"Ben Jonson, who was born 'in Hartshorne-lane, near Charing-cross,' was
at one time 'master' of a theatre in Barbican. He appears also to have
visited a tavern called the Sun and Moon, in Aldersgate-street; and is
known to have frequented with Beaumont and others, the famous one called
the Mermaid, which was in Cornhill.

"The other celebrated resort of the great wits of that time was the
Devil Tavern, in Fleet-street, close to Temple-bar. Ben Jonson lived
also in Bartholomew-close, where Milton afterwards lived. It was in the
passage from the cloisters of Christ's Hospital into St. Bartholomew's.
Aubrey gives it as a common opinion, that at the time when Jonson's
father-in-law made him help him in his business of bricklayer, he worked
with his own hands upon the Lincoln's Inn garden wall, which looks upon
Chancery-lane, and which seems old enough to have some of his
illustrious brick and mortar still remaining.

"Under the cloisters in Christ's Hospital (which stand in the heart of
the city unknown to most persons, like a house kept invisible for young
and learned eyes) lie buried a multitude of persons of all ranks; for it
was once a monastery of Gray Friars. Among them is John of Bourbon, one
of the prisoners taken at the battle of Agincourt. Here also lies Thomas
Burdet, ancestor of the present Sir Francis, who was put to death in the
reign of Edward IV., for wishing the horns of a favourite white stag,
which the King had killed, in the body of the person who advised him to
do it. And here too (a sufficing contrast) lies Isabella, wife of Edward
II.

'She, wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate'
GRAY.