said Godmother, “it may be useful to notice all that we are passing
now. Where you see that statue of Charles the First, there stood in
Elizabeth’s day, one of the crosses to the memory of Queen Eleanor.
Remember that, for one thing. We’re passing the Horse Guards, with
the soldiers on horseback outside. Remember exactly where the
gateway stands. Now look at this line of houses and buildings on the
left—Scotland Yard among them. Imagine them all swept away, what would
you see?”
“The river,” replied Betty. “The Victoria Embankment first, and then
the river.”
“Yes. Well, keep this picture of the present Whitehall in your head,
because you will look upon a very different one this afternoon.”
Betty smiled in anticipation of “the magic time” that was coming.
“I do wonder what London will be like in Queen Elizabeth’s day!”
she exclaimed. “Do you think we shall see her? And Shakespeare too,
perhaps?”
“Possibly,” said Godmother. “Here we are at home, and if you like, you
may amuse yourself by looking at an old map I’ve got upstairs, made
towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth. You will see that though
London has grown bigger since the days of Dick Whittington, it is still
full of open spaces and large gardens, even _within_ the walls. And
outside them, where now we have miles and miles of streets, it was
still nearly all open country, except on the south side of the river,
where you will see some interesting buildings marked.”
Betty was interested in the quaint old map, but it was one thing to
look at a map, and quite another to walk in the actual streets it
represented, and she longed for the afternoon.
* * * * *
“How shall we get back to-day?” she asked when the time came.
“There are many ways of getting into the Past,” Godmother replied.
“Sometimes a single word, or the sight of a picture, or a line of
poetry is the magic that will send one there in the twinkling of an
eye. To-day we will try one line from a poem written by a man called
William Dunbar. No one has ever praised London better than this poet,
who saw the city in the sixteenth century, though about fifty years
before Elizabeth came to the throne. Shut your eyes, take this book in
your hand, and say after me the line with which each verse of Dunbar’s
poem ends:
“_London, thou art the flower of Cities all_,” repeated Betty
obediently....
“Now you may look!” said Godmother after a pause and as Betty’s eyes
flew open, she added, “We are in the middle of the sixteenth century.
Elizabeth is Queen, and here we are once more on London Bridge.”
They were standing by the tower at the entrance gate, looking towards
the tower at the other end, leading into Southwark, but Betty did not
at first recognize it as the same bridge on which she had stood in the
Middle Ages.
“Why, it looks more like a _street_ than a bridge,” she cried. And
indeed when they began to walk across it, she and Godmother _were_ in
a street. Gabled houses lined the parapets on either hand, shutting
out any view of the river, and at the foot of all the houses, were
shops. Half-way across the bridge stood a fantastic-looking house which
Godmother said was called _Nonsuch_,—a perfectly delightful name,
Betty decided. Then came an open space from which one could look up and
down the river before the houses and shops closed in again and extended
right up to the gate and towers at the Southwark end of the bridge.
“Oh, how it’s altered!” cried Betty. “But the little Chapel of St.
Thomas is there still, and it’s the same bridge, of course, only built
over with all these funny old houses. And how the dress of the people
has altered too,” she went on. “Look at this lady coming with the
enormous ruff round her neck.”
“But they’re still very gay, aren’t they?” remarked Godmother. “Here’s
a fine young man approaching, with his long crimson silk stockings and
his slashed doublet, and the little red velvet cloak hanging from one
shoulder. You see the men are quite as gaily dressed as the women. Just
as they were in the fourteenth century. Only now the costume both for
men and women has changed.”
“London’s grown bigger since we last saw it,” said Betty, looking right
and left up and down the river from the open space where she stood.
“It’s had nearly two hundred years to do it in. But though the
buildings cluster more thickly, the old wall, as you notice, still
remains, and people enter or leave London through its gates. There’s
one of them, you see. It’s called Aldgate, which means Old Gate,
because it was one of the first to be built.”
“Is that where Aldgate Street is now?”
“Yes. Beyond it, as you know, in our day, London stretches on and on,
northwards and eastwards. But though there _are_ buildings outside the
gates, as you may see, they are set in green fields, and there is still
country just beyond the gates of London. Now let us wander about a
little to discover what changes there are since the last time we were
in the Past. Let us see how much of the old has gone, and what there
is that’s new.”
