  Cheapside.—We begin with the true heart of London, West Chepe, as it was formerly called, and the streets lying north and south of this marketplace. St. Paul’s Churchyard and Foster Lane mark our western boundary; Princes Street and Walbrook, our eastern; Gresham Street (formerly Cateaton Street) is on the north, and Cannon Street on the south. By the time of Queen Elizabeth we find the West Chepe, with its streets north and south, laid out with something like the modern regularity. We must therefore go back to earlier centuries to discover its origin. West Chepe, from time immemorial, has been the most important market of the City. It was formerly, say in the twelfth century, a large open area. This area contained no fewer than twenty-five churches, of which nine still exist. The churches are dotted about in apparent disorder, which can be partly explained. For the market of Chepe was extended in fact from the Church of St. Michael le Querne on the west, to that of St. Christopher le Stock on the east, and lay between the modern Gresham Street in the north and Watling Street in the south. It is ordered in Liber Albus that all manner of victuals are to be sold between the kennels of the streets. The so-called streets were narrow lanes, many of which remain to the present day. In the Liber Albus the seld is distinguished from the “shop, the cellar or solar.” It is also alluded to in the same book as the place where wool and other commodities are sold. Bakers were forbidden to store their bread in selds longer than one night. The seld was therefore a warehouse, a weighing place, as well as a shop. Since we hear nothing about selds in the Calendar of Wills after the fourteenth century, we may infer that a change had been made in the methods of the market. The change in fact was this. North and south of what is now Cheapside were arranged in order the stalls of those who sold everything; these stalls were protected from the weather; the various branches or departments of the market were separated by narrow lanes. It is impossible at this time to assign all the various trades accurately each to its own place—in fact, they always overlapped; but we can do so approximately. The names of the streets belonging to Cheapside are a guide. For instance, Wood Street, Milk Street, Honey Lane, Ironmonger Street, Old Jewry, the Poultry, Scalding Alley, Soper Street, Bread Street, Friday Street, Old Change, explain a great part of the disposition of the ancient market. When we consider that twenty-five churches stood in or about the great market, and that they were all presumably more ancient than the Conquest, we may deduce the fact that the stalls very early became closed shops, and in many cases permanent houses of residence, and that the market contained a large resident population by which industries were carried on as well as shops. With certain wares, such as milk, honey, wood, spices, mercery, salt-fish, poultry, meat, and herbs, there was no other industry than that of receiving, packing, and distributing. We therefore find few churches between Wood Street and Ironmonger Lane, the chief seat of these branches; while on the south side, for the same reason, there are still fewer churches. A brief study, therefore, enables us to understand, first, why the churches stand thickly in one part and thinly in another; next, that West Chepe was a vast open market containing a resident population, crowded where industries were carried on, and sparse where the goods were simply exposed for sale; and, thirdly, that the place could be easily converted into a tilting ground, as was done on many occasions, by clearing away the “stationers,” that is to say, the people who held stalls or stations about the crosses in Cheapside. On one occasion, at least, this was done, to the great indignation of the people. There are certain places in the country, and on the Continent, where the mediÆval market is still preserved in its most important features. For instance, there is the market-place of Peterborough, which is still divided by lanes, and which has areas allotted to the different trades; and that of Rheims, where the ancient usages are preserved and followed, even to the appearance of Autolycus, the Cheap Jack, and the Quack, who may be seen and heard on every market day. We may take Stow’s description of the Elizabethan Chepe: “At the West end of this Poultrie, and also of Bucklesbury, beginneth the large street of West Cheaping, a market place so called, which street stretcheth west till ye come to the little conduit by Paule’s gate, but not all of Cheape ward. In the east part of this street standeth the great conduit of sweet water, conveyed by pipes of lead underground from Paddington for the service of this city, castellated with stone, and cisterned in lead, about the year 1285, and again new built and enlarged by Thomas Ilam, one of the sheriffs 1479. “About the midst of this street is the Standard in Cheape, of what antiquity the first foundation I have not read. But Henry VI., by his patent dated at Windsor the 21st of his reign, which patent was confirmed by parliament 1442, granted license to Thomas Knolles, John Chichele, and other, executors to John Wells, grocer, sometime mayor of London, with his goods to make new the highway which leadeth from the city of London towards the palace of Westminster, before and nigh the manor of Savoy, parcel of the Duchy of Lancaster, a way then very ruinous, and the pavement broken, to the hurt and mischief of the subjects, which old pavement then remaining in that way within the length of five hundred feet, and all the breadth of the same before and nigh the site of the manor aforesaid, they to break up, and with stone, gravel, and other stuff, one other good and sufficient way there to make for the commodity of the subjects. “Of executions at the Standard in Cheape, we read, that in the year 1293 three men had their right hands smitten off there, for rescuing of a prisoner arrested by an officer of the city. In the year 1326, the burgesses of London caused Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exceter, treasurer to Edward II., and other, to be beheaded at the standard in Cheape (but this was by Paule’s gate); in the year 1351, the 26th of Edward III., two fishmongers were beheaded at the standard in Cheape, but I read not of their offence; 1381, Wat Tyler beheaded Richard Lions and other there. In the year 1399, Henry IV. caused the blank charters made by Richard II. to be burnt there. In the year 1450, Jack Cade, captain of the Kentish rebels, beheaded the Lord Say there. In the year 1461, John Davy had his hand stricken off there, because he had stricken a man before the judges at Westminster, etc. “Then next is a great cross in West Cheape, which cross was there erected in the year 1290 by Edward I. upon occasion thus:—Queen Elianor his wife died at Hardeby (a town near unto the city of Lincoln), her body was brought from thence to Westminster; and the king, in memory of her, caused in every place where her body rested by the way, a stately cross of stone to be erected, with the queen’s image and arms upon it, as at Grantham, Woborne, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Dunstable, St. Albones, Waltham, West Cheape, and at Charing, from whence she was conveyed to Westminster, and there buried. “This cross in West Cheape being like to those other which remain to this day, and being by length of time decayed, John Hatherle, mayor of London, procured, in the year 1441, license of King Henry VI. to re-edify the same in more beautiful manner for the honour of the city, and had license also to take up two hundred fodder of lead for the building thereof of certain conduits, and a common granary. This cross was then curiously wrought at the charges of divers citizens: John Fisher, mercer, gave six hundred marks toward it; the same was begun to be set up 1484, and finished 1486, the 2nd of Henry VII. “In the year 1599, the timber of the cross at the top being rotted within the lead, the arms thereof bending, were feared to have fallen to the harming of some people, and therefore the whole body of the cross was scaffolded about, and the top thereof taken down, meaning in place thereof to have set up a piramis; but some of her majesty’s honourable councillors directed their letters to Sir Nicholas Mosley, then mayor, by her highness’ express commandment concerning the cross, forthwith CHEAPSIDE CROSS (AS IT APPEARED ON ITS ERECTION IN 1606). The cross was the object of much abuse by the Puritans, who at last succeeded in getting it pulled down. “On May 2nd, 1643, the Cross of Cheapside was pulled down. A troop of horse and two companies of foot waited to guard it; and, at the fall of the top cross, drums beat, trumpets blew, and multitudes of caps were thrown To continue Stow’s account: “Then at the west end of West Cheape Street, was sometime a cross of stone, called the Old Cross. Ralph Higden, in his Policronicon, saith, that Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exceter, treasurer to Edward II., was by the burgesses of London beheaded at this cross called the Standard, without the north door of St. Paul’s church; and so is it noted in other writers that then lived. This old cross stood and remained at the east end of the parish church called St. Michael in the Corne by Paule’s gate, near to the north end of the old Exchange, till the year 1390, the 13th of Richard II., in place of which old cross then taken down, the said church of St. Michael was enlarged, and also a fair water conduit built about the 9th of Henry VI. “In the reign of Edward III., divers joustings were made in this street, betwixt Sopers lane and the great cross, namely, one in the year 1331, the 21st of September, as I find noted by divers writers of that time. “In the middle of the city of London (say they), in a street called Cheape, the stone pavement being covered with sand, that the horses might not slide when they strongly set their feet to the ground, the king held a tournament three days together, with the nobility, valiant men of the realm, and other some strange knights. And to the end the beholders might with the better ease see the same, there was a wooden scaffold erected across the street, like unto a tower, wherein Queen Philippa, and many other ladies, richly attired, and assembled from all parts of the realm, did stand to behold the jousts; but the higher frame, in which the ladies were placed, brake in sunder, whereby they were with some shame forced to fall down, by reason whereof the knights and such as were underneath, were grievously hurt; wherefore the queen took great care to save the carpenters from punishment, and through her prayers (which she made upon her knees) pacified the king and council, and thereby purchased great love of the people. After which time the king caused a shed to be strongly made of stone, for himself, the queen, and other estates to stand on, and there to behold the joustings, and other shows, at their pleasure, by the church of St. Mary Bow, as is showed in Cordwainer street ward” (ibid.). In 1754 Strype writes: “Cheapside is a very stately spacious street, adorned with lofty buildings; well inhabited by Goldsmiths, Linen-Drapers, Haberdashers, and other great dealers. The street, which is throughout of an equal breadth, begins westward at Paternoster Row, and, in a straight line, runs to the Poultry, and from thence to the Royal exchange in Cornhill. And, as this Street is yet esteemed the principal high street The great Conduit of Chepe, commenced in 1285, brought the water from Paddington, a distance of 3½ miles. It stood opposite Mercers’ Hall and Chapel. It was a stone building long and low, battlemented, enclosing a leaden cistern. In the year 1441 at the west end of Chepe and in the east end of the Church of St. Michael le Querne, the smaller conduit was erected. Both conduits were destroyed in the Great Fire—the larger one was not rebuilt. The Standard opposite Honey Lane was in later years fitted with a water cock always running. At the Standard many public executions took place (Strype, vol. 1. p. 566). Hardly any street of London is more frequently mentioned in annual documents than Chepe. There are many ancient deeds of sale and conveyances still preserved at the Guildhall, relating to property in Chepe. In the Calendar of Wills, houses, etc., in Chepe are bequeathed in more than two hundred wills there quoted; many ordinances concerning Chepe are recorded in Riley’s Memorials. Stow has given some of the history of Chepe. His account may be supplemented by a few notes on other events and persons connected with the street. The antiquity of the street is proved by the discovery of Roman coins, Roman tesserae, Romano-British remains of various kinds, and Saxon jewels. It is not, however, until the thirteenth century that we find historical events other than the conveyance, etc., of land and tenements in Cheapside. In the thirteenth century a part of Cheapside, if not the whole, was called the Crown Field; the part so called was probably confined to a space on the east of Bow Church. In the year 1232 we find the citizens mustering in arms at Mile End and “well arrayed” in Chepe. In 1269 it is recorded that the pillory in Chepe was broken, and so remained for a whole year by the negligence of the bailiffs, so that nobody could be put in pillory for that time. The bakers seized the opportunity for selling loaves of short weight—even a third part short. But in 1270, on the Feast of St. Michael, the sheriffs had a new pillory made and erected on the site of the old one. Then the hearts of the bakers failed them for fear, and the weight of the loaves increased. In 1273 the Mayor removed from Chepe all the stalls of the butchers and fishmongers, together with the stalls which had been let and granted by the preceding sheriffs, although the persons occupying them had taken them for life and had paid large sums for their leases. This was a political move, the intention being to deprive the stall-keepers of their votes. The Mayor, however, defended the In the year 1326 a letter was sent by the Queen and her son Edward calling upon the citizens of London to aid with all their power in destroying the enemies of the land, and Hugh le Despenser in especial. Wherefore, when the head of Hugh was carried in triumph through Chepe, with trumpets sounding, the citizens rejoiced. In October of the same year when the Bishop of Exeter, Walter de Stapleton, was on his way to his house in “Elde Dean’s Lane” to dine there, he was met by the mob, dragged into Chepe with one of his esquires, and there beheaded. Another of the Bishop’s servants was beheaded in Chepe the same day. On the birth of Edward III. on November 13, 1312, the people of London made great rejoicings, holding carols, i.e. dances and songs, in Chepe for a fortnight, while the conduits ran wine. In 1482 a grocer’s shop in Cheapside with a “hall” over it—perhaps a warehouse—was let for the rental of £4: 6: 8 per annum. The owner of the shop was Lord Howard, created Duke of Norfolk in 1483. References to Cheapside multiply as we approach more modern times. In 1522, when Charles V. came to England, lodgings were appointed for his retinue. Among them was a house in Cheapside, a goldsmith’s. It contained one parlour, one kitchen, one chamber, and one bed. The murder of Dr. Lambe in 1631, the execution of William Hacket in 1591, the burning of the Solemn Covenant in 1661,—these are incidents in the history of Cheapside. Many other events belonging either to the history of the City or of the realm have been mentioned elsewhere. In the sixteenth century one of the sights of London was the Goldsmiths’ Row, built in 1491 on the site of certain shops and selds. Stow calls the Row “a most beautiful frame of faire houses and shops consisting of ten faire dwellinghouses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, builded foure stories high, beautified towards the street with the Goldsmith’s Arms and the likeness of woodmen, in memory of his name, riding on monstrous beasts all richly painted and gilt.” Maitland, who certainly could not remember it, says that it was “beautiful to behold the glorious appearance of the Goldsmith’s shops in the South row of Cheapside, which in a course reached from the Old Change of Bucklersbury exclusive of four shops only, of three trades, in all that space.” Coming now to a description of Cheapside as it is at present, we find a statue of Sir Robert Peel standing on a block of granite. The whole is more than 20 feet in height. The statue was put up in 1855, and on the pedestal is the inscription of Peel’s birth and death. On the north of Cheapside is a large stone block of building in one uniform style with shops on the ground floor. This contains the Saddlers’ Hall, and in the middle is the great entrance way solidly carried out in stone. THE SADDLERS COMPANYThe date of the formation of the Company, and the circumstances under which it was founded, are unknown. It existed at a very remote period. There is now preserved in the archives of the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin’s-le-Grand a parchment containing a letter from that foundation, in which reference is made to the then ancient customs of the Guild. This document is believed to have been written about the time of Henry II., Richard I., or John, most probably in the first of these reigns. In this letter reference is made to “Ernaldus, the Alderman of the Guild.” This Ernaldus is stated by Mr. Alfred John Kempe, in his work Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin’s-le-Grand, to have lived before the Conquest, by which it may be inferred that the Company is of Anglo-Saxon origin. King Edward I., A.D. 1272, granted a charter. King Edward III., by his charter 1st December, 37 Edward III., A.D. 1363, granted that as well in the City of London as in every other city, borough, or town where the art of Saddlers is exercised, one or two honest and faithful men of the craft should be chosen and appointed by the Saddlers there dwelling to superintend and survey the craft. This charter was exemplified and confirmed by Henry VI., Henry VII., and Henry VIII. Richard II., by charter 20th March, 18 Richard II., A.D. 1374, granted to the men of the mystery of Saddlers of the City of London, that for the good government of the mystery they may have one commonalty of themselves for ever, and that the men of the same mystery and commonalty may choose and appoint every year four keepers of the men of the commonalty to survey, rule, and duly govern the same. Furthermore, that the keepers and commonalty, and their successors, may purchase lands, to the yearly value of twenty pounds, for the sustentation of the poor, old, weak and decayed persons of the mystery, and this charter was exemplified, ratified, and confirmed by Edward IV. Queen Elizabeth, by charter 9th November, 1 Elizabeth, A.D. 1558, exemplifies, ratifies, and confirms the previous charters, and reincorporates the Company by the name of the wardens or keepers and commonalty of the mystery or art of Saddlers of the City of London. The charter names and appoints four wardens to hold office from the date of the charter until the 14th August then following, and authorises them to keep within their common hall an assembly of the wardens or keepers or freemen of the same mystery, or the greater part of them, or of the wardens, and of eight of the most ancient and worthy freemen, being of the assistants of the mystery, and that the wardens and eight of the assistants at least being present shall have full power to treat, consult, and agree upon the articles and ordinances touching the mystery or art aforesaid, and the good rule, state, and government of the same. Power is given to elect four wardens on the 14th August yearly. Power of giving two votes is given to the master at doubtful elections. Powers are also given for the government and regulation of the trade. This is one of the most ancient, as it is also one of the most interesting, of the City Companies. Their original quarter was at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. The saddle played an important part in every man’s life at a time when riding was the only method of travelling. The saddlers were connected with the Church of St. Martin’s-le-Grand and made some kind of convention with the Canons, the nature of which is uncertain. Probably the Canons promised them their aid in support of their rights and privileges, in return for which their religious gifts and fees were paid to the Church of St. Martin. The mystery of saddlery, like all others, overlapped, and encroached upon, other mysteries and crafts. Then there followed quarrels. Thus in 1307 (Riley, Memorials, p. 156) there was an affray between the saddlers on one side and the loriners, joiners, and painters on the other, on account of such encroachments. The quarrel was adjusted by the Mayor and Aldermen. Another trouble to which so great a trade was liable, was the desire of the journeymen to break off into fraternities of their own. This pretension was seriously taken in hand in 1796, and such fraternities were strictly forbidden. The Company has had three halls, all on the same site. The first was burned in the Great Fire; the second in 1822; the present hall was built after the second fire, and is at No. 141 Cheapside. At the corner of Wood Street is what remains of the churchyard of St. Peter’s, Westcheap, the building of which was destroyed in the Great Fire: a railed-in “Erected at the sole cost and charges of the Parish of St. Peter’s, Westcheap, A.D. 1687,” followed by the names of the churchwardens. The Church of St. Peter, Westcheap, was also called SS. Peter and Paul. After the Great Fire its parish was annexed to that of St. Matthew, Friday Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1302. The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Abbot of St. Alban’s before 1302. Henry VIII. seized it and granted it in 1545 to the Earl of Southampton, in whose successors it continued up to 1666. Houseling people in 1548 were 360. A chantry was founded here at the Altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Nicholas de Faringdon, Mayor of London, 1313 and 1320, for himself and Rose his wife, to which Lawrence Bretham de Faversham was admitted chaplain, October 24, 1361; the endowment fetched £29: 3: 4 in 1548, when Sir W. Alee was priest. There was another at the Altar of the Holy Cross. Sir John Munday, goldsmith, Mayor, was buried here in 1527; also Sir Alexander Avenon, Mayor in 1569; and Augustine Hind, clothworker, Alderman, and Sheriff of London, who died in 1554. The only charitable gifts recorded by Stow are: £2: 4: 4, the gift of Sir Lionel Ducket; 3s. 4d., the gift of Lady Read; 7s. 6d., the gift of Mr. Walton. John Gwynneth, Mus. Doc. and author, was rector here in 1545; also Richard Gwent, D.D., and William Boleyn, Archdeacon of Winchester. But the ornament of Cheapside is St. Mary-le-Bow, which derived its additional name from its stone “bows” or arches. The date of its foundation is not known, but it appears to have been during or before the reign of William the Conqueror. The court of the Archbishop of Canterbury was held here before the Great Fire; and though the connection between the church and the ecclesiastical courts has ceased, it is still used for the confirmation of the election of bishops. The “Court of Arches” owes its name to the fact that it was held in the beautiful Norman crypt which still survives. The church has been made famous, Stow observes, as the scene of various calamities, of which he records details. In 1469 the Common Council ordained the ringing of Bow Bell every evening at nine o’clock, but the practice had existed for already more than a century; in 1515 the largest of the five bells was presented by William Copland. The church was totally destroyed in 1666, as well as those of St. Pancras, Soper Lane and Allhallows, Honey Lane; the two last were not rebuilt, their parishes being annexed to St. Mary’s. Wren began building the present church in 1671 and completed it in 1680. The cost was greater than any other of Wren’s parish churches by £3000, £2000 of which was contributed by Dame Williamson. The steeple was repaired by Sir William Staines in the eighteenth century, and again in 1820 by Mr. George Gwilt. In 1758, seven of the bells were recast, new ones were added, and the ten were first rung in 1762 in honour of George III.’s birthday; the full number now is twelve. In 1786 the parish of Allhallows, Bread Street, was united with this. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1242. The patronage of the church has always been in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury and his successors, but Henry III. presented to it in 1242. Houseling people in 1548 were 300. The church measures 65 feet in length, 63 feet in breadth, and 38 feet in height; it contains a nave Chantries were founded here: By John Causton, to which John Steveyns was admitted chaplain, December 2, 1452; by John Coventry, in the chapel of St. Nicholas; by Henry Frowycke, whose endowment fetched £15: 10s. in 1548; by John de Holleghe, whose endowment produced £7 in 1548; by Dame Eleanor, Prioress of Winchester, whose endowment yielded £4 in 1548. The original church does not appear to have contained many monuments of note. Among the civic dignitaries buried here was Nicholas Alwine, Lord Mayor in 1499, whose name is familiar to readers of The Last of the Barons. Sir John Coventry, Mayor in 1425, was also buried here. There is a tablet fixed over the vestry-room door, commemorating Dame Dionis Williamson, who gave £2000 towards the building of the church. On the west wall a sarcophagus commemorates Bishop Newton, rector, who won celebrity by his edition of Milton first published in 1749. The parish possessed a considerable number of charities and gifts: George Palin was donor of £100, to be devoted to the maintenance of a weekly lecture. Mr. Banton, of £50 for the same purpose. There were others, to the total amount of £60. There was one Charity School belonging to Cordwainer and Bread Street Wards for fifty boys and thirty girls, who were put to employments and trades when fit. The following are among the notable rectors: Martin Fotherby (d. 1619), Bishop of Salisbury; Samuel Bradford (1652-1731), Bishop of Gloucester; Samuel Lisle (1683-1749), Bishop of Norwich; Nicholas Felton (1556-1626), Bishop of Bristol; Thomas Newton (1704-1782), Bishop of Bristol; and William Van Mildert (1765-1836), Bishop of Llandaff, and later the last Prince-Bishop of Durham. Quaint sayings and traditions have gathered more thickly about St. Mary’s than about any of the City churches. Dick Whittington’s story has made the name familiar to every British child; while to be born “within sound of Bow Bells” is more dignified than to own oneself a Cockney. In sooth-saying we have the prophecy of Mother Shipton that when the Grasshopper on the Exchange and the Dragon on Bow Church should meet, the streets should be deluged with blood. They did so meet, being sent to the same yard for repair at the same time, but the prophecy was not fulfilled. The ringing of the Bow bells in the Middle Ages signified closing-time for shops, and the ringer incurred the wrath of the apprentices of Chepe if he failed to be punctual to the second. We now proceed to the Poultry. Stow thus describes the place: “Now to begin again on the bank of the said Walbrooke, at the east end of the high street called the Poultrie, on the north side thereof, is the proper parish church of St. Mildred, which church was new built upon Walbrooke in the year Strype says of it: “The Poultry, a good large and broad Street, and a very great thoroughfare for Coaches, Carts, and foot-passengers, being seated in the Heart of the City, and leading to and from the Royal Exchange; and from thence to Fleet Street, the Strand, Westminster, and the western parts: and therefore so well inhabited by great tradesmen. It begins in the West, by the old Jewry, where Cheapside ends, and reaches the Stocks market by Cornhill. On the North side is Scalding Alley; a large place, containing two or three Alleys, and a square Court with good buildings, and well inhabited; but the greatest part is in Bread Street Ward, where it is mentioned.” Roman knives and weapons have been found in the Poultry. The valley of the Walbrook, 130 feet in width, began its slope here. Nearly opposite Princes Street, a modern street, there was anciently a bridge over the stream. We find in the thirteenth century an inquest held here over the body of one Agnes de Golden Lane, who was found starved to death, a rare circumstance at that time, and only possible, one would think, considering the charity of the monastic houses, in the case of a bedridden person forgotten or deserted by her own people. In the fourteenth century there are various bequests of shops and tenements in the Poultry. In the fifteenth century we find that there was a brewery here, near the Compter; how did the brewer get his water? In the same century the Compter—which was one of the two sheriffs’ prisons—seems to belong to one Walter Hunt, a grocer. In the sixteenth century one of the rioters of 1517 was hanged in the Poultry; there was trouble about the pavements and complaints were made of obstructions by butchers, poulterers, and the ancestors of the modern coster, who sold things from barrows, stopping up the road and refusing to move on. Before the Fire there were many taverns in the Poultry; some of them had the signs which have been found belonging to the Poultry. The later associations of the place have been detailed by Cunningham: “Lubbock’s Banking-house is leased of the Goldsmiths, being part of Sir Martin Bowes’s bequest to the Company in Queen Elizabeth’s time. The King’s Head Tavern, No. 25, was kept in Charles II.’s time by William King. His wife happening to be in labour on the day of the King’s restoration, was anxious to see the returning monarch, and Charles, in passing through Poultry, was told of her inclination, and stopped at the tavern to salute her. No. 22 was Dilly, the bookseller’s. Here Dr. Johnson met John Wilkes at dinner; and here Boswell’s life of Johnson was first published. Dilly sold his business to Mawman. No. 31 was the shop of Vernor and Hood, booksellers. Hood of this firm was father of the facetious Tom Hood, and here Tom was born in 1798” (Hand-book of London). For Stocks Market, St. Mary Woolchurch Haw, on the site of which the Mansion House stands, and the vicinity, formerly included in the Poultry, see Group III. At the east end of the Poultry is Grocers’ Alley, formerly Conyhope Lane, of which Stow says: “Then is Conyhope Lane, of old time so called of such a sign of three conies hanging over a poulterer’s stall at the lane’s end. Within this lane standeth the Grocers’ hall, which company being of old time called Pepperers, were first incorporated by the name of Grocers in the year 1345.” The Grocers’ Hall really opens into Princes Street. The Company’s records begin partly in Norman-French, partly in Old English, as follows: “To the honour of God, the Virgin Mary, St. Anthony and All Saints, the 9th day of May 1345, a Fraternity was founded of the Company of Pepperers of Soper’s Lane for love and unity to maintain and keep themselves together, of which Fraternity are sundry beginners, founders, and donors to preserve the said Fraternity.” (Here follow twenty-two names.) The same twenty-two persons “accorded to be together at a dinner in the Abbot’s Place of Bury on the 12th of June following, and then were chosen two the first Wardens that ever were of our Fraternity,” and certain ordinances were agreed to by assent among the Fraternity, providing that no person should be of the Fraternity “if not of good condition and of this craft, that is to say, a Pepperer of Soper’s Lane or a Spicer in the ward of Cheap, or other people of their mystery, wherever they reside”; for contributions among the members, for the purposes of the Fraternity, including the maintenance of a priest; the wearing of a livery; arbitration by the Wardens upon disputes between members; attendance at Mass at the Monastery of St. Anthony on St. Anthony’s Day, and at a feast on that day or within the octave, at which feast the Wardens should come with chaplets and choose and crown two other Wardens for the year ensuing; attendance at the funerals of members; the taking of apprentices; assistance of unfortunate From external evidence it appears that for two centuries at least before 1345 there had existed a Guild of Pepperers, who had superseded the Soapers in Soper’s Lane, and probably absorbed them. The twenty-two Pepperers, who in 1345 founded the social, benevolent, and religious fraternity of St. Anthony, were of “good condition,” probably the most influential and wealthy men in the Pepperers’ guild; in founding the new brotherhood “for greater love and unity” and “to maintain and assist one another,” they did not desert their old guild, but formed a new fraternity within it. They did not seek, apparently, to alter the institution of the Guild of Pepperers, nor did they adopt a distinctive title for themselves; but the movement was obviously an important one, and attracted notice and jealousy, which was perhaps increased by the foreign connections of some of the members. So rapidly did the Company gain favour and strength that in 1383, not forty years after its foundation, there were one hundred and twenty-nine liverymen of whom not less than sixteen were Aldermen. At that time, no doubt, the Company exercised a preponderating influence in the City of London. The new brotherhood was styled the Fraternity of St. Anthony from 1348 to 1357. After this year there is an hiatus in the Company’s records, and when these recommence in 1373 the title is “company” or “fraternity” of “gossers,” “grosers,” “groscers,” or “grocers.” The origin of the term “grocer” and its application to the Company are involved in considerable obscurity. As far as can be ascertained, the first use of the word, officially, is against the Company from without, and in an aspect of reproach. It occurs in a petition to the King and Parliament in 1363, against the new fraternity that “les Marchantz nomez Grossers engrossent toutes maneres de marchandises vendables.” It is by no means improbable that the term, first suggested by less successful rivals in trade, was adopted by the leading dealers “en gros” for the name of the company, which formed round the Fraternity of St. Anthony, and probably absorbed the whole Guild of Pepperers. From this time forward the Company began to act with energy in the interests of trade. In 1394 we find them, together with some Italian merchants, presenting a petition to the Corporation complaining of the unjust mode of “garbling,” i.e. cleansing or purifying spices and other “sotill wares.” The petition was entertained, and the Company were requested to recommend a member of their own body to fill the office, and on their nomination Thomas Halfmark was chosen and sworn garbeller of “spices and sotill ware.” The fraternity, after holding their meetings for three years at the Abbot of Bury’s, assembled in 1348 at Fulsham’s house at the Rynged Hall, in St. Thomas Apostle, close to St. Anthony’s Church in Budge Row, Watling Street, where they at this time obtained permission to erect a chantry, etc., and called themselves the Fraternity of St. Anthony. They ultimately collected at Bucklersbury (“Bokerellesbury”), at the Cornet’s Tower, which had been used by Edward III. at the beginning of his reign as his exchange of money and exchequer. Here the Company began to exercise the functions entrusted to them of superintending the public weighing of merchandise. In 1411 a descendant of Lord FitzWalter, who, in the reign of Henry III., had obtained possession of the chapel of St. Edmund which adjoined his family mansion, sold the chapel to the Company for 320 marks, and in the next reign the Company purchased the family mansion and built their Hall upon the site. The foundation stone was laid in 1427 and the building was completed in the following year. The expenses were defrayed by the contributions of members. Five years later the garden was added. In 1428 the Company’s first charter of incorporation was granted by King Henry VI., and they became a body politic by the name of “Custodes et Communitas Mysterii GroceriÆ Londini.” Nineteen years later the same king granted to the Company the exclusive right of garbling throughout all places in the kingdom of England, except the City of London. In 1453 the Company, having the charge and management of the public scale or King’s Beam, made a regular tariff of charges. It appears that to John Churchman, grocer, who served the office of sheriff in 1385, the trade of London is indebted for the establishment of the first Custom House. Henry VIII. granted to the City of London the Beam with all appurtenances, and directed its management to be committed to some expert in weights. The City thereupon gave the management to the Company, only requiring one-third of the profits. The Company enjoyed, uninterruptedly, these privileges up to 1625, when a dispute arose with the City, and an agreement was made whereby the Company were to appoint four under-porters, and present four candidates for Master Porter, the Lord Mayor to choose one of them. Several disputes followed with the Corporation, who in 1700 ejected the officers appointed by the Company, and tried their right at law. No result is reported, but the Company filled up vacancies after that date, and up to 1797, when a Bill was passed for making Wet Docks at Wapping, and this appears to have had the effect of depriving the Company of their privileges. The Company throughout this period kept, in common with others, a store of corn, according to ancient custom, for the supply of the poor at reasonable prices when bread was dear. The Company was also bound to maintain an armoury at their Hall. At the time of the Great Plague in 1665 the Company were assessed in various sums of money for the relief of the poor, and they also provided a large quantity of coals. The next year the Great Fire of London inflicted losses on the Company from which it did not recover for nearly a century. The Company’s Hall and all the adjacent buildings (save the turret in the garden, which fortunately contained the records and muniments of the Company) and almost all the Company’s houses were destroyed. The silver recovered from the ruins of the Hall was remelted and produced nearly 200 lbs. weight of metal; this was sold for the Company’s urgent present necessities. In 1668 Sir John Cutler came forward and proposed to rebuild the parlour and dining-room at his own charge. In the same year ninety-four members were added to the Livery. The next year a petition was presented to Parliament praying for leave to bring in a Bill to raise £20,000 by an equal assessment upon the members of the Company of ability. The application to Parliament failed, and an effort was then made to raise the £20,000 among the members, but only £6000 was subscribed. In January 1671 a Special Court was summoned to consider a Bill exhibited in Parliament by some of the Company’s creditors, praying for an Act for the sale of the Company’s Hall, lands, and estates to satisfy debts; and to make members of the Court liable for debts incurred. A Committee was appointed and in 1672 the Hall was, at the instance of the Governors of Christ’s Hospital, sequestered, and the Company ejected till 1679, when, after great difficulties and impediments, money was borrowed to pay off the debts and get rid of the intruders. In 1680 the Court of Assistants agreed that the most effectual way of regaining public confidence was to rebuild the Hall. In order to prevent a second sequestration an Inquisition was taken in 1680 before Commissioners for Charitable Uses, and, pursuant to a decree made by those Commissioners, a period of twenty years was allowed to the Company to discharge their debts. The next year, to secure an accession of influence and talent for the support of the Company, sixty-five members were added to the Court, and a number of Freemen were summoned, and eighty-one members added to the Livery. In 1683 the Company arranged, by arbitration, their difficulties with the Governors of Christ’s Hospital, and their prospects appeared more hopeful when the celebrated Writ of Quo Warranto was issued by King Charles II. against the City charters and liberties. The Company, with the view of propitiating the King, by deed under seal, voluntarily surrendered the powers, franchises, privileges, liberties, and authorities granted or to be used or exercised by the Wardens and Commonalty, and the right of electing and nominating to the several offices of Wardens, Assistants, and Clerk of the Company, and besought his Majesty to accept their surrender. Charles II. obtained judgment upon the Quo Warranto against the City, and all the redress that the Company could obtain was the grant of another The history of the Company during the eighteenth century is an account of pecuniary difficulties and the gradual extrication by the public spirit and foresight of the members. As regards the profession or trade of the members, a return exists of the whole numbers for the year 1795 when the Court contained 32, the livery numbered 81, and the freemen 228. Of these, 40 were