MIDDLE TEMPLE HALL

AN

HISTORICAL GUIDE

TO

LONDON

BY

G. R. STIRLING TAYLOR

ILLUSTRATED WITH 56 PHOTOGRAPHS

1911

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.

NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SANTA BARBARA

PREFACE

THE reader who desires to pursue the subject of Historical London, but has not the time or opportunity to examine contemporary sources, will find the most convenient and scholarly summary of the facts in Mr Loftie's two volumes of “The History of London” as the best general survey; in Mr Lethaby's “London before the Conquest,” a masterly statement of the early City, based on a careful examination of original evidence, as distinguished from loose traditions; in Dr Reginald R. Sharpe's “London and the Kingdom,” for the general political situation. Mr Kingsford's two-volume edition of Stow's “Survey of London,” with very full notes, and a fine map by Mr Emery Walker, is by far the best issue of a book which remains the chief classic of London history.

I have to thank my brother, Mr W. F. Taylor, not only for the judgment he has shown in producing pictures which most adequately represent what is left of historical London, but also for innumerable suggestions concerning the book itself. I am also indebted to Captain Charles E. Gladstone, R.N., for his kindness in allowing me to reproduce the four photographs of Westminster Abbey.

G. R. S T.

I PUMP COURT, TEMPLE, LONDON

May 5th, 1911

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MIDDLE TEMPLE HALL

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT—THE AMBULATORY

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT—THE AMBULATORY

ST PAUL'S FROM LITTLE BRITAIN

ST CLEMENT DANES

TOWER OF LONDON—CHAPEL OF ST JOHN IN THE WHITE TOWER

GATEWAY OF ST JOHN'S PRIORY, CLERKENWELL

TOWER OF LONDON—BYWARD TOWER

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK—THE CHOIR

CHELSEA OLD CHURCH—THE MORE CHAPEL AND CHANCEL

ALL HALLOW'S, BARKING

ST MARGARET PATTENS

GREAT ST HELEN'S CHURCH—EXTERIOR

GREAT ST HELEN'S CHURCH—INTERIOR

GREAT ST HELEN'S CHURCH—TOMB OF SIR JOHN AND LADY CROSBY

THE INNER TEMPLE GATEWAY

PUMP COURT TEMPLE

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT—TOMB OF RAHERE, THE FOUNDER

GRAY'S INN SQUARE

WATERGATE OF YORK HOUSE—EMBANKMENT GARDENS

WESTMINSTFR ABBEY—CHOIR AND SANCTUARY

WESTMINSTER ABBEY—THE SHRINE OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR

WESTMINSTER ABBEY—HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL

NEWCASTLE HOUSE—LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS

LINCOLN'S INN—WITH OLD HALL

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK—EFFIGY OF JOHN GOWER, THE POET

CHELSEA OLD CHURCH

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK—THE LADY CHAPEL

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK—EFFIGY OF AN UNKNOWN KNIGHT

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK—TOMB OF ALDERMAN HUMBLE

ALL HALLOW'S, BARKING—WITH FONT BY GRINLING GIBBONS

STATUE OF CHARLES I. IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE

ST ANDREW UNDERSHAFT—EFFIGY OF JOHN STOW, THE ANTIQUARY

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT—GATEWAY AND TOWER

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT—FIGURES AT THE FOOT OF THE EFFIGY OF RAHERE THE FOUNDER

BUNHILL FIELDS—THE DISSENTERS’ BURIAL GROUNDS

CHELSEA CHURCH—CAPITAL IN MORE CHAPEL

CHELSEA HOSPITAL

CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, WITH CARLYLE'S HOUSE

CLIFFORD'S INN

ST JAMES’ PALACE—THE GATEWAY

GRAY'S INN HALL—THE ELIZABETHAN SCREEN

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK—EFFIGY OF BISHOP LANCELOT ANDREWES

GREAT ST HELEN'S CHURCH—THE “NUNS’ GRATING”

GREAT ST HELEN'S CHURCH—TOMB OF OTESWICH AND HIS WIFE

LAMBETH CHURCH AND PALACE GATE

LINCOLN'S INN—THE GATEWAY

LONDON STONE—CANNON STREET

ST MARTIN'S IN THE FIELDS—TRAFALGAR SQUARE

MONUMENT OF DR JOHN YOUNG, BY TORREGIANO IN THE RECORD OFFICE

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK—TOMB OF JOHN TREHERNE AND HIS WIFE

STAPLE INN

THE TEMPLE CHURCH

TOWER GREEN—PLACE OF EXECUTION IN THE FOREGROUND

HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER, AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS

BANQUETING HALL, WHITEHALL

PART I

A GENERAL VIEW OF LONDON

CHAPTER I

THE SCOPE AND USE OF THIS BOOK

LONDON is not a fit subject for a book. A fragment of it might possibly be got within the limits of a library; but even that would be a somewhat hasty glance. The traveller who calls on London, for a week or so, must realise that this City has behind it a continuous history of almost nineteen hundred years; a period of time which has given it the opportunity of experiencing as many exciting moments as fall to the lot of most places on this earth. Except, perhaps, a first-class earthquake and a Moorish invasion, London has tasted the greater part of the joys and sorrows of life, and the sum total result is a history of a quite engrossing character.

In writing a book of this kind, the problem is to decide which dots in the huge mass of available materials will give the most suggestive picture of the whole. It is quite impossible to get an appreciable part of the details of London's history into the limits of any book of a size which even the serious traveller can find time to use during a limited visit. The aim has been to build an intelligible framework, into which the rest of the story can be fitted by subsequent study. There has been an attempt to keep a due proportion in the parts. So many guide-books have seized on one or two spots of obvious importance; for example, Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London; and, in order to cover these in a fairly complete manner, they have passed in silence many places which are a necessary part of the whole subject. The Tower at its east end and the great Abbey beyond its western border were, quite truly, all important matters; but the intervening smaller castles and religious houses, even if they have generally disappeared from material existence, were of vital importance to the Londoners of their day; and they are an absolutely essential part of the historical atmosphere, if the student desires to breathe therein.

It is true that the greater part of the mediæval buildings of London have been swept away; nevertheless, it is impossible to give their proportional value to those which remain, if the missing ones are not indicated as the visitor passes along. Now that Crosby Hall has gone the way of all bricks and mortar which stand in the way of a higher ground rent, there is nothing which exists in the City area to-day to illustrate the fact that, for the far greater part of its history, London was a place where nobles had their town houses, and great merchants had their dwellings, as well as their places of business. To pass along the streets and lanes of the City without contradicting their present solely commerical note, would be to utter, indirectly, an historical untruth. There is one part of the treatment of the subject which deserves an explanation, for it may be regarded as typical of the rest: namely, all the older parish churches are given a separate notice in the Gazetteer, even when they have been destroyed. For there is no more typical centre of mediæval local life than the parish church. The date of its first record, its patrons and its chief monuments, are all valuable hints to the student.

As a matter of fact, there is far more of old London, still embodied in stone and bricks, than most people imagine. There are still remains of the Roman wall. There is a Norman castle, the Tower, and a Norman church, St Bartholomew's, to keep it company. There is one of the finest Gothic churches in Europe at Westminster. A Guildhall, which is Lancastrian in its main structure; a Tudor palace at St James's and a Tudor gate-house at Lincoln's Inn; with the Elizabethan Staple Inn in Holborn, and one of the most perfect Elizabethan halls at the Middle Temple: all these are there to represent their periods. Of the Stuart and Georgian times there are buildings innumerable. St Helen's and St Ethelburga Bishopsgate, Allhallows Barking, Austin Friars, with the crypts of St John's Clerkenwell, and St Mary le Bow, are all substantial remains.

When the actual buildings have gone, their memory is recorded in local boundaries and names which have defied the wear and tear of centuries. There is scarcely a street in the central parts of London which does not follow to-day the same line which it has taken for hundreds of years, and borne the same name throughout its career. The name of a district, for example Stepney and Kensington, will often carry us back to some great mediæval manor and its mighty lords.

It is the aim of this book to catalogue the vast museum of London. It would make its stones and its names retell the story of a life of almost two thousand years. But, as we have said, the story of the whole is the work of a library. This book will keep within its proper limits. It endeavours to be the link between the history book and the actual spots where that history was once enacted in the life. It is, therefore, written for the sightseer to use in the streets. Now, intelligent sightseeing is a very tiring process; it is a combination of physical and mental labour; and there is a limit beyond which the normal human being cannot endure. So this book will recognise the capabilities of this average person. It will pick out the essentials; it will endeavour to impress on the traveller's mind and eye the vital points, round which he can group the details at his subsequent leisure. To take an instance: Westminster Abbey is a maze of buildings and monuments; to expect the traveller to wade through a list of all its details is to expect the impossible; and, if attempted, it only results in the essential points being obscured in a mist of minor affairs. There are people who are so anxious to see every tomb in the Poets’ Corner, that they forget to see the great church itself. The best guide is that which engages the traveller's eyes as little as possible. The delights and education of travel do not consist in reading the pages of a book, but rather in looking around and discovering for oneself. There are certain points in Westminster Abbey, to keep to that instance, which must be seen, under penalty of missing the whole. This book will endeavour to call attention to those points without confusing the mind with comparative trivialities. There are certain persons who have been buried in the Abbey who have not the slightest right to be there. It is unwise to add emphasis to the mistake by repeating their names, simply because they are there. It is more profitable use of the space to record the name and situation and history of, for example, a parish church in the city, which was a local centre for centuries, even though it has now disappeared.

This book is divided into three main parts.

First, there is a general survey of the history of London and its neighbourhood. This attempts to link into some slight continuity the events and places which the rest of the book discusses in detail. This survey endeavours, further, to show how the political and municipal history of the place was related to its physical growth. A description of London has been given at several characteristic periods of its history. Also, the craft guilds and their elaborate organisation have been indicated as underlying much of the life of the city; it is impossible to begin to understand the development of a town in mediæval times until the importance of the guild system is realised; neither can the traveller otherwise understand the meaning of all the halls of the livery companies which are still dotted about the City to-day.

The second part, the Itineraries, divides London into districts, which have some common distinctive feature, as far as they can be so grouped; and these districts are then arranged as far as possible in a logical and historical order, fixed by the period when their distinction or origin was most marked. Thus the Cannon Street district has been placed first, because it seems to cover in the most marked manner the earliest inhabited part of the City. Similarly, the southern side of the City is placed before the northern side, because, on the whole, the banks of the Thames in the neighbourhood of the present Thames Street were fully occupied before the ground to the north of Cornhill and Cheapside was covered, although there are signs that the Saxon kings had their basis near Aldermanbury. Again, the Lincoln's Inn Fields district comes before the later developments of the West End. The Itineraries endeavour to group the vast field of London into some kind of logical order which will make sightseeing less chaotic and therefore less wearisome.

These Itineraries give merely an outline for visiting the places of interests; but the main details of each individual house or site are grouped together under its own name in the Gazetteer, to which the references are marked. The Itineraries only supply the topographical and historical links which will give the separate items of the Gazetteer some kind of atmosphere and coherency.

Such is the arrangement of the book. But there are many who will not find time to use it in full. For such the following summary is given of those places in London which are of most importance, if it cannot be examined as a whole. This list is arranged in topographical order, following the grouping planned in the Itineraries.

A LIST OF THE MOST IMPORTANT HISTORICAL BUILDINGS AND PLACES IN LONDON

ITINERARY I: The Tower of London, which is one of the finest examples of a mediæval fortress, and an all-important position throughout the history of London. The Church of Allhallows, Barking, a splended specimen of a parish church, which escaped the Great Fire, still showing Transition Norman and Early English architecture. The Church of St Stephen, Walbrook, which is usually considered Sir Christopher Wren's finest parish church.

ITINERARY II: The Church of St Olave Hart Street, which escaped the Fire, and has interesting memories of Pepys and his period. St Andrew Undershaft, still in the main of the early sixteenth century.

ITINERARY III: The group of parish churches in the south-west corner, whether standing or their sites, should be visited as a vivid example of how thickly these were dotted over the mediæval city (an equally good example of this fact can be found in Itinerary I). Likewise the sites of the group of nobles’ and ecclesiastics’ mansions at the west end of Thames Street should be inspected for a similar reason. The Apothecaries’ Hall is a good example of one of the smaller Halls rebuilt at the Great Fire period, and also of a City Company still with active duties connected with the control of its trade. The Cathedral of St Paul's, the great mother church of the City of London.

ITINERARY IV: The Guildhall, the centre of London's municipal life, still in its main structure a building of the Lancastrian period. The bastion of the City Wall in Cripplegate churchyard, and the piece of the wall in London Wall.

ITINERARY V: The Merchant Taylors’ Hall (if admission can be gained by the kindness of a member of the Company), the finest old Hall of this kind now standing in the City. St Ethelburga, the best example of a small parish church of the mediæval period. St Helen, Bishopsgate, which was beyond the Great Fire area, and the chapel of a mediæval religious society, the burial place of great city magnates; it has been called the “Westminster Abbey of the City.”

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT

The Ambulatory

ITINERARY VI: The Temple, still an enclosed area as it was in mediæval times, with its Temple Church, its Middle Temple Elizabethan Hall, and many seventeenth-century houses and courts. Lincoln's Inn, with similar attractions, and its fine Tudor Gatehouse.

ITINERARY VII: St Bartholomew's Hospital, still standing for the same purposes as laid down by its twelfth-century endowment. St Bartholomew's Church, with a fine portion of its Norman building still standing. St John's Priory, with its Gate and the early crypt of its church. Barnard Inn, with its old lawyers’ Hall. Staple Inn, with its similar Hall, the Elizabethan front facing the main street, and its quaint eighteenth-century courtyard within. Gray's Inn, with its Tudor Hall, and the courts around it.

ITINERARY VIII: The Strand district is chiefly interesting for its memories rather than its realities. The only mediæval relic is the much-restored and rebuilt Savoy Chapel. The Adelphi should be visited as a good example of the London of the end of the eighteenth century.

ITINERARY IX: Westminster Abbey, one of the greatest of Gothic churches; and the remains of the monastic domestic buildings attached and incorporated in the buildings of Westminster School. Westminster Hall, the great hall of the royal palace. The crypt of St Stephen's Chapel. The Banqueting House, Whitehall. The Horse Guards and the Admiralty and the intervening buildings make the best group of official Georgian London.

ITINERARY X: Newcastle House and Lindsay House in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the Inigo Jones house on the south side of Great Queen Street, are good examples of seventeenth-century domestic buildings.

ITINERARY XI: St James's Palace, with its Tudor and Georgian buildings.

ITINERARY XII: Berkeley Square is one of the best examples of an early eighteenth-century square; and Devonshire House is a good specimen of an eighteenth-century noble's mansion.

ITINERARY XIII: Featherstone Buildings in Holborn, and the “Queen Anne” streets on its north side, are good examples of their period.

ITINERARY XIV: Chelsea Old Church gives a good idea of what the parish churches of the City once were, with their monuments of the local magnates. Chelsea Hospital is a fine example of Sir Christopher Wren's secular style.

ITINERARY XV: Southwark Cathedral is, after Westminster Abbey, the finest existing church in London.

CHAPTER II

THE HISTORICAL MAP OF LONDON

THAT vast incoherent collection of houses and streets and human beings which we call London, can scarcely be covered by such terms as “town” or “city,” in the ordinary meaning of those words. One usually thinks of a town as a place with some definite central square or street or market place: it would be a hard question for a stranger or citizen to decide hastily where is the centre of London. Or one thinks of a place with a mayor and council: but London has twenty-nine mayors. It is a city which seems to have got out of control and engaged in a riotous increase on all sides. One has a vague notion that there is an older and smaller London hidden somewhere near the centre of this wilderness of bricks and mortar; and that there are other geographical personalities lying engulfed in the waves of London's growth. But at a casual glance, a map of the metropolitan area appears without form and void—a mere mechanical multiplication of streets, without end.

The historical sense can detect more definite forms emerging from this chaos. The unwieldy mass of the London of the geographical map can be dissolved by the historian into a number of units, each with an individuality of its own. To him it is not the result of an incoherent growth. He sees, rather, a collection of neighbouring communities, of which the real City of London, the walled town, is only one; not even the largest, although by far the most important. These separate individualities have been cemented together into a continuous whole by the architectural flood which flowed out of every gate of London; nevertheless, without utterly submerging them from the eyes of a careful observer.

The map of London, thus considered, is no longer a uniform structure: it becomes dissolved into the City of London; the City of Westminster; the borough of Southwark; the villages of Islington, Stoke Newington, Hackney, and Hampstead; the manor of Bloomsbury and the hamlet of St Giles; the villages of Marylebone, Paddington, Kensington, Chelsea, and Fulham; on the south side of the Thames, besides the town of Southwark, there are Lambeth, Kennington, Battersea, Clapham, Camberwell, Walworth, Peckham, Greenwich, Woolwich, and Lewisham; to the east, the great manor of Stepney, with its cluster of hamlets, such as Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Bow, and Bromley. This collection is, roughly speaking, a list of the separate units which the compilers of the Domesday Book had to record over the area which is now collectively massed together, as the single county of London, by the Local Government Act of 1888. The historian sees them all as geographical personalities; with even a more distinct life than the present circling communities of Croydon, Kew, Richmond, Hampton, Ealing, Tottenham, for example, have still maintained in the face of their obvious fate of being absorbed in London, as their inner companions were absorbed long ago.

It may be pleaded that it is useless to try to go beneath the surface; it may be said that, whatever its former state, London is now a monotonous whole, without any remaining distinction in its parts. The answer is that it is impossible to take any intelligent interest in London on any other principle than the separation of its parts. It is only under the historical method that London has any meaning; otherwise, it is merely a succesion of streets and the multiplication of houses. To the tourist and student, London, without historical links, must be a confused jumble of impressions which will lose the greater part of their meaning.

It is, therefore, proposed to sort out the London of the map into its component parts; and to treat each as a geographical and historical individuality.

There is little doubt which is the central figure in this survey. The City of London, a walled space with a definite boundary, early rose into easy predominance over its neighbours; and the main part of this book will be to examine this walled city and the suburbs which grew immediately around those walls, and early became the “outer” wards. But these outer wards extended only a short distance beyond the wall, and carry us a very little way over the map; no further than to Temple Bar at the end of Fleet Street, to Holborn Bars in Holborn; the district round Smithfield and Bishopsgate and Aldgate, and over the bridge to Southwark. That little plot is all that the citizen of Tudor days would have understood by the name London.

But although it so happened that London got the first start, there was at least one of its neighbours which, if fortune and circumstances had given a little turn one way or another, might have taken the first rank; and London might have borne another name—the name of Westminster, which covered, and still covers, a wider tract of land than London City proper; for once it ran on its south boundary from the western side of the Abbey to the west ditch of London, that is to the Fleet river which ran at the foot of Ludgate Hill; and on its north side it went west from the Fleet until it included Kensington and then turned back south to Westminster. Even now it reaches about as far east as Chancery Lane. Until there was sufficient engineering skill in England to build a bridge over the Thames, the easiest way across it was at its shallowest, and therefore its widest, part; which spot, in this neighbourhood, was across the marshes which lay around what is now the City of Westminster. It was here that the old British road (which afterwards became the Roman Watling Street) passed over the Thames, and the marsh island of Thorney, which became Westminster, at first was a better known place perhaps than the little hamlet on the Walbrook bankside, near Cannon Street Station, which afterwards became London. And for a long period of their history, London and Westminster ranked almost as equals; the one the city of the people and the other the city of the king's Court, clustered round the Abbey Church, which the kings began to frequent during the eleventh century, Edward the Confessor being the first to live there with regularity. With a great church and a Royal Palace, Westminster was long a serious rival to merchant London.

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT

The Ambulatory

Even when we have considered Westminster, there was another town, now swallowed up in the maze of London, which, however, might perhaps have come out the winner before all. In Ptolomey's description of London, it seems clear that he is writing of what is now Southwark, and not of a town on the north bank; so that there may be good reason for the theory that the first Roman London was at Southwark, and the north side was merely occupied as a fort to protect the bridge head. But whether this was so or not, Southwark remained a separate town until as late as 1550, when it was made a “ward without” (the walls of) the City of London; and now, again, since 1899 it has been given a borough council of its own.

But one does not wish to underestimate the importance of the City of London as against even Westminster or Southwark; but merely to point out that their separate existence in history is obscured by their modern fortunes. If one begins to discuss possibilities in the turning of Fortune's wheel, then there is no particular reason why one should not speculate on the hard fate of Chelsea or Bloomsbury or Greenwich in not growing into the great City, instead of being fated to be one of the submerged. What one must realise, if one wishes to have any intelligent comprehension of this subject, is that while the City of London was easily the first town in the area, yet there were other places all round it which once held their heads higher than they do to-day. Whatever the modern citizen and travellers may think, the historian discusses Westminster and Southwark, Chelsea and Islington, as distinct personalities. It is with this respectful courtesy that we approach them here. Without it, London means little else than a wild orgy of speculative builders. Strictly speaking, in the historical and legal sense, London, until recently, had no more connection with Westminster or Chelsea or Islington, than with Winchester or Bath or Brighton, except that they were nearer.

So long as one is dealing with London proper, the City, it is comparatively simple to grasp the development of the town; for it had always (within historical times) its wall, and its wards were settled, almost exactly as they now are, by the year 1275, probably much earlier. Within historical times this area has been developed as a uniform whole, which can be treated as such. And so with Southwark and the smaller districts. But the great manor of Westminster covered a very large area which developed at very different periods. The corner of Thorney Island, with its great church and palace, was one completely developed place all through history; while other parts of this great manor were open fields for centuries later. So that Covent Garden, St James's, the Grosvenor Square district, Knightsbridge and Paddington are almost places apart, though they were all part of the manor of Westminster. Quite a large portion of this book will be to describe how the manor of Westminster was, piece by piece, absorbed into the greater growth of London, as its citizens, for one reason and another, but chiefly for want of space, went to live beyond these walls.

This development of the “West End” of London has an orderly history, if one troubles to follow it out. Thus, the whole compact district between Lincoln's Inn Gardens and St Martin's Lane and St Giles, was first built during the early Stuart period; when the nobles and the city merchants began to take such opposite sides in politics that it was no longer pleasant to live too near each other. Again, the St James’ Square district sprang up as the home of the Royalists who came back with Charles II. from his exile. The district round Soho Square and Leicester Square is chiefly characterised by the names of the late Stuart and the earlier Hanoverian periods. Grosvenor Square, Portman Square, and their satelite streets reek of the Georges at their best (or was it their worst?). Then the last of their set, the Regent, afterwards George IV., gave a tone and a name to Regency London, by ordering Nash to design Regent Street between the Carlton House and Regent's Park; which, with their surrounding streets, gave us another London district with a character of its own. And before the earliest of these divisions of Westminster had ceased to be fields, a line of great houses of bishops began to grow along the bank of the Thames on the way from London City to the King's Court near the Abbey. This was a day when only such holy personages as bishops would have been safe outside the City walls. Until to-day the Strand remains, with its street names and its history in general, as a distinct part of the great whole of London. Beyond the earlier West End of St James and the Regency we find the distinctive district of Belgravia, planned and built almost as a whole about the years 1825-1835; and yet again beyond this we find a certain coherency and order about Victorian Crompton and South Kensington.

So that, looked into with care, the unwieldy mass of London dissolves into parts with a history and character of their own, which it will be the aim of this book to endeavour to put into logical order. There will be much rebuilding and rearrangement of parts, but we must try and distinguish the main outlines from the accidental blurrings, as it were. The first essential for a proper understanding of the history of London is to dismiss out of mind, as far as possible, all that London is now. Try to visualise it as it was.

Perhaps the most satisfactory plan is to begin with Tudor London, as Stow described it, and Ralph Agas drew it on his famous map of about 1570. Of course this was not the beginning of London history; indeed, it had already been a subject of history for almost fifteen hundred years. But, as will be seen by Agas's map, it was still a walled city with very little beyond those walls. St Giles, now in the heart of London, was still in the Fields: Charing, with its Cross, was but a hamlet which had not long possessed its own parish church. There was the thin line of houses running to Westminster, and Westminster itself. All else that we now include in London was little else than open fields and scattered villages. Out of these villages and on these open fields we are, then, ready to watch London grow with a force that overwhelmed its smaller neighbours.

It must be recollected that it was not until this time of Stow and Agas that the City of London had begun to grow in the modern sense. Up to the Reformation and its turmoil, both ecclesiastical and economic, London held less than 50,000 inhabitants within its walls; and by 1540 or so there were, perhaps, another 20,000 in the outer wards of Fleet Street, Cripplegate, and the rest. Then began the sudden growth. The merchants of London were extending their trade, which in itself meant increasing population. But, further, these same merchants, and others, were buying up the land of the dissolved monasteries, and converting them into sheep farms, which needed far fewer labourers than under the old régime; hence the beginning of the rush to the towns. So London was started on its rapid development. Perhaps the mad tyranny of the Spaniards in the Low Countries was the chief first stimulus of London's growth. Alva drove 100,000 of the best of the Netherland merchants and artizans to England, and many of these brought their trade and commerce to London. So by the end of Elizabeth's reign it had almost doubled its population; and held about 125,000 persons within its wards, inside the wall and out. By the Restoration of Charles II. it had overwhelmed all the boundaries of the City wards, and had begun extending into the City of Westminster, totalling in all about 460,000 inhabitants; and the growth has continued ever since. But the historical point to keep in mind is that until Henry VIII.’s time London was practically contained within the wall which the Romans had built.

CHAPTER III

THE OUTLINES OF LONDON'S HISTORY

SECTION I

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LONDON

THERE was a time when man had not begun to tamper with this spot of land and water, which has now become London; and the growth of this great City is the story of how human beings have remoulded a natural surface to suit their needs. It is very necessary, if one wishes to understand London, to grasp the nature of the place, as it was, when men started on it. Without that knowledge we shall be little able to comprehend what they have made of it. Let us say at once, that the result has been an overwhelming victory for man. London began as a place of great physical variety; it had many streams and wide harbour mouths; it had marshes along the river banks, and meres on the top of the higher ground; its surface was not the uniform level which the casual eye sees it to-day; but a broken patchwork of islands and rivers, with the neighbouring mainland to form a backbone. The strongly marked features of this natural London have been almost obliterated by the human handiwork which has been performed thereon; in much the same way that a lady of fashion may smooth out the natural features which do not suit her purpose. Let us try to see the place as it was when the Romans first came, almost two thousand years ago.

The River Thames then dominated the situation. It did not run in an orderly manner between its banks, as it does now; but was merely the main waterbed of a marshy swamp, which covered a large part of what is now solid south London, and made Westminster (or rather, would have made it, if it had been there) a little island, and Chelsea a mere peak of land running into the water; while on the east side the River Lea with its marshes repeated the picture. In short, London was in those days of the Roman invasion, a low headland on the northern side of the Thames marshes; which became London mainly because it was the highest and safest plot of land within a reasonable distance of the first fordable place (Westminster) on the natural highway of the Thames.

The centre of this place was the land which lay between the present Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower of London, and the higher ground behind them to the north. The western boundary of this central area was the river, which became known during the course of years by the varying names of the Holeburn, Turnmill Brook, or the Fleet. It gained its original name because it was the burn in the hole or hollow which went between the steep side of Ludgate Hill and the gentler slope of Holborn Hill, which is now almost entirely concealed from the passing eye by the level road of Holborn Viaduct which bridges the gap between the two banks. Where once ran this stream is now the hard surface of Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street, leading to Blackfriars Bridge; and here its waters ran until early modern times. In 1307 we find the Earl of Lincoln, who had a house in Shoe Lane, complaining that “ten or twelve ships, navies with merchandise, were wont to come to the foresaid bridge of Fleet [where is now Ludgate Circus] and some of them to Oldborne bridge [under the present Holborn Viaduct]; now the same course, by filth of the Tanners and such others, was sore decayed; also by rising of wharfs, but especially by a diversion of the water made by them of the New Temple for their mills.” The earl therefore begged “the Mayor of London with the Sheriffs and other discreet Aldermen,” that they should have this useful waterway cleared; and this was repeatedly attempted until the last successful endeavour in 1502. Stow tells of a despairing effort in Elizabeth's reign, in 1589, to collect together the springs of Hampstead in order to divert them into the Fleet, that it might be scoured and useful again; but it was a failure, and he adds: “the Brook by means of continual incroachments upon the banks getting over the water, and carting of soilage into the stream, is now become worse cloged than ever it was before,” and that was practically an end of the Fleet as a useful waterway; it became henceforth nothing but a ditch, and later a dangerously dirty drain, as the habitation of the country behind drained it of its water supply. But it was not until 1841 that it was entirely arched over and became a mere sewer under the street. So thus disappeared a natural feature which, when the Romans came, had been an ample arm of the River Thames, with a plentiful stream flowing in at its land end. It is a typical example of what one means by saying that the growth of London has meant the blotting out of the physical individuality of its several parts. So much for the west boundary of primitive London.

ST PAUL'S FROM LITTLE BRITAIN

On the east side, beyond the Tower, there was nothing so definite to mark natural limits for the coming City. Indeed, the boundary we have mentioned, the Tower and a line running north from it, was chiefly made by man, when the Romans built the walls of London. The natural boundary lay almost three miles further east, where the marshes of the Lea began, extending to the Thames on the south; and northwards beyond Hackney, which is a name denoting the ey, or island, of Hacon.

Through the heart of the early City ran the Walbrook; a stream which has been covered by hard streets in the same way as the Fleet. It entered at the north side of the walls, near Finsbury Circus, and emerged by an estuary where is now Walbrook, below Cannon Street Station. It was a distinctive feature of early London, and must have given it a sense of variety which is now lacking. One must remember all the many bridges which marked its passage across the City streets and lanes. The repair of these bridges was a charge on the citizens under various rules and customs. Thus, it was the duty of the prior of Holy Trinity (q.v.) to maintain one bridge, while the prior of St Mary Spital (q.v.), was charged with the repair of the middle part of another; and the parishioners of St Stephen upon Walbrook (q.v.) were bound by law to scour the bed of this stream in their neighbourhood. The church of St Margaret, Lothbury, was built over it on vaults But long before Stow's time, he tells us, the water was “vaulted over with brick, and paved level with the streets and lanes wherethorugh it passed; and since that, also, houses have been built thereon, so that the course of the Walbrook is now hidden under ground, and thereby hardly known.” Another sacrifice to London's growth.

But perhaps the stream had foreseen its fate and planned its revenge; for when the Romans built the walls along the north side, beyond Moorgate, they acted as a dam to the waters, which before drained easily away, and there then began that marshy fen which was a nuisance to the City until it was finally drained at the beginning of the Stuart period (v. Moorfields). This fen is a marked feature throughout the mediæval history of London, and should be kept carefully in mind.

Westward of the original walled London lay the land which rose gradually from the Fleet stream with a rather steep bank running down from the high lands of Holborn and Oxford Street to the river's edge, where is now the Victoria Embankment. The mass of buildings and the raising of the Embankment at the foot have made it hard to realise how sudden this edge was; but if one glances down the streets which lead from the Strand and the west end of Fleet Street to the river, it will be seen how quickly they fall, and must have seemed still steeper when the river ran to their ends without the Embankment intervening. The Strand, probably from Roman days, was a road along the side of this low hill, down which ran many little rivulets, which during the mediæval period were crossed by bridges. Behind the Strand, beginning at the top of Holborn Hill, was a plateau which extended westwards until it reached the dip down to the Tyburn stream, which ran south at Marylebone, as we shall see later. The southern edge of this plateau extended west of the Strand, along behind the north side of Trafalgar Square (where it had a gentler edge than beside the Strand) and along Piccadilly until it reached the Tyburn stream, as it did further north, as we have just seen. At the top of Holborn, where now is New Oxford Street, there was a mere, which by the name of Rugmere is still commemorated as a canon's stall in St Paul's, which was once endowed with a manor on this spot; the mere was not drained until the time of John (v. Bloomsbury). This plateau, which forms the backbone of the present West London, after the dip down to the Tyburn valley, rose again on the other side, and continued until it reached another stream, the Westbourne; also running south to the Thames, and now forming on its way the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Again rising, it continued until it reached the outskirts of the present London at Notting Hill; where it then met the Bridge Creek stream and the marshes which extended west of Chelsea and covered the land that is now Fulham and Hammersmith and the Thames's bank. If we follow down the Tyburn valley, which can be easily traced to-day in its dry bed, just west of Bond Street, where comes the dip down in Oxford Street, and south to the low dip in Piccadilly, and on through the Green Park and St James's Park, where it again reaches the present surface, forming the lakes there, then it leads us at last to Westminster marshes which we found at the end of the Strand.

At the corner, where is now Trafalgar Square, began the low marsh lands which surrounded Thorney, the last syllable “ey,” as in the case of Hackney, denoting an island. This early island was afterwards to become Westminster when the Abbey was built on it. In early days it was the chief centre of the swampy lands which lay at the mouth of the Tyburn stream, which we have just traced down the valley from Marylebone and Oxford Street. What is now the middle of Whitehall was then only a low strand covered at every tide or at all high tides at least. Gradually it was reclaimed, and the soil accumulated; as it has accumulated at Westminster, which is now nine feet above its old level.

Then, leaving the present Westminster a mere island in the Thames valley, at its widest and shallowest part, if we had, in these ancient days, continued westwards there would have been no permanently dry land, where now are Victoria and Pimlico, but only more marshes, until the low headland of Chelsea was reached, jutting out from the northern plateau at its western end, whither we tracked it above.

So we have seen that of the present site of London north of the Thames, in the beginning of its history, a large part of the south-west was uninhabitable marsh or tidal lands; and it had, for its dry backbone, a plateau cut through by four clearly marked streams, the Walbrook, the Fleet, the Tyburn, and the Westbourne, with sharply cut valleys and well defined slopes. The ground of London was, in short, a very different thing from the smoothly graded streets and gently sloping sides and dry valleys and viaducts which have to-day reduced the surface to a level uniformity, which will only reveal its former state to the inquisitive eye.

But the south side of the Thames would be still more startling if we could go back to visit it as it was when the Romans built the walls of London. All the land between the curl of the Thames southwards at Deptford, and its curl northwards at Fulham, was then marsh land; some of it continually under water, some of it covered at high tide, and just a few dry places or islands which are recorded for us by their present names. Thus the “ey” in Bermondsey and the “ea” of Battersea are the same word which we have seen to denote “island” in Hackney and Thorney, and perhaps Chelsea. There were other dry spots, no doubt, of which Southwark was one; but the rest was marsh and water until one came to the rising hills south behind Deptford, Peckham, and Camberwell.

When the first Romans reached the place, there was little to be seen southward from the hill above Walbrook (where they first settled on the north back) except swamps and coarse river meadows, until the eye reached the hills almost three miles away. On the east and west it was much the same. This state of affairs was changed chiefly by the embankments built by the Romans themselves: these reclamations may even have commenced before they came.

But the tendency of a great town's history is always to drain away the river and the swamp, to level the hill and fill up the valley; and this has been the event in the case of London. Nevertheless, the distinctive geographical personalities of river and hill and valley, are still not wholly obliterated; and we shall understand London's human history all the better if we first grasp its physical history. Perhaps the most vivid way of realising the physical conditions which lie beneath the surface is to quote the words of Stow, writing in the intermediate period, when man was not so paramount: “In the year 1242 the Thames, overflowing the banks about Lambeth, drowned houses and fields, by the space of six miles, so that in the great hall at Westminster men took to their horses, because the water ran over all.” Thus for a brief time London went back to the time of the Romans.

SECTION II

ROMAN LONDON

THE patriots may resent the fact, but it is generally admitted that the first substantial foundation of London was a Roman city; or, if they can argue round this beginning, then the credit must be given to the earlier Celtic ancestors of the Irish, and Welsh, and the Scotch Highlanders. In any case, London was a well-established place before the Anglo-Saxon race appeared on the scene; and the patriot usually means Teutonic blood when he speaks of his own.

It is useless to give much space to Celtic London, which was there when the Romans arrived. Something of a settlement there almost certainly was; for remains of it have been discovered along the banks at the mouth of the Walbrook; which we have already seen was an open river in early times. When we arrive at Cannon Street Station we are probably in the near neighbourhood of the first Celtic London. Perhaps the most important remnant of it, is its name; for amongst other conjectures, the word London has been traced to a Celtic compound, Llyn-din, which means the stronghold-by-the-lake (Llyn = lake, din = a fort or hill). That conjecture has a rival; for some trace the origin of the name to Lud, a Celtic water-god; who is also recorded on the River Severn, by a place named Lydney, and, some say, by Ludgate (q.v.). From the fact that the Roman adopted a Celtic name, it is highly probable that there was already a town or settlement of appreciable size to enforce its name as an established thing. If the first derivation is correct, then it certainly was an appropriate one for the marshy banks of the early Thames, which we have considered above.

But leaving a question of some doubt, London makes its first appearance in positive history in the year A.D. 61, when it was sacked by the followers of the rebel Boadicea, who had risen against the Roman rulers. Tacitus, the Roman historian (who was then living), describes “Londinium, a place which is not indeed dignified with the name of a Colonia, but which is greatly celebrated for the number of its merchants and the abundance of its supplies.” It was probably to this Londinium that the Britons had fled before the Roman army in A.D. 43; though Dion Cassius, who records the fact, does not mention it by name (and he did not write until about 222). It is obvious that such a flourishing commercial town as Tacitus describes, must have had some considerable space of time in which to develop. Cæsar says nothing of it, but that is by no means conclusive proof that it did not exist in his time. Still, it may have been to a protected position rather than to a town that the Briton fled in 43, as noted above.

There is a little doubt whether this Roman London was on the north bank of the Thames, where stands the City to-day; or on the south bank, at Southwark. This doubt was suggested by the statement of Ptolemy (writing about A.D. 150) that London was in Kent. There have been plenty of Roman remains discovered under Southwark; so it is possible that just at the beginning, before London Bridge was built, the southern town may have been the main one; and the borough of Southwark may be older than its greater neighbour. But it was on the north bank that the first great buildings were erected. There was a good reason why the Romans should concentrate round this spot of London Bridge; it was at once the narrowest crossing for a bridge, and the ground on the bank was the highest and dryest for a long distance along the river, both ways. The combination of these two facts may be regarded as the secret of London's early rise to fame. The Roman Ermine Street, from the North of England, points down to the Bridge; so this latter was almost certainly as old as the road, which otherwise would have been more likely to aim at the Ford at Thorney Island, afterwards Westminster, where the other great Roman Road, afterwards called Watling Street, the earliest to be made, had crossed at first.

The centre core of the early Roman London was probably a great fort or legionary camp lying between Cannon Street Station and the Tower of London as its south front, and extending back to the neighbourhood of Cornhill; with the Walbrook for its western boundary. Round this centre, accumulated the town with its villas and official residences; while on the southern bank round Southwark the process of embanking and reclaiming was also proceeding.

But for a long time there was no wall encircling the whole settlement on the north bank of the Thames. It was probably not until the third century, after London had been rescued from the Picts and Scots by Theodosius, in A.D. 367, that the great walls were built; which survived as the boundary and defence of London over a thousand years, and made London one of the safest towns in Europe, and consequently a great place of merchants. Nevertheless, the evidence of the exact date of the first wall is very slight, and it has also been ascribed to the middle of the second century. Perhaps it will be sufficient to rest here with the knowledge that when the Romans deserted this country in A.D. 412, they left a walled London behind them.

To what extent they left behind anything else but their memory is one of the squabbling grounds of history. Sir Lawrence Gomme, in a most brilliant book, “The Governance of London,” maintains that the Londoners, safe within their walls, were never really conquered by the Saxons and Danes, who ruled outside during the next six hundred years. On this argument, London was able to assert its independence as its own lord and king; and for its kingdom, the same territorium which had been allotted to it under the Roman government. By a weight of cumulative evidence, this writer makes out a most powerful case for the unbroken continuity of London since Roman days. For example, the continued reverence for the London Stone (q.v.); the rectangular crossings of the main portion of the old streets (as in a Roman city); the public character immemorially attached to Leadenhall (q.v.); the building of St Paul's on the site of a Roman temple to Diana; the continuation of the walls and the gates; the name of St Martin Pomroy Church (q.v.), combined with the fact that it stood on a spot where must have been the usual pomœrium, the unbuilt-on space which always lay outside a Roman city; the further extraordinary coincidence that gladiators’ tridents have been discovered in the area which was still used in mediæval times as a place for sports, the Bear Garden in Southwark. All these topographical facts, and a further argument based on legal and political evidence, must be carefully considered in any estimate of Roman London, and its influence on the subsequent history of the town.

SECTION III

SAXON LONDON

ON the other hand, there are those who hold that London, deserted by the Roman arms, fell a prey to the invading Saxons, and other Teutonic races; and, since it was not desired by its country loving conquerors, it was left desolate for generations until the Teutons adopted a town life. It is only possible here to give the historical facts in outline.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, writing of the year 456, tells how the Saxons defeated the Britains at Crayford, whereupon the vanquished “with much fear fly to London-borough.” Then the curtain falls on the written history of London until Bede tells us that Mellitus was made Bishop of London in the year 604; “to preach to the province of the East Saxons, who are divided from Kent by the river Thames and border on the eastern sea. Their metropolis is the city of Lundonia, which is placed on the bank of that river, and is the mart of many nations resorting to it by land and sea. At that time, Sebert, nephew to Ethelbert through his sister Ricula, reigned over the nation, though he was under subjection to Ethelbert, who had command over all the nations of the English as far north as the Humber. But when this province also received the word of truth by the preaching of Mellitus, King Ethelbert built the church of St Paul the Apostle, in the city of Lundonia, where he and his successors should have their episcopal see.” So the silence of over one hundred and fifty years is broken with the most detailed record of London, so far written in history. What had happened during those intervening years is a matter of indirect evidence or no evidence at all. One thing seems clear, that Ethelbert would not have built a cathedral to minister to empty houses or ruins.

But the Londoners did not settle down to their newly imposed faith with sobriety; and in a few years Mellitus was driven out. The process of conversion was repeated in 652; again they reverted; and again the church of St Paul's was reopened for Christian services in 664. From that time the services have ever continued in this chief church of the City; for when the Danes arrived they rarely got within the walls, but were more often driven off by force of arms or by the payment of a ransom.

These struggles with the Danes need not be repeated here; suffice it to say that in the year 884 Alfred the Great drove them off with such energy that they left London in peace, while Alfred repaired the walls and began, probably, some systematic reorganisation of the City government. After this year, 884, at the latest, London was never seized by an enemy by force of arms. Even the mighty Sweyn and Cnut never broke down its defences, and they had to do their business by treaty; combined with as much hard hitting as they could do outside the walls.

In the year 886 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that: “King Alfred restored London; and all the Anglo-race turned to him that were not in the bondage of the Danish men; and he then committed the burh to the keeping of the Aldorman Æthelred,” who seems to have been one of the Earls of Mercia. There is a little doubt whether this word burh, or burgh, denotes the whole town of London, or only a castle or citadel within its walls. In this latter case, it must be taken as the first building of the Tower of London. But it is more probable that it describes the first serious interference of the Wessex kings, who were now the English kings, in the affairs of London; in other words, it may be considered as the beginning of London's rise to be the capital of England, which was still the theoretical right of Winchester, the chief seat of the Wessex dominion. In the reign of Athelstan, Alfred's grandchild, the King built a house for his own use within the walls of London, and it may have been the origin of the building in the street which is now called Addle Street; but which can be clearly traced to an early form of Adel and, still earlier, Atheling Street, meaning the street of the royal born (v. Aldermanbury).

It was also in Athelred's reign that a city frith-guild was formed by the citizens, with an elaborate code of rules for the provision of mutual defence. This guild had its guild-hall as a place of assembly for consultation and also for feasting. In both particulars it may not be very rash to see in it the first establishment of some kind of City government and the first Guildhall (q.v.). It is even possible that the Aldermanbury, or house of the aldermen, which gave a name to a street which still bears it, may have been this hall; in which case the present Guildhall is almost on the same spot as this first guildhall of the tenth century. Dr Reginald Sharpe, in his “London and the Kingdom,” points out that this guild bears the impress of having been imposed on the City by a dominant power; in other words, he seems to regard it as a measure of national police. If this be so, it is interesting to remember that the executive offices of the guild and the royal palace were (on the above suggestions) neighbouring buildings.

The reign of Ethelred the Unready (978-1016) was a period of repeated Danish assaults, which never broke through the walls, as we have said; but it is only fair to add that by this time the Londoners were often ready to pay ransoms for their city. Yet when Sweyn tried his very hardest to break the walls in 1012, because Ethelred was hiding within them, he could not do so. But after a year's triumphal march over England, he returned; and London came to terms, and acknowledged him as King. When Sweyn died, his son Cnut succeeded; but the English sent for Ethelred again. He came accompanied by Olaf, the King of Norway (so their traditional story goes), who charged with his boats against London Bridge, which was crowded with Danish soldiers; whereupon the bridge was pulled down by cables attached to Olaf's vessels; and to this day remains the song of “London Bridge is broken down,” which everyone does not know is a Norwegian poem.

ST CLEMENT DANES

But though the Danes were thus driven out of London for a time, Ethelred was too timid to fight his enemies in the open field; so he remained behind its safe walls; and Cnut was marching on the City when Ethelred died within it, and was buried in St Paul's, 1016. The Witan and the citizens of London immediately elected Edmund king. It was then that Cnut sailed up the Thames to attack London; and being stopped by the bridge, he is said to have cut a canal from Bermondsey to Battersea, across the low lying marshes. But even when he was thus able to attack the City on both sides of the bridge, he was repulsed. However, Edmund soon agreed to divide the kingdom; and when Cnut succeeded to the whole, on Edmund's death, the Dane made a splendid king and London prospered under him.

It was under the rule of Cnut that the Danish settlements in the neighbourhood of London began to develop; though both the village of St Clement Danes, between London and Westminster, and the town or “wark” of Southwark had been in existence as Danish centres before (the latter, as we have seen, began in Roman times at latest), yet a recognised Danish king on the throne almost certainly caused these suburbs of London to grow into substantial places. Indeed, we may call this the beginning of the London suburban dwellers, though they were very different from the City clerks who are representative of that type to-day. It is possible that Cnut may have been the first king to build a royal palace at Westminster, so that he might be near his own people at St Clement's. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells of the City's attitude in the words: “The Londoners made a truce with the army [of Cnut] and bought themselves peace; and the army brought their ships to London, and took them winter-quarters therein” (1016).

The reign of Edward the Confessor (1042-1066), the last of the Saxon kings, is a landmark in the history of London. His love for Westminster, made that place the greatest royal palace in the neighbourhood of London; for there is no reason to think that Athelstan's house in the City was anything but a temporary home during the fleeting visits which would be necessary from time to time. But Edward the Confessor's systematic adoption of the precints of Westminster Abbey as his regular residence did more than anything else to give London a practical supremacy over the theoretical right of Winchester to be considered the capital city. Alfred the Great had made it a custom to hold two meetings of the Witan in London each year; and his successors had continued to hold their councils there at intervals. In Edward's reign six meetings are recorded in London. But it was the King's persistent residence at Westminster which had the greatest effect in strengthening the power of the great trading community which lay so near the Court. Westminster Palace was henceforth to remain the chief seat of the kings until the present day; for in after years they did nothing more than shift their palaces to different parts of the same manor of Westminster. Whitehall, St James's, Buckingham Palace, are all in the historical parish attached to Westminster Abbey, which was the parish of the Confessor also.

We have pointed out the possibility that Cnut may have had a palace at Westminster, but in the case of Edward we reach certainty; and with this palace and the great Abbey, which he rebuilt on almost as large a scale as it is to-day, the Isle of Thorney becomes a place of the first importance in history. But be it remembered, it was not yet London, or even a part of it, in the strict case; it was a separate town, with which the governors of London had nothing to do. It began as the house of a religious society, near which a pious king built himself a home; and as a place of kings and monks and priests, it continued to exist so long as it had any individuality. So that the reign of Edward the Confessor gave London at once its recognised supremacy and its nearest great neighbour.

SECTION IV

THE NORMANS AND THEIR TOWER

WHEN William became the Conqueror at Hastings, it was to London that the chiefs of the defeated army fled. The position of London at this moment is suggestive of its strength. William marched upon it, but ventured no further than to burn the town of Southwark; the intervening river, the walls of London, and the number of its inhabitants were too great an obstacle to allow of more drastic acts. Then, having gained time to consider the situation, the citizens of London took a chief place in making William King of England. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says: “There came to meet him Archbishop Eldred and Edgar Child, and Earl Edwin and Earl Morcar, and all the best men of London…and they gave hostages, and swore oaths to him; and he promised that he would be a kind lord to them.” So instead of storming London, William granted it a charter acknowledging its privileges. The often quoted words cannot be omitted here: “William, King, greets William the Bishop and Gosfregdh the Portreeve, and all the burgesses within London, French and English, friendly. And I give you to know that I will that ye be all of those laws worthy that ye were in King Edward's day. And I will that every child be his father's heir after his father's day; and I will not suffer that any man offer you any wrong. God keep you.” This first charter of London stil exists and is preserved in the Guildhall. It will be seen that it did not propose to make any change in the government of London. In another charter (now lost) he confirmed to the citizens their city and the sheriff rights thereover. In fact, the Conquest made no very sudden break in the history of this town; it did not have nearly so radical an effect as Edward the Confessor's buildings at Westminster.

If there is one event of this period which stands out before another, it is the establishment of the Tower as a royal castle within the walls of London. It was William's first act to have this erected in a temporary form; and until this was finished he retired to Barking, a few miles outside the City. It was not until the next reign that the White Tower was completed in stone, as it now stands; but the Conqueror gave the orders for its erection; and his temporary structure was sufficient to mark definitely the beginning of that more autocratic rule of the Crown over London which was to take the place of its independent position in earlier days. The Tower of London is not a part of the City, it is an intruder from without; perhaps it will be more accurate to say that, standing half within the walls and half without them, its physical position was like its legal position. Some say that Alfred had built a Tower on this same place; it is doubtful, but if he did so, it was built as a protection against the Danes; William's Tower was built for the subduing of the City, not for its defence; a very radical distinction.

In 1087 the cathedral of St Paul's was destroyed, with a large part of London, in the great fire of that year; and then began the extensive rebuilding which became, in the course of years, the great church of the mediæval period, which stood until it was destroyed in the great fire of London. At this time, also, began the foundation of a large number of the parish churches of the City.

TOWER OF LONDON

Chapel of St John, in the White Tower

SECTION V

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE CROWN: AND THE FOUNDATION OF A FORMAL CONSTITUTION

IT was Henry I. who made the next great mark in the history of the town, by the grant of a new charter, about 1101. It put the county of Middlesex under the power of a sheriff who was henceforth to be chosen by the City: and for this right the City was to pay a rent of £300 yearly, which the King considered an equivalent for his previous revenue from the county. Beyond this, the citizens were to appoint their own Justiciar, who should judge in all cases in which the King's pleas were concerned; and they were to be exempt from any obligation to appear in courts of justice beyond their own walls. This charter, with the one of John which we shall soon see, probably marks the high-water mark of London's independence of the Crown and its officers. Since the Roman days it had been to a large extent a little state by itself, never subject to any Comes or Earl as were the counties; while the other towns were in the domain of the King or some great lord. Here, London is recognised to be not only its own master, but it is made the sheriff of the county of Middlesex as well. This self-government by the citizens, or rather by their powerful men (who often looked after their own personal class interests first), without the State control and national legislation which exists to-day, must be carefully remembered by the student of London's affairs. But, of course, this local independence is a common feature, in varying degrees, of all mediæval social organisation, and London is merely an extreme example. And yet, on the other hand, there was the Royal Tower looming behind. So the position must not be overstated. Indeed, the next kings, until John's second charter, paid no attention to this grant by Henry I., and appointed the sheriffs themselves. One can do a great deal with towers and arms in the background.

But if the citizens of London obtained their right to a wide independence of the national government, they had no intention of giving up, in exchange, any control they possessed over it; so we find them taking a very prominent part in the contest between Stephen and Matilda for the crown. They favoured the former; and when they were compelled by force of circumstances to receive Matilda within their walls as their Queen, they only bore with her for a few days, after which they rose; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that: “The London folk would take her, and she fled and lost thus much.” But not content with having driven her from their City, the Londoners went out to besiege Winchester, which was in her favour, and that city was taken mainly by their great aid. So mighty was the position of London at this time that when the citizens were approached on Matilda's behalf, they were called “quasi optimates,” i.e. “great nobles on account of the greatness of their city.” But this great City was sadly scoured by the fire of 1136; which spread from London Stone to the Cathedral (it is doubtful how much of it was destroyed), and eastwards to Aldgate; and also burnt London Bridge; and it is well to remember that in a city at that time mainly built of wood and thatch, a fire of this kind meant almost entire annihilation of the parts touched. It is only in the reign of Richard I. that we come to a regulation, issued in 1189, commanding all houses to be built of stone in the lower parts and roofed with slate or tiles.

The reigns of Richard I. (1189-1199) and John (1199-1216) were of great importance in the history of London; and out of the somewhat confusing mass of deeds and records of this period stands the formal recognition, on the 8th day of October 1191, that the City of London was a “communa” or self-governing commune. The events which led up to this acknowledgment must be given briefly, for they make an illuminating page in the history of this town.

Richard had gone off on his favourite pastime of Crusading in Palestine; leaving William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, as his chief minister in England. Longchamp settled his headquarters in the Tower of London, which he strengthened by the addition of a moat, and then behaved in the high-handed manner sometimes practised by entrenched persons. John, the King's brother, saw his chance of playing on the feelings of the oppressed, so he began to pose as their defender. Longchamp appealed to the citizens to denounce John as a plotter against his brother's throne; but the citizens, on the whole, inclined to John, who immediately came to London, while Longchamp shut himself up in the Tower and awaited the development of events. On the morning of the 8th of October, the great bell of St Paul's Churchyard, the place of assembly of the citizens’ folkmoot, called the people together, and they heard John and the barons depose Longchamp from his office of Chancellor of England. Then these aforesaid barons and John, and also the bishops who were present, announced to the assembled people that they “granted to the citizens of London their commune, and swore that they would guard it with the privileges of the City of London, so long as it might be pleasing to the King. And the citizens of London and the bishops, earls, and barons swore fealty to the King Richard, and to John his brother, and that they would receive him as their lord and successor if so be that Richard should die without offspring.” On the following morning John, at the head of the citizens, went to the space outside the Tower walls and informed the Chancellor that he was deposed, and he came out a beaten man and left England.

Now the true significance of these events is by no means clear. Records exist which credit London as a commune with its distinctive officer, a mayor, before this acknowledgment by John. The truth probably is that it was only a formal acceptance of a state of affairs which was already an accomplished fact. We must realise that London had claimed immemorially to be an independent unit in the State, and its charters were almost always the acknowledgment, by the ever-strengthening Royal power, of a code of laws and regulations which the under kingdom of London had already made its customary procedure. The term “commune” was at that time the recognised word to describe the great cities of the continent, which were on an equality with the great feudal barons, being almost independent kingdoms. It is probable that London had already almost a similar rank in England; which John, in the hopes of gaining favour in the eyes of the powerful citizens, expressed by the most suggestive word in the scope of municipal terminology. It is not, in short, by any means certain that London, by this acknowledgment, became any more independent than it was before; it was rather, perhaps, that the Royal power was growing sufficiently strong to declare whether or not it deigned to allow this independence to continue.

But with this warning against attaching too much importance to a formal acceptance of what may, after all, have been an established fact before; still it is necessary to realise that about this period, sooner or a little later, London did adopt that form of municipal government by a mayor and aldermen, with a popular assembly of some kind to authorise their acts, which has existed to the present day in a modified form, with its substantial outlines the same. The first recorded Mayor is the Henry Fitz-Eylwin of Londenestane (i.e. who lived near London Stone [q.v.]), who held office from 1188 until his death nearly twenty-five years afterwards. Here, again, we find a mayor in fact, some time before he is first recognised in theory by the fifth charter of John (1215) in the words: “We have granted to our barons of our City of London that they may choose to themselves each year a mayor who to us may be faithful, discreet, and proper for the government of the City, provided that when he shall be chosen he shall be presented to us or our justiciar.” But the mayor had been already referred to in the fourth charter of John (1202) by the opening words: “Know ye that at the request of our mayor and citizens of London.” However, the point of the 1215 charter may have been the annual election.

It was in 1200 that the first record appears of a council of “five and twenty of the most discreet men of the city” who were “sworn to take council on behalf of the city together with the mayor.” Here some find the first formal record of the Court of Aldermen, for about this time (by 1230 at latest) the wards of the City were already established in their present number (except the Farringdon Without ward, formed in 1393, and Southwark or Bridge Without in 1550); so that the twenty-five men may have been the representatives of the twenty-four wards that then existed, with the odd man for some privileged place or person not recorded, or for some ward which was absorbed by another, for they were often bought and sold. But the aldermen were as old as the wards, and a list of these is in existence for 1130; and they were probably of immemorial age at that time. So, here again, we can only think of the council of 1200 as perhaps the first record of a body which had existed long before. Mr Round, however, holds that the twenty-five were akin to the echevins of Rouen; and that they were the origin of the common councillors rather than of the aldermen.

We have just seen that John uses the term “barons of London” in his charter of 1215; and when we recall the part which London had taken in the matter of the Great Charter, we see the propriety of the title. For it was in the heart of the City that the agitation began; when the barons assembled in St Paul's Cathedral on the 25th of August 1213, and Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, placed before them the Charter of Liberties which their ancestors had received from Henry I., and asked them to take measures to maintain the same. The first conference between John and the barons took place in the Temple (q.v.) just outside the City; and when it broke up without any agreement, it was the Castellain or Chief Constable of the City, Robert Fitz-Walter, whom the barons chose as their leader (v. Baynard's Castle). Finally, when the Charter was signed, the Mayor of London was one of the twenty-five nobles appointed to see that the terms were carried into effect, his name being the only one on the list which was not of baronial rank. So the rulers of London were well entitled to their “courtesy” title of barons, for in fact they played the part of such.

SECTION VI

FITZSTEPHEN'S LONDON OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY

HAVING thus glanced at the political evolution of the City of London up to the centre of the Middle Ages, when it had settled down with the main characteristics of that period, it is now a favourable moment to endeavour to visualise the physical condition of the city in its topographical aspect. It is a convenient moment, because at the end of the twelfth century William Fitz-Stephen, the clerk and friend of Thomas à Becket, wrote a description of London in his introduction to the life of his late master. The date of the writer's own death was about 1190, so his survey of London refers to its condition at the end of Henry II.’s reign. Amongst some vague and glowing periods, which cannot be taken too seriously, Fitzstephen's summary gives us a valuable picture which, with other information, enables us to see the London of that moment as a living thing, and not merely a topographical antiquity.

He tells us of “the great wall of the City, having seven double gates and set with towers on the north side at intervals.” These gates at the Tower, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate, had probably all been there in the Roman walled City, though only Bishopsgate and Newgate, and, perhaps, Aldersgate, are quite certainly of Roman origin. It was this wall which formed the boundary of Fitzstephen's city, for there were no suburbs of London in his day except the thin line of houses beginning in the neighbourhood of the present Fleet Street and reaching to Westminster. What was not inside the walls was, with slight exceptions, not London at all to the men and women of the twelfth century. Westminster was the King's town and the Abbot's domain, alike a rival to the London merchants and to the churchmen of St Paul's, the City's church. At the south end of London Bridge was another town called Southwark, which had no connection with London in any legal sense. It was not under the jurisdiction of the City rulers, but under the private rule of several ecclesiastical priories and the Crown and its great barons, who were no more under the control of London than the citizens of Timbuctoo are to-day.

