I. SPRING-TIME AMONG THE RUINS

If the London of the Third Edward was a city of palaces, that of Queen Elizabeth was a city of ruins.

Ruins everywhere! Ruins of cloisters, halls, dormitories, courts, and chapels, and churches. Ruins of carved altar-pieces, canopies, statues, painted windows, and graven fonts. Ruins of old faiths and old traditions. Ruins everywhere. Only consider what became of the monastic buildings. King Edward's Cistercian House, called the New Abbey, or Eastminster, was pulled "clean down," and in its place storehouses for victuals and ovens for making ships' biscuits were set up. On the abbey grounds were erected small tenements for poor working-people, the only inhabitants of that neighborhood where is now the Mint. Sir Arthur Darcie it was who did this. The Convent of St. Clare, called the Minories, was similarly treated, its site converted into storehouses. The old buildings are always said to have been entirely pulled down, but their destruction was never thorough. Walls were everywhere left standing, because it was too much trouble to pull them down. For instance, the north wall of the present mean little Church of the Holy Trinity, Minories, ugliest and meanest of all modern London churches, was formerly part of the wall of the nuns' chapel.

More fortunate than the other monastic churches, that of the Austin Friars was allowed to remain standing. The nave was walled off and assigned to the Dutch residents, with whom it has continued to this day. You may attend the service on Sunday, and while the preacher in the black gown addresses his scanty audience in the language which, though it sounds so much like English, you cannot understand, you may look about you, and think of the Augustine Brothers who built this church. In their time it was filled with monuments, of which not a single one now remains. The nave was greatly damaged by a fire in 1862, but the walls and columns of the ancient church remain. The rest of the church, including the finest and most beautiful spire in the whole city, was all pulled down by the Marquis of Winchester, who broke up and sold the whole of the monuments for £100. In this church were buried, among other illustrious dead, the great Hubert de Burgh; Edmund Plantagenet, half brother to Richard II.; the barons who fell at the battle of Barnet; Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, beheaded 1397; the Earl of Oxford, beheaded 1463; and Edward Strafford, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded 1521. Winchester House, which stood till fifty years ago, was built on part of the abbey grounds; Cromwell House, on a site where now stands the Drapers' Hall, on another part.

The Priory of the Holy Trinity, granted to Sir Thomas Audley, fared worse still, for the whole church—choir, transepts, nave, steeple, and all—was, with great labor, pulled down, and the whole materials and monuments sold for paving or building stones at sixpence a cart-load. The ring of nine bells was divided between Stepney Church and St. Katherine Cree, where, I believe, they still hang and do their duty. So much, and that is all, is left of this proud foundation. Sir Thomas Audley, who obtained the precinct by gift of the King, built a house upon it. His daughter and heiress marrying the Duke of Norfolk, the house and grounds were named after their new owner. Duke's Place and Duke Street preserve the new name. The former, now a mean square, crowded with Jews engaged in the fruit trade, is certainly the site of one of the courts of the old priory. It is at the back of St. Katherine Cree Church in Leadenhall Street. Strange, that of this most rich and splendid house not a vestige should remain either of name, or building, or tradition.

Crutched Friars' Church was made into a carpenter's shop and a tennis court. Their refectory, a very noble hall, became a glass-house, and was burned to the ground in the year 1575.

St. Mary's Spital, outside Bishopsgate, which had been a hospital with one hundred and eighty beds, was entirely destroyed and built over. But Spital Square, which now remains, marks the site of the church-yard, where stood (in the north-east corner) the famous spital pulpit, from which, for three hundred years, sermons were preached at Easter before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and the citizens. It is an illustration of English conservatism that long after the hospital was demolished, and when the pulpit stood in an ordinary square of private residences, the same custom was kept up, with the same official attendance of the corporation.

The Nunnery of St. Helen's became the property of the Leathersellers' Company. The nuns' chapel still remains forming the north part of a church, which, for its antiquity and its monuments, is one of the most interesting in London. The nuns' refectory formed the Company's Hall until the year 1790, when, with its ancient crypt, it was pulled down to make way for the present St. Helen's Place. Considerable ruins of the nunnery remained until the same time.

The Church of the Knights Hospitallers was blown up with gunpowder; its ruins and those of the priory buildings remained for many years. The Charter House was first given by Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Audley, passed from him to Lord North, to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, to Lord North again, to the Duke of Norfolk, to the Crown, to the Earl of Suffolk, and to Thomas Sutton. The last transfer was in 1611. Sutton endowed it as a charity under the name of the Hospital of King James. This noble foundation has ever since existed as a hospital for decayed gentlemen and a school for boys. Some of the old monastic buildings yet survive in the Charter House. Its name of the Hospital of King James has long been forgotten. The place has been celebrated by Thackeray, and it is, at this day, the most beautiful and the most venerable monument of old London.

The magnificent Church of the Dominicans, or Black Friars, was destroyed. Either the hall of the abbey or a portion of the church was used as a storehouse for the "properties" of pageants—strange fate for the house of the Dominicans, those austere upholders of doctrine. A play-house was erected by Shakespeare and his friends among the ruins, which remained standing for a long time. Only a few years ago the extension of the Times offices in Printing House Square brought to light many substantial remains. The Abbey of Bermondsey furnished materials and a site for a great house for the Earl of Sussex. A tavern was built on the site, of the Church of St. Martin's le Grand. The Church of St. Bartholomew's Priory was pulled down to the choir, which was converted into a parish church. The bells were put up in the tower of St. Sepulchre. The Church of the Grey Friars was spared; but as for its monuments—consider! There were buried here the queens of Edward I. and Edward II., the queen of David Bruce, an innumerable company of great lords, nobles, and fighting men, with their dames and daughters. The place was a Campo Santo of mediÆval worthies. Their monuments, Stow writes, "are wholly defaced. There were nine tombs of alabaster and marble, environed with 'strikes' of iron, in the choir, and one tomb in the body of the church, also coped with iron, all pulled down, besides sevenscore gravestones of marble." The whole were sold for £50 or thereabouts by Sir Martin Bowes, goldsmith and Alderman of London. Surely the carved marble and sculptured alabaster did not teach the hated papistical superstitions; yet they all went; and it was with bare walls, probably washed white or yellow to hide the frescos, that the building became the parish now called Christ Church. The monastery buildings were converted into the Bluecoat School.

Such was the fate of the greater houses. Add to these the smaller foundations, all whelmed in the common destruction; the colleges, such as that of St. Spirit, founded by Whittington; that founded by Walworth; that founded by Richard III., attached to Allhallows Barking; St. John's, Holywell; St. Thomas of Acon, a rich foundation with a lovely church; the College of Jesus; the Hospital of St. Anthony; Jesus Commons; Elsing Spital; and we begin to realize that London was literally a city of ruins.

