The leading feature of Elizabethan London was that it was a great port. William Camden, writing in his Britannia, remarked that the Thames, by its safe and deep channel, was able to entertain the greatest ships in existence, daily bringing in so great riches from all parts "that it striveth at this day with the Mart-townes of Christendome for the second prise, and affoordeth a most sure and beautiful Roade for shipping" (Holland's translation). Below the great bridge, one of the wonders of Europe, we see this shipping crowding the river in the maps and views of London belonging to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Tower and the bridge were the city's defences against attack by water. Near the Tower was the Custom House, where peaceful commerce paid its dues; and between the Custom House and the bridge was the great wharf of Billingsgate, where goods were landed for distribution. Near the centre of the bridge was a drawbridge, which admitted vessels to another great wharf, Queenhithe, at a point midway between London Bridge and Blackfriars. Between the bridge and Queenhithe was the Steelyard, the domain of the merchants of the Hanseatic League. Along the river front were numerous other wharves, where barges and lighters unloaded goods which they brought from the ships in the road, or from the upper reaches of the Thames. For the river was the great highway of London. It answered the needs of commerce, and it furnished the chief means of transit. The passenger traffic of Elizabethan London was carried on principally by means of rowing-boats. A passenger landed at the point nearest to his destination, and then walked; or a servant waited for him with a saddle-horse. The streets were too narrow for coaches, except in two or three main arteries.

The characteristic of present-day London, at which all foreigners most marvel, is the amount of traffic in the streets. In Elizabethan London this characteristic existed in the chief highway—the Thames. The passenger-boats were generally described as "wherries," and they were likened by Elizabethan travellers to the gondolas of Venice; for instance, by Coryat, in his Crudities, who thought the playhouses of Venice very beggarly compared with those of London, but admired the gondoliers, because they were "altogether as swift as our rowers about London." The maps of the period reveal the extraordinary number of "stairs" for landing passengers along both banks of the river, besides the numerous wharves for goods. John Stow, the author of the Survey of London, published first in 1598, and again in a second edition in 1603, describes the traffic on the river. "By the Thames," he says, "all kinds of merchandise be easily conveyed to London, the principal storehouse and staple of all commodities within this realm. So that, omitting to speak of great ships and other vessels of burthen, there pertaineth to the cities of London, Westminster, and borough of Southwark, above the number, as is supposed, of 2,000 wherries and other small boats, whereby 3,000 poor men at the least be set on work and maintained." Many of these watermen were old sailors, who had sailed and fought under Drake. The Armada deliverance was recalled by Drake's ship, which lay in the river below the bridge. The voyage of the Earl of Essex to Spain, the expeditions to Ireland and to the Low Countries, formed the staple of the gossip of these old sailors who found employment in the chief means of locomotion in Elizabethan London.

There was only the single bridge, but there were several ferries. The principal ferry was from Blackfriars and the Fleet river to a point opposite on the Surrey side, called Paris Garden stairs—nearly in a line with the present Blackfriars Bridge. At Westminster was another, from the Horseferry Road to a point a little west of Lambeth Palace—almost in the line of the present Lambeth Bridge. The river was fordable at low tide at this point; horses crossed here—whence the name Horseferry—and possibly other cattle, when the tide was unusually low.

The sea is the home of piety. Coast towns, ports, and havens, reached after voyages of peril, are invariably notable for their places of worship, and for customs which speak touchingly—like the blessing of fishermen's nets, for instance—of lives spent in uncertainty and danger. Thus, the leading characteristic of Elizabethan London being its association with the sea and its dependence on the river, we find that its next most striking characteristic was the extraordinary number of churches it contained. The great cathedral predominated more pronouncedly than its modern successor. From the hill on which it was based it reared its vast bulk; its great spire ascended the heavens, and the multitude of church towers and spires and belfries throughout the city seemed to follow it. The houses were small, the streets were narrow; but to envisage the city from the river, or from the Surrey side, was to have the eye led upwards from point to point to the summit of St. Paul's. The dignity and piety of London were thus expressed, in contradiction to human foibles and failings so conspicuous in Elizabethan drama. The spire of St. Paul's was destroyed by lightning early in the reign of Elizabeth; and the historian may see much significance in the fact that it was not rebuilt, even in thanksgiving and praise for the deliverance from the Great Armada. The piety of London dwindled until it flamed forth anew in the time of the Puritan revolt.

The bridge was carried on nineteen arches. It had a defensive gate at the Southwark end, and another gateway at the northern end. In the centre was a beautiful chapel, dedicated to Thomas À Becket, and known as St. Thomas of the Bridge. Houses were built on the bridge, mostly shops with overhanging signs, as in the streets of the city. Booksellers and haberdashers predominated, but other trades were carried on also. After the chapel, the most conspicuous feature of the bridge was "Nonesuch House," so called to express the wonder that it was constructed in Holland entirely of wood, brought over the water piece by piece, and put together on the bridge by dovetailing and pegs, without the use of a single metal nail. Adjoining the northern gateway was an engine for raising water by means of a great wheel operated by the tide. Near the Southwark end were corn-mills, worked on the same principle, below the last two arches of the bridge. The gateway at the Southwark end, so well shown in Visscher's view of London, was finished in 1579, and the traitors' heads, which formerly surmounted a tower by the drawbridge, were transferred to it. Travellers from the south received this grim salutation as they approached the bridge, which led into the city; and when they glanced across the river, the Tower frowned upon them, and the Traitors' Gateway, like teeth in an open mouth, deepened the effect of warning and menace.

