III. THE PEOPLE

Through broad Chepeside rode the great lord—haply the King himself—followed by his regiment of knights, gentlemen, and men-at-arms, all wearing his livery. The Abbot, with his following, passed along on his way to Westminster in stately procession. The Alderman, in fur gown and gold chain, with his officers, walked through the market inspecting weights and measures and the goods exposed for sale. Priests and friars crowded the narrow ways. To north and south, in sheds which served for shops, the prentices stood bawling their wares. This was the outward and visible side of the City. There was another side—the City of the London craftsman.

Who was he—the craftsman? Whence did he come? London has always opened her hospitable arms to foreigners. They still come to the City and settle, enjoying its freedom, and in the next generation are pure English. In the days of Edward the Confessor the men of Rouen and of Flanders became citizens with rights equal to the English. Later on, the names of the people show their origin and the places whence they or their forefathers had come. Then William Waleys is William the Welchman; Walter Norris is Walter of Norway; John Francis is John the Frenchman; Henry Upton is Henry of that town; William Sevenoke, Lord Mayor of London, took his name from the village of Sevenoaks, in Kent, where he was born. The first surnames were bestowed not only with reference to the place of birth, but partly to trades, partly to the place of residence, partly to personal defects or peculiarities. But it is obvious from the earliest names on record how readily London received strangers from any quarter of western Europe, Norway, Denmark, Flanders, Lorraine, Picardy, Normandy, Guyenne, Spain, Provence, and Italy. It is noteworthy in studying the names, first, that, as was to be expected, there is not in the fourteenth century a single trace of British or Roman-British name, either Christian or surname, just as there was not in the Saxon occupation a single trace of Roman customs or institutions; next, that the Saxon names have all vanished. There are no longer any Wilfreds, Ælfgars, Eadberhts, Sigeberts, Harolds, or Eadgars among the Christian names. They have given place to the Norman names of John, Henry, William, and the like. The London craftsman was therefore a compound of many races. The dominant strain was Saxon—East Saxon; then came Norman, then Fleming, and then a slight infusion of every nation of Western Europe.

In the narrow lanes leading north and south of the two great streets of Thames and Chepe the craftsmen of London lived in their tenements, each consisting of a room below and a room above. Some of them followed their trade at home, some worked in shops. There were those who sold and those who made. Of the former, the mercers and haberdashers kept their shops in West Chepe; the goldsmiths in Guthrun's Lane and Old Change; the pepperers and grocers in Soper's Lane; the drapers in Lombard Street and Cornhill; the skinners in St. Mary Axe; the fish-mongers in Thames Street; the iron-mongers in Ironmongers' Lane and Old Jewry; the vintners in the Vintry; the butchers in East Chepe, St. Nicolas Shambles, and the Stocks Market; the hosiers in Hosiers' Lane; the shoemakers and curriers in Cordwainer Street; the paternoster-sellers in Paternoster Row; patten-sellers by St. Margaret Pattens; and so forth.

It is easy, with the help of Stow, and with the names of the streets before one, to map out the chief market-places and the shops. It is not so easy to lay down the places where those dwelt who carried on handicrafts. Stow indicates here and there a few facts. The Founders of candlesticks, chafing-dishes, and spice mortars carried on their work in Lothbury; the coal-men and wood-mongers were found about Billingsgate stairs; since the Flemish weavers met in the church-yard of Lawrence Pountney, they lived presumably in that parish. For the same reason the Brabant weavers probably lived in St. Mary Somerset parish. The furriers worked in Walbrook; the curriers opposite London Wall; upholsterers or undertakers on Cornhill; cutlers worked in Pope's Head Alley; basket-makers, wire-drawers, and "other foreigners" in Blond Chapel, or Blanch Appletone Lane. In Mincing Lane dwelt the men of Genoa and other parts who brought wine to the port of London in their galleys. The turners of beads for prayers lived in Paternoster Row; the bowyers in Bowyer Row; other crafts there are which may be assigned to their original streets. Sometimes, but not always, the site of a company's hall marks the quarter chiefly inhabited by that trade. Certainly the vintners belonged to the Vintry, where is now their hall, and the weavers to Chepe, where they still have their hall. When, however, the management of a trade or craft passed into the hands of a company, there was no longer any reason, except where men had to work together, why they should live together. Since there could be no combined action by the men, but, on the contrary, blind obedience to the Warden, they might as well live in whatever part of the City should be the most convenient. From the absence of great houses, whether of nobles or princes, in the north of the City, one is inclined to believe that great numbers of craftsmen lived in that part, namely, between what is now called Gresham Street and London Wall.

The trades carried on within the walls covered very nearly the whole field of manufacture. A mediÆval city made everything that it wanted—wine, spices, silks, velvets, precious stones, and a few other things excepted, which were brought to the port from abroad; but the City could get on very well without those things. Within the walls they made everything. It is not until one reads the long lists of trades collected together by Riley that one understands how many things were wanted, and how trades were subdivided. Clothing in its various branches gave work to the wympler, who made wimples or neckerchiefs for women; the retunder, or shearman of cloth; the batour, or worker of cloth; the caplet-monger; the callere, who made cauls or coifs for the head; the quilter; the pinner; the chaloner, who made chalons or coverlets; the bureller, who worked in burel, a coarse cloth; the tailor; the linen armorer; the chaucer, or shoemaker; the plumer, or feather-worker; the pelliper, pellercer, or furrier; the white tawyer, who made white leather; and many others. Arms and armor wanted the bowyer; the kissere, who made armor for the thighs; the bokelsmyth, who make bucklers; the bracere, who made armor for arms; the gorgiarius, who made gorgets; the taborer, who made drums; the heaulmere, who made helmets; the makers of haketons, pikes, swords, spears, and bolts for crossbows. Trades were thus already divided; we see one man making one thing and nothing else all his life. The equyler made porringers, the brochere made spits, the haltier made halters, the corder made ropes, the sacker made sacks, the melmallere made hammers, and so on.

