A Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. University of Illinois Library DEC 2 0 HAY R 1980 MAY 0 2 lilw (a LONDON. EDITED BY CHARLES KNIGHT. VOLUME L PUBLISHED BY CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET. 184L London : Printed by William Ci-owes and Sons, Stamford Street. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. THE NAMES OF THE AUTHORS OF EACH PAPER. In'TRODUCTIOM • I.— THE SILENT HIGHWAY II.— CLEAN YOUR HONOUR'S SHOES III. — PAUL'S CROSS . IV. -THE TABARD . v.— LONDON BRIDGE . VI.— MIDSUMMER-EYE . YII — ST. MARY OYEIIIES VIII.— STREET NOISES IX.— ROMAN LONDON . X.— THE OLD SPRING-TIME IN LONDON XL— THE PARKS XII.— THE PARKS XIII.— UNDERGROUND XIV— SUBURBAN MILESTONES XV.— LAMBETH PALACE . XVI.— THE ROMAN REMAINS XVII.— PICCADILLY . XVIII.— CROSBY PLACE XIX — OLD WHITEHALL . XX.— NEW AVHITEHALL . XXL— BEN JONSON'S LONDON XXII.— BEN JONSON'S LONDON XXIII.— RANELAGH AND YALXHALI XXIV.— STREET SIGHTS XXV.-THE MONUMENT . C. Knight G. L. Craik J. Saunders G. L. Craik C. Knight J. Saunders C. Knight G. L. Craiic J. Saunders W. Weir . >> • J. C. Pi.ATT autl C. Knight J. Saunders G. L. Craiic W. Weir . J. Saunders C. Knight >» J. Saunders (!. Knkjht J. Saunders Saunder Paqs i I 17 33 57 73 97 113 129 145 1(59 1S5 20.5 225 211 257 281 2i»7 .".17 3:J3 ;j40 305 ;'.si :v.)7 413 429 b In the Introduction, or rather Prospectus, of 'London,' we have said — " If the encourage- ment of the public should enable this work to be carried forward to something like a general completeness, its miscellaneous character may be reduced into system by chrono- logical and topographical Indexes." That encouragement has been bestowed ; and the Editor ventures therefore to hope that the jJlan which he conceived of producing a new work on London, " wholly different from any which has preceded it," has been carried out in a manner which may enable him to look to its completion within moderate limits, when its "miscellaneous character" will appear not wholly without a plan. In the mean while, the following Analytical Table of Contents will be of some assistance to those readers who may desire to use the volume for reference. ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 1.— THE SILENT HIGHWAY. Page Gower the Poet's Meeting ^v•ith Richard II. . 1 Illuminated 3Ianuscript in the British ]Museum, with ancient Representation of London . . 2 "William Fitz-Stcphen's • Description of London' 3 The Thames ....... 3 Water Quintain ...... 4 "Water Tournaments ..... 4 John Lj dgate's * London Lyckpcny ' . . 5 London Bridge ...... 5 "NVatermen of London ..... G Songs of the Watermen ..... G The Thames the Common Highway of London . G Palaces on the Thames ..... 8 Pace Royal Processions on the Thames ... 0 The Works of John Taylor, the Water Poet . 10 John Taylor's Quarrel with William Fennor . 11 The Bankside H Taylor's Complaint of the Introduction of Coaches 12 D'Avenant's Frenchman's Description of the Thames ....... 13 Fishing in the Thames at London . . .14 D'Avenant's Englishman's Description of the Seine and its Conveyances . . . .15 Voyage from Shades Pier to Hungerford Market 15 The Steam Boat lo ILLUSTRATIONS. Frontispiece. — View of Old London, looking eastward from the Strand. On the left foreground is the entrance to Covent Garden ; on the right the rookery of Durham House ; onward the Palace of the Savoy ; the Strand Inn ; the Temple ; to Blackfriars ; Castle Baynard ; Old St. Paul's, &c. ; Loudon Bridge. On the Surrey side — St. Mary Overies ; Bishop of Winchester's Palace, &c. ...... Title — Exterior of St- Paul's ....... 1. Richard II. and Gower ....... 2. Water Quintain ........ 3. Water Tournaments ........ 4. Procession of James I. ...... , 5. Palace-Yard Stairs, 1G41 Desi-mers. W. 11. Pyne Prior DiCICES Anelav Fairholt TiMBRILI, 6. Loudon and Westminster Steamers An F LAY TiMBRILL Engravers. Jackson Jackson Mlrdon E. Jewitt Wragg hollowav Kirchneh E. Jewitt II.— CLEAN YOUR The Last of the Shoe-hlacks . . . .17 Superiority of the Shoe-black over the Author . 18 Gay's Episode of the Black Youth in ' Trivia' . IS Pavements of London • , . , .18 Gay's Description of Walking in London . .19 Moh round the Pillory 20 I )' Avenant's Frenchman's Complaintof the Streets «f London ....... 21 Shooting at Butts in Cheapsidr; . . .22 Shoes of the time of Elizai)»'th . . .22 Progress of Henry IV. and other Sovereigns through tlie City 23 Saddle-horses ...... 24 Horse-litter 24 The Vehicles that jjreceded Coaches . , 25 HONOUR'S SHOES. Stow's Description of the Introduction of Coaches 2.') Coaches for liire , . . . . . 2(5 Inconveniences of Coaches . . . . 2G First Hackney-coach Stand . . , .27 Proclamation against Hackney-coaches , . 27 Sedan-chairs ....... 2S Original use of the Hammer-cloth . . . 2i> Gay's Lines descriptive of Street Arcidenls in the days of Anne ... ... 20 Hackney-chairmen , . . . . .K) (ilass Coaches , . . . . . 1 Decay of Hackney-coaches . . . .31 Cabriolets ....... 3? Omnibuses . ...... 3j ILLUSTRATIONS. 7. London Shoe-Mark, n.'iO . 8. Foot-hall in the Strand n. Proclamation of Accession of K.hvard 10. Palace Yard .... 11. Sedan, in3S .... 12. 01<1 Hackney-roachman, ir.sf) 13. (!abriolcf, about lU'siijnprs. Fairiioi.t Mei.vii I e Anei.av Anei.av Til l' IN 15. Si V Til I IN hn^jravers. Andrew J. (^1 AUTI.K' All ai)()N (h»U WAV MrOENT F. Smvtiie Gray h 2 viii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. III.— PAUL'S CROSS. Paoe Space round tlii^ (-'atlicdral — cliicf Burj infj-ground 33 Pri'Hhytoriuin found hy Sir (MniHtopher Wren . 33 Gnivt'H of the Uoniiins and Siixons . , .34 TirHl Enclosure of ruul's Ciuuchyard , . 34 SumnioiiH of a Follvuiote at Taul's Cross . . 35 IVIi'auiutf of r\)llviuotc . . . . , 3f> Bull of Tope Urban read at Paul's Cross . .37 Clocliier, or Bell Tower . . • . .37 Walliui,' round of the Churchyard . . .37 St. l'aul'8 Churchyard the Forum of llie Lon- doners 38 Sermons preached at Paul's Cross . . ,38 Fund for Jioans in tiie Trcasm y of the Cathedral 38 Earliest Sermon i)reaehed at Paul's Cross . . 40 Stow's Account of a Penance in Paul's Churcli . 41 llecantation of Reginald I'ococke . . .42 Shaw's Sermon from Paul's Cross to prove the Justice of ('laims of Richard IIL to the Crown 43 I'enanee of Jane Shore . , , , .44 Penance of James Baynham . , . ,45 Page Tortures and Burning of James Baynham , . 4G Confessions at Paul's Cross of the Ploly Maid of Kent and Richard Master . . . .40 The Wonderful Rood of Boxley in Kent . . 47 The Imposture of the Spirit in the Wall . . 48 Confession of Elizabeth Croft . • • .48 Penances at Paul's Cross in 1555 . . . 48 Last Anathema pronounced at Paul's Cross , 49 Publication of the Pope's Sentence against Luther 49 Preaching at Paul's Cross in the time of Henry YIII 50 Latimer and Ridley's Sermons from Paul's Cross 51 Latimer's Sermon of the Plough . , .51 First Use of the Book of Common Prayer . . 53 Sermon preached by Dr. Bourn , . .53 Account from Stow's * Annals ' of Sermons deli- vered from Paul's Cross . . , .54 Visits of James I. and Charles I. to Paul's Cross 55 Paul's Cross pulled down , . . .56 ILLUSTRATIONS. 14. Elm Tree in St. Paul's Churchyard 15. Roman Antiquities IG. HiMiry III 17. James Baynham doing Penance (from Fox's Martyrology) 18. Latimer 19. Paul's Cross Designers. Fairholt Anelay Engravers. Leonard Andrew Slader ^luRDON HOLLOWAV F. Smyth 33 34 35 45 51 56 IV.— THE TABARD. The Borough The Grave of Massinger ..... High Street of Southwark The Talbot Inn Chaucer and the other Pilgrims . . Description of the Talbot in 1841 The Pilgrims' Room Notice of the Site of the Tabard in a Register of the Abbey of Hyde . . . . The Abbot of Hyde at the Battle of Hastings Fire of Southwark in 1076 . . , , The Tabard partly destroyed . The Poet-Pilgrim , . . The Host , . . * * • 57 58 58 59 59 GO 62 63 03 63 64 66 66 I he Knight The Prioress ...... The Wife of Bath and the Squire The Monk, the Friar, and the Parson The Sumpnour and the Pardoner The Miller . . . . . The Merchant The Sergeant of Law and the Doctor of Physic The Franklin ..... The Manciple, the Shipman, and the Cook, &c. The Clerk of Oxenford and the Poet The Supper The Host's Proposition .... ILLUSTRATIONS. 20. Border.— Supper of the Canterbury Pilgrims oo ^""'^t-yard of the present Talbot, from the Street , r,;* ^•''^^"O'' of Tabard Inn, from Urry s Chaucer, 1720 ^3. Court-yard of the Tabard, from a Drawing in the British Museum about 1780 Designers. Buss Archer Tiffin Prior Engravers. MuRDON & Smyth Jackson 57 60 64 v.— LONDON BRIDGE. Bridges over the Thames the Thames in the year 44 by Dion Cassius , . Voyage of King Anlaf up the Thames \ \ -Battle of Loudon Bridi^e Canute's Canal . ° , ^TnL^'^"T'\^ Foundat'ion of ijondon Bridge , EarUest Historic Notice of London Bridge* 74 75 75 London Bridge burnt down in 1136 . Stow's Assertion that the Bridjje was Rebuilt 1163 . . . , , First London Bridge of Stone . Peter of Colechurch Chapel of St. Thomas Nonsuch House Fire in 1212 . Fire in 1683 . ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Page Houses on London Bridge burnt by Fire of Lon- don in 1G6G 83 Old Traitors' Gate damaged by Fire in 1725 . 83 "Water-works ...... 83 Corn-mills ....... 84 Pennant's Description of the Street on London Bridge ....... 85 Danger to Foot Passengers . . . .86 Shops on London Bridge . . . • 80 Signs on London Bridge . . . . .80 Chapel of St. Thomas a Beckct and Nonsuch House converted into shops and dwelling- houses ....... 87 Fish Pond under the Chapel of St. Thomas . 88 Eminent Names associated with London Bridge . 88 Traitors* Heads exposed on London Bridge . 68 Eleanor of Provence attacked from London Bridge 89 ^\at Tyler 90 Page Passage of Arms waged between Sir David Lind- say and Lord Wells . . . . .90 Processions of King Richard and his Queens . 9l> Reception of Henry V. on London Bridge . . 91 Entry of Henry YI. into London . . .91 Pageants at London Bridge at the reception of Margaret of Anjou . . . • .91 Eleanor Cobham . . . . . .91 Assault of London Bridge and Burning of South- wark Gate ....... 92 Jack Cade 92 Entrance into London of Catherine of Arragon , 92 Procession of Cardinal "NVolsey over London Bridge 93 Rescue of the Daughter of Sir AVilliam Hewet . 93 Wyatt's Insurrection ..... 93 Return of Charles II 94 Repairs of London Bridge . . . .94 Building of New London Bridge . . .95 Old Loudon Bridge pulled down . . . 9(i ILLUSTRATIONS. Designers. Engravers. 24. London Bridge about 161G Melville Rembault . 73 25. London Bridge just before the Houses were pulled down in 1700 Sears . 80 2(>. Upper Chapel of St. Thomas ..... Masteus Smyth . 81 27. Lower Chajjel or Crypt of St. Thomas .... Melville MURDON . 81 28. Approaches to London Bridge on the Southwark side Wells Heaviside . . 82 29. AVater-works B. Slv Slader . 84 30. Hogarth's View of Old Houses on London Bridge . Melville Andrew . 85 31. Chapel of St. Thomas converted into a House or Warehouse Fairholt Sears . . 87 32. London Bridge in 1827 • jj i> • . 95 33. Opening of New London Bridge . . . • Anelay Nicholls . 9G VI.— MIDSUMMER-EVE. Henry VIII. incognito with Wolsey and Brandoi Cross in Wcstcheap .... The Marching Watch Richard Niccol's Lines on Cresset Lights Route of the Marching Watch Hanging of Thieves in the time of Henry VIII Marching Watch put down ... Watchmen ....... Mode of Liirhting Streets ... Bellman of Milton's ' II Penseroso' Bellman's Verses in Ilerrick's ' Hespcrides' Watchman of the time of James I. . Lanthorns ...... Boilcau's Description of the Streets of Paris 97 99 99 99 100 101 101 101 102 UK] 103 103 104 105 Glass Lights . . . . . .105 Defoe's Plan for liighting and Guarding London 10(5 Robl)eries in the Streets of London . . 100 Address to the King from the Lord Mayor and Aldermen . . . . *. . lUG IVIohocks ....... 107 Description of a Bully in Johnson's 'London' . 108 Flambeaux . . . . , . .108 Link-boys . . . . . . .109 Gay's Lines on Link-men . . . .109 Oil Lanij)8 . . . . . . .110 The Old System of Wateiiing . . . .110 The Lighting of London by Gas . . .Ill ILLUSTRATIONS. I)rsi;,'n('rs. ICiigravors, .34. Tl)e Marching Watch Mklviile J. Qi ahtlev . 97 25. WatchmiiM of 1509 Anelay Nn iioLi.s . . 102 3G. Watchmen, from Dekker, iOlO ...... ,, „ • • l'>3 37. Watrhuian of the time of James I Faikmoi.t „ . . jO l 38. Lnnthorn-makor, from II ans S( ho[)j)( s .... ,, ,, . • 1" ' .39. Footman with J lnmhcnu Melville Si ars . . los 40. Link-boy, from Boitard Anelay Nk iioils . . ]():» 41. London at Night, 1700 Faihiiolt StADi.R . .110 42. Lamplighter of 1800 Anelay , .112 X ANALYTIC^]. TABLE OF CO^'TENTS. VII.— ST. MARY OVERIES. Mury ()v(«ry . . . • • Koundutioii of St. Miiry Ovurics . IJciH'fucturs of St. Mury Ovcries Trioi y (lainii>,'i'(l' by Ein; in 1212 ()rif,'iii of St. 'riiomas's Hr)S[)it:il . ^ . Stiite of llio Priory in the Eoiulccnth Century The IJoy- bishop ..... Ilestoriition of St. IMary Overies The I'oet (lOWcr (Jower'H iMonuincnt .... Mun i:i','(.' of the Earl of Kent Curdinal litcaufort .... Murriaf,'e of James I. of Scothuid . Murder of James I. . St. Saviour's ..... Fosbroke's account of a religious procession Harrow eseajje from destruction of St. Mary Overics duriuij "VV'yatt's insurrection I'aoe 113 114 11. J ll(i 11(5 11(5 IH) 117 117 117 118 119 119 120 120 121 121 Trial of heretics in St. Mary Ovcries Edmund Shakspere buried in St. Mary Overies Aubrey's description of the death of Eietcher . St. Mary Overies in 1713 .... Site and appearance of St. Mary Overies . Churchyard of St. Mary Overies Interior of St. Mary Overies .... Effigy of the Knight Templar Prospect from the Tower of St. Mary Overics . Epitaphs in St. Mary Overies Monuments in St. Mary Overies EiKg-y of Dr. Lockyer ..... Inscription on the Monument of Richard Humble The Lady Chapel Design of pulling down the Lady Chapel, and its preservation through the interference of a few public-spirited artists Bishop Andrews ...... Paok 121 122 122 122 122 123 123 124 12.5 125 126 125 126 127 127 128 ILLUSTRATIONS. 43. (icnrrai View of the Churcli from the South 44. Norman Arch . 45. Gower's iMonumcnt . 46. The Choir 47. Effigy of a Knight Templar 48. Lady Chapel . Designers, AllCHEU Engravers, Jackson 113 115 117 124 125 128 VIII.—STREET NOISES. Ben Jonson's ' Silent "Woman' 129 The Water-carrier .... . 133 London Cries . . 1.30 The Milk-carrier ..... . 137 Cries at the Door of "Westminster Hall . 131 ' Water-cresses' ..... . 138 Cries of Feeding . . 131 Flower-girls . ... . 139 Shopkeepers' Cries 131 Smallcoal-man ..... . 139 Orange-women 132 The Working Trades .... . 139 Tempest's * Cries' 132 Venders of Food ..... . 140 • Cherry ripe' ^ . 133 Cofiee-shops ..... . 140 Fish -wives . . . . 134 Hogarth's Enraged Musician . 140 The Costard-monger 134 Hornmen, Dustmen, and Muffin-men . 141 Oyster-wives, Herb-wives, «S:c., denounced in the De la Serre's praise of Street Music . 142 seventh year of Charles I. . 135 The Cittern . 142 Bavarian Broom-women 136 Street Music, now, and in the last century . 143 ' Old Shoes for some Brooms' 136 ILLUSTRATIONS. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. The Enraged Musician, from Hogarth Orange-woman, from Tempest's ' Cries of London Orange-woman, 1841 .... " Four for Sixpence, Mackerel." Tempest . Costard-monger, 1841 .... " Old Shoes for some Brooms." Tempest Conduit ui West Cheap .... " Bucklersbury in Simple Time"' " Pots to Mend." Tempest Hornmen— " Great News" Muffin-man, 1841 . . . . ' . Bear-ward, from Hogarth .... Designers. Engravers. DiCKES W. QUARTLEY . 129 TiMBRILL . 132 Minns . 133 Wells Hollo WAV . 134 TlMBUlLL Sladeu . 135 Wells Roe . 138 Tiffin Jackson . . 137 Fair HOLT GORWAY . . 138 >> Smyth . 139 TiMBRILL Slader . 141 Minns . 142 Fairholt Sears . 143 Square TiMBRILL WlTHEY . . 144 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. xi IX.— ROMAN LONDON. Page Occupation of Britain by the Romans . . 145 Camden's Supposition of the Descent of the Britons ....... 146 Site of London ...... 146 Embankments of the Romans . . , 146 The Ancient Mouth of the Thames . . . 147 The Thames an Estuary . . . .147 Junction of the Thames with the Sea . . 148 Derivation of the word London . . , 148 London an unimportant Town in the time of Ca?sar 148 The London of the Britons .... 149 Probable extent of London in the time of the Britons 149 Earliest mention of London .... 150 London and Verulam chiefly peopled by Romans 150 Dion Cassius' Account of the Outrages perpe- trated by the followers of Boadicea . . 151 Druidic Fanes ...... 151 London supposed to have been Burned by Boa- dicea ....... 151 Sir J. Henniker's Account of the Appearance of the Soil in Lombard Street in 1786 . . 151 Vestij^es of Fire discovered in London . .151 The Horrors and Termination of Boadicea's Revolt 152 Mention of London by Ptolemy in his Geography 152 London a Town of the Cantii . . . 153 Plunder of London by the Franks in the year 297 153 Deliverance of London by Theodosius . • 153 Paoe Fortifications of London ...» 154 London designated Augusta .... 154 Streets of Roman London .... 154 London Stone ...... 154 Evidences of the extent of Roman London . 156 Roman Burial-grounds ..... 156 Stow's Description of the Discovery of a Burial- place belonging to Roman London . . 156 Roman Antiquities discovered in Camomile Street in 1707 ...... 158 Roman Sepulchral Remains found in various parts of London ..... 158 Old City Wall 160 The Gates of London 160 Foundations of the City Wall . . .160 Woodward's Account of the Upper Part of the Wall 161 Towers on the City Wall . . . .161 Circuit of the City Wall . . . .162 Destruction of part of the Wall in the time of Richard 1 162 Fragments of the Wall still existing . . 163 Recent Disinterment of part of the Roman Wall 163 Line of the Wall traced . . . .164 Extension of the Wall in 1276 . . . 165 Yestiges of Roman Dwelling-houses . . 167 General Level of Roman London . . . 167 Excavations on the Site of the late Royal Ex- change ....... 167 Roman Remains found in Princes-street . . 168 ILLUSTRATIONS. G2. Vases, Lamp, &c., found after the Great Fire 63. London Stone ......... 64. Plan of Roman London ....... 65. Part of the Roman Wall of London recently excavated behind the Minories ......... 66. Urns, Vabes, Bead, and Fragment of Pottery found in Lombard Street, 1785 Designers. Fairholt Engravers. Sears Sly . Welch NiCllOLLS Slader 145 156 157 164 168 X.— THE OLD SPUD The First of May 169 The Eve of May-day 170 Hall's description of Henry VI 11. joining in the ♦Maying' . . . . . .170 The May-pole 171 The Lord and Lady of the May . . . 172 "Evil-May-day" ...... 172 Grudge against Foreigners . . . .172 Sir Thomas More and the Rioters on May-day 172 Hall's account of the scene between the King and tlje May-day Rioters . . . .173 May-pole or Shaft destroyed .... 174 RcHtoration of the famous Strand ]\I ay-pole in the tim« of C'harlcs II. .... 174 Revival of Archery ..... 174 Fraternity of St. George . . . .171 The King and • Foot iu Bosom' . . .174 Duke of Shoreditch ..... 175 Knights of i'rinrc Arthur's It)ui)d Tahlf . 176 Short tluration of the golden cge of Archery . 17(5 Archery-grounds cnclost-d . . , .17(5 Great Archery-grounds of Loudon . . . 177 Archers' marks • . . . .177 [-TIME IN LONDON. Degeneracy of Archers . . . . .177 Satire on the Finsbury Archers from I)' Avonant's • Long Vacation' ..... 178 Last eflbrt of the Archers .... 178 Bowling-alleys . . . . • . .178 (iuarter-staff, and otlier Old English Sports . Stow's account of an Amusement of the old tinu! ....... 179 Wrestling ISO Stow's description of a Wrestling-fray . . ISO Foot-ball IS I Tennis-I)alls 1S| Pall-mall IKI Hull and Bear-b:iiting, and Cock-lighting . ISI Decline of Old Knglish Sports \ . . IS2 Shooting-matches . . . . . 1S2 Bowls, Skittles, and Cricket .... 182 Single-stick and Prize- lights . . . . 1S2 Picture of a Prize-light in London in the last Century 1H2 Challenge of a Pugilist 1S3 Places and Walks opened to the Public . . 1K3 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. ILLUSTEATIONS. 07. Henry VHL Maying at Shoolcr's Hill ()H. Muy-|.oU' l)ef(>rc St. Andrew Underahaft tJ9. Arlliiir'H Show . . • • • 70. llowling-allry . . . • • 71. (iuurter-Htuii" - 72. I'luying ut Bucklers— Maids Dancing for Garlands Designers. Engravers. Paoe Anelav Jewitt . . 169 Faikholt WlTIiY • . 171 Buss Sears . 176 Bkandakd . 178 Buss NlCIIOLLS . . 179 Anelav "\V. Quartley . 184 XI.— THE PARKS. 1. — General View of the Parks. Taoe Mountstuart Elphinstone's Account of a Practice conmion among the Citizens of Kabul . . 185 Custom of opening Koyal Gardens to the Public ancient and universal .... 186 First Enclosure of the Parks . . . .186 Fondness of early English Sovereigns for the Chase ...... . 187 Blackstone's explanation of the words chase and park ....... 187 Proclamation of Henry Vni. . . .187 Encroachments on the Royal Hunting Re- serves ....... 188 Different character of the Parks . . .188 2.— St. James's Park. The Green Park 189 Beauties of St. James's Park . . .189 St. James's Palace, Westminster Abbey, &c. . 189 AVatcr-fowl in St. James's Park . . . 190 The three epochs in the History of St. James's Park • 190 St. James's Park in the reigns of Elizabeth and the tirst two Stuarts 190 The Tilt-yard 191 Spring Garden ...... 191 Garrard's Description of Spring Garden . . 191 Bowling-green in Spring Garden put down . 192 Spring Gardens re-opened .... 192 Spring Gardens closed by Oliver Cromwell . 192 Spring Gardens re-opened at the Restoration . 192 The Mulberry Garden 192 Importation of Silkworms .... 192 St. James's a favourite lounge . . . 192 Improvements in St. James's Park in the reign of Charles II 193 Notices in Pepys's Diary of the Alterations in St. James's Park 193 Aspect of the Park in the reign of Charles 11. . 194 The Mall 194 The Decoy, and Rosamond's Pond . . 195 Birdcage Walk 195 First Enclosure of the Green Park . . . 196 Anecdotes of Charles II 196 Evelyn's Account of a Stroll in the Park with Charles II. . . . " . . .196 Coke's Anecdote of Charles II. ■. , . 197 Pepys's Account of a Court Cavalcade in the Park 197 The Duke of York 198 Introduction of Skating - . . . . 198 Crowds attracted to the Mall . . . .198 Swift a frequenter of the Park . . . 199 The Park patronised by Ladies . . . 200 Horace Walpole's account of a party of pleasure in the Mall ...... 201 Resort of persons of all ranks to the* Park . 201 Extracts from the * Annual Register' , . 202 Alterations in the Park in the reign of George IV. 203 The "Silent Sister" 203 Neglect of the Green Park . . . .203 St. James's Park the scene of many exciting incidents 203 ILLUSTRATIONS. Designers. Engravers. 73. The Ornamental AVatcr in St. James's Park . Shepherd F. Smyth . 185 74. The Tilt-yard Anelay NiCHOLLS . . 191 75. View in St.^ James's Park, temp. Charles II. Fairholt Sears . 194 76. The Game of Pall Mall . Brandabd NiCHOLLS . . 195 77. Rosamond's Pond, 1752 .... Tiffin Gray • . 204 XII.— THE PARKS. 3. — Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens originally one 205 Patents and grants relating to Hyde Park . 206 The sale of Hyde Park . . ' . , . 206 Boundaries of the Park . . . . . 206 The pools in Hyde Park .... 207 General appearance of Hyde Park 1652 . . 208 Extent of Kensington Gardens in 1690' . . 209 Improvement in Kensington Gardens in the reign of Anne , , . , . , 209 Description of Kensington Gardens in tlie ' Spectator' 210 Additions and Improvements to Kensington Gardens by Queen Caroline . . . 210 Ha-ha I 211 Recent Alterations in Hyde Park and Ken- sington Gardens . . . , .211 Hyde Park on May-day 212 Amusements of the Lord Protector, from the ' Moderate Intelligencer ' . , . , 213 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CO>'TENTS, xiii Page Accident to Ciom'uell in Iljdc Park • .214 The Ring 214 Reviews in Hyde Park ..... 215 Hyde Park the rendezvous of the troops of the Commonwealth ..... 21G Duels in Hyde Park 217 Highway Robberies in Hyde Park . . . 217 Narrative of the princi]);!! "Witness in the Trial of William Belchier • . . . .217 Page Hyde Park generally resorted to previous to 1653 218 Kensington Gardens open to the public on Sa- turdays 218 Anecdotes of George H. .... 211) Kensington Gardens entirely thrown open . 219 Most eligible mode of entering H)de Park . 21J) The Serpentine 220 4. — The Regent's Park. Situation of the Regent's Park . . . 222 The rivulet Ay-bourne or Tyboume . . 222 Manor House of Marybone .... 222 Boundaries and extent of the Regent's Park . 222 Zoological and Botanical Gardens, &c. . . 223 Bowling-green in the Park in the reign of Anne 223 Duke of Buckingham at ]Mary bone . . . 223 Marybone Gardens open to the public previous to 1737 223 Marybone Gardens finally dosed iu 1777 . 223 ILLUSTRATIONS. 78. Lodge in Kensington Gardens . . 7*J. Humane Society's Boat-house • 80. Old Elm 81. The Serpentine .... 82. Plan of St. James's Park, temp. Charles IL 83. Maryiebone House .... Designers, Engravers. TiFl-lN KlRCHNER . 205 5 J Bastin . 211 i J Row K . 220 U Gray , . 220 Fairholt ROWE . 221 Tiffin Sladkr • . 22^ XIIL— UNDERGROUND. London below the soil ..... 225 Ancient mode of sujjplving London with AVater 22G The Wells . . * 22G ("lerkenwell 22G The River of AVells ..... 227 The course of the Wall-brook . . . 227 The Walbrook entirely arched over . . 227 The origin and course of the Fleet River . 227 Putrid exhalations arising from the Fleet . 228 The decline of the Fleet .... 229 Roman Remains discovered in the bed of the river ....... 229 Improvement of the Fleet .... 229 Bridges over the Fleet ..... 229 Channel of the Fleet filled up ... 229 Inconveniences to the inhabitants of London from the former want of underground drainage . 230 Gradual improvement in drainage since tlie reign of Henry VIII. .... 230 ('hief features of the system of drainage . . 230 The number and length of the sewers in London 231 The Fleet Sewer 231 Mr. Roc's experiments on the best mode of cleansing sewers ..... 233 Summary of the statistics of the gas Avorks . 233 Sir Hugh Middleton 23-4 Conduits ....... 234 Conduits flowing with wine .... 235 Imperfect supply of water afforded by conduits 235 Print in the British Museum, headed ♦ Tittle- Tattle ' 23G Removal of chief conduits after the Fire of London ....... 23G Fountains ....... 23G Peter Morris's " Artificial Forcier " . . 2.37 Grants for raising water in the time of Eliza- beth and James ..... 237 Commencement of the New River . . . 23S DifHculties encountered by Sir II. [Middleton during the progress of the cutting of the New River . ' 238 Procession and verses in honour of the opening of the New River ..... 23S Quantity of water daily supi)lied to London . 210 Capital expended on water-works . . .210 ILLUSTRATIONS. 84. Opening a Scwor by Night . • 85. Fleet Ditch, 1749 . 86. Fleet Ditch, 1H41, back of Fi. ld Lan 87. Ba}8water Conduit 8S. Plui; in a Frost 89. Conduit nt LcridrTiIiall 90. Tillle-tattle .... lVsi;,Miors. TiMllUII.I. Faiimioi.t Aut iii;u Til 1 IN I'aiiuioi.t Til FIN En^rnvors. Nic iioi.l.s , Hoi.l.oWAV Jackson Sl.Y . NiCIIOI.I : -,.) 22S 230 23.) 23G 2;J7 240 xiv ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. XlV.-SUBUllBAN MILESTONES. Jedfiliiili JoiiuH ...... Mill'HtOlll'H llillvH'H Hull Whittiiiffton'H Stoiiu Ti»e Sliiiidiird in Coniliill . . • ' • St. (iilfs's Pound ..... SysUMiis of int'iiHuring tlic j oiids Tyliiini Tunipiko ..... Hyde I'iuk Conu-r Di'llic-ult} of di'tcnniniiif,' tlu' confines of London Plan in tlu; I'refuccto tljo * I'opuhition Returns' Exaj^^'cratt'd^old iiccounts of tlie populousness of London ....... Proclamations of Elizabeth forbidding the erec- tion of new buildings ivithin three miles of till' Ci\y gates ...... I'roflaniution of Charles L to forbid building, &c. Decrease of popvdation during tiie Plague Howcl's comparison of the populousness of Lon- don witli other cities .... Scrutiny" of the inhabitants of the City in 1631 Jlxtension of the suburbs of London , • , Pa OK 241 242 242 243 245 215 240 240 240 247 247 247 248 248 249 249 250 250 Extract from ' Grand Concern of England Ex- plained' ....... Advance of rents Lines from 'The Playhouse to Let' of D'Avenant Influx of Scots and French to London . Sir William Petty's calculations of the popula- tion of London . .... Sir William Petty's theory of its ultimate in- crease ....... Letter from Fleetwood the Recorder to Lord Burghley London rogues ...... The supply of food to London Evils of discouraging building in the suburbs . Contemplated road from the east end of Oxford Street direct to Holborn .... The Rookery and the Holy Land . Example of the dense population of St. Giles's . Mr. Smirke's scheme for providing lodging and houses for the poor ..... Present lodging-houses .... Dormitories ...... ILLUSTRATIONS. 91. Islington, one mile from the spot where Hicks's Hall formerly stood . . . . . . .... !)2. One mile from the Standard in Cornhill .... \Ki. Eight miles round St. Paul's ...... 94. Bayswater, One ]\Iile from London * . Designers. Anelay B. Sly Anelay Engravers. Bastin Heaviside C. Smith . Anduew . Page 250 251 251 251 252 252 253 253 254 254 254 254 255 255 255 256 241 244 247 250 XV.-LAMBETH PALACE. Westminster Hall 257 Somerset House ...... 257 The [Monument ...... 258 Matthew Paris's account of the origin of Lam- beth Palace 258 Manor of Lambetli previous to the building of the Palace 259 Lambeth occasionally occupied by the Arch- bishops of Canterbury .... 259 Cause of the Archbishop's removal from Canter- bury and the building of Lambeth Palace . 260 Sitting of the Council to consider the legality of Henry I.'s marriage with Matilda . . 260 Maude the Good 201 Gateway of Lambeth Palace .... 201 ^loney and bread given to the poor . . 202 Bounty of Archbishop Winchelsey . . . 202 Archbishop Tenison and the Stationers' Com- pany 203 The Water Tower ..... 203 Lollard's Tower 203 Exterior of the Great Hall .... 203 ]Mauuscript-room ..... 203 Caxton's Preface to 'The ISotable Wise Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers' . . , 264 Archbishop Chicheley's Missal . . . 204 The Court 204 Cardinal Pole's fig-trees .... 204 Entrance Hall . . . . , . '^65 The Great Hall 205 The Hall pulled down during the Common- wealth ....... 205 The Hall rebuilt by Archbishop Juxon . . 205 The Painted Window . . . . • . 206 Hospitality at the Archbishop's Palace . ■ . 266 Description of the order of a dinner in Arch- bishop Parker's time .... 266 History of the Library ..... 267 Pictures in the Gallery ..... 267 The Guard-room ...... 268 Portraits of the Archbishops .... 268 Lewis's account of Wicklitfe's defence . . 269 Archbishop Arundel and the fiery stake . . 269 Archbishop Chicheley ..... 270 Reginald Peacock ..... 270 Cranmer, and the marriage of Henry YIH. with Anne Bullen . . . . . .271 Oath of succession administered to exclude the Princess Mary . . . , . .271 Anecdotes of Sir Thomas More . . .271 Various meetings in Lambeth Palace , .271 Earl Cassilis ...... 272 Cardinal Pole 272 Fuller's story of Pole's election to the Popedom 272 Archbishop Parker 272 Parker's treatment of prisoners committed to his charge . , . . . .272 Bishop Thirlby's body 273 Elizabeth and Parker's wife .... 273 Grhidall 273 Death of Whitgift ..... 274 The " Nine Articles of Lambeth " . . . 274 Archbishop Abbot ..... 274 Extracts from Laud's Diary .... 275 Archbishop Juxon ..... 276 Lambeth Palace used as a prison . . . 270 Sale of Lambeth Palace during the Common- wealth . • 276 Various portraits in the Guard-room . . 277 The Chapel 277 Epitaph on Archbishop Parker . . . 278 Archbishop Parker's body disinterred . . 278 Restoration of Parker's remains by Archbishop Sancroft . . ... . . 278 The Post-room ...... 278 The Lollards' Prison ..... 279 * By an oversight this is described as Knightsbridge under the engraving. ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV ILLUSTRATIONS. Designers. Engravers. Pagk 95. View of Lambeth Pulace from the River .... Archer Jackson . . 257 96. Gateway „ „ . . 262 97. Great Hall „ „ . . 205 98. The Guard-room ........ „ . . 268 99. The Chapel „ . . 277 100. The Lollards' Prison „ „ . . 279 101. Lambeth Palace — Garden View ..... „ „ . . 280 XYL— THE ROMAN REMAINS. No Roman structures standing in London Modern corruptious of old British names Camp of Julius Ca?sar < . . . . Stukeley's account of Ccesar's encampment on Greenfield Common ..... Oriijin of Ciesar's invasion .... Stukelej's description of the camp at St. Pancvas Brill Principal Roman remains under^^round , Stone monument discovered by AVren Pennant's dpscrijjtion of sepulchral stone found at Lud;^'ate ...... Pra'torian camp ou the site of St. Paul's . Coins, &c., found on the site of the Ordnance Office Sepulchral monument dug up at the back of the London Colfee-house .... Tessellated pavements and mosaic work . Description of tessellated pavement found in Leadenhall Street ..... Tessellated pavement found in Lothbury Tessellated j)avcments discovered in various places Roman- antiquities found between London Bridge and Moorgate .... Earthenware vessels, &c., found near St. Leo- nard's Church ...... 281 281 282 282 283 283 284 285 285 280 286 287 287 288 288 280 290 290 201 Iron instruments, «S:c., found in Lothbury . 291 Various antiquities dug up between Lothbury and London Bridge . . . . .291 Description of earthen vessels discovered in Coleman Street . . . . .291 Mr. Smith's description of earthen pans found in Bread Street 292 Silver Ilarpocrates found in the bed of the Thames 292 Various bronzes found in the Thames . . 292 Stone altar found under Goldsmiths' Hall . 293 Pavement discovered near Sherbourn Lane . . 293 Walls and pavements dug up near the Post Office 293 Various fragments of walls, &c., found in Lombard Street 293 Gold coins, pottery, &c. .... 293 Fluted pillar found in the Wall of the Grey Friars' Monastery ..... 291 Roman materials used for the erection of new buildings 294 Old books found in the vaults of Verulaniium . 295 Destruction of Arthur's Oven on the banks of the Carron ...... 295 Roman London probably built of brick . . 295 ILLUSTRATIONS. 102. Altar of Apollo, and Vases 103. Plan of Ca?5ar'8 Camp at St. Pancras Church 104. Sepulchral Stone found at Ludgatc 105. Tessellated Pavement .... 100, 107, 108, 109. Coins and Fragments . 110. Statue of Harpocrates, &c. &c. Designers. Fairhoi-t Si.v Fairiiolt Engravers. Roe . . 281 Ckowk . 284 Sr.ADKlJ . 285 Bkanston . 289 . 294 ROK . 290 XVn.— PICCADILLY. The While Horse Cellar .... 297 The Achilles 298 Ajrgas's Map of London .... 298 Slew's account of Wyatt's Attempt on London 298 Surrender and execution of Sir Thomas Wyatt 299 Piccadilly in the early ])art of the reign of Mary 300 No mention of Piccadilly in reigns of Elizabeth and James ...... 300 Mention of Piccadilly by Lord Clarendon and Garrard in the reit,Mi of Cliai !('s I. . . 300 Piccadilly House '.'AA) Limits of Piccadilly ..... 301 Derivation of the name Pic cadilly . . . 301 Name of Piccadilly extended to Portugal Street 302 Building and improvcmentH in the Htrcefs near Pirciidilly ...... 302 Goring House ...... 303 ExtractH from Pepys'd Diary . . . .301 Villas built «»pposile (ioring House . 301 Clarendon HouMe ...... 304 ExtracLs from Evelyn's Diary .... 305 Mob at Clarendon House .... 300 Lines on Clarendon from a MS. poem . 30(i Lord Clarendon and Evelyn .... 300 Evelyn's account of the faiu of Clarendon House 307 h and id the Evelyn's descri])tion of Lord Berkeley's house Streets built in Berkeley Gardens . Devonshire House .... Burlington House • . . . . The Duke of York and Lady Dcnharn Death of Lady Denham The Eiul of Burlington .... I'iccadilly at the close of the sevcntcei beginning of the eighteenth centuries Bond Street .... Rank of the inhabitants of Piccadilly : neighbouring streets . Clarges House .... Hamilton Street and Ajislfy House The Hercules* Pillars . ' . The Triumphant Chariot The Terrace .... May Fair ..... Breaking uj) of May Fair Building in May Fair . Bath llou.ie .... The Ranger's house The Park Wall .... St. Georye'b Hospital :;o7 308 :{0S 308 308 308 300 310 310 :mi 31 I 311 1 2 312 313 311 311 .3 I 315 310 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF COIsTENTS. ILLUSTRATIONS. HI. Clarciidoii Ho II?. 114 Ihiiiinulon House . • • • Kiiliaufc to Kaii-iM-K L.ulge, (-iiceu TarV., 1 ifCialilly, St. Cioorge's llohpital, about I75U Designers. Faiuiiolt j> TlI'MN Fauuiolt Engravers. Andrew • Slader KUGENT . IIOLLOWAY Paoe 297 309 313 315 31G XVIII.— CROSBY PLACE. Sir Joliu Ciosby ]Mis8i«)ii ciitrnstc'd to Sir John Crosl)y IJuildini,' of Crosby riacc . . . • The Duke of Uh)ster and the Lady Anne Di'position of Edward Y. determined on in Crosby Hall • Arrest of Edward V. and execution of Lord Rivers Crosby Place the residence for some time of Richard III • Sir Thomas More's account of the proceeding after the arrest of the young King . . Defeat and death of Richard III. and accession of Henry VII (Jerman ambassadors lodged at Crosby Place . Causes of the embassy from Ccrmany Crosby Place purchased by Rartholoinew Read . Crosby Place sold by Sir John Rest to Sir Thomas INI ore . Probability that Sir Thomas Morc's < Utopia' was written in Crosby Place Extract from the Preface to the « Utopia' Crosby Place sold by Sir Thomas INIore to An- tonio Ronvisi Part of a letter written by Sir Thomas More in the Tower ...... Execution of Sir Thomas More I'AOK 31S 31H 318 318 319 319 319 320 320 320 321 321 322 322 322 322 323 323 Crosby Place leased to William Roper . Various proprietors of Crosby Place Alterations in Crosby Place . . • • The Rich Spencer" . . • • • Letter from Sir John Spencer's daughter to her husband Sully entertained at Crosby Place . Letter from the Duke of Sully Sir Philip Sidney's sister a tenant of Crosby Place Ben Jonson's Epitaph on the Countess of Pem- broke Fire in Crosby Place . . . • • Crosby Hall converted into a Presbyterian meet- ing house . . • • • , • The houses in Crosby Square built on the ruins of the old mansion . . . • • Crosby Place a packer's warehouse Reparations and rebuilding of Crosby Place Description of Crosby Place .... Exterior of the hall , , . . . Council-chamber or dining-room The Throne-room The Great Hall ...... Armorial bearings on the painted vvindoAVS The INIinstrels' Gallei-y . . . . _ » Mr. Taylor's remarks on the musical memories of Crosby Place 324 324 324 324 324 326 326 327 328 328 328 328 328 328 .328 329 329 329 330 330 331 331 ILLUSTRATIONS. IIG. Exterior of the Hall of Crosby Place 117. The Great Hall 118. Tomb of Sir John Crosbv Designers. Shepherd Archer Engravers. Jakvis Jackson 317 321 332 XIX.— OLD WHITEHALL. The Banqueting House .... 333 Henry VIII. and AVolsey . . . .334 !Magniticence of AVolsey's establishment . . 334 The Gilt and the Council Chambers . . 334 The dress and appearance of "Wolsey . . 334 Banquets and masques given by Wolsey to the King 335 Account of the arrival of Henry VIII. at White- hall in a mask ...... 335 Anne Boleyn first seen by Henry VIII. at Whitehall . . ' . . . .336 The fall of Wolsey 338 The name of York Place chanirod to Whitehall 338 Private marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn . . . * . . . .339 Alterations made by Henry A'lII. at Whitehall 339 Pictures in Whitehall 339 Holbein 339 Gate-house ....... 339 Anecdote of Henry VIII. and Holbein . . 340 Death of Henry VIII. . . ! , . 340 Whitehall in the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary 341 The reign of Elizabeth the poetical era of White- hall 341 Deputation sent to Elizabeth at Whitehall , 341 Elizabeth's reply to the deputation . . 341 The Duke of Anjou 341 Banqueting House on the south-west side of Whitehall 342 Preparations for Elizabeth's marriage . . 342 " The Castle or Fortress of Perfect Beauty" . 342 Tourneys in the Tilt-yard . . . .342 Arrival of the Duke of Anjou at the Court . 343 Elizabeth's determination not to marry . . 343 The death of the Duke of Anjou . . .343 Hentzuer's description of the Queen and White- hall in 1598 344 Death of Elizabeth 344 Proclamation before Whitehall of James I. . 344 Number of persons knighted by James I. in Vrhitehall 344 Interrogation of Guy Fawkes at Whitehall . 344 Festivities in Whitehall in honour of the visit of Christian IV. to England .... 345 James's Speech at Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament ...... 345 Base intrigues set on foot in Whitehall . . 346 The Countess of Essex and Lord Rochester . 346 Sir Anthony Weldon's account of Bacon's con- duct during the visit of James I. to Scotland 347 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTEXTS. xvii ILLUSTRATIONS. 119. Presence Chamber, York Place • 120. "Wolsey and Jiis Suite 121. "Wolsey suriemlerinjj the Great Seal 122. Holbein's Gate Designers, Engravers. Page Harvey & Prior Jackson . 0.33 Fairuolt Rembault , 33-5 „ Mead , . XiH Sargent Jackson . 34.8 XX.— NEW WHITEHALL. Page Old Banqueting House pulled down and the new one erected ...... 349 Fire in the Banqueting House . . . 3-19 Inigo Jones ...... 3.'30 Sumptuous masques at "Wliitehall . . . 3.30 luigo Jones's designs for a new Palace . . 350 Building of the new Banqueting House . . 350 Proclamation of Charles I. at Whitehall . . 352 Marriage of Charles I. , , . . . 352 Henrietta !Maria ...... 352 Dismissal of Henrietta Maria's French servants 353 Marshal Bassompiere's audience Avith Charles at Whitehall 353 Charles I.'s encouragement of the arts , . 353 The Cartoons of Ratiaelle .... 354 The amusements of the Court of Charles I. . 354 Hostility of the Scots provoked by Charles , 354 The Earl of Loudon and thQ Duke of Hamilton 355 Parliament at the Banqueting House . , 355 Parliament dissolved • . . . . 35G The Long Parliament summoned . . . 350 Whitehall guarded ..... 35G Removal of the King and Court to Hampton Court 357 Whitehall seized by the Parliament . . 357 Sale of the pictures in Whitehall , . . 357 Account of the execution of Cliarlcs I. . . 357 Cromwell's residence at Whiteiiall , , . 358 Meeting of Little or Barebones Parliament at Whitehall 350 Cromwell made Lord Protector , . . 350 Plots against the life of Cromwell . . . 350 Regal Crown ottered at Whitehall to Cromwell 350 Cromwell's refusal of the Crown . . . 3(;0 Accident to Richard CronnvcU at Whitehall . 300 Domestic habits of Cromwell ... 3()0 The friends of Cromwell .... 300 Illness and death of Cromwell at Whitehall . 361 AVhitehall occupied by Richard Cromwell . 301 Design of the Rump Parliament of selling White- hall 301 The return of Charles II. to Whitehall . . 301 Charles II. and the Duchess of Portsmouth . 3(51 Evil cured by Charles at Whitehall . . 302 The Chapel Royal 302 Passage from Evelyn's Diary . . . 302 Death of Charles 302 James II. and Catherine Sedley . . . 3(52 Tendency towards Popery of James IT. . . 302 James I I.'s departure from Whitehall . . 303 Destruction of Whitehall by fire, with the excep- tion of the Banqueting House . . . 3(53 The Banqueting House used as a Chapel . 3(53 Dr. Waagen's description of the ceiling in the Banqueting House ..... :'.(5 .lonsou in the army , , . . . 3()0 •lonHon a player and a writer for the stage . 3(;(; Jonson's dui'l with Gabrell .... 3 Extract from Jonson's Induction to 'Cjnthia's Revels' 377 Countiy s(iuires in London . . . .37 7 Lines from the 'Old and Young Courtier' . 378 Jonson's ruhrs for making a town gentleman out of a country clown ..... .'578 Extract frt)m • Tlie Devil is an Ass'. . . 378 Jiines from Jonson's ' Alcliymisl' . . . .378 Tlie projector in * The Devil is an Ass' . . 3H0 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. ILLUSTRATIONS. 12R. Hon Jonaon . . • • 125). The Fortune Tlu-alrc, Coldou Lane, in 1700 . . . • i:iO. Beauiijont . • • • i:n. Paul's Wiillv . . • • Jui-bican, as it remained Designers. Anelay Faiuholt >> Anelay Engravers. F. Smyth HOLLOWAY MURDON . NiCHOLLS Page 365 .371 372 380 XXrr.— BEN JONSON'S LONDON. The Dupo ...... (Jainl)liii|Jr ...... Ordinnrii's ...... Story from * Anecdotos and Traditions' Stow'H account of tlie putting down of venisoi catiui^ in the City .... blaster-cooks ..... Ma'itrc do cuisine to the Marechal Strozzi Tobacco-lovers and tobacco-haters . Cliarles Lamb's ' Farewell' to tobacco Aubrey's account of the introduction of tobacco Quarrels in taverns and ordinaries . Story of Thomas Randolph in Winstanley' ' Lives of the Poets' Extract from L'Kstrange's papers . . Pickpockets and cutpurses Lines from Jonson's ' Bartholomew Fair' Description of an academy for thieves Fleetwood the Recorder . Reprieves ...... Begging lands ..... (Cunduded from XXI.) Pa OK 3.S1 382 382 382 383 383 384 384 385 385 386 386 386 386 387 387 387 388 388 Extract from Jonson's ' Poetaster' . Jonson imprisoned for libel . • _ • • Jonson's mother's design of poisoning herself and her son Houses *' begged" for manslaughter Jonson's pictures of scenes at court . . * Jonson's delineations of profligacy and ambition Sidney's dedication of his 'Arcadia' to his sister Masques of the courts of Elizabeth and James . Bacon's Essay ' Of Masques and Triumphs' _ . Masques of Jonson in celebration of various events James's desire to knight Jonson The masque of ' Time Yindicated' . « Staple of News' Public appetite for news . . . • Jonson"s attacks upon the Puritans Jonsons library Jonson's later dramas . . . • • Jonsons Ode to revenge himself on the town . His death, and gravestone in Westminster Abbey 388 389 389 389 389 390 391 392 392 393 394 394 .394 394 395 396 396 396 396 ILLUSTRATIONS. 132. Inigo Jones .... 133. The Professor .... 134. A Room, temp. Elizabeth and James 135. Masque, from Strutt's Antiquities Designers. Anelay Meadows Melville Fairholt Engravers. MuRDON Burrows NiCHOLLS Sears 381 384 391 392 XXIII.— RANELAGH AND VAUXHALL. of the Cban£re in the public taste . . . . Ranelagh first converted into a place of amuse- ment . . • . . The Rotunda .... Description of the exterior and interior Rotunda . , , . Breakfasts and Concerts, &c., at Ranelagh Dr. Arne ..... Musical performance at Yauxhall in 1749 ^lasquerades at Ranelagh Extract from the * Connoisseur' Dulness of Ranelagh Passage from Miss Burney's ' Evelina' Bloomfield's verses on Ranelagh The Rotunda pulled down Ranelagh entirely given up . Yauxhall ..... First mention of Yauxhall as a place of i ment , . . , ' , Sir Roger de Coverley's visit to Yauxhall Faux Hall . . . DitTerent proprietors of Yauxhall House Sir Samuel ]\Iorland 397 398 398 398 399 400 400 400 400 401 401 401 401 401 402 402 402 403 404 404 Re-opening of Yauxhall .... Decorations of Yauxhall .... Lines from ' A Trip to Yauxhall' . Account of Yauxhall Gardens from ' The Cham- pion Passage from Fielding's ' Amelia' . Extracts from GoldsmUh's ' Citizen of the World' The Water-works . . . • • Advertisement in ' The London Chronicle' 'The^rial' Prices of admission to Yauxhall . Description of the present appearance of Yaux- hall The Grove The Orchestra The Hall of Mirrors The Theatre The Italian Walk The extraordinary feats of the Ravel Family Fire-works ....... Description of D'Ernst's Fire-works The Tight-rope 404 404 405 405 406 406 406 407 407 408 409 409 409 410 410 410 411 411 411 411 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. ILLUSTRATIONS. Designers. Engravers. Page 1.36. Ranelagli Gardens, Rotunda, &c., 1751 .... Fairiiolt Holloway . 397 137. Yauxhall in 17.51 „ „ . . 402 138. Ladies of the Rci^ of George II., from Jeffery's Collection . „ Slader . . 404 139. Costume, 173.5, Mall in St. James's Park .... „ Sears . . 408 140. Yauxhall, 1841— The Ballet Theatre and Entrance to the Dark AValk ,, Andrew . .412 XXIV.— STREET SIGHTS. D'Avenant's ♦ Long Vacation in London' Passage from D'Avenant's poem The streets of London too busy for street sight Tumblers ...... Joseph Clark, the posture-master ' Balance a straw ' . . . . Signor Violante, the slack-rope vaultcr . Cadman, the steeple-flyer Description of steeple-flying, from Strutt 'Sports and Pastimes' Samuel Scott, the American diver . Death of Samuel Scott .... Conjurers ...... Chaucer's sleight-of-hand man Chinese jugglers ..... Conjurer of Cairo .... Fire-eaters ...... Mr. Powell, the fire-eater Mountebanks ..... Hearne's description of Dr. Andrew Borde The Hammersmith mountebank Page 413 413 414 414 415 415 410 41G 417 417 418 418 419 419 419 419 419 419 419 420 Morris-dancers ...... 421 Will Kemp's account of his dance from London to Norwich 421 Motions, or puppet-shows .... 421 Jonson's puppet-show of ' Hero and Leander' . 422 Punch and the Fantoccini .... 422 Dancing dolls 423 Italian boys and monkeys .... 423 Beggars ....... 424 Extract from * Elia' 424 Ilaree-sliow ...... 425 The Industrious Fleas ..... 425 Dancing bears ...... 425 Delight of our ancestors in street sights . . 426 Banks's horse Morocco .... 426 Bishop Morton's story of Banks and ISIorocco . 427 Fate of Banks and his horse . . . .427 Jonson's lines on Banks .... 427 Bear-baiting sanctioned by Royal authority . 427 Telescopic exhibition in Leicester Square . 428 ILLUSTRATIONS. Designers. Engravers. 141. Punch, 184 1 W. Lee F. Smyth . 413 142. Joseph Clark, from Tempest's Collection .... Fairiiolt Wragg . . 415 143. Faux, the Conjurer ........ ,, „ . . 41(J 144. Samuel Scott leaping from an Arch of Waterloo Bridge . Anelay Murdon . . 418 145. Mountebank, from Tempest's Collection .... ,, „ . . 420 140. Dancing DcUs — Italian ....... Fairiiolt Slader . . 423 147. Dancing Dolls — Hogarth's Southwark Fair ... ,, „ . . 423 14H. " Oh Raree Show !" from Tempest's Collection ... ,, Kirciiner . 425 149. Banks's Horse „ „ . . 420 150. Telescopic Exhibitions in the Streets, 1841 . . . . W. Lee Sears . . 428 XXV.- -THE London at Sunrise .... . 429 Lines by Wordsworth .... . 429 Description of the ascent . 430 View from tho top of the Monument . 430 The Tower, Iho Mint, anrl the Custom IIousf» . 430 The bridges ..... . 431 St. Paul'H . 431 Tli(! natural basin of London . 431 Popys's description of the breaking 'out of th Fire of London .... . 432 Farryncr'fl cvidcnco before a (.'ommittee of th (; House of Commons .... . 432 Popys's descri])tion of the progress of the Fire . 4;{2 The peculiar ft)rm of the great body of llame . 4.33 Evelyn's description of the conflagration . 434 Mr. Vincent's account of the extent of the rlntu! of smoke ...... . 4.34 The cf)urse of the Fire .... . 434 Method used to check the I ii. . 435 MONUMENT. Accomit of the dosolntion caused by tlu^ (ireat Fire '<35 The ruin of St. Paul's 130 Miserable state of the citizens . . . fiJO The King's proclamation .... H'.O Alarm raised of the arrival of llie rn-nc li :iinl Dutch 131; 'I'he amount of destruction caused by tlu> I'irc . ■\'M liiniits of the Fire ..... 4.37 Fstimate of the loss of proi)crty . . . 137 IMuniliccncc of the Kiiiir .... 437 JCxtract from 'The Conflagration of London Poetically Delineated' .... 4.38 Means employed to inquire into the origin of the Fire 438 Various evidence taken before a Committee of the House of Parliament .... •13H Prophecies of I'apists ..... 13.S 'i'lic coufoHHiou of Robert Hubert . . . I3S XX ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Paoe EvidcMiPP roliitlnp; to fiic-l)alls and otlier com- buHtiblo luiittcr thrown into houHcs • . 439 InHulIlcioncy of evidence to ])rove the exist- ence of tt Popish phH for tlie destruction of London 439 Execution of Iliihcrt 440 ('i»arit:ihl(M-ondu( t of tlie citizens . . . 440 Court of Judicature , . . • . 440 Paoe Sir Christopher Wren appointed principal ar- chitect for rebuihling the City . . . 441 Plan of the new City 441 The difliculties encountered in rebuilding the City 442 Wren's first design for the Monument . . 442 Inscriptions on the Monument . . . 443 Present improvements of London . . . 444 ILLUSTRATIONS. L'>1. The l^ronument, 1841 ...... m'i. London during tlie Firo, from the Bankside, Southwark 153. Burning of Newgate — Old St. Paul's in the background l'»4. Wren's Plan for Rebuilding the City .... IT)."). Wren's first Design for the Monument . . . l.)