But these terrors loomed darkling in the background for the most part. They belonged rather to the time when the sovereign's palaces at Westminster and at the Tower seemed to hold London in a grip. The palace at Westminster now languished in desuetude; the Tower was a State prison, and—with some ironical intent, perhaps—also the abode of the royal beasts, lions, tigers, leopards, and other captives. The Queen passed in her royal barge down the river with ceremonious pageantry from her palace of Whitehall; the drawbridge raised, the floating court passed the Tower as with lofty indifference on its way to "Placentia," Her Majesty's palace at Greenwich. Out of the silence of history a record speaks like a voice, and tells us that here, in 1594, Shakespeare and his fellows performed at least two comedies or interludes before Her Majesty, and we know even the amounts that were paid them for their services.

In the Survey of John Stow we have three separable elements: the archÆology and history of London, Stow's youthful recollections of London in the time of Henry the Eighth, and Stow's description of the great change which came over London after the dissolution of the religious houses, and continued in process throughout his lifetime. The mediÆval conditions were not remote. He could remember when London was clearly defined by the wall, like a girdle, of which the Tower was the knot. No heroic change had befallen; the wall had not been cast down into its accompanying fosse to form a ring-street, as was done when Vienna was transformed from the mediÆval state. London had simply filled up the ditch with its refuse; its buildings had simply swarmed over the wall and across the dike; shapeless and haphazard suburbs had grown up, till the surrounding villages became connected with the city. Even more grievous, in the estimation of Stow, was the change which he had witnessed within the city itself. The feudal lords had departed, and built themselves mansions outside the city. The precincts of the dissolved religious establishments had been converted into residential quarters, and a large proportion of the old monastic gardens had been built upon. The outlines of society had become blurred. Formerly, the noble, the priest, and the citizen were the defined social strata. Around each of these was grouped the rest of the social units in positions of dependence. A new type of denizen had arisen, belonging to none of the old categories—the typical Elizabethan Londoner.

The outward aspect of Elizabethan London reflected this social change. On the south of the city, along the line of Thames Street, the wall had entirely disappeared. On the east and west it was in decay, and was becoming absorbed in fresh buildings. Only on the north side of the city, where it had been re-edified as late as 1474, did the wall suggest its uses for defence. In the map of Agas, executed early in the reign of Elizabeth, this portion of the wall, with its defensive towers and bastions, appears singularly well preserved. Thus the condition of the wall suggested the passing of the old and the coming of the new order. The gates which formerly defended the city, where the chief roadways pierced the wall, still remained as monuments, and they were admirably adapted to the purpose of civic pageantry and ceremonial shows. Indeed, the gateway on the Oxford road was rebuilt in 1586, and called Newgate, "from the newness thereof," and it was the "fairest" of all the gates of London. It is reckoned that this was the year that Shakespeare came to London from Stratford-on-Avon; and the assumption is generally allowed that he entered the city by Newgate, which would be his direct road. A new gate, of an artistic and ornamental character, set in the ancient wall, was a sign and a symbol of the new conditions in London, of which Shakespeare himself was destined to become the chief result.

---

With the characteristics of London as a great mart and port is included the foreign elements in its population. In Lombard Street the merchants of Lombardy from early mediÆval times had performed the operations of banking and foreign exchange; and around them were assembled the English merchants of all qualities and degrees. Business was conducted in the open street, and merchants merely adjourned into the adjoining houses to seal their bonds and make their formal settlements. Henry VIII. tried to induce the city to make use of the great building of Leadenhall for this purpose; but the innovation was resisted, and Lombard Street continued to be the burse of London till long after the accession of Elizabeth. The name of Galley Key remained in Tower Street ward to mark the spot on the river bank "where the galleys of Italy and other parts did discharge their wines and merchandises brought to this city." The men of the galleys lived as a colony by themselves in Mincing Lane; the street leading to their purlieus was called, indifferently, Galley Row and Petit Wales. Here was a great house, the official territorium of the Principality. The original of Shakespeare's "Fluellen" may very possibly have been a denizen of this quarter.

Above the bridge, in Thames Street, was the territorium of the Hanse merchants, alluded to by Stow as "the merchants of Almaine," and by Camden as "the Easterlings or Dutch merchants of the Steelyard." Their position in the city was one of great importance: the export trade of the country in woollen goods was chiefly in their hands, and they had their own Guildhall in Upper Thames Street, called the Gilda Teutonicorum. The special privileges accorded to this foreign commercial community carried the obligation to maintain Bishopsgate in repair, and "to defend it at all times of danger and extremity." When the house of the Augustine Friars, Old Broad Street, was dissolved, and its extensive gardens became cut up and built upon, the Dutch colony settled there in residence, and the church of Austin Friars was specially assigned to them by Edward VI. Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth the privileges of the Hanse merchants were revoked, and their guildhall was confiscated to the use of the navy. But the Dutch element continued as a part of the commercial life of the city, and the church of Austin Friars is still the "church of the Dutch nation in London."

West of the Steelyard was the Vintry. Here the merchants of Bordeaux had been licensed to build their warehouses of stone, at the rear of a great wharf, on which were erected cranes for unloading the lighters and other boats which brought the casks from the ships below bridge. The trade of these foreign merchants gave the name of Vintry Ward to one of the divisions of the city. In Bishopsgate Ward, near the church of St. Botolph, was a French colony, their purlieus forming a quadrant, called Petty France.

