Note 96 — ACT IV. SCENE I.

Cole-Harbour] The stage-direction in the old eds. is “Enter at Cole-harbour, Hoord, the Widdow, and Gentlemen, he married now.”—Cole-Harbour (a corruption of Cold-Harbour, or Cold-Harborough) was an ancient building, situated in the parish of All-hallows the Less, in Downgate Ward: see an account of it in Stow’s Survey, b. ii. p. 206. (vol. i.) ed. 1720. A good many years before the date of this play, the then Earl of Shrewsbury took it down, and built a number of small tenements in its stead, which were let at great rents, and served as a retreat for debtors, &c.; the place being considered a sort of sanctuary, probably because Tunstall, bishop of Durham, had resided there in Henry the Eighth’s reign. Lodge says, “It was pulled down by Earl Gilbert, about the year 1600.” Illust. of Brit. Hist. vol. i. p. 9: but its demolition must have been earlier; for, in Nash’s Haue with you to Saffron Walden, 1596, we find, “Or hast thou tooke thee a chamber in Cole-harbour?” &c. sig. D. 4. From the present scene, as the editor of 1816 observes in a note on act ii. sc. 1, “it may be inferred that it was notorious as a place where marriages were solemnised hastily and without the proper forms; such as the Fleet Prison and Keith’s Chapel were for some time previously to the passing the marriage-act.” He adds, that “the only [other] allusion he recollects to it among the dramatic writers of the time, is in our author’s Roaring Girl:” but half-a-dozen might easily be furnished.