Street.

Dr. James Foster, a Dissenting minister eulogised by Pope, carried on
the Sunday evening lecture in Old Jewry for more than twenty years; it
was began in 1728. The clergy, wits, and freethinkers crowded with
equal anxiety to hear him of whom Pope wrote--

"Let modest Foster, if he will, excel
Ten metropolitans in preaching well."

And Pope's friend, Lord Bolingbroke, an avowed Deist, commended Foster
for the false aphorism--"Where mystery begins religion ends." Dr. Foster
attended Lord Kilmarnock before his execution. He wrote in defence of
Christianity in reply to Tindal, the Freethinker, and died in 1753. He
says in one of his works:--"I value those who are of different
professions from me, more than those who agree with me in sentiment, if
they are more serious, sober, and charitable." This excellent man was
the son of a Northamptonshire clergyman, who turned Dissenter and became
a fuller at Exeter.

At Grocers' Hall we stop to sketch the history of an ancient company.

The Grocers of London were originally called Pepperers, pepper being the
chief staple of their trade. The earlier Grocers were Italians, Genoese,
Florentine or Venetian merchants, then supplying all the west of
Christendom with Indian and Arabian spices and drugs, and Italian silks,
wines, and fruits. The Pepperers are first mentioned as a fraternity
among the amerced guilds of Henry II., but had probably clubbed together
at an earlier period. They are mentioned in a petition to Parliament as
Grocers, says Mr. Herbert, in 1361 (Edward III.), and they themselves
adopted the, at first, opprobrious name in 1376, and some years later
were incorporated by charter. They then removed from Soper's Lane (now
Queen Street) to Bucklersbury, and waxed rich and powerful.

The Grocers met at five several places previous to building a hall;
first at the town house of the Abbots of Bury, St. Mary Axe; in 1347
they moved to the house of the Abbot of St. Edmund; in 1348 to the
Rynged Hall, near Garlick-hythe; and afterwards to the hotel of the
Abbot of St. Cross. In 1383 they flitted to the Cornet's Tower, in
Bucklersbury, a place which Edward III. had used for his money exchange.
In 1411 they purchased of Lord Fitzwalter the chapel of the Fratres du
Sac (Brothers of the Sack) in Old Jewry, which had originally been a
Jewish synagogue; and having, some years afterwards, purchased Lord
Fitzwalter's house adjoining the chapel, began to build a hall