(5. The Monunaent, Eighteenth Century Designers. SlIEI'IIEUD russi:r.L >> POYNTER a. povntek Faiuholt Engravers. Sears KiCIlOLLS Jackson ' I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes With the memorials, and the things of fame, That do renown this city.' It was an afternoon walk for the stranger who thus desired to 'see the reliques' of some ancient Dalmatian town, whose Roman monuments covered a few acres. But London ! in what time shall we visit her ' memorials,' so as to ' satisfy our eyes ? ' What amount of labour does it require to become acquainted with her ' things of fame ? ' A week, or a month, may indeed enable us to see those ' rcliques ' which every one sees ; but ' memorials ' as true and as interesting lie perishing or hidden in dark corners ; and there are ' things of fame ' in the meanest alleys. Their chief value, however, consists in the associations which they suggest ; and these do not always lie upon the surface. To comprehend modern London we must ' make a stand upon the ancient way, and then look about us ; * to be properly interested in ancient London we must turn from our old Chroniclers, and Topographers, and Poets, and Memoir- writers, and look upon its living scenes, ever changing in their outward forms, but essentially the slow growth of a long antiquity. We propose in this- sj.irit to produce a nkw Work on London ; and the ])rin- • ciple which we have thus indicated of looking at the Present through the Past, and at the Past through the Present, requires that our Work shall be wholly different from any which has preceded it. It will neither be a ' Survey ' of Lon- don, nor a ' History ' of London. Its arrangement will neither be topograj)hical nor chronological. It will not travel ' with tedious steps and slow ' from Port- soken Ward to Westminster ; nor begin at the beginning with King Lud, and end at the end with Queen Victoria. Nor will it, in point of fact, be ambitious of any classification. London, which Camden has called totius Britannice epitome, is too va.st a thing to be analysed, and sorted, and labelled, — at least in a l)()()k which will endeavour to combine amusement with information. Tlie gn atest and the meanest features of such a city lie mingled together, in tlie same way that the mightiest and the minutest works of Nature are presented to the ol)serv- ing eye. That traveller is to our minds the most faithful, the most entertaining, and perhaps the most scientific, who, whilst he is measuring the height of an Alpine mountain, makes himself familiar with the habits of the little marmot thai burrows in its crevices. The plan of publication wliii h we shall adoi)t will also, in some degree, deter- b ii mine the miscellaneous character of the j>roposed work. We shall publish a Weekly Sheet, devoted, for the most part, to some portion of the great total of T^ondon which shall he complete in itself. This subject must necessarily be of no abstract nature — no mere disquisition upon remote and lifeless matters— but something which can he seen, and thus copied for the reader's eye, or made more iiitc'lli<;ible by the grnphic art. Ouii London will be Pictorial. The several artists of eminence who will be engaged upon this undertaking will labour upon a well-defined principle — that of uniting to the imaginative power the strict- est fidelity in every detail of Architecture and Costume. In the same spirit will the writers work. The time is past when it was thought that what was accurate could not be amusing ; and in the great subject before us, whether in its modern or its ancient aspects, the truest delineation will, unquestionably, be the most interesting. Of the probable extent of this work the editor can at present form no very exact noticm. It is the less necessary that he should do so, as every number, every part, and every volume, will be, as far as it goes, complete in itself. If the encourage- ment of the public should enable this work to be carried forward to something like a general completeness, its miscellaneous character may be reduced into system by chronological and topographical Indexes. But^ as it proceeds, it will have all the charm of variety. For example : — A Memoir on the Maps of Lon- don for three centuries, showing the gradual spread of the great Babel, may fitly be in company with a picture of its locomotive facilities, through all the phases of Wherry, Sedan, Hackney Coach, Cabriolet, Omnibus, and Steam-Boat. We may linger about Smithfield, with its horse-races of the days of Henry II., its tournaments, its wagers of battle, its penances, its martyrdoms, its Bartholomew fairs, and its cattle-market, without feeling that any of its associations are incongruous or unworthy of description and reflection. The Cock-Lane Ghost is a matter of history as much as the records of that fatal Traitor's Gate of the Tower, over which might have been written the terrible words of Dante — • All hope abandon, ye who enter here.' The City Poet, with his tawdry Lord Mayor's state and doggrel verses, belongs to the social history of London as distinctly as the classical inventor of the Masques in which James and Charles delighted. The Christmas revels of the Lord of Misrule in the Temple, and the triumphant entry of Henry V. after the battle of Agincourt, have each had their historians, and they may each form epi- sodes in our pages. Tempest drew from the life the Cries of London in the days of Anne, and they may be found in company with some account of Catnach's ballads in our day. The glorious picture-satires of Hogarth may tell us of a generation that is past, whilst the splendid caricatures of Gillray may slide into the generation that is present. There are many aspects of Society in London which are not fit to be described: there are scenes, past and present, which are improper to be exhibited to the general eye. Those which a parent would not wish his child to look upon will never be delineated in this book. We shall not, however, from any false refinement, confine ourselves to what is the most agreeable. All reasoning beings should know that there is crime, and ignorance, and suffering, and sorrow, in such an nnmense city, as well as propriety, and elegance, and comfort, and pleasure. iii But, by a careful attention to what we are and what we were — to our improve- ments, as well as to some things in which we begin to find out we have not im- proved — we may indirectly show how the condition of every Londoner is to be ameliorated ; and how, by diminishing ignorance, we may diminish crime ; and, by cultivating innocent pleasures, do something to drive out unlawful excitements. We have a few observations to add. Such a work as we hope to produce may interest every English reader, whether he be a resident in London or in Aus- tralia. It treats of the largest city in the world, — whose inhabitants are in inter- course, commercial, political, or religious, with almost the whole human race, — which has been the scene of the most stirring events of history, — which has been a city of progress from its first foundation, — which has sent forth its literature through four centuries to the uttermost ends of the earth, — and which is full, therefore, not only of material monuments of the past, but of the more abiding memorials which exist in imperishable books. If the Tabard Inn at Southwark is now but a waggoner's yard, with its accompanying liquor-shop and tap-room, we have Chaucer's immortal picture of ' that hostelrie,' and its guests — • Well nine -and -twenty in a compagnie Of sundry folk ;' — and he will tell us * The chambres and the stables weren wide.' If ^st Cheap has lost all its ancient characteristics in the improvements of Lon- don Bridge, Lydgate will show us that there ' Pewter pots they clattered on a heap ; There was harp, pipe, and minstrelsy.' If Finshury and Islington are covered with interminable rows of houses, Ben Jonson shall call to mind ' the archers of Finsbury, or the citizens that come a-ducking to Islington ponds.' If Spring Garden be no longer green, Garrard, the gossiping correspondent of the great Lord Strafford, shall inform us of its ' Bowling,' its * Ordinary of six shillings a-meal, continual bibbing and drinking wine all day long under the trees, and two or three quarrels every week.' If the Devil Tavern, with its Apollo Club, has i)erished. Squire Western's favourite song of * Old Sir Simon the King' shall bring back the memory of Simon Wadloe, its landlord, with Jonson's verses over the door of the Apollo Room. If the River Fleet no longer runs across Holborn, Pope shall recall that polluted stream, — 'Than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood.' If the glories of White's, and Will's, and the Grecian, and the St. James's, have }>assed away, in the fall of Coffeehouses and the rise of Clubs,— if the stranger can no longer expect to walk without obstruction into a common room where wit is as current as tea and muffins, and a Drydcn stands by the fire with a young Pope gazing upon him,— he may yet live in the social life of the days of Anne, and peo])le the solitary Coffeehouses with imaginary Swifts, and Addisons, and Steelcs. Such, and so various, are the literary ' memorials ' of London ; and these literary ' memorials ' arc, in truth, amongst her best anticjuities. As a dty of progress, her material remains of the ])ast are (•(mii)arativ('ly few ; but the mightiest of the earth — those wlio liave made our language immortal and universal — have dwelt within her walls, and their records have outlived brick and stone. iv To one of observation, and reflection, and adequate knowledge, everything in London is smjiiastive. In her external features we read the history of hex past, and the descriiition of her present social state. ♦ The things of fame That do renown this city,' — Churches, palaces, theatres, exhibitions, courts of justice, prisons, hospitals,— parks, squares, streets, bridges, wharfs, docks, warehouses, markets, shops, facto- ries, inns,— pavements, sewers, gas-lights, water-pipes,— post-offices, railroads, steam-boats, i)ublic carriages— have each their tale of that mighty stirring of Humanity which in its aggregate is a spectacle of real sublimity unequalled in tlic world. It is the more sublime and the more wonderful that all this mass— with its manifold associations of Government, Municipal Arrangements, Police, Supply of Food, Population, Disease, Mortality, Industry, Wealth, Poverty, Crime, Religion, Charity, Education, Literature, Science, Arts, Amusements, Dress, Manners, Domestic Life— is ever-growing and ever-changing. While we are putting down the figures the facts are shifting. We shall not, therefore, trouble our readers with many figures. But the great aspects of London humanity are written in tolerably permanent characters, whether of the past or the present. It will be our duty sometimes to digest the abiding facts that are not likely to elude our vision or our grasp — sometimes to * Catch ere she flies the Cynthia of the minute.' If what is permanent, and what is fleeting, shall be found equally without attrac- tion, the fault will be in ourselves and not in our subject. The interest of that subject we believe to be universal. The features of such a city, physical and moral, present and antiquarian, if truly and strikingly presented, are to be looked upon with interest and curiosity, by the stranger as well as the citizen who daily hears the sound of Bow-bell, London is not England, as Paris is said to be France ; neither is she the head and England the body, as used to be set down ; but she is so identified with the whole empire — she absorbs and returns again so much of the general prosperity — that what belongs to her belongs to all. To the British public, then, we offer, in confident hope of their support, our [Rielianl II. and (iower.] I.— THE SILENT HIGHWAY. One of the most remarkable pictures of ancient manners which has been trans- mitted to us is that in which the poet Gower describes the circumstances under which he was commanded by Kinw Troy, Which took of Brute liis firsl"' jov : 2 LONDON. In Tlianies, wlicn it was flowing, As I by boat6 came rowing, So as fortune her time set, My liege lord perchance I met, And so befel, as I came nigh, Out of my boat, when he me sygh,* He bade me come into his barge : And when I was with him at large. Among other thinges said He hath this charge upon me laid. And bade me do my business, That to his high worthiness Some new thing6 I should book, That he himself it might look, After the form of my writing. And thus upon his commanding. Mine hcarte is well the more glad To write so as he me bade." Nothing can be more picturesque than this description, and nothing can more forcibly carry us into the very heart of the past. With the exception of some of the oldest ])ortions of the Tower of London, there is scarcely a brick or a stone left standing that may present to us a memorial of ''the king's chamber"! of four hundred and fifty years ago. There, indeed, is the river, still flowing and still ebbing, — the most ancient thing we can look upon, — which made London what it was and what it is. Nearly all that then adorned its banks has perished ; and many of the stirring histories of the busy life that moved upon its waters have become to us as obscure as the legend of ''New Troy." But the poet calls upon our imagination to fill up the void. One of the most ancient pictorial representations of London which exists is of a date some fifty years later than the poem we have quoted. It is found in a manuscript preserved in the British Museum, and represents the captivity of the Duke of Orleans in the Tower. The manuscript itself, which consists of the poems of the royal captive, was probably copied in the time of Henry VI. ; but the illumination purports to represent the London of an earlier date, with its bridge, its lofty-spired cathedral, its numerous churches, its gabled houses. Under these walls we may imagine the poet and his patron to have glided, amidst crowded wherries, and attendant barges, and the merry sounds of song and clarion, and the shouts of the people. Often had the " imaginative" king so passed between his palace of Westminster and his Tower of London. But the state was to end in misery, and degradation, and a solitary and mysterious death. The ' Prologue' of Gower, in the true spirit of the romantic times, tells us of the town which was founded by the Trojan Brute. Here was the fable which the middle-age minstrels rejoiced in, and which History has borrowed from Poetry without any compromise of her propriety. The origin of nations must be fabu- lous ; and if we would penetrate into the dark past we must be satisfied with the torch-light which fable presents to us. We commend, therefore, the belief of the good citizens of London, who, in the time of Henry VI., sent the king a copy of an ancient tract, which says of London, '' According to the credit of chronicles it * Saw. t Camera Regia ; which title, immediately after the Norman Conquest. London began to have.— Camden. THE SILENT HIGHWAY. 3 is considerably older than Rome ; and that it was, by the same Trojan author, built by Brute, after the likeness of great Troy, before that built by Romulus and Remus. Whence to this day it useth and enjoyeth the ancient city Troy's liberties, rights, and customs."* This is dealing with a legend in a business-like manner, worthy of grave aldermen and sheriffs. Between Brute and Richard II. there is a long interval ; and the chroniclers have filled it up with many pleasant stories, and the antiquarians have embellished it with many ingenious theories. We must leap over all these. One ancient writer, however, who speaks from his own knowledge, — William Fitz-Stephen, who died in 11 91, — has left us a record in his * Description of London,' which will take us back a few hundred years further. The original is in Latin. " The wall of the city is high and great, continued with seven gates, which are made double, and on the north distinguished with turrets by spaces : likewise on the south London hath been enclosed with walls and towers, but the large river of Thames, well stored with fish, and in which the tide ebbs and flows, by continuance of time hath washed, worn away, and cast down those walls." Here, then, six hundred and fifty years ago, we find the river-bank of London in the same state as described by Sir Thomas More in his imaginary capital of Amaurote : — " The city is compassed about with a high and thick stone wall, full of turrets and bulwarks. A dry ditch, but deep and broad, and overgrown with bushes, briers, and thorns, goeth about three sides or quarters of the city. To the fourth side the river itself serveth as a ditch." f The Saxon chronicle tells us that in the year 1052 Earl Godwin, with his navy, passed along the southern side of the river, and so assailed the walls. A hun- dred and fifty years after, in the time of Fitz-Stephcn, the walls were gone. About the same period arose the stone bridge of London ; but that has perished before the eyes of our own generation. There is another passage in Fitz-Stephen which takes us, as do most of his descrij)tions, into the every-day life of the ancient Londoners — their schools, their feasting, and their sports : — In Easter holidays they fight battles on the water. A shield is hanged on a ])ole, fixed in the midst of the stream ; a boat is ])repared without oars, to be car- ried by violence of the water, and in the forepart thereof standeth a young man, ready to give charge u])()n the shield with his lance. If so be he break his lance against the shield and doth not fiiU, he is thought to have ])erformed a worthy deed. If so be, without breaking his lance, he runneth strongly against the shield, down he falleth into the water, for the boat is violently forced with the tide; but on each side of the shield ride two boats, furnished with two young men, which recover him that falleth as soon as they may. U])()n the bridge, wharfs, and houses by the river-side,:}: stand great numbers to see and laugh thereat." The sport, which may be still seen amongst the watermen of the Seine, and of the Rhine, was the delight of the bold \ outh of London in the (la\ s of I lenry 1 1. Fitz- Stcphen tidls us of this amongst the sports of the people generally ; and tlie cir- * Stow, l)()(»k i. f I '1(>])ia, I), ii. c. ii. J Wp ^ivc the tr.'imlafioii of Stow, Imt In- .ijiprars lien- lo liiive tiikni a lillle licence willi (lie origiiiul : — ** Supra imnlfm fl /// sn/uni.i Mi/jirn Jhtnuiit." b2 4 LONDON. cumstancc shows that they were accustomed to exercise themselves upon their noble river Four centuries afterwards Stow saw a somewhat simdar game:—- 1 have seen also in tlie sunnner season, upon the river of Thames, some rowed m wherries, witli staves in their hands, flat at the fore-end, running one agamst another, and. [Water Quintain.] for the most part, one or both of them were overthrown and well ducked." Of the antiquity of these customs we have evidence in two drawings of a beautiful illu- minated ' History of the Old Testament,' &c., of the fourteenth century, in the Bri- tish Museum. Howel says, "There was in former times a sport used upon the Thames, which is now discontinued : it was for two wherries to row, and run one [Water Tournaments.] against the other, with staves in their hands, flat at the fore-end; which kind of recreation is much practised amongst the gondolas of Venice."* From the time of Fitz- Stephen to that of Gower we may readily conceive that the water-communication between one part of London and another, and between * Londinopolis : 1G57. THE SILENT HIGHWAY. 5 London and Westminster, was constantly increasing. A portion of London Bridge was moveable, which enabled vessels of burden to pass up the river to unload at Queenhithe and other wharfs. Stairs (called bridges) and Water-gates studded the shores of both cities. Palaces arose, such as the Savoy, where the powerful nobles kept almost regal state. The Courts of Law were fixed at Westminster ; and thither the citizens and strangers from the country daily resorted, preferring the easy highway of the Thames to the almost impassable road that led from Westminster to the village of Charing, and onward to London. John Lydgatc, who wrote in the time of Henry V., has left us a very curious poem, which we shall often have occasion to refer to, entitled ' London Lyckpeny.' He gives us a picture of his coming to London to obtain legal redress of some grievance, but without money to pursue his suit. Upon quitting Westminster Hall, he says, " Then to Westminster Gate I presently went." This is undoubtedly the Water-gate ; and, without describing anything beyond the cooks, whom he found busy with their bread and beef at the gate, " when the sun was at high prime," he adds, '* Then unto London I did me hie." By water he no doubt went, for through Charing he would have made a day's journey. Wanting money, he has no choice but to return to the country ; and having to go into Kent," he applies to the watermen at Billingsgate: — " Then hied I me to Billingsgate, And one cried hoo — go we hence : I pray'd a bargeman, for God's sake, That lie would spare me my expense. Thou scap'st not here, quoth he, under two pence." We have a corroboration of the accuracy of this picture in Lambarde's ' Perambu- lation of Kent.' The old topographer informs us that in the time of Kicliard H. the inhabitants of Milton and Gravesend agreed to carry in their boats, from Lon- don to Gravesend, a passenger, with his truss or farthell, for two-pence. The poor Kentish suitor, without two-pence in his ])ocket to pay the Gravesend bargemen, takes his solitary way on foot homeward. The gate where he was welcomed with the cry of Jioo — ho, ahoy — was the great landing-place of the coast- ing-vessels ; and the king here anciently took his toll upon imports and exports. The Kentishman comes to Billingsgate from Cornhill ; but it was not an uncom- mon thing for boats, even in those times, to accomplish the feat of passing through the fall occasioned l)y the narrowness of the arches of London Bridge ; and the loss of life in these adventures was not an unfrequent occurrence, (iillbrd, in a note upon a pas.sage in Ben Jonson's ' Sta])le of News,' says somewhat ])ettishly of the old bridge, " had an alderman or a turtle l)een lost there, the nuisance would have ])een long since removed." A greater man than an alderman — .lohn Mowbray, the second Duke of Norfolk — nearly perished there in 1428. This companion of the glories of Henry V. took his barge at St. Mary Overies, with many a gentleman, s(juire, and yeoman, " and ])re])ared to pass through London Brigg. Whereof the foresaid barge, through misgovernnient of steering, fell uj)()U the ])ll( s and ()\ crwliclnu'd. The wincli was cause of spilling many a gentle man, and other; the more ruth was ! Hut as (Jod would, the Duke iiimself, and two or three other gentle men. sci iug that uiischii l". leaped up on the piles, and so 6 LONDON. were saved throuo li help of them that were above the brigg, with casting down of rones "* But there were hinding-places in abundance between Westminster and London Bridge, so that a danger such as this was not necessary to be in- curred When the unfortunate Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, was condemned to do penance in London, in three open places, on three several days, she was brought by water from Westminster ; and on the 13th November, 1440, was ])ut on shore at the Temple bridge ; on the 15th, at the Old Swan ; and, on the 17th, at Queenhithe. Here, exactly four centuries ago, we have the same stairs described by the same names as we find at the present day. The Old Swan (close to London Bridge) was the Old Swan in the time of Henry VL, as it con- tinued to be in the time of Elizabeth. If we turn to the earliest maps of London we find, in the same way. Broken Wharf, and Paul's Wharf, and Essex Stairs, and Whitehall Stairs. The abiding-places of the watermen appear to have been as unchanging as their thoroughfare— the same river ever gliding, and the same inlets from that broad and cheerful highway to the narrow and gloomy streets. The watermen of London, like every other class of the people, were once mu- sical ; and their " oars kept time " to many a harmony, which, if not so poetical as the song of the gondoliers, was full of the heart of merry England. The old city chronicler, Fabyan, tells us that John Norman, Mayor of London (he held this dignity in 1454), was the first of all mayors who brake that ancient and old- continued custom of riding to Westminster upon the morrow of Simon and Jude's day." John Norman " was roioed thither hy water, for the which the watermen made of him a roundel, or song, to his great praise, the which began, ' Row the boat, Norman, row to thy leman.' " The watermen's ancient chorus, as we collect from old ballads, was " Heave and how, rumbelow ;" and their burden was still the same in the time of Henry VIH., not forgetting, " How the boat, Norinan."t Well might the first mayor who carried the pomp of the city to the great Thames, and made " The barge he sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Born on the water," deserve the praises of watermen in all time ! We could willingly spare many more intrinsically valuable things than the city water-pageant ; for it takes us even now into the old forms of life ; and if it shows us more than all other pageants some- thing of the pcrishableness of power and dignity, it has a fine, antique grandeur about it, and tells us that London, and what belongs to London, are not of yes- terday. We every now and then turn up in the old Chronicles, and Memoirs, and Letters that have been rescued from mice and mildew, some graphic description of the use of the river as the common highway of London. These old writers were noble hands at scene-painting. What a picture Hall gives us of the populousness of the Thames ! — the perfect contrast to Wordsworth's " The river glideth at his own sweet will " — in the story which he tells us of the Archbishop of York, after leaving the widow * Hail. MS., No. 565, quoted in ' Clironicles of Loudon Bridge.' f Skelton. THE SILENT HIGHWAY. 7 of Edward IV. in the sanctuar}' of Westminster, sitting- alone below on the rushes, all desolate and dismayed," returning home to York Place in the dawning of the day ; " and when he opened his windows and looked on the Thames, he might see the river full of boats of the Duke of Gloucester his servants, watching that no person should go to sanctuary, nor none should pass unsearched." Cavendish, in his 'Life of Wolsey,' furnishes as graphic a description of the great Cardinal hurrying to and fro on the highway of the Thames, between his imperious master and the injured Katharine, when Henry had become impatient of the tedious conferences of the Court at Blackfriars sitting on the question of his divorce, and desired to throw down with the strong hand the barriers that kept him from the Lady Anne : — " Thus this court passed from session to session, and day to day, in so much that a certain day the king sent for my lord at the breaking up one day of the court to come to him into Bridewell. And to accomplish his com- mandment he went unto him, and being there with him in communication in his grace's privy chamber from eleven until twelve of the clock and past at noon, my lord came out and departed from the king, and took his barge at the Black Friars, and so went to his house at Westminster. The Bishop of Carlisle, being with him in his barge, said unto him, (wiping the sweat from his face,) ' Sir,' quoth he, *^ it is a very hot day.' ' Yea,' quoth my Lord Cardinal, ' if ye had been as well chafed as I have been within this hour, ye would say it were very hot.' " Between Westminster and the Tower, and the Tower and Greenwich, the Thames was especially the royal road. When Henry VH. willed the coronation of his Queen Elizabeth, she came from Greenwich attended by " barges freshly furnished with banners and streamers of silk." When Henry VHI. avowed his marriage with Anne Boleyn, she was brought by all the crafts of London" from Greenwich to the Tower, "trumpets, shawms, and other divers instruments, all the way playing and making great melody." The river was not only the festival highway, but the more convenient one, for kings as well as subjects. Hall tells us, "This year (1536), in December, was the Thames of London all frozen over, wherefore the king's majesty, with his beautiful spouse Queen Jane, rode through- out the city of London to Greenwich." The interesting volume of the ' Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VHL' contains item upon item of sums ])aid to water- men for waiting with barge and boat. The barge was evidently always in attendance upon the king ; and the great boat was ever busy, moving household stuff and servants from Westminster to Greenwich or to Richmond. In 1531 we have a curious evidence of the king being deej) in his ])olemical studies, in a record of ])ayment " to John, the king's bargeman, for coming twice from Greenwich to York Place with a great boat with l)()()ks for the king." We see the "great Eliza" on the Thames, in all her pomp, as Ilaleigh saw her out of his prison-window in the Tower, in 1592, as described in a letter from Arthur Gorges to Cecil: — " U]>on a report of her majesty's being at Sir (leorge (^arew\s. Sir W. Raleigh, having gazed and sighed a long time at his study-window, from whence he miglit discern tlu; barges and boats about the Blackfriars stairs, suddenly he brake out into a great distemper, and sware that his enemies had on ]mrj)ose brought her majesty thither to break his gall in sunder with Tan- talus' torment, that when she went away he might see death ixlore his eyes; with many such-like conceits. And, ius a num transported with pa.ssioii, he swore 8 LONDON. to Sir Georf^o Carcw that he would disguise himself, and get into a pair of oars to ease his mind with but a sight of the queen." In the time of Elizabeth and the First James, and onward to very recent days, the North bank of the 'rhaines was stud(U'd with the palaces of the nobles ; and each palace had its hiiuliiig-])la('e, and its private retinue of barges and wherries; and many a freight of the brave and beautiful has been borne, amidst song and merriment, from lioiise to house, to join the masque and the dance ; and many a wily statesman, inullled in his cloak, has glided along unseen in his boat to some dark conference with his ambitious neighbour. Nothing could then have been more picturesque than tlie Strand, with its broad gardens, and lofty trees, and embattled turrets and pinnacles. Upon the river itself, busy as it was, fleets of swans were ever sailing ; and they ventured unmolested into that channel which is now narrowed by vessels from every region. Paulus Jovius, who died in 1552, describing the Thames, says, This river abounds in swans, swimming in flocks ; the sight of whom, and their noise, are vastly agreeable to the fleets that meet them in their course." Shakspere must have seen this sight, when he made York com- ])are the struggle of his followers at the battle of Wakefield to a swan encoun- tering; a tidal stream : — " As I have seen a swan, With bootless labour swim against the tide, And spend her strength with over-matching waves."* But there wTre those, during three centuries, to whom the beauties of the silent highway could have offered no pleasure. The Thames was the road by which the victim of despotism came from the Tower to Westminster Hall, in most cases to return to his barge with the edge of the axe towards his face. One example is enough to suggest many painful recollections. When the Duke of Buckingham was conducted from his trial to the barge, " Sir Thomas Lovel desired him to sit on the cushions and carpet ordained for him. He said, *^Nay; for when I went to Westminster I was Duke of Buckingham ; now I am but Edward Bohun, the most caitiff" of the world.' "f But these exhibitions, frequent as they were, occupied little of the thoughts of those who were moving upon the Thames, in hundreds of boats, intent upon business or amusement. In the beginning of the seventeenth century the river was at the height of its glory as the great thorough- fore of London. Howel maintains that the river of Thames hath not her fellow, " if regard be had to those forests of masts which are perpetually upon her ; the variety of smaller wooden bottoms playing up and down ; the stately palaces that are built upon both sides of her banks so thick ; which made divers foreign am- bassadors affirm that the most glorious sight in the world, take water and land together, was to come upon a high tide from Gravesend, and shoot the bridge to Westminster. "J Of the '^smaller wooden bottoms," Stow computes that there were in his time as many as two thousand ; and he makes the very extraordinary statement, that there were forty thousand watermen upon the rolls of the com- pany, and that they could furnish twenty thousand men for the fleet. The private watermen of the court and of the nobility were doubtless included in this large number. It is evident, from the representations of a royal procession in the early times of James I., that, even on common occasions, the sovereign moved upon * Henry VI., part III. | Hall. + Londinopolis, p. 403. THE SILENT HIGHWAY. ^ the Thames with regal pomp, surrounded with many boats of guards and mu- sicians : — [Procession of James I. on the Tluimes.] The Inns of Court, too, filled as they were not only with the great practitioners of the law, but with thousands of wealthy students, gave ample employment to the watermen. Upon the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to the Palatine, in 1013, the gentlemen of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn presented a sumptuous masque at court. These maskers, with their whole train in all triumphant manner and good order, took barge at Winchester Stairs, about seven of the clock that night, and rowed to Whitehall against the tide : the chief maskers went in the king's barge royally adorned, and plenteously furnished with a great number of great wax lights, that they alone made a glorious show : other gentlemen went in the prince's barge, and certain other went in other fair barges, and were led by two admirals : besides all these, they had four lusty warlike galleys to convoy and attend them ; each barge and galley, being re])lenished with store of torch- lights, made so rare and brave a show ui)on the water, as the like was never seen upon the Thames."* When Charles was created Prince of Wales, in 1010, \\v came from Barn Elms to Whitehall in great aquatic state. In 10'25, when Hen- rietta Maria arrived in London (June 10), "the king and (puH'n in the royal barge, with many other barges of honour and thousands of boats, ])assed through London Bridge to Whitehall ; infinite numbers, besides these, in wherries, stand- ing in houses, shi])s, lighters, western barges, and on each side of the shore. "f What a contrast does this s])len(h)ur and rejoicing ])resent to the scene which a few years disclosed ! — " The harge-wlndows," (says Mr. Mead, the writer of this letter,) notwithstanding the vehement shower, were o])en : iiiid all the ])i'o|)h> * Howes' ( 'oiitiiiiuition of Slow';* Aniuil.-, p. I1M17. f Kllis's LclliTH, vol. ill. i". IIKI. 10 LONDON. Bhoutinjr amain. She ])ut out her hand, and shaked it unto them." The White- hall, to wliic-h the dauj^hter of Henri Quatre was thus conveyed, had another tale to tell in some twenty-three years ; and the long tragedy of the fated race of the Stuarts almost reaches its catastrophe, when, in a cold winter night of 1688, the wifi^ of .Jiunes II. takes a common boat at Whitehall to fly with her child to some l)lace of safety ; and when in a few weeks later the fated king steps into a barge, surrounded by Dutch guards, amidst the triumph of his enemies, and the pity eM'ii of those good men who blamed his obstinacy and rashness : " I saw him take barge," says Evelyn,— a sad sight." But let us turn from political changes to those more enduring revolutions which changes of manners produce. We have before us a goodly folio volume of some six or seven hundred pages, closely printed, and containing about seventy thousand lines, for the most part of heroic verse, entitled All the Works of John Taylor, the Water-Poet, being sixty and three in number, collected into one volume by the Author."* John Taylor, who made this collection of his tracts in 1630, was literally a Thames waterman, working daily for his bread. He says, " I have a trade, much like an alchemist, That oft-times by extraction, if I list, With sweating labour at a wooden oar I'll get the coin'd, refined, silver ore ; Which I count better than the sharping tricks Of cozening tradesmen, or rich politicks. Or any proud fool, ne'er so proud or wise, That does my needful honest trade despise." f The waterman's verses are not so ambitious as those of the Venetian gondolier, Antonio Bianchi, who wrote an epic poem in twelve cantos ; but they possess a great deal of rough vigour, and altogether open to us very curious views of London manners in the early part of the seventeenth century. Taylor is never ashamed of his trade ; and he cannot endure it to be supposed that his water- man's vocation is incompatible with the sturdiest assertion of his rights to the poetical dignity : — It chanc'd one evening, on a reedy bank, The Muses sat together in a rank ; Whilst in my boat I did by water wander, Repeating hnes of Hero and Leander : The triple three took great delight in that ; Call'd me ashore, and caus'd me sit and chat, And in the end, when all our talk was done. They gave to me a draught of Helicon, Which proved to me a blessing and a curse, To fill my pate with verse, and empt my purse." \ In one of his controversies— for he generally had some stiff quarrel on hand with witlings who looked down upon him— he says, addressing William Fennor, "the king's rhyming poet," " Thou say'st that Poetry descended is From Poverty : thou tak'st thy mark amiss. In spite of weal or woe, or want of pelf, // is a kingdom of content itself. Such a spirit would go far to make a writer whose works would be Worth looking * Taylor, after the publication of this volume, printed about fifty more tiacts, in prose and verse, f Taylors Motto, p. 50. t jbij,^ p, 55, THE SILENT HIGHWAY. 11 at two centuries after the praise or abuse of his contemporaries was forgotten ; and so homely John Taylor, amongst the race of satirists and manner-painters, is not to be despised. " The gentleman-like sculler at the Hope on the Bank- side" (as he makes Fennor call him) lived in a ])oetical atmosphere. He pro- bably had the good fortune to ferry Shakspere from Whitehall to Paris Garden ; lie boasts of his acquaintance with Ben Jonson ; and the cause of his great quarrel with Fennor is thus set forth : Be it known unto all men, that I, John Taylor, wateiTnan, did agree with William Fennor (who arrogantly and falsely entitles himself the King's Majesty's Rhyming Poet) to answer me at a trial of wit, on the 7th of October last, 1614, at the Hope Stage on the Bank-side ; and when the day came that the play should have been performed, the house being filled with a great audience who had all spent their money extraordinarily, then this companion for an ass ran away and left me for a fool, amongst thousands of critical censurers." Taylor had taken his waterman's position in a spot where there was a thriving trade. The Bankside was the landing-place to which the inhabitants of Westminster, and of the Strand, and of London west of Paul's, would daily throng in the days of the Drama's glory ; when the Globe could boast of the highest of the land amongst its visitors ; when Essex and South- ampton, out of favour at court, repaired thither to listen, unsatiated, to the lessons of the great master of philosophy ; when crowds of earnest people, not intent only upon amusement, went there to study their country's history, or learn the " humanities" in a school where the poet could dare to proclaim universal truths in an age of individual dissimulation ; and when even the idle profligate might for a moment forget his habits of self-indulgence, and be roused into symj)athy with his fellows, by the art which then triumphed, and still triumphs, over all competition. Other places of amusement were on the Bankside — the Paris [I'ulu.e Vani Miiii>, l).4i j 12 LONDON. Ciiirdcn, the Rose, and the Hope playhouses ; and in earlier times, and even when the drama had reached its highest j)oint of popular attraction, on the same spot were the " Bear-houses"— places of resort not only for the rude multitude, but to which Elizabeth carried the French ambassador to exhibit the courage of English bull-dogs. Imagine Scmthwark, the peculiar ground of summer theatres and circi, with no bridge but that of London, and we may easily understand that John Taylor sang the ])raises of the river with his whole heart : — " But noble Thames, whilst I can hold a pen, I will divulge thy glory unto men : Thou in the morning, when my coin is scant, Before the evening doth supply my want." * But the empire of the watermen was destined to be invaded ; and its enemies approached to its conquest, after the Tartarian fashion, with mighty chariots crowded with multitudes. Taylor was not slow to complain of this change. In his * Thief,' published in 1622, he tells us that, *' When Queen Elizabeth came to the crown, A coach in England then was. scarcely known ;" and he adds, " 'tis not fit" that " Fulsome madams, and new scurvy squires, Should jolt the streets at pomp, at their desires. Like great triumphant Tamburlaines, each day, Drawn with the pamper'd jades of Belgia, That almost all the streets are chok'd outright, Where men can hardly pass, from morn till night. Whilst watermen want w ork." In a prose tract, published in the following year, Taylor goes forth to the attack upon "coaches" with great vehemence, but with a conviction that his warfare will not be successful : " I do not inveigh against any coaches that belong to persons of worth or quality, but only against the caterpillar swarm of hirelings. They have undone my poor trade, whereof I am a member ; and though I look for no reformation, yet I expect the benefit of an old proverb, ' Give the losers leave to speak.' "f He maintains that " this infernal swarm of trade-spillers (coaches) have so overrun the land that we can get no living upon the Avater ; for I dare truly affirm that every day in any term, especially if the court be at Whitehall, they do rob us of our livings, and carry five hundred sixty fares daily from us." This is a very exact computation, formed perhaps upon personal enumeration of the number of hired coaches passing to Westminster. He natu- rally enough contrasts the quiet of his own highway with the turmoil of the land- thoroughfare : " I pray you look into the streets, and the chambers or lodgings in Fleet Street or the Strand, how they are pestered with them (coaches), espe- cially after a mask or a play at the court, where even the very earth quakes and trembles, the casements shatter, tatter, and clatter, and such a confused, noise is made, so that a man can neither sleep, speak, hear, write, or eat his dinner or supper quiet for them." The history of this innovation we shall have to recount in a future paper. The irruption of coaches must have been as fearful a calamity to John Taylor and his fraternity in those days, as the establishment of railroads has been to postmasters and postboys in our own. These transitions diminish * Praise of Hemp-seed. f The World runs on Wheels. THE SILENT HIGHWAY. something of the pleasure with which we must ever contemplate a state of pro- gress ; but the evil is temporary and the good is permanent, and when we look back upon the past we learn to estimate the evil and the good upon broad prin- ciples. Half-a-century hence, a London without railroads, that inns and stages might be maintained, would appear as ludicrous a notion as that of a London without carriages, that John Taylor might row his wherry in prosperity, glad- dened every day by the smiles of ladies, whose ancient lodgings were near St. Katharine's, the Bankside, Lambeth Marsh, Westminster, Whitefryars, Cole- harbor, or any other place near the Thames, who were wont to take a boat and air themselves upon the water," — and not have to complain that "every Gill Turntripc, Mistress Fumkins, Madam Polecat, and my Lady Trash, Froth the Tapster, Bill the Tailor, Lavender the Broker, Whiff the Tobacco-seller, with their companion trugs, must be coach'd to Saint Alban's, Burntwood, Hockley-in-the- hole, Croydon, Windsor, Uxbridge, and many other places."* Peace be to honest John Taylor. He was the prince of scullers ; for he rowed in a wherry " that had endured near four years' pilgrimage," from London to York, on one occasion ; made what he calls " a discovery by sea from London to Salisbury," on another voyage ; and passed, " in a sculler's boat," from London to Hereford, on a third adventure. He never bated " one jot of heart or hope," and yet the coaches, and other evil accidents, drove him from his waterman's trade, and he finished his eccentric career as a victualler at Oxford, writing against sectaries and schismatics, and filling bumpers to prerogative, on to a good old age. The revolutions of half-a-ccntury made wonderful changes in the aspect of the Thames. The Restoration found the famous old theatres swept away, and the ancient mansions towards the east invaded by the traders. Wharfs took the place of trim gardens ; and if the nobleman still kept his state-boat, the dirty coal-barge was anchored by its side. D'Avenant has given a description of this state of things, which he puts into the mouth of a Frenchman : — "You would think me a malicious traveller if I should still gaze on your mis- shapen streets and take no notice of the beauty of your river ; therefore I will pass the importunate noise of j our watermen (who snatch at fares as if they were to catch prisoners, ]>lying the gentry so uncivilly, as if they never had rowed any other passengers but bear-wards), and now ste]) into one of your peascod-boats, whose tilts are not so sumptuous as the roofs o{ gondolas, nor, when you are within, are you at the case of chaise a hras. The commodity and trade of your river belongs to yourselves; but give a stranger leave to share in the j)leasure of it, which will hardly be in the prospect or freedom of air ; unless ])rospect, consisting of variety, be made up with here a j)alace, there a wood-yard, here a garden, there a brewhouse ; here dwells a lord, there a dyer, and between both duomo comune. If freedom of air be inferred in the liberty of the subject, where every ])rivate man hath authority, for his own ])rofit, to smoke uj) a magistrate, then the air of your Thames is open cncmgh, because 'tis equally free."t It is easy to perceive that during the ])r()gress of these changes — all indicating the advance of the middle classes, and the general extension of public accommo- dation and individual comfort — the river was every day becoming less and less a general highway for j)assengers. The streets from Westminster to St. Paul's * Th.r WnrM riiiu (.n WIutIh, Wurkg, j.. T,\H. \ Kiiti rf.'iiiiiiinil at Iliitlatul Houw, D' Avciuitit's Works, I(i7.'{, p. .S.')2. 14 LONDON. wvro y)avod, after a fashion ; the foot-passenger could make his way, though with some (hmger and difficulty ; and the coach, though sometimes stuck in a hole, and sometimes rudely jostled by the brewer's cart, did progress through the Strand and Holborn. But the time was approaching when the great capital would find out that one bridge was somewhat insufficient, and that ferries and wherries were uncertain and inconvenient modes of passage from one shore to another. West- minster Bridge was finished about 1750. In sixty or seventy years later, London could number six bridges, the noblest structures of the modern world. Alas, for the watermen ! They were a cheerful race, and Dogget did a wise thing when he endowed the river with his annual coat and badge. But they have gradually dwindled— and where are they now ? They are not even wanted for the small commerce of the Thames. Steam-vessels bring every possible variety of lading u]) the river, where formerly the little hoys had their share of a coasting- trade ; and the market-cart has entirely appropriated to itself the vegetable burthens of Co vent-garden. Steele has given us a lively description of a boat-trip from Richmond in an early summer-morning, when he "fell in with a fleet of gardeners." Nothing remarkable happened in our voyage ; but I landed with ten sail of apricock-boats at Strand bridge, after having put in at Nine Elms, and taken in melons."* Things are changed. Howcl, amongst his enumeration of the attractions of the city, says, " What variety of bowling-alleys there are !" And when the idler was tired of this sport, and would turn his back even upon shuffle-board and cock-fighting, he had no- thing to do but to step down to Queenhithe or the Temple, and have an afternoon of such recreation as can now only be found at a distance of five miles from Lon- don Bridge. " Go to the river," continues Howel ; "what a pleasure it is to go thereon in the summer-time, in boat or barge ! or to go a floundering among the fishermen !" Imagine a waterman, in these our days of his decay, tired of wait- ing for a fare at Westminster, strike out into the mid-stream with his draw-net ! What a hooting would there be from Blackwall to Chelsea ! Or conceive an angler, stuck under one of the piers of Waterloo Bridge, patiently expecting to be rewarded with a salmon, or at least a barbel. Yet such things were a century ago. There are minute regulations of the " Company of Free Fishermen" to be observed in the western parts of the Thames, which clearly show that the pre- servation of the fish, even in the highway between London and Westminster, was a matter of importance ; and very stringent, therefore, are the restrictions against using eel-spears, and wheels, and "angle-rods with more than two hooks." f There is a distinct provision that fishermen were not to come nearer London Bridge than the Old Swan on the north bank, and St. Mary Overies on the south. Especially was enactment made that no person should " bend over any net, during the time of flood, whereby both salmons, and other kind of fish, may be hindered from swimming upwards." Woe for the anglers! The salmons and the swans have both quitted the bills of mortality ; and they are gone where there are clear runnels, and pebbly bottoms, and quiet nooks under shadowing osiers, and where the water-lily spreads its broad leaf and its snowy flower, and the sewer empties not itself to pollute every tide, and the never-ceasing din of human life is heard not, and the paddle of the steam-boat dashes no wave upon the shore. Spectator, No. 404. f Stow's London, book v. THE SILENT HIGHWAY. 15 We have seen a Frenchman's description of our Thames as a highway ; and it may be well to look at the same author's picture, in the character of an English- man, of the Seine, and its conveyances : — " I find your boats much after the pleasant shape of those at common ferries ; where your hastelier is not so turbulently active as our watermen, but rather (his fare being two brass liards) stands as sullen as an old Dutch skipper after ship- wreck, and will have me attend till the rest of the herd make up his freight ; passing in droves like cattle ; embroidered and perfumed, with carters and crochetevTS ; all standing during the voyage, as if we were ready to land as soon as we put from the shore ; and with his long pole gives us a tedious waft, as if he were all the while poching for eels. We neither descend by stairs when we come in, nor ascend when we go out, but crawl through the mud like cray-fish, or anglers in a new plantation." * London, at all periods, could exhibit better accommoda- tion than this ; though D'Avenant's Frenchman complains of the landing at " Puddledock." But we select the description, to contrast the Parisian passage- boat of 1660 with the London steamer of 1841. Our readers will kindly ac- company us on a quarter of an hour's voyage from the Shades Pier to Hungerford Market. We have stood for a few minutes on the eastern side of London Bridge, looking upon that sight which arrests even the dullest imagination — mast upon mast, stretching farther than the eye can reach, the individual objects constantly shifting, but the aggregate ever the same. We pass to the western side, and descend the steps of the bridge. We are in a narrow and dirty street, and we look up to the magnificent land-arch which crosses it. A turn to the left brings us to the river. A bell is ringing ; we pass through a toll-gate, paying four-pence, and in a few seconds are on board one of the little steam-boats, bearing the poetical name of some flower, or planet, or precious gem. As the hand of the clock upon the pier aj)proaches to one of the four divisions of the hour, the boat prepares to start. The pilot goes to the helm ; the broad plank over which the passengers have passed into the boat is removed ; the cable by which it is attached to the pier, or to some other boat, is cast off. The steam is up. For a minute we ap])ear as if we were passing down the river ; but, threading its way through a dozen other steam-winged vessels, the boat darts towards the Surrey shore ; and her ])r()w is breasting the ebbing tide. What a gorgeous scene is now before us ! The evening sun is painting the waters with glancing flames ; the cross upon the summit of that mighty dome of St. Paul's shines like another sun ; churches, warehouses, steam-chimneys, shot-towers, wharfs, bridges — the noblest and the humblest things — all are ])ictures(iue ; and the eye, looking upon the mass, sees nothing of that meanness with which our Thames banks have been re])roached. In truth, this juxta])()siti()n of the magnificent and the common fills the mind with as much food for tliouj^ht as if from London Bridy^e to Westminster tlu're was one splendid (juay, curtaining the sheds, and coal-barges, and time-worn landings which meet us at every glance. The ceaseless activity with which these objects are associated renders them even se])arately interesting. We see the goings-on of that enormous traffic which makes London what it is ; and whilst we rush under the mighty arches of the iron bridge, and behold another, and another, • Kjitcrtaiiiniciit nt llutliiml House, p. .'}.'>(). 16 LONDON. and another spanning the river, looking as vast and solid as if they defied time and the cleinonts ; and also see the wharfs on the one bank, although the light be waning, still populous and busy, — and the foundries, and glass-houses, and print- ing-oflices, on the other bank, still sending out their dense smoke, — we know that without this never-tiring energy, disagreeable as are some of its outward forms, the splendour which is around us could not have been. But the boat stops. Without bustle, some twenty passengers leave us at Blackfriars Bridge, and as many come on board. The operation is finished in a minute or two. We are again on our way. We still see the admixture of the beautiful and the mean, but in another form. The dirty Whitcfriars is the neighbour of the trim Temple. Praised be the venerable Law which has left us one green spot, where trees still grow by our river-side, and which still preserves some relics of the days that are gone ! Another bridge, perhaps the noblest, is again passed ; and the turrets and pinnacles of Westminster are spread before us, with the smart modern mansions that have succeeded the old palatial grandeur of the seventeenth century. The sight is not displeasing, when we reflect that the ground upon which once stood some dozen vast piles, half house and half fortress, is now covered with hundreds of moderate-sized dwellings, filled with comforts and even luxuries unknown to the days of rushes and tapestry, into whose true sanctuaries no force can intrude, and where, if there be peace within, there is no danger of happiness being dis- turbed by violence without. But we are at Hunger ford- wharf. The greater portion of the freight is discharged, ourselves amongst the number. The boat darts through Westminster Bridge, and farther onward to Vauxhall ; and in ano- ther hour some of its passengers are miles on the road to Southampton. We are in the Strand as the gas-lights are 'peeping ; and we are thinking of what the Strand is, and what it was. [London and Westminster Steamers— Ilungorford Stairs,] [" The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown'd.*'] II.— CLEAN YOUR HONOUR'S SHOES. In one of the many courts on the north side of Fleet Street, might be seen, somewhere about the year 1820, the last of the shoe-blacks. One would think that he deemed himself dedicated to his profession by Nature, for he was a Negro. At the earliest dawn he crept forth from his neighbouring lodging, and planted his tripod on the quiet pavement, where he patiently stood till noon was past. He was a short, large-headed, son of Africa, subject, as it would appear, to considerable variations of spirits, alternating between depression and excitement, as the gains of the day presented to him the chance of having a few ])ence to recreate himself, beyond what he should carry home to his wife and children. For he had a wife and children, this last representative of a falling trade ; and two or three little woolly-headed decrottenrs nestled around him when he was idle, or assisted in taking off the roughest of the dirt when he had more than one client. He watched, with a melancholy eye, the gradual improvement of the streets; for during some twenty or thirty years he had beheld all the world combining to ruin him. He saw the foot-pavements widening ; the large flag-stones carefully laid down ; the loose and broken piece, which discharged a slushy shower on the unwary foot, instantly removed : he saw the kennels diligently cleansed, and the drains widened: he saw experiment upon exy)eriment made in the re])air of the carriage-way, and the holes, which were to him as the "old familiar faces" which he loved, filled up with a haste that a])pearcd quite unnecessary, if not insulting. One solitary country shopkeejXT, who had come to London once a year during a long life, clung to our sable friend ; fur he was the only one of the fraternity that he could find remaining, in his walk from (/haring Cross to Cheapsidc. The summer's morning when that good man planted his foot on the three- legged stool, and desired him cuieiiilly to turn back his brown gaiters, and asked c 18 LONDON. him how trade went with him, and shook his head when he learned that it was very bad, and they both agreed that new-fangled ways were the ruin of the country— that was a joyful occasion to him, for he felt that he was not quite deserted. He did not continue long to struggle with the capricious world. " One morn we miss'd him on th' accustom'd standi He retired into the workhouse ; and his boys, having a keener eye than their father to the wants of the community, took uj) the trade which he most hated, and aj)])lied themselves to the diligent removal of the mud in an earlier stage of its acc umulation— they swept crossings, instead of cleaning shoes. The last of the Shoe-blacks belongs to history. He was one of the living monuments of old London ; he was a link between three or four generations. The stand which he purchased in Bolt Court (in the wonderful resemblance of external appearance between all these Fleet Street courts, we cannot be sure that it was Bolt Court) had been handed down from one successor to another, with as absolute a line of customers as Child's Banking-house. He belonged to a trade which has its literary memorials. In 1754, the polite Chesterfield, and the witty Walpole, felt it no degradation to the work over which they presided that it should be jocose about his fraternity, and hold that his profession was more dignified than that of the author : " Far be it from me, or any of my brother authors, to intend lowering the dignity of the gentlemen trading in black ball, by naming them with ourselves : we are extremely sensible of the great distance there is between us : and it is with envy that we look up to the occupation of shoe-cleaning, while we lament the severity of our fortune, in being sentenced to the drudgery of a less respectable employment. But while we are unhappily excluded from the stool and brush, it is surely a very hard case that the contempt of the world should pursue us, only because we are unfortunate."* Gay makes the black youth" — his mythological descent from the goddess of mud, and his importance in a muddy city — the subject of the longest episode in his amusing Trivia. The shoe-boy's mother thus addresses him : " Go thrive : at some frequented corner stand ; This brush I give thee, grasp it in thy hand ; Temper the foot within this vase of oil, And let the little tripod aid thy toil ; On this methinks I see the walking crew, At thy request, support the miry shoe ; The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown'd. And in thy pocket gingling halfpence sound. The goddess plunges swift beneath the flood. And dashes all around her showers of mud : The youth straight chose his post ; the labour ply'd Where branching streets from Charing Cross divide ; His treble voice resounds along the Mews, And Whitehall echoes—' Clean your Honour's shoes ! ' " The cry is no more heard. The pavements of Whitehall are more evenly laid than the ancient marble courts of York Place, where Wolsey held his state, and Henry revelled ; and they are far cleaner, even in the most inauspicious weather, * The World, No. 57. CLEAN YOUR HONOUR'S SHOES. 19 than the old floor beneath the rushes. Broad as the footways are — as the broadest of the entire original streets — the mightiest of paving stones is not large enough for the comforts of the walker ; and a pavement without a joint is sought for in the new concrete of asphaltum. Where the streets which run olF from the great thoroughfares are narrow, the trottoir is widened at the expense of the carriage- road ; and one cart only can pass at a time, so that we walk fearless of wheels. If we would cross a road, there is a public servant, ever assiduous, because the measure of his usefulness is that of his reward, who removes every particle of dirt from before our steps. No filth encumbers the kennels ; no spout discharges the shower in a torrent from the house-top. We pass quietly onwards from the Horse Guards to the India House without being jostled off the curb-stone, though we have no protecting posts to sustain us; and we perceive why the last of the shoe-blacks vanished from our view about the time when we first noticed his active brothers at every corner of Paris — a city then somewhat more filthy than the London of the days of Anne. He who would see London well must be a pedestrian. Gay, who has left us the most exact as well as the most lively picture of the external London of a hundred and twenty years ago, is enthusiastic in his preference for walking : " Let others in the jolting coach confide, Or in the leaky boat the Thames divide, Or, box'd within the chair, contemn the street, And trust their safety to another's feet: Still let me walk." But what a walk has he described ! He sets out, as what sensible man would not, with his feet protected with firm, well-hammer'd soles;" but if the shoe be too big, " Each stone will wrench th' unwary step aside.'