Roger Torold, citizen and vintner, in the year of grace 1355, and in the
twenty-eighth year of our Sovereign Lord King Edward III., said one day,
in the presence of witnesses, that he was ready to defy the Mayor; and
that if he should catch the Mayor outside the City, then the Mayor
should never come back to it alive. These things being reported, the
Mayor caused him to be brought before himself, the Aldermen, and
Sheriffs at the Guildhall. The prisoner confessed his crime, and put
himself upon the favor of the Court. He was committed to prison while
the Court considered what should be done to him. Being brought to the
bar, he offered to pay a fine of one hundred tuns of wine for
restoration to the favor of the Mayor. This was accepted, on the
condition that he should also make a recognizance of £40 sterling to be
paid if ever again he should abuse or insult the name or person of the
Mayor. For perjury, the offender was, for a first crime, taken to the
Guildhall, and there placed upon a high stool, bareheaded, before the
Mayor and Aldermen. For the second offence he was placed in pillory.
For women, the thew was substituted for the pillory. One Alice, wife of
Robert de Causton, stood in the thew for thickening the bottom of a
quart-pot with pitch, so as to give short measure. The said quart-pot
was divided into two parts, of which one half was tied to the pillory in
sight of the people, and the other half was kept in the Guildhall.
Death by hanging or pillory. These were almost the only punishments. The
cases before the Mayor's Court remind us of the remarkable resemblance
we bear to our ancestors. They are monotonous because they read like the
cases in a modern Police Court. Giles Pykeman goes in terror of his
life, because certain persons threaten him, but they find surety for
good behavior. John Edmond Commonger, convicted of passing off bad oats
for good--pillory. John William, for passing off rings of latten as
rings of gold--pillory. Nicolas Mollere, for spreading false
news--pillory, with a whetstone round his neck to mark the offence.
Heavens! if this offence were again made penal. John Mayn, indicted for
being a leper--banished out of the city. Robert Brebason, stock
fish-monger, charged with assault in presence of the Mayor. Not a case
for pillory this: let him be imprisoned for a year and a day in Newgate.
Alice Sheltoir, charged with being a common scold--to the thew. John
Rykorre, cordwainer, for forging a bond--pillory.
As an illustration of the times I give the story of William Blakeney. He
was a shuttle-maker by trade, but a pilgrim by profession. He dressed
for the part with long hair, long gown, and bare feet. He loitered about
in places where men resorted--taverns and such--and there entertained
all comers with travellers' tales. He had been everywhere, this pious
and adventurous pilgrim. He had seen Seville, city of sacred relics;
Rome, the abode of his Holiness the Pope; he had even seen the Pope
himself. He had been to the Holy Land, and stood within the very
sepulchre of our Lord. And what with the strange creatures he had met
with in those far-off lands, and the men and women among whom he had
sojourned, and the things he could tell you, and the things which he
postponed till the next time, the story would fill volumes. For six
years he lived in great comfort, eating and drinking of the best, always
at the expense of his hearers. This man must have been an unequalled
story-teller. Six years of invention ever fresh and new! Then he was
found out--he had never been a pilgrimage in his life. He had never been
out of sight of the London walls. So he stood in pillory--this poor
novelist, who would in these days have commanded so much respect and
such solid rewards--he stood in pillory, with a whetstone round his
neck, as if he had been a common liar! And then he had to go back to the
dull monotony of shuttle-making, and that in silence, with nobody to
believe him any more. Well, he shortly afterwards died, I am convinced,
of suppressed fiction. But perhaps his old friends rallied round him,
and by the light of the fire he still beguiled the long evenings by
telling for the hundredth time of the one-eyed men, and the men with
tails, and the men who have but one leg, and use their one foot for an
umbrella against the scorching sun--all of whom he had seen in the
deserts on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus, where St. Paul was
converted.
