Produced by Eric Hutton, Jane Hyland and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
OLD AND NEW LONDON.
[Illustration: CASSELL'S OLD & NEW LONDON, PLATE 10.
THE THAMES EMBANKMENT.]
[Illustration: CASSELL'S OLD & NEW LONDON, PLATE 9.
THE ROYAL EXCHANGE & BANK OF ENGLAND.]
[Illustration: CASSELL'S OLD & NEW LONDON. PLATE 8.
ALDERMAN BOYDELL. From the Portrait in the Guildhall Collection.]
[Illustration: CASSELL'S OLD & NEW LONDON PLATE 7.
THE MIDLAND RAILWAY STATION,--ST. PANCRAS.]
[Illustration: CASSELL'S OLD & NEW LONDON. PLATE 6.
Maclure & Macdonald del et lith.
A CITY APPRENTICE,--16TH CENTURY.]
[Illustration: CASSELL'S OLD & NEW LONDON. PLATE 5.
A BANQUET AT THE GUILDHALL.]
[Illustration: CASSELL'S OLD & NEW LONDON. PLATE 4.
THE HOLBORN VIADUCT.]
[Illustration: CASSELL'S OLD & NEW LONDON. PLATE 3.
LONDON WATCHMAN (CHARLIE) 18TH CENTURY]
[Illustration: CASSELL'S OLD & NEW LONDON. PLATE 2.
ST. PAUL'S FROM LUDGATE CIRCUS.]
[Illustration: A WATERMAN IN DOGGETT'S COAT AND BADGE.]
OLD AND NEW
LONDON.
_A NARRATIVE OF_
ITS HISTORY, ITS PEOPLE, AND ITS PLACES.
Illustrated with Numerous Engravings
FROM THE MOST AUTHENTIC SOURCES.
VOL. I.
CASSELL, PETTER & GALPIN:
_LONDON, PARIS & NEW YORK._
[Transcriber's Note: Although the Table of Contents is correct, the chapter
heading for Chapter XLIII is used twice and Chapter XLVII missing with
chapter headings offset by one in between. These have been corrected in
this text document.]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I.
ROMAN LONDON.
Buried London--Our Early Relations--The Founder of London--A
Distinguished Visitor at Romney Marsh--Caesar re-visits the "Town on the
Lake"--The Borders of Old London--Caesar fails to make much out of the
Britons--King _Brown_--The Derivation of the Name of London--The Queen
of the Iceni--London Stone and London Roads--London's Earlier and Newer
Walls--The Site of St. Paul's--Fabulous Claims to Idolatrous
Renown--Existing Relics of Roman London--Treasures from the Bed of the
Thames--What we Tread underfoot in London--A vast Field of Story 16
CHAPTER II.
TEMPLE BAR.
Temple Bar--The Golgotha of English Traitors--When Temple Bar was made
of Wood--Historical Pageants at Temple Bar--The Associations of Temple
Bar--Mischievous Processions through Temple Bar--The First Grim
Trophy--Rye-House Plot Conspirators 22
CHAPTER III.
FLEET STREET:--GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Frays in Fleet Street--Chaucer and the Friar--The Duchess of Gloucester
doing Penance for Witchcraft--Riots between Law Students and
Citizens--'Prentice Riots--Oates in the Pillory--Entertainments in Fleet
Street--Shop Signs--Burning the Boot--Trial of Hardy--Queen Caroline's
Funeral 32
CHAPTER IV.
FLEET STREET (_continued_).
Dr. Johnson in Ambuscade at Temple Bar--The First Child--Dryden and
Black Will--Rupert's Jewels--Telson's Bank--The Apollo Club at the
"Devil"--"Old Sir Simon the King"--"Mull Sack"--Dr. Johnson's Supper to
Mrs. Lennox--Will Waterproof at the "Cock"--The Duel at "Dick's Coffee
House"--Lintot's Shop--Pope and Warburton--Lamb and the _Albion_--The
Palace of Cardinal Wolsey--Mrs. Salmon's Waxwork--Isaak Walton--Praed's
Bank--Murray and Byron--St. Dunstan's--Fleet Street Printers--Hoare's
Bank and the "Golden Bottle"--The Real and Spurious "Mitre"--Hone's
Trial--Cobbett's Shop--"Peele's Coffee House" 35
CHAPTER V.
FLEET STREET (_continued_).
The "Green Dragon"--Tompion and Pinchbeck--The _Record_--St. Bride's and
its Memories--_Punch_ and his Contributors--The _Dispatch_--The _Daily
Telegraph_--The "Globe Tavern" and Goldsmith--The _Morning
Advertiser_--The _Standard_--The _London Magazine_--A Strange
Story--Alderman Waithman--Brutus Billy--Hardham and his "37" 53
CHAPTER VI.
FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES--SHIRE LANE AND BELL YARD).
The Kit-Kat Club--The Toast for the Year--Little Lady Mary--Drunken John
Sly--Garth's Patients--Club Removed to Barn Elms--Steele at the
"Trumpet"--Rogues' Lane--Murder--Beggars' Haunts--Thieves'
Dens--Coiners--Theodore Hook in Hemp's Sponging-house--Pope in Bell
Yard--Minor Celebrities--Apollo Court 70
CHAPTER VII.
FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES--CHANCERY LANE).
The Asylum for Jewish Converts--The Rolls Chapel--Ancient Monuments--A
Speaker Expelled for Bribery--"Remember Caesar"--Trampling on a Master of
the Rolls--Sir William Grant's Oddities--Sir John Leach--Funeral of Lord
Gifford--Mrs. Clark and the Duke of York--Wolsey in his
Pomp--Strafford--"Honest Isaak"--The Lord Keeper--Lady Fanshawe--Jack
Randal--Serjeants' Inn--An Evening with Hazlitt at the
"Southampton"--Charles Lamb--Sheridan--The Sponging Houses--The Law
Institute--A Tragical Story 76
CHAPTER VIII.
FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES--_continued_).
Clifford's Inn--Dyer's Chambers--The Settlement after the Great
Fire--Peter Wilkins and his Flying Wives--Fetter Lane--Waller's Plot and
its Victims--Praise-God Barebone and his Doings--Charles Lamb at
School--Hobbes the Philosopher--A Strange Marriage--Mrs.
Brownrigge--Paul Whitehead--The Moravians--The Record Office and its
Treasures--Rival Poets 92
CHAPTER IX.
FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES--CRANE COURT, JOHNSON'S COURT, BOLT COURT.
Removal of the Royal Society from Gresham College--Opposition to
Newton--Objections to Removal--The First Catalogue--Swift's Jeer at the
Society--Franklin's Lightning Conductor and King George III.--Sir Hans
Sloane insulted--The Scottish Society--Wilkes's Printer--The Delphin
Classics--Johnson's Court--Johnson's Opinion on Pope and Dryden--His
Removal to Bolt Court--The _John Bull_--Hook and Terry--Prosecutions for
Libel--Hook's Impudence 104
CHAPTER X.
FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES.
Dr. Johnson in Bolt Court--His Motley Household--His Life there--Still
existing--The Gallant "Lumber Troop"--Reform Bill Riots--Sir Claudius
Hunter--Cobbett in Bolt Court--The Bird Boy--The Private Soldier--In the
House--Dr. Johnson in Gough Square--Busy at the Dictionary--Goldsmith in
Wine Office Court--Selling "The Vicar of Wakefield"--Goldsmith's
Troubles--Wine Office Court--The Old "Cheshire Cheese" 112
CHAPTER XI.
FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES--SHOE LANE.
The First Lucifers--Perkins' Steam Gun--A Link between Shakespeare and
Shoe Lane--Florio and his Labours--"Cogers' Hall"--Famous "Cogers"--A
Saturday Night's Debate--Gunpowder Alley--Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier
Poet--"To Althea, from Prison"--Lilly the Astrologer and his
Knaveries--A Search for Treasure with Davy Ramsay--Hogarth in Harp
Alley--The "Society of Sign Painters"--Hudson, the Song Writer--"Jack
Robinson"--The Bishop's Residence--Bangor House--A Strange Story of
Unstamped Newspapers--Chatterton's Death--Curious Legend of his
Burial--A well-timed Joke 123
CHAPTER XII.
FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES--SOUTH.
Worthy Mr. Fisher--Lamb's Wednesday Evenings--Persons one would wish to
have seen--Ram Alley--Serjeants' Inn--The _Daily News_--"Memory"
Woodfall--A Mug-House Riot--Richardson's Printing Office--Fielding and
Richardson--Johnson's Estimate of Richardson--Hogarth and Richardson's
Guest--An Egotist Rebuked--The King's "Housewife"--Caleb Colton: his
Life, Works, and Sentiments 135
CHAPTER XIII.
THE TEMPLE.--GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Origin of the Order of Templars--First Home of the Order--Removal to the
Banks of the Thames--Rules of the Order--The Templars at the Crusades,
and their Deeds of Valour--Decay and Corruption of the Order--Charges
brought against the Knights--Abolition of the Order 147
CHAPTER XIV.
THE TEMPLE CHURCH AND PRECINCT.
The Temple Church--Its Restorations--Discoveries of Antiquities--The
Penitential Cell--Discipline in the Temple--The Tombs of the Templars in
the "Round"--William and Gilbert Marshall--Stone Coffins in the
Churchyard--Masters of the Temple--The "Judicious" Hooker--Edmund
Gibbon, the Historian--The Organ in the Temple Church--The Rival
Builders--"Straw Bail"--History of the Precinct--Chaucer and the
Friar--His Mention of the Temple--The Serjeants--Erection of New
Buildings--The "Roses"--Sumptuary Edicts--The Flying Horse 149
CHAPTER XV.
THE TEMPLE (_continued_).
The Middle Temple Hall: its Roof, Busts, and Portraits--Manningham's
Diary--Fox Hunts in Hall--The Grand Revels--Spenser--Sir J. Davis--A
Present to a King--Masques and Royal Visitors at the Temple--Fires in
the Temple--The Last Great Revel in the Hall--Temple Anecdotes--The
Gordon Riots--John Scott and his Pretty Wife--Colman "Keeping
Terms"--Blackstone's "Farewell"--Burke--Sheridan--A Pair of
Epigrams--Hare Court--The Barber's Shop--Johnson and the Literary
Club--Charles Lamb--Goldsmith: his Life, Troubles, and
Extravagances--"Hack Work" for Booksellers--_The Deserted Village_--_She
Stoops to Conquer_--Goldsmith's Death and Burial 158
CHAPTER XVI.
THE TEMPLE (_continued_).
Fountain Court and the Temple Fountain--Ruth Pinch--L.E.L.'s
Poem--Fig-tree Court--The Inner Temple Library--Paper Buildings--The
Temple Gate--Guildford North and Jeffreys--Cowper, the Poet: his
Melancholy and Attempted Suicide--A Tragedy in Tanfield Court--Lord
Mansfield--"Mr. Murray" and his Client--Lamb's Pictures of the
Temple--The Sun-dials--Porson and his Eccentricities--Rules of the
Temple--Coke and his Labours--Temple Riots--Scuffles with the
Alsatians--Temple Dinners--"Calling" to the Bar--The Temple Gardens--The
Chrysanthemums--Sir Matthew Hale's Tree--Revenues of the Temple--Temple
Celebrities 171
CHAPTER XVII.
WHITEFRIARS.
The Present Whitefriars--The Carmelite Convent--Dr. Butts--The
Sanctuary--Lord Sanquhar murders the Fencing-Master--His Trial--Bacon
and Yelverton--His Execution--Sir Walter Scott's "Fortunes of
Nigel"--Shadwell's _Squire of Alsatia_--A Riot in
Whitefriars--Elizabethan Edicts against the Ruffians of
Alsatia--Bridewell--A Roman Fortification--A Saxon Palace--Wolsey's
Residence--Queen Katherine's Trial--Her Behaviour in Court--Persecution
of the first Congregationalists--Granaries and Coal Stores destroyed by
the Great Fire--The Flogging in Bridewell--Sermon on Madame
Creswell--Hogarth and the "Harlot's Progress"--Pennant's Account of
Bridewell--Bridewell in 1843--Its Latter Days--Pictures in the Court
Room--Bridewell Dock--The Gas Works--Theatres in Whitefriars--Pepys'
Visits to the Theatre--Dryden and the Dorset Gardens
Theatre--Davenant--Kynaston--Dorset House--The Poet-Earl 182
CHAPTER XVIII.
BLACKFRIARS.
Three Norman Fortresses on the Thames' Bank--The Black Parliament--The
Trial of Katherine of Arragon--Shakespeare a Blackfriars Manager--The
Blackfriars Puritans--The Jesuit Sermon at Hunsdon House--Fatal
Accident--Extraordinary Escapes--Queen Elizabeth at Lord Herbert's
Marriage--Old Blackfriars Bridge--Johnson and Mylne--Laying of the
Stone--The Inscription--A Toll Riot--Failure of the Bridge--The New
Bridge--Bridge Street--Sir Richard Phillips and his Works--Painters in
Blackfriars--The King's Printing Office--Printing House Square--The
_Times_ and its History--Walter's Enterprise--War with the
_Dispatch_--The gigantic Swindling Scheme exposed by the
_Times_--Apothecaries' Hall--Quarrel with the College of Physicians 200
CHAPTER XIX.
LUDGATE HILL.
An Ugly Bridge and "Ye Belle Savage"--A Radical Publisher--The Principal
Gate of London--From a Fortress to a Prison--"Remember the Poor
Prisoners"--Relics of Early Times--St. Martin's, Ludgate--The London
Coffee House--Celebrated Goldsmiths on Ludgate Hill--Mrs. Rundell's
Cookery Book--Stationers' Hall--Old Burgavenny House and its
History--Early Days of the Stationers' Company--The Almanacks--An
Awkward Misprint--The Hall and its Decorations--The St. Cecilia
Festivals--Dryden's "St. Cecilia's Day" and "Alexander's
Feast"--Handel's Setting of them--A Modest Poet--Funeral Feasts and
Political Banquets--The Company's Plate--Their Charities--The Pictures
at Stationers' Hall--The Company's Arms--Famous Masters 220
CHAPTER XX.
ST. PAUL'S.
London's Chief Sanctuary of Religion--The Site of St. Paul's--The
Earliest authenticated Church there--The Shrine of Erkenwald--St. Paul's
Burnt and Rebuilt--It becomes the Scene of a Strange Incident--Important
Political Meeting within its Walls--The Great Charter published
there--St. Paul's and Papal Power in England--Turmoils around the Grand
Cathedral--Relics and Chantry Chapels in St. Paul's--Royal Visits to St.
Paul's--Richard, Duke of York, and Henry VI.--A Fruitless
Reconciliation--Jane Shore's Penance--A Tragedy of the Lollards'
Tower--A Royal Marriage--Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey at St.