* This, we see, is a London without trottoirs. The middle of a paved street was generally occupied with the channel ; and the sides of the carriage-way were full of absolute holes, where the ricketty coach was often stuck as in a quagmire. Some of the leading streets, even to the time of George II., were almost as im- passable as the avenues of a new American town. The only road to the Houses of Parliament before 1750 was through King Street and Union Street, " which were in so miserable a state, that fagots were thrown into the ruts on the days on which the King went to Parliament, to render the passage of the state-coach more easy." * The present Saint Margaret's Street was formed out of a thorough- fare known as Saint Margaret's Lane, which was so narrow that " j)ales were obliged to be placed, four feet high, between the foot-])ath and coach-road, to preserve the passengers from injury, and from being covered with the mud which was splashed on all sides in abundance." f The j>ales here ])reserve(l the pas- sengers more effectually than the ])ost8 of other thoroughfares. These posts, in the ])rincipal avenues, constituted the only distinction between the foot-way and carriage-way ; for the space within the j)osts was as uneven as the space without. This inner 8])acc was sometimes so narrow that only one ])cr8on could pass at a time; and hence those contests for the wall that filled the streets with the vocife- rations of anger, and the din of assaulting sticks, and sometimes the clash of • Smitirs Wfstmiiister, j». 2(»1, t M. p. 2(J2. C 2 20 LONDON. linked steel. Dr. Johnson (]escril)cs how those quarrels were common when he liist eaiiu" ti) London ; and how at length things were better ordered. But the change must in great part be imputed to the gradual improvement of the streets. In Gay's time there was no safety but within the posts. " Though expedition bids, yet never stray Where no ranged posts defend the rugged way ; Here laden carts with thundering waggons meet, Wheels clash with wheels, and bar the narrow street." In wet and gusty weather the unhappy walker heard the crazy signs swinging over his head, as Gulliver describes the Red Lion of Brentford. The spouts of every house were streaming at his feet, or drenching his laced hat and his pow- dered wig with unpitying torrents. At every step some bulk or shop-projection narrowed the narrow road, and drove him against the coach-wheels. The chair- men, if there was room to pass, occupied all the space between the wall and the ])osts. The hooded maid" came sometimes gingerly along, with pattens and umbrella (then exclusively used by women), and of courtesy he must yield the wall. The small-coal man, and the sweep, and the barber, took the wall, in assertion of their clothes-soiling prerogative ; and the bully thrust him, or was himself thrust, "to the muddy kennel's side." The great rule for the pedes- trian was, — " Ever be watchful to maintain the wall." The dignity of the wall, and its inconveniences, were as old as the time of James and Charles. Donne, in his first Satire, describes the difficulties of one who took the wall : — " Now we are in the street ; he first of all, Improvidently proud, creeps to the wall, And so, imprisoned and hemmed in by me, Sells for a little state his liberty." The streets, in the good old times, often presented obstructions to the pedes- trian which appear to us like the wonders of some unknown region. In the more recent unhappy days of public executions the wayfarer passed up Ludgate Hill with an eye averted from the Old Bailey ; for there, as Monday morning came, duly hung some three, and it may be six, unhappy victims of a merciless code, judicially murdered according to our better notions. Then was the rush to see the horrid sight, and the dense crowd pouring aAvay from it ; and the pickpocket active under the gallows ; and the business of life interrupted for a quarter of an hour, with little emotion even amongst the steady walkers who heeded not the spectacle : it was a thing of course. And so was the pillory in earlier times. Gay says nothing of the feelings of the passer-on ; he had only to take care of his clothes : " Where, elevated o'er the gaping crowd, Clasp'd in the board the perjur'd head is bow'd, Betimes retreat ; here, thick as hailstones pour, Turnips and half-hatch'd eggs, a mingled shower. Among the rabble rain : some random throw May with the trickling yolk thy cheek o'erflow." People used to talk of these things as coolly as Garrard wrote to Lord Straflford of them: "No mercy showed to Prynne ; he stood in the pillory, and lost his first ear in a pillory in the palace at Westminster in full term ; his other in Cheap- CLEAN YOUR HONOUR'S SHOES. 21 side, where, while he stood, his volumes were burnt under his nose, which had almost suffocated him."* The cruelty is not mitigated by the subsequent account of Garrard, that Mr. Prynne " hath got his ears sewed on, that they grow again, as before, to his head."t If the mob round the ])illory was safely passed, there was another mob often to be encountered. Rushing along Cheapside, or Covent Garden, or by the Maypole in the Strand, came the foot-ball players. It is scarcely conceivable, when London had settled into civilization, little more than a century ago, — when we had our famed Augustan age of Addisons and Popes, — when laced coats, and flowing wigs, and silver buckles, ventured into the streets, and the beau prided himself on " The nice conduct of a clouded cane,—" that the great thoroughfares through which men now move, "intent on high designs," should be a field for foot-ball: " The prentice quits his shop to join the crew ; Increasing crowds the flying game pursue." X This is no poetical fiction. It was the same immediately after the Restoration. D'Avenant's Frenchman thus complains of the streets of London : " I would now make a safe retreat, but that methinks I am stopped by one of [root-IVill in til.- Stiand.] your heroic games, called foot-ball; which I conceive (under your favour) not very conveniently civil in the streets; ('s])eciallv in such irr(»gular and narrow roads * .StralTonrn L< !t. r^, vi.l. i. y. 2(11. t M- !'• '-i'"'- i Tiivi.i. 22 LONDON. as Crookcd-lanc. Yet it argues your courage, much like your military pastime of throwing at cocks. But your mettle would be more magnified (since you have long allowed those two valiant exercises in the streets) to draw your archers from Finsbury, and, during high market, let them shoot at butts in Cheapside."* It was' the same in the days of Elizabeth. To this game went the sturdy apprentices, with all the train of idlers in a motley population; and when their bh)od was uj), as it generally was in this exercise, which Stubbes calls '^a bloody and murthering practice, rather than a fellowly sport or pastime," they had little heed to the passengers in the streets, whether there was passing by " a velvet justice with a long Great train of blue-coats, twelve or fourteen strong ; " t or a gentle lady on her palfrey, wearing her "visor made of velvet."t The courtier, described in Hall, had an awful chance to save his " perewinke" in such an encounter; when with his " bonnet vail' d," according to the "courtesies" of his time, "Travelling along in London way," he has to recover his "auburn locks" from the "ditch" that crosses the thorough- fare. The days we are noticing were not those of pedestrians. The '^'^ red-heel'd shoes" of the time of Anne were as little suited for walking, as the "pantofles" of Elizabeth, " whereof some be of white leather, some of black, and some of red ; some of black velvet, some of white, some of red, some of green, rayed, carved, cut, and stitched all over with silk, and laid on with gold, silver, and such like." So Stubbes describes the "corked shoes" of his day; and he adds, what seems very apparent, " to go abroad in them as they are now used altogether, is rather a let or hindrance to a man than otherwise. "§ These fine shoes belonged to the transition state between the horse and the coach; when men were becoming " effeminate" in the use of the new vehicles, which Ave have seen the Water-Poet denounced; and the highways of London were not quite suited, to the walker. Shoes such as those are ridiculed by Stubbes as "uneasy to go in;" and he adds, " they exagerate a mountain of mire, and gather a heap of clay and baggage together." In asking our readers to look back to the period when London was without coaches — when no sound of wheels was heard but that of the cart, labouring through the rutty ways, with its load of fire- wood, or beer, or perhaps the king's pots and pans travelling from Westminster to Greenwich — we ask them to exer- cise a considerable power of imagination. Yet London had no coaches till late in the reign of Elizabeth; and they can scarcely be said to have come into general use till the accession of James. Those who were called by business or pleasure to travel long distances in London, which could not be easily reached by water-conveyance, rode on horses. For several centuries the rich citizens and the courtiers were equestrians. All the records of early pageantry tell us of the magnificence of horsemen. Froissart saw the coronation of Henry IV., and he thus describes the progress of the triumphant Bolingbroke through the city :— " And * Entertainment at Rutland House. f Donne. + Stubbes. § Anatomy of Abuses. CLEAN YOUR HONOUR'S SHOES. 23 after dinner the duke departed from the Tower to Westminster, and rode all the way bareheaded ; and about his neck the livery of France. He was accompanied with the prince his son, and six dukes, six earls, and eighteen barons, and in all, knights and squires, nine hundred horse. Then the king had on a short coat of cloth of gold, after the manner of Almayne, and he was mounted on a white courser, and the garter on his left leg. Thus the duke rode through London with a great number of lords, every lord's servant in their master's livery ; all the burgesses and Lombard merchants in London, and every craft with their livery and device. Thus he was conveyed to Westminster. He was in number six thousand horsed* The old English chroniclers revel in these descriptions. They paint for us, in the most vivid colours, the entry into London of the conqueror of Agincourt ; they are most circumstantial in their relations of the welcome of his unhappy son, after the boy had been crowned at Paris, with the king riding amidst flowing conduits, and artificial trees and flowers, and virgins making "heavenly melody," and bishops "in pontificalibus ;" and having made his oblations at the cathedral, "he took again his steed at the west door of Paul's, and so rode forth to West- [From an illumination, Harl. MS3 , 2278. — Temp. Henry VI,] minster. "t By the ancient " order of crowning the kings and queens of England," it is prescribed that, "the day before the coronation, the king should come from the Tower of London to his palace at Westminster, through the midst of the city, mounted on a horse, handsomely habited, and bare-headed, in the sight of all the peoj)le."+ The citizens were familiar with these sj)lendid ecpiestrian ])r()- cessions, from the earliest times to the era of coaches ; and they hung their wooden houses with gay ta])estry, and their wives and daughters sate in tlieir most costly dresses in the balconies, and shouts rent the air, and they forgot for a short time that there was little security for life or property against the des])()t of the hour. They ])layed at these jiageants, as they still ])lay, up(m a smaller scale themselves; and the Lord Mayor's horse and henchmen were seen on all solemn occasions of t Fabynn. * \A.m\ nri.lc. ll.irl. M is.-.-llany. t Taylor.* 20 LONDON. lc<,nslato(l atrainst their " excessive use ;" it was equally in vain that the citizens and citizens' wives who aspired to ride in them, were ridiculed by the wits and hooted by the mob. As in the diffusion of every other convenience or luxury introduced by the rich, the distinction of riding in a coach soon ceased to be a distinction. The ])roud Duke of Buckingham seeing that coaches with two horses were used by all, and that the nobility had only the exclusive honour of four liorscs, set up a coach with six horses ; and then " the stout Earl of Northuniberhmd" established one with eight horses.* Massinger, in "The City Madam," exhibits Anne Frugal demanding of her courtly admirer — " My caroch Dftiwn by six Flanders niares, my coachman, groom, Postillion, and footmen." The high-born and the wealthy soon found that those who had been long accus- tomed to trudge through the miry streets, or on rare occasions to bestride an ambling nag, would make a ready way with money to appropriate the new luxury to themselves. Coaches soon came to be hired. They were to be found in the suburban districts and in inns within the town. Taylor (he writes in 1623) says, " I have heard of a gentlewoman who sent her man to Smithfield from Charing Cross, to hire a coach to carry her to Whitehall ; another did the like from Ludgate-hill, to be carried to see a play at the Blackfriars." He imputes this anxiety for the accommodation of a coach to the pride of the good people, and he was probably right. He gives us a ludicrous example of the extent of this passion in the case of " two leash of oyster- wives," who " hired a coach to carry them to the green-goose fair at Stratford-the-Bow ; and as they were hurried betwixt Aldgate and Mile-end, they were so be-madam'd, be-mistress'd, and ladyfied by the beggars, that the foolish women began to swell with a proud supposition or imaginary greatness, and gave all their money to the mendicanting canters."! The rich visitors who came to London from the country were great employers of coaches ; and Taylor tells us that the " Proclamation concerning the retiring of the gentry out of the city into their countries" somewhat ''cleared the streets of these way-stopping whirligigs ; for a man now might walk without bidding Stand iip, ho ! by a fellow that can scarcely either go or stand himself J" It is easy to conceive that in those days of ill-paved and narrow streets the coaches must have been a great impediment to the goings-on of London business. Our Water-Poet is alive to all these inconveniences : " Butchers cannot pass with their cattle for them ; market folks, which bring provision of victuals to the city, are stopped, stayed, and hindered; carts or wains, with their necessary wares, are debarred and letted ; the milk-maid's ware is often spilt in the dirt ;" and then he describes how the proud mistresses, sitting in their "hell-cart" (Evelyn tells us this was the Londoner's name for a coach long after), ride grinning and deriding at the people " crowded and shrouded up against stalls and shops." D'Avenant, some forty or fifty years later, notices the popular feelmg: "Master Londoner, be not so hot against coaches." But the coaches flourished, in spite of the populace. The carman might drive up against them, and the coachman, " with six nobles sitting together," might be compelled to * See Wilson's Memoirs. f World runs on Wheels, p. 239. J Id. CLEAN YOUR HONOUR S SHOES. 27 "stop, and give place to as many barrels of beer."* They flourished, too, in spite of the roads. " It is a most uneasy kind of passage in coaches on the paved streets of London, wherein men and women are so tost, tumbled, jumbled, rumbled, and crossing of kennels, dunghills, and uneven ways."f It is affirmed in a pamphlet quoted by Markland, entitled " Coach and Sedan," that in 1636 the coaches in London, the suburbs, and within four miles compass without, are reckoned to the number of six thousand and odd." It was two years before the date of this calculation that the first hackney-coach stand was established in London. Garrard thus describes it in a letter to Straf- ford : " I cannot omit to mention any new thing that comes up amongst us though never so trivial : here is one Captain Baily, he hath been a sea captain, but now lives on the land, about this city, where he tries experiments. He hath erected, according to his ability, some four hackney-coaches, put his men in livery, and appointed them to stand at the May-pole in the Strand, giving them instruc- tions at what rates to carry men into several parts of the town, where all day they may be had. Other hackney-men seeing this way, they flocked to the same place, and perform their journe3's at the same rate. So that sometimes there is twenty of them together, which disperse up and down, that they and others are to be had everywhere, as watermen are to be had by the water-side. Every- body is much pleased with it. For, whereas before coaches could not be had but at great rates, now a man may have one much cheaper^ % f I'filnre Yiinl. from Ilolhir.] Writing two niontlis after, the same rctaiU'r of news says. here is a procla- mation coining forth about the reformation of Hackney-coaches, and ordering of other coaches about London. One thousand nine hundred was tlie number of * D Avpii.int. f T.iylnr. ♦ Sfrafford's Letters, vol. i. p. 227. 28 LONDON. hiif.knoy-roachcs of London, base lean jades, unworthy to be seen in so brave a city, or to stand about a king's court." In 1635 he writes, " Here is a procla- mation coming forth, to prohibit all hackney-coaches to pass up and down in L(mdon streets; out of town they may go at pleasure as heretofore." It is per- fectly clear that the King might proclaim, and that his subjects would not hearken to him, as long as they found hackney-coaches essential to their business or plea- sure. We have an amusing example of the inefficiency of such meddling, twenty-five years after. Pepys, in his Diary of 1660, writes, " Notwithstanding this is the first day of the King's proclamation against hackney-coaches coming into the streets to stand to be hired, yet I got one to carry me home." We think we hear his cunning chuckle as he hires the coach, and laughs at the law-makers. When Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I., returned from his faithless wooing of the daughter of Philip IV., he brought with him three sedan-chairs of curious workmanship. Such a mode of conveyance was unknown to the English. They had seen the fair and the feeble carried in a box, supported by a horse before and a horse behind ; and they felt, therefore, something like what we have felt at the sight of an election rabble harnessed to the wheels of a popular candidate — they felt that men were degraded, when the favourite of James and Charles, Bucking- ham, first moved into the streets of London, borne in his sedan on men's shoulders. " Baby Charles" had presented " Steenie" with two of these luxuries of foreign growth. Wilson says, " When Buckingham came to be carried in a chair upon men's shoulders, the clamour and noise of it was so extravagant, that the people would rail on him in the streets, loathing that men should be brought to as ser- vile a condition as horses." The very year of the expedition of Charles and Buckingham to Spain, 1623, was Massinger's " Bondman" produced. Charles and the favourite returned to London early in October ; the play was first acted on the 3rd of December. It contains these lines : " 'Tis a strong-limb'd knave : My father bought him for my sister's litter. — O pride of women ! Coaches are too common ; They surfeit in the happiness of peace, And ladies think they, keep not state enough If, for their pomp and ease, they are not borne In triumph on men's shoulders." Gilchrist and GifFord think that this was an allusion to Buckingham. If so, and there can be little doubt of the matter, the vain favourite must have paraded with his new luxury, '^degrading Englishmen into slaves and beasts of burden," (as a writer of that day expresses himself,) upon the instant of his return. But the popular clamour was as ineffectual against the chairs as against the coaches. In 1634, Garrard, writing to Lord Strafford, says, " Here is also an- other project for carrying people up and down in close chairs, for the sole doing whereof Sir Sander Duncombe, a traveller, now a pensioner, hath obtained a patent from the king, and hath forty or fifty making ready for use." The coachmen and the chairmen soon got up a pretty quarrel; and in 1636 we find published the amusing tract, entitled - Coach and Sedan, pleasantly disputing for place and precedence." The title exhibits to us the form of the sedan, with its bearers touting for custom— and we have a description of the convey- ance and its men, which, with the engraving which accompanies it, clearly enough shows that the chairmen no longer bore the ^'litter" on their shoulders, palanquin- CLEAN YOUR HONOUR S SHOES. 29 fashion, but that they quickly adopted the mode of carrying which has lasted till our own day, however the form of the thing carried has changed. We have now the coach and the chair fairly launched into the streets of Lon- don, of which they held joint possession for more than a century and a half. We have no doubt that the chair was a most flourishing^ invention. The state of the pavement till the middle of the last cen- tury must have rendered carriage con- veyance anything rather than safe and pleasant. Dulaure tells us that before the time of Louis XIV. the streets of Paris were so narrow, particularly in the heart of the town, that carriages could not penetrate into them.* D'Avenant's pic- ture of London, before the fire, is not much more satisfactory : Sure your an- cestors contrived your narrow streets in the days of wheel-barrows, before those greater engines, carts, were invented. Is your climate so hot that as you walk you need umbrellas of tiles to intercept the sun ? or are your shambles so empty that you are afraid to take in fresh air, lest it should sharpen your stomachs ? Oh, the goodly landskip of Old Fish Street ! which, had it not had the ill luck to be crooked, was narrow enough to have been your founder's perspective : and where the garrets (perhaps not for want of architecture, but through abundance of amity) are so made, that opposite neighbours may shake hands without stirring from home." The chair had a better chance than the coach in such a state of affairs. In the pictures of coaches of the time of Elizabeth, the driver sits on a bar, or narrow chair, very low behind the horses. In those of Charles I. he sometimes drives in this way, and sometimes rides as a postillion. But the hackney-coachman after the Restoration is a ])ersonage with a short whip and s])urs ; he has been compelled to mount one of his horses, that he may more effectually manage his })rogress through the narrow streets. His coach, too, is a small affair. D' Avenant describes the coaches as " un- easily hung, and so narrow, that I took them for sedans on wheels." As the streets were widened, after the fire, the coachman was restored to the dignity of a seat on the carriage; for, in the times of William III. and Anne, we invariably find him sitting on a box. This was a thing for use and not for finery. Here, or in a leather pouch appended to it, the careful man carried a hanmier, ])in- cers, nails, ropes, and other ajipliances in case of need; and the hammer-oXoih. was devised to conceal these ne- cessary but unsightly remedies for broken wheels and shivered panels. The skill of this worthy artist in the way of reparation would not rust for want of use. Gay has left us two vivid j)ictures of the common accidents of the days of Anne. The carman was the terror of coaches from the first hour of their use; and whether he * Hiatuire de Paris, tome ix., |'. 182. 30 LONDON. was the rof^iilar city carman, or bore the honour of the dustman, brewer's man, or coal-heavt'r, he was ever the same vociferous and reckless enemy of the more aristocratic coachman. Tvo seen a beau, in some ill-fated hour, When o'er the stones chok'd kennels swell the shower, In gilded chariot loll ; he with disdain Views spatter'd passengers all drench'd in rain. With mud fill'd high, the rumbling cart draws near ; — Now rule thy prancing steeds, iac'd charioteer : 'J'hc dustman lashes on with spiteful rage, His ponderous spokes thy painted wheel engage; Crush 'd is thy pride, down falls the shrieking beau. The slabby pavement crystal fragments strew ; Black floods of mire th' embroider'd coat disgrace, And mud enwraps the honours of his face," The dangers of opened vaults, and of mighty holes in the paving, fenced round with no protecting rail, and illuminated only by a glimmering rushlight in a dark street, seem to belong altogether to some barbaric region which never could have been London: — " Where a dim gleam the paly lantern throws O'er the mid pavement, heapy rubbish grows, Or arched vaults their gaping jaws extend. Or the dark caves to common-shores descend ; Oft by the winds extinct the signal lies, Or smother'd in the glimmering socket dies PJre night has half roll'd round her ebon throne ; In the wide gulf the shatter'd coach overthrown Sinks with the snorting steeds ; the reins are broke, And from the crackling axle flies the spoke." But long after Gay's time the carmen and the pavement made havoc with coaches. If we open Hogarth, the great painter of manners shows us the vehicular dangers of his age. Bonfires in the streets on rejoicing nights, with the " Flying-coach," that went five miles an hour, overturned into the flames;* the four lawyers getting out of a hackney-coach that has come in collision with a carman, while the brewer's man rides upon his shaft in somniferous majesty ;t the dustman's bell, the little boy's drum, the knife-grinder's wheel, all in the middle of the street, to the terror of horses :^ these representations exhibit the perils that assailed the man who ventured into a coach. The chair was no doubt safer, but it had its inconveniences. Swift describes the unhappy condition of a fop during a City shower — " Box'd in a chair the beau impatient sits, While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits ; And ever and anon with frightful din The leather sounds ;— he trembles from within !" The chairmen were very absolute fellows. They crowded round the tavern- doors, waiting for shilling customers ; but they did not hesitate to set down their box when a convenient occasion offered for the recreation of a foaming mug.§ They were for the most part sturdy Milesians, revelling, if they belonged to the aristocracy, in all the finery of embroidered coats and epaulettes, and cocked hats and feathers. If they were hackney-chairmen they asserted their power of the strong arm, and were often daring enough as a body to influence the fate of * Night. f Second Stage of Cruelty. + Enraged Musician. ^ Hogarth's Beer Street. CLEAN YOUR HONOUR S SHOES. 31 Westminster and Middlesex elections, in the terror which they produced with fist and bludgeon. But they are gone. No Belinda now may be proud of " Two pages and a chair." They glide not amongst the chariot-wheels at levee or drawing-room. The clubs want them not. They have retired to Bath and Oxford. We believe there is one chair still lingering about May Fair ; but the chairmen must be starving. The Society of Antiquaries ought to buy the relic. Walpole has somewhere a complaint of the increase of London, that it would be soon impossible for the chairmen to perform their functions. This sounds very like the notion that the noble and the rich could ride in nothing but chairs. These were the days when the private chair had its crimson velvet cushions and damask curtains," such as Jonathan Wild recovered for the Duchess of Marl- borough, when two of his rogues, in the disguise of chairmen, carried away her chair from Lincoln's Inn Cha])el, while the " true men " were drinking. The town has increased beyond Walpole' s calculation, and that is, in some measure, the reason why the chairs are gone. The town did not stop in its increase to consider the chairs. But there is another reason. The rich and the high-born have wisely learned to be less exclusive than of old; and as they must now-a-days wear coats of the same fashion as humbler men, so must they ride in their own carriages, with no other perceptible difference between the carriage of the duke and his tailor than that of the blazonry. Pepys tells us of ^*^my Lady Peter- borough being in her glass-coach with the glass up, and seeing a lady pass by in a coach whom she would salute, the glass was so clear that she thought it had been open, and so ran her head through the glass."* This hints of the days when Ladies were learning to ride in glass-coaches, having just passed through the transition state of open coaches, and curtained coaches, and coaches with talc windows. How ashamed the wife of John Gilpin would have been not to have known better ! And so when everybody rode in coaches the lords and ladies set up their chairs. The times are altered. We have seen a peer in an omnibus. It is very difficult to conceive a London without an omnibus or a cabriolet. Yet who amongst us does not remember the hour when they first appeared ? For some two hundred years, those who rode in hired carriages had seen the hackney-coach passing through all its phases of dirt and discomfort; the springs growing weaker, the iron ladder " by which we ascended into its rickety cai)aciousness more steep and more fragile, the straw filthier, the cushions more redolent of dismal smells, the glasses less air-tight. But it is of little conse- quence. Nobody rides in them. The gentlemen at the " office for granting licences for carriages plying for hire in the metropolis" tell us that licences are still granted to four hundred hackney-coaches. Alas, how are the horses fed? Are the drivers living men who eat beef and drink beer? We doubt if those huge capes ever descend to receive a fare. Are they not s])ectre-coaches — coach- men still doomed to sleep upon their boxes, as the wild huntsman was doomed to a demon chase — for propitiaticm ? The same authority tells us that there are fifteen hundred cabriolets to whom licences arc granted. 1'hese we know are things of life. They rush about the streets as ra])i(l as fire-flies. They lame few, they kill fewer. They sometimes overturn us: — but their serious damage is not much. We borrowed them from the French on a fine May morning in the year * Diiiry. I(l<',7. 32 LONDON. 1 820. It is remarkable how slow we are in the adoption of a new thing ; and how we hold to it when it is once adopted. In 1813 there were eleven hundred and fifty cabriolets upon the hackney-stands of Paris— " Cabriolets de place,"* — and we had not one. Now, we have fifteen hundred of them. Our English one- horse hackney-carriages have run through every variety of form ; and have at length settled down into as comfortable vehicles as men can ride in. But we rejected them when they were proffered to us a generation or two ago. We have before us the copy of a drawing in the splendidly illustrated Pennant in the British Museum, in which we see Temj^lc Bar, with heads still blackening upon si)ikes over the arch, and beneath it a carriage of which that below is an exact representation. There is also a print without a date, giving the same delineation of the same vehicle; and this tells us that it is " the carriage of the ingenious Mr. Moore." Like many other "ingenious" persons, Mr. Moore was before his age ; and in another half-century his carriage, or something very like it, finds favour in our eyes as one of " Patent Safety." We have ridden in one of the hundred omnibuses that run from Paddington to the Bank with an elderly gentleman who told us that in his day there was only one stage from that then suburban neighbourhood to the commercial centre, and that was never filled. There are now above seven hundred omnibuses and short stages — for the most part omnibuses — in the Metropolitan District — that is, licensed to run within ten miles of the General Post Office. They carry some sixty thou- sand people daily, and receive annually in fares about three-quarters of a million sterling. The omnibus was tried about 1 800, with four horses and six wheels ; but we refused to accept it in any shape till we imported the fashion from Paris in 1830. And now then, patient reader, seeing that you have borne this introductory gossip about London locomotion, we are in a condition to With viewing of the town: " beguile j^our time, and feed your knowledge, m." * Dulaure, [Elm in St. Paul's ChunhyarJ.] III.— PAUL'S CROSS. A FEW years ago, it seems, a tree grew, but even that no longer marlis the spot, where stood of old the famous Paul's Cross, towards the eastern extremity of the vacant space on the north side of the Cathedral. The greater part of this space apY)ears to have been a burying-ground, and no doubt the chief one belonging to the City, from the most ancient times — from the erection of the first sacred edifice, whether Christian church or heathen temple, on the mount now crowned by St. Paul's, or possibly from the origin of London itself Sir Christoy)her Wren, who dug deep into all ])arts of the ground in hiying the foundations of the ])resent cathedral, discovered no indications to confirm the tradition that the site had been originally occupied by a temple of Jupiter or Diana ; the precious fragments of bucks' horns, ox-heads, and boars' tusks, that had so charmed the anticpiaries, had all disa])peared, or become transmuted, like fairy coin, into much more worthless ware — into bits of wood and shreds of pottery. But he found under the choir of the old building a jjrr.shylrrinni, or semicircular c hancel, of Roman architecture — a structure of Kentish rubble-stone, cemented with their inimitable mortar — which proved that the first Christian church had been the work of the Roman colonists; and he also clearly ascertained that the northern part of the churchyard had been a dej)ository for the dead from the Ronum and British D 34 LONDON. times. Layer upon layer, there they lay— and still lie—the successive possessors of the land; ui)i)ermost, the graves of later generations; next under them, our Saxon forefathers from the days of Ethelbert and St. Austin, some more honour- ably and securely entombed within sarcophagi formed of great upright and horizontal Hags, most embedded in cavities lined with chalk-stones— in either case the one enclosure serving for both grave and coffin; then, the Britons of the period between the departure of the Romans and the establishment of the Saxons, their dust mixed with great numbers of ivory and box-wood pins, about six inches long, the fastenings apparently of the now mouldered shrouds in which the bodies had once been wrapped; and, lowest of all, eighteen feet or more below the surface, other remains such as these last, but interspersed with fragments of Roman urns, revealing the burial-place of the colony when Romans and Britons lived and died together." * [Roman Antiquities found on the Site of Paul's Cross.] The churchyard appears to have been first enclosed, and that only in part, by Richard de Beaumeis, who was Bishop of London in the reign of Henry I. But we find no mention of the Cross till long after this time. Yet the earliest notice of it that has come down to us describes proceedings which have all the air of old usage, and, at any rate, are not likely to have originated in the age when we thus first hear of them, or in any preceding one since the Norman Conquest, although they may possibly have been then revived after having been discon- tinued from the time of that revolution. Suddenly, in the latter part of the reign of Henry III., during the struggle between the King and the barons — in the midst, we may say, of the birth-throes of English liberty — Paul's Cross rises up before us, the central object of a picture as startling to our preconceptions of the time as of the place. The field of the dead is covered with an excited living throng, an assembly of the people met to pass judgment on their civic rulers, whom the King's minister, speaking from the Cross, charges with extortion and oppression. It is the Comitia of the citizens of * Pareutalia, p. 266. PAULS CROSS. 35 London, held in their Forum, around the orator haranguing them from the Rostra. It appears that about the beginning of the year 1258, Henry, having found, or pretending to have found, in the royal wardrobe at Windsor, a roll of parchment sealed with green wax, and filled with a number of accusations against the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London, though no one could tell whence it came, commanded John Mansell, who is- called one of his Chief Justices, forthwith to summon a Folk- mote at Paul's Cross, and there to read the docu- ment to the citizens. The word is Saxon — Folk- mote, a people-meeting, as JVitenagemote is a legis- lative assembly, a meeting of wise men or counsel- lors. And the thing also was probably a relic of the old Saxon freedom, though whether now, or when LHenry ni ] first revived, if ever lost, no record tells. But the assembling of a folkmote on this occasion is not mentioned as if it were something unheard of, or even new to that time. Only one day's notice is stated to have been given : the day was the 26th of January, the morrow of the festival of St. Paul ; and when Mansell made his appearance, accompanied by the Earl of Gloucester, the other Chief Justice Henry de Bathon, and others of the King's Council, both the people and their magistrates were there to meet him. Mansell, having first ordered the charges to be read aloud, so that all might hear them, then called upon the people to inform him who those rich men were that, as asserted by the unknown accuser, had been favoured in the collection of the late tallage exacted by the king from his good subjects of the city of London ; and whether the mayor and aldermen had applied any part of the tax to their own use. The old civic chronicler, Fabian, himself an alderman, and a great venerator of his order, makes the impeached functionaries, in indignant consciousness of innocence, to have shown the boldest of fronts — in fact to have driven Mansell from the field with disgrace; and, certainly, the extortion and oppression have quite as much the look of being on the king's part as on their's. At least, if they had been fleecing their fellow- citizens of the commonalty, his majesty was clearly resolved that, by hook or by crook, he should have his share of the plunder. And first he set to work by crook, making loud profession of his regard for nothing so much as the riglits and interests of the most numerous class of his subjects, and seeking to cfTcct his despotic purpose by the aid of the most popular institution in the country, ])er- haps that he might both gain his end and damage the institution at the same time. In the course of the affair, which it does not belong to our ])resent subject to relate in detail, several other public meetings were held ])oth at Paul's Cross and in the Guildhall, at which the people were addressed by Mansell and others of the King's ministers. On one of these occasions it is insiniiated that the mul- titude which gathered around Paul's Cross did not properly deserve to be con- sidered a meeting of London citizens — of those entitled to attend a fi)lkm()te ; many strangers, or foreigners, non-freemen, and even servants or bondmen, hav- ing joined the assemblage. An irregularity this which would be a])t to occur when there was anything very interesting to be discussed or transacted at these n 2 1 3r, LONDON. popular open-air diets. In the end, after the accused aldermen, deserted by their fellow-citizens, liad been coerced or terrified into the payment of handsome sums by way of ransom or bribe, the business was settled by the calling of another folkmotc at Paul's Cross, on the day before the feast of St. Leonard, at which the kuvr himself was present, with the chief men of his court; and where such of the aldermen as had not previously made their peace were formally taken back into the royal favour, and reinstated in their offices— Henry even professing to be now satisfied that there never had been any ground for the charges made against them ! Thus the sponge, having been squeezed, was set down again, nothing the worse, in its old position, to suck up more moisture for the next occasion. But whatever may have been the amount of practical abuse, we see from this account that, in so far at least as concerned the city of London, the government of England, in the thirteenth century, was by no means either a pure despotism, or even a monarchy merely counterbalanced by an aristocracy. There was also a living and active element of democracy in the constitution, which, however unenlightened, yet required to be constantly managed and propitiated, and served at any rate to preserve the instinct of popular liberty in men's minds and hearts throughout the worst times. It may be presumed, both from the name and from the notices that have been preserved of its proceedings, that the Lon- don Folkmote was composed of the entire free commonalty of the city — of all that portion of the male inhabitants constituting what was properly called the Folk or People, as distinguished from the resident strangers or natives of other countries (the Metoikoi, as they would have been called at Athens), and also from persons in a servile state, whose condition throughout England at this date much more nearly resembled that of the slaves among the Greeks and Romans than that of those we now call servants. It was evidently not an assembly of delegates, like the Common Council of the city at the present day ; but a body like that now called a Common Hall, or assembly of the whole Livery or freemen, of which, in- deed, the Folkmote seems to have been the original form. The district meetings of the Livery are still called Wardmotes, as they appear to have been in the time of Henry III.* Fabian records another Folkmote, or Folmoot, as having been called at Paul's Cross by King Henry III., after the feast of Candlemas, 1259: where," says the chronicler, he in proper person, with the King of Almain (that is, his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who had got himself many years before this elected King of the Romans, or Emperor of Germany), the Archbishop of Can- * Mansell, the chief justice, whose high-handed style of going through with his work, and skill withal in wield- ing the fierce democracy, Heni-y found so serviceable in the above contest with the London magistrates, w as, like many of the most eminent statesmen and lawyers of those days, a churchman. He is sometimes designated the King's Chaplain ; but for mmiificence of spirit, as well as for the place which he held in the King's favour, Mansell may be styled the Wolsey of the thirteenth century. The following notice is given by Stow, in his ' Survey,' on the authority of Matthew Paris :— •«« In the year of Christ 1256, the fortieth of Henry IIL, John Mansell, the King's counsellor and a priest, did invite to a stately dinner the kings and queens of England and Scotland, Edward the King s son, earls, barons, and knights,.the Bishop of London, and divers citizens ; whereby his guests did grow to such a number that his house at Tothill could not receive them, but that he was forced to set up tents and pavilions to receive his guests ; whereof there was such a multitude, that seven hundred mess of meat did not serve for the first dinner." In his ' Annals,' Stow adds—" The like dinner had not been made by any chaplain before." Mansell is affirmed, in the Chronicle of Mailros, to have held three hundred benefices in the English Church. PAUL'S CROSS. 37 terbury, and many other nobles came, when the kin^ commanded unto the mayor that every stripling of the age of twelve years and above should before his alderman be sworn, the day following, to be true to the king, and to his heirs, kings of England, and that the gates of the city were [should be] kept with armed men, as before by the King of Romans was devised."* Henry was at this time preparing, under the advice and with the support of his brother, to break through the trammels imposed upon him by the assembly of the barons held about a year before at Oxford, commonly called the Mad Parliament. The next year he sent to Rome for an absolution from the oath he had then been compelled to take; and in 1262, on the second Sunday in Lent, '*hc caused to be read at Paul's Cross a bull obtained of Pope Urban the Fourth, as an absolution for him and for all his that were sworn to maintain the articles made in the parliament of Oxford."t From a writ of quo warranto of the year 1287, the 15th of Edward I., it appears, according to Dugdale, that the ground on which Paul's Cross stood, described as lying eastward from the church, and as that on which the citizens of London had been anciently wont to hold their Folkmotes, was claimed as belonging to the king, and had only newly come to be used for the interment of the dead. The people, it is stated, used to be summoned to the folkmote by the ringing of a bell, hanging in a tower which stood on the ground. This tower is conjectured by Dugdale to be the same that is mentioned in the time of Henry L, in a charter of Bishop Richard de Beaumeis, in which the bishop grants to one Hugh, the schoolmaster, and his successors, the habitation at the corner of the turret where William, the dean, had already placed him by his (the bishop's) command ; "doubtless," says Dugdale, writing in 1658, " the place where the schoolmaster of Paul's school dwelleth at this day." This tower was called the Clochier, or Bell Tower; and in another document of the beginning of the reign of Henry HI., which Dugdale quotes, it is described, under the I>4itin name of the Clokarium, as situated in the corner of the greater cemetery of St. Paul, towards the Forum — for such is the classical term here applied to the part of the churchyard a])])ro- priated to the holding of the Folkmote. Stow, in whose younger days this tower was still standing, gives the following account of it : — " Near unto this school (St. Paul's), on the north side thereof, was, of old time, a great and high Clochier, or Bell-house, four-square, builded of stone ; and in the same a most strong I'rame of timber, with four bells, the greatest that 1 have heard: these were called Jesus bells, and belonged to Jesus Chaj)el ; but 1 know not by whose gift. The same had a great sj)ire of timber, covered with lead, with the image of St. Paul on the top ; but was pulled down by Sir Miles Partridge, knight, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. The common speech then was, that he did set one hundred ])ounds u])on a cast at dice against it, and so won the said Clochier and bells of the king; and then causing the bells to be broken as they hung, the rest was pulled down." "This man," adds Stow, with evident satisiaction, '^was afterward executed on the Tower-hill, for matters conn rning the Duke of Somer- set, the 5th of Edward the Sixth. "J In 1285, two years before the issue of the above-mentioned writ of r/no u /tr- rantOy the churchyard was, apparently for the first time, comj)letely walled round, * Seo al»o Stows Anualu, eo I. an. f \\>. \ Sumy. 38 LONDON. in conformity with a licence granted to the dean and canons by King Edward I., upon inlbrniation given to him, that by the lurking of thieves and other dis- orderly persons in the night-time within the ground— which, although partly enclosed, was yet accessible to any body — divers robberies and homicides, not to speak of much immorality of other kinds, had been ofttimes committed therein. The licence, which was dated at Westminster, on the 10th of June, ''for the lionour of God and holy church, and of those saints whose bodies were buried therein, as also for the better security of the canons and officers belonging thereto," gave permission that the ground should be inclosed " with a wall on every side, with fitting gates and posterns therein, to be opened every morning, and closed at night."* After the reign of Henry III., we read of no more Folkmotes being held at Paul's Cross. Indeed, a few years after the accession of Edward I., as we have just seen, the assembling of the Folkmote seems to be spoken of rather as a thing that had been than that was still in use. It is remarkable that the same period in our history which witnessed, if not the original institution, at least the com- plete establishment, of the Commons' House of Parliament, should have been that in which this ancient court of the commonalty of London fell into desuetude, or lost its importance with its old form and character. But the age of the introduc- tion of representative government was perhaps naturally that of the decay and extinction of government by assemblies of the whole people. The northern part of St. Paul's Churchyard, however, still continued to be the Forum of the Londoners, and the Cross to be the station from which, in those days, when as yet there was no printing and little reading, announcements and harangues on all such matters as the authorities in church or state judged to be of public concern were poured into the popular ear and heart. Stow, who by the bye places it "about the midst" of the churchyard — and in fact it was only a very little to the east of Canon Alley — describes it as " a pulpit-cross of timber, mounted upon steps of stone, and covered with lead;"t and this was probably its form before as well as after his day. We may conjecture that it came first to be used for ecclesiastical purposes after the ground on which it stood was taken into the churchyard in the reign of Edward I. ; at least the earliest occasion on which it is recorded to have been so employed was in the year 1299, when, according to a notice in Stow, the dean of Paul's accursed at Paul's Cross all those which had searched in the church of St. Martin in the Field for an hoard of gold, &c."i A curse pronounced from this famous pulpit was sure to be heard far and wide upon earth, whether it went up to heaven or not. Very soon after this date we begin to hear of sermons regularly preached from Paul's Cross. In 1361, Michael de Northburgh, bishop of London, in bequeath- ing a sum of a thousand marks to be placed in a chest in the treasury of the Cathedral, to form a sort of Mont de Piete, or fund for loans upon pledges (but without interest), directed that if in any case at the year's end the sums borrowed were not repaid, then the preacher at Paul's Cross should in his sermon declare that the pledge would be sold within fourteen days, if not forthwith redeemed. The good bishop, by the bye, did not contemplate benefiting the lower orders of his countrymen only by this judicious charity. In those times, when the little * Dugdale, p. 12. f Survey. + lb. PAUL'S CROSS. 39 commerce existing was still in great part a commerce of barter, money was often scarce even with those who had plenty of everything else ; accordingly it was here provided that, while a poor layman might borrow to the extent of ten pounds from the fund, the dean or any of the principal canons of the Cathedral might have a loan of twice that sum, a citizen or nobleman one to the same amount, and the bishop of the diocese one of forty or even of nearly fifty pounds.* It would be interesting to know if any of the noble or right reverend borrowers was ever proclaimed as a defaulter at the Cross ; and also Avhether on occasion of such occurrences it was customary for the preacher to adapt his discourse to the case in hand, as would seem to be implied by the regulation that he should make the announcement in the course of his sermon. It is easy to conceive how forcibly he might illustrate certain of the moral duties by the happy application of this method — how the precept might not only be sent home by the example, as by the blow of a hammer, but the example itself might, according to the Horatian rule, be made more stimulating by being addressed to the eyes as well as to the ears of the congregation, through the actual exhibition of the forfeited pledge from the pulpit — of the humbler tradesman's holiday suit or best yew bow, the merchant's bale of broad-cloth, the nobleman's silver drinking-cup, or the bishop's holy book or richest mule-trappings. Indeed the register of this ancient pawnbroking establishment would be altogether one of the most curious relics of the middle ages if it could be recovered ; but it has no doubt perished long ago, as well as the good bishop's legacy itself, with the chest, secured by three keys, in which it was kept, and the pledges of the last borrowers, upon whom probably the Reformation, or some other earlier convulsion, came suddenly some fine morning, foreclosing all redemption. But to return to the sermons. In 1388 the then bisho]), Robert de Braybroke, in certain letters addressed to his clergy, describes Paul's Cross — " the high cross standing in the greater churchyard of our cathedral" — as the station from which the word of God was in use to be preached to the people in the most public and distinguished part of the cemetery. The object of the bishop's letters was to call upon his clergy to stir uj) their flocks to contribute to the repair of the Cross, which " was then grown ruinous by reason of winds and tempests." It is said to have suffered, with many other buildings, by the earthquake which was felt all over the south of England on the morning of the 21st of May, 1382. Stow records that in Kent especially " it sunk some churches and threw them down to the earth. "t The restoration of Paul's Cross was taken u]) as a matter in which the church over the whole kingdom was concerned. Other letters, inviting the I'liith- ful to assist in the good work, were written by the Archbishop of Canterbury ; "as also," continues Dugdale, "the Bishops of Ely, Bath, Coventry and Lich- field, Llandaff, and Bangor sent out at the same time, promising indulgence of forty days to all such iis (de peccatis suis vere ])enitentil)us, confessis, et contritis)J should contribute thereto." It is affirmed that considerable contributions were in this way drawn from the pockets of the peo])le, but that Braybroke and the other bisho])s, instead of ap])lying the money to the pious ])urp()se fi)r which it was * Dugdale. , t AihiiiIh. X " For their siiui truly pppeiitiiig, having made confession, ami frit coiitritioJi :" lliR ct»ndilion expressed in all ]«pal indulgence*. 40 LONDON. professedly collected, put it, or th ) greater part of it, into their own pockets. What seeiTis to be certain is, that no considerable repair of the Cross was exe- cuted at this time, nor till about half a century afterwards, when it was rebuilt by one of Braybroke's successors, John Kemp, who held the see from 1422 to 142(3.* Dugdalc notices that Kemp's arms were to be seen in sundry places of the leaden cover of the Cross. One of the earliest sermons, if not the very earliest, recorded to have been preached at Paul's Cross, is still preserved, and may be found printed at full length, from a manuscript of the time, in Fox's Book of Martyrs. It was preached on Quinquagcsima Sunday, in the year 1389, by a certain learned clerk of the name of R. Wimbeldon, and is altogether a highly curious specimen both of the language and of the popular theology of that age. When we state that the zealous martyrologist strongly recommends it to his readers as " a godly and most fruitful sermon," it will be understood that it is no declamation in honour cither of pope or saint. Indeed it might almost be suspected, from the strain in which he runs on, that Wimbeldon had adopted most of the opinions of his reforming contemporary, Wyclif; unless it was that before the Reformation the peculiar tenets which now distinguish the Romanists were really not wont to be so much insisted upon in preaching to the people as they naturally came to be after they were made the main subjects of contention between the two hostile parties that divided Christendom. Nor does it appear that a man brought his orthodoxy into question in those days merely by inveighing, however freely, against the corruptions of the church, and the pride, luxury, ambition, hypocrisy, or other vices of the clergy. Many other productions of the thirteenth and four- teenth centuries have come down to us, besides this sermon of Wimbeldon's, in which a tone is taken in regard to such matters that would hardly have been ventured upon by any Romanist in a later age ; we need only mention the Visions of Pierce Ploughman, many of Chaucer's poems, and the History of Matthew Paris ; but, although the followers of Luther were afterwards fond of claiming the authors of these works as fellow-reformers, and altogether of their faith and party, it does not appear that any one of them was in his own day regarded as other than a good Catholic, for all his philippics and sarcasms. Wimbeldon takes his text from the parable of the unjust steward, as related in the sixteenth chapter of St. Luke— selecting the words Redde rationem villicationis tuce,"' which he translates, " Yield reckoning of thy bailly," and applies to the different classes of men with much sharpness and good sense, enlivening his address, ever and anon, with a legend from St. Augustine or some other of the old fathers, or an illustration from the evcrj^-day occupations of his hearers, in the happiest style of popular oratory. The entire discourse occupies eleven of Fox's long and closely-pnnted columns. f * Dugdale, on the authority of Godwin de Praesulibus. Kemp, whom Dugdale here, by mistake, calls Thomas, was afterwaids successively archbishop of York and archbishop of Canterbury, besides being lord chan- cellor and a cardinal. t We transcribe a few sentences, modernising the old spelling, where it does not affect the sound, to give the curious reader a taste of what sort of preaching was to be heard at Paul s Cross nearly five hundred years ago :— " Right as ye seeth," Wimbeldon begins his explanation of his text, " that, in tilling of the material vuie, there ben divers labours; for some cutten away the void branches, some maken forks and rails to bearen up the vine, and some diggen away the old earth fro the rote, and lain there fatter ; and all this offices ben so necessary to the vine, that, if any of them fail, it sliall harm greatly other [or] destroy the vines ; for, but PAUL S CROSS. 