[Illustration]
They began their walk along the river bank, and very soon Betty saw
here and there, great spaces in which sometimes a wall, sometimes a
column was left standing. Otherwise, except for a litter of stones,
nothing remained of the buildings but ruins.
“What have they been doing here, Godmother?” she asked in surprise.
“Pulling down monasteries, colleges for priests, and hospitals that
were looked after by monks and nuns.”
“But _why_?”
“Now you’ll have to think of your history. About fifty years ago,
counting that we are now in the year 1590, Elizabeth’s father, Henry
the Eighth, was reigning. Remember his quarrel with the Pope. Remember
how he made his subjects become Protestants. The monasteries were the
homes of the monks, so they were swept away because they represented
the old Roman Catholic faith. When Elizabeth came to the throne, London
was as full of ruins as it had formerly been full of monasteries. Now,
as we shall see, new buildings are everywhere rising on the sites of
the old religious houses. But as yet there hasn’t been time to build
over _all_ of them. This, for instance,” she pointed to the crumbling
walls and broken pillars at which Betty was sadly gazing, “is still
nothing but a heap of ruins.”
“What was it?”
“A college for priests, called the College of St. Spirit, built by our
old friend Dick Whittington.”
“Oh, what a shame!” cried Betty. “It’s dreadful to come back to London
and find so many beautiful places gone or spoilt, Godmother.”
“Yes, it’s sad, I agree. Though it’s true that the power of the Church
had grown _too_ great, and most of the clergy had become rich and idle,
it seems unnecessary to destroy the beauty of churches and monasteries
because the people to whom they belonged were unworthy. However,
nothing can remain as it was for ever, you know, and though we shall
find much that was beautiful in the fourteenth century vanished for
ever, we shall also see new beautiful things that have sprung, or are
springing into life in _this_, the sixteenth century. Let us go and
look at some of them. We’ll go first to the Royal Exchange.”
“Why, we’ve just been there!”
“Not to the one we’re going to see, though it stands in exactly the
same place. We’ll walk to it through the Chepe.”
“It was called _Cheapside_ this morning when we drove down it,” said
Betty, smiling. “How funny it is to think it should be really the same
place.”
“More or less on the same _ground_, at any rate,” Godmother returned.
“Here we are.”
“It isn’t so very much altered from the time we saw it when Richard the
Second was king, is it?” Betty remarked, looking round. “Though some of
the houses are larger and grander,” she added.
“You see many of them are built of brick and stone now. How handsome
they are! This sixteenth century is the age for beautifully-built
dwelling-houses. We shall see many of them along the Strand presently,
and scattered about all over the City as well.”
“There’s Queen Eleanor’s cross, and there are the fountains and the
booths and the funny shops, just as they were,” Betty observed.
“The same crowds, the same noise, the same bustle!” Godmother agreed.
“The costume of the people is different, that’s all. They look very
well off and happy, don’t they? England has become richer and much more
prosperous lately. There are signs of it everywhere as you will not be
long in discovering.”
“But there are lots of the old houses left,” Betty said.
They had turned out of the Chepe, and were walking down a narrow lane
bordered on either side by the timber houses she remembered from her
last visit to old-time London,—houses whose top stories so nearly met,
that only a narrow strip of sky was visible between them.
“Yes, and they will last till the Great Fire sweeps them all away in
less than a hundred years’ time. Now here we are at the Royal Exchange.”
They were out of the narrow lane now, and there, rising in front of
them, was a fine, foreign-looking building of brick and stone with a
high sloping roof, and pinnacles at the corners, upon each one of which
was placed a huge metal grasshopper.
“Do you remember the name of the street I pointed out to you near this
spot this morning?” asked Godmother.
“Yes. _Gresham_ Street. And we saw a big gilt grasshopper, something
like those up there, hanging out from a doorway, in another street
close by,” Betty answered.
