Hicks Hall

Hicks's-Hall: A good large Building situate near the S. end of St. John's Str. built by Baptist Lord Hicks, a Justice of the Peace of the County of Middlesex, on the Ground belonging to the Crown, for a Session's House, about the Year 1610, (before which time the Justices met at the Windmill-Inn close by this Hall,) the erection whereof cost about 800 l. It is used also for the fitting of the Grand-Jury (who meet 8 times a Year) upon Bills of Indictments of Criminals to be afterwards tryed at the Justice-Hall. 3d. For the sitting of the Commissioners of the Queen's Tax for Holbourn and Finsbury Divisions. 4. For meeting of the Commissioners of Seuers, &c.

[Hicks's Hall.] Sir Baptist Hicks, Mercer, sometime living in Cheapside, Viscount Campden, built at his own Charge, in St. John's Street, a Shire House, for the Justices of Middlesex to hold their Sessions at. Which cost him 900l. or thereabouts.

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Within the County of Middlesex.

He built a Sessions-House for the Justices of Middlesex, (now commonly called Hickes's Hall) to keep their Sessions in, which cost Six Hundred Pound.

Hicks's Hall, in St. John's street, facing West Smithfield, is the county hall in which the justices of Middlesex hold their sessions. This is a very plain brick edifice with a portico at the entrance. It was built by Sir Baptist Hicks, Viscount Campden, who was for some time a mercer in Cheapside, and died in 1629, and from him it received its name. Stow.

Hicks's Hall. Hickses's or Hicks's Hum, in the middle of the roadway of St John-street, Clerkenwell, opposite the Windmill Inn (as denoted by an inscription at the corner of St. John's-lane), was built by Sir Baptist Hickes in 1612, as a Shire-hall, or Sessions-house, for Middlesex; until which, the justices met at the Castle Inn, near Smithfield Bars. The old Hall was taken down after the erection of the New Sessions-house on Clerkenwell Green, which, however, was long after called " Hicks's Hall" ... The exterior is decorated with the county arms, and medallions of Justice and Mercy; the court is in the form of D; and here is a James I. chimney-piece from the old Hall; and a fine portrait of Sir Baptist Hickes.

Hicks's Hall, the Sessions House of the County of Middlesex, in the broad part of St. John Street, Clerkenwell, opposite the Windmill Inn, and so named after Sir Baptist Hicks, of Kensington, a mercer of Cheapside, one of the justices of the county, afterwards Viscount Campden (d. 1629), at whose cost it was built in 1612. In 1619 James I. issued a "Grant to Sir Baptist Hickes and other Justices of the Peace for Middlesex, that the building they have erected near the Sessions House in St. John Street, Clerkenwell, shall be a prison or gaol for the county for ever, for all offences save treason and felony."¹ Hicks's Hall becoming much out of repair the magistrates, 1779, obtained an Act empowering them to remove their Sessions House to a more convenient site on Clerkenwell Green, where it still stands. [See Clerkenwell Sessions House.]

Sir Baptist Hicks, knight, one of the Justices of the County, builded a very stately Session House of brick and stone, with all offices thereunto belonging, at his own proper charges, and upon Wednesday, the 13 of January, this yere 1612, by which time this house was fully finished, there assembled 26 Justices of the County, being the first day of their meeting in that place, where they were all feasted by Sir Baptist Hicks, and then they all with one consent gave it a proper name, and called it Hicks's Hall, after the name of the founder, who then freely gave the same house to them and their successors for ever. Untill this time the Justices of Middlesex held their usuall meeting in a common Inn, called the Castle [near Smithfield Bars].—Howes, ed. 1631, p. 1003.

An old dull sot who told the clock
For many years at Bridewell Dock,
At Westminster and Hicks's Hall,
And hiccius-doctius played in all.
Hudibras, pt. iii. c. 3.

At Hixe's Hall, by jury grave.
     It was manslaughter found:
Oh what would it have cost to have
     A pardon from the Crown!
Sir C. Sedley, 1704, p. 180.

William, Lord Russell, the patriot, was condemned to death in Hicks's Hall; and Count Koningsmarck, the real, though not the actual, assassin of Mr. Thynne, was acquitted in the same building. The distance on the mile-stones of the great north road were formerly measured from Hicks's Hall.

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¹ Cal. State Pap., 1619–1623, p. 66.

Hicks' Hall. The chief point of contact between Sir Baptist Hicks and the county of Middlesex arises of course out of the "Hall" which he built for the use of the Justices, the story of which has often been told, and will be found at p. xxiii. of the editor's preface to our second volume. The date at which his name first appears in the Records has not been noted, but he was a Justice some time before 1612. (He was made a Deputy Lieutenant March 23rd, 1625). Up to that date the Justices had held their sessions at the Castle or Windmill Tavern (for it seems to have been known by both names,) on the east side of St. John Street, just outside Smithfield Bars, and therefore at the nearest point in the county of Middlesex to the City of London.

In the 19th year of Elizabeth a piece of waste land in St. John Street had been granted to Christopher Saxton for the purposes of a Sessions House, but nothing more appears to have been done with it. But in 1610 James I. granted by Letters Patent to Sir Thos. Lake and fourteen other Justices and Esquires of the County of Middlesex "a plot of land a hundred and twenty-eight feet of Assize from North to South in length, thirty-two feet from East to West in breadth, reserving twenty feet on each side thereof for a carriage way, such ground to be for ever used and employed as a Sessions House, and for keeping a prison or House of Correction in the same County," and on this "Sir Baptist Hicks," says the continuation of Stow's Chronicle, "builded a very faire Sessions House of bricke and stone, with all offices thereunto belonging, at his own proper charges," variously stated at from £600 to £900. "Upon Wednesday the 13th of January¹ this year 1612, by which time the house was fully finished, there assembled twenty-six Justices of the County, being the first day of their meeting in the place, where they were all feasted by Sir Baptist Hicks, and then they all with one consent gave it a proper name, and called it Hicks's Hall, after the name of the Founder, who then freely gave the same house to them and their successors for ever." This account is confirmed by the Records (vol. ii. 84).