41 Early in the next century Paul's Cross figures in a transaction so curiously characteristic of the times, and in its whole course so startling to modern manners and notions, that the relation ought not to be attempted by any modern pen, and we will therefore give the details in the homely but graphic words of the old chronicler. " On Easter-day in the afternoon,'* Stow records under the year 1417, ''^at a sermon in St. Dunstan's in the east of London, a great fray happened in the church, wherethrough many people were sore wounded, and one Thomas Petwardcn, fishmonger, slain out of hand : wherefore the church was suspended, and the beginners of the fray, which was the Lord Strange and Sir John Tussell, knight, through the quarrel of their two wives, were brought to the Compter in the Poultry. The Archbishop of Canterbury caused them to be excommunicate, as well at Paul's Cross as in all other parish churches of the city. The 21st of April the said Archbishop sate at St. Magnus to inquire of the authors of that disorder, where he found the fault to be in the Lord Strange and his wife ; who, upon the first of May following, in Paul's Church, before the Archbishop, the Mayor of London, and others, submitted themselves to penance, which was en- joined them, that immediately all their servants should in their shirts go before the parson of St. Dunstan's from Paul's to St. Dunstan's church, and the lord bare-headed, with his lady bare-footed, Reignold Kepwood, Archdeacon of Lon- don, following them ; and at the hallowing of the church the lady should fill all the vessels with water, and also offer an ornament of ten pound, and the Lord Strange should offer a pix of five pound."* A scolding match, or, for aught that appears, an actual rencontre of talons or fisticuffs, in the church, between the wives of a knight and a nobleman — the flying to arms of probably the greater part of the congregation — the blood made to flow in all directions — the slaughter outright of the poor fishmonger — make an appropriate prologue of the savage and horrible to the comedy that follows, of the procession along Fleet Street, led by the parson in his canonicals, and brought up by the bare-headed lord and bare-footed lady ; while, in admirable keeping with the absurdity of the whole exhibition, the principal part of the performance is vicariously sustained by the poor shivering menials — a pretty long string, we may su])pose, of both sexes, — who, one would think, might not unfairly have been presumed to have suffered penance enough already in the service of a mistress requiring so shar]) a dis- cipline to keep her in order. It is a comfort to find, however, that the termagant if [unless] the vine he cut, she slmll wax wild ; hut if she he railed, slie shall he overgo with nettles and weeds ; but if the rote he fatted with dong, she fur fcehleness should wax harren ;— right so in the Church helh needful those three oflires ; priesthood, kniglithood, and lahourers. To ])riests it falleth to cut away the void hranches of sins with the swerd of her [their] tongue. To kniglithood it falleth to lelten [prevent] wrongs and thefts to ben done, and to maintain (iod"s law and them that hen teachers thereof, anehlon'8 picture of the clergy of his day. " How the life of priests," he exclaims, is changeb crit'fh at the door." * AnniN. 42 LONDON. was obliged to fill the water-vessels with her own noble hands^ and^ apparently, unassisted and unattended by either servants or husband. These are the inci- dents that paint an age. Nothing can bring more forcibly home to us than such a strange narrative as this the difference between the London of our own day and that of three hundred years ago. It makes one wonder if the sun shone then as it does now — if our ancestors of that remote date were actually wide awake, and did not move about in a sort of mere somnambulous condition — at any rate, if they possessed any sense of the ludicrous or faculty of laughter, that they could look on gravely while such fantastic tricks were played before high heaven, Anoth er remarkable appearance, also of a penitential character, that was made at Paul's Cross some years after this, is likewise described, with all its details, by Stow — the recantation of the learned and pious Reginald Pecocke, bishop of Chi- chester, who ''having laboured many years," says the annalist, ''to translate the holy scripture into English, was accused to have passed the bounds of divinity and of Christian belief in certain articles." On the 4th of December, 1457, he was brought to Paul's Cross, and there renounced his heresies, and made pro- fession of his deep contrition and entire submission to holy church in a formal harangue "in his mother tongue," which Stow gives at full length. And "after this," concludes the account, "he was deprived of his bishoprick, having a certain pension assigned unto him for to live on in an abbey, and soon after he died." And, doubtless, he himself then felt that it would have been better had he died somewhat sooner. Little more than two years before these high-handed proceedings against Bishop Pecocke, which may be regarded as a sort of commencement of the war between the old and the new opinions in religion, the first swords had been crossed at St. Alban's in the war of the Roses, which was to make the best blood in the land flow like water throughout the greater part of the next quarter of a century. Passing over that space, comprising the remainder of the reign and life of Henr}^ VI., and the whole of the reign of Edward IV., we come, in what may be called the last act of the long, tumultuous drama, to perhaps^ the most remark- able day in the history of Paul's Cross. It is towards the latter end of June, in the year 1483. The young king, Edward V., who had been escorted from Horn- sey to the bishop's palace, close by the cathedral, on the 4th of May, by the lord mayor, the sheriffs, " and all the other aldermen in scarlet, with five hundred horse of the citizens in violet," had been soon after, along with his brother, carried " from thence through the city honourably into the Tower, out of which after that day they never came abroad ;" Crookbacked Richard directed all things as Lord Protector ; Lord Hastings, arrested in the council-room at the Tower on the morning of Friday, the 13th of June, had had his head immediately struck off, "upon a long log of timber," on "the green beside the chapel;" the Lord Grey, with his fellow-prisoners, had been executed before the gate of Pontefract Castle, on the same day ; Lord Rivers lay there in his dungeon, about to follow his friends to the scaffold ; Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of Ely, were all under the lock and key of the tyrant ; " then thought the Pro- tector, that, while men mused what the matter meant, while the lords of the realm were about him out of their own strengths, while no man wist what to PAUL'S CROSS. 43 think, nor whom to trust, ere ever they should have space to dispute and digest the matter and make parties, it were best hastily to pursue his purpose, and put himself in possession of the crown, ere men could have time to devise any way to resist." The story has been told, as Herodotus himself might have told it, by Sir Thomas More ; and we shall folloAv his lively and graceful narrative with little abridgment. The first concern of Gloucester and his confederates was, how the matter " might be first broken to the people, in such wise that it might be well taken;" and for this purpose, while they took into their counsels Sir Edmond Shaw, the lord mayor, that he " upon trust of his own advancement, whereof he was, of a proud heart, highly desirous, should frame the city to their appetite," they also associated to themselves "of spiritual men such as had wit, and were in authority among the people for opinion of their learning, and had no scrupulous conscience ;" and " among these had they John Shaw, Clerk, brother to the Mayor, and Friar Pinker, Provincial of the Augustine Friars, both Doctors of Divinity, both great preachers, both of more learning than virtue, of more fame than learning. For they were before greatly esteemed among the people, but after 4:hat never. Of these two the t'one had a sermon in praise of the Pro- tector before the coronation ; the t'other after ; both so full of tedious flattery, that no man's ears could abide them." With Pinker's sermon, which was deli- vered at St. Mary's Hospital, on Easter day in the following year, we have here nothing to do : More states that he " so lost his voice, that he was fain to leave off and come do>vn in the midst." As for Shaw, it was determined that he should forthwith lay before the people the Protector's claims as the legitimate heir to the crown, in a sermon at Paul's Cross. Accordingly, on Sunday the 2'2nd of June, the Doctor presented himself in the pulpit at the Cross before a great au- dience, — " as alway assembled great number to his preaching," — and taking for his text the words from the Book of Wisdom, Spuria vitulamina non agent ra- dices altas — '^Bastard slips shall not strike deep roots," he proceeded to address the multitude. The introductory portion of his discourse consisted of an attempt to show that heaven, although it might sometimes suffer the legitimate line to be set aside for a season, never permitted it to be ultimately or long supplanted by those bom out of wedlock, or their descendants, especially if the offspring of adultery. " And when he had laid for the proof and confirmation of this sentence," continues More, certain examples taken out of the Old Testament and other ancient histories, then began he to descend into the praise of the Lord Richard, late Duke of York, calling him father to the Lord Protector, and declared the title of his heirs unto the crown, to whom it was, after the death of King Henry the Sixth, entailed by authority of parliament. Then showed he that his very right heir of his body lawfully begotten was only the Lord Protector. For he declared then that King Edward was never lawfully married unto the Queen, but was before God husband under Dame Elizabeth Lucy, and so his children bastards. And, besides that, neither King Edward himself nor the Duke of Clarence, among those that were secret in the household, were reckoned very surely for the children of the noble Duke, as those that by their favours more re- sembled other known men than him. From whose virtuous conditions he said also that King Edward was far off. But the T^ord Protector, he said, the very noble prince, the special pattern of knightly prowess, as well in all princely 44 LONDON. behaviour as in the lineaments and favour of his visage represented the very face of the noble duke his father. This is, quoth he, the father's own figure, this is his own countenance, the very i)rint of his visage, the very sure redoubted image, the j)lain express likeness of that noble duke. Now was it before devised, that, in the speaking of these words, the Protector should have come in among the ])eople to the sermon- ward, to the end that those words, meeting with his presence, might have been taken among the hearers as though the Holy Ghost had put them in the preacher's mouth, and should have moved the people even there to cry King Richard ! King Richard ! that it might have been after said that he was specially chosen by God, and in manner by miracle. But this device quailed, either by the Protector's negligence, or the preacher's over-much diligence. For while the Protector found by the way tarrying lest he should prevent those words, and the Doctor, fearing that he should come ere his sermon could come to these words, hasted his matter thereto, who was come to them and past them, and entered into other matters ere the Protector came. Whom when he beheld coming, he suddenly left the matter with which he was in hand ; and, without any deduction thereunto, out of all order and out of all frame, began to repeat those words again: — * This is the very noble prince, the special pattern of knightly prowess, which, as well in all princely behaviour as in the lineaments and favour of his visage, representeth the very face of the noble Duke of York, his father ; this is the father's own figure, this is his own countenance, the very print of his visage, the sure undoubted image, the plain express likeness of the noble duke, whose remembrance can never die while he liveth.' While these words were in speaking, the Protector, accompanied by the Duke of Buckingham, went through the people into the place where the doctors commonly stand in the upper story, where he stood to hearken the sermon. But the people were so far from crying King Richard ! that they stood as they had been turned into stones, for wonder of this shameful sermon. After which once ended, the preacher got him home, and never after durst look out for shame, but kept him out of sight like an owl. And when he once asked one that had been his old friend what the people talked of him, all were it that his own conscience well showed him that they talked no good ; yet when the other answered him, that there was in every man's mouth spoken of him much shame, it so strake him to the heart, that within few days after he withered and consumed away." It has been sometimes stated, that another famous exhibition, got up by the Protector at this crisis with the same view of winning the voices of the multitude — his exposure of poor Jane Shore— also took place at Paul's Cross; but this is a mistake— the penance imposed upon the frail, but merry and kind-hearted mis- tress of Edward IV., was to walk before a cross carried in procession through the streets. Her story, therefore, likewise so interestingly told by More, may stand over for the present. But very soon after this date, it became customary to adjudge persons who performed penance— especially the unhappy followers of the new opinions in religion— to stand before Paul's Cross during the sermon after they had been paraded in the procession. Thus, Fox tells us, that on Sunday the 17th of January, 1497, "two m.en, the one called Richard Milderale, and the other James Sturdie, bare fagots before the procession of Paul's, and after stood before the preacher in the time of his sermon." " And upon the PAUL'S CROSS. 45 Sunday following," he adds, ''stood other two men at Paul's Cross all the sermon time; the one garnished with painted and written papers, the other having a fagot on his neck. After that, in Lent season, upon Passion Sunday, one Hugh Glover bare a fagot before the procession of Paul's, and after with the fagot stood before the preacher all the sermon-while at Paul's Cross. And on the Sunday next following four men stood, and did there open penance at Paul's, as is aforesaid : in the sermon time many of their books were burnt before them at the Cross." Again, he notes that in 1499 "many were taken for heretics in Kent, and at Paul's Cross they bare fagots, and were abjured. And shortly after, the same year, there were thirteen Lollards afore the procession in Paul's, and there were of them eight women and a young lad, and the lad's mother was one of the eight, and all the thirteen bare fagots on their necks afore the pro- cession." This last exhibition seems to be the same mentioned by Fabian as having taken place on Sunday the 23rd of July, in that year, when, he says, twelve heretics stood before the Cross ''shrined with fagots." The fagots were of course designed to signify the death by burning which the bearers had de- served, and which they only escaped by undergoing this humiliating penance, and making abjuration of their heresies. Sometimes they were condemned to wear ever after the badge of a fagot in flames on their clothes — an awkward coat of arms. In one case which Fox records at great length, that of " James Baynham, lawyer and martyr," the fagot borne at the Cross turned out to be prophetic as well as emblematical. Baynham having adopted some of the opinions of Wy- clif, was, towards the end of the year 1531, arrested and brought before Sir Thomas More, then Chancellor, at his house in Chelsea. Fox is an honest, but a very prejudiced and credulous writer; and it is to be hoped, for the honour of genius and elegant letters, that his zeal has led him to impute some things to More, which such a man, even in that age, could hardly have been guilty of He tells us that he detained Baynham with him in a sort of free custody for a while, but that, when " he saw he could not prevail in perverting him to his sect, then he cast him in prison in his own (More's) house, and whipped him at the tree in his garden, called the Tree of Troth, and after sent him to the Tower to be racked ; and so he was. Sir Thomas More being present himself, till in a manner he had lamed him, because he would not accuse the gentlemen of the Temple of his acquaintance, nor would not show where his books were ; and because his wife denied them to be at his house, she was sent to the Fleet, and their goods confiscated." However, the result was that Baynham at last consented to make abjuration, and on a Sun- day in February, 1532, he did penance by first walking in procession, and then standing with a fagot on his shoulder at Paul's 40 LONDON. Cross during the sermon, on a sort of scaffold erected before the pulpit, in the fashion which the martyrologist has represented in a rude but curious wood- cut. But Baynham had been at home little more than a month, after having recovered his forfeited life by this submission, when, vehement remorse and shame conquering the fear of death and every other feeling, he called his friends toge- ther and expressed to them the bitterest regret for what he had done ; and immediately, the next Sunday after, he came to St. Austin's with the New Testa- ment in his hand in English, and the obedience of a Christian man in his bosom, and stood up there before the people in his pew, there declaring openly with weeping tears that he had denied God, and prayed all the people to forgive him, and to beware of his weakness, and not to do as he did." He was now, as a relapsed heretic, beyond the pale of mercy in this world, and, as his judges believed, in the next also. Urgent methods, however, were used to make him re- cant before he should be committed to the flames. Being again arrested, " for almost the space of a fortnight," according to the martyrologist, " he lay in the bishop's coal-house in the stocks, with irons upon his legs : then he was carried to the Lord Chancellor's and there chained to a post two nights : then he was car- ried to Fulham, where he was cruelly handled by the space of a sevennight ; then to the Tower, where he lay a fortnight, scourged with whips, to make him revoke his opinions : from thence he was carried to Barking, then to Chelsea, and there condemned, and so to Newgate to be burned." He was burned in Smithfield at three o'clock in the afternoon, on the 30th of April. Such tragic and brutal work as this, still more even than the solemn comedy of Lady Strange's penance, goes to make it difficult for us to feel, when we read of it, that the sky Avas as blue and the earth as green in England three centuries ago as they are now. In another remarkable instance, which occurred soon after this, the scaffold of penance at Paul's Cross was in like manner only a stepping-stone to a more fatal scaffold. Hither, in the end of the year 1533, was brought to make public confession of their imposture, Elizabeth Barton, called the Holy Maid of Kent, with Richard Master, the parson of the parish of Aldington, where she lived, who had sought, by means of her hysteric outcries and pretended inspirations, to raise the fame and attraction of the wooden Virgin in his chapel at Court-at- Street ; her confessor. Dr. Becking, of whom, as Burnet tells us, there were violent suspicions that he did not, in his intercourse with her, confine himself strictly to his spiritual duties ; Richard Deering, who wrote the most popular book of her revelations and prophecies; and half a dozen more of her accomplices. Having been brought into the Star-chamber," says Burnet, " where there was a great appearance of many lords, they were examined upon the premises, and did all, without any rack or torture, confess the whole conspiracy, and were adjudged to stand in Paul's all the sermon time ; and, after sermon, the king's officers were to give every one of them his bill of confession, to be read openly before the people ; which was done next Sunday, the Bishop of Bangor preaching, they being all set on a scaffold before him." It was thought, he adds, that this public exposure would be the surest way to satisfy the people of the imposture of the whole affair; and It had, it seems, very generally that effect. Their penance and confession, how- ever, did not save either the nun herself, or her chief confederates : on the 20th of April follomng, she. Master, Becking, Deering, and two more of those who PAUL'S CROSS. 47 had been exposed at Paul's Cross, were, in the words of - old Stow, " drawn from the Tower of London to Tyburn, and there hanged and headed." The nun's own head was stuck up on London Bridge; those of the others on the different gates of the city. And, within little more than a year. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More both had their heads struck off on Tower Hill, principally, there can be no doubt — though other charges were made the pretext — for the countenance they had been, weakly enough, drawn in for a time to give to the Maid's ravings against the divorce of Queen Catherine, and the king's new marriage. Thus sure and sweeping, if a little slow, was the revenge taken by Henry, who is held up to our admiration by Burnet, as showing him- self to be " not very easily inflamed," by the way in which he passed over the audacity of the friars Peto and Elston, the former of whom, in the preceding summer, while preaching in the royal chapel at Greenwich, had told him to his face that many lying prophets had deceived him, but that, if he proceeded with the business he had in hand, the dogs should assuredly lick his blood, as they had done Ahab's ; and the latter of whom, on a subsequent Sunday, the king also being present, rose from the midst of the congregation and justified all that Peto had said, nor would be silenced till his majesty himself commanded him to hold his peace. The two friars, indeed, in the mean time, only received a rebuke before the privy council ; but they and all the rest of their order were soon after banished from England. A few years after the exposure of the Maid of Kent — who, by the bye, according to Strype, " began her pranks about eight or nine years before her execution" — another gross Popish fraud was laid open to the popular scorn at the same place ; the trick of the wonderful rood, or crucifix, of Boxley in Kent, which actually used to move its eyes and shake its beard, and sometimes even to nod its head and bow with its whole body, to those who knelt before it and brought it offerings. The wheel-work by which all this was managed under the guidance of the priests was, it seems, detected, in the year 1538, by one Nicolas Partridge; on which the image was first brought to the neighbouring town of Maidstone, and shown to the people there, and then carried to London, where it afforded for a time infinite amusement to all classes, from the king and the inmates of the royal palace downwards. It seems to have been exhibited, probably for money, in some of the places of popular amusement. The rood had been famous for ages over all England, and people came from the most distant parts of the country to gaze and wonder at a discovery which no doubt astonished many of them almost as much as if it had been found out that any one of them- selves was merely a similar piece of mechanism. The evidence, however, was too conclusive to be resisted by any possible stupidity. " There," to translate the animated account given ])y John Hooker, the parson of Maidstone, in a Latin letter to Bullinger, which Burnet has printed, there stands the idol going through his performance; he makes his eyes look stern and threatening; he expresses aversion by the motion of his li])s, he twitches his nostrils, he throws back his head, he bends his back, he nods, he draws himself u]) ; they stare, they laugh, they marvel, the room echoes with their vociferation, their obstre- perous clamour makes the welkin ring." At last the affair was taken U]) by the Council, and by their order the Boxley rood was brought to Paul's Cross, and 48 LONDON. there elevated on a scaffold, so as to be seen by all the people, during the ])reaching of a sermon by Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester. This, as we learn from Stow, was on Sunday the 24th of February. " Here," continues Hooker, the image once more, with all its machinery exposed, goes with its usual ability through its part. Admiration, rage, astonishment, stir the multitude by turns. The ])revailing feeling is one of mortification that they should have been so shamefully deluded by such a cheat. At length, while the preacher waxes warm in his discourse, and the word of God is secretly working in the hearts of his auditors, the wooden block is thrown down headlong into the thickest of the throng. Instantly a confused outcry of many voices arises ; the idol is pulled about, is broken, is plucked one piece from another, is torn into a thousand fragments, and is finally consigned to the flames." This uproarious outbreak on the part of his congregation would, we take it for granted, be fatal to any further display of his eloquence by the bishop for that day. But the tricks and delusions exposed at Paul's Cross were not always those of the Romanists. Exactly twenty years after the penance of Elizabeth Barton, occurred that of Elizabeth Croft, the principal performer in the imposture known by the name of the Spirit in the Wall. The Spirit in the Wall was first heard in March, 1554, soon after the accession of Queen Mary, in a house without Aldersgate, and was certainly a Protestant spirit ; the tenor of its exclamations and prophecies, as Strype acknowledges, being " against the Prince of Spain, and the Queen's matching with him, and against auricular confession, the mass, and other Popish worship newly introduced." In fact, so far as it went, the affair was as exact a parallel to that of the Maid of Kent as well could be. By her dark utterances, " the people of the whole city," says Stow, " were wonder- fully molested, for that all men might hear the voice, but not see her person." The sounds were supposed to come from nothing less than an angel. It turned out that Croft, " a wench about the age of eighteen years," made them with a peculiar kind of whistle, which she had got from one Drakes : among her other confederates were several parish clerks ; but the plot was nipped in the bud, before it had time to attract any higher patronage or countenance. On Sunday, the 15th of July,* she was brought out at Paul's Cross, and placed upon a scaffold erected for the purpose on the usual spot, where she stood all the time of the sermon, and made open confession of the deception she had been guilty of. Strype relates that she wept bitterly, and kneeled down, and asked God mercy and the Queen, and bade all people beware of false teaching ; and said that promises were made her that she should have many good things given her, as though that had been the cause that induced her to this deceit." Neither she herself nor any of her accomplices was put to death ; but one of them, a weaver who lived in Golden Lane, was a few days after set on the pillory. On the 19th of May in the following year, 1555, two women did penance and made confession at Paul's Cross, for their concern in what was, apparently, a harmless enough imposture — the propagation of a story about an infant in a house near the cathedral having spoken, and bidden men pray, declaring that the kingdom of God was at hand. But most probably this miraculous infant was also in the Protestant interest. Most of the other penances performed here * Strype says the 6th, but that was not a Sunday. PAUL'S CROSS 49 in the days of Mary appear to have been by persons, both clers^y and laity, who had been seduced into some irregularity or other by the confusion and changes of the time, and who now desired to be received back into the bosom of the ascendant church. Several which Strype records are cases of priests who had taken to themselves wives which they were now willing, possibly more than willing, to part with. Thus, on the 14th of November, 1554, we are told, "five did penance with sheets about them, and tapers and rods in their hands ; and the preacher did strike them with a rod ; and there they stood till the sermon was done. Then the sumner took away the sheets and the rods from them, and they went into Paul's again, and so up the side of the choir. One of these was named Sir Thomas Laws, otherwise called Sir Thomas Griffin, priest, some time a canon at Elsing Spittle. He and three more were religious men; and the fifth was a temporal man, that had two wives. Those were put to penance for having one. ' But some of the religious men had indulged themselves with a pair of wives too. Thus, it is noted, that on the 8th of February, 1556, "Mr. Peryn, a black friar, preached at Paul's Cross ; at whose sermon a priest named Sir Thomas Sampson did penance, standing before the preacher with a sheet about him, and a taper in his hand burning; the Lord Mayor, the aldermen, and many other worshipful persons present. This man's crime was, that he had two wives, and one was enough to make him do penance." On the 8th of March, again, " while a doctor preached at the Cross, a man did penance for trans- gressing Lent, holding two pigs, ready dr est, whereof one was upon his head, having brought them to sell" — a spectacle which would be rather trying to the gravity of most congregations. Pennant states, without quoting his authority, that in 1537 a priest named Sir Thomas Newman "bore the fagot here on a singular occasion, for singing mass with good ale." He had just before told us that the Catholic penitents, not having been in danger of burning, never bore fagots. We do not know what reliance is to be placed upon his next assertion, that the last person who did penance at Paul's Cross was a seminary priest, who made his recantation in 1593. One of the latest instances noticed of the pronouncing of an anathema or curse from this pulpit was in 1502, in which year, as we are told by Fabian, " u])()n the first Sunday of Lent, was solemnly accursed at Paul's Cross Sir Edmond do la Pole, Sir Robert Curzon, and others, and all that them aided again the king." This Edmond de la Pole was the unfortunate Duke of SnfFolk, ne])how of King Edward IV., his jealousy and fears of whom made Henry VII. miserable for a great ])art of his reign, and who, afterwards falling into the hands of that king's more daring son and successor, was by him ])iit to death, without even the form of a trial, in 1513. On the 12th of May, 1521, a grand display of state and pageantry was made here on occasion of the j)ublication of the Pope's sentence against I^uther. An account of the ceremonial is quoted by Dugdale from one of the Cotton manuscri])t8. First, "the Lord Thomas Wolsey," Legate de latere, as well as Cardinal and Archbishop of York, attended by "the most part of the bisho])s of the realm," presented himself at the entrance to the cathedral, where he was received with i)rresent, and his friend Bradford, another eminent Protestant preacher, having interfered with some success to moderate the tumult, managed to convey Bourn away to a house in the neighbourhood.^ * Annaln. f Memorials, iii. 3. — Stow, in liis AiiiiuIh, miys Omt llidlcys Kortnoii, wln-n-iii ''he vrlnMiinitIy ixTsiiadcd tlie peo]jle in the title «)f the I-.a(ly Jane, late {jroclainied Queen, unci inveighed earnestly agaiiut the titlw of I^dy Mary," wan prearhe*! on the Ifith. J Burnet. — Fox. 54 LONDON. On the next Sunday the sermon at Paul's Cross was preached by Dr. Watson, chaplain to Bishop Gardiner, guarded by two hundred of the Queen's guards ; there being present, besides the lord mayor and aldermen, ''all the crafts of London in their best liveries, sitting on forms, every craft by themselves."* Thy change of doctrine does not appear to have diminished the attendance upon the sermons. After the parliament met in October, "the town," says Speed, "being full, care was taken to put up men of the greatest vogue to preach the Paul's Cross sermons. The 15th day Dr. White, warden of Winchester, preached there ; the Sunday following, the 22nd day. Dr. Weston, dean of Westminster. And while these sermons were preaching, were great bars set up at every gate in Paul's Churchyard, to prevent the breaking in of horses and great throngs of people, for fear of disturbance while the sermons were preaching." Yet the post of preacher here still continued to be one of some danger. On the 10th of June, 1 554, while Dr. Pendleton was preaching, between ten and eleven o'clock in the forenoon, a gun was fired at him, the tin bullet from which struck the wall a very little way over his head. Pendleton had been a zealous professor of the reformed doctrines in the late king's time.f On the 23rd of September, Dr. Rud, another apostate from Protestantism, appeared in the pulpit, who took the oppor- tunity of making a frank profession of his change of sentiments, and particularly of telling the people how greatly he repented having taken a wife— of whom, how- ever, he had of course by this time had the satisfaction of having got rid. On the next Sunday, the 30th, Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Lord Chancellor, preached at the Cross; "which," says Strype, "he did with much applause, before an audience as great as ever was known, and among the rest all the council that were then at court." On the 14th of October we find it noted that the old Bishop of Durham, Tonstall, preached in the Shrowds, as we have seen was also done by old Latimer. On the 2nd of December another very illustrious congregation as- sembled to hear Gardiner preach at the Cross : Cardinal Pole " came from Lambeth by water, and landed at Paul's Wharf, and from thence to Paul's Church, with a cross, two pillars, and two pole-axes of silver borne before him and about eleven o'clock. King Philip himself arrived by land from Westminster.J On the 6th of February, 1558, another sermon of Gardiner's was attended by sixteen bishops, the lord mayor and aldermen, and many of the judges ; and on the 20th of the same month, when Dr. Watson, Bishop of Lincoln, preached, "there were ten bishops present, besides the lord mayor and aldermen, judges and men of the law, and a great audience." § But lord mayor, aldermen, judges, and bishops, were all soon after this obliged to suit themselves, as best they could, to another change. The breath had been only three days out of Mary's body, when on the 20th of November the pulpit at Paul's Cross was mounted by Dr. Bill, the new queen's chaplain, and made to resound once more with the doctrines formerly preached by Ridley * Strype. t On Sunday, the 8th of April, this year, " a cat, with her head shorn, and the likeness of a vestment cast over her, with her fore feet tied together, and a round piece of paper like a singing cake betwixt them, was hanged on a gallows ni Cheap, near to the Cross, in the parish of St. Matthew, which cat, being taken down, was carried to the Bishop of London (Bonuor), and he caused the same to be showed at Paul's Cross by the preacher, Dr. Pen- dleton." — Stow's Annals^ I Stow, Annals. ^ Strype. PAUL'S CROSS. 55 and Latimer. But the following curious passage from Stow's Annals, which has not been noticed by recent writers, shows that this alert commencement soon received a check: — "On Low Sunday, the 2nd of April (1559), Master Sampson, lately come from beyond the seas, made the rehearsal sermon at Paul's Cross ; but, when the lord mayor and aldermen came to their places in Paul's Churchyard, the pulpit door was locked, and the key could not be heard of : whereupon the lord mayor sent for a smith to open the lock, which was done, and, when the preacher should enter the place, it was found very filthy and un- clean ; moreover, the verger, that had the key of the place where the bishops and prelates use to stand to hear the sermon, could not be found ; whereupon certain gentlemen with a form broke open the door. This disorder chanced by reason that since Christmas last past there was not a sermon preached at Paul's Cross ; for an inhibition had been sent from the council unto the Bishop of London, that he should admit no preacher, because of the controversy betwixt the bishops and them of the clergy that were new returned into the realm from beyond the seas." After this, however, Horne, Jewel, and other eminent divines of the re-esta- blished Protestant church, vindicated the new order of things at Paul's Cross ; and the sermons delivered there every Sunday, as of old, appear to have been well attended throughout the reign of Elizabeth. Stow has described at great length the gorgeous state in which her Majesty, attended by the Earl of Essex and a great number of ladies of honour, came from Somerset House to the Ca- thedral on the 24th of November, 1588, to hear the thanksgiving sermon for the destruction of the Spanish Armada, preached at the Cross by Doctor Pierce, bishop of Salisbury : she took her seat in a closet made for the purpose in the north wall of the church, over against the Cross. On the 17th of November (1595), the same chronicler records, "the pulpit cross in Paul's Churchyard was new repaired, painted, and partly enclosed with a wall of brick ; Dr. Fletcher, bishop of London, preached there, in .praise of the queen and prayer for her majesty, before the lord mayor, aldermen, and citizens in their best liveries. Which sermon being ended, upon the church leads the trumpets sounded, the cornets winded, and the quiristers sung an anthem ; on the steeple many lights were burned; the Tower shot off her ordnance, the bells were rung, bonfires made, &c." The next year, while the lord mayor and aldermen were attending a sermon here, an order came to them from the queen for a levy of a thousand able-bodied men to assist in raising the siege of Calais, then besieged by the Spaniards; upon which, we are told, they immediately (juitted their devotions, and exerted themselves so actively, that they had the thousand men in readiness for marching before morning. Nor was the glory of Paul's Cross over till many years after this date. James I. came in great state on horseback, from Whitehall, to hear a sermon preached from this famous ])ul]jit by Dr. John King, Bishop of London, on Mid- lent Sunday, the 26th of March, 1628. And Peimant is mistaken in su])j)()sing this was the last sermon ever preached here. It was not even the last attended by royalty; for, on the 30th of May, 1680, Charles 1., like his two predecessors, also came in state to St. Paul's, and, after having attended the service in the cathedral, took his seat in a ])lace prei)ared for him, and heard the sermon at the 56 LONDON. Cross.* But this was very nearly the last of those sermons delivered in the open air. In Aprils 1633, while the cathedral was undergoing extensive repairs, and the churchyard was occupied with masons and building materials, the sermons were removed into the choir ; and it docs not appear that the old pulpit out of doors was ever again occupied. At last, by the votes of both Houses of the Long Parliament, on the 10th and llth of September, 1642, for the abolishing of bishoj)s, deans, and chapters, "the very foundation of this famous cathedral," to quote the impressive words of its historian, " was utterly shaken in pieces ; . ... so that the next year following, 1643 (Isaac Penington being Lord Mayor), the famous Cross in the churchyard, which had been for many ages the most noted and solemn place in this nation for the gravest divines and greatest scholars to preach at, was, with the rest of the crosses about London and West- minster, by further order of the said parliament, pulled down to the ground. "f * Continuation of Stovv's Annals. — There is a sermon in print, entitled The White Wolf ; preached at Paul's Cross, February II, 1627, by Stephen Denison, Mlrn"ster of Katherine Cree Church." t Dugdale's History of St. Paul's Cathedral, p. 109 ; edit, of 1818. / 1 A am [Paul's Cross, temp. James I.] If one were suddenly asked to point out that portion of the Metropolis which more than any other is crowded with the most deeply in- teresting associations, the Borough would hardly we think be the chosen place. The very name seems to repel all ideas of a ro- mantic or poetical nature. Yet, if there he classic ground in London, it is this. Standing upon the foot of that bridge which has replaced the venerable piece of antiquity so connected with the local history of Southwark, and looking forwards into the mass of liuman dwellings beyond, what a host of recollections of some of the mightiest intellects of our own 58 LONDON. or of any other country rush upon the mind, in connexion with localities every one of which might be comprised in a half-circle of a few hundred yards from the river ! On the right, beneath a splendid canopied tomb, in the fine old church of St. Mary Overies, or, as it is now called, St. Saviour's, lies Gower, lodged as few j)oets are lodged in their last resting-place ; and for a reason that few poets are so fortunate as to be able to give, namely, on account of his extensive benefactions to the sacred edifice. In the churchyard of the same building lie in one grave Fletcher and Massinger. The record of Massinger's death in the parochial register is a melancholy one : " Philip Massinger, a Stranger !" Still farther to the right, on the Bank Side was Beaumont and Fletcher's house ; for that too, like their genius and reputation, they held in common ; and, above all, in the same immediate neighbourhood was the theatre where an audience saw Shakspere nightly tread the stage ; where, from time to time, all the aristo- cracy of London — whether of rank or intellect —thronged to witness some new production from that wonderful mind ; and from which he retired in the prime of life to spend his last days in the peaceful and honourable enjoyment of his well- earned wealth. In the street now known as Clink Street was Shakspere's London residence as late as 1609. In 1607 his brother Edmund, sixteen years his junior, was buried in St. Saviour's Church. Thus more than commonly rich in its poetical associations is the apparently unpoetical Borough ! But have we concluded the list ? — The Tabard of Chaucer yet lies unnoticed before us. There are few more ancient streets than that in which the famous hostelry is situated — the High Street of Southwark. During the period of the Roman Lon- dinium, two thousand years ago, it was undoubtedly what it still remains — the great road from the metropolis to the southern ports. Roman antiquities are still occasionally found in different parts of its line. Its convenient situation as a suburb for the entertainment of travellers passing between London and the counties of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, — who were here as contiguous to the ^'^ silent highway" as they could desire, and at the same time more pleasantly lodged than they could be in the densely-populated metropolis, — made it early famous for its inns. After the murder and canonization of Becket, the number of persons continually setting out on pilgrimages to his shrine at Canterbury, and who appear to have been generally accustomed to meet here and form themselves into parties, contributed still further to the increase and prosperity of these houses of entertainment. Stow, several centuries later (in 1598), alludes to them in such a way as to show that they then formed a principal feature of the High Street : " In Southwark be many fair inns for receipt of travellers and he then proceeds, " amongst the which the most ancient is the Tabard, so called of the sign, which as we now term it is of a jacket or sleeveless coat, whole before, open on both sides, with a square collar, winged at the shoulders : a stately garment of old time, commonly worn of noblemen and others, both at home and abroad in the wars ; but then (to wit in the wars) their arms embroidered, or otherwise depict upon them, that every man by his coat of arms might be known from others. But now these tabards are only worn by the heralds, and be called their coats of arms in service." This ^'most ancient" then of the inns of South- wark, even in 1598 — this great rival of our Boar's Heads and Mermaids, which, older than either, has survived both — is situated immediately opposite what was THE TABARD. 59 formerly called St. Margaret's Hill (though now perfectly level), then the site of St. Margaret's Church, now of the Town-hall of the Borough. The exterior of the inn is simply a narrow, square, dilapidated-looking gateway ; its posts strapped with rusty iron bands — its gates half covered with sheets of the same metal. " The Talbot Inn" is painted above, and till within the last five or six years there was also the following inscription : — " This is the Inne where Sir Jeffry Chaucer and the nine and twenty Pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury, anno 1383." This inscription was formerly on the frieze of a beam laid cross- wise upon two uprights, which stood in the road in the front of the Tabard, and from which hung the sign, creaking as it swung to and fro with every passing gust. The sign and its supports were removed in 1 7G6, when all such characteristic features of the streets of London in the olden time disappeared, in obedience to a parliamentary edict for their destruction. The writing of this in- scription was evidently not very ancient ; but had, not improbably, been renewed from time to time from a very remote period. Tyrrwhitt,* however, thinks it is not older than the seventeenth century, from the fact that Speght, who noticed the Tabard in his edition of Chaucer (1602), does not mention it; he therefore supposes it to have been put up after the great fire of Southwark in 1676, when some portion of the inn was burnt, and in consequence of the change of name which then took place. Aubrey, writing a little after the period of the fire, says, " The ignorant landlord, or tenant, instead of the ancient sign of the Tabard, put up the Talbot, or dog 1" and " on the frieze of the beam" was then the inscription, which, however, he does not say was then also put up. Certainly Speght docs not give any inscription, properly so called, but he has mentioned as a fact the cir- cumstance recorded in the inscription, and in language so very similar, that we cannot but think the inscription was in his mind at the time of writing : This was the hostelry where Chaucer and the other pilgrims met together, and with Henry Baily, their host, accorded about the manner of their journey to Canterbury, &c." The date also, 1383, is precisely that which best agrees with the details of the poem and the known period of its composition, the latest historical event mentioned in it being Jack Straw's insurrection in 1381, and the poem itself having been composed somewhere between that year and the close of the century. We are, therefore, fully at liberty to believe, if we please, that the inscription (and con- sequently the poem) records, or is founded on, a real fact ; and we may strengthen that belief by remembering how much of the real, as well as of the ideal, ])er- vades the entire structure of the ' Canterbury Tak-s,' making it inij)ossil)le t(; say where the one ends and the other begins. Faith therefore is best. We cannot do better than believe Chaucer's statement implicitly: — ** Befol, ihat in that season, "^ on a day In Southwark at the Tabard as I hiy, Heady to wondon on my pilf^riina^n To Canterbury with devout cour;i{;e. At w'v^hi was (Mjiiie into that hostelry Well nine and twenty in a company Of sundry folk, by fidventure yfall In fellowship, and pilj^rinis were they all. That toward Canterbury woulden ride." * Notef to li'n DiMertatioii on the ' Cantrrlmry Tiilos,' prefixe*! to liii excellent rflitinn of fh<' jx)em. f April, with hiw ■liowres no\c." [Rwr«'t. J I' 2 60 LONDON. The state of the gateway presents but a too faithful type of the general state of the inn. Its patchings and alterations, its blackened doors and bursting ceiling, and its immense cross-beams, tell us, in language not to be mistaken, of antiquity and departed greatness. From the gateway the yard is open to the sky, and gradually widens. On either side is a range of brick buildings, extending for some little distance ; opposite the end of that on the right, the left-hand range is continued by the most interesting part of the Tabard, a stone-coloured wooden gallery on the first floor, which, in its course making a right angle, presents its principal portion directly opposite the entrance from the High Street. It is sup- ported by plain thick round pillars, also of wood ; and it supports on other pillars of a slenderer make, in front, the bottom of the very high and sloping tiled roof. Offices, with dwellings above, occupy the left range as far as the gallery, be- neath which are stables ; whilst under the front portion of the gallery is a waggon- office, with its miscellaneous packages lying about ; and suggesting thoughts of the time when as yet road- waggon s, properly so called, were unknown, and the carriers, with their strings of pack-horses and jingling bells, filled the yard with their bustle and obstreperous notes of preparation for departure. Immediately over this office, in the centre of the gallery, is a picture, said to be by '^'^ Blake," and "well painted,"* of the Canterbury Pilgrimage, though now so dirty or decayed that the subject itself is hardly discernible. The buildings on the right are principally occupied by the bar, tap-room, parlour, &c., of the present inn : to these, therefore, we shall for convenience give that appellation, although the [The Talbot, 1841.] gallery and stables also still belong to it. From the inn, then, originally stretched across to the gallery a bridge of communication, balustraded, we may be sure, like the gallery, and arched over like the similar bridge still existing * Gentleman's Magazine, 1812. THE TABARD. 61 in another part of the yard. The proofs of this connectmg bridge are exhibited on the wall of the inn, in the blackened ends of the row of horizontal planks, set edge-wise, which supported it, and in the door, now walled up, to which it led, which opened into a large room, extending quite through the depth of the inn-buildings. On turning the corner of the right-hand range, we find in the same line, but standing considerably back, the lofty stables ; and scarcely can we enter the doors, before — as our eye measures their extraordinary size — we acknow- ledge the truth of Chaucer's description : we are almost satisfied this must have been the place he saw. They are, indeed, "wide." On the same side is another range of buildings, continued into another open yard behind ; on the opposite side projects the end of the gallery ; and here we find the bridge we have mentioned connecting the two sides, and which is in a most ruinous-looking state. The great extent of the original inn may be conceived when we state that there is little doubt but that it occupied the whole yard, with all its numerous buildings ; for, from one of the houses in the High Street, standing on the North side of the gate- way, a communication is still traceable through all the intermediate tenements to the gallery ; from thence across the bridge at its furthest extremity to the stables, and back again to the present inn ; and, lastly, from thence right through to the High Street once more — to the house on the South side of the gateway. Let us now walk into the interior. The master of the inn, of whom we may say, with a slight alteration of Chaucer's words — " A seemly man our hoste is withal,'* — welcomes us at the door, and kindly and patiently inducts us into all its hidden mysteries. Passing with a hasty glance the bar in front — the parlour behind with its blackened roof and its polished tables — the tap-room on the left — the low doorways, winding passages, broken ceilings, and projecting chimney- arches which everywhere meet the eye — we follow our conductor through a narrow door, and are startled to find ourselves upon what appears, from its very contrast to all around, a magnificently broad staircase, with a handsome fir balus- trade in perfect condition, and with landings large enough to be converted into bedrooms. On the first floor is a door on each side ; that on the left communicating with one room after another, till you reach the one overlooking the bustle of the High Street ; and that on the right leading to the large room formerly opening out upon the bridge. In this room, which is of considerable size, there are the marks of a cornice yet visible on the ceiling. On the second story the contrast is almost ludicrous between the noble staircase and the narrow bedrooms, pushed out from within by an immense bulk of masonr}', which (en- closing a stack of chinmcys) occu])ies the central space; and forci'd in from with- out by the boldly slojiing roof: in fact, they were evidently not intended for each other. The changes induced by decay, accidents, and, above all, ])y a gradually contracting business, which has caused the larger rooms and wide ])assages to be divided and subdivided, as convenience prompted or necessity re<|uired, may account for these discr('j)an( i('s. The buildings of tlie ()])])()siti' range have evi- dently been to a certain extent of a corrcsjiondiiig nature. These manifold changes have produced a *• Tabard" very different from tluit of the memorable April night, when " The chambers and the stables weren wide 62 LONDON. and the whole body of pilgrims, numerous as they were, found entertainment of the ''best." Stepping across the central part of the yard to the gallery, we ascend by a stair- case, also "shorn of its fair proportions." As we mount the stairs our eyes are attracted by a retired modest-looking latticed window, peeping out upon the landing; and in different parts of the gallery are passages leading to countless nests of rooms, forming (as perhaps many of them did of old) the dormitories of the inn. In the centre of the gallery, immediately behind the picture, is a door opening into a lofty passage, with a room on each side : that on the right is, as our host announced to us, " The Pilgrim^ s room'' of tradition. With due reverence we looked upon its honoured walls, its square chimney-piece, and the panel above reaching to the ceiling, upon which there was till very recently a piece of ancient needlework or tapestry, cut out from a larger work, representing, it is said, a procession to Can- terbury, and which probably in the days of its splendour adorned the walls of this very room. The size, however, of the place, we confess, did not exactly accord with our ideas of the hall of the ancient Tabard. The depth from wall to window was satisfactory, so was the height ; the latticed window itself was large and antique in its expression, notwithstanding the alterations it had certainly experienced ; but the length of the room — so much less than its depth — appeared, to say the least of it, extraordinary. We went into the room on the other side of the passage, which, with a similar window of similar depth and height, was still shorter ; but that our host explained, — he had cut off a third room beyond. We went round the gallery to this, and there found an exactly corre- sponding fireplace and panel, in the exactly corresponding corner to those of the first room. Could the whole have formed one room ? Our host was struck with the idea. There was certainly a great difficulty in the way ; the intervening door, passage, and staircase, with a portion of the ancient balustrade, apparently still remaining. We could not, however, avoid again expressing our belief that such was the case. Scarcely had the words passed our lips when the host called out, with as much pleasure in his tones as we can imagine there must have been in his great progenitor's when he announced his famous scheme to the pilgrims, "You are right; where the door now is there has been a third window." True enough, there were the undeniable evidences of a middle window, half of its out- lines visible in the wall agreeing in height and dimensions with those on either side, and the remainder cut away by the door. Were further proof wanting, it exists in the staircase itself, the marks of the original ceiling which crossed the space it occupies being still visible. The whole three rooms then had clearly been originally one, measuring some forty-five feet in length, twelve in height, and about twenty in breadth ; lighted by its three handsome windows. Thus, doubtless, it was when "newly repaired" by "Master J. Preston,"* in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth — the period to which the more modern features of the room — the fireplace and panels — may be ascribed. Here, then, is a place worthy of the tradition ; which, too, we may add, is in no slight degree confirmed by the circumstances narrated. But was this the pilgrims' room after all ? Does that or any portion of the * Speght s notice. THE TABARD. 