Two opposite forces acted upon the City Companies: one separating them and multiplying Companies for different parts of the same trade or craft; the other uniting in one Company crafts which were related chiefly by using the same material. Thus the Barbers divided into Barbers and Surgeons; the Grocers into Grocers and Apothecaries; while at one time the Weavers included in their body all those trades which had to do with woven stuffs, and were so powerful that they threatened to rule the whole City. It happened sometimes that some trades were injured by the inability of the Company to look after them. Thus it was quite natural that the Grocers who imported drugs and spices and oils used by Apothecaries should include these persons in their own livery. But, the wardens not being skilled in the use of medical prescriptions and preparations, could not look after their own people. Consequently complaints became general of the ignorance and incompetence of Apothecaries for want of proper supervision. Towards the end of the sixteenth century these complaints were brought forward categorically. It took time for the matter to be understood, and it was not until 1617 that James bestowed a separate charter upon the Apothecaries in spite of the remonstrances of the Grocers.

The objects of this charter, concisely stated, are to restrain the Grocers (the former associates of the Apothecaries) or any other City Company from keeping an apothecary’s shop or exercising the “art, faculty, or mystery of an apothecary within the City of London or a radius of seven miles.” To allow no one to do so unless apprenticed to an apothecary for seven years at least, and at the expiration of such apprenticeship such apprentice to be approved and allowed by the master and wardens and representatives of the College of Physicians, before being permitted to keep an apothecary’s shop, or prepare, dispense, commix, or compound medicines. To give the right of search within the City of London or a radius of seven miles of the shops of apothecaries or others, and “prove” the drugs, and to examine within the same radius all persons “professing, using, or exercising the art or mystery of apothecaries.”

It also confers the power to burn “before the offender’s doors” any unwholesome drugs, and to summon the offenders before the magistrates.

And to buy, sell, or make drugs. Up to the passing of the Apothecaries Act, 1815, so far as the prescribed radius extended, the three first-stated objects of the charter and the existence of the society in relation to its members were identical. A member of the Society of Apothecaries and an apothecary of the City of London or within seven miles were convertible terms.

As regards the fourth object prescribed by the charter, the Society, doubtless from its want of means, has never itself until the present time bought, sold, or made drugs, but owing to the great difficulty of its members obtaining pure drugs it allowed them to raise money themselves and create stock or shares for that purpose, and to carry on such trade in the name of the Society for their own personal profit as a private Company or partnership under various titles. Owing to such trade having ended in a loss, this private partnership was dissolved in 1880, and the Society is now itself carrying on the trade at its own risk.

As regards the three first-stated powers of the charter, the Society (by means of the Apothecaries Act of 1815) extended them so greatly as to effect not only a revolution in their own sphere of operations, but also in the medical profession and in the relations subsisting between the latter and the general public.

This Act (after placing the right of search referred to in the third-stated power of the charter on a more precise and practical basis, but to which it is unnecessary to allude as having fallen into necessary desuetude by the various Pharmacy and Poisons Acts) created a court of 12 examiners to be appointed by the master, wardens, and court of assistants, who were to examine all persons in England and Wales as to their skill and ability in the science and practice of medicine, and five examiners to examine assistants for the compounding and dispensing of medicine. It authorised the Society to receive fees for granting the respective licences, and (saving the rights of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons) it empowered the Society to recover penalties for practising or compounding without such licences.

The Apothecaries Act, 1815, contained, however, two restrictions which were removed by the Apothecaries Act Amendment Act, 1874, namely, (a) the obligation of the 12 examiners being members of the Society of Apothecaries, and being of at least 10 years’ standing, and (b) of candidates for examination having served an apprenticeship of five years to an apothecary.

The Act of 1874 also contains other provisions which relate more to questions of medical legislation than this present inquiry. Shortly the effect of the Act of 1815 was to make the Society of Apothecaries one of the three great medical licensing bodies for England and Wales [the number of its present licentiates is between 8000 and 9000], and of the Act of 1874 was to throw open the Society’s examinerships, and to confer on it a freedom in reference to future medical reform to an extent not exceeded by any other body.

The Company consists of about 400 members including the court, the livery, and the yeomanry or freemen.

The hall, which stands on the eastern side of Water Lane, formerly consisted of the town house of Lady Howard of Effingham. It was, of course, destroyed by the Fire, but the buildings which were erected after the Fire have a delightful air of quiet and peace, such as belongs very fitly to a scientific society. The hall stands behind a small paved court; on the left hand is the shop, at the north end of the hall are the offices, the library and the court rooms. The Physic Gardens at Chelsea also belong to the Apothecaries on certain conditions, especially that the Company should every year present to the Royal Society fifty dried specimens of plants growing in these gardens, till the number of 2000 was reached. As this was in 1731, that number has long since passed and the Company’s debt is paid.

Among the more eminent members of this Company have been William and John Hunter, Jenner, Smollett, Humphry Davy, Dr. Sydenham, Erasmus Wilson, and Sir Spencer Wells. Oliver Goldsmith and Keats were also members.

Printing House Square contained the King’s Printing House.

“The first I have discovered was John Bill, who, ‘at the King’s Printing House in Black Friars,’ printed the proclamations of the reign of Charles II., and the first London Gazette, established in that reign. Charles Eyre and William Strahan were the last King’s printers who resided here, and in February, 1770, the King’s Printing House was removed to New Street, near Gough Square, in Fleet Street, where it now is. The place still continues to deserve its name of Printing House Square, for here every day in the week (Sunday excepted) The Times newspaper is printed and published, and from hence distributed over the whole civilized world. This celebrated paper, finding daily employment on the premises for between 200 and 300 people, was established in 1788,—the first number appearing on the 1st of January in that year.” (Cunningham.) The Times office is a very notable feature in Queen Victoria Street by reason of its great height and conspicuous clock. Queen Victoria Street and Upper Thames Street gradually diverge at a very acute angle. The former is on a lower level than the latter, and is divided from it for about seventy yards by a low wall only, with an open space crossed by steps. In Queen Victoria Street on the left is the square tower of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe, outlined in white stone, and thrown into relief by a rather ornamental red-brick building which stands in front.

St. Andrew’s Hill was sometimes called Puddle Dock Hill. In Ireland Yard stood the house bought by Shakespeare in 1612, and bequeathed by him to his daughter Susanne Hall. In Green Dragon Court there stood, until a year or two ago, one of the oldest of the London taverns from which the court took its name.

The Wardrobe.—On the north side of St. Andrew’s church stands a small square which, with its trees and the absence of vehicles or shops, is one of the most quiet spots in the whole City. This square was formerly the court of the town house built by Sir John Beauchamp (d. 1359), whose tomb in St. Paul’s Cathedral was commonly called Duke Humphrey’s tomb. Before his death the house became the property of King Edward III. who made it a Royal Wardrobe House, and so it remained until the Great Fire. James I. gave the collection of dresses—called by Fuller a “Library of antiquaries wherein to read the fashion and mode of garments in all ages”—to the Earl of Dunbar, by whom they were all sold and dispersed. The wardrobe was taken after the Fire to the Savoy and then to Buckingham Street, Strand. The last keeper was Ralph, Duke of Montagu (d. 1709).

When Charles V. came to England in 1522, among the lodgings assigned to his suite was the house of Margaret Hanley, “under the Wardrobe side, having two chambers and two beds.”

Wardrobe Place is a delightful spot with an air of brooding quietness. The houses are nearly all old “post fire,” dating from about 200 years ago. That on the east side of the entry is black with age, and the lines in the brickwork waver as they cross its front. Next to it on the east side of the court is a plaster-fronted one, and then a row of three dark-brick houses with the so-called “flat arch” of brighter red bricks glowing above the rectangular windows. Nearly a dozen twisted plane trees, all young, and measured by inches only in circumference, straggle irregularly from the cobblestones of the courtyard. On the west side there are charming houses in the same style as the above-mentioned. The largest of these, No. 2, is wainscotted from floor to ceiling, and has in many rooms great projecting fireplaces forming recesses on either side half the width of the rooms. From the south-east corner there is a covered-in passage leading to the back of the Old Bell Hotel, and with Wardrobe Chambers opening into them.

The church derived its title from its proximity to the King’s Wardrobe above described. It was formerly called St. Andrew-juxta-Baynard’s Castle. After the Great Fire, the church was rebuilt by Wren and completed in 1692, and the parish of St. Anne, Blackfriars, was united with it. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1261.

The patronage of this church was in the hands of: The family of Fitzwalter, Lords of Woodham, 1361, which becoming extinct, it passed to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, then to Richard, Earl Warwick, who married Berkeley’s daughter; the three daughters of the Countess of Warwick, viz. Lady Talbot, afterwards Countess of Shrewsbury; Lady Ross; and Lady Latimer, afterwards Countess of Dorset in 1439; and the Crown, since St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, was annexed to it.

Houseling people in 1548 were 450.

This church measures 75 feet in length, 59 in breadth, and 38 feet in height, and contains two side aisles divided from the nave by square pillars, encased in wood to the height of the top of the galleries. The ceiling is exceptionally fine, with beautifully moulded wreaths. The exterior is of red brick with stone dressings. The tower, which is square and of four stories, rises at the south-west; the two lower ones contain windows, the third a clock, and the highest has square-headed openings with louvres. A cornice and balustrade complete the tower, which is about 86 feet in height.

Chantries were founded here by: John Parraunt, armiger, for himself and Clemencia his late wife, and for John Loc, alias Foxton, citizen and fishmonger, and Margaret, his wife (licence was granted December 3, 1409; the endowment fetched £12: 3: 4 in 1518 when Thomas Mores was priest, “aged 54, meanly learned”); Humphrey Talbot, whose endowment fetched £7: 6: 8 in 1548.

There are three pyramidal monuments of white marble to three successive rectors—the Rev. William Romaine, a celebrated preacher; the Rev. William Goode, rector in 1795; and the Rev. Isaac Saunders, who held the living for nearly twenty years.

Some of the donors of charities were: John Lee, of a house and wharf, leased for £30 per annum; Mrs. Paradine, £3 per annum; Mrs. Cleve, thirteen penny loaves to be dealt out every Sunday.

There was a free school founded by a private person for the benefit of the children of poor tailors, where forty boys and thirty girls were taught and clothed. Also three almshouses maintained by the rent of an adjoining house, built partly by charity of the Lady Elizabeth, Viscountess Chomondeley, and partly at the expense of the inhabitants, in 1679.

Among the most notable of the rectors were: Philip Baker (d. 1601), Vice-Chancellor Cambridge University; William Savage (d. 1736), Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; William Romaine (1714-1795), Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London; William Goode (1762-1816), President of Sion College; John Harding (1805-74), Bishop of Bombay.

A little passage, right-of-way to the public, goes round the north and east sides of the church, and at the corner where this joins St. Andrew’s Hill stands the old Rectory House. This is a charming old building, dating from soon after the Fire. There is, curiously enough, no oak in the woodwork, excepting only in the cross-pieces of the window-frames. The fireplace in the study is of interest, fashioned of marble and tiles set in polished wood; and on the overmantel there is a little slab bearing the words, all in capital letters:

Laus Deo per Jesum Christum. Church Missionary Society, Instituted April 12, 1799, in this room; the committee meetings of the Society were held from June 17, 1799, to January 3, 1812: and here on January 2, 1804, its first missionaries were appointed to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.

The house betrays its age in all its lines, and though there is no other special feature worthy of comment in it, the tiny garden behind is well worth a visit; it contains a plane-tree, and is a curious little oasis in a wilderness of bricks and mortar.

Queen Victoria Street was only begun in 1867-68 as a direct thoroughfare from the embankment to the Mansion House. It was formally opened November 4, 1871.

The headquarters of the British and Foreign Bible Society is solidly designed, with pilasters running up the front between the windows. Over the great door, supported by blocks of polished granite, is a heavy stone balcony, and three smaller balconies project from the windows above. An ornamental cornice runs round the roof. The architect was Mr. Edward l’Anson.

The library contains the Fry collection of English Bibles, the most complete ever made. This was purchased by the Society for £6000. It includes a copy of the earliest edition of Coverdale printed abroad 1535, and one of the earliest editions printed in England two years later. In the cases about the room are many objects of interest—a German Bible printed 1473; Codex Zacynthus, a palimpsest, of which the earlier writing is supposed to date from the fifth or sixth century, the later from the twelfth. The Society was founded in 1804. Its object is simply to “circulate the Bible without note or comment, in all languages and in all lands.”

Since its foundation over 140 million copies of the Bible, whole or in parts, have been issued. The Society now produces the Bible in about 330 languages and dialects. The University Press monopolises the printing of English Bibles, and much of the printing of the Society in foreign languages is done abroad. The only actual printing carried on in Queen Victoria Street is that done by one man, who works with two hand-presses for the blind. But the issue of fresh copies by the Society comes to an average of 13,000 for every working day.

The General Post Office Savings Bank offices, with a frontage of about 250 feet, are next door. The garden belonging to the old Doctors Commons stretched across the roadway at this point, and was only finally cleared away in 1867 at the making of the new street.

The Heralds’ College or College of Arms is a fine old building in deep-coloured brick. The front stands back from the street, and is supported by two wings. The small courtyard resulting is separated from the street front by high iron railings and gates. There are two brick and stone piers at each gateway, with that favourite ornament of the Stuart period—stone balls—on their summits. The back of the eastern wing abuts on Peter’s Hill, and the wide, outside flap shutters of an old-world style give the little hill a quaint aspect. The College was rebuilt after the Fire, and restored at the opening of Queen Victoria Street. It was originally Derby House, built by the first Earl of Derby and presented in 1555 by Queen Mary to the then Garter King-of-Arms; so it has long been devoted to its present use. Returning to Queen Victoria Street we see opposite in enormous gilt letters, each four or five feet long, “Salvation Army International Headquarters” right across the front of a great building.

Addle Hill, like Addle Street, is supposed to be derived from the Saxon Adel, noble. It has been found written Adling Hill. The whole space between Addle Hill and Bell Yard, and between Queen Victoria Street and Carter Lane, with the exception of Knightrider Street, is now occupied by General Post Office Savings Bank Department. Northward, on the south side of St. Paul’s Churchyard, near the west end, was the church of St. Gregory mentioned elsewhere.

Carter Lane was formerly divided into Great and Little Carter Lane. From the Bell Inn, Bell Yard, in Carter Lane, the only letter addressed to Shakespeare that is known to exist was sent to him by Richard Quiney—“To my loveing good friend and country man, Mr. William Shakespeare, deliver these.” Bell Yard led to the Prerogative Will Office, Doctors’ Commons.

Carter Lane, also called Shoemakers’ Row, is mentioned in the Calendar of Wills in the year 1295. The west end still retains that name in Ogilby’s map of 1677. In 1424 the exchequer paid to John Kyllyngham, master of a house called The Bell in Carter Lane, the sum of £17: 14: 8 for costs and expenses of Sir Gilbyn de Lauvoy, knight, and John de la Roe, Esq., and their servants and horses for twenty-eight days. The said Sir Gilbyn and John de la Roe had been sent to the Holy Land by Henry V. “upon certain important causes.” Deeds of the fourteenth century speak of tenements in Carter Lane. In this street were several taverns of note such as the White Horse, the Sun, the Bell, and the Saracen’s Head. Here was a famous meeting-house in which many of the most distinguished of Nonconformist ministers preached.

Here is the school for St. Paul’s choir-boys, with a stencilled frieze. The playground is on the roof.

Creed Lane was formerly called Sporier Row. An inn in Sporier Row is assigned in the fifteenth century by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s to their canons. After the Fire there were differences as to the sites and boundaries of houses destroyed in Creed Lane. The Lane was widened in 1750 as one of the improvements made at that time.

Dean’s Court has now warehouses erected on the north and east sides. The house over the archway was said to have been occupied by Sir Christopher Wren as his office during the building of St. Paul’s. Within this court were also the vicar general’s, the commissary and the consistory courts, and offices for procuring marriage licences.

St. Peter’s College adjoined Dean’s Court on the west side in St. Paul’s Churchyard (see under the Stationers Company, p. 199).

When Charles V. came to London in 1522, Doctors’ Commons among other places furnished for his suite a hall, a parlour, and three chambers with feather beds. Mention is made of the dining-hall of Doctors’ Commons and of the “entre going into the great canonicale House now naymed the Doctors’ Commons with a chamber over the said entre,” and of other parts of the building.

This ancient College or House of Doctors of Law was swept away in 1861-67 in consequence of alterations in legal procedure. The courts were removed, and the business of the proctors was merged in the ordinary work of the High Courts of Justice and the Bar.

The Deanery itself is on the west side standing back behind a high brick wall, painted yellow. It is attributed to Sir Christopher Wren, and was built soon after the Great Fire. The stone piers of the gates are surmounted by cones. The building itself is tiled with three dormer windows standing out from the roof and heavy projecting eaves. In the interior there is no carving or anything of antiquarian interest calling for remark, but the front door has some rich wood-carving in the style of Grinling Gibbons.

Paul’s Chain and the greater part of St. Bennet’s Hill are now Godliman Street. The origin of the name “Godliman” is unknown. Cunningham says that the earliest mention of the name is 1732. It is not found in Ogilby nor in Strype. It has been spelt “Godalmin.”

A little court named Paul’s Bakehouse seems to have been asleep while the rest of the world passed it by. It is true the house immediately fronting the entry is covered with ugly yellow plaster, but it is by no means obtrusively modern, and if we except an iron railing in the corner over an area in the north-east, and the house above it, the remainder of the court has been touched by time alone since it left the builders’ hands in the seventeenth century. The houses on the north and south sides are of brick; the northern ones bulge forward out of the perpendicular, and they have low wooden doorways. That in the south-west corner is supported by grooved pilasters. The northern building claims a better staircase in the interior—a staircase with spiral balusters and carved woodwork, low and substantial.

Knightrider Street.—Why this street should be named, as Stow says, “after knights riding” more than any other street, it is impossible to explain. One may, however, suppose that it was named after some branch of the Armourers’ or Loriners’ Craft. Dr. Linacre lived here. Knightrider Street now extends to Queen Victoria Street, but formerly the eastern part from Old Change was called Old Fish Street. Do Little Lane, between Carter Lane and Knightrider Street, now Knightrider Court, is found in many ancient documents called “Dolite,” “Do Lyttle,” “Doelittle” in deeds of Edwards I., II., and III.

The church stands in Knightrider Street; it has been known by several other names, Coldenabbey, Coldbey, etc. It was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren in 1677, when the parish of St. Nicholas Olave was annexed. In 1873 it was thoroughly repaired. Four other parishes were subsequently united. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1319.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Dean of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, then the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1532. Henry VIII., who seized it, and so continued in the Crown till Queen Elizabeth granted it in 1559 to Thomas Reeve and George Evelyn, from whom it passed to several private persons and at length came to the Hacker family in 1575, one of whom, Colonel Francis Hacker, was involved in the beheading of Charles I.; he was finally executed as a traitor, his estate including this advowson being forfeited and thus it came to the Crown, and so continued until St. Nicholas Olave was annexed after the Great Fire, when the patronage was shared alternately with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

Houseling people in 1548 were 180.

The interior of the church, which contains no aisles, measures 63 feet in length, 43 feet in breadth, and 36 feet in height. The steeple, which rises at the north-west, consists of a tower of four stories concluded by a cornice with urns at each angle; above this a spire rises, completed by a balcony, and supporting a square pedestal with a finial, ball, and vane. The total height is about 135 feet.

Chantries were founded here: By John Sywarde and Thomas Blode, who endowed it with lands which fetched £6 in 1548, when Anthony Little was priest “of 50 years and of mean learning”; by John Tupley, who left lands and tenements valued at £12: 8: 4 in 1548, when Ralph Jackson was priest “of 30 years of age and very well learned”; Thomas Barnard, John Saunderash, and William Cogshale, who gave their lands in Distaff Lane to endow the same, which yielded £7: 6: 8 in 1548, when William Benson was priest, “46 years of age, and a very poor and sickly man.”

The church contained no monuments of any special note. Walter Turke, mayor in 1349, was interred here.

Barnard Randolph bequeathed £900 to this parish and St. Mary Magdalene for charities; he died in 1583. No other names are recorded by Stow.

Herbert Kynaston (1809-1878), High Master of St. Paul’s School, was rector here. But the most notable among the rectors is the most recent, Prebendary Shuttleworth, whose death in 1900 left a gap difficult to fill. Among the most notable of his social schemes was the foundation of a social club for young men and women who work in the City (see p. 219).

Old Fish Street, partly wiped out by Knightrider Street, was a row of narrow houses built along the middle of the street like the old houses at Holborn Bars, or like Butchers’ Row behind St. Clement Danes; or like Holywell Street, Strand. Stow says:

“These houses, now possessed by fishmongers, were at the first but moveable boards or stalls, set out on market-days to show their fish sold; but procuring license to set up sheds, they grew to shops, and by little and little to tall houses of three or four stories in height, and now are called Fish Street.”

St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, was situated on the north side of Knightrider Street at the west corner of the Old Change. It was destroyed by the Great Fire, and subsequently rebuilt and made the parish church for this and the parish of St. Gregory; but it was again burnt down in 1886, and has not been rebuilt.

In 1890 these two parishes were united to St. Martin, Ludgate. 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, as a vicarage, about 1162, but about 1319 it was a rectory in the same patronage and has so continued.

Houseling people in 1548 were 360.

The church formerly contained a considerable number of monuments, but the individuals commemorated were of comparatively little note. Among them was one, Barnard Randolph, common sergeant of the City of London, and benefactor of the parish. He died in 1583.

