Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: NO. 1. AN OLD RIVER-WALL OR EMBANKMENT (CHELSEA) _See
page_ 9]
STORIES OF
LONDON
BY
E. L. HOSKYN, B.A. (LOND.)
AUTHOR OF "PICTURES OF BRITISH HISTORY," ETC.
WITH A PREFACE BY
SOPHIE BRYANT, D.Sc., LITT.D.
[Illustration: Title page logo]
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1914
{3}
PREFACE
There are many kinds of ignorance which, for lack of time and
opportunity, we may rightly tolerate in ourselves. Ignorance of the
stories that cling around and beautify the home-place is not one of
these. A place, indeed, is not a home unless human life has woven a
thread of story through and through it. Happy are those who dwell as
children in a place well clad with racy memories and legendary lore.
The city-home of the London child is just such a place. Here we have a
city with an old old history losing itself in the mists of time, and
preserving itself in the memorials of its ancient sites and the tales
that grow like ivy round its odd place-names. Of all this the careless
city-dweller takes no note, but the London child should be a different
kind of being. London stories are racy of London; they reflect its
life in every age; and the London child is heir to them all.
The stories of London in this little book are interesting to everybody,
whether young or old; they cannot fail to be so, because London is
interesting, more or less, to everybody in the world. But the book is
written more particularly for the children of London, so that they may
not be careless city-dwellers, as so many are, but may grow up into
real citizens of this great London, loving their old city in all its
nooks and corners for its own dear sake, feeling it in all the twists
and turns of its varied history, as if their life and its life were
bound up in one.
But this is not all that the study of London's stories may {4} do for
the London child. The natural beginning of interest in
history--including the literature that collects around it--arises out
of interest in the story of the place in which we live. We walk about
the place and picture the events of which we read as happening within
it. The place is transfigured, is filled with life; and the story is
transfigured too as seen against the background to which it really
belongs. In the case of London, moreover, there is a good deal of
useful work for the imagination to do in sufficiently restoring that
background to its primitive simplicity. So the London child who knows
the London stories thoroughly--so thoroughly as to be able to see them
in their real setting, as they happened in that city by the river on
the marshes in the olden time--has learnt to know how every other
story, including the history proper of any other town or country,
should be known. Thus, the study of the home story is for each of us
the true beginning of our education in that exercise of historical
imagination on which our appreciation of history largely depends.
It is hoped that these _Stories of London_ will be specially
interesting to the London child, but not to him alone. The story of
London is central in the story of England, and appeals to the interest
of every English-speaking child.
SOPHIE BRYANT.
{5}
CONTENTS
I. SOME VERY OLD STORIES
II. WESTMINSTER ABBEY
III. THE CHARTER HOUSE
IV. TWO FAMOUS CHARITIES
V. THE STORY AND THE HISTORY OF DICK WHITTINGTON
VI. WHEN ELIZABETH WAS QUEEN
VII. THE STORY OF ST. PAUL'S
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. AN OLD RIVER-WALL OR EMBANKMENT (CHELSEA) . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
2. PART OF THE OLD BUILDINGS OF THE CHARTER HOUSE SCHOOL,
ITS CHAPEL AND PLAYGROUND
3. WESTMINSTER ABBEY, THE TOMB OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
4. THE FIRST CORONATION IN THE ABBEY
5. A ROOM IN THE TOWER WHERE STATE PRISONERS WERE LODGED
6. SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER WATCH THE CARTHUSIAN
PRIORS GOING AWAY TO DIE
7. OLD PENSIONERS AND SCHOOLBOYS IN THE CHARTER HOUSE CHAPEL
8. ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH BEFORE IT WAS RESTORED
9. AN EXCITING GAME; OLD CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, LONDON
10. ENTRANCES OF THE OLD CHRIST'S HOSPITAL AND OF CHRIST'S
CHURCH, LONDON
11. AN ARCH OF LONDON BRIDGE, TOWER BRIDGE IN THE DISTANCE
12. WHITTINGTON SETTING THE KING FREE FROM HIS GREAT DEBT
13. GREENWICH AS IT IS NOW
14. PLACENTIA, THE OLD PALACE AT GREENWICH
15. THE FIRE OF LONDON
16. ST. PAUL'S FROM THE RIVER
_Sketch map of Norman London_
_Old St Paul's_
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[Illustration: NO. 2. PART OF THE BUILDINGS OF THE OLD CHARTER HOUSE
SCHOOL, ITS CHAPEL AND PLAYGROUND. (See p. 28)]
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STORIES OF LONDON
I.
SOME VERY OLD STORIES
The first story of London should tell who built it, and when, and why.
But London is old, very old; it began before its builders had even
thought of making books, and so its earliest history is written in the
ground on which it stands, in its hills and valleys, its rivers and
river-beds; and this is a kind of history which, if only we know how to
read it, always tells the truth. Perhaps you are saying to yourself,
"There is only one river in London, and that is the Thames; and there
are no hills,--London is flat; and as for the ground, who has seen the
real ground on which London stands? Is it not all built over, or paved
with wood or stones or cement? How, then, can we learn anything from
it?" Sometimes old worn-out buildings have to be pulled down to their
very foundations so that new houses may be put in their places, or a
tube-railway or a tunnel has to be made, or gas-pipes or electric wires
have to be laid under the roads;--have you not seen navvies digging
deep into the earth to do all these things? Then the secret things
hidden in the ground are brought to light, and they teach us something
of the very old history of the land.