It is at first hard to understand how there should have been, even among the baser sort, so little reverence for the past, so little regard for art; that these treasure-houses of precious marbles and rare carvings should have been rifled and destroyed without raising so much as a murmur; nay, that the very buildings themselves should have been pulled down without a protest. Once only the citizens remonstrated. It was in the hope of saving from destruction the lofty and most beautiful spire of Austin Friars, but in vain. It seems to us impossible that the tombs of so many worthies should have been destroyed without the indignation of all who knew the story of the past. Yet in our own day we have seen—nay, we see daily—the wanton and useless destruction of ancient buildings. Winchester House, which ought to have been kept as a national monument, was pulled down in 1839; Sir Paul Pinder's house, another unique specimen, vanished only yesterday; within the last few years a dozen city churches have been destroyed, in total disregard to their historical associations. At this very moment the church where John Carpenter, Whittington's executor and the founder of the City of London school, the church whose site has been consecrated as long as that of any church in the city, where King Alfred may have worshipped, is standing roofless, waiting to make way for offices not wanted. Nay, the very city clergy themselves, the official guardians of all that is venerable, have, in our own days—the actual, living city clergy!—basely sold their most beautiful old house, Sion College, and built a new and garish place on the Thames Embankment, which they call Sion College! It is unfortunately too true that there is not, at any time or with any people, reverence for things venerable, old, and historical, save with a few. The greater part are careless of the past, unable to see or feel anything but the present. The city clergy of to-day are no better than Sir Thomas Audrey, Sir Arthur Darcie, and the rest.

There were other ruins. Cromwell's men were not the only zealots against popish monuments, signs, and symbols. The parish churches were filled with ruins. The carved fonts were defaced; the side chapels were desolate and empty; the altars were stripped; the rood screens were removed; the roods themselves were taken down; the painted walls were whitewashed; the simple service that was read in the vulgar tongue seemed to the people at first a ruin of the old mass; the clergyman, called minister or priest, who preached in the black gown, was a ruin of the priest in his gorgeous robes; the very doctrines of the Protestant faith seemed at first built out of the ruins of the old, as the second Temple was built upon the ruins of the first, and was but a poor thing in comparison. At first only, because the work was thorough, and in a single generation all the traditions of the ancient faith were lost and forgotten.

If, indeed, the Reformation was to be carried at all, it was necessary, for the prevention of civil war, that it should be thorough. Therefore the young generation must be made to believe that a return of the old things was absolutely impossible; that the old religion could never, under any circumstances, be revived. When Queen Mary ascended the throne, the work was only half done; the Protestant faith had not yet taken root; yet when she died, five years later, no lamentations were made over the second departure of the priests. It is a commonplace that the flames of Smithfield, more than the preaching of Latimer, reconciled the people to the loss of the old religion. I do not think that the commonplace is more than half true, because the flames were again kindled, and more than once, in the reign of Elizabeth without any murmur from the people. Henceforth the old religion was dead indeed, and impossible to be revived. When Shakespeare came up to London, he found many who could remember the monks—gray, white, and black; the Franciscan—innocent of the old simplicity; the rich and stately Benedictine; the austere Dominican; the pardoner and the limitour; the mass, and the holy days of the Church; but we find in Shakespeare's writings no trace of any regret for their disappearance, or of any desire for their return. The past was gone; even the poetic side of a highly poetic time was not touched, or hardly touched, by the sadness and pathos of this great fall; the dramatists and poets have made nothing out of it.

The people lived among the ruins but regarded them not, any more than the vigorous growth within the court of a roofless Norman castle regards the donjon and the walls. They did not inquire into the history of the ruins; they did not want to preserve them; they took away the stones and sold them for new buildings.

It was very remarkable and very fitting that on the site of the Grey Friars' House should be erected a great school. The teaching of the new thought was established in the place where those dwelt who had been the most stalwart defenders of the old. It was also very remarkable and very fitting that within the walls of Black Friars' Abbey, the home of austerity and authority, should rise a play-house for the dramas of free thought and human passion. It was further remarkable and very fitting that the house of the Carthusian monks, those who had fled from the work, and war, and temptations of the world, those who, while yet living, were already dead, should be converted into a home for those who were broken down and spent with that very work and war, a place where they could meditate in their old age over the storm and struggle of the past.

Once arrived at the second half of the sixteenth century we are in modern times. We have maps, surveys, descriptions of the city; we have literature in plenty to illustrate the manners of the time. There is no longer any doubt upon any point. The daily life of London under Elizabeth and the first James may be learned in all its details, by any one who will take the trouble to read, as easily as the daily life in our own time. Perhaps more easily, because things which are so trivial and yet mean so much are passed over or taken for granted in the literature of our day. But let no one be content with reading the modern books upon the Elizabethan period. They contain a great deal, but the literature of the time itself is a storehouse, into which every one who wishes, however lightly, to study the time should look for himself. And it is a storehouse so full that no man can hope to exhaust though he could carry out of it load upon load of treasure.

Before me hangs a fac-simile of the map made by Ralph Agas. "Civitas Londinium." One remarks first, that the part lying south of Chepe is still the most crowded, yet not so crowded that there are no open spaces. Between Size Lane, for instance, and Walbrook is a great garden. Behind Whittington College is a large open court, which was also certainly a garden. There are gardens in Blackfriars of which the only remains at the present day are the pretty little square called Wardrobe Court and the tiny garden—I believe there is still one other garden left—at the back of the rectory of St. Andrew's. North of Chepe the streets are wider, and the open spaces larger and more frequent. At Grey Friars, already the Bluecoat School, the courts of the monastery are yet standing with the church, and the great garden still stretches unto the city wall; in the corner of the wall, where is now Monkwell Street, with Barber Surgeon's Hall, is a fine large garden. On either side of Coleman Street there are very extensive gardens; those on the west belonged to the Augustine Friars, the last remnant of which, the Drapers' Garden, was built over a few years ago to the enrichment of the Company and the loss of the city. Some part of the gardens of the Holy Trinity Priory remain. There are gardens and trees and an open space within Aldgate; and an open court, or series of courts, where had been the nunnery of St. Helen's. Without the walls, on the east, East Smithfield is a large field, with paths across. The sites of New Abbey and the convent of the Clare Sisters are marked by courts and gardens. Houses stand north and south along the Whitechapel Road, but not far; a single row of houses runs along Hound's ditch from Aldgate to Bishopsgate. Without the latter there is a line of houses as far as Shoreditch Church, and here the open country begins. Finsbury and Moorfields are to a great extent divided up into gardens, each with its house, reminding one of Stubbes's complaint against the citizens' wives and daughters, that they use their husbands' gardens outside the walls for purposes of intrigue. All round the north and east of the city the people could step out of the gates into the country. Except the houses of Bishopsgate Without and the Whitechapel Road, there was nothing but fields and open ground. Around St. Giles, Cripplegate, however, we find a suburb already populous. About Smithfield the houses gather thickly. We observe the familiar names of Little Britain, Pye Corner, Cock Lane, and Hoosier Lane. Holborn, with gardens on the north, has a double line of houses as far as Chancery Lane. Where is now Blackfriars Bridge Road stood the palace of Bridewell, with its two square courts and its gabled front facing the river. Whitefriars is partly built upon, but some of the courts and gardens remain. The lawns of the Temple, planted with elms, slope down to the river, and these were followed westward by the palaces along the Strand—Exeter House, Arundel House, the Bishop of Llandaff's house, Somerset House, the Savoy, Bedford House, Cecil House, Northumberland House, and the rest, of which Somerset House alone remains, and that in altered guise. There are no docks as yet. The lading and the unlading of the ships continued almost until this century to be done in the Pool below London Bridge by barges and lighters.

