I don't remember how long, doing my Business in that manner; but he was so very covetous, that he could not part with Mony that was in his own Power, and let the Gardens run to Ruin, and I was forc'd to part with him, and was put to a very great Expence in puting my Gardens into Order again, after he had broke his Contract with me, and receiv'd a great Sum of Money for keeping these Gardens, tho' he did it in a very scandalous Manner. In the Time he liv'd with me I never refus'd to give him any Recommendation to advance his Children: Sometimes they succeeded, and sometimes not. And his Son, who is a Clergyman, I always intended to give him a good Living, as soon as it was in my power. So much I say to shew how much his Children have been oblig'd to me. But I have liv'd too long to think there is any Thing to be expected from Gratitude. And therefore I will now come to the Reasonable part; and shew You that what I desire is as much for Mr. Hughes's Advantage as for mine, And I think more; because all that I want is what I can obtain by Law. Lease from Mr. Jackson: And who, I suppose, did it to make his Houses lett better, tho' it made it difficult for me to get into a House that cost me of my own Mony £44,000. This put me upon a thing, that otherwise I should never have thought of. Which was, to get a Grant of the Reversion after Mr. Jackson, of four very little Houses. And I paid the Fine and Fees to the Crown for it. And there is now but six or seven years remaining of the Old Leases. And when this Term is out, these Houses are mine for as long a Term as the Crown cou'd grant. The Corner House (which would have been down before now, if it had not been propp'd upon my Ground) is all I want for my Purposes to be quiet. An old Frenchman, who took it of Mr. Arnold or Mr. Hughes I don't know which, was with me lately, and told me that his Lease was out, and said he could not pay his Rent to his Landlord, unless I would speak to the Board of Green Cloth to continue his Licence to keep an Ale-house which I have found means to get taken away, it being a great nuisance, they putting out all manner of Nastiness in the way that I must go by to my House. And besides, it was very disagreeable to have an Alehouse so near for under-servants to be at. This French-man told me that he must leave his House, if I would not obtain this Favour for him, for he could now lett it for nothing for any other use. you sent any body to view it, you would see that for any thing but an Ale-house, nobody would give £10 a year for it. However I have lately offer'd £200 down for the whole term of this miserable Place: Which I am told is a prodigious Price for such a Thing, Which the Landlord has so short a Time in, and is oblig'd by his Lease to leave it in Repair. Queen Anne gave me a Grant for the House and Ground that was Queen Dowager's, and the Way into that House is in a Plan annex'd to my Grant. Some time after her Death, finding the Neighbours had committed many Trespasses that made it uneasy and disagreeable to get into my House, I sent to Mr. Lowndes of the Treasury, who had drawn my Grant, to ask him what I should do? Upon which he examin'd the old Leases, I believe of Mr. Jackson's, and measur'd the Ground, and told me, it was plain the Builders had incroached Eight Feet beyond the Lease. And that it was no matter which end the Incroachment was on, for the Crown could take it. And that it was most likely to be taken from the Passage into Queen Dowager's House, because the other end was so near the Gate of St James's Palace, that it cou'd not be there. Notwithstanding this, I had no mind to make a Dispute; but endeavour'd by an extravagant Price to have bought the Corner House in the passage, which is a miserable, small, and rotten House. And by that means, I shou'd have been able to get into my House well enough, and shou'd have been contented to let all the other Encroachments stand: But this I could not obtain. And since this, the Neighbours have made many new Incroachments, by building Sheds and Cellars upon my Ground. Which Mr. Jackson, the first Proprietor, has own'd I may pull down. This, I think, could not be done without Mr. Arnold's Direction, who had the first And if And I believe, Sr, that you are a very good Judge, what the real value of it is. consequently will see, whether 'tis not much better for Mr. Hughes to take what is offer'd, and avoid a chargable Lawsuit. For tho' I have submitted twenty years to what I needed not have done, I can bear it no longer. And as Mr. Hughes is your Servant I suppose you have a just Influence upon him. I do assure you upon my Honour that all the Facts which I have related in this tedious Account are true, that I desire you to do nothing in this matter but what is just and Reasonable, and whatever you do towards contributing to my Ease, I shall always acknowledge as an Obligation done to, Your most obedient humble Servant, March 17th. SONNET ON THE OBITUARY. (FOR THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.) THESE are the thrillings of the mind's repose— Widely around there still hath been bereaving C. V. L. G. CORRESPONDENCE OF SYLVANUS URBAN. Comments on the Biography of Jeremy Taylor-The Complutensian Polyglot-The Stanley Memorial Window in Norwich Cathedral-House Drainage in Early Domestic Architecture-Memorial Buffetings; Norman Privilege of Retractation, and Character for Uncertainty; Custom of Smiting a Jew at Easter-Touthill, or Totehill, Tothill Fields-Mile End; Huscarl's Manor at Stepney and Mile End-St. Armill's Chapel, Westminster. COMMENTS ON THE BIOGRAPHY OF JEREMY TAYLOR. MR. URBAN,-In the following pages I purpose to offer some comments upon a portion of the elaborate biography of Jeremy Taylor written by Bishop Heber, and lately re-edited by the Rev. C. Page Eden. The life as well as the writings of Taylor must be of interest to all lovers of English literature. Not only are we glad to meet with any notices of him during the troublous years in which he wrote the greater number of his works, but we are also curious to learn something more than is generally known of his manner of life during his early days at school and college, in which the