Elizabethan London was more cosmopolitan than many European capitals. In Lombard Street the merchants of Germany, France, and Italy were conspicuously differentiated by the varieties of costume. On the site of the present Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham laid the first stone of his great Bourse in 1566; the design was in imitation of the Bourse at Antwerp; the materials of its construction were imported from Flanders; the architect and builder was a Fleming, named Henryke. The opening of this building by Queen Elizabeth in state in January, 1571, when Her Majesty commanded it to be proclaimed by herald and trumpet that the Bourse should be called The Royal Exchange from that time henceforth, is a familiar story, because it is, in fact, one of the most striking and significant events in the history of London. The trumpet of that herald, on January 23rd, 1571, announced a new era.

The building was a quadrangle, enclosing an open space. The sides formed a cloister or sheltered walk; above this was a corridor, or walk, called "the pawn," with stalls or shops, like the Burlington Arcade of the present day; above this again was a tier of rooms. The great bell-tower stood on the Cornhill front; the bell was rung at noon and at six in the evening. On the north side, looking towards St. Margaret's, Lothbury, was a tall Corinthian column. Both tower and column were surmounted by a grasshopper—the Gresham crest. The inscription on the faÇade of the building was in French, German, and Italian. The motley scene of Lombard Street had been transferred to the Royal Exchange. The merchants of Amsterdam, of Antwerp, of Hamburg, of Paris, of Bordeaux, of Venice and Vienna, distinguishable to the eye by the dress of the nations they represented, and to the ear by the differences of language, conducted their exchanges with English merchants, and with each other, in this replica of the Bourse of Antwerp, the rialto of Elizabethan London.[1]

Cheapside was called West Cheap in Elizabethan London, in contradistinction to East Cheap, famous for ever as the scene of the humours of "Dame Quickly" and "Falstaff." The change in West Cheap since the mediÆval period was chiefly at the eastern end, on the north side. Here a large space opposite the church of St. Mary-le-Bow was formerly kept clear of building, although booths and stalls for market purposes occupied the ground temporarily. The space was otherwise reserved for the mediÆval jousts, tournaments, and other civic pageantry. The site of Mercers' Hall was occupied by the Militia Hospitalis, called, after Thomas À Becket, St. Thomas of Acon. After the Dissolution this establishment was granted by Henry to the Mercers' Company, who adapted the existing buildings to the purposes of their hall, one of the principal features of Cheap in Elizabethan times. The district eastward of Mercers' Hall had become filled up with building, and the making of Cheap as a thoroughfare was now complete. The original road westward was from the top of New Fish Street, by East Cheap, Candlewick or Cannon Street, past London Stone (probably the Roman Milliarium), along Budge Row and Watling Street, to the site of St. Paul's, where it is conjectured a temple of Diana stood in Roman times. But Cheap, or West Cheap, was the chief traffic way westward in Elizabethan London; it was filled with shops and warehouses, a thriving business centre, the pride of the city. The name of "Cheap" was derived from the market, and several of the streets leading into it yet bear names which in Elizabethan times were descriptive of the trades there carried on. Thus the Poultry was the poulterers' market; ironmongers had their shops in Ironmonger Lane, as formerly they had their stalls in the same area; in Milk Street were the dairies; and towards the west end of Cheap was Bread Street, the market of the bakers, and Friday Street, where fishmongers predominated. Lying between these two streets, with frontages in both, was the Mermaid Tavern, the chief resort of "the breed of excellent and choice wits," included by Camden among the glories of Elizabethan London. Stow does not refer to the Mermaid by name, but possibly he had it in mind when he wrote the following passage: "Bread Street, so called of bread sold there, as I said, is now wholly inhabited by rich merchants; and divers fair inns be there, for good receipt of carriers and other travellers to the city." The trades kept themselves in their special localities, although they did not always give the name to the street they occupied. Thus, to return to the eastern end of Cheap, there was Bucklersbury, where the pepperers or grocers were located, having given up their former quarters in Sopars' Lane to the cordwainers and curriers. With the grocers were mingled apothecaries and herbalists; and hence the protest of Falstaff, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, that he was not "like a many of these lisping hawthorn-buds, that come like women in men's apparel, and smell like Bucklesbury in simple time." In the midst of Cheap, at a point between Mercers' Hall and Old Jewry, opposite the end of Bucklersbury, was the water conduit—in the words of Stow, "The great conduit of sweet water, conveyed by pipes of lead underground from Paddington for the service of this city, castellated with stone, and cisterned in lead." Around the conduit stood the great jars used by the water-carriers to convey the water to the houses. The water-carrier, as a type of Elizabethan London, is preserved by Ben Jonson in the character of Cob in Every Man in his Humour. Going westward from the Conduit, another object stood out in the roadway—the Standard, a tall pillar at which the public executions of the city jurisdiction took place. Still further west, in the midst of Cheap, stood the Eleanor Cross, one of the most beautiful monuments in London at this time.

