Let us climb the steps that lead to the City Wall at the Tower postern, and make a circuit by means of the Wall. We walk on the five-foot way designed for the archers. It is grass-grown between the stones. On the battlements the wall-flower grows luxuriously with the green fumitory and the red flowers of the kiss-me-quick. Looking over the Wall we perceive that the ditch is nearly filled up: all kinds of rubbish have been shot into it; there are small ponds of water here and there, and on the opposite bank are gardens in patches and what we call allotments. “Alas!” says our guide, who continually laments the past, “I remember when the ditch was full, and when the boys came to bathe in it and were sometimes drowned in it. Then fish abounded and men angled from the bank.” We begin our walk. “I remember,” our guide goes on, talking while he leads the way, “running along the Wall when I was a boy, nearly sixty years ago. It was a favourite pastime to run from gate to gate. That was before the suppression of the Religious.” He sighed—Was he then regretting that event? “All the Houses were standing then. One thought they would stand for ever. Yet the axe was already laid to the tree: there was internal decay and external contempt, though we boys knew nothing of it. The friars in vain searched the boxes put up for them in the shops: no one would give them alms; if they went into a house, no one would give them so much as a crust of bread; there were but fifteen left in Grey Friars, and they were selling their vessels of silver and gold when they were called upon to surrender. But still their churches made a brave show. All day long the bells were ringing—’twas a city of bells. They rang from cathedral and parish church; from monastery and nunnery; from college of priests and from chapel and from spital. They rang for festivals and fasts; for pageants and ridings; for births and deaths; for marriages and funerals; for the election of City officers; for the King’s birthday; for the day and the hour; they rang in the baby; they rang out the passing soul; they rang merrily in honour of the bride; they rang for work to begin and for work to cease; the streets echoed the ringing of bells all day long; for miles round London you could hear with the singing of the larks the ringing of the bells.

“A third part of the City belonged to the Houses and the Church. Why, thousands of honest people lived by working for St. Paul’s and the parish churches and the monks and nuns. Look around you now.” We were close to Aldgate. Stow pointed to the south-east. Near the Tower stood a venerable church in a precinct surrounded by a stone wall and containing a cloister, houses round it, a garden, a school-house, and a burial-ground. “Behold the last of them!” he said. “St. Katherine’s, the smallest of all the Foundations, still exists; but changed—Ah!—changed. Where are the rest?” On the north of St. Katherine’s was another precinct marked out by a wall, and within it broken walls, broken windows, and rough timber store-houses. “There was once Eastminster,” said Stow. “Who is mindful of our Lady of Grace and her Cistercians? They are forgotten. Look Citywards. Yon ruins are those of the Crutched Friars. What is left to mark their abode of two hundred years and more? Their hall was converted into a glass-house and is burned down; their church contains now a carpenter’s shop and a tennis court. Turn your eyes more to the north. Those are the ruins of St. Helen’s Nunnery: their chapel is part of the parish church; their hall is now the Hall of the Leathersellers’ Company; their gardens also belong to that honourable Company. Or yonder, where you may behold the precinct of the Holy Trinity Priory. The Prior was also Alderman of Portsoken Ward and rode among the other Aldermen, but in habit ecclesiastical, as I myself have seen. The House kept open table for rich and poor; a noble and hospitable House it was, but in the end decayed by reason of too great hospitality. The church was pulled down and levelled with the ground—Proh Pudor!—the courts remain, but with other buildings; and now is that venerable and regal Foundation clean forgotten. Behold”—he pointed outside the Wall—“the place where the Sorores Minores, the sisters of St. Clare, lived for many years. The walls of their refectory still stand; on the site of their cloister is a fair and large store-house for armours and habiliments of war, with work-houses serving unto the same purpose. Alas! Poor Sisters! To this end has come their House of Peace and Prayer.”

“Nevertheless, Master Stow, the City is more prosperous than before.”

“I know not; I know not,” he said impatiently. “What do I know about wealth and prosperity? Let us go on.” So he left off talking about the churches and monasteries and pointed to the houses beyond the Wall. “The suburbs,” he said, “have not greatly increased of late years. There has been too much plague among us. And, indeed, it would seem that we are never to be rid of plague. The Queen’s Council forbade the building of new houses. As well forbid the rising of the tide. There are now—as you can plainly see—a line of cottages on both sides of the road as far as Whitechapel Church. But who is to hinder? There is a line of houses along the riverside as far as Ratcliffe and even Limehouse, where once were elms so noble. But who is there to hinder? Masterless men are they, and sea-faring men and common cheats and rogues, who live beside the river, beyond the jurisdiction of the Mayor and safe from the wholesome cart tail and the penance of pillory.

“Pleasant it was, in those old days,” he went on, “to overlook the quiet nuns from the Wall. There were no whispers against those holy Sisters, and no scandals. We loved to look upon them in their gardens quiet and peaceful. They prayed for the City, the nuns of St. Clare, of St. Helen’s, and of Holywell. Now every man prays for himself. There were also the monks in their cloisters, walking and reading and meditating. Some there were who called the monks devourers and drones. I know not. Their prayers were asked for the dead and for the living. No one prays now for the dead, and no one asks where they lie or how they fare. Drones and devourers! They were gentlemen all by birth,—why should they work?”

It was, indeed, surprising to see the ruins of the Houses, nor had I understood, until I walked round the Wall and observed the ruins, how many there were, or how great was the destruction when the masterful King turned out the monks and nuns and gave their houses to his favourites and his courtiers. “They have taken” said Stow, “all they wanted of the stones. What are left will vanish little by little.”

“But the memory will continue.”

“Nay, in the minds of scholars, not of the people. Things of the past are soon forgotten. No one will teach the children about the Houses of monks and friars. If they teach them anything at all, it will be as Barnabe Googe taught his generation when he gathered into one volume all that could be alleged or invented against those holy men, if they were holy,” he added, correcting himself. “Indeed a man must pay heed unto his words. I have been, myself, charged with Romish leanings because I remember things that are past and gone. What do the young folk now understand of what they have lost, because they never saw it? I am now old, and in age the mind flies back willingly to the days of youth.”

