RAMBLES IN AND NEAR LONDON W I OFT V? * I* JL^V^I I IJLrf QJ A.j F.O* A,, r.Z.vOs THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF Mrs. George Gore WpiB^'. 1 _3* -->> Photo : Cassell A Co., Lim. THE ANGEL IN THE VESTRY OF ST. OLAVE'S CHURCH, HART STREET (p. 753). RAMBLES IN AND NEAR LONDON OR LONDON AFTERNOONS W. J. LOFTIE, B.A., F,S.A, F.Z.S. AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF LONDON," "THE CORONATION BOOK OF EDWARD VII.," "WINDSOR," AND "THE AUTHORISED GUIDE TO THE TOWER"; AND EDITOR OF "THE ORIENT GUIDE" WITH UPWARDS OF SIXTY ILLUSTRATIONS CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE. MCMIII ALL RIGHTS 'RESERVED PUBLISHERS' NOTE. This Volume was originally published under the title of "London Afternoons." i=io3 PREFACE. IT is a serious thing to add another to the number of London books, and having undertaken the task, I hope to carry it out seriously. I have avoided, as far as possible, the mention of matters over which there has been controversy. Where it has not been possible I have stated the result only the result, that is, as it appears to me. In all controversies the want of what hi arithmetic is called a common denominator is the great cause of doubt. Lately, to name an example, three students of London history had an argument as to the situation of Tyburn. No con- clusion was arrived at, after much learning had been displayed and much ink shed, because the three had not first agreed as to what each meant by Tyburn. To one it was a place of public execution, to another it was a manor comprising a church and a village, to the third it was a brook Nevertheless, by many such controversies, carried on, for the most part, very good-humouredly, the history of London is gradually assuming scientific proportions At first, thirty or forty years ago, it had not got beyond the point at which it was left by the Elizabethans. A History of London was a mere list of events, often misstated. The same errors were repeated in book after book, and there Avas not the slightest attempt to get beyond the authorities of three centuries ago. In noticing such errors I have endeavoured not to go over the proofs upon which the modern view has been 922392 IV PREFACE. founded. These proofs, which thirty years ago were matters of research, are now, by the munificence of the City Corporation and the labours of the Rolls and the Historical Manuscripts Commissions, made perfectly accessible in print, and generally in English. They can be seen and read by all. That they are worthy of study is apparent when we remember that the records preserved at St. Paul's and those of the City Fathers at the Guildhall form such an unbroken series, extending back to the times of our Saxon kings, as can be exhibited by no other city in the whole world. For London alone has never been entered by a foreign invader during the millennium which has elapsed since the death of Alfred. Her greatest enemy has been fire, but the care and daring of her citizens have saved the records at each emer- gency; and when we see the old fables repeated in modern books we can only say Dream from deed be must dissever Who his fortune here would try. Our holiday afternoons must not be spent in blind acceptance of old stories. We must seek the truth for ourselves. It is in this spirit only that it becomes us now to investigate history. The following chapters are arranged, as far as possible, so as to fit the brief description in the title. In this country, the great country which we call London, it is well to remember that fine days are few and short, dark days many and long. I have sought accordingly to provide for rainy afternoons as well as for those during which train, horse, bicycle or boots may carry us a few miles out of town. Some of the chapters deal with related subjects, so that I have had here and there to cite the same fact more than once, though in different connections. PREFACE. V As, for a quarter of a century or more, I have written much upon the great and inexhaustible subject thus indicated, I make no apology for occasional repetitions of what has already appeared elsewhere. In most cases this repetition, I think, only extends to the title of a chapter. A suitable title is not to be lightly thrown away, because two or three different essays may be written upon it. In other cases I have used the words of whole paragraphs which have appeared in former books now long out of print, and in various periodicals, of which I need only name the Saturday Review and the Scots Observer among many weeklies, the Magazine of Art and the Portfolio among monthlies. But, as I have said, all the passages here reprinted have been rewritten, brought up to date, or otherwise altered so as to render the kind permission to use them, which I have obtained, very little more than a matter of form ; while of those chapters which I have taken from books now out of print, of which there are parts of three or four, I am myself the owner of the copyright. Here I must name three editors to whose encouragement I chiefly owe it that my London studies have been so long continued. The late Martin Sharp, of the Giiardian, published my early essays. William Ernest Henley, first at the Magazine of Art and afterwards at the Scots Observer, was ever ready with suggestions, work, and help. Of AValter Herries Pollock, my life-long friend, I need say no more than that for twenty years, under his guidance at the Saturday Revieiv, I wrote almost weekly a London article. I have received much kind encouragement in preparing this volume. Sir Benjamin Stone, M.P., courteously permitted me to use his photograph of the old volumes of the City Records ; and Sir John Monckton, the Town Clerk of London, also wrote most obligingly on the same Yl PREPACK. subject To Dr. Reginald Sharpe, D.C.L, I owe much information as to tho Guildhall Muniments. Miss Kato Qreenaway generously gave me her drawing, made some years ago, of Abbot John of Berkhampstead, from one of tho Cottonian manuscripts. Mr. Alfred Stalman's timely reminder and loan of the unique photograph of the Chapel Royal, Savoy, taken before the fire of 1864, enables me to show the building as it was with the old monuments. Messrs. Ellis and Elvey, of Bond Street, kindly gave me the curious pictures of mediaeval life from the manuscript of King Rene. The Rev. Lewis Gilbertson afforded me the same help which I had formerly re- ceived from his predecessor as librarian of St. Paul's, the lamented Dr. Sparrow Simpson, and I beg grate- fully to acknowledge it. Many and pleasant have been tho memories called up in my mind as I have gone over the labours of past years while engaged in putting together the materials of these records of afternoons spent in London and its neighbourhood. They do not aspire to be guides, and may not be without interest, I hope, to those who have no opportunity of visiting the scenes which they de- scribe. Handbooks are plenty, and of late years have been immensely improved. But the accurate descrip- tion of a visit, to be read after we have seen an interesting place, is often found to be both pleasant and instructive. In these pages, then, I have endeavoured to note impressions which may possibly be found enter- taining and useful as records and reminiscences of a pilgrimage. W. J. L. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. PAOT Aspect of London Five Centuries Ago The Walls and Gates The Fleet Fleet Street and the Strand Charing The Hole-bourne Smithfield and St. Bartholomew's The New Gate Cheap- Richard Whittington and Henry V. Pawnbroking Eastcheap The Tower London Bridge St. Saviour's Becket, "St. Thomas of London " . . . . .1 CHAPTER II. LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. Publication of London Records Greatness of John Stow the Antiquary Houses in the Fourteenth Century The Interior Furniture Domestic Details Prices of Provisions " House- Warming " of Westminster Hall Medicine and Surgery Overcrowding Pestilence Abolishing the Relics of Slavery Growth of Romanist Doctrines Ecclesiastical Parties The Friars London and the Wars The Manufacture of Armour an Important Industry The City Dagger Street Scenes , , . .23 CHAPTER HI. NEWGATE. Abolition of the Prison The Associations of Newgate The Name William the Chamberlain State of the Prison early in the Nine- teenth Century The Sunday between Trial Friday and Execu- tion Monday Gaol Fever Giltspur and other Neighbouring Streets 4f CHAPTER IV. ANCIENT RIVERS. Why the Thames has become the most Important of Rivers The Site of London Hills and Brooks The Highest Ground The Fleet The Hole-bourne The Wells Tyburn The Gallows The Westbourne "Bournes" in the City . . . ' . 54 CHAPTER V. KING'S LANGLEY. The Tomb of an Ancestor of Edward VII. A Royal Hunting Lodge The Burial of Richard II. Piers Gavestone A Rich Priory The Church of All Saints . 04 Till CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. OLD ST. PAUL'S. r*c London in the Year One Thousand Foundation of Old Si Paul's Its Secular Constitution The Cloister an Afterthought The Folk- mote Bell Tower Hollar's Engravings The Tallest Spire in Christendom The Monuments "lingo Jones, Esquire'* His Portico ........ 71 CHAPTER VIL BROOK 8HOTT AND 8TONEBRIDGE CLOSE. Changed Names, and Names that have Survived Things and Places The Grosvenor Estate Buckingham House A Roman Road in "brook Shott" Stonebridge Close The Scene of Harriet Westbrook's Suicide The Ranger's Lodge . .81 CHAPTER VIII. THE CITT COMPANIES. The City Guilds not to be confused with the City Companies When the Guilds were abolished Companies as Trustees The Husting Court The Rise of the Companies Religious Guilds The Fish- mongers and the Goldsmiths The Stationers The Barber- Surgeons The Honourable Artillery Company Funds and Expenditure of the Companies The Mercers' and Drapers' Companies and what they are doing with their Money The Dinners The Cups and other Ornaments of the Tables . 88 CHAPTER IX. BEEKHAMPSTEAD. Little Fragments of a Great Place Age of the Castle The Earl of Cornwall Memories of the Castle Richard, King of the Romans Abbot John of Berkhampstead The Black Prince at Berk- hampstead "Proud Cis" Lord Falkland -Decay of the Castle The Church Dean Incent Birthplace of William Cowper . 105 CHAPTER X. TEMPLE BAB. Lud Gate and its Origin The Ward of Farringdon The Successive Temple Bars Sir Horace Jones's Monument Are the Middle and Inner Temples in the Lord Mayor's Jurisdiction? The Outer Temple Dr. Barebone . . . .114 CHAPTER XL THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. Churches Btrilt before 1666 Churches since Destroyed Parochial Divisions St. Bartholomew's and Its Founder, Rahere The Church as it was in the Fifteenth Century Prior Bolton : His Pun and His Window The Monuments in the Church St. Giles's, Cripplegate Its Churchyard The Parish Guest House The Monuments St. Helen's, Bishopsgate : "The West- minster Abbey of the City " Croi-by Hall St. Ethelburga's St. Andrew Undershaft St. Katharine Cree Where did Holbein Die ? Allhallows, Barking St. Olave's, Hart Street Pepys A Curious Relic . ...^ '. . . . .121 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER XII. THING. PAU A Museum amid the Chiltern Hills Tring The Vale of Aylesbury Akeman Street The Museum The Chief Curiosities Instruc- tive Zoology . ' ., - . ' . ^ .-':... .164 CHAPTER XTTT. WEEK'S ST. PAUL'S. The First Design Wren's Perplexity The Foundations The Opening Service The General Plan The Western Portico The Cupola The Proportions, compared with those of St. Peter's A Silly Story Wren's Epitaph The Nobility of the Cathedral The Interior : Carvings aud Metal Work The Organ The Monu- ments The Wellington Monument The Crypt Tombs of Nelson and Wellington Decoration of the Dome and Choir Surges' Design The Reredos The Old Railings and their Fate Sir William Richmond's Designs . . . .180 CHAPTER XTV. TWO BIYEESIDE PALACES. The Savoy Palace and the Hospital The Chapel Thomas Fuller His Epitaph His Ministry at the Savoy Follows the King to Oxford A Royal Chaplain His Last Sermon Northumberland House The Percys and their Fortunes The Interior of North- umberland House Its Ugliness and Inconvenience The Site, and what was done with it . . - ' . . . 187 CHAPTER XV. GUILDFOED. Guildford's Domestic Architecture, Ancient and Modern Trinity Church Pepys at Guildford " The Bull Inn": a Ludicrous Blunder Origin of Guildford's Name The Castle and its Asso- ciationsAbbot's Hospital The Abbot Brothers What the "Restorer" has done at Guildford . . 200 CHAPTER XVI. "TAPESTEY AT ST. JAMES'S." The Hospital of St. James Henry VIII. 'a Hunting Lodge Prince Henry Charles I.'s Last Night St. James's after the Restora- tionThe "Warming Pan" Plot The Lutheran Chapel The Chapel Royal Death of Queen Caroline Wedding of George III. and the Princess Charlotte Baptism of George IV. A Service in the Chapel Royal ..... 208 CHAPTER XVII. CAMBEEWELL. When Cauiberwell was a Pleasant Village The Parish Registers Curious Names Camberwell's Modern Associations Its An- tiquitfes St. Thomas-a- Watering The Name . . .21(5 X CONTENT?. CHAPTER XVIH. THB GUILDHALL. TA..X What was a Guild Merchant P The Old Ooildhall in Alderraanbury The New Guildhall The Hustings The Monument* Election* of King* Trial of Queen Jane Royal Visit* The Library The HuMom The Art Gallery The Council Chamber The Record*- The Real Centre of the City . . . .221 CHAPTER XIX. CANONBURT. Oanonbury and the Canons of St. Bartholomew Bolton'a Tower A Great Heiresa An Elopement Tho Tale of a Basket Lady Compton's Expectations Literary Associations of Canoubury . 233 CHAPTER XX. BUCKINGHAM PALACE. The Largest English Palace The Site and its Memories Mary Divvies the Heiresa, and her Marriage to Sir Richard Grosvenor James I.'s Mulberry Garden Arlington or Goring House The Duke of Buckingham Buckingham House a Royal Residence George III. and his Library The Meeting between the King and Dr. Johnson Queen Victoria as the Occupant of Buckingham Palace 239 CHAPTER XXI. THE LIBRARY OP ST. PAUL'S. A Long Ascent The Preservation of Ancient Records Bishop Compton The Model of Wren's Favourite Design for the Cathedral The Manuscripts "Bishop and Portreeve" Odd Names- Priests' Sons . ..... 260 CHAPTER XXII. LONDON A CENTURY AGO. Alterations in Half a Century In a Century Piccadilly in 1801 Southwark London Bridge St. George's Fields and South London Prison Abuses Tyburn and the Gallows The Roads A Walk from North to South A Frenchman in London The Old Bailey The English Character . . . .262 CHAPTER XXIII. KENSINGTON. In Search of a Palace Holland House, its Architecture and Associa- tions Purchase of Nottingham House by William III. Its Conversion into Kensington Palace Sir Christopher Wren and William Kent The Serpentine The State Apartments Royal Deaths in the Palace Queen Anne Queen Caroline The Cupola Room The Room in which Queen Victoria was Born . 280 IMDEX 289 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. The Angel in the Vestry of St. Olave's Church, Hart Street . . Frontispiece Remains of St. Michael's Chapel, Aldgate ; and South Gate of Duke's Place, Aldgate . . . To face page 2 Crosby Hall ....... . 10 View in Bishopsgate Street ..... . 16 Room and Furniture, 15th Century . . . ,, . 24 A Sleeping-Chamber in the 14th Century . . . ,, . 28 Two Illuminations from a MS. by Ren^ D'Anjou . . 30 Margaret, Queen of Henry VI., Daughter of Ren6 D'Anjou . 36 Henry VL and his Court ..... ,, . 40 Prisoners on the Way to Newgate . . . . ,, . 46 Newgate Chapel Execution Sunday . . . . 50 The Gallows and Drop, Newgate . . . . . 52 Tothill Fields . . . . . . 58 Remains of Old Palace at King's Langley . . . 64 King's Langley Church . . . . . ,, . 68 Monument of Sir Christopher Hatton in Old St. Paul's . ,, .74 Old St. Paul's . 76 Distant View of Old St. Paul's . . . . 78 South Front of the Ranger's Lodge, Green Park . . .86 Fishmongers' Hall ...... . 90 Stationers' Hall ...... . 94 Merchant Taylors' School, Suffolk Lane . . . . 98 The Mercers' Cup, the Ironmongers' Salt, the Richmond Cup . 102 Torrington Monument, Berkhampstead Church . . ,, 106 John of Berkhampstead, Abbot of St. Albans . . ,, .110 Temple Bar in 1800 . . . . . . . 114 Temple Bar in 1900 ...... . 116 Old View of Searle's Court, Lincoln's Inn . 118 Inner Temple in 1796 ..... . 120 St. Katharine Coleman . . . . . 124 Crypt of St. Bartholomew the Great . . 128 St. Helen's Church and Priory . . . . . 134 Interior of St. Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate ... ,, 138 ill LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. The Navy Office, Pepys' Residence, 1660-1669 . . To farf page 148 Museum and Library, Tring . . . . . 156 Wren'i First Design for St. Paul's 164 Model by Stereos of the Wellington Monument . 170 Central Figure for the Mosaic in the Apse of St. Paul's . . 176 The Recording Angela, for the Mosaic in St. Paul's . . 182 The Chapel Royal, Savoy, in 1777 .... . 188 The Chapel Royal, Savoy, before the Fire in 1864 . . 192 Northumberland House, Charing Cross . . . ,, .196 The High Street, Guildford, looking West . . . 202 Committee Room, Abbot's Hospital, Guildford . . ,, 206 The King's Presence Chamber, St. James's Palace . ,, . 212 The Chapel, Guildhall Yard . . . . . 222 The Old Council Chamber, Guildhall . . . . 226 The New Council Chamber, Guildhall . . , . 228 Muniment Room, Guildhall . . . . . 230 Crypt of the Guildhall . . * . . . . 232 The Hamlet of Canonbury . . . . . . 236 Buckingham House ...... . 240 The King's Library, Buckingham Palace ... . 246 The Library, St Paul's Cathedral .... . 254 The Old Houses of Parliament, 1821 . . . . 262 Westminster Bridge, Hall, and Abbey 100 Years Ago . . 264 The Southwark End of Old London Bridge, 1831 . . 266 Hosier Lane, Smithfield, in 1809 . . . . . 272 Stoneware Plate, in Author's Possession, bearing View of Tyburn Gate, 1750 . . . . . 276 Old Kensington Church in 1750 . . . . . 282 Th Room in Kensington Palace in which Queen Victoria was Born . . . 286 LONDON AFTERNOONS. CHAPTER I. LONDON FIVE CENTUBIES AGO. Aspect of London Five Centuries Ago The Walls and Gates The Fleet Fleet Street and the Strand Charing The Hole-bourne Smithfield and St. Bartholomew's The New Grate Cheap Richard Whittington and Henry V. Pawn- broking Eastcheap The Tower London Bridge St. Saviour's Becket, " St. Thomas of London." IN the first of these chapters I propose to attempt a survey of London as it was when Edward HI. was King. That famous monarch came to the throne on Saturday, the 24th of January, 1327, when he was proclaimed at the door of Westminster Hall and in the City of London. He died at Richmond, then called Shene, in Surrey, on the 21st of June, 1377. Five hundred years had, there- fore, elapsed hi 1877. If we take our five hundred years from the end of the nineteenth century, we find ourselves at the dismal close of his successor's reign : the Wars of the Roses were about to commence. When they had deluged England, and we may say France also, with blood, for a hundred years, they finally ceased when the last male descendant of Edward HE. was beheaded, on the 24th of November, 1499. He had spent the twenty-five years of his short life in prison for what was then the B 2 LONDON AFTERNOONa unpardonable crime of being a prince of the old royal house. A few years before, the name " Plantagenet," which had been borne by Geoffrey, the father of our first Angevin King, had been discovered and assumed by Edward IV., and perhaps his brothers ; and immediately afterwards the last Plantagenet perished, like so many of his relatives, on Tower Hill. Five centuries ago, then, the hundred years of war had scarcely begun, and we have set ourselves to find out, as far as we can, what London was like in those days. We may begin with the topography. One sentence will show how very different its aspect was then from what we see now. The inhabited portion was almost confined to the City proper. Although the population of that portion was large considerably larger than it is now the area was very small, the houses being for the most part within the walls. The merchants lived in their places of business, and every house and street was crowded with citizens. They did not, as now, i-esort to the City only in the daytime for business, and keep villas in the suburbs. Few except the monks and the day-labourers dared to live beyond the protection of the City walls. There was no Abbey within the walls, but the houses of friars and canons abounded. The poorer shopkeepers in Cheap, and the men employed as porters, bricklayers and unskilled labourers in general, lived, as we are told by contemporary chroniclers, outside the walls, at Stepney, Stratford and Hackney ; their migrating to the eastward being possibly induced by the freedom of All-gate, now called Aldgate, from the tolls levied at other points of exit if indeed this is the correct interpretation of a name almost always spelt Alegate in the fourteenth century and later. The walls commenced at the Tower, between which REMAINS OF ST. MICHAEL'S CHAPEL, ALDGATE. (From a Print in Lambert's "London," 1805.) SOUTH GATE OF DUKE'S PLACE, ALDGATE. (From a Print in Pennant's "London," 7793.) LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 3 and the City wall there was a ditch ; and we read of Edward III. ordering the ditch to be cleared lest it should overflow into the fortress. No wonder that we find about the same time a bill for medicines supplied to the unfortunate King of Scots, who had been a prisoner for eleven years. The bill amounts to 2 12s. 9d. This sum represents between 40 and 50 hi our money. From the Tower the wall passed northward as far as Aldgate, fragments of which were still standing on the spot a hundred years ago ; in fact, very few of the City gates had been demolished till long after George III. came to the throne. Outside Aldgate there was a small village, or hamlet, called Whitechapel, and near it a house of Sisters of the Franciscan Order of St. Clare. They were popularly called Minoresses, and their house, which was a priory, was described as an abbey. It left its name to the Minories. Spital Fields, close by, derive their name from a Hospital of St. Mary, which occupied a place called Lolesworth, outside Bishopsgate. The Minories were long the headquarters of the armourers who worked in the Tower. Shoreditch lay a little to the west, and was the estate of an honourable family of the name of Shore, many of whom were City merchants. One of them, a jeweller, was the husband of Jane Shore, who attained an unenviable notoriety in the reign of King Edward IV. Then outside Moorgate was a moor or heath, and in the hollow nearer the City wall a piece of marshy ground which is often said to have given its name to the district of Finsbury. But the name is more probably personal, and denotes the residence of Fin, who may have been a Danish settler, like his neighbour Hacon, who is com- memorated in Hacon's ey, or Hackney. The street now called London-wall still shows the marks of the great foss which ran under the wall ; and parts of the fortifi- 4 LONDON AFTERNOONS. cations themselves may still be seen a little to the west of Moorgate, at Cripplegate churchyard. In the same direction there was a small gate or l>arbican, which has given its name to a modern street; and to the covered way, or Crepulgeat, which led to it, and not to any assembly of beggars, we may attribute the name of the neighbouring church, which stood outside the walls. There were herb markets outside the walls, some of which may still be identified by such names as Camomile Street, Wormwood Street, and St. Mary " Matfelon," where " knapweed " or " centaury " was sold under its French name.* Aldersgate stood close to where the General Post Office has been built ; the name reminds us of Aldred, a very early citizen who built the gate, possibly at the time of King Alfred's settlement. Next, to the west, came Newgate, which seems to have been used as a prison for London and Middlesex as early as 1218.f Holborn Bars were a kind of outwork to Newgate, and there was some fortification near them, the site of which is indicated by Castle (now Furnival) Street. Then came Ludgate, which is a name like Cripplegate, recalling a lidgate, or postern, in a fortification. Ludgate is mentioned in documents as early as 1273 at least. Temple Bar was a City boundary beyond the Fleet Bridge, where now is Farringdon Street ; and the wall ended close to where Blackfriars Bridge now stands ; its direct course from Newgate to the Thames having been altered in 1276 to take in the new priory of the Dominicans, or Blackfriars.J There was some protection also along the river ; and we hear of Dowgate and Billingsgate among other modes * I owe this reference to the kindness of Professor Skeat. t See Chapter III., p. 45. j See Chapter X., p. 114. LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 5 of access to the water ; but, except a strongly fortified castle at each end of London Bridge, there were few attempts at defence on that side. Baynard's Castle was pulled down by the Black Friars, as well as Montfitchett's Tower, both being parts of the old City defences. A sceond Baynard's Castle, that which is mentioned by Shakespeare, was built some distance to the eastward, beyond the friars' precincts. If we return to Ludgate and pass out through the gate, we find ourselves at the small bridge which conducts us over the Flood, or Fleet. Vessels are moored in this little river as high as the bridge ; on the right we see the pleasant orchards of the Bishop of Ely and the Earl of Lincoln, at the top of the slope, in front of which, from the Thames to Hollx>rn, crosses the Show Well Lane, a leading thoroughfare in those days, now called Shoe Lane. Lincoln's Inn was no longer in the Earl's hands, and the lawyers' chambers were very soon to convert it to another purpose. In 1307, we find the Earl of that time complaining to Parliament which sat then at Carlisle on account of the King's expedition to Scotland that vessels could hardly reach the bridge of the Fleet, so much was it impeded by rubbish thrown into it, and reciting that hitherto they had been able to go up as far as King's Cross, where there had been wharves for the reception of merchandise. If we pursue our way along what is now Fleet Street, we pass on the left the house of the White Friars, and, before we reach Temple Bar, the great monastery of the Knights Templars, then called the New Temple, to distinguish it from then 1 former habitation near Holborn. In this place the King's jewels or " jocalia " were deposited for safety by most of the sovereigns until the time of Henry III. King John had begun to use the Tower for 6 LONDON AFTERNOONS. this purpose, and thither the regalia were finally removed in 1252, when the crown and other objecta which had been lost in the Wash were renewed for the coronation of Henry III., and lasted till 1649. Passing through Temple Bar, we find ourselves in open country. The road, now the Strand, is a mere muddy track, overgrown with bushes, and skirted on the right by gardens and thickets. On the left, between the road and the river, are a few half-fortified town houses of the bishops, Exeter House, where now is Essex Street, being perhaps the first and moat important. Pleasure grounds and gardens are round them and the Temple, and walks along the Thames, like what we still see at Richmond and Twickenham. At St. Clement's Church there are a few houses, said to be the remains of a colony of Danes who settled here before the Conquest ; many of them are pleasure houses and taverns, much resorted to by the youth of the City, who come to drink of the water of the neighbouring holy well, and to play at various games in the open fields of Lincoln's Inn. Most probably they are often entertained here with stories about the grim Danish king, son of Canute, who lies buried in the neighbouring church : how, when he had killed himself by his gluttony at Lambeth, his body was buried in West- minster Abbey, and was dug up again by his brother and successor and thrown into the Thames ; and how one day a fisherman, drawing his net to shore, was astonished at the unusual weight until the royal body was discovered ; and how it finally found a resting-place in the parish church of St. Clement. Going on still to the westward, we come to what was called Aldwych Road (Aid Wych seems to mean the Old Village), afterwards Wych Street and Drury Lane ; and if we turn to the north along this ancient road, leaving LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 7 on our left the garden of the Convent of Westminster, we pass the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and emerge in the Oxford Road, near the pleasantly situated village of Holborn. : *As we pass through St. Giles's Fields we may notice the hospital of St. Giles, near the cross road formed by the Old Wych Sreet, and what is now New Oxford Street. Here in the fourteenth century was a pond called the Rugmere. William Bleomund drained it to improve his own house, Bleomund's bury, or Bloomsbury, and in our own time Oxford Street was here continued eastward to meet the street of Holborn, which had previously been diverted to pass south of the mere. Beyond the road by which we have arrived at Holborn from the Strand, and running nearly parallel to it, is a narrow road, or track, called Hedge Lane. It cannot be identified exactly with any modern street, but it ran parallel with St. Martin's Lane. Commencing at the village of Charing, it passes St. Martin's Chapel, on the site of which a church was erected by Henry VIII., then really " in the fields," like St. Giles's, and a little further on the entrance to the great Reading Road, now Piccadilly. The foot of the lane at Charing is marked by a cross, sacred to the memory of Queen Eleanor, the wife of Edward I. Some have fancifully derived the name of Charing from the French words chere reine, referring to Edward's love for his queen, but, unfortunately for such a pretty idea, the village has borne the same appellation from Saxon times, long before the cross was set up. Near Charing is the magnificent palace of the Archbishops of York, surrounded by pleasant gardens and a park which stretches away to Westminster. This palace was afterwards known as Whitehall, the gardens as Spring Gardens, and the Park as St. James's. 8 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Near the Cross, where now stands the Nelson Column with Sir Edwin Landseer's lions, was an aviary or mews for the King's hawks. The word " mew " signifies, in the technical language of falconry, a moulting place, and is so used by Shakespeare. That falcons were in great esteem in those days will be proved by w the fact that unless the law has been very recently repealed it is still felony, by Act of Parliament, to steal a hawk. The following extract from the Ward- robe Accounts of Edward I. relates to the royal mews at Charing Cross : " For timber whereof to make the King's mews, and carriage of the same from Kingston to the said mews, as well by land as by water : diver keys for the same, and for repairing the keys of the gerfalcof ns bath ; for iron rings for the curtain of the mews be'ore the said falcons, and for turfs bought for the herbary of the said falcons, 25 Os. 2d." This sum represents no less than 500 of our money, not counting the twopence. It was in the same days that the Bishop of Hereford paid his falconer 3s. 4d. a half year ! The royal mews were established in 1377, were turned into stables in 1537, and were finally taken down in the reign of George IV. We must pass for the present the great palace of the Savoy, of which the twice-restored chapel* still remains to this twentieth century ; and returning towards the City by Kugmere and St. Giles's, we find ourselves at the top of Holborn Hill. In the valley below runs the Fleet, and frowning from the opposite steep we see the city towers, and high above them all, to the right, the spire of St. Paul's, at that time the tallest steeple in Christendom, if, as some say, it was 180 feet higher than the ball and cross on the top of Sir Christopher Wren's dome. Immediately opposite us we see the tower of St. Sepulchre's, * See p. 187. LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 9 just at the top of the hill, and outside the^fortifications of Newgate. As we begin to descend we pass St. Andrew's on the right, and the palace of the Bishop of Ely on the left. This palace was famous for its gardens, which are referred to by Shakespeare. The names Hatton Garden and Ely Place preserve for us indications of the site 011 the banks of the Hole-bourne, which winds past the crocus beds (now Saffron Hill), and perhaps the fields and slopes and trees, commemorated now in the local names of Hockley (oak field), Vineyard, Pear Tree, Cherry Tree, Apple Tree, as well as the Spa Fields, and Coldbath Square, and Back (or beck) Hill. Next we find ourselves at the entrance of Cow Lane, by which we ascend the hill and enter Smithfield. Cow Lane has but few houses hi it. It is not a pleasant place in which to live, for just at the end, as we emerge on the open space, we pass a spot known as the Elms ; and if you are curious in such matters, you may see the great elmwood gibbets, placed here by Henry HI. They were usually decorated with a body or two, or at least a skeleton, the supply being easily kept up as long as criminals were hanged in Smithfield and the Sheriffs had not noticed the superior advantages offered by Tyburn. Smithfield was the chief place for all City assemblies after the Dean and Chapter had obtained the King's help in obstructing the old place of the Folk Mote at the western end of Cheap. It was hi Smithfield that the boy King, Richard, had met Wat Tyler and his followers, near the beginning of his reign. Here, for centuries, the principal cattle market was held. It was also the scene of tournaments and merry makings, and the annual fair was supposed to be for the benefit of the neighbouring hospital. Crossing Smithfield, we come to the porches of a 10 LONDON AFTERNOONS. magnificent church, the west end of which projects far into the pen space. It is St. Bartholomew's Church, and the priory buildings surround it. A beautiful door- way leads into the south aisle of the nave. This doorway is destined to remain a witness to the splendour of the other buildings, and in the days of King Edward VII to form the entrance to St. Bartholomew's Churchyard. But you care little to look at the church or priory, for opposite the gate is a post about three feet thick and eight high. It is charred all over, as if it had been partially burnt. It is sunk deep in the ground at the foot, and has two or three iron staples and rings driven into each side. You shudder and pass on. Turning to the right, with the wall on your left hand, you follow what is now Giltspur Street, so called from the armourers* shops under the wall, and the space, from Newgate to Smithfield, along which short races could be run and tilting practised. We proceed at once, past St. Sepulchre's Church, to enter the City through the New Gate, of whose history I have something to say further on. If you are charitably disposed you will stop to put a farthing or two into the bag which you see hanging by a long string from one of the windows ; and if you aTe rich, perhaps you will put in a penny, equal to a shilling at least of modern coinage. The bag is quickly drawn up and emptied by the poor starving wretches above. I remember in 1847 to have seen prisoners' hats hanging by a string from the windows of the Vicaria at Naples. In 1886 I saw prisoners begging in the same way at Lisbon. Frightful stories have been told of the condition of Newgate in common with all the prisons of those days ; nor did they much improve until a period but little removed from our own. Strange to say, they were almost all either LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 11 private property or were leased to a private individual, who made what he could out of the necessities of his miserable charge. As you proceed through Newgate Street, you per- ceive that all along the left hand of the way the space is occupied by another convent. This time it is the Grey Friars. The Church, which is at the extremity of the street, is very magniiicent. In later times, after the Great Fire, it was pulled down, and the present Christ Church built on part of the site ; but before the sixteenth century the visitor was able to see some very remarkable tombs within its walls. These tombs were wantonly destroyed by a Lord Mayor of Queen Elizabeth's tune. Among others, you might have seen the monuments of four queens Margaret of France, the second wife of Edward L; her niece, the wicked Isabella, whom Gray calls the " She-wolf of France " ; her daughter, Joan of the Tower, Queen of Scotland ; and Isabella Fitzwarren, in her own right Queen of the Isle of Man. Near them lies the body of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the in- famous companion of Isabella. As if in mockery of death, we read that upon Queen Isabella's breast, in the tomb, was deposited the heart of " her murdered mate," Edward II., in a gold vase. Opposite the Grey Friars stands the town mansion of the great Earls of Warwick. Here a few years later was held the semi-regal court of the King-maker, to whom the estate descended by his marriage with one of the heiresses of the last of the Beauchamps. Some steps further and we are in Paternoster Bow, so called from the number of text writers who live here and in the neighbourhood of Ave Maria Lane, Amen Corner, and so on. Here also in those days lived the makers of beads or rosaries, popularly called paternosters and aves. The row 12 LONDON AFTERNOONS. \V;IM, if possible, narrower tlian it is now, and was bordered on one side by the wall of the great Cathedral Close. The wall was overhung with trees, probably belonging to the garden of the great Earl in Warwick Lane and that of the great Bishop whose palace formed part of the cathedral buildings. There were many gardens and orchards, especially towards the river. Among the City Records is one of an inquest held on a boy named Adam Schot, who was killed by falling from the bough of a pear tree in a garden in St. Michael-Paternoster, on the south of the cathedral. At the north-east end of the Close is an archway ; aud here, if you are so disposed, you may enter to hear the sermon at St. Paul's Cross. Any description of the great Cathedral would require a chapter to itoelf,* so we will not pause now, but enter Cheap, or Cheapside, the great market-place of the City. It is very narrow ; there is hardly room for one horse to pass along the centre of the street in most places ; yet this is the chief thorough- fare from the centre of the city towards St. Paul's and Ludgate Hill, as well as towards Newgate. Before Ludgate and Fleet Bridge were built, Newgate was the only exit on this side. Cheapside is full, in the wider pails, not only of shops, but of open stalls, where all kinds of merchandise are exposed for sale. London is already famous for the importance of its trade. The Hall of the Mercers, one of the chief companies of the City, stands about half-way along the street, upon the site of the house in which the great Thomas Becket was born. Towards the south side is the old parish church, St. Mary Aldermary, and in the centre, St. Mary-le-Bow, with fine Norman arches of stone * See Chapter VI., p. 71. LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 13 probably regarded as wonderful in the twelfth century, when the church was built. At the entrance to Cheapside, where a road or street leads towards Aldersgate, is the market cross ; and here, by the church of St. Michael " le Querne," is a place for weighing the corn brought to market. The famous " Panyer " was probably the appropriate sign of a house near the spot ; the meat market or shambles were where Paternoster Square has now teen built. Next, as you go along you see the localities devoted to the different wares which are sold : Bread Street, Milk Street, Honey Lane, Friday Street for dried Fish, Cordwainer's Street, now Bow Lane, Hosier Lane, and at the further end the Poultry market may be noticed. The Stock fish market was beyond the Poultry ; and two other kinds of stocks have existed near the same place : namely, the stocks for the punishment of petty offences, where the Mansion House is now, and the Stock Exchange a little further on ; but I do not think the similarity of the names is anything but a coincidence. There is no open space opposite the Mansion House ; in fact, there is no Mansion House ; the Lord Mayor livas in his own house, and enter- tains in the hall of the Company to which he belongs. Half-way through the Cheap, and opposite St. Mary-le-Bow, is Guildhall. In the open space between, a great tournament was held in 1329 by Edward HE., when a scaffolding fell, by which several persons were injured. The council would have prosecuted the carpenters, but they were released on Queen Philippa's intercession. At the extremity of Cheapside is the Wallbrook, with many bridges ; and across it a church, where the Royal Exchange was built three centurias later ; and another, St. Christopher's, where the Bank of England afterwards rose. To the south, on the same eastern bank of the 14 LONDON AFTERNOONa brook, is the Wool Market, with three churches in it, all dediwitod to St. Mary, Woollenliithe, Woolchurch Haw, and Boat Haw. The number of churches in London has always been very great since the twelfth century. Long before the time of King Edward III., they were reckoned at 12C parish churches, besides the chapels of thirteen convents, and no fewer than seventy chantries and chapels attached to St. Paul's. The steeples of some of these churches were higher than any in modern London ; so as there was not much smoke to obscure the view, the City must have looked very beautiful from a distance. That there was little smoke we infer from the fact that coal was still rare in London ; and so unwholesome were its fumes considered that we hear of a man in the reign of Edward I. having been sentenced to death for using it. Indeed, nothing strikes us more when we study those times than the ease with which a man might get himself hanged ; and it seems strange that three centuries had to pass before our legislators learned the wisdom of the saying, " It is the worst use to which you can put a man." Proceeding on our way through Cornhill, we pass St. Michael's Church, and, a little farther on, the street which leads to one of the outlets of the wall at Bishopsgate. Just within the gate we see the magnificent mansion which Sir John Crosby has almost completed. A bystander will perhaps inform us that the ground belongs to the prioress of St. Helen's (another convent !), and that Sir John pays her 11 6s. 8d. per annum for the lease. In the hall of the mansion you may see one of the first fire- places used in England in such a building. Logs were usually burnt in the centre of the floor, and the smoke escaped or, more probably, did not escape by a hole in the roof. It was, therefore, customary on great occasions LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 15 to burn spices and sweet scented wood in those places. During the third mayoralty of Sir Richard Whittington, in 1419, he entertained King Henry and his bride, Katherine of France, at a sumptuous banquet in Guildhall ; and when they remarked on the sweet perfume of the fire which burned in the centre, Sir Richard replied that with their graces' leave he would make it even more pleasant ; and drawing forth the bonds which he held for more than 60,000, which the King had borrowed towards the cost of his French expedition, he threw them into the fire. This story must be taken for what it is worth ; it is told of other great longs and merchants, at home and abroad, and is probably no more true than the other famous story of the same Sir Richard's cat ; or the collateral one that he let all his lands upon leases for " nine lives ! " It is, however, true that King Henry obtained large sums of money hi the City for his French wars, and that he even pawned the royal crown of England for 20,000 marks to the Bishop of Winchester. Richard H. had not been fortunate or, to speak exactly, had not been honest in his dealings with the City. Like Henry VI., Charles I., and James II., his credit in London was low, and he was distrusted by the citizens. His fall was chiefly brought about by this cause. Pawnbroking was not confined to the natives of London in those days ; and if we turn to the right out of Cornhill, through Gracechurch Street, we shall pass the head- quarters of the business hi Lombard Street, so called on account of the immigration of Italian jewellers and other merchants, who here drove a thriving trade in money- lending. The sign of the pawnbroker the three golden balls is derived from the arms of the great Medici, Dukes of Florence, which some of these merchants may have hung 16 LONDON AFTERNOON* over their doors in honour of their native sovereigns. This reminds us to observe that none of the houses are mi in tared, hut that every shop has its sign, as taverns, pawnbrokers, barbers, and gold-beaters have still. The lighting of the streets as well as the numbering has been neglected hitherto ; but soon after the accession of the Lancastrian House, and owing, it is said, to such victories as Poitiers and Sluys, we read of great improvements. Carpets came into use, and Sir Henry Barton, when he was Lord Mayor, in 1416, made street lamps compulsory. When we have passed through Lombard Street we find ourselves in Eastcheap, a second market place. As Westcheap was on the road from the bridge to Newgate, so Eastcheap was originally established on the road from the bridge to Bishopsgate. It consisted, and may be said still to consist, of several parts. Corn, hay, and grass may have been sold in Cornhill, Fenchurch (Foin, fen, hay) and Grasschurch (now Gracechurch) Streets. When an older fish market near St. Paul's Wharf was abandoned, Billingsgate became the great landing-place, and here also the great trade in wine with the King's foreign dominions was carried on. One Mayor of London was Mayor of Bordeaux the next year, 1275, and from that time onwards the quays and hithes of the Thames were always full of merchandise, wool going out, wine and fish coming in. Billingsgate and Leadenhall Markets still re- main to us, though Eastcheap itself has dwindled to a street. In Eastcheap is the "Boar's Head, "a tavern in which, according to local legends and Shakespeare, the future Henry V., as Prince, disported himself with Falstaff or Fastolf, and was committed to prison for insulting the Chief Justice. Fastolf soon married a rich widow in Wiltshire. As for Prince Henry, we observe that when, as was then the law, the Judges were re-appointed at the s ^ o I CO Ul I -S LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 17 beginning of a new reign, Gascoigne was among those left out. From the hay, grass, corn, fowl and fish markets in Eastcheap we reach the Tower. King Eichard often resided in his palace within the walls, and it was there that on a melancholy Michaelmas Day in 1399 he resigned the crown to his ambitious cousin, Henry, Duke of Lancaster, whose accession may be said to have commenced the Wars of the Eoses. On Tower Hill, three years before, Eichard's friend and former tutor, Sir Simon Burley, was beheaded the first of a long line of statesmen who suffered on the same spot in after years. Here too, in 1397, the sixth Earl of Anmdel, who was chiefly concerned in Burley's death, submitted himself in his turn to the stroke of the headsman's axe. Eeturning along the river, we pass St. Botolph's Church on our left, and St. Magnus' on our right, and enter the gate which opens to the roadway of London Bridge, in order to reach the Borough before dark. This bridge is the only one over the Thames hi London. You cannot cross otherwise, except by boat. The bridge is covered with buildings, a gateway being at each end ; and, as you pass in through the archway and pay your toll, you could imagine yourself hi a street and forget the river altogether but for the noise of the mill wheels which are worked under some of the arches, by the rush of water through the narrow aperture. A roaring sound like this would be most appropriate in a modern street ; but we must remember that hi those days there were few or no carts or carriages, especially in the streets, and that the only sounds were those of human voices, or the trampling of horses, with the occasional clanking of a man in armour as he rode along. Half-way across, in a tiny chapel, lay buried the engineer 18 LONDON AFTERNOONS. who built the bridge, Petor, curate of Colechuirh, in the City. He died in 1205, and his bridge stood until 1832 ! The houses built upon it were crowded with inhabitants. Richard II. had a serious quarrel with them, for the King's mother, the widow of Edward the Black Prince, was insulted and pelted as she passed under one of the arches in a boat. Richard, who was always glad of an excuse for getting money out of the citizens, made them pay a heavy fine for this offence. The same insult had been offered many years before to Eleanor of Provence, the mother of Edward I. Over the gate at the Southwark end you will see the blackened skulls of some of the victims of the recent disturbances ; and will perhaps remember that, like the water-gate at the Tower, this is called the Traitor's Gate. If you look back at the City from the southern end of the bridge you get a very fair idea of the extent of it, and of the comparative sizes of the various buildings with which it is adorned. The limits are very sharply defined by the Tower on the right, or eastern side, and the buildings of the Temple on the left. In the centre, towering above all competition, stands the great Cathedral, with its glorious spire; while the other most prominent churches are those of St. Mary-le- Bow, in Cheapside, St. Michael's, in Cornhill, and the Grey Friars, near Newgate. Nearer the water's edge you observe the great pile of Baynard's Castle west of the bridge, within the City walls ; the Church and Hall of the Blackfriars ; and outside, the Whitefriars, the New Temple, Exeter House, the Savoy, Whitehall, and far hi the south-west the Clock Tower of the Royal Palace at Westminster, the huge spireless shape of the Abbey, and the roof of Westminster Hall. Of these, Exeter House belonged to the Bishops of LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 19 Exeter ; and Baynard'a Castle was a little later the city domicile of a lady whose children played a very prominent part in the affairs of the kingdom during the fifteenth century. Here Cicely Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV., kept a kind of Court. She was cousin of the King-Maker, being herself a Neville, the daughter of his uncle, the Earl of Westmorland. I speak more at length of her in my chapter on Berkhampstead.* Near the foot of London Bridge stands the Church of St. Mary Overies, otherwise called St. Saviour's. It i one of the largest and handsomest churches in London and was destined to be the only one of any importance, after Westminster Abbey, which survived till the twentieth century. It forms a kind of cathedral for the Bishop of Winchester, who resides in a magnificent palace not far off, and who holds occasionally a Court in the Lady Chapel for the trial of heretics. In the church is a monument over the burial place of Sir John Gower, the poet of the reign of King Edward II. Surrounding the church are some of the oldest buildings in London ; and, in fact, some antiquaries have been of opinion that Southwark is more ancient than the City tc which it belongs on the opposite bank. In the principal street you will see an inn, just then becoming famous as the scene of part of a poem by one Geoffrey Chaucer. He was Clerk of the Works at Westminster, and lived in a house at the east end of the church, where the great chapel of Henry VII. stands now. He wrote poetry which endeared him to later ages, so that Spenser and Prior and Cowley and many since have been buried in the same corner of the south transept, beside him. In the Chapel of St. Edward, close by, lies the body of Richard, his master, who died, or was murdered, in the same year, 1400. f * See Chapter IX., p. 105. t See Chapter V., p. 64. 20 LONDON AFTERNOONS. At Southwark the " Tabard Ion," as you pass by, is probably crowded with pilgrims Betting off for a visit to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury. Becket was looked upon as a special patron by Londoners, and St. Thomas's Hospital, which was then an almshouse, close to the bridge foot, bore ample testimony for centuries to the liberality of the pilgrims. St. Thomas's Chapel, dedicated to the same Saint, was on one of the piers of the bridge, and the Traitor's Gate at the Tower also bore his name. In fact, for centuries he was called St. Thomas " of London," and the house in which he was born was pointed out in Cheap. It must have been one of the first houses built in the Market Place, if indeed this is not a fiction, like that about his mother. She was fabled to be a Saracenic Princess, who followed Gilbert Becket from the Crusades, knowing no English but a Gilbert," and " London." Rohese Becket and her husband, the Portreeve, were really of Norman extraction. Agnes, his sister, married into the old City family of Agodshalf (in Latin, Ex parte Dei), and the Irish Butlers, Earls and Marquesses of Ormond, claim to represent them. So that Anne Boleyn, some time Queen of England, whose grandmother was a Butler, was descended from the saint's sister. The Mercers' Chapel now marks the site. The aspect of London, viewed from a slight distance, must have been very different from anything we can see in England now. No doubt the streets were no better than what we should call lanes, but there were wide open spaces the two Market Places, on which stand chiefly booths, with but few houses, stretching diagonally from Newgate to the Tower and plenty of gardens and trees, with very little smoke. There was no wheeled traffic. Many burdens were laid upon men's shoulders, and horses carried packs LONDON FIVE CENTURIES AGO. 21 and panniers. The roadways were but roughly paved, and the mud was proverbial, as well as the summer dust ; but from, say, the other side of the river these things were not apparent. The low hills right and left of Walbrook rose gently, reflecting in the surface of the stream the outlines of many spires and roofs, the colours of ruddy tiles and of shady trees, the tall grey steeple of St. Paul's covered with lead and wooden " slats," and soaring more than five hundred feet into the blue sky. Flanking it as a centre were many church towers, some square like St. Michael's on Cornhill, some pointed like the Austin Friars, some ending in such features as the arches, only finished in 1512, which made St. Mary's in the midst of Cheap so famous. The houses, even the great Guildhall, and such palaces as Crosby's, and Baynard's, and Pountney's, were far below the churches, but the louvres on many halls and the fantastic patterns of many tall red chimneys added to the variety, while coloured banners floated almost everywhere. Some called the traveller's attention to an Inn, some bore the ensigns of a Holy Guild, or of a wealthy Company, while others again marked the dwelling of some mighty lord from the country, or some abbot, attending Parliament, or the Court. High, pointed, narrow arches 'spanned the Fleet, the Walbrook, and the moat of the Tower. Gathering all in a close embrace were the brown, frowning battlements and bastions of the old wall, patched and worn and mended, but while cannon was unknown, impregnable. Their gloom was relieved here and there by a course of brickwork, which was pointed out to the stranger as Eoman, and by the City Gates, with their baileys and their deep archways, half hiding the massive door and falling portcullis. To the east of the Tower were the low green meadows of the Lea, to the west of 22 LONDON AFTERNOONS Newgate the long suburban street of Ilolborn stretched up the hill among the gardens and meadows. In the foreground along the river, which was the chief highway, the houses of the nobles and the Bishops succeeded each other past Charing and on to the King's great Hall, and the Abbey of Westminster, while in the background pleasant villages and orchards and long green lanes led the eye through St. Pancras and Islington, through little Hoxton and great Hackney, to Hampstead and Highgate on the well- wooded hills of Middlesex beyond. 