lol'=i-i/c ..^^^^l^^J' -^^.,3i, •"■^ --i^"^^ The White Tower from the South-East. ~ LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limited, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. No. lo Downing Strfet. PREFACE. The ' Pen and Pencil Series ' has hitherto included, with the exception of Sea Pic/urcs, only volumes devoted to the description of a country. But many representations have been made to the publishers of the desirability of devoting a volume to London. The present book is an attempt to meet adequately that desire. The number of books dealing with the multifarious life and the antiquarian wealth of London is enormous, and the reader may at first be inclined to ask, 'Why add another to the long list .^ ' And the reply must be to the effect that no work exactly suited to the place which this is intended to fill is in existence. The author wishes here to acknowledge his indebtedness to many of the writers who have preceded him in this field. No attempt whatever at original research has been made, but the author has himself carefully inspected almost every place referred to in the volume ; and he has consulted, so far as possible, all the easily accessible books on those portions of London with which he deals. He has also laid under contribution a great many books not easily accessible. It is hopeless to expect that amid such a multitude of detail all inaccuracy has been avoided, but his constant aim has been to make no statement of fact or history for which good authority is not forthcoming. A superficial glance will show that many things the reader might naturally expect to find in the volume are omitted. This is due first to limitations of space, and secondly, to the^ author's conviction that it was better to try and treat a few well-defined chapters adequately rather than hastily to glance at a larger number. Hence the reader will find that whole subjects, like the city companies, the great museums, the art life of London, and many others, are entirely omitted. Perhaps, if this volume proves to 1CS9416 PREFACE. meet a literary need, these may be included in some future work. The author's aim in this has been to try and give the reader a satisfactory and an accurate sketch of the present condition and the past history of the great City in relation to such subjects as the civic and commercial life, the Tower, the great ecclesiastical and governmental buildings, the legal and literary life. Each separate item in this list already possesses a library upon its special features, and hence the difficulty of trying to compress them all into a volume of 224 pages. Special acknowledgments must be given to the Library Committee of the City of London for permission to copy some engravings from their Descriptive Account of the Guildhall, to Messrs. Longman & Co., for the use of the wood- cuts on pages 118, 120, 121, and 127, to Mr. John Murray for the woodcuts on pages 93, 96, 100, and 10 1, to the London Stereoscopic Company for the photographs from which the engravings on pages 129, 180, and 202 were reproduced, and to the proprietors of the Graphic for permission to copy the admirable pictures of London scenes by Mr. Logsdail given on pages 12, 34, and 48. The book goes forth with the author's earnest desire that it may recall many well-known haunts and pleasant experiences to those who already know and love London well, and that it may perhaps stimulate many who live within reach of her nearly inexhaustible stores of interest and information to avail themselves more freely of these treasures. .<-:^j^l The Foreign Office from St. James's Park. CONTENTS. The White Tower from the Soutb-East ......... Frontispiece St. Paul's title-page No. 10 Downing Street ........... page- 5 The Foreign Office from St. James's Park .......... 7 The Monument .............. 10 The Bank and Royal Exchange ........... 12 CHAPTER I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. London's Waterway .... page 13 The Statue to William Tyndale on the Embank- A Block of Peabody's Buildings, Spitallields . 17 ment ...... page 30 A London Street Arab ..... iS The Church of AUhallows, Bread Street, de- The School Board Inspector Abroad ... 19 molished in 1877 ...... 32 Old London Bridge ..... 20 Cheapside and Bow Church Steeple . . 34 The Pool by Night 22 The Old Cross in Cheapside • • ■ ■ 35 London Bridge ...... 23 The Tree in Wood Street, Cheapside . . 36 The Victoria Embankment .... 26 At the Gate of Christ's Hospital .... 38 The Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, occupying Holborn Viaduct ...... 41 the Site of the Old Fleet Prison ... 28 A Crowded Crossing 45 St. Thomas's Hospital ..... 29 Johnson reading the MS. of the Vicar oj Wakefield 47 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Fleet Street, showing the Old Houses and St. itinited. Early Morning in Covent Garden IlLinstan's Church page 48 ^ Quiet Nook in Regent's Park . London in the Grasp of a Snowstorm . . 54 page 49 • 52 ota«;o CHAPTER II. CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LONDON. Seals of the City and of the Lord Mayor The New Common Council Chamber The Guildh.iU Chapel The Interior of the Guildhall . The Crypt of the Guildhall Ancient Bosses in the Guildhall Crypt The Guildhall Library The Old Boar's Head Sign . Punching out the Blank Coin The Rimming Machine . 56 57 61 63 06 68 73 75 78 79 St. Margaret's, Lothbury The Coining Press ...... So The London Custom House . Si Billingsgate Market ...... S2 Billingsgate Amenities ..... S3 The Letter Box at the General Post Office at Six P.M 84 Sorting ....... 85 Stamping. .... .85 The Shoot at Eight P.M 86 The Pneumatic Tubes at the Post Office . . 87 88 o^»io CHAPTER III. THE TOWER OF LONDON. Bird's-eye View of the Tower of London in 168S The Traitor's Gate from the River Front Plan of the Tower of London . Vertical Section of the White Tower, East and West A Beefeater ....... The so-called Raleigh's Cell in the While Tower . Ancient Inscription in the White Tower . Plan of the Third Stage of the White Tower. 90 91 93 97 98 99 100 Norman Fireplace in the White Tower . . loi Inscription in the Beauchamp Tower, cut by the Earl of Arundel in 1587 ..... 103 Inscription in the Beauchamp Tower, cut by Charles Bailly m 1571 .... 104 Inscription in the Beauchamp Tower, cut by Arthur Poole in 156S ...... 105 The Interior of the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower . . . . . . 108 The Block, Axe, and Executioner's Mask CHAPTER IV. ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. St. Paul's from the River . . . . 112 Lambeth Palace from the River . . . . "3 London around St. Paul's in 1563 . . , 114 St. Bartholomew the Great , . . .116 The Old Stone in Panyer Alley . . . 117 Old St. Paul's irom the South-nest, showing the Church of St. Gregory, and the Chapter House. iiS Interior of the Nave of Old St. Paul's . . 120 Inigo Jones' Porch to Old St. Paul's, showing the Lollards' Tower ...... 121 St. Paul's Cross in 1620 .... 124 Interior of St. Paul's, looking East, as it would have been after Wren's First Design . . 127 The Interior of St. Paul's, from Under the Dome, looking East . . . . . . 129 Ttie Deanery, St. Paul's ..... 132 Ground Plan of Westminster Abbey . . 134 The Choir and Nave of Westminster Abbey, looking West 135 The Coronation Chair of Edward III., with the Stone of Scone ...... 13S The Chantry of Henry V , and the Entrance to the Chapel of Henry VII. ..... 139 CONTENTS. C H A P r E R I v.— continued. Detail of Henry the Seventh's Chapel . piii^'e 142 The Roof of Henry the Seventh's Chapel . . 143 The South Aisle of Henry the Seventh's Chapel 145 The Monument to the Wesleys in the Nave of Westminster Abbey ..... 14S The Jerusalem Chamber .... 150 St. Margaret's Church, Westminster . . .152 Lambeth Palace in 1688 .... 155 St. Helen's, Bishopsgate . . . . .157 The South Aisle of the Choir of St. Bartholomew the Great . . . . . . 15S The Tomb of Rahere .... page 159 .St. Giles', Cripplegate . . . 160 St. Olave's, Hart Street 162 The Nave and .South Transept, St.- Saviour's, Soutbwark ...... 164 The Lady Chapel, .St. Saviour's, Soulhwark, . 165 The Old Weigh House Chapel . " . 166 The New Chapel, destroyed in 18S3 . . . 166 Surrey Chapel . ..... 167 Christ Church, Westminster Bridtie Road . . 168 CHAPTER V. THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE ROYAL PALACES. The Great Seal 1 70 The New Palace of Westminster, from Lambeth Bridge . ■ '71 Westminster in 1647 . . . 173 The Lobby of the Old House of Commons . -174 The House of Commons in the time of James L 175 Eliot Defending the Rights of the Com mons. . 176 Westminster Hall at the close of the Eighteenth Century . . . . . . . 178 The Interior of the House of Commons . . iSo The Horse Guards from St. James's Park . . iSi The Cabinet Room, Downing Street . . 1S2 The Gateway to .St. James's Palace . . . 184 Kensington Palace, the Room in which Queen Victoria was born ..... 1S5 The Fagade, Buckingham Palace . . l85 The Pillar Room, Buckingham Palace . 187 .\ Drawing-Room, Buckingham Palace . 188 The Marble Staircase, Buckingham Palace 189 C^ueen Victoria (18S7) ..... 191 CHAPTER VI. LEGAL AND LHERARY LONDON. The Royal Courts of Justice .... 194 Samuel Rogers' House, No. 22, St. James's Place 195 The Interior of the Temple Church. . . 198 The Great Hall of the Middle Temple. . . 202 The Chancery Lane Gate of Lincoln's Inn . 206 Staple Inn from Southampton Buildings . . 20S Barnard's Inn ...... 209 The Publishing Depot of the Religious Tract Society, at No. 56 Paternoster Row . .211 The Retail Department of the Religious Tract Society, No. 65 St. Paul's Churchyard . 212 The Offices of the British and Foreign Bible Society, in Queen Victoria Street . . . 214 Milton's House in the Barbican (pulled down in 1864) 216 Miltun and his Daughters ..... 218 Dr. Johnson's House, No. 17, Gough Square . 220 Dr. Samuel Johnson ...... 221 The Old Charterhouse ..... 222 Zoar Chapel, Southwark ..... a2J '■•Has The Monument. a o z < X u X a < o a z < z < M u ^^'—-^^ Victor "Proulj^^, London's Waterway. CHAPTER I. First Impressions. THE great orator, Mr. John Bright, once said, in the writer's hearing, in the course of a famous speech : ' A great many of you have been to London, but you know nothing about it. I have spent six months there every year for nearly forty years, and I Icnow nothing about it. It is so large that nobody knows much about it. I don't believe there is a man in it who is fairly acquainted with all the parts and districts of that vast city. You have over four millions of people there.' In these words the speaker touches upon those phenomena connected with London which are the first to strike the most superficial observer, and which also appear even more impressive and more marvellous to the observer who has spent many years in their close contemplation and study. We may study the enormous figures that represent the population of London ; we may know in square miles the area occupied by its palaces and mansions and hovels ; we may cull whole galleries of pictures, either from the endless panorama of human life, with all its strange vicissitudes and contrasts, or from the succession of famous buildings extending from the Tower of William the Norman, down to the great buildings of the Victorian era ; we may scan the history of social development as expressed in Act after Act of Parliament passed with this oljject in view ; and yet with those who think they know it best, and who have passed long years of their life in the very centre of its ceasele.ss struggle and turmoil, we shall have at last to admit, like John Bright, that in the sense of full and adequate knowledge we know nothing about it. 14 LONDON PICTURES. In 1 88 1, when the last official census was taken, the population amounted to 4,766,661. The normal annual increase can hardly have been less than 100,000 per year; hence in 1890, Larger London almost certainly includes within her borders over 5,600,000 human beings. These figures form a hieroglyph of which we are apt to think we know the meaning, but which can never be grasped in any complete sense by the mind. And hence to make it easier the census students break it up into some of its many component parts. They tell us, for example, that Kensington alone — a mere drop in the ocean of London life — contains more people than Bradford, York, and Scarborough combined ; that the total inhabitants of Newcastle might be dropped down in St. George's, Hanover Square, and yet fall some thousands short of the present population ; that the Tower Hamlets with its 500,000 inhabitants could fill to overflowing ten such towns as Reading, and that you could fill four or five New Yorks with London's millions. Never before in the life of the globe have so many human beings been compressed into so small a space. Larger London — that is, speaking roughly, a circle having Charing Cross for the centre, and a circumference running through the counties of Middlesex, Hertford, Essex, Kent and Surrey, at a distance of fifteen miles from Trafalgar Square — includes six hundred and ninety square miles. This area, as mapped, really forms a square of over twenty-si.x miles each way. In walking or dri\ing these twenty-six miles, whether from east to west, or from north to south, for much the larger half of the distance the appearances presented are those of a crowded city. The wayfarer who starts from Stratford, in the east, may walk — with hardly a break in the streets of houses, through Whitechapel, the City, the West End, Kensington and Hammersmith — through twelve or fourteen miles of houses. Then again, London is not one, but many towns. Hounslow is for all practical purposes of life, as far away from, and as little known to the dwellers in, say, Blackheath or Aldgate, as Rome or New York. Except for an occasional trip to satisfy a passing curiosity, the ordinary inhabitant of Belgravia knows no more of Deptford or Wapping than he does of Fiji or New Guinea. Myriads of people, even with the enormously increased means of locomotion, but rarely or never leave those districts of London in which their work is situated and in which they reside. And here we touch another peculiarity of this great London Certainly half a million people — according to some estimates 800,000 — daily leave their homes in various parts of the suburbs, and ply their avocations within Lesser London, and for the most part within what is known as the City. The way in which London has become a kind of maelstrom, drawing into its vortex the young and vigorous, the broken-down and criminal, the professional and scientific and literary classes, no less than the cultured and wealthy 'retired' classes, is shown by the fact that only 2,401,955 persons FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 15 out of the 3,816,483 residing in Inner London in 1881 were born there. That is, no less than 1,414,528 were not born in London. Out of these — we give only round numbers — Ireland sent 80,000, Scotland 49,000, the county of Norfolk 49,000, Somerset 43,000, and the foreigners reach the large total of 60,000. In the last number are included no less than 21,000 Germans and 8,000 French. But with facts and statistics of one kind or another, not only this book but a dozen more like it could easily be filled. And our object is not to collect these, but to present the reader with some pen and pencil pictures of London life, London buildings, and London history. Undoubtedly the best way to see London is to walk about it, just as the worst way to accomplish this object is to employ the railways, most of which go either underground, where nothing can be seen, or overground, whence only acres of roofs with smoking chimney-tops, and the most prominent towers and steeples can be observed. The hansom cab is a speedy and comfortable vehicle, and its popularity is shown by the fact that London possesses nearly 7,000 of them, as against 4,000 of its slower brother, the ' four-wheeler.' But in fine weather not only the cheapest but the best vehicle for London sight-seeing is the omnibus, and the best point of vantage thereon is the top. The old-fashioned style, which admitted of two passengers sitting on each side of the driver, and the roof of which could only be reached by a series of gymnastic exercises upon a perpendicular set of narrow steps, is being fast superseded by those which have cross-seats outside, all facing the driver, on the top, and which are reached by an easy staircase. For this reason it has come to pass that whereas a few years since it was com- paratively rare to see a lady outside an omnibus, now the fair sex so frequent that part, that Punch's joke is hardly far-fetched when it represents the conductor asking the ladies above him whether one of them will consent to ride inside ' to oblio-e a gentleman.' Between 2,000 and 3,000 omnibuses ply along the main thoroughfares. Competition has greatly lowered the fares, and also improved the accommoda- tion. This multitude of omnibuses not only renders it possible to ride through most of the leading streets, at the same time doing much to congest the traffic, but it also gives the traveller a ready and pleasant way of visiting not only the nearer suburbs, such as Highgate, Hampstead, Clapham and Hammersmith, but also more distant favourite places of resort, like Richmond and Hampton Court. The stranger who gazes for the first time upon the hurrying crowds of Cheapside, Oxford Street, Whitechapel Road or the Borough, and the c^ld resident who for the thousandth time studies the ever-varying, ever-fascinating panorama of London street life, cannot find and cannot reasonably desire a better point of view than that afforded by the top of a London omnibus. It is in this way that we propose to get our first impressions of the i6 LONDON PICTURES. great City. In the succeeding chapters no less than in this we shall limit our observations for the most part to the area lying between Westminster and the Tower in one direction, and the Angel, Islington, and the Elephant and Castle in the other. This area embraces what may be considered as London's heart. Within it lies the tiny area of Roman London, the larger Saxon, and the still larger Tudor capital. Here are to be found the centres and springs of not only London but Imperial Government, the home of all civic authority and rule, the source and fountain-head of most of the businesses of the richest city in the world. Here are to be seen the palaces of England's monarchs, the stately house of her Parliament, the mighty Cathedral of her patron saint, and the ancient Abbey wherein are interred so many of her illustrious dead. Within these somewhat narrow limits are to be .seen the greatest extremes and contrasts that life can afford. Hard by mansions in which every luxury is enjoyed and upon the furni.shing of which a fortune has been expended, are to be found rooms and tenements in which human beings live a life utterly unfavourable to moral and spiritual welfare. And go where you will in this area for a large part of the twenty-four hours in the day, you will find abundant evidence of active life, hard work, luxurious idleness, outward splendour, mingled with, alas ! far too many traces of suffering, poverty, vicious indulgence and rampant vice. Heinrich Heine's well-known words still remain in many respects as true as when he wrote them : ' 1 have seen the greatest wonder which the world can show to the astonished spirit. I have seen it, and am still astonished — for ever will there remain fixed indelibly on my memory the stone forests of houses, amid which flows the rushing stream of faces of living men with all their varied passions, and all their terrible impulses of love, of hunger, and of hatred.' Perhaps the best starting-point for any journey of inspection within this central London is that shown in the engraving on page 12. It represents the open space in front of the Mansion House, a spot which during the hours of daylight is thronged with foot and carriage traffic. Upon it converge Cheapside, one of the most ancient thoroughfares in the capital ; Queen Victoria Street, one of the newest and handsomest of recent streets ; Princes Street and Threadneedle Street, names which at once bring up associations connected with the greatest financial transactions of the modern world ; Cornhill, Lombard Street, King William Street, and Walbrook, names which enshrine chapters of the ancient and modern history of the capital. In the background of the engraving stands the Royal Exchange, the home and the outward symbol of London's commerce. It was founded in Elizabeth's reign by Sir Thomas Gresham, and opened by the Queen in 1 57 1, and destroyed in the Great Fire. It was rebuilt by Wren, who — had only the perverse and short-sighted men of authf)rity in his day allowed it- — would have caused all the principal streets of London to branch out from it. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 17 In i<'^3''^ fire once again ruined it, and the present structure was erected and opened in 1844. Opposite the Exchange stands the Bank of England, which will be referred to in some detail later on. The engraving on page 12 admirably represents the variety of traffic here to be seen. From this point omnibuses will convey the wayfarer to almost every part of London. Passing up Cornhill, a few minutes' ride will bring us to the congested districts of Whitechapel, .Spitalfields, or Bcthnal (ireen. Here are many of the saddest and some of the noblest features of the great City's life. While by no means confined to the East End, yet here are to A Block of Peabody's Buildings, Si'italfif.lds. be seen more of struggling life, of poverty, and ot crime, than in other districts. Hundreds of thousands of human beings here spend their lives, dependent upon a weekly wage earned by the hardest toil, and which when it comes in regularly only just suffices to keep them out of the clutches of huno-er. It is h(;re that the sweater's victims toil, and here many of the labouring class, who leave the country in the hope of finding London an b'ldorado, sink down into lives of hopeless drudgery. Antl yet in no part of London is Christian philanthropy more active, and nowhere else are the results more cheering. The great cjuestion of so housing these teeming c / Ig LONDON PICTURES. myriads that at any rate it shall be possible to observe the commonest decencies of life, is coming more and more to the front. Much has been done in the way of erecting artizan dwellings, but much yet remains to be done. The public conscience is, however, aroused, and men of all grades and of all shades of religious opinion are beginning to realise that in this sense they arc their brother's keeper. It perhaps cannot be denied that there has been too much indiscriminate charity, and that benevolent effort has not always followed the wisest advice ; but it is incontestable that never before in the world's history have so many devoted Christian men and women been working at the cost of self-sacrifice, money, and even health itself, for the bodily and spiritual welfare of their fellows as are to be found to-day in the east of London. Institutions like Mr. Charrington's Hall and the People's Palace have been founded. Churches and chapels and mission halls abound. Devoted clergy- men, both of the Established and Nonconformist churches, city missionaries, nurses, and a multitude of voluntary workers of both sexes, are proving to-day that the New Testament is a living force. They live among these people, they give of their thought and sympathy and time and strength to the utmost of their power, from no desire, and from no possibility of reward here, but because a time will come, they believe, when the Saviour to whom they have con- secrated their lives will say, ' Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.' But to the average Londoner — that is, to the man who spends the working hours of the day in the bank, or counting-house, or warehouse, and then at night rushes off as fast as omnibus or train will carry him to the suburbs — the East End is as little known as Kamschatka. He never goes there. He knows that such a region exists, but his acquaintance with it is limited to what the newspaper reports about its dock strikes and labour troubles, about some crime more than usually atrocious, or about the efforts to help on its progress — efforts which not unfrequently he helps neither by his sympathy nor by his contributions. And yet no London scenes are more interesting or more full of matter for careful reflection than a walk by day through the London Docks, or a walk b)' night along Whitechapel Road or Ratcliff Highway. In the East End may be seen an abundant variety of the type of street Arab, and here also may be seen the result of the recent development in London of the education movement in the numerous board schools. Over the whole of Larger London there are to be seen these buildings, so full of hope and future promise to the State, and not A London Street Arad. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. >9 unfrequently are to be witnessed scenes like that depicted in the engraving. If we choose King William Street, and take one of the conveyances running southwards from the Bank, we soon reach the great waterway of London, the River Thames. It is here crossed by London Bridge, a name most famous in the City annals, the site of many an exciting and tragic event in London's history, and during twelve hours in the day probably the most crowded spot on earth. There is evidence for the belief that a bridge stood here in Roman times, and it is certain that our Saxon ancestors possessed one. The Sagas commemorate the great battle fought here in 1008, in which Olaf the Saint, King of Norway, and converter of that land to Christianity, took part. He has left traces of his influence not only in the fact that three City churches were dedicated to him, but also because the Tooley Street on the south bank of the Thames is really St. Olave's Street. The first stone bridge over the Thames was built m 1 1 76 by a noted architect, Peter, the curate of St. INIary Colechurch in Cheap. And so well did he do his work that, with patchings and restorations and alterations, it actually stood until the nineteenth century. It took Peter thirty-three years to complete his work, and a very re- markable piece of building it was. There were no less than nineteen arches, the piers occupying at low water, it has been calculated, about 700 out of the 900 feet of waterway. Hence there was consider- able obstruction to navigation, many an exciting adventure, and much loss of life and property. Royal personages and .State prisoners on their way to or from the Tower by water, had to consult the tide before venturing to shoot the bridge. One reason for these numerous and substantial piers was that Peter built a little town as well as a bridge. L^pon the central pier he placed a chapel dedicated to Thomas a Becket, 65 feet long, 20 wide, and 40 high. It could be entered from the l)ridge level, and also by steps from the river. In the crypt of this chapel he himself was buried in 1205. Upon the outer piers there stood tor centuries housc^s of different kinds. A roadway lUii SCHuuL JJuAKIJ iNSl'liCTUK AliKOAU. 20 LONDON PICTURES. ran through the centre of the bridge, closed at either end by a massive gateway, and there were three ' vacancies ' or gratings through which the boats passing up or down could be seen. Near the Southwark end was a drawbridge, and the gate at that end was known as the Traitors' Gate, from the fact that here the heads of many of those who had been executed for high treason were exposed. It was here that the head of Wallace, the Scotch ,iw., (-'"^\ i-"^si.\ -J'^JW -,J3^v-??a4U 1 -. v\:^^i> s^i. Old London Bridge. {From a print by C. Vischer.) hero, was exposed in 1305, and here, two centuries later, crowds came to gaze upon the disfigured features of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More. Across the bridge in 1381 Wat Tyler and his undisciplined crowd of Kent and Surrey men streamed to the sack of the Tower ; here, in 1 390, Sir David Lindsay met and defeated, in deadly conflict. Lord Wells ; over these FII^ST IMPRESSIONS. 2C old arches, in 14 15, Henry V., then only twenty-seven years of age, amid the most extravagant civic rejoicings, passed in triumphant state, leading in his train the prisoners taken at the battle of Agincourt, little dreaming that, seven years later, his body would be borne along the same pathway, amid a nation's lamentations, to its final resting-place in Westminster Abbey. In the reign of Elizabeth, the bridge was restored. Nonsuch House, a four-story wooden edifice, was built just to the north of the drawbridge, and a new gate at the South wark end was put up by the City. Fires in 1632 and 1666 destroyed many of the old houses, but they were not finally swept away until about 1760. Pennant " thus describes the old bridge : ' This great work was founded on enormous piles, driven as closely as possible together ; on their tops were laid long planks, ten inches thick, strongly bolted, and on them was placed the base of the pier, the lowermost stones of which were bedded in pitch, to prevent the water from damaging the work. Round all were the piles called the starlings, designed for the preservation of the foundation piles. These contracted the space between the piers so greatly as to occasion at the retreat of every tide a fall of five feet, or a number of temporary cataracts, which since the foundation of the bridge have occasioned the loss of many thousand lives. The water at spring-tide rises to about the height of eighteen feet. The length of this vast work is nine hundred and fifteen feet, the exact breadth of the river. The number of ai'ches was nineteen, of unequal dimensions, and greatly deformed by the starlings and the houses on each side, which overhung and leaned in a most terrific manner. In most places they hid the arches, and nothing appeared but the rude piers. I well remember the street on London Bridge, narrow, dark- some, and dangerous to passengers from the multitude of carriages ; frequent arches of strong timber crossed the street, from the tops of the houses, t(j keep them together, and from falling into the river. Nothing but use could preserve the rest of the inmates, who soon grew deaf to the noise of the falling waters, the clamour of watermen, or the fre(|uent shrieks of drowning wretches.' Such being the character of the old Ijridge, it is no wonder that men used to say : ' If London Bridge had fewer eyes it would see better,' and ' London l)ridge was made for wise men to go over, and fools to go under.' Even in Fuller's days he could write : ' The middle thereof is probably in none, the two ends in two counties, Middlesex and Surrey. Such who only see it beneath, where it is a bridge, cannot suspect it should be a street; antl such who behold it above, where it is a street, cannot believe it is a bridge.' It was not until 1823 that the Corporation decided to build a new bridge. But if tardy in taking the matter up, they did it thoroughly when it was once resolved u])on. The work began in 1824, and the present structure was o[)ened in 1S31. It is a very fine ])iece of architecture and ' ^omc .Ucouiit oj London, Kourlh cililion, 1S05, p. 2S2. 