GRESHAM COLLEGE.--AUSTIN FRIARS.--GUILDHALL--ST. MARY'S,
ALDERMANBURY.--CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.--ST. SEPULCHRE'S
Through Milton's lifetime and for nearly a century after, there stood on
Gresham Street and Basinghall Street the famous Gresham College, founded
in 1579, in honour of Sir Thomas Gresham, who gave the Royal Exchange to
the city on condition that the corporation should institute lectures on
divinity, civil law, astronomy, music, geometry, rhetoric, and physics, to
be delivered at his residence. His dwelling-house was a spacious edifice
of brick and timber, "with open courts and covered walks which seemed all
so well suited for such an intention, as if Sir Thomas had it in view, at
the time he built his house." Seven professors were appointed and lectured
in the morning in Latin, in the afternoon in English for two hours each
day. Among the number was Sir Christopher Wren, who not only was the
greatest architect, but, as is elsewhere said, was one of the famous
astronomers of his day. It was out of his lectures on astronomy, which
were attended by learned men, that the Royal Society originated. On
Cromwell's death, all college matters were put in abeyance, and the
college was temporarily turned into barracks, and so polluted that Bishop
Sprat wrote to Wren that he "found the place in such a nasty condition, so
defiled, and the smells so infernal, that if you should now come to make
use of your tube [telescope] it would be like Dives looking out of hell
into heaven."
After the Fire, Gresham College was temporarily used for an Exchange,
where merchants met. "Gresham College became an epitome of this great
city, and the centre of all affairs, both public and private, which were
then transacted in it."
Except "London stone" and bits of the Old Wall, little more remains to
consider among the important landmarks of the city that was nightly locked
within the city gates, and which still endures after the Great Fire. Of
this little part, Austin Friars Church, on the site of the Augustinian
Convent, is the most notable. Of the extensive and magnificent
establishment that was founded here in 1253, nothing to-day remains but
the nave of the great church of former days, which is now reached through
narrow passages from Old Broad Street north of the Bank. Originally the
church was cruciform, with choir, transepts, and a "most fine, spired
steeple, both small and straight." Henry VIII. at the Dissolution bestowed
the house and grounds upon the first Marquis of Winchester, but the church
was given by the young King Edward VI. "to the Dutch nation in London, to
be their preaching place." From that day to this the Dutch have worshipped
here, and in the days of persecution it was the religious home of other
Continental refugees. In the generation before Milton, thousands of the
skilled artisans of the Netherlands and France had fled to England,
impoverishing the lands of the short-sighted tyrants who drove them forth,
to add to English industry and commerce. The most eminent pastor of these
exiles was a Polish nobleman, John a Lasco, who shepherded, not only this
flock, but all the other foreigners in England, and superintended their
schools as well. He was a friend of Melanchthon and Erasmus, was with the
latter when he died, and became possessed of his library.
It was to these refugees in London, Norwich, and other towns that
harboured them, that England owed the introduction of many new, choice
flowers, among them, the gillyflower, carnation, Provence rose, and
others. The handiwork of these industrious folk produced many new stuffs
unknown to English ladies, among others the fine light fabric known as
bombazine. One of the Dutch ladies, who taught the English to starch and
launder cambric ruffs, was so much sought after and charged such high
fees, that she soon earned herself a competence. Evidently these strangers
paid their way.
The church assigned to them in London once possessed a marvellous array of
tombs of noted men. The register is crowded with the names of earls and
barons, all of whose monuments were sold by the impecunious and callous
marquis for L100. Just before Milton's birth the fourth Marquis of
Winchester was compelled to part with all his possessions in Austin
Friars. At about this time the tower, declared to be "one of the
beautifullest and rarest spectacles" in the city, was pulled down, and the
choir and transepts were demolished. The size of the original building may
be imagined when we remember that the length of the nave alone is one
hundred and fifty feet to-day. The chronicler records that in the
beginning of the Dutch services, the church was filled to overflowing.
