Katharine of France, who was crowned at Westminster Abbey on the 14th of
February 1421. On the 31st of August following the King died in France.
On the 14th of November 1422 the infant, Henry VI., was carried through
the city to the Parliament at Westminster on the lap of his mother, who
sat in an open chair.
On the 6th of November 1429 the young King was crowned in Westminster
Abbey. The coronation was a very imposing ceremony. At the commencement
of the proceedings the Archbishop of Canterbury made proclamation at the
four corners of the scaffold on which the King sat. He spoke as follows:
'Syrys, here comythe Harry, Kyng Harry the V. ys sone, humylyche to God
and Hooly Chyrche, askynge the crowne of thys realme by ryght and
discent of herytage. Yf ye holde you welle plesyd with alle and wylle be
plesyd with hym, say you nowe, ye! and holde uppe youre hondys.' Then
all the people with one voice cried, 'Yea, yea.'[113]
Henry VI. was crowned in France on the 7th of December 1431 by Cardinal
Beaufort his uncle (Bishop of Winchester), and on his return to England
he was met at Blackheath by the Mayor and citizens on the 21st of
February 1431-1432. The Mayor and aldermen were dressed in scarlet, and
the members of the gilds in white, with the cognisances of their crafts
on their sleeves. The figure of a mighty giant, with a drawn sword,
stood at the entrance of the bridge. When the King had passed the first
gate and was arrived at the drawbridge, he found a goodly tower, hung
with silk and cloth of arras, out of which suddenly appeared three
ladies, clad in gold and silk, with coronets upon their head; of which
the first was Dame Nature, the second Dame Grace, and the third Dame
Fortune. On each side of these dames were seven virgins, all clothed in
white; those on the right presented the King with the seven gifts of the
Holy Ghost--sapience, intelligence, good counsel, strength, cunning,
pity, and dread of God; those on the left with the seven gifts of
grace--the crown of glory, the sceptre of clemency and pity, the sword
of might and victory, the mantle of prudence, the shield of faith, the
helmet of health, and the girdle of love and perfect peace.
On Cornhill was a tabernacle of curious work, in which stood Dame
Sapience, and around her the seven liberal arts--Grammar, Logic,
Rhetoric, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy.
At the conduit in Cornhill was set a circular pageant, on the summit
whereof was a child of wonderful beauty, apparelled like a King, upon
whose right hand sat Lady Mercy, on his left Lady Truth, and over them
stood Dame Clemency embracing the King's throne.
At the conduit in Cheap there were formed several wells--the Well of
Mercy, the Well of Grace, and the Well of Pity, and at each a lady
standing who administered the water to such as would ask it, and then
the water was turned into good wine. A little further west was a tower
ornamented with the arms of England and France. By its side stood two
green trees, one bearing the genealogy of Saint Edward and the other
that of Saint Louis.
On entering St. Paul's Churchyard Henry VI. was met by a procession of
the dean and canons, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and six bishops, who
conducted him to the Cathedral, where he made his oblations. He then
took horse at the west door of St. Paul's, and so rode to Westminster,
where he was received by the abbot and taken to St. Edward's shrine. His
lords then conveyed him to his palace, and the Mayor and citizens
returned joyously to London.[113]
This was probably the most elaborate and beautiful pageant ever
performed in the streets of London.
The King married Margaret of Anjou in 1445, and on approaching London,
on the way to her coronation, the Queen was met on Blackheath by the
Mayor, aldermen and sheriffs and the principal members of the gilds,
attired in 'browne blue,' with embroidered sleeves and red hoods on
their heads, every craft having its cognisance, who brought her with
great triumph to Westminster. There were on this occasion several
pageants of a similar character to those described before.
In 1461, after the Battle of Mortimer Cross and the second Battle of St.
Alban's, Edward Earl of March came to London with his forces and was
chosen King in St. John's Field, Clerkenwell, on March 2. King Edward's
title was set forth in a sermon at Paul's Cross by the Bishop of
Exeter. After the sermon the king was conveyed in procession to
Westminster Abbey, and after having offered at St. Edward's shrine he
went to Westminster Hall and, sitting in the royal seat, was greeted
with shouts of 'Long live the King!' He then returned to St. Paul's, and
was lodged in the bishop's palace.[115] On the 26th of June the Mayor
and aldermen in scarlet, and the Commons in green, brought Edward IV.
from Lambeth to the Tower, and on the 28th inst. he was crowned with
great solemnity at Westminster.
'And on the morrow, after the King was crowned againe in Westminster
Abbey in the worship of God and S. Peter, and on the next morrow he went
crowned in Paules Church in London, in the honor of God and S. Paule,
and there an angell came downe and censed him, at which time was so
great a multitude of people in Paules as ever was seene in any
dayes.'[116]
On Whitsunday 1465 Queen Elizabeth Grey was crowned at Westminster
Abbey, having on the preceding day ridden in a horse litter through the
chief streets of London, preceded by the newly-created Knights of the
Bath, four of whom were men of London--the Mayor and three others.
Shortly after the murder of Henry VI. in the Tower (1471) Edward was met
by the Mayor, aldermen and citizens, about a mile from the city, between
Islington and Shoreditch, and in the highway he knighted the Mayor,
eleven aldermen and the recorder.
Edward IV. died on April 9, 1483, and his young son, Edward V., was
brought from Ludlow by the Greys, his relations on the mother's side.
Richard Duke of Gloucester, fearing the action of the Greys, overtook
the procession, and sent Earl Rivers and Sir Richard Grey prisoners to
Pontefract. Edmond Shaa, the Mayor, the sheriffs and the aldermen in
scarlet, with 500 horse of the citizens in violet, met the King and the
Duke at Hornsey, and, riding from thence, accompanied them into the
city, which was entered on the 4th of May. The King was lodged in the
bishop's palace, where a great Council was held, at which the Dukes of
Gloucester and Buckingham and other great lords were sworn. Edward V.
was deposed soon after this, and on the 5th of July, the day before his
coronation, Richard rode from the Tower through the city, with his son,
the Prince of Wales, three dukes, nine earls, twenty-two viscounts and
barons, eighty knights, esquires and gentlemen 'not to be numbered,'
besides the great officers of State.
After the Battle of Bosworth, Henry VII. was met at Hornsey on the 28th
of August 1485 by the Mayor (Sir Thomas Hille) and the aldermen in their
scarlet robes, accompanied by a great number of citizens on horseback,
in violet-coloured gowns, whence they conducted him to Shoreditch, where
he was received by the several companies, and then conducted to St.
Paul's, where he offered three standards, one with the image of St.
George, another with a red, fiery dragon, and the third with a dun cow.
After the singing of the _Te Deum_ he went to the bishop's palace. Less
than a month afterwards Sir Thomas Hille died of the sweating sickness.
The coronation of Henry VII., in 1485, was hurried over with less
ceremonial than usual and without any procession through the city, but
that of the Queen (Elizabeth of York), in 1487, was attended with all
the pomp customary on similar occasions. On Friday before St.
Katherine's Day the Queen came from Greenwich by water. The Mayor,
sheriffs and aldermen, with citizens chosen from every craft in their
liveries, were waiting on the river to receive her and attend her to the
Tower. On the following day she went through London to Westminster in a
litter. The houses were dressed with clothes of tapestry and arras, and
in Cheap with rich cloth of gold, velvet and silk. Along the streets,
from the Tower to St. Paul's, stood in order all the crafts of London in
their liveries, and in various places were placed singing children, some
arrayed like angels, to sing sweet songs as the Queen went by.
The Battle of Bosworth we have agreed to consider as the period of the
break up of the Middle Ages, but it was many years after this before the
shows and amusements of the people exhibited any great change. The
Tudors (especially Henry VIII.) showed a particular delight in
pageantry, and the Stuarts carried on the tradition. In fact, it was in
Elizabeth's reign that special attention was given to the arrangements
of the Lord Mayor's pageant.
George Peele, the dramatist, is the first on the list of the city poets,
although we have already seen that Lydgate was employed to write poetry
in honour of King Henry VI. The pageants prepared for the triumphant
passage of 'King James and Queen Anne, his wife, and Henry Frederick,
the Prince,' from the Tower through the city on the 15th of March
1603-1604 were of a magnificent character. Seven beautiful arches of
triumph were designed by Stephen Harrison, joiner and architect. These
were erected at the expense of the livery companies and the foreign
merchants. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the art of
pageantry was almost entirely lost. The decoration of our streets on
joyful occasions has lately considerably improved, but there is still
room for a more artistic treatment. With our knowledge of the past and
the possession of artists who are enthusiastic for the revival of a true
taste in pageantry there ought to be no difficulty in the production of
pageants that would do honour to our city. It would be well if the
authorities would consult with artists for the improvement of the Lord
Mayor's Show.[117]
We have treated of out-of-door amusements, and must now say a few words
on one of those enjoyed indoors. Music and poetry were cultivated by
certain foreign merchants in England, who established in London, at the
close of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, a
society or brotherhood of the 'Pui,' 'in honour of God, our Lady Saint
Mary, and all Saints, both male and female; and in honour of our Lord
the King, and all the Barons of the country; and for the increasing of
loyal love. And to the end that the city of London may be renowned for
all good things in all places; and to the end that mirthfulness, peace,
honesty, joyousness, gaiety and good love, without [with?] infinity may
be maintained.'[118]
The majority of the members were foreigners, but Englishmen were not
excluded, for we find that John de Cheshunt was the third prince or
president.
Statutes and full particulars of proceedings are given in _Liber
Custumarum_, and curiously enough no other evidence of the existence of
such a fraternity in England is known. From this document we learn that
the society had received from the city great privileges in respect of
the Chapel of St. Mary, in Guildhall, which was building towards the
close of the reign of Edward I. Hence the donation in its favour for a
chaplain by Sir Henry le Waleys, 1299,[119] who had been Mayor both of
London and Bordeaux, and in the latter capacity would be likely to feel
an additional interest in this musical society of French merchants and
their English friends.
The Regulations are very full and explanatory of the various proceedings
at the Festival of the Pui, as the following extracts from Mr. Riley's
translation of the Latin original will show:--
_As to the yearly election of a Prince._--'The Prince ought to be chosen
as being good, and loyal, and sufficient, upon the oath of eleven
companions, or of the twelve, to their knowledge, upon their oath, that
the Pui may be promoted thereby, and maintained and upheld. And he who
shall be chosen for Prince, may not refuse it, upon his oath. And when
the old Prince and his companions shall leave to make a new Prince, at
the great feast, the old Prince and his companions shall go through the
room, from one end to the other, singing; and the old Prince shall carry
the crown of the Pui upon his head, and a gilt cup in his hands, full of
wine. And when they shall have gone round, the old Prince shall give to
drink unto him whom they shall have chosen, and shall give him the
crown, and such person shall be Prince.'
_Marriage, death and burial of the Members._--'If there be any one of
the companions who marries in the city of London, or who becomes a
clerk-priest, he ought to let the companions know thereof, and each
shall be there according to his oath, if he have not a proper excuse.
And the married person ought to give them chaplets, all of one kind; and
all the companions ought to go with the bridegroom to church, and to
make offering, and to return from the church to the house. And if there
be any of the companions of the brotherhood who departs this life and
dies, all the companions ought to be there, and to carry the body to
church, by leave of the kindred, and to make offering.'
_Common hutch._--'There shall be a common hutch of the company of the
Pui, in which the remembrances and the revised provisions of the company
shall be placed in safe keeping; of which hutch, in the first place, the
new Prince, each year after he is chosen, shall have one key; and two
companions, by assent of the companions, for such custody chosen, each
one key. And that this hutch shall stand in such safe place as the
companions shall ordain within the city of London.'
_Clerk and Chaplain._--'There shall be a clerk, intelligent, and
residing in London, chosen by the companions, to serve the company, and
that he be willing and able to be attendant upon, and obedient unto the
Prince, and to the twelve companions, in all matters that concern the
company.'
'That there be a chaplain, at all times singing [Mass] for the living
and the dead of the company, [and] a chapel, founded in honour of God
and our Lady, so soon as the improved means of the company, by the aid
of God and good folks, may thereunto suffice. And if the companions of
the Pui who are of sufficient means, be pressed by illness, so much as
to wish to make their testaments, the Prince is to go, with two of the
twelve companions with him, to visit the sick persons; and is to remind
them of their faith which they have pledged unto the company, and to
admonish them to devise somewhat of their property towards supplying the
chapel and chaplain aforesaid, and supporting the same.'
_The Grand Feast._--'Whereas the royal feast of the Pui is maintained
and established principally for crowning a royal song, inasmuch as it is
by song that it is honoured and enhanced, all the gentle companions of
the Pui by right reason are bound to exalt royal songs to the utmost of
their power, and especially the one that is crowned by assent of the
companions upon the day of the great feast of the Pui. Wherefore it is
here provided, as concerning such songs, that each new Prince, the day
that he shall wear the crown, and shall govern the feast of the Pui, and
so soon as he shall have had the blazon of his arms hung in the room
where the feast of the Pui shall be held, shall forthwith cause to be
set up beneath his blazon the song that was crowned on the day that he
was chosen as the new Prince, plainly and correctly written, without
default.'
'As to the serving up the feast, it is also ordained that all the
companions shall be served amply, as well the poorest as the richest, in
this form; that is to say, they shall be served with good bread, good
ale, and good wine; and then they shall be served with pottage, and with
one course of solid meat; and then after that with double roast in a
dish, and cheese, without more.'
