reet, on the south side of Cheapside, stood Ringed Hall, the
house of the Earls of Cornwall, given by them, in Edward III.'s time, to
the Abbot of Beaulieu, near Oxford. Henry VIII. gave it to Morgan
Philip, _alias_ Wolfe. Near it was "Ipres Inn," built by William of
Ipres, in King Stephen's time, which continued in the same family in
1377.

Stow says of Soper Lane, now Queen Street:--"Soper Lane, which lane took
that name, not of soap-making, as some have supposed, but of Alleyne le
Sopar, in the ninth of Edward II."

"In this Soper's Lane," Strype informs us, "the pepperers anciently
dwelt--wealthy tradesmen, who dealt in spices and drugs. Two of this
trade were divers times mayors in the reign of Henry III., viz., Andrew
Bocherel, and John de Gisorcio or Gisors. In the reign of King Edward
II., anno 1315, they came to be governed by rules and orders, which are
extant in one of the books of the chamber under this title, '_Ordinatio
Piperarum de Soper's Lane_.'" Sir Baptist Hicks, Viscount Campden, of
the time of James I., whose name is preserved in Hicks's Hall, and
Campden Hill, Kensington, was a rich mercer, at the sign of the "White
Bear," at Soper Lane end, in Cheapside. Strype says that "Sir Baptist
was one of the first citizens that, after knighthood, kept their shops,
and, being charged with it by some of the aldermen, he gave this answer,
first--'That his servants kept the shop, though he had a regard to the
special credit thereof; and that he did not live altogether upon the
interest, as most of the aldermen did, laying aside their trade after
knighthood.'"

The parish church of St. Syth, or Bennet Sherehog, or Shrog, "seemeth,"
says Stow, "to take that name from one Benedict Shorne, some time a
citizen, and stock-fish monger, of London, a new builder, repairer, or
benefactor thereof, in the reign of Edward II.; so that Shorne is but
corruptly called Shrog, and more correctly Shorehog, or (as now)
Sherehog." The following curious epitaph is preserved by Stow:--

"Here lieth buried the body of Ann, the wife of John Farrar,
gentleman, and merchant adventurer of this city, daughter of William
Shepheard, of Great Rowlright, in the county of Oxenford, Esqre. She
departed this life the twelfth day of July, An. Dom. 1613, being
then about the age of twenty-one yeeres.

"Here was a bud,
Beginning for her May;
Before her flower,
Death took her hence away.
But for wha