23 CHAPTER H. LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, Publication of London Records Greatness of John Stow the Antiquary Houses in the Fourteenth Century The Interior Furniture Domestic Details Prices of Provisions " House- Warming " of Westminster Hall Medicine and Surgery Overcrowding Pestilence Abolishing the Belies of Slavery Growth of Romanist Doctrines Ecclesiastical Parties The Friars London and the Wars The Manufacture of Armour an Important Industry The City Dagger Street Scenes. WITHIN a few years a large number of records have been printed and published as to London life before the Wars of the Roses. Mainly by the munificence of the Cor- poration many valuable volumes have been issued. Old papers relating to houses, dress, food, furniture, and all those things which concerned the daily life of the citizens, have been made public, and an immense stock has been added to the information we could boast of even thirty years ago. Though they were very little known until lately, London is better provided with authentic historical documents than any other city in the world. The series stored at Guildhall, from which Dr. Reginald Sharpe draws from time to time such wonderful accounts of London life and manners in the Middle Ages, goes back to the thirteenth century. At St. Paul's, too, are many old manuscripts, some of which, going back another 24 LONDON AFTERNOONS. hundred years and more, have also been copied and printed for the Library Committee of the City. History, without records at once to guide and sustain it, would teach us very little. When we have these documents before us we can form our own opinions as to many events which previously we had to accept without question or thought. A revolution has in fact taken place as to our know- ledge of everything that happened before the Reformation. One result of better education and comparative freedom in matters of knowledge and opinion, was the appearance in hia true character of John Stow, a man, in his own depart- ment, fit to stand beside Shakespeare and Bacon and Hooker among the worthies who glorified " the spacious times of great Elizabeth." For his age and his opportunities he was indeed wonderful. He advanced so much further than any other historian of his time that only now have we overtaken him only now can we judge of what he tells us, or employ ordinary criticism in dealing with his marvellous " Survey." Where he had any opportunities of using his eyesight the " monstrous observations " of which his contemporary Ben Jonson speaks we may accept what he says as almost infallible. But he was very imperfectly acquainted with Latin especially mediae- val Latin and could hardly read manuscript more than a hundred years older than his own time. From his com- plete ignorance of old English or Anglo-Saxon, coupled with a most irrepressible habit of guessing, he is a very untrustworthy guide in the explanation of place names. He derives Holborn from Old Bourn, Ludgate from King Lud, Cripplegate from cripples resorting there, Aldersgate from alders growing there, and so on. Yet Stow's guesses in philology are still accepted and gravely propounded as solutions of questions which can only be answered by means_which Stow could^not employ : he had no Old ROOM AND FURNITURE, FIFTEENTH CENTURY (From a Print by Henry Shaw, after John Schoreel.) LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 25 English dictionary, nor could he consult the researches of Professor Skeat. He lived in an uncritical age, and must neither be followed blindly nor, on the other hand, rejected because his ideas of historical method and historical accuracy differed from those now in vogue. It is always interesting to look through these newly edited records and meet unexpectedly passages which apparently were seen by Stow in the course of his inquiries. Some of his facts were gathered from documents which have now perished or disappeared. But when we compare his work with that of his contemporaries in the same field Verstegan, for example, or even the great Camden we are more and more surprised at the thorough character of his research and the absence of those prejudices which mar so many learned treatises. Our first inquiry should be as to the houses which formed the London streets in the fourteenth century. We know that from the time of Henry, the first mayor, two hundred years before, the citizens were forbidden to continue building inflammable houses to the common danger, and many provisions as to walls, roofs, and especially chimneys, were made. But these laws were not retro- spective. We may be sure that even as late as the reign of Richard II. there were many wooden houses in London, many roofed with thatch, or " slats," many with chimneys formed of " tuns," or barrels. For drainage there were cesspits, for water there were wells, and though the fact has been questioned, it is difficult to doubt that the cessation of the plague after the Great Fire was much more caused by the filling up of wells with cinders and ashes than by the " purification by fire " to which we often hear it vaguely ascribed. That similar fires did not cause the same effect is easily understood when we remember that in 1666 the New River was waiting at the gates, ready for those who 26 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Ixrfore the fire used wells, and were not obliged to make choice of the clean wnter. As to the actual design and fabric of a house built in the fourteenth century we have abundant evidence. In 1308, for example, William Hanyngton, a wealthy furrier, a member of the Skinners' Company, owner of houses in various parts of the City, and himself living in the parish of St. Stephen-upon-Walbrook, called in the services of Simon of Canterbury, a caq>enter, to enlarge and improve his house. Simon accordingly went before the Mayor and Aldermen and signed a contract by which he undertook to work into his design an old kitchen and a living room, and to make for William a house of some pretensions in the fashion of the day. It was to have a courtyard, to be entered by a suitable porch from the street. In the court was to be a stable, from which we infer that the porch or passage was large enough to admit a horse. We still see such entrances in old country inns. On one side was to be the hall, on the other a large chamber connected with the kitchen and a larder. But the most important feature of the new house was the number and size of the upper rooms. Not only were there three of these on the first floor, but one at least had a garret over it. We may note that this was not a civic palace like Crosby Hall, but an ordinaiy citizen's dwelling. William Hanyngton died there in 1313, leaving a widow and three children ; and we may infer that, though he filled no civic office, he was in easy circumstances, from his bequest of 1 towards the funds for building and maintaining London Bridge. There are several other examples in the records. One of them is particularly interesting. The Archdeacon of Middlesex, the year after Master Hanyngton had arranged for his house in Walbrook, complained to the Dean and LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 27 Chapter about the house in which he lived an official residence, it would seem, on the south side of the precinct. He was much affected by the noise of men and horses in the neighbouring streets which must have been what we know as " Knightrider Street," a suggestive name and he especially complained of the mean prospect of the opposite houses, and the want of quiet in the Chamber called " Bosamunde," probably from the pictures or tapestry on the walls. He therefore asked leave to build, and mentioned a space reaching from the roadway to a certain pear tree and some vines, which were not to be touched. A little later, in the reign of Henry VI., there are several such estimates and descriptions. In one we read of three shops, and over each were to be several stories of living rooms, including principal chambers, drawingrooms and bedrooms ; and they were to be ceiled and to have windows. Previously light and air were luxuries; and people were driven into the open air unless they could afford large halls, where rain and wind were more easily defied. We do not find it easy to conceive the discomfort, at least from our point of view, of the citizens' daily life. By the way, a fashion very common at that period and for long after was to call a room by the name of the classical or sacred story depicted in the tapestry or painting on the walls. A Chamber of Diana matched that of Rosa- munde hi the precincts of St. Paul's. At Westminster, in what was the Abbot's house, they still show chambers called Jericho and Jerusalem ; and others in the Palace, which formed the royal nursery, were Heaven and Hell and Purgatory, and adjoined the great hall. It is hard to imagine the state of people who lived without what to us are such ordinary things as glass windows, or writing paper, or printed books. Yet in London, down to the year 1400, such things were 28 LONDON AFTERNOONS almost, pome of them quite, unknown. Street lamps, as I have mentioned on an earlier page, were made com- pulsory in 1416. Chimneys wero often made of wood before 1419, when it was ordered that any henceforth constructed, except of stone, tiles, or plaster, should be pulled down. Glass was very dear, and only to be had in small pieces, so that few completely glazed windows were to be seen except in churches ; and the poorer citizens were obliged to content themselves with lattices, or with very small windows almost filled up with stone or wooden tracery. In the houses of some of the wealthy nobility sets of glass windows were made to be removed, and were taken from place to place, as their owner changed his residence. Crockery was almost unknown, except as a great rarity from Italy ; and a glass or majolica basin or drinking cup was worth more than its weight in gold. The common people used horn, or perhaps in some cases iron and pewter cups and drinking vessels, and the richer sort silver, silver gilt, and even gold, onyx and agate. Crosby Hall, which still remains, and is now very appropriately turned into an eating house, gives us a fair idea of what the houses of the upper class in London were like in the early part of the fifteenth century ; but this is an extremely magnificent example, and, as we have just seen, the houses of people in an inferior rank were very different. Not, indeed, that such a house as Crosby Hall was then would be considered comfortable nowadays. The vast rooms, the through draughts, the badly fitting doors and smoky fire-places, and the very imperfect drainage and ventilation must have more than made up for the beauty of the carving, and the magnificence of the hangings on the walls or for the general splendour of the furniture and the richness of the stained glass. A SLEEPING CHAMBER IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, (from a Print by Shaw, after the MS. of "Tobit," Royal MSS. 15 D 7.) LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 29 The town house of the Earls of Warwick, in Newgate Street ; Baynard's Castle, in which the Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV., lived ; Pembroke Place, on the site of which stands Stationers' Hall, and Pulteney House, were all very similar, varying more in size than in general arrangements. In these fine mansions a visitor would have found a strange mixture of luxury and barbarism. He would have seen the great hall used as a sleeping-place by the servants of the family the bare floor being their bed, and for a pillow a sheaf of rushes or straw ; while in the chambers of the master and his equals he would have seen the most elaborate and sumptuous couches, orna- mented with heraldic devices of the richest kind, hung with velvet or silk, and constructed of the softest down. Linen sheets would not be so common, and in many instances he would only find the bed arranged for lying upon, not in ; but in others he would see counterpanes of damask or satin, and sheets of the finest cloth of Cambray, or cambric. The word counterpane is derived from the practice of " paning " or striping various rich stuffs one with another. Our words panel and pane are from the same source. The walls would be hung with tapestry, generally orna- mented with heraldic badges, but sometimes embroidered with representations of scenes from the romances and ballads which were popular at the time. For furniture there would probably be in each chamber a chair or two generally what we should call armchairs or else stools with- out any back ; also a seat in the thickness of the wall under the window, and a wardrobe, sometimes of great magni- ficence, but more often a mere curtained recess, in which to hang clothes. A more important article of furniture would be the chest, or cabinet, which would also serve for a table, and would be richly ornamented with 30 LONDON AFTERNOONS. hinges, and perhaps painted or carved with shields of arms. The visitor would probably see no looking-glass, or else only a small hand mirror of metal ; he would not tind any wash-hand-standthough there might be a bath and he would but seldom find a fire-place, though he might see a brazier with charcoal. The door would be protected with heavy curtains, and the window would not be made to open and shut; nevertheless he would find a plentiful supply of the outer air circulating in the room, some coming through the imperfectly leaded window panes, some under the ill-fitting door, and a great deal through the boards of the walls and floor, though ceilings were now frequently plastered. Carpets were more commonly used for wall- hangings, though we read of their use for the floors in the King's palace as early as the reign of Edward III. There would be no hair brushes, though combs were in common use ; and no pins, though brooches like skewers, but ornamented with jewels, would be found ; metal pins were first made alx>ut the reign of Edward IV. A smaller bed would probably be found at the foot of the great one for a servant or a guard ; and a little orator)' would probably occur in one corner, fitted with an image, a little reliquary, and a " paternoster " or rosary of beads. In a few cases you might also find a volume of prayers, or the " Book of Tribulation," containing the seven penitential Psalms, and in another part of the room a volume of the " Romaunt of St. Lancelot du Lac," or a " Chronicle of the Wars," or one of the moral treatises of Rene d'Anjou, the father of Margaret, the Queen of Henry VI., such as " The Mortification of Vain Pleasure," or, perhaps, " A Contest Between a Devoted Soul and a Heart full of all Vanity " all of course in manuscript. Descending to the reception rooms of the house, you - id LU > -3 Z Q o z LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 31 would be struck by the general want of furniture every- where apparent. In the great hall there would be forms at either side of a long table, which itself would consist of boards laid upon trestles, and removed after each meal. The forms would then be set back against the wall, or taken away altogether. A cross table at the upper end of the hall would be provided for the lord of the mansion, who, with his wife and principal guests, would sit under a canopy, which would be not so much a matter of state as of necessity, for protection from the draughts. Men all wore head coverings, as they do still in the East, and women had hoods and wimples, according to the fashion of the day. The servants, and indeed all the family, high or low, except those actually engaged in cooking or waiting, would dine together ; and dinner would be the principal meal of the day, a slight breakfast and a slighter supper preceding and following it. The Duchess of York dined at eleven in the forenoon, and supped at five ; these early hours were general : the judges at Westminster sat only from eight in the morning until eleven, when they adjourned for the day. No doubt the difficulty of performing any labour, literary or manual, except by daylight, led to these arrange- ments. Candle light was bad, candles were dear ; the only light always available during the short days of winter being that of the fire which burnt in the middle of the hall the smoke escaping by the louvre in the roof. The hall of Westminster School was warmed in this way until the year 1850, if not later ; and the same old method may still be seen in occasional use at Penshurst Place, in Kent. Crosby Hall is usually said to give us the earliest example of a great hall with a fireplace, but a thirteenth century fire-place and chimney are at Abingdon, and two of early but uncertain date are in the Tower of London. It was almost impossible, without a chimney or any certain 32 LONDON AFTERNOONS. exit for the smoke, to burn coal ; and the smoke of coal, as I have said, was considered unwholesome, and its use was prohibited in London by the severest enactments, until the middle of the fourteenth century, nor was it by any means common for a hundred years later. What beds were like in 1400 we may gather from the will of Margaret Brad- ford, who leaves to her servant Margaret her entire bed, with its canopy of three silken curtains, a green coverlet, a pair of sheets, two blanketa, and a quilt. Bedsteads were of wood, and there were no pillows or bolsters except for the sick. Westminster Hall was completed by Richard II. in 1390. The accounts of the " house-warming " which he gave in celebration of this event have come down to us, and give us a lively picture of the table arrangements of the period. The prices of provisions may also be easily ascertained by a reference to the market regulations made at different times. These prices were always much affected by the visitations of the plague, which were so common in London. For example, after the plague of 1348, in which a hundred thousand persons are said to have died, a fat ox might have been bought for 4s., and a fat wether for 4d. A lamb was 2d., and a pig 5d. Even if we allow that money is now fifteen times more valuable, these are exceedingly low rates. The usual prices were much higher. One schedule gives us these particulars : Between Easter and Whit Sunday a fat goose was to be had for 5d., at other times for 4d., or even for 3d. Three pigeons came to a penny, which is not very cheap, if we calculate a penny as worth between Is. 3d. and Is. 8d. of our money. The swan was much esteemed at the great City feasts, costing the prodigious sum of 3s., equal to nearly 2 10s. in modern currency. There were many swans on the Thames ; the King's birds, and those belong LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 33 ing to the citizens, being distinguished by markings annually made on their bills. The common tavern sign, a swan with " two necks," properly " nicks," has its rise from this circumstance. Salmon were from 3s. to 5s. each, which, multiplied by fifteen, answers roughly to the present prices ; whilst oysters were at 2d. per gallon, which, on the same calculation, is certainly cheap. A prominent feature at all great entertainments was a pea- cock served " in his pride," with the feathers and train, as we still see pheasants at table, with the tail feathers by way of garnishing. When Richard II. gave the feast at Westminster Hall, he employed, we read, 2,000 cooks, and is said to have feasted at one tune above 10,000 persons. Many particulars have come down to us of this and other extravagant banquets of the unfortunate Richard, but none seems to have exceeded the magnificent pageant displayed by the City of London at the tune of his coronation ; when, among other things, we read of the following " sotylty " (subtlety) or device which was exhibited in Cheapside. " At the upper end of Chepe," says the chronicler, " was a certaine castell made with foure towers, out of the which castell, on two sides of it, there ran foorth wine abundantlie. In the towers were placed foure beautifull virgins, of stature and age like to the King, apparelled in white vestures, hi every tower one, the which blew in the King's face, at his approaching neere to them, leaves of gold. . . . When he was come before the castell, they took cups of gold, and filling them with wine at the spouts of the castell, presented the same to the King and his nobles. On the top of the castell, betwixt the foure towers, stood a golden angell, holding a crowne in his hands, which was so contrived that when the King came, he bowed downe, and offered him the crowne." 34 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Tliis was a * sotylty " on a very large scale, but similar devices were common at table ; heraldry being called in to help, and great pains, if not great taste, being shown in their composition. Thus, at the coronation feast of Queen Katharine, wife of Henry V., we read that there was a " sotylty, called a pellycan, sitting on his nest, with her byrdes and an image of Seynt Katheryne holdyng a booke, and disputynge with the doctours, holdyng a reason in her right hande." This feast, which was held in Lent, was remarkable. It consisted entirely of fish, dressed in various ways ; and included, besides many kinds of salt and fresh-water fish, the names of which it is not very easy to identify, " porpies rostyd," and " mennys fryed " porpoises and minnows. At a feast given a few years before, there were served at table, besides wild boar and venison dressed in several ways, peacocks, cranes, bitterns, egrets, curlews, partridges, quails, snipes, and " smal byrdys * perhaps sparrows. After this account of the high feeding of the period, it may not be amiss to say something of the state of medi- cine. The monks were the chief physicians, and seem to have been but moderately successful. Henry V. was probably killed by the unskilfulness of his medical advisers. Their prescriptions are of inordinate length, and seem to be compounded in a sort of wild hope that if one drug fails another may succeed. During visitations of the plague, or any epidemic sickness, they appear to have been utterly powerless ; although they did guess at the real cause of these disorders, as we see from the many ordin- ances for the better cleansing of the City, and for the abating of nuisances. It was unlawful, for instance, to keep pigs within certain boundaries. But, no doubt, contaminated wells and the stagnant moat which sur- rounded the City walls, to say nothing of that which LONDON LIFE IN THE FOUETEENTH CENTURY. 35 protected the Tower, were enough to account for the awful visitations of pestilence to which the people were so frequently subjected. The names of two or three of the eminent physicians of those days have come down to us. Master Lawrence was Queen Isabella's medical adviser ; but we cannot say much for his skill when we read that his royal patient's death was occasioned by a too powerful dose of some medicine which, although at her desire, he had adminis- tered to her. We find that he was paid 2 for a whole month's attendance. Another eminent practitioner was Master Gun, or Quin, a monk at Bermondsey Abbey, to which place many royal and noble personages resorted for the benefit of his advice. During one such visit Queen Elizabeth Wydeville, widow of Edward IV., died. Surgery was no further advanced than medicine, and a very slight wound was sure to be fatal. Amputations were seldom attempted, and when attempted were almost always unsuccessful. We cannot wonder at this when we read that it was customary, after a man's leg or arm had been lopped off with an axe, to plunge the stump in boiling pitch, hi order to stop the bleeding. No doubt this object was effectually accomplished ! There were some surgeons, nevertheless, not unskilful in reduc- ing fractures and dislocations. A magnificently illumi- nated MS. hi the National Library of Paris contains the English translation of the treatise of Guy de Chauliac, an eminent French surgeon, on the " Restorynge of Broken Bones." The overcrowding of the poor in miserable hovels hi the City, and the want of pure water, already noticed, are quite sufficient to account for the fearful mortality caused by the plague in various ways. The worst visi- tation seems to have been that of 1348, hi which 100,000 36 LONDON AFTERNOONS. are said to have died ; and it was rendered further memor- able by the munificence of Sir Walter Manny, who pur- chased a piece of ground outside the City walls and had it dedicated as a cemetery for those who died of the plague. Fifty thousand corpses are said to have been interred here during the prevalence of the visitation ; but this number is probably inaccurate and exaggerated. Sir Walter, who was one of the first Knights of the Garter, and a famous hero in the wars of Edward III., died in 1372, and was buried in this cemetery. He had given it into the charge of a society of monks of the Chartreuse or Carthusian Order, who were afterwards violently sup- pressed by Henry VIH. Their last prior was hanged and quartered at Tyburn, in May, 1535 ; and the site of the priory and burial ground, by a new foundation, be- came the famous Charterhouse School, at which so many eminent men were educated hi after years, including Thackeray, who, in some of his books, refers to it as the Slaughter-house, and in others as the Grey Friars, a name which properly belonged to Christ's Hospital in Newgate Street. The effects of the " Black Death " were of a kind we cannot easily realise. Whole families were swept away, not in London only, but all over England. One good result followed, and many bad ones. The lingering relics of the old usages of slavery were finally obliterated. Servants were at a premium, bond or free. The old days were gone by when the Bishop's subscription to the rebuilding of St. Paul's took the form of John the carpenter, " the son of our carpenter at Fulham," or when Walter Windsor gave to the same pious work Godwin, his carpenter, with Godwin's brothers, Ranulph and Richard, and all their be- longings. But this was a hundred and fifty years before, andjthe pestilence had raised the value of all kinds of labour MARGARET, QUEEN OF HENRY VI., DAUGHTER OF KING RENE D'ANJOU. (From the Tapestry at Coventry. Reduced from a Print by Henry Shaui.) LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 37 by diminishing the number of labourers. There is a marked change in all things of the kind after the middle of the fourteenth century, but we can chiefly trace it now, so far as if affected the city, by the increase in the number of chantries and mass priests. The devoutly disposed citizen before the twelfth century endeavoured to build and endow a church, and to have a parish assigned to it. By 1150 the city had been divided and sub-divided until there was little room for any more. The old churches were then rebuilt, and building became the characteristic by which the next century is now chiefly remembered. A thirteenth century church spared by fire and even by Wren, was pulled down to make room for a bank three or four years ago. Very few now remain. The Black Death of 1348 led to the establishment in the older churches of endowments for the provision of continual masses. The outbreaks of pestilence in 1301 and 1369 added largely to such bequests, and we may be sure that during the domestic strife of the fifteenth century they were still further increased. Such a church as St. Paul's, where the number of altars was almost illimitable, supported, besides the regular Cathedral staff, as many as a hundred mass priests, men who, though in holy orders, had been in most cases unable to obtain parochial employment. Their dissolute lives were proverbial. Wills are still extant hi which testators expressed their anxiety that the funds they bequeathed for masses should not be spent upon dissolute, drunken, or gambling priests. The growth of Romanist doctrine led eventually to such expedients as indulgences, and these and other develop- ments led to the Reformation. So rapidly did doctrines develop and so urgent became the necessity of a change that it is to the same reign that we owe alike the most 38 LONDON AFTERNOONS. gigantic endowment for masses ever made that, namely, of the great chapel for the rejx)se of the soul of Henry VII. and the abolition of the whole system, both by Henry VIII. There was strong antagonism during the whole of the fourteenth century between the different orders and sects in the Church. St. Paul's, a Cathedral of what is now described as the old foundation, had its canons, and, to help them, its minor canons, established and endowed by King Richard II. With these, but unconnected with the establisliment, were the mass priests. In the twelfth century and earlier, the canons, who had chiefly been parocliial clergy, and who, from the nature of their en- dowments, had risen to be country squires, lords of manors, patrons of livings, were as a rule married men, as they became again in the sixteenth century. After the en- forcement by the Roman Church of the celibacy of the clergy a great change took place in the policy of the whole body of secular priests, from the Bishop down to the smallest parocliial incumbent, and they gradually, by a series of " developments," drifted further and further away from the laity and grew more out of sympathy with them. I must return to the subject further on. Meanwhile, the friars came in, and for a time, until the outbreak of the war, they seem to have filled the place vacated by the secular clergy. The differences of the Londoners with Richard II. found the friars on what the citizens thought the wrong side, and wliile the popularity of the mendicant orders waned, their greed, which soon almost equalled that of the canons of St. Paul's hi older times, increased. What the canons and friars spared, the priests of the chantries seized, and it is very sad to see reflected in the wills printed by Dr. Sharpe from the records of the Corporation the increase of superstitious terror and, with it, the decrease of trust in the religion that was pre- LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 39 sented to the people by those whom they were forced to regard as the agents and ministers of the powers of Heaven. The aspect of the city, then, in the closing days of King Richard, and during the reigns of the three Henrys, was eminently ecclesiastical. In addition to the number of parish churches, the buildings of the monasteries were very numerous. There were two principal kinds of relig- ious bodies, the monks and the friars, in London. These were all spoken of as the regular clergy hi contradistinction to the secular, or priests that is, they lived according to certain rules or regulations. The different orders of monks were distinguished among themselves by the system of rules to which they adhered. The Cistercians, the Carthusians, and the Augustinians might all be classed as reformed Benedictines ; and to the same order almost all the abbeys and cathedrals in England belonged. The friars were chiefly White, Black, or Grey. In London and its neighbourhood the various divisions of the Benedictine Order were especially powerful. To them belonged the magnificent and wealthy abbey of Westminster ; Canterbury and Rochester were also under their dominion, as well as the stately foundation of St. Alban's ; and to various denominations of the same Rule were assigned almost all the monasteries hi London. St. Bartholomew's, and St. Mary Overies at the foot of London Bridge, were Augustinian, the monks of which order were generally known as Austin canons. The Cluniac Order held Bermondsey Abbey, and the Carthusians the mag- nificent foundation of the Charter House. The only Cistercian house was the abbey of St. Mary of Graces, on Tower Hill, locally called " Eastminster," being the only abbey, besides St. Peter's at Westminster, in either London or Middlesex. It was founded in 1349, but 40 LONDON AFTERNOONS. never flourished. And besides all these and many more there were the semi-military orders of Templars and Hospitallers. The Templars were originally lodged in Holborn, and afterwards by the Thames before Fleet Street had been built ; whilst the Knights of St. John had their headquarters at Clerkenwell, in a noble building the interesting old gate of which is still to be seen, as well as the crypt underneath their church. In addition to all these monks of the older orders, the thirteenth century saw the rise of the Franciscan or Grey Friars, and the Dominican or Black Friars, founded by men who, as far as their light went, were sincere and good, and who, when we consider the age in which they lived, are entitled to our admiration. They and the Crutched-friars and the Friars of the Sack and others, rapidly spread throughout all the countries of Europe. In England the Franciscans were especially successful, and thirty years from their first landing in 1226 had at- tained the large number of 1,242 members, and possessed forty-nine convents in different places throughout the kingdom. We look in vain among the remains of Franciscan convents for those glories of architecture so commonly found in the ruins of the abbeys of the older orders. They lived in hovels and practised the strictest austerities. By their founder's precept, they were bound to consider themselves lower than the lowest ; hence the name " Minorites " or " Friars Minors," by which they were known. St. Francis had forbidden them to apply themselves to learning, by which term in those days the ancient philosophies and the more modern theologies were known ; they therefore addicted themselves to physical studies, and were the naturalists and mathe- maticians of the age. Roger Bacon was a member of their order. Bishop Grosteste was their cliief patron. HENRY VI. AND HIS COURT. (From the Tapestry in St. Mary's Hall, Coventry. Reduced from a Print by Henry Shaw.) LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 41 But it was for their charities that they were best known or rather for their labours in distributing the charity of others ; for they themselves professed, and even to the time of their dissolution under Henry VIII. maintained, an austerity of manners which forbade the acquisition of riches. Nevertheless, their chief church in London, which was partly on the site of the chancel or choir of Christ Church, Newgate Street, was remarkable for its ornaments, and especially for the stained-glass windows, the gift of those who had benefited from the preaching or ministrations of the members of the order, and the dwellings of the brethren were soon in accordance with the magnificence of their church. It was much the same with the Dominicans, whose hall was so large that Parliament could sit in it. London was always deeply interested in the wars : the citizens were constantly drilled in their trained bands, and from an early period they were noted for their bravery and for their fine appearance as soldiers. Many Londoners fought at Hastings, and the portreeve was either killed on that memorable field or died soon after of his wounds. The money for distant expeditions was always forth- coming, and the Londoners joined the men of Bristol in a crusade across the Bay of Biscay in 1147, and took Lisbon from the Moors. The Chaplain of the Fleet became the first bishop of Portugal. Foreign conquest always brought wealth to London. Nor was this the only reason for its warlike spirit. We find that almost all the armour which was then so important a means of defence came from the City. On hearing of the invasion of Louis the Dauphin, in the early part of the reign of Henry III., the merchants sent the King 60,000 coats of mail. The citizens took part in most of the expeditions to France under Edward III. and Henry V. ; 42 LONDON AFTERNOONS. and in the Wars of the Roses they were equally active, either on one side or other, or else in their own defence. Thus, during a meeting of the heads of the rival parties, attended by a largo number of followers, order was kept in the City by the mayor with 5,000 men completely armed, whilst three aldermen watched with another force of 2,000 during the night. Of all the City Com- panies, that of the Armourers was of the most importance, and even the great Edward himself was a member of it. Every King of England since his time has belonged to some City Company. Edward's French wars were always popular in the City, and the armourers no doubt derived great benefit from them. Iron in those days came from the hills and valleys of Sussex and Kent, which were full of small furnaces for extracting the ore from the red earth. Remains of their shallow pits and burnt-out fires are often met with ; and it may be of interest in this place to mention that Walter the Smith, otherwise known as Wat Tyler, or Hilliard, who in the early part of the reign of Richard II. headed the Kentish insurrection, was one of these iron-founders. Perhaps also we may note here that the dagger or sword in the City arms, generally supposed to have been granted by Richard to Sir William Wai worth for his assistance in putting down this rebellion, had been there long before, and was the emblem of St. Paul, the City's patron saint. When the Black Prince and his prisoner, John ; King of France, made their public entry into London after the battle of Poitiers, in 1356, we read that the London authorities met him at Southwark, gorgeously apparelled, and conducted him in state through the City to the Savoy ; but the most remarkable part of the show on that occasion was not so much the tapestry hanging from every window, the showers of roses, or the sanded streets, but LONDON LIFE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 43 the extraordinary quantity of arms bows, arrows, spears, and swords exhibited by the citizens in token of their warlike proclivities. It was at this time that Sir John Picard, the mayor, entertained four kings namely, those of England, France, Scotland, and Cyprus, at a banquet in the City. During the reign of Edward III. cannon were first used, and a manufactory established in the Tower by the King for powder for his engines " pulvis pro ingeniis suis" In 1346 we read of saltpetre and other ingredients being purchased pro gunnis. The last scene of the fourteenth century in London was long remembered. Towards the end of 1399, King Richard was at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire. News of his death, " through taking thought," as many said, came to London early in 1400. In March (the year did not end till the 25th) his body was brought to the Tower, and having been carried with great solemnity to St. Paul's, was shown to the people, " his head upon a black cushion and his visage open," on the 12th. Thence it was removed to King's Langley, where it rested till Henry V. had it brought to Westminster and laid beneath the sumptuous monument which Richard had made on the death of his Queen, Anne of Bohemia.* How different were the scenes in the street at that period from anything we are now acquainted with ! No sound of wheels, or at most the slow, lumbering waggon in which a great lady in bad health might choose to travel to or from her town residence ; none of the dense smoke to which modern Londoners are accustomed, so that the dresses of all ranks of people were much gayer than they are now. Here, a knight in plate armour and with his horse almost concealed under iron * See Chapter v., p. 64. 44 LONDON AFTERNOONS. trappings, jogs heavily and noisily over the pavement ; a page running by his side, a squire carrying his helmet behind him, and a long train of ferocious-looking soldiers, some on foot, some on horseback, but all clad in their lord's colours, following in single file on account of the narrowness of the streets ; there, a procession of white-robed monks, each with his face concealed in a black hood, leads the way to the burial of some eminent citizen, or conveys the sacrament to some dying penitent ; here, perhaps, the Lord Mayor, or a leading alderman, clad in a marone-coloured velvet robe, lined throughout with fur, and wearing a scarlet silk suit underneath, goes, attended by mace and sword bearers, whose office was no sinecure among the turbulent populace, to hold his court at Guildhall, or at Newgate ; there, tho shop of a herb-seller in Bucklersbury is besieged by a howling mob ; while its unhappy owner, suspected, perhaps, of complicity in witchcraft with the Lollards, Lord Cobham, and Queen Joanna, is led away to undergo that fatal ordeal which leaves no hope of escape. If he is innocent, he drowns ; if guilty, he floats, and is despatched by the stones and bludgeons of the crowd. 45 CHAPTER III. NEWGATE. Abolition of the Prison The Associations of Newgate The Name William the Chamberlain State of the Prison early in the Nineteenth Century The Sunday between Trial Friday and Execution Monday Gaol Fever Giltspur and other neighbouring Streets. THE precise reasons which induce the City authorities to demolish Newgate have not yet been made public. To the outsider it would sometimes appear as if every municipality and corporation, religknis or lay, was subject to periodical fits of destructiveness. As a prison, Newgate, no doubt, is antiquated ; but we shall probably see the present building succeeded by a smaller one for the safe custody of prisoners during the Sessions, and may ask without impertinence why the old prison could not have been a little altered and made suitable without absolute destruction. Many of the arguments against the removal of Temple Bar apply with greater force here. We are told, for instance, by innumerable writers that Temple Bar was the last of the City gates.- They forget, or never knew, that it never had been a City gate ; but Newgate is unquestionably one wing of a real City gate, having been built on the site of the southern portion of the ancient arched entrance to the City from Holborn. As to associations, also, Newgate is far more interesting 46 LONDON AFTERNOONS. than Temple Bar. It vies, in fact, with the Tower in the eminence of its involuntary inhabitants. Though it would be a mockery to say of the present edifice that it is orna- mental, it is undoubtedly one of the most satisfactory public buildings in London gloomy, strong, impressive, and with its object as plainly marked on it as if the word " prison " were stamped on even 7 stone. Dance, its architect, deserves the credit of having designed a perfectly simple, but perfectly suitable facade, the more so as, though it is three hundred feet long, it has no windows, except in the central portion, which is but thirty feet in width. Although the height is only fifty feet, the effect produced by the mere mass and outline is comparable to that of a Norman keep. The central lodge, with its numerous arched windows in five storeys, has been severely criticised ; but. without some such feature, the plainness of the rest of the front might have failed of its due effect. The statues, removed from the old gate, are somewhat incongruous, and festoons of fetters form a veiy lugubrious kind of ornament. The hundred and twenty years of its existence have seen many alterations and improvements of the interior, but have left the exterior substantially as it was when the new building was completed. The name of Newgate may be compared with that of Newport, at Lincoln. Both belong to the entrances of Roman cities. It may be too much to say that Newgate is the oldest of the London city gates, but it would be difficult to prove the greater antiquity of its rival, Bishops- gate. As a Roman gate it has the advantage, for the northern entrance to Roman London was some distance to the east of the site of the mediaeval Bishopsgate, while Newgate is very near the place where the Watling Street reached the City wall. When the Romans had diverted the old road at what is now the Marble Arch, so that it PRISONERS ON THE WAY TO NEWGATE. A HALT AT BAPTIST'S HEAD, ST. JOHN'S LANE. (From an Old Print.) NEWGATE. 47 no longer pursued the course of the modern Park Lane to the ford at Westminster, but turned towards what was then the newly constructed bridge at London, the place of the gate on the hill was determined by the place in the valley below of the bridge over the Fleet. The Hole- bourn took its name from its course among the high clay banks of Coldbath Fields ; at what we call Farringdon Street it turned south and became a tidal estuary, wide enough for ships, probably as large as any then built.* A Watergate may have existed at Ludgate, a name which denotes a postern, though there are certain indications to the contrary ; but the principal entrance to the later Roman London must have been by Newgate. If we examine a large scale map of the City, it will be seen that a bastion of unusual size must have stood here when the boundaries were fixed, perhaps before the thirteenth century. The wall ran straight from Ludgate north- ward; but at a point which we may fix upon as the site of the Roman gate there is a deep bow on the map, as if to take in a large fortification. The roadway from the bridge over the Fleet below did not run straight into the gate, but had to make a turn under this bastion of the wall, as at Pompeii and other places. The gate where the road passed through it faced probably to the north, not to the west. A fragment of the road which crossed the City diagon- ally from Newgate towards the great bridge over the Thames still bears its ancient name; but even here the Watling Street is not quite on the original site, which is more distinctly marked by Budge Row, that part of the street which crossed the corner of Cheap, where budge, or rabbit skin for fur, was sold. The exact date of the alteration to which Newgate owes its * See p. 58. 48 LONDON* AFTERNOONS. existence will now, in all probability, never bo known. It must have been after the Roman occupation of Britain, but that is all we can say with certainty. Of Newgate itself, however, it will be safe to assert that it was first built when the Romans made their new wall to take in, not only the ancient city, but also ita suburbs. Even here, too, the exact date eludes us, but it must have been between the time of Julian the Apostate and that of Valentinian, or in the ten years between A.D. 3f0 and 370. To account for the name " New " as applied to this ancient gate we must come nearly a millennium further down the stream of history. A mistake of Stow's on this head has been repeated again and again. He asserts that the enlargement of St. Paul's so obstructed the high- way that passengers had to go round by Paternoster Row to reach Ludgate. In reality the enlargement eastward of St. Paul's did obstruct the Watling Street and cut it off from its western extremity, now Newgate Street. But though this synchronises very well with the re- building of the old gate towards Holborn in the reign of Henry I., or Stephen, it by no means follows that it was caused by it. The road through Newgate existed before St. Paul's itself. But Stow, and many other writers since his time, believed that Ludgate was called after King Lud ; just as some writers believe or affect to believe that Holborn means Oldlx>ume, and if anyone nowadays is of this opinion, all the other improbabilities and inconsistencies of the story are as nothing. It is curious to oliserve that, if the " New " gate is one of the two oldest, the " Aid " gate is absolutely the newest of all. Newgate was willed " new " with reference to an older gate, Wcstgate, on the same site. Alegate, or Algate, which was built at the time XEWGATE. 49 when a bridge over the Lea at Stratford made an exit necessary to the eastward of Bishopsgate, probably points to its having been thrown open, by the Canons who made it, to all. The spelling " Aldgate " is modern, and, in any case, cannot mean " eald " or " old." For a time Westgate was called Chamberlain's Gate, until, this Chamberlain himself having been forgotten, his gate was called from its new fabric Newgate, a name which occurs as early as 1285. The Chamberlain was probably the same William the Chamberlain who held of the King at the time of the Domesday survey (1087) a vineyard at " Holeburne," near the site of the Charterhouse, and therefore not very far from the gate. The Roman fashion of making gaols of gates was imported into Britain from the East. The City Chamber- lain still possesses a special lock-up, and at the Conquest he may have used this gate for the purpose. Ludgate was also a prison a "free prison," says Stow, referring, of course, to its use for the freemen of the City. Newgate was, to some extent, appropriated to the use of the in- habitants of the adjoining county of Middlesex, which, about the time of the rebuilding, had been granted in farm to the citizens. The inconvenience of the gaol, as popula- tion increased, caused the complaints which appear in the pages of every I/mdon chronicle. So far back as 1419 there is an entry in the Letter-book of the Corpora- tion, quoted by Riley, in which mention is made of the f ostid and corrupt atmosphere of " the heynouse gaol of Newgate." Ludgate had been alx)lished as a prison, and the result was that many " citizens and other re- putable persons " were committed to Newgate, and died, " who might have been living, it is said, if they had remained in Ludgate, abiding in peace there." Sir llichard Whittingtoii was mayor at this time, and three E '>u LONDON AFTERNOONS. yours later, at his death, loft money for the improve- ment of Newgate, " seeing that every person is sovereignly bound to support, and l>e tender of, the lives of men." Whittington's Newgate was burnt by the Gordon rioters the present prison, which had been founded a few years before, being already in part completed 011 the south side of the gate. The Surgeons' Hall, so celebrated for alleged resuscitations an authentic case occurred in 1587 stood a little further to the south in the Old Bailey, but it was now removed, and a part of the Sessions House stands on the site. A portion, how- ever, of the older building long survived, being the " condemned cells." They had a right to the name in several senses ; but, though every humane person, and many besides, spoke or wrote of them with horror, the practice of hanging for felony declined before they were removed or improved. One writer discloses a state of things hardly credible even eighty or ninety years ago. The convicts were crowded like sheep in a pen. That these " unhappy beings were not victims to the most malignant diseases" he attributes to the kindness of the late keeper, "who fre- quently assisted their wants at liis own expense." This last sentence suggests conditions horrible to think of, even now. "When Mr. Nield visited this prison, one-half of the prisoners, particularly the women, were miserably poor, and covered (scarcely covered) with rags. This does not appear to be so much the case just at this time." Such was the state of Newgate so lately as 1815. After several even more shocking details, the writer goes on to say that, in order not to hurry poor wretches out of the world, iu strict conformity to the letter of the law, after twenty- four hours, the trials for capital crimes took place on NEWGATE. 51 Fridays, as Sunday was not counted a legal day. There is a curious plate here reproduced in the Microcosm of Pugin and Eowlandson, which represents the interior of the chapel in Newgate on the Sunday intervening between trial Friday and execution Monday. It shows eleven felons, two of them women, in a kind of central pew painted black. In the middle of the pew is a table. On the table is a coffin. This was in 1809. A few years earlier, in September, 1801, the Sheriffs were thanked, by an advertisement in the newspapers (reprinted, Times, 14th September, 1901), for their humane conduct. The female prisoners in Newgate speak of their benevolence, "through a long and scarce season," in " alleviating their infelicity." The whole paragraph is made up of long words; but it shows plainly that to bring " a ray of comfort to the afflicted mind of the otherwise despairing captive " was considered an unusual act. In one of Johnson's letters is an account of the burning of the old gate house prison. There were not above a hundred Protestants at work, but they were left unmolested. There were no guards to prevent them from carrying out their design, " without trepidation, as men lawfully employed in full day. Such," reflects Dr. Johnson, "is the cowardice of a commercial place." It was in the older building, then destroyed, that gaol fever made such terrible ravages. In 1750 the Lord Mayor and two of the judges, and others to the number of sixty, died of it after the Sessions. This is the less wonderful as we read that the prison was in- adequately supplied with \vater. The new prison was at first little better in this respect. Lord George Gordon himself died in it of gaol fever thirteen years after his followers had destroyed the older buildings. Much 52 LONDON AFTERNOON'S. improvement ter8ons might be seen in the two wards connected with the Tress Yard, and congratulates humanity on the fact that none of them wore irons. It was only in 1817 that any classi- fication of the prisoners was attempted. The coffin at the " condemned sermon " was disused about the same time. Mrs. Fry's exertions on behalf of the female prisoners resulted in great improvements in their con- dition. She taught them to make stockings and other articles, that by selling them they might improve their prison fare. What that was may Ije guessed when it is mentioned as a matter for satisfaction by a visitor in 1825 that a regular allowance of food is "now" made out of City funds. The alteration of this corner of the City in the past fifty years has been very great. Giltepur Street, which in the fifteenth century was a place where armour might be rej>aired when a tournament was going on in the smooth- field or Smithfield adjoining, was latterly best known by the Sheriff's Compter, a prison which stood on the north side of Newgate. The entrance to the great prison nearest to Newgate Street was known as the Debtor's Door. Here, from 1783, when Tyburn as a place for the public hanging of criminals had been abolished, a scaffold was erected and the sentence of the law was executed after every Sessions of the monthly Court. Of the scenes which took place here many books treat so fully that I need not dwell on them. The antiquity and persistence of tavern signs has often been remarked. The "King of Denmark" will probably survive Newgate itself, which gave it notoriety. But there are more cheerful and in most respects NEWGATE. 53 more interesting associations with the street names of this district. At Green Arbour Court Goldsmith lived in 1758, before he removed to Fleet Street. In those days the descent to the valley of the Fleet was very steep, and such places as Breakneck Steps and Seacoal Lane led down to the quays fronting the Fleet Prison. This stood on the ground now occupied by the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street. To understand the " scenery " of Besant and Rice's story, " The Chaplain of the Fleet," it is needful, nowadays, to thread Fleet Lane and its affluent, New Court, no longer noisome alleys, but clean and wholesome enough, the headquarters of printing houses and paper factories, retaining few signs of the ancient condition of the region when it bordered the open tidal and muddy river, reeking with the sewage of Coldbath Fields and Clerkenwell, washed down to it by the Hole-Bourne. A few traces of old carving, like that over the entrance to Wheatsheaf Yard, or a street name like Turnagain Lane or Bear Alley, recall " the good old times " when the debtors begged at the door of their frowning home behind the prison bars, and the city walls looked down from the Old Bailey and the Newgate on the cliff above. CHAPTER IV. ANCIENT RIVERS. Why the Thumps haa Income the most Important of Rivers The Site of London HilU and Brooks The Highest Ground The Fleet The Hole-bourne The Wells Tyburn The Gallows The Westbourne " Bournes " in the City. THE causes which have made the Thames the most important river in the world are many and various. Similar causes are at work enlarging the great cities on the Mersey, the Clyde, and Belfast Lough : while still more favourable circumstances have produced no such results as yet at Limerick, or Milford, or the Forth. The early trade of London was, no doubt, largely influenced by two kinds of security, both rare in those times. Since the reign of King Alfred London has enjoyed immunity from war. It has been secure from invasion. No enemy has Ixttieged it with success. No other European capital has escaped siege and capture, not even Rome, in the course of a thousand years. The other kind of security was from the elements. The Londoners were noted as expert sailors when we first hear of them ; nor was this all : a large part of their maritime trade was carried on in land-locked waters. The Londoner of a thousand yeai-s ago could take his largest as well as his smallest boat from London Bridge to within ten miles from the French coast in smooth ANCIENT RIVERS. 55 water all the year round. His harbours were never frozen, or so seldom that frost had not been reckoned among the dangers of the deep. He sailed down the Thames to Eeculver, where he entered the Wantsome; or, leaving the main stream of the Thames at Sheerness, he could make his way by the Swale ; from Reculver he passed by the Wantsome to Ebbsfleet, near Richborough. Here he reached a wider passage, sheltered by the GoodwinSi which seem to have been islands before the Norman Conquest. He lay behind them in safety till a favourable wind and tide took him across some eight or ten miles of open sea, after which he reached anchorage again. The Londoners in Alfred's time were already bold sailors, and the English Kings conferred special privileges on those who fared frequently across. They were accounted worthy of thane right. Their skill must have been shown chiefly in understanding the winds, tides, and currents of the narrow channel. The natural features of the district now covered by the County of London may be rapidly surveyed. The great flood of bricks and mortar which pours over them renders it often difficult for us to distinguish field from wood, or even hill from valley. Rivers and ravines are masked, marshes are hidden. The brooks run far underground. The flats are elevated, and the heights depressed. The tide of buildings surges on, swallowing up in its course fields and gardens, parks and woods ; uprooting treesi blasting flowers ; shutting out even the air and the winds of heaven. There is something appalling in the resistless growth of London. Middlesex was nearly eaten up. Surrey and Kent and Essex have been largely contaminated. Still the city spreads, like moths fretting a garment. The old form of the country, as it lay bare to the sky, is wholly lost. It is overwhelmed and obliterated. Even when 56 LONDON AFTERNOONS. the houses fall, and London lx>comes niiuuuH heaj)8, the old geography will not. l restored. The ancient rivers will not How in their old channels. The valleys and the hills will have alike disappeared, and men will some day talk of the plains of London as we talk of the plains of Bahylon., If we could look on the site of Jxmdon as it was Ixjfore oiir city was made, we should not know it. Who can define the extent and the boundaries of the fields of St. Martin and St. Giles, or tell us where the mount stood in Mount Street, or the conduit in Conduit Street ? We have all a vague idea that there is a stream running under Buckingham Palace. We have Iwen in the habit of taking strangers to Fanyer Alley, as to the " highest ground in the City," and we do not yet forget the steep ascent of Holborn Hill. But our infor- mation seldom extends much further. We are un- acquainted with the soil in our own street. We have no notion how many feet it is alx>ve or below the level of the Thames. We have never remarked whether Park Lane slopes to the north or to the south. We have not the slightest idea over what river Battle Bridge was builtj nor why wo should have to go down steps from Thread- needle Street to Broad Street. All these things depend more or loss directly on the physical geography of the region which we have covered over and disguised with pavements and rows of houses. The London district, at least the more thickly in- habited portion of it, consists of a series of low hills rising from the sloping bank of the Thames. On the north or left side, they were in the counties of Middlesex and Essex. On the south or right bank, they were in Surrey and Kent, except from the Temple to the Tower on the left, and a small division round St. Saviour's on the right, which were, and are still, in the City. These hills are ANCIENT RIVERS. 57 not iii lines uniformly parallel with the Thames, which flows from south to north where it passes AVestminster, and flows from west to east past London. The hills are divided by brooks or bournes, now nearly all hidden in tunnels and sewers. Here and there the ground is flat. There is a long tract of level ground south of Netting Hill and west of the river Thames, where the elevation is very slight, and where in places there is even a depres- sion. On this tract an enormous population is now gathered. The villages of Kensington and Brompton were formerly separated from the water's edge by an unwholesome morass, but even this has been built upon ; and Pimlico, which contains some of the worst, contains also some of the best, streets in London. We are surprised to notice the great differences of level and also of soil which occur. While north of the Park, hi places, the ground rises to nearly a hundred feet above the sea, at Millbank it only stands twelve feet above the river. The highest ground in the City is in Cannon Street, where it reaches sixty feet, and not in Newgate Street, where it ia only fifty-eight ; for the old rhyme of Panyer Alley is untrue, like so many other things we have believed in from our youth up. The slope falls rapidly towards the east. Stepney is only thirty-five feet above the river, and a short distance beyond we are again at the level of Brompton. But if we look further into the matter we find that the slope from the Thames and its adjacent morass is not uniform, but is broken into a number of different eminences. If we could divest Oxford Street, for instance, of its houses, we might see that the whole line of thoroughfare from Newgate to Netting Hill goes up and down hill alternately not less than three times. Instead of a long piece of almost level road, bordered on 58 LONDON* AFTERNOON'S. either aide by houses, we should see a steep hill when we hud crossed the Fleet, round which the river would run on the north and east, and, arriving at the summit, should find ourselves on a ridge elevated perhujjs as much as eighty feet above the Thames, towards which, on the left, there would be a continuous slope, while on the right a valley of alight depth, but of considerable steepness, would mark the north-westward winding of the Fleet. The valley, of which the head would be at Euston Square, would correspond with a similar depression on the west of a large tract of the densest clay known to geolo- gists. This tract is now the llegent's Park, and from it the principal streams of which we speak take their source. The Hole-Bourne on the east, emerging as the Fleet near Blackfriars Bridge ; the Ty-Bourne on the west ; the Kil or Cool-Bourne beyond it ; smaller streams, as the Milford, near Temple Bar, and another where Ivy Bridge stood in the Strand, all either How directly from it, or are largely fed by the waters gathered in its tenacious grasp. They still run, though hidden from sight. The Hole-Bourne is the largest and most important of these ancient rivers. The name, which occurs in other parts of England, where our forefathers would describe a brook which burrowed its way through steep banks, like the Holing-Bourne, or Hollingbourne, in Kent, the Holbeck in Nottinghamshire, and the Hoi- brook in Suffolk, has l)een interpreted in various ways : especially by Stow, who, as I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, says it is a corruption of Old-Bourne : a view hardly worth refuting, only that I saw it quoted with approval quite lately. The Hole-Bourne, or Hoi- born, marked ita early course by many such cuttings as that named hi " Black Mary's Hole," a reference, probably, to one of the wooden " Madonnas " which ANCIENT RIVERS. 59 were destroyed at the Reformation and probably commemorated in St. Mary's Benedictine Nunnery ; also by Hockley " in the Hole," a garden or place of public amusement in the deep valley, which made it convenient for the spectators of bear-baiting, dog-fighting, and other pastimes. Dotted round on both sides of the brook were many wells, such as Clerken well, God's well, Show well, Bagnigge's well, Sadler's well, and, far to the westward of the rest, Holy well and St. Clement's well. No wonder the summit of the principal hill on the left bank was denominated Cold-bath Fields. If we follow the old roadway of Holborn, we find it reaches its highest point on the ridge once known by a pond, as Ridgemere or Rugmere, near the Regent's Circus. Thence to Bird Street we find a slope which, if we could strip off the granite and bricks, would be seen to be part of a long ravine extending from the church of St. Mary, southward to Westminster, the little brook which marks its course being still acknowledged in the name of the parish, St. Mary " le bourne," and in that of Brook Street and of Engine Street, now called Brick Street, Piccadilly, where a waterwheel or " engine " was turned by the stream. This was the original Tyburn. It is not very easy to trace the depression caused by the bourne. The windings of Marylebone Lane perhaps represent the earlier turnings of the stream along whose banks it ran. At Stratford Place, centuries ago, there was a conduit connected with the stream, and standing on its left bank, and this is still the boundary between the territories of the Corporation and those of the Duke of Westminster. Another was found, a few years ago, near North Audley Street. There were several more all belonging, originally, to the City, which had its water supply from these springs as far back as 60 LONDON AFTEBNOONa tlie thirteenth century. The brook turns to the left on crossing Oxfoi-d Street, where it was tapj>ed by tlie engineers of the " Twopenny Tube " and caused much delay ; tlien, running tatween Davies and South Molton Streets, it crosses Berkeley Square, and, winding round the Imse of a mount, and feeding another conduit, it turns almost at right angles past Hay Hill, and thence under Lansdowne House by Brick Street into the Green Park, across which its path is marked, especially at sunset, by a line of mist. Emerging very near, if not actually under, the sjx)t on which Buckingham Palace stands, it turns again to the right, and finally falls into the Thames at Westminster, forming in the last few hundred yards the delta of Thorney, as shown in Hollar's view of Tothill Fields. In another chapter I have tried to describe its lower course. This brook was undoubtedly the original Tyburn : and the place of Longbeard's death in 1194 cannot have been far distant from Stratford Place. So lonely was the neighbourhood that, St. John's Church having been repeatedly robbed, Bishop Braybrook removed it from the foot of Marylebone Lane to the High Street early in the fifteenth century, though, with characteristic immobility, the vestry remained, where it still stands, close to the original site. From this point, again, there is a considerable ascent, the highest ridge being just opposite the Marble Arch ; and here the traditional Tyburn, the bourne in particular from which so many travellers never returned, has usually been placed. A distinction should be made by those who pursue the subject. It is usually assumed that a " gibbet " marked a place of execution. It is just the contrary. A permanent gibbet, on which the body of a malefactor hung in chains, might be set up almost anywhere. An execution of a death ANCIENT RIVERS. 61 sentence always took place on the King's highway or on an adjacent common or piece of open land. Such a piece appears to have been at the place where the western road crossed the brook ; and another at the cross roads near the Tyburn Turnpike. The sandy and gravelly soil must have been found unsuitable for cultivation. The hill was probably little more than a bare heath, favourable, no doubt, except under peculiar cir- cumstances, to human life ; for, standing as it does almost a hundred feet above the Thames, surrounded on all sides by valleys, more or less depressed, and bounded on the east and west by the Tyburn and the Westbourne, the hill, although without a name of its own, has always been remarkable in later times for its low death-rate, a blessing duly acknowledged by the inhabitants, who built St. Luke's Church in Nutford Place to commemorate the absence of cholera from the district during the visitation of 1849. If we descend the hill from the Marble Arch, we come near Lancaster Gate to the Westbourne at a place known as Baynard's Watering. A tavern, appro- priately named the "Swan," has long marked the site. The course of the brook from Hampstead is easily traced, but it seldom appears above ground except between this " Swan " and another " Swan" in Sloane Street. In Kensington Gardens it was known, from its erratic course, as the Serpentine. Queen Caroline dug a straight canal for it, and thence it flowed through a part of Hyde Park. Emerging at Knightsbridge, it ran a very winding course, dividing the manors of Ebury and Chelsea, and is conveyed in an iron aqueduct across Sloane Square Station. It falls into the Thames near Chelsea, being known for the last part of its course as the Grosvenor Canal, through which at low tide the flow is very perceptible. <>2 LONDON AFTERNOONS. If, instead of turning west at the Fleet Iwlow Ilollwrn Hill, we try to examine the geographical features of the Uity itself, the difficulties in our way are even greater. The hill of which St. Paul's is the crown never rises much more than half the height of that on which the gallows stood at Tyburn. And some fifteen or twenty feet of even tlu's moderate elevation must be accounted for by the successive destructions of a series of cities which have stood on the same site, and which have contributed to the salubrity of their modern representative by raising it on a deep layer of ashes and adventitious soil of all kinds. Two streams crossed the site of the City. Both have disappeared, more completely than even the Fleet. The Langbourne only survives in the name of the ward through which it ran, and Slier bourne Lane marks its later course before it fell into the Thames at Swan Wharf. It has been suggested that the Lang and Shire, or Slier, bournes formed two sides of the old moat of the inner Homan London or Pre- torium. If so, Wallbrook would be the third. The Wallbrook also had at least two names, whether as the Dour it gave a name to Dowgate, and whether as the Wallbrook it really marked the western boundary. Barges at one time sailed up it at high water as far as Bucklersbury, and a boat-hook of Roman make has been found in Coleman Street. Bridges crossed it at the same period and later, one of them connecting the two streets which are now the two ends of Cannon Street. The ship which formed the vane of St. Mildred's in the Poultry has been referred to the stream which flowed under the church ; St. Mary Bothaw has been explained as St. Mary Boat- haw, St. Mary Woolnoth as St. Mary Woollenhithe, and the course of the brook may be traced across Princes Street, behind the Bank, along Broad Street, until, like ANCIENT RIVERS. 63 the Langbourne, it reaches Finsbury. The marshy ground in Moortields is to the City what the Regent's Park clay is to the West End ; and though Threadneedle Street is thirteen and Broad Street six feet above the ancient level of the land, they preserve in a remarkable manner evidences of their respective positions when suburban villas lined the banks of the Wallbrook, and corn grew upon Cornhill, and when the whole site of modern London was traversed by these long-hidden and ancient rivers. CHAPTER V. KING'S LANGLKY. The Tomb of au Ancestor of Edward VII. A lioyal Hunting Lodge The Burial of Richard II. Piers Gavestoue A Rich Priory- -The Church of All Saiuta. TUEKK are BO many Langleys in England that it is not very cosy to distinguish one from another. But King's Langley, though it has been the subject of a series of historical mistakes, has claims on our notice sujx-rior to those of any other Langley. In the church of All Saints, almost forgotten and until lately long in want of repair, is the tomb of an ancestor of King Edward VII., the Edmund Duke of York whose great-grandson in the male line sat on the throne as Edward IV. Its ornamentation consists only of a row of shields, but the effect is so good that no one can doubt, if only on artistic grounds, that it deserves preservation, if not, perhaps, a moderate measure of restoration. It was spared at the dissolution of the monasteries, and removed to the parish church, where it formerly blocked up the north side of the chancel. There was no side chapel into which it could be put. Finally, a little chantry was made, a place better suited for it, and the monument was carefully removed into it in 1878, the late Queen placing a stained-glass window over the tomb of her ancestor. The dukedom of York was conferred upon Prince KING'S LANGLEY. 