HISTORY OF LONDON.

VOL. I.

N B EFO R E THE HOUSES

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tTie iwuses, Section- front West to East
Edward Stanford, 55 Oiaiing Cross.

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History of London.

BY
W. J. LO FT I E,
f
B.A., F.S.A.,
AUTHOR OF 'ROUND ABOUT LONDON,' ' IN AND OUT OF LONDON,'
'MEMORIALS OF THE SAVOY,' ETC.

WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED.

LONDON:
EDWARD STANFORD, 55, CHARING CROSS, S.W.

1884.

L%<t3
<g23i.b 1

TO THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE ROBERT NICHOLAS FOWLER, M.P.,
LORD MAYOR OF LONDON,
THIS BOOK
IS, BY PERMISSION, RESPECTFULLY
2Betluateo\

PREFACE.

In revising the following pages for a second edition,
I have- received much kind help from various corre
spondents. I have also endeavoured to profit by the
newspaper criticisms which I have seen, and can only
complain that they have been so uniformly tender to
my feelings that my many errors have been overlooked.
At the suggestion of one of them, however, I have
added as an appendix a sketch of the commercial
history of the city, a task in which I have had much
kind assistance from Mrs. John Richard Green, who
allowed me access to so far unpublished notes by her
lamented husband. By the kindness of the Guildhall
authorities I am enabled to give entire the curious list
of aldermen and their wards referred to in Chapter VII.
The Rev. Canon Venables, Precentor of Lincoln, was
so good as to send me a very complete list of errata,
of which I most gladly avail myself. I have also
specially to thank Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs, Mr. John
Westlake, Q.C., Mr. Lionel Robinson, and Mr. C. A.
Cook, as well as the gentlemen mentioned in the preface
to the first edition, for important items of information.
December, 1883.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

In the multiplicity of books on London it is strange
that for more than forty years no history has appeared.
Thomas Allen's five volumes reached a second edition
in 1839, being continued, but unfortunately not corrected
by Thomas Wright. Since that time no serious attempt
has been made to tell the story of our great city's origin
and growth, although the materials have' gradually accu
mulated in abundance : and many chronicles, diaries,
and collections of records have been printed. The
' Liber Albus ' and the ' Liber Custumarum ' have been
edited by the lamented Henry Thomas Riley for the
Rolls Series, and extracts from the Letter Books for
the Corporation. He also issued a translation of a
chronicle which he attributed to Fitz Thedmar, and
the Camden Society published several later London
chronicles. Finally, last year Canon Stubbs printed his
' Annales Londinienses ' and ' Annales Paulini.' Not to
mention everything of the kind, it will easily be seen that
a complete change has come over the aspect of London
history in a single generation. Allen had no better
authority than Stow, but we have the very documents
from which Stow worked, and many others besides. It
is a matter for surprise that they have been so little

PREFACE. ix
used. An allusion to the existence of any authority
higher than Stow's is of the rarest occurrence. One
brilliant exception only proves the truth of this assertion.
The papers contributed by Mr. Clark and Mr. Green to
a volume entitled 'Old London,' published in 1867, show
what might have been done by literally hundreds of
writers who yet have preferred the beaten track.
I have endeavoured, therefore, in the first of these
volumes to weave the history of the city of London as
told by the chroniclers into a continuous narrative : pre
facing it with a topographical account of the site, and by
an attempt to describe the effects on London of the
Roman and Saxon invasions. The mediaeval history
includes that of the guilds, the wards, the churches, the
monasteries, and the companies.
Of the later period, so well illustrated by Maitland,
Malcolm, Lysons, and others, I have said comparatively
little, as their works are well known and generally acces
sible. Such subjects as the great plague, the churches
of Wren, the rise and progress of banking, and the
modern commercial development of London would each
require for adequate treatment a volume to itself, and, in
fact, many such volumes exist. I have therefore en
deavoured to state the mere outline in each case and
to refer my readers to the authorities consulted.
The second volume contains a detailed account of
each parish of the suburbs, prefaced by a sketch of the
history of Middlesex. Here the continuous method has
of necessity been abandoned : but I have directed my
attention in each chapter chiefly to an attempt to show
the origin and growth of the present condition of the

x PREFACE.
suburbs, with special reference to the accumulations of
land in the so-called " Great Estates." I have in almost
all cases tried to omit mere local gossip, unless it
happened to be of a kind likely to illustrate the history,
or had not been already noticed by other writers. I
have avoided as much as possible such things as pro
cessions, executions, duels, and the loves of Charles II. :
but I have endeavoured to trace each manor from its
earliest mention to the present day, and to explain local
names and other circumstances by the history. I trust
that the numerous maps and plans may prove interesting
as showing in so many cases a state of things which has
passed away for ever, and as accounting for what we see
by what our forefathers saw when so much that is now
densely populated lay in open fields.
I should be sorry to be understood as disparaging the
delightful memoirs of Cunningham, Leigh Hunt, Jesse,
and others. They are entertaining to read, and if they
add very little to our real historical knowledge, they at
least serve to keep alive an interest in scenes and places
which might otherwise be passed by. The worst of them
is that they set a bad example, and their imitators have
produced by the dozen, nay, by the hundred, books in
which truth has been a secondary object, books which
bristle with errors, and which are so far from history that
they are not even good fiction. There is not a mistake
in Stow or Cunningham that they have not taken up and
expanded, accepting guesses as certainty, and asserting
boldly what their authorities cautiously conjectured. To
take a single example : among the almost countless lists
that exist of the mayors and sheriffs, there is not one

PREFACE. xi
which has not been directly founded on Stow's. From
the imperfection of his materials, it was necessarily im
perfect, and was only completed by a system of elaborate,
but often erroneous guessing. Yet contemporary chroni
cles containing the correct names are in print in abundance,
and overlap each other in such a way as to make the
task of forming a new list a mere school-boy's exercise.
I ought to mention, in order that any critic who is kind
enough to notice this book may be saved the trouble of
arranging " parallel passages," that I have been in the
habit for many years, as I pursued my investigations,
of writing articles on old London and its environs in
various periodicals, chiefly the Quarterly and Saturday
Reviews, and the Archceological Journal. I have re
ceived much kind help from various quarters, and have
to thank Mr. C. Trice Martin of the Record Office, Dn
Reginald Sharpe of the Guildhall, and Mr. W. M. Trol-
lope of Westminster, for replies to questions which they
must often have considered exceedingly troublesome if
not impertinent. I have obtained much information
from Mr. J. Henry Middleton, who kindly gave me the
elaborate plan of Westminster Abbey which illustrates
Chapter XVI. Mr. J. J. Stevenson kindly gave me leave
to use one of the illustrations of his ' House Architecture,'
for which I heartily thank him ; as well as Mr. John
Ward, F.S.A., for the gift of a view of Buckingham
Gate. I have also to acknowledge the' sympathy and ever
ready assistance I received from the deeply lamented
John Richard Green, whose death in the maturity
of his powers is announced even as I write. To his

XU PREFACE.
encouragement and advice I owe it that I ever com
menced the studies which have resulted in the pro
duction of this book. His inexhaustible stores of know
ledge and his unfailing historical judgment were my
constant resource during the many years in which I
have been engaged in gathering materials and placing
them in order. If I could have had his help until my
work was completed I might have solved difficulties
which now seem insuperable.
I trust that some of the problems which I have stated
may awaken an interest in the minds of investigators
able to solve them. We know very little, for instance,
about the history of guilds and companies, about the
origin of the office of alderman, about the early division
of parishes, and many other subjects at which I have
been obliged only to hint. Hitherto the most competent
antiquaries have avoided such questions. Yet they are
of the highest interest, and I can only regret to have been
able to do so little towards giving them a satisfactory
answer. Let me conclude these "fore words" with a
quotation from 'Twelfth Night/ and without further
apology ' ' I pray you let us satisfy our eyes
With the memorials and things of fame
That do renown this city."
March, 1883.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.
THE, SITE OF LONDON.
The largest city in the world — Its rapid growth — A valley with
a river — A lagoon with islets — The northern line of hills —
The Tyburn — The central hill — The Fleet — The western city
hill — The highest ground — The' Wallbrook — The eastern hill
— The original London — Meaning of the name — The earliest
imports — London geology — Levels — The coming of the
Romans  Page i
CHAPTER II.
ROMANLONDON.
Buried under the modern surface — The history buried under fable
— Roads to London — Ferry, ford, bridge — First facts — Boadicea —
Population — Perambulation of Roman London — The Prastorium
— The suburbs — London fog — Carausius — Allectus — Asclepio-
dotus — The Franks plunder the suburbs — The wall built round
them — Its circuit — Augusta — A Christian city — Legend of St.
Peter's-upon-Cornhill— Difficulties of the early history. Page 25
CHAPTER III.
SAXON LONDON.
Date of the conquest unknown — Last appearance of Augusta — First
appearance of Saxon London — Bishop Mellitus — London the
metropolis of Essex — Its weakness — The church in London —
Seberht and his sons — Bishop Cedd — The two kings of Essex —
Erkenwald — The Mercians — Egbert of Wessex — The Danes —
Alfred the Great — The wall rebuilt — The alderman Ethelred —
The battle of Bemfleet — Diversion of the Lea — Ethelbert in

xiv CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
London — Canute's canal — Danish saints — Representation at
Oxford — Election of Harold — Hardicanute — Edward the Con
fessor — Municipal beginnings — Londoners at Hastings — The
embassy to Berkhampstead — William the Conqueror Page 50

CHAPTER IV.
LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST.
Rise of municipal life — William's charter — The bishop and the
portreeve — Law worthiness — Heirship — Normans in the city —
The Tower — Domesday book — Citizens mentioned — William the
chamberlain — Deorman of London — St. Paul's — The divisions of
Willesden — Walter Mapes — William II. — Henry I. — His
charter — Remissions and grants — The sheriffs of London and
Middlesex— Anecdotes of the city privileges — The death of
; Adam Schot — The murder of Lawrence Duket — Welsh thieves —
The billet — List of portreeves — The election of Stephen — The
great fire — The earl of Essex sheriff — The empress Maud —
Henry II. — Fitz Stephen's account of London — The gates — The
Cheap — Houses and churches — Domestic life — Rohese Becket
and her son  Page 76

CHAPTER V.
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY.
London under Richard I. — The first mayor — Longchamps. at the
Tower — John — William Fitz Osbert — The champion of the poor
—The Nore — The Interdict — Merchants and craftsmen — The
great charter — The barons at St. Paul's — Fitz Walter, the stan
dard - bearer — Patricians and plebeians — Symon Fitz Mary 
Henry III. — His bid for popularity — The case ofthe widow Vyel
— The claim of the abbot of Westminster — The roll with the
green seal — The mayor and aldermen at Westminster — Thomas
Fitz Thomas — Elected mayor — The crafts organised — The queen
insulted— The citizen army — The battle of Lewes — Parliamentary
representation — Strange scene in St. Paul's — Evesham— Henry's
vengeance — The mayor at Windsor — Disorder in London —
Regency of Sir Edward — Sir Edward le Fitz Roy — Fate of Fitz
Thomas— Walter Hervey— Death of Henry III. .. Page 121

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. xv
CHAPTER VI.
THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES.
The divisions of parishes — The wards — The old families — The
great estates— Portsoken — Priory of Holy Trinity — The guilds —
The weavers — The Steelyard — Hervey and the crafts — His
charters questioned — The Cheap depopulated — Hervey deposed
— Estimate of his work  Page 156
CHAPTER VII.
THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES.
Edward I. — The city M.P.'s — Gregory Rokesley and Henry le
Waleys — Allhallows, Barking — Sir Ralph Sandwich, warden —
List of the wards — The bridge over Wallbrook — The small beam
— Suttone's contempt — Wallace's rebellion — Slaughter and
banishment of Jews — Livery companies — Edward II. — Queen
Isabella's tailor — Wengrave, mayor — Farringdon, mayor — Chig-
well, mayor — Disorder in the city — Murder of bishop Stapleton
— The Black Friars — Richard de Betoyne, mayor — Deposition of
Edward II. — Charter of Edward III. — Royal present — The lists
in Cheap — Fall of Mortimer — Isabella in Lombard Street —
Death of Chigwell — Warlike preparations — Pulteney, mayor —
Betoyne's fee as butler — The city companies . . . . Page 182
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BISHOP.
London in the fourteenth century — Population — Aspect of the city
—The Temple— The Rolls— The new ward— Temple Bar— The
Friars — The Grey Friars — Abbey of Saint Clare — Austin Friars
— St. Paul's — The priests of the church — The bishops — Bishop
Courtenay — Flight of John of Gaunt — Bishop Braybrook —
Reforms the chapter — Richard II. — Nicholas Brember — Death
of Constantyn — Richard's extravagance — An earthquake — The
Lollards — The discontent in the city — Death of Richard — Tomb
of Braybrook  Page 226

xvi CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
CHAPTER IX.
YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON.
The London of Stow— Richard Whittington — The new Guildhall-
William Sawtree, martyr— Lord Cobham— An obstinate heretic
— The war with France — Newgate — John Carpenter, town clerk
—Henry VI.— Faction in the city — The tragedy of the widow
of Aldgate — Jack Cade — Warwick in London — Election ot
Edward IV.— Death of Henry VI  Page 255
CHAPTER X.
SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON.
Shakespeare, Stow, and Norden — Edward IV.'s popularity — Shaw,
niayor — Buckingham's speech — Election of Richard III. — Crosby
Place — St. Helen's, Bishopsgate — Accession of Henry VII. — The
sweating sickness — The king's extortions — Accession of Henry
VIII.— Evil May-day— Dean Colet— Murder of Hunne— Black-
friars — The divorce — Suppression of religious houses — Wholesale
executions — The hospitals — Thomas Cromwell in the city —
Aspect of London at the accession of Edward VI. — Machyn's
diary — Queen Jane — Queen Mary — Bishop Bonner — Trial of
queen Jane and archbishop Cranmer at the Guildhall — Wyatt's
rebellion — Southwark — Probably greater than early Roman Lon
don — St. Mary Overey — Shakespeare's theatres — Accession of
Elizabeth — " Her Grace " in procession — Commercial enterprise
— Gresham — The Armada — Essex's rebellion — Shakespeare
leaves London  Page 283
CHAPTER XI.
THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE.
James I. — Unhealthiness of London — Anecdote of James — Hooker
and Travers — The Middle Temple — The Temple church — Parish
lecturers — John Milton — Charles I. — Murder of Lamb — Ship-
money — The five members —Flight of Charles — The citizens'
army — The new fortification — The city humbled— Atkins, mayor
—Cromwell at Guildhall— Election of Charles II. — The Plague
of 1665— The Black Death— The water-supply— The Great Fire
— Burning of St. Paul's and Christ Church . . . . Page 332

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. xvii
CHAPTER XII.
WREN.
Inigo Jones— Portico of St. Paul's— Christopher Wren— State of old
St. Paul's — The City churches — St. Martin Outwich— Plan for
rebuilding London — Wren's parish churches — Wren's towers —
His gothic style— St. Michael, Cornhill — Cost of Wren's churches
—St. Stephen, Wallbrook— St. Paul's Cathedral— Wren and
Burlington — Wren's death  Page 362
CHAPTER XIII.
THE BANK.
Charles II. and the city — The goldsmiths — Backwell— .Child — The
exchequer closed — Consequences — Contest for the shrievalty —
The proceedings on the writ oiQuo Warranto — Illness and death
of Charles II.-— Cornish — His trial^-His execution — Flight of
James II. — Meeting at Guildhall — Election of William III. —
Renewal of the old charters — The siege of Derry— The establish
ment ofthe Bank of England — Patterson and Godfrey— Godfrey's
death — Runs on the bank — The private banks — The South Sea
Bubble — Walpole and the bank  Page 391
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CORPORATION.
The house of Brunswick — Street alterations — Removal of the gates
— London Bridge — Lord Bute — The elder Pitt — John Wilkes —
The 'North Briton' — Beckford and George III. — Printers
arrested on a general warrant — Messengers of the Government
arrested by the city authorities — The lord mayor imprisoned —
Wilkes as mayor — The king's arbitrary conduct — The right of
petition and remonstrance — The king's insanity — George IV. —
State of prisons — Gaol fever — Newgate — Queen Caroline — Pro
posals to reform the corporation — Advantages of the present
system — Its disadvantages — The present state ofthe corporation. Page 418
VOL. I. b

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

CHAPTER XV.
MIDDLESEX.
The Middle Saxons— The hundreds— The population— The suburbs
of London— Ecclesiastical estates— The boundaries ofthe county
— South Minims and the Frowyks— Gunnersbury— Stanwell—
Old families— Old houses— Hampton Court — Syon — Osterley—
Canons— Little Stanmore church— Chiswick— Historical memo
ries in Middlesex   Page i
CHAPTER XVI.
WESTMINSTER.
Its antiquity — Thorney — Offa's charter — Edgar's charter — Boun
daries — Manor of Eia — Parish of St. Margaret — Westminster in
Domesday — The Confessor's church — The Poets' Corner — St.
Margaret's church — Caxton — Raleigh — Cowper — The palace —
The Houses of Parliament— The hall— The abbey — The royal
tombs— The triforium — The waxworks — The first dean — West
minster School — Ashburnham House — The government of the
manor of Westminster  Page 32
CHAPTER XVII.
THE HAMLETS OF WESTMINSTER.
The Decree of 1222— Ludgate — Farringdon Without— St. Clement
Danes — Lincoln's Inn— Smaller inns — Fickett's Field — The^New
Law Courts — The Savoy — St. Mary-le-Strand — Somerset House
— The riverside palaces — Covent Garden — St. Martin's-in-the-
Fields — Charing and the Cross — The National Gallery — St.
James's, Piccadilly — St. Anne's, Soho — St. George's, Hanover
Square — The Westminster estate  Page 68

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. xix
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PARKS AND PALACES.
Whitehall— The king's manor— The banqueting hall— Scotland
Yard — Execution of Charles I. — St. James's palace and park 
Buckingham Palace— Green Park— Hyde Park— Cumberland
Gate— Tyburn — The Serpentine— The manor of Neyte — Ken
sington Palace — Kensington Gardens— The Albert Memorial Page 108
CHAPTER XIX.
THE TOWER AND THE TOWER HAMLETS.
The Towers of Caesar — The parish of Stepney — The boundary of
the Tower Precinct — The Tower in the thirteenth century —
Queen Elizabeth at Traitor's Gate — Restoration of the Tower —
The chapel of St. Peter — The records — The lions — The manor of
Stepney — Its disintegration — Whitechapel — Shadwell — St. Dun-
stan's — St. Philip's — St. George's-in-the-East — Limehouse —
Stepney a centre of fashion — Bethnal Green — Parliament at
Stepney— Colet — The Daniel and Tyssen estates — Hackney —
The sixth earl of Northumberland — Lord's hold and king's land
— Susannah Perwich  Page 136
CHAPTER XX.
THE NORTHERN SUBURBS.
Crown property— The prebendal manors of St. Paul's — The Char
terhouse — The two priories of Clerkenwell — St. John's Gate —
Hicks' Hall — The manor of Islington — Highbury — Lord
Compton at Canonbury— Stoke Newington— Portpool and Gray's
Inn — Ely Place— Sir Christopher Hatton— Bishop Wren— Lady
Elizabeth Hatton— St. Etheldreda's chapel— Manor of Holborn
 St. George the Martyr — The Red Lion and the Blue Boar—
Great Ormond Street and Lord Macaulay  Page 165
CHAPTER XXI.
THE WESTERN SUBURBS.
Rugmere— The Roman road— St. Giles's pond— Bloomsbury—
St. Giles's— Lincoln's Inn Fields— Lady Rachel Russell— The
British Museum— St. George's church— St. Pancras— The old
church and the new church — Tottenhall — Fitzroy Square —
Tyburn— St. Marylebone— Stratford Place— The Conduit Mead
b 2

XX CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
— The manor of Tyburn — Hobson — The duke of Newcastle —
The Harleian library — The manor of Lylleston — The Portman
estate — The Harrow estate — The church of St. Marylebone — All
Souls, Langham Place— Chapels — -St. Mary, Bryanston Square —
Tyburn tree — Paddington — Westbourne — Kensal Green — Queen
Anne's son — The gravel pits — Kensington — Holland House —
Campden House — Brompton — Cromwell — Chelsea — Sir Thomas
More — The old church — Chelsea Hospital .. .. Page 200
CHAPTER XXII.
THE SOUTHERN SUBURBS.
Lambeth — The bishops and the archbishops— St. Thomas's Hos
pital — Lambeth library — Stockwell and Vauxhall — Kennington
— Battersea — A strange family — Bolingbroke — Newington — Ber
mondsey — Rotherhithe  Page 266
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE " METROPOLITAN AREA."
Growth of suburbs — Board of Works — Use of the name "metro
polis '' — The definition of the area — The population and their
food — The governing system — A common error — Conclusion Page 292
APPENDICES.
A. List of Mayors and Sheriffs  Page 301
B. Members of Parliament for the City  330
C. Parishes in London  }> 350
D. Wren's Churches and Public Buildings .. .. n 36 r
E. Prebendal Manors of St. Paul's  >t 35,
F. Note on Wards and Parishes  357
G. Members for Westminster  >t 37 1
H. Members for Southwark  ^ 3™
I. Members for Middlesex  ;j ^qi
K. The Grosvenor, Berkeley, and Maddoks Estates „ 405
L. Early Lists of Aldermen and Wards  ;) 4J3
M. Sketch of the History of the Trade of London .. „ aij
N. List of Buildings which existed before the Great
Fire'&c  „ 432

INDEX

435

MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOLUME I.
PAGE
i. London before the Houses  Frontispiece
2. The West-bourne, Ty-bourne, Hole-bourne and
Fleet  * .. .. i
3. Roman London  25
4. Saxon London  50
5. London in the Thirteenth Century  120
6. London in Wards and Parishes  156
7. St. Paul's before 1561  240
8. „ St. Faith under St. Paul  242
9. „ Interior of Choir  246
10. „ Southern Aspect  250
11. „ Entrance to Choir  254
12. Entrance to Guildhall.  266
13. London in 1604, by Ryther of Amsterdam  282
14. London and Westminster, showing the Forts
erected by order of the Parliament in
1643  332
15. Temple Gate  335
16. London from the North in 1665  352
17. London after the Fire of 1666  359
18. Plan for rebuilding the City of London, by Sir
C. Wren  362
19. Bow Steeple  375
20. St. Magnus (Steeple)  376
21. St. Stephen, Wallbrook (Interior)  384
22. A View of London in 1710  390
23. London Bridge before 1561  418
24. Lord Mayor Crosby's Cup  429

xxii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOLUME II. PAGE
25. The Tower in 1553  Frontispiece
26, The Hundreds of Middlesex about 1756 .. .. 1
27. Westminster in 1658  34
28. The Benedictine Abbey of Westminster .. .. 41
29. Westminster Hall in the Eighteenth. Century 54
30. York Gate  87
31. Map of the Grosvenor Estate  103
32. The City and Liberties of Westminster .. .. 106
33. The Manor of Stepney  140.
34. The Northern Suburbs  j.65
35. The Western Suburbs  201
36. The Marylebone Estate in 1708  223
37. Map of the Portman Estate  227
38. The Southern Suburbs  267
39. London and the Suburbs, showing the Area
built upon at different dates  292
40. Metropolitan London, showing the Area in-
cluded in the bills and tables of mortality 296
41. Parish of St. Peter Cheap  Appendix F.
42. Cheap after the Conquest 

HISTORY OF LONDON.

CHAPTER I.
THE SITE OF LONDON.
LONDON is the name of an ever-widening tract of country
covered by the buildings of a city already so large that
it is equalled by no other in the world. We may even
doubt if any city of the past was so great. Its popu
lation is known to a unit ; and as there is no such trust
worthy information to be had about any ancient city,
it is impossible to compare London with Rome, or
Babylon, or Memphis. But as compared with Paris, the
nearest competitor, London is almost twice as large ; and
as compared with New York, it is three times as large.
As compared with cities in our own islands, London
exceeds Glasgow or Liverpool by more than three million
inhabitants.* The growth of London has been very rapid in modern
times. Those of us whq can remember it for a dozen
years are already unable to trace the older features of
many places over which the resistless tide of building has
crept. When the Crystal Palace was placed in Hyde
Park a little more than thirty years ago, there were only
* Paris, 2,225,910 (1881). New York, 1,206,590 (1880). Glasgow,
511,532 (1881). Liverpool, 552,425 (1881). London, 3,832,441 (1881)..
In 1801, it was 958,863.
VOL. I. B

2 HISTORY OF LONDON.
a few isolated villas between it and Brompton. When it
was removed to the top of Sydenham Hill there were
not even villas between it and Dulwich. Now, in 1882
the statue of Prince Albert looks out over a sea of houses
from Hyde Park to the top of Sydenham Hill, un
interrupted save by the Thames. For a time the suburbs
of London were confined within the hundred of Ossul-
ston, and a corner of Surrey ; now the whole of the
hundred has disappeared, and is no longer reckoned
among the divisions of Middlesex ; while on the other
side of the river the hundred of Brixton has been
similarly devoured, and Greenwich in Kent is as much
a part of London as Wapping or Chelsea. The streets
extend far into Essex, and there are suburbs even in
Hertfordshire. As the houses advance, the natural features are obli
terated. The shady lanes, the palings and orchards, the
green meadows where we were wont to be thankful for a
moment's respite from the din and bustle of the streets,
are turned into villas first, then into rows of houses.
The hollows are levelled up, the hills are levelled down.
The brooks no longer run, the trees and the grass no
longer grow. There is no more seed-time or harvest for
the land the great city covers. The scanty vegetation
which may still be found within its boundaries is artificial,
for even the sky is invisible during a great part of the
year. All seasons are alike to the thorough Londoner,
The summer heat only drives him to the shady side • the
winter wind does but make him call a cab. The railways
under the pretence of taking him farther and farther out
of town, only bring the town farther into the country,
and cover a larger district with villas and avenues which
are merely mockeries of country villages and natural
woods

THE SITE OF LONDON. %
For my present purpose, therefore, which is to describe
the London area as it was before the houses, it may be
convenient not to go beyond the valley bounded by
Hampstead on the north and Sydenham on the south <
although we are constantly being reminded that the tide
has long ago overflowed these limits, especially to the
south, and has poured down the sunny slopes far into
Kent and Surrey. I shall ignore Norwood, reckon
Croydon a country town, and speak as if Anerley was
really what its name is said to import — a place remark
able for its lonely situation.
The London district, thus restricted, lies between two
lines of heights, and is traversed by a winding river of
considerable width. The northern range is the highest,
rising at Highgate to 424 feet, and at Hampstead to
about twenty feet more. The southern range nowhere
attains a greater elevation than 370 feet, but we may note
that while Highgate and Hampstead stand comparatively
alone, Sydenham Hill and Denmark Hill are flanked by
several minor heights, such as Nunhead and Forest Hill.
The northern range, too, differs from the southern in
another particular : it does not fall to the level of the
water at once ; but between it and the lowest ground
there is interposed a line of intermediate heights, some of
them rising above 1 00 feet. It was on one of these
minor hills that the original nucleus of London was
placed. But in one important respect, its position was
utterly different from what it now appears. When
London was confined to the hill above the Wallbrook,
the water of a broad lagoon was stretched in front of it
to the south, filling the valley toward the Surrey hills,
and washing almost to their feet. Though Camberwell:
and Peckham may even then have been dry ground, they
were on the margin of a vast shallow lake, interspersed '
B 2

4 HISTORY OF LONDON.
with marshes and dotted with islets. The river flowed
from Lambeth to Deptford, or from Chelsea to Black-
wall, at every high tide, and at low water left little land
between. Now it is first deflected to the northward as it
passes Westminster, it turns to the east at Charing
Cross, at Rotherhithe it starts in a southerly direction,
and, when it has rounded the Isle of Dogs, runs north
ward again to Blackwall. The Isle pf Dogs, before the
docks covered all its interior surface, was for the most
part seven feet below high water mark. The land on
which Lambeth and Kennington and Newington stand
was river or morass, the site of Southwark and Bermond
sey was a string of little islands. Other places were left
dry at every change. The river brought down quantities
of soil, mud, sand, gravel ; and one by one little settle
ments could be made and embankments could be thrown
up to protect the marshes. That such is the history of
many of the South London districts is evident from their
names, and still more evident if we inquire into the level to
which they have been artificially raised. Upper Ken
nington Lane is in places only about eighteen inches
above the Thames. The Old Kent Road, a thorough-,
fare on which the made earth is everywhere deep, rises
sometimes no more than seven feet ; and Southwark
Park, in spite of modern filling, is six feet below Thames
high water. There are one or two spots in the Ber
mondsey district which, on an exact map, have a minus-
sign before the number which denotes their level, and
are, like Dutch " polders," actually below high water
mark. One by one the little eyots became islands dotting
the lagoon, one by one the marshes were embanked
and became meadows ; so that, when the Romans ran
their great southern road across a bridge to South-

THE SITE OF LONDON. 5
wark, and on piles and embankments to the higher
levels inland, the whole peninsula gradually became
habitable. But there are other low-lying districts in London. The
Isle of Dogs represents the delta of what was, at a not
Very remote period, a tidal estuary. The Lea river,
flowing down from the wooded hills of Essex and Hert
fordshire, was wide and full. To the west also, an
estuary filled what 'is now St. James's Park, and an
island, which is first known in history as the Thorn-ey
was at its mouth. In the ornamental water, we trace the
last remnant of an inlet from whose surface Westminster
gradually rose into the daylight of modern history.
Thickets may have given it the older name. Centuries
before the western monastery had been raised to afford
its sanctuary to human fugitives, the wild deer swam
over to hide from the savage hunter. A skeleton found
under the foundation of the Victoria Tower in the new
Palace of Parliament, tells of an age when antlered stags
roamed through the forest, and when the men who slew
them, slew them with weapons of stone.
Above that part of the Thames Lagoon which is
represented by the flats of Pimlico, flats only reclaimed
in our own day, rose and rises the westernmost and
highest of the low range of hills which I mentioned above.
Each hill is separated from the next by a valley, through
which a brook flowed ; and the whole range runs in
an easterly direction in a line not quite parallel to the
edge of the river, but so tending to the south that while
Campden Hill is three-quarters of a mile inland, Tower
Hill is on the bank. The westernmost rises to a height
of 130 feet. We now call its northern slope Notting
Hill, and the eastern Bayswater Hill : but these are all
designations of the same eminence, which is divided from

6 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the next by a brook, the West Bourne. The West
Bourne originally fed the Serpentine, but it now flows
underground, if it flows at all, and is degraded to the
rank of a sewer.
Going eastward, we next ascend to the sandy plateau
known in history as Tyburn, although by right it should
bear some other name. It falls short of the proportions
of Campden Hill by more than forty feet, but seen from
the lower lawns of Hyde Park it appears to rise some
what abruptly, and no doubt before the levelling hand of
modern man had been employed in rounding it, was
steep, if not precipitous. Down to the last century it
was covered by a barren heath, and its summit at the
Edgware Road was almost flat. The southern edge
approached very near the head of the little estuary of
which I have spoken as being now St. James's Park. If
we stand within Cumberland Gate and look due south
over the only open ground we can now find on the whole
hill, we can easily, if the day is clear, obtain an idea of
the ancient geography of what is now the " West End."
All the districts to the south, as far as the Thames, are
oh a much lower level. The nearest high ground we
can descry is very far off. As the sun gleams on the
roof of the Crystal Palace, we recognise Sydenham Hill.
At our feet is the river, shallow and wide — so shallow
indeed, at times, that it is no mere tradition which affirms
the existence of a ford at Westminster. On the right is
the valley through which the West Bourne took its
course, and on the left, if we could strip off Brook Street
and Grosvenor Street, and the adjacent quarter as far as
South Street, we should be able to follow the windings
of another stream. How entirely the face of nature has
been altered may be seen in a moment if, when passing
through Davies Street towards Berkeley Square, the

THE SITE OF LONDON. 7
curious traveller will turn to the left into Bourdon Street.
Fifty yards off he will see the valley through which the
Tyburn ran, and can judge how much the ground rises
on either side.
The course of the Tyburn was carefully followed and
mapped before it made its last appearance. in daylight.*
Its source was in Conduit Fields, not far from the " Swiss
Cottage," on the first slopes of Hampstead. Thence it
ran for a few hundred yards through the Regent's Park,
across the road at Sussex Place, between Gloucester
Place and Baker Street, across the Marylebone Road,
and turning westward, under Madame Tussaud's, by
South Street to the foot of the High Street of St. Mary
lebone. t Thence it is easily traced to Oxford Street,
for Marylebone Lane once overhung the left bank of the
stream, and marks its windings for us, The brook ran
nearly along Mandeville Place, crossed Wigmore Street,
and reached Oxford Street at Gee's Court. To trace
its further course we must follow the lowest levels of the
ground as best we can through a labyrinth of lanes
behind the fine houses in Bond Street ; and tending
a little to the west, through South Molton Lane, across
Brook Street, by Avery Row to Grosvenor Mews, just
behind the Grosvenor Gallery. Little Bruton Street and
some more mews take us to Berkeley Square, at the foot
of Hay Hill. Thence we go through The Passage, whose
hollow sounding pavement seems to betray the fact that
the brook runs between the gardens of Lansdowne House
on the right and those of Devonshire House on the left.
We are now very near Piccadilly, but the brook again
* J. G. Waller, in the ' Journal of the London and Middlesex Archaeo
logical Society,' vol. v. I have to thank Mr. Waller for much assistance
in writing this chapter.
t For the history of St. Marylebone, see chapter xxi.

8 .HISTORY OF LONDON.
turns westward for a few yards, and only reaches the
Park at Engine Street (now called Brick Street), whose
name probably indicated the existence of a water-wheel
at some not very remote period in history. Across the
Green Park the windings of the Tyburn are occasionally
revealed by a line of mist, which shows that it has not
been wholly dried up in its underground course. Near
Buckingham Palace it divides, and while part falls, or
used to fall, into the Thames through the ornamental
water in St. James's Park, part also ran into the ancient
abbey buildings at Westminster, having been carefully
piped by the monks for their own use ; and a third
branch, passing close to, if not actually under the Palace,
flows nearly in a straight line through Pimlico to Mil-
bank, where, under the name of the King's Scholars'
Pond Sewer, it falls into the Thames not far from the
mouth of the Ranelagh Sewer, in which we recognise all
that is left of the West Bourne.
The number of these small brooks across the site of
modern London is very remarkable, but may be ac
counted for in part by the existence of the next hill
after we have crossed the Tyburn and are proceeding
eastward. This, the central hill of modern London, is
not so high as those beyond the Tyburn and the West
Bourne ; but it is of far greater extent, and its southern
slope is more gradual. Its highest point is at Regent's
Circus North, and it extends back to Regent's Park, and
south to Charing Cross and the line of the Strand, the
lower slope being sometimes rather more steep, as at the
Haymarket, or in Wellington Street. So thickly is it
covered with streets that we cannot easily recognise the
geographical features ; and but for the friendly aid
afforded by such an open space as Regent's Park, we
might find it -hard to understand that all the ground

THE SITE OF LONDON. 9
which Oxford Street traverses from Stratford Place to
Holborn Hill is upon it ; that it extends northward in a
wide and nearly level plain to the foot of Hampstead
Hill, and that its southern slopes are skirted by Pall
Mall, the Strand, and Fleet Street along a distance of
not less than two miles.
We shall be able to see more clearly when observing
the geological structure of the London soil, that from
the dense bed of clay which is, as it were, dammed up
by this hill, most of the streams which cross the site
of London take their r}se ; but its own surface, with the
exception of two little rivulets which cross the Strand — •
at Ivy Bridge, Adelphi, and at Milford Lane, Temple Bar
— is smooth and unfurrowed. It rises ninety feet at
Regent's Circus and eighty-five at Tottenham Court
Road. Regent's Park occupies a kind of ridge be
tween two slight depressions, west and east ; and is
backed up immediately on the north by Primrose Hill
and Barrow Hill, spurs of Hampstead.* The Tyburn
rose on the western side of this ridge, and on the eastern
another brook, or rather river, wound along through steep
banks, turning more and more to the south, until, as we
descend Holborn Hill, it stops for the time our further
progress. We are on the edge of the Fleet, the eastern
boundary of our great west-central hill.
The Fleet t has wholly disappeared now, but it wai
once a very prominent feature of London geography.
Both it and the Tyburn took their rise in the dense clay
of the region just below Hampstead, but while the
Tyburn took its course towards the west, the Fleet ran
* It is probable that Primrose Hill and its companion, now crowned by
a reservoir of the Middlesex Water Company, were, in part at least,
artificial mounds. Tumuli existed in many places in the same district.
t J. G. Waller, 'London and Middlesex Transactions,' iv. 97.

10 HISTORY OF LONDON.
towards the east. The Tyburn by its subdivision into
several streams forms the delta of Westminster. In
this respect, and indeed in its whole course, it differed in
character from the Fleet ; for the Fleet did not love to
wander through open meadows or go miles out of its
way to avoid a hill. On the contrary it seemed, wherever
it came, to have made its mark as deep and indelible as
it could ; and its early name of Hole-bourne is easily
explained when we find it running between banks so
.steep that in places they may be called cliffs.* The
Hole-bourne was the early course of the Fleet. It is
now buried under earth, pavement, arches, and the
long sepulchral vaults of the main drainage system.
This has been its fate from its source at Haverstock
Hill to its outfall at Blackfriars. Nowhere can we
trace its wanderings except by the contour of the land
through which it flowed. For two miles from the so-
called Vale of Health, past the Gospel Oak — where in
the middle ages the parishioners came, with their priest
reading his service-book, to trace and mark their boun
daries — skirting the slope of Cantelowe's, now Kentish
Town, leaving Camden Town on the right, it reached
at last St. Pancras Church, which, far away among the
fields, was noted even in the sixteenth century for its
deserted air. The Hole-bourne now begins to show its
character and deserve its name.
At Battle Bridge, now King's Cross, the brook begins
to enter the long valley from which it only emerges
when the journey is over. High clay hills are on either
side. One is crowned now by the walls of Coldbath
* Yet so completely have they been covered and disguised that Stow and
others have been forced to invent an "Oldbourne," and to make it flow
down Holborn Hill to account for a name which, even three centuries ago,
had begun to lose its special. appropriateness,.

THE SITE OF LONDON. 1 1
Fields Prison. On another are the equally cheerful-
institutions of Clerkenwell. All are now covered, and
it would be difficult indeed to find the slightest trace of
the camp which was said to have been the resting-place
of Suetonius, before his defeat of Boadicea at Battle
Bridge below. Modern science might have been able,
did any remains exist, to say if it was not rather an
English or Danish fortification, and so confirm or refute
the tradition that here Alfred won a victory. It would-
be rash to say now, unless indeed we might imitate an
antiquary of the last century, who thought he had found,
still more tangible proofs of the Roman occupation.*'
As elsewhere on the Thames valley, mammoth bones
have been discovered along the course of the Fleet ; and
of one such skeleton, Bagford writes to Hearne that,
though some will have it the elephant lay there since.
the universal deluge, he for his own part, is inclined to,,
think it was brought over by the Romans and killed in
the fight by a Briton.
Ingenious as it is, this hypothesis will not suffice to ex
plain all the discoveries of elephants along the shores of the:
Thames and the Lea. There have been other discoveries
also, to throw a light on the early condition of Middlesex ;
and the remains of a" vast forest on this northern shore of
the estuary, may occasionally be found at no great depth.-
The modern decline of the Fleet, from a river to a brook,
and from a brook to a drain, may be in part accounted
for, as well as the decline of the smaller streams already.
mentioned, by remembering how much trees do to
* We cannot afford to laugh at Bagford, or Conyers his informant. In
a history of London remarkable for the number and excellence of its
illustrative woodcuts, this charming theory is enunciated and defended.
The volumes are undated, but bear internal evidence of being less than
five years old*

1 2 HIS TOR Y OF L ONDON.
increase and retain moisture in the air and soil. If
Hockley means a field or lea abounding with oak trees,
then we have, in the name of a place on this part of the
Fleet, some evidence as to both the river and the land.
Scragg Hollow, Hockley in the Hole, is memorable in
history as the birthplace of Jonathan Wild. It was
close to where the Clerkenwell Court is now.
When the bourne emerges from behind the hills and
turns into its tidal course, it becomes the Fleet. This
end of our great west-central hill is now variously
designated according to the side from which we view it
There is Holborn Hill, Saffron Hill, Back Hill, Ely Place,
Hatton Garden, Kirby Street, or Field Lane ; but the
brook preserves its characteristics to the end. The
banks on the eastern side were, and are, so high that
they have refused to submit to the greatest of modern
obliterating agencies ; and even the railway across
Ludgate Hill has left at one or two points steep ascents
like that long known as Break-neck Steps. Snow
Hill has been abandoned for the Holborn Viaduct ;
and the whole district of Farringdon Street, which
actually runs over the course of the old Fleet river,
presents the inquiring geographer with a marvellous
example of the power of modern engineers to disguise
and change the natural appearance of a valley and a
tidal estuary.
The first bridging of the Fleet must have been a
serious matter. In Roman times the only direct road
across it to our fourth hill, from High Holborn, that is,
to Newgate, was by the Holborn Bridge. The street
called Holborn Hill led to it: and Snow Hill was the
ivay up the opposite acclivity. When another bridge
was . made many centuries later, it was lower down.
This was the Fleet Bridge, and the road which led to

THE SITE OF LONDON. 13
it was Fleet Street : while, as some think, the opposite
hill was called after the Fleet, Flood or Lud, Ludgate.* '
The Fleet formed the western bulwark of London for
hundreds of years : its existence must have been one
ofthe chief inducements which brought about the first
settlement on the hill above. There was no such stream
westward for many miles, no creek or harbour with such
high protecting banks and a tide which flowed so far
inland. The Fleet was still navigable in the reign of
Edward I. Ship Court and Seacoal Lane remained till
lately to tell of the time when there was a natural haven,
situated in immediate proximity to the city. Such a
waterway must have been a protection in war as well as
a commercial port in. peace, and London, seated thus on
a lofty hill, with, as we shall see, a smaller harbour in its
very midst, and protected on one side by such a tidal
estuary as the Fleet, and on the other by the Lea, was a
place of natural strength, yet admirably adapted for pur
poses of commerce.
Our fourth hill, then, looked westward over the Fleet,
and eastward over the Wall-brook. Of its real height
and its form we know little. It was included within the
second Roman wall, and there are places in it where the
original surface is forty feet below the present level. Its
level summit extends from the west front of St. Paul's to
nearly the eastern end ;of Cheapside : where a valley,
deep and winding like part of the Upper Hole-bourne,,
descended to the level of the Wall-brook, f
* Others have thought "Lud " a reference to the assembly of the leod or
leet-in St. Paul's Churchyard. Both derivations are doubtful. See chapter
xvii., voL ii., p. 69, for a different view.
t This name is sometimes spelt with one 1, but the existence of the,
original Roman wall on its bank was not established till lately. ' ' Walbrook, "
if wai or gael means a foreigner, could be taken as an early English
reference to the port of Dowgate and the merchants who came to it ; but,

14 HISTORY OF LONDON.
On the south, or river side, the hill was precipitous.
There is a vague tale of some ancient remains in the
corner over Dowgate, which were supposed to indicate
the site of an ancient British village. Its existence is,
however, very problematical. Sir Christopher Wren dis
covered what he considered British graves, " wherein were
found ivory and wooden pins of a hard wood, seemingly
box, in abundance, of about six inches long. It seems
the bodies were only wrapped up and pinned in woollen
shrouds, which being consumed, the pins remained en
tire."* But he goes on to say that " in the same row
and deeper were Roman urns intermixed. This," he
continues, '' was eighteen feet deep or more, and belonged
to the colony where Romans and Britons lived and died
together." This passage proves a few points which do not seem
to have occurred to the majority of the historians of St.
Paul's. If there were interments here we may be sure
that this was not the site of a Roman city or fortress at
the time those interments were made. Therefore this
was not, as Milman and others have supposed, the hill
on which the Pretorium stood. If it was a cemetery, it
could not have been at the same period a fort. It may
possibly have been a British burial-place, but Wren is
careful to say that the Roman urns lay, in some cases,
deeper than the British graves ; and there is nothing of
any other interments earlier or deeper than those where
Roman urns were intermixed. The passage, in short,

the wall which overlooked it affords a better derivation. Geoffrey of
Monmouth derives the name from Livius Gallus. In the Rot. Pat-
Edward III. it is Walebrok.
* Wren's ' Parentalia,' p. 266, quoted in Murray's ' Handbook to St.
Paul's,' p. 5, where this note comes after a general assertion that this was
the site of the Roman pretorium. The interments dispose of this idea.

THE SITE OF LONDON. 1$
gives us little information ; but we do gather distinctly
that, whatever it may have been before the Romans
came, after they came, it was for a time at least, outside
the city wall.
Another discovery has been mentioned. Camden tells
us of the finding of " an incredible " quantity of skulls
and bones of cattle, stags' horns, boars' tusks, and im^
plements and vessels thought to be sacrificial. Apart
from the implements there would be nothing so very
incredible about this discovery, Bones and skulls and
tusks have been found at other places in the Thames
valley. The implements are a puzzle. Were they of
pottery, of metal, or of stone? Were they knives or
arrow-heads? It is absurd to try to draw conclusions
worth having from traditions like these. A kitchen-
midden of any kind would answer sufficiently well to the
description : and there is nothing positively conclusive
against the bones being those of the elephants and bears
of the glacial epoch. The Romans of a later time
occupied the hill, as we shall see when we come to
speak of Roman London. Meanwhile, we have only
to note one other point relating to this hill, and then
cross the Wallbrook to the next one. In Panyer
Alley is a little monument familiar to every one, since
Cruikshank sketched it for Hone, with an inscription
as follows : — ¦ " When you have searched the city round
Yet still this is the highest ground."
The height here is fifty-nine feet But we find a slightly
greater elevation on the neighbouring hill, — for the site'
of the " Standard " on Cornhill is sixty feet above sea-
level — and where a free choice existed, we may suppose
the higher of the two was the first inhabited. At the
same time it is well to remember that our knowledge

1 6 HISTORY OF LONDON.
of the original level is extremely slight. In Paternoster
Row and St. Martin's, remains have been found at a
depth from twelve to sixteen feet : at St. Paul's, as we
have seen, Wren found interments at eighteen. In the
valley of the Wallbrook a villa floor was lately uncovered
not less than forty feet below the present surface. So that
it would be impossible to say that the western hill was
higher or lower than the eastern ; and we may safely
assert that before they were built on, neither exceeded
nor fell far short of forty-five feet above the river shore
below. The Wallbrook took its rise in the fens beyond Moor-
gate, and flowing through a depression, still well marked,
near Lothbury, passed under the site of the Church of
St. Mildred's, in the Poultry, which during the middle
ages was built on an archway over the brook. Thence it
passed a little to the westward of the Mansion House
and through a kind of ravine to a creek at Dowgate.
The present street called by its name runs very nearly
parallel to the course of the stream.
On the eastern hill, if anywhere, there may have been
an early British fort : that is, before the coming of the
Romans. The, situation, guarding a little port below, and
guarded itself from danger on the west by the brook, is
more suitable than that on the hill of St. Paul's, where
the port formed by the mouth of the Fleet was more
subject to inconvenient tides ; and also, in all probability,
to heavier winter floods. On the east was a wider
valley, slightly sloping to the levels of the Lea, and
without any high ground nearer than Barking.
Here, long before the coming of the Romans, the old
Celtic chieftain of the district may have placed his
fortified cattle pen. Behind him were densely wooded
hills, stretching beyond Hampstead and Highgate to

THE SITE OF LONDON. 1 7
St. Albans, with only the marsh of Finsbury* between.
To the west the Wallbrook brawled over its stones. To
the east, with an intermediate fen,t was the wide valley,
where the Tower was placed in later times. He thus
saw himself almost surrounded by an inland sea, whose
rolling waves ebbed and flowed far up among the forests,
which were afterwards to be Essex woods, past Barking
to Waltham on the north-east, with a smaller estuaiy
winding among the hills to King's Cross and Hampstead
on his western frontier ; and before him an archipelago
of little islets in a wide lagoon. The Celtic name clung
to London when everything else was changed. The
derivation of " Londinium " from " Llyn-din," the lake fort,
seems to agree best with the situation and the history.
The Roman could not frame to pronounce the British
word " Llyn," a word which must have soiinded to his
ears very much like " Clun " or " Lun," and the fact, if it is
# a fact, that Llyn was turned into Lon, goes to increase
the probability that this is the correct derivation of the
name. The first founder called his fastness the " Fort
of the Lake," and this is all that remains of him or it.J
* Finsbury may be the borough or bury of Fin, but cannot possibly be
derived from "fen." It was early called Vynesbury.
t Marked by Fenchurch ; here there can be no difficulty.
% In 1876 I received a letter from the late distinguished antiquary,
T. G. Godfrey Faussett, of Canterbury, in which the following passage
occurred : —
" Much as one hesitates about Celtic names, I have never doubted what
it was that the Romans turned into Londinium— to wit Llyn-din — the lake
fortress. No doubt you know both the words in Welsh, the latter now-a-
days more usually ' dinas,' and common enough. Llyn you know is pro
nounced Lun, a sound which Roman lips could not make, and got over it
how they could — sometimes with an o, sometimes with an i, sometimes
with their u, pronounced 00. So you will find the Usk is Isca — Romney
(Welsh, Rhymney) is Limenis, Ritupae and Rutupise are used promis
cuously, &c, &c. London was in those days emphatically a Llyndin, the
river itself being more like a broad lake than a stream, and behind the
VOL. I. C

18 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Here each morning he could assemble his herds
men, and send his cattle out to graze on the green
western hills, along Holborn, or the marshes of the
Strand. From his " Dun " he could watch that they did
not stray too far, and could sally forth to their rescue when
the wild men of some other tribe were seen descending
from the northern heights. Here, perhaps, in case of
extremity, he could summon his clansmen to his help, and
defend his borders at Old Ford, or attack a rival at
Primrose Hill. In his creek at Dowgate, too, when
summer days were calm and boats could thread their
way among the islets and shoals, and could venture
across the lagoon, he might receive the visits of distant
cousins from Greenwich, or the still rustic Stockwell.
And here too, no doubt, now and then in the long course
of years, a foreign merchant, tempted by the natural
harbours, may have sailed up the estuary, and circum
navigated the shallow bays, offering trinkets and weapons
for pearls and gold — perhaps for pale captives and red-
haired girls. The first commerce of London must have
been carried on in such goods as these, and a necklace or
a hatchet formed in all probability its earliest import.
The geological features of the London district have
been the subject of anxious investigation. For my
present purpose it will not be necessary to do more than
describe the surface, merely premising that two deep
borings, one made at Kentish Town, in the northern
suburbs, and the other at the intersection of Oxford

fortress lying the 'great northern lake,' as a writer so late as Fitz-
stephen calls it, where is now Moorfields. I take it it was something very
like an island, if not quite — a piece of high ground rising out of lake, and
swamp, and estuary." No satisfactory explanation of " Thames " has ever
been offered.

THE SITE OF LONDON. 19
Street and Tottenham Court Road, gave results as
follows : — The first stratum, after a bed of alluvium, con
sisted of clay, which in the one place was sixty-four
feet thick, and in the other 236. Under the clay were
between seventy and ninety feet of " Lower London "
Tertiary beds, consisting of pebbles, sand, and sometimes
shells. Under these was the Chalk, 645 to 655 feet in
thickness.* The surface is very different in different places. In
the north-western suburbs, for instance, and especially at
Finchley, there are beds of glacial drift, rich in fossils.
In some places again, as at Woolwich, are deep layers of
peat. On the top of Hampstead Hill, which consists
mainly of heavy clay, there is a capping of " Lower
Bagshot" sand. As a general rule, however, the whole
of the London district, north of the Thames, is on a
surface of clay, with here and there a superficial bed of
alluvial gravel or of sand, of varying depth. The line
of each of the brooks, which I have described above, is
marked by a bed of surface clay. The summits of the
hills are of more or less pure sand or gravel. Thus
Campden Hill is sandy, while the lower parts of Kensing
ton and Holland Park are on clay ; and- in the whole
district called South Kensington, down through Chelsea,
almost to the river's bank, there are patches of clay, of
gravel, and of sand, intermixed in such a manner as to
make it impossible to distinguish them. The eastern
end, for example, of Cromwell Road, is on sand, the
western end is on clay, as is the greater part of Earl's
Court Road ; though immediately beyond the sands
crop up again.
* I must refer the reader who wishes for further information to a ' Guide
to the Geology of London,' by William Whitaker, B.A., F.G.S., which
has been published by the authorities of the Geological Survey Office.
C 2

20 HISTORY OF LONDON.
These examples are taken from a single "parish, but in
others it is much the same. A deep bed of sand occurs
to the west of Portman Square, and a heavy bed of clay
to the east ; so that while Upper Seymour Street is on
sand, Lower Seymour Street is on clay. It will be seen
in a moment, by reference to the map, that there is here
a slope towards the Tyburn, the whole of whose course
is through clay.
The great " West Central " hill of which I have already
said so much, is covered with alluvial gravel, the clay
being, however, very near the surface. In the boring
mentioned above, 22 feet are allowed for " alluvium, drift,
&c"; but the figures are doubtful,* and in most places a
single 2 would represent better the depth of the gravel.
By the shore of the Thames along the Strand, and in
the line of the Fleet along Farringdon Street, where
there is not made earth there is clay. The steep ascent
of Ludgate Hill is formed of a clay bank originally
rising like a cliff, 40 feet above the river. The whole
soil of the city is now made earth, and in places there
are layers of ashes many feet in thickness. The depth
of the soil varies from two causes ; one, of course, being
the comparative antiquity of the site ; the other, the
situation having been originally a hollow, now filled up
as along Broad Street and Wallbrook. The ancient sur
face of Mincing Lane, Gracechurch Street, and Lombard
Street is generally found at a depth of 1 7 feet ; but in
Mark Lane it is 28 feet, and in Fenchurch Street 22 feet.
In Leadenhall Street, which stands high, the old level is
found at 9 feet 6 inches, A pavement was found at
Lothbury and another at Bucklersbury, both in the
valley of the Wallbrook, now filled up, at a depth of
40 feet. On the western hill Wren found interments
* Mr. Whitaker puts a ? to them.

THE SITE OF LONDON. 21
about 1 8 feet below the modern surface ; and in Pater
noster Row, Cheapside, Bow Lane, Queen Street, the
depth of the Roman remains discovered varies from
12 feet to 15 feet, as we have already seen.
The East End is more uniformly on clay than the
West, especially near the river ; but great beds of alluvial
drift are found in several places. I have spoken already
twice of the occasional discoveries of fossils in this
superficial formation, and may illustrate them further by
referring to the largest find of all, that made by Sir
Antonio Brady near Ilford, a place beyond my limits,
but on the same soil as many parts of London. Here,
in what is called brick earth,* a brown loam, much
esteemed by market gardeners, which is found for the
most part at low levels only and is often interbedded
with gravel and sand, a large number of bones and teeth
of various animals, extant or extinct, were collected.
So various and remarkable are some of these remains
that one might fancy the "Zoo" of the period was
situated at Great Ilford. The list comprises the bison,
musk sheep, Irish elk, beaver, lion, hyaena, bear, rhi
noceros, and hippopotamus, besides wolves, horses, oxen,
pigs, mice, and such small animals in abundance, and,
above all, not fewer than three distinct kinds of elephants.
In this one "incredible" discovery, as Camden might
have called it, there were the teeth of as many as a
hundred different mammoths of this last kind (Elephas
primigenius). North of London, as I have already pointed out, the
clay of Regent's Park used to give birth to the water
courses traced above ; and though it is partially drained
by the canal, and in other ways, it remains a deep and
dense mass of very impervious character. This, the
* Whitaker, ' Geology, of London,' p. 69.

22 HISTORY OF LONDON.
London Clay of geological writers, extends eastward
beyond Kentish Town, and westward beyond Paddington
and the northern part of Bayswater, along St. John's
Wood, Maida Vale, and Westbourne Grove : the
higher ground along Hyde Park being more alluvial,
although in places, especially in valleys as at Lancaster
Gate, the clay comes to the surface. Near the Thames
on both banks are wide beds of the so-called "brick
earth," or loam, already mentioned, and the pure sand
becomes less frequent.
On the south side the formation is very similar.
Sydenham Hill, like Hampstead, is of clay, but without
its capping of Bagshot sand. The valley, as we descend
towards the Thames, is alluvial, the sand occurring rather
more rarely than on the north bank. In many places
there is peat, and signs of very recent watery action are
abundant. At the extreme east, near Greenwich, the
formation known as Thanet sands, and the Blackheath
sands, and other lower tertiary beds appear ; but they
are beyond the limit of this book.
So far we have only observed the surface on which
London has been built ; but if we wish to know what
lies below that surface, information is easily obtained.
At the Museum of Practical Geology there is a large
model, on a scale of 6 inches to a mile, showing the
formation of the ''London Basin" within an area of
about 165 square miles; or from Turnham Green, on
the west, to Barking, on the east ; and from Hampstead
on the north, to Penge, on the south. It shows the
strata down to the " Gault," which at the time the model
was made, had only been touched in two borings, one
already referred to, at Kentish Town, and the other at
Crossness. Since then some lower beds have been
reached, but it is safe to say that the Gault underlies the

THE SITE OF LONDON. 23
whole of London, with the " Lower Greensand " under
neath it, and at a depth of over a thousand feet the
" Devonian " formation. Above the Gault is the " Upper
Greensand," and so far none of these strata appear on the
surface. Next above them is the Chalk, which does not
crop out anywhere within the limits of London, but is to
be seen at the surface as near as Chislehurst. This
formation is about 800 feet thick. Above it are, at
varying depths, the sandy beds named after Thanet,
Woolwich, and Blackheath, where they have been ob
served. Above them is the great bed of " London Clay,"
some 450 feet thick, capped here and there, as on the
summits of Hampstead and Highgate, or in the upper
parts of Richmond Park, by " Bagshot sands." On the
surface, as we have seen, are alluvial deposits of various
periods, but all postpliocene, consisting of glacial and old
river drifts.
As an example of the variations of elevation in
London, the following lists, giving the heights in feet as
marked in the Survey maps,* may be found useful. The
first gives the levels along Oxford Street and the other
streets in a line with it or nearly so from Shepherd's
Bush in the west to Mile End in the east. The second
gives the levels along a route from Regent's Park to
the Crystal Palace : —

I.
Shepherd's Bush, 21.
Uxbridge Road Station, 26.
Holland Park, 33.
Clarendon Road, 39.
Lord Holland's Lane, 60.
Ladbroke Road, 64.
Aubrey Road, 93.

Palace Gardens, 90.
Orme Square, 95.
Broad Walk, 90.
Craven Lane, 81.
Ornamental Water, 61.
Victoria Gate, 82.
Hyde Park Gardens, 80,
Albion Street, 79. *

* Ordnance datum, 12J feet below Trinity high-water mark.

24

HISTORY OF LONDON.

Fountain in Hyde Park, 77-
Marble Arch, 90.
Hereford Gardens, 92.
North Audley Street, 83.
South Moulton Street, 68.
Vere Street, 82.
Regent's Circus, N., 90.
Berners Street, 87.
Tottenham Court Road, 85.
Gray's Inn Gate, 70.
Farringdon Street, 28.
Newgate Street, 59.
Cheapside, 59.
Poultry, 50.
Cornhill, 60.
Aldgate, 54.
Goulston Street, 50.
North Street, 40.
Cleveland Street, 36.
St. Peter's Road, 35.
Such are the geological and geographical features of
the site on which London has grown. To follow its
growth we must look back to a period which may safely
be placed near the beginning of the Christian era. The
Roman general, Julius Csesar, may or may not have
visited the Llyndin on the lower Thames. He was in
Britain in B.C. 54, and it is not until a hundred and six
years later that we meet with the first historical notice
of London.

II.
St. Katherine's, Regent's Park, 120.
Euston Road, 90.
Regent Circus, N., 90.
Regent Circus, S., 65.
Waterloo Place, 40.
Charing Cross, 24.
Whitehall, 15.
Bridge Street, Westminster, 15.
Christ Church, 12.
Elephant and Castle, 14.
Walworth Road, 13.
Boundary Lane, 10.
Camberwell Green, 19.
Denmark Hill, 100.
Dulwich, 91.
Crystal Palace, 365.

Tofaca-p.Zb.

London: Edward Stanford, 55 Coaling Cross.

Stanford^ 6ecgV Sstabt

( 25 )

CHAPTER II.
ROMAN LONDON.
" FULL fathom five " is it buried. Moderns, standing
on the accumulated ruins of a succession of cities, can
but peer down through the darkness of twenty centuries,
and dimly discern a few broad facts. All else is wrapped
in mystery, obscured by fable, overlaid by tradition, and
confused by ingenious but unsupported guesswork. The
accumulation of earth over the ancient level resembles
nothing more than the accumulation of literature over a
few historical facts. Just as the city of the present must
be cleared away, so to speak, before we can find the city
of the past, so the early history must be sought by
sweeping out of sight at once all we find as to the origin
of London in the pages of the mediaeval chroniclers, and,
it must be added, almost all that has been written since
up to a very late period. We must construct for ourselves
such a view of the subject as will square with what we
know for certain. Lud and Belin must flee away with
Troy-Novant, and Llyn Dinas. St. Helen and her wall,
St Lucius and his church, must disappear with the
temple of Diana on the site of St. Paul's. It is rather in
spite of what has been written about it, than with its
help, that we must approach Roman London. Some
theories and some traditions we may examine, but with
caution, and come to our task with our minds wholly

26 HISTORY OF LONDON.
unfettered and untrammelled.* A very few documentary
facts are beyond dispute. Something has been dis
covered by excavations unsystematically conducted. The
sites covered by modern buildings cannot be thoroughly
examined. Now and then, under an old foundation, an
older one comes to light ; and piecing them one by one
together we obtain a few leading lines, and can re
construct some of the ancient thoroughfares, and lay out
anew some of the ancient streets.
A glance at the map suffices to bring out clearly one
important point. A great many of the ancient roads —
roads, that is, which may be older than the Roman occu
pation, or that may have been diverted or altered by
the Romans on a systematic scheme — seem to converge
towards a single spot on the northern or left bank of the
Thames. Some of these roads, we may observe, for
example, after traversing the country for perhaps hun
dreds of miles in a line which is nearly straight, are
turned aside in order to reach that point. There must be
a reason for such a course. A few moments' observation
shows us what that reason was.
We have already seen that the narrowest place on the
Thames, for many miles, namely, between Battersea and
* Here are some examples of the way "history " has been employed upon
London : — Richard Newcourt dates it in the year of the world 2855 :
Thomas De Laune says, in 1681, "This city was built 2789 years ago
that is 1 108 years before the birth of Christ and (by the exactest com
putation) in the time of Samuel the prbphet and 350 years before the
building of Rome." Allen and Wright, in 1839, had not attained much
further; after repeating the old story, they continue : — "Dismissing this
fable, it will appear that the Britons had formed towns, and that to them
must be attributed the foundation of London. Csesar in his ' Commentaries'
denominates it the chief city of the Trinobantes." Caesar's mention of a
" civitas Trinobantum " may very possibly be London. It may very possibly
be St. Albans. In short it may very possibly be one of half-a-dozen places.
By "very possibly" most imposing structures of this kind have been raised.

ROMAN LONDON. 27
the mouth of the river, is at a little wharf adjoining
Thames Street, or just opposite to St. Olave's church on
the other bank. If the roads of which I have spoken
were to cross the Thames by a bridge, it is obvious that
the narrowest place was the most likely to be chosen.
If, on the other hand, a road was to cross by a ford, it
is likely that the place where the river was most shallow
would be the best. The river was deep where it was
narrow and shallow where it was broad.
Now, we find that one of the widest places is between
Westminster and the site of the new St. Thomas's
Hospital. In ancient times it was not only wider there
than it is now, but the river also spread over a large tract
on both sides, which must have been marshy, and probably
even foreshore, covered at every high tide. There is
still a district called Lambeth Marsh, on the right bank ;
and St. James's Park* occupies the place of a similarly
low-lying, and, not very long since, marshy place. If we
look at the map, accordingly, we see that a very ancient
way passed down what we call Edgware Road, and in a
straight line, now slightly diverted, by Park Lane,
towards Westminster, where it ran along a low ridge —
nowTothill Fields — and so reached the Thames. Again,
on the other side, we find a similar road seeking at once
the Surrey Hills, and so crossing to the southern coast.
This ancient way, which came from Chester and went
towards Dover, was called by the English the Watling
Street. Its course, as some have observed, follows that
of the Milky Way in the starry heaven above ; and the
same name was applied to both. On the Surrey bank,
close to St. Thomas's, is a place still called Stanegate, or
" the paved way." The country road beyond was the
* So lately as the time of Charles II. occasional high tides converted
the Palace of Whitehall into an island.

28 HISTORY OF LONDON:
" Stane Street." It is therefore more than probable, and
very little less than certain, that the Watling Street
crossed the Thames — perhaps by a ford— just here.
This must have been before a certain remarkable event
to which we next turn. There is another local name
which catches our eye, just across the Thames, near
London Bridge. It is Stony Street. The word " Stony "
connects it at once with the Stane Street mentioned above.
But how comes it there ? There can be but one answer,
when we observe, first, that an ancient street in the City
is called Watling Street. A very small portion of it lies
in the old direction, which was from a point on the bank
nearly opposite Stony Street, to the north-westerd
corner of the outer city wall. But how can we connect
Watling Street with the Edgware Road ? The answer
comes from an old Saxon charter, of which, unfortunately,
only a copy has been preserved, a charter of King
Edgar,* in which we read of a " broad military road "
between St. Andrew's, Holborn, and Tyburn. This road
Connected the Watling Street in London with the
Watling Street which came down Edgware Road : and
so we find that the old road which went on to a ford, at
Westminster, where the Thames was widest, was diverted
to the east, and passed through London to the point on
the north bank at which the Thames was narrowest.
The reason for the alteration must have been the open
ing of a better road, by ferry or bridge, at London.
To the building of the bridge London owed its early
prosperity. The exact period at which it was built has
not been ascertained. Coins in a continuous series were
found in the bed of the river when the old foundations
were taken up, ranging from the republican period to
that of Honorius, which seems to prove that the bridge
* Widmore's ' Enquiry,' p. 22 ; and Kemble, No. 569. (See chap, xvi.)

ROMAN LONDON. 29
was first made before republican coins had gone out of
use ; therefore early in the Roman occupation. It pro
bably at first consisted of great beams, founded on piles,
and the coins held ready to pay the toll slipped from
careless fingers through the gaping boards into the stream
below. Some may have been thrown in as a religious
offering to the deity of the river. The piles remained
and formed the foundations of the mediaeval bridge.
Similar piles protected Southwark, and they have been
found all along the road into Kent until the marshes
had been crossed and the higher ground reached.
I have spoken of the building of the bridge first be
cause it is the first ascertained fact in the history of
Roman London. The second fact is of a different kind.
We arrive at the earliest distinct mention of London by
name. Tacitus* tells us that in A.D. 61 it was full of
merchants and their wares, but was undefended by ram
parts. It was a place of comparatively large population,
though of little military importance. From its abandon
ment by the Roman general, Suetonius, I am led to
think that only a ferry (trajectus) existed as yet, and that
the bridge had not been completed. It was a large open
British town, full perhaps of Roman merchants and
traders, but not a Roman colony ; and it was not
worth the risk of defending against Boadicea. That risk
seems to have been great, or Suetonius would hardly
have left the place in spite of the prayers and tears of
the inhabitants. All, says Tacitus, who, on account of
their unwarlike sex, or weak old age, or because of the
attractions of the situation, f remained in London, were
slain by the enemy.
* Tac. Annal., lib. xiv. c. 33. " At Suetonius, mira constantia, medios
inter hostes Londinium perrexit cognomento quidem colonia non insigne, sed
copia negotiatorum et commeatuum maxime celebre."
t "Locidulcedo."

30 HISTORY OF LONDON.
As to the size of London at this time we know
nothing. Verulam, and Camalodunum, and London, all
taken together, contained 70,000 people — that is, the
number massacred amounted to 70,000, Many, no
doubt, escaped ; and it has often been assumed that
London must have contained 30,000 people. But we are
not warranted in coming to any conclusion which would
make it equal in size either to Verulam or Colchester,
which were colonies. All we can accept as certain
is that London was the least considerable of the three.
Strange to say, we have no further mention of the
place by any Roman author until after the lapse of more
than two centuries. We have, therefore, to turn to the
results of diggings, and other investigations of the kind,
to find out something about it. The Romans do not
seem at first to have perceived the advantages of the
position. They had a small fortified town, perhaps only
a barrack, here ; and, though it became wealthy and
populous very speedily after its destruction by the Iceni,
it was not defended. It consisted in fact of a fort com
manding the bridge, and possibly connected with a
similar fort at Southwark ;* of a port, perhaps two ports,
one at Billingsgate, and one at Dowgate ; and of a vast
ring of suburbs, surrounding the fort on the east, north,
and west sides, and extending as far as Bishopsgate,
Newgate, and even Westminster^
Of the Roman buildings we can form an approximate
idea. They were, no doubt, like Roman buildings else
where. Several castles or forts which answer very well
* It is by no means impossible that the principal Roman station was on
the southern side. This would account for Ptolemy's placing London in
Cantium. t The remains of a Roman building, perhaps a villa, with a hypocaust,
have been recently found in the nave of Westminster Abbey. They may
date from the time when the chief road to Dover crossed the Thames here.

ROMAN LONDON. 31
to the remains discovered in London are still standing
in various parts of the world. Such a place as Rich-
borough gives us a distinct view of the kind of fortress
the Romans would make in London. Let us take for
granted that London Stone marked the site of a gate
in the western rampart, for, though it is no longer in its
original place, it is not very far from it, and let us enter
and walk up from the valley of the Wallbrook to the
level ground above. We are now in an oblong walled
space, extending along the brow of a line of low bluffs
from what is now Dowgate Hill on the west to the
place where a bend occurs in the line of Little and
Great Tower Street* I do not know that the bend is
caused by this having been the site of a Roman bastion,
but it is not improbable. At the south-western corner,
overhanging Dowgate, was a great semicircular bastion,
built of stone and thin tile-like bricks in alternate
courses. It was so large that its foundations extended
from what is now Scot's Yard, beside Cannon Street
Station, to Laurence-Pountney Lane. Here the level
ground approaches nearer the river, and the lanes which
now lead down to Thames Street are shorter and
steeper, though after the Great Fire they were altered
and levelled to a considerable extent. The east and
north sides of the fortress were defended by ditches full
of water. Traces of the northern ditch remained for a
thousand years or more in the neighbourhood of Lom
bard Street, f and were looked upon as forming the bed
of a stream which ran into the Wallbrook according to
* Among projected improvements is one for the straightening of Tower
Street. t Stow says, " Langbourne Water, so called of the length thereof," rose
in Fenchurch Street, crossed Gracechurch Street, and ran down "Lumbard
Street." It was covered before his time, but some allusion to it may exist
in the name of Sherborne Lane.

32 HISTORY OF LONDON.
some, or by "divers rills or rillets to the river of
Thames." There may have been a stream, but though the
English called the ditch a bourne, and the ward through
which it ran Langbourne, we can have little hesitation
in thus identifying it, the more so, as the earliest form
of the name is not Langbourne but Langford. The
Langbourne ran from the north-eastern corner of the
little city to the declivity of Wallbrook, all along the
northern front, except where a thoroughfare parallel to
that now called Gracechurch Street, but more eastward,
and nearly on the site of Botolph Lane, crossed it, and
went out north by what the English afterwards called
the Eormen Way, towards Ancaster and Lincoln. The
whole oblong space, therefore, was crossed by two great
streets, the Watling Street from the west and north-west,
and the Eormen or Ermyn Way from the north and
north-east. The two met* at the bridge foot, and here,
therefore, was the market place, still called East Cheap.
There was possibly a small river postern at the spot now
or lately marked by Ebbgate Lane, and probably a larger
one opening on the bridge.
The walls which defended this Pretorium, as some
have called it, were enormously strong, but have almost
all gradually disappeared under the inexorable hand of
modern improvement. Cannon Street Terminus destroyed
the great south-western bastion. An immensely massive
portion was laid open lately on the east side, in Mincing
Lane, and not destroyed, only because destruction was
too expensive. All kinds of Roman remains have been
found within the walls. All, that is, except funeral relics.
No interments were made within a Roman city, and we
find none here. The moment we pass the limits marked
* A third road, the Vicinal Way, ran eastward from the northern gate
towards Essex — but was hardly yet in existence.

ROMAN LONDON. 33
above, the interments occur, some of them close under
the wall, as at St. Dunstan's church, on the east, and in
Lombard Street on the north.
Outside the fort on the west was the steep bank of
the Wallbrook, and its mouth at Dowgate. The course
of the stream was turned by the bastion mentioned
above, and close to it, with probably some kind of bridge,
was the chief gate opening on the Watling Street.
Vestiges of rude buildings have been found on the
opposite bank of the brook, which have led some writers
to suppose that a native village, perhaps of Dowgate
fishermen, stood on the height. Remains, too, have been
found which would indicate the existence then or later
of something like a place for boat-building.
Within the fort, close to the western wall, and there
fore overlooking Dowgate, was a large hall or basilica
with a tesselated pavement, perhaps the residence of the
governor, or the court where justice was administered.*
But with this exception we know of no great building
within the walls, and though a bath has been found near
the river-side, we may conclude, from the absence of an
amphitheatre or any great temple, that up to the middle
of the third century at least, the military force in London
was not large, and probably was kept apart from the
suburban population and within the fortifications. In
the later wall fragments of buildings with architectural
and artistic pretensions are sometimes found, such as
capitals, broken friezes and portions of sculptural decora
tions. But the buildings to which they belonged were
more probably outside the wall of the Roman castle.
The Roman part of the place was very small,, but, up
to the time when the great wall was built, London was
a city of suburbs as it is to-day. The long peace of Roman
* Harrison, p. 7.
VOL. I. D

34 HISTORY OF LONDON.
rule rendered it unnecessary for the ordinary townsman
to live within fortifications. In this respect London
differs and, as it appears, differed fifteen hundred years
ago, from the cities of the Continent. The whole of the
ground round the Roman fort was covered with houses,
some great, magnificent, artificially warmed, frescoed and
painted, and some also, no doubt, mere hovels. There
were gardens, trees and orchards, and among them what
was not to be seen in any other Roman town of the size,
the tombs and monuments of the dead. The population
was singularly careless in this respect, and the hand of
the modern excavator sometimes * comes upon the
mosaic floor of a Roman villa, with a portion of the later
wall built across it, and a grave underneath it.
The banks of the Wallbrook were especially popular
as sites for villas. All along its winding course, at
a varying depth, we come upon evidences of the wealth
and luxury of these old dwellers in the pleasant ravine
beside Threadneedle Street, or the rounded summit of
Cornhill by the great northern highway. It is here that
the finest remains have been found, many of them
covered with layers of black ashes which betray at
once the fragile character of the wooden houses, and the
constant occurrence of destructive fires.
The merchants came into the port from many foreign
shores. The oysters of Britain, the iron, the tin and
lead, and perhaps also the corn, were embarked at
Billingsgate and Dowgate. The merchants built their
one-storeyed houses round the castle, and have left us
a few evidences of their wealth and taste, t We may
* As at Camomile Street a few years ago.
t See Mr. Roach Smith's Catalogue of his London Museum, and Sir
William Tite's 'Antiquities exhibited at the Royal Exchange.' To the
latter work, and other books and papers by the same author, I am chiefly
indebted for this view of Roman London.

ROMAN LONDON. 35
picture them to ourselves, as they assemble in the narrow
lanes, aping Roman manners and wrapping themselves
in Roman togas to hide the " braccae " which the climate
rendered necessary. We see the British maidens tripping
down the steps by the Wallbrook, to fill great red jars bf
Kentish pottery, where now clerks hurry down from
Threadneedle Street to Broad Street and never think
why stairs are necessary between the two parallel rows
of houses. We may visit the market-place, and where
now the Sailor King's statue looks down on the crowd
of omnibuses and drays, may see some foreign slave
merchant, with cunning, swarthy face, as he haggles over
the wretched gang of fair-skinned children from beyond
the northern forests. We may perhaps stand by and
see the Roman base coin counted out by the money
changers, and hear the frequent ring to test the genuine
ness of some plated " penny." * Or we may witness a
dispute between a Gaulish merchant and a Frankish
mercenary, and a riot may ensue, the guard be called out,
and the ringleaders taken before the propraetor or the
centurion. Perhaps he sends them on to York for trial,
and writes with them such a letter as Claudius Lysias
wrote to Felix, f
Such must have been Roman London during two-thirds,
at least, of its existence. It is not the picture usually
drawn ; % for we are accustomed to talk as if Roman
London was always the same, and to forget that it
underwent many changes, and only acquired the walls
which still, in a sense, survive, towards the end of the
* By far the larger portion of the denarii found in the Thames consist of
lead and brass, plated with silver. (Roach Smith, p. 89.)
t Acts, xxiii. 26.
t This, which is the only chronological and therefore reasonable view,
was first described by Mr. Arthur Taylor in the 'Archseologia,' xxxiii.
101.
D 2

36 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Roman occupation of Britain. It was still an unwalled
town when the next event of which we have documen
tary evidence occurred.
The story is a curious one, but it may be noted as
characteristic of our city that the mention of a great
fog is the means of removing the mist which, for
nearly two centuries and a half, had enshrouded its
history. It was now near the close of the third century of the
Christian era, and Diocletian, the Emperor of the Roman
world, had just (A.D. 286) associated Maximian with him
in the government. The two emperors were univer
sally acknowledged except in Britain and Gaul, where
Carausius had long been chief commander of a fleet for
the suppression of German piracies in the Channel. He
now declared himself, or was elected by his soldiers
" Emperor." His insular residence was at Clausentum,
now Bitterne, on Southampton Water, where a Roman
stone pier still exists ; but he was probably more often at
his Gallic capital, Boulogne. He was very wealthy, as
he had retained the booty taken from the pirates, and
was popular with his soldiers in consequence. For seven
years he maintained his power, and, feeling no doubt
pretty sure the emperors would not acknowledge him,
he took the matter into his own hands, and pretending to
recognise Maximian as his colleague, struck a gold medal
at London — perhaps the earliest coin minted there — on
which the name of his rival appears, with an inscription
which implies the simultaneous existence of three
emperors.* We should know little indeed of his reign
* Obv.— Maximianus P. F. Aug. Laureated head of Maximianus to
the right ; rev. Salus Auggg. Personification of the goddess Salus
standing, and feeding a serpent from a patera. In the exergue M.L., for
Moneta Londinensis. (Roach Smith, Catalogue, p. 86.)

ROMAN LONDON. 37
were it not for the large amount of money he issued,
much of it at London. This is the only thing to connect
him with the place, which it is, however, evident that he
held and used as a treasury.
At length the Csesar, Constantius, sent by the two
emperors, marched upon Boulogne and laid siege to it.
Carausius fled away to Britain, where he might have
remained long in comparative security ; but his prestige
was gone when his cowardice became apparent, and he
was murdered by Allectus, one of his officers, who
assumed the purple, and for three years held sway in
Britain while Constantius was occupied in reducing the
rebellious Franks to obedience. The capital of Allectus
was probably Clausentum. It was certainly not London,
though he coined some money there.*
Allectus stationed his fleet off the Isle of Wight, and
swept the Channel. He largely recruited his army from
the Franks whom Constantius had driven out of Gaul,
and a descent upon Britain in the teeth of such an arma
ment was a work not to be lightly undertaken. But
Constantius, though he went slowly about the business,
went surely. He gradually assembled a fleet at Havre,
and selected a trustworthy officer to command it. This
was Asclepiodotus, of whom it is strange that we hear
so little in subsequent history. News of the intended
invasion reached Allectus, who probably thinking Clau
sentum sufficiently protected by his fleet, marched
eastward, lest the troops of Asclepiodotus should land in
Kent. London, or more probably Southwark, was evi
dently his base of operations : and his army, too large for
* 'The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon,' by T. Wright, p. I13, &c, a
summary of almost all that is known of these emperors. In the following
pages I have given my own version of the events so far as they relate to
London.

38 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the citadel, was encamped on some of the hills* on the
south side of the Thames. The bridge, open behind him,
and, in case of defeat, the possibility of retreating north
ward beyond the Thames, made his position very strong;
Asclepiodotus was ready in A.D. 296, and having
assembled his galleys at Havre, and taken his troops on
board, found his progress impeded by a fog and an east
wind. But the conqueror of Britain must not be afraid
of either the one or the other. Asclepiodotus set sail, in
the fog, thereby eluding the fleet of Allectus ; and using
the side wind in, a way few Romans had attempted
before, he landed in the west, thereby eluding also the
army of Allectus. The place of his landing is unknown,
but the story reminds us of the landing of William of
Orange in 1688, the more so as the result was similar.
The Romans in Britain, whether colonists or Romanised
natives, were probably very tired of the ten years' tyranny,
first of Carausius and afterwards of Allectus ; for the
island was of necessity cut off from the Continent by a
blockade like that established by Buonaparte at a later
date ; and the " citizens of Rome," living in Britain,
missed the commerce and all the other benefits of their
august position, and found themselves reduced to their
pristine condition of mere islanders. We cannot doubt
that Asclepiodotus, long expected, was warmly welcomed
and his expedition forwarded towards London by the
colonists of the west. But before he commenced his
march, he burnt his galleys, and having thus both re
lieved a large number of men from guarding the fleet,
and also cut off all chances of flight in case of defeat,
he turned eastward, and was soon heard of in London
as being on his way along the left or north bank of the
Thames. * There are traditions and reports of camps at Clapham and Vauxhall.

. ROMAN LONDON. 39
Allectus, thus taken in flank, or perhaps in rear,*
hastily summoning his soldiers, some of whom may have
been encamped as far out as Wimbledon, commenced to
cross the Thames by the bridge at London. But it was
a work of time and skill to march a large army through
a narrow outwork, over a narrower bridge, through the
very circumscribed walls of the fort of London, and out
into the crowded suburbs by the only gate which opened
upon the Watling Street. Whether from want of experi
ence or panic, Allectus failed to accomplish the task.f
He was met by Asclepiodotus with a superior force,
defeated and slain. His mercenary Franks, who prac
tically held the city already, some of them in all proba
bility having not yet passed the bridge, commenced
plundering and burning, with an idea of -escaping across
the sea with their booty ; but Asclepiodotus gave them
no time, for he immediately marched into the intricate
network of villas, orchards, and cemeteries which sur
rounded London, and killed the greater number of the
marauders. The citizens warmly welcomed Constantius when
he came over, for the mercantile class in London
desired peace, a strong government, and open communi
cation with the Continent, all of them gifts which he
brought with him. But he did not stay. The Picts and
Scots were troublesome on the northern frontier ; he
made his headquarters at York,$ and we hear no more
* The facts on which this narrative is based are very meagre ; a long
and careful consideration of the geographical as well as the documentary
exigencies of the case has induced me to piece together what may be
considered a reasonably connected account.
t Some of us may remember the duke of Wellington's opinion as to
the difficulty of marching 20,000 men out of Hyde Park.
% It may be worth while to note that, though the wife, or concubine, of
Constantine was possibly a British slave girl who attracted and retained

40 HISTORY OF LONDON.
of London for half a century. When Constantine, his
son, became emperor in 306, he was in Britain ; but his
connection with London is only marked by the issue of
coins bearing his name, and a London mint mark. There
are also coins bearing the name of his mother, Helena,
which have the syllable " Lon " in the mint mark.* They
seem to point to the presence of the divorced wife of the
late emperor in Britain, or may have been coined by her
son merely in her honour. There is no proof that Helena
ever set foot in our island. Coins of the emperor's wife,
and of his two sons, Crispus and Constantine, are also
found with the presumed London mint marks ; therefore
it seems probable that, during the ascendancy of this
family, London began to be looked upon with increasing
favour. It is certain that, either under Constantine him
self, or under one of his immediate successors, the outer
wall was built.
Though the building of the Roman wall, which still in
a sense defines the city boundaries, is an event in the
history of London not second in importance even to its
foundation, since it made a mere village and fort with a
" tete du pont " into a great city and the capital of pro
vincial Britain, yet we have no records by which an exact
date can be assigned to it. All we know is that in 350
London had no wall : and in 369 the wall existed, f

his fancy during this expedition, the whole London legend of St. Helena
and her father, "old king Cole" of Colchester, has about as much con
temporary authority as the nursery rhyme about the "fiddlers three." Yet
I saw it not long ago fully and gravely detailed in the history of a church
in the city dedicated to the saint. Wright (p. 371) calls Helena the
daughter-in-law of Constantine ; a very gratuitous assumption, but one
which, so far as London evidence is concerned, may be correct. Gibbon
makes her the daughter of a Nicomedian innkeeper and allows the marriage.
* Roach Smith, p. 97.
t These dates are arrived at by Sir William Tite (Archseol., xxxvi.
203) by a comparison of two passages in Ammianus. It will be well

ROMAN LONDON., 41
The new wall must have taken in an immense tract
of what was until then open country, especially along
the Watling Street, towards Cheap and Newgate. It
transformed London into Augusta ; and though the new
name hardly appears on the page of history, and never
without a reference to the older one, its existence proves
the increase in estimation which was then accorded to
the place. The object of this extensive circumvallation
is not very clear. The population to be protected might
very well have been crowded into a much smaller space.
But at that time Roman houses were seldom more than
one storey in height, and spread over a large space,
especially as most of them were rather villas than town
houses, and were, of course, surrounded by extensive
gardens and pleasure grounds. Among the trees and
flowers rose frequent terminal figures and occasional
shrines of rude but costly workmanship, in which the
successful merchant burnt incense before a precious
bronze Mercury brought in his last cargo from Rome
itself, or the idle man of pleasure set up an ill-sculptured
effigy of Diana, in the hopes of obtaining by her favour
good sport in the wooded hills of Middlesex.
The wall enclosed a space of 380 acres, being 5485
yards in length, or 3 miles and 205 yards.* The por
tion along the river extended from Blackfriars to the
Tower — the Thames bank being strengthened with
piles — -and was finished by bastions and additional
defences at the angles. Near the chief gates, and, per-
here to caution the reader against supposing that any remains of the
Roman wall are now to be identified with certainty. The wall was re
built more than once in the middle ages, and the use of ancient material,
such as brick, has led to the ascription of much mediaeval work to the
Romans. * These figures are Harrison's. It is not now any longer possible to
trace exactly the course of the Roman wall.

42 HISTORY OF LONDON.
haps, at the Barbican on the long north face, there were
similar bastions. The wall was built in the usual Roman
manner, with alternate courses of thin bricks and stone.*
There were two land gates and three water gates, as
well as the gate to the bridge. Of the form and ap
pearance of the wall and its towers we can only judge
by the remains of similar buildings elsewhere. There
have been so many renewals of the city defences that
little of the original work, except the materials, is ever
now to be seen. In one respect, however, the wall re
mains almost intact, namely, as the boundary between
the city of London and the county of Middlesex.
There have been only three serious alterations of this
boundary. The ward of Farringdon Without, comprising
Smithfield, Fleet Street, and the valley of the Fleet, then a
marsh, was abstracted from Westminster and added to
London in 1 346. The ward of Bishopsgate Without was
also added at a period not as yet fixed with certainty, but
probably a hundred years earlier.f These changes are
at the western and northern sides, and naturally fol
lowed from the growth of suburbs without the gates.
The erection of a gate on the eastern side led similarly
to the addition of Portsoken as a ward,t which took place
early in the twelfth century. We must also notice
another alteration. The south-eastern corner of the wall
was removed, and the Tower of London was built on the
* Unfortunately few of the antiquaries who had an opportunity of
examining the wall while any considerable part of it was intact were
capable of distinguishing Roman from mediaeval masonry. None of the
fragments I have had the good fortune to see appeared to me older than
the time of Edward IV., though full of Roman bricks.
t A ditch to enclose and defend this extramural ward was made in
1212. X The history of Aldgate and the Portsoken will be found in a
subsequent chapter. (See below, in this volume, p. 162, etc.)

ROMAN LONDON. 43
site, between 1077 and 11 99, a small portion of the city
precincts being invaded.
The course of the wall may be briefly detailed. Be
ginning at Blackfriars, we may follow it in a northerly
direction along the crest of the hill above the Fleet.
A watergate, opening on the little river, was at Ludgate.
The chief exit on this side was at Newgate, almost on
the site of the mediaeval gate. Here the Watling Street
emerged from the city. The wall then took a north
easterly course, between St. Bartholomew's Hospital and
Christ's Hospital, and, forming a kind of angle where
Aldersgate was afterwards made, turned north for a
short distance, and then east again to Bishopsgate, the
second great land gate of the city. It stood a little to
the east of the mediaeval gate, and gave admission to
travellers arriving from the north by the Ermyn Street,
and from the east by the Vicinal Way, which united
at this point. Thence sloping in a south-easterly direc
tion, past the point at which Aldgate was opened in
the later time, it reached the Thames exactly on the
spot on which the White Tower now stands.* A little
to the westward was Billingsgate, a port of superior
importance to that on the Fleet, and still further west,
above the bridge, the smaller port of Dowgate at the
mouth of the Wallbrook.
The road from the bridge, dividing at Eastcheap, ran
northward to Bishopsgate, and north-westward to New
gate. The northward street passed, in a line parallel
with Gracechurch Street, but lying further east, over
Cornhill, whose name possibly denotes its open condition
when the Saxons came, and, dividing outside the gate,
the left-hand branch ran on towards Lincoln and York,
* This must be the explanation of the common ascription of the Tower
to the Romans.

