by Tom Quinn
Ye sons of Westminster who still retain
Your ancient dread of Busby’s awful reign
Forget at length your fears, your panic end –
The monarch of the place is now a friend!
Two of the best stories about Busby concern his extraordinary sense of his own importence. On the first occasion he welcomed Charles II to Westminster School but refused to doff his hat to the king – an extremely daring omission which at that sensitive time (so soon after the Restoration) could have had serious repercussions. When he was upbraided by the king, Busby is said to have replied: ‘I cannot do it, for the boys would then think there is someone greater than I…’
On another occasion Busby was discussing the role of headmaster with someone who suggested that it was perhaps a role of relatively little importance. Busby would have none of it and replied: ‘The fathers of my boys rule the country. The mothers rule the fathers. The boys rule the mothers and I rule the boys.’
A MONARCH ON THE SCRAPHEAP
1660
Any visitor to Westminster Abbey at any time of year will notice something curious – there is always a small bunch of flowers, sometimes dried flowers, in the folded hands of the recumbent statue of Mary, Queen of Scots. It is as if there is a stream of people taking responsibility for their constant renewal and the phenomenon has been noted now for decades.
Similarly the statue of Charles I, the only monarch ever to be executed by Parliament, is often decorated with fresh flowers and wreaths. No one quite knows who puts them there but sympathy for the dead king has been passed down the generations and in some circles he has always been seen as a holy martyr. So his supporters still come at quiet times to lay flowers in his memory.
But if that is odd then odder still is the history of the statue itself, which is more a piece of propaganda than a statue.
Like Napoleon, Charles I was tiny, but a dwarf king was unlikely to impress his subjects so the sculptor first put the mini-king on a horse and then increased his dimensions to a strapping six foot. Because he’s on horseback the deception isn’t obvious at all.
First erected in Covent Garden in 1633, the statue of Charles that now stands in Trafalgar Square was taken down by the Puritan Parliament after Charles had been executed and sold to the appropriately named Mr Rivett. Rivett, it was assumed, would simply break it up and reuse the scrap metal, but being a shrewd man who sensed that things would not always be as they were then, he tucked it away undamaged and made a small fortune selling metal knick-knacks supposedly made from the statue’s metal.
After 1660 and the return of the monarchy in the form of the debauched (and secretly Catholic) Charles II, Rivett made another small fortune by selling the king the statue of his dead father.
The new king had the statue set up at Charing Cross and looking down Whitehall to the spot outside the Banqueting House where Charles was executed and there the statue has remained ever since.
But if it had eyes to see and cared to look a little beyond the Banqueting House the statue would no doubt be very cross indeed, for at the other end of Whitehall, and just outside Westminster Hall, stands another statue – a memorial to Charles I’s greatest enemy, Oliver Cromwell.
HOW TO AVOID DEBT IN THE MALL
1661
The phrase ‘shopping mall’ is either greeted with horror or delight depending on one’s attitude to a phenomenon that spread across town centres in America and then the UK like a plague (or a blessing) but the origins of the word mall lie deep in the history of central London, where The Mall and Pall Mall commemorate a game that has vanished as completely as the dodo.
The Mall referred originally to a strange game imported from Italy. The game pallo a maglio soon became known in English as ‘pall mall’. It was played on a half-mile course laid out by James I and Charles I. The two kings were enthusiastic players and the game involved using sticks rather like hockey sticks to knock a ball along the course.
When the first course was destroyed as houses were put up along The Mall Charles II needed a new course. He built it on the north side of what is now The Mall. The old course became what we now call Pall Mall.
Because the king played the game crowds of wealthy Londoners and courtiers came regularly to watch the matches. The great diarist Samuel Pepys records seeing the king play in 1661.
‘While the fashionable strollers watched they meandered up and down talking and enjoying the view across the park.’ The area where pall mall was played also had the great advantage that being within the jurisdiction of the court of St James it was not subject to the debtors laws that applied everywhere else. This meant that in addition to fashionable promenaders The Mall attracted those who could not pay their debts. As long as they stayed there they could not be arrested. Soon the word ‘mall’ came to mean any fashionable place to promenade and loiter whether for conversation, exercise, shopping or debt avoidance!
Technically, even today, you still can’t be arrested for debt if you are within the jurisdiction of St James’s – but don’t rely on it!
THE GOVERNOR OF DUCK ISLAND
1661
Jules Mazarin (1602–1661), one of the most extraordinary French politicians in history, was an Italian Jesuit gambler who effectively ruled France during the minority of Louis XIV from 1643 until his death in 1661. During Mazarin’s time the poet Charles de Marquetel de Saint-Evremond (1613–1703) fell out with the French Government and was forced into exile. He chose London, where he hoped to find employment at the court of Charles II. This put Charles in a very difficult position because Saint-Evremond was extremely well connected and popular in London. Charles neither wanted to offend Saint-Evremond nor upset the French Government under Mazarin.