“Well, Gresham Street is named after the man who built that
Exchange,—Sir Thomas Gresham. And the grasshopper in Lombard Street is
the Gresham crest. London in this reign of Elizabeth has become very
rich and prosperous. Well, its riches and its prosperity have been so
greatly increased by Sir Thomas Gresham, that I must tell you something
about him. He is a great merchant who in this year, 1590, has a
goldsmith’s shop in Lombard Street at the sign of the Grasshopper. For
though he has been knighted, and now has a great house in Bishopsgate
Street, he still keeps his shop. When he was a younger man, he went to
Antwerp, where there was a fine building for the use of the merchants
in that city. Now in London, there was no convenient place for the use
of merchants who wanted to discuss business, so on his return, Thomas
Gresham built that Exchange you see before you, and made it as much
as possible like the Exchange he had seen in Antwerp. That, you see,
accounts for its foreign appearance. He then presented the mansion to
the City of London, and invited Queen Elizabeth to open it, and it was
_she_ who called it The _Royal_ Exchange—(a name our present Exchange
still keeps). Well, at the time at which we’ve arrived now, it has been
open about twenty years, and has been so useful for commerce, that the
trade of London has enormously increased. There are, of course, other
reasons for the present wealth of the City, some of which we shall find
out later. But that Royal Exchange has greatly helped its prosperity.”
“It’s quite different from the one we have now,” said Betty, “and it
looks as though it ought to last for ages. Why isn’t it standing in
_our_ day?”
“Because it was burnt down in the Great Fire, like so many other
beautiful and interesting things. Then another one was built, and that
also was burnt. So there have been _two_ Royal Exchanges on the same
spot as that on which the third—our present one—stands.”
“Sir Thomas Gresham, in this reign, is rather like what Dick
Whittington was in the reign of Richard the Second, I suppose?” Betty
remarked. “Dick Whittington was a great merchant too, who did a lot of
good for London.”
“Yes, London has been very fortunate in having generous merchants.”
“Now let us go back to London Bridge, and see if we can find other
reasons besides the Exchange for the increase of wealth and luxury in
this city.”
As Betty followed her, she looked back at Sir Thomas Gresham’s quaint
building with its sloping roof, its high middle tower, and the gilded
grasshoppers on its pinnacles. It was a very different place indeed
from the one she had visited this very morning with all the roar and
bustle of modern London round about it, but its _purpose_ was the same.
For now, as then, the Royal Exchange is the centre of London’s enormous
trade.
When they reached the river again, Betty noticed at once how much more
crowded the shipping had become than it was in the fourteenth century.
On the side of the bridge towards the Tower, the broad sheet of water
was filled with ships of a shape and build strange to her eyes, but
picturesque and delightful in appearance. They were small, and had
enormously high prows, coloured and gilded, and were hung with many gay
flags and streamers.
“Some of those ships have sailed across the Atlantic to the strange
newly-discovered country of America,” said Godmother. “Let us go down
on to the quay, where you see the crowd of little boys round that
sunburnt sailor. He is telling them all sorts of travellers’ tales, you
may be sure.”
Betty ran eagerly down a slimy wooden staircase on to the quay that was
thronged with sailors unloading some ships that had newly arrived. A
rough, strong-looking man with a face burnt almost black by the sun,
and large gold rings hanging from his ears, was talking to a group
of men and boys who listened breathlessly to stories about gold and
jewels, about marvellous animals and still more marvellous men, about
wonderful islands under hot blue skies, all of which the sailor had
seen in his travels.
Glancing at his audience, Betty saw by their faces how his words
stirred their imagination and filled them with excitement.
“Such stories of foreign travel are being told in every inn by sailors
who have come back from new lands,” said Godmother. “All through the
present reign of Elizabeth, great English sailors like Drake and
Hawkins, of whom you’ve heard, have been making voyages, and coming
back to London with gold and all sorts of merchandise.”
“That’s one of the reasons why London is getting so rich, then?” Betty
asked.
[Illustration]
“One of the chief reasons. England has already beaten the Spanish
Armada and become ‘Mistress of the Seas,’ and the ships you see here,
go to and from this port of London increasing its trade and its riches
every day. Now you understand why that Exchange built by Sir Thomas
Gresham was so much needed as a meeting-place for merchants to arrange
the enormous amount of business the sailors have won for them. London
is becoming more and more a city of merchants, living in beautiful
houses. We will go and look at one of them. It is called Crosby Place,
and it’s not far from the Royal Exchange which we have just seen.”
“Crosby?” echoed Betty. “But I thought it was somewhere in Chelsea?
There’s a Crosby Hall there. I passed it only the other day!”
“I’ll explain that to you in a minute, when we’ve seen where the house
stands now, where it was built, and where it ought to have remained—in
Bishopsgate Street.”
Before very long they had reached a most beautiful and stately mansion.