65 Edmund in August, 1385. He was already Earl of Cam- bridge and a Knight of the Garter, being the fifth son of King Edward III. and Queen Philippa, and he was born here in June, 1341. Through his second son, Richard, who married his cousin, Lady Anne Mortimer, eventually heiress of Edward III., he became ancestor of the Yorkist Kings, Edward IV., Edward V., and Eichard III., and of Queen Elizabeth, the wife of Henry VII. It is interesting in the light of recent events to reflect that this was the first introduction of the dukedom of York into the Eoyal Family. The tomb is not only the monument of a king's son, but it is almost the sole tangible relic in the place of the time when a Eoyal manor-house stood on the neighbouring hill, with the richest friary in England beside it. Both have been so completely swept away that a careful search only reveals the built-up arch of a gateway in a farmhouse, and a building, locally known as " King John's Palace," and long used as a pigsty, which is still supported on a row of pointed arches. Whether these remains belonged to the manor-house or to the priory it is impossible now to say. The friars, at their first coming, were lodged near the parish church, where Edward III. gave them a garden. Then the King allowed them to build themselves a house in the park, and finally in 1316 he gave them the manor-house itself. Yet later kings must have built themselves a hunting lodge close by, and we afterwards find them living there. The building must in fact have been very extensive and the park which surrounded it large, and it is easy to see, by a walk through the fields in the neighbourhood, that they have been broken up andj[enclosed^comparatively recently. King's Langley lies about twenty miles from London on the road to Berkhampstead. In these days the North- 66 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Western Railway passes through the valley, and cuts what was once the Long Ia by the river Gade, or Bui- bourne, into small portions The hills rise on either side, Abbot's Langley being high up on the eastern slope, and King's Langley about half-way up the western, which was crowned five hundred years ago by the manor-house and the Dominican church. St. Albans, to whose abbot the eastern Langley be- longed, is only six miles away, and Berkhampstead is the same distance to the north. The situation was therefore eminently suitable for a Royal resting-place on the journey to London, from either the great castle or the great abbey. Like Berkhampstead itself, it belonged at the time of the Domesday Survey to Earl Morton, and may have been later included in the possessions of Richard, King of the Romans. But Henry III. is the first king whose name is connected with it; and if it once formed part of the lands of the Duchy of Cornwall, it was certainly included afterwards in those of the Duchy of Lancaster. Alienated under the Stuarts, the park enclosed, the manor-house dismantled, the friary suppressed, and its church so completely destroyed that its very site is now conjectural, there still lingers about Langley a memory of its ancient Royal dignity, and anyone who cares to hunt up its history will find it the scene of many remarkable and more obscure events. We may conclude that it was well wooded ; for though, under the Earl, it only answered for a hide and a half of arable land, there was food under the oaks and beeches for two hundred and forty hogs. We may also suppose that, being so near the much more extensive Royal residence of Berkhampstead, it was only an occasional dwelling for the King, and probably before the reign of Edward II. it was little more than a hunting seat. But it was used sufficiently often to make the name frequent among the KING'S LANGLEY. 67 charters dated in the fourteenth century ; and, for a time at least, an English King lay buried in the friars' church. Though the body of Richard II. lay at Langley for fourteen years^it was eventually removed "with reaverence and solempnnytie," and conveyed to the tomb which Richard had made in his own lifetime, to " be buryed by Queen Anna his wyfe." And Richard's godson, the grandfather of Edward IV., though, like his father, he was probably born at Langley, yet leaves little or no mark upon the history of the place. The tomb of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, his father, and the fact that " Piers Gavestone, Earl of Cornwall/' was buried there and never exhumed, are the chief points of historical association remaining. Both Edmund and Piers were buried hi the church of the Priory ; the monument of the King's son, King Eel ward VII. 's ancestor, remains, and his body was probably transferred with the monument to the parish church. The covering slab was raised in 1878, when it was found to contain the skeletons of a man and two women, probably those of the Duke, of Isabel of Castile, his first wife, and of Anne, the wife of his second son : but this last identification is a mere guess. The thirteen shields of arms, three of which were hidden before by the east wall, showing the birth, title, and marriage of the Duke, are, from an artistic point of view, well worthy of more than a passing glance. In the fourteenth century, when they were carved, heraldry was still a living art. As for Gavestone, it is difficult to say that he was ever at Langley in his lifetime. Some of the chroniclers, and Knyghton among the number, assert that the Priory was founded by Edward II., expressly to provide continual 68 LONDON AFTERNOONa prayer, pro animn dicti Petri. But a comparison of dates forbids the possibility of this assertion being true. Another mistake regarding the foundation may be found in Dugdale. Ho speaks of Langley as having been founded by one " Robert de Helle," a baron. But no such name occurs among the list of peers, and no such person ever owned land at this particular Langley. Edward's foun- dation was certainly the first here. A third question, which is not without interest, may be noticed in this place. According to a record preserved by Rymer, Edward gave a Langley to Henry, Lord Percy. But which Langley ? Probably not this one, for when, after Gavestone's betrayal by Percy at York, and his subsequent execution at Warwick, Edward sent a warrant against Percy to the Governor of York, and seized his goods, we read of no forfeiture of this estate, though immediately afterwards we find it in the King's hands. There would have been a fine irony, no doubt, in seizing Percy's manor and giving it to the friars to pray for the soul of the man whom Percy had done to his death. But the facts are against it, and the church was built and consecrated in the same year that Gavestone suffered, and probably before June 19, the date usually, if doubtfully, assigned for the tragedy of Blacklow Hill ; while the body of the favourite was not brought to it until two years later. The grant of the manor-house hi 1316 may have been in order to make an addition to either the church or the friary, in which case a fresh house for the King's use was probably built. But, except that we know the church to have stood westward of the house, and that we can still see the gateway, so that we may safely place the site of the church in an orchard near the road, on the very summit of the hill, where bones have been found, we can do little but guess at the exact localities. KING'S L ANGLE Y. 69 Speed reckons the revenues of the Priory at 150 a year, which would make it the wealthiest house of the Dominicans in England at the dissolution. Queen Mary endeavoured to restore it by placing a community of nuns in the old building. But under Elizabeth the nuns were dispersed, and the house granted to Edward Grimston, who seems to have taken effectual measures to prevent any future restoration. By what happy chain of events the tomb of the Duke of York was re- moved and preserved is not known. As Queen Elizabeth had views on the subject of the Royal dignity, and as Edmund of Langley was the paternal ancestor of Elizabeth of York, it may have been owing to her direct intervention that the monument was rescued amid the general destruction. At the present day King's Langley has the forsaken and forgotten air common to so many Hertfordshire villages. Royalty has departed from a county once notable for its Royal houses. John of Gaunt lived at Hertford, the Black Prince at Berkhampstead, and the Duke of York at Langley, all possibly at the very same time. But now the manor of Hertford is in private hands, and the Duke of Cornwall and York, though the site of the castle of Berkhampstead still belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall, has, in all, only thirteen acres of land in Hertfordshire, with an annual rental of 5. King's Langley ceased to be the King's in 1628. The church is in good repair, but has been lately much too severely " restored." It abounds in monuments, and that of Duke Edmund in the chancel used to be faced at the other side by the equally imposing tomb of Sir William Glascocke, a successful lawyer, who, though he seems to have lived in Essex, desired to be buried here. His tomb has been displaced, and is^in the north aisle. The 70 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Duke's monument is now behind a screen ; and stands north and south. The window presented by Queen Victoria repeats the coata-of-arms. Another altar tomb, long traditionally assigned to Gavestone, supports the effigies of a knight of the Verney family, one of whom seems to have had the custody of the King's house. It was very possibly brought from the friars' church, and, like the Duke's, bears marks of having travelled. There are several brasses on the floor, and some quaint inscriptions occur on the church walla, both inside and out. At the west end hangs a proclama- tion relating to the selection of children for " The Heal- ing," as performed by Charles II., and there is a good peal of bells. On the whole, the church is worth a visit, and a walk over the hill may enable the modern traveller to form an idea of the time when the King's hunting grounds extended with little interruption from Berkhampstead to Westminster, and even of the still remoter time when the Wat-ling Street ran through woods for thirty or forty miles from London. CHAPTER VI. OLD ST. PAUL'S. London in the year One Thousand Foundation of Old St. Paul's Its Secular Constitution The Cloister an Afterthought The Folkmote Bell Tower Hollar's Engravings The Tallest Spire in Christendom The Monuments "Inigo Jones, Esquire " His Portico. IT was universally believed in England that the world would come to an end with the year 1000. How the exact year 1000 was to be determined did not greatly trouble the simple-minded thinkers of the period. The odd " 4," which Bishop Lloyd added to the received date of the Christian Era, had not been so much as mentioned. The ten thousand years of Professor Petrie had not been added to Lloyd's "4." That the year when B.C. was changed into A.D. might have been miscalculated was an idea that never occurred to anybody. So it came to pass that there was a general awakening to activity, among other things in building, and especially in church building, as soon as the eleventh century was well begun. In London, within the old Roman walls, this revival was checked by three things which followed each other very closely. Men had not recovered the Danish in- cursions, and had by no means recognised that they were at an end. Next came the Norman Conquest, and still more the change for the worse in the Conqueror's policy 72 LONDON JLFTKRNOONa; which marked the close of his reign. These troubles prolonged the tension. The uneasiness still prevailed when the eleventh century A.u. had also come to an end. A third revival, more clearly expressed, came in with the dawn of the twelfth century, but only to be a third time and most disastrously checked, at least for the citizens, by the Great Fire. But for another and still greater fire, that of 1666, it was remembered by that name and might be remembered still. The Great Fire of 1136 was superseded as a national calamity by the later conflagration, but for five hundred years dwelt in the popular memory, and led to even greater changes in the city. To this date, before the middle of the twelfth century, we must ascribe the almost complete re-arrangement of parishes, of which I have something to say elsewhere.* It was from this event that what we have heard of as Old St Paul's could be dated. The tallest spire in Christendom was not yet built, nor did the east end of the church with its famous rose window look out over Cheap till long after. But the rebuilding of what before the Conquest had probably been a heterogeneous pile of wooden construction, thatched with reeds, and patched here and there with small portions of stone and brick, com- menced after 1136 to be a settled and very ambitious design, which went on for centuries beginning with Bomanesque, and ending, so far as it can be described as final, with Romanesque again under Inigo Jones. St. Paul's was a cathedral of the old foundation. In fact, the constitution of this, the earliest example, was followed in all the later churches founded for secular canons throughout England. At Canterbury, the monks of Christ Church were regular canons, and had no separate^estates, See.p,3l23.jJ t iB OLD ST. PAUL'S. 73 but^were bound together by regulations and inhabited the domestic buildings adjoining the cathedral. At St. Paul's the canons were not bound by monastic vows ; many of them were married men before the reign of Henry III., and there were at first few domestic buildings. The Palace of the Bishop, the deanery, a brew-house, a bake-house these, with their respective offices, comprise nearly all the separate buildings of which we hear before the thirteenth century. In 1332 the Dean and Chapter resolved as an after- thought to build a cloister and a Chapter house, in order, they said, that their cathedral church might resemble others. They took for this purpose the garden of the Dean and Chapter on the south side of the church. The church itself had meanwhile attained great dimensions. The old Norman nave had been supplemented by a choir of Pointed architecture. The east end was very lofty, and formed a conspicuous object from the market place. The east window was circular above, but the lower part was what is now called " cottage headed," and separated by a string course from the rose window above. Below was a crypt of unusual size, for the use of the parish of St. Faith, the older church of which had been removed to make way for the extension of the choir. East of the church were a belfry tower, a gateway into West Cheap, and a wall, all on ground which had formerly belonged to the citizens. Here at the sound of the bell they used to assemble in Folkmote, while west and south-west was another space where Lord Fitzwalter exercised them with their arms and their banners. The name of Knight- rider Street, which was probably derived from the sign of a local tavern, marks the spot for us. Both places were, with the King's leave, encroached upon by the cathedral. The Folkmote had to assemble in Smithfield 74 LONDON AFTERNOONS. outside the wall, and probably the military drill and training went on in the same place before the establishment of the Artillery Garden, still further out. Hollar made a large number of engravings of old St. Paul's for Dugdale's " History," and Payne Fisher, in the time of Cromwell, catalogued the tombs and monuments- There is no other vanished cathedral so familiar to us. The Norman nave and transepts, the Pointed transept aisles, the great buttresses of the tower and the choir, the little cloister with the tall chapter house in its midst, may all be seen in these prints. The western towers were small, but massive, and one of them was the bishop's lock-up for ecclesiastical offenders, and was known, like one at Lambeth Palace, as the Lollards' Tower. But the great glory of the building, and indeed of London and the kingdom at large, was the central tower with its spire,* the tallest ever built before or since. It rose five hundred and twenty feet from the pavement, being crowned with a ball and cross. The ball was made a receptacle for relics, such as a portion of the true cross ; and over them was a weathercock in the shape of an eagle. In 1498, " the crosse with the bolle and egell " was hallowed with great and solemn observances. The length of the cross from the ball to the eagle was 15 feet 6 inches, but whether this was in addition to the height of the spire we do not know. The spire unfortunately was of timber, covered with " slate," or small pieces of wood, and became in time highly combustible. It was struck by lightning, as is supposed, in 1561, and was burnt, together with * It may be well to warn the reader that Longman's account of the spire in his " Three Cathedrals " is incorrect in several important particulars, as the late Bishop Stubbs and Dr. Sparrow Simpson both pointed out from ancient manuscript views. MONUMENT OF SIR CHRISTOPHER HATTON IN OLD ST PAUL'S. OLD ST. PAUL'S. 75 the timber roofs of the transepts and part of the nave. The principal monuments in Old St. Paul's are described by Fisher and others. I need only name a few. A tablet to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney was in the north aisle of the choir, and near it one to his father-in- law, Sir Francis Walsingham. In the south aisle was a great monument to Sir Christopher Hatton, which oc- casioned a not very brilliant epigram, reported and probably composed by Stow, as to Philip and Francis having no tomb, while the " great Christopher takes all the room." The view given by Dugdale was engraved by Hollar for the "History of St. Paul's." It fills a full page, but appears from a manuscript volume of drawings of monu- ments, executed for Dugdale in 1641 by William Sedgwick, and now in the possession of the Earl of Winchilsea, to have been " abridged," many features being omitted to bring it within the limits of a page. A few of the monuments, which were very numerous, survived the destruction of the building and are now carefully preserved in the cathedral. Among them is that of John Donne, Dean hi the reign of King James I. and Charles I., who died before the Rebellion. The sculptor represented him in a shroud apparently rising from a small funeral urn at his feet, in a way which irresistibly reminds the spectator of the genie rising from the jar in the Arabian story of the Fisherman. Some members of the Knatchbull family are similarly represented in Maidstone church, probably by the same sculptor. Donne, whose poetry is well known, may be supposed to have composed his own epitaph, though it is in prose, which tells us in highly figurative language of his incumbency of the decanal office, " by the counsail and perswasion of King James." It adds that though now setting in the 76 LONDON AFTERNOONS. | west," yet duth^he stedfastly behold the Sun of Kighteous- nees gloriously arising out of the East." The most famous of these old monuments was that of Sir John Beauchamp, in the nave. Tins " hath formerly been mistaken, and by the credulity of the vulgar believed to be the tomb of I hike Humplu'ey that good Duke of Gloucester," who was buried at St. Albans. A hungry wanderer, pacing the aisles, was said to be dining with Duke Humphrey. Before the second Great Fire of London, the old cathe- dral had become very ruinous. The fall of the spire had brought down much of the nave. Though massive, the church was badly constructed, wanting in unity and, so to speak, falling to pieces by its own weight. Before 1620 it had become necessary to do something, and King James issued a Royal Commission. Not only was the building out of repair, but destruction was accompanied by desecra- tion. To such mean uses was it put that, as we read, St. Paul's was turned into a gossip shop, a rendezvous for the transaction of business, a place of meeting for secular amusements of every description, and, as Evelyn, lament- ing " the sad and deplorable condition it was in," says, " it was made a stable of horses and a den of thieves." Foremost among the names of the commissioners is that of Inigo Jones. This remarkable man, " Inigo Jones, Esquire, Surveyor of His Majesty's Works," was himself a Londoner, having been born in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Less, where his father, of the same name, was a cloth worker. By the kindness of William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke of that family, and Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, the young Jnigo was enabled to travel in Italy. There, at Vicenza and Venice, he was struck with the architecture of Palladio and the best of _his contemporaries. At^Rome ^he^examined OLD ST. PAUL'S. 77 mathematically the plans of old Eoman buildings which have now totally disappeared. We need not here follow his career, but study, if we can, his influence on the fabric of St. Paul's. When in 1620 he surveyed it, he found that in every possible respect it was little better than a ruin. Standing at Ludgate, he saw a great round-arched pile of what in his day was styled Eoman architecture, that is Norman, encrusted nearly all over up to a certain height with mean, tumbling houses, and rising above them in massive Romanesque arches. The north transept was wholly, the south transept chiefly, in the same style. Adjoin- ing the nave on the south side was the little church of St. Gregory, also Norman. The entrance to the cathedral was by a large, round, undecorated arch in the centre ; two similar flanking arches admitted to the side aisles. Some of the Norman lower windows on the south side had been fitted with Perpendicular tracery, such as we still see at Winchester, Tewkesbury, and many other places. It will be remembered that the tall Gothic spire no longer existed. Overlooking these windows, Jones resolved that the best way to repair and complete a Romanesque building was to apply to the windows and the doors the Renascence features he had learnt in Italy. Thus treated, the nave and the transepts, without structural alterations, became homogeneous, and attained a unity to which, with their many incongruous features, they hadnever pretended before. To do this adequately he was obliged to interfere with some old work, as in later days a Gothic " restorer " would have done when he had the chance, but never to the extent to which Wyatt gutted Salisbury or Gottingham Hereford. He scrupulously respected the monuments and chantries, and destroyed no good work in any style. 78 LONDON AFTERNOONS. But it can hardly IK- denied that in ignoring the Pointed style and carrying out his work in the nearest thing he knew to old Itoinan he was doing very much what Wren did in the White Tower, and Salvin at Windsor Castle or the Waketield Tower. The most important j>art of Inigo Jones's work was the creation of a western front. This he undertook without any of the misgivings excited in later times. Remembering that he had to deal with a great but wholly unlovely building, in a very anomalous style, with none of the charming minor features to be seen in the Norman work at Canterbury or Durham, he came to his task unfettered by any prejudices. He understood the mediaeval English style very well much better, in fact, than many of the modern so-called Gothic architects. But, at a glance, it will be seen that a First, Second, or Third Pointed front would have been entirely incongruous to the nave and transepts which it was intended to com- plete and, in truth, to mask ; nothing was possible but either a great two-storied western portico, or, if it could be made sufficiently large and imposing, a frontispiece composed of marble columns like that which he had seen at Rome in front of the Pantheon, or at Vicenza, where a Gothic building had been completely faced with pillars. Something of the kind he determined to attempt at St. Paul's, and the result was one of the most beautiful and altogether satisfactory designs ever carried out under such restrictive conditions. The front consisted of ten marble columns, those at the corners being square. The portico was three columns, or two intercolumniations, deep, and presented a magnificent front to Ludgate Hill. The columns were of the Corinthian order, and were forty feet high. The work was completed in 1631 (or 1633, according to other authorities), but certainly it 1- to (0 s I O L. 1 O ~ UJ o > I OLD ST. PAUL'S. 79 was finished just when the architect, as most critics believe, was engaged on St. Katherine Cree, in Leadenhall Street, one of the most interesting of London churches. St. Paul's portico was 140 feet in width and about 40 feet in depth, and had a flat architrave, instead of a pediment, which would have contrasted with the sharp apex of the church roof above. When, after the Great Fire of 1666, Wren was employed to repair St. Paul's, it never seems to have struck him that there was any incongruity between nave and portico. All the world admired the work, and its loss is lamented in many contemporary notices. That there was any- thing amiss does not seem to have occurred to anybody before the time of Horace Walpole. Wren, in a report made to the Commissioners a few months before the Fire, says of it, " The Portico built by Inigo Jones, being an entire and excellent piece, gave great reputation to the work in the first repairs." Evelyn, who at least thought himself a man of consummate taste, .laments over it in 1666: " I was infinitely concerned to find that goodly church, St. Paul's now a sad ruin and that beautiful portico (for structure comparable to any in Europe, as not long before repaired by the late king) now rent in pieces, flakes of large stones split asunder, and nothing remaining entire but the inscription in the archi- trave, showing by whom it was built, which had not one letter defaced. It was astonishing to see what immense stones the heat had in a manner calcined, so that all the ornaments, columns, friezes, capitals, and projectures of massy Portland stone flew off, even to the very roof." Walpole, who may be described as the discoverer of the modern Gothic style, makes two unfounded assertions about Jones's work at St. Paul's, and has been blindly followed by many subsequent writers. He says : 80 LONDON AFTERNOONa " Inigo made two capital faults. He firat renewed the sides with very bad Gothic, and then added a Roman portico, mag- nificent and beautiful indeed, but which had no affinity with the ancient parts that remained, and made the Gothic appear ten times heavier." But, as we have seen, Inigo did neither of these things. He found the sides Romanesque or Norman, and he " restored " them, to use a modern expression ; that is, he made them look as he thought, perhaps wrongly, their original designer intended them to look in short, he made the mistake which, during the whole of the nine- teenth century, was made in every other cathedral in England, from the days of Wyatt and (Nottingham to those of Scott and Pearson. CHAPTER VII BROOK SHOTT AND STONEBB1DGE CLOSE. Changed Names, aiid Names that have Survived Things and Places The Grosvenor Estate Buckingham House A Roman Road " Brook Shott " Stouebridge Close The Scene of Harriet Westbrook's Suicide The Ranger's Lodge. THE irresistible tide of bricks and mortar which overwhelms the country round London obliterates more than the ancient landmarks. There is a kind of feeling in our minds that the alterations of level and of surface, and the additions of rows of houses, are the only things by which oui- modern suburbs are changed from what they were a few years ago. But a comparison instituted between maps of the present day and maps of even a hundred years ago shows that we have lost much more than the mere geographical features. The old nomen- clature has perished. Who that paces the smooth pave- ment of Oxford Street remembers that its western end was once known as the Tyburn Road ? The Kensington Gravel Pits have long borne the wholly incorrect and confusing name of Netting Hill Gate. Kensington Gore is now the description of a large number of houses which are not, and never were, in any part of Kensington. Queen Square, Bloomsbury, is not, and never was, in Bloomsbury, but in Holborn. West Kensington, to which, for some reason, one of the old City schools has migrated, is not in Kensington, but in Fulham, or rather in that hamlet 82 LONDON AFTERNOONS. of Fulham now denominated Hammersmith. The Dominicans had a house where the office of the Times is now, and Blackfriars Station is close by, but Blackfriars Road is on the other side of the Thames. It would Ije easy to find a hundred examples of this kind of topo- graphical deception in the London suburbs. Hornsey Wood has, in part at least, become Fiiisbury Park, though the nearest part of Finsbury is two miles away. The southern parts of Lambeth have taken many names. Dulwich has spread into neighbouring districts. Part of Lambeth has become Penge. Stepney was long divided into the Parliamentary boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets. These changes are on a large scale ; but if we con- descend to note smaller matters, we find the old enclosures and boundaries similarly forgotten, and it would puzzle many a competent modern topographer to say where was Great Gibbet Field in St. Mai-ylebone, or the Six Closes in the llegent's Park. Sometimes, on the other hand, the names still in use commemorate places and things long destroyed. Great and Little Turnstile still lead into Lincoln's Tnn Fields. The windmills near Savile Bow and the Haymarket nay, the Hayrnarket itself are recalled by local names. An inconsiderable inn and tea-garden, called Piccadilly, or Peccadillo, Hall, which gave its name to the short portion of the grand modern highway between the Hayinarket on the east and Swallow Street on the west, has become the exclusive appellation of what was once known by three, if not four, different names, and now stands equally for Portugal Street and the Worcester Road. Though the Neyte Bridge remains in a mutilated form, Stonebridge and Cowford Pool have disappeared, and of Penniless Bank only a portion survives, as Hay Hill. BROOK SHOTT AND STONEBRIDGE CLOSE. 83 According to most of the London books, Berkeley Fields were only the site of Berkeley Square; but in reality this name stood for all the land between Tyburn Lane on the west and Swallow Street on the east that is, between what we call Park Lane and Eegent Street. Lord Berkeley of Stratton did not keep a very tight hold 011 this valuable estate, and it was gradually broken up and sold in small pieces. Much of it, by the falling in of leases and other causes, is now Crown property ; but before the suppression of the religious houses it must have formed part of the vast estate of St. Peter's, West- minster being, in fact, the north-eastern portion of the manor of Ebury. It was early divided into farms. One of these farms, becoming the property of " rich Audley," is now covered by Grosvenor Square and the adjacent streets. On another, Sir Benjamin Maddocks and his tenants built the thickly inhabited quarter east of Bond Street, ten acres of the southern portion of Tyburn Mill Farm becoming the Burlington Estate, and attaching itself to St. James's parish, while the northern part went to St. George's. The lessee was bound under a heavy penalty in 1687 not to plough up any of these ten acres. A curious example of the influence of old boundaries on modern streets may be observed in the pavement of the side path of Eegent Street, between New Burlington Street and Princes Street. The parochial marks occur on the paving- stones four or five times at least in a few yards. A third farm, in the reign of James I., occupied the area now covered by the Green Park and the gardens of Buckingham Palace.* Goring House, with a walled enclosure, afterwards the Mulberry Garden, stood where the palace is now. South of it for a short time * See p. 240 84 LONDON AFTERNOONS. was "Ariidall," properly Arlington House. West of it were open fields, some of them marsh land, and when the Duke of Buckingham rebuilt the house in the beginning of the eighteenth century he de- scribes, in a letter to another duke, the view of '' a meadow full of cattle beneath, no disagreeable object in the midst of a great city." On this meadow, which in 1675 was rented by Thoby Beele and Joseph Keeling, according to a map in the (Jrace collection, Grosvenor Place and Belgrave Square were afterwards built. Goring House had been placed right across an ancient pathway which led from Tyburn to Westminster by Tothill Fields ; and it is more than probable that this path, the line of which is preserved by Park Lane and Constitution Hill, was a lioman road perhaps a British road, the same which the Saxons named the Watling Street. The Thames was crossed somewhere near Westminster Abbey, in the nave of w r hich a Roman pavement was recently found ; but whether there was a ford or a ferry does not appear. Could we follow this old roadway from Westminster towards Hyde Park Corner, as it was when Henry VIII. dispossessed the Abbot, it would be hard to recognise any of the modern geographical features. Instead of the wide triangle where the Wellington. Statue long stood 011 its triumphal arch, we might have seen a clump of trees at the top of a steep slope. This was " Brook Shott," a field which stretched from the Watling Street eastward down to the Brook, or Tyburn. At the Comer another road crossed the Watling Street. This, one of the great western thoroughfares, must have been hi existence as early as the tenth century, when there is mention of the Cowford. The Cowford was then the only way of crossing the Tyburn for a traveller entering London from the westward. Long before the time of the suppression, BROOK SHOTT AND STONEBRIDGE CLOSE. 85 however, the bridge on the Oxford Road, at St. John's Church, had been built, and the Stonebridge had taken the place of the Cowford, though Cowford Pool was not filled up till 1842. A passenger, therefore, except when there was a flood, had no more difficulty here than in crossing the Westbourne by the Neyte-bridge, Knight- bridge, or Knightsbridge, a few hundred yards further west. As late as 1692, however, a temporary Speaker had to be chosen for a conference between the Lords and Commons, because, owing to the state of this road in the beginning of March, Sir Robert Atkyns could not get into town from Kensington, where he lived, and after heavy ram the lower part of the valley was under water. Rosa- mond's Pond, a sort of double to the more famous Rosamond's Pond in St. James's Park, was fed by these overflows, and was only filled up in 1856, when the last relic of the Tyburn disappeared. This was the scene of Harriet Westbrook's suicide in 1816, and lay near a " gully hole," by which the water from the engine escaped into Stonebridge Close. Engine Street, as I have said before, has become Brick Street. In a map of 1767 we have still many of the old names. All that part of Piccadilly which lay between Park Lane and Brick Street, stretching up the western slope from the brook, was " Shoulder of Mutton Field," Down Street marking the centre of the side facing Portugal Street, as that part of Piccadilly was called after the marriage of Charles II. A statuary's yard, in which, doubtless, a waterwheel worked the engine, was on either side of the brook at Brick Street ; and we are reminded that then and long after Piccadilly presented the same appearance which Euston Road presents now. Leaden figures to support dials, as well as marble statues, were made here, and one of them which long survived in a picturesque 86 LONDON AFTERNOONS. corner in Clement's Inn is now in the Temple Gardens. The brook, winding south ward from the bridge and gully-hole, divided Brook Shott from Stonebridge Close, which Charles II. added to St. James's, giving it the name of the Upper Park. Strange to say, none of the numerous historians of London has given us the origin of the two principal local names. K Constitution Hill " and the " Green Park " are equally unaccounted for, as is the fact that the entrance to Hyde Park opposite " Brook Shott " has never received any name at all. Over the side gates we only read " Hyde Park Corner." When the Ranger's Lodge was built opposite Down Street, Brook Shott became an ornamental plantation, and was known as the Wilderness. The lodge itself, which was popularly supposed to have been built from a design by King George the Third, but which was carried out by Adam, in 1768, was pulled down in 1842, and soon afterwards the brick wall along Piccadilly was removed and railings were substituted. The figures of deer on the gate-posts were removed to the new Albert Gate, just where, underground, the Serpentine, resuming its original name of Westbourne, crosses the road at Knights- bridge.* Visitors to the National Gallery, by the way, who have seen and admired Reynolds' picture entitled " Angels' Heads," may reinemter that the child here portrayed so charmingly was Frances Isabella, daughter of Lord William Gordon, the Park Ranger in 1787. She must have lived here in the Lodge, and died unmarried in 1831. Meanwhile the fields on the northern side of the road had disappeared a scompletely as the brook by whose side they lay. The May Fair used to be held in Great Brookfield, and a permanent row of stalls became eventually Shepherd's * See p. 61, BROOK SHOTT AND STONEBRIDGE CLOSE. 87 Market. Further up the stream the slope on the eastern side was almost precipitous. Hay Hill rose opposite a little islet, ait, or ay, and forms now the roadway across " Pinneless Bank," probably called after some tenant of Hay Hill farm. If Hill Street and Farm Street mark the site of the farmhouse, it must have been on the opjx>site or right bank of the Tyburn. From Hay Hill to Piccadilly the little river ran through a very circuitous course, first under the north wing of Lansdowne House, and not, as is often asserted, under the Passage ; then behind Bolton Row to Clarges Street, across Curzon Street, through Shepherd's Market, and under Brick Street (Engine Street) to the Park. North-east of the Stonebridge was a " field " called after it, like the " close " on the opposite side. Stonebridge Field was the paddock of the " Half Moon Inn," and is now covered in part by Half Moon Street. The inn stood at the corner as lately as 1752, as Mr. Wheatley tells us in his " Round About Piccadilly and Pall Mall," a pleasant volume, in which the later history of the district may be found. Here I have only attempted to reconstruct some forgotten features of its early history, and to try to realise its appearance when the open hills and pastures stretched away north- ward to St. Marylebone, and south-westward to Chelsea ; when Constitution Hill was a wooded eminence between two valleys ; when the Watling Street ran along its crest ; when the Knight Bridge and the Stone Bridge were high archways over flooded streams ; and when the traveller had still a full mile to go before he reached the wall of the abbot's garden, and turned through the path " along the Seven Acre Field," now contracted into Long Acre, and so reached the comparatively inhabited region of Drury Lane. - -* * '.'' f'M 88 CHAPTER VIII. TIIK CITY COMPANIES. The City Guilds not to be confused with the City Companies When the Guilds were Abolished Companies as Trustees The Husting Court The Rise of the Companies Religious Guilds The Fishmongers and the Goldsmiths The Stationers The Barber-Surgeons The Honourable Artillery Company Funds and Expenditure of the Companies The Mercers' and Drapers' Companies and what they are doing with their Money The Dinners The Cups and other Ornaments of the Tables. POPULAR errors are very difficult to deal with effectually. One of the most persistent is that which confounds the City Guilds with the City Companies. Here, two widely different things are inextricably confused, and that, too, not in mere catchpenny popular lx>oks, but in books pretending to more or less authority. In the common run of London Histories, Guild means Company and Company means Guild. As we do not propose here to deal except incidentally with Guilds, it may be enough to mention one or two facts and then pass on. To begin with, there are now no Guilds in London. By an Act passed in 1557, all religious Guilds were abolished, and all Guildable property was confiscated. But as there were no Guilds not religious, and as the property of Guilds was held in Trust to provide burials, masses, and sometimes chantries for deceased members, THE CITY COMPANIES. 89 the Guilds and their lands, and their money, and their priestly vestments, and their illuminated manuscripts, all ceased to exist absolutely ; and not only so, hut it became penal to revive them. A City Company which calls itself a Guild renders itself liable to forfeiture a penalty which would, of course, be rather difficult to enforce. We may recommend some busybody with more money than brains to prosecute the Merchant Taylors for call- ing themselves the Guild of St. John ; or some artistic or architectural enthusiast to prosecute the designers, projector, and constructors of that worst of South Kensington eyesores, the City and Guilds of London Institute ! Aa to Guilds themselves, there is much to be read about them, but that much tells very little. When a writer speaks of Guilds with any degree of certainty, it is gener ally found that he bases his views on rules made in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, forgetting that rules made in the fourteenth century, and still more in the fifteenth, tell us nothing about the Guilds of the ninth. That we have knowledge of Guilds being in existence so early we owe to a study of local names. Guildford, in Surrey, is mentioned in King Alfred's will, which took effect by his death. The name suggests the existence of a sort of Ninth Century Humane Society, not so much to rescue travellers crossing the Wey on foot, as to provide masses for the souls of such as were drowned, for that was the form humanity chiefly took in the ninth century. The name reminds us also of Bedford, " the precarious crossing." The word guild, or part of it, occurs also in other local names, some of them very ancient, such as the two Guildens, one in Cambridgeshire and one in Cheshire, and Guilford or East Guilford in Sussex, whence the North family takes its title of Earl. But of all the examples 90 LONDON AFTERNOONS. which may }>e mentioned, that of the Guildhall in London is the moat interesting and, it must be confessed, the most puzzling. It has been adduced by some authorities as proving the antiquity of City Companies. What it does prove is the very contrary. We know there was a Guild in the City because there was, and is, a Guildhall. There our absolute knowledge ceases. Other Guilds met and commemorated their dead friends in masses, following the service by a butt-filling, as it was called, and a feast in which every man pledged his neighbour. These societies very often consisted of twelve persons and one woman ; at least, we know this about them at a later period. The men represented the twelve Apostles and the woman the Virgin Mary. But although we cannot here go into the history of the Guilds, and have sufficiently indicated the fact of their extinction, we must ask how it comes to pass that the City Companies are so closely connected in our minds with City Guilds ? This close connection before 1557 may lie accounted for in perhaps half a dozen ways. We find that in 1557 the City Companies adminis- tered the estates of a large number of Guilds, and of foundations for " Guildable "that is, religious purposes. Why the Guilds confided their property in this respect to Companies, and why individuals bequeathed money not to the clergy or to religious houses, indicates a state of public opinion such as existed in London before the Reformation, and exists in other places at the present day. The old Londoners had a profound distrust of their priests, and this distrust amounted to dislike of the friars, black, white, grey, or crutched. To the clergy, secular or regular, they had to go for masses, but they went to the Guild, and through it to the Company, to see the trust duly executed. A familiar modern example THE CITY COMPANIES. 91 of this feeling is found at the present day in Ireland. If the Londoner left his money to his family for the purpose of securing the repose of his soul, he could not say hut what his family might die out, as indeed happened with awful frequency during the prevalence of the Black Death. If he left it to the clergy he had no way of making certain that they would observe the conditions of his bequest. But if he left it to the Guild he belonged to, he had nothing to think of except the continued solvency of that Guild, and when the affairs of the Guild were administered by a Chartered Company, no questions of any kind arose. The dying man knew that he should be commemorated at annual masses, " so long as the world should last," as Henry VII. wrote to the monks of Westminster. The City Companies, at the time they were deprived of Guild property, had carried on some of these trusts for centuries. It is well to keep these few considerations in our minds. In the Middle Ages, as we call them, people had views on religious subjects which were of the most vague and shadowy character ; religion with them was little but superstition ; but, on the other hand, they were much more inclined to deal liberally and boldly with the difficulties which teset the provision of religious endowments. Within a few years after the middle of the fourteenth century a large iiuml^er of Companies had been formed and chartered. Two or three circumstances contributed to give them immediately a preponderating voice in the governing of the City. Up to this date the Aldermen, who formed a compact body originally of owners of lands within the walls, were assisted by and recruited from the Common Council. In these two bodies, with the Mayor at their head, power was mainly vested, though there was an appeal to a greater Council, con 92 LONDON AFTERNOONS. slating of all citizens. This greater Council, after the first election of a Common Council in 1200, very seldom asserted itself. The Husting Court is very carefully described by Dr. Sharpe in his " Calendar of Wills." It used always to sit on Monday in each week, as, indeed, it is supposed to do still, though it has not been called together for many years. Its principal business in the thirteenth century was to grant probate of wills, to enrol the names of citizens newly admitted to the franchise, and to hear pleas of land. The first and the last of these duties were gradually transferred elsewhere. The admission of freemen also gradually ceased, and this brings the history of the Com- panies into immediate prominence. To become a citizen a man must be free he must belong, that is, to no lord ; or, if he had escaped from servitude, and had resided and worked for " a year and a day " in the City unclaimed, he could be admitted as if he had been born free. In addition to the small number thus made free of the City by the Husting, a large number of the citizens were so by descent, their fathers or grandfathers having held the freedom before them. Finally, a third class con- sisted of men who had been apprenticed to trades, and who, when the Companies were formed, were easily converted into citizens under the charters without any recourse to the Husting. By a patent of Edward II., no one who was described as a foreigner that is, not a Londoner could be admitted except by the Husting ; but, of course, inheritors and apprentices were not reckoned foreigners, and membership of a Company eventually became a qualification, and the best. Since the reign of Edward IV. the members of the Common Hall have had the right not of electing the Mayor, as some say, but of presenting two persons to the Aldermen for election. THE CITY COMPANIES. 93 This Common Hall consists exclusively of the Livery, or those free of a Company. There are very bad mistakes, as Dr. Sharpe shows, in the authorities chiefly relied upon by London historians as to this matter. Here it is enough to point out the state of affairs at the time of the first rise of the Companies. It had by degrees been made compulsory that everyone working at a trade in the City should belong to the Guild of his mystery, and there were probably very few citizens not so enrolled. The Fishmongers chiefly belonged to Guilds dedicated to St. Peter or St. Michael. The Skinners had also two Guilds, consecrated to Corpus Christi and to the Virgin Mary. The Tailors had one Guild that of St. John the Baptist. The Grocers devoted themselves to St. Anthony. The Haberdashers were a fraternity of St. Katharine. The list might be in- definitely prolonged, but one thing is to be observed : no Guild could make a man free of the City. This point has hardly been insisted on sufficiently. In addition to these Guilds among the workers in particular trades, there were other religious Guilds in- numerable, two or three being sometimes connected with the same church. There were three at least in St. Michael's, Cornhill, and in St. Sepulchre's, and two in St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street. None of these were trade unions ; and all were swept away, together with those which were held by Companies, under Henry VHI. and Edward VI. The Fishmongers' Company claim to have received the earliest charter. They assert that it was granted by Edward I., in 1289. There are a good many reasons for doubting the truth of this allegation. The charter is not mentioned in any way, or even alluded to, in the charter of 1363, granted by Edward HI. Of the 94 LONDON AFTERNOONS. twelve great Companies, as they are called, eight received charters from the same King. Kichard II. incorporated the " Mistery of the Mercers in Cheap," and the Mercers' Company now takes precedence among the twelve. The history of the Goldsmiths has never been adequately written. Long before they obtained their first charter , in 1327, they had exerted an influence on the trade, and still more on the finances, of the kingdom. The first Mayor was probably a goldsmith. The great value of a charter to the brethren of the fraternity of St. Dunstan was that they were allowed to hold an estate of twenty pounds annual value, for the benefit of sick or aged members. About the same time they obtained the house of Sir Nicholas Seagrave, in the parish of St. Vedast, as headquarters, and they have remained on the same site ever since. It is easy enough to see from the records of the purchase of Segrave House that, even as early as 1323, four years before they had leave to hold land, the Gold- smiths had attained sufficient consistency to enable them to buy the house, the sale being nominally to their chap- lain, William Clift. They have, without remuneration, continued to assay and hall-mark gold and silver plate ever since. In this respect they and the Fishmongers, who also occupy a site which has belonged to them since the date of their incorporation, are alone among the twelve great Companies. It is often asserted that all the Companies have functions of this kind and neglect them. One writer believed, though he never gave any authority for it, that the City Companies are bound to teach a trade to anyone who comes to them. The duties self-imposed on the Goldsmiths and Fishmongers are a boon to the public, and deserve every acknowledgment ; but as- sertions as to the duties of other Companies are, THE CITY COMPANIES. 95 to say the least, impertinent. Such duties are not within the list of the purposes for which they were founded. Besides those already named, the great Companies comprise the Drapers, Haberdashers and Cloth workers. They, with the so-called Merchant Taylors, would seem to have formed members of the great Weavers' Guild, but the question of their origin is too obscure for treatment here. A Weavers' Company, with a merely nominal income, still exists, but it seems only to have been chartered by Queen Elizabeth with a view to the benefit of the refugee silk weavers. There are also among the minor Companies several which were connected with the great cloth industry. The Broderers', Dyers', Feltmakers', Gird- lers', and Woolmen's Companies are all in existence. A long treatise might be written on the social and political influence of the cloth trade of the Middle Ages both in England and Scotland. Its traces are strong in our modern surnames, such as Lister, a man who lists ; Calendar, a man who calenders ; Walker, one who treads the web ; Webster, one who weaves it ; Dyer, one who dyes it ; Sherman, one who shears it ; to say nothing of Fuller, Winder, Cutter, Tucker, Packer, Boxer, Corder, and many more. Among the Companies which are still concerned with trade the Stationers' is one of the most interesting, although its charter only dates from the time of Philip and Mary. Little as we know about Shakespeare and the first appearance of his plays, we should know less than half as much but for the registers of this Company. " Entered at Stationers' Hall " is a very familiar sen- tence. There was a Guild of Stationers, but it cannot have been very flourishing at a time when so few read or wrote. When printing was invented, the Stationers 96 LONDON AFTERNOONS. rose in the world, but it was too late for their admission to the ranks of the great Companies, nor are they very remarkable for their wealth, although they distribute large annual sums as pensions in the trade. The Tudors had a dread of the printing press, and under Queen Elizabeth the Company was made an implement of religious and political tyranny. Printers everywhere had to serve their time to a member of the Company, and books could not be sold without its leave. There were also many monopolies and privileges granted out- side the ranks of the Company. The Queen's Printers first, and afterwards the Universities, had leave to print Bibles. Richard Tottel had a monopoly given him by Queen Elizabeth for Law r Books. At present, since the Copyright Act of '42, any publisher can register a book at the Hall, and proceedings for a breach of copyright cannot be taken till a book has been so registered. The Apothecaries' (a very poor Company) does excellent work in examining, and long cultivated the old " Physic Garden " at Chelsea. Another Company exercised for a time somewhat analogous powers. The Barber-Surgeons were incor- porated by Edward IV., and a further Act of Incorporation was passed in 1541. At this time surgeons obtained their licences from the Bishop of London and the Dean of St. Paul's. The Company examined the candidates and recommended them to the Ecclesiastical functionaries. The Company still flourishes, though it has no very large number of members, " the livery " consisting of only ninety-two persons. Of course, there are many others including, by the way, a lady who are free of the Com- pany, but who have not attained the dignity of livery. One more Company should be mentioned, though of much later origin than most of the others. Nevertheless, THE CITY COMPANIES. 97 " The Honourable Artillery Company " claims to repre- sent, if not actually to be, a Guild of St. George, incor- porated by Henry VIII. This Company was apparently among those ruined by the statute against Guilds, and before 1610 was extinct and the Artillery Garden given up to the gunners from the Tower. The re-foundation by James I., the suppression by Oliver Cromwell, and the revival by Charles II. and by his brother, the first captain of the modern corps, are facts which have been much obscured in histories of the Company. It has lately been reformed or rehabilitated, and may continue to remind us of the old " trained bands " of the City, of which Gilpin was an illustrious captain. It is worth while to inquire into the expenditure of one or two of the wealthier Companies. We may pre- mise that, of the whole seventy-four, very few can be called absolutely wealthy, and the great majority have no estates at all. The twelve great Companies have over ten thousand a year each, as have the Brewers, Carpenters, Leathersellers, and Saddlers among the minor Companies. Mr. Ditchfield, a well-known antiquary, versed in munici- pal history, has for some time past investigated the charities of the Companies. We take a few notes from his interesting papers. The Mercers, who rank first hi civic precedence, are first also in wealth, their gross income amounting to 83,000. Of this, 35,000 is held in trust for various useful purposes, and is gratuitously administered by the officials of the Company. The rest, 48,000, is at the disposal of the members. It is curious to observe that as lately as 1745 this great Company was in difficulties. Money had been advanced to successive kings, from Henry VIII. downward, and the Scots re- bellion had emptied the till. Few or none of these loans had been repaid. A Petition was presented to Parlia- 98 LONDON AFTERNOONS. merit, showing that the Company's unfortunate position was caused by its advances for the public service, and it received a grant from the coal dues. But better times came. Judicious investments in estates situated in or near London have greatly increased in value. The Mercers' badge of a maiden's head, said by some to repre- sent the Blessed Virgin, by others Queen Elizabeth, is to be seen on many houses in and about Covent Garden. Their charities and other public works defy enumeration. The Company is trustee of the great estate of Sir Richard Whittington. A college of priests 011 this foundation was suppressed under Henry VIII., and a large slice of the Whittington estate was confiscated, but enough remains for the great almshouse known as Whittington College at Highgate. Here twenty-eight poor women are provided for at a cost of 2,454. In connection with the same trust, 4,550 is given in pen- sions to some 130 deserving persons, and about 3,000 more in special donations. The estates left by Dean Colet, the friend of More and Erasmus, are also administered by the Mercers, of whom Colet said in his will that he made them his trustees considering their assured truth and circumspect wisdom and faithful goodness, and trusting in their fidelity and love. It is needless to point to the new St. Paul's School at Hammersmith as proof that the Mercers have worthily carried out the trust. Also they administer a large number of separate bequests for scholarships and other bene- factions to the school. They have, likewise, an excellent middle-class school in the City, where a hundred and fifty boys are educated, the cost to the Company being about 3,000 a year. Further, the Mercers manage the well-known school founded by Richard Collier at Horsham in Sussex, and another, founded at Lavington by Alderman THE CITY COMPANIES. 99 Dauntsey in 1542. They are also trustees of the Gresham estate, and, besides innumerable grants on former occasions, gave 63,000 towards the latest rebuilding of the Royal Exchange. Then, again, they take charge of Lady Mice's almshouses at Stepney, and of Lord Northampton's Hospital at Greenwich, which is only one part of the extensive trust. These are a few items from an enormous list. That they should be in the hands of a great and wealthy body like the Mercers' Company is an immense advantage to the charities. Suppose, for example, that the particular estate or fund bequeathed for one of them should ever be deficient, the poor would suffer, and the charity, standing by itself, would in all probability fail ; but the Mercers take care no such catastrophe shall occur in any scheme for which they are trustees. Other funds are spent in large gifts to such objects as their committees consider deserving. They lately spent 1,000 on the decoration of St. Paul's, and large sums on St. Albans and Gloucester Cathedrals, on the City and Guilds of London Institute, on University College, and a hundred other objects. Their offices more nearly resemble a large bank than a " guzzling society," as some of their detractors call them, and while no so-called religious society does more for philanthropy, the extreme care with which all cases are sifted and investigated, the re- luctance to pauperise those they help, involve a large expenditure. The income of the Drapers' Company comes next to that of the Mercers, their corporate income being larger, but their trust funds smaller. The Drapers had an enormously long charter from James I., in which the King, in contravention of the Statute, restored to the Company the name of the Guild of the Blessed Virgin, which had been abolished, at heavy cost to the Company, 100 LONDON AFFERNOONS. by the Acts of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. The King'a charter cannot legalise an illegal act, but the Drapers have certainly a shadowy excuse for calling themselves a Guild. This Company support no lass than two hundred almshouses in the neighbourhood of London alone. They are also trustees for a large number of apprenticeship charities, a form of education generally believed obsolete. They apprentice a hundred boys, besides a number of girls, annually, chiefly orphans, and, standing towards them 171 loco parentis, look after their welfare till they are well out in the world. The Drapers Avere probably the largest donors to the foundation of the People's Palace, as they subscribed 70,000, and still give 7,000 a year. They ulso do a great deal of good with the schools of which they are trustees, or for which they pay out of corporate funds. The schools may be met with all over the country, and in many cases have proved stepping-stones to the Universities. Among the many other useful objects wherewith they charge themselves is an Arabic professorship at Cambridge. The great school at Woodford was endowed with money bequeathed by the eccentric Francis Bancroft, and was built at a cost of 50,000 out of the corporate funds of the Company. They have applied to educational purposes some bequests made for the relief of prisoners for debt, and, like the Mercers, spend larger sums on schools, male and female, than on anything else. It is impossible to picture to ourselves the widespread distress and misery which any tampering with the Com- panies would cause. We had a slight taste of this a few years ago. Several Companies had estates in Ulster. They had been induced, chiefly by James I., to take the land as part of the " plantation " of the province, and THE CITY COMPANIES. 101 the name of Londonderry is in itself a perpetual reminder of the influence of the City on the newly settled districts. The lands of the Companies were models of estate manage- ment, except in one particular. The Companies did too much : churches, schools, even meeting-houses and Roman Catholic chapels, were provided for the petted tenants, together with many other gifts and privileges. The prosperity and contentment of the people of this region made it particularly obnoxious to discontented tenants, such as must exist on very large estates, and they threatened and cajoled the rest into joining an agitation against their landlords, the Companies. The story is too long to tell in full, but the result was that the Com- panies, or some of them, withdrew from Ireland. It is almost incredible, but none the less strictly true, that a fresh agitation was then got up, because the Companies refused to continue the grants for the churches, chapels, schools, and other institutions on the estates which once were theirs. We have only mentioned the Mercers and Drapers at length, but every one of the great Companies has a similar record. St. Peter's Hospital at Wandsworth, for instance, is maintained by the Fishmongers. The famous Grammar School at Tonbridge is the glory of the Skinners. The Carpenters have almshouses both at Twickenham and at Godalming. The Clothworkers have given solid help to the technical colleges at Leeds, Bradford, and other places interested in the manufacture of woollen goods. The City Companies alone give no less than 50,000 a year towards the support of various charitable institutions both in London and in the country. They spend 9,000 a year on primary education, 5,000 on the education of the blind, and 50,000 on exhibitions and scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge, including those 102 LONDON AFTERNOONS. for women. The total trust income of all the Companies is estimated by Mr. Ditchfield at about 200,000, but they are all wont to apply large sums from their cor- porate income in supplementing and furthering the objects of the trusts. Here it may be well to point out a difficulty which the so-called reformers will have to meet. If we endeavour to analyse the position of the question, if question there be, as to the existence of the Companies, we may put the case in the barest way thus : A number of gentlemen of great wealth and great respectability have agreed to com- bine and form themselves into, a kind of club. They have obtained leave to hold lands and accept legacies. Old members have made them trustees of money and estates for charitable purposes, and these, at great trouble and expense to themselves, they administer for the public advantage. Not losing sight of the invariable practice in England of, so to speak, hallowing any serious under- taking with a dinner, they keep an excellent cook, have an old cellar of wine, and give a great deal of employment to waiters and other estimable people, in addition to the army of clerks who look after the trust funds, estates, and charities. These gentlemen have a perfect right to meet, and when they meet to dine, if they can pay for it. The 100,000 a year they are said to spend in hospitality comes from three sources : it is partly a voluntary subscrip- tion, it is partly corporate money, and it is partly money specially left for the purpose by the same testators who have bequeathed the trust funds for charitable purposes. The Company exists for the purpose, among other things, of dining. All the funds would be diminished if the dinners were omitted, and only a very small sum, if any, would be saved. The diners are the Company. It is chiefly at the dinner table that they meet and discuss LU '5 I = I- i THE CITY COMPANIES. 