Beyond Southwark lay the hamlets of Bermondsey, Lambeth, Kennington, Battersea, Camberwell and Peckham, Greenwich, Lewisham Lee, Balham, and several others, which are now part of London, but which it would not have entered Fitzstephen's head to mention in a description of his City. On the west side were Rugmere and St Giles (a sort of early Bloomsbury), St Pancras, Tyburn, afterwards Marylebone, Kensington, Chelsea, and Fulham; all country villages or large farms. Within half a mile of the north gate at Bishopsgate was the hamlet of Hoxton, quite apart from London and belonging to St Paul's, and within a mile was Islington. On the north-west was the hamlet of Hampstead. On the east was the great manor of Stepney, in which, by this time, little hamlets were beginning to spring up, such as the Danish settlement of Hacon at Hackney (q.v.). But all these encircling towns and hamlets were outside Fitzstephen's London.

He tells of the “Palatine Castle very great and strong” on the east side, and the fear with which the mediæval townsmen thought of the Tower seems hidden behind his tale, that its walls are “fixed with a mortar tempered by the blood of animals.” Then, on the west, he mentions the “two towers very strongly fortified”: these were Baynard Castle (q.v.); and Montfiquit Tower, also on the wall, and slightly to the north of the original Baynard Castle, which lay at the south-west corner of the wall, at the mouth of the Fleet River, where it ran into the Thames. It thus exactly corresponded to the position of the Tower of London at the south-east corner of the wall.

Then he writes that “to the west the royal palace (of Westminster) is seen rising above the river, an incomparable building with ramparts and bulwarks, two miles from the city, joined to it by a populous suburb.” Half way along this suburban road, which is now Fleet Street and the Strand, Fitzstephen might have mentioned St Clement Danes (q.v.), and the Danish settlement of Aldwych, which by this time had probably lost its distinctively foreign character, and had perhaps become somewhat decayed. One of the most important facts which Fitzstephen tells us of the City is that in London and the suburbs were “thirteen greater conventual churches besides one hundred and twenty-six lesser parish churches.” These were for the service of, at the highest figure (a contemporary calculation by an archdeacon of London), not more than forty thousand inhabitants. To deal with the parish churches first. We have records of at least fourteen of these before the end of the eleventh century, and some were very old indeed, for example, St Alban, Wood Street (q.v.); and St Peter's, Cornhill (q.v.), as was St Andrew's, Holborn. Of course we must not think of all these parish churches as very fine buildings; many of them were probably wooden buildings at this time, and if we look at St Ethelburga in Bishopsgate Street to-day, we can feel certain that Fitzstephen would have regarded it as quite a substantial erection. But since the great fire of 1136 some of the churches had probably been rebuilt with stone.

GATEWAY OF ST JOHN'S PRIORY, CLERKENWELL

Of the conventual churches, thirteen in number, the greater proportion were without the walls. They included Westminster Abbey, with its monastery; the Hospital of St Giles, the Templars in Fleet Street, where they were just establishing themselves, the priory of the Knights of St John at Clerkenwell, and the nunnery of Clerkenwell within a few paces of it, and St Bartholomew's Priory was a little to the south-east; outside the east wall was St Katherine's Hospital, and over the river were St Mary Overy Priory and Bermondsey Priory. The conventual churches within the walls, to which Fitzstephen must refer, at this time were only St Martin-le-Grand, by St Paul's, and the priory of Holy Trinity, by Aldgate, unless St Helen's, Bishopsgate, was founded a few years earlier than the usually accepted date, or it may be the old nunnery at Elsing Spital, which he includes. Which were the other two or three to make up Fitzstephen's list is a little uncertain. But the above names give a basis for rebuilding this early London in the mind's eye. We can visit to-day some remnant, or its direct descendant, of almost all the one hundred and twenty-six parish churches, and of the thirteen “greater” churches which Fitzstephen recorded about 1180.

The description of the surrounding country is very tantalising to those of us who have to put up with a wilderness of bricks and mortar instead. Fitzstephen says: “On the north side of the city are pastures and pleasant meadow land, through which flow river streams, where the mill wheels turn with a cheerful sound. Very near thereto lies a great forest, with its woodland pastures, the lair of wild animals, stags, fallow deer, boars and wild bulls. The tilled lands of the city are not on barren gravel, but fat plains like those of Asia, that make fertile crops.” These forests were to continue until long after, as we shall see.

Another marked feature of Fitzstephen's London was the group of wells: “Excellent springs in the outskirts, with sweet, wholesome and clear water that flows rippling over the bright stones; among them, Holywell, Clerken Well, and St Clement's are held of most note. They are visited by great numbers, chiefly of the scholars and youths of the city, whither they go out for fresh air on summer evenings.” He also gives a vivid description of the weekly horse and agricultural fair held every Friday at Smithfield.

The historian also notes that it was the custom of the City, as was the general case in mediæval municipal organisation, to group the trades of the town into distinctive places. He does not give us particulars of these localities, merely remarking: “Those engaged in the divers occupations, sellers of wares, contractors of varied work, go each morning to their several districts and shops.” But the details we can find for ourselves by walking along such a place as Cheapside, noting the the names of the streets which lead from it; there is Bread Street, Friday Street (where they sold the fast day fish), Milk Street, Honey Lane, Ironmonger Lane, and Bow Lane, which was formerly called Cordwainer Street, the locality of the cordwainers.

In short, we see in Fitzstephen's description the basis of the London which during the next three hundred years was to show these marked characteristics which are the essential points of mediæval society. If one can give any short definition of what is meant by the “Middle Ages,” it may perhaps be termed the period when society was formed round the Baron, the Guild, and the Church. In London we can trace the development of all three. During the next one hundred and fifty years the Craft Guilds are rapidly rising in power, until they practically control the City government. When the friars arrive, during the first half of the thirteenth century, in their assorted colours of black, grey, and white, they add another heavy-weight to the already overwhelming bulk of the Church. As for the barons, they demonstrate their evolution by gradually clearing out of the City as its lords, at least remaining merely as the owners of town houses for use during the London season, or whatever corresponded in mediæval times to that elaborate social plumage display. Their chief use for these City houses was, of course, during the sitting of Parliament or the royal councils. As for the control of the City Council, it gradually passed out of a class which was very closely allied to the country gentry, as they would now call themselves, and settled down in the hands of a new social group of “middle class” merchants and aldermen of the craft guilds, whose interests were centered very much more in trading rather than in the ownership of land. Yet we must not exaggerate the difference between the two classes during the mediaeval period. Dick Whittington, London's show mayor, was probably the son of a Gloucestershire knight. Nevertheless, the broad fact should be remembered that, whereas the Barons of John's reign made London their headquarters during their struggle for Magna Carta, in the Civil War of Charles I.’s time, to take a long jump for the sake of a clear contrast, London represents a body of traders who are of the opinion that the courtly lords are their deadly foes. It is interesting to take another forward leap to our own days, when the distinction between land and merchant capital is now being obliterated: the great financial magnate of the City is often also a peer of the realm, and the peer is often engaged in a trade which in mediæval times would have made him an alderman of his craft guild.

But at the period which we have reached in our rapid survey, the end of the twelfth century, we find London magnates still, in the main, basing their position on the possession of land. Sometimes this property is legally called a “soke,” or private little kingdom, with privileges of a very complete kind, giving it rights of self-government. Such, for example, was the soke of Baynard Castle, the property of the Fitzwalters, the Castellans or Marshals of the City. Or, if these great magnates of London are not exactly the owners of a soke, they are the owners of the wards which in the early lists are almost always called after the names of their aldermen; thus Farringdon Ward still bears the name of the William Farringdon who bought the ward from John le Fevre in 1279, at which time it included both the part inside and the part outside the walls, i.e., the Holborn and Fleet Street districts. Again, Bassinghall Ward takes its name from the Bassings who had their haw or house there about Fitzstephen's period. As we have said, in early days it was customary to describe the wards by their owners’ names; thus we read in a list of the city possession of St Paul's Cathedral, drawn up about the year 1130, of the Wards of Hacon, of Alwold, of Edward Parole, of Hugo the son of Ulgar, of Sperling, and so on. It does not necessarily follow that, in all these cases, the alderman was the owner of the land of the ward; his right was probably to collect the tolls or dues, as a sheriff collected the taxes of a shire. The aldermen may have bought the right to collect the ward taxes; as a borough bought or farmed the royal rents of its town.

In any case, we must not think of the London of Fitzstephen's day as a united community, all under the common guidance of a mayor and corporation, for there were some lordly domains where their masters lived almost like little kings. But these lay “liberties” or privileged places soon disappeared after this time. However, there were left an increasing number of ecclesiastical liberties—such as St Martin-le-Grand—which remained sanctuaries from the law until the modern period, as we shall see (v. St Martin-le-Grand, Whitefriars, Blackfriars, etc). All around the City and its few overflow districts beyond the walls, the neighbouring lands of Middlesex were, in Fitzstephen's time, mainly in the hands of the Church. Thus, the manor of Stepney, which now makes up almost the whole of what we call the “East End” of London, was the rural domain of the Bishop of St Paul's; to which Cathedral likewise belonged St Pancras and its district, and the manor of Rugmere, which was what we should now call New Oxford Street and its neighbourhood. Almost the whole of the present “West End,” except Marylebone, which belonged to the Abbey of Barking, and Kensington, which belonged to the Abbots of Abingdon, was the great manor belonging to St Peter's Abbey of Westminster, any intrusion into which, by the powers at the Guildhall, would have caused the whole fabric of municipal affairs to rock to its foundations. So that the Londoners of this time were invaded by the Church inside the walls and surrounded by her without.

SECTION VII

THE RISE OF THE CRAFT GUILDS

WITH this attempt to note some of the main elements which lay below the surface of Fitzstephen's London, we will continue its more general history in the years which succeeded him. We have seen that London won a formal acknowledgment of its mayor within a year or two of Fitzstephen's death. But it was not a very substantial gain, for Henry III. and Edward I. were continually performing an autocratic process termed, “taking the city into the king's hand,” which consisted in driving the mayor out of office and appointing a royal officer, termed a “custos,” or warden, to take his place and rule according to the royal will. So naturally, when the barons began to press the King for political reforms, the City of London took their side by way of revenge. But the lords were little better than the King, they soon discovered. So when Henry appeared in 1260, to take up his residence at the Tower, the citizens made the rebellious Simon Montfort, Earl of Leicester, with his ally, the young Prince Edward, wait outside to lodge as best they could in the suburbs; and it was a deputation of the men of London that Henry sent to Dover, in 1263 to negotiate with the barons.

But by this time Edward had returned to his father's side, and, in order to raise some money for him, he raided the Templars’ house in Fleet Street (v. Temple), where was a great store of jewels and coins, for the Templars often acted as the bankers of that time, being able to defend their holdings, which was the chief function of successful banking in those unruly days. The citizens, imagining that their turn might come next, showed what they thought of this unlawful conduct by throwing mud on the Queen's head, as she passed under London Bridge on her way from the Tower to Windsor. To this Henry replied by refusing to accept FitzThomas as mayor, when he appeared for the confirmation of his third election.

This FitzThomas serves as a convenient mark of a new era in the municipal constitution of London. Until his time, the government of the City had been rather in the hands of the landowners of the place, or their successors, the hereditary or purchasing aldermen of the wards. But behind the agitation which resulted in the acknowledgment of a right to a self-elected mayor, had been a rising of the trading classes, as against the territorial magnates. When FitzThomas first took office as mayor in 1261, he appears to have been the representative of this class of more modest tradesmen; he referred matters to the craftsmen, which before had been settled by the court of aldermen. In the words of a contemporary writer: “He so pampered the city populace that these called themselves ‘the commons of the people.’ In all he did, he acted and determined through them, saying, ‘Is it your will that so it should be?’ and if they answered, ‘Ya, ya,’ so it was done…. He had all the populace of the city summoned, telling them that the men of each craft must make such provisions as should be to their own advantage, and he himself would have the same proclaimed throughout the city and strictly observed.”

That is the first clear record of the beginning of the great power of the craft guilds in London, which, as we have said, is one of the distinctive marks of the period to which we are now coming. The above proclamation by FitzThomas was giving way to craft dominion with a vengeance. It was the King's refusal to acknowledge such an accommodating chief citizen that confirmed the Londoners in their alliance with the barons, and sent them to fight against the royal army at Lewis. On the 14th of May 1264 the battle was fought, when Edward revenged his insulted mother by chasing the men of London so far from the field that when he got back his father, the King, was routed and a prisoner. But the campaign had been such a serious drain on their time and money that the rulers of the City were only too glad to take an oath of fealty before Henry himself in St Paul's Cathedral in 1265. By this time FitzThomas was again accepted as mayor, and he added to his oath the qualification that he would keep it only “so long as you are willing to be to us a good king and lord.”

But by August of this year Simon Montfort, the heart and soul of the rebellious barons, was lying dead on the battlefield of Evesham, and Henry manifested his consciousness of renewed power by punishing London, “taking it into his hand” and appointing another warden. The City decided to send a deputation of submission, and it started for Windsor, only to meet a King's messenger coming to say that they must first submit their lives and goods, without any reservation of terms, to the royal good will; it was further stipulated that FitzThomas and the chief men of the city must attend in person before the King at Windsor, but with letters of safe conduct. The sequence was, and still remains, a mystery. Their first night in the castle was spent in the keep; then some of them were released, but FitzThomas was never seen again. There was neither confirmation of his death nor of his escape—there was merely a dead silence. Henry set out for London; there was wholesale confiscation of the property of sixty of the citizens, and a fine of twenty thousand marks on the whole city, which seemed rather a large sum to demand for the right to murder their mayor; which seems the most reasonable theory of FitzThomas's end. To Queen Eleanor was presented the right to the tolls of London Bridge, whereon they had insulted her.

It was not until 1270 that Henry restored to the City its right to a mayor, and its choice of the sheriffs for the town itself and for Middlesex, though the yearly rent was to be £400 instead of the £300 agreed by Henry I.

The return of the mayor was a signal for the struggle between the aldermen and the craft guilds to break out once more as in the time of FitzThomas. Walter Hervey was elected mayor in 1272, after a fierce struggle with the aldermen's party. Each day for a fortnight did Hervey present himself at Westminster with a great crowd of craftsmen, demanding his election, and the cry which reached the dying King's ears was: “We are the Commune. It is we who should choose the mayor. We will have none other than Hervey.” At last the aldermen withdrew and Hervey was accepted. In spite of all this turmoil of popular clamour, it is not so entirely certain that Hervey was the democrat he professed to be, or the people thought him. When, after a year of office, he was accused of illegal actions, it was said that the charters which he had given to the guilds were “solely made for the benefit of the wealthy men of those trades to which they were granted, and to the loss and undoing of the poor men of those trades, as also to the loss and undoing of all the other citizens and of the whole realm.” What he really seems to have done was to begin that formal recognition of the craft guilds, which so far had been living an unauthorised existence under the usual name of “adulterine” guilds. Henry II. had fined eighteen of these in 1180, on the grounds that they had never been legally licenced. They exercised, or attempted to exercise, a monopoly control over their trades, and in mediæval politics a right of monopoly could only be acquired by a charter, for which the higher powers, be they King or Barons or Church, could exact a payment in return. Now, said Hervey's opponents, he had granted charters without the consent of the aldermen, therefore they were illegal; and on this theory they were cancelled at the end of Hervey's year. In so far as they had given the favoured guilds a right to exclude from the trade all but their own members, to that extent they were “undemocratic.” But the new craft organisation was “in the air” of the social evolution of the time; and during the beginning of the fourteenth century, within thirty years of Hervey's defeat, we shall see the craft guilds gain great power.

SECTION VIII

THE GROWING STRENGTH OF THE CROWN OVER LONDON

EDWARD I. demonstrated very clearly, to those who considered the matter, that the days of free towns and licenced barons, and such like displays of local government, were passing rapidly away, and being supplanted by the stronger national power of the Crown. London, at least, had reason to understand this fact. For, when the mayor, in 1285, refused to attend (in his official capacity) the justiciar's sessions at the Tower, on the grounds that he had not received the legal notice, there was a scene in Court, and the judges immediately declared the mayoralty vacant, and that the City should be “taken into the king's hands.” The wardenship which then began lasted for thirteen years (1285-1298). It rather appears, reading between the lines, that this scene was carefully planned beforehand. To tell the truth, the City government had got into a tangle. The older rule by the territorial aldermen was passing away; there was a state of transition. As Mr Loftie has written: “The old families were gradually withdrawing into the country and leaving their claims to supremacy in the hands of a new class. Some of the aldermen sat by purchase, some by election, and a few by hereditary right.” On the other hand the guilds were not yet firmly seated in the saddle of power. The result was a great deal of chaos in the government of London; and disorder ruled.

The wardens, Sir Ralph of Sandwich and Sir John Briton, who held office by turns, were instructed by the King to “guard and guide the citizens according to their customs and liberties.” This instruction they appear to have obeyed; theirs was, in short, a benevolent despotism, and the City was probably never so well governed before. The sanitary condition was carefully considered, and improvements were made in many details; for example, in the cleansing of the streets and streams. In the summoning by Briton of “six discreet men” from each ward to recognise his wardenship, we probably have an early and rudimentary appearance of the Common Councillors (though these have been traced by Mr Round to the twenty-five men called together in 1200, as we have seen). Their first establishment was not for self government so much as for the convenience of the Crown (to recognise its officer), just as the first appearance of the House of Commons was not that they might pass laws, but rather that they should grant money to the King or register his wishes.

But the main trouble of Edward I. was a persistent want of money, and in return for a generous grant by the citizens of London, Edward removed the wardens and restored the right of electing the mayor of their own choice, 1298, when the City at once re-elected Henry de Waleys, who had been mayor several times before the long wardenship began. It is interesting to remember that, under the continental dominion of our early English kings, de Waleys had also been mayor of Bordeaux, for he was a wine-merchant and traded in those parts. London came out from its “despotism” distinctly the better for the episode; one very useful feature being that the ward divisions became fixed about this time, henceforth bearing a permanent name, and having a settled area.

SECTION IX

THE GEOGRAPHY OF THIRTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON

DURING the reign of Edward I. took place that expulsion of the Jews, in 1290, which had a considerable effect on the City of London, where they had hitherto possessed a reserved district allotted to them at the north-east end of Cheapside, which to this day bears the name of the Jewry. With the disappearance of this race of financiers, there was a counterbalancing rise of the Lombard merchants, who likewise gave to their district a name that has also continued until our own day in Lombard Street; which first appears in the records of the reign of the next king; though these Italians had probably arrived long before, originally as collectors of the Papal revenues.

While on this point, it is a good opportunity to mention that it is impossible to understand what kind of place old London was, unless we grasp how much it was divided up into distinct districts of one kind or another. This fact must have been peculiarly obvious at the time of which we are writing, for it was during the middle of the thirteenth century that the Friars obtained such large tracts of the City for their special preserves. The big corner at Blackfriars (q.v.), in the south-west, was now the Friary of the Dominicans; outside the walls, along the Thames, to the west, just off Fleet Street, was the district of the White Friars, between the royal house of Bridewell and another large domain belonging to the Templars. The still enclosed Temple (q.v.) is a very living example which remains to show us what a mediæval “liberty” meant. On the north-west side of the City, a large piece, between St Paul's and St Bartholomew's, was allotted to the Grey Friars (v. Christ Church); which, after the dissolution of the religious houses, remained as the Blue Coat School. These religious societies had appeared in London since Fitzstephen had surveyed it. Another large space, just within the north walls, had been given to the Augustine Friar-Hermits in 1253 (v. Austin Friars); and their church, or a part of it, is still in use for religious services. One other great religious foundation, with its enclosed district, dates from Henry III.’s reign, the Carthusian monastery, which now remains, with many of its monastic buildings still standing, under the name of the Charterhouse (q.v). These five great religious groups were added to the City during the hundred years which we have now covered since Fitzstephen's time, and they complete the main lines of its mediæval geography. After this there will be nothing to add of peculiar significance in the way of building, except a growth of the Fleet Street and Strand suburb and outside Cripplegate and a general filling up of the open spaces within the walls towards the north side. All to the south, by the Thames bank and up to St Paul's and Cheapside, had been closely packed in Fitzstephen's time, and long before, as a glance at the close clustering of the early parish churches in that district will immediately demonstrate. But we must remember that London did not begin to make any definitely rapid advance in the number of its inhabitants until the Tudor period.

The disturbances of Edward II.’s time about his dear friend, Piers Gaveston, did not materially affect the City, though it was at St Paul's that the barons met to decide his fate and execution in 1312. In the following year there was an addition to the long list of struggles between the Crown and London, and some of the details of this case are good examples of the general subject. The King had commended a talliage from London and other towns, and when the mayor was summoned to the Whitefriars house to explain, to the royal council sitting there, why his city refused to pay, he gave as the first reason, that the City of London was not in the demesne of the King, as were many other cities; as we have already noted, London had always claimed a very marked degree of independence of the State. He also said that it was quite impossible for himself and the municipal rulers to consent to a general talliage in their city, for there were many barons and churchmen and private citizens possessing lands and houses in the City who were entirely beyond municipal legal control. This is a useful practical illustration and reminder of the fact which must be so repeatedly referred to in the history of a mediæval town; namely, that there were always areas of extraordinary privilege which were exempt from jurisdiction of the municipality which surrounded them. Government and society in the mediæval State, in other words, was based on individuals and groups of individuals rather than on locality. Even in London, the most self-governed city in England, there were, thus said the mayor, in this year 1213, associations and persons beyond his control. The King and his council were so impressed by this argument that they agreed to defer the talliage until it was sanctioned by Parliament, on condition, however, that the City made a loan of £1000 to keep the Exchequer going until the Lords and Commons met.

SECTION X

EDWARD II. AND III.: THEIR FAVOURITES AND THEIR WARS

BUT the really important event of Edward II.’s reign was the charter granted in 1319. It is by far the most detailed one yet drawn up for the City, and in this particular is an example of that increase in the royal power which was now encroaching on the status of the municipality. The earlier charters are little more than an acknowledge of London's right to govern itself as its ancesters had governed it. Now, the matter is referred to the Crown. The clauses cannot be gone through in this sketch, but there is one which registers a fact which underlies the condition of the municipal history for the rest of the mediæval period. This is the one in which, concerning the admission of new freemen, it is enacted: “And if they are not of some certain mystery, then they be not admitted into the freedom without the assent of the commonalty.”

That clause is the triumph of the craft guilds. As we have seen, they were rising to power against all opposition and legal boycott. They were the force behind FitzThomas: he disappeared, but they continued their career. When Edward I. came back from his Scottish Wars it was the guilds which organised the triumph on his return. Henry II. had fined them as “adulterine” or illegal: now in this charter of Edward II. it is declared that no one shall be made a freeman of the City of London unless he belong to a guild or mystery, except, indeed, he can get the people to accept him by a popular election. Whereupon one of the chroniclers of the period writes: “At this time many of the people of the trades of London were arrayed in Livery, and a good time was about to begin.” From this period we see the gradual legal recognition of the livery companies by the grant of letters patent from the King, giving them various powers over the members of their guilds; these recognitions were a frequent event in the reign of Edward III. By 1328 there were already twenty-five guilds which had the legal power to elect governors and draw up rules; by the end of Edward III.’s reign, 1277, thirty-five more had been added to the list; and there were others without legal acknowledgment. In 1351 and 1352 we find the guilds electing the Common Council, then scarcely an established body and only occasionally summoned. But the election went back into the hands of the freemen of the wards until 1376, when it returned to the guilds once more.

When the Despensers, the King's favourites, upset the peace of the realm, as Piers Gaveston had done at an earlier date of the same reign, the City began by declaring that it would assist neither King nor barons, but would keep order within its own walls. However, when Isabella, the Queen, was refused admission to Leeds Castle, in Kent, the Londoners set out with the King to avenge the insult, and they helped to capture the castle and hang the constable; and they helped the King, also, to capture the Earl of Lancaster at Bamboroughbridge; and then, with strange inconsistence, displayed much sorrow when the Earl was beheaded as a traitor. The fact being that the citizens had gone out with the King in return for some privileges he had granted them, and, for payment, they seemed ready to hunt down reforming patriots or anyone else.

This King had always played fast and loose with the City, removing and changing its mayors, sending judges to pry into its privileges, attempting to levy talliage and then extorting loans. So when Queen Isabella and her lover, Mortimer, took up arms against the King, the City was quite pleased to take its revenge. The citizens began to riot in her favour; sent back the mayor and municipal magnates ignominiously to the Guildhall when they discovered them on the way to converse with the King's friends, the Bishops of London and Exeter, at the House of the Blackfriars. The mob then proceeded to sack the Bishop of Exeter's house at the west end of the Temple, in Fleet Street, and finding the Bishop, Walter Stapleton, on his way to dinner, they beheaded him in Cheapside without delay, and despatched his head to the Queen, whom they imagined would be interested in this ghastly memento of the man who, as Treasurer, had confiscated her property to the use of his royal master, her husband. The people did other general rioting, and set free the prisoners in the Tower; in return for which course of violence the City received an ordinance from the Queen restoring to it that right of free election of its mayors with which the King had tampered: however, they elected as mayor the same man, Richard de Betoyne, whom she had made Warder of the Tower. Then came Mortimer to the Guildhall with a great company of bishops—all very friendly disposed to the City since Stapleton's death—and there was much swearing of fealty to the Queen and her son, and promises to maintain the liberties of London; while the Archbishop, also present, declared that he presented to the Commons of London fifty tuns of wine, a slight indication of the value of London's good favour. In seven days Edward II. was murdered in Berkeley Castle, 1327.

During the early years of the reign of Edward III., the City was worried, but not fundamentally concerned, by the struggles between Mortimer's party and the nobles whom he excluded from the powers of government. The barons made St Paul's the place of their consultations; but the municipal governors, on the whole, apparently sat on the political fence, with a general tendency to get down on the King's side, which at first was Mortimer's side. When the tide turned against this favourite, it was outside the west walls of London that he was hanged by the order of the Parliament before which he was tried at Westminster, 1330.

During this period the City was continually being called upon to provide contingents of men to follow the King to his wars in France; and it was the Londoner, trained to use his longbow in the fields of Finsbury, who, with others of his class, taught Feudal Europe, on the battlefields of Crecy and Poitiers, that the day of the armour-clad knight was passing away, giving place to the middle-class man of trade, whose weapon was the bow. In many ways Edward III. was a merchant's King. He even enrolled himself as a member of the Merchant Taylors. His marriage with Philippa of Hainhault was the basis of closer trade with the wool buyers of Flanders; and at this time raw wool was England's staple product. Hence this marriage made the King popular with the Londoners; but they were not so ready to appreciate his action in introducing Flemish weavers to teach his subjects to manufacture their cloth as well as grow the wool.

In 1338 and 1339 we find London guarding its walls night and day, and driving piles into the river, all to ward off the French who were expected to arrive at any moment. But they never came. The continual process of lending the King money and supplying him with armed men was varied in 1341 by the citizens flatly refusing to answer any questions which the royal judges put to them at an inquiry at the Tower (concerning the raising of the taxes) until they had acknowledged the liberties of the City, especially its right that only its own judges should sit within its bounds. The King was wroth, but the citizens stood firm; and a general pardon for their rebellious behaviour had to be granted, followed by a powerful charter allowing them to change the form of their municipal government when it was necessary.

But the people are always kept in good humour by martial success; and the citizens of London gave the Black Prince a great reception when he crossed London Bridge with his royal captives after the battle of Poitiers in 1356, and paraded the City on his way to Westminster.

SECTION XI

THE MUNICIPAL WARS BETWEEN THE GUILDS

BUT the real centre of London's history during this period is the guild system and its development, and when London took a prominent part in the Wycliffe affairs and the Peasants’ Rebellion of 1381, the real key to its action will be found in the faction fights between the guilds. The whole matter is very complex, and only the merest outline can be suggested here. There was on one side the desire of all the guildsmen to strike at the autocracy of the aldermen, who practically only called the Common Council together when they thought fit. On the other side, the guilds were split up into warring sections by opposing economic interests, and the rivals seized every opportunity which the course of national affairs presented for hitting at their opponents.

When the Good Parliament of 1376 inquired into the use of a previous grant of money to the Crown, it was revealed that three of the aldermen of London had been guilty of grave misappropriation of the funds. This was just the opportunity which the “reformers” (as they called themselves, and perhaps they were) desired. They then discovered that one of these aldermen had also obtained an illegal monopoly in the wine trade, with the knowledge of at least fifteen of his fellow aldermen. The clamour became so great that the mayor was compelled to call a Common Council, elected, not at the ward assemblies, which were under the control of the aldermen, but by the guilds themselves. This Council dismissed the three chief culprits from office, and enacted that henceforward the Common Council should meet regularly twice every quarter, and should also have the right of electing the mayor and sheriffs. Although the exact constitution of this Common Council was altered in 1384 by restoring the election of its members to the wards (where it still remains), yet from this Council of 1376 we can date the entry of the Common Council as a regular part of the City's municipal government. Henceforth, that government continues to exist as a complete organisation, dividing the power between a mayor, aldermen and councillors much in its present form.

But perhaps the motive force behind the guild quarrels of this period was a contest between the victualling guilds, such as the fishmongers and the grocers on one side, and the manufacturing guilds, as the drapers and goldsmiths on the other. In modern language it was largely a matter of Protectionists against Free Traders. The food suppliers wanted the value of their goods protected against the competition of foreign imports, while the other party wanted the cheapest food it could get. John of Northampton, alderman, and afterwards mayor, was the leader of the Free Traders; Nicholas Brembre and John Philipot of the Protectionists.

The situation was complicated by the religious disputes which gathered round Wycliffe and the Lollards. Just as to-day, Nonconformity, to a great extent, hangs on to the skirts of the Free Traders, so in Edward III.’s time the Free Traders were closely bound to the Wycliffites. There was another complication. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was posing as the friend and disciple of Wycliffe, probably for much the same reason that Henry VIII. posed as a reformer—he wanted the lands of the Church. By this time the wealth of the ecclesiastical bodies was getting so obvious that it was arousing the desire of the nobles and the City merchants.

In 1377 the Duke had been talking of interfering in the government of the City by removing the mayor, replacing him by a royal official, and taking the control of the food duties out of the hands of partial victuallers, and placing it instead, either under the country justices or the Constable of the Tower. In other words, this was a threat to introduce Free Trade. At this moment, Wycliffe had to appear at St Paul's to defend his creed, and the Duke stood at his side. The Protectionist party seized the opportunity for a demonstration; and the Duke had to escape, at the risk of his life, over the river to Kennington where he took refuge with the Princess of Wales. The City mob had been to seek him at the Savoy Palace, in the Strand, and it was his luck to be dining in the Vintry at Tower Royal which gave him time to get away. However, the mayor and a deputation apologised to the King for the disturbance, and also made overtures to Lancaster. But the peace was only on the surface.

At this moment Edward III. died, and his grandson, Richard II., succeeded. The nobles called him the “Londoner's King,” for, as they said, he owed his crown to the support of the City rather than the approval of the nobility. Lancaster declared that the City of London was taking advantage of its loans to the Crown to gain monopolies injurious to the nation as a whole, at least, such was his excuse for hitting at the City. The nobles then found an effective way of damaging the citizens, by withdrawing themselves and their households into the country, and having the Parliament called to Gloucester instead of Westminster. The City was on its knees at once, for the loss of trade was great. The merchants collected a fund which was offered as a bribe to the Lords if they would return; Philipot gave £10; and Brembre and Walworth £5 each; and Richard Whittington, not yet come to his fame and money, 5 marks, the lowest sum of all. And the Lords came back.

Then came the poll tax of 1381 and the Peasants’ Revolt. It was another opportunity for the Protectionists. There is little doubt that they invited the mob, under Wat Tyler, to come to the City, or certainly they used it when it did come. Some one raised the cry, “To the Savoy!” immediately the rebels got within the City walls. In other words, they were started off to wreck the house of the worst enemy of the Fishmongers and their allied guilds. The mob did its work effectively, and the great palace of the Duke of Lancaster was burnt to the ground; then the Temple was sacked, as the best way, the rebels thought, of stopping the supply of legal fetters on their liberty; and the Priory of the Knights of St John at Clerkenwell, the landlords of the Temple, followed.

Richard was living in the Tower, only a boy of fifteen, but when it was reported that the men of Essex were also marching on London under Jack Straw, the King was taken to meet them, apparently in the hopes of stopping their advance. When they asked, rather vaguely, for the surrender of all traitors, Richard, with equal vagueness, promised them their desire; and the peasants, doing their own arresting and judgment, went straight to the Tower and beheaded Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Hales, the Treasurer, and some few others. The whole of the following day the rioting and massacre continued. Then Richard arranged to meet Tyler and his men in a conference at Smithfield, where occurred the famous scene, the death of Tyler, struck down by Walworth, the Lord Mayor, and the dispersal of his followers without further bloodshed.

The Protectionist party seemed to have judged the course of events very unskilfully, for the result of all this rioting was the return to power of Northampton and his party; and they succeeded in getting legislation through Parliament which opened the victualling trade, wholesale or retail, to anyone, whether freemen of the City or not. But Northampton was a good deal of a meddling and puritanical turn of mind; and further, he attempted so many reforms all round that there were more persons being reformed than benefiting thereby. At least that is the most probable explanation of Northampton's loss of popularity; and his successor and rival, Brembre, reversed the whole policy, and the fish trade came up top once more, in 1383, and the retail trade was restricted to the freemen of the City, and stranger merchants could not stay beyond forty days therein. Northampton was arrested for causing a riot next year; and when he appealed to the Duke of Lancaster, Richard lost his temper and ordered his execution, but the Queen appeared, with the due regularity of this period of mediæval history, and begged for his life. Thereupon the victorious Brembre began a dangerous course of high politics which eventually led to his hanging at Tyburn, in 1388; and Northampton was recalled from banishment. The whole incident has been related here in some slight detail; for it is an example of the interrelation between municipal and national politics, and it is a fair picture of the kind of events which have made up the history of London. After all, London was essentially a city of merchants and shopkeepers, and it was only questions of trade which really interested them for long and affected their judgment. The student of this town will do well to search until he find some commercial object or cause behind the more stately reasons often given for the citizens of London having done this thing or that, as the case may be.

It was by the end of Richard's reign, in 1394, that the growth of Farringdon Ward without the walls, in the neighbourhood of Holborn and Fleet Street, had become so marked that this part was split off as a separate Ward of the City. It is one of the first signs of London's growth beyond the walls. If we except Portsoken Ward, without the walls on the east side, which was early added to the City for quite other than reasons of building space, this new Farringdon Without is the first complete ward outside the gates (for Cripplegate without the walls was never made a separate ward). The City had certainly been given some control over the hitherto independent borough of Southwark, in 1327, but it was only a very partial control, and it was not made a ward until 1550.

With the deposition of Richard II. and the election of Henry IV., we cannot deal; suffice it to say that if Richard had not offended London by his erratic financial demands, he would probably have held his throne. He was always worrying for loans. In 1392 he had been flatly refused, whereupon he went to a Lombard moneylender and got what he wanted; and the citizens promptly beat the Lombard within an ace of his death (though there is another version of the story which says that some of the citizens themselves advanced the money to the foreigner, to supply the loan they had refused directly. This sounds very possible. Like the financiers of to-day, the merchants were always ready to lend money to their enemies if they got due interest thereon). However, whichever was the right version, Richard lost his temper and fined the City £100,000, and removed the mayor for a warden, as the earlier kings had done. But all ended happily by the City giving Richard a royal reception when he was next in Town; the fine was forgiven, and the mayor returned. Here again we have a typical case in the history of London's dealings with its kings. A great part of that history was made up of the dodging of taxation in illegal forms. But, as we have said, Richard grew particularly unreasonable at a time when there happened to be some one else ready to take his place. So London supported the new man, Henry of Bolingbroke; and Richard died a prisoner in the Tower, instead of its king. It is recorded that Richard's last attempt to gain the Londoners was a promise that they should have their fish trade as they wished!

This was the period of Richard Whittington, one of London's picture-book heroes. He had first been made mayor in 1396, in one of the King's bad tempers with London, when its own choice was rejected by the King. This four times mayor does not seem to have been of really great importance. He gained his reputation by vast wealth, and his memory was preserved by numerous charitable bequests at his death.

SECTION XII

THE WARS OF THE ROSES; THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BARONS; THE BUILDING OF THE HALLS OF THE GUILDS

DURING the Wars of the Roses, London balanced itself on the fence as best it could, and was not very much troubled which boisterous nobleman lost his head. In the end the City was quite pleased to accept Edward IV., not because he wore a White Rose, but because he was a genial fellow to themselves (and their wives); had a mind to do what he could for their trade in various ways; and asked for surprisingly little money in return. His family had a Town house at Baynard Castle, which had been rebuilt to the east of the older Norman Tower where the FitzWalters had lived long before. Edward, when he was king, entered the wool trade and exported to Flanders, just as a City merchant did. The treaty he made with Burgundy in 1467 pleased London vastly. He also helped forward legislation which protected the native craftsmen against their foreign rivals; and the Act of 1462 prohibited the importation of many specified manufactures from foreign countries. He also initiated a new policy, which his successors, Richard III. and Henry VII. and VIII., continued, of incorporating the lesser craft guilds, putting them in somewhat the same position as the greater companies which had been already incorporated by Edward III. and Henry VI. It was this latter king who had granted charters to most of the great livery companies, such as the grocers, the fishmongers, the vintners, the leathersellers and others. Edward IV.’s policy was what one might call democratic, for it put the more modest trader in possession of some of the privileges hitherto enjoyed only by the merchant princes of the type of Whittington and his set of fellow-guildsmen. The City Corporation was somewhat annoyed at the free manner in which Edward granted these new charters, but it could not stop them, so it began to grant similar ordinances itself; and we find such guilds as the Painters, the Lorimers, the Founders, and others, all being put into formal shape under the regulation of the Municipal Council instead of by royal grant.

But the most obvious manifestation of the growth of the craft guilds was the building of their halls in every part of the City during this fifteenth century, which we are now discussing. When Henry IV. came to the throne in 1400, there were only two Halls of whose building we can be quite certain; the Merchant Taylors’ and the Goldsmiths’, and probably the Fishmongers’. When Henry VII. ascended the throne, in 1485, there were twenty-eight craft Halls already built and others building. Amongst them were the Skinners’, the Vintners’, the Grocers’, the Brewers’, the Carpenters’, the Dyers’, the Drapers’, and the Haberdashers’. It was, in fact, the most vital manifestation of the development of London, this dotting of it all over with the governing seats of the City craft guilds. It was the most palpable sign that London was fast shaking off its feudal barons and country gentlefolk, and was becoming almost purely the city of merchants and manufacturers.

But for the moment, and until the Stuart period, to some extent, there was room in the City for both merchant and baron. It is suggestive that the greatest baronial family living in the City at this period was that of the York house at Baynard Castle; and, as we have seen, Edward, its heir, when he became King, was trader as well as monarch; he was characteristic of the London of his day—half feudal, half commercial.

But even Edward only held the affection of the City by a delicate thread; and when the Civil War was renewed by the restless Warwick, the Londoners lent money to both sides, and even gave most to Warwick. At last the King fled (1470), and his Queen took refuge in the monastery of Westminster; while Henry VI. was brought out from his prison in the Tower, which the mayor and aldermen had seized and held until the barons’ army arrived. The citizens kept guard whilst Edward's Constable was beheaded on Tower Hill; and they voted Henry a loan for preliminary expenses. However, at heart, London still preferred Edward; and when he came back to England in 1471, some of the leading men opened Aldersgate to him, while the rest were in vain being appealed to by Henry's chancellor to rise on his master's behalf. Henry VI. went back to the Tower a prisoner once more; and Edward's Queen came forth from Westminster with the child who had been born during her refuge there. Then Edward marched out of London and crushed Warwick, just in time, at Barnet, only seven miles outside the City walls, to which he was marching. Whilst Edward was pursuing Henry's men, the men of Kent, under Fauconberg, advanced on London, and being refused admittance, they tried to carry the City by an assault on London Bridge and Aldgate and Bishopsgate. But they were everywhere unsuccessful; and Fauconberg's head was soon added to the ghastly trophies on London Bridge.

Then Edward came back to London, and the same night Henry VI.’s death at the Tower was announced. There is little doubt he was murdered by order of Edward, probably by the hand of the Duke of Gloucester, the King's brother. Edward's popularity with the Londoners was so great (for he paid his debts punctually and was a genial guest at their homes) that he was even able to grant the Hanseatic League almost absolute independence within their Steelyard, their ancient guild house in Thames Street, where Cannon Street Station now stands. This was a concession to foreign merchants which the City would have borne from few of their rulers.

The chief events which preceded and followed Richard III.’s succession all took place in London. Richard was living at Baynard Castle, while the Duke of Buckingham went to address the citizens at the Guildhall to persuade them that Edward V. was a bastard and his father an unmitigated scamp. The leading men of London sat quiet, but a few hired persons behind shouted “Richard for our King,” and with this as as his only reply, Buckingham informed the assembly that they had done most wisely in so choosing. The next day there was a hasty and incomplete Parliament held in St Paul's, and the same farce was gone through without protest; a deputation went down the street to Richard at Baynard Castle, and begged him to accept the Crown, which he agreed to do after all necessary display of surprise and modesty. The next day he was escorted to Westminster. London did not like all this; but the streets were filled with soldiers, and Richard had just beheaded Lord Hastings at a few minutes’ notice in the Tower, which was a hint to possible objectors. So he became King. Within a month the two young princes were murdered in the Tower. So London can claim the grim pleasure of being the chief scene of this disreputable piece of vulgar ambition to sit on a throne.

But the City was not squeamish if it got out of Richard the government it desired; and when he returned from crushing his late dear friend, Buckingham, the London companies rode to meet him and petitioned for reform of recent regulations to which they objected. Richard promptly called a Parliament to reverse much of the favour which Edward IV. had shown to foreign merchants. He also borrowed money from the Londoners, and repaid it at the proper time, which was more unusual.

Then, in turn, Henry VII. appeared at the City gates after having slain Richard at Bosworth; and the mayor and aldermen rode out to Shoreditch to welcome him in scarlet robes, accompanied by the sheriffs and over four hundred members of the craft guilds. The procession proceeded to St Paul's, to return thanks for all mercies received; and Henry was lodged in the Bishop's Palace in the churchyard.

SECTION XIII

TUDOR LONDON: PEACE, THE RISE OF TRADE AND PAUPERISM

HENRY VII. was liked by the merchants of London because he kept the peace and was too strong to allow any more squabbling between unruly barons who could find nothing better to do than cause disturbances everywhere. Most of the aforesaid barons had killed each other in the late wars. He was disliked, however, because he made the City pay heavily for its privilege of peace and prosperous trade. Henry's chief assistants, Empson and Dudley, lived just off Walbrook (v. Itinerary I.), and being well acquainted with the possible depths of the merchants’ purses, they spent their time trumping up charges against them, for which the penalty was a heavy fine. Perhaps in the long run, it did not do much harm to raise the national revenue in this way rather than in some other manner. Anyhow, nobody was strong enough to kick against the system at the moment. As a matter of fact, London was now a very flourishing city. A Venetian traveller of this time wrote: “In one single street, named the Strand, leading to St Paul's, there are fifty-two goldsmiths’ shops, so rich and full of silver vessels, great and small, that in all the shops in Milan, Rome, Venice, and Florence put together, I do not think there would be found so many of the magnificences that are to be seen in London.” The taxation of the rich City merchant was altogether typical of the Tudors. If they made illegal exactions they went to the pockets of the wealthy; and the poorer people were not prepared to fight constitutional battles in defence of a few rich men's purses. Of course, when the youthful Henry VIII. came to the throne in 1509, he made an impetuous bid for popularity by beheading both Empson and Dudley, and found a more respectable financial agent in Wolsey, who was continually negotiating for money from the City merchants and guilds.

The position of the craft guilds of London during the Tudor period, and on through the Stuart times, is manifest from the practice of making the livery company the unit from which to collect money levied by the Crown, and also the unit round which to organise the levies of soldiers. Each company was ordered to provide so much money or so many men, as the case might be. But the great economic changes following the development of foreign trade and the enclosure of the common lands (soon to be followed and aggravated by the dissolution of the monasteries), were beginning to affect the position of the London guilds. The suburbs were enlarged by the arrival of country artisans and foreign craftsmen, who were beyond the organisation of the City companies and guilds in practice; though, in theory, there was an attempt during this period to include them within the control of the London societies The sum total result was a want of discipline and a state of transition which it was difficult for any government to handle.

The story of the May Day Riots of 1517 throws light on the condition of affairs. In the previous year there had been sedition bills published by unknown persons, inciting to anger against the foreign craftsmen. Now a London broker persuaded one of the preachers of the Spital Easter Sermons to make the cry against the foreign workmen the subject of his address (v. St Mary, Spital). The preacher went as far as advocating physical violence. It leaked out that on May Day the advice would be followed, and Wolsey sent for the Lord Mayor, and arranged that on the night in question every citizen should be ordered to keep his house. When it was attempted to enforce this order in the ward of Cheap, the riot began with the cry of “Prentices and Clubs.” In a short time the streets were in control of a mixed mob of unruly persons from watermen to priests. They forced the jails, set free the prisoners, and sacked St Martin-le-Grand, Lombard Street, and Whitechapel, all which places were the resort of the obnoxious strangers. The rioters were on their way home early next morning, when they were met by the mayor and armed forces, and easily arrested to a large number. Thirteen of them were hanged and four hundred others taken, with halters round their necks, before Henry in Westminster Hall, where they were melodramatically pardoned. As a matter of fact, no one had been killed by their rioting, so the punishment was sufficiently severe. But the point of the episode is that it was a riot against the new people who were beginning to pour into London by immigration from outside.

London, in short, had begun its growth as a modern city. And this sudden growth was complicated by the “unemployed problem,” of which it was in part the cause and in part the effect. An Act of 1524 may be quoted here as interesting not only for its economic ruling, but also as giving a topographical statement of the new areas which London was now beginning to include in practice; though they were still beyond the general control of the City Councils, yet this Act attempts to put them under the control of the City guilds. It enacts that: “All aliens using any manner of handicraft in city or suburbs, the town of Westminster, the parishes of St Martin's-in-the-Fields, Our Lady of the Strand, St Clement's Danes, St Giles's-in-the-Fields, St Andrew's in Holborn, the town and borough of Southwark, Shoreditch, Whitechapel parish, St John Street, the parish of Clerkenwell, St Botolph's parish without Aldgate, St Katherine's Bermondsey Street, or within two miles’ compass of the City and the parishes aforesaid,” shall be placed under the control of the City companies, that is, made subject to their powers of search and regulation; but they were to choose one “substantial stranger” from each craft to act with their own wardens in this matter. The problem of the suburbs had begun, which was to continue more or less acutely until the old metropolitan vestries were swept away. This Act also forbade an alien to employ more than two journeymen or take aliens as apprentices. It was therefore a concession by the Government to the May Day rioters, and an example of how the Tudor kings became popular with the people of London.

The keynote of Tudor London is that it is the beginning of the modern City—not only by the fact that it then began to spread its bounds at a far greater pace than could follow from its internal birth-rate, but also because the dissolution of the ecclesiastical houses swept away a large part of the physical existence of the mediæval town. And with the physical changes in houses and streets and area went an accompanying change of social structure. The guilds and City companies were still in existence, so far as outer form could denote their life, but they were only the shadows of their great past. It was only in London and a few towns that they were allowed to retain even their formal shape; for the Acts of 1547-8, following on less effective legislation tending in the same direction, annihilated the privileges of the guilds, by granting permission to craftsmen to work where it suited their convenience, free from the regulations of the guild of their trade. Now, although the London guilds were exempted from this revolutionary legislation (for they were so bound up with the constitution of London's municipal government that it would have been impossible to abolish them without reorganising the City's whole legal basis), yet it was an exemption rather of theory than fact. During the century which covered the Tudor rule in England, the power of the co-operative guild passed away, and the age of the great capitalist merchant began to take its place. When the sixteenth century closed, the London City companies were mainly fossils of a structure which was once alive, but had then died. The London of the craft guilds had, by the time of James I., turned into the London of the merchant adventurers and the patent holders. But these we must leave until we have endeavoured to sum up the vast change in the physical structure of London which moved Stow to put the remains of the mediæval City on record, in 1598, before all trace of it had passed away.

SECTION XIV

STOW'S LONDON: THE FALL OF THE CHURCH

THE keynote of that change was the ecclesiastical earthquake which was so well stage-managed to fill the purses of Henry VIII. and his new nobility. The beginning of the Tudor period found London a place of many monasteries and friaries and religious guilds, which covered almost a third of the area of the City. By the reign of Elizabeth they had been swept away by a wave of dissolution, which sometimes demolished their physical structure, sometimes gave them a new lay owner in the place of the religious order. But the change must be noted in detail. It is useless to put the whole case as a matter of mere robbery and social anarchy. Like the barons before them, the monks and friars had lived their day. It had been a more useful day than the barons’, and there was still a certain social life remaining in them; nevertheless the abuses probably outweighed the good. It is recorded that at this time the London priests neglected their duties for the pleasure of idling in pot-houses and taverns, and dressed after the habit of town gallants. These were but the rather trivial manifestations of a deeper disease. But the good went down with the bad when the earthquake began.

The first to fall, May 1531, was the Augustine house of canons at Elsing Hospital, which had supported a hundred blind men (v. St Alphage, London Wall). Its fate was fairly typical: the chapel became the parish church, while the secular buildings were given to Sir John Williams, the keeper of the King's jewels. Then followed the priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, and the Lord Chanceller Audley took possession thereof, and passed is to his son-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk, who made it a family mansion until he was beheaded in 1572; his son had sold it to the City Corporation before Stow published his survey. Audley had already pulled down the great chapel of the priory, but could find no one to offer him anything for the stones, for all the City was then built of brick and timber, Stow adds, in an illuminating note.

In 1534, the priory at the Charterhouse was attacked, and in this case it needed the execution of their prior and several monks before the remaining inmates would surrender their house in 1537, when Lord North rebuilt it as a town house. In 1535 had come the execution of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More, on Tower Hill, because the King was enraged at the resistance of the monks of the Charterhouse; and their heads were added to the relics on London Bridge, one of the most vivid record books of the City at this period.

Then, under Cromwell's energy, followed the dissolution of the great friaries at Blackfriars, Greyfriars, and Whitefriars. The first became a residential quarter of considerable fashion during the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, and the abode of one of the early theatrical companies; while a large part of it was given to Sir Thomas Carwarden, the keeper of the royal wardrobe. Greyfriars became the Blue Coat School; and in the precincts of Whitefriars, as Stow tells us, “be now many fair houses built, lodgings for noblemen and others.”

In 1538 the Austin Friary in Broad Street was seized, and the Paulets, afterwards Marquises of Winchester, made out of it a great mansion, but gave the nave of the great church to the Dutch residents of the City, who still possess it. St Bartholomew's Hospital was allowed to continue in its good works; and the church of the adjacent priory was made a parish church, and its precincts given over to the builders. The priory of the Knights of St John at Clerkenwell, near to St Bartholomew's, was made a storehouse for military goods during Henry VIII.’s reign, then the Protector Somerset seized a great part of the stonework for the building of his palace in the Strand (v. Somerset House). The neighbouring nunnery of St James, Clerkenwell, was also dissolved and passed into various lay hands. The Temple had long been in the hands of its lawyer tenants, who leased it from the Knights of St John; and the Crown continued their tenancy. So the Temple is one of the few ecclesiastical properties in London which did not break their continuity at the Dissolution. The house of the Crutched Friars went into the possession of Sir Thomas Wyatt; and of St Helen's Nunnery (q.v.), Williams, Thomas Cromwell's brother-in-law, and an ancestor of Oliver Cromwell, got part, and the Leathersellers’ Company soon bought the nuns’ hall and adjacent buildings for their guildhall, on which site the new hall still stands.

The fate of St Martin-le-Grand was very drastic. Within a few years the church was entirely demolished, and a wine tavern took its place, while the precincts as a whole were cleared and built over with dwelling-houses which became a favourite place for strangers and others who desired a home which, to a large extent, still continued to claim its privileges of sanctuary against the ordinary law. Outside the City wall, on the east, the abbey of St Clare, for nuns, became a place of storehouses for military goods, as in the case of St John's Priory. The hospital of St Katherine by the Tower, on its east side, almost alone of all the great religious foundations, was allowed to remain untouched. Outside Bishopsgate, the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem also survived as before; but it had been long under the part patronage of the Corporation and the Crown, which explains its escape at the Dissolution. The priory of St Mary Spital, a little farther beyond the walls, was seized, however, and on its site were then “many fair houses builded for receipt and lodging of worshipful persons,” Stow tells us; but a large part of the churchyard remained with its pulpit, where the famous Spital Sermons were preached every Easter, as before, until the Stuart Civil Wars destroyed it.

Such was the annihilation of the ecclesiastical London which had been one of the main features of the mediæval City. We have only mentioned the chief spots affected. There were many smaller houses and colleges; for example, St Thomas Acon and Whittington's College, which passed under lay control; in both the cases mentioned, it was the Mercers’ Company which bought them and continued their charitable trusts, without any practical break in their continuity. But the sum-total result was that London was swept clear of religious institutions except the parish churches and the cathedral of St Paul's. That is the chief fact to note of this period. We have already seen how London became dotted with guildhalls during the previous century, the fifteenth; and these still continued to exist, although the economic power of their owners had departed to a large degree. Owing to the grants of some of the monasteries to lay lords, there was, for a time, a revival of the great noble's house within the City borders; but, on the whole, the feudal baron was beginning to leave the City to the merchant; and Crosby Hall (q.v.), the house of a great grocer, is more typical of the age than Baynard Castle, which in Stow's time was occupied by the Earl of Pembroke. Thus, Northumberland House, just within Aldersgate, which had once been the town house of the earls of that name, was, in Stow's time, a printing works; the great Neville family had disappeared from Leadenhall; the Earls of Warwick had gone from Warwick Lane; the Mounthaults had left their house in Queenhithe: but all these had gone long before, with the many aristocratic houses which lay, in particular, along the south side of the City, near the Thames bank (see Itineraries I. and III.).

On the other hand, we have just seen the Howards of Norfolk installed for a brief period at Holy Trinity, Aldgate; and a house in Ave Maria Lane had come to the Nevilles, by descent, which had formerly belonged to the Duke of Richmond, though Stow does not say that the Lord Burgaveny of that time was actually living there. But the new gentry in the City are mainly the new aristocracy which came from the official class of the Tudor period: such as Audley, at Holy Trinity, for example; and Nicholas Bacon, at Bacon House near Aldersgate; or Sir John Williams at Elsing Spital, and the Paulets at Austin Friars.

SECTION XV

LONDON'S SHARE IN TUDOR POLITICS

WE must now pick up again the threads of the general political events as they influenced London. Henry VIII. died 1547, at York Place, which was now generally known as Whitehall. This event marks the breaking away from the Royal Palace of Westminster, which had been the chief seat of the Crown since before the Norman Conquest. During the whole of the rest of the Tudors and the Stuarts, Whitehall is the Court. Only a few days before he died, Henry handed over St Bartholomew's Hospital, the Greyfrairs, and St Mary's Bethlehem, to the Corporation of London to be administered for the good of the poor of the City, all which still exist in similar forms. To this group of institutions Edward VI., the next king, added the palace of Bridewell, which was specially allotted as a house of correction for vagabond persons; and the Corporation bought St Thomas's Hospital at Southwark. In 1553 all these charities were included in one charter appointing the mayor and Corporation their governors.

The real King of England, during the beginning of little Edward VI.’s reign, was the Duke of Somerset, who was then building himself the palace in the Strand. The City detested him because he had dislocated trade by debasing the coinage and in other ways, and because he was such a grabber of everything he could lay his hands upon. So when the Earl of Warwick asked the mayor and aldermen to meet the Lords of the Council at Ely Place (q.v.) in Holborn, they showed themselves willing to help in deposing the tyrant. Then the Lords found it safer to hold their meetings in the City in the midst of their friends, the Londoners; so they met at the Mercers’ Hall, and Warwick went to live in Walbrook, at the house of Sir John York, one of the sheriffs. Then the Lords and the Council met again at the Guildhall, and the Lords assembled at York's house in Walbrook. The conspirators struck their blow; the City collected armed men, and Somerset was brought a prisoner to London, and lodged in the Tower. Then Edward came and stayed in Southwark, at Suffolk House, while the Lords sent for Somerset to attend before them at the sheriff's house in Walbrook; and there they released him on a pledge not to move beyond four miles of Sheen or Sion House, and not to see the King. Whereupon the Earl of Warwick took his place as tyrant. The whole incident is related as a clear indication of the growing strength of the City as a political force; the discontented peers made it their chief ally.

At this moment the City again showed its strength by procuring almost complete rights over the borough of Southwark from the King, who passed to the Corporation, for a capital payment of £500 and the old rent of £10 a year, all the rights in that place which belonged to the Crown, and sold the royal estates in Southwark to the Corporation for a sum of £647, 2s. 1d., only reserving to the Crown Suffolk House, the Marshalsea, and King's Bench Prisons. In May 1550, the mayor took possession of the borough, and it was made a new “Ward without.” But the ward has never had common councillors like the rest; and the alderman is not elected by the ward, but nominated by the other aldermen; since 1771 it has been held by the senior alderman. By this grant, the City of London made its first important absorption of a neighbouring community; for the district of Farringdon Ward Without had been in practice under its control since it was inhabited to any appreciable extent. While Southwark was thus acquired, it is interesting to remember that Westminster was still long to remain, in theory at least, the manor of its abbots, subject to the jurisdiction of these lords and their manorial court. In Elizabeth's reign, Burleigh tried to revise this government of Westminster, but apparently without much effect; and it gradually passed under the practical control of the justices and vestries, and had no real municipal constitution until 1899, when it became one of the metropolitan boroughs, under the title of the City of Westminster.

TOWER OF LONDON

Byward Tower

When the Earl of Warwick, then made Duke of Northumberland, arrested the Lord Protector Somerset for the second time, the City was informed of the charges against him; but having by this time tasted the alternative rule of his successor, the Londoners were not so ready to applaud as they had been on his former arrest. When Somerset landed at the Crane in the Vintry, on his return from Westminster Hall to the Tower, a condemned man, it is recorded that the people cried “God save him!” But he was added to the list of Tower Hill victims in 1552.

When the Duke of Northumberland, on Edward VI.’s death, proclaimed his daughter-in-law Queen, in the place of Mary, the City of London never liked this arrangement of the succession; and when the Duke was brought in at Bishopsgate a captive on his way to the Tower, the populace cursed him loudly and made him ride with his hat in his hand. Northumberland was soon beheaded on Tower Hill; and then Lady Jane Grey, with her husband and Cranmer, were tried at the Guildhall and sentenced to death for treason. Before their execution, Sir Thomas Wyatt attempted to enter the City with his followers from Kent, protesting against Mary's proposal to marry Philip of Spain. But the citizens closed London Bridge and Ludgate in his face, and he was surrounded by Mary's soldiers at Temple Bar, as he was retreating. Then followed the usual beheadings on Tower Hill, where Wyatt, Dudley, and Suffolk died; and on the Tower Green, inside the castle, Lady Jane was executed; while gallows were set up at every gate of London, and in Cheapside, Fleet Street, Holborn, and Charing Cross, for the humbler victims of Tudor law and order; and they soon were dangling with their prey. It is disagreeable to record these scenes of violence; but they stand for a large part of the government of London during this period; they were the alternative to legislative reform.