Some of the charitable gifts recorded by Stow are: A messuage, leased at £28 per annum, the gift of Thomas Berry; 40s. per annum, the gift of Justice Randall; £3: 18s. per annum, the gift of the Company of Wax Chandlers.

In St. Gregory’s Parish, in the Ward of Castle Baynard, there was a school purchased at the cost of Alderman Barber, where thirty boys and twenty girls were educated. There was one almshouse upon Lambeth Hill.

John Hewitt was rector here; he was tried by Cromwell’s High Court of Justice in 1658 and beheaded. Also William Crowe (d. 1743), Chaplain in Ordinary to George II.

Sermon Lane.—According to Stow this was originally Sheremonier’s Lane. The name is found as “Sarmoneres,” “Sarmoners,” “Sarmouneris,” and “Seremoneres” Lane. The most interesting mention of the Street is contained in the Hist. MSS. Comm. Rept. IX., Part I. 26b. (A.D. 1315):

“Whereas a house belonging to the Chapter of St. Paul’s, at the north-east corner of ‘Sarmouneris’ Lane, has been assigned to Sir Nicholas Housebonde, minor canon of St. Paul’s, for his residence, the said Sir Nicholas has complained that it is inconvenient for the purpose on account of the grievous perils which are to be feared by reason of its distance from the cathedral and the crossing of dangerous roads by night, and the attacks of robbers, and other ill-disposed persons, which he had already suffered, and also on account of the ruinous condition of the building and the crowd of loose women who live around it. The Chapter, therefore, assigns to him a piece of ground at the end of the schools upon which to make a house.”

In Sermon Lane is the charity school. It was built in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Two quaint figures of charity children, each perhaps a couple of feet high, project from the first floor. The boy dressed in the long lapelled coat, the girl in panniers, apron, and cap. The house is of brick. The two lower floors have ordinary wide arched windows, but the two upper ones have each a unique display of no less than nine narrow, circular headed windows in a row extending across all the front. These give a curious cloistral aspect to the place. Over the doorway and two ground-floor windows are scrolls fixed up, but on one only is there an inscription, which is clearly readable, as follows:

To the Glory of God and for the benefit of the poor children of this parish of Castle Baynard Ward this house was purchased at the sole cost of John Barber, Esq., Alderman of this ward, in the year of our Lord 1722.

And on an immense plaster slab running all across the story above is “Castle Baynard Ward School, supported by voluntary contributions.”

St. Bennet’s Hill.—Strype: “Upon Paul’s Wharf Hill, within a great Gate, and belonging to that gate next to the Doctors’ Commons are many fair Tenements, which in their Leases made from the Dean and Chapter go by the name of Camera DianÆ, or Diana’s Chamber. So denominated from a spacious building that in the time of Henry II. stood where they now are standing. In this Camera, an arched and vaulted structure, this Henry II. kept, or was supposed to have kept, that jewel of his heart, fair Rosamund, whom there he called Rosa Mundi; and hereby the name of Diana. To this day are remains and some evident testifications of turnings tedious and windings as also of a passage underground from this House to Castle Baynard, which was, no doubt, the king’s way from thence to his Camera DianÆ.”

In 1452 (Hist. Comm. IX.) the “Inn called Camera DianÆ,” alias Segrave, in the parish of St. Benet is assigned by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s to a Canon Residentiary of the Cathedral. And in 1480 we find the Camera described as a messuage with a garden let at eight marks a year to Sir John Clay; it was formerly occupied by Lord Berners, “but probably belonging to Richard Lichefield, Canon Residentiary, who pays to the Chapter 26s. a year for the obit of Richard Juvenis.

St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf, is sometimes called St. Bennet Huda, or At the Hyth, and sometimes St. Benet Woodwharf. The date of the foundation of the original church is unknown. It was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the present building, the work of Wren, was finished in 1683. The neighbouring church of St. Peter was not rebuilt and after the Fire the parishes were united. This rectory has ceased to be parochial, its parish having been united with that of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey. In 1879 the church was handed over to the Welsh congregation by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners ratified by an Order in Council. The patron is the Bishop of London. It is now used for services for Welsh residents in London. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1150.

The patronage of the church had always been in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s since 1150 up to 1879.

Houseling people in 1548 were 336.

The present church is built of red brick, with stone quoins and festoons over the windows. It is 54 feet long, 50 feet broad, and 36 feet high. There is one aisle, on the north side, separated from the nave by two Corinthian columns on lofty bases. The steeple, rising at the north-west, reaches a height of 115 feet and consists of a square-based tower, with a cornice, a cupola with oval openings, and a lantern supporting a ball and vane.

A chantry was founded here at the Altar of Our Lady for Sir William de Weyland, to which John Love de Canterbury was admitted, April 10, 1334.

This church formerly contained monuments to: Sir William Cheyne, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, who died in 1442; Dr. Richard Caldwell, President of the Royal College of Physicians, who died in 1585; Inigo Jones was buried here in 1652, but his memorial perished in the Great Fire; there is a marble tablet to his memory on the north-side wall. Many heralds and dignities of the Ecclesiastical Courts were buried in this church owing to its contiguity to the College of Arms and Doctors’ Commons, among whom are John Charles Brooke, William Oldys, author of the Life of Raleigh, who died in 1761, also Mrs. Manley, author of the New Atlantis, who died in 1724. Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, was married here.

There was a charity school here for twenty poor boys; also almshouses, consisting of six tenements for six poor widows. Each widow received 7s. 4d. per quarter from Christ’s Hospital, 9s. 6d. at Christmas from the Embroiderers, and 25s. each at Christmas from the churchwardens. In the event of marriage, the benefit of this foundation was forfeited.

As this brings us down to Thames Street again, we must retrace our steps and come right along the river-side from the westward limit of our section.

Puddle Dock was called Waingate in Stow’s time; it was possibly an artificial port constructed like Queenhithe, in the mud of the foreshore. Beside the dock, in the sixteenth century, was a brewery, the first of the many river-side breweries.

Baynard’s Castle has already been mentioned. There was no house in the City more interesting than this. Its history extends from the Norman Conquest to the Great Fire—exactly 600 years; and during the whole of this long period it was a great palace. First it was built by one Baynard, a follower of William. It was forfeited in A.D. 1111, and given to Robert Fitzwalter, son of Richard, Earl of Clare, in whose family the office of Castellan and Standard-bearer to the City of London became hereditary. His descendant, Robert, in revenge for private injuries, took part with the barons against King John, for which the King ordered Baynard’s Castle to be destroyed. Fitzwalter, however, becoming reconciled to the King, was permitted to rebuild his house. It was again destroyed, this time by fire, in 1428. It was rebuilt by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, on whose attainder it reverted to the Crown. During one of these rebuildings it was somewhat shifted in position. Richard, Duke of York, next had it, and lived here with his following of 400 gentlemen and men-at-arms. It was in the hall of Baynard’s Castle that Edward IV. assumed the title of king, and summoned the bishops, peers, and judges to meet him in council. Edward gave the house to his mother, and placed in it for safety his wife and children before going out to fight the Battle of Barnet. Here Buckingham offered the crown to Richard.

Henry VIII. lived in this palace, which he almost entirely rebuilt. Prince Henry, after his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, was conducted in great state up the river, from Baynard’s Castle to Westminster, the mayor and commonalty of the City following in their barges. In the time of Edward VI. the Earl of Pembroke, whose wife was sister to Queen Catherine Parr, held great state in this house. Here he proclaimed Queen Mary. When Mary’s first Parliament was held, he proceeded to Baynard’s Castle, followed by “2000 horsemen in velvet coats, with their laces of gold and gold chains, besides sixty gentlemen in blue coats with his badge of the green dragon.” This powerful noble lived to entertain Queen Elizabeth at Baynard’s Castle with a banquet, followed by fireworks. The last appearance of the place in history is when Charles II. took supper there just before the Fire swept over it and destroyed it.

Baynard’s Castle is mentioned repeatedly in ancient documents. During a lawsuit heard before the Justices Itinerant at the Tower of London (14 Edward II.) a charter of Henry I. was produced granting permission to the Bishop of London to make a wall over part of the ditch of Baynard’s Castle, and referring back to the possession of the castle by Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, in 1106. In 1307 there were mills “without” Castle Baynard, which were removed as a nuisance. The Brethren of the Papey had a tenement adjoining Baynard’s Castle.

In 1276 Gregory Rokesley, mayor, gave the Archbishop of Canterbury two lanes or ways next the street of Baynard’s Castle. In 1423 a great fire destroyed a part of the castle. In 1501 Henry VII. rebuilt the place or restored it. In 1463 Cicely, Duchess of York, wrote from “our place at Baynard’s Castle.” In 1551 the castle was in the hands of Lord Pembroke, whose wife, Anne Parr, sister of Queen Catherine Parr, died there, February 28, 1552, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The house, as it stood a little before the Fire, was a striking and picturesque palace. The river-front was broken by three towers of unequal height and breadth; the spaces between these were ornamented by tourelles containing the windows; a gateway with a portcullis opened upon the river with a broad stone “bridge” or pier, and stairs. Within, it contained two courts.

After the Fire the site of Baynard’s Castle lay for a long time neglected. Ogilby’s map shows an area not built upon, approached by a lane from Thames Street, called Dunghill Lane. At the river-edge is a small circle denoting a tower. Strype says that it was all burned down except a little tower. Strype also says that the site was converted into “Buildings and Wharves,” but his map shows neither.

Near Baynard’s Castle, but not marked on the maps, was a place called Butchers’ Bridge, where the offal and blood of the beasts killed in the shambles, Newgate, were thrown into the river. It was ordered (43 Edward III.) that the bridge, a pier or jetty such as at New Palace Yard was called Westminster Bridge, should be taken away, and the offal should be carried out of the City.

Stow speaks of another tower on the west side of Baynard’s Castle, built by Edward II. “The same place,” he says, “was since called Legate’s Inn, where be now divers wood wharves.”

On the east side of the castle stood “a great messuage” belonging to the Abbey of FÉcamp. During the wars Edward III. took it, and gave it to Sir Simon Burley, from whom it was called Burley House.

Next came another great house, called Scrope’s Inn, “belonging to Scrope in the 31st of Henry VI.”

Paul’s Wharf, a “common stair,” was very ancient, and may very well mark the site of an early break in the wall. In 1354 Gilbert de Bruen, Dean of St. Paul’s, bequeaths his “tenements and wharf, commonly called ‘Paule’s Wharf,’ to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s and their successors, so that they maintain a chantry in the Chapel of St. Katherine” (in the cathedral) “for the good of his soul and the souls of others.”

In 1344 there was a dispute concerning the right of free access to the river by Paul’s Wharf. The matter was referred to certain wardsmen. “They say that Paul’s Wharf used to be common to the whole city for taking water there, but they say that Nicolas de Tailleur, ‘heymonger,’ tenant by rent service of Dominus William de Hagham, collects the quarterly payments of those who take water there against the custom of the city.”

Paul’s Wharf was also called the Wharf of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

Beyond Paul’s Wharf was a great house, formerly—i.e. in the fourteenth century—called Beaumont’s Inn, but given by Edward IV. to Lord Hastings. In 1598 it was called Huntingdon House, as belonging to the Earls of Huntingdon.

St. Peter, Paul’s Wharf, stood at the south-east corner of St. Peter’s Hill in Upper Thames Street. It was sometimes called St. Peter’s Parva. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf. Its burying-ground may still be seen amidst the surrounding warehouses. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1315.

The church has always been in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul, since 1181, and continued in their successors up to 1666, when the church was burnt down and the parish annexed to that of St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf.

Chantries were founded here by: William Bernard for himself and Isabel his wife, to which James Payne was admitted January 22, 1542-43; Walter Kent.

No monuments remained in Stow’s time except that in memory of Queen Elizabeth.

Fish Wharf was near Queenhithe. In 1343 Thomas Pykeman, fishmonger, bequeathed to his wife the messuage wherein he lived, situate upon “la Fisshewharfs,” with shops, for life. In 1347 Simon de Turnham, fishmonger, ordered the sale of “his shops and solars” at “le Fisshewharfs in the parish of St. Mary Somerset.” In 1374 the Fishwharfs is said to be in the parish of St. Magnus. Now, there are four parishes between St. Mary Somerset and St. Magnus. The latter “Fish Wharf” is probably “Fresh” Wharf in St. Magnus’s parish. In 1291 Thomas Pikeman (father of the above named [?]), Henry Poteman, and John Aleyn, fishmongers of Fishers’ Wharf, pray that they may be allowed to go on selling fish, fresh or salted, in their houses on the above wharf by wholesale or retail, as their ancestors have been accustomed to do. The Fish Wharf of St. Magnus was also called the Fish Wharf at the Hole.

St. Mary Mounthaw was situated on the west side, about the middle of Old Fish Street Hill, and derived its name “Mounthaw” or “Mounthault” from its having belonged to the family of Mounthaul or Monhalt who owned a house in the parish. It was destroyed by the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of St. Mary Somerset, its site being made into a burying-ground for the inhabitants. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1344.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The family of Mounthault, who sold it to Ralph de Maydenstone, about 1234, who gave it to his successors the Bishop of Hereford, in whose successors it continued till 1666, when the church was burnt down and the parish annexed to St. Mary Somerset, who shared the alternate patronage of that church up to 1776.

A chantry was founded here by John Gloucester, late citizen, before 1345, to which John Whutewey was admitted, February 18, 1381.

Two monuments only are mentioned by Stow, one in memory of John Gloucester, alderman in 1345, and John Skip, Bishop of Hereford, 1552.

Twenty-four boys and twenty girls were taught and clothed by the gentlemen of Queenhithe Ward.

The parish, together with others, had a gift of 8s. per annum left by Randolph Bernard, and 40s. per annum left by Robert Warner.

Boss Alley, now vanished, preserved the memory of a “boss” of water placed there by the executors of Whittington. Beside Boss Alley was a house once belonging to the Abbots of Chertsey in Surrey, as their inn when they came to town. It was afterwards known as Sandie House. “I think the Lord Sands has been lodged there.”

Trig Lane follows, leading down to Trig Stairs:

Broken Wharf is mentioned so far back—e.g. 1329 and 1349—that one suspects that the wall, not the wharf, was at this place broken. In 1598 a stone house stood beside the wharf, with arched gates. It belonged in the forty-third year of Henry III. to Hugh de Bygod; in the eleventh of Edward III. to Thomas Brotherton, the King’s brother, Earl of Norfolk, Marshal of England; and in the eleventh of Henry VI. to John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.

Within the gate of this house (now belonging to the city of London) is lately—to wit, in the years 1594 and 1595—built one large house of great heith called an engine, made by Bevis Bulmar, gentleman, for the conveying and forcing of Thames water to serve in the middle and west parts of the city. The ancient great hall of this messuage is yet standing, and pertaining to a great brewhouse for beer (Stow’s Survey).

St. Mary Somerset was situated on the north side of Upper Thames Street, opposite Broken Wharf, and was so-called from a man’s name Summer’s Hith. It was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren in 1695, when St. Mary Mounthaw was annexed to it. The building, with the exception of the tower, was pulled down in 1868. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1280.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: William de Staundon, who gave it by will, dated November 20, 1273, to Arabella de Staundon, his wife; Sir John de Peyton, 1335; Edward III., 1363 (see Braybroke, London Review, 146, as to a dispute about the patronage when Thomas de Bradeston claimed it); Richard II., as custodian of Thomas de Bradeston, 1387; Walter de la Pole, in right of his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas de Bradeston; Thomas de Ingaldesthorp, cousin and heir of Walter de la Pole; Henry VI., 1435; William Norris, Knight, married to Isabel, daughter of Edmund de Ingaldesthorp, 1478; Edward VI., 1550; Mary, 1554; G. Comb, generosus, 1560; Elizabeth, 1585; George Coton, 1596; and several others until the Great Fire in 1666, when the parish was annexed to St. Mary Mounthaw.

Houseling people in 1548 were 300.

Chantries were founded here: By and for John Gildesburgh, in the time of Edward III., at the Altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the King granted in mortmain to Richard, son of W. de Segrave, May 18—the endowment fetched £4: 6: 8 in 1548, when John Bordell was priest; by Thomas Wilforde, who had a licence from Henry IV., whose endowment fetched £3: 7: 4 in 1548, when John Moryalle was priest.

Most of the monuments of the original church were defaced by Stow’s time, and those which he records are of individuals of little eminence. In later times the memory of Gilbert Ironside, Bishop of Hereford, was honoured by a stone inscription within the communion rails.

Ralph Bernard left 8s. per annum, and John Moysier 7s. 6d. per annum. No other gifts or charities are recorded by Stow.

Twenty-four boys and twenty girls were clothed and educated at the charge of the gentlemen of Queenhithe Ward.

Samuel Croxall, D.D. (d. 1752), Chancellor of Hereford, was rector here.

Timber Hithe crossed the narrow lanes parallel to Thames Street. It is now called High Timber Street. These lanes have changed their names; “Dunghill Lane,” for instance, became Gardeners’ Lane. There used to be here a quaint little figure of a gardener, dated 1670, of the kind to be found at one time in many parts of London, but now very scarce.

In Fye Foot Lane is the Shuttleworth Club, founded in 1889 by Prebendary Shuttleworth. It was intended to provide “a comfortable place of social intercourse, culture and recreation,” for men and women in business in the City. The affairs of the Club are managed by the members themselves, and no religious test of any kind is required. The Club at first went by the name of St. Nicholas, but it was rechristened the Shuttleworth Club in honour of the founder. Every form of recreation is provided—from cricket in the summer months, and dancing, to lectures and chess. In the basement there is a fine billiard room with two tables. On the ground floor there is a refreshment bar, where alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic beverages are provided, and also dining-rooms, which look out at the back of the house on the dreary little strip of ground—all that remains of St. Mary Somerset Churchyard. The experiment is interesting, as this is the first mixed Club established in the City.

Of Bread Street Hill there seems to be no recorded history; here on the west side once stood

St. Nicholas Olave, destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1327.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Bishop of London, by whom it was given in 1172 to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, with whom it continued up to 1666, when the parish was annexed to St. Nicholas Cole Abbey.

Houseling people in 1548 were 163.

Thomas Lewen, sheriff in 1537, who died 1555, was buried here; also Blitheman, organist of the Queen’s Chapel, who died 1591; John Widnell, Master of the Merchant Taylors Company.

Stow says that the parish received no gifts for any purposes.

Hugh Weston (d. 1558), Dean of Westminster, was a rector here. The churchyard still remains.

Perhaps of all the many points of interest in Thames Street, that open dock or harbour called Queenhithe is the most interesting. It originally, as we have seen, belonged to one Edred, a Saxon, but fell into the hands of King Stephen, as valuable property had a way of falling into kings’ hands in those early days. After being held by an intermediate possessor, William de Ypres, who gave it to a convent, it came again to the Crown, and was given by King John to his mother, the Dowager Queen Eleanor. It was a valuable property by reason of the dues collected from the ships unlading here. King Henry VIII.

commanded the constables of the Tower of London to arrest the ships of the Cinque Ports on the River of Thames, and to compel them to bring their corn to no other place, but to the Queen’s Hithe only. In the eleventh of his reign he charged the said constable to distrain all fish offered to be sold in any place of this city, but at the Queen Hithe (Stow).

In pursuance of this order the larger ships, as well as the smaller ones, were compelled to come up beyond London Bridge, and were admitted by a drawbridge. In 1463 the “slackness” of the drawbridge impeded their progress, and Queenhithe suffered accordingly. At Queenhithe were delivered goods varying in quantity and quality, but the two great trades were in fish: for the fish-market, the principal one—Billingsgate not being then a free and open port—was at Old Fish Market; and grain, in memory whereof we may still see the vane on the top of St. Michael’s Church in the form of a ship made to contain exactly a bushel of corn. It was in Henry III.’s reign that the “farm” of Queenhithe was granted to the Lord Mayor and Commonalty of the City to be held by them, but the profits were soon “sore diminished,” partly by reason of the competition of Billingsgate.

St. Michael, Queenhithe, was situated on the north side of Upper Thames Street, and was sometimes called St. Michael, Cornhith. It was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt from the designs of Wren in 1677, when the parish of Trinity Church was annexed. In 1876 the building was pulled down. Several portions of the building and fittings were preserved; the font has been removed to St. Paul’s, as well as a number of the monuments, and the old oak pulpit to St. James’, Garlickhithe. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1150.

The church has always been in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

Houseling people in 1548 were 100.

Chantries were founded here: By Richard Marlowe, ironmonger and mayor of London, 1409 and 1417; by Stephen Spelman, who died in 1414 and endowed it with lands, which fetched £11: 16: 8 in 1548, when Thomas Gilbank was priest; by Robert Parres, Thomas Eure, and John Clarke, who endowed it with tenements, etc., which fetched £7: 13: 4, when Sir Thomas Bigge was priest.

Few monuments are recorded by Stow, as many had been quite defaced by his time. He mentions Stephen Spelman as a benefactor to the church in 1404; and here was buried also Richard Marlow, mayor in 1409, who gave £20 to the poor of the parish, and Richard Gray, donor of £40.

The gifts and benevolences belonging to the parish were registered in the parish book, but the details of them are not recorded by Stow.

There was a school for forty-three boys and girls.

John Russell (1787-1863), D.D., headmaster of Charterhouse, was rector here.

Huggin Lane was known as Hoggene Lane in 1329, 1373, 1429, 1430, 1431, 1433 (see Calendar of Wills). In its south-east corner stood the Church of St. Michael, Queenhithe. The churchyard still remains.

In Little Trinity Lane is the Painter Stainers’ Hall, opposite to which was the Lutheran Church. In Great Trinity Lane was the Church of the Holy Trinity, not rebuilt after the Fire.