The old City grows gradually clearer to the vision when we think of all these trades carried on within the walls. There were mills to grind the corn; breweries for making the beer—one remains in the City still; the linen was spun within the walls, and the cloth made and dressed; the brass pots, tin pots, iron utensils, and wooden platters and basins were all made in the City; the armor, with its various pieces, was hammered out and fashioned in the streets; all kinds of clothes, from the leathern jerkin of the poorest to the embroidered robes of a princess, were made here; nothing that was wanted for household use in the country but was made in London town. Some of those trades were offensive to their neighbors. Under Edward I., for instance, the melters of tallow and lard were made to leave Chepe, and to find a more convenient place at a distance from that fashionable street. The names of Stinking Lane, Scalding Lane, and Sheer Hog sufficiently indicate the pleasing effect of the things done in them upon the neighbors. The modern City of London—the City proper—is a place where they make nothing, but sell everything. It is now quite a quiet city; the old rumbling of broad-wheeled wagons over a stone-laid roadway has given way to the roll of the narrow wheel over the smooth asphalt; the craftsmen have left the City. But in the days of Whittington there was no noisier city in the whole world; the roar and the racket of it could be heard afar off—even at the rising of the Surrey Hills or the slope of Highgate, or the top of Parliament Hill. Every man in the City was at work except the lazy men-at-arms of my lord's following in the great house that was like a barrack. They lay about waiting for the order to mount and ride off to the border, or the Welsh march, or to fight the French. But roundabout these barracks the busy craftsmen worked all day long. From every lane rang out without ceasing the tuneful note of the hammer and the anvil; the carpenters, not without noise, drove in their nails, and the coopers hooped their casks; the blacksmith's fire roared; the harsh grating of the founders set the teeth on edge of those who passed that way; along the river-bank, from the Tower to Paul's stairs, those who loaded and those who unloaded, those who carried the bales to the warehouses, those who hoisted them up, the ships which came to port and the ships which sailed away, did all with fierce talking, shouting, quarrelling, and racket. Such work must needs be carried on with noise. The pack-horses plodded along the streets, coming into the City and going out. Wagons with broad wheels rumbled and groaned along; the prentices bawled from the shops; the fighting-men marched along to sound of trumpet; the church bells and the monastery bells rang out all day long, and all night too. And at the doors of the houses or the open windows, where there was no glass, but a hanging shutter, sat or stood the women, preparing the food, washing, mending, sewing, or spinning, their children playing in the street before them. There are many towns of France, especially Southern France, which recall the mediÆval city. Here the women live and do their work in the door-ways; the men work at the open windows; and all day there is wafted along the streets and up to the skies the fragrance of soup and onions, roasted meats and baked confections, with the smell of every trade which the people carry on.

Everything was made within the walls of the City. When one thinks upon the melting of tallow, the boiling of soap, the crushing of bones, the extracting of glue, the treatment of feathers and cloth and leather, the making and grinding of knives and all other sharp weapons, the crowding of the slaughter-houses, the decaying of fruit and vegetables, the roasting of meat at cooks' shops, the baking of bread, the brewing of beer, the making of vinegar, and all the thousand and one things which go to make up the life of a town, the most offensive of which are now carried on without the town; when one considers, further, the gutter, which played so great a part in every mediÆval city; the gutter stream, which was almost Sabbatical, because it ceased to run when people ceased to work; the brook of the middle of the street, flowing with suds, the water used for domestic and for trade purposes, and with everything that would float or flow; when, again, one thinks of the rags and bones, the broken bits and remnants and fragments, the cabbage-stalks and pea-pods and onion-peelings which were thrown into the street, though against the law, and of the lay stalls, where filth and refuse of every kind were thrown to wait the coming of carts, even more uncertain than those of a modern vestry—when, I say, one thinks of all these things, and of the small boundaries of the City, and its crowded people, and of its narrow streets, one understands how there hung over the City day and night, never quite blown away even by the most terrible storm that ever wept o'er pale Britannia, a richly confected cloud of thick and heavy smell which the people had to breathe.

They liked it; without it, the true Londoner languished. The mediÆval smell, the smell of great towns, has left London, but in old towns of the Continent, as in the old streets of Brussels, it meets and greets us to the present day. Breathing this air with difficulty, and perhaps with nausea, you may say, "Such and such was the air in which the citizens of London delighted when Edward III. was King."

The craftsman in those days had to do good work, or he would hear of it. He had to obey his company, or he would hear of it; and he had to take, with outward show of contentment, the wages that were assigned to him, or he would hear of it. He might be imprisoned, or put in pillory. We shall see a few cases of his punishment presently. As a final punishment he might be thrust outside the gates of the City, and told to go away and to return no more.

Then, one fears, there would be nothing left for the craftsman but to turn ribaud, if he was clever enough to learn the arts of ribauderie; or to sink into the lowest depth and become a villein, bound to the soil.

If it was a city of hard work, it was also a city of play in plenty. London citizens, old and young, have always delighted beyond measure in games, shows, sports, and amusements of every kind. There were many holidays, and Sunday was not a day of gloom.

The calendar of sport begins with the first day of the year, and ends with the last day.

The year began with New-year's gifts:

There were skating and sliding upon the ice in Moorfields, where the shallow ponds froze easily; or they played at quarter-staff, at hocking, at single-stick, at foot-ball, and at bucklers. In the evening they played at cards and "tables" and dice.

On Shrove Tuesday they had cock-fighting, a sport continued with unabated popularity until within the memory of man—nay, it is rumored that he who knows where to look for it may still enjoy that humanizing spectacle. Every Friday in Lent the young men went forth to Smithfield and held mock fights, but the custom was in time discontinued; at Easter they had boat tournaments. At this holy season also they had boar fights, and the baiting of bulls and bears. They had stage plays—the parish clerk in Chaucer "played Herod on a scaffold high." In the year 1391 the parish clerks had a play at Skinners Well, Smithfield, which lasted for three days. In 1409 they represented the creation of the world, and it lasted eight days.

Then there were the pageants, shows, and ridings in the city. Here are two, out of several described by Stow.

Of triumphant shows made by the citizens of London, ye may read, in the year 1236, the 20th of Henry III., Andrew Bockwell then being mayor, how Eleanor, daughter to Reymond, Earl of Provence, riding through the city towards Westminster, there to be crowned Queen of England, the city was adorned with silks, and in the night with lamps, cressets, and other lights without number, besides many pageants and strange devices there presented; the citizens also rode to meet the king and queen, clothed in long garments embroidered about with gold, and silks of divers colours, their horses gallantly trapped to the number of three hundred and sixty, every man bearing a cup of gold or silver in his hand, and the king's trumpeters sounding before them. These citizens did minister wine as bottlers, which is their service, at their coronation. More, in the year 1293, for victory obtained by Edward I. against the Scots, every citizen, according to their several trade, made their several show, but especially the fish-mongers, which in a solemn procession passed through the city, having, amongst other pageants and shows, four sturgeons gilt, carried on four horses; then four salmons of silver on four horses; and after them six-and-forty armed knights riding on horses, made like luces of the sea; and then one representing St. Magnus, because it was upon St. Magnus' day, with a thousand horsemen, &c.