London's next experience of national government was seeing its citizens being burned at the stake, in Smithfield, for holding religious opinions which did not correspond with Mary's more classical beliefs. Rogers, who had been vicar of St Sepulchre's, and the first man to write a biblical commentary in English, was the first to suffer; refusing a free pardon, if he would recant at the last moment, when he was already bound, he was burned in the presence of his wife and ten children, and a loudly sympathetic multitude of the people. The citizens endured this for two years with ever-rising anger; there were frequent street fights between the Londoners and the Spanish followers of Mary and Philip, who had often settled themselves in the halls of the City companies. The Government further annoyed the City by showing favour to the Hanse merchants at the Steelyard; to which the mayor and council retaliated by forbidding foreigners to open shops within the boundaries of London, and commanded the citizens to withhold work from these interlopers: regulations which it was practically impossible to enforce, however.

On the 9th of January 1558, a letter was delivered to the mayor with these urgent words on its cover: “Hast, Hast, Post Hast, For lief, For lief, For lief, For Lief.” It was the news that Calais had fallen and the Queen wanted a thousand men to go to its rescue. But Mary was dead before she had raised the money for the accomplishment of her revenge: though she had raised a loan of £20,000 from London which the Corporation levied from the livery companies, in return for 12 per cent. interest and a mortgage of the Crown lands.

Elizabeth, on her sister's death, moved to the Charterhouse, where she held a council, and a few days after moved to the Tower. London received her with innumerable bonfires and general rejoicings; but they had greeted Mary with enthusiasm on her arrival, the calmer observer might have remembered.

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK

The Choir

SECTION XVI

THE ROYAL EXCHANGE AND THE MERCHANT ADVENTURERS

PERHAPS the most significant event in London during the whole of Elizabeth's long reign was the building of the Royal Exchange. It was the manifest sign that London was becoming a great centre of international trade. Sir Thomas Gresham, as the Queen's agent in Flanders, had seen the Bourse at Antwerp; and he asked why London should not have one also, where its merchants could transact their affairs under cover. His father had asked the same question, for he had been in Antwerp, too. After many negotiations Gresham persuaded the Corporation to provide the land on the understanding that he would erect the building. This he did; and the present tesselated pavement of Turkish hone stones still remains of the original work, though the rest was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666; and the second Royal Exchange, by the fire of 1838; after which the existing one was erected. Gresham's Exchange was opened in 1571 by Elizabeth, who rode in state from Somerset House in the Strand, which she was then occupying, and after dining with Gresham at his house in Bishopsgate Street, she christened the Bourse the “Royal Exchange.”

This Sir Thomas Gresham was one of the most picturesque City figures of his time, and a summary of the municipal history of that age. He had made his fortune in Antwerp; and it was the position of Antwerp that London inherited, when Alva ruined the Flemish city by his folly and cruelty; and the disorderly Spanish troops completed the work by sacking the town in 1576. It would not be very far from the truth to date the modern London from that day; though we have seen that beginning, from another aspect, in the destruction of the monasteries and the early growth of the suburbs. But it is quite scientific to give more than one reason and more than one date for such a phenomenon as modern London. Certainly the sack of Antwerp had a most stimulating effect on the trade of London. The Flemish town had become the chief trading centre of Northern Europe, partly because of its geographical position, partly because of its freedom from the restrictions of the mediæval guild system. London was to succeed it with very similar qualifications: it was a fine port, and the mediæval guilds existed mainly in name, presiding in theory over an industrial system which had escaped beyond their control in practice. It was Gresham who planned the expulsion of the Hanse merchants from the Steelyard, which was accomplished in 1578; and their place in the trade with Germany was taken by the English Merchant Adventurers. In both particulars, the seizure of foreign trade and the formation of what was almost a modern mercantile “company” (in comparison with the older guilds), these Merchant Adventurers are a landmark in the history of London, linked on to the name of Sir Thomas Gresham, the Royal Exchange, and the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

The question on which the history of the City was to turn during the next fifty years, was whether these new trading associations were to be under the control of the Crown, and subject to strict rights granted them by letters patent, or whether they were to be free to conduct their affairs as they thought best fitted to meet the competition of their rivals. The question was to be one of the main issues of the Great Rebellion of Charles I.’s reign, which was, in part, the protest of the City of London against the granting of patent monopolies, and the desire of the merchant capitalists to be free from State control. The history of the early Stuart relations with the City will make this clearer.

It was during the year 1601 that occurred that tussle between the piqued Earl of Essex and Elizabeth which is hardly worthy of the name of a “rising,” and yet left some interesting scenes in London history. Essex had been chafing under Elizabeth's rebuffs, and got together a wild plot to force new ministers on her. He rode from his house next the Temple (v. Essex Street) into the City, expecting the people to rise with him. He got as far as Fenchurch Street, where lived one of the sheriffs whom he supposed ready to assist; but nothing turned out as he had hoped. When he attempted to get back, he found Ludgate and Newgate barred; and there was nothing to do but escape to Essex House by water. Once home, he barricaded himself within and was besieged, forced to surrender, tried in Westminster Hall, and executed on Tower Hill, while his friend and accomplice, the Earl of Southampton, was reprieved, and detained a prisoner in the Tower.

SECTION XVII

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE AND THE GROWTH OF THE SUBURBS

THE names of these two earls remind us that London was now the scene of the chief events of Shakespere's career, for they were his friends; and the history of the Elizabethan town would be lacking one of its most characteristic notes if it did not just refer to the theatrical enterprises which sprang up in various parts of the City, or, it would be more accurate to say, in its suburbs, about this time. Although there is a long history of the drama before this, yet the first theatre, in the sense of a specially constructed building, was “The Theatre” which Burbage built just beyond the City's jurisdiction, at Holywell, in 1576, on a part of the dissolved priory of St John, outside Bishopsgate. He chose the spot because it was near the Finsbury Fields where the citizens gathered together for martial exercises and sports, and also because it was over the boundary line, where the mayor and his officers could not censor his doings. This first theatre had no roof, was merely a little wooden erection in the shape of an amphitheatre. But primitive though it was, it is almost certain that Shakespere acted there, soon after his arrival in London; and here the great clowns, Tarlton and Armin, made the people shout with laughter, and probably gave Shakespere invaluable hints for the writing of his clownish parts. Within a few months a rival house opened, named “the Curtain,” almost next door; but it was served by the same players to a great extent. Then the chief scene of the drama shifted over to the Bankside, Southwark, whither Burbage carried his “Theatre” in 1597, and there re-erected it as “The Globe” (where Barclay and Perkins’ Brewery now stands). A little to the west of it, a very temporary building had been built for theatrical uses in the Bear Garden in 1585; and it is very possible that there had been a Roman amphitheatre on that spot. The Bear Garden had certainly been a place of amusement from time immemorial. It was this latter house which Alleyn rebuilt in 1613 as “The Hope Theatre.” (The White Bear Public House is probably its site.) But when Burbage arrived in Southwark, the great rival already established there was Henslowe's “The Rose,” opened in 1592. In 1596, the year before he opened “The Globe,” Burbage had also leased a part of the old Blackfriars’ Monastery (where the Court players had existed for some time) and converted it, by about 1600, into the Blackfriars’ Theatre, the first theatre in London to possess a roof. Finally, there was “The Fortune” Theatre, opened by Alleyn, 1599, Golden Lane, Cripplegate. The history of these houses is the history of Shakespere and his fellows and rivals. Afterwards, at the Restoration, the place of playhouses moved westward to the region of Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields.

It was during Elizabeth's reign that we find the first definite attempt to resist the sudden outburst of building in the suburbs of London. In the proclamation of 1580 appear words which, in the light of subsequent history, now seem ludicrous. It announces that the Queen, by the “good and deliberate advice of her Counsell, and being also thereto moved by the considerate opinions of the Lord Maior, Aldermen and other the grave wise men in and about the Citie, doeth charge and straghtly command all maner of persons…to desist and forbeare from any newe buyldings of any house or tenement within three miles from any of the gates of the said Citie of London.” In 1633 the Crown and the Corporation actually ordered the demolition of some houses which had infringed this regulation. There were several reasons behind this attempt to stop the spreading of the suburbs: besides the reluctance of the City guilds to allow districts to grow up beyond their practical powers of controlling the craftsmen who dwelt in them; there was also the serious fact that it was in the suburbs that the plague usually seemed to start. Of course, the remedy was to make the suburbs more sanitary, instead of damming the tide and more over-crowding the City within the walls. But that was a solution beyond the municipal outlook of that period. But the proclamation was never made permanent by an Act of Parliament; and gradually it was pushed out of sight by inevitable growth; and in the time of James I. the building of the first of the West End, Lincoln's Inn Fields and its district, was undertaken by a Royal Commission.

SECTION XVIII

THE FIGHT AGAINST THE TRADING MONOPOLIES AND STUART RULE

IN the year 1601 Elizabeth had the first experience of the dislike of her subjects to monopoly of trade by patents. She gave way, and withdrew them on the bold remonstrance of a Parliament of which the Recorder of London was Speaker. In two years Elizabeth was dead, and James I. continued the same system. It was their desire to crush these patents which perhaps first turned the thoughts of the London merchants towards organised political action. It must be remembered that some of them were just as anxious to buy patents as the men outside the ring were striving to break them down. But the general feeling in the City was against the control of Trade by the Stuart Government. It was because the City traders objected to all control, however beneficial, that London became the very heart and soul of the Parliamentary Party which crushed Charles I. One concrete example of this matter must suffice. James I. had granted a patent for a monopoly in gold and silver thread; which the mercers of London defied. Some of them were arrested and sent to the Fleet Prison; whereupon the citizens burst into a storm of indignation; four aldermen came forward with bail of £100,000 for the prisoners; a deputation went to the King, who collapsed before the tumult, and ordered the men to be set free. But his next step was to issue a proclamation, which ended: “We have therefore, to the good liking of the inventors thereof, taken the said manufacture of gold and silver thread into our hands, and so purpose to retain and continue it, to be exercised only by agents for ourselves, who shall from time to time be accountable to us for the same.” It was not the perpetual application for loans to the Government which troubled the City men of wealth; for they got good interest for their money; and it is the business of financial men to lend money at good interest. But this monopoly of trade struck at their very basis of life.

The City also disliked the friendship of the Crown for Spain: when the Spanish ambassador was passing along Fleet Street one day in 1621, an apprentice cried: “There goeth the devil in a dung cart,” to which a Spaniard replied: “You shall see Bridewell ere long for your mirth,” and he was promptly laid flat on the ground. When appealed to by the ambassador (the famous Gondomar) the mayor, much against his real desire, ordered the apprentices to be whipt. Whereupon three hundred of their fellows collected at Temple Bar and rescued the prisoners. When Gondomar again appealed to the mayor he received the curt reply that the Spanish ambassador had nothing to do with the government of the City of London. Then James himself suddenly announced that he intended to go to the Guildhall and personally speak with the mayor and aldermen concerning their laxity of conduct. He came with the lords of his council and reproved the City magistrates severely. In short, the King and the Londoners were falling out all round.

The accession of Charles soon increased the tension. He could not borrow the money, so he demanded a “forced loan.” He left the City till the end; and the nearer his collectors came to it, the more they were opposed. We are told that the Strand and the Savoy districts resisted more stubbornly than Westminster or St Martin-in-the-Fields. Then came the forced loan of 1627, when many Londoners flatly refused to contribute and were sent to prison. The Recorder of the City was appointed to defend them at their trial. Charles was alarmed and they were released at once.

The breach between the Court and the City is marked for the student of London by the accompanying growth of the Cavaliers’ quarter round Lincoln's Inn Fields and on the Russell's property round Covent Garden. It was the first systematic suburb, the beginning of the “West End”: henceforth there is a merchants’ London and a smart London.

There was another forced loan in 1640. The mayor and aldermen were summoned before the King's council to bring a list of the wealthiest of the citizens. Instead of the list they brought a petition to be excused. It was on this occasion that the Earl of Strafford is said to have turned to Charles with the advice that he would do nothing with these City merchants until he had hanged a few of them. The King ventured to send a few of the aldermen to prison for their obstinacy. To which the City replied by marching out to Lambeth in a riotous assembly, for the purpose of sacking the Archbishop's Palace there; for they hated Laud with their whole hearts. However, Laud had escaped to Whitehall before they arrived. Then Charles tried to collect the Ship Money; but only one man in the whole City would pay; and the sheriffs refused to distrain. The mayor in person tried to seize a draper's goods in payment; but the owner calmly said he would charge it to the mayor's private account as a purchase.

By this time the City had made up its mind that the Established Church was a bulwark of the aristocratic monarchy, so it became ardently Puritan. When Prynne and Burton were released by the Long Parliament, in 1640, from their sentence for attacking the bishops, London received them with a triumph. Then a petition for the abolition of episcopy “root and branch” was presented to Parliament by fifteen thousand Londoners. The Scotch Commissioners arrived and lodged in a house near St Antholin, in Size Lane, where they were much fêted.

Then came the trial of Strafford in Westminster Hall: to which Charles replied by trying to get possession of the Tower. Whereupon ten thousand “citizens of very good account, some worth £30,000, some £40,000,” marched out to Westminster demanding their enemy's execution. His brother peers and Charles resisted no longer, and Strafford was beheaded. It was the greatest scene that Tower Hill had ever presented to history, and to the two hundred thousand people who came to witness the strongest and bravest man in England die. His defence in Westminster Hall had been a marvel of brilliancy; his end was a calm defiance of all those who did not understand his theories of government. And there is no doubt whatever, that it was the City of London which decided his fate.

Charles had never entered the City since his accession, until in November 1641, he was met by the mayor and liverymen at the Church of St Leonard's, Shoreditch, and escorted to the Guildhall, where he made a conciliatory speech after the banquet, and knighted the Mayor and Recorder. But this pretty byplay was very shallow. There were probably some leading citizens, including the mayor himself, who were Royalists. There were plenty of people who flourished under an aristocratic Crown; there must have been many who made money under the monopoly patents. But the mass of the people were on the rebel side. Within a few days of Charles's visit there was another mob raging round Westminster and Whitehall, shouting “No bishops.” They were told they were of no class; to which they replied with a signed petition containing the names of over twenty thousand substantial citizens, so they said, with many aldermen and common councillors. But the Recorder stoutly maintained that the municipal governors of the City had no objection to bishops.

The Common Council elected in 1641 was strongly for the Parliamentary Party, but the aldermen were still inclined to keep peace with Charles. The apprentices, at least, had made up their minds, and in December of this year they had a fight with the cavaliers, who chased them out of Westminster down King Street to Whitehall, calling them “roundheads” for their close cropped hair, which became the nickname of history. But even the Common Council declared that this rioting had no sanction from it; and Charles replied that he quite knew it had been the work of “meane and unruly people of the suburbs.” Nevertheless, he tried to secure control of the Tower; and went down to the House of Commons to arrest the five members who were leading the rebel party. They had already taken refuge in the City, whither Charles followed them: for the next day he arrived at the Guildhall with a few followers, while the Court of Common Council was sitting, and demanded the surrender of the refugee members from the Commons. His answer was: “It is the vote of this Court that your Majesty hear the advice of your Parliament,” and a stubborn cry of “the privileges of Parliament.” After dining with one of the sheriffs, he returned to Whitehall with the people crying as he passed, “Privilege, privilege.” London was on the verge of civil war.

The Commons then left Westminster, and sat in Grand Committee at the Grocers’ Hall (q.v.), in the heart of the City; where they were safe under the protection of the trained bands, who had put themselves under arms without the mayor's consent, since he refused to give the order. Charles left Whitehall for Hampton Court when he heard that the citizens were arming themselves on all sides. On this, Parliament, with the five members who were the origin of the tumult, made a triumphal procession back from the City to Westminster by way of the Thames. The sight on the river was an impressive one; for it was covered with armed boats; and the whole town seemed to march forth with the armed bands to receive the Commons with acclamations when they landed.

SECTION XIX

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE PARLIAMENT

HAVING seen how it was the City of London which was mainly responsible for the Civil War, we must leave the subsequent developments, with the final scene of Charles's execution in Whitehall, for general histories. There is a certain grim humour in finding Fairfax at the head of the Parliamentary army, advancing to London in 1648, having heralded his arrival by a letter demanding £40,000, and announcing that the soldiers would be quartered in the City until it was paid. On 2nd December they arrived; and as the money was not ready, Fairfax seized the treasury at the Goldsmiths’ and Weavers’ Halls, £27,000 being in the latter. After all, there was not such a radical distinction between being ruled by the Parliament or the King, especially when the soldiers started plundering the City. Within a few months of Charles's trial in Westminster Hall and his execution in front of the Banqueting House, Whitehall, 30th January 1649, John Lilburne was tried at the Guildhall for publishing pamphlets of too advanced a democratic tone for an aristocratic House of Commons. He was acquitted amid the joyful cries of the people, but when the Londoners elected him a Common Councillor, the Commons declared the election void!

When Cromwell died, in 1658, we soon find the City apprentices rioting against the Protectorate just as they had rioted against the Stuarts. An interval of puritanism had not suited their tastes. They were suppressed by the Army; whereupon the cry went round: “it was only kept on foot for the murder of citizens.” Then the City set to work reorganising its trained bands, the first sign of restoring the monarchy, as it proved. The Parliament had already dissolved the Common Council (for refusal to pay taxes until a full Parliament was elected) before Monk arrived in London. So his negotiations were conducted with the aldermen, who were by this time no less discontented with Parliament than the others. When he met them at the Guildhall with the news that he had just sent a letter to the Speaker demanding instant Parliamentary reform, they received it with shouts of joy. The City spent the night lighting bonfires and treating Monk's soldiers. The following day Monk attended a service at St Paul's; and the following, he conferred with the mayor and aldermen at Drapers’ Hall, which was quite close to the house he had moved to in place of Whitehall, which was too much under the power of the Parliament. The first definite sign how the political wind blew, was when the Skinners’ Company decorated their Hall with the Royal Arms one day when they were entertaining Monk. Then came a letter from Charles to the Common Council enclosing the Declaration of Breda, which set down the terms on which he was willing to return to England. And the Council sent back thanks and said the arms of the Commonwealth had been already removed. When Charles approached from Dover, the mayor and aldermen went out to meet him at St George's Fields, between Southwark and Lambeth, on the south side of the river, and his way hence to Whitehall was a triumphal march.

SECTION XX

LONDON OF THE RESTORATION PERIOD AND THE REVOLT OF 1688

THE period of the remainder of the Stuarts and William III. and Anne is chiefly interesting to the student of London's development in that it was the time of the rebuilding of the centre of London after its destruction by the Great Fire of 1666; and the building of the West End in the neighbourhood of St James's Palace, Piccadilly, Soho Square, and Leicester Fields. All this district, together with the already-built new neighbourhood round Covent Garden, bears the stamp of this period in its street names, and even in its architecture, for the latter part of the time. St James's Park, the Mall, and Hyde Parks were now the centres of fashion; and instead of mansions in the Strand, it was more correct to own a house in Piccadilly. Westminster remained a comparatively small group of houses round the Abbey and the Palace; with open fields between it and the village of Chelsea, which village was now the fashionable place for the suburban house of a wealthy peer. But, of course, all this West End had still nothing to do with the City of London in any legal sense.

The subsequent history of London in its general view, is mainly a matter of variation in detail on the general lines already formed, both in physical features and social structure. The foundation of the Bank of England in 1693 made a most radical change in the City's dealings with the Government, for it was to the bank rather than to the livery companies and the municipal council that the Crown afterwards applied for loans of money. With that change, the corporation and livery companies of London ceased to be a direct political force. During its earlier history it had been almost an Estate of the Realm, reaching the climax of its power when it became the leading force in the Great Rebellion against Charles I., as we have seen. From the time of the Restoration, the supremacy of Parliament, and the stricter definition of the national legislative and executive powers, pushed on one side even the mighty strength which London possessed as the greatest city in the kingdom, and as the doorkeeper of the Parliament Houses at Westminster. This geographical position, giving it the opportunity of overawing Parliament by the physical arbitration of a London mob, was always an element which had to be reckoned with, until the Crown came to possess a standing army; and this army was practically established by the Mutiny Act of 1689, when William III. took the place of the deposed James II.

The manner of this Rebellion of 1689 is interesting from the point of view of London; for it shows that the City took a far less prominent part in the enthronement of William than it had done in the recalling of Charles II. It was indeed within the bounds of the City of London that it was decided to offer the Crown to William; but it was the Lords who acted; the City was rather a passive spectator. The peers and the bishops in December 1688 had gathered together at the Guildhall as the safest place to debate on the national situation; but the municipal councillors took no part in their deliberations, being merely informed of the decision after it was taken (and the Lords dined with the Lord Mayor at the Grocers’ Hall the same evening). But it must be noted, on the other hand, that when William called a Parliament to confirm his invitation, he included in it the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and fifty of the Common Councillors. This, at least, was London's last appearance as in any way approaching the position of an Estate of the Realm. Henceforth it is merely the biggest city in the kingdom, of no greater legal position than the others; only bigger.

From the end of the seventeenth century the main lines of London's history, topographical, municipal, and national (if the last be not a paradoxical word), are more or less fixed. The later history is intensely interesting in detail; but here we are only trying to get broad outlines which will make London intelligible to the traveller.

SECTION XXI

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON AND ITS SUBURBS

WE have now arrived at a time when London, in the loose, popular sense (not the legal sense, be it remembered), included the City proper, that is, all within the old walls and the suburbs which had long clustered outside their gates, the old town of Southwark, and the original great parish of St Margaret's, Westminster, which has been almost covered with the houses of the “West End.” Beyond this threefold group of separate geographical personalities which had thus united, there was still open country at the end of the seventeenth century, and a great way through the following century. A very observant foreigner, De Saussure, was living in London during the years 1725-6; and he has left a very picturesque account of his impressions. After a description of the chief sights of Westminster and the City, and the district which lay between them, he goes on: “Outside the town you scarcely see anything but large, fine pastures, where all the year round thousands of cows graze and give an abundance of milk. In these large pastures you see neither trees nor hedges; the property of each individual is marked by ditches. Beyond these pastures there are many charming country houses, with fine large gardens, flourishing villages, but very little cultivated land.”

Then he goes on to mention these villages by name, with a brief sketch of their special characteristics. What he calls villages have now become absorbed into the great mass of London. De Saussure tells us that: “Chelsea is one of the finest and largest villages outside London…about two miles from Chelsea you reach Kensington, a large and fine village situated on a slight elevation…When the King does not go to Hanover, he spends his summer in this palace…Kensington is about three short miles from London.” He goes on: “Marylebone is a fine large village about one mile from London. It contains several handsome houses, and a very fine and large public garden. Many people go there on Sundays and holidays…. Paddington is a small village further north and two miles distant from London. It has fine houses.”

So he continues round London. To De Saussure, Islington is “a large village or small market town,” about two miles from the City; and on the way there he passes London Spa and Sadler's Wells, where the visitors are served with a daily entertainment which lasts all through the summer. And beyond Islington he discovered the villages of Hackney and Hampstead and Highgate.

On the south and south-west side of London it is very much the same. Lambeth is “a small market town,” where the Archbishops of Canterbury live in a “fine palace.” Hammersmith and Fulham, Wandsworth and Putney, are all villages also; while, of course, Richmond is something far away, “a fine large market town…much pleasant company.”

In brief, until the middle of the eighteenth century, there was scarcely a resident of London who was more than a mile from the open country; in most cases, ten minutes’ walk would take him to the green fields and de Saussure's very bountiful cows. London was still a reasonable place, which respected its neighbours; not an orgy of architectural nightmares. The London of Addison and Pope is now but a fragment in the middle of the bounds of the London County Council, just as the London of Chaucer and Wycliffe was only a fragment of the London of Queen Anne; while the dominion of the London County Council is now being threatened by still further expansions, and is threatening these suburbs in its turn.

CHELSEA OLD CHURCH

The More Chapel and Chancel

PART II

ITINERARIES

ITINERARY I

EARLY ROMAN LONDON AND THE WALBROOK DISTRICT

WHEN one has to settle the starting point for a logical survey of historical London there must be considerable hesitation, and the decision when made is rather a wavering one. Which corner of the City does best represent its origin? A reference to the historical survey in the beginning of this book, will give certain reasons for choosing the east banks of the Walbrook.

When the traveller stands outside Cannon Street railway station, opposite St Swithin's Church, he will note that the street falls until it reaches the corner where Dowgate Hill and Walbrook meet Cannon Street; while beyond this meeting place, Cannon Street rises again on its way to St Paul's. The valley thus formed was in ancient days the bed of the Walbrook, a stream which was such a distinctive feature of early London (see the Foundations of London). It was on its banks that the slight traces of Celtic or British London have been found. There have also been pile dwellings of a supposed Celtic origin discovered on the banks of the Fleet River; but we have given the precedence to those on the Walbrook, because it was also on the bank of this latter stream that Roman remains seem to denote their first Roman city.

It is useless to pretend that the evidence is very certain; but there is much to suggest that the London Stone (q.v.), which is now covered by the iron grating in the Cannon Street wall of St Swithin's Church, was near the centre of the first Roman settlement in London. There is the reasonable suggestion that it was the spot from which the milestones on the Roman roads were measured. In Bush Lane, just by the east side of Cannon Street Station, very massive Roman foundations were discovered, which apparently prove the existence of a large public building; while the station still rests on other bastion-like Roman remains, which seem to indicate a wall ending on the bank of the Walbrook. Such remains, with the absence of burials in this area, are generally accepted as probable proof that this spot was within the early fort which the Romans built to protect the north end of London Bridge. With that indication of the reason this place has been chosen as a starting point, we will point out the details and history which should be noticed in this area.

We are now in the ward of Walbrook. Starting at St Swithin's Church (q.v.), and turning up St Swithin's Lane, we come to Salter's Hall on the left. On this spot was once the house of Henry Fitzalwyn, the first recorded Mayor of London, in the time of Richard I. The house afterwards was sold to the Priory of Tortington in Sussex and from them it passed to the de Veres, Earls of Oxford, in 1539. Stow writes: “The late Earle of Oxford, father to him that now liveth, hath been noted within these fortie years, to have ridden into this Citie, and so to his house by London stone, with 80 gentlemen in a livery of Reading Tawny and chains of gold about their necks before him, and 100 yeomen in the like livery to follow him without chains, but all having his cognisance of the blew Bore, embroidered on their left shoulder.” He was a type of the feudal lord who was soon after this to disappear from the neighbourhood of the City, when the nobles left it for the West End. In 1641 the Salter's Company bought this mansion.

It was in the garden of this house that Henry VII.’s tools of financial exaction, Dudley and Empson, used to meet for consultation; they lived in two houses in the adjacent Walbrook, which joined this garden in St Swithin's Lane.

Starting from the north end of Walbrook, the Mansion House (q.v) is on the left. Partly on the open space by its west side and partly under it, once was the Church of St Mary Woolchurch (q.v.), which stood on the old Stocks Market, which was held in the large open space which now faces the Royal Exchange, but long before it was built, of course. Continuing down Walbrook we come to St Stephen's Church (q.v.). Opposite this church, at the south corner of Bucklersbury, was still standing in Stow's time a house called the Old Barge, in the possession of the ancient London family of the Buckerells in the thirteenth century. It was their “bury” or town house (hence the name of the present street, which has kept its winding form and its name since the time of these early owners). Stow says: “This manor is supposed to be the great stone building yet in part remaining on the south side of the street, which of late hath been called the Olde Barge, of such a sign hanged out, near the gate thereof. This manor or great house hath of long time been divided and letten out into many tenements; and it hath been a common speech that when Walbrook did be open, barges were rowed out of the Thames or towed up so far, and therefore the place hath ever since been called the Olde Barge.” Its first record under this name was in 1414.

Continuing south we come to Cannon Street again, west of St Swithin's. Crossing over to Dowgate Hill, at its north-west corner once stood the Church of St John upon Walbrook (q.v.). Clustered all around this spot are several halls of the Livery Companies: the Skinners’ (q.v.), the Dyers’, the Innholders’ (q.v.), the Chandlers’, and the Cutlers’; all of which have been in their present position since Stow surveyed them in Elizabeth's reign; except the Dyers, who only moved here after the Great Fire destroyed their Hall in Thames Street, near London Bridge.

On the opposite side of Dowgate Hill, in part where Cannon Street Hotel now stands, was once St Mary Bothaw Church (q.v.), which had been there at least since the middle of the twelfth century. We must remember that we are now in one of the oldest parts of the mediæval City, as well as probably the earliest part of the Roman town. South of this church, and under the station, was the site of the great mansion house called the Erber. At the end of Edward III.’s reign it belonged to John de Hatfield, a pepperer; and his widow sold it to Lord Latimer in 1273; and it passed successively through the hands of various nobles; the Earl of Westmorland, Ralph Neville, had it in 1399; his son, the Earl of Salisbury, lived there in 1458; then it passed to the Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in the Malmsey butt; and his brother, Richard III., gave it to the Earl of Oxford, whom we met in St Swithin's Lane; in 1513 it was returned to Clarence's daughter, the Countess of Salisbury, who resided there until she was beheaded in 1541 by Henry VIII.’s desire to rid himself of all possible royal blooded competitors. In Elizabeth's time Sir Francis Drake lived there.

Still further south, and still under the present Cannon Street Station, on the bank of the Thames, was once the famous Steelyard, the London warehouse of the powerful Hanseatic traders. They had been in this neighbourhood since at least the middle of the twelfth century; their Guildhall is recorded in 1260, but they or their fellow Germans had been established in London probably since the end of the tenth century. The Steelyard itself was occupied by these merchants in 1320, and it is a frequent note in London's history until the privileges of the Hanse were abolished and the merchants expelled from England, in the reign of Elizabeth. The name is probably a corrupted translation of Stahlhof, itself of doubtful meaning.

ALL HALLOWS, BARKING

Passing under the station, by Thames Street, we find on emerging on the other side, a little open space and some stonework, which is all that remains to mark where stood the Church of Allhallows the Great (q.v.), demolished in 1898. Just beyond it had been Allhallows the Less (q.v.), which was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. Almost attached to the latter church was the mansion of Cold Harbour, which had once belonged to Sir John Poulteney, a famous mayor of Edward III.’s reign. He also owned “the Manor of the Rose,” which stood on the right hand side, half way up Suffolk Lane on the opposite side of Thames Street; it was also known as Poultney's Inn. In 1384 it passed to the Earl of Arundel, and by the middle of the fifteenth century the Dukes of Suffolk were living there; and in 1506 it was confiscated and sold to the Duke of Buckingham, which Shakespere remembered when he wrote in his play, Henry VIII., act i. sc. 2:—

“Not long before your highness [King Henry] sped to France,
  The Duke being at the Rose within the parish
  Of St Lawrence Poultney, did of me demand
  What was the speech among the Londoners.”

In 1526 it went to Courtney, Earl of Devon, who was beheaded, and the house passed to the Earls of Sussex, who sold it about 1561 to the Merchant Tailors, who founded therein the school which still exists, but in another part of London (v. Charterhouse).

Turning down to the right, near the top of Suffolk Lane, we pass two beautiful doorways of the Wren period, at Nos. 1 and 2 Lawrence Poultney Hill. Lower down on the left is the churchyard, which marks the destroyed Church of St Lawrence Poultney (q.v.). In St Martin's Lane and Crooked Lane, the two following streets, running down to Thames Street from Cannon Street, there was a church in each (v. St Martin Orgar, and St Michael, Crooked Lane). These make five parish churches in all, since we emerged from Cannon Street tunnel, a few steps back; showing how thickly the churches were dotted over those parts of the City, which were most populated in the early days, when practically everyone in a parish went to church and had to be provided with room.

At the bottom of Miles Lane we come to the great Fishmongers’ Hall on the river bank, with its main entrance high up at the level of the London Bridge roadway. This company of traders held a mighty position in London during the mediæval period (v. The Historical Survey), and for a time, at the end of the fourteenth century, it looked as though they were fighting for supreme control of the City. Their hall has been on this present site since the beginning of the fourteenth century; Stow says of them: “The company was so great, as I have read, and can prove by records, these fishmongers having been jolly citizens and six mayors of their company in the space of twenty-four years,” between 1350-1374.

We now pass under London Bridge (q.v.), and emerge in Lower Thames Street, with the Church of St Magnus (q.v.) on the right. There were once two more parish churches [St Margaret, Fish Street (q.v.), and St Leonard Milk Church (q.v.)], before one reached the top of Fish Street Hill at Eastcheap. But these have now gone. Half way up is Wren's Monument (q.v.) in commemoration of the Great Fire of London in 1666. If the day is at all clear, and the traveller wishes to understand London, this tower should certainly be ascended, and the panorama compared carefully with a map, and the varied buildings and features located and grouped as a whole.

Still to the east, in Botolph Lane, is St George's Church (q.v.): and, at the top, was St Andrew Hubbert (q.v.). At the south end of the Lane, on the other side of Thames Street, once stood St Botolph's Church (q.v.), which was one of the older churches of London. It stood by Botolph Gate, a wharf on the Thames, still bearing that name, which it has borne since the time of William the Conqueror at least. The charter in which it is mentioned is worth quoting in full as giving a vivid peep into early London life. It runs, in an English translation from the original Latin: “William, King of England, sendeth greeting to the Sheriffs and all his ministers, as also to all his loving subjects, French and English of London: Know ye that I have granted to God and St Peter of Westminster [Westminster Abbey] and to the Abbot Vitalis, the gift which Alunodus of the port of St Botolph gave them, when he was there made monk: that is to say his Lord's Court with the houses and one wharf, which is at the head of London Bridge, and all other his lands which he had in the same City, in such sort as King Edward more beneficially and amply granted the same: and I will and command that they shall enjoy the same well and quietly and honourably with sac and soc.”

We are now probably in the neighbourhood of the oldest landing place in the City, unless we except the mouth of the Walbrook. A very short distance to the east of Botolph's Wharf, we arrive at Billingsgate (q.v.), whose name carries us back at least to Anglo-Saxon times, perhaps to pre-Roman. It is thought by some that the early Roman fort extended from the Walbrook bank, whence we have come in this itinerary, to Billingsgate, which was the port at its east corner, thus guarding the end of London Bridge. Coming down to this wharf (which is now partly covered by Billingsgate Market and partly by the Custom House) is St Mary at Hill, with its church of the same name (q.v.) on the west side. Stow tells us that in his day “this lane on both sides is furnished with many fair houses for merchants.” Near the foot of the Hill on the west side is the Watermen's Hall, built here in 1786; before which they had their hall at Cold Harbour. In olden days the watermen were a most numerous company, for the river was a much used thoroughfare; and, of course, bridges were few; until 1750, when Westminster Bridge was opened, London Bridge was the only one anywhere near London. So even as late as 1720, Strype says there were forty thousand watermen enrolled on the books of this guild. Near by, on St Dunstan's Hill, is the parish church of that name (q.v.), which Stow says was in his time a “parish of many rich merchants.” Christopher Wren's own house stood in Love Lane until 1909; and there is a fine iron gate of his period still standing in this lane.

The old Custom House was to the east of the existing building, and extended along the river bank from the foot of Water Lane to the foot of Beer Lane. It was built, at least as early as 1385, for the collection of the wool dues. There have been several rebuildings; one by Wren, but his was destroyed by fire. The façade of the present House was erected by Smirke in 1817, the rest, by Laing, begun in 1814. It was to the quay along the river front that the poet Cowper drove, intending to commit suicide, but found the tide too low and a porter sitting near. Just opposite the quay are still moored the ancient looking Dutch eel-ships, by right of the privilege which was granted to them by Queen Elizabeth.

Between Harp Lane and Water Lane is the Bakers’ Hall, which was used as such in Stow's time; but he says it had previously been the dwelling of a nephew of Chichele, a famous Lord Mayor of 1421, and his brother the famous Archbishop.

To the north-east, opposite the end of Seething Lane, is the very interesting Church of Allhallows, Barking (q.v.), one of those which escaped the Great Fire, and containing varied architecture from the Norman period onward. It is one of the churches which the traveller must not miss on any account.

A few steps bring us to Great Tower Hill (q.v.), off which is Catherine Court, an interesting group of houses of 1725, and Savage Gardens, with houses of the end of the same century, and the Trinity House (q.v.). The Tower of London (q.v.) lies as a huge mass of buildings to the south-east. A great part of the history of London is bound up with the Tower; and it must be carefully studied. It expresses the Norman Conquest, and the supremacy of the Crown which followed from it; and it was the symbol of the power before which the independent municipal government of London gave way to the will of the national law. It is now little more than a museum of history, but it must be remembered that during all the earlier part of London's career, until the time of the Tudors, it was a very living force; the continual fear of jealous citizens and the chief desire of plotting rebels.

Beyond the Tower, further east, are the Katherine Docks, so called after St Katherine's Hospital (q.v.), which stood there for almost seven hundred years. Just to the north, where the Royal Mint now stands, was formerly the Abbey of Eastminster (q.v.).

We have now reached the eastern boundary line of historical London; we already crossed the line of the City walls when we passed Great Tower Hill. Until the eighteenth century all beyond was mainly the open country and not London at all. Since we passed under London Bridge approach we have found nine parish churches or their sites, in the little plot of ground up to the Tower, besides two churches in the Tower itself, and two ecclesiastical foundations immediately beyond its east walls. These facts must be noted as proof how thickly this corner of old London was populated, and how powerful was the Church in those days.

ITINERARY II

THE MANSION HOUSE AND ALDGATE DISTRICT

IN Itinerary I. we touched the Mansion House, which is almost the exact centre of the area which was enclosed within the walls of London. We will start from this point to-day, since it was both the centre of the later Roman and the mediæval City. In the previous journey, it will be remembered, we started at London Stone because there is reason to hold that it was the centre of the first Roman London. We have now to deal with the larger City.

In the mediæval London there was a large open space at the west end of Lombard Street and Cornhill, where they meet, just as there is to-day. In this space, partly where the Mansion House now stands, was the Stocks Market, which was one of the chief shopping places in the town; and in its centre stood the stocks from which it took its name. Stow tells us that Henry le Waleis, a mayor, built a market house in the year 1282, and the rent obtained from it went to the maintenance of London Bridge; he adds that it “was appointed by him to be a market place for fish and flesh in the midst of the city…. After this, in the year 1322, the 17 of Edward the Second, a decree was made by Hamond Chickwell, Mayor, that none should sell fish or flesh out of the markets appointed; to wit, Bridge Street, East Cheap, Old Fish Street, St Nicholas Shambles, and the said Stockes, upon pain to forfeit such fish or flesh as were sold, for the first time, and the second time to loose their freedom; which act was made by commandment of the king under his letters patents dated at the Tower” (v. Mansion House).

This extract from Stow will help us to locate the places of the mediæval markets. In that period of industrial organisation, the traders were not at liberty to scatter themselves over the town at their own pleasure. Buying and selling must be done in specified places, under proper supervision, where the rules and regulations of the municipality and the craft guilds could be enforced.

At the peak of King William Street and Lombard Street stands the Church of St Mary Woolnoth (q.v.). We are now in Lombard Street (q.v.), one of London's most famous streets. The parish churches are here thickly placed. St Edmund's (q.v.), and a little further on Allhallows’, still stand; and St Nicholas Acon (q.v.) was in St Nicholas Lane on the other side of Lombard Street. All three were very early foundations, Allhallows is recorded before the Norman Conquest, and St Nicholas before William the Conqueror was dead; and St Edmund was certainly in existence by 1150. If we turn down Birchin Lane (which Stow says was mainly inhabited by wealthy drapers in his day) into Cornhill, we shall find two other parish churches immediately to our right: first, St Michael (q.v.), which is recorded as early as 1133; and then St Peter (q.v.), which is ascribed to the Celtic Christian period by a tradition which itself dates from A.D. 700. If the facts of this tradition are erroneous, it at least proves that there was a church there at that early date.

At the west end of Cornhill is the Royal Exchange (q.v.), which marks the beginning of the rise of London into the first place in the commerce of the world, in the age of Elizabeth, who opened the Exchange with great state in 1570.

The name of Cornhill is very ancient, going back to the beginning of the twelfth century; but its origin is doubtful, for there is no trace of any corn market having been there, which was Stow's conjecture. He says that in his time the north side had “divers fair houses for merchants and others.” Opposite the Royal Exchange, on the south side of Cornhill, once stood the Pope's Head Tavern. Stow remarks of it: “This Pope's Head Tavern with other houses adjoining, strongly built of stone, hath of old time been all in one, pertaining to some great estate, or rather to the king of this realm, as may be supposed both by the largeness thereof; and by the arms, to wit three Leopards passant, gardant, which was the whole arms of England before the reign of Edward III., that quartered them with the Arms of France, then flower de luces. These arms of England, supported between two angels, are fair and largely graved in stone on the fore front towards the High Street.” This ancient house extended through to Lombard Street, opposite the church of St Mary Woolnoth. Stow adds: “Some say this was King John's house; which might be so, for I find in a written copy of Matthew Paris his history that in the year 1232 Henry III. sent Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, to Cornhill in London, there to answer all matters objected against him.” It is not at all unlikely that John may have lived here when he took the side of the citizens against Longchamp, for that rival had possession of the Tower, but it was facing the foe to come to this spot, for Henry de Cornhill was the leading citizen on Longchamp's side.

In the middle of Cornhill, opposite the east end of the Exchange, stood the Tun, of which Stow says: “Then have ye a fair conduit of sweet water, castellated in the middest of that ward and street. This conduit was first builded of stone, in the year 1282, by Henry de Waleis, mayor of London, to be a prison for nightwalkers, and other suspicious persons, and was called the Tun upon Cornhill, because the same was builded somewhat in fashion of a Tun standing on the one end…. By the west side of the foresaid prison was a fair Well of spring water curbed round with hard stone; but in the year 1401, the said prison house called the Tun was made a cistern for sweet water conveyed by pipes of lead from Tyburn, and was from thenceforth called the Conduit upon Cornhill. Then was the well planked over, and a strong prison made of timber called a Cage, with a pair of stocks therein set upon it, and this was for night-walkers. On the top of which cage was placed a pillory for the punishment of bakers offending in the assize of bread, for millers stealing of corn at the mill, for bawdes, scoulds and other offenders.”

On the opposite side of Cornhill to St Michael Archangel stood the Weigh-house or the King's Beam, where merchandise was officially weighed by the Crown officers.

Walking eastward, we come to the meeting place of Cornhill, Bishopsgate Street, Leadenhall Street, and Gracechurch Street, all very ancient names in the history of London. Leadenhall Market (q.v.), which lies behind the corner formed by Leadenhall Street and Gracechurch Street, is generally admitted to have been the site of important Roman buildings of a public nature, perhaps a basilica. We have seen how St Peter's Church facing it has been ascribed, by persistent tradition, to a Roman foundation. The spot must further have been the crossing-place of the great Roman road to Bishopsgate, and the road running east and west, through the City, from Newgate to Aldgate (for the latest opinion is that Aldgate was opened in the Roman period). It is possible, or even probable, that we are here at the centre of the later Roman London, as we were near the centre of the earlier Roman London at London Stone. It is certain, at any rate, that very many remains of Roman buildings have been discovered in this part of the City.

ST MARGARET PATTENS

We will turn to the right along Gracechurch Street. Stow says that in his day there were here “many fair houses for merchants and artificers, and many fair inns for travellers.” At the south-west corner of Fenchurch Street stood the parish church of St Benet (q.v.). The early name was Grass Church; it was so called after the herb or grass market held outside, when the street was far wider than it is now. Stow's account of the customs of the market gives a vivid picture of the organisation of mediæval society: “The Customs of Grasse church market, in the reign of Edward III…. were these: every foreign cart laden with corn or malt coming thither to be sold, was to pay one halfpenny, every foreign cart bringing cheese two pence, every cart of corn and cheese together (if the cheese be more worth than the corn) two pence, and if the corn be more worth than the cheese it was to pay a half penny; of two horses laden with corn or malt, the Bailiff had one farthing; the cart of the franchise of the Temple and of St Martin le Grand paid a farthing; the cart of the hospital of St John of Jerusalem paid nothing for their Goods.” Here we have a practical example of the privileged position of the religious houses.

The modern King William Street (so called after William IV., in whose reign it was cut through the old mediæval lanes, as a short cut from the Mansion House to London Bridge) meets Gracechurch Street in front of the statue to the same king at the end of the approach to London Bridge. In the angle formed by the two streets is the parish church of St Clement Eastcheap (q.v.). The statue just mentioned stands on the site of the Boar's Head Tavern, which was there until 1831, when the way was cleared to the new bridge. This was made by Shakespere the scene of Falstaff's exploits and wit, as expounded in the two parts of his play of Henry IV. Stow tells how Prince Hal's brothers, being late one night after supper in Eastcheap (at the end of which we now are), a quarrel arose between their followers; and when the mayor and aldermen were called before the Chief-Justice Gascoyne to answer the charge of reducing the King's sons to order, these City officers refused to acknowledge that it was any fault to restore the peace; whereupon the king “remitted all his ire and dismissed them.” It was on this record that Shakespere seems to have based these scenes in his plays. Eastcheap in earlier days extended from the church of St Clement's to the end of Gracechurch Street; and beyond it was Little Eastcheap, leading to Tower Hill. At the top of Botolph Lane, at the east corner, stood the Weigh House Chapel (v. St Andrew Hubbard) until 1880; it was one of the first Nonconformist chapels to be built in England.

Turning into Rood Lane, on the left of Eastcheap, we find St Margaret Pattens (q.v.) parish church. Continuing, we come to Fenchurch Street again. To our left at the west corner of Lime Street once stood the parish church of St Dionis (q.v.), but now there is only a little churchyard with some tombs to mark the spot; and returning beyond Rood Lane to the right, we come to the place where the parish church of St Gabriel Fenchurch (q.v.) once stood in the middle of the street, halfway between Rood Lane and Mincing Lane.

In Mincing Lane, a few steps down on the east side, stands the Clothworkers’ Hall in the same place where it stood in Stow's time, though the present building only dates from 1860. Pepys was Master in 1677, and presented a “loving cup” which is still preserved by the society, which is the last on the list of the Twelve Great Companies. Mincing Lane is so called because it chiefly belonged to the “minchens” or nuns of St Helen's Nunnery, Bishopsgate, which we shall visit afterwards.

Continuing along Fenchurch Street, a narrow passage takes us to where a tower in a churchyard is all that remains to record the position of the parish church of Allhallow's Staining (q.v.), which stood in Mark Lane. This is important, for it is a part of the earlier mediæval church which escaped the Great Fire of 1666. In Fenchurch Street, opposite the north end of this lane, is the Ironmongers’ Hall, which was almost in the same position in the middle of the fifteenth century, though it was rebuilt in 1748, and since altered in various ways. By the east side of this hall runs Billiter Lane, which is called Belzeters’ Lane as early as 1298, meaning the lane of the belzeters or bell-founders. It may be mentioned in passing that this ancient origin of a street name is typical of the whole City of London; a large number of the names being traceable, like this one, to the mediæval period, many of them to the Saxon period (as we shall note, for example, at Addle Street). If the traveller will be continually on the outlook for these derivations, it will greatly help to revivify the old City. Stow mentions a fact concerning this neighbourhood which will give some idea of the great age of the district we are now visiting. He says that between Billiter Lane and Lime Street (which we noted farther west off Fenchurch Street) he observed, during the course of digging the foundation of new buildings, massive stone walls with windows, crossed by iron bars, at a depth of about twelve feet. In other words, the ground had accumulated to the depth of all these feet since the erection of these buildings, which Stow dates to the time of Stephen, though they may well have been Roman. At the north-east corner of Mark Lane had once been the manor of Blanches Appeltuna, belonging to a noble family, De Vaux, in 1177; it afterwards became known as Blanch Apleton, then as Blanch Chapulton, finally as Blind Chapel Court. It was the market privileges attached to this manor which gave Mart or Mark Lane its name. Stow says: “I read that in the third of Edward the fourth, all basket makers, wire drawers, and other foreigners, were permitted to have shops in this manor of Blanch Apleton and not elsewhere within the City or suburbs thereof.” No. 33 Mark Lane, standing behind the main frontage of the street, was built in 1689-94, probably by the Nevilles. It is a fine example of the William and Mary period, and has their heads in keystones of the building. It is at the west side of the lane, and is reached by a passage.

Continuing along Mark Lane we reach Hart Street, at the south-east corner of which is the parish church of St Olave (q.v.), always known as Pepys's Church, and also noteworthy as having survived the Great Fire. It is full of interesting monuments and memories of the Elizabethan and Stuart London merchants and their life. This church is bounded on its east side by Seething Lane, a corrupted form of the Shyvethenestrat, as it was recorded in 1257, or Sevyynhane, as it was called in 1312. Stow says that in this lane were “divers fair and large houses,” in which had lived Allen, a Lord Mayor and councillor of Henry VIII.; Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's great Secretary; and the Earl of Essex, one of her pet courtiers.

Turning back to the north end of Seething Lane, we are at the corner of Crutched Friars (q.v.).

Passing under Fenchurch Street Station, and reaching the Minories by way of John Street, we arrive on the site of the abbey of St Clare, which stood just beyond the walls, which once crossed the centre of John Street on their way south to the Thames bank. The only remnant of this abbey is the church of Holy Trinity (q.v.), now used as a parish room. It will be found by proceeding along Minories to the north, and going down Church Street off its right-hand side. All beyond this spot eastward in Stow's time was open country; he writes: “Near adjoining to this Abbey on the south side thereof, was sometimes a farm belonging to the said nunnery, at the which farm, I myself in my youth have fetched many a half penny's worth of milk…One Trolop and afterwards Goodman were the farmers there, and had thirty or forty kine to the pail. Goodman's son being heir to his father's purchase, let out the ground first for grazing of horses, and then for garden plots, and lived like a gentleman thereby.” An early example of a lucky London landlord who sat at home while other persons worked on his ground. This Goodman is still commemorated by Goodman's Yard on the east side of Minories.

Continuing along Minories we reach the parish church of St Botolph, Aldgate (q.v.) which stood just outside Aldgate (q.v.); just as there are St Botolphs at Bishopsgate and Aldersgate, and once was one at Billingsgate. Outside the gate, about three quarters of a mile along the High Street is the church of St Mary Matfelon (v. Whitechapel) the parish church of Whitechapel (q.v.), but this was quite beyond the jurisdiction of the mediæval City, which only extended about two hundred and fifty yards from Aldgate, up to the Bars, which marked the east boundary of Portsoken Ward, the ward without the walls, which has roused so much interesting historical discussion. It belonged to, or was governed by a mysterious body called the Knighten-Guild which was founded before the Norman Conquest; and in 1115 all its members retired within the Priory of Holy Trinity (q.v.), just inside the Aldgate, as we shall see; and endowed that ecclesiastical body with its possessions of the Portsoken. Stow says that just within the Bars “Hog Lane stretcheth north toward St Mary Spital, without Bishopsgate, and within these forty years had on both sides fair hedge rows of elm trees, with bridges and easy stiles to pass over into the pleasant fields, very commodious for citizens therein to walk, shoot, and otherwise to recreate and refresh their dulled spirits in the sweet and wholesome air; which is now within few years made a continued building throughout of garden houses and small cottages, and the fields on either side be turned into garden plots, tentes yards, bowling alleys and such like from Houndsditch in the west so far as White Chapel and further towards the east.”

Almost one and a half miles east of Aldgate, half way between the Mile End and the Commercial Roads, lies the mother parish church of St Dunstan, Stepney (q.v.). In the Mile End Road are the picturesque Trinity House Almshouses, which are in part, at least, the work of Wren.

Returning to Aldgate, the road on its right, just before reaching it, is named Houndsditch; it marks the place of the ditch beyond the City Wall (v. Walls). Within the walls on the right of the main street (Aldgate, High Street) stood the famous Priory of Holy Trinity (q.v.). Its former position is marked by Duke Street, so called after the Duke of Norfolk, who was in possession after the priory was dissolved.

Bearing to the left along Fenchurch Street, we pass Northumberland Alley which marks the position of a house which belonged to the Percies, Earls of Northumberland, in Henry VI.’s reign; but which had been deserted by its owner before Stow's time, and converted into tenements. Then, just to the south of the main street, is St Katherine Coleman (q.v.). Turning to the right by Fenchurch Buildings, we reach Leadenhall Street, and opposite on our right, is the parish church of St Katherine, Cree (q.v.). Further west along Leadenhall Street, at the corner of Mary Axe, is the parish church of St Andrew Undershaft (q.v.). On the south side of Leadenhall Street is Lime Street whereof Stow writes: “In Lime Street are divers fair houses for merchants and others; there was sometime a mansion house of the Kings, called the King's Artirce, whereof I find a record in the 14 year of Edward the First, but now grown out of knowledge. I read also of another great house in the west side of Lime Street, having a chapel on the south, and a garden on the west, then belonging to the Lord Nevill, which garden is now called the Green Yard of the Leaden Hall” (see Leadenhall Market and Street). The Pewterers’ Hall was in Lime Street, and Sir Christopher Wren's wainscoted dining hall and another smaller room also by him, still exist as part of the premises of Messrs Townend, the hatters, on the west side of the street.

We now reach Cornhill which we have already visited.

ITINERARY III

THE SOUTH-WEST WARDS OF THE CITY

ONCE again we start from the Mansion House; and proceed westwards along Queen Victoria Street. This is one of the few highways in the City which the ghost of a thirteenth century Londoner would not recognise; it is the product of Victorian days as its name will tell. It is surprising how few streets there are in the City, except in the north-east corner, which were not already there when Wat Tyler raided the town in 1381: indeed it would be safe to say that a very large number of them were there a hundred years earlier; and have persisted in spite of such radical changes as this Queen Victoria Street, for example. Thus, at the spot which we are now passing, we can note one end of the ancient Bucklersbury on our left, and its continuation still existing on the right, winding its way to Cheapside; and Bucklersbury as we have already seen was there in 1270, when it was the home of the Buckerells.

Turning down Sise Lane, at the corner where it joins Budge Row there is a tiny open space with a monument, marking where stood the parish church of St Antholin (q.v.). Budge Row is apparently a part of Watling Street, the Saxon name given to the Roman road which was constructed to the head of London Bridge when the older ford at Westminster was supplanted by the Roman bridge. Crossing Budge Row, we go down Tower Royal, so called after a house of the French wine-merchants of La Reole in Gascony, who first built it. Afterwards it got into the hands of the Crown, and we find Edward III. presenting it to Queen Philippa in 1331. It was here that Richard II. came to reassure his mother, after he had attended the famous assembly of Wat Tyler's followers in Smithfield: “he, his Lords and all his Company, entered the City of London with great joy, and went to the Lady Princess, his mother, who was then lodged in the Tower Royal, called the Queen's Wardrobe, where she had remained three days and two nights, right sore abashed; but when she saw the King, her son, she was greatly rejoiced and said: 'Ah, son, what great sorrow have I suffered for you this day.’ The King answered and said: 'Certainly, Madam, I know it well, but now rejoice and thank God, for I have this day recovered mine heritage, and the realm of England, which I had near hand lost.’” Richard and his mother had both taken refuge here when the rebels had seized the Tower of London. The Tower Royal stood almost where Cannon Street (another of the few big, new streets) cuts through the older Tower Royal Street.

College Hill (q.v.), on the south side of Cannon Street, is Richard Whittington's street, as the parish church of St Michael Royal (q.v.) may be called his church; it stands half way down the street on the left side. We have already noted (Itinerary I.) the little group of Halls of the City Companies which lie to our left; so we will bear to the right, passing at the corner between College Street and Queen Street the site of the destroyed parish church of St Martin Vintry (q.v.), still marked by the old churchyard and a few tombs at the east side of Queen Street. The church precincts stretched across the present street; and in the same manner further up the street, just where it reaches Cannon Street, once stretched the parish church of St Thomas the Apostle (q.v.), a vestige of its churchyard remaining as the few square yards of space in front of the two handsome early eighteenth (or perhaps late seventeenth) century houses on the left side. These houses are an interesting record of the City as it was in the Georgian period, when it was still partly residential, and the great blocks of offices and warehouses had not yet arrived.

Turning along Great St Thomas Street, on the south side of these houses, we are in what was once known as Knightrider Street, on which Stow remarks: “So called (as is supposed) of Knights well armed and mounted at the Tower Royal, riding from thence through that street, west to Creed Lane and so out at Ludgate towards Smithfield, where they were there to tourney, joist or otherwise to show activities before the King and States of the realm.” The part of this street south of St Paul's still bears the name. On the north side of this lane, where we now are, partly on the site of the two houses just mentioned, and extending west to the top of Garlick Hill, once stood Ipris Inn, which was first built by William of Ipres. “This William,” says Stow, “was called out of Flanders with a number of Flemings to the aid of King Stephen, against Maud the Empress, in the year 1138, and grew in favour with the said king for his service, so far that he builded this his house near unto Tower Royal; in the which Tower it seemeth the king was then lodged as in the heart of his City for his more safety.” Long afterwards, in 1377, the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, was dining with John of Ipres, a descendant of William, at this same house, on the day when the rebels under Wat Tyler rushed upon the palace of Savoy in the Strand, hoping to find the Duke there: “but one of the Duke's knights seeing these things, came in great haste to the place where the Duke was [at Ipris Inn], and after that he had knocked, and could not be let in, said to Haveland the porter, 'if thou love my lord and thy life, open the gate’; with which words he got entry, and with great fear he tells the Duke, that without the gate were an infinite number of armed men, and unless he took great heed that day would be his last: with which words the Duke leapt so hastily from his oysters that he hurt both his legs against the form: wine was offered but he could not drink for haste and so fled with his fellow Harry Percy out at a back gate and entering the Thames, never stayed rowing until they came to a house near the manor of Kennington where at that time the princess lay with Richard the young prince, before whom he made his complaint.” Opposite Ipris Inn, on the south side of Knightrider Street, once stood Ormond Place, “a great house builded of stone,” says Stow, who adds that it had just been demolished and tenements erected in its place. It had belonged to the Earls of Ormond, but had got into the hands of Edward IV., who gave it to his wife Elizabeth.

Turning down Garlick Hill, at the top right-hand corner once stood the parish church of Holy Trinity the Less (q.v.) (only commemorated by the names of the adjacent Great and Little Trinity Lane); and at the bottom of the hill still stands the parish church of St James Garlickhithe (q.v.), which in early days had almost touched the church of St Martin to the east.

In Thames Street, on the south side, to our left, is the Vintners’ Hall (q.v.), reminding us that we are now in the Vintry Ward, which took its name because it was the locality of the wine merchants, who have left their records all over it, as we have seen, for example, at the Tower Royal. Stow writes of this ward: “so called of Vintners and of the Vintry, a part of the banks of the river of Thames where the merchants of Bordeaux craned their wines out of lighters and other vessels, and there landed and made sale of them within forty days after, until the 28th year of Edward the first; at which time the said merchants complained that they could not sell their wines, paying poundage, neither hire houses or cellers to lay them in, and it was redressed by virtue of the king's writ, directed to the mayor and sheriffs of London; since the which time many fair and large houses with vaults and cellers for stowage of wines and lodgings of the Bordeaux merchants have been builded in place where before time were cooks’ houses.” Behind the Vintners’ Hall was the Three Cranes Landing Stage.

