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CHAPTER IV
THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY

Of the King's Company, under Killigrew – Hart, Burt, and Clun have already been noticed as players who commenced their career by acting female parts. Of the other early members of this troop, the first names of importance are those of Lacy, and little Major Mohun, the low comedian, and the high tragedian. Of those who precede them alphabetically, but little remains on record. We only know of Theophilus Bird, that he broke his leg when dancing in Suckling's "Aglaura," probably when the poet changed his tragedy, in which the characters killed each other, into a sort of comedy, in which they all survived. Cartwright, on the other hand, has left a lasting memorial. If you would see how the kind old fellow looked, go down to Dulwich College – that grand institution, for which actors have done so much and which has done so little for actors – and gaze on his portrait there. It is the picture of a man who bequeathed his books, pictures, and furniture to the College which Alleyn, another actor, had founded. In early life, Cartwright had been a bookseller, at the corner of Turnstile, Holborn; and in his second vocation his great character was Falstaff.

Lacy was a great Falstaff, too; and his portrait, a triple one, painted by Wright and etched by Hopkins, one of the Princess Elizabeth's pages, is familiarly known to Hampton Court visitors. Lacy had been first a dancing-master, then a lieutenant in the army, before he tried the stage. In his day he had no equal; and his admirers denied that the day to come would ever see his equal. Lacy was handsome, both in shape and feature, and is to be remembered as the original performer of Teague, in the "Committee;" a play of Howard's, subsequently cut down to the farce of "The Honest Thieves." And eight years later (1671), taught by Buckingham, and mimicking Dryden, he startled the town with that immortal Bayes, in the "Rehearsal;" a part so full of happy opportunities that it was coveted or essayed for many years, not only by every great actor, whatever his line, but by many an actress, too; and last of all by William Farren, in 1819.

There was nothing within the bounds of comedy that Lacy could not act well. Evelyn styles him "Roscius." Frenchman, or Scot, or Irishman, fine gentleman or fool, rogue or honest simpleton, Tartuffe or Drench, old man or loquacious woman, – in all, Lacy was the delight of the town for about a score of years. The King ejected the best players from parts, considered almost as their property, and assigned them to Lacy. His wardrobe was a spectacle of itself, and gentlemen of leisure and curiosity went to see it. He took a positive enjoyment in parts which enabled him to rail at the rascalities of courtiers. Sometimes this Aristophanic licence went too far. In Howard's "Silent Woman," the sarcasms reached the King, and moved his majesty to wrath, and to locking up Lacy himself in the Porter's Lodge. After a few days' detention, he was released; whereupon Howard, meeting him behind the scenes, congratulated him. Lacy, still ill in temper, abused the poet for the nonsense he had put into the part of Captain Otter, which was the cause of all the mischief. Lacy further told Howard he was "more a fool than a poet." Thereat the honourable Edward, raising his glove, smote Lacy smartly with it over the face. Jack Lacy retaliated by lifting his cane and letting it descend quite as smartly on the pate of a man who was cousin to an earl. Ordinary men marvelled that the honourable Edward did not run Jack through the body. On the contrary, without laying hand to hilt, Howard hastened to the King, lodged his complaint, and the house was thereupon ordered to be closed. Thus, many starved for the indiscretion of one; but the gentry rejoiced at the silencing of the company, as those clever fellows and their fair mates were growing, as that gentry thought, "too insolent."

Lacy, soon after, was said to be dying, and altogether so ill-disposed, as to have refused ghostly advice at the hands of "a bishop, an old acquaintance of his," says Pepys, "who went to see him." Who could this bishop have been who was the old acquaintance of the ex-dancing-master and lieutenant? Herbert Croft, or Seth Ward? – or, Isaac Barrow, of Sodor-and-Man, whose father, the mercer, had lived near the father of Betterton? But, whoever he may have been, the King's favour restored the actor to health; and he remained Charles's favourite comedian till his death, in 1681.