This Company was incorporated by Queen Elizabeth, 1582, for a master, 2 wardens, 19 assistants, and a livery of 124. The present livery is 130; their Corporate Income is £700; their Trust Income is £2300. Their hall is in Little Trinity Lane. The history of the Company has been written by Mr. John Gregory Grace, late master. It was an ancient Gild, but how ancient cannot be learned. In the fifteenth century the Painters sent unto the mayor and aldermen the usual petition that they might be allowed to choose two persons of their Mystery who should be authorised to make search for bad and “false” work. This Company originally included painters of portraits and other kinds, as well as decorators, sign painters, etc. It might, in fact, have become the City Academy of Arts, and it seems a great pity that its nobler side was lost sight of. The hall, formerly the residence of Sir John Brown, Sergeant Painter to Henry VIII., was destroyed by the Great Fire and rebuilt immediately afterwards. The Company can show many distinguished names on the roll of members, including those of Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Antonio Verrio, Sir James Thornhill, and Richard Lovelace.

Holy Trinity the Less was situated in Knightrider Street. In 1607 and 1629 it was rebuilt and repaired, but it was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, and its parish annexed to that of St. Michael, Queenhithe. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1323.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of St. Mary Overy, Southwark, before 1316; Henry VIII. seized it, when it soon came, either by exchange or grant, to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, with whose successors it continued till 1666, when the church was destroyed and the parish annexed to St. Michael, Queenhithe.

Houseling people in 1548 were 170.

Chantries were founded here by: Thomas Cosyn; John Bryan.

John Bryan was buried in this church—he was an alderman in the reign of Henry V. and a great benefactor; also John Mirsin, auditor of the Exchequer in 1471.

No legacies or gifts are recorded by Stow.

There was a school for forty-three boys and girls belonging to St. Michael, Queenhithe.

John Rogers, who was burnt as a heretic at Smithfield in 1555, was a rector here; also Francis Dee (d. 1638), Bishop of Peterborough.

Great Trinity Lane, together with Great St. Thomas Apostle and the west half of Cloak Lane, formerly counted as part of Knightrider Street, which joins the western end of Great Trinity Lane.

It was changed to the present style after the Fire. In 1888 the underground “Mansion House” station ousted all the houses on the south side of the lane; but Jack’s Alley was a right-of-way into Keen’s mustard factory—its loss had to be made good, and hence the iron bridge which crosses the station from the lane to the factory: really it is an alley suspended in mid-air.

Great St. Thomas Apostle was an important street in old days. It was so-called from the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle.

At St. Paul’s Cathedral is a document of 1170 relating to St. Thomas-the-Apostle; that is the earliest reference. In 1181 the book of Dean Ralph de Diceto describes it as “Ecclesia Sancti Thomae,” a church with burial-ground belonging. The Cathedral canons collated to it, and one Stephen was then priest. The name at that time is simply written “St. Thomas”; it was the only church of the name in the City. A few years later the church dedicated to St. Thomas À Becket was founded in Cheapside and styled St. Thomas of Acres: after that, necessity of distinction caused the earlier church to be known as “St. Thomas-ye-Apostle.” Of the building, scant information exists. Roesia de Burford erected upon the south side a new chapel shortly before 1329.^[4] At about the same time a partial or complete rebuilding of the church took place: John Bernes, mercer, Lord Mayor 1371, was a substantial contributor to the new work, and a coat-of-arms existing in the stone work and the windows until Stow’s time (1598) was believed to attest his munificence. A Fraternity of St. Eligius, or Eloy, Bishop of Noyon, had quarters here, and there was an altar to their saint. In the years 1629-1630 the building was “well repaired and finely varnished” at a cost of nearly £300. Then in 1666 came the trial by fire, and the church succumbed. The parish was united to St. Mary Aldermary, and the Dean and Chapter, as patrons of St. Thomas, were allotted alternate presentation to the united living. The sites of the church and rectory were thrown into Queen Street, cut from Cheapside to Thames Street soon after the Fire. Some small portion of the churchyard remained, east and west of the new thoroughfare. Part of the western space was shortly built upon; the very houses still stand, with the tree-planted churchyard as a garden entrance: beneath the garden are the vaults, once used as a last resting-place for deceased parishioners, now as a wine store. The western space still contained some remains of the church until plastered over in 1828. The ground was curtailed by the widening of Queen Street and the allotment of a rectory site for St. Mary Aldermary in 1851. Thus it has been reduced to a tiny and flagged square. On the north wall a tablet bears this inscription: “Near this spot stood the church of St. Thomas the Apostle, destroyed in the Great Fire of London, September 1666: the burial ground belonging to which, extending 55 feet northward of Cloak Lane, and 20 feet on an average eastward of Queen Street, was circumscribed to the space here enclosed a.d. 1851, when by virtue of an Act of Parliament 10 and 11 Vict. cap. CCLXXX, the remnant of the ground was taken to widen Queen Street and Cloak Lane. All remains of mortality which could be discovered were carefully collected and deposited within the vault beneath this stone. H. B. Wilson DD, rector: Matthew T. Bishop: John Pollock: churchwardens.” The earliest date of an incumbent is 1365.

The patronage of the church has always been in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, and was given to them in the twelfth century by Wicelonis the priest and Gervasius his nephew.

Houseling people in 1548 were 298.

Chantries were founded here: By Thomas Romayn, whose will was dated December 21, 1312, for himself and Juliana his wife, to which John Wariner, priest, was admitted chaplain, April 20, 1368; by Roger atte Wine, whose endowment fetched £2: 13: 4 in 1548; by William Champneys, to which Walter Badewynde de Canterbury dio was admitted chaplain, June 12, 1368—the endowment fetched £5: 6: 7 in 1548 (the above three were consolidated and united in January 9, 1400-1401, when Thomas Jordan was admitted chaplain); by Richard Chawry, who gave to the Salters Company certain lands, etc., to find a priest, which were valued at £6: 13: 4 in 1548, when Sir George Walpole was chaplain; by William Brampton, who endowed it with lands, etc., which fetched £6: 13: 4 in 1548, when Sir John Barnes was chaplain.

Very few monuments of special interest are recorded by Stow. John Foy, citizen and Merchant Taylor, was buried here in 1625; he was a benefactor of the parish.

The charitable gifts belonging to this parish were few and small: £13: 0: 4 the gift of Mr. Hinman; £2: 12s. the gift of Mr. Beeston; and others to the amount of £5.

Two almshouses for the poor of the Salters Company belonging to St. Mary Aldermary.

John Walker (d. 1741), Archdeacon of Hereford, was rector here; also Thomas Cartwright (1634-1689), Bishop of Chester.

Just beyond its eastern end, across the present College Hill, stood the Tower Royal. The wine merchants of La Reole, near Bordeaux, settled in and round the present College Hill during or before the reign of Edward I. The hill and the immediate neighbourhood became termed “the Reole”: the word “Royal” is a corrupted form, and has nothing to do with kings. The tower, tenement, or inn situated in “the Reole” stood on the north of Cloak Lane, at College Hill corner; it extended eastwards nearly to the Walbrook, northwards perhaps to Budge Row. It had a south gate, and probably also a courtyard opening into the lane; and a west gate standing on the hill. Perhaps Henry I. was the founder: Stow wishes us to believe that Stephen lodged here, “as in the heart of the City for his more safety,” which is very likely true.

The theory that the tower, or main building, was reserved to the King finds support in 1331, when Edward III. granted “La Real” to Queen Phillippa for life, to serve as her wardrobe. A few years later Phillippa repaired, perhaps rebuilt, it; particulars of the work done still survive (Cottonian MS.). In 1369, a few months after Phillippa’s death, the King gave this “inn (hospitum) with its appurtenances, called le Reole” to the canons of his college of St. Stephen’s, Westminster, the annual value being then £20. By some means the place still continued at the royal disposal, both to dwell in and to grant away. When the Wat Tyler rebellion in 1381 drove Johanna, the King’s mother, from the Tower of London, she took refuge here, the place being then called the Queen’s Wardrobe: thither came Richard II. when he returned from Smithfield, after the death of Tyler. Richard was still here in 1386, “lying in the Royal,” as Stow has it, when he granted a charter of £1000 per annum to the refugee Leon VI., King of Armenia. The place was granted by Richard III. to John Howard, Duke of Norfolk. In later times the Tower became neglected, and converted into stabling for the King’s horses. When Stow wrote (1598), it was divided into tenements let out to divers persons. All perished in the Great Fire; but at the rebuilding the south entrance and courtyard in Cloak Lane were plainly marked by Balding’s Yard; the west gateway by Tower Royal Court in what was then Tower Royal Street, but is now the upper end of College Hill. Neither survived; but a small lane called Tower Royal, in Cordwainer Ward, marks the western boundary.

West of the Church of St. Thomas Apostle, reaching to Bow Lane, was the great house called Ypres Inn, first built by William of Ypres, who came over from Flanders with other Flemings to aid Stephen against Matilda.

In the year 1377 John of Ypres lived there: on a certain day came John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Lord Henry Percy the marshal to dine with him. Both the Duke and Percy had been defending Wyclyf before the Bishop of London: the citizens, enraged, sought the life of both, going in pursuit of them to the Savoy. A knight of the Duke’s hastened to Ypres Inn with the news: the frightened Duke “leapt so hastily from his oysters that he hurt both his legs against a form,” refused the consolation of wine, left the Inn with Percy by a back gate, and taking a boat at the Thames “never stayed rowing” until he came to Kennington, where he was safe. Thus the hunters missed the fox at his hole, whilst the fox, lying in hiding at the hunter’s back door, conveyed himself to a place of security. What eventually happened to the Inn is not recorded.

Garlick Hill, or Garlick Hithe, where, one supposes, garlick was formerly sold, has at present in it nothing remarkable except the Church of St. James. “Garleckhithe” occurs in a record of 1281. Of old time, Stow relates, garlic was sold upon the Thames bank near this hill: as a strong flavouring it was much in vogue for the dressing of food among the common folk: and an ordinance of 1310 relating to Queenhithe, close by, makes reference to ships with cargoes of garlic and onions. Here, no doubt, the garlic market was held, hence this particular hithe, hive, harbour, or quay was the Garlickhithe, and the church on the hill just above was called St. James-at-Garlickhithe. At the north-east corner of the hill stood Ormond Place, a great stone house, sometimes the residence of the Earls of Ormond. It had just been demolished when Stow wrote his Survey, and tenements and a tavern built on the site. The hill was “well built and inhabited” after the Great Fire, says Strype. Sir John Coke was living here in 1625.

“St. James versus vinitariam” occurs in a document of about 1170;^[5] “St. James in Garleckhithe” is found written in 1281:^[6] both names were at that time used without distinction, but the former was eventually dropped. “Vinitarium” or Vintry applied to the general district of the wine trade situated hereabouts; “Garleckhithe,” to the harbour, just below the church, where the garlic-monger made sale of his wares. St. James is the saint here honoured.

The earliest church is well-nigh recordless: it was in part rebuilt and chiefly restored by Richard de Rothing, probably the same who was sheriff in 1326; here, within the walls of his munificence, was he buried. He did not complete the restorations. John de Rothing, Richard’s son, left by will in 1375 money towards completing the repairs, towards the rebuilding of the old belfry, and for re-erecting a doorway in the north side.

It was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt from designs by Wren, 1676-1683. During the last century the church was several times repaired, but not substantially altered. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1259.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1252; Henry VIII. seized it in 1540 and granted it to Thomas Thirlby, Bishop of Westminster, the same year, viz. January 20, 1540-1541; the Bishop of London, by grant of Edward VI. in 1550, confirmed by Mary, March 3, 1553-1554.

Houseling people in 1548 were 400.

The church measures 75 feet in length, 45 feet in breadth, and 40 feet in height. There are two side-aisles separated from the nave by Ionic columns, six on either side, with a clerestory above. This is interrupted at the centre, and three eastern and three western columns each bear half of it, thus presenting a cruciform appearance. The tower, measuring 20 feet square at the base, rises at the west, surmounted by a dome, lantern, ball finial, and vane; the total height is 125 feet. The transitions are softened by vases and urns. Above the door projects a bracket clock topped by the grotesque figure of St. James in pilgrim’s garb, locally known as “old Jimmy Garlick.” Much of the woodwork in the interior was brought from St. Michael, Queenhithe, when that church was pulled down.

Chantries were founded here: By John Whitthorn, of three chaplains—one Thomas Haverbergh, chaplain, exchanges it with William Gedelston, rector of Ongar ad Castrum, Essex, July 31, 1381; by William Hawye, at the Altar of St Katharine, whose endowment fetched £12: 18: 8 in 1548, when Thomas Dale was priest; by John de Oxenford, citizen and vintner, which was augmented by Roger de Fordham, whose will is dated next after the Feast of St. Barnabas, 1349; by Thomas Lincoln and Richard Lyon in 1548, when John Borell was chaplain; by Thomas Bodynge, whose endowment yielded £22: 10s. in 1548.

Richard Rothing, the reputed founder of this church, was buried here. So also were the following: Walter Nele, vintner, sheriff in 1337; John Oxenford, vintner, mayor in 1341; John Wroth, fishmonger, mayor in 1360; John Bromer, fishmonger, alderman in 1474; William Venor, grocer, mayor in 1389; William Moor, vintner, mayor in 1395; Robert Chichele, grocer, mayor in 1421; James Spencer, vintner, mayor in 1527; Richard Lyons, sheriff in 1374, beheaded by Wat Tyler; Richard Platt, brewer, founder of a free school and almshouses in Hertfordshire. There were tombs of importance: especially curious were those of Richard Lyons and the Countess of Worcester, which had either great brasses or recumbent effigies; also the tombs of Sir George Stanley, K.G., and his first wife; John Stanley; Lord Strange, 1503; and the Countess of Huntingdon. The church owned many precious things: an inventory of its jewels in 1449 is still preserved at Westminster Abbey.

There was a charity school in Maiden Lane, which by the subscription of the whole ward maintained fifty boys.

Arthur Bulkely (died 1553), Bishop of Bangor, was rector here. Also Charles Booth, Bishop of Hereford, 1516.

Adjoining to the church on the south side stood a house called “The Commons”: it had been given by one Thomas Kente for keeping his anniversary in the church. Here dwelt the chantry priests, who held the tenure. When the chantries were suppressed by Edward VI. “The Commons” was valued at 53s. 4d. a year: no fewer than nine “incumbents,” who had life interests in the chantry property of the parish, received pensions under Mary in 1555-1556. The total chantry property fetched £2551: 3s. In the church was founded a Guild or Fraternity of St. James in 1375: it was practically a religious Benefit Society: the members, men and women, were sworn together for the amendment of their lives: on one Sunday in the year they held an annual feast: they paid entrance fees and periodical subscriptions. A member of seven years’ standing was eligible for a sickness or old age allowance of fourteen-pence a week, and in case of false imprisonment a needy member would be granted a sum of thirteen-pence a week. In the year 1566 the church was repaired. The parish bought the rood-loft which had been taken in Protestant propriety from St. Martin Vintry; the woodwork was utilised for their new fittings. Edmund Chapman, the Queen’s joiner, carried out the work. He was afterwards buried in the church, and his monument narrated that:

Here it was that Sir Richard Steele heard the Common Prayer read so distinctly, emphatically and fervently that inattention was impossible.^[7] The reader who drew forth his praise was the then rector, Philip Stubbs, afterwards Archdeacon of St. Albans. There is kept in the church a shrouded corpse in a remarkable state of preservation; formerly it was one of the show things for the benefit of the churchkeeper, but though still above ground it is not now publicly exposed. The parish registers date back to 1536, two years before Thomas Cromwell made a general order for the keeping of such records. They are amongst the oldest in the City. Before the Great Fire there stood south of the church, nearly opposite to Vintners’ Hall, a parsonage. In 1670 it was rebuilt and leased to one Richard Corbet for forty-one years.

Opposite, at the corner of Garlick Hill, was Ormond Place, residence of the Earls of Ormond. Farther east, on the same side, stood Ringed Hall. At the west end of the Church of St. Thomas was a lane called by Stow Wringwren Lane, a most interesting survival. Of old not only were wines imported into Vintry ward, but grapes were grown here. The Anglo-Saxon name for wine-press was “winwringa”; that word reversed into “wringa-win” is undoubtedly contained in the corrupted form of “Wringwren.” Perhaps a wine-press stood in the lane; the proximity of “Ringed” Hall seems to strengthen the probability.

The lane called Worcester Place serves to mark the site of Worcester House, the old residence of the Earls of Worcester. One of them, John Tiptoft, Lord High Treasurer of England, dwelt here in the reign of Edward IV. This earl was a patron of Caxton, and a great lover of books; to Oxford University he gave volumes to the value of 500 marks. He was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1470, when, as Fuller puts it, “the axe then did in one blow cut off more learning than was in the heads of all the surviving nobility.” Nevertheless he was known as “The Butcher of England.” He had impaled forty Lancastrians at Southampton, and slain the infant children of Desmond, the Irish chief. One of the countesses of Worcester was buried in the old church of St. James, Garlickhithe, close by. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign the premises were let out in tenements. In 1603 they were in possession of one Matthew Paris, girdler, who left them, by will bearing that year’s date, to his mother Katherine, then living in Aldermanbury.^[8] The Fruiterers Company were then occupying one or more of the tenements as their Hall, although they were not incorporated until 1606. Their choice of this locality indicates that much of the fruit trade was centred here. Worcester House perished in the Great Fire. The Fruiterers were too poor to establish a new hall, but met in that of the Parish Clerks.

Maiden Lane appears as “Kyrunelane” in 1259. Stow writes it Kerion Lane, “of one Kerion sometime dwelling there,” but this etymology is guesswork, as shown by the earlier forms. Before the Fire the lane contained “divers fair houses for merchants,” says Stow, and the Glaziers’ Hall.

Queen Street was cut shortly after the Great Fire of 1666 in common with King Street, Cheapside, to connect the Guildhall with the Thames; thus the Lord Mayor now had a straight course for his procession when he “took water” at the Three Cranes Stairs on his way to be sworn at Westminster Hall. The new thoroughfare included the present Queen Street Place, and was named New Queen Street in honour of the wife of Charles II. The prefix “New” subsequently vanished. Close to Queen Street in Upper Thames Street is the Vintners’ Hall (see p. 229). The rectory house of the parish stands on a portion of St. Thomas the Apostle Churchyard; the remainder of the churchyard on this side of the street consists of a small flagged square enclosed by a railing. The portion of the churchyard on the west side of the road, opposite, contains two houses; they are the only houses remaining of the post-Fire rebuilding. In front, the churchyard serves them for a garden; its two fine plane-trees set off their quaint red brick walls and pillared and pedimented doorways. The southern house has a delightful room on the first floor, now used as the board room of the Tredegar Iron Company. The mantel is exquisite, carved with all the beauty of the Grinling Gibbons school; the walls are wainscotted; the doors all solid mahogany, over each a carved panel; the medallion cornice, of minutely beautiful detail, once carried a panelled ceiling now removed. An ante-room has a second delicately carved mantel, and a panelled ceiling.

St. Martin Vintry stood at the south corner of Royal or Queen Street, Upper Thames Street. Authentic history dates back to the Conqueror’s reign, when Ralph Peverell gave the Church of St. Martin, London, to the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Gloucester. In a document at St. Paul’s (Hist. MSS. Comm. Rep. IX.) of the year 1257 “St. Martin de Beremanes churche” is met with. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries “St. Martin de Barmannes-cherche” and St. Martin Vintry are both used. The church was rebuilt in the beginning of the fifteenth century, several bequests having been left for the purpose. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of the church, St. Michael Royal. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1250.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Bishop of Winchester; Ralph Peverell; Abbot and Convent of St. Peter’s, Gloucester, from 1388; Henry VIII.; Bishop of Worcester by grant of Edward VI., in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the parish was annexed to St. Michael Royal.

Houseling people in 1548 were 460.

A chantry was founded here by John Gisors or Jesores, for himself and Isabel his wife, to which Geoffrey Stowe was admitted chaplain, September 5, 1368.

Very few monuments of interest are recorded by Stow. Sir John Gisors, mayor in 1311, was buried here; also Sir Ralph Austrie and Sir Cuthbert Hacket, mayors. A considerable number of those commemorated were “Vinetarii.”

According to Stow, there were no bequests or legacies belonging to the church, or for public uses; though there were a few for the poor. The Stationers Company was donor of £2: 10s., for bread; the Dyers Company was donor of £4 every two years, for clothing; and George Lucas was donor of £2.

In St. Martin, Vintry, there was a workhouse, and thirteen almshouses founded by Sir Richard Whittington, each person being allowed 3s. 10d. a week.

Bruno Ryves (1596-1677), who suffered much persecution in Puritan times, Dean of Chichester and of Windsor, was rector here.

The site became a burial-ground. A part is now covered with buildings, but the remainder forms a small square, planted with trees—three great elms, two small limes, one large plane: six trees in all—really quite a leafy wood for the City! The paths and flower-beds are well tended. A few gravestones impart an aspect of sepulchral solemnity. Thus the site of St. Martin Vintry is not wholly effaced.

The Vintry stood east of Queenhithe; it was a wharf on which “the merchants of Bordeaux craned their wine out of lighters and other vessels, and then landed and made sale of them within forty days after, until the 28th of Edward I., at which time the said merchants complained that they could not sell their wines, paying poundage, neither hire houses nor cellars to lay them in.”

This was remedied by building storehouses with vaults and cellars for storage, where formerly had stood a row of cooks’ shops.