Within the Wall we saw the ruins of the Crutched Friars, of St. Helen’s, of the Holy Priory, of the Austin Friars, of the Papey, of Elsing Spital, of St. James’s in the Wall, of the Grey Friars and of the Black Friars; without the Wall there were the ruins of Eastminster, of the Clares, of St. Mary Spital, of Holywell, of the Church House, of the Knights Hospitallers, of Clerkenwell Nunnery, of St. Bartholomew’s Priory, and of the White Friars.

“The poets, doubtless,” I said, “and with them the divines, meditate among these ruins.”

“Alas! No. The poets write songs of love and sing them; or they go forth to the wars and sing of them. The times are brisk. It is as if the world was waking up from sleep: there are new things everywhere; we live in the present; our ships go forth to distant lands; there is a new world, a Terra Incognita, to be explored and conquered; it is no time for meditation. When the cloister was broken down meditation fled beyond the seas. We live to fight and to get rich, and to watch against the wiles of Pope and Spaniard.”

“Do these ruins then inspire no regret?”

“None. The people are forgetting fast. Only old men sometimes speak of what they remember; when the last stones have been taken away, the very names will tell them nothing. Even the names are changing. Soon all will be lost and forgotten. Strange! Four hundred years those monks lived among us, and after fifty years they are already clean forgotten as much as if they had never lived.”

At Bishopsgate, Stow pointed northward. “Houses,” he said, “are stretching along the northern road, but slowly. Among the ruins of Holywell stands a Play house, and outside it is another. What will be the end of this passion for the theatre, I know not. Formerly, an interlude in an Inn yard, a masque in a Company’s Hall, and so enough. Now have ye every day a play set forth upon a stage, with songs and music, and boys dressed up as women.”

He shook his head and led on, still following the Wall. Within the City on this north side there were many large and fair gardens, some belonging to Companies which here have their Halls, and some to merchants’ houses, and some that once belonged to the Monastic Houses. They were set with fruit-trees and with beds of flowers and sweet herbs. Among the gardens stood collections of craftsmen’s cottages and workshops, and the churches with their small green churchyards were almost hidden by the trees. This part of London truly had a rural look by reason of these gardens.

We passed Moorgate, the old church of the Papey close to the Wall, and further along, also close to the Wall, the church of All Hallows; we came to Cripplegate with its church outside the Wall. And passing a bend to the south, continued our walk. On the other side of the ditch was another double line of houses. “This is Aldersgate,” said Stow. “The way leads to the Charter House and beyond to the village of Iseldon. You can now see the ruins of the House of the Knights Hospitallers; their noble gate yet stands, and part of their church. Beyond was the Priory of St. Bartholomew. From the Wall you may behold their cloisters; the chancel of their church is now a parish church. Close at hand is Smithfield. What things have been done at Smithfield! I was thirty years of age when Queen Mary burned her martyrs. There had been burnings before her time, but she outdid them all. Sir, she was ill-advised: she thought to make the people go back to the old Religion through fear. She might have led them back through love. I have seen the burning of those stubborn folk. Old and young, men and women, nay children, have I seen standing in the faggots, praying aloud while the flames mounted up and licked their hands and their faces. Mostly they died quickly, being smothered with the smoke; but sometimes the flames were blown away, and we saw the blackened body still in agony, and the lips that moved to the end in prayer. And we saw how the Lord answered, giving fortitude to endure or even, if we knew it, painlessness in the midst of fire. To see father, brother, neighbour, so die without fear, and as if joyously enduring torture in order to reach the gates of Heaven,—Believe me, sir, this it was that made the people what they are, and completed Henry’s work.”

We came to Newgate. “Behold!” he said, “the cat, emblem of Whittington, who rebuilt this gate and prison. Here is Christ’s Hospital, which once was the House of the Grey Friars. It is London’s chiefest glory: here shall you find boys ruled with wisdom and taught godliness, who would otherwise have joined the throngs of the masterless, and roamed about the streets and roads.” And so on to Ludgate, where we left the Wall. “See,” said Stow, “there are houses with many palaces of nobles all the way from Bridewell to the King’s House at Westminster. And now, good sir, we leave the Wall, and we will visit the City within the Wall.”

He led me by Ludgate into the precinct of St. Paul’s, surrounded by a stone wall; the Cathedral looked battered and worn by the tooth of time; the spire, once the glory of the City, was gone never to be replaced; the stonework was black in parts from the smoke of the sea coal; the tracery was mouldering; about the towers of the west flew the swifts crying. “There are kites on the roof,” said Stow, “which keep the City clean and devour the offal.”

At Paul’s Cross there was a preaching by some reverend divine: a crowd of women sat on benches listening; a few men were there, but it was in working hours. The preacher argued some difficult point of doctrine, comparing texts and turning over the leaves of his small brown Geneva Bible. I observed that his hearers listened with a critical air. “For fifty years,” said Stow, looking on with contempt, “they have been arguing and disputing on matters of doctrine and nothing settled yet; in the old time we were told what to believe, and we were stayed and comforted by our belief. These people prove one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow. They are pulled this way and that by the power of texts which they think they understand. Let us go into the Cathedral.”

Outside, in the churchyard, everything was destroyed that formerly made the place venerable and beautiful: Pardon churchyard; the “Clochard;” the cloister with the Dance of Death; Sherrington’s Library; the college of the minor canons. Only Paul’s Cross remained. And the Cathedral, rising up alone and gaunt, bereft of her daughters, seemed mournful and lonely. “Perhaps,” said Stow, “a new church is wanted for the new Faith. St. Paul’s was not built for Protestants. They know not how to treat the church. Look at yonder fellows!” He pointed to two porters who bore boxes on their heads, and entering at the North doors tramped noisily through the Cathedral, going out at the South. “They have made a right of way, a short way, through the church. Saw one ever the like? Through the church itself!”