{8}
Perhaps you know that the Hampstead and Highgate Hills lie four or five
miles north of the Thames; and at about the same distance south of it
are other hills, on one of which the Crystal Palace stands. Though we
call the land between these hills the Thames Valley, it is not flat;
and long ago, before London was built in it, it was much more uneven
than it is now; for the more level roads are the easier it is for heavy
carriages and carts to be pulled along them, so hollows have been
filled up and hillocks cut down to make the ground as flat as possible.
Even now, as you ride on the top of an omnibus through the long
straight road called Oxford Street, if you watch carefully you may
notice the rise and fall of the land,--a little hill, then a little
valley, and so on. Once through each of these valleys a stream ran
down to the Thames. Where are they now? Some of them are
underground--arched over, built over, buried in the dark, out of sight.
Look at the map on p. 11; there you will find one of these rivers,
which ran from the Highgate Woods southward to the Thames. It was
called the Fleet, and has given its name to Fleet Street.
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[Illustration: NO. 3. IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY: THE TOMB OF EDWARD THE
CONFESSOR WITH ITS VELVET COVERING _See pages_ 17 _and_ 22]
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There were also some low hills quite close to the north bank of the
river. Let us fancy that we have gone back through the ages, many
hundreds of years before ever the Romans came to this country, and that
we are standing--you and I--facing the river on one of those hills,
that on which St. Paul's now stands. What do we see? To our right,
under its steep clay bank, so high it is almost a cliff, the Fleet runs
on its way to the Thames; to our left is the hill; behind us, {9} all
the way up to the hills of Hampstead, are tangled forests, and in the
low ground are wide marshes; and in front is the river. It is
low-water; on either side of the stream are great stretches of mud and
sand, wet marshy places, such as you may have seen at some place by the
sea where the shore is very flat and the tide goes out very far.
Beyond the marsh, on the southern shore, I think there is a wide
shallow lake, for to this day some of the land there is below the level
of the river at high-water. As we watch, look! a little rippling wave
runs over the flats between the sand-banks; the tide has turned,--how
fast it rises, how far it spreads! Before long the wide waste before
us is covered with grey waters; it has become a great lake or sea.
Nowadays embankments, such as you see in picture 1, keep the river in
its place; but in the long-ago times of which we are thinking every
high tide must have spread far and wide over what is now dry land.
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[Illustration: NO. 4. THE FIRST CORONATION IN THE ABBEY _See page_ 21]
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Could any people have wished to live in such a watery place? Yes,
indeed they did; and under the bed of the Fleet River, near its mouth,
traces have been found of their homes. That ancient people must have
had many enemies,--other men who fought them, fierce wild animals,
wolves and other creatures which have not lived in England for hundreds
and hundreds of years; and to defend themselves that people had such
poor weapons, perhaps made only of bronze; so they sought for a very
safe dwelling-place. Down into the muddy bed of the river they drove
great wooden posts, such posts as men drive down now into river or sea
when they are building a pier. The worn {10} tops of those old timbers
have been found showing up through the soil where once the Fleet ran;
and on them once rested a platform of wood on which houses were built.
Is not this a piece of history written in the soil? The first men who
tried to read it understood more easily the meaning of those worn old
posts because to this day the brown people, who live in one of the
great islands to the south-east of Asia, build their houses on just
such platforms out over the water.
How long did the men of that far-off time live in these strange
river-dwellings? That we do not know; it may have been for very many
years. At last (so some learned men believe) they built for themselves
a fort or stronghold on the high land near-by, perhaps where St. Paul's
now stands, but more likely lower down the river, on the next hill;
this stronghold may have been the beginning of London. If, as some
people think, London means "The Fort of the Waters," or "The Lake
Fort," was it not well named?
Up the river to this fort ships may sometimes have come, bringing
merchants to buy pearls and skins of wild animals and slaves; and to
pay for them with such things as the fierce Londoners of those days
would like--a sharp axe or a gay necklace.
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[Illustration: LONDON IN THE TIME OF THE NORMANS.]
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The written history of London does not begin until the Romans had
conquered and were ruling the land, more than a hundred years after
their great general, Julius Caesar, had first come here. They found
London only a little group of huts, very likely made of wickerwork
plastered over with mud, and surrounded by a poor wall and ditch. How
much they did for it! They {12} built round it the great walls which
you see marked in our little map; so strong were they that parts of
their foundations and of the walls themselves have been found even of
late years. And many other traces of the Romans have been found in
London--coins, and weapons, and carvings. Near the Strand is a bath
which once, perhaps, belonged to some Roman gentleman's fine house.