On the Vintry wharf were three cranes standing. They gave the name to Three Cranes Lane. At Three Cranes Stairs, in 1552, the Duke of Somerset was landed on his way to the Tower. In 1554 Queen Mary landed here, when she paid a visit to the Guildhall and “showyd hare mynde unto the Mayor, aldermen, and the whole craftes of London in hare owne person.”

On the south side of Thames Street, just above the Three Cranes wharf and opposite to St. Martin Vintry, stood a large house built of stone and timber; below it were vaults for the stowage of wines, for it was a wine merchant’s mansion known as “The Vintry.” John Gisors, vintner, mayor 1311, 1312, and 1314, constable of the Tower, dwelt here; also Henry Picard, vintner, Lord Mayor, 1356. In the year 1363 Picard sumptuously feasted in this house Edward III.; John II. of France, the Black Prince’s prisoner; David, King of Scots; the King of Denmark; the King of Cyprus, and many nobles. Truly an illustrious gathering. It is said that the toast of “five times five,” still drunk, owed origin to this feast of the five kings. Picard kept his hall for all comers that were willing to play dice with him; his wife, the Lady Margaret, kept her chamber to the same intent for the princesses and ladies. The King of Cyprus won fifty marks from Picard, but afterwards lost a hundred marks and was at pains to conceal his chagrin. “My Lord and King,” said the host, “be not agrieved, I covet not your gold but your play, for I have not bid you hither that I might grieve you, but that amongst other things I might try your play.” Thereupon Picard restored the monarch’s marks and good humour at one and the same time, “plentifully bestowing of his own among the retinue.” Moreover, he gave rich gifts to King Edward and to the nobles and knights who had that day dined with him “to the great glory of the citizens of London.” (Stow).

It is probable that a fraternity or company of the Mystery of Vintners, by the name of the Wine Tunners of Gascoigne, has existed in London from time immemorial.

The Company is mentioned in a Municipal Ordinance of the year 1256.

By letters patent, 37 Edward III., it was ordained and granted, amongst other things, that no merchant should go into Gascony for wines, nor use the trade of wine in England, except those who in London were enfranchised in the said mystery there, or who, in other cities, boroughs, and towns, had skill therein, and that no stranger should retail wines; and that the merchants of the said mystery of Vintners should elect four persons to see that all wines were sold by retail in taverns at a reasonable price for such wine, and of such conditions, as they were known, or named, to be; and that the taverners should be ruled by such four persons, and likewise that the said four persons should correct and amend all defaults that should be found in the exercise of the said mystery, and inflict punishments by their good advice and consideration, if need were, without the mayor, bailiff, or other chief magistrate; and the King gave licence to the said Merchant Vintners to export cloth, fish, and herrings in exchange for wines; and did ordain that all wines coming to London should be landed above London Bridge, westward towards the Vintry, so that the King’s butler and gauger and searchers might have knowledge thereof, and take the customs and prices of right due. Which Letters Patent were exemplified and confirmed by inspeximus by King Henry the Sixth by Letters Patent, bearing date the eighth day of November, in the sixth year of his reign.

By another charter of King Henry VII., the King and Queen ordained and constituted the mystery of Vintners of the City of London a mystery of itself, and the freemen and commonalty thereof were to be one body corporate and politic, in deed, fact, and name, by the name of the master and wardens and freemen and commonalty of the mystery of Vintners of London.

Other charters are recited from Edward VI., Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth.

The members of the Vintners Company, by patrimony or servitude, and their widows have, by its various charters, the right to sell foreign wine without a licence; and the court of assistants as the governing body, when a complaint is made that the privilege is abused by any member, summons him to attend, and after hearing the evidence on both sides, adjudicates according to its discretion. The utmost penalty is disfranchisement.

The Company exercises control only over its own members.

The Company claims to exercise through its members the privilege of selling foreign wine without licence throughout England.

It appears that from time immemorial this Company also enjoyed the exclusive right of loading and landing, rolling, pitching and turning all wines and spirits imported to, or exported from the City of London, and all places within three miles of the same. From this franchise which was, and still is exercised by its tackle porters, the Company derived a very considerable emolument till in the years 1799, 1800, 1804, and 1805, several Acts of Parliament were passed, by which this privilege was in a great measure curtailed. The Company indemnifies those persons employing its tackle porters against all losses of wines and spirits caused through their negligence or accident.

The number of liverymen called during ten years is 206. The Corporate Income is £9500; the Trust Income is £1500.

1. A freeman or his widow has a claim to relief. When admitted by patrimony or servitude, a freeman, or his widow, enjoys the privilege of a “Free Vintner,” and, if exercising such privilege, is exempt from “Billeting,” i.e. having soldiers or sailors quartered in his or her house.

2. The average annual sum distributed amongst the members of the court of assistants has amounted, during the last ten years, to £886: 11s., being about £50 each per annum (income tax free).

Members of the court receive no pensions or donations.

No fees are paid to liverymen or freemen.

The average annual sum paid to liverymen and freemen, and their widows, in pensions and donations during the last ten years has amounted to £2503.

3. The qualifications for a pension are: being a member or widow of a member in reduced circumstances, between the ages of fifty and sixty, or, if younger, being in ill-health. For a donation: membership, or being the widow or child of a member.

The site of Vintners’ Hall appears in reliable records of the fourteenth century. Strype has the account of it: That Sir John Stodeye, who held it of Edward III. in free burgage, gave it in 1329, under style of the Manor of the Vintry, to John Tuke, parson of St. Martin Vintry, as a feoffment; that Tuke’s successors claimed it as belonging absolutely to the church, whereas it really appertained to the Vintners’ Company; that an inquisition was held in relation thereto before Sir Ralph Joslyn, in 1477; that a trial in the Exchequer followed; and that finally Richard III. decided the ownership in favour of the Company,^[9] reciting the above statements in his grant. It is difficult to harmonise this account with other known facts; therefore, leaving it on record, we pass to better authenticated matter. Now, Edmund de Sutton owned the site in the reign of Edward III.; upon the Thames bank lay his quay, towards the high street of the Vintry his houses, cellars, and solars. Upon the east stood Spital Lane and the tenements of the Abbess of St. Clare in Aldgate; on the west, Cressingham Lane and the tenement of John Cressingham; through the midst ran the boundary line between St. Martin Vintry parish and St. James-at-Garlickhithe. Sutton’s possession was disputed, trial followed, and Sutton “recovered it from Walter Turke by Writ of Novel disseisin.” Turke was alderman of the ward, and mayor, 1349. Then in 1352 Edmund de Sutton granted the whole to John de Stodeye who was sheriff that year. The Vintners Company had as yet no licence in mortmain; perhaps Stodeye was acting as feoffee for them, perhaps not. Stow relates that he gave Spital Lane, “with all the quadrant wherein Vintners’ Hall now standeth, with the tenements round about, to the Vintners”; but the statement proves nothing either way. Stodeye’s will is dated 1375; it makes no mention of the property. His heirs granted it to feoffees, and it passed from one to another as a feoffment, until finally vested in the Company by the wills of Guy Shuldham (1446) and John Porter (1496).^[10] Shuldham’s will^[11] conveys the impression that of his own bounty he added to the original property of which he was feoffee. To his foundation are attributed the Vintners’ almshouses. His will describes them as “thirteen little mansions lying together.” He directs that in them should dwell rent free thirteen poor and needy men and women of the Vintners’ craft, each to have a penny every week; any of them to be ejected for misconduct after three warnings. These “little mansions” were probably on the Spital Lane (at that time Stodeye’s Lane) side of the Hall; after the Great Fire they were removed to Mile End. Not much is known of the old premises, but Shuldham’s will tells us something. There was a great hall and a refectory, a parlour with a leaden roof, and adjoining it a counting-house with two rooms above; a kitchen, pantry and buttery, a coal-house, and a “yard” with a well. No doubt the yard lay betwixt hall and river, and answered to what was the garden in later years. When the Vintners “built for themselves a fair hall and thirteen almshouses” (to quote John Stow), these miscellaneous and doubtless inconvenient buildings disappeared. In 1497 the premises were inspected for the purpose of assessing the fine for amortising them pursuant to the act.^[12] Here a new pair of stocks was erected in 1609 for punishment of deserving members; here General Monk was feasted and entertained by special music on April 12, 1660, shortly after the Restoration. Six years later a restoration of a different sort was required; the Great Fire had wrought its work of woeful ruin, and the Vintners Company must needs rebuild. In 1823 the hall was almost entirely rebuilt again.

College Street.—The Walbrook stream, crossing the street, divided Vintry from Dowgate ward. It was spanned by a bridge called in the twelfth century Pont-le-Arch, also, but probably later, Stodum Bridge. The earliest style of the lane east of that bridge was “Les Arches Lane,” and that would be derived from the bridge. Later, just as St. Mary de Arcabus became St. Mary-le-Bowe, so this lane became “the lane called Le Bowe”; a will of 1307 so styles it. Quite possible Little College Street did not then exist, or existed only as a path on the east side of the brook; if the latter, there would thus be a bow-like passage from Dowgate Hill to Thomas Street, and both shape and name would be singularly in accord. West of the bridge the lane was probably, and in common with the present College Hill, “Paternoster Lane”; afterwards the hill became “the high street called le Riole,” but this lane seems to have retained the old title until Stow wrote of it. When Walbrook stream became arched over, the strict division between Paternoster Lane and Le Bowe Lane disappeared. The course of Walbrook so divided the lane that the north side from the church to Skinners’ Hall was included in Paternoster Lane, and the south side opposite was part of Bowe Lane; this distinction would naturally disappear on the covering of the brook. Before that event Le Bowe Lane would be all in the parish of Allhallows the Great; in 1307 reference is made to it in the parish of St. Michael’s (Wills in the Court of Hustings, pt. i. p. 190), so that the covering of the brook appears already to have taken place, at least in part, by that date. By Stow’s time Le Bowe Lane had become Elbow Lane, and ran by a crescent course from Dowgate Hill to Thames Street; Paternoster Lane continued as before. Stow makes an error in each case; he misses the true etymology of the former, implying that its elbow-like bending was the origin of its name, and he surmises that “Les Arches” was the old title for Paternoster Lane, which was not so. After the Great Fire the whole thoroughfare from College Hill to Dowgate Hill became Elbow Lane, and later Great Elbow Lane; the bend into Thames Street was renamed Little Elbow Lane. Subsequently the present styles were adopted, and, like College Hill, commemorate Whittington’s College. College Street is quaint: on the south side No. 24 has been rebuilt, and No. 27 refaced since the post-Fire rebuilding; otherwise the Vintry portion remains unaltered. The Skinners’ Hall and all the garden belonging to it are close by, though the entry is on Dowgate Hill (see p. 238).

In College Street is the Innholders’ Hall.

From the records of the Company it appears that it was a Guild or Fraternity by prescription under the name of “Hostiller” before the same was incorporated by charter.

Its earliest known record is a petition preferred on the 12th December, 25 Henry VI. (1446), by certain “Men of the Mistery of Hostillars of the City,” in the chamber at Guildhall before John Colney, mayor, and the aldermen of the City praying them to confirm certain ordinances which were ordered to be entered upon the Record and observed in all future times.

The next record is a petition preferred on 28th October, 13 Edward IV., 1437, by the wardens and certain men of the Mistery of Hostillers in the chamber of Guildhall, before Mr. Hampton, mayor, and the aldermen of the City, stating that the craft or mistery were called hostillers and not innholders as they were indeed, by which no diversity was perceived between them in name and their servants being hostillers indeed, and praying that they might be called innholders and in no wise hostillers, which was ordained accordingly.

On 31st July, 1 Richard III., 1483, another petition was preferred.

The present number of liverymen is 86; the Corporate Income is £1900; the Trust Income is £225.

The Innholders were an ancient fraternity which grew out of the Hostelers or Hostillers and the Haymongers. The former provided a bare lodging for travellers; the latter provided stabling. The visitor or lodger had to go to the tavern for his food and drink. The Innholder advanced a step; he received the traveller with his horses and his following. If the traveller was a trader, the inn received his wagon, his merchandise; while the stable belonging to the inn received his horses. The inn provided food, wine, and ale. The old Hosteler became the servant of the Innholder and was at last restricted to service in the stable.

Stow describes the hall as a fair house. After the Great Fire it was rebuilt (about 1670) by Wren and Jarman, and the west side of the great hall facing Little College Street is of this date. The present College Street front was built in 1886 from designs by Mr. J. Douglass Mathews, architect. It is a very handsome three-storied building of red brick. The door is of remarkably fine carving, of curious form, having the appearance of two doors, the smaller imposed upon the greater. Above the door under a pedimental canopy are the Company’s arms. The great hall, which dates from the old building, is a plain apartment, with wainscotted walls, and a flat square-panelled ceiling. The fire-place is framed in a fine piece of marble, and the mantel is of carved wood.

The reception-room is remarkable for a splendid ceiling, said to be Wren’s. It has a handsomely moulded oval panel, covering the centre, whilst the four corners bear respectively: the date 1670, the arms of Charles II., the City arms, and the Innholders’ arms. The room is panelled and has a good oak overmantel.

In the window of the staircase is some old seventeenth-century stained glass, removed from a window of the great hall. One piece has the arms of Deputy John Knott, “3rd time master 1670”; the other the arms of Captain Richard Pennar, “once master 1678.” The modern court-room is of the 1886 rebuilding, and has a good moulded ceiling and carved overmantel. It contains two curious old pictures. One the arms of Charles II., bearing the mark “C.R.2,” and showing Might and Power crushing down Rebellion whilst a peaceful king reigns. The other is a representation of the Nativity in the Inn at Bethlehem, said to have been presented by Charles II. It depicts St. Joseph holding a crucifix. The star in the Innholders’ arms is the Star of Bethlehem, which is, of course, shown in this picture.

St. Michael Royal on College Hill derived its name Royal from the adjacent lane “La Riole” (see p. 223); it was sometimes called St. Michael Paternoster from Paternoster Lane. “Paternoster-cherch” is first found written in the Calendar of Wills (Court of Hustings, Part I. p. 3) in 1259; “St. Michael de Paternoster-cherch” in 1284; and “Paternostercherche near la Rayole” in 1301. It was rebuilt by Sir Richard Whittington. Early in the fifteenth century the old church was small, frail, and ruinous: it stood where it now stands, but north and east lay unbuilt spaces, green with grass, and possibly tree-planted. Across the green to the north stood “The Tabard,” the dwelling-house of Whittington, who rebuilt the church on a larger scale, granting land of his own for the purpose in 1411. The site available measured 113 feet long from east to west, just as now there is a graveyard 26 feet long. The new building had a castellated parapet: the tower stood at the west end, square, embattled, surmounted by a great cross. Beneath the tower a great doorway opened upon Paternoster Lane. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt by Edward Strong, Wren’s master-mason, in 1694; the steeple was added in 1713. The church of St. Martin Vintry was not rebuilt after the Fire, its parish being annexed to this. The parishes of Allhallows the Great and Allhallows the Less were also annexed in 1893. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1282.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1282; the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury from 1550 to 1666, when St. Martin Vintry was annexed and the patronage was alternate with the Bishop of Worcester.

Houseling people in 1548 were 213.

The church is oblong in shape, 67 feet in length, 47 feet in width, and 38 feet in height. The oak altar-piece is said to be the work of Grinling Gibbons, and above it there is a painting by William Hilton, R.A., presented in 1820 by the directors of the London Institution. The tower is square and contains three stories terminated by a cornice and parapet, with vases at the angles; it is surmounted by a shallow dome on four arches, and encircled by Ionic columns. Above this the steeple is octagonal, crowned by a pedestal with finial and vane. The total height is 128 feet 3 inches. The church was repaired and the interior arrangements remodelled in 1864; in 1895 was again repaired; at this date the carved woodwork and the organ case from Allhallows the Great were utilised on the demolition of that church. Beneath the tower is preserved a carving of the royal arms (William and Mary); this stood above the reredos before the placing of the picture there in 1820. The tower contains one bell.

A chantry was founded here by Lawrence Duket in 1289.

The church contained but few monuments of note. There was one in memory of John Haydon, mercer, Sheriff 1582, and benefactor of the parish. Sir Richard Whittington, the founder of the church, was also commemorated; he was buried here with his wife, and the traditional site of the tomb, which was destroyed in the Great Fire, is where the sanctuary rail and organ are.

The only monument of any interest in the present building is one to Sir Samuel Pennant, who died 1750, during his mayoralty; he died of gaol fever, caught in discharging his duty in visiting Newgate. There is a memorial tablet to Jacob Jacobsen on the west wall; Bishop Wadington’s arms can be seen in the south-west window.

Reginald Peacock, Bishop of Chichester, 1449, was rector here; also William Ive (d. 1485), Vice-Chancellor of Oxford; Humphrey Hody (1659-1707), Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford; and Richard Smith (1500-1563), Dean of Douai and a great pillar of the Catholic Church.

Under Whittington’s will, the church became collegiate in 1424. A college of St. Spirit and St. Mary, the college house, the almshouse, also of Whittington’s foundation, and a parcel of ground then a garden, but intended for consecration as a new churchyard, were grouped north of the church, between that and Whittington’s own dwelling. They probably composed a quadrangle. The almshouse was called “God’s House or Alms-house or the hospital of Richard Whittington.” It was for twelve poor folk, men and women, and a “tutor” who had custody of the goods, and was to preserve order. He had a separate apartment—the twelve others lived more together; all dined and supped in common hall. They were to pray daily for their founder, his wife and others; to behave seemly; to read, work, or meditate; to dress in dark brown, “not staring nor blazing in colour.” The college house was for the accommodation of five fellows or chaplains, two clerks, and four choristers; these composed the collegiate staff. The fellows were secular priests, that is to say, not regulars or conventual clergy; they were to be masters of art, poor men, unbeneficed. One of them was to occupy the position of master. The church ceased as a rectory when it became a collegiate. The then rector was appointed the first master and he was to continue his parochial duties.

Before the end of the century the members had formed themselves into a fraternity—Fraternitas ScantÆ SopluÆ—for the reading of a divinity lecture. A little later a divinity reader was provided by a bequest, and another legacy was allotted to the fellows, so that each should deliver two additional sermons every year, either in the City or out. Whittington’s estates originally produced £63 per annum for the college and £40 per annum for the almshouse. At the suppression of the former, under Edward VI., the value was returned at only £20: 1: 8 per annum; the college house and garden were sold for £92: 2s. to Armagil Waad, or Wade, Clerk of the Council, in 1548. The almshouse was not then affected, but was and is administered by the Mercers Company. It was rebuilt after the Great Fire. In 1808 the almshouse people were removed to Highgate. The Mercers’ School, rebuilt in Old Jewry in 1670, removed to Budge Row in 1787, and burnt down and removed to 20 Red Lion Court, opposite to St. Antholin’s, Watling Street, in 1804, was settled in the old almshouses on their becoming empty. In 1832 the premises were rebuilt. Externally they present a plain structure of stone, with a great projecting cornice; the interior is spacious, the flagged playground still preserves a suggestion of collegiate cloisters. Here almsmen walked, here college fellows paced, here hearty schoolboys shouted—now all is silent and untenanted. The Mercers’ School is now removed to Holborn.

The name College Hill does not occur in Stow, but Newcourt’s map of 1658 so styles it: it bore reference to Whittington’s College. As the Duke of Buckingham’s “Litany” (1679) has it, there was thus “Nought left of a College, but College Hill.” Ogilby’s post-Fire map (1677) names the street College Hill only so far north as Cloak Lane; above that it was Tower Royal Street: both portions are now reckoned as College Hill as far as Cannon Street. At the corner of the present Maiden Lane was situated, in the fourteenth century, the house and tavern of Richard Chaucer, vintner, step-grandfather to Geoffrey Chaucer, the poet. Perhaps the latter dwelt here.

After the Great Fire “a very large and graceful building” with great courtyards was erected on College Hill. Here lived the second and last Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, “for the more security of his trade, and convenience of driving it among the Londoners.” This dissolute but clever courtier was nicknamed “Alderman Buckingham” and satirised by Dryden as “Zimri” who was “everything by starts and nothing long.” The house was sometime the residence of Sir John Lethieullier, merchant and alderman, sheriff in 1674; it has since disappeared, but portions of the courtyard remain. One of these is Newcastle Court, on the west of College Hill, now merely a yard between backs of great houses, and a postern entrance to the Cloak Lane Police Station.

Of the general houses which Strype (1720) says were “well built and inhabited by merchants and others,” none remain, except Nos. 3 and 4 on the west side, of which the latter has a quaintly carved tympanum above the front door: and Nos. 21 and 22 on the east side. The two last or some part of them stand upon the site of “The Tabard,” Whittington’s own dwelling-house. Here are two stories of cellars in the northern house, whose foundation walls are built from stones possibly once forming the materials of Whittington’s mansion. Both premises have massive staircases, and the southernmost possesses some well-carved doorcases. The little courtyards before them are each entered through a great porch with timbered sides, and heavy panelled doors shut it off from the street. The arched gateways of the porches are pedimented, the tympanums filled with a profusion of luxuriant carvings—grotesque heads, drapery, garlands of flowers and fruit. Above the gateways stand porch-rooms; still higher little latticed dormer windows peep out of the quaint, tiled roofs. The porches are the pride of the hill, and well serve to mark so illustrious a site.

