much of it was left quite undone. Here is a little bit of a letter
which the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Richard Gresham, wrote to the King,
in 1538, on this very subject:--Someone, he says, must come to the
"ayde and comfort of the poor, syke [sick], blynde, aged and impotent
persons beyng not able to help themselffs, nor havyng no place certen
where they may be refreshed or lodged at, tyll they be holpen and cured
of their diseases and sickness." And he goes on to ask that three
ancient hospitals may be given over to the Mayor and Aldermen of the
City to carry on once more their old work. King Henry thought this was
a wise plan, and in 1546 he gave to London Rahere's old hospital, St.
Bartholomew's, and the Grey Friars' monastery.
{36}
Nothing more seems to have been done for five years. Yet the poor
needed help greatly; and under Henry's son, Edward VI., we hear of
sermons being preached, of the King, the Bishop of London, and the
Mayor consulting together and making a new plan--that the house of the
Grey Friars should be set aside as a hospital or home for "fatherless
children and other poore mens children," where they should be fed,
clothed, taught, and properly looked after. Thus Edward VI. is often
spoken of as the chief founder of the new charity, but I think Henry
VIII. and Sir Richard Gresham had more to do with it; don't you? Yet
it was the City's charity, and the citizens provided the money needed
for it. Before the next winter set in nearly 400 boys and girls were
lodged in the old Grey Friars; the next Christmas Day (1552), the
children, 340 in number, "all in one livery of russet cotton," lined
the road as the Lord Mayor and Aldermen passed in procession to St.
Paul's Cathedral. "The next Easter they were in blew [blue] at the
Spittle [hospital], and so have continued ever since"; and from these
"blew" clothes the school has taken one of its names--the Blue-Coat
School. Its other name is Christ's Hospital.
Hundreds of boys have worn the long blue gown and yellow stockings, and
some of them have become famous men. I will tell you the name of only
one of these, Charles Lamb; for he has written about the school as he
knew it, and perhaps you have read Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare"; he
and his sister Mary wrote them.
Facing page 32 is a picture of Blue-Coat boys, with {37} their gowns
tucked up, playing football. Until a short time ago, people in the
busy street called Holborn could look through the bars which separated
the playground from it, and watch the boys at play. They can do this
no longer, for the old buildings have been pulled down, and part of the
ground they stood on has been bought for the General Post Office; and
in the year 1902 the school, like the Charter House School, moved away
into the country, to Horsham.
From the beginning it was meant for girls as well as boys; old papers
about it always speak, not of the _boys_, but of the "_children_ of
this House." Boys and girls seem to have lived there, to have dined
together in Hall, and even at one time to have shared a classroom for
writing-lessons; part of the girls' work was to learn to make their own
and the boys' clothes. They too wore a quaint dress with white caps
and wide collars, but they gave it up long ago; and long ago, in 1778,
they left London; their school is at Hertford. It has never been as
famous as the boys' school.
Now I must tell you a little about King Henry's other gift to London,
St. Bartholomew's Hospital. It is now one of the largest of the London
hospitals, and has become very famous as a school where young men are
taught and trained to be doctors; perhaps your doctor was once a
student there.
A great part of the Priory church was pulled down as soon as it fell
into the hands of Henry VIII., and for many years the rest of it was
neglected and allowed to fall almost into ruins. Even in the
nineteenth {38} century, stables, coach-houses, and store-rooms stood
where once were the monks' old cloisters. In one part of the church
was a blacksmith's forge, a fringe factory had taken possession of
another, and in still another the boys of the parish school did their
lessons. Now all this has been changed. For more than fifty years
much care, thought and money have been spent in restoring the building
and in getting rid of stables, forge, factory, and school; and now
Londoners have every reason to be proud of their beautiful old church.
{39}
V.
THE STORY AND HISTORY OF DICK WHITTINGTON
"Turn again, Whittington,
Lord Mayor of London!"
Bow bells sang these words on All-Hallows Day many years ago, and on
Highgate Hill a boy stood listening to them. If I ask you who the boy
was, I am sure you will answer, "Dick Whittington."