Continuing west along Thames Street, we come to an open space at the foot of Trinity Lane which marks the old Queenhithe (q.v.), where was the famous landing-place of that name. At the north side of Thames Street, opposite this spot, once stood the parish church of St Michael Queenhithe (q.v.), which had been there since soon after the Norman Conquest, if not earlier; now, only the little churchyard in Huggin Lane commemorates it. On the right-hand side of Little Trinity Lane stood the mansion of the Earl of Cornwall in the time of Edward IV., but it had disappeared before the end of Elizabeth's reign. We have seen that the earls had property in Queenshithe (q.v.). At the left top corner of Little Trinity Lane still stands the Painter Stainers’ Hall (q.v.), with its fine doorway. Turning to the left, we reach Queen Victoria Street again, and opposite us is the parish church of St Mildred, Bread Street (q.v.), behind the frontage houses of the street. Knightrider Street reappears again at this point. Just south of this had once been Gerrard's Hall, the site of which is now mainly covered by Queen Victoria Street. This house had its tradition of Gerrard the Giant, who used the gigantic pole which stood in the great hall. Leaving myths, we learn that Sir John Gisors, the mayor of London in 1245, was owner of this mansion, which he had built; and his descendants were still living there in 1386, but apparently it was soon after sold. By the year 1479, at least, it was being used as a tavern, which was its trade until 1784. Its crypt was not destroyed until 1852.

Continuing westwards down Queen Victoria Street, we reach a district that is a nest of parish churches or the sites of demolished ones, which may be compared to the nest we found on the ground along the banks to the Tower of London, in the first Itinerary. Now, we have St Nicholas Olave (q.v.), only commemorated by the churchyard on the west side of Bread Street Hill. Going west, we come to St Nicholas Cole Abbey (q.v.), just on the north side of Queen Victoria Street, and just round the corner, at the west corner of Old Change, once stood St Mary Magdalen (q.v.). Passing down to Thames Street, we come immediately to the tower which still stands of the otherwise demolished St Mary Somerset (q.v.); and St Mary Mountlaw (q.v.) stood on the west side of Old Fish Street Hill, which last church is interesting for its origin as the chapel of a noble's mansion.

On the south side of Thames Street, opposite the two St Mary's, stood the great town house of the Earls and Dukes of Norfolk, who were living here from Henry III.’s reign until the fifteenth century; and by 1544 it had been bequeathed to the City Corporation, and was used in Stow's time as a pumping-station to supply Thames water to the Londoners. At the south-east corner of Peter's Hill stood the parish church of St Peter, Paul's Wharf (q.v.), now marked only by a small part of the churchyard; while opposite it, on the south side of Thames Street, was once the town house of the Abbots of Chertsey, which at the end of the sixteenth century was called Sandie House. Adjoining it, on the west, stood a house which was called New Inn in 1397, when it belonged to the Earl of Salisbury; in the fifteenth century Edward, Duke of York, owned it; later the Viscounts Beaumont; and in Stow's time it was Huntington House, after its then owners, the Earls of Huntington. Next beyond Paul's Wharf stood Scrope's Inn, the town house of the Scropes in Henry VI.’s reign; and facing it, on the north side of Thames Street, is still the parish church of St Benet (q.v.). Next beyond Scope's Inn stood the town house of the Abbots of Fecamp in France; and when it came into Edward III.’s hands after the French wars, he gave it to Sir Simon Burleigh. Then came Baynard Castle (q.v.), where it stood in its second position, still marked by the name of Castle Baynard Dock. Opposite to the castle on the north side of Thames Street stood Berkley Inn, where lived Lord Berkley in 1416, and afterwards the Earl of Warwick in 1439.

There are two general characteristics to note concerning the corner of the City we have just inspected during the last few minutes—first, the large number of parish churches crowded together; and secondly, the group of town houses belonging to great nobles and ecclesiastical lords.

Turning now once more into Queen Victoria Street, we must retrace our steps a little way, until we reach the College of Arms (v. Heralds’ College) on the north side; it is the handsome example of late Stuart architecture at the west corner of St Peter's Hill. Coming west again, we see St Andrew Wardrobe (q.v.), another parish church. Behind it is Wardrobe Place (q.v.), whence it gets its second name, and passing behind St Andrew's to the left, we shall find in a narrow back lane, called Church Entry, a little churchyard which is all that remains of St Anne Blackfriars (q.v.). It was in the lane which ran down to the Puddle Wharf from the Wardrobe, where Shakespere bought a house in 1613, but by that time he had left London, so never lived there himself.

We are now in the precincts of the demolished domain of the Black Friars (q.v.). There is only a small fragment of a ruin left to record the actual building, which we will find in the little courtyard on the north side of Ireland Yard. But the names around us are indications of what once stood on this spot. There is Friars Street, and again Cloister Court, just to the south; and there is Playhouse Yard, a little to the west, which commemorates the use to which one of the friary buildings was put, for it was here that Shakespere and his fellows opened their Blackfriars Theatre, in what was probably the great hall of the old friary.

In Water Lane is Apothecaries’ Hall (q.v.). About where the Times newspaper buildings now stand, was once the Tower of Montfichet, one of the baronial castles which arose soon after the Norman Conquest; it was demolished with Baynard Castle to make room for the Blackfriars. The original Baynard Castle was at the mouth of the Fleet, where it entered the Thames, a little to the south-west of Montfichet Tower.

We have now reached the west walls of the City, which ran along the east side of the Fleet stream. At first they had gone straight from Ludgate to Montfichet's Tower, and then to Baynard Castle on the Thames bank, but later on they were diverted westwards to include the Blackfrairs precinct when it was built in 1284. This diverted wall turned east towards St Paul's, just south of Ludgate Hill, then turned north again by St Martin's Church. From Ludgate (q.v.) we approach St Paul's Cathedral (q.v.), the centre of London's ecclesiastical life, and also of the popular side of its civic life, for it was at Paul's Cross, at the north-east corner of the cathedral, that the people assembled to discuss public affairs. We must realise that St Paul's was once much more than the isolated church as it stands now, for it was in mediæval days surrounded by a walled precinct which had almost a separate life of its own. Stow gives the history of the enclosing of the precinct: how it began in the time of Bishop Beamor, who succeeded in 1107: “purchasing of his own cost the large streets and lanes about it…which ground he began to compass about, with a strong wall of stone and gates…. It should seem that this Richard inclosed but two sides of the said church of St Paul, to wit the south and north side…. But the citizens then claimed the east part of the churchyard to be the place of assembly to their folkmotes, and that the great steeple there situate was to that use, their common bell…. Edward the III. in the 17 year of his reign, gave commandment for the finishing of that wall, which was then performed, and to this day [end of sixteenth century] it continueth; although now on both the sides (to wit within and without) it be hidden with dwelling houses.” So we must approach St Paul's as a society, not merely an isolated building.

ITINERARY IV

CHEAPSIDE AND THE NORTH-WEST CITY

WE have now visited the chief places in the area of the Roman City and the early Teutonic London which extended along the river bank from Billingsgate to the wharfs below St Paul's Cathedral. But there are some indications that the centre of Saxon London was in the district just to the north of Cheapside and St Paul's, which we will traverse to-day. Once again we begin at the Mansion House.

Proceeding westwards along the Poultry, which is the eastern end of Cheapside, we pass, on our right, Old Jewry (q.v.) and then Ironmonger Lane. Between these two early lanes were once no less than three parish churches, St Mary Colechurch (q.v.), at the south-west corner of Old Jewry; St Olave Jewry (q.v.), of which the tower still stands on the east side of Ironmonger Lane; and St Martin Pomary (q.v.), which almost abutted on the west end of St Olave, and faced on Ironmonger Lane. The name Pomary has been pointed at by Sir Laurence Gomme as denoting the position of the old Roman pomœrium, the open space outside the early Roman settlement. This fact must be remembered with what we have already considered in Itinerary I. Stow, writing of the supposed derivation from pomarium, an orchard, remarks that “it is supposed to be of apples growing, where now houses are lately builded; for myself have seen large void spaces,” a statement which is suggestive of the comparatively open condition of the centre of the City, even so late as the middle Tudor period. At the south-east corner of Ironmonger Lane, with one part of its south side appearing in Cheapside, still stands the Mercers’ Hall (q.v.), which has been on this spot since the time of Henry VIII., and the main parts of the present building date back to the rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1666. Opposite the Cheapside entrance of this hall we note Bucklersbury reappearing in its now broken course from the Walbrook. Passing down it, and turning into Pancras Lane on the right, we shall find two little open spaces on its north side, marking the now destroyed parish churches of St Benet Sherehog (q.v.) and St Pancrate (q.v.). Thus, within a few minutes, we have found the sites of five parish churches, which will help us to realise the residential nature of the old City of London: it was then not merely a place for work and money-making, it was a place in which to live and die, and pass one's whole life in between whiles.

Turning once more into Cheapside, by way of Queen Street, we pass up King Street to the Guildhall, passing, just before we reach that place, the parish church of St Lawrence (q.v.) on the left. Before considering the Guildhall, however, we will glance at the streets on its east. On the east of Guildhall Yard entrance, opposite St Lawrence, along the north side of Gresham Street, once stood Bakewell Hall, which had a long history in the City, from the middle of the thirteenth century; in Edward I.’s reign it was the mansion of Sir Roger Clifford, who presented the great hall of it to the City, in 1280; the City, in 1291, gave it to a man named Banquell or Bakwell, whose family gave it its name and held it until 1396, when it again was bought by the Corporation and converted into a weekly cloth market. It stood until the year 1820. Then, to the left, runs Basinghall Street (q.v.), another very ancient City name which is recorded as early as 1180, probably earlier still. It commemorates the “haw” or manor house of the Basings, who were great City magnates in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. With its three halls of venerable City companies mentioned in the note on Basinghall Street (q.v.) it may well be regarded as typical of a London highway. In the next main street to the east, Coleman Street, we have another instance of a name which probably comes from one of the great governing families of the City, in this case the Ceolmunds. Coleman Street is mentioned as early as 1227, and there was a Coelmund who had property near Ludgate as early as A.D. 857. At the north end of the street, on the east side, is the Armourers’ Hall, which has been on the same spot since the reign of Richard III. On the west side of the street, near the Gresham Street end, is the parish church of St Stephen (q.v.), with the Last Judgment relief over the doorway.

Returning to the Guildhall (q.v.), we must realise that this, or within a few steps thereof, has been the seat of the City government since the Saxon period. The existing site is historically connected with the older building in Aldermanbury, a few paces to the west; and the name, Aldermanbury (q.v.), that is, the seat of the alderman, is itself of Saxon origin. Then, there is a suggestive fact in the name of Addle Street, which goes westwards from Aldermanbury (at the corner where stands Brewers’ Hall (q.v.). Adle or Adel was the earlier name, and still earlier Atheling Street, all which words denote some connection with the Royal House or Athelings. There is thus a link of evidence connecting the Guildhall with the seat of the Saxon kings. It may well be that the City of London has been controlled from this little area (including the places and streets just mentioned at the west end of the Guildhall) since Alfred the Great sent an alderman to guard London against the Danes.

At the east corner of Love Lane is the parish church of St Mary Aldermanbury (q.v.), which has great interest for Shakespere students; at the west end of Love Lane is the parish church of St Alban, Wood Street (q.v.), which again has strong links with the Saxon kings. At the top of Aldermanbury, in London Wall, is the parish church of St Alphage (q.v.), which still can show in its walls a part of the ancient Elsing Spital, built in 1332 on a still older nunnery. On the opposite side of London Wall is a portion of the churchyard with the old City wall still standing at this spot. Remember that in London Wall one is walking along the site of these walls.

Continuing westward to the top of Wood Street, we come to Cripplegate (q.v.), with the parish church of St Giles (q.v.), Milton's grave; in its churchyard a fine piece of a bastion of the City wall still standing above ground. It was the extreme N.W. point of the wall, just where it turned due south; this certainly must be seen by the traveller. Off Fore Street is Milton Street, which, under its older name of Grub Street (q.v.), has many illiterate literary memories. But there are more legitimate ones in this neighbourhood, for it was near by, between Whitecross Street and Golden Lane, that Henslowe and Alleyn built their “Fortune” Theatre, and opened it about 1600, as a rival to the new theatres at Southwark and Blackfriars. Its site is still called Playhouse Yard. Here Alleyn was a rival to Burbage, his equal as an actor, only unsuccessful in that he did not persuade Shakespere to write any play for this theatre.

To the west of Golden Lane runs the Barbican (q.v.), another street with many historical memories; and at its west end runs Aldersgate Street (q.v.), the north road running from Aldersgate (q.v.), which stood at its south end. Just before reaching the gate (or, rather, its site, for it has gone with the rest) stands the parish church of St Botolph (q.v.) Aldersgate, which is on the west side, and was built immediately beyond the gatehouse, as was also a St Botolph parish church beside Billingsgate, Aldgate, and Bishopsgate. To the east, in Noble Street, stands the parish church of St Anne and Agnes (q.v.), and at the south-east corner of the same street once stood the parish church of St John Zachary (q.v.), the site being still marked by a little part of its churchyard remaining open ground. Farther north, along Noble Street, at the south-west corner of Oat Lane, once stood Bacon House, which was rebuilt by Sir Nicholas Bacon, the father of the great Francis Bacon; and before his time it had belonged to the Shelley family, until 1400. On the north side of the same lane stood the parish church of St Mary Stanning (q.v.), with only the churchyard still there to record its existence. Still farther north, at the end of Noble Street at its east corner, is another small piece of open ground which was once the churchyard of the parish church of St Olave, Silver Street (q.v.), that once faced the City walls, which here went along the west side of Noble Street, until they turned west, opposite the end of Oat Lane.

At the south-west corner of Monkwell Street, abutting on to the City wall, once stood the house of the Nevilles, where they had lived since 1367 at latest. It descended to the Earls of Westmoreland, who were here from about 1420, and Lord Windsor, the husband of a descendant of theirs, possessed it in the reign of Elizabeth. Just north of this mansion, and also built beside the walls, was, and still is, the Barber Surgeons’ Hall (q.v.), the entrance to which is in Monkwell Street, but the hall lies hidden behind, and is worth seeing.

Here, retracing our steps along Noble Street, we come to the end of Foster Lane, with the Goldsmiths’ Hall (q.v.) at its east corner; and a few steps along Gresham Street, to the east, we come to the Haberdashers’ Hall. The former Company has occupied its present site since 1357, and the latter since the reign of Richard III., at least. Where Wood Street crosses Gresham Street, once stood the church of St Michael (q.v.). On the south side of St Michael's site runs Huggin Lane, which was so called in the reign of Edward I., for we find it recorded as Hoggeslane in 1234. We are now in a part of the City which has been inhabited from very early times, and there is scarcely a street in this north-west corner of London, within the area of the walls, which has not been there, and with its present name, for hundreds of years. Continuing eastwards along Gresham Street, we come to Milk Street, on its south side, in which the parish church of St Mary Magdalen (q.v.) once stood on its east side; and almost touching it, at the south-east corner, was once the parish church of Allhallows’, Honey Lane (q.v.).

We now emerge in Cheapside (q.v.), almost facing St Mary-le-Bow (q.v.), which formed the central feature of this famous City Street. “Within sound of Bow Bells” is a proverbial saying, and Bow Church has long been the most famous of the many parish churches of the City. But both these must be considered as separated notes in the Gazetteer. At the Watling Street corner of Bow Lane stands the parish church of St Mary Aldermary (q.v.). The traveller may note that there is a little piece of Bow Lane on the south side of Queen Victoria Street, a reminder of the days when neither this wide thoroughfare, nor Cannon Street, had yet cut through the mediæval streets; which, in the main, ran parallel with, or at right angles to the Thames, with exceptions, of course—for example, Lombard Street, Threadneedle Street, and Watling Street, which we have just crossed on its ancient way between the head of London Bridge and Newgate, and thence on to join the main Roman highway, which is now the Edgware Road, and so on to Chester. The word Watling is said by Stow to be a corruption of “Watheling,” which in turn is a corruption of “Atheling” or “Noble” Street, which, in other parts of the City, we have seen corrupted to Addle Street. The form “Watling Street” first appears in a record of 1307. Stow adds of the street that “at this present, the inhabitants thereof are wealthy drapers, retailors of woollen cloths, both broad and narrow, of all sorts more than in anyone street of this city.” It must be remembered that the connection of Watling Street with the old Roman road outside the City is theoretical, and not beyond dispute.

GREAT ST HELEN CHURCH

Besides St Mary Aldermary, there were no fewer than three other parish churches in Watling Street before St Paul's was reached. At the south-east corner of Bread Street stood Allhallows’, Bread Street (q.v.); at the south-east corner of Friday Street stood St John Evangelist (q.v.), where there is still a scrap of its churchyard to mark the position; and at the north-east corner of Old Change still stands St Augustine, (q.v.). In Friday Street there stood, until 1881, the parish church of St Matthew (q.v.), and crossing Cheapside we see the churchyard of the destroyed St Peter's (q.v.) at the west corner of Wood Street, while, in the next street westward, Foster Lane, still stands St Vedast (q.v.), and on the other side of the lane, immediately opposite it, was once the parish church of St Leonard (q.v.). Next to St Vedast's, on its south side and on Cheapside, is the Saddlers’ Hall (q.v.). At the extreme west end of Cheapside stood the parish church of St Michael at Querne (q.v.).

The church of St Leonard reminds us that a large piece of ground between Aldersgate and St Paul's was included, throughout the mediæval period, within the walls of St Martin-le-Grand (q.v.), the oldest of the large religious societies in the City. The present main street, Martin's-le-Grand, runs through what was once the centre of the precincts of this religious colony.

The main historical fact in Newgate Street—besides its Newgate (q.v.) and the early importance of this road, by which the Romans left the City when they travelled westwards—is the memory of the Grey Friars, who had their Friary on the north side, which afterwards became Christ Church Hospital, and has now been swept away, except the parish church of Christ Church (q.v.), which is the direct descendant of the friars’ great chapel—though, in its present form, it was built by Wren after the older church had been destroyed by the Great Fire. All along the north side of the friary ran the City walls; they turned sharply to the south, about fifty yards north of Newgate, which stood almost level with the Old Bailey, a street running outside the wall to Ludgate. This gate we have already reached in a former journey, with the parish church of St Martin (q.v.) at its side. Just beyond the church is Stationers’ Hall (q.v.) and Warwick Lane, so called because it had on the east side a town house where the Earls of Warwick lived during part of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. This street was still earlier called Elde-denes-lane, i.e. Old Dean's Lane, in the reign of Henry III. On the west side of Warwick Lane, nearer Ludgate Hill, once stood the town house of the Earl of Richmond of Edward II.’s reign, and later of the Earls of Pembroke and Lords of Bergavenny, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

ITINERARY V

THE BISHOPSGATE AND MOORFIELDS DISTRICTS

ONCE more we start from the Mansion House. Walking towards Threadneedle Street (which Stow calls Three Needle Street) we pass the main entrance of the Bank of England (which we will leave for notice when we return to this spot at the end of the walk), near which place once stood the parish church of St Christopher (q.v.) until the Bank buildings swept it away. Then, at the south-east corner of Bartholomew Lane, stood the parish church of St Bartholomew (q.v.); and so thick were parishes here, at the north-east corner of Finch Lane once stood the parish church of St Benet Fink (q.v.), while immediately opposite, on the other side of Threadneedle Street, stood the hospital of St Antony (q.v.). On the south side of the street, facing the spot where St Antony's Hospital once extended along the north side, we now reach the finest existing example of an old livery company's guildhouse, the Merchant Taylors’ Hall (q.v.). The older part is hidden behind a more modern front, as is so often the case in these companys’ halls.

Beyond the hall, at the corner of Bishopsgate Street, once stood the parish church of St Martin Oteswich (q.v.). Continuing north-east along Bishopsgate Street, on the right, just beyond Crosby Square, stood until recently Crosby Hall (q.v.), which has now been removed to Chelsea and there rebuilt. The next passage on the same side brings us before St Helen's Church (q.v.). This is very important; it was beyond the area of the Great Fire, and is a most interesting survival of the church attached to the nunnery which once stood on its north side, where the next court, St Helen's Place (with the Leatherseller Hall) now stands. This large court is now an interesting and picturesque example of the comparative peaceful simplicity of the domestic architecture at the end of the eighteenth century. There are also a few eighteenth-century houses at the north-west end of St Helen's Church.

Continuing again along Bishopsgate Street, we come in a few steps to St Ethelburga's Church (q.v.). This, once more, is a survivor of the Great Fire, and perhaps we can here get a more vivid impression of what the average parish church in early London was like, than anywhere else in the City to-day. Camomile Street, a little beyond St Ethelburga, marks the line of the City wall, and at this place it was pierced by Bishopsgate (q.v.). Almost immediately outside the gate stood, and still stands, the parish church of St Botolph (q.v.), which Stow describes as “in a fair churchyard, adjoining to the town ditch, upon the very banks thereof.” Where is now Liverpool Street Station once stood the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem (q.v.). On the opposite side of Bishopsgate street stood the famous mansion which became known as Fisher's Folly. Stow says of this: “Then is there a fair house of late builded by John Paulet. Next to that, a far more large and beautiful house with Gardens of pleasure, bowling alleys and such like, builded by Jaspar Fisher, free of the Goldsmiths, late one of the six clerks of the Chancery, and a Justice of the Peace. It has since for a time been the Earl of Oxford's place. The Queen's Majesty Elizabeth hath lodged there.” It afterwards passed to the Earl of Argyll in James I.’s time; and then to the Earl of Devonshire, whose widow entertained Charles II. there, in 1660, the year he came back from his travels. Although this mansion has entirely disappeared, its site is worth noting as a reminiscence of the days when great noblemen were still living within the City wards.

The next, and last, place of importance in the outskirts of early London on this road out of Bishopsgate, was the priory of St Mary Spital (v. Spitalfields), which stood where is now Spital Square and its adjacent White Lion and Elder streets; these should be visited as one of the most interesting groups of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses still standing in London. These were built on the site of the dissolved priory, when the French refugees fled thither from the Huguenot persecutions in their own country, and first developed this district of Spitalfields. In Tudor days there was merely a line of houses, with a few short streets attached, along the Bishopsgate Road, with open country behind them. The hospital or priory was the scene of the Easter Spital Sermon of which Stow wrote: “time out of mind it hath been a laudable custom that on Good Friday in the afternoon, some especial learned man, by appointment of the Prelates hath preached a sermon at Paul's Cross, treating of Christ's passion; and upon the three next Easter holidays, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the like learned men, by the like appointment have used to preach on the forenoons at the said Spital, to persuade the articles of Christ's resurrection: and then on Low Sunday, one other learned man at Paul's Cross to make rehearsal of these four former sermons either commending or reproving them, as to him by judgment of the learned divines was thought convenient. And that done, he was to make a sermon of his own study, which in all was five sermons in one.” At these theological tournaments it was the custom for the mayor and aldermen to attend in state. They were used as an opportunity for political propaganda, as when the preacher incited the apprentices to the May Day riots of 1517 (see Historical Survey).

GREAT ST HELEN'S CHURCH

We have now reached the boundary of the old City of London. Opposite the Priory were the bars of the ward without the gate. Indeed, the priory was in the liberty of Norton Folgate, which was a district belonging to St Paul's Cathedral, and beyond the control of the mayor and Corporation.

But we must proceed a little farther out to Holywell Row, which recalls the old priory of Holy Well, St John the Baptist (q.v.), and the theatres which followed on its site in Elizabethan days. It may almost be called the birthplace of the Elizabethan stage (see Historical Survey). The church of St Leonard, Shoreditch (q.v.) is also a record of the actors who made these theatres famous. This parish church is further north on the High Street, near Shoreditch Station. Shoreditch, all during the mediæval period, was a manor quite distinct from the City of London.

To the east of Shoreditch Church lies the district of Bethnal Green (q.v.); to the north-east, almost two miles away, is Hackney (q.v.); and to the north is Stoke Newington (q.v.) almost three miles distant; all which were once detached villages, now absorbed by greater London.

Going west from Shoreditch Church is Old Street, which extends under the same name until it reaches Aldersgate Street. It points in the direction of Holborn; and since it was called Old Street even in the twelfth century, there are some reasons for believing that it was part of the Roman road which ran between Norwich and Exeter, and just skirted outside the north wall of the City. Turning south down the Curtain Road (which commemorates the name also given to one of the Elizabethan theatres, that we have just noted), on the right hand side of its southern end, we pass the site of the Holy Well, which gave its name to the priory and the succeeding streets; we then (by striking off westward) reach Bunhill Burial Ground (v. Bunhill Fields), one of the chief places of Nonconformist memories in London. On the other side of the City Road are Wesley's Chapel and House (q.v.).

We are now in the district which was once the fen of Finsbury, which became a marsh when the building of the Roman walls stopped the flowing of the water in its natural courses. There is frequent reference to this fen in the history of London (v. Moorfields). Just south of the Bunhill Grounds is the Artillery Ground, which has been the home of the Honourable Artillery Company of the City of London since 1642; they had been established in 1537 by Henry VIII., and were first known as the Guild or Fraternity of St George. It supplied the officers for the London Trained-bands, and it has the rare honour of marching through the City with fixed bayonets. It is the premier volunteer regiment in England, and should be remembered as a survival of the time when there was no standing army, and the King's soldiers were the citizens in arms. This company has had in its ranks many famous men, such as Milton, and Pepys, and Christopher Wren.

GREAT ST HELEN CHURCH

Tomb of Sir John and Lady Crosby

Continuing south along Finsbury Pavement, we arrive at the crossing of London Wall, where Moorgate (q.v.) pierced it; and once more we are within the line of the old Walls of the City. A few steps to our left, on entering, was where the Walbrook flowed under the Wall, following a rather winding course, until it reached the Stocks Market, and then beyond down the present Walbrook. Proceeding along London Wall eastward, we come to Throgmorton Avenue, on the east side of which is the Carpenters’ Hall (which in Stow's time had been nearer the Walls, not far east of where Finsbury Circus now enters London Wall). Next is Austin Friars (q.v.) which marks the priory of that name. The church, or part of it, still stands, and is in use at the present day. It is of the greatest importance as a living example of a chapel of a monastic society, which has escaped both the Great Fire and demolition. In this way it ranks with St Helen, Bishopsgate, and St Bartholomew, as the only cases within the City wards except for the fragment of Elsing Spital in St Alphage, which we shall visit later.

Returning to London Wall, we come to Allhallows on the Wall (q.v.) and on the other side of the street was formerly Paulet or Winchester House, which was built on part of the Austin Friars’ (q.v.) ground. Stow wrote of: “a long and high wall of stone enclosing the north side of a large garden adjoining to as large a house builded in the reign of King Henry the eighth and of Edward the sixth by Sir William Powlet Lord Treasurer of England. This great house adjoining to the garden aforesaid, stretcheth to the north corner of Broad Street, and then turneth up Broad Street all that side to and beyond the east end of the said Friars church. It was builded by the said Lord Treasurer in place of Augustine Friars house, cloister and gardens etc. The Friars church he pulled not down, but the west end thereof, enclosed from the steeple and choir, was in the year 1550 granted to the Dutch nation in London to be their preaching place: the other part, namely the steeple, choir and side aisles to the choir adjoining he reserved to household uses.” The enclosure of such a large part of the City to make the grounds of one huge house should be noted; it serves to remind us that even as late as Tudor times, this north-east corner of old London was very much more open than the still older south and west parts. The wider distances between the parish churches is another indication of this fact; and by consulting an old map, the absence of streets will be noted as another sign.

Following after Stow into Broad Street, we find some way down on its west side, the parish church of St Peterle-Poer (q.v.). Bearing along Throgmorton Street, we come to the Drapers’ Hall: this Guild of traders came here in 1541, when they purchased Thomas Cromwell's great house from the King, to whom it had passed on Cromwell's condemnation. This building was destroyed by the Great Fire and a new one built in 1667: but it was largely rebuilt in 1870. Stow writes of Cromwell's house very bitterly; for the owner seized in very autocratic fashion a piece of the garden of Stow's father, who lived next door; he says: “On the south side and at the west end of this church [Austin Friars] many fair houses are builded, namely in Throgmorton Street, one very large and spacious builded, in the place of old and small tenements, by Thomas Cromwell, master of the king's jewel house, after that master of the Rolls, then Lord Cromwell knight, Lord Privy Seal, Vicar General, Earl of Essex, High Chamberlain of England.” Then he tells the story of the encroachment in the garden and finishes sarcastically: “Thus much of mine own knowledge have I thought good to note, that the sudden rising of some men causeth them to forget themselves.”

Beyond Throgmorton Street, we reach Lothbury; which name appears as “de Lodebure” as far back as about 1200. It seems to mean the “bury” or mansion house of some great family; as in the case of Bucklersbury, which we have already passed, and many others. In it is St Margaret Lothbury (q.v.) which now stands as the church of seven parishes, the other buildings having disappeared in various ways.

Turning now to the left we pass along Princes’ Street, with the Grocers’ Hall (q.v.) hidden away on our right, behind the street front; and the whole of the left side of the street is occupied by the west buildings of the Bank of England; which first began to occupy a part of this site in 1734, until which time it had carried on its business in the Grocers’ Hall opposite. But the rest of the Bank buildings as they now stand were mainly erected between 1788-1827.

We have now arrived once more at the centre from which we started, the Mansion House.

ITINERARY VI

THE SUBURBS OUTSIDE LUDGATE

IN our previous journeys we have travelled over the City within the Walls, and glanced at a few places which lay just beyond them. To-day, however, we start at the gates themselves; and shall cover the ground that was occupied by the first real suburb which grew up outside the Walls. In Fitzstephen's time, at the end of the twelfth century, there was already a line of houses stretching from Ludgate, along the Strand to Westminster, and he also says that outside Newgate was the much-frequented market-place of Smithfield. In this journey we will deal with the road towards Westminster, and its surroundings.

We will start at Ludgate Circus; for a previous visit brought us to the place where Ludgate stood half way up Ludgate Hill, just beyond the Old Bailey; and we have also visited the district of Blackfrairs which lies to our right as we look up the hill towards St Paul's. To our left is Belle Sauvage Yard (q.v.), where stood the famous old inn which gave theatrical displays, as well as refreshments, to its patrons. It was such popular, rough and ready theatres which prepared the people for the more elaborate drama of Shakespere and his successors.

In Farringdon Street, about where the Memorial Hall now stands, was the Fleet Prison (q.v.,) which has dealt with criminals, guilty or innocent, for hundreds of years; it was the most famous prison of London, after the Tower, of course. This was, indeed, rather a favourite haunt of prisons, for besides the Fleet, there was a prison in Ludgate, and also another in Newgate, which has still an heir in its later form of the Old Bailey Criminal Court. The name of this place reminds us that the Fleet brook once ran past it, along the line which is now the dry Farringdon Road and New Bridge Street (see The Foundations of London). Just beside it comes down the steep Fleet Lane, from the Old Bailey, which will give us some idea how steep the bank of this stream was in its more natural condition. This natural state is now hard to visualise. Perhaps Stow's description of the bridge which stood where Ludgate Circus now is, may help. He is writing of its condition at the end of Elizabeth's reign: “Fleet bridge in the west without Ludgate, a bridge of fair stone coped on either side with iron pikes, on the which towards the south be also certain lanthorns of stone, for lights to placed in the winter evenings for commodity of travellers. Under this bridge runneth a water…This bridge hath been far greater in times past, but lessened as the water course hath been narrowed. It seemeth this last bridge to be made or repaired at the charge of John Wells Mayor, in the year 1431, for on the coping is engraven Wells embraced by angels.”

THE INNER TEMPLE GATEWAY

Along New Bridge Street, to the south, stood for centuries, on its west side, the palace of Bridewell (q.v.). There is still standing (mainly behind the street, but with a frontage and a door leading to it from New Bridge Street) a part of the later building, which was erected in the eighteenth century; its name still reads, “The Royal Hospital of Bridewell,” and there is a modern head of Edward VI., its official founder, over the door. Turning back from Bridewell Place to Fleet Street, we find the parish church of St Bride (q.v.) on the left, the steeple of which is generally described as one of Christopher Wren's masterpieces. Quite near this church, to the west, is Salisbury Square (q.v.), where Samuel Richardson, the novelist, carried on his trade as a printer. This place has many other memories, which are recalled by the note in the Gazetteer. Stow says of this spot: “Next is Salisbury Court, a place so called for that it belonged to the bishops of Salisbury and was their inn, or London house at such time as they were summoned to come to the Parliament, or came for other business; it hath of late time been the dwelling, first of Sir Richard Sackville, and now of Sir Thomas Sackville his son, Baron of Buckhurst, Lord Treasurer, who hath greatly enlarged it with stately buildings.”

Almost opposite the entrance into Salisbury Square, on the other side of Fleet Street, is Shoe Lane, which once extended through to the old Holborn, under the Viaduct; in it was the inn of the Earl of Lincoln in the thirteenth century, and it was there that the custom of collecting law students together seems to have begun in England; it was the first of the inns of which there are still survivals in the Temple and Lincoln's Inn further west; and many more which we shall find in this neighbourhood. This Earl of Lincoln gave some land and buildings in Shoe Lane for the first home of the Blackfriars in England, before they moved over to the more permanent settlement which we have seen within the City Walls, at Blackfriars. This older Blackfriars was probably on the south side of Shoe Lane, facing St Andrew's Church, which we shall see in our next Itinerary.

To the east of Shoe Lane, is Racquet Court, which is a very good example of an eighteenth century court and houses. Here we are in the midst of the atmosphere of the Fleet Street of Dr Johnson's day. Continuing westwards on the same side we come to Wine Office Court, which contains within it the Old Cheshire Cheese (q.v.), an eating-house which has been scarcely altered since the days of the later Stuart. Behind this lies Gough Square (q.v.), another place frequented by Johnson. It was in Bolt Court (q.v.), only a few steps along Fleet Street, that the great man died; and it has not very much altered since that time.

On the south side of Fleet Street, stretching down to the Thames, between the present Whitefriars Street and Bouverie Street once stood the buildings of the White Friars (q.v.). In the basement of a house in Britton's Court on the west side of Whitefriars Street, there is still a piece of the mediæval fourteenth century vaulting, probably the crypt of the great church. Other remains were discovered in Bouverie Street.

Beyond the Whitefriars’ precincts, westwards, came the large area of the Temple (q.v.); which is still contained within its own gates; and perhaps gives the best existing example that London can show of a great private domain enclosed as it was in the mediæval age, and even still used for the same purposes as those to which it was devoted as long ago as the fourteenth century. Of course the buildings have changed, except the church; but there is an atmosphere of seclusion about the Temple courts and lanes which is an invaluable suggestion for those travellers who desire to grasp the full meaning of a mediæval “liberty” as it was called. All the great religious societies, which we have seen scattered over the City and its suburbs, were private preserves with their gates, and the Temple has kept its gates to this day. But in the old days the seclusion was much more complete. The gates kept out the law of the land in great measure, as well as the intruder. These “Liberties” were little kingdoms by themselves.

PUMP COURT, TEMPLE

Just between the Temple and Fleet Street is Mitre Court in which is the Mitre Tavern, where Dr Johnson and Boswell often supped with Goldsmith. Just to its east is Sergeants’ Inn (q.v.); and on the opposite side of Fleet Street is Crane Court (q.v.), which is a pleasant example of eighteenth century London. Beyond Crane Court is Fetter Lane, a very old thoroughfare, which bore this name as early as 1312; Stow says it was “so called of fewters or idle people lying there, as in a way leading to gardens; but the same is now of latter years on both sides builded through with fair houses.” On the east side of this street in Nevill's Court; wherein are still standing some seventeenth and eighteenth century houses, and this group is very well worth seeing.

Opposite the south end of Chancery Lane is the entrance to the Inner Temple, and the house by its side, No. 17 Fleet Street, is a fine example of a house built during the reign of James I. (1611). It now belongs to the London County Council who restored it carefully, and threw it open to public inspection. The Council Chamber (so-called because it is probable that this house was used as the office of the Duchy of Cornwall in the seventeenth century) has a very fine Jacobean ceiling, and oak panelling of the same date on the west side; the rest of the panelling and the fireplace are Georgian.

On the north side of Fleet Street, a few steps to the east of Chancery Lane, is the parish church of St Dunstan in the West (q.v.), beside it is the entrance into Clifford's Inn (q.v.), with its interesting hall and quaint late seventeenth or early eighteenth century houses round the courts. Chancery Lane has on its east side the Record Office, built on the site of the old Rolls House (q.v.). Further north, on the west side is one of the finest antiquarian remains in London, the gate house of Lincoln's Inn (q.v.), and the houses within its gate. Lincoln's Inn lies just outside the boundary of the City ward; but it will be convenient to place it within this itinerary; for its history makes it part of the story of mediæval London, whereas immediately beyond its western boundary we plunged directly into the modern life of the Stuart period. Like the Temple, it is a suggestive picture of the enclosed precincts that were such a marked feature of the social structure of the Middle Ages.

A few yards west beyond the south end of Chancery Lane, there is an erection in the middle of Fleet Street which marks where Temple Bar once stood across the highway, to mark the end of the City's ward, and the west-most boundary of its jurisdiction. Beyond it was the domain of the Abbots of Westminster, with a small intervening patch which made the old Danish settlement round St Clement's Church, and the further liberty of the Savoy on the south side of the Strand; but this district must be given an Itinerary to itself.

ITINERARY VII

THE SUBURBS OUTSIDE NEWGATE

WE have visited the suburbs outside Ludgate, which extended along Fleet Street to the Strand. We now start from Newgate, which was probably an older gate than Ludgate, and opened on a still older road than the road along the Strand; the Roman highway which was afterwards named by the Saxons, Watling Street, ran from the head of London Bridge, out at Newgate and along a straight line, which is roughly represented by Holborn and Oxford Street, until at the Marble Arch it joined the still more ancient highway which crossed the ford at Westminster before there was a London Bridge. But we have chosen the Fleet Street suburbs first, because, on the whole, they grew up sooner than those along Holborn. Fleet Street was on the road to the King's palace at Westminster; it was also near the water-way of the Thames; and in early days water traffic was easier than being shaken to pieces on badly constructed highways.

Immediately outside Newgate stands the parish church of St Sepulchre (q.v.) which is interesting as still preserving some of its mediæval building, though much restored, for it was not wholly destroyed at the Great Fire. Turning along Giltspur Street to the right, we are reminded of its early uses by its name, which has outlived them so long: “called Giltspur or Knightriders Street, of the knights and others riding that way into Smithfield,” says Stow, who thus connects it with the Knightrider Street which we found on the south side of St Paul's, leading from the Tower Reole. On our right is Bartholomew's Hospital (q.v.) which has been on that spot since the beginning of the twelfth century, and there are still traces of its mediæval work in the parish church of St Bartholomew the Less just within its gate.

We are now at Smithfield (q.v.), one of the most historical spots in London; we have seen that Fitzstephen included it in his survey of the twelfth century City, and it has again and again been the scene of exciting events in the life of London.

At the east corner of Smithfield is the parish church of St Bartholomew the Great (q.v.), which perhaps gives a better idea of an early mediæval church than any other within the immediate wards of the City. We must always remember that what now remains is only the choir of the original church; a thought which will give us a sense of the due proportions of both the art and the religion of the Middle Ages. Outside the church, on its north side is Cloth Fair, which contains some old domestic buildings. Those to the west side of the north porch with the over-hanging upper floors are probably of the sixteenth century, and further east in the lane is an inn named the “Old Dick” which is in part, probably of a similar date; and the whole lane gives a good idea of an age when the City was a town of homes, not a mass of warehouses and insurance offices and banks.

Proceeding a short way north, we reach the Charterhouse (q.v.); which, with the Temple and the other Inns of Court, is the most living realisation of what a mediæval religious house and its precincts were like. The north-east corner of Charterhouse Square has one or two handsome late seventeenth or early eighteenth century houses still standing.

Going westwards, two or three minutes’ walk will bring us to St John's Lane, across which still stands the sixteenth century gateway which once formed the south entrance into the priory of St John of Jerusalem (q.v.). The now irregular square beyond it to the north was once the site of the rest of the priory buildings and courts; and at the north-east corner is the parish church of St John, Clerkenwell (q.v.), which is the descendant of the chapel of the mediæval house, and still contains its ancient crypt, and the main walls of the same choir (except the west side) which the monks knew. But the present church is only the choir of the greater building which was once here (as in the case of St Bartholomew).

A few paces north-west of St John's we reach Clerkenwell Green, on the north side of which is the parish church of St James, Clerkenwell (q.v.) which (or rather its ancestor) was the chapel of the Nunnery of St James, and its old close still bears the name of Clerkenwell Close. Clerkenwell Green is an interesting survival of topographical personality, still surviving in the midst of the overwhelming flood of the builders’ London. The Sessions House, built for the Middlesex magistrates in 1780, on the west side of the Green, reminds us rather of a prosperous market town, than of London. Isaac Walton was living in a house on this Green when he published his “Complete Angler.” The well, from which the whole district takes its name, was a few yards to the north-west of the Sessions House, beyond the area of the present Green. We have already seen, in the introductory “Historical Survey,” that Fitzstephen mentions this well as being a favourite place of resort during the twelfth century. Skinners’ Well lay just to the west of the Nunnery of St James. Stow also mentions these wells, saying that the first took its name: “of the Parish Clerks in London, who, of old time were accustomed then yearly to assemble and to play some large history of Holy Scripture. And for example of later time, to wit in the year 1390, the fourteenth of Richard the Second, I read that the Parish Clerks of London on the 18th of July, played interludes at Skinners’ Well near unto Clerks’ Well, which play continued three days together, the King, Queen and nobles being present. Also the year 1409, the tenth of Henry the Fourth, they played a play at the Skinners’ Well which lasted eight days, and was of matter from the creation of the World. There were to see the same, the most part of the Nobles and Gentility in England.” He adds that, Skinners’ Well was so-called because the members of the Skinners’ Guild performed annual plays there. We saw the Skinners’ Hall in Dowgate, during the first Itinerary.

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT

Tomb of Rahere, the Founder

Beyond Clerkenwell, on the north and north-east, lies the district which was first built over in the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. It has one or two interesting squares, e.g. Wilmington Square, Myddelton Square, Northampton Square, and King Square, of that date; but only the more leisurely traveller will have time to visit them. Yet beyond them lie Islington (q.v.) and Canonbury (q.v.); the former still has the characteristics of the older village in its High Street, and there are some older world houses round Canonbury Tower.

Returning once more to our main line along Holborn (q.v.) we will proceed westwards, from Newgate, which we left at St Sepulchre Church. Here, we must realise that the present road over Holborn Viaduct is an innovation of the Victorian age, a convenient method of bridging over the deep valley of the Holebourne. The mediæval road ran down Snow Hill, just beyond the church, and crossed the stream at its foot; then went sharply up Holborn Hill, as it was then called, with Shoe Lane joining it about halfway up, and meeting the present road about Holborn Circus. At the west corner of Shoe Lane, where it entered the old Holborn Hill, stood, and still stands the parish church of St Andrew's, Holborn (q.v.) where it has been since A.D. 971 at the latest, and probably much longer: it still contains a little of the mediæval building in the lower part of the tower. Facing it, on the other side of Holborn Hill, was once Scrope Inn, which had belonged to the Lords Scrope from the beginning of the fifteenth century, and afterwards was let as a house for serjeants of law, who held it thus in the reign of Henry VII.

Beyond Scope Inn was Ely Place (q.v.), with the chapel of St Ethelreda still standing and showing part of its mediæval building. Both in Ely Place and in the following Hatton Garden (q.v.) there are many interesting doorways of the early eighteenth century. The two streets recall the memories of Sir Christopher Hatton and Queen Elizabeth and the many personages of their time, who came to visit its powerful owner. Still further west, on the north side of Holborn, once stood Furnival Inn, a house of law students from Henry IV.’s time, who leased it from the Furnival family and their heirs, the Earls of Shrewsbury, who sold it to the lawyers’ Guild in 1546. It was in Furnival's Inn that Charles Dickens lived until 1837, and here began his Pickwick Papers. Its site is now covered by the Prudential Insurance Company's offices. Opposite this, on the south side of Holborn still stands the hall of another lawyers’ house, Barnard's Inn (q.v.), which is hidden away down a passage and is well worth a visit. West, beyond the site of Furnival Inn is Brooke Street (q.v.) and on the south side of Holborn again, stands Staple Inn (q.v.) the most perfect group of domestic Elizabethan street architecture remaining in London. The Holborn Bars, which marked the western boundary line of the City ward, at this point crossed the highway, as the Bars did outside the Temple and elsewhere. Beyond, we pass into a district which, legally speaking, has nothing to do with the old City of London; but the part of Holborn Street just beyond, historically belongs to the mediæval period for there was a thin line of houses stretching a little way beyond the north end of Chancery Lane, as early as the Tudor period.

GRAY'S INN SQUARE

Just outside where the Bars stood, on the north side of Holborn, is the entrance to Gray's Inn (q.v.) with its delightful Tudor Hall and eighteenth century squares, and the beautiful gardens which Bacon is believed to have planted. Beyond Staple Inn, on the south side of Holborn again, stood the Old Temple, which the Knights Templars inhabited before they moved to the New Temple which we have visited off Fleet Street. There were still extensive remains of it standing until the end of Elizabeth's reign. Westward of this, at the north-east corner of Chancery Lane, stood the town house of the Bishops of Lincoln, which was first built about the year 1147. It had been the property of the Earls of Southampton from Edward VI.’s reign, but they soon made their Bloomsbury Square House their chief residence; the site is still known as Southampton Buildings.

ITINERARY VIII

THE STRAND DISTRICT

As early as the time when Fitzstephen described London at the end of the twelfth century, as we have seen in our “Historical Survey,” there was a Strand district: for he tells us that from London he could see the Royal Palace of Westminster “an incomparable building with ramparts and bulwarks two miles from the city, joined to it by a populous suburb.” Beyond Temple Bar, which we reached in Itinerary VI., that suburb was scarcely more than a thin line of houses along the bank of the Thames; indeed, on the north side of the road (which we now call the Strand) there was probably nothing more than an occasional cottage. What Fitzstephen called a suburb, we would more likely call a country village; for, to quote his own words: “everywhere outside the houses of these suburban dwellers are joined to them spacious and beautiful gardens, planted with trees.” So when we think of the Strand district as an early suburb of London, we must dismiss out of mind the thick clustering houses of to-day, with their smoke and noisy streets, and think of all the north side of the street with gardens and meadows; and replace the south side streets, with their huge hotels and blocks of offices and shops, by a broken line of country mansions with their dependent smaller houses around them.

To view the district in detail. The first street beyond Temple Bar, or rather the monument which now marks the spot, is Essex Street (q.v.) which was the site of the noble house that in Elizabethan days was the residence of the Earl of Essex, but had begun its career, as did so many of the great houses of the Strand, as the town house of a bishopric; in this case of the bishops of Exeter. It had once been part of the domain of the Knights Templars, and their successors, the Knights of St John, disposed of it to the bishops, who had a house there at least as early as the reign of Edward II. Although the house itself has disappeared, the present Essex Street has still some interesting doorways, and the watergate at the end.

At the north end of Essex Street, stands the parish church of St Clement Danes (q.v.) a place of very ancient memories, taking us back to the times of the Danish invasions of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries; when England at last submitted to the rule of Cnut, the Dane; and allowed his countrymen to settle. This spot was one of the places they chose; a fact, which is also commemorated by the Danish name of the adjacent street of Aldwych, meaning the Old Wic, or Old Settlement, a name it has borne all through its history, though the present street is only part of the highway which once had this name. The church's story includes such very varied events as the burial of Hardicnut in 1040, and the regular attendance of Dr Samuel Johnson as a worshipper, whose customary pew is still there.

Continuing along the Strand, from the west end of St Clement's church, runs Milford Lane towards the river: it was there in the time when Ralph Agas drew his map in the reign of Elizabeth; it then formed the east boundary of Arundel House (v. Arundel Street) which soon after that time extended, with its grounds and adjoining dependent houses, as far as Strand Lane, which also is marked in this map, and still exists with the identical little mediæval curl at its north end, just before it reaches the Strand. The persistent nature of the old London streets through hundreds of years is an interesting fact, which a careful comparison of the old maps with the modern ones will soon make clear. For example, almost all these little passages along the south side of the Strand, such as Strand Lane, and others which we shall reach later, have been right-of-ways, and boundaries between great houses and gardens for ages. In Stow's time, within the area which was soon all included in Arundel House, there was also standing, on the east side of Strand Lane, Landaff Inn, the town house of the bishops of that see, who had been there since the reign of Edward II. In Strand Lane can still be seen a Roman bath, which must have been attached to a suburban villa of that period.

Then, on the west side of Strand Lane is the great domain of Somerset House (q.v.); which was begun by the Protector Somerset as his London Palace. He had ruthlessly swept away much to make way for his buildings; for, when he set to work, immediately beyond Strand Lane stood the Inn of the bishops of Chester (who had also an Inn of Chancery nearer the river, which was called Chester or Strand Inn); and immediately beyond the house of the bishops of Chester was the town house of the bishops of Worcester, the fifth bishop's house we have had to record in the few yards we have covered since Temple Bar; the bishops of Exeter, of Bath (who were the first possessors of Arundel House), of Landaff, of Chester, and of Worcester. There were nine bishops living in the Strand at the Reformation.

There is a mass of history attached to the Stuart and early Hanoverian period, which clusters round Somerset House, mostly of the social or literary kind, for though it came into the hands of the Crown after Somerset's beheading in 1552, yet it was never made a chief royal residence. Its gayest time was when Anne of Denmark, the Queen of James I., and Henrietta Maria, Charles I.’s wife, lived there; and until 1775 it was the custom to settle it on the wife of the reigning sovereign. Its older form, before it was rebuilt in 1776, may have been more graceful, but the existing buildings are certainly very stately and an admirable example of middle Georgian architecture.

The parish church of St Mary-le-Strand (q.v.), standing in the middle of the street at the north-east corner of Somerset House, is descended from a very ancient church which stood within the site of Somerset House, and was swept away to make room for it.

WATERGATE OF YORK HOUSE

Embankment Gardens

Continuing along the south side of the Strand (for the north side generally belongs to the modern London of the Stuart and Havoverians periods), the approach to Waterloo Bridge forms the western boundary of Somerset House; and immediately beyond it begins the district which was once the precinct of the palace of the Savoy (q.v.), perhaps the most famous of all the Strand mansions. Fortunately there is still standing the chapel of the Savoy, which in some degree may be regarded as a mediæval building, for it was finished about 1511, as the chapel of the hospital which Henry VII. founded on the more ancient ruins. This chapel has been much burned and restored, yet it retains its original form to a large extent. The Savoy Hotel is the modern representative of this ancient palace.

On the north side of the Strand, facing the Savoy precincts, Burleigh Street still marks the position of Burleigh or Cecil House, which after a previous history became the residence of the great William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, Queen Elizabeth's chief official of State. This house was afterwards known as Exeter House, when Burleigh's son, the Earl of Exeter, succeeded his father; hence the name of the Exeter Hall, built on this site 1830, known for religious fervour, until it was demolished a few years ago, and the Strand Palace Hotel took its place.

Crossing again to the south side of the Strand, the Cecil Hotel stands partly on the site of two old mansions. First, next to the Savoy was once the Inn of the Bishops of Carlisle, afterwards the property of the Russells, Earls of Bedford, from 1539; they were still living there in Stow's time, but were just on the point of moving across the road to their newer house, which Stow says was already built in Covent Garden. We shall note this later house in the next walk. This south house afterwards became known as Worcester House (q.v.). The other side of the Cecil Hotel stands on the site whereon Stow says: “Sir Robert Cecil [Burleigh's second son], principal secretary to her Majesty hath lately raised a large and stately house of brick and timber, as also levelled and paved the highway near adjoining, to the great beautifying of that street.” He adds the general statement: “Richard II., in the 8th year of his reign, granted license to pave with stone the highway called Strand Street from Temple Bar to the Savoy, and toll to be taken toward the charges; and again the like was granted in the 24th year of Henry VI.” We must not think of the mediæval Strand as a well-kept road, for an Act of 1532 says that it is “full of pits and sloughs, very perilous and noisome.”

This mansion of the Cecils (Salisbury House as it was soon called, when Sir Robert became Earl of Salisbury) was the last house within the Duchy of Lancaster, for the old Ivy Lane outside its west wall was the boundary line separating the Duchy from the City of Westminster. Since we left Temple Bar we have been mainly in the area that once formed that old Liberty of the Duchy of Lancaster, which was another of the early rivals of the City of London as a place of independent jurisdiction, and quite beyond mayorial control. Stow notes that in his time: “This Liberty is governed by the Chancellor of that Duchy at this present Sir Robert Cecil…. There is under him a Steward that keepeth court…then is there 4 burgesses” and other officers, “there is in this liberty 50 men which is always to be at an hour's warning, with all necessary furniture, to serve the Queen as occasion shall require.”

Beyond Cecil House the first great mansion was Durham House, on the site of which the Adelphi (q.v.) was afterwards built and still stands as a well-preserved corner of eighteenth-century London. In the Strand, Nos. 414 and 415, opposite the Adelphi, are still standing two houses of the Restoration period or perhaps the earlier Stuart period: their picturesque fronts are worth noting. Beyond this again we come to the group of streets (hidden behind the main frontage of the Strand) where once stood York House (q.v.), of which the watergate still exists.

We have now reached Charing Cross Railway Station, built on the site of the old Hungerford Market, which was held there from 1680, but is now only commemorated by the name of the footbridge which crosses beside the railway. It was this Hungerford Market which is part of the scenery of Charles Dickens's “David Copper-field,” and Dickens himself worked here in a blacking factory in his child days of poverty. The neighbourhood beyond we will visit in another Itinerary, included in its legitimate sphere of Westminster, which we have encroached on during the end of this walk for purposes of geographical convenience.

ITINERARY IX

WESTMINSTER

OUR previous journeys have taken us over the ground covered by the ancient City of London and its legitimate suburbs without the walls, those which grew up around its gates in the early days of its history. Our last journey, along the Strand (Itinerary VIII.), opened up what is practically a new idea in the development of the history of London: for the Strand was not so much, in its origin, a place of independent birth, it was rather the long line of houses which grew up on each side of the road which led from the City of London to the City of Westminster. To-day we have reached the first important settlement or town, which might easily have become the predominant rival, and supplanted the town of London as the chief place. However, history decided otherwise, and Westminster was absorbed by London, in practice if not in legal theory. We must remember that to-day there is a legal local government area termed the City of Westminster, just as there is one called the City of London. Certainly, in historical perspective, they are very distinct personalities.

The very centre of the district of this Itinerary is the Abbey itself, not merely in geographical position, but in historical fact. Round it clustered everything else. It is the raison d’être of Westminster. The palace of the kings followed the Abbey Church because it was the habit of kings to patronise sacred places, gaining in return prayers and mediation with Heaven. The town of Westminster, the dwellings of its people, were the homes of those who attended to the wants and luxuries of monastery and royal court.

But the persistent questioner will ask—Why did the Abbey come there? There is a reason, which reduces Westminster to a very secular origin after all. Before the great church came, there was almost certainly some kind of posting-station or ferryman's house where lived the guides to conduct the travellers over the lowest available ford which the Thames provided for those who wished to cross it on their way north from the south-east corner of England. This place, which became Westminster, was once the little island of Thorney, the last firm land before the main stream of the river Thames was reached (v. Westminster).

The main point about the Abbey, as we see it to-day, is that it is the truest example of purest Gothic in England, that is, if we accept the theory that the French school of mediæval church-building was the central line of Gothic development. Without entering into architectural philosophy, one can point out, as an example of this French influence, the rounded apsidal east-end of the choir (which has, of course, been concealed and destroyed, in part, by the later addition of Henry VII.’s Lady-chapel). The ordinary English church finishes with a square east-end, while in France the rounded end is the general rule. Henry III., who almost entirely rebuilt the earlier church of Edward the Confessor, was much under foreign influence; we must not forget that he was king of part of France just as much as of England.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Choir and Sanctuary

Remember that this Abbey was not a public building, in the same way that a parish church is open for the use of all the parishioners of the parish. The parish church of the district of Westminster was not the Abbey, but St Margaret's (q.v.), which stands outside, at the north-east corner. The Abbey Church was the chapel of the monks of Westminster; and when we see it to-day, apparently standing alone, we must endeavour to add to it all the many buildings which made up a great monastery: the dwelling-places of the monks and their followers, and, encircling and intermingling with these and the church, were the open spaces of the sanctuary and the gardens and courts. Indeed, the monastery of Westminster included the open square along the north side, now called the Broad Sanctuary (through which now runs the main road to Victoria) over to Westminster Hospital; the great west gate of the monastery was at the end of Tothill Street; and all the many courts and spaces which now go to make up Westminster School (q.v.), and the cloisters and chapter-house which still form part of the ecclesiastical precincts, extended on this south side to College Street, where once ran the stream which formed the south boundary of the orginal Thorney island. All these places together made the Abbey.

Westminster Abbey was, in short, a very magnificent specimen of the same ecclesiastical houses which we have already seen in the City, at St Bartholomew's, Blackfriars, Whitefriars, the Charterhouse, and Christ-church of the Greyfriars. The distinction about Westminster is that whereas these London houses had only great lords and merchants for their patrons, and the royal patronage only in its odd moments, at Westminster the King's palace was attached to the monastery as a permanent residence of the royal family and its government departments. The monks of Westminster had the most powerful patron of all; so their church was the greatest of all. Again, while the smaller houses had become the tomb of their less illustrious friends and benefactors, the church of Westminster became the place of burial of kings and queens and the national heroes. Westminster is just a very much magnified repetition of the Carthusian house at the Charterhouse, for example, where we can still see the grouping as a uniform whole, though on such a small scale. Westminster Abbey was to its monks, just what the tiny chapel at the Charterhouse was to its members. (For the monastic buildings, see Westminster School.)

The West Gate of the precincts opened, as we have seen, on to Tothill Street, which was then the main street westwards, for Victoria Street is quite a modern production of 1851. Within the peak now formed by these two streets meeting, was once the Almonry where the monks distributed the alms they allowed to poor applicants. The spot is mainly interesting because it was one of the buildings called “The Red Pale,” attached to this almonry, that Caxton rented from the monks as his printing works, and there he produced the “Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers,” in 1477, which was the first book printed in England. Just to the north of Tothill Street, bordering St James's Park, is Queen Anne's Gate (q.v.), containing some beautiful Queen Anne doors in the houses of that date.

To the south of the Abbey precincts, between the south wall and St John's Church (q.v.), are still one or two quaint streets of the eighteenth century in the “Queen Anne” style of architecture, such as Cowley Street, North Street, and the north side of Smith Square. Leaving Smith Square by its south side, we reach the Horseferry Road, leading down to the ancient ferry, the tolls of which belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury, who have lived on the opposite bank at Lambeth Palace since the eleventh century. This ferry was in use until Westminster Bridge was built in 1750, when the archbishops got £3000 for their compensation. By going along Horse-ferry Road to the west, one comes to the Grey Coat School (q.v.), built at the end of the seventeenth century and still in its original condition. It is one of the quaintest survivals in Westminster outside the Abbey precincts. A part of the Blue Coat School built in 1709, perhaps by Christopher Wren, still stands in Caxton Street on the north side of Victoria Street.

At the east end of the Abbey grew up the palace of its patron kings, which, like the church, had once a multitudinous following of attached buildings to hold the court and its officers. The existing Houses of Parliament have now taken the place of the palace, just as the representative system has gradually pushed on one side the autocratic power of the kings. But one all-important part of the royal house, the Great Hall, remains to this day: besides the crypt of St Stephen's Chapel. (For details of the palace, see Westminster Palace.) The present Parliament Square was once included within the great Palace Yard, which has now been reduced to the smaller area within the rails on the left as one emerges on the square from Whitehall and Parliament Street. At the corner where Peel's statue now stands, was the great gatehouse at the bounds of the palace precincts, by which one entered if one came by road from London along the Strand; but much of the early traffic, especially for the royal progressions from the Tower, was by water along the Thames.