_No ladies present._--'Although the becoming pleasance of virtuous
ladies is a rightful theme and principal occasion for royal singing, and
for composing and furnishing royal songs, nevertheless it is hereby
provided that no lady or other woman ought to be at the great [sitting]
of the Pui, for the reason that the [members] ought hereby to take
example, and rightful warning, to honour, cherish and commend all
ladies, at all times, in all places, as much in their absence as in
their presence.'
_Costume and Procession._--'The Prince ought, at his own cost, to be
costumed with coat and surcoat, without sleeves, and mantle of one suit,
with whatever arms he may please, at his own free will; so that at the
election of a new Prince, at the great feast of the Pui, he give his
mantle and his crown to the new Prince, so soon as he shall be chosen.'
'He who shall be crowned for his song upon that day may ride between the
old Prince and the new one in the procession on horseback which they
shall make throughout the city, after the feast, that they may have
knowledge of the one Prince and of the other by the suit of the
costumes.'
'Forthwith, after they have given the crown to him who shall sing the
best, they shall mount their horses and make their procession through
the city, and shall then escort their new Prince to his house; and there
they shall all alight, and shall have a dance there, by way of hearty
good-bye; and they shall then take one drink and depart, each to his own
house, all on foot.'
The fraternity took its name from Le Puy en Velay, in Auvergne, the
celebrated statue of the Virgin Mary in the Cathedral of which place was
long a popular object of pilgrimage and devotion during the Middle Ages.
M. Aymard, Administrator of the city of Le Puy en Velay, and the
historian of the Confrèries of Notre Dame du Puy, is of opinion that the
document in the _Liber Custumarum_ is at once more full and more ancient
by far than any set of regulations of a similar French fraternity which
is known to have survived to our times. Societies of the Pui flourished
in Normandy and Picardy. The place of meeting of the 'companions' is not
known, but Mr. Riley suggests that it was possibly in the Vintry. There
is some uncertainty as to how the fraternity came to an end.[120]
Londoners were better supplied with eating-houses than their neighbours
on the Continent, as we learn from the description of the street of
cookshops on the Thames side by Fitz-Stephen:--
'There is also in London, on the bank of the river, amongst the wine
shops, which are kept in ships and cellars, a public eating-house; there
every day, according to the season, may be found viands of all kinds,
roast, fried and boiled, fish large and small, coarser meat for the
poor, and more delicate for the rich, such as venison, fowls and small
birds. If friends, wearied with their journey, should unexpectedly come
to a citizen's house, and, being hungry, should not like to wait till
fresh meat be bought and cooked ... meanwhile some run to the riverside,
and there every thing that they could wish for is instantly procured.
'However great the number of soldiers and strangers that enters or
leaves the city at any hour of the day or night, they may turn in there
if they please, and refresh themselves according to their inclination;
so that the former have no occasion to fast too long, or the latter to
leave the city without dining. Those who wish to indulge themselves
would not desire a sturgeon, or a bird of Africa, or the godwit of
Ionia, when the delicacies that are to be found there are set before
them. This, indeed, is the public cookery, and is very convenient to the
city, and a distinguishing mark of civilization.'
Mr. Riley points out in his Introduction to the _Liber Custumarum_ that
the _Coquina_ of Fitz-Stephen was in reality a Cook's Row, not merely a
solitary cookshop. In Fitz-Ailwyne's Second Assize (1212) the cookshops
on the Thames were ordered to be whitewashed and plastered and the inner
partitions to be removed, from which it would appear that lodging-rooms
had been 'constructed for the harbouring of guests and travellers in
contravention of the city regulations, which at all times during the
thirteenth and two succeeding centuries strictly forbade cooks and
pie-bakers to keep hostels for the entertainment of guests. In the
fourteenth century, however, most of these cookshops had made way for
genuine hostels and herbergeries,--to be kept only by freemen, and on no
account by foreigners,--though we find mention made of one or two
cookshops lingering on the city margin of the Thames so late as the
reign of Edward the Third.'[121]
Mr. Riley adds in his glossary: 'To the celebrity which London gained at
an early period for its cookshops its citizens were not improbably
indebted for their nickname of 'cockney,' one which they have retained
throughout England to the present day. The earliest recorded instance of
its use is probably of this same period; the rhyme uttered, according to
Camden, by Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk, in reference to Henry II., the
capital of whose English dominions was London:--
'Were I in my castle of Bungay,
Upon the river of Waveney,
I would no care for the King of Cokenay.'[122]
'Keepers of wine taverns and ale-houses and victuallers (who merely sold
provisions) do not appear to have lodged their guests any more than the
cooks.' 'The persons whose business it was to receive guests for profit,
appear to have been divided into two classes, the "Hostelers" and the
"Herbergeours." The line of distinction between these two classes is not
very evident ... but it seems not improbable that it consisted in the
fact that the former lodged and fed the servants and horses of their
guests, while the latter did not. At all events, hostelers are mentioned
as supplying hay and corn for horses, but herbergeours never.' Hostelers
were also forbidden to sell drink and victuals to any other than their
guests.[123]
The established charge for a night's lodging about the time of Henry IV.
was one penny per night.
'In the times of our early Kings, when they moved from place to place,
it devolved upon the Marshal of the King's household to find lodgings
for the royal retinue and dependents, which was done by sending a billet
and seizing arbitrarily the best houses and mansions of the locality,
turning out the inhabitants and marking the houses so selected with
chalk; which latter duty seems to have belonged to the Serjeant-Chamberlain
of the King's household. The city of London, fortunately for the comfort
and independence of its inhabitants, was exempted by numerous charters
from having to endure this most abominable annoyance at such times as it
pleased the King to become its near neighbour by taking up his residence
in the town.'[124]
By an Act (7 Edw. VI.) 1553 forty taverns and public-houses were allowed
in the city and three in Westminster.
CHAPTER VII
_Health, Disease and Sanitation_[125]
When I mentioned to a friend that I intended to devote one of the
chapters of this book to the consideration of sanitation in the Middle
Ages, he hinted that as there was no such thing this would partake
somewhat of the character of the famous chapter on Snakes in the
_History of Ireland_. In this opinion I hope to prove that he is wrong.
There are many conflicting accounts of the general sanitary condition of
a walled town in the Middle Ages, but although some have painted the
condition of early London in a very unfavourable light, there is
sufficient evidence on the other side to induce us, in taking a general
survey of so large a subject, to be careful not to use too dark colours
for our picture. Probably the town was healthier in ordinary times than
the country, because the regulations were stricter, but in time of
pestilence it was doubtless worse, from the confined space and the want
of fresh air, caused by the closeness of buildings.
We do not hear much of the health of London between the periods of
pestilence, but occasional information shows how great was the mortality
among infants. The vast disproportion between the births and deaths
made the influx of immigrants from the country necessary to keep up the
population.
As a sign that the general conditions of life were unhealthier then than
now, we may note that the expectancy of life in the Middle Ages was much
shorter than at present. It is said that as large a number of persons
died at forty years of age as now live to seventy. Queen Elizabeth was
the first of the twenty-three sovereigns of England after the Conquest
who attained the age of seventy, although Edward I indeed lived to his
sixty-ninth year.
Dr. Jessopp gives a vivid picture of the frightful condition of town
populations. He writes: 'The sediment of the town population in the
Middle Ages was a dense slough of stagnant misery, squalor, famine,
loathsome disease and dull despair, such as the worst slums of London,
Paris or Liverpool know nothing of.'[126]
Dr. Charles Creighton, in his monumental work on epidemics,[127] takes
the view that we must receive with some scepticism the extremely
unsatisfactory accounts of the condition of old London. He points out
that, while Erasmus gives a most repulsive description of the state of
the houses, his contemporary and friend, Sir Thomas More, takes a much
more flattering view. Dr. Creighton says: 'Some part of the rather
unfair opinion as to the foulness of English life in former times may be
traced to a well-known letter by Erasmus to the physician of Cardinal
Wolsey. There are grounds for believing that Erasmus must have judged
from somewhat unfavourable instances.' Dr. Creighton further points out
that William Harrison (_Description of England_) gives proof enough that
the filthy floors described by Erasmus had no existence two generations
later, even among the poorer classes.
Fitz-Stephen was quite satisfied with the salubrity of the city, and he
becomes enthusiastic over the gardens and clear springs which abounded
on all sides, and made the walks of those who took the air in the summer
evenings so agreeable. In fine, he says: 'The city is delightful indeed
when it has a good governor.'
Sir Thomas More at a later period saw so little amiss that he was
content to consider London as a fair sample of what he would wish the
capital of Utopia to be. We know, at all events, that whatever its
faults it was in advance of foreign cities. It has been said that the
English word 'comfort' cannot be translated, and a curious confirmation
of this is found in the fact that in the old French contemporary account
of Wat Tyler's Rebellion the word is introduced in a French context, as
if there was no equivalent in that language.
Dr. J. W. Tripe, in 1881, took as the subject of his inaugural address
on assuming the presidential chair of the Society of Medical Officers of
Health: 'The Sanitary Condition and Laws of Mediæval London.' Referring
to this, a writer in the _Medical Times and Gazette_ says: 'His
description of the streets and houses of Old London, and of the habits
of our forefathers, though most graphic, was not new ... but few, we
think, have any idea of the antiquity of Sanitary, Nuisance Removal and
River Conservancy Acts, and Dr. Tripe has therefore done well to again
set forth the accounts of them that have been exhumed from the records
of the city. Rude as they may seem to modern notions, they ought to have
sufficed for the prevention of the epidemics which from time to time
decimated the population, if they had not, like so many more recent
enactments, been in advance of the age, and consequently remained for
the most part dead letters.'[128]
Before entering into particulars as to means taken for the protection of
the city from disease, and as to those upon whom the duty was laid of
carrying them out, it will be necessary to make a few remarks upon the
healing art in the Middle Ages.
It may be presumed that at all times large numbers suffered from
illnesses and required medical aid, yet little has come down to us
relating to the treatment adopted by the doctors. Unfortunately the
medical men of the Middle Ages do not appear to have trusted to
themselves or to their own practical knowledge. Instead they put their
whole trust in the little they knew of Greek practice which they learnt
from the Arabs. So that, even when writing on cases that came under
their own observation, they give but slight information respecting the
clinical treatment they adopted, and were afraid to express an opinion
without the authority of a great name.
Dr. Norman Moore says: 'The basis of medicine is the patient.'[129] This
being so, as the patient always exists the medicine man must always have
been required.
Those whose duty it was to combat disease among the Saxons seem to have
been of little account, if we are to judge from the Rev. Oswald
Cockayn's collection of _Leechdoms, Wort-cunning and Star Craft of Early
England_, published in the Master of the Rolls' Series (1864); and Dr.
J.F.Payne's _Fitzpatrick Lectures on the History of Medicine_, 1903.
The Saxon leech received a professional education, and was often learned
although he did not advance knowledge. He seems to have placed more
reliance upon charms and magic than upon any sensible treatment. He
compounded recipes of the most incongruous character, and paid special
attention to the use of herbs, but few instances of cures performed by
him are recorded.
It is not until after the Conquest that we are able to find the first
signs of the noble profession of to-day.
It is said that mediæval medicine first began to emerge from obscurity
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Jews and the clergy were
among the first to practise medicine. A noted Jewish physician is
recorded by William of Newburgh as practising at King's Lynn at the end
of the twelfth century, but shortly afterwards the Jews were driven out
of the country, and we hear no more of them except of an occasional
physician who managed to escape the general outlawry of his nation. The
clergy also in course of time largely gave over their noble attempts to
heal their fellow-citizens, and a medical profession was gradually
formed.
John of Salisbury (d. 1180), the friend and counsellor of Thomas à
Becket, who is called by Bishop Stubbs 'the central figure of English
learning for thirty years,' and may therefore be considered to some
extent as an authority on the subject, had a very poor opinion of the
medical profession of his day, and rated its members roundly for their
ignorance and incompetence. He affirmed that they had two maxims which
they never violated--'Never mind the poor; never refuse money from the
rich.'
There was no school of anatomy or surgery throughout England in the age
of Chaucer and Wyclyf, but the medical schools of Salerno, Naples and
Montpellier were attended by Englishmen. St. Luke is usually considered
as the patron saint of the medical profession, but in the Middle Ages he
was to a great extent dispossessed by St. Cosmas and St. Damian,[130]
two brothers, who practised as physicians in Cilicia, and were martyred
in the early part of the fourth century. These were the patron saints of
the Company of Barber Surgeons, but the Fellowship of Surgeons, whose
history has been written by Mr. D'Arcy Power,[131] kept St. Luke's Day
as well as that of St. Cosmas and St. Damian.
Chaucer found room for the 'Doctor of Physick' in his wonderful gallery
of mediæval portraits, and a very vivid picture he gives of the studies
and practice of this worthy. It is drawn with the poet's tolerant
humour, but he ends by saying that the doctor loved his gold, and all
accounts appear to corroborate this opinion.
'With us ther was a Doctour of Phisik,
In all this world ne was ther noon hym lik,
To speke of phisik and surgerye;
For he was grounded in astronomye.
He kepte his pacient a ful greet deel
In hourés, by his magyk natureel.
Wel koude he fortunen the ascendent
Of his ymáges for his pacient.
