occupied by them in the character of beggars, when they made their observations for the angling of the night. "Wild Rogues were the offspring of thieves and beggars, who received the rudiments of the art even before they left their mothers' backs; 'To go into churches and great crowds, and to nim golden buttons off men's cloaks; and being very little are shown how to creep into cellar windows, or other small entrances, and in the night to convey out thereat whatever they can find to the thievish receivers, who wait without for that purpose; and sometimes do open the door to let in such who have designed to rob the house; if taken, the tenderness of their age makes an apology or an excuse for their fault, and so are let alone to be hanged at riper years.' 6 "Palliards or Clapperdogeons, were those women who sat and reclined in the streets, with their own borrowed or stolen children, hanging about them, crying through cold, pinching, or real disease, who begged relief as widows, and, in the name of their fatherless children, gaining by this artifice, a great deal of money, whilst her comrogue lies begging in the fields, with climes or artificial sores.' The way they commonly take to make them is by sperewort or arsenic, which will draw blisters; or they take unslacked lime and soap, mingled with the rust of old iron: these being well tempered together, and spread thick upon two pieces of leather, they apply to the leg, binding it thereunto very hard, which in a very little time would fret the skin so that the flesh will appear all raw, &c. &c. "Fraters were impostors who went through the country with forged patents for briefs, and thus diverted charity from its proper direction. 6 "Abram men were fellows whose occupations seem to have been forgotten. They are described in the 'Canting Academy' in these words: Abram men are otherwise called Tom of Bedlams; they are very strangely and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands or tape in their hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging down, a long stick with ribands streaming, and the like; yet for all their seeming madness they have wit enough to steal as they go.'* * It is still a phrase with the vulgar to say, a man "shams Abram." "The Whip-Jacks have left us a specimen of their fraternity. They were counterfeit mariners, whose conversations were plentifully embellished with sea-terms, and falsehoods of their danger in the exercise of their profession. Instead of securing their arms and legs close to their bodies, and wrapping them in bandages (as the modern whip-jack is in the habit of doing, to excite compassion for the loss of limbs and severe wounds), the ancients merely pretended they had lost their all by shipwreck, and were reduced to beg their way to a sea-port, if in the country; or to some remote one, if in London. "Mumpers.-The persons thus termed are described as being of both sexes: they were not solicitors for food, but money and cloaths. 'The male mumper, in the times of the late usurpation, was clothed in an old torn cassock, begirt with a girdle, with a black cap, and a white one peeping out underneath.' With a formal and studied countenance he stole up to a gentleman, and whispered him softly in the ear, that he was a poor sequestered parson, with a wife and many children. At other times, they would assume the habit of a decayed gentleman, and beg as if they had been ruined by their attachment to the royal cause. Sometimes the mumper appeared with an apron before him, and a cap on his head, and begs in the nature of a broken tradesman, who, having been a long time sick, hath spent all his remaining stock, and so weak he cannot work! The females of this class of miscreants generally attacked the ladies, and in a manner suited to make an impression on their finer feelings. "Domerars are such as counterfeit themselves dumb, and have a notable art to roll their tongues up into the roof of their mouth, that you would verily believe their tongues were cut out; and, to make you have a stronger belief thereof, they will gape and show you where it was done, clapping in a sharp stick, and, touching the tongue, make it bleed-and then the ignorant dispute it no further.' "Patricos are the strolling priests: every hedge is their parish, and every wandering rogue their parishioner. The service, he saith, is the marrying of couples, without the Gospel, or Book of Common Prayer, the solemnity whereof is thus: the parties to be married find out a dead horse, or any other beast, and standing the one on the one side and the other on the other, the patrico bids them to live together till death them part; and, so shaking hands, the wedding is ended.'"* On the southern side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the back of Portugal Row, is Portugal Street, formerly containing a theatre, as celebrated as Covent Garden or Drury Lane is now. This was the Duke's Theatre, so called from the Duke of York, afterwards James II., who, at the Restoration, patronised one of the principal companies of players, as his brother Charles did the other. The latter was the Drury Lane company. Readers of theatrical history are generally led to conclude that there was only one theatre in the Lincoln's Inn quarter; but this is a mistake. There were at least two successive houses in two different places, though usually confounded under the title of "the Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields." The first was in Gibbon's tennis-court, in Vere Street, Clare Market, where the actors who had played at the Red Bull opened their performances in the year of the Restoration, under the direction of Killigrew, and with the title of King's Company. These in 1663 removed to Drury Lane. The Duke's, or Sir William Davenant's company, removed in 1662 from Salisbury Court (see Fleet Street) to a new theatre "in Portugal Row," says Malone, 66 near Lincoln's Inn Fields."† Malone is a correct inquirer: so that he makes us doubt whether the name of Portugal Row did not formerly belong to Portugal Street. The latter is certainly meant, or he would describe it as in and not near the Fields. Davenant's company performed here till 1671, when they quitted it to return to the renovated theatre in Salisbury Court, under the management of his son, Charles Davenant (the father being dead), and the famous Betterton, who had been Sir William's first actor. The * Manners and Customs, vol. i. p. 332. Historical Account of the English Stage, p. 320. two companies afterwards came together at Drury Lane; but again fell apart, and in 1695 the Duke's company (if its altered composition could still warrant the name), with Betterton remaining at its head, and Congreve for a partner, again opened "the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields," which was rebuilt for the purpose, and is described as being in "the Tennis-court." Was this the tennis-court theatre in Vere Street? or were there two tennis-courts, one in Vere Street, and one in Lincoln's Inn Fields? We confess ourselves, after a diligent examination, unable to determine. At all events, the latest theatre of which we hear in Lincoln's Inn Fields, was not in Vere Street. It stood in Portugal Street, on the east end of the present burial ground, just at the back of Surgeons' College, and was subsequently the china warehouse of Messrs. Spode and Copeland.* This theatre, which was built of red brick, and had a front facing the market, is the one generally * It has recently been pulled down to make room for the enlargement of the museum of the College of Surgeons. VOL. II. meant by the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It finally became celebrated for the harlequinades of Rich; but, on his removal to Covent Garden, was deserted, and, after a short re-opening by Gifford from Goodman's Fields, finally ceased to be a theatre about the year 1737. Since that period Covent Garden and Drury Lane playhouses have had this part of the town to themselves. It is conjectured, that the first appearance of an actress on the English stage, to the scandal of the Puritans, and with many apologies for the "indecorum" of giving up the performances of female characters by boys, took place in the theatre in Vere Street, on Saturday, Dec. 8. 1660. The part first performed was certainly that of Desdemona; a very fit one to introduce the claims of the sex. * Mr. Malone has given us the prologue written for this occasion by Thomas Jordan; which, as it shows the “ sensation" that was made, sets us in a lively manner in the situation of the spectators, and gives a curious account of some of the male actors of gentle womanhood, we shall here repeat. It is entitled "A Prologue, to introduce the first Woman that came to act on the Stage, in the Tragedy called the Moor of Venice :" "I came unknown to any of the rest, Abhor all sorts of looseness, and yet play; Play on the stage — where all eyes are upon her: Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour? In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em ; The difference lies only in the custom. * See Malone, pp. 135, 136. |