We went in; the nave was a kind of noisy Exchange, yet not for merchants. It was full of people loudly talking of all kinds of business; ladies were there. “They make their assignations in the church,” said Stow. Gallants richly dressed swaggered up and down the middle aisle; servants stood waiting to be hired; scriveners had their stools and tables, and were busy writing letters; men disputed over their affairs, yea, and quarrelled loudly. The chancel was walled off and separated from the nave and transepts. The old glory had departed from the once splendid interior: of all the chapels, shrines, altars, chantries, paintings, lights, carved marbles, work in ivory, gold and silver, nothing was left. Only bare whitewashed walls and a few plain tombs; even the painted glass, wherever it could be reached, was broken. While we looked around the organ began to play; it was accompanied by other instruments, chiefly wind instruments. With the music ascended the voices of the choir, the pure sweet voices of the boys. My old guide’s eyes grew humid. “No,” he said, “they have not taken all away. The music remains with us, to remind us that Heaven is left although we have whitewashed the paintings that revealed its glories.”

We left the precinct by the North gate, which opens upon the back of St. Michael le Querne, and turned eastward into Chepe. The breadth of this great market had contracted since the reign of Edward the Third. The houses on the south side were much higher and better built, with timber frames and much carving and gilding. On the north side the lanes, which were formerly broad spaces for stands and sheds for the market, were now narrow, with houses on either hand: there were also houses on that side, but not continuous; here were Grocers’ Hall and Mercers’ Hall. Round the Standard and the Cross were stalls kept by women; the poulterers still had their shops in the Poultry, and apothecaries sold their drugs and herbs in Bucklersbury.

It was now evening, and supper time. My guide led me to the tavern called the Rose, in the Poultry. There was a goodly company assembled in the great room. Here there was music, and the drawers ran about with supper and with wine. A capon with a flask of Malmsey warmed the heart of my old guide. After supper we took tobacco and more wine, while boys sang madrigals very sweetly. The close of a summer day in the City of London brings with it a cessation of the noise of hammers and the ringing of anvils and the grinding of waggons and the shouts of those who quarrel over their work. The City became quiet; there was the tinkling of guitar and lute from the taverns and the houses; the voices of those who sang; the merry laugh of maidens, and the sober voice of age.

“Come,” said Stow, “there remains the Royal Exchange. This we will see and so an end until to-morrow.”

The Royal Exchange was lit up with candles. The upper walk or pawne[4] I found to be a collection of shops, all as light as day. Music was playing and the place was full of people; not the sober merchants, but the City madams and their daughters, the gallants, and the ’prentices. “In the summer,” said Stow, “the place is open till nine of the clock, in the winter till ten. Many come here just as they go to Paul’s in the morning, because they have no other place to go to and no money to spend in the tavern. Know you not the lines?

Other walks, many other walks, I have taken about London in company of good old John Stow: we have walked together along Thames Street, which is surely the very heart of the City, and in Chepe, and among the gardens of the northern part. In these walks about the streets, even then so old and so venerable, the old man waxed eloquent over the houses of the past where the great nobles had each his palace, which was also a barrack in the City of London. It was not only in and about Thames Street: all over the City he led me, prattling in his kindly garrulity. “There were kings’ palaces here once,” he said: “the Tower Royal where Richard’s mother dwelt; and the King’s Wardrobe—I can show you that; and Baynard’s Castle, which is now rebuilt and remains a noble house; and Crosby Hall, where the third Richard sojourned for a while; and the Stone House in Lombard Street that they call King John’s Palace, but I know not with what truth; and Cold Harbour where Prince Hal once lived; and the Savoy which was John of Gaunt’s. And there were the town houses of the noblemen. What a stately house was that of the Northumberlands outside Aldgate! It is now a printing-house. And they had another house in Aldgate Ward with broad gardens, now turned into bowling-greens. And there is the house called the Erber on the east side of Dowgate. The Earl of Warwick had it, then the Duke of Clarence had it, and when it was rebuilt Francis Drake had it. There is Gresham’s Mansion in Broad Street, which has become a noble college for the instruction of youths in the liberal arts, so that some say that London will become like unto Oxford or Cambridge. And Whittington’s house beside the church of St. Michael, now an almshouse, which was once also a college for priests. And there is the house which once belonged to Sir Robert Large, when Caxton was his ’prentice, at the corner of Old Jewry; formerly it was a Jews’ Synagogue, and afterwards the House of the Brethren of the Sack. Alas! most of these houses are now in decay and inhabited by poor folk. The nobles come no more to town.” Yet he showed me the house of Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s Secretary. It was in Seething Lane. “We look for these palaces now, along the river, between Bridewell and Westminster,” he said.

My old guide looked at the people as they passed with a peculiar benevolence, especially upon the young. “I have myself been a ’prentice,” he said; “I know the rubs and crosses of that time; an impatient master, long hours of work, hard fare, hot blood that longs to be up and doing. Many there are who have in their latter days broken their indentures and fled to sail the seas with Oxenham or Drake; many have gone into the service of the adventurous Companies. I remember very well, very well,” he sighed, “the joys of the time, the dancing on a summer evening, the wrestling, the fighting, the pageants and ridings in the streets. Life lies all before the ’prentice. What boots it to be my Lord Mayor when life is wellnigh spent?”

“Sir,” my guide added, “I have shown you our City. Go now, alone, and watch the ways of the people: mark the wealth of our merchants; look at the Port crowded with ships and the Quays cumbered with merchandise; talk with the mariners, and observe the spirit that is in them all. Like all old men I lament the past; but I needs must rejoice in the quickening of these latter days. And so, good sir, farewell.”

Let us supplement this discourse by contemporary evidence.

There is an anonymous map of London in the sixteenth century called “Londinium Feracissimi AngliÆ Regni Metropolis.” It is in some respects more exact than the better known map attributed to Agas. The streets, gardens, and fields are laid down with greater precision, and there is no serious attempt to combine, as Agas does, a picture, or a panorama, with a map. At the same time, the surveyor has been unable to resist the fashion of his time to consider the map as laid down from a bird’s-eye view, so that he thinks it necessary to give something of elevation.