He knew the cause of everich maladye,
Were it of hoot or cold, or moyste or drye,
And where they engendred and of what humour;
He was a verray parfit practisour.
The cause y-knowe and of his harm the roote,
Anon he yaf the siké man his boote [remedy].
Ful redy hadde he his apothecaries
To sende him droggés and his letuaries,
For ech of hem made oother for to wynne.
Hir frendshipe was nat newè to begynne.
Wel knew he the oldé Esculapius
And Deyscorides and eek Rufus,
Olde Ypocras, Haly and Galyen,
Serapion, Razis and Avycen,
Averrois, Damascien and Constantyn,
Bernard and Gatésden and Gilbertyn.
Of his dieté mesurable was he,
For it was of no superfluitee,
But of greet norissyng and digestible.
His studie was but litel on the Bible.
In sangwyn and in pers he clad was al,
Lynéd with taffata and with sendal.
And yet he was but esy of dispence,
He kepté that he wan in pestilence.
For gold in phisik is a cordial,
Therefore he lovéde gold in special.'
Chaucer here shows great learning and knowledge of the history of
medicine. He gives a full list of the Greek and Arab authorities, and
also of the men living nearer to his own day. Bernard was Bernardus,
Gordonius the professor of medicine at Montpellier in Chaucer's time,
Gilbertyn was Gilbertus Anglicus and Gatesden was John of
Gaddesden.[132]
Gilbertus Anglicus, author of a _Compendium Medicinæ_ (about 1290), is
said to have been the first English practical writer on medicine, but as
Gilbert quotes a Master Richard, there may have been a still earlier
English writer on the subject. The book contains the first description
of leprosy written by a European. Little is known of the particulars of
his life, but he is said to have been Chancellor at Montpellier. He
travelled in the East at the time of the Crusades, probably during the
Third Crusade in which Richard I. took part.
John of Gaddesden (1280-1361) was a Doctor of Physick of Oxford,
graduating from Merton College, Oxford, who subsequently obtained a
large practice in London. He was in priest's orders and held a stall in
St. Paul's Cathedral. His famous medical treatise, entitled _Rosa
Anglica_, was written about the year 1305. It treats of fevers and
injuries of all parts of the body, and soon became a medical text-book
throughout Europe. In this book there is an account of his special
treatment of smallpox. He wrote: 'Let scarlet red be taken, and let him
who is suffering smallpox be entirely wrapped in it or in some other red
cloth; I did thus when the son of the illustrious King of England
suffered from smallpox, I took care that everything about his couch
should be red, and his cure was perfectly effected, for he was restored
to health without a trace of the disease.'[133] Gaddesden was court
physician to Edward II. and Edward III., and seems to have taken
advantage of his position to exact high fees. He recommended his
contemporaries to make arrangements about payment before undertaking a
case.
The clergy were forbidden by Pope Innocent III. (1215) to undertake any
operation involving the shedding of blood, and subsequently they were
forbidden to practise surgery in any form. From this cause the practice
of surgery largely came into the hands of the barbers.
We shall see later how the profession was divided between the military
surgeon and the barber surgeon, but here we have only to deal with the
physician.
We learn from Riley's _Memorials_ (p. 464) that Roger Clerk, of
Wandsworth, was placed in the pillory in May 1382 for pretending to be a
physician. He was brought before the Mayor and aldermen, and charged
with deceit and falsehood by Roger atte Hacche: 'Whereas no physician or
surgeon should intermeddle with any medicines or cures within the
liberty of the city aforesaid, but those who are experienced in the said
arts, and approved therein, the said Roger Clerk knew nothing of either
of the arts aforesaid, being neither experienced nor approved therein,
nor understood anything of letters.'
He pretended to heal Roger atte Hacche's wife Johanna of her bodily
infirmities by making her wear an old parchment leaf of a book rolled up
in a piece of cloth of gold. This being of no avail, Clerk was adjudged
to be led 'through the middle of the city with trumpets and pipes, he
riding on a horse without a saddle, the said parchment and a whetstone,
for his lies, being hung about his neck.'
This man evidently was an impostor, and was properly punished for
obtaining money under false pretences, but many of the recipes adopted
by the recognised physicians would probably be as ineffectual as the
charm of Roger Clerk. John de Gaddesden made a disgusting plaster of
dung, headless crickets and beetles, which was rubbed over the sick
parts to cure the stone, and we are told in the _Rosa Anglica_ that 'in
three days the pain had disappeared.'
It was very long before the doctors gave up the making of extraordinary
plasters and decoctions. Apparently they had the assistance of laymen on
occasions. Dr. Furnivall has printed in his edition of Vicary's
_Anatomie of the Bodie of Man_ (1888) a series of ten recipes by Henry
VIII., and his physicians, Dr. Augustyne, Dr. Butts and Dr. Cromer,
taken at random from Sloane MS. 1047 (British Museum). Among these are
'the Kinges Majesties owne plastre,' 'a black plastre devised by the
Kinges Hieghness,' 'a plastre devised by the Kinges Majestie at
Grenewich, and made at Westminstre, to take awaye inflammacions, and
cease payne, and heale excoriations,' 'a decoccioun devised by the
Kinges Majestie,' and 'a cataplasme made ungtment-lyke of the Kinges
Majesties devise, made at Westminster.'
A conjoint Faculty of Medicine and Surgery was founded in 1423. On the
15th of May 1423 the Mayor and aldermen were petitioned for this
purpose. 'The petition prays that all physicians and surgeons practising
in London may be considered as a single body of men, governed by a
Rector of Medicine, with the assistance of two surveyors of the Faculty
of Physic and two masters of the Craft of Surgery. There was to be a
common place of meeting, consisting of at least three separate houses,
one fitted with desks for examinations and disputations in philosophy
and medicine, as well as for the delivery of lectures. The second house
was for the use of the physicians, and the third for the convenience of
the surgeons.'[134]
The petition was granted, and on the 28th May 1423 Master Gilbert Kymer
was sworn before the Mayor and aldermen as Rector of the Faculty of
Medicine. Dr. Kymer was a graduate of the University of Oxford, and
physician to the household of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, and also an
ecclesiastic. Dr. John Somerset and Dr. Thomas Southwell were sworn on
27th September to act as Supervisors of Physic. The former was also a
graduate of Oxford University and a physician to Duke Humphry. Of the
latter's history Mr. Power could find nothing. There is no record 'of
the swearing in of a Rector of Medicine after 27th September 1424, nor
is there any other indication of the continued existence of a conjoint
college after 1425.'[135]
Dr. Kymer went to the west of England in 1428, and became Dean of
Salisbury in 1449. He continued, however, to practise medicine, 'for in
June 1455 he was summoned to Windsor to attend Henry VI. in the fit of
imbecility which attacked him after the first Battle of St.
Albans.'[136] Little is known of the action of the physicians from 1427
until the College of Physicians was founded by Linacre in 1518.
_Surgeons._--Barbers were of old humble practitioners in the art of
surgery and performed minor operations such as bleeding, tooth-drawing,
and cauterization. They largely assisted the clergy, in whose hands the
practice of surgery and medicine was almost wholly confined. The action
of the Popes, already alluded to, in forbidding the clergy to interfere
in any matter connected with the shedding of blood as incompatible with
the holy office caused the clergy to devote themselves specially to
medicine, and the duties of the barbers were thereby largely extended.
Mr. D'Arcy Power has drawn attention to a matter which is of the
greatest interest in the history of the profession, viz., that two types
of surgeons flourished side by side in London during the Middle
Ages--the military surgeons who formed the aristocracy of the
profession, and the barber surgeons. As early as the Third Crusade
(1189-1192) military surgeons 'were in attendance upon the kings and
nobles, often in a purely personal capacity, but in the thirteenth
century they had formal gradations of rank and were known as "the Royal
Surgeon," the "Common Surgeon," etc.'[137]
In 1308 Richard le Barber, the first master of the Barbers' Guild, who
dwelt opposite the Church of Allhallows the Less, in Upper Thames
Street, was sworn at Guildhall, and in 1310 barbers were appointed to
keep strict watch at the city gates, so that no lepers should enter the
city.
John Arderne was an early surgeon of mark who is worthy of special
notice as one of the first English writers on surgery. He had an
extensive experience in the treatment of wounds, and it is supposed that
at one time he was attached to the English forces during the French wars
in the capacity of field surgeon. He was born in 1307, and practised at
Newark from 1349 to 1370, when at the age of sixty-three years he
settled in London.[138]
He was specially famous for his treatment of fistula, and he made his
great reputation by curing Sir Adam Everyngham of this complaint after
his case had been pronounced incurable by the chief doctors in France.
Arderne had many distinguished patients and received very large fees. In
his works he entered very fully into the history of his cases, and his
mode of treatment, and when describing 'ye mannere of ye leche' he
throws a remarkable light upon the professional ethics and habits of his
time. He was by no means reticent as to the best means of getting over
his patients and making them pay well. The surgeon is told to 'beware of
scarse askings,' and as an example, Arderne says that, if he had to do
with 'a worthy man and a great,' he charged 100 marks or £40 for a cure,
'with robez and feez of an hundred shillyns terme of lyfe, by year.' 'Of
lesse men' he would take £40 or 40 marks without feez, but he adds
'never in alle my lyf toke I lesse than an hundred shillyns for cure of
that sekeness.'
He counsels doctors to be careful in estimating the length of time of a
cure, in fact to suggest double the time he expects. If the patient
wonders at the rapidity of cure and asks, 'Why that he putte hym so long
a tyme of curyng, sithe that he helyd hym by the halfe? Answere he,
that it was for that the pacient was stony-herted and suffred wele
sharpe thingis, and that he was of gode complexion, and hadde able
fleshe to hale, and feyne he other causes pleasable to the pacient for
pacientez of syche wordez are proude and delited.'
Arderne's instructions for the guidance of doctors are very sensible,
and they help us to form a correct estimate of the manners of the public
who were patients. Dr. Poore, after giving an analysis of the surgeon's
work, writes: 'It is evident that John of Arderne was a consummate man
of the world, and knew all the tricks of his trade. His fees seem to
have been enormous, and indeed he is only one out of many examples among
our early professional forerunners who made very large professional
incomes.'[139]
Mr. Anderson, the biographer of Arderne, remarks that although he called
himself 'Chirurgus inter Medicos,' 'there is nothing to show that he
possessed a master's degree, or any formal license for the exercise of
his calling.' Mr. Anderson adds, however, 'his writings prove that he
was a man of clerkly attainments, with a good knowledge of Latin and
French, and well read in the available literature of his profession,
quoting freely from the works of the mediæval surgeons, the Arabs, and
even from the Greeks.'
Mr. Anderson notes that there are no less than twenty-two manuscripts of
the works of Arderne in the British Museum, both in the original Latin
and in early English translations, 'some repeating or overlapping
others in matter.' His book _Da curâ Oculi_ is dated from London in
1377.
It was not until the next century that a surgeon of equal distinction
had arisen in England.
There must have been many incompetent practitioners in London in the
fourteenth century, an instance of which evil we find in Riley's
_Memorials_. John le Spicer of Cornhill in 1354 attended Thomas de
Shene, who suffered from a serious wound in the jaw. Certain surgeons
sworn before the Mayor found that the 'enormous and horrible hurt on the
right side of the jaw of Thomas de Shene' was incurable, but they held
that if John le Spicer had been expert in his craft, or had called in
counsel and assistance to his aid, the injury might have been
cured.[140]
When the charter was granted to the Barbers' Company in the next century
it is expressly stated in the preamble (1462) that through 'the
ignorance, negligence and stupidity' of various barbers and other
practitioners in surgery many of the King's lieges had 'gone the way of
all flesh.'
Mr. D'Arcy Power states that 'a Guild of Surgeons, distinct from the
Guild of Barbers, existed in London from time immemorial. The guild was
always a small body, probably never more than twenty in number, and
sometimes dwindling to less than a dozen. It existed and remained
unincorporated at a time when many of the other guilds either vanished
or were converted into companies. The earliest notice of the Surgeons'
Guild occurs in 1369.'[141] This information is obtained from Letter
Book G, translated from the Latin by Riley.
'On Monday next, after the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed
Virgin Mary [2nd February 1369], Master John Dunheued, Master John
Hyndstoke, and Nicholas Kyldesby, surgeons, were admitted in full
husting, before Simon de Mordone [Mayor] and the Aldermen, and sworn, as
Master Surgeons of the city of London, that they would well and
faithfully serve the people, in undertaking their cures, would take
reasonably from them, would faithfully follow their calling, and would
present to the said Mayor and Aldermen the defaults of others
undertaking cures, so often as should be necessary; and that they would
be ready, at all times, when they should be warned, to attend the maimed
or wounded, and other persons; and would give truthful information to
the officers of the city aforesaid, as to such maimed, wounded and
others, whether they be in peril of death or not. And also faithfully to
do all things touching their calling.'[142]
There is a similar ordinance dated April 1390 in which Master John
Hynstok, Master Geoffrey Grace, Master John Brademore, and Master Henry
Suttone, surgeons, were admitted and sworn before the Mayor.[143] Mr.