The other main feature in this district of Westminster was the new palace in which the sovereigns took up their residence after Henry VIII. was driven out by an extensive fire in the earlier palace, which we have just considered. This later one was the great house of Whitehall (q.v.), of which the Banqueting House (q.v.), almost opposite the Horse Guards, is the only existing remnant, and that of a later period, 1620. This palace, when in its prime, during the reigns of Henry VIII. to Charles II., covered a large piece of ground, roughly extending, between Whitehall and the Thames, from the present Richmond Terrace to opposite the Admiralty Buildings at the north end of the street. All this district was covered with innumerable courts and houses which were the scene of much of the domestic life of the Courts of Henry VIII. and James I., and Charles I. and II. Just to the south of the Banqueting House, the wide street of Whitehall was crossed by the famous Holbein Gate, on the south side of which began the narrow King Street, which ran between the west wall of the Privy Garden and the Tennis Court and Cockpit on the other side, and then was crossed by another gate from which King Street continued until it reached the north gate of the older palace of Westminster. By these two gates, across the main road from London to Westminster, the man who held Whitehall had a considerable hold over all rapid communication between the two places.

The west side of Whitehall, with the Horse Guards (q.v.) in the centre; placed between the Scottish Office (which was originally built in 1774, bought by the Duke of York in 1789, who added the domed entrance, and called it York House), and the Pay Office and the Admiralty (q.v.) on its north, is all together the most typical group of Georgian London left. The very Horse Guards, mounted in their little houses at each side of the entrance through to St James's Park, appear exactly in the same position in a print of 1725. The space in front of the Guards, before their house had been built, had been the Tilt-yard of the Tudor and Stuarts kings, who could watch the shows from the Holbein Gate at the south end. Then, when the Horse Guards was built and the street in front became more thronged with passengers, the exercising ground was moved behind where the large open space still exists.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

The Shrine of Edward the Confessor

In its royal days, Whitehall had for a park that of St James (q.v.) where Charles II., in particular, loved to lounge in his play hours. St James’ Palace was in the Tudor days quite a picnicing place, used when the kings wanted to be nearer the fields for hunting.

Between Whitehall Palace and the present Northumberland Avenue, Stow says there was: “a large plot of ground enclosed with brick, and is called Scotland, where great buildings have been for receipt of the kings of Scotland, and other estates of that country; for Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and sister to King Henry VIII., had her abiding there, when she came into England after the death of her husband, as the kings of Scotland had in former times when they came to the parliament of England.” The site is still commemorated by Old Scotland Yard. The palace was allowed to fall into decay by Henry VIII.; and its site was used for Government Offices in later days. Milton lived there when he was Cromwell's secretary; and Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren when they held the office of Surveyor of Works to the Crown. A few steps north of Great Scotland Yard is Craig's Court, which contains a beautiful house of 1702 date.

At the north end of Whitehall is a statue of Charles I., on the same spot where formerly stood the old Charing Cross (q.v.); which latter was erected by Edward I. to the memory of his wife Eleanor. The Charles statue is a contemporary one, and perhaps the best thing of its kind in a London street. Trafalgar Square now occupies the cleared space made where the royal mews (the house for keeping hunting hawks) had been since Richard II.’s time: until Henry VIII. had turned it into a stable for his horses; it was rebuilt by George II. in 1732. Northumberland Avenue marks the site of the old Northumberland house (v. Charing Cross), where still earlier had stood the Priory of St Mary Rounceval, which was dissolved in Edward VI. reign.

At the south-west corner of Trafalgar Square is Spring Gardens, now the well-known seat of the London County Council administration; it takes its name from the Spring Gardens (q.v.) of the early Stuart period. It was here that Prince Rupert lived between 1674-1682, ln one of the houses erected after the Gardens were abolished.

The very modern neighbourhood of Trafalgar Square is historically part of Westminster, for it was in the dominion of the lordly abbots and probably began its career as the group of huts in which lived the workers in the Convent Garden (v. Covent Garden) and the Thames fishermen who seem to have been here from time immemorial. St Martin in the Fields (q.v.) was the parish church of this hamlet, the first built to relieve the mother church of St Margaret of the charge of such a huge parish. The whole square is a modern creation of William IV.’s reign, and the first half of the nineteenth century; and was cut out of the more chaotic streets which had sprung up mainly since the last days of the Tudors. In Ralph Agas’ map of about 1570, there is a single line of houses which stop at the end of a half circle in front of the Cross; and then begin the open fields.

ITINERARY X

THE LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS AND COVENT GARDEN DISTRICT: EARLY STUART LONDON

IF a citizen of London, at the end of Elizabeth's reign, had walked out beyond Ludgate until he reached the west wall of Lincoln's Inn garden, he would have come to the end of his city. Behind him was mediæval London as it had existed in general outline for hundreds of years; in front of him were open fields. The garden in which he stood had been there since the Bishop of Chichester had built his London house on this spot, and died there in 1244. It had been the west boundary of London for three hundred and fifty years. The area behind it had become more thickly covered with houses during that time; but westward, beyond this garden wall, practically nothing had grown except the long line of houses which now stretched from Temple Bar along the river bank (the Strand) to Westminster. Just outside the Bar, to our citizen's left, lay the village settlement of the Danes who had clustered round St Clements’ Church since before the Conquest, when the citizens had no wish to take them within the city borders. On the right, there were a few houses beginning to appear along the Holborn highway. But straight in front there was practically no habitation in sight until, a little over half a mile away, the eye reached the hamlet of St Giles, which had been there since the year 1100, in King Stephen's time; and there was a cluster of houses round Charing Cross at the end of the Strand, just beyond the garden of the monks of Westminster, which was soon, as we shall see, to become Covent Garden Market. On this open space there was one intrusion; for the ancient highway of Aldwych, running from St Clement's village to St Giles, had now, Stow tells us, became known as Drury Lane; so called from the great house which the Druries had built themselves there, probably during Henry VIII.’s reign.

WESTMINISTER ABBEY

Henry VII.’s Chapel

On the fields between Lincoln's Inn garden and these hamlets of St Giles and Charing, grew up early Stuart London. It was the beginning of its modern growth. We can step straight from the bishop's garden of the thirteenth century to the Stuart square, Lincoln's Inn Fields (q.v.) of the seventeenth. By 1616 it had become manifest that building operations were imminent, so the Government appointed a commission to guide future developments after an orderly plan. The great architect Inigo Jones, was called in; and he drew the outline of the square, and himself designed at least Lindsay House, which still stands on the west side, with its imposing brick gate-pillars. But the rest of the houses round the Fields were first built at a rather later part of the century. Thus the south side was erected in 1657, and called Portugal Row after Charles II.’s Queen; probably none of the existing houses in the row are of this date; though one or two are, at latest, of the early part of the next century. Here was the theatre which the Duke's Company opened in 1662 with a triumph, a play which ran twelve days, then considered a great success; and a few nights later Betterton played “Hamlet” which brought fame and fortune to the Company.

Perhaps the most interesting existing building in the Fields after Lindsay House, is Newcastle House, at the north-west corner, by the side of Great Queen Street. This was erected in 1686 and purchased by a Duke of Newcastle, who was succeeded as tenant by his nephew, the more famous Duke who was a Prime Minister to George II. The great Lord Chancellor Somers was also a tenant. The whole Fields savour of Stuart times; from the Earls of Lindsay's House to Nell Gwynne, who acted in the Portugal Row Theatre until she gave birth to her royal son, the future Duke of St Albans, at her lodgings in the same street.

Inigo Jones’ work of town planning (which is again becoming more fashionable, after years of anarchical speculating builders) included the neighbouring Great Queen Street (q.v.), which may not unjustly be called the first fashionable street of the West End, the Park Lane of Charles I.’s day—just as Lincoln's Inn Field was its Grosvenor Square. A map of 1654 shows us the street built on both sides along its whole length, except for a space before it reached the corner of Newcastle House. Its aristocratic pretensions were recorded by the Royalist tenants, who christened it after the Queen, Henrietta Maria. The south side must have been of very handsome houses; and No. 56 remains as part of the stately row, probably designed by Jones himself, and erected in 1640. Many of the existing houses on the north side, for more modest inhabitants, are in their main structure of not much later date than the end of the same century; though, of course, they have been rebuilt in part.

NEWCASTLE HOUSE

Lincoln's Inn Fields

The residents in this street recall many of the famous and fashionable people of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There was Sir Thomas Fairfax in 1648; and the Earl of Bristol in 1671, whose house became the office of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, of which John Evelyn, the diarist, was a member; it can thus claim to be the first Board of Trade. Lord Herbert of Cherbury died at his house in this street in 1648. Sheridan was here in 1779, while the street was blocked by the carriages of Opie's sitters in 1791. By the end of that century the day of fashion had passed away westwards, where we will overtake it in a later chapter.

Out of Great Queen Street ran Wild Street, close by which Sir Kenelm Digby had built himself a house in 1632; and away back, near the south-west corner of the Fields, we have left the site of Clare House, still recorded by Clare Market, where the earls of that name were living during most of the century in a “princely manor,” as Howell described it in 1657. To continue westward again, we find that the home of the Druries had come into the possession of the Earls of Craven about this time; where they, also, remained until the end of the century. The first earl was a hero of the plague year of 1665, when he and Monk, Duke of Albemarle, refused to fly, and worked hard for the assistance of the distressed. Craven House was destroyed in 1809. Drury Lane (q.v.) was as fashionable during the Stuarts as Great Queen Street and the Fields; but it passed its prime earlier, for by Steel's time (he died 1729) it was considered distinctly disreputable.

We now approach the other central point of this district, Covent Garden (q.v.), with its accompanying streets. Once again we find an early Stuart origin; it was the Earls of Bedford who began to develop the garden of the Convent of Westminster (hence its present name), which had passed into their hands in 1552 after the Dissolution. They had built themselves a house on the Strand, where Southampton Street now is; and in 1631 the fourth earl commissioned Inigo Jones to plan out for building the old convent garden to the north of their house. So Jones designed Covent Garden in the form we see it to-day, his piazza still exists along the north side, and his St Paul's Church on the west side. The street names around bear the record of their firstperiod: Henrietta Street was named after the Queen; from the north corner ran King Street to commemorate Charles I.; Bedford Street (q.v.), after the family of its founder. The whole group became a centre of fashion at once; and after the Great Fire of 1666 the wealthier city merchants came there also; for by that time some of the aristocrats were moving westward to St James's Square. If the spirits of the dead haunt their former scenes, then the piazza and square of Covent Garden must be a place of ghostly revelry: Stuart nobles and fashionable portrait painters, Queen Anne wits and Georgian play-actors, were all here in their heyday prime. This, or close to it, was the place of “Will's Coffee House (q.v.) and “Buttons” (q.v.), and the “Bedford,” the scene of literary and dramatic playtime from Pepys to Garrick.

At the south side of this group of Covent Garden streets, we find Maiden Lane, running at the south side of Henrietta Street; it was here that lived Andrew Marvell the poet and M.P., in 1677, when Charles (so the tale goes) sent Lord Danby to bribe him and was refused; Voltaire lodged at the “White Peruke” in this lane when he came to England in 1726; the great landscape painter, Turner, was born at No. 26, and lived here with his father until he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1800. Continuing westward along Chandos Street, where Claude Duval the highwayman of Charles II.’s time was arrested, we arrive just north of Trafalgar Square, with the parish church of St Martin's in the Fields (q.v.) at the north-east corner. This was probably originally the chapel which was used by the workers in the Convent Garden and the inhabitants of the little hamlet of Charing which we have already discussed in the last Itinerary. St Martin's Lane (q.v.) has many interesting memories of the later Stuarts and Hanoverian times, but it is now quite commonplace. Leading from its north end is Long Acre, another product of the early Stuarts and the Bedford's estate. It was known as the “Long Acre” when it was still the property of the Abbots of Westminster. From the beginning of its career, when it was first built during Charles I.’s reign, it has been a street of carriage builders. It is still possible to pick out a few houses which are substantially still of the original date of the street. Oliver Cromwell lived on the south side, between 1637 and 1643, from the time when he was merely Captain Cromwell of no great fame. Two doors from him lived Nicholas Stone, the sculptor, whose work we have seen close by in the York Watergate; in a house facing Rose Street, Dryden lived from 1682 to 1686.

Continuing northwards from the end of St Martin's Lane we reach, in a few moments, Seven Dials; so called because of the seven streets meeting there. Its date is recorded in Evelyn's diary for 5th October 1694 where he says: “I went to see the building beginning near St Giles's, where 7 streets make a star from a Doric pillar placed in the middle of a circular area”; a spot which was once celebrated for its ballad printers; then as a slum, and now the rebuilding is creeping up to it from all side.

Passing north again, along Great St Andrew Street, we come to where the curving High Street joins the curving Broad Street, which meets High Holborn, the two completing a bow-like form with its ends at the two ends of New Oxford Street. This marked distinction from the ordinary rectangular crossing of the modern London streets, will indicate to the observant traveller that we have now reached a place with a more ancient history. This curving highway, in fact, marks the village street of St Giles (q.v.), a village which has existed at least, since the hospital for lepers was founded there in 1118, or thereabouts. A glance at a map giving the Roman roads, will suggest a reason for this early hamlet of St Giles: for if the eye continues along the line of the Old Street which we found at the north of the City walls (Itinerary V.) and accepted as perhaps part of the great Roman road from Exeter to Lincoln, we shall see that it must have crossed the other Roman road leading out of Newgate along the line of Holborn and Oxford Street, almost exactly at this spot where we now are. If this be so, St Giles is the village which grew round the crossings of two great highways. However, it was only a small one, for it is not mentioned in Domesday, by itself at least. But whether this be so or not, the curving High Street was laid down when St Giles was a village “on its own” (also see Bloomsbury). It was not until the end of Elizabeth's reign that the houses along Holborn joined St Giles to the City of London.

It was in the fields outside St Giles’ Hospital, that Sir John Oldcastle assembled his Lollard followers in 1413, and their leader was executed on the same spot. There was long a gallows at the north-west corner of the hospital; and afterwards, when Tyburn, and then the Marble Arch, became the place of execution, the doomed victims were always allowed to stop for a last drink at St Giles’ Inn named “The Bowl,” which stood on the south side of the High Street.

LINCOLN'S INN

With Old Hall

ITINERARY XI

LATER STUART LONDON: ST JAMES, PICCADILLY AND SOHO

THE district we propose to wander through to-day, has St James’ Palace, Pall Mall and St James’ Square for its base, for it was here that the new London sprang into being on the open fields round St James’ Palace, when the Royalists came back from exile at the Restoration of Charles II, in 1660. From this base the new district extended to Piccadilly and old Bond Street; and filled in the gap between the older Covent Garden district and St Giles, by the building of Soho Square and the streets to its south, with Leicester Square, which last is almost of the earlier period, and a kind of link between the two.

We will begin our walk in Trafalgar Square, leaving it along Cockspur Street on its west side. Passing the Haymarket (q.v.), with a characteristic block of “Regency” period houses at its south-east corner, we reach the spacious Waterloo Place which once had on its south side Carlton House (q.v.). The handsome Carlton Terrace stretches along the north side of the Park beyond it. It was this Carlton House, one of the London houses of the Georgian monarchs, that was the reason of Regent Street (q.v.), which begins at the north side of Waterloo Place and winds north-westwards until it almost reaches the Regent's Park (q.v.), which latter will come into a subsequent walk. This long street (with the houses surrounding it) is the chief mark left in London by the Regency period at the end of the reign of George III. Some people are apt to laugh at this architectural style, yet it had a sense of unity and design, which is utterly lacking in so much of modern street building in London to-day. Beyond the west boundary of Waterloo Place we come to Pall Mall.

On the north side of Pall Mall (q.v.) lies St James's Square (q.v.), the first elaborate building scheme after the Restoration. This was the fashionable Square of the West End, after the first smartness of Lincoln's Inn Fields had worn off, and before there were any other West End squares at all, except Bloomsbury Square, which began to be built about the same time. There are many houses in St James's Square which still stand in their eighteenth century form, and their history has a distinct atmosphere.

At the west end of Pall Mall lies St James's Palace (q.v.), the oldest royal residence in London still standing as a more or less perfect survival—unless, of course, one regards the Tower of London as a palace—for Westminster Hall is only a part of a greater whole.

Just beyond, at the south-west corner of the Palace, is Stafford House, built 1825, partly on the site of an older Godolphin House, where Charles James Fox lived near his end. Garibaldi was the guest of the Duke of Sutherland at Stafford House in 1864. North of it, beyond Cleveland Row, is Cleveland Square, with Bridgewater House in its centre. The square takes its name from Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, who entered the lists as a competitor for the somewhat risky prize of Charles II.’s heart. She received the house, Berkshire House, which then stood there, as a gift from Charles, and rebuilt it. In 1730 the Duke of Bridgewater bought it, and it is now in the hands of the Earls of Ellesmere who rebuilt it in 1850 after Barry's designs. It contains a famous collection of pictures.

Returning now to the north front of St James's Palace we see, ascending northwards, St James's Street (q.v.), which has a very typical history of the eighteenth century. On its west side is St James's Place, first laid out about 1694, where Addison was living in 1710, and Samuel Rogers entertained literary and famous London at No. 22, from 1803 until 1855; at No. 25 Sir Francis Burdett, the aristocratic Radical, died in 1844, having lived there for many years. At the south-west corner of this winding street lies Spencer House, the home of the famous Whig statesmen; it was built about 1760.

Further north on the same side is Park Place, still retaining some old houses; it was first built about 1683. At its north-east corner stands Brook's Club (q.v.), and almost opposite in St James's Street is Boodle's. Bennet Street, beyond, leads into Arlington Street (q.v.), and on the east side of St James's Street is Jermyn Street (q.v.), [(out of which runs Bury Street (q.v.)], and just beyond it is White's Club.

We are now in Piccadilly (q.v.), also of later Stuart foundation. During its early days it held three famous mansions: Burlington House (q.v.), a large part of which still stands, Clarendon House (v. Bond Street), and Berkeley House, where is now Devonshire House (q.v.).

Leaving the west end of Piccadilly for another walk we will turn eastwards. Old Bond Street (q.v.) is on the left. Then comes Burlington House (q.v.), then the Albany (q.v.), and behind it lies Savile Row, which still has torch extinquishers standing at the door of No. 12; this street was built about 1735. Sheridan died at No. 17, in 1816, and he had also lived at No. 14. William Pitt, the younger, was living in this street in 1781.

Returning to Piccadilly we come to St James's (q.v.) parish church on the south side, a very soberly beautiful example of Wren's work. Continuing we reach Piccadilly Circus with Regent Street (q.v.) running through it, and a little further on we come to the top end of the Haymarket (q.v.), both which streets we have already seen at their south end. Coventry Street (named after a Secretary of Charles II., Henry Coventry, who lived here in a house on the north side of Panton Street) was begun to be built about 1681. It leads us into Leicester Square (q.v.), whose name takes us back to the Earl of Leicester who had a house (where the Empire Music Hall now is) in the time of Elizabeth.

Leaving the Square by its north side we find Gerrard Street (q.v.), and crossing Shaftesbury Avenue (one of the modern diagonal highways which have cut through the rectangular Stuart streets) we find Frith Street (q.v), bringing us to Soho Square (q.v.) with the unruly Duke of Monmouth for its godfather. The streets around are mainly of the end of the seventeenth century in origin, and still retain many interesting doorways and fronts of that period or a little later. In Greek Street lived Sir Thomas Lawrence from 1797–1804, and Douglas Jerrold was born here in 1803. In Dean Street, to the west of Soho Square, Sir James Thornhill occupied No. 75, which still has his work on the staircase. At the west end of Carlisle Street (leading out of Soho Square), after it has crossed Dean Street, is an interesting house of the Queen Anne period or perhaps a little earlier; it was once Carlisle House. Further south in Dean Street, on its west side, is Meard Street leading into Meard Court, which is an interesting little group of eighteenth century houses, in one of which lived Lawrence Sterne's Pretty Kitty. Still going westwards we shall find more houses of the same period or even earlier in, for example, Broad Street and Great Pulteney Street, in which latter Haydn the musician lived at No. 18 (now rebuilt). In Broad Street, William Blake was born 1757, and kept his print shop, 1784–87, after his marriage. Then we reach Golden Square (q.v.), which still has a general air of the eighteenth century. North of Golden Square and along the west side of Carnaby Street once lay the Pest Fields, where many of the victims of the Great Plague of 1665 were buried. In Great Marlborough Street (laid out in 1698 and called after the great Duke who was then so famous) lived Mrs Siddons, at No. 49, from 1790 to 1802; Haydon, the painter, at No. 41: the body of Lord Mohan was brought to his house in this street when he was killed in his duel with the Duke of Hamilton in 1712.

We have now covered that part of London between St James's and Soho Square, which seems specially the child of the later Stuart period. We have now reached Regent Street again, which brings us into the distinctly Hanoverian district on its west side.

ITINERARY XII

GEORGIAN LONDON

WE have seen how later Stuart London had extended out to Piccadilly and Soho Square, and had filled in the intervening space to a large extent. The most typical spots in the district we are going to visit to-day will be Hanover Square, Grosvenor Square, and Portman Square. The main connecting link continuing through the walk, in the names of the streets and the history of the residents, will be of the period from the reign of Anne to the period of the Regency, so strongly marked by the boundary line at Regent Street and Regent's Park.

We will begin at the north end of St James's Street, which we reached in the last itinerary, keeping along Piccadilly to the west, instead of the east, as we did before. The first part of this district is still of Stuart origin. Albemarle Street, in front of us, took its name from the second Duke of Albemarle (the son of Monk who had restored Charles II. to his throne) who had bought Clarendon House which stood on this spot (v. Bond Street). In the next, Dover Street, first built in 1686, also on the site of Clarendon House, lived the Earl of Dover, who gave it its name; nine doors up on the east side lived John Evelyn, the diarist, who died there in 1706. Harley, Earl of Oxford and St John, Lord Bolingbroke, the two great statesmen of their time, both lived in this street, and there Dr Johnson came to visit Sir Joshua Reynold's sister. Dover Street contains some interesting houses of the eighteenth century, the Adam period of architecture, but their beauty is now in their interiors, not obvious to the passing traveller. No. 37, however, still retains an interesting exterior; it has been the town house of the bishops of Ely since 1772, which is about the date of its building.

Berkeley Street leads us to Berkeley Square (q.v.), both taking their name from the Berkeley House which once stood where Devonshire House (q.v.) has now taken its place. At the south side of the Square lies Lansdowne House (q.v.). The street was laid out about 1684. No. 9 was the house which Pope bought for Maria Blount. Richard Cosway, the miniature painter, lived at No. 4 in 1770 before he moved to Pall Mall. Further west, along Piccadilly, is Bolton Street, where Scott visited Fanny Burney, where Maria Blount had lived. Then comes Clarges Street (q.v.). Running along its north end is Curzon Street; at No. 19 Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, died in 1881. In this street were performed the irregular marriages, which corresponded to the Fleet marriages at the other end of the town; thus the Duke of Hamilton married one of the beautiful Miss Gunnings, and the Duke of Kingston married Miss Chudleigh. At the west end of Curzon Street, at the east corner of South Audley Street, is Chesterfield House (q.v.)

South Audley Street, which was laid out about 1730, has had many famous residents. Holcroft, the dramatist and friend of the Godwins, there worked for his cobbler father who had his stall here, 1761. Charles X. of France lived in exile in 1814 at No. 72; Lord Bute was attacked by the mob when he was living at No. 73 during the Wilkes's riots of 1769, and he died there in 1792. Johnson, Boswell, and Reynolds all visited General Paoli when he lived in this street. At the Grosvenor Chapel, on the south side between South Street and Mount Street, are buried Lady Mary Wortley Montague (died 1762) and John Wilkes (1797). David Garrick was married to Eva Violette in the Portuguese Embassy in this street, 1749. Harriet Westbrook, Percy Shelley's first wife, was the daughter of the keeper of a coffee-house in Mount Street.

Grosvenor Square (q.v.) is the typical fashionable place of Hanoverian London, and the basis, so to speak, of the Grosvenor family, who have been fortunate enough to lay hands on such a huge slice of the West End. The foundation of their fortune was the land in this district, which made the Hay Hill Farm, still commemorated by the three names, Hay Mews, Hill Street, and Farm Street, lying on the south side of the Square and to the east of Berkeley Square. This farm once belonged to a wealthy bookseller named Davies, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1677, and by a marriage (1676) of Sir Thomas Grosvenor, a Cheshire baronet, to Miss Mary Davies (the daughter of the owner of a farm where is now Belgravia, who was also a relation of the Lord Mayor apparently, and inherited his Grosvenor estates), the united Davies estates came to the Grosvenors, who have by this chance accumulated enormous wealth. It was Sir Richard Grosvenor, Mary Davies's eldest son, who began systematically to build over the Grosvenor Square district about 1725, though there had been scattered houses before.

In Grosvenor Street, leading to Bond Street, Lord North, the Prime Minister of George III., lived and died; Nance Oldfield, the actress, lived and died at No. 60. Continuing across Bond Street (q.v.) we go along Muddox Street and George Street, both first built in George I.’s reign, to Hanover Square (q.v.), with St George's Church (q.v.), where the two streets cross.

We are near the Regent Street line once more, on the east of which we have already seen the London of the later Stuarts extend. So continuing no further in that direction we will go out at the north side of Hanover Square by Harewood Place and reach Oxford Street, which took its present name and completed its line of houses to the point where the Tyburn crossed it (i.e. at the lowest dip in the road, a few minutes’ walk to the west of Harewood Place) about 1725. It took its name from the Earl of Oxford whose wife gave her name to Cavendish Square (q.v.), which lies just north of Oxford Street at this point. This square and its adjacent streets were the first part of London to be built on the north side of Oxford Street, but the district was nothing like completed until towards the end of the eighteenth century. Mansfield Place, to the north of Cavendish Square, was designed by the Adam brothers, and built about 1770; it is still much as they left it. Portland Place, the main thoroughfare which continues Laugham Place and Regent Street, was also planned by the same architects, and they themselves completed the part between Duchess Street and Devonshire Street. It was built so wide in order that the view from Foley House (which stood where the Laughan Hotel now is) might not be interrupted. Talleyrand lived at No. 51, and Lord Byron made love to Miss Milbanke at No. 63.

At the end of Portland Place we soon reach Regent's Park (q.v.), once part of the manor of Marylebone (q.v.), with a whole collection of Regency streets and crescents around it; but only the very careful traveller will examine them, though they are a highly successful example of town planning on a palatial scale.

Keeping within more available distance we can continue out at the north-west corner of Cavendish Square by Wigmore Street until we reach Portman Square and its district; crossing on the way the winding Marylebone Lane (with Strafford Place (q.v.) and the old Marylebone Court House, at its south end, at Oxford Street), which, by its curvings, reminds us that it is a survival of the old village of Marylebone (q.v.), which has been almost obliterated by the modern streets ruled across it. It is one of the many sacrifices which have made modern London. Just beyond this Lane is Manchester Square (q.v.) with Hertford House and its great collection of the Arts, open to the public view. At the end of the High Street (another memory of Marylebone village) is the parish church (q.v.). Then we come to Portman Square (q.v.) and its surrounding streets, the creation of the latter half of the eighteenth century.

The Edgware Road, which is the west boundary of this district, has been a great highway since the Romans (or perhaps the Britons before them) first used it as the main road between the Kent coast and Chester. It was not so much made as the road to London; it was rather because the road came this way that London was built. The Edgware Road is an older thing than London. Originally it continued along where is now Park Lane, at the east side of Hyde Park, and thence over the ford of the Thames at Westminster (q.v.). When the London Bridge took the place of the ford, then the Roman road was diverted at the foot of the present Edgware Road, at the Marble Arch, and turned eastwards along the site of the present Oxford Street, or very near it. So that this Portman Square corner of London is bounded on its two sides, its west and south, by very ancient Roman or even British highways, and at its east side lay the ancient village of Tyburn, which was in existence in Saxon times, and later became Marylebone, which we have already visited.

It was in the neighbourhood of the Marble Arch, where the Roman Oxford Street began when it turned east, as we have seen, that Tyburn Tree stood for so long as the place of execution of London criminals: a gruesome subject which will not be dwelt on here with the relish devoted to it in many London histories. Still Tyburn gallows are a part of history: they probably stood in the neighbourhood of the existing Connaught Place or Square (No. 49 of the Square is usually given as the exact spot), at the south-west corner of the Edgware Road.

Beyond Edgware Road, westwards, along the north side of Hyde Park, is that district of London which sprang into building existence during the first half of the nineteenth century. Its nucleus was the village of Paddington (q.v.), which was the headquarters of the manor of the same name, belonging to the Abbey of Westminster for the greater part of its history. When we reach the bottom of the dip in the Bayswater Road, just beyond Sussex Square, we are crossing the old bed of the West Bourne, which gave its name to the ancient manor that lay just beyond (v. Westbourne). But there is comparatively little history in its details, for the streets are only of the nineteenth century.

ITINERARY XIII

BLOOMSBURY

WHEN we left the north side of Holborn (in Itinerary VII.) on our arrival at Gray's Inn, and then (in Itinerary XII.) pursued our way to the north side of Oxford Street, in the Marylebone district, we left a gap on the north side of this great western highway, which we have now filled along its southern side as far as Hyde Park. There is a certain historical justification for the omission, as well as an excuse on the grounds of convenience in arrangement, which cannot always follow a strictly logical and historical order, however much one tries.

As a matter of fact the bulk of Bloomsbury (if by that term we mean the district between High Holborn and King's Cross) is of the early part of the nineteenth century, distinctly later than the Cavendish and Portman Squares, north of Oxford Street. But this nineteenth century Bloomsbury had an older basis, formed as early as the latter part of the seventeenth and the earlier part of the eighteenth centuries. Further, its historical origin goes back to the days of King John, when the possessor of the land here was one, Blemund (v. Bloomsbury). But it was not until the days of the Stuarts that it was anything more than a hamlet.

The first elaborate building operations were at Bloomsbury Square (q.v.) and Red Lion Square (q.v.), both beginning in the seventeenth century. Round this nucleus sprang up a district that is best described by the term “Queen Anne,” which has its most marked topographical feature in Queen's Square (q.v.), to the east of Southampton Row, called after Queen Anne, in whose reign it was first built. But perhaps the most perfectly complete example of this period now remaining in is Featherstone Buildings (q.v.), near the south-east corner of Red Lion Square. There are also many delightful eighteenth century doorways in Theobald's Road (just to the north of the same square) and in the smaller streets which leave it from its north side, and go back to great Ormond Street. In Theobald's Road the best examples are those facing Gray's Inn Gardens. This road was so called because it was along it that James I. travelled to his favourite hunting lodge at Theobald's, in Hertfordshire.

Lamb's Conduit Street leads up to the Foundling's Hospital (q.v.), beyond which were the Lamb's Conduit Fields whence was drawn the water supply which Lamb organised for the Londoners in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. These fields were the summer evenings’ promenade of the Holborn and St Giles folk, until the end of the eighteenth century, when they still remained open ground. Great Ormond Street, which was originally built about 1708, once had Powis House at its west corner, where Powis Place now is; it was the home of William Herbert, the second Marquis of Powis, who built it in the reign of William III. Later, it was inhabited by Hardwicke, the famous Lord Chancellor of George II. and III.’s time. In No. 45, on the north side, lived another great Lord Chancellor, Thurlow, who entertained Dr Johnson and Crabbe there.

Proceeding westward we come to Russell Square (q.v.), marking the beginning of nineteenth century Bloomsbury, and at its south-west corner lies the British Museum, where once stood Montague House, which was built for the third Lord Montague in 1678, but burned in 1685, and rebuilt in a form which lasted until 1840, when it was replaced by the present Museum. Still west of this square we come to Bedford Square (q.v.), lying at the north-west corner of the Museum.

At the west side of Bedford Square runs the Tottenham Court Road (q.v.), a main thoroughfare taking its name from a manor which was so named in the Domesday Book. Just north of Bedford Square is Store Street, where Mary Wollstonecraft lived when she was in love with Fuseli. Going north-east we reach Gordon Square, with the “Cathedral of the Catholic and Apostolic church” where the followers of Edward Irving worshipped; it was built about 1850; and in the chapel in Regent Square, to the east, Irving himself preached to fashionable congregations. In Tavistock Square, to the east, Charles Dickens lived in Tavistock House from 1851, where he wrote “Bleak House,” “Hard Times,” “Little Dorrit,” and “The Tale of Two Cities.” In Great Coram Street, a little to the south-east, Thackeray was living in 1837, and it was from here that he called on Dickens with an offer to illustrate “The Pickwick Papers,” but the offer was declined.

We soon come to the Euston Road, and beyond it St Pancras Old Church (q.v.), surrounded by railways, and near it Battle Bridge at King's Cross (q.v.). These were two of the ancient spots of historical London, and, as fate will have it, they are placed to-day in the midst of its latest modernity.

Still further north and north-west lie the modern districts of Somers Town (q.v.), Camden Town (q.v.), and Kentish Town (q.v.), the last of which, however, bears an ancient name.

The district lying north of Oxford Street, between Tottenham Court Road and Regent Street, is not a very interesting one. Its southern streets, near Oxford Street, were laid out in the reign of Queen Anne, and it gradually filled up to the Euston Road, on the north, during that century. Fitzroy Square (q.v.), at the north, is partly the work of Robert Adam and his brother. In Berners Street, about half way between Tottenham Court Road and Regent Street, lived Opie and Fuseli, the painters who were in their prime towards the close of the eighteenth century. In Castle Street Dr Johnson and his wife lived at No. 6, in 1738. In Great Titchfield Street, No. 85, Richard Wilson lived, 1779, when that great landscape painter could still be in the fields by walking to the end of his street. Weber, the musician, and Dr Johnson's Bothwell died in Great Portland Street, the former at No. 91, in 1826. It was in the Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street that Charles Kean played Shakespeare in 1849-59.

ITINERARY XIV

THE WESTERN SUBURBS: CHELSEA AND KENSINGTON

IN our journeys over the districts which have now become united as the West End of London, we have passed several spots that were once individual villages or hamlets. There were, for example, St Giles and Marylebone and Paddington. But all these were swept into the mass of London before they had attained to any great size of their own. To-day, however, we shall visit two towns, Chelsea and Kensington, which were quite respectably big before London arrived at their gates; they had already become nice little towns for those days, big villages as we would call them.

For the sake of geographical convenience we will begin with the modern patch of London which is called Belgravia, after its central feature, Belgrave Square (q.v.). But this is merely its modern centre, for the old lordship house of Ebury is marked in the map of 1676 as standing where is now Ebury Square, near the south-west end of Ebury Street. This district, one of the Dukes of Westminster's gold mines, was built over mainly in the twenties, thirties and forties of the nineteenth century. It formed the major part of the manor of Ebury, which had stretched from the Thames between Westminster and Chelsea, and along the east side of Hyde Park up to Oxford Street, where it met the manor of Lylleston. Ebury seems to mean the “ey” ( = island) “bury” ( = fortified place or manor house). It is recorded as early as 1307, when its then owner was granted royal permission to fortify it. It got, during the Stuart period, into the hands of a man named Davies, whose daughter married a Grosvenor, and the Dukes of Westminster are her descendants.

The Sloane Street district sprang into existence a little earlier, and was rather the outgrowth of Chelsea than of London. The west side of the street was built by 1787, and connected the village of Chelsea with the district which was springing up round the hamlet of Knightsbridge (q.v.). On its east side is Cadogan Place, so-called after its landlords the Earls of Cadogan, who are the chief lords of Chelsea. William Wilberforce died at No. 44 in 1833; and Mrs Jordon, the actress, lived at No. 30. Byron was at Sloane Terrace when he was ten years of age. At No. 22 Hans Place, on the west side of Sloane Street, was the school where Miss Mitford, who wrote “Our Village,” was a pupil; and also the Lady Caroline Lamb who loved Byron so intensely. Jane Austen also lived in Hans Place, and Canning and Lord Liverpool, the statesmen. Such slight notes may help to date this district, and we will proceed to the older Chelsea (q.v.), beginning at the south end of Lower Sloane Street near the west side of which we reach Chelsea Hospital (q.v.), a very fine example of Christopher Wren's style. The west wing of the Infirmary contains the old Walpole House where Sir Robert Walpole came to live in 1723 for over twenty years, during the time when he was the most powerful man in the kingdom. He entertained here the most notable personage of the day, Bolingbroke, Swift and Pope, and all that set. At the opposite corner of Chelsea Hospital (the south-east) were once the Ranelagh Gardens (q.v.), for a time the most fashionable place near London.

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK

Effigy of John Gower, the Poet

In Tite Street is Gough House, which was built by the Earl of Carberry in Charles II.’s time. It has now been absorbed by the modern building of the Victoria Hospital for Children, so that it is hard to realise that a part of the old house is still there. Opposite the north end of this Hospital, on the other side of the Queen's Road, once stood Paradise Row, where lived a whole volume full of notable or notorious persons. There was Mary Astell who was an early “suffragist” in the time of Bishop Burnet and Queen Anne; there was the Duchess de Mazarine, one of Charles's most extravagant ladies, and her own favourite, St Evremonde. She never paid her poor-rate properly all the time she was here, yet she introduced Italian opera into England at her musical evenings, which perhaps made up for the rates and taxes being rather in arrears.

Near the south-west end of Queen's Road are the Botanical Gardens, which were first planted in 1673 as the Gardens of the Apothecaries’ Company, whose Hall we saw in Water Lane near Ludgate Hill (v. Apothecaries’ Hall).

We now come to Cheyne Walk and Cheyne Row (q.v.), with many literary memories. At the corner, just before we reach the Albert Bridge, stood the Manor House which Henry VIII. built (v. Chelsea). Behind it, up Oakley Street, was Winchester House, the residence of the Bishops of Winchester from the middle of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century, but it was demolished in 1828. On the opposite side of Oakley Street stood Shrewsbury House, the residence of the Earls of that name between 1530-90. It is said that Mary Queen of Scots was in this house under the charge of the sixth Earl at some period between 1572-86. Under his charge, somewhere, she certainly was, and his masterful wife, Bess of Hardwick, violently accused him of flirting with his prisoner.

Beyond the Albert Bridge we reach the rebuilt Crosby Hall (q.v.), and a few steps further is Chelsea Old Church (q.v.), a most interesting relic filled with Chelsea history. Behind it was once the Old Manor House, now marked by Lawrence Street (v. Chelsea). Continuing westwards, we reach Danvers Street (v. Chelsea), marking Danvers House, and then Beaufort Street, marking Beaufort House (v. Chelsea). Just beyond Battersea Bridge is Lindsey House (q.v.); and then No. 119 Cheyne Walk, where Turner, the landscape painter, died, watching the sunshine within an hour of his end. Then Cremorne Road marks the Cremorne Gardens (q.v.), and some way to the west, over the railway bridge north of the gas works, is Sandford Manor House (q.v.). This is actually in Fulham (q.v.), with Fulham Palace almost two miles further west.

We have now travelled over the area, which was covered by the village of Chelsea when it was in the full flush of its glory during the Tudors’ and the Stuarts’ reigns. At the close of the eighteenth century it was much the same; there were then open fields and Chelsea Common to the north, until one reached the little hamlet of Brompton, which lay around the spot where is now South Kensington station and the old Brompton Road. As one proceeded north-east along this road, the open sides became filled with a row of houses, until one reached the village of Knightsbridge (q.v.), which we have already found at the north end of Sloane Street. On the north side of the Brompton Road were more open fields and nursery gardens at the time of which we are writing, the end of the eighteenth century. Where is now the South Kensington Museum was the Cromwell House, which had been called Hale House in the previous century, but had taken its later name from an uncertain tradition that Oliver Cromwell had lived there, the truth being that his son Henry may have once owned it. In Charles II.’s time it was occupied by the Lord Howards of Effingham; still later Edmund Burke was there, in 1794. Now the Cromwell Road records the name and the tradition. William Wordsworth married Mary Hutchison at Brompton, in 1802. Guizot lived at No. 20 Pelham Crescent after the Revolution of 1848 drove him out of France, and Thackeray once lived at 36 Onslow Square. But Brompton was only a part of the larger manor of Kensington. Likewise was Earls Court (q.v.), lying at the west end of the Cromwell Road, so named because it was there that the Earls of Oxford had the Court House of their manor. But the district is very uninterestingly modern.

CHELSEA OLD CHURCH

To the north of Earls Court we begin to get to older scenes again. On our way towards Kensington Church, the central spot of the ancient village of that name, we can pass, more or less on our road, Edwardes Square (q.v.) and Kensington Square (q.v.), the latter still containing many houses of its first buildings of the end of the seventeenth century, and many later dwellers of repute are associated with the neighbourhood (v. Kensington). The chief historical place is Kensington Palace (q.v.).

To the west lies the other great house of the neighbourhood, Holland House (q.v.). Between those two and to the northwards lies the Campden Hill district (v. Campden House). Here lived Lord Macaulay, at Holly Lodge, where he died in 1859.

On the road back to central London, along the south side of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, we pass the site of Gore House (now occupied by the Albert Hall) where William Wilberforce lived, and afterwards, Lady Blessington whose famous receptions from 1836 brought the cream of cultured society to her doors, Brougham, Lytton, Thackeray, Dickens, and Disraeli being amongst her chief lions, and Count d'Orsay her right-hand deputy. The street is here called Kensington Gore.

ITINERARY XV

SOUTHWARK AND THE SOUTHERN SUBURBS

WE have now visited, in outline, the City of London proper, and the immediate suburbs outside its gates; also the City of Westminster, with its suburbs in turn, which became the West End of London; then we glanced over Chelsea and Kensington, which brought us near the western border of the present London area. Now, for the first time we cross the Thames.

By far the most important, and the first place in historical order, is Southwark. Of course, strictly speaking, it should have been visited before the West End, perhaps even before Westminster. For Southwark was an important town at a very early date (v. Southwark). It is possible that the Romans settled at Southwark before they had any buildings on the north side of the Thames; there is almost equal evidence for and against the theory that Southwark was the original London. So that, historically speaking, London may be the northern suburb of Southwark. It is not of great importance, for immediately London Bridge was built the advantages of the north side quickly put London in the first place.

The bridge is the keynote of Southwark (v. London Bridge), and we will start at its southern end. We can, unfortunately, dismiss the area to our left, on the east side, very quickly, for its historical remains are mainly memories, not material facts. But the memories are very interesting ones, and very important, if we wish to understand what kind of place this once was.

Immediately to our left, we find Tooley Street, in which is the parish church of St Olave (q.v.), a prompt reminder that we are now in a part of London which was in its early days a Danish settlement; for Olaf (afterwards Olave) was a Dane who suffered martyrdom at the hands of his pagan countrymen. The Priory of Lewis, which once owned this church, had a town house almost opposite it. On the east side of the church once lay the Inn of the Abbots of St Augustine of Canterbury, who leased the ground from the Earls of Warren. In later days this house passed into the hands of the St Ledger family, and is recorded by the name of Sellinger Wharf. Then comes the spot where the Bridge House (for the storage of the materials to repair London Bridge) stood, perhaps from the Saxon period. Then Battle Bridge Lane records the fact that on that spot the Abbots of Battle Abbey had their town house, with their gardens extending where now the South-Eastern line, leaving London Bridge Station, passes overhead.

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK

The Lady Chapel

A little beyond this lane, Bermondsey Street takes us south to St Mary Magdalen parish church (q.v.), which is the only building now standing in the line of descent from Bermondsey Abbey (q.v.), which once dominated this district; its precincts have only left a few street names to record their existence.

Returning now to Southwark proper, we will turn westwards from the south end of London Bridge. Immediately we reach St Saviour's, Southwark (q.v.), the finest architectural remains of the place, ranking after Westminster Abbey as the most important Gothic building in the neighbourhood of London. It was once the great chapel of the Abbey of St Mary Overy (q.v.), and is a storehouse of ecclesiastical and literary history.

Immediately west of this great church stood the London house of the Bishops of Winchester (v. Winchester House), of which a vestige still remains in the modern wall of the archway over Stoney Street, on the south side of Clink Street. The name of this street records the liberty of the Clink, which was attached to the bishops’ house; it owed its privileged position to the fact that it was within the bounds of the bishops’ domain; and, like other lordly and ecclesiastical property during the Middle Ages, it was therefore exempt from the general law which controlled the unprivileged places.

But before going westward over the ground of the Clink, we will walk along the Borough High Street, which was the centre of the old Southwark, throughout all its mediæval history; when it was the place of inns for the travellers passing through London along the great road to Canterbury and the south coast. In this street were some of the most famous inns of the mediæval period. There is only one left in anything approaching an old form, the George Inn (q.v.), even that is only a part, which dates from the Stuart times, but it is nevertheless very picturesque and interesting. The other inns are discussed with it in the Gazetteer. All along this High Street can still be found new courts and houses bearing the old names which have made them historic.

Going down the Borough High Street from its north end, we find on our left St Thomas's Street, on the north side of which is St Thomas's Church, the only survival of the St Thomas's Hospital (q.v.) which once stood here, but has now been removed to the south end of Westminster Bridge. Beyond it is a row of ancient houses, of the end of the seventeenth century, which belonged to the hospital buildings. Then, on the south side of this bye street, are the large buildings of Guy's Hospital, which has not been supplanted, as its fellow institution was, by the erection of the railway station and yards on its site. Compared with St Thomas's, Guy's Hospital (which was founded in 1721 and still has its main buildings of that date) is a modern thing. Guy, the bookseller, who founded it, made lucky speculations in South Sea stock; an interesting example of how fortunes can be made out of worthless business.

Continuing down the main High Street, we pass the White Hart Yard, where stood the famous inn of that name; then the George Inn (q.v.), which is still there in part; then the Talbot Inn Yard, where once was the still more famous Tabard Inn, which Chaucer made immortal, though his poems could not preserve its buildings. Beyond it is the Queen's Head Yard, and others commemorating the sites of old inns will also be noted.

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK

Effigy of an Unknown Knight

Between King's Street and Mermaid Court stood the Marshalsea Prison. It was there at least as early as Edward III.’s reign. It was demolished by Wat Tyler's followers in 1381. In Elizabeth's time it was one of the most important prisons in England; Bishop Bonner died there in 1569. The prison was disused after 1801, but Charles Dickens has made it part of his scenery in “Little Dorrit,” and visited the place in order to get local colour into his descriptions. Still further along the High Street, just before we reach Angel Court, once stood another famous prison, the King's Bench Prison; to which, tradition says, Chief Justice Gascoigne committed Prince Henry (after King Henry V.) for contempt of Court. Here also Smollett was imprisoned for libel in 1759; and Wilkes was detained here while he was being expelled four times from the House of Commons and re-elected every time by Middlesex, 1768-1770. The prison stood until 1879. In this part of the High Street are several old houses still standing; for example, No. 191 on the east side, and Nos. 146-152 on the west, are all of the seventeenth century in their main structure. A little beyond Angel Court, we reach the parish church of St George the Martyr (q.v.). Great Suffolk Street, on the north-west side of the Borough High Street, a little further down, marks the spot where stood Suffolk House, the great mansion which was built by Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, who married Henry VIII.’s sister. Queen Mary gave it to the Archbishops of York as a compensation for Whitehall, which her father took from Wolsey; but the archbishops sold it in 1557, and came back to York House, near Charing Cross (v. York House).

We will now return to the Thames Bank, and the scene of the early theatres. In Park Street, to the west of the Clink Street (where we broke off our journey in order to visit the High Street), stood the Globe Theatre (q.v.), the site of which is marked by the tablet placed just to the east of where Park Street runs under Southwark Bridge approach. Continuing westward along New Park Street, we come to Rose Alley, leading down to the Bankside; this was the place where stood “The Rose” Theatre, which was first opened about 1592, by Henslowe. A few yards further, and we reach Bear Gardens, which marks the site of the old Bear Pits and “The Hope” Theatre, into which Henslowe converted one of them in 1613, when the Globe Theatre was burned. One of the first plays performed here was Ben Jonson's, “Bartholomew Fair.” Mr Fairman Ordish has suggested that the irregular shape of the present Bear Gardens Lane may be a survival of these buildings, after which it is named.

Round the south end of Blackfriars Bridge lay Paris Garden (q.v.); and Bear Street, leading off the south side of Southwark Road, probably marks the place of the old bear pit, which was one of their attractions in Tudor times. A visit to the Bankside is essential for the serious traveller; for, beyond its memories of the Elizabethan Theatre, it gives a unique view of the City on the opposite bank of the river.

The rest of the southern suburbs must be summed up by the following notes in the Gazetteer: Lambeth, Battersea, Kennington, which are examples of the many villages and hamlets which were dotted over the present area of south London from Saxon days, whose names are chronicled in the Domesday Survey, and still exist, though they themselves have been swallowed up by the growth of the London suburbs.

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK

Tomb of Alderman Humble

PART III

GAZETTEER

ADELPHI (Strand)

THE name is given to a group of streets, built on arches, which now stand on the spot where once was Durham House. This episcopal town house was built by the bishop who died in 1310; and it went out of the hands of the See when Henry VIII. acquired it in exchange for Cold Harbour (v. Allhallows the Less). Here Henry, in 1540, held a great tournament of knights: it was occupied by Elizabeth before her accession; afterwards she gave it to Walter Raleigh. By the early Stuarts it was in bad repair; and on part of it was built the New Exchange, a place for fashionable people to shop and flirt: and in Anne's time the rest was covered by well-to-do tenements. Then, in 1768, the famous Adam brothers cleared the whole spot and built the present standing Adelphi: the streets of which record their united names. The arches below were at first left open and became a convenient asylum for the poor and desperate; they are now mainly shut: one road into this underworld is on the west side of the Tivoli Music Hall. Above lived, at No. 4 of the Terrace, David Garrick, from 1772 until his death in 1779. Note the typical doorways of this architectural style, which has left its mark in English building. The house of the Society of Arts in John Street is a good example of the Adams’ method.

ADMIRALTY (Whitehall)

This house, at north-west end of Whitehall, is described as “newly erected” in 1720 edition of Stow; it was raised on the site of Wallingford House, which had been built by Knollys, treasurer to Queen Elizabeth (afterwards Viscount Wallingford). In 1622 the Duke of Buckingham, James I.’s favourite, bought this Wallingford House, and was there created Lord High Admiral. His son lived here after the Restoration; but by 1676 it was in the official occupation of the Lord Treasurer; the Crown bought the house in 1680; and soon after the Admiralty offices were removed from Duke Street, Westminster, at the end of seventeenth century. The stone screen, in front of courtyard, built by the Adam brothers about 1770, is a fine example of their work. The whole structure is an interesting survival of Georgian Whitehall.

(ST) ALBAN, WOOD STREET (City)

This church is one of the oldest ecclesiastical foundations in the City. Matthew Paris, writing in the thirteenth century, said it was the chapel of King Offa, and stood beside his palace. It was certainly in the possession of St Alban's Abbey (another foundation of Offa's) in 1077, when it was exchanged with Westminster Abbey, then passed into the possession of the hospital of St James (afterwards St James's Palace); and in the reign of Edward IV. it went to Eton College, which now shares the patronage with St Paul's Chapter. We are probably here in the oldest centre of Saxon London; the seat of the King (v. Aldermanbury). The church was rebuilt by Wren in 1685, as it now stands. St Alban was the first British Christian martyr, who suffered about A.D. 300, during the persecutions of Diocletian, and gave his name to St Albans.

ALBANY, THE (Piccadilly)

This building, which has become famous as a group of bachelor chambers, was originally a single mansion, called Piccadilly House, designed by Sir William Chambers. Here lived, in 1770, the first Lord Melbourne, who bought it from Fox, Lord Holland, and afterwards exchanged it with the Duke of York for a house in Whitehall, Dover House. The Albany (so called after the Duke's second title) was in 1804 rearranged and enlarged for chambers. Among its tenants have been: Lord Byron, who rented his rooms from Althorp, afterwards the great Earl Spencer of the Reform Act; George Canning, the Prime Minister; Lord Brougham, the lawyer; Monk Lewis; Macaulay, who wrote much of his “History of England” here; and Bulwer, Lord Lytton.

ALDERMANBURY

One of the most venerable spots in the City: so called because here was the “bury” or house of the Alderman, i.e. the Aldermen's Court House. Stow says the ruins of this were still in existence in his time (v. Guildhall). The name appears in records as early as 1130, when the Guildhall is first mentioned, also. It was probably the first Guildhall or Council Chamber of London. The adjacent Addle Street (which can be traced back to Adle Street in Stow's time and Atheling Street in Henry III.’s time (i.e. the street of the noble or king), may perhaps be regarded as a connecting link between the governing seat of the King and the later government by the City Council (v. St Alban's): for the kings deserted this old palace for their newer ones at Westminster and the Tower. It is quite possible that the King's Council Hall itself became the Hall of the Aldermen of the City; so the continuity may have been actually in the same building. Or the Alderman Bury may have been the house of the alderman whom Alfred appointed to guard London against the Danes; and the King's officer may have been supplanted by the aldermen chosen in a more popular manner.

ALDERSGATE (Aldersgate Street, E.C.)

This gate at the north-west corner of the City Wall, appears in the laws of King Ethelred, of 1000 (circ.), as Ealdredesgate; in later forms of the thirteenth century it is Aldredesgate and Aldrichegate; all which prove, fairly conclusively, that it takes its name after a person bearing the name of Ealdred (not, as Stow thought, because it was an “old” gate). How early this gate was opened is uncertain; but a recent plan of Roman London (in the Victoria County History) shows a road leading for some distance in a direct line to this gateway, so it was almost certainly an open way in Roman times. The gate was restored after damage from the Great Fire, but was finally destroyed, 1761, at the same time that the other gates were taken down. Its position is now occupied by No. 62 Aldersgate Street. In the old gatehouse John Day, the well-known Elizabethan printer, lived; he issued from here Latimer's Sermons, Roger Ascham's “The Scholemaster,” 1570; Tyndale's (the translator of the Bible) books, and Foxe's “Book of Martyrs.” Foxe himself lived in the gatehouse with Day in 1567.

ALDERSGATE STREET (beyond Aldersgate)

This street has such a long and varied history that it is worthy of a collective note to itself. In its earlier days it was quite a fashionable neighbourhood. Not to go further back than Stow's time, he tells us that there were “many faire houses” on both sides; at the extreme south end of it, on the west side, there stood the great town house of the Percies, Earls of Northumberland. Later, in 1657, the Earl of Thanet was living in a house which had been built by Inigo Jones (demolished in 1882) on the spot (No. 36, etc.) where Shaftesbury Hall and adjacent shops now stand; this house passed to the possession of the great Earl of Shaftesbury, Ashley-Cooper, the philosopher, whose friend Locke (“On the Understanding”) lived there frequently; and the rebel Duke of Monmouth once found refuge here with the unorthodox Earl. Nos. 58-9 now occupy the place of Lauderdale House, where the Duke of that name (one of the Cabal Ministry, and the murderer of Scottish covenanters) lived in Charles II.’s reign. In front of Shaftesbury House was once Petre House (the Lords Petre) in Elizabethan days; afterwards inhabited by the Marquis of Dorchester in the time of Cromwell; still later the Bishops of London held it for a little time, and it was thither the Princess Anne fled when she turned “Orange” at the Great Rebellion of 1688. Lovelace, the poet, was imprisoned here in 1648 by order of the Commons. Where are now Westmoreland Buildings was once the town house of the Earls of Westmoreland, demolished 1760. Next to Shaftesbury Place is the Court (now Maidenhead Court), where Milton lived from 1643 to 1645, when he made up his differences with his first wife.

It was on a bookstall in Little Britain (close by on the west side of Aldersgate Street) that the Earl of Dorset picked up a copy of the neglected “Paradise Lost” and sent it to Dryden, who returned it with the comment, “This man cuts us all out and the ancients too.” This Little Britain was a famous place of bookstalls during the Commonwealth period. It was in Aldersgate Street that died (1621) the Countess of Pembroke, “Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother,” as Ben Jonson put it. Just opposite St Botolph's Church once stood the Cook's Hall, which was there from the fifteenth century until 1771, when it was burnt. These indispensable craftsmen were a well-organised guild or mystery as early as 1379.

ALDGATE (Aldgate High Street, E.C.)

This was one of the gates in the Wall which surrounded the City. In the Saxon Chronicle it is called the Eastgate in 1052. It is doubtful when it was first opened; it was probably there in the Roman occupation; but it was certainly rebuilt by the first prior of Holy Trinity during the first part of the twelfth century; and it was closely connected with that religious house owing to the grant of the Portsoke, which probably carried with it the duty of defending and repairing this gate. The name has been hastily assumed to mean the “Old” gate; but its earlier form was “Alegate” and “Algate”; and the meaning is at least doubtful. In 1374 the gatehouse was occupied by Geoffrey Chaucer under a lease from the Corporation. The gate was finally pulled down in 1761. The Portsoken ward which lies without the gate was once the domain of the Knighten-guild, the somewhat mysterious body which began its career in Saxon days, probably as the corporate military guard of London; and afterwards retired suddenly within the Priory of Holy Trinity (q.v.). The gate stood in Aldgate High Street, about forty yards west of the corner where it is joined by Houndsditch.

ALL HALLOWS, BARKING

With Font by Grinling Gibbons

ALLHALLOWS BARKING (Tower Street, City)

A church of ancient, but uncertain, foundation; however, Richard I. added a chapel to it, which carries us back to 1199 at latest. This King ordered his heart to be buried in this chapel; but there is no certain evidence that the command was obeyed. It was in the patronage of the Abbess of Barking in 1387, at latest, hence its name. Edward I. and Richard III. both added endowments and buildings. The present building is all of the mediæval church (which escaped the Great Fire) that has survived the subsequent restorations. The nave is the oldest part left, and its strong piers show Norman origin; the east window was probably erected in the fourteenth century; the choir is of fifteenth century; the tower was built 1659. There are several fine brasses, including that of William Tonge, 1389, in the south aisle (the oldest brass to be found in London); and a Flemish one, 1530. William Penn was baptized here, 1644. John John Quincy Adams, afterwards president of the United States, was married here, 1797. The pulpit is Jacobean, and the altar is of Laud's time; while the reredos and screen are of the end of 17th century.

ALLHALLOWS, BREAD STREET

This church survived until 1878, when it was demolished. It appears to have always been under the patronage of either the Priory of Christ Church or the Archbishops of Canterbury, who received it in 1365. Here John Milton was baptized, 1608.

ALLHALLOWS THE GREAT (Thames Street, City)

This church was demolished in 1898. Its foundation is of unknown date; its earliest mention is in 1279. It was under the patronage of various great nobles, e.g. the Despensers, Beauchamps, and Nevilles, until it came into the hands of the Archbishops of Canterbury in 1569. There is still a small open space which was part of the churchyard.

ALLHALLOWS THE LESS (Thames Street, City)

This church was in the gift of the Bishop of Winchester in 1242, which appears to be its first record; afterward of Corpus Christi College, Candlewick Street, attached to St Lawrence Poultney. It was not rebuilt after the Great Fire had destroyed it. Stow says that it had been erected over the arched gate which led into a great house then called Cold Harbrough; which, after an earlier career, had come into the possession of Sir John Poultney (four times mayor) in Edward III.’s reign, and subsequently had many great occupiers at various times: the Earl of Hereford (to whom Poultney leased it for life “for one Rose at Midsommer”), 1348; Edward the Black Prince; the Earl of Exeter, 1443; Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII.; the Earls of Shrewsbury, 1509, who took it down in Elizabeth's reign, and built small tenements “now letten out for great rents, to people of all sortes,” Stow tells us. These got a bad reputation and were slightingly referred to by Ben Jonson in “The Silent Woman.”