I will take that part of the map which lies outside the walls. The precinct of St. Katherine stands beside the Tower with its chapel, court, and gardens; there are a few houses near it, apparently farmhouses; the convent of Eastminster had entirely vanished. Nothing indicates the site of the Nunnery in the Minories; yet there were ruins of these buildings standing here till the end of the last century; outside Bishopsgate houses extended past St. Mary Spital, some of whose buildings were still, apparently, standing. On the west side St. Mary of Bethlehem stood, exactly on the site of Liverpool Street Station, but not covering nearly so large an area; it appears to have occupied a single court and was probably what we should now consider a very pretty little cottage, like St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford.

Outside Cripplegate the houses begin again, leaving, between, the lower Moorfields dotted with ponds; there are houses lining the road outside Aldersgate. The courts are still standing of St. Bartholomew’s Priory, Charter House, St. John’s Priory, and the Clerkenwell Nunnery; Smithfield is surrounded with houses; Bridewell with its two square courts stands upon the river bank; Fleet Street is irregular in shape, the houses being nowhere in line; the courts of Whitefriars are still remaining. The Strand has all its great houses facing the river; their backs open upon a broad street with a line of mean houses on the north side. On the south of the river there is a line of houses on the High Street; a line of houses along the river bank on either side; and another one running near Bermondsey Abbey.

Within the walls we observe that some of the Religious Houses have quite disappeared; Crutched Friars, for instance; there is a vacant space which is probably one of the courts of St. Helen’s; the Priory of the Holy Trinity preserves its courts, but there is no sign of the church; there are still visible the courts and gardens of Austin Friars; there is still the great court of the Grey Friars; but the buildings of Blackfriars seem to have vanished entirely.

But Sir Thomas More has left us a description of London in his time. It is a description in terms too vague, yet interesting. He calls the City Amaurote and the Thames he calls the Anyder.

“The River Anyder riseth four and twenty miles above Amaurote, out of a little spring: but being increased by other small floods and brooks that run into it: and, among others, two somewhat bigger ones. Before the City, it is half a mile broad (hardly so much now as it was in former days being pent in and straitned to a narrower space, by the later buildings on each side): and further, broader. By all that space that lyeth between the Sea and the City, and a good sort of land also above, the water ebbs and flows six hours together, with a swift tide; when the sea flows in to the length of thirty miles, it fills all the Anyder with salt water, and drives back the fresh water of the river; and somewhat further, it hangeth the sweetness of fresh water with saltness: but a little beyond that, the river waxeth sweet, and runneth foreby the City fresh and pleasant; and when the sea ebbs and goes back again, this fresh water follows it almost to the very fall into the sea.

They have also another river, which indeed is not very great, but it runneth gently and pleasantly: for it riseth even out of the same hill that the City standeth upon, and runneth down slope through the midst of the City into Anyder.” [This may be the river of the Wells; in More’s time the Walbrook was probably covered over.] “And because it ariseth a little without the City, the Amaurotians have enclosed the head spring of it with strong fences and bulwarks; and so have joined it to the City: this done, to the intent that the waters should not be stopped nor turned away, nor poisoned, if their enemies should chance to come upon them. From thence the water is derived and brought down in Chanals or Brooks divers ways into the lower parts of the City. Where that cannot be done by reason that the place will not suffer it, then they gather the Rain Water in great Cisterns which doth them as good service.” [This, it seems, was all the supply of Water the City had in that age, which is now much more plentifully served.] “Then next for the situation and Walls. That it stood by the side of a low Hill, in fashion almost square. The breadth of it began a little beneath the top of the Hill, and still continued by the space of two miles, until it came to the river Anyder. The length of it, which lyeth by the river-side, was somewhat more.

The City is compassed about with an high and thick wall, full of Turrets and Bulwarks. A dry Ditch, but deep and broad and overgrown with bushes, briers, and thorns, goeth about three sides or quarters of the City. To the fourth side, the River itself serveth for a Ditch.

The streets be appointed and set forth very commodious and handsome, both for carriage and also against the winds. The Streets be full twenty foot broad. The Houses be of fair and gorgeous Buildings: and in the street-side, they stand joined together in a long Row through the whole Street, without any partition or separation. On the bankside of the Houses, through the whole length of the Street, lye large Gardens which be closed in round about with the back parts of the Street. Every House hath two doors, one to the street, and a Postern Door on the backside into the Garden. These doors be made with two leaves, never locked nor bolted: so easie to be opened, that they will follow the least drawing of a finger, and shut again of themselves.

They set great store by their gardens. In these they have Vineyards and all manner of Fruits, Herbs, and Flowers, so pleasant, so well furnished, and so finely kept, that I never saw anything more fruitful, nor better trimmed in any place: and their study and diligence herein cometh not only of pleasure, but also of a certain strife and contention that is betwixt street and street, concerning the trimming, husbanding, and flourishing, of their Gardens, every man for his own part: and verily, you shall not lightly find in all the City anything that is more commodious, either for the Profit of the Citizens, or for pleasure. And therefore it may seem, that the first founder of the City minded nothing so much as he did these Gardens. They say, that King Utopus himself, even at his first beginning, appointed and drew forth the platform of the City into this fashion and figure that it hath now, by his gallant garnishing and the beautiful setting forth of it. Whereunto he saw that one man’s age would not suffice, that he left to his posterity.

Their Chronicles, which they keep written with all diligent circumspection, containing the history of 1760 years, even from the first conquest of the Island, record and witness, that the Houses in the beginning were very low, and likely homely cottages, or poor shepherds’ houses, made at all adventures of every rude piece of wood that came first to hand: with Mud-walls, and ridged Roofs thatched over with straw. But now the Houses be curiously builded after a gorgeous and gallant sort, with three stories, one over another.

The outside of the walls be made of either hard Flint, or of Plaister, or else of Brick: and the Inner-sides be well strengthened with Timber-Work.

The Roofs be plain and flat, covered with a certain kind of Plaister that is of no cost: and yet so tempered that no fire can hurt or perish it: and notwithstandeth the violence of the weather, better than any lead.