One other show, in the year 1377, was made by the citizens for disport of the young prince, Richard, son to the Black Prince, in the feast of Christmas, in this manner: On the Sunday before Candlemas, in the night, one hundred and thirty citizens, disguised, and well horsed, in a mummery, with sound of trumpets, sackbuts, cornets, shalmes, and other minstrels, and innumerable torch-lights of wax, rode from Newgate, through Cheap, over the bridge, through Southwark, and so to Kennington beside Lambhith, where the young prince remained with his mother and the Duke of Lancaster his uncle, the earls of Cambridge, Hertford, Warwick, and Suffolk, with divers other lords. In the first rank did ride forty-eight in the likeness and habit of esquires, two and two together, clothed in red coats and gowns of say or sandal, with comely visors on their faces; after them came riding forty-eight knights in the same livery of colour and stuff; then followed one richly arrayed like an emperor; and after him some distance, one stately attired like a pope, whom followed twenty-four cardinals, and after them eight or ten with black visors, not amiable, as if they had been legates from some foreign princes. These maskers, after they had entered Kennington, alighted from their horses, and entered the hall on foot; which done, the prince, his mother, and the lords, came out of the chamber into the hall, whom the said mummers did salute, showing by a pair of dice upon the table their desire to play with the prince, which they so handled that the prince did always win when he cast them. Then the mummers set to the prince three jewels, one after another, which were a bowl of gold, a cup of gold, and a ring of gold, which the prince won at three casts. Then they set to the prince's mother, the duke, the earls, and other lords, to every one a ring of gold, which they did also win. After which they were feasted, and the music sounded, the prince and the lords danced on the one part with the mummers, which did also dance; which jollity being ended, they were again made to drink, and then departed in order as they came.

Whenever an excuse could be found, the Mayor, Sheriffs, and Aldermen held a solemn riding in all their bravery. Not even in Ghent or Antwerp were there such splendid ridings and so many of them. "Search all chronicles," says an old writer, "all histories and records, in what language or letter soever, let the inquisitive man waste the deere treasures of his time and eyesight, he shall conclude his life only in the certainty that there is no subject received into the place of his government with the like style and magnificence as is the Lord Mayor of the city of London." We shall see later on what kind of show would be held in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

As for pageants, they were so splendid that he was unhappy, indeed, who could not remember one. But there were few so unfortunate. Whenever the King paid a visit to the City, on his accession, on his marriage, on the birth of a prince, the City held a pageant. When you read the account of the pageant when Henry V. and the City returned thanks for the victory of Agincourt, remember to cover in imagination the houses with scarlet cloth, to dress the people with such bravery of attire and such colors as you can imagine, to let music play at every corner, to let the horses be apparelled as bravely as their riders, to let the bells be pealing and clashing, to fill up the narrative with the things which the historian neglects, and then own that in the matter of pageants we are poor indeed compared with our forefathers five hundred years ago.

On the king's return after the glorious field of Agincourt, the Mayor of London and the Aldermen, apparelled in orient grained scarlet, and four hundred commoners clad in beautiful murrey, well mounted and trimly horsed, with rich collars and great chains, met the King at Blackheath; and the clergy of London in solemn procession with rich crosses, sumptuous copes, and massy censers, received him at St. Thomas of Waterings. The King, like a grave and sober personage, and as one who remembered from Whom all victories are sent, seemed little to regard the vain pomp and shows, insomuch that he would not suffer his helmet to be carried with him, whereby the blows and dints upon it might have been seen by the people, nor would he suffer any ditties to be made and sung by minstrels of his glorious victory, because he would the praise and thanks should be altogether given to God.

At the entrance of London Bridge, on the top of the tower, stood a gigantic figure, bearing in his right hand an axe, and in his left the keys of the city hanging to a staff, as if he had been the porter. By his side stood a female of scarcely less stature, intended for his wife. Around them were a band of trumpets and other wind instruments. The towers were adorned with banners of the royal arms, and in the front of them was inscribed CIVITAS REGIS JUSTICIE (the City of the King of Righteousness).

At the drawbridge on each side was erected a lofty column, like a little tower, built of wood, and covered with linen; one painted like white marble, and the other like green jasper. They were surmounted by figures of the King's beasts,—an antelope, having a shield of the royal arms suspended from his neck, and a sceptre in his right foot; and a lion, bearing in his right claw the royal standard unfurled.

At the foot of the bridge next the city was raised a tower, formed and painted like the columns before mentioned; and, in the middle of which, under a splendid pavilion, stood a most beautiful image of St. George, armed, excepting his head, which was adorned with a laurel crown, studded with jems and precious stones. Behind him was a crimson tapestry, with his arms (a red cross) glittering on a multitude of shields. On his right hung his triumphal helmet, and on his left a shield of his arms of suitable size. In his right hand he held the hilt of the sword with which he was girt, and in his left a scroll, which, extending along the turrets, contained these words, SOLI DEO HONOR ET GLORIA. In a contiguous house were innumerable boys representing the angelic host, arrayed in white, with glittering wings, and their hair set with sprigs of laurel; who, on the King's approach, sang, accompanied by organs, an anthem, supposed to be that beginning "Our King went forth to Normandy;" and whose burthen is, "Deo gratias, Anglia, redde pro victoria,"—printed in Percy's Reliques.

The tower of the Conduit on Cornhill was decked with a tent of crimson cloth, and ornamented with the King's arms, and those of Saints George, Edward, and Edmund. Under the pavilion was a company of hoary prophets, in golden coats and mantles, and their heads covered with gold and crimson; who, when the King passed, sent forth a great quantity of sparrows and other small birds, as a sacrifice agreeable to God, some of which alighted on the King's breast, some rested on his shoulders, and some fluttered round about him. And the prophets then sang the psalm, Cantate Domino canticum novum, &c.

The tower of the Conduit at the entrance of Cheap was hung with green, and ornamented with scutcheons. Here sat twelve venerable old men, having the names of the twelve Apostles written on their foreheads, together with the twelve Kings, Martyrs, and Confessors, of the succession of England, who also gave their chaunt at the King's approach, and sent forth upon him round leaves of silver mixed with wafers, and wine out of the pipes of the conduit, imitating Melchisedeck's reception of Abraham, when he returned from his victory over the Four Kings.

The Cross of Cheap was not visible, being concealed by a beautiful castle, constructed of timber, and covered with linen painted to resemble squared blocks of white marble and green and crimson jasper. The arms of St. George adorned the summit, those of the King and the Emperor were raised on halberds, and the lower turrets had the arms of the royal family and the great peers of the realm. On a stage in front came forth a chorus of virgins with timbrel and dance, as to another David coming from the slaughter of Goliath; their song of congratulation was, "Welcome, Henry the Fifte, King of Englond and of Fraunce." Throughout the building there was also a multitude of boys, representing the heavenly host, who showered down on the King's head small coins resembling gold, and boughs of laurel, and sang, accompanied by organs, the Te Deum laudamus.