When Lacy's posthumous comedy, "Sir Hercules Buffoon," was produced in 1684, the man with the longest and crookedest nose, and the most wayward wit in England – Tom Durfey – furnished the prologue. In that piece he designated Lacy as the standard of true comedy. If the play does not take, said lively Tom —

 
"all that we can say on't
Is, we've his fiddle, but not his hands to play on't!"
 

Genest, a critic not very hard to please, says that Lacy's friends should have "buried his fiddle with him."

Michael Mohun is the pleasantest and, perhaps, the greatest name on the roll of the King's Company. When the players offended the King, Mohun was the peacemaker.

One cannot look on Mohun's portrait, at Knowle, without a certain mingling of pleasure and respect. That long-haired young fellow wears so frank an aspect, and the hand rests on the sword so delicately yet so firmly! He is the very man who might "rage like Cethegus, or like Cassius die." Lee could never willingly write a play without a part for Mohun, who, with Hart, was accounted among the good actors that procured profitable "third days" for authors. No Maximin could defy the gods as he did; and there has been no franker Clytus since the day he originally represented the character in "Alexander the Great." In some parts he contested the palm with Betterton, whose versatility he rivalled, creating one year Abdelmelich, in another Dapperwit, in a third Pinchwife, and then a succession of classical heroes and modern rakes or simpletons. Such an actor had many imitators, but, in his peculiar line, few could rival a man who was said to speak as Shakspeare wrote, and whom nature had formed for a nation's delight. The author of the Epilogue to "Love in the Dark" (that bustling piece of Sir Francis Fane's, from the Scrutinio,²⁷ in which, played by Lacy, Mrs. Centlivre derived her Marplot), illustrates the success of Mohun's imitators by an allusion to the gout from which he suffered:

 
"Those Blades indeed, but cripples in their art, —
Mimic his foot, but not his speaking part."
 

Of his modesty, I know no better trait than what passed when Nat. Lee had read to him a part which Mohun was to fill in one of Lee's tragedies. The Major put aside the manuscript, in a sort of despair – "Unless I could play the character as beautifully as you read it," said he, "it were vain to try it at all!"

Such is the brief record of a great actor, one who before our civil jars was a young player, during the civil wars was a good soldier, and in the last years of Charles II. was an old and a great actor still. Of the other original members of the Theatre Royal, there is not much to be said. Wintershell, who died in 1679, merits, however, a word. He was distinguished, whether wearing the sock or the buskin, majestic in loftily-toned kings, and absurd in sillily-amorous knights. Downes has praised him as superior to Nokes, in at least one part, and his Slender has won eulogy from so stern a critic as Dennis.

Among the men who subsequently joined the Theatre Royal, there were some good actors, and a few great rogues. Of these, the best actor and the greatest rogue was Cardell Goodman, or Scum Goodman, as he was designated by his enemies. His career on the stage lasted from 1677, as Polyperchon, in Lee's "Rival Queens," to 1688. His most popular parts were Julius Cæsar and Alexander. He came to the theatre hot from a fray at Cambridge University, whence he had been expelled for cutting and slashing the portrait of that exemplary Chancellor, the Duke of Monmouth.

This rogue's salary must have been small, for he and Griffin shared the same bed in their modest lodging, and having but one shirt between them, wore it each in his turn. The only dissension which ever occurred between them was caused by Goodman, who, having to pay a visit to a lady, clapped on the shirt when it was clean, and Griffin's day for wearing it!

For restricted means, however, every gentleman of spirit, in those days, had a resource, if he chose to avail himself of it. The resource was the road, and Cardell Goodman took to it with alacrity. But he came to grief, and found himself with gyves on in Newgate; yet he escaped the cart, the rope, and Tyburn. King James gave "his Majesty's servant" his life, and Cardell returned to the stage – a hero.

A middle-aged duchess, fond of heroes, adopted him as a lover, and Cardell Goodman had fine quarters, rich feeding, and a dainty wardrobe, all at the cost of his mistress, the ex-favourite of a king, Barbara, the Duchess of Cleveland. Scum Goodman was proud of his splendid degradation, and paid such homage to "my duchess," as the impudent fellow called her, that when he expected her presence in the theatre, he would not go on the stage, though king and queen were kept waiting, till he heard that "his duchess" was in the house. For her he played the mad scene in Alexander with double vigour, and cared for no other applause so long as her Grace's fan signalled approbation.