103 or broach or contribute to those magnificent charities for which they are notable. These dinners are themselves relics of a most remote antiquity. The first item in the history of the long- extinct Guilds was the name of the saint on whose day they dined. It is the same with the Companies, and, as might be supposed, all that is curious and quaint about them seems to culminate in the dinner. First, there is the Hall with its portraits and its solid old furniture, and the parcel-gilt cups and beakers gifts and bequests of old members. Pepys gave a cup and cover to the Cloth workers in 1677, and they use it still. The Skinners treasure five silver-gilt cups in the form of fighting-cocks, each standing on a tortoise, the bequest of William Cockayne in 1598. The Merchant Taylors possess a pair of grand silver tankards with a text hi Latin, " Naked, and ye clothed me." The Milkmaid Cup of the Vintners is famous, and dates from 1568. The Barber-Surgeons received a Koyal Oak Cup from Charles II. In short, the number and beauty of these ornaments of the dinner table scattered among the London Companies are marvel- lous. The most singular cup is perhaps that of the Mercers. It is Gothic, or at least Tudor, in style. The arms of the Company represent a " Demi- Virgin " with her hair dishevelled, and the cup is covered all over with a fretwork enclosing, at intervals, representations of the maiden's head. But the top of the cover is the most curious part of the composition ; it consists of a hexagonal boss, richly ornamented, on which is seated the figure of a maiden, with a unicorn reposing its head in her lap. This cup dates from before the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which began in November, 1553, so that the popular idea mentioned above that the Mercers' arms represent the Queen is erroneous. There cannot be any doubt that the 104 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Virgin Mary is intended. At Mercers' processions and feasts, down to 1686, there was always present " a young and beautiful gentlewoman " who, with hair dishevelled, sat on a lofty chariot, drawn by nine white Flandei's horses. She was attired in silk, covered with jewels, and wore a coronet of gold on her head. This " fair one with the golden locks " also sat at the banquet, at a table by herself, where she had nothing to do but to eat her dinner and look pretty . They " remunerated her assiduity with a pecuniary consideration," and she took her dress and her jewels as a perquisite. 105 CHAPTER IX. BERKHAMPSTEAD. Little Fragments of a Great Place Age of the Castle The Earl of Cornwall Memories of the Castle Richard, King of the Romans Abbot John of Berkhampstead The Black Prince at Berkliarnpstead " Proud Cis " Lord Falkland Decay of the Castle The Church Dean Incent Birthplace of William Cowper. TRAVELLERS from London on the North- Western Railway may observe, after emerging from great cuttings and a tunnel, and passing Boxmoor, a thick wood on the right of the line and facing the long straggling town which occupies a slope on the left. The town is Berkhampstead, or as it is sometimes spelt, Berkhamsted ; indeed, some fifty other ways of spelling the name are given in Mr. Cobb's " History and Antiquities of Berkhamsted." Just before we pass the railway station, twenty-six miles from London and five from Tring, two fragments of a double wall standing parallel to each other near the edge of the wood catch the eye for a moment. In another moment the wood is out of sight, and the open country, pleasantly undulating, extends to a distant horizon on both sides. But those two little fragments of flint masonry have a history worth pausing over. They have their place even in the history of the nation. To keep the passage between them was once a charge worthy of the greatest 106 LONDON AFTERNOONS. subject in the realm. Through the gateway whose place they mark, in peace or war many a noble procession has passed. They admitted in turn John of England and Louis of France ; John of France and Richard King of the Romans. Here the Black Prince lived, and here, in the days of his son, Chaucer was clerk of the works. Froissart was here with the Queen in 1361, and probably again in 1394, with Richard II. But all the glory is now departed ; except the site little is left, and it looks to-day probably much as it did when, in 1087, Robert of Mortaigne came at the Con- queror's bidding to build the castle. The earthworks and the mound were there then as they are now, but hardly anything besides, unless some wooden sheds for the shelter of the soldiers. At what date the mound was made, and the ditches were first opened, it is not possible to say. When the Conqueror came they were there, and his coming is perhaps the first authentic event in the history of Berk- hampstead, unless we accept it as the scene of St. Brith- wald's Council in 697, and not rather Bearsted near Maidstone, or Brasted near Sevenoaks. But if authentic history is silent, tradition is not. St. Paul was here when he had journeyed into Spain, and, according to the same authority, he signalised his visit by an act of exorcism similar to that, some three centuries later, performed by St. Patrick in Ireland. Both serpents and lightning have visited the parish since, and seem to regard the exorcism from the sceptical point of view which is now generally considered appropriate to the pleasant fables of local tradition. We only know that before the Conquest, Berkhampstead was a place of importance perhaps on account of its military position and because it was one link of a complete chain of fortresses which surrounded and guarded the valley of the Thames. Though it had THE TORRINGTON MONUMENT, BERKHAMPSTEAD CHURCH. (From a Print by B/ore, 1815. BERKHAMPSTEAD. 107 previously been inhabited, and possibly strengthened by the Kings of Mercia, and afterwards .by the successors of Alfred, it owes its first regular fortification to William, whose military genius recognised it as one of the series of which Rochester, Guildford, Farnham, Windsor, and Wallingford were the other members. William was here before he reached London, and, as we have seen, he probably found here already the cone on which the keep of his castle was to rise, as similar cones had been found and turned to account at four out of five of the other places. In some respects the Berkhampstead keep may have resembled that of Windsor, being sur- rounded by a moat of its own, partly within the moat of the whole fortress and partly conterminous with it. The mound was used to support a hollow shell of masonry, as at Cardiff, but only the saucer-like configuration of the summit now remains to indicate its existence. And all the rest of the buildings which made up the Castle have shared the fate of the keep. There was once a chapel near the foot of the mound, one of three with which the Castle was sanctified. Of it there remain only some fragments of brass-work, discovered lately on the site. The two decaying walls near the railway station are all that is left of the entrance gateway, and a key dug up when the road was made is all that is tangible of the gate itself. Whether the builder of Berkhampstead Castle was ever Earl of Cornwall is more a matter of nomenclature than of actual historical question ; but it is certain that from his time the Castle has followed the fortunes of the Earls and Dukes of Cornwall. The Duke of Cornwall and York is its present inheritor. To the first duke, better known as the Black Prince, it was a favourite residence ; here, in 1361, he took his last leave of his mother, when 108 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Froissart was told of the prophecy of Merlin that the crown would never rest on the head of Edward or of the next prince, Lionel, but descend to the son of the third brother John. While living at Berkhampstead, before the sad days which closed his father's glorious reign, he fell ill, and when but half recovered set out from here to meet the Parliament at Westminster, only a few days before his death. Of older memories than these the Castle has no lack. We may choose between such names as those of the FitzPiers and the Mandevilles, Lords of Berkhampstead ; of Thomas Becket, sometime its cus- todian ; of King John, who granted the town its first charter ; of Louis of France, his siege of the Castle, and the fruitless bravery displayed by the defenders ; but the two most interesting names in the list of its occupants are perhaps those of Richard King of the Romans and of Cicely Duchess of York. Richard seems to have been formally invested with the title which his father had borne. As Earl of Cornwall, he lived much at Berkhampstead. From it he set out on his expeditions, first to the Holy Land, and afterwards on a scarcely less unreal errand : this was to Germany, in quest of the crown of the Romans, which, when he had lavished much of the treasure gathered from the English Jews, he obtained in 1257. As King of the Romans, he lived and died here ; and here he brought successively three wives. The first was one of the co-heiresses of the Marshalls, Earls of Pembroke, and the widow of Gilbert de Clare. She died in child- bed at Berkhampstead, and perhaps it was owing to his grief that he assumed the cross. On his return, after three years' widowerhood, he married Sanchia, one of the four queens, daughters of Raymond, Count of Provence. After sixteen years' exile from the sunny skies of her BERKHAMPSTEAD. 109 native land, she too died at Berkhampstead, having lost all her children successively except one, Edmund, who sur- vived his father, but eventually died childless. The King's last wife was perhaps better suited to the climate of Hertfordshire. According to most accounts, she was Beatrice von Falkestein, the niece of Archbishop Conrad of Cologne, and she survived her husband. In April, 1272, the body of Richard, King of the Romans, Count of Poictou, and Earl of Cornwall, was carried from Berk- hampstead to Hales Abbey for interment, and his heart to the church of the Friars Minor, at Oxford. In 1300 his only son died, and the county of Cornwall, with the Castle of Berkhampstead, reverted to the Crown. Edward I. made it the dower of his second wife, and is further posthumously connected with the place, because one of the letters of Edward III., dated from the Castle, relates to the removal of the cerecloth of his grandfather, " de eera renovanda circa corpus Edwardi Primi." Six picked men from Berkhampstead served at Crecy, but this reign is signalised in the annals of the town by an event of a different character. In 1291, John of Berkhampstead, a native, was elected Abbot of St. Albans. During his rule it was that the remains of Queen Elinor rested at St. Albans on their long journey from " Herdeby " to Westminster, and he was the Abbot who, in 1295, succeeded in obtaining for the church protection from the additional taxes levied to support the King's wars. There is a curious manu- script record of the Abbots of St. Albans and their benefactors in the British Museum (Nero D7), from which we gather that Abbot John of Berkhampstead offended his monks by insisting on their keeping their vows. They revenged themselves on his memory by representing him wringing his hands with an expression 110 LONDON AFTERNOONS. of deep remorse, and add this sentence for his epitaph : " Since he did nothing memorable in his life we shall place nothing respecting him in the present page ; but we warn the reader that he be converted to works of piety, and pour forth prayers " for the Abbot's soul. Under Edward III. the Castle attained its greatest splendour, or rather under his son the Black Prince, of whose tenure of it we have already spoken. Richard II. gave it to his favourite Vere, but on his attainder it returned to the Crown. Edward IV. gave the town a fresh charter, which was of more real importance to the inhabitants than even the presence of Chaucer and Frois- sart. It is not many years since the exemption of the tradesmen from serving on juries was acknowledged by the law courts, in accordance with the privileges of this charter. And thus we reach the name of the King's mother, the last and one of the greatest of the denizens of the Castle. This was Cicely Duchess of York, the daughter of the head of the Nevilles, the niece of Henry IV., the aunt of the King-maker, sister of five peers of the realm, mother of two kings, and for many years the greatest lady in the land. " Proud Cis " has passed into a proverb, and no one can wonder if she was proud. Whether she was or not, one thing is certain : she was a woman of sufficient talent to keep her high position all her life, and of sufficient strength to survive the misfortunes which in those days seemed appropriate to high rank. Her hus- band, her brother, and her second son all perished after the fatal field of Wakefield ; yet she survived to see another son put to death by his own brother, and a third slain in battle. She outlived Bosworth nearly eleven years. Before her death she saw her eldest son's heiress on the throne, and the young Henry who, after bearing for a time the title which had been her husband's, was destined JOHN OF BERKHAMPSTEAD, ABBOT OF ST. ALBANS. (From Cotton MSS., Nero D 7.) BERKHAMPSTEAD. Ill to extinguish in the blood of her granddaughter the last fading glimmer of the great Plantagenet name had reached the age of five years. She lived and regulated her household, at Berkhampstead, until 1496, when, after seeing her granddaughter's husband put her grandson to death and her daughter take up the cause of an impostor, she died, full of honours and of all the attendants of honour, after a life which, viewed in the perspective of four cen- turies, appears, according to the light turned upon it, either such a long tragedy, or else such a course of pros- perity, as is unexampled in our annals. The arms of the Duchess Cicely are still to be seen in a window of the nave of the church. She died here in 1495, and was buried at Fotheringay beside her husband, whom she had survived nearly thirty-five years. After her death the Castle fell into decay, and her descendant Queen Elizabeth granted it, at the annual rent of a red rose to be paid on the feast of St. John the Baptist, to Sir Edward Carey, the father of the first Lord Falkland, and cousin of the Queen's cousin Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon. It was already ruined, as Leland describes it, and when Sir Edward built the house on the hill just above it, the old walls no doubt formed a convenient quarry for the supply of building stone. After it had thus mounted the hill piecemeal its connection with great folk and great events continued as before the translation. Here Lucius, Lord Falkland, spent much of his boyhood ; and when the Careys ceased to live here the house was occupied by some of the house- hold of James I. Prince Charles was here in 1616, and as Duke of Cornwall obtained from his father a charter for the town by which its privileges were enlarged and a baih'ffjand burgesses appointed. Camden, the King of Arms, granted the corporation a coat of arms, in which 112 LONDON AFTERNOONS. the Castle figures prominently " within a border of Corne- wall, viz. Sables, bezanted." But, after lasting less than fifty years, the trouble of electing and sustaining a corporation grew too great for the sleepy little town, and though they still claim some of their privileges, the charter has long been a dead letter to the burgesses of Berkhampstead. Under the Commonwealth, the house which had succeeded the Castle was again prominent. During the Protectorate it was occupied by Colonel Axtel, the Regicide ; after the Restoration, by Weston, Earl of Portland, the Chancellor, in whose day the greater part of it was destroyed by fire. In its reduced state it was rented by John Sayer, who, as his epitaph in the church informs us, had been " Archimagirus," or chief cook, to Charles II., and who at his death in 1682 left houses and a weekly pension to six widows. It still belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall, and is now under a lease, with the Castle, or its site in the valley below, to the owner of the neighbouring park of Ashridge. The Castle and its successive occupants have left less mark upon the church of Berkhampstead than might have been expected. None of the royal and princely folk seem to have selected it as a burial-place, and the only monu- ments which connect it with the Castle are those of John Raven, esquire to the Black Prince, of King Charles's cook, already mentioned, and of Robert Incent, " late s'vant unto the noble princesse lady Cecyle duchesse of Yorke, and mother unto the worthy King Edward the IIII and Richard the thyrde, whych sayd Robert lucent dyed of the grete swetyng sykenesse the first yere of the Reygne of King Henry the VII." Dean Incent was his son, and founded the Grammar School in 1541 ; dying in 1545, he was buried in the church, but his monument BERKHAMPSTEAD. 113 is no longer extant. The name of Incent or Innocent lingered till lately in the parish, and the quaint arms of the Dean are still to be seen on stained glass in the Head - master's parlour. They are alluded to in lines preserved by Weever, but now no longer to be seen ; and the descrip- tion, "Argent, on a bend gules an Innocent or," seems to mean an infant holding a rose. The last event connecting Berkhampstead and royalty seems to have been the residence here of Peter the Wild Boy, who had been found and sent over as a curiosity to George II., and lived here till his death in 1785. The collar with his guardian's name and address is still at Ashridge, " Peter the Wild man from Hanover. Who- ever will bring him to Mr. Fenn, at Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, shall be paid for their trouble." But the modern traveller will be more interested by another and worthier association. In the Rectory House was born, in 1731, the great Christian poet, William Cowper, and in the east window of the church, recently filled with stained glass in honour of his memory, we may see him depicted, and at his feet the three tame hares which he immortalised. The house is now pulled down, and the only tangible relic of the poet seems to be the garden and the old well-house. His mother's tomb is in the chancel the mother whose picture, received in after life, drew from him some of the most touching lines in our language. 114 CHAPTER X. TEMPLE BAR. Lud Gate and its Origin The Ward of Farringdon The Successive Temple Bars Sir Horace Jones's Monument Are the Middle and Inner Temples in the Lord Mayor's Jurisdiction ? The Outer Temple Dr. Barehone. IN the early history of London nothing is more difficult than to assign a date to Ludgate. If we believe the old- fashioned writers, it is the oldest of the City gates. If we accept the newer lights, it is the latest. The latter view is probably the true one ; the old story of King Lud is brushed aside like that of King Belin ; and it is, at any rate, not very difficult to find a time, which may be chrono- logically determined, when there was only one way out of the City over the Fleet, and that was by Newgate. When Lud Gate was connected with a bridge, the road to West- minster at once joined the suburbs about Shoe Lane and St. Clement Danes with the City; and, in accordance with the custom of the time, these suburbs became wards, and had their aldermen, who, however, answer rather to the modern idea of lords of manors than aldermen. A very curious and interesting account of the descent of the ward of Farringdon, gathered from the Hustings Rolls at the Guildhall, may be found in Dr. Sharpe's first volume (pp. 112, 397). Stow had an inkling of the story, but appears to have misread the documents. They TEMPLE BAR IN 1800. (From a Print by Dayes.) TEMPLE BAR. 115 are too technical for quotation here. But it would appear that Farringdon's heiress and her husband took the name instead of that of Le Pevre, and so puzzled posterity. In 1223, Joce Fitz Peter was the alderman of Ludgate. One of his successors, John, the son of Ralph le Fevre, sold the ward of Ludgate to William Farringdon, and it was joined to the other suburban estate of that wealthy alderman, becoming, what it continues after the lapse of six hundred years, the great ward of Farringdon Without. The one person whose rights were invaded by this extension of the Liberties of London was the Abbot of Westminster. His manor of St. Margaret's, he contended, reached to the Fleet ; and the truth of this allegation is proved by the fact that he presented to the churches of St. Dunstan's and St. Bride's ; yet it was at the same time closely connected with the City, for, in 1278, Thomas Auverne had an annual quit rent from " the baily of Ludgate, which he bequeathed to the church of ' St. Brigid ' for candles at the altar of St. Mary." The Dean and Chapter of Westminster are still the patrons of St. Bride's ; but in the thirteenth century Henry III. persuaded the Abbot to give him St. Dunstan's that he might annex it to the house in Chancery Lane which he was then founding for converted Jews. Henry little fore- saw the day when a Jew would reign in the same house as the Master of the Bolls, and the Abbot as little foresaw the day when Temple Bar would be gravely described as one of the City gates. The ward, indeed, can hardly be said to have been recognised before 1346, when its representatives were first admitted to the Common Council. The word Ludgate in Anglo-Saxon, properly Lydgate, denotes a postern* a small opening in a wall, or fortification. The Legend of King Lud was invented when the meaning 116 LONDON AFTERNOONS. of the name had been forgotten. The Fleet Bridge was in existence before 1228, and the " bar of the New Temple" is mentioned as early as the first year of the fourteenth century. Keeping these meagre facts in mind, it is curious to inquire for the mention of a time when there was no bar there. Even this may be obtained, for in the grant of a piece of ground to Peter of Savoy in 1246, it is described as lying in the Strand outside the walls of London. In all subsequent documents it is described as lying outside Temple Bars. There were Wards without and bars in other places Bishopsgate, for instance, and Holborn. We know, then, that Temple Bars came into existence after 1246 and before the end of the century, and in all probability some further in- formation may come to light on the subject before very long. That the Temple Bars formed a City gate that is to say, a fortified opening in the wall probably few would now assert. But when the triumphal arch, erected in 1670, was removed a little time ago, there was much lamentation in certain quarters at the loss of " the last of our City gates." Considering that the boundary between the Ward of Farringdon Without and the parish of St. Clement Danes was absolutely unmarked by any defence, it would be hard to say what the gate, if it was a gate, was situated in. A gate implies a wall, or fence, or something of the kind. Yet we know that access could be had from the Templars' tilt yard into the " City " by various ways, as numerous, probably, as they are now, between Carey Street and Chancery Lane. The ground, Fickett's Field, or Little Lincoln's Inn Field, as it was called, on which the religious knights took their diversion, is now covered by the New Law Courts and that part of Lincoln's Inn which was known aa Searle's Court. Here long stood a pillar attributed to TEMPLE BAR. 117 Inigo Jones, and a fountain. Among the thirty-three streets and courts pulled down there was a Shire Lane, whose very name is interesting, marking as it did the exact boundary between what was then the County of Middlesex and the City of London. The name had, however, for some years been lost in that of Searle's Place ; but Stow, who says it " divideth the cittie from the shire," adds that it adjoins Temple Bar ; and this is all the mention he accords to the " gate." He stumbles over the name of Fetter Lane, which shows us where some of the armourers made rests, or feutres, for the lances of the knights in the adjoining tilting ground. Shortly after Stow's time a wooden building, some- what like a toll-house, was placed across the narrow street, and on its removal hi a ruinous state the archway of stone was made by Wren, and adorned with statues of the two Kings Charles, and of King James I. and Queen Anne of Denmark, by Bushnell. It was worth preserving, and everyone is glad to hear of its re-erection at Theobald's Park, near Waltham Cross, though a place on the Embankment at the gate of the Temple Gardens, for instance would have been preferable. It was designed for a City site, and is to some extent literally out of place in the country, though it looks well, surrounded with fine old oak trees, in its new home. Street, the architect, in one of his earlier designs for the Law Courts, proposed a kind of Eialto reaching from the new buildings into the Temple, and affording the lawyers a safe conduct over Fleet Street. It would have been a very picturesque feature in the view, and would have commemorated Temple Bar very worthily. But other counsels prevailed, and it is impossible to feel much regret that the noble street is uninterrupted forming as it does a much more imposing entrance to 118 LONDON AFTERNOONS. the greatest city in the world than any archway, short of an edifice equalling the Arc de 1'Etoile itself, could do. As a memorial, and as a boundary stone, Sir Horace Jones's refuge in the centre of the carriage way is perfectly effectual. There can be no hesitation as to the true site of the " bar of the new Temple," and, historically speaking, a mere monument is more appropriate to the site than a mock gateway. At first it can have been only a toll-bar. The removal of the " Gate " is of the nature of a " restoration," as restoration is understood nowadays. Although the Middle and Inner Temples are within the Bar, it is a question which has often occurred whether they are in the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor. No settlement has ever been arrived at ; one or two Mayors have been mobbed for driving into the Temple with the State Sword held erect. If we remember that when the Templars removed from their house in Holborn, and came to the wider site by the river's edge, in 1118, the suburb of Fleet Street had not yet been made, it is quite intelligible that their house was never reckoned in the City. When they built it a marsh and a tidal estuary were between them and Ludgate, and to get within the wall it was necessary to go up " Show Well Lane," now Shoe Lane, through a newly built street on the high ground round the church of St. Andrew. When the " Friars Preachers " came to England, in 1221, they first made good their footing on this hill, and gradually pieced together a little estate, which, when they removed in 1276, like the Templars, to a riverside site, they sold to the Earl of Lincoln. Thus, bit by bit, the ground was occupied on the north side of Fleet Street. Then, between the Black Friars and the Templars, the inter- vening riverside site was taken by the White, or Carmelite Friars ; and so the chain of houses, on both sides of TEMPLE BAR. 119 Fleet Street, was completed, from the outlying village on the hill, crowned by St. Clement Danes, to the bottom of the valley, over which the towers of the postern at Ludgate looked out. It is not so difficult to picture the state of the " suburb " at that time if we remember the fluctuations of level which are still encountered between Temple Bar and Ludgate Circus. Opposite Chancery Lane the roadway is thirty- eight feet above high-water mark, but only 20 feet at St. Bride's, and fifteen feet where it crosses Bridge Street. There is a depression also just outside Temple Bar, a de- pression probably marking the place where a little brook once ran, of which Milford Lane recalls the memory. A brook and a mill and a ford would look strangely out of place there now, but the names preserve them as matters of history ; just as the City still pays rent for a certain tenement called the Forge, probably burnt by Wat Tyler, which stood over against Milford Lane, and was the armourer's shop a natural adjunct when the knights tilted in Fickett's Field. One ingenious writer has sup- posed that Milford Lane marks a ford over the Thames, while another cites a discovery of mediaeval pottery in Chancery Lane as a sign that Fleet Street was occupied by the Romans. It is somewhat strange that so many books have been written about Old London, and that so few writers have followed the good example of Stow, who both made up as far as he could the early records and also walked over the ground. In many books about Temple Bar there is not so much as a single mention of the Outer Temple. It would stand to reason, we might suppose, prior to experience, that, if there is a Middle Temple, and if there is an Inner Temple, there must have been an Outer one. It was not given to the lawyers, but was occupied first by a Bishop, and 120 LONDON AFTERNOONS. afterwards by a line of Earls, one of whom, Essex, was here besieged after his abortive rebellion towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, lint perhaps the most im- portant fact in the history of the Outer Temple is that the first streets and lanes on its site were those built by Dr. Nicholas Barbon, or Bare bone, the son of the too famous IVaise-dod Barebone, M.P., and nephew of If- Christ-had-not-ey at St. Albans by Offa. Whether this church with its parish was then made, or whether, as Maitland conjectures, it was not till the time of Alfred, St. Alban's, Wood Street, remains the oldest parochial division, besides the three mentioned above, about which we have even conjecture worthy of notice. It has been assumed that the great St. Erkenwald, who is said to be commemorated in Bishopsgate, built St. Ethelburga's Church close to the gate as a monument to the piety of a lady of the royal family of Sebert, the first Christian King of Essex. We shall have occasion to notice this church more at large. Another church which may be connected with this period, but which much more likely belongs to that of Alfred, is St. Osyth's, now St. Benet Sherehog. The old name survives in " Size Lane," and the odd name of Sherehog commemorates a citizen named William Serehog, who was living in the year 1122, and probably rebuilt and rededicated the church of St. Osyth. With these exceptions, if they are exceptions, most London churches belong to a period later than the Conquest, and are evidence of the rapid increase in wealth of the " barons " of the City, each one of whom, when he had made for himself an estate, desired for it a separate church ; and to this we may ascribe confidently, first, the very small size of the churches and parishes ; and, secondly, the number of personal names used to distinguish the various dedications. Though Allhallows and St. Mary " Staining " may be references to the rare use of stone in building, as THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 125 St. Mary " le Bow " is to the use of arches, though St. Mary "Woolnoth" and St. Mary " Woolchurch Haw" refer to the woollen hithe and market, as St. Mary Bothaw refers to a little harbour on the Wall brook, yet in such names as St. Martin Orgar, St. John Zachary, St. Katharine Coleman, St. Martin Outwich, St. Benet Fink now commemorated by Finch Lane St. Nicholas Aeon, St. Andrew"Hubbard, St. Laurence Pountney, St. Margaret Moses, St. Margaret Lothbury, St. Mary Montalt or Mounthaw, St. Nicholas Olave, and othei-s, we have the founder or rebuilder indicated, and can, in a majority of cases, ascertain when he lived. It was in the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth that church-building activity was at its height. The cathedral of St. Paul ceased to be used by the parishioners, for whom the dean and chapter provided St. Faith's, St. Gregory's, and other small and compara- tively late churches. They likewise accepted from various citizens the charge of new churches. Orgar, probably a goldsmith, near the beginning of the twelfth century, gave them two, St. Martin Orgar and St. Botolph Billingsgate. A priest named Daniel gave them St. Edmund the King, in Lombard Street, on condition that his son Ismael should have the living after him. Eobert, the son of Ralph, the son of Herlewin, gave them St. Michael-le-Querne, which stood in the corn market where Sir Eobert Peel's statue is now. It would be tedious to go through all the list. We must remember that, owing to a variety of causes, the old City churches were probably little better than wooden sheds. A stone church was something remarkable. The Norman arches under St. Mary-le-Bow, in Cheapside, are still visible to the curious who obtain permission to visit the vaults. But of all the relics of this period the 126 LONDON AFTERNOONS. noblest in the Gity is St. Bartholomew the Great. The story of its founder, Rahere, has been often told. He may have been a professional jester at the Court of Henry I., or may, as the late Mr. Walcott thought, have been the same Rahere who was a companion of Hereward, and who " rescued four innocent persons from Norman execu- tioners, who, owing to his ingenious disguise, mistook him for a heron, an honourable nickname which continued to cling to hun through life." This curious and puzzling passage I have extracted from a broad-sheet published by the vicar, with a very pretty view of the churchyard on the first page. It is part of a paper contributed to a magazine by the late Precentor Walcott in 1864. If any of my readers have studied ecclesiastical archaeology they will know how cautiously we should accept Mr. Walcott's authority ; and indeed this very paper contains a passage calculated to shake our belief in it, for in speaking of Smithfield as the scene of Wat Tyler's death he says, " here Sir W. Walworth won the distinctive dagger which figures in the City arms." As there is no dagger in the City arms, though possibly Mr. Walcott thought the sword of St. Paul was a dagger, this statement is not calculated to reassure us. However, we may follow Mr. Walcott's account of St. Bartholomew's and its founder in certain particulars. Rahere " is said to have led a sinful life as a young man at Court : on his earnest repentance he went upon a pil- grimage to Rome ; and on his return, in a dream he saw St. Bartholomew direct him to found a church in his name on the present site." This is the received account. There is reason, however, to believe that either on this site or that of St. Bartholomew the Less a parish church already stood, and an early tradition, which indeed Mr. Walcott mentions (and of which full particulars may be found in THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 127 Malcolm's * Londinum Kedivivum "), connects with it the name of Edward the Confessor. How far Kahere was concerned with the hospital I do not know, but probably at first the interests of the priory and the hospital were more intimately connected than they afterwards became. As their separate wealth increased, their independence increased, and latterly the prior had little to do with the hospital except to control the election of a master. Mean- while the parishioners used an aisle of the nave of the canons' church, and at the Dissolution received the choir itself instead of their former place of worship, which had become ruinous. The hospital shared the fate of the priory, but towards the end of the life of Henry VIII. it was re-granted to the citizens, and became what it still is. The hospital chapel became the church of a parish which comprises only the hospital itself within its boundaries. The modern visitor has to exercise what may be called his " historical imagination " if he would picture to himself St. Bartholomew the Great in the fifteenth century. He stands facing the narrow Early English archway, which now admits him to the churchyard, and which before the Dissolution would have admitted him to the south aisle of the nave. Facing him there would have been probably three tall gables of the same style* To his right a narrow street, Duck Lane (now Duke Street), flanked on one side by the hospital wall and on the other by the conventual buildings, would have run up to the City wall. Behind him would be the wide, grassless expanse of Smithfield, decorated near its further margin with an old gibbet or two, and close by, opposite the main entrance of the nave, with a tall, half-charred post and chain, surrounded, according to the season, with white wood ashes or with black mud. Of the buildings forming the square on the west and north sides, none would be tall enough to hide 128 LONDON AFTERNOONS. the view of the Charterhouse beyond, and, still further in the background, the nunnery of Clerkenwell and the great house, a small town in itself, of the Hospitallers of the order of St. John. Far away on the green wooded hills in the distance, beyond the river Fleet and the Hole- burn, would have been the tower recently built by Prior Bolton to mark conspicuously his country house at Canon- bury ; the tower is standing yet (p. 234). Prior Bolton put the same punning device, of which he was evidently very proud, on the side of his tower and on the front of his oriel window within the church. There is a similar window in Westminster Abbey, near the western end. It is of dark oak, and may be approached from what is now the Deanery ; and from it, without leaving his own chambers, the Lord Abbot could see mass performed below him in what is now the baptistery. Prior Bolton's window at St. Bartholomew's is more ambitious. It is of stone, and looks into the choir of the church, tilling up one of the old Norman triforium arches. The prior's house from which it opened is gone, but the window serves to identify its site for us. On a panel in front is carved the " Bolt in Tun," an arrow transfixing a barrel, which I mentioned above. There was another prior after Bolton Trafford, who surrendered the house to Henry's commissioners, and the site was granted to Sir Richard (afterwards Lord) Rich, the ancastor of the Earls of Holland. The advowson of the church con- tinued in the hands of his descendants until a compara- tively recent period, but now belongs to a private gentle- man. Queen Mary for a short time interrupted Rich's tenure by giving the house to the returned Black Friars, but their occupation did not last long ; and Rich, to make sure and stablish his position, took out a new grant from Queen Elizabeth. It was under his auspices, no doubt, THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 129 that the nave and the parish church were pulled down ; and even the choir, which he left to the parishioners, was intruded upon. A warehouse or something of the kind long occupied the east end of the triforium, and necessitated the use of iron pillars on either side of the communion table. The tomb of Rahere bears the impress of Prior Bolton's hand, being in a style many centuries later than that of the massive Norman piers and arches which surround it. To see these well and judge of their picturesque effect, it will be necessary to walk round behind the altar, where an arrangement will be found of which the only parallel now remaining in London is that afforded by the chapel of St. John in the Tower. St. Bartholomew's, being on a much larger scale and of a slightly later period, is finer, except for the destruction (now repaired) of a part of the vaulting by the intrusion above mentioned. There are several fine monuments of a later date than that of Rahere. The largest is in the south aisle, and is a very typical example of the style in vogue in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Sir Walter Mildmay, whom it commemorates, was her Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is a very singular but powerful piece of sculpture, placed too high up to be seen well, as a memorial of Percival Smallpace and Agnes Tebowld, his wife. It is dated 1588, one year before Mildmay 's monument, and consists of the busts of the old couple : he with a double-pointed beard, and she with a goodly and imposing ruff. The south transept remained roofless and ruined until the end of the nineteenth century, but it is now very cleverly " restored." The old walls with their Nor- man arches are gone. The present tower was built in 1628. Part of the cloister was long occupied as a stable. " Can London," asks Malcolm, " boast such another stable ? j 130 LONDON AFTERNOONS. I hope not ! " And he adds, writing in 1802, " Mr. Wheeler keeps his cloister stable roof as clean as whitewash will make it, and is very obliging." The cloister, I have to note, was destroyed in 1833. When Rahere had succeeded in founding and peopling his monastery, " he joined to him a certain old man, Alfune by name, to whom was sad age and sadness of age, with experience of long time. This same old man not long before had builded the church of St. Giles at the gate of the City that in the English tongue is called Cripplegate, and that good work happily he had ended." So says the writer of a curious manuscript life of Rahere (Cott. MSS., Vesp. B ix.) from which Malcolm givessome long extracts. There are few parish churches in London of which the history is so complete as is that of St. Giles, Cripplegate. Alfune built it during the lifetime of Rahere, but it may well be considerably older than St. Bartholomew's, for the priory was founded in 1102, according to most authorities, and in or soon after 1103 the church was no longer in Alfune's hands. It was given by a deed which is witnessed by Reyner, who is known to have been an archdeacon in that year and later to the dean and chapter of St. Paul's, subject to the incumbency of the donor, Aelmund, and his son Hugh. This was a very common arrangement at that period. Aelmund was probably married, as it is believed most parish priests were at the time. After the lapse of some 800 years the dean and chapter of St. Paul's still hold the advowson which Ael- mund gave them. The first event in the history of the church must have occurred very soon after Aelmund's gift. Good Queen Matilda, the wife of Henry L, founded in it a guild or brotherhood, called after St. Mary and St. Giles; and this must have been before 1118, for in that year the Queen died. THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 131 The parish lies wholly without the wall, a great bastion of which is in the spacious churchyard. By tracing the parish boundaries on a map, the places of two other bastions further south may be found, though the bastions themselves are concealed or have disappeared. An unfor- tunate guess of Stow connects the name with cripples begging at the gate. But Crepul-geat, in Old English, as I have said elsewhere, means a covered way in a fortification, and here a postern opened in the wall, and the covered way communicated with the Barbican. There is a noteworthy little point of historical curiosity connected with this churchyard. In 1662, it being found that there was scarcely room for all the dead, a piece of ground was taken on lease from the City to add to the cemetery. It is described as " near Crowder's Well." This was a spring of water which was exceedingly popular, not only with the parishioners, but also with strangers, as it was believed to be particularly good for ophthalmia, and also that " the use of it would restore an intoxicated person to his senses sooner than any other." The parish boasted of another spring near the ditch of the City wall, which was arched over for them by Whittington, and had other sources of supply, such as a pipe or conduit from Highbury. " Hence we find," says one writer, without the slightest inkling of the real mean- ing of his words "Hence we find the parish was well supplied with that excellent element many years previous to Sir Hugh Middleton's memorable work." He then goes on to describe the frightful ravages of the plague in 1603, when even the clerk died, and the number of interments was such that the extensive churchyard was raised two feet. It does not seem to have occurred to anyone to connect the shocking death-rate with the use of the well in the churchyard or that in the City ditch. 132 LONDON AFTERNOONS. The old Norman church of Alfune and Aelmund has long disappeared. The church, whatever it was then, was entirely destroyed by fire in 1545, and the present building is mainly as it was afterwards restored. Still, it is in what Pugin used to call " the Gothic or Christian Pointed style," large, wide, and light, without much beauty of form or detail, but convenient and airy. It consists of a nave with narrow side aisles, and has not suffered very materially from the ruthless hands of modern " restorers." Between the church and the street there is a curious old building, the parish " Guest House," where the ward inquest used to be held, and where now the parochial charities are managed. It contains some handsome plate, among the articles being two or three silver cups, with such inscriptions as this : " The Fyne of Peter Phillips for being Released from being Scavenger, 1612." Evidently the jurymen, " in merry pin," sometimes elected a wealthy fellow-citizen to the unpleasant office in order to obtain a cup from him. The parish beadle's staff is decorated with a model in silver of old Cripplegate, with a wooden-legged cripple, hat in hand, walking through the archway. It was given by Sir Benjamin Maddox, who is commemorated at the West End by Maddox Street, Hanover Square, which covers part of a suburban farm which he owned. The Guest House is about to be pulled down. In the church of St. Giles are interred the remains of John Milton, the poet, and of John Milton, the scrivener, his father. Their grave is " in the upper end of the chancel, at the right hand," and therefore not very near the conspicuous monument in the south aisle which was put up in 1793 by Samuel Whit bread. There are several other monuments of interest, and one, which represents Constance Whitney rising in her THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 133 winding-sheet from the grave at the Day of Judgment, in a very realistic style, has been made the subject of a curious local story, which Mr. Woodthorpe attributed to Daniel Defoe (who was an inhabitant of the parish), and which is one of the best known of all graveyard and sepulchral legends. The lady was said to have fallen into a death- like trance, and to have been buried. The grave-digger, the night after the funeral, hid himself in the church, opened the vault, and to obtain some valuable rings which were on the hand of the supposed corpse, proceeded to cut off one of its fingers. How far he had succeeded in this operation we are not told ; but the bleeding, it is said, restored the lady to life, and she was able to rise and walk home, to the astonishment, let us hope to the joy, of her husband and servants. The story is so circum- stantial, and contains at the same time so many improba- bilities, that it has all the appearance of a work of Defoe, whose fictitious diary of the Great Plague has been often received as true. Constance Whitney has, however, a more substantial claim on our attention, for she was the granddaughter of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, whom Shakespeare has immortalised as Justice Shallow. She died at the age of seventeen, as an affecting epitaph records. Her aunt, Margaret Lucy, is also buried in the church. The celebrated Lancelot Andrewes was at one time vicar of St. Giles's, and some of the monumental inscrip- tions are attributed to him. If the attribution is correct he was no poet. Of Charles Langley, who died in 1602, we read, for instance, after a description of his charities in life : "And when he died he gave his mite, All that did him befall, 134 LONDON AFTERNOONS. For ever once a Yeere to cloath St. Giles his poore withall. All Saints he pointed for the day, Gownes twenty ready made, With twenty shirts and twenty smocks, As they may best be had." This doggrel, and more like it, is actually signed by Andrewes. There are monuments in the church to Foxe, who wrote the " Book of Martyrs " ; to Speed, the historian ; and to the bold mariner, Martin Frobisher, all of whom are buried here. The register contains some interesting entries. Among them is the marriage of Oliver Cromwell and Elizabeth Boucher, August 22, 1620. The burial of Daniel Defoe in the Bunhill Fields cemetery is thus recorded : " 1731, April 26, Mr. Dubow, Cripplegate." Although St. Giles's Church has many interesting memorials, it is to St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, that the late Dean Stanley gave the title of " the Westminster Abbey of the City." It contains a grerter number of handsome tombs than St. Giles's, but the persons commemorated are not so eminent. There is no Milton, no Foxe, no Defoe at St. Helen's. But those who are buried in the church had a considerably greater idea of their own im- portance than the poor literary men upon whom probably they would have looked down. The monuments which belong to St. Helen's were largely recruited in 1877, when the neighbouring church of St. Martin Outwich was removed, and the dead men's bones were carted away to Ilford. The church, like so many others, belonged early to St. Paul's. It was given to the dean and chapter by Ranulph, a canon, and Robert, his son, about the year 1148, on condition that the anniversary of Archbishop THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 135 Thurstan of York who, by the way, had been himself a canon, and was, presumably, a friend as well as an ecclesi- astical brother of Kanulph should be kept in the church for ever. Either Ranulph himself or some previous member of his family must have built and endowed the church, which belongs, therefore, to the great church- building epoch that followed the fire of 1136. The priory of St. Helen stood on the north side of the church, where is now St. Helen's Place. The north aisle of the church was the priory chapel, and being at the Dissolution left unoccupied, was speedily almost filled with the great tombs which we see in it now. But the nuns seem sometimes to have worshipped, as Prior Bolton worshipped from his oriel at St. Bartholomew's, without coming into church, as they had in the south wall of their cloister a traceried opening, which looked, from within the church, like an altar-tomb, as well as an ordinary window. As the cloister was at a lower level than the church, the opening, which in the church is close to the floor, must, at the other side of the wall, have been at a most convenient height. The old doorway remains at the foot of a short flight of steps. The priory was founded about the year 1212, and was more or less under the control of the Dean of St. Paul's, who seems to have had constant trouble with the nuns and their prioress. Dugdale and other historians give summaries of the regulations made by successive deans, but apparently in vain. A series of injunctions, issued in the fifteenth century, and discovered by Mr. Maxwell Lyte among the archives of St. Paul's, desired the nuns to sing fully and distinctly at divine service, and not so fast as hitherto, but with the proper pauses ; and orders them to refrain from kissing secular persons. Further, they are en- joined to wear their veils according to the rules of their 136 LONDON AFTERNOONS. order not too sumptuous in character ; and the prioress is ordered to keep not more than one or two dogs, and is forbidden to receive guests at table or elsewhere. There used to be a belfry tower over the entrance to Great St. Helen's from Bishopsgate, but it was taken down in 1696. Nevertheless, the visitor who enters now cannot fail to be struck with the aspect of the place. The houses which surround the churchyard present a specimen of almost every style, and the church contains examples quite as various. Crosby Hall is Gothic, and Borne of the houses adjoining it are quite worthy of Sir Christopher Wren. One, now pulled down, dated 1606, looked, with its brick pilasters, very like the work of Inigo Jones, but was too early. The almshouses of Sir Andrew Jud, on the north side, are devoid of beauty, but are very characteristic of the year 1729, in which they were rebuilt. The south entrance of the church is an exceed- ingly picturesque example of the style in vogue in 1633, and is attributed with less doubt to Inigo Jones. How it and the beautiful porches within have escaped " restoration " I cannot imagine. When we enter the church we are almost confused by the number and magnificence of the sepulchral monuments. The most beautiful is to the north of the communion-table, close to the altar-tomb of Sir Thomas Gresham. It shows Sir William Pickering, a handsome Elizabethan knight, lying in full armour under a canopy of excellent design, supported by marble pillars. The most curious monument is behind the organ in a kind of south transept. It was erected by Lady Caesar to the memory of her husband, Sir Julius Caesar, and cost her the large sum of 110, equal to fully 1,000 now. Nicholas Stone was the sculptor. On a great slab of black marble is what looks like a parchment deed inlaid THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 137 in white marble, with a signature, and below a seal and an attesting document. The inscription imitates the lawyers' writing of the day, and is in Latin. In it Sir Julius Caesar, otherwise Delmare, promises : " I will cheerfully pay the debt I owe to Nature whenever it shall please God to appoint it." This oddly named knight was of Italian descent, his father having been a physician who came over to attend Queen Mary, and remained with Queen Elizabeth. The son was born at Tottenham in 1557, and, boasting through his mother of descent from the ducal family of Cesarini, he dropped his father's name of Adelmare, or Delmare, and called himself Caesar. He rose to eminence as a lawyer, and was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Cecil. His brother was Dean of Ely and has a beautiful monument in the Cathedral. In a chapel at a slightly lower level, to the eastward, are some brasses, one of them, which is raised on a stone base, being particularly interesting, as it represents a lady covered with a mantle, on which a coat of arms is emblazoned. Two altar tombs bear each a pair of stone effigies of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. They came from St. Martin's, and are believed to represent members of the Outwich or Oteswich family. In the nuns' aisle are two very handsome canopied Gothic tombs, which were formerly decorated with brasses. They came also from St. Martin's, and belong respectively to families named Clitherow (1469) and Pemberton (1500). The Clitherows succeeded the prioress of St. Helen's at Boston House, her manor near Brentford, and their descendants hold it still. Opposite, on the south wall of the church, is a very handsome monument, gorgeous with colours and gilding. It represents Richard Staper, alder- man of this ward of Bishopsgate Within, and his wife and eight children. He died in 1608, and is described in his 138 LONDON AFTERNOONS. epitaph as " the greatest merchant in his tyme." This also came from St. Martin's. It would lie impossible to go through even a tithe of the monuments in St. Helen's ; but we must pause a moment to look at Sir John Spencer, who, in Queen Elizabeth's time, occupied Crosby's old house, and also Prior Bolton's villa at Canonbury. He and his wife lie in great state on the tomb, and before them kneels their daughter and sole heiress, the wife of Lord Compton, and ancestress of the earls and marquises of Northamp- ton (p. 235). Among other eminent people buried in St. Helen's I must also mention Spencer Compton, the godson of Sir John, who was killed at Hopton Heath in 1643 ; Richard Williams, paternal great-grandfather of Oliver Cromwell, who died in 1546 ; Sir Andrew Jud, who was Lord Mayor during Wyatt's rebellion, and died in 1558 ; and Sir John Crosby himself. I have mentioned St. Ethelburga's as a very ancient church. It is situated just within the site of Bishop's Gate, and unlike its near neighbour, St. Helen's, it is always open. Why St. Helen's, with its wealth of monuments, should always be kept locked except during service-time is " one of those things no fellow can understand." At St. Ethelburga's the quiet little church invites the passer-by to enter and pray, or rest, or admire the solitary bit of First Pointed or Early English architecture left in the City, with the doubtful exceptions of the Lady Chapel in South wark and the Temple Church, both of which are so thoroughly restored that they belong not to the thirteenth century, but to the nineteenth, and are worthless as archi- tectural examples. St. Ethelburga's is not, and probably never was, a handsome church ; but it is venerable and curious. I know nothing of its history. It may have been founded by King Alfred himself. It may belong ETHELBURGA, BISHOPSGATE. THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 139 to the same category as St. Giles's and St. Helen's, and have been founded after the great fire of 1136. This is the safest theory, if a theory is necessary. The parish is chiefly situated at the other or western side of the street, and lies wholly within the line of the wall. The advowson was long part of the property of the prioress of St. Helen's, and was granted by Queen Elizabeth to the Bishop of London. The curiously mean entrance, the lancet windows, half built up, the minute dimensions of the church, which is only fifty-four feet long and about half that in width, and, above all, the comparatively genuine and unsophisticated state of the ancient fabric, make this one of the most interesting of London churches, even though it contains no magnificent monuments, and is connected, it is my duty to note, with the names of no illustrious men. The porch passing under or through a private house is very characteristic of an old London church. We see the same or similar arrangements at Allhallows, Lombard Street, at St. Katharine Coleman, at St. Helen's, Bishops- gate, and at St. Bartholomew's. A gate formerly existed at Allhallows, Barking, St. Peter's, Cornhill, St. Andrew Undershaft, St. Mary-le-Bow, and a great many other places. It seems to point to the original foundation of these churches as more or less private chapels. It is on record that before the fire several parish churches notably St. Mary Colechurch and St. Mary Mounthaw were over the gateways of great mansions. Churches over gates are very common in old towns, but they are generally over town gates, as at Bristol, not over the entrances of private houses. Two, I think, are over precinct gates at Winchester. It will not do to press the point too far, but it is well worth marking ; and it certainly goes to strengthen the view I have ventured to put forward above 140 LONDON AFTERNOONS. as to the number and smallness of London churches, and the probability that a majority of them were of private foundation and not of very great antiquity. There is a curious little labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys of old-fashioned houses between the churchyard of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, and St. Mary Axe. There have been great alterations going on in the district of late years, but on the whole they have brought the ancient church of St. Andrew more into view. The street of St. Mary Axe was formerly called St. Mary at Axe, and that implement is supposed to have figured on a neighbouring signboard. A church of St. Mary stood on the west side of the street until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when it was pulled down, and the parish united with that of St. Andrew Undershaft. It is not very easy to reconcile conflicting calculations, but if we are not greatly mistaken St. Andrew's used to stand on the highest ground in the City, being, in fact, on the summit of the Cornhill. A place in Cannon Street is now said to be higher. In ancient times there was no distinction between Cornhill and Leadenhall Street, and the church was St. Andrew upon Cornhill. It obtained its present name from the street in front of it being the place selected for the annual raising of a May -pole. We are told that the shaft was taller than the steeple, but we cannot argue from this as to its height, because the steeple was rebuilt after the May -pole had been disused for some years. The street must have been much wider than it is at present at this point, or else the market-place of Leadenhall was more open. In the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. the celebration of May-day upon Cornhill came to a sudden end. A riot against foreigners grew to such proportions that more than four hundred people, including a number of women, were arrested and THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 141 brought before the young King at Westminster. He pardoned all but thirteen, who were hanged, but the May- pole and the celebration of May-day in the City were dis- credited, and the shaft itself was hung on a range of hooks under the eaves of a neighbouring row of houses, the situation of which is probably marked by Shaft Alley. For two-and-thirty years, from 1517 to 1549, it remained there unmolested, but in the latter year " Sir Sampson," curate of the neighbouring parish church of St. Katharine Cree, preached a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, in which he denounced the popular rites and ceremonies of May- day as heathenish and idolatrous, and so worked upon the feelings of his audience by the vigour of his eloquence that they attacked the old shaft with their knives and whittled it all away. The present church dates only from 1520. It is uniformly built in late Perpendicular, and has within a surprisingly spacious appearance. In the north aisle, at the east end, is a monument which of itself would be sufficient to make the church a place of pilgrimage. John Stow, the historian of London, occupies a unique position among the authors of the great Elizabethan age. Little, indeed, should we know of the appearance of London before the fire were it not for his descriptions. He was able at a time when any legend, however wild, any tradition, however garbled, did duty for history, to go to original documents and to weigh facts for himself. In reading his book one has to remember, as I have hinted on an earlier page, that his guesses are as erroneous as those of any of his contemporaries ; but when he quotes an ancient docu- ment, or narrates a fact of his own knowledge, he may be depended upon as absolutely accurate. In forming an idea of this very spot we may see how Stow's account brings it before our eyes. I quote from the first edition (1599, p. 105). 