44 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the right branch over the Old Ford of the Lea into
Essex. When a new bridge was made at Stratford, a
little lower down the stream, or a little earlier, when
the roadway to Stratford was paved, another entrance
was made to the city at Aldgate ; but this would be
after the Roman time.*
The new city, which was still smaller than Uriconium,
and probably York and Verulam, does not appear to have
contained a single public building of importance. There
was no forum, unless the supposed basilica within the
citadel be considered part of one ; there was no amphi
theatre, no temple worthy of so great a city. Some
remains were found under Bow church in Cheap by Sir
Christopher Wren, and were decided to be those of a
temple, on what grounds we have no means now of
finding out. Sir Christopher discredited the idea of a
temple of Diana on the site of St. Paul's : — " I must
assert that, having changed all the foundations of old
St. Paul's, and upon that occasion rummaged all the
ground thereabouts, and being very desirous to find
some footsteps of such a temple, I could not discover
any." Had Sir Christopher Wren known that at the
time this hill was first included within the walls of
London, a Christian family was on the imperial throne,
and that, although idolatry had not yet been expressly
abolished, it was unlikely that any great heathen edifice
would adorn the new city, he might have saved himself
some troublcf The absence of ornamental pavements
* See chap. vi.
t Yet it is reasserted without a particle of proof by the author of
Murray's ' Handbook to St. Paul's ' (p. 6), chiefly on the grounds of the
altar of a hunting goddess, or god, having been discovered in Foster Lane.
A piece of sculpture is found near Goldsmiths' Hall : the figure on it held a
bow ; therefore there was a temple of Diana on the site of St. Paul's.—
Q.E.D. Too much London history is of this sort.

ROMAN LONDON. 45
so far west, or of the other signs of occupation so fre
quent about the Wallbrook, shows that, in all probability,
the suburb here, if indeed there was a suburb, was incon
siderable ; for it is possible enough that, in order to take
in the geographical features described in the last chapter,
the ground surrounded by this new wall may at the time
have been in many places absolutely open, while in
others the sites of villas which extended beyond it were
traversed by it. It is also just possible that such changes
in the direction of its course as that by Aldersgate were
caused by the desire to enclose a building or avoid a
swamp ; but it is more likely that this angle contained a
postern protected by a barbican.
The question is often asked as to whether any vestiges
of Christian worship have been found within this area.
There can be but one reply. Nothing to indicate the
existence of a church, and only some doubtful indications
of Christian burial, have yet rewarded the most care
ful search. A pin or two, ornamented with crosses, and a
seal or stamp, dredged out of the Thames, are all that can
possibly be classed as of the Roman period. The absurd
claim lately put forward, with encouragement from very
high quarters, on the part of St. Peter's-upon-Cornhill to
represent a church founded in Roman or British times,
would be too ridiculous to deserve notice here, were it not
that a few years ago the parish, or some of its repre
sentatives, celebrated the 1700th anniversary of the
foundation by a religious service. Such a celebration,
though turned to a charitable object, looks like playing
at religion, and is not calculated to further a love of
truth and honesty among those for whom the Church is
supposed especially to labour. There is certainly a very
ancient tradition, and perhaps something more than a
tradition, as to a Bishop of London ; and it is supported

46 HISTORY OF LONDON.
by the recorded presence of a British bishop named
Restitutus, sometimes said to have been Bishop of
London, at the Council of Aries in 3 14.* It is remarkable
that of the fourteen bishops mentioned by Jocelyn, a
monkish chronicler of the twelfth century, as having
succeeded each other in this see, not one is afterwards to
be found as the patron saint of a London church.
I hoped at one time, by means of a classified list of the
city church dedications, to have been enabled to arrive at
some positive conclusions on the subject. In the result
I only found that the presumably oldest churches, such
as St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. Mary-le-bow, St. Stephen's,
St. Andrew's, and others, were dedicated to the apostles
and members of the primitive Church, and that there was
not a single case in which any reminiscence, however faint,
could be traced to a British saint. There are some
churches, such as St. Helen's and St. Alban's, of which
the history and origin are well known as comparatively
recent, which are dedicated to saints supposed at the
time of the dedication to belong to the ancient British
Church. Moreover, among the dedications to the Blessed
Virgin and the Apostles, there are many churches of
which the origin is on record.f Yet, as the wall was built
after the conversion of the West, Roman London — that
is " Augusta," — was always a Christian city, a fact which
may be taken to account in some measure for absence
of remains of temples.
* Mr. Stubbs ('Episcopal Succession in England,' p. 152) also mentions
a British bishop, Fastidius, as living in 431. He gives the apocryphal list
of British bishops of London, beginning with Theonus or Theanus who
was said to have built the church of St Peter in the time of Lucius, but
adds a caution as to the "uncritical" state of the list, which, by the way
does not include Restitutus.
t I shall have occasion to return to this subject when speaking of the
Saxon and Danish dedications. (See below, pp. 60 and 72.)

ROMAN LONDON. A7
That no very magnificent city ever filled the space
thus walled in is abundantly evident from the remains
found. A more poverty-stricken exhibition cannot be
imagined than the Roman museum at the Guildhall, yet
it contains by far the finest collection in existence.
From the mosaic pavements here and at the British
Museum, we learn that in such arts as those of house
decoration the Londoners were fairly advanced, but that
the rooms they occupied were miserably small. There
are few other works of art — gold there is none, and the
statues and statuettes are for the most part fragments, of
foreign make. A new room has been opened in the
British Museum, where a small silver statue of Harpo-
crates is preserved, which was dredged out of the Thames
in 1825 ; and a very good bronze of an archer. Another
figure, said to represent Diana, was found near the Dean
ery, between St. Paul's and the river bank, and forms, with
the altar mentioned above, the chief or only argument
for the existence of a temple on the site now occupied
by the church. London Stone, a cubic foot of oolite,
protected in 1869 by an iron grating, is probably a
Roman relic, and is typical of the mutilated and un
shapely condition of almost all that has been discovered.
The early condition of London, a fort surrounded by
unprotected villas, is sufficient to account for this
apparent poverty, while its later condition, fitting
loosely within a wall too large for it, in a period of
disaster and decay, renders absurd any very sanguine
expectations of the future disclosure of more important
remains. I now resume the enumeration of the historical notices
of Roman London. In 360, Lupicinus, the lieutenant of
Julian, being despatched to Britain to repel an invasion of
the northern barbarians, set sail from Boulogne, landed

4 8 HIS TOR Y OF L OND ON.
at Richborough,* and marched to London, but of his
further proceedings we know nothing. It is probable
that even for the time his efforts were unsuccessful.
The Picts and Scots were making daily progress, and in
368 were already in sight of the walls. They plundered
the surrounding country, the forests affording them
cover, and nothing but the new wall would have been
able to resist them, but Valentinian sent an able general,
named Theodosius, who, landing like Lupicinus, at Rich-
borough, was able, finding the barbarians scattered about,
to defeat them in detail, and relieve London. He
restored the plunder to its owners, and was joyfully
received by the citizens at their gates. This Theodosius
was father of the emperor of the same name, who, dying
in 395, was succeeded by the feeble Honorius, under
whom the Roman occupation of Britain came to an
end. Of London at this crisis we hear nothing. That it
enjoyed some years of comparative security and peace
after the Romans withdrew is very likely, but the
history of the time has yet to be written. Though it is
pretty certain that to the end of the occupation a strong
imperial force was constantly within its fortifications,
we cannot even tell by which of the legions the troops
of the propraetor were supplied.
I have thus endeavoured to piece together the few
fragments, topographical or documentary, which relate
to Roman London. The result is more shadowy than I
wish. The historian cannot but shrink from seeing his
pages abundantly sprinkled with such words as " possibly,"
" perhaps," " in all probability," and yet, when I come to
look at the passages in which I have been minded to ex
press myself with a fair measure of certainty, I regret to
* Or Rutupiae, near Sandwich in Kent.

ROMAN LONDON. 49
observe that in each case an alternative story may be, or
has been put forward. If I have succeeded at all, it is
only in showing how very little we know about the early
history of the city. That it was ever the capital of
Britain, as so many have asserted, can only be doubtfully
proved regarding the short time which elapsed between
the building of the wall and the withdrawal of the
imperial troops. It was only named Augusta during the
brief period which succeeded the re-organisation of the
empire under Constantine and his family. The remains
discovered tell us little in comparison with what we
know of several other British towns. But we do know
that far beneath the feet of the busy throng which presses
every day the pavements of modern London, there lie
buried the traces of an ancient city — a city which has
well kept up the character accorded to it by Tacitus, and
through whose streets there has been no cessation of that
concourse of merchants, that crowd of foreign peoples,
that activity and bustle which have made it, during
nearly 2000 years, a thriving commercial city. A foreign
poet spoke of it in the 17th century in words far more
true now than they were then, when he said of London
that it was, — " Cunctas celebrata per oras,
Cor mundi, mundique oculus, mundique theatrum,
Annulus Europes, praesignis adorea terrae."*

* From ' Venceslai Clementis a Lybeo-Monte Trinobantiados Augusta,
sive Londoni: libri vi.' The date is elaborately concealed in a chronogram,
but appears to be 1636, and the poem is dedicated to Charles I. by
" Autor, Christi exsul."

VOL. I.

( So )

CHAPTER III.
SAXON LONDON.
IT was necessary to conclude the last chapter by a refer
ence to the insuperable difficulties presented by much of
the history of Roman London. These difficulties are
doubled when we approach the subject of Saxon London,
We have to attempt the construction of a continued
narrative from the most meagre facts. The Romans
left Britain in 410.* The East Saxons are in London in
609. Of the intervening years, eventful as they were
to the country at large, we have no records relating
to London, except that after the fatal battle of Cray
ford, in 457, the fugitives of Kent took refuge within
her walls.
All that can be done, therefore, by the historian is to
place in chronological order the notices found in the
most nearly contemporary documents — for of really con
temporary documents there are none — and to mention
such topographical facts as may seem to bear on the
question of the first conquest of London by the Saxons.
From the year 369, then, when Ammianus Marcellinus
tells us of the expedition of Theodosius, to the year 457,
we have no mention of London. In the interval the
Saxons were pouring over the land. We know that the
great and terrible events which were to make Britain
* Green, ' Making of England,' p. 24.

SAXON LONDON,

To -facet -p. 50.

Stanford's GeogT-EEtab'

3000 FEET

London: Edward Stanford, 55 Oiaring Cross.

SAXON LONDON. 5 r
into England, were happening all through the island.
The half-Romanised cities were everywhere yielding to
the heathen invader, and being destroyed deliberately
and slowly, or else were resisting him, and being destroyed
with fire and massacre. The great storm rages : the
clouds hide all the landscape : the thunder roars : the
lightning dazzles our sight : then a corner of the obscurity
clears for a moment, and we see London standing alone
in the midst of the tempest. " This year," says the
Chronicle, grimly, " Hengest, and ^Esc his son, fought
against the Britons at the place which is called Cregan-
ford, and there slew four thousand men ; and the Britons
then forsook Kent, and in great terror fled to London,"
We see the city surrounded by the invaders, and the hap
less fugitives from the slaughter in the valley of the Cray
crowding the gates. Then the cloud settles down again,
and we see no more. Augusta has made her very last
appearance on the stage of history. What went on
within the Roman walls after that fatal year, 457, we
know not. There is silence everywhere, and it lasts for a
century and a half. In the passage from the Chronicle
we are admitted to one glimpse of the awful drama : but
the rest of the tale is untold. The denoument must be
guessed. The third volume is lost.
It is easy to talk lightly, but this is one of the most
awful episodes in our history. What the hapless Britons
must have suffered from their conquerors cannot be
realised or described. That a great nation should have been
so completely effaced, and in so short a time, is in itself a
marvel. But that the conquest of Essex and .Middlesex,
and above all, of the great walled city of London, should
have taken place without any historical notice whatever,
is even more extraordinary. " No territory," remarks a
great foreign historian, " ever passed so obscurely into
E 2

52 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the possession of an enemy as the north bank of the
Thames."* When we next meet with London, she is the chief
town of a Saxon kingdom. The invaders of Britain, as
enumerated by the chronicler, were Old Saxons, Angles
and Jutes. From the Old Saxons came, he says, the
men of Essex and Sussex and Wessex. This is the first
time we hear of Essex, namely in 449. Under the year
491, we have an account of the conquest of the Channel
coast by the tribe afterwards known as the South Saxons.
Under 495 we have the beginnings of Wessex. But of
the East Saxons, the conquerors of London, we have no
history. How their progress was crowned by the posses8
sion of the most important position in England, we do
not know. We find them in full possession.! It is in
604. " This year," says the Chronicle, " Augustine hal
lowed two bishops, Mellitus and Justus. He sent Mellitus
to preach baptism to the East Saxons, whose king was
called Seberht, son of Ricula, the sister of Ethelbert,
whom Ethelbert had there set as king. And Ethelbert
gave to Mellitus a bishop's see at London, and to Justus
he gave Rochester."
From this short passage we learn that in spite of the
strength of London, the men of Kent were stronger than
the East Saxons. The king of Kent appointed Seberht
Had the wall been broken down ? This is very probable.
It was no defence a few years later against the Danes
and had to be rebuilt by Alfred. The Essex men made
no attempt to resist Egbert in London in 827. In fact,
there is negative evidence enough to make it a very
strong presumption that London, while it was occupied
* Lappenherg, i. III.
t Turner says the settlement occurred about 530, basing the date
evidently on Matthew of Westminster, who names 527.

SAXON L OND ON. 5 3
by the East Saxons, was not a place of military import
ance. It was perhaps too large to defend. Its walls
were perhaps unsuited to the Saxon system of warfare.
Whatever be the cause, it is certain that the occupation
of London was no source of strength to the Essex kings,
who were alternately subdued by Kent and Mercia and
Wessex, and finally subsided into mere local nobles.*
London, in short, was rather a source of weakness than
of strength ; and it is worth while to inquire why. The
answer which occurs to me is twofold. First, the walls
had to be kept up. They were always getting out of
repair. A single breach in so great a length ruined the
value of all. Had the old Roman fort remained, their
tenure of London might have had great results for the
East Saxons. The costs and charges summed up under
the old formula, "burh-bote and bryc-geweorc," must
have fallen very heavily on the inhabitants. At a slightly
later period we shall find that there were very valiant
men among the citizens, and the exceptional discipline
required for keeping their defences in working order may
have contributed to increase their martial spirit. But at
first, when they were few in number, these charges were
a burden too great for them. And a second source of
weakness to the East Saxons in the possession of London
lay in the fact that other people were interested in it.
There was the bridge which led into another kingdom.
There was the port occupied by foreign merchants. The
East Saxons would seem never to have had complete
power, and if the king of Kent could appoint a bishop
and could station his own officer, like a modern consul in
* A " Sigred Dux,1' who witnessed a charter in 810 is supposed to be
identical with Sigered, king of Essex, who was present at a Witan " in the
royal city of London," in 811. A Sired is recorded to have built a church
at Aldgate before noo. See also Appendix M.

54 HISTORY OF LONDON.
an oriental port, to look after the commercial dealings of
his subjects, it will be easily understood that the Essex
kings had the trouble, the expense, the military duty to
perform in London, and yet were themselves little the
better. We may incidentally gather a few other inferences
from the Essex occupation. The Britons left in London
must have been very few. With the single and doubtful
exception of Dow-gate — the first syllable of which may
be Celtic, none of the local names survived. The Saxons
re-named everything. The great streets became, what
ever they may have been before, Watling Street and Corn^
hill, and the Ermyn Street. The market-places became
East, and West Cheap. The western and eastern ports
became Lud-gate and Billings-gate. In England many
rivers retain Celtic names, like the Thames itself. But
in London we have the Hole-bourne, the Fleet, the Wall
brook, the Lea.* When we examine the direction of the
Roman remains, the facing, for example, of a villa, as
shown by its pavement, we do not find it coincide with the
direction of the modern streets. The great northern road
entered the Roman wall considerably to the east of the
mediaeval Bishopsgate. The Watling Street led to a gate
which was by no means on the exact site of Newgate.
In short, there are evidences, rather negative, it is true,
than positive, to show that the East Saxons found
London desolate, with broken walls,f and a scanty popu
lation, if any ; that they entered on possession with no
great feeling of exultation, after no great military feat
deserving mention in their Chronicle ; and that they re
tained it only just so long as the more powerful neigh-
* The Lea may bear a Celtic name analogous to the modern French eau.
f " Good reasons may be given for the belief that even London itself for
a while lay desolate and uninhabited." — Guest, ' Arch. Journ.,' xix. 217.

SAXON LONDON. 55
bouring kings allowed them. This view is the only
one which seems to me to account for the few facts we
have. That there was no great or violent conquest seems
clear from the continued existence of the bridge, and
from the continued concourse of foreign merchants ;
and it is very possible that these foreign merchants
occupied a small habitable area in a vast wilderness of
abandoned villas and open fields. I have already endea
voured to show that, until the last few years of the
Roman occupation, London cannot have been very
populous. The wall included many large empty spaces.
When the city became Augusta, and was dignified with
the presence of great Roman officials and a Roman
army, it became populous enough. But if we subtract
the army and the officials, and also the " concourse of
foreign merchants," who in time of war would retire to
their own lands, there may not have been much left ; and
the Britons, defeated at Crayford, and so closely pressed
that they did not even destroy the bridge after them,
very possibly stayed but a short time in London, which
the successors of Hengest left peaceably to their East
Saxon neighbours — a possession of no value to people
who did not fight from behind walls. In Anderida and
Richborough and Canterbury, we see the same low value
placed on Roman defences. Anderida and Richborough
were not even occupied as forts. The Britons had lost
the art of using walled cities, the Saxons had not
acquired it. London was equally useless to both.
The written history of London at this period is the
history of the Church. It is to be feared that the
Londoners did not take kindly to the change of religion.
To their independent minds it must have seemed a sign
of servitude. Ethelbert had seen Gospel light in a
woman's eyes, and were they to give up their gods, and

56 HISTORY OF LONDON.
undergo a rite which made every British slave on their
farms their equal in the sight of religion ? Were not
their princes, the family of Erkenwine, Offa's son, de
scended from Woden, the great god of the north ? Yet,
Ethelbert not only ordered them to abandon the worship
of the divinities who had brought them safely from over
the sea, and given the Welsh of London into their hands,
but imposed on them a bishop, and built for him a
cathedral. Beda, who fully ranks with the Chronicle as
an early and trustworthy authority, tells us that Ethelbert
had command over all nations of the English as far as
the Humber, and that he built the church of St. Paul in
London, where Mellitus and his successors should have
the Episcopal See.
Of London itself, at this time, Beda tells us something.
It was, he says, the " metropolis " of the East Saxons,
who were divided from Kent by the river Thames.
The word " metropolis " has of late years been so often
applied to London that it is interesting to note its first
use. Beda, no doubt, in this instance, refers to the
ecclesiastical position of the place, with its bishop and its
church ; but in this connection his words have a larger
meaning, and leave no doubt on the mind that Seberht,
in his official capacity as king of Essex, had his head
quarters in London ; just as Mellitus, in his official capa
city as bishop of London, had the regions peopled by
the East Saxons for his diocese.
Seberht reigned more than twelve years after his con
version before he " departed to the heavenly kingdom," as
Beda quaintly says. After his death the mission of
Mellitus failed. Without his support, and that of Ethel
bert, for both were now dead, the bishop found his
teaching vain. The son of Ethelbert had outraged the
laws of the church of Canterbury. His cousins, the three

SAXON LONDON. 57
sons of Seberht, went further ; they openly relapsed,
and, worse than all, in the eyes of the chroniclers, they
gave the people leave to believe what they chose. The
bishop and his church had no sanctity in their eyes.
They saw in the sacrifice of the mass a kind of fetish — a
ceremony which impressed their imagination and worked
on their superstitious fears ; and they tried to force
Mellitus to communicate with them, though they were
unbaptised. On his refusal they turned him out of
London. Beda is not slow to add the appropriate moral, and_.in
so doing gives us a valuable little historical note. The
kings, he says, did not long continue unpunished in
their heathenish worship ; for, marching to battle against
the men of Wessex, they were all slain with their
army. Unfortunately, it is impossible not to suspect that here
Beda has constructed history on the principle of " after,
therefore, because," since the Chronicle, which says
nothing about the sons of Seberht, tells us only that, in
6 1 6, Ethelbert, king of Kent, and Laurence, archbishop
of Canterbury, died, and that Mellitus, "who formerly
had been bishop of London, succeeded to the arch
bishopric. Then," it continues, "the men of London,
where Mellitus had formerly been, became heathens
again." This ambiguous passage, taken literally, says
therefore, that Mellitus had ceased to be bishop in
London before he became archbishop ; but that the
relapse of the East Saxons did not take place till after
he became archbishop. Though this is the literal
meaning of the words, I think it would be straining them
not to allow for a certain awkwardness of construction
which would leave it possible that Beda's account, and
that of the Chronicle, are mainly in accordance.

5.8 HISTORY OF LONDON.
This battle with the men of Wessex is, after all, the
important part of the story. The West Saxons appa
rently did not possess themselves of London.* Eventually
— but not for two hundred years — Wessex was to be
paramount in London ; but here we only find the succes
sion of Essex kings unbroken, and the notices of their
chief city more and more unfrequent. We have seen
them subject to Kent and subdued by Wessex, and when
we next hear of London, it is fifty years later, and they
are then subject to Northumbria. Oswy, king of North
umbria, converted — we know not by what means; —
Sigebert, king of Essex. It does not appear quite
clearly that this Sigebert had possession of London, for
when Cedd, the brother of St. Chad, came at his request
to preach to the heathen of Essex, he took up his head
quarters several miles further down the river — at Tilbury.
Here, in any case, he soon gathered a congregation, and
eventually succeeded in converting the whole population.
In 654 Cedd was consecrated at Lindisfarne, by Finan
and two other bishops, as bishop of London, f Of the
ten years of his episcopate, we only know that when
they closed London was no longer in the power of
Northumbria, but in that of Mercia, since Beda tells us
of Wina, a West Saxon bishop, that, being expelled
from Winchester, he took refuge in Mercia, and, on the
death of Cedd, purchased with money from king Wulf-
here the bishopric of London.
Under such unfavourable circumstances was London
Christianised. It is not surprising to find, a little later,
that one of the kings of Essex — for there were usually
two, reigning as colleagues, — and all his people seceded,
* What they did with their victory may be found in Mr. Green's,
Making of England.'
t Stubbs, ' Episcopal Succession,' p. 2.

SAXON LONDON. 59
during a terrible plague, from the church of Wina, and
returned a second time to Woden and Thor. Once more
Mercia interferes ; and though we have good ground for
concluding that it was not the Londoners who had
turned apostate, we cannot separate them from Essex, and
have other grounds for believing that Mercia was at this
time still in possession of the city,* though it yielded to
Wessex in or before 693. Jarumnan, bishop of Lichfield,
the bishop, that is, of the Mercians, converted them a
second time ; and, if we may believe the saintly legends
of later time, Osyth, the daughter of the king of Surrey
and wife of the recalcitrant Sighere, took an active part
in furthering these missionary efforts.t
The other king of Essex at this time was Sebbi, who
was neither brother nor uncle, but probably cousin, of
Sighere. Sebbi's name is interesting to the Londoner.
A charter, } witnessed by him, by his cousin the second
king, and by the saintly Erkenwald, bishop of London,
is still extant § in the British Museum. It relates to the
grant of some land by one of the royal family, Othilred
namely, to Barking Abbey. Sebbi signs himself " Ego
Sebbi, Rex East Sax." Under his cross is that of his
colleague Sighere, who is simply described as " Rex."
This is the earliest East Saxon document of the kind
now extant.
We thus see Christianity finally established in London.
The scandal which Wina may have caused by an irregular
or simoniacal election was speedily forgotten under the
great Erkenwald. The Church took root ; and already,
* Green, ' Making of England,' p. 386.
t See Life of St. Osyth, in Mr. Baring Gould's 'Lives ofthe Saints.' I
am sorry to say it will not square with any possible arrangement of known
facts. X ' Codex Dipl.,' vol. i., No. 35.
§ Cott. MSS. Aug. 2, 29.

60 HISTORY OF LONDON.
in searching into the beginnings of London history, we
catch sight here and there of the name of a Saxon saint,
or have something better than tradition on which to
found a local name. The northern entrance of the city
had fallen into decay. The walls, as I have ventured to
suppose, were ruinous. Bishop Erkenwald,* who seems
to have been a kind of civil authority as well as a bishop,
endeavoured to commence their reparation. To this end,
he built the gate ever since called, after him, Bishops-
gate.t Nothing can better show the decay of Roman
roads and Roman gates than the fact that, though
Bishopsgate Street leads from the bridge to the great
northern road, the old line was not preserved. The
Saxon gate was placed considerably to the west of the
older one ; and the roadway itself wound more or less
and deviated from the straightness which its original
constructors had loved.
There is no church of St. Erkenwald ; J but two saints,
of whom one may have been his contemporary, as the
other certainly was, are among the earliest dedications
in London. I pass by the St. Matthews, St. Peters, and
St. Michaels, of which there are so many, and the St
Maries, of which in the city alone there are a round dozen
at least, because, except in a few cases, it is impossible
to fasten any date to the name. But if we look down a
list of London parishes, the names of St. Ethelburga and
St. Osyth will catch the eye. Both, according to saintly
legend, were daughters of kings, and both, we may
* Erkenwald is spoken of by Ine, king of the West Saxons, as "my
bishop." London had therefore passed from Mercia to Wessex before
693- t This is tradition, but tradition of a kind which it would be absurd to
reject, yet it may be called after St. Botolph.
X It was not till our own day that another Erkenwald or Archibald
held the see of London.

SAXON LONDON. 6l
suppose, were concerned in the conversion of the be
nighted East Saxons. Ethelburga, the niece of Ricula,
whose husband, King Seberht, was the first Christian king
of Essex, was herself the daughter of Ethelbert of Kent
and his French wife, Bertha. Her church in London
stands close to the bishop's new gate. The connection
may be accidental, but there is nothing improbable in
the idea that the lady Ethelburga lived through the
troubles brought upon the see by the weakness of bishop
Mellitus and the wickedness of her cousins, the sons of
Seberht ; nor can it be wrong to suggest as probable that
her memory, after the night of trouble was overpast,
would be cherished when the religion she had loved be
came once more the faith of the people. Be this as it
may, the church of St. Ethelburga, whose fabric is pro
bably the oldest of all now remaining in London, was
built hard by the gate of the bishop.
Among the open spaces within the wall when the
Saxons came was the West Cheap, a market-place of
which I shall have more to say. In a network of
narrow lanes on the south side of this place, and on the
west bank- of the Wallbrook, formerly stood the church
of St Osyth. In later times, the saint was only remem
bered by the name of the street ; for, the church having
been " restored " or rebuilt before the end of the thir
teenth century was probably rededicated, and became
St Bennet Sherehog in " Size Lane." * It was burnt
in the Great Fire, and never rebuilt
To this period, also, belongs another great name. St.
Botolph is commemorated by four churches, which call
for notice. He was the special saint of East Anglia.
To him in particular every wayfarer going north from
London Bridge would commend himself. He died in
* Biley, p. xix. His derivation of "Schorhog" is unsatisfactory.

62 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the highest reputation for sanctity, at " Botolphston,"
or Boston, during the time Erkenwald was bishop of
London ; and we find among the most ancient dedica^
tions one church at the foot of the hill leading to old
London Bridge, and another without the Bishopsgate, at
the very first step upon the Ermyn Street. When
Aldersgate was built to relieve the traffic through what
until then was the only northern gate, a third church of
St. Botolph was built ; so that the traveller should lose no
blessing on his journey by patronising the alternative
route. When Aldgate was opened, probably late in the
eleventh century, a fourth St. Botolph's church was
erected on the new road into Essex. Botolph's Lane
still marks the line of the first road from the bridge,
and Botolph's Wharf is on the site of the bridge foot.
St. Osyth,* if we may believe the legend, was
mother of Offa, a royal youth of " most lovely age
and beauty," of whose history Beda has left us some
particulars. He deserted "wife, lands, kindred and
country," and going to Rome in the company of his
overlord, Coinred, king of Mercia, he became a monk.
That he had actually reigned as king, a point omitted by
Beda, is proved by the existence of charters granted or
signed by himyf but so little was he remembered even a
few years after his time, that early copies of these
documents describe him as king of Mercia. He evi
dently left no children, as Beda does not mention them,
* Her festival is 7th October, and she is described as "Queen and
Martyr." Stow passes the church over in a single line, in which he
confounds this saint with her namesake ' ' the virgin."
t In the introduction to the ' Codex Diplomaticus,' p. xxv., Mr.
Kemble detailed the arguments which enabled him to replace Offa in the
list of East Saxon kings. He prints a copy of a charter in which Offa is
confounded with his great namesake of Mercia. In it some land is given to
the church at Worcester. Offa of Essex was probably little more than a
superior kind of nobleman at the Mercian court.

SAXON LONDON. 63
and as he was succeeded in the empty royalty of Essex
by a cousin, Selred, of whom we only know that he was
killed in 746.
After this time there is no further connection to be
traced between London and the kings of Essex. By
insensible degrees, the kings of Mercia, who perceived
the importance of the place, held it and kept it ; and in
a charter of Ethelbald, whose reign was prolonged from
718 to 757, we have special mention of the port and
shipping, being, in fact, the first notice of London in any
contemporary document now extant. It is in the British
Museum.* Ethelbald grants to the bishop of Rochester
leave for a ship, whether of his own or of another, to pass
without tax into the port of London — {in portu Lun-
donice) — and speaks of the tax on shipping as his royal
right, and that of his predecessors. This grant was made
in 734. A little later the same king, in a charter written
in Anglo - Saxon, makes mention of " Lundentune's
hythe," another allusion to the importance of the port.f
The great Offa of Mercia may have recovered it in 775.J
but among the multitude of his charters he has left no
mention of London, § though later tradition says he had
a palace there. When we come to Coenulf, his successor,
however, we have one phrase of the highest value.
Coenulf speaks of a Witan, or national council, held in
* Cott. MSS. Chart, xvii. i. 'Cod. Dipl.,' No. 78. This manuscript
should be exhibited in a table case with the others of public interest.
There is in Kemble a charter of Erkenwald (No. 38) which is a copy or a
forgery : in it there is a mention of land " supra vico Lundoniae." The
copy is very ancient,
f Kemble, No. 95. Mr. Kemble printed several other charters, all
more or less doubtful, in which London is mentioned before the close of the
eighth century, e. g. Nos. 97, 98, 106, and 159. See below, Appendix M.
% Green, 418. As to Offa's palace, said to have been in Wood Street on
the site of St. Alban's Church, see Maitland, ii. 1051.
§ Except in No. 159, which is of more than doubtful authenticity.

64 HISTORY OF LONDON.
London in 811. He calls it "the illustrious place and
royal city" {loco preclaro oppidoque regali), a description
which, if " oppidum " is used in its strict sense, would
imply that the Mercians set store by the fortifications.
Among the signatures is that of a king of Essex.
London may be said after this time to be no longer the
capital of one Saxon kingdom, but to be the special
property of whichever king of whichever kingdom was
then paramount in all England. When the supremacy of
Mercia declined, and that of Wessex arose, London went
to the conqueror. In 823, Egbert receives the submission
of Essex; and in 827 he is in London, and in 833 a
Witan is held there, at which he presides.
Such are the scanty notes from which the history of
London during the so-called Heptarchy, must be com
piled. The Witan of 833 met to deliberate on a question
which, in its further developments, became one of the
highest importance to the city.
Already, while the newly acquired power of Wessex
was still in its infancy, a cloud of terrible disaster
hung over the land. Nothing, as the event proved, could
have been more fortunate for the dynasty of Egbert than
the necessity which now arose that England should be
under the rule of one strong hand. The Saxon's hour of
retribution had come. What his heathen forefathers had
inflicted on the Britons, the Danes were about to inflict
on him ; but the English were made of sterner stuff than
the Welsh, and in time the struggle, having united
England and welded her into a single kingdom with
identical interests and aims, came to an end.
London had to bear the brunt of the attack at first.
Her walls wholly failed to protect her. Time after time
the freebooters broke in. If the Saxons had spared any
thing of Roman London, it must have disappeared now.

SAXON LONDON. 65
Massacre, slavery, and fire became familiar in her streets.
At last the Danes seemed to have looked on her as their
headquarters, and when, in 872, Alfred was forced to
make truce with them, they actually retired to London
as to their own city, to recruit.*
To Alfred, with his military experience and political
sagacity, the possession of London was a necessity ; but
he had to wait long before he obtained it. His prepara
tions were complete in 884. The story of the conflict is
the story of his life. His first great success was the
capture of London after a short siege : to hold it was
the task of all his later years. He probably found the
Roman defences useless. The repairs effected by the
Danes must have been of a very temporary character, and
did not include any systematic restoration of the wall.
Alfred knew the value of fortifications against savages,
and his first care was to renew what was left of the
Roman work. To his age we may probably attribute
the building of two new gates, if not three. Cripplegate
was never anything but a kind of enlarged postern, and
did not open on any important road, though it was
nearest to an outwork known as the Barbican. Aiders-
gate was of more importance, as being nearer the Wat
ling Street, while communicating eastward with the
Ermyn Street at Bishopsgate. Moorgatef does not
appear to have yet existed, although a small entrance
close to the Wallbrook may have survived from Roman
times. But we really know very little of the extent and
details of Alfred's work. What we do know is that he
* They 6rst took London in 839, and next in 851 or 852. In 852 the
battle of Aclea (probably Oakley, on the Stone Street in Surrey) was
fought, after which the Danes were quieted for a time.
t It is not mentioned in the list of gates as late as 1356. (Riley,
' Memorials,' p. 291.)
VOL. L F

HISTORY OF LONDON.
was successful. The Danes never again took the city by
siege. Alfred appointed to the government of his new strongs
hold, Ethelred, the Alderman, his son-in-law. Whether
" the Lady of the Mercians " was with her husband in
London, we know not. But he signalised his government
by a brilliant feat of arms, one worthy of Alfred himself.
The Danes, within a few years of their retirement from
London, had assembled again in great strength at the
mouth ofthe Thames. Ascending as far as " Beamfleote,"
now South Benfleet, in Essex, where a considerable tidal
estuary or lagoon existed, stretching far up among the
woods to the foot of the Laindon hills,* they formed a
kind of fortified harbour from which they were able to
plunder the country and to stop the traffic of the river.
The Londoners under Ethelred sallied out, defeated
them, and drove them back on their stronghold, which
was besieged and taken, together with the wife and sons
of Hastings, the Danish leader. But the Danes were
only spurred to greater exertions ; and assembling at
once with fresh reinforcements after their defeat at Ben-
fleet, they determined to attack London itself. Taking
a large flotilla of galleys up the Lea to a stronghold in
the forest about Ware, or possibly Hertford, they prepared
to spend the winter in recruiting, with a view to the final
capture of the city in the spring. But Alfred came him
self upon the scene at this precarious moment, and by
one of those combinations of strategy and daring so
characteristic of him, he contrived to divert the waters of
the Lea into three channels ; f so that the Danish ships
were left high and dry inland, and the Danes themselves
* It is impossible not to connect the almost certainly Celtic name
Laindon, with the similar name of a very similarly situated hill, London.
t This story rests on very insecure foundations.

SAXON LONDON. &7
were pent in where their only chance of escape consisted
in a disastrous flight across an enemy's territory.
This story is perhaps too circumstantial to bear the
stamp of truth, yet it is old enough to show that opera
tions of considerable magnitude in the war were carried on
near London, when the Londoners performed " prodigies
of valour," according to the boasts of their descendants.
They certainly figure in the warlike annals of the time.
There were Londoners with Athelstan at Brunanburgh ;
and when all England was overrun and wasted with fire
and sword, they, at least, kept their own city intact.
The surrounding counties, Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Sus
sex, even Hampshire and its royal city, were entirely in
the hands of the enemy, while London held out. At the
same time she increased in wealth. Security such as she
could offer naturally attracted property, and we find
Athelstan, when he established his mints, assigning eight
coiners to London and seven to Canterbury ; from which
we may infer that these were the two centres of com
mercial life. At a later date, there are many references
to this good time of old ; and the number of foreigners
in London when the Conqueror came shows that the
concourse of merchants still existed in spite of the
Danes. During the century and a half which elapsed
between the death of Alfred and the peaceful time of
King Edward, London Wick, and London Hithe, and
London Street were crowded whenever London Bridge*
was open. Mercantile transactions were carried on under
difficulties, no doubt, when merchant adventurers had to
run the gauntlet of the Danish pirates if they travelled
by river, and of Danish brigands if they travelled by
land. Yet the merchants prospered, and as early as the
* " The first historical proof of the existence of a bridge is in Eadgar's
day, when a witch was drowned there." Green, ' Conquest,' ch. ix.
P 2

68 HISTORY OF LONDON.
reign of Athelstan we find a " frith-gild " in existence.
Guilds, as we shall see further on, had a powerful in
fluence on London history ; but as yet the association,
though recognised by the higher powers, was merely a
friendly society which met once a month for " butt-
filling," drank their beer, subscribed fourpence to a kind
of insurance, ordered masses for the souls of brethren
deceased since the last meeting, and paid for the detection
and prosecution of thieves who had robbed any member
of the guild. Finally, the remains of the feast were dis
tributed in alms. Notwithstanding the butt-filling and
feasting, this appears to have been a purely religious and
social guild ; and though it may have subsequently
become a power in the city, so far it is only of im
portance as the first evidence of combination among
the inhabitants of London for anything like corporate
action.* The weak Ethelred, of whose kingdom London and
Canterbury seem at one time to have been the only
remnants, did nothing for London but take refuge within
her walls ; and it is rather to the credit of the citizens
than of the king that we must put the victorious expe
dition of 992. The treason and desertion of Aelfric, the
bravery of Thorod, the presence of two bishops on board
the ships, and many other circumstantial particulars, are
narrated by the chroniclers ; all that is certain being
that the river traffic was opened for the merchants, and
that a flank attack on the returning Londoners was
signally defeated. The paltry spirit of the king, who
on the one hand taxed his people for the disgraceful
payment of Danegeld, and on the other encouraged
* See ' English Gilds,' by Toulmin Smith, and the ' History and Develop
ment of Gilds,' by Lujo Brentano ; also Stubbs's ' Constitutional History '
vol. i.passim. For the whole text containing the rules of -the frith-gild see
appendix to Kemble's ' Saxons in England,' ii. 521.

SAXON LONDON. 6g
them to the cowardly massacre of 1001, greatly in
creased the difficulties of the city, which had, as usual,
to bear the brunt of Danish vengeance. Sweyn burned
to exact punishment for the murder of his sister.
Twice he essayed to subdue London, within whose
walls Ethelred had, as usual, sought safety ; and whether
he might have succeeded the first time or not we cannot
tell, for Ethelred bought him off with an enormous ran
som* — bought him off, that is, only for a time, while
his forces were being renewed for a supreme effort. In
1012 he took Canterbury, and carrying Alphage, the
archbishop, to Greenwich, he killed him there almost
in sight of the terrified citizens. The following year he
returned, and having been resisted by London alone,
he prepared to besiege the city ; but Ethelred did not
await his onset, and having no longer a king to defend,
the citizens opened the gates and admitted the Danes.
London luxuries, however, or London fogs did not
agree with Sweyn, who died suddenly at Gainsborough,
after one winter in his new capital, and then the weary
contest began again. The miserable Ethelred returned
and reigned till 1016, when he died in peace at a good
old age, and was buried in St. Paul's. His grave
must have been among ruins or within newly rising
walls, for the old church, the church of Cedd and Sebbi,
if not of Mellitus and Seberht, had been burnt a few
years before. The most tangible relic of the Danish
occupation was found, in 1852, close to the site.t
It bears the only Runic inscription yet identified
in London : " Kina caused this stone to be laid over
* Said to have been 48,000/.
t In digging the foundation of Mr. Cook's great warehouse on the
south side of St. Paul's Churchyard. The upper part is very handsomely
carved with a grotesque figure. There is a description and woodcut in
'Archaeological Journal,' x. 82.

70 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Tuki." When Kina gave Tuki, his brother in arms,
Christian burial in St. Paul's Churchyard, the war be
tween the Saxons and Danes had entered a new phase.
We hear of no massacre under Sweyn, of no burning or
plundering. London was too rich to be injured, too
precious to the king to be abandoned to the soldiers.
She had many foreigners within her walls, perhaps many
Northmen, Danish or otherwise. The contest was hence-
' forth between two royal families for the crown of
England, and the royal road ran through London.
The election and coronation of Edmund Ironside took
place in London, and soon afterwards commenced the
most memorable, because the last, regular siege of Lon
don. Canute disputed Edmund's right, and the king,
notwithstanding his tried bravery, showed a want of
military caution in leaving the protection of the city
walls. Alfred had set store by them ; they had been a
kingdom to Ethelred ; and when Edmund went into
Wessex his cause was lost. Canute's siege affords one
incident of remarkable interest. His canal* round Lon
don Bridge has been vaunted as the crowning feat of
Danish strategy, while its failure has covered the Lon
doners with glory. In truth, however, neither was the
canal a very wonderful work, nor was its success very
likely. In my opening chapter I endeavoured to de
scribe the original aspect of the country south of South
wark. Since the time of the Romans, no doubt, the muddy
archipelago had become less moist, and was now only
submerged at very high tides ; while banks and drains

* Many writers have been at the pains of tracing Canute's canal. The
whole subject is discussed by Maitland, Allen, Harrison, and others. I
have gone carefully over the ground, and I have also endeavoured to read
the various theories impartially. The result only, without further references,
will be found in the text.

SAXON LONDON. 7 1
everywhere conducted the surplus water back into the
Thames. A considerable stream, winding among the
green aits of Bermondsey, ran out in Rotherhithe, where
now St. Saviour's Dock is marked upon the maps.
Another bore a high-sounding name in the local tradition
Of the last century, and flowed, as the Tigris, into the
Thames above Southwark. In short, the difficulty of
identifying Canute's canal is caused by the multitude of
competitors for the honour. But at that day, the ques
tion of transporting a fleet of flat-bottomed galleys from
Redriff to Lambeth depended on the force of men avail
able, the depth of the channels, the height of the tide, and
the distance from the threatening walls of Southwark.
Here and there a roadway or an embankment had to be
cut through. Here and there the black peat had to be
strengthened in a watercourse. Some of the chroniclers
speak clearly of the dragging of the ships. The work
was soon done, but London did not surrender, and
Canute, threatened from the west by Edmund, made a
feint of retreating. His sudden return and attack did
not surprise the citizens, and to the treason of Edric of
Mercia, as much as to any result attained by fighting,
must be attributed the position of Canute in his final
treaty of partition.*
At last London was his, but peaceably, f and he held
it and treated it peaceably. It is asserted that on this
occasion the Londoners presented Canute with the
enormous sum of 10,500/., % and that 72,000/. was raised
in all England ; and we need not refuse to believe that
the citizens paid heavily for their privileges, and secured
* Canute seems, for some reason, to have also made a. ditch round
the north side of the city. — Florence of Worcester, ed. Thorpe, vol. i.
P- 173-
t A.D. IOI7.
t Equal to about a quarter of a million in modern money.

72 HISTORY OF LONDON.
freedom from molestation at the highest price Canute
could exact.
We find many traces of the Danes of this period in
London. Olaf came over as Thor and Woden had
come before. We disguise his name in Tooley Street, at
the southern end of London Bridge ; but there are or
were churches of St. Olave in Hart Street, and in the Old
Jewry, in the city, while St. Magnus, in Thames Street,
looks across the river at his compatriot. Of St. Clement
Danes and St. Bride's it is not so easy to judge. The
first, when it was founded, stood far out in the green
fields of the Strand, on a hillock almost surrounded by
water* and the legend of a special Danish settlement
may or may not be true. The objection to it that it was
unlikely such a formidable colony should be placed half
way between London and Westminster is easily disposed
of when we remember that there was no road through it,
either east or west, at the time, and that access to the
church must have been from the north. The road from
London to Westminster ran through Holborn. St.
Bride's cannot be attributed to the time of Canute. The
ground on which it stands was then under water.*
Under the orderly government of Canute some be
ginnings of municipal organisation show themselves.
Money lies at the root of civic institutions. When Dane-
geld had to be assessed, when, under a sudden demand,
resistance was to be offered, when walls had to be built
and ships fitted out, it is clear some power existed which
could conduct or control the citizens. That it had a
purely mercantile origin, and may, therefore, have in
cluded many foreigners, may be inferred from the first
mention of a body representative of the wishes of Lon-
* Both St. Bride's and St. Clement's, as well as St. Dunstan's, were at
first only chapels or district churches to Westminster. See chapter xvii.

SAXON LONDON. 73'
doners. When Canute died the magnates of the realm
assembled in " parliament " at Oxford, and there came
up among them the "lithsmen" of London* These
were the traders who, going abroad or coming from
abroad with their merchandise, were travellers by pre
eminence, and not only the owners, but, during the long
peace of Canute's reign, the creators of the city wealth.
This witan chose Harold, who died three years later ;
and a similar assembly invited Queen Emma and her
son Harthacnut, or Hardecnut as he is called in his
charters, to come over from Bruges. Hardecnut, who
stood in the unusual position of having two half-brothers
— one on the father's and one on the mother's side, — and
who succeeded one of them, and was succeeded by the
other, chiefly signalised his reign by digging up the
body of Harold, and throwing it into the river. It was
found by fishermen — so runs the story, — and, being
handed over to the Danish colony, was re-buried in St
Clement's. Hardecnut speedily drank himself to death,
and Edward, called the Confessor, stepped into his place.
Edward's history connects him rather with West
minster than with London. In 1047, however, a council
sat in London, at which, while nine ships were sent out to
protect the Channel, no fewer than five were retained for
the defence of the port of London. In the rebellion, or
" pronunciamento " of Godwin, London figures to some
extent, since the earl held Southwark for a time, and
* A. S. Chron., 1036. Lithan is to navigate. Norton (pp. 23, 24) goes
into some elaborate arguments on this passage, to show that the merchants
were thanes rather than mere burgesses. There is really no proof either
way. The word may mean sailors and may mean merchants, or rather
"commercial travellers." In the East to this day, a foreign traveller is
called Khawaga, that is, literally, bagman. That any one should travel for
pleasure was till lately incredible, and we still pray for travellers as for
those afflicted.

74 HISTORY OP LONDON.
passing fhe bridge with his ships overawed the king in
the abbey-palace at Westminster.
We have some further notices of the beginnings of
municipal institutions in this reign. Edward directs his
writ * to London, to William, the bishop, and to Swet-
man, the portreeve, and another time to Leofstan and
^Elsi, the portreeves. A little later Esgar f the " staller,"
or marshal, and Ulph, are the chief officers bf the city.
At a much later date, in the reign, namely, of Henry I.,
we hear of Leofstan again. He is mentioned as head of
the old Knighten Guild, which was turned into the priory
of Holy Trinity. Two sons of his also figured in con
nection with guilds. One, Robert, pays, in 1130, 16/. into
the exchequer for the guild of weavers ; and in the reign of
Henry II. the other, Witso, gives half a mark of gold for
his father's office. Unfortunately we do not know what
office is intended.^ One thing is certain, London was
not included in any earldom.
Esgar, or Ansgar, the Staller, was at Hastings, and
was wounded, but was able to retreat with his men upon
London. " His wound was so severe that he could
neither walk nor ride, but was carried about the city in a
litter."§ Edgar Atheling was chosen as king, but was
never crowned. Esgar must soon have seen the hope
lessness of the struggle. William came to the bank and
burnt Southwark, then marched away to the west, crossed
the Thames at Wallingford, and marched north-east to
Berkhampstead. He betrayed no symptoms of hurry.
The city was gradually but surely being surrounded. A
story has been told of a secret embassy from Esgar to
* ' Cod. Diplo.,' Nos. 856, 857, 861.
t There is little or no difficulty in the identification of Esgar and Ansgar.'
% See Stubbs, ' Const. Hist.,' i. 406.
§ Freeman, 'Norman Conquest,' iii. 545. -

SAXON LONDON. 75
Berkhampstead, and of private negotiations between the
conqueror and a party in the city. There is no necessity
for such a legend. The submission of London was open
and straightforward. The young Edgar Atheling was
among the messengers. He had never been crowned, and
was only a titular king. William received him well,
and saluted the chief men of London, as he says him
self, " friendly." After some delay, caused by a real or
feigned hesitation, he accepted the proffered crown, and
appointed Christmas for his coronation at Westminster.
He was not the last king the Londoners elected ; but his
election by them is an event not to be lightly passed over.*
Under the long succession of English kings, during the
long Danish wars, the side of the city had been the side
of the conqueror. London had become more and more
important; and in the embassy to Berkhampstead we
see the last act in the story of the Saxon domination —
a period of struggle, of gradual growth, of the slow
development of great constitutional principles, of increas
ing wealth, in which, while we can find no trace of
Roman influence on municipal institutions or religion, we
must attribute its existence itself to the Roman wall.
Morally, the Romans did nothing, materially they did
everything for Saxon London ; and Edward the Con
fessor in one of his charters made no vain boast when
he spoke picturesquely of the city as fundata olim et
edificata ad instar magna Troje.
* The Londoners' special place in the constitution of England is
described more or less clearly by all historians, but perhaps the most com
prehensive summary is that of Mr. Freeman ('Norm. Conq.,' v. 411) : —
" Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third were called to the crown no
less than Stephen, by the voice of the citizens of London. And in the
assembly which called on William of Orange to take on himself the provi
sional government of the kingdom, along with the Lords and the members
of the former parliaments, the citizens of London had their place as of old."

( 76 )

CHAPTER IV.
LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST.
With the removal of Edward the Confessor to Westmin
ster, the position of London as the capital of England
had begun to change. At the Conquest it was completely
altered. True, the kings, and sometimes the queens, had
henceforth occasionally a residence in the city, but it was
no longer a permanent residence. The palace, or a relic
of it, of Athelstan and his successors, used to be pointed
out before the Great Fire. But when Norman William
and his successors had business in London, they lived at
Westminster or in the Tower.* If London thus in one
sense declined, in another she rose. She became more
independent. She began to look to her commerce more
and more as her true source of greatness. Her real
supremacy was always unquestionable. Westminster^
great as it is, and the ring of boroughs which now sur
round the city, are, in truth, only suburbs. London is
the mother of them all. From the time of William she
acquired new life. Her liberties and privileges were
assured to her, and the history of mediseval London is
* I am not concerned here to find out the capital of England, nor yet
to define the word metropolis. London is neither, except it be in the
blundering nomenclature of an Act of Parliament. If the capital of a state
is here, as in America, the seat of the Law Courts, then Westminster is our
capital ; but the new Law Courts are partly within the City boundary.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 77
the history of a long, but eventually victorious, struggle
against despotism, encroachment and robbery. The
charter which William, king, granted to William, bishop,
and Gosfrith, portreeve, is the first of a long list of similar
documents, in which the city, bit by bit, recovered from
the Crown the true ancient liberty which has been the
Teutonic ideal for so many thousand years.
London desiring nothing so much as peace, and having
already both had a taste of William's harsh manner, in his
burning Southwark on his march westward from Canter
bury, and having learned that she fared best under a strong
king, received the Conqueror, after a little hesitation, as her
just and lawful sovereign. It may be considered certain
that there was a strong Norman party in the city. The
bishop was a Norman, and if the name of the portreeve
be read Geoffrey, as it sometimes is, he may have been
a Norman too ; one at least of the old portreeves was
unquestionably a Norman, for the name of Gilbert
Becket, of Rouen, is among the few that remain to us of
the list* William's charter, too, is peculiarly worded.
He greets, besides the two great officers, " all the bur
gesses in London, Frenchmen and Englishmen." The
charter is one of conciliation. The English might fear
the new dynasty. But William assures them of his
friendly feeling, and though we may conjecture that the
Norman bishop and the Norman party in general had a
voice in obtaining for their fellow-citizens this declaration
of the Conqueror's favour, we may also believe that the
freedom they already enjoyed in their place of residence
* Green's "London and her election of Stephen," in 'Old London^'
p. 296. I shall have occasion frequently in the next few pages to make use
of Mr. Green's views, in this brilliant foretaste of his powers, and here
acknowledge them gratefully once for all. For a fragmentary list of
portreeves see further on in this chapter.

78 b HISTORY OF LONDON.
had endeared itself to them, and that they were in no
way reluctant to share its continuance. The text,
then, of the First Charter is as follows*: — "William
king) greets William, bishop, and Gosfrith,t portreeve,
and all the burghers within London, French and
English, friendly ; and I do you to wit that I will that
ye be all law-worthy that were in King Edward's day.
And I will that every child be his father's heir, after
his father's day : and I will not endure that any man
offer any wrong to you. God keep you."
Brief, curiously jealous and scanty, as this document
is, it contains a sufficient statement of the condition of
the citizens. We learn from it, for example, that the
bishop, equally with, or perhaps it would be more correct
to say more than, the portreeve, was a great authority. His
exact position in the corporation was afterwards defined,
but at this time we only know that he lived in his palace
* The original of this charter, or a very ancient copy, is preserved at the
Guildhall. It is a little strip of parchment written in a. rather more
crabbed hand than was usual at that period. Mr. Stubbs gives a careful
copy in his ' Select Charters,' p. 79, which differs little from the copy in
Riley's ' Liber Custumarum,' ii. 504, except that it is printed in ordinary
type. Riley, in addition, prints an old copy in the ' Liber Custumarum, '
(i. 246), and an old and very interesting translation into the ' English of
1314. These are followed by a Latin version. Another English transla
tion is at p. 25. In fact the compilers of the city records seem to have
determined that if the original should be lost, a sufficient number of copies
would remain to establish its existence. The name of the portreeve is
variously spelt, Goffrey (p. 25), Gofregth (p. 246), Gofregd and Gofridum
(p. 247). Mr, Stubbs and Mr. Freeman (iv. 29) print it Gosfregth, and
Mr. Stubbs translates it by Gosfrith.
t Gosfrith, Stubbs, i. 404. The translation is that of 'Select
Charters,' p. 79. Mr. Stubbs points out that the word port ra port-reeve is
the Latin porta not partus and implies a market-place. " From the
position assigned to the port-reeve in this writ, which answers to that given
to the sheriff in ordinary writs, it may be inferred that he was a royal officer
who stood to the merchants of the city in the relation in which the bishop
stood to the clergy."

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 79
on the north side of St. Paul's, and was proprietor of a
great estate in Cornhill, at the other side of the Wall
brook, and of two country villas, one at Fulham and one
at Stepney. We learn little of the portreeve, except that
there was a portreeve, but there can be no difficulty in
forming an idea of his position and duties. He was in
the" port, that is the walled city, what a shire-reeve was in
a county. Much ingenuity may be, and has been, spent
in trying to make him out to be more than this. The
result has only been to show that the reeve of London
stood towards the Crown in no exceptional position. As
to the mode of his appointment at this period we know
nothing, but there is a presumption, as we shall see
further on, that he was elected by his fellow-burgesses.
The first thing granted in the charter is that the
citizens should be law-worthy, and we have the historical
statement that they had been so under King Edward.
By " law-worthy " the king meant that the citizens
should have the privileges of freemen in the courts of
justice :* that they should not be judged, that is, by a
superior, but should have an appeal to the verdict of their
equals, as " compurgators," a kind of jury of neighbours
and friends who were willing, when a man was on trial,
to swear they believed his oath.f There were other
forms of trial, and the Normans introduced the wager or
ordeal of battle ; but it was never popular in the city.
The law-worthy man, then, could give evidence in a
court of justice, in his own favour or that of another, and
could call upon his neighbours and his friends to justify
him. It was a rude kind of law, but from it grew our
* Norton, p. 264.
t According to this view, to be law-worthy meant to be not in dominio,
demesne, as were many other English cities at the time. I have avoided
the technicalities of law as much as possible.

80 HISTORY OF LONDON:
much-vaunted jury system, a system which seems, some
how, unfitted for any race but our own, where it has
grown up from small beginnings and become a second
nature. The law-worthy citizens had, no doubt, unlaw-
worthy serfs under them, and there were besides in the city
a few people who, though free, had no rights as citizens,
from crime or poverty, or because they had not complied
with the forms of admission, whatever they may have been.
Further, William allows the citizens to inherit the pro
perty of their fathers, a right which had always been one
of the privileges of freedom among English and Saxons,
but which was inconsistent with the spirit of feudalism.*
The estate of the father was divided among his children,
and primogeniture had not yet been introduced.
Such is the tenure of William's charter. It will be
observed that he introduces nothing new. The citizens
were to continue in the freedom they had enjoyed under
Edward. We may therefore infer that the English,
French, German, Gascon, Flemish, and above all Norman,
merchants who frequented the market-places of London,
had already, in spite of their mixed origin, combined and
organised themselves into a body, more or less corporate,
and that to be a citizen pf London was to be a freeman
with certain definite privileges.
There was an influx of Normans after the Conquest,
as might be expected Many of the citizens of Rouen
and Caen, says a nearly contemporary writer,t passed
over thither, " preferring to be dwellers in that city, inas
much as it was fitter for their trading, and better stored
with the merchandise in which they were wont to traffic."
The Normans had already a colony there, as had the
* And was not accorded to tenants in demesne, except as a special favour.
t One of Becket's biographers, in a MS. at Lambeth, quoted by
Mr. Green ut supra.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 8 1
Germans, the " Rouen men " and the " Emperor's men,"
as they are called in a law of Ethelred ; and it was not
until the occurrence of a war with some one of the
nations represented among the citizens, that any disa
bilities in the way of trading, and eventually of citizen
ship, were imposed on foreign-born settlers.*
William granted privileges to the great walled " port,"
and her mixed multitude of merchants ; but he determined
at the same time that, though they might remain as
strongly fortified as they could against foes from without
in general, they should have no defences against himself.
For this purpose he determined on the erection of a
fort where, without weakening the city, he might yet
hold the key to it. The Tower of London is to the wall
like a padlock on a chain. A piece of foreshore existed
just without the ditch, to the south-east, beyond Billings
gate. In the line of the wall close by there was a strong
bastion, either of Roman work, or else built of Roman
materials taken from older fortifications. William deter
mined to break the city cincture at this point, and to
replace with his own castle the ancient turret. At the
time he formed the plan he was encamped at Barking,
the nearest rising ground east of the city, and had evi
dently surveyed the situation with care. The small
portion of the wall removed — according to some authori
ties two bastions — was more than compensated by the
strength of the ditch and palisade with which William
surrounded his works. When they were completed,
they were calculated not only to protect, but to over
awe the citizens and to control all the traffic of the
river.f Rather less than half the new enclosure was
* See Riley, 'Memorials,' pp. xxxvii. and 151.
+ "Military Architecture of the Tower," ' Old London,' p. 13, &c., by
George T. Clark. I shall have occasion to quote several times from this
valuable paper.
VOL. I. G

82 HISTORY OF LONDON.
within the old city boundary. The whole Tower Liberty
consists of about twenty-six acres, twelve of them within
the ditch, of which the western portion is in the parish
of All Hallows Barking, in the city of London, and the
eastern and larger portion in the county of Middlesex,
and the original parish of Stepney.
William did not begin the building of the White
Tower till eleven years after Hastings, when, having
had some experience of the advantages of the site, he
entrusted the work to Gundulf, a monk from the Abbey
of Bee in Normandy. Gundulf, who had just been con
secrated bishop of Rochester when he received William's
commission,* appears to have given his first attention
to the repairs of his own cathedral, but arriving in
London in 1078, and lodging at the house of his friend, a
citizen named ^Edmer Anhsende, he commenced the
gigantic building on such a scale that though he lived to be
eighty-four, that is, for thirty years longer, he did not see
the completion of the whole design. The immense mass
of the walls disposes of the story that it was injured by
the great gale of 1090, though the scaffoldings may have
suffered. Mainly, the White Tower is still as Gundulf left
it, though the windows were altered in 1663, when the
" restorer," Wren, who may have believed the building to
have been originally erected by Julius Csesar, put in
classical keystones.f It consists literally of four walls,
prolonged into turrets at the corners, and divided into
three storeys by timber flooring, and a basement of
masonry. It measures % 107 ft. north and south, 118 east
* Stubbs, ' Episcopal Succession,' p. 22, 1077, Mar. 19, Canterbury.
t An example followed by Salvin and other Tower architects in our own
day, only that for classical features others, in various Gothic styles, equally
foreign to the building, have been employed. Salvin's work is easily
recognised by a square-headed doorway or window which he borrowed
from a Northumbrian castle, and employed here and at Windsor with
disastrous effect. J Clark, ui sup.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. ¦ 83
and west, and is 90 ft high to the crest of the battle
ment. It contains a chapel, long used for the storing of
records, and afterwards ruthlessly scraped and renewed,
so as to have lost every feature of interest except its out
line. There is an apsidal curve, apparent from the
exterior, where it is worked into the great south-eastern
turret. The chapel is 31 ft. wide, and 5 5 J' long, in
cluding the apse. There are side aisles, which go round
behind the site of the altar, and above them an upper
aisle occupies the place of a clear-storey, and as it could
be entered from the state apartments on the upper floor,
served for the use of the monarch himself, who could
attend mass, yet be invisible from below. The chapel
was dedicated to St. John.
Here, in 1503, the body of Elizabeth of York, who died
in the Tower, lay in state before its removal to West
minster Abbey ; and it is probable that the burial of the
bones of her two brothers in the staircase wall below,
was due to the consecration of the chapel, which would
extend to the ground underneath. The crypt, long
known as Queen Elizabeth's Armoury, and entered by
visitors through a window, and a lower crypt below ground,
were nevertheless used as prisons, but perhaps not till
after the year 1550, when the chapel was dismantled by
order of the Council. It remained a store for state papers
for centuries, owing to which circumstance the Tower has
been the residence of more than one eminent antiquary
as keeper of records, including Lambard and Selden, and
the republican Prynne, whose celebrity is of a different
kind. When the records were removed in 1857, it was
intended to make it a tailor's shop for the soldiers ; but
the interference of lord Combermere, then Constable,
was successful in preventing this desecration.
The chapel and its appendages are the only walled
G 2

84 HISTORY OF LONDON.
chambers in the Tower. All the rest are made of wood.
It is remarkable that this, the keep of the royal castle
intended as the refuge and residence of the sovereign,
should contain but one fire-place, and hardly any of
the domestic conveniences common to Norman towers
of far inferior pretensions and very slightly later date.
The main entrance was 12 ft. above the ground, so that
the door could be easily defended, and led into a
narrow winding staircase. " Supposing a score of re
solute men to garrison the keep, they could hold the
main door and postern against an army."* As a
residence, however, the immense altitude of the state
rooms, chiefly 21 ft. high, the excessive coldness, the
difficulty of access, the inconvenience of the frequent
posts supporting the roof, must have been serious draw
backs, to say nothing of the absence of privacy, although
no doubt some of the chambers were screened off by
panelled partitions, like the dormitories of old-fashioned
schools. The surrounding buildings and the outer wall are of
later date, but are probably on the Norman site. " The
circumscribing ditch," as Mr. Clark observes, "though
unusually broad and deep, was by no means too secure
a defence against a turbulent and notoriously brave
body of citizens." The entrance, at the south-western
corner, faced towards no street then existing, and Tower
Street, Great and Little, must have been made by
degrees and through already existing buildings, as is
plain from its unusual irregularity of direction.!
* Clark, 'Old London,' pp. 39, 40.
t An irregularity, as I have endeavoured to point out above, partly
owing, no doubt, to its traversing whatever traces remained of the eastern
wall <?f the inner Roman fort. Portions of the wall have been found
in Mincing Lane and other places adjacent

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 85
One of the last great events of the reign of William I.
was the completion of Domesday Book. London was
exempted from it. The reason of this is not very clear.
It has been used as a proof that London was not in
demesne — was not held by any overlord whatever ; but
from what we know of the disposition of William, a claim
to such a condition of independence would certainly have
been disregarded. As a fact, the king's interest in
London and its suburbs was very small. A few years
later, William Rufus had accumulated as much foreshore
at Westminster as served for his additions to Edward's
palace ;* but in 1087 the king had only a few acres
in Middlesex. They lay in Ossulston, and are described
quaintly as " no man's land," and as having belonged to
King Edward. A piece of ground of three and a half
acres, which bore this name, was bought by bishop
Stratford in 1339, and formed into a burial-place for
people who died of the plague. It was afterwards joined
to the possessions of the Charterhouse, or Carthusian
Priory of the Salutation, and it has been identified, not
without reason, as part of the plot of twelve and a half
acres, " de nane maneslande," which King Edward and
King William had owned, and which was valued at five
shillings. The king had also thirty cotters — we are not told
where, but within the boundaries of Ossulston. They
were probably owners in fee of small villas without the
walls ; their united rent only amounted to fourteen shil
lings and tenpence-halfpenny. He had also two other
small holdings.
" At Holeburne,'* says the record, " the king has two
cottagers who render yearly twenty pence to the king's
sheriff." A distinction may here be intended between
* See below, chapter xvi.

86 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the sheriffs, for in the next line we are told " the sheriff
of Middlesex always had charge of these cottages in the
time of King Edward."
The other piece of land has often, on slender grounds,
been identified with the celebrated garden of Ely Place.
It was also in Holborn, and is thus described : "William
the chamberlain renders yearly to the king's sheriff six
shillings for the land where his vineyard is situated."
Attempts have been made to identify this chamberlain
as the official who eventually blossomed into " mayor,"
but the grounds are insufficient* William the chamber
lain was also a holder of lands in Kingsbury, Eia, and
Stepney. The first named was a farm belonging to
the Abbey of Westminster, and cannot have been long
in William's occupation ; it had belonged in the time
of the Confessor to a certain Aylwin Horne, who had
taken it in pledge from a vassal of the abbey. The
Stepney holding was under the bishop of London, and
consisted of land worth thirty shillings. The holding in
Eia, or Eybury, had a little history attached to it
Though William is returned as the tenant, it appears
he had lost it four years before, and the king's dues
amounting to twelve pounds were unpaid. The manor
itself was then part of the estate of Geoffrey Mandeville.
Why William the chamberlain had lost his holding we do
not know, but the expression ofthe record, amisit, is clear,
and we cannot suppose he voluntarily resigned possession.
Another citizen who is frequently named in the record
is Deorman.t Among the most ancient records in the
* Mr. Riley in 'a brief note, ' Memorials,' p. 3, says positively " at this
period (1272), the offices of mayor, chamberlain, and coroner, in the city
were held by the same person."
t H. C. Coote, ' Transac. Lond. and Midd. Arch. Soe.,' iii. 153. If
the reader wishes to see an amusingly erroneous interpretation of an
ancient document, he may look at Allen, i. 51, where Deorman is

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 87
archives of the city is a little piece of parchment, in
many respects similar to the charter granted to London
itself by William I. In it " William, king, greets William,
bishop," as before ; but the third name is that of Sweyn
or " Swegen, the sheriff," and " all the king's thanes in
Essex," stand where the burghers of London stood in
the other charter. The grant is one of a hide of land at
Gaddesden to a man named Deorman. The same man
is called in Domesday Deorman of London. He had
an estate at Hertfordshire which had belonged to
Aylwin Horne, and evidently he was in favour with
the Conqueror, and was one of the few Englishmen who
held directly from the king without the intervention of
an overlord. One of his sons was named Algar, and
as it appears that his holding in Islington had belonged
before him to a thane of King Edward's, called Algar,
it is more than likely that we have here father, son,
and grandson. Algar the second was a prebendary of
St. Paul's, but his brother Thierry carried on the succes
sion of the family. The Norman name shows the
tendency of the times, and Bertram, Thierry's son, goes
further and takes a territorial surname, appearing in
some charters as Bertram of Barrow. Barrow has been
identified with Highbury, a manor in Islington ; and it
would seem that the family of Algar continued on
the same land till their male line became extinct in
the reign of Henry III.
William Rufus carried on his father's works at the
Tower, and, as we shall see when we look into the
history of Westminster, almost equally great works
there. These and other burdens fell on city and county
translated " the people,'' or at Norton, p. 257, where we are told that the
king " merely states that he has granted to his dear man or men (friends) a
certain piece of land." One of his sons is named on p. 163, n.

88 HISTORY OF LONDON.
alike ; and the chronicler of the day, in noticing the
arrival of Henry I. in London, after his brother's death,
mentions that before Maurice, the bishop, crowned him,
he made him swear to annul all the unrighteous acts of
the late king. How far the city was concerned in the
selection of Henry, which took place at Winchester, we
know not ; but we do know that though Rufus was only
killed on Thursday and buried on Friday, Henry was in
London on Saturday and was crowned at Westminster
on Sunday. From subsequent events it is clear that to
London he owed a debt of some kind, perhaps of grati
tude for his welcome on this occasion. His charter,
enlarging the liberties of the citizens, already so large,
was not granted, we may be sure, for nothing. Unfortu
nately, although the original document still exists in
the city archives, it is undated ; but from the names
appended to it, or some other evidence, Rymer (' Fcedera ')
dates it in 1 101, the first year of the new reign, and says
it was signed at Westminster. The London names may
include that of Hubert Roger the chamberlain, but he
may have been the chamberlain of Winchester, or an
official of the palace. William of Montfitchet, the bishop
of Winchester, and Robert FitzRichard, bear London
names. Montfitchet's Tower was on the Thames bank,
within the city boundary and not far from Baynard's
Castle. How Gilbert de Montfitchet, or Montfiquet, who
" came in with the Conqueror " obtained his tower we do
not know. It may have been an ancient bastion, and
have been committed to his charge by the king or by
the city authorities. The gates were so leased at a later
time, and Baynard's Castle was long held by the Fitz-
walters, as standard-bearers of London.* Montfitchet's
* In 1347, the Lord Fitzwalter of the day claimed certain rights and
privileges in Castle Baynard Ward, but his claim was refused by the

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 89
Tower was demolished and its materials appropriated
to the fabric of the Blackfriars' House early in the
thirteenth century.
The charter of Henry I. is even more important in
the history of the city liberties than that of his father.
His grants are of two kinds. They may be classed as
remissions, and as gifts. Thus, he absolves the citizens
from the payment of any kind of feudal service, such as
occasional levies and rates, summed up under the word
Scot ; from Danegeld, a tax which, originally imposed for
the purpose of expelling or buying off the Danes, had
now become a regular source of royal revenue ; from
Murder, a tax payable to the king by a district in
which an assassination — especially of a Norman — had
been committed : from Wager of Battle, a form of trial
very repugnant to civic ideas ; from having to provide
lodgings for the king's household ; from tolls such as
Passage, or payments at ferries, and Lestage, or a tax
on leather, which were remitted throughout England
to the citizens of London ; and from Miskennings, the
use by lawyers of an unknown tongue, or, as we
should say, special pleading, in its worst sense, in
the courts.
The second form of grants was of the nature of gifts.
Thus Henry handed over to the city the revenues of
Middlesex ; he gave the county to them " to farm," on a
payment of 300/. a year, which has been made ever
since; and he allowed them to appoint from among
themselves a sheriff to receive the demesne dues. In
addition they were to have leave to hunt as their

mayor, aldermen, and commonalty, on the ground that it was repugnant
to the liberties of the city. Mr. Riley, in noticing this decision, adds that
the Fitzwalters had parted with their castle in the reign of Edward I.
— ' Memorials,' p. 23(5 ; and see below, p. 162.

90 HISTORY OF LONDON.
ancestors had hunted in the forests of Middlesex and
Surrey and on the Chiltern Hills. A hunting licence of
this kind was indeed a great concession from a king of
the line of William the Norman.
He also gave them leave to appoint their own justiciar
and relieved them from having to resort to any court out
side the city. It has been supposed that the justiciar
here mentioned means a mayor or chief magistrate, and
that the grant includes that of the election of the
supreme executive officer of the city. It may be so,
but all probability is against this view. For by this time
the citizens already appear to have elected their own
portreeve, by whatever name he was called ; and it is
absurd to suppose that the king gave them power to
appoint a sheriff of Middlesex, if they were not already
allowed to appoint their own. The omission of any
reference to the portreeve in the charter cannot, in fact,
be otherwise accounted for.
It is very desirable to place this question of sheriffs
and mayors in a clear light, and it may be well to
endeavour to do so here once for all. The grant of
Middlesex to farm, by Henry I., enables us to form a
very distinct opinion. From that day to this every
citizen of London is a potential sheriff of Middlesex.
For every citizen has a voice in the appointment of the
officer whose business it will be to collect for him as joint
tenant of the king, the king's revenue in Middlesex.
The sheriff of Middlesex, therefore, represents the whole
body of citizens acting in their corporate capacity. He
is not a high sheriff appointed by the king, but rather a
sub-sheriff appointed by the corporate body in which
the sheriffship is vested. The exact period at which two
sheriffs were appointed must have been when the city
sheriff, or portreeve, became mayor. The first mayor on

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 91
record is Henry FitzAylwin, in 1189,* and though there
may have been bailiffs of equal, or almost equal rank and
power before him, it is certain that in a charter of
Henry II. which, though undated, cannot safely be
placed earlier than 1173, two sheriffs are mentioned. It
is probable therefore that the sheriff of Middlesex and
the sheriff of London finding their duties clash, made
themselves an arrangement by which one of them was to
hold the county shrievalty on alternate days with the
other ; or else that by the appointment of one of them
to superiority over the other, a sub-sheriff became neces
sary. It is very probable that the sheriff of London, a
" high " sheriff, that is, if there be any meaning in the
term, became mayor ; while the sheriff of Middlesex, a
sub-sheriff in the modern sense, had a colleague appointed
to do the sub-sheriff's work with him in London. For
centuries one sheriff was nominated by the mayor, and
the other elected by the people, as in many parishes the
vicar chooses one churchwarden and the people the
other ; and we find to this day that the mayor performs
the duties assigned in a county to the high sheriff. He
is still allowed to nominate one or more of the citizens as
sheriff on approval, but, as happened lately (1879), the
commonalty may refuse his candidate. In civic cere
monials the aldermen, as follows from what I have stated,
go before the sheriffs, and so does the recorder on some
* This is the date assigned to FitzAylwin's first mayoralty in the ' Liber
de Antiquis Legibus.' But "it is improbable," observes Mr. Stubbs
('Chronicles,' p. xxxi.), "that London had a recognised mayor before
1 191, in which year the communa was established, at the time of Long-
champ's removal from office ; and there is, I believe, no mention of such
an official in a record until some three years later." In the first of the two
chronicles in this volume the beginning of the mayoralty is placed in 1209.
In the 'Chronicle of London,' printed in 1827 (from Harl. MS. 565, and
Cott. MS. Julius B. 1), under the tenth year of King John, is this distinct
assertion ; — " In this yere was the first maire of London," See below, p. 122.

92 HISTORY OF LONDON.
occasions, if not on all. The sheriffs, in short, are the
mayor's deputies.* John Carpenter, who, in the time of
the famous Richard Whittington, compiled the so-called
' White Book ' of the city records, sums up their position
when he describes them as the executors of the mayor's1
judgments and precepts, as the eyes of the mayor, ever
on the watch, and as taking upon themselves a share of
that anxiety which the mayor could not bear alone ; " for
the sheriffs and all their officers both ought to be, and of
usage have been, subject to the mayor for the time being
as the limbs are subject to the head."
Of the exercise of the other privileges granted to the
citizens, we have many curious anecdotes in the old city re
cords, t Two or three which, though belonging to a slightly
later period, are in point here, may be taken as examples.
On Sunday, September 14th, 1276, Ponce de More,
who was probably a French wine merchant, living by the
Thames bank, in the parish of St. James Garlickhythe,
sent to inform the authorities that Adam Schot his
servant, was lying dead in his house. The chamberlain
and sheriffs immediately repaired to the spot. They
called together the men of the ward, which was then
called after Henry de Coventre, its alderman, but was
afterwards known as Vintry ward, and diligent inquisi
tion was made as to the causes of the unfortunate
Adam's death. From the evidence they soon collected,
it appeared that the previous Wednesday afternoon he
had gone to the garden of one Laurence in the adjoining
• In a letter to the Times, lately, a member of the Herald's College
gravely asserted the precedence of the sheriffs of London as equal to that of
high sheriffs of counties. But it will be seen from these remarks that their
position is in reality very different.
t The insertion of these examples in this place is an anachronism ; but
the letter books, from which they were selected by Mr. Riley, only go back
to 1276.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 93
parish of St. Michael Paternoster* and had climbed a
tree to gather some pears. But the branch on which he
was standing broke, and Adam fell heavily to the
ground. " By reason of which fall," says the narrator,
" his whole body was almost burst asunder." In this
miserable condition the poor lad lingered through
Thursday and Friday and died on Saturday.
The jurors viewed the body, but no wound appeared
on it, and they found that no one was suspected of
having caused Adam's death. The pear-tree was valued
for deodand t at five shillings, and John Horn the sheriff
was held answerable for it. At the same time, as a pre
caution, the two nearest neighbours were called upon to
find sureties who would be able to answer for them in
case fresh evidence arose, or it appeared that the
story told by Ponce should prove untrue. Ponce de
More himself and all his household were similarly bound,
and the matter dropped.
It so happened that among the sureties there was a
man named Laurence Duket, whose subsequent history
is very illustrative of the city usages. Eight years after
the accident to Adam Schot, he was one day in the
market-place, near the great church of St. Mary-le-Bow,
and unfortunately fell in with an acquaintance, a clerk
named Ralph Crepyn.f They quarrelled about a lady
with whom Crepyn had very tender relations. Alice atte
Bowe, to judge from her name, lived near the church ;
* This was a church in the same ward, and not in Paternoster Row, as
I have seen it described. I note the point because in my ' In and Out of
London,' I mistakenly alluded to this inquest as evidence that a garden
adjoined the north side of St. Paul's. That fruit-trees did grow there,
however, is proved by a story which will be found in chap, viii., p. 241.
t Deodand was a kind of fine paid for the redemption from forfeiture
of an animal or, as in this case, of a tree by which a death had been caused.
J See 'French Chron.,' p. 240. Crepyn was M.P. for the city.

94 HISTORY OF LONDON.
and when her dear Ralph was brought home to her on a
stretcher, badly wounded, she vowed vengeance on Lau
rence Duket, who had assaulted him. Laurence, knowing
he was in greater danger from the anger of the woman
than if the sheriffs themselves were in search of him, fled
to the church, and concealed himself in the steeple. But
Alice, living close by, had either seen him or heard that
he had been seen to hide himself; and she determined,
notwithstanding the sacred character of the building, to
have him murdered in it. To this end she assembled a
number of ruffians in the dead of night, and arranged
with them to do the deed in such a way that detection
seemed impossible. Acting on her instructions they
stealthily entered the church, found the unhappy Lau
rence, strangled him, tied the cord to the mullion of one
of the windows, and retired as stealthily as they had
come. Next morning, of course, information of a shocking
discovery in St. Mary's was brought to the sheriffs, who
held a hurried inquest on the body. One of the sheriffs
was, apparently, among the friends of Alice atte Bow ;
and, no doubt, he hastened the verdict oi felo-de-se, which
was presently returned. The body of the murdered man
was therefore dragged by the heels through the streets,
and thrown into the ditch outside the city wall.
But the fact was that when Laurence Duket took
refuge in the church he was not alone. A little boy —
perhaps a street beggar, perhaps one of his own family,
an apprentice or servant, for he was a man of substance —
had accompanied him into the sanctuary, and remained
with him in the dark church. We can picture to our
selves the poor little fellow shivering behind the tall
tomb of some civic dignitary, while he listened to the
tread of muffled feet on the marble pavement, and

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 95
the whispered council of the murderers, and can realise
his horror when, with the dawn of day, he saw the stark
stiff corpse hanging to the window-sill between him and
the light. No wonder he fled in terror, and was not
forthcoming at the inquest.
But his story soon became known down by the river
in Duket's old home. All London was stirred ; numerous
arrests were made. The whole truth gradually came out.
The boy's evidence was fully confirmed, and no fewer
than sixteen persons were condemned either as principals
or accessories, while the sheriff, Jordan, whose place of
residence or business is sufficiently indicated by his
surname, Godcheap or Goodcheap, was removed from
office. The body of Laurence Duket was found and
brought back, and honourably interred in the church
yard ; but the church itself was closed for a time under
interdict, and the doors and windows filled up with
thorns. The lady who was at the bottom of all this
mischief underwent the terrible penalty annexed to
murder by a female, and was burnt to death in the
market-place, while seven of her accomplices were
hanged in the cruel fashion then in vogue. They ap
pear, for the most part, by their names to have belonged
to respectable city families. Ralph Crepyn himself, with
two other clerks and the sheriff, remained long in prison,
but were at length released on payment of fines, or, as
the chronicler describes the transaction, were " hanged by
the purse." *
The way in which the chamberlain, coroner, or sheriff,
as the case might be, dealt with accidents and offences
is thus illustrated, and, in addition, a few other examples
will be sufficient.
* The full authorities for this tragic tale are cited in Aungier's edition of
the 'French Chronicle ' (Camden Soe, p. 19.)

96 HISTORY OF LONDON.
On Monday, in March, 1276, information was brought
to Gregory de Rokesley, the mayor, coroner or chamber
lain,* and to the sheriffs, that Henry de Flegge was
lying dead in the dock of the ward of Castle Baynard.
They proceeded to the spot, and called together the men
both of this and the adjoining ward of Queenhithe, who
made diligent inquisition as to the cause of death.
Henry de Flegge it appears, not being a Sabbatarian
according to modern notions, took his horse to water in
the dock on the preceding Sunday morning. The horse,
however, fulfilled the warning of the proverb, and refused
to drink. Henry spurred him, and the horse, filled, we
are told, with exceeding viciousness and strength, carried
him out into deep water, where he was drowned. The
result of the inquiry must be given in full. "And be
cause it was presented by the jurors that the said Henry
de Flegge was first found, after the misadventure, near
the quay of Baldwyn le Buscher (Woodmonger), and
was removed therefrom, and taken by Henry Lapewater
and Roger le Folur (Fuller) to the quay aforesaid, with
out leave of the chamberlain, the same Henry was
attached by John Wyther, carpenter, and Adam Absolon,
girdler, and the said Roger by Henry Smith and Robert
de Everesham, dyer. And the four nearest neighbours
were attached, the two neighbours nearest to the spot
where the body was first found, and the two neighbours
nearest to the spot where the body was viewed by the
coroner. And the said horse was appraised at one,
mark," for deodand.f
As examples of the right of " infangthief," or the
criminal jurisdiction of the mayor and sheriffs over
* These offices were till then united. (Riley, p. 3, note, and Lansdowne
MSS. 558, fo. 206.)
+ Riley, ' Memorials,' p. 5.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 97
thieves taken within their boundaries, we might select
several illustrative cases. One will suffice. Certain
Welshmen, thieves, were taken up in 1 3 1 1 for robbing a
lady named Dionisia le Bokbyndere, who had to find
sureties that she would prosecute them at the next ses
sions as having committed burglary in her house "in
Fletestrete, in the suburbs of London." * The accused
were committed to Newgate, but the king's marshal,
Peter de Bernardestone, came and claimed them as
belonging to the king's establishment and household,
adding that if any one wished to prosecute them he
could do so before the seneschal.f To this demand the
mayor replied by calling together the " good men of the
commonalty," who agreed with him in utterly repu
diating the right of the king's marshal to receive custody
of the Welshmen, as, "according to the custom and
franchise of the city, persons attached within the liberties
thereof for such felonies and trespasses as this, ought not
to be delivered elsewhere than within the same city,
before the justiciars of our lord the king, or the officials
of the city." $
' As an example of the freedom from the billet, or obli
gation to receive the king or his servants into lodgings,
an obligation very strictly and arbitrarily enforced else
where, we have the record of the reception in 13 17 of the
clerk of the Marshalsea, with a request that such lodgings
might be assigned by the choice of the city authorities
in the suburbs, and of the appointment of two delegates
to go with him for the purpose.
It would be easy to multiply examples of this kind.
* Fleet Street was included in the ward of Farringdon Without, when
that ward was defined in 1346.
f A court official, or controller.
X The sequel is unrecorded, Riley, p. 90,
VOL. I. H

98 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Very possibly, the city was slow to put its privileges to
the test. At first the king's authority was paramount
everywhere, but little by little each article of the charter
was asserted, and the arbitrary interruptions of the city
liberties which at first took place on the occasion of each
assertion, especially under weak kings like Henry III.
and Edward' II., only served to show eventually how
strongly they were founded.*
Besides the charter to the citizens, Henry I. granted
one to the church of the Holy Trinity at Aldgate, by
which he gave it the rights of the old knighten guild,
mentioned in the last chapter. This act dissolved the
guild, but whether in displeasure or in favour we know
not.f The prior of the fraternity attached tp the church,
whom Stow calls the first canon regular in England,
became alderman of the ward of Portsoken, which lies
without the wall. Presumably, therefore, the head of the
old guild was alderman of the same ward. The disso
lution of the guild may have been connected with the
other charter. The grants of liberties, as detailed in it,
* Stow (p. 108, Thoms's ed.) gives a list of portreeves, among whom he
includes Godfrey, whom he names " de Magun, or Magnavile, "in the reign
of William I. and William Rufus, and Hugh de Buch, in the reign of
Henry I., Auberie de Vere, earl of Oxford ; after him, " Gilbert Becket, in
the reign of King Stephen ; after that, Godfrey de Magnavile, the son of
William, the son of Godfrey de Magnavile, earls of Essex." These, he says,
were portgraves or sheriffs of London and Middlesex. He goes on to name
Peter Fitzwalter and John Fitznigel, as ruling in the reign of Henry II.
It is apparent that he mixes up two families by connecting the ' ' Godfrey,.
Portreeve " of the Conqueror's charter, with the Mandeviles ; one of whom,
as we shall see (p. 101), was arbitrarily made governor of the city and
county by the Empress Maud, during her brief tenure of London. The
list of genuine portreeves stands therefore as follows :— Godfrey, Hugh de
Buch, Gilbert Becket, Peter Fitzwalter, and John Fitznigel. To these
may be added William Chamberlain, at the time of the compilation of
Domesday Book (see above p. 86), and the Saxon portreeves, Swetman,
Leofstan, ^Elsi, Esgar and Ulf (see above p. 74).
t See further on this subject in chapter v.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 99
which I have endeavoured to illustrate by anticipating,
the chronological course of events, may have been in
some way conditional on the suppression of the guild.
We saw, in speaking of London under Edward the
Confessor, that at one time the head of the knighten
guild was portreeve. Whether he was always the port
reeve — whether, that is, Portsoken was a kind of
manor assigned for the maintenance of the chief magis
trate for the time being, — is one of those questions we
shall never now, in all probability, be able to answer.
It has been suggested * that the office of portreeve was
now abolished, and that of sheriff substituted for it, the
citizens being recompensed for the loss of their ancient
officer by obtaining leave to elect the newer one. If
Henry discouraged or disliked guilds, it is remarkably
that we first hear of the weavers in 1 1 30, when Robert,
Leofstan's son, paid 16/. into the exchequer for them.
In many cities, here, and on the continent, the weavers
are the most ancient and most persistent of the commer
cial guilds.
The London election of Stephen shows plainly the
increasing influence of the, citizens in public affairs.
Henry I. died early in December, 1135 ;f and Stephen
showed more wisdom than he ever again appeared to
possess, when by a forced march he threw himself upon
the goodwill of London. The nobles had held aloof
from his party, but the burghers supported him, and as
the result proved with success. In the four-and-twenty
days which had elapsed since Henry's stern rule had
been relaxed by death, disorder had broken out. " The
traders could see the pillage of their wains as they
wound along the banks of the Thames ; " London wanted
* Stubbs, 'Const. Hist.,' i. 406.
t Mr. Green's paper in ' Old London,' mentioned above.
H 2

IOO HISTORY OF LONDON,
a leader, a defender, and the far-off empress was for
gotten in the presence of a ready soldier. So the alder
men gathered the folkmote " and these providing at their
own will for the good of the realm, unanimously agreed
to choose a king." * If we may trust the report of the
chronicler on this occasion, the citizens reverting to ancient
precedents, and remembering what had been done by
their fathers in the old Saxon time, asserted that it was
the special right and privilege of London to choose the
successor of a deceased monarch ; and the doctrine once
clearly laid down, no one was found so bold as to dispute
it. The meeting was held, no doubt, on the old meeting-
ground where the churchyard of the cathedral touched
the corner of the great market-place. Hastening from
their booths and sheds, the citizens followed their " alder
men and wiser folk," as they defiled in procession across
Cheap from their Guildhall ; the speeches at St. Paul's
Cross were soon over ; the handsome, graceful figure of
the Count of Blois was seen above the crowd, surrounded
by the city magnates, who, assuring the people that the
new king would confirm their privileges and respect their
rights, led the way into the church, where the clergy
looked on sullenly. They had no bishop to guide them,
and they were moreover already pledged to Maud. But,
however inspired, Stephen had a bishop ready. He
never showed such promptness and forethought again ;
had he conducted the rest of his life after this beginning,
the course of English history had been altered. The
bishop of London, Gilbert " the Universal," was dead,
and no successor had been appointed ; but William of
Corboil, the Primate, had been already fetched from
Lambeth,f and no time was lost in crowning the new
* ' Gesta Stephani,' p. 3, quoted by Mr. Green.
t The archbishops already rented Lambeth. See below, chapter xxii.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 101
king. " Oath was exchanged against oath. The citizens
swore to defend Stephen with money and blood, Stephen
swore to apply himself with his whole strength to the
pacification of the kingdom."
London kept her promise to the king of her choice.
He broke his to her. The annals of his reign are a
miserable record of wars and fires and robberies. Scarce
four years had elapsed from that winter day in the
enclosure of St. Paul's, before Stephen took away from
the citizens the right to elect their sheriffs, and only
restored it on the payment of a fine, which, though it was
but a hundred marks of silver, was exacted at a time
when the city was still tottering under the heaviest blow
it had received since the days of the Danes. In 1136
occurred what was known for generations afterwards as
the Great Fire of London. It commenced near London
Stone, in the centre of the city, and spread westward
along Watling Street to the newly built cathedral, where
it consumed the shrine of St. Erkenwald ; and eastward
to the gate on the Essex road which had only been
opened a few years, and flinging itself with especial fury
upon the bridge, burnt even the old woodwork which con
nected the Roman piers. In short, whatever was left of
Roman London or Saxon London, if there can havfe been
anything, was consumed in this the first of the " Great
Fires." In spite of Stephen's perfidy the citizens remained
staunch. They had a choice of evils, perhaps, and chose
the least ; for Maud, when she got the chance, not only
rescinded the grants of her father and grandfather, but
went so far as to give the earl of Essex * Middlesex to
farm, the Tower of London as his castle, the sheriffship
* Geoffrey. It is impossible, at this point, not to recall an earlier period
when London was subject to Essex (chap. iii.).