Scum might have had a rare, if a rascally, life, had he been discreet; but he was fool as well as knave. A couple of the Duchess's children in the Duchess's house annoyed him, and Scum suborned a villainous Italian quack to dispose of them by poison. A discovery, before the attempt was actually made, brought Scum to trial for a misdemeanour. He had the luck of his own father, the devil, that he was not tried for murder. As it was, a heavy fine crippled him for life. He seems, however, to have hung about the stage after he withdrew from it as an actor. He looked in at rehearsals, and seeing a likely lad, named Cibber, going through the little part of the Chaplain, in the "Orphan," one spring morning of 1690, Scum loudly wished he might be – what he very much deserved to be, if the young fellow did not turn out a good actor. Colley was so delighted with the earnest criticism, that the tears flowed to his eyes. At least, he says so.

King James having saved Cardell's neck, Goodman, out of pure gratitude, perhaps, became a Tory, and something more, when William sat in the seat of his father-in-law. After Queen Mary's death, Scum was in the Fenwick and Charnock plot to kill the King. When the plot was discovered, Scum was ready to peach. As Fenwick's life was thought by his friends to be safe if Goodman could be bought off and got out of the way, the rogue was looked for, at the Fleece, in Covent Garden, famous for homicides, and at the robbers' and the revellers' den, the Dog, in Drury Lane. Fenwick's agent, O'Bryan, erst soldier and highwayman, now a Jacobite agent, found Scum at the Dog, and would then and there have cut his throat, had not Scum consented to the pleasant alternative of accepting £500 a year, and a residence abroad. This to a man who was the first forger of bank-notes! Scum suddenly disappeared, and Lord Manchester, our Ambassador in Paris, inquired after him in vain. It is impossible to say whether the rogue died by an avenging hand, or starvation.

We are better acquainted with the fate of the last of Scum's fair favourites, the pretty Mrs. Price of Drury Lane. This Ariadne was not disconsolate for her Theseus. She married "Charles, Lord Banbury," who was not Lord Banbury, for the House of Peers denied his claim to the title; and he was not Mrs. Price's husband, as he was already married to a living lady, Mrs. Lester. Of this confusion in social arrangements the world made small account, although the law did pronounce in favour of Mrs. Lester, without troubling itself to punish "my lord." The Judges pronounced for the latter lady, solely on the ground that she had had children, and the actress none.

Joseph Haines! "Joe" with his familiars, "Count Haines" with those who affected great respect, was a rogue in his way, – a merry rogue, a ready wit, and an admirable low comedian, from 1672 to 1701. We first hear of him as a quickwitted lad at a school in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, whence he was sent, through the liberality of some gentlemen who had remarked his talents, to Queen's College, Oxford. There Haines met with Williamson, the Sir Joseph of after days, distinguished alike for his scholarship, his abilities as a statesman, the important offices he held, and the liberality with which he dispensed the fortune which he honourably acquired.

Williamson chose Haines for a friend, and made him his Latin secretary when Williamson was appointed Secretary of State. If Haines could have kept official and state secrets, his own fortune would now have been founded; but Joe gossiped in joyous companies, and in taverns revealed the mysteries of diplomacy. Williamson parted with his indiscreet "servant," but sent him to recommence fortune-making at Cambridge. Here, again, his waywardness ruined him for a professor. A strolling company at Stourbridge Fair seduced him from the groves of Academus,²⁸ and in a short time this foolish and clever fellow, light of head, of heart, and of principle, was the delight of the Drury Lane audiences, and the favoured guest in the noblest society where mirth, humour, and dashing impudence were welcome.