Power points out that this ordinance is specially interesting, because
the inspecting master surgeons are sworn 'faithfully to follow their
calling, and faithful scrutiny to make of others, both men and _women_,
undertaking cures, or practising the art of surgery; and to present
their defaults, as well in their practice as in their medicine, to the
aforesaid Mayor and aldermen, so often as need shall be.'[144]
Mr. Power says: 'The officers thus put under an obligation to perform
certain public duties were the masters or aldermen of the Surgeons'
Guild, and it is certain that they took so wide a view of their duties
as to harass the members of the Barbers' Guild who meddled with surgery.
Thus in 1410 certain 'good and honest folk, barbers of the city,
appeared by their counsel in the private chamber of the aldermen and
sheriffs, and demanded that they should for ever peaceably enjoy their
privileges, without scrutiny of any person of other craft or trade than
barbers, and this neither in shaving, cupping, bleeding, nor any other
thing in any way pertaining to barbery, or to such practice of surgery
as is now used, or in future to be used, within the craft of the said
barbers.'[145]
In 1417 there is in the city records special reference to the wardens of
the faculty or craft of surgeons. Security was given by a surgeon to the
Chamberlain of the city to ensure due care of his patients. John
Severelle Love, surgeon, undertook to pay £20 sterling to the
Chamberlain if he 'should take any man under his care, as to whom risk
of maiming, or of his life might ensue, and within four days should not
warn the wardens of the craft of surgery thereof.' Half of this sum was
to go to the city, and the other half to the faculty of surgeons.[146]
We now arrive at the time when another great surgeon arose. This was
Thomas Morestede, surgeon to Henry V. and Henry VI., and probably
previously to Henry IV., who, Mr. Power says, made the first serious
attempt to convert surgery into a profession. When Henry V. in the
spring of 1415 entered on his campaign in France, which ended with the
victory at Agincourt on the 25th October, the medical arrangements of
the army were very complete. 'The agreement, dated 29th April 1415, is
to the effect that Nicholas Colnet was to accompany the King for a year
as physician to the forces in Guienne and France. He was to be attended
by three archers as a guard, each archer receiving sixpence a day,
whilst Colnet drew twelvepence for his own pay. Thomas Morstede, the
surgeon, had also three archers assigned to him for protection, and he
too received twelve pence a day, in addition to the usual allowance of
one hundred marks a quarter--the pay, it is stated, for thirty
men-at-arms, with a share of the plunder. Morestede was directed further
to take with him twelve of his own craft, each subordinate surgeon to
receive the pay of an archer--sixpence a day.... The scale of pay here
granted is very liberal. The ordinary day's wage of a labourer at this
time was one penny. Each archer and each surgeon was considered to be
worth the wages of six day labourers, and the two chiefs double their
assistants.... Yet in spite of these attractions the service was a
perilous one, even though it only lasted a few months. Morestede engaged
William Bredewardyne to act under him, but he had such difficulty in
securing the services of the twelve assistants that he prayed the King
'to grant his letters of Privy Seal directed to your Chancellor of
England, to cause him to deliver to your suppliant letters of commission
under your great seal, by force of which he should have power to press
twelve persons of his craft, such as he should choose to accompany him,
and to serve your most gracious sovereign lord during your
campaign.'[147] Morstede became a rich and influential London citizen,
and served as sheriff in 1436. He died in 1450, and was buried in the
Church of St. Olave Upwell, Old Jewry, where he had built 'a fair new
aisle.'[148]
Dr. Furnivall printed in his edition of Thomas Vicary's _Anatomie of the
Bodie of Man_ (Early Text Society, 1888, p. 236), a paper from a
manuscript in the British Museum (Royal M.S., 7 F., xiv., art. 24)
containing a statement of the pay of navy surgeons in the reign of Henry
VIII. _The Henry Grace de Dieu_ carried two surgeons at 23s. 4d. a
month; also _The Mary Rose_ and _The Great Gally_, with two surgeons
each at the same pay, and nineteen other vessels each with one surgeon
at 10s. a month.
To return to the Fellowship of Surgeons, Mr. Power tells us that in 1435
the surgeons, then seventeen in number, became an established body, with
a code of laws and regulations which still exist in a small vellum
volume now preserved in Barbers' Hall. In 1462 they obtained a charter
of incorporation, and in 1492 were given a grant of arms. In 1493 the
guild 'was living on friendly terms with the Barbers' Company, for in
this year the two guilds entered into a "composition," dated 12th May,
and signed by representatives of both bodies. This composition
recognised the independence of the two fellowships "of surgeons
enfranchised within the city of London," and "of barber-surgeons and
surgeon-barbers enfranchised in the said city." It was agreed that
neither body should admit any one except a regular apprentice to
practise surgery without the consent and knowledge of the other, and to
ensure this being carried into effect every stranger seeking a license
to practise in London was to be presented to the Mayor by the four
wardens of the two guilds.'[149] The end of the Fellowship of Surgeons
came in 1540, when it was united by Act of Parliament (32 Henry VIII.)
with the Company of Barbers. The granting of the charter on this
occasion was the cause of Holbein's famous picture being painted. This
picture still decorates the Barbers' Hall in Monkwell Street.
Allusion has already been made to the Barbers' Company--to its first
master in 1308, and to its incorporation by royal charter in 1462 by
Edward IV. In 1376 the gild elected two masters, and at this time the
members were sharply divided between the barbers proper and the barbers
exercising the faculty of surgery.
In 1390 four masters were sworn in in one year, but these were really
only master and wardens, as stated by Mr. Young in his most valuable and
exhaustive account of the Barber Surgeons' Company.[150]
The relative positions of the city companies has frequently changed,
thus at one time the Barber Surgeons were entitled to the seventeenth
place, but in 1516 they only ranked as the twenty-eighth. In 1537 the
Barber Surgeons formed the most numerous company in London, the number
of freemen being 185. The next in order of numbers was the Skinners with
151, then the Haberdashers with 120, the Leathersellers with 113, and
the Fishmongers with 109. The rest of the companies numbered less than
100, the Bowyers being the lowest with 19.[151] In 1745 the surgeons,
who had long chafed under the inconveniences caused by official
connection with the barbers, seceded and formed the Surgeons' Company,
under the title of 'The Masters, Governors and Commonalty of the Art and
Science of Surgery,' which was established by Act of Parliament. The
Surgeons found a temporary home at Stationers' Hall until 1751, when the
premises known as Surgeons' Hall, in the Old Bailey, were ready for
occupation.
The company came to a premature end in 1796, and it was not until 1800
that the Royal College of Surgeons was established.
HOSPITALS
_St. Bartholomew's Hospital._--We are justly proud of the hospitals of
the twentieth century, but one of them stands out from the rest on
account of its early foundation, and its enormous influence on the
growth of professional feeling. In following the incidents in the
history of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, we cannot doubt but that this is
one of the noblest institutions in London. The hospital was founded by
Rahere in 1123, and refounded in 1546. We have little history of the
earlier period, but the documents relating to the refoundation evidently
echo the sentiments formed during the earlier period.
Dr. Norman Moore in his paper on the Progress of Medicine at St.
Bartholomew's Hospital (1888), writes: 'We are in the very middle of the
sacred land of medicine, and many of the great events in the history of
medicine are connected with the particular region in which our hospital
is, or have occurred in our hospital itself.'
Rahere while building the hospital continued his labours by founding the
priory, of which all that now remains is the Church of St. Bartholomew
the Great. This consists of the choir and transept of the church of the
priory, and a part of the site of the close is marked by the present
Bartholomew Close. The hospital and the priory were independent but
connected. The relations between the two were revised by Richard de Ely,
Bishop of London in 1197; by Eustace de Fauconberg, Bishop of London in
1224: and by Simon of Sudbury, Bishop of London in 1373, and the two
foundations were finally separated on the dissolution of the priory in
1537.
There is in the British Museum (Cotton MS. Vespasian, Bk. ix.), a Life
of Rahere written by one who had known those who knew the founder. The
manuscript is a copy of an earlier one written in the reign of Henry
II., within fifty years of the foundation of the
[Illustration: OBVERSE OF THE COMMON SEAL OF THE CITY OF LONDON, _Cir._
1225.]
[Illustration: SEAL OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL.]
hospital. This work, which is of great value, is described by Dr. Norman
Moore, and analysed in Mr. Morrant Baker's _Two Foundations of St.
Bartholomew's Hospital_, A.D. 1123 _and_ A.D. 1546[152]
Rahere has been described as the King's minstrel or jester, but there is
no authority for this. The writer of his life says that he was a
frequenter of the palace, and of noblemen's houses, and made himself so
agreeable as to be highly esteemed as the leader of tumultuous
pleasures. He was, however, converted to a better state of life, but
probably, as is the wont of those who write about conversions, the
author rather darkens the picture of the courtier's early follies.
Rahere determined to go to Rome, and after visiting the shrines of St.
Peter and St. Paul, he was taken ill with a grievous sickness. He feared
that God was angry with him for his sins, and he vowed that if God would
give him health so that he might return to his own country, 'he would
make an hospital in recreation of poor men, and to them so there
gathered, necessaries minister after his power.'
In the night he saw a vision which filled him with dread. He seemed to
be borne up on high by a beast having four feet and two wings, and set
down in a high place. From this great height he looked into a deep pit,
and he feared to slide down into it. Then appeared to him a certain man
of great beauty and majesty, who fastened his eye upon him and said, 'O
man, what and how much service shouldest thou give to him, that in so
great peril hath brought help to thee?' Rahere answered: 'Whatsoever
might be of heart and of might, diligently should I give, in recompense
to my deliverer.' So the kingly man spoke again: 'I am Bartholomew, the
Apostle of Jesus Christ, that came to succour thee in thine anguish, and
to open to thee the secret mysteries of Heaven. Know me truly, by the
will and commandment of the Holy Trinity, and the common favour of the
celestial Court and Council, to have chosen a place in the suburbs of
London, at Smithfield, where in my name thou shalt found a church, and
it shall be the house of God.... My part shall be to provide
necessaries, direct, build and end this work; and this place to me
accept with evident tokens and signs, protect and defend continually it
under my wings; and therefore of this work know me the master, and
thyself only the minister; use diligently thy service, and I shall show
my lordship.'
Rahere when he got back to London made overtures to the citizens for the
purpose of obtaining the land he required for building, and the
authorities were favourable to his scheme, but they could not settle the
matter until Henry I. had been consulted, because the place at
Smithfield was within the King's market. When the petitioner applied to
the King his plea was acceded to, and he was given authority to execute
his purpose.
It is not quite clear where all the money came from for the carrying out
so vast an undertaking, but Rahere had a winning way, and from the King
downwards he appears to have obtained liberal help. Before he could
build he had to drain the land, which was nothing but a marsh, and when
he went there the only sign of civilisation about was a gibbet. The
hospital, which from the first was a hospital for the sick, and not a
mere almshouse, had a master, eight brethren and four sisters.
The first master was Alfun, an old man who had previously built the
Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and Rahere was the first prior.
Alfun was also styled hospitaler or proctor of the poor, and the writer
of the manuscript Life of Rahere tells how it was the custom of Alfun to
go about begging for provisions and other necessaries for the poor men
that lay in the hospital, he also looked after the welfare of those who
were employed in building the church. Rahere had many troubles in his
later life, and a large number of envious enemies spoke evil of him and
did him injuries. There was a plot against his life, which failed on
account of the confession of a penitent conspirator. He had, however, a
good friend in the King, who helped him and confirmed his previous grant
by a charter which gave full liberty and great privileges to the priory
and hospital. When, therefore, Rahere died, after having been prior for
twenty-two years and six months, he left his great establishment in a
prosperous condition.
Dr. Norman Moore points out that in the Life of Rahere there is an
account of the admission of the first patients of which we have any
record. This was a man named Adwyne, who came up to London from Dunwich,
in Suffolk, in the reign of Henry II. There are many records of people
who were supposed to be healed by praying at Rahere's tomb, but this man
is described as having been admitted into the hospital, and therefore a
genuine patient. He was discharged cured, but although his condition is
described no details of his treatment are given. Dr. Moore supposes that
by long lying in bed Adwyne's muscles had become anaemic and enfeebled.
He was encouraged 'to move his limbs a little, and he found that he was
able to move them much more than he expected; he began to make small
objects, commencing with cutting and carving, and so at last was able to
work again, and to follow the craft of a carpenter.'[153]
[Illustration: RAHERE'S TOMB IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH.]
John Mirfield, a canon of St. Bartholomew's Priory, wrote a general
treatise on medicine, entitled _Breviarium Bartholomei_, about the year
1380, when Richard Sutton was master of the hospital. This book is of
considerable interest, both as an early medical treatise written at a
time when this form of literature was not general, and for its
connection with the hospital. Dr. Moore gives a full description of the
contents, and adds: 'The picture is complete of the medical and
surgical practice in St. Bartholomew's Hospital in the reign of Richard
II.'[154]
London was doubtless well able to supply the hospital with patients, and
the dismounted knights in the jousts at Smithfield must have found it
convenient to have their wounds attended to at once. It is recorded that
when Wat Tyler fell from his horse, half dead from his wounds, he was
dragged within the hospital gate, and died in what is now the open space
between the church and the outer wall of the great hall. The body was
then laid in the master's chamber. Walworth, however, had the body
brought out and beheaded, the head being sent to London Bridge to
replace that of Archbishop Sudbury.