63 old Tabard still exist? For the answer to these questions our readers must accompany us a brief way into the history of the inn. The earliest notice of the site occurs in a register of the Abbey of Hyde, near Winchester, where we find that two tenements were conveyed by William de Ludegarsale to the Abbot in 1306, and which were described, in a former conveyance therein recited, as extending in length from the common ditch of Southwark eastwards, as far as the royal way towards the west. The ditch here alluded to formerly bounded the back of the Tabard yard, though now, owing to the encroachment of the wall of Guy's Hospital, it is at a little distance beyond ; the royal way doubtless meant the great road from London southwards — the High Street of later times. Speght, after giving a similar account with Stow of the meaning of the word Tabard, goes on to speak of the Inn in Southwark by London, within the which was the lodging of the Abbot of Hyde by Win- chester. This was the hostelry where Chaucer and the other pilgrims met together, and, with Henry Baily their host, accorded about the manner of their journey to Canterbury. And whereas through time it hath been much decayed, it is now by Master J. Preston, with the Abbot's house thereto adjoined, newly repaired, and with convenient rooms much increased for the receipt of many guests." The Abbey of Hyde, to which then it appears the Tabard belonged, had no less distinguished a founder than Alfred the Great, and became, in progress of time, a very splendid and wealthy establishment. Its inmates appear to have caught something of Alfred's chivalrous spirit, for, at the battle of Hastings, the Abbot, who was related to Harold, came into the field with twelve of his monks and a score of soldiers; and of all those brave English hearts who there struggled for the freedom of their outraged soil, none appear to have done better service than these gallant monks. They fell, every man, in the field ; indeed their heroism appears to have been so conspicuous as to attract the Conqueror's atten- tion, for he afterwards used their house with especial harshness, not only seizing their land, but keeping the abbey without a head for nearly three years. Henry II., however, made amends for all its past losses: he endowed it so magnificently that it became one of the most distinguislied of English monasteries ; and when parliaments began to meet, and the abbots to be summoned to the upper house, the Abbot of Hyde was among the number. A London residence now became necessary, and there is every probability that the site of the Tabard was purchased for this purpose — the High Street being a favoured ])lace with these reverend prelates. The year after the conveyance, (August, loO/,) the Abbot obtained a licence for " A chapel at his hosj)itium at St. Margaret's." Finally, at the dissolution of religious houses, the Abbot's house here was granted to John and Thomas Masters. From Speght's notice then we see clearly that the original Tabard was Standing in 1 002, unless we arc to suppose that it had been ])ulle(l down, rebuilt, and then again become the "most ancient" of the inns of Soutinvark. and ** much decayed," in the space of " two hundred years." The most important event connected with the changes the 'I'abard has under- gone is the great fire of Southwark in IG/G, which, almost forgotten as it is now, would have assuredly been s])()ken of as thr great fire, but for the j)re- ceding conflagration of 1GG6. This fire broke out about four o'clock in the 64 LONDON. morning of the 26th of May, and " continued with much violence all that day and part of the night following, notwithstanding all the care of the Duke of Mon- mouth, the Earl of Craven, and the Lord Mayor, to quench the same by blowing up houses and otherwise. His Majesty, accompanied with her Royal Highness, in a tender sense of this sad calamity, being pleased himself to go down to the bridge-foot in his barge, to give such orders as his Majesty found fit for putting a stop to it, which, through the mercy of God, was finally effected, after that about six hundred houses had been burnt and blown up."* The fire was stayed at St. Thomas's Hospital, and, there is reason to believe, through the instrumentality of the first fire-engine with leathern pipes ever used in this country.f The Town-hall, immediately opposite the Tabard, we know to have been then burnt down ; and, to a certain extent, the latter must have shared the same fate. "This house," says Aubrey, remaining before the fire in 1676, was an old timber house, probably coeval with Chaucer's time." He must have referred to the exterior building standing on one side of the gateway, as shown in the en- graving, and which, there is no doubt, was coeval with Chaucer's time: — As we look on it, does it not speak for itself? Is not " the Prior's hospitium'* [Tlie Tabard, fromUiry's edition of Chaucer, 1*720.3 written on it plainly in the pointed arches of its windows and door below? But the gallery within — did that perish too in the flames ? We think we may answer, certainly not ; for, if it had, no such building as that which now exists would have been erected in its room. Galleries like this belong not to the * Loiidon Gazette, May 29, 1676. + As the advertisement on which we found this statement appears to have escaped the writers on the history of this valuable machine, we transcribe it from the London Gazette of August 14th, 1676 : — " Whereas his Majesty hath granted letters- patent unto Mr. Wharton and Mr. Strode, for a certain new-invented engine for quenching of fire, with leatheni pipes, which carries a great quantity and a continual stream of water, with an extraordinary force, to the top of any house, into any room, passage, or alley ; being much more useful tlian any that hath hitherto been invented, as was attested under the hands of the Masters of St. Tliomas's Hospital and officers of the same parish, as in the late great fire of Southwark, to their great benefit and advantage." THE TABARD. 65 time of Charles II. The very aspect of the present gallery is enough to convince any one that it has not been erected within the last one hundred and sixty years, and, if not, the facts of its previous history, as we have narrated them, will show that it must be at least as old as Chaucer. We hold, therefore, firmly to the belief that the very gallery exists along which Chaucer and the pilgrims walked ; we place implicit credence in the tradition as to the "Pilgrims' Room." Let it not be said that we have devoted too much space to these proofs, that the inquiry itself is useless; unless the reverence for distinguished men, in which such inquiries have their root, be condemned at the same time. From the period of the contention of the seven cities for the honours of the birthplace of the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," down to the present day, men in all ages and countries have carefully treasured up every known or supposed fact connected with the personal history of those among them who have raised humanity itself to a higher level by their exertions ; and when they cease to do so, it will be not hazarding too much to say that our great poets, patriots, and philosophers may as well at once disappear from the world, for they are nothing if not honoured ; they must be reverenced in order to be understood. If, then, our admiration of a great work interests us so much in its author, and in all the localities where he has been, and where consequently we love to linger, how much more strongly should such feelings be excited where the work itself has its own particular birthplace and locality — a home as it were from which it cannot be severed ! Thus it is with the 'Canterbury Tales' and with the Tabard — the inn where the dramatis personce of that " Comedy not intended for the stage " meet, in the hall of which its plan is developed, and from which the pilgrims depart, carrying with them an influence that mingles with and presides over all their mirth, humour, pathos, and sublimity, in the person of the Tabard's host, immortal Harry Baily." We have kept our readers a long time waiting in the gallery, but we now request them to enter once more the pilgrims' room, and assist us to restore it to something of its original appearance. The intervening walls disappear : from end to end of the long hall there is no obstruction to the eye, except those two round pillars or posts placed near each end to support the massy oaken beams and complicated timbers of the ceiling. The chimney-pieces and panels too arc gone, and in their stead is that immense funnel-shaped projection from the wall in the centre, o])positc the middle window, with its crackling fire of brushwood and logs on the hearth beneath. The fire itself appears pale and wan, in the midst of the broad stream of golden sunshine pouring in through the windows from the great luminary now fast sinking below the line of St. Margaret's Church in the High Street opposite. Branching out in antlcrcd magnificence from the wall at one extremity of the room, and immediately over the door, arc the frontal honours of a first-rate deer, a ])resent probably from the monks of Hyde to their London tenant and entertainer. At the other end of the hall is the cup- board with its glittering array of plate, com])rising large silver quart-])ots, covered bowls and basins, ewers, salt-cellars, sjjoons; and in a central comi)art- ment of the middle shelf is a lofty gold cup with a curious lid. Lastly, over the chimney-bulk hangs an immense bow, with its attendant ])ara])hernalia of arrows, &c., the symbol of our host's favourite diversion. Attendants now begin to move to and fro, some preparing the tables evidently for the entertainment of a 66 LONDON. numerous ])arty, others strewing the floor with hcrbes sote," whilst one con- siderately closes the window to keep out the chilling evening air^ and, stirring the fire, throws on some more logs. Hark ! some of the pilgrims are coming ; the miller giving an extra flourish of his bagpipe as he stops opposite the gateway, that they may be received with due attention. Yes, there they are now slowly coming down the yard — that extraordinary assemblage of individuals from almost every rank of society, as diversified in character as in circumstance, most richly picturesque in costume : an assemblage which only the genius of a Chaucer could have brought so intimately together, and for such admirable purposes. Yes, there is the Knight on his " good" but not " gay" horse, the fair but confident Wife of Bath, the Squire challenging attention by his graceful management of the fiery curveting steed, the Monk with the golden bells hanging from his horse's trappings, keeping up an incessant jingle. But who is this in a remote corner of the gallery, leaning upon the balustrade, the most unobserved but most observing of all the numerous individuals scattered about the scene before us ? His form is of a goodly bulk, and habited in a very dark violet-coloured dress, with bonnet of the same colour : from a button on his breast hangs the gilt anelace, a kind of knife or dagger. His face is of that kind which, once seen, is remembered for ever. Thought, sad but sweet," is most impressively stamped upon his pale but comely features, to which the beard lends a fine antique cast. But it is the eye which most arrests you ; there is something in that which, whilst you look upon it, seems to open as it were glimpses of an unfathomable world beyond. It is the great poet-pilgrim himself ; the narrator of the p roceedings of the Canterbury pilgrimage. The host, having now cordially welcomed the pilgrims, is coming along the gallery to see if the hall be ready for their entertainment, making the solitary man smile as he passes at one of his merry " japes." As he enters the hall, who could fail to recognise the truth of the description ? — " A seemly man our hoste was withal For to have been a marshal! in an hall. A large man he was with eyen steep, A fairer burgess is there none in Cheap : Bold of his speech, and wise and well ytauglit ; And of manhood him lacked righte nought. Eke thereto was he right a merry man." The dismounted pilgrims, singly or in knots, begin to ascend the gallery. Fore- most comes the Knight, with a sedate and dignified countenance, telling, like his soiled gipon, of long years of service ; his legs are in armour, with gilt spurs ; a red-sheathed dagger hangs from his waist, and little aiglets, tipped with gold, from his shoulders. A nobler specimen of chivalry in all its gentleness and power it would be impossible to find than this worthy man ;" as distinguished for his " truth and honour" as for his freedom and courtesy;" who has been concerned m military expeditions in almost every part of the world — in Egypt, Prussia, Russia, Granada, — has fought in no less than "fifteen mortal battles," and made himself particularly conspicuous against the " heathen ; " yet who still remains in his port and bearing as meek as is a maid ;" who is, in short, " A very perfect gentle knight." With the Knight comes the Prioress, smiling, so " simple and coy," at his gallant THE TABARD. 67 attentions, and looking down every noAv and then to the tender motto of the gold brooch attached to her beads — Amor vincit omnia. She wears a wimple, or neck- covering, " full seemely ypinched," a handsome black cloak, and white tunic beneath — the dress of the Benedictine order, to which she belongs. Her nose is " tretis," that is to say, long and well proportioned ; her eyes are grey ; her mouth full small, soft, and red; and her fair forehead " a span broad." In a scries of the most exquisite touches has Chaucer painted her character ; her l)retty innocent oath — but "by Saint Eloy;" her singing the "service divine" so sweetly entuned in her nose ; her precise and proper French, " after the school of Stratford-attc-Bow ;" her distaste even for her rank, because of the stateliness of manner it entailed ; and her tenderness of heart, which would make her " Weep, if that she saw a mouse Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled." With an attention no less marked than the Knight's, and scarcely less graceful, the host receives his distinguished lady-guest at the door, and, addressing her as "courteously as it had been a maid," leads the way to the table. In the Prioress' train follow a nun and three priests ; and next to them the Wife of Bath and the Squire, she laughing loudly and heartily, and he blushing at some remark the merry dame has made concerning his absent lady-love. Strange contrast ! the one steeped to the very lips in romance, seeing everything by the " purple light of love," sensitive as the famous plant itself to every touch that threatens to approach the sanctuary of his heart — the corner where the holy ministrations of love are for ever going on : the other no longer young, but still beautiful, con- summately sensual and worldly, as utterly divested of the poetry of beauty as a handsome woman can well be. We make that qualification, for it is difficult to look unmoved on that winning countenance, so " fair and red of hue," and which is so well set off by her black hat — " As broad as is a beaver or a targe." Her full luxuriant-looking form is attired in a closely-fitting red surcoat or jacket, and in a blue petticoat or " fotc-mantel," bound round " her hippcs large" by a golden girdle. Well, although — "Husbands at the church-door has she had five," wc may be pretty sure that it will not be long before a sixth is added to the number. Of all the ]>ilgrims, her companion, the Squire, is perhajis the most poetical, and appears in the most poetical costume, with his curled locks adorning his youthful, ingenuous, and manly face ; his embroidered dress looking — " As it were a mead, All full of freshi'; flowrrs white and red and his graceful and active form revealing, in every movement, that he ])ossesses all the vigour with the freshness of the " month of May;*' that he is a " lusty bachelor" as well as a " lover," who can one while htmourably ]iartake all the dangers of his father's foreign expeditions, and the next be content to be doing nothing but "singing" or "Hoyting* all the day." The Knight and the Squire * ri.iying Ml the flufc. 68 LONDON. have with them but a single attendant, a yeoman, " clad in coat and hood of green/' wearing a sword and buckler on one side, and a " gay" dagger on the other, and having a mighty bow in his hand. His " peacock arrows bright and keen " are under his belt, and his horn is slung by the green baudrick across his shoulders. " A forester soothly is he as I guess." It has been remarked that we often hate those whose opinions differ but to a moderate extent from our own, much more than we do those with whom we have not one opinion in common ; thinking, perhaps, that we are in more danger of being mixed up in the eyes of the world with the first than with the last. Some such feeling appears to actuate two, at least, of the three reverend men who are now entering the hall, namely, the respectable Monk and the half-vagabond Friar, who, whilst looking somewhat suspiciously on each other, seem to agree in their aversion to the Parson before them. He, however, with his meek, placid counte- nance, and crossed hands, walks quietly up to the table, quite unconscious of the sentiments he has excited : his habit, a scarlet surcoat and hood, with a girdle of beads round his waist, proclaims the ministering priest. And where, in the literature of any age or nation, may we look for so perfectly sublime a character in such a simple homely shape as in this now before us ? A man poor in circum- stances, but rich in holy thought and work," who, even in his poverty, will rather give to all his poor parishioners about, than " cursen," like his brethren, " for his tithes," — who delays not, ** for no rain, ne thunder, In sickness and in mischief* to visit The farthest in his parish and who, though fully qualified by his learning and abilities to fill the highest offices of the Church, yet remains " full patient " in his adversity, teaching " Christe's lore " to all, but letting all at the same time see that he first follows it himself No wonder a man of this character finds little sympathy with a rich Monk, who can see no reason why he should be always poring over a book in a cloister, when he might be " pricking and hunting for the hare," and whose appearance bespeaks the luxurious tastes and appetites of its owner — " a lord full fat and in good point.'' He wears a black gown, the large sleeves worked or purfled at the edges with the finest fur; his hood, now thrown back and revealing his bald head, shining " as any glass," is fastened under his chin by a curious pin of gold, with a love-knot in the greater end. " Now certainly he is a fair prelate." The Friar, " a wanton and merry," with his tippet stuffed full of knives and pins (presents for the fair wives with whom he is so great a favourite), and lisping — " For his wantonness " To make his English sweet upon the tongue" — looks still less inclined to mortify his appetites, or to want any of the good things of life for any other reason than the difficulty of obtaining them ; — a small difficulty with him, whilst there are riotous " franklins," or " worthy women," * Misfortune. THE TABARD. 69 to be absolved of their sins — whilst he maintains his reputation as the best beggar in his house; — or, lastly, whilst his ''harping'* and his "songs" make him a welcome guest at the " taverns " where our Friar appears in all his glory, with his eyes twinkling — " As do the starres in a frosty night." But the supper-bell rings, and the remainder of the pilgrims rapidly obey the signal ; a glimpse of each in passing is all that the time will admit of. Foremost comes the Sumpnour, one of that " rabble " which Milton denounces — a sum- moner of offenders to the ecclesiastical courts, with his " fire-red cherubinnes face," and the "knobbs sitting on his checks" — (" Of his visage children were sore afeard") — the very incarnation of gross, depraved self-indulgence. The immense garland on his head, however, shows he has no mean opinion of his personal attractions. Every remark he makes is plentifully interlarded with the Latin law-terms he has picked up in his attendance on the courts ; but beware how you ask him their meaning: already he "hath spent all his philosophy." With him comes his " friend and compeer," the Pardoner, his lanky yellow hair falling about his shoulders, and bearing before him his precious wallet — " Bret full of pardon came from Rome all hot," — and containing also his invaluable relics — the veil of " Our Lady," and a piece of the sail of St. Peter's boat. The Miller, who is immediately behind him, seems to listen with marked disrelish to his small goat's voice, and to look with something very like disgust upon his beardless face : he evidently would half like to throw him over the gallery. Certainly no man can be more unlike the object of the Miller's contempt and aversion than the Miller himself, so big of brawn and bone, with his stiff spade-like beard and manly countenance, from the beauty of which, it must at the same time be confessed, the nose, with its large wart and tuft of red bristling hairs, somewhat detracts. His favourite bagpipes are under his arm; he is habited in a "white coat" and "blue hood." The "slender choleric" Reve, or Steward, comes next, having his hair shaved off around his ears, and a long rusty sword by his side, seeming to intimate that he finds that too, as well as his sharp wits (on which "no auditor" can win), sometimes in requisition to enable him so well to keep his " garner.'* The weather, the seed, the crops, form the subjects of his conversation with tho Merchant at his side, who is dressed in a " motley " garment of red, lined with blue, and figured with white and blue flowers; he has a Flanders beaver hat upon his head, and boots, with " fair ' 'and handsome clas])s, upon his feet. The man of busi- ness is inscribed on his face. Pausing for a moment beside the door, that he may enter with becoming dignity, ap])ears the opulent and eminent Serjeant of the Law, wearing the characteristic feature of his order, the coif, and the no less character- istic feature of the individual, the " homely medley coat." He not only is a man full rich of excellence, but takes care to be thought so by his wise s])ecch ; and, whilst the busiest man in his profession, seems ever to be still busier than he is. Such is the man of law — the Judge " full often at assize." Another professional man 1 — the Doctor of Physic, in his low hood and bright purple surcoat and stockings ; 70 LONDON. none like him to speak of physic and of surgery, and of the general business of the healing art ; for he is grounded in astronomy," and keeps " His patient a full great deal In houres by his magic natural." It is not, however, to be overlooked, that he knows " the cause of every malady" — a knowledge that incredulous unimaginative people may think of more import- ance to his fame, as a " very perfect practiser," than the being " grounded in astronomy." Let us commend to all lovers of good living the pilgrim who is next coming along the gallery, this good-looking stately gentleman, with the snow-white beard and sanguine complexion, and the white silk gipciere, or purse, hanging from his waist. It is the Franklin, some time knight of the shire, ''Epicurus' owen son ;" who is evidently snuffing up with eager pleasure certain delicate scents floating hitherwards from the kitchen, and offering up prayers that no unlucky accident may mar the delights of the table, that the sauce may not want in sharpness and poignancy, or his favourite dish be done a turn too much. He is certainly an epicure, but he is also what epicures sometimes are not, exceed- ingly hospitable : you shall never enter his house without finding great store of baked meats, fish and flesh, or without experiencing the truth of the popular remark — " It snewed in his house of meat and drink." Lastly, come crowding in together the Manciple, so " wise in buying of victual " for the temple to which he belongs, dressed in a light-blue surcoat, and little light-brown cap : the Shipman, whose hue " the hot summer " has made all brown," whose beard has been shaken in " many a tempest," and who seems to be still treading his favourite deck : the Cook, famous for his "blanc- manger," who has been preparing for the culinary exertions of the morrow by a little extra refreshment this evening ; the Ploughman — the Parson's brother, a man possessing much of the Parson's spirit : and the Haberdasher, the Carpenter, the Weaver, the Dyer, and the Maker of tapestry, with their silver- wrought knives, showing they are each of them well to do in the world, and in every respect " Shapelich for to be an alderman." Two only of the pilgrims are now missing from the board, the Clerk of Oxen- ford and the Poet : and here they come ; the poor Clerk, in his " threadbare '* garment, and his hollow " face lighted up by an air of inexpressible animation at some remark that has dropped from the lips of his inspired companion. And could Chaucer look unmoved at such a character as the Clerk ? — a character so much like his own in all respects but rank and worldly circumstance, that we are not sure but he has here pointed out those mental characteristics which he did not choose to include in his own nominal portrait; which, be it observed too, is merely personal. The Clerk has his own love of books, and study '* Of Aristotle and his philosophy whilst of Chaucer, perhaps, might be more justly said than of the Clerk, Not a word spake he more than was need, And that was said in form and reverence, And short and quick, and full of high sentence. THE TABARD. 71 Sounding in moral virtue was his speech, And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.*" Supper is now brought in ; fish^ flesh, and fowl, baked meats, roast meats, and boiled, high-seasoned dishes, burning as it were, with wild-fire, and others gaily painted and turreted with paper. Among the liquors handed round, due honou is done to the famous ale, of which the proverb says — • " The nappy strong ale of Southwark Keeps many a gossip frae the kirk." " Strong" wines, also are there, either " neat as imported," according to the old tavern inscriptions, such as those of Rochelle, Bourdeaux, Anjou, Gascony, Oseye, &c., or compounded under the names of hippocras, pigment, and claret. Both ale and wine are carried by the attendants in goblets of wood and pewter. Pilgrims have generally sharp appetites, and Chaucer's are by no means an ex- ception ; they have commenced in good earnest the business of the table. Scarcely is the supper over, and the '^reckonings" made, before our host, who has evidently for some time been impatient to tell the guests of the merry fancy that possesses him, bursts out with — " Now lordings truely Ye be to me right welcome heartily ; For by my truth, if that I shall not lie, I saw not this year such a company At once in this herberwe f as is now. Fain would I do you mirth, and I wist how. And of a mirth I am right now bethought. To do you ease, and it shall cost you nought. Ye go to Canterbury ; God you speed. The blissful martyr quite you your meed ; And well I wot, as ye go by the way Ye shapen you to talken and to play : For truely comfort ne mirth is none To riden by the way dumb as the stone. And therefore would I maken you disport, As I said erst, and do you some comfort. And if you liketh all by one assent Now for to standcn at my judgement, And for to worken as I shall you say To-morrow, when ye riden on the way, Now by my father's soule that is dead, But ye be merry, smiteth oft" my head. Hold up your hands withouten more speech." With an exquisite touch of practical wisdom, Chaucer says, — " He thought it was not worth to make it wise;" so they bade him " say his verdict.'* ** Lordings, (piod he, now heark'neth for the best. But take it not, 1 ])ray you, in disdain : This is tiic j)oint, to sj)eak it plat and plain, Tiiat each of you, to shorten with your way In this voyage, shall tellcn tal6s tway * It tnay l)e added also, that one of the most uiteregting pa/taape* of Cliaucfr'a life — his vi«it to rilnircli in Italy, is referred to by tlie Clerk in his tale of tlie ' Patient (irisildr.' f From arbour apparently, a word often applied anciently to inns, loilgings, &c. 72 LONDON. To Canterbury ward, I mean it so, And homeward he shall tellen other two, Of adventures that whilom have befal. And which of you that beareth him best of all. That is to say, that telleth in this case Tal6s of best sentence and most solace Shall have a supper at your aller cost Here in this place, sitting by this post. When that ye comen again from Canterbury." The proposition is accepted in the genial spirit in which it is offered, and by " one assent." Fresh wine is brought, the pilgrims drink, and then retire to rest — "Withouten any longer tarrying." The hall is therefore soon deserted of all but the attendants, who rake the fire abroad upon the immense hearth : for a few moments the reflection from the ruddy embers illumines here and there a projecting corner of the oak carvings of the ceiling, but it soon fades into a few bright sparkles, running to and fro as if to escape their doom, and dying in the attempt ; till these too at last utterly dis- appear from our gaze. And now silence and darkness reign in the pilgrims' hall. Silence and darkness ! — types of the future desolation which await the now flourishing hostelry, — of a time when the only pilgrims who shall visit its chambers will be the grateful lovers of the genius of the brilliant Morning Star" of our poetry, coming to worship the Poet at his own proper shrine. [The Tabard, from a Drawing about 1780.] [London Bridge about 1616.] v.— LONDON BRIDGE. There is as much, perhaps, in a bridge to take hold both of the affections and the imagination as in any other work whatever — dome, column, spire, or star- ypointing pyramid" — l)y which human hands have given durable expression to the ideal in that peculiar form of art which we distinguish as the architectural. Deeper thoughts of a certain class — thoughts that carry us out of this world — may be awakened by the view of a church : but, as an object for our every-day feelings of regard and attachment, a ])ridge stands among buildings next after a man's own home. Whether it be but a simple arch crossing the humblest village brook, or the mighty structure whose far-extending line of piers breasts the flood of some broad river rolling through a ])()])ul()us ca])ital, what other public accommodation is at once so universally and so ])alpably serviceable .'' Then, its essential beauty antl elegance are ecjual to its utility. Spaiuiing the otherwise im[)assal)le chasm with its firm roadway, it carries us over the flowing water, and through the air, as if it were a winged thiug. It is the rainbow brought down from heaven to earth, and made substantial and ])ermauent. And divers arc the eternal bridges that ])oetry has l)uilt for itself, out of those sun- beams of its own that are far stronger and more lasting than any beauLs that were ever hewn in forest, from " Al-sirat's arch" and that as])haltic ])avement erst thrown over tlu; foauiing deep between earth and hell by Death and his 74 LONDON. mother Sin, to that broken one which Mirza, in his vision, beheld standing in the midst of the tide of eternity, with the multitudes of people passing over it, and continually dropping through its trap-doors and pitfalls, and that other, gleaming with prismatic light, and showing like " one entire and perfect chryso- lite," into which the serpent, the emblem of Intellectual Strength, is finally transformed in Goethe's wondrous tale.* A bridge, too, figures conspicuously in some of the most poetic passages of history — from the expedition of Xerxes — " Over Hellespont Bridging his way " — and the contemporary defence of the Pons Sublicius at Rome by the gallant Horatius Codes, down to Napoleon's brilliant carnage and victory at Lodi, and the still bloodier three days of his baffled charges at Arcole. And in that poetry which is mixed of the imaginative and the real, shedding its supernatural light on earthly scenes, what has not Shakspere made the Rialto to all of us ? In the annals of the metropolis, at least, if not of the kingdom, London Bridge has been one of the most famous of our public monuments for not much short of a thousand years. The Thames at London is now crossed by no fewer than six magnificent bridges ; but it is not yet quite a century ago since London Bridge afforded the only passage from the one bank of the river to the other, and the only entrance into the town from the south, as it had done for eight centuries previous. Whoever, therefore, went out or came in, to or from the wealthiest, the most populous, and in every sense the most important parts of the country, or to or from almost any one of the ports of communication with other countries, passed, from the days of the Saxons to near the end of the reign of George II., either over this great thoroughfare or under it. There it stood, looking down upon the ever-flowing river, and coursed itself by almost as unresting a living tide, of the multitudes of one generation pursuing those of another, amid " the masques and mummeries and triumphs " wherewith each successively sought to gild its mortality. But the bridge itself also underwent various transformations in this long course of ages. Dion Cassius makes mention of a bridge over the Thames at the time of the expedition of the Emperor Claudius, in the year 44 ; but it is much more pro- bable that that historian, writing after the lapse of a century and a half, should have fallen into a mistake as to such a matter, than that any such work should have existed in the then state both of the Thames and of British civilization. Where the bridge stood he does not say ; but his language would seem to imply that it was not very far from the mouth of the river — a notion which never could have entered into the head of a person knowing anything about the Thames, and which may almost be taken as a convijicing proof that the story he tells should be referred altogether — in so far, at least, as the bridge is concerned — to another river, — perhaps, as has been suggested, to some mere tributary of the Thames, over which some rude description of bridge may even thus early have been thrown. There is every reason to believe that at this time, and down to a much later date, the Thames, even at the point where London now stands, and much higher up, flowed for the greater part through broad marshes ; and nothing that we know of * Entitled Das Mdrchen, that is, The Tale — regarded by tlie Germans as the tale of tales, and nobly trans- lated into English by Mr. Carlyle, in his Miscellanies; London, 1839. LONDON BRIDGE. 75 the Britons before the Roman conquest of the country warrants us in supposing that they possessed anything like the mechanical skill that would have been required to construct a bridge for so wide a water-course, even if the banks had been ever so suitable for the purpose. No other ancient writer has any notice of a bridsre over the Thames at London or elsewhere, either at this date or at any time during the connexion of the Romans with our island. It is not improbable, nevertheless, that in the course of the period of between three and four centuries, during which Britain was a Roman province, and London continued to grow in extent and opulence, spreading itself, as it appears to have done, over the southern as well as the northern bank of the river, the inhabitants, or their governors, may have united the two by one of those structures which we know were erected in all other parts of the empire, and some of the examples of which left by the Romans are perhaps still unexcelled by the best efforts of modern science and skill. But if London had her bridge in the Roman times, both the structure itself, and the very memory and tradition of it, have wholly perished. There appears to have been no bridge of any kind over the Thames in the year 993, when, as the Saxon Chronicle tells us. King Anlaf, or Olave, of Norway, sailed up the river with a numerous fleet as far as Staines, which he plundered, without having encountered any impediment, as far as is mentioned, or any attempt having been made to bar his passage. But this very expedition of Olave's, perhaps, was the occasion of the erection of the first Saxon bridge at London. It is at any rate certain that there was a bridge here within a few years from this time : the old Icelandic historian, Snorro Sturleson, who wrote in the thirteenth century, has preserved a most curious relation of the Battle of London Bridge, fought in the year 1008. Under the disastrous rule of our Ethelred the Unready (Adalradr, the Norse writer calls him), the Danish pirates had overrun and conquered the greater ])art of England; and, in particular, they held possession both of the town of London, and also of the great emjiorium, or market, called Sudrvirki (Southwark), on the opposite bank of the river, which they had fortified with a deep ditch and a strong rampart. But in this year, 1008, Ethelred, who had been obliged to take refuge in France, returned liome, collected an army, and prepared to make a great effort for the expulsion of the invaders. In this enterprise he was assisted by his old enemy, the Norwegian King Olave, who had now been baptised, and who, indeed, was afterwards canonised, and is the Saint Olave of the Calendar. At the ])art of the river where London and Southwark stood, there was, Snorro goes on to inform us, a bridge wide enough to allow two carriages, if they met u])on it, to ])ass each other; and upon it were erected defences of various kinds, both turrets, and also roofed bulwarks, raised breast-high : the bridge itself was sustained by ])osts fixed in the bed of the river. These defences were, we should su])])()se, a ])ortion of the original and ])roj)er structure of the bridge, which had probably been erected as uiui h for warlike purposes, and for barring the passage of the river, as for ailbrding a means of transit between the one bank and the other. For the j)resi'nt they were, like the two towns, occupied and manned by the Danes; while below bridge lay King Olave with his fleet. An attempt was made in the first instance by Ethelred to carry the bridge by an attack from the land ; but this failed ; and then at a council of the chiefs, which was called by the almost desjiairing Saxon King to 76 LONDON. consider what should be or could be done, Olave offered that, if the rest would sup])ort him with their land forces, he would try if he could not manage the matter with his ships. The proposition having been adopted, the necessary preparations were set about on all hands; and the first thing King Olave did was to direct some old houses to be pulled down, and with the wooden poles and twigs of osier thence obtained, to raise upon each of his ships a huge scaffolding, extending over the sides of the vessel, so as to enable the men to reach the enemy with their swords without coming from under cover ; and at the same time, as he imagined, of such strength as to resist any stones that might be thrown down upon them from the upper works of the bridge. When everything was in readiness, both on the river and on shore, the ships rowed towards the bridge against the tide ; but, as soon as they got near to it, they were assailed with so furious a shower of missiles and great stones, that, notwithstanding Olave's ingenious basket-work, not only helmets and shields gave way, but even some of the ships were sorely shattered, so that a considerable number of the men made off with themselves altogether. On this, driven to their last shifts, Olave and his brave Norsemen, rowing close up to the bridge, bound their barks with ropes and cables to the piles on which it was supported, and then, tugging their oars with all their might, and being assisted by the tide (we now see why they chose to make their attack while it was ebbing), they soon felt the fabric yielding to their efforts, and in no long time had the satisfaction of bringing down piers and bridge with one great crash into the water — the loads of stones that had been collected upon it, with the crowd of its armed defenders, only helping to make the ruin more complete. Great numbers of the Danes were drowned ; those who could, fled, some to London, some to Southwark. But both towns, blockaded as they were from the river, which then was almost their only highway of communication with the rest of the country, soon found it expedient to surrender to Ethelred. Snorro goes on to tell us that Olave's exploit was celebrated in song by more than one Norwegian bard ; and he even records some of their verses ; but these do not enable us to add any material fact to the excellent old chronicler's own very lucid prose narrative.* The bridge which King Olave thus pulled down with his ships and their strong cables was no doubt constructed only of wood ; and it appears to have been soon rebuilt of the same material ; for there certainly was once more a bridge over the Thames at London, when the Danish king, Canute, invaded the country in 1016. His fleet, the Saxon chronicler informs us, after stopping for a short time at Greenwich, proceeded up the river to London ; " where," it is added, "they sank a deep ditch on the south side, and dragged their ships to the west side of the bridge." The meaning seems to be, that they towed their ships past the bridge through a canal which they dug on the Surrey side of the river for that purpose. At any rate, the mention of the bridge is express. Haitian d, the modern historian of London, even conceived that he had traced the course of Canute's canal : "By a diligent search of several days," he says, " I discovered the vestigia and length of this artificial water-course : its outflux from the river Thames was where the Great Wet Dock below Rotherhithe is situate ; whence, * See this passage of Snorro's History extracted, with a Latin translation, in Jolnison's Antiquitates Celto — Scandicae, 4to., Hauuiae (Copenhagen), 1786 ; pp. 89 — 93. LONDON BRIDGE. 77 running due west by the seven houses in Rotherhithe Fields, it continues its course by a gentle winding to the Drain Windmill ; and, with a west-north-west course passing St. Thomas of Watering's, by an easy turning it crosses the Deptford road, a little to the south-east of the Lock Hos])ital, at the lower end of Kent Street ; and, proceeding to Newington Butts, intersects the road a little south of the turnpike; whence, continuing its course by the Black Prince in Lambeth Road, on the north of Kennington, it runs west-and-by-south, througli the Spring-garden at Vauxhall, to its influx into the Thames at the lower end of Chelsea Reach." This was written more than a century ago ; and even at that time the ingenious and painstaking investigator admits that part of the line which he has so minutely described was not very discernible to ordinary eyes. But we fear that in the work of obliteration the last century has done more than all the seven that preceded it — that Canute's canal must henceforth be contented to live in our historian's description only — if even that be now perfectly intel- ligible to any but the most profound of parish antiquaries. The marsh on the east of Newington turny)ike," where the trench was in Maitland's day " very visible," is now itself visible only to the "mind's 030;" and as for the seven houses in Rotherhithe Fields, their preservation would be as great a miracle as that of the seven sleepers in the cave at Ephcsus. In su])i)ort of his theory, Maitland adduces the fact, that in the year 17'29, when some ditches were making to drain the low grounds which were part of the marsh, " there were dug up a considerable number of large oaken planks, and divers piles, which, from their j)osition, evidently aj)peared to have been part of the northern fence of this canal." He also learned, from one of the workmen, that when the great dock was made in 1694, "there was dug up in the bank of the river a great quantity of hazel, willows, and other small wood, of a considerable height, laid close together endways, ])ointing northward, with rows of stakes drove in to fasten them ;" whence he came to the conclusion that here had been the south bank of the mouth of the canal. Nevertheless, it has been objected, that, Canute's obji'ct ])ein^; merely to ])ass the l)ridge, a much shorter cut than this would have served his turn — that, instead of a canal beginning from the wet dock at Deptford and sweeping round to Chelsea, it would have been as much as he had either use or time for, if he had dug one merely from the ])lace called Dockhead in liother- hithc to St. Saviour's Dock in Southwark. But there was probably very little digging; Canute, in all likelihood, found the new passage he wanted lor liis shi])s made to his hands by the natnral inundations from the river, and, in j)r()- cceding so far beyond the bridge, only followed the guidance of the deeper and more navigable ])arts of the great marsh which then extended all along the south })ank of the Thames in this ])art of its course. Besides, it may have been advisable; for him to get his fleet beyond the reach, not only of tlu' bridge, hnt also of Southwark, where, as tlu; nanu; seems to imply, there was ])robal)ly at this time some sort of military work erecte«' our First Number — "'rii. Sllnii IliKlmay." 80 LONDON. will by no means allow his canal of Canute — for that is evidently what has given rise to Stow's notion — to be thus snatched out of his hands ; he contends, from an actual inspection of the piers of the bridge, that it had evidently been raised upon strong frames of piles driven into the bed of the river, as might very easily have been done, without the water having been withdrawn, the first layer of stones being in this way only about three feet under low-water mark. On the outside of the wooden foundations on which the stone piers were thus built, were driven other piles, rising up to low-water mark, and forming the cumbrous trowel -shaped masses about each pier, known, as long as the old bridge existed, by the name of the Sterlings. It is doubted, however, whether the sterlings were coeval with the erection of the bridge, or were subsequently added to protect and strengthen the original foundations of the piers. Peter of Colechurch died in 1205; so that he had not the satisfaction of seeing his bridge in its finished state. But in the space of nearly thirty years, during which the work had been proceeding under his superintendence, it may be presumed to have advanced to its last stage ; and we are particularly informed that the original architect was buried within the chapel, of St. Thomas a Becket, which was erected on the central pier of the bridge. The bridge consisted of twenty arches supported upon nineteen piers; the roadway being 926 feet in length, 60 feet in height from the river, and 40 feet wide from parapet to parapet. But if all this space was originally left as a free passage, it was afterwards reduced to a much narrower [London Bridge just before the Houses were pulled down in 1760.] thoroughfare. In a patent roll of the 9th year of Edward I., a.d. 1280, mention is made of ^'innumerable people dwelling upon" the bridge ; and as this was only about seventy years after it had been finished, it seems most probable that there were some houses upon it from the first. In course of time it became a continued LONDON BRIDGE. 81 [Upper Chapel of St, Thomas ] street built on both sides, with the exception of only three openings at unequal distances, from which there was a view of the river in each direction. Besides the private houses, however, there were some other erections which might be considered as forming properly a part of the bridge. Of these the most famous was the cha- pel, already mentioned, dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, which stood upon the east side of the street, over the tenth or central pier, which on that account was carried a long way farther out towards the east than the other piers. Its front to the street, which was thirty feet in length, was divided by four but- tresses, crowned with crocketcd spires, into three compartments ; of which the central one contained a large arched window, and the two others the entrances into the chapel from the street. The interior consisted of an upper chapel and a cry])t — the latter, which was about twenty feet in height, and the vaulted roof of which was sup- ported by clustered columns of great elegance, having an entrance from the river by means of a flight of stairs lead- ing from the sterling of the pier, as well as others from the upper room and from the street. Both apart- ments were lighted by rows of arched windows, looking out upon the water. This cha])el continued to be used for divine worshi]) down to the lleformation. Between the chaj)el and the Southwark end of the bridge, one of the arches, or junctions of the ])iers (the ele- venth from the Southwark end), was formed by a drawbridge ; and at the north end of this o])ening was a tower, which Stow tells us was begun to be built as it stood in his time in the year \ \2(\. But pro- bably a similar building had stood there from the first erection ol" the l>ii(l<;i'. On the top of tlu! front oC this tower the heads of jicisons executed for high treason used to be stuck, till it was replaced in the latter part of the sixteenth century by a very singular edifice of wood, called Nonsuch House, which is s;iid to have been constructed in lloll.iinl. ;ni(l hroni^lit, oxer in jhcccs, when it was s(>t uj) here without the assistance ol" either mortar or iron, only wooden ])egs being used to hold it togetlu-i-. It (^xtcndcd a< ross tlic bridge [Lower Chap*'l, or Crypt, of St. Tliomas.] 82 LONDON. by means of an archway, and was a very gay and fantastic structure, elaborately carved both on its principal front towards Southwark, and on its east and west gables, which protruded a considerable way beyond the line of the bridge, while the sq uare towers at each of its four corners, crowned by short domes, or Kremlin spires, and their gilded vanes, were seen from all directions ascending above all the surrounding buildings. When the old tower which had occupied this site was taken down in 1577, the exposed heads were removed to the tower over the gate at the Southwark end, or the foot of the bridge, as it was commonly called ; and that gate now received the name of Traitors' Gate. The tower here was also re- built about the same time, and with its four circular turrets, connected by curtains and surmounted by battlements, all likewise carved in wood, formed an- other conspicuous and imposing ornament of this great highway reared on the bosom of the Thames. [Approaches to London Bridge on the Southwark Side.] These brief notices will enable the reader, with the help of our engravings and of his own imagination, to get up for himself a vision of Peter of Colechurch's old bridge in all its glory. But, although London Bridge remained substantially what its first architect made it till it was taken down only about nine years ago, there was no part of it, not excepting even the arches and the piers themselves, that had not been, probably in most cases more than once, modified and trans- formed in the long interval between the years 1205 and 1832. Not only had the mere lapse of time done its usual work, but visitations of a more violent character had, on several occasions, threatened it with destruction, and necessitated the most extensive repairs. It had scarcely been well finished, when on the night of the 10th of July, 1212, it was greatly injured by a fire, which, having first enveloped the church of St. Mary Overy's (then called Our Lady of the Canons), caught the Southwark gate, and thence was carried by the wind to the London end of the bridge, after a vast crowd of people had collected upon it, who were thus hemmed in between the two advancing masses of flame, and perished miserably, to the number. Stow relates, of " above three thousand persons, whose LONDON BRIDGE. 83 bodies were found in part or half burned, beside those that were wholly burned to ashes^ and could not be found." Perhaps the newly-built bridge, in the confusions of the time, was allowed to remain without any effectual measures being taken to restore what this calamity had laid waste ; for sixty -eight years after it is represented as in a ruinous condition, and as threatening to fall down altogether unless it should be speedily repaired. This is the language of Edward I.'s patent roll of 1280 already quoted. In the very next year, 1281, five of the arches of the bridge were carried away by the ice or a swell in the river succeeding a severe snow-storm and frost. In 1437, on the 14th of January at noon. Stow records in his Annals, " the great stone gate at London Bridge, with the tower upon it, next to Southwark, fell down, and two of the farthest arches of the same bridge, and yet no man perished in body, which was a great work of God.'* On the 13th of February, 1633, between eleven and twelve at night, a fire broke out in the house of one Briggs, a needle-maker, near St. Magnus Church, occasioned by the carelessness of a maid-servant in placing some hot coals under a pair of stairs, which raged till eight in the morning, and consumed all the houses on the bridge, forty-three in number, from the north end to the first opening on both sides. The houses thus destroyed do not appear to have been all rebuilt when the great fire of 1666 occurred; which, although it did not make its way across the bridge, reduced again to a heap of ruins as much of both sides of the street between the city end and the first vacant space, as had been restored since the preceding conflagration. The stone- work of the bridge was so much shaken and weakened on this occasion, that it cost an expenditure of fifteen hundred pounds to make good the damage. After the piers and arches were repaired, however, building leases were eagerly taken, and in about five years the line of houses was once more complete on both sides of the street. Again, on the night of Wednesday, the 8th of September, 1725, a fire broke out, through the carelessness of a servant, in the house of a brush-maker, near St. Ohive's, Tooley Street, (another account says, of a haberdasher of hats, on the bridge foot,) which consumed about sixty houses in all, among which were several on tlie first and second arches of that end of the bridge, and so greatly damaged the bridge gate — the old Traitors' Gate — that it had to be taken down and rebuilt from the fi)undati()n. Various alterations were also made in later times, with the view of warding off the gradual decay of the structure, or im])roving both the roadway over it and the navigation under it, and accommodating it to the demands of a constantly increasing traflfic both by land and water. In ir)S2 was first erected at the I^ondon end the famous engine for raising water for the su])j)ly of the City — the invention of Peter Morris, a Dutchman, but a free denizen" — which was originally moved only by the tide flowing through the fir.st arch ; but for the support of which several more of the water-courses at that end of tlie bridge were afterwards successively converted into cataracts or ra])ids, to the no small inconvenience of the navigation. The lease of the projjrielors, u iiieh ran for five hundred years from the first grant to Morris, at last coniitreheiidecl all the stream of the river to the fifth arch inclusive; aiid the water-works, which had by various inij)rov(?ments IxH'ouie one of the most curious and powerful systems of hydraulic nu'chanisni ever constructed, continued in operation till an Act of Parlia'Dent was obtained for their renio\ al in 1 S22. The inuigination is 84 LONDON. impressed by the mere stability of a dead structure which long outlasts the ordinary date of the works of human hands^ and has stood unmoved amid the changes of many generations, remaining among us an actual portion of that old time and scene of things, all the rest of which has passed away; but we are interested, perhaps still more vividly, by anything, in the contrivances of man, like movement and action sustained without interruption through the lapse of centuries — for this is, as it were, a portion of the very life of the past retained by us. The creaking and jingling of these London water-works, therefore, after it had been going on for two hundred and forty years, must have been curious to listen to ; and the last time the wheels went round was a solemn and touching thing, a sort of death, and that too of an existence that had done the world some service, as well as been protracted to no ordinary span. Latterly, by-the-bye, there were water-works also, though on a smaller scale, at the other end of the bridge, for the supply of the inhabitants of the Borough ; they occupied two of the arches. Here were anciently several corn mills, for the use of the citizens of both divisions of the metropolis, Avhich were erected. Stow tells us, about the year 1508. They are represented in an old picture in the Pepysian Library, as [Water-works.] covered by a long shed, which is raised on three of the sterlings, and as moved by four wheels, a pair placed in each of the two water-courses.