In 1673, his Sparkish, in the "Country Wife" – his original character – was accepted as the type of the airy gentleman of the day. His acting on, and his jokes off, the stage were the themes in all coteries and coffee-houses. He was a great practical jester, and once engaged a simple-minded clergyman as "Chaplain to the Theatre Royal," and sent him behind the scenes, ringing a bell, and calling the players to prayers! When Romanism was looking up, under James II., Haines had the impudence to announce to the convert Sunderland, – unworthy son of Waller's Sacharissa, – his adoption of the King's religion, being moved thereto by the Virgin, who had appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joe, arise!" This was too much even for Sunderland, who drily observed that "she would have said 'Joseph,' if only out of respect for her husband!"

The rogue showed the value of a "profession," which gave rise to as many pamphlets as Dryden's, by subsequently recanting, – not in the church, but on the stage; he the while covered with a sheet, holding a taper, and delivering some stupid rhymes, – to the very dullest of which he had the art of giving wonderful expression by his accent, emphasis, modulation, and felicity of application. The audience that could bear this recantation-prologue could easily pardon the speaker, who would have caused even greater errors to have been pardoned, were it only for his wonderful impersonation of Captain Bluff (1693) in Congreve's "Old Bachelor." The self-complaisant way in which he used to utter "Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in his day," was universally imitated, and has made the phrase itself proverbial. His Roger, in "Æsop," was another of his successes, the bright roll of which was crowned by his lively, impudent, irresistible Tom Errand, in Farquhar's "Constant Couple," – that most triumphant comedy of a whole century.

The great fault of Haines lay in the liberties which he took with the business of the stage. He cared less to identify himself with the characters he represented than, through them, to keep up a communication with the spectators. When Hart, then manager, cast Joe for the simple part of a Senator, in "Catiline," in which Hart played the hero, Joe, in disgust at his rôle, spoiled Hart's best point, by sitting behind him, absurdly attired, with pot and pipe in hand, and making grimaces at the grave actor of Catiline; which kept the house in a roar of laughter. Hart could not be provoked to forget his position, and depart from his character; but as soon as he made his exit, he sent Joe his dismissal.

Joe Haines then alternated between the stage and the houses of his patrons. "Vivitur ingenio" – the stage-motto, was also his own, and he seems to have added to his means by acting the jester's part in noble circles. He was, however, no mere "fool." Scholars might respect a "classic," like Haines, and travelling lords gladly hire as a companion, a witty fellow, who knew two or three living languages as familiarly as he did his own. With an English peer he once visited Paris, where Joe is said to have got imprisoned for debt, incurred in the character, assumed by him, of an English lord. After his release, he returned to England, self-invested with the dignity of "Count," a title not respected by a couple of bailiffs, who arrested Joseph, on Holborn Hill, for a little matter of £20.

"Here comes the carriage of my cousin, the Bishop of Ely," said the unblushing knave; "let me speak to him; I am sure he will satisfy you in this matter."

Consent was given, and Haines, putting his head in at the carriage-door, hastily informed the good Simon Patrick that "here were two Romanists inclined to become Protestants, but with yet some scruples of conscience."

"My friends," said the eager prelate to them, "if you will presently come to my house, I will satisfy you in this matter!" The scrupulous gentlemen were well content; but when an explanation ensued, the vexed bishop paid the money out of very shame, and Joe and the bailiffs spread the story. They who remembered how Haines played Lord Plausible, in the "Plain Dealer," were not at all surprised at his deceiving a bishop and a brace of bailiffs.

Sometimes his wit was of a nicer quality. When Jeremy Collier's book against the stage was occupying the public mind, a critic expressed his surprise, seeing that the stage was a mender of morals. "True," answered Joe, "but Collier is a mender of morals, too; and two of a trade, you know, never agree!"

Haines was the best comic actor, in his peculiar line of comedy, during nearly thirty years that he was one of "their majesties' servants." He died at his house in Hart Street, Covent Garden, then a fashionable locality, on the 4th of April 1701, and was buried in the gloomy churchyard of the parish, which has nothing to render it bright but the memory of the poets, artists, and actors whose bodies are there buried in peace.