102 HISTORY OF LONDON.
of Middlesex and even the sheriffship of London, and
the office of justiciar, so that no person could hold pleas
in either city or county without his permission. In
short, she did at a stroke what the Londoners had always
so much dreaded, and by putting them "in demesne,"
reduced them at once to the position of any petty town
in the country where the overlord plundered as he
pleased from his castle on the hill.
This monstrous act roused the inmost feelings of the
Londoners. Stephen had been made a prisoner at
Lincoln. Essex was busy fortifying the Tower afresh.
It was evident he intended to assert his extraordinary
rights to the utmost. No citizen was safe in his house or
in his shop. His goods and his family were alike at the
mercy of the new overlord. Stephen's worst tyrannies
were not so terrible as the mere thought of what might
now befall them. There was, of course, a weak-hearted
party in the city. Its headquarters were at St. Paul's.
There had been a disputed election to the bishopric,
which Maud eventually terminated by the appointment
of Robert Seal (de Sigillo) a monk of Reading, and the
dean was a leader of the empress's party. But the
opposite side was stronger. A deputation of the prin
cipal citizens attended at Winchester when the estates
of the realm were assembled there ostensibly to recog
nise Maud as queen. They clamoured for the release
of Stephen, remembering perhaps that to recognise
Maud would be to stultify themselves, and 'they com
plained openly and loudly of oppression.
But the queen's party in the city meanwhile had
everything their own way ; and a deputation was actually
sent to her at St. Albans, where she awaited the decision
of the council at Winchester. She was invited to
London, and on her entry was received respectfully, if

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 103
not enthusiastically. As a return for their surrender
the citizens naturally expected a renewal of their ancient
privileges and petitioned accordingly, but Maud did not
know how to use prosperity, and instead of taking the
opportunity thus presented of attaching permanently the
most powerful city in her dominions, she behaved with
such arrogance, and refused the petition so disdainfully,
that waverers and even the more devoted "empress's
men " were disgusted and returned or deserted to
Stephen. The empress fled. Stephen's adherents, though
they could not take the Tower, and probably did
not try, were bold enough to march after Maud to
Winchester, and were rewarded by the capture of earl
Robert, her best councillor and general. This put them
on a safer footing, and when Stephen had been released
in exchange for Robert, and the Tower had been
surrendered to him, London once more breathed freely.
With the accession of Henry II. a period of compara
tive prosperity set in, and London obtained a confirma
tion of all the liberties granted by his grandfather,
together with some definitions of smaller points in dispute.
Henry was the first of the Angevin or so-called Plan
tagenet kings. With him begins a new era, and a new
dynasty. This will be the place therefore in which to
pause, and endeavour to reconstruct, if we can, a picture
of London as it was towards the end of the twelfth
century. Fortunately for such an inquiry an enthusiastic citizen
of London, engaging to write a life of St. Thomas of
Canterbury, whom he claimed as a " fellow citizen," *
thought it would not be complete without some account
of his hero's birthplace, and adducing the example of
Sallust, who, in narrating the history of a Roman expedi-
* " Ejusdem domini mei concivis.'' (Fitzstephen : Prologue.)

104 HISTORY OF LONDON.
tion against the Moors described the situation of Africa,
presents his readers with " a view of the site and constitu
tion of the city of London." His view, meagre to a,
degree, is yet most valuable at the present day as the
earliest account extant. We may have some things to
add to it — some few things to correct ; but the account
written by Fitzstephen tells of what without him we
could never have known. He loved the city as his own
birthplace and that of the saint of whose friendship he
was so proud. He sums up its merits in a few words.
London, according to him, was accounted in the reign of
Henry II. to be happy in the wholesomeness of its
climate, in the profession of the Christian religion, the
strength of its fortresses, the nature of its situation, the
honour of its citizens, the chastity of its matrons, and
the number of illustrious persons that inhabit it
It is evident from this exordium that Fitzstephen is
determined to say nothing but what is good about
London. His description has in it a foretaste of the
great movements of the thirteenth century. There is a
youth and joyousness about it which in itself tells
of prosperity. The city, in truth, within its ancient
walls, was indeed young. It had been rebuilt almost
completely. Its new churches, and the great cathedral
church in particular, were sending their shingled
spires towards heaven, and new modes of construc
tion in stone were producing results in magnificence
and stability unthought of before. The curate of
Colechurch was preparing his plans for the bridge which
was to immortalise him. Bishop Richard FitzNeal was
writing on law and reforming the procedure of the king's
courts. Ralph of Diss was engaged in his deanery
on the epitome of the chronicles. There was a general
wakening to new life. The citizens were now sure^of

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 105
their position. They had withstood the oppressor and
had come victorious out of the struggle. Troubles and
contests were indeed before them and they knew it, but
they also now knew the way to attain success. Within
a few years, before the last decade of the twelfth century
had been entered, the municipal constitution received its
capstone ; and Fitzstephen's ink was hardly dry before
Henry FitzAylwin assumed office as the first of the long
line of London mayors.*
In spite of the air of happiness and contentment which
imparts such a rosy colour to the pages of Fitzstephen,
there are sentences here and there which both betray a
memory of very different times and an apprehension of
their recurrence. This city, he repeats in one place, on
the whole, is doubtless »most charming ; but he adds
significantly, " at least when it has the happiness to be
well governed." He wrote when Henry had reconciled
himself to the Church, and when a momentary gleam of
popularity was still reflected on his reign. He mentions
as a native of the city Henry III., meaning, of course,
the ill-fated prince whom his father had caused to be
crowned in his own lifetime, but who died of fever at
Limoges in 11 84, while engaged in rebellion. In the body
of the book, too, he expresses himself as apprehensive of
tyranny on King Henry's part : and alludes in this
chapter to the frequent fires, while he censures the
drinking habits of the inhabitants. On the whole, how
ever, he sees few drawbacks in a city life ; though, monk
as he was, he takes evidently a keen interest in all
manly sports — horse-racing, hunting, skating, even
cock-fighting, which last he tells us was practised on
* In 1130 a chamberlain is mentioned as rendering part of the account.
Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I., quoted by Stubbs, ' Const. Hist.,' i. 406. The
mayor is often called " chamberlain " at a far later date.

106 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Shrove Tuesdays by the boys in school-rooms1, with the
approval of their masters.
One cannot but wish he had devoted a little less space
to the amusements of London, and a little more to the
topography — that he had omitted the account of a
great eating-house at Billingsgate, and told us something
of other public buildings. There remains, however, a
picture of manners we could ill spare ; and, short as is the
account of the city, it is all we have. He mentions the
wall, with its seven double gates, and tells us that it only
extended round the three landward sides, having been
undermined by the river on the south. He says there
were a hundred and twenty-six parochial churches, with
thirteen which belonged to the various conventual
establishments. This number must include those in the
suburbs. He also mentions three schools, and describes
the mode of study. He has much to say of Smithfield,
and a little of the shops of tradesmen, though he does
not name Cheap.
¦ On the government of the city there are only a few
lines. He compares it with the government of ancient
Rome, in that, like Rome, London is distributed into
regions, and has its annual sheriffs instead of consuls.*
He alludes also to the aldermen as senators, and
speaks of inferior magistrates, and of meetings on
statutable days, which may be a reference to the borough-
mote. His heart is evidently in the forest with its
hounds and hawks. He dwells with pleasure on the
gardens without the walls, and almost the only local
names given are those of Clerkenwell, Holy Well, and
St. Clement's Well.
Nevertheless, it is possible to attain a little clearer
* In 1 130 there were four sheriffs, or vice-comites, who jointly account
for the ferm of London. Stubbs, ' Const. Hist.,' i. 406.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 107
knowledge than what is afforded to us by the actual
words of Fitzstephen. The few notes he gives us as to
the wall are valuable. The seven double gates must he
those which were not mere posterns, or only single gates
for foot-passengers. Such a postern existed facing the
Tower near the church of All Hallows ; but the eastern
most " double gate " must have been Aldgate. This was
not one of the Roman entrances, for the simple reason
that the Lea was not in the Roman time fordable in this
direction. Perhaps the alteration in the course of this
river, commonly ascribed to Alfred, may have rendered
it possible to make some kind of passage ; and it is
evident that several miles would be saved to persons
travelling into Essex if they could cross the Lea at
Stratford, instead of Old Ford, or by leaving the city at
Aldgate instead of Bishopsgate. A fortunate accident
hastened the building of a bridge. The queen of
Henry I., Matilda or Maude, is said to have run some
risk at Old Ford on a journey into Essex, about the
year 11 10, and in consequence to have commanded the
building of a bridge, or system of bridges, over the arms
of the Lea, lower down. The road from Aldgate was
probably in existence already, and the principal crossing
was known as the Stratford — a term which shows that
the roadway was paved, and perhaps in part a causeway.
The stone arch or arches gave the new bridge the name
of Bow.* The exact date of the opening of Aldgate it
is now impossible to determine.! The name seems to
show us that it was older than some other gate —
perhaps Newgate, which was certainly rebuilt more
* As St. Mary-le-Bow is called from its arched crypt, which, in turn,
gives its name to the Court of Arches. There is a Stone Bow at Lincoln.
t The traditional story given by Stow and others about King Edgar and
the thirteen knights is obviously an anachronism to say the least,

108 HISTORY OF LONDON.
than once. But in the earliest records it is always
written Ale-gate or Algate, not Ealdgate, which would
be the proper form if Oldgate was meant.*
From Aldgate the wall passed without interruption to
Bishopsgate, and thence westward to Cripplegate. If
Moorgate existed it was only as a postern,f and Cripple
gate was probably little more. Aldersgate came next, and
thence the wall led to Newgate, which was first called
Westgate and then Chamberlain's Gate, either because
the sheriff, coroner, or chamberlain, had there his prison,
or because it was rebuilt by some one of the name.J
From Newgate the wall followed the crest of the deep
clay bluff under which the tidal Fleet gave a mooring-
place to shipping. Cargoes were discharged at the foot
of Ludgate Hill, and it was perhaps about this time
that a bridge was thrown across the river, with the
effect of restricting the ship traffic, and eventually of
impeding the water-course. It is most likely, how
ever, that very few houses were to be seen along the
modern Fleet Street, and that the " populous suburb,"
which, as Fitzstephen says, united London and West
minster, was rather along the line of Holborn than the
Strand. From Ludgate, by Blackfriars, to the Thames bank,
-there was no other gate, and the wall along the bank
had disappeared. The Thames, says our author, which
abounds with fish, and in which the tides ebb and flow,
* Pepys spells it Allgate (iii. 265), but we cannot lay much stress on his
spelling. t Newcourt (i. 256) speaks of a place called " the Little Postem,''
which almost implies the existence of a greater one.
X The Compter, a sheriff's prison in Giltspur Street, stood more nearly
on the site of the old Roman gate, and may have been the original prison
of the portreeve. Westgate is named in a charter by Burhred, King of
Mercia, 18 April, 857. (Cod. Diplom. cclxxx.)

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 109
runs past the city on this side, but has in a long tract of
time, washed down, undermined, and subverted the walls
in that part. He is so much more circumstantial than
usual in this passage that he must be alluding to some
occurrence of note at the time ; and if we remember first
that the river wall must have been perfect when Canute
failed to take the city by compassing the bridge, and
secondly, that the building of the Tower made the
river-side walls worthless, we may date their fall a very
few years before Fitzstephen wrote.
His seventh gate, we find, was on this south side and
defended the bridge. Of the bridge itself he says
nothing here ; but he probably wrote while it was still in
course of reconstruction after the disastrous fire of 1 1 36.
In another passage he mentions a bridge on which
spectators stood to watch aquatic sports, but he must
allude to Holborn bridge, or some minor work of the
kind, as it would have been impossible to fix the trunk of
a tree in the middle of the Thames to hang a target on.
The point, however, has little bearing on the subject in
hand ; for there must have been a bridge of some kind
over the Thames, and a gate to defend it.
Of the comparative importance and size of the city
gates .we may form some idea from an entry relating, it
is true, to a much later period, but sufficiently near for
our purpose. In 1356 there were many complaints made
of the state of the roads leading to the city, and the
authorities determined to impose tolls on carts passing
the gates. For this purpose collectors were appointed,
and we can judge, by the number of collectors at each
gate, on which road the traffic was greatest. One
collector was sufficient for Ludgate, but the rest had two,
and Bishopsgate four.
Fitzstephen tells us little of the interior of the

1 1 0 HISTOR Y OF LONDON,
city. The churches in his day had already attained the
number of 126, so that the parishes, as defined at present,
were already in existence. To judge by the size of the
parishes then, we find that the population was but scanty
about Newgate, and not much greater at the East-end
about Aldgate ; that the river's bank, and the line of
the two ancient thoroughfares, the Watling Street and
Bishopsgate Street, were the best inhabited ; and that
already the wide open space about the Cheap was being-
contracted, and lines of booths were being turned into
streets. From his. mentioning that the shopkeepers did
not live at their place of business, it is clear that to some
extent at least the old selds or sheds existed in the
market-place, and could be removed in case of need, for
a tournament or a procession. These rows of selds
resembled eastern bazaars. They were so arranged that
wares of each kind were exhibited separately, and the
modern streets which occupy their place still recall by
their names the trade of the ancient occupants.
Thus the Poultry was the poultry market. Adjoining"
it, was the Stocksmarket, so called from a pair of stocks
for disorderly persons, on a site now covered by the
Mansion House. In Friday Street, leading to Old Fish
Street, were to be found provisions suitable for fast days ;
the bakers had their sheds in Bread Street ; corn was
sold by the church of St Michael "le Querne"; there
was a Honey Lane, a Milk Street, a Wood Street, a
Soaper's Lane,* and so on. Each and all of these were
eventually taken for permanent buildings, but at this
time and long afterwards Cheap must have been a
vast permanent market, or fair. The Cheap consisted
of two branches. One lay north of the main thorough
fare ; its most southern part was the Poultry. The
* Riley, xviii. Now Queen Street. See Appendix F.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. Ill
other portion was to the southward and westward and
terminated with the changers' stalls close to Watling
Street. This corner must have been the Threadneedle
Street of the time.* The headquarters of the mercers
and haberdashers and other shops for clothing are suffi
ciently indicated by such names as Hosier Lane, now
Bow Lane, and Cordwainer's Street, which gave a name
to the ward in which half the market-place was situated.
The roadway as far as Bow Church ran along the north
side, and thence passed through the Poultry to a bridge
over the Wallbrook, close to a church dedicated to St,
Mildred. This roadway skirting the market-place was
Cheapside. There was no Cheapside at Eastcheap,
where the market of produce brought over London
Bridge, or into the city by Bishopsgate, was held in the
open place formed by the junction of the principal
roads. Other open spaces were the Romelandf at Billings
gate, the Romeland at Dowgate, the churchyard of St.
Paul's, which adjoined the western end of Cheap, and
was the place for popular meetings, and where a tower
stood with a bell to summon the citizens, and the site
north of Paternoster Row, to which, in 1225, the Grey
Friars removed from Cornhill.f London still fitted very
loosely within its walls, and many houses, even then, were
surrounded by extensive gardens, especially those which
were situated close to the wall, "well furnished with
trees, spacious and beautiful." Of the street architecture
we can form but a very vague idea. The pointed arch
had not yet come in. There were few buildings of stone.
* Stow says he has read of no housing otherwise on that side (the high
Street of Cheap to the Standard), but of divers sheds from Soper's Lane,
Thoms's Stow, p. 97. It was afterwards called Goldsmith's Row.
t In modern pronunciation, Roomy land.
J Now Christ's Hospital. It was occupied by shambles.

1 12 HISTORY OF LONDON.
There was little window glass. Some of the houses of
wealthy Jews * may have resembled those at Lincoln, and
presented the round-arched and zigzag moulded features
of the later Norman style. A few churches, like St.
Bartholomew's outside the wall and St. Paul's within,
had long aisles of stout columns ; but vaulted roofs were
still rare.
Among the thirteen conventual churches mentioned
by Fitzstephen, there were, besides the Confessor's
church at Westminster, the church of the hospital of St.
Katherine beyond the Tower, built by Stephen's queen,
St. Mary Overey's priory, at the southern end of London
Bridge, founded in 1106, the priory at Aldgate, of which
the first prior, Norman, is said to have been " the first
canon regular in all England,"f the new Temple church,
and the rising buildings of the prior of St. John at
Clerkenwell, almost all without the walls,J together with
two, or three which must be noticed separately.
When Fitzstephen tells us of the thirteen con
ventual churches in London, we cannot but wish he
had enumerated them. Our difficulty is to know where
he drew the line between city and suburbs. Did he
reckon in Barking as well as Westminster? Did he
count Merton and Bermondsey ? All are within the
modern suburbs. Of those actually within the walls the
number was but small in his day. A great increase had
taken place, both in the number of convents and also in
the different orders of monks, friars, and nuns. Stricter
* In 1215 the army of the barons repaired the city gates and walls
with stones taken from the ruins of the Jews' houses. Stow, p. 12.
f Thoms's Stow, p. 53.
X There were in existence or lately founded about the end of the twelfth
century, besides St. Paul's and the churches mentioned above, the hospitals
of St. Giles and St. Mary (Spital), the nunnery of Clerkenwell and that
of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate.

L ON DON A FTER THE CONQ UES T. 1 1 3
rules attracted ascetic minds, which had but scant respect
for the old Benedictines. The security from Danish
invasion, and the reparation of old foundations, acted
also as incentives, and the neighbourhood of London
was soon full of religious houses. It is possible that the
sacred character of the inmates enabled them to dispense
with the protection of the walls where laymen would
still have feared to build, and the history of a religious
house contains almost always some reference to the
loneliness, or bleakness, or dampness of the site chosen.
Within the city a few monasteries sprang up, but the
greatest were about the gates, as at Aldgate, Newgate,
and Bishopsgate. The houses then most newly founded
were of canons regular, as at Holy Trinity, Aldgate, and
at St. Bartholomew's, outside Newgate. Even as Fitz
stephen wrote, the first Dominicans may have been
making their voices heard in the city, and the first
Franciscans have been seen begging in the streets ; but
his reference cannot be to them, as their "miserable
barrack-like houses " * were still unbuilt.
The family of St. Thomas of Canterbury were slow
to appreciate their distinguished position ; but about
twenty years after his martyrdom, Agnes, his sister,
who had inherited the old mansion of the Beckets in
Cheap, determined to dedicate it to religious uses.
Her husband, a Norman knight engaged in Henry's
Irish expedition, consented to the establishment of the
hospital of St. Thomas, called " of Aeon." The name
has proved an insoluble puzzle. It may have referred
to an oak tree which grew near the house, as a church
close by was known as St. Martin Pomary, " of apples
growing there." f It may have been from the oaken
* Pauli, 'Old England,' p. 60.
t Newcourt, i. 410.
VOL. I, I

1 14 HISTORY OF LONDON.
panelling or framing of the principal apartments. At
a later period it was looked upon as a reference to Acre,
which was taken about the year of the foundation by
the Crusaders, and in which a hospital of St. Thomas
was also dedicated. Agnes Becket's husband, Thomas
FitzTheobald, was baron of H elles, in Tipperary, and
the progenitor, whether by Agnes or another wife is un
known, of the Butlers, earls of Ormond, who at a later
period connected themselves closely with the house
which she dedicated as her sainted brother's birth
place, " in free, pure, and perpetual alms for evermore."
A colony of monks of the rule of St. Augustine was
placed in it ; and soon a fair chapel arose, and the
monastic buildings spread until they fronted the market
place all the way from Ironmonger Lane to Old Jewry.
The parish .church, St. Mary Colechurch, was squeezed
into a corner, and perched on lofty arches. Two
Jews whose land abutted on that of the canons
were compelled to give it up. One of them bore
a name which was plainly unfortunate for him. It was
probably thought little less than blasphemy that a
miserable unbeliever like Moses of Canterbury should
be settled so near the holy precincts where his namesake
was born. We cannot help suspecting Sir Peter of
Colechurch, the curate or vicar of the parish, of inciting
the monks to this extravagance' in architecture. He was
a noted builder, and was engaged on the colossal work
of making a new bridge over the Thames. In one of its
piers he placed a small chapel of St. Thomas of Canter
bury, and was buried in it himself. The monks im
poverished their house, however, and in the year 1444
their master, John Neel, petitioned parliament to relieve
them of their burdens, by altering the constitution of the
hospital, so that it might receive the gifts of the faithful.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 1 15
Among other reforms Neel projected the opening of
a school — one of four which he and some other en
lightened clergymen succeeded in giving to their fellow-
citizens, who, notwithstanding the boasts of Fitz
stephen, had but few educational advantages before
the middle of the fifteenth century. This period of
trouble brought the brethren help from without. The
earl of Ormond's claim to be of founder's kin, although
supported by a doubtful pedigree, was too good to be
rejected, backed up as it was by the gift of a manor and
advowson in Buckinghamshire.* The earl came to an
untimely end in the Wars of the Roses, but his two
successors were buried in the church, which was
patronised also in the next generation by the earl of
Wiltshire and Ormond, of the Boleyn family, whose
terrible son-in-law, Henry VIII., dissolved the mon
astery.! The Mercers obtained the site, and their chapel
and school perpetuated the older foundations.
The great priory of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, was
also in existence in Fitzstephen's time. It is difficult
to say when the parish church was first built, ' but it
probably existed long before Henry I. founded the
priory in the beginning of the twelfth century. He
brought in Augustinian or Black Canons, who opened
close by a hospital for the poor. The first prior, Rahere,
had seen a vision of the apostle, such was the tale
invented by the monkish legend-makers to account for
the dedication ; but it is unnecessary. St Bartholomew's
church was rebuilt and annexed to the new foundation.
* Herbert, 'Companies,' i. 262. The date, 1472, quoted by Herbert from
Strype must be incorrect, as the earl was beheaded after the battle of
Towton, in 1461. There is further confusion in Herbert as to the next two
earls, John and Thomas.
t Another hospital of St. Thomas still survives. It has migrated west
ward from its original situation near Bermondsey Abbey. I 2

1 16 HISTORY OF LONDON.
The history of Rahere is overlaid with fable, but would
be interesting if we could recover it. He is said to have
been a courtier of Henry I., and renowned for his wit.
He repented while still in the prime of life of his idle
and vicious life at court, and made a pilgrimage to Rome,
where, during a dangerous illness, he vowed to build the
hospital. He obtained the whole parish from the king,
it is said, though we are not told how the king became
possessed of it. Other particulars, equally difficult to
reconcile are added. Rahere feigned madness to attract
a crowd, and compelled the people when they assembled
to help him with his building. They carried great stones
and other materials. They drained the marshy soil.
Gradually the hospital rose in all its magnificence, and
was soon followed by the priory and the church. We
only, however, know for certain, that Rahere became the
first prior, and completed the buildings in 1123, after
having laboured at them for more than twenty years.
He obtained from the king a charter conferring great
privileges on the priory and hospital,* which were to be
exempt from all servitude except " episcopal customs."
He further, as an addition to the endowment, obtained
leave to hold a fair in the " smooth field " or Smithfield,
adjoining, and for many centuries, down to our own day,
" St. Bartholomew's " has been another name for the
assembling together of the lowest class of mountebanks
and players, and for a period of saturnalian license too
frequently ending in tumult.f It was not abolished until
1855. * There is a possibility that the hospital existed long before, and that
the priory was founded to receive a fraternity formed for the charitable
purpose of carrying it on. The estates of the two institutions were always
separate. t I do not know why, but Bartholomew Fair has been a very favourite
subject with one class of London historians. Most books on old London

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 1 17
The church of St Paul's must have been hardly
distinguishable in those days from that of a monastery.
Its canons were in many respects similar to those of the
great neighbouring foundation of St. Martin's, which
claimed an antiquity very nearly coeval with that of the
cathedral. The conventual buildings of St. Paul's were
on the north and north-western side, and were very
extensive, encroaching towards the north-east on the
open market place of Cheap. In later years the precinct
was, as we shall see, strictly defined : but in the time of
Fitzstephen, when there was probably much open or
waste land between the Cheap and Newgate, the church
of St. Paul's would have very little to divide it from the
church of St. Martin.
The house of St. Martin le Grand had been in exist
ence within the walls from time immemorial. It was in
fact one of the oldest monasteries in the kingdom. The
dedication seems to connect it with the days of Mellitus
and Seberht and Bertha. A later tradition connected it
with Wihtred, who was king of Kent in the beginning
of the eighth century. But, like many others, this
house, however ancient its origin, was wholly renewed in
the settled times which followed the last Danish wars,
and may be reckoned to date from the reign of Edward
the Confessor. After William the Conqueror had been
two years on the throne a charter was obtained from
him by two brothers, Ingelric and Girard,* in which

are full of unsavoury details of the celebration. Perhaps the most
interesting is the passage in Smith's ' Book for a Rainy Day,' p. 171, where
he describes the great Belzoni acting as a mountebank. Mr. Morley has
devoted a whole volume to Bartholomew Fair.
* Or Edward. Ingelric is called by Kempe (' History of St. Martin le
Grand ') and others, earl of Essex — I do not know on what grounds. In
fact, the charter is open to considerable question, being very unlike con
temporary documents of the kind. The privileges of Sanctuary are un-

1 18 HISTORY OF LONDON.
St. Martin's is specially excepted not only from ecclesi
astical but civil jurisdiction, and it naturally became the
city sanctuary of every malefactor who could hide within
its precincts. That such a public nuisance should have
been left unmolested all through the middle ages is
strange enough, but that its privileges, and those of other
similar places, should have survived until the close of the
reign of James I., and long after the church and monastic
buildings had perished, is characteristic of the perma
nence of English institutions, good or bad. Criminals on
their way to Newgate passed St Martin's, and some
times succeeded in reaching its refuge, from which they
could not be retaken. In the reign of Henry VIII. these
privileges were curtailed but not abolished : only the
greater crimes, such as treason and murder, being ex
cepted. The church of St. Martin was early connected
with the guild of saddlers,* and seemed to have been
used by them as the scene of their religious meetings.
The canons of St. Martin's concluded a convention with
the guild, in which they formed a close temporal alliance

questionable, and must have been of great antiquity. For some account
of Ingelric or Engelric, see Mr. Freeman's ' Norman Conquest, ' vol. iv.
723, &c. Mr. Freeman doubts the authenticity of the charter of 1068,
which indeed is only known by a copy no older than the reign of
Henry VI. (Dugdale, ' Monasticon,' vi. 1323). Kempe perpetuates the
story that Engelric was the father of a certain Engelrica, mother, by
William, of Peverel of the Peak and other children. Mr. Freeman shows
the slender ground on which this scandal rests. Tanner (' Notitia ') rejects
the history of the foundation of St. Martin's by Cadwallein, an ancient
British king ; but accepts that which makes Victred or Wythred, king of
Kent, the founder. It is not necessary to examine such legends critically.
" Wihtred, rex Cantwariorum, filius Ecgberhti," died in 725. See
Florence of Worcester, i. 42, 50.
* See below, chapter vi. Kempe dates this connection " about the
time of Richard the First." Herbert (' Livery Companies,' i. 16) makes
it still older. The convention refers to an ancient custom made by
Ernaldus, the alderman of the guild, at a yet earlier period.

LONDON AFTER THE CONQUEST. 119
and also promised masses and other religious benefits.
It would not be safe to suppose that the modern
Saddler's Company is in any way descended from this
ancient fraternity, which was evidently of the same
character as the other Saxon Frithguilds of which any
account has survived. The church of the college was
parochial until 1236, when St. Leonard's Church, at the
corner of Foster Lane, was built for the laity. After the
fire, the parish of St. Leonard was united to that of Christ
Church, Newgate Street, and the little church was not
rebuilt. Besides these great monasteries within the city there
were others which will be more conveniently noticed in
their local sequence when we come to our survey of the
suburbs. At the time of Fitzstephen, however, we have
seen that already a great many religious houses existed,
and we can identify a sufficient number of them, whether
in London or in its neighbourhood, to enable us to
feel certain that in speaking of " thirteen conventual
churches " he has made no exaggeration.
The domestic life of the citizens he hardly touches
upon, though there is much about their out-door games,
in the course of which mention is made of skating on a
" vast lake," northward of London, the remnant, probably,
of the marsh which protected the wall on that side.* In
the numerous biographies of Becket which were written
after his martyrdom there are many quaint sketches of
life and manners at this time, and they give us glimpses,
the more precious on account of their rarity, of the
London home of a wealthy merchant. " We see the very
aspect of the house (the Mercers' chapel, in Cheapside,
still preserves its site for us), the tiny bedroom, the larger
hall," opening directly on the bustle of the Cheap.
* See chapter i. p. 16.

120 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Rohese flings over her child's cradle a coverlet of purple
sumptuously wrought.* As he grows older, she weighs
him annually, and gives his weight in garments to the
poor. Wealthy nobles, and gentlemen "well known at
court," visit the portreeve in his city home. The young
Thomas hears of the learning and polish of the arch
bishop's household at Canterbury. He is initiated into
the mysteries of hunting and hawking, and takes his
pastime as a boy in the great forest of Middlesex.
* 'Old London,' p. 269, in Mr. Green's paper already quoted.

( 121 )

CHAPTER V.
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY.
We now arrive at one of the most interesting epochs in
the history of our city, and yet we have to acknowledge
that the authorities are so contradictory, so vague, or so
prejudiced that it is. difficult if not impossible to obtain
an adequate view of the events which characterised it
London in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was a
city in which the old Teutonic spirit of freedom had never
been subdued. In outward seeming at least, it preserved
that freedom by obtaining charters to define what before
required no definition. The burghers only asked for a
recognition of already existing rights. That recognition
they obtained easily enough by paying for it ; and we
have now to see how far they were able to make their
freedom a reality as well as a name. The struggle was
of a twofold character. Among the whole body of
citizens there were always some to whom the oppressions
of the Court were not so irksome as the risjng of the
people. They were often the most influential from wealth
or position, or both. They preferred the king's favour
to that of the commons. In their eyes the assertors of
popular freedom were rebels and demagogues ; yet it is
through those eyes that we have to look if we would
watch the struggle and note the result. The popular
party had no chronicler ; and the chief record* which has
* ' Chronicle of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London,' attributed to
Arnald FitzThedmar, translated by H. T. Riley.

1 22 HISTOR Y OF LONDON.
come down to us is the work of a fierce partisan, one
who hated and feared the populace, as he contemp
tuously terms them, and who does not scruple to accuse
his opponents of conspiracy, sedition, and cowardice,
though by doing so he discredits the whole city. If
Arnald FitzThedmar had been more impartial we
should lose much which now we know ; as it is, his very
violence occasionally throws a light on the opposite side,
which otherwise we should miss.
The accession of Richard was the signal for a
change in the title of the chief magistrate of London.
Henry FitzAylwin or FitzEylwin became the first
mayor, and so continued during five-and-twenty event
ful years. The first was marked by a massacre of the
Jews, but as it took place at the time of the king's
coronation, and in consequence of a supposed evil intent
on the part of the Jews, who crowded to Westminster to
witness the festivities, it is probable that FitzAylwin had
not yet assumed the reins of the civic government.* For
the king was crowned on Sunday, 3rd September, 1 1 89,
the massacre took place on the 4th, the new sheriffs,
Henry of Cornhill and Richard FitzReyner, were admitted
to office on Michaelmas Day, the 29th, and unless, as is
possible, the new mayor first acted on behalf of his fellow-
citizens, as chief butler at the coronation feast, he did not
actually come into office till the 9th November.!
* Mr. Stubbs ('Chronicles of Edward I. and Edward II.,' Rolls Series,
p. xxxi.) observes — " It is improbable that London had a recognised
mayor before 1191." He is first mentioned in a formal record in 1194,
when he was one of the treasurers for Richard's ransom. In the text I
have followed the received accounts, which have sufficient probability in
the absence of evidence to the contrary. See above, p. 91, note.
t There is much confusion about the dates of the early part of Richard's
reign, and the City records place these events in 1 188, as they make the
year begin at Michaelmas. See 'Chronology of History,' by Sir H.
Nicolas, p. 300, &c.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 123
"When history drops her drums and trumpets and
learns to tell the story of Englishmen, it will find the
significance of Richard, not in his crusades or in his
weary wars along the Norman border, but in his lavish
recognition of municipal life."* With regard to London,
however, his only known recognition at this period is a
precept addressed to Henry of Cornhill, one of the
sheriffs, demanding various articles for the accoutrement
of his army and himself. He probably sold lands,
houses, and privileges to individual citizens ; but although
he declared his readiness to sell the city itself could he
but find a purchaser, we do not find any record of
charters or other similar grants, till after his return from
captivity. The armour was provided, no doubt, and
Richard set forth for Palestine, while his chancellor,
Longchamp, bishop of Ely, took up his residence at the
Tower. He immediately began to give offence to the
citizens by an active prosecution of the works of defence,t
for which purpose he encroached on the city boundaries
to the westward to form the approaches, and took in
a piece of ground to the north, which belonged of
right to the newly founded Priory of Aldgate and its
Alderman- Prior. At the south-eastern corner of the
precinct stood a mill which belonged to the hospital of
St. Katherine, and near it a garden, which, as it closely
adjoined the royal apartments, had been let to the king
at six marks a year. Longchamp required and took the
land to round his corner according to the design which
no doubt he and Richard, a master of fortification, had
arranged. The so-called Iron Gate stands on the site.
These acts, trifling in themselves, but cumulative, caused
great annoyance, which was not allayed when Long-
* Green's ' Stray Studies,' p. 216.
t Clark, in ' Old London,' p. 105.

124 HISTORY OF LONDON.
champ seized his rival in the regency, Bishop Pudsey,
and imprisoned him ; nor when he insulted Geoffrey,
archbishop of York, a popular favourite, the son of
Fair Rosamond, and half brother to Richard himself.
John, supported by public opinion and a large army,
summoned Longchamp to Loddon, near Reading, to
justify his behaviour. The bishop avoided the trap laid
for him and retired through London, and in spite of the
obstruction ofthe citizens, to the Tower.
John's conduct of affairs at this crisis must have given
the citizens that false idea of his character for which
they were destined afterwards to pay so dearly. At
tended by a crowd of nobles and prelates, he came to
the Chapter House of St Paul's and held a council
there, and then, having caused the great burghmote bell
to be rung in the churchyard, assembled the people on
their old meeting ground — a proceeding in itself calcu
lated to bespeak their favour. A letter from the king,
dated at Messina, where Richard was already feasting
and fighting and love-making, according to his wont,
was then read amid the rapturous applause of the
assembly. It defined the limited powers of the justiciar,
and the citizens by acclamation declared Longchamp's
condemnation and deposition. A deputation of the
highest rank was sent to the Tower to apprise him of the
popular decree, and on hearing it he fell insensible on
the floor. In the morning John, attended by citizens
and barons and bishops, led the people out to East
Smithfield near the Tower, and thence summoned Long
champ to surrender. He immediately came to terms,
and was allowed to cross the river to Bermondsey, whence
he escaped over the sea.
We find Longchamp back in London in 1 194. Among
the popular leaders of the day was one of whom the

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 125
modern historian would gladly know more. William Fitz-
Osbert, a man " poor in degree, evil favoured in shape,"
and remarkable equally for the long beard which gave
him his nickname, and for his eloquence in persuading
the people to resist unjust assessments, was summoned
by his brother for having said he would be avenged on
king and chancellor for an unjust demand made upon him.
" I would lay out," he avowed, " forty marks to buy a
chain on which I might hang them both, in recompense
for the money the chancellor took from me in the
Tower." It is evident that Longbeard had been specially
oppressed, but the result of this trial is unknown, and
probably the return of the king in that year put a stop
to the prosecution. Richard was warmly welcomed by
the citizens, who almost immediately took out and no
doubt paid handsomely for a renewal of the charter of
Henry II.* Longbeard and his friends had to pay for
privileges which only benefited the wealthier classes.
The city's share of the sum required for the king's
ransom had to be raised, and there were great expenses
connected with his second coronation and with the
prosecution of the mayor's claim to act as chief butler at
the feast in opposition to the city of Winchester. For
the chief butlership Longbeard cared nothing, but he
did care, and roused those about him to care, for an
unjust system, which threw the burden of payment on
the people. Once more we hear the great bell sounded
and see the folkmote assembling with anxious faces
and clouded brows. But Longbeard was powerless
against wealthy aldermen, and officials fresh from bask
ing in the royal smiles. A riot broke out, and several
* This, the first charter of Richard I., is dated in the fifth year of his
reign.

1 26 HIS TOR Y OF LONDON.
citizens were slain. Longbeard was summoned before
the new justiciar, Hubert Fitz Walter, archbishop of
Canterbury, who, however, seeing the number and
apparent determination of his supporters, dismissed him
with a mild admonition.
FitzOsbert's prosecutors were not satisfied with this,
and took measures to have him arrested. He broke
from his guards, and took refuge in Bow Church, in the
middle of the market-place, and there, having, it was
said, laid up a store of provisions, and fortified the
steeple "with munition and victual," he prepared to
stand siege and refused to come forth.
Passion Sunday was at hand, and the archbishop, who
was present in person, was anxious to conclude the matter.
On the refusal of Longbeard and his companions to sur
render, faggots were laid to the door and fired, and after
enduring the heat and smoke as long as they could, they
were obliged to sally forth, half-suffocated and blinded.
Even so, some bloodshed occurred before they were
secured and lodged in the Tower, and Longbeard was
badly wounded by a burgher's son, whose father he had
killed. On Wednesday in Passion Week, notwith
standing the sacredness of the season, FitzOsbert and
his friends were cruelly dragged by the heels through
the city and hanged with every sign of disgrace at the
Elms beside Smithfield.
We have these facts for the most part from witnesses
bitterly hostile to the popular cause, yet it is impossible
to mistake their significance. The people laboured
under a double disadvantage. The great men of the
city, like the great men of one of the Italian republics of
the same period, desired freedom for themselves and
nominally for their city ; but they were not unwilling to
appropriate to themselves alone the privileges purchased

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 127
with the people's money. When the king's hand was
heavy on the citizens all suffered ; when it was light the
great men only were relieved. The civic rebellion of the
next century is a struggle, not against the king only, but
against an oligarchy. The martyrdom of William of
the Longbeard was lamented, if we may believe the
chroniclers, by no fewer than 52,000 adherents, miracles
were wrought at the place of execution, the gibbet
itself was carried away piecemeal, and the sacredness of
the season when he was put to death only added to the
fervency of the devotees, who "pared away the earth
that was be-bled with his blood, and kept the same as
holy reliques to heal sick men."
The second charter of Richard is dated a year before
his death at Chalons. It relates to the " conservancy of
the Thames "; and though the city had from time imme
morial claimed the privilege and duty of keeping open
the navigable part of the stream, a definition of its rights
in the matter was made the subject of a special grant,
and, no doubt, charged for accordingly. The grievance
chiefly to be remedied was the multiplication of wears
or weirs, by which the course of the stream was ob
structed ; and the city had leave to remove and prohibit
such impediments in the way of open traffic both on
the Thames and the Medway. The- New Wear, near
Rochester, has probably given its name to " The Nore,"
which is still the eastern boundary of the city jurisdiction.
John was hardly seated on the throne before we find a
significant entry in the meagre annals ofthe day. Five
and twenty of the more discreet men, we read, were
sworn, together with the mayor, to take counsel on
behalf of the city. The events indicated by such a sen
tence, or by another, under the year 1209, are sufficiently
well known. " In this year there were Pleas of the Crown

128 HISTORY OF LONDON.
at the Tower of London." Meanwhile no fewer than five
charters were granted ; and it is evident, from the wholly
unimportant character of some of them, that they were
merely excuses for the receipt of heavy payments. The
interdict did not affect London in so severe a manner as
other parts of England. There were, no doubt, many
private chapels, many conventual churches, to which
citizens desirous of hearing mass, and willing to pay for
the privilege, could resort.
During all these years the rivalry between the wealthier
burghers and the ordinary craftsmen of the city continued
to rage. The "prudhommes" were arrayed at every
election, at every hustings, against the lesser folk. The
wards, as we shall have occasion to notice more distinctly
a little further on, were in the hands originally of the
landowners, and the alderman was still very much in the
position of a "lord of the manor." His office was at
first always, and still usually, hereditary. These " barons "
of the city, as they were often called, formed among
themselves an oligarchy,* and ruled the merchant guild,
an association which had control of the civic govern
ment, the revenues, and the trade regulations. Against
this tyranny the commons struggled in vain. When
craft guilds were formed to protect certain trades, they
were bitterly opposed, and in some cases actually sup
pressed. The tradesmen's difficulty lay in the fact that,
unless all of the same handicraft joined, their labour was
but vain. To insure this co-operation, recourse was had
in later times to the crown, and charters of incorporation
were obtained. But now, the opposition of a small and
* "It was for the most part an aristocratic constitution, and had its
unity, not in the municipal principle, but in the system of the shire,"
observes Mr. Stubbs, speaking of the Norman period. — ' Const. Hist.,' i.
407.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 129
influential party contrived to keep the craft guilds at
bay, and the reign of John, much as was accomplished
for the vindication of national liberty, left the petty
tyrants of the city untouched.
True, these very tyrants were themselves among the
magnates ofthe realm who extorted the Charter in 121 5.
Geoffrey FitzPiers, the first champion of the cause of
national freedom, has often been claimed as a citizen
himself, and a descendant of such a city worthy as God
frey or Gosfrith the portreeve. At the first great meeting
of the barons, Geoffrey brought the charter of Henry I .
before them, and Stephen Langton expounded its full
significance. This meeting was held at St. Paul's.
Geoffrey died soon after in his residence at the Tower,
only surviving Henry FitzAylwyn, the first mayor, a
single year; but archbishop Langton now headed the
barons, and on May 1 2, London threw open her gates to
their forces, led by Robert FitzWalter, the standard-
bearer of the city. At Runnymead London was well
represented, and her liberties secured to her by a special
clause of the Great Charter.
The temper of the city was fully aroused by these
events. For the first time men began to understand
what is now meant by the phrase individual liberty. The
commons were not satisfied that their new mayor,
FitzAlan, or the general of their forces, FitzWalter,
or the Basings and Blunds and Bukerels and other
aldermen of wealth should alone enjoy the privileges
obtained at so much cost. Efforts were made from
time to time to obtain recognition of the popular party.
The name of Serlo le Mercer, mayor in the year of
Magna Charta, is significant It denotes the election of a
member of a craft, one who had, indeed, no aristocratic or
other surname, and who was only known by his occupation.
VOL. I. K.

130 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Meanwhile the meddling of the pope once more made
union necessary for the promotion of the common cause.
Innocent III. annulled the Charter, excommunicated the
barons, and suspended archbishop Langton. King John
triumphantly overran the kingdom, and shut up the barons
and their army in London. The archbishop, their best or
only leader, had been forced to make the long and perilous
journey to Rome, to obtain from the pope a reversal of
the sentence against him, and also if possible to put the
matters at issue in a clearer light. But the papal
decrees continued to fall on London at the king's
demand ; and the citizens, again torn by violent factions,
seem to have been unanimous only in defying king
and pope alike. " The ordering of secular matters per-
taineth not to the pope," they asserted ;* and Simon
Langton, when he counselled them to ring the bells and
celebrate mass as before, acted no doubt on an under^
standing with the archbishop his brother. We may see
in the removal of Jacob Alderman from the mayoralty
in 1 2 17, and the substitution of Solomon de Basinges, a
temporary triumph of the aristocratic party, the same
party which had already committed London to the cause
of the French prince Louis. Dover Castle stopped the
way, however ; and while the siege went on, and the
Londoners despatched FitzWalter with a contingent to
invest Lincoln in conjunction with a French force, king
John died, and immediately the whole aspect of affairs
was changed. The young king, proclaimed as Henry
III., was speedily crowned at Gloucester ; " for by reason
of the war still continuing between himself and the
aforesaid Louis and the barons of England, he could
not come to London and there be crowned."f Peace was
* Green, i. 249.
t ' Chronicle of the Mayors and Sheriffs,' p. 4.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 131
concluded in the following year, but not until Fitz
Walter, whose military skill did not equal his courage,
had been taken prisoner in the narrow streets of Lincoln.
But in the treaty of Lambeth the liberties of the city were
acknowledged, and the citizens who had been captured
during the late hostilities were now set at liberty. The
French and aristocratic party evidently came out of the
contest with a loss of prestige. In 1217,* "Serlo le
Mercer was again made mayor of London, and so con
tinued for five years." FitzWalter never recovered his
influence, and the popular party for a brief period became
so powerful that Constantine FitzAthulf or FitzOlaf,
who at a wrestling match ventured to raise the ciy of
" Montjoye and St. Louis," was taken up by the
justiciar without his aristocratic friends being able to
deliver him. No form of trial delayed the sentence, and
Constantine and two of his fellows were hanged ; though,
when he felt the halter round his neck, he offered 1 5,000
marks to save his life, t
Serlo was succeeded in 1222 by Richard Reinger,
another " plebeian " mayor — if I may borrow a term from
Roman history — who also ruled for five years. A re
action began to set in about 1227, when the same sheriffs,
who, to judge by their names, Henry de Cokham and
Stephen Bukerel, belonged to the " patrician " party,
served for two years. A contest arose at the end of
their second period of office, and the popular party so
far prevailed that all the aldermen and principal citizens
joined in an oath that for the future they would not
permit the same men to serve as sheriffs for two con-
* This is the date in the Chronicle. It means of course the end of the
year. t The wealth of Constantine, his name, and the cry he raised are in my
opinion sufficient justification for this view of his case ; but he is some
times, I am aware, reckoned among the popular leaders.
K 2

132 HISTORY OF LONDON.
secutive years. Eleven years of comparative tranquillity
were passed under two mayors, both of old city families,
Roger le Due and Andrew Bukerel ; the aristocratic
element reappears in the list of sheriffs ; and on the
disgrace of Hubert de Burgh and his flight to Brent
wood, though the bishop of London was able to restore
him to sanctuary, it is evident that the ascendant party
in the city had no sympathy with his cause. Their
opponents in the following year made an expiring effort,
and obtained the election of their nominee to one ofthe
sheriffships. But a charge was soon discovered or in
vented to displace him. Symon FitzMary, whose name
sufficiently indicates his lowly origin, so sadly wasted
the property that formed the issues of the sheriffwick
that he was not allowed to receive them any longer — so
says the Chronicle *— and the clerks of the sheriffwick
were entrusted with the task of collecting them, and of
acquitting with them "the ferm of his lordship the
king." We have here the first indication of the growing
rapacity of the young king. Symon FitzMary, though the
chronicler frowns on him, was unwilling to hand over to
the Crown what he considered more than its due. He was
opposed, we may be sure, by the direct interference of the
aristocratic party, who had by this time forgotten the
old cry of " Montjoye," and joined the brilliant band of
courtiers about the rightful heir of Henry II. But they
soon found that the weak, rapacious, and fickle king
despised them as upstarts, treated them with contempt,
laughed at their assumption of nobility, and finally
added injury to insult when he threw his weight into the
scale against them, and actually commanded them to
admit Symon FitzMary to the sheriffship.
* P-7-

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 133
In this bid for popularity Henry succeeded for a time.
The poorer citizens looked on him as their champion,
the more so as the mayor, William Joynier, absolutely
refused to admit FitzMary. Here he was acting strictly
within his rights ; and though it is difficult to explain
the position taken up by FitzMaiy, it is easy to see that
Henry was engaged, with all the characteristic Angevin
cunning, in playing off one party against the other to
his own advantage, while he watched for an opportunity
of overthrowing the city liberties altogether.
A very small accident gave him this opportunity.
Under the guise of supporting the cause of the widow
and the oppressed, he was enabled to intervene in the
administration of justice, Symon FitzMary being once
more made his tool. Whether Symon was a single-
minded man — whether he had the liberties of his fellows
really at heart — or whether, on the other hand, he
was a mere creature of the court hired to do a certain
piece of work and reckless of consequences, we cannot
tell. But the case of Margery Vyel brought affairs to a
crisis. She was the widow of a citizen named John Vyel, who
at his marriage had made a settlement on her, and, having
apparently prospered, died the owner of a considerable
property. His son was sheriff in 1241, but it does not
appear whether this John Vyel, the younger, was the son
of Margery or of a previous wife. Be this as it may, she
claimed in 1246 to be entitled to a third of her deceased
husband's goods, as his widow ; but the city authorities,
sitting at Guildhall, gave judgment against her, on the
grounds that her settlement was sufficient, and that her
husband had made no further provision for her in his
will. The widow Vyel was by no means content, and,
appealing to the king, brought about a serious con-

134 HISTORY OF LONDON.
flict as to the old question of the freedom of London
from the jurisdiction of any but its own magistrates.
The matter was made a party question. The king on
the one hand was anxious to humble the citizens. He
had received several serious rebuffs from them, as to
the appointment of sheriffs and mayors. Gerard Bat
elected by the citizens as mayor in 1240, had refused
to serve, in consequence of the personal ill-will which
the king had shown to him. Symon FitzMaiy, unfortu
nately, played the king's game for him by opposing
the election as sheriff of Nicholas Bat, another member
of one ofthe old ruling families, on the ground that he had
served the office in the previous year. Henry had on
more than one occasion " taken the city into his hands,"
as it was termed, appointing the mayor, however, to
govern it for him. He was now about to take a much more
important and tyrannical step. Having sent Henry de
Ba, or Bath, a justice, to St. Martin's-le-Grand, to try the
case of the widow Vyel, on the refusal of the citizens to
acknowledge his jurisdiction, the king took possession of
the city, and, setting aside the mayor and the sheriffs,
appointed as his bailiffs William de Haverille and
Edward de Westminster. The mayor and principal
citizens journeyed to Woodstock, and had an interview
with Henry, but could not induce him to change his
mind. This was towards the end of August 1248, and
the time for new elections was approaching. William
of Haverille insisted on the lower officials taking an
oath of obedience to himself, and evidently anticipated a
prolonged term of office. But on the 8th of September
the king changed his mind. Some money transactions
had no doubt taken place in the interval, and the mayor
and sheriffs were reinstated, undertaking on their part
that the city would plead in the king's court as to the

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 135
case of the widow Margery, on the ninth of the ensuing
month of June.
When the eventful morning arrived Michael Tovy,
the mayor of the previous year, who had been re
elected, and the sheriffs attended at Westminster, and
were kept waiting for four days before the king could
be induced to attend to their business. Meanwhile
a kinsman * of the widow had been constantly making
allegations against the citizens, and they on their part
had actually deprived Symon FitzMary of the office
of alderman for taking her side.f When at length they
were admitted to the royal presence a new demand
was made upon them. Before _ proceeding to the case
in hand, Henry announced to the astonishment of the
burghers that he had made grants in Middlesex to the
abbot of Westminster — he was at that time actively
engaged in the building and endowment of the Abbey
— and desired their ratification of certain franchises.
For these he proposed to offer certain exchanges of
equal value. Now, if there was one thing which
the aristocratic party in the city valued more than
another it was the farm of Middlesex, with the rights
belonging to it, which they had enjoyed since the time
of Henry I. For once, after a few minutes' hesitation,
they had to fall back on the despised commonalty.
" They could do nothing in the matter," they replied,
" without the consent ofthe whole community." Although
the king was much angered by this answer, evidencing
as it did that on some subjects all classes of the citizens
* Henry de la Mare.
t This Symon FitzMary by a deed dated in 1246 (see Smith's ' Topo
graphy,' p. 29) founded a priory at Bishopsgate to be in the special
patronage of the bishop of Bethlehem, to whom and his successors an
annual payment was to be made by the priory. The foundation still exists
under the name of " Bedlam."

136 HISTORY OF LONDON.
w«re at one, he dissembled for the time, and proceeded
to hear the case of the widow Vyel. It was speedily
determined against her, and the mayor and sheriffs went
back to London victorious but not triumphant, knowing
but too well that Henry would not let the abbot's claims
rest, and that, in all probability, they would not so easily
have won their cause, but for the greater importance, of
the new demand.
The king, who cared nothing for Margery Vyel, had
in fact been victorious. He had cajoled the citizens into
coming before his court at Westminster, and he foresaw
an infinite number of exactions, fines, gifts, bribes, and
other means of replenishing his exhausted exchequer in
this one great achievement. The claim of the abbot,
unfounded as it was, cropped up at intervals for fifteen
years, and was made a constant instrument of annoyance
to the citizens. At length, towards the close of 1263, after
many events of greater importance had taken place, and
while many questions of constitutional significance were
still pending, the case was decided, under the rule of Simon
de Montfort, in the king's court at Westminster. By
verdict upon oath given by twelve knights of the county
of Middlesex, it was found that the sheriffs of London
had power to enter " all the vills and tenements " which
the abbot holds in Middlesex, even to the very gate of
the royal abbey itself. The tenants of the abbot were
bound to do suit and service like the freeholders of the
county at the county and hundred courts. This deci
sion was duly pronounced by the justiciar, Gilbert
Preston ; and though the citizens denied the jurisdiction
of the court, they were not unwilling to accept its
sentence when given in their favour. The abbot,
therefore, by deed, formally renounced all claim
to the privileges illegally given him by the king —

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. itf
only however to reassert them on the first convenient
occasion. Henry III., in the interval, still continued to plot against
the city liberties, and so far carried on his operations
under the disguise of supporting the popular cause. A
roll, sealed with green wax, was found in his wardrobe
at Windsor,* early in 1258. So the story ran, and that
the king had read it, and had learned from it that his
faithful commons were oppressed by the rich men of the
city. How the roll with its green seal came into the
wardrobe remained a transparent secret. Henry was at
his wits' end for money. He had just accepted from the
pope the crown of Sicily for his second son, Edmund ;
and parliament, at least the assembly which afterwards
grew into parliament, had refused his demands for aid
to prosecute the claim. The roll with the green wax
seal came opportunely to his help. John Maunsell, one
of the judges and a fit implement of oppression, was
despatched into the city. The folkmote was summoned
and assembled on Sunday morning, January the 27th,
when Maunsell read the contents of the roll to the
people, and added that the king regretted to hear of
such oppressions and would by no means permit them.
It would be wearisome to go through all the subsequent
processes, more or less legal, by which Maunsell brought
the aldermen to their knees.f They went with Ralph
Hardel, the mayor, a member of the patrician party, to
meet the king at Knightsbridge on his return to West
minster ; but Henry sent a " certain esquire " forbidding
them to come into his presence. On the ist of February
a meeting was held in Guildhall to receive a message
* Spelt Wyndlesore, here and elsewhere in the Chronicle.
t The story is told with painful minuteness by the chronicler already
quoted, p. 33, &c.

138 HISTORY OF LONDON.
from the king. The people attended in large numbers,
the mayor and aldermen being also present John
Maunsell announced once more the king's desire to in
quire into the grievances set forth in the now too famous
roll, and desired the city authorities to make oath as to
their assessment of tallages and other imposts. To take
the oath was not only to endanger themselves, but it was
also to give up an ancient and cherished privilege of the
city, by which no citizen could be obliged to make oath
in such cases as this. These objections were overruled
by the voices of the people. They gave assent to the im
position of the oath by loud cries of " Ya, ya" ; thus, as
the chronicler bitterly remarks, disparaging their own
liberties, " which, in fact, these same most wretched crea
tures had not been the persons to secure."
The king's triumph was thus complete, at least for the
moment. Maunsell, well instructed beforehand, lost no
time in taking advantage of the popular vote. The
mayor, the sheriffs, even the king's chamberlain, were
removed. All the rolls of tallages were delivered to
John Maunsell. The constable of the Tower, Roger Bigod,
earl of Norfolk,* became governor of the city. The
inquisition, as it was called, sat daily at the Guildhall.
Six-and-thirtymen of each ward were examined, and a
report was prepared on their evidence. All this was
done so speedily, that on the 10th February Maunsell
had the act of accusation complete, and the city mag
nates were summoned to Westminster to receive judg
ment. Plere Maunsell told them that they had been
guilty of changing the mode of making the tallage ; that
they had not read the roll of the last tallage to the
people in Guildhall, and so forth, a long list of charges
being gathered of, it must be allowed, the most trumpery
* Earl Marshal 1245,

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 1 39
character. The aldermen answered, clearing up some of
the charges, but, above all, putting themselves on their
privilege as citizens of London, and offering to defend
themselves according to the laws and customs of the
city. An unseemly wrangle ensued. The offer of the
citizens was too reasonable to be conceded, and at
length they were dismissed with orders to return on the
morrow. A new accusation was now made. The matter
of the tallages, it was perhaps found, would not be suffi
cient ; and when the mayor and aldermen came to West
minster they were charged before the king himself with
having altered the weights and measures of the city. It
was in vain that they pleaded that not the weights but
the method of weighing had been changed, and that the
change had been made on the recommendation of more
than 200 trustworthy men. It was evident that the
fable of the wolf and the lamb was being re-enacted.
Once more the folkmote was summoned to meet in St.
Paul's Churchyard, and John Maunsell,* addressing the
people in a kind of sermon from the Cross, promised
them all their rights and liberties at the hands of the
king, who thus placed himself as it were in competition
with the mayor and aldermen. The speaker went on to
put a supposititious case, in which he asked the people
what they could expect if, when their champion the king
accused these men of oppression, they should be allowed
to acquit each other, every alderman calling upon his
fellows as compurgators. This question, of course, the
populace answered as they were expected to answer, in
contravention, as the chronicler sadly observes, " of the
privileges of the franchises that had been granted unto
the city of old, and by their predecessors, citizens of
blessed memory, obtained." No conference of discreet
* It may have been one of the other commissioners.

140 HISTORY OF LONDON.
men was held. The voice of prudence was drowned in
the acclamations of the populace, " sons of divers
mothers," says our historian in bitter scorn, " many of
them born -without the city, and many of servile con
dition." The mayor and aldermen once more proceeded
to Westminster, where Henry de Ba, their old enemy,
gave judgment, suspending them, degrading them, and
forbidding them to return to their respective wards with
out the king's permission. Henry was present, and saw
that the time had come for an exhibition of magnanimity.
With a few exceptions, one of them being the mayor, all
were restored to their offices. William FitzRichard
became mayor, and one of the sheriffs was changed, a
man of the old Bukerel family being removed, and a
tradesman of lower rank substituted.* These altera
tions and reinstatements did not take place without
money payments, yet it is not easy to see what the king
had gained by the whole transaction, except the imme
diate gratification of having humbled the chief citizens.
This was the year of the "Mad Parliament" and the
Provisions of Oxford, and it is possible that Henry
began to foresee a time when those very citizens were
the men on whom he might have to depend ; that the
populace was even more fickle than himself, and that
there were men among the city aristocracy who, loyal
as they were to their ancient privileges, were also willing,
if he would allow them, to stand by the throne in the
impending struggle.
Two men were, however, now coming to the front
with whom he would have to reckon. What Simon de
Montfort did for England, Thomas FitzThomas did for
London. He had been sheriff when the tallages question
and that of the alteration of weights had been brought
* William Grapefige's name is perhaps enough to prove this.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 141
forward. The roll with the green seal had been found
at Windsor when he was but three months in office.
He seems to have perceived the probable change of'
front in the king's policy, and he also perceived that by
such manipulations of the folkmote as he had now
twice witnessed, the cause of the people was only osten
sibly advanced, but really retarded. He saw that to put
their trust in the throne, as against their own magistrates,
was but to admit wolves to do the work of the sheep
dogs. As Simon de Montfort called a new power into
existence when he summoned the burgesses to parlia
ment, so Thomas FitzThomas, by employing the most
ordinary means, and showing the people how to use
their own power, taught the " plebeian " citizens to elect
for themselves representatives who as aldermen or mayors
should do what they could and what the law permitted
to remove their grievances. In 1262 the aristocratic
party failed in the elections. William FitzRichard*
was displaced, and the sheriffs, whose names for the
three years of his mayoralty had been Adrian and
Cornhill, Bruning and Coventry, Picard and de North
ampton, were now Philip the Taillour and Richard of
Walebrook. The new mayor was Thomas FitzThomas.
FitzThomas must have been very busy during this
year. It was in his first mayoralty that Henry III. made
his retreat to the French court, feigning sickness, and
Simon de Montfort was organising his preparations for
enforcing the Provisions of Oxford, notwithstanding
Urban IV.'s bull absolving the king from the oath he had
taken to observe them. Such were the unhappy cir
cumstances of the countryf when FitzThomas's first
* His true character comes out in 1267. He became warden of the
city at a time when the king abused its liberties after Evesham.
t For an account of Simon de Montfort, and his brief but memorable
career, see Green's ' History,' i. 293-307.

142 HISTORY OF LONDON.
mayoralty commenced. His second year was marked by
an attempt ofthe constable ofthe Tower to take "prisage"
of vessels coming up the Thames with corn — an attempt
defeated for a time by the vigilance of the citizens, and a
declaration on the part of FitzThomas* that force would
if necessary be repelled by force. Shortly afterwards he
took the oath to Edward, afterwards Edward I., as the
king's heir and successor, and administered the same
oath to the aldermen, attending for the purpose at the
houses of those who were ill. So far there would seem to
have been nothing in his rule except evidence of a strong
desire to preserve the liberties of the city, and to act with
loyalty towards the Crown. But he had already contrived
to show the " patrician " or retrograde party among the
citizens his determination to uphold the rights of the
poor as well as of the rich, yet the Chronicle f which
describes him at greatest length was evidently written by
one of the fiercest of his opponents, and we have
therefore no account which even attempts to do justice
to his qualities, He pampered the populace — so we
are told. He taught them to style themselves the
commons of the city. He gave them the first voice in
everything, submitting every important measure to their
vote, and asking their will upon it If they replied with
their familiar " Ya, ya," it was done ; and the aldermen
were little consulted.^ When Montfort made his great
march from Reading to Dover, a deputation of the
* This isclear from the ' Chronicle, ' though the mayor's name is carefully
suppressed. ff FitzThedmar, ' Chronicle of Mayors and Sheriffs,' already frequently
noticed. X The chronicler contradicts himself palpably. The aldermen and chief
citizens, he says, were little or not at all consulted, adding, they were just as
though they had not existed. With so prejudiced a picture before us, it is
as difficult to arrive at the truth as to avoid taking the opposite view too
strongly.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 143
citizens was sent with the members of the council
at the king's command. They took the opportunity of
assuring the earl that he possessed the sympathy of the
city; and something like a league was made between
him and the burghers to observe the Provisions of
Oxford, in fealty to the king, but always reserving the
liberties of London. FitzThomas immediately organised
the people by their wards. All aliens were dismissed.
The " commons " enrolled themselves by hundreds and
thousands ; vigilance committees were appointed, and
the worst excesses which ensued were only the destruc
tion of some houses built upon common land, and the
opening of some lanes and rights of way, which here and
there powerful or wealthy persons had been suffered to
stop. The conflict between the greater and lesser citizens, the
merchants and the craftsmen, came to a head when, upon
the earl's first success, he demanded of the citizens that
they should formulate such rules as might be to their
advantage, promising to obtain their ratification from the
king in council. FitzThomas seized the opportunity
for legalising the existence of the new trade guilds. He
summoned the people, and telling them to organise
themselves by their handicrafts, and to make such
provisions as should secure the conduct of each, he dealt
a fatal blow at the old oligarchy. The chronicler in his
hatred of these proceedings styles the new " nations,"
into which the mechanics had enrolled themselves,
"abominations," and describes their guilds, correctly
enough, as "solely to their own advantage, and to the
intolerable loss of all merchants coming to London."
The influence of FitzThomas showed itself further in his
obtaining at length the judgment, already mentioned, as
to the claim of the abbot of Westminster ; thus vindi-

144 HISTORY OF LONDON.
eating his impartiality, and his anxiety for the full
recognition of the liberties of great and small.
But as the king, by a fluctuation in the tide of events,
began to recover his power, his old desire to annoy the
city showed itself anew ; and when November 1263 came
round, and FitzThomas was again elected, and actually
sworn in as mayor, a brilliant opportunity presented
itself for displaying the change of his policy in London.
He now no longer sought popularity with the commons ;
but on FitzThomas presenting himself at Westminster
for approval, sent to the barons of the exchequer a royal
writ forbidding his admission to office. This was just
before the reference of the questions at issue between
Henry and his subjects had been made to the French
king.* The news of Louis's award, by which the Pro
visions of Oxford were declared utterly null and void,
was received in most parts of England with something
like a sullen acquiescence. But the commons of London,
whom, as we have seen, Henry had just gone out of his
way to insult, wholly refused to abide ¦¦ by it. They had
not, they said, joined in asking for French arbitration,
and they would have none of it. After a momentary
pause their example was followed by the great com
mercial towns of the south, the Cinque Ports, and by
nearly all the middle class throughout England. Mont
fort was in Southwark rather hoping for than demanding
admission to the city, but the retrograde party among
the citizens contrived to keep the gates closed against
him. The queen was lodging in the Tower, as during
the publication of the award Henry had crossed to
France, and on her attempting to join him on his re
turn home, as she rowed in state up the river, the
citizens assembled on the bridge reproaching her as the
* Louis IX., called St. Louis.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 145
cause of all their troubles, her foreign relations having
by their rapacity and misgovernment brought the king
into his present straits. She was at length obliged to
turn back under a storm of stones and foul words. The
commons were further angered by an attempt which
Henry made to take earl Simon from Southwark, and
bursting the Bridge Gate they admitted him with accla
mations to the city. Here, no doubt, he counselled the
steps to be taken for the public safety before he went to
attend the abortive parliament which Henry had sum
moned to meet at Oxford ; and the citizens immediately
throwing aside party feeling, and, acknowledging their
need of experienced guides in the abeyance of the
mayoralty, appointed Thomas Puleston their constable,
and Stephen Bukerel their marshal, thus turning ap
parently to the leadership of their traditional rulers.
They rapidly enrolled themselves, being joined by Le
Despenser, whom Simon had made justiciar and had
lodged in the Tower. Their first exploit was not very
brilliant. It merely consisted in a march to Isleworth,
where they burnt the palace of the king's brother.*
Immediately on the rising of the parliament the earl
of Leicester returned to London. Although he must
have censured some of the recent excesses, which included
a massacre of the Jews, he cannot but have seen with
satisfaction the extensive preparations the citizens had
made ; and in the height of his difficulties must have
derived the greatest encouragement from his reception
in the city. A solemn treaty was drawn • up, in which
citizens and barons declared " they would stand together
against all men, saving, however, their fealty to their
lord the king." A march upon Rochester, which they
* Richard, king of the Romans, or, as he is described in the Chronicle,
king of Almaine.
VOL. I. L

146 HISTORY OF LONDON.
occupied with the exception of the Norman keep, was
the first service on which the Londoners were employed.
They returned home for Easter — the last Easter for
many of them — before the battle of Lewes, a battle
which has been described as the Flodden of London.
Though their cause was victorious, the messengers who
brought the news that the king and his brother had
been made prisoners, and that five-and-twenty of his
lords had been killed or taken, had also to add that " Sir
Edward le FitzRoy " had driven the citizens before him
like sheep, and had wiped out the insult to his mother
in the blood " of a countless multitude " of the commons,
The capture of the prince could not restore the husbands
and fathers for whom so many wept ; and when, on the
Tuesday before Ascension Day,* the army of Montfort
returned to London in triumph, to lodge the king of
the Romans in the Tower, and Henry III. at St. Paul's,
many a cresset fire was unlighted in the street, and many
a shuttered front told of death and mourning within.
The Provisions of Oxford being accepted, and the
constitution ratified by parliament, the difficulties of the
popular party might be supposed at an end. John
Maunsell was banished with the queen's foreign relations,
and spent his time scheming with them for a descent
upon the southern coast. The king's position was in
reality that of a prisoner, and earl Simon knew how
little the acts which he was compelled to sign as a
prisoner would avail when he became free. The parlia
ment of 1265 was but scantily attended by earls and
barons. The addition of two citizens summoned from
every borough to sit with the knights from every shire
put the crown on the parliamentary edifice, and "has
done more than any incident of this struggle to im-
* 1264.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. H7
mortalise " the name of the earl.* They met in the
chapter-house at Westminster on the 13th January, 1265.
Unfortunately the names of the first London M.P.'s have
not been preserved. On St. Valentine's day they received
a solemn declaration from the king, that he and his son
were bound by the charter and would no more aggrieve
or cause to be aggrieved the earl of Leicester, the earl of
Gloucester or the citizens of London, for anything they
had done during the past commotions. How the king
kept his promise the subsequent history of Thomas
FitzThomas will tell.
He had acted as mayor during the year of the battle of
Lewes, although many of the usual formalities had been
omitted, and no "hustings" had been held. On the
expiration of the term he was again elected (28th Oct.,
1264), and on the morrow admitted to the full exercise
of his office by the king. On the 17th March of the fol
lowing year, the king, now restored as far as it was safe
to restore him, to liberty, held a solemn court in the
cathedral church of St. Paul. A strange scene took
place. When the mayor and aldermen came up to do
homage and to renew their oaths of fidelity, FitzThomas
addressed the king in these memorable words : — " My
lord," he said, in a voice audible to the assembled multi
tude, " so long as unto us you will be a good lord and
king, we will be faithful and duteous unto you." f
The king was powerless to show the resentment he
must have felt at this qualification of the oath. He
nursed his wrath, as became the son of king John, and
in due time exacted the penalty to the full.
* Green, i. 300.
t This anecdote is interpolated as a marginal note by the chronicler,
who can scarcely find words to express his horror at the "wondrous and
unheard of" conduct of "this most wretched mayor." — Chron. Mayors
and Sheriffs, p. 77,
L 2

1 48 HISTOR Y OF L ONDON.
The Londoners undoubtedly did not flinch from the
duty they had laid upon themselves. Certain persons
belonging to the Montfort party were arrested for out
rages committed at Stepney and Hackney, during the
raid of Simon de Montfort the younger. Having been
duly convicted, they were hanged on the 29th June.
Meanwhile prince Edward, who had escaped from cus
tody, was engaged in the siege of Kenilworth, and after
various skirmishes which concern the history of London
only incidentally, had engaged the forces of Leicester and
Gloucester at Evesham. The Londoners had cause to
remember long afterwards a terrible thunderstorm which
burst over their city on the 4th August. To them it was
ominous of a long period of darkness and oppression.
The news of the death of earl Simon and the destruc
tion of his party came to them in two days' time, and
they must have known, or at least feared, the worst.
Before the civic year was out, all the king's acts done
under pressure of earl Simon were annulled — all the
oaths he had made and received, all the donations,
charters, and. writings to which he had set his hand were
recalled ; and the parliament, which met at Winchester a
month after the fatal day at Evesham, disinherited or out
lawed all who had been slain in the battle or taken at
Kenilworth. Many prominent citizens were among the
" disinherited," as they were called ; but the commons
met as usual on St. Michael's day to elect their sheriffs,
and on the morrow accompanied them, with Fitz
Thomas as their mayor at their head, to be sworn in
at Westminster before the barons of the exchequer.
But no judges were in attendance. The doors of Rufus's
hall were closed against them, and they returned to
London with doubt and dismay depicted on every face.
Rumours had come to them ' of a vast force which the

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 149
king was already engaged in assembling at Windsor for
the reduction of the rebellious city. Some were for
fortifying it against the king. Others, comprising, of
course, both those of the old court party who had always
been against the commons and those whom fear or hope
now caused to change their views, were for unqualified
submission. They were still sufficiently powerful to take
the lead in sending abject messages to the king by the
hands of monks and friars. But Henry knew his adyanV
tage. The hour of vengeance had come. He turned a
deaf ear to all informal embassies ; and at last the
citizens, whom suspense had by this time wholly de
moralised, though a week had not elapsed since Michael
mas Day, sent a letter sealed with the common seal,
throwing themselves on the king's mercy. Sir Roger
de Leiburne was deputed by Henry to carry his terms
to the citizens. They were to remove all barricades,
chains or posts from the streets — the beginnings of un
finished fortifications, — to submit themselves wholly in
life and limb, and, finally, to send the mayor and the
principal men with him to the court at Windsor, osten
sibly to confirm the conditions named in the letter.
Leiburne met the citizens in the old church of All
Hallows Barking, close to the Tower of which he had
taken possession, and laid these terms before them, pro
mising a safe-conduct to the mayor and his deputation.
There was nothing for it but to obey. They had always
professed obedience. They would have had nothing to
fear from a constitutional king, such a king as Fitz
Thomas had described in his memorable speech at
St. Paul's. On Friday the 5 th October, therefore, they
set out upon a journey from which some of them were
destined never to return. It was not in the nature of
such a man as Henry to keep a safe-conduct granted

1 50 HISTOR Y OF LONDON.
under the circumstances. After long and vexatious
delays, the mayor was admitted to the castle, the
citizens remaining without until evening, when they were
taken in and lodged in the keep, on the site of the pre
sent Round Tower.
The next day the mayor, with Pulesdon, Thovi,
Bukerel, and a certain John de Flete, of whom nothing
else is recorded, were separated from the rest of the
citizens who were lodged in the outer bailey, but, by a
piece of the most odious ill-faith, the five first-named
were reserved in the keep by the king's orders, their
bodies, we are told, being granted to prince Edward
and the safe-conduct " availing them nought."
Having thus secured the principal citizens, Henry
proceeded to London, where he wreaked his vengeance
as he pleased on all who had offended him. He gave
away to his followers more than sixty houses, as even
the royalist chronicler admits ; hostages were demanded
for the good conduct of above sixty more ; their lands at
Lynn and Yarmouth were seized ; and finally, in con
travention of another promise, Henry imposed a fine on
loyal and disloyal alike, amounting to no less than
20,000 marks, or close upon 100,000/. of our money.
Nor was this all. As if to heap insult on the fallen
city, and to add every sign he could of his indiscriminate
hatred, he issued a charter in which, acknowledging the
receipt of the fine, " he remitted his indignation unto the
citizens." Thenceforth, for six long years London lay at the
king's mercy. No mayor was elected, the city being
governed by wardens appointed by the king, and by
bailiffs chosen instead of sheriffs. Everywhere through
out England the proscribed adherents of earl Simon
were in arms. The feeble king could but waste the

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. IS I
public resources, and add to the general confusion, until
Edward, his son, now arrived at maturity, and not
oblivious of the teachings which in his early youth he
had received from earl Simon, took affairs into his own
hands, and gradually brought about a semblance of
peace. Clear evidence of the poverty into which London
Bad fallen in these bad times is afforded by the charter
in which the prince,* then busy with his preparations for
the crusade, remits to the citizens their share of an aid
granted to him on the customs of the realm, and even
more by the fact that in gratitude they presented him
with the paltry sum of 200 marks-
Of the fate of FitzThomas we would fain know some
thing. When he enters the keep at Windsor on that
fatal Monday, he disappears from public view. He was
alive a year later, at least in the belief of his fellow-
citizens ; for when, after a form of election, William Fitz-
Richard was admitted warden of the city and sheriff of
Middlesex, the " fools of the vulgar classes " clamoured
for his release. " We will have no one for mayor ! " they
cried, "save only Thomas FitzThomas." But their
longings were in vain. The chronicler of the dominant
party mentions very circumstantially a plot to seize the
principal opponents of the mayor, which was frustrated
by the battle of Evesham, but he puts it into his narra
tive, as an afterthought, three years later; and its inser
tion may possibly be taken — if it is taken seriously at
all, — to mark the receipt of some fresh intelligence of the
ill-fated prisoner, perhaps his death. It would be more
satisfactory to believe that with the settlement of affairs,
* I call Edward " prince " for convenience. The title was not used for
kings' sons till long afterwards. He is usually styled "Sir Edward" in
contemporary writings.

152 , HISTORY OF LONDON.
or at the accession of Edward, he received his freedom ;
but his name occurs in no list of the pardoned, and we
see our last of him, perhaps, pacing the leads of the tower
on its lofty mound . and looking wistfully eastward to
where he might descry the smoky canopy of the city
which he had loved so well and for which he had suffered
so much.
By imprisoning and gagging FitzThomas, Henry did
but render his views more enduringly popular. For
six years no election of mayor was permitted to take
place. The chief magistrates and sometimes their subor
dinates were appointed by the king. One former mayor,
William FitzRichard, stooped to hold power on such terms.
But the policy of FitzThomas, which had made the
cause of the commons that of the craft guilds, gave
fresh strength to the popular party. The oppressions of
tiiese six years, and the intervention of great provincial
nobles with their armies of half-tamed foresters and
yeomen from the bleak hills of the west, only made the
citizens of all classes long for a settled government.
Custody of the bridge, from whose parapets she had
been insulted, was given to the queen. By her the warden-
ship was farmed to collectors who spent nothing on repairs,
so that the whole edifice sustained "great damage and
peril." The state of the bridge was typical of the state
of the city. At length the increasing decrepitude of the
king and the corresponding growth of Prince Edward,
both in popular estimation and in personal vigour, gave
him sufficient influence in the management of affairs to
make some improvement possible. The slaughterer of
the citizens at Lewes was forgotten in the restorer of the
old law and order. Men remembered that he had
pleaded for earl Simon's life, and had followed his
mutilated remains to the grave. The abundant harvest

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 153
of 1267 had its indirect effect on the prosperity of the
citizens. And three years later, in 1270, they obtained
leave once more to elect their own mayor.
John Adrian, an alderman of the retrograde party, who
had figured among the number of royal wardens, had
influence enough to get himself elected ; but both he
and his sheriffs were displaced in the following year by
members of the trade guilds. It is evident from the
names as well as from the meagre records of the time,
both that the old contest still went on, and that by degrees
the new craftsmen were gradually gaining in wealth,
influence, and a settled policy. The wards begin to assume
their modern names, and are more seldom called after
their owners, or the aldermen who govern them. In
other words, the great estates were being broken up, and
the power of the old families was waning. They put up
Walter le Poter, who had been sheriff the previous year,
as their candidate for the mayoralty at the ensuing
election ; but he was defeated by the " mob of the city,"
who would have no one but Walter Hervey,* a worthy
pupil and successor of the ill-fated FitzThomas.
His opinions may be gathered from an anecdote told
by his enemies.f He was censured by some persons for
wishing to be mayor. No man, it was remarked, ought
to have an office who covets it. Such people think only
of their own promotion, and nothing of the welfare of those
subject to them. Walter Hervey, on hearing this criticism,
" made answer to the people standing about him, affirm
ing and swearing by God and by his own soul to the
effect that he did not desire to be mayor, or any other
officer in the city, for his own sake ; but that, solely
* "Who before was mayor," says the Chronicle; but this is a mis
take or a misprint. He had twice been sheriff— once by royal appointment.
t Chronicle, p. 156.

154 HISTORY OF LONDON.
from love of God, and from motives of charity, he was
willing to endure that burden and that labour." Such
was his outspoken policy ; and he further declared his
intention of supporting the poor against the rich, and of
watching that they were not unduly oppressed in the
matter of tallages or civic expenditure.
It may easily be guessed that these sentiments did
not recommend him to the old oligarchy. The aldermen
appealed in a body to the court at Westminster. Walter
Merton was the ruling spirit of the council. The king
was ill, or he might have meddled to defeat the moderate
proposals of the minister. A warden was to be appointed
until five arbitrators on either side had decided on a
mayor. Evidently Walter le Poter had retired from the
contest, as he is named on the side of the aldermen, with
John Adrian, the late mayor, and Henry Waleys, who
was destined, in more settled times, to rule the city for
many years. Henry de Coventre and Thomas Basing,
members of the oldest and proudest of the patrician
families, were associated with them ; while Hervey
nominated Robert Grapefige, Robert Hauteyn, Alan, a
capmaker,* Bartholomew, a grocer,f and Henry de Win
chester, a member of one of the older families, who
apparently had thrown in his lot with the popular party.
Pending their decision Henry Frowyk was made warden.
Before the committee could sit, however, another and
greater arbiter had stepped in. Retribution, long delayed,
had come at last. With the cries of the men he had so
cruelly oppressed ringing in his ears, Henry died. When
the citizens assembled in Westminster Hall, clamouring
day after day for the mayor of their choice, the noise, we
are told, " reached his lordship the king in bed, to which
he was confined by a severe illness." This was on the
* " Le Hurer." f " Le Spicer."

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 155
eleventh of November, and he never recovered, but died
on the sixteenth, and four days later was buried in the
noble church to build which he had robbed his people.
There we may still see his handsome fatuous face in the
earliest portrait of an English king that has come down
to us.
A hush fell upon the contest. The earl of Gloucester
going into the city to proclaim the absent Edward, called
the people together in their traditional folkmote in St.
Paul's Churchyard. Before the meeting, he and the
other ministers had so arranged matters with the chiefs
of both parties that, when the folk assembled, Walter
Merton, mounting the pulpit of St. Paul's Cross, told
them that their mayor, Walter Hervey, would be
admitted to office.

( 156 )

CHAPTER VI. '
THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES.
WHEN the craft guilds became powerful enough to
control the election of the city officers, the old system
was about to die. Its work was done, but it died hard.
By the end of the fourteenth century it was gone. It had
arisen in a state of things so different from that which
saw its end, that we realise it with difficulty. The small
Saxon population which settled within the deserted walls
of what had been Roman London, found a wide and
empty space crossed by two great paved highways. Their
first division of this space was into holdings or estates,
some of which may have been of considerable size. Such
a space on the north side of the Cheap, was the site of
the king's residence.* A similar space upon Cornhill
belonged to the bishop. By the river side the holdings
were smaller, but comprised spaces equal to two or three
parishes. These divisions appear to be older than the
parochial divisions, and do not always coincide with them.
The two systems were formed independently. When I
* Gutter Lane, formerly Guthrum's Lane, has sometimes been said to
commemorate Guthorm-Athelstane, Alfred's Danish godson. Sir F. Pal-
grave, in his curious little work the ' Merchant and the Friar,' speaks
(p. 1 88) of " the lane of Guthrun (sic) the Dane, otherwise Gutter Lane
in the ward of Cheap." Unfortunately, Gutter Lane is in Farringdon
Within. The cases cited throughout the volume must be looked upon as
more or less fictitious. See below, the story of Simon Frowyk. '

To fkce p. 166.

't/infardii Cecff1 Ssiab*

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 157
say they appear older, I must allow that it might be
fairly argued that they are newer. Still, the prepon
derance of evidence is the other way, and it seems
probable that the earliest partition of London was into
estates or holdings, which subsequently developed into
wards. One reason for this opinion may be found by comparing
land in London with land elsewhere. In London the
holdings are partly in one parish, partly in another. The
parishes were partly in one ward, partly in another. The
connection between the ecclesiastical and civil institutions
is very slender. But in the country, the church and the
hall form part of the same range of buildings ; the squire
has the gift of the benefice, and his estate is the parish.
The two old divisions of manor and parish are almost
always conterminous.
The subdivision of London parishes presents some
peculiar features. So often do we find churches^ of the
same dedication in close proximity, that it is difficult not
to conclude that some large parishes were broken up into
smaller parts, each part retaining the old name with a
distinguishing addition. Here, no doubt, the influence
of property was felt The alderman or owner of the
estate built a new church, and had a portion of the old
parish assigned to it. Thus, in the ward of Queenhithe,
closely adjoining each other, are the three parishes of
St Mary Magdalene, St. Mary Mounthaw, and St. Mary
Somerset.* St. Mary Mounthaw is known to have been
at first the chapel of the Norfolk family of Montalt.
Two other parishes are also in Queenhithe, and both are
dedicated to St. Nicholas. Two in Cordwainers' ward
are dedicated to St. Mary. All Hallows seems to have
been a large parish in Dowgate ; but, at some period
¦* Somershithe.

1 5 8 HISTOR Y OF LONDON.
difficult to fix, it became two, " the Great " and " the
Less." The reason for this division may be indicated by
the1 fact, that All Hallows the Less was, like St. Mary
Mounthaw, the chapel of a great mansion, Cold Harbour,
and stood partly over the gate of the courtyard. There
are indications that the whole east end, comprising the
wards of Aldgate and Portsoken, was once in a great
parish dedicated to St. Katherine. We have still, in name
at least, St. Katherine's by the Tower, St. Katherine Cree,
and St. Katherine Colman. So, too, we cannot help
observing the close proximity of St. John Baptist and
St. John the Apostle ; and the churches nearest to
All Hallows Barking had subsidiary dedications to All
Saints, as had also St. Dunstan's, in the neighbouring
eastern parish of Stepney.
There are probably a few other examples of this
kind : one of a different kind is found in Bassishaw, or
Basinghall, a ward which is remarkable as being conter
minous with the parish of St. Michael, and as one of
those which retains the name of its ancient owners.
The Basings were evidently of Saxon origin.* Their
settlement is at a considerable distance from the river,
but forms the smallest ward north of Cheap. That
it was long kept open, perhaps in a kind of park or
large garden, appears from its having been selected at
a later time for the site of a number of trade or craft
halls, no fewer than four of the companies having had
their headquarters in Bassishaw, together with one of the
* But Heath ('Account of the Grocers' Company,' p. 82) considers
them to have been Italians, as they are mentioned among the Lombards,
in the ' Hundred Rolls ' of 2 Edward I. So are Gregory Rokesley and
others ; and the reference is too late to prove anything. A Lombard was
probably by this time a money-lender, not a native of Lombardy, Mr,
Riley thought "Bassishaw" referred to a family of Bassett, but no such
family is known to have existed iu the parish.

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 159
city courts, and the family mansion of the Basings. A
few other wards retain their ancient names. In the oldest
records all were personal. " The Alderman," says
Carpenter, writing in 1419, " has his title from the ward
over which he presides, as ' Alderman of Chepe,' for ex
ample 'Alderman of Bridge,' ' Alderman of Quenehithe ' ;
in ancient times, however, on the contrary the ward was
styled after its Alderman." * Candlewyke Street ward
was at one time called that of Thomas de Basing.
Castle Baynard, and Tower Street, were both at one time
named after the Hadstocks, another patrician family, t
Of those wards which retain the old family names, the
most prominent are. the two Farringdons, Without and
Within. In 1279, William Farringdon purchased the
estate of Ralph le Fevre, which is described as the ward
of Newgate. About the same time he also bought the
reversion of the " ward of Anketill de Auvern," which
comprised Fleet Street and the parish of St Bride's.J It
is not very easy to ascertain what he bought, whether,
that is, he became owner of the land, or of the incum
bency of the office of alderman. By the end of the
thirteenth century the great estates must have been in part
broken up. It is hardly credible that one man should
have been able to buy an estate which comprised the
* ' Liber Albus,' p. 30.
t The ward of Cheap was that of Henry le Frowyk ; Vintry, of Henry
le Covyntre ; Bridge, of John Horn ; Cordwainers, of Henry le Waleys ;
Langbourne, of Nicholas de Wynton ; Aldgate, of John de Northampton j
Wallbrook, of John Adrian; Broad Street, of William Bukerel; Aldersgate,
of John de Blakethorn ; Billingsgate, of Wolmar de Essex ; Bread Street,
of William de Durham ; and other examples might be given before 1280.
— See Riley's ' Memorials,' passim, and Appendix L.
X Joyce FitzPeter, sheriff in 121 1, appears to have had this ward before
Anketill. See a very curious paper by Mr. Palmer in the 'Reliquary,'
xvii. 36, notes K and L. He witnesses a deed relating to "Sholand"
or Shoe lane as foe. Filio Petri tunc Aldermano warde, then alderman of
the ward — which ward still remained anonymous. See below, vol. ii., 69.