The tower of the Conduit at the west end of Cheap was surrounded with pavilions, in each of which was a virgin, who from cups in their hands blew forth golden leaves on the King. The tower was covered with a canopy made to resemble the sky and clouds, the four posts of which were supported by angels, and the summit crowned with an archangel of brilliant gold. Beneath the canopy, on a throne, was a majestic image representing the sun, which glittered above all things, and round it were angels singing and playing all kinds of musical instruments.

This was the last of the pageantry, and, after the King had paid his devotions at St. Paul's, he departed to his palace at Westminster.

Of ecclesiastical functions and processions I say little. The people belonging to the Church, as well as the churches themselves, were in every street and in every function. At funerals there followed the Brotherhood of Sixty, the singing clerks, and the old priests of the Papey chanting the psalms for the dead. And see, here is a company of a hundred and twenty. They are not Londoners, they are Dutchmen; and they have come across the sea—such are the amenities of mediÆval piety—to flagellate themselves for the sins of this city. Will the English follow their example and go to flog themselves at Amsterdam? For there are sins to be expiated even in Holland. They are stripped to the waist; every man is armed with a whip, and is belaboring the man in front. It is a moving spectacle. London cannot choose but repent. The tears should be running down the cheeks of toper, tosspot, and "rorere." Alas! we hear of no tears. The Dutchmen have to go home again, and may, if they please, flagellate themselves for their own good, for London is impenitent.

Then there is the great day of the company—its saint's day—the day of visible greatness for the trade. On this day is the whole livery assembled; there must be none absent, great or small: all are met in the hall, every man in a new gown of the trade color. First to church; the boys and singing clerks lead the way, chanting as they go. Then march the Lord Mayor's sergeants, the servants of the company, and the company itself, with its wardens and the officers. Mass despatched, they return home in the same order to the hall, where they find a banquet spread for them, such a banquet as illustrates the wealth and dignity of the trade; the music is in the gallery, the floor is spread with rushes newly laid, clean, and warm; the air is fragrant with the burning of that scented Indian wood called sanders; at the high table sit the master or warden, the guests—even the King will sometimes dine with a city company—and the court. Below, at the tables, arranged in long lines, are the freemen of the company, and not the men alone, but with every man sits his wife, or, if he be a bachelor, he is permitted to bring a maiden with him if he chooses. Think not that a city company of the olden time would call together the men to feast alone while the women stayed at home. Not at all. The wardens knew very well that there is no such certain guard, and preservative of honesty and order, which are the first requisites for the prosperity of trade, as the worship of man for maiden and of maid for man.

When dinner is over, they will elect the officers for the year, and doubtless hear a word of admonition on the excellence of the work and the jealousy with which the standard of good work should be guarded. Then the loving-cup goes round, and the mummers come in to perform plays and interludes, dressed up in such fantastic guise as makes the women scream and the men laugh and applaud.

On the day before Ascension Day there was beating of the bounds, a custom still observed, but with grievous shrinkage of the ceremonies.

Perhaps the greatest festival of the year was May Day, which fell in the middle of our month of May. It must be a hard year indeed when the east winds are not over and done with by the middle of May. Spring was upon them. Only think what was meant by spring to a people whose winters were spent, as must have been the case with most of them, in small houses, dark and cold, huddled round the fire without candles, going to bed early, rising before daylight, eating no fresh meat, fruit, or vegetables, waiting impatiently for the time to return when they would live again in the open, shutters down and doors thrown wide.

All the young people on the eve of May Day went out into the fields to gather boughs and white-thorn flowers. In Chaucer's "Court of Love," "Forth goeth all the court, both most and least, to fetch the flowers fresh." Later on, Herrick writes:

It was the prettiest festival in the world. In every parish they raised a May-pole hung with garlands and ribbons; they elected a Queen of the May, and they danced and sang about their pole. The London parishes vied with each other in the height and splendor of the pole. One was kept in Gerrard's Hall, Basing Lane (now swept away by the new streets). This was forty feet high. A much later one, erected in the Strand, 1661, in defiance to the Puritans, was 130 feet high. And there was the famous May-pole of St. Andrews Under-shaft, destroyed by the Puritans as an emblem of idolatry and profligacy. The girls came back from their quest of flowers singing, but not quite in these words:

And there was morris-dancing, with Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Little John, Tom the Piper, and Tom the Fool, with hobby-horses, pipe and tabor, mummers and devils, and I know not what; and Chepe and Cornhill and Gracechurch Street were transformed into leafy lanes and woodland ways and alleys cut through hawthorn and wild rose. You may see to-day the hawthorn and the wild rose growing in Epping Forest, just as they grew four hundred years ago. But the forest has been miserably curtailed of its proportions. A great slice, wedge-shaped, has been cut out bodily, and is now built upon. Hainault Forest has perished these forty years, and is converted into farms, save for a fragment, and of Middlesex Forest nothing remains except the little piece enclosed in Lord Mansfield's park. But in those days the forest came down to the hamlet of Iseldun, afterwards Merry Islington.

And in the month of June there were the burning of bonfires to clear and cleanse the air, and the marching of the watch on the vigils of St. John Baptist and St. Peter.

Hear the testimony of Stow:

In the months of June and July, on the vigils of festival days and on the same festival days in the evenings after the sun setting, there were usually made bonfires in the streets, every man bestowing wood or labour towards them; the wealthier sort also, before their doors near to the said bonfires, would set out tables on the vigils, furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on the festival days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit and be merry with them in great familiarity, praising God for His benefits bestowed on them. These were called bonfires as well of good amity amongst neighbours, that being before at controversy, were there, by the labour of others, reconciled, and made of bitter enemies loving friends; and also for the virtue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the air. On the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and on St. Peter and Paul the Apostles, every man's door being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St. John's wort, orpin, white lillies, and such like, garnished upon with garlands of beautiful flowers, had also lamps of glass, with oil burning in them all the night; some hung out branches of iron curiously wrought, containing hundreds of lamps alight at once, which made a goodly show, namely, in New Fish Street, Thames Street, &c. Then had ye besides the standing watches all in bright harness, in every ward and street of this city and suburbs, a marching watch, that passed through the principal streets thereof, to wit, from the little conduit by Paul's Gate to West Cheap, by the stocks through Cornhill, by Leadenhall to Aldgate, then back down Fenchurch Street, by Grass Church, about Grass Church conduit, and up Grass Church Street into Cornhill, and through it into West Cheap again. The whole way for this marching watch extendeth to three thousand two hundred tailor's yards of assize; for the furniture whereof with lights, there were appointed seven hundred cressets, five hundred of them being found by the companies, the other two hundred by the Chamber of London. Besides the which lights every constable in London, in number more than two hundred and forty, had his cresset: the charge of every cresset was in light two shillings and fourpence, and every cresset had two men, one to bear or hold it, another to bear a bag with light, and to serve it, so that the poor men pertaining to the cressets, taking wages, besides that every one had a straw hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the morning, amounted in number to almost two thousand. The marching watch contained in number about two thousand men, part of them being old soldiers of skill, to be captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals, &c., whifflers, drummers, and fifes, standard and ensign-bearers, sword-players, trumpeters on horseback, demilances on great horses, gunners with hand guns, or half hakes, archers in coats of white fustian, signed on the breast and back with the arms of the city, their bows bent in their hands, with sheaves of arrows by their sides, pikemen in bright corslets, burganets, &c., halberds, the like billmen in almaine rivets, and aprons of mail in great number; there were also divers pageants, morris dancers, constables, the one-half, which was one hundred and twenty, on St. John's Eve, the other half on St. Peter's Eve, in bright harness, some overgilt, and every one a jornet of scarlet thereupon, and a chain of gold, his henchman following him, his minstrels before him, and his cresset light passing by him, the waits of the city, the mayor's officers for his guard before him, all in a livery of worsted or say jackets party-coloured, the mayor himself well-mounted on horseback, the sword-bearer before him in fair armour well mounted also, the mayor's footmen, and the like torch-bearers about him, henchmen twain upon great stirring horses, following him. The sheriff's watches came one after the other in like order, but not so large in number as the mayor's; for where the mayor had besides his giant three pageants, each of the sheriffs had besides their giants but two pageants, each their morris dance, and one henchman, their officers in jackets of worstead or say party-coloured, differing from the mayor's, and each from other, but having harnessed men a great many, &c.