The story of Dick Whittington can be told in two very different ways:
there is, first, the old tale which long ago men told their children,
and these children told their children. Thus it was passed on from
father to son, and we do not know that it was ever written down until
the days of James I., nearly two hundred years after Whittington died.
Of course, everyone who told this tale wanted to make it as interesting
as possible, so little bits were added to it, and it gradually grew
more and more wonderful. It is not surprising, then, that learned men
have not been satisfied with it, and they have searched the Chronicles
and Records of London to find out what they tell us of Richard
Whittington, and thus a second story has been made. Now I will tell
you first the older story.
Dick Whittington was born in the West of England. While he was still
only a little boy his father and mother died, and left him so poor that
he had no home, and was thankful to do even the hardest work {40} for
just his bare food. One day someone told him that the streets of
London were paved with gold. "Can it be true?" he thought to himself.
"Is there so much gold in London that it is trodden underfoot? Then it
is my own fault if I starve here in the West Country, for am I not big
enough and brave enough to tramp all the way up to London? Who could
prevent me from picking up some of that gold which surely no one needs,
or they would not pave the streets with it? And I need it so much!
Courage, Dick Whittington; off with you to London!" So off he set, and
tramped all the weary way to the great city.
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[Illustration: NO. 11. AN ARCH OF LONDON BRIDGE; TOWER BRIDGE IN THE
DISTANCE.]
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When he reached it, up and down its streets he went,--streets far
narrower than those of to-day, and darkened by the overshadowing
houses, for often each of their stories stood out a little beyond the
story below. Very dirty we should have thought those streets, for
people often threw out into them their rubbish and refuse. And what of
the gold? Dick saw none. At last, utterly wearied out, utterly
disappointed, so weak from hunger that he could hardly stand, he sank
down to rest on the doorstep of one of the houses. Now the story says
that presently the cook of this house caught sight of him sitting
there. She was a bad-tempered woman. She flung open the door and
scolded Dick well for an idle fellow, and bade him be off. Dick begged
her to give him work so that he might earn some food, but she would not
listen to him, and only scolded the more; and while this was going on
up came the master of the house, a rich merchant, whose name was Hugh
Fitzwarren. He asked the meaning of all these angry words, and {41} he
too was vexed to see a boy sitting idly on his doorstep, and bade him
go to his work.
"Ah," said Dick, "I have no work, and I have had nothing to eat for
three days. I am a poor country lad, and here no one knows me, no one
will help me." And he rose up to wander away again, but he was so
tired, so weak, he could hardly stand. The merchant saw this, and said
to the cook, "Take him in; feed him well, and set him to work to help
thee in thy kitchen."
Now, she was, as I said, a bad-tempered woman. Her master's orders she
must and did obey, but if Dick now had work and food and a
resting-place, he had also many a sharp word, many a sour look, many a
cruel blow. Though he worked hard he could not please her. Indeed, in
all the household--and it was a large one--the only person who was
friendly to him was the merchant's little daughter, Mistress Alice, who
not only spoke kindly to him herself, but tried to make his
fellow-servants treat him better.
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[Illustration: NO. 12. WHITTINGTON SETTING THE KING FREE FROM THE
GREAT DEBT.]
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Dick slept in a garret which was overrun with rats and mice; they were
so bold that they even crept about over him when he was in bed, and
prevented him sleeping. What could he do about this? In all the world
he had but one penny; how he came by this penny I do not know, but I
feel sure he earned it by doing some extra work. With it he bought a
cat and took her up to his garret, and there she lived and made war on
the rats and mice. Henceforth Dick slept in peace.
Whenever the merchant, Hugh Fitzwarren, sent a ship to trade with
foreign countries, he allowed each {42} of his servants to have some
little share in her; each might send out in her some silk or cloth, or
even a very little thing, whatever he had or could afford to buy; and
the money for which this thing was sold was the servant's own. This
the merchant did that "so God might give him greater blessing." Thus
it came about that one day Dick was called with all the other servants,
and each was asked what he would send out in the good ship _Unicorn_,
which was now ready for sea. When it came to Dick's turn, he said, "I
have nought to send." "Think again," said his master; "hast thou no
little thing thou canst spare? Hast thou nought to venture?" "Nought,
nought," answered Dick, "except my cat, and thou wilt not take her."