160 HISTORY OF LONDON.
whole of the western suburbs from St. Bartholomew's
round to the Temple ; together with Newgate Street and
Ludgate Hill. We only know that he was alderman for
that part of the double ward which lay within the wall,
and that in 1 393 the outer part claimed and obtained the
right of electing an alderman for itself. Although, there
fore, in this particular case, it would not be easy to say
of what the estate of William Farringdon consisted,
if it was more than the baronial jurisdiction, there is
plenty of evidence as to the holdings of other great
city families. Besides the Basings, we have the Fitz-
Aylwins of London Stone, who owned the advowson
of the adjoining church of St. Swithin, and, indeed,
the whole parish itself. Henry, the first mayor, was in
all probability the son of Aylwin, called Aylwin " Child,"
who was wealthy enough to found and partly endow the
priory of Bermondsey* The son of Henry, Peter,called
FitzMayor, inherited an immense estate, which he be
queathed to coheirs now represented by some of the
highest nobility. The Beckets, who came from Rouen,
had held some property on the north side of Cheap.
The Bukerels had Bukerelsbury, on the opposite side
They came, it is believed, from Italy. Arnald Fitz
Thedmar, whose Chronicle throws such light on the
political movements of the thirteenth century, was of
German origin.t The Pountneys lorded it on the site
pf the Roman fort, and the Bats, the Rokesleys, the
Blounts, and the Cornhills, who were among the old
landowners of the city, counted themselves the equals or
the superiors of the great country lords. Henry III,
* See below, chap. xxii. Also the very curious preface to the ' Liber
de Antiquis Legibus,' by Thomas Stapleton (Cam. Soe. 1846).
t See the family legend in the ' Chronicle of Mayors and Sheriffs,'
p. 201.

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 161
taunted them as " churls who called themselves barons." *
When the aldermen ceased to be merely landowners they
similarly ceased to be looked upon as barons, t
In addition to the great estates, which gradually
became wards, there were certain sokes, or liberties, in
London, which survived a few years as exempt jurisdic
tions. Some of them actually became wards, others were
absorbed. They were of the nature of wards or manors,
but were not endowed with the same privileges of self-
government till long after the great estates of the
aldermen had become wholly free. One of them became
eventually the ward of Cornhill, but was at first the soke
of the bishop of London. The standard-bearer had a
liberty at Castle Baynard. The knighten-guild had a soke
outside Aldgate, which subsequently became Portsoken
and a ward. The queen, Maud, or Matilda, had another.
The cathedral church of St. Paul had a small liberty,
comprising the precincts.J The priory of St. Bartholomew
seems to have had a similar liberty, as we read in 1246,.
of their "sokenreve." It appears to have been absorbed
in Farringdon Without. The word "soke " is very loosely
employed by old writers, and sometimes appears inter
changeably with " ward." The heads of wards had sac and
soe, or the rights composing baronial jurisdiction, and the
proprietors of sokes as distinguished from wards, had the
same. The steward or bailiff of the bishop had probably
the government of Cornhill. In 1228, the bishop made a
declaration of his rights in the soke, and obtained
recognition of them from the citizens, the chapter of St.
* The mayor ranks as an earl (Norton, p, 260), and was so assessed
under Richard II. In the city he ranks immediately after the sovereign,
but at the Duke of Wellington's funeral, Prince Albert, as representing the
Queen, preceded the Lord Mayor.
t See Stubbs, iii, 561.
% There is a curious reference to it in Pepys's ' Diary,' iii. 348 (Bohn).
VOL. I, M

162 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Paul's, and the king's treasurer.* But in 1291, the' soke
had become a ward, and soon afterwards we find an
alderman mentioned. All such exempt jurisdictions
were, however, gradually subordinated to the general civic
government. In 1347, the citizens refused to recognise
the liberty of lord Fitzwalter, on the express ground
that it was repugnant to the liberties of the city.f
The history of the ward named Portsoken, which con
tained two of these liberties, is not so brief. Aldgate, there
is reason to believe, was not one of the original or Roman
gates of the wall. In what year it was opened we cannot
say, perhaps in the reign of Edgar, perhaps in that of
Edward the Confessor. It was certainly in existence by
the time of Henry I. when queen Maud made the bridge
over the Lea at Stratford. Adjoining this gate she had a
"soke." To the northward was another estate or soke,
that belonging to the knighten-guild already mentioned.
In 1 107 a canon of St Augustine opened a house at the
gate near a church dedicated to the Holy Cross and
St. Mary Magdalene, which had been built by one SyredJ
some time, we do not know how long, before. In the
following year, the preaching of the Augustinian, whose
name was Norman, began to attract great attention ; the
queen, whose confessor he became, granted him her
property in the gate itself and the soke adjoining, to
found a house of which he was to be the first prior, and
* The whole document appears as an interpolation in the ' Liber de
Antiquis Legibus.' See Riley's ' Translation of the Chronicles of Mayors
and Sheriffs,' p. 210. And Brentano, in Toulmin Smith's ' English Gilds,
p. 59, where there is an account of a "soke " belonging to the bishop of
Worms. t There is a very lively account of lord Fitzwalter's claim and its
rejection in the ' Merchant and the Friar,' p. 149,
X Syred, or Sired, was a canon of St. Paul's T. R. E., and is mentioned
in D. S.

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 163
which was to be dedicated to the Holy Trinity.* How
the queen came to be possessed of the gate I do not
know. It is very possible she actually opened it and
built it, and that there was no gate at this point in; the
wall before her time.t The knighten-guild were con
nected with the church of St. Botolph Aldgate, which
goes to prove that they had a corporate existence before
Aldgate existed. Nay, it is possible that the guild
existed before the church of St. Botolph itself was built :
because it is described as standing on land which
belonged to them. { Norman's popularity increased.
He obtained property in the city, the advowson of
churches, and other benefactions. The "good queen"
as she was called, did not live long ; but her popularity
must have contributed to his. Ten years after the
foundation of the priory she died at Westminster, and
was buried in the abbey of her uncle. The king con
firmed her gifts to Holy Trinity, Aldgate, and when,
some seven years later, the brothersof the knighten-guild §
took the strange resolution of joining Norman's little
* After the Dissolution this house and church wholly disappeared. The
church of the convent of Minoresses has been confounded with it by
Cunningham and others. There is a cartulary of the Priory' of Aldgate
among the archives of the university of Glasgow. See Third Report, His
torical MSS. Commission. A new church of St. James, Duke's Place,
was consecrated in 1623, but has since been removed.
t Stow and others, deceived by the name, have endeavoured to give a
very ancient origin to Aldgate.
X They " gave seisin to the prior on the land itself through the church
of St. Botolph, which is built on it, and is, as they said, the head of that
same land." —Stevens, 'Continuation of Dugdale,' p. 75.
§ Their names are given as Ralf, son of Algod, Wimard le Doverlishe,
Orgar le Prude, Edward Hupcornhill, Blakstan and Albyn his kinsman,
Albyn and Robert his brother, the sons of Leostan, Leostan the goldsmith,
and Wizo his son, Hugh the son of Wlgar, Algar Secusun; Orgar the. son
of Dereman, Osbert Drinchepyg, Adelard Hornpiteson. A charter of
William Rufus is recited by Stow and another of Henry to the men of
the knighten-guild, in which they are granted, " the guild that belonged "to
M 2

1 64 HISTORY OF LONDON.
band of canons, he confirmed the grant of their soke to
the priory.
The most interesting point to be noticed here is that
the prior became alderman of the Soke of the Port :
but when is not known. In 1264, Prior Eustace, holding
that a regular priest had no call to act in temporal
matters, delegated his authority to a bailiff, as the bishop
had done in Cornhill ; but few of his successors seem to
have been of his mind, and Stow describes the prior-
aldermari as sitting in court and riding with " the mayor
and his brethren the aldermen, as one of them, in scarlet
or other livery as they used."
After the reign of Henry III. the great landowners
of the city had no longer any place as such in the
governing body. The aldermen no longer owned their
wards. The names are fixed, the offices purely elective.
The constitution of the city, in fact, had undergone a
complete change ;* the oligarchy was broken up ; the
danger which at one time threatened, that London
would fall first into the hands of some local tyrant and
then into that of the king, as in the case of the great

them and the land that belonged thereunto, with all customs " as they had
the same in the time of king Edward and king William. This was the
soke conveyed to the church in 1 125 by Ralf and his companions. The
list of their names is curious. It contains a very early mention of Corn
hill, one of the brethren being Edward " Hupcomhill." There are two
Leostans mentioned ; one of them a goldsmith, whose son Wizo is with
him ; the other, whose trade is not given, and whose' two sons Albyn and
Robert are among the brethren. There is also a son of Dereman, no
doubt the same Deorman to whom William the Conqueror had given the
Essex charter still preserved in Guildhall. See above, p. 87.
* Mr. Stubbs ('Const. Hist.,' i. 407) seems to think that a previous
civic revolution took place on the " disappearance of the portreeve, the
conversion of the knighten-guild into a religious house, " and other changes
before the reign of Stephen. It is elsewhere (p. 630) described as a
victory of the mercantile over the aristocratic element. We have now to
witness the victory of the craft-guilds over that mercantile element.

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 165
cities of the continent, was averted ; and when we look
back through the names of the chief agitators and
political leaders of this time of transition, one name
stands out as that of the man who more than any one else
prepared the way for the Whittingtons, the Larges. the
Greshams, the Beckfords of later generations, and who
set the ancient liberties of London on a foundation so
secure that they remain practically what they were after
the lapse of half a millennium. Walter Hervey was
the political pupil of FitzThomas. He succeeded to
the championship of popular rights. When, in 1272, he
granted charters of incorporation to the trades, and took a
step which, so to speak, hardened the companies in the
mould — gave them a consistence, that is, which in spite of
the subsequent forfeiture of his charters, they never lost, —
he only carried out the system which FitzThomas had
introduced during the ascendancy of Simon de Montfort.
The history of the city companies is much complicated
by that of guilds. A " frith-guild " existed as early as the
time of Athelstan. The knighten-guild which Henry I.
recognised was in existence at a very early period — so
early that tradition assigned its foundation to king Edgar.
What the guilds were may to a certain extent be ascer
tained. Some were religious, some were merely social.
But those of greatest importance were mercantile. They
were comprised in the " town guild " at the Guildhall, and
controlled or endeavoured to control the whole policy of
the city. It was to counteract the oligarchical action of
the town-guild that Hervey gave organisation to the
" handicrafts." The original guild was undoubtedly
" an institution of local self-help,"* and of the highest
* Miss Toulmin Smith, 'English Gilds,' p. xiv. In the sketch
attempted here I have occasion frequently to use the words of this remarkr
able essay.

1 66 HISTORY OF LONDON.
antiquity in England. Guildship and its duties are
mentioned in the laws of Athelstan, in the canons of
Edgar, and by Henry I. The " Cnihten Gild " or Young
Men's Guild of London, of which mention has been
made so often, had a charter from Edward the Confessor,
to which Stow refers, but which is now lost.* These
ancient associations bound themselves to pay for masses,
to insure against fire, to provide funerals, to assist each
other in fines, and, in short, to encourage peace and good
will among fellow-citizens, f
The institution of mercantile guilds is also very
ancient. Their constitution is recognised by Glanville.
Writing in the reign of Henry II., he uses the phrase
" commune, in other words a gyld," meaning a town
whose corporation had set up a guild. London must
have been such a town, as is proved by the existence of
a guildhall. If a countryman came into such a town
and resided there undisturbed for a year and a day, and
was received into the " commune, otherwise .gyld " {com-
muniam, scilicet gyldam), he became a freeman and could
not be recalled into " villenage." % Mercantile guilds
existed at York, Leicester, Preston and other places
before the end of the twelfth century. .
The third kind of guild was that of the handicrafts-
* Cunningham, Palgrave, and others derive the name of Nightingale
Lane from the Knighten Guild. It is well to look with suspicion on these
plausible derivations. Miss Strickland's "Chere Reine" Cross is an
example. Nightingale Lane is not in Portsoken, and was much more pro
bably called from the birds which sang in it or from an ale-house sign,.
Stow makes special mention of the rural aspect of this district in the
sixteenth century.
f Frith-guild means an association for a peaceful purpose.
X The case of Simon Frowyk is detailed in the ' Merchant and the
Friar,' p. 140. Frowyk is a bondsman Of Alan, Lord Zouche, who
endeavours in vain to detain him when he finds him on his glebe after
he has become a citizen of London. The story is partially fictitious.

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 167
men. The struggle in London was between them and the
communal guild, or mercantile guild, which, wholly in
the hands of those landowners and merchants who con
stituted what I have ventured to describe as the patri
cian party, oppressed the mere craftsman, as in other
times manufacturers, so called, have oppressed their
workmen. They resembled rather the modern trade
union than anything else, and seem to have existed
before 11 80, when the guilds which had not a charter
from the Crown — that is to say, all but the town or
city guild itself and that of the weavers, were fined.
This marks the first victory of the oligarchy in the
struggle. It has usually been asserted* that on this occasion the
" adulterine " guilds, as they were called, were suppressed. -
It is true we do not hear of them very often ; but the
same record which gives us their names when they are
first made to pay, mentions them again a few years later.f
They were eighteen in number, and paid sums varying
from the forty-five marks of the goldsmiths to the half
mark of "the guild whereof Hugo Leo is alderman." It
has yet to be proved that these were in any sense
trading companies, or that their aldermen had any
municipal rank as such.J The word alderman was often
used of any one who was senior officer of an association.
The guilds of 11 80 were presided over by men of whom
we hear little or nothing in the city annals. If they had
been aldermen in the modern sense they would appear as
* Stubbs, iii. 574, for example, The word "adulterine," by the
way, was also applied to castles erected without a licence to crenellate. —
Stubbs, i. 333.
t Madox, ' Hist. Exchequer,' i. 390.
X Ralph Flael is said by some to be the alderman who sold a ward to
William Farringdon. This is a mistake of Flael for Fevre. In any case
Flael could hardly have been alive in 1297.

168 HISTORY OF LONDON.
sheriffs and mayors in their turn.* Peter FitzAlan, who
was alderman of one of the Bridge guilds, and is spoken
of as dead,f cannot of course be the same as the Peter
FitzAlan who, sixty-seven years later, was mayor when
the case of the widow Vyel first came up. There was a
William de Haverille, sheriff in 1 190, who may very well
be the same as the William de Haverhill, who is named
as alderman of an otherwise anonymous guild, fined ten
marks ; but such an exception only goes to prove the
rule. A few years later there is mention of several trades
as having certain bonds of union, this time not for peace
but for ill doing, among themselves. The goldsmiths,
by which we must understand the workmen employed
by the goldsmiths, fell out with the tailors, and the cloth-
merchants and tanners joined in a fray which resulted in
thirteen persons being hanged, " that others, put in awe
thereby, might take warning ; so that the peace of his
lordship the king, by all within the city, might be the
more rigidly maintained." The weavers, again, by their
superior wealth, and their superior organisation, were
constantly exciting the envy, not only of other trades
but also of the city guild itself.J They had taken care to
* Both these points have been assumed of late. In Herbert the question
is further complicated by carelessness. He says there were ' ' four gilds
de Ponte, or of the Bridge, Thomas Coke, alderman." If we turn to the
record, however, we find, it is true, four gilds "de Ponte"; but they
have four aldermen, of whom " Thomas Cocus " is only one : — " Gilda de
Ponte, unde Thomas Cocus est aldermannus, debet j marcas. Gilda
de Ponte, unde Ailwinus Fink est aldermannus, debet xv marcas. Gilda de
Ponte, unde Robertus de Bosco est aldermannus, debet x marcas. Gilda.
de Ponte, unde Petrus Filius Alani fuit aldermannus, debet xv marcas."
Thomas Cook was therefore not the head of four local guilds, but only
head of one, and that the poorest. Mr. Stubbs (iii. 561) speaks of three " as
aldermen of the Gilda de Ponte," as if there was but one guild. It is a
serious thing to differ with Mr. Stubbs, but the facts are plain.
t So at least I understand the word " fuit " in the record.
X The weavers were everywhere important. See Toulmin Smith,
' English Gilds,' 120, and Stubbs's ' Const. Hist.,' iii. 572.

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 169
obtain acknowledgment as early as 1 1 30, when Robert,
son of Levestan, who may have been their alderman, paid
16/. into the treasury for them. They had a charter,
more or less formal, in which Henry I. enacted that no
one should exercise their trade in London or Southwark
except he be a member of their guild. This was con
firmed by Henry II. On the establishment of the
mayoralty the weavers had a narrow escape. In 1202
the citizens offered the king sixty marks to suppress the
guild, but they had money as well as influence, and the
king only renewed their privileges, while he increased
their annual payment. "Although," as Mr. Stubbs
remarks, " there is no positive evidence to connect them
and their fellow-guildsmen with the factions of Thomas
FitzThomas and Walter Hervey, or with the later
troubles under Edward I., it is not at all unlikely that
their struggle with the governing body was a continuous
one." Edward gave them a charter so worded that they
assumed powers of self-government, which the city
authorities could not recognise, and in the following
reign a verdict against them was obtained after long
, litigation.* It was perhaps in consequence of this verdict that the
old corporation of the weavers resolved itself or was di
vided by a higher power into its constituent elements,
and we henceforth hear of the drapers, tailors, and others,
but no more of the weavers till long after. There is,
however, absolute silence on the subject in the works of
* Mr. Stubbs oddly observes (iii. 574) that at the end of the reign of
Edward III. the guilds had increased to forty-eight, but that " the weavers
were not in the first class : the grocers, mercers, goldsmiths, fishmongers,
vintners, tailors and drapers being evidently richer." But the tailors must
be identified with the telarii or weavers, who would otherwise have un
accountably disappeared, since they are not named at all, even among the
inferior companies.

'1 70 HISTOR Y OF LONDON.
London historians. The phenomena are altogether pecu
liar, and but few facts can be picked out as tolerably
certain. The weavers touched on one side the trade in
linen, on the other that in wool. The woollen drapers
were naturally very much divided in their interests from
the linen-armourers,* and the tailors who constructed
garments, as well from the vegetable as from the animal
production, were distinct from those who wove the cloth.
We find, therefore, not only great dissension at times
among the weavers, but a strong tendency to establish
separate interests. The drapers, under their Latin de
signation of pannarii, very soon divided themselves from
the tailors, cissores; and, though there is no evidence of
their separate existence \ before 1299, when the tailors'
records commence, it is very probable that from time to
time they both rebelled against the tyranny of the
weavers. Certain it is, that this powerful guild, which
had subsisted through all changes and chances from
the time of Henry I. at least, now suddenly and un
accountably disappears ; while from its ashes rise the
tailors — to whom long after, in the reign of Henry VII.
the title of "Merchant Taylors" was conceded — the cloth-
workers, at first " shermen " and fullers, and the drapers,
all of which preserve, more or less dimly, a tradition
of their previous united state of existence.
How far these guilds, now organised as companies,
influenced the final division of the wards it is impossible
to tell. The question turns on whether we are to regard
the aldermen named in the list of adulterine guilds as
* Not necessarily makers of armour.
t It is wholly unproved, and indeed against all probability, that Henry
FitzAylwin, the first mayor, was a member of the guild and left them
houses. In fact, it was at the commencement of his term of office that the
transaction already described took place, when the weavers out-bribed the
authorities of the Guildhall.

THE, RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 1 71
aldermen of city wards, or whether we may take them
to be merely the heads, or chairmen, so to speak, of their
several societies. We cannot very well identify them as
aldermen of local divisions, seeing, as has been said, that
in one locality alone, four names of aldermen occur.
The probability is that though in 1 318 it was ordained
that the freedom could only be acquired by the member
of a " mistery " or trade guild, the wards and the comr
panies were perfectly distinct from each other, and the
aldermen of wards from aldermen of guilds. There
was, in fact, a certain amount of antagonism between
them.* In 1 346, for example, the common council-men
were nominated by the wards, in 1375 by the compa
nies, and in 1384 by the wards again. Other similar
changes, showing indeed a close connection but at the
same time a certain rivalry, went on for many years
before the constitution of the city was settled on its
present basis.t
It is not impossible to localise certain trades. The
goldsmiths were always seated in the ward of Alders-?
gate. Ralph Flael, their alderman in the reign of
Henry II., is said to have " held the ward in demesne."}
The drapers were now unsettled, but the mention of
their houses at St. Mary " Boathatch, " a lock-gate or
* Stubbs, iii. 574, 575.
t The identification of the adulterine guilds with the later com
panies is scarcely possible. The goldsmiths, of which Ralph Flael was
alderman, may have developed into the wealthy company of that name.
So, too, the piperarii may have become grocers, and the butchers have
survived to be chartered. But it is with doubt that I would suggest the
identity of the later company of merchant-tailors, at whose head was, not an
alderman, but a pilgrim, with the " Gilda Peregrinorum, unde Wamerius
le Turnur est Aldermannus." There were eighteen guilds, and four being
in one locality, the number of wards represented, if wards were represented
at all by the aldermen of the guilds, would be but fifteen. This is more
than improbable,
X Herbert, ii. 127.

172 HISTORY OF LONDON.
dock on the Wallbrook, and in St. Swithin's Lane as
well as by St. Mary " Woollen-Hithe, " and in Broad
Street, may be accounted for if we remember their
probable identity with the great guild of the weavers.
After their separation the tailors seem to have had a hall
in Cordwainers' ward, and then to have bought the
ground on which Merchant Taylors' Hall still stands, in
the lane which their trade endued with the nickname,
now long become permanent, of Threadneedle Street.
The drapers, who wandered with the weavers, found a
resting place in Cornhill, though their anniversary was
kept in the chapel of Bethlem Hospital. From Cornhill
they migrated to St. Swithin's Lane, where they seem to
have hired a hall from John Hende. It was not until
1 541 that they moved to their present quarters in
Throgmorton Street, a house built by Cromwell, earl of
Essex, on the ruins of the Austin Friars, and forfeited by
his attainder.* The bakers, who as a guild are almost as
old as the weavers, f may have flourished in Bread Street
ward, and the shoemakers in Cordwainers.
The German merchants kept to the river's bank,
where they had their own house, the Steelyard. Stow
quaintly speaks of the " Haunce of Almaine;" but the
word Hans is old English and means, literally, guild.t
Their house was close to the mouth of the Wallbrook, in
the ward of Dowgate, and surrounded with quays and
stores. The head was termed an alderman, though he
was certainly not alderman of a ward. We read of
the Easterlings at a very early period as living together
under strict regulations, and considering themselves a
* See a curious account of the vicar-general's tyrannical proceedings in
Stow, p. 67 (ed. Thorns), quoted below, chapter x. p. 309.
t There are frequent entries in the rolls of payment for the " Bolengarii."
X Stubbs, i. 411.

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 17 1
colony of the great continental towns of the Hanse,
Cologne, Lubeck, Rostock, and the rest. The German
families in the city were numerous and wealthy, but can
not have belonged to the Steelyard, the members of
which kept wholly apart, leading a celibate, almost a
religious life, in the monastic sense, and looking forward,
no doubt, to the time when they might leave this remote
island and return to their dear fatherland.* The German
Guildhall (Gildalda Theutonicorum) is frequently men
tioned before the reign of Edward IV. when they
acquired a larger house, known as the Steelyard, from
their stafel, staple, or market in it. The merchants of
the Steelyard engaged in the thirteenth century to keep
Bishopsgate in repaint They seem to have been the
same with " the emperor's men," or Easterlings, declared
by Ethelred to be law-worthy ; but it is not certain, as
these are described as resorting to Billingsgate.} That
their credit or their money was accounted good is clear
from our expression " sterling," as the equivalent of real
or " royal." §
Another very ancient society was that of the saddlers.
Their guild seems to have been connected with the
church of St. Martin-le-Grand, and to have been wholly
religious. An agreement between Ernald, their alder
man, and the canons of St. Martin, which makes mention
of the antiquity of the society, cannot itself be much later
than the reign of John.
Such are the chief indications of the organisation of
guilds and companies before the accession of Edward I.
The civic revolution, which is described at the close of
* See above, chapter iv.
t Herbert, i. 10.
X Riley, 'Memorials.'
§ An interesting account of the English nation at Bruges in the
fifteenth century is given by Mr. Blades, ' Life of Gaxton,' chapter iii.

174 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the last chapter, brought these organisations to the front.
The tyranny of the patrician party had succeeded by the
union of its members. Their common interest, and above
all the necessity for excluding the lower classes from a
share in the government, acted as a bond. There was
constant disunion in the opposite ranks. The trades
could not agree together. United action was only
possible on great occasions like that which led to the
election of Hervey. To him, or to some astute adviser,
occurred the solution of the difficulty. It was obviously
impossible that the trades could be bound together.
The weavers were already disintegrating. No universal
bond could be found. The new mayor took the business
into his own hands. No longer striving for one great
union against the city guild, he organised all the different
trades separately, and assuming, as chief of the city
executive, the right to grant charters of incorporation
to the craftsmen, he called a new force into existence.
Bringing order out of disorder, he faced the aldermen
with a hydra-headed combination, against which the
struggle was soon found to be useless. The charters
which he granted were not called in question while he
remained mayor, which was only for the one year
reckoned from the king's death in November 1272.
The chronicler from whose one-sided pages we have so
often quoted, makes many insinuations as to Hervey's
conduct during the new king's absence, but they are
inconsistent ; and without endeavouring to exalt his
character above the average morality of the time, we
may yet look on Walter Hervey as worthy of the dignity
conferred on him by his contemporaries, and worthy also
of a larger measure of historical fame than has yet been
accorded to him. The founder of a system of civic
government which is still, nominally at least, in full

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 175
force, does not deserve the oblivion in which London has
been content to leave his memory.
The mayoralty of Walter Hervey terminated in the
usual way, and a member of the aldermen's party was
permitted by the commons to succeed him. Henry le
Waleys, or Galeys, a merchant trading with Bordeaux,
pf which city he was mayor a year later, was elected.
He had hardly taken the oaths, when a disagreeable
incident occurred. His sheriffs, Cusin and Meldeburne,
men belonging to his own party, were convicted, one of
having taken a bribe from a dishonest baker, the other of
having connived in the fraud. The customary contest as
to jurisdiction between the government at Westminster
and the City authorities took place, but the precedent
of Simon FitzMary having been adduced, the citizens
deposed their sheriffs, and elected in their stead two men
of the oldest and proudest families, by apparently such
a reaction as constantly occurs in public opinion. In
conjunction with the mayor, they immediately attacked
the charters of the craftsmen. Occasion was easily found.
The charters had been disobeyed : " a certain person "
had worked in contravention of the statutes contained in
the charter which he and the men of his trade had
obtained. They came into the Guildhall, where the
mayor and the aldermen, including Walter Hervey,
alderman of Cheap, were assembled. The complainants
were asked where they obtained their charter. From
the late mayor, Walter Hervey, was the reply. Hervey
boldly acknowledged the authorship, not only of the
charter in question, but also of a number of others. The
mayor kept silence, but Gregory Rokesley, an old and
wealthy alderman, afterwards, " Master of the Exchange,"
ambassador to Flanders, and mayor after. Waleys, rose
and expressed his opinion that Hervey's charters only

176 HISTORY OF LONDON.
had force during his mayoralty, and that they were framed
in such a way as to benefit the rich, and oppress the poor.
The aldermen assented, but Rokesley 's bid for popular
support did not succeed. Hervey withstood him to the
face, and a "wordy and abusive dispute" ensued.
Hervey, when he left the Guildhall, assembled a great
crowd of those to whose trades he had granted charters,
in the church of St. Peter in Cheap — where now a green
tree refreshes the dusty street — and promised to do what
he could to maintain the charters. For the next two
days he was busily visiting his adherents " through the
streets and lanes of the city," and strengthening the
weak-hearted and waverers. But the oligarchical party,
remembering the tumultuous scenes at Westminster
which had preceded Hervey's election, went to the council,
then sitting in St. Martin's-le-Grand, and by representing
the probability of a similar outbreak, and the consequent
danger to the "peace of his lordship the king," easily
persuaded them to issue a writ in the king's name for the
apprehension * of Hervey. But twelve compurgators
speedily acquitted him, and Christmas ensuing the matter
dropped for a few days.
On New Year's day, 1274, the mayor and citizens met
once more in the Guildhall, and Hervey's charters were
brought in by the tradesmen and impounded by the
mayor, who, a fortnight later, in open hustings, had them
read, their alleged dangerous character explained, and
the injury they would cause described, after which it was
ordered, with the assent of the people present, that the
members of the different trades should follow their crafts as
before, and that the charters should be held of no weight.
* The writ is so worded that the aldermen may have thought themselves
justified in arresting Hervey — though they are not directly commanded to
do so.

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. 177
It is evident that some intimidation was used to obtain
the consent of the people to the loss of their charters
But still more high-handed proceedings were about to be
taken. The great market-place of Westcheap was, as we
have seen, covered with booths, arranged in order
according to the nature of the wares exposed for sale.
The whole of the ground now occupied by Wood Street,
Milk Street, Friday Street, Honey Lane, Ironmonger
Lane, and so on, was then like a. country fair. " I
read," says Stow, " of no housing otherwise on that side
of the street, but of divers sheds." Such for many
centuries was Cheap, the Forum of London, Warda
Fori* as it is called in the old records. The roadway
of which Stow speaks, ran along the edge of the market
place, whence it obtained its name of Cheap-side. In the
centre stood the great church of St. Mary " le Bow," so
called on account of its stone vaulting. Before the church
was a tilting ground, but all the rest of the open space
was let out from time to time for the sheds of various
provision dealers, arranged by their trades. They did
not live in their booths, f and the permanent population
of Cheap must have been small. It was, no doubt, these
tradesmen who had made Walter Hervey their alderman,
and at this, the constituency of their enemy, the patricians
determined to aim their next blow. An edict went forth
announcing that the young king was coming home, that
the city must be in order to receive him, and that, as
a step in this direction, the market-place must be
cleared.} * Letter-book A, p. 116, and Lansdowne MSS. 558, fo. 205.
t Fitzstephen.
J The proclamation recorded in the 'Chron. Mayors and Sheriffs,' p.
173, only mentions two trades ; but it is clear from a consideration of the
whole passage that all the others suffered.
VOL. I. N

178 HISTORY OF LONDON.
The shopmen had in many cases paid handsome
sums of money for the privilege of selling their goods
at what they regarded as permanent stalls in Cheap.
The mayor, backed, no doubt, by superior power,
asserted in reply to their remonstrances that the
sheriffs who had given leases had done so on bribery.
He ruthlessly carried out, apparently in one day, the
removal of the sheds. The king's eye must not be
offended, he said, by the sight of any refuse lying about ;
and his severity fell with peculiar weight on the fish
mongers and butchers. They appealed to Guildhall on
the morrow. The mayor and aldermen were assembled
to "plead the common pleas." The complaint of the
unfortunate salesmen was laid before them, and the reply
of the mayor is very significant. He had evidently been
consulting with the council, and knew how far he would
be supported ; at the same time he did not scruple, in
order to crush the plebeian rising, to surrender, and to
acknowledge virtually that he had surrendered, the
liberties of the city. For he made answer that what he
had done he had done by order of the king's council,
thus endeavouring to shield himself.
Hervey, we may be sure, made the most of this ad
mission. The king's council had no jurisdiction over
the chief magistrate of London. Again a " wordy strife,"
says the chronicler, ensued. The mayor was openly re
proved by Hervey before all the people. At length,
stung by his reproaches, he broke up the meeting and
betook himself to his friends at Westminster. Here the
final course of action was resolved upon. Hervey's supr
porters had been dispersed to their houses out of the city
and into various other wards, by the clearing of Cheap ;
and now, without further delay, Hervey himself must be
silenced.

THE RISE OP THE COMPANIES. 1 79
Accordingly the interrupted pleas were reopened on
the morrow. From what ensued it is evident that the
meeting was carefully packed. " Certain persons of
the city, of Stebney, of Stratford and of Hakeneye,"
Hervey's dispossessed constituents, no doubt, were ex
cluded. The mayor had learned his lesson well. A
"certain roll" was read in which were detailed the
various " presumptuous acts and injuries " which Hervey
had committed. He had not attended at the exchequer
to show the citizens' title to the Moor : * he had attested
that a certain man was an attorney who had never been
admitted ; he had allowed ale to be sold in his ward at
three-halfpence the gallon, contrary to an order of the
aldermen ; he had taken money from the fishmongers
to plead their cause ; he had allowed wine to be carried
out of the city, and had received presents of a tun and a
pipe and.twenty shillings from different wine merchants ;
he had converted to his own use some money collected
by his followers for the advancement of the interests of
the lower orders in the elections : such were the charges
trumped up against him. Among the articles of this
strange accusation were two, upon which no particular
stress was laid, although, in reality, the whole object of
the roll was to press them. They related to the char
ters and to the proceedings of the previous day, when
Hervey had " made unjust complaint against the mayor,
who had warranty sufficient for what he had done, "
namely, that of the king's council. It is curious to
observe that the poor people dispossessed of their stalls
in Cheap are described as " certain persons of the city,
of Stebney, of Stratford, and of Hakeneye," who came
with him to the hustings. Thus it appears that the
fishmongers and butchers who had their shops ir> the
* Finsbury Moor (Riley).
N 2

180 HISTORY OF LONDON.
market-place lived out of town and only came in to
business. Cheap, in short, in the thirteenth century, was
like the whole city now.
The object of the mayor in clearing Cheap was soon
apparent. In the depopulated ward a new election
would ensure the return of an alderman very different
from Hervey, and the mayor had no difficulty in
obtaining a vote deposing Hervey, and ordering the
" aldermanry " to choose a successor.
From this time Walter Hervey disappears from the
city annals. What became of him we cannot tell. The
work he did lived after him. Twenty years later he was
spoken of as an improver of the city, * but his struggles
for the handicraftsmen were forgotten in a new order of
things. He may have lived to see the partial triumph of
his efforts when, in 1298, at the return of Edward from
his Scottish campaign, the citizens assembled by their
trades to give him welcome. He may even have survived
to see the first royal charters given to the companies
by Edward III. By imparting corporate life to the old
crafts he had conferred on them a political consistence
not easily destroyed. To him they owed their ultimate
victory over the old oligarchy. Within a few years their
place among the ruling powers of London was fully
established, and a list still extant among the earliest
records of the city preserved in the Guildhall shows us
the wards reorganised, and marks the completion of the
civic revolution he had initiated. That he was so soon
forgotten, is not to the credit of his successors in London.
It is not very clear why this should be. It is not because
of the remoteness of the time at which he lived and
worked. Richard Whittington is a modern hero, yet he
* Riley, ' Memorials,' p. 25, where mention is made of his having rebuilt
the bridge over Wallbrook, at the eastern extremity of his ward.

THE RISE OF THE COMPANIES. l8l
entered into the labours of such men as FitzThomas and
Hervey in the century before his own. It is strange
indeed that the city preserves no memorial of the only
martyr among the mayors, or of his pupil, the man who
before any other recognised the importance of the handi
crafts, and by substituting companies for guilds made
them the future rulers of the municipal commonwealth.

( 182 )

CHAPTER VII.
THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES.
THE rule of Edward I. in the city was stern. The
citizens of all parties had welcomed him home from the
Crusade with a display of enthusiasm which told at once
of their sufferings in the past and of their hopes for the
future. The reorganisation of the municipality must
have been their first care. The establishment of the
livery companies on the one hand, was balanced by the
final division of the wards. Sokes of all kinds ceased to
exist. The suburbs were benefited by the extension of
city privileges and city order. The completion of the
new bridge led eventually to the incorporation of South
wark, and its enrolment among "wards without." But
all these changes and reforms required time. Trade
was increasing, and with it a wider distribution of the
wealth which had previously been in the hands of a few.
The king insisted chiefly that order should be preserved :
and the first years of his reign were passed without any
serious infringement ofthe civic liberties.
Under the year 1284 we have for the first time the
names of the members sent to represent London in a
parliament. The king had summoned the estates of the
realm to meet him at Shrewsbury. The city sent six
men, namely, the Mayor Waleys and his friend Rokesley
(of whose history we shall have much to say), with Philip

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 1 83
Cissor (or "the Tailor"), Ralf Crepyn, Jocele (or
Jocelyn) le Acatour (or " the Buyer "), and John of
Gisors* They sat in judgment on David, the brother of
the last prince of Wales, and, as the chronicle grimly
adds, they carried his head back with them to London.
Before the year was out, one of them, Ralf Crepyn, was
wounded in Cheap, as before narrated, when the strange
murder of Laurence Duket was perpetrated.} As no re
turns to the writs of parliament of this early period are
known to exist, these names are well worth recording. The
legislative measures of Edward's reign were of the utmost
importance in moulding the future destinies of the city,
and both, in the codification of the old laws and the
regulations now framed for the action of the hundreds,
London was interested. The statute known as Quia
Emptores, in particular, may be named as having had a
direct influence on the development of civic institutions.
Every district was now held responsible for crimes com
mitted within its bounds : the system of compurgation
which had been in force in London for so many genera
tions, in short, now became universal. " The gates of
each town were ordered to be shut at night ; and all
strangers were required to give an account of themselves
to the magistrates of any borough which they entered."}
In London, the order which Edward elsewhere enforced
was frequently endangered. The tragedy of Duket did
not stand alone : similar tumults were not infrequent.
We do not read of any such oppressions as those of
Edward's father ; but it may have seemed necessaiy to the
orderly mind of the " Greatest of the Plantagenets," as he
* The names are given in the 'Chronicle,' lately published by Canon
Stubbs in the Rolls Series (' Annales Londonienses,' Introduction, xxxiii.).
t See above, chap. iv. p. 93.
X Green, ' English People,' i. 335.

1 84 HISTORY OF LONDON.
has been sometimes rather vaguely called, that a stronger
power than that of annually elected magistrates should
watch the transitional course of events in the city :
especially as Edward's warlike aspirations rendered the
peace of so large and wealthy a place more than ever
necessary. He made a vehement attempt to subject it to
the system of assize visitation which he had perfected,
and when, on the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul (29th
June), 1285, the justices in Eyre {iter) sat at the Tower,
they summoned the mayor to give an account of the
peace of the city.
It so happened that London was just then under the
rule of two remarkable men, of both of whom I have
already spoken. Gregory Rokesley and his friend Henry
le Waleys,* or Galeys, had, one or other, held the
mayoralty from the time of Walter Hervey's suppression,
in which they were so largely concerned. Hervey's
successor as Alderman of Cheap was Stephen Aswy,t
who must have been a mere creature of Rokesley. There
does not appear to have been any rivalry between
Waleys and Rokesley, but sometimes one, and some
times the other, would hold office for a year or two.
They had been sheriffs together in the reign of the
king's father. Waleys traded in wine, and Rokesley
also had great foreign dealings, being both a goldsmith
and also a wool merchant. In their benefactions to the
Grey Friars they were rivals. Waleys built a portion of
* Rokesley's family was long seated at Rokesley, a village in Kent,
which gives its name to the hundred, though it is now a mere hamlet and
was united in 1557 to North Cray. The Italian origin of the family is
extremely doubtful. See Hasted's 'Kent,' vol. ii. 51, and Thome's
' Environs, '.i. 129; also 'Arch. Cant.', vol. ii. Gregory's heir was his
nephew, Roger Rislepe, who seems to have assumed the name of Rokesley.
Henry le Waleys was probably a Gascon by birth.
t Mr. Stubbs in his ' Chronicles' (p. xxvi.) spells the name Ascwy.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 1 85
the church, where now stands Christ Church in Newgate
Street. Rokesley made the dormitories of the friars,
where is now the Blue Coat School. They were, in
short, typical examples of the traditional London mer
chant prince, enormously wealthy, benevolent in an
ostentatious way, impatient of interference from the
commons, and yet imbued with lofty ideas of the great
ness, freedom, and privileges of the city which they
practically ruled between them during the first dozen
years of Edward's reign. But their attention was too
much divided by the nature of their business and by
public employments for it to be possible they could
govern London adequately. Both were in attendance
on the king in Gascony in 1273, and the mayoralty was
in the hands of deputies. In the following year Rokesley
was on an embassy in Flanders, and in 1275 Waleys
was mayor of Bordeaux. The sheriffs were not above
suspicion, as we have s'een in Laurence Duket's case.
Burglaries j murders, and the escape of prisoners were
events of daily occurrence. Young men of the older
families broke out into debauchery. An example was
made of one of them, but too many escaped with im
punity. The execution of Michael Thovy,* only checked
this spirit of disorder for the moment. Justice was done
by fits and starts as the mayor had time to attend to the
duties of his office. A raid upon coiners and clippers
was marked by the wholesale execution of nearly three
hundred Jews. On this occasion Edward's judges visited
the city and sat in the Guildhall : but the king deter
mined at last to get London more completely into his
own personal control. When Rokesley was mayor for
the eighth time, the judges were sent to hold theif assizes
* He was probably son of a citizen of the same name who had been
sheriff and even warden under Henry III.

1 86 HISTORY OF LONDON.
at the Tower as I have said, and they summoned him
before them to give an account of the peace of the city.
Although a small part of the Tower precinct was
within the imaginary boundary formed by the old Roman
wall, it was wholly without the liberties of the city.
Close to the border stood, and stands, the old church of
Allhallows, distinguished from other churches of the
same dedication by its connection with the great Abbey
of Barking, a few miles farther down the river beyond
the Tower. Here, no doubt, from the days of good St.
Erkenwald, came the Lady Abbess,* whenever she had
business in London, with her bailiff, her chamberlain, her
treasurer, her chaplain, and other attendants, and landing
at her private wharf, heard mass in the church before
proceeding farther into town.
On this fateful 29th June, the mayor put on his
robes at the house in Milk Street, which he had long
rented from the Prior of Lewes, — one of the first private
houses we hear of as standing in the market place — and
prepared to obey the summons. Followed by his sheriffs
and the aldermen in full civic procession, he passed
along Cheapside, by the great cistern his friend Waleys
had that very year filled with water from the distant
Tyburn, and threading the narrow lanes to Tower Street
he dismounted at " Berkyngechurche." A commodious
vestry-room for the use of the Lady Abbess adjoined the
church, and entering it Rokesley divested himself of
his robes of office, took the seal ring of the city off his
finger, and the chain off his neck, and handed them to
Stephen Aswy. Then he went out through the postern,
over the little drawbridge, and so to the Tower, and came
* The Abbess of Barking ranked, like the Abbesses of Wilton, Shaftes
bury, and St. Mary's at Winchester, as a baroness of the realm. She was
very frequently a princess of the blood, and seldom less than the daughter
or sister of a peer.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 187
into the presence of the judges,* " not as mayor f but as
one of the aldermen, and neighbour of the citizens before
mentioned," as if he was an ordinary individual coming
as compurgator of some one who lived in his ward. The
judges, incensed at this behaviour, asked what he meant.
Rokesley must have been a bold man. He answered
bravely that the city of London was not bound to send
to the Tower to hold its inquests, nor was it bound to
make any appearance for judgment beyond its own
liberties. A judge of assize on the bench is not, even in
these days, approached without much deference : and in
the reign of the stern Edward, the treasurer John de
Kirkby,} sitting actually within the royal fortress, deeply
resented such language, though he must have known
that he was acting as we should say unconstitution
ally, only that the British Constitution of which we hear
so much nowadays had not then been discovered.
Rokesley seems to have quietly retired,§ but the next
day, attending with the citizens on Edward at West
minster, he and a large number of the principal persons
were placed under arrest, and those who had been with
him at Barking Church were actually imprisoned for a
few days. Aswy, to whom he had delivered his chain
and ring, was not let out so soon as the rest. || Mean-
* They probably sat in a hall near the gate.
t 'Liber Albus,' Riley's Translation, p. 15.
X He was Bishop of Ely, and the first, as we shall see (vol. ii. 184), to
inhabit Ely Place in Holborn. He may be commemorated in the name of
Kirby Street.
§ There is great difficulty in piecing together the few notes we have of
this event. I have endeavoured here to make the narrative straightforward,
but the reader is referred for the official account to the Record Series,
'Liber Albus,' i. 16.
II This exception is mentioned in the ' Liber Albus.' Aswy was alive
and at liberty in 1291, but died soon after and was succeeded as alderman
by " Joh's Blound," according to Lansdowne MSS. 558, fo. 204. Blund-
became mayor in 1301.

1 88 HISTORY OF LONDON.
While, on the clever plea that the city had been found
without a mayor, it was " taken into the king's hands,"
and Sir Ralf de Sandwich was appointed to exercise the
duties of the mayoralty under the name of warden.
Apart from the immediate causes of this course of
action, Edward may have been influenced by several
considerations which are but dimly hinted at in con
temporary history. He may have feared that the in
fluence of Rokesley and Waleys was becoming too great
and that a new oligarchy of wealth was being gradually
established in the place of the old oligarchy of the
landowners. The craft guilds had now attained a position
which made their recognition and regulation a necessity.
The wards of the city required to be defined and limited.
The landing-places along the river's bank were out of
repair, and so filthy that no well-dressed person could
pass from his boat into Thames Street without risk of
contamination. The king himself, with the great
schemes he was nourishing of bringing the whole island
of Britain under his government, could not allow anything
like disorder in its principal city. Sir Ralf de Sandwich
showed indefatigable activity. He put everything into
military order. Yet he always acted with the advice and
co-operation of the aldermen, and the annual election of
the sheriffs went on as usual. The king, in short, only
appointed the warden as a permanent mayor, and did
not in any other way infringe the liberties of the citizens.
At this period the city records commence to be
regularly kept, and their publication, in part at least, under
the editorship of the late Henry Thomas Riley, has both
revealed the sources from which Stow made the collec
tions which have immortalised him, and also enabled us
to correct his account and to form our own opinion as to
the course of events. Whether the keeping of records

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 1 89
was one of the new regulations or only the extension of
an ancient custom we cannot tell, but it is impossible not
to connect it with various other civic changes, reforms,
and improvements introduced during the twelve years of
the mayor's eclipse.*
Foremost among them was the definition and naming
ofthe wards. The year 1290 is celebrated in the annals
of England for the passing of the famous statute known
from its opening words as " Quia Emptores." } By it
certain feudal restrictions on the subdivision of land were
removed, and the increase of manors was checked. The
influence ofthe new statute on the geography of London is
at once apparent when we note that about the same time
the list of wards became substantially what it remains to
the present day. One of the earliest collections of city
records } contains a very curious list of aldermen and
their respective wards which must be assigned to this
year 1290. It is simply headed " The names belonging
to the wards of the city of London, with the names of
the aldermen." § Its insertion shows that some arrange
ment or rearrangement had just been made, and this is
further evident from another list, || written some thirty
* In 1288 and part of the following year Sir John de Bretton was
warden, Sandwich being probably in attendance on the king abroad. Sir
Ralf was second son of Sir Simon de Sandwich, of Preston in Kent
(' Archseologia Cantiana,' v. 190).
t The Third Statute of Westminster. Green, ' History of the English
People,' i. 335.
X Letter Book A, fo. 116. I am indebted to Dr. Sharpe of the Town
Clerk's office for the discovery of this list. It was very incorrectly printed
by Maitland (i. 105), who referred it to the ' Liber Albus.' Mr. Riley
had seen it, but does not seem to have been aware of its importance. He
dates it "about 1292," I presume because Gregory Rokesley is mentioned
in it. But Rokesley died on the 13th July, 1291 ('Arch. Cant.,' ii. 234).
I should mention that Dr. Sharpe is inclined to date it as early as 1287.
§ "Nomina propria Wardarum civitatisLond.etnominaAldermannorum."
II Lansdowne MSS. 558.

190 HISTORY OF LONDON.
years later, in which the aldermen named in the first list
are the earliest of whom the writer apparently has any
knowledge. From 1 290 it should be possible to construct
a complete list of the rulers of each ward.
The twenty-five councillors who advised the mayor in
the reign of King John had gradually become identified
with the aldermen : and this title, which at first was
applied to the heads of trade guilds and other function
aries, was henceforth confined to the rulers of the wards.*
The city was parcelled out into twenty-four divisions.
Each division was to elect its alderman, except Portsoken
of which the Prior of Aldgate was ex officio alderman.
There are many signs in other wards that the old
hereditary system was long in dying out, and the alder
manry of Farringdon, which then comprised both the
modern wards of that name, continued to be vested in
William Farringdon, who had bought it, and his son
Nicholas, for no less then eighty-two years. Their rent
was the presentation of a gillyflower annually at Easter,
Nevertheless, election now became the rule, and here
ditary succession the exception ; and, but that two
of the larger wards were afterwards divided, no im
portant change has since been made in their number
or name.}
* It has been suggested that the twenty-five councillors came from the
twenty-five wards, but a chronological arrangement of the facts disposes
of this idea. There were not twenty-five wards then in existence — more
over, it would be necessary to account for twenty-six, if the mayor is
reckoned. t These two lists present a few curious variations. In 1290 Langborn
is called "Langford." By 1320 it has obtained its present name. Broad
Street is called " Lodyngeberye." It is " Brade strete "in the later list.
Before each name in the older list is the word Warda, until we come to
" Portsokne" which is without it. We therefore err in speaking of the
" ward of Portsoken," but we might say the " Soke of the Port." Aldgate
is Alegate in the earlier list, and Algate in the later. Our modern form is

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 191
Sir Ralf de Sandwich's, activity showed itself in other
ways. It may be worth while to look into the old
minute books of the corporation and examine a few of
the entries which relate to this period, for they give us
some of the earliest contemporary notices of London
life.* On Friday, the feast of St. Margaret the Virgin
(20th July), in 1 29 1, for example, we find Sir Ralf in
quiring as to the condition of the bridge over the Wall
brook at Bucklersbury. He had previously made a
very stringent order as to the cleansing of the course
of the stream, from where it entered the city, close to
the modern site of the three railway stations in Liver
pool Street, to the Thames at Dowgate. The bridge,
which was close to St. Mildred's Church, at the eastern
end of Cheapside, was in a dangerous state. It had been
repaired many years before by "the then improver of
the city," Walter Hervey, who had charged the cost
against the occupiers of four adjacent houses, probably
those which stood at the four corners of the bridge. One
of them was the old mansion of the Bukerels, from

certainly wrong, and never occurs in ancient documents. If it did we should
have it as " eald," or " old," as in the case of " Ealdstrete," which survives
as Old Street. Certain wards were called after trades, which shows the
growing influence ofthe guilds. Bread Street, Vintry, and Cordwainer
Street are among them. Cheap is called " Warda Fori," and Queenhithe
"Ripa Regine." Farringdon obtains its modern name in 1320, but in
1290 is called " Warda de Lodgate et Neugate." The bishop has sur
rendered his hold on " Cornhulle," which has become a ward and is ruled
by Martin Box. Baynard's Castle has an alderman, one of the Aswys,
and the name of Lord Fitzwalter does not occur. There must, however,
have been some question as to the position of the bishop's soke, for in
1320 it is omitted from tbe list (Lansdowne MSS. 558, fo. 204. " Nomina
Aldermannorum London, post ultimatujter justic. apud Turrim London.").
Fitzwalter's claim was not finally disposed of till 1347.
* Riley's ' Memorials,' p. 25, &c.

192 HISTORY OF LONDON.
whom the district was named. Another had belonged
to Richard " de Walebroke." There were four stones in
ancient times to mark these tenements, but Harvey took
them away to widen the road. No doubt, things of this
kind were no longer dependent on such- primitive
arrangements, but had begun to find their way into
writing. " Certain men " of the adjacent wards were
now put upon oath as a jury, and found that the tenants
of these houses were bound to keep the bridge in repair
and the sheriffs were accordingly ordered to see it done.
In ascertaining the duties to be paid on certain kinds
of goods two public weighing machines were used. Of
the " small beam," as one of them was called, we have
a curious notice under this same year 1291. It appears
that a certain citizen called Imgram de Betoyne had, at
the request of Queen Eleanor, been appointed custodian
ofthe " beam " for his life. It probably stood by the river
side in the ward of Queenhithe, a ward called from the
old landing-place which had belonged to Eleanor, the
mother of King John, and which, in 1246, had been leased
by her heir, Richard, earl of Cornwall, to the city at fifty
pounds a year, with sixty shillings to the hospital of St.
Giles. When Imgram died, the warden and aldermen
promptly put William de Betoyne, who was probably his
son, into the office. William was himself alderman of
the ward, and it may be believed that the custody of the
"beam" was lucrative. Meanwhile, Jacobina la Lumbard,
a lady of whom we have no further knowledge, obtained
from King Edward, who was then at Berwick-upon-Tweed,
a letter, dated 28th June, in which he requested the war
den and aldermen to give her the keeping of the " small
beam." To which they sent a reply stating respectfully
that they had given the place away already and could
not comply with the king's wishes. From Jacobina's

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 1 93
name we should judge her to have been a money-lender,
whom the king would willingly have paid at the expense
of the city ; but it is to be observed that he did nothing
illegal or oppressive in the matter, and that his nominee,
Sandwich, identified himself completely with the govern
ing body in their reply.
An amusing incident occurred a month later, and is
duly entered in the records.* Roger de Portlaunde, who
was clerk to the sheriff, occupying a position analogous
to that of sub-sheriff in our own day, was a gentleman
who entertained very strict notions as to his own dignity
as the representative when in his court of the sheriff, and
through him of the warden, and through the warden of
" our lord the king " himself. On a certain Thursday in
July, Portlaunde was holding the sheriff's court, when
Robert de Suttone " cast vile contempt upon him."
Suttone's contempt was expressed by repetitions of a
syllable which the chronicler spells as " Tprhurt " or
" Tphurpt," " to his damnifying, and in manifest con
tempt of our lord the king." Portlaunde had refused him
leave to plead in the court on account of some previous
offence, and Suttone had vented his discontent by these
utterances, which Portlaunde with evident effort en
deavours to spell for the benefit of the warden and the
aldermen.t Suttone, whatever his moral shortcomings,
understood the rhetorical value of the direct negative,
and wholly denied the truth of the deputy sheriff's
complaint. But when Savage the armourer, and Mares-
calle the surgeon, and German de St. Giles, and Goddard
the attorney, and other reputable citizens had been
formed into a jury, they found that Robert de Suttone
* Riley, p. 27, from Letter-book A, fo. 96.
f The syllable also appears in a political song, printed in the Camden
Society's volume by Wright, p. 223.
VOL. I. O

194 HISTORY OF LONDON.
had said in full court that he cared nothing for all the
forbidding of Roger, and "still further speaking in
manifest contempt, he uttered these words in English
'Tphurpt, Tphurt.'" He was accordingly committed to
prison. In another note we are told of the election of three
citizens to be killers of swine " found wandering in the
king's highway, to whomsoever they might belong, within
the walls of the city and the suburbs." A night fair, or
" evecheping," as it was called, in Soper Lane, was put
down in 1297, "by reason of the murders and strifes
arising therefrom." In the same year new regulations
were made as to the guarding of the city gates.
Edward I. was anxious to go to war with France, and
though he was restrained by his councillors, and by the
breaking out of Wallace's rebellion in Scotland, London
was placed in a state of defence. During this year,
indeed, news must constantly have reached London of
the atrocities committed in the north of England by the
Scottish freebooter, and "could not but have filled the
English with horror something akin to that which the
English in India must have felt at the outbreak of the
Mutiny."* Many Londoners were in the army which
Wallace defeated at Stirling} in 1298, including a canon
of St. Paul's, Sir Hugh de Cressingham,} who was
among the slain, and whose body the savage Scots_
flayed. The story even came to London that Wallace
himself had a sword-belt made of the skin.
* Bright, ' English History,' i. 189.
f ' French Chronicle ' (ed. Riley), 244.
X He is not mentioned by Newcourt, unless he may be identified with
Hugh de Kersington, who was prebendary of Neasden about this time.
Aungier, in a note, speaks of him on the authority of Prynne as Canon
of St. Paul's and "an insatiable pluralist." He was Treasurer of Scot
land.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 195
Meanwhile, the king, who probably was in great want
of money, offered to restore their mayor to the citizens
of London on payment of a fine of 23,000 marks.
Henry Waleys stepped at once, as if naturally, into the
office, and everything went on without a break. John
le Breton had been warden for the four last years of
this period of sequestration. Following the mayor's
restoration was the grant of a charter in which it was
arranged that for the future in case of the absence of
the king and his court from Westminster the mayor
should be admitted at the Tower by the constable.
The impression made in London by Wallace's rebel
lion must have been very strong. All the chronicles
speak with horror of his atrocities. He " destroyed
Northumbarlond and brent and robbet it, and kylled
both man and womon and chyldryn that lay in cradylles,
and brent also holy chyrche," says one of them.* In
consequence of these crimes Scotland was placed under
an interdict; " all the world spake of the wykkednesse
that thai diddyn throghe crystendome." The terror
inspired by these stories was not lessened by an earth
quake which occurred in January 1299. At length the
king crushed the rebels in the terrible slaughter at
Falkirk, and when Wallace himself was taken he was
sent to London for execution. He arrived on the 22nd
of August, 1 305, and having been lodged for a night at a
private house in Fenchurch Street, he was duly hanged
and beheaded on the 23rd, to the great satisfaction of
an immense throng of the citizens, to whom he appeared
as the Nana Sahib of his time. The next three years
witnessed the deaths by the same process of Simon
Fraser, Herbert Morham, Thomas Boys, the Earl of
* Egerton MSS., quoted by Aungier. 'Fr. Chron.' p. 25.
O 2

196 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Athol, two brothers of Robert Bruce, and a brother of
William Wallace, all of whom were sent to London for
execution.* These scenes, horrible as they appear to us, were
probably thought very proper at that time. We have
already seen how the Jews were treated. In 1264, not
fewer than 500 of them were massacred, and the Jewry
burnt. Yet we do not read that any one was punished
for this atrocity. In 1 279, as mentioned above, 293 Jews
were hanged for clipping the coin. The chronicle is so
precise as to the number that we cannot doubt an exe
cution of the most shocking character must have been
carried out, a judicial massacre, in fact A few years
later we read that " all the Jews of England were taken
and imprisoned and put to ransom." This was in 1287.
They had objected to a tallage, laid upon them by
the king's mere motion, no doubt, for the Jews were
reckoned as royal chattels, and all they had was his. It
was said that they paid 12,000/. to appease the king's in
dignation on this occasion, and if we remember that at this
time a good lamb could be bought for 6d. and a goose
for 4d. the amount appears prodigious. But the respite
thus purchased did not last long. Edward wanted a
grant of a fifteenth from his subjects in 1290, and his sub
jects, on the other hand, prayed him to expel the Jews
from the realm altogether. After some hesitation, due
no doubt to the fact that the Jewries of some of the
large towns were a source of regular revenue as well
as an always ready scene for irregular exactions, he
* The writer of 'The Greatest of the Plantagenets,' p. 315, somewhat
strangely remarks upon Edward's clemency in only hanging one Scot.
But seven at least besides are mentioned in all the contemporary
chronicles. The same apologist carefully, and perhaps wisely, avoids all
mention of the expulsion of the Jews,

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 197
consented. They were accordingly ordered to quit
the kingdom between the first of August and the first
of November, or as an alternative to become Christians.
Notwithstanding the unattractive side of Christianity
which must have been presented to the Jewish mind
by the transactions of the past few years, there seems
reason to believe that a considerable number did
embrace the Cross.* " Of the sixteen thousand who
preferred exile to apostacy," says Mr. Green,} " few
reached the shores of France. Many were wrecked,
others robbed and flung overboard. One shipmaster
turned out a crew of wealthy merchants on a sandbank
and bade them call a new Moses to save them from
the sea." The Jews' quarter in London still retains its
name ; but when the race was permitted to return in
Cromwell's time the new Jewry was at Aldgate, on the
site of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, and to this
day large numbers of Jews congregate at the same
place. In the reign of Edward we have the first distinct
mention of the modern Livery Companies. The king's
second marriage and the victory which delivered England
from the fear of Wallace occurred so nearly together that
we are not surprised to find that the double occasion
was celebrated in an unusual manner. On Edward's
first visit to the city after these events a magnificent
pageant was organised, and every citizen according to his
trade took part in it } The fishmongers especially dis-
* A hospital for converted Jews had been established in the previous
reign. When converted Jews grew scarce it became as it is still, the Rolls
Court. By the revolutions of time it chanced that the late master of this
house was himself a Jew, but unconverted.
t i- 341-
X Herbert, i. 89. The date cannot have been 1298, as the battle of
Falkirk was fought on 22nd July, 1300.

I9§ HISTORY OF LONDON.
tinguished themselves, a figure of St. Magnus,* on whose
day the procession took place, forming the central feature
of their show.
It has been asserted that Edward I. gave charters to
some of the companies. The fishmongers, in particular,
are named among those who were thus recognised, and
their historian, Herbert, mentions the fact vaguely. No
such charter has, however, been preserved. It is true that
Edward I. recognised the existence of the fishmongers,
but only to censure them for misconduct in their trade.
Nevertheless we can have no doubt that during the whole
of this reign the companies were gradually attaining to
a more perfect system of organisation, and though still
unchartered were already engaged in making regulations
for the conduct of their respective misteries.}
Edward of Carnarvon appears on the city records
before the death of his father as obtaining for one of his
servants, Thomas de Kent, who had been serjeant to the
mayor, the custody of the gate-house of Cripplegate, on
condition that he was "to well and honestly behave
himself, and keep the said gate roofed at his own expense
and protected from wind and rain."} Thomas was very
soon afterwards promoted to some other civic office, it
does not very clearly appear what, but letters from both
Edward II. and his favourite, Gavestone, remain in the
records § recommending one Albon, who had been
Gavestone's " vadlet," for the post, together with the city
reply that it was already given to Kent. These are only
* Two days, April 16 and August 19, are assigned to St. Magnus in the
calendar. There is considerable difficulty about assigning a date to this
procession : it may have taken place in honour of the king's marriage in
1299. t There can be no doubt that this word originates in "master," or as we
pronounce it "mister," not in mystery.
% Riley, ' Memorials,' p. 59. § Riley, pp. eg, 70.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 199
examples of numerous similar requests on the new king's
part, and it was not until long after that the citizens
perceived that the more they granted the more he would
ask. In 1 310 he wanted them to give one Richard de
Redyng the"small beam," of which we have already heard,
and in this request he was joined by his wife. It was
granted, and we find indeed that queen Isabella was
always a favourite with the city. Her opposition to the
king's foreign minions, and the strength of her character
as compared with his, gave her a certain ascendancy.
When the son who was afterwards to be Edward III.
was born, in 13 12, she sent a messenger from Windsor to
apprise the mayor, aldermen and commonalty, " foras
much as we believe you would willingly hear good
tidings of us." An amusing transaction ensued.* The
queen's messenger was -her tailor, John of Falaise, and
he attended in the city on the 16th November, to make
the pleasing announcement. But the mayor and alder
men had received the news the day before from one
Robert Oliver, and had illuminated the city in con
sequence. There were public rejoicings and a holiday,
with high mass at St. Paul's a week later, and on the
following day, the mayor, with the consent of the alder
men and commonalty, presented John of Falaise with
ten pounds sterling and a silver cup, thirty-two ounces in
weight. This magnificent present — the money alone
would come to at least 200/. in our reckoning — did not
satisfy the queen's tailor. He sent it back. The mayor
seems to have taken no further steps in the matter, and
John of Falaise, no doubt, ultimately repented of having
" cut off his nose to vex his face."
In 1 3 12 an attempt to extend the fortifications ofthe
Tower had led to a serious outbreak, and in 1313,
* Riley, p. 105.

200 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Edward II. had attempted to tax the city as if it were "in
demesne."* But the citizens objecting and offering a con
siderable sum by way of loan, he was induced to be satis
fied for the time. A heavy tallage was laid on the people,
and a list of pledges for the unpaid assessment occurs in
the Letter-book two years later.} The whole history of
this unhappy king's dealings with the city shows him to
have been a worthy grandson of their greatest oppressor,
Henry III., and in the contests that ensued between him
and his queen, the citizens warmly espoused her cause
and contributed largely by their support to her ultimate
victory. In addition to the troubles caused by bad
government, two years of great scarcity, owing to heavy
rains,} followed, of course, by a pestilence, increased the
discontent of the citizens. Rioting broke out on very
small provocation, and even the sanctity of the cathedral
church was invaded on one occasion by the mob, which
insulted a certain Lombard who had been in the company
of the pope's nuncio. When one of the confederated
barons, Bartholomew de Badlesmere, offended the queen
by refusing her admission to Leeds Castle, in Kent, on
her way back from a pilgrimage to Canterbury, the
citizens joined the king in exacting vengeance, and having
taken the castle, hanged the governor.§ These proceed
ings, although the king was concerned in them, were
probably carried out rather on behalf of the queen ; and
the citizens refused, when Edward had recalled his
favourites, to give him any assistance whatever.
The city meanwhile fell into great disorder. John
Wengrave, by underhand means, kept the mayoralty
* Allen, p. 98. f Mey, P- 108.
I In 131 5 the rains lasted, we are told, from Pentecost to Easter.
' French Chron.' p. 251.
§ Sir Thomas Culpeper.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 201
for three years, during which he " did much evil to
the commons." A new charter confirming various pri
vileges having been promised, the mayor and the people
quarrelled over the terms to be introduced, and we read *
that the commons were victorious and provided certain
points, " a thing that was much against the will of the
said John, the mayor." What these points were we
know not, but it is evident that " the times were out of
joint "in the city. Edward's second charter was granted
in consequence of the Leeds Castle incident, and acknow
ledged that citizens should not be called upon to serve
in war beyond the civic boundaries. " It has been treated
as a document of great importance." }
There is some difficulty in unravelling the events of the
last few years of Edward's reign. The citizens were
strong partizans, and opposed the Despencers with all
their might. Popular outbreaks occurred frequently.
Obnoxious persons were seized and beheaded or hanged
by armed mobs. The king made and unmade mayors.
Hamo de Chikewell, or Chigwell, appears to have been
a rival of Nicholas Farringdon, and to have supported
the king's side. Farringdon, a goldsmith, and enormously
wealthy, was of course in himself a host to the queen's
faction. In the confusion we read of escapes from New
gate, of murders, robberies and street fights, of conspiracies
and executions, and, in short, of all possible evidences of
bad government. In 1320, Nicholas Farringdon was
mayor, when the king, on a trumped-up charge, made,
not against Farringdon, but against one of his pre-
* ' French Chron.' (Riley), p. 252.
t Aungier, ' French Chron.' p. 43. Mr. Stubbs (' Chronicles,' p.
lxxviii.) speaks of the "bitter quarrel between the mayor and citizens."
The mayor was summoned in 1319 before the regent, in the chapter-house
of St. Paul's, and peremptorily commanded to make peace with the
commons.

202 HISTORY OF LONDON.
decessors in office, seized the city and deposed the
mayor. Chigwell was appointed at last and remained
in office during the following year, which was otherwise
marked by the expedition against Thomas, earl of
Lancaster, many of whose adherents were put to death
in the city. London sent the king a hundred fully armed
soldiers for his disastrous invasion of Scotland, and was
proportionately disgusted at his miserable failure. His
victim, earl Thomas, was, by contrast, canonised in the
minds of the people, who had to be restrained by order
of the king (June 1323), from worshipping at a tablet
which he had set up in St. Paul's. Miracles were wrought
there, and another St. Thomas was said to have arisen
for the special protection of London.*
Meanwhile, the king turned Chigwell out and put Far
ringdon in his place, while Chigwell and some other
citizens were called upon to attend the court in its
wanderings, perhaps as councillors, but more probably as
hostages. Mortimer had escaped from the Tower and
fled to Flanders, and the king was much displeased
with the citizens, who were not unreasonably suspected
of having favoured his escape. The queen, under pre
tence of making peace between France and England,
also withdrew from the realm, and before long was
joined by the young " Sir Edward de Wyndsore," her
son. Chigwell was now mayor again, not by election,
but merely on the king's nomination, and in 1326 a
proclamation was made in the city that no Frenchman
should be allowed to trade in England. At the same
time the queen's lands were seized, she was put on
" wages " at twenty shillings a day, and finally, her title
* Queen Isabella endeavoured to obtain the pope's acknowledgment of
his sanctity, but failed. See 'Memorials of the Savoy,' 34-36, for further
particulars.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 203
of queen was taken from her, and she appears for a
while in the chronicle as " the lady Isabele."
This miserable condition of public affairs is marked
by many entries in the records. The city was peram
bulated by bands of marauders, "the ancestors of the
Mohawks of queen Anne's days." * Some of the new
associations of workmen fell out, and street-fighting en
sued between the saddlers and the joiners. The joiners
obtained assistance from the lorimers} and from the
painters, and there was a pitched battle in Cripplegate.
The efforts of the mayor, moreover, were not sufficient
to keep the people from showing sympathy with the
cause of the queen,} and great satisfaction was expressed
when one of her strongest partisans, Stratford, Bishop of
Winchester, took up the freedom of the city. He may
have been connected with London by birth, as his name
would import. He signalised the occasion by giving
some lead for the repair of Guildhall Chapel, and the
record of this gift is the last entry under the reign of the
unfortunate Edward II.
Isabella and her "gentle Mortimer" had been in
constant correspondence with their friends in England,
and especially in London. The city chronicler records
with sympathy, under the year 1325, § that she wore the
garments of widowhood. The common people, he says,
greatly pitied her. At length news came that she had
landed at Harwich, with her son and the Mortimer, " to
* Stubbs, p. lxxxvii.
t Who made bits and other objects in iron and in copper.
X Mr. Stubbs ('Chronicles,' p. lxxxvi.) suggests that the fishmongers
and pepperers took different sides. John de Gisors, in whose mill
Mortimer took refuge on his escape from the Tower, was a pepperer.
Chigwell was a fishmonger.
§ ' French Chron.,' p. 49. "Encele temps la reyne usa simple appa-
raille come dame de dolour qe avoit son seignour perdue."

204 HISTORY OF LONDON.
destroy the enemies of the land." She was anxious at
the first to be assured of a welcome in London, and
forwarded a letter to the commons, to which however no
answer was returned, "through fear," we are told, "of
the king." Chigwell was naturally desirous to check the
enthusiasm of the people, but when the queen sent a
proclamation denouncing Hugh le Despencer, and the
king's advisers in general, her letter was fixed at day
break upon the cross in Cheap, and copies were ex
hibited in the windows. The mayor was in despair. He
retired to the house of the Black Friars, but the commons
went thither for him and forced him to come to the
Guildhall "crying mercy with clasped hands." There
they speedily obliged him to make a proclamation
banishing from the city the enemies of " the king and
queen and their son," and not content with this evidence
of their devotion, they attacked the house of John
Marshall, an adherent of the Despencers, who lived by
the Wallbrook, broke into it, seized the unfortunate
man, and led him into the market-place, where without
further ceremony they cut off his head.
A nobler victim was at hand. Walter Stapleton,
bishop of Exeter, and formerly treasurer under the
Despencers, had, in addition to the Outer Temple,
a house in Old Dean's Lane.* He was among those
proscribed by the reluctant mayor ; but knowing nothing
of the revolution which was taking place a few yards off,
he rode into the city to his hostel to dine.} The mob,
having wreaked their fury on the unhappy Marshall, had
only to turn round when they beheld the bishop fleeing
* Eldedeaneslane ('French Chron.,' p. 52), afterwards Warwick Lane,
led out of Newgate Street, opposite the house of the Grey Friars.
t Mr. Aungier gives a somewhat different account of this tragedy in a
note, p. 53. But the story in the chronicle is very simple and circumstantial

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 205
for sanctuary to St. Paul's. But they intercepted him, tore
him from his horse, and dragged him into the Cheap,
where, on ground still wet with the blood of Marshall,
they cut off his head, and left his body lying while they
sought for two of his servants, William Walle and John
of Padington. Walle made a stout defence and had
nearly escaped, but was captured on the bridge, and
speedily shared the fate of his master, while Padington,
who, as steward of the bishop's manor, as it was called,
outside Temple Bar, had made himself particularly
obnoxious, was despatched on the same spot.
Towards evening the choirmen of St. Paul's ventured
forth, and raising the headless body of the bishop, bore it
into their church ; but the commons gave them to under
stand that "he had died under sentence," or, in other
words, as a traitor, and they, terrified, conveyed the
corpse to his parish church, St. Clement Danes, close to
his suburban house.* But the people there were as un
willing to receive it as the citizens, and it was cast out with
that of William Walle. At length, " certain women and
persons in the most abject poverty took the body, which
would have been quite naked had not one woman given a
piece of old cloth to cover the middle, and buried it in a
place apart without making a. grave, and his esquire near
him, without any office of priest or clerk." } Eventually,
about six months later, when a settled government had
again been established, the bishop's body was conveyed
to the cathedral church of his see and duly interred with
* Exeter House adjoined the modern Essex Street
t Riley's ' French Chron.,' p. 263. Walsingham says the body was
thrown into the river. The two stories are not absolutely inconsistent.
Godwin says the body was buried in a heap of sand at the back of the
house. This must have been close to the water's edge, and there was,
moreover, the little tidal creek commemorated in the modern Milford
Lane.

206 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the proper solemnities ; and three years later the rioters
of that fatal Wednesday were apprehended, and the
ringleaders suffered the doom they had inflicted on
Stapleton and his companions.
The Black Friars had warmly espoused the cause of
Edward and the Despencers. Their newly-finished
house by the riverside, at the extreme south-western
corner of the old city wall, stood on the site of Mont-
fitchett's Tower, of which mention has been made more
than once already* It must have been a fine building.
Henry VI. afterwards held a parliament in the hall.
But on the news of Bishop Stapleton's murder the friars
fled, " seeing that the commonalty entertained great
enmity against them by reason of their haughty car
riage," — " lour orgelousse port," as the chronicler calls it
— "they not behaving themselves as friars ought:" and
with them also fled Segrave, Bishop of London, and
various other functionaries who might be suspected of
friendship with the Despencers. The commons, making
a rendezvous at the Leaden Hall on Cornhill, received
there the constable of the Tower, who gave up to them
various political prisoners, including John of Eltham, the
king's second son, a mere child. The tablet of Thomas
of Lancaster which the king had removed was replaced
in St. Paul's : and, in short, for a month, the mob seem
to have been masters of the whole city.
At length the queen's party sent Bishop Stratford
to see how things were going on, and at Guildhall he
was solemnly admitted to the franchise, and read letters
from the queen and her son calling upon them to elect a
mayor, Chigwell being described as not lawfully mayor,
* For some account of the introduction of the mendicant orders, see
next chapter.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 207
since he had been nominated, not by the people, but
by the king. To this command they joyfully acceded,
the right man having been carefully provided beforehand
by the bishop. This was Richard de Bettoyne, who had
suffered great persecution from the Despencers, and
who was well known in the city, being, like Farringdon,
a goldsmith. He had just arrived from the queen, and
was the next day sworn into office.
The rioting, however, went on as before. It is possible
that the queen's party, even if they could have stopped it,
found it a very easy way of disposing of their enemies.
Arnold * of Spain, a wine merchant, for instance, was
carried out, barefooted and half naked, to No Man's
land,} where the Charterhouse now stands, and was there
beheaded. News came daily from the west, where the
Despencers and others of the king's party were being
hanged, one by one, and Baldock, Bishop of Hereford, the
chancellor, who was well known in London, having been
prebendary of Vynesbury, or Finsbury, } was taken in
Wales with the king and was forwarded to the city, where
he received such rough treatment on his way to Newgate
that he died in a few days. His body was buried in
St. Paul's.
This disorderly state of things continued for a whole
year, during which the consistorial courts did not sit, nor
did the mayor dare to hold his hustings. At the beginning
of 1327, the timid Chigwell being once more mayor, the
queen came to Westminster and parliament met. The
city sent six representatives, two to sit, the others to be
* He is called " Bernard " in the ' French Chronicle,' and "Anthony "
by Carte.
t Mentioned in Domesday Book j see above, chap, iv,
X He let his manor to the corporation in 1315, on a. lease which only
expired in 1867, when it reverted to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's.

208 HISTORY OF LONDON.
ready in case of need.* The Despencers and most of
their friends had been slain, and the king was in ward in
the Castle of Kenilworth. His deposition was speedily
voted by the parliament,} the people loudly demanding
" the Duke of Guyenne " for their king. Young Edward
was but fourteen at the time, but as soon as the king had
agreed to resign the crown, he was knighted and crowned
(13th November), and immediately afterwards took the
field against the Scots.
The Black Friars continued to intrigue for Edward II.,
and fell therefore into great disfavour at the time, besides
precipitating his murder, which took place at Berkeley
Castle, in Gloucestershire, the same year. Before many
years were over he was looked upon as a martyr, his
oppressions and vices forgotten, and the Black Friars
reinstated in the public favour.
One of the young king's first acts was to grant a
charter to the city. It considerably enlarged the
privileges of the citizens. The mayor was constituted a
justice of the gaol delivery at Newgate : he still takes
his place beside the judge at the Old Bailey, and it is
possible that this provision first gave rise to the altera
tion of his title into the modern form of " Lord " Mayor,
though it did not come into ordinary use before the time
of Richard III., as we shall have occasion to notice
further on. The annual rent of the sheriffwicks of
London and Middlesex} was fixed at 300/., at which it has
* Their names were Gisors, Secheford, "de Conductu," Leyre, Cosyn,
and Steere.
t It is interesting to observe that his temporary absence from the realm
is assigned as a reason for his deposition. A similar reason may have
governed the case of Richard II. as it certainly did that of James II.
X Norton (p. 346), says "the sheriffwick of London," but the text ofthe
charter is in a collection published in 1793, and is as above, the two being
thus united.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 209
remained ever since, having previously for some time,
contrary to the ancient charter, been 400/. The mayor
was further made " escheator " of lands and goods falling
in by forfeiture, but this grant seems occasionally to have
been resumed by the crown.* Finally the new charter
forbade any market to be kept within seven miles of
London, a prohibition, with certain modifications, still in
force. In the same year a short charter relating to
Southwark was also granted by the young king. The
magistrates of London had been much annoyed by
the frequent escape of "felons, thieves, and other male
factors and disturbers of the peace " into the " village " of
Southwark. To prevent this source of trouble the said
village was made over to the city in feefarm, to be
accounted for by the bailiff or sheriff annually at the
Exchequer, like the farms of London and Middlesex, the
amount being at first fixed at 10/. Southwark was not
however fully placed under the city jurisdiction till the
reign of Edward IV. (1462), and was not made a " ward
without " till the year 1550.}
With these concessions Edward III. commenced his
long and glorious reign. A sort of golden mist hangs
over it. We do not know as much about city politics
under Edward III. as under Henry III. True, there
was not so much to record. But we read of tournaments
and processions, of gorgeous pageants and conduits
running wine. Knights in harness clank over the pave
ment, and armorial banners float from the windows.
There is fighting and feasting. Expeditions are fitted
* See the very curious story of the attempted suicide and subsequent
death of Anthony Joyce, in Pepys's 'Diary,' vol. iii. 355, etc. (Bohn's
edition). t Sir John Ayloffe was the first alderman of the ward of Bridge Without
(' Stow,' Thoms's edition, p. 156).
VOL. I. P

2 1 0 HIS TOR Y OF LONDON.
out, prisoners of war received into custody, ships built
and cannon cast for presentation to the king. The old
" Ya, Ya," of the folkmote is drowned in the blare of
trumpets. It is the time of Froissart and of Chaucer :
of the Black Prince and the first Knights of St. George :
of the motherly Philippa and the Fair Maid of Kent.
But with all this outward show of wealth and prosperity,
there is contrasted the exhaustion produced by almost
constant war, the frightful ravages of the plague, the
disorders of the king's later years, the breakdown of
morals, beside the immense increase of ecclesiastical
endowments, the armies of friars and monks, and the
hordes of mass priests. The London chronicler, who
began with civic annals, with the hanging of thieves in
Cheap, and the conflagration in Bread Street, now fills
his concluding pages with the battle at Sluys, and the
siege of Tournay.
The very first event recorded is typical. When the
king was only sixteen years of age, Philippa of Hainault
who was still younger, came over to be his wife, and was
received in London with the loudest acclamations of
welcome. The commercial treaty with Flanders, of
which this union was one result, made it popular with
the traders ; and the young queen was conducted in
gorgeous state through the city on her way to the north.
The boy-king met her at York, and the wedding cere
mony was made more joyful by the conclusion of peace
with Scotland. The Londoners presented the bride
' with a service of plate worth 300/." * When the newlyJ
married couple arrived at Westminster they received a
further present, which is carefully described in the
records.} It reminds us of the present Jacob sent to
* Strickland's ' Lives of the Queens ' (i. 547). Not very good authority,
t Rileyj 'Memorials,' p. 170.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 211
Joseph. To the king there went ten carcases of beeves,
at the price of 7/. ior. each, and twenty pigs for 4/.,
these being bought of Nicholas Derman ; also, twenty-
four swans which cost 61, a like number of bitterns and
herons, and ten dozen of capons, amounting in price to
61. 14s., these being bought of John Brid and John Scot.
To the meat and fowls were added four barrels of
sturgeon, which cost 12/., six pike and six eels, which
cost 10 marks, and five stone of wax, costing 19/. 19s. Crfd.,
which were bought of Hugh Medefrei. The queen's
present was similar, but smaller in quantity, five car
cases and a dozen pigs being thought sufficient, with
pheasants, swans, pike, eels and sturgeon in propor
tion, . and three stone of wax. The whole came to
95/. 1 3 j. 6d., equal to about 3000/. of our money.
The boy-king and his wife came into the city after
the birth of their eldest son, and a tournament was held
in Cheap.* Edward, though he had already gone through
a campaign and was already a father, cannot have been
eighteen at the time. Yet we are told that when the
scaffolding or stage, from which the queen and her
ladies watched the tilting, fell down, he would have had
the unfortunate carpenters that made it hanged, though
no one was killed. The oldest version of this story
hardly admits of the embellishments sometimes given to
it.} The lists were set up between the cross and the
conduit : that is, opposite Soper Lane, which is now
* This story, which has often been regarded as apocryphal, is given in
the ' Chronicles' edited by Mr. Stubbs, p. 335, but without the incident of
the queen's intercession. It is detailed by Stow, ' Annals,' p. 230. The
tournament in Cheap, held in September 1331, may be this one.
t Thus Miss Strickland : — " When the young king saw the peril of his
wife, he flew into a tempest of rage, and vowed that the careless carpenters
who had constructed the building should instantly be put to death.
Whether he would thus far have stretched the prerogative of an English
sovereign," &c, &c, i. 550.
P 2

212 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Queen Street. They were, therefore, close to St. Mary's,
or Bow, Church, where we may suppose the market
place was widest. Stow says that the tournament lasted
three days, that the wooden scaffold, " like unto a tower,"
stood across the street, and that a part of the struc
ture, " the higher frame," broke in pieces, whereby the
ladies " were with some shame forced to fall down, by
reason whereof the knights and such as were underneath
were grievously hurt." It does not appear from this-
that the queen was in any danger, or even that she fell,
and the people below seem to have suffered only from
the people above falling, on their heads. He says
nothing about the king ordering the carpenters to instant
execution. On the contrary, the council seems to have
sat on the case and to have thought seriously of prose
cuting them ; " wherefore," says Stow, " the queen took
great care to save the carpenters from punishment, and
through her prayers (which she made upon her knees)
pacified the king and council, and thereby purchased
great love of the people."
A tangible memorial of the tournaments in Cheap
still exists. As we walk under the steeple of St. Mary's
we may observe a window and balcony looking upon
the street. From this balcony queen Anne is said to
have seen a city procession in 1702, and it is alluded to,
soon after it was built, in contemporary memoirs.* It
is the successor of a stone building which Edward II I.
caused to be made on the north side of the old church
in the place of the wooden " seid " or shed which had
fallen down. Stow tells us that it " greatly darkeneth
the said church, for by means thereof all the windows
* See Cunningham, under Cheapside. In the 'French Chron.,' p. 62,
we read : "En cele an nostre joeveneroy ... a Caunterbury fit faire
solempne joustes et puisse apres a Loundres en Chepe."

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 213
and doors on that side are stopped up." Under it was
the crownseld, afterwards leased to the Mercers.
Edward's revolt from the tutelage of his mother and
Mortimer took place in 1330, when the Londoners, who
had so warmly received the queen and her paramour a
few years before, went out along the great western high
way over Holborn Hill to see the earl of March hanged.
Gallows were set up in a valley by a brook known as
the Tyburn : * and here a few days later also suffered
Mortimer's confidential adviser, Sir Simon Beresford.}
Mortimer's body, by the special grace of the king, was
interred in the church of the Grey Friars, now Christ
Church, Newgate Street, where, after twenty-eight years,
the body of the guilty queen was also laid, with the
heart of Edward " her murdered mate," as if in mockery,
in a gold vase upon her breast. Her son had always
ignored the repbrts of his mother's connection with
Mortimer. He always treated her with the highest
respect. Castle Rising was assigned to her as her chief
residence, but she was much at Leeds Castle — where the
ghosts of the Badlesmeres should have haunted her, had
shebeen susceptible of such impressions — and she died at
Hertford Castle, which became afterwards the residence
of her grandson, John of Gaunt. She spent enormous
sums on jewelry. She entertained foreign ambassadors.
She was much in London, where she hired a house in
Lombard Street from the Prioress of St. Helen's, at the
rent of 2/. \os. ^d. a year. Here she received her son
and his queen, her grandson, the Black Prince, and
others of the royal family : and here she was constantly
visited by the grandson of Mortimer, whom Edward III,
had restored in blood and admitted to the earldom of
* For identification of the sitey see vol. ii.
t Or Bereford.

214 HISTORY OF LONDON.
March in 1354* The stories of her confinement by her
son, and of her long imprisonment and deep repentance,
seem to have no foundation in fact.} On the contrary,
we do not even see her lamenting long for Mortimer :
the very winter of his death she attended in state the
usual Christmas festivities at Windsor.
Meanwhile, Chigwell had fared but badly. He had
endeavoured but too successfully to trim his course so
as to appear to belong to both parties. In the abortive
rising of Lancaster against Mortimer in 1329, he was
deeply implicated. An inquiry set on foot by Mortimer
found a suitable charge with which to commence the
prosecution of Chigwell, who was accused of having
connived in a felony. The abbot of Bury St. Edmund's
had been robbed and abducted by a malefactor named
Cotterell, a skinner, who was hanged for his misdeeds.
Chigwell, it was alleged, had received two silver basins
as his share of the abbot's property. He was convicted,
and, in all probability, would have shared the fate of the
unhappy skinner, had he not pleaded that he was in
orders. This plea brought him under the jurisdiction
of the bishop. It is possible that during his sojourn
among the friars he had been admitted to minor orders,
in anticipation of his declining years : for he must at
this time have been already an aged man. The bishop,
Stephen of Gravesend, who was himself under more or
less suspicion, as he had refused to consent to the
deposition of Edward II., was powerful enough, never
theless to protect so munificent a churchman as Chig
well, and kept him for a while at his country-house
at Orsett, in Essex. Early in the following year, deem-
* Beltz, ' Order ofthe Garter,' 41.
t They rest principally on some lines in Froissart. See ' Archaeologia, '
vol. xxxv., for an interesting paper relating to the "Last Days of Queen
Isabella," by Mr. E. A. Bond.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 21 5
ing himself out of danger, he ventured back to London
and was warmly welcomed by his fellow-citizens, with
whom Isabella and Mortimer were rapidly becoming
unpopular. Mortimer immediately issued a writ for his
apprehension, and he fled once more. Only his lifeless
body returned, to be buried in the north aisle of the new
cathedral.* In 1338, Edward made his first expedition against
France. In 1 340, he won a great naval victory in which
he derived, according to the London chroniclers, con
siderable assistance from a ship which belonged to
William Hansard, who had been sheriff in 1333. The
Londoners, in fact, were much interested in this war.
Froissart specially commends their martial spirit, which
seems to have impressed him so much that he reckons
24,000 men completely armed, and 30,000 archers, as
being in the city and neighbourhood, an exaggeration
probably born of what he saw of their conduct in the
field, where, as he says, " the more blood is spilled, the
greater is their courage." The records contain among
other entries regarding the war one or two of interest,
but the events of Edward's reign are very fully de
tailed by all the historians, and for my present pur
pose it is only necessary to refer in passing to the wars,
and then go on to notice the newly-chartered companies,
the regulation of trades, the enforcement of sanitary
precautions, the sufferings of the people from famine
and pestilence, the increase of ecclesiastical and monastic
foundations, and many topographical points which do
not concern the general history of England.}
In 1339, we find a list of the munitions of war pro-
* Stubbs, ' Chronicles,' p. lxxxiv.
t The details of Edward's foreign campaigns are very pleasantly given
in Miss Yonge's ' Cameos.'