They keep the wind out of their windows with glass: for it is there much used: and some were also with fine linnen dipped in oyl or amber: and that for two commodities: for by this means more light cometh in, and the wind is better kept out.” (Utopia.)

The following notes on England were written by one Stephen Perlin in 1558. The tract was translated for, and published in, the Antiquarian Repertory (vol. iv.):—

“The English in general are cheerful and great lovers of music, for there is no church, however small, but has musical service performed in it. They are likewise great drunkards; for if an Englishman would treat you, he will say in his language, yis dring a quarta rim gasquim cim hespaignol, oim malvoysi; that is, will you drink a quart of Gascoigne wine, another of Spanish, and another Malmsy. In drinking or eating they will say to you above an hundred times, drind iou, which is, I am going to drink to you; and you should answer them in their language, iplaigiu, which means, I pledge you. If you would thank them in their language you must say, god tanque artelay, which is to say, I thank you with all my heart. When they are drunk, they will swear blood and death that you shall drink all that is in your cup, and will say thus to you, bigod sol drind iou agoud oin. Now remember, if you please, that in this land they commonly make use of silver vessels when they drink wine, and they will say to you at table, goud chere, which is good cheer. The servants wait on their master bareheaded, and leave their caps on the buffet. It is to be noted, that in this excellent kingdom there is, as I have said, no kind of order; the people are reprobates, and thorough enemies to good manners and letters, for they don’t know whether they belong to God or the Devil, which St. Paul had reprehended in so many people, saying, be not transported with divers sorts of winds, but be constant and steady to your belief.

In this country, all the shops of every trade are open, like those of the barbers in France, and have many glass windows, as well below as above in the chambers, for in the chambers there are many glazed casements, and that in all the tradesmen’s houses in almost every town; and those houses are like the barbers’ shops in France, as well above as below, and glazed at their openings. In the windows, as well in cities as villages, are plenty of flowers, and at the taverns plenty of hay upon their wooden floors, and many cushions of tapestry, on which travellers seat themselves. There are many bishopricks in this kingdom, as I think sixteen, and some archbishopricks, of which one is esteemed the principal, which is Cantorbie, called in English Cantorberi, where there is a very fine church, of which St. Thomas is patron. England is remarkable for all sorts of fruits, as apricots, peaches, and quantities of nuts.”

In the year 1598 a German traveller, Paul Hentzner by name, visited London. This is what he says about the streets:—

“The streets in this city are very handsome and clean; but that which is named from the goldsmiths who inhabit it, surpasses all the rest: there is in it a gilt tower, with a fountain that plays. Near it on the farther side is a handsome house, built by a goldsmith, and presented by him to the city. There are besides to be seen in this street, as in all others where there are goldsmiths’ shops, all sorts of gold and silver vessels exposed to sale, as well as ancient and modern medals, in such quantities as must surprise a man the first time he sees and considers them.” (See Appendix VI.)

Stow furnishes a very clear account of the condition of the suburbs in his own time. Thus, he says that outside the Wall in the East there were no houses at all east of St. Katherine’s along the river until the middle of the sixteenth century, but that during the latter half of the century there had sprung up a “continual street, or filthy strait passage, with alleys of small tenements built, inhabited by sailors; victuallers, along by the river of Thames, almost to Ratcliff, a good mile from the Tower.”

He says, further, that in his time had arisen quite a new suburb between East Smithfield and Limehouse; and that good houses had been recently built between Ratcliff and Blackwall.

Outside Aldgate he mentions a “large street replenished with buildings to Hog Lane and the bars. Without the bars both sides of the street were ‘pestered’ with cottages and alleys, even up to Whitechapel Church and almost half a mile beyond it into the common field.” Note, therefore, that close to Aldgate, just beyond Whitechapel Church, was a common which was thus encroached upon and settled on by squatters and by those who made enclosures and placed laystalls, etc., upon them. The whole of the common was thus taken up; “in some places it scarce remaineth a sufficient highway for the meeting of carriages and droves of people,” a fact to be remembered and accounted for.

Going on to Bishopsgate and its highway. Outside the gate stood St. Botolph’s Church; next to it the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem; opposite certain houses; then, the liberty of Norton Folgate, belonging to the canons of St. Paul’s; then the site of the Holywell Nunnery; all along the road to St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, except for the site of St. Mary Spital, a “continual building of small and base tenements, for the most part lately erected.” Among the cottages Stow points to a certain row whose history was perhaps that of many others. The row of cottages were almshouses belonging to St. Mary Spital; the occupants were appointed by that House; they paid a yearly rent of one penny, in acknowledgment of ownership; and on Christmas Day they were feasted by the Prior. When the Hospital was suppressed the cottages, for want of repairs, fell into decay; the new owners of the land would not take over the responsibility of the charitable endowment; they neither repaired the houses nor did they invite the tenants to a Christmas feast. On the other hand, they did not collect the rent of a penny. They were then sold, although they ought to have been continued as almhouses to one Russell, who rebuilt them and gave them his own name, and let them to tenants in the usual way.

The church of St. Leonard’s contained monuments to the memory of three noble families at least: the Westmoreland Nevilles; the Blounts, Lords Mountjoy; and that of Manners, Earls of Rutland. The reason of their tombs and monuments being found in the church must be sought in the history of the manors lying north of Shoreditch.

On the north side of the City the Moor Fields continued for a long time as waste ground, seldom visited; in 1415, however, Thomas Fawconer, Mayor, broke through the City Wall and built the postern called Moorgate; he constructed causeways over the Moor; cleansed and repaired the dykes or ditches with which the Moor was intersected: so that the place was drained and made into a pleasant walk for the citizens, either on summer evenings, or on their way to Iselden and Hoxton. Sixty years later brickfields were opened in the Moor, and bricks made for the repair of the City Wall. Then citizens began to make and to enclose gardens in the Moor; in 1498 these were all taken away and an archery-field made in their place. In 1512 more dykes were made for the drainage of the Moor, and in 1527 conduits were constructed to carry the waters over the Tower Ditch into the Walbrook. The point is that in the sixteenth century the whole of the ground lying between Moorgate and Bishopsgate was unoccupied by houses. The map already referred to shows the road running north from Moorgate, and the Moor itself crossed by causeways: in the east a broad ditch crossed by bridges falls into the Tower Ditch.