On the Feast of St. Bartholomew there were wrestlings, foot-races, and shooting with the bow for prizes. On Holyrood Day (September 14th) the young men and the maidens went nutting in the woods. At Martinmas (November 1st) there was feasting to welcome the beginning of winter. Lastly, the old year ended and the new year began with the mixture and succession of religious services, pageants, shows, feasting, drinking, and dancing, which the London citizen of every degree loved so much.

Then there were the City holidays. St. Lubbock had predecessors. There were Christmas Day, Twelfth Day, Easter, the day of St. John the Baptist, on June 24th, and of St. Peter and St. Paul, on June 29th. On the last two days, to discourage the people from keeping it up all night, the vintners had to close their doors at ten.

The City of London has always been famous for the great plenty and variety of its food. Beef, mutton, and pork formed then, as now, the staple of the diet; small beer was the drink of all, men, women, and children. When, for instance, the Franciscans first set up their humble cells, the small beer being short in quantity, they did not drink water, but mixed water with the beer, in order to make it go round. There were so many fast-days in the year that fish was as important a form of food as mutton or beef. They ate lampreys, porpoise, and sturgeon, among other fish. Ling, cod, and herring furnished them with salted fish. Peacocks and swans adorned their tables at great banquets. Their dishes were sweetened with honey, for sugar was scarce, but spices were abundant. By the thirteenth century they had begun to make plentiful use of vegetables. They were fond of pounding meats of different kinds, such as pork and poultry, and mixing them in a kind of rissole. At a certain great banquet, the menu of which has survived, there appears neither beef nor mutton, probably because those meats belonged to the daily life, but there are great birds and little birds, brawn, rabbits, swans, and venison for meats, soup of cabbage, then the rissoles just mentioned, and various sweetmeats. Their drink was strong ale for banquets, hot spiced ale with a toast, the loving-cup of hypocras, and for wines, Rhenish, sack, Lisbon, and wine of Bordeaux.

Since every man in the City who practised a trade must be a freeman and a member of a company or trade guild, and since every company looked after its livery, there should have been no poor in the City at all. But performance falls short of promise; laws cannot always be enforced; there was, it is quite certain, a mass of poverty and worthlessness in the City even in those days. Perhaps the City proper, with its wards, was tolerably free from rogues and vagabonds, but there were the suburb of Southwark, that of the Strand, that already springing up outside Cripplegate, and the city of Westminster. Plenty of room here for rogues to find shelter. There were also the trades of which the City took no heed, of minstrels, jugglers, and actors, and all those who lived by amusing others; also the calling of servant in every kind, as drover, carter, wagoner, carrier, porter (not yet associated), and so forth. And there were the men who would never do any work at all, yet wanted as much drink and food as the honest men who did their share. For all these people, when they were hungry, there were the charities of the great men, the bishops, and the monasteries. For instance, the Earl of Warwick allowed any man to take as much meat as he could carry away on a dagger; the Bishop of Ely (but this was later, in the sixteenth century) gave every day bread, drink, and meat to two hundred poor people; the Earl of Derby fed every day, twice, sixty old people; thrice a week all comers; and on Good Friday 2700 men and women. In the year 1293, being a time of dearth, the Archbishop of Canterbury fed daily four or five thousand. In 1171, Henry II., as part of his penance for the murder of À Becket, fed 10,000 people from April till harvest. In the reign of Edward III. the Bishop of Durham bestowed on the poor every week eight quarters of wheat, besides the broken victuals of his house.

The almshouses, of which there are so many still existing, belong for the most part to a later time. The citizens founded hospitals for the necessitous as well as for the sick; they rebuilt and beautified churches; they endowed charities, and gave relief to poor prisoners. The first almshouses recorded were founded in the fourteenth century by William Elsing, mercer, who, in 1332, endowed a house for the support of a hundred blind men, and by John Stodie, citizen and vintner, Mayor in 1358, who built and endowed thirteen almshouses for as many poor citizens. In 1415 William Sevenoke, citizen and grocer, founded a school and almshouses in his native place, and two years later Whittington founded by will his college and almshouses. The college has been swallowed up, but the almshouses remain, though transferred to Highgate. After this the rich citizens began to remember the poor in their wills, choosing rather, like Philip Malpas, Sheriff in 1440, to give clothing to poor men and women, marriage dowries to poor maidens, and money for the highways than to bequeath the money for the singing of masses or the endowment of charities.

One more amusement must be mentioned, because it is the only one of which the honest Londoners have never wearied. It is mentioned by the worthy Fitz Stephen. It still continues to afford joy to millions. The craftsman of the fourteenth century found it at the Mermaid in Cornhill, or the Three Tuns of Newgate, or the Swan of Dowgate, or the Salutation of Billingsgate, or the Boar's Head of London Stone. He found it in company with his fellows, and whether he took it out of a glass or a silver mazer or a black jack, he took it joyfully, and he took it abundantly. Tosspots and swinkers were they then; tosspots and swinkers are they still.