Whether there are fewer Dutch in London four centuries later, or fewer who
are glad to worship in their own tongue, cannot be said. But to-day, the
visitor, who on a Sunday morning walks through the silent and deserted
streets north of the Bank of England, and penetrates to the seclusion of
Austin Friars Church, will find but a scant congregation of perhaps two
hundred, who gather cosily within the curtains in the centre of the nave,
which shut out the great bare aisles. If he thinks of the old days when
Roger Williams taught Dutch to his learned pupil, John Milton, he may let
his fancy picture to him these men, who ranked among the nation-builders
of their day, stepping some Sunday morning under its Gothic arches from
out the greensward that then surrounded them, and listening to the gospel
in the tongue of those brave exiles who, like them, had fought for freedom
of conscience.
If the visitor waits after service, he may see in the pastor's room the
portrait of John a Lasco, to whom all the congregation point back with
pride, as the first and greatest preacher in their history; and the
courteous pastor may point out many things of interest that would escape
the casual observer. Standing at the front of the church, beside the
little tower at the left, whose beautiful spire no longer rises aloft, one
finds himself in the heart of the modern business world, relentless,
pushing, loving neither beauty nor the sacredness of age. One
sign--Barnato Brothers--may attract his attention in a window close to the
gray church walls. Here the ambitious and ill-starred king of African
mines, Barney Barnato, brought his power to bear upon the men on 'Change
a decade since. A decade hence his name, like John a Lasco's, will be
remembered by few. These names and the associations they suggest are no
unfitting theme for meditation on a Sunday morning stroll amid the stony
streets of London past and present.
Further west, amid the district swept by the Great Fire, stands Guildhall,
not as it stood either before or after the fire, but still worthy of
mention in the category of buildings that withstood the flames. Only the
roof perished in the fire, and its walls stood intact; but so great have
been the changes since their restoration that very little which belonged
to Milton's London remains above the crypt.
A clergyman, writing the year after the Great Fire, thus describes it, as
he saw it during that terrible conflagration: "And amongst other things
that night, the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood
the whole of it together, after the fire had taken it, without flames (I
suppose because the timber was such solid oake), like a bright shining
wal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished
brass."
The present roof is as nearly as possible a reproduction of the one that
perished in the fire: it is an open oak roof, and has a central louvre.
The figures of giants in its hall represent Gog and Magog, who were the
Corineus and Gogmagog of the ancient city pageants. The former was a
companion of Brutus, the Trojan, and according to tradition killed
Gogmagog, the aboriginal giant.
The crypt is reputed to be the finest now remaining in London. It is a
portion of the ancient hall of 1411. The north and south aisles had
formerly mullioned windows, which are now walled up. The vaulting, with
four centred arches, is notable, and is probably of the earliest of that
type.
The Guildhall was founded in 1411, in the time of Henry IV., and when
Milton was a boy had attained a certain venerableness. Within its walls
had taken place, not merely the civic banquets for which its modern
successor is noted, but also many tragic scenes in English history. Here
the evil-minded Protector who wished to supplant his boy-nephew, Edward
V., had his name presented to the assembled multitudes as the legitimate
monarch, by his oily courtier, Buckingham. The people, "marvellously
abashed," listened in dead silence, as the accomplished orator proclaimed
the bastardy of the little prince, and urged the claims of his ambitious
uncle. The speaker, somewhat disconcerted, explained again, louder and
more explicitly, his meaning. "But were it for wonder or fear, or that
each looked that other should speak first, not one word was there answered
of all the people that stood before; but all were as still as the
midnight." Then the recorder was summoned to use his efforts with the
people. "But all this no change made in the people, which alway after
stood as they were amazed." At last some servants of the duke, and
'prentices and lads "thrusted into the hall amongst the press," began
suddenly to cry out aloud: "King Richard, King Richard," and "they that
stood before cast back their heads marvelling thereat, but nothing they
said. And when the duke and the mayor saw this manner, they wisely turned
it to their purpose, and said it was a goodly cry and a joyful to hear
every man _with one voice_, and no man saying nay." Thus a bold _coup_,
struck with a masterful hand, surprised an honest people without organised
opposition and leadership, and as so many times in the history of the
Anglo-Saxon race, the voice of a small and powerful minority was
impudently declared to be _vox populi_.