In considering the people of London in the time of good Queen Bess one is forced to put the poets and dramatists first, because they are the chief glory of this wonderful reign. Yet such a harvest could only spring from a fruitful soil. Of such temper as were the poets, so also—so courageous, so hopeful, so confident—were the inarticulate mass for whom they sang and spoke. Behind Kit Marlowe, Greene, and Peele were the turbulent youth, prodigal of life, eager for joy, delighting in feast and song, always ready for a fight, extravagant in speech and thought, jubilant in their freedom from the tyranny of the Church. Behind Spenser and Sydney were the cultivated class, whose culture has never been surpassed. Behind Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Massenger, and Beaumont, and the rest were the people of all conditions, from Gloriana herself down to Bardolph and Doll. We can only get at the people through those who write about them. Therefore we must needs say something about the Elizabethan poets.

Fortunately there are plenty of them. In proportion to the population, far, very far more than we have even at the present day, when every year the reviews find it necessary to cry out over the increasing tide of new books. Of poets, in what other age could the historian enumerate forty of the higher and nearly two hundred of the lower rank? Of the forty, most are well remembered and read even to the present day; for instance, Chapman, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Robert Greene, Marston, Sackville, Sylvester, Donne, Drayton, Drummond, Gascoigne, Marlowe, Raleigh, Spenser, Wither, may be taken as poets still read and loved, while the list does not include Shakespeare and the dramatists. Nearly two hundred and forty poets! Why, with a population of a hundred millions of English-speaking people now in the world, we have not a half or a sixth of that number, while in the same proportion we should have to equal in number the Elizabethan singers—about 5000. But in that age every gentleman wrote verse; the cultivation of poetry was like the cultivation of music. Every man could play an instrument; every man could take his part in a glee or madrigal; so, also, every man could turn his set of verses, with the result of a fine and perfect flower of poetry which has never been surpassed.

But they were not only poets. They had every kind of literature in far greater abundance, considering the small number of educated people, than exists in our own time, and in as great variety. Consider! There are now scattered over the whole world a hundred millions of English-speaking people, of whom at least five-sixths read something, if it is only a penny newspaper, and at least a half read books of some kind. In Elizabeth's reign there were about six millions, of whom more than half could not read at all. The reading public of Great Britain and Ireland, considered with regard to numbers, resembled what is now found in Holland, Norway, or Denmark. Yet from so small a people came this mass of literature, great, varied, and immortal.

In the matter of fiction alone they were already rich. There were knightly books: the Morte d'Arthur, the Seven Champions, Amadis of Gaul, Godfrey of Bouillon, Palmerin of England, and many more. There were story-books, as the Seven Wise Masters, the Gesta Romanorum, the Amorous Fiammetta, the jest books of Skogin, Tarleton, Hobson, Skelton, Peele, and others. There was the famous Euphues, Sidney's Arcadia, all the pastoral romances, and the "picaresque" novels of Nash and Dekker. Then there were the historians and chroniclers, as Stow, Camden, Speed, Holinshed; the essayists, as Sir Thomas Browne, Ascham, Bacon; the theologians, of whom there were hundreds; the satirists, as Bishop Hall and Marston; the writers of what we should call light literature—Greene, Nash, Peele, and Dekker. And there were translations, as from the Italian, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Biondello, Tasso, and others; from the French, Froissart, Montaigne, Plutarch (Amyot), the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (in the Hundred Merry Tales), and the stories of the Forest and the Palace of Pleasure. And there were all the dramatists. Never before or since has the country been better supplied with new literature and good books.

Remember, again, everything was new. All the books were new; the printing-press was new; you could almost count the volumes that had been issued. It was reckoned a great thing for Dr. Dee to have three thousand printed books. Every scholar found a classic which had not been translated, and took him in hand. Every traveller brought home some modern writer, chiefly Italian, previously unknown. Every sailor brought home the record of a voyage to unknown seas and to unknown shores. It was a time when the world had become suddenly conscious of a vast, an inconceivable widening, the results of which could not yet be foretold. But the knowledge filled men with such hopes as had never before been experienced. Scholars and poets, merchants and sailors, rovers and adventurers, all alike were moved by the passion and ecstasy of the time. Strange time! Wonderful time! We who read the history of that time too often confine our attention to the political history. We are able, with the help of Froude, quite clearly to understand the perplexities and troubles of the Maiden Queen; we see her, in her anxiety, playing off Spaniard against Frenchman, to avoid destruction should they act together. But the people know and suspect none of these things. State affairs are too high for them. They only see the brightness of the sky and the promise of the day; they only feel the quickening influence of the spring; their blood is fired; they have got new hopes, a new faith, new openings, new learning. And they bear themselves accordingly. That is to say, with extravagances innumerable, with confidence and courage lofty, unexampled. Why, it fires the blood of this degenerate time only to think of the mighty enlargement of that time. When one considers when they lived and what they talked, one understands Kit Marlowe and Robert Greene, and that wild company of scholars and poets; they would cram into whatever narrow span of life was granted them all—all—all—that life can give of learning and poetry, and feasting and love and joy. They were intoxicated with the ideas of their time. They were weighed down with the sheaves—the golden harvest of that wondrous reaping. Who would not live in such a time? The little world had become, almost suddenly, very large, inconceivably large. The boys of London, playing about the river stairs and the quays, listened to the talk of men who had sailed along those newly-discovered coasts of the new great world, and had seen strange monsters and wild people. In the taverns men—bearded, bronzed, scarred—grave men, with deep eyes and low voice, who had sailed to the Guinea coast, round the Cape to Hindostan, across the Spanish Main, over the ocean to Virginia, sat in the tavern and told to youths with flushed cheeks and panting, eager breath queer tales of danger and escape between their cups of sack. We were not yet advanced beyond believing in the Ethiopian with four eyes, the Arimaspi with one eye, the Hippopodes or Centaurs, the Monopoli, or men who have no head, but carry their faces in their breasts and their eyes in their shoulders. None of these monsters, it is true, had ever been caught and brought home; but many an honest fellow, if hard pressed by his hearers, would reluctantly confess to having seen them. On the other hand, negroes and red Indians were frequently brought home and exhibited. And there were crocodiles, alive or stuffed; crocodiles' skins, the skins of bears and lions, monkeys, parrots, flying-fish dried, and other curious things. And there were always the legends—that of the land of gold, the Eldorado; that of the kingdom of Prester John; that of St. Brandan's Island; and, but this was later, the theory—proved with mathematical certainty—of the great southern continent. Enough, and more than enough, to inflame the imagination of adventurers, to drive the lads aboard ship, to make them long for the sails to be spread and to be making their way anywhere—anywhere—in search of adventure, conquest, glory, and gold.