[Illustration: BLACKWELL HALL, KING STREET]
On a day in the beginning of October, 1382, there was great excitement
in the parish of St. Mildred, Poultry. A certain mazer, or silver cup,
the property of Dame Matilda de Eye, had been stolen. Now, whether Alan,
the water-carrier, had his suspicions, or whether he was himself
suspected, or whether he wished to fix the guilt on somebody else, I
know not, but he repaired to the house of Robert Berewold, of great
repute for art magic, and inquired of him as to the real thief.
Whereupon Robert took a loaf, and in the top of it fixed a round peg of
wood, and four knives at the four sides, so as to present the figure of
a cross. He then did "soothsaying and art magic" over the loaf. After
which he declared that Johanne Wolsy was the person who had stolen the
cup.
This thing being bruited abroad, and the voice of the indignant Johanne
ascending to the ears of the Aldermen, the said Robert was attached to
make answer to the Mayor and commonalty as in a plea of deceit and
falsehood. Answer there was none. Whereupon Robert stood in pillory for
one hour, the loaf, peg, and knives hung about his neck; and on the
following Sunday he went to the parish church--it is now pulled
down--and in the presence of the congregation confessed that he had
falsely defamed the same Johanne. Meantime Alan, one may believe, had
consigned the mazer to a safe place, and joined in the congratulations
of Johanne's friends.
Would you know how a young married couple set up house-keeping? Here is
the inventory of the household furniture of such a pair in the
fourteenth century. It is not the only document of the kind which
exists, but it is interesting because it forms part of a story which
remains unfinished.
[Illustration: ANCIENT PLATE]
The inventory belongs to the year 1337. The proprietor's name was Hugh
le Bevere; that of his wife Alice. Hugh le Bevere was a craftsman of the
better sort, but not a master. He was so well off that the furniture of
his house, including clothes, was valued at £12 18_s._ 4_d._, which,
being interpreted into modern money, means about £200. He had been
married but a short time when the events occurred which caused this
inventory to be drawn up. The newly-married pair lived in a house
consisting of two rooms, one above the other. The lower room, which was
kitchen and keeping-room in one, was divided from the houses on either
side by solid stone walls; it had a chimney and a fireplace; the walls
were hung round with kitchen utensils, tools, and weapons; a window
opened to the street, the upper part of which was glazed, while the
lower part could be closed by a stout shutter; the door opened into the
street; there was another door at the back, which opened upon a buttery,
where there stood ranged in a row six casks of wine. One folding-table
and two chairs served for their wants, because they were not rich enough
to entertain their friends. A ladder led to the upper room, which was an
attic or garret, built of wood and thatched with rush. Here was the bed
with a mattress, three feather beds, and two pillows. A great wooden
coffer held their household gear; here were six blankets and one serge,
a coverlet with shields of sendall (a kind of thin silk), eight linen
sheets, four table-cloths. The clothes, which were laid in chests or
hung upon the wall, consisted of three surcoats of worsted and ray; one
coat with a hood of perset (peach-colored cloth), and another of
worsted; two robes of perset; one of medley, furred; one of scarlet,
furred; a great hood of sendall with edging; one camise (only one!) and
half a dozen savenapes (aprons). One perceives that the inventory omits
many things. Where, for instance, were the hosen and the shoon? For
kitchen utensils there were brass pots, a grate, andirons, basins,
washing vessels, a tripod, an iron horse, an iron spit, a frying-pan, a
funnel, and two ankers--_i.e._ tubs. They had one candlestick "of
lattone;" two plates; an aumbrey (cabinet or small cupboard); curtains
to hang before the doors to keep out the cold; cushions and a green
carpet; and for the husband a haketon, or suit of leather armor, and an
iron head-piece. Of knives, forks, wooden plates, cups, glasses, or
drinking measures there is nothing said at all. But it is evident that
the house was provided with everything necessary for solid comfort;
plenty of kitchen vessels, for instance, and plenty of soft
feather-beds, blankets, pillows, curtains, and sheets.
Every morning at six o'clock, after a hunch of bread, a substantial
slice of cold meat, and a pull at the black-jack of small ale, Hugh le
Bevere walked off to his day's work. Then Alice, left at home, washed
and scoured, made and mended, cooked the dinner, talked to the
neighbors, and, when all was done, sat in the door-way enjoying the
sunshine and spinning busily.
