tle Britain; and in the earlier part of the last century, the
frequenters of this locality included such worthies as the Duke of
Devonshire, Edward, Earl of Oxford, and the Earls of Pembroke,
Sunderland, and Winchelsea. After the 'hunt' they often adjourned to the
Mourning Bush in Aldersgate, where they dined and spent the remainder of
the day.

[Illustration: _Thomas Britton, 'the small-coal man,' Collector of
Musical Instruments and MSS._]

Another famous Little Britain bookseller was Robert Scott whose sister
was the Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North's 'grandmother's woman.' Scott was
a man of 'good parts,' and was in his time, says Roger North, the
'greatest librarian in Europe; for besides his stock in England, he had
warehouses at Frankfort, Paris, and other places, and dealt by factors.'
When an old man, Scott 'contracted with one Mills, of St. Paul's
Churchyard, near L10,000 deep, and articled not to open his shop any
more. But Mills, with his auctioneering, atlases, and projects, failed,
whereby poor Scott lost above half his means. . . . He was not only an
expert bookseller, but a very conscientious, good man, and when he threw
up his trade, Europe had no small loss of him.'

The most celebrated family of booksellers, perhaps, who lived in Little
Britain, was that of Ballard, or Bullard, as the original name appears
by the auction catalogues. The family were connected with the trade for
over a century, and were noted, says Nichols, 'for the soundness of
their principles in Church and State.' One Henry Ballard lived at the
sign of the Bear without Temple Bar, over against St. Clement's Church,
in 1597, but whether he was an ancestor of the family in question is not
certain. Thomas Ballard, the founder of the bookselling branch, was
described by Dunton, in 1705, as 'a young bookseller in Little Britain,
but grown man in body now, but more in mind:

'His looks are in his mother's beauty drest,
And all the Father has inform'd the rest.'

Samuel Ballard, for many years Deputy of the Ward of Aldersgate Within,
died August 27, 1761, and his only son, Edward, January 2, 1796, aged
eighty-eight, in the same house in which he was born, having outlived
his mental faculties. He was the last of the profession in Little
Britain.

Among the scores of Little Britain men who combined publishing with
second-hand bookselling, one of the more interesting is William Newton,
who resided there during the earlier years o