One of the saddest sights that the Guildhall Milton knew ever witnessed
was the trial, in the reign of Henry VIII., of that young lady, Anne
Askew, whose courage and devotion never were surpassed within the
Colosseum, among the Christians who fought with beasts or were sawn
asunder. Having become a Protestant, she was driven by her husband, who
was a papist, from his home. King Henry, it might have been supposed,
would have at least taken no action against her, but she was arrested and
examined. The lord mayor of London asked her whether the priest cannot
make the body of Christ, to which she replied as shrewdly as Jeanne d'Arc
to her inquisitors: "I have read that God made man; but that man can make
God, I never yet read." She was condemned at Guildhall to death for
heresy. A daughter of a knight, this delicate lady, reared in comfort, was
carried to the Tower, thrust into a cell, where but for a few brave
friends she would have starved, and then her tender body was put on the
rack, and Chancellor Wriothesley himself applied such power as nearly rent
it in sunder. The story of her cruel death amid the flames at Smithfield
belongs rather to that bloody spot than to the Guildhall. Her life she
could have saved, even at the last moment, had her heroic soul faltered,
and unsaid what conscience taught. Those were tales to freeze the life
from out young hearts, that grandames told in Milton's boyhood. To the men
of his day, Guildhall stood chiefly connected with some of the most
remarkable trials in England's history.
Among them was that of Throckmorton for complicity in Sir Thomas Wyatt's
attempt against the Catholic Queen Mary. In those days, when trial usually
meant speedy death, his acquittal, due to his own forensic skill and
eloquence, is recounted in detail by historians as most remarkable. He it
was whose tomb in St. Catherine Cree's is mentioned, and for whom a London
street is named.
The church of St. Mary Aldermanbury is one that few visitors to London
ever enter, but the follower in Milton's footsteps will not fail to seek
out, a little west of the Guildhall, this church, whose registers record
that here Milton, at the age of forty-eight, married his second wife,
Katherine Woodcocke. Aldermanbury derives its name from the ancient court
or _bery_ of the aldermen, which is now held at the Guildhall. The church
stands in its tiny green churchyard closely surrounded by business blocks,
amidst the bustle of the city; on a summer noontide, in its shady retreat,
the seats are filled with loiterers who chat or meditate or read their
papers around the central monument.
This monument, though modern, is of great interest. It records the fact
that J. Heminge and Henry Condell, Shakespeare's fellow actors and
personal friends, lived many years in this parish, and are buried here.
Says the inscription: "To their disinterested affection the world owes
all that it calls Shakespeare; they alone collected his dramatic writings,
regardless of pecuniary loss, and without the hope of any profit gave them
to the world.
"First Folio: 'We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead,
without ambition of selfe-profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so
worthy a friend alive, as was our Shakespeare.'
"Extract from Preface: 'It had been a thing, we confesse, worthie to have
been wished, that the author himselfe had lived to have set forth and
overseene his own writings, but since it hath been ordained otherwise,...
we pray you do not envy his Friends the office of their care and paine to
have collected and published them, absolute in their numbers, as he
conceived them, who as he was a happy imitator of nature, was a most
gentle expression of it. His mind and hand went together, and what he
thought he uttered, with that easiness that wee have scarse received from
him a blot on his papers.'" In 1656 Milton's marriage took place in the
earlier church, of very ancient foundation. The present building was
designed by Wren, and was begun in 1668, during Milton's blindness. It has
a square tower capped by a square bell turret about ninety feet in height.
