Fame will display
Her gracious virtues
Through the world for aye,
Spain's Rod, Rome's Ruine,
Netherlands' Reliefe;
Heaven's gem, earth's joy,
World's wonder, Nature's chief.
Britaine's blessing, England's splendour,
Religion's Nurse, the Faith's Defender."

The Poultry Compter, on the site of the present Grocers' Alley, was one
of the old sheriff's prisons pulled down in 1817, replaced soon after by
a chapel. Stow mentions the prison as four houses west from the parish
of St. Mildred, and describes it as having been "there kept and
continued time out of mind, for I have not read the original hereof."
"It was the only prison," says Mr. Peter Cunningham, "with a ward set
apart for Jews (probably from its vicinity to Old Jewry), and it was the
only prison in London left unattacked by Lord George Gordon's blue
cockaded rioters in 1780." This may have arisen from secret
instructions of Lord George, who had sympathies for the Jews, and
eventually became one himself. Middleton, 1607 (James I.), speaks ill of
it in his play of the _Phoenix_, for prisons at that time were places of
cruelty and extortion, and schools of villainy. The great playwright
makes his "first officer" say, "We have been scholars, I can tell
you--we could not have been knaves so soon else; for as in that notable
city called London, stand two most famous universities, Poultry and Wood
St., where some are of twenty years standing, and have took all their
degrees, from the master's side, down to the mistress's side, so in like
manner," &c.

[Illustration: THE POULTRY COMPTER. (_From an Old Print._)]

It was at this prison, in the reign of Charles I., that Dr. Lamb, the
conjurer, died, after being nearly torn to pieces by the mob. He was a
creature of the Duke of Buckingham, and had been accused of bewitching
Lord Windsor. On the 18th of June Lamb was insulted in the City by a few
boys, who soon after being increased by the acceding multitude, they
surrounded him with bitter invectives, which obliged him to seek refuge
in a tavern in the Old Jewry; but the tumult continuing to increase, the
vintner, for his own safety, judged it proper to turn him out of the
house, whereupon the mob renewed their exclamations against him, with
the appellations of "wizard," "conjuror," and "devil." But at last,
perceiving the approach of a guard, sent by the Lord Mayor to his
rescue, they fell upon and beat the doctor in such