Fetter Lane

City (EC4) Anciently called Fewterer's Lane. Fewterers were a sort of idle and disorderly persons who frequented this neighbourhood; the word is probably slang of ancient date. In Fetter Lane resided that celebrated leather-seller of the times of the Revolution known by the name of "Praise-God Barebones," who has bequeathed his name to one of. Cromwell's Parliaments. The leatherseller had a brother known to the people as "Damned Barebones," the name he appears to have chosen for himself, viz. "If-Christ-had-not-died- for-you-you-had-been-damned Barebones," being too cumbersome. This fanatic appears to have been a man of some property. He inhabited the same house in Fetter Lane for twenty-five years, and paid a rent of £40 per annum-a very considerable rental in the seventeenth century. (Reference: Smith's Streets of London, p. 263)