Stow calls Dowgate Hill “the high street called Downgate,” and by that he doubtless includes both the hill on the north side of Thames Street and Dowgate Dock on the south side of the same. The east side is now wholly occupied by the immense wall of Cannon Street hotel and station. Only a portion of the former is in the ward. Beneath the latter, opening upon the street, are several cellars called Dowgate vaults. Previously to the erection of the station a lane called Chequer Yard ran from opposite Dyers’ Hall to Bush Lane. Stow terms it Chequer Lane, or Alley, “of an inn called the Chequer.” Its former name, he says, was Carter Lane, “of carts and carmen having stables there.” Strype calls it “a pretty good open space.” Malcolm (1802) says Chequer Yard then consisted of a vast range of warehouses, many stories in height, always filled with tobacco, cotton, coffee, etc. Amongst these were the Plumbers’ Hall warehouses. Here formerly stood Plumbers’ Hall (see Appendix) and the Chequer Inn. “The Chequer” is mentioned as a brew-house so early as the reign of Richard III., when it appears to have appertained to the Erber. It was rebuilt as an inn after the Great Fire, and stood in a courtyard on the south side of the lane, near the west end. It had a gate and a passage into Dowgate Hill. Strype (1720) says it was “an inn of no great account, being chiefly for livery stables and horses.” In Strype’s 1754 edition all mention of the inn is omitted, so that it had, presumably, vanished during the intervening thirty-four years. At the north-west corner of Chequer Yard was the site of the Erber (p. 245). Previously to the erection of the station, the hill forked opposite to Skinners’ Hall and turned into Cannon Street by two narrow lanes. Of these the north-eastern was Turnwheele Lane, “from a turnpike in the middle thereof”; the north-western retained the name of Dowgate Hill. They had between them at the fork a block of buildings. When the station was built, Turnwheele Lane was covered and Dowgate Hill was widened by absorbing the block. Towards “the upper end of the hill, stood the fair Conduit-upon-Dowgate,” mentioned by Stow as “castellated, and made in the year 1568, at charges of the citizens.” In Ryther’s map, 1604 (British Museum), it is shown to stand in the middle of Dowgate Hill opposite the end of Cloak Lane. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt. Allen, in his History of London, places it at the south-east corner of Walbrook, in Walbrook ward; evidently he is mistaken. On the west side the ward begins at the corner of Cloak Lane, of which only a part of the southern side is in Dowgate. Thence proceeding southwards is Tallow Chandlers’ Hall (see p. 243).

At 8 Dowgate Hill is

It is probable that, like other traders who came to London in early times, men following the trade of Skinners were assigned some separate locality in the town and associated together for the purposes of a guild.

In course of time, as the guild grew in importance, the Skinners seem to have absorbed or affiliated unto themselves two other trades, the Upholders and the Tawyers.

It is clear that as long ago as the reign of Henry VI. the guild included among its members other than those who exercised the trades of Skinner, Tawyer, and Upholder, for in one of the Company’s books, dated 25th July, 23 Henry VI., there is a list of names of the brethren and sistren of the guild at that time. They amount to twenty in all, and include one doctor, three gentlemen, nine of no trade or description, two butchers, one dyer, one joiner, one skinner, one grocer, as brethren, and one sister as silkwife.

The Company has a copy of the charter of Henry VI., but none of that of Philip and Mary. They are Inspeximus charters, as also is that of 22nd March, 2 Elizabeth.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth differences arose between the working “artesans” of the guild and the rest of the fraternity, especially the governing body, which continued for many years and culminated in a surreptitious application in 1606 by the Artisan Skinners for new Letters Patent from the Crown without the consent or privity of the master and wardens of the guild, and in December 1606 (4 James I.) a charter was issued. Full inquiry was made. The Lord Mayor and aldermen made their report to the lords of the Privy Council, who thereupon ordered (March 22, 1606) that the privy seal that had been procured by the Artisan Skinners for this new charter appertaining to the Company of Skinners should be cancelled.

The charters and title deeds of the Skinners Company were surrendered in 1625 like those of the other City Companies, but in 1641 their privileges were restored.

After the restoration of King Charles II. the Skinners Company obtained the charter dated 20th June, 19 Charles II. It grants nothing new, but merely confirms to the master and wardens of the guild or fraternity all they had under any of their previous charters.

Passing to 1744, the Artisan Skinners appear to have thought that if they could only be more fully represented on the governing body of the Company, their trade grievances would be redressed, and they accordingly, in October 1744, presented a remonstrance to the Court.

The result of this was that in three months the master and three wardens were served with a copy of a rule for a mandamus commanding them to choose a number of Artisan Skinners to be wardens and assistants. The governing body, in reply, set out the whole of the proceedings of 1606, but the mandamus was ultimately issued and a return made to the writ. At the hearing, counsel for the prosecutors, the artisans, informed the Court of King’s Bench that he had perused the return and could not find any fault with it, and accordingly the judges ordered the return of the master and wardens to be affirmed.

In December 1747 similar hostile proceedings were renewed, and led finally to an information for a false return being filed against the master and wardens in June 1748. The cause came on for trial at the King’s Bench bar on the 24th April following, and the jurors, without going out of court, brought in a verdict of not guilty.

The number of liverymen is 200; the Corporate Income is £27,500; the Trust Income is £17,500.

A freeman of the Skinners Company is eligible, as vacancies from time to time occur, to a presentation for his child to Christ’s Hospital, ten such presentations being given to the Company under the benefaction of Mr. William Stoddart. Besides being eligible for certain almshouses and pensions, poor freemen who have fallen into straitened circumstances obtain charitable assistance from the Company at the discretion of the governing body, as also do the widows and children of such poor freemen. Freemen are entitled to a preference among applicants for loans under trusts administered by the Company. They are also with their sons and apprentices eligible under certain conditions for exhibitions founded by the Company, and their sons will have a preference for admission into the Company’s Middle School, referred to in another part of this return, if there should not be room for all the candidates. Liverymen have similar claims. They also attend at dinners given to the livery at the Company’s Hall, and have the privilege of occasionally introducing friends at such dinners. The master and wardens and other members of the court have similar rights and privileges. They also receive fees as members of the governing body in respect of their attendance at courts and committees as already stated.

Assistance is granted by the Company to members if it appears upon inquiry that from misfortune or by reason of sickness, infirmity, or from other good cause they are in need.

Stow describes Skinners’ Hall as “a fair house, which was sometime called Copped Hall by Downgate.” Copped Hall was purchased by the Skinners, together with several small tenements adjacent, in the reign of Henry III. (about 1260-62). The Company afterwards held it under a licence of mortmain granted by that king. It was subsequently alienated, though by what means is uncertain, and in 1326, according to Stow, it was possessed by Ralph de Cobham, the brave Kentish warrior, who made Edward III. his heir. Edward III. restored the hall to the Skinners at about the time of the Company’s legal incorporation (1327).

Of Copped Hall no plan exists, but it is probable that four small tenements occupied the Dowgate Hill frontage (50 feet), and it is known that there was a court or quadrangle somewhat like the present one with an entrance from it direct into the hall. It perished in the Great Fire of 1666, soon after which the rubbish and lead were sold. There still remain, however, some of the old walls, and the great stone fireplace of the kitchen was discovered when excavating in the present cellars about 1870. On October 15, 1668, a committee, of which Sir George Waterman, Master of the Skinners, and Sir Thomas Pilkington were members, was appointed to carry out the rebuilding, the Company meanwhile holding their courts in various places as at Salters’ Hall, the Red Bull Inn, Bishopsgate, and in the church of St. Helen.

In November 1688 “the front houses at Skinners’ Hall” were ordered to be rebuilt; in the February following the Renter was empowered to make a gateway of stone or timber as he thought fit; and the quadrangle was ordered to be 40 feet square. By 1672 the rebuilding must have been practically finished, for Sir George Waterman kept his mayoralty here in 1672-73, renting the hall for £160.

The Dowgate Hill front was rebuilt under the Company’s surveyor in 1777, and Mr. Jupp, afterwards surveyor to the Company, also made some alterations. This front is somewhat like that of Old Covent Garden Theatre in the time of Garrick. It is a regular three-storied building of the Ionic order. The basement part to the level of the first story is of stone, and rusticated; from this rise six pilasters supporting an entablature and pediment all of the same material. In the tympanum are the Company’s arms. In the facade are two doorways, one leading to the quadrangle before the great hall, the other to the clerks’ offices. Across the quadrangle is a carved doorway, the principal entrance to the lobby in front of the great hall. This hall is a very handsome apartment. It was rebuilt 1849-50 under the direction of Mr. G. B. Moore, and was restored and decorated in 1891 at much expense. Up to that time the walls had been wainscotted; they are now panelled in light oak to a higher level, the panelling being crowned by a fine frieze decorated with raised shields, and a cornice. The carved roof is richly decorated and contains a wagon-headed skylight. The entrance to the hall is at the north end through a splendid carved oak screen, which in 1891 supplanted the original Ionic screen ordered for the hall in 1760. Behind the hall is a small Committee room with a good fireplace, above which is a carved panel in the style of Grinling Gibbons. Beyond is the court room. On the floor above is the great cedar parlour or withdrawing room. It is a magnificent chamber, redolent with the scent of the red cedar, in which material the whole of the interior is executed. The cedar wood is said to have been presented by the East India Company. The walls are wainscotted up to the frieze and cornice, the former of which is carved both in light and dark wood, the whole being richly gilt. From the cornice springs the coved ceiling, which is panelled and painted, and which, some years ago, when the room was redecorated under the mastership of Mr. Charles Barry, architect, was substituted for the old ceiling. The doors are handsomely carved and pedimented. Over the fireplace is a panel carved in Grinling Gibbon’s best style, displaying the Company’s arms wreathed about with festoons of dark wood on the light cedar panel.

At one end, in glass cases, are two curious coloured statuettes, one representing Edward III., the other Sir Andrew Judd, both neat pieces of work.

The grand staircase is well designed, and displays some of the massy carving and rich ornaments in vogue just after the Great Fire. Attached to the hall is a small garden, in which are a tree and several flower-beds, also a curiously embossed cistern dated 1768. The original cost of the Skinners’ Hall was, according to the New View of London (1708), £18,000, but much has since been spent upon it. Several Lord Mayors and sheriffs have kept their year of office here, and in 1691 the new East India Company, before their incorporation with the old Company, began to hold their meetings here, paying an annual rent of £300. In consequence of these meetings the new Company afterwards presented to the hall a carved mahogany court-table and silver candlesticks.

The Dyers Company was in existence in 1381, and probably even earlier.

The first charter was that granted by Henry VI. in 1471; this was renewed by Edward IV. in 1472. The charter was confirmed or renewed by Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth, and Mary. An Inspeximus charter was granted, 2 Elizabeth 1559 and by 4 James I. 1606; James II. gave the Company a charter 1688, and they were re-incorporated by Anne 1704.

The number of the livery is now 61; the Corporate Income is £5000; the Trust Income £1000.

The Company has the right to keep swans on the river Thames. This privilege they share with the vintners, and the “Barge masters” of both Companies have the care of the swans.

Dyers’ Hall extends from Skinners’ Hall to the corner of College Street, and occupies the site of Jesus’ Commons, which was, says Stow (1598), “a college of priests, a house well furnished with brass, pewter, napery, plate, etc., besides a fair library well stored with books, all which of old time was given to a number of priests that should keep commons there, and as one left his place, by death or otherwise, another should be admitted into his room, but this order within this thirty years being discontinued, the said house was dissolved, and turned to tenements.”

The Dyers’ Hall consists of a plain four-storied building, the basement being of stone, the upper part of white brick with stone facings. Part of the lower story is let out as business premises, the corner at College Street being allotted to the Bunch of Grapes Inn. The great hall is a large and lofty room, but comparatively plain. It is relieved by rather handsome frieze and cornice and is lighted by two windows, one at either end.

The Company’s Hall in use prior to 1666 stood at the south end of what is now Dyers’ Hall Wharf, Upper Thames Street. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and apparently rebuilt in a stately manner, but again destroyed by fire in 1681. (Malcolm, 1802.) For several years the Company met in Salters’ Hall. Maitland (1739) says “the Company has converted one of their houses in little Elbow Lane into a hall to transact their business in.” This fell down in 1768. The next hall was erected about 1770. It was a tolerably spacious unassuming building, the exterior distinguished by a double flight of steps, but was not of any architectural merit. The present hall was built 1839-40 (Charles Dyer, architect). Some additions and alterations were made to it 1865-67 by D. A. Corbett, architect. (See Lond. and Mid. Arch. Trans. vol. v. p. 452.)

The Dyers’ Wharf estate is now covered with warehouses. Those on the riverside are known as the Monument Bonded Warehouses. The archives of the Company were destroyed in the Great Fire.

The slope of Dowgate Hill is now a gradual one, but Stow speaks of it as of rapid descent, and relates that in 1574 the channels became so swollen and swift in a heavy storm of rain, that a lad of eighteen, endeavouring to leap over near the conduit, was taken with the stream and carried thence against a cartwheel that stood in the watergate, “before which time he was drowned and stark dead.” Strype (1720) mentions that the hill was still so steep that in great rains floods arose in the lower parts. Ben Jonson speaks of “Dowgate torrents falling into Thames.”

Dowgate Wharf or Dock is supposed to have gained its name from its steep descent to the river, as it was sometimes called Downgate, but this derivation sounds highly improbable. One of the most ancient ferries over the Thames was at Dowgate. On the east side of the dock is Walbrook Wharf, showing the spot where the ancient stream, the Walbrook, reached the Thames.

Robert Green the dramatist, from whom Shakespeare borrowed the plot of his Winter’s Tale, died (1592) in an obscure lodging at the house of a shoemaker in Dowgate, indebted to his landlord for the bare necessaries of life.

At the north end of Dowgate Hill near Cloak Lane stood St. John the Baptist’s Church.

St. John the Baptist was situated on the west side of Dowgate Hill in the ward of Walbrook. Ecclesia Sancti Johannis super Walbroc, occurs about 1181; ecclesia Sancti Johis de Walbrook is set down in the “Taxatio Ecclesiasticus” of Pope Nicholas IV. (1291). The first mention of the church is contained in a book at the Cathedral (Newcourt, i. p. 371) compiled in the time of Ralph de Diceto made dean 1181. The entry is as follows:—“Ecclesia Sancti Johannis super Walbroc est Canonicorum, & reddit eis ii sol. per manum Vitalis clerici, solvit Synodalia ivd, Archidiacono xiid. & habet in domino suo quondam terram, quae reddit ii sol. & est de feodo Willimi de la Mare, & etiam terrulam, quae est inter ecclesiam & Walbroc & reddit iii sol. non habet coemiterium.”

Thus the earliest church stood upon the east side of the stream, a little tract of land intervening between its west wall and the bank. When the watercourse was diverted to flow more eastwards, the chancel bordered on the brook. It was rebuilt about 1412, and again in 1621, but destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666, when its parish was annexed to that of St. Antholin. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1150.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s in 1150, who granted it to the Prioress and Convent of St. Helen about 1373, till it was seized by Henry VIII. and so continued in the Crown up to 1671, when it was annexed to St. Antholin.

Houseling people in 1548 were 375.

Only two monuments are recorded by Stow as being of note—W. Combarton, Skinner, who gave lands to the church, buried 1410; and John Stone, Taylor, Sheriff 1464.

The site of the building was converted into a churchyard, and upon the wall is a stone with this inscription:

“‘Before the dreadfull Fire, anno domini 1666, here stood the parish church St. John Baptist, upon Walbrook—William Wilkins, James Whitchurch, churchwardens this present year anno domini 1674.’ The above stone was refaced, and the letters fresh cut anno domini 1836—Rev. John Gordon M.A. rector, Edward Jones, Lewis Williams, churchwardens.”

The parsonage was not rebuilt, and Strype notes (1754, vol. i. p. 516) that neither its site nor that of its garden was given in the 1693 visitation. Newcourt (Repertorium, i. p. 371) further notes that the same visitation records great encroachments having been made on the churchyard since the Fire “to some of which the parish had consented, and others have been done by the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen, without the consent of the Archbishop and Bishop of London (as ’tis said) and the Chamberlain of London receives the rent for them.”

It was reserved for the commercial civilisation of this century to “encroach” the churchyard out of existence. The Act of the Metropolitan Railway gave the Company power to construct their Cannon Street Station (1883) under the burial-ground, and to remove the human remains. The churchyard is no more; the greater part of its site is enclosed by a brick wall which screens the opening in the roof of the station below. At the extreme west end an asphalted square has been railed in and reserved as a home for gravestones, and a large ornament bearing this melancholy and curious inscription:

Sacred to the memory of the dead interred in the ancient church and churchyard of St. John the Baptist upon Walbrook during four centuries. The formation of the District Railway having necessitated the destruction of the greater part of the churchyard, all the human remains contained therein were carefully collected and re-interred in a vault beneath this monument A.D. 1884.—Rev. Lewis Borrett White, D.D., rector; John R. W. Luck, Edward White, churchwardens.

But why sacred to the memory of the dead during “four centuries” only? Had not those buried previously to 1484 any right to commemoration? The churchyard existed in 1378 and the church in 1181. Truly inscription writers are marvellous in their discriminating powers. The vault containing the remains is situated alongside the railway line beneath.

Very interesting discoveries were made when excavating for the station. Mr. E. P. Seaton, the resident engineer, has preserved some careful notes, from which the following is an extract: “At the west end of the churchyard was found a subway running north and south. The arch was formed of stone blocks (Kentish rag) placed 3 feet apart, the space between being filled up with brickwork. The sides were of worked red ragstones, 8 by 11 inches, and 3 feet long (some 1 foot 4 inches long), surrounded with rough rubble masonry, set in mortar of a brown colour. The flat bottom varied from 2 to 4 feet in thickness and was formed of random rubble masonry. The brick invert was of much later date, about 6 inches thick and almost a semicircle. The space between the underside of that and the bottom was filled with made earth. A portion of the arch had been broken in, and was filled with human bones. The other parts of the subway or sewer were filled with hand-packed stones. This is supposed to be the centre of the ancient Walbrook (this supposition is quite correct) and made earth was found to a distance of 35 feet from the surface. Clay of a light grey colour was then found, impregnated with the decayed roots of water-plants. The foundations (it is a matter of regret that no plan of the foundations was taken; the opportunity is now lost for ever) of the old church of St. John the Baptist, destroyed 1666, and pulled down about 1677, were discovered about 10 to 12 feet from the surface and composed of chalk and Kentish ragstones. They ran about north-north-east to south-south-west. Piles of oak were found which seem to denote that the church was built on the edge of the brook, which must have been filled up during the Roman occupation, as numerous pieces of Roman pottery were found.” The bottom of the Walbrook valley was reached at 32 feet below the present street level, and is now 11 feet below the level of the lines in the station. During the excavations the piles and sill of the Horseshoe bridge which crossed the Walbrook hereabouts were also found near the churchyard, together with the remains of an ancient boat. These were unfortunately too rotten to preserve, but a block of Roman herring-bone pavement, formerly constituting part of a causeway or landing-place on the brook, is now at the Guildhall Museum. It was found beneath the churchyard 21 feet below the present level of the street, and was presented by the rector and churchwardens. Most of the Samian pottery and Roman coins found at this time were also presented to the Guildhall.

The first charter of incorporation of this Company bears date the 8th of March 1462, 2 Edward IV., wherein the then members of the Company are described as “our beloved and faithful subjects, the Freemen of the Mystery or Art of Tallough Chandlers of our City of London.”

It is evident, however, that a company, guild, or other association of tallow chandlers existed in London before the date of the above charter, seeing that in the year 1426, or thirty-six years prior thereto, Letters Patent were granted by Henry VI. to the mayor of the City of London, and the master and wardens of the Mystery or Craft of Tallow Chandlers of the same city for the time being, empowering them to search for and destroy all bad and adulterated oils.

Also in the year 1456, or six years prior to the said charter, a grant of arms and crest was made by John Smert, Garter King-at-Arms, to John Priour, John Thurlow, William Blakeman, and Richard Grenecroft, sworn wardens or keepers (gardiens) and several other notable men of the trade and of the Company of Tallow Chandlers (Chandeliers de Suif) of the City of London, on behalf of and in the name of their whole confraternity.

At present there is a livery of 102; the Corporate Income was not returned to the Commissioners. The Trust Income is £220. Maitland says that the Fraternity anciently dealt not only in candles, but also in oils, vinegar, butter, hops, soap, etc.

Stow designates the hall of the Tallow Chandlers “a proper house.” After the Great Fire it was rebuilt (1672). In 1884 a large red brick and terra-cotta building of five stories, standing upon a granite base, was erected on Dowgate Hill instead, and upon the site of the old house of the Company’s clerk and beadle, and the hall is now approached by a vestibule running under this building. The vestibule leads into an open quadrangle, which was diminished when the above-mentioned house was built. It is surrounded by a Tuscan piazza of ten arcades. This piazza in part belongs to the 1672 building. It was restored in 1871. The building itself is of red brick. On the first floor is the great hall, a handsome apartment 50 feet long by 27 feet wide, having a decorated ceiling, and walls wainscotted with oak panelling and looking-glass to a height of 30 feet. On the south wall are three great mirrors; in a broken pediment over the central one are the arms of Charles II. At the north end is a carved oak screen, in the centre of which are the entrance doors, of handsome carved work filled with stained glass, erected in 1894. The screen itself is of the 1672 building. A heavy carved frieze and cornice passes round the hall above the long windows. The pictures include two by Sir Godfrey Kneller. The court parlour is the handsomest room. It is wainscotted to the ceiling, which is magnificently panelled in oak, and richly gilt, having in the centre an oval compartment enclosed by an exquisitely moulded wreath of flowers. The rest is divided into squares and oblongs, filled with groups of flowers and fruit.

