St Martins pub history index
A listing of historical public houses, Taverns, Inns, Beer Houses and Hotels in St Martins in Fields, London.
Residents at this address.
LARGELY associated as the immediate neighbourhood of Charing Cross is with the destinies of the Stuarts and with Jacobite intrigue, it is not surprising to find the tavern and the coffee-house in its precincts the scene of many an historic incident The "Blue Posts" in Spring Gardens was a great resort of the Jacobites during the reign of William III. It was here that Charnock and his gang breakfasted on the day fixed for the murderous ambuscade which they prepared for the King at Turnham Green.
" All was ready ; the horses were saddled ; the pistols were loaded ; the swords were sharpened ; the orderlies were on the alert ; they early sent intelligence from the palace that the King was certainly going a-hundng ... a party of guards had been sent round by Kingston Bridge to Richmond ; the royal coaches, each with six horses, had gone from the stables at Charing Cross to Kensington.
The chief murderers assembled in high glee at Porter's lodgings. Pendergrass, who, by the King's command, appeared among them, was greeted with ferocious mirth. * Pendergrass,' said Porter, 'you are named one of the eight who are to do this business. I have a musquetoon for you that will carry eight balls.'Mr. Pendergrass,' said King, ' pray do not be afraid of smashing the glass windows.'
From Porter's lodgings the party adjourned to the * Blue Posts' in Spring Gardens ... to take some refreshment before they started for Turnham Green. They were at table when a message came from an orderly that the King had changed his mind and would not hunt, and scarcely had they recovered from their first surprise at this ominous news when Keyes, who had been scouting among his old comrades, arrived with news more ominous still. ' The coaches have returned to Charing Cross. The guards that were sent round to Richmond have just come back to Kensington at full gallop the flanks of the horses all white with foam. I have had a word with one of the Blues. He told me that strange things are muttered.'
Then the countenances of the assassins fell, and their hearts died within them. Porter . . . took up an orange and squeezed it ' What cannot be done one day may be done another. Come, gentlemen, before we part let us have one glass to the squeezing of the rotten orange.' "
"After breakfast," on May 1, 1852, records Macaulay in the diary, published in his " Life and Letters," " I went to Turnham Green to look at the place. I found it after some search ; the very spot beyond all doubt, and admirably suited for an assassination.
The place was a narrow and winding lane leading from the landing place on the north of the river to Turnham Green. The spot may still easily be found. The ground has since been drained by trenches.
But in the seventeenth century it was a quagmire, through which the royal coach was with difficulty tugged at a foof s pace. The time was in the afternoon of Saturday the fifteenth of February."
At the public recognition by the " Grand Monarch," Louis XIV. of France, of the son of James II as King of England, and when a royal messenger was sent by William of Orange from Kensington to order M. Poussin, the French ambassador, to leave the country without delay, he was found to be supping at the "Blue Posts" in Spring Gardens, along with three of the most prominent Jacobite members of the House of Commons.'
John Lockie, a descriptive London Street Directory in 1810 states - "Spring Garden, Charing Cross, the street behind the West side of it, entrance by 66, or at 51, opposite the Equestrian statue."