By a composition, dated 1373, the master of the hospital was ordered to
be presented to the Prior of St. Bartholomew's Priory after election,
and previous to presentation to the bishop. The last master was John
Brereton, who subscribed to the King's supremacy in 1534. The last
prior, Robert Fuller, surrendered the priory to the King in 1540.
About the year 1423 the famous Richard Whittington repaired the hospital
at his own expense. Little more than a century after this it was
refounded by Henry VIII., but with very little pecuniary help from the
King.
In 1538 the Mayor, aldermen and commonalty of the City of London
petitioned Henry VIII. that they might from thenceforth have the order,
rule, disposition and governance of St. Mary's Spital, St. Bartholomew's
Spital, and St. Thomas's Spital, and the new Abbey at Tower Hill, with
the rents and revenues appertaining to the same, for the only relief of
the poor, sick and needy persons. In 1544 the King confirmed by letters
patent the grant and establishment of St. Bartholomew's Hospital to the
master and chaplains, but in 1546 a deed of covenant between Henry
VIII. and the Mayor, commonalty and citizens of London respecting the
hospital was sealed, by which they came under the rule of the city. It
is stated in the deed that 'his Highness of his bountiful goodness and
charitable mind was moved with great pity for and towards the relief,
aid, succour and help of the poor, aged, sick, low and impotent people.'
Additional letters patent were issued in 1547.[155]
In 1552 was published _The Ordre of the Hospital of S. Bartholomewes in
West Smythfielde, in London_, with this text on the title, 'I Epist.
John, ij. chap. He that sayeth he walketh in the lyght, and hateth his
brother, came never as zeal in the lyght. But he that loveth his
brother, he dwelleth in the lyght.'
We have already seen how the later years of Rahere's life were darkened
by the attacks of enemies, and a curious revival of similar slanders
appears to have occurred when the hospital was refounded, and so
virulent were the slanders that it appears to have been thought that a
reply from the governing body was needed, and such a reply is found in
the Preface to the _Ordre_[156]--this commences as follows: 'The
wickednes of reporte at thys Daie, good reader, is growen to such
ranckenes, that nothing almost is able to defend it selfe against the
venyme thereof, but that, either with open slander or privie whisperyng,
it shalbe so undermyned, that it shall neither have the good successe,
which otherwyse it myght, ne the thankes whiche for the worthines it
ought.'
Henry VIII. being dead the governing body appear to have felt it
possible to tell the truth as to the little he had done in endowing the
hospital. In fact, both Henry VIII. and Edward VI. have gained credit as
founders, when they really did little more than give buildings for
public purposes that were of no use to themselves and then leave others
to find the money to support them.
The writer of the Preface says that the slanderers ought to repent and
praise both the deed and the doers so as to wipe away the slander: 'But
forasmuch as it is doubtful whether thei wil do as thei maie, and of
conscience are bounden, and the slaundre is so wide spred, that a narowe
remedy cannot amend it: It is thought good to the Lord Mayour of thys
Citie of London, as chief patrone and governour of this Hospitall, in
the name of the Citie, to publishe at this present the officiers and
ordres by hym appoincted, and tyme to tyme practysed and used by twelve
of the citizeins the moste aunciente in their courses, as at large in
the processe shal appiar, partly for the staye and redresse of such
slaundre, and partly for that it myght be an open witnesse and knowledge
unto all men howe thynges are administered there and by whom. Wherein if
any man judge more to be set forth in woorde, than in diede is folowed
there be meanes to resolve him.'
The case in abstract is as follows: For the relief of the sore and sick
of the City of London Henry VIII. was pleased to erect a hospital in
West Smithfield for a hundred sore and diseased. He endowed it with 500
marks a year, on condition that the citizens found another 500 marks.
The citizens soon discovered that the King's endowment was far under
what at first they had hoped. The 500 marks rent was to come from houses
in great decay, and some 'rotten ruinous,' so that to make them again
worth the wonted revenue was no small charge, and after paying certain
pensions, etc., there only remained towards succouring the hundred poor
sufficient for the charge of three or four harlots then lying in
childbed. The citizens therefore, to relieve their own poor and others
coming daily out of all quarters of the realm, spent above their
covenant of 500 marks yearly not much less than £1000, which enabled
them to receive the number agreed upon. In spite of this, certain busy
bodies more ready to espy occasion to blame others than skilful to
redress things blameworthy indeed, rounded into the ears of the
preachers their tender consciences. These preachers took upon them to
make known these slanders, so that the good citizens for their five
years' loathsome work done for Christ's sake received only open
detraction and the poor a greater hindrance.
During these five years (1547-1552) 800 sick folk were healed in the
hospital and 92 died. The Preface writer ends by saying that if any man
spieth aught in the Ordre worthy to be reformed he will find those at
the hospital glad and willing to reform it, and the city wish, if by any
means it is possible, to raise the number of those receiving the
benefits of the hospital from 100 to 1000.
The number of distinct paid officers is given as seven, in this
order--(1) The Hospitaller, (2) the Renter Clerk, (3) the Butlers, (4)
the Porter, (5) the Matron, (6) the Sisters (twelve), (7) the Beadles
(eight). 'There are also as in a kynde by themselves iii. chirurgeons in
the wages of the Hospitall, gevyng daily attendaunce upon the cures of
the poore.'
The charges in this little book of orders are of great interest, and
will well repay careful perusal. The surgeons are charged to the
uttermost of their knowledge to help cure the diseases of the poor
without favouring those with good friends; they are not to admit the
incurables, so as to keep out those who are curable; when they dress any
diseased person they are to advise him to sin no more and be thankful
unto God; they are to receive no gift from anyone, and never to burden
the house with any sick person, for the curing of which person they have
received any money. In conclusion, they are to report any wrongdoing to
the almoners.
The nurses of the present day would be surprised at the stringency of
the instructions in the charge to the sisters. Mr. Morrant Baker
specially refers to one command: 'And so muche as in you shall lie, ye
shall avoyde and shonne the conversacion and company of all men,' and
adds, 'An order which, I have no doubt, was as implicitly obeyed then as
any similar command would be now.'
At the end of the charges is 'A daily service for the poore,' and 'A
thankesgeving unto Almyghtie God to be said by the poore that are cured
in the hospital, at ye time of their delivery from thence, upon their
knies in the hall before the hospitaler, and twoo masters of this house,
at the least. And this the hospitaler shal charge them to learne without
the booke, before they be delivered.'
Thomas Vicary, serjeant surgeon to the King, and the foremost surgeon of
his time, was first appointed Governor of St. Bartholomew's on the 29th
of September 1548, and in January 1552 he was made governor for life. He
was the first medical officer of the hospital. Dr. Norman Moore
describes his position as 'intermediate between that of the master of
older times and that of the surgeons subsequently appointed. For some
years he seems to have had both medical and general charge of the
hospital.'[157]
At this time he had long held a distinguished position, although not
originally a trained surgeon, and at first in small practice at
Maidstone. In 1525 he was junior of the three wardens of the Barber
Surgeons' Company. In 1528 he was upper warden and one of the surgeons
to Henry VIII. On 29th April 1530 he was granted the office of serjeant
surgeon to the King 'as soon as Marcellus de la More shall die, or
resign or forfeit his post,' and in the same year he became master of
the Barber Surgeons' Company. La More died, or disappeared from England
at some time after Easter 1535, when he received his last payment.
Vicary received his first quarter's salary as serjeant surgeon on the
20th September 1535, and filled this distinguished office under Henry
VIII., Edward VI., Mary and Elizabeth. The serjeant surgeons were
originally military surgeons, whose first duty was to attend the King
upon the battlefield. John Ranby was the last to perform this duty when
he attended George II. at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743.[158]
In 1541 Vicary was appointed first master of the Amalgamated Company of
Barbers and Surgeons, and in 1548 he is said to have published for the
first time his _Anatomie of Man's Body_. This work was reprinted in 1577
by the four surgeons of St. Bartholomew's of that time--William Clowes,
Wil. Beton, Richard Story and Edward Bayly, who dedicated it to the
president and governors. The book is one of great interest, but Dr.
Payne has lately proved that it is not an original work, but merely a
_rechauffé_ of an anatomical treatise of the fourteenth century, from
which the greater portion has been transcribed word for word.[159]
The first physician of St. Bartholomew's was Dr. Roderigo Lopus, a
Portuguese Jew, who was appointed about 1567.
_St. Thomas's Hospital._--This hospital is almost of as great antiquity
as St. Bartholomew's. The original hospital belonged to the canons of
the Priory of St. Mary Overy, and was situated on the west side of the
road running south from London Bridge. In 1207 the hospital was
destroyed in the fire which devastated the borough of Southwark, but a
temporary building was erected on the old site (now occupied by the
Bridge House Hotel and the London and Westminster Bank). Peter de
Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, projected a new hospital on a more
suitable site on the east side of the road, and appealed for funds for
this purpose by means of a charter of indulgence, 1228: 'Behold at
Southwark an ancient hospital built of old to entertain the poor, has
been entirely reduced to cinders and ashes by a lamentable fire;
moreover, the place wherein the old hospital has been founded was less
appropriate for entertainment and habitation, both by reason of the
straitness of the place and by reason of the lack of water and many
other conveniences; according to the advice of us, and of wise men, it
is transferred and transplanted to another more commodious site, where
the air is more pure and calm, and the supply of water more plentiful.'
The new hospital was dedicated to St. Thomas (à Becket) the Martyr, and
became independent of St. Mary's Priory. It was frequently referred to
as Becket's Spital.
The third building was erected about 1507, and in 1535, a short time
before the dissolution of the religious houses, the custos or master,
the brethren and the three lay sisters, had the charge of forty beds for
poor and infirm people, who were to be supplied with food and firing.
The hospital was refounded in 1553 by Edward VI., and endowed with 4000
marks a year. It was dedicated to St. Thomas the Apostle, but was often
called, in honour of Edward, the King's Hospital. The parish of St.
Thomas Apostle, Southwark, contained within its limits the two hospitals
of St. Thomas and Guy's, and was often called the parish of St. Thomas's
Hospital. Thus the old name remained, but the dedication was changed
from that of the famous saint of the Middle Ages to that of the Apostle
St. Thomas.
Dr. Payne, who wrote an essay 'On some old Physicians of St. Thomas's
Hospital,' says that in old times the staff was exclusively surgical.
Dr. Eliazer Hodson, who was appointed about 1620, was the first named
that Dr. Payne could find, but he does not think that Hodson was the
first physician.
The building having fallen into disrepair was entirely rebuilt in
1701-1706, and the hospital remained on the same spot from 1228 until
1862, when the property was sold to the South Eastern Railway Company,
and a new hospital was opened on the Albert Embankment at the southern
end of Westminster Bridge.
_Lepers._--There were other mediæval hospitals in London besides those
now described, which were the two chief ones. Many smaller buildings in
the suburbs were devoted to the reception of lepers.
Dr. Creighton writes: 'The remarkable Ordinance of Edward III. in 1346
for the expulsion of lepers from London seems to have been the occasion
of the founding of two so-called Lazar-houses, one in Kent Street,
Southwark, called "the Loke," and the other at Hackney or Kingsland.
These are the only two mentioned in the subsequent orders to the porters
of the city gates in 1375, and as late as the reign of Henry VI.
[Illustration: ST. GILES' IN THE FIELDS]
they are the only two besides the ancient Matilda's Hospital in St.
Giles's fields.... Another of the suburban leper-spitals was founded at
Highgate by a citizen of 1468, and it is not until the reign of Henry
VIII. that we hear of the spitals at Mile End, Knightsbridge and
Hammersmith.'[160] Dr. Creighton adds that the Lock was doubtless the
house of the 'Leprosi apud Bermondsey,' who are designated in the Royal
Charter of 1 Hen. IV. (1399) as recipients, along with the _Leprosi_ of
Westminster (St. James's), of five or six thousand pounds.
The village of St. Giles in the Fields, as shown in the accompanying
plan, is of great interest, largely because the place still retains some
of its old special features. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century,
when the Rookery of St. Giles's was destroyed, and New Oxford Street was
built on the site, the lines of its contour were little altered since
the Hospital was founded at the beginning of the twelfth century.
The Ordinance of Edward III. (1346), and the swearing of the porters of
the city gates that they will prevent lepers from entering the city, are
printed in Riley's _Memorials_ (pp. 230, 384).
Dr. Creighton states that, as far as he knows, the Ordinance of 1346 is
the only one of the kind in English history, and adds: 'The statutes of
the realm contain no reference to lepers or leprosy from first to last;
the references in the Rolls of Parliament are to the taxing of their
houses and lands. The laws which deprived lepers of marital rights and
of heirship appear to have been wholly foreign; in England, leprosy as a
bar to succession was made a plea in the law courts.'[161]
Doubtless there were many cases of true leprosy in the Middle Ages, but
there was a great confusion of diseases under this generic term, and we
are told that, 'in some instances of leper hospitals with authentic
charters, the provision for the leprous was in the proportion of one to
three or four of the non-leprous inmates.'[162]
It was a very terrible fate for a man or woman to be accused of being a
leper, for the sufferers were driven from the haunts of men, and being
in many cases uncared for, they grew worse and worse. The disease was
largely caused by bad food, and this cause was quite neglected in many
places.