They had been married but a short time. There were no children.
Then--one knows nothing; one must not judge harshly; there may have been
jealousy; there may have been cause for jealousy; perhaps the woman had
a tongue unendurable (fourteenth-century tongues were cruelly sharp);
perhaps the man had a temper uncontrolled (in that century there were
many such); but no one knows, and, again, we must not judge--then, I
say, the end came, suddenly and without warning. When it was all over,
some of the neighbors thought they had heard high words and a smothered
shriek, but then we often think we have heard what probably happened. In
the morning Hugh le Bevere went not forth to his work as usual; Alice
did not open the door; the shutters remained closed. The neighbors
knocked; there was no answer. They sent for the Alderman, who came with
his sergeants, and broke open the door. Alas! alas! They found the body
of Alice lying stark and dead upon the floor; beside her sat her husband
with white face and haggard eyes, and the evidence of his crime, the
knife itself, lying where he had thrown it.
They haled him to the Lord Mayor's Court. They questioned him. He made
no reply at first, looking as one distraught; when he spoke, he refused
to plead. For this, in later times, he would have been pressed to
death. What was done to him was almost as bad; for they took him to
Newgate, and shut him up in a cell with penance--that is to say, on
bread and water--until he died.
[Illustration: THE CONDUIT, NEAR BAYSWATER]
This done, they buried the unfortunate Alice, and made the inventory of
all the chattels, which the City confiscated, and sold for £12 18_s._
4_d._, out of which, no doubt, they paid for the funeral of the woman
and the penance of the man. The rest, one hopes, was laid out in masses,
as far as it would go, for the souls of the hapless pair. Death has long
since released Hugh le Bevere; he has entered his plea before another
Court; but the City has never learned why he killed his wife, or if,
indeed, he really did kill her.
Of Plantagenet London this is my picture. You see a busy, boisterous,
cheerful city; with the exception of the cities of Ghent and Bruges and
Antwerp, the busiest and the most prosperous city of the western world,
with the greatest liberty of the people, the greatest plenty of all good
things, and the happiest conditions of any town. You have seen that
though the sovereign was King within as well as without the walls, there
was no other Over-Lord; the royal hand was sometimes heavy, but its
weight was better to bear than the internal dissensions that ravaged the
Italian cities; it was better that London should suffer with the rest of
the country than that she should sit, like Venice, secure and selfish
beside her quays, though the people of the land behind were torn with
civil wars and destroyed by famine and overrun by a foreign enemy.
When we think of this period let us never forget its external
splendor--the silken banners, the heralds in their embroidered coats,
the livery of the great lords, the Mayor and Aldermen in their robes
riding to hear mass at St. Paul's, the cloth of gold, the vair and
miniver, the ermine and the sable, the robes of perset and the hoods of
sendall, the red velvet and the scarlet silk, the great gold chains, the
caps embroidered with pearls, the horses with their trappings, the
banners and the shields, the friars jostling the parish priests, the
men-at-arms, the city ladies, as glorious with their raiment as the
ladies of the court, the knights, the common folk, the merchant, and the
prentice. Mostly I like to think of the prentice. One always envies
the young; theirs is the inheritance. The prentice lived amid these
glories, which seemed like pageants invented entirely for his delight.
It was time when the fleeting shows and vanities of life were valued all
the more because they were so fleeting. He looked around, and his heart
swelled with the joy of thinking that some day these things would fall
to him if he was lucky, diligent, and watchful. His was the threefold
vow of industry, obedience, and duty. By keeping this vow he would
attain to the place and station of his master.
[Illustration: SOUTH-EAST VIEW OF STEPNEY CHURCH]
Meantime, there were great sights to be seen and no hinderance to his
seeing them.
When there any ridings were in Chepe,
Out of the shoppe thider would he lepe:
And till that he had all the sights y seen,
And danced well he would not come again.