The Moor formerly extended beyond Cripplegate and as far as the Fleet River; it was built upon by the Religious Houses; St. Bartholomew’s Priory and Hospital; the Charter House; the Priory of St. John; and the Nunnery of Clerkenwell. Between these houses and the wall were St. Giles’s Church, St. Botolph’s Church, Fore Street, Whitecross Street, and other streets, making a suburb with a population in the sixteenth century of 1800 householders, or 9000 souls. The last bit of the Moor left on the north-west of the City was brickfield.

We now come to the western suburb: the earliest settled and the most thickly populated of all. Fleet Street and the streets north of it, however, belonged to the Ward of Farringdon Without.

We are now in a position to show other reasons why the extension of the City was so slow and so limited.

All round the City lay manors and estates belonging for the most part to the Church. St. Paul’s Cathedral possessed a great many of these manors; the Bishop possessed many; St. Peter’s, Westminster, possessed many. Finsbury, Shoreditch, Hoxton, Iselden, St. Pancras, Willesden, belonged to St. Paul’s. The manor of St. Peter stretched all the way from Millbank to the Fleet River, and from the Thames to Holborn. These estates belonged to the Church; when the City received the County of Middlesex to farm, it did not receive these manors, and the owners had their rights. Foremost among these rights was that they were outside the jurisdiction of the City; the land could not be built upon without permission of the owners; what the City got was the inclusion of that part of the land outside the Wall which was bounded and defined by the Bars: that is to say, it included, without the Wall—(1) The Ward of Portsoken, formerly the lands of the Cnihten Gild; (2) The Common Land of Whitechapel; (3) The Common Land of the Moor as far as to the Fleet River, and (4) The Ward of Farringdon Without. Why did it go no farther? Because at every point beyond these limits the manors of the Church were met. At first the encroachments of the City authorities into the manors met with no opposition; perhaps the ecclesiastics felt that it was well to have the people on their lands well governed; on one occasion the City acquired rights by taking a manor on lease, as that of Mora di Halliwell in 1315. In other cases the ecclesiastics interfered and made it impossible for more houses to be built on their lands, save on their own terms, and without acknowledgment by the City Authority.

For these reasons, therefore,—the limited jurisdiction of the City; the steady opposition of the ecclesiastical owners of the manors outside; and the slow growth of the population,—there was little increase save in the direction of Bishopsgate Street Without, where the City had a lease of the manor, until the Dissolution of the Religious Houses and the change of owners in the manors.

There was never a time when the sober citizen was more sober, more responsible, more filled with a sense of his authority and dignity. “The man,” says the wise king, “who is diligent in business shall stand before princes.”

They did stand before princes, these merchants of London; as their prosperity leaped up increasingly year after year, they became the creditors, at least, of princes, for Elizabeth borrowed freely and repaid unwillingly—yet in spite of this too notorious weakness, she retained to the end the deepest affection of her people.

It has been a matter of reproach to the City that it seemed at this time wholly given over to trade and the interests of trade. To reproach a city which has always been a trading city with caring chiefly for the interests of trade seems somewhat unreasonable. But is it true that London has ever been wholly devoted to trade? I cannot find such a time in the whole long history of the City: certainly not in the reign of Elizabeth, when London cheerfully raised her men and her ships for the repulse of the Armada; and cheerfully gave the Queen whatever money she asked for; at the same time, while trade became larger than before, while the individual merchants became of more importance, the City certainly lost some of its political importance and was less dreaded, while it was more caressed, by the Sovereign.

It was, moreover, with the better class, a deeply religious age; men were not afraid or ashamed of proclaiming, or of showing, their religion. When Francis Drake saw the Atlantic on one side and the Pacific on the other, he fell on his knees in the sight of the company and prayed aloud, that God would suffer him to sail upon that unknown sea: if a cutpurse was hanged, he never failed to make a moving speech, deeply religious, while on the ladder. All classes preserved as yet the Catholic practice of going often to church; they studied the Bible; they made their ’prentices attend services; they listened patiently to sermons; doctrine was considered a vital point. By the end of the sixteenth century those who favoured the old Faith were either dead or silenced; to the common people the old Faith meant a return to the flames in Smithfield; torture at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition if any should haply fall into Spanish hands; and slavery under the Spanish King should he achieve the conquest of the country; whereas the new Faith meant freedom of thought, increased wealth, advancing trade, fighting the Spaniard and capturing the Spanish galleons. Religion, therefore, was allied with prosperity.

I have spoken of the sober guise of the London merchant. That sober guise belonged to the places where the merchant was mostly found: to the Royal Exchange, for instance, or Thames Street, beside the quays and warehouses. We must not think that there was no longer brightness of colour and even splendour in the streets. The rich liveries of the great nobles were chiefly seen on the river—remember that the front of the Palace faced the river, that the back belonged to the Strand, and that the river was London’s principal highway. Their varlets lolled about on the river stairs or escorted their master in his barge, but hardly belonged to the City. A Court gallant was dressed as extravagantly as he could afford, or as his estate would bear. He carried manors on his back, broad acres in his velvet cloak, with golden buckles and lace trimming, a year’s rents in his fantastic doublet slashed and puffed, in his silken hose, in his splendid sword, his scabbard and the handle set with gold, in his rings, his scents, his gloves and in his chains. But the Court gallant seldom showed on Thames Street.

In Norman and Plantagenet London there were no shops, nor was there anything sold in the streets except in the market-places, and the streets set aside for retail trade. But in the Tudor time Street Cries had already begun. We find, for instance, the following pleasant verses:—

Sumptuary laws were constantly renewed and continually broken. Yet the mass of the people obeyed the unwritten law by which a man’s station was shown by his dress. For more on this subject see the Chapter on Dress.

The ordering of the household was strict. Early hours were kept; in summer servants and apprentices were up at five; in winter at six or seven; there were rules as to attendance at morning and evening prayers; there was to be no quarrelling; no striking; no profane language.