Paul's--"Peter of Westminster"--A Bonfire of Bibles--The Cathedral
Clergy Fined--A Miraculous Rood--St. Paul's under Edward VI. and Bishop
Ridley--A Protestant Tumult at Paul's Cross--Strange Ceremonials--Queen
Elizabeth's Munificence--The Burning of the Spire--Desecration of the
Nave--Elizabeth and Dean Nowell--Thanksgiving for the Armada--The
"Children of Paul's"--Government Lotteries--Executions in the
Churchyard--Inigo Jones's Restorations and the Puritan Parliament--The
Great Fire of 1666--Burning of Old St. Paul's, and Destruction of its
Monuments--Evelyn's Description of the Fire--Sir Christopher Wren called
in 234
CHAPTER XXI.
ST. PAUL'S (_continued_).
The Rebuilding of St. Paul's--Ill Treatment of its Architect--Cost of
the Present Fabric--Royal Visitors--The First Grave in St.
Paul's--Monuments in St. Paul's--Nelson's Funeral--Military Heroes in
St. Paul's--The Duke of Wellington's Funeral--Other Great Men in St.
Paul's--Proposal for the Completion and Decoration of the
Building--Dimensions of St. Paul's--Plan of Construction--The Dome,
Ball, and Cross--Mr. Horner and his Observatory--Two Narrow Escapes--Sir
James Thornhill--Peregrine Falcons on St. Paul's--Nooks and Corners of
the Cathedral--The Library, Model Room, and Clock--The Great Bell--A
Lucky Error--Curious Story of a Monomaniac--The Poets and the
Cathedral--The Festivals of the Charity Schools and of the Sons of the
Clergy 249
CHAPTER XXII.
ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.
St Paul's Churchyard and Literature--Queen Anne's Statue--Execution of a
Jesuit in St. Paul's Churchyard--Miracle of the "Face in the
Straw"--Wilkinson's Story--Newbery the Bookseller--Paul's
Chain--"Cocker"--Chapter House of St. Paul's--St. Paul's Coffee
House--Child's Coffee House and the Clergy--Garrick's Club at the
"Queen's Arms," and the Company there--"Sir Benjamin" Figgins--Johnson the
Bookseller--Hunter and his Guests--Fuseli--Bonnycastle--Kinnaird--Musical
Associations of the Churchyard--Jeremiah Clark and his Works--Handel at
Meares' Shop--Young the Violin Maker--The "Castle" Concerts--An Old
Advertisement--Wren at the "Goose and Gridiron"--St. Paul's School--Famous
Paulines--Pepys visiting his Old School--Milton at St. Paul's 262
CHAPTER XXIII.
PATERNOSTER ROW.
Its Successions of Traders--The House of Longman--Goldsmith at
Fault--Tarleton, Actor, Host, and Wit--Ordinaries around St. Paul's:
their Rules and Customs--The "Castle"--"Dolly's"--The "Chapter" and its
Frequenters--Chatterton and Goldsmith--Dr. Buchan and his
Prescriptions--Dr. Gower--Dr. Fordyce--The "Wittinagemot" at the
"Chapter"--The "Printing Conger"--Mrs. Turner, the Poisoner--The Church
of St. Michael "ad Bladum"--The Boy in Panier Alley 274
CHAPTER XXIV.
BAYNARD'S CASTLE AND DOCTORS' COMMONS.
Baron Fitzwalter and King John--The Duties of the Chief Bannerer of
London--An Old-fashioned Punishment for Treason--Shakesperian Allusions
to Baynard's "Castle"--Doctors' Commons and its Five Courts--The Court
of Probate Act, 1857--The Court of Arches--The Will Office--Business of
the Court--Prerogative Court--Faculty Office--Lord Stowell, the
Admiralty Judge--Stories of him--His Marriage--Sir Herbert Jenner
Fust--The Court "Rising"--Doctor Lushington--Marriage Licences--Old
Weller and the "Touters"--Doctors' Commons at the Present Day 281
CHAPTER XXV.
HERALDS' COLLEGE.
Early Homes of the Heralds--The Constitution of the Heralds'
College--Garter King at Arms--Clarencieux and Norroy--The
Pursuivants--Duties and Privileges of Heralds--Good, Bad, and Jovial
Heralds--A Notable Norroy King at Arms--The Tragic End of Two Famous
Heralds--The College of Arms' Library 294
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHEAPSIDE--INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL.
Ancient Reminiscences of Cheapside--Stormy Days therein--The Westchepe
Market--Something about the Pillory--The Cheapside Conduits--The
Goldsmiths' Monopoly--Cheapside Market--Gossip anent Cheapside by Mr.
Pepys--A Saxon Rienzi--Anti-Free-Trade Riots in Cheapside--Arrest of the
Rioters--A Royal Pardon--Jane Shore 304
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHEAPSIDE SHOWS AND PAGEANTS.
A Tournament in Cheapside--The Queen in Danger--The Street in Holiday
Attire--The Earliest Civic Show on Record--The Water Processions--A Lord
Mayor's Show in Queen Elizabeth's Reign--Gossip about Lord Mayors'
Shows--Splendid Pageants--Royal Visitors at Lord Mayors' Shows--A Grand
Banquet in Guildhall--George III. and the Lord Mayor's Show--The Lord
Mayor's State Coach--The Men in Armour--Sir Claudius Hunter and
Elliston--Stow and the Midsummer Watch 315
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHEAPSIDE--CENTRAL.
Grim Chronicles of Cheapside--Cheapside Cross--Puritanical
Intolerance--The Old London Conduits--Mediaeval Water-carriers--The
Church of St. Mary-le-Bow--"Murder will out"--The "Sound of Bow
Bells"--Sir Christopher Wren's Bow Church--Remains of the Old
Church--The Seldam--Interesting Houses in Cheapside and their
Memories--Goldsmiths' Row--The "Nag's Head" and the Self-consecrated
Bishops--Keats' House--Saddlers' Hall--A Prince Disguised--Blackmore,
the Poet--Alderman Boydell, the Printseller--His Edition of
Shakespeare--"Puck"--The Lottery--Death and Burial 332
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES--SOUTH.
The King's Exchange--Friday Street and the Poet Chaucer--The Wednesday
Club in Friday Street--William Paterson, Founder of The Bank of
England--How Easy it is to Redeem the National Debt--St. Matthew's and
St. Margaret Moses--Bread Street and the Bakers' Shops--St. Austin's,
Watling Street--Fraternity of St. Austin's--St. Mildred's, Bread
Street--The Mitre Tavern--A Priestly Duel--Milton's Birthplace--The
"Mermaid"--Sir Walter Raleigh and the Mermaid Club--Thomas Coryatt, the
Traveller--Bow Lane--Queen Street--Soper's Lane--A Mercer Knight--St.
Bennet Sherehog--Epitaphs in the Church of St. Thomas Apostle--A
Charitable Merchant 346
CHAPTER XXX.
CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES--NORTH.
Goldsmiths' Hall--Its Early Days--Tailors and Goldsmiths at
Loggerheads--The Goldsmiths' Company's Charters and Records--Their Great
Annual Feast--They receive Queen Margaret of Anjou in State--A Curious
Trial of Skill--Civic and State Duties--The Goldsmiths break up the
Image of their Patron Saint--The Goldsmiths' Company's Assays--The
Ancient Goldsmiths' Feasts--The Goldsmiths at Work--Goldsmiths' Hall at
the Present Day--The Portraits--St. Leonard's Church--St.
Vedast--Discovery of a Stone Coffin--Coachmakers' Hall 353
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES, NORTH:--WOOD STREET.
Wood Street--Pleasant Memories--St. Peter's in Chepe--St. Michael's and
St. Mary Staining--St. Alban's, Wood Street--Some Quaint Epitaphs--Wood
Street Compter and the Hapless Prisoners therein--Wood Street Painful,
Wood Street Cheerful--Thomas Ripley--The Anabaptist Rising--A Remarkable
Wine Cooper--St. John Zachary and St. Anne-in-the-Willows--Haberdashers'
Hall--Something about the Mercers 364
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES, NORTH (_continued_).
Milk Street--Sir Thomas More--The City of London School--St. Mary
Magdalen--Honey Lane--All Hallows' Church--Lawrence Lane and St.
Lawrence Church--Ironmonger Lane and Mercers' Hall--The Mercers'
Company--Early Life Assurance Companies--The Mercers' Company in
Trouble--Mercers' Chapel--St. Thomas Acon--The Mercers'
School--Restoration of the Carvings in Mercers' Hall--The Glories of
the Mercers' Company--Ironmonger Lane 374
CHAPTER XXXIII.
GUILDHALL.
The Original Guildhall--A fearful Civic Spectacle--The Value of Land
increased by the Great Fire--Guildhall as it was and is--The Statues
over the South Porch--Dance's Disfigurements--The Renovation in
1864--The Crypt--Gog and Magog--Shopkeepers in Guildhall--The Cenotaphs
in Guildhall--The Court of Aldermen--The City Courts--The Chamberlain's
Office--Pictures in the Guildhall--Sir Robert Porter--The Common Council
Room--Pictures and Statues--Guildhall Chapel--The New Library and
Museum--Some Rare Books--Historical Events in Guildhall--Chaucer in
Trouble--Buckingham at Guildhall--Anne Askew's Trial and
Death--Surrey--Throckmorton--Garnet--A Grand Banquet 383
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE LORD MAYORS OF LONDON.
The First Mayor of London--Portrait of him--Presentation to the King--An
Outspoken Mayor--Sir N. Farindon--Sir William Walworth--Origin of the
prefix "Lord"--Sir Richard Whittington and his Liberality--Institutions
founded by him--Sir Simon Eyre and his Table--A Musical Lord
Mayor--Henry VIII. and Gresham--Loyalty of the Lord Mayor and Citizens
to Queen Mary--Osborne's Leap into the Thames--Sir W. Craven--Brass
Crosby--His Committal to the Tower--A Victory for the Citizens 396
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE LORD MAYORS OF LONDON (_continued_).
John Wilkes: his Birth and Parentage--The _North Briton_--Duel with
Martin--His Expulsion--Personal Appearance--Anecdotes of Wilkes--A
Reason for making a Speech--Wilkes and the King--The Lord Mayor at the
Gordon Riots--"Soap-suds" _versus_ "Bar"--Sir William Curtis and his
Kilt--A Gambling Lord Mayor--Sir William Staines, Bricklayer and Lord
Mayor--"Patty-pan" Birch--Sir Matthew Wood--Waithman--Sir Peter Laurie
and the "Dregs of the People"--Recent Lord Mayors 410
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE POULTRY.
The Early Home of the London Poulterers--Its Mysterious
Desertion--Noteworthy Sites in the Poultry--The Birthplace of Tom Hood,
Senior--A Pretty Quarrel at the Rose Tavern--A Costly Sign-board--The
Three Cranes--The Home of the Dillys--Johnsoniana--St. Mildred's Church,
Poultry--Quaint Epitaphs--The Poultry Compter--Attack on Dr. Lamb, the
Conjurer--Dekker, the Dramatist--Ned Ward's Description of the
Compter--Granville Sharp and the Slave Trade--Important Decision in
favour of the Slave--Boyse--Dunton 416
CHAPTER XXXVII.
OLD JEWRY.
The Old Jewry--Early Settlements of Jews in London and Oxford--Bad Times
for the Israelites--Jews' Alms--A King in Debt--Rachel weeping for her
Children--Jewish Converts--Wholesale Expulsion of the Chosen People from
England--The Rich House of a Rich Citizen--The London Institution,
formerly in the Old Jewry--Porsoniana--Nonconformists in the Old
Jewry--Samuel Chandler, Richard Price, and James Foster--The Grocers
Company--Their Sufferings under the Commonwealth--Almost Bankrupt--Again
they Flourish--The Grocers' Hall Garden--Fairfax and the Grocers--A Rich
and Generous Grocer--A Warlike Grocer--Walbrook--Bucklersbury 425
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE MANSION HOUSE.
The Palace of the Lord Mayor--The Old Stocks' Market--A Notable Statue
of Charles II.--The Mansion House described--The Egyptian Hall--Works of
Art in the Mansion House--The Election of the Lord Mayor--Lord Mayor's
Day--The Duties of a Lord Mayor--Days of the Year on which the Lord
Mayor holds High State--The Patronage of the Lord Mayor--His Powers--The
Lieutenancy of the City of London--The Conservancy of the Thames and
Medway--The Lord Mayor's Advisers--The Mansion House Household and
Expenditure--Theodore Hook--Lord Mayor Scropps--The Lord Mayor's
Insignia--The State Barge--The Maria Wood 435
CHAPTER XXXIX.
SAXON LONDON.
A Glance at Saxon London--The Three Component Parts of Saxon London--The
First Saxon Bridge over the Thames--Edward the Confessor at
Westminster--City Residences of the Saxon Kings--Political Position of
London in Early Times--The first recorded Great Fire of London--The
Early Commercial Dignity of London--The Kings of Norway and Denmark
besiege London in vain--A great _Gemot_ held in London--Edmund Ironside
elected King by the Londoners--Canute besieges them, and is driven
off--The Seamen of London--Its Citizens as Electors of Kings 447
CHAPTER XL.
THE BANK OF ENGLAND.
The Jews and the Lombards--The Goldsmiths the first London
Bankers--William Paterson, Founder of the Bank of England--Difficult
Parturition of the Bank Bill--Whig Principles of the Bank of
England--The Great Company described by Addison--A Crisis at the
Bank--Effects of a Silver Re-coinage--Paterson quits the Bank of
England--The Ministry resolves that it shall be enlarged--The Credit of
the Bank shaken--The Whigs to the Rescue--Effects of the Sacheverell
Riots--The South Sea Company--The Cost of a New Charter--Forged Bank
Notes--The Foundation of the "Three per Cent. Consols"--Anecdotes
relating to the Bank of England and Bank Notes--Description of the
Building--Statue of William III.--Bank Clearing House--Dividend Day at
the Bank 453
CHAPTER XLI.
THE STOCK EXCHANGE.
The Kingdom of Change Alley--A William III. Reuter--Stock Exchange
Tricks--Bulls and Bears--Thomas Guy, the Hospital Founder--Sir John
Barnard, the "Great Commoner"--Sampson Gideon, the famous Jew
Broker--Alexander Fordyce--A cruel Quaker Criticism--Stockbrokers and
Longevity--The Stock Exchange in 1795--The Money Articles in the London
Papers--The Case of Benjamin Walsh, M.P.--The De Berenger
Conspiracy--Lord Cochrane unjustly accused--"Ticket Pocketing"--System
of Business at the Stock Exchange--"Popgun John"--Nathan
Rothschild--Secrecy of his Operations--Rothschild outdone by
Stratagem--Grotesque Sketch of Rothschild--Abraham
Goldsmid--Vicissitudes of the Stock Exchange--The Spanish Panic of
1835--The Railway Mania--Ricardo's Golden Rules--A Clerical Intruder in
Capel Court--Amusements of Stockbrokers--Laws of the Stock Exchange--The
Pigeon Express--The "Alley Man"--Purchase of Stock--Eminent Members of
the Stock Exchange 473
CHAPTER XLII.