For the continued noise and uproar of the City, for its crowds, for its
smells, the people cared nothing. They were part of the City. They loved
everything that belonged to it--their great cathedral; their hundred
churches; their monasteries; their palaces and the men-at-arms; the
nobles, priests, and monks; the Mayor and Aldermen; the ships and the
sailors; the merchants and the craftsmen; the ridings and the festivals
and the holy days; the ringing, clinging, clashing of the bells all day
long; the drinking at the taverns; the wrestling and the archery; the
dancing; the pipe and tabor; the pageants, and the mumming and the
love-making--all, all they loved. And they thought in their pride that
there was not anywhere in the whole habitable world--witness the
pilgrims and the ship-captains, who had seen the whole habitable
world--any city that might compare with famous London Town.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Plague in 1348, 1361, 1367, 1369, 1407, 1478, 1485, and 1500.
[14] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry_, p. 416.
VI
TUDOR
I. SPRING-TIME AMONG THE RUINS
If the London of the Third Edward was a city of palaces, that of Queen
Elizabeth was a city of ruins.
Ruins everywhere! Ruins of cloisters, halls, dormitories, courts, and
chapels, and churches. Ruins of carved altar-pieces, canopies, statues,
painted windows, and graven fonts. Ruins of old faiths and old
traditions. Ruins everywhere. Only consider what became of the monastic
buildings. King Edward's Cistercian House, called the New Abbey, or
Eastminster, was pulled "clean down," and in its place storehouses for
victuals and ovens for making ships' biscuits were set up. On the abbey
grounds were erected small tenements for poor working-people, the only
inhabitants of that neighborhood where is now the Mint. Sir Arthur
Darcie it was who did this. The Convent of St. Clare, called the
Minories, was similarly treated, its site converted into storehouses.
The old buildings are always said to have been entirely pulled down, but
their destruction was never thorough. Walls were everywhere left
standing, because it was too much trouble to pull them down. For
instance, the north wall of the present mean little Church of the Holy
Trinity, Minories, ugliest and meanest of all modern London churches,
was formerly part of the wall of the nuns' chapel.
[Illustration: BOAR IN EASTCHEAP]
More fortunate than the other monastic churches, that of the Austin
Friars was allowed to remain standing. The nave was walled off and
assigned to the Dutch residents, with whom it has continued to this day.
You may attend the service on Sunday, and while the preacher in the
black gown addresses his scanty audience in the language which, though
it sounds so much like English, you cannot understand, you may look
about you, and think of the Augustine Brothers who built this church. In
their time it was filled with monuments, of which not a single one now
remains. The nave was greatly damaged by a fire in 1862, but the walls
and columns of the ancient church remain. The rest of the church,
including the finest and most beautiful spire in the whole city, was all
pulled down by the Marquis of Winchester, who broke up and sold the
whole of the monuments for £100. In this church were buried, among other
illustrious dead, the great Hubert de Burgh; Edmund Plantagenet, half
brother to Richard II.; the barons who fell at the battle of Barnet;
Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, beheaded 1397; the Earl of Oxford,
beheaded 1463; and Edward Strafford, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded 1521.
Winchester House, which stood till fifty years ago, was built on part of
the abbey grounds; Cromwell House, on a site where now stands the
Drapers' Hall, on another part.
The Priory of the Holy Trinity, granted to Sir Thomas Audley, fared
worse still, for the whole church--choir, transepts, nave, steeple, and
all--was, with great labor, pulled down, and the whole materials and
monuments sold for paving or building stones at sixpence a cart-load.
The ring of nine bells was divided between Stepney Church and St.
Katherine Cree, where, I believe, they still hang and do their duty. So
much, and that is all, is left of this proud foundation. Sir Thomas
Audley, who obtained the precinct by gift of the King, built a house
upon it. His daughter and heiress marrying the Duke of Norfolk, the
house and grounds were named after their new owner. Duke's Place and
Duke Street preserve the new name. The former, now a mean square,
crowded with Jews engaged in the fruit trade, is certainly the site of
one of the courts of the old priory. It is at the back of St. Katherine
Cree Church in Leadenhall Street. Strange, that of this most rich and
splendid house not a vestige should remain either of name, or building,
or tradition.