Let us now consider the men in Davenant's, or the Duke's Company, who acted occasionally in Dorset Gardens, but mostly in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Of these, the greatest actor was good Thomas Betterton, – and his merits claim a chapter to himself.

CHAPTER V
THOMAS BETTERTON

The diaries, biographies, journals, and traditions of the time will enable us, with some little aid from the imagination, not only to see the actor, but the social aspects amid which he moved. By aid of these, I find that, on a December night, 1661, there is a crowded house at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is "Hamlet," with young Mr. Betterton, who has been two years on the stage, in the part of the Dane. The Ophelia is the real object of the young fellow's love, charming Mistress Saunderson. Old ladies and gentlemen, repairing in capacious coaches to this representation, remind one another of the lumbering and crushing of carriages about the old playhouse in the Blackfriars, causing noisy tumults which drew indignant appeals from the Puritan housekeepers, whose privacy was sadly disturbed. But what was the tumult there to the scene on the south side of the "Fields," when "Hamlet," with Betterton, as now, was offered to the public! The Jehus contend for place with the eagerness of ancient Britons in a battle of chariots. And see, the mob about the pit-doors have just caught a bailiff attempting to arrest an honest playgoer. They fasten the official up in a tub, and roll the trembling wretch all "round the square." They finish by hurling him against a carriage, which sweeps from a neighbouring street at full gallop. Down come the horses over the barrelled bailiff, with sounds of hideous ruin; and the young lady lying back in the coach is screaming like mad. This lady is the dishonest daughter of brave, honest, and luckless Viscount Grandison. As yet she is only Mrs. Palmer; next year she will be Countess of Castlemaine.

At length the audience are all safely housed and eager. Indifferent enough, however, they are during the opening scenes. The fine gentlemen laugh loudly and comb their periwigs in the "best rooms." The fops stand erect in the boxes to show how folly looks in clean linen; and the orange nymphs, with their costly entertainment of fruit from Seville, giggle and chatter, as they stand on the benches below with old and young admirers, proud of being recognised in the boxes.

The whole court of Denmark is before them; but not till the words, "'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother," fall from the lips of Betterton, is the general ear charmed, or the general tongue arrested. Then, indeed, the vainest fops and pertest orange girls look round and listen too. The voice is so low, and sad, and sweet; the modulation so tender, the dignity so natural, the grace so consummate, that all yield themselves silently to the delicious enchantment. "It's beyond imagination," whispers Mr. Pepys to his neighbour, who only answers with a long and low drawn "Hush!"

I can never look on Kneller's masterly portrait of this great player, without envying those who had the good fortune to see the original, especially in Hamlet. How grand the head, how lofty the brow, what eloquence and fire in the eyes, how firm the mouth, how manly the sum of all! How is the whole audience subdued almost to tears, at the mingled love and awe which he displays in presence of the spirit of his father! Some idea of Betterton's acting in this scene may be derived from Cibber's description of it, and from that I come to the conclusion, that Betterton fulfilled all that Overbury laid down with regard to what best graced an actor. "Whatsoever is commendable to the grave orator, is most exquisitely perfect in him; for by a full and significant action of body he charms our attention. Sit in a full theatre, and you will think you see so many lines drawn from the circumference of so many ears, while the actor is the centre." This was especially the case with Betterton; and now, as Hamlet's first soliloquy closes, and the charmed but silent audience "feel music's pulse in all their arteries," Mr. Pepys almost too loudly exclaims in his ecstasy, "It's the best acted part ever done by man." And the audience think so, too; there is a hurricane of applause; after which the fine gentlemen renew their prattle with the fine ladies, and the orange girls beset the Sir Foplings, and this universal trifling is felt as a relief after the general emotion.

Meanwhile, a critic objects that young Mr. Betterton is not "original," and intimates that his Hamlet is played by tradition come down through Davenant, who had seen the character acted by Taylor, and had taught the boy to enact the Prince after the fashion set by the man who was said to have been instructed by Shakspeare himself; amid which Mr. Pepys remarks, "I only know that Mr. Betterton is the best actor in the world."