Such an enlargement, such hopes, can never again return to the world. That is impossible, save on one chance. We cannot make the world any wider; by this time we know it nearly all; the pristine mystery—the awfulness of the unknown—has wellnigh gone out of every land, even New Guinea and Central Africa. Yet there is this one chance. Science may and will widen the world—for her own disciples—in many new and unexpected ways. The sluggish imagination of the majority is little touched even by such marvels as the electric telegraph, the phonograph, the telephone. For them science in any form cannot enlarge their boundaries. Suppose, however, a thing to be achieved which should go right home to the comprehension, brain, and heart of every living man. Suppose that science should prevent, conquer, and annihilate disease. Suppose our span of life enlarged to two hundred, three hundred, five hundred years, and that suddenly. Think of the wild exaltations, the extravagances, the prodigalities, the omnivorous attempts of the scholar, the universal grasp of the physicist, the amazing and audacious experiments of chemist, electrician, biologist, and the long reach of the statesman! Think of these things, I say, and remember that in the age of Elizabeth, of Raleigh, Drake, Marlowe, Nash, Greene, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Spenser, Bacon, and the rest similar causes produced similar effects.

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We have seen the development of the mediÆval house from the simple common hall. The Elizabethan house shows an immense advance in architecture. I believe that the noblest specimen now remaining is Burghley House in Northamptonshire, built by Cecil, Lord Burghley and first Earl of Exeter. The house is built about a square court. The west front has a lofty square tower. Let us, with Burghley House before us, read what Bacon directs as to building. The front, he says, must have a tower, with a wing on either side. That on the right was to consist of nothing but a "goodly room of some forty feet high"—he does not give the length—"and under it a room for dressing or preparing place at times of triumphs." By triumphs he means pageants, mummings, and masques. "On the other side, which is the household side, I wish it divided at the first into a hall and a chapel (with a partition between), both of good state and bigness. And these not to go all the length, but to have at the further end a winter and a summer parlor, both fair." Here are to be the cellars, kitchens, butteries, and pantries. "Beyond this front is to be a fair court, but three sides of it of a far lower building than the front. And in all the four corners of the court fair staircases, cast into turrets on the outside, and not within the row of buildings themselves.... Let the court not be paved, for that striketh up a great heat in summer and much cold in winter. But only some side alleys with a cross, and the quarters to graze being kept shorn, but not too near shorn." Stately galleries with colored windows are to run along the banquet side; on the household side, "chambers of presence and ordinary entertainments, with bedchambers." Beyond this court is to be a second of the same square, with a garden and a cloister. Other directions he gives which, if they were carried out, would make a very fine house indeed. But these we may pass over. In short, Bacon's idea of a good house was much like a college. That of Clare, Cambridge, for instance, would have been considered by Bacon as a very good house indeed, though the arrangement of the banqueting-room was not exactly as the philosopher would have it. The College of Christ's in its old form, with the garden square beyond, was still more after the manner recommended by Bacon.

It will be seen that we are now a good way removed from the Saxon Hall with the people sleeping on the floor, yet Bacon's house lineally descends from that beginning. All the old houses in London were built in this way, as may be illustrated by many which retain the old form, as well as by those which remain. Hampton Court, for instance, built by Wolsey; Northumberland House, recently taken down; Gresham House, taken down a hundred years ago; Somerset House, still standing, though much altered; the old Navy Office, the court of which still remains; some of the old almshouses, notably Trinity Almshouse, in the Whitechapel Road; Emanuel, Westminster; and the Norfolk Hospital, Greenwich, Gray's Inn, Clifford's Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard's Inn—which contains the oldest house in London—are admirable specimens of Bacon's house; while in the old taverns, of which a few imperfect specimens still exist, we have the galleries which Bacon would construct within his court.

In the reign of Elizabeth, while the merchants were growing richer and increasing in number and in wealth, the great nobles were gradually leaving the city. Those who remained kept up but a remnant of their former splendor. Elizabeth refused license for the immense number of retainers formerly allowed; she would suffer a hundred at the most. It was a time rather for the rise of new families than the continued greatness of the old. The nobles, as they went away, sold their London houses to the citizens. Thus Winchester House and Crosby Hall went to merchants; Derby House to the College of Heralds; Cold Harbor was pulled down in 1590, and its site built over with tenements; the Duke of Norfolk's house, on the site of Holy Trinity Priory, was shortly after destroyed, and the place assigned to the newly-arrived colony of Jews. Barnard's Castle alone among the city palaces remained in the possession of a great noble until the fire came and swept it away.

Great beyond all precedent was the advance of trade in this golden age. Elizabeth was wise and wisely advised in the treatment of the City and the merchants. Perhaps she followed the example of King Edward the Fourth. Perhaps she remembered (but this I doubt) that she belonged to the City by her mother's side, for her great-grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, had been Lord Mayor a hundred years before her accession. But the rapid growth of London trade seems to me chiefly due to the wisdom of one man—Sir Thomas Gresham.

This great man, even more than Whittington, is the typical London merchant. Not a self-made man at all, but coming of a good old country stock—always a master, always of the class which commands. Nearly all the great London merchants have, as has already been stated, belonged to that class. His family came originally from Gresham, in Norfolk; his father, Sir Richard, was Lord Mayor; his uncle, Sir John, also Lord Mayor, saved Bethlehem Hospital at the dissolution of the religious houses. Not a poor and friendless lad, by any means; from the outset he had every advantage that wealth and station can afford. He was educated at Gonville (afterwards Gonville and Caius) College, Cambridge. It was not until he had taken his degree that he was apprenticed to his uncle, and he was past twenty-four when he was received into the Mercers' Company.

When he was thirty-two years of age a thing happened to Thomas Gresham which proved to be the most fortunate chance that ever came to the City of London. He was appointed Royal Agent at Antwerp. The King's loans were at that time always offered at Antwerp or Bruges, and were taken up by merchants of the Low Countries at the enormous interest of 14 per cent. Sometimes a part of the advance had to take the form of jewels. At this time the annual interest on the debt amounted to £40,000; and while the exchange was sixteen Flemish shillings to the pound sterling, the agent had to pay in English money. The post, therefore, was not an easy one to fill.

Gresham, however, reduced the interest from 14 per cent. to 12, or even 10 per cent. He suppressed the jewels, and took the whole of the loan in money; and he continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward's ministers, of Queen Mary, and of Queen Elizabeth. In order to effect this, he must have been a most able and honest servant, or else a most supple courtier. He was the former. Now, had he done nothing more than played the part of Royal Agent better than any one who went before him, he might have been as much forgotten as his predecessors. But he did much more. The City owes to Gresham a debt of gratitude impossible to be repaid. This is a foolish sentence, because gratitude can never be repaid. You may always entertain and nourish gratitude, and you can do service in return, but gratitude remains. A great service once received is a possession forever, and generally a fruitful and growing possession.

When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne the commercial centre of the world was Antwerp; when she died, the commercial centre of the world was London. This transfer had been effected by the wisdom and foresight of one man taking advantage of the times and their chances. The religious wars of the Netherlands brought immense losses to Antwerp. These losses Gresham desired to make London's gains. But he was met with the initial difficulty that the merchants of London had not yet learned to act together. They had, it is true, the old trading company of merchant adventurers, but that stood alone; besides, its ambitions were modest. They had no experience in union; there was no central institution which should be the city's brain, the place where the merchants could meet and receive news and consult together. Now, at Antwerp there was a goodly Bourse. What if London could also have its Bourse?