* On the bank of the river also, near this same end of the bridge, were the Bridge-house and yard, a considerable plot of ground, containing various buildings, some for the stowage of such materials as were required for keeping the bridge in repair ; others used as granaries for storing up corn for the consumption of the City in times of scarcity ; others containing the public ovens, of which Stow states there were six very large, and four others of only half the size, all erected at the cost of John Thurston, citizen and goldsmith, in the early part of the sixteenth century. All these last-mentioned erections, however, had disappeared long before the old bridge was pulled down. * See a copy of a part of this drawing at p. 35fi of Mr. Richard Thomsons " Chronicles of London Bridge,'' 8vo. London, 1827 ; a work into wliich the author lias poured the contents of a whole library of precedinji: ymblications and manuscript authorities, and from which the materials of every shorter and less elaborate account, must henceforth be mainly borrowed. LONDON BRIDGE. 85 The true old historic character of the bridge was destroyed, however greatl}^ it might be improved as a thoroughfare and means of communication, when the dwelling-houses and other buildings upon it were removed. This was begun to be done in 1757, though the operations appear to have proceeded slowly, and were not completed till some years later. The gate at the Southwark end was left standing till 1766. Pennant has described, from his own recollection, the singular features of the old street sus])ended between sky and water. " I well remember," he says, "the street on London Bridge, narrow, darksome, and dangerous to passengers from the multitude of carriages: frequent arches of strong timber crossed the street from the tops of the houses, to keep them together, and from falling into the river. Nothing but use could preserve the repose of the inmates, who soon grew deaf to the noise of falling waters, the clamours of watermen, or the frequent shrieks of drowning wretches." The houses, he states, overhung the bridge on both sides in a most terrific manner — in most places hiding the arches, so that nothing was to be seen but the rude piers. But the best idea of these houses on old London Bridge is to be obtained from the sixth plate of Hogarth's 'Marriage a la Mode,' which may be seen in the National Gallery, and of the portion of which representing the bridge we subjoin [IIogarlh'H Vi.'w of Old IIousoh on I-oikIoii Hriilgo.] a copy on a reduced scale. At the widest ]);irls the street was no more than twenty feet broad, and in some ])la('es it was narrowed to twelve; so we may con- ceive what a scene of ccmfusion and pass of jtcril it mnst have been, without any 86 LONDON. footways, and with a torrent of carts, coaches, and other vehicles, constantly pouring along in both directions — unless when matters were made still worse by two crossing wagons, more highly loaded than usual, being caught between the projecting first floors, to the stoppage of the whole accumulating mass of traffic in the rear of each, and the entire blocking up of the passage. The common and the only tolerably safe plan for the pedestrian adventurer who sought to make his way along through the tumult, was to get into the wake of some carriage, and keep close to it at whatever rate it might be going, till he was fairly across the bridge, or had reached his point of destination. But the principal customers of the shopkeepers on the bridge came in carriages. " Most of the houses," Pennant informs us, " were tenanted by pin or needle makers, and economical ladies were wont to drive from the St. James's end of the town to make cheap purchases." These pin and needle makers are probably the same that are styled haberdashers of small wares in a list which has been preserved of the houses destroyed by the great fire of 1633, which, as we have seen, burned down all the portion of the street on both sides between the London end of the bridge and the first opening. Of the inhabitants of the forty-three houses consumed, only one, Mr. John Briggs, at whose house the fire commenced, is designated a needle-maker ; of the other houses, eight, according to this list, were tenanted by haberdashers of small wares, six by hosiers, one by a shoemaker, five by haberdashers of hats, three by silkmen, one by a milliner (a man), two by glovers, two by mercers, one by a distiller of strong waters, one by a girdler, one by a linen draper, two by woollen drapers, one by a Salter, two by grocers, one by a scrivener, one by the curate of St. Magnus Church, and another by the clerk. One was inhabited by a female, who is not stated to be of any business ; two others — one of them. No. 16, ^The Blue Boar' — are marked empty.* Much curious information has been collected by Mr. Thomson about the shops on London Bridge. In the sixteenth century this street ranked with St. Paul's Churchyard, Paternoster Row, and Little Britain, as one of the principal literary emporia of the city. The Three Bibles, The Angel, and the Looking Glass are some of the signs of publishers established on the bridge, which are mentioned on the title-pages of works of that time. The Three Bibles, indeed, is traced as a bookseller's shop down to the year 1724, and The Looking Glass, which was over against St. Magnus Church, to twenty years later. Another bookseller's sign, of the early part of the eighteenth century, was The Black Boy. Here, at The Golden Globe, under the Piazzas, was established, till the house was taken down with the rest in 1757, William Herbert, the editor of Ames's ' Typographical Antiquities,' as a map and print- seller ; one of his shop-bills, which has been preserved, with the date of 1749, further announcing, along with '^Prints neatly framed and glazed for exportation," "Rooms and Staircases fitted up in the modern or Indian taste." Other London Bridge shop-bills, noticed by Mr. Thomson, are those of John Benskin, stationer, at The Bible and Star ; of James Brooke, stationer, at The Anchor and Crown, who, among other things, sold " variety of paper-hangings for rooms of William Osborne, leatherseller, at The Roebuck ; of William Watkins, breeches- maker, leatherseller, and glover, at the sign of The Breeches and Glove, facing * See extract in tlie Gentleman'3 Magazine for November, 1 824, from the MS. Journal of Nehemiah Wallington, in the possession of Mr. Upcott. LONDON BRIDGE. 87 Tooley Street ; of Churchcr and Christie, leatherscllers and breeches-makers^ at The Lamb and Breeches ; of John Allan, at The Lock of Hair, who sold " all sorts of hair, curled or uncurled, bags, roses, cauls, ribbons, weaving and sewing silks, cards, and blocks, with all goods made use of by peruke-makers, at the lowest prices." From some tradesmen's brass and copper tokens, we learn that other signs on the bridge w^ere The Lion, The Sugar-Loaf, The Bear, and The White Lion. In those days, it is to be remembered, such insignia were no mere figures of speech, as they have now for the most part become ; a shopkeeper's sign was then one of the most substantial and ponderous of realities projecting from or swinging over his door ; and all these Sugar- Loaves, Angels, Lions, Bears, Blackboys, Bibles, and Breeches, dangling and creaking away, must have made wild enough work among them on London Bridge, especially when the wind was at all high, and must have added not a little to both the noise and the terrors of the thoroughfare. It is something like disinterring a Herculaneum or Pompeii to get in this way at the names, occupations, and distinctive badges of the old inhabitants of this extirpated street. Both the famous Nonsuch House and the venerable chapel of St. Thomas-a-Becket were latterly used as shops or dwelling-houses. The former is stated to have been occupied in the early part of the last century by a stationer and a drysalter.* The chapel, or, as it came to be called, Chapel-house, was in- habited about the same time (1737), according to Maitland, by a Mr. Yaldwyn, who, while repairing a staircase, disco- vered under it the remains of the sepul- chral monument of Peter of Colechurch — or at least what was conjectured to be such, for there was no inscription, nor was any search made for the body. It is stated in Nichols's ' Literary Anec- dotes,' on the authority of Dr. Du- carel, that at a later date the house over the chapel belonged to a Mr. Bald- win, a haberdasher, who was born there, and who, we suppose, is the same person called Yaldwyn by Maitland, the name being misprinted either in his history or in Nichols's publication. When Mr. Baldwin, the latter adds, at the age of seventy-one, was ordered to go to Chisle- hurst for a change of air, he could not sleep in the country for want of the roaring lullaby of the river he had always been used to hear. The last occupants of the cha])el were Mr. Gill and Mr. Wright, who used the lower a])artin('nt as a ])ai>(T warehouse; and " although," we are told, ''the floor was always, at high-water mark, from ten * Survey of the Citiea of Tendon and W est mi inter , hy Hi)Urt Seymour, Kimj. Fol. Imh. 1731. This work is kuowu to have been comiiik-d by the Rev. John Motley, the •ame jKruoii who c ullec led Joe Mill. r's J. sts. ['V\u' Cliniwl of St. Thoma-H roii vrrtrd into a Iloimc ami Wan-houN.-.] 88 LONDON. to twelve feet under the surface^ yet, such was the excellence of the materials and the masonry, that not the least damp or leak ever happened, and the paper was kept as safe and dry as it would have been in a garret."* In the sterling of the long pier upon which the chapel principally stood a fish-pond had been made, with an iron grating over it, by which the fish were detained after they had been carried in by the tide; and Mr. Thomson mentions that, in 1827, when he wrote, there still survived an ancient servant of London Bridge, then verging upon his hundredth year, who well remembered having gone down through the chapel to fish in this pond. The original external form and appearance of the eastern extremity of the chapel had been obliterated long before its destruction : the upper part of it was covered with brickwork or boarding, and to the paper warehouse below was attached a crane for taking in goods from the river. Few of the old inhabitants of the street on the bridge have left names that are now remembered ; but it is remarkable that the memories of two or three indivi- duals are, traditionally at least, associated with it, whose peculiar talents the in- fluences of so peculiar a local habitation seem to have had some share in awakening or fostering. The eminent painter of marine subjects, Peter Monamy, who died about the middle of the last century, is stated by Walpole to have " received his first rudiments of drawing from a sign and house-painter on London Bridge ;" and it is added, the shallow waves that rolled under his window taught young Monamy what his master could not teach him, and fitted him to paint the tur- bulence of the ocean." Another marine painter, Dominic Serres, of later date, is also said to have once kept a shop upon the bridge. But the greatest artist that is reported to have ever fixed his studio in one of the breezy attics of the river street was old Hans Holbein. "The father of the Lord Treasurer Oxford," Walpole relates, passing over London Bridge, was caught in a shower ; and, stepping into a goldsmith's shop for shelter, he found there a picture of Holbein — who had lived in that house — and his family. He offered the goldsmith 100/. for it, who consented to let him have it, but desired first to show it to some per- sons. Immediately after happened the fire of London, and the picture was de- stroyed." Holbein's house, therefore, must have been in the division of the street nearest to the London end. The most illustrious memories associated with the old bridge are not of persons who ever lived there, but of some of those whose ghastly heads, stuck upon poles or spikes, were set up to pinnacle its towers after the executioner had made them trunkless. The first of the London Bridge traitors of whom there is any record was the Scottish patriot and hero, William Wallace, whose resistance to a foreign yoke Edward I. could never subdue till he had made his true heart be plucked from his bosom, and his head fixed up aloft here, to be gazed at in comparative tranquillity by many who would have stood short space to scan his living visage, wherever they might have encountered it. This was in August, 1305. Here, in 1408, after his overthrow at Horselwood, was similarly exposed the grey-haired head of the Earl of Northumberland, the father of the gallant Hotspur, by the crafty master whom he had served too well ever to be repaid otherwise than by being destroyed. But the two most extraordinary heads, if we may believe all that * Ancient Topography of London, by J. T. Smith, Esq. 4to. London, 179L LONDON BRIDGE. 89 is related of them, that were ever thus elevated were those of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and his friend Sir Thomas More, both executed in 1535 for their refusal to acknowledge the king's spiritual supremacy. Fisher was executed on the morning of the •22nd of June, and, according to his biographer Hall, his head would have been set up on Traitors' Tower that same night, but that it was kept to be first shown to the Queen, Anne Boleyn. The next day, however, continues Hall, the head, being parboiled, was prickt upon a pole, and set on high upon London Bridge, among the rest of the holy Carthusians' heads that suffered death lately before him. And here I cannot omit to declare unto you the miraculous sight of this head, which, after it had stood up the space of fourteen days upon the bridge, could not be perceived to waste nor consume, neither for the weather, which was then very hot, neither for the parboiling in hot water, but grew daily fresher and fresher, so that in his lifetime he never looked so well ; for, his cheeks being beautified with a comely red, the face looked as though it had beholden the people passing by, and would have spoken to them Wherefore, the people coming daily to see this strange sight, the passage over the bridge was so stopped with their going and coming, that almost neither cart nor horse could pass ; and therefore, at the end of fourteen days, the executioner was commanded to throw down the head in the night-time into the river of Thames, and in the place thereof was set the head of the most blessed and con- stant martyr. Sir Thomas More, his companion and fellow in all his troubles, who suffered his passion the 6th of July next following." But the miracle was not put down by this substitution : More's head proved as indestructible as the bishop's, according to the account of his great-grandson and biographer, Avho tells us that, after it had remained exposed for some months, being about to be cast into the Thames, ''because room should be made for divers others, who, in plentiful sort, suffered martyrdom for the same supremacy," it was bought by his daughter Margaret, when not only was his lively favour"' found to be "not all this while in anything almost diminished," but, the hairs of his head being almost grey before his martyrdom, they seemed now as it were reddish or yellow." In general about this time, and throughout the sixteenth century, the collection of traitors' heads at London Bridge would have made a respectable craniological museum: the German traveller Hentzner, when he was here in 1597, by whicli time they had been removed to the Southwark gate, counted above thirty of them ; and in some of the old prints the structure looks as if its roof were covered with quite a crop of s])iked skulls. And heads continued to be exposed here, principally those of seminary priests, executed for violation of the statute ])rolii- biting their entry into the kingdom, throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and down even to the breaking out of the civil war in that of Charles I. After the Restoration, too, the heads of some of the regicides were set uj) on London Bridge. And many another strange sight, as well as this long succession of ghastly traitors* heads, had the old bridire beheld (lurin«r its existence of al)ove six cen- turics. From its ])arapets, in the year lHh), Eleanor of Provence, the hated (jueen of Henry HI., when, leaving the Tower, in which Henry and she had 1:ik( ii refuge from De Montfort and the associated barons, "she would have gone by ii 90 LONDON. water unto Windsor/' was assailed by the Londoners assembled in great numbers on the bridge, not only with " many vile and reproachful words," but also with " dirt and stones," so that she was constrained to return again to the Tower ; on which, continues Stow, " the citizens fortified the city with iron chains drawn overthwart their streets, munited the city, and did marvellous things." By this entrance in the next century — on the 13th of June, 1381 — Wat Tyler forced his way into the city at the head of his commons of Kent, notwithstanding all the activity of the mayor. Sir William Walworth, whose loyalty had been sharpened by the insurgents having that same morning broken down the stews on the south bank of the river, which, it seems, were his property, and farmed from him by " the frows of Flanders," — and who before the arrival of the Kentish-men had fortified the bridge, caused the drawbridge to be drawn up, ''and fastened a great chain of iron across to restrain their entry." But " then the commons of Surrey, who were risen with other, cried to the wardens of the bridge to let it down and give them entry, whereby they mought pass, or else they would de- stroy them all, whereby they were constrained by fear to let it down and give them entry — at which time the religious present were earnest in procession and prayer for peace." A few years after — in 1390— the bridge was the scene of a rencontre of another kind — the famous passage of arms waged on St. George's day, amid all the pomp of heraldry, between the Scottish knight Sir David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford, and the English Lord Wells, who, being King Eichard's ambassador in Scotland, and attending at a solemn banquet there, where *' Scottishmen and Englishmen were communing of deeds of arms," pro- posed to settle the controversy as to the comparative valour of the two nations by a single combat between Lindsay and himself. " As soon as the day of battle was come," says Stow, following the animated narrative of Hector Boecius, ''both the parties were conveyed to the bridge, and soon after, by sound of trumpet, the two parties ran hastily together, on their barbed horses, with square grounden spears, to the death. Earl David, notwithstanding the valiant dint of spears broken on his helmet and visage, sate so strongly, that the people, moved with vain suspicion, cried. Earl David, contrary to the law of arms, is bound to the saddle : Earl David, hearing this murmur, dismounted off his horse, and without any support or help ascended again into the saddle. Incontinent they rushed together with the new spears the second time, with burning ire to conquer honour ; but in the third course the Lord Wells was sent out of his saddle with such a vio- lence that he fell to the ground. Earl David, seeing his fall, dismounted hastily from his horse, and tenderly embraced him, that the people might understand he fought with no hatred, but only for the glory of victory ; and, in the sign of more humanity, he visited him every day while he recovered his health, and then returned into Scotland ;" — an incident combining all the finest points in the brilliant morality of chivalry. Over London Bridge, on the 29th of August, 1392, King Richard, having come from Windsor by the way of Richmond and Wandsworth, passed in joyous procession, along with his consort, the good Queen Anne, after having been reconciled, chiefly through her mediation, with the citizens of London, who, meeting him at the Southwark Gate, " men, women, and children in order," presented him with "two fair white steeds, trapped in cloth of LONDON BRIDGE. 91 gold, parted of red and white, hanged full of silver bells, the which present he thankfully received ; and after he held on his way through the city toward Westminster."* On the 13th of November, four years after, Richard and his new queen, the infant Isabel of France, made their entry through Southwark, with great pomp, into the Tower of London, at which time there went such a multitude of people to see her, that upon London Bridge nine persons were crowded to death, of whom the Prior of Tiptree, in Essex, was one, and a worshipful matron that dwelt in Cornhill was another." Here Henry V. was received in triumph, on Saturday, the 23rd of November, 1415, on his return from Agincourt ; and along this same great civic highway, about the same day seven years after, passed on from conquered France the mournful splendour of his funeral procession — the body laid in a chariot drawn by four great horses, and above it a figure made of boiled hides or leather representing his person, as nigh to the semblance of him as could be devised, painted curiously to the similitude of a living creature, upon whose head was set an imperial diadem of gold and precious stones, on his body a purple robe furred with ermine, and in his right hand he held a sceptre royal, and in his left hand a ball of gold with a cross fixed thereon ; and in this manner adorned was this figure laid in a bed in the said chariot, with his visage uncovered towards the heavens ; and the coverture of his bed was of red silk beaten with gold." By this bridge again, on the 21st of February, 1432, the young Henry VI. made his magnificent entry into the capital of his native dominions after his coronation at Paris — as sung by the poet Lydgate in many substantial stanzas, and more briefly related in prose by Fabian and Stow, the latter of whom tells us that, " when the King was come to the bridge, there was devised a mighty giant, standing with a sword drawn in his hand, having written certain speeches in metre of great rejoicing and welcoming of the King to the city, on the midst of the bridge." And nearly as sumptuous were the pageants exhibited at the bridge on Friday, the 28th of May, 1445, at the reception of Henry's bride, Margaret of Anjou — the "she-wolf" of France — as she was conducted from Blackheath by the king's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, and attended by "the mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs of the city in scarlet, and the cral'ts of the same, all riding on liorsc- back, in blue gowns with broidered sleeves and red hoods," — being met at tlie bridge-foot toward Southwark by "a ])ageant of ])eace and plenty," while upon the bridge stood "Noah's ship," — both figures ])lentifully adorned with Latin texts from the Vulgate, as well as with scrolls of English verse. Only a few years before this — on Wednesday the 15th of November, 1441 — Gloucester's own wife, the unfortunate Eleanor Cobham, had passed along ])art of the same street, and through the midst of j)rol)ably as thronging and eager a multitude of s])ectator8, but in a guise and fashion as different as was that wintry season from "Jolly • Under the date of the procediiifj year, \:VJ\, Stow, in liis Annals, has llie fulK)wini^ Kfory : The nanjo Christmas-day a dolphin came lortii of the sea, and jilayed himself in the Thames at London, to the hridj^e, foreshowing? ha])ly the temj)e8t/i that were to follow within a week after; the which dolphin, hcinj? seen of tlie citizeiu antl followed, was with nnicli dilKcnlty intercepted and Wrought aj^ain to I^)ndon, nhowinj; a B|K'< tacle to many of the heif^ht of his hody, fur he was ten feet in lenj^lh. Th(>se doljihiiis are (ishes of the mm. that follow the voices of men, and rejoice in jdayinj^ of inHtruinentJi, and are wont to jjalher tliemsclves at nmsic, Tlicse, when they play in rivers, with hasty 8pi in;finj,'s, or leajiini^s, ilo si^jnify temiM-il to follow. The ntm contain nothing more swift nor niml)Ic-, fur oftentimes with their hkipj* they mount over thesHiU of hhips." II 2 92 LONDON. May" — performing her penance for the abhorred crime of sorcery, "with a taper of wax of two pound in her hand/' and ''hoodless, save a kerchief," — though she too was accompanied throughout her weary three days' perambulation by the mayor, sheriffs, and crafts. But it was not long before the royal Margaret also had her days of humiliation and misery enough, in the chances and changes of that tumultuous time. Her forces had been scattered at Tewkesbury, her son. Prince Edward, had been murdered almost before her eyes, and she lay herself a prisoner in the Tower along with her husband, also on the eve of having his life reft from him by an act of darker violence, when, on Tuesday the 14th of May, 1471, the Bastard of Faulconbridge, making a last attempt for Henry's de- liverance, "with a riotous company of shipmen and other of Essex and Kent," assaulted London Bridge, and was not driven back till he had burned the South- wark Gate, " and all the houses to the drawbridge, being," says Stow, " at that time thirteen in number." Other accounts say that sixty houses on the bridge were burned down on this occasion. Before this, in 1430, on the evening of Thursday the 2nd of July, the bridge-gates were opened by the London com- monalty to Jack Cade, who, as he entered at the head of his men, cut the ropes of the drawbridge asunder with his sword; but on the night of the following Sunday, when the rebels and their leader were retired to the south end of the river, the mayor and aldermen, having collected a force of the better disposed among the citizens, repossessed themselves of the bridge, and kept the passage, driving back any of the Kentishmen who attempted to cross it ; and this led to the bloodiest and most obstinate conflict ever waged for this key to the city. Cade, as soon as he saw the bickering, to quote the account which Stow has col- lected in his Annals from preceding chroniclers, "went to harness, and assembled his people, and set so fiercely upon the citizens, that he drove them back from the stoups (or posts) in Southwark or Bridge-foot, unto the drawbridge, in de- fending whereof many a man was drowned and slain This skirmish conti- nued all night, till nine of the clock on the morrow, so that sometime the citizens had the better, and sometimes the other ; but ever they kept them upon the bridge, so that the citizens passed never much the bulwark at the bridge-foot, nor the Kentishmen no farther than the drawbridge — thus continuing the cruel fight to the destruction of much people on both sides." Hall asserts, however, that the Londoners were several times beaten back " as far as to the stoups at St. Magnus' Corner" — that is, quite to the northern extremity of the bridge. He and other authorities also state that the rebels set fire to some of the houses on the bridge. "Alas !" he exclaims, "what sorrow it was to behold that miserable chance ! for some, desiring to eschew the fire, leapt on his enemy's weapon and so died ; fearful women, with children in their arms, amazed and appalled, leapt into the river ; other, doubting how to save themself, between fire, water, and sword, were in their houses suffocate and smothered." At last both parties, faint, weary, and fatigued, agreed to rest them all the next day ; and during this pause the king's pardon Avas proclaimed, on which the rebels broke up and dispersed. In a more peace- ful hour, again, by this ancient approach entered London, on Friday the 12th of November, 1501, the Lady Katherine of Arragon to her first nuptials with the young Prince Arthur: "About two of the clock at afternoon," says the LONDON BRIDGE. 93 old annalist, " the said Lady Princess, accompanied with many lords and ladies, in most sumptuous manner apparelled, came riding from Lambeth into Southwark, and so to London Bridge, where was ordained a costly pageant of St. Katherine and St. Ursula, with many virgins," — the first of six ex- hibitions of the same character which greeted her in her progress through the city. The next grand procession that the bridge witnessed was that of Katherine's arch-enemy, the gorgeous Wolsey, as he departed on his embassy to France, on the 26th of July, 15'26, marching, as his biographer Cavendish relates, from his house at Westminster, all through London and over the bridge, " having before him of gentlemen a great number, three in a rank, in black velvet livery-coats, and the most part of them with great chains of gold about their necks ; and all his yeomen, with noblemen's and gentlemen's servants following him, in French ta\vny livery-coats, having embroidered upon the backs and breasts of the said coats these letters, T. and C. under the cardinal's hat." More than twenty sumpter-mules, and many carts and carriages, had passed on before, guarded by men armed with bows and spears. The proud churchman himself, coming last, as the crowning figure of the show, " rode like a cardinal, very sumptuously, on a mule trapped with crimson velvet upon velvet, and his stirrups of copper and gilt, and his spare mule following him with like apparel ; and before him he had his two great crosses of silver, two great pillars of silver, the great seal of England, the cardinal's hat, and a gentleman that carried his valence, otherwise called a cloak-bag, which was made altogether of fine scarlet cloth, embroidered over and over with cloth of gold very richly, having in it a cloak of fine scarlet." The poor queen was now standing on the edge of the precipice over which she was to be thrown; in this very visit to France the aspiring but shortsighted cardinal hoped to arrange a new marriage for his royal master ; nevertheless, his fall speedily followed Katherine's ; and his death, of disgrace and a broken heart, preceded hers. An incident of ])rivate life, but too interesting to be omitted, also marks the history of the bridge in this reign — the rescue of the infant daughter of Sir William Hewet, the wealthy clockmaker, by his apj)rentice, Osborne, who gallantly leaped into the river, and brought out the child, Avhen it had been dropped by the carelessness of a servant from a window of the house — an exploit for which he was afterwards ap])r()])riately rewarded by her father with the young lady's hand and an am])le dowry. This is said to have haj)j)ened in 1536; Hewet was Lord Mayor of London in 1559; Osborne attained that dignity in 1582; and before the end of the next century his great-grandson, as his lineal descendant still is, was Duke of Leeds. In the beginning of the reign of Mary, London Bridge was one of the scenes of Wyatt's short and ill-fated insurrection : when, on the afternoon of the 3rd of February, 1554, news arrived that he was marching at the head of a body of about two thousand men from De])tf()rd towards Southwark, instantly " the mayor and sheriffs, harnessed, commanded each man to shut in their shops and windows, and to be ready harnessed at their doors, what chance soever might lia])])en ;" and at the same time the bridge-gates were shut, and tlic drawbridge, not merely raised as it liad been when Wat Tyler made his attack, l)ut ( lit down and thrown into the river. Ordnance were also brought up and ])lante{l on the l)ri(lg('. In these circumstances Wyatt did not 94 LONDON. venture to attempt to force an entry. But it is told that at a late hour at night he himself, accompanied by a few of his friends, contrived, by ascending to the leads of a house adjoining the bridge, to make his way into the porter's lodge, where he found the porter asleep, but his wife and some other persons keeping watch, with a coal fire burning in the chimney ; on which he commanded them, as they loved their lives, to remain silent, and then proceeded with his companions to the edge of the drawbridge, where, lurking themselves in the shade, they saw and heard the lord admiral, the lord mayor, and one or two others, consulting about the defence of the bridge on the other side of the chasm. This were a subject for the pencil of a Rembrandt or a Salvator Rosa. We can merely glance at one other memorable day of public pomp in which old London Bridge is recorded to have borne a share — Tuesday, the 29th of May, 1660 — that of the triumphant return home to his capital of Charles II., when, having arrived in Southwark about three o'clock in the afternoon, he proceeded over the bridge, riding between his two brothers, the Dukes of York and Gloucester, while before him passed on all the gaiety of military and civic display, and on all sides around the splendid cavalcade rolled perhaps a fuller tide of genuine popular jubilation than was ever, before or since, witnessed on any occasion of national rejoicing in England. But old age, with its infirmities that no art can cure, was now fast coming upon Peter of Colechurch's venerable structure, as it comes alike surely, sooner or later, upon man himself, and upon all the works of his hands ; and throughout the next century the ancient pile was only sustained in a serviceable condition by incessant propping and tinkering. The less service, too, it was able to render, the more was required from it ; for, while it was growing old and crazy, mighty London was becoming every day more extensive, more populous, more alive with the spirit of traffic and industry of all kinds ; and the progress of refinement and luxury was also making people discontented with accommodations which had satisfied earlier times. It was slowly and reluctantly, however, that the Londoners gave up the notion of still repairing their old bridge. In their eyes, indeed, it seemed to be looked upon as a sort of counterpart to the shepherd's boy in the Arcadia, piping as if he should never grow old." Yet the corporation, so early as the year 1685, found itself compelled to make the thoroughfare over it in some degree more suitable to the demands of a state of society very different from that for which it had been originally contrived : an inscription of that date upon the north side of Nonsuch House recorded that the street had then been widened from the breadth of twelve feet to that of twenty. Again, in 1697, an Act of Parliament was procured for widening the street at the south end of the bridge ; and, in 1722, another for the establishment of certain regulations with the object of keeping the passage free, and securing both the easier transit of carriages and the greater safety of foot-passengers. At last, after the opening of Westminster Bridge in 1749, a loud demand arose from the public for the erection of a new bridge in the city also; and, in 1754, the subject was forced upon the Common Council. After much violent debate and controversy, it was conceded that a new bridge should be built at Blackfriars ; but it was resolved that London Bridge should still be left standing, and only be repaired, and have the houses upon it pulled down. LONDON BRIDGE. 95 This was done ; and the bridge, as a means of communication, was thereby ren- dered greatly more commodious ; but, architecturally, it was probably rather [London Bridge in 1827.] weakened than strengthened by the operations that were at the same time resorted to with the view of improving the navigation. In 1761 Smeaton the engineer, who had been hastily called in upon some alarming appearances presenting them- selves, found, besides other dilapidations that were in progress, one of the piers undermined to the extent of six feet, and in such a state that it must have sunk and fallen down in a few days. Fortunately the city gates had just been taken down, and the stones, having been sold to a builder, lay ready in Moorfields ; they were instantly repurchased, and, on a Sunday morning, brought as fast as carts could carry them, and thrown under the tottering pier, which was the one next to the north or city end of the bridge. The work of paring and patching the old bridge went on for sixty years longer ; but at length, in 1822, notwithstanding the continued resistance of the corporation, a select committee of the House of Commons, to which the subject had been referred, recommended the erection of a new bridge ; on which an Act of Par- liament for that purpose was ])assc'd tlie following year. The new bridge was built after the designs of the late John llennie, Es(|., who died, however, before the work was begun ; it was superintended throughout by his son, the present Sir John Rennie. The first pile of the first coffer-dam, being that fur the south pier, was driven on Monday the l.'jth of March, 1821; the foundation-stone was laid by the Lord Mayor, John (iarratt, Estj., in the ])resence of the Duke of York and many other distinguished personages, on the 15th of June, 1825; and the finished bridge was opened ])y his late Majesty King William IV., and Queen Adelaide, on the 1st of August, 1831. The cost of the bridge, with the approaches, amounted to not much short of two millions. It stands about a hundred and eighty feet higher up tlie river than the old ])ri(lge, which was left standing till its successor wa,s built, nor was its la.st arch i)ulled down till 96 LONDON. towards the end of the year 1832. It is needless to say that the new London Bridge, bestriding the broad river with its five vast elliptical arches, is a far more magnificent, and in every way more perfect work, than Peter of Colechurch's structure ever was in its best days ; and, looking there, in its firm and massive strength, as if it might last a thousand years, it is to the imagination, if we may so speak, as expressive and impressive a monument of the far future as the old bridge was of the past. [Opening of New London Bridge.] [Tlte MarcliirK,' Watch.] VI.— MIDSUMMER-EVE. It was on the vigil of St. John the Baptist, in the year 1510, that two young men, wearing the dress of the King's Guard — the rich and picturesque uniform which has survived the changes of three centuries, to linger about the Court of England, and preserve its gorgeous dignity, however vulgarized into associations with beef-eaters and showmen — that two handsome and soldierly-looking young men came to the water-gate at Westminster, and, in answer to the Eastward- ho'* of the watermen, jumped into a common wherry. There were not many boats at the stairs, and those which were still unhired were very different in their appearance and their comforts from the royal barges which were moored at some little distance. The companions looked at each other with a peculiar expression before they sat down on the uncushioned and dirty bench of the wherry; but the boisterous laugh which burst forth from one of them ap])earcd to remove all scru])les, and the boat was soon adrift in the ebbing tide. The evening was very lovely. The last sunbeam was dancing on the waters, and the golden light upon the spires (;f the city was fast fading away. Suddenly, 1 98 LONDON. however^ a redder light came up out of the depths of the streets, and wreaths of grey smoke mingled with the glare. The Thames was crowded with boats, and voices of merriment were heard amidst the distant sounds of drum and trumpet. The common stairs or bridges were thronged with people landing. The wherry in which sate the two guardsmen ran in to a private stair at Bridewell ; and with the same hearty laugh they stepped into a spacious garden. " Charles/' said the more boisterous of the companions, this will be a snug nest for the right witty Almoner when Empson's head is off." In a few minutes a noble-looking person, dressed in a sober but costly suit, like a wealthy citizen, joined them, making a profound reverence. " No ceremony," exclaimed he of the loud voice ; and then, making an effort to speak low, His Highness is safe in the palace ; and we are two of his faithful guards who would see the Midsummer Watch set. Have you a dagger under your russet coat, my good Almoner ? — for the watch, they say, does not fear the rogues any more than the gallows.'* It was Wolsey, then upon the lower rounds of the ladder of preferment, who answered Henry in the gay tone of his master. Brandon, who, in spite of his generous nature, did not quite like the accommodating churchman, was scarcely so familiar with him. The three, however, all gaily enough passed onward through the spacious gar- dens of Empson's deserted palace, which covered the ground now known as Dorset Street and Salisbury Square ; and with a master-key with which the pros- perous Almoner was already provided, they sallied forth into the public street, and crossing Fleet Bridge, pursued their way towards West Cheap.* Lud-gate was not closed. In the open space under the city wall was an enormous bonfire, which was reflected from the magnificent steeple of Paul's. Looking up the hill there was another bonfire in the open space before the cathedral, which threw its deep light upon every pinnacle of the vast edifice, and gleamed in its many windows as if a thousand tapers were blazing within its choir and transepts. The street was full of light. Over the door- ways of the houses were ''^ lamps of glass, with oil burning in them all the night;" and some hung out branches of iron, curiously wrought, containing hundreds of lamps lighted at once."t Before the houses were tables set out, on which were placed ponderous cakes, and flagons of ale, and wine " unexcis'd by kings ;" and the sturdy apprentices, who by day were wont to cry, ''What lack ye?" threw open their blue cloaks, disclosing their white hose, with a knowing look of independence, as they courteously invited the passer-by to partake of their dainties. Over the doors hung the delicate branches of the graceful birch, with wreaths of lilies and St. J ohn's wort ; and there were suspended pots of the green orpine, in the bending of whose leaves the maiden could read her fate in love. Wending their way through the throng, the three men of the west felt, the two younger especially, something of that pleasure which human beings can scarcely avoid feeling at the sight of happiness in others. Henry whispered to Wolsey, " This is a merry land /' and the courtier answered, " You have made it so." * On Midsummer- Eve, at night, King Henry came privily into West Cheap, of London, being clothed in one of the coats of his guard." (Stow's ' Annals,' under date 1510.) It is not likely that Henry, though bold enough, would so far yield to the impulses which belong to a youth of nineteen as to go alone. Brandon had been his companion from childhood ; Wolsey had already learned to minister to his pleasures as one mode of governing him. The patent by which the great churchman ol)tained Empson's house is dated 1510. f SNtw's Survey. MIDSUMMER-EVE. 99 The three visitors of the city moved slowly along with the dense crowd towards the Cross in West Cheap. They there stationed themselves. The livery which two of them wore would have secured them respect^ if their lofty bearing had not appeared to command it. The galleries of the houses, and the windows, were filled with ladies. 'Between the high gabled roofs stood venturous boys and servants. Tapestry floated from the walls. Within was ever and anon heard the cadence of many voices singing in harmony. Then came a loud sound of trumpets ; and a greater light than that of the flickering bonfires was seen in the distance ; and the windows became more crowded ; and the songs ceased within the dwellings. The procession which was approaching was magnificent enough to afford the highest gratification to one at least of the three spectators that we have described. It suggested, however, the consideration that it did not belong to himself, and threw no particular glory round his throne and person. But, nevertheless, his curiosity Avas greatly stimulated ; and that love of pomp which he had already begun to indulge, in processions, and jousts, and tournays, could not fail of re- ceiving some delight from the remarkable scene that was before him. He was, as Cavendish has described him, " a young, lusty, and courageous prince, enter- ing into the flower of pleasant youth." His amusements were manly and intel- lectual, exercising himself daily in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the bar, playing at the recorders, flute, virginals, and in setting of songs and making of ballads.*' * The future sensual tyrant is not readily seen in this de- scription. But here, on Midsummer-Eve in 1510, was Henry standing beside the Cross in West Cheap, and mixing unknown amongst his subjects, like the Harotm Er-Rasheed of the ' Thousand and One Nights.' Onward came the March- ing Watch, winding into Cheap from the little conduit by Paul's Gate. Here, literally, *' Tlie front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets." The pitchy ropes borne aloft in iron frames sent up their tongues of fire and wreaths of smoke in volumes whicli showed, afar olf, like the light of a burning city. Stow tells us that for the " furniture" of the Marching Watch there were ap])ointed seven hundred cressets ; besides which every constable, amounting to two hundred and forty, had his cresset. Each cresset had a man to bear it and another to serve it, so that the cresset-train amounted in number to almost two thousand men. This was, indeed, civic pom]) u])on a s])lendid scale. A ])()et of the next century, whose name is almost unknown in the ordinary catalogues of English poetry, but who has written with more elegance and taste than half of those we call classics — Richard Niccols, in a ])erformance called ' T^ondon's Ar- tillery,' has the following very beautiful lines descriptive of" the bonfires and cresset-lights of the great festival of the Summer Solstice: — "Tiio wakeful shepherd by his fhu^k in field With wonder at tliat time far ott' beheld The wanton shine of thy triuiM)»hant fircR Playing ujion the lijjjs of thy tall spires," * Hull. I 2 100 LONDON. Mingled with the cresset-bearers came on two thousand men of the Marching Watch, some mounted, and some on foot. There were " demilances" on great horses ; gunners with their harquebuses and wheel-locks ; archers in white coats, with bows bent and sheafs of arrows by their sides ; pike-men in bright corslets ; and bill-men with aprons of mail. Following these came the constables of the Watch, each in bright harness gleaming from beneath his scarlet jornet* and his golden chain ; with his henchman following him, and his minstrel before him, and his cresset-light by his side ; and then came the waits of the city, and morris-dancers footing it to their merry notes ; and then, in due order, the mayor himself on horseback, and his sword-bearer, his henchmen, his harnessed footmen, his giants, and his pageants. The Sheriffs' Watches, says Stow, " came one after the other in like order, but not so large in number as the Mayor's." Niccols, still apostrophizing London, thus describes this part of the solemnity : — "Thy goodly buildings, that till then did hide Their rich array, open'd their windows wide, Where kings, great peers, and many a noble dame. Whose bright, pearl -glittering robes did mock the flame Of the night's burning lights, did sit to see How every senator, in his degree, Adorn'd with shining gold and purple weeds^,^ And stately mounted on rich-trapped steeds, • Their guard attending, through the streets did ride Before their foot-bands, grac'd with glittering pride Of rich gilt arms.'' Onward swept the mighty cavalcade past the Cross at Cheap, along Cornhill, and by Leadenhall to Aldgate. It was to return by Fenchurch Street and Gracious Street, and again into Cornhill and through Cheapside. The multi- tude thronged after it, but the three strangers remained almost alone. " This costs gold," said Wolsey. " And it is worth the cost," replied the king. "Would they fight," said Brandon, "these demilances and archers?" " Indeed they would," said Wolsey r and turning round to the king, " such men have fought with your Highness's grandsires ; and the cry of Clubs of the blue-cloaks is as fearful a rallying cry as that of St. George.*' " Come," said the king, "we must homeward. Are the streets watched, or shall we have to knock a knave or two on the pate ?" The streets were watched. They again passed Ludgate ; and as they descended Fleet Hill they found the lamps still burning before the doors, but the hospitable tables were almost deserted. At due intervals stood a constable in bright harness, surrounded by his footmen and his cresset-bearer ; and as they went onward through Fleet Street, and looked to the right and left, up the narrow lanes, there was still the cresset gleaming in the armour. " We are safe to-night," said the king. " This is a glorious affair, and I shall bring her Highness to see it on St. Peter's Eve. How looks the city, my grave Almoner, on other than festival nights ?" " It is a melancholy place, your Highness. After curfew not a light to be seen : the one cresset in a street makes it more gloomy ; and masterless men cut purses in the dark, while the light-bearer tells the rogues where there is no watch." " Ha !" exclaimed the king. " This should * Probably scarf. MIDSUMMER-EVE. 101 be remedied/' added the statesman. The cost of one Midsummer-Eve would double the watch for the rest of the year." Ho/' said Harry, " hang up the thieves, and let the true men keep in their houses." " They break into the houses/' said Wolsey. We will tell our justices to spare none of them/' replied the kmg. They were by this time at Temple Bar. There were three led-horses waiting, and a dozen footmen with lighted, torches. Slowly they rode, for the way was rough, past St. Clement's, and through the Strand, and by Charing Cross to the palace-gates. Here and there was seen a solitary bonfire, but there was no rush of population as in the city. The large palatial houses were dark and silent. The river, which ever and anon lay spread before them as they looked upon it through the broad open spaces of its bank, was red with the reflection of the city fires. The courtier-priest was at his master's stirrup as he alighted ; and Henry whispered, Come to me to-morrow. Our people want Empson's head, and the sooner you get his house the better." With a loud laugh his Highness and Brandon vanished into an inner court of the palace, and the Almoner rode thoughtfully to his lodgings. During the reign of Henry VIII., as Harrison tells us, he hung up, of great thieves, of petty thieves, and rogues, three score and twelve thousand. This was a wholesale mode of dispensing with a preventive police ; though we doubt whether the prison and the gallows were cheaper than lighting and watching. The same graphic pen, writing in 1586, adds — ''He seemed for a while greatly to have terrified the rest ; but since his death the number of them is so increased, that, except some better order be taken, or the law already made be better executed, such as dwell in uplandish towns and little villages shall live but in small safety and rest." * London, we have no doubt, had a pretty equal share of discomfort and danger. The time was passed when it could be enjoined, as by the statute of Edward I., that none be so hardy as to be found going or wan- dering about the streets of the city after curfew tolled at St. Martin's-le-Grand, with sword or buckler, or other arms for doing mischief, or whereof evil sus])icion might arise, nor any in any other manner, unless he be a great man, or other lawful person of good repute, or their certain messengers, having their warrants to go from one to another, with lanthorn in hand." The progress of industry had rendered it necessary that others, besides great men awl their accredited mes- sengers, should go about at night, and not be considered as malefactors. Thirty years after the Midsummer Eve of 1510, Henry VIII. put down the marching watch, considering the great charges of the citizens /' but the good old lovers of pageantry would not so readily part with it, and it was several times attempted to be revived, till, in 1569, it was altogether abandoned; and it was determined in the room thereof to have a substantial standing watch, for the safety and preservation of the city/' f It is curious, in these our own days of police and gas-lights, to look back to the means by which the safety and ])reservation of the city were secured. The watchman had gradually been transformed from a sturdy constable in harness into a venerable personage bearing halberd and lanthorn. It was the business of this reverend j)ers()n to make the i ry inscribed under the Dcscriptiuu of Kiiglund, book ii. di. 11. t Slow'» Siirrry. 