Bow Street

Bow street a Spacious Str. betn Russel str. Covent Garden SEly and near Long Acre. L. 200 Yds. and from Chat + NEly 800 Yds.

Bow-street, so called, as running in Shape of a bent Bow: The Street is open and large, with very good Houses, well inhabited, and resorted unto by Gentry for Lodgings, as are most of the other Streets in this Parish.

Bow-St., Covent Garden, is the first turning eastward, and parallel to the east side of the great piazza. It extends from No. 63, near the east end of Long Acre, to Great Russell-street.

Bow Street, Covent Garden, built 1637, and so called "as running in shape of a bent bow." Strype, who tells us this, adds, that "the street is open and large, with very good houses, well inhabited, and resorted unto by gentry for lodgings, as are most of the other streets in this parish."⁴ This was in 1720; and it ceased to be well inhabited about five years afterwards. The Theatre (see Covent Garden Theatre) was built in 1732, and the Bow Street Police Office, celebrated in the annals of crime, established in 1749. Eminent Inhabitants. Edmund Waller, the poet, on the east side of the street, from 1654 to 1656; here then he was living when he wrote, in 1654, his famous panegyric upon Cromwell. Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, was born in this street, October 5, 1661. William Longueville, the friend of Butler, on the east side. The witty Earl of Dorset, in a house on the west side, in the years 1684 and 1685. Major Mohun, the famous actor, in a house on the east side, from 1671 to 1676 inclusive. Dr. John Radcliffe, on the west side, from 1687 to 1714: the house was taken down in 1732 to erect Covent Garden Theatre. Grinling Gibbons, in a house on the east side (about the middle of the street), from 1678 to 1721, the period of his death. The house was distinguished by the sign of "The King's Arms."¹

On Thursday the house of Mr. Gibbons, the famous carver, in Bow Street, Covent Garden, fell down; but by a special Providence none of the family were killed; but 'tis said a young girl, which was playing in the court [King's Court?] being missing, is supposed to be buried in the rubbish.—Postman of January 24, 1701–1702.

 

Grinlin Gibbins gen. and wife	... ...	£1
Mr. Gibbons more for a fine refusing to take upon him the office of an assessor	... ...	5
5 Children—Eliz., Mary, Jane, Katherine, and Ann	... ...
Appr. Robert Bing [King in another place]
Servts. Mary Guff         Mary	... ...
Lodger Madam Titus	... ...	1
Her servant	... ...

Poll Tax Bks. of St. Paul's, Cov. Gar., anno 1692.

Marcellus Laroone ("Captain Laroon"), who drew the Cries of London, known as "Tempest's Cries," in a house on the west side, three doors up, from midsummer 1680 to his death in 1702. William Wycherley, the dramatist, in lodgings (widow Hilton's, on the west side), three doors beyond Radcliffe, and over against the Cock. King Charles II. paid him a visit here, when ill of a fever; and here, when seventy-five and too unwell to attend the church, and only anxious to burden the estate descending to his nephew, he was married in his own lodgings to a woman with child. He died eleven days after his marriage (in 1715); but his widow had no child to succeed to the property. Edmund Curll, "next door to Will's Coffee-house."² Robert Wilks, the actor, "Gentleman Wilks" (d. 1732), at No. 6, the sixth house on the west side walking to Long Acre. Wilks built the house, next door but one to the Theatre,³ and in it, in 1742, Macklin, Mrs. Woffington, and David Garrick lodged.⁴ They took it by turns to keep house, and it was here that Johnson heard Garrick blame the Woffington's extravagance in having the tea "as red as blood." Spranger Barry, the actor, in 1749, in the corner house on the west side, formerly Will's Coffee-house. Dr. Johnson, for a short time. Henry Fielding, the novelist, and acting magistrate for Westminster, in a house (destroyed in the Gordon riots of 1780, it being then in the occupation of Sir John Fielding), on the site of the late Police Office (No. 4). It was Fielding (d. 1754), and his half-brother, Sir John Fielding (d. 1780), who made Bow Street Police Office and Bow Street officers famous in our annals. Here the former wrote his Tom Jones.

A predecessor of mine used to boast that he made one thousand pounds a year in his office; but how he did this (if, indeed, he did it) is to me a secret. His clerk, now mine, told me I had more business than he had ever known there; I am sure I had as much as any man could do.—Fielding, Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.