To set against this eagerness for pleasure, this avidity after sports of every kind, we must remember the continual recurrence of plague and pestilence, especially in the fourteenth century,[13] when the love of shows and feasting was at its highest, and when the Black Death carried off half the citizens. Is it not a natural result? When life is so uncertain that men know not to-day how many will be alive to-morrow, they snatch impatiently at the present joy; it is too precious to be lost; another moment, and the chance will be gone—perhaps forever. As is the merriment of the camp when the battle is imminent, so is the joy of the people between the comings of the plague. Life never seems so full of rich and precious gifts as at such a time. As for the lessons in sanitation that the plague should teach, the people had not as yet begun to learn them. The lay stalls and the river-bank, despite laws and proclamations, continued to be heaped with filth, and the narrow street received the refuse from every house. And, in addition to the occasional plague, there was ever present typhoidal fever striking down old and young.

Perhaps the joy of the present was also intensified by the possibility of famine. At the end of the twelfth century there was a terrible famine. There was one in 1251; there was one in 1314, when "no flesh was to be had ... a quarter of wheat, beans, and peas was sold for twenty shillings." This is something like twenty pounds at present prices. This famine continued throughout the next year, when Stow says "horse-flesh was counted great delicates, the poore stole fatte dogges to eate; some (as it was said), compelled through famine, in hidden places, did eate the fleshe of their owne children, and some stole others, which they devoured. Thieves that were in prison did plucke in pieces those that were newlie brought among them, and greedily devoured them half alive." The uncertainty whether next year would produce any bread at all sweetened the loaf of to-day. In the year 1335 long-continued rains caused a famine. In 1353 there was another; in 1438 the scarcity was so great that bread was made from fern-roots, and so on.

The earliest schools of the City were those of St. Paul's, Westminster, and the Abbey of Bermondsey. Each of the religious houses in turn, as it was erected, opened another school. When, however, Henry V. had suppressed the alien priories, of which four certainly, and perhaps more, belonged to London, their schools were also suppressed. So much was the loss felt that Henry VI., the greatest founder of schools of all the kings, erected four new grammar-schools, namely: at St. Martin's le Grand, St. Dunstan in the West, St. Mary le Bow, and St. Anthony's; and in the following year he made four more, namely: in the parishes of St. Andrew's, Holborn; All Hallows the Great, Thames Street; St. Peter's, Cornhill; and St. Thomas of Acon.

But to what extent education prevailed, whether the sons of craftsmen were taught to read and write before they were apprenticed, I know not. For them the trivium and the quadrivium of the mediÆval school, the grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy could not possibly be of use. On the other hand, one cannot understand that the child of a respectable London craftsman should be allowed to grow up to the age of fourteen with no education at all. As for the children of gentle birth, we know very well how they were taught. Their education was planned so as to include very carefully the mastery of those accomplishments which we call good manners. It also included Latin, French, reading, writing, poetry, and music. In the towns the merchants and the better class understood very well the necessity of education for their own needs. The poor scholar, however—the lad who was born of humble parents and received his education for nothing—was a young man well known and recognized as a common type. But he never intended his learning to adorn a trade; rather should it lead him to the university, to the Church, even to a bishopric. It is significant that throughout Riley's Memorials there is no mention of school or of education; there is no hint anywhere how the children of the working-classes were taught. One thing is certain, the desire for learning was gradually growing and deepening in those years; and when the Reformation set the Bible free, there were plenty—thanks perhaps to King Henry's grammar-schools—in the class of craftsmen who could read it. But as yet we are two hundred years from the freeing of the Book.

It is always found that the laws are strict in an inverse proportion to the strength of the executive. Thus, had the laws been properly carried out, London would have been the cleanest and the most orderly town of the present, past, and future. Every man was enjoined to keep the front of his house clean; no refuse was to be thrown into the gutter; no one was to walk the streets at night. When the curfew-bell rang, first from St. Martin's, and afterwards from all the churches together, the gates of the City were closed; the taverns were shut; no one was allowed to walk about the streets; no boats were to cross the river; the sergeants of Billingsgate and Queenhithe had each his boat, with its crew of four men, to guard the river and the quays; guards were posted at the closed gates; a watch of six men was set in every ward, all the men of the ward being liable to serve upon it. These were excellent rules. Yet we find men haled before the Mayor charged with being common roreres (roarers), with beating people in the streets, enticing them into taverns, where they were made to drink and to gamble. Among the common roreres was once found, alas! a priest. What, however, were the other people doing in the street after curfew? And why were not the taverns shut? As is the strength of the ruling arm, so should be the law. We are not ourselves free from the reproach of passing laws which cannot be enforced because they are against the will of the people, and the executive is too weak to carry them out against that will. People, you see, cannot be civilized by statute.

The wages and hours of work of the craftsman have not been satisfactorily ascertained. The day's work probably meant the whole day. Like the rustic, he would begin in the summer at five and leave off at 7.30, with certain breaks. In winter he would work through the daylight. His wages, which were ordered for the craft by the company, seem to have been ample so long as employment was continuous. But the crafts were always complaining of foreign competition. Edward IV., in 1463, states that owing to the import of wares fully wrought and ready made for sale, "artificers cannot live by their mysteries and occupations as they have done in times past, but divers of them, as well householders as hirelings, and under-servants and apprentices in great numbers, be this day unoccupied, and do hardly live in great misery, poverty, and need." Therefore the statute enumerates a long list of things that are not to be exported. Among these we observe knives, razors, scissors—showing that the cutlery trade was already flourishing then—but not swords, spear-heads, or armor of any kind. Actual artificers were not to be employers but only servants; those already established could sell in gross but not in retail, and they were not to have alien servants. That there was discontent among the working-men is clear from these statutes and from the constant attempts of the craftsmen to form journeyman, or yeoman guilds, whose real objects, though they might mask them under the name of religion, were to increase wages and keep out new-comers.

Apart from the question of wages, what the craftsmen wanted was what the masters, too, demanded—"encouragement of natives, discouragement of foreigners, the development of shipping, and the amassing of treasure."[14]

Such were the people of London in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Such was Plantagenet London, the land of Cocaigne—Cockney Land—whither the penniless young gentleman, the son of the country squire, made his way in search of the fortune which others had picked up on its golden pavement.

But, indeed, a pavement of flints and stones the City offered to any who tried to win her fortunes save by the way prescribed. Of course there were—there always are—many who cannot enter by the appointed gate, nor keep to the ordered way. As it is now, so it was then. There were rogues and cheats; there were men who preferred any way of life to the honest way. How the City in its wisdom dealt with those we shall now see.