There were many such houses in and about London; and many a time the
beautiful pavements of these houses, and even the pavements of the old
Roman streets, have been found in the City down below the present
streets and houses. The Romans made great roads which stretched out
north, south, east, and west, from London; and they built a bridge over
the Thames. In those days the people across the English Channel, the
Gauls and Italians, were far wiser than the wild people of Britain; and
roads and bridges made it possible for their trade, skill and wisdom to
come to the people of London. A flourishing city it became under the
Roman rule.
The years passed on and evil days befell the Roman Empire; the wild
fierce northern races attacked it, and the Roman soldiers had to leave
Britain and go back to defend Italy. Then there came to this country
also sad days of war and trouble, for the English came over the North
Sea, fought and conquered the Britons, and at last settled here. Then
came the Danes, and there was more war, more fighting. During these
dreadful times we hear little of London.
At last Alfred became King. Do you remember how many good things he
did for England? One of the best of them was that in the year 886, as
the {13} ancient Chronicle or history of our country tells us, he built
London Town,--that is, he built again her walls and towers, and made
her once more a strong city. Thus, with Alfred as her founder and
protector, her later history begins. Year by year she grew greater and
more important, until she became the greatest of all English cities and
the capital of the land.
There is another and a very different story of Old London, and this is
how it begins:--"Brute, about the yeare of the world 2855 and 1108
before the nativitie of Christ" (that is, before Christ was born,)
"builded this city neare unto the riuer (river) now called Thames, and
named it Troynouant"--that is, 'New Troy.' Now, this Brute belonged to
the very same family as Romulus who built Rome; and he and his
followers came across the sea to this island, in which then only a few
giants were living, and he conquered them and took the land, and named
it Britain after his own name, and his companions he called Britons.
There were more giants in Cornwall than in any other part of the land.
One of them was called Goemagot; he was so strong that he could pull up
an oak-tree as if it were only a hazel-wand. Now there was a great
fight between the Britons and the Cornish giants, and all the giants
were killed but Goemagot. Then he and a famous Briton fought together,
and all men stood by to watch. At first it seemed that the giant would
win for he wounded the Briton sorely; but, wounded as he was, the
Briton heaved Goemagot up on his shoulders, ran with him to the shore,
and flung him headlong into the sea; and (so says the story) the rock
from which he fell is called "The Giant's Leap" unto {14} this day.
All this happened near the place where Plymouth now stands. What has
it to do with London? In the Guildhall, which is the Council Hall of
London, are many statues of great and famous men, and here are also two
great wooden giants called Gog and Magog; they are the City's giants.
Once they used to be carried in the Lord Mayor's Show and in
processions to make the people wonder. The older giant is said to be
Goemagot; the other, the Briton who hurled him headlong into the sea.
Long after Brute died, Belinus became King. Of all his wonderful
history I can tell you only this,--he placed a great building in
Trinovantum (that is, London,) upon the banks of the Thames, and the
citizens called it, after his name, Billingsgate. Over it he built a
huge tower, and under it a fair haven or quay for ships. "At last,
when he had finished his days, his body was burned, and the ashes put
up in a golden urn, which they placed with wonderful art on the top of
the tower" which he himself had built. Have you ever heard of
Billingsgate? It is the chief fish-market of London, and its wharf is
the oldest on the Thames, so old that no one knows when fish were first
landed and sold there.
Many years after Belinus built his great tower, Lud became King. He
"not only repaired this Cittie" (that is, Trinovantum,) "but also
increased the same with faire buildings, Towers and walles; and after
his own name called it Caire Lud, as Lud's towne." And about sixty-six
years before Christ was born he built a strong gate in the west part of
the city, and he named it, in his own honour, Ludgate; and when he {15}
died his body was buried by this gate. Turn back to the little map of
London on p. 11; there you will find Ludgate marked. St. Paul's
Cathedral stands just to the east of it, on Ludgate Hill.
These stories were first written down by a Welsh priest called Geoffrey
of Monmouth, who lived in the days of King Stephen; and long ago
everyone believed they were true. Then came a time when people said
what, perhaps, you are thinking, "These stories are only fairy-tales.
Who made them up?" Well, Geoffrey of Monmouth said, in his book
written nearly 800 years ago, that he had read them in a still older
book which came out of Brittany. Who else had read this old book? No
one, so Geoffrey said; so people left off believing them; they were put
aside and forgotten. Now wise men think that they are really the old
stories of our nation which have been passed down from father to son,
and that perhaps the heroes of which they tell are the gods the people
once worshipped, that Lud was a God of the Waters. If so, was it not
very natural that he was worshipped in Old London on the shores of the
Thames and the Fleet Rivers?
There is another hero, Bran the Blessed, of whom I must tell you. He
too was King of the Isle of the Mighty, as Britain was called. He was
so big no ship could contain him for he was like a mountain, and his
eyes were like two lakes. In the end of his days he fought with the
Irish in their own land until only he and seven of his followers were
left alive, and he was wounded unto death. And he said to his
followers, "Very soon I shall die; then cut off my head, and {16} take
it with you to London, and there bury it in the White Mountain looking
towards France, and no foreigners shall invade the land while it is
there." Much more he told them of the manner of their coming to
London, and all that he said came true, so that many years passed away
before in the White Mount, where the Tower now stands, they buried the
head. There it lay until Arthur dug it up, for he said, "The strong
arm should defend the land." He meant that the men of a nation should
be its defence.