The "very faire Sessions House" was a plain building after all, and its only embellishment was said to have been a stone portico, which, however, does not appear in the only extant representation of the place, which we reproduce. "As far as we can recollect," says a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1827, "it was a shapeless brick lump, containing a great warehouse in the centre for the court, and houses for the officers all round and joined on to it. The prison was not, for want of room, connected with the court, but removed to another site." The hall also contained a room where the bodies of criminals were publicly dissected, as shown in the last plate of Hogarth's series of the Progress of Cruelty. A plan in the Guildhall Library shows the court of an oval shape, which was also that of the dissecting room, probably beneath it.

As the Sessions House of the county of Middlesex for a hundred and seventy years, Hicks' Hall is of course the subject of numerous references not only in the County Records, but in the Domestic State Papers, and in current literature of the time.¹ Standing close to the City boundary it was a starting point for distances on the North Road, and until comparatively recently, milestones were to be seen marked with the number of miles "from Hicks' Hall," or "from where Hicks' Hall formerly stood." A few years ago one such existed between Highgate and Finchley, but like many other things it has been "improved" away.

In 1777 Hicks' Hall had fallen into very bad condition, and application was made to Parliament for power to rebuild it. The site, however, was becoming more and more inconvenient as traffic increased, and instead of rebuilding it the justices erected the present Sessions House on Clerkenwell Green. The first stone of the new building was laid on the 29th August, 1779, by the Duke of Northumberland, Lord Lieutenant of the county, of whom two portraits, by Reynolds and Gainsborough respectively, removed from the new Sessions House, now hang in the Guildhall Westminster. The Sessions were removed in 1782, and the old Hall pulled down. It was proposed to erect a column on the spot, but it was never done, and the site is now marked by a modern erection which, if more useful, is less dignified. There is also an old tablet on a public house, the Queen's Head, on the west side of the street, which states that "Opposite this place Hicks' Hall formerly stood."

Hicks' Hall has not passed altogether without leaving its memorials. The fine old chimney-piece, now in the magistrates' room at the Sessions House, a photograph of which is annexed, was removed from the dining-room of the old structure.¹ The portrait reproduced in our frontispiece was one of its ornaments. Mr. Charles Wright, the veteran keeper of the Sessions House, now in his eightyninth year, remembers seeing in his youth John Martin, the old porter from Hicks' Hall, who lived to a very advanced age, and almost to the end of his life (about the year 1818) used to occupy the porter's chair at the new Sessions House.

Our Middlesex County Record Society is in some degree an outcome of Sir Baptist Hicks' work, since it was in the search for additional information respecting him that the ruinous and perishing condition of the Records was brought to light, and interest awakened which led to their preservation and to the formation of the Society for their publication. We have also a more tangible result of his good deed. In former days it was the practice during the sessions to provide dinner for the justices in attendance at a cost of half-a-crown a head, and if any justice had violated the unwritten law of the court, as for instance by bailing a prisoner whom another justice had refused to bail, or granting a licence out of his own division or to a non-juror or papist, or offending in any other way, he was formally reprimanded, and the reprimand duly recorded. It might be thought that such a postprandial rebuke carried no great terrors, but if the offence was of a more aggravated nature, or was repeated, a representation might be and in some cases was made to the Lord Chancellor, who took more serious steps. When the habits of society altered, and mid-day dinner was no longer in vogue, a Magistrates' Club was formed, the members of which paid an entrance fee (subsequently abolished) and an annual subscription, and also the old fee of half a crown a dinner, and dined together on the eight county days of the year. The Local Government Act of 1888, however, which broke up the historic county of Middlesex, broke up also many pleasant and useful associations of the justices, and among them their social gatherings. The club was wound up, its property, consisting of a small cellar of wine and a small quantity of plate bearing the name of Hicks' Hall, and dating from the middle of the last century, was sold, and the produce, amounting to £187 2s. 11d., generously handed over to the Middlesex County Record Society towards the production of their third volume.

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¹ The 13th of January, 1612, however, fell on a Monday.

¹ It has often been stated, as for instance by Hare (Walks in London), that the trial of Lord William Russell in 1673 took place in Hicks' Hall, whereas in fact it took place at the Old Bailey. Anyone who holds a superstitious faith in the trustworthiness of books will be rudely disillusioned if he attempts to verify their statements on any historical subject of secondary importance such as the present. One popular local historian has four mistakes in a single paragraph on Sir Baptist Hicks. Though indeed every one who ventures into print, including the present writer, lives in a glass house.

¹ The chimney-piece bears the following inscriptions:—"Sir Baptist Hickes of Kensington in the County of Middlesex Knight one of the justices of the peace of this county of Middlesex of his worthy disposition and at his own proper charge buylt this session house in the year of our Lord God 1612 and gave it to the justices of peace of this county and their successors for a sessions house for ever. 1618." (This is also the date of the portrait.) And "On the erection of the present Sessions house Anno Dom. 1782 this antient chimney front (a part of the old Hickes Hall) was placed in this room, to perpetuate the memory of Sir Baptist Hickes as set forth in the above inscription."