216 HISTORY OF LONDON.
vided by the city. In the house called " La Bretaske,"
near the Tower, were stored cross-bows, with their
" quarrels," and twenty-nine cords, " called strenges!'
At Alegate a similar store was made, and besides these
a number of weapons had been lent to William Hansard
for his ship, " La Seinte Mary Cogge." Besides these,
there were laid up at the Guildhall six instruments of
brass or latone " called gonnes," as well as " peleta? de
plumbo," balls of lead, for the said instruments, of four-
and-a-half pounds weight ; and in addition thirty-two
pounds of powder. These terrible weapons were pro
bably imported* by the Bardi, a company of Italian
merchants with whom Edward, and before him Mortimer
and Isabella, had extensive dealings. Cannon had
been used at the siege of Florence thirteen years earlier.
Another part of the city preparations consisted in
putting the Thames into a state of defence, and the
king, on each expedition, exhorted the citizens to this
effect, and solemnly charged them with the preservation
of peace in the city. When, in 1341, he had to raise the
siege of Tournay, and suddenly returned home to obtain
or hasten supplies, he sent first for the mayor and
confided to him the task of apprehending the careless
guardians on whom he had depended.} They were
speedily taken, except Sir John de Molins. Edward's
journey to St. Albans, and his seizure of Sir John's
treasure in the keeping of the abbot, have been often
described, and the punishment of the judges at West
minster belongs to a later chapter.} The mayor above
mentioned was succeeded by John de Oxenford, who
* See a long and interesting note on the subject, Riley, ' Memorials,'
p. 205. He misread "vocata" as "vocitata," in the MS.
t ' French Chron.' (Riley), p. 283. Andrew Aubrey, " three times
mayor and member for the city in 1337," p. 275.
X See vol. ii., p. 53. ;

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 217
died in a few months, when Simon Franceis became
mayor for the rest of his term and for the following
year as well. Among other wealthy and eminent citizens
of the period, John Pulteney, or Pountney, a draper, was
remarkable for his munificence to the church, and was
mayor in 1330, and in three other years, though he had
never served the office of sheriff.* His magnificent
house near Dowgate, the Cold Harbour, stood till 1600.
When he died, in 1349, he was buried, like his prede
cessor, Chigwell, in St. Paul's. Another great merchant
family bore the odd surname of Turk, of whom one,
Walter Turk, fishmonger, was mayor in 1350. He lent
money to the king, and is frequently mentioned in the
city annals. In his epitaph, which long stood in the
church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, he is described in
quaint rhymes as
" Audax, formosus, pulcher, cives animosus,
Pauperibus fomes, piscenarius, vice comes."
This brave, handsome, beautiful and courageous citizen,
the warmer of the poor, fishmonger and sheriff, was one
of a large family of the same name, and died two years
after his mayoralty. I have already mentioned Richard
de Bettoyne, who was mayor in the year of Edward's
coronation. A curious petition was made by him in
1338, the year of the outbreak of the French war. He
was by trade a goldsmith, and represented the city in
parliament, so that we may presume him to have -been
wealthy. But in his petition, which is addressed " To
our lord the king, and his council," he sets forth that he
attended at the coronation as mayor, and performed the
office of butler, with three hundred and sixty valets,
each carrying a silver cup : but he complains that the
* Note in Aungier's edition of the ' French Chron., ' p, 64.

2 1 8 HISTORY OF LONDON.
fee which he received from the king on this occasion,
the fee, in fact, appended to that service, which was
always a gold cup and cover, with a gold enamelled
ewer, was made the subject of a charge from the ex
chequer. The sheriffs had been called upon to levy an
estreat upon the goods and chattels of the said Richard,
to the appalling amount of 89/. 12s. 6d. We may be
sure Edward did justice to his unfortunate petitioner :
but the fact is not recorded.
Each of these great merchants, it will have been per
ceived, belonged to a company. In addition to the
goldsmith Bettoyne, and the fishmonger Turk, and the
draper Poultney, we have among the lists of mayors and
sheriffs, Grantham, a pepperer, or grocer ; Swanlond, a
draper ; Lancer, a mercer ; Ely, a fishmonger ; Conduit,
or " de Conductu," M.P. in 1322 and 1327, a vintner ; and
at last, after 1340, the companies were so universally
recognised that every mayor or sheriffs name was
followed by that of the trade or craft to which he
happened to belong. It is evident, then, that a great
change had occurred in the condition of these bodies
since the days of Walter Hervey, and that the arrange
ments in progress under Sir Ralf de Sandwich had now
been completed.
The city companies have, in fact, from that day to
this, been, so to speak, the very city itself. We have
already mentioned as among the early guilds the
weavers and saddlers. There is no kind of proof now to
be found which connects the companies formed under
Edward III. with the guilds which existed before the
time of his grandfather,* yet it would be rash to say the
* Herbert's valiant struggle to connect them must be considered a
failure. He does not adduce a single fact which can be accepted as
satisfactory.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 219
companies did not grow out of the guilds. There is no
royal charter of the modern kind now extant which dates
before those which were granted in 1327 to the gold
smiths, to the tailors and armourers, and to the skinners.
These are among the twelve great livery companies,
so called, it is said, from the leave they obtained to
wear a dress of the colours of their respective societies.
Another derivation connects the word " livery " with the
freedom of the city. The tailors and linen armourers
were at first conjoined. Edward III. also gave charters to
the grocers, fishmongers, drapers, and vintners. As an
example of the way the modern companies grew up, we
may take the history of the grocers.* Twenty-two per
sons, we are told, carrying on the business of pepperers, in
and near the Cheap, chiefly along the rows of booths
which about this time began to be known as Soper's
Lane,} agreed to meet together and draw up rules for the
regulation of their trade. In the first volume of the
records of the grocers' company, these twenty tradesmen
are spoken of as the founders. It is evident, therefore,
that whatever were the guilds to which any of them may
have belonged, this is an entirely new departure. The
meeting, which was held " in the Abbot's place of Bery "
— a hall probably, in St. Mary Axe, which they hired for
the purpose — was preceded by a dinner, to the expenses of
which each man contributed twelve pence, and twenty-
three pence more were disbursed by the wardens, who
were elected on the spot, namely Roger Osekyn and
Lawrence de Haliwell. They commenced operations at
* It has been carefully detailed in a volume by John B. Heath, of which
the second edition appeared in 1854.
t See Riley, ' Memorials,' p. xviii., as to the origin of this street name.
Stow is mistaken in attributing it to Alan le Soper. It has long been
merged in Queen Street.

220 HISTORY OF LONDON.
once, though they did not obtain the royal recognition
till eight years later.*
The work of incorporation went on merrily during this
and several succeeding reigns. Eight of the twelve
great companies were chartered before the end of
Edward's life. Exclusiveness and monopoly were, of
course, the objects of each society thus formed. They
desired to regulate trade and also to regulate traders.
They fixed the prices. They fixed the methods of
manufacture. They made rules as to the conduct and
even the dress of their members. It is apparent that
to do this effectually they required to have power to
forbid all interference from without. No one must
carry on their trade who was not of their mistery.
It will be remembered how the charters of Walter
Hervey were superseded by the want of this power.
The royal charters conferred it — though it may- be
doubted whether the mayor's charter might not legally
have been quite as efficient — and every new company
as it was formed sought for the distinction of a grant
from the king himself. Edward's constant wars made
every windfall welcome, and batches of charters seem to
synchronise with great expeditions. What Richard I.,
seeking money for his crusade, did for English cities,
Edward III., gathering armies against Scotland and
France, did for the mercantile communities.} The com-
* The name of grocer, or rather "grosser,'' was applied to the
pepperers because they sold their goods in gross (see Skeat's ' Dic
tionary,' p. 245). Retail dealers were called "regrators."
t The more carefully the history of the companies is studied, I venture
to think, the more clear it becomes that in identifying them with the
older guilds a serious obstruction has been placed across the course of the
investigator. The only guild which now survives, even in name, is the
guild merchant, that is, the corporation. All the others, if they lasted till
the Reformation, must then have been dissolved. Many, no doubt, had
meanwhile merged in the companies, or more correctly had been super-

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 221
panies included in every case the greater merchants.
The most eminent members of the city governing body —
the aldermen — joined them, and in a very few years they
were able not only to control trade, but also to control
the corporation.
The power in the city constitution assumed by the
twelve livery companies, became, in the reign of
Edward's feeble successor, the cause of many troubles.
In 1346 each ward elected its alderman, and a number
of the inhabitants, four, six, eight, according to the size
of the ward, to be members of the common council.
All elections were made by a similar number of six,
eight, or twelve as the case might be. In a few years it
was found that this arrangement would not work. The
governing body had been able to summon what electors
it pleased. In 1375, accordingly, it was superseded, and
the great companies were recognised in an ordinance by
which the power of nomination was taken from the
wards and given to the companies, and by which the
persons so nominated were to be summoned both to
the council and the elections. It will be seen at once
that this deprived a large body of citizens of all municipal
power except that of electing their aldermen, and was a
fruitful source of contention and disorder, as we shall
observe further on.*
The halls of the companies speedily rose in various
parts of the city, and were conspicuous among the

seded by them in the exercise of their secular, as distinguished from their
religious, functions. An example of the confusion of guilds and .com
panies is afforded by the history of the Skinners as given in Strype's ' Stow, '
where we are told that Edward III. addressed them as the "Guild or
Fraternity of the Skinners of London." But the charter really runs — to the
king's "beloved men of the city of London called Skinners." (See
Herbert, p. 301.) See below, note p. 225.
* Stubbs, ' Constitutional History,' iii. 575.

222 HISTORY OF LONDON.
humbler houses of private merchants. The palaces of
the old city families, the Basings, the Bukerels, the
Lovekyns and others, were found convenient in some
cases. The goldsmiths occupied a house built by Sir
Nicholas de Segrave, whose brother had been bishop
during three years of Edward II.'s reign. The merchant
taylors were at first in a hall " about the back side of
the Red Lion in Basing Lane," but eventually bought a
mansion in the ward of Cornhill from Edmund Crepin,'
and a little later added to it the holding of the Outwich
family, and established themselves firmly where they
have ever since remained. The mercers had their shops
about the eastern end of Cheap, and a kind of bazaar
called the Mercery. The open market-place was being
permanently occupied by this time, and one of the last
remains of it was the meadow which adjoined the crown-
seld already described. The mercers had made a small
settlement for themselves on the north of the Cheap side,
but the space was required for an extension of the build
ings of the hospital of St. Thomas of Aeon, which, about
this time, as mentioned before,* was reforming itself into
a school. The mercers obtained the open space opposite,
and there erected the hall and other buildings in which
they remained till Henry IV. gave them the crownseld
itself. On the Dissolution they obtained the site of their
old quarters and carried on the good work begun by the
brethren of St. Thomas. The fishmongers and stock-
fishmongers had many halls about Thames Street and
Old Fish Street, but eventually settled down on the site
they still occupy. The skinners} were fortunate, after
* Chapter iv.
t They are said to have had a licence from Henry III. to hold land, an
early recognition of a company, if we could accept it. There is probably
here a confusion between guild and company. I assume this in the text.

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 223
some migrations, in obtaining a house which had been
used by an old guild of their trade, but which had
long been in private hands. It came to Edward III.
shortly before he incorporated the company, and they
bought it from him.
The regulations made by these new bodies for their
respective trades were solemnly confirmed at the Guild
hall. There are numerous entries on the subject in the
city records. Some of them were afterwards included
in the royal charters : and on the whole the rules set
forth in the Letter-books of the corporation are earlier
than the grants from the crown. The grocers, described
as " the good folks of Soper Lane," * for example, register
their regulations as early as 1309, and the armourers as
early as 1322. Edward's charters to the pellipers or
skinners, and to the girdlers are set down in the same
collection, and the bye-laws of the cutlers, spurriers, pew-
terers, heaumers,} hatters, glovers, and other minor traders
are also to be found.} The companies thus, by union
among themselves, attained enormous power, which in too
many cases they wielded very tyrannically. The general
tendency of their action was, however, for the benefit of
the city ; and this was especially the case when they set
themselves to reform abuses and prevent adulteration
and frauds upon purchasers.§ Whittington, who became
so famous, was particularly noted for his sternness to the
brewers who made bad beer. If the laws of the com
panies were fairly carried out, they must have produced
excellent results ; but unfortunately, it does not seem
* This description of the pepperers or grocers does away with any idea
that they were already a company, though long before there had been at
least one guild of pepperers (see chap. vi.).
t Makers of helmets.
X All are printed in Riley's ' Memorials.'
§ Most of these notes are from Herbert's first volume,

224 HISTORY OF LONDON.
that any of the officials of the time were above taking
presents, and even Whittington received money and
wine from the brewers on different occasions. The
goldsmiths in their charters had imposed upon them the
duty of assaying gold and silver, and have discharged it
ever since. The tailors inspected the cloth fair in West
Smithfield, and tried the measures with a standard yard
of solid silver. The grocers had the oversight of drugs,
the vintners the tasting and gauging of wines. All these
duties had been discharged previously in fits and starts
by the mayor and sheriffs, and their transference to the
companies facilitated the movements of business and,
could we but be sure they were honestly performed,
must have tended to benefit the consumer. Another
and very important branch of the ordinances of the
companies related to apprentices. No one could enter a
mistery without an apprenticeship, and in some of the
trades even a journeyman must have served his time to
the craft.
While Edward and his family were engaged abroad in
fighting the French, these changes were quietly going
on at home. Not that the citizens failed in patriotic
sentiment. On the contrary they were equally ready to
pay for men-at-arms to go with the king and to devise
grand pageants when the city was honoured by a visit
from some royal guest or captive. Edward took care to
interfere as little as possible with the affairs of the
citizens, and in return he was as popular as any English
king before him, and as able to obtain a loan or gift
when money ran short. He gave them leave in 1354 to
have silver maces carried before their mayor and his
sheriffs, an honorary favour, which yet produced in the
following year a vote of twenty-five men-at-arms and
five hundred archers, " all clad in one livery." This

THE WARDS AND THE COMPANIES. 225
contingent took part in the glories of Poictiers, and, no
doubt, marched in the van of the procession when the
boy hero, already known as the Black Prince, led king
John of France a prisoner through the Cheap on
his way to the Savoy. A thousand citizens in their
holiday costumes crossed the bridge on horseback and
met the royal personages in Southwark, while the mayor
and aldermen welcomed them at the foot of the bridge
and conducted them through the city. A crown was
put upon the organisation of the great livery companies
when the king himself was enrolled as a linen armourer
Thenceforth the list of honorary members of the mer
chant taylors, as they are now called, has contained
almost every English king, and princes and nobles in
due proportion.*
* In the above attempt to dissociate guilds from companies, the burden
of proof appears to lie upon those who assert their identity. I am aware
that my views have not been received with favour by some of my readers.
My contention is briefly, first, that there is no necessary connection between
the old guilds and the new companies ; and, secondly, that the religious
character, if any, which may have attached to certain companies, if not to
all, was expressly abolished in 1552.

VOL. I.

( 226 )

CHAPTER VIII.
THE BISHOP.
It would be hardly possible to overrate the influence
of religion on the external appearance of London in the
fourteenth century. The parishes did not multiply, but
in each of the churches were numberless private chantries.
The older monasteries were as sleepy as ever, but beside
them were the friars, ever begging, ever teaching, ever
preaching. The houses of the poorer folk were still
very miserable. Overcrowding must have been the rule,
when every man had to live near the scene of his daily
work. A long journey home after dark was impossible
through unlighted streets and unmended roads : and
so, although the houses were taller than before and over
hung more and more until opposite neighbours could
shake hands from upper windows, the squalor, the bad
air, the want of pure water, the teeming population, con
tributed to a state of things almost incredible. The
death rate must have been under ordinary circumstances
from 40 to 60 per 1000, instead of from 18 to 20 as now.
And when the plague came, as it did in 1350 and raged
for seven years, the average of deaths must have been
something of which we can have no conception. Even if
the estimate be exaggerated which makes 50,000 to have
been buried during one year in a new cemetery provided
by Bishop Stratford, — the nephew of Stratford, arch
bishop of Canterbury, who as bishop of Winchester had

THE BISHOP. 227
taken so prominent a part in the deposition of Edward
II. — yet the fact that the deaths were so estimated
by contemporary writers shows how terribly the pesti
lence must have raged. Sir Walter Manny bought " the
Spittle Croft" which adjoined the bishop's field, and the
two together were soon afterwards covered by the
buildings of a Carthusian monastery built by Stratford's
successor, bishop Northburgh.*
The blow inflicted by this awful visitation seems to
have taken effect in an increase of ecclesiastical establish
ments ; chiefly, however, in the endowment of mass
priests to pray for the souls of the deceased, one or more
of whom must have been mourned by every family.
The result did not add much to the substantial beauty
of the parish churches. They continued small and mean
with certain exceptions, such as St. Mary le Bow in
Cheap : and the view of the city from a distance, say
from the opposite side of the river, must have been re
markable for the number rather than the height of the
towers. Some of the conventual churches and the noble
spire of St. Paul's must have been very conspicuous
among the smaller edifices. The aspect of old London
in the later years of Edward III., in fact, from what we
know, was very fine. No doubt, as in the case of so
many modern cities on the Continent and in the East,
the best view was from the outside, where the narrow
winding lanes, the broken pavement, the filth and ruin
were not apparent, and where the spectator was asto
nished by the vast mass of buildings great and small
which covered the double hill, a few standing out by
themselves on account either of their beauty or their
* For a full and careful account of the Charterhouse, see Archdeacon
Hale's paper in the ' Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeo
logical Society,' iii. 309. See also vol. ii. p. 169.
Q 2

228 HISTORY OF LONDON.
size. The long, red-tiled roofs of the companies' halls
were contrasted with the shingled or lead-covered spires
of the churches which rose between, while here and
there a grim bastion of the city wall, or one of the
gates, crowned by vanes and banners alternating with
the heads of Scottish marauders, showed high and
square. The Templars had long disappeared ; but their house
was the first to greet the traveller from the west. It
seems never to have been decided whether the Temple
is in the city or not. The Temple, in fact, was on the
spot before the city had ventured to throw its arms
round the new suburban ward of Farringdon Without.
So far back as 1360 the question was raised. The
original Templars had come and gone before 13 13.
Their successors were nothing if not aggressive and
litigious. The Lord Mayor who ventures into the pre
cincts of the lawyers with his sword and his mace held
upright does so at the risk of being mobbed. Woe
betide the policeman who pursues a thief into the laby
rinth of courts. Yet the Outer Temple, a little district
of alleys and lanes chiefly named after Devereux, earl
of Essex, is in the city and amenable to the jurisdiction
of the civic authorities. But when the students of the
common law in 1326 accepted their lease from the
hospitallers to whom the house of the Knights of the
Sepulchre had been given, an exception was made for what
was then and long after the house ofthe bishops of Exeter.
The bishops of Ely were also entitled to "corrody"
in the Temple, and John of Kirkeby had many a con
test with the knights on the subject, before he removed
to Holborn.* It was to his house here, as we saw in the
last chapter, that the body of the unfortunate bishop
" See below, chapter xx.

THE BISHOP. 229
Stapleton, of Exeter, was carried by pious choristers
after his murder, and his successors retained their
lodgings on the spot till the time of Henry VIII.
The Templars' first settlement had been in Holborn.
There, in 11 18, they built a house which must have stood
very close to what is now the north-east corner of
Chancery Lane, or Southampton Buildings. Some relics
of its carvings were unearthed on the spot a few years
ago. The knights removed to the " New Temple," as it
was called for centuries, in 11 84, and seem to have
made it very strong. King John both resided in it on
several occasions and also kept his treasures under the
guardianship of the Templars. When they were sup
pressed, amid the troublous times of Edward II., their
house, of which only the chapel now remains, was given
by the king to his cousin Aymer de Valence, earl of
Pembroke. The earl of Lancaster next obtained it, but
on his " martyrdom " it reverted to the crown, and in
1 33^,, by special arrangement, went to the Templars' old
rivals, the Knights of John of Jerusalem, at Clerkenwell.
They had a house of their own already, and leased two-
thirds of the estate to the students of common law
for a rent of 10/. a year, while the Outer Temple, as we
have seen, continued in the occupation of the bishops of
Exeter. Of the- buildings which existed when the Knights of
St. John made these transfers but one can be said to
remain. The church with its circular nave is the most
ancient edifice along the route between the Tower and
Westminster Abbey. A crypt still to be seen at
Clerkenwell, and the church of St. Bartholomew, Smith-
field, both retain features of the same period. But the
Templars' chapel has peculiarities unequalled for their
interest. Only three other examples of the round form

230 HISTORY OF LONDON.
affected by the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre are to be
found in England. One is at Northampton, and one
at Maplestead in Essex, and most of us have seen the
quaint little church which represents the Temple at
Cambridge. The modern Templars have dealt very
hardly with their church. Considering its antiquity and
the venerable associations which might have been ex
pected to guard its walls, which even the Great Fire
spared, one is tempted to wonder at the audacity, rather
than the bad taste, which has wiped off every trace of
age, has renewed every crumbling stone, has re-chiselled
every carving, has filled the windows with kaleidoscope
glass, has painted the roof with gaudy patterns, and has
taken the old monuments, rich with heraldry, down from
their places and bestowed them under the bellows of the
organ.* On the opposite side of Fleet Street another religious
house survives, like the Temple, in its chapel alone.}
The hospital for converted Jews, which Henry, III.
founded in 1233, has become the Rolls office, and the
chapel was long desecrated by the presence of accumu
lated records. Little but the skeleton of the building is
ancient, but very few of the thousands who daily pass so
near it have any idea of the wealth of renascence monu
ments which the old walls contain. In calling attention
to them I feel a certain hesitation. Should the ruthless
hand of the restorer be let loose on the altar-tomb of
John Young, by Torregiano, it will be a source of regret
to every one who can admire work in a style which is
neither gothic, nor classical, nor even " Queen Anne."
* This is scarcely credible, but strictly true.
f The liberty of the Rolls is not reckoned in the city, that is, in the
ward of Farringdon. It may, therefore, be assumed that the boundaries
of the ward of Anketin de Auvergne had not been defined in 1233.

THE BISHOP. 231
The chapel in which Burnet and Atterbury, but above
all Butler, preached, and whose pulpit was filled in our
own time by the lamented Brewer, has exceptional
claims on our regard.
The extension of the city liberties to Temple Bar was
an infringement of the rights of the Abbot of West
minster, in whose great parish of St. Margaret the
churches of St. Dunstan and St. Bride v/ere but
chapels of ease. Their dedications show the lateness
of their dates. The dean and chapter still present
to St. Bride's, but Henry III. persuaded the abbot
to annex St. Dunstan's to his Jews' House. The
opening of the Fleet Bridge under Ludgate, which had
previously been a water-gate only, must have taken
place before 1228, and the "bar of the New Temple " is
mentioned as early as the first year of the fourteenth
century. A new roadway or street now connected the
outlying suburb of Showell Lane, now Shoe Lane, with
the city, by a route more direct than that which led
through Newgate and over Holborn Bridge. Of the
manor or ward which the great goldsmiths of the
Farringdon family purchased here I have spoken
already.* This part, westward from the Fleet, was pre
viously the aldermanry of Anketin de Auvergne, and was
known for a time as his ward, and before him it
apparently belonged to Joyce Fitz Peter.}
That there was no bar here before 1246 is probable
from the wording of the original grant of the Savoy.}
* See chapter vii.
t See chapter vi., and also vol. ii. p. 70.
X 'Memorials of the Savoy,' p. 10. "Extra muros civitatis." In
another deed, dated in 1284 (Appendix, p. 248), the phrase occurs,
"extra civitatem Londoniarum." It is possible, therefore, that Temple
Bar did not come into existence till the end of the century, and that it was
part of the system of defence completed under Edward I.

232 HISTORY OF LONDON.
A piece of ground, there spoken of as lying outside the
walls of London, is described in subsequent documents
as lying outside Temple Bars. Similar bars were set up
on the great western highway in Holborn, and at Smith-
field, Norton Folgate, Whitechapel, and other places on
the principal roads. When the archway which subsisted
till our own time was built in 1670, it succeeded to " a
House of Timber," described by Stow, who, however,
mentions " posts, rails, and a chain " as being the ancient
arrangement. The singular form was adopted instead
of the plural when this " house " was erected, but the bar
was never properly a city gate, that is, a fortified opening
in the wall. There was in fact no wall or other defence
between city and county. Shire Lane* till lately
marked the boundary. Access could be had from the
Templar's tilt-yard — now the site of the New Law
Courts — into the city by numerous passages.
In addition to the monasteries and hospitals already
enumerated as having been in existence in the time of
Fitzstephen, a walk through the city from the Temple
Bars, at the close of the reign of Edward III., would
have revealed a great number newly founded. The
friars, to whom I have already had several occasions to
refer, established themselves early in the reign of
Henry III., and by the middle of the fourteenth century
their churches had become conspicuous ornaments of
the city. The Carmelites had a house next door to the
Temple, the site of which is still known as the White
Friars'. On the opposite bank of the Fleet was the more
celebrated settlement of the Black Friars, or Dominicans,
who made their appearance in London in 1221, when,
under the patronage of Hubert de Burgh, they opened
their first house, like the Templars, in Holborn. The
* Called Searle's Place at the time of its removal.

THE BISHOP. 233
history of the gradual piecing together of an estate on
this spot has been told with loving minuteness by a
modern antiquary.* In 1250 they had managed by gift
or purchase to obtain so much land that it became
possible for them to build a convent suited to the
requirements of the order. Only a part of this estate,
apparently, was occupied by the earl of Lincoln when
the friars moved, in 1285, to their new buildings on the
river's bank, at what we call still the Black Friars'. For
this purchase the earl gave 550 marks, to be paid by instal
ments. The new house actually interrupted the course
of the city wall, which the brethren, such was their
extraordinary influence, obtained leave to remove and
rebuild. One of their number, Robert Kilwardby, was
at this time archbishop of Canterbury, and to his good
offices, no doubt, they were indebted for the king's
favour. It must be allowed to the credit of the Black
Friars, that so far, at least, they did not seek popularity
at any sacrifice of principle. They endeavoured to
mitigate the cruelty of the decrees against the Jews by
every means in their power, and when, in 1255, thousands
were sacrificed in a general persecution, the friars pro
tected them with little regard to their own safety, " quod
dictu horribile est," as one of the chroniclers of the day
exclaims. So, too, at the time of the deposition of
Edward II, they took the king's side, and so greatly
incurred the wrath of the Londoners, that they had to
flee from their house into the country.
Gregory Rokesley, who, as we have seen,} did much
for the Grey Friars, seems to have looked with equal
favour on the Dominicans. It was on a site of his
presentation in " two lanes or ways next the street of
* Mr. Palmer's paper will be found in the ' Reliquary,' vol. xvii.
t See above chapter vii.

234 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Baynard's Castle," that their second house was built ;
and he permitted them to take down Montfitchet's
Castle, and to use the materials for a church, which must
have been one of the finest in London. It has as com
pletely disappeared in its turn as the Norman baron's
tower which it succeeded.* The city wall was pulled
down from Ludgate to the Thames and rebuilt, so as to
include the convent within its shelter. At the bend of
the wall thus made a "certain good and comely tower"
was reserved for the accommodation of the king, whenever
he might choose to visit the brethren. Parliaments were
held here on several occasions, and the magnificence of
the buildings is frequently referred to in contemporary
records. The Friars Preachers gradually fell into all the
vices which beset their brethren of the older monasteries,
and by the time of the suppression had as little claim
on the public regard as any body of Benedictines or
Cistercians in the kingdom.
The churches of the friars were always much esteemed
places of burial. The Black Friars could boast of pre
serving the tomb of Hubert de Burgh, which they
brought with them from Holborn, and in addition were
laid in their spacious aisles the bodies of John of Eltham,
the brother of Edward III., the father and mother of
Henry VIII.'s last wife, and many other great folk, one
of the most remarkable being that Tiptoft, earl of Wor
cester, who was Caxton's patron or friend, and who was as
* There is an interesting reference to this and other churches of the
friars in a petition of the mayor, aldermen, and commonalty to
Henry VIII. in 1538 ('Memorandum Relating to the Royal Hospitals,'
printed in 1836) : — " May it please your grace ... to consider that the
four churches of late belonging to Grey, Black, White, and Augustine
Friars, be the most ample churches within your said city, Powles only
except." Of the four a part of one only was spared till our own day,
when the last remains of the old work in the church of the Augustines was
obliterated under the name of restoration.

THE BISHOP. 235
much distinguished for his learning as he was disgraced
by his cruelty in war. But though the Black Friars could
show many noble names inscribed on their pavement, and
had among their relics the heart of queen Eleanor and
that of Alphonso her eldest son, they were not so highly
favoured in this respect as their neighbours on the hill
above. The church of the Grey Friars has disappeared as
completely as that of the Black Friars, its site being now
partly a cemetery and partly covered by the modern
Christ Church, Newgate Street : but in it were laid the
bodies of four queens, and a larger number of great folk
than even in " Powles " itself. Weever says of it that it
was "honoured with the sepulture of four queens, four
duchesses, four countesses, one duke, two earls, eight
barons, and some thirty-five knights," summing them all
up as "six hundred and sixty-three persons of quality
here interred." Stow tells us of "nine tombs of alabaster
and marble invironed with strikes of iron, in the choir ;
and one tomb in the body of the church also coped with
iron ; besides seven score grave stones of marble." *
The queens were Margaret, the second wife of Edward I. ;
Isabella, the widow of Edward II. ; her daughter, Joan
" Makepeace," wife of David Bruce, king of Scotland,
whose funeral is said by tradition to have taken place
the same day as her mother's ; and Isabella, wife of Lord
Fitzwalter, in her own right queen of Man. Besides
these the church contained the hearts of Eleanor, queen
of Henry III., and of Edward II.} All the monuments,
which were at the east end of the church, were destroyed
* A catalogue of the monuments in the Grey Friars' church, from the
register of the house, is printed in ' Collectanea Topographica et Genea-
logica,' vol. v.
t The duchesses buried here were Beatrice of Brittany, daughter of
Henry III., and Eleanor, Duchess of Buckingham ; the duke was John of
Bourbon, who died here in captivity after the battle of Agincourt.

236 HISTORY OF LONDON.
and sold for the paltry sum of fifty pounds by Sir Martin
Bowes, Lord Mayor in 1545.*
The Franciscans, who came to London during the
lifetime of their founder, in 1224,} were at first enter
tained by the Friars Preachers who had preceded them.
They then hired a house in Cornhill where they remained
until the munificence of the citizens allowed them to
migrate to Newgate Street, where John Ewen, or Iwyn,
gave them a site, and himself joined their body. It has
sometimes been said that they took up their abode
among the shambles in token of humility, which is
possible, but Ewen's grant and the probable openness
of the spot are sufficient reasons for their choice. The
first chapel, afterwards the choir, was built for them by
William Joyner, mayor in 1239. The nave was added
by Henry Waleys ; the chapter-house by Walter le
Poter ; the dormitory, as already mentioned, by Gregory
Rokesley, who was buried here ; the refectory by
Bartholomew de Castro, who further gave the friars an
annual feast on St. Bartholomew's day ; the infirmary by
Peter de Helyland, and the studies by Bonde, a king-of-
arms. In later years the famous Whittington built and
furnished their library.
The conventual buildings were but mean, as was the
wont of the Franciscans, but a second church, which was
not completed for twenty-one years, must have been one
of the most magnificent in London. It was 300 feet
long, and had columns and pavement all of marble. The
ground occupied by the domestic buildings is now
covered by the school known as Christ's Hospital, in
* Malcolm, iii. 331. Ten tombs and 140 gravestones were sold on this
occasion. The church, or what remained of it, thus desecrated, was
burnt in 1666.
t See preface to the ' Grey Friars' Chronicles' (Camden Society), by
J. G. Nichols.

THE BISHOP. 237
many parts of which remains of the old architecture may
still be seen.
There was also a house for sisters of the order, with
out Aldgate. Waleys was its greatest benefactor and
was buried in the church. It is commemorated by the
street called the Minories, as the sisters were known as
Minoresses, or poor Clares, from their patron, St. Clare.
A curious history attaches to the site of their house, which
though it was in Portsoken is not now reckoned in the
city* Their church soon after the Reformation was
made parochial, under the name of Holy Trinity in the
Minories, the gift being in the crown. Pretensions of an
absurd kind were put forward by successive incumbents,
as to exemption from episcopal visitation and other
privileges of a royal chapel. Boniface VIII. in 1294 had
indeed made the old house of the sisters exempt, and
nothing but a kind of local tradition existed to support
the claim, which was not, however, overruled till it had
been a source of considerable trouble to the authorities.
The curates used to perform marriages, as they were
about the same time, and on similar grounds, performed at
Somerset House and the Savoy, without licences or the
publication of banns. The old church, after having been
repeatedly repaired, was pulled down in 1706 and rebuilt
as we now see it. The conventual buildings must have
been of a substantial and even ornamental character, and
worthy rivals of the neighbouring foundation after which
the modern church is called.}
* Cunningham, p. 847 (ed. 1849), evidently believed that Trinity
Church was that of the priory of Aldgate, of which I have spoken in a
former chapter. But its history is fully detailed by Newcourt, i. 562. The
author of ' Old and New London,' it need hardly be said, falls into
Cunningham's error, vol. ii. p. 249.
t Smith, 'Topography of London,' p. 8, gives two views of the ruins
finally removed after a fire in 1796. The superior of the convent is called
an abbess by all the authorities. See ' Archaeologia,' vol. xv.

238 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Intermediate between the Minoresses and the male
representatives of their order, was the site of the noble
foundation of the Augustinian Friars, which still, in an
abbreviated form, retains their name, as the church — also
shortened — retains some of its architectural features.*
The church pavement still shows traces of some two
score of brasses, all marking the graves of illustrious
people, including a step-brother of Richard II., an earl of
the Bohun family, one of the Arundels, one of the Veres,
one of the Courtenays and one of the Befkeleys. Of the
fabric ofthe church, which was built for the friars by the
grandson of their founder, another Humfrey de Bohun,
earl of Hereford, about the middle of the fourteenth cen
tury, we are told that it boasted a noble spire — " small,
high, and straight," says Stow, who lived under its shadow
— in this respect probably excelling the other churches
of the mendicant orders. The friars had made their
first settlement here in 1253, and gradually, by encroach
ments, by favour, by purchase, — in short, by* incessant
activity, open or underhand, — they had put together, in
the very heart of the city, an estate which even in the
middle ages must have been immensely valuable. The
church owes its partial preservation to its having been
assigned for the use of a Dutch congregation, but after
the dissolution neither considerations of taste nor the
prayers of the inhabitants of the parish availed with the
marquis of Winchester to spare the choir or to save the
falling steeple : so that, as Strype observes bitterly, for one
man's commodity London lost so goodly an ornament,
" and times hereafter may more talk of it." Times
hereafter, unfortunately, have to complain of what in
some respects is an even greater act of vandalism. Of
* See paper on Austin Friars, by Hugo, London and Middlesex
Society ' Transactions,' ii. I.

THE BISHOP. 239
the old church as Stow knew it, little if anything now
remains. A modern building, with neat masonry and
shallow mouldings, was erected in its place under the
name of restoration some few years ago, and the last
remnant of the four noble churches — next to " Powles "
the finest in London, — of which the corporation spoke
in such moving terms to Henry VIII., was wantonly
and stupidly destroyed.
These mendicant orders; as the friars were called,
abounded in bishops. Even then the greatness of the
see of London made it necessary for its incumbent to
employ a coadjutor or suffragan. For a long time Peter
de Corbavia, an Italian, whose proper diocese was
in Dalmatia, resided in London, and helped bishop
Gravesend. We find him, in 1327, employed to purify
St Paul's, where two rival canons had fought and one of
them had shed blood.* Another of his duties was to
perform episcopal rites in churches which the pope had
specially excepted from the supervision of the bishop.
In 1 33 1 we meet him again at St. Paul's to consecrate
a new bell. In the following year he died and was
buried among his brethren of the Grey Friars. The
Black Friar, archbishop Kilwardby, has already been
mentioned. The pride of the friars increased with
years. Their learning soon gave place to mere pe
dantry. Their credit with the people declined. But
their churches only grew more and more magnificent,
and this lengthened notice of them is justified because,
though they must have been among the most prominent
architectural features of the city, they have now so utterly
disappeared. But far above all competitors within the boundaries of
the city rose the new fabric of the cathedral church.
* Stubbs, ' Chronicles,' xci.

240 HISTORY OF LONDON.
The pavement was laid down in 13 12, and the spire
finished with its cross and pommel within three years
more.* Though it was not built of stone, but of timber
covered with lead, this steeple must have presented a
magnificent appearance. It rose, according to contempo
rary authority, to the extraordinary height of 520 feet : —
" The height of the stone fabric of the belfry of the
same church contains from the level ground cclx feet.
The height of the wooden fabric of the same belfry
contains cclxxiiij feet. But altogether it does not ex
ceed five hundred and xxty feet. Also the ball of the
same belfry is capable of containing, if it were vacant,
ten bushels of corn ; the rotundity of which contains
xxxvj inches of diameter, which make three feet ; the
surface of which, if it were perfectly round, ought to
contain four thousand Ixviij inches, which make xxviij
square feet and the fourth part of one square foot. The
staff of the cross of the same belfrey contains in height
xv feet, the cross beam being vj feet."} The Londoners
were justly proud of their cathedral church, which must
have cost vast sums. The contemporary chronicles
contain frequent entries as to the completion of various
parts, the translation of the bodies of the saints to their
new tombs, the dedication of altars, the reception of
* In a ' Chronicle of [London,' printed by Edward Tyrrell in 1827
(from Harl. MS. 565), the dimensions of the church are given according
to " a tablet hung against a column by the tomb of the Duke of Lancaster."
This tablet is mentioned in Strype's Stow, but is quoted incorrectly. It is
odd that Longman, in his ' Three Cathedrals ' (p. 30), should have over
looked this Chronicle, which is sometimes attributed to Sir Harris Nicolas.
t I have thought it worth while to give this quotation from the
' Chronicle ' printed' in 1827, as it seems to be Httle known, and was not
referred to in some recent controversies. See Longman's 'Three
Cathedrals dedicated to St. Paul.' There is a little view of this spire in
the ' Annales Paulini,' edited by Mr. Stubbs in his volume of ' Chronicles '
for the Rolls series, p. 277.

To -fbuov p. 240.

ST PAUL'S BEFORE 1561.
As Bketched by Van den Wyngaerde
London: Edward Stanford, 55 Charing Cross.

Stem/oreUe GeagP -ffstaft*

THE BISHOP. 241
precious relics and the consecration of bells. Round about
the church was the precinct wall pierced by six gates, of
which the chief opened upon Ludgate Hill, affording
therefore a measure for the eye of the visitor approach
ing from the west, and perhaps framing as in a picture
the noble front of the church itself. At the north
western corner was the house of the bishop. On the
south side was the chapter-house, the scene of so many
events of historical importance in the history of our city.
Though the citizens still claimed the right to assemble
in their folkmote at the eastern end of the churchyard,
where the wall and a gate only intervened between it
and the wider expanse of the Cheap, the old open space
had gradually been encroached upon, and in spite of
protests and even an action at law, was so reduced as to
be useless for its former purpose.*
When the first foundations of the new and glorious
fabric of the cathedral church were laid, after the
great fire of 1087, the Cheap was covered only with the
tents and booths of the market-people. When it was
finished, and the spire had received its " pommel and
cross," in 13 14, houses crowded round the precincts, the
open space of Cheap was confined to a mere field near
Bow Church, the vacant ground on the north was
occupied by the church and house of the Franciscans,
and only a little space, just about the bishop's " palace "
and the so-called " Pardon Churchyard," were cultivated
as gardens. In 1329 a fruiterer who was gathering nuts in
what is now London House Yard fell from the tree and
was killed.f The king's coroner deeply offended the
» 'Liber Custumarum,' 338, &c. See below, p. 310.
t ' Chronicles,' Stubbs, p. xcvi. The report of this accident must have
been seen by some one who, quoting it from memory, confounded it with that
described above in chapter iv. as having occurred in St. Michael Paternoster.
VOL. I. R

242 HISTORY OF LONDON.
susceptibilities of the dean and chapter by holding an
inquest in the bishop's hall, within their sacred precincts.
The chapel of the Holy Ghost stood on the same side,
and in Pardon Churchyard was an old Norman building
erected by Gilbert Becket, the portreeve, with a cloister,
in which the Dance of Death was painted. A little to
the eastward and near the gate into Cheap stood a
temporary pulpit, sometimes used for sermons by popular
preachers, and sometimes, as at the death of Henry III.
for proclamations to the people. The church itself had
grown so much that two parish churches, St. Faith's and
St. Gregory's, were both absorbed. The modern St.
Paul's stands within the boundaries of St. Gregory's,
though itself " extra-parochial," except the north aisle
of the choir, which is in St. Faith's. The church was
demolished about 1256 to make room for the comple
tion of the east end of the cathedral, and parishioners
worshipped in a portion of the crypt, assigned to them
and beautifully fitted up. St. Gregory's was built close
to the western entrance, at the south side, and probably
served as a foil or measure to the main building. In
very mistaken taste, it was pulled down during the
repairs and " beautifications " of St. Paul's carried out
under the superintendence of Inigo Jones.
The number of priests attached to the service of this
immense church, with all its chantries and altars, was
reckoned at upwards of one hundred when the celebration
of masses was abolished at the Reformation. Of these,
the officers on the establishment,* so to speak, were the
dean, subdean, four archdeacons, treasurer, sacrist, with
his three vergers, precentor, chancellor, thirty canons,
now called prebendaries, and twelve minor canons. This
vast body subsists, in name at least, to this day, but the
* See Dr. Sparrow Simpson's ' History of Old St. Paul's,' p. 25.

Torino ~by TJ" HoUxii- ¦. date- a"bmit 1657.

ToftuvpSW.

London: Edwaid Stanford, 55 dialing Cross.

THE BISHOP. 243
whole constitution of the cathedral has been altered.
The prebendaries, from being each lord of a well en
dowed manor, are almost without any emolument. Four
" residentiary canons," without estates, but drawing a
salary from the ecclesiastical commissioners, represent
the higher clergy, and occupy the pulpit. We do not so
much as hear of any pulpit in the old church. Preaching
was not, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, con
sidered at all a necessary part of the priestly office.
When a sermon was wanted, some person of known
eloquence, generally a friar, was called in for the purpose.
To this day many old churches in our city and in the
suburbs have " lectureships" attached to them, established
for the most part at the time of the Puritan movement,
when parishioners were dissatisfied with the mere minis
trations of prayer and the sacrament.*
At the close of the reign of Edward III. the see was
governed by one of the most popular of the long line of
prelates who had occupied London House. Sudbury,
his predecessor, had somewhat favoured the doctrines of
Wycliffe, and had, in an evil day for himself, sneered at
the devotion of the pilgrims who assembled at , the
shrine of St. Thomas in Canterbury Cathedral. The
words were remembered against him, no doubt, when
the Kentish mob dragged him from the Tower and
smote off his head, in the riots of 1381. Six years
earlier, on his advancement to the primacy, he had
* " It is clear from the minutes that preaching or lecturing on Sundays
was not practised in the church, for in the year 1583 Mr. Shepherd offered
to preach a lecture upon Tuesdays and Thursdays ; but the parishioners
preferred to have one on Sundays in the forenoon and on Thursdays in the
night." — Parish Books of St. Margaret Lothbury, by Mr. Freshfield, in
' Archseologia,' xiv. 67. There are other notes to the same purpose in this
curious and interesting paper. See also Newcourt, i; 20, who is quite
indignant, apparently, at preaching going on in the cathedral.
R 2

244 HISTORY OF LONDON.
been succeeded in London by William Courtenay, who
in his turn, after Sudbury's tragical end, was promoted
to Canterbury. Among their predecessors in London,
mention should be made of Maurice, whose daring mind
planned the great church as completed ; of Gilbert
Foliot, who was excommunicated by archbishop Thomas,
to the great indignation of the citizens, who a few years
later crowded to Canterbury to worship at the tomb of
the new saint ; of Richard of Ely, or FitzNeal, the first
of a long line of literary bishops, and the leader of the
movement which his dean, Radulphus de Diceto, carried
on, and which eventually produced the great chroni
clers of the thirteenth century ; of Roger the Black, a
patriot and legislator canonised by popular acclama
tion, whose shrine in the south aisle was long marked
by the knees of innumerable votaries ; and of the two
Gravesends, uncle and nephew, the second of whom,
Stephen, was hated and ill-treated for his fidelity to
Edward II.*
Bishop Courtenay from the first opposed the doctrines
of Wycliffe, and was no sooner in possession of the see
than he called a synod at St. Paul's and summoned the
reformer to appear before them and give an account of
himself. He came, but accompanied by John of Gaunt,
who was practically regent of the realm, as the Black
Prince was dead, and the king, sunk in senility, thought
of nothing but the charms of Alice Perrers, who on her
part was busy amassing an estate from the foolish favours
of her doting lover. Courtenay saw in the Duke of
Lancaster the man who had driven William of Wykeham
from the court, and had restored his favourite to the
king. His appearance with Wycliffe did not in reality
* I may refer the reader who wishes to know more of these and the
other great men who filled the seat of Erkenwald to Newcourt, Dugdale,
Godwin, and the history of St. Paul's by the late Dean Milman.

THE BISHOP. 245
strengthen the reformer's case. On the contrary, when
the bishop and the duke had disputed fiercely for some
minutes, the shouts of the assembled citizens became so
threatening that John of Gaunt withdrew, and went to
his house at the Savoy. The next day, nevertheless, he
ventured again into the city to dine with a certain
Flemish merchant, William of Ypres, who lived by the
Thames' side. The city mob, meanwhile, had assembled
in great force at the gates of the Savoy, and were
clamouring for the duke and lord Percy, who had
joined him in insulting the bishop. Wycliffe seems to
have quietly retired from these tumultuous scenes. He
must have perceived that the duke only took up his
cause to annoy the bishop, and not from any conviction of
the truth of his doctrine. News came in that the people
had burst the gate and were wrecking the house. The
duke and his friend left their oysters untasted, as we are
told, and fled by boat to Kennington : and the bishop
to whom also the tidings were brought while he was at
dinner, himself went to appease the multitude, in which
he at last succeeded by reminding them of the sacredness
of the season, for Easter approached.
Notwithstanding Bishop Courtenay's popularity, there
were occasions on which he acted against the true
interests of the city. In 1376 Edward demanded an
aid or subsidy from the clergy. Things were not going
well in France, and money was badly wanted at home
and abroad. The bishop withstood the king and the
grant was refused. But old as he was Edward had his
revenge. The bishop ventured to pin a papal bull
relating to the Florentines to the cross of St. Paul's. It
was a direct incitement to the lawless to pillage the
wealthy Italian bankers and merchants. The mayor*
* I have not been able to make certain whether this mayor was Brember
or his predecessor Ward.

246 HISTORY OF LONDON.
protested and invoked the chancellor, himself a bishop.*
Courtenay had put himself in danger of a " praemunire,"t
and only a very speedy apology saved him from the
consequences. Courtenay became archbishop on the death of the
unfortunate Sudbury, and was succeeded in London by
Robert de Braybrook. The Wycliffe controversy still
raged, and the city had not yet recovered the tumults of
1 381. Half the house of the Hospitallers had been
burnt at Clerkenwell, and the whole of the Savoy. The
young king had excited a warm thrill of loyalty by his
courageous conduct in Smithfield, and Walworth, who
with his own hand had cut down the rebel Tyler, was
still mayor. But Braybrook set himself to reform abuses,
to restore ruins, to regulate services, to endow the poor
priests and control the wealthy prebendaries of his
church. He abolished the expenditure on gluttony, by
which every new canon signalised his election. He
introduced the Use of Sarum for the daily prayers. In
many other ways he showed the practical turn of his
mind, and after five centuries we still see traces of his
work, not only in London, but in the suburbs.^ The
college of minor canons was founded by him and
obtained a charter from the king in 1394. He cleared
the nave of buyers and sellers, who, " not only men but
women also," he complained," — not only on common days,
but especially on festivals, — expose their wares, as in a
public market." He further threatened to excommunicate
those who, throwing sticks and stones at the pigeons,
* The bishop of St. David's, John Thoresby, afterwards of Worcester
and archbishop of York.
t The statute of Prsemunire was passed in 1353 to counteract the
aggressions of the pope, who was then at Avignon.
X It was by his arrangement that St. John's, Tyburn, was removed, and
St. Mary "le Bourne " built instead. See vol. ii. chapter xxi.

from, ait engraving Tg, KMnUar, elate- about tesi.
jGHCSB.1 JECCiE^iA CATHJCDMLIS

S. FAVLI, PSOiPECTV,?

To fasjep. MR.

INTERIOR.

Whncqfeu* Sellar dca>vcairit d fcalpfit

London: Edwiu-d SUuifoj-d. l\h Giarm^ t

THE BISHOP. 247
broke the carvings, or those who, playing at ball, broke
the windows. It does not, of course, follow that these
latter practices went on within the church, but it is
evident that the great nave had been built only to be
desecrated, and that the " Paul's Walk " of which we
hear so much before the fire of 1666 was a very ancient
institution. Meanwhile Richard II. had long belied the promise
of his youth. He kept no faith with the city. He
established the very oppressive rules by which the
constable of the Tower seized a toll of every boat or ship
passing up the Thames. He made the citizens repair
their wall and the forts on it, and ordained an " octroi "
or duty on all food brought into the city to pay for the
work. These and a multitude of minor oppressions did
not endear him to the populace, who had their own
battle to fight with the companies. Unfortunately we
have here no longer the guidance of the candid Fitz
Thedmar : and it is barely possible to disentangle the
ravelled web of city politics in the reign of Richard II.
One mayor, Sir Nicholas Brember, took a prominent
part in the affairs of the country at large, and seems to
have been at least as worthless as any other of the king's
unworthy favourites. He had participated in the sup
pression of Wat Tyler's rebellion, and at any rate no
such mean motives were ever attributed to him as to
Walworth* in this matter. In the struggles of the
young king for emancipation from the control, first of
Lancaster and afterwards of Gloucester, Brember was
reckoned among the king's friends : and Richard was
welcomed into the city on Sunday, November 10, 1387,
* They are set forth by Allen and others and need not be detailed here.
It may be worth while to mention that the so-called dagger in the city
arms is the sword of St. Paul, and has nothing to do with Walworth.

248 HISTORY OF LONDON.
by a large assembly, comprising the mayor, Nicholas
Exton, and the chief citizens, all wearing the royal livery.
But the " five lords " had influence in London, and when
Richard's schemes were known they did not meet with
favour. Gloucester was received without hesitation, and
the mayor told the king that though the citizens were
ready to arm against his enemies they would do nothing
against his friends. It was afterwards alleged that Brember
and others, who called themselves the king's party, en
deavoured to persuade the mayor to join them in a plot
against the life of Gloucester, who was to be invited to
a banquet in Brember's house, and there murdered.
Whether such a plot was ever concocted, and whether
Richard was a party to it, are questions which cannot
now be answered. We only know that Brember's posi
tion was altogether unusual, although we cannot tell to
what circumstance he owed the king's favour.
The question of the day in the city was one of little
importance without the walls. We saw, in the last
chapter, how the companies had come to wield un
bounded influence in the election of the members of
the governing body. In 1375 the common councilmen
were elected exclusively by the companies. The wards,
and those of their inhabitants who did not happen to be
free of a company, were thus excluded from power. In
1384 another change was made. The populace rose
against the tyranny of the companies. The fishmongers
by their monopoly made themselves especially un
popular.* One poor wretch, John Constantyn, a shoe
maker, went about among his neighbours counselling
them to make resistance. He set the example by
putting up the shutters of his shop — it was on Thurs
day, the nth February — and calling upon the people to
* Riley, ' Memorials,' p. 482.

THE BISHOP. 249
join him. It does not appear that any actual rioting took
place, but the mayor, Brember, and the sheriffs sallied out,
took Constantyn, hurried him into the Guildhall, con
demned him, and without further delay cut off his head.
For this act Brember obtained a special writ from the
king, excusing him on account of the dangerous tendency
of Constantyn's conduct. But it was evident that some
thing must be done to appease the populace : and the
election of the deliberative council was accordingly given
back to the wards. At the same time, however, the
choice ofthe electoral body was left with the companies,
so that the people were no better off than before. It is'
evident that they obtained no power, for a fishmonger
was mayor in the succeeding year. In 1386, Brember,
in order to further the schemes of Suffolk, Tresilian, and
the other " king's friends," forced himself into the
mayoralty. He belonged to the grocers' company,
which at this time was so powerful that it boasted of
sixteen aldermen among its members. In spite of this
strong support, public opinion was against the king,
and when Gloucester appeared at Clerkenwell with forty
thousand men, the gates were opened and Brember fled,
but was shortly apprehended. He was brought before
the parliament with Tresilian, and though he offered to
prove his innocence by wager of battle, he was tried in
the ordinary way. This was on the 17th of February,
1388, and on the 20th he was condemned, and im
mediately hanged at Tyburn.*
Bishop Braybrook seemed to have held aloof as much
as possible from all interference in politics. When
Richard came into the city in state in 1387, he did not
appear. The following day, however, he withstood
De la Pole, the king's favourite, to the face, reproaching
* Stow (p. 190) says he was beheaded.

250 HISTORY OF LONDON.
him as a malefactor already condemned and only suffered
to live through the royal clemency. Richard was highly
incensed, and ordered the bishop out of the room. But
in 1388, after the death of Brember and the exile of
De la Pole,* Braybrook joined the archbishop in a solemn
service at Westminster, where Richard renewed his
coronation oath. Two years later he was concerned in
a transaction of peculiar importance to the city.
Richard was as extortionate as he was extravagant.
The oppressions of Edward II. and Henry III., and the
vast sums they had contrived to squeeze out of London,
were not forgotten. Richard resolved to try one of his
ancestors' favourite devices. He sent to borrow 1000/.
from the citizens. They refused the loan, and, in addi
tion, ill-treated " a certain Lumbard " who would have
given the money. John Hinde, the mayor, with his
sheriffs, was summoned to Nottingham, and on his
arrival arrested and locked up in Windsor Castle, the
sheriffs being separated and sent, one to Wallingford and
the other to Odiham. This was in May. In August,
the citizens, who had found out that " the end of these
things was a money matter," resolved to meet the king's
demands, and it was arranged that he and his queen
should visit London. The people, to the number of four
hundred, went out to meet them as far as Wandsworth,
and the bishop and his clergy awaited them and joined
the procession at St. George's Church in Southwark. At
London Bridge two white horses were offered to the
king and queen, in trappings of red and white with
silver bells. The conduit in Cheap ran with wine, and a
child, dressed as an angel, presented them with gold
crowns. A "table of the Trinity," in gold, perhaps a
bas-relief or an enamel, was given to Richard, and one of
* Earl of Suffolk.

Copied* hy Phato:bihograph)y rronvarv mgraA'ing by W.Sollajr;data ctbovJ, 1657.

To face ,, Z.iO

London: Edward Stanford, 65 Charing Cross.

•Sttxn/itrdis Geog} Esinh",

THE BISHOP. 25 1
St. Anne to the queen, in honour of her name. Going on
to St. Paul's, the procession was met by the choir singing
to welcome them, and a solemn mass was performed
before the king and queen went on to Westminster.
In addition to the costs of this entertainment London
had to pay a fine of 10,000/., and on the 28th February
following, a formal patent or charter was granted by
which Richard received them back into his favour. It
may readily be believed that the citizens, of whatever
rank, had now lost the loyal feelings with which they
had originally regarded Richard II. ; and, as events
proved, he was to add another example to those of
Henry III. and Edward II. as showing that the favour
of London was worth keeping.
Bishop Braybrook and the primate were now much
exercised by the universal outbreak of " Lollardry." If
we may believe a contemporary poet* Richard himself
made a declaration against heretics on the occasion of this
visit to the city.f Courtenay had held a synod or con
ference at the Grey Friars' in the year after Wat Tyler's
rebellion, and undeterred by an earthquake which inter
rupted the proceedings, but which the archbishop adroitly
turned in his own favour as showing that the earth would
fain shake itself free from false doctrine, he had set up a
White Friar at St. Paul's Cross to inveigh against Wycliffe
and his " poor priests." In spite of all he could do the
new doctrine spread in every direction. % Oxford was
leavened with it and we may be sure London was not
far behind. Wycliffe had died at the end of 1384, and
* ' Political Poems and Songs ' (i. 282), edited by Wright for the Rolls
series. f Some readers will remember the curious rhyming line in Richard's
epitaph at Westminster : —
" Comburit hseriticos et eorum stravit amicos."
X See Green, ' History of English People,' i. 490.

252 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Courtenay had been able to suppress his teaching in the
university, but it only spread the more widely, like a
pollarded tree. When the pulpit at St Paul's Cross was
occupied by a preacher reputed a Lollard, all the city
crowded to hear him. The mayor in 1382 and the
following year was more than suspected of favouring the
new doctrine, and when his opponent Brember succeeded
in procuring his imprisonment we may be sure the fact
was not forgotten against him.*
When Richard married his French bride of eight years
old, the citizens, with a last effort of expiring loyalty,
met the royal procession on Blackheath, and a few days
later conducted the queen in state through the city, on
which occasion the crowd was so great that the Prior of
Tiptree was crushed to death with eight other unfortu
nate spectators. This ill-omened event was followed
shortly afterwards by the death in his mayoralty of
Adam Bamme, when the king by an exercise of illegal
authority appointed a new mayor. This was the last
time a king of England! took the city of London " into
his own hands " to use the old phrase. The mayor he
thus arbitrarily appointed was none other than the
famous Richard Whittington.
The remainder of this reign so far as London is
concerned, was a time of deep discontent. The king's
extravagance increased daily. He extorted blank char
ters, or as we should say " cheques " from wealthy
citizens and filled them up at his royal pleasure. He
borrowed money from every one who came to court, and
yet he is reported to have spent 3000 marks on a single
dress. The citizens, worn down with taxation, petitioned
* This imprisonment of Northampton is mentioned by Stow, but I have
not succeeded in discovering particulars.
t Charles II. did something of the kind, but the difference is pointed out
by Norton, p. 118.,

THE BISHOP. 253
that there should be some lightening of their burdens,
since the war with France was happily ended by the
advent of the little French princess : but the king was so
indignant that it was with difficulty that Braybrook
and the archbishop pacified him.
Meanwhile Henry, the son of John of Gaunt, had
become the idol of the people, who had forgotten their
hatred of his father. In the beginning of 1399, the old
duke died at Ely Place, in Holborn,* which he had
hired after the destruction of the Savoy. His son was
in exile. In May of the same year, Richard departed
on his Irish expedition. Early in July Henry landed in
Yorkshire, and hastened to London, knowing how strong
his cause would be if the city favoured him. He was
received with joy, and his army supplied with provisions
by the citizens. When a little later he brought the
wretched king a captive to the Tower, it is said that a
body of respectable citizens begged that he might be
put to death, but others report that only the lowest
rabble wished to assassinate Richard. Henry returned
from the Tower and gave thanks in St. Paul's. Bray
brook was one of those who took part in Richard's
deposition, in the coronation of Henry, and in the sub
sequent act by which the ex-king was condemned to
perpetual imprisonment. All these events happened
before the last year of the fourteenth century was out,
and in the beginning of the following year Richard's
body was brought to London, " in the state of a gentle
man,"! and shown to the people in St. Paul's, " that they
might believe for certain that he was dead."
With the dirge for Richard, Braybrook's episcopate
* For an account of Ely Place, see vol. ii. chapter xx.
t See 'Life of Bishop Braybrook,' in London and Middlesex 'Trans
actions,' vol. iii.

254 HISTORY OF LONDON.
was nearly ended. Yet he survived till the autumn of
1404, when he died, and was buried in the Lady Chapel
of his cathedral. After the great fire Pepys records that
the bishop's body " fell down in the tomb out of the great
church into St. Fayth's." He describes the "skeleton
with the flesh on," all tough and dry like spongy leather,
the head turned aside, and adds, "a great man in his
time and Lord Chancellor ; and his skeleton now exposed
to be handled and derided by some, though admired
for its duration by others." The disgraceful exhibition
continued till the new cathedral was built, when the
body was re-interred in the crypt ; where, however, no
monument marks its last resting-place.*
* A fine brass was on the tombstone and is engraved by Dugdale.
Newcourt makes some interesting remarks on the subject (p. 20) : —
" One thing more of mine own observation I cannot omit, which is this,
viz. though the sculptures in brass were by sacrilegious hands torn away
from all the tombs in the church, yet this alone, which was one of the
costliest, having the bishop's effigies in brass at length engraved upon
it, in his episcopal habit, and his epitaph in brass likewise inscribed about
it, was left untouched, till it was buried in the ruins by that dreadful fire,
notwithstanding it was the most conspicuous of any ; the lord mayor and
his brethren, and the greatest part of the congregation passing over it
every Sunday." It would seem, therefore, as if the good bishop's
memory was cherished by the citizens until then.

Copied, hy F}ioto-HthuQiiipky from.

by W.Sollar. dated I6.W.

w-ft.lt.,- &£„,**/* <-S*f "TyUr^pt . P^oj^if- I'dut £Ai-ia,'TrifjaJ LLr Mr&At Jieitunii dSutffir .in. vntinun u„--XMrJ,Z.ii

- '.':--. Edward Stanford, 65 CJidring Cross.

( 255 )

CHAPTER IX.
YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON.
We have now in our narrative of the city history arrived
at a period regarding which innumerable books exist,
teeming with information. London was particularly
fortunate in having attracted the attention of an acute
and patient observer like Stow, before the bloom of the
middle ages had been rudely wiped off. He saw it as
it was left by Whittington and Large, still but half ruined
by Thomas Cromwell and his master, and before the
great fire had made it into modern London. That the
fire spared Stow's monument in the little church upon
Cornhill was only an accident, but amid such wide
spread destruction, when some of the grandest buildings
in Europe were sacrificed, it was perhaps a good omen
for the future that the curious terra-cotta figure of the
antiquarian tailor still sits where his widow set it in the
side aisle of St Andrew Undershaft. Mr. Thorns has
well remarked that " the devouring element, as if pitying
his fate, and honouring his labours, spared the monument
of him who had so carefully preserved the history of
London's greatness."
Stow's general accuracy is remarkable, but when, in
our own day, another and almost equally painstaking in
terpreter of old records arose, a few mistakes and errors
were detected. Henry Thomas Riley, whose premature

256 HISTORY OF LONDON.
death was a public loss, obtained access to the original
documents on which Stow founded his historical passages,
and by publishing them with his own comments has
enabled us to correct Stow where it is necessary, and at
the same time to form for ourselves a clearer view
than has previously been possible of the growth of
the municipal institutions. Of London in the fifteenth
century it is now easy to conjure up a tolerably distinct
impression. The city itself was still greater than its
suburbs. Though Westminster, with its new wool staple,
its law courts, its royal palace, and its long line of noble
villas by the bank of the Thames was rapidly rising
into importance, London itself with its bridge, and
perhaps on account of its bridge, was still the most
populous and the most wealthy. We have traced its
gradual growth, the extension of its "wards without,"
the bridging of the Fleet, the covering of open spaces,
the formation of streets in Cheap, the building of halls
and churches, and the changes of public opinion re
garding the religious orders. By this time the monastic
institutions swallowed up a large part of the city itself,
and clustered thickly round the gates. The parish
churches had in many cases become collegiate, that is,
attached to foundations for the residence of priests or
monks, and were crowded with chantries and separate
altars at which mass was sung for the repose of the
souls of generations of wealthy citizens. With all this
outward deference to religion it cannot be said that
morals had improved, and the records are full of details
of crime, in which the idle mendicant friars and the
ignorant mass priests take somewhat more than their due
share. Although much foreign trade had been lost in
the wars of the Edwards, the city was still very wealthy
when the first Lancastrian king ascended the throne,
and a lively competition and friendly rivalry with Bruges

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 257
and Ghent, and with the Hanseatic towns of northern
Germany, more than made up for the decline of trade
with Bordeaux and the absence of Italian bankers.
The name of Richard Whittington, who was four
times mayor in the early years of the century, is as
familiar as nursery tales can make it* The country
lad of good family was sent up to London at thirteen to
make his fortune. He was accredited to a wealthy
mercer, who like himself came from the west country,
and taking the oath of industry, obedience, and duty,
imposed upon apprentices, entered the office, as we
should say, of John Fitz Warren. This must have been
about 1 37 1 or 1372, and king Edward was still alive.
The boy may have seen the last tournament of the old
monarch, and Alice Perrers riding to Cheapside as the
Lady of the Sun, and sitting on the balcony where the
motherly Philippa had sat when she was a girl queen.
He may have watched the rising walls of the " Charter
House," and heard from an eye-witness of the burial in
the pest-field behind of the 50,000 victims of the great
plague. He may have seen the Canterbury pilgrims set
out, nay, he may have been acquainted with Geoffrey
Chaucer, who was alive till the end of the century. He
must have often looked at the gay banners hung out
from houses where some great country baron was lodging
while parliament sat,f and was probably a spectator of
* Messrs. Besant and Rice, in their charming little account of Whitting
ton and his times, have made extensive use of Riley, but have breathed life
into the dry bones, and presented us with a picture as vivid as it is accurate.
t See evidence of Chaucer in the Scrope and Grosvenor Case,
p. 178 : "Being asked if he knew of any interruption or challenge made
by Sir Robert Grosvenor, or by his ancestors, or by any one in his name,
to the said Sir Richard (Scrope) or any of his ancestors of that name, he
replied that he was on one occasion in Friday Street in London, and as'he
passed through the street he saw hanging out a new sign made with the
said arms, and asked whose town house it was which had barging without
it these arms of Scrope."
VOL. I. S

258 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the grand mystery play — ofthe history of the world from
its foundation — which the parish clerks gave at Skinner's
Well near Clerkenwell, and which lasted eight days, when
the most part of the nobles and gentles of England were
there to behold it*
In due time the apprentice f was made free of the
mercers' company, which numbered King Richard II.
himself among its members : and he seems to have very
soon attracted the attention of his sovereign. He had
subscribed five marks in 1379 towards the defence
of the city, and ten years later he pays 10/., from
which we may judge of the prosperity of his affairs in
the interval. In 1397 Richard took upon himself to
make Whittington mayor on the death of Adam Bamme
during his year of office.f The arbitrary nature of this
step does not seem to have given any offence. The
citizens were too much occupied with other and more
important affairs. The blank " charts," or cheques,
already mentioned, were being signed, and the appoint
ment of a popular merchant was acquiesced in willingly,
as is proved by his regular election to serve as mayor
again in the following year. There was disquietude in the
city. The king's affairs were more and more involved.
There was a constant dread of invasion. The river was
but half protected, and a few years before a Scots pirate
had shown himself off the Nore, and had only been
driven away by an expedition fitted out at the cost of a
private citizen, Sir John Philpot. There were warm
disputes over the elections of aldermen, and new regula
tions were adopted, which practically placed the power
* Stow, p. 7.
t- Messrs. Besant and Rice accept the authenticity ofthe story of Whit-
tington's first commercial venture with the cat (p. 137).
X There is a misprint of 1379 for 1397 in Besant and Rice. The king's
writ is in Riley, p. 544, from Letter-book H.

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 259
of choice in the hands of the aldermen themselves.
Whittington belonged to the retrograde or autocratic
party, which now pursued very much the same policy as
that of the old oligarchy in days long gone by. Pro
clamations were made against public meetings, and
Whittington, who had been elected alderman of Broad
Street Ward, in 1393, is frequently mentioned as assent
ing to all such repressive measures. He was not mayor
the year Henry IV. ascended the throne, but was re
elected in 1406.
Meanwhile, the new Guildhall was fast approaching
completion.* The old Guildhall, the place of meeting of
the ancient senate of the city from time immemorial, had
been situated in Aldermanbury, a street in the ward of
Cripplegate, to which it gave a name. Strange to say,
we do not know when the old site was abandoned.
Some remains of its buildings were still extant in the
time of Stow, but as we know that the Guildhall chapel
was built in the reign of Edward II., on a site adjoining
that of the new Guildhall, it is evident that the removal
had then already taken place. Stow speaks of the older
hall on this new site as being little better than a cottage.
The old hall in Aldermanbury may have been burntf and
a sudden removal may have been rendered necessary : but
if so, the removal probably took place before the final
arrangement respecting wards, which I have ventured
to assign to the government of Sir Ralf Sandwich.
That this is likely appears by a glance at the ward map,
by which it will be seen that the site of the Guildhall
itself is a reservation taken out of the ward of Bassishaw
and annexed to that of Cheap. The new site may have
* Riley, p. 545. I am disposed to think that part at least of the beautiful
crypt, now so shamefully ill-used, is of older date than the building above.
t Stow says it was a carpenter's yard in his time. History repeats
itself. The crypt of the newer Guildhall is a carpenter's yard now.
S 2

260 HISTORY OF LONDON.
been chosen, as 1 4iave already hinted, on account of the
openness of the ground, where, probably, the " haugh " or
wooded space surrounding the mansion of the Basings
still in part existed. Many other halls were on the same
estate. " Bakwellehalle "* closely adjoined the site of
the new Guildhall and was appropriated in the mayoralty
of Whittington as a mart for the sale of broad cloths.
The chapel and Bakwellehall have disappeared, and their
place is taken for a bankruptcy court and other civic
buildings ; but their position may be ascertained by a
glance at the accompanying view in a print engraved in
the early part of the eighteenth century. The original
Guildhall in Aldermanbury must have almost touched
the new one, which, however, faced a different way, and
this closeness of the two structures, though they were in
different parishes, wards, and streets, may be the reason
for the absence of any notice of the removal of the cor
poration from their time-honoured place of meeting.
In order to provide for the new building many ex
pedients were resorted to of a somewhat questionable
nature. Thus a payment was imposed upon apprentices,
upon persons taking up their freedom, and upon the
enrolment of deeds ; and fines were imposed on small
offenders, who had hitherto stood in the pillory in Cheap
or sat in the stocks in the poultry market. A sum of
ioo/. was, moreover, taken from the tolls of London
Bridge for six years which should have gone to repairs.
Whittington's second, or to speak more exactly, his
third mayoralty was in 1406 and was marked by a
return of the plague, of which it was reported that thirty
thousand people died. The year must, in fact, have been
* So called from the Banquelles, who succeeded the Cliffords and
Basings. The original "manor-house," so to speak, may well have stood
on the spot,

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 261
one of extreme anxiety. The insecure condition of the
kingdom, the king's personal unpopularity, the frequent
plots and tumults, and, it may be, disaffection, in the city,
are indicated in the numerous executions for high treason,
and the subsequent exhibition of traitors' heads on the
battlements of the bridge. Another cause of disquietude
was the increase of Lollardry ; and the act for burning
heretics, which had been passed in 1401, led to conse
quences the horror of which can hardly have been fore
seen. The Black Friars, and indeed all the conventual
orders, began to see their influence slipping from them.
The ballads and rhymes of the time are full of scurrilous
references to their life and conduct. The increase in the
number of mass priests, already mentioned, did not tend
to the elevation of the secular clergy. Learning declined,
and the name of one of the greatest scholars, Duns Scotus,
became and remains a synonym for ignorance. The so*
called learned men were occupied with absurd quibbles,
and the spread of superficial education among the laity,
while it helped to discredit the pedantries of the friars
and to further Lollardry, also paved the way for the
great literary revolution which the century now begun
was destined to see before it closed. Meanwhile, the
bishops clamoured for an example, and in February,
1401, their first victim, William Sawtree, mass priest,
or perhaps curate, of St. Osyth,* suffered the cruel
penalty annexed by the new act to " obstinate heresy,"f
* Or St. Benet Sherehog, Size Lane. Newcourt points out that John
Newton was the parish priest here from 1396 to 1427. Some authorities bring
Sawtree from St. Osyth's in Essex, where he may have been the abbot's
vicar. f The Grey Friars' Chronicle simply records : — " That yere a prest was
brent in Smythfelde, that was called Sir "William Sautre for erysse." " A
lollard and an eritik approved afore alle the clergye" (Tyrrell's ' Chronicle ').
The spelling of the newly-defined offence does not seem to have yet been
settled.

262 HISTORY OF LONDON.
To their surprise the bishops found that so far from
crushing out the spirit of the new sect by this bar
barity, its constancy rose superior to the flames, and
that the behaviour of Sawtree at the stake only en
couraged his followers. Parliament, too, when it met,
showed some signs of disapproval, and it is among the
marvels of the time that the Church did not see the
danger it ran in betaking itself to such extreme measures
of repression. Sir John Oldcastle, — in right of his wife,
Lord Cobham, — was the acknowledged leader of the
Lollards, and from his neighbouring estates in Kent was
able to succour the sufferers in London. His soldierly
qualities endeared him to the king and his son, Prince
Henry, while the personal holiness of his life testified
to the sincerity of his convictions. For eight years,
including that of Whittington's mayoralty, the act was
not put in force, but even the lowest rabble must have
been horrified at the burning of the second martyr,
at which the prince himself assisted. The story is so
quaintly told by the chronicler* that we may quote
it whole : — "This same year (1409) there was a clerk f
that believed not on the sacrament of the altar, that is to
say God's body, which was damned and brought into
Smithfield to be burnt. And Harry, Prince of Wales,
then the king's eldest son, counselled him for to forsake
his heresy and hold the right way of holy Church. And
the prior of St. Bartholomew's in Smithfield brought the
holy sacrament of God's body, with twelve torches' light
before, and in this wise came to this cursed heretic : and
it was asked him how he believed : and he answered
that he believed well that it was hallowed bread and not
* 'Chronicle,' printed in 1827, p. 92. I have, for the most part,
modernised the spelling.
t Mr. Green says he was a layman, named Thomas Badby (i. 535).

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 263
God's body : and then was the tun put over him and fire
kindled therein : and when the wretch felt the fire he
cried mercy ; and anon the prince commanded to take
away the tun and to quench the fire, the which was done
anon at his commandment : and then the prince asked
him if he would forsake his heresy and taken him to the
faith of holy Church, which if he would do, he should
have his life and good enough to live by : and the cursed
shrew would not, but continued forth in his heresy,
wherefore he was burnt."
On the accession of Henry V. these horrors became
more, rather than less, frequent. With some difficulty
the new king was persuaded to commit Lord Cobham,
his old companion in arms, to the Tower, whence, how
ever, he very soon escaped and commenced to organise
his followers and take measures for an armed rising.
Meanwhile there was a great convocation of the clergy
at St. Paul's which lasted a fortnight * and when it was
over, Archbishop Arundel and many other bishops called
the people together on Sunday at the cross, and solemnly
accursed Sir John Oldcastle and all his supporters.
Immediately after Christmas the rising began. Sus
picious bodies of men were to be seen assembling among
the thickets between London and St. Giles'. On the
8th January, 1414, the king and his brothers and the
bishops took the field against the rebels, whom they
found in great force beyond St. Giles' " between West
minster and the highway toward Tyburn."f The first
person they took up proved to be a squire of Oldcastle's,
and they seem thereupon to have arrested wholesale all
the passengers they met on the road. No resistance
* It assembled on St. Edmund's Day (20th Nov.) and sat " tyl the iiij
day of Decembre," 1413.
t This circumstantial account is in Tyrrell's 'Chronicle,' p 97. For the
ancient topography of the district, see vol. ii. chapter xxi.

264 HISTORY OF LONDON.
seems to have been made, but thirty-seven poor wretches
were committed, some to the Tower and some to New
gate, and on the morrow they were hanged in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, and their bodies burnt. We hear of no
formal trial : of no identification of the prisoners :
nor are we told that they had arms in their hands :
but the chronicler no doubt reflects the scare which
was in men's minds when he says, " these men were
arisers against the king," adding, "and certainly the
said Sir John Oldcastle with great multitude of Lol
lards and heretics were purposed with full will and
might for to have destroyed the king and his brethren,
which be protectors and defenders of holy Church, and
them also that be in degree of holy order in the service
of God and of his Church, the which will and purpose, as
God would, was let" It is evident that we see here the
elements of a religious war at work. Fanaticism and
superstition were busily employed. Whether Oldcastle's
designs were treasonable or not, they were put down
with a ferocity begotten of terror. When he was
taken in "the march of Wales," namely, in his native
Monmouthshire, he was put to death with even greater
cruelty than that shown to his followers. London
was the headquarters of " heretykes " and " Lollards,"*
and he was accordingly drawn through the London
streets to the gallows at St. Giles', f " and he was
.hanged be a cheyne of iron, and was brent up galawes
and alle."
While these tragical scenes were being enacted, London
was plunged into a whirl of agitation of another kind
by news of the victory of Agincourt. War, as usual,
* Tyrrell, p. 106.
t There has been some conflict of opinion as to the spot on which he
suffered, but the ' English Chronicle,' edited by Mr. Davies for the
Camden Society, expressly mentions " Sent Gilis feld."

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 265
brought with it financial excitement, and enormous for
tunes were rapidly accumulated by some of the leading
mercantile firms. Centuries have not dissipated the
estates bequeathed to their descendants by some of the
contemporaries of Whittington. Among the city lists
of the magnates of the time we meet with the names
of men whose posterity are now in the first ranks of
the peerage. And Whittington himself profited like the
rest. He is said to have burnt bonds worth 60,000/.
before the king on his return, a by no means impro
bable story. No doubt he had made more by the
king's want of money for his campaigns, and these
very bonds, though they may have represented a
royal debt, were probably by no means worth their
nominal value. In 1419, the year ofthe king's marriage
with Katherine of France, he was mayor for the last
time, but if he died in the following year, as has been
asserted, it is impossible that as mayor he can have
entertained the king and queen, for they did not come to
England till Candlemas,* the king entering London
" upon seynt Valentyne's day,"f and the queen on the
2 ist of the same month of February, 1420, when he was
out of office, if not dead. But his death is placed by
some authorities % in 1423, which is more probable, being
the year in which his will was proved by John Coventry,
John White, William Grove, and John Carpenter. The
munificent gifts he had made to the city in his lifetime
were continued after his death. In addition to the
college for priests, in St. Michael, Paternoster Royal,
* Feb. 2nd.
t Tyrrell, p. 108.
X Besant and Rice, p. 174. Mr. Brewer says (' Life of Carpenter,' p. 23)
that Whittington's will was made in September, 1421, and proved in 1423.
The king's licence for rebuilding Newgate prison was obtained on the 23rd
May.

266 HISTORY OF LONDON.
which he founded, he exemplified the new interest in
literature by his gifts of books to the Grey Friars, where
a building, on the site of the present hall, was erected to
receive his library, and to the Guildhall. The executors,
moreover, pulled down and rebuilt the prison of Newgate
adjoining the gate, which with a great part of the city
wall had been repaired in 141 5. The gate, indeed, was
wholly new, and seems to have been placed a> little to
the south of the original site, whence its somewhat mis
leading name. The old " Chamberlain's Gate " was
probably on the same spot as the Roman entrance
from the Watling Street, of which the remains have
been found in our own day.
Whittington or his executors have also the credit of
founding the first city library. It consisted of a very
considerable stock of books, and Stow says they erected
a " fair and large library " for it and for the other manu
scripts belonging to the corporation, adjoining closely to
the Guildhall chapel. In the reign of Edward VI., his
uncle, the Protector Somerset, sent for the books, and
carried them away in " three carres," promising to restore
them shortly. But the promise was never fulfilled, and
London, till our own day, was left without a library.
New and restored buildings for St. Bartholomew's
Hospital, the pavement and glazing of the new Guild
hall, the stocks market, where the Mansion House now
stands, the opening of '' drinking bosses," or taps, in
the public conduits, and an almshouse for thirteen poor
men, which still subsists,* were among the objects to
which his wealth was devoted. His example was followed
by many other public-spirited citizens, and all genera
tions of Londoners have been taught from their infancy
to revere the name of Whittington.
* On Highgate Hill.

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 267
Carpenter,* his executor, also deserves a few lines of
remembrance. He was of a very different character
from the merchant princes with whom he associated
and was one of the first writers and readers of whom we
know that, though in a sense a clerk, he was not in
orders. He was appointed town clerk or " secretary ofthe
city" in 1417, and is immortalised by the composition of
the famous " Liber Albus," or " White Book " of London
records, which has proved so valuable to the historian.!
Like Sir Thomas More at a later period he was a lay
brother of the Charterhouse, and seems indeed to have
been attached to other ecclesiastical fraternities, but
without taking orders. He is venerated as the first
founder of the city school, and seems, like Neel, the
master of St. Thomas of Acons.J and other enlightened
men of the day, to have been anxious in the cause of
education. The printing press had not yet been in
vented, but men's minds were being prepared for the
outburst of the new learning which the end of the
century was to see. Two years before Carpenter's death,
his friend Robert Large, the mercer, was mayor ; and
among Large's apprentices was a boy from Kent, whose
name was destined to become at least as famous as that
of Whittington himself. When we come to mention
Caxton, it seems as if the clouds of the middle ages were
already rolling away, and the new light of the renascence
breaking at once upon the page. But ere Large's
apprentice had become master of the " English nation " at
Bruges, and had learnt the wondrous art from Colard
Mansion, London had to suffer many things, to see the
hero of Agincourt on his bier, to witness the fall of the
* 'Life of John Carpenter,' by Thomas Brewer. London, 1856.
f It was printed in the original Latin for the Rolls Series in 1859, and
translated by Mr. Riley for the corporation in 1861.
X Whose school survived as the Mercers'. See above, p. 1 14.

268 HISTORY OF LONDON.
fated house of Lancaster, and to be, in particular, the
scene of the ambitious plots of Richard of Gloucester.
Before the death of Henry V., and during the mayor
alty of Sir Henry Barton in 1416, the lighting of the
streets with lamps was made compulsory. On the 13th
August, 1422, a weathercock was set on the steeple of
St Paul's. King Henry died during the course of the
same month, his body passed in solemn procession
through the city in the November following, and nearly
a year later an almost equally melancholy procession
took its place. Could the citizens have foreseen the
troubles coming on the kingdom, no appearance would
have been more sad than that of the infant Henry VI.
in 1423. The widowed queen and her little son set
out from Windsor for London on Saturday (the 13th
November). They rested at Staines, and on the morrow
the king was being carried toward his mother's chair in
order to continue the journey when " he shriked and cryed
and sprang and wolde nought be caryed forthere : where
fore he was borne ayeyne into the inne and there he bood
the Soneday al day."* It seemed as if the infant king
foresaw the misery he was to endure in the city to which
he was being taken for the first time. On Wednesday
the cavalcade passed through London, and the boy '' with
a glad chere sate in his modres lappe in the chare."f
Then the baby king's uncles led him into St. Paul's, where
he was made to kneel at the altar. When we think of the
tall columns and overarching vault, of the wide marble
steps, the lofty canopy, and the poor little child, barely
two years old, " looking gravely and sadly about him,"
as if feeling already the weight of two usurped crowns,
* Tyrrell, ' Chronicle,' p. 112.
t Tyrrell, p. 165. Miss Yonge ('Cameos,' ii. 353) and others have
mentioned a tall white horse on which the queen sat bearing the child.

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 269
as he crouched by himself in the midst, it is hardly
possible to call up any scene in our history more pathetic.
The streets of London immediately became the battle
field of rival factions. Gloucester, the regent, was per
sonally popular. " Good Duke Humfrey " is not even
yet altogether forgotten. Though his grave is in St.
Alban's Abbey, a tomb in old St. Paul's was appro
priated to him by the people, and his tragical fate made
the deepest impression on the citizens. We read that
during the mayoralty of Sir John Coventry in 1426, he
warned the city of a design to seize it which had been
formed by his rival, the bishop of Winchester. Shops
were shut, men-at-arms called out, the gates locked,
and the bishop's adherents were successfully excluded.
This is an example of the state of things which prevailed
more or less for nearly fifty years. A very brief sum
mary of them will suffice. The young king was crowned
at Paris in 1429, and coming to London was met on
Blackheath with great ceremony and conducted through
the city to Westminster by the mayor and chief citizens.
A few years later, on the breaking out of war between
England and the Duke of Burgundy, not only did the
city furnish and maintain a contingent for the defence of
Calais, but, what is not so pleasant to record, the people
in London rose and murdered a number of Flemings and
other subjects of the duke who had been trading here.
In January, 1437, the body of queen Katharine, the
widow of Henry V., rested at St. Paul's on its way from
Bermondsey Abbey, where she had died, to Westminster
Her second husband, Owen Tudor, was actually at the
time a prisoner in Newgate, hard by, and in the course of
the following year broke out, " hurtynge foule his kepere,
but at the last," adds the chronicler,* piously, " blessyd
* ' Chronicle,' printed 1827, by Ed. Tyrrell, p. 123.

270 HISTORY OF LONDON.
be God, he was taken ayeyn." What the poor man had
done to deserve imprisonment history sayeth not. The
same year that saw queen Katharine's death saw also
that ofthe widow of Henry IV., Joanna of Navarre, who
had been accused of sorcery during the reign of her
stepson. It has been suggested that for " sorcery '' we
should read " lollardry," which is very possible, but the
case of the duchess of Gloucester, notwithstanding that
her maiden name had been Cobham, was one of simple
superstitious belief in witchcraft. It can, in fact, hardly
be doubted that when the wretched lady was charged
with having endeavoured " to consume the king's body
by negromancie," she at least believed in the possibility
of such a thing, and the people believed that she had
attempted the dreadful deed. She confessed, and was
condemned to penance. Being sent from Westminster
by water, she walked, with only a " keverchef " on her
head, through " Fletstrete " to St. Paul's, where she
offered a taper of wax weighing two pounds. This was
on Monday, the 1 3th November. The following Wed
nesday she performed her dismal walk from the Swan
in Thames Street — Swan Wharf still survives — through
Bridge Street and Gracechurch Street to Leadenhall,
and " so to Crichurche," that is, St. Katharine Cree, near
Aldgate. Again on Friday, in like manner, she landed
at Queenhithe, walked through Cheap, and on to St.
Michael's, Cornhill. At each place where she landed, the
mayor, sheriffs and crafts met her and accompanied her
pilgrimage. Her chaplain was hanged, and she herself
was sent into perpetual imprisonment, it is said, in the
Isle of Man. A few years later the " good duke Hum
frey," her husband, was murdered at Bury St. Edmunds,
and within eight weeks his rival, cardinal Beaufort,
followed him to the grave ; leaving England a legacy of

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 27 1
disunion and strife which was not allayed till a whole
generation had passed away.
As an example of the city life of the time, we may
take the story of the widow of Aldgate, of which some
particulars have survived. She found a poor Breton, who
had perhaps wandered over with the followers of Joan of
Navarre, who, when she married Henry IV., was dowager
duchess of Brittany. The widow, out of charity, took
him home to her house and treated him kindly. In
return, he murdered her and carried off all she possessed.
Being detected, he fled across the river to Southwark, and
took sanctuary. On one or two occasions the mayor and
sheriffs had invaded sanctuary, as, for example, when a
soldier in 1439 got safe into St. Martin-le-Grand, while
actually on his way to be hanged, but they had been
obliged by the fulminations of holy Church to give
up their prey.* The Breton was starved out, but, in
accordance with the ecclesiastical rule, he was allowed to
go, on condition of forswearing the realm, and departing
to Dover, and across the sea as quickly as possible.f
"Bareheaded, barefooted, ungirt, a white cross placed in
his hand, he was sent forth on his painful pilgrimage."
But though he had escaped the law, " as he went his way
it happed him to come by the same place where he had
done that cursed deed, and women of the same parish
came out with stones and dirt, and there made an end of
him in the high street, so that he went no further, not
withstanding the constables and other men also which
* Kempe, 'St. Martin-le-Grand,' p. 117. The contemporary report is
very quaint : — " There came out (of) the Panyer-Aley, five of his fellowship,
not being of your franchises, but strangers, betwix the Bocherie and the
Bole, hed and bereft from the said officer the foresaid sowdeor, with
daggers drawn, and brought him with them into the Sanctuarie,"&c. The
Bowl was probably a tavem. The soldier's name was Knight.
t See Palgrave, 'The Merchant and the Friar,' p. 189, for an account of
the usage on these occasions.

272 HISTORY OF LONDON.
had him under their governance to conduct him forward,
for there was a great company of the women, and they
had no mercy, no pity."*
The meagreness of the city annals during this reign
would be extreme but for the rebellion of Cade, one of
the strangest events we meet with in all London history.
Who Cade was, what he wanted, how he contrived to
make himself leader of the regular Kentish levies, and
to overawe the city for so many weeks, and why his power
so suddenly collapsed, we shall probably never know.
Our acquaintance, too, with the state of the civic parties
is of the slightest. There are indications now and then
of the existence of political views. Some of the city
rulers are more popular than others. There is occa~-
sionally a sign of emotion among those below, of re
pression by those above : a reference, too vague to tell
us much, to the existence of " the commons." In short,
the old days of isolation were past. The citizens of
London were no longer a peculiar people, dwelling in a
close-walled town, surrounded by fordless morasses and
impenetrable forests. They could no longer indulge in
political rivalries which did not concern any one but
themselves. The old days of Fitz-Thedmar and his
chronicle, in which London is described as a kingdom
within a kingdom, self-contained, self-governing, were
gone for ever. The suburbs took the citizens far into
Middlesex. Southwark was directly under their
governance. They lived in villas at Stepney and
even at Tyburn. London had become part of Eng
land : and already the old patriotism of the citizens to
their city was growing weak. It is difficult, once the
first half of the fifteenth century has been reached, to
dissociate the . history of London from the history of
* Modernised from Tyrrell, 'Chronicle,' p. 117.