foundations of his future greatness must have been laid. And if we cannot see him as a school-boy and an undergraduate, we shall not deem it lost time to learn only the dates of the turning points in his life. That Jeremy Taylor was born in Cambridge, that he was at school and at college there, are facts well known; but as to the date of his birth and the time he passed within the walls of Caius College, his biographers are not agreed. Bishop Heber speaks with hesitation, and his recent editor has added very little to our information on these points. For the little we have learnt since Heber wrote we are indebted to the elegant biography by Mr. Willmott, which is quoted by Mr. Eden, and which had been enriched from sources of information supplied by Mr. Smart Hughes's research -sources which the latest editor appears not to have resorted. to 1. Bishop Heber, in the Life by him (p. xi. Ed. Eden, 1854), states that "Jeremy, third son of Nathaniel and Mary Taylor, was born in Trinity parish, Cambridge, and baptised on the 15th of August, 1613." In what parish he was born will be doubtful till it can be determined in which of two houses his father and mother lived at the time. According to tradition (and on such a point tradition may be worthy of trust), he was born in the house which is now the Wrestlers' Inn, though this does not stand in Trinity parish, but in St. Andrew's.* But, not to spend time and space upon discussing this question, *In the Rev. J. J. Smith's Cambridge Portfolio, 4to. 1840, is an interesting article on the Old Houses, and particularly the old Inns, of Cambridge, written by the Editor. we may make one of two suppositions, either that Jeremy Taylor was born in the Wrestlers' Inn, and baptised in the neighbouring church, where his grandfather had been warden and his parents were married, and that at a subsequent period before 1621 his parents moved to Trinity parish, occupying the house which was the Black Bear (not the Bull, as the biographers have it), and in which, perhaps, his grandfather Edmond Taylor had resided; or we may suppose that he was born in the parish in the church of which he was baptised, and that some years afterwards (after 1621) his parents went to live in the house now the Wrestlers' Inn, and that after Jeremy had become famous people began to point out the house in which his parents had dwelt and died as the place of his birth. However this question may be settled, we must pass on to one of more personal interest, and this is the date of Jeremy's birth. 2. Towards the determination of this question there exist : I. The documentary evidence of his baptism in the register of Trinity parish, which is given correctly in note (A).to Heber's biography. From this we learn that he was baptised on 15th August, 1613, his brother Nathaniel having been baptised on 8th December, 1611, and his brother Thomas on 21st July, 1616. II. The no less authentic document of his admission to Gonville and Caius col lege, which is given correctly in a note on pp. 3, 4 of Bonney's Life.t This document is not to be confounded, as it has been by Heber (p. xiv.) with the memorandum inserted on a page of the Annales Collegii. The volume containing Caius' Annals," with the continuations of William Moore and others, is quite different from the "Admission Book," or, as it is commonly called, the "Matriculation Book," which has been continued regularly by the successive registrars of the college to the present day. The memorandum in the Annals may be inaccurate in another of its statements; but the evidence of Jeremy Taylor's age does not rest upon such a document, for it is the formal and authentic entry in the admission book that we have now to consider. In this entry it is stated that he was admitted 18th August, 1626, "anno ætatis suæ 15°;" that is, he was fourteen years old, but not fifteen. According to this statement, the date of his birth will be after 18th Aug. 1611, and before 18th Aug. 1612 hence, at his baptism (15th Aug. 1613), he may have been a year old, or nearly two. This statement well agrees with the suggestion given by Mr. Eden in his note (h) to p. xiii. Bishop Heber, supposing him to have been baptised shortly after his birth, goes on to state that-" At three years of age, Jeremy Taylor is said to have been sent to the grammar school then The Wrestlers' Inn stands in the street called the Petty Cury, and was built in 1634. The street front has fallen a victim to the modern taste for plain brick and mortar : but the adjoining house is still one of the most interesting examples of domestic architecture in Cambridge. "If the observer penetrate beyond the surface, in the Inn Yard he might imagine himself living in another age of building. Here he beholds portions advanced like oriels, and rising aloft, having the whole breadth of each face occupied by windows, and terminating in pediments which are either surmounted with minarets of wood carved in some fantastic shape, or support, at the vertical angle, pendants of similar character. On another side a gallery runs between the basement and upper story, into which all the rooms of this floor open. The front is intersected by beams, and presents a surface of plaister worked in a hexagonal pattern., Between these timber studs the bricks, when first they were brought into use, were laid obliquely, as may be seen in this and a few other cases in Cambridge and the neighbourhood. The undefended staircase invites the curious to investigate the internal distribution of this antiquated structure; but there is nothing within to gratify his expectation.". 1 The spirited etching of The Wrestlers' Inn which we have now the pleasure to present to our readers, was made by a very talented young artist, the late Mr. John Barak Swaine, from his own drawing: and, whether the tradition that Jeremy Taylor was born within its walls be well founded or not, we consider it will be acceptable as a specimen of the ancient architecture of Cambridge. EDIT. *But he does not note that "Postea Episc. D." is in another hand, an omission which might allow the inference that the entry was of a date long subsequent to that of the admission. GENT. MAG. VOL. XLIII. 3 C |