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men; his information led to their discovery; they were tried and executed, and Clarkson was pardoned; though, some time afterwards, he, also, suffered death, for obtaining a box of plate from the White-horse, in Fetter-lane, upon pretence that it had been sent thither by

mistake.

The robbery at Copenhagen-house, was so far fortunate to Mrs. Harrington, that she obtained a subscription consider ably more in amount than the value of the money and property she had lost. Mr. Leader, the coachmaker, in Longacre, who was her landlord, remitted to her a year's rent of the premises, which at that time was 301. The notoriety of the robbery increased the visitors to the house, and Mr. Leader built the additional rooms to the old house, instead of a wooden room, to accommodate the new influx of custom; and soon afterwards the house was celebrated for fives-playing This last addition was almost accidental. "I made the first fives-ball," says Mrs. Tomes," that was ever thrown up against Copenhagen-house. One Hickman, a butcher at Highgate, a countryman of mine, used' the house, and seeing me country,' we talked about our country sports, and amongst the rest fives; I told him we'd have a game some day: I laid down the stone in the ground myself, and, against he came again, made a ball. I struck the ball the first blow and he gave it the second, and so we played; and as there was company they liked the sport, and it got talked of. This was the begin ning of the fives-play, which has since become so famous at Copenhagen-house."

A word or two on ball-play.

Fives was our old hand-tennis, and is a very ancient game.

In the fourteenth century there was a game at ball, where a line, called the cord, was traced upon the wall, below which the stroke was faulty. Some of the players were on foot; others had the two hands tied together, or played in a hollow cask.*

Hand-ball was before the days of Homer. He introduces the princess Corcyra, daughter of Alcinous, king of Phoacia, amusing herself, with her maidens, at hand-ball:

Mr. Fosbroke's Dict. of Antiquities.

"O'er the green mead the sporting virgins play;

Their shining veils unbound, along the skies,

Tost and re-tost, the ball incessant flies."*

It is related of St. Cuthbert, who lived

in the seventh century, that "whan he with other chyldren, sodeynly there stode was viii yere old, as he played at the ball amonge them a fayre yonge chylde," who admonished Cuthbert against " Vayne playes," and seeing Cuthbert take no his hands; "and than Cuthbert and the heed, he fell down, wept sore and wrung other chyldren lefte their playe and comforted hym; and than sodeynly he vanyshed away; and than he knewe veryly that it was an angel; and, fro than forth on, he lefte all such vayne playes, and never used them more."

Ball-play was formerly played at Easter late the size of the ball. The ceremony in churches, and statutes passed to reguwas as follows: the ball being received, the dean, or his representative, began an antiphone, or chant, suited to Easterday; then taking the ball in his left hand,

he commenced a dance to the tune, others hand. At intervals the ball was handed of the clergy dancing round, hand in or tossed by the dean to each of the chodance and sport: at the conclusion of the risters, the organ playing according to the anthem and dance, they went and took refreshment. It was the privilege of the lord, or his locum tenens, to throw the ball, and even the archbishop did it.

The French palm-play consisted in receiving the ball and driving it back again with the palm of the hand. Anciently they played with the naked hand, then with a glove, which, in some instances, was lined; afterwards they bound cords and tendons round their hands, to make the ball rebound more forcibly; and hence, says St. Foix, the racket derived its origin.

In the reign of Charles V., palm-play, which, Strutt says, may properly enough be denominated hand-tennis, or fives, was exceedingly fashionable in France, being played by the nobility for large sums of money; and when they had lost all that they had about them, they would sometimes pledge a part of their wearing apparel rather than give up the game. The

Pope's Homer

+ Golden Legend.

Mr. Fosbroke's Dict. of Antiquities,

duke of Bourbon having lost sixty francs at palm-play with M. William de Lyon, and M. Guy de la Trimouille, and not having money enoughto pay them, gave his girdle as a pledge for the remainder.

A damsel, named Margot, who resided at Paris in 1424, played at hand-tennis with the palm, and also with the back of her hand, better than any man; and what is most surprising, says St. Foix, at that time the game was played with the naked hand, or at least with a double glove.

