These privileges were derived from its having been an
establishment of the Carmelites, or White Friars, founded says Stow,
in his Survey of London, by Sir Patrick Grey, in 1241. Edward I. gave
them a plot of ground in Fleet Street, to build their church upon. The
edifice then erected was rebuilt by Courtney, Earl of Devonshire, in
the reign of Edward. In the time of the Reformation the place retained
its immunities as a sanctuary, and James I. confirmed and added to
them by a charter in 1608. Shadwell was the first author who made some
literary use of Whitefriars, in his play of the Squire of Alsatia,
which turns upon the plot of the Adelphi of Terence.
In this old play, two men of fortune, brothers, educate two young men,
(sons to the one and nephews to the other,) each under his own
separate system of rigour and indulgence. The elder of the subjects of
this experiment, who has been very rigidly brought up, falls at once
into all the vices of the town, is debauched by the cheats and bullies
of Whitefriars, and, in a word, becomes the Squire of Alsatia. The
poet gives, as the natural and congenial inhabitants of the place,
such characters as the reader will find in the note. [Footnote:
"Cheatly, a rascal, who by reason of debts dares not stir out of
Whitefriars, but there inveigles young heirs of entail, and helps them
to goods and money upon great disadvantages, is bound for them, and
shares with them till he undoes them.
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