It is said that coaches were introduced in this reign; but there had always been coaches, i.e. wheeled conveyances of a kind. Such a carriage, belonging to the fourteenth century, is figured in J. J. Jusserand’s English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages—a cumbrous unwieldy thing, yet still a coach. What really happened in this century was the introduction of a much more convenient kind of coach from Holland.

Stow laments the mud and the splashing in the streets. “The coachman rideth behind the horse tails, lasheth them, and looketh not behind him; the drayman sitteth and sleepeth on his dray and letteth his horse lead him home.” Most of the City streets, however, were so narrow and so much obstructed by houses standing out, for as yet there was no alignment except in streets like Chepe, which were highways and market streets, that no wheeled vehicle could pass at all.

There was very little more lighting at night than there had been in the preceding centuries. If a London dame ventured out of the house after dark, the ’prentice carried a link before her. Some of the old shops or sheds with “solars” over them remained in Stow’s time; the last of them stood in Clare Market, and was pulled down a few years ago. See the accompanying photograph of it. Stow says that stalls had become sheds, i.e. roofed stalls; and then shops, i.e. enclosed stalls; and then “fair houses.” He instances a block of houses called Goldsmiths’ Row, between Bread Street and the Cross, which contained ten dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, “all in one frame, uniformly built.” They were four stories high. The shops seem to have been open, but perhaps the upper part was protected with a shutter or with glass.

Inland communication was conducted by means of carts and coaches. Harrison[5] complains of the new fashion: “Our Princes and the Nobilitie have their cariage commonlie made by carts, wherby it commeth to passe that when the Queene’s Majestie dooth remove from anie one place to another, there are usuallie 400 carewanes, which amount to the summe of 2400 horses, appointed out of the counties adjoining, whereby hir cariage is conveied safelie unto the appointed place. Hereby also the ancient use of sumpter horses is in maner utterlie relinquished, which causeth the traines of our princes in their progresses to shew far lesse than those of the kings of other nations.”

During this long reign, in spite of plague and pestilence, the population of London increased, and the suburbs extended, as we have seen, in all directions. The increase of population was due (1) to the increase of trade in London, which required a great accession of ship-builders, boat-builders, makers of the various gear required for ships, seamen, lightermen, porters, stevedores, and the like; (2) to the large number of immigrants from France and the Low Countries; and (3) to the number of persons released from the Religious Houses. That is to say, this last is generally represented as one of the causes. To me it seems as if the influence of these people on the population of London must be regarded as quite insignificant. There were some 8000 monks, nuns, and friars who were sent into the world. Many of those who were in priests’ orders obtained places in parish churches, conforming by degrees to the changes of doctrine; the monks and nuns had pensions; many of the latter went abroad; of the friars many were absorbed in the general population; a certain number, one knows not how many, refused to work, and joined the company of rogues and masterless men, but there seems nothing to show how many of them settled in London.

Here is a simple calculation of the population in 1564. There was a great plague in that year. The total number of deaths in the City for the year is stated to have been 23,660, of whom 20,136 died of plague. This leaves 3524 deaths from ordinary causes. Now, if the average mortality of the City was twenty in the thousand, we should have a population of 176,200. If, which is more likely, the average mortality was twenty-five in the thousand the population was 140,960. In the time of King James, but after much devastation by the plague, the population of London was estimated at 130,000.

It has been said that there is no street in London in which one cannot find a church and a tree. It is indeed remarkable to observe the large number of trees still existing and flourishing in the City of London, especially since the City churchyards have been converted into gardens. Of the old private gardens there are now left but few: one in St. Helen’s Place; one behind the Rectory of St. Andrew’s by the Wardrobe; the Drapers’ Gardens, much curtailed; and the churchyards above mentioned, which have been converted into gardens. In the sixteenth century, however, London was still full of gardens, in the north part of the City much more than in the south. Every house had its garden behind; for the most part narrow, yet carefully cultivated and full of trees and flowers. If you take the part of London that has been least meddled with, the north-west corner of the City, for instance—that part bounded by London Wall on the North; by Monkwell and Noble Streets on the West; by Gresham Street on the South; and by Moorgate on the East—you will find that the blocks between the older streets are intersected everywhere by courts, alleys, narrow lanes and buildings. These were all, including the ancient churches, taken out of the gardens. Formerly, for instance, between Basinghall Street and Coleman Street there were very long gardens behind the houses; these have been used for lanes of connection, and for workmen’s houses, such as Lilypot Lane and Oat Lane. Hidden away behind the houses is Sadler’s Hall; here also, hidden away behind houses, is Haberdashers’ Hall; here were the courtyards of inns, which formed among the gardens convenient ground for their great open courts and their stables. In this way the gardens of London gradually disappeared. In the sixteenth century, however, there were a great many still left: London presented an appearance of greenery and waving branches wherever one turned off the main roads. The chief authority on the gardens of the time is Harrison, who tells us what herbs, fruits, and roots were then grown, as well as the medicinal plants then so much cultivated.

Harrison[6] says, speaking of the flower gardens:—

“If you look into our gardens annexed to our houses, how wonderfullie is their beauty increased, not onelie with floures which Colmella calleth Terrena sydera, saying, ‘Pingit et in varios terrestria sydera flores,’ and varietie of curious and costlie workmanship, but also with rare and medicinable hearbes sought up in the land within these fortie yeares; so that in comparison of this present, the ancient gardens were but dunghills and laistowes to such as did possess them.

And even as it fareth with our gardens so dooth it with our orchards, which were never furnished with so good fruit, nor with such varietie as at this present. For beside that we have most delicate apples, plummes, peares, walnuts, filberds, etc., and those of sundrie sorts, planted within fortie yeares passed, in comparison of which most of the old trees are nothing woorth; so have we no less store of strange fruit, as abricotes, almonds, peaches, figges, corne-trees in noblemen’s orchards. I have seen capers, orenges, and lemmons, and heard of wild olives growing here, beside other strange trees, brought from far, whose names I know not. So that England for these commodities was never better furnished, neither anie nation under their clime more plentifullie indued with these and other blessings from the most high God, who grant us grace withall to use the same to His honour and glorie! and not as instruments and provocations unto further excesse and vanitie, wherewith His displeasure may be kindled, least these His benefits doo turne unto thornes and briers unto us for our annoiance and punishment which He hath bestowed upon us for our consolation and comfort.”