102 LONDON. figure of the watchman here given. He had to deal with deaf listeners^ and he therefore proclaimed with a voice of command, " Lanthorn !" But a lanthorn alone was a body without a soul ; and he therefore demanded " a whole candle." To this the vital spark was to be given, and he continued to exclaim, " light." To render the mandate less individually oppressive, he went on to cry, " Hang out your lights ! " And that even the sleepers might sleep no more, he ended with ^^Hear!" ' Lanthorn, and a whole candle light! Hang out your lights ! Hear!" We are told by the chroniclers that, as early as 1416, the Mayor, Sir Henry Barton, ordered lanthorns and lights to be h^pged out on the winter evenings, betwixt Allhallows and Candlemas. For three centuries this practice subsisted, constantly evaded, no doubt, through the avarice and poverty of indi- viduals, sometimes probably disused altogether, but still the custom of London up to the time of Queen Anne. The cry of the watchman, " hang out your lights," was an exhortation to the negligent, which probably they answered only by snores, equally indifferent to their own safety and the public preservation. A worthy mayor in the time of Queen Mary provided the watchman with a bell, with which instrument he accompanied the music of his voice down to the days of the Commonwealth. The " Statutes of the Streets," in the time of Elizabeth, were careful enough for the preservation of silence in some things They pre- scribed that " no man shall blow any horn in the night, or whistle after the hour of nine of the clock in the nighty under pain of imprisonment ;" and, what was a harder thing to keep, they also forbad a man to make any " sudden outcry in the still of the night, as making any affray, or beating his wife." Yet a pri- vileged man was to go about knocking at doors and ringing his alarum — an intolerable nuisance if he did what he was ordered to do. But the watchmen were, no doubt, wise in their generation. With honest Dogberry, they could not see how sleeping should offend ;" and after the watch was set, they probably agreed to " go sit upon the church bench till two, and then all to bed." Dekker, however, describes the bellman as a person of some activity — " the child of darkness; a common night-walker ; a man that had no man to wait upon him, but only a dog ; one that was a disordered person, and at midnight would beat at men's doors, bidding them (in mere mockery) to look to their candles, when MIDSUMMER-EVE. 103 [Watclimen, from Dekker, 1616.] they themselves were in their dead sleeps." Stow says that in Queen Mary's day one of each ward " be<^an to go all night with a bell, and at every lane's end, and at the ward's end, gave warning of fire and candle, and to help the poor, and pray for the dead." This is the more poetical bellman of Milton's ' II Penseroso : ' — ** Some still removed place will fit, Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom ; Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth ; Or the bellman's drowsy charm, To bless the doors from nightly harm." Herrick, also, has given us the verses of the bellman of poetry, in one of the charming morsels of his ' Hesperides — " From noise of scare-fires rest ye free, From murders Benedicite ; From all mischances that may fright Your pleasing slumbers in the night, Mercy secure ye all, and keep The goblins from ye wliile ye sleep. Past one o'clock, and almost two, My masters all, ' Good day to you !' " But, with or without a Ixdl, the real ])r()saic watchman continued to make the same demand as his ])redecessors for lights, through a long series of years ; and his demand tells us ])lainly that lA)ndon was a city without lamj)s. But though he was a ])rosaic ])erson, he had his own verses. He addressed himself* to the *' maids." He exhorted them to nuike their lanthorns " bright and ch-ar." lie told them how long their candles were ex])ected to Imrn. And, finally, like a considerate lawgiver, he gave a reason for his edict. In a print which is of the time of James I. we have the wiitclnnan lu ic rc iircscntcd. witli tlu' following lines underwritten : — 104 LONDON. " A light here, maids, hang out your light, And see your horns be clear and bright, That so your candle clear may shine, Continuing from six till nine ; That honest men that walk along May see to pass safe without wrong." The making of lanthorns was a great trade in the early times. We clung to King Alfred's invention for the preservation of light with as reverend a love, during many centuries, as we bestowed upon his civil institutions. The horn of the favoured utensil was a very dense medium for illumination, but science had substituted nothing better ; and, even when progressing people carried about a neat glass instrument with a brilliant reflector, the watchman held to his ponderous and murky relic of the past, making night hideous" with his voice. MIDSUiMMER-EVE. 105 while he made " darkness visible" with his Ian thorn. But, as we see, in the early days of lanthorns, when the cresset was being superseded by Hang out your lights," there was a wonderful demand for these commodities ; and upon the maids and their mistresses, who were nightly appealed to for the provision of the external light that was to protect the ward from thieves and murderers, must have rested a very serious responsibility of keeping horns clear and bright," and securing the candle against " chinks," either made by " time" or bad manufacturers. We have an old print of Hans Schopper's before us, repre- senting the lanthorn-shop ; and it will be observed that the lady has taken this piece of furniture under her especial care. Paris was in the same condition as London for a long period. The nightly passengers through the streets Avalked about with Ian thorns; and it was only in times of alarm and imminent danger that ordinances were issued, commanding each occupier of a house to place a light in the window of his first floor. La Reinie, the first lieutenant-general of police, introduced public lanthoms in 1667. This was hailed as a great event, for a medal was struck upon the occasion, bearing the legend Urbis sccuritas et nitor. One lanthorn, lighted with candles, in the middle of each street, and one at each end, constituted the amount of the security and splendour which Louis XIV. and his minister of police bestowed upon the Parisians. We cannot exactly say whether Boileau had composed his sixteenth satire before this event, but about this period he describes the darkest wood as far less dangerous than the streets of Paris, in which the " lated traveller" would encounter four bandits as he turned a corner: — " Le bois le plus funeste et le moins frequent 6 Est au prix de Paris un lieu de surete. Malheur done li cclui qu'une affaire imprevue En£^a<:^e un pou trop tard au detour d'une rue : Bientot quatrc bandits, lui serrant les cot^s. La bourse London was perhaps better off, with its general system of ])rivate lights, however imperfect that system might be. In 1694 a licence was granted by the corporation to certain persons concerned and interested in glass-lights, com- monly called or known by the name of convex lights," for the sole supi)ly of the public lights in all public places in the city, for twenty-one years. Here, one would have thought, would have been the ])ros])er()Us commencenuMU of a system which would really have insured safety to the inhabitants of London. But when the lease was expired we hear no more of the glass-lights or convex lights ; and every housekeeper whose house fronts any street or lane and is of the rent of ten pounds, and every j)erson having the charge of a public building, are each required and obliged, in every dark night, from the twenty-ninth of September until the twenty-fifth day of March, to hang out one or more lanthorn or hint- horns, with sufficient cotton-wick candles lighted therein, and to continue the same burning in every such dark night, from the hour of six until the hour of eleven of the same night. The act of Common rouncil which makes these ])r()visi()ns tells us they are, " for securing the houses a<;;iinst robbers and thieves, for the ])re- vention of murder, and the conveniency of passengers." (Ilorious provisions in- deed were they for accomplishing those ends! When there were clouds over the moon, — and whole streets and portions of streets were without light, because 106 LONDON. the inhabitants wero not rated at ten pounds, — and there was no light at all after eleven o'clock, we must admire the sagacity of the civic authorities who thus proposed to put down robbery and murder. Defoe, who in many things was a century before his age, published a pamphlet in 1729, wherein he suggested a plan by which our streets will be so strongly guarded, and so gloriously illu- minated, that any part of London will be as safe and pleasant at midnight as at noon-day, and burglary totally impracticable." London continued to be strongly guarded by its " ancient and most quiet watchmen" for another hundred years ; and the authorities began to think of rendering the streets illuminated with a convenient and sufficient number of glass lamps," not until they had gone up in terror to George II., to implore " a speedy, rigorous, and exemplary execution of the laws upon the persons of offenders." This was in 1744. But we have something to say upon the period that intervened between the old days of " Hang out your lights," and those semi-modern days when society, pretending to be in the most civilized condition, was really going backwards in many of the essential matters that constitute the salt of life." It has been generally held that crimes of violence belong only to what are called the rudest states of society. They belong, unquestionably, to an imperfect state of civilization ; but they may nevertheless exist under a condition which admits of great wealth amongst the higher individuals, a diffusion of wealth amongst the middle classes, and a certain refinement amongst those classes who are supposed to give the tone to an age. But they nevertheless indicate some- thing radically wrong in the general social state — some imperfect application of the preventive forces which belong to a really civilized condition — some gross inequality in the distribution of freedom, and of the means for securing the com- forts which are due even to the lowest class, conjoined with the inability, through the exercise of honest industry, to rise out of that class. These crimes are not always confined to the poorest, but spring out of the desire to employ the strong hand, under circumstances where mere brute force is a general indication of power, even amongst those whose peculiar interest, rightly understood, would be to show that no real power should be lawless. We can understand how a watch came to be established in London, when it was " a common practice in this city that a hundred or more in a company, young and old, would make nightly inva- sions upon houses of the wealthy, to the intent to rob them ; and if they found any man stirring in the city within the night that were not of their crew, they would presently murder him ; insomuch that when night was come no man durst adventure to walk in the streets."* This was an age of general lawlessness; and the establishment of the watch in cities by Henry III. was the first step towards a preventive police. But it is not so easy to comprehend how, nearly five hun- dred years afterwards (in 1744), London should have been in such a state that the Lord Mayor and aldermen went up with an address to the king, representing that divers confederacies of great numbers of evil-disposed persons, armed with bludgeons, pistols, cutlasses, and other dangerous weapons, infest not only the private lanes and passages, but likewise the public streets and places of usual concourse, and commit most daring outrages upon the persons of your Majesty's good subjects, whose affairs oblige them to pass through the streets, by terrifying, robbing, and wounding them ; and these facts are frequently perpetrated at such * Roger Hoveuden, quoted by Stow iu his Survey, MIDSUMMER-EVE. 107 times as were heretofore deemed hours of security." If in the ''hours of security'* armed gangs thus destroyed the safety of ordinary life^, what must they have been in the hours of darkness, when a feeble light was hung out here and there from six to eleven o'clock, and after that the city was surrendered to gloom and rapine ? In the first fifty years of the eighteenth century we should assuredly have thought that society had settled into order and security. These atrocities could not have existed without a most lamentable weakness in the government. Everything was then left to the narrow-minded local authorities. There was no central power. The government (what a misnomer !) had nothing to do but to make war and to hang. The Lord Mayor and aldermen cried, " Hang, hang !" *' Permit us. Sir, to express our hopes that a speedy, rigorous, and exemplary execution of the laws upon the persons of offenders, as they shall fall into the hands of justice, may, under your Majesty's princely wisdom, conduce greatly to the suppressing these enormities, by striking terror into the wicked, and pre- venting others from entering into such evil courses." And the king promised he would hang : " Nothing shall be wanting on my part to put the laws in execu- tion, to support the magistrates rigorously to punish such heinous offenders.'* Some person, whose good deeds, like those of many others, have fallen into oblivion, suggested a wiser course ; and Maitland, the historian of the city, from whose work we collect these remarkable facts, tells us, ''this year was enacted another act of Parliament for making more effectual provision for enlighteniiuj the streets of this city." A mental illumination had been required before this de- sirable event. In the long interval between the vigour of despotism and the better vigour of sound legislation, London must have been anything but a pleasant abode. Under the one sway (in the latter days of Elizabeth for exam- ple), Fleetwood, the recorder, strung u]) a dozen cutpurscs on a morning; and although he says, It is grown for a trade now in court to make means for reprieves — twenty pound for a reprieve is nothing,"* yet he contrived to clear London for a season of the rogues, by dint of the halter and the whij). But then came the age of weakness — a necessary conse(juence of a government relaxing its discipline, in that regard for the '' liberty of the subject " which was another name for its own ignorance and idleness. All the social pictures of the days of Anne and of the two first Georges exhibit a state of j)olice much worse than the days of Elizabeth. London was then a prey not only to daring thieves, but to swaggering bullies and hired assassins, who had lost the old salutarv tenor of the Star-chamber, and des])ised the ordinary adniinistraticm of justice. In the time of Charles II. Dryden was waylaid and beaten by a gang of ruHiaus hired by Rochester, as he walked home from Will's Coffeehouse to Geriard Street. This was a solitary case. But the Spectator has left us the uncpu'stionabU' evi- dence of the existence of "the Mohocks," — a class that would a])pear as im])os- sible to have existed in the London ol" tlic (l:i\s of Anne asof those ol' (ieorge IV. : "An outrageous ambition of doing all possible hurt to their fellow-creatures is the great cement of their assembly, and the onlv (|nalilical ion recjuired in the members. In order to exert this ])rincij)le in its full str( nL;tli and perfection, they take care to flrink themselves to a pitch that is l)ev«»nd the ])ossiI)ility of attending to any motions of reason or hunianitv. then make a general sally, and attack all that are so unfortunate as to walk the streets tlirouL;li which they • Klli','» F.fftors, First Strioa, vi.l. ii. p. '-IW. 108 LONDON. patrol. Some are knocked down, others stabbed, others cut and carbonadoed." Gay has given his testimony to the existence of the same association : — " Now is the time that rakes their revels keep, Kindlers of riot, enemies of sleep. His scatter'd pence the flying Nicker * flings, And with the copper shower the casement rings. Who has not heard the Scowerer's midnight fame ? Who has not trembled at the Mohock's name ? Was there a watchman took his hourly rounds Safe from their blows or new-invented wounds ?" We have a Mohock or two still left ; and sometimes our magistrates are still weak enough to inflict a miserable money penalty, instead of honestly levelling all distinctions amongst those made equal by crime and folly. But we have no fraternity of Mohocks. A firm police will root up the last of the race. Some thirty years after the Spectator had described the Mohocks, Johnson gave us a picture, in his ' London/ of the individual bully : — " Prepare for death if here at night you roam, And sign your will before you sup from home. Some fiery fop, with new commission vain, Who sleeps on brambles till he kills his man, — Some frolic drunkard, reeling from a feast, Provokes a broil, and stabs you for a jest. Yet even these heroes, mischievously gay, Lords of the street and terrors of the way, Flush'd as they are with folly, youth, and wine, Their prudent insults to the poor confine ; Afar they mark the flambeau's bright approach. And shun the shining train and golden coach." This then (1738) was the age of flambeaux and linkboys. London had only * The gentleman who breaks windows with halfpence. MIDSUMMER-EVE. 109 still its lanthorns here and there, and its few glass lamps. Westminster was per- haps worse provided. But the coach rolled from the theatre and the ball with its liveried torch-bearers ; and even the present century has seen flambeaux in London. The intelligent antiquary — not he who discovers nothing of antiquity but what is buried in the earth or described in the classics — may behold a relic of the manners of a hundred years ago in some of our existing squares and streets, that have stood up against the caprices of fashion. On each side the door-way, and generally attached to the posts that carry an arching lamp-rail, are two instruments that look like the old tin horn of the crier of great news." They are the flambeau-extinguishers : and when the gilded coach was dragged heavily along at midnight to the mansion (people of fashion once went to bed at midnight), and the principal door was closed upon the lords and ladies of the great house, the footmen thrust their torches into these horn-like cavities, and as the horses moved off* by instinct to their stables, the same footmen crept down the area in utter darkness. There was perhaps a solitary linkboy at the corner of the square, especially if an opened cesspool, or a little lake of mud, promised a locality where gentlemen without his aid might break their necks or soil their stockings. But he generally hovered about the theatres and taverns. He was, too often, a half-idiotic wretch, whose haggard features have been admirably preserved by Boitard, an artist of Hogarth's period, who possessed some share of the Hogarthian humour. Gay describes the officious linkboy's smoky light but he has also given the fraternity a bad character, which pcrha])8 they were enabled to live down. The poor fellow of Boitard's picture we are sure did not deserve the reproach : — "Thoupjh tlioii art tempted by the linkinairs call, Yet trust him not alon^ the lonely wall ; In the mid-way he'll <|uciic.ii the flaming; brand, And share the booty with the pilfering band. Still keep the ])ul)lie streets, where oily rays, Shot Irouj the crystal lamp, o'erspread thy ways." Oily rays, and crystal lamps ! The very existence of the " linkmen" and *' the pilfering band" tells us to what extent the illumination reached, and what were dignified by the name of *' public streets." 110 LONDON. But the age of lamps was really approaching. The City, as we see, became vigorous in lighting, when it was found that severity did little against the thieves ; and the Westminster Paving and Lighting Act was passed in 1 762. Then came the glories of the old lamplighters ; — the progress through each dis- trict to trim the wicks in a morning — and the terrible skurry, with ladder driven against your breast, and oil showered upon your head, as twilight approached. What a twinkling then was there through all the streets ! But we were proud of our lamps; and Beckmann, in his * History of Inventions,' has described them as something like a wonder of the world. Beneath the faint lamp slept the watch- man ; or if he walked, he still walked with his lanthorn ; and the linkboy, yet a needful auxiliary to the lamp and the lanthorn, guided the reeling gentleman from his tavern to his lodging. [London at Night, 1760.] The old system of watching lasted up to 1830. It is impossible to conceive any institution more unfitted for the demands of society, more corrupt, more inefficient ; — in a word, as it was described by all parties before the passing of Sir Robert Peel's Police Act, it was an intolerable nuisance. It is amazing how it could have lasted so long ; and its duration can be accounted for upon no other principle than that, it being agreed on all hands that it was utterly worthless and contemptible, means were resorted to for rendering the police of London in some degree efficient, whilst those reverend pensioners, who had only the duty to dis- charge of having their lanthorns broken (sometimes their heads), and of spring- ing their rattles duly at the midnight hour, row or no row, were held to be entirely without responsibility in the serious matters of burglary and street-rob- bery. These were left to the inspection of the officers of Bow Street ; and very vigilant had these functionaries been for some thirty years. There was no such MIDSUMMER-EVE. Ill thing as a mounted highwayman known in the neighbourhood of London ; street- robberies had become very rare ; burglaries were not common. The face of things had been wonderfully changed since the London thieves plotted to stop Queen Anne's coach as she returned from supper in the city ; and since highway- men committed robberies in noon-day in the immediate vicinity of the capital, and slowly rode through the villages without any one daring to stop them. But the application of a scientific discovery had as much to do with some of these beneficial results as the greater vigilance of a police. When London became lighted with gas, half the work of prevention of crime was accom])lished. It is pleasant to think what has been done in this matter in our own day. Bir- mingham, Halifax, Manchester, had employed gas as a means of lighting manu- factories very early in the present century ; but London first adopted this beautiful light in her public streets. Pall-Mall was thus illuminated in 1807; and we certainly owe this application of the invention (although to the invention itself he can have no claim) to the sanguine perseverance of a German, named Winsor. He raised a subscription of 50,000/. for his experiments ; and not a penny came back to the subscribers. But he lighted a street. For several years Pall-Mall alone was so lighted. His extravagant expectations of enormous profits to his subscribers had utterly failed ; but the principle could not fail. The business of the first chartered company was also long unprofitable ; but in fourteen years they had conquered every diflRculty. Other companies were rapidly established ; and the metropolis now burns gas in every square, street, alley, lane, passage, and court. It was shown in 1823, upon a parliamentary investigation into the affairs of the chartered company, that they produced six hundred and eighty thousand cubic feet of gas every night, giving a light equal to thirty thousand pounds of tallow candles. The consumption of the metropolis is now reckoned at nearly nine millions of cubic feet in twenty-four hours ; so that the production of gas in London everij night is equal to the light of four hundred thousand pounds of tallow candles. Compare this with the one "candle with a cotton wick," hung up here and there, from six to eleven o'clock on dark nights. In 173G, when public lamps were to a certain extent established, the City had only one thousand throughout all its great thoroughfares and numberless lanes and alleys. Should we err in saying that the light of these thousand lam])s was not more than equal to that of one hundred ])ounds of tallow candles? This slight computation su])j)lies food for thought. But if the nightly illumination of London is to be presented to tlic mind in a picturesque shape, let us recollect how Richard Niccols described the illumina- tion of the bonfires and cresset-lights of Midsununer-Eve, startling the slu'i)lu'r(l tending his flocks on the neighbouring hills. There is a nobler and far more brilliant illumination now lighting uj) this mighty city, from sunset to sunrise every night throughout the year. The noblest prosi)ect in the world is London from Ham])stead Heath on a bright winter's evening. The stars are shining in heaven, but there are thousands of earthly stars glittering in the city there spread before us: and as we look into any small sj)ace of that wondrous illuniinatii)n. we can trace long lines of light losing themselves in the general s])len(lour ol the distance, and we can sec the dim shapes of mighty buildings alar oil", showing their dark 112 LONDON. masses amidst the glowing atmosphere that hangs over the capital for miles, with the edges of flickering clouds gilded as if they were touched by the first sun- light. This is a spectacle that men look not upon, because it is common; and so we walk amidst the nightly splendours of Cheapside, and forget what it was in the days of Marching Watches. But in all these things we may trace the pro- gressive growth of a principle. A city has made some progress in civilisation when its institutions are sufficiently compact for men to be agreed upon union for their common safety. It has made a great progress when that union, however imperfectly directed, exhibits itself in occasional magnificence amidst habitual poverty of expenditure. There is another stage when the pomp is abandoned, and the capital wasted upon it is dedicated to some general improvement. The extent of the improvement is a question only of time. The two thousand cresset- lights of the Midsummer-Eve of 1510, and the thousands upon thousands of the nightly gas-lights of 1841, are not so widely separated as the lapse of three hundred years might appear to say. They are to be associated as much as they are to be contrasted. The lamplighter of 1800 appears to belong almost as little to our own day as the ancient cresset-bearer. VII.— ST. MARY OVERIES. Romance has of late years borrowed much from the stores which our antiquaries and topographers hav e been so long and so industriously heaj)ing up, and with its "wizard" touch has re-animated the dry bones and crumbling ])articles, till the past has again become the present, and the shapes around which hang so many of our dearest recollections have once more lived and moved before our eyes, — their entire being, ])hysical, moral, and mental, revealed to our earnest curiosity. It is ])ity that the antiquaries and the to])ographers, on their ])art, do not recij)rocate such friendly advances. Romance would do much for them. So far, however, are they from thinking so, that, even when anything of the kind comes in their way — is so forced uj)on their attention that they inust notice it — nothing can be more characteristic than their treatment of the impertinence. How suspiciously they peer into its genealogy ; how curtly they dismiss it if no flaw be there (lis< ()ver- able ; how triumphantly if there be! They want no Rosamond's Bowi-r to bloom for them. The Lion Heart may remain in ca])tivity forever, rather than IJioiidcl. under such touching and beautiful circumstances, shall discover his abode^ and be the means of his relief So, in the history of the noble church we are about to describe, Mary Overy, plying to and fro between the oj)positc shores of the great river, before a single metropolitan bridge existed, and devoting her earnings, as well as the earnings of her parents before her, to the erection of a religious house on its banks, — even she, j)oor maiden, hardly escapes their hands: they would 114 LONDON. deprive her of all honours, based though they be upon nine or ten centuries of grateful recollection. And why would they do this ? Why, whilst few traditions are better authenticated than this of the ferryman's daughter, should few or none of the local historians give it frank and hearty credence ? Why should most of them make a point of questioning its truth ? Let us see what the evidence is. And first we shall call one of their own body (honest John Stow, the prince of topographers, because he has some of the spirit of poetry about him) into court. He favours us with two separate depositions. The first, where he states his authority to he " Linsted, last prior of St. Mary Overies^ we have already tran- scribed in our account of London Bridge ;* the other, in which we find some important additions made, runs as follows ; " This church, or some other in place thereof, was of old time, long hefore the Conquest, an house of sisters, founded by a maiden named Mary. Unto the which house and sisters she left (as was left her by her parents) the oversight and profits of a cross ferry over the Thames there kept before that any bridge was builded. This House of Sisters was after- wards by Swithin, a noble lady, converted into a college of priests, who, in place of the ferry, builded a bridge of timber, &c. * * * * In the year 1106 was this church again founded for canons regular, by William Pont de I'Arche and William Dauncy, Kts,, Normans. "f It will be observed that the statement here put upon record is direct and unqualified; indeed it is highly probable that Linsted spoke not only from the traditional, but also from the written, records of the house, which, being in Latin, were all destroyed a few years after the dissolution of the house at the Reformation, as "superstitious" remains of the Catholic church. At all events, whatever Linsted's story may be worth as regards the bridge, it is, as regards St. Mary Overies, deserving of every credit, because supported by other and most satisfactory proofs. Thus we learn from him, and in express words from him only, that the foundation of St. Mary Overies dated from a period "long before the Conquest." Now, first, it is certain that there was a religious house in Southwark at the early period referred to : — " The Bishop [of Bayeux] has in Southwark one monastery and one harbour. King Edward [the Confessor] held it on the day he died. Whoever held the church held it of the King." And, secondly, it is almost equally certain that St. Mary Overies was that religious house, "there being no pretence," says Bishop Tanner (a high authority), " for any other to claim to be as old as the Confessor's time." Surely this is good evidence ; but it is not all. There is much reason to believe that a portion of that very early building still remains. " Recently, when digging for a family vault in the centre of the choir of the church, near the altar, it was found necessary to cut through a very ancient foundation wall, which never could have formed any part of the present edifice ; the situation exactly corresponds with that of the House of Sisters/ '+ described by Stow as near the east part of the present St. Mary Overies, " above the choir," and where he says Mary was buried. Lastly, there is the name itself. Who is meant by St. Mary? Not certainly the mother of Jesus, for a part of the edifice (the well-known Lady * Pages 77, 78. f Strype's Stow, vol. ii. p. 773. X Taylors * Annals of St. Mary Overy a work to which we are bound to express our obligations for much interesting matter overlooked by preceding historians. ST. MARY OVERIES. 115 Chapel) is expressly dedicated to her ; on the other hand, it was a matter of common occurrence in the early ages of the Christian church to enter the names of the benefactors of religious communities in their " canon'^ books, which names were recited from time to time with honour, and the persons thenceforward held as sanctiy or saints; and hence the word " canonization ^ Such, doubtless, was the process -that transformed the ferryman's daughter into St. Mary Overy : the latter word meaning either Over the Rhe (the Saxon word for river), or, o' the Feny, — easily corrupted into Overy, when the bridge had put aside the more primitive method of transport, and the original meaning of the phrase was for- gotten. The last is, in all probability, the true derivation ; " for in some very ancient records the church is called St. Mary at the Ferri/.'"* So that, on the whole, we think we are fully justified in once more declaring our faith in the history of the ferryman's daughter, and in stating our firm belief that tradition, Linsted, and Stow, are right in this their account of the foundation of one of the most interesting, beautiful, and least known of London edifices. The second foundation of St. Mary Overies was, as we have seen, for canons regular;! and the founders were "William Pont de TArche, and William Dauncy, Knights, Normans." Aldgod was tlic first prior. Gilford, the then bishop of Winchester, who about the same ])eriod built the sj)lendid palace adjoining, was also a great benefactor : indeed the erection of the entire nave is attributed to him. Others rendered assistance of a dilferent but no less * Mo*j aiiti Nightinjfjile's St. Saviour'n. f Caiion* of the order of St. AngiHtiin', who were less strict in their (liscipliiic than the nionkt pfHTally Their custuiiio was a wlut« tunic, with u black clouk, and a liuod covering the head, neck, and shoulders. K '2 116 LONDON. useful kind. Alexander Fitzgerald gave two weys of cheese, and his grandson Henry a field of wheat. The ceremonies attending the presentation of important gifts are strikingly illustrated in the instance of the second Earl of Warren, who, in presenting his church of Kircesfield to the new priory, placed a knife upon the altar, in confirmation of the grant. Of the building erected at this period, there remained in the nave, till the late alterations, four massy round pillars (differing from all the others, of a later date, which supported the roof}, and the very ancient Norman arch which was discovered a few years since buried in the thickness of the wall of the north aisle, and which led, it is supposed, into the cloisters that extended along the northern side of St. Mary Overies. In the great fire of Southwark in 1212 * the Priory received so much damage, that the canons founded an hospital in the neighbourhood, where they performed all the services of their church until St. Mary Overies was repaired. From this hospital arose the well-known St. Thomas's. About five-and-twenty years after this sad calamity the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen was founded by Peter de Rupibus [Peter des Roches], who was consecrated Bishop of Winchester, at Rome, by the Pope, having previously distinguished himself as a follower of Richard I., and received the honour of knighthood at his hands. On the death of the Earl of Pem- broke he was appointed guardian of the young king, Henry III., but was soon supplanted by his great rival, Hubert de Burgh. Of the state of the Priory in the beginning of the fourteenth century there is an interesting record ; it is an answer to the application of the king, Edward I,, to admit one of his aged ser- vants into their body. They state that they are so poor that the whole of their goods, rents, and possessions cannot afford sufficient for their own mainte- nance without the " pious bounty of the faithful ; " and then continue : — our church, too, which now for thirty years last past (oh shame !) has been in ruin, we have laboured our utmost about the repairs of, since the beginning of that time, yet we have only been able to proceed so far in its restoration (hindered by vexatious and burdensome exactions, as well in spiritual as in temporal) as to build our campanile. Moreover, through that continued resistance which with- out ceasing we attempt against the violence of the River Thames (on whose banks our little house is situated), and for the safety of our church, our strength would not suffice for our own security, were the danger not lessened happily on the one hand by a subsidy, on the other by our being immediately furnished by our- selves," &c. f During the period that the monks had been so piously struggling to repair their church, Walter Archbishop of York (in 1273) promulgated thirty days' indulgence to all who should assist them ; with what success does not appear. Another ancient record recalls a custom of the Catholic church in the olden times, which must have presented many pleasing and picturesque features. The Priory passed a statute in 1337, restricting the hoy -bishop to the limits of his own parish. The personage thus referred to was a child commonly chosen from among the choristers by them on St. Nicholas' Day (December 6), to assume the dignity and perform some of the offices of a bishop, until the following Innocents' Day, wearing all the while the mitre, and bearing the pastoral staff. On the eve * See ' London Bridge,' p. 82. t Bundela Brevium et Literam in Turro, London. Ann. 32 Edw. I. Translated in Taylors 'Annals.' ST. MARY OVEKIES. 117 of that day, the chorister as bishop, and his companions as prebends, walked in procession to the church, preceded by the dean and canons. As he went he was feasted by the people, and bestowed in return his blessing, which was highly coveted. Wc arrive now at one of the most interesting events in the history of St. Mary Overies — its restoration about the close of the fourteenth century, when the poet Gower contributed the principal funds. This church was doubtless endeared to him by a peculiar tie: he was married here, in 1397, to Alice Groundolf, by the celebrated William of Wickham, who then held the see of Winchester; and here their ashes repose. A small monument marked the site of her resting-])lace, according to Leland, which has long disa])pearcd ; his is doubtless destined to last as long as the beautiful edifice which enshrines it. [(iuu. r , M.„.,.ni, ,u.j This monument, now in the south transept, was originally in a ])art of the north aisle of the nave, called St. John's Chaj)el, where it was ])lace(l in accord- ance with the ])oet's directions as ex])ressed in his will. He writes, I leave my soul to God my Creator ; and my body to be buried in the church of the Canons of the blessed Mary de Overes, in (i phicc rj-prcw/j/ p/ornlcd for it.'' The gratitude of the canons to their generous benefactor was marked l>y their long continuing to ])erf()rm a yearly obiit to his ineiuoi v. and by hanging u|) a tablet beside the monument with the inscription " that whosoi'ver ])rayeth for the soul of .John Gower, lie shall, so oft as he so doth, have a M and a 1) days of pardon." Of the sumptuous beauty of this moiniuicnl (»ur riii;ia\ in<;- f urnishes the best des( rij)tion those slender, tree-like pillars, sending off their countless branches till they ai)i)ear to form one " con- 128 LONDON. tinuity of shade/' stretching over all, rather than a mere mason's groined roof — having also admired the effect of the elegantly painted shields of arms which here and there enrich the windows, we now turn an inquiring gaze around to see what else of interest may belong to the Lady Chapel, until the tomb of Bishop Andrews is perceived, which at once arrests and fixes the attention. Seldom has the world seen a man more worthy of its united love and veneration than he whose remains lie here interred ; and seldom has the world been so willing as in his case to acknowledge such claims upon it He was successively Dean of West- minster, Bishop of Chichester, Bishop of Ely, and lastly, in 1618, Bishop of Win- chester. His great learning made him a favourite with the King ; his piety and virtues with the people ; his fascinating eloquence with both. He was one of the authors of our common translation of the Bible. It is recorded that towards the close of his life the manuscript of his ' Manual for Private Devotions,* &c., was scarcely ever out of his hands, and after his death it was found worn in pieces and wet with his tears. That death made a great sensation. Milton, then only about sixteen or seventeen, wrote, in Latin, an impassioned elegy to his memory, which Cowper has translated. The good bishop's tomb was formerly in the Bishop's Chapel, a small edifice projecting eastward beyond the Lady Chapel. It had originally a fair canopy upon black marble pillars, with a long inscription, commencing, Reader, if thou art a Christian, stay ; it will be worth thy tarrying to know how great a man lies here." This canopy was destroyed by the falling in of the roof of the chapel in the fire of 1676. During the late alterations this chapel was pulled down, and the tomb removed to its present site. The latter was then opened, and his coffin seen within, in an excellent state of preservation, closely bricked up. It rested on a cross of brickwork. The leaden coffin bore simply his initials, L. A., Lancelot Andrews. [The I/uly Chapel ] [The enraged .Mu.->iciaii. — IIooartii.] Vni._STREET NOISES. ' The Silent Woman,' one of the most popular of Ben Jonson's conudies. pre- sents to us a more vivid picture than can elsewhere be found of the characteristic noises of the streets of London more than two centuries ago. It is easy to form to ourselves a general idea of the hum and buzz of the bees and drones of this mighty hive, under a state of manners essentially different from our own ; but it is not so easy to attain a lively conception of the particular sounds that once went to make up this great discord, and so to compare them in their rescinblances and their differences with the roar which the great Babel nov sends throuu^h all her gates." We propose, therefore, to j)ut before our readers this ])assage of Jonson's comedy; and then, chissifying what he describes, illustrate our fine old dramatic painter of manners by references to other writers, and by the n suits of our own observaticm. The principal character of Jonson's 'Silent Woman' is founded upon a sketch by a Greek writer of the fourth century, Libanius. Jonson designates this cha- racter by the name of*' Morose;" and his peculiarity is that he can bear no kind of noise, even that of ordinary talk. The ])lot turns u])on this affectation; for, having been entra])ped into a marriage with the Silent Woman, she and her friends assail him with tongues the most obstreperous, and clamours the most 130 LONDON. uproarious, until, to be relieved of this nuisance, he comes to terms with his nephew for a portion of his fortune, and is relieved of the Silent Woman, who is in reality a boy in disguise. We extract the dialogue which will form a text to our paper ; the speakers being Truewit, Clerimont, and a Page : — " True. I met that stiff piece of formality, his uncle, yesterday, with a huge turban of night-caps on his head, buckled over his ears. " Cler. O 1 that's his custom when he walks abroad. He can endure no noise, man. " True. So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as it is made ? They say he has been upon divers treaties with the fish-wives and orange- women ; and articles propounded between them : marry, the chimney- sweepers will not be drawn in. " Cler. No, nor the broom-men : they stand out stiffly. He cannot endure a costard-monger ; he swoons if he hear one. " True. Methinks a smith should be ominous. " Cler. Or any hammer-man. A brasier is not suffered to dwell in the parish, nor an armourer. He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a Shrove-Tuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were quit. " True. A trumpet should fright him terribly, or the hautboys. Cler. Out of his senses. The waits of the city have a pension of him not to come near that ward. This youth practised on him one night like the bellman, and never left till he had brought him down to the door with a long sword ; and there left him flourishing with the air. Page. Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in, so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches, nor carts, nor any of these common noises : and therefore we that love him devise to bring him in such as we may, now and then, for his exercise, to breathe him. He would grow resty else in his cage; his virtue would rust without action. I entreated a bearward, one day, to come down with the dogs of some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did ; and cried his games under Master Morose's window ; till he was sent crying away, with his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And, another time, a fencer marching to his prize had his drum most tragically run through, for taking that street in his way at my request. " True. A good wag ! How does he for the bells ? " Cler. O ! in the queen's time he was wont to go out of town every Saturday at ten o'clock, or on holyday eves. But now, by reason of the sickness, the perpetuity of ringing has made him devise a room with double walls and treble ceilings; the windows close shut and caulk'd: and there he lives by candle- light." The first class of noises, then, against which Morose protected his ears by a huge turban of night-caps," is that of the ancient and far-famed London Cries. We have here the very loudest of them — fish- wives, orange-women, chimney- sweepers, broom-men, costard-mongers. But we might almost say that there were hundreds of other cries.; and therefore, reserving to ourselves some opportu- nity for a special enumeration of a few of the more remarkable of these cries, we shall now slightly group them, as they present themselves to our notice during successive generations. STREET NOISES. 131 And fii^t let us go back as far as the days of Henry V. Lydgate, in his very curious poem of 'London Lyckpeny/* has recorded the cries of four centuries ago. He tells us that at the door of Westminster Hall, " Fleming begun on me for to cry, Master, what will you copen or buy. Fine felt hats, or spectacles to read ?" Spectacles to read before printing was invented must have had a rather limited market ; but we must bear in mind where they were sold. In Westminster Hall there were lawyers and rich suitors congregated, — worshipful men, who had a written law to study and expound, and learned treatises diligently to peruse, and titles to hunt after through the labyrinths of fine and recovery. The dealer in spectacles was a dealer in hats, as we see ; and the articles were no doubt both of foreign manufacture. But lawyers and suitors had also to feed, as well as to read with spectacles; and on the Thames side, instead of the coffeehouses of modern date, were tables in the open air, where men every day ate and drank jollily, as they now do at a horse-race : — Cooks to me they took good intent, And preferred me bread with ale and wine, Ribs of beef both fat and full fine : A fair cloth they gan for to spread." London itself seems to have been especially full of food and the cries of feed- ing. In Eastcheap " One cries of beef send many a pie." In Canwyke Street (Cannon Street) " Then comes in one crying hot sheep's feet.'' Those who preferred a vegetable diet had their choice : — *' Hot peascnd one began to cry :" and the dessert was not wanting, for there was the cry of " Strawberries ripe, and cherries in the rise.f There were venders of "pepper and saffron,^'' bidding him draw near ; and the cry which is still heard and tolerated by law, that of mackerel, rang through every street. There was the cry " rusJtes (jrem,''* which tells us of by-gone customs — rushes for the floor. In Cheap (Chea])side) he saw much ])eople standing, who proclaimed the merits of their velvets, silk, lawn, and Paris thread. These, how- ever, were shopkeepers ; but their shops were not after the modern fashion of plate-glass windows, and car])eted floors, and lustres blazing at night with a splendour that would ])ut to shame the glories of an eastern palace. They were rude booths, the owners of which bawled as loudly as the itinerants ; and they went on bawling for several centuries, like butchers in a market, so that, in 1028, Alexander Gell, a bachelor of divinity, was sentenced to lose his ears and to be degraded from the ministry, for giving his opinion of Charles I., that he was fitter to stand in a Chea])side sho]) with an ay)r()n before him, and say " what lack ye?" than to govern a kingdom.:;: With unj)aved streets, and no noise of * See 'The Silent Highway,' imgo 5. f Rise — branch, Iwig, eitlior a natural hraiirh, or ticcl on iiticki (U wr still we thrtn. \ Sec EUi*' i • Lelteri,' vol. iii. p. 270. L 2 132 LONDON. coaches to drown any particular sound, we may readily imagine the -din of the great London thoroughfares of four centuries ago, produced by all this vociferous demand for custom. The chief body of London retailers were then itinerant, — literally pedlers; and those who had attained some higher station were simply stall-keepers. The streets of trade must have borne a wonderful resemblance to a modern fair. Competition was then a very rude thing, and the loudest voice did something perhaps to carry the customer. If the age of the Stuarts was not the greatest period of London cries (and it is probable that the progress of refinement had abolished many of them), that period has preserved to us the fullest records of their wonderful variety. Artists of all countries and times have delighted to represent those peculiarities of costume and character which belong to the history of cries. Annibal Carracci has immortalized the cries of Bologna; and from the time of James I. to that of George IV., we have woodcuts and etchings almost numberless of the cries and Itinerant Trades of London. There is a very rare sheet of wood- cuts in the British Museum, containing twelve cries ; and these may be taken, on the authority of Mr. Smith, the late keeper of the prints, as of the same date as Ben Jonson's fish wives and costard-mongers." We have here the reverend watchman, with his Hang out your light,' ' and the noisy ''bellman,*' described and engraved in a recent paper. The " orange-women " of Ben Jonson are here figured to the life. The familiar mention of the orange- sellers in the 'Silent Woman,' and this very early representation of one of them, show how general the use of this fruit had become in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is stated, though the story is somewhat apocryphal, that the first oranges were imported by Sir Walter Raleigh. It is probable that about his time they first became an article of general commerce. We now consume about two hundred and fifty millions of oranges every year. The orange-women who carried the golden fruit upon their heads through every street and alley, with the musical cry of " Fair lemons and oranges, Orayiges and citrons,'" lasted for a century or two. The 'Cries' of Tempest were published in the beginning of the eighteenth century, but many of the designs, which are by [" Fair licmoiis .ind Oranges !''J STREET NOISES. 133 Mauron (sometimes spelt Lauron), belong unquestionably to an earlier period. The orange-woman became, as everything else became, a more prosaic ])erson as she approached our own times. She was a barrow-woman at the end of the last century ; and Porson has thus described her : — " As I walked throui^h the Strand so cheerful and gay, I met a young girl a-wheeling a barrow ; Fine fruit, sir, says she, and a bill of the play." The transformation was the same with the cherry-women. The Strawberries ripe, and cherries in the rise," of the days of Henry V., was a poetical cry. It must have come over the ear, telling of sunny gardens not a sparrow's flight from the city, such as that of the Bishop of Ely in Holborn,* and of plenteous orchards which could spare their boughs as well as their fruit. " CJiernj ripe'^ was the cry in the seventeenth century ; and we all know how Herrick has married the words to poetry which is not the worse for having been as populajin our own day as "Jump Jim Crow "Cherry ripe — ripe — ripe — I cry, Full and fair ones ; come, and buy : If so be you ask me where They do grow ? I answer, there, Where my Julia's lips do smile. There 's the land, or cherry-isle ; Whose plantations fully show All the year where cherries grow." What a tribute to the fine old poet, who says, " I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers," to have had the dirty lanes of London, two hundred years after his death, made vocal with words that seemed to gush from his heart like the nightingale's song ! [OriiiifeTs.— 184I.J But the cries of (J/urry ripe' and of Fair oramjrs'" are no longer heard. The barrow laden with its golden or ruby treasures no longer is wheeled securely through the Strand. Driven off the pavement by the throng of i)o])nla- tion, the orange-woman stands u])()n the edge of the kerl), ])oising her laden basket so as to present the least impediment to the pasfwrngers, and thus satisfy ♦ Sto Kidmid 111., Act »ii. Sc .O. 134 LONDON. the inexorable policeman. She is now silent. Even Morose, with his " turban of nightcaps/' would shun her not. We shall not readily associate any very agreeable sounds with the voices of the fish-wives." The one who cried MackereV in Lydgate's day had probably no such explanatory cry as the " Mackerel alive, alive ho /" of modern times. In the seventeenth century the cry was ''New mackerel;^'' and in the same way we [" Four for sixpence, Mackerel !"] have ''New Wall-fleet oysters,"" and "New flounders.'" The freshness of fish must have been a considerable recommendation in those days of tardy intercourse. But quantity was also to be taken into the account, and so we find the cries of " Buy my dish of great smelts " great plaice "great mussels^ Such are the fish-cries in Overton's various collections. The respectable one-eyed lady whom we here present is in Tempest's set; and her cry is "Four for sixpence, mackereV^ She is to be contrasted with the damsel gaily tripping with a basket on her head, to the cry of "Buy my dish of great eels,'" and with another sprightly maiden, who vociferates " CrCih, crab, any crabs ? " The fish-wives are no longer seen in our great thoroughfares. In Tottenham Court Road, indeed, which still retains the character of a market, they stand in long rows as the evening draws in, with paper-lanthorns stuck in their baskets on dark nights ; and there they vociferate as loudly as in the old time. The costard-monger " that Morose dreaded, still lives amongst us, and is still noisy. He bawls so loud even to this day, that he puts his hand behind his ear to mitigate the sensation which he inflicts upon his own tympanum. He was originally an apple-seller, whence his name ; and, from the mention of him in the old dramatists, he appears to have been frequently an Irishman. In Jonson's % ' Bartholomew Fair,' he cries "pears."" Ford makes him cry "pippins."" He is a quarrelsome fellow, according to Beaumont and Fletcher : — " And then he '11 rail like a rude costermonger, That schoolboys had cozened of his apple. As loud and senseless." The costermonger is now a travelling shopkeeper. We encounter him not in Cornhill, or Holborn, or the Strand : in the neighbourhood of the great markets and well-stored shops he travels not. But his voice is heard in some silent streets stretching into the suburbs j and there his donkey-cart stands at the door, as the STREET NOISES. 135 dingy servant-maid cheapens a bundle of cauliflowers. He has monopolized all the trades that were anciently represented by such cries as " Buy my articlio/ics, mistress "Ripe cowcumbers /" " White onions, ivhite St. Thomas' onions " White radish " Ripe young leans Any baking pears Ripe speragas.'' He would be indignant to encounter such petty chapmen interfering with his wholesale opera- tions. He would rail against them as the city shopkeepers of the sixteenth and [Costard-monger. — 1811 ] seventeenth centuries railed against itinerant traders of every denomination. In the days of Elizabeth, they declare by act of common council, that in ancient times the open streets and lanes of the city have been used, and ought to be used, as the com- mon highway only, and not for hucksters, pedlers, and hagglers, to stand and sit to sell their wares in, and to pass from street to street hawking and offering their wares. In the seventh year of Charles I. the same authorities denounce the oyster-wives, herb-wives, tripe-wives, and the like, as unruly people;" and they charge them somewhat unjustly, as it must appear, with framing to themselves a way whereby to live a more easy life than by labour." " How busy is the man the world calls idle ! *' The evil, as the citizens term it, seems to have increased; for in 1691 the com- mon council threatened the pedlers and petty cha])men with the terrors of the laws against rogues and sturdy beggars, the least ])enalty being whij)j)ing, whe- ther for male or female. The reason for this terrible denunciation is very candidly put : the citizens and sh()])keepers are greatly hindered and ])rejudiced in their trades by the hawkers and ])e(llers. Such deiunu iaticms as these had little share in putting down the itinerant traders. They continued to flourish, because society required them ; and they vanished from our view when sot icty required them no longer. In the middle of the last century they were fairly established as rivals to the shopkeepers. Dr. .Jolmson, than whom no man knew London better, thus writes in the ' Adventurer:' " The attention of a new-iomer is generally first struck by the multiplicity of cries tliat stun him in the streets, and the variety of merchandise and manufactures which the shopkeepers expose on every hand." The sh()j)kee])ers have now ruined the itinerants— not by ])ut- ting them down by fiery penalties, but by the coin])etition amongst themselves to have every article at hand for every man's use, which shall be better and chea])cr than the wares of the itinerant. Whose ear is now ever deafened by the cries of 136 LONDON. the broom-men ? The Bavarian broom-women, with their " buy a broom " and their hideous songs, belong to the class of street exhibitions. They go with the Savoy- ard and his monkey and white mice. But the man who bears about real brooms for use has vanished. He was a sturdy fellow in the days of old Morose, carrying on a barter which in itself speaks of the infancy of civilization. His cry was " old shoes for some brooim.'' These proclamations for barter no doubt furnished a pecu- [*' Old Shoes for some Brooms !"] liar characteristic of the old London cries. The itinerant buyers were as loud, though not so numerous, as the sellers. The familiar voice of old clowze'^ has lasted through some generations ; but the glories of Monmouth Street were unknown when a lady in a peaked bonnet and a laced stomacher went about proclaiming " old satin, old taffety, or velvet and a puritanical-looking gentleman, with three hats on his head, and a bundle of rapiers in his hand, bawled old cloaks, suits, or coats'^ There was trading then going forward from house to house, which careful housewifery and a more vigilant police have banished from the daylight, if they have not extir- pated it altogether. Before the shops are open and the chimneys send forth their smoke, there may be now sometimes seen creeping up an area a sly-looking beldam, who treads as stealthily as a cat. Under her cloak has she a pan, whose unctuous contents will some day assist in the enlightenment or purification of the world, in the form of candles or soap. But the good lady of the house, who is a late riser, knows not of the transformation that is going forward. In the old days she would have heard the cry of a maiden, with tub on head and pence in hand, of any kitchen-stvff have yon, maids and she probably would have dealt with her herself, or have forbidden her maids to deal. So is it with the old cry of " any old iron take money for The fellow who then went openly about with sack on back was a thief, and an encourager of thieves ; he now keeps a marine-store. A curious parallel might be carried out between the itinerant occupations which the progress of society has entirely superseded, and those which even the most advanced civilization is compelled to retain. We can here only hastily glance at a few of these differences. The water-carrier is gone. It is impossible that London can ever again see a man bent beneath the weight of a yoke and two enormous pails, vociferating "New River watery In the days of James I. the water-carrier bore a large can upon his shoulders, with a towel over his back and another over his breast, and he was called a tankard-bearer ; and he tra- STREET NOISES. 