He came up with a perfect if rather strange solution: Charles remembered that the island in the middle of the lake in St James’s Park was known as Duck Island so he made Saint-Evremond Governor of Duck Island. This pleased the French poet (who hadn’t a clue what it referred to) and his friends and it neatly avoided upsetting the French ambassador, who knew precisely where Duck Island was and what it signified!
Saint-Evremond never returned to France. He remained Governor of Duck Island and died in London in 1703. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
WHERE TO GET YOUR COAT OF ARMS
1666
The British are obsessed with social class – it’s a truism but one that reverberates through history. In earlier times the rising middle classes tried desperately to find an ancestor or two who would introduce a hint of blue blood to the family. Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles reveals that even a poor country girl could be fooled into thinking that her ancestors were aristocrats and that somehow this meant her whole life should change. Then there was Shakespeare, who made every effort to persuade the College of Arms to accept his family’s entitlement to a banner that would proclaim them gentlemen through and through. He failed but the institution to which he applied for his coat of arms still exists in the heart of London.
The vast mystery of family coats of arms, their history, design, conception and meaning, can be traced to an ancient, crooked, but still magnificent building in Queen Victoria Street in the heart of the old City and close to the river.
A miraculous survivor of German bombs, the seventeenth-century College of Arms is home to a bizarre range of officials who can be grouped into the royal heralds and the kings at arms. There are three kings at arms – Garter, Norroy and Clarenceux. The royal heralds are York, Lancaster, Windsor, Chester, Somerset and Richmond. The college also houses the pursuivants – Rouge Dragon, Blue Mantle, Rouge Croix and Portcullis. Each of these titles is given to one man. Bizarrely, the head of the college – the Earl Marshall – is always the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk is England’s premier dukedom but the family has always traditionally been Catholic and at least one had his head lopped off for treachery.
The role, complexity and purpose of the various jobs carried out at the College of Arms would take a whole book t
o explain but suffice it to say that even today, more than five centuries after the college was established, no one, whether company or individual, is allowed to design and use a coat of arms without the permission of the college and there are strict rules about what exactly can appear on a coat of arms. There are a number of cases where those who broke the rules have been fined heavily for so doing.
Most of the terms used by the college are based on a curious medieval mix of Norman French (still current in elevated circles for a century and more after the Norman invasion), Latin and Middle English.
The College of Arms still has the charters and other documentation that survived the Great Fire of 1666 when the fifteenth-century building on the same site was burned down. All the paperwork was bundled into a boat and taken across the river.
Traditionally – though this is apparently not the case now – jobs in the college were given to important friends of important people, which may explain the long line of eccentrics, drunks and lunatics who have snoozed away the decades in the ancient panelled rooms of this delightful building.
Among the most eccentric was William Oldys (1696–1761), apparently given a job as herald because the Duke of Norfolk had enjoyed reading Oldys’s book about Sir Walter Raleigh. Dukes of Norfolk, remember, always get the job of Earl Marshall, whose main role is to organise state occasions – funerals, weddings and coronations. Oldys spent his days and evenings in a local pub but employed a man to carry him back – completely drunk – to the college before midnight. If he was later than that it meant a fine. Oldys is best remembered today for a strange little poem he wrote towards the end of his life:
Busy curious thirsty fly
Drink with me and drink as I.
Freely welcome to my cup
Couldst thou sip and sip it up.
Make the most of life you may
Life is short and wears away.
YEOMAN OF THE MOUTH
1669
One of London’s least-known but most beautiful buildings is Morden College just south of Blackheath. Not a college at all in the modern sense, Morden was actually built as a charitable foundation to house Turkey merchants who had fallen on hard times. Turkey merchants had nothing to do with the Christmas bird were merchants who, under a charter of Elizabeth I, began trading with the Near East. One such merchant – Sir John Morden – had grown enormously wealthy from his trading exploits. So much so that he bought the ancient estate of Wricklemarsh near Blackheath in 1669. The estate got its name from the Saxon word ‘wirckle’, meaning ‘babbling’, because the ground was crisscrossed by streams.
According to legend Morden’s luck ran out in the early 1690s and a flotilla of ships on which his wealth depended failed to arrive from the Levant. He was faced with ruin but just when all hope had been lost, his ships appeared in the Thames Estuary and rather than ruined he found himself richer than ever. He was so grateful for what he saw as divine intervention that he commissioned Christopher Wren to build the college that still bears his name.
The college – with its lovely gardens and wonderful collonaded courtyard – is still home to elderly local people and it is still administered by trustees, something for which Sir John made provision in his will.
But the strangest thing about Morden College is not its survival, wonderful though that is, but rather the tombstone of one of its former inhabitants which is to be found in the grounds.
On his gravestone John Thompson is described as Yeoman of the Mouth. The inscription reads: ‘in ye kitchen to king Charles II he served the said king as well during his exile as after restoration unto the time of his death. He served also King James the second and King William the third and being aged was allowed by her majesty Queen Anne to come hither.’