A monstrous Ordinance of the Scottish Parliament at Scone in 1386 is
recorded in the _Ancient Laws and Customs of the Burghs of Scotland_:
'Gif ony man brings to the market corrupt swine or salmond to be sauld,
they sall be taken by the bailie, and incontinent, without ony question,
sall be sent to the lepper folke; and gif there be na lepper folke, they
sall be destroyed all uterlie.' The Rev. W. Denton, in quoting this
instance of horrible cruelty, writes: 'Sir Walter Scott must have had
instances of such economy in his mind when he put into the mouth of John
Girder the directions--"Let the house be redd up, the broken meat set
by, and if there be ony thing totally uneatable, let it be gien to the
puir folk."--_Bride of Lammermuir._'[163]
Men sometimes took advantage of a charge of leprosy to injure an enemy.
In 1468, Johanna Nightyngale, of Brentwood, in Essex, was accused of
leprosy. She refused to remove herself to a solitary place, and appealed
to Edward IV., who issued a Chancery warrant for her examination by his
physicians and certain lawyers to be associated with them. The court of
inquiry reported that they found the woman to be in no way leprous, nor
to have any sign of lepra. The case is recorded in Rymer's
_Foedera_.[164]
There was another evil caused by the privilege of begging which was
accorded to lepers, for men sometimes pretended to be lepers in order to
avail themselves of this privilege.
It is worthy of mention, in passing, that the two districts of London
which have given their names to the extremes of high and low life--viz.,
St. James's and St. Giles's--both have their origin in the leper
hospitals of the Middle Ages.
_The Plague._--The greatest scourge among the epidemics which have
devastated the world is the Eastern bubonic plague, which entered Europe
for the first time in the fourteenth century. All epidemics, when they
find a new field, appear to be specially virulent, and this was the case
with the first appearance of the plague, which so terrified the
inhabitants of Europe that they applied to it this ominous name; but the
epidemic of 1349 has of late years received the new name of the Black
Death, which distinguishes it in the popular mind from the later
visitations. The name, which came from Germany, will not be found in the
old descriptions of the plague in England. A writer in the _Quarterly
Review_ says: 'The term "Der Schwarze Tod" may have been used in Germany
in the fourteenth century, but it does not seem to have been current in
England before Hecker's work [on Epidemics] was translated into English
in 1833.'[165]
The Black Death entered Dorsetshire in August 1348, moving on to
Bristol, Gloucester and Oxford. From Oxford the infection marched to
London, which city it reached at Michaelmas or November. It soon swept
over the whole country. Dr. Creighton writes: 'The Black Death may be
said to have extended over three seasons in the British islands--a
partial season in the south of England in 1348; a great season all over
England, in Ireland, and in the south of Scotland, in 1349; and a late
extension in Scotland generally in 1350. The experience of all Europe
was similar, the Mediterranean provinces receiving the infection as
early as 1347, and the northern countries, on the Baltic and North Seas,
as late as 1350.'[166]
This plague had the most momentous effect upon the history of England,
on account of the fearful mortality that it caused. It paralysed
industry, and permanently altered the position of the labourer.
Ineffectual attempts were made to neutralise these effects by the
Statute of Labourers and by enactments 'that every workman and labourer
shall do his work just as he used before the pestilence'; 'that the
servants of substantial people shall take no more than they used to
take'; and 'that labourers and workmen who will not work shall be
arrested and imprisoned.'[167]
The effects of the pestilence on the Church and on morals is seen in the
writings of Wiclif and Langland. Wiclif, who was an Oxford student, in
1348 predicted in his book, _The Last Age of the Church_, the end of the
world in 1400 at latest. The effects upon architecture has been dwelt
upon by the antiquaries; upon the growth of the country, by political
economists; and upon the general health of the country, by doctors; so
that it is not necessary here to enter into further explanations.
The statistics of the writers of the Middle Ages are of little value,
and the estimates of those who died are very various, but the statement
that half the population of England died from the plague is probably
not far from the truth.
In East Anglia, which suffered most severely, upwards of 800 parishes
lost their parsons, eighty-three of them twice, and ten of them three
times, in a few months. In Norfolk and Suffolk nineteen religious houses
were left without abbot or prior.[168]
The details of the Black Death in London are not numerous, but Riley
gives some particulars of mortality among the City Companies at this
time. In the Articles of the Cutlers (1344) the names of eight wardens
are given, and below it is stated that in the 23rd year of Edward III.'s
reign (five years after) they were all dead, and others chosen in their
place.[169] In the Articles of the Hatters (1347) six wardens are named
as being chosen on Tuesday after the Feast of St. Lucy, 13th December,
21 Edw. III., and a note is added that by the Saturday after the
translation of St. Thomas the Martyr, 7th July, 24 Edw. III., they had
all died.[170] Four wardens of the Goldsmiths' Company are recorded to
have fallen victims to the Black Death, and doubtless the other
companies suffered in a like manner.
The most striking fact in respect to the mortality in London is that
recorded by Stow in his Chronicle, of 50,000 persons buried in Sir
Walter de Manny's burial place in Spittle Croft (now the Charterhouse).
Although doubtless the number is grossly exaggerated, it is certain that
it was very great. One of the victims in high places was Dr.
Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died at Lambeth on 26th
August 1349, just one week after he had landed at Dover from Avignon.
In January 1349 the meeting of Parliament was prorogued because 'a
sudden visitation of deadly pestilence had broken out at Westminster and
the neighbourhood.'
Dr. Creighton writes: 'For 300 years plague was the grand zymotic
disease of England--the same type of plague that came from the East in
1347-1349, continuously reproduced in a succession of epidemics at one
place or another.' He goes on to quote Peinlich's _Pest in Steiermark_
[i.e. _Styria_], 1877-1878, to show that similar cases occurred over
Europe. From 1349 to 1716 seventy years are marked in the annals of
Styria as plague years.[171]
The second great pestilence occurred in 1361, when the number of deaths
was about a third of those from the plague of 1349. The mortality was
greater among men than women. The third pestilence, of 1368-1369, is
referred to by Langland in _Piers Plowman_. The fourth was in 1375-1376,
and the fifth in 1390-1391.
Dr. Creighton describes several other plagues, and writes that 'in the
decade from 1430 to 1440 there were no fewer than four distinct
outbreaks of plague, three of them confined to London, and one of them,
that of 1439, general throughout the realm.'[172]
The constant recurrence of the plague must have taught the authorities
some mode of treatment, but although certain sanitary regulations were
made (which will be referred to later on), it is only incidentally that
we learn what was done during the earlier visitations. Probably panic
reigned generally in the time of the Black Death. Such writings as are
left us give this impression, and there is little reason for surprise
that it should have been so.
Dr. Creighton has entered very fully into the history of the various
plagues and the different expedients which were adopted to mitigate
their severity. His valuable work is so thorough in its treatment of the
subject that to a great extent I have drawn the following particulars
from his luminous pages.
The first plague order, of which the full text is extant, was issued in
1543. The following transcript is taken from an _An Abstract of several
Orders relating to the Plague_ (British Museum. Addit. MS., No. 4376):--
'35 Hen. VIII. A precept issued to the aldermen:--That they should cause
their beadles to set the sign of the cross on every house which should
be afflicted with the plague, and there continue for forty days: that no
person who was able to live by himself, and should be afflicted with the
plague, should go abroad or into any company for one month after his
sickness, and that all others who could not live without their daily
labour should as much as in them lay refrain from going abroad, and
should for forty days after [illegible] and continually carry a white
rod in their hand, two foot long. That every person whose house had been
infected should, after a visitation, carry all the straw and [illegible]
in the night privately in the fields and burn; they shall also carry
clothes of the infected in the fields to be cured.
'That no housekeeper should put any person diseased out of his house
into the street or other place unless they provided housing for them in
some other house.
'That all persons having any dogs in their house, other than hounds,
spaniels or mastiffs necessary for the custody or safe keeping of their
houses, should forthwith convey them out of the city, or cause them to
be killed and carried out of the city and buried at the common laystal.
'That such as kept hounds, spaniels or mastiffs should not suffer them
to go abroad, but closely confine them.
'That the churchwardens of every parish should employ somebody to keep
out all common beggars out of churches on holydays, and cause them to
remain without doors.
'That all the streets, lanes, etc., within the wards should be cleansed.
'That the aldermen should cause this precept to be read in the
churches.'
Dr. Creighton says that this order was a development of the measures
devised by the King or his Minister before 1518, and probably in the
plague of 1513. The wisps put out on the infected houses are replaced by
crosses, which above are described simply as 'the sign of the
cross.'[173]
On 15th November 1547 it was ordered by the Mayor, recorder and aldermen
(_vicecomites_) that 'everye howseholder of their severall wardes, which
sithe the feast of all seyntes last past hath bein vysyted with the
plage ... shall cause to be fyxed upon the uttermost post of their
strete dore a certain crosse of saynt Anthonye devysed for that purpose,
there to remain xl. dayes after the setting up thereof.'[174]
The cross of St. Anthony was a crutch, such as was used by the Crutched
Friars. It was painted in blue on canvas or board, and the legend under
or over the cross was 'Lord have mercy upon us.'
In the plague of 1563 it was ordered, on the 3rd of July, that two
hundred blue headless crosses be made with all convenient speed by the
Chamberlain, and again, on the 6th of the same month, two hundred more
were ordered. On the 8th of July blue crosses were delivered to the
Bailiff of Finsbury to be used there.[175]
Dr. Creighton says that before the plague of 1603 the colour of the
crosses had been changed to red. The white rod or wand was used in
France as well as in England, as we learn from a letter of the Venetian
Ambassador to France (20th November 1580): 'This city [Paris] I hear is
in a very fair sanitary condition, notwithstanding that as I entered a
city gate, which is close to where I reside, I met a man and a woman
bearing the white plague wands in their hands, and asking alms; but some
believe that this was merely an artifice on their part to gain
money.'[176]
The white wand was afterwards retained as the peculiar badge of the
searchers of infected houses and of the bearers of the dead. In 1603 it
had become a red wand, just as the blue cross had become a red one.
The regulation about dogs is of great interest, as it incidentally shows
that dogs were commonly kept in London houses for the purpose of
protection. It was believed that dogs carried infection in their hair.
Brasbridge, in his _Poor Man's Jewel_, 1578, relates how, 'not many
years since, I knew a glover in Oxford who, with his family, to the
number of ten or eleven persons, died of the plague, which was said to
be brought into the house by a dogge skinne that his wife bought when
the disease was in the citie.'
The plague orders contained the clause against dogs to the last, and
thousands of them were killed. A proclamation during the London plague
of 1563 was directed against cats as well as dogs.[177]
The early literature of the plague is very unsatisfactory, and we have
to come to a time much later than the mediæval period for information as
to treatment. The main points of the various regulations were isolation
of the infected and special attention to sanitation. These in principle
are in accord with the best opinion of to-day, but the way in which they
were carried out left much to be desired. Those who were imprisoned in
their houses must have felt that they were given over to death. Yet some
of these patients did recover, and we naturally ask what was the
treatment which caused these cures? Was the cure due to the doctor or to
nature alone? The answer is not easy to find.
Dr. Payne, in his Inaugural Address as President of the Epidemiological
Society in 1893, specially alludes to the literature of the plague, of
which he says: 'The number of publications relating to the plague in
Europe during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is
very large, those in Germany being probably the most numerous, while
those published in England are comparatively few. We might expect,
however, that those works published at the time of great epidemics would
furnish us with valuable material for epidemic history. It is very
disappointing, therefore, to find how very seldom these writings,
whether of continental or English origin, have any historical value.
What generally happened was this. When an epidemic broke out, or was
expected in any particular place, some local physician thought it his
business to furnish the public with a tract on the subject, and he
accordingly compiled from the best authorities a pamphlet, good or bad
as the case might be. Such a physician, if he survived, would no doubt
have been able to acquire some experience of the disease during its
continuance, and if he had chosen to put this down in plain words when
the epidemic was over he might have done some service to medical
history, but unfortunately when the disease had once disappeared the
physicians seemed to have lost all interest in the subject, and it is
only in rare instances that the medical literature of the plague
contains any account of contemporary epidemics. One exception is Guy de
Chauliac's well-known account of the "Black Death" at Avignon, but we
have nothing in English literature to compare at all with this till much
later. The only medical work on the plague in the Elizabethan times
which has much value is that of Thomas Lodge, and this cannot be called
original.... It is not till after the great plague of 1665 that we have,
in the well-known work of [Nathanael] Hodges [_Loimologia, sive Pestis
Narratio_, 1672], some attempt at a scientific description of the
epidemic.'
Dr. Furnivall has printed in his edition of Vicary some extracts from
the Guildhall Repertories relating to the appointment and payment of
surgeons and physicians to attend to the plague-stricken folk. William
King, surgeon to the Pesthouse, petitioned for a pension in 1611. He
affirms that he had shown 'great care and diligence in curinge of such
persons as have been sent thither, and by reason of his attendance and
imployment there, his friendes and former acquaintances do utterly
refuse to use him in his profession.' On September 10 the city
authorities agreed to give King a stipend of £3 a year, which does not
seem very liberal pay for his onerous services.[178]
In the British Museum there is a MS. of some importance (Sloane MS.,
349), entitled 'Loimographia, an account of the Great Plague of London
in the year 1665, by William Boghurst, apothecary.' This was first
referred to by Mr. E. W. Brayley in his edition of Defoe's _Plague
Year_, and it was analysed by Dr. Creighton in his work on Epidemics.