An inscription tells us:

“This parlour was wainscotted at the expense of Sir Joseph Sheldon, Knt., a member of this Company and Lord Mayor of this City A.D. 1675. Who also gave this Company a barge with all its furniture.”

On the second floor is the court-room, which is also wainscotted to the ceiling.

Dowgate, the Steelyard, and Cold Harbour were all very near together. The Steelyard was so called from the beam of steel by which goods imported into London were weighed. It stood just where Cannon Street Station now is. It had a fine hall and courtyard, and was for 300 years held by the members of the Hanseatic League, a community of foreigners who enjoyed the monopoly of importing hemp, corn, wax, linen and many other things into England, to the great loss of our own traders. (See London in the time of the Tudors, p. 82.)

Beyond the station is the City of London Brewery. The archway spanning the central entrance to this occupies the site of an earlier arch which once carried the choir and steeple of Allhallows the Less, and led to what Stow speaks of as “the great house called Cold Harbrough.” Its site is now covered by the brewery. The name of the house is conjectured to be a corruption of the German words Colner Herberg (Cologne Inn), which passed into Coln Harbrough, Cole Harbrough, Cold Harbrough, and Cold Harbour. Cologne being one of the principal of the Hanse towns, the proximity of the steelyard makes this derivation appear likely. There are several Cold Harbours in England, none of them remarkable for bleak situations, but most of them existing in places where commerce once greatly throve. The house stood at the water’s edge. It was a large building, with steps leading down to the river through an arched door. About the year 1600 it is represented with five gables facing the water, and rows of mullioned diamond-pane windows—a beautiful building. It had the right of sanctuary, though how or when gained is not known.

Until 1607 Cold Harbour had been outside the City jurisdiction, for it is one of the places added to the City’s rule by the charter of James I. to the mayor, commonalty, and citizens of London in that year. It must have been deserted by its original inhabitants, the Cologne merchants, before the reign of Edward II. It belonged to the Poultney family, and was for some time called Poultney’s Inn.

“In the year 1397, 21 Richard II., John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon, was lodged there, and Richard II., his brother, dined with him. It was then counted a right fair and stately house: but in the next year following Edmond, Earl of Cambridge, was there lodged, notwithstanding the said house still retained the name of Poultney’s Inn in the reign of Henry VI., the 26th of his reign” (Stow).

In 1410 Henry IV. gave it to Henry, Prince of Wales, for life. Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., lodged here temporarily; in the reign of Henry VIII., the Bishop of Durham’s house, already mentioned, “being taken into the King’s hands,” Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, was lodged in “the Cold Harbrough.” This Bishop of Durham remained here until 1553, when he was deposed from his bishopric and Cold Harbour was taken from him. It was granted by Edward VI., together with its appurtenances and six houses or tenements in the parish of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East, and certain lands in Yorkshire, to the Earl of Shrewsbury and his heirs. Edward VI. is said to have given it to the Earl at the instance of the Duke of Northumberland, “who practised to gain as many of the nobility as he could to his purpose.” It then became known as Shrewsbury House. Francis, fifth Earl of Shrewsbury, who died in 1560, and his son, the sixth Earl, the guardian for fifteen years of Mary, Queen of Scots, took it down, “and in place thereof built a great number of small tenements, now letten out for great rents to people of all sorts” (Stow). The Earl died in 1590. The tenements were destroyed in the Fire of 1666. No remains of the building exist unless Wren utilised some of the stones in rebuilding Allhallows the Great. Hubbard, writing in 1843, says that a foundation wall of the house and the ancient stairs still survived in his time.

Stow calls The Erber a “great old house” and says that Geoffrey Scroope held it by gift of Edward III. in 1341. It subsequently belonged to John Nevil, Earl of Raby, who appears to have died some years prior to 1396. The last of the honourable family of the Scroopes to possess it was William de Scroope, Knt., who lived in the reign of Henry IV. He gave it for life to his brother Ralph Nevil, Earl of Westmoreland, who married, as his second wife, Joan, daughter of the Duke of Lancaster. Ralph Nevil died, seised of the Erber, in 1426, and his wife in 1441. Their son Richard Nevil, Earl of Salisbury, was lodged here in 1547. He died in 1460, and the Erber passed to his son Richard, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, “the king-maker,” who was slain at the battle of Barnet Field in 1471. In 1474, George, Duke of Clarence, who had married Isabel, daughter of “the king-maker,” then received it from Edward IV. who gave it to him and his heirs so long as there was living male issue of the Marquis Montacute. If the said male issue should die during the duke’s life, then the duke to remain seised for life, taking precedence of the rights of all others than the marquis and his issue. The Duke of Clarence died in 1479. After his death, Edward, his son, was seised of the Erber, and George, Duke of Bedford, son of John Nevil, Marquis Montacute, dying without male issue in 1483, the lands remained in the hands of Edward till 1500, when he was attainted and the lands thus came to the Crown. Here they remained until 1512, when Henry VIII. gave them to John, Earl of Oxford, and his heirs male. In 1513 the King gave the reversion to Sir Thomas Bulleyn, Knt., and his male heirs. In 1514 he restored Margaret, daughter and heir to George, Duke of Clarence, and to all the lands of Richard, Earl of Salisbury, “who by colour of restitution entered, and was attainted in 1540. So the lands came back to the Crown, and were given in the next year to Sir Philip Hoby, who in 1545 sold the Erber to one Doulphin, a draper, who in 1553 sold it to the Drapers Company. Strype, who gives these particulars, says that notwithstanding this account “by some lawyers and historians in those days,” it appears by the Rolls (1405) that there was a surrender of the Erber from Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland, to the King for the use of John Darrel, and Walter de Arkham; that Richard III. possessed it under the name of “The King’s Palace,” and that one Ralph Dowel, a yeoman of the Crown, was keeper of this place. Dowel seems to have repaired not only the Erber, but also other houses belonging to it, “particularly a brewhouse called the Chequer,” as appears by a ledger-book of the King’s in which the accounts of Dowel are said to be examined by John Hewyk, one of the King’s auditors. Orders were given to Lethington, bailiff of the lordship of the Clavering in Essex, “to content him,” but £14: 18: 3 still remained in arrears due to him for the repairs. Stow says that the Erber had been lately rebuilt by Sir Thomas Pullison, and that it was afterwards inhabited by Sir Thomas Drake.

St. Mary Bothaw was situated on the east side of Turnwheele Lane, Cannon Street. The date of foundation is unknown. Newcourt mentions Adam Lambyn as a rector, who died 1279. In the Taxation Book of Pope Nicholas IV., 1291, the church occurs as Sancte Marie de Bothaw. It was destroyed by the Great Fire, but not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Swithin. Stow supposes, for want of a better theory, that “this church being near unto the Down-Gate in the river of Thames, hath the addition of Bothaw, or Boat Haw, of near adjoining to a haw or yard, wherein of old time boats were made, and landed from Downgate to be mended.” Strype mentions that it seems “of old to be called St. Mary de Bothache,” and Mr. Loftie in his London City (1891) says that the name is “most likely from ‘la board hatch,’ a wooden gate-lock called also in some ancient documents ‘Board-Hatch.’” The map by Agas c. 1560, and Hollar’s view of London, call the church St. Mary Buttolph Lane. It is somewhat remarkable that Dowgate is almost the only one of the older City gates which has no Church of St. Botolph near by, as at Billingsgate, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, and Aldersgate. The term St. Mary Bothol occurs more than once in records of the sixteenth century. Can it be that the name bears witness to the existence of a St. Botolph’s Church here, which was dedicated to the Virgin, with the name Botolph attached as a remembrance of the former appellation? The earliest date of an incumbent is 1281.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, before 1281; the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury from 1552 up to the time it was annexed to St. Swithin in 1666.

Houseling people in 1548 were 182.

Chantries were founded here: By Lady Joan Fastolf, to which Robert Kirke was instituted, May 10, 1445; by and for John, son of Adam de Salusbury, who endowed it with a tenement called the “Key” in Coleman Street, which fetched £7 in 1548; by and for John Hamond, before 1387; by James le Butler; by Hugh Fostall.

Many noble persons were buried here, as appeared from the arms in the windows, the defaced tombs, and print of plates torn up and carried away. The most remarkable, perhaps, was that of Sir Henry Fitz-Alwine, draper, the first Lord Mayor of London, who continued in his position for twenty-four years. Here, too, Robert Chicheley, grocer and mayor of London in 1422, was buried; he appointed by his will that 2400 poor men should each have a good dinner on his birthday, and he also gave a plot of land for the building of the parish church, called St. Stephen’s, Walbrook.

No charitable gifts are recorded by Stow.

At the construction of Cannon Street station and hotel, in 1866-68, the churchyard was built over. Its site is now immediately under the steps leading from the hotel to the forecourt, and is occupied by part of a corridor, a carpenter’s shop, a knife-cleaning room, and a coal cellar, all of which belong to the hotel basement.

The north-western side of the station forecourt stands upon the site of Turnwheele Lane, a narrow turning which formerly led from Cannon Street by a westerly slope into Dowgate Hill, which it joined opposite the northern boundary of Skinners’ Hall. Stow calls it “a little lane with a turnpike in the middle thereof.” Strype (1720) terms it Turnwheele Lane, but the New Remarks of London (1732) style it Turnmill Lane. By the eastern side of the station runs Allhallows Lane leading northward into Bush Lane. The church of Allhallows the Great stood here until 1898, and east of it was Allhallows the Less.

Allhallows the Great was situated on the south side of Thames Street. This church has been known, at various times, as All Saints, Allhallows-ad-foenum, Allhallows-in-the-Hay, Allhallows-in-the-Ropery (“because,” says Stow, “of hay sold thereunto at Hay Wharf, and ropes of old time made and sold in the high street”), Allhallows the More (“for a difference from Allhallows the Less”), Allhallows the Great, which has been the name at least since the Fire. Of its first foundation there is no record, but from the fact that the riverside is the oldest inhabited part of the City it may be nearly coeval with the establishment of Christianity in London. The first actual mention of it is in 1361 when, according to Newcourt, one Thomas de Wodeford was rector. In 1627 and 1629 it was repaired and redecorated, and a gallery built at the west end, but the whole was destroyed by the Great Fire. In 1683 it was rebuilt, the architect being Wren, and Allhallows the Less, its neighbour, united with it by Act of Parliament. In 1877 the tower and north aisle were taken down to widen Thames Street. The church was taken down in 1898. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1279.

The patronage was in the hands of the family of Le Despensers before 1314; Richard Beauchamp; Richard Nevil, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, 1465; George, Duke of Clarence, before 1480; Edward, eldest son of Isabel, Duchess of Clarence, 1480; Edward IV.; Henry VII., as a gift from Anne, widow of Richard Nevil, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury; Henry VIII.; the Archbishop of Canterbury, by exchange, 1569, in whose successors it continues.

Houseling people in 1548 were 550.

There was a large cloister originally on the south side of the church, but it was in a considerable state of ruin in 1627.

The plan was nominally an oblong square, but, owing probably to the desire of Wren to make use of the old foundations, its walls were neither built parallel nor four-square. The length was 87 feet, the height 33 feet, and the width 60 feet, of which the nave was made 48 feet wide and a north aisle 12 feet wide. To the north aisle was also attached a heavy square tower, occupying a portion of the aisle. The elevation was finished with a cornice and parapet. The tower rose above the second division from the east to a height of 86 feet. The church was celebrated for its beautiful woodwork, which, on its demolition, was removed to St. Michael Royal.

Chantries were founded here by: Richard de Preston, citizen and grocer, at the Altar of St. Katherine, for himself and Agnes his wife, and to which Alfred Lyndon was admitted chaplain in 1396; Peter Cosin whose will is dated 1291 (Pat. 43 Edward III. p. 2 m. 12); Sir Nicholas Lovin for himself and dame Margaret his wife; William Lichfield, augmented by Thomas Westhowe, both of which endowments fetched £8: 16: 8 in 1548; and William Peston.

The church formerly contained monuments to: William Lichfield, Doctor of Divinity; John Brickles, a great benefactor. Queen Elizabeth’s monument, “If Royal Vertues, etc.,” was also in this church.

Two charity schools were erected in 1715, consisting of thirty boys and twenty girls supported by voluntary subscriptions from the inhabitants of the ward.

Among the notable rectors of this church are: Thomas White (1628-98), Bishop of Peterborough; Hon. James York, Bishop of Ely, 1781; Robert Richardson, D.D. (1732-81), Dean of Lincoln; Edward Waddington (d. 1731), Bishop of Chichester; William Vincent (1739-1815), Dean of Westminster; William Cave, author (1637-1713).

In 1877 a new vestry was built on the south side of the church. It is approached from Allhallows Lane by steps, through an arched doorway, above which stands what is called “the tower,” a mean erection and a mere apology for a tower. Its height does not extend beyond the church roof. The vestry is fitted with the panelling and the pedimented doorway brought from the old north aisle, from which also come the two fantastically and beautifully carved wooden shields, now placed respectively over the fireplace and the door. The ceiling is a neat piece of panelling. The room is used for the holding of the Dowgate wardmotes. The churchyard (south of the church) is much higher than the lane at its side. It contains one tree, several tombs, and in the north-west corner the vestry-room. The enclosure remains an open space even after the demolition of the church.

Allhallows Church was dismantled in 1894. The screen, the pulpit, the altar rails, the brass candelabra, and some of the woodwork went to St. Margaret, Lothbury; the organ case, the font rails, the statues of Moses and Aaron, most of the carved woodwork, the monuments, and the stained-glass arms of Bishop Waddington went to St. Michael, Paternoster Royal. The carved-wood altar was allotted to the new Church of Allhallows, North St. Pancras, which was to be erected partially from the funds arising out of the sale. The clock by Ericke was bought by a gentleman connected with the City of London Brewery, where it now stands. The site and the materials of the fabric were sold by auction on July 31, 1894, for £31,100.

Allhallows the Less was situated on the south side of Thames Street, to the east of Allhallows the Great; it was called by some Allhallows-on-the-Cellars, from its standing on vaults. It is said to have been built by Sir John Poultney. After the Great Fire the church was not rebuilt and the parish was annexed to Allhallows the Great. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1242.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Bishops of Winchester in 1242; master and chaplains of Corpus Christi College, Candlewick Street.

Houseling people in 1548 were 200.

The steeple and choir of this church stood on an arched gate, which was the entry to a great house called Cold Harbour. Dormers were made on the south side of the church in 1613 to lighten it, and several galleries subsequently added.

A chantry was founded here by James Andrew, the endowment of which fetched £8: 9: 4 in 1548.

The donors of charities to this church were: Elizabeth Bannister, £5; Anne Hope, £5; Roger Daniel, £8; and Samuel Goldsmith, £6, paid by the Company of Dyers.

Two charity schools were erected in 1715 consisting of thirty boys and twenty-eight girls supported by voluntary contributions from the inhabitants of the ward.

Cannon Street was formerly Candlewick Street. It was part of the ancient Roman highway that ran through the City and was once called Watling Street throughout its whole length. Many deeds are extant relating to Candlewick Street.

Roman remains have been found in Cannon Street including tessellated pavements and a bronze statuette of Hercules.

In 1369 mention is made of the “Yeldehalle” in Candlewick Street, probably the “Hula Dacorum,” Hall of the Danes mentioned in the Liber Albus, where we learn that it was occupied by the Cologne merchants and perhaps by those of Dinant also. The building was probably the “Great stone Binn” called “Olde Hall” mentioned by Stow.

One of the Caxton family, of whom there were so many in the City, named William de Caxton, lived here in 1342, and left to the Rector of St. Swithin his mansion in this street for the maintenance of a chantry.

The Calendar of Wills proves that we are in the most populous and ancient part of London. Between 1259 and 1350 there are more than fifty references to Candlewyke Street. The place is famous for its weavers, and especially for the coarse cloth they made here called “burel.” There was a fraternity of the “Burellers” working here. In 1334 one hundred foot-soldiers were provided with “gowns” of cloth made in Candlewyke Street. There was also a petition drawn up by the “good-folk” of this street and Clement’s Lane against the melting of lead in their midst.

From Eastcheap to Walbrook, the title was for many centuries Candlewick, Candlewright, or Canewyke Street. “Candelwykestrete” is mentioned in the City Records as early as 1308; “Canewykestrete” appears 1376-99, and again as “Cainwicke St.” in the map of Ralph Agas c. 1560. Stow gives three possible derivations: (1) From Candlewright, a maker of candles; (2) from the yarn or cotton candle-wick; (3) from candle-wike, a “wike” being a place where things are made. The proximity of Tallow Chandlers’ Hall in Dowgate Hill points to this as the candlemakers’ quarter of the City, and favours the first and third theories rather than the second. In Ryther’s map of London, 1604, it is styled “Conning Streete,” (probably a misprint for Canning Street), and Newcourt in his 1658 map of London calls it “Cannon Street,” so that the change from Candlewick to Canwyke, Conning, and Cannon appears to have taken place within a comparatively short space of time.

The weavers of woollen cloths, brought from Flanders by Edward III., probably dwelt here: “cloth of Candelwykestrete” is mentioned in City records in 1334; and Stow says that these weavers obtained permission in 1371 to meet in the churchyard of St. Lawrence Pountney close by. They appear not to have remained long in the neighbourhood, but their advent led to a settlement of many drapers in this part of the City and ultimately to the founding of the Drapers’ Hall in St. Swithin’s Lane. In Stow’s time the street was “possessed by rich drapers, sellers of woollen cloth, etc.” After the Great Fire the street, Strype says, was “well built and inhabited by good tradesmen.”

There are two churches in the street, which is now extended to the south-east corner of St. Paul’s, sweeping away Distaff Lane, Basing Lane, Little St. Thomas Apostle, and a bit of Budge Row. London Stone is in this street. Beside London Stone Henry Fitz Ailwyn or Alwyne, first mayor of London, had his residence. Here lived the Earl of Oxford, who, about the year 1540, according to Stow, rode to his house with eighty gentlemen in “livery of Reading tawny,” and chains of gold about their necks and “one hundred tall yeomen in the like livery to follow him without chains, but all having his cognizance of the blue boar introduced on their left shoulders.” This retinue was discountenanced by the Tudors and fell into disuse. Perhaps this earl was the last to maintain so great a following.

London Stone was probably the pillar set up in the Roman fort to mark the milliarium, the beginning of mile.

Some have supposed this stone to be the remains of a British druidical circle or religious monument. Strype quotes Owen of Shrewsbury as giving rise to this view by his assertion that “the Druids had pillars of stone in veneration, which custom they borrowed from the Greeks, who, as Pausanius writeth, adored rude and unpolished stones.” Malcolm suggests that, if it is of British origin, “policy may have induced the Romans to preserve it, as a relic highly valued by the Londoners, or as the monument of some great event.” The general opinion, since Camden’s time, seems to be that the stone is of Roman origin, but its first purpose still remains uncertain. Stow notes that some considered it to have been set “as a mark in the middle of the City within the wall; but, in truth, it standeth far nearer to the river of Thames than to the wall of the City.” He says, also, that others thought it was set for the payment of debts, on appointed days, “till, of later times, payments were most usually made at the font in Pont’s Church (St. Paul’s), and now most commonly at the Royal Exchange.”

Sir Christopher Wren was of opinion that “by reason of its large foundation, it was rather some more considerable monument in the Forum; for, in the adjoining ground to the south, upon digging for cellars after the Great Fire, were discovered some tessellated pavements, and other extensive remains of Roman workmanship and buildings.” Originally, no doubt, the erection was of considerable proportions, and a suggestion is made in the Parentalia that this milliarium was not in the form of a pillar as at Rome, but probably resembled that at Constantinople, which must have been a large building “for under its roof, according to Cedrenus, and Seidas, stood statues of Constantine and Helena, Trajan, an equestrian statue of Hadrian, a statue of Fortune, and many other figures and decorations.”

Strype considers it likely that this stone was, in after days, the place from which proclamations and public notices were made. This is confirmed in Pasquill and Marforius (1589): “Set up this bill at London Stone. Let it be done solemnly with drom and trumpet.” Malcolm considers that it was certainly regarded for some ages as “a rallying point for the citizens in times of insurrection, as Guildhall would now be.” At any rate, when in 1540 Jack Cade, “the Kentish rebel, who feigned himself to be Lord Mortimer,” forced his way into the City from Southwark, he marched to London Stone, where he found a great concourse of citizens, the Lord Mayor being among them. Here, according to Holinshed’s account, he struck his sword upon the stone, exclaiming, “Now is Mortimer Lord of this City,” as if, Pennant remarks, “that had been a customary ceremony of taking possession.” This scene occurs in the second part of Henry IV., Act iv. Sc. 6, where Shakespeare makes Cade enter Cannon Street with his followers, and strike the stone with his staff instead of his sword. To quote Fabian, “Rome, Carthage, and Jerusalem have been caste downe” with many other “cytyes,” yet

However great the stone may have been in the beginning, the ravages and fires of London could have left but little of the original remaining in the sixteenth century.