22 LONDON PICTURES. cost, together with the approaches, _^^ 1,500,000. It spans the river in five fine arches, which offer Httle, if any, resistance to the tide or the stream. Notwithstanding the opening in recent years of others, such as Southwark, Blackfriars, and Waterloo, it is still the main crossins: to the south bank of the Thames. The engraving gives a good impression of the normal condition of its traffic. From 20,000 to 25,000 vehicles cross it every day, the stream of foot-passengers, especially morning and evening, is crowded and almost continuous, swelled by the great railway terminus which adjoins the southern side. It has been estimated that over 150,000 human beings cross London Bridge every week-day. The region around the southern approach to London Bridge is full of interest to the lover of the past. Here stands the Church of St. Mary Overy, one of the finest in London ; here formei*ly stood Winchester House, the ancient episcopal residence of the bishops of that see ; hard by, along the river bank, stood the theatre in which both Shakespeare and Ben Jonson played their parts ; within a five minutes' walk were situated the old Tabard Inn, to which Chaucer's pilgrims resorted — now, alas ! a commonplace London gin- palace — and other famous hostel- ries, of which only the White Hart allows the visitor to see any traces of the ancient glory, the Marshalsea Prison, and Bermond- sey Priory. Over the old bridge and along the Old Kent Road went for centuries the greater part of the traffic from London to Canterbury, Dover, and the Continent. Immediately below the bridge is the part of the Thames known as the Pool, and here the visitor interested in shipping may at almost any hour of the day or night obtain ample evidence of the importance and activity of London as a great shipping centre. Returning to the Exchange, and turning our faces westwards, we have two routes before us, each abounding in associations of very great value, and illustrating the perennial interest of this great London. Choosing one of the newest streets, we cross at its very threshold a trace of the most ancient London. The street called Walbrook, runninsf alono- the western side of the Mansion House, enshrines in its name quite a volume of ancient history The Pool uv Night. r o o ':^' 1 ill r, l!ll!J! li,'. ii'' ".V ■ >■■■■ . >ll'llll]lllllll[lll{llll'.lll '". ':;lil1 1 'IiimI.iiiiiijiih l^Ws^t)H The Tree in Wood Street, Cheapside. At the western end of Cheapside two great thoroughfares branch oft. The right hand one passes St. Martin's le Grand, with the enormous buildings, old and new, of the General Post Office, and becomes first Newgate Street, formerly closed by the New Gate, which, however, At the Gates uf Christ's IIusittal. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 39 disappeared many generations ago, and famous for Christ's Hospital, which in recent days has become a great school, nominally for the poor, but actually in a great many cases for the children of those who can gain access to persons of influence connected with the government of the charity. Among the most familiar objects in the City are the bare-headed boys, clad in the long blue frock coat, yellow stockings, and broad leather belt, such as their predecessors have worn from the times of Edward VI. Between the great iron railings and gate that front upon Newgate Street may be seen the Ime old hall of the hospital, and not unfrequently the passers-by stand for a minute or two watching the somewhat intricate manoeuvres of the boys either at drill with their long skirts flowing free, or at football with the same skirts girded up into a curious-looking baggy hump at the small of the back. At the corner of Newgate Street and the Old Bailey, yet stands the gloomy and forbidding pile of Newgate Prison, the place where during the last hundred years so many wretched criminals have suffered the extreme penalty of the law. The Old Bailey, formerly at executions the meeting-place for the foulest specimens of the London rough and criminal classes, who used to turn the night before an execution into saturnalia disgraceful to civilisation, has not only changed for the better in outward appearance, but it has also by the growth of a healthy moral sentiment ceased to be the witness of criminal executions. ¥ov the last twenty years the only external sign that the full rigour of the law has been wrought upon some unhappy wretch within those grim and blackened stone walls has been the hoisting of a black flag at the moment the drop falls. The story of Newgate would be a long and gruesome history of human crime and cruelty, into which we have no space to enter. The old prison was burnt down in the No Popery riots of 1780, as every reader of Baniaby Rudgc remembers, and the present building was the work of George Dance, the architect of the .Mansion House, and the disfigurer of the splendid old Guildhall porch. But upon the dark background of crime and suffering there have been thrown some of the brightest examples of Christian philanthropy, for here Howard laboured to introduce more humane methods into English treatment of criminals, and here Elizabeth Fry showed what it was possible for a Christian woman with the love of God and love for her fellow-creatures in the heart to do for the worst and most degraded of her sex. Opposite to the gaol, at the corner of Giltspur Street, stands St. Sepulchre's, one of the many handsome City churches lately restored. The bell of this church has slowly and solemnly tolled the fatal hour for many an unhappy prisoner in the gaol opposite. The church was not destroyed, but only injured by the Great Fire, and possesses in the south-west porch a very fine example of Perpendicular architecture. Within the choir lie the remains of 40 LONDON PICTURES. Captain John Smith, the hero of the early colonisation of Virginia, who died in the year 1631. At this church the thoroughfare changes in name, and becomes Holborn Viaduct, another noble specimen of modern building and recent improvement in London. Formerly there was here a steep descent to the banks of the Fleet known as Snow Hill, trying alike to men and horses, and then an ascent to High Holborn. To the east was a labyrinth of narrow and dirty lanes, the most notorious being Cock Lane, where Dr. Johnson went to see, if possible, the ghost. But some five-and-twenty years ago the Corporation decided to bridge over the valley, and in 1867 the present handsome road- way was commenced. It swept away some interesting remains of old London, but it was an enormous boon to all who had to travel that way. The Saracen's Head, on Snow Hill, Field Lane and Saffron Hill, a district notorious for its thieves, and the scene of much of Oliver Tivist, and of the London doings of Mr. Squeers, have either disappeared or been radically altered. A splendid road now enables the visitor to see one of the finest streets in London, and also gain some idea of the extent of the great city. He can now travel mile after mile along the street, which bears successively the names of High Holborn, Oxford Street, High Street, Notting Hill, and Uxbridge Road, with abounding evidence on every hand of the wealth and business and splendour of the capital of England. And after he has thoroughly explored this whole region, he will have seen but one of the many districts of this great aggregate of human dwellings, he will ha\-e scanned but one out of the many great thoroughfares along which her five millions of residents daily travel. Although we cannot examine with any degree of minuteness this district, we must point out a few of its many interesting features. On the V'iaduct itself, in addition to the lofty houses of business, stand the great hotel and terminus of the Chatham and Dover Railway. Pausing on the broad bridge which spans Farringdon Street, the eye can range north and south along what was in ancient days the course of the Fleet River, and try to imagine what the landscape must have looked like when vessels sailed where now stand the massive piers of the bridge. On the left towards the river rise the towers of the Memorial Hall, the centre of English Congregationalism. Just beyond the bridge stands the commodious and handsome structure known as the City Temple, the new home of the old Congregational Church which for many years stood in the Poultry. Here the present preacher. Dr. Parker, holds, in addition to the regular Sunday services, a Thursday morning lecture, at noon, largely attended by City men and visitors. At the western side of the City Temple stands St. Andrew's Church, once high above,- now considerably below, the roadway. Webster, the Elizabethan dramatist, is said to have been parish clerk here ; Stilling- fleet, the great theologian, and the notorious Sacheverell, were rectors. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. . 43 Still going west, we pass Hatton Garden, the home of diamond merchants, named after Sir Christopher Hatton of Elizabeth's day, to whom she gave the property, after having extorted it in very high-handed fashion from the Bishop of Ely. The character of both queen and bishop is revealed by the fact that the former used, and the latter yielded, to the argument, ' If you do not immediately fulfil your engagement, I who made you what you are will immediately unfrock )ou.' Ely Place still com- memorates the site of the ancient episcopal palace. Leather Lane, the residence mainly of Italians, including those London nuisances, the organ- grinders, is on Saturday night a sight worth seeing by all who would know how the poor of London live. The old Bell Inn hard by is a survival, one of the few, of the old coaching hostelries. A little beyond, and we come ujjon quite a colony of Inns, the homes and the haunts of lawyers. These we shall look at in some detail later on. I'urther west, on both sides of the great thoroughfare, lie districts and buildings of great interest. In the street itself are many of the most noted shops of London, some of its best hotels and restaurants, like the I'irst Avenue, the Inns of Court, and the Holborn Restaurant. To the left lie Lincoln's Inn b'ields, and to the right the British Museum. Beyond O.xford Circus to the right lies Cavendish Square and the streets leading out of it, the home of the great medical and surgical specialists, to the left Regent Street, and the fashionable districts of Mayfair. At the Marble Arch, the north side of Hyde Park is reached, and hard by was the site of the gallows at Tyburn, whither in ancient days along the route we have travelled went many a dismal procession. It is along routes like this that one frequently sees the varied and lively ])icture presented in the engraving on page 45. The policeman, omnipotent in all relating to street traffic, stays by the mere uplifting of his hand the stream of vehicles, summarily and simultaneously arresting the progress of the fashionable carriage, no less than the great dray and the coster- monger's cart, while he secures a safe crossing for rich and poor alike. To ladies, and more especially to those who are naturally enough nervous at attempting to pass across a street crowded with traffic, the London policeman is a friend in need. iUit we must return and glance at the other route leading westward from Cheapside. With St. Paul's and Paternoster Row we shall deal later. Passing round the great cathedral, we reach the descent of Luclgate Hill, leading to Fleet Street, the centre of so many literary associations, and the present home of the great newspaper enterprises of Great Britain. As the visitor from his seat on the top of omnilnis scans the multitudinous notice- boards of Fleet Street, he will see the names of many of the prominent newspapers of the kingdom, not only those of the great London dailies, but also those of the leading press organs in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 44 . LONDON PICTURES. and those of Australia and America. For the telegraph has so linked together the ends of the earth, that the daily events of London are flashed each evening all over the civilised earth, and into these numerous offices, all in the full swing of work when most people are preparing for bed, come pouring the latest items of intelligence and business from India, Africa, Australia, America — in short, from wherever the telegraph wire has pene- trated, accompanied as it invariably is by 'our own correspondent.' The part of the district between Ludgate Hill and the River Thames nearest the river is known as Blackfriars, so called from a Dominican monastery of the Black Friars, founded here in the thirteenth century. The church of the monastery was occasionally used for parliaments. Owing to the belief, common in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that ' to be buried in the habit of the Order was a sure preservative against the attacks of the devil,' a large number of persons of high rank were buried in the church attached to the monastery. The heart of Eleanor, wife of Edward I., was kept here. Here also after his execution the body of the Earl of Worcester, the enlightened patron of William Ca.xton, was buried. Several parliaments met here, including that presided over by Sir Thomas More as Speaker, known from the place as the Black Parliament, held in 1529. Here also on June 21 1529, Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio pronounced the divorce between Henry VHI. and Katherine of Aragon. Here also a few months later parliament passed that sentence of praemunire which placed not only Wolsey, but the whole Church in England in the king's power. To the north of the Circus, and partly upon the site now occupied bv the Memorial Hall, stood the old Fleet Prison. This was demolished in 1846, and the Hall was erected in memor}' of the fact that in this prison during the Tudor and Stuart reigns many suffered for liberty of conscience. Bishop Hooper was imprisoned here in 1555, and many of the victims of the Star Chamber. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries it became a prison for debtors. Like its neighbour Newgate, it was burnt in 1780, but was immediately rebuilt. Readers of the Pickivick Papers will remember how many scenes of that famous book are laid here. The whole region between Ludgate Circus and Temple liar, on both sides of Fleet Street, abounds with associations and memories upon which many volumes have been written. To the west of St. Bride's Church and Salisbury Square — so called because here formerly stood the town house of that bishop — is Whitefriars, the Alsatia of The Forhmcs of Nigel. Like the other districts of London which possessed the privilege of sanctuary, this also speedily became the refuge of criminals and bad characters of e\er\- kind. To the east of Alsatia, and appropriately close at hand, stood the prison of Bridewell demolished about 1863, but still commemorated in the name Bridewell Place, where now stand the offices of that most useful and FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 47 deserving institution the London City Mission. Bridewell was founded by Edward VI. as a refuge for deserted children, then became a reformatory, and lastly a prison noted for all the savagery common in the prisons of the last century. Here formerly stood the old palace of Bridewell, and here Henry VHI. first publicly intimated his doubts about the legality of his marriage with his first wife. The name I5ridewell commemorates the fact that in ancient days a well stood here. In the churchyard of St. Bride's Milton lived for some years ; John Cardmaker, vicar of St. Bride's, was burnt at Smithfield in Mary's reign ; and within the church are buried Samuel Richardson and Wynkyn de Worde, the colleague and successor of Caxton. Johnson reading the MS. ov the 'Vicar of Wakefielh.' One feature of this district is the number of little courts and lanes running north and south from the main street, and each famous in its way. 1 )i-. Johnson passed most of his litcTary life in this region. At No. 17, Ciough Square, he wrote his Dictionary and much of the Rambler and Idler; It No, 7, Johnson Court, he li\ed from 1763 until 1766 ; and at S, B)o!t Court, in December, 1784, he died. At No. 6, Wine Office Court, Goldsmith lived, aiul the Cheshire Cheese, the tavern which both frequented, still exists. It was in Wine Office Court that the Vicar of J ! 'a Ir/itli/ was wvittcn. In Crane Court stooil formerly the mansion in which from 17 10 to 17S2 the; Rowal 48 L OND OX PIC TURKS. Society held its meetings, and there Sir Isaac Newton presided over its assemblies. The house was burnt in 1877, and rebuilt in 1880. Fetter Lane has been a o;reat centre of Free Church life in London. No. 12 IS the \^:i old Moravian Chapel, which escaped the Great F"ire, whose pulpit was occupied by Richard Baxter during the years 1672-1682, and to whose society for a time fohn W^esley belonged. White- field and Count Z inzendorf were also often here. No. 95 is the old Fetter Lane Congregational Church. Higher up is the splendid building known as the Record Office, built during the years 185 1- 1856. Here the priceless ]\LS.S. and documents previously kept in St. John's Chapel in the Tower, the Chapter House at Westminster, and other places, have all been brought tog-ether, and so arranged as to be easily accessible to the student. Here amid other treasures is preser\'ed William the Conqueror's famous Domesday Book. In Falcon Court stood Wynkyn de Worde's printing office. Between Fetter Lane, so called because of the faitors or beggars who frequented it, and Chan- cery Lane, stands the Church of St. Dunstan in the W^est, a late church dating from 1831. The old church, which stood upon the same site, except that it came thirty feet further into the roadway, was the building in which William Tyndale preached during that year (1523-1524) he spent in London, 'and marked the course of the world, and heard our praters (I would say preachers), how they boasted themselves of their high authoritv ; and beheld Fleet Street, showing the Old Houses and St. Dunstan's Church. FIRST lAfPRESSIONS. 49 the pomp of our prelates, and how busy they were, as they yet are, to get peace and unity in the world, and saw things whereof I defer to speak at this time, and understood at the last not only that there was no room in my Lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do it in all England. The statue of Queen Elizabeth, here preserved, formerly adorned Ludgate, and survived unscathed the Great Fire. Passing the New Law Courts on the one hand, and the Temple on the other, to both of which we shall return later on, iio( passing through the old gates of Temple Bar, for the sufficient reason that it now adorns the entrance to Sir Henry Meux's house in Hertfordshire, and being hindered, if the traffic in F"leet Street is in its normal crowded condition, by the hideous obstruction which the Corporation have put up to mark the site of the old Bar, we enter upon the Strand, which recalls the time when it once was the strand of the Thames, either open country or pleasure- rardens attached to trreat mansions. Here aofain a volume would be necessary to recount but briefly the associations indicated by almost every name we meet — Holywell, St. Clement's Danes, Norfolk Street, the Savoy, Essex Street, Burleigh Street, Somerset House, the Adelphi, etc. At every turn we are reminded of men and deeds from the times of John of Gaunt down to the present. Through Southampton Street Covent Garden is reached, and here at an hour far too early in the morning to come by omnibus, one of the sights of London can be enjoyed, viz., the life and bustle and beauty of the far-famed fruit and flower market. ' On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, its especial market days, Covent Garden should be visited. It is one of the prettiest sights of London, and it is difficult to say whether the porch given up to flowers, or the avenue devoted to fruit, is most radiant in freshness and colour. How many London painters, unable to go farther afield, have come hither with profit to study effects of colour, which piles of fruit give as nothing else can.'' Thackeray, who knew this region well, and who was a frequenter of the noted Bedford Tavern in his early life, has sketched this whole region with all his skill and life : ' The two great national theatres on one side, a churchyard fiill of mouldy but undying celebrities on the other, a fringe of houses studded in every part with anecdote or history, an arcade often more gloomy and deserted than a cathedral aisle, a rich cluster of brown old taverns — one of them filled with the counterfeit presentments of many actors long since silent, who scowl and smile once more from the canvas upon the grandsons of their dead admirers — a something in the air which breathes of old books, old painters, and old authors ; a place beyond all other places one would choose in which to hear the chimes at midnight ; a crystal palace — the representative of the present — which presses in timidly from a corner upon many things of the past ; a squat building with a ' IValks in Loiuloii, by A. J. C. Hare, i. 50. E 5° LONDON PICTURES. hundred columns and chapel-looking front, which always stands knee-deep in baskets, flowers, and scattered vegetables ; a common centre into which Early Morning in Covent Garden. Nature showers her choicest gifts, and where the kindly fruits of the earth often nearly choke the narrow thoroughfares ; a population that never seems FIRST IMPRESSIONS. Ji to sleep, and that does all in its power to prevent others sleeping ; a place where the very latest suppers and the earliest breakfasts jostle each other over the footways.' But space warns us that we must bring these preliminary excursions to a close. We cannot dwell upon Trafalgar Square with its Nelson Monument, Landseer lions, and National Gallery, upon Whitehall with its palace and government offices, upon Pall Mall with its clubs, upon Piccadilly with its ceaseless streams of carriages and its lono- list of famous houses. But no one can wander over the area we have thus briefly indicated without gaining among his first impressions of London some notion of its complexity and almost infinite variety. The student of human nature finds a fascination ever fresh and ever strengthened by familiarity in watching the myriad faces that hurry past him at Hyde Park Corner, Regent's Circus, Cheapside, or London Bridge. Here he sees London life in the exhaustless variety of its great and normal streams. In five minutes at any one of these points the gamut of human existence m.ay be run up and down. Faces that indicate high social station, mental culture, resolute determination, and business concen- tration on the part of the men, beauty and luxury, not unfrequently, on the jicUL of the women, flit jiast side by side with faces that bear the look of loneliness engendered by the heedless crowd around, unacquainted with, and caring nothing for the individual burden, anxiety, sorrow, or joy ; faces upon which poverty, hardship, and social wrong have left their indelible impress ; laces bearing upon them the mark of vice, flaunting and prosperous, to be followed perhaps the moment after by faces which haunt the keen observer like some ghastly dream, and which tell of a soul utterly engrossed in doing wickedness. And no one can habitually tread these London streets without asking himself often and seriously what will be, what can be, the ultimate issue of all this energy in action, of all this varying love and hatred, jjrosperity and adversity, success manifested by almost extravagant gladness, and failure writing despair in ineffaceable characters upon the brow. Whither are they all tending, and what master do they serve } So hard and reckless oftentimes does the spirit of selfishness seem, so absorbed is each man in his own affairs, to the seemingly total exclusion of the claims of others, so strong are the forces of evil, and so unblushing their outward manifestation, so heart-breakintj the evidences of sufferintj and ruin wroug-ht liy lust and drink and the fierce struggle for life, that the heart is some- times ready to fail, ready to relinquish the seemingly hopeless fight. Well is it for us at such times to be able to hold fast the belief that God is over all, and cares for all, and loves all — that His mercy in Christ Jesus can avail for even the most vicious and degraded and despairing — and that in the wilds of London, seemingly so far away from all that is good and pure, ready and willing to overcome by His love and mercy the selfishness and heartlessness and crime of man, God is e\er near, yearning to deliver men E 2 y- LOXDON PICTURES. and women from the bondage of sin and evil habit, the strength and refuge of the many who in the midst of London are striving not only ' to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,' but also to keep themselves ' unspotted from the world.' Again, the phenomena of life in London vary much within the compass of the twenty-four hours. Billingsgate and Covent Garden and Smithfield Market are all alive at five in the morning, preparing for the feeding and adornment of the great city ; for nearly twelve hours of the twenty- four, Cornhill, the Bank, Queen Victoria Street — in short, the whole area technically known as the City — is as empty as during the rest of the day it is crowded with high- pressure life. You may wander in the early morning or afternoon on a fine day — and notwithstandinof all that is said about London weather it has many fine days — through Hyde Park and Kensinofton Gar- or through dens, Regent's Park, and fancy yourself hun- dreds of miles away from the fashion and too obtrusive life of Regent Street, or from the ceaseless roar of the Strand. And to the careful observer the atmospheric changes are a source of charm. London under a pea-soup fog is not a cheerful sight, and the experience one which the resident would gladly part with for ever. Still, as an American once remarked to the writer when commiserating him upon having to endure the visitation, 'This is one of the sights of London, and I'm real glad to have seen it.' Nevertheless the great and frequent atmospheric variations / A Quiet Nook in Regent's Park. 1,'jMjoM in lllh (..KASl" OF A S-NOWiluRM. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 55 add to the charm of London. It is quite a different city under the shining summer sun from that under a grey February sky ; and the sunset effects from Westminster Bridge, or the sunrise lights in the eastern sky of a sunny January morning, defy even the skill of a Turner to reproduce. Perhaps the one aspect under which most Londoners would admit that they least desire to see their city, is when wrapped in a mantle of snow. For a brief, very brief period only, does it retain any of its pristine whiteness or beauty. But for hours, nay sometimes for days, it is a most unmitigated nuisance. Rarely does snow visit London in any great excess, but every few years we get an approach to a ' blizzard,' and then scenes like these tlepicted in the engraving occur, and language fails to describe the ex- periences of those compelled to face the inconveniences of the streets. Again, London by night differs widely from London by day, not only in the natural change from day to night, but in the pursuits followed and in the composition of the throngs that fill the main thoroughfares. By a large section of Londoners the work of life has to be done in the nio-ht. Those who toil in the daily press, who prepare for the early markets, whose duty it is to watch while others sleep ; those who cater for the amusement of others, those who enter with ardour into the enticements and fascinations of London social life, turn a good part of the night into day ; while those who minister to the vicious desires, or who seek to live by the commission of crime, find in the night their most fruitful time of harvest. But whether seen by night under the judgment-confusing glare of artificial light, or in the calmer, clearer light of the grey day, whether seen for a few brief days, or studied week by week for many long years, this great London deeply impresses the reflective mind, and its varied and crowded pictures of life become a permanent mental possession. Here as elsewhere a little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, puffing up the mind, and leading its possessor to think that he has really a fair idea of what London is and what London means in the world of life. But the thoughtful student, and the man who as the years pass by gains ever new and ever fresh experience of the boundless variety of London life, comes at length to the conviction so well expressed by John Bright, that although he may have spent half of each year there for forty years, he yet, in the sense of any full or adequate knowledge, knows nothinsj about it. Seals of the City and of the Lord Mayor. CHAPTER II. Civic and Commercial London. THE rise and development of municipal life in the City of London is a somewhat intricate subject, full of interest and importance, but demanding far larger space than can be given to it in these pages. We can attempt only to summarise the chief facts which are the result of long- continued labours on the part of men interested in this great theme. Controversy has raged over the question whether any decided traces of Roman influence are to be found in the mediaeval and modern civic life of London, or whether our modern institutions are the development of Saxon customs. The weight of authority appears unmistakably to be on the latter side. It is, however, certain that during the Roman period, whilst York was the centre of imperial government and rule, London was, to use the words of Tacitus, ' most celebrated for its merchants and trade.' After the departure of the Romans, a blank of over a century occurs in the history of London. We know little of that time beyond the broad fact that the Britons were being practically annihilated by the Saxons, whose life and habits completely altered all the institutions of the country. But when the mists roll away we find London again an important centre of trade. Attempts have been made to prove, or render likely, the contention that the prefect under the Romans, and the port-reeve to whom William the Conqueror addressed his famous charter, were lineal ancestors of that crown and glory of London civic life— the Lord Mayor. But all such attempts have so far proved unsatisfactory. The first of the long line of civic digni- taries to whom the title of mayor can be applied was Henry Fitz-Alwyn, and the date in his case is well ascertained, viz., 1189. But the splendid collection of municipal records preserved in the Guildhall go back to a much earlier date than this. The power and importance of London in the eyes Insn^^l \t^^\ '(mi illllllHiltipl i'H.'^J'^. ^^^i^Ji&i^ The New Common Council Chamber. CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LOXDON. 