Well, Gresham built a Bourse; he gave it to the city; he formed this place of meeting for the merchants; the Queen opened it, and called it the Royal Exchange. The possession of the Exchange was followed immediately by such a development of enterprise as had been unknown before in the history of the City. Next he persuaded the citizens to take up the Queen's loans themselves, so that the interest, at 12 per cent., should remain in the country. He showed his own people how to take advantage of Antwerp's disasters and to divert her trade to the port of London. As for his Bourse, it stood on the site of the present Royal Exchange, but the front was south in Cornhill. The west front was blocked up by houses. The building was of brick and mortar, three stories high, with dormer windows in the high-pitched roof. At every corner was a pinnacle surmounted by a grasshopper—the Gresham crest. On the south side rose a lofty tower with a bell, which called the merchants together at noon in the morning and at six in the evening. Within was an open court surrounded by covered walks, adorned with statues of kings, behind which were shops rented by milliners, haberdashers, and sellers of trifles. This was the lower pawne. Above, in the upper pawne, there were armorers, apothecaries, book-sellers, goldsmiths, and glass-sellers. The Bourse was opened by Queen Elizabeth on January 23, 1571. She changed its name from the Bourse to the Royal Exchange. When it was destroyed in the fire of 1666, it was observed that all the statues were destroyed, except that of Gresham himself.

To illustrate this increase in English trade, we have these facts: In the reign of Edward VI., a time of great decay, there were few Merchant Adventurers and hardly any English ships. When Elizabeth began to reign there were no more than 317 merchants in all, of whom the Company of Mercers formed ninety-nine. Before her reign it was next to impossible for the city to raise a loan of £10,000. Before she died the city was advancing to the Queen loans of £60,000. Before her reign the only foreign trade was a venture or two into Russia; everything came across from Antwerp and Sluys. During her reign the foreign trade was developed in an amazing manner. New commodities were exported, as beer and sea coal, a great many new things were introduced—new trades, new luxuries. For instance, apricots, turkeys, hops, tobacco were brought over and planted and naturalized. Fans, ladies' wigs, fine knives, pins, needles, earthen fire-pots, silk and crystal buttons, shoe-buckles, glass-making, nails, paper were made in this country for the first time. The Merchant Adventurers, who had been incorporated under Edward I., obtained fresh rights and larger powers; they obtained the abolition of the privileges enjoyed for three hundred years by the Hanseatic merchant; they established courts at Antwerp, Dordrecht, and Hamburg; they had houses at York, Hull, and Newcastle. Further, when we read that they exported wine, oil, silks, and fruits, in addition to the products of the country, it is clear that they had already obtained some of the carrying trade of the world. Of the trading companies founded under Elizabeth and her successors, only one now survives. Yet the whole trade of this country was created by these companies.

Who, for instance, now remembers the Eastland Company, or Merchants of Elbing? Yet they had a long existence as a company; and long after their commercial life was gone they used to elect their officers every year, and hold a feast. Perhaps they do still. Their trade was with the Baltic. Or the Russian Company? That sprang out of a company called the "Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Lands not before known to or frequented by the English."

This company sent out Sir Hugh Willoughby, with three ships, to find a north-east passage to China. But Sir Hugh was forced to put in at a port in Russian Lapland, where he and all his men were frozen to death. The Russian Company became whalers, and quarrelled with the Dutch over the fishing. It had a checkered career, and finally died, but, like the Eastland Company, it continued to elect officers and to dine together long after its work was over. Or the Turkey Company, which lasted from 1586 to 1825, when it dissolved? Or the Royal African Company, which lived from 1530 to 1821? There were, also, the Merchants of Spain; the French Merchants; the Merchants of Virginia; the East India Company, the greatest and most powerful of any trading company ever formed; the Hudson Bay Company, which still exists; the South Sea Company; the Guinea Company; the Canary Company. Some of these belong to a later period, but they speak of the spirit of the enterprise and adventure first awakened under Elizabeth.

In the Church of St. Martin Outwich, now pulled down, was a monument to the chief actor in the promotion of these trading companies. "Here," said the tombstone, "resteth the body of the worshipful Mr. Richard Staple, elected Alderman of this city 1584. He was the greatest Merchant in his time; the chiefest Actor in the Discovery of the Trade of Turkey and East India; a man humble in prosperity, painful and ever ready in affairs public, and discreetly careful of his private. A liberal house-keeper, bountiful to the Poor, an upright dealer in the world, and a devout inquirer after the world to come.... Intravit ut exiret."

The increase of trade had another side. It was accompanied by protection, with the usual results. "In the old days," says Harrison, "when strange bottoms were suffered to come in, we had sugar for fourpence the pound that now is worth half a crown; raisins and currants for a pennie that now are holden at sixpence, and sometimes at eightpence and tenpence, the pound; nutmegs at twopence halfpenny the ounce; ginger at a pennie the ounce; prunes at a halfpenny farthing; great raisins, three pound for a pennie; cinnamon at fourpence the ounce; cloves at twopence; and pepper at twelve or sixteen pence the pound." He does not state the increase in price of the latter articles; but if we are to judge by that of sugar, the increase of trade was not an unmixed blessing to those whose incomes had not advanced with equal step.

The city associated the new prosperity with their Maiden Queen, for whom their love and loyalty never abated in the least. When she asked them for a certain number of ships they sent double the number, fully manned and provided; when the Queen's enemy, Mary of Scotland, was beheaded, they rang their bells and made bonfires; while the Queen was living they thanked God solemnly for her long reign; when she died, their lamentations were loud and sincere; her monument, until the fire, adorned many of the city churches. One of the Elizabeth statues yet remains outside the Church of St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street. It is the statue which formerly stood on the west side of Lud Gate.

To return to Gresham. He not only gave the city a Bourse, but he also endowed it with a college, which should have been a rival of Trinity or Christ Church but for the mismanagement which reduced it for a long time to the level of a lecture institute. The idea of the founder will, no doubt, be revived some time or other, and Gresham College will become a place of learning worthy of the city.

The career of Sir Thomas Gresham strangely resembles that of Whittington. Both were favorites with successive sovereigns. If Gresham built an Exchange, Whittington, by his will, added to Guildhall; if Gresham founded a college for the London youth, Whittington founded a college for priests, and an almshouse; if Gresham restored the finances of his sovereign, Whittington gave back to his the bonds of all his debts. Both were mercers; both merchant adventurers; both kept a shop; both were of good descent.

Gresham's shop was in Lombard Street, at the Sign of the Grasshopper, his family crest. His shop contained gold and silver vessels; coins, ancient and modern; gold chains, gold and silver lace, rings, and jewels. He lent money, as most bankers do, on security, but he got 10 and 12 per cent. for it. He had correspondents abroad, and he gave travellers letters of credit; he bought foreign coin either to exchange or to melt down. And he lived in his own house, over his shop, until he was knighted, when he built a new house between Bishopsgate Street and Broad Street. Stow calls it "the most spacious of all thereabout; builded of brick and timber." This house became afterwards Gresham College.

