theran and Co.: this highly
respectable house was established in Tower Street, E.C., as far back as
1816.

[Illustration: _A Corner at Ellis and Elvey's._]

WESTMINSTER HALL.

[Illustration: _Westminster Hall when occupied by Booksellers and
others._

From a Print by Gravelot.]

There is not, perhaps, in the whole world, a more interesting
bookselling locality than Westminster Hall. This place is redolent with
historical associations, with parliaments, coronations, revelries, and
impeachments. Stalls for books, as well as other small merchandise, were
permitted in the hall of the palace of Westminster early in the
sixteenth century. The poor scholars of Westminster also were employed
in hawking books between school-hours. In the procession of sanctuary
men who accompanied the Abbot of Westminster and his convent, December
6, 1556, was 'a boy that killed a big boy that sold papers and printed
books, with hurling of a stone, and hit him under the ear in Westminster
Hall.' In the churchwardens' accounts of the parish of St. Margaret,
Westminster, there is, under date 1498-1500, an entry: 'Item, Received
for another legende solde in Westmynster halle, v_s._ viij_d._,' the
'legende' being one of the thirteen copies of 'The Golden Legend'
bequeathed by Caxton to the 'behove' of the parish of St. Margaret's.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century Tom Nash wrote: 'Looke to it,
you booksellers and stationers, and let not your shop be infested with
any such goose gyblets, or stinking garbadge as the jygs of newsmongers;
and especially such of you as frequent Westminster Hall, let them be
circumspect what dunghill papers they bring thether: for one bad
pamphlet is inough to raise a dampe that may poyson a whole towne,' etc.
At first the shops or stalls were ranged along the blank wall on the
southern side of the hall. Subsequently they occupied not only the whole
of the side, but such portion of the other as was not occupied by the
Court of Common Pleas, which then sat within the hall itself, as did the
Chancery and King's Bench at its farther end. Gravelot's print of the
hall during term-time shows this arrangement. The stationers and other
tradespeople in the hall were a privileged class, inasmuch as they were
exempt from the pains and penalties relative to the license and
regulation of the press. Here as elsewhere there were plenty of inferior
books obtainable; Pepys, writing October 26, 1660, and referring to some
p