Arthur himself was proclaimed King in London. Perhaps you remember the
old story of the child who was brought up so secretly that, when the
King, his father, died, no one knew who was now the rightful King or,
indeed, if there was one. Then, as Merlin the Magician had advised,
the Archbishop of Canterbury called on all the great lords of the
kingdom to come together in London; and there, one day, outside the
greatest church in the City (was it St. Paul's, I wonder?) they saw a
great stone with a sword sticking in it; and round about the stone,
written in letters of gold, were these words:--"Whoso pulleth out this
sword of this stone is right wise born King of England." The great
lords tried to pull it out, and not one of them could do so; but young
Arthur, who had come to town with his foster-father and foster-brother,
pulled it out easily, not because he wanted to show that he was the
King,--he does not seem to have known about this,--but because his
foster-brother had sent him to fetch a sword and he could get no other.
Thus, all men knew that he was "right wise born King of England."
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[Illustration: NO. 5. A ROOM IN THE TOWER WHERE STATE PRISONERS WERE
LODGED.]
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[Illustration: NO. 6. SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER WATCH THE
CARTHUSIAN PRIORS GOING AWAY TO DIE. _See page_ 26]
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{17}
II.
THE STORY OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY
Turn to the picture facing p. 8. If you have ever been in London, I
think you will know that this is a picture of part of Westminster
Abbey. Even if you have never seen the Abbey, perhaps you know that it
is a very old and beautiful church near the River Thames in London.
Imagine that you are standing near it now, and that you can see its old
grey walls, and the grass and railings which separate it from the busy
street with its motors and omnibuses, its carriages and carts. Now,
with the roar of the streets in our ears, with the tall London
buildings all around us, and busy people constantly hurrying past us,
let us try to fancy what this spot was like in the very early times
when we first hear of it.
Then the Thames was clear and fresh and full of fish, and many a red
deer and other wild animal wandered along its banks and drank of its
waters. About a mile and a half above London, where the river was wide
and shallow, one of those little brooks of which I have told you ran
into it; and here, where the waters of the brook and of the river met,
was a bank of sandy gravel, which at high tide was an island, so it was
called Thorney or Thorn Ey--the Island of Thorns--for it was all
overgrown with thorn-bushes. Very lonely, very quiet, Thorney must
have been.
{18}
Who first lived there, what kind of a dwelling-place they had, we do
not really know. In later days the monks, whose home it then was, said
that once the temple of a Roman god had stood there, and that when the
Britons became Christians a good King built in its place a Christian
church called the Abbey of St. Peter. Do you remember that, after the
Romans left Britain, the English, who were still heathen, came over the
North Sea and conquered the Britons and settled on their lands? The
monks said that in those days of war and trouble the little Abbey of
St. Peter was destroyed. Early in the seventh century, when the
English also had learnt the Christian Faith, Sebert, King of the East
Saxons, rebuilt the little abbey, and when he died he was buried there.
So said the monks, and to this very day there is a grave in Westminster
Abbey which is said to be Sebert's.
There is a strange story told about this ancient church. It was just
finished, and the first Bishop of London, Mellitus, was to come on a
certain Monday to consecrate it--that is, to set it apart for the
service of God. The evening before a man called Edric was fishing in
the river. Suddenly, on the southern bank, he saw a bright light; he
pulled his little boat towards it, and saw standing by the water a
strange-looking stately man, who pointed towards Thorney and said,
"Ferry me, I pray thee, across to yonder place"; and Edric did so. As
the stranger landed and went to the new church the air was filled with
heavenly light, the church was "without darkness or shadow," and
through the light angels came flying from the skies, and with their
help the stranger held the solemn service of {19} consecration. All
this Edric heard and saw. Do you wonder that he forgot all about his
fishing?
When the service was ended and, I suppose, the heavenly light had faded
away and darkness again covered the place, the stranger came to Edric
and asked for food. "Alas!" he answered, "I have none. I have not
caught a single fish."
Then said the stranger, "I am Peter, Keeper of the Keys of Heaven.
When the Bishop comes to-morrow, tell him that I, St. Peter, have
consecrated my own church of St. Peter. Go thou out into the river;
thou wilt catch many a fish, whereof the most part will be salmon.
This I grant thee if thou wilt promise two things;--first, that never
again wilt thou fish on Sunday; and, secondly, that thou wilt give
one-tenth of thy fish to the Abbey of St. Peter."
Next day King Sebert and the Bishop of London came to Thorney. There,
by the new church, with a salmon in his hand, Edric, the fisherman, was
waiting to tell his story. Did they believe it? How could they help
believing? for he showed them the marks of twelve crosses on the
church, and the traces of the sacred oil and of the candles which the
angels had held! There was nothing left for the Bishop to do but to
declare that the church had been well and truly consecrated.
These are the wonderful stories the monks used to tell of their abbey.