"Nay, why not?" said the merchant. "Send thy cat by all means." So,
though his fellow-servants laughed and mocked, Dick's cat was sent on
board the _Unicorn_.
Now he was lonely indeed; so lonely that the cook's angry words and
cross tempers were harder to bear than ever, and Dick made up his mind
to run away. Very early one morning--it was the Feast of
All-Hallows--while his fellow-servants were still fast asleep, he
slipped out of Master Fitzwarren's house and made his way northward out
of London. On Highgate Hill he sat down to rest. Hark! what was that
he heard? Now the wind brought the sound to him more clearly; now it
died away again. It was the chime of Bow bells, and this is what it
said to him:--
"Turn again, Whittington,
Lord Mayor of London!"
{43}
Lord Mayor of London! Was he to be Lord Mayor? If so, must he not
work faithfully, and, if need be, endure hardships--yes, even such
little hardships as the cruel words and blows of the bad-tempered cook?
Up he jumped, and hurried back so fast that he reached Master
Fitzwarren's house before the cook had missed him.
The _Unicorn_ had sailed to the Barbary Coast of Africa. The King of
this country was rich and great, yet he was most miserable and
uncomfortable, for his kingdom simply swarmed with rats and mice. They
were everywhere, even in the beds and on the King's table, where they
ate the food which had been prepared for him. When the men of the
_Unicorn_ came to the Court to show the King the goods their ship had
brought, fancy how surprised they were to see rats and mice here,
there, and everywhere! "That cat we have on board," said they, "would
soon stop this." "Then let the cat be sent for at once!" cried the
King. So Dick's cat was brought, and now in the palace, as once in
Dick's garret, she made fierce war on the rats and mice, and before
long she had driven them all away. The King was so delighted that he
bought the cat for ten times more money than he paid for all the
_Unicorn's_ rich merchandise.
When the ship came home, here was fine news for Dick,--no more
kitchen-work for him; he was a rich man now. He became a merchant like
his master, Hugh Fitzwarren, and by-and-by he married Mistress Alice;
and, as Bow bells had promised him, he was made Mayor of London, not
once, but three times. He was a good Londoner and a good Englishman,
for {44} the story says that when King Henry V. came home after he had
conquered France, Whittington entertained him at a great banquet. Look
at the picture of this which faces page 41; near the table a fire is
burning, and Whittington is just going to throw something into it. How
eagerly everyone is watching him, and well they may; for before the
King went to France he had borrowed great sums of money from the City
and its merchants to pay the cost of his wars, and now Whittington is
flinging into the fire the papers in which the King had promised to pay
back 37,000 crowns--that is, L60,000 in our money. Thus he set the
King free from his debt, or, in other words, gave him all this money.
Was not this a princely gift for the great merchant to give the great
King?
Now I must tell you what the Chronicles and Records of London tell us
about Richard Whittington. He was indeed born in the West of England,
but he belonged to a good family. We do not know why and when he came
to the City. In those days it was certainly no disgrace for the
younger sons of good families to be London merchants; for the City was
great and prosperous, able to raise large sums of money to help the
King in his wars; and we read that at a council held at the Guildhall
about this very matter, to which came the Archbishop of Canterbury and
the King's brothers, the Lord Mayor was given the seat of honour above
them all, so greatly was he respected because he was London's chief
officer.
All the workmen, according to their trades, had to belong to companies
called "guilds." Each guild had its own officers and made its own
rules for looking {45} after its members; and it had to see not only
that these members knew how to do their work, but also that they did it
properly and charged a fair price for it. We may still read the rules
about all this made by the Guilds of the Blacksmiths, the Plumbers, the
Glovers, and many others. Truly, the merchants and workmen of London
were honourable and upright, and turned out good honest work. No
wonder, then, that Richard Whittington became a London merchant.
