He ran up a score of L40, and then
disappeared, to the vexation of Mrs. Brown, the landlady, who would
willingly have welcomed him, even though he never paid, as a means of
amusing and detaining customers. Waithman, the Common Councilman, was
always clear-headed and agreeable. There was also Mr. Paterson, a
long-headed, speculative North Briton, who had taught Pitt mathematics.
But such coteries are like empires; they have their rise and their fall.
Dr. Buchan died; some pert young sparks offended the Nestor, Hammond,
who gave up the place, after forty-five years' attendance, and before
1820 the "Chapter" grew silent and dull.

The fourth edition of Dr. ----ell's "Antient and Modern Geography," says
Nicholls, was published by an association of respectable booksellers,
who about the year 1719 entered into an especial partnership, for the
purpose of printing some expensive works, and styled themselves "the
Printing Conger." The term "Conger" was supposed to have been at first
applied to them invidiously, alluding to the conger eel, which is said
to swallow the smaller fry; or it may possibly have been taken from
_congeries_. The "Conger" met at the "Chapter."

The "Chapter" closed as a coffee-house in 1854, and was altered into a
tavern.

One tragic memory, and one alone, as far as we know, attaches to
Paternoster Row. It was here, in the reign of James I., that Mrs. Anne
Turner lived, at whose house the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury was
planned. It was here that Viscount Rochester met the infamous Countess
of Essex; and it was Overbury's violent opposition to this shameful
intrigue that led to his death from arsenic and diamond-dust,
administered in the Tower by Weston, a servant of Mrs. Turner's, who
received L180 for his trouble. Rochester and the Countess were
disgraced, but their lives were spared. The Earl of Northampton, an
accomplice of the countess, died before Overbury succumbed to his three
months of torture.

"Mrs. Turner," says Sir Simonds d'Ewes, had "first brought up that vain
and foolish use of yellow starch, coming herself to her trial in a
yellow band and cuffs; and therefore, when she was afterwards executed
at Tyburn, the hangman had his band and cuffs of the same colour, which
made many after that day, of either sex, to forbear the use of that
coloured starch, till at last it grew generally to be detested and
disused."

In a curious old print of West Chepe, date 1585, in the vestry-room of