"He hastened home, that rustic bell "In the whole of the legendary history," observes a writer in the Saturday Magazine, "there does not appear to be one single word of truth further than this—that the maiden name of Lady Whittington was Alice Fitzwarren. It would be extremely interesting to ascertain the exact age of the legend. Neither Grafton nor Holinshed, who copies him, says anything of the legendary history of Sir Richard; but the legend itself, as we now have it, must have been current in the reign of Elizabeth, for in the prologue to a play, written about 1613, the citizen says:-'Why could you not be contented, as well as others, with the legend of Whittington? or the life and death of Sir Thomas Gresham, with the building of the Royal Exchange? or the story of Queen Eleanor, with the rearing of London Bridge upon woolsacks?' The word legend in this case would seem to indicate the story of the cat; and we cannot, therefore, well assign it a later date than the sixteenth century. Whittington's cat," continues the writer above quoted, "has not escaped the shrewdness of those persons who have a wonderful inclination to discover a groundwork of historical truth in popular legends, for in some popular History of England,' the story has been explained, as it is called; and two or three country newspapers have copied the explanation with evident delight. Sir Richard Whittington was, it seems, the owner of a ship named the Cat, by his traffic in which he acquired the greater part of his wealth. It is not, however, quite clear that our worthy mercer was directly engaged in foreign traffic." A few yards before the traveller reaches the Whittington Stone the road separates into two branches, of which the right-hand one is a modern cutting, known as the Archway Road, from its passing under Highgate Archway, of which we shall speak presently. On the right hand of this road, but within the limits of Upper Holloway, is situated Sir Richard Whittington's College, or almshouse, originally founded in the parish of St. Michael Paternoster, London, by the celebrated Lord Mayor, who, in 1421, left the residue of his estate for the foundation and endowment of almshouses for thirteen poor people under the control of the Mercers' Company. William Howitt, in his "Northern Heights of London," thus relates the See Vol. II., p. 26. story of the foundation of these almshouses :-"The Mercers' Company having in hand £6,600 from the estates of Sir Richard Whittington, in 1822, commenced establishing a set of almshouses for twenty-four single women not having individually property to the amount of £30 a year. They receive a yearly stipend of £30 each, besides other gifts, with medical attendance and nurses in time of illness. At first the establishment was proposed to be erected on the main road up Highgate Hill, near to the Whittington's Stone; but the ground not being procurable, they built it in the Archway Road instead, but still near to the stone which commemorates the name of the founder. This is a much better situation, however, on account of its greater openness and retirement. The buildings are Gothic, of one storey, forming three sides of a quadrangle, having the area open to the road. In the centre of the main building is a chapel or oratory for the reading of daily prayers. The establishment has its tutor, or master, its matrons, nurses, gardener, gate-keeper, &c. It is a remarkably pleasant object viewed from the road, with its area embellished by a shrubbery and sloping lawn." The remarks of Mr. Howitt in censure of the "miserable philosophy, falsely called utilitarian," which would discourage the erection of such homes and retreats for our aged poor, are such as can be cordially endorsed by any one who has a heart to feel for the sufferings of others. The high road in this neighbourhood, and the fields on either side, leading up the slopes of Highgate, must have presented a strange sight during the "great fire" of London, for John Evelyn tells us, in his "Diary," that many of the poorer citizens who had lost their all and their homes in the conflagration, encamped hereabouts. "I then went," he writes, under date Sept. 7th, 1666, "towards Islington and Highgate, where one might have seen some 200,000 people, of all ranks and degrees, dispersed and lying along by their heaps of what they could save from the fire, deploring their loss; and yet ready to perish for hunger and destitution, yet not asking one penny for relief, which to me seemed a stranger sight than any I had yet beheld." The houses on the road which leads from the "Archway" Tavern up to Highgate are poor and mean, and inhabited by more than a fair proportion of laundresses and rag-shop keepers. But in the parts which lie off the road are many comfortable mansions, belonging, for the most part, to retired citizens. Few of them, however, are old enough to have a history. Population of Highgate at the Commencement of the Century-The Heights of Highgate-The Old Roadway-Erection of the Gate-Healthiness of the Locality-Growth of London Northwards-Highgate Hill-Roman Catholic Schools-St. Joseph's Retreat-" Father Ignatius' The "Black Dog" Tavern-Highgate Infirmary-The "Old Crown" Tavern and Tea-gardens-Winchester Hall-Hornsey Lane-Highgate Archway-The Archway Road-The "Woodman " Tavern-The Alexandra Orphanage for Infants-Asylum of the Aged Pilgrims' Friend Society-Lauderdale House-Anecdote of Nell Gwynne-The Duchess of St. Albans-Andrew Marvell's Cottage-Cromwell HouseConvalescent Hospital for Sick Children-Arundel House-The Flight of Arabella Stuart-Death of Lord Bacon-Fairseat, the Residence of Sir Sydney Waterlow. HIGHGATE, though now it has gradually