After the Fire its foundations were disclosed by Wren: no doubt a certain part of its upper end had been destroyed in the flames and possibly damaged in clearing away debris, but at all events a small portion of it, in shape somewhat like a cannon ball, was saved, says Strype, and placed within “a new stone handsomely wrought, cut hollow underneath, so as the old stone may be seen, the new stone being over it to shelter and deface the venerable one.” Strype’s map shows that the stone, in its new case, was at first re-erected on the old site on the south side of the street. On December 13, 1742, it was complained of as an obstruction, and was removed by order of the churchwardens of St. Swithin, at a cost of 12s., to the opposite of the “kerbstone” on the north side of the street. By kerbstone is here meant the stone protecting the foot of the buildings and not (as now) a stone protecting a pavement. At the beginning of 1798 the church was about to undergo a complete repair, and the historic stone was actually doomed to be removed as a nuisance. Fortunately Mr. Thomas Maiden, a printer of Sherborne Lane, championed the cause, and prevailed on one of the parish officers to preserve it and to have it replaced against the church wall. The enclosing stone, “somewhat like a Roman altar,” had formerly a curved bar of iron projecting across the elliptical aperture through which the relic is seen; but the present grill was placed over the front of the case in 1869, when the present inscription, in English and Latin, was cut in the wall of the church over the stone at the instance of a Committee consisting of members of the London and Middlesex ArchÆological Society, and the parish officers. At the same time a careful examination of the stone itself was made. It was found to measure about a foot cube, and that instead of being basaltic, capable of giving off sparks when struck by steel, it was in reality an oolite, such as the Romans used extensively in their buildings, and sometimes for coffins and sepulchral monuments, thus corroborating the idea of its Roman origin.

In Cannon Street is the Cordwainers’ Hall.

The Allutarii or Cordwainers appear to have been voluntarily associated together as a craft or mystery from very remote times, probably as early as the Conquest, in close connection with the municipality of London. Its object was to encourage and regulate the trades connected with the leather industry, and included the flaying, tanning, and currying of hides, and also the manufacture and sale of shoes, boots, goloshes, and other articles of leather. In the thirteenth and following centuries several branches separated and formed distinct communities, such as the girdlers, tanners, curriers, and leather sellers.

The first existing Ordinance of the Cordwainers (Allutarii) is found in Liber Horn, folio 339, and was made in the 56th year of King Henry III., Anno Domini 1272.

The Company was originally called the “Allutarii,” and became first connected with the “Coblers” in the 14th century. Maitland explains that the Cobler was not only the maker but the vendor of boots and shoes. As people in cold countries always wanted shoes, the Guild or Fraternity of shoemakers was certainly ancient. In 1375 the “reputable” Cordwainers submitted their ordinances to the mayor. In 1378 we learn that “discreet” men of the trade had authority to seize hides badly tanned. In 1395 the Cordwainers and the Coblers—i.e. the workers in new and old shoes—adjusted their differences, but that in 1409 the dissensions between them broke out again and were once more composed. In 1387 three journeymen cordwainers were haled before the mayor, charged with illegally forming a Fraternity of themselves excluding the masters. Another indication of the existence of an ancient Fraternity is that of the brawling and fighting in 1304 of the cordwainers and the tailors.

The first charter of incorporation was granted by King Henry VI. 1439, whereby, in consideration of the payment of fifty marks, he granted to the freemen of the Mysterie of Cordwainers (Allutariorum) of the City of London that they should be one body or commonalty for ever, that they should every year elect and make of themselves one master and four wardens to rule and govern the said mysterie, and all men and workers of the mysterie and commonalty, and all workmen and workers whatsoever of tanned leather relating to the said mysterie, to search and try black and red tanned leather and all new shoes which should be sold or exposed for sale, as well within the said City as without, within two miles thereof.

The above charter was exemplified and confirmed by the charter 4 and 5 Philip and Mary (June 17, 1557).

The charter or Letters Patent of Queen Elizabeth, dated August 24, in the fourth year of Her Majesty’s reign (A.D. 1562), exemplifies and confirms the exemplification of Philip and Mary.

The charter further grants to them the government of all persons exercising the said trade within the City of London and three miles round about the said City and suburbs, the privilege having previously run only to two miles. Also the power of making bylaws for such purpose is thereby given to the master, wardens, assistants, and commonalty.

King James I., in the tenth year of his reign, granted another charter to the Company.

A new charter was granted by King James II. in the first year of his reign, but it would appear that this charter was afterwards annulled by Act 2 William and Mary, cap. 9; but this same Act restored and confirmed all previous charters.

The first Hall was burned in the Great Fire: it stood in Great Distaff Street; since this street was swallowed up by Cannon Street, the Hall, rebuilt after the Fire, and again in 1788, and greatly altered since then, has now a frontage in Cannon Street.

The livery is now 100; the Corporate Income is £7700; the Trust Income £1600.

Of the cordwainers, Stow speaks as follows:

“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 5th of Richard II. (when he took to wife Anne, daughter of Vesalaus, King of Boheme), 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.”

Suffolk House, in Suffolk Lane, stands upon the site of the old Merchant Taylors’ School, and hence also upon the site of the Manor of the Rose.

This was a famous mansion once called Poultney’s Inn, from Sir John Poultney, who dwelt here after his removal from Cold Harbour. This was probably in 1348, for in that year (the year after he founded his college of Corpus Christi, by the church of St. Lawrence Poultney (or Pountney) on Lawrence Poultney Hill) he gave the Cold Harbour to the Earl of Hereford and Essex, for “one Rose at Midsummer, to him and his heirs for all services, if the same were demanded” (Stow). It seems most probable that this light “service” is accountable for the name of the Manor of the Rose. Subsequently the Manor belonged to John Holland, Duke of Exeter, then to William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, attainted and beheaded 1450. His son John, made Duke of Suffolk in 1463, does not appear to have possessed it, but his son John, Earl of Lincoln, owned it at the time of his attainder in 1487. It remained with the Crown until 1495, when it was restored to Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, on whose forfeiture of it by treason it was granted in 1506 to Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who kept possession of it until he was attainted and beheaded in 1521. Shakespeare (Henry VIII., Act i. Sc. 2) alludes to “The Rose within the parish of St. Lawrence Poultney,” in connection with the Duke of Buckingham. After remaining with the Crown for about four years it was granted in 1526 to Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who had recently been created Marquis of Exeter. He was beheaded in 1539, when the property again fell to the Crown. In 1540 it was granted to Robert Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, Earl of Sussex, whose son and grandson held it in turn. In 1560-61 it was sold and shortly after divided into moieties, of which one part was afterwards sold for the use of the Merchant Taylors’ School. All that remained intact of the mansion perished in the Fire of 1666, except a few portions of which the chief were a wall in Ducksfoot Lane, and a crypt extending from Suffolk Lane to Lawrence Poultney Hill. At the rebuilding of the City, No. 3 Lawrence Poultney Hill stood over this crypt, which remained until that house was pulled down in 1894, when, despite the protests of the antiquarians, the crypt was ruthlessly destroyed.

After the Fire the school was rebuilt on the old site, in 1675, the head-master’s house being erected adjoining it.

The school premises were enlarged at various times, especially in 1829. In 1875 they became too small for the requirements of the school, and the old Charterhouse School having been removed to Godalming, the Charterhouse site was bought by the Merchant Taylors Company for £90,000, and Merchant Taylors’ School was moved to its present quarters. The old premises were taken down, and Suffolk House was erected in part upon their site in 1882.

The pious Robert Nelson, author of the Fasts and Festivals, was born in Suffolk Lane, June 22, 1656. His father, John Nelson, was a wealthy trader to the Levant.

Strype calls Ducksfoot Lane Duxford. The name is, perhaps, a corruption of Duke’s Footmen’s Lane, tradition asserting that this lane contained the servants’ entrance to the Duke of Suffolk’s house, the Manor of the Rose. In that case “footmen” is equivalent to retainers, or men-at-arms, whose quarters would probably be at the back of the mansion. Wilson (History of St. Lawrence Poultney) thinks it was once called Duke’s-foot-lane, meaning a narrow way to the mansion.

The only old house in the Lane is No. 2, which possesses a very interesting interior. The building is now used for offices, but was originally a merchant’s residence. The old dining-room is a fine chamber, having panelled walls profusely decorated with florid designs in raised composition. The panel over the chimney-piece is particularly good. The entablature of the handsome mantel is supported by fluted Ionic pilasters, the frieze filled with flowers and fruit, and the keystone embellished with a curious rural scene. There are several other quaint mantels in the house, one being of coloured marbles exquisitely painted with figures and scenes. The great staircase with its wainscotted walls and fine balusters is a good piece of work. The cellars are very extensive, and there are traces of a subterranean passage which formerly led to the Thames. The staircase and the old dining-room were copied by Mr. John Hare, and staged at the Garrick Theatre for Mr. Pinero’s play The Profligate, first performed in 1889.

Laurence Pountney Hill.—Stow calls this hill St. Laurence Hill. The part from Cannon Street to Suffolk Lane was formerly Green Lettice Lane, but was renamed under the present title only, on the widening of Cannon Street, 1853-54. The two houses at the corner of Suffolk Lane are splendid specimens of early eighteenth-century architecture. Both are finished with a handsome cornice. The doorways of both are side by side and have lintels and architraves of such rich carving as to be unsurpassed in the City by any doorways of similar size and style. The lintels are both concave: that on the southern house contains garlands of flowers, a cherub’s head, and the date 1703, that on the northern consists of a large scallop shell having in it two naked children. The staircase in the northern house, with its fine twisted balusters, is one of the best original staircases left in the City. The southern house has been modernised for business premises and spoiled. Next below is a plot recently bared, where was the vault alluded to under Suffolk Lane.

At the north-east corner of Ducksfoot Lane is an old house, a good specimen of the domestic architecture after the Fire. Next to it eastwards is the southern half of St. Lawrence Pountney Churchyard now disused. It contains three trees and several tombs. In summer a large-leafed plant covers almost the whole area. Across the enclosure is another fine old house, now used for offices, containing handsome rooms and a fine balustered well-staircase.

Dr. William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, came to live with his brother Eliab opposite St. Lawrence Pountney Church, after the surrender of Oxford. Both Eliab and another brother Daniel were rich and distinguished merchants on the hill. Richard Glover, the author of Leonidas, was also an eminent merchant on this hill.

The character of Laurence Pountney Lane on both sides (except the modern warehouses on the east side at the corner of Upper Thames Street) is that of the rebuilding after the Fire. Perhaps as a whole this lane preserves this character better than any other thoroughfare in the ward. At the Upper Thames Street end, on the west side, is a house which, though rebuilt on the Upper Thames Street front, retains the old side wall. This is still pierced with narrow windows filled with little squares of glass in lead-work. On the same side of the lane are several carved lintels, and well-panelled deeply recessed doorways. Near the lower end is an old house beneath which is an archway leading to a courtyard, cellars, and offices. The house is partly tenanted by Messrs. Cooper, Box & Co., who first made beaver hats here in 1830 or thereabouts. The back part at the end of the yard, and the front windows were added about 1855. The cellars at the rear of the yard used to contain the vats in which the beaver hats were dyed. The lease of the house dating from shortly after the Fire is still in existence. In the yard is an arched doorway of stone, and solid arches of the same material support the walls of the house in the basement cellars. The stone no doubt came out of the ruins of buildings destroyed in the Fire; possibly some of it from the Manor of the Rose.

At the beginning of 1543 Master Arundel kept a house of entertainment in this lane, much resorted to by the gay young men of that time. Henry, Earl of Surrey, the poet, was summoned before the Privy Council to answer certain charges, when Mistress Arundel, being examined, said that the Earl of Surrey and other young noblemen frequented her house. They ate meat in Lent and committed other improprieties. At Candlemas they went out at 9 o’clock at night, with stone bows, and did not return till past midnight; and next day there was a great clamour of breaking of windows, both of houses and churches, and shouting at men in the street, and the voice was that those hurts were done by my lord and his company. Again at night, rowing on the Thames, they used these stone bows to shoot, as she was told, “at the queens on the Bankside” (MS. quoted by Froude, vol. iv. p. 253).

St. Lawrence Poultney or Pountney was situated on the west side of Laurence Pountney Lane, between Cannon Street and Thames Street in the Ward of Candlewick Street. Thomas Cole added to it a chapel of Jesus, for a master and a chaplain, and this together with the parish church was made into a college by John Poultney and confirmed by Edward III. At the suppression of the religious houses it was valued at £97: 17: 11 and surrendered in the reign of Edward VI. The church was burnt down by the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of St. Mary Abchurch. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1318.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The chaplains of this college; Henry VIII., who seized it and so continued in the Crown till Queen Elizabeth granted it to Edward Dorening and Roger Rant as an appendage of the manor of East Greenwich.

Houseling people in 1548 were 270.

No benefactors are recorded by Stow. There are few monuments recorded, and those of little note: John Oliffe, alderman, was buried in the church in 1577; also Robert and Henry Radcliffe, Earls of Sussex.

William Latymer was master of this college; he was prosecuted for complaining with John Hooper, of Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London.

In Martin’s Lane a high tower resembling the steeple of a church projects at the end of a block of modern buildings. The old clock, which is attached and hangs out over the street, makes the resemblance to a church more noticeable. The building was erected on the site of the old church of St. Martin Orgar. The churchyard below is comparatively large and includes a row of trees. It is considerably above the level of the street. At the east end are some old seventeenth or eighteenth century houses with rusticated woodwork beneath their gables. On the west side of the lane No. 7 is an old eighteenth-century house, a fine specimen, with brick courses across its frontage.

St. Martin Orgar was situated in St. Martin’s Lane, near Candlewick Street. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to St. Clement’s, Eastcheap. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1348.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Orgarus, who gave it about 1181 to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who held it up to 1666, when the church was burnt down.

Houseling people in 1548 were 280.

Chantries were founded here by: William Cromer, whose endowment fetched £30: 15: 4 in 1548, when John Carre was priest; John Weston, who gave to the Augmentation of Our Lady’s Mass to be “songe by note” £12: 18: 8 a year in 1548; William Oreswicke, whose endowment for two chaplains fetched £13: 5: 0 in 1548.

The church contained monuments to: William Crowmer, mayor, who built a chapel on the south side of the church, and who was buried there in 1433; Sir Humphrey Browne, Lord Chief Justice (d. 1562); Sir Allen Cotton, lord mayor (d. 1628). There was also a monument to Queen Elizabeth.

According to Stow the parish enjoyed the benefits of many benefactors. Among others, Benedict Barnham was donor of £10 yearly; Thomas Nicolson of £5; Sir Humphrey Walwyn of £5; and James Hall of three tenements to the value of £18: 10: 0.

Brien Walton (d. 1661), Bishop of Chester, was rector here.

Crooked Lane has been partly destroyed to make way for the approach to London Bridge, which has also swallowed up St. Michael’s Lane and Great Eastcheap. In Crooked Lane stood a house before the Fire called “the Leaden Porch,” which belonged to one Sir John Sherston in the fifteenth century. The lane also contained St. Michael’s Church, the burial-place of William Walworth.

St. Michael, Crooked Lane, was situated on the east side of Miles’s Lane, Great Eastcheap, and was one of the thirteen “Peculiars” in the City, subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was repaired and redecorated in 1610, but burnt down by the Great Fire and rebuilt from Wren’s designs in 1687; the steeple was not built till 1698. In 1831 the building was pulled down, its parish being united with those of St. Magnus and St. Margaret. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1286.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, before 1286; the Archbishop of Canterbury, who presented in 1408, in whose successors it continued up to 1848, when the church was annexed to St. Magnus the Martyr.

Houseling people in 1548 were 354.

The church built by Wren, which was without aisles, measured 78 feet in length and 46 feet in breadth. The tower was surmounted by a circular lantern in three stages, supporting a cupola with a lofty vane and cross, and reached a height of about 100 feet.

Chantries were founded here: By William Walworth (mayor 1380) of five chaplains; he endowed it with lands, etc., which fetched £20: 13: 4 in 1548, when the priests were William Berte, Thomas Harper, William Hale, William Clayton, and John Nesehame; by John Rothinge, who left £6 yearly, which is appropriated to finding a Walworth chaplain; by Walter Morden, who endowed it with the “bores hedde” in Eastcheap, valued at £4 a year; by William de Burgo, who had the King’s licence June 21, 1318, whose endowment fetched £6: 13: 4 in 1548; by Pentecost Russel and Gerard de Staundon at the altar of St. Thomas Martyr and St. Edmund; the King granted his licence July 14, 1321, for himself, his father and mother, and G. de Staundon, late parson of Stevenage, Herts; by Henry Grubbe, for which the King granted his licence April 20, 1371; by Roger Steere, who endowed it with tenements valued at £8: 8: 0 yearly, which is spent towards finding the Walworth chaplains; by William Jordan, who left £5: 16: 8 to find a priest, but this was also appropriated to the Walworth chaplains; by Robert Brocket, who endowed it with £7 a year; by John Longe, who left 10s. per annum; March 10, 1380-81—the King granted his licence to William Walworth, citizen and merchant of London, to unite diverse chantries in this church, founded by Pentecost Russell; Matilda and Roger Steere; John Harewe; John Abell; W. Burgh; Henry Grubbe; William Jordan; Walter Mordon; and Thomas atte Leye, which by changes of time are insufficient to maintain these chantries, and he was further empowered to found a college of one master and nine chaplains there.

The church formerly contained monuments to: John Lovekin, fishmonger, four times Lord Mayor, through whom the church, 1348, 1358, 1365, and 1366, was rebuilt; also Sir William Walworth, the mayor who overthrew Wat Tyler—he enlarged the church with a new choir and side-chapels and founded a college in connection with it; Sir John Brug, mayor 1520, donor of £50.

No legacies or charitable gifts are recorded by Stow.

John Poynet (d. 1556), Bishop of Rochester and of Winchester, was rector here; also Adam Molens or Molyneux (d. 1450), Bishop of Chichester, who was slain at Portsmouth by the Marines, incited by Richard, Duke of York; Giovanni Giglii (d. 1498), Bishop of Worcester.

At the end of Swan Lane is Old Swan Pier, beneath which are the famous Old Swan Stairs; these now consist of stone steps followed by a flight of wooden ones, descending straight into the water. Stow calls them “a common stair on the Thames.” In 1441, when the Duchess of Gloucester did penance at Christchurch-by-Aldgate, she landed here, and walked the rest of the way. When persons did not care to risk “shooting London Bridge,” it was customary for them to land at these stairs, walk to the other side of the bridge, and then take to the water again. Pepys in his Diary (1661) mentions taking Mr. Salisbury to Whitehall: “But he could not by any means be moved to go through the bridge, and we were fain to go round by the Old Swan Pier”; and Boswell says that he and Johnson “landed at the Old Swan and walked to Billingsgate,” where they took oars for Greenwich.

The race for Doggett’s Coat and Badge, open to watermen, is rowed between the Old Swan and the White Swan at Chelsea. Near these stairs was John Hardcastle’s counting-house, where were first brought forth the Hibernian Society, the London Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Religious Tract Society.

At the end of Swan Lane (west side) is the entrance to the subway called Waterside. It passes beneath Tennants’, Commercial, and Dyers’ Hall wharves, in front of Red Bull Wharf (the only place where it emerges into the open), and ultimately runs under the City of London Brewery into All Hallows Lane. In Strype’s 1754 map the whole of the riverside from Swan to All Hallows Lane is shown as a broad path (40 feet wide) open to the water, and called New Key, upon which debouch all the lanes leading from Thames Street to the shore. It was part of a design of Wren for improving the river-bank after the Great Fire. In a map of 1819 the “key,” though mostly open, is shown to be a subway under a portion of the brewery. It is marked as a “Public Way.” It has been gradually covered over by the extension of the brewery and the wharves, so that now what was once a riverside walk has become a subway, from which the water is nowhere visible, unless one of the wharf doors happens to be open.

The Fishmongers’ Hall rises squarely beside London Bridge, and not far off is the Monument, with an absurd chevaux de frise of spikes rising from its golden ball, and representing flames, very much as they are represented in the contemporary illustrations of the Fire. St. Magnus’s white steeple makes a good foreground.

The origin of the Fishmongers Company is lost in remote antiquity; it is unquestionable that it existed prior to the reign of Henry II., and originated in an association or brotherhood.

The Fishmongers Company lost the greater part of its earlier records, books, and muniments in the Great Fire of London; the earliest existing record in the possession of the Company being a court book dating from 1592.

The privileges of the Company were confirmed by royal charters in the reign of Edward I., 1272, Edward II., 1307, and Edward III., 1327.

The first extant charter is in Norman French, dated July 10, 1364, 37 Edward III.

It recites that from ancient times, whereof memory runs not, it was a custom that no fish should be sold in the City of London but by fishmongers, except stockfish, which belongs to the mistery of stockfishmongers (subsequently incorporated with the fishmongers), and further recites that the mistery of fishmongers had grants from the King’s progenitors in ancient times, that the fishmongers should choose yearly certain persons of the mistery to well and lawfully rule the same.

The foregoing charter was confirmed by a proclamation of the following year, July 12, 1365, 38 Edward III., which granted further power and privileges to the mistery of fishmongers of the City of London.

By a further mandate of King Edward III., dated July 24 in the same year, the King granted to the fishmongers of the said city, and of the liberty of the halmote of the same mistery, that no person, stranger or inhabitant, should in any manner occupy the mistery of fishmongers in the said city, or intermeddle therewith, unless he were of the same mistery; and that the fishmongers of the same liberty should be able in every year to elect four persons (to be sworn) to oversee the buying and selling of fish in the said city, and well and faithfully to rule the said mistery “for the common commodity of our people.”

In the twenty-second year of King Richard II., May 9, 1399, another charter was granted.

By an Inspeximus of 6 Henry VI., July 10, 1427, the charter of King Richard II. was confirmed.

By charter of 23 Henry VII., dated July 3, 1508, the Letters Patent of 11 Henry VI., 1433, are set forth and ratified and confirmed.

By a charter of 24 King Henry VII., dated September 20, 1508, the stockfishmongers of the City of London were incorporated by the name of “The Wardens and Commonalty of the Mistery of Stockfishmongers of the City of London,” with perpetual succession and a common seal.