59 of William I. is shown by the charter he granted to the citizens. This precious document, a narrow slip of parchment, contains in Anglo-Saxon the following words : ' William, King, greets William, bishop, and Gosfrith, port-reeve, and all the burghers within London, French and English, friendly ; and I do you to wit that I will that ye two be worthy of all the laws that ye were worthy of in King Edward's day. And I will that every child be his father's heir, after his father's day. And I will not endure that any man offer any wrong to you. God keep you.'' Dr. Stubbs, in his Co7istlhitmial History," holds that this charter shows that London was the only town in England which at this time had attained to anything like later civic life, and that ' London under its port-reeve and bishop, the two officers who seem to give it a unity and identity of its own, is only a bundle of communities, townships, parishes, and lordships, of which each has its own constitution.' He further adds : ' the word port in port-reeve is the Latin porta (not partus), where the markets were held, and although used for the city generally, seems to refer to it specially in its character of a mart or city of merchants. From the position assigned to the port-reeve in this writ, which answers to that given to the sheriff in ordinary writs, it may be inferred that he was a royal officer who stood to the merchants of the city in the relation in which the bishop stood to the clergy ; and if he were also the head of the guild, his office illustrates very well the combination of voluntary organisation with administrative machinery which marks the English municipal system from its earliest days.' The evidence of old charters and documents seems to establish the fact that the port-reeve continued to be the chief official in the civic life of London down to the reign of Richard the First. Henry the First, in a charter, the date of which is generally supposed to be iioi, granted two most important privileges. The citizens of London were put in possession of the ferm or farm^ of Middlesex, with, the right to appoint the sheriff ; and they ' may have their chaces to hunt, as well and fully as their ancestors have had, that is to say, in Chiltern and in Middlesex and Surrey.' Among the first acts of Henry H. was one to confirm this charter of his grandfather. The number of the sheriffs had by this time become fixed at two, and although the exact date of the establishment in London of a coniinuna,'^ or commune, after the French model, is unknown, it probabh' dates from this king's reign. It is said by the old historians to have taken place at the deposition of William Longchamj) in the year 1191, but there is no official record of this. The first year of the reign of Richard L, 11S9, ' Stubbs's Select Charters, \i. S3. - Stubbs's Constitutional History, i. 460 (Library Edition). ' That is, the profits of the jiirisdiction were to belong to the citi/cns, subject to a fixed payment to the king of j£'30o annually. * The term communa indicates 'an organised body possessing rights and property in common.' It sometimes means a chartered town, and sometimes the community dwelling in such a town. 6o LONDON PICTURES. is generally held to be the date of the first appointment of a viayor of London, and the first mention known of such a dignitary is recorded in the Liber de aiitiqiiis /cgibiis, viz. Fitz-Alwyn's Assize of Buildings (i Richard I., 1189); the first official mention is the appointment, in 1194, of the mayor as one of the treasurers of Richard's ransom. He was Henry Fitz-Alwyn, the son of a man who had been a wealthy and powerful alderman of the old Knightenguild, a wealthy and aristocratic organisation which exerted a very powerful influence in London during the twelfth century. He was also known as Henry of Lundenstone, because his house was in St. .Swithin's parish, close to the spot where the ancient 'London Stone' is still to be .seen. It was one of the great epochs of English historv. The absence of Richard from his realm, and the character of John, led up to that enormous revolution which conferred upon the English nation Magna Charta. Fitz-Alwyn died in 121 2, after more than twenty years of office. By a charter dated 12 15 John either confirmed or conferred upon the citizens of London the right of electing their own mayor ; and although it was not until a much later day that the election became annual, with the exception of a break during the reign of Henry HI., the succession of mayors has not failed for nearly seven centuries. Closely connected with the mayoralty is the ancient Guildhall, and the association or group of associations or guilds from which the Hall takes its name. The word guild, or, as it may more correctly be spelt, gild, comes according to some authorities from the Anglo-Saxon gildan, ' to pay ; ' according to others it is a Celtic word signifying ' contribution.' The Guildhall has been sometimes called, as in Reading, the Yield hall, and if this be the true interpretation, it would mean the place where burgesses had to yield or pay their taxes, hito the question of the origin of guilds and city companies we cannot enter. But the guild gradually came in many instances to be the governing body of the town, and the ancient Guildhall the ancestor of the modern Townhall. This has been the case w^ith the Guildhall of London. The Guildhall originally stood -upon the east side of Aldermanbury, and the references to it by name begin with a regulation intended to prevent fires in the City, passed towards the end of King lohn's reign. Hence it .seems clear that a building stood on or very near the present site, at least as early as the thirteenth century. The City records contain entries relating to works at the Hall and Chapel in 1326 and 1337, and one of the letter books contains a record to the effect that Thomas de Maryns was rewarded for ' his pains and diligence about the repairs of the Guildhall' in the years 1341-1343. Towards the close of the fourteenth and at the beginning of the fifteenth century London began to increase in power and commercial influence. The mythical nursery hero, but the strong and very real civic personality, Richard W'hittington, reached and upon three several anC AND COMMERCIAL LO.XDOX. 6i occasions filled the office of mayor. Commerce increased, the City companies grew in power and influence, the old Guildhall was found unsuitable for the increased requirements of the City, and in 141 i a new building was :>LLi^$;h-.r:, Slmfci^Mte^ ?^^?=^V--;S3r^ -a^i!iJ^V''<:!f^»^i:;t^^: The Guildhall Chai'el, commenced. The following entry in Fabyan's Chronicles refers to this event : ' In this )ere also was ye Guyldehalle of London begon to be newe edyfied, and of an old and lytell cottage made into a fayre and goodly LONDON PICTURES. house, as it now apperyth.' About the same time the companies began to build private halls for their own use, leaving the Guildhall entirely for civic employment. But the ' fayre and goodlye house ' occupied a long time in construction, and cost more than the burgesses had anticipated, insomuch that the records of the first half of the fifteenth century are full of fines and levies exacted for this object. In 1422 the executors of Whittington, one of whom, John Carpenter, was the compiler of the famous Liber Albus, gave twenty pounds towards the paving of the Hall with Purbeck stone, and in 1423 an additional fifteen pounds, at the same time glazing some of the windows of the Hall and of the Mayor's Court. Whether Whittington ever heard Bow bells while resting on Highgate Hill, or ever possessed the famous cat, may be doubtful. But that he was a capable, powerful, and prosperous citizen during his life is certain, and he so arranged his affairs that his wealth continued to do good after he had passed away. Dr. Nowell, one of the Deans of St. Paul's, thus sketches him and his deeds : ' This Sir Richard Whittington three times mayor, Son to a knight, and prentice to a mercer. Began the Hbrary of Grey Friars in London, And liis executors after him did build Whittington College, thirteen almshouses for poor men ; Repaired St. Bartholomew's in Smithfield, Glazed the Guildhall and built Newgate.' These Guildhall windows, many of which doubtless were religious in choice of subjects, were in all probability destroyed about 1643 by order of the House of Commons. The building begun in 141 1 seems to have been' completed about 1433. Since then the Guildhall has passed through many vicissitudes, and only one or two portions of the present structure can with any certainty be identified as parts of the original edifice. But one of these faces every visitor who enters from the Guildhall yard. He sees before him a fine porch, and although here, as so frequently in London, modern restoration has done nearly as much as possible to ruin and deface ancient work, in the lower part of the porch, and especially in the interior work, he sees a structure which dates from the year 1425. It consists of two bays of groined vaulting, the walls being deeply recessed, moulded, and panelled. In the western side is the door leading to the comptroller's office, in the eastern one leading to the New Library and Museum. The vaulting of the roof is a fine specimen of early work. The upper story, in the Roman style, an utterly incongruous restoration, was added by George Dance after the fire of 1666. The porch opens upon the great hall, one of the most spacious and handsome apartments in London, being a hundred and fifty-two feet long, A "4, The Intkrior or the Glildiiai i,. CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LONDON. 65 forty-nine and a half feet wide, and eighty-nine feet high. It is divided into eight bays, separated by dustered pillars. At each end, east and west, is a magnificent window, occupying the whole width, and very rich in design and decorative detail. At the east end is a raised dais, reached by three steps. In this hall is held the Court of Hustings, the meetings of the Common Hall for election of Lord Mayor, sheriffs, &c., and the various public meetings of the citizens of London called by the Lord Mayor. Here also the great ninth of November banquet takes place every year, and here are held the great meetings for conferring the freedom of the City upon distinguished men. One of the glories of the hall is the magnificent roof, erected in the year 1865. The original roof of timber perished in the Great Fire, a contemporary account stating that ' the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood the whole body of it together in view for several hours together after the fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the timber was of such solid oake) in a bright shining coale, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass.' After this event, which greatly injured not only the roof, but the whole fabric, the walls of the hall appear to have been raised twenty feet, and a flat roof placed upon them. It is thus that the hall appears in the last century prints. But in the years 1864 and 1865, under the superintendence of Mr. Horace Jones, the late City architect, the present handsome roof, which is believed to be on the same plan as that destroyed in 1666, was erected. In the great hall are some interesting memorials, notably those to William Beckford, Lord Mayor in 1763 and 1770; William Pitt, Earl of Chatham ; the Duke of Wellington ; Lord Nelson, and William Pitt, son of the Earl of Chatham. The old Guildhall, which was glazed by the munificence of Whittington, was doubtless very rich in mediaeval glass and ornamentation. In very recent years civic and private wealth has been devoted to a similar purpose, and the hall can boast of some magnificent stained and painted glass. The great east window was erected by Lancashire operatives in commemoration of the liberal help afforded to them by London during the hard times of the cotton famine. It depicts the rebuilding of London by King Alfred, and the grant of the first charter by William the Conqueror. It contains full-length portraits of Sir Richard Whittington, Sir Thomas Gresham, John of Gaunt, and Sir Thomas Stanley, and it also exhibits the arms of the twelve great City companies. The other windows commemorate important events in London life, such as the coronation of Edward VI., Rahere's dream and the founding of St. Bartholomew's Hosi)ital, the death of Wat Tyler, the e.xpulsion of the Jews under Edward I., their petition to Cromwell for liberty to return, and the swearing in of Sir David Salomons, in 1855, the first Jew who attained to the dignity of Lord Mayor. The great window at the west end is a memorial to Prince Albert. F 66 LONDON PICTURES. One of the most recent additions Is the window presented by Mr. J. T. Bedford, commemorating that great beneficial act of the Corporation, by which between the years 1871 and 18S2, the City succeeded in saving 5500 acres of Epping Forest from the Ijuilder, and preserving them in perpetuity for pubHc use. The two scenes depicted are Queen EHzabeth starting for the chase from her hunting lodge in the forest, which is still preserved ; and Queen Victoria receiving an address from the Corporation In 1882, prior to the dedication of the forest to public use. No one can enter the hall without noticing the huge figures of the two giants placed in the angles at the western end, and probably few objects in London are more frequently mentioned In descriptions of civic ceremonials /'&& Vir ^ ^— \^ ^»^- The Crypt of the Gitiidiiall. than these effigies, known as Gog and Magog. They are fourteen feet six inches high, and were in all probability carved by Captain Richard Saunders, a Cheapside carver. In the first few years of the eighteenth century. Originally they represented Gogmagog and Corineus, two mythical person- ages, who were supposed to have engaged In the prehistoric conflicts between the Trojans and early Britons. But In process of time the latter name has been dropped and the former divided, In order to serve for the two. A not unreasonable supposition as to their origin and use is that they owe their introduction into London life to a desire on the part of the citizens to imitate In their civic processions the custom of the Flemish municipalities, which on great festival days were In the habit of parading their com- CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LOXDON. 67 munal or local giant. It was formerly the custom to parade large wickerwork figures resembling these images in the Lord Mayor's procession. For a long time these two grotesque effigies stood over the north doorway of the hall, but during the repairs of 18 15 they were removed to their present position. In addition to the porch the only part of the Guildhall now extant that dates from 141 1 is the crypt, and of this probably only the eastern portion remains in its original state. It is seventy-six feet long, forty-five and a quarter feet wide, and thirteen feet seven inches high. It is an unsually fine specimen of Early English architecture. It is a vaulted chamber consisting of three aisles, separated by pillars, each aisle being divided into four vaults. A very interesting feature is the large number of unusually interesting bosses. Among these may be noted the arms of Edward the Confessor, the shield with the crossed swords, and those of heads and of animals. In ancient times there adjoined the south-east wall of the hall a chapel, but this, after sharing the vicissitudes of the Guildhall for centuries, was finally destroyed in 1822, and the site is now occupied by the New Art Gallery. From sketches and plans of this structure still extant, enough is known of it to make it a matter of regret that permission was ever granted for its removal. A reproduction of one of the sketches is given on page 61. The three stone figures of Edward YI., Elizabeth, and Charles I., which formerly occupied niches on the west front of the chapel, facing Guildhall Yard, are now preserved on the principal staircase of the Guildhall Library. The custom of giving the great banquet on the installation of the new Lord Mayor, in the Guildhall, originated with Sir John Shaa, who was mayor in 1501, and who built the kitchen Previously it had been held in the hall of one or other of the companies. But from .Sir John Shaa's day to the present the feast has been held there, except during the period after the Great Fire, when the hall was uninhabitable. But at a much earlier date the hall had been used for pageants and state occasions, and that hospitality for which the City of London is so famous. The great victory of the Black Prince at Poitiers was celebrated by a grand entertainment on May 2, 1357. In 14 19 Sir Richard Whittington entertained Henry V. and his queen, on which occasion, the story goes, that while Henry was admiring the fire of wood mixed with cinnamon and other spices, Whittington threw into it bonds for ^60,000, representing the debt owed to him by the king. If tru(', and many hold that the incident is authentic, well might Henry, as reported, exclaim, ' Never had Prince such a subject ! ' To which Whittington responded, ' Never had subject such a Prince ! ' On August 12, 1554, the City gave a magnificent reception to Mary and her husband, Philip 11. In 1641 Sir Richard Gurney entertained Charles 1. The reception was very brilliant, and scmns to have led Charles to fancy that his influence in the City was stronger than he had thought. It encouraged him to proceed with his resistance to Parliament and begin the c;ight years' V 2 68 LONDON PICTURES. conflict that for him was to close in utter destruction. Gurney paid the penalty for his share in this business by being expelled from Parliament. In 1643 Charles appeared in the Guildhall to demand the surrender of the five members, but he found the temper of the great body of the citizens anything but what he wished, and retired thence as baffled as he had been the previous day in the House of Commons. Seventeen years later, in 1660, his son, Charles II., visited the Guildhall in state to commemorate his 'glorious restoration.' Pepys describes at length a banquet he attended in 1663, the arrangements not meeting with his entire approval. 'Anon comes the Lord Mayor, who went up to the Lords, and then to the other tables to bid welcome, and so all to dinner. I sat near Probyn, Baron and Creed, at the merchant strangers' table, where ten good dishes to a messe, with plenty of wine of all sorts, of which I drank none ; but it was very unpleasing that we had no napkins, nor change of trenchers, and drank out of Ancient Bosses in the Guildhall Crypt. earthen pitchers and wooden dishes. ... I expected musique, but there was none, but only trumpets and drums, which displeased me. The dinner, it seems, is made by the Mayor and two Sheriffs for the time being, the Lord Mayor paying one half and they the other. And the whole, Probyn says, is reckoned to come to about 7 or /800 at most.' William of Orange, George II., George III., and other recent sovereigns have all accepted the Guildhall hospitality, it being the invariable practice for the sovereign to honour the City by being present at the first mayoralty banquet after his accession. One of the most gorgeous banquets of this century was that given on November 9, 1837, when Queen Victoria was present. In many minds the chief idea connected with the Mayor and Corporation is that of lavish, if not altogether too excessive hospitality — and with the Guildhall that of almost perpetual feastings. But those ancient walls have looked down in their time upon many a state tragedy. They have witnessed many a trial of great moment in English history, and within them many a man and woman has had to await the verdict, which, if adverse, condemned them to speedy, and in many cases very cruel execution. In 1509 Edmund Dudley, Speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of Henry VII., and CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LONDON. 69 with Sir Thomas Empson the agent of that monarch's financial oppression, was here sentenced to death, and executed upon Tower Hill. In 1547 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a man of great intellectual force and of high poetic gifts, to whom is assigned the credit of having been the first to intro- duce the sonnet and blank verse into English poetry, was here found guilty loi treason, and executed on January 19th. His father, the Duke of Norfolk, was one of the very few who escaped from Henry the Eighth's cruelty. He was sentenced to death on January 27, 1547, and the warrant for his beheading sent to the Lieutenant of the Tower ; but fortunately for the duke the great Tudor monarch died in the night, and the warrant was never executed. In 1570 John Felton, one of the many Romish conspirators of Elizabeth's reign, was here condemned to an execution the details of which are horrible to read, and enable us to understand the absolute disregard of humanity in Tudor times in the punishment of treason. Here the men who had poisoned Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower, Richard Weston and Sir Jervis Elwes, discovered in 161 5 that their sin had found them out. Weston was hung at Tyburn, and Elwes formed one of the long list of Tower Hill sufferers. But in the Guildhall even in Tudor and Stuart times a prisoner some- times escaped with life. In 1554 Sir Nicholas Throckmorton was declared not guilty by a jury whose action was so resented by the Commissioners presiding over the trial that they sent them all to the Fleet, releasing them only after the payment of heavy fines. Of all the sad scenes that took place within those ancient fifteenth- century walls, two, in each of which a woman was the victim, stand out above all others in the mournful series. Here, in 1546, Anne Askew, a name ever to be reverenced in the annals of English I^vangelical Christianity, was tried or examined no less than three times, prior to that revolting scene in one of the gloomiest vaults of the Tower, where Lord Chancellor Wriothesley and Master Rich are said to have laid their own hands to the rack, in order to increase her torture.' She died, as bravely as she had lived, at Smithfield, at the early age of twenty-five years. Seven years later another trial, in which a woman was the chief figure, took place. Under the year 1553 the chronicles of the Grey Friars record: ' Thys jere the xiii day of Novembre the Byshoppe of Cantorbury Thomas Creme and Lady Jane that wolde abene Queen and iii of the Dudleys condemyd at the yelde-halle for hye-tresone.' Out of this company the Lady Jane died on Tower Green, Guildford Dudley on Tower Hill, and Cranmer was burnt at Oxford in 1555. But we must leave the shadows no less than the sunshine of the past, and glance at those portions of the buildings included under the general term, Guildhall, utilised for modern civic needs, and for the benefit of the citizens generally. LONDOX PICTURES. Our limits of space do not permit us to enter with any fulness of detail into these matters. But before quitting the Guildhall we must consider briefly the chief provisions for municiijal government, and the valuable aid given to the intellectual development of the citizens by the handsome and well-stocked Library and Museum. The Corporation consists of the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and the Common Council. We have already mentioned some facts in the history of the mayoralty. Authorities seem generally agreed that the first official in any real sense answering to the Lord Mayor was Henry Fitz-Alwyn, who appears to have held the office from 1189 until his death in 1212. During Henry the Third's and Edward the First's reigns constant struggles occurred between the royal and ci\ic powers, resulting finally in the triumph of the latter, and in 1299 the commonalty exercised the right of electing the Mayor, conferred upon them by the charter of King John in 1215. From this time forward the power of election appears to ha\e been vested entirely in the commonalty. In 1383 it was resolved: 'That no person shall from henceforth be Mayor of the said City, if he ha\e not first been Sheriff of the said City, to the end that he may be tried in governance and bount)', before he attains such estate of the Mayoralty.' In 1406 Richard Whittington was elected Mayor for the second time, and the record, yet preserved in the archives, gives an interesting picture of how City affairs were administered in the early part of the fifteenth century. ' On Wednesday, the Feast of the Translation of St. Edward the King and Confessor (13th October), John Wodecok, Mayor of the City of London, considering that upon the same day he and all the Aldermen of the said City, and as many as possible of the wealthier and more substantial Com- moners of the same City, ought to meet at the Guildhall, as the usage is, to elect a new Mayor for the ensuing year, ordered that a Mass of the Holy Spirit should be celebrated, with solemn music, in the chapel annexed to the said Guildhall ; to the end that the same Commonalty, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, might be able peacefully and amicably to nominate two able and proper persons to be Mayor of the said City for the ensuing year, by favour of the clemency of Our Saviour, according to the customs of the said City. Which Mass having in the said chapel been solemnly celebrated .... the Commoners peacefully and amicably, without any clamour or discussion, did becomingly nominate Richard Whytyngtone, mercer, and Drew Barentyn, goldsmith, and presented the same. And hereupon the Mayor and Aldermen, with closed door, in the Chamber of the Mayor's Court, chose Richard Whytyngtone aforesaid, by guidance of the Holy Spirit, to be Mayor of the City for the ensuing year.' This method struck the citizens as so satisfactory that it was resolved to continue it ; but, like many others of those good ancient resolutions, has been more honoured in the breach than in the observance. CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LONDON. 71 The Court of Aldermen is first mentioned in 1 200, in which year were ' elected 25 of the most discreet citizens, and sworn to consult for the City together with the Mayor.' These ' discreet citizens ' were originally styled ' Barons,' a title which to this day stands upon the Common Seal. The election by wards dates from 1293; in 1393 the office was made a lite tenure; and in 1413 it was decided that birth within the kingdom and descent from an English father was essential. The Court now consists of twenty-six members, and from them the Lord Mayor is annually chosen. The Court-room in the Guildhall is a handsome apartment. The ceiling was painted by Thornhill, and the stained-glass windows exhibit the arms of past Lord Mayors. The only section of the Corporation that can be considered in any modern sense as representative is the Common Council. It originated when the City was divided into wards, certain citizens of each being appointed to assist the Alderman in the discharge of his functions. \\\ 1273 they num- bered in all forty ; in 1 840 they had increased to 206, the present number. The first date that refers to their Chamber is given by Stow, who says that in 1424 'was built the Mayor's Chamber and the Council Chamber, with other rooms above the stairs.' Between 161 1 and 16 15 a new Council Chamber was built, which was destroyed in 1666. In 1S83 the magnificent apartment in which the Common Council now transact their business was begun, and the first business meeting was held in it on October 2, 1884. It is described as duodecagonal in design ; its diameter is fifty-four feet, and it is surrounded by a corridor nine feet wide, above which is a gallery tor the press and the public. The height from floor to dome is sixty-one feet six inches, and above this rises an oak lantern, the top of which is eighty-one feet six inches above the floor. This lights and ventilates the whole apart- ment. Seats are provided for twenty-six Aldermen, the Recorder and other officers, the Sheriffs, and 206 Common Councilmen. The details of the stone and wood work and the whole interior decoration are worthy of careful study. The Guildhall Library contains a very fine and easily accessible collection of books, housed in an approi^riate and beautiful home. There have been facilities for literary research connected with the Guildhall from \cry early times. A library was founded here either by Sir Richard Whittington, or by his executors and those of William Bury. The original Library was a building adjoining the south side of the Chapel, and was for the use of the students connected with Whittington's College. The Library seems to have possessetl, almost from the foundation, a valuable collection of books, but in Edward the Sixth's reign, Somerset, the Protector, borrowed three cartloads, and never returned them. This spoliation practically suppressed the Library, and in 1552— how great a fall! — the building became a 'common market for the sale of clothes!' Early in Elizabeth's reign, however, the scandal was removed by a renewetl attempt to ' founde a \ery mete and apte LONDON PICTURES. house to make a lyberary of,' which Hbrary appears to have finally perished in 1666. In 1824 a committee was appointed by the Corporation to establish a Library at the Guildhall. In 1828 the first librarian, William Herbert, was appointed. In 1832 the first building was erected, and in 1S40 the first catalogue issued contained ten thousand volumes. In 1859 the number had increased to thirty thousand. In 1869 it was determined to erect the present handsome building, which, together with the land, cost ^90,000, and was formally opened as a Free Library on November 5, 1872, by the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Selborne. ' The Principal Library, now daily thronged with readers and students, is one hundred feet long, and sixty-five feet wide, and fifty feet in height, divided into nave and aisles, the latter being filled with oak book-cases, forming twelve bays. The room is well lighted, the clerestory over the arcade of the nave, with the large windows at the north and south ends, together with those in the aisles, transmitting plenty of light to every corner of the room. The beautiful roof comprises arched ribs which are supported by the arms of the twelve great City Companies, with the addition of those of the Leathersellers' and Broderers', and also the Royal and City arms. The timbers are richly moulded, and the spandrels filled in with tracery. Each spandrel of the arcade has, next to the nave, a sculptured head, representing History, Poetry, Printing, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Philosophy, Law, Medicine, Music, Astronomy, Geography, Natural History and Botany ; the several personages chosen to illustrate these subjects being Stow, Camden, Shakespere, Milton, Gutenberg, Caxton, William of Wykeham, Christopher Wren, Michael Angelo, Flaxman, Holbein, Hogarth, Bacon, Locke, Coke, Blackstone, Harvey, Sydenham, Purcell, Handel, Galileo, Newton, Columbus, Raleigh, Linnaeus, Cuvier, Ray and Gerard. There are three fireplaces in this room. The one at the north end, executed in D'Aubigny stone, is very^ elaborate in detail, the frieze consisting of a panel of painted tiles, the subject being an architectonic design of a pro- cession of the Arts and Sciences, with the City of London in the middle, emblematised by an enlarged representation of the ancient seal, viz., St. Paul, and some mediaeval buildings with a river in the foreground. The quatrefoil panels on either side have sculptured heads of Carpenter, the founder of the City of London School, and Chaucer, the " Father of English Poetry." The screens in front of the fireplaces at the south end are executed in oak, the panels being inlaid with coloured foreign wood, and the bases of the screens forming dwarf book-cases which are fitted to receive large folio books.' ' The number of books now exceeds 70,000, and among these are a very large number illustrative of the history, life, and antiquities of London. Every facility is offered by the committee and their officers to place the ' A Dcstriptivt Account of the Guildhall, pp. 229, 230. The GfiLDHALL Library. CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LONDON. treasures of the collection at the service of those who are able to make use of them, or desirous to consult them for special work. The historical records of the Guildhall, including as they do MSS. from the time of William I. to the present day, form a rich mine for the students of English municijjal life to work. The Library is open free daily from lo a.m. to 9 p.m. to every person above sixteen years