Again, this was a great age for the foundation of grammar-schools. The education of London in the Middle Ages is a subject which has never yet been adequately treated. We know very well what was taught at the universities. But what did the merchant learn, the shopkeeper, the craftsman? To what school was the boy sent before he was apprenticed? There was a school, it is said, to every religious house. I think that latterly the monastic school was kept up with about as much sincerity as the monastic rule of poverty. Stow certainly says that when Henry V. dissolved the alien priories, their schools perished as well. On the other hand, consider the great number of religious houses in and around London. There should have been schools enough for the whole population. Yet Henry VI. founded four grammar-schools "besides St. Paul's," viz., at St. Martin's le Grand, St. Mary le Bow, St. Dunstan's in the west, and St. Anthony's. Why did he do this if there were already plenty of schools? And observe that one of his foundations was at a religious house—St. Martin's. The year after he created four more schools—at St. Anthony's (Holborn), All Hallows the Great, St. Peter's (Cornhill), and St. Thomas of Acon. All these schools perished in the Reformation, with the exception of St. Paul's and St. Anthony's. Why they perished, unless they were endowed with property belonging to some monastic house, is not clear.

For a time the city had no schools, no hospitals, no foundations for the poor, the sick, or the aged. These grievous losses were speedily amended. St. Paul's was presently newly founded by Dean Colet. The Blue-Coat School arose on the ruins of the Grey Friars. The Mercers' Company continued the School of St. Thomas as their own, and it still exists. The Merchant Taylors founded their school, which is now at the Charterhouse. At St. Olave's and St. Saviour's schools were established. A few years later was founded the Charterhouse School, which is now removed to Godalming.

In these narrow limits it is impossible to reproduce much of the Elizabethan daily life. Here, however, are certain details.

The ordering of the household was strict. Servants and apprentices were up at six in the summer and at seven in the winter. No one, on any pretence, except that of illness, was to absent himself from morning and evening prayers; there was to be no striking, no profane language. Sunday was clean-shirt day. Dinner was at eleven, supper at six. There was no public or private office which was not provided with a Bible. In the better classes there was a general enthusiasm for learning of all kinds. The ladies, imitating the example of the Queen, practised embroidery, wrote beautifully, played curious instruments, knew how to sing in parts, dressed with as much magnificence as they could afford, danced corantoes and lavoltas as well as the simple hey, and studied languages—Latin, Greek, and Italian. The last was the favorite language. Many collected books. Dr. John Dee had as many as four thousand, of which one thousand were manuscripts. They were arranged on the shelves with the leaves turned outward, not the backs. This was to show the gilding, the gold clasps, and the silken strings. The books were bound with great care and cost; everybody knows the beauty of the type used in the printing.

Tournaments were maintained until the end of Elizabeth's reign. But we hear little of them, and it is not likely that they retained much of their old popularity. One Sir Henry Lee entered the tilt-yard every year until age prevented him. They always kept up the sport of tilting at the Quintain in the water. But their favorite amusements were the pageant and the play. The pageant came before the play; and while the latter was performed on a rough scaffold, in an inn-yard, the former was provided with splendid dresses, music, songs, and properties of every kind. There were pageants for the reception of the King when he made a procession into the City; there were court pageants; there were private pageants in great men's houses; there were pageants got up by companies. The reception pageants, for instance, are very well illustrated by that invented for Queen Elizabeth on her visit to the city in the year 1558.

It was in January, but I think people felt cold weather less in those days. The Queen came by water, attended by the city barges, which were trimmed with targets and banners of their mysteries, from Westminster to the Tower, where she lay for two days. She then rode through the City, starting at two in the afternoon, when everybody had had dinner.

In Fenchurch Street there was a scaffold, where was a band of music, and a child who presented the Queen with a poetical address.

At the upper end of Gracechurch Street a noble arch had been erected, with a triple stage. On the lowest stood two children, representing Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York; on the second, two more, for Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn; and on the third, Queen Elizabeth herself. Music and a poetical address.

At Cornhill there was another pageant, representing the Queen placed on a seat supported by four figures, viz., Religion, Wisdom, Justice, and Love, each of which was treading under foot the opposite vice. Music and a poetical address.

At the entrance of Cheapside a third pageant represented the eight beatitudes.

At the Conduit a fourth pageant displayed two mountains; one, ragged and stony, with a withered tree, under which sat one in homely garb; over her head was a tablet with the legend, "Respublica ruinosa." The other hill was fair and green, with a flourishing tree, and the words, "Respublica bene instituta." Between the hills was a cave, out of which issued Time, with his wings, scythe, and forelock quite complete, leading a maiden in white silk, on whose head was written Temporis Filia, and on her breast Veritas. This fair damsel held a Bible in her hand, which she let down by a silken thread to the Queen.

At the Conduit in Fleet Street they had erected a stage with four towers, on which was a throne under a palm-tree. On the throne sat Deborah, "Judge and Restorer of the House of Israel." On the steps of the throne stood six personages, two of them representing the nobility, two the clergy, and two the commons. At Temple Bar they had two giants, Gogmagog and Albion, and Corineus, the Briton. On the south side was a "noise" of singing children, one of whom, attired as a poet, bade the Queen farewell in the name of the City.

The court pageants may be understood by reading the masques of Ben Jonson. Everything costly, splendid, and precious was lavished upon these shows. Everything that machinery could contrive was devised for them. Ben Jonson himself, speaking of the performance of his "HymenÆa," says: "Such was the exquisite performance, as, besides the pomp, splendor, or what we may call apparelling of such presentments, that alone, had all else been absent, was of power to surprise with delight, and steal away the spectators from themselves. Nor was there wanting whatsoever might give to the furniture or complement, either in riches, or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of dances, magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of musick. Only the envy was that it lasted not still."

It was not until 1570 that the first theatre was built. The popularity of the play had already begun to grow with amazing rapidity. In twenty years there were five theatres, with performances every day. The Queen had four companies of children trained to perform, viz., the children of St. Paul's, the children of the chapel, the children of Westminster, and the children of Windsor. The public actors, too, were often called upon to perform before the Queen.

These companies were: Lord Leicester's company, Sir Robert Lane's, Lord Clinton's, Lord Warwick's, the Lord Chamberlain's, the Earl of Sussex's, Lord Howard's, the Earl of Essex's, Lord Strange's, the Earl of Derby's, the Lord Admiral's, the Earl of Hertford's, and Lord Pembroke's. It is not supposed that all these companies existed at the same time; but the list shows how company after company was begun and maintained on the credit of some great lord.

The theatres at the end of the sixteenth century were seven in number—the Globe, at Bankside; the Red Bull, in St. John Street; the Curtain, in Shoreditch; the Fortune, in Whitecross Street. These four were public theatres. The other three were called private houses—the Blackfriars, the Whitefriars, and the Cockpit or Phoenix Theatre. In the next chapter we shall assist at a matinee of one of Shakespeare's plays.