Grocers. The number of the Livery returned in 1898 was 183. The Corporate Income was £37,500; the Trust Income was £500. The advantages of being a member of the Company are as follows: (1) Freemen are entitled to apply on behalf of their children for the Company’s presentations (six in number) to Christ’s Hospital; for the Company’s Scholarships for free education at the City of London School. The orphan children of freemen are alone eligible for the three presentations to the London Orphan Asylum. Freemen are entitled to take apprentices. Freemen, and widows and daughters of freemen, in needy circumstances may apply for relief, either temporary or permanent. Loans to freemen are practically abolished. (2) Twelve months after a liveryman has been elected he is entitled, provided he live within twenty-five miles of the polling place, Guildhall, to be put upon the Register of Voters for the City, which entitles him to a vote at the election of Members of Parliament for the City; a liveryman is also entitled to vote at the election of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London. The livery receive invitations from the Master and Wardens to the four public dinners in the months of November, February, May, and July, in each year, and at every fifth dinner an invitation for a friend as well. In some years when the honorary freedom of the Company is bestowed on distinguished personages, there is an extra public dinner to which the livery are invited. At the public dinner in May, called the Restoration Feast, a box of sweetmeats is presented to every guest. Liverymen, and the widows and daughters of liverymen in needy circumstances may apply for relief, either temporary or permanent. The Hall of the Company has always occupied the same site since the first erection in 1427, when the Wardens bought part of the demesne of Lord FitzWalter in Conyhope Lane. This building perished in the Great Fire of 1666. A new hall was built, but in 1798-1802 this building was pulled down and rebuilt. Alterations and additions were made in 1827, when the present entrance into Princes Street was constructed. There were formerly three ways of access to the hall—one from the Old Jewry; one by the lane called Grocers’ Alley; and one by Scalding Lane from St. Mildred, Poultry, of which a scrap of the churchyard still remains. The two lanes opened on a small Place on the north side of which was Grocers’ Hall and on the south side the Poultry Compter. The hall destroyed in 1666 would have become by this time historical as the place to which the Houses removed from Westminster in 1642 after the attempt to seize the five members on 4th January of that year. The Committee appointed by both Houses met first at Guildhall and adjourned to Grocers’ Hall to “treat of the safety of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland.” It was in this hall that the City entertained the Houses, June 17, 1645, in the midst of the Civil War, and on June 7, 1649, when the Civil War was over. For forty years, 1694-1734, the Grocers’ Hall was rented and occupied by the Governors and Company of the Bank of England. The Company numbered among its members Charles II., James II., William III., the Earl of Chatham, William Pitt, George Canning, and many others. In the eighteenth century, the “Lane” was chiefly occupied by houses called spunging houses; here persons were confined by the sergeants belonging to the Inscription for St. Lazarus’s Cave. Hodie, teste coelo summo, Sine pane, sine nummo; Sorte positus infeste, Scribo tibi dolens moeste. Fame, bile, tumet jecur: Urbane, mitte opem, precor, Tibi enim cor humanum Non a malis alienum: Mihi mens nec male grato, Pro a te favore dato.—AlcÆeus. Ex gehenna debitoria, Vulgo domo spongiatoria. The Alley led to an open court. In this open place in 1688 a cart-load of seditious books was burned. The east side of the Place is at present occupied by one wall of the Gresham Life Assurance Society, a magnificent building facing Poultry. It has finely proportioned polished granite columns with Corinthian capitals adding strength to the frontage, and a balcony with parapet running horizontally across the front. This was rebuilt in 1879. It stands on the site of St. Mildred, Poultry. The Church of St. Mildred, Poultry, was situated on the north side of the Poultry. It was rebuilt in 1456, and, after being destroyed by the Great Fire, again rebuilt in 1676, when the parish of St. Mary Colechurch was annexed. In 1872 it was taken down, and the parish joined to St. Olave, Jewry. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1247. The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Prior and Convent of St. Mary Overy, Southwark, 1325; Henry VIII., 1541, and so continued in the Crown. Houseling people in 1548 were 277. Chantries were founded here by Solomon Lanfare or Le Boteler, citizen and cutler, at the Altar of Blessed Virgin Mary, to which Wm. de Farnbergh was admitted chaplain, October 4, 1337; by Hugh Game, poulterer, who endowed it with rents, which fetched £10 in 1548, when John Mobe was priest; by John Brown, for himself, his wife, Margaret his daughter, and Giles Walden, etc., to which John de Cotyngham was admitted chaplain, April 6, 1366. One John Mymmes had licence from Richard II. to found the Guild of Fraternity of Corpus Christi here; the endowment fetched £10: 8: 8 in 1548, when John Wotton was priest thereof. Here was a “Little Chapell” valued at 60s. in 1548. Thomas Ashehill was buried here; he gave great help in rebuilding the church about 1450; also Thomas Morstead, chirurgeon to Henry IV., V., and VI., and one of the sheriffs of London. In more recent times, Wm. Cronne was commemorated; he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the College of Physicians, and died in 1706. A great number of benefactors are recorded by Stow, of which the most notable are: William Watson, of £100, whereof £65 was received; William Tudman, of £247 in all, for various charities; Sarah Tudman, of £80; Lady Elizabeth Allington, £200, towards rebuilding. One free school is recorded, called Mercers’ School (Stow). On the east side of Grocers’ Hall Court stood the Poultry Compter. Strype describes the place and its government. ST. MILDRED, POULTRY “Somewhat west to this Church is the Poultry Compter, being the Prison belonging to one of the Sheriffs of London, for all such as are arrested within the City and liberties thereof. And, besides this Prison, there is another of the same Nature in Wood Street for the other Sheriff; both being of the same nature, and have the like officers for the Execution of the concerns belonging thereunto, as shall be here taken notice of. So that what is said here for Poultry Compter, belongs also to Wood Street Compter. “Unto each Compter also belongs a Master Keeper; and under him two Turnkeys, and other servitors. INSIDE THE POULTRY COMPTER “The poorer sort of prisoners, as well in this Compter, as in that in Wood Street, receive daily relief from the sheriff’s table, of all the broken meat and bread. And there are divers gifts given by several well disposed people, towards their subsistence. Besides which, there are other benevolences frequently sent to all the prisons by charitable persons; many of which do conceal their names, doing it only for charity sake. And there are other gifts, some for the releasement of such This was the only prison in London with a ward set apart for Jews. “Here died Lamb, the conjuror (commonly called Dr. Lamb), of the injuries he had received from the mob, who pelted him (June 13, 1628), from Moorgate to the Windmill in the Old Jewry, where he was felled to the ground with a stone, and was thence carried to the Poultry Compter, where he died the same night. The rabble believed that the doctor dealt with the devil, and assisted the Duke of Buckingham in misleading the king. The last slave imprisoned in England was confined (1772) in the Poultry Compter. This was Somerset, a negro, the particulars of whose case excited Sharpe and Clarkson in their useful and successful labour in the cause of negro emancipation” (Cunningham’s Hand-book of London). When Whitecross Street Prison (1815-1870) was erected, the prisoners were removed there from the Poultry, and the site of the Compter was built upon partly by a Congregational Chapel, the congregation of which removed to the Holborn Viaduct when the City Temple was built. The prison was burned down in the Fire, whereupon the prisoners were taken to Aldgate until it was rebuilt. It was an ill-kept, unventilated, noisome place. It is worthy of note that the earliest bequest to the Compter mentioned in the Calendar of Wills belongs to the fifteenth century, and that most of the legacies to the prisoners were made after the Reformation and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In some of them we find mention of the “Hole” and of the “Twopenny Ward.” In 1378 there was an altercation between the Mayor and one of the sheriffs. Allusion is made to that sheriff’s “own compter” in Milk Street, which may be taken for that of Wood Street, as the Compter lay between the two, though it stood in Bread Street until the year 1555. In the year 1382 a sumptuary law was issued restricting the dress of women of loose life, and those who offended were to be taken to one of the Compters. In 1388 we find the porter of a Compter insulting Adam Bamme, alderman, for which he was removed from his office. We find also a householder taken to the Compter for refusing to pay his rates and abusing the collector. In 1413, an old man named John Arkwythe, a scrivener, was summoned by Alderman Sevenoke for allowing the escape of a certain priest caught in adultery in St. Bride’s Church. John Arkwythe lost his temper, clutched the Alderman by the breast and threatened him. They sent him to Newgate, but, considering his age, they let him go, only depriving him of the freedom of the City. In 1418, one William Foucher, for contempt of Court, was sent to solitary imprisonment in the Compter, and prohibited from speaking to any one except those who should counsel him repentance and amendment. From these cases it would appear that the Compters were used partly as West of Grocers’ Alley is the Old Jewry, one of the most interesting places in the whole of London on account of its having been the Ghetto, though not a place of humiliation, for the Jews of London. When they came to London they received this quarter for their residence; why this place, so central, so convenient for the despatch of business, was assigned to them, no one has been able to discover. In the learned work of Mr. Joseph Jacobs (The Jews of Angevin England) he shows that Jews were in Oxford and Cambridge as well as in London in the time of the Normans. The older name of the street was Colechurch Street. In the Receipts and Perquisites of the Tower from the Jews of London are found the following:
[The sense of this entry is doubtful. Perhaps the two pounds were forfeited and 60 is wrongly transcribed for 40 (lx. for xl.).] (Guildhall MS. 129, vol. ii. p. 95a.)
It thus appears that the Jewry was walled in with gates. Had it been a simple street, a thoroughfare, there could have been no objection to any one passing through. As for the teaching of the Church respecting Jews, these extracts from Mr. Jacob’s book will show the hatred which was inculcated towards them. “If any Christian woman takes gifts from the infidel Jews or of her own will commits sin with them, let her be separated from the church a whole year and live in much tribulation, and then let her repent for nine years. But if with a pagan let her repent seven years. “If any Christian accepts from the infidel Jews their unleavened cakes or any other meat or drink and share in their impieties, he shall do penance with bread and water for forty days; because it is written ‘to the pure all things are pure.’ “It is allowable to celebrate mass in a church where faithful and pious ones have been buried. But if infidels or heretics or faithless Jews be buried, it is The earliest mention of the Jews occurs in the Terrier of St. Paul’s, 1115: “In the ward of Haco... in the Jew’s street (?Old Jewry) the land of Lusbert, in the front on the west side, is 32 feet in breadth. Towards St. Olave’s is fourscore and fifteen feet; again towards St. Olave’s is 65 feet, and in the front 13 feet. The land in the front is 73 feet, and in depth 41 feet, and pays 10s.” In 1264, and again in 1267, the popular hatred of the Jews broke out with unmistakable violence. They fled to the Tower, while the mob destroyed and sacked their buildings. In 1290 they were banished. Their synagogue, which stood in the north-east corner of the present street, was given to the Fratres de Sacc (see MediÆval London, vol. ii. p. 365), and on their dissolution it was ceded to Robert FitzWalter and converted into a merchant’s residence. Here lived and died Robert Large to whom Caxton was apprenticed. The later history of the street may be quoted from Cunningham: “The last turning but two on the east side (walking towards Cateaton Street) was called Windmill Court, from the Windmill Tavern, mentioned in the curious inventory of ‘Innes for Horses seen and viewed,’ preparatory to the visit of Charles V. of Spain to Henry VIII., in the year 1522. ‘From the Windmill,’ in the old Jewry, Master Wellbred writes to Master Knowell, in Ben Jonson’s play of Every Man in his Humour. Kitely, in the same play, was a merchant in the Old Jewry. The house or palace of Sir Robert Clayton (of the time of Charles II.), on the east side, was long a magnificent example of a merchant’s residence, containing a superb banquetting-room, wainscotted with cedar, and adorned with battles of gods and giants. Here the London Institution was first lodged; and here, in the rooms he occupied as librarian, Professor Porson died (1808). Dr. James Foster, Pope’s ‘modest Foster’— Let modest Foster, if he will, excel Ten Metropolitans in preaching well— was a preacher in the Old Jewry for more than twenty years. He first became popular from Lord Chancellor Hardwicke stopping in the porch of his chapel in the Old Jewry, to escape from a shower of rain. Thinking he might as well hear what was going on, he went in, and was so well pleased that he sent all his great acquaintances to hear Foster.” Alexander Brown, the cavalier song-writer, was an attorney in the Lord Mayor’s Court in this street, and Bancroft, who built the almshouses of Mile End, was an officer in the court. Sir Jeffrey Bullen, Lord Mayor, 1457, lived in this street, where he was a mercer. The modern street is not of much interest. The City Police Office is in a court of some size near the north end. The Old King’s Head is in an elaborate building faced with red sandstone, and a grimy blackened old brick house close by contains the Italian Consulate. In Frederick Place are two rows of Georgian houses in dull brick, varying only slightly in detail. The iron link-holders of a past fashion still survive on the railings before some of the houses. No. 8, at the south-eastern corner, contains some curious and interesting mantels. One of these has a central panel representing a boar hunt; this is in relief enclosed in a large oval. There are fine details also in other fireplaces in the house. But these are not the only objects of interest in Frederick Place, for in exactly the opposite corner, the north-west, in a house numbered 4, are one or two fireplaces which surpass these in beauty if not in quaintness. In one of the rooms there is a very high and well-proportioned white marble mantelpiece, with singularly little decoration, which is yet most effective. All these houses are now used as offices by business men, and the evidences of bygone domestic occupation add a human interest to the daily routine. St. Mary Colechurch was situated in the Poultry at the south-west corner of the Old Jewry. It was burnt down in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Mildred, Poultry. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1252. The patronage of the church was in the hands of Henry III., who presented to it one Roger de Messendene, April 21, 1252; then the Master and Brethren of St. Thomas de Acon; afterwards Henry VIII., who granted it to the Mercer’s Company, April 21, 1542. Houseling people in 1548 were 220. Chantries were founded here by Thomas de Cavendish, late citizen and mercer, at the Altar of St. Katherine, to which Roger de Elton was instituted chaplain, March 15, 1362-63; Agnes Fenne, who left by Will, dated March 28, 1541, £140 to maintain a priest for twenty years; Henry IV. granted a licence to William Marechalcap and others to found a Fraternity in honour of St. Katherine, February 19, 1399-1400; a further licence was granted by Henry VI., June 19, 1447, the endowment of which fetched £9 in 1548, when Robert Evans was Chaplain. No monuments are recorded by Stow. In this church St. Thomas À Becket and St. Edmund were baptized. The parish had one gift-sermon, but no other gifts or legacies are recorded. Thomas Horton (d. 1673), Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, 1649, was a rector here. The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted it in 1171 to the Prior and Convent of Butley, Suffolk, when it became a vicarage. Henry VIII. seized it, and so it continues in the Crown. Houseling people in 1548 were 198. The open space, belonging to the ancient graveyard, abuts on Ironmonger Lane. A chantry was founded here by John Brian, rector, who died in 1322, and a licence was granted by the King, August 20, 1323; Robert de Burton, chaplain, exchanged with William de Aynho, June 15, 1327. In 1548 the endowment fetched £13: 1: 4. Robert Large, Mayor in 1440, and donor of £200 to the church, was buried here. Among the later monuments is one in memory of Sir Nathaniel Herne, Governor of the East India Company; he died 1679. The church was not rich in charitable gifts and legacies. Among the benefactors, Sir Thomas Hewet gave £5: 4s. yearly; Henry Lo gave £10 for ever; Gervase Vaughan gave a house, rented at £14 per annum, to provide bread for the poor every Sunday. On the west side of Old Jewry there was a free school, said to be founded by Thomas À Becket in 1160, for 25 scholars. There were two almshouses for 9 poor widows of armourers, each of whom received 6s. per quarter, and 9 bushels of coal a year; those past labour received £1 a quarter. These were the gift of Mr. Tindal, citizen and armourer of London. Anthony Ellys, D.D. (1690-1761), Bishop of St. David’s, was rector, also Joseph Holden Pott (1759-1847), Archdeacon of London. Old Jewry runs through into Gresham Street, which is roughly parallel with Cheapside. Gresham Street, formerly called Catte, Cateaton, or Ketton Street, or Cattling Street, when changed to its present name also swallowed up Lad Lane and Maiden Lane. Catte Street is mentioned in a deed dated the Saturday after Ascension 1294, in which Hugh de Vyenne, Canon of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, grants to the master and scholars of Balliol, inter alia, four shillings of yearly rent from the tenement held by Martin the arbitrator, in Catte Street, opposite the church of St. Lawrence, also the same amount from the tenement of Adam de Horsham opposite the church. On the Feast of Ascension in the year 1360 a case of great interest was heard at the Hustings of common pleas. In this case, John de Wyclif, Master of Balliol, Oxford, was attached to make answer to Nicholas Marchant in a plea of distresses taken. Wyclif is accused of having made an unlawful seizure upon the freehold of Nicholas in the parish of St. Lawrence, Jewry, on Wednesday after the Feast of St. Gregory that year. From the pleading it appears that the house was once the property of “one Thippe, wife of Isaac of Suthwerk, a Jewess”; after her exit from England it came to King Edward, grandfather of Edward III. Their tenement in Catte Street was given (so the pleadings show) by that king to Adam de Horsham, mercer, uncle of Nicholas There is another ancient mention of Catte Street, belonging to the year 1281, in which one Aaron, a wealthy Jew and a money-lender, contracts with Rudolph the mason for the building of a house in Catte Street. From Aldermanbury westward to Wood Street, Gresham Street was formerly called Lad Lane. The name occurs certainly as early as 1301, as containing a house belonging to Coke Bateman, a Jew. It is first found in the Calendar of Wills in 1362, after which we hear no more of it till 1419. Here a Roman pavement was found. One of the most important of the old coaching inns, the Swan with two Necks, stood in Lad Lane. From this place an amazing number of coaches and wagons set out every day. The sign is still to be seen over the entrance to the London and South Western Railway Company’s yard. The street was widened in 1845. It has a picturesque appearance, for the houses project irregularly at the corners of the cross streets. The Church of St. Lawrence occupies part of the north side. The date of the foundation of St. Laurence or Lawrence, Jewry, is not known, but the church was burnt down by the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren 1671-76, when the parish of St. Mary Magdalene was annexed. The new building was erected at the expense of the parishioners, assisted by a liberal subscription from Sir John Langham. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1321. The patronage of the church was in the hands of Henry de Wickenbroke, who, May 30, 1294, gave the Rectory to Balliol College, Oxford, when a Vicarage was here ordained, and in this college it still continues. Houseling people in 1548 were 148. The church measures 82 feet in length, 71 feet in breadth, and 39 feet in height. It contains only one aisle, on the north side, separated from the rest of the building by Corinthian columns. Above the columns is a richly worked entablature, which is continued all round the church. The east front has a faÇade formed by four Corinthian columns with entablature, supporting the pediment. The tower, which is three storied, is surmounted by a square turret, supporting a square pedestal, and above this by an octagonal spirelet with a ball and vane; the vane is in the form of St. Laurence’s emblem, the gridiron. The total height is 160 feet. Chantries were founded here: For William de Kancia at the Altar of St. John, July 10, 1321; by Thomas Wytton at the Altar of Virgin Mary, the endowment of which fetched £8: 4: 8 in 1548, when Thomas Sandlord was chaplain; by William Myldreth at the Altar of St. Michael the Archangel, the endowment of which yielded £7: 6: 8 in 1548, when Rowland Robynsonne was chaplain; by Simon Bonyngton, whose endowment fetched £22: 13: 4 in 1548 when Thomas Sylvester was chaplain; by Simon Bartlett, whose endowment yielded £5: 4: 8 in 1548, when Thomas Ballard was chaplain; by Simon Gosseham, for two chaplains, whose endowment fetched £14: 6: 8 in 1548, when Thomas Begley and Henry Whorleston were the priests. Pictorial Agency. The old church was the burying-place of a considerable number of eminent citizens. Among them were: Richard Rich, ancestor of the Earls of Warwick and Holland, who died in 1469; Sir Geffney Bullen, Lord Mayor in 1459 and great-great-grandfather to Queen Elizabeth; Sir Richard Gresham, Lord Mayor in 1537 and father of Sir Thomas Gresham; Sir Michael Dormer, Lord Mayor in 1541; Roger Thorney, who founded a Fellowship at Jesus College, Cambridge; Dame Alice Avenon, a benefactress to the parish. Against the west wall there is a monument displaying three busts, in memory of Alderman Sir William Halliday, sheriff in 1617; this was erected in 1687 by Dame Margaret Hungerford in place of that destroyed by the Fire. Dr. John Wilkins, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and vicar here in 1662, was buried under the north wall of the chancel. There are monuments also to John Tillotson, lecturer here for some years, and to Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, the celebrated preacher, who succeeded Wilkins as vicar. On the western part of the south wall a large monument commemorates Mrs. Sarah Scott, who died in 1750, leaving £700 for parish purposes. Sir John Langham was a donor of £250 for the purpose of church repairing, etc., and no gifts or bequests belonging to the parish are recorded by Stow, except two weekly lectures each at £30 per annum, the donors of which are not stated by him. There was one Grammar Gresham College stands at the end of a row of uniform plaster-faced houses. The College itself is a great yellow-plastered building with disproportionately heavy cornice and rigid balconies. Drawn by J. Coney. In Guildhall Yard is a fine view of the ornamental gateway of the Guildhall. On the east is the Guildhall Tavern, and on the west, beyond the church, is an open space, formerly the churchyard, with a few plane-trees dotted about, and a fountain of Gothic design, erected in 1866, with statues upon it representing St. Lawrence and the Magdalene. St. Martin’s House, on the north side, is a modern red sandstone building. St. Anne’s Churchyard, with one or two plane-trees of good size, makes a break in the line of modern houses beyond. This church stands on the north side of Gresham Street, towards the west end. The date of the foundation of the original church is uncertain, but mention is made of it in a deed dating between The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Dean and Canons of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, 1322; the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1510; the Bishop of Westminster by grant of Henry VIII., January 11, 1540-41; the Bishop of London and his successors by grant of Edward VI., July 4, 1550; confirmed by Queen Mary, March 3, 1553-54. Houseling people in 1548 were 300. The present building is of brick, and measures 53 feet square, and 35 feet in height. Within this area four Corinthian columns form another square. The tower, rising at the west, measures 14 feet at the base and culminates in a vane; the total height is 95 feet. A chantry was founded here by Thomas Juvenal and Alice his wife at the Altar of St. Nicholas; to which Richard Grant was instituted chaplain, April 10, 1363. The church formerly contained monuments to Stephen Brackynbury, gentleman, Usher to Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. William Gregory, Mayor of London, 1461, was buried here, but no monument remained in 1598. The principal benefactors were William Gregory, alderman and skinner, and John Werke, goldsmith, both of whom bequeathed a number of houses to the parish in the fifteenth century. Some of the most notable rectors were: John Hopton (d. 1558), Bishop of Norwich; Samuel Freeman, Dean of Peterborough, 1691; and Fifield Allen, Archdeacon of Middlesex. At the corner of Noble Street is the churchyard of St. John Zachary, which parish is now incorporated with St. Anne and St. Agnes. This is a fairly large piece of ground surrounded by brick houses. There are many upright tombstones among the blackened shrubs within. Beyond there is a large building of red brick finished with piers of polished granite. The Church of St. John Zachary, which was situated in Maiden Lane, was burnt down in the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of St. Anne, Aldersgate. It was built or founded by a monk named Zachary. The earliest date of an incumbent is some year between 1217 and 1243. The church has always been in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, from the earliest record up to 1666, when the parish was annexed to that of St. Anne and St. Agnes. Houseling people in 1548 were 240. Chantries were founded here by Thomas Lichfield in 1320; for Roger Beynyn and Isabel his wife before 1322. Stow records that the monuments in this church were well preserved in his time. Some of the most notable persons commemorated were: Sir James Pemberton, who founded a free school in Lancashire, and was donor of many other charitable gifts (died 1613); Philip Strelley (d. 1603), benefactor to the parish, and Henry de Spondon, rector here in 1366. There were some small legacies belonging to the parish, but few names are recorded by Stow. Colonel Henry Drax was donor of £20, and his wife of £30. Philip Strelley, of 40s. a year. By the subscribers of the united parishes thirty boys and twenty girls were taught, clothed, and put out as apprentices. William Byngham, founder of Christ Church College, Cambridge, was rector here. In Gresham Street are also the halls of two City Companies. THE HABERDASHERS COMPANYIt has been surmised that the haberdashers were originally a branch of the mercers, and formed a trade association for the protection and general supervision of the trade carried on by the haberdashers and milliners. They are supposed to have existed as early as the year 1372, being mentioned in the City records as having then promulgated their first ordinances. By the Company’s earlier minute books they seem to have been at one time associated with the felt-makers. The first charter granted to the Haberdashers Company was by Henry VI. (June 3, 1448); it authorised and empowered the liegemen of the mystery of haberdashers to erect and found a guild or fraternity in honour of St. Katherine. The charter grants that the fraternity shall be a perpetual and incorporate fraternity of haberdashers of St. Katherine of London, to hold lands to themselves and their successors and with a common seal. Henry VII. by charter united the crafts of hurriers and hatter merchants into one craft, and by another charter, 17th Henry VII., he united the hurriers and hatter merchants with the craft of haberdashers, and declared they should be one craft and perpetual commonalty by the name of Merchant Haberdashers. Henry VIII.—November 1511—by charter of this date confirmed previous charters, and, on the application of the Merchant Haberdashers, altered and translated the style of the said guild into the name of the Master and Four Wardens of the Guild of Fraternity of St. Katherine, of the Craft of Haberdashers, in the City of London. It enacted that no foreigner or stranger in London should make any caps or hats for the use of any stranger, unless admitted by the master and wardens, under pain or forfeiture of the thing made, one half to go to the Mayor and Commonalty of the City, and the other to the use of the mystery or craft aforesaid. Philip and Mary—1557—by charter of this date confirmed all previous charters. Elizabeth—June 19, 1578—by charter confirmed all previous charters, and it is under this charter that the Company is now governed. It is thought there can be little doubt that the Haberdashers Company was originally established for trade purposes, and was in former times associated with other trades, as the felt-makers and hatters. The before-mentioned charters of incorporation gave the Company considerable powers for regulating the trade in haberdashery, and for enforcing its orders in reference thereto, and these powers were no doubt exercised for many years. In course of time, however, the business or trade of haberdashery became so interwoven with other trades, such as drapers, milliners, mercers, hosiers, etc., that there is no longer any distinct business of haberdashery. The Company, however, being anxious to help those who are engaged in it have for the last eight or nine years advertised that the sum of £100 will be annually awarded as prizes to the actual inventors of new patterns, designs, or specimens of articles of haberdashery proper, provided such inventors were not manufacturers or dealers. No control is now exercised by the Company in reference to the trade of haberdashery. Freemen are eligible for pensions and gifts if in needy circumstances. The children of freemen have the privilege of competing for certain exhibitions in the gift of the Company. Liverymen are also eligible for the pensions and gifts under similar circumstances, and their children have like privileges for competing in exhibitions. They are also eligible (provided their fathers or grandfathers are not members of the governing body) for educational grants which are made voluntarily by the Company annually towards defraying the cost of education, and liverymen’s children who have distinguished themselves in their studies are also eligible for four exhibitions of £40 each, also voluntarily given by the Company and tenable for three years, for the purpose of pursuing their studies in the higher branches of learning. The children of liverymen and freemen have also a priority of claim over outsiders for admission to the Company’s Aske’s Schools at Hatcham and West Hampstead and Acton. The members of the governing body, on attending courts and committees (but not otherwise), receive fees for their attendance. The present number of recipients of annual gifts is 40, and the amount paid to them £215: 2s. It is believed that few, if any, of the recipients of the above pensions and gifts carry on or have carried on the trade the name of which is borne by the Company. Considerable grants are made every year to poor clergy and poor hatters. In addition to the above yearly gifts various sums are from time to time voluntarily granted to poor members of the Company, their widows and families, amounting in 1879 to £276: 10s. The Hall is at 77 Gresham Street. It was built by Wren but burned down in 1864. The Trust Income of the Company is expended in schools and almshouses, the most important schools being Aske’s, referred to above. There are other almshouses at Monmouth, at Newland in Gloucestershire, and at Newport, Salop. There are also schools at Monmouth, Pontypool, Newport, Salop, and Bunbury connected with the Company. They give several exhibitions, and they grant pensions and give large subscriptions to philanthropic objects. There is no documentary evidence in the possession of the Wax Chandlers’ Company of an earlier date than 45th Edward III., A.D. 1371, which is a petition to the Court of Aldermen of the City of London for leave to choose searchers for bad wares, and for approval of byelaws then submitted for the regulation of the craft. The prayer of this petition seems to have been acceded to, for Walter Rede and John Pope were in the same year chosen and sworn to oversee the said craft, and the defaults from time to time found to present to the mayor and aldermen, etc. These documents are set out (p. 104) in the Report of the Commissioners on Municipal Corporations in England and Wales dated 1837. That the craft of wax chandlers had an association previous to this date there are no documents to show, although from the petition it would appear that it had, but without power to enforce obedience to its orders. The following is a list of the charters, etc., granted at various times to the Company: 1. Charter of 1 Richard III., 1484. 2. Grant of arms, 2 Richard III., 1485. 3. Further grant of arms, 28 Henry VIII., 1536. 4. Exemplification and confirmation of said charter of Richard III. by Philip and Mary, 7th June, 4 and 5 Philip and Mary. 5. Letters Patent of confirmation of said charter by Queen Elizabeth, 2 Elizabeth, 1560. 6. Ditto, ditto. King James I., 2 James I., 1604. 7. Charter of 15 Charles II., 1663. 8. Byelaws pursuant to last-mentioned charter, and the statute 19 Henry VII., approved and signed and sealed by the Lord Chancellor and two Chief Justices of the King’s Bench and Common Pleas, dated June 28, 1664, referred to at p. 100 of the above-mentioned report. 9. Charter of 1 James II., 1685 (this charter was avoided under the General Statute). At present they have a livery of twenty-seven, a Corporate Income of £1370, a Trust Income of £230, and a hall in Gresham Street. The use of wax tapers and candles not only in the churches, but also in the houses of the wealthy sort, caused the material to be valuable and the mystery of preparing it prosperous. The Company was in fact in great credit until the Reformation, when the greater part of its work—that of providing lights for the churches—vanished. In ancient documents the Guildhall Yard is mentioned frequently, as might be expected. In Agas’s map the yard is enclosed, and entered by a gateway. Some of the land belonged to Balliol College, Oxford. It was widened by taking off part of the churchyard of St. Lawrence, Jewry. Here were the taverns of the Three Tuns and the White Lyon. Sir Erasmus de la Fountaine had property here and gave his name to Fountain Court. BLACKWELL HALL, 1819 Of this historic mansion Stow speaks at some length. He says that it was built upon vaults of stone brought from Caen in Normandy, and that it was covered over in painting and carved stone with the arms of the Basings or Bassings, viz. “a gyronny of twelve points gold and azure.” This family when Stow writes was “worn out.” In the 36th year of Edward III., one Thomas Bakewell was living in this house. In the 20th of Richard II., for a sum of £50, licence was given to transfer this hall with certain messuages appertaining to the mayor and commonalty of the City. Here was established the year after, by Whittington, thrice Mayor, a weekly market for cloth, no foreigners being allowed to sell cloth anywhere except in Blackwell Hall and in the courts thereof. In the year 1588 the house, being decayed, was taken down and rebuilt. In the Great Fire the Hall was destroyed, together with a great quantity of cloth stored by country manufacturers in its warehouses. “What,” says Lord Clarendon, “have we lost in clothe if the little Company [the stationers] lost £200,000 in books?” “The late edifice of Blackwell Hall appears to have been erected about the year 1672, and it exhibited the dull and prison-like appearance of the older storehouses The changes gradually made in the cloth trade caused the decay of the market. In 1815 an Act was passed enabling the Mayor and Corporation to pull down the hall of St. Mary Magdalene Chapel, which was stated to be in a ruinous condition, and to replace it by buildings for courts. The present Art Gallery, the Museum, the Library, Guildhall Buildings, the Courts, etc., stand upon the site of the Hall, the Chapel, and the adjacent ground. The Hall was taken down in 1819. The Guildhall, like the Mansion House, Royal Exchange, etc., is so woven in with the history of the City that an account of it must be sought in the historical volumes preceding this. We may return to the Poultry by the next north and south thoroughfare, namely: Ironmonger Lane, which is frequently mentioned in early deeds and documents. As early as the middle of the twelfth century documents are spoken of in “Ismongers’ Lane,” in the parish of St. Mary Colechurch. In 1245 there are shops, solars, and cellars in the street. Riley (Mem. 128. 15) presents two most interesting inquests connected with two murders in this street. The lane is called variously Ismongers’, Iremongers’, and Ironmongers’. On the east side of this street, near Cheapside, was the Church of St. Martin Pomeroy. St. Martin Pomeroy is supposed by Stow to have gained its second name from an apple garden there, but it was more probably from a family named Pomeroy. In 1629 the church was repaired, but it was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being united to that of St. Olave, Jewry. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1361. Photo. Sandell, Ltd. Houseling people in 1548 were 120. Chantries were, founded here: For Henry atte Roth, chandeler, to which Richard Scot was admitted, February 7, 1391-92; for William Love, to which Stephen Benet was collated, January 24, 1391-92. Only two monuments are recorded by Strype, neither of which commemorate persons of eminence. There was a free school, said to have been founded by Thomas À Becket, in the Old Jewry, for twenty-five scholars. There were also two almshouses for nine widows of Armourers or Braziers, the gift of Mr. Tindal, citizen and armourer of London. John Kingscote, Bishop of Carlisle, 1462, was rector here. In Ironmonger Lane is the Mercers’ Hall. The Mercers, although not incorporated until the year 1393 (17th Richard II.), were in very early times associated voluntarily for the purposes of mutual aid and comfort. They come to light as a fraternity first in the time of Henry II., for Gilbert À Becket, the father of St. Thomas of Canterbury, is said to have been a mercer; and in the year 1192, Agnes de Helles, sister of St. Thomas, and her husband, Thomas Fitztheobald de Helles, in founding the hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, which is distinctly stated to have been built on the spot where the future archbishop was born, constituted the fraternity of mercers patrons of the hospital. The hospital and the Company were intimately connected until the Reformation, and afford a good example of the connection of secular guilds and ecclesiastical foundations in the Middle Ages, secular guilds being established for the promotion of trade and almsdeeds, and ecclesiastical foundations for devotion and almsdeeds. It is probable that a guild could not be carried on without the King’s licence at this early date; and it would seem a necessary interference that the mercers had a licence at the time of Henry II., from their not appearing among the “adulterine” guilds, or guilds set up without the King’s licence, which were fined in 1180 for being established without such licence. The Merchant Adventurers Company gradually became detached from the Mercers Company in the course of the fifteenth century, especially by the opening of the trade with Flanders in the year 1497; and yet more so in 1564, when Queen Elizabeth, by charter, constituted the Merchant Adventurers a distinct body politic or corporation in England; but the Mercers Company still kept up an intimate connection with the “Brotherhood beyond the Sea,” the last link connecting the two companies being only severed by the Great Fire of London in 1666, which destroyed the office which the Merchant Adventurers held of the mercers under Mercers’ Hall. It is probable, however, that trade in former times was separated into main divisions, the staple and the miscellaneous, now known as mercery. Silk, when first imported, fell in England into the latter division, hence the combined appellation “silk mercers”; but on the Continent the word was applied to the vendors of all goods carried about for sale. Cervantes, speaking of the original history in Arabic of Don Quixote, says he purchased it of a book mercer; and Guicciardini, in his description of the Netherlands, speaks of merceries as well of silk as of other materials, and in another place says that mercery comprehends all things sold by retail or by the little balance or scales. Skinner, in his Etymologicon, published in 1671, says “that a mercer was mercator peripateticus” or an itinerant merchant. The master and wardens superintended the taking of apprentices by their members, searching the weights and measures of shopkeepers belonging to the Company, and otherwise regulating their commercial dealings. The Company appointed brokers of mercery wares, under the first charter to the City by Edward II., by which it was declared that there should be no brokers in the City but those chosen by the merchants in the mysteries in which they exercised their office, and under the charter of Edward III., which declared that none should exercise the office of broker in foreign merchandise in London unless chosen by the In the 13th year of Edward II. the Companies had advanced towards the phase of “Livery Companies.” “Moultz des gens de Mesters en Loundres furent vestus de suite.” The Company seem to have exercised some supervision over the retailers of silk and other mercery wares previous to the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but such supervision was probably not founded on any legal basis, as a petition to the privy council at the commencement of that queen’s reign, praying that these rights should be recognised, was unsuccessful. The numbers of the Company have been recruited by the admission of apprentices, and from the sons of mercers, who have from very early times been always entitled to the freedom; and one reason for the smallness of the Company may probably have been the old custom, established so long ago as 1347, that no strangers should be admitted to the freedom without the consent of the generality. The Company has never been very numerous. In 1347, when it was refounded, 103 persons paid their entrance fees; in 1527 the Company numbered 144; in 1707, when most numerous, 331; and on December 31, 1880, 166. The earliest date of which there is a record in the Company’s books is the year 1347, when it was reorganised, if not refounded. The statement that no one should take as an apprentice one who had carried packs through the country, called pedlars, seems to show that a mercer at this time had ceased to be, if he had ever been, a pedlar. Previous to the charter granted by Richard II., the mercers did not pretend to be a corporation, but simply a member of the City. In their petition to Parliament in 10th Richard II., against Nicholas Brembre, then mayor, they call themselves “the folk of the mercerie, a member of the city.” The Company, having at this time no hall of their own, assembled either in the house of one of the wardens, or in the hall or church of the hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, the site of which is now occupied by their chapel and hall, and subsequently occasionally at the Prince’s Wardrobe in the Old Jewry. They had then no landed property, and their income was derived from subscriptions, apprentice fees, and fines, and amounted to about £20 a year. The Company’s first charter, enrolled at the Record Office (the original of which has been lost), is dated at Westminster the 13th January, 17th Richard II. (1393). The most important event in the early history of the Mercers Company was the appointment of the Company as trustees of the charities of Sir Richard Whittington, several times master or principal warden of the Company, and four times Lord Mayor of London. He died in the year 1422-23. It is not necessary to enumerate precisely the munificent works of charity which were carried out by Sir Richard Whittington in his lifetime, or by his executors after his death; suffice it to say that he, or they by his direction, rebuilt the parish church of St. Michael Royal, rebuilt the prison of Newgate, built or repaired the City conduits, contributed very largely to the building of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and of the Guildhall, to the library of the Corporation of London, and the library of the Greyfriars, and established a chaplain at St. Paul’s. Whittington appointed John Coventry, John White, John Carpenter, and William Grove to be executors of his will, which was proved in March 1422-23. On the 12th November, 3rd Henry VI. (1424), his executors obtained a charter from the King to found Whittington college and almshouses. Of both these foundations the Mercers Company were made trustees. The Company’s second charter was granted by Henry VI. at the prayer of the executors of Whittington. On the accession of Edward IV. it became necessary for the quieting of men’s titles that the grants made by the Lancastrian kings should be confirmed, and accordingly the statute 1st Edward IV. cap. 1 was passed, by which it was enacted that all liberties and franchises granted by Henry IV., Henry V., and Henry VI., to counties or corporations, and among others to the wardens and commonalty of the Mystery MERCERS’ HALL 1463. This year is a most important one in the Company’s annals, as in it the court of assistants was first established. The business of the Company having very much increased, both on account of their connection with the Merchant Adventurers Company and also from the management of the trusts of Whittington, Abbot, and Estfield, it was felt that the whole burden of the Company’s affairs should not be cast upon the wardens, and that it was not desirable that the generality should be constantly called together. For many years previous to this date it had been the practice that the wardens, and the aldermen free of the Company, and their peers, should hold assemblies for the devising of ordinances or other matters, their deliberations being afterwards submitted to a general court for approval. On the 23rd of July 1463, at a general court of the Company, the following resolution was passed: “It is accorded The rest of the history of the Mercers Company is mainly occupied by a recital of charities which were placed in their hands to administer. It is sufficient to call attention to the many and splendid endowments which have been placed in the hands of the Company. The general court appoint three trustees of the Prisons’ Charities Trust, decide when the corporate seal shall be affixed, and determine the amount of fees which shall be paid for attendance at general courts, courts of assistants, and committees. The fee paid to a member for his attendance at general courts and courts of assistants is £4: 4s., and to a member attending a committee, £2: 2s. (1) A freeman is entitled from Lady Campden’s legacy for loans, and from the money legacies for loans, to have the loan of not more than £500 without interest for not more than five years, giving approved security. He is entitled, if his circumstances warrant it, and within the limits of the Company’s nominations, to have his sons placed in Christ’s Hospital under Daniel Westall’s gift, and clothed, boarded, and educated there from eight years old to fifteen, and perhaps to nineteen; and his daughters educated out of the Company’s funds at an expense not exceeding £50 per annum, from nine years of age to fifteen, and if they show reasonable proficiency and ability to seventeen, under regulations approved by the general court. He is also entitled in case of old age, misfortune, or infirmity to receive relief proportioned to his circumstances out of the Company’s or out of Sir Richard Whittington’s estate, which was left to the Company specially for that purpose; and his widow and daughters are entitled to relief under similar circumstances. (2) Liveryman.—A liveryman is entitled to the same advantages as a freeman, and in addition is invited to three dinners in the course of the year. He has the right to attend common hall, and to vote at elections of lord mayors and sheriffs and of such other officers of the Corporation of London as are elected by the livery; and if resident within a radius of twenty-five miles from the City, to vote at elections of members of Parliament for the City of London. He is eligible, and if of sufficient position and standing he is generally called in rotation by the court of assistants, to be a member of their body. (3) Master, Warden, or otherwise a member of the governing body.—A member of the court of assistants is summoned to general courts as well as to meetings of the court of assistants (which are held weekly, except during Christmas and Easter weeks and six weeks in August and September). He is also eligible to be placed on committees appointed by the court and on the Gresham committee. He is invited to dine at all dinners in the Company’s hall. He recommends in rotation to appointments to Mercers’ School, and to out-pensions on the Whittington estate, and to the Whittington almshouses. The court of assistants appoint nine governors of St. Paul’s School under the provisions of the scheme, and also governors and members of the council and of the executive committee of the City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education. The master and wardens are members of every committee appointed by the Company. They distribute Alderman Walthall’s and Lady Hungerford’s gifts, appoint preachers in Mercers’ Chapel under various gifts, and are ex officio governors of St. Paul’s School. They also receive under various wills of benefactors to the Company certain small annuities, and are entitled to the surplus of Blundell’s estate, which surplus amounted in 1880 to £205: 9: 9. A member of the Company will probably come on to the court of assistants when he is about forty-five years of age, and he remains a member for life. The Company does not carry on any trade or occupation whatever. The Mercers had occupied a house adjoining for more than a hundred years before this acquisition. The Religious House itself was undoubtedly on the site of the house where Thomas was born. The buildings were destroyed in the Great Fire. The second hall was built on the same site with another chapel in which service is held every Sunday evening. Fragments of the ancient buildings can still be seen. The present hall is said to have been designed by Wren. The entrance in Cheapside was built in 1879. Among the more distinguished members of this great Company have been Whittington, Caxton, and Sir Thomas Gresham, Sir Henry Colet, Sir Baptist Hicks. The present number of the livery is returned in Whitaker as 187; the Corporate Income as £48,000; the Trust Income as £35,000. For an account of the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, which at first extended from Ironmonger Lane to Old Jewry, see MediÆval London, vol. ii. p. 262. King Street was constructed after the Fire, in order to give a nobler approach to the Guildhall. Pepys refers to the ground having been already bought in December 1667. Strype says that “it is well inhabited by Norwich Factors and other wholesale dealers of wealth and reputation.” He calls it New King Street. Trump Street or Trump Alley is not named in Agas, Stow, or Ogilvy; Strype calls it Duke Street. The mention of John Carsyl, Tromppour, Trumper or Trumpet-maker (1308), also of William Trompeor (1321) and William le Trompour, gives Riley occasion for the following notes: “The persons who followed this trade mostly lived, in all probability, in Trump Street, formerly Trump Alley (a much longer street then than it is now), near the Guildhall; their principal customers not improbably being the City waits, or watchmen; each of whom was provided with a trumpet, also known as a “wait,” for sounding the hours of the watch, and giving the alarm. In reference to this trade it deserves the remark, that the only memorial that has come down to us of the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin, and of St. Mary Magdalen and all Saints, formerly adjoining the Guildhall, is a massive stone coffin (now in the Library at Guildhall) with its lid, whereon is sculptured a cross between two trumpets, and around its margin the following inscription: Godefrey le Trompour: gist: ci: Deu: del: ealme: eit: merci. ‘Godefrey the Trompour lies here, God on the soul have mercy.’ In Trump Alley, close adjoining, he probably lived, sold trumpets, and died—if we may judge from the character of the writing, in the latter half of the fourteenth century” (Riley’s Memorials, p. xxi). St. Lawrence Lane.—“Antiquities in this lane I find none other, than that among many fair houses, there is one large inn for receipt of Travellers called Blossoms inn, but corruptly Bosoms inn, and hath to sign St. Laurence the Deacon, in a border of blossoms or flowers” (Stow’s Survey). Cunningham adds as follows: “When Charles V. came over to this country in 1522, certain houses and inns The inn was also called “Bossamez” Inn and Boscham’s Inn. Honey Lane Market was established soon after the Fire. Strype thus speaks of it (vol. i. p. 566): “Adjoining to this street, on the north side, is Honey Lane, being now, as it were, an alley with a Freestone pavement, serving as a passage to Honey Lane Market; the former Lane, and other buildings, being since the fire of London converted into this market. Among which buildings, was the Parish Church of St. Allhallow’s, Honey Lane; and, because it was thought fit not to rebuild it, the parish is united to St. Mary-le-Bow. This Market is well served, every Week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, with Provisions. The Place taken up by this Market is spacious. In the middle is a large and square Market-house, standing on pillars, with rooms over it, and a bell-tower in the midst. There are in the market one hundred and thirty-five standing stalls for butchers, with racks, blocks, and others necessaries, all covered over, to shelter them from the injury of the weather; and also several stalls for fruiterers. The west end of the market lieth open to Milk Street, where there is a cock of conduit water for the use of the market. There are two other passages into it, that is, one out of St. Lawrence’s Lane, besides that which comes out of Cheapside; which passages are inhabited by grocers, Fishmongers, Poulterers, Victuallers, and Cheesemongers.” Complaints are found in the wardmote book of people making fires in the market; of butchers killing sheep and lambs there; and of the annoyance caused by the farmers letting soil and refuse lie about the place. Honey Lane, which led to it, is said by Stow to be so called, being a dark and narrow place, on account of the constant washing required to keep it clean—a far-fetched derivation. The name is indeed very ancient. In a grant, dated 1203-15, made by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s to one Richard de Corilis mention is made of “Huni” Lane, and in another grant of the same period the house in question, “a stone built house,” is mentioned in between Milk Street and “Huni” Lane. There was one Elias de Honey Lane in 1274. The market was closed in 1835 and the City of London School built on its site. The school has now been removed to the Embankment and the place is let out in offices. The Church of Allhallows, Honey Lane, stood on the north side of Cheapside in Honey Lane. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and the parish was then annexed to St. Mary-le-Bow. Honey Lane Market was on the site of the church. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1327. Houseling people in 1548 were 150. CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL, MILK STREET Chantries were founded here for John Fourneys, citizen, and Katherine his wife, at the Altar of Blessed Virgin Mary, August 22, 1396 (Pat. 20 Rd. II. p. i. m. 21), and by Alexander Speat, Thomas Trompington, John Downe, and Henry Edelmeton. Sir John Norman, Mayor of London, 1453, was buried in this church. No bequests or charitable gifts are recorded in Parish Clerk’s Summary of 1732. Among the notable rectors were Thomas Garrard, who was burnt at Smithfield, and John Young, Bishop of Gallipoli. Milk Street is one of the streets of Cheapside which peculiarly recalls the site of the old market by its name. There is not much recorded of this street. Milk Street in the thirteenth century was the residence of certain Jews. Thus in 1247 Peter the Jew had a house there; and in 1250 leave was granted to John Brewer to build a chapel in his house, formerly that of Benedict the Jew; and in 1285 Cresse the Jew had a house there. In 1294 Martin the Arbalestin lived in Milk Street; and in 1285 the mayor had his residence there, his house being rented of the Prior of Lewes. The Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Milk Street, formerly stood on the east side, towards the south end of Milk Street, Cheapside. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Lawrence, Jewry. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1162. The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s continuously from 1162, until it was burnt down, when the parish was annexed; the Dean and Chapter now share the alternate patronage of the amalgamated parish (see Hist. MSS. Rept. ix. p. 18bc 19a as to a lawsuit concerning the patronage). Houseling people in 1548 were 220. Chantries were founded here by: Robert de Kelsey, about 1334, for himself, Julian his wife, Hen. de Galeys, and Sara de Eldham, to which Hen. de Kelsey was admitted chaplain, September 5, 1336; the above Robert de Kelsey endowed it with the “Caufare” in Westcheap, which fetched £3: 14: 8 in 1548; John Offam, whose endowment fetched £14: 9: 6 in 1548, when William Baker was priest; Thomas Kelsey, whose endowment fetched £12: 13: 4 in 1548. A great number of the monuments in this church had been defaced by Stow’s time. He records the interment of Thomas Knesworth, mayor in 1505; Sir John Langley, mayor in 1576. No names of benefactors are recorded by him. Lawrence Bothe, Bishop of Durham 1457, of York 1476, was rector here; also John Bullingham (d. 1598), Bishop of Gloucester. Wood Street or Lane is the next important thoroughfare westward. It is supposed by Stow to have been so called because it was built wholly of wood; but Stow suggests also an alternative derivation, that it may have been named after one Thomas Wood, sheriff in 1491. The latter suggestion must be ruled out, because in 1394 a testator bequeathed his “mansion” in Wood Street. It is worthy of note that the first mention of the street is of houses, rents, and tenements, and so it continues until the end of the thirteenth century, when we begin to hear of shops; in 1349 a brewery is spoken of—the water, as in the case of Mugwell Street, must have been furnished by one of the numerous City wells. There were many inns in Wood Street: the Bell, the Coach and Horses, the Castle, and the Cross Keys. The Castle is still commemorated in a stone slab. The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Abbot of St. Albans before 1150; Henry VIII., who seized it in 1540 and sold it in 1543 to William Burwell; John Marsh and others in trust for the parish—it so continued up to 1666, when St. Mary Staining was annexed and the patronage was alternately in the Crown and parishioners. Houseling people in 1548 were 317. The latest church was very plain and measured 63 feet in length, 42 feet in breadth, and 31 feet in height. The east front had four Ionic pilasters supporting a pediment, and in the spaces between the columns there were three circular-headed windows. The tower, which was connected with the church by a porch, contained three stories, terminated by a parapet which was surmounted by a narrow spire with a vane; the total height was 130 feet. Richard de Basingstoke founded a chantry here before 1359, probably at the Altar of St. John Baptist. Amongst those buried in the old church was Alderman John Lambarde, sheriff, 1551, who was father to Stow’s great friend William Lambard, the antiquary; he died in 1554. The church contained a monument to Queen Elizabeth. The legacies of charity left to the parish were: 8s. per annum, of which Lady Read was donor; 5s. per annum, of which Mr. Hill was donor; £2 for 20 years, of which Mr. Longworth Cross was donor; £1 per annum, of which Mr. Bowman was donor. There were also ground-rents amounting to £36: 4s. leased for 61 years. Anthony Ellis or Ellys (1690-1761), Bishop of St. David’s, was a rector here; also Thomas Birch (1705-66), Secretary to the Royal Society, 1752-65. The modern Wood Street, for a considerable distance after Gresham Street, is one series of immensely high warehouses, on which the vertical lines of bricks between the plate-glass windows are the most prominent feature. The effect of these lines is rather neat and workmanlike; horizontally beneath the windows are carved stone designs of flowers and fruit in very heavy relief. On the other side of the street are the entries into Pickford’s Yard under an old eighteenth-century house of the plainer sort. The Church of St. Alban, Wood Street, is too far north to fall within our present section; but as it belongs to this street it must find a place here. The Church of St. Alban, the only one remaining in this street, is on the west side, in the Cripplegate Ward. In 1632 it was pulled down, but was rebuilt in 1634, probably by Inigo Jones, but was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the present building is the work of Wren, who completed it in 1685. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1244. The patronage of the church, as far as can be traced, was in the hands of: St. Alban’s Abbey, who exchanged it in 1077 to Westminster Abbey; St. James’ Hospital, Westminster, presented before 1244; Provost and Fellows of Eton, 1477, with whom it remained up to 1666, when the parish of St. Olave, Silver Street, was annexed and the patronage shared alternately with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s. Houseling people in 1548 were 300. There was a chantry founded here by Roger Poynel before 1366. The church formerly contained monuments to Sir John Cheke (1514-57), tutor of Edward VI. and others. The donors of charitable gifts were: William Peel, of St. Mary Savoy, who bequeathed an annuity of £10 in 1623 for the use of the poor; Gilbert Keat; Susan Ibel, £40 for providing coals for the poor; Richard Wynne, £20 to be distributed among eight poor people, at 2s. 6d. apiece; Thomas Savage, citizen and goldsmith, donor of premises in Holborn Bridge; Mr. Londson, £1: 6s. per annum for bread for the poor, through the Company of Embroiderers. There was a charity school for fifty boys and twenty-five girls, supported by voluntary contributions from the Church of St. Alban and others, from which the boys were apprenticed and the girls placed out to service. The parish had in 1732 a workhouse hired in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate. The following are some of the notable vicars of the church: William Watts (d. 1649), chaplain to Charles I.; John Adams (1662-1720), chaplain to William III. and Queen Anne. Foster Lane was originally St. Vedast’s. It is mentioned in a document of 1281 as St. Fauster’s, which was actually a corruption of St. Vedast’s. It was, before the Fire, a neighbourhood much frequented by goldsmiths and jewellers; William Fleetwood, Recorder of London in 1571, dated some of his letters to Lord Burleigh from Foster Lane. St. Vedast’s Church, commonly known as St. Fauster’s or Foster’s. It was severely damaged by the Fire, and rebuilt by Wren; the steeple was erected in 1697, the old one having been retained until then. The parish was united after the Fire with St. Michael-le-Querne, and St. Matthew, Friday Street, to which St. Peter, Westcheap, had been annexed. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1291. The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury; the Archbishop of Canterbury before 1396, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the parish of St. Michael-le-Querne was annexed and the patronage was alternately shared with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s up to 1882, when St. Matthew, Friday Street, with St. Peter, Westcheap, were annexed; the patronage is now in the hands of the Bishop of London for two turns, the Duke of Buccleugh for one turn. Houseling people in 1548 were 460. The church measures 69 feet in length, 51 feet in breadth, and 36 feet in height, and consists of a nave and south aisle separated by arches supported on four Tuscan columns. The steeple, which rises at the south-west, consists of a tower, surmounted by three stages, the lowest of which is concave, the second convex, and the third an obelisk-shaped spire; the total height is about 160 feet. Chantries were founded here: By Galfridus atte gate for himself and his wives Joan and Alice, about 1447, when Edmund Brennyng was admitted chaplain—the lands fetched £8: 6: 8, which was augmented by Christopher Tury and yielded in all £14: 10s. in 1548, when John Markehame was priest, “of the age of 59 years, of mean qualities and learning”; by William de Wyndesore for himself and Tolonia his wife; by John de Wyndesore, brother of the above William; by Mr. Cote in 1530, who gave £160 to purchase lands for the endowing of it, which were not purchased, but one Mr. Hayton, in 1548, finds a priest; by William Tryston, who endowed it £6: 14: 4, which was augmented by Simon Atwoll to John Longson, Master of the Mint, was buried in this church in 1583. Among the later interments Stow records those of: William Fuller, D.D., Dean of Durham, who suffered imprisonment for his loyalty in the times of the rebellion; Sir John Johnson, Alderman of the City, who died in 1698; and William Hall, deputy of this ward, who died in 1680; Robert Herrick was baptized here in 1591. No legacies or gifts are recorded by Stow. Drawn by G. Shepherd. Thomas Rotherham (1423-1500), afterwards Archbishop of York, was rector here; also Isaac Maddox (1697-1759), Bishop of St. Asaph and of Worcester; Adam Moleynes (or Molyneux, d. 1450), LL.D., Bishop of Chichester, who was slain by the marines at Portsmouth, incited by Richard, Duke of York; Thomas Blage (d. 1611), Dean of Rochester; Nathaniel Marshall (d. 1730), Canon of Windsor. In Gresham Street, between Foster Lane and Gutter Lane corners, is the Goldsmiths’ Hall. THE GOLDSMITHS COMPANYThe Goldsmiths Company is mentioned in the year 1180, when it appears to have been a voluntary association. It doubtless had its origin in a combination of goldsmiths, for their mutual protection, and to guard the trade against fraudulent workers. In the year 1300 the existence of the Company is recognised by a statute, viz., the 28th Edward I., cap. 80, which provides for the standards of gold and silver, and enacts that all articles of those metals shall be assayed by the wardens of the craft, to whom certain powers of search are also given. The first of the Company’s charters was granted to them by Edward III., in the first year of his reign (1327). It states that it had been theretofore ordained that all those who were of the goldsmiths’ trade should sit in their shops in the High Street of Cheap (Cheapside), and that no silver or plate, nor vessel of gold or silver, ought to be sold in the City of London, except at the King’s Exchange, or in the said street of Cheap amongst the goldsmiths, and that publicly, to the end the persons of the said trade might inform themselves whether the sellers came lawfully by such vessel or not; that no gold or silver shall be manufactured to be sent abroad but what shall be sold at the King’s Exchange, or openly amongst the goldsmiths, and that none pretending to be goldsmiths shall keep any shops but in Cheap. By two subsequent charters Edward III. confirmed and extended the privileges before granted, and he gave the Company licence to purchase and hold tenements and rents to the value of £20 per annum, for the relief of infirm members. Richard II., by letters patent of the sixteenth of his reign, after reciting that Edward III. had allowed the Company of the said craft to accept charitable donations, and to purchase estates as aforesaid, and that they might retain a chaplain to celebrate Mass amongst them every day, confirmed the liberties granted by Edward III. and granted and licensed the men of the craft that thenceforth they may be a perpetual community or society amongst themselves. Henry IV., by letters patent of his fifth year, recited and confirmed the preceding charters of Edward III. and Richard II. Henry VI., by letters patent of his first year, also recited and confirmed the charter of Henry IV. Edward IV., by letters patent of his second year, recited and confirmed the charters of his predecessors. Moreover, he granted that the said then wardens and their successors may be a corporation or body corporate to consist of and be called the Wardens and Commonalty of the Mystery of Goldsmiths of the City of London. That they may be capable in law to purchase, take, and hold in fee and perpetuity lands, tenements, rents, and other possessions whatsoever of any persons whomsoever that shall be willing to give, devise, and assign the same to them. That they may have perpetual succession and a common seal. Henry VII., by letters patent of the twentieth year of his reign, confirmed the whole of the preceding charters, and on account of the Company being opposed in their trade search and assay, granted by Edward IV., gave them the additional power to imprison or fine defaulters in the trade at their discretion; to seize and break unlawful work; to compel the trade, within three miles of the City, to bring their work to the Company’s common hall, to be assayed and stamped; and gave them power for ever, when it was not standard, to utterly condemn the same, without rendering account to the Crown. The whole of the liberties and franchises granted to the Company by the preceding charters are set forth and confirmed by inspeximus charters of 1st of Henry VIII., 1st of Edward VI., 1st of Mary, 3rd of Elizabeth, 2nd of James I., and 18th of Charles II. The Company also received a charter from James II. dated 4th of May in the first year of his reign, whereby, amongst other things, that monarch reserved to the Crown a right of control over the appointment of the wardens and clerk. The statute was made void by the Act of Parliament 2nd William and Mary, cap. 8. The Company have also an exemplification under the great seal of letters patent granted to them by James I., in the seventeenth year of his reign (July 24, 1619), confirming to them the possession of a large quantity of property in the City of London. The powers of the Company are exercised at the present time chiefly under the Acts of 12th George II., cap. 26, and 7th and 8th Victoria, cap. 22. As before stated, it appears that the Company was at first a voluntary association, and had for its chief objects the protection of the mystery or craft of goldsmiths; but it was evidently also formed for religious and social purposes, and for the relief of the poor members. From a drawing by Thos. H. Shepherd. The powers exercised by this voluntary association over the craft were subsequently confirmed to them by their charters. The wardens fined workmen for making wares worse than standard, entered their shops and searched for and seized false wares, settled disputes between masters and apprentices, and frequently punished rebellious apprentices by flogging, levied heavy fines upon members for slander and disobedience of the wardens, and for reviling members of the livery; and generally exercised a very powerful and absolute control, not only over the members of the fellowship, but also over all other persons exercising the goldsmiths’ trade. For the purpose of the assay they had an assay office in the early part of the fourteenth century. The statute of 28th Edward I. enacts that no vessel of gold or silver shall depart out of the hands of the workman until it is assayed by the wardens of the craft, and stamped with the leopard’s head; the leopard being at that time part of the royal arms of England. The Company and its members, even at this early period, appear to have acted as bankers and pawnbrokers. They received pledges, not only of plate, but of other articles, such as cloth of gold and pieces of napery. The London goldsmiths were divided into two classes, natives and foreigners. They inhabited chiefly Cheapside, Old Change, Lombard Street, Foster Lane, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Silver Street, Goldsmiths’ Street, Wood Street, and the lanes about Goldsmiths’ Hall. Cheapside was their principal place of residence; the part of it on the south side, extending from Bread Street to the Cross, was called “the Goldsmiths’ Row.” The shops here were occupied by goldsmiths, and here the Company possess The native and foreign goldsmiths appear to have been divided into classes, and to have enjoyed different privileges. First, there were the members of the Company, who were chiefly, but not exclusively, Englishmen; their shops were subject to the control of the Company; they had the advantages conferred by the Company on its members, and they made certain payments for the support of the fellowship. The second division comprised the non-freemen, who were called “Allowes,” that is to say, allowed or licensed. There were the “Allowes Englis,” “Allowes Alicant,” “Alicant Strangers,” “Dutchmen,” “Men of the Fraternity of St. Loys,” etc. All these paid tribute to the Company, and were also subject to their control. The quarterage paid by the members, and the tribute so paid by the “Allowes,” constituted the Company’s original income. We find frequent mention of efforts made by the English goldsmiths to prevent foreign goldsmiths from settling in London, but they did not succeed. The wise men of the craft probably knew that the best artists were foreigners, and were willing to profit by observation of their works and mode of working. In 1445, thirty-four persons, who were strangers, were sworn, and paid 2s. a head. In 1447 Carlos Spaen paid £8: 6: 8 to the alms of St. Dunstan, to be admitted a freeman, and in 1511 John de Loren paid £20 for the same object. The wardens also frequently obliged foreigners applying for the freedom to produce testimonials from the authorities of the towns abroad where they had resided. The government of the trade under the Company’s charters continued up to the reign of Charles the Second. But some time before this period, and in the interval between it and the passing of the Act of the 12th George II., cap. 26, the powers which had been granted to the Company began to be questioned, and the Company experienced difficulty in putting them into force. In 1738 the Company considered it expedient to obtain an Act of Parliament. And the 12th George II., cap. 26, passed in 1739, was prepared by the officers of the Company, brought into Parliament by them, with the assent of the government of the time, and all the cost of soliciting it and getting it passed was paid for by the Company, although it is a public Act. Under this Act the Assay Office is regulated. The Company are empowered thereby to make charges for the assaying and marking plate sufficient only to defray the expenses of the office, and are prohibited from making any profit thereby or deriving any pecuniary advantage therefrom. It may here be mentioned that at a very early period we find members of the governing body of the Company, both wardens and assistants, who were not of the craft. Amongst others, the leading bankers, themselves the descendants in trade of the old goldsmiths, from the time of the Stuarts to the present time, have been some of the most conspicuous members of the body. Amongst them we find the names of Sir Martin Bowes, who was Master of the Mint in the reign of Elizabeth; Sir Hugh Myddelton, the enterprising founder of the New River; Sir Francis Child, of Temple Bar; Sir Charles Duncombe, Sir James Pemberton, Sir Robert Vyner; and in the 19th century, Robert Williams and Thomas Halifax, Henry Sykes Thornton, William Banbury, John Charles Salt, Herbert Barnard, William Newmarch, William Cunliffe Brooks, Robert Ruthven Pym, Arthur B. Twining, Charles Hoare, and Robert Williams, jun. It remains to mention the connection of the Company with the coinage of the realm in what is called the trial of the Pyx, an office which has been performed by the Company ever since the reign of Edward I. Its object is to ascertain that the metal of which the gold and silver money coined by the Mint is composed is standard, and that the coins themselves are of the prescribed weight. This duty was performed in ancient times at uncertain intervals, and usually had for its immediate object the giving an acquittance to the Mint Master, who was bound to the Crown by indentures to coin money of the prescribed fineness and weight. But the Coinage Act of 1870 provides for and establishes an annual trial, and since that date the Pyx has been brought to Goldsmiths’ Hall and tried annually. In 1900, for the first time, at the request of H.M.’s Treasury, a Pyx from each of the Colonial Mints coining Imperial Coinage was tried. The jury is sworn by the Crown Remembrancer, who, the trial having been made and the verdict of the jury reduced to writing, attends at the Hall and receives them; after which their names are published in the Gazette. The number of the livery is 150. The Hall is in Foster Lane. Privileges of membership: A freeman of the Company has no advantages as such, except that if he be a deserving man and in need of pecuniary assistance he is eligible to receive, and would certainly receive, aid from the Company, either by pension or donation. When the Guild first had a Hall we know not, but the Hall has stood on its present site for upwards of 550 years. About 1340, land and a house at St. Vedast Lane and Ing Lane After the Great Fire they repaired and partly rebuilt their Hall, 1666-69, raising money slowly. Jarman was architect. The buildings, brick and stone, surrounded a paved quadrangle entered through the Doric archway in Foster Lane. The great hall was “magnificent” with marbled floor, moulded ceiling, pillared screen, high wainscot, painted banners, costly plate. Within 140 years they found this Hall decaying. They pulled it down and built the present (fourth) Hall in 1830-35, Philip Hardwick being architect. Like the Drapers, the Goldsmiths Company has taken up the cause of Technical Higher Education. On the west side of Foster Lane stood also St. Leonard’s Church, which was the parish church for St. Martin’s-le-Grand. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of Christ Church, Newgate Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1291. The patronage of the church was in the hands of: the Dean and Canons of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, 1291; the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1509; Henry VIII., who seized it in 1540; the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, 1553-54, in whose successors it continues, they being the alternate patrons of Christ Church, Newgate Street. Houseling people in 1548 were 452. A chantry was founded here by and for William de Wyndesore, at the Altar of Virgin Mary, before 1368, when his endowment fetched £3: 13: 4. There are few charities recorded by Stow. The church of St. Mary Staining was situated on the north side of Oat Lane, Foster Lane, and derived its name Staining from Painter Stainers dwelling there; or, according to some from stein, the Saxon for stone, other churches being built of wood. It was repaired and redecorated in 1630, and was burnt down in the Great Fire, but not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Michael, Wood Street; the site of this church was made a burying-ground. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1270. The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prioress and Convent of St. Mary, Clerkenwell; Henry VIII., and so continued in the Crown till the Great Fire, when the parish was annexed to St. Michael, Wood Street. Houseling people in 1548 were 98. The parish received three legacies, payable yearly, namely: 15s. 6d. from Lady Read and Mr. Hill; £1: 4s. from Mr. Lawne; and 1s. 6d. from Mr. Dean. What Gresham Street is on the north of our present section, so Watling Street is on the south. It runs roughly parallel with Cheapside and Poultry. Stow says of it: “Then for Watheling Street, which Leland called Atheling, or Noble Street; but since he showeth no reason why, I rather take it to be so named of that great highway of the same calling. True it is that at the present the inhabitants thereof are wealthy drapers, retaillers of woollen cloths, both broad and narrow, of all sorts, more than in any one street of this city.” How came Watling Street, the old country road, into the City? The old Roman road, as it approached the Thames, passed down the Edgware Road. Where is now the Marble Arch it divided into two, of which the older part crossed the marsh, and so over Thorney Island? The other ran along what is now Oxford Street and Holborn. It then crossed the valley of the Fleet and entered the City at the New Gate. If now we draw a line from Newgate to London Stone, just south of its present position, we shall find that it passes the north-east course of St. Paul’s precinct, cutting it off, so to speak, and meets the present Watling Street where it bends to the south of Bow Lane; it then follows the old Budge Row as far as the Stone. That was the original Watling Lane of the City. The Saxons, however, who found the streets a mass of confused ruins, built over part of the old Watling, and continued it as far as the south-east course of St. Paul’s. The street has few antiquities apart from its churches. There is no mention of Watling Street in Riley’s Memorials. In the Calendar of Wills we find shops in this street in 1307, a brewery in 1341, a widow’s mansion in 1349, and shops in 1361, “lands, tenements, and rents” in 1373, a house called “le Strelpas” in 1397. The other references to Watling Street are those of “tenements” only. The yearly procession of the City rectors with the mayor and aldermen started from St. Peter’s, Cornhill, marched along Chepe as far as St. Paul’s Churchyard, turning to the south and so to “Watling Street Close,” which was the eastern entrance to the churchyard. After the Fire, while the rubbish was being cleared away, on the east of the street were discovered nine wells in a row. They were supposed to have belonged to a street of houses from Watling Street to Cheapside. But one hardly expects to find a well in every house. The Church of St. Mary Aldermary stands in a triangle formed by Bow Lane, Queen Victoria Street, and Watling Street. It is called Alder, Older, or Elder, Mary, from its being the oldest church in the City having that dedication. Sir Henry Keble, Lord Mayor in 1510, began to rebuild it, and left at his death £1000 towards its completion; this was augmented by William Rodoway and Richard Pierson in 1626. The building was destroyed by the Great Fire, but rebuilt by Wren in 1681-82. For this purpose the legacy of £5000 was applied, which had been left by Henry Rogers for the rebuilding of a church; stipulation, however, was made that the new church should be an exact imitation of Keble’s, so that Wren was forced to adopt methods very different from his own. The building was greatly restored in 1876-77. The church now serves for four parishes—its original one, that of St. Thomas the Apostle, of St. Antholin, and of St. John the Baptist. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1233. The patronage of the church was in the hands of Henry III., 1233; the Prior and Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1288, who exchanged it with the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1401, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the parish of St. Thomas was annexed; and thus the Archbishop shared the patronage alternately with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s. Houseling people in 1548 were 400. The church is in the Tudor style of architecture, and consists of a nave, chancel, and two side aisles, separated from the central part by clustered columns and slightly pointed arches. It is 100 feet long, 63 feet broad, and about 45 feet high. The north side of the chancel is longer than the south, which gives the church a somewhat curious appearance. The tower, the upper portion of which was rebuilt about 1701, contains four storeys, with an open parapet, and is surmounted by four pinnacles. The total height is 135 feet. Sir Henry Keble, the founder of the original church, was buried here, and a monument erected to him in 1534; also Sir William Laxton, mayor, 1556, and Henry Gold, one of the rectors here, who was executed at Tyburn in 1534. “The Holy Maid of Kent” was also buried here. The monuments in the present church are of little interest. Over the west door there is a Latin inscription recording the munificence of Henry Rogers. Mr. Garret gave £100 to the lecturer of this church, to endure as long as the Gospel was preached. The particulars of the numerous other gifts and charities did not come into the possession of Stow. There were two almshouses for the poor of the Salters Company, who are four in number, each of whom has an allowance of 1s. per week. Thomas Browne (d. 1673), chaplain to Charles I., was rector here; also Robert Gell (1595-1665), Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge; Offspring Blackall (1654-1716), Bishop of Exeter; White Kennett (1660-1728), Bishop of Peterborough; Henry Ware, Bishop of Chichester; Henry Gold, who was executed at Tyburn, 1534; George Lavington, D.D. (1684-1762), Bishop of Exeter. Budge Row, northward, was spelt Begerow in 1376. Of it Stow says: “So called of Budge fur and the Skinners dwelling there.” At the south-western corner of Sise Lane, in Budge Row, there is a rectangular railed-in space about a dozen feet by six, sheltered by the corner of the adjoining house. Against the wall, facing eastward, is a monument in stone of considerable size. Two columns with Corinthian capitals support an architrave, and enclose a Here stood the parish church of St. Antholin, destroyed in the Great Fire, A.D. 1666, rebuilt 1677 by Sir Christopher Wren, architect. On the bases of the columns are inscribed the names of the churchwardens of St. Antholin’s and St. John Baptist’s, Walbrook, respectively. While the following inscription is beneath: The change of population in the City during two centuries rendering the church no longer necessary, it was taken down A.D. 1875, under the Act of Parliament for uniting City Benefices; the funds derived from the sale of the site were devoted in part to the Restoration of the neighbouring church of St. Mary Aldermary, where are also erected the monumental tablets removed from St. Antholin, and the erection at Nunhead of another church dedicated to St. Antholin greatly needed in that thickly populated district. And again, right across the bases of the pillars and the stone, run the words: In a vault beneath are deposited the greater part of the human remains removed from the Old church. The remainder are laid in a vault in the City of London Cemetery at Ilford, where also a monument marks the place of interment. The Church of St. Anthony or Antholin stood on the north side of Budge Row, at the corner of Shoe Lane, in Cordwainer Street Ward. It derived its name from being dedicated to St. Anthony of Vienna, who had a cell here founded by Henry II., but it is not known when the church was first built. About 1399 it was rebuilt, and again in 1513, but the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed it. From Wren’s design it was rebuilt, and completed in 1682; it was remarkable for its tower, with a spire all of freestone. In 1874 the building (except the steeple) was taken down, and in 1876 the steeple was also demolished, the materials of which were sold for £5. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1181. The patronage of the church was always in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted one part to John, son of Wizo the goldsmith, about 1141. Houseling people in 1548 were 240. In 1623 a very beautiful gallery was added to the church, every division of which (52 in number) was filled with the arms of kings, queens, and princes of the kingdom, from Edward the Confessor to Frederick, Count Palatine of the Rhine. Chantries were founded here by: Nicholas Bole, citizen and skinner, at the Altar of St. Katherine, to which William Pykon was admitted chaplain, 1390, on the resignation of Richard Hale—the endowment fetched £6: 13: 4 in 1548, when Robert Smythe was chaplain; John Grantham, whose endowment fetched £4 in 1548. In this church Thomas Hind and Hugh Acton, benefactors to the parish, were buried. There was also a monument to William Daunsey, mercer and alderman of the City. Some of the donors of gifts and charities were: the Mercers and Drapers, of £6 respectively; Sir William Craven and William Parker, £100, to which £118 were added by the parishioners, for establishing a daily lecture. There were a considerable number of charities in this parish. Among the rectors of this church were William Colwyn, who made a recantation at St. Paul’s Cross, Advent 1541, and Thomas Lamplugh (1615-91), Archbishop of York. On the opposite side of the street extends for some way a really old brick building, evidently built immediately after the Fire. Over a centre window is a curved pediment of brickwork. Beneath, an opening leads into a yard, and the building is used by Stationers. The west side of the lane is modern. Pancras Lane is an open space, once the graveyard of St. Pancras, Soper Lane. The houses are dull brick and stucco. The graveyard bears a great similarity to all that is left of the others; it is covered with dingy gravel and decorated by blackened evergreens. The iron gate bears a little shield telling that it was erected in 1886. There are one or two tombs still left. The Church of St. Pancras, Soper Lane, stood near a street called Soper Lane, but since the Fire called Queen Street. It was repaired 1621, and in 1624 Thomas Chapman the younger built a porch to it. The building was destroyed by the Great Fire, when its parish was annexed to that of St. Mary-le-Bow. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1312. The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, who granted it, April 25, 1365, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the church was destroyed in the Great Fire and the parish annexed to St. Mary-le-Bow. Houseling people in 1548 were 146. Chantries were founded here by: John Causton at the Altar of St. Anne, which was augmented by Simon Rice and Lettice his wife, before 1356, to which William de la Temple was presented by the King, January 10, 1374-75—the endowment was valued at £13 in 1548, when Adam Arnolde was priest; Margaret Reynolds, who bequeathed £233: 6: 8, which the Mercers had, and guaranteed a rent charge of £8: 13: 4 for the same to find a priest. The church originally contained monuments to John Stockton, mercer and mayor, 1470; Richard Gardener, mercer and mayor, 1478; and Thomas Knowles, twice Lord Mayor. Two charitable gifts are recorded by Stow, the donors of which were Thomas Chapman, whose benefaction was lost by Stow’s time, and Thomas Chapman his son, to the amount of £11: 3: 8. Only a few steps farther on is another melancholy little spot, with a stone slab on the wall near with inscription as follows: “Before the dreadful Fire, Anno 1666, stood the church of St. Benet Sherehog.” The railing and low wall were put up in 1842. Within the enclosure stands a tomb over the “Family Vault of Michael Davison, 1676.” The church was called St. Benet Sherehog, from one Benedict Shorne, or Shrog, or Shorehog, who was connected with it in the reign of Edward II. It was repaired in 1628, but destroyed by the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to St. Stephen, Walbrook, and its site made into a burying-ground. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1285. The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Prior and Convent of St. Mary Overy, of Southwark, 1324; then the Crown, since Henry VIII. seized it in 1542. Houseling people in 1548 were 300. Chantries were founded here: For Ralph le Fever and Lucy his wife—the endowment fetched £3: 11: 8 in 1548, when Anthony Gyplyn, lately deceased, had been priest; for Thomas Romayn and Julia his wife, to which John de Loughebourgh was admitted, August 12, 1326. Only one charitable gift is recorded by Stow in this parish, that of £5 per annum left by Mr. Davison for keeping his family vault in repair. Some of this was used for charitable purposes. John Wakering (d. 1425), Bishop of Norwich, was rector here. Queen Street was constructed in part after the Fire, and covers the old Soper Lane, so called from the soap-makers who formerly lived here (though Stow wants to derive the name from an ancient resident). The south end, leading to the river, seems to have been the later part. Soper Lane is mentioned in the Calendar of Wills as early as 1259, when Nicholas Bat, a member of the old City family of that name, bequeathed to his wife rents in Sopers’ Lane. Here, in 1297, there sprang up an evening market—“Eve Chepynge”—called the New Fair. It was established against the knowledge of the mayor by “strangers, foreigners, and beggars,” and was the cause of many deeds made possible by selling in the dark, and of much strife and violence. Therefore it was abolished. In the reign of Edward II. Soper Lane was the market-place of the Pepperers; seventy years later of the Curriers and Cordwainers. In the reign of Queen Mary there were many shops here for the sale of pies. In the year 1316 the “good folks in Soper Lane, of the trade of Pepperers,” agreed upon certain regulations for the observance of the trade and the prevention of dishonesty. In 1375 we find cordwainers between Soper Lane and the Conduit. The name of Size Lane is derived from St. Osyth. For Bucklersbury we will first let Stow speak: “Bucklersbury, so called of a manor and tenements pertaining to one Buckle, who there dwelt and kept his courts. This manor is supposed to be the great stone building, yet in part remaining on the south side of the street, which of late time hath been called the Old Barge, of such a sign hanged out near the gate thereof. This manor or great house hath of long time been divided and letten out into many tenements; and it hath been a common speech, that when Walbrooke did lie open, barges were rowed out of the Thames, or towed up so far, and therefore the place hath ever since been called the Old Barge. “Also on the north side of this street, directly over against the said Bucklersbury, was one ancient and strong tower of stone, the which tower King Edward III., in the 18th of his reign, by the name of the king’s house, called Cornet stoure in London, did appoint to be his Exchange of money there to be kept. In the 29th he granted it to Frydus Guynysane and Landus Bardoile, merchants of Luke, for “This whole street called Bucklersbury on both the sides throughout is possessed of grocers and apothecaries towards the west end thereof: on the south side breaketh out one other short lane called in records Peneritch street; it reacheth but to St. Sythe’s Lane, and St. Sythe’s church is the farthest part thereof, for by the west end of the said church beginneth Needler’s Lane, which reacheth to Soper Lane, as is aforesaid” (Stow’s Survey, p. 276). The origin of the name of Bucklersbury is Bukerel, and not Buckle; Bukerel was the name of an old City family. Andrew Bukerel was mayor from 1231 to 1236. Many Roman antiquities, pavements, bronzes, Samian ware, spoons, etc., have been found in Bucklersbury. A bronze armlet also found there may belong to pre-Roman times. The street is mentioned in many ancient documents, beginning with the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth century there were tenements here known as “Sylvestre tour” assigned by the Dean of St. Stephen, Westminster, to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, druggists, furriers, herbalists, and tobacconists had shops in Bucklersbury. In 1688 there was a Roman Catholic chapel in Bucklersbury, which was one of those destroyed or burned by the mob, chiefly consisting of London apprentices, during the riots pending the arrival of the Prince of Orange. An argument between the Dean and Canons of St. Paul’s and a carpenter of Bucklersbury shows that the parish of St. Benet Sherehog was called in 1406 the parish of St. Osyth, in which part of Bucklersbury stood. In 1455 the former name is given to the parish. Bucklersbury was cut in two when Queen Victoria Street was made. The upper portion consists chiefly of large modern many-windowed business houses. Near the north-east corner there is an old brick house containing part of Pimm’s restaurant. In the southern half Barge Yard is modern. The Bourse Buildings, occupied by a great number of engineers, accountants, and business men of all sorts, take up a large part of the street. Passing westward we come to Bow Lane, which was formerly called in the lower part Hosier Lane, from the trade of those who occupied it, and in the upper part, for a similar reason, Cordwainers’ Street. For the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow see p. 10. In its modern aspect Bow Lane is not uninteresting. A covered entry, inappropriately named New Court, leads into a fascinating corner. There is a gateway really and ruinously old; it is said to have survived the Fire. The ironwork pattern is lost now in meaningless and broken twists, though there is a semblance of what might have been a monogram over the centre gate. The houses all round the court evidently date from the period directly after the Fire. That facing the street is of red brick toned by age, and is said to have been the residence of a Lord Mayor. The others are of dark brick, picked out in red. No. 5 contains the offices of the Financial World. Beyond it a narrow passage leads at an angle round to the churchyard. A more spacious way runs beside the church itself. At the corner of this is a polished granite drinking fountain, erected in 1859, supporting green painted dolphins. In the churchyard a scene of confusion and turmoil daily takes place on the pavement which lies over the bones of the “ancient dead.” Great wooden crates and packing-cases are littered about. They are from that large modern building on the west, facing the church, belonging to warehousemen and manufacturers. But one old seventeenth-century house, of a date immediately succeeding the Fire, remains, on the south side of the churchyard, facing Cheapside. Its quiet blackened bricks and flat windows have beheld many a change of scene on the stage before it. The ground-floor windows and doorway are connected by an ornamental cornice. The red bricks of the church in Bow Lane contrast with a long narrow building of the eighteenth century which is squeezed against them. These contrast with the gaping cellars and basements of the more modern buildings. Of Bread Street there is very early mention. In 1204 the leprous women of St. James’s received a charter respecting a certain tenement in Chepe, at the head of Bread Street; in 1290 this tenement again becomes the subject of a charter. In 1263 there was a fire which consumed a part of Bread Street. “So called of bread in old time there sold: for it appeareth by records, that in the year 1302, which was the 30th of Edward I., the bakers of London were bound to sell no bread in their shops or houses, but in the market: and that they should have four hall-motes in the year, at four several terms, to determine of enormities belonging to the said Company. “Bread Street is now wholly inhabited by rich traders; and divers fair inns be there, for good receipt of carriers and other travellers to the city. It appears in the will of Edward Stafford, Earl of Wyltshire, dated the 22nd of March, 1498, and 14 Hen. VII., that he lived in a house in Bread-street in London, which belonged to The bakers gave continual trouble to the City by their light-weight loaves and their bad bread. When they were “wanted” by the alderman they gat themselves out of the City and to their hills beyond the jurisdiction of the mayor. It was ordained, in order to meet this difficulty, that the servants who sell the bread thus complained of should be punished as if they were masters. It was also discovered that “hostelers and habergeons” bought bread in the market and sold it to their guests at a profit. This was not allowed in mediÆval times. It was ordered that every loaf was to be bought of a baker, with his special stamp, and sold at the price regulated by the assize of bread. But there were others besides bakers who used the market of Bread Street, Cheapside; it became a place for cooks. In 1351, one Henry Pecche bought a caper pasty of Henry de Passelowe, cook at the Stocks, and found on opening it that the fowl was putrid. The case coming before the mayor, experts were called in, among them six cooks of Bread Street and three of Ironmonger Lane. The story shows how the exclusive character of a market had to be broken up for the conveniences of the people. Here we have cooks carrying on their trade