come to be recognised as a parish, is the name of a district, or hamlet, embracing sundry outlying portions of Hornsey, Islington, and St. Pancras; and it is treated as such not only by older writers, but by Lysons, in his "Environs of London." It must, however, have been an important hamlet of the parish, for the Parliamentary Return of the Population in 1801 assigns to Highgate no less than 299 out of the 429 inhabited houses in Hornsey. It may well be styled one of the "northern heights" of London, for its summit is about 350 feet above the level of the Thames, or twenty-five feet higher than Hampstead Heath; and-passing into the region of poetry-Garth has suggested that the heights of Highgate might put in a claim to rivalry with the mountain in Greece which was the fabled haunt of the Muses "Or Highgate Hill with lofty Pindus vie." We have already seen that the old highway between London and Barnet ran from the east end of St. Pancras Church, and thence to Crouch End, leaving Highgate considerably to the left; but in 1386, or thereabouts, the Bishop of London consented, on account of the " deepnesse and dirtie" passage of that way, to allow a new road to be carried through his park at Highgate, at the same time imposing a toll on all carts, wagons, and pack-horses; and that for this purpose there was erected on the top of the hill the gate which for five hundred years has given its name to the locality. In fact, until the fourteenth century there would seem to have been no public road at all over the top of Highgate Hill into the midland and northern counties. The great northern road was, no doubt, very largely frequented in the Middle Ages, because it was the only means of access to the shrine of St. Alban, which from the Saxon days was a constant object of pilgrimage. The road at that time, however, did not lie over the top of Highgate Hill, • See ante, p. 372. but wound round its eastern slope, by way of Crouch End and Muswell Hill; but we have reason to believe that the country hereabouts through which it passed was densely covered with forest-trees and brushwood, and was the home and haunt of all sorts of "beasts and game," among which Fitzjames enumerates "stags, bucks, boars, and wild bulls;" to which "wolves" also must be added, if Matthew Paris is to be believed, who states that owing to such beasts of prey the good pilgrims were often in imminent danger of their lives and property. Norden tells us, in his "Speculum Britanniæ," that "the name is said to be derived from the High Gate, or Gate on the Hill, there having been from time immemorial the toll-gate of the Bishop of London on the summit. . . . . It is a hill over which is a passage, and at the top of the said hill is a gate through which all manner of passengers have their way; so the place taketh the name of the High Gate on the hill, which gate was erected at the alteration of the way which is on the east of Highgate. When the way was turned over the said hill to lead through the park of the Bishop of London, as it now doth, there was in regard thereof a tole raised upon such as passed that way with carriages. And for that no passenger should escape without paying tole, by reason of the wideness of the way, this gate was raised, through which, of necessity, all travellers pass." The road here described, no doubt, as Mr. Prickett suggests, in his "History of Highgate," formed a junction with the northern private road between the bishop's palace and the common at Finchley. Other writers, including Mr. James Thorne, F.S.A., in his "Handbook of the Environs of London," suggest that the name denotes simply the high road or passage, the word "gate" being used almost in the same sense as the "gatt" or "gate" of our eastern counties, and preserved in Danish in the Cattegatt. The gateway, which thus gave its name to the place, is described by Mr. Prickett, in his work above mentioned, as having been built, not at the side of the road, but across it, as an arch; and he tells us that it extended from the gate-house on the west side of the road to the old burying-ground on the east. "The rooms," he adds, "were approached by a staircase in the eastern buttress;" but they do not seem to have been of a very imposing character, as immediately before the removal of the gateway in 1769 they were occupied by a laundress. The cause of the removal of the ridge, in Hertfordshire, to be imprisoned in the Tower. Norden, whom we have quoted above, bears testimony to the healthiness of this locality. He writes: "Upon this hill is most pleasant dwelling, yet not so pleasant as healthful; for the expert inhabitants there report that divers who have long been visited by sickness not curable by 'physicke' have in a short time repaired their health by that THE GATE-HOUSE, HIGHGATE, IN 1820. (From an Original Skech.) arch was the fact of its crown being so low that even moderately laden stage-wagons could not pass under it; but whenever it was found that the wagon would not pass under the archway, the latter was taken round through a yard in the rear of the "Gate House Tavern," on the site afterwards covered by the Assembly Rooms. It may be added here that there was a corresponding gate at the other end of the episcopal demesne, at the "Spaniards," just at the north-east end of Hampstead Heath. The newly-made way, no doubt, soon became the leading thoroughfare to the North of England, for we read that it was by way of Highgate that, in the reign of Mary, her sister, the Princess Elizabeth, was brought up to London from Ash sweet salutary air." Indeed, the place is still proverbially healthy, and therefore has been chosen from time immemorial as the site