Moll Davis by Bernard Capes — Read

Running north from Storey's Gate, the backs of its western houses abutting on the network of conduits which fed what is now in St. James's Park called the Ornamental Water, but which was then "The Canal," was a short road, or row, named Duke Street, in which was situated the building -- subsequently the town home of Jeffreys, the filthy Fouquier Tinville of an earlier revolution -- known as the Admiralty House. This mansion -- or part of it, for the whole of it was of considerable dimensions -- was, in fact, the headquarters of the recently reorganized Navy, and as such is mentioned here as being associated, however indirectly, with our narrative, inasmuch as it was to a member of its staff (a Mr. Samuel Pepys, not then long nominated to a clerkship of the acts) that Jack Bannister, the famous harpist, and a figure with whom we have hereafter to reckon, owed his "discovery," in the exclusive as apart from the popular sense.

This man, sprung into evidence no one knew whence or when, had for months been perambulating the town as an itinerant musician, earning a precarious livelihood by playing before tavern doors, at street corners, and in marketplaces, and rich only in the soulful tribute of the many-headed, to whom he had come to be known by the appellation of "Sad Jack. " For sad, indeed, he appeared, both in face and habit; a lean, stoop-shouldered fellow, grimly austere, and always clothed in grey -- grey hose, grey breeches, grey doublet, and grey hat, from the shadow of whose limp wide brim his eyes shone white, like pebbles gleaming through dark water.