Unless Thompson was making it up it looks as if he served as a food taster for a series of monarchs – something not recorded elsewhere. Monarchs were certainly obsessed with the idea that they might be poisoned so it is perhaps not unlikely that Thompson was indeed ‘Yeoman of the Mouth’.
THE CHURCH THAT INSPIRED A CAKE
1672
St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street is a fund of wonderfully odd stories. Its lightning conductor was designed and fitted by the great American republican and inventor Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) but only after a huge row about whether blunt-ended conductors (seen as American) should be used or British pointed-end conductors.
The church steeple, designed by Christopher Wren, was used by a local baker, Mr Rich, as the inspiration for the bridal cake design that we now take for granted – St Bride’s didn’t get its name from the cake, the cake design copied the church and Rich became very rich indeed as a result of his new cake which, as we all know, survives to this day.
The remains of seven previous churches have been found during excavations at St Bride’s and among more recent monuments are two that are very special indeed. On a wall close to the font there is a small memorial to Virginia Dare, whose claim to fame is that she was the first English child to be born in America. There is also a memorial – an unusually light-hearted one – to the man who built the church. We don’t know the name of the author but it begins:
Clever men like Christopher Wren
Only occur just now and then.
No one expects
In perpetuity
Architects of his ingenuity.
No – never a cleverer dipped his pen
Than clever Sir Christopher, Christopher Wren.
HOW THE ROYAL MISTRESS GOT HER WAY
1675
The history of political scandal in Britain is the history of sexual intrigue. What a man won’t do for patriotic or even financial reasons he will often do for his mistress and that simple fact explains a very odd historical circumstance concerning one of London’s most famous streets.
Pall Mall, that street which runs from St James’s Palace to Trafalgar Square, is also one of the most historic in London. Today, the area is almost entirely offices and clubs, but it was once one of London’s most fashionable addresses and through the bizarre workings of royal patronage and favour it contains a unique building – Number 79. This is the only building in the whole street where the freehold is not owned by the Crown. And the reason? The original house on the site is long gone, but it was once owned by Charles II’s favourite mistress, Nell Gwynn.
When Charles offered to find her a house near his own home – St James’s Palace – he discovered that No. 79 was free and he simply gave her a long lease and thought no more about it. However, the gift of the lease did not make Ms Gwynn happy. She refused to move into the house on the grounds, as she apparently put it, that she had ‘always conveyed free under the crown and always would’. In other words unless she had the freehold the deal – and probably much besides – was off. Charles knew when he was beaten and arranged to have the freehold given to Nell. When she died, her son the Duke of St Albans inherited the freehold and it was sold later to pay off his debts. Its freehold has been bought and sold ever since and never returned to the Crown.
THE ULTIMATE CELEBRITY STREET
1675
One of the most interesting thoroughfares in London is Buckingham Street – a short street of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century houses that runs up from the Embankment towards the Strand and a little to the east of Charing Cross Station.
The houses are modest and one or two have been rebuilt but this short street can lay claim to having housed more celebrities than any other comparable street in London.
When London’s first great speculative builder – the first modern developer – Nicholas Barbon (1640–1698) bought the land at the end of the seventeenth century he immediately began building the sort of houses that would appeal to the fashionable. Most were complete by 1675.
Number 10 Buckingham Street was once the home of David Hume (1711–1776), the brilliant Scottish philosopher and father of the Enlightenment. Later on the house was lived in by the famous postimpressionist painter Henri Roussea
u (1844–1910). Diarist Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) lived both at number 12 and at number 14. Number 12 was later occupied by Queen Anne’s Lord Treasurer Robert Harley (1661–1724), who invited Jonathan Swift (1644–1718) and William Penn (1667–1745) (of Pennsylvania fame) to dine with him. Two painters lived in the house at different times – William Etty (1787–1849) and Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1867). The scientist Humphrey Davy (1778–1829) carried out some of his most important experiments in the cellar! Peg Woffington (1720–1760), a celebrated beauty and one of the greatest eighteenth-century actresses, lived at number 9. The Russian Peter the Great (1672–1725) stayed for a while at number 15, while Henry Fielding (1707–1754), the creator of Tom Jones, lived here too, as did – a century later – Charles Dickens (1812–1870). Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) lived at number 21. Most bizarrely of all, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) stayed in a house in the street – exactly which one is disputed – for a short period during 1791.
A QUACK ON TOWER HILL
1680
The court of Charles II was probably the most debauched English court in history. This probably had a great deal to do with Charles’s years of exile in France. The French, then as now, were little concerned if their king had a wife and a dozen or more mistresses – France after all was the country where the extraordinary feudal system of droit de seigneur held sway in rural districts. This bizarre tradition meant that the local lord of the manor could sleep with any newly wed peasant woman on the first night she was married if he chose to do so. The husband could do nothing but acquiesce.
The rather puritanical English were suspicious of Charles, who was addicted to pleasure and cared almost nothing for affairs of state. He also gathered round him a bizarre group of madmen and eccentrics and none was madder or more eccentric than John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680).