of age. In addition to the principal apartment described above, a free reading room is provided, well furnished with dictionaries, directories, and legal and commercial handbooks. Beneath the Library is the Museum, with a varied collection of early antiquities. The many excavations in recent years, connected with changes which have resulted in the practi- cal rebuilding of the City, have greatly en- riched this department. Here, for example, maybe seen the superb Roman mosaic, twenty feet long and thirteen feet six inches wide, found in Bucklersbury at a depth of nineteen feet below the present surface level. Here are specimens of Roman memorial sta- tues, funeral monu- ments, architecture, pottery, lamps, needles, bronzes, &c. Not a few objects of Scandinavian settlement times, and of the period between the Conquest and the Revolution, are also preserved here. The famous London signs are also rei)resented by several good specimens — the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, and the George and the Dragon from George Yard, being the best. Not the least of the literary treasures is a very fine autograph of Shakespeare. Moreover, the whole collection is so admirably arranged that the visitor with the seeing eye has there spread out before him a most interesting. Instructive and valuable series of object lessons in London history. While the Lord Mayor has to discharge most of his official duties at the Guildhall, his residence is at the Mansion House. This prominent building, with the heavy Corinthian pillars of the portico, known by sight to Thk Old Boar's Head Sign, 76 LONDON PICTURES. every Londoner, and seen by almost every stranger who visits London, stands in the very heart of the City, facing the Bank of England. Here during his term of office the Lord Mayor makes his home, and here he extends much of that hospitality which has made the Mansion House famous. In addition to the private apartments, and to a number of rooms devoted to official duties, the Mansion House contains a handsome suite of state rooms, which look remarkably well when lit up on a grand evening, and thronged, as they often are, by a distinguished company. The largest room is the Egyptian Hall, so called from the character of the decoration. It is very spacious, and here are held the balls, banquets, and the numerous afternoon and evening meetings by which every successive chief magistrate of London seeks to help forward the great religious, social and philanthropic efforts of his time. From no house, probably, in the civilized world do more appeals for benevolent help issue, and certainly to none do more liberal responses return. Whether it be for an Indian or a China famine, for a disaster in a sister country, like the great Chicago fire, for a home calamity like the Cotton Famine, or some one of our too numerous colliery accidents, for some local benevolence — whatever the object, if it be good in itself and one in which, without distinction of creed or political conviction, all good citizens can unite — the appeal goes forth, and the response is almost invariably prompt and generous. While near the Mansion House we must glance at commercial London, although obviously our glance must be brief. It is not desirable to load these pages with statistics on a subject which affords an almost endless supply, whose significance would be neither clear nor interesting to one in a hundred readers. Nor can this vast subject be referred to in any detail. The best plan seems to be to limit our view to a few well-known buildings and to the great interests and commercial movements represented by them. We begin, therefore, with one of the most famous ; viz., the ' Old Lady of Threadneedle Street,' or, in other words, the Bank of England. Part of the southern front of this great building is shown in the engraving on page 12. It impresses the visitor more by its e.xtent and solidity than by its architectural beauty. It is irregular in design, and covers about four acres of land, much of the present structure dating from the last century. The outer walls contain no windows, in order to obtain greater security, the various apartments being lighted either by skylights or from interior courts. The Bank was founded in 1694 by a Scotchman named William Paterson. The Government of William HI. were then in financial difficulties, and Paterson, in conjunction with others, lent them ^1,200,000. The subscribers were to receive eight per cent!, and were incorporated by a charter dated July 27th, 1694, into a society known as the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. It thus became the first joint-stock bank in England, and continued until 1834 the only bank of that kind in London. In the two centuries that have passed, the Bank has grown with the extension of CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LONDON. 77 England's commerce and finance. The capital is now over twelve times the original sum. In the vaults are usually from ten to twenty millions sterling in gold and silver. Notes to the amount of twenty or twenty-five millions sterling are in constant circulation. These are legal tender every- where, except at the Bank itself, and the Bank alone in London has the power of issuing notes. All the Government finance, such as the manage- ment of the National Debt, which amounts now to .1^700,000,000, negotiation of Treasury bills, &c., is managed here. The dividends on all kinds of Government stock and on many colonial loans are paid here. In addition to this a very large banking business, receiving deposits, discounting bills and making advances, is also carried on. It has been estimated that over ^2,000,000 daily are negotiated at the Bank. The Bank is now so complete that it is quite self-contained. Not only are all the processes connected with its business, with the sole exception of coining, carried out on the premises, but even the account book making and binding, and all structural repairs, are done by the Bank staff. For these purposes, quite an army of assistants, some nine hundred in number, is required, who receive annually in salaries about _;^2 10,000, that is, just a trifle more than the Bank receives from the Government for managing the National Debt. The Bank furnishes a library and reading room, and other conveniences for the staff, and the various members are entitled to a pension upon retirement. The ordinary offices where notes are cashed, deposits accepted, and cheques and dividends paid, are always open to the public during banking hours. But to inspect the other departments, a special order from the governor or deputy-governor is necessar)'. These include the Court Room and offices connected with the management of the Bank, a very handsome and comfortable suite of apartments. The Court Room, in which the directors hold their meetings, is quite an imposing chamber. In the strong vaults the visitor sees, laid upon trucks, great piles of bars of solid gold. He may take up in his hand a small fortune, but if he could take from the Bank only as much gold as he could carry, he would not be excessively rich. One bar of gold taxes his muscular strength, but in the note department he can easily hold in one hand a fortune of a million. The stock of gold in the vaults varies constantly, the Bank being compelled by statute to buy all gold bullion brought to it at a fixed rate of £2, i /-f. <^d. an oimce. In the room adjoining the bullion vaults is a very complicated and delicately adjusted hytlraulic balance, by which gold can be weighed to the thousandth of an ounce. It is used to weigh, and by weighing to test the quality of the bullion brought for sale to the Bank. A very interesting apartment in the Bank is the Weighing Room, that is, the room in which all the sovereigns and half-sovereigns paid into the Bank are weighed. Those only are accepted as full value which are up to the standard weight. All such as have become light by the wear and tear 78 LONDON PICTURES. of circulation are rejected and recoined. The machines that decide this question are very ingenious. The coins are phiced in a tube and are pushed down by their weight upon a little delicately adjusted table. If the coin is the proper weight, it sinks to a lower level, and a little lever sweeps it into the proper receptacle. If it is light, it fails to depress the table sufficiently, and a lever, working the opposite way, sweeps it into the receptacle for condemned coins. The light coins are then taken to a machine which rapidly cuts a slit in each coin, from the circumference to the centre. The person from whom these come is debited with the amount of deficiency, and then the defaced coins go to the Mint to be recoined. These machines can weigh thirty to forty coins a minute. At the Bank, all pro- cesses connected with the notes, except the making of the paper, are carried on. As the note paper comes in from the makers, each bundle is carefully counted. There are men in the Bank whose whole time is sfiven up to counting blank notes. Then, as each variety of note is needed, the proper paper is sent to the printing department, there trans- formed by the agency of the press from blank paper into notes that will soon represent hundreds and millions sterling, and then carried off to the bank-note store room, whence they are sent out as required into circulation. It is in this room that the presiding official amuses the visitor by handing him a little oblong packet composed of ^looo notes, which enables him afterwards to say that he once held in his hand one million sterling. The life of a note may be long, and it may be very brief The same note ne\'er twice goes forth from the Bank. In the store rooms, where the returned and can- celled notes are kept ten years before being destroyed, you are shown a note that was in circulation for a century. Not unfrequently a new note returns Punching out the Blank Coin. CIVTC AND COAfMERCrAL LOXDOX. the very day it is issued. Each month all the notes issued in the corresponding month ten years before are burnt. In one of the note rooms an autograph book is preserved, containing the signatures of many of the royal and distinguished visitors to the Bank during the last and the present centuries. Directly behind the Bank of England, in Lothbury, stands the London and Westminster Bank, the first of the many joint-stock banks that have come into existence since 1834, and within a radius of a quarter of a mile stand a number of the wealthiest private and public banking establishments in the world. On the other side of Prince's Street are the offices of the Union Bank ; hard by the Mansion House are the Rothschilds' and Messrs. Smith, Payne and Smith's ; within a stone's throw are the National Provincial, the City Bank, and a host of other great commercial institutions. A visit to the Bankers' Clearing House in Post Office Court, Lombard Street, is the best evidence of the enormous financial business of London. There daily the accounts of the different bankers are settled. As each house holds cheques, &c., of the others, instead of a long series of negotiations, a balance is struck, a cheque on the Bank of England given, and the account is at once settled. In this way, transactions to the amount of over six tJionsand millions sterling are annually settled in the. City. The coinage of England was for many generations struck in the Tower of London, but since 1811 it has been done in the Royal Mint, which stands 8o LONDON PICTURES. on the eastern side of Tower Hill. The premises were enlarged, and new and greatly improved machinery introduced in 1881 and 1882. Sir Isaac Newton and Sir John Herschel were among the past holders of the Mastership, an office now abolished. The processes are very interesting, and the rate at which the coins can now be produced is very rapid. The visitor is shown in quick succession the melting of the bullion, the casting it into bars, the various pro- cesses of rolling, annealing, punching out the blank coins, rimming, and finally stamping them. Possibly the rimming and the stamping most im- press the visitor. In the former the perfectly flat metal discs, that have just been punched out from bars of metal rolled until they have reached a standard thickness fixed by very accurate gauges, are pushed forward until they reach a rapidly revolving wheel, which .seizes them, and, faster than the eye can follow it, raises a rim or protecting edge evenly all round the disc. The stamping or coining is accomplished by one act of the coining-press, in which two dies are concerned. The lower one is fixed, the upper one moves up and down under a pressure of several tons. The attendant puts the blank discs in the tube with his left hand. Their weight presses them down. A metal finger pushes each in succession upon the fixed lower die, this is encircled by a movable ring so cut as to give the milling to the edge of the disc. As soon as the disc rests upon the die, this ring rises, the upper die descends, forces the disc against the lower, the one blow stamping both the obverse and reverse pattern, and giving at the same time the milling, the metal driven out by the stamping being forced against the ring. As the die rises, the metal finger which is bringing The Coining Press. CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LOXDON. forward the next disc pushes off its completed predecessor into a shoot, through which it falls into the tray below. These machines, of which there are fourteen, can each stamp at the rate of a hundred and twenty coins a minute. The Mint possesses a very good museum of coins, exhibiting fine examples of the various forms which English metal currency has assumed ThtOlD QUEENS PIPE. luring the last thousand years. Here also are to be seen examples of the medals struck as rewards for service not only in the army, but in many other government departments, ami for bravery in the way of saving life. In Thames Street, only a few minutes' walk from the Mint, stands a building in which centre a great many operations which have a powerful and not always kindly appreciated influence upon London commercial life — the Custom House. The Thames Street entrance looks ancient antl somewhat insignificant, but the ri\er front is both extensive and imposing. Vexatious and objectionable as customs duties even yet are in the opinion of many, they were much more so in the 'good old days' when free- (i 82 LONDON PICTURES. trade was almost unheard of. In 1329 the Bardi of Florence farmed the customs of England for ^20 a year ; in Henry the Second's day Oueenhithe was the port of London, and the customs were worth ^^36 a year. From that time forward they grew rapidly, and even in these degenerate times amount to about _;^ 1 2,000,000 a year. The captain of every ship entering London has to appear in the Long Room — a lofty apartment about a hundred and ninety feet long and sixty-six wide — and there declare his cargo. For those upon which duty can be levied, such as tea, tobacco and spirits, either the amount must be paid, or a bond must be entered into that the duty will be paid when the goods are remo\'ed from the warehouses. Bonded goods remain under 'crown locks,' under the charge of Custom House officials, and BiLLTNGSGATE MARKET. the merchant to whom they are consigned has access to them, but cannot remove them. If they are exported, no duty can be claimed. Confiscated articles are sold quarterly, and realise as much as _;^5ooo annually. The Queen's Pipe is a furnace used mainly to destroy confiscated tobacco. This is not quite the waste it seems, since, as a rule, the bulk destroyed is tobacco of such poor quality that it is left on the officials' hands rather than cleared by paying the duty. There is a museum which exhibits many ingenious attempts to outwit the officials — such as coils of rope made of tobacco, books ingeniously adapted so as to carry instead of leaves the same material, and garments with an altogether abnormal number of pockets situated in altogether unexpected parts. But the number and variety of these con- trivances that have been seized leads the reflective observer to doubt CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LONDON. 83 whether the game can ever have been very profitable, and affords another of the many collateral proofs that honesty is the best policy. Close to the Custom House is Billingsgate, the great fish-market of London, and a little further east, at the northern end of London Bridge, stands the stately Fishmongers' Hall, one of the richest of the old City guilds, having an annual income of ^20,000. Lord Mayor Walworth, who slew Wat Tyler — the dagger with which the deed was done being preserved in the Hall — was a member of this company. The fiction still obtains in some quarters that the dagger in the City arms dates from this event. Like Covent Garden in the west, Billinfjspfate in the east is one of the sights of London, and the visitor who would see the _^ ^^ |)lace at its best should be an early riser. The present mar- ket building was erected by Horace Jones, the late City architect, and was opened in 1877. The fish is brought in boats to the open river front and landed in baskets or boxes, and sold first to the wholesale, and then the retail dealers. Oysters and shell- fish are bought by measure, salmon by weight, and other fish by number. Five a.m. is the market hour, and the early clerk on his way from the .suburbs to the City meets on his way to the train the carts bearing off the fish to all parts of the metropolis. The rail also brings a large quantity of fish to the market, and daily there pour in huge quantities of fish that only a short time before were disporting in a Scotch salmon river, or swimming over the Doggerbank, or near the mouth of Torbay. The approaches to the market are not so commodious as they might be, and scenes like that shown in the engraving not unfrequently occur. When they happen, dialogues ensue that are not fit for ears polite, and that ha\'e transferred the name of the market to language more remarkable for violence than propriety, and generally descriptive in a very unflattering sense of the person to whom it is addressed. Great as the temptation is to enlarge upon so fascinating a theme as G 2 Billingsgate Amenities, tt S4 LONDON PICTURES. the varied and enormous commercial life of London, we must resist it. We close our necessarily imperfect sketch with a brief description of that great commercial heart, any paralysis of which would instantly be felt through all the trunk and limbs of the commercial body, not only of London, but of the whole civilized world — the General Post Office. The rapid and gigantic development of modern commerce has been due very largely to im[)roved methods of communication, and much of this can be fairly traced to modern postal enterprise. Great and increasing is the amount of business done by means of the telephone and the telegraph, but it will be long, if ever, ere these supersede to any appreciable extent letter writing and the general post. Time was when the huge institution in St. Martin's-le-Grand was con- cerned chiefly with letters and their transit. But recent extensions and developments have greatly added to the work done there. The financial departments connected with the sale of stamps, the issue of postal orders, the savings bank, annuities, etc., demand a large staff; the telegraph work monopolises a large portion of a huge building ; while the sorting and despatch of letters, newspapers, and all other kinds of mail matter are carried on in the blackened building which is among the most familiar objects in London. The General Post Office stands on the site of a famous and venerated The Letter Box at the General Post Ofi'Tce at Six p.m. CIVIC .LVD COMMERCIAL LONDOX. 85 old monastery. In the thirteenth century, between what is now Newgate Street and the old St. John's Gateway, Clerkenwell, there stood no less than five great monastic establishments — St. Martin-le-Grand, a Franciscan monastery, St. Bartholomew's Spital, St. Bartholomew's Priory, the Charter- house, and the Priory of St. John. It was between the years 1825 and 1829 that the present Post Office was built. It is in the Ionic style, is 390 feet long, and has a heavy portico, within which are the boxes for the receipt of letters and packets. As si.\ o'clock r.M. draws near, this portico becomes one of the busiest spots in London, and the engraving gives a capital view of the scene from the inside. The statistics of letters and other objects dealt with reach such gigantic proportions as to be practically meaningless. For example, about 1,500,000,000 letters, 500,000,000 book- packets and newspapers, 200,000,000 post-cards, and 25,000,000 packages SORTINO. St.^mpini;. for the Parcel Post, pass through it annually. These numbers need con- siderable breaking up before they convey any clear idea to the mind. If we take for this purpose the total population of Great Britain at 35,000,000, then for e\ery man, woman, and child in it, supposing the postal matter equally ai)portioned, about forty letters, fifteen newspapers, and six post-cards pass through the General Post Office every year. It is obvious that system and the skilful division of labour can alone grapple with enormous quantities like these. No matter what the day brings, whether it be only the million of every ordinary day, or the extra- ordinary millions of Christmas week — sometimes reaching over two and a half millions a day— they are all dealt with on the day in which they come in. The best way to appreciate the smooth and rapid manner in which these enormous quantities of communications are daily dealt with, is to go some 86 LONDON PICTURES. evening and spend the hours from five to eight p.m. within the Post Office under the courteous conduct of one of the officials. Chaos seems to have come at six, but order has been restored, and the vast quantity of epistolary and other postal matter entirely cleared out at eight. Let us make a rapid The Shoot at Eight p.m. tour. When on the stroke of si.\ the boxes close, the letters are carried off in boxes and shot out upon long tables, and the sorting begins. They are all faced one way, and then stamped in such a manner as to show by what mail it was sent, and whose hand stamped it. They are then sorted into CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL LONDON. 87 'roads,' the term having come into use in the old days before railways were known. This can be done at a rate varying from thirty-five to fifty a minute, according to the skill of the sorter. Meanwhile, the damaged, unsealed, illegibly addressed or otherwise troublesome letters are weeded out and sent to the proper official, to be, if possible, mended sufficiently to travel safely, or re-addressed so as to reach their intended destination. By a system of sub- division the letters ultimately reach the brown bags so familiar to all travellers by mail trains, are tied up and sealed, and then as the hand of the clock draws near eight are hurried to the shoot, at the foot of which they are seized, deposited in the right red cart, and off they go, to begin their journey to Jerusalem or Madagascar, to Tristan d'Acunha, or some remote island in the far-off southern seas, or, it may be, to the least distant postal district on the nearest railway. The Post Office staff numbers about 11,000. The building we have thus visited is known as the General Post Office East. Directly opposite is a less pretentious but much taller mass of building known as the General Post Office West. This was erected in 1 870-1 873 at a cost of nearly half a million, and is devoted, the lower floors to the offices connected with Post- Office administration, the upper to the tele- graph department. This enlargement was rendered needful in 1870, when the Govern- ment took over all the telegraphs except the private wires of the railways. In addition to the fifteen hundred instruments, the three thousand operators, and the special arrangements for making through connections with diflerent parts of the kingdom, a most interesting room is the chamber given up to the pneumatic tubes. All London messages pass through the Central, and for this purpose it has been found that these tubes are quicker t;ven than electricity. Powerful engines e.\haust the air in the tubes, and then when the signal is given, say at Charing Cross, a handle is turned, and in three The Pneumatic Tubes at the Post Okfice. 88 LONDON PICTURES. minutes a thud is heard, and out of the pipe is taken a cylinder made of felt, which may contain twenty, thirty or forty messages on the forms upon which they were handed in at Charing Cross. These are at once distributed and despatched very much sooner than they could possibly have been sent from the local centre. This method, however, is available only for short distances, the longest tube being that which connects the Post Office with the House of Commons. So rapidly is the business of the Post Office increasing that at the present time (1890) a third huge building fronting upon Aldersgate Street is in the course of erection. And in this respect the Post Office is but feeling the force of the modern expansion of London commerce. Upon whatever department of commercial enterprise the observer fixes his attention, the same phenomena present themselves. The old-fashioned cramped buildings and warehouses are everywhere being replaced by large modern structures, business tends more and more to centre in large establish- ments, the great banks are covering London with their well-built branch houses, the co-operative store principle is becoming more and more p^imlar, and serious as are many of the aspects of the capital and labour problem, there seems to be no doubt that London is growing richer every day, and that the stress and pressure of commercial competition grows keener every year. London is not only exhibiting to the world the largest concourse of human beings ever collected into one area of residence and work, but also the spectacle of a commercial life, activity and wealth on a scale hitherto undreamed of in human history. St. Margaret's, Lothbury. jTfivM"" ,^ ^-^iw .(C 1^--^ -o - ^^f^^fe Igs^^s^*^^ i'"n\ ..' The Traitor's Gate from the River Front. iCHAPTER III. The Tower of London. THIS Tower is a Citadel, to defend or command the City. A Royal Palace for Assemblies and Treaties : A Prison of Estate, for the most dangerous Offenders : the only Place of Coinage for all England at this time : the Armoury for warlike Provision ; The Treasury of the Ornaments and Jewels of the Crown ; and general Conserver of the most Ancient Records of the King's Courts of Justice at Westminster.' Thus John Strype concludes his si.xty folio pages concerning the Tower of London in the new and enlarged edition of old John Stow's Survey of the Cities o/ Londo7i and Westmiitsier, which he published in the year i 720. The extract is interesting as a summary of the varied uses to which, during its long life, LONDON PICTURES. this Tower of London has been put. But out of the long list only two or three functions have survived to the present hour. No longer a palace, a prison, a mint, a record-office, it yet remains a citadel, an armoury, and the guardian of the ornaments and jewels of the crown. Among the many ancient and splendid buildings of which London can boast, none more powerfully, it may be doubted whether any other so powerfully, kindles the imagination and excites the interest of all English-speaking people. The Tower of London sprang into being at the call of one of the most grim and mighty of English sovereigns — the ' Stark William ' — at one of the darkest and most tragic epochs in the history of the English nation. By his will of steel and by his military skill and courage, William L had seized the crown of England ; the White Tower is at once the symbol and the evidence of the firmness with which he planted his dynasty in a land that yielded only to his all-conquering sword. Although the London of 1078 was but a tiny hamlet compared with the London of 1890, William recognised at once its great importance, and the castle reared at his command still stands as a convincing proof that the Norman no less than the Roman knew how to build for the ages. At the spot where the ancient Roman wall touched the Thames, where in Saxon times stood two strong bastions, William, in order that he might ' command the city,' began the great cluster of Tower buildings with the one that is still the strongest, the great central keep or White Tower. Around this as a centre, during the two centuries separating the close of the Conqueror's reign from the end of Henry the Third's, the great mass of buildings that have ever since occupied that site came gradually into existence. The plan gives a good bird's-eye view of the whole. It repre- sents the Tower as it appeared just prior to the most recent alterations, and therefore possesses a special interest. The chief of these alterations have been the removal of the Horse Armoury from the south of the White Tower, the sweeping away of the mass of stores and offices between the Horse Armoury and the inner ward, of the block of stores by the side of the Salt Tower, and of all the buildings hard by the Iron Gate, and the re- erection of Lanthorn Tower midway between the Salt and Wakefield Towers. In all other respects the plan shows the Tower as it is to-day. In the centre stands the great Norman keep. Around this runs the massive fortification known as the inner ward or curtain, strengthened by no less than thirteen towers, viz., those now^ known as the Wakefield, Bloody, Bell, Beauchamp, Devereux, Flint, Bowyer, Brick, Martin, Constable, Broad Arrow, Salt, and Lanthorn towers. The Lanthorn, as alreadj- noted, is a recent restoration, and two or three of the others are of late date. The only entrance to this inner ward was through the gateway of the Bloody Tower ; and the huge portcullis by which it was secured is still there, and THE TOWER OF LONDON. 93 in working order. Around and encircling the whole of the inner ward stands the outer ward — a very powerful fortification, strengthened by three batteries, known as Legge's Mount, North Bastion, and Brass Mount Battery. Byward Tower, the main entrance to the outer ward, dates from Richard the Second's time, the foundation being still earlier ; and in ancient days it protected the drawbridge, 130 feet in length, by which only the Tower could be approached. The river front is occupied by a strong quay, built originally by Henry III., and defended by .St. Thomas's Tower, through Plan of the Tower of London. A. Tower Stairs. B. Wharfinger's House, c. Middle Tower. D. Byward Tower. E. Guard Room. v. Queen's Stairs. G. Bell Tower. I. Beauclianip Tower. K. Devereux Tower. L. Legge's Mount Battery. M. Flint Tower. N. Bowyer Tower, o. Brick Tower. P. Martin Tower. Q. Old Jewel House. R. Constable Tower. s. Salt Tower. T. Develin Tower, w. Wakefield Tow'er. .