The Guildhall stood where it stands to-day, accessible from Cheap by Ironmonger Lane and St. Lawrence Lane. Only the walls and the crypt of the original building remain; but the features of this great civic establishment, as well as its sumptuous character and beautiful adornments, were practically the same in the days of Gresham as at the present time. Stow describes the stately porch entering the great hall, the paving of Purbeck marble, the coloured glass windows, and, alas! the library which had been "borrowed" by the Protector Somerset in the preceding reign. Near the Guildhall was the church of St. Mary Aldermanbury, the predecessor of the existing edifice. In this parish dwelt Hemmings and Condell, "fellows" of Shakespeare—that is to say, players of his company, whom he remembered in his will. These men conferred a benefit on all future ages by collecting the poet's plays, seven years after his death, and publishing them in that folio edition which is one of the most treasured volumes in the world. In the churchyard a monument to their memory was erected in 1896. It is surmounted by a bust of the poet, who looks forth serenely greeting the passer-by from beneath the shade of trees in this quiet old churchyard in modern London.

To return to Cheap, it remains to speak of a feature which attracted Queen Elizabeth, and was, indeed, one of the marvels of London. Here are the ipsissima verba of Stow's contemporary description:

Beyond Goldsmiths' Row was the old Change; the name and the street both still exist. Beyond old Change were seven shops; then St. Augustine's Gate, leading into St. Paul's Churchyard; and then came Paternoster Row. Between Paternoster Row and Newgate Street stood the Church of St. Michael-le-Querne, stretching out into the middle of Cheap, where the statue of Sir Robert Peel now stands. Stretching out from the east end of the church, still further into the street, was a water conduit, which supplied all the neighbourhood hereabout, called "The Little Conduit," not because it was little, but to distinguish it from the great conduit at the other end of Cheap.

---

We are concerned in this place not with the history of old St. Paul's, nor with the technique of its architecture, but with the great cathedral as a religious and social institution, the centre of Elizabethan London. Here the streams of life were gathered, and hence they radiated. It was the official place of worship of the Corporation; the merchants of the city followed. The monarch on special occasions attended the services; the nobility followed the royal example. The typical Elizabethan made the middle aisle his promenade, where he displayed the finery of his attire and the elegance of his deportment. The satirists found a grand opportunity in the humours of Paul's Walk; but the effect of the cathedral is not to be derived from such allusions in the literature of the time. All classes were attracted by the beautiful organ and the anthems so exquisitely sung by the choir. The impressive size and noble proportions of the building, the soaring height of the nave, the mystery of the open tower, where the ascending vision became lost in gathering obscurity, and where the chords from the organ died away; these spiritual associations, these appeals to the imagination, were uplifting influences so powerful that the vanities of Paul's Walk were negligible by comparison. As with the gargoyle on the outer walls, the prevailing effect was so sublime, that it was merely heightened by this element of the grotesque.[2]

The cathedral stood in the midst of a churchyard. In the mediÆval period this was enclosed by a wall. In the reign of Elizabeth the wall still existed, but, as Stow observes, "Now on both sides, to wit, within and without, it be hidden with dwelling-houses." In 1561 the great steeple was struck by lightning and destroyed by fire, but the tower from which the spire arose remained. The tower was 260 feet high, and the height of the spire was the same, so that the pinnacle was 520 feet from the base.[3] Surmounting the pinnacle, in this earlier portion of Elizabeth's reign, was a weathercock, an object of curiosity to which Stow devotes a minute description. In the midst of the churchyard stood Paul's Cross—"a pulpit cross of timber, mounted upon steps of stone and covered with lead, in which are sermons preached every Sunday in the forenoon." Many of the monastic features of the establishment had disappeared; others were transformed and adapted to other uses. The great central fabric remained, and the school flourished—"Paul's School," in the east part of the churchyard, endowed by Dean Colet in 1512, and rebuilt in the later years of Elizabeth, where one hundred and fifty-three poor men's children were given a free education under a master, an usher, and a chaplain.

---

Newgate Street, Cheapside, Cornhill, Leadenhall, and Aldgate formed (as they do still) nearly a straight line, east and west. From this line to the wall on the north, in Plantagenet and early Tudor times, the city was largely composed of open spaces: chiefly the domains of religious houses; while south of the dividing line to the river the ground was thickly built over. After the Dissolution the transformation of the northern area began.

Considerable building took place in the reign of Edward VI.; but at the time of Elizabeth's accession the generally open character of this area, as compared with the more southerly part of the city, still subsisted. The increase of population, however, due very largely to people who flocked to London from all parts of the country, led to rapid building, which produced the Queen's famous proclamation to stay its further progress. To evade the ordinance, and to meet the ever-increasing demand, large houses were converted into tenements, and a vast number of people were thus accommodated who lived chiefly out-of-doors and took their meals in the taverns, inns, and ordinaries which abounded in all parts of the city. The pressure of demand continued, and the open spaces became gradually built over. The Queen and her government, aghast at the incessant tide of increase, in terror of the plague, recognised the futility of further prohibition, and avoided communication with the city as much as possible. At the slightest hint of plague Her Majesty would start off on one of her Progresses, or betake herself to Richmond, to Hampton Court, or to Greenwich.

Some of these transformations of ancient monastic purlieus may be briefly instanced. Within Newgate was the house and precinct of the Grey Friars. After the Dissolution the whole precinct was presented by Henry to the citizens of London, and here Edward VI. founded the school for poor fatherless children, which became famous as Christ's Hospital, "the Bluecoat school."

