re laid roughly on cope and chalice, and Henry VIII., seizing on the
friars' domains, gave his physician--that Doctor Butts mentioned by
Shakespeare--the chapter-house for a residence. Edward VI.--who, with
all his promise, was as ready for such pillage as his tyrannical
father--pulled down the church, and built noblemen's houses in its
stead. The refectory of the convent, being preserved, afterwards became
the Whitefriars Theatre. The mischievous right of sanctuary was
preserved to the district, and confirmed by James I., in whose reign the
slum became jocosely known as Alsatia--from Alsace, that unhappy
frontier then, and later, contended for by French and Germans--just as
Chandos Street and that shy neighbourhood at the north-west side of the
Strand used to be called the Caribbee Islands, from its countless
straits and intricate thieves' passages. The outskirts of the Carmelite
monastery had no doubt become disreputable at an early time, for even in
Edward III.'s reign the holy friars had complained of the gross
temptations of Lombard Street (an alley near Bouverie Street). Sirens
and Dulcineas of all descriptions were ever apt to gather round
monasteries. Whitefriars, however, even as late as Cromwell's reign,
preserved a certain respectability; for here, with his supposed wife,
the Dowager Countess of Kent, Selden lived and studied.

In the reign of James I. a strange murder was committed in Whitefriars.
The cause of the crime was highly singular. In 1607 young Lord Sanquhar,
a Scotch nobleman, who with others of his countrymen had followed his
king to England, had an eye put out by a fencing-master of Whitefriars.
The young lord--a man of a very ancient, proud, and noble Scotch family,
as renowned for courage as for wit--had striven to put some affront on
the fencing-master at Lord Norris's house, in Oxfordshire, wishing to
render him contemptible before his patrons and assistants--a common
bravado of the rash Tybalts and hot-headed Mercutios of those fiery days
of the duello, when even to crack a nut too loud was enough to make your
tavern neighbour draw his sword. John Turner, the master, jealous of his
professional honour, challenged the tyro with dagger and rapier, and,
determined to chastise his ungenerous assailant, parried all his most
skilful passadoes and staccatoes, and in his turn pressed Sanquhar with
his foil so hotly and boldly that he unfortunately thrust out one of his
eyes. The young baron, ashamed