142 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Speaking of the Priory at Aldgate he says : " These Priors have sitten and ridden amongst the Aldermen of London, in livery like unto them, saving that his habite was in shape of a spirituall person, as I myself have seene in my childhood : at which time the Prior kept a most bountifull house of meate and drinke both for rich and poore, as well within the house as at the gates to all comers accord- ing to their estates." One sentence like this transports us back beyond the Reformation, and tells us more of the life of old London than whole chapters written now can do. It is distressing to know that Stow's bones were not suffered to rest in peace where the loving hands of his wife had laid them. In 1732 they were removed to make way for the body of some citizen who was doubtless a personage of more importance in the eyes of his contemporaries. But the monument remains in its place. If Stow was so poor before his death that he had a licence from James I. to beg in London and Westminster, it is strange that so beautiful and costly a tomb should have been erected. Either his widow spent all her substance on it, or, what is not improbable, his works began, after his death, to bring in some money. " A Survay of London, Contayning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Moderne estate, and description of that Citie, written in the yeare 1598 by John Stow, Citizen of London," had only been published when he was seventy-four, and he died at the age of eighty in 1605. The figure is of alabaster. The historian is represented as sitting with a book on his knee, hi which he writes, a " practicable " goose quill being from time to time renewed. Over his head are the arms of the Merchant Taylors, the City company to which he belonged. In the recess on either side of him is a closed and clasped book, as if to denote that he is represented as he sat in his THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 143 study. Altogether, if this was only the monument of some private individual, it would still be worthy of notice for the quiet dignity of the design. I wish I could add that we know the name of the artist who made it. The church of St. Katharine, a little further east hi the same street, is a building of double interest. It forms a link between the old Gothic and the later Classical or Palladian styles. In addition, its connection with the history of a very remarkable man, William Laud, beheaded on Tower Hill on January 10, 1645, would be enough to call our attention to it. The curious mixture of styles, all the parts, however incongruous, being good in themselves, imparts to the interior, hi a higher degree than any other city church, that kind of picturesqueness which we call quaintness. The visitor sees at once on entering that, though some modern Goth has been at work upon it, though the old woodwork has been destroyed, and though the stained glass is of unusual ugliness, a master in art designed the church, a man who could accept what was best in both styles, and weld them together into one harmonious whole. There was only one man in England when the church was built who could have done this, and skilled opinion almost universally assigns St. Katharine's to Inigo Jones, Mr. Eeginald Blomfield standing almost alone in doubting it. Before proceeding, we may glance at the previous history of St. Katharine's. Stow, in his original edition, gives a short account of the old structure, which seems to have been of the meanest character. The tower, still standing, " hath beene lately builded, to witte, about the yeare 1504, for Sir John Percivall, Marchant Taylor, then deceasing, gave money towards the building thereof." In a later edition, Stow, or Strype for him, states that it was built ?at the motion of the Lord Eichard do 144 LONDON AFTERNOONS, Gravesend, bishop of London, who presided from the year 1280 to 1303." This is very likely. The Canons of Christ Church, or the Holy Trinity, from wliich St. Katharine, Christ Church, vulgarly St. Katharine Cree, took the name, did not care for the presence of the parishioners in their own church. And just as, for a similar reason, the Canons of St. Paul's built St. Gregory and St. Faith, and probably other churches, to relieve themselves of the people, so the proud monks of Aldgate went to the trouble and expense of providing a church in which their neighbours might worship without in- truding on the sacred precincts of the monastery. One of the Canons they were of the Augustinian or Austin order officiated until 1414, when a disagreement occurred, and the church became independent. Henry VIII. gave the house and church of the Canons to Thomas Lord Audley. Stow describes vividly the trouble and expense Audley was put to in removing the church of the priory. It must have been a very noble building, but does not immediately concern us, except as showing that in his time, and that of his son-in-law the Duke of Norfolk, there was no parish church between St. Katharine and Aldgate. Lord Audley gave the advowson to Magdalene College, Cambridge, and that college is still the patron. A fact, if it is a fact, of great interest relates to the old church. It has often been asserted that Hans Holbein died in the house of the Duke of Norfolk. This assertion was made in the days when Hol- bein's death was supposed to have taken place about 1555. But since the discovery of his will, it is known that he died in November, 1543. At that time Lord Audley was still alive. Mr. Wheatley remarks on the unlikeli- ness that if Holbein died in his own house in St. Andrew Undershaft he was buried in St. Katharine. But here THE7OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 145 the second tradition comes to our help. If he died in the Duke of Norfolk's house, he would be buried in the church or cemetery of the parish namely, of St. Katharine. If he died of the plague, as is asserted by another tradition, confirmed by the hasty character of the will, his own parish might not have claimed his body. St. Andrew's is further from Aldgate than St. Katharine's. A glance at the map shows this, and a reference to Stow's edition of 1633 proves that St. Katharine's actually stands in the old cemetery of the Canons. The tradition mentioned by Strype is therefore not only probably, but almost certainly, true. It is not, says Mr. Wheatley, likely that his body would " be carried, at such a season, to another parish for burial." Precisely so. In 1863, Sir Wollaston Franks, commenting in Arcfucologia (xxxix., p. 1) on Holbein's will, which had then just been unexpectedly discovered, mentions that Holbein had a house in St. Andrew Undershaft. Whether he lived there or not, we do not know; probably not, as he had no family in England, his two illegitimate children being out at nurse. But if he died in Lord Audley's house while staying there engaged in his art, he would certainly have been buried, not in what we may for the moment call his own parish, but in the parish in which Audley House stood, namely, that of St. Katharine. This view disposes of another difficulty. Sir Wollaston Franks says that Vertue surmised that Holbein died in the Duke's house, and adds that Walpole shows this to have been an error, as the priory did not come into the Duke of Norfolk's possession till 1558. But it is not really any objection, for, according to what was known in Vertue's day, Holbein died in or about 1555. Lord Audley died in 1544, only six months after Holbein, and the house went to the Duchess of Norfolk and her younger sister, K 146 LONDON AFTERNOONS. who never married. Vertue's surmise and Walpole's correction are therefore not incompatible. The date, 1558, for the Duke's coming into possession does not specially concern us. His Duchess died in 1563, and the date is perhaps that of his coming into sole possession by the death of the Duchess's sister. But the difficulty that Holbein cannot have been buried in St. Katharine's if he died in the house owned first by Lord Audley and afterwards by the Duke, falls to pieces. He gives no directions in his will as to where he would be buried. Otherwise, he might have wished his interment to be in the parish where he had his estate. We have at any rate shown that all the difficulties in Strype's story are dis- sipated on examination, and very little more would establish the truth of the view put forward above. Its very un- likeliness is a point in its favour. The level has been raised some 15 feet. Stow men- tions that men were " fain to descend into the church by divers steps, seven in number." A column of the old building, more than half buried, is preserved in the present church. A cloister, or part of one, belonging to the priory, stood on the north side. It must have been very small, as it was only 7 feet wide. As this was taken into the church at Laud's rebuilding, and as the present breadth, including side aisles, is only 51 feet, we gather that the old St. Katharine's was very small indeed. Yet this in old times was the favourite scene of " miracle plays "; and in Godwin and Britton's " Churches of London" there is a long dissertation on the subject. Altogether, with the May-pole at St. Andrew Undershaft, and the " enterludes " at Easter in St. Katharine's, Cornhill must have been a lively part of the City in the fifteenth centuiy . In 1624, however, the church was partially ruined. The parishioners petitioned Magdalene College to rebuild THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 147 the chancel. Nothing seems, however, to have been done till Laud, then recently appointed Bishop of London, took the matter in hand. He had probably already enjoyed some experience of the powers of Inigo Jones. Part of St. John's College, at Oxford, was designed, it is universally believed, by Jones for Laud Mr. Blomfield again dissenting and there is certainly no garden front in the University more beautiful. The Gothic oriels, with their Italian details and their delicate proportions, are beyond praise. The Bishop may have thought of another thing. He wanted, not a preaching house, but a place for the celebration of the Mass, or something very like it. He could therefore employ Inigo, who was a Bomanist, with the more confidence. The problem was complicated by the intended inclusion of the priory cloister, which was not parallel with the church, and a visitor can see the result. Wren had in many of his churches a similar difficulty, and he followed closely the example set by Jones. The wall of the north aisle is not parallel with the arcade of the nave, being narrower at the eastern than at the western end. We see, too, how far westward the cloister site ex- tended, for a piece of blank wall set in several feet marks the place. The windows are cottage-headed, except that the central light in each is higher than the side lights. The exterior has few other features of interest. The interior is most satisfactory I had almost written satisfying. The effect is magical. It is difficult to re- member the smallness of the whole building. It is only 90 feet long and 37 feet high. The nave there is no chancel has five arches at either side, supported by beautiful columns of a very free rendering of the accepted form of the composite style. The soffits of the arches are flat, but coffered into deep panels of floral ornament. Above the arches there is a lofty clerestory with pilasters, 148 LONDON AFTERNOONS. from which the groining of the nearly flat roof rises. The pillars of the nave are rather too tall for their width, Inigo thinking, no doubt, that the oakwork of the pews would conceal the lower portion. When an architect was employed some twenty years ago to " restore " the church, he could not understand this, and Inigo's design suffers accordingly. A fine square-headed window com- pletes the view eastward. The upper half contains the wheel tracery appropriate to St. Katharine. Below are five panels, which have cusped heads and a very Gothic look, but the arches are round. The wheel part of the window contains some fairly harmonious glass of the last century ; but the lower panels, which formerly showed the arms of George I., have been " restored " into some- thing invisible to the naked eye, except for the discordance of the colour. It is said to contain a reference to the annual " flower sermon " ; but it may, for aught we can Bee, be a picture of Alderman Gayer and the lion, in allusion to the Lion Sermon preached every year on October 16. When the building was complete (January 16, 1631), Bishop Laud consecrated it with ceremonies which Prynne remembered against him fourteen years later. These ceremonies, innocent enough in themselves, offended the Puritan party beyond hope of forgiveness. When Laud came to the door he prostrated himself, saying, " This place is holy." He then went to the altar, casting dust from the floor into the air. A procession round the church followed, while these psalms were repeated: the 100th and the 19th. He then read out from a manuscript curses on anyone who should profane the place, followed by blessings on those who had helped the work. After his sermon, a celebration was held, and the Bishop again offended the delicate susceptibilities of the party which thirsted for, THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 149 and eventually obtained, his blood. At the present day many clergymen who cannot be even suspected of ritualism use much the same forms. They were ceitainly, as Malcolm shows (iii. 315), as unlike as possible to those used by the Romanists. The only monument of im- portance is that of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a minister of Queen Elizabeth, which, as he died in 1570, must have been removed from the old church. The visitor, unless he is wedded to the so-called Gothic revival, will find this a beautiful church, worthy of close study. It is one of the few City churches that are nearly always open. The doorway at the east end, in Leadenhall Street, which formed the monument of William Avenon, 1630, was lately removed to the cemetery, which can only be reached through the church. No reason was ever assigned for its removal, for we cannot easily believe that mere greed was a motive. On our way to the church of Allhallows, Barking, we may turn into a little court off Fenchurch Street and pass through the churchyard of Allhallows Staining, emerging again in Mark Lane. Of the church itself the very picturesque tower alone remains. The history of Allhallows, Barking, affords atl east one problem which I have so far found insoluble. Al- though there can be no reasonable doubt that the church was originally built and endowed by the great lady abbess of Barking, yet the first circumstance that we have of documentary history relating to it is a grant of " Berkinchechirche," after the Norman Conquest, to the church of Rochester. The date of this grant was after the middle of the eleventh century and before the middle of the twelfth, and it was made by a certain man named Riculf, and Brichtwen, whom we may suppose to have been his wife. Nevertheless, we find in the year 1387 150 LONDON AFTERNOONS. that the abbess had resumed her rights, and founded a vicarage, to which she presented William Colles. The question is, how did Riculf become possessed of Barking Church, and how did the abbess get it back from Rochester Cathedral ? It would be easy to write, as Mr. Maskell has done, a whole volume on the history of this most interesting church, but for our present purpose it will be sufficient to call attention to the massive Norman piers in the nave, to the beautifully coloured iron brackets of the seven- teenth century, which are provided in this and several other churches for the support of the Lord Mayor's sword and mace when he visits the church in state, and to the unusually large number of fine monuments, and especially of brasses, one of which, handsomely restored, represents " Mr. William Thynne, Esquire," Henry VIII.'s cook, who died in 1546. It is engraved on both sides, or, to use the correct term, is " palimpsest." In this church were buried the headless bodies of the Earl of Surrey, Bishop Fisher, and Archbishop Laud, to the last of whom, as I have said, we owe St. Katharine Cree ; but all were subsequently removed. The Great Fire of 1GC6 burnt the porch of Allhallows, but spared the church. St. Olave's, Hart Street, also escaped the Great Fire. It has many claims on our attention. Over and above its architectural interest, we can never forget that within its walls is the tomb of the famous Samuel Pepys, a member of Parliament, a faithful public servant, a President of the Royal Society, a founder of a great Uni- versity library, and to mention last the one thing for which his name will be longest cherished the writer of a ten years' Diary (1659-1G69), in one of the most eventful periods of our history. For us he is the writer of the Diary. We can hardly THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 151 think of him without a smile. But when we visit his wife's tomb, look at the bust with which it is surmounted, and read the eulogistic Latin epitaph which was indited by her widowed Samuel ; when we look at the monument below, and think that it occupied the same place when Pepys worshipped here, that he must have often read the quaint inscription, and may possibly have determined to mould his own life on the model of the two worthy aldermen there commemorated ; when, in short, we stand in St. Olave's, Hart Street, the Diary over which we have so often laughed, and which seems to belong to a period too remote to have much reality for us, seems to become a living thing, and its author something more to us than a name. In 1672, Sir Andrew Eiccard left the advowson to the inhabitants, and with them it has ever since remained. The register books date from 1563, and the curious visitor may still see, under July 24th, 1665, the name of Mary Ramsay, with the dreadful " P " annexed, for she was the person who brought the plague into the City, and who, before the year was out, was followed to the tomb by a hundred thousand victims. The organ is said to be one of the efforts of the famous artist Bernard Schmidt, better known as Father Smith, and it is worthy of his fame. The quaint monuments which fill every corner, the venerable arches of the aisles, the beadle with his silver mace, the arms of City companies on the ironwork, the vestry-room with an angel looking down from the roof, the various patterns of the windows, and not least, the quiet, country-like service, render this one of the most attractive among the minor City churches, quite apart from its connection with Samuel Pepys. Yet, let us endeavour as we^will to recall wandering thoughts, it is impossible 152 LONDON AFTERNOONS. not to remember that in the pulpit here* Dr. Mills so often " made a good sermon," and at the altar on the 4th of November, 1660, " did begin to nibble at the Common Prayer " ; that here in November, 1669, he buried Mrs. Pepys, so soon after her husband's return from his foreign tour, as her epitaph observes ; and that here, in 1689, Dr. Mills himself was buried. Then, after having survived the last entry in his Diary for more than thirty years, the diarist was borne hither from the house at Clapham where he had died at " about three-quarters past three on Wednesday morning," May 26th, 1703, and was laid under the pavement of the chancel. A hundred and twenty mourning rings were distributed at the funeral, which was performed by Dr. Hickes, the Nonjuring ex- Dean of Worcester, who wrote of him : " I doubt not but he is now a very blessed spirit, according to his motto, me ns cujusque is est quisque " (as the mind, so the man). The register spells his name Peyps. Immediately below the bust of Mrs. Pepys is a very good example of the early seventeenth-century monument and epitaph. It commemorates two brothers, aldermen, named Bayning, Andrew and Paul, who died respectively in 1610 and 1616 : M If all great Cities prosperously confesse That he by whom their Traffick doth increase Deserves well of them, then th' adventure's worth Of these two who were Brothers both by birth, And office, prove that they have thankful bin For the Honours which the City put them in : And dying old, they by a blest consent This Legacy bequeathed, their Monument. The happy sum and end of their Affaires, Provided well both for their soules and Heires." * But not in the present pulpit, which came from a neighbouring church. THE OLDER CITY CHURCHES. 153 It is pleasant to find for once that the heirs were satisfied. The most curious relic of old times is probably to be found in the vestry. The figure of an angel in white plaster appears on the ceiling immediately over the table. The mantelpiece shows us, in addition, carved in mahogany, Faith, Hope, and Charity, and, with the whole room, should by no means be passed without a visit. This is said, according to a local tradition, to have been one of the City churches in which the bells were rung when the Princess Elizabeth was released from the Tower. When she became Queen she presented sets of silken ropes to these parishes, so we have heard, and the crown with a crystal ball on the steeple is connected with the same tradition. 154 CHAPTER XII.' TRING. A Museum amid the Chiltorn Hills Tring The "Vale of Ayles- bury Akeman Street The Museum The Chief Curiosities Instructive Zoology. FEW people would expect to find a first-rate zoological museum in a very out-of-the-way town among the Chiltern Hills. Tring nestles in a wooded valley, as remote from railways as, nowadays, any place can be which is no more than thirty-two miles from London. There are many different ways of reaching it. The Tring station, so called, ia at Pendley, on the North- Western, two miles off, near Ashridge Park. Wendover and Marston Gate and Cheddington are not far away ; and there are public conveyances which take a visitor fromWy combe, Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard, and other neighbouring centres of population to within measurable distance. But few travellers are likely, except under very unfavourable cir- cumstances, to grumble at being delayed in such beautiful scenery. The Chilterns everywhere bring forth beech trees in abundance, and though they seldom rise more than seven or eight hundred feet above the sea level, they form a lovely mountainous background to many a fair view across the Vale of Aylesbury. The town of Tring is reckoned to be in Hertfordshire, but the Bucking- hamshire Vale, the Conca d'Oro of England, flowing with THING. 155 milk and honey, and teeming with lily-white ducks and little, round black pigs, extends so far south that the boundary is technical only, not natural or geographical. In all directions surrounding the Vale are the palaces of the Rothschild family. Halton and Waddesdon smile at each other from opposite hills. Ascot and Eythrope are of minor importance, perhaps, but Mentmore, the seat of the late Baron Meyer de Rothschild, and now of Lord Rosebery, and Aston Clinton, which belonged to Sir Anthony de Rothschild, whose daughter is Lady Battersea, are magnificent places, and remind the visitor that what Ralph of Coggeshale said in the twelfth century is true at the end of the nineteenth, " The houses of the Jews are like kings' palaces." Among these splendid mansions the Manor House of Tring, though originally designed by Sir Christopher Wren, is very modest with its plain red brick front standing but a little back from the market-place, and approached from the street by a short avenue of limes. To the south- west, over a high spur of the Chilterns, is the noble park, best reached from Tring by a short branch of the ancient British, Roman, and Saxon road called the Akeman Street. Akeman Street, Tring, takes you straight up-hill to the woods and over the hill to Wigginton and Berk- hampstead ; but as you would enter the park you are arrested by a tall, windowless brick building, in front of which a notice board tells you that the Museum is open to the public on four afternoons and one morning (Friday) in every week. Close by are picturesque houses extending into an avenue running eastward towards the principal mansion, and on a smooth green lawn facing the private buildings of the Museum are half a dozen emus or rheas stalking about in the grass, accompanied by a pretty contingent of long-tailed 156 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Indian fowls. Cassowaries and zebras may also be seen among the live inhabitants of Tring Park, but this is nearly all there is of a zoological garden, though the aviaries of the late Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild across the valley at Waddesdon are famous in the region. The Museum was established in 1880 by Mr. Walter Rothschild, the eldest son of the Lord of Tring. From very modest beginnings it has gradually become an in- stitution of high scientific importance, as befits the attain- ments and wealth of the founder, one of the foremost naturalists of the day. His agents ransack the isles of the South Seas, the pampas and forests of America, and the deserts of Africa for specimens. Though full}' representative of the principal orders of animals, the Museum is chiefly remarkable for the number of rarities it preserves. The benefit directly and indirectly conferred upon the town and the neighbourhood is incalculable. In addition to ordinary visitors and sightseers a certain number of students are always engaged in the private rooms, where nearly ten thousand birds' skins may be examined, in- cluding the rare yellow-headed parrot from Venezuela (Chrysotis Rothschildi), to which the authorities have given the name of Mr. Rothschild, but which he has modestly omitted from the public division of the Museum. In addition to the ornithological collection, a whole room is devoted to butterflies, of which there are about 30,000 examples, and another to beetles of all kinds, of which there must be close upon 100,000 specimens. There is also an excellent library of the latest and best books on natural history. This gigantic undertaking was commenced while Mr. Rothschild was still very young, but was first opened to the public on the completion of the buildings some dozen years ago. So highly is it THING. 157 appreciated that, besides students, more than 30,000 visitors passed the turnstile during the first year of the exhibition. On market days, Fridays and Mondays, the galleries are crowded. Unfortunately the exigencies of the situation have been too much for Mr. Rothschild's architect, or builder, for the Museum aspires to no dis- tinctive architectural features, and the lower storey is by far too dark, though lighter than the best rooms of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, where the atmosphere of London so greatly impedes the labours of the student. The clear air of the Chilterns is admirably suited to Mr. Rothschild's purpose, and both birds and insects show themselves in their true colours, exhibiting hues invisible hi town. The public part of the show may be sharply divided into four distinct departments. On the lower floor, but inconveniently crowded with specimens, is a series of cases containing examples of all the orders of mammals. Another range contains the birds, and this also is by far too full. On the upper floor are some whales, seals, and other warm-blooded inhabitants of the sea. together with various reptiles, tortoises, snakes, and lizards. Fish also are well represented, as well as corals, shells, and sponges. The fourth department is made up of a series of desk-shaped cabinets containing insects, including spiders, scorpions, leaf and straw insects, and what, in the American language, are termed " flutter bugs " in general, as well as a cabinet of English entomology, arranged in drawers. Great pains have been taken in this department to select suitable and representative specimens to illustrate the whole field, from among the hundreds of thousands in the students' department, many of them being, so far as is known, unique in any collection. A fifth general feature is a large number of examples of skilful taxidermy, 158 LONDON AFTERNOONS. which are arranged on a kind of swinging floor in the centre. They comprise zebras, both Grevy's, with close, thin stripes, in a kind of pattern, and Chapman's, on which the stripes are coarser, and beautifully set up ; near them, one of the gems of the collection, is a giraffe's head, ex- quisitely treated to show the gentle expression and the soft brown eye, with its long eye-lashes. Some antelopes lead up to the Indian gaur, a gigantic buffalo, which is most life-like, and seems as if it would leap from the plat- form. Near it is a very rare " tauriform " antelope lying down, and next an aard-vark (earth pork) from the same region of South Africa, with its long tongue out, waiting at an ant-hill for its prey. The casual visitor can only pick out here and there what, for rarity or some other cause, appears worthy of special note. The ground-floor collection commences, of course, with marsupials, of which there is a large and very representative series, including opossums from America, phalangers, flying squirrels, the miniature marsupial jerboas (conilurus) ; kangaroos of all sizes, and more wonderful than any other, the large moiiotreme from New Guinea (Echidna nigroaculeata), which has not yet become common in museums ; it is very dark in colour. Beside most of the stuffed animals are the skeletons, neatly mounted. The " native water-mole " (Ornithorhyncus) is also fully represented, as well as the blind marsupial mole (Notoryctes). Near these archaic animals is a great case of anthropomorphous apes, gorillas, the Gibraltar ape (Macacus inuus, as it is here labelled, but frequently called Inuus ecaudatus), and a female kooloo kamba, a black ape, absurdly like a negro child (Anthropithecus calvus). The cat tribe is fully represented by a tiger and cub ; a lion, lioness, and cub ; several ocelots, wild cats, hairy leopards, jaguars, and a wonderfully THING. 159 life-like puma. We can only mention further the wild boars and peccaries, armadilloes, pangolins, quagga, sloths, giant red wolf from South America, and the Malayan binturong ; the cattle and big-horn sheep, rats and agoutis, dormice and beavers ; and pass on to the birds, only pausing to admire the fine setting up of a series of heads of wild buffaloes, and an unwieldy white rhinoceros from South Africa. In the departments devoted to birds, the eagle and falcon tribe fill the first two cases. Opposite to them are no fewer than twenty-seven ruffs, all in different plumage, ranging from black to cream colour. A case full of British finches and warblers seems very complete. In the corner, and but indifferently lighted, are the parrots and toucans, among which we cannot pass over a series of varieties of the common grey parrot, white, ash-coloured, red-mottled, and finally, almost entirely red ; nor the contrast presented by a mighty hyacinthine macaw and a tiny Ara Hahni, no larger than a sparrow. The rarer Australian parrakeets are to be seen, but not in any quantity. An owl-parrot and other New Zealand birds seem to offer a missing link between parrots and the accipitrine family ; while the birds of Paradise, humming birds and grass finches, chiefly in cases on the staircase, rival the parrots in bearing " the bright hues of all glorious things." The visitor goes forth sadly, feeling sure he must have missed many of the best and rarest features of the collection, but mitigating his sorrow with a strong sense of gratitude to the learned and generous provider of so much that is calculated to please and instruct his fellow-creatures. 160 CHAPTER XIII. WKEN'S ST. PAUL'S The First Design Wren's Perplexity The Foundations The Opening Service The General Plan The Western Portico The Cupola The Proportions, compared with those of St. Peter's A Silly Story Wren's Epitaph The Nobility of the Cathedral The Interior: Carvings and Metal Work The Organ The Monuments The Wellington Monument The Crypt Tombs of Nelson and Wellington Decoration of the Dome and Choir Surges' Designs The Reredos The Old Railings and their Fate Sir William Richmond's Designs. IN another chapter I have endeavoured to put together a few notes as to what we know of Old St. Paul's, down to the time of its ruin in the Great Fire. It was not wholly destroyed. Much remained, and it might have been repaired. But there was a want of unity in the building. Repair, to Wren's mind, might have meant using what was left and replacing in the same style what was burnt. But what was the style ? Inigo, when he put his beautiful Palladian portico on the west front, " restored " the Norman nave to suit it. But the east end of the church was in the Pointed style. Which, then, was Wren to adopt ? Some of his Gothic, such as the Tom Tower at Oxford, and the Church of St. Mary Aldermary, is very good though quite unlike nineteenth WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 161 century Gothic, because, for one thing, the proportions are so carefully calculated. At first, he thought of repairing both ends and of bringing them together, as it were, by crowning the tower with a dome, which would have formed a splendid feature in every view of London. He was, however, forced, after a few experiments, to recognise the untrustworthy character of the old build- ing : it was rubblework on a loose foundation, having been built by what we call "jerry builders," with the largest possible regard to immediate effect and the least possible concern for the stability of the edifice. When it became apparent, after some nine years' experiments, during which London was without a cathedral, that a new building must be designed, Wren prepared the beautiful model which we see in a chamber of the triforium. But neither Charles II. nor his brother, afterwards James II., would give any countenance to a Protestant preaching house without chapels for masses or even a choir and chancel. Sir Christopher made three designs of various degrees of compliance; but the King and the Duke of York cared nothing for the beauty of the building : it must have chapels, and be suitable for Komanist worship. Wren held out as long as he could. He is even said to have shed tears. But the King was obdurate. " No per- plexity," says Weale, "that can assail an architect can well equal the difficulty of Wren's task, between a Protestant nation and a Catholic future monarch, to plan a temple that might upon occasions serve for either religion, and therefore for neither well." He suggested the building of a long chancel or choir to his original design. But no ; a totally different arrangement must be made. At last Wren produced a drawing, of which it may 162 LONDON AFTERNOONS. safely be said that it was poor in outward aspect although in plan it was something like the present church, and had plenty of places for chapels,. There was hardly about it a trace of Wren's genius, and the western towers, of the pattern aptly denominated "pepper pots," would have formed a frightful eyesore in the view from Ludgate Hill. Objections were made, and at last Wren, one of the mildest of men, was nettled. He would exhibit, he said, no more designs, and having at length obtained the King's approval of the worst of the series, he de- termined to trouble himself no more about rival sects among the clergy or any outside criticism. Mr. Blomfield (Renaissance Architecture, i. 167) gives us this design from Wren's drawing at All Souls' College, Oxford. He distinguishes it as " the warrant design," because King Charles approved of it as " very artificial, proper, and useful." It is simply grotesque. The steeple of St. Bride's, Fleet Street, is placed on the top of a small dome standing on a drum. The drum again is on a half-dome. There are no distinctly architectural features, no order, no kind of ornament, but Inigo Jones's portico is renewed at the western end. Mr. Blomfield thinks Wren was serious in offering this drawing, but I cannot believe that he ever intended to use any part of it, and, as a fact, he never did. He had begun to recognise that time was on his side, and that he would have abundant leisure in which to decide what he would do and how he would do it. The King graciously allowed him to introduce such alterations and improvements as he chose. This leave was all he wanted, and he was hi no way hampered by the King's command that he jhould begin with the east end, choir and chancel. This was hi 1675. Nine years more were to elapse before much progress had been made. The materials were to WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 163 be gathered and tested ; the best workmen in each depart- ment had to be sought out. Such ironworkers as those of Lamberhurst ; such masons as the two Strongs ; such carvers as Gibbons and Gibber ; such artists even as Thornhill, did not abound. Clearing the foundation was a heavy task, and the utter ruin wrought by the Fire may be judged if we visit the church as it is, and observe how few of the monuments of which the old church was full have survived. Contrary to the King's command, Wren set to work where the ground was cleared, which happened to be at the west end. He evidently did not wish to delay a single moment once it was possible to begin. Within two months after he had the King's approval the first stone was laid, the foundations being on what was called " the pot earth," which had served for the old church. Wren's extreme care in small matters is exemplified by an anecdote. Gwilt tells us that when he had completed the circuit of the new foundation, all but six or seven feet at the north-east corner, he found a place from which " the pot earth " had been removed. Not trusting the sand, and having an ingrained dislike to piling, he built a solid pier ten feet square, commencing eighteen feet below the surface, and at fifteen feet he turned a massive arch from the pier to connect it with the rest of the foundation* The choir was first ready for use, and was opened for divine service on the Thanksgiving Day for the Peace of Ryswiek, the 2nd of December, 1697. Charles and James were both gone ; so was Queen Mary, who had been a steady friend to Wren. No one now dared to question the suitability of his designs, even though he still kept them in his own mind. He could not revert to his original plan, but the church he built is the glory of our great city, a landmark, a picturesque relief to the eye amid 164 LONDON AFTERNOONS. sordid surroundings a subject of congratulation to all who love good architecture and a sublime scenic effect. It will be remarked that no consecration service was held in St. Paul's. The idea of solemn ceremonies of this kind was wholly foreign to the feelings of citizens who had risked their lives and their property to expel King James and to bring in King William, but a special collect was used, of such beauty and fitness that it must not be omitted here. It is to be found in the Tendon Gazette (2-6 December, 1697) : " Most Gracious Father, who hast remembered Thy ancient loving kindness, and restored to us the public solemnities of worship in this Thy house ; we offer our devout praises and thanksgivings to Thee for this Thy mercy, humbly beseeching Thee to perfect and establish this good work. Thou, O Lord, dwellest not in a house made with hands ; Heaven and the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain Thee ; but though Thy Throne is in Heaven, earth is Thy footstool. Vouchsafe, there- fore, we beseech Thee, Thy gracious presence in this Thy house, to hear our prayers and accept our sacrifices of praise and thanks- givings, and grant that it may never be defiled with idolatrous worship or profaneness ; but that truth and peace may dwell in this place ; that sincere piety and devotion may be the glory of it ; that they who minister, may attend on their ministry ; they who teach, on teaching ; they who exhort, on exhortation ; they who rule, with diligence ; that Thy name may be in all things glorified." Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, preached a sermon before the King, probably at Whitehall, but Elmes one of Wren's biographers, mixes up the Peace, the sermon, and the opening of St. Paul's in such a way that he makes us imagine that the celebration in all three respects took place at St. Paul's. It only remains here to say that the first Sunday servicewas held on the 5th, three days later. Even the briefest description of the cathedral church i- S WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 165 must commence by pointing out its novelty and originality. Wren can never have seen a domed building of any size until he was called upon to build one of the largest in existence. During his visit to Paris, in 1665, he may have made special observation of Le Mercier's dome of the Sorbonne, but the fact is not recorded ; and that dome, commenced in 1629, is neither instructive nor inspiring. It may, however, have served as a warning. The best known domes of modern Paris were not then in existence ; and it is quite likely that both St. Genevieve and the Invalides were imitated from St. Paul's. Of course St. Peter's at Rome set the pattern for all, and Wren, in selecting what was best in that great building and avoiding its errors, has left a cathedral which compares favourably with its older and greater rival south of the Alps. The dome of St. Peter's is hidden in the front view owing chiefly to Bernini's immense colonnade ; but if Wren could have colonnaded St. Paul's Churchyard on the symmetrical plan he used so effectively at Greenwich, he would have taken good care to avoid this serious fault ; while the result would have placed his church in the very front rank, and well ahead of all possible competitors. Mr. Birch, in his recent book on London Churches, says that although St. Peter's exceeds St. Paul's " in size, and in richness of decoration, hi external effect it is admittedly inferior." The best technical account of the architecture of St. Paul's is that contributed by Gwilt to Britton and Pugin's "Edifices of London "(i., 8). It may be abridged here. The plan of St. Paul's is a Lathi cross, to the foot or western end of which projections are added north and south. These prolongations give increased width to the west front, and within leave space on either side for a morning chapel and a consistory court. At the internal angles 166 LONDON AFTERNOONS. of the crosa are small square bastion-like adjuncts, whose chief use is in strengthening the piers of the dome, but which also serve within for staircases and vestries, the chief staircase being that to the Library, on the south- western side. The eastern end is slightly curved so as to form an apse. The nave and the choir are separated by the space under the dome, and are each flanked by three arches, clear of the transepts. The transepts consist of one clear arch each, and end in semi-circular porticoes. Within, the eastern and western limbs of the cross are seen to end in the great piers which support the dome, similar piers being north and south. There are four large arches and four smaller, as at Ely Cathedral, a building which Wren probably studied when his uncle, Matthew Wren, was bishop of that see. The whole of the interior is strengthened and at the same time ornamented by pilasters of the Corinthian order. Two orders appear on the exterior, the pattern being set by the portico in its two storeys, one above the other. The lower' order is Corinthian ; the upper, Wren himself described as " a composition," but it is only a slight variation of the other. The western portico was at first, it is believed, intended to be single, built of marble monolithic pillars of vast size. We cannot doubt that this feature, which Wren had first designed for his " preaching house," would have produced a noble effect. But marble was expensive, and monoliths were not to be had, and perhaps it is as well. The portico is most beautiful with its double columns, which is an arrangement the architect may have learned in France, where it was employed with such effect by Perrault in the east front of the Louvre. This was commenced in the selfsame year 16G6 that saw the destruction of Old St. Paul's, so that Wren did not see the WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 167 building, though he may have seen Perrault's designs, and must have heard all about them long before he came to his west front. In the pediment, above the upper portico, is a sculptured relief by Francis Bird, representing the conversion of St. Paul. Two exceedingly graceful towers flank the portico, rising from square pedestals above the upper order, plain at first, but crowned by steeples consisting of a group of pillars of great lightness surmounted by small domes " of contrary flexure, very like bells," as Gwilt remarks. These towers, like everything in the exterior of the church, are designed to enhance to the utmost the effect of the central dome, being each 220 feet high, or two-thirds the height of the cupola, counting to the cross on the summit. They are double the height of the adjacent roofs. The cupola " rises from the body of the church hi great majesty." The colonnade which surrounds it has always been admired. It stands on a great circular base of plain masonry, by which it is admirably set off. The order of the colonnade, which is also Composite in style, is finished at the top with an Italian balustrade, a feature Wren objected to, but, though incongruous, it is not altogether unpleasing. Above this balustrade is what Gwilt calls an attic, being in reality a part of the dome, which rises directly from it. The inner dome, that visible from the interior of the church, is, in fact, contained in this attic storey, and rises but slightly above it. The exterior of the dome forms a casing to conceal and strengthen a cone of brickwork which sustains the stone lantern and the great gilt ball and cross which crown the edifice. Weale gives us a clear idea of the size of the lantern. " If placed on the floor of the church, it would not stand under the ceiling of the nave." The roof is double, as in all vaulted buildings, the inner structure 168 LONDON AFTERNOONS. being of masonry and the outer of wood. " The beautiful outer dome," remarks the same writer, " cannot be called unreal ; it corresponds in structure to the upper roofs of all the other parts, and is in the most economical as well as beautiful form for a timber roof to cover such a space. The waste of internal capacity in the unseen spaces between the innermost and outermost dome is not nearly so great as in the roofs of Gothic buildings ; and no part of this structure can be said to be like a Gothic high roof or spire, erected for external effect alone, except the lantern." As to the balustrade just mentioned, Weale is equally clear. " A late writer on architecture has said, regarding the effect of scale or no scale on works of nature or art, ' it takes very little to humble a mountain. A hut will do it sometimes.' It takes still less to humble a cathedral, and this little, Wren's contemptible successor contrived to add, in his mock balustrade over the second cornice." It is studiously contrived to give a false scale, like the gigantic cherubs of St. Peter's. " We know that a balus- trade is meant to lean upon." But this one is nine feet high, and, if it chanced to be a little more obtrusive, it would undoubtedly have the effect attributed to it by Weale, of apparently reducing! the ninety feet of the whole building to thirty or forty. This will be the place for a few notes as to the pro- portions of St. Paul's. The simple ratio of one to two prevails almost everywhere. The windows, for example, are 12 feet wide by 24 feet high. The aisles are 19 feet in clear width by 38 feet in height. The domed vestibule at the west end of the nave is a square of 47 feet by 94 feet in height. The space under the great dome is 108 feet in width, and is 216 feet high. The western towers, similarly, are in height just double the adjacent roofs. There is no attempt made in St. Peter's to preserve any WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 169 such ratios, but it may be well to quote a few comparative figures. St. Paul's ball and cross are 365 feet above the outer ground line ; St. Peter's are 452 feet. The supports of St. Paul's occupy two-ninths of its plan, while those of St. Peter's amount to a quarter. The nave of St. Paul's is 41 feet in width and 82 feet in height. That of St. Peter's is 84 feet in width and 147 feet in height. It will easily be seen that, small as the London building appears to be as compared with the Boman, its proportions are far more satisfactory, and its beauty is thereby greatly enhanced. To quote Weale once more to show what various proportions have been admired : " At the Pantheon the clear height is equal to the breadth, and at St. Sophia it is one-third greater. In the two domes of Florence and of St. Paul's it is twice, and at St. Peter's two and a half times the breadth." St. Peter's laboured under the drawback that fourteen architects, chiefly of divergent views, were employed for 176 years on the building. St. Paul's enjoyed the advan- tage, in this respect, that only two architects were employed on it, one for forty-three years and one for nearly two. There is a silly fiction, repeated solemnly by Mr. Birch, which tells us that St. Paul's is " the culminating effort of the genius of a single architect," and was built under the fostering care of one bishop, and by the " adminis- trative skill of one master mason." We may leave Wren's successor as architect, William Benson, almost out of the account, though he contrived to spoil Wren's work as much as he could in his short tenure of the office of sur- veyor, by the erection of the gigantic balustrade round the dome. But when the first stone of the church was laid, in the reign of Charles II., Henchman was Bishop. He died in October, 1675, and was succeeded by Compton, who lived till July, 1713, so that he saw the new choir 1*70 LONDON AFTERNOONS. ready for divine service in December, 1697, and the last stone of masonry laid in 1710. But the church was not finished even then. He was succeeded by Robinson, who was Bishop at the time of Wren's dismissal, and who died in 1723, two months only after the great architect, when Gibson came into office and saw the finishing touches put to the cathedral. So, too, with the master masons. Thomas Strong, the first, died in 1G81, and was succeeded by his brother, Edward, who died in the same year as Wren and Bishop Robinson. So that the traditional tale about a single architect, and the fostering care of one bishop, and administrative skill of one master mason, has to be retold as follows : under three architects, three bishops, or, strictly speaking, four, and three master masons, at least. It would be very hard to say when St. Paul's was completed. It was not in 1697, when the choir was opened not consecrated, as some say. It was not in 1718, when Wren handed it over to Benson. It was not in 1720, when Benson was dismissed. Perhaps we may say that it was when Robert Mylne, a good architect, born the year after Wren's death, was appointed surveyor, namely, in 1766. He put a finishing touch to the fabric when he placed, over the entrance to the choir, the in- scription which Wren's son had placed on his grave in the vault below, and which may still be seen in the north transept : Si monumentum requiris circumspice. In comparing St. Peter's and St. Paul's, the exaggerated greatness of particular features dwarfs the apparent size of the whole and deceives the human eye, at St. Peter's. The limitations of human sight do not seem to have been considered by the architects. In St. Paul's the drum is much lower, and is not broken by the line of a string course as at St. Peter's. The whole ->.-- ...,-_~*r =--- MODEL BY STEVENS OF THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT (p. 177). WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 171 composition resolves itself into three equal divisions, of which one is occupied by the drum and the colonnade above it. The second division contains the ring of plain windows in an attic, which takes one quarter, and the dome itself, which takes three quarters. The dome has thirty-two ribs. The third division is occupied by the lantern, ball, and cross, which are not so slender as those of St. Peter's. The width of the drum and of the colonnade and of the dome at its springing is two divisions. Therefore, in St. Peter's the height is to the breadth as seven to four, while at St. Paul's it is as three to two, an easier proportion for the unconscious mental process which affects our sense of beauty. It should be mentioned that these proportional measurements are approximate only. Wren's mind took great pleasure in combinations of architectural parts and features, and every church he built contained a problem carefully worked out. The great difference between the two cupolas and their supports seems to be marked by the thirty-two columns which surround the cupola of St. Paul's as con- trasted with the fourteen coupled columns of St. Peter's. The charm of a building depends much more on its pro- portions than on its ornamentation. The most bigoted Goth cannot help an exclamation of pleasure at a first view of St. Paul's. Many of us were brought up with an idea that modern Gothic is the only true style. We were told that St. Paul's was a sham ; that one half was built to conceal the other half, a fault to be found with all buildings of a certain size, though less with St. Paul's than with any other ; that it was heathenish ; that it boasted no long drawn aisles ; that its vaults were unf retted, and so on. Nevertheless, its first view gave us, one and all, a sensation of pleasure which neither the Houses of Parliament nor 172 LONDON AFTERNOONS. the Law Courts, nor St. Pancras Hotel, nor even the rival Cathedral at Truro, can evoke. This is largely due to the calculations which Wren made of the proportions. His proportions have a simplicity so great that they are readily grasped, and are the principal elements in a success which is denied by few. He allowed for human weakness in three particulars. He made his building look strong. He added no features to deceive the eye as to its size. And he combined proportions which are as simple as those of St. Peter's are complex. The breadth of the vaulting of St. Peter's is to its height as 1 to 1.75. At St. Paul's it is as 1 to 2. The first involves elaborate calculation before it is understood. A child can grasp the relation of one to twice one. The ulterior of the church presents to the visitor feature after feature of the highest beauty. It is dignified as well, and seems to repeat constantly Wren's saying, "Building is for eternity." The morning chapel is on the left at the western entrance, and, with the consistorial court on the opposite side, forms the foot of the cross. All the details may be carefully examined, and will yield new pleasure at every visit to anyone who admires skill in wrought-iron, in carved wood, and above all in the exquisite undercutting of Grinling Gibbons' floral wreaths and capitals of stone. Exami- nation of these things involves a series of surprises, and proves that the botanical wonders shown to us by the monk of Southwell are rivalled and often surpassed by the carvers of St. Paul's, and that too in some ten times the quantity. The best panel of stone carving is usually thought to be that at the entrance to the north aisle of the choir. Neither Gibbons nor his helper, Gibber, can have sculptured them all, but they must have superintended their workmen so carefully that whether it is in the stone- WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 173 work, the pear wood, the oak of the stalls, the cherubs in the choir, the jambs of the doorways, the saints and angels of the organ case, the screens of the chapels in everything we seem to recognise the same hand, without any flagging or failure. It is the same with the metal- work, some of which will repay careful examination, especially the scroll work in the gates north and south of the choir, and the small grills in the side aisles. These and other iron- work are attributed to a French designer, Tijou, but were made by English workmen. Tijou de- signed the well-known gates made at Hampton Court by Huntingdon Shaw. There is a certain decline to be traced in the wood-carving of the morning chapel and the consistorial court, by Jonathan Maine ; but in almost any other church it would be pointed out as of superior beauty. The organ, which formerly stood across the entrance to the choir, is now divided very judiciously, and the view eastward shows extremely well. The organ was originally constructed by "Father Schmidt." A short but sufficiently full account of it is in a little volume on " Organs Built in England," written anonymously by a clergyman in 1847. Schmidt, we read, was distinguished for the sweetness and brilliancy of his wooden pipes, to which he gave great attention. The organ of St. Paul's was one of his best works, and even now some of his stops are in the divided instrument. It was first used in 1694. The magnificent chorus was its principal feature, and was improved by Bishop in 1826. The swell had been added by Crantz in the eighteenth century. In some respects the organ has been greatly unproved of late years. Wren, jealous of his architectural features, never allowed it room enough, and the modern methods of laying pipes in any convenient situation had not been discovered. Some of Schmidt's stops lay useless in the 174 LONDON AFTERNOONS. vestry. All this has now been changed, and good judges assert that the organ of St. Paul's is not only one of the best and largest, but also one of the sweetest in the world. It is related that Handel held the instrument as it was in his day in high esteem, and often played on it. What would he think of it now ? If we turn from the architectural view of St. Paul's to examine the monuments which have been placed in the building, and to inquire as to the mosaic and other decorations, we shall enter on subjects more or less con- troversial. Without mention of these things no account of the church would be at all complete ; but we must endeavour to glance at them briefly and pass on. The monuments engage our attention first, and offer a difficult and delicate theme for treatment. It would, perhaps, be a mistake to say that the church would be better for their removal ; yet there are but few that can be reckoned worthy of the situation. Portions of six figures which were in Old St. Paul's may still be seen : one in the south aisle of the choir has already been described as the monu- ment of Dean Donne ; the other five are in the crypt at the east end. They have been identified as belonging to the monuments of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper ; Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor ; Sir John Wolley ; Sir Thomas Heneage ; and Sir William Cockayne, who was Lord Mayor in 1019, and died in 1G2G. In the south aisle of the choir, beside the effigy of Dean Donne whose best memorial is Izaak Walton's biography are the modern tombs of Bishops Blomfield and Jackson, and of Dean Milman, none of which calls for special notice. Beyond them and in strong contrast is the kneeling figure of Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta (d. 1826). It is by Sir Francis Chan trey, but cannot be greatly admired. WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 175 At the extreme east end is a recumbent effigy of Canon Liddon (d. 1890). Under the dome are some sad eyesores, especially the semi-nude statues of Johnson (d. 1784, and buried in Westminster Abbey), and of John Howard (d. 1790), both by Bacon. Howard's monument was the first to be placed in the church, and would seem to have set a fashion in bad art. Bacon could, and sometimes did, excel in sculpture, but St. Paul's seems to have deprived him of his presence of mind, an effect it had also on lioth Flaxman and Chantrey. There were, however, lower depths than even this to be reached. In the north transept are figures cut in stone they cannot be called statues or sculpture of several members of the illustrious family of Napier, by Adams ; and a battle scene by Bailey, of enormous size and nudity, to the memory of Sir William Ponsonby, a Waterloo hero ; under the dome, in a most conspicuous place, is a pulpit to the memory of Captain Robert Fitzgerald, who died in 1853. It consists of pillars and panels of coloured marbles arranged by Mr. Penrose, and demonstrates the truism that incongruity is not of necessity picturesque. When the organ was taken down and divided in 1870, the monument of Nelson was removed from its place against the choir screen. It now stands in the south transept, where it goes far, with some of the other monu- ments near it, to spoil the view. One reads the name of Flaxman upon it, as well as upon a great group, in even worse taste, worse style, and poorer sculpture, to the memory of Earl Howe (d. 1799). Two other groups are rather less offensive. They are by Rossi, an Italian, and represent Lord Rodney (d. 1792), and Lord Cornwallis (d. 1805). The Historic Muse on the Rodney group is very fine. Among the more conspicuous failures in the church is the 176 LONDON AFTERNOONS. cenotaph of General Gordon, who was killed at Khartoum in 1885. It is by Sir Edgar Boehm, a foreign artist, naturalised like Marochetti, and is very unfortunately placed, being immediately to the north of Stevens's master- piece, and close to the Melbourne memorial. If the hero's recumbent figure and its base had any merits they would still suffer in competition with the Wellington monument ; if they had any poetic feeling, or even sentiment, Marochetti's angels would have excelled them. Marochetti, an Italian, was before all things poetical. As a sculptor he was capable of making a design, but he was not capable of fully carrying it out. The statue of Prince Albert at Kensington Gore was to have been by him. The model he produced was found to be impossible, and the authorities discovered when it was all but too late that they ought to have entrusted the work to Foley, who barely lived to finish it. The tomb by Marochetti at St. Paul's is in the north aisle. It commemorates two members of the family of Lamb. The elder, William, inherited the Irish Viscounty of Melbourne, and was Prime Minister at the time of Queen Victoria's accession. He died in 1848, and was succeeded as Lord Melbourne by his brother, Frederick James, Lord Beauvale, who died in 1853, and to whose taste the design of the monument may be chiefly ascribed. It represents a sable portal, the ebony entrance of a tomb. The panelling of the doorway, which exactly fills the space under the easternmost window of the north aisle of the nave, is very poor and meaningless, wanting both in design and in excellence of execution. On two panels are gilded the names of the two brothers. On either side, in white marble, are two statues ; on the west, the Angel of Death, leaning on his sword ; on the east side the Angel of the Resurrection with his trumpet. The poetical feeling is better than that of any other CENTRAL FIGURE FOR THE MOSAIC IN THE APSE OF ST. PAUL'S. (From a photograph by Mr. F. Hollyer of the Cartoon by Sir William Richmond, K.C.B., R.A.) WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 177 monument in the church, and, in fact, wholly disarms the criticism which the shortcomings of the sculpture might otherwise evoke. Marochetti used figures of angels very like these for the monument over the well of Cawnpore. We may well imagine that when it was resolved to remove the Wellington monument from the side chapel where it ought never to have been put, the Dean and Chapter were unwilling to place it under the arch for which Stevens designed it. This was the easternmost arch on the north side. It would have hidden the Mel- bourne monument. They, perhaps wisely, resolved to place it under the middle arch where it would only oc cult Boehm's wretched figure of Gordon. As the three nave arches are of equal height, it does not greatly matter. It is to be hoped that now there is abundant room for it, the equestrian statue which Stevens designed to crown his work may be placed upon its summit ; but the extra- ordinary vacillations of successive deans and chapters as to this, the one worthy piece of memorial sculpture in their church, warn us not to expect too much. Alfred Stevens was undoubtedly the greatest sculptor England has produced, and his Wellington monument is his greatest work. Stevens did not live to see the monu- ment set up, having died in 1875. It is not to the credit of the Dean and Chapter that we can assign its removal io its present position. After it had remained some twenty years in the consistorial court behind the great oaken screen and against the light of a south window, the monu- ment was transferred to a place approximately that for which it had been designed, with a south window shining not behind it but on it, and as full a view as possible from the central aisle of the nave. This was done, in 1892, through the exertions and generosity of the late Lord Leighton and some of his friends. 