He [Rigby] and Peter Bathurst t'other night carried a servant of the latter's, who had attempted to shoot him, before Fielding; who to all his other vocations has, by the Grace of Mr. Lyttelton, added that of Middlesex Justice. He sent them word that he was at supper with a blind man, three Irishmen, and a whore, on some cold mutton and a bone of ham, both in one dish, and the cursedest Dirty cloth. He never stirred nor asked them to sit. Rigby who had seen him so often come to beg a guinea of Sir C. Williams, and Bathurst at whose father's he had lived for victuals, understood that dignity as little, and pulled themselves chairs, on which he civilised.—Horace Walpole to H. W. Montague, May 18, 1749.

On Thursday night they pulled down Fielding's house and burnt his goods in the street.... Leaving Fielding's ruins they went to Newgate to demand their companions who had been seized demolishing the chapel.—Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, June 9, 1780.

George M. Woodward, caricaturist, died in 1809 at the Brown Bear public house, and was "buried by the humane landlord."

Till the passing of Sir Robert Peel's Police Act, the Bow Street police officers—Bow Street Runners, or Red-breasts (from their red waistcoats), as they were commonly called by the populace—were chiefly charged with the detection and apprehension of criminals.

At home our Bow Street gemmen keep the laws,

says Lord Byron in Beppo; but now they are an extinct genus.

I have actually come to Bow Street in the morning, and while I have been leaning on the desk, had three or four people come in and say, "I was robbed by two highwaymen in such a place;" "I was robbed by a single highwayman in such a place." People travel now safely by means of the horse patrol. That Sir Richard Ford planned. Where are the highway robberies now?—Townsend, the Bow Street Officer (Evidence before the House of Commons, June 1816).

To the list of celebrated personages living in lodgings in this street may be added the name of Sir Roger de Coverley.¹ Remarkable Places. Will's Coffee-house; No. 1, on the west side. [See Will's Coffee-house.] The Cock Tavern, about the middle of the street, on the east side.

Their lodgings [Wycherley and his first wife the Countess of Drogheda] were in Bow Street over against the Cock, whither if he at any time were with his friends, he was obliged to leave the windows open, that the lady might see there was no woman in the company, or she would be immediately in a downright raving condition.—Dennis's Letters, p. 224.

Here Wycherley has laid two of the best scenes in The Plain Dealer (4to, 1677). Here Sedley, Buckhurst, and Ogle exposed themselves in very indecent postures to the populace; Sedley stripping himself naked, and preaching blasphemy from the balcony. Here Sir John Coventry supped for the last time with a whole nose, being waylaid, by order of Charles II., on his way home from the Cock to his brother's in Suffolk Street, and his nose cut to the bone.¹ The house was kept, when Sedley exposed himself, by a woman called "Oxford Kate."² Jacob Tonson's printing office.

The Bow Street Police Court, the wretched den in which the chief magisterial business of the Metropolis was for so many years carried on, was on the east side of the street, but a very large space was cleared on the opposite side and a new court erected, more convenient for the officials and the public and more suitable to the important character of the functions performed there. The new Police Courts and Station possess the advantage of being in great part detached, having frontages also to Broad Court and Cross Court. They cover nearly half an acre.

The courts are placed on the northern portion of the ground, with the necessary rooms for the attorneys, etc. The magistrates' rooms are on the first floor, where is placed the second court intended for extradition and special cases. The police station occupies the southern end, and has series of rooms for all concerned, including living and sleeping accommodation for 100 policemen. The whole is of fire-proof construction, and was admirably arranged by Mr. John Taylor, architect, of H.M. Office of Works and Public Buildings. The building was completed in 1881 at a total cost of about £40,000.

Remarkable Circumstances. "At the large rooms at the upper end of Bow Street, nearly opposite the Play House passage," Bonnell Thornton, in the name of " The Society of Sign Painters," opened on the same day as the exhibition of the Royal Academy an exhibition of sign-paintings, a piece of inoffensive drollery in which Hogarth did not disdain to lend the aid of his pencil. The Catalogue, in imitation of that of the Royal Academy, was in 4to, price 1s. The painters treated the affair seriously and the burlesque was not repeated.

At the Garrick's Head, facing the Theatre, the disreputable Renton Nicholson, editor of The Town, held for some years his meetings of "Judge and Jury," when he styled himself "Lord Chief Baron."

---

⁴ Strype, B. vi. p. 93.

¹ Black's Ashmole MSS. col. 209.
² Advertisement of Ashmole's "Berkshire," in Daily Post Boy, February 7, 1729–1730.
³ T. Dibdin's Autobiography, vol. ii. p. 18.
⁴ Fitzgerald's Garrick, vol. i. p. 132.