He was a mercer--that is, he sold cloth and silk and velvet and such
things; and so we hear of him providing velvet for the servants of that
Earl of Derby who afterwards became King Henry IV.
Whittington became a great man in the City, was Alderman and Sheriff,
and from June, 1397, until November, 1399, he was Mayor. Mayor for a
year and five months? Are not Mayors appointed every year in October?
and do they not rule only for one year, from November to November?
Yes, but the Mayor chosen in October 1396 died during his year of
office, and the King, Richard II., appointed Whittington to take his
place; and at the year's end the Aldermen chose him to be Mayor again
for the next year.
He was still carrying on his business, and when Henry IV. became King,
and the Princesses, his daughters, were to be married, Whittington sold
to them the cloth of gold and other things necessary for their
weddings. He often lent great sums of money to Henry IV., and in later
days to his son, Henry V., and in the reign of this King he was Mayor
twice. He died in the year 1423; on his gravestone were carved some
Latin words which mean that he was the {46} Flower of Merchants. His
wife's name was certainly Alice Fitzwarren, but she was the daughter of
a Dorsetshire Knight.
So you see the real Richard Whittington was a very great and rich
merchant. But many another has been as rich and great, yet no stories
are told of them; what makes Whittington different from all others?
First of all, he was Lord Mayor three times, or, rather, may we not say
three and a half times? And then he was very wise and generous; he
gave, as I have already told you, a library to the Grey Friars; and he
arranged that after his death a great deal of his money should be used
to help London. His friends, who had to see to this, knew that good
water is one of the things most necessary for a great city, so they
arched over a spring to keep it clean and sweet, and they placed
"drinking-bosses," or taps, in the conduits or channels and pipes which
brought the water from country springs and streams into London.
Newgate Prison was "feble, over-litel, and so contagious of eyre [air]
yat [that] hit caused the deth of many men," so Whittington's money was
used to rebuild it. It was also used to repair St. Thomas's Hospital,
and to make a new hospital or almshouse where always thirteen old men
should live, who were to pray for Dick Whittington's soul, and the
souls of his father and mother and wife. These almshouses are no
longer in the City; they have been moved out to Highgate, and stand not
far from the stone which marks the place where Whittington heard the
chime of Bow bells; and through them Dick Whittington's wealth is still
doing good to the poor of London.
{47}
VI.
WHEN ELIZABETH WAS QUEEN
In the reign of Henry VI., Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the King's
uncle, built himself a palace at Greenwich, and he called it
"Placentia" or "Plaisance," which means a pleasant thing or place.
(Turn over this page and the next, and you will find a picture of it.)
I think the Tudor Kings really found it a pleasant place, for they
lived there a great deal; here Henry VIII. and his daughters, Mary and
Elizabeth, were born, and here Edward VI. died.
In those days the road we now call the Strand led from the City to the
village of Charing Cross; and all along it stood great and beautiful
houses with gardens which stretched down to the river. Each house,
most likely, had its water-gate or landing-place, where the master of
the house and his guests could step on board their barges, which might
take them up the river to Westminster and the royal palace near
Richmond, or down to London and beyond it to Greenwich; for in those
days the river was London's greatest and most stately highway. Very
stately were the barges, very gay, too, with flags and the fine
liveries of servants; and very often people on the banks or in little
boats near-by heard music sounding from their decks as they moved
swiftly along. How beautiful, how stately, must Queen Elizabeth's
barge have been, when at her Coronation she came by water to the Abbey!
{48}
She often stayed in her palace called Plaisance; how grandly she lived
there! One who saw her there tells of the "gentlemen, barons, earls,
Knights of the Garter, all richly-dressed and bareheaded," who went
before her; one of them carried the sceptre, another the sword of
state. The ladies of her Court followed her, and she was guarded on
each side by fifty gentlemen who carried gilt battle-axes. She was
herself magnificently dressed, and "wherever she turned her face as she
passed along, everybody fell down on their knees."