As Sir Thomas Overbury remarked of a great player, his voice was never lower than the prompter's nor higher than the foil and target. But let us be silent, here comes the gentle Ophelia. The audience generally took an interest in this lady, and the royal Dane, for there was not one in the house who was ignorant of the love-passages there had been between them, or of the coming marriage by which they were to receive additional warrant. Mistress Saunderson was a lady worthy of all the homage here implied. There was mind in her acting; and she not only possessed personal beauty, but also the richer beauty of a virtuous life. They were a well-matched couple on and off the stage; and their mutual affection was based on a mutual respect and esteem. People thought of them together, as inseparable, and young ladies wondered how Mr. Betterton could play Mercutio, and leave Mistress Saunderson as Juliet, to be adored by the not ineffective Mr. Harris as Romeo! The whole house, as long as the incomparable pair were on the stage, were in a dream of delight. Their grace, perfection, good looks, the love they had so cunningly simulated, and that which they were known to mutually entertain, formed the theme of all tongues. In its discussion, the retiring audience forgot the disinterring of the regicides, and the number of men killed the other day on Tower Hill, servants of the French and Spanish ambassadors, in a bloody struggle for precedency, which was ultimately won by the Don!

Fifty years after these early triumphs, an aged couple resided in one of the best houses in Russell Street, Covent Garden, – the walls of which were covered with pictures, prints, and drawings, selected with taste and judgment. They were still a handsome pair. The venerable lady, indeed, looks pale and somewhat saddened. The gleam of April sunshine which penetrates the apartment cannot win her from the fire. She is Mrs. Betterton, and ever and anon she looks with a sort of proud sorrow on her aged husband. His fortune, nobly earned, has been diminished by "speculation," but the means whereby he achieved it are his still, and Thomas Betterton, in the latter years of Queen Anne, is the chief glory of the stage, even as he was in the first year of King Charles. The lofty column, however, is a little shaken. It is not a ruin, but is beautiful in its decay. Yet that it should decay at all is a source of so much tender anxiety to the actor's wife, that her senses suffer disturbance, and there may be seen in her features something of the distraught Ophelia of half a century ago.

It is the 13th of April, 1710 – his benefit night; and the tears are in the lady's eyes, and a painful sort of smile on her trembling lips, for Betterton kisses her as he goes forth that afternoon to take leave, as it proved, of the stage for ever. He is in such pain from gout that he can scarcely walk to his carriage, and how is he to enact the noble and fiery Melantius in that ill-named drama of horror, "The Maid's Tragedy"? Hoping for the best, the old player is conveyed to the theatre, built by Sir John Vanbrugh, in the Haymarket, the site of which is now occupied by the "Opera-house." Through the stage-door he is carried in loving arms to his dressing-room. At the end of an hour Wilks is there, and Pinkethman, and Mrs. Barry, all dressed for their parts, and agreeably disappointed to find the Melantius of the night robed, armoured, and be-sworded, with one foot in a buskin and the other in a slipper. To enable him even to wear the latter, he had first thrust his inflamed foot into water; but stout as he seemed, trying his strength to and fro in the room, the hand of Death was at that moment descending on the grandest of English actors.

The house rose to receive him who had delighted themselves, their sires, and their grandsires. The audience were packed "like Norfolk biffins." The edifice itself was only five years old, and when it was a-building, people laughed at the folly which reared a new theatre in the country, instead of in London; – for in 1705 all beyond the rural Haymarket was open field, straight away westward and northward. That such a house could ever be filled was set down as an impossibility; but the achievement was accomplished on this eventful benefit night; when the popular favourite was about to utter his last words, and to belong thenceforward only to the history of the stage he had adorned.

There was a shout which shook him, as Lysippus uttered the words "Noble Melantius," which heralded his coming. Every word which could be applied to himself was marked by a storm of applause, and when Melantius said of Amintor —

 
"His youth did promise much, and his ripe years
Will see it all performed,"
 

a murmuring comment ran round the house, that this had been effected by Betterton himself. Again, when he bids Amintor "hear thy friend, who has more years than thou," there were probably few who did not wish that Betterton were as young as Wilks: but when he subsequently thundered forth the famous passage, "My heart will never fail me," there was a very tempest of excitement, which was carried to its utmost height, in thundering peal on peal of unbridled approbation, as the great Rhodian gazed full on the house, exclaiming —

 
"My heart
And limbs are still the same: my will as great
To do you service!"
 

