period under the shadow of Lincoln's Inn.

Whilst Lincoln's Inn Fields took rank amongst the most aristocratic
quarters of the town, it was as disorderly a square as could be found in
all London. Royal suggestions, the labors of a learned committee
especially appointed by James I. to decide on a proper system of
architecture, and Inigo Jones's magnificent but abortive scheme had but
a poor result. In Queen Anne's reign, and for twenty years later, the
open space of the fields was daily crowded with beggars, mountebanks,
and noisy rabble; and it was the scene of constant uproar and frequent
riots. As soon as a nobleman's coach drew up before one of the
surrounding mansions, a mob of half-naked rascals swarmed about the
equipage, asking for alms in alternate tones of entreaty and menace.
Pugilistic encounters, and fights resembling the faction fights of an
Irish row, were of daily occurrence there; and when the rabble decided
on torturing a bull with dogs, the wretched beast was tied to a stake in
the centre of the wide area, and there baited in the presence of a
ferocious multitude, and to the diversion of fashionable ladies, who
watched the scene from their drawing-room windows. The Sacheverell
outrage was wildest in this chosen quarter of noblemen and blackguards;
and in George II.'s reign, when Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the
Rolls, made himself odious to the lowest class by his Act for laying an
excise upon gin, a mob assailed him in the middle of the fields, threw
him to the ground, kicked him over and over, and savagely trampled upon
him. It was a marvel that he escaped with his life; but with
characteristic good humor, he soon made a joke of his ill-usage, saying
that until the mob made him their football he had never been master of
_all_ the _rolls_. Soon after this outbreak of popular violence, the
inhabitants enclosed the middle of the area with palisades, and turned
the enclosure into an ornamental garden. Describing the Fields in 1736,
the year in which the obnoxious Act concerning gin became law, James
Ralph says, "Several of the original houses still remain, to be a
reproach to the rest; and I wish the disadvantageous comparison had
been a warning to others to have avoided a like mistake.... But this is
not the only quarrel I have to Lincoln's Inn Fields. The area is capable
of the highest improvement, might be made a credit to the whole city,
and do honor to those who live round it; whereas at present