At first sight one may be struck with the leniency of justice. In cases which in later years were punished by flogging at the cart-tail, by hanging, by long imprisonment, the criminal of the fourteenth century stood in pillory, or was made to ride through the streets, the nature of his crime symbolized by something hung from his neck. There were as yet no burnings, no slicing off of ears; there was no rack, no torture by rope, boot, or water. It is true that those who ventured upon violence to the sacred person of an Alderman were liable to have the right hand struck off; but at the last moment that officer always begged and obtained a commutation, while the criminal made humble submission. Those who have entered upon an inheritance of law-abiding and of order have forgotten by what severities men were forced into external forms of respect for the officers of justice. Then, again, the Alderman knew every man in his ward; he was no stranger among his people; he knew the circumstances and the condition of every one; he was punishing a brother who had brought the ward into disrepute by his unruly conduct; he was therefore tender, saving the dignity of his office and his duty to the city.

For instance, it was once discovered that wholesale robberies were carried on by certain bakers who made holes in their moulding-boards, and so filched the dough. These rogues in the last century would have been flogged unmercifully. Robert de Bretaigne, Mayor A.D. 1387, was satisfied by putting them in pillory till after vespers at St. Paul's, with dough hung about their necks, so that all the world might know why they were there. When certain "tapicers" were charged with selling false blankets, that is, blankets which had been "vamped" in foreign parts with the hair of oxen and cows, the blankets were ordered to be burned. On the other hand, highway robbery, burglaries, and some cases of theft were punished by hanging. The unhappy Desiderata de Torgnton, for instance, in an evil moment stole from a servant of the Lady Alice de Lisle thirty dishes and twenty-four salt-cellars of silver. The servant was bound by sureties that he would prosecute for felony, and did so, with the result that Desiderata was hanged, and her chattels confiscated; but of chattels had she none.

For selling putrid meat the offender was put in pillory, and the bad meat—dreadful addition to the sentence—burned beneath his nose. The sale of "false" goods—that is, things not made as they should be made, either of bad materials or of inferior materials—was always punished by destruction of the things.

What should be done to a man who spoke disrespectfully of the Mayor? One Roger Torold, citizen and vintner, in the year of grace 1355, and in the twenty-eighth year of our Sovereign Lord King Edward III., said one day, in the presence of witnesses, that he was ready to defy the Mayor; and that if he should catch the Mayor outside the City, then the Mayor should never come back to it alive. These things being reported, the Mayor caused him to be brought before himself, the Aldermen, and Sheriffs at the Guildhall. The prisoner confessed his crime, and put himself upon the favor of the Court. He was committed to prison while the Court considered what should be done to him. Being brought to the bar, he offered to pay a fine of one hundred tuns of wine for restoration to the favor of the Mayor. This was accepted, on the condition that he should also make a recognizance of £40 sterling to be paid if ever again he should abuse or insult the name or person of the Mayor. For perjury, the offender was, for a first crime, taken to the Guildhall, and there placed upon a high stool, bareheaded, before the Mayor and Aldermen. For the second offence he was placed in pillory. For women, the thew was substituted for the pillory. One Alice, wife of Robert de Causton, stood in the thew for thickening the bottom of a quart-pot with pitch, so as to give short measure. The said quart-pot was divided into two parts, of which one half was tied to the pillory in sight of the people, and the other half was kept in the Guildhall.

Death by hanging or pillory. These were almost the only punishments. The cases before the Mayor's Court remind us of the remarkable resemblance we bear to our ancestors. They are monotonous because they read like the cases in a modern Police Court. Giles Pykeman goes in terror of his life, because certain persons threaten him, but they find surety for good behavior. John Edmond Commonger, convicted of passing off bad oats for good—pillory. John William, for passing off rings of latten as rings of gold—pillory. Nicolas Mollere, for spreading false news—pillory, with a whetstone round his neck to mark the offence. Heavens! if this offence were again made penal. John Mayn, indicted for being a leper—banished out of the city. Robert Brebason, stock fish-monger, charged with assault in presence of the Mayor. Not a case for pillory this: let him be imprisoned for a year and a day in Newgate. Alice Sheltoir, charged with being a common scold—to the thew. John Rykorre, cordwainer, for forging a bond—pillory.

As an illustration of the times I give the story of William Blakeney. He was a shuttle-maker by trade, but a pilgrim by profession. He dressed for the part with long hair, long gown, and bare feet. He loitered about in places where men resorted—taverns and such—and there entertained all comers with travellers' tales. He had been everywhere, this pious and adventurous pilgrim. He had seen Seville, city of sacred relics; Rome, the abode of his Holiness the Pope; he had even seen the Pope himself. He had been to the Holy Land, and stood within the very sepulchre of our Lord. And what with the strange creatures he had met with in those far-off lands, and the men and women among whom he had sojourned, and the things he could tell you, and the things which he postponed till the next time, the story would fill volumes. For six years he lived in great comfort, eating and drinking of the best, always at the expense of his hearers. This man must have been an unequalled story-teller. Six years of invention ever fresh and new! Then he was found out—he had never been a pilgrimage in his life. He had never been out of sight of the London walls. So he stood in pillory—this poor novelist, who would in these days have commanded so much respect and such solid rewards—he stood in pillory, with a whetstone round his neck, as if he had been a common liar! And then he had to go back to the dull monotony of shuttle-making, and that in silence, with nobody to believe him any more. Well, he shortly afterwards died, I am convinced, of suppressed fiction. But perhaps his old friends rallied round him, and by the light of the fire he still beguiled the long evenings by telling for the hundredth time of the one-eyed men, and the men with tails, and the men who have but one leg, and use their one foot for an umbrella against the scorching sun—all of whom he had seen in the deserts on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus, where St. Paul was converted.

On a day in the beginning of October, 1382, there was great excitement in the parish of St. Mildred, Poultry. A certain mazer, or silver cup, the property of Dame Matilda de Eye, had been stolen. Now, whether Alan, the water-carrier, had his suspicions, or whether he was himself suspected, or whether he wished to fix the guilt on somebody else, I know not, but he repaired to the house of Robert Berewold, of great repute for art magic, and inquired of him as to the real thief. Whereupon Robert took a loaf, and in the top of it fixed a round peg of wood, and four knives at the four sides, so as to present the figure of a cross. He then did "soothsaying and art magic" over the loaf. After which he declared that Johanne Wolsy was the person who had stolen the cup.

This thing being bruited abroad, and the voice of the indignant Johanne ascending to the ears of the Aldermen, the said Robert was attached to make answer to the Mayor and commonalty as in a plea of deceit and falsehood. Answer there was none. Whereupon Robert stood in pillory for one hour, the loaf, peg, and knives hung about his neck; and on the following Sunday he went to the parish church—it is now pulled down—and in the presence of the congregation confessed that he had falsely defamed the same Johanne. Meantime Alan, one may believe, had consigned the mazer to a safe place, and joined in the congratulations of Johanne's friends.

Would you know how a young married couple set up house-keeping? Here is the inventory of the household furniture of such a pair in the fourteenth century. It is not the only document of the kind which exists, but it is interesting because it forms part of a story which remains unfinished.