I suppose they loved it so much that they wanted people to think it as
old and as wonderful as it could possibly be.
But now we have come to real history which we know to be true. In 1042
Edward, called the {20} Confessor, became King of England. Englishmen
long remembered him and what he looked like; his hair and beard were
milky white, and his cheeks were red; he loved hunting and long
services in church; and his people believed that the touch of his hand
would heal the sick, and that God spoke to him in dreams and visions.
His father had been driven out of England by the Danes, and Edward had
grown up in Normandy; so it came about that he loved the Normans, who
were more courteous than the rude rough English. Yet I think he loved
England too, for we are told that he made a vow to St. Peter that if
ever he returned there in safety he would make a pilgrimage to the
saint's grave in Rome.
He did not keep this vow; his people would not let him, for they said,
"The journey to Rome is long and dangerous, and our King is very
precious to us. We cannot let him go." But a man, even if he is a
King, may not break a solemn vow, so Edward asked the Pope what he must
do, and the Pope answered, "Stay at home and rule thy people; yet, as
thou hast vowed to make a pilgrimage to Rome, do some other costly
thing instead. Build a new church, or rebuild an old one in honour of
St. Peter." And King Edward determined to rebuild the little church at
Thorney, or Westminster as we must now call it; for the thorns had long
since been cleared away, the sandy bank was no longer an island even at
high-water, and pleasant meadows lay on either side of the river.
For fifteen years the work went on; Edward was so interested in it, so
loved it, that he watched over and {21} cared for every part of it.
Now at last, at Christmas-time of the year 1065, the east end was
finished. How eagerly the King looked forward to its consecration! It
was indeed consecrated three days after Christmas, on the Feast of the
Holy Innocents, but the King was not there; he was very ill, and within
a few days he died. The first great service held in the new Abbey was
his funeral; he was buried before the high Altar. After this there was
no peace or happiness in England for many a day. Edward left no son,
so the greatest of the English Earls, Earl Harold, was made King. But
William, Duke of Normandy, declared that Edward had promised him the
crown; and he came across the sea, and fought and killed Harold on the
Sussex Hills at the Battle of Hastings. Thus the Norman Duke became
William I., King of England, and he was crowned in Westminster Abbey on
Christmas Day, 1066. Inside the church with him were the Norman
nobles; outside crowded the poor English.
When he was proclaimed King at the Altar, the English shouted, as was
their custom, "God save the King!" The Normans within the Abbey heard
and wondered. What could the shouts mean? Were the English rising
against them? Full of fear and anger they rushed out to find
everything in confusion, the houses ablaze, and their men, who had been
left outside on guard, killing the poor English. In the Abbey William
and the Bishops and monks were left almost alone; and thus, in the
gloom and darkness of the winter's day, with the sound of tumult and
fighting ringing in their ears, the Conqueror was {22} crowned. This
was the first coronation in the Abbey; facing p. 9 is a picture of it.
Two hundred years later King Henry III. pulled down Edward the
Confessor's Abbey, and built in its place the Abbey we still have. In
it the Confessor's tomb is behind the altar; for Henry had his body
reverently moved from its first grave to a chapel which he had
especially prepared for it. When you go to the Abbey you will see that
this chapel is higher than any of the others; some people say the
reason is that, to do more honour to the Confessor, King Henry sent
ships to bring earth from the Holy Land, and this sacred earth was
piled up into a mound behind the high Altar, and on it the Confessor's
chapel was built. This is the part of the Abbey shown in picture 3;
turn back and look at it again. Do you see that the old tomb is
covered with purple velvet? Are not the pillars and arches about it
beautiful?
I have told you only the beginning of the Abbey's history. Not only
are all our Kings crowned there but many of them lie buried there too;
so also do some of the best and wisest men who have served our country,
some of our bravest sailors, and of our greatest poets. Thus it comes
about that the history of the Abbey is as long as the history of our
country--indeed, it _is_ the history of our country.
{23}
III.
THE STORY OF THE CHARTER HOUSE
In 1347 Edward III. was besieging Calais; he was at war with France,
and but the year before had won the great victory of Crecy. The siege
lasted a whole year, and then at last the men of Calais could hold out
no longer, for the French King could not help them and they had no food
left. When King Edward heard this he sent to them one of his knights,
Sir Walter Manny, with this message, "Give yourselves up to me that I
may do with you what I will." This was a hard thing to ask, so hard
that Edward's lords pleaded with him to show mercy; and the King gave
way and said he would be content if six citizens came to him, barefoot,
in their shirts, with ropes about their necks, and bearing the city's
keys. "On them," he said, "I will do my will." So the Captain of
Calais gave up six of the citizens to Sir Walter Manny, and he brought
them to the King and begged him to spare their lives--begged, but
begged in vain. Then Queen Philippa, Edward's wife, weeping bitterly,
fell on her knees, and prayed the King for love of our Lord to have
mercy; and the King's heart was moved to pity, and he answered her,
"Though I do it against my will--take them! I give them to you." Can
you not fancy how well she treated them, and how happy she was when she
sent them home to Calais?