¹ Spectator, No. 410.

¹ See Marvell's Letters, and article "Haymarket."
² Pepys, July 1, 1663; Shadwell, vol. i. p. 45.

Bow Street

Few Streets in Covent Garden have changed their original character more since the late eighteenth century than Bow Street. The present aspect of the street is determined by two factors: its function as part of a through-route from Waterloo Bridge to St. Giles's and Bloomsbury, and the public or semipublic nature of the large buildings that front upon it. Originally, however, the street did not form part of an important line of communication, having no northward opening into Long Acre (Plate 7), and until the building of Smirke's Covent Garden Theatre in 1809 was essentially the usual street of houses, shops and taverns.

Its first occupants appear in the parish ratebooks in c. 1633. The west side, which was developed under the Bedford leases running from 1631–3 tabulated on pages 294–7, was the first to be completed, by 1635–6.

On the east side the northern half of the frontage was formed by the brick wall built in c. 1610 by the third Earl of Bedford (see page 24), and the ground behind this, which had been granted on long lease by the second Earl in 1574 to Sir Edmund Carey, (fn. 6) remained undeveloped for the time being, as did a piece of fee-farm property immediately to its south. The rest of the eastern frontage, southward to Russell Street, turned slightly westward from the wall, and the building-up of this part was completed three or four years after the west side. (fn. 7)

Unlike the other main streets in Covent Garden Bow Street did not take its name (which it bore by 1638 (fn. 7) ) from the Russell family or the royal family. No doubt, as Strype supposed, the name derived from its shape. (fn. 8)

The ratebooks suggest that the first houses in the street varied considerably in value, and the occupants were also diverse. Some people of title occur from the beginning. The first residents also included the building speculator, Richard Harris, who, when not in gaol, weathered out the vicissitudes of his career at No. 4 (on the site of the Russell Street market): further north one of the first residents was a schoolmaster, Thomas Haywood or Howard. (fn. 9) The street seems never to have achieved uniform residential respectability; nor was it quite as much a superior tradesman's street as Bedford Street or King Street. Perhaps it was more animated than they were and more attractive to lively or talented people. By the late 1690's the residents included Grinling Gibbons, William Wycherley (probably, in lodgings (fn. 10) ), Doctor John Radcliffe, Marcellus Laroon the elder, Doctor Humphrey Ridley, the penman John Ayres, Lady Craven, and the proprietor of Will's coffee house. (fn. 7)

This last had been established in 1671 in a newly built house at No. 1, by a William Urwin, from whom it took its name. It occupied part of the site of a larger property which had previously included, under the name of the Three Roses, the corner house (No. 21 Russell Street, originally the site of the Goat tavern) and No. 20 Russell Street. (fn. 11) Under Dryden's patronage Will's rapidly became famous, and by the 1690's had been extended to take in the upper part of the corner house. (fn. 12) At about this time, however, Urwin was 'lapsed in his fortunes' and his mortgagee, Doctor William Oldys, the civilian, (fn. 13) had to put in a manager. (fn. 14) In the 1720's it was sufficiently prosperous to include the upper part of No. 20 Russell Street. (fn. 15) No. 1 Bow Street continued under the name of Will's coffee house until at least 1730, (fn. 10) but in 1743 it was known as Chapman's coffee house, and by 1751 the name Will's had been transferred to a coffee house in the Little Piazza. (fn. 16) (fn. 1)

The building-up of the street had been completed in 1673–7 with the erection of eleven houses at the northern end of the east side, where a garden is prominently shown in Hollar's view (Plate 1). In 1659 the leasehold interest here, acquired by Sir Edmund Carey, had passed to the Honourable Arthur Annesley (fn. 17) (who was created Earl of Anglesey in 1661), but by 1673 all or most of the street frontage was again in the fifth Earl of Bedford's hands, (fn. 18) and had been built upon by 1675. (fn. 7) The lessees from the fifth Earl included (Sir) Richard Blake, a 'gentleman', and a 'chirurgeon'; another is known to have been a building tradesman, Thomas Thurban, bricklayer. The pre-lease articles of agreement were very specific in respect of materials and scantlings and included a requirement that the roof-timbers, first floor and external woodwork should be of oak. The clear room-heights on the ground, first and second floors were 10, 10½ and 9 feet respectively. The elevations were to be uniform, to a design approved by the Earl's surveyor. (fn. 19)

At the extreme northern end of the east side two 'uniform' houses were built at this time by the same Blake who was the Earl of Bedford's lessee, but seemingly as lessee of the Earl of Anglesey, or by right of tenure from the two Earls together. His building-work included a gateway high enough to take a laden hay-cart, probably communicating with the Red Lion Inn: (fn. 20) maps of the 1680's show Red Lion Court opening into Bow Street here from Drury Lane.