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 273
Westminster, or of St. Giles's, or of Southwark ; and
though the old bounds are still set, and the old walls, by
a kind of fiction, are still standing, London entered a
new stage of existence before the last king of the house
of Edward III. had ascended his blood-stained throne.
The Kentish men, disgusted like every one else at the
misgovernment of the kingdom, had been foremost in
the deposition and assassination of the weak king's weak
minister, Suffolk. In 1450 they wanted a leader, and Cade
offered himself. He was an old soldier, and knew how
to organise an army. Calling himself Mortimer, he led
some twenty thousand men over the wooded hills of
Dartford to the Thames, and encamping at Blackheath,
issued his orders and levied his contributions on the city
for a month, during which the king fled to Kenilworth,
and the city magistrates seem to have been simply
paralysed with fear. Of the mayor, Thomas . Chalton,
we hear absolutely nothing, except that after Cade had
defeated the king's general near Sevenoaks, and had
returned and made his head-quarters at the White Hart
in Southwark, he called a meeting of the common
council, at which was debated, not the question how to
oppose the rebel, but whether he was to be allowed to
enter the city. The lower classes it is evident sym
pathised with Cade. He promised them immunity from
taxation and all the other benefits which every leader of
the kind has always offered to the credulity of the
populace. He demanded and obtained contributions,
but ordered that they should be levied on the foreign
merchants only. The archbishop of Canterbury and
other great men had interviews with him, in which they
were surprised at his discretion, but they naturally could
not persuade him to retire or to lay down his command.
Robert Horne alone among the aldermen seems to have
VOL. I. T

274 HISTORY OF LONDON.
had the courage to counsel resistance ; and the very day
that the citizens had met, the rebel army entered by
London Bridge. Cade immediately disarmed the re
sentment of the commons at this proceeding by fre
quent proclamations to his soldiers forbidding violence
or robbery : he was somewhat absurdly attired in a
" pair of brigandines," with gilt spurs, a gilt tilting helmet,
and a gown of blue velvet, with his sword borne before
him, "as he had been a lord or a knight,"* and coming
westward along the old line of the Watling Street, he
struck his sword upon London Stone, and exclaimed,
" Now is Mortimer lord of this city."
This moderation did not last long. On the following
day (3rd July) he again entered the city, having retired
to Southwark for the night. He repaired to Guildhall,
where the trembling mayor and aldermen were assem
bled. Here he ordered them to bring Lord Say f from
the Tower,:j: and to arraign him before the mayor and
the king's judges who were then sitting. Robert Horne
was summoned at the same time, but escaped on his
wife's payment of 500 marks for his liberty. Say desired
to be tried by his peers, but the impatient rebel, taking
him forcibly from the custody of the city officers, dragged
him into Cheap and beheaded him in company with a
thief and murderer named Hawarden, Say's body
being stripped and dragged naked through the streets,
so that, as the chronicler declares, the flesh clave to the
stones all the way from Cheap to Southwark. A former
sheriff of Kent, Crowmer, who was Say's son-in-law, and
* ' English Chron.' (Cam. Soe), p. 66.
t Sir James Fiennes. He lived at Knole, and is called "lord lieu
tenant" in Mr. Cooper's account of the affair in ' Archaeologia Cantiana,'
vol. vi.
X On the outbreak of the rebellion Say, who had been Lord Chamber
lain, was committed to the Tower by the king.

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 275
had been committed to the Fleet on account of a com
plaint of extortion in his shrievalty, was taken out to
Mile-end and handed over to a party of Essex rebels,
when he speedily shared the fate of Say. Their heads
were borne on poles and set up on London Bridge.
Cade dined, when this bloody work was accomplished, at
a citizen's house, and robbed his host of "great sub
stance," the next day doing the same at another house.
This was Saturday, 5th July. The city mob, always
glad to see rich men plundered, were now all on his side,
but at length the mayor and aldermen woke up. They
sent to Lord Scales, who still held the Tower, though he
had not been able to save Lord Say, and concerted
measures with him for the protection of the city. On
the morrow, being Sunday, Cade seems to have rested
on his laurels, merely beheading a man in Southwark ;
but in the evening some of his soldiers seeking to enter
the city, found their passage opposed at the bridge. Cade
came to see what was the matter, and drove the citizens
back to the very foot of the bridge, and killed or drowned
an alderman and several other people. The brave
citizens, however, held out all night ; " ever they kept
them upon the bridge, so that the citizens passed never-
much the bulwark of the bridge foot, nor the Kentish
men no further than the drawbridge." At last, about
ten* in the morning, the rebels " withdrowe thaym litille
and litille," a kind of truce being patched up for a few
hours, and the archbishop, again advancing, and taking
on himself to issue a general pardon, Jack Cade and his
followers withdrew, the leader to Queenborough, whence
he hoped to escape to the continent with his plunder,
which he had sent to Rochester by water, going by land
himself ; and the people to their forests and furnaces in
* Tyrrell's ' Chronicle' says nine, and the Cam. Soe. ' Chronicle,' ten.
T 2

276 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the hills of Kent and Sussex. The rebellion collapsed.
It was, as Mr. Green* and others have pointed out, one
wave of a great tide of public movement throughout
England, but, so far as London is concerned, the incident
ends with the elevation of Cade's head to the place
previously occupied by those of Say and Crowmer on
London Bridge.
Meanwhile the kingdom was being gradually aroused
to the fact of the existence of Richard of York, the heir
of the line of Edward III. He had no position and
asserted none, in respect of the crown, which had been
confirmed by parliament to Henry IV., a descendant it
is true of a junior branch, but claiming in the male line,
while York, had he made any claim, could only have
done so through the Mortimer family, whose heir he had
lately become. The Mortimers had, by the marriage of
Edmund, third earl of March, with the daughter of
Lionel of Antwerp, inherited his position as the third of
king Edward's four sons, while Henry VI. only repre
sented John, the fourth son. But York, in addition,
was, by his father's side, descended from Edmund of
Langley, the fifth son of Edward III., and was thus as
much a Plantagenet as his cousin the king.f
The side which London would take in the coming
contest was to determine its result. Up to 1452 the
city was loyal to Henry. York had marched up from
the west with a large army, and hoped the gates would
have been opened to him. But entrance being denied,
he crossed the Thames at Kingston, and took up a posi-
* i. 564. The Camden Society's ' Chronicle,' quoted above, says that
Cade was wounded unto the death and carried in a cart towards London,
and " be the wey he deide."
t The only occasions on which this surname was used in the family were
when this duke began to set up pretensions to the crown, and when
Edward IV. bestowed it on his bastard son, Arthur.

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 277
tion at Dartford, the royal army being at Blackheath.
His rival in the king's councils was Beaufort, duke of
Somerset, and a kind of armed truce having been patched
up, York attended in St. Paul's on the 10th March and
took an oath of allegiance to Henry VI. In the follow
ing year an event occurred which obliged him to declare
his intentions. The queen, after eight years of marriage
without issue, gave birth to a son at Westminster. The
king at the time was sunk in the stupor of insanity.
He could take no steps to recognise the prince as his
heir, and Warwick, who was destined to become so
famous as the " king maker," actually ascended the
pulpit at St. Paul's Cross, and proclaimed to the citizens
the illegitimacy of the queen's infant. The child, whose
birth had taken place on the feast of the Translation
of St. Edward the Confessor, was christened by the
name of that saint, and when the king recovered he was
duly recognised. York seems to have disavowed the
action of Warwick, and when he became protector it
was specially stipulated that he should only continue in
office during the prince's minority. The events of the
next few years belong to the general history of the
kingdom, and though Warwick frequently resided in
his house, the site of which in Newgate Street is still
indicated by Warwick Lane,* he does not appear to have
interfered to any appreciable extent in civic affairs.
York also occasionally resided in the city, at his house in
Baynard's Castle, by the Thames' side. He was now,
and remained, during the rest of his life, supreme in
London, where his popularity was unbounded. In 145 1,
a Yorkist army occupied the city. Warwick's followers
amounted to six hundred men, all clothed in red, with the
old Beauchamp badge, the ragged staff, in white. The
* Previously Old Dean's Lane.

278 HISTORY OF LONDON.
white rose had been adopted by the soldiers of York,
although it appears previously to have been a badge of
the Nevils. The famous scene in the Temple Gardens
had been enacted some years -before, when Warwick had
assigned the rose to " Plantagenet." Shakespeare has
taken some liberties with chronology in his famous
version of the story.* But it is to be observed that
Cicely Nevil, Warwick's sister, was the wife of York.
In short, during these years of confusion and warfare,
London was a Yorkist camp, and her streets must have
been constantly animated by the tramp of liveried men-
at-arms, and the clank of knights in harness. At every
corner fluttered banners of heraldic tinctures, and the
retainers of country lords, each dressed in the livery
colours of his master, lounged at the gates of the
hostels. The mayor and sheriffs trembled for the
peace of the city.f Special precautions were taken.
Five thousand citizens were under arms. At night a
patrol of a thousand men attended each of three
alderman as a watch till seven o'clock in the morning.
They marched we are told, % " owte of Newgate, and
soe up Holborne and downe Chauncery lanne and
thorow Fletstret and in at Ludgate and thorow
Temstret, and soo to the Tower of London, and soe
forthe home agayne." The Somerset party was abso
lutely refused admission. After the first battle of St.
Alban's, in 1455, where Somerset was slain, the duke
of York conducted the king to London. And now the
feeling of the city was apparent. The victors were
received in triumph with a grand procession. The
duke conducted the king to the house of the bishop
* First part of ' Henry VI.,' act 2, sc. 4.
t See further particulars in Mr. Gairdner's ' Introduction to the Paston
Letters,' vol. i., p. cxxxi. J ' Grey Friars Chronicle,' p. 20.

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 279
at St. Paul's, as Leicester had conducted Henry III.
nearly two centuries before.* Shortly after, the king
was allowed to retire to Hertford.
A short peace ensued, but the troubles were only
beginning. One of the contemporary authorities! com
plains bitterly of the state of affairs in the city. The
king's debts increased daily, yet payment there was none.
The hearts of the people were turned away from them
that had the land in governance. Commerce must have
suffered grievously. The Flemings had been alienated
as we have seen. Normandy and the French pos
sessions, except Calais, had been lost. But Warwick
held Calais firmly, and attacking a Spanish fleet took
some rich prizes. He defeated an attempt of the Lan
castrian party to oust him, and at the climax of the war
landed at Sandwich, and conducting with himself the
young earl of March, sent a herald to know how London
was disposed. " They that were not friendly to the earls
counselled the mayor and the commonalty for to lay
guns at the bridge for to keep them out, and so a little
division there was among the citizens, but it was soon
ceased." Twelve aldermen went out and assured the
earls of a welcome, and on the 2nd July, 1460, they en
tered London. A convocation at St Paul's was turned
into a political meeting. Warwick once more harangued
the people on behalf of March and himself, setting forth
the misrule of the king's government, but avowing loyalty
to his person, and expressing their determination " to
declare and excuse their innocence or else to die in the
field." Warwick then made his father, Salisbury, ruler
of the city, and set forth to meet the royal army at
Northampton, taking March, and the pope's legate, the
* After the battle of Lewes in 1264.
t 'English Chronicle,' Cam. Soe, p. 79.

280 HISTORY OF LONDON.
archbishop of Canterbury, and other high dignitaries with
him. Meanwhile the citizens under Salisbury blockaded
the Tower, in which some Lancastrians had taken refuge.
The besieged " cast wild fire into the city, and shot in
small guns, and burned and hurt men and women and
children in the streets. And they of London laid great
bombards on the further side of the Thames against the
Tower, and erased the walls thereof in divers places."
When the battle of Northampton had been fought and
won by the Yorkists, and Henry was back a prisoner once
more in the bishop's palace, the Tower surrendered " for
lack of vytayl," and some of its defenders were put to
death, but their leader, Lord Scales, attempted to escape
into sanctuary at Westminster. He entered a boat with
three rowers, but was recognised by a woman, and pur
sued by a number of boatmen, who fell upon him in mid
stream, killed him, and cast his body on the Surrey
shore by the church of St. Mary Overey. " And great
pity it was," says the chronicler, " that so noble and so
worshipful a knight, and so well approved in the wars
of Normandy and France, should die so mischievously:"
a lament which might have been uttered over many a
victim of that dreadful time.
Henry was not kept long in London, but was allowed
to cross to his manors at Greenwich and Eltham. In
October, parliament settled the reversion of the crown on
the duke of York, and again for a brief season there was
peace. But before the end of the year the fighting was
renewed, and in a way disastrous to the cause the
Londoners favoured. On the last day of December
the queen's army defeated and killed the duke of York
at Wakefield, and a few days later the earl of Salisbury
was beheaded by the people of Pontefract A second
battle took place at St. Alban's, and Warwick was
forced to retire upon London.

YORK AND LANCASTER IN LONDON. 28 1
The Londoners, meanwhile, dreading the queen's ven
geance and hearing that she had promised her northern
soldiers the sack of the city, sent envoys entreating her
favour, at the same time, however, shutting the gates
against certain men-at-arms, whom she had sent on
before her. March had been fighting in the west, where
he had defeated a gathering of Lancastrians, and put to
death, among others, Owen Tudor, who, old as he was,
had done good service in the cause of his stepson. The
queen and her army, joined by the poor king after the
battle at St. Alban's, turned back from London on
hearing that Warwick and March had effected a junc
tion. The citizens, free for the moment from appre
hension, welcomed Edward of York with acclamation.
He reached London on the 28th February, and pro
ceeded to his mother's house at Baynard's Castle, where
the citizens crowded to his standard clamouring to be
led against the slayers " of the noble duke Richard, his
father." A council of lords was summoned. Henry
was declared to have forfeited the crown, and the people
were summoned to a great meeting to signify their will.
The Cheap was no longer available for a folkmote. But
they assembled in thousands in Smithfield and the open
space northward towards Clerkenwell, known as St.
John's Field, and being asked if they would have the
young earl for their king, the air was filled with the old
cry of " Yea, Yea !" and London elected Edward IV. as
it had elected so many of his predecessors.
After Edward's marriage, his policy, no longer directed
exclusively by Warwick, was nevertheless unswerving in
its favour towards the Londoners. The alliance with
Burgundy in 1467, which opened again a vast trade
between England and the Low Countries, was ex
tremely welcome to the city merchants. Edward him
self engaged in commercial ventures, and sent his own

282 HISTORY OF LONDON.
wool to Flanders. During the troubles between him and
Warwick, when for a time he was driven out and the
wretched Henry once more set upon his throne, London
stood by her elected king. The battle of Barnet was
won by the help of the citizens. Henry, his feet tied to
his stirrups, was led three times round the pillory in
Cheap and consigned to the Tower. While Edward
was absent in the west, an old adherent of Warwick's,
the bastard Falconbridge, marched through Kent and
assaulted London, burning the houses on the bridge.
He could not obtain an entrance, however, and having
only succeeded in setting Aldgate on fire, had to fall
back before the resistance of the citizens. Peace was
proclaimed after the fatal fight at Tewkesbury, which,
so far as Edward was concerned, not only concluded the
war, but rid him of every possible rival, friend or enemy.
King Edward returned in triumph once more : the
mayor, Stockton, accompanied by the aldermen and
sheriffs, one of whom was the famous John Crosby,* went
out with a vast multitude to the fields beyond Islington
to meet him, and on the highway he knighted them, to
the number of twelve, including the recorder. The same
night saw the last act of the dismal tragedy of Henry of
Lancaster. He was found dead in his lodging in the
Tower, of " pure displeasure and melancholy " said the
Yorkists, of poison said others.f The next day his body
was brought to St. Paul's and shown to the people.
Was any old man present to recall the day when, eight-
and-forty years before, Henry, as a little child, had
kneeled in royal loneliness before the altar of the same
church ?
* Crosby was never mayor.
t Shakespeare makes Gloucester stab him. (' Henry VI.,' 3rd part,
act v. sc. vi.)

( 283 )

CHAPTER X.
SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON.
FROM the accession of Edward IV. a change comes over
^our city annals. The civic constitution was now settled.
The outermost ring of suburbs had been enclosed. The
last touches had been put to the fabric over which rival
aldermen and common councillors had contended for
centuries. The city had become venerable. Her citizens
had begun "to think upon her stones." The repair of
the Roman wall, carried out in 1476, is one of the first
examples of the modern idea of " restoration," namely, a
falsification of the history of a building. The first of the
long series of London antiquaries, the first dramatist who
was to illustrate her history, her people, her streets, for
readers of all generations, were not yet born, but their
time was drawing very nigh, and the printing-press was
already at work. Fortunately for us, the old associations
had begun to be studied before Cromwell and the Fire
came to obliterate them. Stow has made the stage and
painted the scenery, and Shakespeare has put in the
figures. The antiquary conducts us through the narrow
lanes, among the crumbling courts, under the overhang
ing gables, into falling priories and empty aisles. The
dramatist sets Henry before us marching to Agincourt ;
he makes Richard plot in Crosby Place ; Nym and
Bardolph carouse for him in Eastcheap ; at " a hall in
Blackfriars" the two cardinals sit under the king as

2 84 HIS TOR Y OF L OND ON.
judges. Even when Shakespeare lays his scene in
Illyria, or at Verona or Messina, the watchmen are from
the London streets, the palaces are London houses,
Dogberry himself is a tradesman upon Cornhill. In
writing the plays which relate to London in those times,
he could speak of what was actually before his eyes.
The Wars of the Roses were not more remote from him,
than the Scots' rebellion is from us. He stood, with re
spect to the sad story of Henry VI., nearly as we stand
to that of George III. London had not altered so much
since Gascoigne, and Falstaff, and Dame Quickly walked
the streets, as it has now since the Gordon riots.
Shakespeare saw it as Stow, who was his contemporary,
saw it. It is more than probable that the antiquary*
often passed before his eyes, " tall of stature, lean of body
and face, his eyes small and crystalline," yet sober, mild,
and " courteous to any that required his instructions."
He may have seen Shakespeare at the Mermaid, and
recognised his genius. Stow knew Ben Jonson well, who
says of him that he had monstrous observation. He
jested with poverty, being " of his craft a tailor." He
always went about on foot, and travelled "to divers
cathedral churches, and other chief places of the land, to
search records." Yet he was merry, as was Shakespeare,
and made epigrams. One of them is on the size of Sir
Christopher Hatton's tomb, and the absence of any
memorial of Philip Sidney and Francis Walsingham.
He " annal'd for ungrateful men," and died at eighty, no
richer than he had lived.
Of Shakespeare's personal history, we hardly know as
much as we do of Stow's. But the few meagre facts
that have been gleaned about him chiefly relate to
* Thoms's 'Stow,' p. xii.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 285
London.* His rare signature appears to a London deed,
now exhibited in the Museum at the Guildhall. His
theatre was at "the Gloabe on the Banckeside," a not
very reputable locality. He was part owner of a
" messuage " in Blackfriars. He alludes to Whitefriars
in his play of 'Richard III.,' and mentions London
Stone in ' Henry VI.' A letter was addressed to him in
Carter Lane, the main thoroughfare to Ludgate, where
he lodged at the Bell. He bought a house near Puddle
Dock, in Blackfriars, in 161 2. The Mermaid, in Cheap-
side, has long disappeared, but there can be no doubt of
its site in the block of buildings between Friday Street
and Bread Street, with an entrance from each side. His
plays were published in St. Paul's Churchyard, at the
" Signe of the Floure de Leuse and the Crown," or at
the Green Dragon, or at " the Foxe," and some of them
in Fleet Street, " under the diall " of St Dunstan's
Church. What London was like then, we may gather from a
third source. Norden was born of a good family, in
Wiltshire, about 1548. f He was therefore, the contem
porary of both Stow and Shakespeare. He lived chiefly
at Hendon, in Middlesex, and was employed as a land
surveyor. His accounts of Hertfordshire and of Middle
sex were part of a projected work, which he never
completed. His map of London was drawn in 1593.
There had been previous maps of the kind, bird's-eye
* The ' ' New Shakspere Society " have done good work for lovers of
Shakespeare's London, in publishing Harrison's ' Description of England
in Shakspere's Youth,' together with Norden's map, Mr. Wheatley's valu
able notes on it, and the extracts from Perlin and Hentzner, and others.
In the following pages I make continual use of this book, and acknow
ledge my obligation gratefully once for all.
t ' Shakspere's England,' New Shakspere Society, p. xc. Mr. Wheatley's
notes on Norden's map.

286 HISTORY OF LONDON.
views, in fact, such as that of Ralph Agas, which is
believed to have been made about 1570, but the earliest
copy known was printed after the accession of James I.
There is also a small view-map in Braun and Hohen-
berg's ' Cities of the World,' which must have been drawn
before 1561, as it shows the steeple of St. Paul's, burnt
in that year. The first, however, on which full reliance
can be placed, is Norden's, which represents the city
only, at a definite date, 1 593. We see in it both Holborn
Bridge and Fleet Bridge: Moorfields had been lately
drained, but were not built over. The old hospital still
stands in Spitalfields. St. Clare's Nunnery is outside
Aldgate. Essex House, or Leicester House, is outside
the Temple. Burbage's Theatre was placed in Black
friars * when the map was three years old. Close by,
Baynard's Castle with its gables still remained as it was
when Cicely, duchess of York, the " proud " mother of
Edward IV, had lived in it when she visited London.
Another great mansion may also be identified. This is
Pulteney's, or Pountney's Inn, also called Cold Harbour,
which has already been mentioned. Richard III. gave it
to the Heralds, whom he had incorporated, but after the
battle of Bosworth it was occupied by the mother of the
new king.f
With Stow and Norden, Shakespeare's London should
be sufficiently familiar to us. By Shakespeare's London
I do not mean only the London in which the great
dramatist moved ; but that of which, having the scene
before him, he wrote, and in which his characters had
* Its site is still marked by Playhouse Yard, behind the Times office.
t A foreign map, by Ryther of Amsterdam, published in 1604, closely
resembles Norden's, but being much larger and clearer I have preferred to
have it copied, the more so as Norden's map has been copied very often.
Ryther's map, in two editions, is in the Crace collection at the British
Museum, Nos. 31 and 32.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 287
moved. To a mind like his, the actual scene of a great
event must have been a direct incentive to clearness of
description ; just as we could realise the burial of queen
Anne and queen Katharine, and so make a step towards
realising their execution, when we saw the actual ground
in which they were so carelessly laid, with its broken
pavement as if but just disturbed. When we go now to
the chapel of St. Peter, and see the gaudy and vulgar
tiles and a royal or noble name neatly worked into an
encaustic border, we experience no emotion whatever,
unless it be one of anger. But in Shakespeare's lifetime
London was very much as it had been left by the wars
of York and Lancaster. He could see the roses growing
in the Temple Gardens, with the gabled buildings round
them, which successive treasurers have since been so
busy removing. He could traverse Cheap on the path
ways overhung by the rapidly multiplying houses of
Cheapside. He could walk in the long nave of " Powles "
and listen to the distant music of the reinstated organist.*
He must have known many people who had seen
heretics burnt in Smithfield.f He may have been
present when the heads of dukes and lords fell on the
scaffold at Tower Hill. Therefore, to take up the thread
of the narrative of the city history from the death of
Henry VI., we proceed to describe the final tragedy of
the old royal line, the fall of the Church which had so
completely overshadowed the city, the acclamations
which greeted the young Elizabeth, and when Elizabeth
had become an " occidental star," the rising of the clouded
days of the Stuarts. We are here chiefly concerned
with the scenes which were constantly nearest his own
* ' Grey Friars' Chronicle,' pp. 75, 80.
t Evelyn saw a woman burnt there for murder. — 'Diary,' ioth May,
1652.

288 HISTORY OF LONDON.
mind as he turned over the pages of the black-letter
chronicle of Holinshed — then among the newer books of
the day* Much that Shakespeare noticed is chiefly
interesting now because he noticed it.
The popularity which Edward IV. had obtained in
the city remained with him until his death. The exten
sion of trade, in which the king himself took part,
brought great wealth to London. I have spoken of the
English colony at Bruges, which owed its establishment
to the Yorkist alliance with Burgundy. The military
ability of Edward was equalled by his commercial
enterprise. His cruelty on the battlefield was well
balanced by his love of luxury. He wrought sad havoc,
unless he is much belied by his contemporaries, in the
hearts of the citizens' wives ; but as his policy filled their
coffers much was forgiven him. When William Har
court was mayor in 1482, the king made a great enter
tainment in Waltham Forest to the members of the
corporation. After many deer had been hunted and
killed, the citizens were feasted in a stately arbour
erected for the purpose. The same year Edward sent,
as a present to the mayoress and the wives of the prin
cipal citizens, two harts, six bucks, and a tun of wine.
When he died, in April, 1483, there was great lamenta
tion in London ; and though, shortly afterwards, his
favourite, Jane Shore, was made to do penance before
the people, it is recorded that " more pitied her penance
than rejoiced therein." f
Sir Edmund Shaw % was mayor when Edward died ;
and Richard, seeing that the best chance of success in
* Holinshed's ' Chronicle,' from which Shakespeare derived his historical
knowledge, was printed in 1577. This, the first edition, is often described ¦
as Shakespeare's Holinshed. See Lowndes, p. 1086.
t Stow's ' Annals.' t Or Shaa.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 289
his schemes lay in obtaining the favour of the city, had
him sworn of the privy council; and engaged his
brother, Dr. Shaw, a famous preacher, to "break the
matter in a sermon " at St. Paul's Cross. In this dis
course Shaw hesitated at nothing. He not only accused
the late king of bigamy, but the duchess of York, his
mother — " proud Cis " herself — of adultery ; and pro
ceeded to describe the duke of Gloucester as the perfect
image of his illustrious father. At this point in Shaw's
peroration Gloucester had arranged to appear in the
background, perhaps coming up through Dean's Yard
from Baynard's Castle, perhaps along Cheapside from
Crosby Place,* which he then rented. But by some
mistake, Shaw had finished the passage before the duke
appeared, and he ruined its effect by a repetition. The
people had been expected to cheer the duke, but they
maintained an obstinate silence. Next day an assembly,
consisting of the mayor, aldermen, and principal citizens,
was called in the Guildhall. Buckingham made them a
speech, recapitulating a few cases of oppression and
heavy taxation under the late reign, and referring to
Shaw's sermon as if he had proved the truth of his
various allegations regarding Edward and his mother.
He next dwelt upon the dangers to the realm of having
a boy-king, and ended by calling upon the citizens to
offer the crown to Richard. Again there was obstinate
silence ; and Buckingham had to try a second speech.
Even then no response was heard. The recorder, Fitz-
william, at the mayor's command, also spoke in the
same sense, but without avail. Buckingham then in-
* Shakespeare makes Richard tenant of Crosby Place as early as 1471
(' Richard III.,' act i. scene 2), but this is an anachronism. He also mentions
it in act i. scene 3, and in act iii. scene I. Richard certainly lived there
at the time of the young king's death.
VOL. I. U

290 HISTORY OF LONDON.
formed the citizens that the "lords and commons"
would have determined the matter without them, but
wished to have the city with them ; and would expect
an answer one way or other on the morrow.
The prescriptive right of London to elect the king
was thus partially allowed. The great importance which
Richard's party attached to an election by the citizens is
a very interesting feature in the story; and when we
remember that Edward IV. had been similarly chosen,
we can the better understand Buckingham's anxiety.
At last some of the protector's servants, and some of the
duke's, raised a shout at the further end of the hall, calling
for king Richard, and throwing their caps into the air.
This was enough, as no formal opposition was offered.
Buckingham assumed the unanimity of the assembly,
and invited them to accompany him on the morrow to
lay the crown at Richard's feet.
The mayor, accordingly, with the chief citizens, put
on their best apparel, and repaired to Baynard's Castle,
where the protector was lodging in the house of the
mother whom he had allowed to be so basely defamed.*
He probably thought that if things took an unfavour
able turn it would be well to be near the water's edge,
instead of at Crosby Place, where he might have been
more easily hemmed in. He affected great reluctance,
obliging the citizens to send twice before he would
admit them, and giving Buckingham the opportunity
of pointing out that he did not expect them. But once
he had accepted the offer, he did not long delay, and
made his way immediately to Westminster, going thither,
no doubt, by water, and took his seat on the throne..
The mention of Crosby Place in this narrative may
justify a brief digression. Baynard's Castle has wholly
* It is sometimes said that the deputation of citizens attended at Crosby
Place.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 291
disappeared, though Shakespeare was probably as
familiar with the one as the other. Of Crosby very
considerable remains still exist, though the house, has
passed through some strange vicissitudes, and experi
enced some very narrow escapes. Of the adjoining
priory only the "nuns' aisle" in the parish church of
St. Helen, with its window looking towards the altar
from the crypt,* now remains. When Shakespeare was
an inhabitant of the parish, f he saw it as it was left at
the suppression, only that here and there the lead was
torn from the roof, here and there a wall was battered
down, and the pleasant . gardens, of which three at least
had belonged to the nuns, were untrimmed and neglected.
Great St. Helen's must have presented a singularly
picturesque appearance to him as he entered from the
street of Bishopsgate. On his left were the priory
buildings, low, straggling, and irregular, with trees rising
in many places above the roofs. On his right was
Crosby Place, with its long row of gothic windows
looking on the churchyard, and its lofty hall towering
behind. In the midst was the church, overshadowed
and " half hidden by the foliage." %
The church of St. Helen stood here before the priory
was founded, for between 1145 and I'i50§ it was given
to St. Paul's by one Ranulf, and Robert, his son. It is
the only church of St. Helen in London, and seems to
have been connected in some way with York, since
Ranulf stipulated for the keeping in it of the anniversary
* So Malcolm describes it ('Londinum Redivivum,' iii. 554), and he
had seen a considerable portion of the Priory standing ; but from his print
it would seem that the cloister was at a lower level than the church, and
that this " squint" was in the cloister wall.
t He is assessed in the parish books in October, 1598, for 5/. 13s. nd.
X Malcolm. *
§ The date is not given, but the names of the witnesses, chiefly pre
bendaries, enable it to be fixed within five years. Newcourt, i. 363.
U 2

292 HISTORY OF LONDON.
of the great archbishop Thu'rstari, who had died in
1 140.* Half a century later f the priory was founded
by William Fitzwilliam, a goldsmith, who obtained the
advowson of the church, and gave it to the prioress.
The nuns seem to have stood in the same relation to
the dean and chapter of St. Paul's as the nuns of
Kilburn to St. Peter's, Westminster ; and one of the
deans, Robert Kentwood, knowing, or suspecting, that
things were not always conducted as they should be by
the ladies of St. Helen's, issued a series of regulations,
from which it is evident that he had cause for dis
pleasure.:]: He enjoins morning and evening service,
and silence in chapel. He forbids the admission of any
but nuns to the dormitory. He expresses anxiety as to
the character of the portress : she should be " some sad
woman and discreet." The presence of lodgers in the
house is discouraged. That it was necessary to make
these provisions for the good behaviour of the nuns is
very evident from several parts of the document. One
sentence is especially curious as giving us a somewhat
novel idea of female monastic life in the fifteenth cen
tury : "Also we enjoin you that all dancing and revelling
be utterly forborn among you, except Christmas and
other honest times of recreation among yourselves, used
in absence of seculars in all wise." This injunction
has no meaning if it does not tell us that the prioress
and her nuns were in the habit occasionally of giving
balls, and of admitting the laity to them. §
* For St. Helen, the "Empress Helena," see chap. ii. "Roman
London." t Newcourt thinks 1212 is the exact date.
X They are printed in full by Hugo, ' Last Ten Years of the Priory of
St. Helen,' and by Malcolm.
§ Mr. Hugo's materials were chiefly the same as Malcolm's, but his long
paper already quoted, which was originally contributed to the ' Transac-

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 293
The ground south of the church was leased for 99
years by the prioress, Alice Ashfeld, to Sir John Crosby
in 1466. He must have hurried on his building opera
tions considerably if they were completed in his lifetime,
as he only survived nine years, if so long, for his will
was proved in February, 1475. His rent amounted to
11/. 6s. 8d., and though he had no freehold, he seems to
have been certain of a long tenure. The house must
have been one of the most magnificent in London.
Even yet, the hall, now a public dining-room, is a marvel
of beauty. The carved oak roof rivals that of Eltham,
while the building is in far better repair. The tall oriel
illuminates the luncheons of bank clerks, and shines on
any one, however humble, who can afford to sit near it ;
but it must have given light in its time to assemblies
beside which even the famous coteries of Holland House
are as nothing. Here "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's
mother," must have entertained Ben Jonson, and may
have entertained Shakespeare. Fifty years before Crosby
had belonged to Sir Thomas More. Colet and all the
great men who gathered round the witty chancellor,
must therefore have been here, but not Erasmus, who
had left England* More's last letter, written from the
Tower with a coal, the night before his death, was
addressed to his friend Bonvisi, who had succeeded him

tions ' of the London and Middlesex Society, adds a little to our know
ledge of the history of the Priory. The nuns are said by Stow to have
been popularly called Minchons, whence Minchon, or Mincing Lane, which
belonged to the Priory. The last prioress, Mary Rowlesley, had evidently
provided for her kindred. In 1534 she granted the manor of Burston, now
called Bordeston, or Boston, to John Rowlesley, at 9/. a year, and he and
Edward Rowlesley continued to receive pensions till 1556.
* Erasmus left England in 1514. Colet died in 1519. More had
Crosby Place between 1516 and 1523, but the More household described
by Erasmus was in Bucklersbury. See Seebohm, ' Oxford Reformers.' '

294 HISTORY OF LONDON.
in Crosby Place. It is but too easy to multiply names,
and the few I have mentioned must suffice. St. Helen's
Church has been called, not without reason,* the West
minster Abbey of the city, and we may go further and
say, in the same proportion, Crosby Place is its West
minster Hall. It is the central feature in Shakespeare's
London. Six days after Bosworth, Henry of Richmond entered
the city in triumph. This was in August, and he was
received by the mayor, Thomas Hill, and the sheriffs
and aldermen, with great pomp, and conveyed to St.
Paul's, where he offered the standards he had captured,
and took up his abode in the palace of the bishop close
by. His coronation followed at Westminster at the end
of October, but meanwhile a terrible calamity had
befallen the city. " This year," says the chronicler,!
" was a great death and hasty, called sweating sickness."
The mayor died and was succeeded by William Stocker.
Six aldermen shared Hill's fate, and Stocker had only
enjoyed his new dignity for three days when he followed
his predecessor to the tomb. A third mayor was chosen
in John Ward, who, whether he was a candidate at
Michaelmas or had died in the meantime, only held the
mayoralty till the annual election, and was succeeded by
Hugh Brice, an Irishman. Thus London, in the short
space of a single month, saw four different mayors at the
Guildhall.! The reign of Henry VII. commenced with an incident
very noteworthy in the city annals. The new king in
vented a national debt. He borrowed 3000 marks, and
* By the late Dean Stanley.
t ' Grey Friars' Chronicle,' p. 24.
X Further references to this and other visitations of pestilence will be
found in a subsequent chapter.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 295
probably to the surprise of the lenders, he repaid it at the
appointed time. This judicious conduct enabled him a
few years later, in 1488, to obtain 6000/. without any
trouble, and it would have been better for his popularity
if he had continued to borrow and had occasionally paid.
But in 1491 he extorted a so-called benevolence, and
saying that he who paid most should be esteemed his
best friend, he made all his enemies. The conduct of
Empson and Dudley, his extortionate agents, is well
known. It was signalised in London by the fine of
2700/., which they imposed on Sir William Capel, an
alderman, for some imaginary infringement of a forgotten
law, but which, by the intercession of powerful friends,
was eventually reduced a half, though not till he had
been committed to the custody of the sheriff. He was
marked down for future spoliation : and the king, though
on one occasion, in a sudden fit of liberality, he released
all the debtors in London who owed forty shillings and
under, permitted the prosecution of Thomas Knees-
worth for some abuse when he had been mayor two
years before, and sent Shaw and Groves, who had
been his sheriffs, to the Marshalsea. Heavy fines only
obtained their release. When Christopher Haws, an
alderman, was apprehended on some imaginary charge,
" being a timorous man," it killed him : and in 1 506,
when the king went so far as to depose one of the
sheriffs, Johnson by name, and to put William Fitz
william * in his place, " the other," we read.t " took such
a thought that he died." Capel was made of stouter
stuff, and when a year later Empson and Dudley prose-
* This William Fitzwilliam built the church of St. Andrew Under-
shaft as we now see it. He had been recorder in the year of Richard's
accession, as mentioned above.
t ' Grey Friars' Chronicle,' p. 29.

296 HISTORY OF LONDON.
cuted him for having allowed the escape of some coiners
at the time of his mayoralty, he absolutely refused to
pay the fine of 2000/. imposed on him, and went cheer
fully to prison, first to the Compter,* and afterwards
to the Tower, where he remained till Henry's death
in 1509.
Much more serious crimes than any Haws or Capel
had committed were condoned for a money payment.
The rebels under Lord Audley threatened London from
Blackheath in 1498, and when the citizens had armed
themselves and had repaired their fortifications, the king
led them against the rebels, who were signally defeated.
A few, including the leaders, were put to death : but the
rest compounded for their lives at the rate of two or
three shillings each. Even Perkin Warbeck was not
hanged till he had made two attempts to escape from
the Tower. In this respect Henry's reign is in strong
contrast to the reigns of the succeeding monarchs of his
family. But he was not on that account the more popular
with the citizens, on whom he forced a new charter, at
the price of 5000 marks, to be paid by instalments, which
merely recapitulated some of the privileges already
granted by former kings.
The young king, Henry VIII., when he succeeded his
father in 1 509, was not yet the husband of the princess
Katharine, but on the occasion of their marriage, a pro
cession passed from the Tower to Westminster, which
must have shown the citizens, in its lavish display, how
different was their new king from his father. The
western end of Cheapside, which was known as Gold
smiths' Row, from the number of shops belonging to
that craft, was hung with gold brocade : and the civic
dignitaries took a prominent part in the day's pomp.
* Or sheriffs' prison.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 297
Henry was immensely popular, and contrived to retain
his popularity in the city to the end of his long reign.
While he was still young he came freely among the
citizens : he saw the watch march through the streets in
state on St. John's eve, and joined the May games on
Shooter's Hill. But one of his very first acts had been
to fling Empson and Dudley into the Tower, and when,
in the course of the following year, they were both
attainted by parliament, they were immediately handed
over to the headsman, and their agents in extortion were
about the same time marched in mock procession
through the city, riding backwards, to the pillory.
The inclination to severity and the disregard of
human life which marked Henry's later years had not
yet been displayed. On the contrary, he seemed to
delight in the exercise of the royal prerogative of pardon.
On " Evil May Day," as it was called, a foolish demon
stration against foreign merchants was turned by an
injudicious alderman into a riot. The apprentices had
been excited by a sermon preached by a certain Dr. Bell,
and the same day alderman John Mundy, finding some
young men playing at single-stick in Cheap ordered one
of them into custody. A rescue was attempted. The
Compter was broken open, the foreign houses were
plundered, many people on both sides were hurt, and
finally Newgate prison was assailed and some rioters
who had been arrested and shut up were set at liberty.
To add to the confusion, the lieutenant of the Tower,
Sir Roger Chomeley, fired off his guns, and by daylight
next morning all the suburbs were pouring soldiers into
the city. The lord prior of Clerkenwell came with his
knights. The duke of Norfolk summoned his guards
men. The Inns of Court sent their volunteer students.
In short, such a riot has seldom been stirred up in a

298 HISTORY OF LONDON.
single night, or so much alarm awakened with so little
known cause. Dr. Bell was sent to the Tower, where
his punning device may still be seen carved — " A Bell "
— on the wall of a dungeon.* A special commission
sat at the Guildhall to try the rioters. An immense
number were condemned, and gallows were set up at the
principal gates and in other places. Thirteen only were
hanged, and the rest, to the number of 400, including
1 1 women, were brought with ropes about their necks to
Westminster, where they were formally pardoned by the
king, cardinal Wolsey exhorting them to loyalty and
obedience. It is not easy to understand the political significance
of this event. Evil May Day is referred to long after
wards in many city documents. Ostensibly the demon
stration was against French workmen and merchants,
and especially against one Mewtas or Mottas, of whom
the Grey Friars' chronicler says that he " was an out
landish man " whom they would have slain had he not
" hid him in the gutters in his house." Ten years later,
Seymour, who had been sheriff during the riot, was a
candidate for the mayoralty, but was objected to by the
commons on account of his share in the severities
which followed, and was only elected after violent
opposition.! In these early years of Henry's reign the city was
agitated by another event. The unpopularity of the
clergy was becoming greater every year, though no stop

* By one of the most senseless of all the vandalisms to which the Tower
has been subjected in our own day, the prisoners' inscriptions in the Beau
champ Tower have all been assembled in one chamber, thus not only
destroying their historical value, but that also of the carvings which were
already on the walls.
t ' Grey Friars' Chronicle, ' p. 33.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 299
was put to the increase of chantries and other ecclesi
astical foundations. An innumerable multitude of clergy,
secular and regular, of mass priests, monks, friars, singers,
and preachers, pervaded the city. The nunneries were
crowded. Twenty-seven minoresses died of a plague in
one year at Aldgate.* The difficulty of keeping order
must have been greatly increased by the comparative
immunity of religious people. Colet, the friend of More,
of Erasmus, of Warham, of all who were good and
learned, in short, and himself a clergyman and dean of
St. Paul's, in a sermon before convocation spoke openly
of the morals of the priests. f The occasion was a
serious one. The bishop, Fitz James, was known to
have shown no mercy in his dealings with Lollards. Yet
Colet permitted daily readings in his church, and had
been heard to pin his faith to the Bible and to the
Apostle's Creed.J He catechised the young in English,
and it was notorious that many who were suspected of
heresy came to hear him. As the convocation met in
his cathedral he could not well refuse to preach to them.
Yet he hesitated. If he spoke, he knew he must speak
the truth. At last his mind was made up and he de
termined to do his duty, cost what it might. He boldly
reproved his hearers for their mode of life, their hunting
of preferment, their avarice, their pride, their lust, and
exhorted them to newness of mind. This sermon struck
the first note of the English Reformation. The bishop
would have prosecuted Colet, but archbishop Warham
ignored the charges. Henry himself, though he heard
* " This year, 1514, was great death at the Minories." ' Grey Friars'
Chronicle,' p. 29.
t See Milman, ' St. Paul's,' and Green, ii. 88.
X For further particulars as to Colet's views, see Seebohm's ' Oxford
Reformers.'

300 HISTORY OF LONDON.
from him unpalatable truths, did not hesitate to declare
" This is the doctor for me."
In the city the bishop made little way towards gaining
the confidence or affection of the people. The burnings
in Smithfield were frequent. It was dangerous to bring
a priest to justice even for the worst offences. Richard
Hunne, a respectable citizen who had been concerned in
a prosecution against a priest, was accused of heresy,
shut up in the Lollards' Tower adjoining the cathedral,
and there, after a short interval, was found dead. A
coroner's jury refused to bring in a verdict of suicide, but
accused the keepers of the prison of wilful murder. The
chancellor, Dr. Horsey, notwithstanding his indignant
denial, was suspected of having helped to kill Hunne,
and of having hung up the body so as to raise the
suspicion of suicide. The bishop, by way of screening
Horsey, made matters worse. A Wycliffite bible had
been found in Hunne's house. His body was dug up,
condemned by a mock court at which the bishop pre
sided, and actually burnt in Smithfield.
The long-continued troubles of the Wars of the Roses,
and the subsequent extortions of Henry VII. had
diverted public attention from the ecclesiastical question,
but it now daily became more and more prominent.
The clergy had laid up in men's minds a store of bitter
memories from which they could not in after years
escape. Quite apart from religious feeling every citizen
had his own grievance ; there was no family but had
suffered more or less from the extortions, cupidity, im
morality, or accusations of a priest: and nowhere in
England were the later measures of Hemy more popular
than in London, nowhere did the hatred of "super
stition " become so intense, nowhere, unfortunately, did
the enthusiasm now being awakened lead to more com-

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3°*
plete and contemptuous destruction of " massing stuff,"
of noble buildings, of gorgeous monuments,
" Of tombs
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights,"
the fathers of the city.
Under the year 1528, we have a curious illustration of
the position of the religious houses in these last days of
their existence. The chronicler,* from whom I have so
frequently quoted, tells us of the escape of a prisoner
from Newgate into the adjoining priory. He continued
seven days in the church, when the sheriff and his
officers obtained leave to speak with him. In spite of
all exhortation, he refused either to abjure the realm, or
to give himself up ; and at length, exasperated by his
obstinacy, the sheriff seized him, and took him forcibly
away. This breach of sanctuary caused the friars to
shut the church from Monday till Thursday, and " mass
was sayd and songe in the fratter." At length the
bishop of St Asaph, who lived in the house, reconse
crated the church ; but the " powre prisoner continewyd
in prisone, for they sowte all the wayes that they cowde,
but the lawe wolde not serve them to honge him ; and
at the last was delyvered and put at lyberte."
The next entry is of a different character, but inter
esting as illustrating the history of the theatre. It
relates to an actor. His name was John Scotte. He
was one of "the kynges playeres," and was put into
Newgate for " rebukynge of the shreffes." Perhaps he
presumed on his position in the royal service ; but he
lay for a " sennet " (seven-night) in gaol, and was then
led through- the city and back again ; and, finally, was
* ' Grey Friars' Chronicle,' p. 34.

302 HISTORY OF LONDON.
" delyveryd home to hys howse," but — and this gives us
some idea of what a prison must have been in those
days — "he took such a thought that he died, for he
went in his shirt."
The beginning of the end was now at hand for the
monasteries. The same year that the poor player was
done to death, a solemn farce was being enacted at the
house of the Black Friars. The two legates, cardinal
Campeggio, and his brother cardinal, Wolsey, sat on the
divorce question ; and in the autumn Wolsey ceased to
be chancellor. Shakespeare must often have visited the
beautiful hall of the Dominicans, in which he lays the
scene.* To the privileges accorded to the monastic
orders, and the odour of sanctity which hung about
places which had once been theirs, we may attribute
the very existence of the theatre in Blackfriars which
Richard Burbage built in 1575, and in which Shake
speare was a shareholder. Players had been expelled
from the city, on account of the fear of infection in large
crowds ; but the sheriff could not touch them within the
sacred precincts. And the ancient house of the Black
Friars, by its protection, repaid the poet for the immor
tality he has conferred upon itt Another scene which
occurred here might well have been dramatised. In
1524, a parliament had sat in the great hall. The names
of the city representatives have not been preserved, but
we cannot doubt that Sir Thomas More was one of
them. He was certainly a member, and was elected
speaker. The king had demanded a heavy subsidy, and
Wolsey came into the hall to advocate it J He was
* 'King Henry VIII.,' act ii. scene 4.
t The Playhouse, still commemorated in Playhouse Yard, where the
Times office stands now, was pulled down in 1655.
X Roper's ' Life of More,' p. 18.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3°3
attended by his whole retinue, his mace-bearers, his
cross, his scarlet hat, the great seal of England, and all
the state which belonged at once to an archbishop, a
cardinal, and a chancellor. The scene that ensued puts
the reader in mind of the visit of Charles I. to the
House of Commons, in 1642. More and the members,
repeatedly addressed by the overbearing Wolsey, took
no notice of him whatever. They sat silent in their
places. At length the cardinal began to perceive the
mistake he had made. He said he had been sent by
the king, who would require an answer. The silence
was surprising and obstinate. " Is it," he asked, " that
the house will only express its mind through the
speaker ? " On this More made answer, assuring the
cardinal that the members were abashed at the sight of
so great a personage. This little bit of flattery shows
the admirable tact of the speaker, who went on to say
that the chancellor's presence was not in accordance
with the ancient liberties of the house ; and that he
himself could give no reply to the demand except as
instructed by it. Wolsey was obliged to retire dis
comfited, and afterwards, in the gallery at Whitehall,
said to More, " Would to God you had been at Rome,
Master More, when I made you speaker."
The divorce took place in 1533, but already the city
monasteries had begun to feel the heavy hand of Henry.
On the nth May, 1531,* the work that was to transform
London began by the suppression of the Augustinian
canons of Eising Hospital,f a blind asylum. A few
months later the venerable priory of Aldgate % was
dissolved ; the canons dispersed to other houses, and
* ' Grey Friars' Chronicle,' p. 35.
t Afterwards Sion College.
X For an account of the foundation see above, chapter vi.

3°4 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the site given to lord chancellor Audley.* When
queen Anne Boleyn was crowned,t she passed through
the city in procession on her way to Westminster, having
two days before gone by water from Greenwich to the
Tower "with barges, the mayer, aldermen, and the crafftes,
as the mayer dothe to Westmesterwhan he takys hys othe."
Burnings and persecutions now went on with renewed
vigour. The foolish proceedings of Elizabeth Barton, a
Kentish prophetess, involved many of the clergy in de
struction. In May, 1534, "the Holy Maid," as she was
called, was drawn to Tyburn, with two monks from the
cathedral at Canterbury, two friars, and a London rector,
and all were hanged and beheaded. The bodies of the
monks % were buried in the Black Friars' church, those of
the friars and the prophetess at the Grey Friars' ; and
the parson in his own church. This was but the
beginning of executions. Three Carthusian priors, in
cluding the head of the London " Charter House," and
six monks were hanged at Tyburn, and quartered. One
of the quarters of the prior was set up at the entrance
of his own house facing into Aldersgate Street The
same year Fisher and More were beheaded on Tower
Hill ; and so what Mr. Green has well called the English
Terror was inaugurated. The pages of the Chronicle are
taken up with long lists of abbots, priors, priests, monks,
friars, noblemen, knights, and ladies, who pass in sad
procession to the gallows, the block, or the stake. In 1537
ten women and three men were hanged at Tyburn in
one day. The rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace were
tried and condemned at the Guildhall ; and after their
* He had also the site of the Charterhouse.
f On Whitsunday, May 31, 1532.
X The monks were Booking and Dering ; the friars, Rich and Risby ;
the priest, Gold. He was rector of St. Mary Aldermary.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3°5
execution their quarters were buried at the Charter
house. A single paragraph from the journal of the
Franciscan friar * will be a sufficient example of the
horrors which went on in London during the rule of
Cromwell. It tells us first of the execution at Tyburn
of six men, including the abbot of Fountains and the
prior of the Black Friars in York ; and goes on, " At that
time was drawn from the Tower after, the lady Mar
garet Bowmer (Bulmer), wife unto Sir John Bowmer,
and he made her his wife ; but she was the wife of one
Cheyny, for he sold her unto Sir Bowmer ; and she was
drawn when she came to Newgate into Smithfield, and
there burned the same forenoon."
The assumption by the king of what had hitherto
been considered the rights of the pope, in 1534, placed
the monasteries at his mercy. The early zeal of the
monks and friars had passed away. The apostles of
the New Learning wanted to spread education, and
beheld the magnificent buildings and vast estates of the
so-called religious houses with envious eyes. Cromwell
and the king had an old grudge against them for resisting
a "benevolence." Nor did any one rise to defend. them.
The whole system which it had taken so many centuries
to build up, and which had grown so vast that it over
shadowed the land, fell at a blow. In London, without
mentioning the suburbs, the suppression left vacant
great spaces of the most valuable land at what we still
call Whitefriars, "at Blackfriars, at Newgate Street, at
Smithfield, at the Charterhouse, at St. Martin's-le-
Grand, in Cheap, at the Austin Friars, at the Crutched
Friars, in the Minories, at Aldgate, at Bishopsgate, at St.
Helen's ; and, in short, on more than a dozen sites, great
* The ' Grey Friars' Chronicle,' p. 40.
VOL. I. X

306 HISTORY OF LONDON.
or small ; some of them within, some without the walls.
It is worth notice that only one abbey was in the city.*
All were priories except the house of the nuns of St.
Clare, whose abbess, as the Minoresses were a Franciscan
order, would more correctly be described as a prioress,
But many houses with mitred abbots and lady abbesses
at their head held land in London; and the fall of
Westminster, of Barking, of Bermondsey, of Battle, and
many others, some of them much further away than
these, which had owned estates in the city, contributed
to the surprising change. In 1538 the work was com
pleted, and the division of spoils began.
There were among the convents a few in which sick
people had always been received. The hospitals were not
all of this character, but a majority of them certainly
seem to have performed their duty to the poor, and their
suppression with the rest left their patients uncared for.
The city authorities, though they probably saw the ruin
of so many fine buildings and so many splendid churches,
with utter indifference, were alive to the charge which
the absence of endowments for the succour of the poor
and suffering threw upon them. A period of great
misery must have followed the suppression. No pre-
vision of any kind seems to have been made beforehand
for carrying on the good work hitherto performed at
Smithfield, in St. Bartholomew's, or at Bishopsgate, in
Bethlehem. The blind at Elsyng 'Spittle, the lame at
St. Giles's, the leprous at St. Thomas's, were thrown upon
the world. The evil was so great that, immediately on
the suppression, the mayor, aldermen and commonalty
* The " New Abbey " of St. Mary of Grace, in East Smithfield, some-
times called East Minster, was without the walls. It belonged to the
Cistercian order. The victualling office, so often mentioned by Pepvs,
afterwards stood on the site.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3°7
addressed a petition to the king praying him to grant
them four houses, which they named, for the relief of
poor, sick, and needy persons. In the general confusion,
the petition lay neglected for eight years. It is probable
however, that though no formal step was taken, the
citizens were allowed to use the hospitals, or some of
them. They asked for " Saynt Mary Spytell, Saynt
Bartylmewes Spytell, and Saynt Thomas Spytell, and
one abbey called the Newe Abbey at Tower hyll,
fownded of good devocion, by auncient fathers, and en
dowed with great possessions and rents, onely for the
relyeff, comforte, and ayde of the poore and indygent
people not beyng hable to helpe theymselffs." * In 1 544
the citizens succeeded in obtaining St. Bartholomew's.
Two years later they agreed to pay 500 marks a year to
meet a similar contribution from the king towards the
expense of providing for the poor. In the same year,
1546, they obtained, the Grey Friars', and a scheme for
the management of an extensive charity was formed by
which the church, under the name of Christ Church, was
to be made parochial ; the neighbouring parishes of St.
Nicholas Shambles and St, Ewen were to be united, and
two clergymen, one a vicar, and the other to be called the
Visitor of Newgate, were to be appointed. Early in the
following year the king made a further concession, and
the city obtained possession of Bedlam. The first years
of the reign of Edward VI. were taken up in arranging
and regulating the hospitals, and in dealing with their
endowments, committees being formed of aldermen and
common councillors, to survey and govern the charities
to the best advantage, In 1552, Sir Richard Dobbes,
* ' Memoranda, References and Documents relating to the Royal
Hospitals,' printed under the direction of the committee of the Court of
Common Council, 1836.
X 2

308 HISTORY OF LONDON.
then mayor, called all the citizens together into their
respective parish churches, " where, by the lord mayor,
the aldermen and other grave citizens, they were by
eloquent orations persuaded how great and how many
commodities would ensue unto them and their city, if the
poor of divers sorts, which they named, were taken from
out their streets, lanes, and alleys, and were bestowed
and provided for in hospitals." The result of this appeal
was so satisfactory, that in the course of the same year
the Grey Friars' convent was fitted up as a school, the
hospital of St. Bartholomew newly furnished, and the
hospital of St. Thomas, now called " St. Thomas the
Apostle," in Southwark, purchased from the crown and
repaired for the reception of " poor, impotent, lame, and
diseased people." In the following year, a further grant
was obtained of the palace of Bridewell, as a workhouse,
the endowments given by Henry VII. to the Savoy
being transferred to it, and on the 26th June, 1553,
Edward VI. signed the letters patent, formulating the
whole system of municipal charity.
Except Bridewell, all these foundations still subsist.
The conception of the public duty towards pauperism
has altered since Edward VI. gave his father's palace to
the citizens for a workhouse. " Bridewell " has become
the ordinary name throughout the country for a tem
porary prison, and its origin is hardly remembered, the
more so, as every vestige of the ancient house has dis
appeared. Some of the kings had a residence here as
early as the reign of Henry III., if not of John. The
spot can hardly have been dry land much before the
beginning of the thirteenth century. We have, however,
very few particulars of its history, and can but fall back
Upon the theory that it, like the neighbouring Savoy, was
foreshore, and so became royal property. Henry VIII.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3°9
seems to have liked the position, and to have rebuilt the
house. He and Katharine were living here when the
two cardinals sat on the divorce in the Black Friars' house
at the opposite side of the Fleet ; and when the Emperor
Charles V. was in England he lodged with the friars,
and a temporary bridge was made for his suite to pass
into their apartments in Bridewell. The city authorities
applied the palace to various uses, but it was chiefly
what we should now call a '' casual ward." * It was not
pulled down till 1863. In old views and maps, it appears
as a castellated building of some architectural preten
sions.! It was the scene of the third act of Shakespeare's
'Henry VIII.,' who, playing at the Black Friars',. had
Bridewell almost before his eyes.
The estates in the city, confiscated at the suppression,
speedily became the prey of greedy courtiers. Cromwell
himself condescended to fix upon London for the site of
a residence. Some small tenements in Throgmorton
Street, belonging to, and adjoining the house of the
Austin Friars, were pulled down, and a " very large and
spacious" mansion was erected for the vicar-general.
Stow, whose father suffered from Cromwell's tyranny,
feelingly describes the way in which the great man %
encroached on the land of his neighbours, and by the
simple process of removing their fences, or the more
complicated device of pushing back their summer-houses
on rollers, succeeded in piecing together the open space
still marked on maps as the Drapers' Garden. It was
bought by the company in 1541. Henry VIII. played at
* See view of court in Wilkinson, vol. i., and of the wretched " Pass
room," in Ackerman's ' Microcosm,' vol. i.
+ Wilkinson calls it a "western arx palatina.''
X " Thus much of mine own knowledge have I thought good to note,
that the sudden rising of some men causeth them in some matters to forget
themselves ", (p. 68).

310 HISTORY OF LONDON.
dice with Sir Miles Partridge for the bells and belfry at
the eastern end of St Paul's Churchyard, and lost them.
How he had become ppssessed of them is not very clear,
unless they were reckoned among the useless ornaments
of the church, but the tower was pulled down, and the
bells melted. This was the tower beside which the
citizens had of old so often assembled in their folkmote,
summoned by the great bell.* The site of the Charter
house was first granted to lord chancellor Audley, who
as we have seen had also Holy Trinity, at Aldgate, and
by him sold to lord North, who again parted with it to
Dudley, duke of Northumberland. St. Helen's Priory
was granted to Williams, Cromwell's brother-in-law, who,
though not in any sense his heir,f assumed the name,
and became ancestor of Oliver Cromwell, the Protector.
The site of the priory of the Crutched Friars, at the
south-east corner of Hart Street, was granted to Sir
Thomas Wyatt. The school and church of St. Thomas
of Aeon, in Cheapside, were bought for 969/., by Sir
Richard Gresham and the mercers' company, in 1541,
and the good work inaugurated by Neel in the fifteenth
century was carried on almost without a break. %
* The place of meeting of the Folkmote is defined for us by a present
ment against the dean and chapter in the fourteenth year of Edward II.,
as to the obstruction and enclosure of " quandam placeam terrae de solo
Domini Regis," 30 feet long by 20 feet wide in one part, in other 15 by 8.
The citizens contended that the ground on the east, including a new
cemetery, and the cemetery by the bell-tower, as well as the ground on the
west side, belonged to the king, and that the ground between the Cheap
Gate and St. Augustine's, was king's highway. Sir Miles, " the wych
playd wyth Kynge Henry the viiite at dysse, for the gret belfery," was
hanged on 26th February, 1552, on Tower Hill.
t Thomas Cromwell's son and heir was summoned to parliament as lord
Cromwell in the very month of his father's death. His descendants became,
in 1607, earls of Ardglass, and on their extinction in the male line, in
1687, the representation of the great vicar-general devolved on an ancestor
of the present lord de Clifford. J See above, p. 114,

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3 r r
The alteration made in the aspect of the city by means
of these changes must have been remarkable, and the
social changes must have been scarcely less enormous.
The monasteries had long ceased to inspire any popular
enthusiasm. The people feared the mass-priests, and
hated them. The friars inspired only contempt. The
Grey Friars' chronicler, whose quaint pages I have so
frequently quoted, was perhaps afraid to record his indig
nation at the destruction of so many sacred places, and
so many objects of reverence, though he does not fail to
show his pleasure when the reign of Mary brings some
of them back. But his tone throughout the reign of
Edward VI. is uniformly marked by gloom. He notes
the ruin of ancient houses, the desecration of churches,
and the non-observance of holy-days, but restrains him
self to the occasional ejaculation, " Almyghty God
helpe it when hys wylle ys," or, if a more than usually
fierce Protestant preaches at St. Paul's, cries, "What
an ironyos oppynyone is this ! " He makes frequent
mention of the successive steps by which London was
transformed during this period. In 1545, we read that
the church of the White Friars was pulled down and the
steeple of the Black Friars. " Item, thys same yere in the
same monyth (September) was the Charterhowse pulde
downe." He notices in the last month of Henry's reign,
two events, the death of the earl of Surrey, amid " grete
lamentacion," and the reopening of the church of the
Grey Friars, " and it was namyd Crystys Churche of the
fundacion of Kynge Henry the viijth." Henry was
actually on his death-bed, at Whitehall, when Ridley,
then bishop of Rochester, celebrated the reopening of
" Christ Church," in a sermon the same day at St. Paul's
Cross, in which he dwelt on the king's munificence, and
recapitulated the advantages of his tardy gift to the city,

312 HISTOR Y OF LONDON.
The very same year saw the destruction of the choir of
the church. The oaken stalls were taken out and sold.
The altars were all pulled down, and with them the altar-
tombs and the larger gravestones, and were sold for
their value as old materials — Stow says for the paltry
sum of 50/. A catalogue of about two hundred monu
ments is still extant* Two old stones, commemorating
only private persons, were found on the site fifty years
ago. The other monastic houses fared even worse. We
have already seen how the marquis of Winchester
treated the Austin Friars, f It, with the priory of St.
Bartholomew's, was spared by the Great Fire, and por
tions of the old buildings of the Minoresses were extant
till the beginning of this century.J The choir of St
Bartholomew's still stands, a magnificent example of
Norman work, but partially desecrated by the neigh
bourhood and intrusion of a factory. Some portions
of a cloister and other buildings may be made out in
the adjoining courts and lanes. Of the Black Friars'
Priory nothing is left. Of the White Friars' we have only
the name. The Mercers' chapel survived till the Great
Fire, when it consisted of a handsome nave and aisles,
with a lofty choir, quite overshadowing the little parish
church of St. Mary.
It is, perhaps, with secret satisfaction that the chro
nicler demonstrates the sinfulness ofthe people of his time,
and dwells on the punishments inflicted for various crimes.
To a contemporary, Henry Machyn,§ a cheerful under-
* Printed in ' Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica,' vol. v. See
also preface to Mr. Nichols' edition of the ' Grey Friars' Chronicle.'
t See above, chapter viii.
X They are engraved by Smith, 'Topography,' p. 8.
§ "Monser the Machyn de Henry," as he playfully describes himself
(p. 143), kept his diary, which has been printed by the Camden Society,
from 1550 to 1563.

SHA KESPEA RE'S L OND ON. 3 1 3
taker, we are also indebted for many curious particulars
of social life and street scenery. One example is men
tioned by both. In April, 1552, on Easter-even, a
woman " rod thrugh London " in a cart ; she dwelt in
Aldersgate Street, and made " aqwavyte " ; and was ex
posed for cruelty to her servant, "of the wyche the
damsell ys lyke to dee." The cruelty was depicted
above the cart on a banner painted with the figures of a
woman with a card in her hand, " such as one doth card
wool withal," and of a naked girl, whom she is repre
sented as carding — " the wyche she left butt lytyll skyn
of her " — and about her neck was hung the implement of
her misdeeds. She was finally set down at her own door,
the beadles making a proclamation of her shameful acts.
Other misdemeanours were punished with whipping, as
some girls who were idle and would not work, some im
moral apprentices, and a man for selling false rings. A
" pyller " or " post of reformacyon," is many times men
tioned, and seems to have given great satisfaction to the
authorities. It was set up on the ist June, 1553, at the
Standard in Cheap. One Sunday morning the mayor
superintended the flogging " with roddes soore on their
backes " of two young servants, who were tied to the
pillar with " a chain that they might go about it," and,
afterwards " as many as pleased the mayor."
The death of Edward took place at Greenwich, on the
6th July. The short reign of queen Jane was chiefly
signalised in the city by the cruel punishment of Gilbert
Potter, " a drauer at Sent Jones * at Ludgate," who had
spoken slightingly of the new queen's title, for which his
ears were nailed to the pillory, and afterwards "clean
cut off." His master, who had denounced him, was the
* St. John's Head Tavern; see Nichols' 'Chronicle of Queen Jane'
(Cam. Soe), p. 115.

314 HISTORY OF LONDON.
same afternoon accidentally drowned in shooting London
Bridge on his way to the Tower, where he held the place
of a gunner. Queen Mary was no sooner come to the
throne, than the Guildhall authorities gave poor Potter a
reward, and in the following year he received a grant of
land in Norfolk, which, by the way, he speedily sold.*
The Londoners, no doubt, had learned to hate the
overbearing duke of Northumberland, and many of
them had heard from their fathers of the wars of a dis
puted succession. Mary's title was accepted with more
pleasure than might have been expected by so Protes
tant a community, but there was probably by this time
a strong reaction against the excesses of the reformers,
and we cannot doubt, also, that many believed the
princess to be by no means so bigoted as her enemies
asserted. It turned out well for the Protestants in the
result. The queen was far more bigoted than her worst
enemy could have described her, and the new party
needed but the cruel persecution she so soon com
menced to restore them to their former popularity. The
new queen, " goodly imparelde," was received at Aldgate
by the mayor and aldermen, and conducted in great
state to the Tower, the crafts in their livery lining the
streets ; and as the sympathising chronicler declares, the
people's heart rejoicing at her coming in, and giving her
" God save Her Grace, and long to continue, and prosper
her in goodness ! Amen." Mary soon justified the friar's
joy. Notwithstanding his declarations, there was a
strong party in the city, which, though hating North
umberland and loyal to the queen, was not prepared for
* See the curious " Epistle of Poor Pratte to Gilbert Potter ' in the
tyme when he was in prison'" ('Chronicle of Queen Jane,' p. 116).
Northumberland is alluded to as " the beare and ragged staf," and is com
pared to the lions in the den with Daniel. Pratte's knowledge of scripture
makes " Nabuchodonosor " the king by whom he was cast in.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3J5
the complete restoration of papal supremacy. The very
first sermon preached at the Cross by one of the old
religion gave offence, though the lord mayor was pre
sent. The preacher, Bourne, the queen's chaplain, was
ultimately " pullyd owte of the pulpyt by vacabonddes,"
and a dagger flung in his face. In fact he would pro
bably have perished had not Bradford and Rogers, both of
them subsequently martyred, interfered to save him, and
he took refuge hard by in St. Paul's School. The Grey
Friar notices many such outbreaks, uniformly attri
buting them to "vagabonds" and the lowest of the
people, but it is not unreasonable to suppose many of
the same rank as Bradford and Rogers were of the same
way of thinking. He records with pleasure the return of
Bonner from the Marshalsea, " lyke a byshope," and
speaks of the welcome he received, and of the women
who pressed to kiss him, and of the joy-bells which the
people rang. The altar in St: Paul's was set up again,
with such magnificence that the work occupied a month.
Mass was performed early in October, the bishop sing
ing " in hys pontyficalibus," and at the beginning of 1554
the old procession, with the mayor and aldermen in their
robes, was renewed about the church on Sundays. Con
troversial disputations were held in " the longe chapell in
Powles," three times a week, between " the new sortte and
the olde," and there " came moche pepulle ; but they ware
never the wyser." It is pretty clear that the " new sort "
had the best of these arguments, for they were very
speedily put down by an order in council. On the occaj
sion of the coronation the daily service had to be sus
pended because all the priests not under censure for
Protestantism, or for having married, were summoned to
assist at Westminster. When the queen passed through
the city on her way, a man bearing flags stood on the

316 . HISTORY OF LONDON.
summit of the cathedral spire, a form of adornment re
peated when Philip of Spain made his entry a few
months later, and "one came downe from the chapter-
howse upon a roppe."
A procession of a different kind conducted lady Jane,
with her young husband and two of his brothers, from the
Tower to Guildhall, in November, to their trial. With
them went the aged Cranmer, and all were tried to
gether.* The old walls can never have witnessed a
sadder sight. " They all v. wher cast for to dee," says
Henry Machyn. Thomas White, the mayor, f was
among the judges, and no one can have envied him
the duty. The prisoners pleaded guilty, and confessed
the truth of the indictment against them. Sentence was
then pronounced, and they were led back as they had
come, on foot The lady Jane was dressed in black
cloth, we are told, with a velvet cap, a black velvet book
hanging to her girdle, and another book in her hand.
She was at this time but "sweet seventeen," and her
husband and his brothers were mere boys. It can
hardly have been intended that the sentence should be
executed ; but Wyatt's % ill-timed, ill-planned, and ill-
conducted rising sealed the fate of two of them.
He appeared before Southwark on the afternoon of
* Mr. Doyne Bell (' St. Peter ad Vincula,' p. 169), says, " The trial was
by special commission before the Lord Mayor (Thomas White), the Duke
of Norfolk presiding as Lord High Steward, and other peers." The
meaning of this sentence escapes me. Was the mayor included in the com
mission ? If so, how can the duke have presided ? I cannot conceive the
mayor taking a subordinate place in his own Guildhall. The point is
interesting, but Mr. Bell, though he seems to have inspected the original
documents relating to the trial, does not notice it.
+ He was the founder of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1555.
J The general history of Wyatt's rebellion does not come within the
scope of the narrative in the text. I have only inserted what concerns
London.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3J7
ist February, and remained at the bridge-foot for a
week, during which he suffered the ardour of his fol
lowers to cool. Some deserted. Some were taken and
hanged — two of them before the western door of St.
Paul's. At length he was forced to march westward, as
far as Kingston, before he could cross the Thames. If
he had possessed ordinary military ability, or had not
temporised in Southwark, no one can say what might
have happened. As it was, he marched unimpeded to
Westminster, past Whitehall, where the queen actually
lay at the time, and through Fleet Street to Ludgate.
No preparations had yet been made to oppose him. As
his men were ascending the hill an officious citizen
named Harris, a merchant tailor of Watling Street, ex
claimed, " Those be Wyatt's ancients," * and at his word
the gates were shut It is very possible that a majority
of the citizens would at least have let Wyatt in. " Some
were very angry," says the chronicler, " with Harres be
cause he spake." In short, though there was not enough
discontent abroad among the citizens to induce any one
himself to strike the blow, they would not have been
sorry to see the blow struck.
Wyatt returned towards Temple Bar, where he was
made prisoner ; and having been first conducted to
Whitehall, was sent finally to the Tower by water. The
sequel is soon told. This was 7th February. On the
1 2th, lady Jane and lord Guildford Dudley were be
headed. On the 14th, twenty of Wyatt's adherents, and
of those who had deserted from Norfolk, were hanged in
various places. On the 23rd, Suffolk, the lady Jane's
father, was beheaded on Tower Hill. Three weeks later
the lady Elizabeth, the queen's step-sister, was com
mitted to the Tower. On the nth March, Wyatt
* A very Shakespearian expression.

3 1 8 HISTOR Y OF LONDON,
himself suffered the penalty of high treason^ on Tower
Hill.* So ended this miserable business, and the Marian
persecution began. Philip II. and Cardinal Pole arrived
in the autumn. Numerous timid Protestants recanted ;
and bonfires were actually ordered throughout London
"for joy of the people that were converted." Our
chronicler observes that "this year was divers burned
in many places in England," and evidently takes as
little notice as possible of individual cases. But the last
entry in his diary is significant. " The vth- day of Sep
tember (1556) was browte thorrow Cheppesyde teyd in
ropes xxiiij tayd to-getheres as herrytykes, and soo unto
the Lowlers tower." Rogers, who had intervened to
save Dr. Bourne, was the first to suffer in Smithfield ; f
and Gardiner is said to have refused him permission to
bid his wife farewell, on the ground that priests have no
wives. This story, even if it is untrue, shows how savagely
the persecutions were believed to be carried on. We
have no occasion here to detail them.J An inundation,
a pestilence in the course of which no fewer than seven
aldermen died, and a famine which followed, added to
the general gloom. The loss of the last of England's
possessions in France was a blow deeply felt by all
classes of citizens; and Mary died in November, 1558,
leaving behind her a memory of hatred which the lapse
of three centuries did not wholly obliterate. Her per^
secution of the reformers had utterly failed to stamp out
the new religion ; but had, on the contrary, in London
* It is sometimes said that he was hanged on Hay Hill, which was then
in sight of St. James's, but though two of his men were gibbeted there, our
chronicler can hardly be wrong in making their leader die on Tower
Hill. t 4th February, 1555.
X The whole number burnt is set down at 277.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3 1 9
especially, the effect of rendering it more enduringly
popular. Of the purely civic history we know but little.
A loan was contracted in the city, in the last year of the
queen's reign, on the security of certain lands, and
interest at twelve per cent, allowed on it. The mayors
seem to have submitted to the ecclesiastical tyranny
without a murmur ; and were busied with schemes of
internal reform, especially regarding the civic expendi
ture, the old standing quarrel with foreign traders, the
regulation of their newly acquired hospitals, and the
reduction of Southwark into a " ward without."
This last-named event deserves more than a mere
passing mention. The borough, as it is so often called,
had been a constant source of trouble to the authorities
and, as we have seen, in the reign of Edward IV, some
concessions were made by which the London magistrates
obtained a certain jurisdiction over it, and were enabled
to prevent the escape of criminals across the bridge or
the Thames. But it was not until 1550 that the mayor
and aldermen obtained the complete control of South
wark. By a royal charter dated on the 23rd April in
that year, Edward VI. granted to the commonalty of
London the manor of Southwark, and all the manorial
rights annexed to it, with a criminal and civil juris
diction. For this grant* the mayor and citizens paid
647/. 2s. id., and it included a number of houses which
had belonged to Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, and
had been bought from him by Henry VIII., and the site
of the dissolved abbey of Bermondsey. These posses
sions have ever since, as the Bridge House Estate, paid
for the maintenance of London Bridge. The ancient
farm rent of 10/. yearly was still to be paid, as well as
* See ' The Charters of London,' p. 164, where the text, summarised by
Norton, p. 386, is given in full.

320 HISTORY OF LONDON.
a sum of 500 marks for the hospital of St. Thomas,
" now called the King's Hospital." The mayor, recorder,
and such aldermen as had passed the chair were to be
magistrates within the borough, and the whole was to
be held of the king " as of his manor of Greenwich, by
fealty only, and in free socage by way of service." On
receiving this charter, the court of aldermen added
another member to their number, and erected Southwark
into a ward of the liberties of the city ; and at first the
choice of an alderman was directed to be by the election
of the inhabitants.
In the reign of Philip and Mary a change was made,
and the alderman was appointed by the court of alder
men ; and the office speedily became a sinecure, which it
still remains, the senior alderman for the time being
holding it upon translation from his own original ward.
A magistrate appointed by the court presides in the
district, and a high bailiff executes the duties of a
sheriff. Southwark had probably, in the early days of the
Roman occupation, been a place of importance not
second even to London. The remains found under the
modern streets tell us of a time when the bridge foot
was a station to be protected with care. Solid founda
tions and pavements are frequently uncovered. The
boundaries of the fort are still indicated, as in the city,
by the occurrence of interments ; and the great extent of
the cemetery betrays the size of the town.* It does not
appear to be anywhere mentioned in a Saxon charter,
* The opinion' that Roman London stood on the site of Southwark is a
mere question of names. Ptolemy, it is true, places London in Cantium
(see above, chapter ii.), and Southwark may have been reckoned an
integral part of the city, and may, moreover, before the extension of the
walls, have been the larger part.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 321
but its name shows that the walls existed in Saxon
times ; and they were certainly available for the protec
tion of the bridge during the Danish invasions. They
were, however, easily destroyed by Norman William,
and Southwark probably remained a very inconsider
able place for several centuries, though it has sent
members to parliament since 1295. Richard the Clerk
and William Dynnok were returned in that year ; and
Southwark is mentioned as having two members in
1298, 1300, and later years.
The central feature of the borough was and is the
church of the priory of St. Mary " Overey," now called
St. Saviour's, which has in part Survived to our own
day among the few conventual churches left in London.
The nave was senselessly pulled down and rebuilt in
a hideous style in 1839, when many interesting features,
including a fine Norman doorway, were obliterated. The
site of the adjoining priory seems to have been occupied
by some religious foundation connected with the bridge
at a very early period, but its authentic history begins
with the year 1106, when two knights, one of whom
bore the Norman name of Pont-de-1'arche, brought in
a colony of Augustinian canons, and made Algod the
first prior. Henry I. gave them the parish church of
St. Margaret ; and shortly after they obtained the house
of Pont-de-1'arche, and other property, much of which
is still in the hands of the corporation as the so-called
"Bridge House Estate," and is devoted to the main
tenance of the fabric of London Bridge. The priory was,
however, poor at first, but after the death of St. Thomas,
it grew and prospered, being the resort of Canterbury
pilgrims, and indeed of all travellers going south. The
two parishes of St. Margaret and St. Mary Magda
lene were absorbed, and portions of the great building
VOL. I. Y

322 HISTORY OF LONDON.
assigned to the parishioners. At the dissolution the two
were legally united into a new parish of St. Saviour,
with the priory as a parish church; and it still stands,
in part at least, as it stood when, in 1607, the register
received the significant entry, "Edmond Shakespeare,
a player." The "restoration" of St Saviour's took place while
Gothic architecture was still very imperfectly under
stood, The old nave was wholly removed ; and the new
one is a building which possesses the rare characteristic of
absolute ugliness. It is, indeed, disagreeably remarkable
to the thousands, perhaps millions, who see it from one
branch or another of the network of railways which now
surrounds it. The eastern end and the transepts have
also been severely handled, but still retain traces of their
mediaeval beauty, and are crowded with interesting
monuments ; some of them, such as the altar-tomb of
John Gower, the poet, having been brought from the
demolished nave. The Lady chapel has been thoroughly
remodelled, but retains some ancient features ; and,
amid the squalor of the neighbourhood, the staring
vulgarity of the store-houses which now cover the site of
the conventual buildings, and the great heavy mass of
the brewery opposite, where once was the park of the
bishops of Winchester, it is a veritable oasis. There
was another chapel in the angle of the choir and the
south transept. It was, strictly speaking, the parish
church of St. Mary Magdalene. It shared the fate
of the nave, but was not rebuilt. A handsome Per
pendicular chapel was east of the Lady chapel, and
was also removed. In it had been buried the great
Lancelot Andrews, bishop of Winchester. His tomb
was taken down, and replaced within the existing
building. The palace of the bishops has long disap-

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 323
peared, but stood very near the church to the westward,
where the names of some of the narrow lanes com
memorate it. Clink Street, in particular, points out the
site of the prison in which the bishops confined heretics.
In the restoration of the Lady chapel care was taken to
set up the names of the Protestant martyrs of queen
Mary's time who were examined by Gardiner in the
adjoining eastern chapel, long used as a consistorial
court* The connection of William Shakespeare with South
wark is one of the most unquestionable facts in his
biography. There was a second inn called the Boar's
Head in the High Street, immediately opposite the east
end of the church.f His brother Edmond was buried in
the church in 1607. His theatre was the " Gloabe upon
Banckside," to which reference has already been made.
Close to it, but rather more to the westward, was the
Rose, another theatre. A little further in the same
direction were two "pits" for bear-baiting and bull-
baiting, and the locality is still, or was very lately,
known as the Bear Garden, and is so marked on many
maps. Another old name still extant is that of the
Falcon Dock, close to which stood the Falcon Tavern,
which is said to have been patronised by Shakespeare
and his company. Paris Garden was exactly on the
spot now covered by the southern approaches of Black
friars Bridge. If the modern visitor, therefore, wishes
to identify the place where Shakespeare played, he
cannot do better than take the train from Charing Cross
to Cannon Street, and when he has crossed the line of
* See Wilkinson's ' Londina Illustrata,' vol. i., from which an idea may
be formed as to the ruthlessness of Gwilt's " restoration.''
t Boar's Head Court has not long been taken away. It belonged to
Fastolf, the original of Falstaff.
Y 2

324 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the Chatham and Dover Railway he is in the classical
region of Bankside. Looking towards the river he will
see St. Peter's Church, immediately beyond which, a
little to the right, were the bull and bear pits. The
train then crosses the Southwark Bridge Road, on the
right-hand side of which, looking from the railway, is
Barclay and Perkins' brewery. It covers the site not
only of the Globe, but also of the Rose, the Hope, and
various other places of a similar kind which existed here
from before Shakespeare's time until all theatres were
abolished by the Commonwealth. The Globe was a
great hollow octagon, something like a modern martello
tower, but thatched. The thatch took fire in 1613, "by
the negligent discharge of a peal of ordnance close to
the south side thereof."* ' Henry the Eighth ' was
actually being played at the time. It was rebuilt on a
larger scale, and continued in occupation till 1644, when
the ground landlord, Sir Matthew Brand, pulled it down,
no doubt at the instance of the authorities/]" The other
theatres on Bankside and the bear pit were spared a few
years longer, but in 1655 the last of them was removed.
" Seaven of Mr. Godfrie's Beares, by command of
Thomas Pride, then hie sheriefe of Surry, were shot to
death, on Saterday, the 9 day of February, 1655, by a
company of Souldiers." %
The long reign of Elizabeth commenced with the
customary procession through the city. " Her Grace "
was met at Highgate by the lord mayor and aldermen
* Stow. We are not informed how the artillery came to be discharged
so near, but it may have been stage play.
t "Munday the 15 April, 1644, to make tenements in the roome of it."
MS. note in a copy of Howes' Stow, at Thirlestane House, in the Phillips
collection, quoted in the 'Academy' of October 28th, 1882 by Mr.
Furnival. X Ibid. The Blackfriars "players' playhouse," was pulled down on the
6th August, 1655, " and tenements built in the rome."

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 325
and conducted to the Charter-house, whence on several
occasions she passed through the outskirts of London
before her coronation, which was delayed, it is said, on
account of the difficulty of finding a Catholic bishop to
bless the heretic. On the 14th January, 1559, however,
she made her solemn progress from the Tower in state
to Westminster, every step of which was minutely
chronicled,* with the decorations of each street-corner
and gate, the wondrous pageants and subleties, the
dreary verses in English and Latin, the children that
" made orations," the beatitudes at the Conduit in Cheap,
and above all, the famous presentation at the door of
St. Peter's Church f of a Bible in English. In Cheapside,
we are told, her grace smiled "for that she had heard
one say ' Remember old King Henry theyhgt.' " The
citizens were charmed to see " how many nosegays did
her grace receive at poor women's hands ; how oft-times
stayed she her chariot, when she sawe any simple body
offer to speak to her grace ; a branche of rosemary geven
to her grace with, a supplication by a poor woman about
Flete bridge, was seen in her chariot till her grace came
to Westminster."
Elizabeth, like most strong sovereigns, was popular in
the city, and she retained her popularity, in spite of a
few demonstrations of the old Tudor temper, to the end
of her life. People never forgot that her great-grand
father had been a mayor.} True, there was a strong
* Allen has reprinted a scarce tract (vol. i. p. 254), which is devoted
to an account ofthe "Passage of our most dread soveriegne Lady Quene
Elizabeth through the city of London to Westminster." It was printed
by Tottill in 1559.
t St. Peter's in Cheap was not rebuilt after the Great Fire.
X Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, just a century before the queen's accession.
The citizens had good cause to cherish his memory, for he left an enormous
sum, 1000/., equal to perhaps 30,000/. in our money, to poor house
holders.

326 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Catholic party among the citizens at first, led by Sir
Thomas White,* the founder of St John's College, who,
indeed, had much cause to complain of the reformers'
zeal. In parliament, where he sat for Southampton, he
opposed the change of religion, but " to every Protestant
the Mass was identified with the fires of Smithfield,
while the Prayer-book which it displaced was hallowed
by the memories of the Martyrs. "f This, the natural
effect of Mary's ruthless persecutions, turned the citizens
into vehement Protestants, and it did not wholly lose
its influence for a hundred years. The excesses of the
Puritans in the time of Charles I. and the Common
wealth turned popular feeling a different way, but
from 1558 to 1658, or from the accession of queen
Elizabeth to the death of Oliver Cromwell, London
was animated with a religious fervour which prevailed
over every political or civic feeling such as had pre
viously moved them.
Commercial enterprise took a new direction from the
extension of English naval power. "Merchant ad
venturers" formed companies and obtained charters. J
Trade with Flanders flagged when Alva ruined Antwerp ;
but the refugees brought with them fresh ideas and
aspirations, as well as fresh methods of business. The
Royal Exchange, which Elizabeth opened in 1570, was
an avowed imitation of the bourses of the Low Countries.
The old traditions of a guild merchant were uncon
sciously revived in it, though Sir Thomas Gresham had
no idea that he was superseding one of the most ancient
institutions of his city. The next movement, that which
* Mayor at the trial of the lady Jane, in 1553. See above, p. 316.
t Green, ii. 303.
X The company of so-called Merchant Adventurers obtained their first
charter from Henry VIL, and that from Elizabeth in 1564, the Turkey
Company in 1579, and the East India Company in 1600.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 327
resulted eventually in the formation of the Bank of
England, took its rise about the same time, and Sir
Thomas Gresham, at the sign of the Grasshopper in
Lombard Street, was one of the first goldsmiths who
began to develop into bankers.* As the trade of
Flanders died away under Spanish oppression, that of
London increased, and in the markets of the city "the
gold and sugar of the new world were found side by side
with the cotton of India, the silks of the east, and the
woollen stuffs of England itself't The queen's statue
in the Exchange was an acknowledgment of the helps to
trade which her policy afforded ; and her punctual pay
ment of crown debts, and abolition of benevolences and
such illegal exactions, coupled with the reform of the
coinage, gave general satisfaction. The steady support
of the city undoubtedly tended to strengthen her govern
ment. Money, ships, and men were forthcoming at
every emergency. In fact, the citizens were far more
inclined for war than the queen herself ; and when the
generation that had lived under Mary, and had breathed
the air of Smithfield reeking with the smoke of human
sacrifices, began to pass away, a little of the old tem
perament showed itself again. In 1586 the whole city
was illuminated, bonfires blazed at every corner, tapestry
was hung on many a house-front, bells were rung, the poor
were feasted, and all because Babington's conspiracy had
been detected and Mary Stuart condemned. The queen
wrote a letter of thanks to the mayor on the occasion,
and the demonstrations of joy were repeated a little

* See Mr. Price's 'Handbook of London Bankers,' p. 66. Messrs.
Martin and Co., 68, Lombard Street, occupy the site of the Grasshopper,
and claim to represent the original firm. The sign was abolished in 1770,
and lost in 1794. (See below, chapter xiii.)
t Green, ii. 389.

328 HISTORY OF LONDON.
later when news came of the final tragedy at Fother-
ingay.* The military and naval preparations to oppose the
Armada were watched by the citizens with anxious eyes.
Elizabeth asked London for fifteen ships and five
thousand men. To this demand the citizens replied
with thirty ships and ten thousand sailors, while the
trained bands, to the number of ten thousand more,
paraded each evening at the Artillery Ground \ in
Spital Fields. We may be sure that all London poured
out by river and road to the famous review at Tilbury,
and when the flotilla of Philip was finally defeated,
Elizabeth attended a solemn service in St. Paul's on the
24th November, 1588. She was conducted from the
choir to a closet made on the north wall of the church,
whence she could hear the discourse of bishop Pierce of
Salisbury, at the Cross, and she afterwards returned
through the church and dined in London House with
bishop Aylmer. Seven years later, also in November, a
special service of thanksgiving was held for the queen's
long reign, when bishop Fletcher, who had succeeded
Aylmer, preached a sermon in praise of Elizabeth.}
When at length she died, the grief of the citizens was
marked by the most lively tokens. Monuments were
erected to her memory in the churches, with epitaphs in
which her virtues were set forth in language worthy of
* There are notices of these events in nearly every city register. See
Smith's 'Topography,' p. 51.
f Artillery, it is hardly necessary to observe, originally meant archery.
The history of the Honourable Artillery Company is very interesting.
The Guild of St. George which presided over it, was instituted by James^I.
in spite of the statute of Edward VI., and is perhaps the only guild besides
the guild merchant now existing.
} Sparrow Simpson, 'Old St. Paul's,' p. 227. Aylmer died in 1594,
and Fletcher was appointed in the following year, that of the thanks
giving.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 329
Euphues.* When her funeral passed to Westminster
there was " such a general sighing, groaning and weeping,
as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory
of man, neither doth any history mention any people,
time, or state, to make like lamentation for the death of
their sovereign." |
Such were the personal relations of Elizabeth and the
citizens. Of the political history of London during her
reign there is less to tell. We have on several occasions
outbreaks of apprentices, but it is impossible to assign
any great meaning to them. As in all oligarchical periods
the lower classes were more or less oppressed. Though
the mayor and aldermen were much engaged in the
regulation of the charities, pauperism increased to an
alarming extent Sturdy beggars, who gave themselves
out as disbanded soldiers from the wars in Flanders,
infested every road, and in 1593 the evil grew to such a
height that the mayor was commanded to suppress it
within three miles of London. Rioting, in which the
apprentices were but too willing to join, ensued, and in
the very year, 1595, which saw the rejoicings for
Elizabeth's long reign, five unhappy wretches were con
demned for sedition at the Guildhall, and were hanged
upon Tower Hill. Among such fiery materials the
authorities had no difficulty over and over again in
finding soldiers, and on one memorable occasion the
lord mayor and aldermen being at service in St. Paul's
received a message from the queen asking them to raise
a certain number of men for immediate service. Before
night a thousand were enrolled, being chiefly, no doubt,
* Many sets of these verses are in Stow's ' Survey.' These monuments
were set up also in many country churches. I have observed that for some
unexplained reason they are nearly as obnoxious as hatchments to restorers,
and few of them survive.
t Howe's Stow.