But the people lost no opportunity of "making up," acting, and dancing. The pageant became more and more a play. There were pageants of more or less splendor—we all know the great pageants of Kenilworth—held in every great man's house, in every company's hall, and in private persons' houses, to mark every possible occasion. Thus, in the year 1562, on July 20, took place the marriage of one Coke, citizen (but of what company I know not)—was he a cousin of Edward Coke, afterwards Speaker?—with the daughter of Mr. Nicolls, master of London Bridge. My Lord Mayor and all the Aldermen, with many ladies and other worshipful men and women, were present at the wedding. Mr. Bacon, an eminent divine, preached the wedding sermon. After the discourse the company went home to the Bridge House to dinner, where was as good cheer as ever was known—Stow says so, and he knew very well—with all manner of music and dancing, and at night a masque till midnight. But this was only half the feast, for next day the wedding was again kept at the Bridge House with great cheer. After supper more mumming, after that more masques. One was in cloth of gold, the next consisted of friars, and the third of nuns. First the friars and the nuns danced separately, one company after the other, and then they danced together. Considering that it was only two years since the friars and the nuns had been finally suppressed, there must have been a certain piquancy in this dance. It is always, at such times, put on the stage. One of the first things, for instance, done in Madrid when Spain got her short-lived republic was that in every cafÉ chantant they put a friar and a nun on the stage to dance and sing together.

They still kept the saint's day of their company; in fact, when the old faith was suppressed the people willingly endured a change of doctrine so long as they were not called upon to give up their feasting, which was exactly what had happened in Italy and elsewhere when the people were induced or forced to become Christians. They made no objection to doctrine, provided their practice was not interfered with. Therefore the Protestant citizens kept up their Whitsun ales, their wakes, their Easter and Christmas feastings. All the saints' days which brought something better than ordinary to eat, with morris dances, May-poles, bonfires, music, and Feasts of Misrule were religiously conserved. As to the Feast of Misrule, hear the testimony of the contemporary moralist:

"Thus all things set in order, then have they their hobby-horses, their dragons, and other antiques, together with their pipers and thundering drummers, to strike up the Devil's Dance. Thus march this merry company towards the church and church-yard, their pipers piping, their drummers thundering, their stumpes dancing, their bells jingling, their handkerchiefs fluttering about their heads like madmen, their hobby-horses and other monsters skirmishing among the throng, and in this sort they go to the church like devils incarnate, with such a confused noise that no man can hear his own voice. Then the foolish people—they look, they stare, they laugh, they cheer, they mount upon forms and pews to see the goodly pageants solemnized in this sort. Then, after this, about the church they go again and again, and so forth into the church-yard, where they have commonly their summer halls, their bowers, arbors, and banqueting-houses set up, wherein they feast, banquet, and dance all that day, and, peradventure, all that night too."

To keep a troop of servants has always been a mark of state. Ladies used to beat their servants—following the example of the Queen, who sometimes boxed the ears of her courtiers. Everybody of position travelled, and nearly everybody went to Italy, with results disastrous to religion and to morals. One of the worst figures in the Elizabethan gallery is the Englishman Italianized. Of course on his return the traveller gave himself strange airs. How they travelled and what they saw may be read in that most charming book, the EpistolÆ HoellianÆ.

Card-playing and gaming were the commonest form of amusement. The games were primero, which Falstaff foreswore, trump, gleek, gresco, new cut, knave out-of-doors, ruff, noddy, post and pace—all of these games corresponding, no doubt, to those still played.

Another favorite amusement was dancing in all its various forms, from the stately court dance to the merry circle on the village green. The principal dances were the solemn pavane, the brawl, the Passamezzo galliard, the Canary dance, the coranto, the lavolta, the jig, the galliard, the fancy, and the hey.

Gentlemen were followed in the streets by their servants, who carried their master's sword. Their dress was blue, with the master's badge in silver on the left arm.

The pages of Stow, Harrison, Hall, Greene, and Nash contain not only glimpses, but also set pictures of the time, from which extracts by the hundred might be made. There are the awful examples, for instance, of Sir John Champneys, Alderman and Lord Mayor, and Richard Wethell, citizen and tailor. Both these persons built high towers to their houses to show their pride and to look down upon their neighbors—one is reminded of the huge leaning towers in Bologna. What happened? The first went blind, so that though he might climb his tower he could see nothing. The second was afflicted with gout in hands and feet, so that he could not walk, much less climb his tower. Stubbes has other instances of judgments, particularly the terrible fate of the girl who invoked the devil to help her with her ruff.

Here is a curious little story. It happened in the reign of King James. One day, in Bishopsgate Ward, a poor man, named Richard Atkinson, going to remove a heap of sea-coal ashes in his wheelbarrow, discovered lying in the ashes the body of a newly-born child. It was still breathing, and he carried it to his wife, who washed and fed it and restored it to life. The child was a goodly and well-formed boy, strong and well-featured, without blemish or harm upon it. They christened the child at St. Helen's Church, by a name which should cause him to remember, all through his life, his very remarkable origin. They called him, in fact, Job Cinere Extractus. A noble name, for the sake of which alone he should have lived. What an ancestor to have had! How delightful to be a Cinere Extractus! Who would not wish to belong to such a family, and to point to the ash-heap as the origin of the first Cinere Extractus? Nothing like it in history since the creation of Adam himself. What a coat of arms! A shield azure, an ash-heap proper, with supporters of two dustmen with shovels; crest a sieve; motto, like that of the Courtenays, "from what heights descended?" But alas! poor little Job Cinere Extractus died three days afterwards, and now lies buried in St. Helen's church-yard, without even a monument.

Another baby story—but this belongs to Charles I.'s time—it happened, in fact, in the last month of that melancholy reign. It was seven o'clock in the evening. A certain ship-chandler became suddenly so foolish as to busy himself over a barrel of gunpowder with a candle. Naturally a spark fell into the barrel, and he was not even left time enough to express his regrets. Fifty houses were wrecked. How many were killed no one could tell, but at the next house but one, the Rose Tavern, there was a great company holding the parish dinner, and they all perished. Next morning, however, there was found on the leads of All Hallows Barking a young child in a cradle as newly laid in bed, neither child nor cradle having sustained the least harm. It was never known who the child was, but she was adopted by a gentleman of the parish, and lived certainly to the age of seventeen, when the historian saw her going to call her master, who was drinking at a tavern. It is two hundred and fifty years ago. That young woman may have at this moment over a thousand descendants at least. Who would not like to boast that she was his great-grandmother?

A reform of vast importance, though at first it seems a small thing, was introduced in this reign. It was the restoration of vegetables and roots as part of daily diet. Harrison is my authority. He says that in old days—as in the time of the First Edward—herbs, fruits, and roots were much used, but that from Henry IV. to Henry VIII. the use of them decayed and was forgotten. "Now," he says, "in my time their use is not only resumed among the poore commons—I mean of melons, pompines, gourds, cucumbers, radishes, skirrets, parsneps, carrots, marrowes, turnips, and all kinds of salad herbes—but they are also looked upon as deintie dishes at the tables of delicate merchants, gentlemen, and the nobilitie, who make their provision yearly for new seeds out of strange countries from whence they have them abundantly."

Perhaps the cause of the disuse of roots and vegetables was the enormous rise in wages after the Black Death, when the working-classes, becoming suddenly rich, naturally associated roots with scarcity of beef, and governed themselves accordingly.

The use of tobacco spread as rapidly, when once it was introduced, as that of coffee later on. King James speaks of those who spend as much as £300 a year upon this noxious weed. Those who took tobacco attributed to it all the virtues possible for any plant to possess, and more.

