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Blanchard & Child, at the
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Marygold, Fleet Street, figure conspicuously as
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The original Marygold (sometimes mistaken for a rising sun), with the motto,
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Ainsi mon ame, gilt upon a green ground, elegantly designed in the French manner, is still to be seen in the front office, and a marigold in full bloom still blossoms on the bank cheques. In the year 1678 it was at Mr. Blanchard's, the goldsmith's, next door to Temple Bar, that Dryden the poet, bruised and angry, deposited £50 as a reward for any one who would discover the bullies of Lord Rochester who had beaten him in Rose Alley for some scurrilous verses really written by the Earl of Dorset. The advertisement promises, if the discoverer be himself one of the actors, he shall still have the £50, without letting his name be known or receiving the least trouble by any prosecution. Black Will's cudgel was, after all, a clumsy way of making a repartee. Late in Charles II.'s reign Alderman Backwell entered the wealthy firm; but he was ruined by the iniquitous and arbitrary closing of the Exchequer in 1672, when the needy and unprincipled king pocketed at one swoop more than a million and a half of money, which he soon squandered on his shameless mistresses and unworthy favourites. In that quaint room over Temple Bar the firm still preserve the dusty books of the unfortunate alderman, who fled to Holland. There, on the sallow leaves over which the poor alderman once groaned, you can read the items of our sale of Dunkirk to the French, the dishonourable surrender of which drove the nation almost to madness, and hastened the downfall of Lord Clarendon, who was supposed to have built a magnificent house (on the site of Albemarle Street, Piccadilly) with some of the very money. Charles II. himself banked here, and drew his thousands with all the careless nonchalance of his nature. Nell Gwynne, Pepys, of the
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Diary,