We have passed over two hundred years. We left London under the Three Edwards. We find it under Elizabeth. It was a City of Palaces—monasteries, with splendid churches and stately buildings: town houses of bishops, abbots, and noble lords, every one able to accommodate a goodly following of liveried retainers and servants: the mansions of rich City merchants, sometimes as splendid as those of the lords: the halls of the City Companies: the hundred and twenty City churches. Look at London as Shakespeare saw it. Everywhere there are the ruins of the monasteries: some of the buildings have been destroyed with gunpowder: some have been pulled down: where it has been too costly to destroy the monastic chapels they are used as storehouses or workshops: the marble monuments of the buried Kings and Queens have been broken up and carried off: the ruins of refectory, dormitory, library, chapter house stand still, being taken down little by little as stones are wanted for building purposes: some of the ruins, indeed, lasted till this very century, notably a gateway of the Holy Trinity Priory, at the back of St. Catharine Cree, Leadenhall Street, and some of the buildings of St. Helen's Nunnery, beside the church of Great St. Helen's. One would think that the presence of all these ruins would have saddened the City. Not so. The people were so thoroughly Protestant that they regarded the ruins with the utmost satisfaction. They were a sign of deliverance from what their new preachers taught them was false doctrine. Moreover, there were other reasons why the citizens under Queen Elizabeth could not regret the past.

The parish churches were changed. The walls, once covered with paintings of saints and angels, were now scraped or whitewashed: instead of altars with blazing lights, there was a plain table: there were no more watching candles: there were no more splendid robes for the priest and the altar boys: the priest was transformed into a preacher: the service consisted of plain prayers, the reading of the Bible, and a sermon. In very few churches was there an organ. There was no external beauty in religion. Therefore external beauty in the church itself ceased for three hundred years to be desired. What was required was neatness, with ample space for all to be seated, so arranged that all might hear the sermon. And whereas under the Plantagenets every other man was a priest, a friar, or some officer or servant of a monastery, one only met here and there a clergyman with black gown and Genevan bands.

This change alone transformed London. But there were other changes. Most of the great nobles had left the City. Long before they went away their following had been cut down to modest numbers: their great barracks had become useless: they were let out in tenements, and were falling into decay: some of them had been removed to make way for warehouses and offices: one or two remained till the Great Fire of 1666. Among them were Baynard's Castle, close to Blackfriars, and Cold Harbour. A few nobles continued to have houses in the City. In the time of Charles II., the Duke of Buckingham had a house on College Hill, and the palaces along the Strand still remained.

The merchants' houses took the place of these palaces. They were built either in the form of a quadrangle, standing round a garden, with a cloister or covered way running round, of which Gresham House, pulled down in the last century, was a very fine example. But, since few merchants could afford to build over so large a piece of ground and land was too valuable to be wasted on broad lawns and open courts, the houses were built in four or five stories, with rich carvings all over the front. The house called Sir Paul Pinder's House in Bishopsgate Street, pulled down only a year or two ago, was a very fine example of such a house. The great hall was henceforth only built in great country houses: in the City the following of the richest merchants, in his private house, consisted of a few servants only; small rooms henceforward became the rule: when entertainments and festivities on a large scale are held, the Companies' Halls may be used. The inferior kind of Elizabethan house may still be seen in Holborn—outside of Staple Inn: in Wych Street: in Cloth Fair: and one or two other places. They were narrow: three or four stories high: each story projected beyond the one below: they were gabled: the windows were latticed, with small diamond panes of glass: they were built of plaster and timber. Building with brick only began in the reign of James the First. Before every house hung a sign, on which was painted the figure by which the house was known: some of these signs may still be seen: there is one in Holywell Street: one in Ivy Lane: and there are many old Inns which still keep their ancient signs.