Let a short passage from Stow describe this change from the old order to the new:

The Greyfriars or Bluecoat school was one of the largest buildings in London. Its demesne extended to the city wall, in which there was a gate communicating with the grounds of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, the famous foundation of Rahere. The wall ran northward from the New Gate, the ground between the school and the wall on that side had been built over. There was a continuous line of building along Newgate Street to St. Martin's le Grand. The shambles or meat market occupied the centre of the street, called St. Nicholas Shambles, from a church which had been demolished since the Reformation.

From Newgate Street and the top of Cheapside to St. Anne's Lane was formerly the territory of the Collegiate Church and Sanctuary of St. Martin's le Grand. The college was dismantled after the edict of dissolution, but the sanctuary remained.

Some of the collegiate buildings had been converted into tenements, and other houses had been erected. These were occupied by "strangers born"—i.e., denizens who were not born Londoners—although within the walls the civic jurisdiction did not extend over this territory. Certain trades were carried on here outside the regulated industry of the city—e.g., tailoring and lace-making. The district became one of the resorts of the Elizabethan ruffler; and under the Ægis of the ancient right of sanctuary a kind of Alsatia came into existence, the scene of many exciting episodes when debtors and fugitives from justice evaded their pursuers, and succeeded in reaching these precincts.

In Broad Street the ancient glory of the Augustine Friars was still a memory, and much of their spacious domain had been divided into gardens. The beautiful church remained, but the spire was becoming ruinous from neglect. Stow described the gardens, the gates of the precinct, and the great house which had been built here by William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, Lord Treasurer of England, "in place of Augustine friar's house, cloister, gardens, etc." There is an admirable irony in the recital of Stow at this point:

Between Broad Street and Bishopsgate Street the space was chiefly composed of gardens. One of the houses fronting Bishopsgate Street was the residence of Sir Thomas Gresham (perhaps his house in Lombard Street was reserved for business purposes).

On the opposite side of Bishopsgate Street was Crosby Hall and the precinct of the dissolved nunnery of St. Helen, extending towards St. Mary Axe and the church of St. Andrew Undershaft. At the further end of St. Mary Axe was the "Papye," a building which had been a hospital for poor priests before the Reformation. In the year 1598 Shakespeare was living in the St. Helen's precinct, within the shadow of Crosby Hall, and John Stow, in his home near the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, had just corrected the proofs of the first edition of his Survey of London. Stow tells us about Gresham's House and about Crosby Hall. He tells us that Sir Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State, resided at the Papye. He describes the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, where his own monument may be seen at the present day; he describes, too, the ancient church of the nunnery of St. Helen, in which a memorial window now commemorates Shakespeare. But he failed to mention the fact, which has since been recovered from the subsidy-roll in the Record Office, that William Shakespeare was a denizen of the precinct in 1598. Had Shakespeare built a water conduit in the neighbourhood, or endowed an almshouse, he might have been celebrated in the pages of John Stow.

They were neighbours, and may have been acquainted. The district had been familiar to Stow from childhood, and he may have entertained the poet as he entertains us in his Survey with recollections of the changes he had witnessed in his long lifetime. Describing Tower Hill, he recalls the abbey of nuns of the order of St. Clare, called the Minories, and after giving the facts of its history, proceeds:

Here we have the source of the name Goodman's Fields, a point of some interest for us; but how vastly more interesting to have rambled with Stow in Elizabethan London, listening to such stories of the old order which had passed, giving place to the new!

We have strayed outside the wall, but not far. This road between Aldgate and the Postern Gate by the Tower, running parallel with the wall, is called the Minories, after the nunnery. Setting our faces towards Aldgate, to retrace our steps, we have the store-houses for armour and habiliments of war on our right; the wide ditch on our left has been filled up, and partly enclosed for cultivation. There are trees, and cows browsing, although the farm which Stow remembered no longer existed. Before us, just outside Aldgate, is the church of St. Buttolph, with its massive tower, standing in a spacious churchyard. Owing to the extensive building and development which had taken place outside the wall since the Reformation, it had been necessary to construct lofts and galleries in this church to accommodate the parishioners. At Aldgate the line of the wall turns westward towards Bishopsgate. Parallel to it a road has been made along the bank of the ditch, and leads into Bishopsgate Street. This is Houndsditch. The houses stand thickly along one side of the way looking towards the wall; the ditch has been filled up, and the wide surface is used for cattle pens or milking stalls.

We will not go along Houndsditch, but turning sharply to the left from St. Buttolph's we pass through Aldgate. In doing so we immediately find ourselves in the midst of the remains of the great priory of Holy Trinity. The road leads southward into Fenchurch Street, branching off on the west into Leadenhall Street. At the junction of these streets stood the hospitium of the priory. Between Leadenhall Street and the city wall, from Aldgate nearly up to St. Andrew Undershaft, lies the ground-plan of the establishment of the Canons Regular, known as Christchurch, or the priory of Holy Trinity, the grandest of all the monastic institutions in Middlesex except Westminster. The heads of the establishment were aldermen of the City of London, representing the Portsoken Ward.

