en forth the next day,
and laid all along in the gallery, presented to the lookers-on a wofull
spectacle of fourscore and seventeen dead persons, besides eight or nine
which perished since, unable to recover themselves."

[Illustration: RICHARD BURBAGE, FROM THE ORIGINAL PORTRAIT IN DULWICH
COLLEGE (_see page 201_).]

"They that kept themselves close to the walls, or remained by the
windows, or held by the rafters, or settled themselves by the stayres,
or were driven away by fear and suspition, sauved themselves without
further hurt; but such as seemed more devoute, and thronged neere the
preacher, perished in a moment with himselfe and other priests and
Jesuites; and this was the summe of that unhappy disaster."

In earlier days Blackfriars had been a locality much inhabited by
fashionable people, especially about the time of Queen Elizabeth.
Pennant quotes from the _Sydney Papers_ a curious account of a grand
festivity at the house of Lord Herbert, which the Queen honoured by her
attendance. The account is worth inserting, if only for the sake of a
characteristic bit of temper which the Queen exhibited on the occasion.

"Lord Herbert, son of William, fourth Earl of Worcester," says Pennant,
"had a house in Blackfriars, which Queen Elizabeth, in 1600, honoured
with her presence, on occasion of his nuptials with the daughter and
heiress of John, Lord Russell, son of Francis, Earl of Bedford. The
queen was met at the waterside by the bride, and carried to her house in
a _lectica_ by six knights. Her majesty dined there, and supped in the
same neighbourhood with Lord Cobham, where there was 'a memorable maske
of eight ladies, and a strange dawnce new invented. Their attire is
this: each hath a skirt of cloth of silver, a mantell of coruscian
taffete, cast under the arme, and their haire loose about their
shoulders, curiously knotted and interlaced. Mrs. Fitton leade. These
eight ladys maskers choose eight ladies more to dawnce the measures.
Mrs. Fitton went to the queen and woed her dawnce. Her majesty (the love
of Essex rankling in her heart) asked what she was? "_Affection_," she
said. "_Affection!_" said the queen; "_affection_ is false"; yet her
majestie rose up and dawnced. At this time the queen was sixty. Surely,
as Mr. Walpole observed, it was at that period as natural for her as to
be in love! I must not forget that in her passage from the bride's to
Lord Cobham's she went through the house of Dr. Puddin, and