ext door to Temple Bar," Dryden deposited his L50
received for the discovery of the "bullies" by whom Lord Rochester had
been barbarously assaulted in Covent Garden.

Another distinctive feature of Fleet Street was the taverns and
coffee-houses. "The Devil," "The King's Head," at the corner of Chancery
Lane, "The Bolt-in-Tun," "The Horn Tavern," "The Mitre," "The Cock," and
"The Rainbow," with "Dick's," "Nando's," and "Peele's," at the corner of
Fetter Lane--its descendant still existing,--completes the list of the
most famous of these houses of entertainment.

To go back to a still earlier time, to connect therewith perhaps the most
famous name of English literature, bar Shakespeare, it is recorded that
Chaucer "once beat a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street," and was fined two
shillings for the privilege by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.
As the chroniclers have it: "So Speght heard from Master Barkly, who had
seen the entry in the records of the Inner Temple."

A rather gruesome anecdote is recounted by Hughson in his "Walks through
London" (1817), concerning Flower-de-Luce Court (Fleur-de-Lis Court), just
off Fetter Lane in Fleet Street. This concerned the notorious Mrs.
Brownrigg, who was executed in 1767 for the murder of Mary Clifford, her
apprentice. "The grating from which the cries of the poor child issued"
being still existent at the time when Hughson wrote and presumably for
some time after. Canning, in imitation of Southey, recounts it thus in
verse:

"... Dost thou ask her crime?
She whipp'd two female 'prentices to death,
And hid them in the coal-hole. For this act
Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws! But time shall come,
When France shall reign and laws be all repeal'd."

Which gladsome (?) day has fortunately not yet come.

No resume of the attractions of Fleet Street can well be made without some
mention of Whitefriars, that region comprehended between the boundaries of
the Temple on one side, and where once was the Fleet Ditch on the other.
Its present day association with letters mostly has to do with journalism,
Carmelite Street, Whitefriars Street, and other lanes and alleys of the
immediate neighbourhood being given over to the production of the great
daily and weekly output of printed sheets. This ancient precinct formerly
contained the old church of the White Friars, a community known in full as
_Fratres Beatae Mariae de Mont Carmeli_.

Founded by Sir Rich