In those days, outside the walls of London towards {24} the north-west
was a pleasant land of fields and trees, of streams and clear sweet
springs, a lonely land with few houses except three great monasteries.
Here Sir Walter Manny and the Bishop of London of that time founded
another monastery for twenty-four monks and a Prior or chief monk. It
was called the London Charter House, for it was one of several Charter
Houses which all belonged to the same kind of monks, who all obeyed the
same rules and wore the same dress, and so they are said to belong to
the same Order. This new Charter House stood on land which had been
given (some by Sir Walter Manny, some by a former Bishop of London,) to
be used as a burial-ground for people who had died in the great
sickness, called the Black Death, in the year 1349.
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[Illustration: NO. 7. OLD PENSIONERS AND SCHOOLBOYS IN THE CHARTER
HOUSE. _See page_ 28]
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Let us fancy what the life of the monks of the Charter House was like.
Their day began at an hour when you are sound asleep in bed; at eleven
o'clock the convent bell rang, and at midnight the monks met in chapel
for Matins, their first service, which often lasted two hours, or even
longer, so slowly, so solemnly, did they chant the psalms and prayers.
When it was over the monks went back to their beds until five o'clock,
when they rose and went about the business of the day. What did they
find to do? They were busy all day long, for they had to take part in
the many services of the chapel; and each monk had his own little house
and garden, called his "cell," where he passed most of his time alone.
Here he read and prayed; here he worked,--perhaps at carpentering or
some such trade, perhaps he copied or wrote books; here he ate his
solitary meal, the only meal {25} of the day, which might be of eggs,
fish, fruit and vegetables, but never of meat; sometimes it was of
bread and water only. By seven o'clock his day was ended and he was
asleep in bed. One of the strictest rules of this Order of monks is
that they shall be silent except in Chapel. They only meet together
twice a week; once when they all dine together, and again on Sundays,
when they all go for a long walk in company.
This has been the life of every Carthusian monk (so the Charter House
monks are called,) ever since the Order was founded in the eleventh
century; and this was the life of the London Charter House from the
days of Edward III. until the reign of Henry VIII. Do you remember
that he and his Parliament broke the links which bound together the
Churches of Rome and England? In 1534 a law was made which said that
the King, not the Pope, should henceforth be the Head of the English
Church, and that anyone who would not agree to this was a traitor.
Some people in England were very glad of this, for there were things in
the Church which seemed to them altogether wrong; "Now," they thought,
"these wrong things can be set right." But other people were very
sorry; they believed the Pope was indeed Head of the whole Church, that
God had made him so, and what God had willed man cannot alter. Amongst
those who thought so were the monks of the Charter House.
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[Illustration: NO. 8. ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S CHURCH BEFORE IT WAS RESTORED.
_See page_ 30]
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It is hard to wait day by day for some dreadful thing which we know is
surely coming to us, so these were sad days for the monks. Were they
frightened, I wonder, when they heard what was going on in the {26}
world outside their walls, and knew that soon, very soon, they must
tell the fierce King that for them the Pope was and must always be Head
of the Church? What would happen to them? Did their prayers and
solemn services strengthen and comfort them then? Yes, indeed they
did. And their Prior, John Houghton, was a brave true man, as men have
need to be in such times; and not only by his words, but by his deeds,
he taught his monks to choose rather to die than to give up what they
believed to be true; for in the spring of the next year he and two
other Carthusian Priors told Thomas Cromwell, the King's great
Minister, that they could not change their Faith. They were sent to
the Tower, tried as traitors in Westminster Hall, and found guilty.
Turn to picture 6; here you see Sir Thomas More, in this month of May
himself a prisoner in the Tower for the same reason, watching the three
Priors and another monk going away to die. As he watched, More said to
his daughter, "Lo, dost thou see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be
now as cheerful going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their
marriages?"
At Tyburn Tree, where the Marble Arch now stands, John Houghton laid
down his life for his Faith.
Two sad years followed; then all but ten of the monks yielded to the
King and promised to "forsake the Bishop of Rome." These ten were sent
to Newgate Prison. There they would very soon have died, for in those
days life in a prison was a dreadful thing, but they were helped by a
brave woman, called Margaret Clement, whom Sir Thomas More had brought
up with his own daughter Margaret. "Moved {27} with a great compassion
of those holy Fathers, she dealt with the gaoler ... and withal did win
him with money that he was content to let her come into the prison to
them, which she did, attiring and disguising herself as a milkmaid,
with a great pail upon her head full of meat, wherewith she fed that
blessed company, putting meat into their mouths, they being tied and
not able to stir, nor to help themselves."
Soon orders came that the monks were to be kept very strictly, and the
gaoler could not allow Margaret Clement to visit them; then, one after
another, all but one died.
In 1538 the rest of the monks were turned out of the Charter House.
Sorrowfully they passed out under its great archway, and went their
different ways to places of safety.
And was the Charter House left empty to fall into ruins? No; it became
the property of first one great lord and then of another. They altered
it to meet their needs; the monks' cells disappeared; it became a grand
mansion. Queen Elizabeth and James I. both stayed there.
