tically, "Give
fire, gunner," and a sturdy smith burst the pannels open with a huge
sledge-hammer. The horrified Lord Mayor being appealed to soon arrived,
attended by the watch of the ward and men armed with halberts. At eleven
o'clock on the Sunday night the two monarchs came into collision in Hare
Alley (now Hare Court). The Lord of Misrule bade my Lord Mayor come to
him, but Palmer, omitting to take off his hat, the halberts flew sharply
round him, his subjects were soundly beaten, and he was dragged off to
the Compter. There, with soiled finery, the new year's king was kept two
days in durance, the attorney-general at last fetching the fallen
monarch away in his own coach. At a court masque soon afterwards the
king made the two rival potentates join hands; but the King of Misrule
had, nevertheless, to refund all the five shillings' he had exacted, and
repair all the Fleet Street doors his too handy gunner had destroyed.
The very next year the quarrelsome street broke again into a rage, and
four persons lost their lives. Of the rioters, two were executed within
the week. One of these was John Stanford, of the duke's chamber, and the
other Captain Nicholas Ashurst. The quarrel was about politics, and the
courtiers seem to have been the offenders.

In Charles II.'s time the pillory was sometimes set up at the Temple
gate; and here the wretch Titus Oates stood, amidst showers of unsavoury
eggs and the curses of those who had learnt to see the horror of his
crimes. Well said Judge Withers to this man, "I never pronounce criminal
sentence but with some compassion; but you are such a villain and
hardened sinner, that I can find no sentiment of compassion for you."
The pillory had no fixed place, for in 1670 we find a Scotchman
suffering at the Chancery Lane end for telling a victualler that his
house would be fired by the Papists; and the next year a man stood upon
the pillory at the end of Shoe Lane for insulting Lord Ambassador
Coventry as he was starting for Sweden.

In the reign of Queen Anne those pests of the London streets, the
"Mohocks," seem to have infested Fleet Street. These drunken
desperadoes--the predecessors of the roysterers who, in the times of the
Regency, "boxed the Charlies," broke windows, and stole knockers--used
to find a cruel pleasure in surrounding a quiet homeward-bound citizen
and pricking him with their swords. Addison makes worthy Sir Roger de
Coverley as much afraid of these night-birds as