\. Bloody Tower, v. Main Guard. Z. Site of ScafTold on Tower Green. which the main entrance from the river — a via dolorosa in English history — passed, closed by the famous Traitor's Gate. Encircling this whole cluster of fortifications ran what was in early days the most efficient protection to the Tower — the wide and deep moat, which in recent times has been drained, and laid nut partly as an exercise ground and partly as a garden. So nuich for the general plan ; and now a word or two about the history of the Tower, a theme demanding a whole volume for anything 94 LONDON PICTURES. like adequate treatment, and upon which we can only lightly and briefly touch. William the Conqueror and William the Red fixed the style and plan of the structure, impressed indelibly upon it the character of a fortress, and began its history as a dungeon. Necessarily they developed towards it the unfiu'ourable opinion of the Londoners, by causing them at once to realize how firm a grasp it laid upon their liberties, while at the same time vigorous levies were exacted for its construction. The money of the citizens contributed to their own subjection. Naturally in its earlier days the Tower was not popular. Stephen was a monarch to whum the Londoners took kindly. He was their candidate for the throne, and by their election only was his possession of the crown rendered probable. In 1143 he managed to make Geoffrey, Earl of Essex, who was then holding the Tower for Matilda, jirisoner, and as his ransom exacted the surrender of the Tower. Stephen managed to hold it for ten years. In Henry the Second's reign large sums were spent on the buildings ; but already its associations had become grim and forbidding, and Fitz-.Stephen described it as 'great and strong, with encircling walls rising from a deep foundation, and built with mortar tempered with the blood of beasts.' This last statement is of course mythical ; but there is ample evidence that more than the first scenes of the Tower tragedy of human cruelty and suffering had been enacted prior to Henry the Second's time. In 1 2 15 the barons seized London, and the Tower was held by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in connection with the struggle which resulted in John's very unwilling assent to the Magna Charta. Henry III., during his long reign of fifty-six years, almost rebuilt the Tower. He did not, indeed, as in the case of Westminster Abbey, resolutely sweep away almost every trace of his predecessors' work, but he spent very large sums, greatly increased the strength of the place as a fortress, and built the entire river front and quay. In 1258 the barons again seized the Tower, restoring it to Henry after promises which, in a few years, by the special permission of the people, he faithlessly broke. Edward I. continued his father's work upon the Tower; Edward II. used it mainly as a place of refuge from his enemies; while Edward III. passed the first years of his reign here, until he had rescued public affairs from the confusion into which they had fallen during his predecessor's troubled rule. The Beauchamp, Salt, and probably the Bowyer towers date from this reign. Edward III. used the Tower as an arsenal, greatly developed the Mint within it, and tried many plans for improving the military weapons of his time, carrying on, among others, those curious experiments for manufacturing pulvis pro ingeniis, in which, according to the records in 1346 and 1347, nine hundredweight and twelve pounds of saltpetre, and eight hundred and eighty-six pounds of quick sulphur, were used. This is taken by competent authorities to indicate that THE TOWER OF LONDON. 95 gunpowder was at that time manufactured in the Tower. In Edward's reign also came the first of a long series of royal prisoners of war — John, King of Scotland, captured at Neville's Cross in 1347; Charles of Blois, nephew to the King of France ; John de V'ienne, governor of Calais ; and in 1350 John, King of France, and many of his nobles. In Richard the Second's reign the Tower was captured by Wat Tyler and his adherents, who summarily executed Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury ; and here, in 1399, Richard signed his abdication. For the next century the Tower was alternately a fortress or a refuge, the former under kings like Henry V. and Edward IV., the latter under a weak man like Henry \'I. Henry \'11I. seems to have thoroughly repaired the buildings; but from his time the jjopularity of the place as a royal residence began to decline. I'Llizabeth was not likely to associate any pleasant memories with the walls which had witnessed the execution of her mother, and to which she herself had been brought an unwilling prisoner. The rival claims of Richmond, St. James's, and Whitehall, the troubles of the Commonwealth, the develop- ment of social life and luxury, all tended to render the Tower unsuitable for royal residence ; and hence it came to pass that the last English monarch who .set out upon the time-honoured procession on coronation day from the Tower to Westminster Abbey was Charles II. Since that day a great deal has been done by unwise restoration, by Philistine destruction, by the erection of unsightly buildings, which have either hidden or swept away ancient work, to deface and injure the Tower. But, notwithstanding all the chances of time, and the follies of men in authority, it still remains the one fortress and place of past royal residence, surpassing all others in historical association and perennial interest. And now a few details relating to special buildings. The first architect employed, the builder of the White Tower, was Gundulf, a monk from the Abbey of Bee, in Normandy. From this famous religious house came the first two Norman Archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc, the wise adminis- trator, and Anselm, the man who could withstand even the wrath of William the Red, the man who penned the most profound and most helpful religious works of the Middle Ages. Gundulf was consecrated Bishop of Rochester in 1077, and belonged to that school of architects who reared the Conqueror's cathedral at Caen, Durham Cathedral, and other structures of similar massive grandeur. It is one of the strange contrasts and ironies of life that Gundulf was a man of such sympathetic nature, and so easily moved by the sorrows of others, that he was known as ' the weeper.' And yet his brain planned, and his skill directed, the construction of a l)uilding whose life-history was to be one long tale of cruelty, suffering, tears, and blood. He lived well into Henry the First's reign, dying in 1108. Hence he was able to complete not only the Keep, but also, in all probability, a consider- able part of the inner ward. The foundations of this, from nine to twelve 56 LONDON PICTURES. feet thick, and the lower half of the Wakefield Tower, date from this period. The White Tower is of enormous strength, and slightly irregular in plan. It is rectangular, forming a nearly but not quite perfect square. But the regularity of outline is broken at the north-east angle by a circular tower, and the south-eastern angle is occupied by the apex of the chapel, which curves boldly outwards — as shown in our frontispiece^and forms a marked feature in the exterior view. The length from north to south alonof the western wall is ii8 feet, from east to west the breadth is 107 feet. The keep, as may be well seen from the accompanying plan, consists of base- 1-^^.n^.PL^j^.pLj^ ments, and of three upper stages. It is divided into two unequal portions by a strong wall run- ning north and south, and the eastern portion is again subdivided into two sections. This interior wall allows communica- tion between the eastern and western sections by means of arches, of which in the crypt there is one, and on each of the other floors five. There are also five windows looking towards the Beauchamp Tower on each floor. On each of the three floors the western and north-eastern parts are occupied by large, unvaulted apartments ; but the south-eastern section of the structure is occupied by vaulted apartments ; on the ground level a sub-crypt, Little Ease ; above this a crypt known as Queen Elizabeth's Armoury, and then, extending through the second and third stages, St. John's Chapel. The W^hite Tower can never have been a comfortable residence. It was built for purely defensive purposes, and as a strong place of refuge. The massive thickness of the walls, and the paucity of staircases, show that Vertical Section of the White Tower, East and West. THE TOWER OF LONDON. 97 the main object of the architect was to make it impregnable as regards any attack from without. If the way in which Gundulfs building has survived the wear and tear of eight centuries may be taken as a symbol of the firmness of grasp with which the ' Stark ' William seized upon Harold's crown, the skilful way in which security was secured for the residents, and the absence of all home comfort in the gloomy pile, may be taken as evidence that the Conqueror well knew he could retain that crown only by the exercise of that force and courage which placed it in the first instance within his grasp. This unsuitability for comfortable residence explains why, from very early times, there were buildings between the southern wall and the Wakefield Tower more suitable for royal residence — buildings which, in one form or another, survived until the seventeenth century. In these, so far as home comfort was understood in Plantagenet times, the royal residents and their chief attendants doubtless secured a measure of luxury unattainable in the larger and less attractive apartments of the great Keep. Several parts of the White Tower, including the crypts and dungeons, are not shown to visitors as a matter of course, but special application to the authorities on the part of those who have good reasons for wishing to see them will almost always prove successful. No visitor, however, is allowed to go without a warder, and it is well to be somewhat sceptical as to the statements made. Unfortunately the authorities do not make a careful stud}' of the true history of the Tower a compulsory condition of entry into the ranks of the 'beefeaters.' The entrance to the basement is in the northern wall. On this side the ground level is higher by twenty-five feet than on the south. So, after passing through the wall, over fifteen feet thick, the Boor is reached by descending a long flight of steps. Like the upper stages, the basement consists of three apartments, a large one on the western side and two smaller on the eastern. The flight of steps terminates at the end of the north-eastern room, known as the ' torture- chamber.' Here stood the rack, and yet visible in the floor are the holes for the posts of that instrument of cruelty. Here also in former days were the thumbscrews, scavenger's daughter, and all the horrid apparatus for inflicting exquisite suffering upon the human frame. The instruments perished for the most part in the fire of 1841. But although they are no longer in evidence to deepen the impression, yet the dim light, the chill atmosphere, and the power of imagination, make a visit to this room a gruesome experience. How often, one feels, must these dark rooms have re-echoed the groans of great criminals like Guy Fawkes, of noble martyrs like Anne Askew! A Beefeater. gS London pictures. The south-eastern vault, the sub-crypt of the chapel, is known as Little Ease, an accurate description of the condition of those who were unfortunate enough to be immured in it. It is entered by a very ancient door covered with bolts and bars, battered and defaced, but still strong, and said to be the only ancient door left in the Tower. The chamber is forty- seven feet by fifteen, and the only light comes from a deep recess and loophole in the eastern wall. The warder im- parts a quantity of information, some of which is interesting and probable, some absurd. He tells you that Guy Fawkes was imprisoned in the cell formed by what is now the entrance into Little Ease, that the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot were shut up in Little Ease, and that Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was con- fined in the western dungeon. There is an inscription on the wall signed I. F"isher, but the man who carved it was cer- tainly not the bishop. In all probability he was a Jesuit, arrested nearly a century after the bishop's execution, in con- nection with the Gunpowder Plot. But one needs no spe- cific information to receive very uncanny impressions while walking through these gloomy chambers. They must ever have been admirably suited for deeds of cruelty, and wretched indeed were those who heard the door clang upon them and the bolts shot home, keeping them exposed to the vengeance or dependent for justice upon the flinty hearts of Norman, Plantagenet, or Tudor sovereigns. The stage directly above the dungeons is used as an armoury for the storage of rifles, and contains nothing of any special interest to the ordinary visitor. But on passing through the armoury one of the most interesting The so-called Raleigh's Cell in the White Tower. THE TOWER OF LONDON. 99 apartments In the whole Tower is reached. It is a vaulted chamber, the crypt proper of St. John's Chapel. It was known some years since as Queen Elizabeth's Armoury, because an effigy of that sovereign, mounted on h(;rseback, stood there, and used to be shown to the public, who then entered by the east window. It is thirty-nine feet long by thirteen feet six inches in width, and well lighted, because it stands at some distance above the ground level, and the old windows in the southern side have been enlarged. Opening out of the northern side, and hollowed out of the massive eastern wall, is an unlighted cham- ber eight feet by ten. The legend used to run that here Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned, and penned his Hisioiy of the ]]"orld ! The warders now rarely venture beyond the assertion that at some time during his numerous imprisonments in the Tower that great man was immured here. Clear to the view, on stones forming part of the door- way to the cell, in the same apart- ment, but not, in all probability, on the exact spot where they were first carved, are some inscriptions which form touching memorials of pri- soners who deserved a better fate. The unfortunate and ill-judged insur- rection of Sir Thomas Wyatt filled the Tower with prisoners ; and either that event or the religious persecution which followed it, brought hither the men who carved these affecting inscriptions. One is only partially legible, but two can be easily read. They are as follows : ' He that indureth to the ende shall be saved. M. lo R. Rudston. Kent, Ann. 1553.' 'Be faithful unto the deth, and I will give thee a crowne of life. T. Fane. 1554.' Beneath this stands simply the name and date, ' T. Culpeper of Darford.' While it is true that the Tower on the one hand witnesses to the power and willingness of authority to inflict suffering, on the other it affords very convincing proofs of the great truth that the hope of personal immortality and of redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ is the most sure solace and consolation in the hour of man's greatest extremity. The aged Bishop Fisher, the staunch upholder of a system and a creed which were fast losing their hold upon England, and these humble unknown men of Kent, alike g(J for comfort and strength, and H 2 Ancient InscrU'Tion in the White Tower. lOO LONDON PICTURES. find it, in the pages of Christ's Gospel. They carved upon their prison cell the words of confidence that nerved the martyrs to face the rack and the dungeon and the stake ; the bishop, when starting for his short walk to the scaffold, opens his New Testament and reads : ' This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' The third stage of the White Tower, and occupying the second floor, is open to the public. Access is obtained by a door cut through the south- western wall, probably in Tudor times. Passing through this a winding stair is reached, and upon the first landing, in 1674, were found some bones believed to be those of Edward V. and his brother, who were probably murdered by order of Richard III. The turret-stair leads to the corridor which enters St. John's Chapel in the south-western corner. The building is a noble specimen of Norman architecture, at once the largest and most perfect castle chapel known to exist in England. It has been so re- cently restored, and scraped so clean, the floor has been so neatly repaved and repaired, that we find it next to impos- sible to realize that these aisles have echoed to the tread of twenty-six generations of wor- shippers and visitors. While kneeling here, it is said, Bracken- bu O". HI 1483, received and re- Plan of the Third Stage of the White Tower. fused to obey the order to kill the young princes. It was here that the Duke of North- umberland, who by his ambition had destroyed Lady Jane Grey and many of his relatives, revealed the baseness of his nature by a public recantation of Protestantism. On August 21st, 1553, in the vain hope of saving his worthless and mischievous life, he heard mass celebrated by Gardiner, confessed himself a Romanist, and turning to those present, who had been carefully summoned to witness his humiliation, said, ' Truly, good people, I profess here before you all that I have received the sacrament according to the true Catholic faith ; and the plague that is upon the realm and upon us now, is that we have erred from the faith these sixteen years ; and this I protest unto you from the bottom of my heart.' But this apostasy, the shame of which, to use Froude's words, shook down the frail edifice of the Protestant constitution, to be raised again in suffering, as the THE TOWER OF LONDON. first foundations had been laid, by purer hands and nobler spirits, did not save him. He was executed on Tower Hill on August 22nd, 1553. Only a few days before this event, Mary Tudor had attended a solemn requiem according to Romish rites for the soul of Edward VI., while at the same time, in Henry VH.'s Chapel at Westminster, Cranmer was committing his body to the dust according to the ritual of the Prayer-Book the archbishop had so largely moulded, thus completing the last public and official act of his life. It was at the altar in St. John's Chapel, according to some authorities, that Mary betrothed herself to Philip II., hoping to find in him a loving husband, and by his help to win back England and Europe to complete allegiance to the Pope, but succeeding only in linking herself to one of the cruellest monsters who ever disgraced humanit)-, and who repaid her almost fanatical affection by the most heartless neglect. The chapel consists of a nave and aisles separated by heavy pillars The aisles are roofed over, and above them is a gallery or triforium, which on the north side communicates directly with the state apartments on the upper floor, and thus allowed royal worshippers to enter the chapel unseen by those below. In 1550 the furniture was removed, and from about that period until the building of the present Record Office, many of the public archives were kept here. From the north aisle of the chapel a door leads into the smaller apartment on the second floor, known as the Banqueting Chamber, and remarkable from the fact that it possesses a fireplace- -a convenience that appears to have been extremely rare in Norman build- , , , 11-1 Norman Fireplace in the mgs, only two or three other examples bemg known. white Tower. Passing through the larger western room on this floor, the third and highest stage in the White Tower is reached by a turret staircase in the south-western corner. This stage is occupied by the large western apartment known as the Council Chamber, the smaller eastern chamber and the triforium of St. John's Chapel. In the exterior walls, which are from ten to eleven feet thick, is a vaulted gallery thirteen feet high and from three to three feet six inches wide, opening at one end into the southern and at the other into the northern end of the chapel triforium. In the Council Chamber and the adjoining room is very well displayed the rich Tower collection of ancient armour, weapons, and relics. The old notion that it extended from William I.'s days down to modern times has had to be given up, but there is no doubt that a few specimens go back to the fourteenth century, and the collection is rich in examples of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The collection is now very well arranged, and most of the articles are .so clearly marketl that all interested in such things may make a leisurely inspection of them. LONDON PICTURES. It was from this room that Lord Hastings, in 1483, was hurried to execution on the Tower Green ; it was here that the Duke of Orleans and John of France were confined in Edward the Third's reign, and from the southern windows Ralph Flambard escaped by means of a rope in iioo. Great as the temptation is to linger over the many historic sites and nooks of the Tower, we must not stay. We can only refer to three or four parts that demand notice in any sketch, however brief Three out of the thirteen towers of the inner ward deserve special attention. The Wakefield Tower is associated with the two great builders of the Tower, and with one of the weak kings who sought to make it his defence in times of trouble. The lower part dates most probably from Gundulfs time. Henry HI. partially rebuilt it, the upper part dating from about 1238. It was then known as the Hall Tower, doubtless because of its nearness to the palace. Henry VI. used the recess in the principal apartment — believed to be the chapel referred to in ancient records — as an oratory. Here he lived for many years, or, as perhaps it may be more correctly described, here he was confined. Here, according to tradition, he died on May 22nd, 147 1, his end, according to the belief of many, having been hastened by foul play. For centuries prior to 1856 public records were stored in the Wakefield Tower, but since the year 1867 it has been used for the preservation and exhibition of the regalia or crown jewels of England. These in King John's day were guarded by the Templars at their house in Fleet Street, and in 1253 they were first sent to the Tower. They used to be kept in a room at the south side of the White Tower, whence in 1 641 they were moved to a special building in the Martin or Brick Tower. After the execution of Charles I. the jewels were almost all broken up and sold or lost. At the restoration of Charles II., Sir Robert V'yner, a goldsmith, was employed to supply all that was needful, using of course such fine stones belonging to the former regalia as had been preserved. So far as possible the old patterns were followed, and the old names were given to the new objects. They are kept by an officer specially appointed for the purpose, by whom only they can be removed when required for State purposes. We cannot venture upon any detailed description of these valuable objects, nor can we do more than refer to the desperate and so nearly successful effort of Thomas Blood to carry them off in 1671. Adjoining the Wakefield Tower, and pierced by the only gate through wliich admittance is gained to the inner ward, stands what is now called the Bloody Tower, though known in ancient times by the much more agreeable name of Garden Tower. The gateway, with its hea\y portcullis, fronts and seems to frown darkly upon the Traitor's Gate, immediately opposite and below it. The heart of queen and bishop, of noble and peasant, might well have quailed at the sight of its strength, as they came up the steps and passed under the portcullis, the strong walls of stone deepening their sense of helplessness THE TOWER OF LONDON. 103 and of danger. Behind the parapet to the west of the tower stood formerly a garden, probably the origin of the ancient name. The warder shows you, with some confidence, the room in which the young princes were murdered. Tradition has it that here Henry VI. lived immediately before his death, but the modern name dates in all probability from 15S5, when Henry, the unhappy eiehth Duke of Northumberland, was found dead in his bed here, with three bullet-wounds in his body. The garden was the place where Sir Walter Raleigh was allowed to walk about, and from the parapet he was able to converse with friends and passers-by in the outer ward. In this tower he probably passed some years. At the south-west angle of the inner ward stands the Bell Tower, so called from the alarm bell in the little turret. The upper chamber is a large vaulted room, in which many distinguished prisoners were confined. It was here probably that Eliza- beth was imprisoned ; here, and not In the basement of the White Tower, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, awaited execution; here, in 1565, Marearet, Countess of Len- nox, the mother of Darn- ley, was shut up when the news of her son's marriage to Mary Queen of Scots reached London ; and here the hapless Arabella Stuart wore out four weary years, and finally lost her reason. To the north of the Bell Tower stands another most interesting building, the Beauchamp Tower. It dates from lulward the Third's time, and has three stories, die middle one being on the level of the rampart. Upon the walls of the various parts of this tower are carved a large number of inscriptions, the work of the unfortunate prisoners confined here, who thus sought to while away some of the weary hours of their durance. Many of the inscriptions stand just where they were originally carved, but a number of them unf.irlunately have been brought from other parts of the Tower. This, no doubt, is a con\enience to the public, but it has destroyed the historic significance and the historic charm of seeing the lines or the device exactly where and exactly how the long-vanished hand of the car\er left them. These inscriptions are numbered, and there are no less than ninety- one, the oldest known being that of 'Thomas Talbot, 1462,' one of the men, doubtless, concerned in the Wars of the Roses. Of many of the prisoners who cut these inscriptions nothing is known, but a few of them are well calculated INSCRII'TION IN THE BEAUCHAMP ToVVER, CUT BY THE EARI. OF Arundell in 15S7. I04 LONDON PICTURES. mmmM> m w [fsit to arouse interest, imagination, and pity. On the ground floor ' Elizabeth's Earl of Leicester' has left his name, ' robart dvdlev.' Imprisoned with his three brothers, in connection with the crowning of Lady Jane Grey, he was liberated in 1555, and created Earl of Leicester in 1563. Over the fireplace in the room where so many have been collected, Philip Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk who was beheaded in 1573, scion of one of the staunchest Roman Catholic families of England, carved these words in 1587: ' Ouando plus afflictionis pro Christo in hoc saeculo tanto plus gloriae cum Christo in futuro. Gloria et honore coronasti, domine. In memoria a;terna erit justis, arundell, June 22nd, 1587.' In English this runs : ' The more suffering for Christ in this world, the more glory with Christ in the next. Thou hast crowned Him with glory and honour, O Lord. In memory everlasting He will be just.' Committed to the Tower in 1585, this unhappy man, refusing liberty at the price of abjuration, cut off from wife and child and friends, died in 1595. He was buried in the church of St. Peter, but in 1624 his body was moved to Arundel Church. To the right of the fireplace is an elaborate piece of sculpture, carved by John Dudley, the eldest son of the Duke of Northumberland, in memory of his four brothers, Ambrose, Guild- ford, Robert, and Henry. Guild- ford, the husband of Lady Jane Grey, had been beheaded on February 12th, 1554, and as John died eight months after his brother's execution, this carving dates from the year 1554. Charles Bailly, an agent concerned in some of the many plots for replacing Elizabeth by Mary Queen of Scots, has left several very interesting memorials of his imprisonment. On one he carved — speaking doubtless from painful experience: 'April loth, 1571. Wise men ought to see circumspectly what they do — to examine before they speak — to prove before they take in hand — to beware whose company they use, and, above all things, to whom they trust.' On another, ' Be friend to one. Be enemy to none. The most unhappy man in the world is he that is not patient in adversities ; for men are not killed by the adversities they have, but with the impatience they ,Tiemoftvn!iap¥ ;,imairi)iiTithe'vv-Drld!is Ih-a m^ ^7grfe a (gi JFor m^i% sir eim'st- eifgime^ U'belh) the? svffar . lia rlEs Ball y Ed Inscription in the Beauchamp Tower, cut by Charles Bailly in 1571. THE TOWER OF LONDON. 105 suffer.' Inscription No. 48 consists of the single word ' i.