THE ROYAL EXCHANGE.
The Greshams--Important Negotiations--Building of the Old
Exchange--Queen Elizabeth visits it--Its Milliners' Shops--A Resort for
Idlers--Access of Nuisances--The various Walks in the
Exchange--Shakespeare's Visits to it--Precautions against Fire--Lady
Gresham and the Council--The "Eye of London"--Contemporary
Allusions--The Royal Exchange during the Plague and the Great
Fire--Wren's Design for a New Royal Exchange--The Plan which was
ultimately accepted--Addison and Steele upon the Exchange--The Shops of
the Second Exchange 494
CHAPTER XLIII.
The Second Exchange on Fire--Chimes Extraordinary--Incidents of the
Fire--Sale of Salvage--Designs for the New Building--Details of the
Present Exchange--The Ambulatory, or Merchants' Walk--Royal Exchange
Assurance Company--"Lloyd's"--Origin of "Lloyd's"--Marine
Assurance--Benevolent Contributions of "Lloyd's"--A "Good" and "Bad"
Book 503
CHAPTER XLIV.
NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE BANK:--LOTHBURY.
Lothbury--Its Former Inhabitants--St. Margaret's Church--Tokenhouse
Yard--Origin of the Name--Farthings and Tokens--Silver Halfpence and
Pennies--Queen Anne's Farthings--Sir William Petty--Defoe's Account of
the Plague in Tokenhouse Yard 513
CHAPTER XLV.
THROGMORTON STREET.--THE DRAPERS' COMPANY.
Halls of the Drapers' Company--Throgmorton Street and its many Fair
Houses--Drapers and Wool Merchants--The Drapers in Olden
Times--Milborne's Charity--Dress and Livery--Election Dinner of the
Drapers' Company--A Draper's Funeral--Ordinances and
Pensions--Fifty-three Draper Mayors--Pageants and Processions of the
Drapers--Charters--Details of the present Drapers' Hall--Arms of the
Drapers' Company 515
CHAPTER XLVI.
BARTHOLOMEW LANE AND LOMBARD STREET.
George Robins--His Sale of the Lease of the Olympic--St. Bartholomew's
Church--The Lombards and Lombard Street--William de la
Pole--Gresham--The Post Office, Lombard Street--Alexander Pope's Father
in Plough Court--Lombard Street Tributaries--St. Mary Woolnoth--St.
Clement's--Dr. Benjamin Stone--Discovery of Roman Remains--St. Mary
Abchurch 522
CHAPTER XLVII.
THREADNEEDLE STREET.
The Centre of Roman London--St. Benet Fink--The Monks of St.
Anthony--The Merchant Taylors--Stow, Antiquary and Tailor--A Magnificent
Roll--The Good Deeds of the Merchant Taylors--The Old and the Modern
Merchant Taylors' Hall--"Concordia parvae res crescunt"--Henry VII.
enrolled as a Member of the Taylors' Company--A Cavalcade of
Archers--The Hall of Commerce in Threadneedle Street--A Painful
Reminiscence--The Baltic Coffee-house--St. Anthony's School--The North
and South American Coffee-house--The South Sea House--History of the
South Sea Bubble--Bubble Companies of the Period--Singular Infatuation
of the Public--Bursting of the Bubble--Parliamentary Inquiry into the
Company's Affairs--Punishment of the Chief Delinquents--Restoration of
Public Credit--The Poets during the Excitement--Charles Lamb's Reverie
531
CHAPTER XLVIII.
CANNON STREET.
London Stone and Jack Cade--Southwark Bridge--Old City Churches--The
Salters' Company's Hall, and the Salters' Company's History--Oxford
House--Salters' Banquets--Salters' Hall Chapel--A Mysterious Murder in
Cannon Street--St. Martin Orgar--King William's Statue--Cannon Street
Station 544
CHAPTER XLIX.
CANNON STREET TRIBUTARIES AND EASTCHEAP.
Budge Row--Cordwainers' Hall--St. Swithin's Church--Founders' Hall--The
Oldest Street in London--Tower Royal and the Wat Tyler Mob--The Queen's
Wardrobe--St. Antholin's Church--"St. Antlin's Bell"--The London Fire
Brigade--Captain Shaw's Statistics--St. Mary Aldermary--A Quaint
Epitaph--Crooked Lane--An Early "Gun Accident"--St. Michael's and Sir
William Walworth's Epitaph--Gerard's Hall and its History--The Early
Closing Movement--St. Mary Woolchurch--Roman Remains in Nicholas
Lane--St. Stephen's, Walbrook--Eastcheap and the Cooks' Shops--The
"Boar's Head"--Prince Hal and his Companions--A Giant
Plum-pudding--Goldsmith at the "Boar's Head"--The Weigh-house Chapel and
its Famous Preachers--Reynolds, Clayton, Binney 550
CHAPTER L.
THE MONUMENT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.
The Monument--How shall it be fashioned?--Commemorative
Inscriptions--The Monument's Place in History--Suicides and the
Monument--The Great Fire of London--On the Top of the Monument by
Night--The Source of the Fire--A Terrible Description--Miles
Coverdale--St. Magnus, London Bridge 565
CHAPTER LI.
CHAUCER'S LONDON.
London Citizens in the Reigns of Edward III. and Richard II.--The
Knight--The Young Bachelor--The Yeoman--The Prioress--The Monk who goes
a Hunting--The Merchant--The Poor Clerk--The Franklin--The Shipman--The
Poor Parson 575
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Introduction of Randolph to Ben Jonson (Frontispiece) 40
The Old Wooden Temple Bar 6
Burning the Pope in Effigy at Temple Bar 7
Bridewell in 1666 12
Part of Modern London, showing the Ancient Wall 13
Plan of Roman London 15
Ancient Roman Pavement 18
Part of Old London Wall, near Falcon Square 19
Proclamation of Charles II. at Temple Bar 24
Penance of the Duchess of Gloucester 25
The Room over Temple Bar 30
Titus Oates in the Pillory 31
Dr. Titus Oates 36
Temple Bar and the "Devil Tavern" 37
Temple Bar in Dr. Johnson's Time 42
Mull Sack and Lady Fairfax 43
Mrs. Salmon's Waxwork, Fleet Street 48
St. Dunstan's Clock 49
An Evening with Dr. Johnson at the "Mitre" 54
Old Houses (still standing) in Fleet Street 55
St. Bride's Church, Fleet Street, after the Fire, 1824 60
Waithman's Shop 61
Alderman Waithman, from an Authentic Portrait 66
Group at Hardham's Tobacco Shop 67
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Kit-Kats 72
Bishop Butler 73
Wolsey in Chancery Lane 78
Izaak Walton's House 79
Old Serjeants' Inn 84
Hazlitt 85
Clifford's Inn 90
Execution of Tomkins and Challoner 91
Roasting the Rumps in Fleet Street (from an old Print) 96
Interior of the Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane 97
House said to have been occupied by Dryden in Fetter Lane 102
A Meeting of the Royal Society in Crane Court 103
The Royal Society's House in Crane Court 108
Theodore E. Hook 109
Dr. Johnson's House in Bolt Court 114
A Tea Party at Dr. Johnson's 115
Gough Square 120
Wine Office Court and the "Cheshire Cheese" 121
Cogers' Hall 126
Lovelace in Prison 127
Bangor House, 1818 132
Old St. Dunstan's Church 133
The Dorset Gardens Theatre, Whitefriars 138
Attack on a Whig Mug-house 139
Fleet Street, the Temple, &c., 1563 144
Fleet Street, the Temple, &c., 1720 145
A Knight Templar 150
Interior of the Temple Church 151
Tombs of Knights Templars 156
The Temple in 1671 157
The Old Hall of the Inner Temple 162
Antiquities of the Temple 163
Oliver Goldsmith 168
Goldsmith's Tomb in 1860 169
The Temple Fountain, from an Old Print 174
A Scuffle between Templars and Alsatians 175
Sun-dial in the Temple 180
The Temple Stairs 181
The Murder of Turner 186
Bridewell, as Rebuilt after the Fire, from an Old Print 187
Beating Hemp in Bridewell, after Hogarth 192
Interior of the Duke's Theatre 193
Baynard's Castle, from a View published in 1790 198
Falling-in of the Chapel at Blackfriars 199
Richard Burbage, from an Original Portrait 204
Laying the Foundation-stone of Blackfriars Bridge 205
Printing House Square and the "Times" Office 210
Blackfriars Old Bridge during its Construction, 1775 211
The College of Physicians, Warwick Lane 216
Outer Court of La Belle Sauvage in 1828 217
The Inner Court of the Belle Sauvage 222
The Mutilated Statues from Lud Gate, 1798 223
Old Lud Gate, from a Print published about 1750 226
Ruins of the Barbican on Ludgate Hill 228
Interior of Stationers' Hall 229
Old St. Paul's, from a View by Hollar 234
Old St. Paul's--the Interior, looking East 235
The Church of St. Faith, the Crypt of Old St. Paul's 240
St. Paul's after the Fall of the Spire 241
The Chapter House of Old St. Paul's 246
Dr. Bourne preaching at Paul's Cross 247
The Rebuilding of St. Paul's 252
The Choir of St. Paul's 253
The Scaffolding and Observatory on St. Paul's in 1848 258
St. Paul's and the Neighbourhood in 1540 259
The Library of St. Paul's 264
The "Face in the Straw," 1613 265
Execution of Father Garnet 270
Old St. Paul's School 271
Richard Tarleton, the Actor 276
Dolly's Coffee House 277
The Figure in Panier Alley 282
The Church of St. Michael ad Bladum 283
The Prerogative Office, Doctors' Commons 288
St. Paul's and Neighbourhood, from Aggas' Plan, 1563 289
Heralds' College (from an Old Print) 294
The Last Heraldic Court (from an Old Picture) 295
Sword, Dagger, and Ring of King James of Scotland 300
Linacre's House 301
Ancient View of Cheapside 307
Beginning of the Riot in Cheapside 312
Cheapside Cross, as it appeared in 1547 313
The Lord Mayor's Procession, from Hogarth 318
The Marriage Procession of Anne Boleyn 319
Figures of Gog and Magog set up in Guildhall 324
The Royal Banquet in Guildhall in 1761 325
The Lord Mayor's Coach 330
The Demolition of Cheapside Cross 331
Old Map of the Ward of Cheap--about 1750 336
The Seal of Bow Church 337
Bow Church, Cheapside, from a View taken about 1750 342
No. 73, Cheapside, from an Old View 343
The Door of Saddlers' Hall 348
Milton's House and Milton's Burial-place 349
Interior of Goldsmiths' Hall 354
Trial of the Pix 355
Exterior of Goldsmiths' Hall 360
Altar of Diana 361
Wood Street Compter, from a View published in 1793 366
The Tree at the Corner of Wood Street 367
Pulpit Hour-glass 370
Interior of St. Michael's, Wood Street 372
Interior of Haberdashers' Hall 373
The "Swan with Two Necks," Lad Lane 378
City of London School 379
Mercers' Chapel, as Rebuilt after the Fire 384
The Crypt of Guildhall 385
The Court of Aldermen, Guildhall 390
Old Front of Guildhall 391
The New Library, Guildhall 396
Sir Richard Whittington 397
Whittington's Almshouses, College Hill 402
Osborne's Leap 403
A Lord Mayor and his Lady 408
Wilkes on his Trial 409
Birch's Shop, Cornhill 414
The Stocks' Market, Site of the Mansion House 415
John Wilkes 420
The Poultry Compter 421
Richard Porson 426
Sir R. Clayton's House, Garden Front 427
Exterior of Grocers' Hall 432
Interior of Grocers' Hall 433
The Mansion House Kitchen 438
The Mansion House in 1750 439
Interior of the Egyptian Hall 444
The "Maria Wood" 445
Broad Street and Cornhill Wards 450
Lord Mayor's Water Procession 451
The Old Bank, looking from the Mansion House 456
Old Patch 457
The Bank Parlour, Exterior View 462
Dividend Day at the Bank 463
The Church of St. Benet Fink 468
Court of the Bank of England 469
"Jonathan's," from an Old Sketch 472
Capel Court 474
The Clearing House 475
The Present Stock Exchange 481
On Change (from an Old Print, about 1800) 487
Inner Court of the First Royal Exchange 492
Sir Thomas Gresham 493
Wren's Plan for Rebuilding London 496
Plan of the Exchange in 1837 497
The First Royal Exchange 498
The Second Royal Exchange, Cornhill 499
The Present Royal Exchange 504
Blackwell Hall in 1812 505
Interior of Lloyd's 510
The Subscription Room at "Lloyd's" 511
Interior of Drapers' Hall 516
Drapers' Hall Garden 517
Cromwell's House, from Aggas's Map 520
Pope's House, Plough Court, Lombard Street 523
St. Mary Woolnoth 528
Interior of Merchant Taylors' Hall 529
Ground Plan of the Church of St. Martin Outwich 534
March of the Archers 535
The Old South Sea House 540
London Stone 541
The Fourth Salters' Hall 546
Cordwainers' Hall 547
St. Antholin's Church, Watling Street 552
The Crypt of Gerard's Hall 553
Old Sign of the "Boar's Head" 558
Exterior of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, in 1700 559
The Weigh-house Chapel 564
Miles Coverdale 565
Wren's Original Design for the Summit of the Monument 570
The Monument and the Church of St. Magnus, 1800 571
[Illustration]
LONDON AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS.
Writing the history of a vast city like London is like writing a history
of the ocean--the area is so vast, its inhabitants are so multifarious,
the treasures that lie in its depths so countless. What aspect of the
great chameleon city should one select? for, as Boswell, with more than
his usual sense, once remarked, "London is to the politician merely a
seat of government, to the grazier a cattle market, to the merchant a
huge exchange, to the dramatic enthusiast a congeries of theatres, to
the man of pleasure an assemblage of taverns." If we follow one path
alone, we must neglect other roads equally important; let us, then,
consider the metropolis as a whole, for, as Johnson's friend well says,
"the intellectual man is struck with London as comprehending the whole
of human life in all its variety, the contemplation of which is
inexhaustible." In histories, in biographies, in scientific records, and
in chronicles of the past, however humble, let us gather materials for a
record of the great and the wise, the base and the noble, the odd and
the witty, who have inhabited London and left their names upon its
walls. Wherever the glimmer of the cross of St. Paul's can be seen we
shall wander from street to alley, from alley to street, noting almost
every event of interest that has taken place there since London was a
city.