The register of the church, which was preserved, records that: "The
agreement and intention of marriage between John Milton, Esq., of the
parish of Margaret's in Westminster, and Mrs. Katharine Woodcocke of
Mary's in Aldermanbury, was published three several market days in three
several weeks ... and no exception being made against their intentions,
they were according to the act of Parliament, married on the 12th of
November, by Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices
for the Peace in the City of London." A justice instead of a clergyman was
prescribed by the Marriage Act which was then in force.
Judge Jeffreys of bloody memory is buried in the church (d. 1689).
A little west of it is Christ's Hospital, which, since its establishment
in 1552 by the boy-king, Edward VI., until the summer of 1902, has been
one of the most noted of London schools. Its revenue is about L60,000. Its
removal to Horsham in the country will provide the ample playgrounds and
modern accommodations that the times demand; but even an American, to say
nothing of native Londoners, must feel a pang of regret at the
disappearance from the street of the bright-eyed, bare-headed lads, whose
quaint costume has for centuries given their school its name of "Blue Coat
School." Anciently the boys wore caps, but now they go bare-headed through
the year.
The school was originally established on the site of the Gray Friars
Monastery, as a kind of asylum for poor children. Stow gives the following
account of the opening of the institution. "In the month of September they
took in near four hundred orphans, and cloathed them in Russet, but ever
after they wore Blue Cloath Coats, whence it is commonly called the Blue
Coat Hospital. Their habit being now a long coat of blue warm cloth, close
to their arms and Body, hanging loose to their Heels, girt about their
Waist with a red leather girdle buckled, a round thrum Cap tyed with a red
Band, Yellow Stockings, and Black Low-heeled Shoes, their hair cut close
their Locks short."
"Their fare was Breakfast, bread and beer, 6.30 summer, 7.30 winter.
Sunday, beef and pottage for dinners. Suppers, as good legs and shoulders
of mutton as can be bought. Tuesdays and Thursdays, same dinner as
Sundays. Other days, no flesh--Monday, milk porridge; Wednesday, furmity;
Friday, old peas and pottage; Saturday, water-gruel. Rost beef, 12 times a
year. Supper, bread and butter or bread and cheese; Wednesday and Friday,
pudding pies."
This seems to have been a liberal table compared with that of the famous
Winchester school in its early days, when two meals a day were all that
were allowed, except for invalids.
Stow mentions that "the King granted all Church Linnen formerly used in
the Churches of London" to the hospital, as a superabundance had been
found. Girls as well as boys were lodged and taught here. Stow tells us of
the custom which prevailed from his day to ours: "One boy being appointed,
goeth up into a pulpit there placed and readeth a chapter ... and prayers.
At the end of every prayer all the boys cry 'Amen,' that maketh a very
melodious sound. The boy that reads is designed for the university. A
Psalm is named by the same boy; and all sing with a good organ that is
placed in the said great Hall." He describes the grace said by one boy in
the pulpit, and the boys and girls quietly seating themselves while
"multitudes of city and court" came to witness it.
An ancient writer recounts the joy of the half-starved youngsters when
they were first taken into its dining-hall and saw the baskets heaped with
bread, and knew that there was enough for all. Among the buildings which
are about to be replaced by mercantile establishments there is little, if
anything, that Milton saw. Christ's Church, beside it, where Richard
Baxter lies buried, was built by Wren a little after his time.
Where so many famous men in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were
to be numbered as students,--Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and
others,--the one name on its register that would have most interested
Milton was that of William Camden who studied here, as well as at St.
