" says Stow, "of a house in Wood Street then
called 'Black Hall;' but no man at this day can tell thereof. In the
time of King Richard II., Sir Henry Percy, the son and heir of Henry
Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had a house in 'Wodstreate,' in London
(whether this Black Hall or no, it is hard to trace), wherein he treated
King Richard, the Duke of Lancaster, the Duke of York, the Earl Marshal,
and his father, the Earl of Northumberland, with others, at supper."

The "Rose," in Wood Street, was a sponging-house, well known to the
rakehells and spendthrifts of Charles II.'s time. "I have been too
lately under their (the bailiffs') clutches," says Tom Brown, "to desire
any more dealings with them, and I cannot come within a furlong of the
'Rose' sponging-house without five or six yellow-boys in my pocket to
cast out those devils there, who would otherwise infallibly take
possession of me."

The "Mitre," an old tavern in Wood Street, was kept in Charles II.'s
time by William Proctor, who died insolvent in 1665. "18th Sept., 1660,"
Pepys says, "to the 'Miter Taverne,' in Wood Street (a house of the
greatest note in London). Here some of us fell to handycap, a sport that
I never knew before." And again, "31st July, 1665. Proctor, the vintner,
of the 'Miter,' in Wood Street, and his son, are dead this morning of
the plague; he having laid out abundance of money there, and was the
greatest vintner for some time in London for great entertainments."

In early life Thomas Ripley, afterwards a celebrated architect, kept a
carpenter's shop and coffee house in Wood Street. Marrying a servant of
Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister of George I., this lucky pushing
man soon obtained work from the Crown and a seat at the Board of Works,
and supplanted that great genius who built St. Paul's, to the infinite
disgrace of the age. Ripley built the Admiralty, and Houghton Hall,
Norfolk, for his early patron, Walpole, and died rich in 1758.

Wood Street is associated with that last extraordinary outburst of the
Civil War fanaticism--the Anabaptist rising in January, 1661.

[Illustration: PULPIT HOUR-GLASS (_see page 368_).]

On Sunday, January 6, 1661, we read in "Somers' Tracts," "these monsters
assembled at their meeting-house, in Coleman Street, where they armed
themselves, and sallying thence, came to St. Paul's in the dusk of the
evening, and there, after ordering their small party, placed sentinels,
one of whom killed a person