in three different parts of the great market of Chepe. A few years later, one of the Bread Street cooks, John Welburgh Man by name, was convicted by the evidence of his neighbours of selling a pie of conger, knowing the fish to be bad. In 1595 a singular discovery was made at the north-east end of this street. In the construction of a vault was found, 15 feet deep, a “fair” pavement, and at the farther end a tree sawed into five steps—Stow says: “which was to step over some brook running out of the west towards Walbrooke; and upon the edge of the said brook, as it seemeth, there were found lying along the bodies of two great trees, the ends whereof were then sawed off, and firm timber as at the first when they fell, part of the said trees remain yet in the ground undigged. It was all forced ground until they went past the trees aforesaid, which was about seventeen feet deep or better; thus much hath the ground of this city in that place been raised from the main.” The first turning to the east going down Bread Street was, until recently, called the Spread Eagle Court. One of the corner houses of this court is supposed to have been the work-place of John Milton, whose father traded under the sign of the “Spread Eagle.” He was baptized in the church of Allhallows. House and church were destroyed in the Fire, but the register remains. On the corner house between Watling and Bread Streets is a stone slab fixed to the wall; this bears a bust of the poet in alto relievo. The rest of the building, which runs along Watling Street as far as Red Lion Court, is in new red brick, Born in Bread Street, 1608. Baptized in the Church of Allhallows, which stood here ante 1678. The Mermaid, like many other London inns, stood in a court with an entrance from Friday Street and from Bread Street. On the west side of Bread Street, on a site which, when Stow wrote, was occupied by “large houses for merchants and fair inns for passengers,” stood the Bread Street Compter, one of the two sheriffs’ prisons. As we have seen, it was later removed to Wood Street. Behind St. Mildred’s Church stood Gerard’s Hall, the entrance from Basing Lane. Of this place Stow speaks at length: “On the south side of this lane is one great house, of old time built upon arched vaults, and with arched gates of stone, brought from Caen in Normandy. The same is now a common hostrey for receipt of travellers, commonly and corruptly called Gerards hall, of a giant said to have dwelt there. In the high-roofed hall of this house sometime stood a large fir pole, which reached to the roof thereof, and was said to be one of the staves that Gerard the giant used in the wars to run withal. There stood also a ladder of the same length, which (as they say) served to ascend to the top of the staff. Of later years this hall is altered in building, and divers rooms are made in it. Notwithstanding, the pole is removed to one corner of the hall, and the ladder hanged broken upon a wall in the yard. The hosteler of that house said to me, ‘the pole lacketh half a foot of forty in length’: I measured the compass thereof, and found it fifteen inches. “I read that John Gisors, mayor of London in the year 1245, was owner thereof, and that Sir John Gisors, knight, mayor of London, and constable of the Tower 1311, and divers others of that name and family, since that time owned it. William Gisors was one of the sheriffs 1329. More, John Gisors had issue, Henry and John; which John had issue, Thomas; which Thomas deceasing in the year 1350, left unto his son Thomas his messuage called Gisor’s Hall, in the parish of St. Mildred in Bread Street: John Gisors made a feoffment thereof, 1386, etc. So it appeareth that this Gisor’s Hall, of late time by corruption hath been called Gerard’s Hall for Gisor’s Hall; as Bosom’s inn for Blossom’s inn, Bevis Marks for Buries Marks, Marke Lane, for Marte Lane, Belliter Lane for Belsetter’s Lane, Gutter Lane for Guthuruns Lane, Cry Church for Christ’s Church, St. Michel in the Querne for St. Michel at corne, and sundry such others. Out of this Gisor’s Hall, at GERARD’S HALL CRYPT IN 1795 The crypt of this house escaped the Fire. On its site was erected an inn called Gerard’s Hall, which contained seventy-eight bedrooms, and was one of the principal hotels of the City. The whole was removed for the construction of Cannon Street; Basing Lane, which ran from Bread Street to Bow Lane, disappeared at the same time. The Church of St. Mildred, Bread Street, still stands. It is on the east side of the street, a little to the south of Cannon Street, and is supposed to have been rebuilt in 1300 by Lord Trenchaunt, of The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of St. Mary Overy, Southwark, who had it in 1300, and granted it to John Incent and John Oliver, 1333; the above Prior and Convent. Houseling people in 1548 were 216. The present church measures 62 feet in length, and 36 feet in breadth, while the total height, to the summit of the cupola, is 52 feet. The interior remains practically in its original state. The carvings about the altar-piece and pulpit are attributed to Grinling Gibbons. The steeple, which rises at the south-east, consists of a plain brick tower, lantern, and slender spire culminating in a ball and vane. The total height is 140 feet, but only the upper portion is visible, owing to the buildings surrounding it. A chantry was founded here by Stephen Bull, citizen, of which Thomas Chapman was chaplain, April 26, 1453. The church originally contained monuments to: Lord Trenchaunt, a great benefactor, who was buried here about 1300; also Sir John Shadworth, mayor, 1401, who gave a parsonage house and other gifts to the church. Here too John Ireland and Ellis Crispe were buried in 1614 and 1625, the grandfather and father of Sir Nicholas Crispe, the devoted adherent of Charles I., who is greatly eulogised for his loyalty by Dr. Johnson; he died in 1666. Few details of the charities belonging to the parish are recorded by Stow; Thomas Langham and Mr. Coppinger being the only names mentioned besides those commemorated by monuments. Thomas Mangey (1688-1755), D.D., Prebendary of Durham, was a rector here; also Hugh Oldham (d. 1519) of Exeter. The Church of Allhallows, Bread Street, stood on the east side of the street. In 1625 the building was repaired, but ruined by the Great Fire shortly after. It was subsequently rebuilt. In 1878 it was taken down. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1284. The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Prior and Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury; Archbishop of Canterbury, April 24, 1365, by gift (1284-85) from the above, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when St. John’s, Watling Street, was annexed to it, these being annexed to St. Mary-le-Bow by Order in Council dated July 21, 1876. Houseling people in 1548 were 300. On the south side of the chancel there was a small part of the church, called “The Salters’ Chapel,” containing a window with the figure of the donor, Thomas Beaumont, wrought upon it. The church originally had a steeple, but in 1559 it was destroyed by lightning and not restored. The King granted a licence to Roger Paryt and Roger Stagenhow to found a guild in honour of our Lord, April 12, 1394 (Pat. 17 Rd. II. p. 2 m. 15). Some of the most notable monuments were those of Thomas Beaumont of the Company of Salters, John Dunster, a benefactor of the church, and Arthur Baron. The following were among the numerous benefactors: David Cocke, £100; William Parker, £100; John Dunster, £200, to be laid out in lands and tenements; Edward Rudge, £200, to be laid out in lands and tenements; Lady Middleton, £100. The most notable rectors of the church were: William Lyndwood (d. 1446), Chancellor to the Archbishop of Canterbury; Thomas Langton (d. 1501), Bishop of St. David’s. John Milton was baptized in this church. A tablet formerly affixed to the exterior of the church in commemoration of the event was put up outside St. Mary-le-Bow after the destruction of Allhallows. Friday Street.—“So called,” says Stow, “of fishmongers dwelling there, and serving Friday’s market.” In the roll of the Scrope and Grosvenor controversy, the poet Chaucer is recorded as giving evidence connected with this street, for when Cunningham also notes as follows: “The Nag’s Head Tavern, at the Cheapside corner of Friday Street, was the pretended scene of the consecration of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The real consecration took place in the adjoining church of St. Mary-le-Bow; but the Roman Catholics chose to lay the scene in a tavern. ‘The White Horse,’ another tavern in Friday Street, makes a conspicuous figure in the Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele. In this street, in 1695, at the ‘Wednesdays Clubs,’ as they were called, certain well-known conferences took place, under the direction of William Paterson, which ultimately led to the establishment of the Bank of England.” In the year 1247, certain lands in Friday Street are held by the nuns of “Halliwelle.” In 1258, one William Eswy, mercer, bequeathed to the Earl of Gloucester all his tenements in Friday Street for 100 marks, wherein he was bound to the Earl, and for robes, capes, and other goods received from him. In 1278, Walter de Vaus left to Thomas, his uncle, shops in Friday Street. Therefore in the thirteenth century the street was already a lane of shops. The date shows that the former character of Chepe market as a broad open space set with booths and stalls had already undergone great modifications. Other early references to the street show that it was one of shops. Chaucer’s evidence shows that a hundred years later there were “hostelers” or “herbergeours” living there. In 1363, certain citizens subscribed money as a present to the King. Among them is one Thomas, a scrivener of Friday Street, and in 1370 we find one Adam Lovekyn in possession of a seld which has been used for time out of mind by foreign tanners. He complains that they no longer come to him, but keep their wares in hostels and go about the streets selling them in secret. In Friday Street at the corner in Watling Street is a railed-in space, all that remains of an old churchyard, the churchyard of St. John the Evangelist. This is a piece of ground containing very few square yards, separated from the street by high iron railings, and filled with stunted laurel bushes and other evergreens. A hard gravel walk runs round a circular bed of bushes, and on one side stands a raised tomb-like erection. On the wall are one or two slabs indicating the names of those who are buried in the vault below. The Church of St. John the Evangelist was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to Allhallows, Bread Street, and both of these to St. Mary-le-Bow, by Order in Council, 1876. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1354. The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, before 1354; Henry VIII. seized it in 1540; the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1546 up to 1666, when it was annexed to Allhallows, Bread Street. A chantry was founded here by William de Angre, before 1361, whose endowment fetched £8: 13: 4 in 1548, when John Taylor was chaplain. No monuments of any note are recorded by Stow. In the north part of Friday Street is Blue Boar Court on the east side. This court was rebuilt in 1896, but previous to this was surrounded by old houses. One of these, No. 56, was interesting as having been the City home of Richard Cobden until 1845. It is said that this house was built on the site of a garden attached to Sir Hugh Myddelton’s house in Cheapside. The cellars beneath the building once covered the bullion belonging to the Bank of England. This was at the time when the Bank was in a room of the old Grocers’ Hall. The Church of St. Matthew, Friday Street, was situated on the west side of the street near Cheapside. It was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren in 1685; it was then made the parish church for this and St. Peter’s, Westcheap, which was annexed to it. About 1887 the building was pulled down. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1322. The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Abbot and Convent of St. Peter, Westminster, 1322, then Henry VIII., who seized it and gave it to the Bishop of Westminster, January 20, 1540-41; the Bishop of London, March 3, 1553-54; it continued in his successors up to 1666, when St. Peter’s, Cheapside, was annexed, and the patronage was shared alternately with the patron of that parish. Houseling people in 1548 were 200. The church was plain, without aisles, measuring 64 feet by 33 feet and having a tower 74 feet high. Chantries were founded here: By Adam de Bentley, goldsmith, for himself and Matilda his wife, to which Adam Ipolite de Pontefracto was admitted chaplain, June 14, 1334; by Thomas Wyrlyngworth, at the Altar of St. Katherine, to which John Donyngton was admitted chaplain, November 13, 1391: the King granted his licence, June 16, 1404; by John Martyn, whose endowment fetched £10 in 1548, when Henry Coldewell was priest, “70 years of age, meanly learned”; for Nicholas Twyford, miles, about 1400. The church originally contained monuments to Sir Nicholas Twyford, goldsmith and mayor, who died 1583, also Sir Edward Clark, Lord Mayor in 1696. Sir Hugh Myddelton, the designer of the New River, was a parishioner, and was buried here in 1631. A legacy of £5 a year was left to the poor of the parish by Mrs. Cole. James Smith, Edward Clark, and others contributed to the furnishing of the necessities of the church. The parish was to receive £240 out of the “cole-money” for the use of the parish or poor (Stow). John Thomas (1691-1766), Bishop of Lincoln, 1744, of Sarum 1761-66, was rector here; also Edward Vaughan (d. 1522), Bishop of St. David’s; John Rogers, who was burnt at Smithfield, 1555; Lewis Bayley (d. 1631), Bishop of Bangor, and Michael Lort (1725-90), Vice-President of Society of Antiquaries; Henry Burton, the ardent Puritan, who was put in the pillory and imprisoned for his religious opinions and attacks. The Church of St. Margaret Moses was situated on the east side of Friday Street, opposite Distaff Lane, now merged in Cannon Street, and derived its name from one Moses, who founded it. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of St. Mildred, Bread Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1300. The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Robert Fitzwalter, the founder, who gave it in 1105 to the Priors and Canons of St. Faith, Horsham, Norfolk, being confirmed to that house by Pope Alexander III. in his Bill dated at Turin, May 26, 1163; Edward III., who seized it from St. Faith, as an alien priory, and so it continued in the Crown till the parish was annexed to St. Mildred, Bread Street, in 1666. Chantries were founded here by: Nicholas Bray, whose endowment fetched £8: 16: 8 in 1548, when John Griffyn was “priest of the age of 46 years, of virtuous living and of small learning”; John Fenne, whose endowment yielded £9: 10s. in 1548, when John Brightwyse was “priest of the age of 46 years, of honest behaviour and indifferently learned”; Gerard Dannyell, whose endowment fetched £8 in 1548, when Nicholas Prideoux was priest. The church originally contained monuments to Sir Richard Dobbes, mayor, 1551; Sir John Allot, mayor, 1591. Only two legacies are recorded by Stow: 18s. per annum, the gift of John Bush; 16s. per annum, the gift of John Spot. John Rogers, who was burnt at Smithfield in 1555, was rector here. Distaff Lane.—“On the west side of Friday Street, is Mayden lane, so named of such a sign, or Distaffe lane, for Distar lane, as I read in the record of a brew-house called the Lamb, in Distar Lane, the 16th of Henry VI. In this Distar Lane, on the north side thereof, is the Cordwainers, or Shoemakers’ hall, which company were made a brotherhood or fraternity, in the 11th of Henry IV. Of these cordwainers I read, that since the fifth of Richard II. (when he took to wife Anne, daughter to Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia), by her example, the English people had used piked shoes, tied to their knees with silken laces, or chains of silver or gilt, wherefore in the 4th of Edward IV. it was ordained and proclaimed, that beaks of shoone and boots, should not pass the length of two inches, upon pain of cursing by the clergy, and by parliament to pay twenty shillings for every pair. And every cordwainer that shod any man or woman on the Sunday, to pay thirty shillings. “On the south side of this Distar Lane, is also one other lane, called Distar Lane, which runneth down to Knightrider Street, or Old Fish Street, and this is the end of Bread Street Ward” (Stow’s Survey, p. 393). The other lane was afterwards called Little Distaff Lane. Another name for this street was Maiden Lane. There was another Maiden Lane in Thames Street, and a third in Lad Lane, and a fourth on Bank side. Distaff Lane is absorbed by Cannon Street, and the “Little Distaff Lane” has been promoted by the omission of the adjective. Old Change.—Of this street Stow tells us everything that is of interest: “A street so called of the King’s exchange there kept, which was for the receipt of bullion to be coined. For Henry III., in the 6th year of his reign, wrote to the Scabines and men of Ipre, that he and his council had given prohibition, that none, Englishmen or other, should make change of plate or other mass of silver, but only in his Exchange at London, or at Canterbury. Andrew Bukerell then had to farm the Exchange, and was mayor of London, in the reign of Henry III. In the 8th of Edward I., Gregory Rockesly was keeper of the said Exchange for the king. In the 5th of Edward II., William Hausted was keeper thereof; and in the 18th, Roger de Frowicke. “This street beginneth by West Chepe in the north, and runneth down south to Knightrider Street; that part thereof which is called Old Fish Street, but the very housing and office of the Exchange and coinage was about the midst thereof, south from the east gate that entereth Pauls churchyard, and on the west side in Baynard’s castle ward. “On the east side of this lane, betwixt West Cheape and the church of St. Augustine, Henry Walles, mayor (by license of Edward I.), built one row of houses, the profits rising of them to be employed on London Bridge” (Stow’s Survey, p. 35). Lord Herbert of Cherbury lived in a “house among gardens near the Old Exchange.” St. Paul’s School was founded by Dean Colet in 1509, and the schoolhouse stood at the east end of the Churchyard, facing the Cathedral. It was destroyed by the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren, and then again taken down and rebuilt in 1824, and subsequently removed to Hammersmith to the new building designed by Alfred Waterhouse, R.A., in 1884. For further, see “Hammersmith” in succeeding volume. The old site in St. Paul’s Churchyard is now covered by business houses. At the corner of Old Change and Watling Street stands St. Augustine’s Church. It was burnt down by the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren in 1682, and the parish of St. Faith’s annexed to it. The steeple, however, was not completed till 1695. As it possessed no proper burying-ground of its own, a portion of the crypt of St. Paul’s was used for the interment of parishioners. The earliest date of an incumbent was 1148. The patronage of the church was always in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted it to Edward, the priest, in 1148. Houseling people in 1548 were 360. The present church measures about 51 feet in length, 30 feet in height, and 45 feet in breadth; it is divided into a nave and side aisles by six Ionic columns and four pilasters. The steeple rises at the south-west, consisting of a tower, lantern, and spire. It is 20 feet square at the base, and has three stories. The lantern is very slender. The total altitude is 140 feet. No chantries are recorded to have been founded here. The ancient church contained few monuments of note. The present building has a tablet to the memory of Judith (died 1705), the first wife of the eminent lawyer William Cowper. Some of the benefactors were: Thomas Holbech, rector of the parish, 1662, who gave £100 towards finishing the church; Dame Margaret Ayloff, £100. After the parish of St. Faith’s was annexed, gifts to the amount of £700 were received from various sources. William Fleetwood (1656-1723), Bishop of St. Asaph, was rector here; also John Douglas (1721-1807), Bishop of Carlisle and of Sarum, and Richard H. Barham (1788-1845), author of The Ingoldsby Legends. With this we end the first section of the City. |
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