Paul's. A visitor from Boston, Massachusetts, is interested to know that
in 1626, one little lad in yellow stockings and dark blue coat, who
studied Latin here to some purpose, was Ezekiel Cheever, who became the
master of the Boston Latin School. For thirty years he taught the Yankee
boys in the little wooden house on School Street at the foot of Beacon
Hill, and made them learn his famous "Accidence," which went through many
editions. Often as he wandered over the "rocky nook with hilltops three,"
where "twice each day the flowing sea took Boston in its arms," his
thoughts must have turned back to the walled city with its spires and
palaces and prisons which he and Milton knew when they were boys.
The London tourist, who visits London for the first time after 1902, will
miss seeing one of its most fascinating sights, for he can never stand in
the great dining-hall of Christ's Hospital on a Sunday noon and see the
procession of pink-cheeked lads in their knee-breeches and long skirts
come trooping in an orderly procession into the great hall, bearing great
platters of steaming meats and baskets piled with rolls. The "Grecians"
and "Deputy-Grecians," and the less distinguished rank and file will
never again pause here to listen to the Latin grace, nor will gaze at the
huge canvas on the long wall between the galleries at either end. One
wonders what will become of the old desks in the schoolroom, into which a
score of generations of schoolboys have carved their names, and whether in
their splendid new surroundings they will not look back half regretfully
to the dim old cloisters which linked them with their great historic past.
Old Newgate was a foul prison in Milton's day. Here in filthy chambers,
gentlemen like Ellwood, Defoe, and William Penn were thrown together with
felons. Diagonally across the street from the huge grim prison of later
days, which since 1770 has stretched its length along the thoroughfare
which bears its name, is St. Sepulchre's Church. From its tower the knell
was struck for executions at the neighbouring Newgate, and many a time
must the boys in Christ's Hospital and the Charterhouse School north of it
have listened in horrified curiosity as the bell tolled, and they knew it
meant that a man, blindfolded and with bound hands, was standing on the
scaffold in front of Newgate. St. Sepulchre's has been much altered since
Milton entered it, perhaps in search of the same monument that first of
all attracts Americans. This is the monument of that bold discoverer and
coloniser, John Smith, who settled Jamestown in Virginia the year before
Milton was born. Who knows but Milton may have met him, or have gazed upon
the dark-eyed Princess Pocahontas, who left her native forests and became
the bride of the Englishman Rolfe, after she had saved the life of the
gallant Captain Smith.
His old tombstone is nearly defaced, and lies in the side aisle, some
yards from its original site. A replica of the original inscription is
placed on a brass tablet near it:
"Here lyes one conquered, who hath conquered kings;
Subdued large territories and done things
Which to the world impossible will seem
But that the Truth is held in more esteem,...
Or shall I tell of his adventures since,
Done in Virginia, that large Continente?
How that he subdued kings unto his yoke,
And made those Heathen flee as wind doth smoke,
And made their land, being of so large a Station,
An habitation for our Christian nation."...
The above-mentioned "kings" were doubtless Indian sachems. The Anglo-Saxon
satisfaction at the way the heathen were made to flee like smoke, and make
room for a Christian nation, as shown by the writer of this effusion,
indicates that the white Christian of Smith's day was not unlike his
posterity three centuries later in the time of Cecil Rhodes and of
Philippine campaigns.
John Rogers, the Smithfield martyr, was vicar of this church. During his
residence in Antwerp, he had made the acquaintance of Tyndale, the
translator of the Bible, and continued Tyndale's work after his death.
Dean Milman tells us: "There is no doubt that the first complete English
Bible came from Antwerp under his superintendence and auspices. It bore
then and still bears the name of Matthews's Bible. Of Matthews, however,
no trace has ever been discovered. There is every reason for believing the
untraceable Matthews was John Rogers. If so, Rogers was not only the
protomartyr of the English Church, but, with due respect for Tyndale, the
protomartyr of the English Bible."
Among the most eminent men buried at St. Sepulchre's was Roger Ascham, in
1568. Doubtless Milton, before writing his own remarkable treatise on
education, must have studied the progressive theories of this man who
taught Latin and Greek to Queen Elizabeth.