Dr. Payne printed an edition of the tract in 1894. Mr. Brayley reprinted
from the _Intelligencer_, July 31, 1665, the following curious
advertisement:--
'Whereas Wm. Boghurst, apothecary at the White Hart, in St. Giles' in
the Fields, hath administered a long time to such as have been afflicted
with the plague, to the number of 40, 50, or 60 patients a day, with
wonderful success, by God's blessing upon certain excellent medicines
which he hath, as a water, a lozenge, etc. Also an electuary antidote,
of but 8d. the oz. price. This is to notify that the said Boghurst is
willing to attend any person infected and desiring his attendance,
either in city, suburbs or country, upon reasonable terms, and that the
remedies above mentioned are to be had at his house or shop, at the
White Hart aforesaid.'
Boghurst gives a good deal of information in his book regarding the
signs of the disease, and its treatment; and he describes the spread of
the disease in London as follows:--
'The winds blowing westward so long together, from before Christmas
until July, about seven months, was the cause the plague began first at
the west end of the city, as at St. Giles', St. Martin's, Westminster.
Afterwards it gradually insinuated and crept downe Holborne and the
Strand, and then into the city, and at last to the east end of the
suburbs, soe that it was halfe a yeare at the west end of the city
before the east end and Stepney was infected, which was about the middle
of July. Southwark being the south suburb, was infected almost as soon
as the west end. The disease spread not altogether by contagion at
first, nor began at only one place, and spread further and further as an
eating spreading soare doth all over the body, but fell upon severall
places of the city and suburbs like raine, even at the first at St.
Giles', St. Martin's, Chancery Lane, Southwark, and some places within
the city, as at Proctor's House.'
Dr. Payne writes: 'It has always been a question whether the repeated
recurrences of plague in Europe were to be attributed to re-introduction
of the virus from the East, or to a fresh awakening of a virus already
endemic,' and then alludes to Boghurst's local explanation of the origin
of the 1665 plague. He concludes his Introduction by saying: 'It seems
probable that London still contained sufficient plague virus to start a
fresh epidemic, when the local and temporary conditions were
favourable. The only temporary conditions of this kind that we know of
are, first, the rapid growth of population in London, which caused
terrible overcrowding, and must have overtasked the ordinary measures of
sanitation; and, secondly, the long drought in the spring of 1665, which
is referred to by Boghurst. The importance of this latter fact has been
explained by Dr. Creighton, in accordance with Pettenkofer's laws, but,
on the other hand, the great plague year of 1625 was remarkably wet. The
question is still one for discussion, and it may be left to the judgment
of the reader, guided by the valuable materials which Boghurst
contributes.'
From 1348 to 1665 plague was continually occurring in London, but it has
not appeared since the last date on anything but a small scale.[179] It
has been supposed that in the Great Fire the seeds of the disease were
destroyed, but this is not a conclusive reason, and fears were expressed
as to its possible reappearance in London after the plague of Bombay in
1896-1897; and the plague of Marseilles in the summer of 1720 created a
panic throughout Western Europe. Renewed attention was paid to the
London plague of 1665, and in 1722 Defoe wrote his renowned _Journal of
the Plague Year_.
We have no thoroughly trustworthy statistics of the earlier plagues, but
Dr. Creighton gives particulars of the visitations in London in 1603,
1625 and 1665 in one table:--
Estimated Total Plague Highest
Year. Population. Deaths. Deaths. Mortality Worst Week.
in a Week.
1603 250,000 42,940 33,347 3385 25 Aug.-1 Sept.
1625 320,000 63,001 41,313 5205 11-18 Aug.
1665 460,000 97,306 68,596 8297 12-19 Sept.
To these may be added that, in 1593, 11,503 persons died of the plague.
The figures of 1603 and 1625 in some reports differ from the above.[180]
Some of the plagues devastated the whole country, so that there was no
place for the Londoner to fly to for safety, but in others the danger
was more generally confined to London. In 1665 there were many places
that the Londoner could visit with considerable chance of safety, but
Queen Elizabeth in her reign would have none of this moving about. Stow
says that in the time of the plague of 1563 'a gallows was set up in the
market-place of Windsor to hang all such as should come there from
London. No wares to be brought to, or through, or by Windsor; nor any
one on the river by Windsor to carry wood or other stuff to or from
London, upon pain of hanging without any judgment; and such people as
received any wares out of London into Windsor were turned out of their
houses and their houses shut up.'
Monke, Duke of Albemarle, and Samuel Pepys were two of the most
prominent public servants who remained in London during the plague of
1665. The clergy and the doctors fled with very few exceptions, and
several of those who stayed in town doing the duty of others as well as
their own fell victims to the disease.
Dr. Hodges, author of _Loimologia_, enumerates among those who assisted
in the dangerous work of restraining the progress of the infection the
learned Dr. Gibson, Regius Professor at Cambridge, Dr. Francis Glisson,
Dr. Nathaniel Paget, Dr. Peter Barwick, Dr. Humphrey Brookes, etc. Of
those he mentions, eight or nine fell in their work, among whom was Dr.
Wm. Conyers, to whose goodness and humanity he bears the most honourable
testimony. Dr. Alexander Burnett, of Fenchurch Street, one of Pepys's
friends, was another of the victims.[181]
_Sweating Sickness._--The sweating sickness did not appear until the end
of the Middle Ages, viz., the year 1485, when the Battle of Bosworth was
fought, and there were five outbreaks of the epidemic up to 1551, after
which date it did not appear again in England. Dr. Creighton has taken
some pains to trace the origin of the disease. He writes: 'The history
of the English sweat presents to the student of epidemics much that is
paradoxical although not without parallel, and much that his research
can never rescue from uncertainty. Where did this hitherto unheard of
disease come from? Where was it in the intervals from 1485 to 1508, from
1508 to 1517, from 1517 to 1528, and from 1528 to 1551? What became of
it after 1551? Why did it fall mostly on the great houses--on the King's
Court, on the luxurious establishments of prelates and nobles, on the
richer citizens, on the lusty and well-fed, for the most part sparing
the poor? Why did it avoid France when it overran the Continent in 1529?
No theory of the sweat can be held sufficient which does not afford some
kind of answer to each of these questions, and some harmonising of them
all.'[182]
Those who wish to follow these inquiries must consult Dr. Creighton's
book. Suffice it to say here that the author is of opinion that
suspicion falls justly upon the foreign mercenaries who landed with
Henry Tudor at Milford Haven on the 6th of August 1485 as the carriers
of the disease.[183]
Dr. Creighton found among the British Museum manuscripts (Addit. MSS.,
No. 27, 582) a treatise on the _Sudor Anglicus_, or English Sweat,
dedicated to Henry VII. by the author, Thomas Forrestier, M.D., a native
of Normandy, who lived for a time in London. Stow says that the sickness
began in London on the 21st September, and continued till the end of
October, 'of the which a wonderful number died'; but Forrestier gives
the date as the 19th.
The second sweat was in 1508, when many died in the city. In August
public prayers were made at St. Paul's on account of the plague of
sweat. The third epidemic was in 1517, and the fourth in 1528. On the
5th of June of the latter year, Sir Brian Tuke wrote to Bishop Tunstall
that he had fled to Stepney 'for fear of the infection,' a servant
having died in his house. Anne Boleyn, her brother George and her father
caught the infection and recovered. Her brother-in-law, William Cary,
died at Hunsdon. A large number of persons caught the disease, but a
very considerable proportion recovered.
The fifth and last outbreak was in 1551, and it is interesting to note
that Dr. John Caius, the famous physician, wrote a treatise on it. Dr.
Norman Moore[184] describes this as 'the first original treatise
published in England, by which I mean the first treatise in which the
modern idea of observing the disease and writing a complete account of
what was actually seen was carried out.'
In Machyn's _Diary_ it is said that 'there died in London many
merchants, and great rich men and women, and young men and old of the
new sweat'; and Sir Thomas Speke and Sir John Wallop are instanced
among others. Hancocke, a minister of Poole, Dorset, refers to 'the
posting sweat that posted from town to town thorow England, and was
named "Stop-gallant," for it spared none. For there were some dancing in
the Court at nine o'clock that were dead at eleven.'
In taking stock of diseases and epidemics in London, we may note that
many of the pestilences previous to the Black Death were due to famine.
Dr. Creighton says of the year 1258 that 'so great was the pinch in
London from the failure of the crops and the want of money that fifteen
thousand are said to have died of famine and of a grievous and
widespread pestilence that broke out about the Feast of the Trinity,
19th May.' The number is that given by Matthew Paris, and Dr. Creighton
adds: 'It suggests a larger population in the capital than we might have
been disposed to credit. The same writer says that London was so full of
people when the Parliament was sitting in the year before (1257) that
the city could hardly hold them all in her ample bosom. The Annals of
Tewkesbury put the whole mortality from famine and fever in London in
1258 at 20,000, but the whole population did not probably exceed
40,000.'[185]
Small-pox and measles were not known to the ancients, and the latter
seems to have been first noted in the fourteenth century.
Of later diseases the name of influenza is Italian of the eighteenth
century, but Dr. Creighton refers to several epidemics which may have
been the same disease as those of 1173, 1427, 1510 and 1557. The 'new
disease' of 1643 was either typhus or influenza.
SANITATION
Having considered the condition of medical practice at the hospitals and
among private patients, and having also reviewed the particulars of
some of the chief epidemics, we shall now be better able to understand
the sanitary condition of mediæval London, and the means taken to keep
it clean. There can be little doubt that strenuous attempts were made at
different periods to improve its condition.
We may allow at once that old London was not a clean or healthy town, as
we understand these words now, but there can be little doubt that it was
in advance of most other towns.
Dr. Poore is rather severe in his estimate of the health of mediæval
London; he considers the situation of the city fairly good from a
sanitary point of view. It was not healthy, however, because of its
marshy surroundings. Ague and dysentery were always present and very
fatal. Scurvy was very prevalent before the introduction of the potato
by Hawkins.[186]
William Clowes, the well-known Elizabethan surgeon of St. Bartholomew's,
was also surgeon to Christ's Hospital, and in his day twenty or thirty
children had the scurvy at a time in the latter house, a fact due to a
diet largely composed of fish and other salted provisions, with a scanty
allowance of vegetables.
'There can be no doubt that down to the commencement of the present
century London was a veritable fever-bed, the causes of death being
largely malarial fever, spotted or typhus fever, plague, small-pox,
measles, scarlet fever, and whooping cough, the two latter being
comparatively recent introductions.'[187]
Another source of the unhealthiness of London is supposed by Dr. Poore
to be due to a soil soaked with the filth of centuries, by which means
the wells were probably infected.
Dr. Creighton takes a much more favourable view of the condition of
London, and he writes: 'Nuisances certainly existed in mediæval London,
but it is equally certain that they were not tolerated without
limit.'[188] It is also probable that the polluted condition of the soil
inside and outside the houses has been greatly exaggerated.
There was overcrowding in some quarters of London, but in most parts
there were gardens and plenty of fresh air. Many of the streets were
used as markets, and they were mostly left in a very untidy state, but
attempts were made to cleanse them.
The worst parts of the town were the lanes leading down to the river.
The bad state of these places was constantly complained of, but we must
always remember that complaints and legal actions are evidence to some
extent that in the end the evils were abated.
Very little is recorded when affairs go straight, as all are contented
to let them remain as they are, but when things go wrong we are all
anxious to raise complaints, and too much weight must not be given to
the supposed universality of these evils. We do not judge of the general
manners and morals of the country by the cases in the law courts and the
police courts.
Some of the evils, of which a description has come down to us, were
doubtless the cause of remedial measures being adopted. The streets soon
after the Conquest must have been in a very rotten condition, if we are
to judge from some accounts that have come down to us.
Stow relates in his Chronicle that in the great tempest of November 17,
1090, when 606 houses were beaten down by the wind in London, the roof
of St. Mary le Bow in Cheapside 'being raised with the beames thereof
were carryed in the ayre a great while, and at the last sixe of the
sayde beames were driven with their fall so fast in the ground, that
there appeared of some of them the seventh, and of some the eyght part,
to wit, but foure foote above the ground; which beames or rafters were
seaven and twentie or eyght and twentie foote long, which was a
wonderful to see them so pierce the ground [not paved then with stone],
and there to stand in such order as the workmen hadde placed them on the
church.' There these beams remained as obstructions until they were cut
even with the ground.