The London garden was not only a place of recreation in the summer; it also furnished flowers for the pretty custom of decorating the rooms and strewing the floors; the gardens furnished pot herbs for the kitchen and sweet herbs for the walls and floors; branches also of fragrant woods, such as fir and pine, were hung up on the walls. I know not if this is a common custom still maintained in America; but in Hawthorne’s house at Concord the rooms are still decorated and made fragrant with branches of pine such as the writer used in his lifetime. The floor of the great hall was strewn with rushes, brought chiefly from the upper reaches and low-lying grounds of the river. These rushes were of various kinds: some of them were grasses, such as that called mat-weed, of which beds were made as well as floors strewn.

The chief authorities on the London garden are Bacon in his Essays, and Gerard in his Herbal. Francis Bacon wrote his essays in Gray’s Inn, whose garden he laid out and planted by request of the Benchers. His essay on the garden was written, as he says himself, for the climate of London.

“And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells, so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find nothing of their sweetness, yea, though it be in a morning’s dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow, rosemary little, nor sweet marjoram. That which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet, especially the white double violet, which comes twice a year, about the middle of April and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk-rose; then the strawberry leaves dying, which yield a most excellent cordial smell. Then the flower of the vines; it is a little dust like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth. Then sweetbriar, then wall-flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlour or lower chamber window. Then pinks and gilliflowers, especially the matted pink and clove gilliflowers. Then the flowers of the lime-tree. Then the honeysuckles, so they be somewhat afar off; of bean-flowers I speak not, because they are field-flowers. But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three—that is, burnet, wild thyme, and water-mints. Therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.”

In Ordish’s Shakespeare’s London will be found an excellent analysis of Gerard’s Herbal as it deals with the gardens of the City and its suburbs. In it also is an enumeration of the principal gardens of the time, especially those of the Inns of Court. To these may be added the gardens belonging to those of the City Companies whose Halls were in the north part of the City, and those not yet built over which had once formed part of the monastic precincts, not to speak of the private gardens which were in many cases—such as the house of Sir Thomas Gresham in Broad Street—large and spacious. (See Appendix VII.)

The allusions to London and to City customs in Shakespeare are numerous, but not, as a rule, instructive. That is to say, he speaks of streets and places which we know from other sources. The Tower, the Bridge, Smithfield, Fish Street, St. Magnus Corner, the Savoy, the Tower Royal (King Richard’s Palace), Westminster Hall, Eastcheap, Bankside, the Temple, Cheapside, London Stone, Baynard’s Castle, Blackfriars, Paris Garden, are mentioned with the familiarity of one who lived in the City and knew all the streets intimately. It is pleasant to find them playing their parts in the immortal plays, but, as I said above, they teach us nothing.

In 1568, to escape the cruelties of Alva, a vast number of Flemings came across the sea and were received hospitably. In order to prevent their arrival proving an injury to the crafts of London, they were scattered about, finding homes in Norwich, Colchester, Maidstone, Sandwich, and Southampton, as well as in London. In the next generation they appear to have been completely merged in the English population, and the custom, common among persons of foreign descent, of anglicising their names has made it very difficult to discover the Flemish origin of a family. The earlier Flemish settlers in England were regarded with hatred. It would seem that another colony of Flemings came over before this immigration in the year 1568; they were settled in Suffolk. In 1594 a good many Portuguese came over as retainers to Don Antonio, and settled here. Among them was the Balthazar who became confectioner to King James and founded almshouses at Tottenham. There were Italians, probably connected with the Italian trade, for the “Lombardi,” the Pope’s men, were gone; they had a service at the Mercers’ Chapel every Sunday. There were also a great many “Dutch,” among whom were numbered the Flemings. Thus, in 1567, a census was taken of “foreigners” in London. There were found to be 4851 altogether, of whom 3838 were Dutch, and 720 French. A few years later the French Ambassador reports that there were 13,700 strangers in London, of whom a third were going to be turned out.

Of the hatred and suspicion entertained towards foreigners by Londoners we have many proofs. “They scoff and laugh at foreigners,” says the Duke of Wurtemberg, “and, moreover, one dares not oppose them, else the street boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and strike to the right and left unmercifully without regard to person.” Isaac Casaubon in James the First’s reign complained that he had never been so badly treated as by the people of London: they threw stones at his windows; they pelted his children and himself with stones. The Venetian Ambassador of 1497 testifies to the same effect; in 1557 his successor says that it is impossible to live in London on account of the insolence with which foreigners are treated.

At the same time it must be remembered that there were quarters assigned to foreigners, and that the people must have been accustomed to see these residents going about the streets. Perhaps they were only insolent to foreign nobles, and those whose dress and language were not familiar to them. The Hanse merchants had their house beside Dowgate, Petty Almaigne; the Flemings had theirs on the east side of the Bridge, Petty Flanders: the French had a place in Bishopsgate Ward called Petty France. It was in Petty Flanders that certain Jews resided under the guise of Flemings, just as in the fourteenth century they passed themselves off as Lombards. The Flemings built the Exchange: it was designed after the Antwerp Bourse, by a Fleming; the workmen were specially brought over, and appear to have been unmolested.

In February 1831 there was swept away, with all the buildings in the place called the King’s Mews, where Trafalgar Square now is, a small building called Queen Elizabeth’s Bath. It was a square building of fine brick. It was certainly a Bath, and had a groined roof ascribed by Mr. William Knight who sketched it to the fifteenth century. It was an interesting building of which nothing seems known. Nobody has noticed it except a writer in ArchÆologia (vol. xxv.), who gives a plan and drawing of the curious place. Like the Sanctuary at Westminster it would have been entirely forgotten but for the hand of a single antiquary, who rescued it from oblivion at the last moment.