ALLHALLOWS HONEY LANE (Cheapside, City)

This church was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. The parish is recorded as early as 1242. The patronage was apparently at first in the hands of private lay citizens; since 1471 it belonged to the Grocers’ Company. Stow says that in his time it was a small parish church with no monuments worthy of notice. The district almost certainly got its name from the sale of honey being peculiar to it. Sir John Norman, draper, was buried here, 1453; he was the first mayor to go to Westminster, to take the oath, by water along the Thames; “for joy whereof the watermen made a song in praise of him, beginning thus: ‘Row thy boat, Norman.’”

ALLHALLOWS, LOMBARD STREET

The earliest record of this parish church is in 1054, when it was presented by Brihterus, citizen of London, to the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury; at the Dissolution it passed to the present holders, the Chapter of Canterbury. Once called “Grasse Church” because it looked over the Grass Market (Gracechurch Street). The church was rebuilt by Wren, 1694; and the gateway of this period was removed within the church porch when it had to be taken down to make way for Lombard Street rebuildings; it is now to be seen there. There is much fine wood work in this church, the walls of which are panelled with oak; there are also two fine doorways, a pulpit, and an altarpiece all in wood.

STATUE OF CHARLES I.

Trafalgar Square

ALLHALLOWS, LONDON WALL (City)

A church has probably stood here, on the London Wall, since very early times, though 1300 is the earliest certain reference to it. The present building dates from 1765, by Dance, the younger. The picture over the altar (Restoration of sight of Saul) is a copy of a di Cortona (Florentine, d. 1669). This church was in the patronage of the Priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, until the Dissolution; then passed to the Crown.

ALLHALLOWS STAINING (Mark Lane, City)

This church was demolished, except the tower, in 1870. It had existed at least from 1187, by which time it is singled out from the general parish churches of London by the distinctive name of “Stanenchirche,” “for a difference,” says Stow, “from other churches of that name in this City which of old time were builded of timber.” The patronage seems to have been mainly in the lay hands of the de Walthams, until it passed to the Abbey of Graces in 1367; it was bequeathed to the Grocers’ Company in the reign of James I. The tower should certainly be seen, for it dates from the mediæval building, which escaped the Great Fire; and it was still allowed to stand when the rest of the church had been rebuilt in 1675.

(ST) ALPHAGE (London Wall, City)

The older parish church stood against the City Wall, where it had existed since at least 1137, the earliest record of an incumbent. The present church was originally part of the chapel of the priory and hospital of Elsing Spital, for 100 blind men; refounded by William Elsing, 1332, on an earlier foundation of Nuns, then decayed. It was made the parish church at the Dissolution of the priory in Henry VIII.’s reign. The rest of the buildings were given to Sir John Williams, the Keeper of the King's jewels. On the site was founded Sion College, 1623; removed to Victoria Embankment, 1886. The north-west porch with its pointed arches, which formed the base of the tower, is the only part of the priory chapel which remains: the rest was rebuilt in 1777. There is a monument to Sir Rowland Hayward, Lord Mayor, 1570 and 1591. The patronage was in the possession of St Martin-le-Grand until 1324; afterwards of the Abbot of Westminster; and of Bishops of London since 1550. St Alphage was the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered by the Danes, seven months after they had captured him, when they sacked Canterbury in 1012.

(ST) ANDREW HOLBORN (Shoe Lane, Holborn Viaduct)

This church is recorded in a document of about the year 971, when it was either just within or just without the north-east boundary of the great manor of the Abbey of Westminster. Early in the mediæval period it was presented to the Chapter of St Paul's, but with the restriction that it should be sub-leased to the Abbey of Bermondsey. So it remained until the patronage was given to the Earls of Southampton (of Bloomsbury Square [q.v.]) at the Dissolution; it is now in the hands of the Dukes of Buccleuch. The present building is as it was rebuilt by Wren in 1676, except the tower of the older church, which was preserved and still shows some mediæval arches, which have survived recent repairs. The following couples were married in this church: Sir Edward Coke and Lady Elizabeth Hatton, 1598 (v. Hatton Garden); Colonel Hutchinson and Lucy Apsley (who afterwards wrote the “Memorials”), 1638; Hazlitt and Sarah Stoddart, with Charles Lamb for best man, 1808. Chatterton, the poet (v. Brook Street), was buried in this parish at the Shoe Lane workhouse yard. Stillingfleet, 1664-89, and Sacheverel (buried here, 1724) were famous rectors. Benjamin Disraeli here was given the Christian faith by baptism, in 1817, when twelve years old.

(ST) ANDREW HUBBARD OR EASTCHEAP (Eastcheap, City)

This church had been in the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke in 1389, and continued in private lay hands of great nobles until it was destroyed by the Great Fire, and was not rebuilt; the parish was combined with St Mary-on-Hill. It was in Love Lane. On part of its site, the mayor and aldermen built the King's Weigh-house, which had formerly stood in Cornhill: it was here that goods were authoritatively weighed in all transactions concerning over 25 lbs. weight. Strype, writing in 1720, says that the custom was but little heeded, there being no means of compelling the merchants to bring their goods hither. It was this Weigh-house which gave its name to the Independent's Weigh-house Chapel, which was built near this spot, after they had met above the Weigh-house itself from the early part of the eighteenth century. This chapel has now been rebuilt in Duke Street, Grosvenor Square, where it is still a well-known centre of Nonconformity.

ST ANDREW UNDERSHAFT

Effigy of John Stow, the Antiquary

(ST) ANDREW UNDERSHAFT (Leadenhall Street, City)

A church outside the Great Fire area, and now in the form it took at the rebuilding of 1520 (with restorations—tower rebuilt, 1830). This church is mentioned as early as middle of twelfth century, when it was part of the priory of Holy Trinity; it had almost certainly existed before the priory's foundation (v. Holy Trinity). It took its later name of Undershaft because the Maypole shaft, set up, in the street opposite, every May Day, was higher than the church. It contains the monument of John Stow, London's greatest antiquarian, who died near by, 1605, in poverty$$ after all his invaluable toil; this monument was erected by his widow. Also a tomb of Sir Hugh Hammersley, a Lord Mayor (d. 1636), with his wife and two attendants; his epitaph is an interesting summary of the powers and duties of a great London magnate of his period: “Colonel of this City, President of the Artillery Garden, Governor of the Company of Russia Merchants and those of the Levant, free of the Company of Haberdashers and of Merchant Adventurers of Spain, East India, France and Virginia.” Also tombs of Sir Thomas Offley (d. 1578) and his wife and three sons, Sir Christopher Clitherow (d. 1642), and Dame Alice Byng (d. 1616). There is a good sixteenth-century brass to Nicholas Levison, his wife and eighteen children, all figured thereon.

(ST) ANDREW BY THE WARDROBE (Queen Victoria Street)

This parish church became so titled because it once adjoined the King's Wardrobe (v. Wardrobe Place). The date of its foundation is unknown, but there is a recorded priest of 1261. It was in early days, until 1361, in the patronage of the Fitzwalter family, the lords of this Ward and Standard-bearers of the City (v. Castle Baynard): then in the hands of the Berkeley family and their successors, who had a house, Berkeley Inn, near by; until it passed to the Crown in Charles II.’s time. It was rebuilt by Wren, 1692: the ceiling is considered very fine.

(SS.) ANNE AND AGNES, ALDERSGATE

In Stow's day this parish church had the poetical name of St Anne in the Willows. It had been built at least as early as 1193; in its early days it was under the patronage of St Martin's-le-Grand; after the Dissolution it passed to the Bishop of London, where it still remains. It was rebuilt by Wren, 1681. In 1720 Strype records that lime trees were flourishing in the churchyard.

(ST) ANNE, BLACKFRIARS (City)

The precinct of the Black Friars’ House had St Anne for its parish church. This had been seized with the rest of the buildings at the Dissolution; and Sir Thomas Cawarden, who received the property in 1550, at first used the church as a store for the royal wardrobe, of which he had the charge as Master of the Revels. The parishioners had to be content with an upper chamber until 1597; when a new St Anne was built. This was destroyed by the Great Fire and never re-erected. This second building stood where is now Church Entry; and was probably the site of the earlier church in the Friary. If so, the present little yard, which is all that remains of it, may be regarded as a last vestige of the vanished House, except for the fragments of masonry on the north side of Ireland Yard, adjacent.

ST ANNE SOHO (Dean Street, W.C.)

This parish was formed, in 1678, out of the great parish of St Martin-in-the Fields, whose church had at first been sufficient for the “West End,” until 1660, when St Paul's, Covent Garden, had been made a parish church. The date is interesting in both cases, as showing the time when the fields at the west of the City were first inhabited. The original church, begun about 1673, stands to-day, after various repairs and alterations, especially inside. Theodore, King of Corsica, was buried here within a few days after he was set free of the debtors’ prison, having registered his kingdom for the benefit of his creditors; the inscription on his tomb was written by Horace Walpole. Also William Hazlitt, buried, 1830; and Horne Tooke, baptized, 1736.

(ST) ANTHONY (Budge Row, Cannon Street)

A small open plot and a monument alone record this parish church; which was taken down in 1874. From its first appearance in the records, about 1119, it had been in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's. The derivation of the name from the cell of St Antony's of Vienna is doubtful; for that was in Threadneedle Street, not here.

(ST) ANTHONY'S HOSPITAL (Threadneedle Street, City)

On a plot of ground at the north side of Threadneedle Street, between Broad Street and Bishopsgate, Henry III. had founded a “cell” of the Hospital of St Anthony of Vienna about 1249; which spot had been inhabited formerly by the Jews, or used for their synagogue. The brothers lived mainly by alms (of which the famous pigs of St Anthony were one source); and by Henry VI.’s reign the house was very needy. Under the Alien Priories Act of 1414 it had become a Royal Chapel in the patronage of the Crown; and in 1447 all connection with Vienna was broken. In the year 1441 this monastic institution had been practically dissolved, and made a secular body; and, under the wardenship of John Carpenter, appointed 1434 (afterwards Bishop of Winchester), a great educationalist, it began its special career as a school. The endowments of the rectory were applied: “to keep a grammar school in the precinct of the hospital or some convenient house adjacent, wherein to teach free of payment all boys and others deserving to become pupils.” This was one of Henry VI's. grammar schools. In 1475 the whole institution was attached to St George's College, Windsor. In Stow's day the scholars of St Anthony's were famous for their ability; but the school decayed and was never rebuilt after the Great Fire; although the chapel was re-erected and long used as the French church.

APOTHECARIES’ HALL (Water Lane, Blackfriars)

The Apothecaries were at first enrolled in the Grocers’ Company; but they received an independent charter in 1617. They then had to deal with their other rivals, the physicians, concerning their right to give medical advice as well as to sell drugs. In 1703 the House of Lords decided that they possessed this double right. At this time every apothecary within seven miles of the City must be a member of the Company. By the Act of 1815 the Company was made the examining and licensing authority for all apothecaries: it is therefore an example of a guild still retaining some of the functions of such bodies as they existed in mediæval times. Their former hall, once the house of Lady Howard of Effingham, was destroyed at the Great Fire; but rebuilt in 1670, as it still stands, with its shop, its court-room and library. Thus, both for its active constitution and its ancient building, it is one of the most interesting of the City Companies.

APSLEY HOUSE (Hyde Park Corner)

This house is famous as the residence of the Duke of Wellington from 1820. It was here that he lived when the Reform Bill riots of 1831-2 were raging; and his windows were broken by the mob. The house was originally built in 1794 for Lord Apsley, the Lord Chancellor; but extensive alterations were made in 1828 (especially Grecian front); and further changes in 1853.

ARLINGTON STREET (Piccadilly)

This street was first built, during 1689, on ground belonging to the Earl of Arlington, who acquired it from Charles II. Here lived the Duchess of Cleveland (1691-6) after the death of Charles; and Lady Mary Wortley Montague before her marriage. Sir Robert Walpole lived at No. 17, on the west side (next door to Pultney, Earl of Bath), and here Horace, his son, was born 1717: afterwards he, Sir Robert, moved to No. 5, on the east side, where he died in 1746, as Earl of Oxford. Horace Walpole lived in all over fifty years in this street, watching famous neighbours passing his windows; and writing in 1768, he says: “From my earliest memory Arlington Street has been the ministerial street. The Duke of Grafton is actually coming into the house of Mr Pelham, which my Lord President is quitting, and which occupies the ground on which my father lived; and Lord Weymouth has just taken the Duke of Dorset's.” Nelson and his wife were lodging in this street, 1801, when they had their final scene concerning Lady Hamilton; and Lady Nelson drove away from her husband's house for the last time. Charles James Fox lived for a short time at No. 14.

ARUNDEL STREET (Strand)

The name of this street is the only remaining visible sign of the great house and grounds which once extended around this spot, a domain which began at Milford Lane and stretched westward along the Strand to Strand Lane, almost at the east end of St Mary-le-Strand Church, and extended to the banks of the Thames. This property is recorded by Stow, in the following words, as standing next to Essex House (with a chapel of the Holy Ghost between them): “Then was the Bishop of Bath's Inn, lately new builded, for a great part thereof, by the Lord Thomas Seymour [brother of the great Protector Somerset, who built the mighty Somerset House next door], which house came sithens to be possessed by the Earl of Arundel, and thereof called Arundel House.” Seymour had ousted the Bishops of Bath in Edward VI.’s reign, and in that same reign he was beheaded, and Edward sold this property to the Arundels, kinsmen of the Howards, Dukes of Norfolk, who seem to have added to it the ancient house of the Bishops of Landaff, who had been there since 1311. Arundel House was demolished, 1678, and the streets, bearing the family names of its owners, were laid out soon after (note Norfolk Street, Arundel Street, Surrey Street), but all these have been rebuilt quite lately.

Hollar, the great engraver, who did so much to preserve the memory of the London of his time (1607-1677), was a frequent guest at Arundel House where he did many of his engravings of the City and its neighbourhood. John Evelyn, the diarist, was also a frequent visitor there.

ASHBURNHAM HOUSE (Little Dean's Yard, Westminster)

This house was built by Inigo Jones in the reign of James I., for the Earls of Ashburnham. It was placed on the remains of the convent buildings of Westminster Abbey and still can show a Norman capital; the south wall of the Misericorde is part of the present building. Its staircase is famous. It was here that the great Cotton collection of manuscripts was once stored. The House was bought by the Crown in 1730, and it is now, since 1882, part of the school (v. Westminster School).

(ST) AUGUSTINE (Watling Street, City)

This ancient church, at the east end of St Paul's Cathedral, has been, since the earliest record in an inventory of 1148, and still is, in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's as it was then. It was rebuilt by Wren in 1682. Barham, the author of “The Ingoldsby Legends,” was rector when he died, 1845. This parish church was one of the many which were dotted all over the City under the care of the mother church of St Paul's. It was called in ancient records the church of St Augustine at the Gate, because it was just outside the gate in the wall which surrounded St Paul's and its precincts. Augustine was the Archbishop of Canterbury who taught the Christian religion to the Saxons in 596.

AUSTIN FRIARS (Old Broad Street, City)

The existing church is the nave of the chapel of the priory which was founded by Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, in 1253, one year after the Augustine Friar Hermits arrived in England. They never gained the position reached by the other bodies of Friars, such as the Grey and Black Friars; and the citizens of London did not bequeath property to them so generously as to the others. However, Richard Cobham increased their lands in 1344; and in 1354 another Earl of Hereford built the great church which became their chief title to remembrance. The order's reputation for sanctity was sufficient to induce many great persons to seek burial within the precincts of this priory; in the long list of burials, in this church, given by Stow, are: Richard II.’s brother, Edmund; Humphrey Bohun, the Earl of Hereford, who built the church; the Earl of Arundel, who was beheaded 1397; Lucia, the daughter of Visconti, of Milan; de Vere, Earl of Oxford, beheaded, 1463, on Tower Hill; and Edward, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded 1521. Erasmus stayed at priory, 1518. At the Dissolution, Sir William Paulett, the Lord Treasurer, got a big piece of the property, whereon he built himself a palace which was known as Winchester House, when he gained the title of Marquis of Winchester. This was the statesman who said he kept office “by being a willow and not an oak.” The nave of the great church he preserved and presented to the Dutch residents of London, who possess it to this day. This fragment of the whole priory escaped the Great Fire of 1666; it was damaged in 1863, but carefully restored. It still contains many tombs of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.

BAKER'S HALL (16 Harp Lane, Great Tower Street, City)

The Bakers were one of the first established guilds; in 1155 they were a Fraternity sufficiently established to be taxed. They had for centuries a divided career as White Bakers and Brown Bakers, who were united and formally incorporated in 1509. The site of their hall was originally occupied by the Chichele family in the fifteenth century. The present one was built, 1719, after a fire, and was restored within and without, 1825.

BARBER-SURGEON'S HALL (Monkwell Street, near Cripplegate)

In 1308 the Barbers were already a recorded Guild; in 1312 the surgeons appear as well; but there were at first two masters, one for each branch of the profession. Then each obtained a separate charter of incorporation, but they were united under one charter in 1541. The granting of this document is recorded in the famous picture, in part by Holbein, which still exists in this present Hall. There is also a portrait of Inigo Jones by Van Dyck. The beautiful door and the Court Room still remain of the Hall of 1678 (but it must be remembered that neither of these is visible from the street; they are reached at the end of a passage from Monkwell Street), and there is some valuable plate. The union of the two Companies was dissolved in 1745, and the Barbers retain possession of this Hall to-day.

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT

Gateway and Tower

BARBICAN (Aldersgate Street)

This street is so called from an ancient tower which once stood here on the north side, described by Stow: “On the north side of this Citie, there was a Tower commonlie called Barbican was of old time used as a Watch Tower for the Citie from whence a man might behold and view the whole Citie toward the south, as also into Kent, Sussex and Surrey, and likewise every other way, cast, north and west.” It probably had disappeared fairly early in the history of London. The manor whereon it stood was granted by Edward III. to the Earl of Suffolk, 1331; his descendant married a Willoughby d'Eresby, and in 1601 the house is called the “great mansion house called Willoughby House or Barbican.” Close by on the north of this house stood Garter House, where Thomas Wriothesley was born: afterwards Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII. (v. Bloomsbury Square). Gondomar and the other Spanish Ambassadors lived in this street during the Tudor and early Stuart periods. Prince Rupert passed his old age in Beech Lane, working at mezzotints and chemistry. Milton was living at No. 17, 1645-47, where he was joined by his reconciled wife. John Trundle of the Barbican was one of the famous Elizabethan printers, chiefly of ballads.

BARNARD'S INN (Holborn)

On the death (1451) of John Mackworth, Dean of Lincoln, the owner of this house, it was bequeathed to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln on condition that they appointed a Chaplain to pray for the soul of the donor. At this time the buildings were occupied by one Barnard, hence the name of the law students’ Inn of Chancery, which was founded during his occupation. It later became attached to Gray's Inn. But the ownership of the freehold remained with the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln until 1894, when they sold it to the Mercers’ Company, who established there the school which they removed from the heart of the City, where it had existed on various spots since 1447. Colet, Dean of St Paul's, and Thomas Gresham had been among its famous boys. Of the Old Inn, the Hall still stands; built about 1540; contains some interesting stained-glass coats-of-arms of its former masters, from 1545 to the middle of eighteenth century; there is also some fine wood panelling. The building over entrance passage by Hall is of 1770. Barnard's Inn has been made a famous scene in Dickens's works. He was living at Furnival Inn, on the other side of Holborn, when he began “The Pickwick Papers.”

BARNSBURY (N.)

This district in the north of London, part of the great original parish of Islington (q.v.), is so called from the family of Berners or Bernieres (the bury = house or enclosure, of the Berners) who held this manor at least from the time of Edward I. until 1422, when it passed by marriage to John Bouchier, afterwards Lord Berners. The last lord of this family was the Berners who translated Froissart's Chronicles into English; he died 1532.

(St) BARTHOLOMEW EXCHANGE (Threadneedle Street, City)

This parish church was demolished, 1840. It was at the south-east corner of Bartholomew Lane. It first appears during the end of the thirteenth century, when it was in private lay hands; it belonged in 1337 to Simon Goddard, passed to the Abbey of Eastminster near the Tower, and went with it to the Crown in Henry VIII.’s reign. Stow says that Alderman Pike and Sheriff Yoo had rebuilt it about 1438. Miles Coverdale, who translated the Bible, and was Bishop of Exeter until Mary deprived him for his Puritan views, was buried here in 1568; but his remains were afterwards removed to St Magnus, London Bridge.

(ST) BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT (SMITHFIELD)

Rahere, a somewhat shadowy personality, perhaps jester to Henry I., is said to have had a vision of St Bartholomew while he lay sick in Rome during a journey thither in 1120, whereupon he vowed to build the saint a church and a hospital for the sick on his return. So in fulfilment he founded a priory for Augustine regulars. When Rahere died, in 1143, only the choir was finished and some of the convent buildings, and apparently it was not completed until 150 years later. In the beginning of the fifteenth century began further additions; Roger de Walden's (Bishop of London, died 1406) chantry chapel was added, but of this nothing remains except (probably) the screen now placed over Rahere's tomb; and a little of the new cloister of this period also stands. The Lady Chapel was also added at this date. Prior Bolton, who took office in 1506, also carried out many alterations, but only his window (note his rebus, the bolt and a tun) and a door in south aisle remain. The next prior was the last, for the priory was dissolved by Henry VIII. The great change which concerns us is that the nave was then pulled down, and the present church is only the choir of the great chapel of the Priory. It became the parish church. The brick tower was built in 1628. The rest of the monastic buildings gradually fell into ruins or were destroyed by fire. In 1863 great restorations began of what was left of the church; by this time it was assumed that the square east end of the choir was a fifteenth century rebuilding in the place of an assumed Norman apsidal end. So an apsidal end was built, though the course of the works revealed an absence of central piers which makes it very doubtful whether the apse was ever there. But in spite of this possible error in restoration, St Bartholomew's, as it stands to-day, is one of the great sights of London. The bulk of the building is just as Rahere saw it, and it has the special advantage of still holding the tomb of its founder, the only grave in London which has been spared to represent the first benefactor of a mediaeval church (though Rahere's tomb is of a later age than his death). Milton, Benjamin Franklin, Hogarth, and Washington Irving lived in St Bartholomew's Close. Franklin worked in a printing office which had been established in the Lady Chapel.

(ST) BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL (Smithfield)

This hospital still stands as a fulfilment of Rahere's vow in Rome (v. St Bartholomew the Great Church). It was a part of his endowment for the aiding of the sick and the child-bearing. Richard Whittington left money to repair the hospital in 1423, and at the Dissolution, after considerable haggling, it was soon re-endowed practically in its older form. It is thus the oldest charitable institution in London, still standing on its original site. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was chief physician, 1609-43, and there has been a medical school here since 1662 at least. The main existing building is by Gibbs, 1730: the Smithfield gateway being 1702. The adjoining church of St Bartholomew the Less was built at the first foundation of the twelfth century as the hospital chapel, but is now almost entirely the work of its 1823 rebuilding. But the tower still remains substantially of the mediæval building, especially the vestibule at its base. There is a 1439 brass to William Markeby and his wife; and a monument of 1591 to Robert Balthorpe, “Sargeant of the Chirurgeons” of Queen Elizabeth. Inigo Jones was baptised here, 1573. There are several portraits by Kneller, Reynolds and Lawrence in the Hospital Hall, and one of Henry VIII. by an unknown artist; Hogarth painted the frescoes on the great staircase.

BASINGHALL STREET

So named from the Basings’ Haw, i.e. the enclosure of the Basings, which appears in records as early as 1180. They were a distinguished City family during the twelfth and first part of the thirteenth centuries. Solomon Basing was Mayor in 1216, and Adam Sheriff in 1343 (cf. Bucklersbury). Stow says it was “a name of great antiquitie and renowne.” The whole ward was called, after them, Basinghall Ward. The street still contains the Hall of the Girdlers Company on its east side, and the Coopers’ Hall on the right, just behind the Guildhall; both were in the same positions when Stow surveyed it in Elizabeth's time. Until 1856 the Weavers’ Hall stood in this street (where a block of offices bears its name). This was perhaps the oldest of all the London guilds in any complete historical form. Henry I. gave them a charter which forbade anyone outside the guild to follow the trade of weaving in either London or Southwark. But the craft broke up into varied branches as the trade was subdivided, so that, although the Company still exists, it is not big enough to have a hall of its own.

BATTERSEA

This appears in Domesday Book as Patricsey, a manor in the possession of the Abbey of Westminster and formerly in the possession of the late King Harold. When fishing-nets of illegal size were brought before the Mayor of London in the year 1385, one of their owners was described as a fisherman of Batricheseye. The derivation is probably Peter's ey = island, in Anglo-Saxon (cf. Bermondsey), but whether the first part of the word refers to St Peter's, Westminster is a little uncertain. At the Dissolution the manor reverted to the Crown; and was granted to Oliver St John, whose ancestor became the great Lord Bolingbroke of Anne's reign. Lord Spencer bought it from the Bolingbrokes, 1763, and it still remains in his family. The manor house was to the south-west of Battersea Park, but is now only marked by the names of Bolingbroke Road and Terrace. Strype, writing in 1720, describes Battersea thus: “A pretty handsome Town. Both in this Town as well as in Chelsea, are divers gardners, serviceable to the Cities of London and Westminster for their commodities. The chief house in this Town is the seat of Sir Walter St John (created by his Majesty King George, Lord Battersea); a fine well-built house seated on the banks of the River Thames with fine gardens.” The parish church of St Mary was rebuilt in 1776, but the monuments were preserved, and the glass is also said to have been spared. The famous Bolingbroke was buried here, 1761, and his monument has a famous inscription: “Here lies Henry St John, in the reign of Queen Anne, Secretary of War, Secretary of State and Viscount Bolingbroke: in the days of King George I. and King George II., something more and better.” The monument of Lord Bolingbroke's second wife is by Roubiliac. The glass in the east window, said to be from the ancient church, shows poor portraits of Henry VII. and Queen Elizabeth, and his grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, but they appear to be of about the eighteenth century in execution. William Blake was married here, 1782, to Catherine Boucher, who signed the register with a X.

ST BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT

Figures at the foot of the Effigy of Rahere, the founder

BAYNARD CASTLE (Blackfriars, City)

Although no vestige remains of this ancient building, yet it was so important in early days that it must be mentioned here as giving the key to much of the history of this part of the City. It was first built by Baynard, one of the followers of William the Conqueror, during that King's reign. In 1111 this Lord of Baynard's Castle, and of Dunmow in Essex, forfeited his estates for felony. They were granted to one of the powerful de Clare family, with the duty and right of Standard Bearer of the City of London; and by 1198 had descended to Robert Fitzwalter who took up arms against King John in 1213. He was banished, and his castle and houses destroyed. Stow tells a picturesque story of his reconciliation and how he regained his estates, but whether he ever rebuilt his castle is rather uncertain. In 1275 his descendant, Robert Fitzwalter, by licence of the King transferred his Baynard Castle estate (which, by that time, also included the other western military tower, Montfichet) to the Black Friars (v. Blackfriars). But he still claimed his honours and privileges which he had reserved by the deed of sale; but these were never admitted, and finally rejected by the Mayor and Council in 1347. This first Baynard's Castle stood very near the north end of Blackfriars Bridge and to the south-west of The Times offices. The second Baynard's Castle, of later prints, was an entirely different place to the east, on the bank of the Thames, in the present Upper Thames Street, still recorded by the name of Castle Baynard Wharf. A house here had been the property of Edward, Duke of York, in Henry V.’s reign; it was rebuilt by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who lived there until his death, 1446, when it passed to Henry VI.: by 1457 it was in the possession of the Dukes of York again; and here Edward IV., of York, accepted the Crown in 1460, and went the next day in procession to St Paul's, and thence to Westminster Palace. Richard III. also accepted the Crown here. Henry VII. rebuilt the house, less as a castle than as a palace, and often lived there. Here the Council of State decided to support Mary rather than Lady Jane Grey. In Stow's time the house belonged to the Earl of Pembroke, who entertained Elizabeth. It is recorded that his retinue was “2000 horsemen in velvet coats, with their laces of gold and gold chains, besides sixty gentlemen in blue coats with his badge of the green dragon.” The House was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666.

BEDFORD STREET, STRAND

First built about the middle of the seventeenth century, on property acquired by the Earls of Bedford from the Abbey of Westminster at the Dissolution; it had been part of the Convent's garden (hence Covent Garden). Famous residents: Earl of Chesterfield, 1656; Sheridan's father here entertained Dr Johnson; Quin (1749-52) and Kyneston, the actors; Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy, 1792.

BEDFORD SQUARE (Bloomsbury)

This was planned about 1804, on the estate of the Dukes of Bedford, whose town house had been in Bloomsbury Square (q.v.) until 1800. Bedford Square was at first famous for its lawyer tenants, the most famous being Lord Chancellor Eldon, who lived at No 6 from 1804 to 1816. It was here that he was attacked by a mob demanding a revision of the Corn Laws. His windows were broken, whereupon a wit said that the inhospitable and unpopular owner was “at last keeping open house.”

BELGRAVE SQUARE (S.W.)

This centre of the district of Belgravia was built in 1825, which is a convenient date for the origin of the surrounding streets, stretching to Hyde Park on the north, to Pimlico and the Thames on the south, and to the outskirts of new Chelsea on the west. It is inhabited by fashionable persons who possess blue blood and full purses, or at least the latter, which is indispensible. The main Square was designed by George Basevi.

BELLE SAUVAGE YARD (Ludgate Hill)

There had been a famous inn here from very early days; there is a deed of 1453 which calls it “Savage Inn otherwise called the Bell-on-the-Hoop.” It was at its gate that Sir Thomas Wyatt turned back when he found London would not rise with him against the settled Government of Queen Mary in 1554. The yard of the inn had been famous for its plays and bull baiting, which Lambarde writes of being there in 1576. In the yard once lived Grinling Gibbons, before Charles II. took a fancy to his luxuriant effusions in wood carving.

(ST) BENET FINCK (Threadneedle Street, City)

This parish church stood opposite the end of Broad Street, until it was demolished in 1842, after being rebuilt by Wren in 1673. It was in the patronage of the Nevilles in the latter half of the thirteenth century, and then got into the hands of the Hospital of St Antony on the opposite side of the street, and passed with it, in 1474, to the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, where it continued until its destruction. There was an Alderman Finck, who seems to have lived near by, in 1180, who may be the origin of the name, as a benefactor.

(ST) BENET, GRASSCHURCH (Gracechurch Street, City)

This church stood at the south-west corner of Fenchurch Street until 1868. It first appears in a deed of the first half of the twelfth century in which the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's give the living, at a stated price, to Algarus, the presbyter, for his life and during his good service. It was named St Benedict “de Garcherche” in a deed of 1181. It continued in the gift of St Paul's until its destruction.

(ST) BENET, PAUL'S WHARF (Upper Thames Street, City)

This church first appears in the records in 1111 as “St Benet super Tamisiam,” and apparently had been ever since under the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, until granted, 1879, by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to be the Welsh church and placed under the Bishop of London's patronage. It was rebuilt by Wren, 1683.

(ST) BENET SHEREHOG (Pancras Lane, Queen Street, City)

Almost adjoining to St Pancras, Soper Lane, is another small space with a tablet to commemorate this parish church, which was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. Stow says it was a small church in his day, containing monuments of Joan White, the great grand-mother of Oliver Cromwell; Edward Hall, the chronicler of the history of the fifteenth century, was buried here; also Mrs Katherine Philips, Cowley's “matchless Orinda,” 1664.

BERKELEY SQUARE (north of Piccadilly)

This early fashionable square was planned about the year 1698, behind Berkeley House (v. Devonshire House); but when Strype wrote, in 1720, although he refers to Berkeley Street, he says nothing of the square, nor does it appear in any way in his maps; this spot was then on the verge of the open fields, with Hyde Park beyond them. The square may be called the creation of the middle of the eighteenth century; Robert Walpole was the Prime Minister of the period when it was mainly built. At No. 11 his gossip-loving son, Horace, chiefly lived from 1779, and died here in 1797; at No. 13 the Marquis of Hertford began to collect what is now the Wallace Collection of Art; at No. 25 lived Charles James Fox, 1802; at No. 28 Lord Brougham lived whilst Lord Chancellor; at No. 38 the fashion leader, Lady Jersey, began to entertain London in 1804; she was the heiress of the Childs of banking fame. Lord Clive, of India, committed suicide at No. 45 in 1774. Colly Cibber lived and died at the corner house in Bruton Street. There are still many houses of the period covered by these names, and some of the houses have the torch extinguishers still hanging at their door posts. On the south side of the square is Landsdowne House (q.v.).

BERMONDSEY (south-east of London Bridge)

This district was called Bermundeseye in Domesday, and had been in the possession of King Harold. The “ey,” as in the case of Battersea (q.v.), was the Anglo-Saxon word for island, and the early manor was almost certainly surrounded by marshes. William Rufus gave most of it to Bermondsey Abbey (q.v.) The parish Church is St Mary Magdalene, built by the Abbey for its tenants, but it has been rebuilt out of all recognition of its ancient state (See Itinerary XV.).

BERMONDSEY ABBEY (Bermondsey, S.E.)

In the reign of William the Conqueror, Alwin Child, citizen of London, founded a church of St Saviour in Bermondsey; and subsequently, in 1087, added a priory of Cluniac monks, who had been sent thither by Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury. The monks had a brilliant list of benefactors including William Rufus, Henry I., Stephen, and a whole peerage of nobles and their ladies. Occasionally the National Councils met there; Edward II. ordered the arrest of the prior for harbouring the rebel Earl of Lancaster, and a prior of later date interfered in the troublesome politics of Richard II.’s time. The widows of Henry V. and Edward IV. were both residing here when they died. The Abbey was dissolved in Henry VIII.’s reign, and the property went into the hands of lay persons: first Sir Robert Southwell, then Sir Thomas Pope, who destroyed the great church and built instead a fine house, in which afterwards lived the Earls of Sussex, who were there in Elizabeth's reign. Some of the old abbey buildings were still standing in the beginning of the nineteenth century; and the parish church of St Mary Magdalene (q.v.) is a survival in a more modern form of the church which the monks built for their tenants. The Abbey Road, Long Walk, the Grange and Bermondsey Square now mark the position of the Abbey precincts.

BETHNAL GREEN (north-east of Bishopsgate)

This district, which Stow calls Blethenhall or Bleten Hall Green, was merely a hamlet of the great parish of Stepney until 1743, when the growth of the population on the east side of the City rendered it necessary to create a separate parish. In Rocque's map of 1741 it still appears as a little village, separated from London by open fields. John Kirby, a City merchant of Elizabeth's time, built a house there in which lived Sir W. Rider in Charles II.’s time, of which Pepys writes: “By coach to Bednal Green to Sir W. Rider's to dinner. A fine merry walk with the ladies alone after dinner in the garden”; and Sir Richard Gresham, father of Sir Thomas, also resided sometimes in this village. The name is supposed to be derived from the Bathons, a landowning family in Stepney in the time of Edward I. It was in the eighteenth century that the district grew and became first famous for its weavers, who had spread there from the French settlement at Spitalfields. There was a desperate and historical strike for better wages in 1769, which ended in bloodshed and executions. The parish church of St Matthew was built by Dance, 1740; restored, 1861. There is a Bethnal Green Museum of varying collections. (Open daily, free, except Wednesdays, when sixpence charged.)

BILLINGSGATE (Lower Thames Street, City)

One of the most ancient spots in the history of London. It was quite close to the end of the earlier London Bridges, which were more to the east than the present one. Once a bridge was built, this became the highest landing place, without undertaking the difficult passage under the bridge. It was probably the wharf for the use of the early Roman fort which lay just to the west. But the name is probably of Anglo-Saxon origin, the Billings being a well-known family (cf. Billingshurst in Sussex). When the custom dues of Queenshithe were granted to Matilda, Queen of Henry I., there was an attempt made to force the landing of goods at that newer place; but Stow says of Billingsgate in his time that it “is now most frequented, the Queen's hithe being almost forsaken” (v. Queenhithe). There was a very ancient tradition (still believed by some responsible authorities) that the name of this wharf came from Belin, a British King, long before the Roman days: this is the statement of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who gives B.C. 400 as the date. It is fairly generally held that this Gate was perhaps the east entry of the early Roman fort, which covered the north end of London Bridge, so its name may be of pre-Teutonic date.

BISHOPSGATE (City)

This was one of the early gates on the land side of the wall in Roman days, or, rather, the Roman gate was slightly to the east of the later one. A Roman road ran through this gate to Lincoln and York. Its later name of Bishopsgate cannot be ascribed with certainty to any bishop in particular, though it is usually said it was Bishop Erkenwald in 685. The Liberty of Norton Folgate outside Bishopsgate Ward belonged to St Paul's Cathedral. It is called “the gate of the bishop” in Domesday. During the mediæval period it was the legal duty of the Hanseatic League merchants resident in London to keep this gate in repair in return for a Guildhall granted to them by Henry III. on those terms. Stow says that they rebuilt the gate in 1479. It was finally demolished, 1760.

BLACKFRIARS (City)

In the year 1221 the Black Friars had first settled near Holborn (Shoe Lane) on their arrival in England, where Hubert de Burgh became their first patron. Then, with the aid of Edward I. and the Dominican, Kilwardby, Archbishop of Canterbury, they acquired a new habitation within the south-west corner of the City wall. There they built, about 1276, a great collection of ecclesiastical and secular buildings, which have left their name in that corner to this day, though only a vestige of the building remains. Edward II. treated them with special respect, giving them privileges and residing himself at their house. In 1450, and again 1524, a parliament was held therein. In 1522 the Emperor Charles V. was housed here during his famous visit to Henry VIII. In 1529 the Pope's legate and Wolsey here heard the case of Queen Catherine's divorce from Henry, and a Parliament here sat on Wolsey's case. The House was surrendered to the Crown, 1538, and it was soon after granted to Sir Thomas Carwarden, the King's Master of the Revels. Since the precincts were still claimed to be exempt from the government of the City officers, Burbage brought his players here when he was ejected from the City in 1596. He leased a great upper room which had been divided into seven apartments: this was probably the great Hall of the Friary, which thus became an Elizabethan Theatre (its site is still marked as Playhouse Yard; it was the first roofed playhouse used. In 1629, when a company of French men and women played here, Prynne called them “monsters.” This theatre was suppressed under the Commonwealth and pulled down in 1655. It was only in 1735 that the Courts of law finally decided against the exemption of the Blackfriars precincts from the City's jurisdiction, for the Crown had attempted to retain these rights when it seized the Blackfriars House. In the now destroyed church of this great Dominican Friary had been buried a long succession of famous dead: de Burgh, Earl of Kent, their first patron; Margaret of Scotland; the heart of Edward I.’s Queen Eleanor; Edward II.’s brother, the Duke of Cornwall; and many lords and ladies as witnesses of the power and reputation of this religious Order in whose house everyone was so anxious to lie for the peace of their souls. It is a typical touch of the mediæval spirit. Many famous persons dwelt in the precincts after the Dissolution. Ben Jonson wrote “Volpone” there, 1607; Shakespeare bought a house there on St Andrew's Hill, but probably never lived in it; Vandyck lived and died there 1632-41; it was a painter's neighbourhood. The Earl and Countess of Somerset were in residence here when Overbury was murdered. There is a fragment of the old mediæval buildings still standing in the yard on the north side of Ireland Yard (v. St Anne, Blackfriars).

BLOOMSBURY (North of High Holborn and New Oxford Street)

At the Norman Conquest there was a hugh manor of Rugmere, which was then in the possession of the Canons of St Paul's Cathedral. This manor included what we now know as St Giles in the Fields and Bloomsbury; it extended also south as far as the Strand, and west to Marylebone, north beyond St Pancras, and east to Gray's Inn. The centre was probably St Giles's Church (q.v.). When the Hospital was founded in 1117 the immediately surrounding district was made a manor of its own, and the rest of the manor gradually split up also. In John's reign an owner named Blemund held that part which afterwards kept his name in record as Bloomsbury; he was especially thus remembered because he had drained the Rug mere (which lay between the east and west ends of New Oxford Street) by Blemund's Dyke which ran through his manor. The Manor's subsequent history was connected with the Earls of Southampton and the Dukes of Bedford (v. Bloomsbury Square). This district of Bloomsbury, in its modern meaning, is considered typical of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One connects it with the personages of Thackeray's “Vanity Fair” period, but it contains many early eighteenth century houses and streets in its south-east corner (v. Itinerary XIII.).

BLOOMSBURY SQUARE (near British Museum)

First built in 1665 by Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, whose ancestors had possessed a house, on the north side of the square, since Henry VIII.’s time; this house had just been rebuilt, 1660. It became famous as one of the first squares laid out in London. Its founder died in 1667, and his daughter, Rachel, married William, Lord Russell, who was executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Their son succeeded as third Duke of Bedford, 1700, and this residence was then called Bedford House and became the town dwelling of the Bedfords (instead of that on the south side of Covent Garden). It was pulled down, 1800. The square is now mainly early nineteenth century, but Southampton Street and Hart Street, leaving it on south and west., contain older buildings, with many interesting eighteenth century doorways. Former residents of the square included: Sir Charles Sedley; Richard Baxter, 1681; Steele, 1712; Lords Ellenborough and Mansfield, the famous Lord Chancellors; it was here that the Gordon Rioters burnt out the latter in 1780. Disraeli, afterwards Earl of Beaconsfield, lived at No. 6 in his early years.

BOLT COURT (Fleet Street)

This court is still very much the same as it was when Dr Johnson lived at No. 8 from 1776 until his death, 1784. Here he kept his weird little group of dependants: Miss Williams, old and blind, Mrs Desmoulins and Miss Carmichael, and Levitt the apothecary (v. Gough Court and Temple); at No. 11 William Cobbett published his “Register.”

BOND STREET (Between Piccadilly and Oxford Street, W.)

This street was begun about 1688 by Sir Thomas Bond, who had lately bought the great Clarendon House and grounds, which the famous historian of the Civil Wars had erected on the north side of Piccadilly when this plot was granted him by Charles II. after the Restoration. The Earl's sons had sold the house to the Duke of Albermarle (the son of Monk, the first duke whose army had put Charles on the throne when he came back from exile). This second duke could not afford to keep so great a house; hence his sale to Bond, who demolished the building and planned out Bond Street, Albemarle Street, and Dover Street on its grounds. At No. 14 died Laurence Sterne, 1768; Sir Thomas Lawrence lived at No. 24 and also 29; Boswell had lodgings in Bond Street where he entertained Johnson, Reynolds, Garrick, and Goldsmith all in one evening of 1769. The extension of Bond Street, New Bond Street, began to be built from 1721. Its residents have included: Swift, 1727; Nelson at No. 141, 1797; Lady Hamilton, No. 150, 1813.

(ST) BOTOLPH, ALDERSGATE

This church was just outside Aldersgate. Date of foundation uncertain, but it appears at least as early as 1270. In 1333 it was in the patronage of the adjacent St Martin-le-Grand, afterwards of the Abbey of Westminster since about 1400, now under the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. The church almost escaped the Great Fire, but the whole was rebuilt, 1757, and since restored. There is still a monument of 1565 to Dame Anne Parkington; there are also a few eighteenth century monuments. Note that this gate-church is dedicated to the same saint as the churches at Bishopsgate, Aldgate, and Billingsgate. St Botolph was the seventh century saint of Boston (= Botolph's town), in Lincolnshire; and Boston in the United States, in turn, took its name, from that place. So that Boston, U.S.A., and this church have, historically speaking, the same patron saint.

(ST) BOTOLPH, ALDGATE (City)

This parish church was in the patronage of the Priory of Holy Trinity before the Dissolution; then under a succession of private laymen; now of the Bishop of London. The foundation is ascribed to the time of William the Conqueror. The church escaped the Great Fire, but was rebuilt by Dance, 1744. There is a tomb to the double memory of Lord Darcy and Sir Nicholas Carew, both beheaded on Tower Hill for plotting against Henry VIII. In the vestry is preserved the head that was discovered, in 1852, in the vaults of Holy Trinity, Minories, which is generally believed to be the head of the Duke of Suffolk, brought there after his execution, in 1552, and now removed to this church.

(ST) BOTOLPH, BILLINSGATE (City)

This church was in Thames Street (until destroyed by the Great Fire and not rebuilt) at least as early as the reign of William the Conqueror, who mentions St Botolph's Gate in a charter. In 1181 it was presented to the Chapter of St Paul's. Stow says that it had once possessed many monuments, which had been defaced by his time. The parish is now joined with St George Botolph Lane. This was the fourth church, at a London gate, which was dedicated to St Botolph (the east Anglican saint of the seventh century, who gave Boston (Botolph's town), in Lincolnshire, its name). The other three still stand at Aldgate, Bishopsgate, and Aldersgate.

(ST) BOTOLPH, BISHOPSGATE (City)

This church has always been under the patronage of the Bishops of London; its earliest record is 1323. It was outside the Great Fire area, but was rebuilt by Gold, 1729. Sir Paul Pindar, a great merchant of Charles I's. time, who ruined himself to give money to the king, was buried here, 1650; a part of the front of his house in Bishopsgate Street Without has been preserved in the South Kensington Museum. Edward Allen, the actor, was baptized here, 1566, and John Keats, 1795.

BOW CHURCH, ST MARY LE BOW (Cheapside, City)

Probably first built in the time of William the Conqueror; and the Norman crypt of that date still remains, having survived the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed the rest; the destroyed part was rebuilt by Wren, finished 1680. Note the brick work of that period. Stow says that it was the first church built on stone arches in London. This is the church of Dick Whittington's “Bow Bells”; which also rang the closing hour for the shops, for it was the church on “Chepe,” the chief market-place of the City. It is the church, par excellence, of the London burgess and merchant—to be born “within sound of Bow Bells” is the birth certificate of the true citizen in popular estimation. It was from the balcony of Bow Church (which has been repeated in the more modern building) that the sovereigns and their nobles often watched the sports in the market-place below. The living is the gift of the archbishops of Canterbury; and it was because their court of legal jurisdiction was once held in the arched crypt, that it has ever since been named the “Court of Arches.” It was theses arches which also gave this church its name of Bow.

BOW STREET (Covent Garden)

This unattractive street must yet be mentioned, because of the many famous residents who have lived there since it was first built, about 1637. It is now chiefly famous for its Police Court, first used 1749 (where Feilding the novelist, who also lived in this street, was the first and most famous magistrate, d. 1754), and Covent Garden Opera House (first built 1732). Its famous residents have included Edmund Waller (east side), 1654-6; Robert Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, the famous statesman of Anne's reign, born here 1661; Grinling Gibbons when he was the fashionable wood carver; Wycherley, died here 1715; Macklin, Mrs Woffington and Garrick all lodging in one house, 1742. At No 1 on the west side stood Will's Coffee House (q.v.).

BREAD STREET (Cheapside, City)

This took its name from being the chief bread market in the City, at first a place of stalls, probably. In 1498 the Earl of Wiltshire had his house in this street. Stow, writing of Elizabeth's reign, says: “it is now wholely inhabited by rich merchants and divers fair inns be there.” By the time of Strype, 1720, it was “a good open street, well builded and inhabited by great dealers both by wholesale and retail, hop merchants, grocers and others.” This is a good example of the evolution of a London Street. Milton was born in this street, 1608.

BREWERS’ HALL (Addle Street, Aldermanbury, City)

The first charter of this Company, 1445, assumes that the members have long been a “mystery.” By later charters, down to James II.’s reign, the power of the Company was extended, until the last mentioned gave power to control all brewers within eight miles of the City. The present Hall is, in the main (with various repairs), the one rebuilt soon after the Fire of 1666; the wainscoting of the court-room is of 1670. The former Hall was certainly on this spot in the time of Elizabeth; and seems to have been there since their first Hall was built by the Brewers; they possessed one in 1422, at which time they let their premises repeatedly to other guilds which had no hall of their own.

(ST) BRIDE (Fleet Street)

This church, dedicated to St Bridget, has been in the patronage of Westminster Abbot, or the succeeding Dean and Chapter, from 1306 at latest, probably from its earliest foundation, for it was originally in the great manor of Westminster, which once stretched to the Fleet Brook. However, the earliest record is of 1222. The older church had been until the fifteenth century, “a small thing which now remaineth to be the quire” says Stow; enlarged, 1480, by a new nave and side aisles. All this church was swept away by the Great Fire; and the present building erected by Wren, 1680, with his famous steeple added in 1701. The font of 1615 and the entry stone to the Holden family vault still remain of the earlier church. In this older church had been buried Wynkin de Worde the printer, and (probably) Lovelace the poet, 1658. In the Wren church was buried Richardson, 1761, the novelist, who also was a printer in the adjacent Salisbury Square. Milton lived for a short time in a house facing the churchyard; probably the spot is now partly covered by the “Punch” Office.

BRIDEWELL (Bridge Street, Blackfriars)

There was a residence of the kings in this neighbourhood of St Bride's at least since the reign of King John: Mathew Paris records judicial proceedings there, “in Curia Domini regis,” in 1210: and John also called a Parliament there. (Stow connects this Court with a fortified house or tower which had been in the possession of William the Conqueror, who gave some of its stones to rebuild St Paul's, but this connection is uncertain.) This royal domain, apparently, was disused until Henry VIII. restored it into “a stately and beautiful house”: his object being, it was said, to receive there the Emperor Charles V. when he visited this country in 1522. However, the Emperor lodged at the near by Black Friars’ house, while his suite lived at Bridewell, which was connected by a gallery over the Fleet. Henry himself lodged at Bridewell in 1525, 1528, and 1529; at the last date he was accompanied by Queen Katherine, who was waiting with her husband while their divorce was being argued in the Blackfriars.

Edward VI., in 1553, gave Bridewell Palace to the City of London to be “a work house for the poor and idle persons of the City. The buildings were destroyed by the Great Fire and rebuilt by the citizens, 1668. When the prison side of the institution was removed to Holloway, 1863, Bridewell was demolished, except the entrance front (No. 14 New Bridge Street) with the hall, court-room and governor's house behind it. The entrance in New Bridge Street has a portrait bust of Edward VI. over it. The existing buildings are of an eighteenth century erection.

BROOKE STREET (Holborn)

This street took its name after Brooke House, which once stood on this site. Its early owner was Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, who has for his epitaph “Servant to Queen Elizabeth, councellor to King James and friend to Sir Philip Sidney.” Here the owner was murdered by his servant in 1628, for petty spite. He had been a great figure in the political and literary circles of Elizabeth's and James I.’s Courts; Treasurer of the Navy and Chancellor of the Exchequer; he was a poet also. This house had been formerly in the possession of the Earls of Bath, and called Bath Inn; and had been lately rebuilt in Stow's time.

In this street, in a house which stood almost at the corner of Holborn on the west side, Thomas Chatterton, the precocious literary genius, committed suicide 1770, before he was eighteen.

BROOKS'S CLUB (No. 60 St James's Street)

This club famous in the latter part of the eighteenth century began its career in 1764 in Pall Mall almost where the Marlborough Club now stands, and its first proprietor was Almack; Brooks appears in 1774 and the club moved here in 1778. It was famous in those days for its heavy gambling and its Whiggish political tone; it had been originally founded mainly by Dukes. Its most famous members were Fox, the great Pitt, Burke, George Selwyn, Horace Walpole, Garrick, Sheridan, Palmerston and O'Connell.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE (St James's Park)

James I. had planted a mulberry garden here, in 1609, to grow silk; for the French religious refugees had just introduced the trade to London. The house of the keeper was apparently the origin of the palace. During the time of Charles I. the Commonwealth and the early Restoration period, the garden became a favourite place of amusement, and is often mentioned as a scene in the dramas of that day. In 1672 the house and gardens went to the Earl of Arlington and ceased to be a public spot. In 1703 it was bought and rebuilt by the Duke of Buckingham, the friend of Dryden; and was bought by George III. in 1762, who was occasionally in residence there. It was rebuilt by Nash in 1825 for George IV. but he never lived there; and altered 1837, for Queen Victoria, who first made it the principal royal palace in London.

BUCKLERSBURY (Queen Victoria Street, City)

This street is without existing antiquities, but is interesting as recording by its name and situation the house or “bury” of one of the old City families, the Buckerells; who held property here in 1272. One of them was mayor, 1231-36. Stow says that there were still remains of their manor house in his day, on the south side of the street (v. Itinerary II.); it was then let out in tenements, and called “the Barge,” with its tradition of the days when the barges came up the Wallbrook to this spot. This house became the property of St Thomas Acorn (v. Mercers’ Hall) in 1440. He also says that opposite the “bury” of the Buckerells an ancient tower had stood, until a few years previously one of the Buckerells had pulled it down: in which tower Edward III. placed his “exchange of money,” and later gave it to St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster (v. Westminster Palace). Stow adds that the west send of Bucklerbury was, on both sides, “possessed of Grocers and Apothecaries.”

BUNHILL FIELDS (City Road)

This burial ground, which had been prepared for use during the great plague of 1665, but not used then, was acquired by the Dissecting sects immediately after the restoration of Charles II. brought their division from the Established Church to a definite issue. Here lie the bodies of some of the most eminent Nonconformists, distinguished in literature or theology: Goodwin, 1679, Cromwell's friend; and Fleetwood, his son-in-law, 1692; John Bunyan, 1688; Daniel Defoe, 1731; Richard Price, 1791, who wrote on mathematics, politics, and theology, and made Mary Wollstonecraft turn to unorthodoxy; John Wesley's mother, 1742; Dr Watts, 1748; Horace Tooke, 1812, the friend of a brother republican, William Godwin; and William Blake, 1828. In the adjoining Quaker's graveyard is buried George Fox (d. 1691), the founder of the Society of Friends (v. Wesley's Chapel).

BUNHILL FIELDS

The Dissenters’ Burial Ground

BURLINGTON HOUSE (Piccadilly)

In 1665 the first Earl of Burlington began to build (or Sir John Denham, the poet, for him) a house on this spot, on what was then the very verge of the west-end, with the open fields behind it. The third earl, Henry Boyle, rebuilt the house about 1718, with a fine front and colonnade which he himself adapted after Palladio. He did much to model the architectural style of his time by publishing Inigo Jones's “Designs” and Palladio's “Antiquities of Rome.” Pope, Swift, Kent and Handel were all friends of this Earl, the latter living three years in this house, which still forms the centre of the modern buildings which were grouped round its courtyard in 1866; but this old central portion on the north side of the yard had an additional storey and niches for statues added in 1873, which raised it to the level of the modern buildings of the wings and the front on the street. The central core is now occupied by the Royal Academy and the rest by various learned societies.

BURY STREET (St James's)

In this street, first built about 1672, have lived: Swift, more than once; he once shared his rooms with “Stella” (Hester Johnson); and his “Vanessa” lived in the same street with Mrs Vanhomrigh, her mother. Swift writes to Stella in his journal that he “dines there very often.” Steele brought his wife, “Prue,” to live here in 1707. Tom Moore, the poet, was here in 1806, and many other visits to different houses. Daniel O'Connell lived at No. 19 in 1829 during his political struggles for Catholic Emancipation.

BUTTON'S COFFEE HOUSE (Russell Street, Covent Garden)

This famous Coffee House was opened in 1713, “about two doors from Covent Garden.” It was the rival of Will's Coffee House, the corner house in front, which it surpassed in fame. At Button's the chief lion was Addison, with Steele and Pope as his main supports.

CAMDEN TOWN (N.W.)

This district is so called from being built on the property of Charles Pratt, first Lord Camden, Lord Chancellor in the reign of George III. The building began in 1791.

CAMPDEN HOUSE (North of Kensington High Street)

This house, which was not finally demolished until the beginning of this twentieth century, and has given its name to the district around it, was built by Sir Baptist Hicks about 1612, probably as part of an earlier house. He became the first Viscount Campden in 1628. The third viscount was an ardent Royalist; and Charles II. took supper at this house within a fortnight of his restoration. In 1691 the Princess Anne (afterwards Queen) came to live here with his son, the little Duke of Gloucester, for five years. In 1705 came the young Earl of Burlington who built Burlington House (q.v.). Soon after the middle of the eighteenth century it had become a select school for young ladies; and George Selwyn, the wit and man of fashion, sent his little “Mie Mie” here in 1775. In Holly Lodge, on the south side of Campden Hill Gardens, Macaulay lived, and died in 1859.

CANONBURY (near Islington, N.)

This district in the north of London took its name from the “bury,” i.e. house, of the Canons of St Bartholomew, who got it as a gift from the Berners before 1253. At the dissolution it passed through several lay hands, until it was bought by Sir John Spencer, 1570, the rich City merchant who also owned Crosby Hall. His daughter eloped with Lord Compton. Canonbury Tower was the manor house where Spencer lived, and part of it is still standing to-day. Queen Elizabeth visited Spencer here in 1581. In 1616 Francis Bacon was the occupier. Goldsmith's friend, Newberry, had apartments here after it was divided into tenements, and Goldsmith was often accustomed to hide there from his creditors during 1763-4. The neighbouring streets have some picturesque eighteenth century houses.

CARLTON TERRACE (Overlooking the Mall)

The origin of this name was the Carlton House which was built on this spot by Boyle, Lord Carleton, in 1709. His descendant sold it to the Prince of Wales in 1732. It became prominent after 1783 when a later Prince, afterwards George IV., was established there. When the house had been remodelled, it was the scene of much of his entertaining, and the haunt of Beau Brunnell, Tom Moore, and their contemporaries. The house was pulled down in 1826, and the present Terrace and Waterloo Place laid out on its site. No. 11 was once the residence of Mr Gladstone.

CAVENDISH SQUARE (W.)

So called after the family name of the wife of the Earl of Oxford, on whose property this Square began to be built in 1717, but slowly completed; it was the same earl who gave his name to Oxford Street, which was formed about this same time. On the north side of the Square is all that the Duke of Chandos ever built of the great house which was designed for him in 1720; the Grecian columns of the fronts of the two detached parts are distinctly handsome, and the two corner blocks are also said to be parts of the unfinished house. Romney, the portrait painter, lived at No. 32 for twenty-one years. Lady Mary Wortley Montague lived in this Square a good deal between 1723 and 1731. Nelson and his wife were at No. 5 in 1787, when he was Captain Horatio Nelson.

CHARING CROSS

The little hamlet or village of Charing was so called at least as early as the time of Edward I. It was here that this same King set up one of the Eleanor Crosses, which marked the resting places of his wife's body on its way to Westminster for burial. It was finished in 1296, and in later times has given its distinctive name to the neighbourhood, supplanting the simple name of the village. (The Cross in the station yard is a modern copy of the old one.) It remained a more or less detached hamlet until the growth of the Covent Garden district, during the first half of the seventeenth century, connected it with the main body of London. The Cross stood until 1647, where now stands the statue of Charles I. (by Le Sœur), set up in 1674; it had been cast in 1633, and is therefore contemporary with its subject. The regicides were executed on the same spot, after the Restoration, 1660. There was no Trafalgar Square in those days, for there stood the King's Mews where the fountains now are, with a row of houses surrounding them. These were not cleared away to make the Square until 1829-1841. At the corner where Northumberland Avenue now enters Trafalgar Square was Northumberland House, until it was pulled down in 1873; it had stood there since 1605, where it was built by the Earl of Northampton, the son of the poet Earl of Surrey; it passed to the Earls of Suffolk and a daughter of that family married a Percy, Earl of Northumberland in 1642; and Elizabeth Percy married the “Proud” Duke of Somerset in 1682, and lived here with her husband in regal state. The house came again into the hands of the Northumberlands when the earldom of Northumberland was recreated, in 1749, for the seventh Duke.