In 1531 the King took possession of Christchurch; the canons were sent to other houses of the same order—St. Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield; St. Mary Overies, Southwark; and St. Mary Spital—"and the priory, with the appurtenances, King Henry gave to Sir Thomas Audley, newly knighted, and after made Lord Chancellor" (Stow). So extensive and so solid was the mass of building that Audley was at a loss to get the space cleared for the new house he wished to build here. He offered the great church of the priory to any one who would take it down and cart away the materials. But as this offer met with no response, Audley had to undertake the destruction himself. Stow could remember how the workmen employed on this work, "with great labour, beginning at the top"—the tower had pinnacles at each corner like the towers at St. Saviour's and St. Sepulchre's—"loosed stone from stone, and threw them down, whereby the most part of them were broken, and few remained whole; and those were sold very cheap, for all the buildings then made about the city were of brick and timber. At that time any man in the city might have a cart-load of hard stone for paving brought to his door for sixpence or sevenpence, with the carriage." Thus, in place of the priory and its noble church, was built the residence of Thomas, Lord Audley, and here he lived till his death in 1544. By marriage of his only daughter and heiress, the house passed into the possession of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and was then called Duke's Place.

Turning our backs upon Duke's Place and continuing a little further along the way by which Stow used to fetch the milk from the farm at the Minories to his father's house on Cornhill, we come to Leadenhall, a great building which served as a public granary in ancient times, and later as the chief market hall of the city. Leaving aside all the particulars of its history which Stow gives, let us note what he tells us from his own recollections:

The celebration of the Nativity of St. John and the civic pageantry of Midsummer Eve belonged to the past; but Stow could remember the assembly of the citizens arrayed in parti-coloured vestments of red and white over their armour, their lances coloured and decorated to distinguish the various wards they represented, their torches borne in cressets on long poles. He could remember the processions as they passed the bonfires which burned in the open spaces of the city thoroughfares, and the throng of faces at the open windows and casements as they appeared in the fitful glare. The pageantry had disappeared with the suppression of the religious houses; but the military organization was merely changed. The musters of the city soldiers when they were reviewed by Queen Elizabeth at the coming of the Armada was a recent memory.

And so we turn into Bishopsgate Street again, and walk along to Crosby Hall, the ancient palace of Richard III. In the middle of the roadway, opposite the junction of Threadneedle Street with Bishopsgate Street, stands a well, with a windlass, which probably existed here before the conduit was made near the gateway in the time of Henry VIII. We enter the precinct of St. Helen's: the wall of Crosby's great chamber is on our right hand; before us is the church of the nunnery. The spirit of the place is upon us. The barriers of time are removed; past and present mingle in the current of our meditation. Lo! one bids us a courteous farewell: it is Master Stow, our cicerone, who goes away in the direction of St. Andrew Undershaft. The presence of another influence continues to be felt. We enter the dim church, and shadows of kneeling nuns seem to hover in the twilight of the northern nave. Invisible fingers touch the organ-keys; the strains of evensong arise from the choir. Our reverie is broken, an influence recedes from us. But turning our eyes towards the painted picture of Shakespeare which fills the memorial window in this ancient church, we join in the hymn of praise and thanksgiving.

---

What chiefly impressed the Elizabethan was the newness of London, and the rapidity with which its ancient features were being obliterated. John Stow felt it incumbent upon him to make a record of the ancient city before it was entirely swept away and forgotten. In what was new to him we find a similar interest.

Through Bishopsgate northward lies Shoreditch. The old church which stood here in Elizabethan times has disappeared, but on the site stands another church with the same dedication, to St. Leonard. The sweet peal of the bells from the old belfry, so much appreciated by the Elizabethans, is to be heard no more; but the muniment chest of the modern church contains the old registers, in which we may read the names of Tarleton, Queen Elizabeth's famous jester, of Burbage, and the colony of players who lived in this parish, in the precinct of the dissolved priory of Holywell. The road from Shoreditch to the precinct still exists, known as Holywell Lane.

The priory of St. John Baptist, called Holywell, a house of nuns, had been rebuilt, in the earlier period of the reign of Henry VIII., by Sir Thomas Lovel, K.G., of Lincoln's Inn. He endowed the priory with fair lands, extended the buildings, and added a large chapel. He also built considerably in Lincoln's Inn, including the fine old gateway in Chancery Lane, which still stands as one of the few remaining memorials of ancient London. Sir Thomas figures as one of the characters in Shakespeare's play of Henry VIII. When he died he was duly buried in the large chapel which he had added to Holywell Priory, in accordance with his design; but a few years later, in 1539, the priory was surrendered to the King and dissolved. Stow tells us that the church was pulled down—it is doubtful if Lovel's chapel was spared—and that many houses were built within the precinct "for the lodgings of noblemen, of strangers born, and others."

In the first edition of his Survey Stow added:—

This passage was omitted from the second edition of the book published in 1603; but the whole extensive history of these playhouses, which was won from oblivion by the research of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, proceeded from this brief testimony of Stow.

Against the background of the ancient priory this precinct of Holywell presented a perfect picture of the new conditions which constituted what was distinctively Elizabethan London. It comprehended the conditions of freedom required by the new life. Outside the jurisdiction of the city, but within the protection of the justices of Middlesex; lying open to the common fields of Finsbury, where archery and other sports were daily practised; its two playhouses affording varied entertainment in fencing matches, wrestling matches, and other "sports, shows, and pastimes," besides stage-plays performed by the various acting companies which visited them; this precinct of Holywell presented a microcosm of Elizabethan London society. The attraction of the plays brought visitors from all parts of the city. On the days when dramatic performances were to be given flags were hoisted in the morning over the playhouses; and after the early midday dinner the stream of playgoers began to flow from the gates. On horseback and on foot, over the fields from Cripplegate and Moorgate, or along the road from Bishopsgate, came men and women, citizens and gallants, visitors from the country, adventurers and pickpockets. All classes and conditions mingled in the Theatre or the Curtain, in the "common playhouses," as they were called, which only came into existence in 1576, after the players had been banished from the city. It was all delightfully new and modern; the buildings were gorgeously decorated; the apparel of the players was rich and dazzling; the music was enthralling; the play was a magic dream.