Had it been our lot to write of London before the Great Fire, we should
have only had to visit 65,000 houses. If in Dr. Johnson's time, we might
have done like energetic Dr. Birch, and have perambulated the
twenty-mile circuit of London in six hours' hard walking; but who now
could put a girdle round the metropolis in less than double that time?
The houses now grow by streets at a time, and the nearly four million
inhabitants would take a lifetime to study. Addison probably knew
something of London when he called it "an aggregate of various nations,
distinguished from each other by their respective customs, manners, and
interests--the St. James's courtiers from the Cheapside citizens, the
Temple lawyers from the Smithfield drovers;" but what would the
_Spectator_ say now to the 168,701 domestic servants, the 23,517
tailors, the 18,321 carpenters, the 29,780 dressmakers, the 7,002
seamen, the 4,861 publicans, the 6,716 blacksmiths, &c., to which the
population returns of thirty years ago depose, whom he would have to
observe and visit before he could say he knew all the ways, oddities,
humours--the joys and sorrows, in fact--of this great centre of
civilisation?
The houses of old London are incrusted as thick with anecdotes, legends,
and traditions as an old ship is with barnacles. Strange stories about
strange men grow like moss in every crevice of the bricks. Let us, then,
roll together like a great snowball the mass of information that time
and our predecessors have accumulated, and reduce it to some shape and
form. Old London is passing away even as we dip our pen in the ink, and
we would fain erect quickly our itinerant photographic machine, and
secure some views of it before it passes. Roman London, Saxon London,
Norman London, Elizabethan London, Stuart London, Queen Anne's London,
we shall in turn rifle to fill our museum, on whose shelves the Roman
lamp and the vessel full of tears will stand side by side with Vanessas'
fan; the sword-knot of Rochester by the note-book of Goldsmith. The
history of London is an epitome of the history of England. Few great men
indeed that England has produced but have some associations that connect
them with London. To be able to recall these associations in a London
walk is a pleasure perpetually renewing, and to all intents
inexhaustible.
Let us, then, at once, without longer halting at the gate, seize the
pilgrim staff and start upon our voyage of discovery, through a
dreamland that will be now Goldsmith's, now Gower's, now Shakespeare's,
now Pope's, London. In Cannon Street, by the old central milestone of
London, grave Romans will meet us and talk of Caesar and his legions. In
Fleet Street we shall come upon Chaucer beating the malapert Franciscan
friar; at Temple Bar, stare upwards at the ghastly Jacobite heads. In
Smithfield we shall meet Froissart's knights riding to the tournament;
in the Strand see the misguided Earl of Essex defending his house
against Queen Elizabeth's troops, who are turning towards him the cannon
on the roof of St. Clement's church.
But let us first, rather than glance at scattered pictures in a gallery
which is so full of them, measure out, as it were, our future walks,
briefly glancing at the special doors where we shall billet our readers.
The brief summary will serve to broadly epitomise the subject, and will
prove the ceaseless variety of interest which it involves.
We have selected Temple Bar, that old gateway, as a point of departure,
because it is the centre, as near as can be, of historical London, and
is in itself full of interest. We begin with it as a rude wooden
building, which, after the Great Fire, Wren turned into the present arch
of stone, with a room above, where Messrs. Childs, the bankers, store
their books and archives. The trunk of one of the Rye House
conspirators, in Charles II.'s time, first adorned the Bar; and after
that, one after the other, many rash Jacobite heads, in 1715 and 1745,
arrived at the same bad eminence. In many a royal procession and many a
City riot, this gate has figured as a halting-place and a point of
defence. The last rebel's head blew down in 1772; and the last spike was
not removed till the beginning of the present century. In the Popish
Plot days of Charles II. vast processions used to come to Temple Bar to
illuminate the supposed statue of Queen Elizabeth, in the south-east
niche (though it probably really represents Anne of Denmark); and at
great bonfires at the Temple gate the frenzied people burned effigies of
the Pope, while thousands of squibs were discharged, with shouts that
frightened the Popish Portuguese Queen, at that time living at Somerset
House, forsaken by her dissolute scapegrace of a husband.
Turning our faces now towards the old black dome that rises like a
half-eclipsed planet over Ludgate Hill, we first pass along Fleet
Street, a locality full to overflowing with ancient memorials, and in
its modern aspect not less interesting. This street has been from time
immemorial the high road for royal processions. Richard II. has passed
along here to St. Paul's, his parti-coloured robes jingling with golden
bells; and Queen Elizabeth, be-ruffled and be-fardingaled, has glanced
at those gable-ends east of St. Dunstan's, as she rode in her cumbrous
plumed coach to thank God at St. Paul's for the scattering and
shattering of the Armada. Here Cromwell, a king in all but name and
twice a king by nature, received the keys of the City, as he rode to
Guildhall to preside at the banquet of the obsequious Mayor. William of
Orange and Queen Anne both clattered over these stones to return thanks
for victories over the French; and old George III. honoured the street
when, with his handsome but worthless son, he came to thank God for his
partial restoration from that darker region than the valley of the
shadow of death, insanity. We recall many odd and pleasant figures in
this street; first the old printers who succeeded Caxton, who published
for Shakespeare or who timidly speculated in Milton's epic, that great
product of a sorry age; next, the old bankers, who, at Child's and
Hoare's, laid the foundations of permanent wealth, and from simple City
goldsmiths were gradually transformed to great capitalists. Izaak
Walton, honest shopkeeper and patient angler, eyes us from his latticed
window near Chancery Lane; and close by we see the child Cowley reading
the "Fairy Queen" in a window-seat, and already feeling in himself the
inspiration of his later years. The lesser celebrities of later times
call to us as we pass. Garrick's friend Hardham, of the snuff-shop; and
that busy, vain demagogue, Alderman Waithman, whom Cobbett abused
because he was not zealous enough for poor hunted Queen Caroline. Then
there is the shop where barometers were first sold, the great
watchmakers, Tompion and Pinchbeck, to chronicle, and the two churches
to notice. St. Dunstan's is interesting for its early preachers, the
good Romaine and the pious Baxter; and St. Bride's has anecdotes and
legends of its own, and a peal of bells which have in their time excited
as much admiration as those giant hammermen at the old St. Dunstan's
clock, which are now in Regent's Park. The newspaper offices, too,
furnish many curious illustrations of the progress of that great organ
of modern civilisation, the press. At the "Devil" we meet Ben Jonson and
his club; and at John Murray's old shop we stop to see Byron lunging
with his stick at favourite volumes on the shelves, to the bookseller's
great but concealed annoyance. Nor do we forget to sketch Dr. Johnson at
Temple Bar, bantered by his fellow Jacobite, Goldsmith, about the
warning heads upon the gate; at Child's bank pausing to observe the
dinnerless authors returning downcast at the rejection of brilliant but
fruitless proposals; or stopping with Boswell, one hand upon a street
post, to shake the night air with his Cyclopean laughter. Varied as the
colours in a kaleidoscope are the figures that will meet us in these
perambulations; mutable as an opal are the feelings they arouse. To the
man of facts they furnish facts; to the man of imagination,
quick-changing fancies; to the man of science, curious memoranda; to the
historian, bright-worded details, that vivify old pictures now often dim
in tone; to the man of the world, traits of manners; to the general
thinker, aspects of feelings and of passions which expand the knowledge
of human nature; for all these many-coloured stones are joined by the
one golden string of London's history.
But if Fleet Street itself is rich in associations, its side streets,
north and south, are yet richer. Here anecdote and story are clustered
in even closer compass. In these side binns lies hid the choicest wine,
for when Fleet Street had, long since, become two vast rows of shops,
authors, wits, poets, and memorable persons of all kinds, still
inhabited the "closes" and alleys that branch from the main
thoroughfare. Nobles and lawyers long dwelt round St. Dunstan's and St.
Bride's. Scholars, poets, and literati of all kind, long sought refuge
from the grind and busy roar of commerce in the quiet inns and "closes,"
north and south. In what was Shire Lane we come upon the great Kit-Kat
Club, where Addison, Garth, Steele, and Congreve disported; and we look
in on that very evening when the Duke of Kingston, with fatherly pride,
brought his little daughter, afterwards Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and,
setting her on the table, proposed her as a toast. Following the lane
down till it becomes a nest of coiners, thieves, and bullies, we pass on
to Bell Yard, to call on Pope's lawyer friend, Fortescue; and in
Chancery Lane we are deep among the lawyers again. Ghosts of Jarndyces
_v._ Jarndyces, from the Middle Ages downwards, haunt this thoroughfare,
where Wolsey once lived in his pride and state. Izaak Walton dwelt in
this lane once upon a time; and that mischievous adviser of Charles I.,
Earl Strafford, was born here. Hazlitt resided in Southampton Buildings
when he fell in love with the tailor's daughter and wrote that most
stultifying confession of his vanity and weakness, "The New Pygmalion."
Fetter Lane brings us fresh stores of subjects, all essentially
connected with the place, deriving an interest from and imparting a new
interest to it. Praise-God-Barebones, Dryden, Otway, Baxter, and Mrs.
Brownrigg form truly a strange bouquet. By mutual contrast the
incongruous group serves, however, to illustrate various epochs of
London life, and the background serves to explain the actions and the
social position of each and all these motley beings.
In Crane Court, the early home of the Royal Society, Newton is the
central personage, and we tarry to sketch the progress of science and to
smile at the crudity of its early experiments and theories. In Bolt
Court we pause to see a great man die. Here especially Dr. Johnson's
figure ever stands like a statue, and we shall find his black servant at
the door and his dependents wrangling in the front parlour. Burke and
Boswell are on their way to call, and Reynolds is taking coach in the
adjoining street. Nor is even Shoe Lane without its associations, for at
the north-east end the corpse of poor, dishonoured Chatterton lies still
under some neglected rubbish heap; and close by the brilliant Cavalier
poet, Lovelace, pined and perished, almost in beggary.
The southern side of Fleet Street is somewhat less noticeable. Still, in
Salisbury Square the worthy old printer Richardson, amid the din of a
noisy office, wrote his great and pathetic novels; while in Mitre
Buildings Charles Lamb held those delightful conversations, so full of
quaint and kindly thoughts, which were shared in by Hazlitt and all the
odd people Lamb has immortalised in his "Elia"--bibulous Burney, George
Dyer, Holcroft, Coleridge, Hone, Godwin, and Leigh Hunt.
Whitefriars and Blackfriars are our next places of pilgrimage, and they
open up quite new lines of reading and of thought. Though the Great Fire
swept them bare, no district of London has preserved its old lines so
closely; and, walking in Whitefriars, we can still stare through the
gate that once barred off the brawling Copper Captains of Charles II.'s
Alsatia from the contemptuous Templars of King's Bench Walk. Whitefriars
was at first a Carmelite convent, founded, before Blackfriars, on land
given by Edward I.; the chapter-house was given by Henry VII. to his
physician, Dr. Butts (a man mentioned by Shakespeare), and in the reign
of Edward VI. the church was demolished. Whitefriars then, though still
partially inhabited by great people, soon sank into a sanctuary for
runaway bankrupts, cheats, and gamblers. The hall of the monastery was
turned into a theatre, where many of Dryden's plays first appeared. The
players favoured this quarter, where, in the reign of James I., two
henchmen of Lord Sanquire, a revengeful young Scottish nobleman, shot at
his own door a poor fencing-master, who had accidentally put out their
master's eye several years before in a contest of skill. The two men
were hung opposite the Whitefriars gate in Fleet Street. This
disreputable and lawless nest of river-side alleys was called Alsatia,
from its resemblance to the seat of the war then raging on the frontiers
of France, in the dominions of King James's son-in-law, the Prince
Palatine. Its roystering bullies and shifty money-lenders are admirably
sketched by Shadwell in his _Squire of Alsatia_, an excellent comedy
freely used by Sir Walter Scott in his "Fortunes of Nigel," who has laid
several of his strongest scenes in this once scampish region. That great
scholar Selden lived in Whitefriars with the Countess Dowager of Kent,
whom he was supposed to have married; and, singularly enough, the best
edition of his works was printed in Dogwell Court, Whitefriars, by those
eminent printers, Bowyer & Son. At the back of Whitefriars we come upon
Bridewell, the site of a palace of the Norman kings. Cardinal Wolsey
afterwards owned the house, which Henry VIII. reclaimed in his rough and
not very scrupulous manner. It was the old palace to which Henry
summoned all the priors and abbots of England, and where he first
announced his intention of divorcing Katherine of Arragon. After this it
fell into decay. The good Ridley, the martyr, begged it of Edward VI.
for a workhouse and a school. Hogarth painted the female prisoners here
beating hemp under the lash of a cruel turnkey; and Pennant has left a
curious sketch of the herd of girls whom he saw run like hounds to be
fed when a gaoler entered.
If Whitefriars was inhabited by actors, Blackfriars was equally favoured
by players and by painters. The old convent, removed from Holborn, was
often used for Parliaments. Charles V. lodged here when he came over to
win Henry against Francis; and Burbage, the great player of "Richard the
Third," built a theatre in Blackfriars, because the Precinct was out of
the jurisdiction of the City, then ill-disposed to the players.
Shakespeare had a house here, which he left to his favourite daughter,
the deed of conveyance of which sold, in 1841, for L165 15s. He must
have thought of his well-known neighbourhood when he wrote the scenes of
Henry VIII., where Katherine was divorced and Wolsey fell, for both
events were decided in Blackfriars Parliaments. Oliver, the great
miniature painter, and Jansen, a favourite portrait painter of James I.,
lived in Blackfriars, where we shall call upon them; and Vandyke spent
nine happy years here by the river side. The most remarkable event
connected with Blackfriars is the falling in of the floor of a Roman
Catholic private chapel in 1623, by which fifty-nine persons perished,
including the priest, to the exultation of the Puritans, who pronounced
the event a visitation of Heaven on Popish superstition. Pamphlets of
the time, well rummaged by us, describe the scene with curious
exactness, and mention the singular escapes of several persons on the
"Fatal Vespers," as they were afterwards called.
Leaving the racket of Alsatia and its wild doings behind us, we come
next to that great monastery of lawyers, the Temple--like Whitefriars
and Blackfriars, also the site of a bygone convent. The warlike Templars
came here in their white cloaks and red crosses from their first
establishment in Southampton Buildings, and they held it during all the
Crusades, in which they fought so valorously against the Paynim, till
they grew proud and corrupt, and were suspected of worshipping idols and
ridiculing Christianity. Their work done, they perished, and the Knights
of St. John took possession of their halls, church, and cloisters. The
incoming lawyers became tenants of the Crown, and the parade-ground of
the Templars and the river-side terrace and gardens were tenanted by
more peaceful occupants. The manners and customs of the lawyers of
various ages, their quaint revels, fox-huntings in hall, and dances
round the coal fire, deserve special notice; and swarms of anecdotes and
odd sayings and doings buzz round us as we write of the various denizens
of the Temple--Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, Lamb, Coke, Plowden, Jefferies,
Cowper, Butler, Parsons, Sheridan, and Tom Moore; and we linger at the
pretty little fountain and think of those who have celebrated its
praise. Every binn of this cellar of lawyers has its story, and a volume
might well be written in recording the toils and struggles, successes
and failures, of the illustrious owners of Temple chambers.