It was the Earl of Bedford's intention to make a communication northward also, to Long Acre, and his leases of 1673 included provision for the payment of an additional ground rent if this was effected. Nothing more was done, however, than the creation of a northward cul de sac, where a carpenter, Thomas Chaplin, was the Earl's building lessee in 1675. (fn. 21)

Immediately south of the Earl's houses two others (Nos. 29 and 30) were put up on sites that were no longer part of his estate. (fn. 6) The builder was the bricklayer, Richard Frith, who evidently took advantage of a looser control than was exercised over the Earl's houses to employ bad materials. The Tylers' and Bricklayers' Company fined him for using defective tiles supplied to him by the Deptford fishmonger, Thomas Pitcher, (fn. 22) and some twenty-six years later, in 1702, one of these houses, which was at that time inhabited by Grinling Gibbons, fell down. (fn. 23) Gibbons thereupon moved to an adjacent site southward, and built himself a new house under a lease from the first Duke of Bedford. (fn. 24)

In 1720 the street found favour with Strype— 'open and large, with very good Houses, well inhabited, and resorted unto by Gentry for Lodgings'. (fn. 8) A few years later, however, the parish had a poor-house or nurses' house in the street, (fn. 25) and 1739 saw the disappearance of the last private titled ratepayer. In the following year Sir Thomas De Veil appears in the ratebooks, at the site of Laroon's old house, No. 4, but the establishment of his magistrate's court here (see page 188) no doubt spoilt the street residentially. By 1743 there were eight licensed premises in Bow Street. (fn. 26) The making of Broad Court in 1745–7 on the site of Red Lion Court gave a dull orderliness of appearance to this vicinity, but despite the eminence of the building tradesmen employed by the fourth Duke the scale and social character of the development was quite humble (see page 40 and Plates 52b, 59a).

Since 1732 there had been a small pit-entrance to Covent Garden Theatre on the west side. A larger entrance was made a few doors further south, perhaps about 1776. (fn. 7) By the end of the eighteenth century columned porches had been built, but the theatre still had no façade of its own to Bow Street.

The fifth Earl's intention of making a way through into Long Acre was finally brought about by the fifth Duke in 1792–3, and the passage which he then made was surrendered to the Paving Commissioners of St. Martin in the Fields as a public highway. At first it had a bar across it. (fn. 27) The extension to Long Acre was widened nearly to its present breadth in 1835 by the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues. This was in conjunction with the construction of Wellington Street (see page 226) and was of great importance in opening Bow Street for the first time to heavy through-traffic.

By this period Bow Street was nearing the end of its history as a residential street. Proximity to the theatre seems to have made the northern end of the street particularly disreputable. When the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues were negotiating in 1833 for the purchase of ground here they found that the Duke of Bedford's lessee, James Robinson, owned a brothel on part of the desired site at the northern corner of Hart Street, as well as another opposite, on the east side of Bow Street. During the lengthy negotiations Robinson's solicitor accused the Commissioners' surveyor, J. W. Higgins, of prejudice against 'my client's profession', while another of the Commissioners' officers voiced the conviction that Robinson was prolonging his tenure of 'the naughty house in Hart Street' until 'the Rutting Season is over'. (fn. 28) (fn. 2) The clearing of the site evidently made little difference to the character of the locality. In 1844 the occupant of a building at this northern corner of Hart Street complained to the parish vestry that he had 'numerous Brothels situated around my house', and suggested that the notorious name of Bow Street should be changed to Wellington Street. (fn. 29)

Whatever its social character the appearance of this northern end of the street had been transformed by the building of Robert Smirke's Covent Garden Theatre in 1809. (fn. 3) The subsequent visual history of the street is that of the large buildings which now dominate it—the Opera House and Floral Hall (1856–60), the Police Station and Magistrates' Court (1879– 1880), the Broad Court rebuilding (1897, by R. S. Wornum (fn. 30) ), and the Telephone Exchange (1964–7).