of hospitals and other charitable institutions. It is worthy of note that Defoe, in his "History of the Plague," records not a single death from that fearful visitation having happened here, though it extended its ravages into and beyond the northern suburbs, and even as far as Watford and St. Albans; and his silence is corroborated by the fact that during the continuance of the plague only sixteen deaths are recorded in the register. Convalescent hospitals and infirmaries abound here in plenty; the earliest except the Lazar House already mentionedbeing a hospital for children, established on Highgate Hill in 1665. So continuous are the lines of streets and roads between London and Highgate that the latter may now be reckoned quite as much a part of the great metropolis as Kensington or Chelsea. Indeed, not only have the prophetic lines of Mother Shipton, already quoted,* been to a certain extent verified, but the same, in a great measure, may be said of another curious prophecy, which appears in a collection of epigrams written by Thomas Freeman, a native of Gloucester, and published in 1614, under the title of "Rub and a Great Cast." The lines are headed "London Progresse," and run as follows: "Why how now Babell, whilt thou build? The old Holborne, Charing-Cross, the Strand, Are going to St. Giles'-in-the-Fields: St. Katerine, she takes Wapping by the hand, And Hogsdon will to Hy-gate ere 't be long. London has got a great way from the streame; I think she means to go to Islington, To eat a dish of strawberries and creame. The City's sure in progresse, I surmise, Or going to revell it in some disorder Without the walls, without the liberties, Where she neede feare nor Mayor nor Recorder. Well, say she do, 'twere pretty, yet 'tis pity, A Middlesex Bailiff should arrest the citty." Brayley's "Londiniana." The whole of the above prediction may be said to be accomplished, with the exception of the union of Hoxton with Highgate; but even that is in a rapid course of fulfilment. This extension of "modern Babylon" has, no doubt, in a great measure been mainly brought about by the easy means of transit northwards by the various lines of railway running thitherward. Perhaps no line has felt so rapidly the increase of the suburban traffic as the Great Northern. "There was a time, indeed," says the North Londoner, "when, in common with all the leading railway companies, it rather threw cold water upon it. It has now at least 4,000 season-ticket holders, and trains call at Holloway and Finsbury Park almost continuously during the working hours of the day, and every train is crowded with passengers. Speculative builders have been very busy in the north of London, which was till lately regarded by them as a terra incognita. Highgate Hill was an insurmountable difficulty. Nor did the Archway Road, which at the time of its construction was held to be the eighth wonder of the world, do much to remove it. A heavy toll most materially interfered with the traffic, and thus the north of London was almost as free, and airy, and untrodden as it was See ante, p. 313. when the Gunpowder Plot conspirators (we merely quote a local tradition) stood on the hill between Hampstead and Highgate to witness the speedy exit to the upper regions of the British Solomon and his Parliament; or as when Dick Turpin, from his far-famed oak on Finchley Common, an oak which still defies the battle and the breeze, was in the habit, immortalised by Dickens, of accosting the passing traveller, and by means of a couple of balls in his saddle prevailing on him to stop. A fatal blow was dealt to this state of things by the connection of the Great Northern with the Underground Railway. All at once London discovered that there were no more salubrious breezes, no greener fields, no more picturesque landscapes, no more stately trees than could be shown in the district of country bounded by Highgate Hill on one side and Barnet on the other. The green lanes of Hornsey and Southgate ceased to be such. The lucky landowner who had purchased his lands at sixty or seventy pounds an acre sold them at a thousand pounds an acre. Ancient mansions, where City aldermen had lived, where lord mayors had dined, where even monarchs had deigned to shine, were pulled down; broad parks were cut up into building lots; and instead we have semidetached villas-much better, as a rule, to look at than to live in-advertised as being in the most healthy of all neighbourhoods, and within half an hour's ride of the City." From Holloway the transition to Highgate, morally speaking, is very easy, though the actual ascent of the hill which leads up to its breezy heights is tolerably steep, in spite of the causeway, the handy-work of the amiable hermit whom we have mentioned in the previous chapter. We must accordingly commence it, starting from "Dick Whittington's Stone." On both sides our road is fringed by small cottages, some standing in dreary and unkempt gardens, and mostly belonging to laundresses and small shopkeepers. Norden says that the maker of the causeway was not only a hermit, but "poor and infirm;" and Dr. Fuller writes that it was a double benefit, "providing water on the hill, where it was wanting, and cleanness in the valley, which before, especially in winter, was passed with great difficulty." And to come to a far more recent time, that of the reign of Queen Anne, we find it stated, so lately as 1714, in a preamble of an Act for erecting turnpikes and making other improvements on the roads about Islington, Highgate, &c., that the highways were very ruinous and almost impassable for the space of five months in the It may be added here that the hill is a year. |