Thence we pass to Ludgate, where that old London inn, the "Belle
Sauvage," calls up associations of the early days of theatres,
especially of Banks and his wonderful performing horse, that walked up
one of the towers of Old St. Paul's. Hone's old shop reminds us of the
delightful books he published, aided by Lamb and Leigh Hunt. The old
entrance of the City, Ludgate, has quite a history of its own. It was a
debtors' prison, rebuilt in the time of King John from the remains of
demolished Jewish houses, and was enlarged by the widow of Stephen
Forster, Lord Mayor in the reign of Henry VI., who, tradition says, had
been himself a prisoner in Ludgate, till released by a rich widow, who
saw his handsome face through the grate and married him. St. Martin's
church, Ludgate, is one of Wren's churches, and is chiefly remarkable
for its stolid conceit in always getting in the way of the west front of
St. Paul's.
The great Cathedral has been the scene of events that illustrate almost
every age of English history. This is the third St. Paul's. The first,
falsely supposed to have been built on the site of a Roman temple of
Diana, was burnt down in the last year of William the Conqueror.
Innumerable events connected with the history of the City happened here,
from the killing a bishop at the north door, in the reign of Edward II.,
to the public exposure of Richard II.'s body after his murder; while at
the Cross in the churchyard the authorities of the City, and even our
kings, often attended the public sermons, and in the same place the
citizens once held their Folkmotes, riotous enough on many an occasion.
Great men's tombs abounded in Old St. Paul's--John of Gaunt, Lord
Bacon's father, Sir Philip Sydney, Donne, the poet, and Vandyke being
very prominent among them. Fired by lightning in Elizabeth's reign, when
the Cathedral had become a resort of newsmongers and a thoroughfare for
porters and carriers, it was partly rebuilt in Charles I.'s reign by
Inigo Jones. The repairs were stopped by the civil wars, when the
Puritans seized the funds, pulled down the scaffolding, and turned the
church into a cavalry barracks. The Great Fire swept all clear for Wren,
who now found a fine field for his genius; but vexatious difficulties
embarrassed him at the very outset. His first great plan was rejected,
and the Duke of York (afterwards James II.) is said to have insisted on
side recesses, that might serve as chantry chapels when the church
became Roman Catholic. Wren was accused of delays and chidden for the
faults of petty workmen, and, as the Duchess of Marlborough laughingly
remarked, was dragged up and down in a basket two or three times a week
for a paltry L200 a year. The narrow escape of Sir James Thornhill from
falling from a scaffold while painting the dome is a tradition of St.
Paul's, matched by the terrible adventure of Mr. Gwyn, who when
measuring the dome slid down the convex surface till his foot was stayed
by a small projecting lump of lead. This leads us naturally on to the
curious monomaniac who believed himself the slave of a demon who lived
in the bell of the Cathedral, and whose case is singularly deserving of
analysis. We shall give a short sketch of the heroes whose tombs have
been admitted into St. Paul's, and having come to those of the great
demi-gods of the old wars, Nelson and Wellington, pass to anecdotes
about the clock and bells, and arrive at the singular story of the
soldier whose life was saved by his proving that he had heard St. Paul's
clock strike thirteen. Queen Anne's statue in the churchyard, too, has
given rise to epigrams worthy of preservation, and the progress of the
restoration will be carefully detailed.
[Illustration: THE OLD WOODEN TEMPLE BAR (_see page 2_).]
Cheapside, famous from the Saxon days, next invites our wandering feet.
The north side remained an open field as late as Edward III.'s reign,
and tournaments were held there. The knights, whose deeds Froissart has
immortalised, broke spears there, in the presence of the Queen and her
ladies, who smiled on their champions from a wooden tower erected across
the street. Afterwards a stone shed was raised for the same sights, and
there Henry VIII., disguised as a yeoman, with a halbert on his
shoulder, came on one occasion to see the great City procession of the
night watch by torchlight on St. John's Eve. Wren afterwards, when he
rebuilt Bow Church, provided a balcony in the tower for the Royal Family
to witness similar pageants. Old Bow Church, we must not forget to
record, was seized in the reign of Richard I. by Longbeard, the
desperate ringleader of a Saxon rising, who was besieged there, and
eventually burned out and put to death. The great Cross of Cheapside
recalls many interesting associations, for it was one of the nine
Eleanor crosses. Regilt for many coronations, it was eventually pulled
down by the Puritans during the civil wars. Then there was the Standard,
near Bow Church, where Wat Tyler and Jack Cade beheaded several
objectionable nobles and citizens; and the great Conduit at the east
end--each with its memorable history. But the great feature of Cheapside
is, after all, Guildhall. This is the hall that Whittington paved and
where Walworth once ruled. In Guildhall Lady Jane Grey and her husband
were tried; here the Jesuit Garnet was arraigned for his share in the
Gunpowder Plot; here it was Charles I. appealed to the Common Council to
arrest Hampden and the other patriots who had fled from his eager claws
into the friendly City; and here, in the spot still sacred to liberty,
the Lords and Parliament declared for the Prince of Orange. To pass this
spot without some salient anecdotes of the various Lord Mayors would be
a disgrace; and the banquets themselves, from that of Whittington, when
he threw Henry V.'s bonds for L60,000 into a spice bonfire, to those in
the present reign, deserve some notice and comment. The curiosities of
Guildhall in themselves are not to be lightly passed over, for they
record many vicissitudes of the great City; and Gog and Magog are
personages of importance only secondary to that of Lord Mayor, and not
in any way to be disregarded. The Mansion House, built in 1789, leads us
to much chat about "gold chains, warm furs, broad banners and broad
faces;" for a folio might be well filled with curious anecdotes of the
Lord Mayors of various ages--from Sir John Norman, who first went in
procession to Westminster by water, to Sir John Shorter (James II.), who
was killed by a fall from his horse as he stopped at Newgate, according
to custom, to take a tankard of wine, nutmeg, and sugar. There is a word
to say of many a celebrity in the long roll of Mayors--more especially
of Beckford, who is said to have startled George III. by a violent
patriotic remonstrance, and of the notorious John Wilkes, that ugly
demagogue, who led the City in many an attack on the King and his unwise
Ministers.
[Illustration: BURNING THE POPE IN EFFIGY AT TEMPLE BAR (_see page 2_).]
The tributaries of Cheapside also abound in interest, and mark various
stages in the history of the great City. Bread Street was the bread
market of the time of Edward I., and is especially honoured for being
the birthplace of Milton; and in Milk Street (the old milk market) Sir
Thomas More was born. Gutter Lane reminds us of its first Danish owner;
and many other turnings have their memorable legends and traditions.
The Halls of the City Companies, the great hospitals, and Gothic
schools, will each by turn detain us; and we shall not forget to call at
the Bank, the South-Sea House, and other great proofs of past commercial
folly and present wealth. The Bank, projected by a Scotch theorist in
1691 (William III.), after many migrations, settled down in Threadneedle
Street in 1734. It has a history of its own, and we shall see during the
Gordon Riots the old pewter inkstands melted down for bullets, and,
prodigy of prodigies! Wilkes himself rushing out to seize the cowardly
ringleaders!
By many old houses of good pedigree and by several City churches worthy
a visit, we come at last to the Monument, which Wren erected and which
Cibber decorated. This pillar, which Pope compared to "a tall bully,"
once bore an inscription that greatly offended the Court. It attributed
the Great Fire of London, which began close by there, to the Popish
faction; but the words were erased in 1831. Littleton, who compiled the
Dictionary, once wrote a Latin inscription for the Monument, which
contained the names of seven Lord Mayors in one word:--
"Fordo-Watermanno-Harrisono-Hookero-Vinero-Sheldono-Davisonam."
But the learned production was, singularly enough, never used. The word,
which Littleton called "an heptastic vocable," comprehended the names of
the seven Lord Mayors in whose mayoralties the Monument was begun,
continued, and completed.
On London Bridge we might linger for many chapters. The first bridge
thrown over the Thames was a wooden one, erected by the nuns of St.
Mary's Monastery, a convent of sisters endowed by the daughter of a rich
Thames ferryman. The bridge figures as a fortified place in the early
Danish invasions, and the Norwegian Prince Olaf nearly dragged it to
pieces in trying to dispossess the Danes, who held it in 1008. It was
swept away in a flood, and its successor was burnt. In the reign of
Henry II., Pious Peter, a chaplain of St. Mary Colechurch, in the
Poultry, built a stone bridge a little further west, and the king helped
him with the proceeds of a tax on wool, which gave rise to the old
saying that "London Bridge was built upon woolpacks." Peter's bridge was
a curious structure, with nineteen pointed arches and a drawbridge.
There was a fortified gatehouse at each end, and a gothic chapel towards
the centre, dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket, the spurious martyr of
Canterbury. In Queen Elizabeth's reign there were shops on either side,
with flat roofs, arbours, and gardens, and at the south end rose a great
four-storey wooden house, brought from Holland, which was covered with
carving and gilding. In the Middle Ages, London Bridge was the scene of
affrays of all kinds. Soon after it was built, the houses upon it caught
fire at both ends, and 3,000 persons perished, wedged in among the
flames. Henry III. was driven back here by the rebellious De Montfort,
Earl of Leicester. Wat Tyler entered the City by London Bridge; and,
later, Richard II. was received here with gorgeous ceremonies. It was
the scene of one of Henry V.'s greatest triumphs, and also of his
stately funeral procession. Jack Cade seized London Bridge, and as he
passed slashed in two the ropes of the drawbridge, though soon after his
head was stuck on the gatehouse. From this bridge the rebel Wyatt was
driven by the guns of the Tower; and in Elizabeth's reign water-works
were erected on the bridge. There was a great conflagration on the
bridge in 1632, and eventually the Great Fire almost destroyed it. In
the Middle Ages countless rebels' heads were stuck on the gate-houses of
London Bridge. Brave Wallace's was placed there; and so were the heads
of Henry VIII.'s victims--Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas
More, the latter trophy being carried off by the stratagem of his brave
daughter. Garnet, the Gunpowder-Plot Jesuit, also contributed to the
ghastly triumphs of justice. Several celebrated painters, including
Hogarth, lived at one time or another on the bridge; and Swift and Pope
used to frequent the shop of a witty bookseller, who lived under the
northern gate. One or two celebrated suicides have taken place at London
Bridge, and among these we may mention that of Sir William Temple's son,
who was Secretary of War, and Eustace Budgell, a broken-down author, who
left behind him as an apology the following sophism:--
"What Cato did and Addison approved of cannot be wrong."
Pleasanter is it to remember the anecdote of the brave apprentice, who
leaped into the Thames from the window of a house on the bridge to save
his master's infant daughter, whom a careless nurse had dropped into the
river. When the girl grew up, many noble suitors came, but the generous
father was obdurate. "No," said the honest citizen; "Osborne saved her,
and Osborne shall have her." And so he had; and Osborne's great grandson
throve and became the first Duke of Leeds. The frequent loss of lives in
shooting the arches of the old bridge, where the fall was at times five
feet, led at last to a cry for a new bridge, and one was commenced in
1824. Rennie designed it, and in 1831 William IV. and Queen Adelaide
opened it. One hundred and twenty thousand tons of stone went to its
formation. The old bridge was not entirely removed till 1832, when the
bones of the builder, Pious Peter of Colechurch, were found in the crypt
of the central chapel, where tradition had declared they lay. The iron
of the piles of the old bridge was bought by a cutler in the Strand, and
produced steel of the highest quality. Part of the old stone was
purchased by Alderman Harmer, to build his house, Ingress Abbey, near
Greenhithe.
Southwark, a Roman station and cemetery, is by no means without a
history. It was burned by William the Conqueror, and had been the scene
of battle against the Danes. It possessed palaces, monasteries, a mint,
and fortifications. The Bishops of Winchester and Rochester once lived
here in splendour; and the locality boasted its four Elizabethan
theatres. The Globe was Shakespeare's summer theatre, and here it was
that his greatest triumphs were attained. What was acted there is best
told by making Shakespeare's share in the management distinctly
understood; nor can we leave Southwark without visiting the "Tabard
Inn," from whence Chaucer's nine-and-twenty jovial pilgrims set out for
Canterbury.
The Tower rises next before our eyes; and as we pass under its
battlements the grimmest and most tragic scenes of English history seem
again rising before us. Whether Caesar first built a tower here or
William the Conqueror, may never be decided; but one thing is certain,
that more tears have been shed within these walls than anywhere else in
London. Every stone has its story. Here Wallace, in chains, thought of
Scotland; here Queen Anne Boleyn placed her white hands round her
slender neck, and said the headsman would have little trouble. Here
Catharine Howard, Sir Thomas More, Cranmer, Northumberland, Lady Jane
Grey, Wyatt, and the Earl of Essex all perished. Here, Clarence was
drowned in a butt of wine and the two boy princes were murdered. Many
victims of kings, many kingly victims, have here perished. Many patriots
have here sighed for liberty. The poisoning of Overbury is a mystery of
the Tower, the perusal of which never wearies though the dark secret be
unsolvable; and we can never cease to sympathise with that brave woman,
the Countess of Nithsdale, who risked her life to save her husband's.
From Laud and Strafford we turn to Eliot and Hutchinson--for Cavaliers
and Puritans were both by turns prisoners in the Tower. From Lord
William Russell and Algernon Sydney we come down in the chronicle of
suffering to the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745; from them to Wilkes, Lord
George Gordon, Burdett, and, last of all the Tower prisoners, to the
infamous Thistlewood.
Leaving the crimson scaffold on Tower Hill, we return as sightseers to
glance over the armoury and to catch the sparkle of the Royal jewels.
Here is the identical crown that that daring villain Blood stole and the
heart-shaped ruby that the Black Prince once wore; here we see the
swords, sceptres, and diadems of many of our monarchs. In the armoury
are suits on which many lances have splintered and swords struck; the
imperishable steel clothes of many a dead king are here, unchanged since
the owners doffed them. This suit was the Earl of Leicester's--the
"Kenilworth" earl, for see his cognizance of the bear and ragged staff
on the horse's chanfron. This richly-gilt suit was worn by James I.'s
ill-starred son, Prince Henry, whom many thought was poisoned by
Buckingham; and this quaint mask, with ram's horns and spectacles,
belonged to Will Somers, Henry VIII.'s jester.
From the Tower we break away into the far east, among the old clothes
shops, the bird markets, the costermongers, and the weavers of
Whitechapel and Spitalfields. We are far from jewels here and Court
splendour, and we come to plain working people and their homely ways.