\ne.' The popular belief that it was carved by Lady Jane Grey, the prisoner whose fate arouses the deepest pity, and whose virtues and accomplishments excite the strongest admiration among all the large array of Tower prisoners. But it seems certain that she was never in the Beauchamp Tower, and the single word, so laden with disappointed hopes and tragic memories, was probably the work of either Guildford Dudley, her husband, or John Dudley, her brother-in-law. A whole volume might easily be written upon these affecting memorials, and others of the same kind scattered up and down the Tower buildings. Careful search would probably add to their number. Every now and then repairs and alterations bring ancient and long-concealed inscriptions to light. Some of these mournful memorials speak of hope disappointed, as in No. 79, thought to be the work of him who carved the inscription over the fireplace given in full above, made up of the words, ' I am waiting for liberty ' — a boon for which he — and, alas ! too many of those who shared his fate — waited and longed in vain. Some speak of the power of belief in Jesus Christ, and of His presence with those who conscientiously suffer for Him and His truth, like that one on the ground floor, which runs, ' My hope is in .Christ.' Some speak of human misery, like that unfinished one in Italian, which runs, ' O unhappy man that I think myself to be ! ' And the great majority of those who here lingered out the slow and heavy hours of captivity— whether their final release came on Tower Hill or at Tyburn, or whether they were restored to home and friends and freedom — perhaps learned, and certainly had the opportunity to learn, the lesson that their captivity was, after all, what Arthur Poole, in his inscription, dated 1568, calls it, 'A passage perillus ' which ' maketh a port pleasant.' It is natural in this connection, and in closing our sketch of the Tower, to glance at three closely related places — the gate by which the illustrious prisoners entered; Tower Hill, where so many of them swiftly ended their lives ; and the church of St. Peter ad X'incula, where the most distinguished of them were buried. '\ Inscription in the Beauchamp Tower, cut by Arthur Poole in 1568. io6 LONDON PICTURES. St. Thomas's Tower, which covers and guards the Traitor's Gate, far surpasses in interest all the other buildings of the outer ward. The visitor must be singularly ill informed or unimaginative who can look clown upon that low-arched entrance without being stirred by the memory of some of the many tragic scenes it has witnessed. By passing through that gate — under compulsion, sometimes just, sometimes wickedly tyrannous — men and women, both of exalted rank and of lowly station, have entered upon the last scene of their earthly action. That tower has frowned upon, and those gates have closed behind queens, noble ladies, peers of the realm, bishops, and legions of humbler men and women, whose story is none the less tragic because they occupied a less prominent position upon the world's great stage. Thither, in 1521, preceded by the fatal axe with its keen edge turned towards him, came Wolsey's victim, the Duke of Buckingham, after his condemnation in Westminster Hall. Thirteen years later, under a like condemnation, and preceded by the same grim symbol, came Sir Thomas More, the witty, and wise, and learned statesman, tolerant of all men and things, except those most worthy of tolerance — the men who, like William Tyndale, were the true life and soul of the English Reformation. Treading the same path, less than two years later, came the beautiful but most unhappy Anne Boleyn, over whose guilt or innocence controversy still rages, but concerning whose sorrows there can be no doubt. She entered, never again to leave, the place which had witnessed the rejoicings of her coronation a few short years before. Among the sharp and sudden contrasts in historj', few are more impressive than her rapid exaltation, her brief enjoyment of happiness and power, her great and irremediable fall. With her it is impossible not to associate her daughter, who, after her mother's remains had slumbered seventeen years in their dishonoured grave, also came, under the strong hand of force, to that forbidding portal. No wonder that her nerve failed her, and, probably recalling the fate of her mother, she should have cast herself down upon a stone, and cried, in response to Lord Chandos begging her ' to come under a shelter out of the rain, " Better sitting here than in a worse place. I know not whither you will bring me." ' Through this gate Lady Jane Grey entered as queen, July loth, 1553, and on the following February 12th she was executed on Tower Green. What nobility and patriotism, what passion and conflict of thought, what opposition of envy, malice, ambition and hatred, what loyalty to lost causes were embodied and represented in the men and Avomen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who have trodden this sorrowful wa)-, and jiassed under the Bloody Tower ! Let us recall a few out of the great multitude. Hither came Thomas Cromwell, deadliest of foes to the old Church and the old nobility of England ; Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, last member of the great Plantagenet line ; Kathcrinc Howard, so joung in years as to render THE TOWER OF LONDON. lo; the story of her infamy ahnost incredible ; Thomas Seymour, Duke of Somerset, the man who thought he could use for his own selfish aims the great forces of the English Reformation, but who found in them a power that remorselessly crushed out his life ; Sir Thomas Overbury, the man whose history is an appalling object lesson in the crimes of James the First's reign ; Sir John Eliot, one of the first martyrs in that great struggle which was to annihilate the Stuart tyranny, and inaugurate modern political freedom ; Strafford, the apostate from and bitterest foe to the party of constitutional freedom, the strong upholder of Charles I., most basely deserted in his hour of mortal peril by his imworthy master ; Laud, the ecclesiastical dreamer, bent upon the accomplishment of his narrow-minded schemes, even if the nation went to ruin meanwhile, rudely roused by his summary imprisonment here to some realisation of the fact that his way was not the road the nation meant at that time to journey, and finall)-, a few months later, closing his life-history on Tower Hill. In the great majority of cases their stay in the Tower and their hold upon life after once passing the gate was brief. A short journey to Tower Green or to Tower Hill, a blow of the sword or the heavy axe, and then the anguish and pain, the hard and faithful service, the pride, ambition, and pomp of the earthly life were over for ever. The mortal remains of almost all whom we have mentioned lie buried in the little church of St. Peter ad Vincula, rightly named, when we remember the experiences of those whose burial there forms its great wealth of historic interest. The church stands in the north-west corner of the inner ward, and is known to have existed in the reign of King John. The present building dates from the end of Edward the First's reign. It consists of a nave and chancel with a north aisle, separated from the nave by a row of columns and arches. It is sixty- six feet long, fifty-four wide, and twenty-five high. The dedication to 'St. Peter in chains ' seems to indicate that it was intended from the first as a place of worship for prisoners, the chapel of St. John being for the use of king and court. About 1532 Henry VIII. caused it to be thoroughly repaired and restored, and the present windows, arches, and the wooden roof date from that time. There were two altars, the chief one in the chancel dedicated to .St. Peter, the other at the east end of the aisle dedicated to St. Mar)-. It is interesting to notice the hagioscope, or scjuiiit, which, bcfon* it was blocked up by the large but handsome Blount monument, enabled the; priest at .St. Mary's altar to see at the same time the high altar. The churcli began to be used for interments, so far as the records show, about 1532. During the eighteenth century the building had been greatly disfigured, from an architectural point of view, by plaster and whitewash, by the erection (A a wooden gallery and by the old-fashioned high s([uare pews. In iS}-6-iS77, to the regret of some, but [>rol)al>ly to the satisfaction of the man\-, the io8 LONDON PICTURES. building was 'restored' by Mr. Salvin. It now presents a neat and some- what new appearance, but can hardly be said, except in the chancel, to be entirely out of harmony with its wonderful and mournful memories. During the work carried on under Mr. Salvin, the earth at the east end was very carefully removed, and it is believed that a considerable portion of the bones of Anne Boleyn, Lady Rochford, the Countess of Salisbury, the Dukes of Northumberland, Somerset, and Monmouth, were discovered and carefully -f^ The Interior of the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower. re-buried, so far as possible, in their original resting-place. On a memorial tablet at the west end of the church are engraved the names of no less than thirty-four persons, most of them of the highest distinction, who were buried beneath its pavement. 'Here lieth,' wrote John Stow, 'before the high altar two dukes between two queens, to wit, the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland, between Queen Anne and Queen Katherine, all four beheaded.' In the tiny chancel are buried no less than fifteen men and women, all of whom filled stations of great prominence in English history, all of whom met with a sinister destiny. Besides the two ill- fated consorts of Henry VIII., and the two great dukes whose political rivalry THE TOWER OF LONDON. 109 and strife did so much to bring them to their bitter end, there h'e in this narrow nook Lord Rochford, Anne Boleyn's brother (1536), Lady Rochford and the Countess of SaHsbury (1542), Lord Guildford Dudley, Lady Jane Grey, and the Duke of Suffolk (1554), the Duke of Norfolk (1572), the Earl of Arundell (1595), the Earl of Essex (1601), Sir Thomas Overbury (1613), and the Duke of Monmouth (1685). All executed except the one who carved the pathetic inscription in the Beauchamp Tower, and the one who was poisoned by the most profligate woman of James the First's most profligate court. What life histories do these names recall! Where in all history is a more beautiful character or more accomplished woman to be found than Lady Jane Grey ? yet there she lies, untimely cut ott by the overweening ambition of her father-in- law, whose headless body lies only a few feet from her, almost side by side with those of her father and of her husband. In this same chancel lie the remains of three great victims of ill-regulated desires and ill-controlled pride — the Duke of Norfolk, who in seeking the hand of Mary Queen of Scots found a scaffold and a grave ; the Earl of Essex, first the favourite and then the victim of Elizabeth ; and James, Duke of Monmouth, the bad son of a bad father, who in attempting to seize a crown succeeded only in obtaining the executioner's axe. As the visitor's eye runs down the list of illustrious names on the brass tablet, and as he reflects that beneath the pavement on which he treads lies their dust, he realises the force of Macaulay's words, ' In truth there is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery. Death is there associated not, as in Westminster and St. Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and imperishable renown ; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most endearing in .social and domestic charities ; but with what is ever darkest in human nature and in human destiny ; with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame.' And as the observer passes out of the western door and steps upon Tower Green, wherever his eye turns he meets objects that direct the current of thought to the sad and tragic side of life, to strife and bloodshed and war rather than peace. The huge towering keep, the cannon beneath its walls, the great modern barracks, the governor's house, the Wakefield Tower, all touch the same chords and stir similar memories of man's strife with man. Anil it is this which has given and which will continue to give to the Tower its perennial interest for the English race. It is true that there is much to sadden the careful student. The Tower has much to tell of brute force triumphant, of treachery successful, of murder, of injustice, of mercilessness towards the helpless. But it also has much to tell of human constancy and fortitude, of calmness in the presence of death, and of the power of suffering to purify. It would be difficult to find a better summary of these higher uses of the stern discipline of the Tower, in relation to the heart and life, than LOXDOX PICTURES. in the words once spoken on the scaffold on the blood-stahied hill hard by. On August 22, 1553, the Duke of Northumberland, to whose conduct we have already referred, died, it is to be feared, as he had lived, a consummate hypocrite. There died with him Sir John Gates and Sir Thomas Palmer, who had been two of his staunchest adherents in his opposition to Mary Tudor. Speaking of the latter, Froude says : ' ' Last came Sir Thomas Palmer, in whom, to judge by his method of taking leave of life, there was some kind of nobleness. He leapt upon the scaffold, red with the blood of his companions. " Good morning to you all, good people," he said, looking around him with a smile ; " ye come hither to see me die, and to see what news I have ; marry, I will tell you : I have seen more in yonder terrible place" (he pointed towards the Tower) "than ever I saw before throughout all the realms that ever I wandered in ; for there I have seen God, I have seen the world, and I have seen myself; and when I beheld my life, I saw nothing but slime and clay, full of corruption ; I saw the world nothing else but vanity, and all the pleasures and treasures thereof nought worth ; I saw God omnipotent. His power infinite, His mercy incomprehensible ; and when I saw this, I most humbly submitted myself unto Him, beseeching Him of mercy and pardon, and I trust He hath forgiven me ; for He called me once or twice before, but I would not turn to Him, but even now by this sharp kind of death He hath called me unto Him. I trust the wings of His mercy shall spread over me and save me ; and I do here confess, before you all, Christ to be the very Son of God the Father, born of the Virgin Mary, which came into the world to fulfill the law for us, and to bear our offences on His back, and suftered His passion for our redemption, by the which I trust to be saved." ' ' History of England, v. 24!). The Block, Axe, and Executioner's Mask. St. Paul's from the River. Lambeth 1'alace from the River. CHAPTER IV. Ecclesiastical London. T^riTH every movement of Christianity in England London has been V V closely associated. Of many of the great men developed by each stirring epoch in the onward march of Christianity London possesses one or more memorials. Erom the time when Augustine, the monk, planted the faith of Jesus Christ among the heathen Saxons until the present hour, London has e.xerted a potent influence u]>on the religious development, and the growth of religious freedom, in the nation. .She has sometimes led the van, she has sometimes lagged behind ; the centre and the home of the ruling influences, London has not always been the first to see the need for reforms ; like Jerusalem of old, she has sometimes stoned her prophets, but the great religious movements of the centuries have never left her untouched by their influence, and of them all she retains some outward and visible trace. The successive movements of the Anglo-Sa.xon Church, the mediaeval growth of monastic life, of priories and abbeys, the preaching friars and the struggles for religious freedom under \\'\cliffe and the Lollards, the great contest of the Reformation, the religious awakenings indicated bj- the growth of Independency and Puritanism under b'lizabeth 1 114 LONDON PICTURES. and the Stuarts, the development of Wesleyanism under the House of Hanover, and the High Church reactions of this century within the Anglican communion, have all left their mark upon London. It is not our province to enter upon a minute discussion of these intensely interesting themes. The object of this chapter is simply to indicate the traces yet extant in the buildings of London of these great manifestations of thought and life wrought by the influence of the Bible and the Christian Faith. London around St. Paul's in 1563. {From Ralph Agas's Map.) It is more than probable that during the Roman occupation of Britain Christianity was introduced into London and England. But it now seems tolerably certain that no manifest and indisputable evidence of this has survived. All such claims as those occasionally urged on behalf of St. Peter's, Cornhill, owe most of their supposed validity to the imagination of their supporters. There seems to be no shadow of evidence for the existence in Roman times of any building in London now devoted to 1 2 St. Bartholomew the Great. ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. 117 Christian worship. The great metropolitan cathedral, although it stands upon a site which from very early times has been dedicated to the worship of God, is but of yesterday when compared with St. Bartholomew the Great, the Temple Church, Westminster .\bbey, or the Tower of London. Notwithstanding the want of remote anti(|uity the interest of ecclesiastical London necessarily centres in and around the magnificent building which dominates the whole City, and which forms, from manifold points of view, the most impressive object that London can show. The hill upon which it stands has always been a prominent natural feature in the site of London. In the narrow and short Panyer Alley, which leads from Paternoster Row into Newgate Street, within a few yards of the north door of the Cathedral, is still to be seen the old tab- let with the legend : ' WMien you have sought the City round, Yet still this is the highest ground.' The ground slopes rapidly down to the bank of the Thames, and in the early days of Saxon London [)Ossessed advantages of which the old church builders were not slow to avail themselves. Among the direct results of the mis- sion of Augustine and his fellow monks to England in a.d. 597, were the conversion of Ethelbert, King of Wesse.x, and the subsequent founding of London's Cathedral. The King endowed it with the Manor of Tillingham, a source of revenue which it has retained through the thirteen hundred years that have since passed by. All that we know about the first .St. Paul's is summed up in Bede's sentence : ' Ethelbert, the King, built the Church of St. Paul in London.' Fire has been from the earliest days the tieadly foe of this foundation. The Saxon Chronicle for 961 records: 'The monastery of St. Paul was burnt, and in the same year restored;' but in 1087 or 1088 — the authorities not being in harmony as to the exact date — the church perished in the greater contlagration of a large ]iart of the City. The re- building of the cathedral was begun immediately by Ahiuricc, Bishop of The Old Stone in Panver .\lley. Il8 L OND ON PIC TURES. London, whose plan was on such an extensive scale that he lived to see onlv O a E- < 1/3 2 J I/: w -3 o c/3 < C/3 Q o the foundations laid. Two centuries passed away ere the great church was completed, and in 13 15 the wonderful spire, four hundred and ninety-three ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. 119 feet high according to some, and five hundred and twenty feet according to others, was re-erected, ' and a new cross, with a pommel large enough to contain ten bushels of corn, well gilt, set on the top thereof The old cathedral stood within a walled enclosure, entered by six gates. On the north side of the nave stood the palace, the Pardon Church built by the father of Thomas a Becket, and surrounded by a cloister noted for a series of paintings illustrating the Dance of Death, the old library, while to the east of the north door stood the Charnel Chapel, pulled down in 1549 by the Duke of Somerset. On the south side the conspicuous objects were the Church of St. Gregory ; close against the great west door, the beautiful though small Chapter-house, and the splendid flying buttresses of nave, transept, and choir.' Dr. Sparrow Simpson thus pictures for us the interior of this famous church as it appeared about the year, 15 10: — 'We pass in at the open wicket. What a striking prospect! The cathedral is five hundred and ninety-six feet in length, and the breadth, including the aisle walls, is one hundred and four feet. The grand nave has no less than twelve bays, and the choir — we shall see it by-and-by — has an equal number. Just where we are standing the roof is ninety-three feet in height ; the choir is even loftier by some eight feet — a striking feature. The style is very grand and very simple, as that of large Norman naves is apt to be ; the vaulted roof is so far above us that we cannot tell its material. Some say that it is of wood, but others that it is of stone, as the great llying buttresses outside would have prepared us to expect. The triforium also is Norman, but the clerestory windows are pointed. At the sixth bay, right and left, are two small doors through the outer walls, and you will observe that these doors offer dangerous facilities for making the nave a thoroughfare. .See, here is a notice against the little north door forbidding such desecration: — "All those that shall enter within the church dore With burden or basket, must give to the poor; And if there be any ask what they must pay To this bo.x, 'tis a penny ere they pass away." and below the inscription is an iron chest to receive the penny. ' Observe the large aperture in the roof of the nave. What can be its use ? An able antiquary shall tell us. Lambarde, in his Topographical Diciionary, says : " I myself, being a child, once saw in Paul's Church at London, at a feast of Whitsuntide, where the coming down of the Holy Ghost was set forth by a white pigeon that was let to fly out of a hole that is yet to be seen in the midst of the roof of the great aisle, and by a ' All who wish to know what manner of building old St. P.iul's was, should consult Dr. Sparrow Simpson's interesting books, Gleanings from Old St. Paurs, and Chapters in the History of Old St. Paul's. I20 LONDON PICTURES. long censer which, descending out of the same place, almost to the very ground, was swung up and down to such a length that it reached at one sweep almost to the west gate of the church, and with the other to the choir stairs of the same, breathing out over the whole church and company a most pleasant perfume of such sweet things as burned therein." ' Crossing the nave, at the eleventh bay on the right hand is the tomb of Sir John Beauchamp, Knight of the Garter, son of Guy, Earl of Warwick. Interior of the Nave ok Ulu St. Paul's. [From a print in the Gardner Cotlection, after Hollar.) There lies his recumbent figure clad in complete armour, and on the four panels at the side of the altar-tomb you may see the armorial bearings of his noble family. The common people call it Duke Humfrey's tomb, although Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, lies honourably buried at St. Albans, twenty miles away. On May Day tankard-bearers and watermen, and others of like quality, come to this tomb early in the morning and strew herbs about it, and sprinkle it with fair water, x^nd they have some ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. 121 odd sayings of their own. A man who goes without his dinner (walking during dinner-time in this nave) is said "to dine with DulSy, untitled, ' Westminster Effigies.' iS4 LONDON PICTURES. thei ir draggkJ dignity and impressiveness about them which not even features and faded, moth-eaten garments, laden with the dust of centuries, can efface. The reason of this is clear ; they are really extraordinary works of art, masterpieces of a handicraft that is almost unknown at the present day. St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. ^.^./2»«^ As historical portraits, too, the wax effigies have a fascination all their own. Not only are they wearing the very garments worn by their originals in life, but the wax faces were moulded in the cast that actually touched the royal features. As we turn from one figure to another of this curious assemblage, each life-like portrait in its stately clothes seems to speak to us from the ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. 153 past with strange distinctness, and bring; us suddenly into close communion with bygone centuries.' The north door of the Abbey is at present (1890) undergoing restoration, the rose window having been renewed in what is believed to be its original aspect. A short distance from this stands the church of St. Margaret's, Westminster, dwarfed, indeed, by its huge neighbour, but serving at the same time as an admirable scale by means of which to gauge the great proportions of Westminster Abbey. St. Margaret's is the church of the House of Commons, and, except St. Paul's and the Abbey, is the oldest foundation in London, having been founded by the Confessor and dedicated to Margaret, the Martyr of Antioch. It was rebuilt in Edward the First's time, restored by Edward IV., and again in the unfortunate modern fashion in 1877-1878. Many important assemblies were held in this church during the Commonwealth ; here Hugh Peters, Calamy, Owen, Baxter, Lightfoot, Burnet, .Sprat, and a host of other well-known men, have preached. The east window, a splendid specimen of Gouda work, was originally ordered by Henry VII. for his own chapel, but not finished in time. It was presented by Henry VIII. to Waltham Abbey, and after a series of adventures was purchased for St. Margaret's in 1758. Among those buried in the church are Milton's second wife, Katherine Woodcocke, James Harrington, and John Skelton. Memorial tablets have been put up to Sir Walter Raleigh, who was beheaded in Old Palace Yard and buried in the chancel, and to Caxton, who is buried in the churchyard. Memorial windows have also been erected recently to Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Thomas Erskine May, Lord and Lady Hatherley, and Lord Frederick Cavendish. A window in commemoration of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, with an inscription by Robert Browning, was erected in 1887. London is not the seat of an archbishop, and therefore contains no Canterbury Cathedral or York Minster. But it does contain the residence of the Primate, Lambeth Palace, the building which for over six hundred years has been the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Situated on the south bank of the Thames, nearly opposite the Houses of Parliament, the cluster of towers and buildings comprising the Palace forms one of the most picturesque objects in London. An engraving of it stands at the head of this chapter. Four in the long succession of archbishops have been noted for their building propensities. The fine Early English Chapel was built by Archbishop Boniface about 1245. Like most buildings of its class, it has suffered much at the hands of foes and restorers, but is undoubtedly the most ancient structure of the group. It is 72 feet long and 25 broad, and is divided by an old oak screen erected by Laud. One archbishop only, Parker, who died in 1575, lies within its walls. Adjoining the east end is a handsome old panelled room, known as ' Cranmer's Parlour,' which also communicates with the private apartments. The chapel 154 LONDON PICTURES. is entered through a chamber known as the Post Room, from the fact that an ancient wooden pillar occupies the centre. Legend asserts that Lollards were tied to this post and scourged. From this room is made, by a winding turret stair, the ascent of the Lollards, or, as it should correctly be termed, the Water Tower, the work of the second great builder. Archbishop Chicheley, in 1434. It is the massive square tower at the eastern extremity of the river front. The staircase is made of rough logs, which are said to be those which Chicheley's builders placed there. The ujjper Hoor is wholly taken up with the so-called 'Lollards' Prison,' a room 13 feet long, 12 broad, and 8 high. Rough massive boards line the apartment, and upon them are cut a few inscriptions, among them being Cranmer's motto, Nosce te ipsuni — ' Know thyself,' and another uttering the useful prayer, ' I.H..S. cyppe me out of all el compane. Amen.' The room is lighted by two small windows, and it contains a fireplace. Large rings fastened in the walls are supposed to have been used to chain up the prisoners. Although the Lollards' Tower of Fo.xe was, as we have shown, at St. Paul's, there can be no doubt that many victims of ecclesiastical persecution have here suffered. The large and handsome gate-house at the western end of the river front is the work of Cardinal Morton, about 1490. The fine old hall with the lantern roof, to the east of the gate-house, stands on the site of the ancient hall which was destroyed during the Commonwealth. It is the work of Archbishop Juxon, the prelate who stood by the side of Charles I. on the scaffold, who shared the exile of Charles II., and who had the somewhat rare distinction of being favourably remembered by that unworthy monarch in the days of his prosperity. Upon the accession of Charles II. Juxon was made Primate, and immediately set about the building of this hall. It is 93 feet long, 38 wide, and 50 high. The roof, lighted in the centre by a lantern, is of oak, and into one of the windows has been collected a few of the remaining fragments of ancient glass. The library, which it now contains, was founded by Archbishop Bancroft in 16 10, and has been enriched by successive benefactions. It contains some superb MSS., notably the Gospels of Mac- Durnan, about 900 a.d., an Apocalypse of the tenth century, a St. Alban's Chronicle of the fifteenth, and a MS. relating to the rights and privileges of the clergy, done by command of Laud in 1637. Among the printed treasures are a New Testament on vellum, belonging to the first book ever printed with movable type, viz., the Gutenberg Bible, a magnificent perfect copy of The Chrofiicles of Great Britain, printed by Caxton in 1480, and a Golden Legend by Wynkyn de Worde. As might be expected, the collection is rich in works on Divinity, and on matters connected with the Anglican Church. There are about 30,000 books, 2,000 MSS., and an invaluable series in 41 volumes of the Registers of the official acts of the archbishops from 1274 to 1744. In the room known as the Guard Chamber, remarkable for a fine old ilillSiHi .'■^'- ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. 157 roof, is a series of portraits of the archbishops from 1533. The most notable from the art point of view are Warham (1504- 1533) by Holbein, and Laud (1633-1644) by Vandyck. This is the picture to which Laud, in his niary, refers as having found it ' fallen down upon the face, and lying upon the floor. God grant this be no omen ! ' Among the rest are portraits of Pole, St. Helen's, Bisiiopsgaie. Cranmer, Parker, Bancroft, Juxon, Bancroft, one of the seven bishops sent to the Tower by James I., Tillcjtson and Wake. The modern apartments ot the palace were built by Archbishop Howley between 1828 and 1848. The City churches, the old centres of Nonconformist worship, and sites such as Smithfield, Moorfields, and others, connected with the ecclesiastical history of London, are rich in facts and associations not only of the highest 158 LONDON PICTURES. interest, but which ought to be well known to every Londoner. The true Londoner, however, who really knows the City churches and their history, who can guide a visitor promptly to the most important sites connected with the Wesley revival, the Tudor martyrdoms, and the mediaeval monasteries, is the rare exception. But in this, as in many other ways, London is improving, and there is reason to hope that in days not far distant the average resident in London will begin to feel some of that pleasure in seeing and studying famous buildings and objects, which for the most part is now met with self-satisfied tole- rance when displayed by the country cousin, or the intelligent foreigner. Whole volumes of London history are written in the walls, and spires, and monuments, and re- cords of the City churches. If you wish to appreciate Wren's genius, go into St. Stephen's, Walbrook ; if you wish to be carried back in thought to a remote antiquity, spend half an hour in St. Bartholomew the Great, or in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate ; if you love the literary and historical associations of the past, look in at the open door of St. Giles', Cripplegate, of St. Saviour's, Southwark, of St. Andrew Undershaft, of Allhallows, Barking. Now-a-days the doors are almost always open during business hours, and the habit once formed of looking in during a spare five minutes will add many an interesting item to your stock of information about London. We indicate as briefly as possible, by a few good examples, the richness of this vein of London research. Passing out of the south-eastern corner of Smithheld, by that splendid old archway within a few yards of which martyrs have been burnt, and gorgeous tournaments held, and entering the door at the base of the tower shown in the engraving on page ii6, you The SuuiH Aisle of the Choir of St. Bartholomew the Great. ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. '59 pass in a moment from the nineteenth into the twelfth century. You see a fragment, it is true, but a very noble fragment. You see the choir with its aisles and part of the transept of the great priory church founded by Rahere in 1123. It is a superb specimen of pure Norman architecture, and with the sole exception of St. John's Chapel, in the Tower, is the oldest piece of church architecture of any size in London. It has recently been very well restored. On the south side of the choir is a beautiful oriel, dating from the sixteenth century, and known as Prior Bolton's pew, which the prior occupied during service, or whence the sacristan watched the altar. On the north side of the choir is the splendid tomb of the founder, to whose benevolence London is also indebted for the great hospital opposite the church At the foot stands an angel, and on either side kneels a monk with a Bible open at Isaiah li ' The Lord shall comfort Zion He will comfort all her waste places ; and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord ; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.' Another handsome tomb is that to Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who died in 1589. It is made of alabaster, and is placed in the south am- bulatory. A short distance to the east of .Smithfield, entered by an archway from Red Cross Street, stands the church of St. Giles', Cripplegate. The old gate, so-called perhaps from the cripples who begged there, was demolished in 1762. The chiu'ch tower rises high above some quaint old houses that yet remain before it, but doomed in all probability speedily to disappear under the pressure of business requirements. The building dates from 1545, in which year the church was rebuilt after a fire. Here Fo.xe, the author of the Book 0/ Martyrs, was buried in 1587; Frobisher, the Arctic voyager, in 1594 ; and John Milton in 1674. In this parish Paradise Lost was written. On August 20th, 1620, Oliver Cromwell was here married to Elizabeth Bowchier. Lancelot Andrewes was at one time the vicar. The Tomb ov Raiikke. i6o LONDON PICTURES. In the same neigh- bourhood are both the Charterhouse and the remains of St. John's Priory. The former was founded in 1371, and suppressed by Henry VIII. in 1537, the well- known story of the way in which the monks met their dissolution being one of the most impressive in the whole Reformation history. In 161 1 Thomas Sut- ton purchased the pro- perty, and made it a school for forty ' poor boys ' and eighty ' poor men.' The school, now one of the large modern public schools, was re- moved to Godalming in 1872. The old build- ings are now occupied by the Merchant Tay- lors' .School. Barrow, Addison, Blackstone, Grote, Leech, Thacke- ray, and a host of other noted and famous men, were educated here. No reader of TJie Neivcomes can ever for- get the part the Char- terhouse plays in that story. The Great Hall, the Great Staircase, and the Great Chamber, are all fine specimens of sixteenth-century work. Of the old establish- ment of the Knights .