Some of the plays of Marlowe were performed at these Holywell theatres; and in 1596 a play by the new poet, William Shakespeare, called Romeo and Juliet, was produced at the Curtain, and caused a great sensation in Elizabethan London. The famous balcony scene of this play was cleverly adapted to the orchestra gallery above the stage. The stage itself projected into the arena, and the "groundlings" stood around it. Above were three tiers of seated galleries, and near the stage were "lords' rooms," the precursors of the private boxes of a later time.

---

After the Theatre and Curtain had become a feature of Elizabethan London at Shoreditch, other playhouses came into existence on the other side of the river; first at Newington, outside the jurisdiction of the city, in conditions corresponding to those of Shoreditch. For the sports and pastimes of Finsbury Fields, in the neighbourhood of the playhouses, there were the sports and pastimes of St. George's Fields in the neighbourhood of the Newington Theatre. Playgoers from the city took boat to Paris Garden stairs and witnessed the bear-baiting on Bankside, or proceeded by road on horseback or on foot to St. George's Fields and Newington; or they went thither over the bridge all the way by road, walking or riding. The use of coaches was very limited, owing to the narrow roads and imperfect paving of Elizabethan London.

At Newington the proprietor and manager of the playhouse was Philip Henslowe, whose diary is the chief source of what information we have concerning the earlier period of Elizabethan drama. He was a man of business instinct, who conducted his dramatic enterprise on purely commercial lines. In 1584 he secured the lease of a house and two gardens on Bankside, and here, in the "liberty" of the Bishop of Winchester, nearer to the city but outside the civic jurisdiction, he erected his playhouse, called the Rose, in 1591. Henslowe thus brought the drama nearer to the city than it had been since the edict of 1575 abolished the common stages which until then had been set up in inn yards or other convenient places in the city. The flag of the playhouse could be seen across the river; and from all points came the tide of playgoers, whose custom was a harvest to Henslowe and the Thames watermen.

Midway between these two points of theatrical attraction—Holywell, Shoreditch on the north, and Newington and Bankside on the south—Shakespeare lodged in the precinct of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. The company of players with whom he had become finally associated was that of the Lord Chamberlain. They derived their profits from three sources—from performances at court, from theatrical tours, and from performances at the Theatre and the Curtain. The Theatre was the property of the family of James Burbage, who had built it in 1576—his son Richard Burbage, the famous actor, and others. The interest of the proprietors may have suffered from Henslowe's enterprise in setting up a playhouse on Bankside; and they were in dispute with the ground landlord of their playhouse in regard to the renewal of their lease. In these circumstances the Burbages, with the co-operation of other members of the company, secured a site in the Winchester Liberty on Bankside, not far from the Rose but nearer the Bridge. They then took down their building in Holywell, vacated the land, and re-erected the playhouse on the other side of the river. Those who participated in this enterprise became "sharers," or partners, in the new playhouse. Shakespeare was one of these, and the name by which it was called—the Globe—was symbolical of the genius which reached its maturity in plays presented in this theatre during the closing years of the reign of Elizabeth and the first decade of the reign of her successor. "Totus mundus agit histrionem" was the inscription over the portal of the Globe. "All the world's a stage," said Shakespeare's Jaques in As You Like It. The life of Elizabethan London found its ultimate expression in that playhouse, which became celebrated then as "the glory of the Bank," and now is famous in all parts of the world where the glory of English literature is cherished.

---

There were many reminiscences of mediÆval times on the Surrey side. At Bermondsey were to be seen the extensive remains of the great abbey of St. Saviour. After the Dissolution its name became transferred to the church near the end of London Bridge, formerly known as St. Mary Overies, the splendid fane which in our time has worthily become the cathedral of Southwark. Between this church and the church of St. George were many inns, among them the Tabard, where travellers to and from Canterbury and Dover, or Winchester and Southampton, introduced an element of novelty, change, and bustle; where plays were performed in the inn yards before the playhouses were built on Bankside. At the end of Bankside, looking towards the church of St. Saviour, stood Winchester House, the London residence of the Bishop of Winchester since the twelfth century. Here Cardinal Beaufort and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, had lived in great state. The site, including the park, which extended parallel with the river as far as Paris Garden, was formerly the property of the priory of Bermondsey. This area was under the separate jurisdiction of the Bishops of Winchester, and was called their "Liberty." Here, in the early years of Queen Elizabeth, were two amphitheatres—one for bull-baiting, the other for bear-baiting. There were also ponds for fish, called the Pike Ponds.[4] The great Camden records an anecdote of these ponds or stews, "which are here to feed Pikes and Tenches fat, and to scour them from the strong and muddy fennish taste." All classes delighted in the cruel sport of bear-baiting on the Bankside: ambassadors and distinguished foreigners were always conducted to these performances; on special occasions the Queen had them at the palace.