It was the custom of the better sort of citizens to have gardens outside the City, each with its own garden-house, in some cases a mere arbor, but in others a house for residence in the summer months. Moorfields had many of these gardens, but Bethnal Green, Hoxton (Hoggesden), and Mile End were favorite spots for these retreats. Of course, the city madams were accused of using these gardens as convenient places for intrigue.

The education of girls was never so thorough as at this time. Perhaps Lucy Hutchinson and Lady Jane Grey—well-known cases—ought not to be taken as average examples. The former, for instance, could read at four, and at seven was under eight tutors, who taught her languages, music, dancing, writing, and needle-work. She also became a proficient in the art of preparing simples and medicines. Of her husband she says that he was a masterly player on the viol; that he was a good marksman with gun and bow; and that he was a collector of paintings and engravings. Perhaps there was never a time when body and mind were equally trained and developed as they were in the sixteenth century. Think with what contempt Sidney and Raleigh would regard an age like the present, when the young men are trained to foot-ball, running, and cricket, but, for the most part, cannot ride, cannot shoot, cannot fence, cannot box, cannot wrestle, cannot sing, cannot play any instrument, cannot dance, and cannot make verses!

In the matter of rogues, vagabonds, and common cheats, the age of Elizabeth shows no falling off, but quite the reverse. We have little precise information on English ribauderie before this time, but now, thanks to John Awdely, Thomas Harman, Parson Hybesdrine, Thomas Dekker, Robert Greene, and others, we learn the whole art and mystery of coney-catching as practised under the Tudor dynasty. The rogues had their own language. No doubt they always had their language, as they have it now; and it varied from year to year as it varies now, but the groundwork remained the same, and, indeed, remains the same to this day. The rogues and thieves, the beggars and the impostors, are still with us. They are still accompanied by their autem morts, their walking morts, their Kynchen morts, their doxies, and their dolls, only some of those cheats are changed with the changes of the time. Under Queen Gloriana they abound in every town and in every street, they tramp along all the roads, they haunt the farm-houses, they rob the market-women and the old men. They have their ranks and their precedency. The Upright man is a captain among them; the Curtall has authority over them; the Patriarch Co-marries them until death do them part—that is to say, until they pass a carcass of any creature, when, if they choose, they shake hands and go separate ways. They are well known by profession and name at every fair throughout the country. They are Great John Gray and Little John Gray; John Stradling with the shaking head; Lawrence with the great leg; Henry Smyth, who drawls when he speaks; that fine old gentleman, Richard Horwood, who is eighty years of age and can still bite a sixpenny nail asunder with his teeth, and a notable toper still; Will Pellet, who carries the Kynchen mort at his back; John Browne, the stammerer; and the rest of them. They are all known; their backs and shoulders are scored with the nine-tailed cat; not a headborough or a constable but knows them every one. Yet they forget their prison and their whipping as soon as they are free. Those things are the little drawbacks of the profession, against which must be set freedom, no work, no masters, and no duties. Who would not go upon the budge, even though at the end there stands the three trees, up which we shall have to climb by the ladder?

In the streets of London they separate and practise each in the quarter most likely to catch the gull. For instance, observe this well-dressed young gentleman, with the simple manner and the honest face, strolling along the middle-walk of Paul's. Simple as he looks, his eye glances here and there among the throng. Presently he sees a young countryman, whom he knows by the unfailing signs; he approaches the countryman; he speaks to him; in a few minutes they leave the Cathedral together and betake them to a tavern, where they dine, each paying for himself, in amity and friendship, though strangers but an hour since. Then comes into the tavern an ancient person, somewhat decayed in appearance, who sits down and calls for a stoup of ale. "Now," says the first young man, "you shall see a jest, sir." Whereupon he accosts the old gentleman, and presently proposes to throw the dice for another pot. The old man accepts, being a very simple and childlike old man, and loses—both his money and his temper. Then the countryman joins in.... After the young countryman gets home, he learns that the old man was a "fingerer" by profession, and that the young man was his confidant.

The courtesy man works where the sailors and sea-captains congregate; he accosts one who looks credulous and new; he tells him that he is one of a company, tall, proper men, all like himself—he is well-mannered; they are disbanded soldiers, masterless and moneyless; for himself he would not beg, but for his dear comrades he would do anything. When he receives a shilling he puts it up with an air of contempt, but accepts the donor's good-will, and thanks him for so much. A plausible villain, this.

Outside Aldgate, where the Essex farmers are found, the "ring faller" loves to practise his artless game. Have we not still with us the man who picks up the ring which he is willing to let us have for the tenth of its value? The Elizabethan mariner, who has been shipwrecked and lost his all, has vanished. The Tudor disbanded soldier has vanished, but the army reserve man sells his matches in the street when he cannot find the work he looks for so earnestly; the counterfeit cranker who stood at the corner of the street covered with mud, and his face besmeared with blood, as one who has just had an attack of the falling sickness, is gone, because that kind of sickness is known no longer; the "frater" who carried a forged license to beg for a hospital, is also gone; the abraham man, who pretended to be mad, is gone; the "palliard" or "clapper dodger;" the angler, who stuck a hook in a long pole and helped himself out of the open shops; the "prigger of prancers," a horse thief; the ruffler, the swigman and prigman, are also gone, but their descendants remain with us, zealous in the pursuit of kindred callings, and watched over paternally by a force 38,000 strong—about one policeman for every habitual criminal—so that, since every policeman costs £100 a year, and every criminal steals, eats, or destroys property to the same amount at least, every criminal costs the country, first, the things which he steals—say £100 a year; next, his policeman, another £100; thirdly, the loss of his own industry; and fourthly, the loss of the policeman's industry—making in all about £500 a year. It would be cheaper to lock him up.

In the matter of punishments, we have entered upon a time of greater cruelty than prevailed under the Plantagenets. Men are boiled, and women are burned for poisoning; heretics are still burned—in 1585 one thus suffered for denying the divinity of Christ; ears are nailed to the pillory and sliced off for defamation and seditious words; long and cruel whippings are inflicted—in one case through Westminster and London for forgery; an immense number are hanged every year; the chronicler Macheyn continually sets down such a fact as that on this day twelve were hanged at Tyburn, seven men and five women; mariners were hanged at low water at Wapping, for offences committed at sea; the good old custom of pillory was maintained with zeal; and the parading of backsliders in carts or on horseback was kept up. Thus, one woman for selling fry of fish, unlawful, rode triumphantly through the town with garlands of fish decorating her head and shoulders and the tail of the horse, while one went before beating a brass basin. Another woman was carried round, a distaff in her hand and a blue hood on her head, for a common scold. A man was similarly honored for selling measly pork; and another, riding with his head to the animal's tail, for doing something sinful connected with lamb and veal.

The cruelty of punishments only shows that the administration of the law was weak. In fact, the machinery for enforcing law and repressing crime was growing more and more unequal to the task, as the City grew in numbers and in population. The magistrates sought to deter by the spectacle of suffering. This is a deterrent which only acts beneficially when punishment is certain, or nearly certain. The knowledge that nine criminals will escape for one who is whipped all the way from Charing Cross to Newgate encourages the whole ten to continue. Men are like children: if they are to be kept in the paths of virtue, it is better to watch and prevent them continually than to leave them free and to punish them if they fall. But this great law was not as yet understood.

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