f the Somerset House solicitor would watch, ready to seize
them immediately they came from the press. But the printers were quite
equal to the emergency. They would make up sham parcels of waste-paper,
and send them out with an ostentatious show of secrecy. The
officers--simple fellows enough, though they were called 'Government
spies,' 'Somerset House myrmidons,' and other opprobrious names, in the
unstamped papers--duly took possession of the parcels, after a decent
show of resistance by their bearers, while the real newspapers intended
for sale to the public were sent flying by thousands down a shoot in
Fleur-de-Lys Court, and thence distributed in the course of the next
hour or two all over the town."

The Royal Society came to Crane Court from Gresham College in 1710, and
removed in 1782 to Somerset House. This society, according to Dr.
Wallis, one of the earliest members, originated in London in 1645, when
Dr. Wilkins and certain philosophical friends met weekly to discuss
scientific questions. They afterwards met at Oxford, and in Gresham
College, till that place was turned into a Puritan barracks. After the
Restoration, in 1662, the king, wishing to turn men's minds to
philosophy--or, indeed, anywhere away from politics--incorporated the
members in what Boyle has called "the Invisible College," and gave it
the name of the Royal Society. In 1710, the Mercers' Company growing
tired of their visitors, the society moved to a house rebuilt by Wren in
1670, and purchased by the society for L1,450. It had been the
residence, before the Great Fire, of Dr. Nicholas Barebone (son of
Praise-God Barebone), a great building speculator, who had much property
in the Strand, and who was the first promoter of the Phoenix Fire
Office. It seems to have been thought at the time that Newton was
somewhat despotic in his announcement of the removal, and the members in
council grumbled at the new house, and complained of it as small,
inconvenient, and dilapidated. Nevertheless, Sir Isaac, unaccustomed to
opposition, overruled all these objections, and the society flourished
in this Fleet Street "close" seventy-two years. Before the society came
to Crane Court, Pepys and Wren had been presidents; while at Crane Court
the presidents were--Newton (1703-1727), Sir Thomas Hoare, Matthew
Folkes, Esq. (whose portrait Hogarth painted), the Earl of Macclesfield,
the Earl of Morton, James Burrow, Esq., James West, Esq., Sir John
Pringle, and Sir