It was of immense size, with windows wonderfully sculptured in
stone-work. It had a long noble hall and splendid gateways and outside
staircases leading to doors entering the building at different levels.
A big garden surrounded it.
“Oh, what a lovely place!” exclaimed Betty.
“It has such a wonderful history,” Godmother said, “that I must tell
you at least some of it.”
“It was built by a merchant, a rich grocer called Sir John Crosby, in
the reign of Edward IV, so already in this reign of Elizabeth it’s a
hundred years old.”
“Who lives in it now?” asked Betty.
She was watching with interest the men and women moving about the
courtyard in the costume of Elizabeth’s time, the men with slashed
sleeves to their bright-coloured doublets, and the women in brocade
skirts, with big ruffs standing up at the back of the neck.
“The Mayor of London, a merchant called Sir John Spencer, owns Crosby
Place now. You see what splendid homes the merchants of this reign
possess! The nobles are leaving London and selling their palaces to the
rich traders. But before Sir John Spencer bought it, many famous people
from time to time had lived at Crosby Place. One of them was Richard
the Third before he became king, and it was in that great hall that
he heard the news of the murder of his little nephews in the Tower.
Another celebrated man who lived here for a time, was Sir Thomas More,
and here, as it is thought, he wrote his most famous book.”
“You mean _Utopia_, don’t you?” Betty asked. “We had a lesson about it
in school yesterday!”
“Yes, I’m glad you have heard of it. After he had been here some years,
Sir Thomas More sold Crosby Place to a great friend of his, an Italian
merchant, who, after the execution of his friend, let the mansion to
the husband of Margaret Roper—More’s daughter.”
“Poor Margaret Roper!” exclaimed Betty. “I expect she was glad to come
back to the house her father had lived in, don’t you, Godmother? But
she’s dead now, I suppose—in this reign of Elizabeth, I mean?”
“Yes. Crosby Place belongs now to the Mayor of London, as I’ve already
said, and before long, his daughter, a very extravagant lady, married
to Lord Northampton, will come to live here. I’ll show you (when we
slip back into our own day) an amusing letter from her to her husband
in which she explains how she must have all her houses furnished.
She was so rich that this Crosby Place was only one of them. But no
doubt she filled it with all the things she mentions in her letter,
‘cushions, carpets, silver warming-pans, fair hangings,’ and so forth.
“Another woman of a very different sort will also come to live here
very shortly. I mean Sir Philip Sidney’s fascinating sister, the
Countess of Pembroke, of whom you will read if you don’t know anything
about her already.”
“I do know a little. Sir Philip Sidney wrote the _Arcadia_ for her,
didn’t he? It _does_ seem strange to think I’m in Queen Elizabeth’s
reign and that some of these famous people must be alive,” said Betty.
“But, Godmother, you haven’t told me how the Hall of this beautiful
house comes to be at _Chelsea_ now?”
“I must finish its story quickly. A good many years ahead this splendid
Crosby Place will be partly burnt down, though its Great Hall will
escape. It will fall partly into ruins and actually be used as a
warehouse! Then almost in my day it will be restored, and finally
become a restaurant. I remember having lunch there not so many years
ago. But at last, not long before you were born, Betty, the Hall,—all
that remained of this Crosby Place you are magically seeing now,—was
pulled down to make room for modern buildings. But because it was so
celebrated, and held so many memories of famous people, it was taken
down carefully, and as well as possible put together again and built up
on Chelsea Embankment.”
“It’s not a bit the same thing as having it here, where it belongs,
though,” Betty objected. “It’s dreadful, I think.”
[Illustration]
“I quite agree with you. It ought to have remained here in Bishopsgate
Street. But let us enjoy our magic sight of it while we can, before we
have to return to our own century.”
* * * * *
Just at the moment, Betty turned round quickly to look after a boy who
passed, wearing a long dark blue coat, with a red leather belt round
the waist, yellow stockings and a little white tab or cravat at his
neck.
“Why, there’s a Blue Coat boy!” she exclaimed. “Whatever is he doing in
London in the reign of Elizabeth?”
“He might better ask _you_ that question,” returned Godmother,
laughing, “for he belongs to this age, and you don’t. But he reminds
me that we ought to go and look at some of the great schools, and as
you’re interested in that boy, we’ll see _his_ school first.”
A short walk brought them in sight of a stately pile of buildings.
