years past, particularly all the ground between Shoe Lane and Fewters (now Fetter) Lane, 'so called,' says Howel, in his Londinopolis, 'of Fewters (an old appellation of idle people) loitering there, as in a way leading to gardens;' which in King Charles I.'s reign, and even some of them since, have been built up into streets, lanes, &c. Several other parts of the city, it is well known, have been rendered more populous by the removal of the nobility, &c., to Westminster liberties; on the sites of whose former spacious houses and gardens whole streets, lanes, and courts have been added to the city since the death of Queen Elizabeth,"[1] In 1609, it may here be mentioned, what is called the New River, by which the greater part of the metropolis is still supplied with water, was, after three years' labour, brought into the reservoir at Clerkenwell, by the enterprising and public-spirited projector, Mr. Hugh Middleton, citizen and goldsmith of London, who was thereupon knighted by King James. One of the patents granted by King Charles in 1630 was for the conveying of certain springs of water into London and Westminster from within a mile and a half of Hodsdon in Hertfordshire, after the plan of a projector named Michael Parker. This scheme, however, does not appear to have taken effect, and it only deserves notice from the circumstance that, to defray their expenses,—a considerable item of which was to be a payment of 4000l. a-year into the king's exchequer—the royal grant gave the undertakers "a special licence to erect and publish a lottery or lotteries," "according," it is added, "to the course of other lotteries heretofore used or practised." Lotteries had been for more than half a century before this occasionally resorted to by the government for raising money for particular purposes; the earliest on record, it is said, having occurred in the year 1569, when 20,000l. was raised for the repair of certain harbours by the sale of 40,000 tickets at ten shillings each, the prizes being articles of plate. Another lottery was drawn under the sanction of public authority
- ↑ Anderson, Hist. of Com. ii. 390.