178 LONDON AFTERNOONS. When we descend to the crypt we first reach " The Painters' Corner." Wren's tombstone at the eastern end of the south aisle bears his name, and a tablet on the wall above contains the oft-quoted words, Si monumentum requiris drcumspice. Among the artists sleep Turner, Landseer, Reynolds, Lawrence, Leighton, and Millais. Two eminent bridge builders, Rennie and Mylne, are also laid here, and Sir Astley Paston Cooper, the surgeon. The aspect of the crypt is very fine, Wren's desire to build for eternity being everywhere apparent. Up lo thd middle of the last century nothing of great interest was to be seen except the sarcophagus in which the re- mains of Lord Nelson do not repose. Since the funeral of the Duke of Wellington an attempt has been made, with some success, both to keep the crypt in better order and to utilise some parts of it for divine service. Nelson's tomb is marked by a black marble sarcophagus, to which a curious history attaches. It was made by a Florentine named Benedetto da Rovezzano, in or about the year 1524, for Cardinal Wolsey. The King had granted leave to his great minister to appropriate as a burial place the old chapel of St. Edward at Windsor, and Wolsey set about constructing for himself a sumptuous monument. This marble coffin was handsomely decorated with gilt copper, and, it is supposed, bore a figure of the cardinal. After his disgrace, it lay neglected in what long bore the name of Wolsey's tomb-house ; and Colonel Whichcott, Governor of the Castle during the Common- wealth, sold the metal work for 600. At the time of Nelson's death (1805) it was brought here, but it was found too small for the hero's coffin. His body, therefore, rests in the masonry below, enclosed in the coffin which Captain Hallowell, of the Swiftsure, had caused to be made of the mainmast of the Orient, destroyed at the Battle of the WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 179 Nile. The sarcophagus is a handsome piece of work resting on a base of white and black marble, on which Nelson's name is inscribed. On the north side is the grave of the eighth Earl of Northesk, who was third hi command at Trafalgar, which battle he survived till 1831- On the south is the grave of Lord Collingwood, the second in command at Trafalgar, who died hi 1810. Passing further to the westward we come to the tomb of the Duke of Wellington. It consists of a huge block of purple granite or porphyry, from Cornwall, fashioned very skilfully into the form of a classical sarcophagus, within which the body actually rests. The body of Picton, one of Wellington's generals, who fell at Waterloo, was first buried in the little chapel of St. George in the Bays- water Boad, and was removed to lie near that of his old leader in 1859. At the extreme west end of the crypt is a relic which once more connects the names of Wellington and Stevens. This is the vast bronze funeral car or hearse on which the Duke's coffin was conveyed from the Horse Guards to St. Paul's. Bedgrave, a very second-rate landscape painter, had the preparation of the designs, but Stevens hand is apparent hi every item, and his work has always been recognised as pervading the whole of the massive and beautiful hearse. It is well known that Sir Christopher Wren desired to see colour, gilding, and especially mosaic, employed in the decoration of St. Paul's. Nothing effectual was done to carry out his wishes until a comparatively recent period. He left designs for a baldachino, a model of which used to be preserved in the library. The very poor and unworthy pictures in monotone with which Sir James Thornhill covered the under surface of the dome, though they have been cleaned and touched up more than once, seem only 180 LONDON AFTERNOONS. contrived to enhance the general gloom of that part of the view from below. ^Many schemes for the decoration of St. Paul's were put forward during the second half of the nineteenth century. The funeral of the Duke of Wellington, in November, 1852, seems first to have tardily brought home to those concerned the unadorned and even squalid condition of their church. When Alfred Stevens was commissioned to make Wellington's monument, the bareness of the walls struck him most unpleasantly, and he formulated a scheme for an elaborate series of pictures and inlays. Another grand public function, of a more cheerful character than that of 1852, was the Thanksgiving of the Prince of Wales on his recovery from a fever, in 1872. Again was the public attention called to the melancholy con- dition of St. Paul's, and large subscriptions were ob- tained for the decoration. The views of Stevens had influenced the public mind, and the Dean and Chapter, urged by the universal mandate, and with ample funds in their hands, appointed a committee and spent the munificent sum of 100 on the purchase of Stevens's design for the dome. By an incredible effort, after four years' further deliberation, they decided to employ Mr. Stannus, who had completed the Wellington monument for Stevens, to prepare some coloured full-sized cartoons for two ribs of the dome. The late Lord Leighton, Sir Edward Poynter, and Mr. George F. Watts were consulted on the decoration of the spandrils below the dome with mosaics of the four evangelists and the four greater prophets. St. Matthew and St. John, by Mr. Watts, were translated into mosaic by Messieurs Salviati, for in matters of this kind English- men usually prefer to employ foreigners. The first work was in place hi 1878, and the result was received with mixed feelings by the public. Those best able to judge saw at WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 181 once that the artist had not realised the conditions. He had failed to perceive that a harmony of brilliant colour and an absence of any attempts at the grand style in drawing and composition, would have succeeded better. Instead, the colour is as dull as possible, and the attitude of the two figures and the attendant angels is forced ; while instead of the kind of flatness which alone suits mosaic, something like chiaroscuro was invoked, as if to accentuate the other faults of the designs. But a more serious failure resulted from the employment of the mosaic of Venice instead of that of Whitefriars. Not to speak of the greatly increased cost of bringing over foreign workmen and their glass, the inlay has been found far too smooth for our climate. It has, hi short, no surface, none of what artists call "grain"; and is hi many respects extremely uninteresting. The Dean and Chapter next acquiesced in the appointment of William Surges as " architect of the completion." He approached the work exactly as Scott and Street and other Gothic architects approached a country church, whose history was to be carefully wiped from its walls by way of restoration. As, accord- ing to the authorities of his school, St. Paul's was an Italian building, it was to be " restored " into Italian Gothic, or perhaps Byzantine. Surges considered St. Paul's as a heathen temple, thought it hideous, and openly proclaimed this opinion. To his mind, the only way to " complete " or " restore " it was to modify or alter every- thing classical. The Corinthian and Composite capitals were to be made into mediaeval grotesques. Every part of the church was to be coated with gilding ; and, hi the drawings exhibited, his very rudimentary ideas of colour were shown by everything that was not gilding being yellow. The effect was startling, as may be imagined, 182 LONDON AFTERNOONS. yet it will hardly be believed that the Dean and Chapter dallied with it, and the members of the amateur committee were divided about it. Meanwhile, though schemes and designs and controversies were in the air, very little, if any, progress was made, and in the spring of 1881 Burges died. Meanwhilei the eight pendentives or spandrils of the dome received their mosaics. The figures of St. Matthew and St. John by Mr. Watts were supplemented by St. Mark and St. Luke by Mr. Brittan, while poor Alfred Stevens's design for the figures of the four greater prophets was carried out. He was only actually concerned in the production of Isaiah, but drew the head for the Daniel. The rest were enlarged from his sketches. They do not recall his style, and, in common with those of the evangelists, have a serious fault : the figures are so large that they seem to dwarf the dome. This is an error which could not have been committed if the artists had remembered that Wren chose his proportions with reference to the size and sight of a human being. I have remarked already that, unlike St. Peter's, where cupids six feet high are among the adornments, nothing in St. Paul's is colossal. It was for this same fault that Wren con- demned Benson's balustrade. The subject is one of great difficulty, but it affords a criterion wliich we can apply to all the new work all the work not by Wren in the church. In designing the new reredos, Messrs. Bodley and Garner kept the principle of proportion well in mind. The figures with which it is adorned are all of moderate size. They do not in any way interfere with the spec- tator's power of appreciating the size of the church. The design, which otherwise has but little of Wren's style or feeling about it, consists of a basement, in which, right THE RECORDING ANGELS. (from a photograph by Mr F. Hollyer of the Cartoon by Sir William Richmond for the mosaic in the Apse of St. Paul's.) WREN'S ST. PAUL'S. 183 and left, are two small doorways leading into the apse behind. The basement would have had a better effect if it had been very plain, but of beautiful or costly material, porphyry, for example, or some rare marble. As it is, the unmeaning row of panels only wearies the eyes, and deprives the whole structure of such dignity as it might otherwise have boasted. On the summit of the niche, some eighty feet from the ground, is a fine figure of the " Risen Saviour." The gates leading right and left into the aisles are of beautiful design, and will repay close examination. Two of them were in the old choir screen, but the westernmost at either side were imitated from them. The old work was made of charcoal-smelted iron, from Kent and Sussex, and the new is of iron from Norway, where this method of smelting is still in use. Wren found a skilful designer in iron, named Jean Tijou, whose work is well known, and has already been mentioned. The great railing and gates at the west end of the church were cast at Lamberhurst, in Sussex. Their fate was detailed by the late Dr. Sparrow Simpson in his " St. Paul's and Old City Life " (p. 257). When the gates were removed in 1874, together with about one hundred and twenty feet of the railing, they were sold by public auction for 349 5s. They were placed on board a ship called the Delta for transport to Canada. The Delta was wrecked on the American coast in November, 1874. A portion of the railing was, however, recovered, and was bought by John G. Howard, an architect at Toronto, to which city he presented a public park. When he died, the railing was put round his tomb in the park. Although this portion of the railing was removed a manifest improvement to the western view plenty remains to show what it was like. Among the local traditions is one that tells us that Wren had a house close 184 LONDON AFTERNOONS. to the Thames, on the southern bank, from which he could afar off watch his rising do mo ; and to this house the railing from Lamberhurst was floated in sections, being conveyed as it was required to the Cathedral precincts. It weighed in all about 200 tons, and cost 11,000. We now come to the last, most ambitious, and, so far as we can yet judge, the most successful of the many attempts at decorating St. Paul's. While Messrs. Bodley and Garner were at work on the reredos, they recom- mended that the committee should consult Mr. William Blake Richmond, A.R.A. Mr. Richmond, who has since become a Royal Academician and a Knight of the Bath, had made a careful and critical study of the mosaics at Ravenna, and he recommended that the bold method of the ancient artists should be adopted rather than the smoother modern work, such as we see under the dome. Furthermore, he made the committee an offer so dis- interested and self-sacrificing that we read of it with astonishment. He offered to provide suitable designs and to superintend the work for three years, ending in 1894. " The arrangement," says the present Bishop of London, " recalls some of the most artistic periods of the Middle Ages." Sir William Richmond's scheme was very carefully thought out, and he specially stipulated that the mosaic should be made under his own supervision by Messrs. Powell, of Whitefriars. He worked at it personally, and, so far as can be judged, has been most successful. The roof of the choir and of the apse now glows with colour and gold, great care having been taken not to introduce proportions which can in any way interfere with those of the building. The English mosaic has proved to be exactly what was wanted, and the result is remarkably satisfactory, fully justifying the confidence reposed by the WRENS ST. PAUL'S. 185 Dean and Chapter in Sir William's taste and power. " The brilliancy of the refracting surface of mosaic work," says Mr. Gilbertson, " its permanence, its capacity for bearing cleaning without risk of injury, all mark it out as the ideal material for the decoration of London buildings." Sir William has reverted to the ancient way of placing the cubes which compose his pictures. They are separately placed in position upon the wall itself, and are not arranged in the studio and applied in blocks. This method has enabled the artist to judge of the effect at every stage. For example, in the case of the head of the principal Person represented, he re-laid the mosaic seven times before he obtained the exact character he required. The " Authorised Guide," or the " Account," written by Bishop Winnington Ingram may be consulted for particu- lars of the design. The figure of our Lord, seated, with uplifted hands, fills the central panel at the extreme east end of the church. It is above life-size, but produces no dwarfing effect, so carefully is the design managed. The Recording Angels, with their accessories, fill the adjoining panels, and below in the stained-glass windows we see the four-and-twenty elders, disposed in three groups of eight each. The rectangular panels, north and south, have historical scenes, and represent, among others, Job, Abraham, Cyrus, and Alexander the Great, together with the Persian and Delphic sybils, exquisitely drawn and brilliantly coloured. The small cupolas of the roof and their pendentives are all works of the highest art in them- selves pictures, hi fact, worthy of the most careful examination. The triangular spaces hold herald angels, somewhat conventionalised, each with an appropriate text inscribed in black. In the cupolas, designed in such a way as to increase the apparent height of each dome, 186 LONDON AFTERNOONS. are the da} ? s of the creation of beasts, fi slips, and birds, while the rectangular panels represent Adam, Eve, Melchizedek, and Noah. Mere description fails, and we may diverge to mention the gorgeous harmony, the golden glow, the way in which everything has been subordi- nated to the artist's obvious desire to enhance the size as well as the beauty of the whole building. As a matter of minor importance, it may be mentioned here that anyone who visits St. Paul's, armed with a good glass, will bo astonished by the exquisite loveliness of the faces of the angels, and, in particular, of the sybils. The face of the Persian sybil may be singled out as an example, in this respect, of the highest pictorial art of our day. 187 CHAPTER XIV. TWO RIVERSIDE PALACES. The Savoy Palace and the Hospital The Ohapel Thomas Fuller His Epitaph His Ministry at the Savoy Follows the King to Oxford A Royal Chaplain His Last Sermon Northumberland House The Percys and their Fortunes The Interior of Northumberland House Its Ugliness and Inconvenience The Site, and what was done with it. PEOPLE may pass along the crowded and busy Strand, some of them for years, without any acquaintance with the quiet little church, surrounded by green grass and trees, which hides itself behind the rows of dingy houses. When the mob under Wat Tyler broke into the Savoy, rich palace of John of Gaunt, they burnt the greater part of the build- ings, if not the whole. They may have spared the chapel ; but if they did, it has not been recorded, and but for the fact that during the hundred and twenty years in which the site lay desolate some burials took place here, we should have nothing to go upon in concluding that any part of the chapel, in which very probably Wycliffe may have ministered, still remained. When Henry VIII., in obedience to the dying commands of his father, rebuilt the Savoy as a Hospital, he put it on record that he re- built it from the foundation ; and there is nothing in the masonry or mouldings of the architecture to lead us to any conclusion but what this would indicate. 188 LONDON AFTERNOONS. The chapel was consecrated in or before 1516, but its history as a London church, strictly speaking, does not begin until the following reign. Tho Protector Somerset has been often found fault with for pulling down the church of St. Mary-le-Strand, but since the congregation took refuge at the Savoy Chapel, and since this double employment, both as the chapel of a collegiate foundation and as the church of a parish, led to its being connected with some remarkable men and some memorable events, and perhaps also saved the chapel from utter ruin, those who are interested in it do not regret the connection. The parishioners of St. Mary's elected a chaplain for them- selves, and, by the permission of the Master of the Hospital, he preached and ministered in this chapel. Some famous men held the office of Master, and some famous men that also of chaplain, but of them all no name now stands out so prominently as that of Thomas Fuller, who held the chaplaincy in the first year of the reign of Charles II. As the quaint epitaph on his monument at Cranford states, he spent his life making others immortal, and thereby attained immortality himself ; a sentence which is true of him in a double sense, for though the reference is there first to his great work, the " Worthies of England," it also holds good of the work he performed as a clergy- man, and especially of that part of his work which was performed in the Savoy, and among the predecessors of the congregation which still assembles where he for the last time preached the gospel of peace. Born in 1608, Thomas Fuller was in the prime of life when the great troubles of the Civil War broke upon his country. He lived one year only after the Restoration, and died at the comparatively early age of fifty-three. His career was thus passed among events and trials sufficient to make most men partisans, and to agitate the TWO RIVERSIDE PALACES. 189 most even temperaments. But it is Fuller's greatest praise that, living in the midst of strife, he took no part in it ; that nothing shook his faith ; that no employment caused him to deviate from the strict path of duty ; that the end of his labours was to spread abroad the knowledge of truth, to comfort the fatherless and the widow, to show the cheerfulness of an undaunted Christian spirit, and to make all men know the possibility of moderation, when passion and prejudice were the ruling powers. What his faith was may be learnt from the quaint sentence he has put into one of his epigrams. It refers to his own name, and is a fair specimen of the solemn play on words in which he so much delighted. It is headed " A Prayer" : " My Soul is stained with a dusty colour Let thy Son be the sope, I'll be the Fuller." And elsewhere, speaking of his infirmities being known to God, he says, most devoutly, " As for other stains and spots upon my soul, I hope that He (be it spoken without the least verbal reflection), who is the Puller's sope, Mai. iii. 2, will scour them forth with His merit, that I may appear clean by God's mercy." And when asked to make an epitaph for himself, it is said that he humbly replied/ " Let it be, ' Here lies Fuller's earth.' " Fuller began his ministrations in the Savoy in the year 1641, and he remained here at first for three years. He was in London, therefore, in the most exciting times ; and his preaching was thought so much of that it was said he had two congregations, one within the church, and the other consisting of those who could not get in, but crowded about the windows and doors to get within reach of his voice. It is possibly in reference to the hour- glass in the pulpit here that he says, speaking of another 190 LONDON AFTERNOONS. preacher, Dr. Holdsworth, that " whereas the London people honour their pastors for a short hour, his was measured by a large glass " : a sentence which may well be applied to his own preaching. He used his influence not in adding to the violence of party feeling, which then ran so high, but in endeavouring by all means in his power to make peace among the contending factions ; and among the sermons of his which are still extant there is one, preached here with this aim in December, 1642, just as the terrible war broke out. He chose for his text the words, " Blessed are the peacemakers," and said, " We used to end our sermons with a blessing : Christ begins His with the beatitudes ; and of the eight my text is neither the last nor the least." The best work, he says, is peace-making, and the best wages, that they who make peace are " blessed." Advocating peace, then, he is care- ful to be moderate even in this, refusing to ask for peace at any price, but peace without any sacrifice of truth. Yet the sword, he says, is the worst way of finding truth, for " it cannot discern between truth, error, and falsehood ; it may have two edges, but it hath never an eye." Toward the middle of 1643, Fuller was forced to fly from the Savoy. He did so with the utmost regret, following King Charles to Oxford. His last sermon preached in this church before his departure is still extant, and prefixed to it is an epistle " to my dear parish, St. Mary, Savoy," full of touching allusions to his sorrow at leaving it, and his hope that peace might at length return. " The longer," he says, " I see this war, the less I like it, and the more I loath it. Not so much because it threatens temporal ruin to our kingdom, as because it will bring a general spritual hardness of hearts. And if^this war long continues, we may be affected for the departure of Charity as the Ephesians were at the going TWO RIVERSIDE PALACES. 191 away of St. Paul, sorrowing most of all that we shall see the face thereof no more." Fuller followed the King's army to the field, and en- deavoured to do what he could to succour the wounded and comfort the dying. Another preacher took pos- session of his pulpit here, and he himself, like many of the clergy of his time, when the war was over, wandered from one place to another, patronised by moderate men, and loved by all. He says : " For the first five years during our actual civil wars, I had little list or leisure to write, fearing to be made a history, and shifting daily for my safety. All that time I could not live to study, but did only study to live." Yet during this time he projected and in part composed his works, the " Church History * and the " Worthies of England " ; the latter, however, not being finished till just before his death. In 1645 he came back to the Savoy for a time, but his own flock was dispersed by the troubles, and it was said of him, as of his Divine Master, " He came to his own, and his own received him not." The few who remained were overawed by the factions which divided London, and were in daily fear between the Presbyterians and the Independents. Yet he preferred a London congregation to any other, for he said that some clergymen wished for a Lincolnshire church, as best built, and others for a Lan- cashire parish, as the largest, but he liked a London audience, as consisting of the most intelligent people. He did not stay here long, however. He would not give up the Liturgy, and the penalties for using it were fixed that very year at 5 for the first offence, 10 for the second, and a year's imprisonment for the third. He was, therefore, thrown on his own resources, and his means were very small, and wholly insufficient for the support of himself and the education of his son. Brighter days 192 LONDON AFfERNOONS. were in store, and he was allowed to remain unmolested as Vicar of Waltham, and afterwards as Rector of Cran ford .until the Restoration, when we find him again at the Savoy. Fuller's second return to the Savoy at the Restoration was marked by such a welcome as few preachers have ever been accorded. His sermons, in wlu'ch he had formerly endeavoured to preserve peace, now that the war was over were directed to the mitigation of the cruelties of the party in power. Their influence is mentioned by many of his contemporaries, and among others by Pepys the diarist. Witty as all his utterances were, they were always within bounds. As his biographer says, his wit is all but invariably allied to wisdom, " and very few would rise from the perusal of his pulpit utterances with a feeling that they had been in the company of one who was ir- reverent or undevout." ^Craik said of him, in his " History of English Literature," that " there is probably neither an ill-natured nor a profane witticism in all that Fuller has written." He was strongly of opinion that sermons should be short, and in his account of an ideal " Faithful Minister," he speaks of him as " one who makes not that wearisome which should ever be welcome " ; adding, in his quaint way, an anecdote of a certain professor, " who being to expound the prophet Esay to his auditors, read twenty-one years on the first chapter, and yet finished it not." And now we come to the close. Fuller was made, without solicitation, a Royal Chaplain, and prepared a sermon to preach at court. But it was otherwise ordered. Before the day appointed for its delivery the preacher had left the pulpit for ever. A greater King had sum- moned him. On the 12th of August, 1661, being Sunday, he preached in the Savoy. It was for the last time. He CHAPEL ROYAL, SAVOY, BEFORE THE FIRE, 1864. (From a photograph by Poulton, in the possession of Messrs. Stalman & Co.) TWO RIVERSIDE PALACES. 193 felt unwell, and his friends would have kept him from making the exertion. But a member of the congregation was to be married on the following day, Monday, and Fuller lovingly undertook to wish the wedding couple well in a special sermon, a good custom which still obtains in the Savoy. He said he " had often gone into the pulpit sick, but always came down well, and he hoped he should do as well now by God's strengthening grace." Before he began, he told his congregation he felt ill, but by a strong exertion he got through, and, as his biographer records, " he very pertinently concluded." A christening was to have followed, and he would have made an effort to officiate, but the fever had now taken its hold. He was carried from the church half fainting, and, being taken to his lodgings close by, he was put to his bed, and never rose from it again. So Monday and Tuesday passed, and on Wednesday he was much worse. He had been in- sensible, but as his strength abated his senses returned. Many friends stood round him. He begged them to pray for him, and joined fervently with them, " recom mending himself, with all humble thankfulness and sub- mission, to God's welcome Providence." He would not, as the last scene drew near, allow anyone to weep. He begged them to restrain themselves, to refrain from tears, and spoke of his departure as a translation to a happy eternity. Though he had before counselled men to make their wills early in life, " that so, when they came to die," they might " have nothing to do but to die," he had made no will himself, having probably little to leave. And now he refused to be disturbed by any thought of worldly affairs. Even the book by which his name has chiefly lived, and which was still unpublished, he did not speak of at all. His thoughts were all engaged on the world to which he was hastening. No regret for the career N 194 LONDON AFTERNOONS. which had go lately been re-opened to him no sorrow for the loss of the bishopric to which he was already designated nothing but love to those around him, and hope of the heaven before him. One more night he lived, and on the morning of Thursday, the 18th, passed away in peace ; and so, as his biographer says, " The last view of the faithful minister represents him as assuming, in place of the lawn of the Prelate, the shining raiment, exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller on earth can white it : a whiteness mixed with no shadow ; a light dimmed with no darkness." Of all the riverside palaces, Essex, Arundel, Somerset, the Savoy, Burleigh, Buckingham, and other houses, Northumberland House survived longest. It was one of the latest in date, and one of the least beautiful in architecture, yet most of us were sorry that the designs for making a new street on its site could not have included the preservation of the old gate, the oriel above, and the straight-tailed lion of the Percys over all. No reason, except that destructive passion which seizes all public boards, such as cathedral chapters, parochial vestries, municipal councils and offices of works, at intervals, was assigned for their removal, and it cannot truthfully be asserted that anything beautiful has been placed on the site. If ever a building could be said to have put its best foot first, it was this. The centre of the Strand front, and the turrets at either end, were all that was beautiful or interesting in the whole house. After them, any enthusiasm which might have been felt for its preserva- tion had to depend on the historical, sentimental, and archaeological associations of the place, though they are but meagre. , The fact that Northumberland House is TWO RIVERSIDE PALACES. 195 the last of a row of palaces which once began at Baynard's Castle, in the City, and ended at Westminster Hall, gave it a claim to our regard. Within the walls one or two remarkable events took place, and General Monk here held some of his meetings with the Royalists before the restoration of Charles II. And the plan, which was of the type known in France as entre cour et jardin, became almost extinct among us with the demolition of the building. It would not be easy to say any more than this in its favour. It was as ugly, as inconvenient, and probably as uncom- fortable a family residence as any hi London. Many people were by no means convinced of the expediency of removing it ; and it may be thought that the public did not gain materially by the sacrifice. It must be remem- bered that not only did we take away a relic of antiquity with a fair amount of historical interest attaching to it, but we did so at the expense of half a million of money ; and no very commendable design for utilising the site acquired at such an expense both of feeling and of cash was substituted. There is little to tell about the history of the building. Only the street front towards the Strand bore any traces of the work of Bernard Janson or Gerard Christmas, and even this was altered and not improved. It had over the oriel the initials and badges of Algernon Seymour, who was Duke of Somerset for fourteen months, from 1748 to 1750, and who had inherited the representation of the Percys on the death of his mother some five-and- twenty years before. His daughter, Lady Elizabeth Smithson, carried on the reparation and alteration of the house in conjunction with her husband, who was the first Duke of Northumberland of the present family. In their time probably the corner turrets were lowered to the height they had before the demolition. Towards 196 LONDON AFTERNOONS. the end of the eighteenth century any marks of antiquity remaining were carefully wiped off the exterior, and a fire a few years later completed the transformation of the interior. The side next the Strand had originally an open- work parapet, formed of the letters of a motto, probably that of the busy and scheming Henry Howard, Surrey's second son, who was Earl of Northampton during ten years before 1614, and who built the house. A letter fell down in 1619, during the passage of the funeral of Queen Anne of Denmark from Somerset House, and killed a bystander, for which reason the other letters were re- moved. At least, so runs the story, with the impossible addition that it was the letter S from Espdrance en Dieu ; how the Percy motto came on the parapet more than twenty years before the Percys themselves came into the house, we are not informed. In fact, to judge from a letter quoted in a Report of the Historical Manuscripts Com- mission, the family had no town house at this time, for one of them writes in 1623 to Lord Middlesex to excuse himself from calling on him, because he has no house nearer town than Syon. There is some difficulty, too, in the received accounts of the descent of Northampton House, first to Suffolk and then to Northumberland. Mr. Craik expressly states that the Earl who built it gave it as a New Year's gift to his grandnephew, the second Earl of Suffolk ; but it is not easy to believe that North- ampton did anything so generous except for a consideration. Lord Suffolk again gave it away. Perhaps it was a kind of white elephant. It must have always been expensive to keep up. But Suffolk's son-in-law was well able to make use of the gift. From his time it is identified with the fortunes of the Percys, and during the Commonwealth and afterwards was the scene of many of those dubious NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE, CHARING CROSS. (From Malton's Print, 7795.) TWO RIVERSIDE PALACES 197 but apparently successful efforts which the tenth Earl made for keeping himself in power under any form of government. His granddaughter, the wife of the " Proud " Duke of Somerset, and the favourite of Queen Anne, is immortalised as much by Swift's hatred as by her strange history and great possessions. It was when the Irish Dean lampooned her for her red hair, warning England to beware of carrots from Northumberland, and accusing the Duchess of complicity in the murder of her second husband, the victim of Kb'nigsmark, that he cut himself off for ever from all chances of a^seat on the bench of Bishops. Northumberland House must have been singularly unsuited to the requirements of family life at the present day. The street front was practically separated from the rest of the house, and contained at least two uncon- nected residences. The rest of the house resembled an H in plan. The cross-bar was formed by an entrance-hall or corridor, with some reception rooms towards the garden. This was said to have been originally built by Inigo Jones, but it retained no traces of his handiwork. Two wings at the back partly enclosed the garden, that on the west containing a great gallery upwards of a hundred feet in length, but badly lighted ; the east wing consisted only of offices. There was a low wall beyond the garden towards the Embankment, but the view over the river was neither extensive nor attractive, its chief feature being the dome of Bedlam, which rose conspicuously in the background, flanked by tall chimneys. Bedlam, by the way, has travelled nearly all round Charing Cross. It stood three centuries ago near the site of the present National Gallery, whence it migrated to Bishopsgate, and at last went across the river and settled clown exactly opposite its original station. 198 LONDON AFTERNOONS. The garden of Northumberland House, owing to the slope of the ground, was at a much lower level than the Strand front, and had the cheerful and verdant appearance of other London gardens where the grass has grown long and rank, and only half covers the naked clay below, while the trees were miserably stunted and black with smoke. The great staircase stood to the left of the entrance. It probably supplanted an older, and possibly a more pictur- esque, structure on the same site, under Janson's turret, but for a long time it had been the best feature of the house. Yet, costly as was the ormolu balustrade, and handsome as were the marble steps and pilasters, they were not much more substantial than the ornaments of the other parts of the house, hi which stucco, gilding, and scagliola were the chief ingredients in a magnificent effect. When the walls were covered with tapestry or pictures, and especially when the floors were occupied with people, all must have looked very different. At Knole or Haddon the architectural features which would dis- appear with the furniture might not be very great ; the windows, the oaken floors, the panelled walls, the groined roofs would still remain. In Northumberland House there was nothing of this kind nothing, in fact, but what might be expected when we read that at the beginning of the last century a very general repair took place. Successive architects, including, it is true, many of eminence, had managed to reduce it in two hundred and fifty years to an extreme of ugliness seldom, if ever, equalled even in London. So many cooks never perhaps before more completely ruined a pudding. And nothing could have improved it. The faulty arrangement by which the best rooms were hidden from the sun, which must have shone chiefly on the offices and seldom on the TWO RIVERSIDE PALACES. 199 inhabited parts ; the absence of those conveniences of hot air and water which are now to be found in the most humble dwellings ; the interminable length of corridors and passages ; the want of concentration ; the suites of apartments which opened only out of one another, and were therefore almost useless for the purposes of modern life all these things must have made Northumberland House a singularly disagreeable residence, notwithstanding its great dignity. The change when it was swept away was very great, but the difficulties of making a good use of the site proved insuperable. The surveyors and architects of the time, some forty years ago, were unequal to it. The slope to the Embankment would have admitted of very pictur- esque treatment. With Trafalgar Square for a back- ground, a skilful designer an Inigo Jones would have given London something to be proud of, something to transform and brighten a dismal neighbourhood. Where Northumberland House alone survived to tell in our time of the glories of the day of riverside palaces, we have a gloomy street of clubs and inns, and not one front worthy to recall even the old doorway, with its arch and its oriel and its lion. 200 CHAPTER XV. GU1LDFORD. Guildford's Domestic Architecture, Ancient and Modem Trinity Church Pepys at Guildford " The Bull Inn " : a Ludicrous Blunder Origin of Guildford's Name The Castle and its Associations Abbot's Hospital The Abbot Brothers What the "Restorer" has done at Guildford. THERE are few fairer views in England than those which comprise the town of Guildford, on its two hills, with its river winding through the valley between. The name of the place is enough in itself to suggest all kinds of interest- ing historical questions , and the splendid situation, the antiquity of some of the architectural features, and the beauty of others, are enough to add association and pic- turesqueness to the many attractions of Guildford to the visitor. It does not seem to have been noticed even in the guide books that Guildford is remarkably well off in good examples of domestic architecture ; and besides old houses, it has a Norman castle, three very fine churches, one mediaeval, one in the best style of the 18th century, and one modern, to say nothing of St. Katharine's ruined chapel in the outskirts. Abbot's Hospital and the Town Hall are enough, without the castle or the churches, to make the place famous among architectural students ; and it [is surprising how little has been done to illustrate a place so easily accessible from London. People go to OUILDFORD. 201 Gloucester or to Tewkesbury to look at patterns of domestic architecture, while Guildford is too near to be visible. There are some gabled cottages with high-railed steps, such as artists go to the Continent to sketch, in Park Street, close to the railway station. By the way, is it not strange that with so much worthy of imitation close by, such a building as that same railway station should have been erected to disfigure the old town ? Unfor- tunately, similar buildings by the score are displacing the old houses. The cottages in Park Street will soon, no doubt, share the fate of their neighbours. Of a totally different character is a brewery close to the bridge, a plain, simple, well-proportioned red-brick house, such as Wren might have designed, with its little pediment and its deep cornice. Up the hill also, toward the west, there are one or two similar houses, but not quite so good ; and across the bridge, on the same side of the way, there is, at the corner of Friary Street, a remnant of what must once have been a very beautiful building, in the best " Queen Anne * style. The upper part still remains, and shows a deep cornice and carved capitals, but the lower part has been cut away for a shop-front. Turning aside into Quarry Street, and passing the truncated apse of the old church, said to have been pulled down to let the Prince Kegent's carriage pass on his way to Brighton, we come on the right to two small houses, which were originally only one, with curious plaster-work decorations, cross-mullioned windows, a carved wooden cornice, and other signs of age. They probably date from the time of Charles II., but nearly opposite, at the castle gate, is a much older house, with a bow window and an archway of Gothic form adjoining. This house, which has been turned into a library and museum by ajj local antiquarian^ society, 202 LONDON AFTERNOONS. dates from the time of James L, and replaces the still older Norman gatehouse, of which the buttresses still remain. Of Gothic fragments, besides St. Mary's Church and St. Katharine's Chapel, Guildford has a good store. The castle is dilapidated, but there is a fine crypt under the " Angel " inn, and I believe another on the southern side of the street. The Pointed style still flickers in the chapel window of Abbot's Hospital, and also in the Grammar School. But the prettiest buildings are modern. I confess to a great admiration for Trinity Church, which is simple and dignified, and admirably suited to its purpose. The wide span of the flat ceiling, and the abundant light which pours through the arched windows, make the church a very good one in which to see and hear, as well as to worship. The iron railing towards the street should be studied) with its initials and dates. The contrast between Trinity and St. Mary's, with its curious vaulted side chapels and dim saints painted on the roof, is very striking, and even emblematic. When St. Nicholas, on the western bank of the Wey, was rebuilt a few years ago, it was made to imitate at a respectable distance the old church of St. Mary, with its dark aisles and general inconvenience, instead of the light, wholesome, airy, and convenient Holy Trinity ; such are the aberrations of popular taste. In the Surrey guide book, written, I believe, by the late John Timbs, we read that Holy Trinity is " an ugly red- brick building, though of late somewhat redeemed by the removal of three forlorn clipped yews, and laying out the churchyard in cemetery style." By the way, some very charming old houses are at the back of the same cemetery, and the view from the top of the hill above should not be missed. The prettiest houses in the High Street^are not the GUILDFORD. 203 oldest. In May, 1661, Pepys passed through Guildford on his way from Portsmouth, and slept " at the ' Bed Lyon,' the best inne, and lay in the room the King lately lay in." He visited the Hospital and the school, and was " civilly treated by the Mayster." He mentions Guildford and the " Red Lion," which still exists, on several other occasions, and in 1668 tells us of showing his wife " and Deb " Archbishop Abbot's Hospital, and his monu- ment in Holy Trinity Church, and the rest of the tombs there, of which he remarks that they "are kept mighty clean and neat, with curtains before them." This church was rebuilt in 1763, but, contrary to the practice of modern " restorers," the monuments were scrupulously respected. The Town Hall is not mentioned by Pepys, and probably did not exist in his time, though much of it may be older than 1683, the date on the clock. It is greatly disfigured by a hideous business-house, which has been built up against it, blocking out the view from the east. A few doors above the Town Hall is a pretty house, No. 25. It is of timber, painted white, and appears to date from the reign of Charles I., or thereabouts. The design is semi-classical, with flat pilasters between the beautiful cross-mullioned windows. Mr. Bull, the fortunate pro- prietor of this lovely dwelling, takes worthy care of it ; but I find it described in an American publication as " The Bull Inn " ! There is some pretty festoon work over the very correct Classical porch of No. 29, and on the opposite side of the street four houses, Nos. 125 to 128, form a very pleasing group. The " White Hart " has been re- fronted, but dates from the times of the Stuarts, and there are remains of a handsome Jacobean gateway and some very ancient houses in the courtyard. A good specimen of " Queen Anne " is a little beyond the Grammar School, and another dated 1731, long after 204 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Queen Anne's death, in North Street. But I cannot enumerate half the houses which make Guildford a museum of domestic architecture. Perhaps the most interesting thing in the history of the town is ita name. Guildford is mentioned in the will of King Alfred, so that we may assume that Guilds were known as far back as his time. The high road from London here passes through a gap in the hills. As Mr. Clark has well put it in his " Medieval Military Architecture," the great chalk ridge which forms the bulwark of London, and the southern limit of the Thames Valley, though generally unbroken from Reigate to Farnham, is traversed by two gorges about twelve miles apart, that of the Mole at Dorking and that of the Wey at Guildford. The greater part of the modern town is on the eastern side of the river ; but there are indications in the local names that anciently it was not so, and the building of the castle, probably in the reign of Henry II., may have attracted the inhabitants from the opposite bank. The chief thoroughfare, the High Street, is continued across the bridge, .and thus exists on both sides of the river, a rare example. After the death of Ethelwald, King Alfred's nephew, to whom he had bequeathed " Gyldford," it reverted to the Crown, and so continued for some seven centuries, when James I. gave the castle to Francis Carter. The town had been, in great part at least, built on various private properties, and was often reckoned the county town of Surrey. The wild downs which surrounded it, and the park, on the western bank of the Wey, were no doubt a great attraction to the Norman kings. Henry III. also visited Guildford fre- quently, and we read of a great extension and repair of the castle accommodation in his time, of apartments built GUILDFORD. 205 for his son, afterwards Edward I., and of paintings executed in the hall, to wit, opposite the King's seat, " The Story of Dives and Lazarus," and also, on the seat itself, " a certain figure with beasts," probably heraldic. Latterly the castle became a kind of county gaol for Sussex as well as Surrey. It plays no further part in history until James I. gave it away ; and after passing through various hands, and becoming sadly dilapidated, it was sold in 1885 to the Corporation of Guildford for 2,000, and is now arranged, as Rochester Castle has been, for the recreation of the people of the town. It occupies a natural platform of about six acres, but little is left except the walls of the Keep, a rare example of a square tower on an artificial mound. The town in 1336 was granted by King Edward III. to the Corporation " in fee farm," and was thenceforth free, and owing to its admirable position grew in wealth and extent. It has still a largely attended grain and cattle market, and a whole quarter of new villas has grown up on the eastern heights. Abbot's Hospital is very conspicuous, and, with a very fine monument in the church opposite, keeps alive the memory of the three brothers, sons of a clothworker in the town, who rose to be respec- tively Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of Salisbury, and Lord Mayor of London, in the early years of the 17th century. It is often said that the Archbishop built the Hospital as an expiation for having accidentally killed a keeper while hunting deer hi Bramshill Park. But the dates will not fit. The hospital was founded in 1617 ; the accident occurred on Tuesday, the 24th of July, 1621. The Archbishop was much distressed at what he had done, and retired here to the hospital for a time, and then to one of his country seats ; and on the 22nd of November in the same year had a formal pardon from King James. 206 LONDON AFTERNOONS. But ever after he fasted on Tuesday, though he lived until August, 1633. The upper chaml>er of the entrance gateway was the temporary prison of Mon mouth on his way from Sedgemoor to the scaffold in 1685. There are some pretty old-fashioned rooms in the hospital, which should be seen, but they seem to l)e some- what neglected and out of repair ; and, indeed, the whole place looked to me rather poorly kept and poverty-stricken. The Hall and Council Chamber of the Town Hall also ought to be visited. They are both pleasing, and a chimney-piece, brought from an old house in the neigh- bourhood, is ornamented with curious allegorical figures and carving of a date earlier than the building itself. It is certainly not reassuring as to the revival of art in England to find that the successors of the burghers who built the Hospital and the Town Hall in the seventeenth century, and Trinity Church in the eighteenth, built the Court House and the Railway Station in the nineteenth. Much has been written and asserted as to some curious excavations in the chalk near the castle. All kinds of silly theories have been started about them, but they are probably nothing but quarries, and may well be held to give a name to Quarry Street, which leads to them. The two destructive agencies, " restoration " and rebuilding, are very rife at Guildford, and the present taste of the inhabitants being sometimes doubtful, as I have said, I strongly recommend everyone who likes to see old houses to go there soon. It was only in 1864 that Abbot's birthplace was pulled down ; and its fate is very little worse than that of a number of houses which have been " improved." Mr. Norman Shaw has designed a few villas on the western hill and near St. Katharine's, so that the builders of the hideous new houses on the opposite heights have the less excuse. But if anyone GUILDFORD. 207 thinks that the agitation against so-called " restora- tion" is exaggerated, he has only to walk out eastward a most enchanting walk for fine landscape and see Merrow. First, there is an old inn, the " Horse and Groom," which dates, or dated, from 1621, but has been terribly pulled about of late, and has few ancient features left. Close to it is the site of Merrow Church, a building famous for its beauty of situation and antiquity. Under the name of " restoration" it has been almost rebuilt, and really only dates from 1874. Very few ancient or peculiar features have been preserved ; but even a " restorer " has not been able to spoil the fine views in many different directions, or to deprive a visitor of the feeling of exhilara- tion imparted by the elevation of the landscape and the freshness of the air. 208 [CHAPTER XVI. "TAPESTRY AT ST. JAMES'S." The Hospital of St. James Henry VIIl.'s Hunting Lodge The Hospital Converted into a Nunnery Prince Henry Charles I.'s Last Night St. James's After the Restoration The "Warming Pan" Plot The Lutheran Chapel The Chapel Royal Death of Queen Caroline Wedding of George III. and the Princess Charlotte Baptism of George IV. A Service in the Chapel Royal. * MR. HILYAKD has told me," said Dorothy Forster, " of the famous tapestry which he has seen in the Palace of St. James." When the other day I read these words in Sir Walter Besant's delightful novel, I tried to recall to myself the tapestry I once saw " in the Palace of St. James." But, think as I would, the subjects escaped me ; and the style, and the stitch, and the period, and the preservation, and in short, I had forgotten all about it, except that the sight of it set me thinking of the con- nected but not related events which have taken place within these old walls, events which, however faded and obscure they have all become now, are still so sharply separated from each other that though the pictures, like pieces of old tapestry, are hardly visible, there is no difficulty in tracing the boundary of the frames. Take this piece, for instance, so like Millais's " Vale of Rest," done in wool : a long rising slope of green "TAPESTRY At ST. JAMES'S." 209 grass, a few dark yew trees, a red brick wall, a low belfry, and a shed-like building all in the background. In the foreground, a group of sad women, pale and sickly, in black dresses, and an old priest in a cassock, with a short, ragged surplice, who walks slowly, while the women carry a long bundle sewn up in sackcloth, and passing out of a porch at one side, climb the slope and lay their burden to rest near the belfry under the yews. We cannot hear the quavering voice of the old man ; we cannot hear the dirge the sisters sing at the grave, for though tapestry may sigh hi the wind, it tells us nothing so definite. These are the lepers, the fourteen poor sisters for whom the Hospital of St. James was founded, as far back, possibly, as the reign of Henry I. Henry III. rebuilt their house. Henry VI. placed it under the supervision of Eton College. Henry VIII. suppressed it in 1532, exchanging the site with the Eton authorities for a manor in Suffolk. The invalid sisters were pensioned off ; their chapel, their gardens, and the graves of their predecessors soon dis- appeared, and within a few years Henry had laid out as a park the marsh which intervened between St. James's and Whitehall, had built himself a small house where he might retire occasionally from the cares of State, and had left no memory of the nuns except the name of the saint to whom their hospital was dedicated. Another shadowy tapestry might show us the tall, stout figure of the imperious Henry, with the pale, unattractive face of the German princess, his queen for a few months, beside him. In the old Presence Chamber, fitted up, among others, for the newly wedded pair, may still be seen, lovingly entwined together, the initials of Henry and Anne of Cleves. Thomas Cromwell and Hans Holbein were probably concerned together in making the old nunnery into a 210 LONDON AFTERNOONS. palace on this occasion. Events followed each other rapidly. In January, 1540 (old style 1539) the marriage took place. In April Cromwell was made Earl of Essex ; in July he was beheaded and the queen was divorced. In August Henry married again. These dates will not fit with the popular attribution of the H. and A. of the decorations to Henry and Anne Boleyn. Another Henry figures, but not very clearly, on these old walls. He is tall and straight, young and strong, " and by his demeanour," as says a contemporary biographer, " seemed like a king, even whilst he was a prince only." A prince only he was destined to remain, for whether a kind fate took him away from the evil which came upon his brother, or whether, if he had lived, that evil might have been wholly averted, we cannot say now, for he died at St. James's on the 6th of November, 1612. There may have been something of his great grand-uncle in him. We see his broad forehead and his piercing grey eye, his " terrible frown," as well as his majestic countenance and gracious smile. But the picture has faded, and exists no longer except in the imagination. A clearer portrait may come out of an adjoining panel. I seldom walk through St. James's Park towards the Horse Guards without a thought of that cold and dismal morning in January, 1649, when Charles sat down for a moment it must have been near where the cows used to stand and pointed out a tree his elder brother Henry had planted. Hood, in an exquisite little poem, remembered that " Where my brother set The laburnum on his birthday The tree is living yet." Is the tree living yet which Henry Prince of Wales had set? Did some such thought as Hood has here "TAPESTRY AT ST. JAMES'S." 211 put into words cross the mind of Charles? Before the short winter's daylight had departed, the tree, wherever it stood, had survived both the brothers. Charles had arrived at St. James's Palace on the 19th of January under the charge of Colonel Harrison, who delivered him to Colonel Tomlinson. He had not been at St. James's for years, and his apartments we are not told where they were situated had been hastily prepared for his reception " by Mr. Kinnersley, a servant of his Majesty, belonging to the wardrobe." It was in the bedroom, the night before his execution, that Herbert, his faithful attendant, who slept on a pallet at the King's feet, had that strange dream, or vision, when Archbishop Laud (beheaded on Tower Hill on the 10th of January, four years before) appeared to him, as if to warn him of the tragedy to be enacted on the morrow. A vignette in Pepys' Diary shows us St. James's under the monarchy of the Eestoration. The German Chapel close to Marlborough House is now separated from St. James's Palace by the roadway which crosses the site of the apartments burnt in 1809. When Charles II. married Katherine of Braganza the Portuguese Govern- ment stipulated for a chapel in which she could worship after the manner of her people. The "Friary," as it was popularly called, was accordingly established in the garden east of the palace ; and the buildings, of which only the transformed chapel remains, were completed by 1667. Pepys went into one of the cells " a very pretty little room, very clean, hung with pictures, and set with books." He describes the inhabitant of the apartment with his hair shirt, his hard bed, his cord about his middle but concludes that, " in so good company, living with ease, I thought it a very good life." He peeps into the kitehen, " where a good neck of mutton at the fire," and 212 LONDON AFTERNOONS. admires the library. " Their windows all looking into a fine garden and the park, and mighty pretty rooms all. I wished myself one of the Capuchins." Later on the same chapel was assigned to French Protestant refugees, and in 1781 was given to the German Lutherans, who from the time of Prince George of Denmark had been permitted to worship in the palace. The fire of 1809 consumed the scene, real or supposed, of the " Warming-pan Plot," which so greatly agitated the minds of our ancestors some two hundred years ago. The Queen of James II. was living in the royal apartments at " the east end of the south front." These apartments must have been close to the Friary Court and the chapel. Bishop Burnet was firmly convinced that the plot existed, but whether it was a plot to palm off a child upon the nation as the son and heir of the King, or only to do so in case the Queen's infant proved to be a daughter, we are not informed. Such parts of this corner of the palace as were not burnt in 1809 were pulled down in 1822, the " Old Bedchamber " among them, but Pyne preserves a view. It contained both tapestry and pictures, and a private door near the head of the bed led to a secret stair. Altogether we cannot wonder at the suspicions of the people. This Lutheran chapel is by no means to be confounded with the Chapel Royal, of which Holbein is sometimes said to have painted the ceiling for Henry VIII. The German Chapel is not, strictly speaking, within the Palace now. It is nearer Marlborough House. This was the residence which Wren built for the great Duke and his Duchess, on ground given by Queen Anne for the purpose. Wren himself was married in the older, or Royal Chapel, to his second wife, the Honourable Jane Fitzwilliam, in 1676. But many weddings of great folk and christenings of princes and princesses have taken "TAPESTRY AT ST. JAMES'S." 213 place here in the course of ages, and many royal person- ages have died in the palace. Let me conclude these vignettes with an example of each kind. The brave Queen of George II., Caroline of Brandenburg- Anspach, who made Walpole's Ministry possible, and who laid out Kensington Gardens, to mention two of her claims on the gratitude of posterity, died at St. James's on Sunday, the 20th of November, 1737. She had built herself a library in the garden, and after a visit to it and a walk, fell suddenly ill, when it turned out that she had long suffered from a painful malady, but that for fear of being prevented from fulfilling her duties to her husband and his people, she had never allowed any complaint to escape her. For the piece of tapestry in which is woven the last interview of the King and Queen, the sobbing husband and the forgiving wife, and for the kindly intentioned but brutal vow with which he tried to soothe her last moments, see Thackeray, in his " Lectures on the Four Georges." It is said that, stupid and sensual as he was, after her death George borrowed a portrait of her, which he thought more like her than any of his own, from one of his attendants, and wept beside it for hours. Here is a royal wedding at the Court of St. James's. This is a piece which Mr. Hilyard can never have seen, for when the young George III. ascended the throne the " fifteen " and the " forty-five " were both over long ago, and no one openly disputed his title. In the following year he married, by the advice of the Council, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a princess whom he had never seen before. She travelled over from Germany, a little plain girl, with, perhaps, in her early youth, a face not so un- attractive as it afterwards became. When she arrived, one fine September afternoon, at the famous " Court of St. James's," it is related that she turned pale, and, in 214 LONDON AFTERNOONS. truth, it must have been difficult for her to realise, after all she had heard of the greatness and opulence and mag- nificence of the King who had chosen her for his bride, when she came to the low, irregular pile of bricks, without any architectural features except those then known throughout Europe as barbarous, Vandalic, or Gothic, that, though her bridegroom was so great, and so young, and so handsome, he literally had not a palace in which any other king in Christendom would have lived at the time. Windsor was little more than a picturesque ruin ; Kew was a mere private lodge ; Whitehall had been burnt more than sixty years before and never rebuilt ; the old palace of Westminster was wholly occupied by the Parliament ; and the young couple had to " begin house- keeping " in St. James's. Buckingham House, at the other end of the Park, was afterwards settled on the Queen. Here is a royal christening. Ten or eleven months after the little Queen first saw her magnificent King and his shabby house, the son who was destined to figure so largely in history as " the Prince Eegent " was born and baptised at St. James's, and before he was twelve days old the hope of the nation was solemnly laid out in his plumed cradle and exhibited to the public on drawing-room days from one o'clock to three. I have attempted no detailed account of St. James's Palace. The place is almost too familiar to Londoners, and, though it is shabby and old and not very convenient, one would be sorry to see it pulled down or even altered. It is a monument of the days when England was more remarkable for large subsidies than for fine palaces, and it has been the scene of some of the greatest events in our history. I have mentioned only a few, but 1 cannot conclude without one more. It is too late, too modern, "TAPESTRY AT ST. JAMEsV 215 to figure on tapestry, though it is full sixty years old; but in a book on "London Interiors," published and dedicated to Queen Victoria in 1841, there is a view of the chapel of St. James's Palace during the performance of divine service, soon after the Queen's marriage with Prince Albert. It was drawn by T. H. Shepherd, who could draw correctly enough sometimes. But, though her late Majesty was, like Queen Elizabeth, of moderate height, and though the lamented Prince was very little taller, and though the royal gallery is in the background of the picture, the gigantic figures of the Queen and her husband dwarf everything else in the view. Perhaps Shepherd considered that they were both at the time very young and might grow, and so gave them the benefit of the doubt ! 216 CHAPTER XVII. CAMBERWELL. When Camberwell was a Pleasant Village The Parish Registers Curious Names Camberwell's Modern Associations It* Antiquities St. Thomas-a- Watering The Name. A FEW years ago Camberwell waa in the country, but a child born there last week would assuredly be a Londoner, if not a Cockney. Yet Jowett of Balliol, or Browning the poet, both of whom first saw light at Camberwell, are by no means to be called Londoners, nor is Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, of Birmingham, whose father lived in the parish at the time of his birth, in 1836. In the middle of the last century Harrison speaks of it as a very pleasant village of a rather straggling form ; and another writer says of it, in 1761, that it is a pleasant village in Surrey, two miles from Southwark. It retains a good deal of its pleasantness, for, though much nearer the City than such crowded places as Peckham, Deptford, Stratford, or Kentish Town, it has much still left of the greenness which distinguished it when an aloe flowered in Lord Trevor's garden a hundred and forty years ago, and when, nearly a century earlier, Evelyn wrote of it that it had a fine prospect through the meadows to London. The Green has been well preserved, and the Grove is still bordered with handsome trees. But every year the open space is encroached upon, and there are few localities more CAMBERWELL. 