At last it was sold to Thomas Sutton, a merchant who had made a large
fortune by mining for coal near Newcastle and selling it in London. He
must have been a good old man, for we are told he used often to go into
his quiet garden to pray, "Lord, Thou hast given me a large and liberal
estate; give me also a heart to make use thereof."
He had no children, and when he died, in 1611, he left his great wealth
to found a free school, and a "hospital" where eighty old
men--"soldiers who had {28} borne arms by land or sea, merchants who
had been ruined by shipwreck or piracy, and servants of the King or
Queen,"--could spend their last days in peace. They are called the
Charter House Pensioners. Turn back to picture 7; these two old men
are Pensioners. At first there were to be but forty boys in the
school, but the numbers grew larger and larger; and many a great man
has been educated in the famous Charter House School.
As the years passed on and London spread beyond its walls, the pleasant
fields about the Charter House were covered with streets and houses.
At last, about fifty years ago, the Governors of the school thought it
would be wise to move it to a more open place; so they built a new
school at Godalming in Surrey, and the boys moved into it in 1872.
Into the old buildings they had left came a great day-school, the
Merchant Taylors', so there are still about 500 boys as well as the old
pensioners in the London Charter House.
What a strange history the Charter House has! What changes it has
seen! The convent with its silent monks, the great house with its
state and royal visitors, the noisy school, the peaceful home of the
old pensioners,--the Charter House bears traces of them all. For here
are still the courts and cloisters and the chapel of the monks, and the
stateroom of the great noble; the boys' playground (picture 2 shows us
a little bit of it,) is the square round which once stood the monks'
quiet cells; in the chapel we may see the tomb of the Founder, Sir
Thomas Sutton; indeed, both the Founders, Sir Thomas Sutton and Sir
Walter Manny, lie buried there.
{29}
IV.
TWO FAMOUS CHARITIES
Turn to picture 8; this is the ancient church of St. Bartholomew the
Great. In it, on the north side of the altar, is an old old tomb on
which lies a stone figure in a quaint dress; it is the tomb of Rahere,
said to be the founder of the church and of the great Hospital of St.
Bartholomew near-by.
This is the story of Rahere:--He was born in France in the reign of
William the Conqueror. Early in the twelfth century he was in England,
and he was often at the Courts of the Red King and of Henry I. We are
told that he was "a pleasant-witted gentleman, and therefore in his
time called the Kinge's Minstrell"; indeed, the old chronicler seems to
think he led an idle foolish life. If this is true, he certainly
repented before long, for he became a pilgrim and made the long and
difficult journey to Rome to visit there the places where the Apostles
St. Peter and St. Paul were martyred. In Rome he fell ill, and when he
was getting better he vowed he would make a hospital "yn re-creacion
(that is, re-creation or healing) of poure men."
And now wonderful things happened. In a dream or vision Rahere saw the
Apostle Bartholomew, who said to him such words as these:--"Build not
only a {30} hospital but also a church, and build them in Smithfield by
the City of London." So Rahere went home, called together the citizens
of London, and told them what he meant to do. And they answered, "This
is a hard thing to compass for Smithfield lieth within the King's
market."
Rahere then went to King Henry I. and told him his story, and the King
gave him the land he needed,--such land! wet and marshy, "moorish
land," an old writer says, "heretofore a common," where the Londoners
used to fling out the rubbish and dirt of their city. On this land, in
the year 1123, Rahere began to build his hospital, which he called
after the Apostle who had appeared to him; and later, as that Apostle
had bidden him, he built a Priory; the church you see in picture 8 is
part of its church.
Who helped Rahere to do all this? The citizens of London. We are told
that he gathered together a crowd of people by pretending to be mad,
and then he made them work; they drained the wet marshy soil, they
carried great stones, they laboured hard. Thus the hospital was built.
Rahere was its first master. A friend of his, called Alfune, "went
himselfe dayly to the Shambles and other markets, where he begged the
charity of devout people for their" (that is, the poor sick people's)
"reliefe." Now, the charity he asked for was food for them to eat.
Rahere's last years were quietly spent in his own Priory, where he died
in the year 1144. This is his story, but it was first written down
when writers loved rather to tell wonderful things about great men {31}
than to seek out the exact truth about them. Now some people think he
did not found the hospital, but both hospital and church are far older
than his day; and that the Priory was built for the monks who managed
the hospital.
However this may be, the monks of the Priory certainly had great
privileges; one of them was that every year, at the Festival of St.
Bartholomew, for three days they might hold a fair in the "smooth
field" or Smithfield. Have you ever been to a country fair, and seen
its funny little stalls of sweets and chinaware and its quaint shows?
If you have, you must know that most English fairs are not at all
important nowadays; but in the times of which I am writing most of the
buying and selling in England was done at them. And so the old writer,
Stow, tells us that to St. Bartholomew's Fair "the Clothiers of all
England and Drapers of London repayred and had their boothes and
standings within the churchyard of this priorie, closed in with walles,
and gates locked every night, and watched for safetie of men's goodes
and wares"--so rich and valuable was its merchandise. Year by year it
was held until 1855; then it was done away with, for serious buying and
selling were no longer carried on at such fairs, and "Bartlemy Fair,"
as it was called, was now famous only for its shows of wild beasts,
dwarfs and giants, for its ox roasted whole, and for its scenes of wild
merry-making.