Little appears to have been done in general sanitation until the reign
of Henry III., but it has been said that the sanitary reforms of the
reign of Edward I. were as great as the reforms effected in the law and
constitution. It is satisfactory to learn that it was the example of
this great King which made the use of the bath popular among his
subjects. In Riley's _Memorials_ there are several references to
sanitary ordinances at this time. In 1281 regulations were made that no
swine and no stand or timber were from henceforth to be found in the
streets. The swine were to be killed and the stands and timber
forfeited. Melters of tallow and lard were turned out of their
warehouses in Cheapside in 1283. The watercourse of Walbrook was to be
made free from dung and other nuisances in 1288. Swine still wandered
about the streets, and in 1292 four men whose names are given in Letter
Book C were elected and sworn 'to take and kill such swine as should be
found wandering in the King's highway, to whomsoever they might belong,
within the walls of the city and the suburbs thereof.' The Earl of
Lincoln complained to Parliament in 1307 as to the state of the River
Fleet, and the gist of his complaint is reported by Stow: 'Whereas in
times past, the course of water running at London under Holborne bridge
and Fleete bridge into the Thamis, had beene of such large breadth and
depth, that ten or twelve ships at once with merchandises were wont to
come to the foresaide bridge of Fleete and some of them to Holborne
bridge; now the same course (by filth of the tanners and such other) was
sore decayed. Also by raysing up of wharffes, but especially by turning
of the water, which they of ye new Temple made to their milles without
Baynard Castle, and divers other perturbations, the said shippes now
could not enter as they were wont, and as they ought, wherefore hee
desired that the Maior of London, with the Sheriffes and certaine
discreete Aldermen, might be appointed to see the course of the said
water, and that by oth of honest men all the foresaid hindrances might
be removed, and to bee made as it was wont of old time.'[189]
In the second year of Edward II.'s reign (1309) a proclamation was
issued for cleansing the streets, which were more encumbered with filth
than they used to be, and penalties were enforced against those who
neglected their duty in this matter.[190] Between forty and fifty years
after this we have evidence that one of the main thoroughfares of the
city was in a very bad state. On August 22, 1358, Isabella, the widowed
Queen of Edward II., died at Hertford Castle, and in the following
November she was buried in the Church of the Grey Friars. In order that
the passage of the body through the city should be carried out with any
decency, it was necessary to enact that Bishopsgate Street and Aldgate
Street should be cleansed of ordure and other filth.[191]
Dr. Creighton criticises the public regulations, and writes: 'There are
several orders of Edward III. relating to the removal of laystalls and
to keeping the town ditch clean, which show, of course, that there was
neglect, but at the same time disposition to correct it. It is farther
obvious that the connection between nuisances and the public health was
clearly apprehended. The sanitary doctrines of modern times were
undreamt of; nor did the circumstances altogether call for them. The
sewers of those days were banked-up watercourses, or shores, as the word
was pronounced, which ran uncovered down the various declivities of the
city to the town ditch and to the Thames. They would have sufficed to
carry off the refuse of a population of some forty or sixty thousand;
they were, at all events, freely open to the greatest of all purifying
agents, the oxygen of the air; and they poisoned neither the water of
the town ditch (which abounds in excellent fish within John Stow's
memory), nor the waters of Thames.'[192]
This seems exactly to explain the sanitary condition of the city, and we
must never forget that the streets were cleared by means of surface
drainage, which carried the refuse of the city to the river, to find its
way to the sea at last. The streets were evidently fairly well attended
to in ordinary times, and it is not for those who have polluted the
Thames and made the streams into covered sewers to point the finger of
scorn at the evils allowed by their ancestors, who at all events kept
the Thames pure.
The proclamations and ordinances issued for the proper cleansing of the
streets of London were very numerous, but the first sanitary act that
appears in the Statutes of the Realm was passed in the seventeenth year
of Richard II. (1388), the preamble of which Dr. Creighton prints.[193]
From this and other sources, it appears that one of the chief evils
complained of was due to the blood and offal in the shambles of Newgate
Street.
It is impossible to mention here all the information that has come down
to us as to what was done to secure a satisfactory sanitation, but
special reference may be made to the useful abstract in Riley's
Introduction to the _Liber Albus_.[194]
'Kennels were pretty generally made about a century after the date of
Fitz-Ailwine's Assize, on either side of the street (leaving a space for
the footpath), for the purpose of carrying off the sewage and rain
water. There were two kennels in Cheapside at a period even when nearly
the whole of the north side was a vacant space. The kennels, too, of
Cornhill are frequently mentioned. By reiterated enactments it was
ordered that the highways should be kept clean from rubbish, hay, straw,
sawdust, dung, and other refuse. Each householder was to clear away all
dirt from his door, and to be equally careful not to place it before
that of his neighbours. No one was to throw water or anything else out
of the windows, but was to bring the water down and pour it into the
street. An exception, however, to this last provision seems to have been
made in the case of fishmongers, for we find injunctions frequently
issued... that they shall on no account throw their dirty water into the
streets, but shall have the same carried to the river.'
It was the duty of each alderman to cause to be elected in Wardmote four
respectable men to keep the roads clean and free from obstructions.[195]
The same duties were carried out at another time by a Court of
Scavagers, who apparently were originally Custom House officers. The
scavagers had to see that the work was done, and the labourers who
actually cleansed the streets were called 'Rakyers.' In an Ordinance of
the time of Edward III. we learn that twelve carts, each with two
horses, were kept at the expense of the city for the removal of sewage
and refuse.[196]
CHAPTER VIII
_The Governors of the City_
'London claims the first place... as the greatest municipality, as
the model on which, by their charters of liberties, the other large
towns of the country were allowed or charged to adjust their
usages, and as the most active, the most political, and the most
ambitious. London has also a pre-eminence in municipal history
owing to the strength of the conflicting elements which so much
effected her constitutional progress.'--Stubbs, _Constitutional
History of England_, chap. xxi. par. 486.
The history of the early government of the city is full of pitfalls for
the historian. For years an account of what occurred before the
establishment of the mayoralty was generally accepted, which later
research has proved to be entirely erroneous. Careful students of early
documents have lately given us information of the greatest value, but we
still wait for more facts.
In the following pages an attempt will now be made to place before the
reader a short statement of what is known, with some indication of what
we still have to learn. Fortunately, there is no lack of students who
are constantly adding to our knowledge, and as in the last few years
considerable discoveries have been published, there is every reason to
hope that in the future other discoveries will be made equal at least in
importance to those which have been made in the past.
We know remarkably little as to how the government of London was carried
on before the Conquest, but probably the course of procedure was not
very different from what was the practice immediately after that great
event.
When William the Conqueror granted the first charter to London, he
addressed the Bishop and the Portreeve.[197] The former as
ecclesiastical governor, and the latter as the civil governor.
It has been a generally received opinion that there was a succession of
portreeves until the first appointment of a Mayor, but Mr. Round
believes that the title of portreeve disappears after the Conqueror's
charter.[198] In this opinion he is opposed to the view of both Bishop
Stubbs and Mr. Loftie. It is necessary to bear in mind that a reeve was
an officer appointed by the King, just as the sheriffs (or shire reeves)
of the various counties are still so appointed. There has been some
difference of opinion as to the meaning of the title Port-reeve. It
might at first sight be supposed to refer to the Port of London, but
this is not the received opinion. Bishop Stubbs writes: 'The word port
in port-reeve is the Latin _porta_ (not _portus_), 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.'[199]
The City of London obtained from Henry I. the right of appointing their
own sheriffs, which was a very great privilege, and there must have been
some very strong reason to induce the King to grant this great favour.
Bishop Stubbs writes of this charter of Henry I. to the citizens of
London: 'The privileges of the citizens of London are not to be
regarded as a fair specimen of the liberties of ordinary towns, but as a
sort of type and standard of the amount of municipal independence and
self-government at which the other towns of the country might be
expected to aim. At a period at which the other towns were just
struggling out of the condition of demesne, the Londoners were put in
possession of the ferm or farm of Middlesex, with the right of
appointing the sheriff; they were freed from the immediate jurisdiction
of any tribunal except of their own appointment, from several universal
imposts, from the obligation to accept trial by battle, from liability
to misericordia or entire forfeiture, as well as from tolls and local
exactions such as ordinary charters specify. They have also their
separate franchises secured and their weekly courts, but they have not
yet the character of a perpetual corporation or _Communa_, and thus
although possessing, by virtue of their associations in guilds, of their
several franchises, of their feudal courts, and of their shire
organisation under the sheriff, many elements of strength, consolidation
and independence, they have not a compact organisation as a municipal
body. The city is an accumulation of distinct and different corporate
bodies, but not yet a perfect municipality, nor although it was
recognised in the reign of Stephen as a _Communio_, did it gain the
legal status before the reign of Richard I.'[200] Mr. Round shows,
however, that the city possessed the privilege only for a short time:
'We see then that in absolute contradiction of the received belief on
the subject, the shrievalty was not in the hands of the citizens during
the twelfth century (_i.e._, from '1101'), but was held by them for a
few years only, about the close of the reign of Henry I. The fact that
the sheriffs of London and Middlesex were, under Henry II. and Richard
I. appointed throughout by the Crown, must compel our historians to
reconsider the independent position they have assigned to the city at
that early period. The Crown, moreover, must have had an object in
retaining this appointment in its hands. We may find it, I think, in
that jealousy of exceptional privilege or exemption which characterised
the _régime_ of Henry II. For, as I have shown, the charters to Geoffrey
remind us that the ambition of the urban communities was analogous to
that of the great feudatories, in so far as they both strove for
exemption from official rule. It was precisely to this ambition that
Henry II. was opposed; and thus, when he granted his charter to London,
he wholly omitted, as we have seen, two of his grandfather's
concessions, and narrowed down those that remained, that they might not
be operative outside the actual walls of the city. When the shrievalty
was restored by John to the citizens (1199) the concession had lost its
chief importance through the triumph of the communal principle.'[201]
Mr. Round holds that the office of Justiciar of London was created by
Henry I.'s charter, and as that officer took precedence of the sheriff
he must have been for a time the chief authority of the city. Mr.
Round's explanation of this position is of so much importance that it is
necessary to quote it here in his own words: 'The transient existence of
the local _justitiarius_ is a phenomenon of great importance, which has
been wholly misunderstood. The Mandeville charters afford the clue to
the nature of this office. It represents a middle term, a transitional
stage between the essentially _local_ shire-reeve and the _central_
justice of the King's court.... The _justitiarius_ for Essex or Herts,
or London or Middlesex, was a purely local officer, and yet exercised
within the limits of his bailiwick all the authority of the King's
justice. So transient was this state of things that scarcely a trace of
it remains.... Now, in the case of London, the office was created by the
charter of Henry I. (as I contend) towards the end of his reign, and it
expired with the accession of Henry II. It is, therefore, in Stephen's
reign that we should expect to find it in existence, and it is precisely
in that reign that we find the office _eo nomine_ twice granted to the
Earl of Essex and twice mentioned as held by Gervase, otherwise Gervase
of Cornhill.'[202]
The question of the date of the charter of Henry I. is discussed in
_Geoffrey de Mandeville_ (p. 364), and reasons are given for dating it
after 1130 instead of 1100 or 1101.
Bishop Stubbs specially refers to the foreign element in London at this
time thus: 'Richard the son of Reiner, the son of Berengar, was very
probably a Lombard by descent; the influential family of Bucquinte,
Bucca-uncta, which took the lead on many occasions, can hardly have been
other than Italian; Gilbert Becket was a Norman.' And further, in a
note, he adds: 'Andrew of London, the leader of the Londoners at Lisbon
in 1147, is not improbably the Andrew Bucquinte whose son Richard was
the leader of the riotous young nobles of the city who in 1177 furnished
a precedent for the Mohawks of the eighteenth century.'[203] Andrew, who
was present at the transference of the Cnihtengild's land to the Priory
of Holy Trinity (1125 or 1126), was one of the witnesses of the
agreement between Ramsay Abbey and Holy Trinity after that date, where
his name is written 'Bocunte.'[204] He was Justiciar of London in
Stephen's reign.[205] The Buccarelli were another Italian family whose
name is said to be preserved in Bucklersbury, and Round also mentions
Osbert Octodenarii (otherwise Huitdeniers), a kinsman and employer of
Becket.
The origin of the Commune of London has always been an exceedingly
obscure problem, but Mr. Round has succeeded in throwing a flood of
light upon the subject.
In the twelfth century there was a great municipal movement over Europe.
Londoners were well informed as to what was going on abroad, and
thoroughly dissatisfied with the existing organisation they waited and
were constantly looking for an opportunity of obtaining the privileges
of the Commune. Mr. Round points out that 'even so early as 1141, when
the fortunes of the Crown hung in the balance between rival claimants,
we find the citizens forming an effective _Conjuratio_, the very term
applied to their "Commune" half a century later by Richard of Devizes.
Moreover, earlier in the same year (April), William of Malmesbury
applies to their government the term _Communio_.[206] Miss Mary Bateson
has gone to the manuscript from which Mr. Round obtained the Oath of
Commune (B.M. Add. MS., 14,252), and her conclusion after consideration
is that 'the collection as a whole leaves the impression that "Communio
quam vocant Londoniarum" (1141), as it is styled by William of
Malmesbury, was not merely a unit in the eyes of the Exchequer, that the
jurisdictional unity of the city organised in folkmoot and husting gave
something substantial whereon the foundations of mayoralty and Commune
could be laid.'[207]
Mr. Round writes: 'The assumption that the mayoralty of London dates
from the accession of Richard I. (1189) is an absolute perversion of
history,' and he adds that 'there is record evidence which completely
confirms the remarkable words of Richard of Devizes, who declares that
on no terms whatever would King Richard or his father have ever assented
to the establishment of the _Communa_ in London.'[208]
In October 1191 the conflict between John, the King's brother, and
Longchamp, the King's representative, became acute. William of
Longchamp, Bishop of Ely (1189) and Chancellor to Richard I., was once
described by Henry II. as the 'son of two traitors.' When Richard called
a Council in Normandy in February 1190 Longchamp hurried over to the
King in advance of his enemies and returned to England as sole
justiciar. The Pope also made him Legate.
Longchamp bitterly offended the Londoners who, finding that they could
turn the scales to either side, named the Commune as the price of their
support of John.