Spitalfields was the site of a priory of Augustine canons, however, and
has ancient traditions of its own. The weavers, of French origin, are an
interesting race--we shall have to sketch their sayings and doings; and
we shall search Whitechapel diligently for old houses and odd people.
The district may not furnish so many interesting scenes and anecdotes as
the West End, but it is well worthy of study from many modern points of
view.
Smithfield and Holborn are regions fertile in associations. Smithfield,
that broad plain, the scene of so many martyrdoms, tournaments, and
executions, forms an interesting subject for a diversified chapter. In
this market-place the ruffians of Henry VIII.'s time met to fight out
their quarrels with sword and buckler. Here the brave Wallace was
executed like a common robber; and here "the gentle Mortimer" was led to
a shameful death. The spot was the scene of great jousts in Edward
III.'s chivalrous reign, when, after the battle of Poictiers, the Kings
of France and Scotland came seven days running to see spears shivered
and "the Lady of the Sun" bestow the prizes of valour. In this same
field Walworth slew the rebel Wat Tyler, who had treated Richard II.
with insolence, and by this prompt blow dispersed the insurgents, who
had grown so dangerously strong. In Henry VIII.'s reign poisoners were
boiled to death in Smithfield; and in cruel Mary's reign the Protestant
martyrs were burned in the same place. "Of the two hundred and
seventy-seven persons burnt for heresy in Mary's reign," says a modern
antiquary, "the greater number perished in Smithfield;" and ashes and
charred bodies have been dug up opposite to the gateway of Bartholomew's
Church and at the west end of Long Lane. After the Great Fire the
houseless citizens were sheltered here in tents. Over against the corner
where the Great Fire abated is Cock Lane, the scene of the rapping
ghost, in which Dr. Johnson believed and concerning which Goldsmith
wrote a catchpenny pamphlet.
Holborn and its tributaries come next, and are by no means deficient in
legends and matter of general interest. "The original name of the street
was the Hollow Bourne," says a modern etymologist, "not the Old Bourne;"
it was not paved till the reign of Henry V. The ride up "the Heavy Hill"
from Newgate to Tyburn has been sketched by Hogarth and sung by Swift.
In Ely Place once lived the Bishop of Ely; and in Hatton Garden resided
Queen Elizabeth's favourite, the dancing chancellor, Sir Christopher
Hatton. In Furnival's Inn Dickens wrote "Pickwick." In Barnard's Inn
died the last of the alchemists. In Staple's Inn Dr. Johnson wrote
"Rasselas," to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral. In Brooke
Street, where Chatterton poisoned himself, lived Lord Brooke, a poet and
statesman, who was a patron of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, and who was
assassinated by a servant whose name he had omitted in his will. Milton
lived for some time in a house in Holborn that opened at the back on
Lincoln's Inn Fields. Fox Court leads us to the curious inquiry whether
Savage, the poet, was a conscious or an unconscious impostor; and at the
Blue Boar Inn Cromwell and Ireton discovered by stratagem the
treacherous letter of King Charles to his queen, that rendered Cromwell
for ever the King's enemy. These are only a few of the countless
associations of Holborn.
Newgate is a gloomy but an interesting subject for us. Many wild faces
have stared through its bars since, in King John's time, it became a
City prison. We shall look in on Sarah Malcolm, Mrs. Brownrigg, Jack
Sheppard, Governor Wall, and other interesting criminals; we shall stand
at Wren's elbow when he designs the new prison, and follow the Gordon
Rioters when they storm in over the burning walls.
The Strand stands next to Fleet Street as a central point of old
memories. It is not merely full, it positively teems. For centuries it
was a fashionable street, and noblemen inhabited the south side
especially, for the sake of the river. In Essex Street, on a part of the
Temple, Queen Elizabeth's rash favourite (the Earl of Essex) was
besieged, after his hopeless foray into the City. In Arundel Street
lived the Earls of Arundel; in Buckingham Street Charles I.'s greedy
favourite began a palace. There were royal palaces, too, in the Strand,
for at the Savoy lived John of Gaunt; and Somerset House was built by
the Protector Somerset with the stones of the churches he had pulled
down. Henrietta Maria (Charles I.'s Queen) and poor neglected Catherine
of Braganza dwelt at Somerset House; and it was here that Sir Edmondbury
Godfrey, the zealous Protestant magistrate, was supposed to have been
murdered. There is, too, the history of Lord Burleigh's house (in Cecil
Street) to record; and Northumberland House still stands to recall to us
its many noble inmates. On the other side of the Strand we have to note
Butcher Row (now pulled down), where the Gunpowder Plot conspirators
met; Exeter House, where Lord Burleigh's wily son lived; and, finally,
Exeter 'Change, where the poet Gay lay in state. Nor shall we forget
Cross's menagerie and the elephant Chunee; nor omit mention of many of
the eccentric old shopkeepers who once inhabited the 'Change. At Charing
Cross we shall stop to see the old Cromwellians die bravely, and to
stare at the pillory, where in their time many incomparable scoundrels
ignominiously stood. The Nelson Column and the surrounding statues have
stories of their own; and St. Martin's Lane is specially interesting as
the haunt of half the painters of the early Georgian era. There are
anecdotes of Hogarth and his friends to be picked up here in abundance,
and the locality generally deserves exploration, from the quaintness and
cleverness of its former inhabitants.
In Covent Garden we break fresh ground. We found St. Martin's Lane full
of artists, Guildhall full of aldermen, the Strand full of noblemen--the
old monastic garden will prove to be crowded with actors. We shall trace
the market from the first few sheds under the wall of Bedford House to
the present grand temple of Flora and Pomona. We shall see Evans's a new
mansion, inhabited by Ben Jonson's friend and patron, Sir Kenelm Digby,
alternately tenanted by Sir Harry Vane, Denzil Holles (one of the five
refractory members whom Charles I. went to the House of Commons so
imprudently to seize), and Admiral Russell, who defeated the French at
La Hogue. The ghost of Parson Ford, in which Johnson believed, awaits us
at the doorway of the Hummums. There are several duels to witness in the
Piazza; Dryden to call upon as he sits, the arbiter of wits, by the
fireside at Will's Coffee House; Addison is to be found at Button's; at
the "Bedford" we shall meet Garrick and Quin, and stop a moment at Tom
King's, close to St. Paul's portico, to watch Hogarth's revellers fight
with swords and shovels, that frosty morning that the painter sketched
the prim old maid going to early service. We shall look in at the
Tavistock to see Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller at work at
portraits of beauties of the Carolean and Jacobean Courts; remembering
that in the same rooms Sir James Thornhill afterwards painted, and poor
Richard Wilson produced those fine landscapes which so few had the taste
to buy. The old hustings deserve a word, and we shall have to record the
lamentable murder of Miss Ray by her lover, at the north-east angle of
the square. The neighbourhood of Covent Garden, too, is rife with
stories of great actors and painters, and nearly every house furnishes
its quota of anecdote.
The history of Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres supplies us with
endless anecdotes of actors, and with humorous and pathetic narratives
that embrace the whole region both of tragedy and comedy. Quin's jokes,
Garrick's weaknesses, the celebrated O.P. riots, contrast with the
miserable end of some popular favourites and the caprices of genius. The
oddities of Munden, the humour of Liston, only serve to render the gloom
of Kean's downfall more terrible, and to show the wreck and ruin of many
unhappy men, equally wilful though less gifted. There is a perennial
charm about theatrical stories, and the history of these theatres must
be illustrated by many a sketch of the loves and rivalries of actors,
their fantastic tricks, their practical jokes, their gay progress to
success or ruin. Changes of popular taste are marked by the change of
character in the pieces that have been performed in various ages; and
the history of the two theatres will include various illustrative
sketches of dramatic writers, as well as actors. There was a vast
interval in literature between the tragedies of Addison and Murphey and
the comedies of Holcroft, O'Keefe, and Morton; the descent to modern
melodrama and burlesque must be traced through various gradations, and
the reasons shown for the many modifications both classes of
entertainments have undergone.
Westminster, from the night St. Peter came over from Lambeth in the
fisherman's boat, and chose a site for the Abbey in the midst of Thorney
Island, to the present day, has been a spot where the pilgrim to
historic shrines loves to linger. Need we remind our readers that Edward
the Confessor built the Abbey, or that William the Conqueror was crowned
here, the ceremony ending in tumult and blood? How vast the store of
facts from which we have to cull! We see the Jews being beaten nearly to
death for daring to attend the coronation of Richard I.; we observe
Edward I. watching the sacred stone of Scotland being placed beneath his
coronation chair; we behold for the first time, at Richard II.'s
coronation, the champion riding into the Hall, to challenge all who
refuse allegiance; we see, at the funeral of Anne of Bohemia, Richard
beating the Earl of Arundel for wishing to leave before the service is
over. We hear the _Te Deum_ that is sung for the victory of Agincourt,
and watch Henry VI. selecting a site for a resting-place; we hear for
the last time, at the coronation of Henry VIII., the sanction of the
Pope bestowed upon an English monarch; we pity poor Queen Caroline
attempting to enter the Abbey to see her worthless husband crowned; and
we view the last coronation, and draw auguries of a purer if not a
happier age. The old Hall, too; could we neglect that ancient chamber,
where Charles I. was sentenced to death, and where Cromwell was throned
in almost regal splendour? We must see it in all its special moments;
when the seven bishops were acquitted, and the shout of joy shook London
as with an earthquake; and when the rebel lords were tried. We must hear
Lord Byron tried for his duel with Mr. Chaworth, and mad Lord Ferrers
condemned for shooting his steward. We shall get a side-view of the
shameless Duchess of Kingston, and hear Burke and Sheridan grow eloquent
over the misdeeds of Warren Hastings.
[Illustration: BRIDEWELL IN 1666 (_see page 4_).]
The parks now draw us westward, and we wander through them: in St.
James's seeing Charles II. feeding his ducks or playing "pall-mall;" in
Hyde Park observing the fashions and extravagancies of many generations.
Romeo Coates will whisk past us in his fantastic chariot, and the beaus
and oddities of many generations will pace past us in review. There will
be celebrated duels to describe, and various strange follies to deride.
We shall see Cromwell thrown from his coach, and shall witness the
foot-races that Pepys describes. Dryden's gallants and masked ladies
will receive some mention; and we shall tell of bygone encampments and
of many events now almost forgotten.
Kensington will recall many anecdotes of William of Orange, his beloved
Queen, stupid Prince George of Denmark, and George II., who all died at
the palace, the old seat of the Finches. We are sure to find good
company in the gardens. Still as when Tickell sang, every walk
"Seems from afar a moving tulip bed,
Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow,
And chintz, the rival of the showery bow."
There is Newton's house at South Kensington to visit, and Wilkie's and
Mrs. Inchbald's; and, above all, there is Holland House, the scene of
the delightful Whig coteries of Tom Moore's time. Here Addison lived to
regret his marriage with a lady of rank, and here he died. At Kensington
Charles James Fox spent his youth.
[Illustration: PART OF MODERN LONDON, SHOWING THE ANCIENT WALL (_see
page 20_).]
And now Chelsea brings us pleasant recollections of Sir Thomas More,
Swift, Sir Robert Walpole, and Atterbury. "Chelsith," Sir Thomas More
used to call it when Holbein was lodging in his house and King Henry,
who afterwards beheaded his old friend, used to come to dinner, and
after dinner walk round the fair garden with his arm round his host's
neck. More was fond of walking on the flat roof of his gatehouse, which
commanded a pleasant prospect of the Thames and the fields beyond. Let
us hope the tradition is not true that he used to bind heretics to a
tree in his garden. In 1717 Chelsea only contained 350 houses, and these
in 1725 had grown to 1,350. There is Cheyne Walk, so called from the
Lords Cheyne, owners of the manor; and we must not forget Don Saltero
and his famous coffee-house, the oddities of which Steele pleasantly
sketched in the Tatler. The Don was famous for his skill in brewing
punch and for his excellent playing on the fiddle. Saltero was a
barber, who drew teeth, drew customers, wrote verses, and collected
curiosities.
"Some relics of the Sheban queen
And fragments of the famed Bob Crusoe."
Swift lodged at Chelsea, over against the Jacobite Bishop Atterbury, who
so nearly lost his head. In one of his delightful letters to Stella
Swift describes "the Old Original Chelsea Bun House," and the
r-r-r-r-rare Chelsea buns. He used to leave his best gown and perriwig
at Mrs. Vanhomrig's, in Suffolk Street, then walk up Pall Mall, through
the park, out at Buckingham House, and on to Chelsea, a little beyond
the church (5,748 steps), he says, in less than an hour, which was
leisurely walking even for the contemplative and observant dean. Smollet
laid a scene of his "Humphrey Clinker" in Chelsea, where he lived for
some time.
The Princess Elizabeth, when a girl, lived at Chelsea, with that
dangerous man, with whom she is said to have fallen in love, the Lord
Admiral Seymour, afterwards beheaded. He was the second husband of
Katherine Parr, one of the many wives of Elizabeth's father. Cremorne
was, in Walpole's days, the villa of Lord Cremorne, an Irish nobleman;
and near here, at a river-side cottage died, in miserly and cynical
obscurity, the greatest of our modern landscape painters, Turner. Then
there is Chelsea Hospital to visit. This hospital was built by Wren;
Charles II., it is said at Nell Gwynn's suggestion, originated the good
work, which was finished by William and Mary. Dr. Arbuthnot, that good
man so beloved by the Pope set, was physician here, and the Rev. Philip
Francis, who translated Horace, was chaplain. Nor can we leave Chelsea
without remembering Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection of antiquities,
sold for L20,000, formed the first nucleus of the British Museum, and
who resided at Chelsea; nor shall we forget the Chelsea china
manufactory, one of the earliest porcelain manufactories in England,
patronized by George II., who brought over German artificers from
Brunswick and Saxony. In the reign of Louis XV. the French manufacturers
began to regard it with jealousy and petitioned their king for special
privileges. Ranelagh, too, that old pleasure-garden which Dr. Johnson
declared was "the finest thing he had ever seen," deserves a word;
Horace Walpole was constantly there, though at first, he owns, he
preferred Vauxhall; and Lord Chesterfield was so fond of it that he used
to say he should order all his letters to be directed there.
The West End squares are pleasant spots for our purpose, and at many
doors we shall have to make a call. In Landsdowne House (in Berkeley
Square) it is supposed by many that Lord Shelburne, Colonel Barre, and
Dunning wrote "Junius"; certain it is that the Marquis of Landsdowne, in
1809, acknowledged the possession of the secret, but died the following
week, before he could disclose it. Here, in 1774, that persecuted
philosopher, Dr. Priestley, the librarian to Lord Shelburne, discovered
oxygen. In this square Horace Walpole (that delightful letter-writer)
died and Lord Clive destroyed himself. Then there is Grosvenor Square,
where that fat, easy-going Minister, Lord North, lived, where Wilkes the
notorious resided, and where the Cato-Street conspirators planned to
kill all the Cabinet Ministers, who had been invited to dinner by the
Earl of Harrowby. In Hanover Square we visit Lord Rodney, &c. In St.