Hand-tennis still continues to be played, though under a different name, and probably a different modification of the game: it is now called fives, which denomination, perhaps, it might receive from having five competitors in it, as the succeeding passage shews: When queen Elizabeth was entertained at Elvetham, in Hampshire, by the earl of Hertford, "after dinner about three o'clock, ten of his lordship's servants, all Somersetshire men, in a square greene court before her majesties windowe, did hang up lines, squaring out the forme of a tennis court, and making a cross line in the middle; in this square they, being stripped out of their dublets, played five to five with hand-ball at bord and cord as they tearme it, to the great liking of her highness."

Fives-playing at Copenhagen-house, is recorded in a memoir of Cavanagh, the famous fives-player, by Mr. Hazlitt. It first appeared in the Examiner of February 17, 1819, and is subjoined, with the omission of a passage or two, not essentially connected with the subject.

one else in the world, which so many others are trying to do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not likely that any one will now see the game of fives played in its perfection for many years to comefor Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind him.

It may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a ball against a wall—there are things indeed that make more noise and do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches and answering them, making verses and blotting them, making money and throwing it away. But the game of fives is what no one despises who has ever played at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and the best relaxation for the mind.

The Roman poet said that "Care mounted behind the horseman, and stuck to his skirts." But this remark would not have applied to the fives-player. He who takes to playing at fives is twice young. He feels neither the past nor future "in the instant." Debts, taxes, "domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further." He has no other wish, no other thought, from the moment the game begins, but that of striking the ball, of placing it, of making it! This Cavanagh was sure to do. Whenever he touched the ball, there was an end of the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind complete. He could do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly what to do. He saw the whole game, and played it; took instant advantage of his adversary's weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a miracle and from sudden thought, that every one gave for lost. He had equal power and skill, quickness and judgment. He could either outwit his antagonist by finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes, when he seemed preparing to send the ball with the full swing of his arm, he would, by a slight turn of his wrist, drop it within an inch of the line. In general, the ball came from his hand, as if from a racket, in a vain to attempt to overtake or stop it. strait horizontal line; so that it was in As it was said of a great orator, that he never was at a loss for a word, and for the properest word, so Cavanagh always could tell the degree of force necessary to be given to a ball, and the precise direc* Strutt's sports, from Mr. Nichol's Progresses of tion in which it should be sent. He did Queen Elizabeth, &c.

DEATH OF JOHN CAVANAGH.

"And is old Double dead? See, see, he

drew a good bow; and dead! he shot a fine shoot. John of Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head. Dead! he would have clapt in the clout at twelve score, and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man's heart good to see."

Died at his house in Burbage-street, St. Giles's, John Cavanagh, the famous hand fives-player. When a person dies, who does any one thing better than any

his work with the greatest ease; never took more pains than was necessary, and while others were fagging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as if he had just entered the court.

His style of play was as remarkable as his power of execution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away the game to show off an attitude, or try an experiment. He was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but that was more than any one else could even affect to do. He was the best up-hill player in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, he would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the game through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it up through laziness or want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he never volleyed, but let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from the ground, he never missed having them. There was not only no body equal, but nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give any other player half the game, or beat them with his left hand. His service was tremendous. He once played Woodward and Meredith together (two of the best players in England) in the Fives-court, St. Martin'sstreet, and made seven and twenty aces following by services alone-a thing unheard of. He another time played Peru, who was considered a first-rate fivesplayer, a match of the best out of five games, and in the three first games, which of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace.

Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by profession. He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his smartest clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's pleasure. A person accosted him, and asked him if he would have a game. So they agreed to play for half-a-crown a game, and a bottle of cider. The first game began-it was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh won it. The next was the same. They played on and each game was hardly contested. "There," said the unconscious fives-player, "there was a stroke that Cavanagh could not take: I never played better in my life, and yet I can't win a- game. I don't know how it is." However, they played on, Cavanagh winning every game, and the byestanders drinking the cider and laughing

all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh was only four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in, and said, "What are you here, Cavanagh!" The words were no sooner pronounced than the astonished player let the ball drop from his hand, and saying, "What! have I been breaking my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh?" refused to make another effort. And yet, I give you my word," said Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, "I played all the while with my clenched fist.”