Of the original street, only the range from No. 35 to the corner of Russell Street retains the old site-divisions, with unremarkable buildings of comparatively recent date. They include, however, two public houses, the Globe (at No. 37) and the Marquis of Anglesea (at No. 39 Bow Street and No. 23 Russell Street), which occupy sites where licensed premises were situated at (though not uninterruptedly back to) an early date. On the site of the Globe a victualler was in possession by 1682, (fn. 31) while the Marquis of Anglesea occupies the site of a victualler's premises in the same year (at No. 39), (fn. 31) and of Edward Miles's coffee house at the corner of Russell Street in 1663. (fn. 32)

Ratepaying occupants in Bow Street include: Lady Dorothy Fowles, 1633–41; Dr. Robert Gifford, 1633–41; Sir Edward Payton, 1633–9, parliamentary pamphleteer; Sir Egremont Thynne, 1633–6; Lady Milleson, 1635; Thomas Savile, first Viscount Savile of Castlebar and later first Earl of Sussex, 1635; Sir Thomas Sherley, 1635–6; Sir Richard Tichborne, 1636; Lady Arthurlong, 1637; Dr. Lawrence, 1638; Christopher Lewtener, 1637–9, ? Christopher Lewkenor, member of the Long Parliament; 'Monsieur Amy Merriott', ? Paul Amyraut, 1639– 1640, divine; Lady Carey (Carewe), c. 1640–3; Captain Daniel Goodriche, 1640–4; Sir William Mountick, c. 1640–1; Countess of Castlehaven, 1641–3; Colonel Vaviser, 1643; Captain Welby, 1643; Sir William Lister, c. 1645, member of the Long Parliament; Brian Stapleton, 1645–52, member of the Long Parliament; Dr. Walter Charleton, c. 1651–6, physician; Thomas Wharton, c. 1651,? physician; William Clarke, 1653–5,? (Sir) William Clarke, later Secretary at War; Edmond Waller, 1654–6, poet, member of the Long Parliament; 'Doctor Whitacre', 1654–7,? Tobias Whitaker, physician; 'Thos Blunt Esq', 1657, ? Thomas Blount, author; Lady Coveley (Covell), 1658–60; Sir George Wakeman, 1663–4, physician to Queen Catherine of Braganza; 'Lovelace Esq', 1664,? John Lovelace, later third Baron Lovelace of Hurley, Whig; Sir Richard Corbett, 1666; William Denton, c. 1667–79, physician and political writer; Charles Howard, Viscount Andover and from 1669 Earl of Berkshire, 1667–70; Sir Thomas Ashton, 1668; John Austin, 1668–9, Catholic writer under pseudonym William Birchley; Major Michael Mohun, 1671–6, actor; Dr. Richard Lower, 1672–81, physician; Dr. Edward Duke, c. 1675–81; Thomas Hawker, c. 1675–82,? portrait painter; Henry Powle, c. 1675–8, later Master of the Rolls and Speaker of the Convention Parliament; Thomas Jordan, 1676–80, poet; Grinling Gibbons, 1678–84, 1689–1721, wood carver and statuary; William Longueville, 1679–81, lawyer and friend of the poet Samuel Butler, who often visited him in Bow Street; Marcellus Laroon the elder, 1680–1702, painter and engraver; Dr. Charles Conquest, 1682–92; Charles Sackville, sixth Earl of Dorset, c. 1684–5, poet and courtier; Colonel Sackville, c. 1684–93; Captain David Lloyd, c. 1686–8, naval captain and Jacobite agent; Dr. John Radcliffe, 1686–c. 1702, physician; Edward Cooke, 1688,? dramatic poet; Lady Colliton, 1691; Dr. Humphrey Ridley, 1691–c. 1702, physician; John Ayres, c. 1698, penman; Lady Craven, c. 1698; Captain David Overy, c. 1702; Dr. Bigg(s), c. 1705–12; Dr. Thomas Walker, c. 1705–14; Dr. Thomas West, c. 1705–6; 'Mr. Tonson', 1707, Jacob Tonson, publisher; Dr. Richard Adams, 1708–15; Colonel Townsend, 1726–9; Robert Wilks, 1727–32, actor; Lady Catherine Paul, 1729; Edmund Curll, 1730–1, bookseller; George Douglas, fourth Baron Mordington, 1730–4, Whig pamphleteer; Charles Johnson, c. 1736–8, dramatist; Lady Oliphant, c. 1736–9; (Sir) Thomas De Veil, 1740–6, magistrate; John Hippisley, 1740–7, actor and dramatist; 'Dr. Scott', 1740–6, ? Dr. Daniel Scott, theological writer and lexicographer; Dr. Coats Molesworth, 1742; Charles Macklin, 1743–8, actor; Spranger Barry, 1747–58, actor; Colonel John Mostyn, 1748–51, later Governor of Minorca; Henry Fielding, 1749–53, novelist and magistrate; (Sir) John Fielding, 1754–80, magistrate; John Rich, 1754–61, proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre, succeeded in same house by Mrs. Rich, 1761–7; Messrs. Harris and Co., 1768–92; David Ross, 1755–60, actor; Bonnell Thornton, 1759–62, miscellaneous writer and wit; Richard Yates, 1764–79, comedian; Samuel Howard, 1765–77, ? organist and composer; Daniel Dodd, 1772–3, ? painter; Robert Carver, 1775, landscape and scene painter; William Thompson, 1776–80, 1782, ? portrait painter; Charles Lee Lewes, 1778–80, actor; John Richards, 1781–90, ? John Inigo Richards, R.A., landscape and scene painter; Sir Sampson Wright, 1781–92, magistrate; William Thomas Lewis, 1793–9, actor; William Smith, 1798, ? actor; Thomas Harris, 1808–20, co-proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre; William Gilpin, 1811–14, ? William Sawrey Gilpin; William Wycherley, dramatist, lodged in Bow Street in 1715 and earlier years.