217 crowded now than the site of Lord Trevor's house. The increase of the population in these districts has been some- thing enormous. Whether because the parish had a good name for healthiness, though for the most part lying very low, or for some other reason, the London people have crowded into it in larger numbers than into any other parish on that side of the river. There were only three thousand houses in Camberwell, and less than 18,000 people, in 1821. Three hundred years ago the average number of births registered in ten years was twenty- three, and the deaths twenty-six. The present popula- tion approaches a quarter of a million. The church registers began in 1558, and are full of curious notes, as are the churchwardens' accounts. The registrar of the time of Charles II. introduced a new and, so far as we can remember, a unique feature into the book in his charge, for the margins are decorated with lively sketches in pen-and-ink. Under 1684 we find the names of three people " touched " by Charles, probably at Sir Thomas Bond's house, afterwards Lord Trevor's, but the entries make no note of the subse- quent history of the patients, a girl and two boys. Among the names in the register in 1784 is that of a Mr. Ono Tichener, who is said to have come by his Christian name in a curious way. The sponsors at his christening mistook the officiating clergyman's question " Name this child," and one of them answering " Oh no," the " too impetuous parson " went on at once, * Ono, I baptise thee," etc. Another odd name is " Sence." It occurs as early as 1559, when Mathew Draper married Sence Blackwell. In 1571 it is varied into " Saintes," but for the most part it is written Sence, and it occurs half a dozen times with different surnames. One his- torian of Camberwell supposes it to be a corruption 218 LONDON AFTERNOONS. of Cynthia ; another conjectures that it represents a moral quality, like Mercy or Prudence. This is probable, and Machyn in his " Diary " gives the name as Sens. In the will of Elizabeth Basingdon, in 1544 (though the names are not of a kind to be found in the church register), the testator bequeaths a herd of cows, which belonged to her and pastured in Camberwell meadows. They are men- tioned in couples : " ij kyne namyd wevyll and bleache " head the list, which also contains these not always intelligible names : Leictyn, Sareone, Lytell Gayrle, Blacke Nan, Pykhorne, Browne, Gret Garll, Litell Cheare, Lele, and Threbygs. The chief associations of Camberwell are of a very modern kind. The church, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott while he was in partnership with Moffatt, was opened in 1844, and is one of the largest built since the Gothic revival. The Crystal Palace stands partly within the parish. The gorgeous brickwork of the new Dulwich College was for some years one of the most important modern buildings of its class in England ; while the whole question of the old College, and the contentions which have arisen out of Alleyn's will, have given birth to a literature, in the form of blue-books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles, which would fill a moderate library. Mr. Blanch, who wrote a history of the parish in 1875, devotes sixty pages of his book, and forty pages of appendix besides, to what he calls in the preface a slight sketch, disproportionately brief. But Camberwell has antiquities too. If the Crystal Palace is at one end of the parish, St. Thomas-a-Watering is at the other a place which not only claims to have been mentioned by Chaucer " And forth we riden a litel more than pass, Unto the waterynge of seint Thomas" CAMBERWELL* 219 but also to have been the scene of nearly as many historical executions as Tyburn. There is a reference to a loving letter from Lady Egerton to her husband in the " Egerton Papers." In it mention is made of the inclosure of an account of the death of Franklin, one of the minor accom- plices in the murder of Overbury, and a postscript adds, " My La. commends her love to you, and commandes me to tell that Frankelen dyd geve the hangman a bockes of the eare afore he was hanged." The inclosure describes a scene not unworthy of a puppet show : " The hangman came to him and offered to put the rope about his neck, but he took it out of his hand and strived to put it about the hangman's necke, and laughed in doing it ; then he stood upright and stretched himself, and gave money to everyone that begged of him." This bold criminal was watched with great interest, as the common folk hoped he would betray some of his accomplices; but though asked by the chaplain to speak to the people, he refused. " I'll testimony nothing," he answered, when appealed to for a word as to the justice of his sentence. He refused to pray, " but would often use this word in Latin, Non sum, quod fui, for he sayd he had in his tyme raysed upp thirtye spirits at a tyme." This forerunner of some of our modern spiritualists was hanged on the 9th of December, 1615. The site of St. Thomas-a-Watering is marked by St. Thomas's Road, one of the new streets leading out of the Old Kent Road. Landmarks are rapidly obliterated so near London, and it would be difficult now in passing along the crowded street to form even the slightest conception of what it was like when the Canter- bury Pilgrims rode out from Southwark. The highway which suited pedestrians and equestrians would not suit cabs and omnibuses, and particularly tramways, all of 220 LONDON AFTERNOONS. which now traverse the Old Kent Road. But even omnibuses have their antiquities, and some people may sigh for the time when passengers by Mr. Shillibeer's vehicles were provided gratuitously with newspapers. The name was long spelt Cammerwell, Camerwell, and even Camwell. In Domesday it is Ca'brewelle. But a very few more years will suffice to remove from Camberwell all traces of the time when it was a " pleasant village/' when the Camberwell Beauty roved through gardens and orchards, and when a twopenny church rate only produced 22 12s. 3d. Already an unbroken street reaches from London Bridge to Camberwell Church, and with only two or three intervening fields on to Green- wich itself. The trees and fields disappear day by day. The gardens of Sydenham Hill form a pleasing oasis, but Dulwich has been surrounded, and the tide of brick and mortar climbs rapidly up the slope to Norwood. The three hundred and fifty feet elevation of which it boasts cannot protect it, any more than the four hundred and thirty of Hampstead protected it. Herne Hill and Denmark Hill were open in Ruskiii's time, but are being let in plots on building leases now. Where the town is to end no one can tell, but nothing can restore the old features of the countrv over which the houses have once grown up. The acquisition of Brock well Park, a wide expanse of hill and dale, studded with old trees and command- ing views in all directions, is a happy event in the recent history of Camberwell. 221 CHAPTER XVIII. THE GUILDHALL. What was a Guild Merchant ? The Old Guildhall in Alderinanbury The New Guildhall The Hustings The Monuments Elections of Kings Trial of Queen Jane Royal Visits The Library The Museum The Art Gallery The Council Chamber The Records The Real Centre of the City. No one seems able to tell us what a Guild Merchant is. We know that when, about the time of the Conquest, a little earlier and a little later, guilds existed among the merchants of an English city, one of these guilds had more to do with the government of that city than others had. Or, to put it differently, most of the guilds consisted of members of a single trade : the central or governing guild included, according to some authorities, members of all. But it is precisely here that information fails us. We have scanty records of a contemporary character relating to the guilds in the eleventh century. We have none of the tenth century, except the mere fact that they existed. In the twelfth we have some items, and in the thirteenth some more ; but it is still open to argument whether or not the above statement is correct, for there is very early evidence to the effect that, in London at least, the governing guild consisted of men who were not in trade and did not belong to any ordinary guild, but formed an oligarchy of wealthy families, many of 222 LONDON AFTERNOONS. whom were aldermen ; and that, while they did admit to their number a few merchants, they were for the most part more like squires, lords of manors, or prebendaries of cathedral churches of the Old Foundation, such as St. Paul's. One thing they had in common, according to this view, namely, an estate, called the Portsoken in London, and by other names in Oxford, Winchester, or other cities. It is only by good-tempered support of one theory at a time that we may hope to arrive at truth ; and so far, though a disposition to dogmatism without sufficient knowledge has been shown alternately on one side and the other, we are gradually, I hope, accumulating small items of evidence which will enable the facts to be seen in their true light. All religious guilds were abolished, as we have seen (p. 88), by Act of Parliament in the reign of Edward VI., and their property was confiscated. The only guilds which were not religious were those known as guilds merchant. Some guilds merchant had patron saints, and after the passing of the Act they got into trouble on account of estates which had been " devoted to super- stitious uses." We do not hear anything of this kind about London. The guild merchant itself, in London, is a very mysterious body, of which we hear very little in history, and nothing distinctly. One thing about it is, however, very tangible. The Guildhall still exists. If there is a Guildhall there must have been a guild ; and that guild, being the governing body of the city, may not necessarily have been religious. In fact the first mention we have of the Guildhall certainly does not show it in a strictly religious character. Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in the reign of King Henry II., says somewhat enigmatically that the Guildhall is so called on account of the resort to it of drinkers. What does that mean ? Apparently, THE CHAPEL, GUILDHALL YARD (P. 225). (From Schnebbelie's View, 1815.) THE GUILDHALL. 223 the custom of guilds to meet at stated intervals for " butt filling " and for " mutual pledging," as well as for religious exercise, was in his mind. The chief men of the city, the aldermen, " majores natu," had been accustomed to assemble for civic business in Aldermanbury, where, as the word " bury " seems to imply, they had a house to which they could resort, and where, after they had taken counsel, they could adjourn to their municipal hall and pledge each other as in an ordinary guild. But, in truth, we have no contemporary account of these meetings. After a time, perhaps in the reign of Henry III., the old Aldermanbury hall became too small for them. A great deal of public business of importance had to be transacted, and the appointment of a recorder shows that records had begun to be made and to be preserved. In fact, from the reign of Edward I. there is no break in the continuity of the London records. A new Guildhall became necessary. Its crypt, in part, still remains, and shows early workmanship ; and by a curious chance we are able to tell with considerable certainty both that it was smaller than the present Guildhall, and also how much smaller it was. The boundaries of the City wards were defined about the same tune, and it was arranged that though the new Guildhall stood well back from the market place, it, with a street leading to it, should be in the ward of Cheap. At its western end it abutted on the old Guildhall in Aldermanbury, and when the hall was rebuilt by Whittington and his executors in the fifteenth century, the eastern end was prolonged beyond the ward boundary and beyond the beautiful early crypt. All the additions to the modern buildings have been made in the same way, and at present the hall is hi Cheap and Bassishaw, and the Library and New Council Chamber and offices are some in Cripplegate and some in Bassishaw. 224 LONDON AFTERNOONS. It is not very easy to determine exactly where the first Guildhall stood, but it was probably on a site now or lately covered by the town clerk's and architect's offices on the western side, and extending quite to the street called Aldermanbury. The governing guild of London, then, assembled in its Guildhall as early as the reign of Henry II., and if a governing guild now exists, it consists of the Common Council, the Aldermen, and the Lord Mayor of the City. True, their name has been changed, and so has their constitution. The guild no longer consists of the Alder- men and their portreeve, one of their own body. In 1189 at the earliest, and certainly before 1193, the portreeve became the mayor ; and a few years later, namely, in 1200, there were chosen twenty-five "of the more discreet men of the city " to take counsel with the Mayor and the Aldermen. This Council has been gradually enlarged, and alongside of it we see a second Council, that of the livery, or members of the Companies,* who assemble in common hall. As, practically, every one who wishes to take part in City affairs belongs to a Company, the interests of the two bodies are virtually the same. We have yet to notice one other assembly of citizens which is connected with the Guildhall. Tlus is the hustings. The word is familiar enough. It is com- mon when elections are going on, and at such times it is used all over England. Yet, when we look into it, we observe that it is not, strictly speaking, an English word. It is Scandinavian, Danish perhaps. It is one of a small number of words which are relics among us of the great Danish conquest of England in the tenth century. In other towns and cities the great assembly of the free men of the place is the " portmannimote." That is an English See Chapter VIIL, p. 88. _ THE GUILDHALL. 225 word, strange and unaccustomed as it may sound to modern ears. But in London what would have been called the " portmannimote " anywhere else was called the hustings. In Iceland, the great Council of the people is, or was lately, the * Hus-thing," the assembly of the House. In English * Hus " enters into the composition of a great many words, some of them obsolete. We speak of husband and hus- bandry ; of housewife, or hussif, or hussey ; and our ancestors had " hus-carl " and other common expressions. The assembling of all the citizens of London was the hustings, and in some respects the hustings court of London was in the early Middle Ages the most powerful body in the City. To it was the ultimate appeal from the acts of the governing guild, the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council. The word " hus " in hustings was conjectured by Mr. Price to refer to the civil and domestic matters brought before it ; and Mr. Coote translated it into " the domestic judicatory." These derivations at least show the objects and jurisdiction of the hustings ; and the civic wills proved before it form a large and most interesting collection, which has been printed for the benefit of future historians by Dr Sharpe, of the Town Clerk's office. By degrees legislation has deprived the hustings of most of its functions, but on certain occasions it still assembles on the dais at the east end of the Guildhall, as it did in the days of Chaucer, who mentions it. Other courts have always sat at the Guildhall, some of them of very modern origin ; and the new offices to the north and north-west of the original hall are as great an ornament to the City as those charm- ingly incongruous buildings the Guildhall Chapel and Backwell Hall, which once, not so very long ago, con- fronted St. Laurence's Church, now, besides the Guild- hall itself, the only architectural feature of a little square 226 LONDON AFTERNOONS. which must at one time have been as picturesque as any of the kind in England. The Guildhall, as it is now, presents some of those mixtures of style and incongruities which seem in them- selves to impart picturesqueness to a building, and which are the objects of an almost personal animosity to the average architect. The lamented Sir Horace Jones was not one of these. He improved the building, but was always mindful of its history. The Stuart Gothic with which Jarman refaced it after some injury in the Great Fire was not destroyed ; the Georgian monuments with their classical details were not swept out of the hall ; even the ridiculous giants, about which so much rubbish has been written, were not disestablished. But the new roof, with its fine brown beams, and the stained glass in the windows some of it very good are comparatively new. The last of these windows was presented by the late John T. Bedford, a member of the Common Council, to commemorate the opening and presentation of Epping Forest by the Corporation of London, one of the most splendid gifts ever made to the public. The monuments which are ranged along the sides of the hall are of more interest than is generally the case with objects of this kind. They were all put up in tunes of great civic emotion, so to speak. Each of them repre- sents some phase or mood of popular excitement, for the City of London has always been in the van of progress, and has led the way in every reform which has been for the real benefit of the nation. The monuments are five in number. The first is to the memory of William Beckford, who died in 1770 in his second mayoralty. Beckford asserted the rights of the citizens against certain high-handed proceedings of George HI., and a speech which he is said to have made to the King is inscribed THE OLD COUNCIL CHAMBER, GUILDHALL (From Ackermann's "Microcosm," 1808.) THE GUILDHALL. 227 on the pedestal. There are two versions of this speech extant, and this one is said to have been written by John Home Tooke. Whether Beckford really delivered it or not does not greatly matter. He attended at Court to remonstrate, and the speech shows the object of the remonstrance. The monument is by a sculptor called Moore, and cost 1,300. The second monument in the Guildhall is to Chatham, by John Bacon, R.A., and the third to Pitt, his son, by J. G. Bubb. Wellington appears between Peace and War, sculptured by Bell. Nelson is commemorated by an elaborate allegorical group, referring to his victories and death, by James Smith. The earliest of the great public ceremonials which we can associate with the present Guildhall was the recep- tion given to Henry V. after the Battle of Agincourt, in 1415. The election, or attempted election, of Richard HE. was held at the Guildhall in 1483. By this time the hall must have been nearly, if not quite finished. Bucking- ham endeavoured hi vain to rouse the spirit of the citizens in favour of his master. But Edward IV. had been very popular with them, and they would not be persuaded to desert the cause of his children. It is curious to observe what importance was attached to a formal election of a King by the citizens of London, and Buckingham's singular threat, that the Lords and Commons would take the matter out of their hands, should be noted. It is not mentioned in Shakespeare's Richard III., where Buckingham reports his speech to Richard (Act iii., scene vii.). The reign of Queen Mary was marked by two events in the Guildhall, the reception of the Queen after Wyatt's rebellion, in 1553, when many of the citizens fled, fearing her vengeance ; and, on the 12th of November, the trial of Jane Grey, her husband, her brothers-in-law, and Archbishop Cranmer, before the Lord Mayor, the 228 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Lord Steward, and a number of high officials, when all the prisoners were condemned to death. They walked through the streets from the Tower on foot, and went back again, together. One other historical event must also be mentioned before we come to modern times. In 1088, when the flight of James II. had left England without a King, the peers, who happened to be in London, and other high officials, assembled at the Guildhall to take measures for the public safety. Archbishop Sancroft took the chair, though the Lord Mayor was present and had welcomed the Lords as they arrived. Lord Mayor Chapman was certainly not equal to the occasion. A more capable man would have taken the lead hi that and all the sub- sequent movements ; but there can be no doubt that this memorable meeting at the Guildhall, and the offer of the Crown, and of money to support it, which the City made to William of Orange, determined the course of the Revolution. Of late years there have been many Eoyal visits to the Guildhall, and the famous entertainment given to Queen Victoria on her accession is not forgotten, nor the still more splendid ball after the opening of the Great Exhibition in 1851. On this occasion the beautiful crypt was used as a supper room. It should be mentioned that the Guildhall is one hundred and fifty-three feet long, and fifty wide. The Library is in a very handsome chamber east of the hall, and is approached by a passage which leads out of the old porch. The books include many old manuscripts of interest which were in the possession of the Corporation at the time of the opening in 1828, and have been largely supplemented by the gifts of rarities of litera- ture which citizens have made. This is by no means THE GUILDHALL. 229 the first library the Corporation has had : for Whit- tington opened a collection of books at the Guildhall, which might have subsisted here still, only that Somerset, the Protector of Edward VI., " borrowed " them all and never returned them. There were only ten thousand volumes in the library in 1840, but by 1859 there were thirty thousand, and in 1869 the collection had grown so greatly that it was thought desirable to erect the present commodious building, which contains upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand volumes. Among its treasures is a document bearing the very rare signature of William Shakespeare. Oddly enough, it is so written that it throws little or no light on the orthography of the name. A staircase close to the library leads to the Museum, also an institution of modern growth. It is particularly rich in Roman remains found in London, though in respect of works of art of that period it must yield to the British Museum. But a fine tesselated pavement found in Buck- lersbury, near the course of the Wallbrook, is probably unequalled elsewhere in England, and many other relics found in the same neighbourhood more recently are also in the collection. There are, too, mediaeval remains, such as the sign of the Boar's Head Tavern from East Cheap, and some modern relics and curiosities, including a fine collection of watches. Besides the Library and the Museum there is now an Art Gallery connected with the Guildhall. It occupies the chamber in which, before the erection of the new Law Courts at Temple Bar, City cases were heard before the Court of Queen's Bench. It was built in 1822 on the site of the old Guildhall Chapel. The recent free exhibitions of loan collections of pictures have made this gallery famous. The last of the Guildhall buildings is the new Council Chamber. It lies to the 'north of the'great hall, and east 230 LONDON AFTERNOONS. of the passage or lobby. It has none of the historical associations of the old chamber, which was on the other side of the passage. It is adorned with busts of great men, and is handsomely decorated lx>th with painting and carving. The plan is almost circular, the diameter being about fifty feet. The chamber was built with the most astonishing celerity, for the first stone was laid in April, 1883, and the first meeting of the Court of Common Council was held at the beginning of October in the following year. At the eastern side is the Lord Mayor's seat, with a statue of King George III. behind it. The old Chamberlain's Court was built one hundred years ago, and was pulled down in 1882 to make way for this handsome hall. The Chamberlain is a kind of Chancellor of the Exchequer of the City of London, and in the earliest times appears to have been identical with the portreeve or Mayor ; but the offices were divorced from each other during the long suppression of the Mayoralty under Edward I. Besides the Court, the Chamberlain has his office, in which there is a lock-up for refractory apprentices ; and what looks at first sight like a private house near the site of Bridewell is retained as a prison to which now and then an unhappy " printers' devil " is committed. There is much else to see at the Guildhall, but the above- mentioned hall and chambers are the most easily accessible. A wonderful gathering of City records is in the Town Clerk's office, and there are some magnificent apartments for aldermen, judges, and others. Very nearly, if not exactly, on the site of the ancient Guildhall, in Alderman- bury, was the School of Music, now removed to the Embankment. The documents preserved at the Guildhall are kept in an admirable manner, and carefully indexed. The VOLUMES OF RECORDS, GUILDHALL (From a photograph by Sir Benjamin Stone, M.P.) Photo : London Stereoscopic Co., Lim. A CORNER IN THE MUNIMENT ROOM GUILDHALL. THE GUILDHALL. 231 Hustings Bolls are the most important, but there are " Remembrancia " and a long series of " Letter Books," so called not because they contain correspondence, but because each is marked with a letter. " Letter Book A " goes back to the time of Edward I. Dr. Sharpe gives many interesting examples from the records in his care. For instance, he says (Hustings, p. xlvii.) : " It is curious to trace the fortunes of the widows of some of the testators in this volume, who, being left presumably in good circumstances, sooner or later found second husbands. Thus, in 1314, it is recorded that the widow of John Laurenz, having re-married, desired to marry her daughter of eight years of age, by her first husband, to a child of her second husband, aged ten years. The banns, we are told, had been published, and the trousseau and wedding feast prepared, when the affair got wind, and some friends brought the infant daughter before the authorities at the Guildhall, who placed her for the time being under the care of the City Chamberlain." We may next turn to a volume edited by the same in- defatigable authority, which contains a series of " Letters from the Mayor and Corporation of the City of London," beginning as far back as 1350. These papers are by no means so interesting as those mentioned already. They are, on the other hand, of public and political value, and throw much light on the position of London, not only among English cities, but amongst the cities of Europe. The very first we come to is addressed to the people and commonalty of Florence, about an Italian who had seized some property he had undertaken to convey safely to Florence. The part played by the Guildhall in the history of the City might well be compared with that which London itself played in the history of England. Since the building 232 LONDON AFTERNOONS. of a Mansion House, some of the most interesting and memorable of civic gatherings have taken place hi it. And we might almost assert that the centre of business activity which, hi the Middle Ages, was in Cheap, flanked by Cheapside and the Guildhall, is now transferred to the region occupied by the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange. Yet, historically, the Guildhall will always be the centre of the City ; and since it has been found out that the old date of 1415, which used to be assigned to it, is probably at least a couple of centuries too late, it has gained immensely in this kind of interest. The beautiful Early English crypt is almost the only surviving relic of its period in the City. The crypt of St. Mary-le-Bow is Norman. The church of St. Ethelburga, in Bishops- gate, has in it a few lancet windows which may be con- temporary with the Guildhall crypt. It is, therefore, architecturally as well as archaeologically, and artistically as well as historically, a building which many people wish to see, and which brings back to us, by its extreme beauty, the perfection of the Art of the thirteenth century, and enables us to judge for ourselves what, if this was the crypt, must have been the magnificence of the building above. 233 CHAPTER XIX. CANONBURY. Canonbury and the Canons of St. Bartholomew Bolton's Tower A Great Heiress An Elopement The Tale of a Basket Lady Compton's Expectations Literary Associations of Canon- bury. A LITTLE relic of antiquity, buried among the stucco villas of the great modern suburb of Islington, has been made the subject of a good deal of the guess-work which so often does duty for archeology. Accord- ing to one eminent authority, Canonbury belonged before the dissolution of the monasteries to the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem at Clerkenwell. The anti- quarians of the daily papers may have access to docu- mentary evidence denied to ordinary students, but so far as the history of the house has been printed and it happens that a good deal has been printed about it the Prior of Clerkenwell never had anything to do with Canonbury. It might be thought at first sight that, since Islington was a prebendal manor of St. Paul's, the house or " bury " of the canon would be here. But the estate attached to the stall was situated close to Lower Street, and was sold by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners some years ago. If we look in the Domesday Book we shall be equally at fault. Canonbury is not mentioned. But a certain Hugh de Berneres is spoken of more than once 234 LONDON AFTERNOONS. as holding land under the Bishop of London ; and his estate in Islington has been identified. One of his de- scendants gave a part of it to the Augustinian Canons of St. Bartholomew, and the prior built himself a villa, when, to distinguish the holdings, the original house became known as Berners' Bury, or Barnsbury, and the prior's house as " Canones' Bury " or Canonbury often, and indeed for a time commonly, pronounced Canbury. The word " bury " generally denotes, in Middlesex at least, a manorial residence. The date of the grant is not exactly fixed. It must have been before 1290, as after that year the Act of "Quia, emptores" would have prevented the priors from making their estate into a manor. It was given to them by Ralph de Berners ; but there were several Ralphs, and it is not easy to distinguish one from an- other. However, there is evidence, which need not be recapitulated here, to show that the canons' benefactor was the grandson of the Domesday tenant, and this would bring the gift to the beginning of the thirteenth century. The Knights of St. John came to Clerkeinvell at the be- ginning of the twelfth century, and as it w r as not the common habit of the religious orders to give up what they once possessed, it follows that if the Lord Prior of Clerkenwell had a villa in Islington, it must have been owing to some very unusual occurrence that we find a canon of St. Bartholomew in possession. The tower, all that remains of the old house, which the late Lord Northampton granted to the Islington parochial authorities, presents few architectural features by which its age may be ascertained. An adjoining building had on it the rebus or device of Prior Bolton, who governed St. Bartholomew's for nearly thirty years in the beginning of the sixteenth century. He may have CANONBURY. 235 built the tower, but the few existing decorations which remain seem to point rather to the time of Sir John Spencer, the rich Lord Mayor of Queen Elizabeth's reign, whose arms are described as occurring in several places in Canonbury House a hundred years ago. He also lived at Crosby Hall, in the City, but it was from Canonbury that the famous elopement took place which brought Sir John's fabulous wealth to the Comptons. The story has been often told, and so highly embellished that it is impossible now to get at the truth. Lord Comp- ton is said to have carried off the fair Elizabeth Spencer in a clothes-basket, as Falstaff was carried to Datchet Mead. Another account describes the young lady as having been let down from the topmost storey of Canon- bury Tower in the clothes-basket. The tale varies ; the clothes-basket, though sometimes described as a bread- basket, is constant. In all folklore tales such points may be observed. The basket figures again at Sir John Spencer's funeral, where three hundred and twenty poor men had each a clothes-basket given him containing a black gown and various other articles of dress, together with a black pudding, a candlestick, and tw r o red herrings. Perhaps the heralds, who assign something very like a basket but they call it a " beacon " to the Compton family by way of crest, may have been mindful of the legend. Certain it is that the heiress married the Northamptonshire lord, and that in 1609 the alderman's great possessions came to them. Here again a pretty story is interpolated. Queen Elizabeth was interested in the young pair. Lord Compton, in fact, was a member of the Privy Council. The Queen took advantage of an opportunity to ask the indignant father-in-law to join her Grace as sponsor for the child of a couple whose relations had cast them off. The child 236 LONDON AFTERNOONS. was christened " Spencer " after its godfather, who expressed to the Queen his intention, as his daughter had run away from him, of making the infant his heir. The curtain falls on the appropriate and familiar situation, and the " Bless you, my children ! " of the alderman. The heiress of Canonbury Tower, with all her wealth, does not seem, however, to have made Lord Compton very happy. The first thing that happened to him on inheriting Sir John's fortune is described in a curious letter among Winwood's collections, from which we gather that, " at the first newes, either through the vehement apprehension of joy for such a plentiful succession, or of carefulness how to take it up and dispose of it," he became " somewhat distracted." And what, asks the writer very pertinently, " shall these thousands and millions avayle him if he come to lose, if not his soul, at least his wits and reason ? " But he eventually recovered, was made an earl by King James, and was Lord Presi- dent of Wales when he died in 1G30. The marriage had taken place so far back as 1594, the year when Sir John was Lord Mayor, and in the fifteen years which elapsed before the inheritance came to the Comptons the heiress found time to elaborate a scheme for the organisation of her house- hold which has been preserved, and affords a curious picture of the social life of the upper classes before the Great Rebellion. She must have, she tells her " sweet life," 1,GOO a year, to be paid quarterly, for apparel ; 600 more " for the performance of charitable works." She further required three horses for her own saddle ; two gentlewomen to attend her, " lest one should be sick," and " six or eight gentlemen," and " for that it is indecent to crowd myself with my gentleman usher hi my coach, I will have him to have a convenient horse, to attend me S -a < * uj 3 I H E CANONBUBY. 237 either in city or in country." She also desired as a start twenty gowns, of which six were to be " very excellent good ones," and 2,200 to put hi her purse. Moreover, her husband was to discharge her debts and give her 10,000 for jewellery; and she goes on, "Now seeing I am so reasonable unto you, I pray you find my children apparel, and their schooling," and ends by stipulating that when he becomes an earl he is to allow her another thousand a year, and to double her attendance. Canonbury has remained in the possession of the Compton family ever since. The first Lord Northampton does not appear to have made much use of it as a residence. He had lodgings in the Savoy at the time of his death, which was caused by sudden chill from bathing late one night in the Thames ; and Canonbury was inhabited by various tenants, some of them, such as Lord Chancellor Egerton, people of eminence. In 1770 the old park of the priors, which was surrounded by a wall, was cut up into building ground. A Mr. Dawes, " an eminent and very successful stockbroker," took it and built " a genteel villa," and other houses ; and now the town is all round it and far beyond it. The tower was let in flats, and enjoyed a certain amount of popularity, especially among literary people. Chambers, the author of the " Cyclopaedia," long lived here, and was engaged on a larger edition of that work when he died. At that time, as we are assured by Nichols, the building was so detached from others, " so encompassed with fine fields and gardens, the goodness of the air, considering its nearness to London, being remarkable," and had three such "delightful prospects to the east, north, and south, and the higher rooms also to the west, commanding the whole City of London, and the hills in Surrey and Kent," that many people whose affairs would not permit them to be further from 238 LONDON AFTERNOONS. London resorted to it for retirement and relaxation. He gives the names of some of the more remarkable, but omits, or does not know, the greatest of them all, Oliver Goldsmith. The tower as it now appears is 17 feet square and 58 feet high, and still contains some handsome rooms, all much disguised with plaster-work and painting. We must hope, whatever happens, that this memorial of old time may be spared. It is not easy to realise now that when Prior Bolton came out here from Smithfield he passed hardly any inhabited houses, except the two convents at Clerkenwell, and that from the top of his tower he could look without any interruption at St. Bartholomew's and the new church he was engaged in building. 239 CHAPTEE XX. BUCKINGHAM PALACE. The Largest English Palace The Site ami its Memories Mary Davies the Heiress, aiid her Marriago to Sir Richard Grosvenor James I.'s Mulberry Garden Arlington or Goring House The Duke of Buckingham Buckingham House a Royal Residence George III. and his Library The Meeting between the King and Dr. Johnson Queen Victoria as the Occupant of Buckingham Palace. As an example of the architecture of the Victorian age, Buckingham Palace is not a building of which we can feel very proud. The additions which made it the largest of English royal residences were designed at a very unfortunate period in our art history. Architecture had just then fallen between two stools, the Gothic style and the Classical. Classical architecture itself was also divided, and the Greek, or supposed Greek style, was contending with the Palladian. So that, literally, there were three incompatible schools of design not one of which, by the way, was understood by a majority of its professors. No wonder, then, if the design of Buckingham Palace, in spite of its immense size, deserves above all other adjectives that of " trivial," whether " trivial " means, as Dr. Johnson says, " vulgar," or is connected with Latin words referring to three ways. There were three possible styles in which Buckingham Palace might have been built : and it may safely be said that it is in none of them. Fortunately 240 LONDON AFTERNOONS. there are two sides to every case, however bad, and the inside of Buckingham Palace is certainly better than the outside. The oldest map which gives the features of tliis locality in any detail is one in the Grace Collection at the British Museum. It is a survey of the estate of Mrs. Mary Davies misspelt on the map " Dammison " made in 1675 by a certain Henry Morgan, whose method of spelling the English language was peculiar to himself. He shows us Hyde Park Corner, which he decorates with trees, and calls "Brooke shot." A road skirts the Brookshot, having on its western side open fields labelled " Pastuer." The road passes close to " Gorin House," and an alternative name is also recorded " Arndall House and Garden." This stands for " Arlington House." Behind it on the western side is " Mr. Thomson, Pasteur," with a brick wall called Gorin Garden. The brick wall enclosed an hexagonal plot, which very nearly coincides with the forty acres of the present Palace Gardens. Nearer the road, to the north of " Arndall House," is the " Mulberry Garden." Who was Mrs. Mary Davies ? She was the daughter of Alexander Davies, a scrivener who had married Mary Dukeson, the daughter of the rector of St. Clement Danes. The rector had living in his house at the time a very old man, named Audley, a lawyer, who had amassed a great fortune, which he distributed by will among the children and grandchildren of his sister, Mary Peacock. Her daughter, another Mary, was Alexander Davies's mother; and "Rich Audley," as he is called by Pepys and his other contemporaries, left him the lands eventually surveyed by Henry Morgan. Davies died in the Great Plague, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Margaret's at Westminster. His daughter, " Mrs. Mary Dammison," < => I - O a BUCKINGHAM PALACE. 241 was but six months old at the time, and lived with her grandfather, Dr. Dukeson, who gave her in marriage, when she had attained the ripe age of eleven, to young Sir Richard Grosvenor, of Eaton, in Cheshire. The rector himself had come from Cheshire. Lady Grosvenor's inheritance forms the chief estate of her descendant, the Duke of Westminster ; and was, as it still is, cut in two by the Mulberry Garden of King James, on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace and its grounds. To account for the local names on Morgan's map, we find that soon after the accession of King James I. the great importance in England of the newly established silk manufacture caused an attempt to be made in many places to feed the silk-producing insect at home. The French some years before had made not unsuccessful efforts with the same object, and, ignoring the differences of climate, our " British Solomon " issued to his subjects a circular in which he recommended them to plant mulberry trees, and himself set the example by walling in four acres of the Green Park, then called " Upper St. James's Park," and establishing a Mulberry Garden. The first keeper was William Stallenge, who appears either to have been successful or, at least, to have per- suaded his patron that he was so, and he had a patent granted him for seven years. Eventually, however, the office of Keeper of the Mulberry Garden became more or less a sinecure, and evidently not a very rich one, as it was sold by one official for the modest sum of 406. The buyer was George Goring, a favourite of the King, who was made a peer, as Lord Goring, in 1628. He built a house on land adjoining the Garden, and seems to have made it his residence. He was raised to the earldom of Norwich by Charles I., a title which had been his maternal uncle's, but he seems to have been called Lord Goring 242 LONDON AFTERNOONS. to the day of his death, which did not happen till after the Restoration. His career has been variously judged, and need not be further noticed here. His house, during the Commonwealth, was rented by Lenthall, the Speaker, and after the Restoration by Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, a member of the celebrated Cabal Ministry, who had also a house and grounds at the opposite side of the Park, where they are ^still commemorated by Arlington and Bennet Streets. When the second Earl of Norwich died childless in 1671, Arlington obtained a crown lease at a nominal rent, and he had, therefore, been about four years in possession when Henry Morgan made his survey. Views of Arlington or Goring House are extant. One of them, an anonymous etching, is in the Grace Collection, and is dated 1663. It show's a good plain design of the Inigo Jones type, with a high cupola in the centre and an arcaded portico. It is quite possible that Borne remains of this house are still existing in the fabric of Buckingham Palace. Meanwhile, the Mulberry Garden became a place of public amusement. Both Evelyn and Pepys in their immortal Diaries speak of its attractions. It seems to have been a resort of fashion even during the Protector's life-time, and was furnished with a place in which to dine and a good cook. Pepys, in April, 1669, much admires a Spanish dish he calls it an " olio "of which he partook, visiting the garden twice on the same day. The plays of the Restoration period contain many allusions to the garden and its convenient arbours, and the trees must have been productive, for Dryden is recorded to have loved the mulberry tarts. The garden was probably closed to the public before Arlington House passed into the possession of John Shef- BUCKINGHAM PALACti. 243 field, Marquis of Normanby, who, in the same year, 1703, in which he rebuilt it, was created Duke of Normanby, and a few weeks later, Duke of the county of Buckingham. He is known in history by the title and the form of it which he preferred, for he signed his name not " Normanby and Buckinghamshire," nor even " Buckinghamshire," but simply " Buckingham." And this form is still re- tained in the official name of the palace. The architect employed was Wynde, a Dutchman, generally referred to as Captain Wynne. He built Newcastle House, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and Cliefden, on the Thames, near Taplow. Arlington had died in 1685, leaving an only daughter, and the Duke seems to have bought the lease of 1671. In his will he speaks of it as if it was a freehold. Buck- ingham is an interesting character. His chief vices were the vices of his time, added to an inordinate family pride. He had, it was said, proposed to marry the Princess Anne, and, being refused, retired for a time to the Continent ; but he got over his disappointment, and eventually, by a curious fate, married as his third wife her step-sister, Lady Catherine Darnley, one of the acknowledged children of King James II. This was the lady who received Lord Hervey in a kind of funeral state on the anniversary of the death of Charles I., her reputed grandfather. When Princess Anne became Queen, she remembered the com- pliment Normanby had paid her, and very shortly after her accession conferred the two dukedoms upon him, and made him Lord Privy Seal. In 1703 he put a new front and two wings on his house in St. James's Park, and about the same time he laid out the gardens, which, strictly speaking, can only in small part have been on the site occupied by King James's mulberries. In 1706, on account, perhaps, of some slight to his vanity, he 244 LONDON AFTERNOONS. resigned his office, but did not, as he writes to his friend the Duke of Shrewsbury, go away from London. " You accuse me," he says, " of singularity in resigning the Privy Seal, with a pension added to it, and yet after- wards staying in town, at a season when everybody else leaves it, which you say is despising at once both Court and country." The letter is printed at length in Dodsley's " London and its Environs," 1761 ; and the Duke makes a good excuse for his strange conduct by offering his correspondent a delightful and, for the age, wonderfully enthusiastic description of his house and grounds. The difference which nearly two hundred years have made in the appearance of the West End of London cannot be better illustrated than by some of the sentences of this letter. The garden is able to suggest, by the advantages of its situation, the noblest thoughts that can be, for it presents at once to view " a vast town, a palace, and a magnificent cathedral." Considering that London was then all to the eastward of his house, that the palace was St. James's, and the "cathedral" Westminster Abbey in which, by the way, he was destined to be buried this is a rather high-flown description. But he goes on to say that the commonest shrub in his garden excites his devotion more than a church, as the works of Nature appear to him to be the better sort of sermons. " The small distance of this place from London," he continues, " is just enough for recovering my weariness, and recruiting my spirits so as to make me better than before I set out." He then enters on a minute description of his house, with its hall, " paved with square white stones mixed with a dark coloured marble " ; its parlour, thirty -three feet by thirty-nine, with a niche fifteen feet broad for a beaufette, paved with white marble and placed within an arch with pilasters of divers colours, BUCKINGHAM PALACE. 245 the upper part of which as high as the ceiling is painted by Ricci, its staircase decorated with the story of Dido, and domed with the figures of gods and goddesses ; a saloon, thirty-five feet by forty-five, also painted, and a " closet of original pictures, which yet are not so entertaining as the delightful prospect from the windows." The exterior of the house itself is hardly mentioned by the Duke ; and it seems to have been but little altered even after its occupation for many years by Queen Charlotte. It was of red brick, with stone dressings, had a Corinthian portico, and two wings connected by carved colonnades with the centre. An appropriate Latin motto was on the entablature, referring to the charms of the situation, and on the garden front were the words, now so hackneyed, Rus in Urbe. There were statues and fountains and other embellishments of the kind, most of which disappeared after the Duke's death in 1721. He left the house to his widow, who survived him till 1743. In 1761 it was bought by the young King, and it was settled on the Queen in 1775 when Somer- set House, in the Strand, was given up for public offices. The price paid to Sir Charles Sheffield, the Duke's eventual heir, was 21,000, George III. made Buckingham Palace the headquarters of his immense literary collections. We must remember that London in those days was but scantily furnished with libraries. The nucleus of the library at the British Museum was only formed in 1757, when George II., shortly before his death, gave it the old library of the English Kings, in all about ten thousand volumes. There were libraries at Syon College and St. Paul's for clergymen, and in Queen's Square for Dissenters. A few other small collections were open to the public, but do not seem to have been much used. So liberally did the young King 246 LONDON AFTERNOONS. go to work to start a new royal library, in the place of that given away by his grandfather, that though he only ascended the throne in 1760, and was then, as is well known, but eighteen years of age, he had already, six years after the purchase of Buckingham House, collected a library which, to use the words of Johnson, as reported by Boswell, " was more numerous and curious than he supposed any person could have made in the time which the King had employed." Barnard, the King's librarian, was much beholden to Johnson for a long letter, in which he gave elaborate instructions as to the formation of a library. It would have been interesting to read that letter, but Boswell could not obtain it from Barnard, who thought it would detract from his own merits. The great foreign collection of " Consul Smith " contained books and manuscripts as well as pictures, and new rooms had to be added to the old house. Pyne gives the interiors of two of them, as well as views of several other rooms, the hall, staircase, and saloon of the Duke's building, evidently not much altered since he wrote his letter to the Duke of Shrewsbury, though by 1818, when Pyne's drawings were made, Wyatt the elder had been at work. The libraries were plain, their ornaments consisting of books alone, and it is interest- ing to imagine the uncouth figure of Samuel Johnson standing by that tall wire fire-guard, or sitting in one of those comfortless armchairs with an editio princeps of some classic author held close to his nose. Mr. Barnard, we are told, " took care that he should have every accommo- dation that could contribute to his ease and convenience while indulging his literary taste in that place." The King heard of it, and desired that he should be told of Johnson's next visit. BoswelFs description of the inter- view and the conversation that ensued is one of the best BUCKINGHAM PALACE. 247 passages of the best biography in the language. The minutes of the conversation were submitted to the King for approval before publication. At the time of the interview George III. cannot have been twenty-five years of age, and considering the poverty of the education he had received, and the slight knowledge he can have had time to gain of his newly acquired books, his remarks are surprisingly safe, if not sound. The books collected here form now a very important part of the library at the British Museum, to which between sixty and seventy thousand volumes were conveyed by an arrangement with George IV., who had no room for them during the rebuilding of the palace, and who neglected, or forgot, a library among the new buildings at Windsor. It is interesting here to note that another interview, more than ninety years later, took place in Buckingham Palace between a Sovereign and an eminent author. A few months only before the sudden death of Charles Dickens I quote from a passage in " Old and New London " (iv., 70) he went to visit Queen Victoria at her Majesty's desire. The Queen's kindness left a strong impression on his mind : she gave him a copy of the " Journal in the Highlands * ; and just two months from the day of the interview Dickens was buried in Westminster Abbey All the children of Queen Charlotte, except the Prince of Wales, were born at Buckingham Palace, and after the King's final illness in 1810 she resided here occasionally until her death in 1818. The scheme of making this the headquarters of the Court instead of St. James's was one of the favourite ideas of George IV., but as there was considerable difficulty hi obtaining funds from Parliament, it was determined, ostensibly at least, only to repair and enlarge old Buckingham House. Enormous sums 248 LONDON AFTERNOONS. however, expended by Nash, with a most unsatisfactory result, for the height and proportions of Wynde's design were retained, although wholly unsuited to the new dimensions of the palace. When Queen Victoria succeeded, the palace had been undergoing improvements and alterations; but, though many of the State Apartments were handsome, it was not suitable for the chief royal residence. William IV. had never lived in it, and the Duke of Wellington said of it that no European Sovereign was so ill-lodged as the King of England. The old part of the house faces north into the gardens, and is built of good stone from designs by Nash. In this wing are the dining-room and other domestic apartments, and an extensive and beautiful collection of Sevres porcelain is in wall cases hermetically sealed. A library, a sculpture gallery, and a low but handsome hall, fifty feet by thirty, are among the best features of the old palace. It was further set off by the Marble Arch, which formed a stately entrance. Several extensive additions were ordered to render the building available for the use of the young Queen ; but they were chiefly carried out in poor materials, covered with stucco painted drab, and the design by Blore was so debased being neither Palladian, like Wynde's and Nash's work, nor Gothic, as Blore might have liked it that it has been universally condemned. In 1850 the Marble Arch was removed to Tyburn Turnpike ; the old dome in the centre was pulled down, a great ball-room was built on the south side, and a passage or corridor. A picture gallery, the proportions of which may be judged when we note that it is 152 feet long by 28 feet wide and 30 feet high, was added, in a wretched style, neither Classical nor Gothic, and gaudily painted]and "gilded Jwith skylights. ., ] BUCKINGHAM PALACE. 249 The building remained essentially mean, and only not commonplace because it was more than commonly ugly. We may hope that, considered merely as a background for the monument which is to commemorate Queen Victoria's long and glorious reign, the front of Bucking- ham Palace may be rendered more worthy to be known as the residence of the greatest Sovereign in the world. 250 CHAPTER XXI. THE LIBRARY OF ST. PAUL'S. A Long Ascent The Preservation of Ancient Records Bishop Comptoii The Model of Wren's Favourite Design for the Cathedral The Manuscripts " Bishop and Portreeve " Odd Names Priests' Sons. ONE hundred and forty-three steps ! Such is the pre- liminary exercise prescribed for those who would ascend to the triforium of St. Paul's in order to see the Library. In an ordinary London house twenty or twenty-five steps take us up to the first floor, and we constantly hear people complain of " those endless stairs." The visitor to St. Paul's, therefore, may have to think twice before he sets out on the long climb, and various methods have been suggested by which it may be accomplished with the smallest resultant fatigue and loss of breath. All I can say is that mere curiosity will have very little reward ; but that to the serious student, either of architecture or of history, the excursion will prove most delightfully novel, instructive, even thrilling ; and though a penalty may have to be paid by panting lungs and aching limbs, these things will be forgotten ; while the views east and west, north and south, the objects of literary interest, the ancient cathedral records, and the beautiful model of Sir Christopher Wren's first and favourite design will live long in the memory and return our expenditure with compound interest. THE LIBRARY OF ST. PAUL'S. 251 Let us dwell briefly on the Library and its contents ; pay a visit to the model ; and spend the rest of our time on an examination of some of these, the most ancient series of muniments preserved by any capitular body in England. Even that of the Corporation at the Guildhall, marvellously ancient as it is, pales beside the collection at St. Paul's a collection which owes nothing to the collector, but has grown and accumulated ever since a cathedral church, with a duly constituted Dean and Chapter, occupied the site. I do not know how it was saved from the flames in 1666 nay, so ancient are many of the documents, from the Great Fire of 1136. If we have time, when we have seen the Library and visited Wren's model, we may pick out from among the manu- scripts one or two which were probably in, I was going to say Old St. Paul's, but I mean an older St. Paul's still, the church founded by King Alfred two hundred and fifty years before the first Great Fire, and seven hundred and eighty years before the destruction of what we call Old St. Paul's. The triforium is full of what looks for a moment like theatrical scenery. These great pictures stretched on irregularly shaped frames are designs, some of them by great artists, for the decoration of the dome. For instance, Stevens the sculptor, who designed the Wellington Monu- ment in the nave below, made sketches for three of the prophets, which, with other drawings of his, are here. Among others, there are also here experimental sketches and pictures, some of them highly finished, by Sir Edward Poynter and, I think, the late Lord Leighton and Mr. Watts. When we have passed these curious objects, we reach on the left the door of the Library. A little further on, another door, also on the left, admits to the head of the so-called " geometrical " staircase, and 252 LONDON AFTERNOONS. there is a kind of gallery at the western extremity of the church, from which a fine view may be obtained of the nave and choir. The gallery forma a crossing from the southern triforium to the northern : and here, in one chamber, is Wren's model of his original design. Another chamber forms a lecture- or class-room, sometimes used. The Library contains, besides some fine books, many objects of interest. Bishop Compton left half his library to St. Paul's, and his portrait hangs in the gallery, above the fireplace at the east end of the room. This was the brave bishop who, dressed as a dragoon, carried Princess Anne behind him on horseback to join the Prince of Orange in the winter of 1688, and who as Bishop of London saw the new cathedral opened for service in 1697, and the whole building, so far as stone-work was concerned, finished in 1711, as he survived until 1713. In one of the cases is the promise of King Charles to give a thousand a year towards the rebuilding. There are, unfortunately, no records of a single payment. Some autographs of arch- bishops and a signature in the neat hand of Sir Christopher Wren are also to be seen. On the opposite or north side of the triforium, a door admits us to a chamber where, in a very cramped space, is the beautiful model of Wren's original design.* It is large enough to allow the visitor to enter a doorway in the baize-covered pedestal on which its stands, so as to understand more clearly how far the design accomplishes the architect's object. He aimed at making a house where the largest possible number of hearers might assemble under cover a new " Paul's Cross," but not in the open-air. He wished to provide a preaching place, a building in which music could be performed to the greatest advantage, where there should be the least possible interruption either * A 'reproduction of the design will be found facing p. 1 64. THE LIBRARY OF ST. PAUL'S. 253 to sight or sound. This model shows plainly the practical manner in which Wren grappled with the difficulties of the problem presented to him. In addition to the necessities just mentioned, he never lost sight of one other : his great preaching and praising place must be beautiful. He bestowed upon it such delicate proportions that every part answers to the rest, and that the eye is carried upward by a series of carefully calculated curves from the basement to the cross on the summit of the dome. He depended upon these proportions for his effect, but he did not neglect ornament. True, the ornaments were to be entirely subordinate, but they were to enhance the salient points of the design, and to add to the pleasure of viewing the building in detail. It is not very easy to describe the design so as to convey a clear idea of its beauty. The new church was to consist of a vast dome. Everything else was subsidiary. At the west end was a pedimented portico of eight Corinthian columns, recessed in the centre, where a series of pillars led into a vestibule of considerable size, crowned with a small dome, specially designed to afford the eye a measure of the greater dome which was the principal feature of the whole edifice. The supports of the dome, north, south, east, and west, might be denominated transepts, nave, and choir ; but in reality there were no such divisions, as we shall understand better when we examine the in- terior. The dome was supported by four great masses of building of one storey in height. At the ends of the northern and southern wings were small porticoes flanked by engaged columns. At the eastern end was a slight semi-circular projection, instead of the porticoes which occurred north and south. The entrance to the western wing was by a great arch from the vestibule mentioned above. The vestibule was much narrower than the main 254 LONDON AFTERNOONS, body of the church, with which it did not come into any kind of competition, except in so far as it served for a foil. It had, besides the portico, two smaller entrances, north and south, with stately flights of steps leading up to them. In plan the vestibule was almost an octagon, so that it contrasted strongly with the main building, whose curves were convex. The effect of these curves on the view would have been as beautiful as it would have been singular. Some critics have objected to them as unquiet ; and this would have been a valid objection if the building had been in any other hands. But Wren, while he curved the plan of what would otherwise have been rectangular corners, left the ends of what we must call the transepts square. These projections came just under the dome, and were of the same width. The spectator, therefore, would have admired curves which added so much to the gracefulness of the church, and at the same time would have been satisfied as to the appearance of stability imparted by the square fronts to the dome, which seemed to rest upon them and rise from them. The interior would have mainly consisted of the dome, surrounded by a kind of continuous side aisle, of an even width saving at the east end, where, as has been mentioned, a shallow recess marked the place of the communion table. The apertures were numerous between the cir- cumambient aisle and the space under the dome, and a congregation which filled both spaces would have been able easily to see and to hear. These archways, eight in number, were divided by piers, which themselves were pierced, and the whole effect would have been that of exceeding lightness combined with the most satisfactory strength. The dome was to rise three hundred feet above the floor, and while it was, in many respects, like that of the THE LIBRARY OF ST. PAUL'S. 255 present church, it was to be constructed on a different system. These are points on which we need not enter here. This noble and beautiful design was never carried out. In a former " Afternoon " we have visited the cathedral as it is ; here we may pause to ask what critics have thought and said of Wren's first design. Fergusson (" History of Modern Architecture," p. 268), after speaking of the height and width and other things, goes on : " For the purposes of a Protestant church, it cannot be doubted that this arrangement is superior to that of the present church, the great defect being a want of definite proportion between the small and large arches supporting the dome. As they all sprung from the same level, the wide arches are too low, the narrow ones are too high ; but the practical difference is so slight that it looks like bad building, or as if the architect had made a mistake in setting out the work, and tried to correct his error by a clumsy device. Notwithstanding this defect, the interior of the church as shown in the model would probably have been as superior to that of the present church as the exterior would have been inferior." A little further on Fergusson objects to the curved outline : " The hollow curve connecting the transepts with the nave and choir would have had a most disagreeable effect, adding considerably to the total want of repose in the whole outline." As we have seen, there may be two opinions upon this point, and undoubtedly Wren was far more likely than Fergusson to judge rightly on such a question. Miss Phillimore remarks in her "Sir Christopher Wren" (p. 198): " The outside, with the two hollow curves joining the transepts with the nave ; and the two different-sized domes, would prob- ably have been disappointing ; but one speaks with diffidence, for this was Sir Christopher's favourite design, the St. Paul's which he told his son he would most cheerfully have accom- plished." 