The inventory belongs to the year 1337. The proprietor's name was Hugh le Bevere; that of his wife Alice. Hugh le Bevere was a craftsman of the better sort, but not a master. He was so well off that the furniture of his house, including clothes, was valued at £12 18s. 4d., which, being interpreted into modern money, means about £200. He had been married but a short time when the events occurred which caused this inventory to be drawn up. The newly-married pair lived in a house consisting of two rooms, one above the other. The lower room, which was kitchen and keeping-room in one, was divided from the houses on either side by solid stone walls; it had a chimney and a fireplace; the walls were hung round with kitchen utensils, tools, and weapons; a window opened to the street, the upper part of which was glazed, while the lower part could be closed by a stout shutter; the door opened into the street; there was another door at the back, which opened upon a buttery, where there stood ranged in a row six casks of wine. One folding-table and two chairs served for their wants, because they were not rich enough to entertain their friends. A ladder led to the upper room, which was an attic or garret, built of wood and thatched with rush. Here was the bed with a mattress, three feather beds, and two pillows. A great wooden coffer held their household gear; here were six blankets and one serge, a coverlet with shields of sendall (a kind of thin silk), eight linen sheets, four table-cloths. The clothes, which were laid in chests or hung upon the wall, consisted of three surcoats of worsted and ray; one coat with a hood of perset (peach-colored cloth), and another of worsted; two robes of perset; one of medley, furred; one of scarlet, furred; a great hood of sendall with edging; one camise (only one!) and half a dozen savenapes (aprons). One perceives that the inventory omits many things. Where, for instance, were the hosen and the shoon? For kitchen utensils there were brass pots, a grate, andirons, basins, washing vessels, a tripod, an iron horse, an iron spit, a frying-pan, a funnel, and two ankers—i.e. tubs. They had one candlestick "of lattone;" two plates; an aumbrey (cabinet or small cupboard); curtains to hang before the doors to keep out the cold; cushions and a green carpet; and for the husband a haketon, or suit of leather armor, and an iron head-piece. Of knives, forks, wooden plates, cups, glasses, or drinking measures there is nothing said at all. But it is evident that the house was provided with everything necessary for solid comfort; plenty of kitchen vessels, for instance, and plenty of soft feather-beds, blankets, pillows, curtains, and sheets.

Every morning at six o'clock, after a hunch of bread, a substantial slice of cold meat, and a pull at the black-jack of small ale, Hugh le Bevere walked off to his day's work. Then Alice, left at home, washed and scoured, made and mended, cooked the dinner, talked to the neighbors, and, when all was done, sat in the door-way enjoying the sunshine and spinning busily.

They had been married but a short time. There were no children. Then—one knows nothing; one must not judge harshly; there may have been jealousy; there may have been cause for jealousy; perhaps the woman had a tongue unendurable (fourteenth-century tongues were cruelly sharp); perhaps the man had a temper uncontrolled (in that century there were many such); but no one knows, and, again, we must not judge—then, I say, the end came, suddenly and without warning. When it was all over, some of the neighbors thought they had heard high words and a smothered shriek, but then we often think we have heard what probably happened. In the morning Hugh le Bevere went not forth to his work as usual; Alice did not open the door; the shutters remained closed. The neighbors knocked; there was no answer. They sent for the Alderman, who came with his sergeants, and broke open the door. Alas! alas! They found the body of Alice lying stark and dead upon the floor; beside her sat her husband with white face and haggard eyes, and the evidence of his crime, the knife itself, lying where he had thrown it.

They haled him to the Lord Mayor's Court. They questioned him. He made no reply at first, looking as one distraught; when he spoke, he refused to plead. For this, in later times, he would have been pressed to death. What was done to him was almost as bad; for they took him to Newgate, and shut him up in a cell with penance—that is to say, on bread and water—until he died.

This done, they buried the unfortunate Alice, and made the inventory of all the chattels, which the City confiscated, and sold for £12 18s. 4d., out of which, no doubt, they paid for the funeral of the woman and the penance of the man. The rest, one hopes, was laid out in masses, as far as it would go, for the souls of the hapless pair. Death has long since released Hugh le Bevere; he has entered his plea before another Court; but the City has never learned why he killed his wife, or if, indeed, he really did kill her.

Of Plantagenet London this is my picture. You see a busy, boisterous, cheerful city; with the exception of the cities of Ghent and Bruges and Antwerp, the busiest and the most prosperous city of the western world, with the greatest liberty of the people, the greatest plenty of all good things, and the happiest conditions of any town. You have seen that though the sovereign was King within as well as without the walls, there was no other Over-Lord; the royal hand was sometimes heavy, but its weight was better to bear than the internal dissensions that ravaged the Italian cities; it was better that London should suffer with the rest of the country than that she should sit, like Venice, secure and selfish beside her quays, though the people of the land behind were torn with civil wars and destroyed by famine and overrun by a foreign enemy.

When we think of this period let us never forget its external splendor—the silken banners, the heralds in their embroidered coats, the livery of the great lords, the Mayor and Aldermen in their robes riding to hear mass at St. Paul's, the cloth of gold, the vair and miniver, the ermine and the sable, the robes of perset and the hoods of sendall, the red velvet and the scarlet silk, the great gold chains, the caps embroidered with pearls, the horses with their trappings, the banners and the shields, the friars jostling the parish priests, the men-at-arms, the city ladies, as glorious with their raiment as the ladies of the court, the knights, the common folk, the merchant, and the prentice. Mostly I like to think of the prentice. One always envies the young; theirs is the inheritance. The prentice lived amid these glories, which seemed like pageants invented entirely for his delight. It was time when the fleeting shows and vanities of life were valued all the more because they were so fleeting. He looked around, and his heart swelled with the joy of thinking that some day these things would fall to him if he was lucky, diligent, and watchful. His was the threefold vow of industry, obedience, and duty. By keeping this vow he would attain to the place and station of his master.

Meantime, there were great sights to be seen and no hinderance to his seeing them.

For the continued noise and uproar of the City, for its crowds, for its smells, the people cared nothing. They were part of the City. They loved everything that belonged to it—their great cathedral; their hundred churches; their monasteries; their palaces and the men-at-arms; the nobles, priests, and monks; the Mayor and Aldermen; the ships and the sailors; the merchants and the craftsmen; the ridings and the festivals and the holy days; the ringing, clinging, clashing of the bells all day long; the drinking at the taverns; the wrestling and the archery; the dancing; the pipe and tabor; the pageants, and the mumming and the love-making—all, all they loved. And they thought in their pride that there was not anywhere in the whole habitable world—witness the pilgrims and the ship-captains, who had seen the whole habitable world—any city that might compare with famous London Town.

---