---

Footnotes

1. In 1763 Boswell visited this latter house, in the belief that it was the coffee house 'so often mentioned in The Spectator'.

2. The Commissioners had at first offered £500, but, after sticking long at £525. finally gave £735 for Robinson's interest.

3. In 1834 Sydney Smirke suggested the entire removal of the east side of Bow Street to create a great quadrant-shaped and colonnaded piazza which would join Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres.

4. A drawing of 1740 by Marcellus Laroon the younger in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle correctly entitled 'Night Walkers before a Justice' shows the magistrate apparently sitting in his front parlour. A nineteenth-century caption describes the scene as 'a French Gentn Brought at night before the Justice at Bow S—' but as the disposition of windows and door in the drawing does not correspond with the plan of the houses in Bow Street this is probably incorrect. Laroon's father had lived in the former house at No. 4 Bow Street for over twenty years (1680–1702) before it was rebuilt in 1703–4.

5. This site had been suggested before: in 1827 R. H. Best exhibited at the Royal Academy a 'Design for a Police Office and other buildings forming a quadrangle in front of Covent Garden Theatre, and opening a view of that structure from a proposed street connecting Waterloo Bridge with Holborn'.

6. E/BER, Muniment of Title, Middlesex, D, bundle 2, no. 1.

7. R.B.

8. John Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1720, vol. II, bk. VI, p. 93.

9. R.B.; P.R.O., C9/2/111.

10. H. B. Wheatley and P. Cunningham, London Past and Present, 1891, vol. 1, p. 229.

11. R.B.; P.R.O., C5/92/8, C10/421/42, SP16/254, no. 22; Lacy's map.

12. R.B.; The London Gazette, no. 2957, 15 March 1693/4.

13. D.N.B.

14. P.R.O., C10/421/42.

15. R.B.; Wheatley and Cunningham, op. cit., vol. III, p. 517.

16. G.L.R.O.(M), LV(W), 1743, 1751.

17. E/BER, Drury Lane, deed poll of 24 March 1659/60 (confirmation to A. Annesley).

18. P.R.O., C10/226/30.

19. E/BER, Bow Street, leases of 10 Dec. 1673 to Blake, Boscher, Lloyd and Thurban.

20. P.R.O., C10/226/30; C10/227/20.

21. E/BER, Bow Street, lease of 1 July 1675 to T. Chaplin.

22. Guildhall Library, MS. 3047/2, 1 Dec. 1675; Survey of London, vol. XXXIII, 1966, p. 118.

23. R.B.; B.M., Burney Collection 118b, The Post Man, 22–24 Jan. 1701/2; Walpole Society, vol. 22, 1934 (George Vertue Note Book III), p. 10.

24. R.B.; E/BER, Bow Street, lease of 7 March 1701/2 to G. Gibbons.

25. W.P.L., H.804, p. 130; CWA 1735.

26. G.L.R.O.(M), LV(W), 1743.

27. Bedfordshire Record Office, R.1521, 1593; B.O.L., Estate Plan, 1795, second plate.

28. P.R.O., Crest 26/96.

29. W.P.L., H.844, f. 105v.

30. B.A. 10147.

31. R.B.; G.L.R.O.(M), LV(W), 1690.

32. R.B.; P.R.O. C10/114/37.