Mr Isaac of St Martin's Lane.
Edward Isaac aka Isaac Thorpe. aka Francis Thorpe (c. 1650 - 1720.
Snippet below from The Gentleman Dancing-Master: Mr Isaac and the English Royal Court from ... By Jennifer Thorp- available online in truncated form.
The St Martin's Lane house and dancing school.
This is probably a Red Herring but worth reproducing here as an early reference to occupants of a house in St Martins Lane (south of the Junction with Newport Street) and Dancing Schools.
This post prompted by the discovery of a reference to a sale of the goods
Sale of the Goods of Mrs Selby at Peters Court. 1710.
In 1710 the goods of Mrs. Selby, sword cutler, were advertised to be sold "at the Dancing School in Peter's Court, against Tom's Coffee-house in St. Martin's Lane." .......
The only references found so far to Isaac's/ Thorpes dancing school in St Martin's lane appear within a gazetteer Of schools advertised on page 3 of each Of twelve issues Of the Collection for the Improvement Of Husbandry and Trade between 24 August 1694 and 18 January 1695, and again from 5 April to 25 October 1695.2
The London dancing-masters and their schools noted in these lists included, along with "Mounsieur Isaac" in St Martin's Lane, the well-known and established teachers Holt, Lane, "Cavalry" (Caverley), and Mrs Priest's boarding school in Chelsea.
"Mounsieur Isaac" appears consistently as the last dancing-master on the list, which may be accidental or may perhaps indicate that his St Martin's Lane school was comparatively new in 1694.
The precise location of Isaac's school is not known, although it may well have occupied part of the extensive range of buildings which had been in Isaac's family for the previous thirty years.
This property lay on the west side of St Martin's Lane, a few houses south of the junction with Newport Street, and its size is suggested by its having been taxed for thirteen hearths in 1665.2
This in itself its likely subsequent use was both as private residence and commercial premises.
Evidence from the parish rate books of St Martin in the Fields indicate that the property had been acquired by Isaac's father in 1669 and handed over in the spring of 1675 to Florent Foucade, who by then had married Isaac's sister Mary.
Foucade was another émigré with court connections; he had been appointed Surgeon in Ordinary to King Charles Il in 1667 and within a few months was called in to treat (unsuccessfully) the Duchess of Monmouth's dislocated hip, brought about by a fall while dancing.
In December 1672, he was sworn in again as a Surgeon in Ordinary to the King, and three years later was called in, again at Monmouth's behest, when young Matthew Robinson (the brother of Monmouth's butler) fell mortally sick at Newmarket, and Monmouth wrote to him from Whitehall that "the King, hearing Of your indisposition, has dispatched the bearer, Mons. Foucade, one of his own chirurgeons, to endeavour your recovery*'22
Foucade later served as Surgeon-General to the British Regiments in the Duke of Monmouth's Flanders campaign of 1678, tasked on 11 August that year by Monmouth to find out whether their military surgeons in Brussels and Bruges, preparing for battle, had adequate medical supplies for the forthcoming campaign.ä
Back in London, during the 1680s, he ran a bath house and surgery in the St Martin's Lane premises. By 1688 (and possibly much earlier), these premises were known as The Blue Flowerpots, for this was the address from which Foucade placed an advertisement in the London Gazette after his pet dog ("a little fallow coloured bitch" with white front paws) had gone missing, offering a reward of 2 guineas to anyone bringing her back.
After Foucade's death, rates on the property continued to be paid by his widow for several more years. The premises were assigned a value of £60, with a war tax assessment of €12 in 1693/4, and the house was large enough to accommodate also, at various times in the 1690s, widow Foucade's brothers, Henry Thorpe and Isaac himself (see below,
If the Blue Flowerpots did indeed house Isaac's dancing school from 1694 onwards, then it may be that the property was also shared with, or part of it rented out to, other dancing-masters. Unless there were two houses with the same name in the same street, which is unlikely, the Blue Flowerpots address used later by the dancing-master P. Siris suggests that he rented rooms in those premises, or at least sold his own notated dances from there, perhaps in 1708 and certainly in 1712, according to the title pages of The Camilla (available from 'Chez le Sieur Siris, Rüe St Martins Lane" in 1708) and The New Englich [sic] Passepied (available from "the Blew Flower-pot [sic] near the Upper End of St Martin's Lane over-against New-Street" in 1712).
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The only known surviving portrait of Mr Isaac is the mezzotint by the engraver George White after a painting by Louis Goupy (1674 - 1747).
Print size height: 33.9cm, width: 24.4cm
Lettered below the image with the title, and "L.Goupy
pinx. / Printed for Saml. Sympson & sold at his Printshop in ye Strand near
Catherine Street, London. / G.White fecit".
Images above courtesy British Museum.
another version in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Another reference to Peters Court - John Ashbury c. 1690.
His Trade Card shows a pump punch bowl on which is
engraved:
IOHN ASHBURY Sworn Servant in Ordinary to his most Sacred Male King WILLIAM & Major Hautboy to his Own Regim'. of Foot Guards, Makes all sorts of Wind MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS viz'. Flutes, Hautboys, Bassoons &c. Aliso Punch Bowles.
He being the first Inventor of the Fountain or Pump Punch Bowl. And also turns all manner of Curious works in any sort of hard WOOD or IVORY and Setts in Artificiall Teeth at his House at/ Corner of Peters Court in S'. Martin's Lane in the Fields.
Halfpenny argues that the trade card was printed to advertise Ashbury's opening in new premises around 1698, the date of his first appearance in the rate books. On 6 Mar 1699/1700 he became a freeman of the Turners Company of London by redemption (i.e. he paid for the privilege-by far the rarest method of doing so, the other methods being apprenticeship and patrimony). This is curious, because he was practising his trade outside the City and therefore had no apparent obligation to the Company.
His name disappears from the rate books around 1704, but only the burial of a 'Robert Ashbery' is noted in the church registers (on 1 April) that year.