James's Square we recall William III. coming to the Earl of Romney's to
see fireworks let off and, later, the Prince Regent, from a balcony,
displaying to the people the Eagles captured at Waterloo. Queen Caroline
resided here during her trial, and many of Charles II.'s frail beauties
also resided in the same spot. In Cavendish Square we stop to describe
the splendid projects of that great Duke of Chandos whom Pope
ridiculed. Nor are the lesser squares by any means devoid of interest.
In Pall Mall the laziest gleaner of London traditions might find a
harvest. On the site of Carlton House--the Prince Regent's palace--were,
in the reign of Henry VI., monastic buildings, in which (reign of Henry
VIII.) Erasmus afterwards resided. They were pulled down at the
Reformation. Nell Gwynn lived here, and so did Sir William Temple,
Swift's early patron, the pious Boyle, and that poor puff-ball of vanity
and pretence--Bubb Doddington. Here we have to record the unhappy duel
at the "Star and Garter" tavern between Lord Byron and Mr. Chaworth, and
the murder of Mr. Thynne by his rival, Count Koeningsmark. There is
Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery to notice, and Dodsley's shop, which
Burke, Johnson, and Garrick so often visited. There is also the origin
of the Royal Academy, at a house opposite Market Lane, to chronicle,
many club-houses to visit, and curious memorabilia of all kinds to be
sifted, selected, contrasted, mounted, and placed in sequence for view.
Then comes Marylebone, formerly a suburb, famous only for its hunting
park (now Regent's Park), its gardens, and its bowling-greens. In Queen
Elizabeth's time the Russian ambassadors were sent to hunt in Marylebone
Park; Cromwell sold it--deer, timber, and all--for L13,000. The
Marylebone Bowling Greens, which preceded the gardens, were at first the
resort of noblemen and gentlemen, but eventually highwaymen began to
frequent them. The Duke of Buckingham (whom Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
glances at in the line,
"Some dukes at Marybone bowl time away")
used, at an annual dinner to the frequenters of the gardens, to give the
agreeable toast,--"May as many of us as remain unhanged next spring meet
here again." Eventually burlettas were produced--one written by
Chatterton; and Dr. Arne conducted Handel's music. Marylebone, in the
time of Hogarth, was a favourite place for prize fights and back-sword
combats, the great champion being Figg, that bullet-headed man with the
bald, plaistered head, whom Hogarth has represented mounting grim sentry
in his "Southwark Fair." The great building at Marylebone began between
1718 and 1729. In 1739 there were only 577 houses in the parish; in 1851
there were 16,669. In many of the nooks and corners of Marylebone we
shall find curious facts and stories worth the unravelling.
[Illustration: PLAN OF ROMAN LONDON (_see page 20_).]
The eastern squares, in Bloomsbury and St. Pancras, are regions not by
any means to be lightly passed by. Bloomsbury Square was built by the
Earl of Southampton, about the time of the Restoration, and was thought
one of the wonders of England. Baxter lived here when he was tormented
by Judge Jefferies; Sir Hans Sloane was one of its inhabitants; so was
that great physician, Dr. Radcliffe. The burning of Mansfield House by
Lord George Gordon's rioters has to be minutely described. In Russell
Square we visit the houses of Sir Thomas Lawrence and of Judge Talfourd,
and search for that celebrated spot in London legend, "The Field of the
Forty Footsteps," where two brothers, it is said, killed each other in a
duel for a lady, who sat by watching the fight. Then there is Red Lion
Square, where tradition says some faithful adherents, at the
Restoration, buried the body of Cromwell, to prevent its desecration at
Tyburn; and we have to cull some stories of a good old inhabitant, Jonas
Hanway, the great promoter of many of the London charities, the first
man who habitually used an umbrella and Dr. Johnson's spirited opponent
on the important question of tea. Soho Square, too, has many a
tradition, for the Duke of Monmouth lived there in great splendour; and
in Hogarth's time Mrs. Cornelys made the square celebrated by her
masquerades, which in time became disreputable. Sir Cloudesley Shovel,
Sir Joseph Banks, and Burnet, the historian, were all inhabitants of
this locality.
Islington brings us back to days when Henry VIII. came there to hawk the
partridge and the heron, and when the London citizens wandered out
across the northern fields to drink milk and eat cheesecakes. The old
houses abound in legends of Sir Walter Raleigh, Topham, the strong man,
George Morland, the artist, and Henderson, the actor. At Canonbury, the
old tower of the country house of the Prior of St. Bartholomew recalls
to us Goldsmith, who used to come there to hide from his creditors, go
to bed early, and write steadily.
At Highgate and Hampstead we shall scour the northern uplands of London
by no means in vain, as we shall find Belsize House, in Charles II.'s
time, openly besieged by robbers and, long afterwards, highwaymen
swarming in the same locality. The chalybeate wells of Hampstead lead us
on to the Heath, where wolves were to be found in the twelfth century
and highwaymen as late as 1803. Good company awaits us at pleasant
Hampstead--Lord Erskine, Lord Chatham, Keats, Akenside, Leigh Hunt, and
Sir Fowell Buxton; Booth, Wilkes, and Colley Cibber; Mrs. Barbauld,
honest Dick Steele, and Joanna Baillie. As for Highgate, for ages a
mere hamlet, a forest, it once boasted a bishop's palace, and there we
gather, with free hand, memories of Sacheverell, Rowe, Dr. Watts,
Hogarth, Coleridge, and Lord Mansfield; Ireton, Marvell, and Dick
Whittington, the worthy demi-god of London apprentices to the end of
time.
Lambeth, where Harold was crowned, can hold its own in interest with any
part of London--for it once possessed two ecclesiastical palaces and
many places of amusement. Lambeth Palace itself is a spot of extreme
interest. Here Wat Tyler's men dragged off Archbishop Sudbury to
execution; here, when Laud was seized, the Parliamentary soldiers turned
the palace into a prison for Royalists and demolished the great hall.
Outside the walls of the church James II.'s Queen cowered in the
December rain with her child, till a coach could be brought from the
neighbouring inn to convey her to Gravesend to take ship for France. The
Gordon rioters attacked the palace in 1780, but were driven off by a
detachment of Guards. The Lollards' Tower has to be visited, and the
sayings and doings of a long line of prelates to be reviewed. Vauxhall
brings us back to the days when Walpole went with Lady Caroline
Petersham and helped to stew chickens in a china dish over a lamp; or we
go further back and accompany Addison and the worthy Sir Roger de
Coverley, and join them over a glass of Burton ale and a slice of hung
beef.
Astley's Amphitheatre recalls to us many amusing stories of that old
soldier, Ducrow, and of his friends and rivals, which join on very
naturally to those other theatrical traditions to which Drury Lane and
Covent Garden have already led us.
So we mean to roam from flower to flower, over as varied a garden as the
imagination can well conceive. There have been brave workers before us
in the field, and we shall build upon good foundations. We hope to be
catholic in our selections; we shall prune away only the superfluous; we
shall condense anecdotes only where we think we can make them pithier
and racier. We will neglect no fact that is interesting, and blend
together all that old Time can give us bearing upon London. Street by
street we shall delve and rake for illustrative story, despising no
book, however humble, no pamphlet, however obscure, if it only throws
some light on the celebrities of London, its topographical history, its
manners and customs. Such is a brief summary of our plan.
St. Paul's rises before us with its great black dome and stately row of
sable columns; the Tower, with its central citadel, flanked by the
spear-like masts of the river shipping; the great world of roofs spreads
below us as we launch upon our venturous voyage of discovery. From
Boadicea leading on her scythed chariots at Battle Bridge to Queen
Victoria in the Thanksgiving procession of yesterday is a long period
over which to range. We have whole generations of Londoners to defile
before us--painted Britons, hooded Saxons, mailed Crusaders, Chaucer's
men in hoods, friars, citizens, warriors, Shakespeare's friends,
Johnson's companions, Goldsmith's jovial "Bohemians," Hogarth's
fellow-painters, soldiers, lawyers, statesmen, merchants. Nevertheless,
at our spells they will gather from the four winds, and at our command
march off to their old billets in their old houses, where we may best
cross-examine them and collect their impressions of the life of their
times.
The subject is as entertaining as any dream Imagination ever evoked and
as varied as human nature. Its classification is a certain bond of
union, and will act as an excellent cement for the multiform stones with
which we shall rear our building. Lists of names, dry pedigrees, rows of
dates, we leave to the herald and the topographer; but we shall pass by
little that can throw light on the history of London in any generation,
and we shall dwell more especially on the events of the later centuries,
because they are more akin to us and are bound to us by closer
sympathies.
CHAPTER I.
ROMAN LONDON.
Buried London--Our Early Relations--The Founder of London--A
distinguished Visitor at Romney Marsh--Caesar re-visits the "Town on the
Lake"--The Borders of Old London--Caesar fails to make much out of the
Britons--King _Brown_--The Derivation of the name of London--The Queen
of the Iceni--London Stone and London Roads--London's Earlier and Newer
Walls--The Site of St. Paul's--Fabulous Claims to Idolatrous
Renown--Existing Relics of Roman London--Treasures from the Bed of the
Thames--What we Tread underfoot in London--A vast Field of Story.
Eighteen feet below the level of Cheapside lies hidden Roman London, and
deeper even than that is buried the earlier London of those savage
charioteers who, long ages ago, bravely confronted the legions of Rome.
In nearly all parts of the City there have been discovered tesselated
pavements, Roman tombs, lamps, vases, sandals, keys, ornaments, weapons,
coins, and statues of the ancient Roman gods. So the present has grown
up upon the ashes of the past.
Trees that are to live long grow slowly. Slow and stately as an oak
London grew and grew, till now nearly four million souls represent its
leaves. Our London is very old. Centuries before Christ there probably
came the first few half-naked fishermen and hunters, who reared, with
flint axes and such rude tools, some miserable huts on the rising ground
that, forming the north bank of the Thames, slopes to the river some
sixty miles from where it joins the sea. According to some, the river
spread out like a vast lake between the Surrey and the Essex hills in
those times when the half-savage first settlers found the low slopes of
the future London places of health and defence amid a vast and dismal
region of fen, swamp, and forest. The heroism and the cruelties, the
hopes and fears of those poor barbarians, darkness never to be removed
has hidden from us for ever. In later days monkish historians, whom
Milton afterwards followed, ignored these poor early relations of ours
and invented, as a more fitting ancestor of Englishmen, Brute, a
fugitive nephew of AEneas of Troy. But, stroll on where we will, the
pertinacious savage, with his limbs stained blue and his flint axe red
with blood, is a ghost not easily to be exorcised from the banks of the
Thames, and in some Welsh veins his blood no doubt flows at this very
day. The founder of London had no historian to record his hopes--a place
where big salmon were to be found, and plenty of wild boars were to be
met with, was probably his highest ambition. How he bartered with
Phoenicians or Gauls for amber or iron no Druid has recorded. How he
slew the foraging Belgae, or was slain by them and dispossessed, no bard
has sung. Whether he was generous and heroic as the New Zealander, or
apelike and thievish as the Bushman, no ethnologist has yet proved. The
very ashes of the founder of London have long since turned to earth,
air, and water.
No doubt the few huts that formed early London were fought for over and
over again, as wolves wrangle round a carcass. On Cornhill there
probably dwelt petty kings who warred with the kings of Ludgate; and in
Southwark there lurked or burrowed other chiefs who, perhaps by intrigue
or force, struggled for centuries to get a foothold in Thames Street.
But of such infusoria History (glorying only in offenders, criminals,
and robbers on the largest scale) justly pays no heed. This alone we
know, that the early rulers of London before the Christian era passed
away like the wild beasts they fought and slew, and their very names
have perished. One line of an old blind Greek poet might have
immortalised them among the motley nations that crowded into Troy or
swarmed under its walls; but, alas for them, that line was never
written! No, Founder of London! thy name was written on fluid ooze of
the marsh, and the first tide that washed over it from the Nore
obliterated it for ever. Yet, perhaps even now thou sleepest as quietly
fathoms deep in soft mud, in some still nook of Barking Creek, as if all
the world was ringing with thy glory.
But descending quick to the lower but safer and firmer ground of fact,
let us cautiously drive our first pile into the shaky morass of early
London history.
A learned modern antiquary, Thomas Lewin, Esq., has proved, as nearly as
such things can be proved, that Julius Caesar and 8,000 men, who had
sailed from Boulogne, landed near Romney Marsh about half-past five
o'clock on Sunday the 27th of August, 55 years before the birth of our
Saviour. Centuries before that very remarkable August day on which the
brave standard-bearer of Caesar's Tenth Legion sprang from his gilt
galley into the sea and, eagle in hand, advanced against the javelins of
the painted Britons who lined the shore, there is now no doubt London
was already existing as a British town of some importance, and known to
the fishermen and merchants of the Gauls and Belgians. Strabo, a Greek
geographer who flourished in the reign of Augustus, speaks of British
merchants as bringing to the Seine and the Rhine shiploads of corn,
cattle, iron, hides, slaves, and dogs, and taking back brass, ivory,
amber ornaments, and vessels of glass. By these merchants the
desirability of such a depot as London, with its great and always
navigable river, could not have been long overlooked.
[Illustration: ANCIENT ROMAN PAVEMENT FOUND IN THREADNEEDLE STREET, 1841
(_see page 21_).]
In Caesar's second and longer invasion in the next year (54 B.C.), when
his 28 many-oared triremes and 560 transports, &c., in all 800, poured
on the same Kentish coast 21,000 legionaries and 2,000 cavalry, there is
little doubt that his strong foot left its imprint near that cluster of
stockaded huts (more resembling a New Zealand pah than a modern English
town) perhaps already called London--Llyn-don, the "town on the lake."
After a battle at Challock Wood, Caesar and his men crossed the Thames,
as is supposed, at Coway Stakes, an ancient ford a little above Walton
and below Weybridge. Cassivellaunus, King of Hertfordshire and
Middlesex, had just slain in war Immanuent, King of Essex, and had
driven out his son Mandubert. The Trinobantes, Mandubert's subjects,
joined the Roman spearmen against the 4,000 scythed chariots of
Cassivellaunus and the Catyeuchlani. Straight as the flight of an arrow
was Caesar's march upon the capital of Cassivellaunus, a city the
barbaric name of which he either forgot or disregarded, but which he
merely says was "protected by woods and marshes." This place north of
the Thames has usually been thought to be Verulamium (St. Alban's); but
it was far more likely London, as the Cassi, whose capital Verulamium
was, were among the traitorous tribes who joined Caesar against their
oppressor Cassivellaunus. Moreover, Caesar's brief description of the
spot perfectly applies to Roman London, for ages protected on the north
by a vast forest, full of deer and wild boars, and which, even as late
as the reign of Henry II., covered a great region, and has now shrunk
into the not very wild districts of St. John's Wood and Caen Wood. On
the north the town found a natural moat in the broad fens of Moorfields,
Finsbury, and Houndsditch, while on the south ran the Fleet and the Old
Bourne. Indeed, according to that credulous old enthusiast Stukeley,
Caesar, marching from Staines to London, encamped on the site of Old St.