33° HISTORY OF LONDON.
impressed from the casual wards and the streets, and
were so rapidly equipped that the next morning they
were ready to march for Dover. Their services, as it
turned out, were not required, and they were dismissed
to their homes, as many, that is, we must suppose, as
had homes, within twenty-four hours. Essex, in his silly
attempt at the close of Elizabeth's reign, reckoned on
the assistance of one of the sheriffs, who commanded a
force of a thousand trained-band men, but while he was
demanding " munitions of war '' from the armourers in
Gracechurch Street, Burghley had proclaimed him a
traitor in Cheapside. It is curious to note the appear
ance of the bishop once more among the civic dignitaries
on this occasion. When Essex attempted to return
to his house at the Outer Temple, the bishop, we are
told, had posted a number of men at Ludgate to oppose
him, and so effectually that having had a drink in Friday
Street, perhaps at the classic Mermaid, which must
have been well known to his companion, Southampton,
he turned back, St. Paul's Chain was lifted up to let him
pass, and he descended to Queenhithe, whence he took
his way home by water.
This event, of little importance in the city annals, is
yet the turning point in the career of Shakespeare.* He
was the friend of the seditious earls. He may have been
implicated in their insurrection. Certain it is that their
fall, the death of Essex, the imprisonment of South
ampton, the banishment of Pembroke,! left an indelible
mark on his mind. He had prospered in London. His
subordinate share in Burbage's Theatre at Blackfriars
* See Mr. Stopford Brooke's ' Primer of English Literature,' p. 99.
t Whose mother, "learned, good, and wise," is immortalised in Ben
Jonson's epitaph. She lived in Crosby Place. See above p. 290; and
Mr. Rendle on the Globe Playhouse, Harrison's ' England ' (New Shak
spere Society), part ii., appendix i.

SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON. 3 3 1
had blossomed into the proprietorship of the Globe,
which had been built in 1599 on the opposite bank.
He had made money and fame. He had paid his
father's debts, and bought an estate in his native town.
Essex was beheaded in the Tower on the 19th February,
1 601, and the populace of the city, though they had
declined to join his standard, showed their sympathy by
waylaying the headsman and beating him as he returned
homeward from performing his hideous task. From this
melancholy year a change comes over the spirit of the
poet. 'Julius Caesar' was published in 1601, "and we
may have scattered through the telling of the great
Roman's fate the expression of Shakespeare's sorrow for
the ruin of Essex." The times, as Hamlet, whose tragedy
next appeared, asserts, were "out of joint." It is im
possible not to see the queen's old age and impending
death reflected in many ways. We are reminded of the
old age of Edward III. Shakespeare was already
" aweary of the world," and in the five years that follow
he wrote the more melancholy of his plays, ' Othello,' for
example, and ' Lear,' and dwelt on " the darker sins of
men, the unpitying fate which slowly gathers round and
falls on men, the avenging wrath of conscience, the
cruelty and punishment of weakness, the treachery, lust,
jealousy, ingratitude, madness of men, the follies of the
great, and the fickleness of the mob,"* and as the
" bright and occidental star " of Elizabeth's life sank at
length in gloom, his genius reflects the universal sadness
with which the new era of the Stuarts was ushered in.
* Brooke, p. 100.

( 332 )

CHAPTER XI.
THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE.
There was no part of the kingdom more inclined than
London to acknowledge peaceably the accession of
James I. Amid the popular lamentation for Elizabeth
the heralds proclaimed her successor in Cheap and at
the other accustomed places, and four days afterwards
the new king sent to thank the lord mayor for "his
great forwardness in that just and honourable action."
The favour of the city, as James probably knew, was
worth having, and he hastened to offer it "hereby a
taste of our thankful mind for the same." The lord
mayor and aldermen met the king on his arrival at
Stamford Hill, having sent one of the sheriffs as far as
Waltham. The other sheriff was ill, and indeed London
was never so unhealthy as then. It was computed that
more than thirty thousand deaths occurred that year
from plague alone. The building of houses in the
suburbs was forbidden, as it had already been by Eliza
beth, players were silenced, and Bartholomew Fair
suppressed. But James very prudently stopped when
he had reached the Charterhouse, and deferred his first
visit to London till the plague was stayed — about a year
later. The loan of 60,000/. on the one side, the indiscriminate
bestowal of knighthood on the other, and the disputes
about precedency which ensued ; the confirmation by
charter of the Thames Conservancy ; the settlement of

To ftoe p 3BZ

Londoix: Edward Stanford. 55 Charing Cross.

Stanford* Gooy? Smabt

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 333
the question of metage, and the cleansing — for the
last time — of the old fosse round the walls, are the
chief civic events of the first years of the seventeenth
century. In 1609, James was made free of the cloth-
workers' company, to the great envy of the merchant
taylors, who at a grand entertainment showed him re
proachfully the roll of kings, princes, archbishops, and
dukes that had belonged to their fraternity. They had
to be satisfied with Prince Henry, who was immediately
enrolled, and presented with a purse of gold, which so
pleased the boy that he called upon all his attendants to
follow his example and join the ranks of the company.
It is strange to observe continued proclamations against
the increase of buildings. The city being overcrowded
it might have been thought that an extension of suburbs
would have been a safeguard against the frequent visita
tions of the plague ; but these proclamations were con
stantly issued at intervals even by Oliver Cromwell,
and offenders punished in the Star Chamber, without
any effect, except to drive settlers to the remoter villages,
such as Islington, Greenwich, or St. Marylebone, and to
render the overgrown town more unwieldy still. Two
slight rectifications of the city boundaries (in reality con
sequent on the changes caused by the suppression of
the monasteries) may be noted here, as probably the last
additions of jurisdiction which London received. As far
back as 1570 a dispute which arose as to the lord
mayor's right to exercise his authority in the new district
now springing up about Ely Place in Holborn was
settled by an acknowledgment that the precinct was
within the city.* Similar disputes had constantly taken
place as to the sites of the suppressed religious houses,
and in his second charter king James surveys and defines
* See further on this subject in vol. ii. chapter xx.

334 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the city jurisdiction. The places named are the "late
dissolved priory of the Church of Trinity, near Aldgate,
commonly called Creed Church Street, or the Duke's
Place,-"* St Bartholomew's, Smithfield; the "late dis
solved house or priory of Preaching Friars within and
at Ludgate, London, commonly called Black Friars ; and
also the late dissolved house or priory of Friars of the
Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel,
called White Friars ; and also the inn or liberty of Cold
Herberge, otherwise Cold Harburgb, and Cold Herburgh
Lane." Yet the inhabitants of these precincts were
specially exempted from the payment of certain taxes,
and from the duty of holding certain civic offices, so
long did the old "odour of sanctity" hang about the
" rookeries from which the birds had been chased."
An anecdote, which is probably authentic, gives us
some idea of the estimation in which the shrewd citizens
held their Scottish king.f James was displeased because
he could not obtain the loan of a sum of money which
he wanted. " Being somewhat transported, he said that
he would remove his own court, with all the records of
the Tower, and the courts of Westminster Hall, to
another place, with further expressions of his indignation.
The lord mayor calmly heard all, and at last answered,
' Your Majesty hath power to do what you please, and
your city of London will obey accordingly; but she
humbly desires that when your Majesty shall remove
your courts, you would please to leave the Thames
behind you.'"
The temper of the citizens was indeed changed. The
* See Maitland, i. 291.
t Howell's ' Londinopolis,' p. 19. He tells the story with evident
pleasure, but qualifies it in the index as "A factious saying of the Lord
Mayor's to King James." He does not give the lord mayor's name.

by John Banlrjs.

lotace p. 33&.

uilding.s iij?ar y Temple Gate in Fleetjrr.

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 335
influence of Protestantism acting on two successive
generations, and the spread of a certain smattering of
learning, coupled with that self-conceit which always
characterises the newly educated, must have inclined the
Londoners of this period to the dogmatic views in
religious matters which such moderate counsellors as
Whitgift, or Hooker, or Fuller endeavoured in vain to
direct. We have a full picture of this aspect of the
times in the almost contemporary works of Izaak Walton,
who was a wholesale linen merchant at the corner of
Chancery Lane, and who, through his mother, a Cranmer,
and his wife, a Ken, was connected with several bishops,
and acquainted more or less intimately with the history
of every eminent- churchman of his own time, and the
generation before his. Of none is his portrait more
complete than of Hooker. The great controversy with
Travers raged chiefly in the Temple opposite Walton's
own abode.* Hooker had been appointed Master in 1 585,
before Walton was born, and had died at Bourne in 1600,
before Walton came to live in Chancery Lane ; but when
he wrote of the generation before his own, he had the
scene before his eyes,, and when he mentioned the reli
gious controversies of their day, it was not without
reference to those of his own.
Walter Travers, though he was connected by marriage
with Hooker's family,! had been his rival for the master
ship, and when he was disappointed had shown his Chris
tian temper by using the subordinate post of lecturer to
preach against the opinions of his superior. The lawyers
took sides, and, indeed, the whole town, where, as Walton
* There is a contemporary view of the Temple Gate. See the accom
panying reproduction.
t John Travers, Walter's brother, married Alice, sister of Richard
Hooker. (' Herald and Genealogist,' iii. 27.)

336 HISTORY OF LONDON.
says, even the shopwomen were keen controversialists.
Hooker, in a sermon preached several years before at
St. Paul's Cross, had made use of expressions with regard
to predestination which differed strongly from those held
by a majority of the citizens, and Travers had the support
of many people of all ranks. The contest was carried
on at every opportunity, Travers frequently in the after
noon combating the opinions expressed by Hooker in
the forenoon.* There was no regular rupture between
the two, and neither party forgot the rules of courtesy,
yet there is something unseemly, to our modern ideas at
least, in the whole dispute It had, however, one result
which none can regret the composition by Hooker of his
book on ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' a work which probably
more than any other influenced the settlement of the
Church of England under Elizabeth. In 1592 it was
registered at Stationers' Hall as consisting of eight books,
and the first four were published in 1594. A year later
Hooker's connection with the Temple ceased, on his
appointment to the rectory of Bishopsbourne, near
Canterbury. Since Hooker's time everything at the Temple has
changed, except perhaps the Middle Temple Hall, which
was built in 1572, and has not been substantially altered,
having been spared by the Great Fire of 1666, as
well as by meddling treasurers since, except that the
exterior stonework was renewed in the middle of the last
century.t In 1601 a play of Shakespeare's ('Twelfth
* " Hooker, it was said, preached Canterbury in the forenoon, and
Travers Geneva in the afternoon. The Benchers were divided." — Cun
ningham, ' Handbook,' ii. 802.
t The httle fountain had associations of its own, and was made the
background of one of Dickens' most pathetic scenes. But the vulgar
horror of age and quaintness which has ruined so much else in the Temple
has transformed it within the past few years, and it retains now no more

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 337
Night ') was acted here, and the great dramatist, by an
anachronism, makes it a rendezvous of Falstaff and the
Prince.* Of the other buildings there is nothing left to
recall Hooker. I have already spoken of the chapel, in
which not a trace of old work has been permitted to
remain. It would have been interesting to see the pulpit
from which Hooker and Travers alternately expounded
the doctrines of the Church and of dissent. Pepys
records a visit to " the Temple Church, looking with
pleasure on the monuments and epitaphs"! which the
fire had spared, but which were removed almost in our
own day.f Among them were tablets to the memory of
a son of Coke and of a daughter-in-law of Littleton, who
was honoured by an epitaph containing the well-known
couplet — " For while this jewel here is set
The grave is but a cabinet."
All religious questions were fiercely debated in the city
at this time, and the tendency of a majority of the
citizens was undoubtedly towards the Genevan doctrine.
This was in part caused it is probable by the apathy of
the clergymen who enjoyed city livings. They held
preaching to be no part of their duty. True, before the
Reformation preaching had been rare in a church, and
after it preachers' mouths were closed by the strict en-*
forcement of the power of licensing. But had the in
cumbents of the city livings exerted themselves in this
particular during the reign of James and the early years

beauty or picturesqueness than if it belonged to a nursery garden or a
suburban villa.
* ' Henry IV.' part i. act iii. scene 3.
t Oct. 22, 1666.
J They are now, at least those which have survived, under the bellows
of the organ. The church before it was completely altered is described in
' The Churches of London,' by Godwin and Britton, vol. i.
VOL. I. Z

33§ HISTORY OF LONDON.
of Charles, the very strong part taken by the citizens in
the subversion of the Church might have been modified
if not prevented. As it was, preachers were appointed
in many parishes. Preaching or lecturing seldom took
place on Sunday.* The parishioners paid the lecturers'
salaries, and the rectors were in many cases obliged
therefore to leave to them the choice of suitable persons.
In the result, as might have been and probably was
foreseen, the lecturers became practically the parish
parsons ; and though archbishop Laud made a vehement
attempt to abolish them, they held their ground, and
under the Commonwealth completely supplanted the
rectors. The famous ' Book of Sports ' found no favour
with them, and the first open difference between the
court and the city broke out when the lord mayor
stopped the king's carriages as they were being driven
through the streets during the hours of divine service.
James was bitterly enraged, and inquired how many
kings there were in England besides himself. But the
mayor, George Bolles, submitted with a protest, and
similarly, in 1623, Sir Martin Lumley obeyed an arbitrary
command of the king, who came himself to the Guild
hall to reprimand the citizens for an insult to Gondomar,
the Spanish ambassador. A wretched fellow was actually
"arrested and whipped through the city merely for making
disrespectful remarks.
When James had been five years upon the throne,
there was born in the very midst of the city, nay in the
very midst of Cheap, a child who, though his life has
little to do with the history of London, must yet be
* At St. Margaret's, Lothbury, in 1583, Mr. Alexander Shepherd pro
posed to preach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but the parishioners preferred
Sunday forenoon and Thursday night. Parish Books, quoted by Mr.
Freshfield, 'Archaeologia,' xiv. 67

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 339
mentioned as one of whom citizens have the greatest
reason to be proud. In Bread Street, in 1608, every
house must have had its sign, as the idea of numbering
the doors had not yet occurred to anybody. Among the
signs was one very like a coat-of-arms. It represented
a spread eagle, and was, indeed, the bearing of an old
but decayed family named Milton. Its head at this time
was a scrivener — " an ingenious man," says Aubrey, who
'•delighted in music and composed many songs now in
print, especially that of Oriana." He loved his son's
pursuits, and encouraged him to make verses while still
quite a boy, as the poet himself says* —
" In close affinity, we sympathize
In social arts and kindred studies sweet."
The boy loved the play, and in his poems are many
allusions which show him to have been fond even of
comedy ; but the most distinct point to such tragical
pieces as ' Romeo and Juliet,' or ' Hamlet' Above all,
however, he loved London, and
" . . . . the busy hum of men,
Where throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumph hold,
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence and judge the prize."
The tournaments close by in Cheap were not yet wholly
forgotten. He was able to call them up, and many
another scene which the Great Fire obliterated for us.
Had it been healthy, London must indeed have been a
city which a man could love —
" Too blest abode ! no loveliness we see
In all the earth, but it abounds in thee."

* In a Latin poem 'Ad Patrem,' translated by Cowper, and quoted
with other notices, in Knight's ' London,' ii. 98.

Z 2

34° HISTORY OF LONDON.
And one of his finest sonnets is written in apprehension
of an assault upon the city —
" Captain, or colonel, or knight in arms,
Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
If deed of honour did thee ever please,
Guard them, and him within protect from harms."
Milton was living at this time in Aldersgate Street. He
afterwards removed to "Mr. Russell's, in St. Bride's
Churchyard," and during the Commonwealth he had a
house on the south side of St. James's Park, into which
he had a private door, so as conveniently to attend on
Cromwell at Whitehall. At the restoration he took
refuge in St. Bartholomew's Close, which, perhaps, of all
Miltonian localities, so to speak, is the least altered.
' Paradise Lost ' was composed in the rural Holborn, or
the completely civic Jewin Street, and he died in the
parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, at a house which used
to be pointed out long after, very near the melancholy en
closure of Bunhill Fields. A monument to his memory
exists in the parish church, where his grave was found
and examined in 1790.*
The reign of Charles I. opened with every omen
against it. The plague raged so violently that the cus
tomary procession through the city was omitted, as was
the public reception of queen Henrietta Maria on her
arrival from France. Parliament for the same cause was
adjourned to Oxford. To add to the miseries of the
citizens, it soon became known that the king had even
more overbearing ideas than his father, and a resolute
opposition was organised among the commons when
Charles attempted to exact a loan of 100,000/. It was
absolutely refused, and the imprisonment of a number
of those citizens who were known to have taken part in
* See Knight, &c.

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 341
the refusal only embittered the quarrel and confirmed
the opposition. When a parliament was called in 1628,
the king had the mortification to see no fewer than
twenty-seven of his prisoners returned as members for
various places.* Ship-money was also stoutly refused,
and had the city mob not given legitimate cause of
offence on one memorable occasion, the whole history of
the reign of Charles in London would be comprised in
a list of lawless exactions and lawful resistance. But
the murder of Doctor Lamb cannot in any way be de
fended. The wretched man was looked upon as one of
the principal instruments of oppression, and in June,
1628, he unfortunately ventured into the city, where
being recognised he was set upon by the rabble, dragged
about the streets, beaten and kicked until death released
him from their hands. The king came himself to the
rescue, but in vain. The mob loudly declared that they
had judged him and found him guilty, and Charles had
to return insulted and baffled. An order from the
council to the lord mayor and sheriffs to bring the
rioters to justice produced no effect. They were then
summoned to Whitehall and threatened with the con
fiscation of their charter, but persisted in reporting that
the murderers of Lamb could not be found. Four years
afterwards, however, in 1632, some of them were appre
hended ; but the king had meanwhile imposed a fine on
the citizens, and from this time on there was no truce
between London and Charles. Each year saw some
aggravation of the king's oppressive conduct. Ship-
money, tonnage, and poundage were imposed with the
utmost rigour. Vassall, a wealthy merchant, who re-
* Allen, i. 336. The general history of this miserable period is so well
known that I confine myself in the text to the most prominent points and
of those to what concerns the city only.

342 HISTORY OF LONDON.
sisted, and defended his refusal before the barons of the
exchequer, was condemned and imprisoned. But one
merchant who happened to be a member of the House
of Commons was more successful. John Rolle, a Cornish-
man, was in business in the city. He refused to pay the
illegal tax, and his goods were seized by officers of the
customs. The house took up the question, and, after
several adjournments, voted (while the speaker was
forcibly held in the chair), that Rolle "ought to have
privilege both in person and goods."
Charles issued writs for ship-money in 1634, and the
citizens protested in the most solemn manner, but in
effectually. Rightly or wrongly, they believed that
Strafford meditated "a plundering of the city, and
putting it to fine and ransom," and it was currently
reported that he had threatened to hang some of the
aldermen. The discovery of this so-called army plot
sealed his fate. Twenty thousand citizens petitioned the
House of Lords against him. A mob attacked the
residence of the Spanish ambassador in Bishopsgate,
and the lord mayor could with difficulty protect it.
The professional preachers fanned the flames with
violent diatribes against the fallen minister, and six
thousand citizens presented themselves at Westminster
and clamoured for justice. When the Bill of Attainder
had been passed, the hesitation of Charles was overcome
by similar means, and the earl's execution on Tower
Hill was made the occasion of open rejoicings, and was
observed almost as a public holiday. The bells of the
churches rang out, and when evening came on bonfires.
blazed in many of the streets.
The king, to whom his greatest enemies never im
puted a want of personal courage, who in the worst of
times refused the services of a body-guard, and had once,

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 343
as we have seen, faced a howling mob of the lowest class
of the city, now took a more extraordinary, and in some
respects a still more courageous step. His attempted
seizure of the five members in the House of Commons is
well known. Defeated in this design, and well aware
that the prey he sought had taken refuge among the
citizens, he boldly drove to the Guildhall,* having
previously ordered a meeting of the common council to
be convened. He made them a speech, demanding the
apprehension of the accused members, and taking the
opportunity of assuring his audience of his attachment
to the Protestant religion, which he promised to defend
against " Papists and separatists." To this speech he
obtained no answer. The sheriffs, indeed, received his
commands with respect, but that was all. He dined
with one of them, " who was of the two thought the least
inclined to his service." \ In the afternoon he returned
to Whitehall in his coach, surrounded by an indignant
crowd of the citizens, who vociferated "Privilege of
Parliament," as he passed. Five days went by without
any return to the writs he had issued to the sheriffs, and
with gradually growing rumours that the trained bands
of the city were about to escort the five members % t6
Westminster in triumph, and to constitute themselves
" guardians of the parliament, the kingdom, and the
king." But Charles had no mind to such protection.
On the ioth he left Whitehall for Hampton Court, and
the following day the sheriffs conducted the five
members to Westminster by water, guarded by forty
long boats armed with small pieces of ordnance, and
gaily decorated with flags. The sheriffs were called in
* 3rd January, 1642.
t Clarendon, 'History,' vol. i. See Green, iii. 214.
X They had been lodged very openly in a house in Coleman Street, and
daily visited by members of parliament and the chief citizens.

344 HISTORY OF LONDON.
and publicly thanked by the House of Commons, and
an indemnity passed for their conduct. Two companies
of the trained bands were then told off for constant duty
at Westminster ; and custody of the Tower and its
stores was given to the civic authorities.*
Meanwhile, the king on his side making preparations
for war, the commons ordered the " Militia of London "
to train and exercise themselves daily in various open
places not more than three miles from the city. The
lord mayor, Sir Richard Gurney, was suspected of a
leaning towards the court party. When the parliament
asked the city for money, he received a letter from the
king bidding him to warn the citizens of his displeasure
in case they should comply with the demand. On this
the parliament issued a counter-proclamation, and the
lord mayor was actually arrested, arraigned before what
remained of a house of peers, deprived of his office,
declared incapable of ever holding it again, and com
mitted to the custody of his own sheriffs in the Tower.
The king, having declared war on the 22nd August, and
having commenced his march on London, a prodigious
crowd, which included even women and children, as
sembled to make a new fortification. Charles, after the
undecisive battle of Edge Hill, continued his advance
and occupied Brentford on the 12th November, after a
sharp fight in which the forces of the parliament were
defeated. The approach of peril nerved the citizens to
greater exertions. The trained bands showed such a
formidable front that the king retired first to Reading
and then to Oxford. Shops were shut and apprentices
enrolled, proclamation being made that when their
services were no longer required the masters should
* It is asserted that Charles carried off the contents of the Mint — the
property of the goldsmiths — on this occasion, amounting to 200,000/. See
Price, ' Handbook of London Bankers,' p. 61.

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 345
reinstate them in their former places. The new mayor,
Pennington, was devoted to the cause of the parliament,
and during the winter the inner wall was strengthened,
and a fresh line of defence completed.
This new fortification consisted of earthworks with
forts at various points. It took in both the city and
Westminster, and the suburbs as far as Shoreditch on
the north and St. George's Fields on the south. East
and west it extended from Hyde Park to Mile End and
the Lea. Redoubts were made at Hackney, where not
long ago some remnants of the banks might still be
seen ; at the upper pond of the New River ; * at the
Islington pound ; at Southampton House in Holborn
where probably Castle Street may commemorate it ; at
St. Giles' ; at the east end of " Tyburn Road," close to
what is now Rathbone Place ; and at the head of
Wardour Street. On the western side a large earth
work was long known as " Oliver's Mount," and is com
memorated by the name of Mount Street, Grosvenor
Square. At Hyde Park Corner, at Tothill Fields, and
various places on the south side of the Thames were
similar structures.
To the expenses of the war the city, which had
grumbled at the comparatively small exactions of the
king, cheerfully contributed, the sum of 10,000/. a week
being demanded by the parliament and paid by the
citizens. The discovery of a plot formed by Sir Nicholas
Crisp, a former civic dignitary, for seizing the city, gave
rise to fresh exertions, as did a futile proclamation by
the king fulminated from Oxford, in which London was
placed under a kind of interdict. The answer of the
citizens f was the expenditure of 50,000/. more in
* See below, p. 357.
t " The city of London was the very soul of the cause." — Maitland, i.
380, where even the speeches at the civic banquets may be found in full.

346 HISTORY OF LONDON.
improvement of the fortifications and other defenceSj
and an almost riotous concourse of the people at West
minster to petition the parliament against any recon
ciliation with the king. The common council desired
the city companies to collect and lend 500,000/. to the
parliament, and sent six regiments to raise the siege of
Gloucester. More money and more men were forth
coming when required, and there can be no kind of
doubt that the determined attitude of London decided
the great civil war. Charles learned, when it was too
late, what a glance at history might have told him long
before, that the side of London was eventually the win
ning side in every struggle : and that in oppressing the
citizens he had ruined his own cause. The relief of
Gloucester, mainly achieved by the trained bands, was
the " turning point of the war." *
The citizen soldiers were not, it is true, always vic
torious. At Newbury, Essex was utterly routed, but
the Londoners mustered strongly again under Man
chester at Naseby, and on the 19th June, 1645, five days
after that decisive victory, both houses of parliament
attended a thanksgiving service in the old church of the
Grey Friars,f and afterwards dined with the citizens at
the Grocers' Hall, in the Poultry. After dinner all joined
in singing the inspiriting words of the great psalm { of
trust and triumph which Luther had used on similar
occasions, "God is our refuge and strength: a very
present help in trouble."
So ended the war, as far as the king was concerned.
London had now to reckon with the army. The sub
mission of Charles was offered to the lord mayor,
aldermen, and commons. He expressed his willingness
to comply with the demands of the parliament in every-
* Green, iii. 226. t Christ Church, Newgate Street. { Psa. xiv

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 347
thing, "for settling truth and peace." But it was too
late. Whether he was sincere or not, both parliament
and city had lost the power of accepting his surrender,
They had called a monster into existence, and were at
its mercy. A tumult, raised in all probability by dis
banded royalist soldiers, gave Fairfax occasion to occupy
London. The insurgents were encountered near the
Leadenhall, and put to the rout. The soldiers were
now masters of the city. The battle of Cornhill, as it
may be called, though little known in history, had
momentous consequences.. Soon after the arrival of the
army a demand of 50,000/. was made upon the citizens.
They could not, or would not comply, and the soldiers
threatened, and in part carried out their threat, to dis
mantle the fortifications. Never, perhaps, since the
Norman Conquest, had London been brought so low.
Colonel Pride, who in the following year was to render
himself famous by administering his "purge" to the
house of commons, was sheriff of Surrey, and took the
opportunity of clearing Southwark of playhouses. The
citizens were terrified at the approach of this uncompro
mising officer, but Fairfax kept order, and people began
to look for a renewal of tranquillity on the return of the
victorious Cromwell from his successful campaign in the
north. This took place in the beginning of December,
1648. He immediately sent a couple of regiments into
the city to secure any money they could find, and some
20,000/. was obtained by the simple process of taking it
from the halls of the companies. Long afterwards, the
habit, which seems so strange nowadays, of keeping
cash in hand was practised universally, and Pepys we
may remember, buried some money in his garden on
the approach of the fire. The soldiers were billeted
upon private families, the horses were sent to the inns.

348 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Probably the citizens never spent a more miserable
Christmas. The old festivities of the season were strictly
forbidden. The " sour-visaged saints " demanded of the
common council pay and provisions for the army till the
ensuing 25th March, and only allowed fourteen days for
deliberation, assessment, and collection. The reaction
which had set in showed itself in the election of a
royalist lord mayor, Abraham Reynardson, and no
doubt the occupation of the city was chiefly caused by
the existence of this and other signs of a change in the
feelings of the people. By one of those curious mistakes
which even the greatest rulers of men sometimes make,
the council of officers greatly intensified the smouldering
loyalty of the citizens by the king's execution in January,
as it not only awoke any personal feeling they may
have retained towards a monarch who certainly cannot
be said to have treated them well : but it endued an
innocent boy, of whom so far no harm was known, with
all the traditional regard which London had paid to the
crown. Reynardson absolutely refused to proclaim' the
abolition of royalty, and was committed to the Tower
and heavily fined. A new mayor was elected and sworn
before the remnant of the house of commons with great
solemnity. His name was Atkins, and he lived to
suffer for that day's proceedings. On the accession of
Charles II. he took Reynardson's place in the Tower,
and died in confinement.
Cromwell was now about to proceed to Ireland, and
Fairfax obtained 150,000/. from the city towards his
expenses. Prior to his departure, another solemn ser
vice was held in Christ Church, and another dinner was
eaten in the Grocers' Hall, when the citizens gave
Fairfax a basin and ewer of beaten gold, and plate also
to Cromwell, with a sum of money. The mayor, with

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 349
twelve of the aldermen, proclaimed the abolition of
royalty, and things were so far settled, that no objection
was openly made. As ever, the citizens above all things
desired leisure for their mercantile pursuits, and the
growing power of Cromwell, while it promised peace at
home and protection for commerce abroad, was not un
welcome even to those who in their hearts longed for the
presence of a court, and sighed amid the gloom of the
presbyterian rule for the merry days of old. When
Cromwell came back victorious from the decisive battle
of Worcester, the citizens went out to Acton to meet him.
He was feasted at Guildhall, and received everywhere as
a deliverer. After he had snuffed out the last flicker of
the old parliament, and had been sworn in as lord
protector, the city treated him with regal honours, and
the mayor received knighthood at his hands. There can
be no doubt of the strong royalist feeling of the city.
The person of the king was comparatively a matter of
indifference. Cromwell would have done for them ex
ceedingly well, and they would certainly have elected
him had he allowed it. On his death they turned in
stinctively to Charles II., and General Monk's first over
tures were made to the mayor and aldermen.
As this was the last time but one that the Londoners
exercised their ancient electoral privilege, it excites a
greater interest than the king's actual entry, which has
been so fully described.* The negotiations commenced
upon the rupture between Monk and the parliament,
when that astute general, instead of writing to the citizens,
sent a private messenger to the lord mayor, who may
have communicated some of the design in hand. Be this
as it may, the mayor invited Monk to a dinner, after
* The negotiations are given in great detail by Maitland, chiefly from
Rushworth.

35° HISTORY OF LONDON.
which he and the members of the corporation repaired
to the Guildhall, where he made a speech, in which he
apologised for some recent military proceedings which
had frightened the city into the idea that its independ
ence would be compromised. He further, as an earnest
of his good intentions, communicated the contents of a
letter which he had written to the parliament advising
the issue of writs for a new house of commons ; and
though he did not openly acquaint the meeting with his
whole counsel in the matter of a restoration, he con
trived to show them that in what he did he had the inte
rests of the city rather than of the parliament at heart,
and that, come what may, he felt sure they would
eventually be satisfied with his course of action. By
such vague phrases he restored or awakened their con
fidence, and a mutual engagement was entered into by
which he and they were bound to stand or fall together.
He charged them to keep order, and, having replaced
the members of parliament who had so long been ex
cluded, he contrived that an ordinance should be passed
restoring the ancient liberty, and was in gratitude imme
diately elected general of the civic forces, and invited
for his greater security to take up his quarters in the
city. He probably thought himself sufficiently safe at
Charing Cross, where he had made his headquarters in
Northumberland House ; so he sent a grateful but vague
reply, and summoned the trained bands to a grand
review in Hyde Park. Early in 1660 matters took a
fresh turn. Charles sent Lord Mordaunt and Sir John
Grenville from Breda with a letter to the lord mayor,
aldermen, and common council, as well as to Monk, the
parliament, and the fleet. The mayor, Thomas Alleyne,*
* Alleyne was a member of the Grocers' Company, to which Genera]
Monk was also admitted in February, 1660. Charles II. became a member
of the same company in July.

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 35 J
assembled his fellow citizens, and introduced Mordaunt
and Grenville. The letter was read amid the wildest
acclamations of joy. The messengers were imme
diately presented with a handsome gratuity, and before
the meeting broke up, fourteen members of the common
council were deputed to accompany them back to Hol
land, with a present of 10,000/., and an assurance of their
loyal devotion. A few days later* the new king was
proclaimed at the usual places in the city, when the
citizens took occasion to testify their loyalty, and no
doubt their feeling of relief from the thraldom of the
presbyterians, by excesses of drunkenness such as Lon
don had not seen for many a long day. The fourteen
citizens who formed the deputation were knighted at
Breda, and on the 29th May accompanied Charles to
St. George's Fields, where the lord mayor received
him, and where, before entering the city, the king was
entertained in a splendid tent erected beforehand. The
magnificence of his welcome has been often described,
and may be summed up in a brief sentence from the
amusing diary of Samuel Pepys : — " It is impossible to
relate the glory of this day, expressed in the clothes of
them that rid, and their horses and horse-clothes."
The events of the restoration belong to the history of
England. The history of the city is concerned about
a very different kind of subject. The two greatest mis
fortunes that ever befel it were already approaching.
The intoxication of triumph was sobered by the out
break of an epidemic of small-pox, to which the new
king's brother, among thousands of others, fell a victim ;
but a worse disaster was impending.
I have avoided, hitherto, anything but a passing refer
ence to the visitations of the plague. They culminated
* 8th May, i66or

3 5 2 HISTORY OF LONDON.
in the appalling disaster of 1665. Several times had the
deaths from epidemic disorders reached so high a figure
that the year was afterwards described as that of the
"Great Plague." Such a calamity occurred in 1349,
when 50,000 people are said to have died. This may be
an exaggeration, yet we have no means of testing its
truth, not knowing how great was the population of the
city at the time. Hallam estimated it in the twelfth
century as about 40,000. Fitzstephen speaks of 80,000
fighting-men as mustering for war in his day.* In the
sixteenth century we are just as much in ignorance as to
the number of souls within the city boundaries. In the
seventeenth, however, we have better information, yet
there are astonishing discrepancies between the different
estimates. Thus Howel thinks there were not fewer
than a million and a half of people in London in the
time of the Commonwealth, f while twenty years earlier
the authorities of the Guildhall only estimated about
700,000 within the liberties. In 1682, Sir William Petty,
a very careful and acute observer, reckoned the popula
tion at 672,000, inhabiting 84,000 houses. Yet another
writer of the same period only made the number 530,000.
On the whole, as Petty only reckoned the average
number of inhabitants of each house at eight, it seems
not unlikely that 672,000 is a moderate estimate.
' The number of deaths from the plague, or from
various epidemics, some of which were the plague, and
some of a different character, is as difficult to ascertain
now as the population. When the " bills of mortality "
were first issued in 1603 it became easier, and before the
end of the century a very accurate idea could be formed.
* i°egge suggests that an extra cypher has crept into the manuscript :
but in writing of the period 80,000 would probably be IxxxM.
t ' Londinopolis ' was published in 1657.

To faee. -p. 352.

LONDON FROM THE NORTH IN 1665.
After a Print by Hollar.
London: Edward Stanford, 55 Charing Cross.

Stanftrrdi Seng? JEstabT.

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 353
The plague which began in the year of queen Elizabeth's
death, went on increasing year by year in its fatal powers
till 1609, when no fewer than 4000 were believed to have
succumbed to it. It lost its virulence by 16 11, but there
were probably a few deaths from it at intervals until
1625, when there was another terrific outbreak, and the
deaths from all causes amounted to 54,265, of which
35,417 were attributed to the plague. In the same
year, the number of christenings was only 6983. The
deaths, therefore, in that, the worst plague year before
1665, were to the births as 8 to 1.
Several different kinds of disease were summarily
referred to under the one word "plague." The Black
Death is the significant name given to the epidemic
of 1349. It had reached London in the previous
November.* The first symptoms seemed in themselves
sufficiently horrible to justify the name. A man ap
parently in perfect health would suddenly commence to
vomit blood. A few minutes later he would fall down
dead. Sometimes, however, his agonies would be pro
longed for twelve hours, sometimes for two days. Every
thing he touched, every place where he rested, spread
the contagion. If he survived the .first stunning blow of
the Black Death, his body was covered with inflam
matory swellings, and it was believed that even a glance
of the sick man's distorted eyes was sufficient to give the
infection. The Sweating Sickness came nextf It reached
London in July 15 17, and speedily decimated the
citizens. Yet, compared with the Black Death, it was
mildness itself, and in many cases yielded to curative
treatment. The city was crowded with poor artisans,
* Hecker, ' Epidemics of the Middle Ages,' p. 20, edition of 1844.
t Hecker, p. 209.
VOL. I. 2 A

354 HISTORY OF LONDON.
and the insurrection known as Evil May- day, of which
I gave some account in the last chapter, has been con
nected by many writers with the immigration of in
numerable foreign workmen. But the sweating sickness
attacked high and low indifferently. Ammonius, the
Latin secretary of cardinal Wolsey, whose name occurs
so frequently in contemporary memoirs, boasted to Sir
Thomas More that his precautions were such that he
and his family were perfectly safe. He died the same
evening. Michaelmas and Christmas were both left
unobserved, and the epidemic raged without interruption
for six months, before it abated. The plague began to
spread as soon as the sweating sickness subsided, and
when we read of the state of London houses at the time,
our only wonder is that such an overwhelming misfortune
as the Great Plague of 1666 was so long in coming.
Erasmus says of the dwellings of the lower classes in his
time, that they were filthy beyond description. The
floors were of loam, and were strewed with rushes, which
were constantly put on fresh without the removal of the
old, and intermixed with bones, broken victuals, and
other dirt They had probably improved very little, if
at all, by the middle of the seventeenth century, and we
may be sure that the Augaean filth of the city required
nothing less than the Great Fire to purify it.
The water-supply, it is now generally acknowledged,
is the first cause of epidemic disease. In London at the
beginning of the reign of James I., it was threefold. Some
water came to public conduits, like those in Cheap, by
underground pipes from Tyburn. Some was drawn by
water-wheels and other similar means from the Thames,
polluted as it was at London Bridge.* A third source
* Every one has heard of the sick man who died when he was removed
from the sound of the water-wheel near his house on the bridge.

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 355
of supply was still more dangerous : in all the suburbs,
and probably also in most houses in the city itself,
people depended on wells. What wells among habita
tions, and especially filthy habitations, become, we know
now, but in the seventeenth century and much later,
the idea of their danger had not been started.
Such being the conditions of existence in London, the
plague now and then smouldering for a year or two, now
and then breaking out as in 1603, 1625, and 1636, a
long drought, which means resort to half dry and stag
nant reservoirs, was sufficient to call it forth in all its
strength. The heat of the summer weather in 1665 was
such that the very birds of the air were imagined to
languish in their flight. The 7th of June, said Pepys,
was the hottest day that ever he felt in his life. The
deaths from the plague, which had begun at the end of
the previous year, in the suburb of St Giles' in the
Fields, at a house in Long Acre, where two Frenchmen
had died of it, rose during June from J 12 to 268. The
entries in the diary are for four months almost continuous
as to the progress of the plague. Although it was cal
culated that not less than 200,000 people had followed
the example of the king and court, and fled from the
doomed city, yet the deaths increased daily. The lord
mayor, Lawrence, held his ground, as did the brave earl
of Craven and General Monk, now become duke of Albe
marle. Craven provided a burial-ground, the Pest Field,
with a kind of cottage-hospital, in Soho ; f but the only
remedy that could be devised by the united wisdom of
the corporation, fortified by the presence of the duke and
the earl, was to order fires in all the streets, as if the
* Hecker, for example, accounts for plagues by earthquakes, atmo
spheric disturbances, personal contagion, and many other things.
t See vol. ii., chapters xvii. and xxi.
2 A 2

356 HISTORY OF LONDON.
weather was not already hot enough. Medical art seems
to have utterly broken down. Those of the sick who
were treated by a physician, only died a more painful
death by cupping, scarifying, and blistering. The city
rectors, too, who had come back with the king, fled from
the danger, as might be expected from their antecedents,
and the nonconformist lecturers who remained had
overwhelming congregations wherever they preached
repentance to the terror-stricken people. Distinctions of
creed were forgotten before the common danger. The
wildest conjectures were hazarded as to its origin. The
president of the College of Physicians pronounced it to
have come in a bale of flax from Holland,* while the
lecturers attributed it solely to the just anger of God at
the excesses which had prevailed in the kingdom since
the restoration.
The symptoms were very distressing. Fever and
vomiting were among the first, and every little ailment
was thought premonitory, so that it was said at the time
that as many died of fright as of the disease itself.
Pepys mentions the terror which affected a household
when a child suffered from headache. The fatal signs
were glandular swellings which ran their course in a few
hours, the plague spots turning to gangrene almost as
soon as they appeared. The patients frequently expired
the same day that they were seized, while others sur
vived a week and even longer, only to die slowly of
exhaustion from bleeding and ill-treatment in general.
The most terrible stories of premature burial were
circulated. All business was suspended. Grass grew in
* ' Distinct Notions of the Plague,' by "The Explainer," 1722, p. 14.
This and several other works of the kind were published about the same
time, namely, during a scare occasioned by an outbreak of plague at
Marseilles. Defoe's fictitious ' Diary ' was among them.

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 357
the streets. No one went about. The rumbling wheels
of the cart, and the cry, " Bring out your dead ! " alone
broke the stillness of the night Great pits were dug in
Bunhill Fields, and in Tothill Fields at Westminster,
and the bodies were shot into them and covered up
without coffins, without even grave-clothes, and without
any funeral ceremony. In the first weeks of September
the number of fatal cases rose to 1500 a day, the
bills of mortality recording 24,000 deaths between the
ist and 2 ist of that month. Then at last it began to
decline, but rose again at the beginning of October. A
change of weather at length occurred, and the average
declined so rapidly, that by the beginning of November
the number of deaths was reduced to 1200, and before
Christmas came, it had fallen to the usual number of
former years. In all, the official statements enumerated
97,306 deaths during the year, and, if we add those un
recorded, a very moderate estimate of the whole mortality
would place it at the appalling figure of 100,000 at least.
I have thus briefly summarised the details of this
terrible event, referring for fuller particulars to the innu
merable publications on the subject which appeared
then, and afterwards. That the plague was ever stayed
we must attribute to a cause for which as I have already
hinted, sufficient allowance has not hitherto been made.
Though the Great Fire of 1666 was the proximate
reason, the total cessation of the epidemic must be
traced to the alteration in the water-supply, which the
fire made not only possible but necessary. As far back
as 1620, Sir Hugh Myddelton, a public-spirited Welsh
man, who was a member of the goldsmiths' company,
had completed his scheme for bringing water to London.
He tapped a supply at Chadswell Springs in Hertford
shire, and constructing a canal nearly forty miles long,

35§ HISTORY OF LONDON.
formed a reservoir in Islington, from which to this day
London obtains its water. The New River, as it is still
called, was one of the greatest benefits the city ever
received from a private individual. Sir Hugh was
ruined, and parted with his interest in the great work to
a company, reserving to himself and his heirs an annuity
of ioo/., which has not been claimed since 171 5. The
first dividend was paid to the shareholders in 1633, but
the water was evidently used only here and there before
1666. When the old wells were filled by the ruins after
the fire, the New River water became universal. In the
city as rebuilt it was everywhere laid on ; and London
must acknowledge Sir Hugh Myddelton to have been
its greatest modern benefactor. He changed it, from
having been as unhealthy as Dublin, Naples, or even
Calcutta, to be one of the safest places of abode in the
world. The mildest case of typhoid fever in the city
now would probably occasion a greater sensation than a
thousand cases of plague would have caused under the
Stuarts. Scarcely had the terrified citizens settled down once
more in their old homes when a second calamity came
upon them. The summer of 1666 was, if possible, hotter
than that of the previous year. An easterly wind which
occasionally rose almost to a gale, prevailed without
intermission for weeks together. At last, when wooden
houses must have become as dry as tinder, a baker's
oven in Pudding Lane, near Fish Street Hill and East-
cheap, and thus to windward of the central part of the
city, took fire one sultry night. The neighbours looked
at it as they had looked at many fires before, but when
twenty-four hours had elapsed and the flames continued
to spread into the adjoining streets and lanes, here very
narrow, crowded and old, they began to take alarm

Copied/ ~by Thvato-liihoffraphy from/ an efUfrcuvitig by W.MoUa*

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. 359
The baker's shop had ignited at one o'clock on the
morning of the 2nd September.* By the next night
all Gracechurch Street was burned, and the flames
spread along the river's side to the Vintry. On Tuesday,
the 3rd, the whole of Fleet Street as far as the Temple
was on fire, but the more substantial brick buildings in
that quarter checked its further progress. The king
himself, and his brother the duke of York, exerted their
influence in blowing up and pulling down houses to stop
the course of the conflagration, and succeeded so well,
that it is easy to see that similar activity earlier applied
might have saved the city. But Bludworth, who had
succeeded Lawrence as lord mayor, though he did not
spare himself, had no power of organisation. At first he
under-estimated the greatness of the danger, and replied
by a coarse joke to those who urged the application of
stronger methods of repression. Next he despaired and
wrung his hands in hopeless fatuity. By the help of
soldiers, however, and others, and by the personal exer
tions of the duke and his courtiers, gunpowder was
freely used at Temple Bar, at Pye Corner near the
entrance of Smithfield, and at various other salient points
to the north and east of the central fire. On Thursday
evening it was brought under control, and though it
burst out again in one or two places it was speedily
subdued, and by Friday at mid-day the great danger
was over, and people had time to judge of the dimensions
ofthe disaster.
The prospect was terrible enough to paralyse a stouter
heart than that of the unhappy mayor. The result of
the five days' fire was, summarily, as follows : — 396 acres
of houses were destroyed, comprising fifteen wards
* The official account, from the London Gazette of the loth September,
is reprinted by Allen, i. 401.

360 HISTORY OF LONDON.
wholly ruined, eight others half burnt ; 400 streets,
13,200 dwellings, 89 churches, besides chapels, and 4 of
the city gates. The cathedral of St. Paul, the Exchange,
Custom House, portion of the Guildhall, and most of
the halls of city companies, with a host of other stately
edifices of all sorts, were consumed. The extent of the
ruin is absolutely unparalleled. The earthquake of
Lisbon, in that London was so much greater, was as
nothing in comparison. The loss of life, as ascertained,
was moderate, but the loss of property could hardly be
estimated. It has sometimes been reckoned at between
"three and four millions sterling, but this is irrespective
of the destruction of inestimable things, such as monu
ments, libraries, records, and objects of personal value.
London, in short, as a city, was obliterated from the
map. The burning of St. Paul's alone would have been con
sidered an irreparable misfortune at any other time.
True the steeple, once the highest in Europe, had already,
as long before as 1561, been shortened, if not actually
destroyed, by lightning : but now the long Norman
nave, the light and elegant choir, the chapels, the church
of St. Faith-under-St. Paul's, the cloisters, the venerable
chapter-house, the bishop's palace, the deanery and
the canons' houses, < all were reduced to a mass of
smoking ruins.* The crypt had been filled, as a place
* In a curious poem, 'The Conflagration of London,' attributed by
Lowndes to Simon Ford, D.D. of Oxford (lent to me by Messrs. Ellis and
White of Bond Street), the burning of St. Paul's is described in forcible if
grotesque couplets : —
" That reverend Fabrick which the World admir'd
Amongst a crowd of lesser note, is fir'd.
Its cloud surmounting steeple flam'd so high
That threatned Heavens ne're fear'd a flame so nigh.
Yea, some beholders thought 'twas more then fear'd
While falling sparks like falling Stars appear'd."

THE WAR, THE PLAGUE, AND THE FIRE. ?y6l
of safety, with sheets of unbound, and in some cases
unpublished, books, and four days after the flames had
been first overcome, on the opening of the doors, the
rush of air fanned the smouldering paper into a fresh
fire, which could not be extinguished, and which con
summated the ruin of the very foundations of the great
edifice above.
The beautiful church of the Grey Friars, to which I
have so often had occasion to refer, shared the same fate,
as did the chapel of St. Thomas in Cheap, — the Mercers'
chapel, as it was then called, — and, of course, all vthe
minor parochial churches as far east as St. Michael's and
St. Peter's in Cornhill, and as far west as St. Bride's in
Fleet Street St. Sepulchre's was only partially burnt.
St. Bartholomew's, or what was left of it from the rough
usage of the previous century, was saved, as were the
inner buildings of the Grey Friars, now the Blue Coat
School, and All Hallows, Barking, though the flames ap
proached close to it. The churches on the north side of
Leadenhall Street were also preserved. These exceptions
include, of course, all that lay further north, St. Helen's,
St. Ethelburga's, with Crosby Hall and Gresham College,
in Bishopsgate, but everything else was utterly consumed,
and for most of the old city we have only the descrip
tions left us by the indefatigable Stow to tell how great
is our loss in sumptuous churches, chapels, tombs and
tablets, the memorials of long ages of faith and devotion
of artistic skill and venerable association.

( 362 )

CHAPTER XII.
WREN.
It is but seldom in the history of the world that great
men and great opportunities meet. Too often genius
has to struggle with circumstances. Inigo Jones's fate as
an architect may well be contrasted with that of Wren.
He had to contend against prejudice, national poverty,
and finally, the confusion which was caused by the great
rebellion. His finest designs were never carried out.
His noble portico at St. Paul's was finished just before
war was declared. He fell, indeed, on evil days, and
though at once the most learned and the most original
of English architects, the accident that he lived in
times of social disturbance has deprived us of any
very great building from his designs. He was a man of
genius without an opportunity.*
Personally, too, he seems to have been unpopular.
He was much disliked by the parishioners of St. Gre
gory's for instance. They petitioned Parliament against
him for pulling down half their church to make room
for the new portico.f And others looked askance at
him as an instrument of the royal extravagance. His
* Mr. Fergusson, 'History of Modern Architecture,' p. 265, somewhat
oddly remarks that " the troubles of the Commonwealth supervened before
his career was half over." But Jones was seventy years of age when the
portico of St. Paul's was finished, and he was eighty when he died in 1652.
Does Mr. Fergusson suppose the average length of an architect's career is
140 years ?
t Fourth Report 'Historical MSS. Commission,' p. 89,

sff^JeT

< Sf

111

few

WREN. 363
design for a palace at Whitehall is still extant* and is
well known to architects and others. But no part of
it ever existed except on paper. The Royal Chapel
at Whitehall is, perhaps, the most considerable of his
buildings now remaining, and though it has been di
verted from its original purpose as a banqueting hall,
and much altered and " restored," it is one of the most
complete, satisfactory, and at the same time picturesque
edifices in Europe. His only remarkable church, if,
indeed, he ever designed another, is St Paul's, Covent
Garden.f Here, again, the fates were against him. It
is evident at a glance that the great question for the
architect's solution, was the simple and common one —
namely, how to obtain the greatest effect at the least
cost. In his portico at St. Paul's Cathedral % he was less
hampered by want of means. It must indeed have been
a noble work, worthy of the situation, and in some
sense worthy of the church to which it was attached.
The worst part of the new work was the pair of western
towers, but he may have hoped to improve them as
time went on. The incongruity of the design with a
gothic cathedral has been much insisted upon. But
there was probably very little real incongruity between
the Norman features of the west front, and the Corin-
* It was published by Kent in 1727. No part of the Banqueting
House was in the original design ; and it is doubtful whether it forms part
of the latter one, which may be found in ' Vitruvius Britannicus,' ii. 4. There
are separate plates of the Banqueting House, now Whitehall Chapel, in
vol. i. 12, 13.
t Figured in ' Vitruvius Britannicus.'
X See Longman's ' Three Cathedrals,' p. 68, and the ' Hand-book to St.
Paul's,' p. 28. I understand that a number of Inigo Jones's designs are in
the library of Devonshire House. They probably came through Kent's
hands to lord Burlington. It would be interesting to know if any view of
his restoration of St. Alban's, Wood Street, is among them. The portico
of St. Paul's was 40 ft. high, 50 ft. deep, and 200 ft. wide. The columns
must therefore have been of about the same size as those of St. Martin-
in-the-Fields, but the depth and width of the portico were much greater.

364 HISTORY OF LONDON.
thian columns of the portico, not more, certainly, than
already existed between the round arched and the
pointed work in the church itself. Moreover, incon
gruity, where both the old work and the new were of
the best, would rather deserve the name of picturesque-
ness, and we may feel sure that no work of Inigo Jones
ever wanted in this characteristic. We cannot mistake
his touch when we meet with any fragment of one of
his designs. In fact, if Wren when he was employed
at Westminster, as Jones had been employed at St.
Paul's, had built a similar portico, or had set a Grecian
temple on the summit of his towers, it might have
looked incongruous, but it would at any rate have
been more picturesque than the perfectly congruous
but uninteresting, if not ugly design after which the .
west end was ultimately finished by Hawksmoor.* It
is no disparagement of Wren to say that Jones had
qualities which he wanted, and that Jones more often
struck the exact mean between severity and irregularity
which produces the best effects in architecture.
It is a question whether, if the great opportunity
afforded to Wren had come to Jones instead, he could
have made a better use of it. The very regularity of
Wren's habits, his methodical way of going to work,
his exactness and mathematical precision, are qualities
seldom united with such high creative power. There
is no guess-work in anything he did. He tried no ex
periments. Everything was thoroughly thought out.
He knew beforehand what effect he wished to produce,
and how to produce it. Yet, as is so often the case
with genius like his, his powers improved with years,
and the last design or modification was better than
* These western towers are usually attributed to Wren, but Miss Philli-
more and other recent authorities assign them to Hawksmoor.

WREN. 365
the first. Of no great artist was it ever more true
than of Wren, that his genius was a capacity for taking
pains.* Christopher Wren, the son of the dean of Windsor,
the nephew of the bishop of Ely, was connected by
birth with the royalist party. His uncle was a prisoner
in the Tower during the whole time of Cromwell's
ascendancy,! but he contrived, without however any
inconsistency, to stand on good terms with the Pro
tector's government, owing to his friendship with Clay-
poole. He had no inclination to meddle in politics, and
was not implicated with the losing side at the Restora-
tion4 When Inigo Jones, before hostilities broke out between
King and Parliament, added the portico to the western
front of St. Paul's, he also greatly altered the ancient
building in other parts. The Puritans, who saw in the
cathedral a useless building too large to preach in, not
only stopped the repairs, but considerably injured the
whole church, and especially the new portico, in which
they permitted booths to be built. After the restoration
of the Stuarts even the new work was falling to pieces.
The epitaph of a dean who died four years after Charles
came home is significant. " Among these sacred ruins
* Many of Wren's drawings are preserved in the Library of All Souls'
College. They are briefly described by Mr. Arthur Ashpitel in the
' Transactions of the Lon. and Midd. Arch. Soe.,' iii. 39;
t See vol. ii. for a further account of bishop Wren and his contest with
the Hattons about Ely Place. The authorities for Wren's life and work
which I have chiefly consulted are Miss Phillimore's ' Sir Christopher
Wren,' Mr. A. T. Taylor's 'Towers and Steeples,' and two articles by Mr.
Basil Champneys in the ' Magazine of Art' for 1882.
X Miss Phillimore, whose own prepossessions come out strongly in the
book on Wren, would make Sir Christopher much more of a partisan than
history shows him. He did not in any way betray what would now be
called ' ' ritualistic " views in the planning and adorning of churches.

366 HISTORY OF LONDON.
his own are laid, in the certainty that both shall rise
again." Wren was now employed in the office of Den-
ham, the surveyor-general of works, and had already
shown his capacity by a college chapel at Cambridge.*
He was consulted about the repairs, and reported that
the whole building was in a dangerous state. The
tower leaned. The pillars of the nave were mere shells,
filled with rubble. The roof was too heavy for its sup
ports. He recommended what would practically amount
to rebuilding the cathedral. A dome was to be the cen
tral feature, and the rest of the church was gradually
to be brought into harmony with it Wren's idea of
patching up an ancient gothic and Norman building,
and of gradually bringing the whole into one harmo
nious design, has merits for which he has hardly yet
received due credit We might possibly, had he carried
out the design, have had a new development of archi
tectural art, growing more directly out of gothic, than
the classical, or Italian style afterwards followed, and
might have seen in any later works undertaken by the
same hand, a further and yet further advance. Wren
is known to have admired Ely Cathedral — the plan of
which, indeed, he copied in his new St. Paul's — and the
chapel of King's College, with its " fan-work " roof.
The idea of a dome also fascinated him : though it is
a curious fact, that he can never, till he built his own,
have seen one of any size. The dome of St. Sophia set
a pattern all through the East. Every one of the ex
quisite mosques of Cairo is descended from this most
successful Byzantine development of a classical style.
What similar feeling might have become in Wren's hands
* Pembroke Chapel, "restored" away by Mr. G. Scott. Such an
interesting building should have been spared, but Pembroke College
suffered worse things than this a little earlier.

WREN. Z&7
we know not. He never mastered the simpler principles
of gothic architecture, and it is possible that even the task
of repairing Old St. Paul's might have only awakened
in his mind a disgust at the whole style, in which he saw
so much bad work, so much ignorance of the principles
of building, so much weakness.* St. Paul's, like St.
Alban's Abbey in our own time, was chiefly remark
able for size. There was little or no uniformity. The
lofty spire, the tallest in Christendom,! had been set on
fire by lightning in 1444, but the flames were quenched,
as tradition reports, with vinegar, and the spire rebuilt,^
only to be wholly consumed from the same cause
in 1 561, when no attempt was made to repair the
damage. A wooden spire, 520 feet in height, unpro
tected by either lightning conductors or the neighbour
hood of any buildings of similar elevation, was sure to
be struck sooner or later. It had two towers at
the west end, which Inigo Jones altered to suit the
character of his portico. The nave was Norman, con
sisting of twelve bays, and had been originally roofed
with flat timbers. Some time, perhaps in the fifteenth
century, it had been vaulted. The tower had great
windows showing light into the crossing of the tran
septs. The east end was terminated by a lofty Lady
Chapel, with a large rose window of remarkable beauty.
The clerestory of the nave was Early English, but the
transepts and choir were Decorated.§ The monuments
* Wren, in his contempt for gothic, was justified by many things which
the fire revealed. It has been so much the habit, for perhaps thirty years
past, to praise the conscientiousness of mediaeval workmen, that I was long in
coming at the reasons of Wren's aversion to gothic.
t See above, chapter vii. J In 1462.
§ See Mr. Ferry's beautiful elevations in the ' Three Cathedrals.' The
spire had four corner pinnacles, as appears from Van Wyngaerde's view,
and from a small illumination engraved in Canon Stubbs's edition of
' Annales Paulini ' in the Rolls Series, p. 277.

368 HISTORY OF LONDON.
were numerous. A few fragments only remain, now
shown in the crypt of the new church. Among the
great folk buried in St. Paul's were St. Erkenwald,*
king Ethelred, the " Unready," or " Without Council,"
John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster ; Sir Nicholas Bacon,
Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Walsingham, and Sir
Christopher Hatton, four worthies of the great Eliza
beth period ; Chigwell, Pulteney, Hewit, and probably
many other mayors ; more than twelve bishops of
London, and a number of deans, including Colet,
Nowell and Donne, f
Such was Old St. Paul's, the finest church in London-
The newly named Christ Church in Newgate Street was
considered in its time more elegant, but it was much
smaller, and the choir was remodelled at the Reformation.^
Of the other churches we can only judge from those
which survived the fire. The number of them has been
considerably diminished even since the time of Wren.
Some have been destroyed and rebuilt. Some have
been destroyed and never rebuilt, like the Guildhall
Chapel. Some, like St. Martin Outwich, have been
destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again. Of those that
remain, St. Helen's is the most important, St. Ethel-
burga's the oldest, and St. Katherine Cree the newest,
having been practically rebuilt in 1630. St. Olave's,
* See above, chapter iii.
t Donne's effigy, in a shroud, is the most perfect of the old monuments
now surviving. It stands in the south aisle of the choir. I have mentioned
the preservation of Bishop Braybroke's body in chapter viii.
X See 'London's Remains,' by Simon Ford D.D 1667. Mr. Ellis
favoured me with the loan of this rare tract. Christ Church is thus com
pared to St. Paul's : —
" This church next to Paul's was famed ; Paul's the more wide ;
But this with it for neatness vi'd."

WREN. 369
Hart Street, and St. Andrew's Undershaft also survive,
with All Hallows Barking*
The history of an old city church cannot be better
illustrated than by the fate of St. Martin Outwich.f
It underwent every vicissitude except the Great Fire.
The parish, like several others within the city bounda
ries, is situated in two different wards. It probably,
therefore, represents the estate, or we may, perhaps, say
soke, of the Outwich family. The name occurs as early
as 1 291, as St. Martin Otteswich. In 1302 it is Othes-
wyke. The name may denote a " wych " or dwelling,
within Bishopgate, or may belong to some Otto or
Otho whose memory has not otherwise been preserved.
Stow mentions four members of the " Oteswich " family,
and calls them the founders. The advowson was in the
hands of John, Earl of Warren and Surrey, in 1347. It
appears to have belonged to the Crown after this for a
time. But a certain citizen named Churchman, who
was sheriff in 1385, and who was trustee of some de
scendants of. the Outwich family, bought the estate
and advowson for them. In 1404 we find him joining
with them to sell both to the merchant taylors' or linen
armourers' company, " Keepers of the Guild and Fra-
* The following is a list of the gothic churches and chapels in London
and the suburbs older than the Fire : — All Hallows ; St. Andrew's Under
shaft ; the tower of St. Andrew, Holborn ; St. Bartholomew the Great ; part
of St. Bartholomew the Less ; St. Etheldreda's, Ely Place ; St. Ethelburga's ;
St. Giles, Cripplegate ; St. Helen ; St. John, Savoy ; St. Katherine Cree ;
St. Margaret, Westminster ; St. Olave, ¦ Hart Street ; St. Pancras Old
Church ; St. Peter's Abbey Church, Westminster ; St. Peter in the Tower ;
St. Saviour, Southwark ; Stepney Church ; Austin Friars, now a Dutch
Church; and the crypts of St. John, Clerkenwell, and St. Stephen,
Westminster. t The old church was described and illustrated in a large quarto volume
by Wilkinson, in 1 797.
VOL. I. 2 B

370 HISTORY OF LONDON.
ternity of John the Baptist," * and the company has
ever since presented to the living. The Great Fire, as I
have said, spared the church, which was situated at the
extremity of Threadneedle Street, with its east window
looking on Bishopsgate Street. It thus closely ad
joined Gresham House, and almost faced Crosby Place.
From its conspicuous situation and from the wealth of
its patrons the merchant taylors, we might perhaps
expect that St. Martin Outwich would have resembled
a great country church, or one in a wealthy commercial
town like Hull or Boston. But it was only 66 feet long.
The wooden roof rose but 31 feet from the floor.
The walls were a mixture of brick and stone. The
windows were small, and the tower was only 65 feet
high to the vane. It did not even rank, therefore, with a
second or third rate village church, and contained,
besides a few handsome altar-tombs, no features of archi
tectural importance. The two miserable aisles were
divided by a couple of pillars of " a Gothic-Tuscan
order," and the chancel was panelled to a height of 1 1
feet. Such was the old church. In 1797, it became so
ruinous that it was pulled down and a new building
erected, of which it was remarked that it looked more
like a gaol than a church. Cockerell was the architect
and his object in disfiguring this very conspicuous corner
with so " heavy and ugly "f a design never transpired.
Within it was a little less hideous, being oval in shape,
and not inconvenient for public worship. On its removal
in 1877, the parish was united with that of St. Helen
and the bones of the unhonoured dead were dug up and
* The history of this guild, could it be recovered, might throw light on
many difficult and disputed points. Was St. John a special patron of the
weavers? Or was the guild founded after the incorporation of the
company ?
t Godwin and Britton, ' Churches of London,' ii. 124.

WREN. 37 l
carted off to Ilford. Some of the monuments may be
seen in St. Helen's Church,* and form an interesting
addition to the number already collected there.
It is certain that the majority of the parish churches
of London were not unlike St. Martin's when the fire
came. Some of them, we know, were perched on
arches.t St. Mary Colechurch and St. Lawrence
Pountney were examples of this arrangement, while St
Mildred's in the Poultry was built in part on a bridge
over the Wallbrook.f
The condition of the city when Wren undertook its
reconstruction may be gathered from the summary in
the last chapter. But he was not content with the idea
of merely rebuilding such churches as those of which I
have spoken, nor was he willing to see the narrow,
winding, unwholesome streets renewed on their old lines.
He prepared a magnificent plan, by which St. Paul's
and the Exchange would respectively become the
centres of a double system of radiating streets, designed
to set off the principal public buildings to the best
advantage, while a broad quay lined the river's bank.
The cathedral was to be surrounded by a colonnaded
piazza, and every street corner was to afford some
such vista as that which still surprises and delights the
eye when we pass Greenwich Hospital. The western
* I have given some account of St. Helen's in my ' In and Out of
London.' See also above, chap. x.
t There is a church at Bristol in a similar position, and one at Win
chester, and a portion of one of the churches at Warwick is over a gate.
X 'Church of St. Mildred' by Thomas Milbourne, p. 5. It was rebuilt
about 1456: "John Saxton, then rector, gave 32/. towards the cost of the
new choir, which is described as standing ' upon the course of Walbrook.' ¦''
I may refer here to an article by Mr. Freshfield on St. Margaret's
Lothbury, St. Christopher le Stocks, and St. Bartholomew's by the Bank,
' Archaeologia,' xiv. 57 ; and several papers on old city churches in the
' Transactions ' of the Lond. and Midd, Arch. Soe.
2 B 2

•372 HISTORY OF LONDON.
end was to have looked down Ludgate Hill from a
" circular pavilion 60 feet in diameter."* The smaller
streets were to be not less than 30 feet wide, and all
dark alleys and courts were to be abolished. The
churches were to occupy commanding situations along
the chief thoroughfares, and were to be "designed
according to the best forms for capacity and hearing,
adorned with useful porticoes, and lofty ornamental
towers and steeples in the greater parishes." The
churchyards were to be in the ancient Roman fashion,
a sort of girdle round the town, carefully planted and
laid out, and calculated both to ornament the city and
also to check its growth.! No gardens were to be
within the walls, the wide streets and numerous open
spaces being, in Wren's opinion, sufficient for the healthi
ness of the citizens. The Fleet was to be left open, to
be widened, canalised, and bordered by broad quays, so
as to form a convenient port for barges. %
Had Wren been allowed to carry out this magnificent
design, which would not, by the way, have cost any more
than the actual rebuilding as it eventually took place, no
city in Europe would have had a more magnificent, or a
more picturesque aspect It was not a mere architectural
day-dream. " Wren, with a perfect knowledge of his
own powers, which he considered as dispassionately, and
knew as accurately as any matter of mathematical science,
was ready to undertake and perform his scheme to the
uttermost."§ But several circumstances conspired to defeat
* See paper in the ' Transactions,' iii. 39, by Mr. Ashpitel.
t Miss Phillimore, p. 173.
X London has been Haussmannised in the past few years to an immense
extent, but Wren's lines have not been followed, and, indeed, the design
adopted has been varied from time to time, so that the result, though some
streets are widened, will not, in the end, do much to improve the
appearance of the city.
§ Miss Phillimore, p. 174.

WREN. 373
it. The king could never make up his mind, and at this
time the king counted for more than at an earlier period,
while the mayor was not a man like Whittington or
Gresham. The citizens were in a great hurry to begin
the rebuilding. Leases were granted immediately in
Moorfields. Men of "business were anxious not to part
with the old sites. The winter was coming on, and the
people must be housed. In short, there was no one to
take the scheme up warmly, and there were a great many
to oppose it. The modern archaeologist, who knows how
instructive are those very courts and alleys which Wren
would have obliterated, who traces with diligent minute
ness the old parochial boundaries, and tries to reconstruct
for himself the gabled houses, the quaint little churches
at every corner, the conduits and even the sign-boards
which still survive in street names, would have had most
cause for regret
It is, of course, impossible to go completely through
even the shortest notice of all that Wren built within
the next few years.* No two towers, no two churches,
no two porticoes were the same. The infinite variety
of his designs is almost as surprising as their uniform
beauty. St. Paul's grew slowly, while the parish
churches all around were springing up with amazing
rapidity. For the most part very little money was
forthcoming, and Wren had constantly to postpone every
other consideration to that of cost But the cheapest of
the new churches was at least well built, and likely to last
without any important repairs,! clean, light, airy, and
designed as Wren had promised, " according to the best
* An approximate list of his city buildings is in Appendix D. Miss
Phillimore's is very erroneous, and carelessly printed besides.
t " Building," he says in a letter quoted by Miss Phillimore (p. 150),
" certainly ought to have the attribute of Eternal."

374 HISTORY OF LONDON.
forms for capacity and hearing." The old idea of a church
was one in which there would be the best accommodation
for the celebration of the Mass. The " capacity " to be
studied was not a capacity for holding a large congrega
tion, but for providing as many altars as possible for the
chantry priests. The new idea elevated the sermon to
the first place in the minds of religious citizens. It is
probable that many of the older churches were without
pulpits of any kind. In the new ones the pulpit was the
prominent if not the principal feature. In another point
all the new churches differed from the old. Wren did not
put up a single open timber roof like those which
prevailed in a large majority of the old churches. Some
he vaulted, some he ceiled, but knowing the danger from
storm and fire of the high pitched roofs with their open
beams, he covered his churches for the most part with
lead, and laid it as nearly as possible flat. When he got
leave, he took great pains with the exterior, and some
times, when one part of a church was more exposed to
view than another, he accentuated the ornamental and
constructional features. The eastern end of St. Lawrence
Jewry looks on King Street and the Guildhall Court.
It is enriched with an exquisitely proportioned composi
tion of Corinthian columns and pilasters.* At St.
Matthew's Friday Street,! again, where only one side
faced a street, and light was needed, the whole wall forms
a single long window divided by pillars into six arched
openings. .
But the great glory of Wren's parish churches, and
indeed of the whole city, are the towers and spires.,
They are gradually disappearing, to the great regret of
* The superiority of Wren as an artist comes out strongly when we com
pare the east end of St. Lawrence with the very similar one at St. Botolph
Aldersgate, by Pierson. s t Now condemned or destroyed.

BOW STEEPLE.

To Jace p. 375, Vol. /.

WREN. 375
all lovers of the beautiful in architecture. When two or
three had been pulled down it was discovered, but too
late, that the harmonious effect of all was marred. There
can be no doubt that Wren made the design of one to
balance or contrast or harmonise with another. No
tower was built with reference to itself alone. All were
part of a single great composition, now for ever lost. I
am inclined the more to insist upon this because I have
never heard any kind of reason given why they should
have been removed. It is sometimes said that the site
was valuable. But the site of a church tower is very
small, and surely London is not so poverty-stricken that
it cannot afford to keep its greatest ornaments. The
case of the church itself is somewhat different. In the first
place, it covers a more considerable area, and that, too, in
many parts of the city where land is sold by the inch
almost, so valuable is it. In the second, some persons of
influence, though they did not scruple to allow the church
to be utterly razed, had very considerable objection to
its being put to a secular use.* The value of the site
and of the materials was applied to a most desirable
object, but how that object can be served by the de
struction of buildings admirably suited for some business
purposes, I have not learned. Wren seems to have fore
seen the probability of this course of action, and both to
have put his towers apart from the churches tp which
they belonged, and also to have avoided, where it was
possible, setting them in the principal street front. The
steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside is an unfortunate
exception. Here he built a passage to connect it with
* In India a man will torture and illtreat his cow in the most shocking
manner, and then kneel down and worship her. A somewhat similar
superstition seems to have prevailed in the minds of the worthy people — I
do not in the least know who they are— who have managed this business.

376 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the church, setting the tower forward into the street.
It has not yet been pulled down to widen the roadway,
like the best of the spires.
Wren's towers have been divided into three classes.*
Some are wholly of stone. Some consist of stone sub
structures with lead-covered spires or lanterns. Some
are simple towers. It is difficult to preserve this classi
fication, as it does not in any way define the relative
importance of the different designs. The western towers
of St. Paul's, for instance, are in the first, and the central
dome in the second class. But for practical purposes,
and as we have no occasion to go minutely through
every one of them, it may do as well as any other. !
The stone steeples are eleven in number, including the
two western towers of St. Paul's. Wren's most ambitious
work is to be found in them. They were only attached
to churches when sufficient money was forthcoming and
the architect was not too much hampered by questions
of cost. The palm among them is usually assigned to
St. Mary-le-Bow : and I shall probably be considered
very heterodox if I venture to prefer St. Magnus. There
are some most charming features in St. Mary's, the light
circular colonnade, for instance. But the square and the
circular parts do not seem to come well together, and I
have never been able to see any meaning or use in the
corner finials of the square or lower part of the tower
supporting little vases. They certainly have no beauty.
Vases alone are used in the same situation on the lovely
steeple of St. Bride, as well as on the tower of St. Magnus,
which indeed remains, in my mind, one of the most
absolutely faultless of Wren's towers, though I should
* Taylor, p. 10.
t In Knight's 'London,' v. 180, Wren's churches are divided into
' ' domed, basilical, and miscellaneous, " which is in reality no division at
all, as most of them come under the last head, which has to be subdivided.

ST. MAGNUS.

To face p. 376, Vol. I.

WREN 377
have preferred stone for lead on the dome at the top.
Lead, however, is no necessary part of the design.* St.
Mary's is much larger, the dragon vane on the top of the
highest pinnacle rising to a height of 221 feet 9 inches
from the pavement of Cheapside, while St. Magnus is
only 1 85 feet high, and looks even smaller, as it is close
under London Bridge. St. Mary's was begun in 1671,
and is therefore among the first, as St. Magnus, erected
in 1705, is one ofthe last of Wren's designs.
One cannot but admire the steeple of St. Bride's, built
in 1680, although the series of similar stages which form
the spire would have been unpleasing if executed by
any other hand. As it is, we find it difficult " to avoid
the idea that they might all sink into one another, and
shut up like the slides of a telescope." f Another ambi
tious, yet scarcely successful design, is that of St. Vedast,
Foster Lane. It is seen, when we enter the city by
Newgate Street, behind the steeple of Christ Church,
and the two are exactly the same in height. J As the
steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow can be taken into the same
view from the street, it will be seen at once that Wren
thought more of St. Mary's than of the others, and that
to a certain extent, they were erected to set it off. Of the
two, St. Vedast's was the first built.§ Its unquiet play of
concave curves comes into absolute and violent contrast
with the concentric circles of St. Mary's, and it is easy to
believe that Wren saw the advantage of trying in Christ
Church the effect of simple right angles and as few
curves as were consistent with an arcuated building.

* Mr. Champneys recognises in the lantern a reminiscence-of what Wren
had seen in Blickling and other Jacobean buildings.
t Fergusson, p. 276.
X 160 feet ; roughly speaking, two-thirds the height of St. Mary-le-Bow.
§ I697-

378 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Undoubtedly when the authorities remove one of the
three, both the others will suffer.
Wren, little as he cared for gothic, has left in the city
four examples of what he could do in that style. St.
Alban's Wood Street, is hardly to be distinguished from
a genuine gothic church of a late period. Inigo Jones
had built a church on the same spot, and it is stated by
tradition to have been in the same style. As Wren's
work was finished in 1685, it is among the designs of
a comparatively early period in his career. Thirteen years
later he built the tower only of St. Dunstan's-in-the-
East, the church not having been burnt. Here he
imitated the design of St. Nicholas, at Newcastle-on-
Tyne,* perching a small spire or lantern on four flying
buttresses. Though really a strong building, it looks
weak, and we cannot admire architectural gymnastics.
Thirteen years again elapsed, and Wren rebuilt St. Mary
Aldermary, a church only partially consumed in the
great fire. The groined roof is very fine, and shows
what might have been done for the further development
of the old style had Wren and his successors taken it up
in earnest. The mouldings are too shallow, the tracery
and panelling too round, the details semi-classical ; but
St. Mary's will always take rank after the famous stair
case at Christ Church, Oxford, as an example of post-
mediaeval gothic! The tower, the effect of which has
been greatly injured, when seen from a little distance, by
the removal of Wren's greatest spire, which stood close
by in Watling Street, is graceful, and but for a too
* St. Nicholas is familiar to all lovers of Bewick's woodcuts. Two
examples of this not very meritorious design are in Scotland.
t I find, oddly enough, no mention of St. Mary's in Miss Phillimore's
book. Perhaps she considers the church merely a restoration. There is
evidence, I believe, by the way, that the staircase at Oxford is much older
than the date, 1640, usually assigned to it (see Ingram's ' Oxford,' i. 51).

WREN. 379
frequent repetition of small and meaningless archi
tectural features, very successful as an imitation. St.
Antholin's stood alone as the only simple stone spire
Wren built. It contrasted admirably with St. Mary
Aldermary, being purely gothic in construction though
with Italian details. It was taller than St. Mary's
by about twenty feet, as a spire should be, but the
proportion between them was otherwise very equal.
It was pulled down in 1875. "One cannot but deeply
regret the loss of this spire, unique in its way among
Wren's works," observes Mr. Taylor, and his words are
not by any means strong enough to suit the occasion.
We cannot boast much of the culture with which the
last quarter of the nineteenth century was inaugurated
in the city, when such a vandalism as this was perpe
trated. We may recall the words of Strype when
speaking of the destruction of the spire of the Austin
Friars, " times hereafter may more talk on it.''
Wren's latest architectural effort was the rebuilding of
the tower of St. Michael's upon Cornhill, which was
only accomplished the year before his death. He
had built the church more than forty years before, but
the fire, though it had injured, had not destroyed the
tower. We have thus in the same building a gothic
steeple and a classical church, and the steeple can only be
looked upon as a restoration or imitation of the old one.
Indeed the parishioners seem, as became the dwellers on
the old bishop's soke, to have been unusually conser
vative in their ideas, and their church covers the exact
site of the former one, though it is not rectangular.
The tower, one of the most conspicuous in London, as
it rises 130 feet from the highest ground in the city, is
square, and has at the summit four massive turrets
rather than pinnacles, in a very fair gothic style. This

380 HISTORY OF LONDON.
is more than can be said for a vulgar porch, bedizened
with coarse carving ' and coloured columns, which has
lately been added to the original design.
Of Wren's minor churches it is not necessary that I
should say" much. Many of them were built in great
haste, others with very insufficient means. Thus, the
people of Allhallows Lombard Street had a temporary
structure erected to worship in, and would have restored
their old church had it been possible. They coped the
walls with straw and lime to keep them from further
destruction. By 1670 they reluctantly abandoned hopes
of repair, and commissioned Wren to build them a new
church. To expedite the building in some parishes,
presents were sent to Wren and to his master mason,
Hooke, and rewards for rapid work. It is astonishing
how solidly and soundly they are all constructed. If
ever an architect built for eternity it was Wren. We are
sometimes told that it is necessary when the churches
are abandoned to pull the towers down on account of
the expense of keeping them in repair. But those
towers which have been pulled down showed no signs
of decay, and would have stood for centuries, and
all the longer for not being subject to the tinkering
of a modern builder. ' The excuse only adds insult to
injury. The smallness of the cost of Wren's works is to be
observed. Though he built so solidly, and though
he took care that no part of the panelling or carving
was scamped, yet the most expensive of all his parish
churches, St. Mary-le-Bow, only reached 15,400/. As
money was worth seven to ten per cent, at the time, we
may reckon this less than 50,000/. in our money. Christ
Church Newgate Street, and St. Lawrence Jewry, cost
1 2,000/. each, as did St. Bride's. But a great number were

WREN. 38l
built for an expenditure varying from 2500/. at St.
Nicholas Cole Abbey, to 6000/. at St. Peter's Cornhill.
Sir Christopher himself drew the modest salary of 100/.
a year as architect to the City Church Commissioners.
The difficulty of raising money was often very great,
and some of the poorer parishes found it almost im-
oossible. In fact, when we remember that there were
no insurance companies, that an enormous amount of
wealth was destroyed, that a large number of wealthy
people were utterly ruined, and that little business had
been done the year before the Great Fire owing to the
plague, we are surprised at the rapidity with which
London rose from her ashes. Private benevolence was
very frequently enlisted. A tax on coals was imposed
by Act of Parliament. Collections were made from
house to house. Yet it was only by two parishes
combining their funds that several of the churches
were built* The gifts of private individuals were
in some cases out of all proportion to what we hear
of nowadays. The widow of Henry Rogers, for in
stance, gave 5000/. to the repair of St. Mary Alder
mary, a sum equal to fully 12,000/. now. So, too,
Lady Williamson not only gave 2620/. towards the
building of St. Paul's, being the largest individual sub
scription, but 4000/. towards St. Dunstan's-in-the-East
and 2000/. towards St. Mary-le-Bow. " Mr. George
Holman, said to have been a Roman Catholic, gave
1000/."! to the building of St. Benet Fink. Sums of
250/. and 100/. were very common, and the citizens of
the time set us a good example. The unanimity with
which Wren was employed is also a pleasing feature in
* The number of churches burnt was about 86. The number rebuilt
about 50.
t Godwin and Britton, ii. 194.

382 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the annals of the period. Nor was his attention con
fined to churches. He built also a number of halls for
the companies, but here he had the sharp competition of
the city architect, Jarman, who in fact restored the
greatest of them. But Guildhall was little injured by
the Great Fire, and what Jarman did was neither con
siderable nor admirable. Wren, in short, must be looked
upon as the restorer of the London we now see, and
one hesitates to write that already eleven of his
churches and ten of his towers have been pulled down
in what I may call cold blood — as part of a settled
and premeditated scheme which still carries on its evil
work.* I have reserved to the last the two most important of
his buildings in the city. One is among the smallest,
the other by far the largest of his churches, but their
history is inextricably connected. Wren had already,
early in 1672, built a small domed church. St. Mary-
at-Hill had not lost its ancient tower, which stood till
1780, but Wren renewed the body of the church. Four
Doric columns support a cupola, which only rises to a
height of 38 feet. He formed a more ambitious design
towards the end of the same year. In October the
foundations were laid of the outwardly plain church of
St. Stephen's Wallbrook. Whether Wren ever made a
suitable design for the exterior or not I have no informa-
* The churches destroyed were All Hallows Bread Street, — what does
Miss Phillimore mean (p. 252) by saying that Newton was buried here ? — St.
Antholin Watling Street ; St. Bartholomew by the Bank ; St. Bennet
Gracechurch ; St. Bennet Fink ; St. Christopher le Stocks ; St. Dionys
Backchurch ; St. Mary Somerset j St. Michael Crooked Lane ; St.
Michael Queenhithe ; and St. Mildred Poultry ; the tower of St. Mary
Somerset has not yet found a purchaser, and still stands in Upper Thames
Street, though the church has been pulled down. St. Mary-at-Hill has
narrowly escaped for the present.

WREN. 383
tion, but of the interior it may safely be said that his
fame as an architect is established by it, and is hardly
increased by the subsequent erection of St. Paul's.
St. Stephen's is altogether satisfactory for the same
reason that Sir Christopher Wren had no rivals and no
successors.* The amount of thought expended on one
little church which was not to cost so much as 8000/.
shows us both why the design is so good and also why
it has never been imitated. Wren was probably the
second mathematician in England at the time, his only
superior being Sir Isaac Newton. He knew the exact
proportions which would produce the best effect. The
church was somewhat pulled about and scraped during
the height of the so-called gothic mania, a few years
ago, but remains substantially as Wren left it. There
was a proposal to cut down the pews. Had this been
carried out the whole effect of the church would have
been altered. At present, by one of the most subtle yet
simple contrivances ever thought of, we see the whole of
the area of the church without any interruption. Wren
conceived the happy thought of elevating his pillars on
bases, and concealing the bases with lofty pews. The
real floor, the floor, that is, from which the whole design
rises, is therefore on a level with the eye, and the visitor
sees the church as if in a picture — as if he himself was
not within it. In so small a building this is of the greatest
service in enhancing the size. When it is empty, and
the visitor sees no figure to measure its size, it appears
gigantic. When " two or three are gathered together,"
everything is changed, and it is betrayed as the miniature
* No one could ever make the kind of claim against Wren, for instance,
which a son of Pugin's made for his father against Sir C. Barry. There is
nothing in the Westminster Palace which might not have been designed
by Pugin or by half-a-dozen other architects, but none of Wren's
contemporaries or successors could have designed St. Stephen's.

3 84 HIS TOR Y OF L ONDON.
of a grand cathedral.* The amount of work in planning
and carrying out this small building must have been
altogether out of proportion to its bulk. A few sentences
from a paper on it by a competent architect f will exhibit
its difficulties. "The plan results from an octagon
inscribed in a circle whose diameter is equal to the
distance between the centres of the extreme columns.
The interior length of the church is the common measure
of the other parts, one-half of it being given to the
diameter of the circle about which the columns under
the cupola are circumscribed  The columns are of
the Corinthian order, and it is truly astonishing to
observe the advantage the architect has taken of so
scanty a number as sixteen." But the great merits of
St. Stephen's Wallbrook are not to be described by
mathematical and architectural terms, however carefully
chosen. They are better indicated in the simple fact that
the effect charms the most ignorant visitor as it satisfies
the most learned critic. To imitate work like this would
require not only Wren's genius but his knowledge. We
have had clever architects since his time, no doubt,
but none who were able to apply to their designs his
" capacity for taking trouble," and his previously-acquired
mathematical experience, together with the natural eye
for beauty which distinguished him. Wren stands alone
in his own line as Shakespeare stands in his. Neither
* The dimensions of St. Stephen's are thus stated by Gwilt (' Edifices of
London,' i. 34) : " The main body of St. Stephen's Church (for the entrance
and tower stand completely distinct from it), covers a plot of ground 87 ft.
10 in. in length from east to west, and 64 ft. 10 in. from north to south ; its
clear internal dimensions being 82 ft. 6 in. by 59 ft. 6 in. It is very singular
that so many writers, including the author of the ' Parentalia,' should have
invariably quoted its dimensions as 75 ft. by 56 ft." The dome is 45 ft. in
diameter and 63 ft. in height. The aisles are 36 ft. high. (See Godwin
and Britton, ' Churches of London,' ii. 273.)
t Gwilt ut supra.

To Hum p. 384-.

Interior of ST Stephen's Wallbrook.
(From "The Edifices of London!)