He used frequently to play matches at Copenhagen-house for wagers and dinners. The wall against which they play is the same that supports the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall resounded louder than usual, the cooks exclaimed, "Those are the Irishman's balls," and the joints trembled on the spit!

Goldsmith consoled himself that there were places where he too was admired: and Cavanagh was the admiration of all the fives-courts where he ever played. Mr. Powell, when he played matches in the court in St. Martin's-street, used to fill his gallery at half-a-crown a head, with amateurs and admirers of talent in whatever department it is shown. He could not have shown himself in any ground in England, but he would have been immediately surrounded with inquisitive gazers, trying to find out in what part of his frame his unrivalled skill lay.

He was a young fellow of sense, bumour, and courage. He once had a quarrel with a waterman at Hungerford-stails, and they say, "served him out" in great style. In a word, there are hundreds at this day, who cannot mention his name without admiration, as the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the greatest excellence of which they have any notion)-and the noisy shout of the ring happily stood him instead of the unheard voice of pos terity.

The only person who seems to have excelled as much in another way as Cavanagh did in his, was the late John Davies, the racket-player. It was remarked of him that he did not seem to follow the ball, but the ball seemed to follow him. Give him a foot of wall, and he was sure to make the ball. The four best racket-players of that day were Jack Spines, Jem Harding, Armitage, and Church. Davies could give any one of these two hands a time, that is, half the

game, and each of these at their best, could give the best player now in London the same odds. Such are the gradations in all exertions of human skill and art. He once played four capital players together, and beat them. He was also a first-rate tennis-player, and an excellent fives-player. In the Fleet or King's Bench, he would have stood against Powell, who was reckoned the best open-ground player of his time. This last-mentioned player is at present the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to him for a motto over his door,-"Who enters here, forgets himself, his country, and his friends." And the best of it is, that by the calculation of the odds, none of the three are worth remembering!

Cavanagh died from the bursting of a blood-vessel, which prevented him from playing for the last two or three years. This, he was often heard to say, he thought hard upon him. He was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly carried off to the regret of all who knew him.

Jack Cavanagh was a zealous Catholic, and could not be persuaded to eat meat on a Friday, the day on which he died. We have paid this willing tribute to his

memory.

"Let no rude hand deface it, And his forlorn Hic Jacet.''

Fives-play from the year 1780 was a chief diversion at Copenhagen-house, particularly while Mrs. Harrington remained the landlady. She was careless of all eustomers, except they came in shoals to drink tea in the gardens and long room up stairs, or to play at fives, skittles, and Dutch pins, and swill and smoke. The house was afterwards kept by a person named Orchard, during whose time the London Corresponding Society, in 1795, held meetings in the adjacent fields. In 1812, it was proposed by a company of projectors to bring sea-water through iron pipes "from the coast of Essex to Copenhagen fields," and construct baths, which, according to the proposals, would yield twelve and a half per cent. on a capital of 200,000l.; but the subscription was not filled up, though the names of several eminent physicians sanctioned the undertaking, and the project failed.+

* Mr. Nelson's History of Islington. + Ibid.

After Orchard's tenancy, Copenhagenhouse was kept by one Tooth, who encouraged brutal sports for the sake of the liquors he sold. On a Sunday morning the fives-ground was filled by bull-dogs and ruffians, who lounged and drank to intoxication; so many as fifty or sixty bull-dogs have been seen tied up to the benches at once, while their masters boozed and made match after match, and went out and fought their dogs before the house, amid the uproar of idlers attracted to the "bad eminence" by its infamy. This scene lasted throughout every Sunday forenoon, and then the mob dispersed, and the vicinity was annoyed by the yells of the dogs and their drunken masters en their return home. There was also a common field, east of the house, wherein bulls were baited; this was called the bull-field. These excesses, although com mitted at a distance from other habitations, occasioned so much disturbance, that the magistrates, after repeated warnings to Tooth, refused him a license in 1816, and granted it to Mr. Bath, the present landlord, who abated the nuisance by refusing to draw beer or afford refreshment to any one who had a bull-dog at his heels. The bull-field has since been possessed and occupied by a great cowkeeping landlord in the neighbourhood, though by what title he holds it is not known, certainly not by admission to it as waste of the manor. This field is close to the mud cottage hereafter mento Highgate-hill. tioned in Hagbush-lane, an ancient way