Pancras Church, round which edifice Stukeley found evident traces of a
great Praetorian camp. However, whether Cassivellaunus, the King of
Middlesex and Hertfordshire, had his capital at London or St. Alban's,
this much at least is certain, that the legionaries carried their
eagles swiftly over his stockades of earth and fallen trees, drove off
the blue-stained warriors, and swept off the half-wild cattle stored up
by the Britons. Shortly after, Caesar returned to Gaul, having heard
while in Britain of the death of his favourite daughter Julia, the wife
of Pompey, his great rival. His camp at Richborough or Sandwich was far
distant, the dreaded equinoctial gales were at hand, and Gaul, he knew,
might at any moment of his absence start into a flame. His inglorious
campaign had lasted just four months and a half--his first had been far
shorter. As Caesar himself wrote to Cicero, our rude island was defended
by stupendous rocks, there was not a scrap of the gold that had been
reported, and the only prospect of booty was in slaves, from whom there
could be expected neither "skill in letters nor in music." In sober
truth, all Caesar had won from the people of Kent and Hertfordshire had
been blows and buffets, for there were _men_ in Britain even then. The
prowess of the British charioteers became a standing joke in Rome
against the soldiers of Caesar. Horace and Tibullus both speak of the
Briton as unconquered. The steel bow the strong Roman hand had for a
moment bent, quickly relapsed to its old shape the moment Caesar,
mounting his tall galley, turned his eyes towards Gaul.
[Illustration: PART OF OLD LONDON WALL, NEAR FALCON SQUARE (_see page
21_).]
The Mandubert who sought Caesar's help is by some thought to be the son
of the semi-fabulous King Lud (King _Brown_), the mythical founder of
London, and, according to Milton, who, as we have said, follows the old
historians, a descendant of Brute of Troy. The successor of the warlike
Cassivellaunus had his capital at St. Alban's; his son Cunobelin
(Shakespeare's Cymbeline)--a name which seems to glow with perpetual
sunshine as we write it--had a palace at Colchester; and the son of
Cunobelin was the famed Caradoc, or Caractacus, that hero of the
Silures, who struggled bravely for nine long years against the generals
of Rome.
Celtic etymologists differ, as etymologists usually do, about the
derivation of the name of London. Lon, or Long, meant, they say, either
a lake, a wood, a populous place, a plain, or a ship-town. This last
conjecture is, however, now the most generally received, as it at once
gives the modern pronunciation, to which Llyn-don would never have
assimilated. The first British town was indeed a simple Celtic hill
fortress, formed first on Tower Hill, and afterwards continued to
Cornhill and Ludgate. It was moated on the south by the river, which it
controlled; by fens on the north; and on the east by the marshy low
ground of Wapping. It was a high, dry, and fortified point of
communication between the river and the inland country of Essex and
Hertfordshire, a safe sixty miles from the sea, and central as a depot
and meeting-place for the tribes of Kent and Middlesex.
Hitherto the London about which we have been conjecturing has been a
mere cloud city. The first mention of real London is by Tacitus, who,
writing in the reign of Nero (A.D. 62, more than a century after the
landing of Caesar), in that style of his so full of vigour and so sharp
in outline, that it seems fit rather to be engraved on steel than
written on perishable paper, says that Londinium, though not, indeed,
dignified with the name of colony, was a place highly celebrated for the
number of its merchants and the confluence of traffic. In the year 62
London was probably still without walls, and its inhabitants were not
Roman citizens, like those of Verulamium (St. Alban's). When the
Britons, roused by the wrongs of the fierce Boadicea (Queen of the
Iceni, the people of Norfolk and Suffolk), bore down on London, her back
still "bleeding from the Roman rods," she slew in London and Verulamium
alone 70,000 citizens and allies of Rome; impaling many beautiful and
well-born women, amid revelling sacrifices, in the grove of Andate, the
British Goddess of Victory. It is supposed that after this reckless
slaughter the tigress and her savage followers burned the cluster of
wooden houses that then formed London to the ground. Certain it is, that
when deep sections were made for a sewer in Lombard Street in 1786, the
lowest stratum consisted of tesselated Roman pavements, their coloured
dice laying scattered like flower leaves, and above that of a thick
layer of wood ashes, as of the _debris_ of charred wooden buildings.
This ruin the Romans avenged by the slaughter of 80,000 Britons in a
butchering fight, generally believed to have taken place at King's Cross
(otherwise Battle Bridge), after which the fugitive Boadicea, in rage
and despair, took poison and perished.
London probably soon sprang, phoenix-like, from the fire, though history
leaves it in darkness to enjoy a lull of 200 years. In the early part of
the second century Ptolemy, the geographer, speaks of it as a city of
the Kentish people; but Mr. Craik very ingeniously conjectures that the
Greek writer took his information from Phoenician works descriptive of
Britain, written before even the invasion of Caesar. Theodosius, a
general of the Emperor Valentinian, who saved London from gathered
hordes of Scots, Picts, Franks, and Saxons, is supposed to have repaired
the walls of London, which had been first built by the Emperor
Constantine early in the fourth century. In the reign of Theodosius,
London, now called Augusta, became one of the chief, if not the chief,
of the seventy Roman cities in Britain. In the famous "Itinerary" of
Antoninus (about the end of the third century) London stands as the goal
or starting-point of seven out of the fifteen great central Roman roads
in England. Camden considers the London Stone, now enshrined in the
south wall of St. Swithin's Church, Cannon Street, to have been the
central milestone of Roman England, from which all the chief roads
radiated, and by which the distances were reckoned. Wren supposed that
Watling Street, of which Cannon Street is a part, was the High Street of
Roman London. Another street ran west along Holborn from Cheapside, and
from Cheapside probably north. A northern road ran by Aldgate, and
probably Bishopsgate. The road from Dover came either over a bridge near
the site of the present London Bridge, or higher up at Dowgate, from
Stoney Street on the Surrey side.
Early Roman London was scarcely larger than Hyde Park. Mr. Roach Smith,
the best of all authorities on the subject, gives its length from the
Tower to Ludgate, east and west, at about a mile; and north and south,
that is from London Wall to the Thames, at about half a mile. The
earliest Roman city was even smaller, for Roman sepulchres have been
found in Bow Lane, Moorgate Street, Bishopsgate Within, which must at
that time have been beyond the walls. The Roman cemeteries of
Smithfield, St. Paul's, Whitechapel, the Minories, and Spitalfields, are
of later dates, and are in all cases beyond the old line of
circumvallation, according to the sound Roman custom fixed by law. The
earlier London Mr. Roach Smith describes as an irregular space, the five
main gates corresponding with Bridgegate, Ludgate, Bishopsgate,
Aldersgate, and Aldgate. The north wall followed for some part the
course of Cornhill and Leadenhall Street; the eastern Billiter Street
and Mark Lane; the southern Thames Street; and the western the east side
of Walbrook. Of the larger Roman wall, there were within the memory of
man huge, shapeless masses, with trees growing upon them, opposite what
is now Finsbury Circus. In 1852 a piece of Roman wall on Tower Hill was
rescued from the improvers, and built into some stables and outhouses;
but not before a careful sketch had been effected by the late Mr.
Fairholt, one of the best of our antiquarian draughtsmen. The later
Roman London was in general outline the same in shape and size as the
London of the Saxons and Normans. The newer walls Pennant calculates at
3 miles 165 feet in circumference, they were 22 feet high, and guarded
with forty lofty towers. At the end of the last century large portions
of the old Roman wall were traceable in many places, but time has
devoured almost the last morsels of that great _piece de resistance_. In
1763 Mr. Gough made a drawing of a square Roman tower (one of three)
then standing in Houndsditch. It was built in alternate layers of
massive square stones and red tiles. The old loophole for the sentinel
had been enlarged into a square latticed window. In 1857, while digging
foundations for houses on the north-east side of Aldermanbury Postern,
the workmen came on a portion of the Roman wall strengthened by blind
arches. All that now substantially remains of the old fortification is a
bastion in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate; a fragment in St. Martin's
Court, off Ludgate Hill; another portion exists in the Old Bailey,
concealed behind houses; and a fourth, near George Street, Tower Hill.
Portions of the wall have, however, been also broached in Falcon Square
(one of which we have engraved), Bush Lane, Scott's Yard, and Cornhill,
and others built in cellars and warehouses from opposite the Tower and
Cripplegate.
The line of the Roman walls ran from the Tower straight to Aldgate;
there making an angle, it continued to Bishopsgate. From there it turned
eastward to St. Giles's Churchyard, where it veered south to Falcon
Square. At this point it continued west to Aldersgate, running under
Christ's Hospital, and onward to Giltspur Street. There forming an
angle, it proceeded directly to Ludgate towards the Thames, passing to
the south of St. Andrew's Church. The wall then crossed Addle Street,
and took a course along Upper and Lower Thames Street towards the Tower.
In Thames Street the wall has been found built on oaken piles; on these
was laid a stratum of chalk and stones, and over this a course of large,
hewn sandstones, cemented with quicklime, sand, and pounded tile. The
body of the wall was constructed of ragstone, flint, and lime, bonded at
intervals with courses of plain and curve-edged tiles.
That Roman London grew slowly there is abundant proof. In building the
new Exchange, the workmen came on a gravel-pit full of oyster-shells,
cattle bones, old sandals, and shattered pottery. No coin found there
being later than Severus indicates that this ground was bare waste
outside the original city until at least the latter part of the third
century. How far Roman London eventually spread its advancing waves of
houses may be seen from the fact that Roman wall-paintings, indicating
villas of men of wealth and position, have been found on both sides of
High Street, Southwark, almost up to St. George's Church; while one of
the outlying Roman cemeteries bordered the Kent Road.
From the horns of cattle having been dug up in St. Paul's Churchyard,
the monks, ever eager to discover traces of that Paganism with which
they amalgamated Christianity, conjectured that a temple of Diana once
stood on the site of St. Paul's. A stone altar, with a rude figure of
the amazon goddess sculptured upon it, was indeed discovered in making
the foundations for Goldsmiths' Hall, Cheapside; but this was a mere
votive or private altar, and proves nothing; and the ox bones, if any,
found at St. Paul's, were merely refuse thrown into a rubbish-heap
outside the old walls. As to the Temple of Apollo, supposed to have been
replaced by Westminster Abbey, that is merely an invention of rival
monks to glorify Thorney Island, and to render its antiquity equal to
the fabulous claims of St. Paul's. Nor is there any positive proof that
shrines to British gods ever stood on either place, though that they may
have done so is not at all improbable.
The existing relics of Roman London are far more valuable and more
numerous than is generally supposed. Innumerable tesselated pavements,
masterpieces of artistic industry and taste, have been found in the
City. A few of these should be noted. In 1854 part of the pavement of a
room, twenty-eight feet square, was discovered, when the Excise Office
was pulled down, between Bishopsgate Street and Broad Street. The
central subject was supposed to be the Rape of Europa. A few years
before another pavement was met with near the same spot. In 1841 two
pavements were dug up under the French Protestant Church in Threadneedle
Street. The best of these we have engraved. In 1792 a circular pavement
was found in the same locality; and there has also been dug up in the
same street a curious female head, the size of life, formed of coloured
stones and glass. In 1805 a beautiful Roman pavement was disinterred on
the south-west angle of the Bank of England, near the gate opening into
Lothbury, and is now in the British Museum. In 1803 a fine specimen of
pavement was found in front of the East-India House, Leadenhall Street,
the central design being Bacchus reclining on a panther. In this
pavement twenty distinct tints had been successfully used. Other
pavements have been cut through in Crosby Square, Bartholemew Lane,
Fenchurch Street, and College Street. The soil, according to Mr. Roach
Smith, seems to have risen over them at the rate of nearly a foot a
century.
The statuary found in London should also not be forgotten. One of the
most remarkable pieces was a colossal bronze head of the Emperor
Hadrian, dredged up from the Thames a little below London Bridge. It is
now in the British Museum. A colossal bronze hand, thirteen inches long,
was also found in Thames Street, near the Tower. In 1857, near London
Bridge, the dredgers found a beautiful bronze Apollino, a Mercury of
exquisite design, a priest of Cybele, and a figure supposed to be
Jupiter. The Apollino and Mercury are masterpieces of ideal beauty and
grace. In 1842 a _chef d'oeuvre_ was dug out near the old Roman wall in
Queen Street, Cheapside. It was the bronze stooping figure of an archer.
It has silver eyes; and the perfect expression and anatomy display the
highest art.
In 1825 a graceful little silver figure of the child Harpocrates, the
God of Silence, looped with a gold chain, was found in the Thames, and
is now in the British Museum. In 1839 a pair of gold armlets were dug up
in Queen Street, Cheapside. In a kiln in St. Paul's Churchyard, in 1677,
there were found lamps, bottles, urns, and dishes. Among other relics of
Roman London drifted down by time we may instance articles of red glazed
pottery, tiles, glass cups, window glass, bath scrapers, gold hairpins,
enamelled clasps, sandals, writing tablets, bronze spoons, forks,
distaffs, bells, dice, and millstones. As for coins, which the Romans
seem to have hid in every conceivable nook, Mr. Roach Smith says that
within twenty years upwards of 2,000 were, to his own knowledge, found
in London, chiefly in the bed of the Thames. Only one Greek coin, as far
as we know, has ever been met with in London excavations.
The Romans left deep footprints wherever they trod. Many of our London
streets still follow the lines they first laid down. The river bank
still heaves beneath the ruins of their palaces. London Stone, as we
have already shown, still stands to mark the starting-point of the great
roads that they designed. In a lane out of the Strand there still exists
a bath where their sinewy youth laved their limbs, dusty from the
chariot races at the Campus Martius at Finsbury. The pavements trodden
by the feet of Hadrian and Constantine still lie buried under the
restless wheels that roll over our City streets. The ramparts the
legionaries guarded have not yet quite crumbled to dust, though the rude
people they conquered have themselves long since grown into conquerors.
Roman London now exists only in fragments, invisible save to the prying
antiquary. As the seed is to be found hanging to the root of the ripe
wheat, so some filaments of the first germ of London, of the British hut
and the Roman villa, still exist hidden under the foundations of the
busy city that now teems with thousands of inhabitants. We tread under
foot daily the pride of our old oppressors.