“If we were back in our own century,” said Godmother, “this spot on
which we are standing, would be Newgate Street. Remember that, and now
think of London as we saw it in the reign of Richard the Second. Do you
remember the Grey Friars?”
“Yes, the monks in grey robes, with bare feet? There were hundreds of
them about.”
“Well, that’s their splendid church and monastery, though the monks
themselves are no longer there.”
“Henry the Eighth turned them out, I suppose?” asked Betty.
“Yes, he turned them out, and gave their dwelling to the City of
London. Then his son, the young Protestant King Edward VI, came to
the throne. Now only a few days before he died, Edward listened to a
very touching sermon from one of the new Protestant bishops, about the
need for looking after poor children who were fatherless. He was so
impressed, that he set apart this Grey Friars’ monastery to be a school
for orphan boys for ever, and called it _Christ’s Hospital_.”
“And it’s still a school for them, isn’t it?” Betty exclaimed eagerly.
“Why, my cousin Dick goes to it. But it’s not in London now. Dick goes
to school somewhere in the country.”
“It’s only about twenty years ago that Christ’s Hospital, or, as we
generally call it now, _the Blue Coat School_, was moved to Horsham in
Sussex. Up to that time it stood here. At first, as you see, the boys
were lodged and taught in the monastery that once belonged to the Grey
Friars. Long years afterwards, the monastery part was pulled down and
new houses built. But the school still stood on the old ground, and
forty years ago, boys played over the place where hundreds of Grey
Friars were buried. Now they play in green fields in the country, and
live in red-brick newly-built houses, and have a new red-brick chapel
instead of this ancient church.”
“Isn’t there _any_ of it left in our time?” asked Betty.
Godmother shook her head. “Another and quite a different church stands
on its site, and instead of the old Courts of Christ’s Hospital,
you will see when you come to this place in our day, a huge modern
building—the London Post Office.”
Betty sighed. “What a pity! But even though the school is moved, I’m
glad the boys still wear the same dress as they did in Edward the
Sixth’s time. That makes even the new school still interesting, doesn’t
it?”
“There go some of them,” said Godmother, pointing to where in the
distance two or three yellow-stockinged boys were running across a
courtyard surrounded by walls that even in the reign of Elizabeth were
ancient. “I saw their descendants playing football when I passed near
Horsham in the train the other day. And from the look of them, they
might have been the very same lads.”
“That is what’s so interesting about London,” Betty remarked. “Though
it’s so changed now—in the time to which _we_ belong, I mean—things
that belong to the Past go on. In a different way, of course. But
there’s always something about them to show what they had to do with
the Past, isn’t there?”
“Yes, if it’s only the name of a street,” Godmother agreed. “Nearly
every name in London is a magic key unlocking a door into some part or
other of the Past. I’m glad you’re beginning to find London not quite
so dull,” she added in a teasing voice.
“It’s simply wonderful—when you see it by magic,” Betty returned.
“Every one can see it by magic if they take a little trouble,” was
Godmother’s reply.
“Are there any more big schools we can see?” Betty asked, as they
turned away from the great monastery that once held the Grey Friars,
and was now peopled by boys.
“Several. The century we are in, the sixteenth, is the great time for
the starting of schools, many of which, like Christ’s Hospital, are
great schools to this day. For instance, close to St. Paul’s, whose
spire you can see from here, is the famous school of St. Paul’s,
begun, or _founded_, as we say, by Dean Colet, when Elizabeth’s father,
Henry the Eighth, was reigning. It’s been more than fifty years in
existence already.”
[Illustration]
“And now it’s at Hammersmith. Why, my brother Harry goes there!”
“So that makes it about four hundred years old in our day, doesn’t it?”
said Godmother. “But it’s still the same school. Then over there, is
Charter House, where the boys are lodged in a monastery once belonging
to certain monks called the _Carthusians_. They remained there till
_my_ day. But now, like the Blue Coat boys, they have moved into
the country—to Godalming. They still call themselves Carthusians,
though, in memory of the old monastery from which they came. We’ll go
and see all that is left of Charter House when we slip back into our
own age. It’s still very interesting and beautiful. Just now we must
move on, for there’s so much in Elizabethan London to look at, that we
can’t spend too long over the schools. We’ll go back to London Bridge,
because it’s on the way to something I particularly want to show you.”