CHARTERHOUSE (near Smithfield)

This began its history as the fourth house in England of the Carthusian monkish order; built 1371. The Order had been founded in 1084, at La Chartreuse in France. The chief rule of these monks was severe seclusion, with silence and scanty fare. They were buried with the words “O beata solitudo! O sola beatitudo” as their last expression of life. This monastery was founded on lands given by Ralph, Bishop of London, to provide consecrated burial for the victims of the great plague of 1348-9, and added to by Sir Walter Manny, who endowed the house for the monks. The Monastery had an uneventful history, until it was dissolved by Henry VIII. after the execution of its prior, Houghton, and other members who refused to acknowledge that King's supremacy in the Church. By 1537 resistance was crushed and the monastery surrendered to the King, who gave the property to North, afterwards created Lord North by Mary. Elizabeth stayed here with him more than once. North's son sold most of it to the Duke of Norfolk, in 1565, who made the buildings of the little cloister serve for his town palace. The duke was beheaded for high treason, 1571. In 1611 his descendants sold the house to Thomas Sutton, who had made a great fortune in coal mines and by foreign trade. He endowed it as a home for the aged and a free school for the young. Both institutions still exist; the “poor brethren” being still in the old building, though the school has removed to near Godalming, Surrey, with 500 boys beyond its “foundation scholars.” The old school buildings in part, and enlarged, are now occupied by another ancient school, that of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, whose playground is the site of the great cloister of the Monastery. Amongst the famous old boys of the Charterhouse School were Lovelace, Steele, Addison, Wesley, Havelock and Thackeray; while the Merchant Taylors’ can claim Edmund Spenser, the poet and Lord Clive, the soldier. The south and part of eastern wall of the chapel, the Wash-house Court dwellings, the lower part of the tower, the brothers’ library (formerly the refectory) and fragments of two cells in the school playground, and the entrance arch from the street, with many of the main walls of the whole building, were all probably part of the monastic buildings. The fine staircase and the great Hall were erected during the Duke of Norfolk's occupation, though the Hall is said to have been the guest chamber of the monastery; in which case only the alterations of the interior are Norfolk's. The state room at the top of the great stair was that used by Elizabeth; in its present form, with its plaster ceilings, decorated fireplace and tapestries, it is probably the best example of an Elizabethan room left in London. The chapel was enlarged in 1612 by the Sutton trustees to its present form: note Sutton's own tomb. Thackeray's “The Newcombes” has the Charterhouse for part of its background.

CHELSEA CHURCH

Capital in More Chapel

CHEAPSIDE (City)

John Stow writing in 1598 says: “At the west end of this Poultrie beginneth the large streete of West Cheaping, a Market Place so called, which streete stretcheth west till ye come to the little conduit by Paules gate.” This was the busiest haunt of the people in mediæval London; the centre of their marketing and the scene of their pageants and sports. The chepe (A.S. ceapian = to sell) was in early days much wider than now; for until Tudor times the north side was unbuilt, and used for temporary stalls. By Elizabeth's reign it had taken its existing shape. The names of the neighbouring streets are a record of its marketing history: Bread Street, Friday Street (for fast-day fish), the Poultry, Milk Street, Honey Street, Ironmonger Lane, etc. The Standard in Cheap stood in the middle of the street not far from Bow Church; it was the scene of execution and the burning of seditious books. Wat Tyler there caused Richard Lyons and others to be beheaded when he seized the City in 1381; and another rebel, Jack Cade, had Lord Say beheaded there under similar circumstances in 1450. Opposite the end of Wood Street once stood one of the Queen Eleanor crosses, erected 1290, where her body lay on its progressions to Westminster Abbey. It was destroyed during the Puritan rule of 1643, with John Evelyn looking on the while. At the extreme west end of Cheapside stood, until 1390, the Old Cross, by which Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, was beheaded (v. Essex Street). The tourneys took place before Bow Church, from the balcony of which the royal spectators used to watch the sport. Stow has described one of these: “In the reign of Edward III. divers joustings were made in this street, betwixt Sopar's Lane and the great cross, namely one in the year 1331, the 21st of September, as I find noted by divers writers of that time. In the middle of the city of London, say they, in a street called cheap, the stone pavement being covered with sand, that the horses might not slide when they strongly set their feet to the ground, the King held a tournament three days together, with the nobility, valiant men of the realm, and others some strange knights. And to the end the beholders might with better ease see the same, there was a wooden scaffold erected across the street like a tower, wherein Queen Philippa and many other ladies richly attired, and assembled from all parts of the realm, did stand to behold the jousts.” This balcony fell down: hence the building of the stone one by Bow Church steeple.

CHELSEA (S.W.)

The manor of Chelsea appears in Domesday as Chelched and also as Cercehede, and was recorded as then in the possession of Edward de Sarisberie; but it is probable that the larger part of it was included in the great manor of Westminster. The most probable derivation is chels-ey = the gravelly island. (cf. Battersea and Bermondsey.) There is a long gap in its manorial history after Domesday, though it was certainly in the hands of the Abbey of Westminster in 1368 as a life tenancy at least. It belonged to Sir Reginald Bray in Henry VII.’s reign, and it was soon after this time that it became a fashionable country retreat from London. Henry VIII. acquired it by exchange in 1536, with Lord Sandys, Sir Reginald's nephew-in-law. Henry built a large house, the New Manor House, and settled it on his widow Katherine Parr; and it passed in succession to: the Duke of Northumberland; the Duchess of Somerset (the widow of the Lord Protector); the widow of Lord Howard of Effingham; Charles I.; the Duke of Hamilton; Viscount Cheyne; and then Sir Hans Sloane bought it, in 1712, and his daughter passed it to her husband's family, the Cadogans, who are still the chief landlords of this district. The names of these owners are recorded by street names throughout the neighbourhood.

CHELSEA HOSPITAL

The most eminent resident of Chelsea has been Sir Thomas More, who came there in 1520, and from his house there he was taken a prisoner to the Tower of London in 1534; Henry had often come to visit him in Chelsea, and Holbein also was his guest for three years; also Erasmus came. His house has entirely vanished, and it is uncertain whether it was the one which afterwards was rebuilt by Sir John Danvers in 1618 and demolished 1696 (which stood at the north end of Danvers Street), or that which afterwards was Beaufort House, which was demolished 1740 (it was in Beaufort Street a little way up and there is still a fragment or part of its outbuildings standing in the grounds of the Moravian chapel). Henry VIII. gave the old Manor House (near the church) to the Lawrences (marked by Lawrence Street); and built his new one on the south-east corner of Oakley Street, where it reaches the Albert Bridge. Here Anne of Cleves died; and after Henry's death his widow Katherine Parr lived there with her step-daughter Elizabeth, who was then accused of much flirtation and levity. (v. Lindsay House, Cheyne Walk and Row, Chelsea Hospital, Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea Old Church, Ranelagh Gardens.)

CHELSEA HOSPITAL (Chelsea)

This Hospital for disabled soldiers was founded by Charles II. (on the site of a theological college established by James I.) and built by Sir Christopher Wren, 1682-1702. It is a fine example of Wren's secular architecture. Observe the hall, chapel, and exterior corridors. The metal figure of Charles II., in the great quadrangle, is by Grinling Gibbons. Fanny Burney's father was organist here for thirty years, being appointed by Edmund Burke in 1783. The chapel services on Sunday are open to visitors at 11 and 6.30. The gardens are also open to visitors; the eastern part was once the site of the Ranelagh Gardens (q.v.). The Infirmary at the west side is partly the original Walpole House where Sir Robert Walpole lived (v. Itinerary XIV.).

CHELSEA OLD CHURCH, ST LUKE (Chelsea Embankment)

There was almost certainly a church here from the earliest time, when the Abbey of Westminster held the manor of Chelsea, which was probably from the time of Edward the Confessor (v. Chelsea). It is first actually recorded in 1290; when it was dedicated to All Saints. The present building dates in the main from 1670; with a chancel and north chapel of perhaps the fourteenth century and the south chapel built by Sir Thomas More in the sixteenth century. Of course there have been restorations. The most famous name connected with this church is Sir Thomas More; whose tomb and epitaph were put up by himself during his lifetime, whether his body lies here is uncertain, but it probably does, except the head, which was taken to Canterbury. The other existing monuments include those of the Brays, the Dacres, the Duchess of Northumberland (Lady Jane Grey's mother-in-law and Philip Sidney's grandmother), all of the sixteenth century. The brasses of Sir Arthur Gorges and his wife, and Lady Jane Cheyne are of the seventeenth century. In the churchyard is the monument of Sir Hans Sloane (d. 1753). There are two most interesting carved capitals, which have been ascribed to Holbein as having been executed while he lived with More; but they are almost certainly work of French Renaissance craftsmen.

CHESTERFIELD HOUSE (South Audley Street)

This house was finished about 1749 for the Earl of Chesterfield who wrote the “Letters to his Son.” In 1869 the colonnade was demolished and part of the garden built over by Chesterfield Gardens.

CHEYNE WALK AND ROW (Chelsea Embankment)

Took their name from the Lord of the Manor, Viscount Cheyne, who sold it to Sir Hans Sloane in 1712, about the time of their first erection, or soon after. Thomas Carlyle lived at No. 24 Cheyne Road from 1834 until his death, 1881; it is now open as a museum of his relics and the scene of his work; he wrote “The French Revolution,” “Cromwell,” and “Frederick the Great” here, and much else. Leigh Hunt was at No. 10 in 1839-40.

At Cheyne Walk No. 4, George Eliot died, 1880; and before her, Maclise lived there (d. 1870); No. 10, Count d'Orsay; No. 16, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (d. 1882); No. 18, Don Saltero's Coffee House opened 1695 (which probably mark the first building of these houses), Swift and his contemporaries often mention it; No. 119 where Turner lived, and died 1851.

CHRIST CHURCH (Newgate Street, City)

In the year 1225 the Grey Friars were endowed with a plot of land just within Newgate, on the north side of the present street, and at that time surrounded on their north side by the City walls. They became the centre of much popular religious enthusiasm. In the words of Stow: “about the year 1225 William Joyner builded their quire, Henry Walles the body of the church, Walter Potter, alderman, the chapter house, Gregory Rokerley their cloister, Bartholomew of the Castle made the refectory, Peter de Heleland made the infirmary, Bevis Bond King of Heralds made the study.” Margaret, Queen of Edward I., began the choir of a new church in 1306; and the Earl of Richmond built its nave, and a whole host of queens and lords and ladies helped to get the building finished by 1337. Then in 1429 Richard Whittington erected a library. So great was the respect for these holy friars, that their patrons came to them not only with gift, but were brought for burial as to a favoured shrine. Stow gives a long list of the royal and aristocratic persons who were buried in the Greyfriars Church, beginning with the queens of Edward I. and II. in 1317 and 1358 respectively; and finishing with “John Tresyawall, gentleman and taylor of London,” 1520. The whole account is a typical example of the ecclesiastical influence in mediæval society.

CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA

With Carlyle's House

All this changed when the Friary was dissolved by Henry VIII.; who granted this property (for a considerable sum) to the mayor and Council of the City of London. The chapel was stripped of its treasures and tombs and made the parish church; and the other buildings were endowed and repaired by the citizens as a school for poor children. It began this new career in 1553, under a charter of Edward VI., as the Royal Christ Church School; and its scholars wear to-day almost the same dress as at the foundation of the institution; hence its present popular title of the “Blue Coat School.” This second institution has likewise been removed from this spot, for the school was taken to Horsham in 1902, and the older buildings have been swept away. Camden, the antiquarian, Coleridge, Lamb, Leigh Hunt and Sir Henry Maine the legal historian, were all scholars of this school.

But the existing church stands to represent the old Friary in the direct line of descent. As we have seen, the friary chapel became the parish church; this was burnt during the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren, 1687-1704, as we now find it. Richard Baxter the Nonconformist divine, was buried in this new church in 1691, but without any memorial over his grave. The Spital sermon, once preached at St Mary Spital (q.v.), has been preached here on Easter Tuesday since 1797. They ceased to be preached at the original spot after Spital Cross was destroyed during the Stuart Civil War.

(ST) CHRISTOPHER LE STOCKS (Threadneedle Street)

This parish church stood, until 1780, where the Bank of England now is; it was destroyed to make room for it. It took its name from the neighbouring Stocks’ Market, which existed in the space now in front of the Royal Exchange. The earliest record of the church is of the end of the thirteenth century, when it was the gift of the Neville family, and passed to the Bishops of London in 1415. The parish is now united with St Margaret Lothbury (q.v.).

CLARGES STREET (Piccadilly)

This street is the last street in Piccadilly to appear in the map of 1720; it had just been planned a few years before. Beyond it was the open country. Macaulay lived at No. 3 for two years from 1838; Daniel O'Connell at No. 9 in 1835; Lady Hamilton was living at No. 11 in the year of Trafalgar; Edmund Keen lived at No. 12 from 1816-24. No. 32 where Byron often called on his friend Kinnaird; Charles James Fox was at No. 43. The street took its name from the mansion of Sir Walter Clarges, which stood there until the street was built in its place.

(ST) CLEMENT DANES (Strand)

There seems to have been a settlement of the Danes around this neighbourhood at some date before the Norman Conquest; it was probably after Alfred had established himself in the City of London, 886, or at latest when Cnut made Westminster a royal residence, that the Danes settled here as in some sense distinguishing themselves from the Saxon Londoners. Tradition says that Harold's body was taken from Westminster and thrown into the Thames by Hardicnut; it was then buried at St Clement Danes 1040. Another tradition says that this was the scene of a massacre of Danes about 1012. But this church is certainly mentioned in a charter of William the Conqueror, and again by Henry II.’s charter. The mediæval church was demolished in 1680 and a new one erected immediately, after Wren's or a pupil's designs: restored 1898. The steeple is of 1719, by Gibbs. Dr Johnson was a regular worshipper in his later years; his favourite pew was No. 18 in the north gallery, beside the pulpit. Sedley, 1639, and the Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671, were baptised here: and among the burials were the bodies of Otway, 1685; Bishop Berkeley, 1685; Rymer, 1713.

CLIFFORD'S INN

(ST) CLEMENT EASTCHEAP (City)

Earliest recorded patrons of this parish church were the Abbots of Westminster, 1309, until the Dissolution: it then passed to the Bishops of London, present holders, 1553. Henry Purcell was once the organist. Rebuilt by Wren 1686, and has since been modernised.

CLERKENWELL

This district took its name from a well at which the parish clerks of London were accustomed to play each year their miracle drama: while the nucleus of the ancient village was the Priory of St John of Jerusalem and the Nunnery of St James (q.v.) which were there from the twelfth century. Fitzstephen, writing at the end of that century, says: “There are near London on the north side especial wells in the Suburbs, sweet, wholesome and clear. Amongst which Holywell, Clerkenwell, and Saint Clement's well, are most famous, and most frequented by scholars and youths of the City in summer evenings and when they walk forth to take the air.” By the end of the sixteenth century, when Stow wrote, this district had been absorbed within the range of the London suburbs; but it was only at the end of the eighteenth century that they stretched beyond this spot. The well was a little to the west of the Clerkenwell Green, near where the houses now stand on its south-west side.

CLIFFORD'S INN (Fleet Street)

This takes its name from a Robert de Clifford who bought the property from Edward II. in 1310; it was leased by his widow and successors to law students in 1344 until 1618, when the Society apparently obtained the freehold. These students became more formally incorporated, and continued in possession of this hall until the Society was dissolved at the beginning of the present twentieth century. There still remain picturesque late seventeenth or early eighteenth century sets of chambers; and also the hall itself, where the judges settled the disputes which arose from the confusion of boundaries caused by the Great Fire of London in 1666. There is still left in this Hall some of the 14th century building; t.q., in the arch above the buttery door.

COLLEGE HILL (Canon Street, City)

Besides for its Whittington College and St Michael Royal (q.v.), College Hill is noteworthy as being the site of Whittington's house, “The Tabard.” This was where now stand Nos. 21 and 22, on the east side; so that his College almshouses stood next door where now is the Mercers’ School as it was rebuilt in 1832; and in the adjoining church he was buried. College Hill is therefore, in a very full sense, the street of Richard Whittington, perhaps London's most famous Mayor: he held that office four times, 1397, 1398, 1406, and 1419; and was Member of Parliament for the City in 1416. The houses (or their fronts, at least) which now stand in the place of the Tabard, were built almost immediately after the Fire. There is a house opposite, No. 4, with an interesting door of about the same date, or a little later.

COVENT GARDEN (North side of Strand)

This district takes its name after the Convent Garden of Westminster, which appears in the early maps as extending behind the north side of the Strand from St Martin's Church to Drury Lane. At the Dissolution this part of the spoils of Westminster Abbey had passed into the hands of the Russells; John Russell, Earl of Bedford, being the first to hold it, in 1552. In Stow's time they were living at a Bedford House (which had formerly been Carlisle Inn) on the south side of the Strand, about the position of the present Hotel Cecil; but soon after this, they built themselves a new Bedford House along the south side of Covent Garden, where Southampton Street now comes down to the Strand. The surrounding neighbourhood they began to lay out for building about 1630, with the Market as the central feature, and a new church, St Paul's (q.v.) on its west side. Inigo Jones built the first church and the piazza which ran round the north and east side of the market-place. This district became the haunt of fashionable persons until the Bedfords moved away to Bloomsbury Square (q.v.) in 1704; and the rest of Society went westwards, nearer St James's Palace; but it continued during the eighteenth century as a haunt of literary wits. Of Inigo Jones's piazza only the general idea is left; the west end of the north side was rebuilt in 1880, and on the east side the piazza has not been re-erected at the re-buildings. Before 1700 the following well-known tenants lived above the colonnade: Thomas Kelligrew, the last de Vere, Earl of Oxford; Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir Peter Lely the portrait painters; Sir Harry Vane; Sir Kenelen Digby; besides innumerable persons of title. Lady Mary Wortley Montague was living here about 1730. At the north-east corner was the famous Bedford Coffee House, the playing place of Hogarth, Garrick, Foote, Sheridan, Fielding and Horace Walpole. Perhaps it was Foote who was the lion-show of the house. It was one of the coffee houses which followed Button's and Will's, (q.v.) of a previous generation. This house was at its prime about 1754. There are many references to Covent Garden in the literature of the Restoration and Queen Anne period; it is mentioned (generally for its loose morals) by Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve and others. The Westminster hustings (or Parliamentary elections) were held in front of St Paul's Church; during the fierce political fighting of the days of Charles James Fox and Sir Francis Burdett.

CRANE COURT (Fleet Street)

This contains some good late seventeenth or early eighteenth century houses at the right hand side at the north corner. The end house (rebuilt after a fire in 1887) was the house of the Royal Society when Sir Isaac Newton was its President.

CREMORNE GARDENS (Cremorne Road, Chelsea)

These gardens, a little to the north-west of Battersea Bridge, were opened as a place of public entertainment in the second quarter of the nineteenth century; and became very notorious for their frivolities before they were closed in 1877. The name came from Lord Cremorne who had lived in the house which formerly stood on this spot; it had been built originally for the Earl of Huntingdon. The site of the gardens is now recorded by the Cremorne Road; the whole district is now covered with houses.

CRIPPLEGATE (City)

This gate is recorded at least as early as 1000, when it is mentioned in Ethelred's Laws; and in William the Conqueror's Charter to the ecclesiastical house of St Martin's, it is termed “Cripplesgata.” This was probably a later form of an Anglo-Saxon word, “crepel,” which means a narrow passage. It may be taken that this was one of the less important and narrow gates in the Saxon City wall. Its derivation as the gate where the cripples were cured miraculously on the passing of St Edmund's body, is quite erroneous, for the procession entered at Aldgate; the legend (and the cripples) grew up later to explain the name. This gate had been rebuilt by the Brewers of the City in 1244, and again by a wealthy goldsmith in 1491, and repaired during Charles II.’s reign. It was finally demolished, with the other gates, in 1760.

CROSBY HALL (Chelsea)

This great house was originally built by Sir John Crosby, a famous London merchant, grocer and woolman, in 1466, on ground which he acquired from the prioress of St Helen's Priory (q.v.). The Duke of Gloucester, soon to be Richard III., was a later tenant, while he was Lord Protector; and after him Sir Thomas More lived here in 1518 and sold it to Bonvici in 1523, who again let it to Roper, More's son-in-law and biographer. In Elizabeth's reign it belonged to William Bond, a great merchant prince, who entertained ambassadors and princes in a worthy style, as did his successor, Sir John Spencer (v. Canonbury), a Lord Mayor, 1594. In 1609 the famous Countess of Pembroke lived there. In 1666 much of it was destroyed by fire, and still again later. The great Hall had escaped, however, and this part was taken down with care and rebuilt in Chelsea in 1910, a few yards from the old Chelsea Church which is so closely bound up with its former tenant, Thomas More.

CRUTCHED FRIARS (Seething Lane, City)

Ralph Hosier and William Sabernes endowed a friary of Crossed, or Crutched, Friars, in 1298, founding a house for this order at the corner of Seething Lane where it now joins Crutched Friars Street. In 1520 this church required rebuilding, so they put themselves under the patronage of the City Corporation. The Friary was dissolved in 1539 by Henry VIII., who granted it to Sir Thomas Wyatt, who erected his house there; wherein Lord Lumley was living in Stow's time. It stood on the south-east part of the Friary site, and faced on to Tower Hill. The monastic buildings were all destroyed; and on one part of this site was erected the Navy House, where Pepys conducted his official business and himself lived (v. St Olave); it was from its windows that he saw the beginning of the Great Fire of London in 1666.

DEVONSHIRE HOUSE (Piccadilly)

The present house was built (on the site of Berkeley House which had been burnt) in 1735 by Kent, the famous architect, for the third Duke of Devonshire. The portico is modern. It is still in the possession of the same family. Here the beautiful and accomplished Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, held her salon in the reign of George III., whither came Fox (whom she had won the seat at Westminster for in 1784), Burke, Sheridan, and all their set. It was at this house that the sixth Duke entertained the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia and the suites of the Allied Sovereigns in 1814. Here, in 1851, Charles Dickens and Bulwer Lytton got up a Dramatic Entertainment, with Douglas Jerrold and John Leech taking parts, also, in the two plays: one by Dickens, called “Mr Nightingale's Diary,” and a comedy, “Not so Bad as we Seem,” by Lytton.

(ST) DIONIS BACKCHURCH (Fenchurch Street, City)

This parish church stood at the west corner of Lime Street; it was rebuilt after the Great Fire, but demolished in 1878. When it first appears in the records, 1242, it is in the patronage of the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, whom we find presenting the next gift to the mother of Edward IV. in 1461. It passed to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury at the Dissolution. Dr Burney, Fanny Burney's father, was organist here in 1749-51.

DOVER HOUSE (Whitehall)

This was built in 1758. Lord Melbourne was born there, 1774, while his father occupied it. In 1787 it was purchased for the Duke of York, and the domed entrance and the portico were added. It is now the office of the Secretary for Scotland.

DRURY LANE (north of Strand)

This street has one of the longest histories of any outside the City walls. At first it was the main road between the Danish Settlement round St Clement Danes and the hamlet of St Giles. Until Stuart days it ran through fields with houses only at its two ends. At first named Via de Aldwych, or the road of the Old Settlement—at St Clements: then called after the Druries, who lived in a large house, at the southern end, from Tudor times until the Earls of Craven bought it in middle of seventeenth century. As Craven House it existed until 1809; it was the first Earl who had a romance with James I.’s daughter, the Queen of Bohemia; and worked heroically during the Plague of 1665. The Lane was very smart during the seventeenth century; the home of nobles. But by beginning of the eighteenth it was mean and disreputable. The first theatre in this neighbourhood was the Cockpit, where Pitt Place stands; this may have existed in Shakespeare's time. But the long career of the present theatre began in 1663, when Killigrew built it for the King's Company; Pepys was often there; it was burnt, and rebuilt by Wren, 1674; and rebuilt, as at present, 1812. This theatre was the scene of the triumphs of Booth and Garrick and Kemble.

(ST) DUNSTAN-IN-THE-EAST (St Dunstan's Hill, Lower Thames Street)

A church of an undoubted ancient foundation, though the earliest reference seems to be 1278. It was in the patronage of the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, by whom it was presented to the Archbishops in 1365. The present building dates from 1817, except the tower which remains of Wren's rebuilding of 1698. Stow says that in his day “it is a fayre and large Church of an ancient building and within a large Churchyarde: it hath a great parish of many rich merchants, and other occupiers of diverse trades, namely Saltars and Ironmongers.” He gives a long list of tombs of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, and says there are “many other worshipfull personages besides, whose monuments are altogether defaced.” Sir John Hawkins, the famous Elizabethan sailor, was a parishioner, and when he died at sea a monument was erected to his memory in the old church. There are still surviving some memorial tablets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The patron Saint is Dunstan, the great ecclesiastic (A.D. 924-988) of the Saxon period. There is another church dedicated to him in Fleet Street.

(ST) DUNSTAN-IN-THE-WEST (Fleet Street)

The original foundation of this parish church is of uncertain date: it was for long within the great manor of Westminster, but in 1361 it passed into the hands of the Abbey of Alnwick where it remained until the Dissolution; afterwards it went to the Sackvilles, Earls of Dorset. It escaped the Great Fire, but was entirely rebuilt, away from the street frontage, in 1833. Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, was baptised here, 1593; and William Tyndale, the Reformer, preached here. The statue of Queen Elizabeth, now erected over the main door of this church, was brought here in 1766, when Ludgate Gate was demolished; this figure (of 1586) had been on the outside of the gate. There are many monuments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which were preserved from the old church. Isaak Walton, who wrote the “Compleat Angler,” was a parishioner of St Dunstan's, and there is a modern window to his memory.

EARL'S COURT (S.W.)

This district was the main Kensington manor of the De Veres, Earls of Oxford, who held it at the time of Domesday. The older manor and court house stood near the present station, until 1878. The existing houses and streets have sprung up mainly since 1850 when Earl's Court was merely a village, with a lane linking it to Kensington.

EASTMINSTER, THE ABBEY OF (Royal Mint, Little Tower Hill)

Also called St Mary Graces. This was founded by Edward III., 1350, as a thanksgiving offering for survival through a storm at sea; he raised it on what had been a burial ground for the victims of the great plague of the previous year. It was for Cistercian Monks. It never attained any very great position, and was dissolved by Henry VIII., and entirely demolished by Sir Arthur Darcy, to whom the property was sold. It stood near East Smithfield, just outside the City walls, at the north-east corner of the Tower, where the Royal Mint now stands.

(ST) EDMUND, KING AND MARTYR (Lombard Street, City)

The earliest record of this parish church is in 1150. Rebuilt by Wren, 1690, and restored twice, the last time in 1880. It was at first under the patronage of the Priory of Holy Trinity, Aldgate; given to Archbishops of Canterbury at the Dissolution, where it still remains. Addison was married here to the Countess of Warwick and Holland, 1716.

EDWARDES SQUARE (Kensington)

Built, with the adjacent Earl's Terrace, by a Frenchman at the end of eighteenth century; tradition says they were to house the junior officers of Napoleon's army when it arrived. Leigh Hunt lived at No. 32 in the square, 1840-51; Mrs Inchbald was at No. 4 in her later years; Walter Pater lived in the square.

ELY PLACE (Holborn)

So called after the Town house which the Bishops of Ely acquired here between 1290 and 1298, in which they continued to reside until 1772 when they exchanged it for a house in Dover Street, Piccadilly. It was enlarged by the famous Arundel, the bishop of Edward III.’s reign. A few years after this John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, died here; for the bishops often let their house. It was therein that the plot against the Lord Protector, Somerset, was hatched in 1549. Its most famous tenant was Elizabeth's Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, who built himself a house in the garden (v. Hatton Garden). The only remains of the Bishop's Inn is St Ethelreda, now a Roman Catholic Church in Ely Place. It has been much rebuilt, but in form remains the fourteenth century building, and some of the original work still remains, especially the roof and some of the tracery in the windows.

ESSEX STREET (and House)

South side of Strand, opposite St Clement Danes Church. This street was built about 1682, when Essex House and gardens were broken up for building. Note several interesting doorways of this period still standing; and the arched entrance at the south end is probably the water-gate of old Essex House. Essex House was so called from its owner, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth; when she grew tired of his mismanagement, he rebelled, and was besieged in this house, captured and beheaded, 1600. His son, the great Parliamentary general, also lived here. But the house had much earlier history than under Essex family. Originally it was part of the Temple; leased by its owners, the Knights of St John, to bishops of Exeter, who built their town residence there: the bishop Stapleton, who did most of the building, was murdered by the mob, just as he was entering the north door of St Paul's, to which he was flying for sanctuary, during the riots against the King's favourites in 1326.

Stow says there was a chapel dedicated to the Holy Ghost between Essex House and Arundel House; it seems to have stood almost on the site of the present Unitarian Essex Hall, by a rather paradoxical coincidence. In Devereux Court, opposite, once existed “Tom's” and the “Grecian,” two famous coffee houses. At the former Pope and Akenside were visitors; and the latter saw much of Addison, Steele, Goldsmith and Foote: it was the “serious” coffee house; for the Tatler announced in its first number that “all learned articles from the Grecian” would come. After Reformation owned by Elizabeth's Earl of Leicester, who entertained Edmund Spenser there; and gave it to his step-son, the Earl of Essex, just mentioned.

(ST) ETHELBURGA CHURCH (Bishopsgate Street, City)

This church is one of the quaintest mediæval remains in the City, for it was in the part which escaped the Fire. The front is tightly packed with shops, after the familiar custom of those days. The church hidden behind is very small, perhaps a good example of the average parish church of early London. It scarcely measures 60 feet by 30, and the height is only 31 feet. It consists of a nave and a south aisle. The present structure is the Early English building, as it was modified about 1400, and by later restorations. Its early history is obscure, but it was in the patronage of the nuns of St Helen's Priory, adjoining it.

ST JAMES'S PALACE

The Gateway

FEATHERSTONE BUILDINGS (High Holborn)

This quaint court should be seen as an admirable example of a row of dwelling-houses of the early eighteenth century, with their “Queen Anne” porches. The probable date of these houses is 1725. No. 16-21 stand where was once the “Three Cups,” a famous inn. Charles Lamb's godfather, Field, kept an oilshop at the Holborn corner of this street; and Lamb's father and mother were actually in this house when Sheridan arrived with Miss Linley, whom he had escorted from Bath on her escape from the school there.

FISHMONGERS’ HALL (London Bridge, north end)

This, the fourth of the twelve great City companies, received its earliest existing legal recognition in letters patent granted by Edward III. in 1364, which, however, did little but confirm the immemorial grants made by his ancestors; it restricts the sale of fish in the City (except stock fish) to members of their mystery; and allowed them to choose four wardens to execute the laws of the trade. But the society had an assured position long before this: thus, we find them being fined by Henry II., and arranging a gorgeous pageant for Edward I. when he came back from Scotland. There were many later charters; and in 1537 the Fishmongers’ Company was united with the Stock-fishmongers, who had been separately incorporated. The position of the Hall of the Company has remained practically the same since 1320, at the latest. The present building replaced, 1833, the older one which was destroyed by the rebuilding of London Bridge. It was during Edward III. and Richard II.’s reigns that the Fishmongers’ Company rose to such a prominent place in the history of the City (v. Hist. Survey). One of their most famous members was Sir William Walworth, who slew Wat Tyler; and the dagger which is said to have done the deed is still preserved by the Company in its Hall; likewise the pall used at Walworth's funeral.

FITZROY SQUARE (Easton Road, N.W.)

This was planned by the Adam brothers; and the south and east sides built after their designs in 1790-4. The name comes from the family name of the then owners of the manor of Tottenham (v. Tottenham Court Road).

FLEET PRISON (Farringdon Street)

This prison (so called from the Fleet Brook which ran past it, until it was dried up or paved over) stood on the east of Farringdon Street, almost exactly where the Memorial Hall now stands. The prison was in existence at least as early as Richard I.’s reign, when he put it (and also the Palace of Westminster) under the charge of Osbert Longchamp, and his heirs, as an hereditary office, but another family claimed to have held that office since the Norman Conquest. The place continued specially under the control of the Crown for the holding of prisoners committed by the Star Chamber. When this Court of Justice was abolished in the reign of Charles I., the prison continued a more humble career as a place chiefly for debtors, which it continued to be until it was demolished in 1848. It was the clergymen who found themselves confined here who obligingly performed the hasty “Fleet Marriages,” which were made illegal in 1774.

FOUNDLING HOSPITAL (Bloomsbury)

Founded and built in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram as a place for deserted children; now used for the care of illegitimate children and to aid their mothers. Visitors are admitted on Mondays, 10-4, and to service in the chapel on Sunday morning and afternoon.

FRITH STREET (Soho Square)

This street dates from soon after the planning of the square; and many of the houses now standing are those built about 1680. No. 6 was the scene of Hazlitt's death, in the presence of Charles Lamb, in 1830. Edmund Kean, the actor, passed his infant years in this street; and Romilly was born here, 1757, the son of a jeweller, of a French refugee family.

FULHAM (S.W.)

This district is chiefly known to fame as having been the manor of the Bishops of London, probably from the end of the seventh century, when it is recorded, in an ancient deed, as being given to Bishop Erkenwald; and it has remained the property of his successors ever since, except for a short period during the Commonwealth. In the Domesday Survey it is called Fulcham, and estimated to have woods sufficient to feed 1000 pigs. The bishops in very early times made the manor house their summer residence; and since their palace in St Paul's Churchyard was given up, at the Reformation period, it has been their chief London palace. The present house still retains some of the sixteenth century hall and court built by Bishop Fitzjames in Henry VIII.’s time, but the hall was altered in the time of George II.; and the east side dates from Bishop Terrick, who came here in 1764. The church still retains its fourteenth-century tower, but there has been much rebuilding throughout. Many of the bishops of London have been buried here.

(ST) GABRIEL FENCHURCH (Fenchurch Street, City)

This church stood on the north side of Fenchurch Street to the east of Lime Street. It was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. In the beginning of the fourteenth century it is found in the patronage of the adjacent Priory of Holy Trinity, and was retained by the Crown at the Dissolution, and so remained until its destruction. The name is probably derived from the Anglo-French “fain” = hay, i.e. the church by the hay market, (compare Gracechurch Street = Grasschurch). Stow said it was so called from a fen, or marsh, which he thought was once here, but the evidence for this is vague.

(ST) GEORGE (St Botolph Lane, Eastcheap, City)

This church was in the hands of the Priory of St Saviour's, Bermondsey, in 1321; after the Dissolution in patronage of the Crown. The church was rebuilt after the Great Fire, but closed, 1895, and demolished. Stow said it was small, but had well preserved monuments.

ST GEORGE-IN-THE-EAST (Cannon Street Road, E.)

This church was built in 1729 by Hawksmoor (one of the fifty Queen Anne churches) when the parish was created out of the large mother parish of Stepney.

(ST) GEORGE, HANOVER SQUARE (East of New Bond Street)

This parish church was erected 1724; it was one of the fifty Queen Anne churches. Here Sir William Hamilton was married to Emma Hart, who became historical as Nelson's and Romney's Lady Hamilton (v. Hanover Square). Some very fine stained glass of the sixteenth century, in the Renaissance style, probably of Flemish work, has been inserted in a window of this church.

(ST) GEORGE, HART STREET (near British Museum)

Built 1731, by Hawksmoor, a pupil of Wren. The parish was taken out of the original parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields, when the west end of Bloomsbury began to develop as a residential quarter. The interior was remodelled in 1870 by demolishing the galleries.

GEORGE INN (Southwark, High Street)

This is a more or less living example of the famous Inns of Southwark, which chiefly stood in the High Street within a very little distance on either side of this one. The George appears in history as far back as 1554. The front, with its wooden gallery, still stands as it was rebuilt soon after a fire of 1676. Its neighbour, the “Tabard,” made immortal as the starting place of Chaucer's pilgrims, was swept away for a modern structure in 1875, after an existence since the Abbot of Hyde first built it in 1304 next his own town house, with a chapel attached. Another near neighbour disappeared in 1889, the “White Hart,” where Mr Pickwick met Sam Weller in the pages of the “Pickwick Papers.” But this inn was there long before that great event, for Jack Cade used it as his headquarters during the raid on London in 1450, which Shakespeare remembered when he makes Cade taunt his coward followers for leaving him at the White Hart (v. Henry VI. Part II., act 4, scene 8): “Hath my sword therefore broke through London Gates that you should leave me at the White Hart in Southwark?…You are all recreants and dastards and delight to live in slavery to the nobility.”

(ST) GEORGE THE MARTYR (Queen's Square, Bloomsbury)

Built in 1706; made a parish church soon afterwards as a new division of St Andrew's Holborn Parish. Entirely remodelled in 1868. Its date is significant of the period when this district was first covered with houses.

(ST) GEORGE THE MARTYR, SOUTHWARK (Borough High Street)

This church is recorded as early as 1122, when it was presented to Bermondsey Priory by the Ardernes. It exists to-day mainly in the form which it took when it was rebuilt in 1736, with subsequent restorations and alterations. Bouner, the Bishop of London, was buried here, 1569, having died in the adjacent Marshalsea Prison; here General Monk, who restored Charles II., married Anne Clarges, the daughter of a furrier. Buried here, Edward Cocker (d. 1676), the origin of the phrase “according to Cocker.” This church is mentioned by Dickens in “Little Dorrit.”

GERRARD STREET (near Leicester Square)

A street well known during the eighteenth century; it was built about 1685 on ground belonging to Lord Gerard, who had bought the house and grounds which James I.’s son had formed here. Dryden, the poet, lived and died (1700) at No. 43. No. 34-5 (rebuilt) was the house of Lord Mohun, who fought the duel with the Duke of Hamilton. Edmund Burke lived at No. 37 when he was working at the trial of Hastings. The “Turks Head” of this street was the original home of the “Literary Club,” founded by Reynolds and Johnson; and still earlier it had been the centre of the Art Club fathered by Thornhill and Hogarth; Thornhill had a house quite near in Dean Street.

(ST) GILES, CRIPPLEGATE

There has been a church here since Alfune built the first parish church of St Giles, about 1100, when the patronage came into the possession of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, who still hold it. The earlier church was burnt in 1545, and the rebuilding of that date is what we have to-day (with many restorations), for it was outside the area of the Great Fire. It is an example of the late perpendicular style. Milton was buried here, 1674; also Martin Frobisher, 1594, the northern explorer; Daniel Defoe, 1731; Foxe, 1587, of the Book of Martyrs. Stow notes three Boleyns buried between 1563-1587. Oliver Cromwell was married here in 1620. Note the remains of the London Wall in the churchyard (this bastion once contained a hermit's cell) and a chapel which was recorded as early as 1253: it was named St James on the Wall.

(ST) GILES-IN-THE-FIELDS (High Street, W.C.)

A hospital for lepers was founded here by Matilda, the wife of Henry I., about the year 1117, but it is probable there was a hamlet there before, though a bigger one grew up around the hospital. The village remained detached from the rest of London, except for a line of houses almost joining along Holborn, until the end of the seventeenth century. The mediæval parish church (which probably had a chapel for the hospital) was replaced by a new church, which Archbishop Laud consecrated in 1630, which, in turn, gave place to the existing one in 1733. George Chapman, who translated Homer, was buried here, 1634, and his tomb, by Inigo Jones, remains in the churchyard, and also that of Richard Pendrell, who helped Charles II. to escape after the battle of Worcester; also Lord Herbert of Cherburg, 1648; and Andrew Marvell, 1678. There is a 1669 monument to the Duchess Dudley. The irregular form of the adjacent High Street, Broad Street, and others near them is an interesting mark of their age, which goes back to a time long before the building of the rectangular modern streets all around them. At the dissolution of the religious houses St Giles went to Dudley, Viscount Lisle, who sold it to John Carew. Their mansion house was destroyed, and Denmark Street built on its site at the end of the seventeenth century. (See also Bloomsbury).

GOLDSMITH'S HALL (Gresham Street, City)

There has been a Hall of the Goldsmiths’ Company on this spot since 1357, when they bought the site. But the guild was recorded in 1180; it was first granted a charter of incorporation by Edward III. in 1327. The company's chief power and duty has always been the testing of gold and silver goods. The present Hall was built 1830-35. It contains the Roman altar which was discovered in digging the foundation: a portrait by Jansen of Lord Mayor Myddelton, the founder of the New River Co., 1613; the goblet which Elizabeth used at her coronation; and several portraits of royal personages: George III. and IV., etc. (The Hall is usually shown if written application is made).

GOLDEN SQUARE (Regent Street)

This square was laid out at the end of the Stuart period. In 1720 Strype describes it as “a very handsome open space, railed round and gravelled within; having very good houses inhabited by gentry on all sides.” Lord Bolingbroke lived here during the height of his career, in Queen Anne's reign; Mrs Cibber, the actress, in 1746. Angelica Kauffmann, the R.A., long lived in the centre house on the south side. Golden Square is a scene in Dickens's “Nicholas Nickleby,” and in Smollett's “Humphrey Clinker.”

GOUGH SQUARE (off Fleet Street)

No. 17 is the house wherein Dr Johnson wrote most of his great Dictionary; and the structure still remains as it was in his day. It is now a public museum of Johnson relics.

GRAY'S INN HALL

The Elizabethan Screen

GREY COAT HOSPITAL (near Tothill Fields, Westminster)

This quaint building was erected in 1698 as a school for the parish, and has been used for scholastic purposes ever since. It is a good example of the architecture of its period.

GRAY'S INN (Holborn)

This famous inn of lawyers was built on the manor of Portpool, which the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's granted to Reginald de Grey, Justiciar of Chester, 1294. He seems to have used it to house the students of law who followed him, and such students and lawyers have occupied it ever since. The beautiful gardens, planted (probably under the care of Bacon) about 1600, were a fashionable promenade after Restoration to Early Georgian time. The Hall, built 1560, is a delightful example of its period, and contains some very fine wood work in the oak screen of that Renaissance style, which should be compared with the similar one in the Middle Temple Hall. Both these screens are probably the work of Flemish or German craftsmen. In this Hall Shakespeare's “Comedy of Errors” was acted on December 28th, 1594, to a great audience. This Hall and that in the Middle Temple thus share the honour of being the only existing buildings which have witnessed a performance of Shakespeare's plays during his lifetime. They are therefore amongst the most interesting literary spots in all London. The courts about this Hall are surrounded by buildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The gateway on Holborn was built about 1630, within which lived Jacob Tonson (b. 1656), the bookseller and publisher. Cecil, Lord Burleigh, Laud, Francis Bacon, Southey the poet, were students here. Isaac Walton died here, 1635.

GROCER'S HALL (Princes Street, near the Bank of England, City)

This City Guild or Company was first incorporated in 1345, but they had existed long before that time as a fraternity, then called the Pepperers, under which name they are recorded in the reign of Henry II. They had occupied several other halls before they came to this present spot about 1425, when they acquired a house which had belonged to the great Fitzwalter family (v. Baynard Castle) since 1234 at latest. The existing Hall is the one which was built on the same spot in 1802 with alterations of 1827. It was in the Grocer's Hall that the Houses of Parliament met after Charles I. had attempted to seize the five resisting members in 1642; and we find the grocers subscribing £30 a week during 1643 for the support of the Parliamentary Army. William III. was made the Master of the Company in 1689, as Charles II. had been. Pitt and Canning and many other celebrities of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were members of this powerful Society.

GROSVENOR SQUARE (east of Park Lane, Hyde Park)

This Square is, in the main, the creation of the first thirty years of the eighteenth century. It was built on the estate of the Grosvenors, who afterwards became the Dukes of Westminster. Two Prime Ministers of the beginning of George III. reign, Lord North and Lord Rockingham, lived here. No. 37 was the house of the Earl of Harrowby, where Thistlewood and his men had arranged to murder the Cabinet ministers at a dinner party. At No. 22 Beckford entertained the Hamiltons and Nelson. John Wilkes died at No. 30.

GRUB STREET (now Milton Street, near Cripplegate)

This street had been during the Tudor period the abode of bow makers, who supplied the weapons for the practice butts in the near Artillery Ground, outside Moorgate. In the early Stuart period it had taken on the Puritan tinge of the back streets of the neighbourhood, and we find Andrew Marvell (d. 1678) writing of the “Nonconformist tricks,” “learnt of the Puritans in Grub Street.” Milton was living quite near in Barbican (q.v.) for a considerable time. But, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, these back streets harboured another kind of unfashionable outcasts: a set of small printers and their patrons, the literary hacks, who turned out literature of small worth for anybody who paid them to expound their views on politics or art. Johnson in his Dictionary summed it up: “Grub Street, the name of a street in London much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called Grub Street.”

THE GUILDHALL (City)

The earlier seat of City Government was probably a little to west of present building. Stow says he remembered “the ruins of the old court hall in Aldermanbury Street, which of late hath been employed as a carpenter's yard.” That was, perhaps, the earliest City hall; Aldermanbury, i.e. the bury (the house) of the aldermen, is recorded as early as 1130; as, apparently, giving its name to its ward. It was this earlier building of which Stow had seen the ruins: it may have been the survival of the palace of the Saxon Kings which was almost certainly in this near neighbourhood (v. St Alban, Wood Street). The present building was begun between 1411-1426, on the site of a smaller one. It is this Guildhall of 1411 which, in the main structure, stands to-day; though there has been much destruction and rebuilding. The Great Fire of 1666 burnt out the interior, but the eastern crypt of 1411 escaped; a temporary roof remained until 1861, when restored in style as before fire. South porch, in yard, stands as in 1425, with alterations of beginning of seventeenth century. South front built 1789. Western crypt dates from rebuilding after Fire. The building now contains a museum of city antiquities and a public library. Many great events have happened in Guildhall: e.g. Whittington and City gave banquet to Henry V. on return victorious from France; Buckingham asked City to accept Richard II. as King; trial of Lady Jane Grey and husband; Charles I. asked City to surrender the five rebel members of the Commons, 1642; the Lords of Parliament decided to make William III. King, 1689; the City entertained the Government on passing of the Reform Act of 1832.

ST SAVIOUR'S SOUTHWARK

Effigy of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes

HACKNEY

This district probably began as Hacon's ey = the island settlement of Hacon, a Danish name, in the marsh land, which is still named Hackney Marshes. In its earliest record, of 1252, it is called Hakeneye. In the Domesday survey it is not mentioned by name, for it was then almost certainly included in the great St Paul's manor of Stepney (q.v.). In 1233 the Knights of the Temple bought some land here, and at an early date the Priory of Clerkenwell and St Mary Spital (q.v.) did likewise. The rapacious Henry VIII. got hold of this district and disposed of it to the Wentworths and Earls of Northumberland, and some of it passed to the Rowes, who sold it to the Tyssens in 1600. This district was a fashionable “country house” retreat during the Tudor and Stuart periods: the Earls of Northumberland, the Lord Brookes, Sir Ralph Sadlier (of Elizabeth's government), Sutton of the Charterhouse (q.v.) all lived here. In the map of 1763, Hackney is still marked merely as one of a little group of villages with the neighbouring Dalston, Homerton, and Clapton. Brooke House still stands between the Brooke's and Kenninghall Roads, with much of its Tudor building still retained.

HAGGERSTON (East side of Kingsland Road, N.W.)

At the time of the Domesday Survey, this manor of Hergotestane, as it was then called, was in the possession of one Gernon. It does not seem to be mentioned again until 1535, when it is recorded as part of the late possessions of the dissolved priory of St Mary Spital (q.v.).

HALF MOON STREET (Piccadilly)

This street, built about 1730, has held many famous tenants. Boswell entertained his literary celebrities here; Fanny Burney lived in the east corner house at the Piccadilly end. Hogg says Shelley and his first wife were here in 1813.

HANOVER SQUARE (off Oxford Street)

This was laid out, as its name commemorates, during the first years of the Hanoverian Georges’ period, about 1720. Strype, writing in 1720, says: “Among these suburban territories on this side, on the way towards Tyburn, there are certain new and splendid buildings called, in honour of his present Majesty, Hanover Square; some finished and some creating, consisting of many complete noble houses. One whereof is taken by my Lord Cowper, late Lord High Chancellor of England. And it is reported that the common place of execution of malefactors at Tyburn shall be appointed elsewhere, as somewhere near Kingsland; for the removing any inconveniences or annoyances that might thereby be occasioned to that Square.” However, the executions continued there until 1783, when the scene was shifted to Newgate, in the City.

HATTON GARDEN (Holborn)

This street was built about 1650, on the site of the great house which Sir Christopher Hatton had made for himself in the garden of Ely Place (q.v.), the palace of the Bishops of Ely. Hatton's widow married Sir Edward Coke, and gave a great banquet there to James I. and a brilliant assembly. The house was demolished about the middle of the seventeenth century; and Hatton Garden, or large Court, and the adjacent streets took its place. It still retains some interesting houses and doorways of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mirabeau lived in this street in 1784.

HAYMARKET (north of Pall Mall, east)

This street takes its name from the Hay Market, here established in 1664, and continued until the time of George IV., 1830. Addison and Nance Oldfield both lived in this street, and Moreland, the painter of farmyards, was born here, 1763. The Queen's Theatre (now His Majesty's) was first built in 1705; this became the famous first Opera House of London; here Handel's “Esther” and his “Acis and Galatea” were first performed in this country, 1732. The masquerades of these early days delighted many and shocked the rest. Here sang Grisi, Tamburini, Lablache and Mario between 1824 and 1840; but in 1847 most of them deserted to begin an opera at Covent Garden, and Sims Reeves, Piccolomini and Nilsson took their place. On the opposite side of the Haymarket is the Haymarket Theatre, first built, 1721, slightly to north of the present building, and began with a French company. This was Foote's theatre for thirty years from 1747. It was rebuilt, as it is at present, in 1820: Buckstone ended his management in 1879, when the Bancrofts career began (with a remodelled interior).

GREAT ST HELEN'S CHURCH

The “Nuns’ Grating”

(ST) HELEN'S CHURCH (Bishopsgate, City)

Tradition asserts that the Emperor Constantine built the first church here, in honour of his mother, Helen, who claimed to have discovered the true Cross when a pilgrim to Palestine. There was certainly a church here before the Norman Conquest, for the body of St Edmund the Martyr was brought here in 1010 for three years to save it from the Danes. This was possibly made the chapel of the nunnery which was founded by William, son of William the Goldsmith, about 1216; the older parish church had formerly been in the patronage of St Paul's Cathedral, who authorised the new foundation. In 1285 Edward I. presented to the priory what was claimed to be a piece of the true Cross, as was fitting for an Order with such a patroness Saint, and he brought it himself, accompanied by his great nobles. The Priory was dissolved by Henry VIII. in 1538, and the church given for the use of the parish. The Leathersellers’ Company acquired the nunnery buildings, and in 1799 built St Helen's Place on the site. The priory was to the north of the church, and the door which connected the two still exists in the north wall. The church was beyond the area of the Great Fire, and the two existing naves and part of the south transept are of the thirteenth to fifteenth century; the two chapels of the transept are of the fourteenth century, the remainder, of the fifteenth century. Inigo Jones restored the church in 1631; the south porch and oak porches of both south and west are his. The pulpit is about same date. The double nave is curious, the only explanation being that one was for the parishioners and the others for the nuns; however, it does not appear that there was any parish priest until after the Dissolution.

St Helen's has been called “The Westminster Abbey of the City,” because of its many tombs of great City dignitaries. Note those of Sir Thomas Gresham, d. 1579; Sir Julius Cæsar (by Nicholas Stone); Sir W. Pickering, d. 1574; Sir John Crosby, d. 1475; Sir John Spencer, Lord Mayor, 1594. There are also seven brasses on the floors of the chapels, the earliest, a male and female of about 1400 work: the last one of the same and early sixteenth centuries. A William Shakespere was a parishioner in 1598, perhaps the dramatist. In this church are also the fine alabaster effigies of Outwich and his wife, which were brought here from St Martin Outwich when it was demolished; these are of a slightly earlier date than the Crosby tomb.

HERALDS’ COLLEGE (Queen Victoria Street, City)

The original house was built by Stanley, first Earl of Derby, who married Henry VII.’s mother, the Countess of Richmond. This Derby house was granted by Queen Mary, 1555, to the Garter King of Arms and the other members of the Heralds’ College, as their guild house, with whose successors it still remains. It was rebuilt in 1683 after the Great Fire, mainly as we now find it, allowing for the restorations made in 1877. There are various antiquities preserved here: the sword, dagger and ring of James IV. of Scotland, who died at Flodden 1513; portraits of the Earls of Warwick and Earl of Shrewsbury; and the pedigrees of the nobles and gentry of the kingdom. The Dukes of Norfolk are presidents of the College by hereditary right; and there are kings-at-arms, heralds and poursuivants (with picturesque names, Rouge Croix, Bluemantle, Portcullis, and Rouge Dragon); Camden and Dugdale are famous names on the list of its members. The College still performs its business of investigating and recording pedigrees, granting arms, and preserving the ceremonial rules of the Court functions.

HOLBORN

This name is found in the Domesday Survey where a hamlet is recorded near the Holeburne, i.e. the stream running in the hollow; which is almost certainly the main stream which ran into the Fleet estuary; in other words, the stream which was later known as the Fleet, or sometimes as Turnmill Brook. It ran down from the Hampstead and Highgate hills, passing King's Cross on the way to the Thames, which it entered at Blackfriars Bridge along the line of the present Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street. The name of Holeburn Street is recorded in 1249. The early form of the word does not admit of its origin as “Oldbourne,” the old stream which ran down from a spring on the side of Holborn Hill, which stream may very possibly have been there all the same, for there was Rug-mere and marshy ground on the top of the plateau (v. Bloomsbury). The origin of the street goes back at least to the Roman road which turned off from the St Albans Road at Tyburn corner (the Marble Arch), though the earliest road was at first to the south of the existing Holborn and Oxford Streets, and ran through the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields.

GREAT ST HELEN CHURCH

Tomb of Oteswich and his Wife

HOLLAND HOUSE (Kensington)

This great mansion was originally built for Sir Walter Cope in 1607. His daughter married Henry Rich, a Court favourite who became Lord Kensington and then Earl of Holland; he added two wings and arcades by Inigo Jones. Brilliant entertaining began. Holland was executed by the Parliamentarians in 1649, but his son succeeded him and became Earl of Warwick, 1673. The house then shared by various people: William Penn here in James II.’s time. The widow of the sixth Earl of Warwick married Addison, 1716, who lived here until his death, three years later. The house passed in 1746 to Henry Fox, who had amassed money by means of his public offices; and entertained here his brilliant friends, Horace Walpole, George Selwyn and others. He was created Lord Holland. His grandson, the third Baron, defied society with a divorced wife, who gathered around her the famous Salon of Holland House, without feminine assistance. Its frequent guests during the following years were Ch. James Fox, Erskine the lawyer, Sheridan, Lord Greville and Windham the politicians; Dr Parr and Monk Lewis; Tom Moore and Thomas Campbell, the poets; Wilkie and Hoppner for artists; Humphry Davy for science. Later came Romilly and Brougham; Palmerston and Melbourne and Macaulay; Grote and Dickens. This famous lordly host died in 1840. His son rebuilt parts of the house, and also entertained, but in less classic style; his wife even introduced dancing and performing dogs. The title ended with him; and another branch, the Earls of Ilchester, now holds possession of this house.

HOLY TRINITY, ALDGATE

In 1108 Maud, wife of Henry I., founded the Priory of Holy Trinity, endowing it with land outside the neighbouring gate of the City (Aldgate) and other possessions. Three or four parishes were united within its precincts (v. St Katherine Cree). It became very rich, and had special privileges of trading, within its bounds, where it was not necessary to be a freeman of the City. The possessions of the Soke of Aldgate which the Knightenguild brought to the Priory when the members entered that ecclesiastical order in 1115, carried with them the right of the prior to be the alderman of Portsoken Ward. But the priory had decayed in wealth before the Dissolution, when the whole place was given to Sir Thomas Audley, whose daughter married the Duke of Norfolk: it then became known as “the Duke's Place” (still recorded by Duke Street). However, the Duke was beheaded for treason in 1572, and his son sold it in 1592 to the City Corporation. This neighbourhood became the Jewish quarter for 200 years after their readmission into England by Oliver Cromwell.

It is suggestive to note that it was to this Priory of Holy Trinity that the Marshall of the City, by custom, marched with his men after he had accepted, or confirmed, his office by a formal ceremony at St Paul's. It is possible that the Knightenguild, which was the ancient body possessing the Port Soken Ward, may have been charged with the military guarding of the City, and when this duty was transferred to the Fitzwalters (v. Baynard Castle) as City Marshalls or Standard Bearers, it may have been held a necessary, or symbolic, deed to visit the house which had received the Knightenguild within its walls. It seems more likely that this guild had the limited duty of military service rather than the general powers of City government which some have ascribed to it.

HOLY TRINITY, THE MINORIES (near the Tower of London)

This church, and the street running north from the Tower of London, commemorates the home of the Nunnery of the Grace of the Blessed Mary, founded there in 1293 by Edmund, Earl of Lancaster (the brother of Edward I.), and his wife Blanche. It was also known as the Abbey of St Clare, their patroness saint. Their own name for themselves was “Sorores minores,” hence the name of the street. They were much respected and endowed by the citizens and the nobles. They surrendered their house, in 1538, to the Crown, who granted the property to the Bishops of Bath and Wells for a town residence, but they soon exchanged it again, and it then passed to the Duke of Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane Grey, who both died at the block (v. St Botolph, Aldgate). The ground, with its remaining monastic buildings, then passed into the hands of small tenants; while the old chapel became the parish church, and is now used for a parish room. It was several times restored, and was taken down in 1740, except the north wall, which is all that remains of the earlier building. But some of the monuments remain: a brass to Constance Lucy; and tombs to Sir John Pelham, and the first Lord Dartmouth. The father of the latter lived in this Abbey's remains, in the seventeenth century; his grandfather was a Washington, the ancestor of George Washington; on the Legge tomb in this church can be seen the stars and stripes of the family arms, which afterwards became the national flag of the United States of America.

HOXTON, N.E. (north-west of Shoreditch Station)

This district is recorded in the Domesday Survey as Hochestone, a manor then in the possession of the Canons of St Paul's. Stow wrote of it as “a large streete with houses on both sides, and it is a Prebend belonging to Powles Church in London, but of Sœrsditch [Shoreditch] parish.” It was just beginning to be absorbed into the suburbs of London about the year 1750. The adjacent district of Haggerstone (q.v.) on the east side of the Kingsland Road is, like Hoxton, part of the old parish of Shoreditch (q.v.)

HYDE PARK

The manor of Hyde had been in the possession of the Abbots of Westminster since Geoffrey de Mandeville gave it to them soon after the Conquest; at the Dissolution it became the property of the Crown, where it has since remained, except for a short alienation at the time of the Commonwealth. During the Tudor period it was still a wild park for hunting. It was in Charles I.’s time that it first became fashionable, and still more so after Charles II. built round it a brick wall, when it became the authorised place for society persons to take the air, as it remains to this day. The Hyde Park corner gates and screen were erected 1828.