In the twenty-seventh year of King Henry VIII., 1537, a charter was granted by which the two corporations of the Fishmongers Company and Stockfishmongers Company were incorporated as one company, and in the same year a deed was executed between the two companies regulating the terms of such union.

The rest of the brief history furnished by the Company is a recital of the later charters, which do not seem of very great importance. The number of liverymen in 1898 was 344; the Corporate Income was £46,053; the Trust Income was £7235.

Freemen, the widows of freemen, and freewomen, being in poor circumstances, are eligible for pecuniary relief by way of grant or pension, or for election to the Company’s almshouses. The children of freemen are eligible for weekly pensions or pecuniary relief.

Loans are also made by the Company in special cases in aid of freemen in necessitous circumstances.

The Company has established a number of educational exhibitions for the children of deserving freemen, and subscribe liberally to the City of London Institute.

The children of freemen are also eligible for the nominations to Christ’s Hospital in the gift of the Company.

Liverymen have the usual privileges, and receive invitations in turn to dine at livery dinners in the Company’s hall.

The Company’s first hall was the house of Lord Fanhope given to the Fishmongers by him in the reign of Henry VIII. It was rebuilt after the Fire by Jarman. It stood on the north foot of the present bridge. The present hall was erected when New London Bridge swallowed up its predecessor.

St. Magnus stands on the south side of Thames Street at the bottom of Fish Street Hill; it was called the “Martyr” from its dedicatory saint, who suffered martyrdom in CÆsarea in the time of Aurelian the Emperor. It was burnt down by the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren, who completed it in 1676, with the exception of the steeple, which was not added till 1705. The parish of St. Margaret, New Fish Street, was annexed to this after the Fire. In 1831 that of St. Michael, Crooked Lane, was also annexed. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1247.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Bermondsey before 1252, and the Abbot and Convent of Westminster alternately, since 1252; Henry VIII. seized it, and granted it to the Bishop of Westminster, January 20, 1540-41; Bishop of London by grant of Edward VI. in 1550, confirmed by Queen Mary, March 3, 1553-54, in whose successors it continued.

Houseling people in 1548 were 535.

The building is one of the most beautiful of all the City churches; it measures 90 feet in length, 59 feet in breadth, and 41 feet in height. It contains a nave and side-aisles separated by slender Ionic columns standing a considerable distance from each other. The steeple rising near London Bridge is seen to great advantage, and is considered one of the best of Wren’s works. It consists of a tower with a cornice, parapet, and vases, surmounted by an octagonal lantern with a cupola, which, in its turn, is surmounted by a slender lantern and spire, with a finial and vane. The total height is 185 feet.

Chantries were founded here by: Andrew Hunt, whose endowment fetched £6: 13: 4 in 1548, when Gilbert Smythe was chaplain; Thomas Makinge, whose endowment yielded £16 in 1548, when Thomas Parker was chaplain; Sir John Deepdene, Knt., for himself and Elizabeth his wife, at the Altar of Blessed Virgin Mary, and also at the same altar by Robert Ramsey, for himself and Jane his wife, for which the King granted his licence, February 5, 1404-1405—the endowments fetched £16: 13: 4 in 1548, when Joseph Stepneth was chaplain; Ralph de Gray, whose endowment fetched £4 in 1548; Hugh Pourt, who was sheriff of London 1303, for himself and Margaret his wife, at the Altar of Blessed Virgin Mary, to which Hugo de Waltham was admitted chaplain, October 10, 1322—this chantry was augmented by Roger Clovill, and the King granted his licence in mortmain, June 10, 1370; John Bever, for the support of two priests, whose endowment fetched £20: 6: 8 in 1548, but no priests have been found since Henry IV.’s time—the King granted his licence, May 26, 1448, to constitute the Guild of S. Maxentius and S. Thomas; Andrew Hunt and several others founded and endowed the Brotherhood of Salve Regina, whose gifts fetched £49: 0: 4 in 1548, when John Swanne and William Bunting were the chaplains.

The old church was the place of sepulture of several persons of note in their day, amongst whom may be mentioned Henry Yeuele, master-mason to Edward III., Richard II., and Henry IV.; Sir W. Gerrard, mayor in 1555; and Sir John Gerrard, mayor in 1601; and Thomas Collet, for twenty years deputy of this ward, who died in 1703. On the demolition of St. Bartholomew by the Exchange, the remains of Miles Coverdale were brought here, as he had been rector of the church 1563-66. His monument is on the east wall, south of the communion table.

Sixty boys and forty girls were maintained in the Candlewick and Bridge Wards.

The parish did not possess many large charitable gifts: Samuel Petty was donor of £600, of which only £250 was received, owing to the bonds not being good; Susanna Chambers, £17; Thomas Arnold, £2: 12s.; John Jennings, £13.

Besides Miles Coverdale, other rectors of note were: Richard de Medford or Mitford, Bishop of Chichester in 1389; Maurice Griffith (d. 1558), Bishop of Rochester.

Great Eastcheap, now destroyed, was in Stow’s time a market-place for butchers: it had also cooks mixed among the butchers and such others as sold victuals ready dressed of all sorts. “For of old time when friends did meet and were disposed to be merry, they went not to dine and sup at taverns but to the cooks, where they called for meat what they liked which they found ready dressed and at a reasonable rate.” In Great Eastcheap was the immortal tavern of the Boar’s Head, already mentioned p. 106.

There was apparently another Boar’s Head in this ward. Maitland mentions it:

“In this Ward there was a house called The Boar’s Head, inhabited by William Sanderson, which came to King Edward VI. by the Statute about Chantries; which, with the shops, cellars, solars, and other Commodities and easements, he sold in the second of his reign, together with other lands and tenements, to John Sicklemore and Walter Williams for two thousand six hundred and sixty-eight pounds, and upwards” (Maitland, vol. ii. p. 793).

Fish Street Hill, or New Fish Street, formerly Bridge Street, led to Old London Bridge past St. Magnus’s Church. It contained an ancient stone house which had once been occupied by the Black Prince, and was afterwards converted into an inn called the Black Bell. Very frequent mention is made of Bridge Street. Here lived Andrew Horne, fishmonger, City Chamberlain, author of the Liber Horne. A note which concerns him may be found in Riley’s Memorials, A.D. 1315. Among the signs of the street were the “King’s Head”; the “Harrow”; the “Swan and Bridge”; the “Star”; the “Mitre”; the “Golden Cup”; the “Salmon”; the “Black Raven”; the “Crown”; the “Maiden Head”; the “White Lion”; the “Swan,” etc. Foundations of Roman buildings have been found here. Riley has notices of the street between 1311 and 1340. Notices are found in the Calendar of Wills from 1273. In the Guildhall MSS. the earliest mention of the street is 1189. In this street stood the Church of St. Margaret, not rebuilt after the Fire. This church was on the west above Crooked Lane.

St. Margaret, New Fish Street, sometimes called St. Margaret, Bridge Street, stood on the east side of Fish Street Hill, where the Monument now stands; it was destroyed by the Great Fire, and its parish united to that of St. Magnus the Martyr. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1283.

The patronage of the church, before 1283, was in the hands of: The Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1283-84; Henry VIII., who granted it to the Bishop of Westminster, January 20, 1540-41; the Bishop of London, by grant of Edward VI. in 1550, confirmed by Queen Mary, March 3, 1553-54, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the parish was annexed to St. Magnus.

Houseling people in 1548 were 200.

Chantries were founded here by: Roger de Bury, for which the King granted his licence in 1318; John Coggeshall, at the Altar of St. Peter—his endowment fetched £13: 10s. in 1548, when Richard Bec was chaplain; Thomas Dursley, whose endowment yielded £4 in 1548; John Rous, whose endowment fetched £5 in 1548; Robert Whaplode, whose endowment yielded 40s. in 1548.

Only one monument of note is recorded by Stow, that of John Coggeshall, 1384, and the reason of his eminence is not stated.

Some of the chantries belonging to this parish were: £2: 10s., the gift of John Wybert; £2, the gift of Katherine Parry; £1: 10s., the gift of Mr. Mosyer.

Candlewick and Bridge Wards maintained sixty boys and forty girls.

John Seton (d. 1568), Prebendary of York, author of Dialectica; William Cotton (d. 1621), Bishop of Exeter; Samuel Hasnet, Archbishop of York 1629, are among the notable rectors.

On the east side, higher up, stood the Church and burial-ground of St. Leonard’s Milk Church, also destroyed by the Fire and not rebuilt (see p. 266). The most important building in Fish Street is, of course, the Monument.

For The Monument we quote the account taken by Maitland from the life of Sir Christopher Wren:

“In the year 1671, the Surveyor began the building of the great fluted column of Portland Stone, and of the Dorick Order (commonly called the Monument of London, in memory of the burning and rebuilding of the City), and finished it in 1677. The Artificers were obliged to wait sometimes for Stones of proper scantlings; which occasioned the work to be longer in execution than otherwise it would have been. The altitude from the pavement is two hundred and two feet, the diameter of the shaft or body of the column is fifteen feet, the ground bounded by the Plinth or lowest part of the pedestal is twenty-eight feet square, and the pedestal in height is forty feet. Within is a large staircase of black marble, containing three hundred and forty-five steps, ten inches and an half broad, and six inches rising. Over the Capital is an Iron Balcony, encompassing a Cippus or Meta, thirty-two feet high, supporting a blazing urn of brass gilt. Prior to this, the Surveyor (as it appears by an original drawing) had made a design of a pillar of somewhat less proportion, viz.: fourteen feet in diameter, and after a peculiar device: For, as the Romans expressed by Relievo, on the pedestals, and round the shafts of their Columns, the history of such actions and incidents as were intended to be thereby commemorated; so this Monument of the conflagration and resurrection of the City of London was represented by a pillar in flames; the flames, blazing from the loopholes of the shaft (which were to give light to the stairs within), were figured in brasswork gilt, and on the top was a Phoenix rising from her ashes, of brass gilt likewise.” The total expense was about £14,500.

The height (202 feet) is supposed to be equal to its distance eastward from the house in Pudding Lane in which the Fire broke out. Inside are 345 steps, by which any one after paying 3d. may ascend to the caged-in platform near the top. The pedestal has Latin inscriptions on the north, south, and east panels. In 1681 a further inscription, running round the base of the pedestal, was added as follows:

This pillar was set up in perpetual remembrance of that most dreadful burning of this Protestant City begun and carried on by y^e treachery and malice of y^e Popish factio, in y^e beginning of Septem in y^e year of our Lord 1666 in order to y^e carrying on their horrid plott for extirpating the Protestant religion and old English liberty, and the introducing Popery and slavery.

This was obliterated in the reign of James II., but recut in that of his successor, causing Pope’s comment:

The obnoxious inscription was not erased until 1831.

On the west panel of the pedestal is a bas-relief representing Charles II. in Roman dress attended by Liberty, Genius, and Science.

In the background the City is being rebuilt, and at the King’s feet Envy tries to rekindle the flames.

This church stood at the corner of Eastcheap on Fish Street Hill; it was sometimes called St. Leonard Milk Church, from one Am. Milker, who built it. It suffered considerably from a fire in 1618, but was subsequently well repaired. The building was destroyed by the Great Fire, and its parish annexed to that of St. Benet, Gracechurch Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1348.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1353; Henry VIII., who seized it in 1540, and soon after gave it to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury.

Houseling people in 1548 were 260.

Chantries were founded here by: Reginald de Canterbury, citizen, at the Altar of St. Thomas the Archbishop in 1329, when John de Lacelbrigge was admitted chaplain; William Ivorye, whose endowment yielded £8: 6: 8 in 1548; John Bromesburye and John Wasselbye, whose endowments fetched £10 in 1548; Margery Bedyn, whose endowment yielded £10: 8s. in 1548; Hugo Browne, whose endowment fetched £18: 11s. in 1548; John Doggett, whose endowment yielded £10 in 1548; Robert Boydon.

A considerable number of monuments were recorded by Stow to have been well preserved. That of the greatest antiquity was one in memory of John Johnson, who died 1280. Several were erected to various members of the Doggett family, of whom Walter Doggett was sheriff in 1380, John Doggett, a citizen of eminence in his day, buried 1456 (circa); Robert Fitzhugh (d. 1436), Bishop of London, was rector here.

Pudding Lane was formerly Rother Lane, or Red Rose Lane. It was called, according to Stow, “Pudding Lane, because the butchers of Eastcheap have their scalding houses for hogs there, and their puddings with other filth of beasts are voided down that way to their dung boats on the Thames. This lane stretcheth from Thames Street to Little East Cheap, chiefly inhabited by basket makers, turners and butchers, and is all of Billingsgate Ward” (Cunningham). But the lane has its chief claim to remembrance in the fact that here originated the Great Fire.

In Stow’s time it was occupied by basket-makers, turners, and butchers. On the north-east of the lane stood Butchers’ Hall, destroyed by the Fire, and rebuilt; burned again in 1829; rebuilt in 1831; removed to Bartholomew Close in 1884.

St. George’s Church was burnt down in the Great Fire, rebuilt by Wren in 1674, and became the parish church for St. Botolph’s, Billingsgate, which had been also destroyed but not re-erected. In 1895 the building was closed on account of its dilapidated state. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1321. [Since pulled down.]

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of St. Saviour, Bermondsey, in 1321; then the Crown, since 1541 up to 1666, when it was annexed to St. Botolph, Billingsgate, and with it to St. Mary-at-Hill.

Houseling people in 1548 were 123.

The present church measures 54 feet in length, 36 feet in breadth, and 36 feet in height. It has two side-aisles, each separated from the nave by two composite columns, placed far apart. The tower, which rises at the north-west, consists of three stories, concluded by a cornice and parapet, the angles of which are adorned with vases. The total height is about 84 feet.

Stow records a chantry founded by Roger Delakere.

The monuments of the original church were well preserved, Stow says. Those commemorated, however, were of comparatively little eminence; amongst them were William Combes, donor of £40; James Mountford, another benefactor to the church, who died 1544. Among the more recent ones was one in memory of George Clint, parish clerk for thirty years, who died in 1605.

Monument Street was only opened about ten years ago, and cost half a million of money; this was spent partly in compensation to the dispossessed leaseholders. It was designed to afford a wide and direct route to the City for the fish brought from Billingsgate. A row of new red brick buildings lines part of the way on the right; at the corner of St. Mary-at-Hill is a post-office. Beyond these buildings is the ancient graveyard of St. Botolph, Billingsgate, which church was burnt in the Great Fire and not rebuilt. The graveyard is now used as a public recreation ground, and is fronted by a neat wall with a parapet, and on either side of the gate is a high brick pier with a lamp on the summit. On the south side of Monument Street fragments of waste ground remain still unbuilt on, and form receptacles for decayed fish and garbage.

For the Coal Exchange see p. 270.

In the sixth year of the reign of Henry VIII. an Act was passed regulating the traffic of watermen, ferrymen, and bargemen on the Thames, and settling the fares to be charged by them. In 1555 a court was held by the “Company,” and in 1648 a proclamation compelled certain “dirtboats and bumboats” to submit to the regulations of “the Company.” The Lightermens Company was united to the Watermens in 1667. But the first charter of incorporation was not granted until 7 and 8 George IV., 1827; and this was amended by two acts of Victoria in 1859 and 1864.

After the Great Fire the Watermen’s Hall was erected on the south-west corner of the Cold Harbour quay, where Strype’s map shows it. It was a handsome brick building, and was in use by the Company until 1780, when, their premises being required for an extension of the brewery, they vacated them, afterwards removing to their present hall in St. Mary-at-Hill. The old hall faced the Thames upon New Key, and in front to the river there was a large flight of stone stairs, open at all times to watermen and the public. They had been in uninterrupted use for a long period since the Great Fire, and had neither gate nor other obstruction. They became at length much dilapidated, and were “altogether removed and the wharf closed up” says Wilkinson, a few years prior to 1825. The hall, wharf, and stairs are shown in an engraving published by S. and N. Buck in 1749.

Love Lane was formerly Rope Lane, afterwards Lucas Lane, and then corruptly Love Lane.

It is a crooked winding thoroughfare paved by flags, and the houses are mainly inhabited by fish salesmen who work at Billingsgate. Beyond the church are large warehouses, and business houses in the usual style.

The back of a famous old house now used as a ward school is in Love Lane, but its front faces on to a cobble-stone yard connected with Botolph Lane by a covered entry. Within the house everything points to its having been the residence of some one of wealth and taste. The hall is paved with alternate slabs of black and white marble. The staircase is wide and beautifully proportioned and decorated. The date 1670 is on the ceiling; on the first floor four doors with rich wood carving on the pediments and lintels attract attention. Ceilings and fireplaces alike bespeak careful work. One of the latter is inlaid in different coloured marbles with a white marble plaque of a sleeping child. But downstairs, in a small room on the ground floor, is the chief feature of interest. The walls and panels are literally covered with oil-paintings with the artist’s name and the date “R. Robinson, 1696.” The subject seems to be life in different parts of the globe. The ceiling is of oak heavily carved, though, alas! whitewashed.

The house is now a ward school, and though in repair shows inevitable signs of wear and tear. The hall pavement is stained and broken, the carved woodwork thickly covered with paint and varnish, yet in spite of all this is a place well worth seeing, probably the oldest dwelling-house in the City.

St. Andrew Hubbard, sometimes called St. Andrew, Eastcheap, formerly stood in Love Lane. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt. The parish was then annexed to St. Mary-at-Hill. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1366.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Earl of Pembroke in 1323; John, Lord Talbot, cousin and heir of the above, 1427; Edward IV., who restored it, 1463, to the Earl of Shrewsbury, who presented it in 1470; the Earl of Northumberland up to 1666, when it was annexed to St. Mary-at-Hill, after which the alternate patronage was shared with the Duke of Somerset.

Houseling people in 1548 were 282.

The charitable gifts recorded of this parish are very few; the donors of them were: Margaret Dean, 3s. 4d. per annum; Mr. Jacobs, £1: 6: 4; Mr. Green, £1. All were for the use of the poor.

The most notable rector was John Randall (1570-1622), Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.

In Little Eastcheap was the weigh-house, built on the site of St. Andrew Hubbard, and rebuilt after the Fire.

“Which said Weighhouse was before in Cornhill. In this House are weighed merchandizes brought from beyond seas to the King’s Beam, to which doth belong a Master, and under him four Master Porters, with labouring Porters under them. They have Carts and Horses to fetch the goods from the Merchants’ Warehouses to the Beam, and to carry them back. The house belongeth to the Company of Grocers, in whose gifts the several Porters’, etc., places are. But of late years little is done in this office, as wanting a compulsive power to constrain the merchants to have their goods weighed; they alleging it to be an unnecessary trouble and charge” (Cunningham).

Philpot Lane was named after Sir John Philpot, mayor.

At the south-east end of Rood Lane is the Church of St. Margaret Pattens, so called, according to Stow, because pattens were sold there. Formerly the lane was called St. Margaret Pattens, but when about 1536-38 the church was rebuilt, a rood was set up in the churchyard and oblations made to the rood were employed in building the church. But in 1538 the rood was discovered to be broken, together with the “tabernacle” wherein it had been placed. There was then a colony or settlement of basket-makers in the parish, among whose houses a fire broke out in the same month, which destroyed twelve houses and took the lives of nine persons.

This church was rebuilt, as Stow records, in the reign of Henry VIII.; thoroughly repaired in 1614 and 1632, but destroyed by the Great Fire. The present church was completed by Wren in 1687. The parish of St. Gabriel’s, Fenchurch, was annexed to it after 1666. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1305.

The derivation of the name is obscure; Stow’s conjecture has already been given.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The family of the Nevils in 1281; Robert Rickenden and Margaret his wife, who confirmed it to Richard Whittington, who bestowed it on the Mayor and Commonalty of London in 1411, with whom it continued up to 1666 when St. Gabriel’s was annexed, and it was therefore shared alternately with the Crown.

Houseling people in 1548 were 223.

The church measures 66 feet in length, 52 feet in breadth, and 32 feet in height, and consists of a nave, chancel, and north aisle. The steeple consists of a tower, terminated by a cornice and balustrade, with four pinnacles at the corners, above which a spire rises, culminating in a ball and vane. The spire, which is 200 feet, is taller than any other of Wren’s similar ones, and the steeple comes third in order of height of those of his churches. There is a picture on the north side of the church which is said to be the work of Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), a Roman painter. The church is famous for its canopied pews, the only ones in the city; in one of these the initials C. W., supposed to be those of Sir Christopher Wren, and the date 1686, are inlaid.

A chantry was founded here by: Peter at Vyne, at the Altar of Blessed Virgin Mary, to which John Skelton was admitted chaplain 1472-73.

The original church does not seem to have possessed any monuments of note. Of the later ones, the most interesting are those of: Giles Vandeput, erected by his son, Sir Peter Vandeput, who was sheriff in 1684, and donor of £100 to the parish; Sir Peter Delme, Lord Mayor in 1723, whose monument is the work of Johan Michael Rysbrack, or Rysbrach, of Antwerp; Dr. Thomas Birch, Secretary of the Royal Society, and author, who was rector here for nearly nineteen years, was buried in the chancel, 1766. The side altar of the north aisle contains a Della Robbia plaque representing the Virgin and Child, in memory of Thomas Wagstaffe, the ablest of the non-jurors, appointed rector here in 1684 and deprived in 1690.

Sir Peter Vandeput was donor of £100 to the parish; —— Collyer of £5; Thomas Salter of £20; Richard Camden of £20. The other charitable gifts recorded amounted to £6 per annum.

John Milward (1556-1609), chaplain to James I., was rector here; also Thomas Birch (1705-66), Secretary to the Royal Society; and Peter Whalley (1722-91), head-master of Christ’s Hospital, and author of various works.