For four hundred years the monks of St. Bartholomew's tended the poor
people of London. Then came the days when Henry VIII. broke up the
monasteries; in 1539 he turned the monks out of the Priory and closed
{32} the hospital. Presently I will tell you what afterwards happened
to it.
For the beginning of our second charity we must go far away from London
to the little town of Assisi in Italy. There, on a spring day of the
year 1209, a young man kneeling in a little church heard the priest
reading the Gospel for the day:--"As ye go, preach, saying, 'The
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.' Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers....
Provide neither silver nor gold nor brass in your purses, neither scrip
nor two coats, nor shoes nor staff." The young man felt as though
Christ Himself was speaking to him. "From henceforth," he said, "I
shall set myself with all my might to live thus."
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[Illustration: NO. 9. AN EXCITING GAME: OLD CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, LONDON]
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If you had asked the people of Assisi about him, they would have
answered you in some such words as these, "Yonder man? He is Francis,
the spendthrift son of the cloth-merchant, Pietro Bernardone. He to
make such a vow! he, the idle companion of the foolish young nobles of
Assisi, the waster of his father's wealth! It is true he has changed
of late, but his new way of life pleases his father not at all, for he
has given away all he possessed, and says he has taken Poverty as his
bride. He visits the lepers, and labours to repair some of the poor
churches of the town."
Yet Francis kept his vow. Dressed in a simple grey gown, he went in
and out amongst the poorest of the people, preaching to them and
tending the sick. In return they could give him but a scanty meal or a
night's lodging; money he would not take; it was, he {33} said, of no
use to him. And wherever he was, whatever he was doing, no matter what
hardships he had to bear--and he had many--he was always full of
happiness.
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[Illustration: NO. 10. ENTRANCES OF THE OLD CHRIST'S HOSPITAL AND OF
CHRIST CHURCH, LONDON]
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In those hard cruel days men thought little of pain and suffering; but
Francis had love and sympathy, not only for men, but for animals and
for all things. In one of his poems he calls the moon his sister, and
the sun his brother; and he gives thanks for "our sister water, who is
very serviceable unto us and humble and precious and clean," and for
"our brother fire; he is bright and pleasant and very mighty and
strong." We hear of him preaching to the birds, and bidding them be
thankful for their feather-clothes and wings.
Soon other men joined themselves to him to live and teach as he did,
and they were called Franciscans, the Monks of St. Francis; and
sometimes the Grey Friars, because, like St. Francis, they wore grey
gowns; and they are also called the Begging Friars, because they too
had taken Poverty for their bride, and might own neither houses nor
lands; even food they must earn by the labour of their own hands, or
kindly people must give it to them. All their time, all their thoughts
must be given to helping the poor, the sick, and the wretched; and
where they were, there the Friars must go, so they made their homes
chiefly in the towns; and at first, while they kept the rules of St.
Francis very strictly, even these homes did not really belong to them.
In 1224 nine Franciscans came to England--the very first to come here.
Four of them went straight {34} to London. There the poorer people
lived on the marshy land near the Thames, huddled together in huts
built of mud and wattle; and in such homes there must have been plenty
of sickness and misery. For a short time the four Grey Friars lived on
Cornhill. Perhaps they thought they had no right to live in so
pleasant a place when there was such great misery down by the river;
certainly, soon so many people came about them that this first home was
too small for them. Now, a London citizen had some property "in
Stynkyng Lane and in the parish of St. Nicholas Shambles." Do you know
what shambles are? In them animals are killed for food; they cannot be
nice places to live in. This property the citizen gave to the Friars,
and there they made their new home. By their good deeds they must very
quickly have won the respect of the Londoners, for some gave them more
lands, and others helped in building a church and monastery for them.
This monastery was close to the place where the London General Post
Office now stands.
In those days the monasteries did most of the work which is now done by
schools, libraries, hospitals, hotels, and workhouses; no doubt the
Franciscans did their full share of it in London. But as the years
passed on and the first monks died, the younger men who took their
places became less strict in keeping the rules of St. Francis; many
people gave money and lands to the Order, and it became rich and great,
and changed very much. Before a hundred years had passed away, in
place of their first church, a new one had been built for them, one of
the grandest in the {35} land; its floor and pillars were all of
marble. St. Francis told his followers that they needed no books but a
Prayer-Book; before long the Grey Friars not only had books, but two
hundred years after they settled in London Richard Whittington gave
them a library. They no longer gave all their time to caring for the
poor and wretched, for we hear of some of them teaching at Oxford and
Cambridge; indeed, one of the most learned men of the age, Roger Bacon,
was a Grey Friar.
Thus the years passed on until Henry VIII. became King. Do you
remember how he treated the monks of the Charter House? I have no such
story to tell you of the Grey Friars, for they gave up to the King
their monastery and all they possessed when he called on them to do so.