Crutched Friars' Church was made into a carpenter's shop and a tennis
court. Their refectory, a very noble hall, became a glass-house, and was
burned to the ground in the year 1575.
St. Mary's Spital, outside Bishopsgate, which had been a hospital with
one hundred and eighty beds, was entirely destroyed and built over. But
Spital Square, which now remains, marks the site of the church-yard,
where stood (in the north-east corner) the famous spital pulpit, from
which, for three hundred years, sermons were preached at Easter before
the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and the citizens. It is an illustration of
English conservatism that long after the hospital was demolished, and
when the pulpit stood in an ordinary square of private residences, the
same custom was kept up, with the same official attendance of the
corporation.
The Nunnery of St. Helen's became the property of the Leathersellers'
Company. The nuns' chapel still remains forming the north part of a
church, which, for its antiquity and its monuments, is one of the most
interesting in London. The nuns' refectory formed the Company's Hall
until the year 1790, when, with its ancient crypt, it was pulled down to
make way for the present St. Helen's Place. Considerable ruins of the
nunnery remained until the same time.
The Church of the Knights Hospitallers was blown up with gunpowder; its
ruins and those of the priory buildings remained for many years. The
Charter House was first given by Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Audley,
passed from him to Lord North, to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, to
Lord North again, to the Duke of Norfolk, to the Crown, to the Earl of
Suffolk, and to Thomas Sutton. The last transfer was in 1611. Sutton
endowed it as a charity under the name of the Hospital of King James.
This noble foundation has ever since existed as a hospital for decayed
gentlemen and a school for boys. Some of the old monastic buildings yet
survive in the Charter House. Its name of the Hospital of King James has
long been forgotten. The place has been celebrated by Thackeray, and it
is, at this day, the most beautiful and the most venerable monument of
old London.
The magnificent Church of the Dominicans, or Black Friars, was
destroyed. Either the hall of the abbey or a portion of the church was
used as a storehouse for the "properties" of pageants--strange fate for
the house of the Dominicans, those austere upholders of doctrine. A
play-house was erected by Shakespeare and his friends among the ruins,
which remained standing for a long time. Only a few years ago the
extension of the _Times_ offices in Printing House Square brought to
light many substantial remains. The Abbey of Bermondsey furnished
materials and a site for a great house for the Earl of Sussex. A tavern
was built on the site, of the Church of St. Martin's le Grand. The
Church of St. Bartholomew's Priory was pulled down to the choir, which
was converted into a parish church. The bells were put up in the tower
of St. Sepulchre. The Church of the Grey Friars was spared; but as for
its monuments--consider! There were buried here the queens of Edward I.
and Edward II., the queen of David Bruce, an innumerable company of
great lords, nobles, and fighting men, with their dames and daughters.
The place was a Campo Santo of mediæval worthies. Their monuments, Stow
writes, "are wholly defaced. There were nine tombs of alabaster and
marble, environed with 'strikes' of iron, in the choir, and one tomb in
the body of the church, also coped with iron, all pulled down, besides
sevenscore gravestones of marble." The whole were sold for £50 or
thereabouts by Sir Martin Bowes, goldsmith and Alderman of London.
Surely the carved marble and sculptured alabaster did not teach the
hated papistical superstitions; yet they all went; and it was with bare
walls, probably washed white or yellow to hide the frescos, that the
building became the parish now called Christ Church. The monastery
buildings were converted into the Bluecoat School.
Such was the fate of the greater houses. Add to these the smaller
foundations, all whelmed in the common destruction; the colleges, such
as that of St. Spirit, founded by Whittington; that founded by Walworth;
that founded by Richard III., attached to Allhallows Barking; St.
John's, Holywell; St. Thomas of Acon, a rich foundation with a lovely
church; the College of Jesus; the Hospital of St. Anthony; Jesus
Commons; Elsing Spital; and we begin to realize that London was
literally a city of ruins.