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[Illustration: NO. 13. GREENWICH AS IT IS NOW.]
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Sometimes, when she wanted to be amused, plays were acted in the great
hall of the palace, and she sat in her chair of state with her ladies
about her and looked on. I wonder if any of these plays were written
by Shakespeare? Perhaps they were; it is even possible that
Shakespeare himself may have acted before her, for he had come to
London from his country home two years before the Spanish Armada sailed
up the English Channel to conquer England; and during the last five
years of her reign, whenever Elizabeth went up the river in her barge,
she passed the round wooden theatre, called the Globe, where his plays
were acted, for it was in Southwark on the south bank. There is no
sign of it now; a great brewery has been built over the place where
once it stood.
These were the days when English sailors fought the Spanish on the high
seas, because they claimed all the New World as their own and strove to
keep everyone else out of it. From the windows or the terrace of her
palace did the Queen ever watch ships sailing down the river to take
part in this struggle, or in another,--a struggle with winds and waves,
ice and {49} snow, as the sailors tried to explore the unknown coasts
of America? Once at least we know she did, for Admiral Frobisher's two
little ships fired a salute to her as they dropped down the river. He
was going to search for gold and for the North-West Passage round the
north of America to the Pacific. He found no passage and no gold
though he went again and yet again to the cold North. How often
Englishmen searched for that passage; how hard they found it to believe
that there is no way for ships through those icy seas!
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[Illustration: NO. 14. PLACENTIA, THE OLD PALACE AT GREENWICH.]
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Those were stirring times. Often sailors came home with wonderful
tales to tell; and thus, in September, 1580, a ship, called the
_Pelican_, sailed into Plymouth Sound, and all England rang with the
news of her coming, for she was Admiral Drake's ship. Nearly three
years before he and his sailors had left England in her; they had
fought the Spanish, they had taken great treasure, money and jewels,
and they had sailed round the world. Now they were safe home again.
Do you wonder that the Queen wanted to see the ship which had made such
a voyage? She told Drake to bring the _Pelican_ round to Deptford,
which is very near Greenwich; and she went on board and took part in a
great feast which was given in her honour; and she knighted Drake on
the deck of his own ship. How proud Englishmen were of him! One of
them said the _Pelican_ ought to be hoisted up to the top of the tower
of St. Paul's Cathedral, to take the place of the spire which had been
destroyed by lightning some time before. Was not this a mad plan? Of
course, it was never carried out. For many a year the old ship lay in
Deptford {50} Dockyard just as the Victory lies now in Portsmouth
Harbour; and people used to visit her, and even have supper on board
her. When she was very old she was broken up; out of some of her
timbers a chair was made and presented to Oxford University.
Do you remember what happened in 1588? This was the year of the
Invincible Armada, when England had to prepare ships and sailors and
soldiers to protect herself from the Spanish. What help did London
give? She was asked for fifteen ships and five thousand men. "Give us
two days," said her citizens, "to consider what we can do"; and in two
days they answered, "We will send thirty ships and ten thousand men to
serve our country."
London, then, had certainly plenty of ships; and many a sea-captain
besides Frobisher sailed down the river past Placentia on his way to
some far-off port; for London merchants were eager to trade with all
parts of the world; and after the defeat of the Spanish Armada they
knew that the wide ocean, east and west, lay open before them. No
Spaniard now could forbid English ships to sail on any sea.
Drake had seen for himself and had brought home word of the spices and
great wealth of the East Indies. But they were very far off, and the
cost of fitting out ships for so long a voyage was very great; great,
too, were the dangers these ships would have to face--dangers of sea
and storm, of savage people and an unknown land; could any one merchant
risk so much? The Lord Mayor called together some London merchants to
consider this question, and they answered, "The losses which would ruin
one would hardly be felt if {51} borne by many; let us, then, form a
company to trade with the East." Thus began the East India Company;
its birthday was the very last day of the sixteenth century. It had at
first only four ships and less than five hundred men; before it came to
an end, two hundred and fifty-eight years later, it was ruling nearly
all India.