256 LONDON AFTERNOON'S. Elmes, in his " Life of Wren " (p. 320), says of this design : It " possesses an originality peculiarly striking ; copied from no other building, it exhibits judgment and invention in every turn. Its series of cupolettaa, round the grand central dome, is beautiful, and would have proved eminently effective in execu- tion ; and the variety of views, from the different parts of the building, seen in various lights, as the spectator approaches, recedes, or perambulates its varied scenes, afford a more numerom assemblage of various, beautiful, and picturesque combinations than almost any other plan in existence." Weale, a moderate and judicious writer, with, if anything, a leaning to the old Gothic, says in his " London " (p. 181): " He was planning what, strange to say, the world has not yet seen a solemn and real Protestant temple, not a counterfeit Roman Catholic one. He would have erected an edifice on the principles and in the spirit of the mediaeval church-builders, viz., an edifice whose form should be governed, as theirs were, by fitness to the service for which it was built, and by nothing else." Charles II. and his brother, subsequently James II., would not give any countenance to Wren's splendid design. They wished, not for a preaching house, but a mass house. The documents which, as I have said, are probably the oldest continuous series of records preserved by any corporate body in England, if not in the world are con- tained in the chambers between the north triform m and the south. They are therefore at the western end of the cathedral, and are so stored as to be readily accessible in case their preservation should be threatened. Not only so, but books into which charters have been copied are in the collection copies made in some cases as far back as the reigns of the Conqueror's immediate descendants and successors. The copiers have added considerably to the labours of the modern historians who have dipped into these archives Bishop Stubbs, Dr. Sparrow Simpson, or Mr. Larking, for example by entering the date when the THE LIBRARY OF ST. PAUL'S. 257 copy was made as if it was the date of the original document. A curious example occurs in Sir H. Maxwell Lyte's calendar of these manuscripts. One page of a book of copies (Liber L) contains a grant of land to the Dean and Chapter by Goisbert, before the Conquest, and on another page is an arrangement regarding it made by Robert, Goisbert's son. This second deed is entered on an earlier page than the first, and is dated in 1141, " the year," says the copier, " that King Stephen escaped from captivity by Robert, son of King Henry." But the deed itself bears the signatures of several of the worthies who figure so largely in the pre-Hastings period and are found in the pages of Freeman and Green and Stubbs ; such men, to wit, as Ansgar, who was wounded on the fatal field of Senlac, and William Malet, and many more. A systematic examination and comparison of the names in these documents has yet to be made. Many of them afford the earliest light now to be obtained in any inquiry as to the origin of surnames. They tell us of the odd personal nicknames which had to do duty for surnames in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The investigation is not only amusing, but useful. We have Sherehog, a wealthy wool merchant, whose name still lingers in the City, and reminds us of a sheep farmer's distinction of some of his flock. Again, Drinkpin, an eminent vintner, alderman of his ward, reminds us by his name of the time when tankards were marked by pins or pegs so that you might not take more than you were entitled to. We still talk of having a peg : but how many of us remember what the phrase means ? In " John Gilpin " we hear of one who was in merry pin. Of other names, the majority in the twelfth century referred to some personal peculiarity, and we meet with " Hugh with the teeth," 258 LONDON AFTERNOONS. " Edwai'd with the beard," " Richard with the crooked nose/' " William with the wide eye," and " William with whiskers," and an alderman whose name was " Algar Maimiiigstepson." There are also a great many names of animals, such as bat, bull, goose, pig, and others. A few names seem to be religious, as " Good Soul " and " A God's half." Personal names are " the Blind," " the Lame," " the Spotted," and there is a Phillip " the dwarf " and a Reginald " the dwarf." A few rare trades are named, such as John " who binds books," and Dionysia " la bok- byndere," who dwelt in Fleet Street ; and we must not omit Godeva, the wife of Gerold of Stratford. In addition to these curiosities, the manuscripts in this little known but most important store contain many things well worthy of study, if we would understand London life in those ancient days. But one document stands out as containing a piece of important historical information of far wider interest than most of those which surround it. Only a brief abstract is given in Sir H. Maxwell Lyte's report, but the Corporation has gone to the expense of having the whole parchment copied in facsimile. This document tells us who were the alder- men of the eleventh century, that is, of the period im- mediately succeeding the Conquest. The latest date that can be assigned to it is between 1100 and 1110. The first list of aldermen recognised before the publication of the report is one at the Guildhall, and belongs to the middle of the thirteenth century. It would be easy to enlarge on the differences and similarities between the two lists ; but here and now it must suffice to offer a few particulars of the more important features of the St. Paul's list. We observe, for instance, that in some editions of Stow, and in many later books, we are told of certain provoats, prepositi, who were supposed to be portreeves. THE LIBRARY OF ST. PAUL'S. 259 We know that the portreeve was answerable, like a shire reeve, for the King's farm, or rent. We also know the names of a certain number of these reeves. But not one of Stow's prepositi ever occurs among them. Who were they, then ? This document, which is a list, or terrier, of lands in the City belonging to St. Paul's, answers the question, as you shall see. Furthermore, why did Edward the Confessor, and after him William the Conqueror, address their charters to the bishop and the portreeve ? Two of Edward's charters are thus addressed, and at least one of William's. This document tells us : but I am not surprised that the mention of the bishop in almost the first line made its first modern copiers hesitate* The summary hi the Report leaves out the most important passage in the whole document. Each piece of land is described under the name of the alderman of the ward in which it was situated. Twenty wards are enumerated, and a great many of them may be identified. The list begins with some lands beyond the Fleet, which were afterwards included in the ward of Farringdon Without. After them we have " Warda Episcopi." Before the discovery of this document no one knew that the Bishop of London was an alderman. He was apparently above all other aldermen, and so we see him classed with the portreeve, the official lay head of all the aldermen, in the King's charters. The King wrote to the alderman who was responsible for the ecclesiastical government of London and to his brother alderman who, as portreeve, was responsible for the civil government. Like his brother alderman, the Prior of Holy Trinity, Alderman of Portsoken, the Bishop-Alderman had a deputy, who apparently was called prepositus or provost. It is impossible that the bishop's provost can have been the portreeve. The Latin for portreeve 260 LONDON AFTERNOONS. is vicecomes. But an abbot or a bishop in other places, as Bury St. Edmunds, had a deputy called a provost. There were many portreeves, such as Gilbert Proudfoot, and two of the Buckerels, also Fulcred, also Robert, also Wluardus, and the two Hughs, Bock and Par. One name is not to be found, that of Leuric, the bishop's provost. It was but a few years later that the bishop himself ceased to be an alderman, but it just chances that we have very little information as to the transitional period between the hereditary aldermen and those who were elected. Of the few provosts whom we can discover or of whom Stow tells us, not one occurs among the port- reeves or sheriffs who attended annually at the Exchequer. By the way, Leuric is described as holding land worth, in fee, xijd., extending twenty-one feet along the roadway and in the other direction sixty-three feet and a half, in- cluding two feet which were in dispute. Leuric is men- tioned in several other places, but always as provost and never as portreeve. Before we leave this fascinating collection, it is desirable that we should give an example of one of the ordinary documents it contains. I have chosen one of the oldest, for though it is undated, we know that Turstin and also some of the witnesses were living at the very beginning of the twelfth century, that is, before 1115. Turstin is, in fact, the very earliest of the aldermen we find named, but what ward was in his jurisdiction we cannot tell, except that it was close to the river, and may have comprised such outlying parts of what was afterwards the ward of Farringdon as were not in the " warda Episcopi." Before the full text of the list of aldermen was printed, that is, before we knew that the bishop was an alderman, I for one imagined that Turstin was alderman of the bishop's ward. It is so stated in my volume on London in the THE LIBRARY OF ST. PAUL'S. 261 Historic Towns Series, and is a warning of the danger of guessing in historical matters. Here is Turstin's deed giving his house to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's : " Turstin the Alderman has given to God and St. Paul for hia soul's sake and for the sake of the soul of Wlveva his wife, all that land on which he dwells, by consent of Gilbert his stepson, quietly and without any prejudice on the part of the said Gilbert." The following clergy and laity are witnesses, viz. : " Azo, priest of the parish ; Gerald the priest ; Robert the sacristan ; Ralph the priest, nephew of William the archdeacon ; Gilbert the son of the said Turstin ; Ernald of Betonia ; Edward Long or St. Benedict ; " and thirty-one more, only two of whom possess a sur- name, and two are sons of priests, " John " being " Son of the Dean." The number of men who are named as sons of priests in these MSS. is very striking ; and it would seem as if sometimes the bishop, the dean, and most of the canons were married men. The subject is too large to be fully treated of here : but it is one of those on which this collection gives us extensive information. Dean Milman would have made Bishop Fitz Neal a bastard, because his father was Bishop of Ely. He suggests, as an alternative, that he was born before his father took orders. But at this same time, the middle of the twelfth century, at least fourteen of the prebendaries of St. Paul's were sons of priests, and among them we find Angar, the father of Turstin, the Archbishop of York. 262 CHAPTER XXII. LONDON A CENTURY AGO. Alterations in Half a Century In a Century Piccadilly in 1801 Southwark London Bridge St. George's Fields and South London Prison Abuses Tyburn and the Gallows The Roads A Walk from North to South A Frenchman in London The Old Bailey The English Character. IF we could form a picture of what London was like in 1801 it would enable us to judge historically of the physical changes which have taken place in all England. The moral changes are equally great, but more impalpable. The very air has altered. If the changes which can be remem- bered by a man of sixty are so great, what they must have been in a hundred years is incalculable. I remember one street in 1843. I was a child, very young, but observant as all children are while as yet everything seems new. I had been born and so far brought up in the north of Ireland. In London I was taken to see the Tower, Greenwich Hospital, the Surrey Zoological Gardens, and a Palace I think Buckingham Palace. My recol- lections of the Tower are very distinct. I think there was some kind of tramway or railway to Greenwich. But the most vivid picture I can call up is the view west- ward, up hill, towards the Park gate in Oxford Street : a wide street paved with large round stones, bordered on either side by low, two- or three-storied houses ; a few, LONDON A CENTURY AGO. very few, foot passengers, a blind man playing drearily on a tin whistle, a single vehicle rumbling up the hill, a hearse, with people following on foot, and two little children, all in black. There seemed to be no other traffic. The tin whistle and the hearse were connected indelibly in my mind. The contrast presented by a view from, say, the corner, at what is called " the Deaf and Dumb Church," any fine afternoon is indescribable. At Hereford Gardens there was a dingy brick wall, and just beyond it a house it is there still which was pointed out as that in which Prince Leopold and Princess Charlotte stayed after their marriage. Some fine houses opposite on the right were called Cumberland Gate. The park railings were low and shabby, and there were lodges where fourteen years before had stood the turnpikes to the Edgware Road and the Uxbridge Road. The houses on the north side were dwarfed by Quebec Chapel, the tallest building in the view. There were no omnibuses, no hansom cabs, very few drays ; and the whole aspect of the place was that of the extremity of a town but sparsely inhabited, and that chiefly by the lowest class. The Marble Arch was not moved to Cumberland Gate till 1850. Connaught Place was built long before, but seemed to stand by itself for many years ; and in 1822 Mr. Hope, the principal in- habitant, improved the neighbourhood by placing a pair of handsome gates at the entrance to the park, at an expense of 2,000. Previously, there had only been " a mean brick arch and a small narrow entrance on each side for foot passengers," as we are told by Thomas Smith. If we try to look back another half-century the dif- ference not only there, but everywhere, is enormous. Yet we may assume that between 1800 and 1850 it was not so great as between the middle of the nineteenth 264 LONDON AFTERNOONS. century and the present time. Improvements have been made at a rapid pace since the Crystal Palace was set up where the Albert Memorial stands now, and looked down southward over the open fields and orchards of Brompton. Fifty years before, Chelsea and Kensington were country villages connected by private houses standing in their own grounds, like Gore House and Gloucester Lodge and Cromwell House, where now we see the Albert Hall and St. Stephen's Church and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Prince of Wales Gate was the " Half-way House Tavern." The "Fox and Bull" marked the Knights- bridge entrance to the Park, and Piccadilly extended as far as it does now, and was full of builders' yards and plaster works, like Euston Road at the present day. On the site of St. George's Hospital was a turnpike, and just outside it the country house of Lord Lanesborough had just been pulled down to make way for the new institution. Near it was Buckingham House, which King George III. had bought, and which was then com- monly called the Queen's House. There were few or no buildings, except country houses, further west. Belgravia consisted of market gardens edging the marshy meadows by the Grosvenor Canal, where coal and timber barges unloaded. Pimlico Wharf gave its West Indian name to the whole district Pimlico, or Pimlicay, being, I believe, a place where ships obtained Honduras mahogany. Fulham was resorted to as Richmond is now ; and from Battersea to Lambeth was almost open country, with widely separated villages and a few country houses of rich noblemen. Lambeth was a little better populated, but the popu- lation was not of a very respectable kind. All round the Archbishop's palace were streets and alleys of the worst description. Some of them possessed privileges of LONDON A CENTURY AGO. 265 sanctuary, and were resorted to by insolvent persons of all classes, who here enjoyed a kind of liberty, and ventured out once a week only, being exempt from arrest on Sunday. Very few houses were to be found in Lambeth Marsh, and where the busy stations we call Waterloo now stand there were open fields with an occasional factory, and a fringe of wharves towards the river. Thus we reach Southwark, at the foot of London Bridge. In 1800 the Borough was very densely populated, and, like Lambeth, with the lowest class. There was another sanctuary here called the Mint, but fifty years before its privileges had been abolished. The debtors' prison, called the King's Bench, as well as the Marshalsea, were between Lambeth and Southwark. Pirates as well as debtors were confined in Marshalsea. St. George's Church had not been built very long. St. Saviour's had recently been repaired, but the old nave was still standing. Two modern Gothic naves have been built successively since then. It had been always a serious matter how to cross the Thames. There was a horse ferry from Lambeth to Westminster until the year 1750 or thereabouts, when Westminster Bridge was completed not the bridge we see now, but a stone bridge almost on the same site. There the Thames is 300 feet wider than at London Bridge, and the architect deserved great credit for his boldness. The bridge, with the old Houses of Parliament in the background, must have been very picturesque. Black- friars Bridge, which was at first called Pitt Bridge, was begun in 1760, and was opened for traffic in 1769. A year or two before, London Bridge had houses on it not a double row as previously, but a few here and there, and the remains of the chapel of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre. The old half-fortified gateway 266 LONDON AFfERNOONS. stood at the southern end, and may still have deserved its name of the Traitor's Gate, from the skulls of the Scots rebels grinning on spikes over the archway, when it was taken down in 1720 and rebuilt, to be again, and finally, taken down in 1758. It was like St. John's Gate at Clerkenwell, or the Gate of St. James's Palace, but of stone. The bridge itself was built on abutments and piers of the most primitive kind. It contained, besides a drawbridge, no fewer than nineteen arches, pointed, and of course very narrow; instead of only five arches, as at present. For two hundred years a large part of the water supplied to the city was drawn from the river by a water-wheel, which moved under one of the arches. The stream was often very strong, and Pennant, in 1787, speaks of taking boat from Westminster along the river, but getting out at Old Swan Stairs, to avoid the risk of " adding to the many thousands who had lost their lives in darting down the rapids at London Bridge." He tells us then of walking to Billingsgate, and there re-embarking. The present bridge was begun in 1825, and the principal difficulty in the way of the new bridge was the extraordinary solidity of the old foundations and piers. They were like rocks in the river bed. A view of the city from the Thames at London Bridge in 1801 differed greatly from what we see now. St Paul's had been finished some sixty years before. Many church towers were then visible which are now hidden by new buildings or altogether removed. The great railway stations, with their long roofs and heavy bridges, had not yet appeared to shut out the view. There was hardly so much smoke ; very few tall chimneys ; a few more trees, especially on the left, towards the Temple ; the warehouses were lower LONDON A CENTURY AGO. 26*7 and the church steeples consequently looked taller, and there were more houses with gables and perhaps a Gothic window or two. The approaches to the bridge, however, were very different, consisting of a labyrinth of small streets where King William Street now stands. And from the Tower, looking down the river, there were only one or two docks, and a very small number of ships at least to our modern ideas and of course no steamers. Where the important St. Katharine's Dock now stands, just beyond the Tower, was a church and a kind of almshouse or college ; this institution was moved to the Kegent's Park in 1827. Returning to Southwark, the first thing, perhaps, that strikes us is how soon the streets end and the open country succeeds. Newington Causeway was a real causeway or paved way over some marshy ground, and Newington Butts was what we should call a rifle-ground having been set apart for bows and arrows, with butts or targets. There was a Butts Field at Kensington Gore. St. George's Fields were still fields in reality, with only a sprinkling of houses. But all about the foot of the bridge was a closely inhabited district, containing the remains of many fine buildings of older times than these. To the west of St. Saviour's Church was an old Gothic Hall, part of the Bishop of Winchester's Palace. It was let in small tenements and divided by floors, though the roof was worthy to be compared with that of West- minster Hall. Rochester House, another palace of the same kind, stood where the Borough Market is now. Near the church were the cloisters, where Lord Montagu built his house after the Suppression. Monteagle House was nearer the bridge, and was pulled down in 1831. There is no evidence in support of the local tradition that 268 LONDON AFTERNOONS. here Lord Monteagle received the famous letter which led to the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot : in fact, there is no proof that anyone of the name ever occupied the house, which at the time of its demolition was not more than one hundred years old. The Globe, Shakespeare's theatre, was on part of the ground now occupied by Barclay and Perkins's brewery. It was abandoned at the tune of the Parliament's pro- clamation against theatrical entertainments, and was never afterwards revived. A little way down the river from Southwark was Rotherhithe, a mere village, generally called Redriff. Here was the Greenland Dock, into which ships laden with whales' blubber were brought. It was a hundred years old, but was looked upon hi those days as quite a wonder. The new church was just finished at this time. The tower and spire are remarkable. The number of houses about this tune was about 1,500, and the place was growing rapidly. A little way off, across the fields, was Bermondsey. Tea gardens and grounds like Cremorne were established there after the discovery of the Bermondsey Spa. There were some remains still standing of the Abbey and the King's Palace, all of which are gone now. In those days the parish contained only about 2,500 houses. We thus obtain some idea of the size and appearance of South London a hundred years ago. North London was just as different. Hampstead and Highgate were a long way off, and were occupied by the villas of various noblemen and gentlemen. But we pause not to notice them ; they were, in those days, as little accounted a part of London as we should account Richmond or Harrow. The western extremity of the town was at the Tyburn Turnpike mentioned"above. LONDON A CENTURY AGO. 269 It is hard to understand how persons who were occasion- ally in the habit of using such phrases as " the mildness and humanity of English law," except in comparison with that of France, could have allowed their gaols to be so mismanaged as they were. By the beginning of the nineteenth century some improvements had been intro- duced. The change began when, in 1773, John Howard happened to be sheriff of Bedfordshire. His attention was called to the fact that, after trial and acquittal, prisoners were seldom discharged. He then found the reason to be that the gaolers had no salary but the fees to be paid by each prisoner, and that these were seldom forth- coming. He endeavoured to obtain a mitigation of this evil, and travelled throughout England to search for information on the subject. In London, hi Howard's time, debtors and felons were almost always confined together : men and women hi many cases ; men, women, and children in some. A woman with a baby at the breast was hanged at Tyburn for stealing a piece of lace worth two shillings. There were several cases of children dying of cold in prison. There were no prison surgeons in London, except at New- gate and three other of the most recently erected prisons. The gaolers always rented the prisons, and made what they could out of the prisoners. At the entrance of every gaol was a tap or public-house, kept by the gaoler himself hi most cases, but sometimes by one of the prisoners. At the Marshalsea, in Southwark, the tap was kept by a prisoner-for-debt from the King's Bench, which was so near that he could attend to his business without going beyond the bounds or " rules." It was common for persons who were friends of the prisoners to come in and drink with them. In one place there was a skittle alley, ex- clusively used by outsiders, who thus prevented the prisoners from taking exercise in their yard. 270 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Gaol fever raged so terribly in almost all the London and country prisons that, to mention one example of each, in London in 1750, two judges, the Lord Mayor, several aldermen, the under-sheriff, and many lawyers who had attended the March Sessions at the Old Bailey, together with most of the Middlesex jury, and a considerable number of spectators, died of this distemper ; and at the Taunton assizes, Lent, 1730, the Lord Chief Baron, Serjeant Sheppard, Mr. Pigot, the high sheriff, and more than two hundred other people, died of the same epidemic. Prisons do not appear to have been inspected in any way : nay, they were often private property the Gate House, the chief prison for Westminster, belonged to the Dean and Chapter, and the town gaol of Salisbury to the Bishop and this gave rise to many abuses, the gaoler being appointed, not for his humanity, nor for any other quality except his power of wringing a good rent out of his wretched charge. In most places there was no provision made for feeding the prisoners, except a few pence worth of bread in the day. In others, charitable persons gave small sums of money to be applied in this way, and others sent meat and provisions of various kinds. Legacies, too, were sometimes left. They were, however, administered as charitable legacies too often were administered in those days. No bedding, or straw even for bedding, was allowed in any prison except out of the charity of private individuals. Water had often to be fetched long distances by prisoners in irons. Even air was often denied through the operation of the window-tax, which had to be paid by the gaoler. Another shocking abuse arose from the distances prisoners had in many cases to go for trial. There were no prison vans, and you might often meet along a countiy road a gang of unhappy creatures men, women, and LONDON A CENTURY AGO. 271 children dragging heavy irons to prevent escape, and walking or rather creeping perhaps fourteen or fifteen miles to the assize town. When they arrived there, a room or two would be hired for their occupation till after the sessions, probably in some public-house, and there they would all men, women, and children, as I have said be shut up together, tired, filthy, starving : so that it is no wonder their shrieks and cries disturbed the whole neighbourhood ; no wonder that Mr. Howard was informed at Aylesbury of two men whose toes had mortified after their journey from Hertford ; or that a prisoner told him that he and fifteen others were confined in a very small room at Beigate, awaiting their trial at quarter sessions, and were almost suffocated. The keeper confirmed the statement. Yet this man was only arrested in order to oblige him to maintain a child, and being unable at a strange place like Eeigate to find securities, was sent back to the County Bridewell, in St. George's Fields, for an indefinite term. This same Bride- well is a fair sample of all. There was no glass in the windows, only iron bars. There were no fires, nor was any firing allowed. The sick prisoners lay on the floor ; no bedding ; no straw ; allowance, l^d. worth of bread per diem ; convicts and all other prisoners together ; no infirmary. And yet in this hell upon earth many unfortunates who had committed no crime, and had yet to be tried, were confined. Before trial they had, perhaps, to wait six months or more, and then to undergo the misery of a journey such as I have described to Reigate or Kingston. When the trial came on, it is not wonderful to find that neither prisoners nor judges were very careful as to the punishment. Almost all crimes were punished alike : before 1783 it was a journey in a cart up Holborn Hill 272 LONDON AFTERNOONS. to Tyburn for prisoners in London itself, and the gallows when they got there. In May, 1801, eighteen prisoners were condemned to death at a single sessions, three of them women. A hundred years hence it may be difficult to identify any part of the site of the gallows. They had been removed further and further westward from Smithfield, where they must have spoiled the view of old gables like those at the corner of Hosier Lane and Cow Hill. Next they were in St. Giles's Fields probably very near the spot at which Bloomsbury Street crosses Oxford Street; in 1449, or earlier, they had gone as far as Stratford Place, where there was a conduit with other civic institutions including, of course, a banqueting house. The Tyburn gallows were erected at a place to the west of Marylebone Lane probably, at first, almost adjoining it; and as houses came nearer the open space the fatal tree was moved further, till it took up its most permanent abode at a place where it was almost certain to remain open on two sides at least. This was at the angle formed by the junction of the Edgware and Oxford roads, faced by the park on one side and by open country on two others. On the right-hand side was an inn, where the sheriffs and other officials dined after the executions. A stage, much resembling the grand stand at a race, was erected in front of this house for the spectators. The gallows were removed after each performance, and were deposited in the inn-yard till they were next required. In J. T. Smith's "London" (1815) we read that "a gallows was erected on the mornings of execution, con- sisting of two uprights and a cross-beam. On the west side of the road were two open galleries for spectators i these were standing in my time. The keys of one of them were kept by a squabby woman of the name of Douglas, commonly called Mammy Douglas, the Tyburn HOSIER LANE, SMITH FIELD, IN 1809. (From a Print by J. T. Smith.) LONDON A CENTURY AGO. 273 Pew-opener." After 1783 the beams degenerated into horse-blocks and watering-troughs. A place of execution for soldiers was just within the park boundary, which consisted of a low wall. In Hogarth's print of the Execution of the Idle Apprentice a representation of Tyburn in 1747 will be found, and may be considered tolerably accurate. A long avenue of walnut trees commenced just within the park wall. This is on the left of the picture. The wall itself is surmounted by a row of spectators. Behind, on the right, stand the gallows : they are triangular, sup- ported by three stout beams or legs, and must have been set up in the middle of the road. It is often asserted that bones have been found in this neighbourhood in digging foundations. So far, no such discovery has been authenticated, though the remains of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were buried under the gallows in 1661. It has often been asserted that the gallows stood as far to the west as Gonnaught Square, and a house there was said to stand on the exact site. This is very unlikely, though, while there were open fields, gibbets may have been sometimes placed in them. Smith, quoted above, knew a man named Watkins who had gathered black- berries " on the north side of the road now called Oxford Street " in or about 1762. Two of the fields on which Portman Square was built were named in an old survey " Great and Little Gibbet Fields." The customary place for the execution of the capital sentence was the King's highway or an adjacent " commonable " space. A gibbet, on the other hand, might be set up, like a scarecrow, anywhere. No gibbet or gallows are seen in a view on an earthenware plate in my possession, probably made at Plymouth about 1750, which otherwise agrees very well with Hogarth's. 274 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Every mention of the streets of a century ago calls to our minds the difficulties of locomotion. The roads about London were very bad, and were, moreover, infested with highwaymen. Most people travelled on horseback, but noblemen and those who were wealthy, by using four horses, or even sometimes six, were able to get about in carriages at great expense. Coaches carrying the mails lumbered along very slowly, and were constantly the prey of highwaymen. Thus, one hundred and twenty years ago, the Chester mail was robbed in the City Road. The Leeds coach was stopped at Holloway hi March, 1769, by a single highwayman, who was wounded, but got off. In the dark, a passenger was tied neck and heels and thrown into the basket before he was recognised. From the village of Marylebone to Deptford, a passenger on foot would probably have avoided the Park for fear of robbers, and Park Lane for the same reason, as well as the badness of the road. Along Oxford Road to Holborn, he would pass the labyrinth of streets on the site of which Regent Street now stands, carrying his sword well in hand and his pistols cocked. Perhaps, however, a clergy- man would not have worn a sword, and would have trusted more to his gown and bands to protect him than to his pistols. But the probability is that I should not have worn the usual costume of a clergyman the long black cassock, which still survives in bishops* aprons, and the gown and bands, to say nothing of the shovel three-cornered hat and the full-bottomed wig they were already getting obsolete. Before I got as far as Holborn, I should try to keep company with any respectable-looking person I could find going the same way till we were well past St. Giles's. I would then turn down Chancery Lane, and at Temple Stairs would try to make a bargain with a waterman to row me LONDON A CENTURY AGO. 275 down the river to London Bridge. I should cross the bridge on foot, and then, if possible, obtain a hackney coach in Southwark to drive me along the Kent Road towards Deptford. This would cost 1 Is. I might, perhaps, get a seat on one of the Greenwich coaches, which were beginning to plyi morning and evening, as far as Southwark. I should not think of returning to distant Maryle- bone the same night, unless I was willing to run the risk of being out all night, and of being, perhaps, robbed and murdered on the way home. The beauty of the severe penal laws was, that if a man robbed you he might as well shoot you, because dead men tell no tales, and if he were caught and convicted he would be hanged just as surely for robbing you as for killing you. It is very odd that our legislators were so long perceiving the effect of their efforts for suppressing crime by severity. I should, as I passed through Southwark, have admired the light of the numberless oil lamps which had been lately placed in St. George's Fields to mark the way, but which served only to make the darkness of the Kent Road more dismal. I should also, in passing through the streets of London, have congratulated myself and the London public on the brilliant illumination made by the oil lamps at almost every corner, and, in some streets, even along both sides of the way at long intervals. Of course, I should not admire this feeble light if I had ever seen gas ; and, bad as London gas is, it is a thousand times better than anything used before. In houses the chief light was tallow candles ; wax was too expensive for common use, and composites had not yet been invented. Even to light your dip you had to go through an elaborate process with a flint and steel and some dry tinder in your tinder box. 276 LONDON AFTERNOONS. So far the picture is but gloomy. To our modern eyea London even fifty years ago would be full of sights and sounds which would strike us unfavourably. But London was even then better than many Continental cities. We obtain a curious transient glimpse of it and its impression on the mind of a foreigner in the eighteenth century from a pamphlet written in 1788. It was pub- lished at Amsterdam, and must have been an attempt on the part of some Frenchman, exiled by the revolution, to make a little money. It describes in a letter to a friend a Promenade d'Automne en Angleterre, or, as we should say, a holiday run. He is much impressed, and so is his companion, a boy of seventeen, by the journey through Rouen to the coast of Normandy. He never forgets Paris for a moment, and even when he sees the heart of Richard Coeur de Lion it only reminds him of an opera. At Dieppe he embarks for " Brigtemstone " : which he reaches in safety, but characterises as " a miserable village." After some days he proceeds to London. His first excla- mation is at the astonishing greenness of the country, a verdure wanting, he says, in the rest of the world. He is also surprised at the neatness of everything, the absence of beggars, the abundance everywhere " not a traveller on foot, not a pauper, not a soldier." When our Frenchman arrives in London he first remarks the beauty of the dome of St. Paul's and the wide extent of the suburbs. He describes a villa : a small brick house, ornamented with carpets, with tables of mahogany, solid and comfortable chairs, newspapers, and a Bible. " Here the simple artisan works by the side of his wife, who sews and watches her handsome children out of a corner of her eye as they jump about or scramble on the lawn." He is well pleased with London. According to the STONEWARE PLATE, IN AUTHOR'S POSSESSION, BEARING VIEW OF TYBURN GATE, ABOUT 1750. LONDON A CENTURY AGO. 277 discoveries of the learned, he says, " it was built by Brutus the Trojan, long before the coming of the Komans." He remarks on its great size and population, the multitude of steeples and old edifices, the width of the streets and the foot-paths, the fine squares with their shrubberies, the statues, gilt from head to foot, and the many other features which distinguished London from Paris, even then. On the other hand he sometimes complains of ill-paved lanes, of the smoke, of the funereal tint of a dull day with fog and soot and brown brick. He was much distressed by the bareness of the interior of St. Paul's, in which he complains that they forced him to observe some flags taken from the French. He is greatly pleased with St. Stephen's, Walbrook, which he prefers to St. Paul's, but his chief admiration is lavished on what he calls " With- hall." He remarks with horror on the death of Charles I., little foreseeing, perhaps, that in five short years the King of France was to meet a similar fate in Paris. Westminster Abbey pleases our traveller. The banners are admired, but the monuments disgust him. Never- theless he observes an Englishman, who points out to his son the tomb of some hero, and sees the boy redden as his father tells him not of the glory of the deceased but that he died doing his duty. He notices the order and cleanliness of the hospitals, and makes the strange remark : " I think that hospitals ought to follow the organisation of the English but be managed by Frenchmen." Some of his observations on our courts of justice are less out of date. The Hall of the Old Bailey, he says, is square : the Mayor of London seats himself on a kind of throne, at his side are the seats of the judges, and at the extremities are the two sheriffs in black and scarlet with gold chains. In a separate 278 LONDON AFTERNOONS. tribune on the left is the jury, waiting in a cold and respectful attitude for the accused. Some of the surround- ings of justice are curious, and not easily explained. " Be- low the tribunal was a sword of justice, and under it a cup, the ancient emblem of forgetfulness ; at its sides are two rods of light, white wood, symbolic of the gentleness which ought to preside at punishment." Our Frenchman's love of emblems seems to have led him astray here, but he is correct when he mentions that flowers, bouquets, and sweet-smelling herbs are distributed to the spectators, and are also spread on the benches of the criminals. He goes on, " The light of Heaven having been invoked, the judge begins his interrogatory.'' Here his recollections of French methods of procedure evidently confuse him methods which are the same now, after a hundred years and more of change and revolution among our traveller's countrymen. A man of the world, he remarks, however well-informed or ingenious, could never imagine what tradition of humanity, subtlety and address the judges have acquired in questioning the witnesses. He evidently looked on every one who wore a wig and gown as a judge. While elsewhere, he continues, they try to find a man guilty, here they try to find him innocent. The Court sat till four o'clock, and adjourned for dinner. " The gravity which pervaded this ceremonious repast was in accordance with my feelings," he observes. " Two ceremonies struck me : the grace said by the chaplain before we sat down, and the same ceremony over a large silver-gilt basin of rose-water which went round. At six o'clock the trials were resumed, and twenty-five criminals were condemned to death." The judge spoke in a grave and touching manner, like a father unwilling to punish. Our traveller wished that other countries could adopt the law-giving of the English, though he objected to the punishment of death. LONDON A CENTURY AGO. 279 What strikes a modern reader most is the good he recognises in the English character. Could he have foreseen that the tendency of the jurisprudence on this side of the Channel would be to lessen ill-doing and to make punishment less and less revenge for crime, yet more and more deterrent, and could he have prophesied that after a century the erroneous ideas of his countrymen would have been intensified, as we have seen them lately, he might have written in a still more despondent tone. We are inclined to speak of the cruelty and indifference to suffering of our ancestors, yet we find our Frenchman remarking on the fact that in England " three great horses are set to draw on a smooth highway what one horse in France would have to draw over a rough country road." He observes that when a coachman stops for a moment he gives his horses hand- fuls of hay and rubs up the harness. " He is attentive and civil, and unlike the French cocker" What most astonishes him is the repose everywhere apparent. The quietness of even crowded streets has been mentioned very lately as striking foreign visitors : and one of the best remarks of the gentleman from whom I have quoted so much is, we may hope, still true : " They think much less of the architecture of their theatres than of that of their hospitals." 280 CHAPTER XXIII. KENSINGTON. In Search of a Palace Holland House, its Architecture and Associations Purchase of Nottingham House by William III. Its Conversion into Kensington Palace Sir Christopher Wren and William Kent The Serpentine The State Apart- ments Royal Deaths in the Palace Queen Anne Queen Caroline The Cupola Room The Room in which Queen Victoria was Born. IN the winter of 1689 King William III. was in search of a palace. At that time Whitehall and its neighbour St. James's were decreed by an Act passed in the reign of Henry VIII. to be " the Palace of Westminster." They both lay very low, parts of Whitehall being little, if at all, above the level of high water in the Thames, while St. James's stood in an undrained marsh. Vigorous as was the mind of our Dutch King " of glorious, pious and im- mortal memory," it was lodged in a weak, asthmatical body. Winter spent upon or below the level of the river Thames was not calculated to improve the royal lungs. When he took his daily airing, therefore, on the higher ground round London, William endeavoured to find a house within easy reach of the offices of his Government, yet out of the smoke and damp, and suitably surrounded by spacious gardens and a wide, well-timbered park. It so happened that at this time two very beautiful country KENSINGTON. 281 houses lay to westward of London, one on the road to Kensington, the other beyond that village, both belonging to noblemen who had other residences nearer town, and lx)th, it was understood, if not actually in the market, yet at hia Majesty's disposal for a moderate price. It would seem that in going to look at Holland House, William passed near Nottingham House. The second Earl of Nottingham had not yet succeeded to the title and estate of his cousin the Earl of Winchilsea, but the other earl, the owner of Holland House, had become Earl of Warwick as well, and his second suburban residence was at a place marked for us by Warwick Court, near Gray's Inn. Nottingham House could not boast of the beautiful architecture which Sir Walter Cope had bestowed on Holland House Cope's Castle, as it was locally called before it was inherited by the Earls of Holland. Both had belonged to the Rich family after the marriage of Henry Rich, first Lord Kensington, with Cope's heiress. Before his marriage he had lived near Church Lane in what had probably been the manor house of Neate, or Neyt, and had belonged to the Abbots of Westminster. The Abbots had owned two manors between London and Kensington: Hyde, afterwards Hyde Park, and Neyt, where they had a country house. The Finches obtained the place when the Riches went to Cope's Castle, and the house, with its gardens and park, lay on King William's road as he drove to see Lord Warwick's residence in 1689. Holland House is interesting to Londoners as the relic of an age and a phase of manners now long gone by. And it is, moreover, interesting intrinsically for three things in which it has few rivals in England ; its beauty, its historical associations, and the works of art it contains. It is, to begin with the first of these, a very charming specimen of a style of architecture which should commend 282 LONDON AFTERNOONS. itself to the tastes of Englishmen, as the last of native growth. The development of art in building presents a regular series or succession, from the days when our Saxon ancestors dwelt in wooden huts or in hovels of mud and timber, to the days when Sir Walter Cope founded the turrets of Cope Castle, in the manor of West Town, Kensington, and when his son-in-law, the first Earl of Holland, changed its name to Holland House and com- pleted the building. There is, perhaps, no contrast in nature more pleasing than the artificial one between red brick and green trees. It makes the square mansion of the Georgian period look picturesque in a well-timbered park ; and as we approach Holland House from among the narrow r , crowded streets or the lath-and-plaster of the new suburbs, the views through an avenue of ancient elms, green even in London, of the quaint red turrets, the shaped gables, the arcaded terraces, the many-paned oriels, are as charming as anything that has been built so near London since. We first see the south side of the house. It is most picturesque, and was formerly the front. But now the avenue passes to the east of the house, and the hall door is at what used to be the side. Beyond are the pleasure- grounds and the Dutch garden, with their yew hedges, clipped borders, heavy cedars, statues, avenues, arbours, and archways. Everything is in the state in which our generation found it when they came into the world. Nothing of any importance has been altered, for though the public entrance is no longer on the south, the fabric of the building is hardly disturbed. Facing the old entrance, at the south side, were Inigo Jones's piers and gateway, and the front of the house was thus first approached by the visitor. Now, the piers have been removed to a terrace in the pleasure-ground, the porch KENSINGTON. 283 leads only into a garden, and the chief entrance is at the eastern side. On the whole, however, few exteriors of the period have been less altered than this, a fact the more remarkable when we remember the number of different families by which the estate has been held, and its so dangerous proximity to London. The mention of the different owners to whom the place has belonged brings us to the historical associations which crowd about Holland House. But the name of Addison must not detain us, nor must that of Charles James Fox. We could linger over the history, not altogether edifying, of the mother of the Napiers a family of heroes. We must recall the open admira- tion of the young King George III. for the lovely Lady Sarah, and cannot but remember one touching anecdote of her old age : how in 1814, the year before the battle of Waterloo, Dean Andrews preached a sermon in aid of an institution for the relief of the blind. The preacher spoke of the King's blindness, and the interest he had taken in this infirmary from his sad experience. It was in St. James's Church, and a person who was present relates that on one of the seats sat an elderly lady, who appeared to feel deeply these allusions in the sermon. She wept tenderly, and at the end of the service was led out of church, being herself helpless from loss of sight. It was Lady Sarah Napier, and she survived both the King and the Queen, and died in 1826, preserving her remarkable beauty until the end. There are more recent and far sadder memories con- nected with Holland House. One deep satisfaction we may enjoy. The place has passed into careful hands. The Hollands are extinct, but their history was a long tragedy to the last ; since the first Lord Holland lost his head on the scaffold at Westminster, a doom seemed to 284 LONDON AFTERNOONS. hang over the holder of the title, even though the later Hollands were in no way related to those who first lived here. Every care is taken of both house and grounds, and those who have been permitted to enter the old rooms report on the interest which they still afford. Taking the Library Passage alone, a kind of museum in itself, we find there Addison's portrait, about the authenticity of which authorities are so much divided ; next a picture of Benjamin Franklin, then Lope de Vega ; then a copy of Titian's Galileo, and Machiavelli, Locke, and Madame de Sevigne. A sketch of Edward VI. by George Vertue, the engraver, presented by Horace Walpole, and a drawing by Reynolds of Lord Ossory, are among the minor por- traits. Then a photograph of the members of the Congress of Paris in 1856, with the signatures of the assembled Plenipotentiaries below ; near it a miniature of Catherine of Russia, with an autograph letter annexed. On either side of the Empress are the likenesses of Napoleon and Robespierre ; and near the photograph of the Congress a miniature of the Prince Regent, a little bust of Earl Grey, and a portrait of George Tierney. Fox has written on the back of Robespierre's likeness, " Un scdlerat, un lactic, et un fou." In other parts of the room are pen- and-ink sketches of Gibbon, Voltaire and his friends, a letter from Voltaire, the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle at dinner, a crowquill portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, Joseph Addison's last signature, and a frame containing a piece of wood from the door of the room at Ferrara in which Ariosto died in 1533. The passage also contains portraits of Milton, Burke, Reynolds, Benedict XIV., and George Selwyn. This anecdote is told of the window of the Library Passage : "In the southern window is a pane of glass, removed from the window of what, we believe, KENSINGTON. 285 used to be Rogers' dressing-room in the east turret. Upon this frame of glass are cut some lines by Hookham Frere. They date from October, 1811, and run as follows : 1 May neither fire destroy nor waste impair Nor time consume thee till the twentieth Heir; May Taste respect thee and may Fashion spare.' To which we add a devout amen ! and to which Rogers is reported to have said, ' I wonder where he got the diamond.' " But though William III. visited Holland House he did not take it. The Kensington bell-ringers had five shillings for a peal when he passed through the High Street, but a little later they received twelve shillings for celebrating the victory of the Boyne so greatly had the fortunes of Kensington improved between the two dates. The King did not buy Holland House, but he did buy Nottingham House : and from that time to the present Kensington Palace has taken its place, and a prominent one, hi our history. No one can hereafter write of the longest and most glorious reign in the annals of England without at least a passing reference to the birth within these old walls, on the 24th of May, 1819, of the Princess who, eighteen years later, here held her first Council as Queen Victoria. The palace has been through strange vicissitudes of late years. In 1897 it was resolved to open the State Apartments to the public ; but neglect and dilapidation had necessitated measures of repair and restoration, and it was only on Queen Victoria's birthday in 1899 that the arrangements were completed. Some parts of the old manor house which William III. purchased from Lord Nottingham are still, it is believed, 286 LONDON AFTERNOONS. in existence. The lower building to the westward of the south front comprises, it is said, the central part and one wing of the Abbot's house of Neyt. Here, or in a previous building on the same site, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lan- caster, lived for a time when the rebels had burnt the Savoy. Here, too, Richard, Duke of York, was living in 1448, when John of Gaunt's great-grandson, Henry V., occupied the throne, and the wars of the Roses, of York and Lancaster, were beginning to devastate the land. Here, at his manor house of Neyt, the last Lord Abbot of Westminster before the Dissolution died in 1533, and the estate passed into lay hands. During the reign of William and Mary great projects took shape, but money had to be spent in curbing the ambition of Louis XIV. on the Continent, and in securing the Protestant succession in England. The building of palaces at Hampton Court and Kensington went on but slowly. Though the modern visitor recognises the arms of William of Orange on the gate posts by which he enters from the High Street, and sees W and M com- bined in the weathercock over the portico, it is to Queen Anne that we must attribute the more ornamental features older than the Hanoverian period. The oak staircase by which we ascend at the north-eastern corner is called the Danish Stair, and is said to have been brought from Ms Northern home by Prince George of Denmark. The beautiful orangery close by and the still more beautiful alcove, now banished to the furthest verge of the Gardens, were designed by Wren for Queen Anne ; and to her we may safely attribute much of the fine avenue which we know as the Broad Walk. Queen Mary died in a room which is not shown, but which looks into the Clock Court and opens from Queen Mary's Privy Chamber, one of the suite through which we pass to the State Apartments. KENSINGTON. 287 What Queen Anne and Sir Christopher Wren left unfinished was warmly taken up by Queen Caroline, the Consort of George II. She completed the Gardens by laying out and planting avenues as far as the boundary of Hyde Park, taking up for the purpose - several small farms and other holdings which had been part of the Nottingham domain. The Serpentine, a meandering brook, properly named the Westbourne, flowed in a string of ponds or waterholes through the eastern lawns. Queen Caroline made a fair channel with an ornamental bridge where the Serpentine passed into Hyde Park, a vast im- provement, though it left the name as a puzzle to posterity. Within the Palace, William Kent was employed to complete the State Apartments. We need only mention one of them here. The Cube Room, more correctly called the Cupola Room, as it is less than thirty-five feet high, though the floor is thirty seven feet square, was finished in 1722. In it Queen Victoria was baptised on the 24th June, 1819. Exactly underneath this great chamber is an arrangement of pillars to support the weight of masonry and marble, forming a low saloon, the Duke of Kent's dining-room, it is said, while he occupied the apartments on that floor. In this pillared room Queen Victoria held her first Council. In Kensington Palace, as we have observed, Queen Mary died, on the 27th December, 1694. Here King William died on the 8th February, 1702i Here, too, died successively, Prince George of Denmark (28th October, 1708) ; his widow, Queen Anne (1st August, 1714) ; and King George II. (25th October, 1760). George III. never made Kensington Palace a residence, and its principal occupants near the end of his reign were two of his sons, the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Sussex. The brother of the two Dukes, William IV., while he continued to 288 LONDON AFTERNOONS. allow them to reside here, dismantled the State Apartments, removed the pictures and tapestry to Windsor and Hampton Court, and left the Palace to fall almost into ruin. One of the last acts of Queen Victoria was to dedicate her birthplace to the use and enjoyment of her people. Since then the Acts have come into force by which among other London suburban boroughs that of Kensington has been established and has been allowed to take over and include within its boundaries so much of the old manor as was covered by the Palace, which previously had been reckoned part of the City as well as of the parish of Westminster. In one of the lower rooms, on the same floor as the Council Chamber already mentioned, a small gilt metal plate is let into the north wall. On it is a brief inscrip- tion : " In this room Queen Victoria was born, May 24th, 1819." INDEX. Abbot of Westminster, 115 Abbot's Hospital, Gnildford, 202 Albert, Prince, 215 Aldermanbury, 223 Aldersgate, 4 Aldgate, Name of, 2, 48 Alfred, King, 54, 89, 204, 251 Allhallows, Barking, 149 Staining, 122, 124 All Saints', King's Langley, 64 Anne, Queen, 252, 287 Arlington House, 242 Austin Friars, 121 Barber-Surgeons, 96, 103 Bacon, John, R.A., 227 Barebone, Dr., 120 Baynard's Castle, rebuilt, 5, 19, 29 Beauchamp, Sir John, 96 Becket, Thomas, 12, 20, 176 Bedford, John T., 226 Bedlam, 197 Berkhampstead, 105 Abbot John of, 109 Bermondsey, 268 Bird, Francis, 167 Bishop and Alderman, 259 "Black Death," 36, 91 Blackfriars Bridge, 265 Black Prince, 42, 69, 106, 107, 110 Brook Shott, 81 Buckingham Palace, 84, 240, 247 Caesar, Sir Julius, 136 Camberwell, 216-220 Cannon Street, 57, 62 Canonbury, Name of, 234, 237 Caroline, Queen, 61, 213, 287 Carpenters, 101 Charing, 7, 8 Charles I., 203, 210, 277 II., 70, 103, 161,211, 217 Charlotte, Queen, 245, 247 Charterhouse School, 36 Cheapside, 12, 13 Christ Church, 41 Churches, 14, 121-153, et passim Gibber, Caius Gabriel, 163, 172 Cicely Duchess of York, 19, 108, 110 City Companies, 88-104 Clerkenwell, 40 Clothworkers, 95, 101 Coldbath Fields, Name of, 59 Coleman Street, 62 Compton, Bishop, 252 Lord, 236 Cripplegate, Name of, 4, 223 Cromwell, Oliver, 97, 134, 138, 210 Thomas, 109 Crosby Hall, 14, 28, 31, 135, 136 Danes, The, 6 Defoe, Daniel, 133, 134 Dickens, Charles, 247 Donne, John, 75 Drapers, 95, 99 Dress in the Fourteenth Century, 31 Drinkpin, 257 Eastcheap, 16 Edgware Road, 272, 2-74 Edward I., 7, 14, 18, 93, 223, 231 II., 11, 14, 19, 41, 67, 91, 92 290 LONDON AFTERNOONS. Edward III., 1, 3, 13, 30, 43, 65, 98, 93, 109 IV., 2, 3, 19, 30, 92, 96, 110, 227 VI., 222 VII., 64 the Confessor, 259 Elizabeth, Queen, 95, 96, 103, 111, 235 Ely Cathedral, 1G6 Place, 9 Falkland, Lord, 1 1 1 Farringdon, 114, 115 Fenchnrch, Name of, 16 Fergusson on St. Paul's, 255 Finsbury, Name of, 3 Fishmongers, 98, 101 Fitzgerald, Captain Robert, 175 Folkmote, 73 Friary, St. James's, 211 Friary Street, 201 Fry, Mrs., 51 Fuller, Thomas, 188 Furniture, 29 Gaveston Piers, 67 George III., 226, 230, 237, 245, 264 IV., 247 German Chapel, 211 Gibbons, Grinling, 163, 172 Gibson, Bishop, 170 Goldsmith, Oliver, 238 Gordon, General, 176, 177 Goring House, 83, 241 Graeechurch, Name of, 16 Great Fires, 72, 76, 79, 123, 251 Grey Friars, 1 1 Guildford, 200 Guildhall, 13, 15, 23, 44, 221, 223, 228, 258 Crypt, 232 Guilds, 88, 89~, 90, 93, 221 Gwilt and St. Paul's, 163, 165, 167 Haberdashers, 95 Hackney, Name of, 3 Handel, 174 Henry I., 48, 209 II., 222, 224 III., 9,41,66, 123,204, 223 V., 41, 15, 34, 43, 227 VI., 27 VII., 91 VIII., 7, 36, 38, 84, 97 129, 140, 144, 187, 280 Hereford Gardens, 263 Hockley, Name of, 9, 59 Holbein, Hans, 144, 209 Holborn, 7, 9, 24, 61, 81, 274 Holland House, 281 Hollar, 74 Hookham Frere, 285 Hope, Mr., 263 Hour Glass, 189 Houses in the Fourteenth Century, 25, 26 Howard, John, 175, 183, 269, 271 Husting Court, 92 Rolls, 230 Inoent, Dean, 112 Ingram, Bishop, 184, 185 James I., S3, 96, 97, 99, 111, 241 II., 163, 228 Jane, Queen, 227 John, King, 5, 73 of Gaunt, 69, 187, 286 Johnson, Dr., 51, 246 Jones, Sir Horace, 118, 226 Jones, Inigo, 76-80, 162, 199, 282 Katharine, Queen, 34 Kensington Palace, 285-288 King's Langley, 64-70 Knightrider Street, 27, 73 Knightsbridge, 85 Landseer, 178 Laud, Bishop, 148 < IXDEX. 291 Lawrence the painter, 178 Leighton, Lord, 177, 178 Library of St. Paul's, 250-261 Lincoln's Inn, 6 Lisbon, 41 London Bridge, 17, 265-267 ,, County of, 55 Ludgate Circus, 119 Name of, 4, 47, 116 Lyte, Sir H. Maxwell, 257 Haddocks, Sir Benjamin, 83 Mansion House, 231 Marochetti, 176 Marshalsea, 265 Mary I., Queen, 69, 163, 227 ,, II., Queen, 287 Marylebone, 274 Matfelon, Name of, 4 Matilda, Queen, 130 Medicine in the Fourteenth Cen- tury, 34 Mentmore, 155 Mercers, 12. 94, 97, 98, 99, 100, 103 Merrow, near Guildford, 207 Milford Lane, 119 Milton, John, 132 Minories, Name of, 3, 40 Monks aud Friars, 38, 39 Mylne, Robert, 170, 178 Nelson, 175, 178 Newgate, Name of, 10; 45, 48, 53 Newington Causeway, 267 Northumberland House, 194, 282, 286 Overcrowding, 35 Oxford Street, 262, 263, 273, 274 Park Street, 201 Paternoster Row, 11 Pawnbroking, 15 Pepys, 103, 150, 152, 192, 203, 211 Perrault and the Louvre, 166 Pestilence, 36 Phillimore, Miss, and St. Paul's, 255 Ponsonby, Sir W., 175 Portsoken, 222 Poynter, Sir E., 251 Printers, 96 Prior Bolton, 128, 129, 135, 234 Queen Square, 81 Rahere, 126, 129, 130 Regent, The Prince, 214 Rennie, 1 78 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 178 Richard, King of the Romans, 106, 108 II., 9, 17, 19, 25, 32, 38, 42, 67, 94 III., 227 Richmond, Sir William, R.A., 184 Rodney, Lord, 175 Roman Road, 84 Roses, Wars of the, 42, 287 Rotheihitue, 268 Rothschild, Hon. Walter, 156 Rovezzano, 178 Rugmere, 59 Savoy, The, 8, 42, 188 "Schmidt, Father," 173 Scott, Sir Gilbert, 218 Segrave House, 94 Serpentine, 61, 287 Shakespeare, 95, 268 Sharpe, Dr. Reginald, 225, 231 Sherbourne Lane, 62 Sherehog, 257 Shire Lane, 117 Show Well Lane, 5 Smith, James, 227 Smithfield, 9 Spencer, Sir John, 138 Spital Fields, Name of, 3 St. Albans, 124 ,, Andrew "Dndershaft, 139 292 LONDON AFTERNOONS. St. Clements, 6 Erkenwald, 124 Ethclburga, 124, 138 ,, George's Fields, 267 Giles's, Cripplegate, 130 ,, Helen's, Bishopsgate, 14, 134, 137 ,, James's Church, 284 ,, Palace, 288 ,, Katharine Coloman, 122 Cree, 7, 9, 121 Katharine's Dock, 267 ,, Lawrence's Church, 225 ,, Luke's Church, 61 ,, Martin Outwich, 125 Orgar, 125 ,, Mary Aldermary, 12, 122, 123 Mary-le-Bow, 125 Olave's, Hart Street, 150 Paul's, 160-186, 263 ,, Library, 250-261 ,, ,, Eeredos, 184 Old, 71-80 ,, Peter's at Rome, 165, 169, 170, 172 Peter-le-Poor, 122 ,, Saviour's, 19 ,, Stephen's, Wallbrook, 277 Thomas's Road, 219 Stevens, Alfred, 177, 179, 180, 182, 251 Stonebridge Close, 85 Stow, John, 24, 75, 119, 141 Strand, 6 Stratford Place, 59 Street Lamps, 28 Strong, Thomas, 170 Edward, 170 Surgery in the Fourteenth Cen- tury, 35 Temple, The, 5 Bar, 45, 58, 116, 119 ,, Outer, 120 Thames. 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