In 1583 one of the amphitheatres fell down, and when re-erected it was built on the model of the playhouses.[5] It then became known as the Bear Garden; the bull-baiting amphitheatre dropped out of existence; perhaps it was reconstructed by Henslowe as his Rose theatre. The point is not of much importance, except as regards the evolution of the playhouse.

The second playhouse built on the Surrey side after the Rose was the Swan, opened in 1596. This was erected on a site in the manor of Paris Garden, separated only by a road from the Liberty of Winchester. The playhouse was in a line with the landing-stairs, opposite Blackfriars.

After the Globe playhouse was built in 1599, the other playhouses—Henslowe's Rose and Langley's Swan—ceased to flourish. Here the outward facts corresponded with the inward: a lovely flower had opened into bloom on the Bankside; what was unnecessary to its support drooped earthward like a sheath.

---

Opposite Paris Garden, across the river, was Blackfriars; and here the change from the ancient order to what was distinctively Elizabethan London was most manifest. The ancient monastery had existed here from 1276, when the Dominican or Black Friars moved hither from Holborn, until 1538, when the establishment was surrendered to King Henry VIII. It possessed a magnificent church, a vast palatial hall, and cloisters. Edward VI. had granted the whole precinct, with its buildings, to Sir Thomas Cawarden, the Master of the Revels. It became an aristocratic residential quarter; and in the earlier period of Queen Elizabeth's reign plays were performed here, probably in the ancient hall of the monastery, by the children of Her Majesty's chapel and the choir-boys of St. Paul's. At a later period—viz., in 1596—James Burbage, who built the theatre in Shoreditch, built a new playhouse in the precinct, or more probably adapted an existing building—the hall or part of the church—to serve the purpose of dramatic representation. This playhouse, consequently, was not open to the weather at the top like the common playhouses, and it was distinguished as the "private" theatre at Blackfriars.

The west wall of the precinct was built along the bank of the Fleet river. Across the river opposite was the royal palace of Bridewell, which Edward VI. had given to the city of London to be a workhouse for the poor and a house of correction. This contiguity of a house for the poor and the remains of a monastery suggests a reflection on the social problem of Elizabethan London.

Before the Reformation the religious houses were the agencies for the relief of the poor, the sick, the afflicted. The unemployed were assisted with lodging and food on their way as they journeyed in search of a market for their labour, paying for their entertainment at the religious houses by work either on the roads in the neighbourhood or on the buildings or in the gardens and fields, according to their trades and skill. It would seem that King Henry did not realise the importance and extent of this feature in the social economy, because, after he had suppressed the religious establishments, he complained very reproachfully of the number of masterless men and rogues that were everywhere to be found, especially about London. The good Bishop Ridley, in an eloquent appeal addressed to William Cecil, represented the poor and sick and starving in the streets of London in the person of Christ, beseeching the king to succour the poor and suffering Christ in the streets of London by bestowing his palace of Bridewell to be a home for the homeless, the starving, and the sick, where erring ones could be corrected and the good sustained. The good young monarch granted the bishop's request, and Bridewell Hospital was thus founded to do the social work in which Blackfriars monastery on the other side of the Fleet river had formerly borne its share. But single efforts of this kind were quite unequal to cope with the social difficulty; and early in the reign of Elizabeth the first Poor Law was passed and a system of relief came into operation.

To meet the difficulty of unemployment, it was part of the policy of Queen Elizabeth's Government to encourage new industries, whether due to invention and discovery or to knowledge gained by visiting foreign countries to learn new processes and manufactures; the inventor or the introducer of the novelty was rewarded with a monopoly, and he received a licence "to take up workmen" to be taught the methods of the new industry. One of the manufactures which had been thus stimulated was glass-making; and in the precinct of Blackfriars was a famous glass-house or factory, a reminiscence of which still exists in the name Glasshouse Yard. It has been shown how the crafts and trades of Elizabethan London gravitated to separate areas: Blackfriars precinct was famous as the abode of artists; one may hazard the guess that some of the portraits of Elizabethan and Jacobean players in the Dulwich Gallery may have been painted here. In the reign of Charles I. Vandyke had his studio in Blackfriars, where the king paid him a visit to see his pictures. The precinct was famous also as the abode of glovers; and in the reigns of James and Charles it became a notorious stronghold of Puritans. The existing name of Playhouse Yard, at the back of The Times newspaper office, affords some indication of the site of the theatre; and the name Cloister Court is the sole remnant of the cloisters of Blackfriars monastery.

The eastern boundary of the precinct was St. Andrew's Hill, which still exists. On the site of the present church of St. Andrew in the Wardrobe stood a church of the same dedication in Elizabethan London. Stow wrote of "the parish church of St. Andrew in the Wardrobe, a proper church, but few monuments hath it." Near the church (the site being indicated by the existing court called the Wardrobe) was a building of State, which Stow calls "the King's Great Wardrobe." The Elizabethan use of the Wardrobe is described by Stow thus: "In this house of late years is lodged Sir John Fortescue, knight, master of the wardrobe, chancellor and under-treasurer of the exchequer, and one of her majesty's most honorable privy Council."

Near the top of St. Andrew's Hill and within the precinct of Blackfriars was a house which Shakespeare purchased in 1613. It is described in the extant Deed of Conveyance as "now or late being in the tenure or occupation of one William Ireland ... abutting upon a street leading down to Puddle Wharf on the east part, right against the Kinges Majesties Wardrobe." Curiously enough, the name of this occupier survives in the existing Ireland Yard.

---