137 veiled to and from some conduit, whose waters were bright and ever flowing ; and, filling his vessel, he dealt out the quarts and gallons of the precious liquid to those who never dreamt of a full supply except they lived near the river-bank or close to the conduit. He is gone. But he still remains in Paris. There are [Conduit in West Cheap.] still there some three or four thousand porteiirs cVcaii, who carry water from family to family, either in a cask upon wheels or in pails with yokes. It has been computed that 180,000/. is annually j)aid for this species of labour. In Madrid the same occupation gives subsistence to a very large number of ])co])le; and there the passenger is invited to taste the pure element, brought from a distance of thirty miles, by the cry of "Water, fresh water, fresh from the fountain! Who drinks, gentlemen; who drinks?" But the number of persons thus em- ployed, compared with the London milk- carriers, is no doubt small. The cry of Milk,'" or the rattle of the milk-pail, will never cease to be heard in our streets. There can be no reservoirs of milk, no pipes through which it llows into the houses. The more extensive the great capital becomes, the more active must be the individual exertion to carry about this article of food. The old cry was, ''Any milk here/^' and it was sometimes mingled with the sound of *• Fresh cheese and cream;'' and it then passed into ''Milk, maids hclnw and it was then shortened into "Milk helow;' and was finally corru])fed into Mio,^^ which some wag interpreted into — demi-ean — half-water. Hut it must still be cried, whatever be the cry. The sup])ly of milk to the metropolis is ])erha])S one of the most beautiful combinations of industry we have. The days are long since past when Finsl)ury had its pleasant groves, and ('k rkeinvell was a village, and there were green pastures in Ilolborn, and St. Pancras boasted only a little church standino; in meadows, and St. Martin's was literallv in the fields. Slowh but surely does the baked clay stride over the clover and tin- huttercup; and yet every family in London may l)e suppli(d with niilk lt\ ei^lit o'< hxdi: every morn- 138 LONDON. ing at their own doors. Where do the cows abide? They are congregated in wondrous masses in the suburbs ; and though in spring-time they go out to pasture in the fields which lie under the Hampstead and Highgate hills, or in the vales of Dulwich and Sydenham, and there crop the tender blade, " When proud pied April, dress'd in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything," yet for the rest of the year the coarse grass is carted to their stalls, or they devour what the breweries and distilleries cannot extract from the grain harvest. Long before "the unfolding star wakes up the shepherd" are the London cows milked ; and the great wholesale venders of the commodity bear it in carts to every part of the town, and distribute it to hundreds of itinerants, who are waiting like the water-carriers at the old conduits. It is evident that a perishable com- modity which every one requires at a given hour must be so distributed. The distribution has lost its romance. Misson, in his ' Travels' published at the begin- ning of the last century, tells us of the May-games of the pretty young country girls that serve the town with milk." Alas ! the May-games and pretty young country girls have both departed, and a milk- woman has become a very un- poetical personage. There are few indeed of milk-women who remain. So it is with most of the occupations that associate London with the country. The cry of "Water-cresses'' used to be heard from some barefoot nymph of the brook, who at sunrise had dipped her feet into the bubbling runnel, to carry the green luxury to the citizens' breakfast-tables. Water-cresses are now grown like cabbages in gardens. The cry of " Rosemary and lavender " once resounded through the thoroughfares ; and every alley smelt like Bucklersbury in simple time," when [" Bucklersbury in simple tiine."J STREET NOISES. 139 the whole street was a mart for odoriferous herbs. Cries like these are rare enough now; yet we have heard them. Crossing a bye-street a week ago we felt an unwonted fragrance in the air; and as some one has truly said that scents call up the most vivid associations, we had visions of a fiiir garden afar off, and the sports of childhood, and the song of the h\rk that "At my window bade good morrow Through the sweet briar." There was a pale-looking man with little bunches in his hand, who with a feeble voice cried, Buy my sweet-briar''^ There arc still, however, silent damsels in the less crowded and fashionable thoroughfares who present the passengers with moss-roses and violets. Gay tells us, " Successive cries the seasons' change declare, And mark the monthly progress of the year. Hark I how the streets with treble voices ring, To sell the bounteous product of the spring." We no longer hear the cries which had some association of harmonious sounds with fragrant flowers. They degenerated, no doubt, as our people ceased to be musical ; and the din of " noiseful gain " exterminated them. Of the street trades that are past and forgotten, the smallcoal-man was one of the most remarkable. He tells a tale of a city with few fires ; for who could now imagine a man earning a living by bawling " Small coals " from door to door, without any supply but that in the sack which he carries on his shoulders? His cry was, however, a rival with that of " Wood to cleaved In a capital full of haberdashers, what chance would an aged man now have with his flattering solicitation of Pretty i^ins, pretty v:omen ? " He who carries a barrel on his back, with a measure and funnel at his side, bawling Fine loriting-ink,'" is wanted neither by clerks nor authors. There is a grocer's shop at every turn ; and who therefore needs him who salutes us with ''Lilly-white vinegar?'' The history of cries is a history of social changes. The working trades, as well as the venders of things that can be bought in every street, are now banished from our thorough- fares. " Old chairs to mend" still salutes us in some retired suburb; and we still sec the knife-grinder's wheel; but who vociferates ''Any work for John Cooper?'' or "A brass pot or an iron pot to mend ? " The trades arc gone to those [" rolH li> mend!"] 140 LONDON. who pay scot and lot. What should we think of our prison discipline now- a-days^ if the voice of lamentation was heard in every street, " Some broken bread and meat for the poor prisoners ; for the Lord' s sake pity the poor John Howard put down this cry. Or what should we say of the vigilance of excise-officers if the cry of aqua vitce met our ears ? The chiropodist has now his half-guinea fee ; in the old days he stood at corners, with knife and scissors in hand, crying, " Corns to pick'' There are some occupations of the streets, however, which remain essentially the same, though the form be somewhat varied. The sellers of food are of course amongst these. Hot peascods," and hot sheep's- feet, are not popular delicacies, as in the time of Lydgate. ''Hot wardens,^ and " Hot codlings'' are not the cries which invite us to taste of stewed pears and baked apples. But we have still apples hissing over a charcoal fire ; and potatoes steaming in a shining apparatus, with savoury salt-butter to put between the "fruit" when it is cut ; and greasy sausages, redolent of onions and marjoram ; and crisp brown flounders ; and the mutton-pie-man, with his " toss for a penny." Rice-milk, furmety, barley-broth, and saloop are no longer in request. The greatest improvement of London in our own day has been the establishment of coffee-shops, where the artisan may take his breakfast with comfort, and even with luxury. It was given in evidence before the Committee on Imports last year, that there are now about eighteen hundred coffee-shops in London where the charge for a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and butter is as low as a penny ; where a good breakfast may be had for threepence ; where no intoxicating liquors are sold ; and where the newspapers and the best periodical works may be regularly found. In one of the largest of these establishments, where the charge is three halfpence for a cup of coffee and twopence for a cup of tea, sixteen hundred persons are daily served. This is a vast improvement upon the old saloop-man, who sold his steaming mixture to the shivering mechanic as he crept to his work. It is something better for human happiness than the palmy days of the old coffee-houses. The ' Tatler ' and ' Spectator ' were the refiners of manners ; and the papers which are dated from White's and the Grecian derive something perhaps from the tone of society which there prevailed. Let not those, if any there be, who hold that knowledge and taste should be luxuries for the few, curl the lip when Mr. Humphries, a coffee-shop keeper, informs them, that since he has been in business a manifest improvement has taken place in the taste for literature amongst the classes who frequent his house. But we are forgetting Morose, and his "turban of night-caps." Was Hogarth familiar with the old noise-hater when he conceived his own " Enraged Musician V In this extraordinary gathering together of the producers of the most discordant sounds, we have a representation which may fairly match the dramatist's descrip- tion of street noises. Here we have the milk-maid's scream, the mackerel-seller's shout, the sweep upon the house-top,— to match the fish-wives and orange- women, the broom-men and costard-mongers. The smith, who was "ominous," had no longer his forge in the busy streets of Hogarth's time ; the armourer was obso- lete : but Hogarth can rival their noises with the paVior's hammer, the sow- gelder's horn, and the knife-grinder's wheel. The waits of the city had a pension not to come near Morose's ward ; but it was out of the power of the Enraged Musician to avert the terrible discord of the blind hautboy-player. The bellman. STREET NOISES. 141 who frightened the sleepers at midnight, was extinct ; but modern London had acquired the dustman's bell. The bear-ward no longer came down the street with the dogs of four parishes, nor did the fencer march with a drum to his prize ; but there was the ballad-singer, with her squalling child, roaring worse than bear or dog ; and the drum of the little boy playing at soldiers was a more abiding nuisance than the fencer. Morose and the "Enraged Musician" had each the church-bells to fill up the measure of discord. In our own days there has been legislation for the benefit of tender ears ; and there are now penalties, with police-constables to enforce them, against all persons blowing any horn or using any other noisy instrument, for the purpose of calling persons together, or of announcing any show or entertainment, or for the purpose of hawking, selling, distributing, or collecting any article, or of obtaining money or alms. These are the words of the Police Act of 1839 ; and they are stringent enough to have banished from our streets all those uncommon noises which did something to relieve the monotony of the one endless roar of the tread of feet and the rush of wheels. The street noise now is deafening when we are in the midst of it ; but in some secluded place, such as Lincoln's Inn Gardens, it is the ever-present [Floru-mcn. — fireat News !"] sullen sound of angry waves dashing upon the shingles. The horn that i)ro- claimed extraordinary news, running to and fro among peaceful squares and secluded courts, was sometimes a relief. The bell of the dustman was not alto- gether unpleasant. In the twilight hour, when the shutters were not yet closed, and the candles were not yet burning, the tinkle of the muflin-nuin had something in it very soothing. It is gone. But the legislators have still left us our street music. There was talk of its abolition ; but they have satisfied theinselves with enacting that musicians, on being warned to depart from the neighbourhood of the house of any householder by tho occupier or his servant, or by a ])ol ice- constable, incur a ])enalty of forty shillings by reCusiil. l)e la Serre, who came to England with Mary de Medici, when she visited the Queen of Charles 1.. is en- thusiastic in his praises of the street music of London: — " In all public placi's, 142 LONDON. violins, hautboys, and other kinds of instruments are so common, for the gratifica- tion of individuals, that in every hour of the day our ears may be charmed with their sweet melody." England was then a musical nation ; but from that time [Muffin-man.— 1841.] nearly to our own her street-music became a thing to be legislated against. It ought now to be left alone, if it cannot be encouraged by the State. In the days of Elizabeth, and of James and Charles, the people were sur- rounded with music, and imbued with musical associations. The cittern was heard in every barber's shop ; and even up to the publication of the ' Tatler * it was the same : Go into a barber's anywhere, no matter in what district, and it is ten to one you will hear the sounds either of a fiddle or guitar, or see the instruments hanging up somewhere." The barbers or their apprentices were the performers : " If idle, they pass their time in life-delighting music." Thus writes a pamphleteer of 1597. Doctor King, about the beginning of the last century, found the barbers degenerating in their accomplishments, and he assigns the cause : Turning themselves to periwig-making, they have forgot their cittern and their music." The cittern twanged then in the barbers' shops in the fresh mornings especially ; and then came forth the carman to bear his loads through the narrow thoroughfares. He also was musical. We all know how Falstaff de- scribes Justice Shallow : " He came ever in the rear-ward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the over-?cutched housewives that he heard the carmen whistle." He had a large stock of tunes. In Ben Jonson's ' Bartholomew Fair,' one of the characters exclaims, " If he meet but a carman in the street, and I find him not loth to keep him off of him, he will whistle him and all his tunes over at night in his sleep." Half a century later even, ''^ barbers, cobblers, and plowmen," were enumerated as the heirs of music." Who does not perceive that when Isaac Walton's milk-maid sings, — " Come live with me and be my love," she is doing nothing remarkable ? These charming words were the common pos- session of all. The people were the heirs of poetry as well as of music. They had their own delicious madrigals to sing, in which music was "married to immortal verse," — and they could sing them. Morley, writing in 1597, says. STREET NOISES. 143 " Supper being ended, and music-books, according to custom, being brought to the table, the mistress of the house presented me with a part, earnestly requesting me to sing ; but when, after many excuses, I protested unfeignedly that I could not, every one began to wonder — yea, some whispered to others, demanding how I was brought up.'* In a condition of societ}' like this, the street music must have been worth listening to. "A 7io{se of musicians," as a little band was called, was to be found everywhere ; and they attended upon the guests in taverns and ordi-^ naries, and at ''good men's feasts" in private houses. In 'The Silent Woman,' it is said, "the smell of the venison, going through the streets, will invite one noise of fiddlers or other ;" and again, " They have intelligence of all feasts ; there's good correspondence betwixt them and the London cooks." Feasts were then not mere occasions for gluttony and drunkenness, as they became in the next generation. As the drunkenness went on increasing, the taste for music went on diminishing. In the next century, the 'Tatler' writes, "In Italy nothing is more frequent than to hear a cobbler working to an opera tune ; but, on the con- trary, our honest countrymen have so little an inclination to music, that they seldom begin to sing till they are drunk." Thus we went on till the beginning of the present century, and indeed later. The street music was an indication of the popular taste. Hogarth's blind hautboy-player, and his shrieking ballad- singer, are no caricatures. The execrable sounds which the lame and the blind produced were the mere arts of mendicancy. The principle of extorting money by hideous sounds was carried as far as it could go by a fellow of the name of Keiling, called Blind Jack, who performed on the flageolet with his nose. Every description of street exhibition was accompanied with these terrible noises. The vaulter, and the dancing lass, and the tumbler creeping through a hoop, and the puppet-showman, and the dancing dogs, and the bear and monkey, had each their own peculiar din, whether of drum, fiddle, horn, or bagpipes, compared with which the music of Morose's bear-ward and fencer would have been as the har- mony of the spheres. [M-nr-\\aril — HoOMiTit.] In the fashionable scpuires, towiirds the close of the last century, matters were a little mended. Dayes, who published a collection of street views about 178*J, 144 LONDON. has given us the group which concludes our paper. Here we have the organ, the triangle, the tambourine, and the hurdy-gurdy, — each striving which should be loudest, and winning by their united exertions the applause of all bystanders. After the peace our thoroughfares gradually resounded with the somewhat im- proved melody of the street-singers of Paris; and a lady with a neat coiffure accompanied the organ with the monotonous chant of "Le gai Troubadour." An Italian was now and then imported with his guitar ; and his knowledge of harmony compensated for his somewhat cracked voice. All at once glee-singers started up ; and they are now common. Then a "noise" or two of really tolerable instrumental performers were to be found in Portland Place and other streets of the west ; and even those who were familiar with Rossini might stop to listen. We are still advancing ; and in a few years the Act which protects housekeepers from the nuisance of street musicians will be a dead letter. [Street Music— 1789.] [Vases, Lamp, &c., found after the (treat Fire.] IX.— ROMAN LONDON. We are apt to think and speak of the Roman occupation of Britain as if it had Lccn little more than a mere inroad into the country — a brief episode having scarcely anything to do with the main course of our history. Our modern English civilization has over its whole surface so completely Teutonic and feiuhil a colour, that we can hardly conceive ourselves to have been other than Normans or Saxons from our first emerging out of barbarism. Yet our island was in great part a Roman country, in a certain sense, for not less than six hundred years. So long was it from the invasion of Julius Caesar, which, if it did not actually make us tributaries to Rome, not only brought us into constant inter- course with Romanized Gaul, but, as Strabo, writing within fifty years after, records, made almost the whole island familiarly known to the Romans, till the last remnants of the social fabric raised by that great people were throwm down and swept away by the Saxons in the latter ])art of the sixth century. That is very nearly one-third of the whole ])eriod that has ehi])sed from the hindiiii;- of Caesar to the present hour. It is within a few years of as long a time as the English have been settled in Ireland. It is a ])orti()n of our history of as great extent as has passed since the middle of the reign of Henry III. -since the intermediate point between the grant of Magna Charta and the (•st:il)lishni( nt of the House of Commcms — a date which may be said to stand almost at the com- mencement of the whole system of our existing civilization. Or even if we* ckon the era of Roman Britain only from the expediti(m of Chiudius. which ommenced the colonization of the country a hundred years afler its first inva- ion, to the breaking uy) of the im])erial government in the beginning of the fth century, still here is a period of above three centuries and a lialf— or as hmg as from the present day back to tlie wars ol' the Koses. To a Hriton, theref«)re, M 146 LONDON. in the last days of the Roman dominion, the retrospect even over this period only, during which it had been as completely established on the banks of the Thames as on the banks of the Tiber, was as extended as that which takes in to us of the present day the whole rise and progress of the modern political system of Europe. It was the same as it is to us now to cast our view back over whatever has grown up and happened in England during the whole rule of the House of Hanover, the House of Stuart, and the House of Tudor — including the Revolu- tion, the Great Rebellion, the Union of the Crowns, the Reformation — being probably, at the least, three-fourths of the entire amount of the political and social causes which have operated to make the country and the people what they now are. There is sound sense and truth, as well as elegant fancy, in what has been written by the excellent Camden : " Whilst I treat of the Roman empire in Britain (which lasted, as I said, about 476 years), it comes into my mind how many colonies of Romans must have been transplanted hither in so long a time ; what numbers of soldiers were continually sent from Rome, for garrisons ; how many persons were despatched hither, to negotiate affairs, public or private ; and that these, intermarrying with the Britons, seated themselves here, and multiplied into families ; for toherever, says Seneca, the Roman conquers, he inhabits. So that I have oft-times concluded that the Britons might derive themselves from the Trojans by these Romans, who doubtless descended from the Trojans, with greater probability than either the Arverni, who from Trojan blood styled them- selves brethren to the Romans, or the Mamertini, Hedui, and others, who upon fabulous grounds grafted themselves into the Trojan stock. For Rome, that common mother, as one calls her, challenges all such as citizens Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit. Whom conquered she in sacred bonds hath tied."* However, we do not desire to stand pledged to the Trojan part of this specu- lation. The spot on which London is built, or at least, that on which the first buildings were most probably erected, was pointed out by nature for the site of a city. It was the suspicion of the sagacious Wren, as we are informed in the '^Parentalia,' that the whole valley between Camber well Hill and the hills of Essex must have been anciently filled by a great frith or arm of the sea, which increased in width towards the east ; and that this estuary was only in the course of ages reduced to a river by the vast sand-hills which were gradually raised on both sides of it by the wind and tide, the effect being assisted by embankments, which on the Essex side are still perfectly distinguishable as of artificial origin, and are evidently works that could only have been constructed by a people of advanced mechanical skill. Wren himself ascribed these embankments to the Romans ; and it is stated that a single breach made in them in his time cost 17,000/. to repair it — from which we may conceive both how stupendous must have been the labour bestowed on their original construction, and of what indispensable utility they are still found to be. In fact, were it not for this ancient barrier, the broad and fertile meadows stretching along that border of the river would still be a mere marsh, or a bed of sand overflowed by the water, though left perhaps dry in many places on the ♦ Britannia, Gibson's Translation ; p. cvii. Edit, of 1722. ROMAN LONDON. 147 retirement of the tide. We have in a former paper* expressed an opinion, that Dion Cassius must have been mistaken in stating that there was a bridge over the Thames at the time of the invasion of Claudius, or rather of his general, Aulus Plautius, in a.d. 43; and, indeed, it is clearly impossible that there could have been anything of the kind where he places it — only a little above the mouth of the river f — if we are to understand that expression in the sense which it would now convey. But if the lower part of the Thames at this early date presented the appearance which has just been supposed, of a spacious estuary or frith rather than a river, its mouth, or, as Dion calls it, the place where it discharges itself into the ocean,^ might be held to be only a little below London — ^just as at this day we consider the mouth of the Forth to be, not at Dunbar or North Berwick, but many miles higher up at the head of the frith. It is remarkable that Ptolemy calls the Thames, when he speaks of it as forming the southern boundary of the Trinobantes, not a river, but an estuary. So also does Tacitus, who had probably been in Britain. And Cicsar's description, too, would seem to imply, that what was called the River Thames when he visited the country was only the upper part of what now goes by that name. Kent, or Cantium, which we know from Ptolemy extended at this date at least as far to the west as it still does, he expressly describes as omnis maritima — wholly lying on the sea-coast — without a hint of any part of it being bounded by the river. § And afterwards, in men- tioning the Thames, he seems distinctly to speak of it as bounding the terri- tory of Cassivellaunus only : he conducts his forces, not to that part of the Thames which flows past the territory in question, or to the Thames where it so flows — l)ut, simply, to the Thames and into the territory of Cassivellaunus — " ad flumen Tamesin, in fines Cassivellauni."i| He had ])reviously told us that the said territory was divided from the maritime states by the river called the Thames, at the distance of about eighty miles from the sea — that is to say, from the ])art of the coast, near Sandwich, where he had landed. •[j All these ex})ressions might possibly be made to bear an interpretation conformable to the present ap])earance of the country, and the notion we now have of the junction of the river with the sea about the same ])oint at which it receives the Medway or the Swale ; but they certainly seem to be more apt and natural if understood in reference to a different state of things — when, as we have supposed, what was called the Thames seemed to be swallowed uj) in a branch of the sea within ])erhaj)s two or three miles of where Londcm now stands. Above all, we submit that the expressions of Dion Cassius in describing the ])hu'e where, as he says, tlie Thames meets the ocean are ([uite inap])licable to what the river couhl ever have been at its ]>resent mouth, and must be referred to a ])oint much liigluM* up. They exactly set before us the irreguhir diffusion of the water over the whole valley through the midst of which the Thauies now ih)\vs, which wouhl take ])lace before the river was brought in the way that has beeu ('Xj)hiine. Ix. r. 2'K I Kctf I if rt rov MKtator ij«/iaX>.i«. — ^ I)c HfU. a.iW. V. 11. II Id. V. ^ Id. rn].. II. 148 LONDON. flood, to a single water-course. At this its junction with the sea, the historian states, the Thames hy its own overflow spread itself out into marshes, which, he adds, the natives, who were familiar, with the places that were firm and fordable, easily made their way across.* It is manifest that the fording of the Thames at what we now call its mouth must at all times have been still more out of the question than even the throwing of a bridge over it near that point. But the elevation on which London is built offered a site at once raised above the water, and at the same time close upon the navigable portion of it — conditions which did not meet in any other locality on either side of the river, or estuary, from the sea upwards. It was the first spot on which a town could be set down, so as to take advantage of the facilities of communication between the coast and the interior presented by this great natural highway. To this peculiarity of position London probably owed both its existence and its name. Many con- jectures have been offered as to the meaning of the name London. Like all our oldest British names of places, it is most probably Celtic, and there can be little doubt that the latter part of it is merely the dun or thun — the same word with the Saxon town — which is found in the names of many more of our most ancient towns both in England and Scotland. It seems to signify, what a town uniformly was in early times, a place of strength — a place either naturally strong or fortified by art, usually both the one and the other ; and it may be recognised in its Welsh form din in the Latin Londinum and Londinium. The Lon has been conceived by some etymologists to be Llhw7i, a wood; by others, Llawn, full, populous ; by others, Lon, a plain ; but no one of these derivations seems to furnish a name for this settlement by the river-side so appropriate and distinctive as that from Lhong, the ancient British word for ships. London would thus mean the town of ships — a description which must have been applicable to it from its first foundation, if it originated in the way we have supposed. Or, at any rate, the comparative eminence of London as a resort for ships may be as ancient as the name — which is answer enough to Maitland's objection to this etymology, even if his assumption were to be conceded, that the town could not have deserved this name at the time of its foundation. But the probability is, that the spot was first resorted to as a landing-place by the craft ascending the river, and that in course of time the town grew up around the port. The etymology from Lhong receives some corroboration from one of the Latin forms of the name, Longidi- nium, which is that given in the Itinerary of Antoninus ; while the Lundinum of Ammianus Marcellinus seems to show that the first syllable had very early come to be pronounced much in the way it still is — a natural eff'ect of the nasal consonant by which the vowel is followed in w^hat we have supposed to be the original word. Camden states that London is actually called Lhong-porthy that is, a harbour for ships, by an ancient British or Welsh bard. The silence of Caesar has been taken as a proof that London did not exist when he visited the country ; and certainly it is a proof, if any such were wanted, that Geoffrey of Monmouth's great city of Troynovant, with its strong wall adorned with numerous towers, and its splendid public edifices of all kinds, making it excel every other city in the world, had not yet been built. But, although the place was doubtless neither famous, nor in any respect considerable, at this early X<^P'ff a.Kpi(iu; uVoTuv. — Hist. Rom. Ix. 20. ROMAN LONDON. 149 date, any more than the best of the other stations which the Britons called towns, the name, which, whatever it may be, is certainly not Roman, ^'wcs ground for a presumption that London did not owe its beginning to the Romans. Caesar particularizes no British town whatever, with the exception only of the capital of Cassivellaunus, supposed to be Verulam, which was perhaps the only one that came in his way during his short and hasty inroad. Yet it would be too much to conclude that the country contained no others, merely because he docs not name them, and possibly saw no more. No doubt, many other settlements of the same kind had been long ere this founded by the numerous population which was found to be in possession of the island; and London may very well have been one of them, although as yet, perhaps, undistinguished from the rest, so that, not lying in his route, it did not attract Caesar's attention, if he may be su])[)osed even to have heard its name. We may infer, however, that it was not yet recog- nised as the capital of the country; nor in all likelihood was there any particular town that held that rank. The London of the Britons could only have been what Caesar, and Strabo after him, have described every British town as being, a collection of huts set down on a dry spot in the midst of the marshes, or in a cleared space within a wood, and encompassed, in addition to these natural protections, by the artificial defences of a mound and a ditch. Within these inclosures, Strabo tells us, the inhabitants were accustomed to stall as many cattle as sufficed for a few months' consump- tion ; and Caesar relates that, when the town or fastness of Cassivellaunus fell into his hands, he found in it a great number of cattle, which, he intimates, had been brought thither by the people when they came from all parts to take refuge in that chief stronghold. It is probable that most of the cattle, in which we arc informed the island abounded, still roamed wild and una])])ro])riated through the woods and pastures — dividing the country with the infinite multitude {iNjinita multitudo) of human beings, by which, as Caesar notes, it was already ])oo])k^d. Whether there were any herds regarded as belonging either to individuals, or to the various villages and other communities, does not appear. But the southern Britons, we know, practised agriculture, and wore cloth : that is ini])lied in Caesar's statement, that the ruder tribes of the interior for the most ])art sowed no corn, and were dressed only in skins. The country, therefore, was not all woodland and marsh. No doubt, the southern coast presented already, not only many patches of cultivation, but some considerable tracts brought under the plough. As for London, however, we know that at a date many centuries later a vast forest still covered the country all around it only a few miles back from the river, and that a fen or lake of great extent, whence the part of tlic nu tropolis now called Finsbury derives its name, lay on the north-east close to the city wall. When it was a British town, it probably occu])ied only the face and summit of the first natural elevation ascending from the river, stretching from between Billingsgate and the Tower on the one hand to Dowgate on the other, and going back no farther than to the line of the ])resent Lom])ar(l Strt-ct and Fenchurch Street. The Wall Brook and the Sher Bourne on the west, and the Lang Bourne on the north— though their straggling waters had not yet bccoinc known to f-nnc by thesi\ or perhai)S by any other names, and to the east the wide-s|)read marsh which long after continued to cover the low grounds now occu]»ied by the suburb of Wapping, furnished such natural boundaries as were usually sought lor by 150 LONDON. the founders of these rude settlements. A little to the north of the Lang Bourne, a highway may have passed nearly along the course of Leadenhall Street and Cornhill, prolonging itself along Cheapside, Newgate Street, and Holborn to the west ; — Ca?sar does not describe his march as if it had been performed through a country without roads ; — but immediately beyond this the fen may be supposed to have closed in the town on the one side, and the primeval forest on the other. The earliest mention of London by any extant writer of antiquity occurs in the pages of Tacitus, who did not compose his ' Annals ' till more than a century and a half after the invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar. The name is not noticed either by Strabo or Pliny the Elder, his predecessors, although both have given us descriptions of the British islands. But it appears from Tacitus that in the year 62, in the reign of the Emperor Nero, London, or Londinium, as he calls it, was already a place of great importance ; — " not indeed dignified by the name of a colony," is the description of the historian, " but yet of the first distinction for abundance of resident merchants and of traflfic with other places;" for such seems to be the true meaning of the expressions used.* Both parts of this statement, it may be remarked, go equally to support the probability of London having been a town of British origin : if it had been founded by the Romans, it would, no doubt, have enjoyed the name of a colony; but in that case it could only as yet have existed some seventeen or eighteen years at the utmost, for there certainly was no Roman colonization of Britain antecedent to the expedition of Claudius, nor probably till some years later ; and it is scarcely to be supposed that it could have grown up to the magnitude and eminence it had now attained in so short a time. The facts which Tacitus relates testify still more strongly than his general description to both the populousness of London at this early date, and the consideration in which it w^as held on every account. When the Britons rose in arms against the Roman domination at the call of the outraged Boadicea, the imperial general Suetonius Paulinus, then engaged at the opposite side of the island in the conquest of the isle of Anglesey, hastened across the country to London, and only abandoned his intention of making the preservation of that town his first object, upon finding that the force he could reckon upon would be insufficient for the protection of a place which was pro- bably as yet without walls, j All he could be prevailed upon to do by the prayers and tears of the inhabitants was to receive such of them as chose into his ranks before marching away. But the women, and the aged, and others also, the historian intimates, detained by the pleasantness of the place floci dulcedo J, staid behind, and were in consequence destroyed by the enemy ; for Boadicea, too, appears to have marched direct upon London as upon the centre and chief seat of the Roman power and civilization. In that town, and in the municipium or free town of Verulam, which was also sacked, it is asserted that there perished in this hour of unrelenting vengeance as many as seventy thousand citizens and allies of Rome ; the former term being intended to denote the inhabitants of Verulam, the latter those of London. Both from these expressions, and from the whole * Cognomento quidem coloiiiae iion insigiie, sed copia iiegociatorum et commeafuum maximo colcbre.- — Annal. xiv. 33. \ Tacitus, indeed, states that the barbarians avoided the fortified places and military stations of the province, to attack what would at once afford tlie richest spoil, and offer the least resistance. — Ihul. ROMAN LONDON. 151 course of the story, it may be assumed that the people of both these places were now chiefly Romans. Dion Cassius, or rather his epitomist Xiphilinus, without mentioning the name of either, expressly designates them Roman towns.* This writer gives a sickening description of the horrors perpetrated by Boadicea (or, as he calls her, Boundouica) and her infuriated followers. " It was," he says, a scene of devastation, and spoliation, and butchery not to be uttered. On the miserable people who fell into their hands there is nothing of what is most dreadful and ferocious that they did not inflict. Well-born and beautiful women they hung up naked, and, cutting off their breasts, sewed them upon their mouths, so as that they might be made to seem as if they were eating their own flesh ; and after that they ran sharp stakes lengthways through their bodies. All this they did in the midst of sacrifices and festivity and derision, both in their other consecrated places and especially in the grove of Andate — for so they name the goddess Victory, who is one of the chief objects of their worship." The old Druidic fanes, then — probably only rude structures open to the sky, or in some cases merely rounded lawns or glades — the /«c/,t or light places of the thick, dark wood, — were still standing in London or its neighbourhood, although the gods and shrines of a more cultivated superstition had also by this time been introduced into the country ; for Tacitus mentions among the buildings which already decorated the recently planted colony of Camalodunum (Colchester or Maiden), which was also at this time destroyed, a temple dedicated to Claudius the Divine, and an image of the Roman Victory, which probably adorned another sacred edifice in the same y)lace. Perhaps the grim Andate had her bloody altar on the mount over which now rises the majestic dome of St. Paul's, and which may still have been out of the city, and enveloped in the sacred night of the old forest that howled around it. It is commonly assumed that upon this occasion Boadicea, before she left the place, burned London to the ground ; and the soil at a certain dei)th is still su])posed to retain the ashes and other evidences of that conflagration. The appearances discovered on the excavation of a deej) trench for a sewer in Lombard Street in 1786 arc thus described in a note by Sir John Henniker, printed in the Archa^ologia : — " The soil is almost uniformly divided into four strata; the uppermost, thirteen feet six inches thick, of factitious earth; the second, two feet thick, of brick, a])])arently the ruins of buihlings; the third, three inches thick, of wood ashes, a])parentiy the remains of a town built of wood and destroyed by fire ; the fourth, of Roman ])avement, coimnoii and tesselated.":}: In making another sewer from Dowgate through Wal brook in 1774, similar ap])earances were ()])served ; the labourers brought up wood ashes, mixed with soft earth and mud, from a depth twenty-two feet below the present surface.^ A few years ago also, in forming the northern a])])roaches for the new London Bridge, on the site of the Church of St. Michael, Crooked Lane, and in East Cheap, there were found great (piantities not only of ashes but of molten green glass, and of the fine red jiotti-ry called SaiMiuii ware, bhu keiud evidently * IleXi/f ri 'PA»/y-ai'*«f. — Hint. limn. Ixii. 7. f So calle(4' Irucol oii llir aiiiicxnl plan of Hoinuii Ixindon. But it wvuld mjiiirc lialf-a-iloxcn ])lanf4 to t'xliil)it all tlio coiijccture« thai Iiavr Ix-vn proiH^cd in rrganl to tlie cuursfs of the Konian roacU in Ixindon and i(« nfighhiiurhood. 156 LONDON. bury, at the end of "a fair-written Gospel-book," given to that foundation by the West Saxon King Athelstane, who reigned from 925 to 941. [London Stone.] Roman London in course of time certainly extended over a much greater space than was occupied by the original British town, or even probably by that Avhich Boadicea sacked and laid waste. Appearances which still exist, and numerous remains that have been discovered in modern times, prove that it must have spread out from the central height, which appears to have been first built upon, not only to the east and the west, but also to the north, and even across the river to the south. With the exception of two or three sepulchral stones, which throw hardly any light upon the matter, no ancient inscriptions have been found in London ; but there are two great classes of indications by which we are assisted in conjecturing the probable limits of the Roman city ; although, in consequence of the various facts not being all referable to the same epoch, they might not always, separately considered, conduct us to precisely the same conclusions. I. The first evidence we have is that afforded by the situations of the several Roman burial grounds connected with the city, as established by the different collections of sepulchral remains that have been discovered. It was the custom of the Romans, and indeed of most of the other nations of antiquity, to inter their dead always without the city, but at the same time generally in its near neigh- bourhood. Frequently the cemeteries were immediately without the gates, and were extended for some distance along both sides of the road beyond, as is still to be seen in what is called the Street of Tombs at Pompeii. Stow has given us a very particular account from his own observation of the first discovery that has been recorded of a burial-place belonging to Roman London. It was found, he tells us, about the year 1576, in course of digging for clay in "a large field, of old time, called Lottcsworth, now Spitalfield," on the east side of the churchyard of the dissolved priory of St. Mary Spital, which stood nearly where Christ Church, Spitalfields, is now built, to the east of Bishopsgate Without. Many earthen urns were dug up here, full of ashes and burnt human bones, and each containing a piece of money, the customary classical viaticum. Stow particularly mentions copper coins of Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Trajan, and Antoninus Pius. " Besides those urns," ROMAN LONDON. 157 [Plan of Roman London.] 1. Vases, Coins, and Implennenti found in Fleet Ditcli, after the fJreat P'ire. 2. S«'pulchral Monument at Ludgate, ditto. 3. Urnfi, .Sepulchral Remains, and Pavement at St. Paul's, ditto. 4. Cauwway at How Cliurch, dirto. 5. Tiles and Pottery at fiuildliall, 1822. 0. Tewelated Pavement in Lothbury, 1H05. 7. Huildingw, Coins, &c., in Lombard Street and Itirchin I^ine, 1730, 1774, and 17H.). 8. Roman Coins and Tiles at St. Mary-at-IIiU, 1787. 9. Pavements and Cms by St. Dunstan's in the Ea.s*, IR 10. Pavement in Lon;; Lane. 11. Tesselated Pavement in Crosby Square. 12. Pavement in Old llroad Street. 13. Cemetery outside BishopsKate, 1723. 14. Sepulchral Itemains inside i{isliops;;nte, 1707. 15. Coins, Sepulchral Monument, X:c., in the Tower, 17 Id. Tesselated Pavement in ('rutched Friars, 17H7. 17. Pavement in Northuniberlatid Alley, Fenchurrh Sti IH. Cemetery at Spitallii-lds, I.'.7fi. 19. Ccmeterv and .Monument in (Jootlman's Fields, 17h he says, *'many other pots were found in the saiiu' ])l5icc, made of a w hite earth, with lonrr necks and handles, like to our stone jii^^^s: these were ein|)ty, hut .seemed to be buried full of some licjuid matter, lon^ since consumed and soaked throun^li." They were probably tear-vesscls, or lachrymatories, as they are (oinmonly called. "There were found," Stow adds, 'Mlivers vials and other fashioned «;la.sses some most cunningly wrought, such as I have not seen the like, and some of crystal, all which had water in them, nothing differing in clearness, taste, or savour fnmi common s])ring water, whatsoever it was at the first. Some of these glasses had oil in them, very thick, and earthly in savour. Some were sup])osed to have balm in them, but had lost the virtue." Very few of the pots and glasses were 158 LONDON. taken up whole. Besides the urns^ dishes and cups were found, of a fine red- coloured earth, with Roman letters stamped in the bottoms, and outwardly as smooth and shining as if they had been of coral — the fine pottery known by the name of Samian ware. There were also," continues our antiquary, lamps of white earth and red, artificially wrought with divers antiques about them ; some three or four images, made of white earth, about a span long each of them ; one I remember was of Pallas ; the rest I have forgotten. I myself have reserved (amongst divers of those antiquities there) one urn with the ashes and bones, and one pot of white earth very small, not exceeding the quantity of a quarter of a wine pint, made in the shape of a hare squatted upon her legs, and between her ears is the mouth of the pot." In the same field were likewise found some stone coffins, with bones in them — the remains probably of Britons or Saxons, and also some skulls and skeletons without coflfins, or rather, as Stow conjectures, whose coffins, having been of timber, were consumed. The coffins appeared to have been hollowed out of great trees, and to have been fastened by iron nails, many of which were lying about — " such as are used in the wheels of shod carts, being each of them as big as a man's finger, and a quarter of a yard long, the heads two inches over." Stow found under the heads of some of them the old wood, scant turned into earth, but still retaining both the grain and proper colour" — so that there could be no doubt as to what purpose they had served. The ground broken up on this occasion, however, appears to have been only a small portion of an immense field of the dead which had extended all along the north-eastern quarter of ancient London, from Wapping Marsh to the great fen or lake beyond Moorfields. In 1707, in taking down some old houses at the west end of Camomile Street, close to Bishopsgate, were found, first, about four feet below the surface, a tesselated pavement — then, under that, two feet of rubbish — and, lastly, a stratum of clay, in which, at the depth of about a couple of feet, were several urns of Roman pottery, all containing ashes and burnt bones. There were also found a lachrymatory of blue glass, and a variety of other articles ; but only one piece of money is mentioned by Dr. Woodward in his account, a coin of Antoninus Pius.* All this was inside the wall, which may be therefore conjectured to have included at this place an extension of the original city, and also, from the coin of Antoninus, to have been erected, at the latest, after the middle of the second century. Indeed, it is evident, from the tesselated pavement and the debris found over the urns, that this burying ground had come to be built upon in a later age of the Roman occupation. Some skeletons and bones which had not been subjected to the action of fire were also found — the indications of the Christian mode of interment, which is believed to have become common before the end of the second century, and which we are told by Macrobius had almost entirely superseded the burning of the dead by the end of the fourth. In 1725 and 1726, in Bishopsgate churchyard, on the other side of Bishopsgate, and outside the city wall, were found more urns, and also a vault, containing two skeletons, erected with Roman bricks, and a grave constructed with the largest description of Roman tiles, toge- ther with a coin of Antoninus Pius.f This, we believe, is the farthest point * Remarks upon the Ancient and Present Slate of London, occasioned by some Roman Urns, Coins, and other Antiquities, lately discovered. Third Edit. 8vo. Lon. 1723. The publication consists of a Letter to Sir Christopher Wren, dated the 23rd of June, 1707, followed by another to Thomas Hearne, dated the 30th of November, 1711. t Gough's Camden (Edit, of 1806), ii. 93. ROMAN LONDON. 159 westward to which the cemetery has yet been traced. But to the south-east ot Spitalfields various Roman sepulchral remains have been from time to time brought to light. In 1787, especially, great numbers of urns and lachrymatories were dug up about seven feet below the surface in Goodman's Fields and the adjoining space called the Tenter Ground, to the east of the jVIinories. There was also found a small monumental stone, with an inscription declaring it to have been erected by his wife to a soldier of the Sixth Legion. Another simihir stone, inscribed to a soldier of the Twenty-fourth Legion, was found in 1776 in a burial-ground near the lower end of Whitechapel Lane.* These monuments probably marked the burial-places of soldiers who had belonged to the garrison of the fort which stood on the site of the Tower, where a third tombstone was found in 1777, at tlie same depth with some ancient foundations, resting on the natural earth, along with an ingot of silver, above ten ounces in weight, from the mint of Honorius, the last Roman emperor whose dominion was acknowledged in Britain, and three trold coins, one of Honorius, the two others of his brother Arcadius, Emperor of the Eiist.f Even so far to the east as at the Sun Tavern Fields in the north-east part of Shadwell, urns and other vestiges of a Roman cemetery were found in the beginning of the seventeenth century : in one of the urns was a coin of the Em])eror Pupienus (otherwise called Maximus), who was slain, along with his colleague Bal- binus, in A.D. 238. Among other relics, two coffins were found here in 1G15 by Sir Robert Cotton ; "one whereof," says our authority, "being of stone, contained the bones of a man ; and the other of lead, beautifully embellished with scollop-shells and a crotister border, contained those of a woman, at whose head and feet were placed two urns of the height of three feet each ; and at the sides divers beautiful red earthen bottles, with a number of lachrymatories of hexagon and octagon forms ; and on each side of the inhumed bones were deposited two ivory sceptres of the length of eighteen inches each ; and upon the breast the figure of a small Cu])id, curiously wrought; as were likewise two pieces of jet, resembling nails, of the length of three inches. "J Sir Robert conceived, from these costly decorations and accom- paniments, that the tomb must have been that of the consort of some ])rince or Roman prajtor. In the opposite direction again, some urns are said to have been found in 1824, under a tesselated pavement so far within the line of the old city wall as the church of St. Dunstan's in the East, immediately to the north of Bil- lingsgate. Atone time, therefore, it may be presumed, Roman London did not extend to the eastward — or possibly towards the river — beyond that ])oint. Nor probably did it at first include either any part of Ludgate Street, behind the north side of which, where Ludgate church now stands, Wren found the monument of the soldier of the Second Legion, still in the Arundelian collection ; or e\en what is now St. Paul's Churchyard, the north-eastern ])art of which, as we iiave already seen, was undoubtedly also a burial-ground in the time of the Romans. But no indications of se])ulture, we believe, have ever been found between this locality and Billingsgate in the one direction, or between the river and the immediate vicinity of Bishopsgate and London Wall in the other. Tlu* sjtace marked out by these limits, therefore, may for the present be rea.sonably supposed to have been all included within the city from the earliest date, or at least from the time when the ground was first cleared, or reclainuMl from tin* fens. * Malcolm's Ixnidininm HeiUvivtiiii, iv. l.Olt-l. t Ate lia-nl.i^'iji, v. 'ill 1 . I Weaver, Funeral Moimmt'iitH. ^ Hoe our Tliirtl Ninn' cr — ' Punl'i Cr .-w." 160 LONDON. And it may be remarked, that even the northern portion of this inclosure has, especially within the last few years, in the course of the extensive renovations and improvements in St. Martin's-le-grand, in Moorfields, and in the neighbourhood of Bishopsgate Street, been pretty extensively dug into and explored. On the opposite side of the Thames, the evidences of Roman interment commence in the neighbourhood of the line of road called Snow's Fields and Union Street, running from east to west, at the distance of about a quarter of a mile from the river, and have been detected as far south as the Dissenters' Burial Ground in Deveril Street, New Dover Road, on the south-west of Kent Street.* We may hence conjecture the extent of the small suburb which probably began to grow up here from a very early date around the bridge, or ferry, and the root of the great roads branching out to the southern and south-eastern coasts. II. Secondly, we have the course of the old City Wall to guide us, in as far as it can still be ascertained. The earliest writer who mentions the wall of London is Fitzstephen, towards the close of the twelfth century, who describes it as then both high and thick, having seven double gates, and many towers or turrets on the north side placed at proper distances. The seven gates are supposed by Maitland to have been Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate, and the Postern gate near the Tower. At the east end of the city was what Fitzstephen calls the Palatine Tower ; and on the west were two well- fortified castles, which are understood to have been Baynard's Castle and the Castle of Montfichet. " London," he adds, " once had its walls and towers in like manner on the south ; but that vast river, the Thames, which abounds with fish, enjoys the benefit of tides, and washes the city on this side, hath in a long tract of time totally subverted and carried away the walls in this part." f The original walls of London, as we have said, have always been, in the popular tradition, and by our old chroniclers, accounted a work of the Roman time ; but their claim to that venerable antiquity was first established in the beginning of the last century by Dr. Woodward, one of the Professors of Gresham College, who had an opportunity of examining them from the foundation on occasion of the old houses being pulled down, as already mentioned, in Camomile Street at the end next to Bishopsgate, in April, 1707. He found the foundation of the wall at this place to lie eight feet below the surface ; and to the height of nearly ten feet it appeared clearly to be of Roman construction. It was compiled," he tells us, " alternately of layers of broad flat bricks and of rag-stone. The bricks lay in double ranges ; and, each brick being but one inch and three-tenths in thickness, the whole layer, with the mortar interposed, exceeded not three inches. The layers of stone were not quite two feet thick of our measure ; it is probable they were intended for two of the Roman, their rule being somewhat shorter than ours. In this part of the wall," he adds, " it was very observable that the mortar was (as usually in the Roman work) so very firm and hard, that the stone itself as easily broke and gave way as that." The wall up to this height was nine feet in thickness. Measuring some of the bricks very exactly. Woodward found them to be seventeen inches and four-tenths long, and eleven inches and six-tenths broad, of our measure ; which, he observes, would be as nearly as * See Archaeologia, xxvi. 466, and xxvii. 412. Gent. Mag., 1814, and anw. seq. f Pegge's translation, 1772. ROxMAN LONDON. 161 possible a foot in breadth by a foot and a half in Icng-th — the very dimensions assigned by Pliny to the brick in common use among his countrymen * — if, with Graevius, we receive the foot-rule on the monument of Cossutius in the Colotian Gardens at Rome as the true measure of the Roman foot. The exact thickness of each brick was one inch and three-tenths of our measure. From this heij