-^ I'. l.lM.K^', CKI :..,;'; \ M St. Olave's, Hart Street. ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. 163 of St. John, the only remaining reHcs are the Norman crypt of the old priory church and St. John's Gate, dating from 1502, which still spans St. John's Lane. Mark Lane is one of the busiest centres in London, and contains the Corn Exchange. On the east side of Mark Lane is Hart Street, and the church of which we give an enpfravingf is one of three in London dedicated to Olaf the Saint, the typical Norwegian hero, the man under whose influence Norway became nominally Christian, and who was killed in 1028 at the battle of Stiklestad. He was afterwards canonized. It was not in the area devastated by the Great Fire, and consequently escaped the fate of so many sister churches. In the graveyard multitudes of the victims of the Great Plague were buried. The skulls over the gateway grimly commemorate this fact. Samuel Pepys lived in this parish, and regularly attended the church. He frequently refers to it in his Diary as 'our owne church.' He was buried here in 1703. His wife and his brother also lie here. In the famous Diary there is this characteristic reference to the church alter the Plague : ' This is the first time I have been in the church since I left London for the Plague ; and it frightened me to go through the church more than I thought it could have done, to see so many graves lie so high u|)(in the churchyard, and where people have been buried of the Plague. I was much troubled at it, and do not think to go through it again a good while.' On a brass erected to the memory of John Orgone and his wile EUyne, 1584, is the following inscription: — ' As I was, so be ye ; As I am, ye shall be ; That I gave, that I have ; That I spent, that I had ; Thus I ende all my coste, That I lefte, that I lost.' The last of London's churches to which we can here refer, is by no means one of the least. It is now known as St. Saviour's, Southwark, but the ancient name was St. Mary Overey. It has had an even more chequered history than has usually fallen to the lot of a City church. Though possessing some of the finest architecture in London, it has suftered more from the hands of restorers than perhaps any structure in London. In 1839, for some undiscoverable reason, the fine harmonious nave was pulled down and a building erected in its place admirably adapted for modern worship, in which the sermon is a conspicuous and important part, l)ut as much out of keeping with the transepts and choir to which it is united as it is ])ossible to conceive. Great efforts are now (1890) being made to obtain funds for the destruction of this and the restoration of a nave that shall resemble the original. Here also in early times stood a priory, ami to this the church belonged. It was tounded in Henry the M 2 1 64 LONDON PICTURES. First's reign. Poor at first, when the fame of Thomas a Becket thronged the road to Canterbury with pilgrims, it began to get rich. It gradually obtained possession of the two parishes of St. Margaret and St. Mary Magdalene, and in 1540 these were united to form the parish of St. Saviour's, and the old priory church became the church of the new parish. The church was built by Gifford, Bishop of Winchester, in the thirteenth The Nave and South Transept, St. Saviour's, Southwark. century, and Winchester House, the town residence of the bishops of that see, formerly stood between St. Saviour's and the river. The choir is a beautiful specimen of I'larly English architecture, a special feature in it being the magnificently carved screen, separating it from the Lady Chapel, erected by Fox, Bishop of Winchester, in 1528. Upon it can be seen his device, the pelican. The Lady Chapel is interesting in itself, but doubly so for all Protestants for the memory of scenes that have ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. .65 occurred in it. Here in 1555 Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, held the court which condemned two notable men to death. One was Bishop Hooper, the other was John Rogers, Vicar of St. Sepulchre's, the editor of the first great English Bible, that known as Matthew's Bible, printed and published in 1537. This, rather than Coverdale's, which was published in 1535, is the true primary English Bible, being, with the exception of H. Chronicles to the end of the Old Testament, chiefly the work of Tyndale. So strong was the popular sympathy for Rogers that he had to be taken secretly to Newgate, whence he was led out to be burnt in Smithfield, his martyrdom taking place in full view of the gateway leading to St. Bartho- lomew the Great. St. Saviour's is exceptionally rich in monuments. In the Lady Chapel is the tomb of Lan- celot Andrewes, Bishop of Win- chester, who died in 1626, and called in the inscription vicritissinntnibinicn orbis Christiani. In the south tran- sept is the tomb of Gower, author of Confcssio Avian- iis, who died in 1402. Many of the monumental in- scriptions deserve attention for their quaint and curious wording. Perhaps the most outrageous is the rhyme placed over a certain Miss Barford : ' Such grace the King of Kings bestowed upon her. That now she Hves with Him, a Maid of Honour.' The neighbourhood is closely associated with Shakespeare and the great dramatic writers of the Elizabethan age. Hence it is not surprising to find traces of them in the church reo-isters. Amongr the entries are these : 'March 20, 1639-40, buried Philip Massinger, a stranger;' and under 1607, ' Edmond Shakesjjeare, a player, in the church ' ; the former being the dramatist, the latter a brother of England's greatest poet. In London, naturally Nonconformity has been an increasing power ever since the days of Elizabeth. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 not only The Lady Chapel, St. Saviour's, Southwark. 1 66 LONDON PICTURES. The Old Weigh House Chapel. deprived the Estab- lished Church of multitudes of her most spiritual and ablest ministers, but it also gave to Non- conformity a great impulse, and that notwithstanding the persecution and legal disabilities suffered by both ministers and people. Cast out of the Church of the State, compelled for generations to seek obscurity rather than prominence, and yet ever becoming a stronger influence for good in the life of the metropolis and of the nation. Nonconformity cannot point to her St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey. But traces of her presence are not lacking. She has greatly suffered, it is true, at the hands of the improvers of modern London. Old centres, like Fetter Lane Chapel, Spa • ■' - Fields Chapel, Zoar Chapel, South- wark, have either entirely disappeared ^;sj»J9J:a:r:- or have ceased to be used as centres for worship. On the other hand, the growing power, wealth, and influence of the free Church life, is shown by the handsome buildings that are spring- ing up in all parts of London, and by the energy with which the free churches are doing their share in the evangelization of the millions of the metropolis. During the last twenty years Spa Fields Chapel, so closely associated with the work of the Countess of Hun- tingdon, and rich in its associations with Whitefield and the Evanp-elical Revival, has disappeared ; the King's '-^^i^^^jaafc?- ; =ii:^— ~ wB,r^.^gF^^/ :^^ Weigh House Chapel has been swept the new Chapel, destroyed in 1883. ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. 167 away in order to make room for a railway station, and the old Surrey Chapel, around which clusters such a cycle of stories and incidents relating to its famous minister, Rowland Hill, has been diverted to business puri)oses. The local habitation changes, but the spiritual work goes forward. In the splendid pile of buildings known as Christ Church, in the Westminster Bridge Road, the work of old Surrey Chapel is carried forward, and in a new, handsome, and commodious home in Robert Street, Oxford Street, the King's Weigh House Chapel will continue to influence the religious life of London. We give illustrations of the old and the new Weigh House Chapels. The first is the building erected in Eastcheap after the Great Fire. The .'SURREY CHAI-KL. (^From an Old Print,) church had begun to worship in 1662 in the Weigh House that stood in Cornhill, thus affording an illustration of the fact that the City was ever ready to place buildings at the disposal of those who loved liberty of conscience. In the building originally erected about 1695, and subsequently altered and enlarged, the church life was carried on under such ministers as John Knowles, Dr. Langford, Ur. Wilton, and John Clayton. In 1829 Thomas Binncy, in many respects one of the greatest Nonconformist preachers of the nineteenth century, became pastor. For him the new church was built, he preaching the last sermon in the old Weigh House on May 25th, 1834, from the text, 'Arise, let us go hence,' while John Angell James preached the first in the new building on May 28th of the same year, from i68 LONDON PICTURES. the text, ' And there they preached the Gospel.' Admirably fitted for its purpose, well and strongly built, the New Weigh House might have stood Christ Church, Westminster Bridge Road. for generations, but after a life of barely fifty years, in 1883 it was purchased and removed by the railway company whose station now stands upon its site. ECCLESIASTICAL LONDON. 169 Surrey Chapel, an unprepossessing octagonal building, still standing in the Blackfriars Road, at the corner of Little Charlotte Street, was built for Rowland Hill, then a preacher of considerable fame, and opened in 1783. There for fifty years the powerful and eccentric preacher laboured ; in the adjoining parsonage in 1833 he died. The stories of his wit and readiness are as numerous, and many of them probably as apocryphal, as those told of the Rev. Charles Spurgeon, whose enormous church, only a few minutes' walk from Surrey Chapel, when thronged with its average congregation, is one of the sights of London. Rowland Hill was a good organizer of religious work, a friend of the Sunday School, an active philanthropist, yet it is to be feared he is now remembered more for his witty and eccentric sayings than for his wise and influential deeds. When he saw a number of people taking refuge from the wet in the chapel, he remarked that he had heard of people making religion a cloak, but never before of their makin^f it an umbrella. To him is attributed the remark, the sinfrino- at his services being exceptionally good for the time, that he did not see why the devil should have all the best tunes. Southey, who went to hear him, thus describes the result : 'His manner was animated and strikintj, sometimes impressive and dignified, always remarkaljle ; and so powerful a voice I have rarely or ever heard. Sometimes he took off his spectacles, frequently stooped down to read the text, and on these occasions he seemed to double his body, so high did he stand. He told one or two familiar stories, and used some odd expressions, such as "A murrain on those who preach that when we are sanctified we do not grow in grace ! " And again, " 1 had almost said I had rather see the devil in the pulpit than an Antinomian ! " The purport of his sermon was good ; nothing fanatical, nothing enthusiastic ; and the Calvinism it expressed was so qualified as to be harmless ; the manner, that of a performer as great in his line as Kean or Kemble ; and the manner it is which has attracted so large a congregation about him, all of the better order of persons in business.' He sometimes received from those he addressed more than he bargained for. One day, hearing a drayman swear fearfully, he rebuked him, and said, ' Ah, my man, I shall appear one day as a witness against you ! ' ' Very likely,' replied the man, ' the biggest rogues always turn King's evidence ! ' On the expiration of the lease the congregation migrated to the handsome modern church in Westminster Bridge Road, opened for worship in July, 1876. This structure, together with such buildings as the Metropolitan Tabernacle, the City Temple, Westminster Chapel, and Union Chapel, Islington, illustrate alike the growth of the free churches of London, and also the progress of religious liberty. The Great Seal. CHAPTER V. TiiK Imi'erial Government and the Royal Palaces. THE Imperial Government of the British Empire is carried on in the Houses of Pariiament and in the various pubhc offices which form such j)rominent objects in the neighbourhood of that great pile of buildings in which the Lords and Commons pass the fateful measures which determine, so far as legislation can, the happiness or the suffering of the nation. It is beyond our province to enter into the details of the constitu- tion or administration of Enq-land. In modern times, although the term ' limited monarchy ' sufficiently describes the government, the steady drift has been in the direction of democracy. The bulk of the legislation of the nineteenth century has been directed towards such great reforms as the widening of the franchise, popular education, equalization of taxation, the simplification of civil and criminal law, and similar matters of vital import to the nation as a whole. Hence, the power of the government tends to centre more and more in the House of Commons, and the controlling influence in the hands of the Prime Minister of the day and his cabinet. Following this tendency, we begin our series of pictures with the great buildings, some recent, some ancient and historic, which cluster in the neighbourhood of Westminster Hall. A royal palace e.xisted here from very early times. Here Canute for a time had his home, and here Edward the Confessor lived, entertained 'mam 1 --^; P. C-tarxv, ^vTnK«t.r^___._ »'• J The New Palace oi- WEai.MiNiiLK, iku.m Lameltu liKiDGi:. THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE ROYAL PALACES. 173 William the Norman, and finally died. The Conqueror and his successors resided here from time to time, and indulged their love for building. To William Rufus we are indebted for the superb Westminster Hall, and Stephen built the chapel dedicated to his namesake, the proto-martyr. Destroyed by fire in 1298, it was rebuilt in the finest Gothic style by Edward II. and Edward III. Since in early times the King presided in person over his courts, these also were attached to the palace at Westminster, and it was not until 1882, on the opening of the new Law Courts, that their severance from Westminster became complete, except in so far as the House of Lords continues to act as the ultimate Court of Appeal. The year 1834 was fraught with an evil destiny for the old palace. In the great fire on Westminster in 1647. [After a print by Hollar.) October 16th, all traces of the palace, including buildings most intimately associated with the growth of England, were swept away, except the crypt of St. Stephen's Chapel and the Hall of William Rufus. As noted above, for a long period the Commons assembled in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, but in the reign of Edward \T. St. Stephen's Chapel was set apart for that purpose, and continued in use until 1834. Thus for nearly three centuries this old Gothic church was the local habitation of the House of Commons. During that long period, what scenes it witnessed and what men here carried on the constitutional progress of Great Britain ! Here Raleigh, Bacon, Cecil, and the other great men of the Elizabethan epoch, guided tlie policy of the nation during the tremendous struggle, both diplomatic and military, with the Papacy and with Philip of Sjjain. Here, 174 LONDON PICTURES. under James I. and Charles I., gradually developed the riien and the parliamentary power which shattered the ' royal prerogative,' and gave England the first great impulse towards civil and religious freedom. Here Eliot, Pym, Hampden, Oliver Cromwell, and the men who supported them, overthrew the Stuart tyranny. It was from this chamber that Charles I. walked, baffled in his attempt to seize the Five Members, with the ominous cries of ' Privilege,' ' Privilege,' ringing in his ears, having taken, little as he dreamed it, a long step towards that scaftbld on which, seven years later, his life was to end. Here the great struggle with James II., and the establishment of popular rights under William and Mary, took place. It was here that, under Lord North, that policy was initiated and persevered in that led first to the revolt and then to the Declaration of Independ- ence by the American Colonies. Those old walls echoed to the eloquence of the Pitts, Burke, Fox, Canning, the Parliamentar)- giants of ninety years ago ; and the last great historic conflict there fought and won was the struggle that ended in the pass- ing of the Reform Act of 1832. New men, new methods, new forces, were thus brought into direct relation to the governing powers of the nation, and it was not without significance that just at this crisis in national affairs the old home of the Commons, lono- felt to be inadequate to modern requirements, should be swept away, thus necessitating the erection of the new Palace of Westminster on a colossal scale, no longer as a royal residence, but as the fitting home of imperial government. Our illustration on p. 176 gives a famous scene in the old chamber. It represents Eliot, in 1629, defending the rights of the Commons, the Speaker meanwhile being held in the chair, which, in deference to the roval will, he was anxious to leave before Eliot's motion was carried ThK LoiiliY OF THE OLD HOUSE OF COMMONS. THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE ROYAL PALACES. •75 It was then that EHot uttered the famous words, so soon to be vindicated : ' None have gone about to break Parliaments but in the end Parliaments have broken them.' Although so much has perished that we would fain have had preserved, there still stands at Westminster a building whose historic interest is second The House of Commons in the time of James I. to none in England — the great hall of William Rufus. Like the other rulers of his race, the Red King was a great builder. He did much towards the completion of the Tower; he set over against the Confessor's monastery a huge banqueting hall. The contrast in the buildings expresses well the contrast in the characters of the two kings. Like so many of these ancient structures, \vc sec it only after it has passed through many 176 LONDON PICTURES. vicissitudes. Henry III., Edward I. and Edward II. all had a hand in it. In 1 29 1 it was damaged by fire, and in 1398 Richard II. enlarged it and added the splendid roof, which from that time to this has been one of the Eliot Defending the Rights of the Commons. marvels of London. It has the distinction of being one of the largest halls in the world with a wooden roof unsupported by columns. It is two hundred and ninety feet long, sixty-eight wide, and ninety-two high. Rich in its architecture, it is richer still in its memories. Let us glance THE IMPERIAL GOVERXME.VT AND THE ROYAL PALACES. 177 at a few of the events that have had this grand old hall as their scene during the last eight hundred years. Once only did William Rufus carouse in it ere the fatal arrow terminated his unworthy life. Here Henry I. held his festi\al on the occasion of his marriage with the Saxon Edith, who became the 'good Queen Maud.' Here Henry II. established the royal courts of justice ; here in 1265 the first meeting of anything that can fairly be described as the House of Commons assembled; here in 1356 Kdward HI. received the royal captives from the Battle of Poitiers; Richard II., the second founder of the hall, like the first, held but one festival in it, and then was deposed from the throne he had disgraced. All the coronation festivals of the English sovereigns down to George IV. were held here, and the one King of luigland who has been brought to trial for high crimes and misdemeanours here received his fatal sentence. The great current of the legal life and action of the nation has flowed through the courts that for many centuries here had their home, while the mere enumeration of the great state trials bring centuries of Eiiglish history before us. William Wallace, Sir John Oldcastle, the Duke of Buckingham, Wolsey's rival. Sir Thomas More, the Protector Somerset, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Elizabeth's Earl of Essex, Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, and the haughty Strafford, all stood their trial here, and all went forth to a speedy and in many cases a cruel doom. Here the famous trial of the Seven Bishops resulted in their triumphant acquittal in 1688, and the last great state pageant of the kind held in the old hall was that so brilliantly described by Macaulay when Warren Hastings was impeached by the House of Commons, led by Edmund Burke, the trial, after dragging on for a weary seven years, resulting in the acquittal of the great satrap. Our engraving shows the Hall as it appeared at that time. Now it forms an approach — the most magnificent of several — to the new Palace of Westminster, the stately home of the English Parliament, erected between 1840 and 1859 from plans by Sir Charles Barry, at a cost of about ^3,000,000. Built in the style known as the Tudor or late Gothic, it covers nearlv nine acres of ground, and contains about eleven hundred apartments. It has three grand towers — the Victoria Tower, about three hunclred and fifty feet high (next to the dome of St. Paul's the most conspicuous object in London) ; the beautiful Middle Tower, which rises up threi; huntlred feet above the Central Hall ; and the Clock Tower, close to the north end of Westminster ISridge, three hundred and eighteen feet high, the home of the great clock, whose hands are eleven and a half feet long, which takes five hours to wind up, and whose bell, ' Big Ben,' weighing thirteen tons, can be heard over nearly the whole of London on a quiet evening. The great facade of this splendid pile is on the river front, along which it extends for nine hundred and forty feet. It is ornamented by statues of all the monarchs from the Concjueror, together with their armorial N 178 LONDON PICTURES. bearings. At the end nearest Westminster Bridge the Speaker resides ; at the other extremity Black Rod, one of the officials of the House of Lords. Between the Speaker and the centre of the facade is the Commons' Library, next to Black Rod the Lords' Library. Entrance to the House of Commons is obtained by passing through Westminster Hall, then turning to the left through St. Stephen's Hall, which stands over the ancient St. Stephen's Crypt, thence into the Central Hall, a magnificent octagonal apartment, sixty feet in diameter and seventy- five feet high, with a beautiful stone vaulted roof, from which a passage Westminster Hall at the close of the Eighteenth Century. leads straight to the Lobby of the House of Commons, and thence to the famous House itself. This apartment, the real centre and source of the government of England, was purposely kept small for acoustic reasons. But one great drawback of this is, that although there are six hundred and seventy members, only four hundred and seventy-six can be seated at any one time. When, in iS86, Mr. Gladstone introduced his celebrated Home Rule Bill, an unprecedented spectacle was witnessed, the floor of the House, extending from the Clerks' table to the door opening into the Lobby, being crowded with chairs for the accommodation of members who could find no N 2 a 5 51 THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE ROYAL PALACES. i8i Other seats. The House is seventy-five feet long, forty-five wide, and lorty- one high, oak-panelled, and supplied with benches upholstered in green leather. The Speaker sits in a handsome chair directly opposite the Lobby door, the benches to his right being occupied by supporters of the Govern- ment, to his left by the Opposition. A passage from the Central Hall, directly opposite that to the Commons, leads to the Peers' Lobby, and thence to the House of Lords, the throne occupying a similar position to the Speaker's chair in the Com- mons. This chamber is much more gaudily decorated than the House of Commons, and is larger, measuring ninety feet in length and forty-five in width and height. The benches, which will seat tour hundred and thirty-four peers, are covered with red leather. In addition to -^^ I these great apartments, there are royal TiiE Horse Guards from St. James's 1'akk. rooms. Waiting halls, conference chambers, and an enormous number of committee rooms. Throughout the whole edifice the decorations in frescoes, paintings, brass, wood, and stone work have been carried out with great richness of detail, and, generally, with very great success. Facing Old Palace Yard is Parliament Street, leading into Whitehall, and a short distance further on, in the direction of Charing Cross, we come to Downing Street, the official home of the Prime Minister for the time being, and the centre of the great government offices. Between Downing Street and Charles Street immense blocks of buildings are occupied by the Home Office, the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, and the India Office. Facing Whitehall, and beginning at Downing Street, come successively the lS2 LONDON PICTURES. Treasury, containing also the Offices of Education, Privy Council, and Board of Trade, the Horse Guards, and the Admiralty. The War Office is in Pall Mall, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has an official residence in Downing Street. This short narrow street takes its name in all probability from a certain The Cabinet Roo.m, Downing Street. notorious Sir George Downing of Charles the Second's time, and the dingy row of houses, so famous in English history, may possibly date from his time. George II. gave No. lo to Sir Robert Walpole and to his successors THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE ROYAL PALACES. 183 in the office of First Lord of the Treasury for ever, and since his day every statesman of front rank has been more or less closely associated with this dingy old dwelling. From the waiting room, used by Lord Beaconsfield as a dining room, there is a view of the little garden where perhaps Pepys and Addison and the men of their day may have walked. The chief interest naturally centres in the Cabinet Room, for here Lord North, Pitt, Grey, Palmerston, Beaconsfield, and Gladstone have all presided over deliberations which have shaped the national legislation, and determined questions of peace and war. It is a handsome, well-lighted apartment, separated from a smaller room by folding doors. The walls are lined with bookshelves, and in the centre stands the long table covered with a green cloth, to obtain a seat at which is the legitimate ambition of a rising statesman. The number of Cabinet Ministers has varied from eleven to seventeen, the feeling being in favour of the smaller number, although recent ministries have had about fifteen. No officials other than the ministers are present at a meeting, and no official record is kept of what is done. Nevertheless, such is the enterprise of the modern Press, that accounts more or less accurate from time to time appear of what takes place in this august centre of government. Whitehall takes its name from the old palace that once stood there, and of which only one fragment now remains, the building known as the Banqueting Hall, from one window of which Charles L came out in order to reach the scaffold on that fatal January morning in 1649. The property of the monastery at Westminster once extended to the Fleet, and in the reign of Henry HL, Hubert tie Burgh, the Chief Justiciary, purchased the property, and on his death bequeathed it to the convent of Black Friars, in Holborn, who in 1248 sold it to Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York; and known as York House it continued to be the town residence of the northern archbishops until the time of Cardinal Wolsey. That splendid prelate greatly enlarged it, and here displayed all that pomp and luxury for which he was famed, and which was no insignificant factor among the causes that led to the PInglish Reformation. Here he gave some of those entertainments which so delighted his royal master, and here Shakespeare represents Henry \'III. as first meeting Anne Boleyn. Here Wolsey delivered up the Great Seal on his fall, and hence departed for Esher, York Place becoming Crown property. Henry enlarged and adorned it, the grounds covering the space now enclosed between Scotland Yard and Bridge Street, and between the Thames and what is now the centre of St. James's Park. To this Shakespeare refers in the words : — ' Sir, you Must no more call it York Place, that is past : For, since the cardinal fell, that title's lost; 'Tis now the king's, and called— \Vhitehall.' i84 Ld.vDOJv Pictures. He erected over Whitehall, then a narrow thoroughfare, two gates, one of which, built by Holbein, was a splendid piece of architecture, and survived until 1750, when the Duke of Cumberland pulled it down, but never carried 'out his plan of rebuilding it at Windsor. ' In his closet at Whitehall, being ■St. Paul's Day (Jan. 25th, 1533), Henry married Anne Boleyn, and here on .^an. 28tb, 1546, he died; hence, in 1554, Elizabeth was sent to the Tower; here, in 1555, Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, died; hence Elizabeth went to open her first Parliament, and here, in 1603, her body lay in state [irior The Gateway to St. James's Palace. to her burial in Westminster Abbey. In the garden of this palace a few days after his accession, James I. knighted three hundred gentlemen. 