190
NOTES AND QUERIES. uo s. XL MAR. e, im
SPENSER'S ' FAERIE QUEENE.' We have
heard that there are three supplemental
cantos to ' The Faerie Queene,' not by
Spenser, but by another and inferior hand,
and that the manuscript is in the public
library at Cambridge. Is this true ? and
if it is, has this continuation ever been
published ? N. M. & A.
FALCON COURT, SHOE LANE.
(10 S. xi. 128.)
THE falcon in ancient days was evidently a favourite sign. There is a Falcon Court on the south side of Fleet Street, nearly opposite Fetter Lane ; and MR. AUSTEN LEIGH'S inquiry bears witness to the fact that another Falcon Court lay on the north side of the street. This second Falcon Court probably opened into Shoe Lane. There are now two inns near the same spot called "The Falcon." 'The History of Sign- boards ' states that the sign of " The Falcon" was used by Wynkyn de Worde over his shop in Fleet Street "close to St. Bride's Church," according to 'D.N.B.' ; but when, in 1500, Worde moved from Westminster to Fleet Street, " The Sun " seems to have been the sign he adopted, not " The Falcon." Hotten states that in 1565 William Griffiths published a book which was " imprynted at London in Flete Strete at the sign of the Faucon " ; also, that in 1612 Wm. Dight was publishing at the sign of " The Falcon " in Shoe Lane. A work on the old printers would probably indicate whether or not Dight succeeded to the business and sign of Griffiths, but it would look as ifDight's house had been rebuilt in 1671, with, inserted in it, a stone sign of the Falcon bearing that date, and, according to the querist, later built into a more recent building, presumably on the ancient site. Hotten suggests that these printers may have borrowed their sign from the falcon volant in the Stationers' arms.
It is evident that about the time of Worde the great printing industry was started, which is now centred between Fetter Lane and Shoe Lane, both north and south of Fleet Street ; it seems probable that Messrs. Spottiswoode's business has come down from other like businesses established four centuries ago upon this site a site which is the focus of many so-called " courts" opening into Fleet Street, and doubtless formerly into Shoe Lane. Probably there
were at one time more of them, but the
merging of ownerships tends to the dis-
appearance of courts. Quite recently, for
example., a court has thus been built over
on the south side near Temple Bar Thanet
Court (or Place), I think it was called.
But many still exist, and their names are
quaint enough. I have read somewhere
that the old houses used to stand back from
the road, with a garden at front and back,
and that when the frontage on the road
became valuable, a house would be built
on the garden, fronting on (and I dare say
stealing some of) the road, the remainder
of the garden forming a courtyard between
the old house and the new. A narrow
passage would have to be left along the side of
the new house, to give access to the court,
and this passage would, I take it, be known
by the name of the court to which it led,
the name of the court being that of the sign
borne by the house. In the short space
between Ludgate Circus and Fetter Lane
on the north, there are eleven such courts,
besides gateway entrances which are now
blind, but at one time may also have been
passages to a court behind. Of these eleven
courts, nine bear names which seem to
hand down to us the sign of the first-built
garden house : Poppin (Puppet or Doll),
Racquet, Cheshire ( ? Cheese : old inn still
there), Hind, Three Kings, Bolt, St. Dun-
stan's, Red Lion, and Crane, -all or most
of them, it is to be supposed, house-signs.
Probably in many cases the passage from
the front which ran into the court was carried
round the old house to a junction with a
back-garden access to a lane, and this would
account for the fact that while many courts
are culs-de-sac, others, though called courts,
are more properly alleys, passages or foot-
lanes.
The ground plans and title-deeds of the Goldsmiths' Company would presumably throw much light on this very interesting part of old London, which even to-day re- mains a labyrinth of courts and passages indicative of anciently scattered tenements. DOUGLAS OWEN.
Years ago I tried to ascertain something of the history of Falcon Court, Shoe Lane, but could find only brief mention of it in three or four early eighteenth-century books. For instance, Hatton in his ' New View of London,' 1708, refers to " Falcon court, on the W. side of Shoe lane about the middle, a passage into New str." ; Strype in his edi- tion of Stow's ' Survey,' 1720, speaks of it as " but ordinarv, near unto the corner of