Near the spot at which Hagbush-lane comes out into the Holloway-road to Highgate, the great lord Bacon met with the cause of his death, in a way not generally known. He was taking an airing in his coach, on a winter-day, with Dr. Witherborne, a Scotchman, physician to James I., and the snow laying on the ground. It occurred to lord Bacon that flesh might be preserved in snow as well as in salt; resolving to try the experiment, they alighted from the carriage, and going into a poor woman's cottage at the foot of Highgate-hill, they bought a hen; his lordship helped to stuff the body with snow, which so chilled him that he fell ill, and could not return to his lodgings; he therefore went to the earl of Arundel's house at Highgate, where a bed was warmed for him with a pan of coals;

but the bed not having been lain in for about a year before was damp, and so increased his disorder that in two or three days he died.

It is not to defame so great a man, the greatest of modern times, but merely to illustrate his well-known attachment to particular favourites, that a paper is here for the first time printed. It is a bill of fees to counsel, upon an order made in the court of chancery by lord Bacon, as keeper of the great seal, during the first year he held it. From this it appears that counsel had been retained to argue a demurrer, on the first day of Michaelmas term, 1617; and that the hear

ing stood over till the following Tuesday, before which day" one of my lordkeeper's favourites" was retained as other counsel, and," being one of my lordkeeper's favourites," had a double fee for his services. The mention of so extraordinary a fact in a common bill of costs may perhaps justify its rather outof-the-way introduction in this place The paper from whence it is here printed, the editor of the Every-Day Book has selected from among other old unpublished manuscripts in his possession, connected with the affairs of sir Philip Hoby, who was ambassador to the emperor of Germany from Henry VIII., and held other offices during that reign.

(COPY.)

Termino Micalis, 1617. To Mr. Bagger of the Iner-Temple, Councellor, the firste day of the Tearme, for attending at the Chancery barr, to mayntain or. demurrer against Sr. Tho. Hoby, by my Lo: Keeper's order, that daye to attend the Corte, wch herd noe motions that daye, but deferd it of until Tusday following

Uppon Tusdaye following wee had yonge Mr. Tho: Finch, and Mr. Bagger, of our Councell, to attend there to mayntaine the same demurrer, and the cause be cancelled; Upon (which) my Lo: Keeper ordered, that he refferred the cause to be heard before Sr. Charles Cesér King, one of the docters of the Chancery, to make

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stomach may be satisfied together. A At Copenhagen-house, the eye and the walk to it through the fresh air creates an appetite, and the sight must be allowed some time to take in the surrounding prospect. A seat for an hour or two at the upstairs tea-room windows on a fine day is a luxury. As the clouds intercept the sun's rays, and as the winds disperse or congregate the London atmoshovers over continually varies. Masses phere, the appearance of the objects it of building in that direction daily stretch out further and further across the fields, so that the metropolis may be imagined a moving billow coming up the heights to drown the country. Behind the house the

"Hedge-row elms, o'er hillocks green,"

is exquisitely beautiful, and the fine amphitheatre of wood, from Primrose-hill to Highgate-archway and Hornsey, seems built up to meet the skies. A stroll towards either of these places from Copenhagen-house, is pleasant beyond imagination. Many residents in London to whom walking would be eminently serviceable, cannot "take a walk" without a motive; to such is recommended the "delightful task" of endeavouring to trace Hagbushlane.

Crossing the meadow west of Copenhagen-house, to the north-east corner, there is a mud built cottage in the widest part of Hagbush-lane, as it runs due north from the angle formed by its eastern direction. It stands on the site of one xxii. s. still more rude, at which until destroyed, labouring men and humble wayfarers, attracted by the sequestered and rural beauties of the lane, stopped to recreate It was just such a scene as Morian would have coveted to sketch, and there fore Mr. Fussell with "an eye for the picturesque," and with a taste akin to Morland's, made a drawing of it while it was standing, and placed it on the wood whereon it is engraven, to adorn the next page.

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