1 he old hall having been burnt, James I. resolved to construct a magnificent royal residence here, and the work was begun by Inigo Jones. He finished in 1622 the building that still survives, and which was intended simply as the centre of one wing of his plan, which was on such a magnificent scale that, completed, the palace would have covered twenty-four acres. Whitehall reached its highest splendour during the reign of Charles I., who held his THE IMPERIAL GOVERXMENT AND THE ROYAL PALACES. '85 Court here, never dreaming how his reign was to close. Here Oliver Cromwell lived for some time, with John Milton as his secretary, and here, in 1658, on the anniversary of his great victories of Dunbar and Worcester, the great Protector passed to his rest. Here Charles II. held the most profligate English Court of modern times. Here he told his brother James, who mentioned his fear that the king's life might be attempted, ' they will never kill me to make you king;' and here, in 1685, after apologising to those around him for the length of time he occupied in dying, he closed his wretched life, which began in exile, was spent in its prime in vice and in treason to his country, and to the religion wliich, by virtue of his office, he was bound to [)roless. Only a few minutes' walk from Whitehall, at the junction of Pall Mall and St. James's Street, stands another old palace, the gateway of which we give an engraving, forming one of the most picturesque views in London. The site even before 1190 was occupied by a leper hospital, and came into Henry the Eighth's posse.ssion by exchange in 1532. The palace is said to have been designed by Holbein. Anne Poleyn is commemorated by the device H and A still to be seen on the chimney-piece of one of the rooms. Henry spent very little time here, but Mary, his daughter, resided here after her desertion by Philip of Spain, and here closed the tragic story of her life on November 17th, 1558. Hither Charles I. came as the prisoner of Parliament, iS6 LONDON PICTURES. hence he went to his trial, and here he returned after his condemnation, and hence on the following day he went to execution. Charles II., James II., and Mary were all born in this palace, and here in 1677 Mary was married to William of Orange. To St. James's came William III. as soon as he reached London, and here also on his accession came George I., and here all the Georges and their households resided. Although the palace has The FA9ADE, Buckingham Palace ceased to be a roval residence, the official desigfnation of the British Court is 'The Court of St. James.' The guard is changed every day at 10.45 a.m., when one of the Guards' bands plays for a quarter of an hour in the court that looks towards Marlborough House. Queen Victoria was married in the Chapel Royal attached to the palace, and prior to the close of 1861 both Drawing Rooms and Levees were held here. But since that date the former have alvva\s been held at Buckingham Palace. THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE ROYAL PALACES. 187 The State Apartments are nearly all modern, but form a very handsome suite. The best time to see them is at a levee, and failing that, either immediately before or after one. At all other times they are so carefully swathed in brown holland that a tour of inspection, permission to make which is not easy to get, affords but little satisfaction. The remaining royal palaces included in the London area are Kensington and Buckingham, the former associated with the early life of Oueen Victoria, the latter her present home when resident in the capital. Kensington The I'lLLAR Room, Buckingham Palack. Palace was purchased from Finch, the Lord Chancellor, in 1690 by William III. He suffered from asthma, and found his health better here than in London. Here in 1694 Queen Mary died, and here in 1702 Macaulay's hero himself passed away. In 1714 Queen Anne, the last direct descendant of the Stuarts who occupied the throne, also died here. George III. never resided here, but he assigned apartments in it from time to time to members of his numerous family. The Duke of Sussex here collected his famous library, so rich in rare and carl)- editions of the .Scriptures. Here LONDOX PICTURES. the Duke of Kent lived after his marriage with Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, and, in the room of which we give an engraving, the Princess Victoria, their only daughter, was born on May 24th, 1819. Here, on the death of William IV. in 1837, in the old palace which up to that time had been her home, Queen X'ictoria, then only a girl of eighteen, received the news of her accession. Here she held her first Council. The palace, like Hampton Court, is now usually occupied by some of the children of the Queen, and by royal pensioners and members ot the aristocracy of limited means. Buckingham Palace is at once the most recent, the largest, and the least interesting of the royal palaces. It was originally built as a residence by John Sheffield, Duke of Bucking- ham, in I 703, and in 1791 was purchased by George III., who occasionally lived in it. George IV. enlarged it, but it was never the ordinary residence of the Court until the accession of Queen \'ictoria. In 1846 the "acade that now fronts on St. James's Park, three hun- dred and sixty feet in length, the State Ball-room, and other apart- ments, were added. Attached to the palace are large gardens. On the ground floor are very handsome apartments, enriched with portraits of the various royal and distinguished personages who have visited the Queen, and of presents and objects of interest connected with them. We give an engraving of the finest of these, that known as the Marble or Pillar Room. Access to the magnificent suite of State Apartments is gained by what is the finest architectural effect in the palace, the grand staircase of white marble. It is in Buckingham Palace that the Queen holds her Drawing A Dr4Wing-Room, Buckingham Palace. The RJarble Staircase, Buckingham PAi.Acii. THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE ROYAL PALACES. 191 Rooms three or four times a year. The importance of this function to those who move in what is technically known as 'society,' may be estimated from the fact that a young lady of high position is not supposed to be 'out' until she has been presented, and has kissed her sovereign's hand at a Drawing Room. The bridal ceremonies of a fashionable marriage are hardly considered complete until the bride has been ' presented ' on her marriage. A very rigid censorship of the list of those to whom cards of admission are Queen Victoria (1887). sent is exercised, and a verj- strict etiquette in point of dress and procedure is enforced. In fact, the e.xpense and fatigue to which English ladies will go in the' discharge of this loyal function is only surpassed by the dis- comforts to which the ordinary English woman will submit, and the energy she will display, in her efforts to sec the face of the Queen or of some member of the royal family. Our smaller engraving of the staircase gives some faint notion of the toilet mysteries which the fair debutantes have to undergo before they are fit to enter their sovereign's presence. 192 LONDON PICTURES. The chief apartments in the suite are the Throne Room, sixty-six feet long, in which the Queen receives her subjects, the Ball Room, one hundred and ten feet long and sixty broad, and the Picture Gallerj', one hundred and eighty feet long. This contains a small but in many respects a choice collection of paintings, mainly of the Dutch School. There are very fine examples of Rembrandt, b'rans Hals, Terburg, and many other masters of this school. It was in Buckingham Palace that the Queen passed some of the happy early years of her married life. Here the Princess Royal was born in 1840, and the Prince of Wales in i S I ^ -ii ^ I a ^ == 1 H I O i H « X s r-i i? k. LEGAL AND LITERARY LONDON. 303 considered the finest specimen of its class in London. The walls and windows are adorned with armorial bearings of the Templars and of members who have become peers. This Hall has a unique interest from a fact recorded by a barrister named Manning-, who under date of February 2nd, 1602, records that, 'At our feast we had a play called Tzuelfth NigJif, or What you Will, much like TIic Conicdv of Errors or JMcnccJude in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni.' Hence it follows that this old hall is the only building now standing in London which witnessed, during the poet's lifetime, a performance of one of Shakespeare's plays, at which Queen Elizabeth, according to tradition, was present. The fine old oak screen is said to date from 1575, and therefore cannot have been made, as popularly reported, of wood from the Spanish Armada, but it is nevertheless a handsome piece of work. Nathaniel Hawthorne found some congenial haunts in this part of London, and has described in his own fascinating manner this great hall : ' Truly it is a most magnificent apart- ment ; very lofty, so lofty indeed, that the antique oak roof is quite hidden, as regards all its details, in the sombre gloom that broods under its rafters. The hall is lighted by four great windows on each of the two sides descending half-way from the ceiling to the floor, leaving all beneath enclosed by oaken panelling ; which on three sides is carved with escutcheons of such members of the society as have held the office of reader. There is likewise in a large recess or transept a great window, occupying the full height of the hall, and splendidly emblazoned with the arms of the Templars who have attained to the dign'ty of Chief-Justices. The other windows are pictured in like manner, with coats of arms of members of the inn who have become judges ; and besides all these there are arched lights high towards the roof, at either end full of richly and chastely coloured glass, and all the illuminations of the great hall came through those glorious panes, and they seemed the richer for the sombreness in which we stood. I cannot describe, or even intimate, the effect of this transparent glory, glowing down upon us in the gloomy depth of the hall.' The New Library is a modern erection, containing about 30,000 volumes. The Hall of the Liner Temple is also a modern building, and was opened in 1870. The Temple Gardens are well kept, and annually the benchers hold a fine show of chrysanthemums. The roses have ceased to flourish here as they did in the days when Shakespeare laid in these gardens the scene of that plucking of the white and the red roses that led to so much bloodshed in the fifteenth century, between the great houses of York and Lancaster. The references to the Temple in English literature from Chaucer down- wards, and its associations with great names in English literature, as we shall see later on, are very numerous. Perhaps few of these references are so interesting, and none more musical, than that which Edmund .Spenser introduces into the last complete poem he ever penned, his Prothalanrivv?^ 204 LONDON PICTURES. or ' Spousall Verse,' in honour of the double marriage of Lady Elizabeth and Lady Katharine Somerset. It was written in 1596, and Spenser, very intimate with the whole neighbourhood from the fact that he had often stayed with his friend the Earl of Essex in his great mansion, of which the two lofty pillars at the end of Essex Street are a memento, represents the two brides under the image of two peerlessly white swans swimming slowly along the Thames. ' At length they all to mery London came. To mery London, my most kindly nurse, That to me gave this Life's first native sourse. Though from another place I take my name, An house of anncient fame ; There when they came, whereas those bricky towres The which on Themmes brode aged backe doe rjde Where now the studious Lawyers have their bowers There whilom wont the Templer Knights to byde Till they decayd through pride : Next whereunto there stands a stately place, Where oft I gayned gifts and goodly grace Of that great Lord, which therein wont to ease Whose want too well now feeles my freendles ease ; But ah ! here fits not well Olde woes, but joyes, to tell Against the bridale daye, which is not long : Sweete Themmes ! runne softly, till I end my Song.' Nearly opposite the Fleet Street entrance to Middle Temple Lane is another famous street, renowned for its legal associations — Chancery, or as it used to be called, Chancellor's Lane. Here abound those who deal in wigs, in strong boxes, and in law books ; here abound those huge piles of buildings which have sprung up during the last twenty years, full of offices for solicitors and others connected with the busy legal life of London, and here are still to be found some venerable and noted buildings. Immediately behind St. Dunstan's Church is situated what used to be known as Serjeants' Inn, the members deriving their name from the old Knights Templars' title of Frcrcs Scrjens or Fratns Scrvientes, as the serving brethren were called in the preceptories of that Order. Formerly the membership was confined to judges and serjeants-at-law, it having been the rule prior to the Judicature Act of 1873, that a man must have become a Serjeant before he could be made a judge. But in 1877, as a result of the great legal changes made by the 1873 Act, the members sold their Inn and appropriated the sum received therefor. Very near this old Inn stood Clifford's Inn, approached from Fetter Lane. It was in the Hall of this Inn that Sir Matthew Hale and seventeen other judges adjudicated upon the numerous and delicate and complicated property claims arising out of the Great Fire, and so well did they accomplish their work that their LEGAL AND LITERARY LONDON. *>S- portraits were painted for posterity, and are still to be seen in the Guildhall. A short distance up Chancery Lane, on the eastern side, an archway admits to the dingy old court-yard in which are situated the Rolls Court and Chapel. The office of Master of the Rolls dates from Edward the Third's reign, and until recent years these functionaries lived here. The ancient house in which the Masters used to reside still stands, and is partly occupied by offices. Like so many other bits of old London, it is living a threatened life, there being some talk of utilizing the site for an extension of the Record Office. The tiny Chapel dates from 1617, and was built by Inigo Jones. It is still used for service on Sundays, and is disfigured by some of the ugliest pews that London can now show. It contains one or two good monuments of the Stuart period, but its chief glory is a magnificent specimen of Torregiano's work — the Italian artist to whom we owe the tomb of Henry VII. — in the tomb of Dr. John Yonge, Master in the reign of Henry VIII. This tomb deserves a better fate than the dingy obscurity in which it now resides. The Earl of Strafford was born in Chancery Lane in 1593, and from 1627 to 1644 Izaak Walton lived in an old house at the western corner of Fleet Street. On the western side of Chancery Lane, about midway between Holborn and Fleet .Street, is the ancient gateway, bearing the date i5if>, leading into Lincoln's Inn, so called because it stands upon ground once occupied by the Earl of Lincoln's mansion. As Cromwell's secretary, John Thurloe, had rooms on the ground lloor of No. 24, Old Buildings, the great Protector doubtless often passed in under this okl gateway, and Sir Thomas More, Shaftesbury, Sir Matthew Hale, Thurlow, Mansfield, and Erskine, were all members of this Inn. Concealed behind a false ceiling of Thurloe's room were accidentally discovered the letters and correspondence ot Thurloe with Cromwell and the Parliamentary leaders, and which now constitute the valuable documents known as the ' Thurloe Papers.' The chapel dates from the reign of James I., and stands upon arches which form a crypt where lawyers and clients used to meet. The stained glass windows are very rich in colouring, and there is some fine oak carving. The very large and exceedingly handsome hall and library were built by Hardwicke in 1843-45, and opened by the (Jueen. The library is the oldest in London, dating from 1497, and contains about forty thousand volumes, including the best law library extant. It is very rich in legal MSS. Like the Temple, Lincoln's Inn has a fine garden. Beyond the Inn to the west is Lincoln's Inn Fields, one of the largest and pleasantest squares in London. At No. 13 is the Soane Museum, which contains a valuable and varied collection of works of art, including Hogarth's series of pictures — the P.lection and the Rake's Progress — twelve in all. It was in this great scjuare that Babington and other conspirators concerned in the plots on behalf of Mary Oueen of Scots were executed 2o6 LONDON PICTURES. in 1586, and here in 1683 was perpetrated one of the worst judicial murders that have ever occurred in English history — the execution of WiUiam, Lord Russell. The fourth great legal centre — Gray's Inn — is situated in Holborn, on the north side, just opposite Chancery Lane. It was originally the residence The Chancery Lane Gate of Lincoln's Inn. of the family ot Gray of Wilton. The hall dates from 1560. It is a very fine example of ancient work, vastly superior to the old hall of Lincoln's Inn, and little, if any, inferior to that of the Middle Temple. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth hangs in this hall, and her memory is always celebrated in a special manner on grand occasions. The gateway opening in Holborn LEGAL AND LITERARY LONDON. 207 dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century, and at the beginning of the eighteenth the well-lcnown bookseller, Jacob Tonson, had his shop at ' Gray's Inn Gate.' The gardens were at one time a place of fashionable resort. Here, in 1662, Pepys came with his wife after church time to observe the fashions of the ladies, as his wife was then bent upon making some new dresses. Among the famous men who were members of this Inn, may be mentioned Gascoigne, Chief Justice in the reign of Henry IV. ; Thomas Cromwell, Henry the Eighth's great minister; Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester ; Lord Burleigh, Archbishop Laud, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and Lord Bacon, who here wrote the Novum Orgaiuiiii. In addition to the four Inns of Court, there were also several Inns of Chancery. These were nurseries, so to speak, for the great Inns, the students being in a sense law undergraduates, who only attained their full dignity on being admitted into the great legal institutions. All of these have now ceased to have any official connection with law except that barristers continue to reside in them. Of Furnival's Inn, .Sir Thomas More was once reader, and Dickens was residing there when he wrote the Pickivick Papers. Barnard's and Staple Inn are still among the quietest nooks in London. In Holborn, directly opposite Gray's Inn Lane, stands one of the most picturesque groups of old houses yet remaining in modern London. In the centre of this pile of ancient houses is an old arched doorway. The great thoroughfare is nearly always noisy with traffic and thronged with hurrying foot passengers, not one in a hundred of whom either glance at or give a moment's thought to the fine old London dwellings that have looked down upon so many hurrying, worried, and toiling generations. But pass through the old doorway, and you are at once in a different world. ' F"ar from the madding crowd,' you seem to have stepped back into the last century, and to have found in the heart of the world's busiest city a haven of rest and of peace. Here is a picture of the scene drawn for us by Nathaniel Hawthorne, although it is only just to observe that the fact of there being a thoroughfare from Southampton Buildings, on which the gateway shown in the engraving opens, through the Inn to Holborn, somewhat disturbs the quiet sleepiness of the Inn during business hours. ' I went astray in Holborn through an arched entrance, over which was "Staple Inn," and here likewise seemed to be offices; but in a court opening inwards from this there was a surrounding seclusion of quiet dwelling-houses with beautiful green shrubbery and grass plots in the court, and a great many sunflowers in full bloom. The windows were open, it was a lovely summer afternoon, and I have a sense that bees were humming in the court, though this may have been suggested by my fancy, because the sound would have been so well suited to the scene. A boy was reading at one of the windows. There was not a quieter spot in England than this, and it was very strange to have drifted inlo it so suddenly on 208 LONDON PICTURES. passing through the arch of the outer court. In all the hundreds of years since London was built, it has not been able to sweep its roaring tide over the little island of quiet.' The traditional origin of the name is that in very remote times an Staple Inn fro.m Soutuami iu-n Luildixgs, hostelry of the woolstaplers stood on this site. However this may be, since the days of Henry V. it has been an Inn, and since 1529 it has been associated with Gray's Inn. A little nearer Holborn \'iaduct is a narrow doorway, over which is LEGAL AND LITERARY LONDO.\. 209 written ' Barnard's Inn.' Entering and passing down a narrow passage, you come upon a tiny old hall, thirty-six feet long and twenty-two feet wide, the 1,-f Barnard's Inn. roof supported by ancient oak beams. Like Serjeants' and Furnival's Inns, this has ceased to have any corporate capacity. The inner court, of which we give an engraving, is used for residential chambers, and while liy no i' 210 LONDON PICTURES. means the cheeriest spot, akhough one of the quietest in London, it yet does not merit now, and possibly never did, the severe description given of it in Great Expectations as ' the dirtiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club for tom-cats.' Important and interesting as the whole region over which we have thus rapidly skirmished is from the legal point of view, it is equally so when examined in search of mementoes and associations connected with the men who have made for themselves famous names in English literature. The development of London has swept away many old literary landmarks, and there is scant sympathy on the part of the modern business spirit with the sentiment that an old house, rich in the memories of a great man, is a better possession than a hideously ugly seven-storey erection, crammed with offices of the smallest dimensions, great though the annual rental of the latter may be. It is useless, probably, under existing circumstances, to expect private owners to sacrifice large sums under any such feeling ; and before our governments — who squander millions upon military and naval experiments that often prove only the foolishness of the officials and committees which initiate them, while they starve as far as possible such institutions as the British Museum — can be educated up to the point of seeing that the purchase and preservation of historic buildings is a legitimate use of national revenue, most, if not all of the buildings it is desirable to preserve will have been swept away. The number of men and women in London whose whole time and energy are devoted to various literary pursuits is already very large, and is increasing. The number of those who with a certain amount of leisure on their hands, and under the idea that they have sufficient literary skill to justify them in putting pen to paper, is also, alas ! to judge from an editorial point of view, rapidly increasing. It is equally true that the number of readers is rapidly growing. Opinions may and do differ as to the present Board School system, but there can be no denial of the fact that it has done much to raise the general level of intelligence, and that it has enormously increased the reading public in Great Britain. All the more needful, then, is it that those whose work in life it is to provide the food for this appetite should strive to secure that it shall be wholesome, attractive, and elevating. Much is being done in this direction by the daily and weekly press of London which centres in and about Fleet Street. The achievements of the newspaper press are among, and deservedly among, the marvels of this generation. It is, however, competent for the lover of his country to hope that the daily press, and certain portions of the weekly, may be able to do much more in the way of encouraging the higher class of literature, even if to do this necessitates abbreviating the accounts of current horse- racing, or the curtailment of the nauseous details of the latest fashionable divorce suit. LEGAL AND LITERARY LONDON. 2If The current literature of the day still centres in a tolerably well-defined district, Paternoster Row. Here, or close at hand, are to be found the great publishing houses, like Longmans, Cassell's, and the Religious Tract Society, and great book distributing houses like the recently combined firms of Simpkin, Marshall & Co., W. H. Kent & Co., and Hamilton, Adams & Co. Tilt i'Ul.Llblll.Nu Dhlul UF Tilli KhLlulUbb i KAc 1 bULitlV, AT Mo. 50 FATERNUSTER KoW. But here again the altered conditions of London life are also tending to diffusion, and great publishers are now found dotted over the whole area from -St. Paul's' to John Murray's, in Albemarle Street. As a good illustra- tion of the development of modern publishing we may refer to the great society which issues this volume and the series to which it belongs. It was founded in 1799, and hence has not yet lived a century, in 56 Paternoster r 2 LONDON PICTURES. The Retail Department of the Religious Tract Society, No. 65 St. Paul's Churchyard. Row. It was founded for the publication, distribution, and sale of religious tracts and books. In the early years of its life the transactions on both the business side and the missionary or free circulation side were small. But it has developed until now the general catalogue is a volume, there are books upon its list the sales of which can be numbered by the ten thousand, and in some cases even by the hundred thou- sand, and the magazines sent out monthly from its depot have not only in the past been among the pioneers of pure and healthy periodical literature, but are also to-day well holding their own in the fierce competition of modern si.xpenny magazines. The following facts are quoted as an illustration of the enormous scale on which the publishing of to-day goes forward. Although the Society is one of the largest, it is yet only one out of many publishing houses situated in the world-renowned Paternoster Row. During the year closing March 31, 1889, the Society issued 62,696,190 separate publications. Of these 25,840,900 were tracts and leaflets and 1,054,990 bound books. The income from the busine.ss amounted to ^183,952, and from subscriptions, legacies, and donations ^17,829. The missionary work of the .Society consists of the circulation, either free or at a greatly reduced price, of books, tracts, and various publi- cations at home, and direct literary assistance to nearly, if not quite, LEGAL AXD LITERARY LONDON. ,213 all the missionary societies working among the heathen. This is given in the wav of money grants, large quantities of paper on which to print books and magazines, electrotypes to illustrate them, and various publications specially prepared for missionary work in nearly two hundred different languages and dialects. Upon this work the Society during the last year spent ^44,486, that is ^16,855 more than it received. This fact proves how baseless was the long since exploded idea that the subscriptions to the Society rendered it able to compete unfairly with the ordinary publisher. The truth is that the Society is more heavily weighted than the ordinary publisher. It is not simply a publishing house, able to issue any literature which will lind a ready market. It exists to preach the Gospel by means of the printed p^ige, and the constant aim of its publications is to set forth the way of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ by the inward working of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the business pays the entire work- ing expenses of both departments of the Society, and the profit remaining is generally nearly or quite equal to the free contributions of the Christian public in any given year. Thus the Society is the largest contributor to its own missionary enterprises, a result due to the enormous increase in the number of readers and to the successful way in which the officers of the Society for nearly a century have provided the kind of literature needed. Our illustrations represent the premises of the .Society, and also those of the British and Foreign Bible Society, another great religious literary enterprise, originated by the founders of the Religious Tract .Society, and directly springing out of that good work. The Bible Society last year issued 3,677,204 copies of the whole or portions of the Bible in 290 different languages and dialects, and its total income from all sources was /1 13.870. There are extant few, if any, houses in London now remaining associated ■with such great names as those of Chaucer, Caxton, and Shakespeare. With regard to the last, we know where certain buildings were situated with which he was connected, but there are only three still standing with which .Shakespeare was familiar, and within which we may well believe him to have been, possibly many times. These are the Middle Temple Hall, where it may be considered certain that he witnessed the performance of Tivi-l/th Night, already referred to ; Crosby Hall, in Bishopsgate .Street, which was occupied by the mother of his friend, Pembroke, and which the great dramatist has introduced into Richard III. ; and St. Saviour's, South- wark, the church in which his brother Edmund was buried. Shakespeare was associated with Blackfriars Theatre, a site commemorated in the name Play-House Yard, and said to be now occupied by Apothecaries Hall ; with the Globe Theatre, which stood on j>art of the site now occupied by Barclay and Perkins' Brewery ; and the Mermaid Tavern, which stood in 214 LONDON PICTURES. Cheapside, and where he used to meet Ben Jonson, and other wits of his time. Mr. W. J. Loftie, in his admirable History of London, thus refers to the great poet : ' The connection of William Shakespeare with Southwark is one of the most unquestionable facts in his biography. There was a second inn called the Boar's Head, in the High Street, immediately opposite the The Offices of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Queen Victoria Street. east end of St. Saviour's Church. His brother Edmund was buried in the church In 1607. His theatre was the " Gloabe upon Banckside," to which reference has already been made. Close to it, but rather more to the westward, was the Rose, another theatre. A little further in the same direction were two "pits," for bear-baiting and bull-baiting, and the locality is still, or was very lately, known as the Bear Garden, and is so marked on many maps. Another old name still extant is that of the Falcon Dock, LEGAL AND LITERARY LONDON. 215 close to which stood the Falcon Tavern, which is said to have been patronised by Shal<.espeare and his company. Paris Garden was exactly on the spot now covered by the southern approaches of Blackfriars Bridge. If the modern visitor, therefore, wishes to identify the place where Shakespeare played, he cannot do better than take the train from Charing Cross to Cannon Street, and when he has crossed the line of the Chatham and Dover Railway, he is in the region of IJankside. Looking t(nvard the river, he will see St. Peter's Church, immediately beyond which, a little to the right, were the bull and bear pits. The train then crosses the South- wark Bridge Road, on the left hand side of which, looking from the railway, is Barclay and Perkins' Brewery. It covers the site, not only of the Globe, but also of the Rose, the Hope, and various other places of a similar kind, which existed here from before Shakespeare's time until all theatres were abolished by the Commonwealth.' The engraving on page 48 shows the kind of house Michael Drayt