No one doubted more than a fractional part of this assertion, and Betterton, acting to the end under a continued fire of "bravoes!" may have thrown more than the original meaning into the phrase —

 
"That little word was worth all the sounds
That ever I shall hear again!"
 

Few were the words he was destined ever to hear again; and the subsequent prophecy of his own certain and proximate death, on which the curtain slowly descended, was fulfilled eight and forty hours after they were uttered.

Such was the close of a career which had commenced fifty-one years before! Few other actors of eminence have kept the stage, with the public favour, for so extended a period, with the exception of Cave Underhill, Quin, Macklin, King, and in later times, Bartley and Cooper, most of whom at least accomplished their half century. The record of that career affords many a lesson and valuable suggestion to young actors, but I have to say a word previously of the Bettertons, before the brothers of that name, Thomas and the less known William, assumed the sock and buskin.

Tothill Street, Westminster, is not at present a fine or a fragrant locality. It has a crapulous look and a villainous smell, and petty traders now huddle together where nobles once were largely housed. Thomas Betterton was born here, about the year 1634-5.²⁹ The street was then in its early decline, or one of King Charles's cooks could hardly have had home in it. Nevertheless, there still clung to it a considerable share of dignity. Even at that time there was a Tothill Fields House of Correction, whither vagabonds were sent, who used to earn scraps by scraping trenchers in the tents pitched in Petty France. All else in the immediate neighbourhood retained an air of pristine and very ancient nobility. I therefore take the father of Betterton, cook to King Charles, to have been a very good gentleman, in his way. He was certainly the sire of one, and the circumstance of the apprenticeship of young Thomas to a bookseller was no evidence to the contrary. In those days, it was the custom for greater men than the chefs in the King's kitchen, namely, the bishops in the King's church, to apprentice their younger sons, at least, to trade, or to bequeath sums for that especial purpose. The last instance I can remember of this traditionary custom presents itself in the person, not indeed of a son of a bishop, but of the grandson of an archbishop, namely, of John Sharp, Archbishop of York from 1691 to 1714. He had influence enough with Queen Anne to prevent Swift from obtaining a bishopric. His son was Archdeacon of Northumberland, and of this archdeacon's sons one was Prebendary of Durham, while the other, the celebrated Granville Sharp, the "friend of the Negro," was apprenticed to a linen-draper, on Tower Hill. The early connection of Betterton, therefore, with Rhodes, the Charing Cross bookseller, is not to be accepted as a proof that his sire was not in a "respectable" position in society. That sire had had for his neighbour, only half-a-dozen years before Thomas was born, the well-known Sir Henry Spelman, who had since removed to more cheerful quarters in Barbican. A very few years previously, Sir George Carew resided here, in Caron House, and his manuscripts are not very far from the spot even now. They refer to his experiences as Lord Deputy in Ireland, and are deposited in the library at Lambeth Palace. These great men were neighbours of the elder Betterton, and they had succeeded to men not less remarkable. One of the latter was Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, the friend of Spenser, and the Talus of that poet's "Iron Flail." The Greys, indeed, had long kept house in Tothill Street, as had also the Lords Dacre of the South. When Betterton was born here, the locality was still full of the story of Thomas Lord Dacre, who went thence to be hanged at Tyburn, in 1541. He had headed a sort of Chevy-chase expedition into the private park of Sir Nicholas Pelham, in Sussex. In the fray which ensued, a keeper was killed, of which deed my lord took all the responsibility, and, very much to his surprise, was hanged in consequence. The mansion built by his son, the last lord, had not lost its first freshness when the Bettertons resided here, and its name, Stourton House, yet survives in the corrupted form of Strutton Ground.