WREN. 385
of them established a school, for the simple reason that
no one in their time was worthy to be their scholar.
The largest, and in some senses the greatest, of Wren's
buildings is that which he substituted for the venerable
cathedral church of London. An exaggerated idea of
Old St. Paul's has been formed of late. I have en
deavoured above to form an impartial idea of what it was
in reality. To say that Wren's church is a worthy suc
cessor is to disparage Wren. His work is in a different
style, of course, and it is not possible to institute a just
comparison. The only cathedral in Europe worthy to
compete with Wren's is St. Peter's at Rome ; yet, except
in the one matter of size, where St. Peter's has the advan
tage, St. Paul's is superior. It is not possible to compare
St. Paul's adequately with either Salisbury or Ely ; but
both comparisons have been made. Salisbury and St.
Paul's are alone as having been begun and finished, or
nearly finished, in the same style: Ely Cathedral pre
sents the same complexities of plan as St Paul's ; but
carried very little further both comparisons fail. The
slight irregularities of Salisbury only add to its pic-
turesqueness, and the removal of an incongruous cam
panile by Wyatt is always ranked as an architectural
crime ; or, at least, as that kind of mistake which is as
bad as a crime. Ely has the fault of Old St. Paul's, and
is in two very different styles. No classical or gothic
addition — so as it is good of its kind — can very greatly
injure it. But Wren's St. Paul's is a harmonious compo
sition, complete and uniform, remarkable as much for its
unity as for its beauty* An incongruous addition, how
ever good in itself, would be calculated to injure it. To
* I do not attempt any detailed account of St. Paul's. It is too
familiar and has been too often described already ; nor do I describe at any
length the previous design. See 'Magazine of Art,' June 1882, for an
article on the subject by Mr. Basil Champneys.
VOL. I. 2 C

386 HISTORY OF LONDON.
a gothic cathedral it stands as an ode of Gray's stands
to a ballad like Chevy Chase. A line, a word, sub
tracted or added, would spoil the ode. Half-a-dozen
good verses would not hurt the ballad.
The great feature of St. Paul's, however, is neither its
size nor its beauty, but its fitness, whether considered
from an artistic point of view or from that of mere
utility. It is sometimes objected to churches in a clas
sical style that they are like heathen temples. This is
perfectly true of St. Pancras New Church, for example,
only that no real Greek building of the size would be so
ugly. But St. Paul's is unmistakably a church, notwith
standing its classical details, and can never for a moment
be mistaken for anything but a church. It is roomy and
bright : people can see and hear in it. Windows are part
of the design. At St. Pancras windows exist in spite of
the style. At St. Paul's the dominant problem in the
architect's mind was how to make it possible and con
venient for the largest number of people to worship or
to be taught together. It is not too large for the dome
itself to be used as St. Paul's Cross was used in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There are probably
no such congregations in the world as those which
assemble in St. Paul's Sunday after Sunday, and all can
hear, all can see.
It is said to be the test of Handel's oratorios that they
may be sung by any number of voices that can be
assembled, and that they sound better and better as the
choir is increased in strength. St Paul's Cathedral
stands the test of numbers in the same way, and never
looks so well as when it is most full of worshippers.
But its fitness is evidenced in many other ways, and it may
safely be asserted that no church has been built since the
Reformation which so completely answers its purpose

WREN. ' 38,7
St Paul's, as Wren first designed it, was to be a single-
storeyed building with two domes, one considerably
smaller than the other, and with a portico strongly re
sembling Inigo Jones's. The interior was evidently- a
matter for more thought with him than the exterior.
In fact, it would have consisted mainly of the space
under a great dome, with a vestibule formed under the
smaller one. But court or other influence was against
it, and after some delay Wren proceeded to sketch a
. design on the lines of a gothic church. It was to be
cruciform in plan, to have side aisles and a clear-storey,
and at least a couple of chapels. To all these conditions
he submitted, but very unwillingly, and the drawing,
which still exists, as approved by the king and the com
missioners, fulfilled them all, but is without any exception
the poorest and weakest design which ever issued from
his hands. We can, in fact, scarcely recognise his work
in it. But to the king and his brother it mattered little
whether Wren had done his best or his worst so that
they had a church suitable to the religious worship which
one of them already openly professed. The drawing
was therefore passed, with the words "very artificial,
proper, and useful."
It was no sooner thus accepted than Wren silently
threw it aside. There is no known drawing extant of the
church as we now see it. Three features, all wholly
foreign to Wren's ideas of good taste, exist in the build
ing, all forced upon him by his employers. The
existence of a central aisle and clear-storey rendered it
necessary that a kind of screen should be built above the
walls of the side aisles. The general appearance of the
whole building becomes at once, two-storeyed. So also
the dome could no longer cover the wide space at first
intended, but must be circumscribed to suit the altered
2 C 2

388 HISTORY OF LONDON.
plan. This led to another constructive deception, and
we have now, in fact, three domes ; an inner one, which
is that seen within the church ; an outer one, which is
that seen from the street ; and between the two a cone-
shaped building of brick made to carry the weight of the
central lantern, with its ball and cross. Lastly, when
the work approached completion, a balustrade, which is
not a classical feature, but borrowed from the gothic,
was proposed, and Wren a third time had to submit.
" Ladies," he said scornfully, in an official reply to the
commissioners, " think nothing well without an edging."
With these faults, which probably Wren himself dis
liked more than any one else, St. Paul's is deserving of
all the admiration it receives. Much time and talk have
been spent of late on the subject of the decorations. A
large, sum of money has been laid up, and something
will undoubtedly be done before long. I confess, apart
from artistic considerations; that I am glad to have been
allowed to see it as Wren left it, before the altered
arrangement of the organ, before the intrusion of the
interior porches, before the introduction of the incon
gruous, if handsome pulpit under the dome : and before
the old grey, ghostly figures on the dome are supplanted
by modern mosaics.
The dimensions of St. Paul's are well known. The
figures are easily remembered. The tip of the cross is
as many feet from the pavement as there are days in the
year. The extreme length is 500 ft., the width in the
transepts being just half. The dome which is 145 feet
in outward diameter, is only 108 within, for the reason
stated above. The middle aisle of the nave is 80 feet in
'interior height. The western towers are 222 feet high.
The annoyances to which the architect of this great
edifice was exposed grew in part out of the political

WREN. 389
history of the times. He kept as much as possible aloof
from politics, but we must remember that St Stephen
Wallbrook was begun the year after wide-spread ruin
came upon London merchants by the closing of the
Exchequer* amid declarations of war with Holland.
The first stone of St. Paul's was laid on the 2 ist June,
1675, the year of Charles the Second's disgraceful treaty
with France. The College of Physicians, in Warwick
Lane, was finished as William and Mary ascended the
throne. The choir of the new cathedral was first
opened for service in 1697, the year of the Peace of
Ryswick. Wren was not well treated in his old age, and he lived
to be older than Inigo Jones. It is quite possible that
the magnitude of his own architectural faculty had a
bad influence on his contemporaries. No one could
hope to approach him, so no one attempted it.! The
one architect who came near him was an amateur, a
man whose leisure enabled him to work dut the subtle
and difficult questions of proportion, as Wren worked
them without leisure. Lord Burlington is now hardly
known. The little he built was of rare excellence, and
men of inferior genius have tried to improve it, and have
only succeeded in spoiling it.J But what Burlington,
working slowly, with every kind of professional help,
with no one or nothing to hurry him, was able to do
* See next chapter.
t See criticisms on Gibbs, Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh, and others, in the
second volume.
X The barbarous treatment of Burlington House by some ignorant
builder a very few years ago is typical. The additions are costly, loaded
with ornament, and — hideous. The architect, if indeed an architect was
employed, had no idea that proportion was an element in the beauty of the
house he defaced. The original designs are in ' Vitruvius Britannicus, '
iii. 22-24. A rejected design is in vol. i. 31-32. A beautiful design for a
house for General Wade, by Lord Burlington, is in vol. iii. 10.

390 HISTORY OF LONDON.
twice or thrice, Wren did habitually and did better.
He thought out each design to the utmost. Whatever
his hand found to do, he did it with all his might.
After his time art in this country was at as low an'
ebb as it has ever reached. Before his death he had
retired to a house he had bought in Warwickshire, and
thence once a year he used to come to London and sit
for a while under the mighty dome he had built. When
he died, at length, in his ninety-first year, they bore his
body to repose in the crypt, and his son placed over the
grave the memorable words, now likewise inscribed in a
prominent part of the church above —
" Si monumentum requiris circumspice. "

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( 391 )

CHAPTER XIII.
THE BANK.
WHILE Wren was rebuilding London, the king was
doing all he could to ruin the Londoners. Experience
had taught the Stuarts nothing. Charles II. could not
see, any more than his unfortunate father, that the pros
perity of the kingdom, nay even of the king himself, was
bound up in the prosperity of the city. The conse
quences of his disastrous policy fell slightly on himself,
but they ruined his successor. There can be no doubt
that the dethronement of the dynasty became a certainty
when London had decided against it The causes of
that decision have been detailed by many historians, and
notably by one for whose readers no new arrangement
of facts would have much interest* It will be only
necessary here, therefore, to state those circumstances
which relate strictly to the city, and especially those
which resulted in the establishment of a modern " guild
merchant " of such power that it regulates the trade, not
of London only, nor even of England, but of Europe and
the world.
The wealth of London, even after the great fire, was
enormous, but the principal part of it was in the hands of
the goldsmiths. What the mercers had been in the
sixteenth century, the goldsmiths were in the seven
teenth. They did not call themselves- bankers, but
professed to keep " running cashes," or, in modern
* Macaulay, ' History of England, from the accession of James II.'

392 HISTORY OF LONDON.
language, current accounts. Gradually they gave up
goldsmith work and confined their business to money.
Lombard Street became and continues to be their head
quarters, as it had been that of the Italian money-lenders
of the thirteenth century — the goldsmiths having pre
viously occupied the western end of Cheap, where Old
Change still commemorates their residence and the
object of their trade. In 1677* there were no fewer
than thirty-seven goldsmiths keeping running cashes
in Lombard Street. The seizure by Charles I. of a sum
said to have amounted to 200,000/. which the London
goldsmiths had deposited for safety in the Tower, forced
them to find some better use for money than storing it.
The practice of lending it at a moderate rate of interest
was very soon followed by that of receivingit upon deposit
Thus, as early as the time of the Commonwealth, bank
ing, as we understand it, was flourishing. Cheques,
under the name of " goldsmith's notes " were in use.
Oliver Cromwell himself had an account! at the Mary-
gold, a house just within Temple Bar in which William
Wheeler kept running cashes. He had also dealings
with Edward Backwell, of the Unicorn in Lombard
Street, Alderman of the Ward of Bishopsgate.
The great banker of the day was this Edward Back-
well. Pepys mentions him many times. Among the
diarist's most self-complacent entries are those which
tell of the money he laid out in table silver, and in cups
for presents. But Pepys also visited Backwell for political
* F. G. Hilton Price's ' Handbook of London Bankers,' p. 60, and the
reprint of the ' London Directory ' of 1677. Mr. Price's paper on " Edward
Backwell," read before the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society,
throws much light on the commercial history of London in this reign.
t The book in which the Protector's account was entered has been lost ;
but many of Messrs. Wheeler's ledgers are in possession of the present
firm of Child and Co., on the same site.

THE BANK. 393
purposes. The pay of the troops in the garrison of
Dunkirk, and other expenses connected with that fort,
went through the great goldsmith's hands, as did the
money received from the French when, so much to the
disgust of his subjects, Charles II. sold Dunkirk to
Louis XIV. Backwell also made loans to the crown
on various kinds of security, and Pepys went to him in
1665 to advance a small sum for the navy. Backwell
was constantly sent by the king on messages to France,
and we may be sure was the intermediary in many
money dealings between Charles and Louis after the
famous treaty of Dover. Before the fire he used to take
deposits, allowing as much as 6 per cent, interest at
twenty days' call, and even 3J per cent, or more for
money on demand. All the bankers' houses in Lombard
Street perished in the great fire, and Alderman Back-
well, on account of the great importance of the public
services he was able to perform, had a special precept
from the king to secure him lodgings in Gresham House,
where he could carry on business until the rebuilding
of the Unicorn. He continued to flourish. Loan after
loan he negociated to meet the necessities of Charles, the
war with the Dutch, and the fortification of Tangier.
He bought houses in Lombard Street and lands in Hun
tingdonshire, but the bulk of his fortune was in Treasury
bonds, for the king owed him a quarter of a million the
year after the fire, and nearly 300,000/. in 1672.
There was keen competition among these early bankers,
and other " goldsmiths " besides Backwell had dealings
with the government. One of the most eminent of his
rivals was connected with him by family ties . Tyringham
Backwell, his son, married the daughter of Sir Francis
Child, who had succeeded Wheeler at the Marygold just
within the newly-built archway of Temple Bar. Part of

394 HISTORY OF LONDON.
the house, indeed, stood on ruins of the Templars' outer
courts, and remains of ancient vaultings are said still to
exist in the cellars of the bank. For Child's still
flourishes, though Temple Bar is gone, and no member
of the firm bears the original surname. The mysterious
little chamber over the arch, with its many-paned
windows, one looking up Fleet Street, and one down
the Strand, was rented for 50/ a year from the city by
the Messrs. Child, just as Chaucer had rented the rooms
over Aldgate in 1374* — and was used as a store for old
documents. It had been intended for a porter's lodge,
and when the Bar was pulled down in 1878, the staircase,
long built up, was exposed. High up in the roof, just
under the grinning skulls of traitors, was another little
closet, approached by a ladder, and perhaps designed
as a lock-up for the porter's use when disorderly
characters disturbed the peace of Fleet Street.
The family had become connected with the Marygold
by a double marriage. Sir Joshua Child, an early governor
of the East India Company, whose daughter carried an
immense fortune into the Somerset family, now repre
sented by his descendant the duke of Beaufort, had a
younger brother,! apprenticed to William Wheeler. He
was mentioned above as keeping Cromwell's running cash
account, and had first set up as a goldsmith in Cheap,
removing to Temple Bar early in the reign of Charles I.
The apprentice, according to the time-honoured city
custom, married his master's daughter, and the appren
tice's mother, Mrs. Child, married the master's surviving
partner, Robert Blanchard. The business was thus kept
in the family, and in 1681 Francis Child. was sole owner
and took John Rayer into the firm as his junior.
* Riley, ' Memorials,' p. 377.
t This is not quite certain. See Price.

THE BANK. 395
This was not until after a crisis had occurred in the
history not only of this, but also of every other London
banker of the day. Nearly all were ruined, but Child's
and another eminent firm escaped by the same means.
In 1672 the government of Charles II. was so far from
representing a majority of the nation that it comprised
within the celebrated " Cabal " almost all the eminent
men in the kingdom who thought with the king. The
Cabal did not dare to call Parliament together. They
had obtained a subsidy from the late House of Commons
with a. view to helping the Dutch against Louis XIV.
They had employed it to fit out a fleet and attack the
Dutch. In order to carry on this unpopular enterprise
further supplies were necessary. But how to obtain
more money, without the aid of a Parliament, was a
problem no one could solve, until Clifford happened to
consult a man much more clever than himself, the cele
brated Shaftesbury. He obtained from him by plying
him, it was said, with wine till he forgot his prudence, a
scheme so effectual, but so iniquitous, that we need not
wonder if in a more sober moment he would have kept it
to himself. Charles had openly avowed that he would
give the white staff of the treasury to any one who could
show him where to find a million and a half. Clifford
entering the royal presence claimed the staff, and
unfolded the Shaftesbury plan. It consisted simply
in closing the exchequer and seizing the. goldsmiths'
deposits. Of course such an abominable piece of dishonesty
must be kept secret. Yet, somehow, it got abroad to
a limited extent at least. Among the goldsmiths who
had money in the royal exchequer at the time was one
who is still represented among city bankers. Messrs..
Martin in Lombard Street, are the mercantile descen-

396 HISTORY OF LONDON.
dants of Charles Duncombe, who in 1672 kept running
cashes at his house, the Grasshopper, where a century
before Gresham had carried on his extensive operations.
The sign was in existence till the houses were first
numbered in 1770, and was stolen by a dishonest work
man when the old house was rebuilt a little later. The
modern bank is on the original Elizabethan site, and may
therefore justly claim to be the oldest commercial estab
lishment left in London. Evelyn notices Duncombe's
shrewdness in business not without censure, and Pope,
who was born, it might be said, under the shadow of the
Grasshopper, has gibbeted him in well known lines as " a
scrivenor, or city knight." Shaftesbury was among the
depositors in Duncombe's bank, and Child also had
influential men among his customers. Both these houses
had warning of the impending crash in time to withdraw
their money. But the king's principal creditor, Edward
Backwell, and many others, knew nothing of it, and were
ruined. The money in the exchequer consisted mainly
of customers' deposits. When Charles seized upon the
whole sum, the goldsmiths could not meet the demands
upon them, even though, to repair in some degree the
loss they sustained, the king gave them promises of
interest at what would now be thought a high rate. We
even hear of " runs " upon some banks which were not
connected with the royal treasury, and the mere news
caused such a panic as has seldom if ever since been seen
in the city. The whole sum which Charles thus acquired
by the plunder of the citizens, amounted to above
thirteen hundred thousand, equal to at least three million
sterling in the reckoning of the present day. .
Thus did the son of " the man Charles Stuart " walk
in the footsteps of his father, and, forgetting London's
loyalty to him in his early years, the embassy to Holland,

THE BANK. 397
the welcome and acclamations on Blackheath, reward
the trust reposed in his royal honour. He never made
peace with the city, and during the remaining years of
his disastrous reign, though a spark of loyalty was
towards the end of it rekindled by the rumours of popish
plots, and by the king's last illness, he laboured only to
humble it more and more. On their side the Londoners
intrigued with Shaftesbury against him and his brother,
afterwards James II., and almost openly communicated
with the prince of Orange. The marriage of the princess
Mary with William was joyfully received " as a Protestant
match, and as ensuring a Protestant successor to James."
But Charles was still reigning, and James might and did
marry again, and have a son. The prospect was gloomy
enough. Charles took occasion when the Londoners
harboured Shaftesbury to show them signs of his royal
displeasure, and as in the case of ancient kings, whose
history he might have laid to heart with advantage, he
found eminent citizens willing to further his designs on
the liberties of the city. We seem to be reading a
chapter in the annals of Henry III. or Richard II. when
we find a mayor, Sir John Moore, devoted to the court,
and endeavouring to further the king's views by securing
the election of at least one of the sheriffs. Ten years
had elapsed since the closing of the exchequer, but that
arbitrary and dishonourable act was still fresh in the
memory of the people. They refused the mayor's
nominee by an immense demonstration in favour of the
sheriffs they had chosen, Papillon and Dubois. In this
they were assisted and supported by the two sheriffs still
in office, Pilkington and Shute, and by an alderman,
Henry Cornish, whose tragical fate remains to be told.
All three were summoned on the complaint of the lord
mayor before the Privy Council, and committed to the

398 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Tower. The Habeas Corpus Act was, however now in
force, and the sheriffs were produced at the bar of the
king's bench, and pleading not guilty were admitted to
bail by the judges. A fresh election was ordered by the
lord mayor, and again his nominee was defeated by the
votes of the commonalty. The king and court mean
while had constantly interfered, and there can have been
no doubt in the minds of the people as to the question
involved. Papillon and Dubois were by an order in
council superseded, and on a new election, Box and
North were declared elected. Box, seeing the state of
the case, refused to serve, whereupon Rich was substituted
for him, and he and North were sworn in before the
mayor.* The juries they packed left the life of every
citizen who opposed the duke of York, or supported the
exclusion bills, at the mercy of the court. Shaftesbury
saw that, so far as he was concerned, liberty was no
longer assured though one jury had acquitted him, and he
prudently retired to Holland, but Pilkington and Shute,
the late sheriffs, with twelve aldermen, were accused of
having spoken against James, or otherwise offended the
court party, and were heavily fined, while Pilkington was
.superseded in his aldermanry by North, the second
sheriff. London was now at the king's mercy, and he used his
power as former kings, his ancestors, had used theirs.
We are irresistibly reminded by what ensued of Rokesley
and Edward I., or, before their time, of FitzThomas and
Henry III. The mayor and aldermen were summoned
to show causef wny their charter was not forfeited because
they had printed and published a petition in favour of
* The proceedings are minutely detailed by Maitland and Allen.
t The writ of summons was popularly known from this sentence as the
Quo -warranto.

THE BANK. 399
exclusion which the king had refused ; because they had
made illegal exaction of tolls towards the rebuilding of
the city after the fire ; because they had scandalised the
king's government and oppressed their fellow citizens, and,
in short, though the court party avoided saying so, because
Charles had determined, in the old phrase, " to take the
city into his own hands." The court party were careful
to manipulate the bench so as to insure a victory, and
the citizens were told to expect the forfeiture of their
liberties. They made the long journey to Windsor as
FitzThomas and his company had made it four centuries
before.* They were received by the king, who, through
lord keeper North, explained the situation to them,
and in view of the approaching civic elections, offered
conditions which were simply subversive of the whole
constitution for which their predecessors during so many
generations had contended and suffered. But when the
king's terms were afterwards debated in the Guildhall,
strange as it may appear, an act of submission was
carried by a small majority, and the king issued a com
mission under the great seal, appointing Sir William
Pritchard to be mayor during the royal pleasure, and two
other members of the court party, Daniel and Dashwood,
to be sheriffs. This was the year of the " Rye House
Plot," and many citizens were implicated. Lord Russell
was beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and another city
favourite, Algernon Sidney, upon Tower Hill, while the
infamous judge Jeffreys summoned one after another of
the popular leaders before his court, and fined or im
prisoned them on the most frivolous charges. Papillon,
for having served a writ on the lord mayor two years
before, calling on him to declare valid his election to the
* This was 1683, so that FitzThomas's imprisonment took place 418
years previously.

400 HISTORY OF LONDON.
shrievalty, was fined 10,000/., and refusing to pay had to
seek safety in flight. He remained in Holland till the
revolution. The death of Charles only precipitated the quarrel
between London and the crown. Yet the oppressed
citizens, when the king was in danger, knowing that a
worse ruler was in store for them, crowded the churches
to pray for his recovery, and a feeling sprang up very
like the old sentiment of personal loyalty. But it was
only in fulfilment of the mocking opinion which Charles
had himself expressed to his brother when he said,
" They will never kill me, James, to make you king."
Nor were the citizens wrong in their apprehensions.
James hardly needed the stimulus of Monmouth's
rebellion to make him remember the petitioners of 1682.
Had the whig party among the citizens then obtained
their wishes he could never have reigned. The sheriff
when Charles had refused the civic petition was alder
man Cornish, and three of the companions of Jeffreys
in the west, their hands still dyed with the blood of the
Somerset assizes, came into the city to inflict the
king's vengeance.* Cornish was on the Exchange
transacting business when he received the fatal summons.
His despair, for he must have seen at once that there
was nothing to hope for in a consciousness of innocence,
in the justice of a packed jury, or in the clemency of
James, betrayed no fear, but he behaved, as a witness of
his death declared, with the natural indignation of a
man murdered under legal forms.
He was arrested on Tuesday, 13th October, 1685,
hurried to Newgate and kept in solitary confinement,
without pens, ink or paper, without any power of com
municating with his friends, without counsel, nay, even
" Macaulay, chap. v.

THE BANK. 4° I
without a knowledge of the nature of the charge against
him. His children hastened to Whitehall, but James
coldly referred them to the judges. On Saturday the
prisoner received a copy of the indictment, and on Mon
day he was arraigned at the Old Bailey. Two informers
appeared against him, both " by their own confession,
accomplices in the plot with which they charged the
prisoner."* The judges took part with the attorney-
general in brow-beating the prisoner. In vain he
pleaded that no time had been allowed for the prepara
tion of his defence, and that a material witness was in
the country and had not been summoned. He was
brutally told that he did not deserve well enough of the
government to have time allowed him,! ori in other
words, that his fate was sealed before the hearing.
It may be asked how the government could count on
obtaining a verdict from a jury of freemen in a case like
this. But it must be remembered that the '' city was in
the hands of the king," as the ancient chronicles would
have said, and that though there was a mayor, and though
he had two sheriffs, yet the mayor was a nominee of the
king — not, strictly speaking, a mayor at all, but a warden
— and the sheriffs staunch members of the court party.f
Cornish was found guilty, condemned, and four days
later, on Friday the 23rd, he was led to his own door, at
the corner of Queen Street in Cheapside,§ and put to
* Macaulay, chap. v. f Maitland, i. 484.
X The mayor's name was Smith. Gosling and Vandeput were the
sheriffs, but it does not appear which of them packed the jury.
§ Maitland says "at the end of King Street, facing his own house."
This expression denotes as his a house at the opposite corner, namely, in
Queen Street, formerly " Soper's Lane." Macaulay remarks that the spot
is equally in sight of the Exchange and the Guildhall. It is so now, but
probably in 1685 only the Guildhall could be seen from the corner of King
Street.
VOL. I. 2D

402 HISTORY OF LONDON.
death with the barbarity which then belonged to an
ordinary execution for treason. The same day Eliza
beth Gaunt was burned at Tyburn. William Penn,
the Quaker, for whom, as Macaulay remarks, exhibitions
which humane men generally avoid seem to have had a
strong attraction, hurried from the city to St. Maryle
bone, and witnessed both the executions. The day was
marked in the memories of the citizens by a tempest
" such as had not been known since that great hurricane
which had raged round the death-bed of Oliver."*
There is one house, and one only left in Cheapside
which may have seen the death of Henry Cornish. It
stands at the corner of Friday Street, and retains its old
cross-mullioned windows. On its front is a stone carving,
the chained swan of Henry V., which may survive
from an older house on the same site before the fire. Of
King Street and Queen Street as they were then we can
form little notion. The scaffoldings were still about
many houses. St. Mary-le-Bow was not long finished.
The head o£the murdered alderman was placed over the
newly-repaired Guildhall, one of the few decorations of
the kind it ever received, and typical of the abject state
to which the city was reduced.
But a reaction was at hand. The trial of the bishops
showed the temper of the great mass of the citizens.
It was judged dangerous to conduct the prisoners
through the streets, and they went to the Tower by
water, but the people lined the banks of the Thames,
and " expressed all the transports that love, compassion,
and rage could beget."! Their acquittal was received
with the loudest acclamations of joy. This was in June,
1688, and before October James saw that the policy his
* Macaulay.
t Maitland, i. 485.

THE BANK. 4°3
brother and he had pursued towards the city was a
mistake. But this conviction came too late to save him.
It was in vain that he sent Jeffreys, the chancellor, in
state to the Guildhall with the restored charter. No
popular enthusiasm could be evoked. The address of
thanks was studiously cold, and the news which came
a month later, that William of Orange had landed at
Torbay, was received with open expressions of thanks
giving. Even a forged proclamation was accepted as
the genuine letter of the prince, and was printed and
circulated. Riots against the Roman Catholics occurred
almost daily, and were so far countenanced by the
authorities that the grand jury of Middlesex brought in
a true bill against a nobleman who had abjured Pro
testantism * and the houses of those merchants who held
to the unpopular faith were searched for arms by the
lord mayor. The general suspense and excitement
were heightened by rumours of the king's intended
flight, and news of the actual departure of the queen
and her infant son. On the nth December, James took
the great seal in his hands, drove from Whitehall in a
hired coach, hired a boat at Millbank, dropped the seal
into the river, landed at Vauxhall, and took the road to
Sheerness. The immediate consequences of the king's flight were
momentous to London. Men looked about everywhere
in vain for some one whose authority was undoubted.
The king's virtual abdication dissolved the whole fabric
of society, law, and order. No regency had been ap
pointed. The prince had not arrived.! All eyes were
turned towards the venerable body which still retained
its ancient powers. The lord mayor reigned in London
* Macaulay, chap. ix. The earl of Salisbury.
t Macaulay, chap. x.
2 D .2

404 HISTORY OF LONDON.
whether a king was at Westminster or not* The lords
of the council came into the city and were received in
state at the Guildhall by the magistracy. The lieutenant
of the Tower brought the keys of that fortress. A con
ference between the lords, with Archbishop Sancroft in
the chair, was followed by a declaration calling upon the
prince of Orange to maintain order. The lord mayor
and the aldermen sent immediately four of their number
with eight commoners, and formally invited William to
the city! A second invitation was despatched the same
day. A loan of 200,000/. was speedily gathered, and
amid rioting and the tumultuous plunder and destruction
of the houses of the Roman Catholics, a petition was
circulated and extensively signed, calling upon William
and Mary to take possession of the vacant throne.
William was determined not to precipitate matters,
and called upon the lord mayor to disavow the petition.
But it was virtually adopted by the assembled conven
tion, and the accession of the new sovereigns was
received in London with frantic signs of joy.J
One of the first cares of the new government was to
make a formal restitution of the privileges which, under
the tyrannies of Charles II. and his brother, had been for
* It will be remembered that in those days the " demise of the crown,"
not only dissolved parliament, but put an end to the commissions of the
judges. The mayoralty, almost alone among English institutions of the
kind, was unaffected by James's virtual abdication. Even the church
staggered under the blow, and Sancroft himself felt its weight within a
few months. (See vol. ii., ' Lambeth.')
t. Maitland, i. 488.
X It is, of course, easy to make too much of the election of William by
the city, but perhaps Lord Macaulay makes too little of it, and has not
done justice to its constitutional significance. He mentions the Guildhall
very casually, and places the action of the civic authorities in a subordinate
place. (See above, chap. iii. and Freeman's 'Norman Conquest,' v. 411.)
But several kings had ascended the English throne after a less formal
election by the city of London.

THE BANK. 4°5
a time called in question or withdrawn.* The proceed
ings in the judgment on the Quo Warranto were reversed
and declared illegal by Act of Parliament, and London
was restored fully to her ancient rights. Those rights
had been defined, or at least recapitulated, by an early
charter of Charles II., in which all the older charters were
" inspected," and it is upon the statute thus passed under
William and Mary that London now enjoys the ancient
liberties handed down to her by generation after genera
tion of citizens from days long before the Norman
Conquest They had been frequently endangered, and
are endangered even now. Sometimes kings like the
Angevins and the Stuarts invaded them ; sometimes
democrats who had little idea of the effects of their own
headstrong passions, assailed them from within. To some
men's minds it is a sin and a shame that any part of
England should enjoy freedom without exact definition.
Reformers envy the wealth of the city, and would apply
it to many purposes for which it was never intended and
in which it would do no good. The energy some
agitators display in order to obtain the money which
others have earned would, if better directed, make them
selves rich.
The citizens watched William's Irish campaign with
exceeding interest. The siege of Deny and its relief
were of personal importance to many of them : for
Londonderry, to give it the full title, was a colony
specially sent out by London. The city still has an
Ulster estate, and the grant of James I. to the mayor,
* 'Municipal London,' by Joseph Firth, p. 19. I shall have occasion
further on to notice once again this portly volume. Here it will be
sufficient to observe that the facts collected by Mr. Firth are treated with
such an amount of bitter party feeling that their value is greatly lost, and
their real significance obscured.

406 HISTORY OF LONDON.
aldermen and commonalty of the ruins of the ancient
Irish fort and of six thousand acres in the neighbourhood
is extant. The citizens were slow to take advantage of
their new property, and there was a time when it had
almost become forfeit. But it seemed doubly precious
after the siege, each circumstance of which was recounted
with exultation * in the streets of the parent city. But
the continental war was of even more importance, and
led to consequences of which at the present day we reap
the benefit, not in the city only but all over the world.
The victories of war are as nothing in comparison with
the victories of peace. The battle of Steinkirk and the
fall of Namur are mere names to most of us, but we
have all heard of the Funds and of the Bank of England.
To William's policy we owe these institutions, and to
these institutions London owes her supremacy among
the commercial cities of the world.
The loan of 200,000/. with which London greeted the
new king recalls a similar loan under similar circum
stances to Henry VIL, and betrays, as did the earlier
grant, a feeling of confidence in the new dynasty, such
as at the present day would be manifested by the state
ofthe funds. But in 1689 the public funds had not yet
come into existence, and the next step in commercial
progress was, so to speak, to formulate or regulate the
national debt, by instituting^ a corporation capable of
dealing with it The establishment of banks, as we
have seen, had gone on rapidly during the reigns of the
two last Stuarts. The closing of the exchequer, as the
event proved, had rather tended to discredit the king
* One London firm, Clavel and Simpson, St. Paul's Churchyard,
published in 1689 ' Walker's Account,' as well as ' A new and exact map of
London-derry and Culmore Fort, drawn with great Exactness by Captain
Macullach, who was there during the siege.'

THE BANK. 4°7
and his government than the victims of his fraud. Some
of the older goldsmiths gave up the contest like Back-
well, but others recovered from the blow, and the revolu
tion found them much increased in numbers- and in
business. Charles had been obliged to ask a loan
before the end of his reign, and though it had been
declared on the closing of the exchequer that such a
step showed that the court had resolved never to borrow
again, but to take, he obtained it at the moderate interest
of eight per cent. This betokens the keenness of the
competition among the bankers. The principal was
never repaid, but having been made part of the national
debt by King William, eventually became the nucleus of
the South Sea Fund.*
The idea of a great national bank seems to have been
first started so far back as 1678. Five years failed how
ever to give it definite shape. No mere plan for
sustaining credit could have commanded success. Like
most great enterprises in England, the eventual founda
tion of the national bank was owed to private enterprise.
William Paterson was in many respects a visionary
schemer. He had not only failed as a colonist, but had
involved hundreds, if not thousands, of his fellow Scots
in the disasters of the emigration to Darien. But in
starting the banking scheme he had the good fortune to
meet with thoroughly practical partners.! A proposal
was laid before the queen in council by which the
supplies needed for the use of the king in his foreign
campaign, were to be obtained and forwarded without
the numerous losses and percentages which sometimes
reduced a Parliamentary subsidy one -half before it
* Francis, ' History of the Bank of England,' i. 35.
t The account of Paterson in Francis does not show his connection with
the Bank of England in a clear light. It seems to assume more knowledge
of the subject than most readers possess.

408 HISTORY OF LONDON.
reached the royal treasury. Much opposition to the new
scheme was naturally encountered. The Tory party, and
especially the Jacobite section of it, foresaw the
additional strength an abundant supply of money would
confer on the revolutionary government. The usurers,
and many who were merely financiers in a better sense,
thought the bank would ruin them. The new measure
was, however, introduced to the notice of parliament in
the spring of 1694.* Paterson was only one of a number
of projectors who had laid schemes of the kind before
the legislature. The absurdity of some of them, the use-
lessness of others, the impracticability of the vast
majority, caused Paterson's plan to be looked at with
deep suspicion.
It was briefly this. A sum amounting to nearly a
million and a half was to be borrowed by the govern
ment at eight per cent., and the subscribers to the loan
were to be incorporated under the title of the Governor
and Company of the Bank of England. When a clause
had been inserted in the bill to the effect that the new
bank was not to advance money to the government
without the authority of parliament, it passed, to the
great surprise, no doubt, of its framers and supporters, so
loud and powerful had the opposition appeared. But
at the moment money was in great demand, and no
alternative scheme seemed likely to work so well. The
opposition was even fiercer in the House of Lords than
it had been in the Commons, but at the end of April
1694 the royal assent was obtained, and though, as
Macaulay remarks, it was then as difficult to raise a
million at eight per cent, as it would now be to raise forty
times as much at half that rate,* the confidence in the
administration, as well as in the scheme itself, was so
* Macaulay, chap. xx.

THE BANK. 4°9
great that in ten days the sum required had been sub
scribed, and the treasury was actually in possession of it
before it became due.
The success of Paterson's scheme does not seem to
have enriched him. But he was not a man to whom any
amount of money could bring wealth. The working of
the plan devolved on Michael Godfrey, a man of a very.
different type. Although not of middle age, he was
already wealthy and known in the city. He was strongly
opposed to the Stuarts, and from the mere circumstance
that he was a nephew of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey,* who
was supposed to have been murdered fifteen years before
by the " Popish Plotters," he attracted public attention
and confidence. He obtained leave for the early meetings
of the new company to be held at Mercers' Hall in
Cheapside, but in October of the same year, 1694, he, in
conjunction with ten other members of the company,
signed an agreement by which Grocers' Hall in the
Poultry was taken for eleven years, and here, the term
having been renewed, the new society carried on business
until 1734.! The first governor of the Bank of England
was Sir John Houblon, to whose good offices, no doubt,
the arrangement was due. " Here, in one room, with
almost primitive simplicity, were gathered all who per
formed the duties of the establishment."} The secretaries
and their clerks numbered only fifty-four.
It may be worth while to pause a moment to compare
the condition of the Bank of England at the present day
with the modest establishment here described. It now
* Macaulay, by a mistake, calls bim " the brother of Sir Edmondsbury
Godfrey," vol. ii. p. 483, ed. 1873.
t See Heath's ' Grocers' Company,' p. 31. This hall, becoming
ruinous, was rebuilt in 1802.
X Francis, i. 65,

410 HISTORY OF LONDON.
employs 900 officers of various grades. Its notes in
circulation exceed the value of thirty-five millions. From
fifteen to twenty millions are deposited in gold and silver
in its vaults. About two millions sterling crosses its
counters every day. The buildings cover the whole area
of the church and churchyard of St. Christopher le
Stocks, and indeed all the parish itself except a small
portion on which the portico of the Royal Exchange is
built, as well as large parts of the two adjacent parishes
of St. Margaret Lothbury, and St. Bartholomew by the
Exchange. For managing the payment of the interest
on the National Debt the company receives 200,000/. a
year. Such has been the growth of the single office
opened in the Grocers' Hall in 1694.
Godfrey, who rather than Paterson must be considered
the founder of the bank, and who possessed the pen of a
clear and ready writer, defended the infant undertaking
with success in a pamphlet * published in the following
year, in which he set forth its great advantages, and
justified his own reputation for foresight and prudence.
As deputy governor he seems to have been practically
manager of the whole concern, which, as he exultingly
asserted, gave such a reputation to the government
engagements — known as exchequer tallies — that they
were currently taken by private persons at ten to fifteen
per cent, less than before the establishment of the
bank, " that it was the only fund ever settled in
England that had lowered the interest of money " ;
and that notwithstanding the cost of the great war
then raging, amounting on the part of England alone to
thirty millions at least, the interest on the national debt
had fallen.
When Michael Godfrey alluded to the war he little
* Reprinted in the second volume of Francis's ' History of the Bank.'

THE BANK. 4"
thought he should himself be one of its victims.
William III. was engaged at the siege of Namur in 1695,
not a year after the Bank of England had removed to
Grocers' Hall. London was kept in a state of constant
distraction by a succession of rumours.* The fate of
nations, it was known but too well, depended on success
or failure. The malice of the Jacobites warmly seconded
the cupidity of the stock jobbers. The king's death was
eagerly discounted. Sometimes a mere whisper went
abroad ; sometimes a messenger on horseback dressed
in a military uniform galloped through the streets and
spread dismay with the news that William had been
killed. But it was observed during the whole time of
this anxious siege that the simple test of a bet showed
even the Jacobites to be believers in William's success.
Before it came, however, Michael Godfrey had been sent
to Namur to the king's camp to make some arrange
ments for the transmission of the soldiers' pay and
other supplies. The great attack of the 17th July was
actually going forward, and Godfrey's curiosity over
came his prudence. He ventured to the king's side
amid a shower of bullets. William saw him with sur
prise and anger. " Mr. Godfrey, you ought not to run
these hazards : you are not a soldier : you can be of
no use to us here." Godfrey protested that he ran no
greater danger than did his majesty. " Not so," said
William, " I am where it is my duty to be ; and I may
without presumption commit my life to God's keeping."
As he spoke Michael Godfrey fell dead at his feet, slain
by a French cannon-ball. His body was brought over
to London and buried in St. Swithin's church, where
his epitaph describes him as " a batchelour much
lamented by all his friends." His " sorrowful mother "
* Macaulay, chap. xxi.

412 HISTORY OF LONDON.
raised the monument to "the pious memory of her
beloved son."**
The rivalry between the old goldsmiths' houses and
the new institution was, of course, very keen, and might
possibly have proved eventually fatal to the Bank of
England. In fact, the enterprise was not three years
old when it actually stopped payment.! The recoinage
of silver prevented the company from meeting their
notes in cash : they had received worn and clipped coin
at its nominal value, and had to pay in full. By various
expedients, however, they managed to protract the
periods of payment, to gather in debts, and to call upon
shareholders, till things righted themselves. The bank
deserved well of the country at large, and various con
cessions were made by government, so that public con
fidence was immediately renewed. It was common to
speak contemptuously, but shares went up, and bank
stock rose from a discount of fifty per cent, to a pre
mium of one hundred and twenty. In vain the private
banks dashed themselves against the new corporation.
' They only rendered its position firmer. It lowered the
interest of money, as poor Michael Godfrey had pro
phesied, and thus at once earned the gratitude of the
public and the hatred of the bankers. Runs were con
stantly organised, and every device practised that could
discredit it. It was said that both the Childs and the
* He was the son of another Michael, the brother of Sir Edmund
Berry Godfrey, whence Macaulay's mistake. (See ¦ Arch. Cantiana,' vi.
261.) His mother was Mary the daughter of Thomas Chambrelan of
Leadenhall Street. As he was born in February 1658, he was still a
young man. The verses on his monument have disappeared, and are not
worth reprinting from Maitland ii. 1 184, though they contain a charming
non sequitur. Mrs. Godfrey's monument is in St. Andrew's Undershaft.
t The account of this event in Francis, i. 75, is so wanting in clearness
that a reader must conclude he desired to gloss over the whole story — and
he perfectly succeeded.

THE BANK. 4r3
Hoares purposely gathered large parcels of bank bills to
present at once, but they had no success. The great
war of queen Anne's reign did but make it more pros
perous, and at the same time more necessary to the
state. In 1707 the most dangerous run took place ;
but public confidence had now returned, and many
private persons came forward with help. Godolphin,
then lord treasurer, offered it various kinds of indul
gence. Three wealthy dukes, including the cautious
Marlborough, lodged large sums, and the crisis rapidly
passed away. An anecdote shows the public temper at
this momentous period. A poor man who had but 500/.
in the world carried it to the bank when the run com
menced. " Good Queen Anne " heard of him, and sent
him 100/. as a present, and an obligation on the treasury
for the whole of his venture.
The further history of the Bank of England is that of
England itself. By slow degrees it has risen to such a
position that its proud title does not fully describe it.
The whole world comes to its coffers, and its name has
passed into a common proverb as the emblem of stability.
The old building has been enlarged over and over again.
The modest house of Sir John Houblon in Threadneedle
Street, where its first building was erected, would not
now accommodate a tenth part of the business. In one
of its courts stands a statue, dedicated in 1734, to the
memory of " the best of princes, William III., the founder
of this bank."
It would be easy to occupy all the remainder of my
space with particulars of the old goldsmiths and their
successors. The revolution in politics did not more
thoroughly alter the character of the government than
the establishment of banking altered the tendency and
tone of London business. Before a century had elapsed

4 1 4 HIS TOR Y OF L ONDON.
from the foundation of the Bank of England, the city
had become what we know it, a place not so much for
residence as for commerce. It is now a vast honey
comb of offices. The sight of a little child in " the city "
is as rare as that of a butterfly. People come in and go
out : few stay the night Here and there a tradesman
lives over his place of business, as in the good old times,
but he must be very poor or very peculiar if he has no
villa in the country whither he can retire in the intervals
of work. A hundred years ago, however, many citizens
still lived on their business premises. WTien lord West
morland, on a memorable occasion, dined with Robert
Child it was in the banking-house in Fleet Street. This
was the lord Westmorland who, being in love with
Child's only daughter, Mary Anne, and knowing that
the banker was far too well acquainted with the financial
condition of the Fane family ever to consent to their
union, asked him across the table what he should do if
he was attached to a girl whose father opposed the
match. " Why, run away with her, to be sure," was the
banker's incautious reply. Lord Westmorland and Miss
Mary Anne took him at' his word. They eloped, but
were hotly pursued by the indignant father. Mr. Child
had the best horses and gained on the fugitives. But
the earl was a good shot, and kneeling upon the seat he
fired a pistol over the back of the carriage. The bullet
took effect a*1*! one of the banker's horses rolled over on
the road.* By this very questionable manoeuvre the
fugitives succeeded in reaching Gretna Green, but Mr.
Child never forgave them, though, as his death occurred
within three months afterwards, and as he left every
thing to the eldest child named Sarah, after his wife,
* Mr. Heywood Hardy's picture of this scene is well known. It was
just a century ago, for the marriage took place in 1782.

THE BANK. 4J5
that should be born of the marriage, it cannot be said
that he was likely to have remained long obdurate. As
it was the Fanes did not profit very largely by the
fortune of the banker's heiress. Lest the legacy should
lapse, it is said- that each of the children of lord and
lady Westmorland was baptised by the name of Sarah,
including the only son, but the eldest daughter survived
to marry lord Jersey, and her grandson is the present
head of the firm in Fleet Street
The story of the South Sea Bubble has been often
told. It is only the first and greatest of a long list of
similar examples. Wild speculation, followed by deep
depression, has ebbed and flowed in the city almost as
regularly as the tide in the Thames. The year 1720
was memorable for the Mississippi Bubble in Paris, as
well as for the South Sea delusion at home. The success
of the Bank of England excited the imagination of
schemers. Knaves were only too ready to take up any
design that would impose for a time on fools. But the
South Sea scheme differed from the countless bubbles
of the day in attracting many who must be allowed to
have had at least common sense. Walpole, indeed,
stood aloof. When the South Sea Company offered, in
exchange for trading concessions, to relieve public
burdens to the extent of nearly a million a year, he
warned the country against indulging in a dream.* But
every one else went mad. The king himself and his
ministers partook of the general excitement. Thread
needle Street, where the South Sea House was situated,
sometimes became impassable with crowds from the
other end of town, all thronging to invest. Stock at
one time rose to 1 100/. per cent, premium. It may be
asked in what trade the company proposed to engage.
* Green, iv. 136.

416 HISTORY OF LONDON.
This is one of the disgraceful features of the story. The
ostensible object of the company was to rival, and if
possible out-do Spain in the abominable slave trade.
The South Sea was that part of the Atlantic Ocean
which lies between the Brazils' and Western Africa,
The coffee-houses in Exchange Alley near the chief
scene were filled daily with speculators.* Prior and Gay,
the poets, staked and lost heavily. The duke of Chandos
spent 300,000/. of which nothing returned to him. At
last, in November, the bubble burst, when the crash
actually brought down the ministry. Stanhope died of
it, as did Craggs, the secretary of state. His father, who
was postmaster-general, poisoned himself. These were
only a few of the victims. Ruin fell upon thousands of
innocent persons, and probably no event since the great
fire caused such widespread misfortune. The South
Sea stock itself was only one of many. There were
companies for making butter from beech trees ; for
teaching wise men to calculate nativities ; for casting
cannon balls ; for the discovery of perpetual motion ; nay,
incredible as it may seem, these were among the saner
projects. A subscription of two millions was started
for "a promising design to be hereafter promulgated,"
and another for " carrying on an undertaking of great
advantage, but nobody to know what it is." Even this
insolent attempt on the credulity of speculators suc
ceeded. In five hours 2000/. were deposited, and the
ingenious author of the proposal disappeared and was
heard of no more.!
At this conjuncture Walpole and the Bank of England
concerted measures which, wild as they seem now, were
* A well-known picture by E. M. Ward, R.A., truthfully represents the
scene in Change Alley as it appeared in 1720.
t Francis, ' History of the Bank,' i. 135.

THE BANK. Al7
nothing to what had been proposed and almost carried.
But though they led to a run on the bank they saved
the national credit* The rising of 171 5 affected the
welfare of the bank for the moment much more heavily :
but, with the proverbial want of political sagacity which
characterised the Stuarts, threats of confiscation, of re
pudiation, and of forced loans and contributions alarmed
the city, and though the funds fell to 49, and a run
was, as usual, made on the bank, it " literally faced its
creditors : " the citizens came forward promptly, and as
the danger passed away the bank was more firmly
fixed than ever in the confidence of the people, and has
never since had to sustain the effects of a similar panic.
* These measures are described in technical language by Francis
(i. 138): — "Many expedients were started; when the Bank, fearful of
compromising their own safety, withdrew from the field. Amongst others,
an engraftment of nine millions of the South Sea Stock into Bank, and
nine into East India Stock. Warm and varied debates occurred at the
Courts j and the proposition, though at last agreed to, and confirmed by
Act of Parliament, was afterwards abandoned. ... In 1722 the South
Sea Company was allowed to sell 200,000/. government annuities, and the
Bank of England took the whole at twenty years' purchase at a price equal
to par." See also ' Ency. Brit.,' 9th ed., iii. 318.

VOL. I. 2 E

( 4i8 )

CHAPTER XIV.
THE CORPORATION.*
We have now to see the last attempt made by an
English king to oppress the city. The accession of the
house of Brunswick was popular with the Londoners,
and, as I endeavoured to show in my last chapter, the
support of the citizens was among the strongest bulwarks
of the kingdom against the rebellion of 171 5. It was
the same in 1745, and both George I. and George II.
were very well received at their rare visits to the Guild
hall or the Mansion House. Their reigns are chiefly
remarkable in the -city for the local improvements carried
out. The Fleet river was covered over, after a vain
attempt to make it a canal in accordance with Wren's
suggestion, as far as Holborn Bridge. The precinct of
Blackfriars was finally incorporated with the ward of
Farringdon Within, on the verdict of a jury from Hert
fordshire, summoned specially for the purpose. This
was in 1735, and twenty years later the project for
making a new bridge over the Thames took shape, the
course of the Fleet became a roadway, and not only was
the new bridge named after the Blackfriars, but a Blackt
friars Road appeared in Surrey on the opposite bank.
A newer bridge at the same spot was opened in 1867 by
the queen in person, and springs from arches actually
* I have failed to trace the first nse of this word. In the controversies of
the reign of George III. it came into use to distinguish the mayor, alder
men and common council from the livery at large.

JhHuse-p.418.

sMMM

.Stanford* Seof-Xnibt

LONDON BRIDGE BEFORE 1561.
As sketched by Van den Wyngaerde.
London: Edward Stanford, 65 Charing Cross.

THE CORPORATION. • 4J9
built over the outfall of the old tidal estuary, which now,
as the Fleet sewer, discharges a certain amount of the
surface drainage, and occasionally betrays its existence
after heavy rains or a sudden thaw.
Other great improvements and alterations followed.
The completion of St. Paul's, the last of a long series of
churches and public buildings which were rebuilt after
the great fire, seems to have given leisure and money
for other work, and the last year of the life of our
second Hanoverian king saw the final removal of the old
defences. The plans of Mylne were accepted for Black
friars Bridge, and the first pile driven with civic cere
mony in June 1760; and in the same month the Court
of Common Council empowered a committee to take
measures, under an act passed in the previous year, for
widening the streets. The gates were pulled down,
though some of them were nearly new, and the materials
sold, and now the antiquary has to seek diligently for the
slightest fragment of the wall which in days gone by had
so often saved London. Little of Roman work remained,
but here and there were the flat Roman bricks. Of the
gothic archways only one had survived) namely, Cripple
gate, though it was in wretched condition, and had been
repaired and altered several times. Newgate had been
frequently rebuilt, and subsisted until 1777. But Lud
gate, which was also used as a prison, stood more in the
way and was pulled down and the materials sold for
148/., all except a statue of queen Elizabeth, which had
been set up at one of the frequent rebuildings, and which
was removed to Fleet Street. There, somewhat restored,
it still stands at the entrance of St. Dunstan's Church.*
* Aldgate, which had been rebuilt in 1606, was sold for 177/. ios.
Cripplegate only fetched git. Moorgate had been rebuilt in 1672, Aiders-
gate about the same time, and a new Bishopsgate had only been finished a
few years before its final removal.
2 E 2

420 HISTORY OF LONDON.
But besides removing the gates a still more serious
change was carried out. Old London Bridge had long
been the chief pride of the citizens. Snorro Sturlesen,
a foreign visitor, writing in the thirteenth century,
observed that the bridge was so wide that two carriages
if they met could pass each other. Peter, the curate of
St. Mary Colechurch, in Cheap, was a great engineer
and architect. He perched his own church on arches to
be out of the way of the fine buildings he erected for the
canons of St. Thomas. The building of London Bridge
in stone had been preceded by the wooden bridge he
made in 1163, a little further to the eastward. Nothing
can give a better idea of the size of Peter's piers than
the fact that the ninth contained a chapel, dedicated, like
the hospital of his patrons, to St Thomas of Canterbury.
The chapel was sixty-five feet long, twenty feet wide
and forty high ; the roof was supported by fourteen
clustered columns, and there were eight windows. In
a lower chapel or crypt was the grave and monument
of Peter himself: and there were two entrances, one
from the " street " on the bridge, and one from the river
below. At the suppression of chantries, four chaplains
belonged to St. Thomas's, London Bridge. This ninth
pier was as nearly as possible in the middle of the
bridge, and the chapel looked to the east There were
twenty arches in all, of various sizes, and the rush of
water through them, especially at high tides, made
the navigation very dangerous.* Peter was thirty-three
years carrying out the work, or two years less than the
time Wren was employed upon St. Paul's.
The houses on London Bridge were several times
destroyed by fire and as often rebuilt, the whole effect
* It was calculated that of the whole waterway, there about 900 feet at
low water, the piers occupied 700.

THE CORPORATION. 42 1
in the fifteenth century being very magnificent. It had
begun to decay at the time van den Wyngaerde sketched
his view, but even then justified the proverb, " as fine
as London Bridge," which was in common use. The
Ponte Vecchio in Florence is the only building left in
Europe which gives us an idea of what it was like,*
but its great length, the size of the stone towers and
gates, the picturesque wooden houses, projecting over
the piers, the three " vacancies," with their wrought-iron
grates whence people could view the passage of- the
boats up and down the river, and whence, as we have
seen, they could, when so disposed, molest the passengers,
the waterwheels under some of the arches, the locks
under others, the drawbridge, must have made London
Bridge one of the most picturesque relics of antiquity
in the city, t Only the houses as far as the first vacancy
at the northern end were burnt in 1666 : but before
another century had elapsed, it was found impossible to
leave it unchanged. Much precious merchandise and
many lives were lost shooting the arches. The traffic
across the bridge was impeded by the houses. In 1754
it was found that their annual rent % did not amount to
a thousand pounds. An act of parliament was obtained
and all were cleared away, while two piers were de
molished and a wider waterway made by throwing
a single arch across the space thus gained. The carriage
way was widened to 31 feet, which was thought an
immense boon, though it compares strangely with the
width of the roadway of the present bridge which is
found inadequate.
* I regret to hear that it has been resolved to remove the houses on the
Ponte Vecchio.
t The views by E. W. Cooke, R. A., may be seen at the Guildhall Library.
± It was 828/. 6s.

422 HISTORY OF LONDON.
At length in 1823 a new bridge was decided on. In
July the necessary powers were obtained from parlia
ment, and the work was commenced in the following
March. It was completed in 1831, and cost less than
half a million, though the approaches, which had to be
made through old streets, raised the whole expense to a
million and a half. Rennie was the architect and it is
allowed by every one that London Bridge as it stands
now is a credit to the city. Instead of the old twenty
arches there are but five, and the roadway over them is
almost level. Hardly any perceptible obstruction is
caused to the tide or stream by the narrow and compact
piers. Already it is found insufficient for the traffic, and
various proposals have been made for widening it, none
of them, so far, of a kind to be recommended. The
space between Fishmongers' Hall and St. Magnus'
church will not admit of the obvious idea of doubling
the present width without the destruction of one or
other, or, perhaps, both. Yet something must soon be
done, for the traffic which consisted even ten years ago
of 116,000 vehicles a week, is increasing; the freeing
of Southwark Bridge, which had been opened in i8i9>
and the rebuilding of Blackfriars Bridge have only
demonstrated that some way across the river below
London is what is needed.
The first two kings of the house of Hanover almost
effaced themselves, so far as personal power was con
cerned. George III., with perhaps less capacity than
either, was determined to revive the prerogative of the
crown so far as he thought he could do it with safety*
His accession was marked by the usual addresses of
congratulation, and people observed with pleasure that
the young king was born an Englishman. George may
have thought that this fact, and the total disappearance

THE CORPORATION, 423
of such dangers from Jacobite pretenders as had menaced
his predecessors, would have enabled him to ignore the
results of the revolution, and assume a personal sove
reignty which, as he soon found, was incompatible with
the re-established liberty of his subjects. His favourite
minister, lord Bute, was more unpopular in the city
than any other statesman since the Cabal. When the
elder Pitt resigned, a year after the young king's acces
sion, the Court of Common Council prepared an address
of thanks for the results of his administration, and
added, after very slight opposition, an expression of
regret at his removal from office. But the king was not
to be warned by these expressions of displeasure at his
policy. The Test Act, in keeping up a feeling of irrita
tion, and excluding eligible dissenters from filling civic
office, had been partially disarmed by an annual bill of
indemnity under Walpole's administration, but its
rigours were now again put in force, and three elected
sheriffs were successively set aside between 1760 and
1762. On the other hand, the ignorant mob which had
howled a few years before at the prosecution of a foolish
high-church preacher named Sacheverell, now kept the
city in constant dread by fanatical outbreaks, when the
destruction of life and property was only put down by
sanguinary reprisals and wholesale executions. The
irritable temper of the lower ranks was fanned into a
flame by the injudicious measures of Bute ; and a citizen
of discreditable antecedents, but undeniable powers,
named Wilkes, in a publication which, in derision of the
Scottish minister, he entitled the North Briton, brought
matters to a crisis. Pitt, in spite of his haughty de
meanour, was the darling of the citizens. " When the
dismissed statesman went to the Guildhall, the Londoners
hung on his carriage wheels, hugged his footmen, and

424 HISTORY OF LONDON.
even kissed his horses." * They had stood by him in his
long struggle with Newcastle, and now, though he took
little part in the contest, they hated Bute for his sake.
The popularity of Pitt, and his great city supporter,
Beckford, was transferred for a while vicariously to
Wilkes. How far he was worthy of the people's favour,
in spite of his winning manners, appears from many
anecdotes. Boswell describes the spell he threw over
Dr. Johnson, and every one who has heard of him has
heard of the social powers of which, in spite of his ugly
face and his squint, he boasted, when he said that with
half an hour's start he could excel the handsomest man
in Europe in winning hearts. The original object of his
attacks on Bute was, as he often cynically avowed, the
attainment of a pension or an office under government.
He had squandered the fortune left him by his father,
an honest wine merchant in St. John's Square, Clerken
well, and is reported to have said of the government
that if they did not find employment for him, he was
disposed to find it for them. And he succeeded. When,
during an enforced absence on the continent, he was
asked by Madame de Pompadour, " How far may an
Englishman go in abuse of the royal family and the
court ? " he replied promptly, " I do not quite know,
but I am trying to find out."
The forty-fifth number of the North Briton was one
of these attempts. It had national and constitutional
results far beyond its merits. It consisted in a criticism
on the speech from the throne at the opening of Parlia
ment in 1763, and was considered so scurrilous, that the
ministry issued a general warrant for the arrest of all
concerned in its production and publication. Forty-eight
printers, publishers, and other tradesmen were speedily
* Green, iv. 215.

THE CORPORATION. 42 5
swept up and thrown into gaol. Finally Wilkes himself
was arrested and sent to the Tower. But, by the operation
of a writ of Habeas Corpus, he was immediately brought
out again, and chief justice Pratt, before whom he was
taken, set him at liberty. The whole practice of issuing
general warrants was at once on its trial. Pitt, though
he regarded Wilkes with contempt, spoke against them,
while acknowledging that in time of war he had used
them himself. Before the end of the year they were
specially condemned by the judgment of the Court of
Common Pleas, and Wilkes recovered 1000/. against the
under-secretary of state for the seizure of his papers.
Meanwhile the sheriffs, acting upon the orders of the
House of Commons, proceeded to burn No. 45 of the
North Briton before the Royal Exchange ; but the
mob attacked the officiating hangman, rescued the paper,
and assailed the sheriffs so violently that they had to
retire. Riots broke out in various places, and a jack
boot — in a rough spirit of punning upon the cockney
pronunciation of the name of lord Bute — was solemnly
hanged and burnt at Temple Bar.
During the years that followed, Wilkes's popularity
increased rather than diminished. The city, it is true,
declined to elect him to Parliament, but the voters of
Middlesex returned him at the head of the poll in the
hustings at Brentford.* The House of Commons refused
to receive him, but he, was returned again and again.
The lord mayor that year, Samuel Turner, was known
to oppose him, and the windows of the Mansion House
were broken. For safety in the streets it was necessary
that even casual passengers and foreigners should chalk
" 45 " on their hats. The ministers and the king were
furious. Wilkes had been declared an outlaw, and he
* Vol. ii. chapter xv.

426 HISTORY OF LONDON.
was summoned before the King's Bench, fined 1000/.,
and condemned to imprisonment. But twenty times
the amount was at once subscribed. Plate, wine, house
hold goods, purses of money, and every possible token
of sympathy were showered upon the prisoner. A
chandler sent him forty-five dozen of candles. Wilkes's
Head was the favourite signboard, and long afterwards
he used to relate that he overheard an old lady say of
him, " He swings everywhere but where he ought." The
hopeful prince of Wales, afterwards regent and king,
as George. IV, is said to have shown his rebellious dis
position already, and on one occasion, after he had
incurred his father's anger and was in disgrace, is
reported to have put his head in at the door of the
king's apartment and shouted defiantly " Wilkes and
liberty." The king's popularity was further damaged in the
city by an event which took place in 1770. The previous
year Wilkes had been elected alderman of Farringdon
Without, and William Beckford, who had ruled as lord
mayor in 1762, was chosen a second time for the same
high office. When, in May 1770, the House of Com
mons not only refused Wilkes leave to sit, but put in his
place a Colonel Luttrel, whom he had defeated at the
poll, the Court of Common Council called on lord
mayor Beckford to take a remonstrance, couched in
very moderate terms, to the king. George did not
conceal his displeasure, and the lord mayor, now a
very old man, addressed him in a short but respectful
speech,* in which he pointed out to the king the loyalty
* Much doubt has been thrown on this occurrence. Home Tooke has
been credited with the composition of Beckford's speech ; and it has even
been asserted strongly that Beckford never delivered it. But a subsequent
refusal to allow him to speak to the king goes to prove the truth of the
story, which I cannot persuade myself to reject.

THE CORPORATION. 42 7
of the citizens, and assured him that whoever, " by false
insinuations and suggestions," had alienated his majesty's
affection from the city of London was an enemy to his
person and family, a violator of the public peace, and a
betrayer of the principles established at the glorious
revolution. These brave words were received by George III. with
impatience. No reply was vouchsafed, and when shortly
afterwards the lord mayor attended at court with an
address of formal congratulation on the birth of one of
George's numerous children, he was not admitted to the
presence chamber until a lord in waiting had ascertained
that no speech was to be made.* Although Beckford's
boldness was highly applauded by a vast majority of the
citizens, it encountered strong criticism at the hands of
a large party in the corporation, yet the recorder, Eyre,
who had refused to sign the address of remonstrance,
was summoned before the Common Council and de
clared incapable of any further interference in civic
affairs.f A second address was presented in November,
to which the king returned a sullen reply, refusing to
comply with the prayer of the petition for a dissolution
of Parliament. Brass Crosby, who was now lord mayor,
was fully as patriotic and spirited as Beckford, and had
to suffer for his, opinions. The House of Commons at
that time, as is well known, did not permit the publica
tion of the debates. They were reported, chiefly by
memory, and printed in various periodicals with fictitious
names, the monthly reports in the 'Gentleman's Magazine '
* Beckford's conduct on this occasion may remind the reader of the
speech of Fitz-Thomas to a very similar king at St. Paul's in 1265. See
volume of ' City Adresses,' printed in 1778, p. 20.
t He shortly afterwards resigned, being made chief baron of the
Exchequer — no doubt as a reward from the court party for his behaviour
in the recordership.

428 HISTORY OF LONDON.
being esteemed the best, and attributed to the famous
Dr. Johnson.* The house took deep offence at reports in
some of the daily papers. Two printers named Wheble
and Thompson were summoned to the bar of the house
but did not attend, and the serjeant-at-arms proceeded to
the city to seize them, but ineffectually. The government
issued a proclamation to arrest them. Finally Wheble was
brought by an informer before the alderman then sitting
at the Guildhall, who happened to be no other than
John Wilkes. He treated the proclamation as waste-
paper, and not only set Wheble at liberty, but bound
him over to prosecute his captor, who was subsequently
fined and imprisoned. Miller, the printer of the Evening
Post, was arrested by a messenger of the House of
Commons. Miller knew the law apparently better than
Wheble. He immediately sent for a constable and gave
the messenger into custody. Meanwhile Wilkes had been
reinforced at the Guildhall by the lord mayor, Brass
Crosby, and by Richard Oliver, another alderman. They
instantly discharged Miller, and obliged the messenger
to give bail for his appearance to answer for having
violated the liberty of a citizen.
The excitement in the city was tremendous, and was
not much allayed by the next move of the ministry and
the House of Commons. The lord mayor and alder
man Oliver were ordered to attend at the bar. Wilkes
was summoned too, but refused to enter the House
except as member for Middlesex. The House upon
this specially named the following day for his attendance,
and, in order to avoid raising the question, immediately
* Boswell's ' Life,' i. Dr. Johnson's opinion on the ministry is in vol. iv.
" Such a bunch of imbecility never disgraced the country. If they sent a
messenger into the city to take up a printer, the messenger was taken up
instead of the printer, and committed by the sitting alderman."

LORD MAYOR CROSBY'S CUP.

To Jace p. 429, Vol. I.

THE CORPORATION. 429
adjourned till the day but one after : but the lord
mayor and the alderman were conveyed to the Tower of
London and remained there till after the end of the
session. At this time, as has been often pointed out,* the
House of Commons represented, not the nation but the
ministry. There was reason for the exclusion of a man
of Wilkes's character : but the adjournment, with the
imprisonment of Crosby and Oliver, shows that the
temper of the House was not only unreasonable, but
tyrannical and cowardly. It feared to face Wilkes, but
it did not fear to make fresh martyrs to the popular
cause, and the result only brought the feeling of the
citizens into greater prominence. When the session was
over the prisoners were released from the Tower. Some
days previously it had been resolved by the Common
Council to organise a great demonstration in their
honour. Accordingly the members attended on Tower
Hill in fifty-three carriages, the artillery company forming
a guard of honour, and firing a salute of twenty-one
guns. The lord mayor, entering his state coach, pro
ceeded, amid the loudest acclamations, to the Mansion
House in solemn procession,f and nothing was omitted
that could mark the temper of the city. But George III.
was not to be taught by such demonstrations. The
citizens over and over again protested against the policy
which was driving the North American provinces into
rebellion. To their most respectful addresses on the sub
ject George returned the briefest and most contemptuous
replies. The citizens had commenced by addressing the
* See full account of this affair in Mr. Trevelyan's ' Early Life of Fox.'
t The scene is engraved on a magnificent silver vase, which was pre
sented to Brass Crosby, and is still in the possession of his family, who
kindly permitted me to inspect it.

430 HISTORY OF LONDON.
House of Commons. They next presented a petition
to the Lords. Wilkes was now mayor (1775), and we
may believe very cheerfully undertook the duty of
addressing the king. The remonstrance was couched
in respectful terms, and was of the common sense
character that might be expected. Mercantile men
were naturally alarmed at the interruption of trade.
Politicians saw the futility of the military arrangements.
Humane men were disgusted at the fratricidal war. But
the king's reply took no notice of such considerations. " It
is with the utmost astonishment," he exclaimed, "that
I find any of my subjects capable of encouraging the
rebellious disposition which unhappily exists in some
of my colonies in North America." He went further,
and declared through the lord chamberlain that he
would not receive "any addresses, remonstrance, or
petition, but from the body corporate of the city." Wilkes
in reply wrote to say that " the full body corporate never
assemble, nor could they legally act together as one
great aggregate body." Their duties were exercised by
the civic delegates assembled in common hall. Two
legal opinions on the subject were enclosed, and the
lord mayor, in the clearest and most uncompromising
manner, asserted the rights of the citizens ; " I presume,"
he wrote, " to lay claim, on behalf of the livery of
London, to the ancient privilege of presenting to the
king on the throne any address, petition, or remon
strance." The full drift of the king's action in this matter was
well understood. Wilkes did not hesitate in his letter-
to the lord chamberlain to denounce it as only worthy
of the Stuarts, and to recall the fate of that " Tarquin
race," as he described them. He concluded with a
further appeal in favour of the Americans, and as soon

rm CORPORATION. 431
as he had read his letter to the assembly in the Guild
hall, it was resolved that whoever advised the king to
refuse to receive an address from the lord mayor was
an enemy, and that unless the king " hears the petitions
of his subjects, the right of petitioning is nugatory."
They immediately went on to draw up a new " address,
remonstrance and petition," to be presented by the lord
mayor, aldermen, and livery, on the importance of the
crisis in American affairs. They expressed their dis
approbation of " this fatal war," and went on to say that
" if anything could add to the alarm of these events it is
your majesty's having declared your confidence in the
wisdom of men, a majority of whom are notoriously
bribed to betray their constituents and their country."
The sheriffs were then sent to ask when the king would
receive the address. He replied, " At the next levee."
They informed him that the livery had determined not
to present it "unless your majesty shall be pleased to
receive it sitting on the throne." To which the king
answered "I am the judge where." When this reply
was brought to the lord mayor he declined to attend
the levee, and called a meeting in the Guildhall to
receive the sheriffs' account of their interview. There
was nothing to be done except to direct the members
for the city formally to enquire who were the king's
advisers. These events took place towards the end of June, and
on the 7th July an address was resolved upon by the
corporation, "praying that his majesty would be pleased
to suspend hostilities against our fellow subjects in
America.'' This time the king thought it better to
receive the lord mayor with due respect, but his reply
to the remonstrance was brief and ill-tempered.
The last event of Wilkes's mayoralty was the recep-

432 HISTORY OF LONDON.
tion of a letter from the congress assembled at Phila
delphia, thanking the citizens of London for their efforts
on behalf of peace. The disastrous effect of George's
policy soon became apparent, and though Wilkes in
many respects fails to impress us as a true patriot, it
must be allowed that his conduct on this occasion well
befitted the successor of Walter Hervey, of Gregory
Rokesley, and of William Beckford.
George III., as long as his reason remained to him,
continued to disregard the remonstrances of the citizens,
and learned nothing by his constant experience, as time
went on, of the wisdom of the warnings they addressed
to him. The Gordon riots in 1780 gave him an oppor
tunity of insulting them. The city was occupied by
soldiers, who had orders to disarm all persons and detain
their arms. The dissatisfaction which followed was so
strong that on the opening of Parliament a kind of lame
apology had to be made in the speech from the throne.
Yet the city remained loyal, and on George's escape
from assassination in 1788, and his recovery from the
first attack of insanity in the following year, presented
to him addresses breathing fervent affection for himself
and his dynasty. On St. George's Day, accompanied
by both Houses of Parliament, and having been duly
received by the lord mayor at Temple Bar, he went to
St. Paul's and attended a thanksgiving service. "The
more than triumphal entry of a beloved sovereign," we
are told, " filled the mind with the most sublime ideas."*
John Wilkes lost some of his influence as a popular
leader when, in 1779, he accepted the office of chamber
lain and resigned his aldermanry. From this time his
name appears but seldom in the city annals. As age
approached he became more decorous in his habits. At
* Allen, ii. 101.

THE CORPORATION. 433
his death, in 1797, he was buried in the cemetery
attached to Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street, in
which for some years he had rented a pew. His epitaph
describes him as "John Wilkes, a friend to liberty."
The very year of Wilkes's death the king again refused
to receive a petition from the livery, presented by the
lord mayor and sheriffs, on the ground that he " received
addresses on the throne from the city as a corporate
body only." Twenty years had made little change in
his character. The ministry of the duke of Portland
was exceedingly unpopular, not only in the city, but also
in Westminster, where meetings were held to censure it.
The citizens were, however, by no means unanimous.
Lord Lauderdale, who had become a "citizen and needle-
maker " for the purpose, presented himself as a candidate
for the office of sheriff, and expected the support of the
popular party. He was, however, disappointed, and did
not even venture to go to the poll. There was strong
rivalry at the time between the livery and the members "
of the Common Council, but in 1799, when the king
again refused to receive a petition from the liverymen,
an attempt was made to reconcile their conflicting in
terests, and the petition, which prayed the king to summon
a parliament, was adopted and presented by the Court of
Common Council. The government of William Pitt was,
on the whole, popular with all classes in the city. The
war policy of the great minister was warmly supported.
Volunteers swarmed in the streets, and the king was well
received when he reviewed them. The death of Nelson
and his burial in St. Paul's, the celebration of the " king's
jubilee," or the commencement of the fiftieth year of
his long reign, and various other events of the kind, form
the civic annals of the early part of the nineteenth
century. But 1 809 saw another outbreak of dissatisfac-
VOL. 1. 2 F

434 HISTORY OF LONDON.
tion. The wretched results of the Walcheren expedition
caused great indignation, and an address of remonstrance
against the ministers was presented. To this George
replied as of old. " He was the best judge," he said,
" of the measures adopted by the executive." The
livery then drew up a petition. He refused to receive
it, but mitigated his refusal by a reference to the failure
of his sight Possibly the old madness was felt to be
returning a second time. He never again enjoyed an
opportunity of insulting the citizens. After a few months
his true condition could no longer be concealed. It was
rumoured in October 1811 that something was wrong,
Many people had forgotten the short attack twenty-one
years before. In November a letter from the secretary
of state desired the lord mayor to remain in office
"until His Majesty's pleasure could be taken on the
appointment of his successor." It is difficult to judge
whether this was the legal course. At such an unusual
crisis many things not to be legally justified were done ; but
one of the first acts of the prince regent was to receive the
mayor and aldermen, and his reply to their address, which
consisted, we are told, partly of condolence and partly of
congratulation, was a pleasant contrast to the surly ex
pressions with which his father had so often received
them. A desire for reform was mentioned in a subse
quent address, and various other petitions and remon
strances were presented, but the prince invariably re
ceived them with courtesy ; and if some of us, who know
more of his life than his contemporaries could learn, find
it hard to account for his popularity, we must remember
how different was his manner from that of the old king,
and how pleasant a change it must have been to be
treated with deference where experience had taught
them to expect only ill-disguised contempt.

THE CORPORATION. 435
The reigns of the father and his unworthy son exem
plified to the full the adage that a good man may be a
bad king, and a bad man a good king. Chatham, dying,
said of the reign of George III. that " his majesty
succeeded to an empire as great in extent as its reputa
tion was unsullied. Seventeen years ago this people
was the terror of the world." England was seldom
reduced to so low a level, but better times were in store.
The victories of Nelson and of Wellington were achieved
under the rule of the younger Pitt, whom George III.
detested, and of Canning, who came into office as the
shadow of insanity was beginning to cloud his mind.
Thenceforth he lived, indeed, but had wholly disappeared
from view for ten long and eventful years before his
death in 1820.
Many changes were wrought in the city. The great
wealth which, as always in time of war, had come to the
merchants, was spent, at least partly, in works of public
utility. London led the way, for example, in prison
reform. The indefatigable John Howard, a native of
Hackney, but a Bedfordshire squire, drew attention to the
state of prisons in England and on the continent before
the middle of the eighteenth century. He endeavoured
to bring some kind of system into their management.
The wealthy classes were most anxious to do something,
but no one knew what to suggest until Howard came
forward. It is curious to read his recommendations. Had
we left our prisons in the state to which he thought they
should be raised, they would perhaps be more deterrent
than they are now as places of punishment. What prisons
were before his humane endeavours had succeeded can
hardly be believed. The fact is, our population had
increased, indeed nearly doubled, while our accommoda
tion for the pauper and criminal classes was at a stand-
2 F 2

436 HISTORY OF LONDON.
still. The old ideal of a London gaol was a kind of •
tavern, where a prisoner might take his ease until his
trial.* If he was very poor he received a dole. If he
was rich he could live as he liked. To punish a man for
proved crime by imprisonment only was rare. It did
not occur to the rulers that mere detention was a punish
ment. The prisoner had spacious lodgings, a little more
costly perhaps than his private house ; he could enjoy
the company of his family ; he could gamble and drink ;
or like Bunyan at Bedford, he could work for his living
if necessary. The stocks, the pillory, and the post were
necessary to strike terror into malefactors. But when
the population increased, and a man found a gaol to be
a house with few rooms and a teeming population of all
classes, with few beds, all let at an enormous rate, with
a precarious loaf and poisonous water, the state of a
prisoner was much altered. About the same time, the
authorities began to find that merely to keep a man in
gaol was a hideous punishment, as it was only another
way for condemning him to a lingering but certain death.
Our " sanguinary code," as it was often called, grew out
of this dilemma. We still speak of a "gaol delivery."
To condemn a man to prison was to condemn him to
slow tortures, gaol fever,f and a short life full of misery.
The hulks were little better. Slavery in the plantations
was looked upon as a merciful relief. The question
was brought home to the authorities in an appalling
manner in 1750. The lord mayor, Sir Samuel Pennant,
died on the 20th May, of gaol fever caught at the Old
Bailey during the sessions ; and not the lord mayor
* Howard's 'State of Prisons,' p. 191.
t Howard states his opinion that the number of prisoners who died of
gaol fever was greater than the number of those who were executed. —
p. 18.

THE CORPORATION. 437
only, but two judges, Sir Thomas Abney and Baron
Clark, three aldermen, the under-sheriff, and many
lawyers, jurymen, spectators, officers of the court, and of
course, many prisoners.
All the London prisons were bad, but Newgate,
though it had been several times rebuilt, acquired a pre
eminent reputation * for unwholesomeness. The calamity
of 1750 was only one of a number of similar if less fatal
outbreaks of fever. Another lord mayor, Winterbottom,
died of fever in 1752. We cannot wonder that Newgate
was unwholesome in the middle of the eighteenth
century, since, so far back as 1419 there was an entry "f
made in a letter-book at Guildhall to the effect that
the atmosphere of the " heynouse gaol of Newgate " is
fetid and corrupt Sir Richard Whittington was lord
mayor at the time, and he endeavoured to do something
to mitigate the evil. There had been a separate prison
for freemen in Ludgate, but Ludgate had been closed,
and all kinds of prisoners, including " citizens and other
reputable persons," were committed to Newgate, and many
died " who might have been living if they had remained
in Ludgate, abiding in peace there." Three years later,
at his death, Whittington left money to effect an im
provement, "seeing that every person is sovereignly
bound to support and be tender of the lives of men," as
it is said in his will. The prison thus improved was in
* Howard mentions Newgate, the Fleet, Ludgate (a new prison so called
in Bishopsgate Street), Poultry and Wood Street Compters, Bridewell,
New Clerkenwell Prison, Clerkenwell Bridewell, Whitechapel Debtors'
Prison, Tower Hamlets Gaol in Wellclose Square ("This prison is at a
public-house, kept by an honest Swede"), St. Catherine's, the Savoy,
Tothill Fields Bridewell, Westminster Gatehouse, the King's Bench Prison
in Southwark, the Marshalsea, the Borough Compter, the new Borough
Gaol, and the Surrey Bridewell.
t Riley, ' Memorials,' p. 677.

438 HISTORY OF LONDON.
existence at the time Howard wrote. The builders, he
reports, seem to have regarded in their plan nothing but
the single article of keeping prisoners in safe custody.
What must the old one have been like if this was the
condition of the improved prison ? Howard complains
that the rooms and cells were so close as to be constant
sources of infection. Already, however, the citizens had
determined on building a new gaol, but he was not
satisfied with it, especially as the old cells for felons
condemned to death were to be retained — cells of such
a character that " criminals who had affected an air of
boldness during their trial, and appeared quite un
concerned at the pronouncing sentence upon them, were
struck with horror, and shed tears when brought to these
darksome solitary abodes." *
This old prison subsisted till it was burnt by the
Gordon rioters in 1780, the present gaol, which had been
founded a few years before, being then in part completed
on the southern or Old Bailey side of the gate. The
last public act of lord mayor Beckford's life was to lay
the foundation-stone of the new buildings. He caught
a chill from which at his advanced age he could not
rally, and died three weeks later, 21st June, 1770.
In spite of Beckford's and Howard's efforts, Newgate
continued for many years longer a disgrace to London.
Every humane person who saw the condemned cells
spoke of them with horror. When Neald, another
philanthropist, visited the prison in 1815 he reported
that half the prisoners, and especially the women, were
miserably poor, and scarcely covered with rags. It was
the custom to try prisoners on a Friday, so as to give
the convicts twenty-four hours longer in the world, as
Sunday was not counted a legal day, and the modern
* P- 152.

THE CORPORATION. 439
six weeks reprieve was unthought of even by the most
humane. There is a curious picture in the ' Microcosm,'
by Pugin and Rowlandson,* which represents the in
terior of the chapel on the Sunday intervening between
trial Friday and execution Monday. It shows eleven
felons, two of them women, in a kind of central pew,
painted black. In the middle of the pew is a table ; on
the table is a coffin.
The Gordon rioters made very short work of old
Newgate. Dr. Johnson describes the scene in one of
his letters. The Protestant rioters went about their task
very methodically, but were quite unmolested. They
were allowed to act " without trepidation, as men lawfully
employed in full day. Such," reflects Dr. Johnson, " is
the cowardice of a commercial place." The gaol fever
was not eradicated by the fire. Thirteen years after his
followers had destroyed the old prison Lord George
Gordon himself died of gaol fever in Newgate, having
been imprisoned for a libel.
The benevolent work of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry and other
disciples of Howard commenced about this time, and in
1 8 17 the coffin was dismissed from the chapel table
and some attempt at classifying the prisoners was made'.
Mrs. Fry taught the women to knit stockings and other
articles, that by selling them their prison fare might be
improved. What it was may be guessed, when as late
as 1825, a visitor is equally surprised and pleased to find
that a regular allowance of food has begun to be made
from city funds.
From that day to this improvement has gone steadily
forward. The city prison is at Coldbath Fields, and is a
* Vol. ii. p. 208. Several other views of gaols and bridewells may be
seen in the same book, which was pubhshed in 1809. The combination of
the artists was very fortunate.

440 HISTORY OF LONDON.
model institution. Newgate is only used as a temporary
house of detention for prisoners awaiting trial, who are
conveyed by a subterranean passage into the dock at the
Old Bailey, where the Sessions House now occupies all
the ground on which the old College of Surgeons, with
its dissecting-rooms, the destined end of so many lodgers
in the adjoining building, used to stand.
The prison of Newgate is interesting as an example of
a building designed for a special purpose, and eminently
satisfactory from an architectural point of view. There
can be no doubt that it is a prison, just as there can be
no doubt that St. Paul's is a Christian place of worship.
Dance, the architect, deserves the credit of having built
a perfectly simple but perfectly suitable facade : the more
so as, though it is three hundred feet long, it has no
windows, except in the central part, which is the gaoler's
house. The height is only fifty feet, yet the effect is that
of a Norman keep. The statues, removed from the old
gate, are somewhat incongruous, but the festoons formed
of fetters are, if a little grotesque, extremely effective.
At the coronation of George IV. the lord mayor
figured prominently. In the Abbey he stood beside the
throne, and at the subsequent banquet he filled the old
office of butler and received the ancient fee.* But the
popularity which had been accorded to the Prince Regent
was not continued to George IV. He had long forfeited
the respect of those of his subjects who were most often
brought into contact with him, and now sought adulation
in Scotland and Ireland. The citizens warmly espoused
the cause of queen Caroline. When the divorce bill was
proposed, the corporation addressed her with words of
sympathy, and when it was finally withdrawn, received
her in state when she came to St. Paul's to return
* See above, p. 217.

THE CORPORATION. 44 1
public thanks. Her chief councillor and support seems
to have been alderman Matthew Wood, who had been
twice lord mayor,* and was much beloved by the
citizens. He lived in South Audley Street, and his
house was used by the unhappy queen when she came
to London. Eminent citizens had now ceased to live
habitually in the city, and the great extension of building
in all directions, but especially in Bloomsbury, which
preceded the peace in 1815, commenced again after a
very few years' interval. The change was already
beginning which has transformed London. The great
palaces of Queen Victoria Street and Lombard Street
are inhabited only during the day, and the shopkeepers
who live over their shops are few and far between. When
the queen died, a few weeks later, it fell to the share of
another eminent alderman as sheriff to escort her re
mains across the country. This was Robert Waithman,
to whose courage and coolness it was due that the 14th
August, 1 82 1, did not become the date of a frightful riot,
if not of a massacre. Unlike Wood, Waithman lived over
his place of business, and an obelisk in what is now
Ludgate Circus, was set up opposite his house as a
testimonial. The whole character of the city has changed since
that time. The population has declined, the population
that is, which lives permanently within the old boundaries.
It was reduced to little over a hundred thousand in 1861,
and is now only half that number. At the same time
the rateable value has increased. Streets of brick have
become streets of granite. Houses have become palaces.
London at the present day rivals Venice in her prime.
True, much of the architectural display is unsatisfactory.
* In 1815 and 1816. He was made a baronet in 1837, and was father
of Lord Hatherley, and grandfather of Sir Evelyn Wood.

442 HISTORY OF LONDON.
Too many fronts look as if the builder's object was to
spend a sum of money without reference to propriety of
or proportion of design. But intermingled with such
failures we find many examples to show that art is now
at a higher level than at any other time since Wren died.
The corporation has done much for its own city ; but it
has not stayed its hands at the city boundaries. It has
not only rendered London a model for cleanliness, light
water, and locomotion and health among the cities of the
world, but also has made to the poorer suburbs such
magnificent gifts as Burnham Beeches and Epping
Forest, as Coulsdon Common and Wanstead Park.
True, these advantages may be bought too dear. It is
possible that the fall of the corporation of London, how
ever undeserved, may produce no evil results, and lead
to no abuses* greater than those that now exist, but to
judge by the examples of Paris and New York, this is
most unlikely. There are certain things which need
to be reformed. The parochial charities, for instance,
might be utilised more frequently and widely than
at present. The upper class of citizens might be inclined
more frequently to serve as aldermen and sheriffs.* The
terms of admission to the franchise might be revised.
The other city companies might be called upon to do
work similar to that carried on by the goldsmiths and fish
mongers. In short there are many things on which the
pressure of public opinion will in time make a change :
but the measures, so far as they are known, which seem
to be under consideration now, are not so much calculated
to improve existing institutions as to remove a body
which had political enemies on account of its age, its
wealth, and above all its freedom. Coercion and corrup-
* See above in this chapter for the example of an earl who was a
candidate for the shrievalty.

THE CORPORATION. 443
tion cannot be applied to London electors as things are
now constituted. The suburbs of London are exceeded
in good government, cleanliness, and health only by the
city of London itself, and by no other city in the
kingdom. The change will probably mean a great
increase in the rates all over the territory of the new
municipality, as before the new constitution has got into
working order there will be an immense waste of money
and of time.* In fact it needs no sagacity, nothing but
the smallest experience, to see that the advantages,
whatever they may be, of the change, will not accrue to
the generation which makes it, and if only thirty years
are consumed in fighting over again the battles which
the citizens fought and settled in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, their children will be more fortunate
than were their ancestors.
The many advantages which accrue to the suburbs at
large from the existence in their midst of a body wealthy
enough to Xxy great sanitary experiments, to make ex
pensive inquiries into the food supply, to maintain great
public charities, to relieve ratepayers in the administra
tion of justice, are perhaps hardly appreciated at their
full value. When the lord mayor is dethroned,! and the
money which enables him and his colleagues to do these
great things is thrown into the common fund it will be
too late to look back with regret to the employment of
thousands in such arts as upholstery or cookery, which
the reformers profess to despise, but which nevertheless
enable many very estimable people to earn their liveli-
* The example of the school board is in point here.
t It is obvious that the mayoralty as it is now must be abolished if the
Corporation is extended ; else we should have a prince among us who
would rank next to the queen, and exercise an authority beyond that of
any other subject. England could not brook such a monarchy within her

444 HISTORY OF LONDON.
hood. The political independence of the city has made
it, much more than the universities, a leader in public
opinion, especially where great constitutional questions
are involved. London carried reform. London abolished
the corn laws. London admitted Jews to Parliament.
It would be easy to show by a review of the history of
the past forty years how great and how good has been
the influence of our city on the opinion of the country
at large ; but I pause here, unwilling to enter into
questions of contemporary politics.
The unwritten constitution of the city has, as we have
had occasion to see, varied at different times. I have
endeavoured to avoid legal terms as much as possible,
and have refrained, as far as I could, from descriptions of
the various charters which the citizens have received
from the crown. In concluding this part of my work,
I would venture to point out that a common expression
on this subject is erroneous. There is no historical
warrant for saying that the liberties of London are
founded on royal charters.* On the contrary, the
numerous charters, from that of William the Conqueror
to the Act of William and Mary, did not so much grant
liberties as define and limit them. The most the Norman
could offer the city was its original liberty. Since
Magna Charta that liberty had been the birthright of
every Englishman, but for centuries it had only existed
in the city of London.
There have been several commissions on the subject,
but so far nothing has been done to change the old
constitution. When most of the municipalities were
* Mr. Firth appears to me to fall into this error in several places ; but
as his views, though influential, are both inconsistent with history and with
each other, I need not discuss them here. His opening sentence runs thus : —
" The charters of the City of London form the basis of its constitution."
Chap. i. p. I.

THE CORPORATION. 445
reformed in 1835, London, though it had reluctantly
received the commissioners, was excepted. Lord John
Russell proposed to legislate in 1837, but the strong
show of opposition in the city induced him to abandon
the idea. In 1854 a commission was appointed on the
subject ; and their report is a very interesting document.
London, it said, has no governing charter, in which
respect it differs from many of the English corporations.
The commission went on to remark that it was doubt
ful whether a general act of parliament would be effective
as against a city usage or custom unless it contained an
express mention of London. The tendency of the
present day is no doubt against this kind of vagueness,
and it is very conceivable that mischief might result
from it. But as a matter of fact, there is no part of her
majesty's dominions so peaceably ordered as the city,
and none in which the inhabitants are better satisfied
with their own condition and government.
Government bills were introduced in 1856, 1858 and
other years, but were never pressed. Nobody wanted
them. The slightest opposition was sufficient to defeat
them. Mr. John Stuart Mill had the true republican
dislike of anything venerable for its antiquity, and the
logician's dislike to anything undefined. During the
brief time he sat in parliament probably none of
the doctrinaire crotchets he expounded brought him
less credit than his persistent attacks on the city.
Lord Elcho's bill in 1875 was of a different character,
but met with a very cool reception, and it is understood
that the noble lord, now earl of Wemyss, has changed
his views on the subject : or that having been led to
investigate the questions involved, he saw the true
character of the attack he had been induced to head.
It may be worth while, in conclusion, to place the

446 HISTORY OF LONDON.
present " constitution " before the reader. The lord
mayor is the principal ruler of the city. He is annually
elected from among the aldermen, who, as a rule,
approach the chair in the order of seniority, but any
alderman may be elected ; and occasionally, as in the
case of Beckford, an alderman who has already served
is requested to do so again. He is also usually chosen
from among those aldermen only who have been sheriffs.
The election is made on the 29th September, Michael
mas Day, by the liverymen, or members free ofthe city
companies. The elected lord mayor is presented to the
lord chancellor, who expresses the queen's approbation
of the choice made by the citizens : and on the 9th
November he is sworn at the Royal Courts of Justice.
He has precedence immediately after the sovereign and
before the royal family, within the city. In other places
he ranks as an earl. He is lord lieutenant of the city ;
a judge of " Oyer and Terminer " ; a justice of the
peace ; and at a coronation officiates as chief butler. He
draws a salary of 10,000/., and has the use of the
Mansion House, and of its magnificent furniture and
plate : but it is understood that few lord mayors, if
any, in recent years have kept their expenditure within
these limits.
There are twenty-six aldermen, elected by the several
wards, except Bridge Without, the senior member of the
court being alderman of that ward. The electors are
those persons entitled to the parliamentary franchise.
The aldermen are justices of the peace, and their court
forms the city bench of magistrates, and grants licenses
and admits brokers. It elects the Recorder and the
steward of Southward and several of the minor officials.
The common council is elected in the several wards ;
some like Farringdon Without return sixteen members,

THE CORPORATION. 447
and others like Bassishaw, four only. Parliamentary
voters have the suffrage as in the case of the aldermen.
The total number of the common council is 206. They
stand towards the city as the house of commons stands
to the country at large, and their legislative power
within the city is almost as unbounded. There can be
no doubt that any reforms needed in the city could be
carried into effect by the court of common council with
out the extraneous assistance of parliament* The
committees of the court do all the work which has made
London such an example of healthiness, cleanliness, con
venience, and, indeed, magnificence.
* On a recent occasion parliament was applied to for leave to take a
day census. Leave was refused ; but the same measure being proposed,
as it should have been at first, to the court of common council, was passed,
and carried into effect.

END OF VOL. I

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