INNHOLDERS’ HALL (College Street, City)

The existing building replaced an earlier one, destroyed by the Great Fire, which Stow called a “fair house.” This second hall was designed by Wren, and assistants, 1670, and still stands, except the College Street front and court room which were built 1886. The old hall has wainscotting and panelled ceiling, and the reception room possesses a ceiling ascribed to Wren, and panelling. Note the 1670 front in Little College Street. There is some seventeenth-century glass, preserved from the earlier building, in the window on the staircase. The Innholders were formally registered as a guild in 1446, and more completely incorporated in 1515.

IRONMONGERS’ HALL (Fenchurch Street, City)

The first formal charter of this guild was granted by Edward IV. in 1463, but it has a much earlier history, from 1351, at least. The Hall is mentioned by Stow as standing here in his time: the existing one is the rebuilding of 1750.

ISLINGTON (N.)

This ancient village appears in the Domesday Survey as Isendone; at that time the greater part belonged to the Canons of St Paul's Cathedral, who still retained a diminished part until 1850, when it was sold by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The Berners family (v. Barnsbury) had possession of the greater part by the end of the thirteenth century. Stow quotes Hall as writing in the reign of Henry VIII.: “The inhabitants of the towns about London, as Iseldone, Hoxton, Shorsditch and others had so enclosed the common fields with hedges and ditches, that neither the young men of the City might shoot, nor the ancient persons walk about for their pleasure in these fields.” The passage is quoted as an example of the detached way in which Londoners once talked of the inhabitants of the villages which are now absorbed within the bounds of London. Islington remained a detached village until the beginning of the nineteenth century, and was only partly surrounded in 1850. The main street has still the appearance of a big country market town. The mother church of the parish is St Mary's, of ancient but uncertain foundation; two sixteenth-century brasses are still preserved in the more modern eighteenth-century building. (See also Canonbury.) The nunnery of Bromley by Bow had the patronage of the living for a long time.

(ST) JAMES, CLERKENWELL (Clerkenwell Green)

This nunnery is said by Stow to have been founded in 1100 by the Briset who also founded the adjacent St John's Priory, but later opinion follows Mr Round in ascribing its origin to about the year 1145. It was dissolved in Henry VIII.’s reign, and passed through various lay hands, while gradually the buildings disappeared. William Cavendish, who became Duke of Newcastle, soon obtained possession of the land, and built Newcastle House on it. Here lived the famous Duchess of Newcastle who wrote the Memoirs of the Stuart period. It was her husband who commanded “Newcastle's Lambs,” a cavalry regiment which fought for Charles I. They both wandered in poverty on the Continent during the Commonwealth, but their possessions were restored to them at the Restoration; and Charles II. came to visit them here, also Evelyn. They lived in great state and patronised genius. This was the Duchess who always awoke her footman to write down any literary thoughts which came to her at night. The Duke died in 1676 in this house. It was demolished in 1793; its position is marked by Newcastle Place, built on its site. The chapel of the sisters was made a parish church when their house was dispersed: it was rebuilt in 1792 in the form it still maintains. This is the only direct relic left to represent the old nunnery; but the Close area is still marked by Clerkenwell Close, which was built round with houses after the Dissolution. Here lived Sir Thomas Challoner in Elizabeth's reign, and his descendants after him. The Earl of Clanricarde, who married Philip Sidney's widow, lived near the Challoners in 1619.

(ST) JAMES, GARLICKHITHE (Upper Thames Street, City)

The earliest record is in 1170, and it appears to have been in the patronage of the Abbot of Westminster until the Dissolution when it passed to the Bishops of London. It was rebuilt by Wren, 1683, and since restored. It took its name from the garlick hithe, or landing place, near by. In the older church was buried Richard Lyons, who was beheaded by the rioters during Wat Tyler's possession of the City in 1381: he was a wine merchant; also some of the Stanleys, who had lived in a mansion where the Heralds’ College (q.v.) now stands. The present church contains much fine woodwork in the interior fittings.

ST JAMES'S PALACE

There had been a hospital of St James, near Charing village, since the days of Henry II. at latest, and it was to this institution that Edward I. granted the privilege of holding a fair for seven days around the festival of St James. The hospital was mainly endowed by the citizens of London, and was in the charge of monks and nuns for the housing of fourteen leprous women—which fact accounts for its remote situation. It was accused of great irregularities of discipline during its career. It was seized by Henry VIII., who pensioned off the sisters then holding benefits, and built himself “a goodly Manor, annexing thereunto a park closed round with a wall of brick.” This manor house was the first St James's Palace: of it still remain the old brick gateway and adjoining buildings at the Pall Mall, or north-east corner: and the Chapel Royal contained therein, with the initials of Henry and Anne Boleyn (H.A.) on the mantelpiece of the Presence Chamber. The Cleveland Row part was built in 1735 for the Prince of Wales of that time. The Palace became a place of popular royal residence after the Stuarts: before them it had been eclipsed by Whitehall. Charles I. was imprisoned here the nights before his execution. Charles II. was born here. William III. made it his first residence in London; and, until the fourth of the Hanoverian Georges, it was the centre of the English Court—”the Court of St James” is the scene of the early Hanoverian State functions, and the title on Royal decrees. It held its preeminence until Buckingham Palace took its place.

(ST) JAMES'S PARK

This was “the Park closed round about with a wall of brick, now called St James Park, serving indifferently to the said manor [of St James] and to the manor or palace of White Hall,” which is so described by Stow. At first it was merely the fields connecting the two royal palaces. It was Charles II. who first took great pains, enlarging it and converting it after the Dutch manner of straight lined ponds and paths, which he had seen during his exile in Holland. But these were ruined by the later curving lines which George IV. preferred, which still remain much as Nash planned them in 1829. Through this park walked Charles to the scaffold; and here Cromwell and Whitelocke passed hints as to the possibility of the former taking the Crown. Pepys and Evelyn have much to say about this place of recreation, where Charles II. loved to stroll; and Duck Island has existed since he decoyed duck there. In later days it was much haunted by Goldsmith and his friends.

(ST) JAMES, PICCADILLY

This church was built for the first time in 1684, by Christopher Wren, for the new parish of St James, which was then created out of St Martin-in-the-Fields to provide for the neighbourhood which grew up round St James and Piccadilly immediately after the Restoration. It has been very little altered since first erected. The font is by Grinling Gibbons. The whole structure, with its courtyard, is very quietly pleasing.

(ST) JAMES'S SQUARE (off Pall Mall)

This was the beginning of the district which sprang up round St James's Palace after the Restoration of 1660. It was built about 1665-70. The following famous tenants have occupied it: No. 31 (Norfolk House), the older house, hidden behind, was the residence of the founder of the Square, the Earl of St Albans: George III. born here; the 1742 house was built in front by the Duke of Norfolk; at No. 10 have resided Pitt, Lady Blessington, the Earl of Derby, who was Prime Minister three times in the middle of the nineteenth century; and Mr Gladstone (observe the link extinguishers at the door); No. 15 (Lichfield House, built 1765), from whose windows the Regent displayed the trophies of Waterloo to the crowd, and where O'Connell met the Whigs; No. 17, built 1725 where Queen Caroline lived during her trial in 1820; No. 20 (Apsley House) was built in its present form by Robert Adam in 1774.

(ST) JAMES'S STREET (Piccadilly)

This street was first built soon after the Restoration of 1660, when the older families made a new start outside the City and nearer the Court at Whitehall. But its main history is of the eighteenth century. The following places should be observed: No. 28, Boodles Club; No. 37, White's Club (q.v.) on the east side near the top; No. 60 (the north corner of Park Place), Brooks's Club (q.v.); No. 50 was the high-play “Crockfords,” which flourished between 1827 and 1844; No. 86, The Thatched House Club, which was probably an inn standing where is now the Conservative Club, No. 74, in the mediæval days of St James Hospital (v. St James's Palace); it was, from the early Georgian period until about 1843, one of the most famous eating houses of its time, where all the famous men of the day may be added to it in the travellers’ imagination: e.g. Swift wrote to Stella, 1711; “I entertained our Society at the Thatched House Tavern to-day at dinner. But brother Bathurst sent for wine, the house affording none”: but that was in its earlier and more humble days. Round these Clubs much of the history of the street centres. Edmund Waller, Pope, Charles James Fox, and Gibbon all lived in this street, and the last died at the south corner of Little St James Street, 1794. At No. 8 Lord Byron lived in 1811, the year he published “Childe Harold” and became famous. At the south-west corner, one door from the end, once stood the St James's Coffee House, made famous by Addison and Harley, Steele and Swift, and later by Goldsmith and Garrick. It lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. It was the Whigs’ house, while White's Club was the Tory house.

JERMYN STREET (Piccadilly)

This was laid out about 1667. Named after Henry Jermyn, Earl of St Albans, the owner of this district. Its famous residents have included: Colonel Churchill (after the great Duke of Marlborough) lived five doors from the west end on the south side, 1675-81; Sir Isaac Newton; Sir Walter Scott was seized with his last illness at No. 76 (now Turkish Baths); Gray, the poet; Sydney Smith, No. 81; Secretary Craggs, Addison's friend, died here 1721.

(ST) JOHN THE BAPTIST, THE PRIORY OF (Holywell Lane, Shoreditch)

The name of this lane is now the only local sign of the Priory of St John Baptist (called Holywell Priory because it was beside one of the chief wells of the City), which was, according to Stow, “a house of Nuns, of old time founded by a bishop of London; Stephen Gravesend, Bishop of London, about the year 1318 was a benefactor thereto; re-edified by Sir Thomas Lovel, Knight of the Garter, who builded much there, in the reign of Henry VII. and of Henry VIII. He endowed this house with fair lands, and was buried in a large chapel by him builded for that purpose.” In his notes he added the information: “Near adjoining are builded two houses for the show of activities, comedies, tragedies and histories, for recreation. The one of them is named the Curtain in Holy Well; the other The Theatre.” These were the two early theatres of the Elizabethan period (v. Historical Survey). It is possible that the neighbourhood of this well had been an ancient place for dramatic performances, as in the case of Clerkenwell (q.v.). “The Curtain” was built in the precincts of the Priory (after its dissolution in 1539), about the year 1576, near the middle of the existing Curtain Road. Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet” was first produced here; also Ben Jonson's “Every man in his own Humour.” It stood about where St James's Church now stands.

(ST) JOHN THE BAPTIST (Dowgate Hill)

This church once stood at the north end of Dowgate Hill, where it had been founded at least as early as the eleventh century, on the bank of the then flowing Walbrook. A pre-Norman grave stone was discovered in its churchyard. Stow calls it St John upon Walbrook, though the stream had practically dried up by his day. The church had originally been in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, who gave it to St Helen's Priory, at the end of the fourteenth century. It then passed to the Crown at the Dissolution. It was not rebuilt after its destruction by the Great Fire of 1666.

(ST) JOHN'S CHURCH (Clerkenwell)

It was not until 1723 that the revived remains of the church of the ancient Priory of St John (q.v.) were made the parish church of the district which had once been the precincts of the priory. But little had been left of it after the Protector Somerset had claimed his share of the stones to build Somerset Palace, though a part of the choir and side chapel lasted longer and were restored by Cardinal Pole in the reign of Mary I. But above ground there is now little that is old to the eye, though the main walls (except the west) of the mediæval building still stand. However, the crypt beneath has survived all the turmoil above, even the burning of Wat Tyler in 1381, and here still remain much as it was when it was consecrated in 1185. It therefore represents the oldest age of the priory. Like the present church of St Bartholomew the Great, the part which now is the whole church was once merely the choir of the greater building.

(ST) JOHN THE EVANGELIST (Watling Street)

The position of this church (not rebuilt after the Great Fire) is marked by a small open spot at the corner of Friday Street. Stow describes it as a “small parish church.” It was formerly dedicated to St Werburga; it is so called in 1249. It is first discovered in the patronage of the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, and passed to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury at the Dissolution.

(ST) JOHN THE EVANGELIST (Smith Square, Westminster)

One of Queen Anne's fifty churches: finished 1728. Some of the streets in the immediate neighbourhood are of about the same date: North Street, Cowley Street, and the North side of Smith Square.

(ST) JOHN'S GATE (Clerkenwell)

This is a remaining fragment of the Priory of St John (q.v.). It is the gateway (after severe restoration) of the buildings which replaced the ones destroyed by Wat Tyler in 1381, and formed the main south entrance. It was finished by Prior Docwra about 1504, the last touch to the restoration of the priory which had taken over a hundred years. This is all that remains of the priory except foundations and the main walls and the crypt of the St John's Church (q.v.). This gate-house in 1731 became the printing office of the Gentleman's Magazine, and here Dr Samuel Johnson often came with his numerous articles for publication therein; and many articles he wrote in the gate-house itself. Garrick first appeared on trial as an actor on a stage set up in the large room of this house. This building has lately, 1876, become the home of the new Order of St John of Jerusalem, with its attached St John's Ambulance Association.

(ST) JOHN OF JERUSALEM, THE PRIORY OF (Clerkenwell)

This Priory of St John, at Clerkenwell, was the chief English house of the Knights Hospitallers (founded at Jerusalem in the year 1048, and becoming a military order in 1118). It is usually held to have been endowed in 1100 by Jorden, Lord Briset, and his wife Muriel, who gave ten acres of land; but Mr Round considers that it was founded in 1145 or thereabouts. The Knights Hospitallers were the great rivals of the Knights Templars and they succeeded to the latters’ Estates (v. Temple). Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, consecrated both their chapels in 1185, when he was visiting England. They grew very wealthy, and therefore unpopular, like the Templars, and the priory was wrecked by the followers of Wat Tyler in 1381, and burned for seven days. The rebuilding was not complete until 1504. Of this later priory the restored gate-house still remains; and the crypt of the adjacent church of St John is a part of the original church of the first foundation in the twelfth century (v. St John's Gate and St John's Church). The priory was dissolved in 1540, and, after being at first used as a military storehouse, it was partly destroyed that the material might be used to build the Protector Somerset's house in the Strand (v. Somerset House). As in the case of St James's Nunnery, near by, the precincts became a fashionable place of residence after the Dissolution. Bishop Burnet lived at the north-west corner from 1708 until his death in 1715. The Earls of Carlisle and Essex and Lord Townshend also lived in St John's Square during the reign of Charles II.

(ST) JOHN'S WOOD (N.W.)

This district takes its name from its mediæval owners, the Priory of St John, Clerkenwell (q.v.). At the Dissolution it became a possession of the Crown, and was used as a hunting ground by Henry VIII. and James I.

(ST) JOHN ZACHARY (Noble Street, near Aldersgate, City)

Only the churchyard is left, for the church was not rebuilt after the Great Fire destroyed it. It takes its name from Zacary, to whom the Canons of St Paul's granted it, in the twelfth century, “in alms for the term of his life, provided that he visit the mother church at Christmas and at the feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, every year, offering in charity 42 pence each time.” The patronage remained with the Chapter until the end.

(ST) KATHERINE COLEMAN (Fenchurch Street, City)

Stow says that this church was so called because it was near the old garden which had belonged to Colman's Haw (or house, cf. Basinghall), a mansion which had stood here. It was in the patronage of St Martin-le-Grand at its first record of 1346, then went to the Abbey of Westminster and to the Bishops of London since the Dissolution. Rebuilt, as it stands, 1734.

(ST) KATHERINE CREE (Leadenhall Street, City)

The Priory of Holy Trinity (q.v.) had absorbed the parish of St Katherine (and three others) in 1107, and the parishioners worshipped in the priory church until 1280-1308, when this parish church was again built. This was rebuilt, 1630, and consecrated by Laud. The interior is said to be by Inigo Jones: the tower being still of an earlier Tudor Church, built in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Tomb of Nicholas Throckmorton, Chief Butler of England and friend of Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth. Tradition that Holbein was buried here; he certainly died near by. The patronage was in the hands of the Priory of Holy Trinity, and at the Dissolution it passed to Audley, who bequeathed it to Magdalene College, Cambridge, to whom it still belongs, presenting alternately with the Corporation of London. Bishop Laud's profuse ceremonials at the consecration of the church were one of the charges made against him at his trial by the Puritans.

(ST) KATHERINE, THE HOSPITAL OF (Tower Docks and Regent's Park)

This religious body was first founded and endowed by Matilda, the Queen of Stephen, 1148. It was reconstituted as a charity by Eleanor, the Queen of Edward I., 1273, to maintain some sisters and twenty-four poor persons, and also three guests who were to say masses for the soul of Henry III. and his royal ancestors. It was subsequently richly endowed by Queen Philippa, Edward III., Richard II., Henry VI., the Duke of Exeter, and other great personages. Even Henry VIII. reversed his usual process and founded the Guild of St Barbara in connection therewith, and did not dissolve it when the other religious houses were seized. Nevertheless, the lands were transferred to the Crown in 1546 and a layman was appointed as its warden, which was henceforth considered a royal reward for services to the Crown. The charitable uses continued as before in form, but the master got the better part of the income. In 1698 there was a state inquiry by the Lord Chancellor, and the society was ordered to use its endowments to better purpose, which it accomplished by maintaining a school for boys and girls. In 1825 the whole institution was swept away to make room for the St Katherine Docks; and it migrated, with its old uses, to Regent's Park, whither a fine canopied tomb of the Duke of Exeter and his wife was removed, and still exists. Stow says that the choir of St Katherine's was once almost the equal of St Paul's itself for musical skill.

KENNINGTON

In Domesday this manor is called Chenintune; and it was at that time in the possession of Teodric, the King's goldsmith, who had also held it under the Confessor. The name is derived from the Saxon words meaning the settlement of the Cennings or Cenesingas. By the time of Richard I. it was in the immediate hands of the Crown, and Edward I. was in the habit of residing there for the purposes of hunting. Edward II. gave the manor to his favourite Despensers, but on their fall from power it came back to the Crown in the time of Edward III., who included it as part of the estates of the Duchy of Cornwall, to which it belongs to this day. It was to this royal manor house that John of Gaunt and Henry Percy fled from the London mob to the protection of the young Richard II. and his mother, who were then living there (v. Itinerary III.). Henry VII. stayed here before his coronation. James I. rebuilt it for his son Henry, Prince of Wales, but it was destroyed or deserted at the time of the Commonwealth. The site of this ancient royal palace is now marked by Park Place and Park Street.

KENSINGTON

In Cunningham's “Handbook of London,” 1850 edition, this district is called “a village, a mile and a half from Hyde Park Corner—almost a part of London.” In Domesday Book the manor is called Chenesitum; then the property of the Bishops of Coutances, who had Aubrey de Vere as tenant. The de Veres became Earls of Oxford, with their manor house at Earl's Court, but chiefly absentees. In 1107 a portion of the manor round the church was given to the Abbots of Abingdon, hence church named St Mary Abbot's. In 1526 the last of the Earls of Oxford died, and about the same period the Dissolution gave the Abbots’ manor to the Crown. By the beginning of James I.’s reign Sir Walter Cope was in possession; he built Holland House (q.v.). Kensington became fashionable when William III. bought the Earl of Nottingham's house, 1089, and transformed it into Kensington Palace (q.v.). Gilbert Scott's “Gothic” erection took the place of the older parish church of St Mary Abbots in 1869.

KENSINGTON PALACE (Kensington Gardens, West of Hyde Park)

Originally built by Heneage Finch, who became Lord Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham in the reign of Charles II. William III. bought this Nottingham House, 1689, and ordered Sir Christopher Wren to enlarge it, but north wing and part of the courtyard and the front and south side probably are still the original building. Interior is much decorated by Grinling Gibbons. The King's Gallery and Orangery are fine examples of Wren's work. Kent built the new State rooms for George I. (Queen Caroline's drawing-room, the Cupola room and the King's drawing-room) and remodelled Wren's grand staircase. George II. also made many alterations. This great house remained a principal royal palace until George II. died there. Then it became the residence of minor members of the royal family, and Queen Victoria was born here, 1819. The chief features of the gardens were planned in George I.’s reign, and executed by Bridgeman under the control of Queen Caroline and Sir Robert Walpole. Here, in later days, walked Chateaubriand and Madame Recamier. The Broad Walk was the fashionable promenade all during the eighteenth century.

KENSINGTON SQUARE (Kensington High Street)

Already begun to be built in the time of James II., and completed when William III. brought fashion to Kensington: it revived in the days of Thackeray (who lived during 1846-53 at 16 Young Street, leading from the square; he wrote “Pendennis” and “Esmond” here). He makes this square a prominent scene in the latter book, for “Beatrix” and Lady Castlewood are pictured as living there. In this square lived the beautiful and witty Duchesse de Mazarin, once beloved by Charles II., after her day was over. Steele was here in 1708, and Addison in 1710, and Talleyrand, at No. 36-7, in 1792, when he escaped from riotous Paris. John Stuart Mill lived at No. 18, and J. R. Green, the historian, at No. 14. In this square lodged many of the foreign ambassadors and court officials in early Georgian days. Many of the houses are still of the original seventeenth century building, and contain such characteristic appointments as “powder closets” for the dressing of wigs.

KENTISH TOWN

The earliest form of this name is Kaunteloe (probably from the name, Cantlo, of the ecclesiastical family possessing it); it was at the time of the Domesday survey a part of the parish of St Pancras, and was a prebendal manor possessed by a Canon of St Paul's. Dallaway says that in Henry V.’s time Walter Bruges, the Garter King at Arms, had a country house there, where he entertained the Emperor Sigismund. The later name is Kentistonne. It came into the hands of Charles Pratt, Earl Camden's family, in the eighteenth century, and this village was absorbed by the suburbs of London in the middle of the nineteenth.

KING'S CROSS

The name by which this spot is now known is of very modern creation, 1836, because of a statue of George IV. which was then set up, but soon removed. Its older name was Battle Bridge, so called after a bridge which there crossed the Fleet river (v. Holborn), and the traditional battle which was once fought near it. It is uncertain whether this was the battle between Alfred and the Danes, or the still earlier fight between the Roman legions under Suetonius Paulinus and the British under their Queen, Boadicea, in A.D. 62. But it is expressly said by Tacitus that the Roman general did not make London the seat of war, but that he left it to the enemy. Nevertheless, the battle took place after the sack of London, so it is possible that it occurred here on Suetonius Paulinus's pursuit of the Britons who had evaded him in the remotest parts. An interesting fact, besides, is that a tomb of a Roman soldier, of a legion which is known to have been with this army, was discovered near by, also the skeleton of an elephant, which the Romans used in their wars, and a British spear head.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE, W.

This district took its name from a bridge which crossed the Westbourne near the present Albert Gate and the north end of Sloane Street, which had been there at least as early as 1222, when it is recorded that the villa or hamlet of Knyghtebrigge belongs to the Abbots of Westminster, who had received it soon after the Norman Conquest from Geoffrey de Mandeville when he gave to Westminster all his lands between the Tyburn and the Westbourne. It took its name from being the bridge in the manor of Neyte, which easily became corrupted to its present form. But it never had any very independent history; it was merely a hamlet on the way to Kensington, and remained a rural or at most a suburban spot until it was built over in the early part of the nineteenth century. It is called a “hamlet” by Lyson in 1795. William Penn lived here in order to be near the Court of Queen Anne (at Kensington), who gave him much attention.

LAMBETH

The name of this ancient village, which is called Lambehithe in a charter of 1062, is of uncertain derivation, but probably means Loamhithe = the muddy landing place, where the Westminster Horseferry had crossed the Thames since immemorial days. Since the time of Edward the Confessor this manor had been in the hands of the See of Rochester; but in 1197 the Bishops of Rochester exchanged it with the Archbishops of Canterbury who had already rented the house for almost a hundred years, and they have been in Lambeth ever since (v. Lambeth Palace); but the See of Rochester reserved a house for its own use which was retained until 1540, when the Bishops of Rochester went to Southwark instead. If one regards Lambeth as a part of London these Archbishops of Canterbury may be called its oldest residents in one house, for even the Royal Family has not continued at the Tower or Westminster Palace for so long a time. The parish church of St Mary is on the south side of the palace, immediately outside its gate: it was entirely rebuilt in 1851, except the tower which still stands in its fifteenth-century form. The church contains the tombs of Archbishops Bancroft (d. 1610), Tenison (1715) and others; there are brasses of 1535 and 1545, the former to Catherine, Lady Howard.

LAMBETH PALACE (opposite Houses of Parliament)

The first great house in Lambeth had belonged to the Bishops of Rochester, who had been presented with this manor by Edward the Confessor's sister, Goda. But in the year 1197 the Archbishop of Canterbury brought it from the See of Rochester, for he observed the great advantage of having a town house so near the royal palace at Westminster; indeed the archbishops had already been tenants of Rochester for almost a century before this time. Here they still occupy their London Palace to this day: a record of almost eight hundred years official residence in the same place. The most ancient part of the house now standing is the chapel, which was built by Archbishop Boniface of Savoy between 1249-70, with a crypt which is usually ascribed to the time of Archbishop Fitzwalter (d. 1205). In this chapel the archbishops have been consecrated since it was built. Wycliffe was tried here in 1378. The roof is modern. Archbishop Parker buried here, 1575. The Lollards’ Tower (so called in recent times) was built by Archbishop Chicheley in 1434-45; it was the keep, and contains a room where Episcopalian prisoners were held during the rule of the Parliamentarians; not the Lollards, as is popularly said. Elizabeth also sent State prisoners to Lambeth Palace. The brick gateway dates from 1490. The Great Hall (now the Library) was built by Archbishop Juxon (1663), whose arms it displays on its fine door. The Guard Chamber has portraits of Archbishop Warham by Holbein; of Laud, by Van Dyck; of Herring, by Hogarth; of Secker, by Reynolds. The modern parts of the palace were built in 1828-48 in the Tudor style, by Archbishop Howley, who was the last possessor to live in the “grand manner” of the earlier ecclesiastical lords (v. Lambeth). There is a curious tomb of Tradescant, the botanist, in the churchyard.

LANDSDOWNE HOUSE (Berkeley Square)

This house was built for the Marquis of Bute, George III.’s Prime Minister, by the Brothers Adam in 1767 and sold about twenty years later to Lord Shelburne, who afterwards became the Marquis of Lansdowne, whose family still holds it. Lord Bute had just signed the treaty with France, about the time that this house was built, and the cry arose that it was paid for by money from France with which he had been bribed, or that he had manipulated the public funds in his own favour. The “Letters of Junius” put this accusation into pungent form. Bute was certainly a poor man until he became Premier. He here received a visit from Dr Johnson who came to give thanks for getting him a royal pension. In 1780 Crabbe called on Lord Shelburne to beg for money: it was refused; thirty-seven years later he was dining with the next peer in that same mansion. Lansdowne House was a frequent meeting place of the Whig political leaders during the first half of the nineteenth century.

LAMBETH CHURCH AND PALACE GATE

(ST) LAWRENCE JEWRY (Guildhall Yard, City)

The first foundation of this church is unknown, but it is mentioned as early as 1294, when given to Balliol College Oxford in whom the living still remains. Rebuilt by Wren, 1676. The older church had the tombs of Richard Rich (d. 1469), ancestor of earls of Warwick and Holland, and Sir Geffrey Bullen, a lord mayor and the great-great-grandfather of Elizabeth: interesting as showing the origin of the peerage, and even royalty, in great City magnates. The vestry room has fine oak panelling, and a rich moulded ceiling with painting by Sir James Thornhill. Archbishop Tillotson was buried here in 1694, with a monument; his funeral sermon was preached by Bishop Burnet. It is to this church that the mayor and Corporation of London go every Michaelmas Day and attend a service before they elect the lord mayor for the coming year. The large pew in the middle of the church, with the City's arms on its door, is reserved for their use.

(ST) LAWRENCE POULTNEY (Lawrence Poultney Lane, Canon Street, City)

The date of its first foundation is unknown, but an incumbent is mentioned in 1318. It gained its second name when Sir John Poultney, in 1347, re-endowed an attached chapel, for a master and seven chaplains, who became the patrons of the parish church. (Cf. Whittington's College at St Michael Royal (q.v.)). The chapel was dissolved by Edward VI. The church was not rebuilt after the Great Fire, and the parish was absorbed by St Mary Abchurch. The position of the old churchyard is marked by the space with trees and tombs in Lawrence Poultney Lane.

LEADENHALL MARKET AND STREET (City)

This neighbourhood took its name after the hall with the lead roof, which stood at the Gracechurch Street corner: its first record dates from 1294 when it was probably already a public market. During the first half of the following century this manor was in the possession of the Neville family, who had a house just to the east of the Market. In 1445 a Communal Granary was added to the Hall. There was a chapel attached to the Market, ministered by a body of sixty priests, after 1466; it was preserved until 1812: note how public institutions in mediæval times were almost always under the charge of a religious foundation. (Cf. chapel on London Bridge.) Extensive remains of a Roman building, apparently of basilica form, were discovered where the Market now stands; and the spot was almost certainly an important centre in the Roman city; and has probably remained for the public service ever since, in the shape of a market or otherwise. In 1320 at the latest, we find the Corporation of the City receiving rents here, and in 1326 we find the Commons of London meeting there to discuss national business and the conduct of the King. The old India House, where Charles Lamb and John Stuart Mill sat on office stools, was at the corner of Lime Street. St Andrew Undershaft (q.v.) and St Katherine Cree (q.v.) are in this street. The near position of St Peter Cornhill (q.v.), with its tradition of a Roman foundation, should be noted in connection with the possibility of our here being on the site of the important centre in the Roman City.

LEICESTER SQUARE (W.)

This square was in course of formation between 1635 and 1671; but was still called Leicester Fields in the beginning of the eighteenth century. It took its name from a mansion on the north side which the Earl of Leicester (the nephew of Elizabeth's Leicester, and the brother of Philip Sidney) built for himself in the beginning of the seventeenth century. After about 1670 the owners let their house to various tenants, including the Queen of Bohemia (Prince Rupert's mother) who died there, 1662; Colbert, the French ambassador in Charles II.’s reign; Prince Eugene was there in 1712. In 1718 the then Prince of Wales (afterwards George II.) came to live in Leicester Square, when he quarrelled with his father. It is usually said that he bought Leicester House, but Strype, writing in 1720, says he was living next door in the house of the Earl of Aylsbury. In either case, it became the custom for rebellious Princes of Wales to live there; for his son followed his father's example when he in turn quarrelled; and Leicester Square was wittily labelled by Pennant as “the pouting place” of Princes. Nothing of the house is left. Hogarth lived in the house at the south east corner from 1733; John Hunter lived next door from 1783, and formed the basis of the anatomical museum there; Reynolds lived at No. 47 on the west side from 1761 until he died in 1792. Swift, Mrs Inchbald, Talma the actor, also once resided in this square. It has had a large foreign population since the aristocratic refugees came to live here, when the Revolution drove them from France at the end of the eighteenth century.

(ST) LEONARD, EASTCHEAP (City)

This church was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. The earliest record is an incumbent of 1348; about which time it was in the patronage of the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury; after the Dissolution it went to the Chapter of Canterbury. It stood where Fish Street Hill joins Eastcheap.

(ST) LEONARD, FOSTER LANE (Cheapside, City)

This was the parish church for the Deanery of St Martin-le-Grand. Its earliest mention, 1291, finds it in the patronage of the Dean and Canons of St Martin-le-Grand; by 1509 it was in the hands of the Abbot of Westminster; and after the Dissolution it was in the gift of the Dean and Chapter. It was not rebuilt after the Great Fire destroyed it.

(ST) LEONARD SHOREDITCH (Beyond Bishopsgate)

This church is recorded at least as early as 1218, when it is called de Soreditch. Stow gives a list of many noble people buried there during the sixteenth century; and at the time of Elizabeth and James I. it became the burial place of many famous actors, who came here to play in the Curtain Theatre (in Holywell Lane), founded about 1576. Somers, Henry VIII.’s jester (d. 1560); Tarlton (d. 1588), an Elizabethan clown; the Burbages, father and son; William Sly and Richard Cowley, who played parts in Shakespere's works—were all buried here; likewise Philip Sidney's only child, the Countess of Rutland. The present building was erected in 1740, by Dance, but the east chancel window, of 1634, remains of the older church. The old monuments have disappeared except a black marble slab of 1659.

LINCOLN'S INN (Chancery Lane)

Ralph Nevill, Bishop of Chichester (d. 1244), built on this spot a town house, and the garden extended to the east side of Chancery Lane. Adjoining this garden was afterwards an inn of law students, off Furnival Street, to the north, which was known as Lyncolnesynne; perhaps so called after the Earl of Lincoln who brought students to London, but probably after Thomas de Lincoln, the former owner; but it was not the first Lincoln's Inn, belonging to the Earl of Lincoln, in Shoe Lane. In 1422 this Inn leased Bishop of Chichester's property, and bought freehold in 1579. The gatehouse in Chancery Lane was built 1518. Old Buildings within the gates were built a little later; New Square about 1690. Stone Buildings about 1780. The chapel by Inigo Jones, 1621, contains stained glass; and the oak pews are carved woodwork of the same date as the church; the open crypt was used by the lawyers for a place of consultation with their clients, and as a place of burial for their society: here were buried Thurloe, the Puritan Baxter, and William Prynne, another of his way of thinking. On the west side of the same court stands the Old Hall, built about 1507, where the revels of the Inn took place; but it has been covered with plaster, and a modern ceiling of 1819 takes the place of the older open wood roof, and at the same time it was lengthened by ten feet; it contains a picture by Hogarth. The stained glass and heraldic panels have been removed to the New Hall, which was erected in 1845, across the gardens to the west. In the left ground floor of No. 24 Old Buildings lived Thurloe, Oliver Cromwell's secretary, 1645-59: and in a neighbouring house the Thurloe papers were discovered in time of William III. Oliver Cromwell was a student of this Inn; as also were Sir Thomas More, Mathew Hale, Pitt, Canning, Brougham and many others of fame. The chaplains of the Inn have included Donne, Usher, Tillotson, and Heber, all of whom afterwards became famous. What is now the south side of New Square with adjoining land to Fleet Street was once part of the Temple property, used for martial exercises: afterwards called Fickett's field.

LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS (South of High Holborn)

Laid out for building by Inigo Jones about 1618. He himself designed Lindsay House still standing, No. 57-60 on west side, with brick gate-pillars. On the same side, at the corner of Great Queen Street, is Newcastle House; built 1686, for Lord Powis; Lord Chancellor Somers lived therein; bought by Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, whose nephew, a succeeding Duke, lived here while chief minister to George II. Several eighteenth century houses still standing on north and south sides of square. On the north side is the Soane Museum. On the south side stood the Portugal Row Theatre, opened in 1662, where Nell Gwynne worked; she lodged in a house near by, where her first son, the future Duke of St Albans, was born. Lord Erskine lived at No. 36 (1805); Spencer Perceval at No. 59; Brougham at No. 50; Blackstone; No. 58 is the house of Mr Tulkinghorn in Dickens's “Bleak House.” Almost behind Lindsay House stood until lately the Sardinian Chapel, built 1648, which became a centre of the forbidden faith after its banishment from England. The central part of the Fields was not enclosed until 1735, before that it was the haunt of disorderly persons. Lord Russell was executed here in 1683, for alleged connection with Rye House Plot (v. Bloomsbury Square). In Whetstone Park, which runs between the north side of the Fields and Holborn, John Milton lived after he left his house in the Barbican; the name of Whetstone Park repeatedly appears in the early dramatists as the haunt of shady society.

LINDSAY HOUSE (Chelsea)

This house was rebuilt by the Earl of Lindsay about 1668, on the site of one which had been erected by James I.’s physicians. In 1694 it came into the possession of the Duchess of Mazarin, and, as a repentance after her light gaiety, in 1751 it was possessed by the Moravians, who bought up part of Beaufort House and converted its stable into their chapel—where the only fragment of the Beaufort House buildings still remains. Lindsay House is now divided into separate dwellings, but the main structure still stands. It stands near the north-west corner of Battersea Bridge.

LOMBARD STREET (City)

Stow writes: “Then have ye Lombardstreete, so called of the Longobards and other Merchants, strangers of diverse nations assembling there twise every day.” Edward II., in 1318, gave a house between Lombard Street (so called for the first time) and Cornhill to the merchants of Florence; where they remained until they moved to the Royal Exchange in 1568. In a deed of 1252 it is called “Longebrod.” The Lombard merchants were in England as early as the twelfth century, having come to collect the pope's taxes: and general trade follow. It has remained a chief street of great merchants and financiers. No. 68 is built where once Sir Thomas Gresham traded in Elizabeth's reign. Pope's father was a linen draper in Lombard Street, where his son was born 1688, probably in a house now destroyed, at corner of Plough Court. Near the church of Allhallows (q.v.) was once the famous George Inn, referred to in the Paston letters at the end of fifteenth century: in the twelfth century it was the town house of the earls Ferrers; and in 1348 Edward III. gave it to St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, under the title “our great hospice in Lombard Street.” The name George Yard remains. West of St Edmund's Church (q.v.) was once the house of the de la Poles, from Edward III.’s reign when they were “King's Merchants”; they became Earls of Suffolk in Richard II.’s time, but still, says Stow, had their “marchant's house” here.

LONDON BRIDGE

Whether there was a bridge here in Roman times must be settled by indirect evidence. There is little doubt that when they arrived in England, the passage across the Thames was by a ford at Westminster, where Roman remains have been discovered. Then we find that the great Roman roads all point to London Bridge; so that its origin by the Romans is almost a certainty. They were accustomed to build stone piers with a wood way on the top. This first bridge stood to the east of the present one; it is mentioned in the time of Edgar, 959-75; and it was clearly there in King Ethelred's time, for it stopped Cnut's passage up the river, and forced him to dig (traditionally at least,) the canal from Bermondsey to Battersea, of which some still find supposed traces. There is a tradition that the keeping of this bridge was committed to the care of the convent of St Mary Overy, in return for the profits of the toll at the earlier ferry; this Priory was certainly founded by William de Pont de l'Arche (v. St Mary Overy). Be that as it may, the early bridge was burnt in 1136 and replaced by a new one of stone, which was commenced by Peter the Chaplain of Colechurch in 1176, and finished in 1209; it remained with several restorations until 1832. This third bridge was in the same position as the Roman one; not to the west, as is usually said. The present bridge, of 1831, was built sixty yards west of Peter's one. The second bridge, which is the London Bridge of history, throughout the mediæval and early modern periods, was covered with houses until 1756; and possessed in its centre a chapel to St Thomas of Canterbury. There is in the Fishmongers’ Hall a chair made with the oak piles and the stone used by Peter and taken from the foundations of 1176, when they were demolished in 1832.

LINCOLN'S INN

The Gateway

LONDON STONE (St Swithin's Church, Canon Street)

All that remains of this is now protected by a grille in the wall of St Swithin's Church. Stow describes it as follows: “On the south side of this high street [now Cannon Street], near unto the channel, is pitched upright a great stone called London Stone, fixed in the ground very deep, fastened with bars of iron, and otherwise so strongly set that if carts do run against it through negligence the wheels be broken and the stone it self unshaken.” This account will give an idea of its wearing away during its long history. This relic has been for ages a centre of London life. There was, until the early years of the nineteenth century, a similar one near the present Marble Arch, almost exactly three miles from Newgate; and London Stone was probably the first Roman milestone placed as the mark from which the rest were to be measured. Whatever it was, it has had immemorial respect shown to it by the people of London; as was evidenced by Jack Cade when he invaded London in 1450; one of his first acts on entering the City being to strike the Stone with his sword exclaiming “Now is Mortimer Lord of this City.” It will be noted from Stow's description that the Stone originally stood on the south side of Cannon Street, immediately facing where it now is.

LUDGATE (Ludgate Hill, City)

The romantic tradition of King Lud must be surrendered to the more scientific explanation that Ludgate is the modern form of Old English “ludgeat” = a postern; though the tradition goes back to Geoffrey of Monmouth's time (died 1154). It was probably opened in the wall when Westminster became important; which must have been before the Norman Conquest, perhaps during the time of the Confessor. The Barons rebuilt the gate when they held the City against John 1215. The gate house became a prison for debtors and clergymen in Richard II.’s reign. The gate was demolished with the rest, 1761.

(ST) MAGNUS, LONDON BRIDGE

The earliest record of this parish church is of an incumbent, 1247, when it was in the patronage of the Priory of Bermondsey, who shared it with the Abbey of Westminster from 1252 until the Dissolution; when it went to Bishops of London henceforth. Stow says the church was in very bad condition by his day. It was destroyed by the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren 1676 (except steeple which is of 1705). Miles Coverdale was rector, 1563-66; and his remains have been brought here from their first burial place in St Bartholomew by the Exchange; there is also a monument to him erected here 1837, which records how he translated the Bible into English in 1535.

MANCHESTER SQUARE (Marylebone)

The square took its name from Manchester House, which was built on the north side, in 1776, by the Duke of Manchester. It soon afterwards became the property of the Marquis of Hertford. It was nearly rebuilt in 1874 by Sir Richard Wallace, who left a great collection of pictures and other objects of Art; now the possession of the Nation, and shown in this house.

MANSION HOUSE (City)

The official home of the Lord Mayor since 1752, when it was built by Dance. It stands partly on the site of the former church of St Mary Woolchurch Haw (not rebuilt after the Great Fire), which had been there since about the time of the Norman Conquest, and partly where once was the old Stocks Market. Stow's account of this is: “About the year of Christ 1282 Henry Wales, mayor, caused divers houses in this Citty to bee builded toward the maintenance of London Bridge; namely one void place near unto the parish church, called Wool Church, on the north side thereof, where sometime (the way being very large and broad) had stood a pair of Stocks, for punishment of offenders, this building took name of these Stocks, and was appointed by him to be a market place for fish and flesh in the midst of the city.” In earlier times it had been the custom for the mayor to hold his year of office in his own house, or often in the hall of the craft guild or livery company to which he belonged. But he now resides in the Mansion House.

(ST) MARGARET LOTHBURY (City)

St Margaret de Lodebure is mentioned in 1181: it was once the gift of the Abbesses of Barking; in the hands of the Crown since the Dissolution by Henry VIII. It now serves as the parish church of seven parishes, which have lost their churches by the Great Fire or otherwise. The present building was erected by Wren, 1690. It has a font by Gibbons and other interesting objects.

LONDON STONE

Cannon Street

(ST) MARGARET, NEW FISH STREET (Monument, City)

First recorded in 1283, when the Abbey of Westminster was its patron; passed to Bishop of London at Dissolution. It was not rebuilt, when destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666. The Monument stands on its site.

(ST) MARGARET PATTENS (Eastcheap, City)

This church is mentioned in the reign of King John: it was under the patronage of the Nevilles in 1281; came to Richard Whittington, who presented it to the mayors and Councils of London who still possess it. It was rebuilt by Wren 1687. Its name is of uncertain origin: it was Patynz in John's reign; de Patins in 1272.

(ST) MARGARET, THE PARISH CHURCH OF, WESTMINSTER

This is the parish church of Westminster; and its parish was once the whole of the great manor of Westminster; until the chapel at St Martin-in-the-Fields was made a sub-parish in 1361, and full parish in 1535. According to Stow, the parish church was once within the Abbey, until Edward the Confessor built one outside on the present site. Of this statement there is no certain evidence, but it is most probable. St Margaret's was rebuilt in Edward I.’s reign, and again in the time of Edward IV.; which last church is now in its main form still standing, after violent alterations and restorations in the seventeenth and nineteenth century. The stained glass in the east window is of the time of Henry VII., who is said to have received it as a gift from the town of Dordrecht in Holland; after a romantic wandering it was restored to this church in 1758. The following persons were buried here: Caxton (the printer), 1491; Nicholas Udall, who wrote “Ralph Roister Doister,” 1556; Sir Walter Raleigh, 1613, who was beheaded before Westminster Hall; Milton's second wife, who was also married here; Hollar, the engraver, 1677. Samuel Pepys was married here.

MARLBOROUGH HOUSE (Pall Mall)

This house was built in 1710 for the great Duke of Marlborough, the architect was Sir Christopher Wren, but it has an upper storey added since. The first duchess lived here until 1744; she always spoke of the king at St James's Palace as “neighbour George.” The house reverted to the Crown when the leases expired in 1817 and 1835, and has since been a residence for the members of the Royal Family. The adjacent chapel was built for Henrietta Maria, the Queen of Charles I., wherein to hold her Catholic services. The house stands behind the front of the Pall Mall houses and can be seen from St James's Park.

ST MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS (N.E. corner of Trafalgar Square)

Church of St Martin and cemetery are recorded here at least as early as 1222, when probably the chapel was used by the workers in the adjacent convent garden (v. Covent Garden). Became the first part of the great manor of Westminster to be detached from the central parish of St Margaret as an independent parish, for Henry VIII., disliking funeral processions passing the palace of Whitehall, on their way to St Margaret's, rebuilt and enlarged St Martin's church, which then became the parish church of a large district; which Burnet in 1680 called “the greatest cure in England.” It was then a very fashionable church; until St James, Piccadilly, 1684, St Anne, Soho, 1686, St George, Hanover Square, 1725, divided off from it as separate parishes. Famous burials: Dobson, 1646, the portrait painter; Nicholas Stone, 1647, the sculptor; Nell Gwynne, 1687; Lord Mohun, 1712, killed in duel by Duke of Hamilton; John Hunter, 1793, surgeon (removed to Abbey). The fishermen of the hamlet of Charing Cross river bank had a special corner of the churchyard, until driven over to Lambeth by the building of great houses; they disappeared at Lambeth, also, about 1800.

(ST) MARTIN-LE-GRAND, THE COLLEGE AND SANCTUARY OF (General Post Office, City)

The present General Post Office is built on the site of the College of the Dean and secular Canons of St Martin; founded by Ingelricus and Edwardus, his brother, in 1056; confirmed by special charter by William the Conqueror, 1068, who added some land as his own gift. It is probable that there was a very early church to St Martin on this spot, long before the College was founded; lately discovered buildings lead to that conclusion. The college itself is the first of the great ecclesiastical guilds founded in London, except St Paul's with its Dean and Chapter. By William's Charter the precincts were exempt from all other secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which thus became the origin of the privilege of Sanctuary in this area which caused so much trouble in later days. This right of Sanctuary for escaped prisoners was upheld by the Courts of Law in 1440; it even survived the dissolution of the College in 1548. The site of the College, immediately on its dissolution, was seized eagerly for secular purposes, largely on account of the aforesaid right of sanctuary, which the position was held to carry with it for any inhabitants. This right was not abolished until James I.’s reign. No remains of the old foundation survive; even the church was pulled down in the year of the Dissolution, 1548. St Martin's ranked very high in the mediæval City; it was its great bell which led off the curfew chime, whereupon the gates of the wall were to be closed for the night.

ST MARTIN'S IN THE FIELDS

Trafalgar Square

ST MARTIN'S LANE (Trafalgar Square)

This street began to be built in the time of James I., and for the next two hundred years was a favourite locality for literary men and artists, including Sir John Suckling, 1641; Kenelm Digby, 1641; Sir James Thornhill, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Fuseli. “Slaughter's” Coffee House was their meeting place. Coutts's Bank had its first office in this street, when it was founded by George Middleton; it was removed to the Strand by Thomas Coutts, where it still remains, though now facing its second premises.

ST MARTIN, LUDGATE (City)

This parish church was in the patronage of the Abbots of Westminster until the Dissolution, when Edward VI. granted it to the present patrons, the Bishops of London. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who died 1154, wrote that there was a church of St Martin here in the British period, so that the foundation must be very old even if this is an exaggeration. Rebuilt by Wren, 1684.

(ST) MARTIN ORGAR (Martin Lane, Cannon Street, City)

First recorded as being presented, in 1181, to the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's by Orgar; they held the patronage until the church was burnt in the Great Fire and not fully rebuilt, though its remains were patched up for the use of French protestants until 1820. The last relic, the tower, was removed, 1851, but a new one with a clock was then erected. Its churchyard is left as a sign of this church. Stow called this church “a small thing.”

(ST) MARTIN OUTWICH (Threadneedle Street)

This church stood at the corner of Bishopsgate Street until 1873. It is first mentioned in 1216, at latest, and then termed “Otteswich,” and the later Oteswich family, whom Stow thought were the founders, took their name from the church probably. Edward III. granted the patronage to de Warren, Earl of Surrey, in 1328; the Oteswiches gave it to the Merchant Taylors’ Company in 1426, who held it until the end. The monuments were removed to St Helen, Bishopsgate.

(ST) MARTIN POMEROY (Cheapside, City)

This church, which was not rebuilt after the Great Fire, stood on the east side of Ironmonger Lane. It is first recorded in 1252 when it was in the patronage of Ralph Tricket, who presented it to the Priory of St Bartholomew, and it passed to the Crown at the Dissolution where it remained until it was destroyed. It was probably a very old church. Sir Lawrence Gomme has advanced the illuminating theory that it got its name from the pomærium, which was the name of the open space which lay outside the walls of a Roman town. He gives this as one, among many other brilliant reasons, for asserting that there was continuity of occupation between the Roman and the Saxon City. Stow calls it a small church, and confesses that the derivation of the name is a mystery to him; he does mention the popular suggestion of apples once growing there, and says that he certainly remembers empty spaces in that neighbourhood, an interesting reminder that even the heart of the City was not very thickly covered in the Tudor period.

(ST) MARTIN VINTRY (Upper Thames Street, City)

The little square, with trees, near the corner of Queen Street, marks the site of this church, which existed from, at least, the time of William the Conqueror, when it is recorded that Ralph Peverell presented it to the Church of St Peter, Gloucester. It was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666 and not rebuilt, and the parish merged in St Michael Royal. Three of the Gisors, a great city family of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were buried in the older church. They owned Gisors’ (corrupted to Gerards') Hall. The patronage passed into the hands of the Bishop of Worcester at the Dissolution. It was in this church that the rioters under Wat Tyler's leadership, in 1381, slew thirty-four Flemings, who were hated by the citizens as foreign interlopers, who damaged their trade. This was only a part of those who were murdered, for almost two hundred aliens fell at the same time.

(ST) MATTHEW, FRIDAY STREET (Cheapside)

This church was demolished in 1881, after having been rebuilt by Wren in 1685. The patronage had been with the Abbey of Westminster until the Dissolution, and passed to the Bishops of London afterwards. There is apparently no earlier recorded reference to this church before 1322. Henry Burton, who was put in the pillory with Prynne and Bastwrck, in 1637, for attacking the bishops, was the rector of this church; when the Parliamentary party came into power, he was released from prison and entered London in a triumphal procession.

MARYLEBONE

This district, lying to the north of Oxford Street, was originally named Tybourne, after the stream which ran through it (and reached the Thames at Westminster). It took the name of Mary-le-bourne in 1400, when the parish church of Tybourne was moved from its place on the main road (near the south end of Marylebone Lane, almost on Oxford Street, where the Old Marylebone Court House still stands) where it had been too near the reach of promiscuous robbers passing this way, and was rebuilt further north as St Mary by the bourne side, where the village of Marylebone afterwards existed, until it was absorbed in the mass of London. This village is still marked by the irregular streets between St Mary and Stratford Place. All the time of the Domesday survey the main manor of Tybourne was in the possession of the Abbey of Barking in Essex. It is mentioned in a Westminster Charter of 951, where it is called “Teoburne.” This manor of Tyburne had a varying history, which, of course, was purely that of a country hamlet until the builders of London reached it about the middle of the eighteenth century. Except, perhaps, one should remember that about 1237 the citizens of the City of London had dug reservoirs for water near the old Tyburne Church, which water they conveyed by leaden pipes to the City. The mayor and aldermen built themselves a banquet house where Stratford Place now stands; and when they came to inspect their waterworks, they had a jolly feast and an afternoon's hunting on the moors around. The manor got into the hands of the Crown in Henry VIII.’s time (it was a customary event in his reign), but James I. sold it; Holler, Duke of Newcastle, bought it in 1710, and his daughter married Harley, the Earl of Oxford, whence comes the name of Oxford Street which by 1725 had extended to the corner where the Tybourne crossed it. Their daughter in turn married the Duke of Portland, whose descendants remained the happy possessors of this municipal gold mine. But when James sold the manor he kept the great hunting ground of Marylebone Park; and after some long leases, which ended in George IV. reign, the park was transformed into the present Regent's Park (q.v.). Marylebone Gardens (which were in the neighbourhood of the present Devonshire Street) were a fashionable place of amusement from the days of Pepys until Dr Arne conducted his own music there in 1773. They faded from popularity, and were closed, 1778.

(ST) MARY ABCHURCH (Cannon Street, City)

This parish is first recorded in 1272. The earlier church was destroyed by the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren, 1686. There are paintings in the cupola by Sir James Thornhill, and a famous altar-piece carved by Grinling Gibbons. It is one of the best examples of the churches of the period, both in its carved woodwork and its paintings. The patronage of this church at first belonged to St Mary Overy, Southwark; in the middle of the fifteenth century it passed to the college of Corpus Christi, which had been attached to St Lawrence Poultney Church (near by) by Sir John Poultney, the famous mayor of Edward III.’s reign. At the Dissolution it consequently passed to the Crown, who gave it to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

(ST) MARY, ALDERMANBURY (City)

One of the oldest of the City churches; it is recorded that it was in the hands of the Chapter of St Paul's in 1113 and given by them to Elsing Spital in 1332 (v. St Alphage); at the Dissolution it was given to the parishioners. It was rebuilt by Wren, 1676. Milton was here married to his wife, Katherine Woodcocke, 1656; Judge Jeffreys’ body was moved here from the Tower a few years after his death in 1689, and buried under the communion-table. Heminge and Condell, Shakespeare's brother actors, who published the folio edition of his plays in 1633, were buried in the old church, and there is a monument to them in the churchyard.

(ST) MARY ALDERMARY (Queen Victoria Street, City)

A copy, by Wren in 1682, of the church destroyed by the Great Fire. Called Aldermary because it was the oldest of the churches dedicated to Mary (cf. date of St Mary-le-Bow and St Mary Aldermanbury. The earliest recorded notice is of William the Conqueror's reign, when it was in the hands of Christ Church Chapter, Canterbury; then of the Archbishops of Canterbury where it remains alternately with Chapter of St Paul's. The Holy Maid of Kent was buried in the older church.

(ST) MARY AXE (near St Helen's Place, City)

This church was in existence at least as early as 1200, and soon after that was in the patronage of the new Nunnery of St Helen. By the beginning of the sixteenth century it was in bad repair; after the Dissolution of the Nunnery it grew worse, and was abandoned in 1561, and the parish united to St Andrew Undershaft.

(ST) MARY OF BETHLEHEM, THE PRIORY OF (Bishopsgate)

This priory was founded in 1247, a little beyond Bishopsgate (on the spot now covered by the Great Eastern Railway Company's station), by Simon Fitz-Mary, a citizen and sheriff of London. It was to be a priory for monks and nuns, under the protection of the Bishops of Bethlehem. But this alien connection soon ceased, and by 1346 the house came under the protection of the corporation of the City of London; and in 1546, when it was dissolved, Henry VIII. appears to have acknowledged the City's full rights, and it was formally made a hospital for lunatics. In Elizabeth's reign the governors of Christ's Hospital extended the hospital buildings, and it was later incorporated with Bridewell Hospital (q.v.), and a new building was erected, in 1675, on ground facing Moorgate. In 1814 it was finally removed to St George's Fields on the south side of the Thames, where it still stands in active use. It thus ranks with St Bartholomew's and St Thomas's Hospitals as a mediæval charitable foundation, which has survived Henry VIII. and other perilous whirlpools.

(ST) MARY BOTHAW (Cannon Street, City)

This church once stood, until it was destroyed by the Great Fire and not rebuilt, where Cannon Street Station Hotel now stands. It was there at least as early as 1150, when it was presented by Peter the priest to the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury. Stow says that “within this Church and the small Cloystrie adjoyning divers Noblemen and persons of worship have been buried as appeareth by Armes in the windowes, the defaced tombes, and printe of plates torn up and carried away.” Fitz-Alwine, first Mayor of London, is wrongly said to have been buried here, whereas he was buried in Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate.

(ST) MARY COLECHURCH (Old Jewry, City)

This parish church was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. In Henry III.’s reign it was in the hands of the Crown; afterwards of St Thomas de Acon; then of the Mercer's Company (whose Hall was adjacent) after the Dissolution. Stow says that William Marshall and others, in the reign of Henry IV., founded a brotherhood of St Katherine in connection with this church, in commemoration of Thomas à Becket and St Edmund, who were baptised here. This gives the church an early foundation date. It was not rebuilt after the Great Fire.

(ST) MARY-AT-HILL (Billingsgate, City)

This church is recorded under private lay patronage in 1337, and so continued until 1640, when the parishioners possessed the right of gift, which they shared with patron of St Andrew Hubbard after its union, in 1666, with that parish. It was rebuilt by Wren, 1677, except the tower, which is of 1780. Stow says the old church had been rebuilt during fifteenth century. The present wood carving of interior is mainly of 1849 erection.

(ST) MARY MAGDALENE, MILK STREET (Cheapside, City)

This church almost touched Allhallows Honey Lane Church until they were both destroyed by the Great Fire, neither to be rebuilt. It was in the gift of the Chapter of St Paul's from its first record, 1162, until its destruction. Stow calls it a small church, lately repaired.

(ST) MARY MAGDALENE, OLD FISH STREET (City)

This church stood at the corner of Old Change, and survived until 1886, when it was burnt and not rebuilt. It had been rebuilt by Wren. It was one of the early parish churches which grew around the mother church of St Paul's. It was in existence at least as early as 1162, and always remained under the patronage of the Chapter of the Cathedral Church.

(ST) MARY MOUNTHAW (off Upper Thames Street, City)

This parish church stood a little way up Fish Street Hill. It gained its title from the name of its early patrons, the Mounthaults of Norfolk, who, according to Stow, first built it as a chapel to their house in this street. In 1234 they sold the patronage (apparently with the house) to Ralph de Maydenstone, Bishop of Hereford, who presented it to the See, and the Bishops made the house their London residence. They were still living there in the time of Henry VIII. (and kept the patronage until the destruction of the church), but by Stow's time the house was ruinous and let out in tenements. The church was not rebuilt after its destruction by the Great Fire of 1666.

(ST) MARY SOMERSET (Upper Thames Street)

Only the Tower of this church remains, a part of the Wren's rebuilding of 1695. This parish church is recorded about 1170, when it was in the patronage of private lay persons, and occasionally the Crown, until the parish was merged in St Mary Mounthaw when the church was destroyed during the Fire of 1666. The derivation of Somerset is uncertain, probably from the name of an adjacent landowner, perhaps Ralph de Sumery of the end of twelfth century.

(ST) MARY STAINING (Oat Lane, Foster Lane, City)

This church was not rebuilt after the Great Fire, and the parish was merged with St Michael, Wood Street. It is called “ecclesia de Staningehage” in 1189; the derivation of the name is uncertain, probably the haw, or settlement, of the men of Staines was on this spot. It was early in the patronage of the priory of Clerkenwell. The churchyard still remains to mark its position.

(ST) MARY-LE-STRAND (Strand)

This parish church was originally south of the Strand, but the Protector Somerset demolished it to make room for his Palace of Somerset House. This earlier church was known as Holy Innocent's, which is recorded as early as 1222. The present building was erected by Gibbs in 1717, as the first of Queen Anne's fifty churches.

ST MARY OVERY, THE PRIORY OF SOUTHWARK

In 1106 William Pont de l’ Arch and William Dauncey established in Southwark a house of Austin Canons; but it is possible that there was already an older religious body on that spot. The first benefactor to second their efforts was Giffard, the Bishop of Winchester, who, the following year, built a nave for their church; and Henry I. gave them the church of St Margaret's, Southwark. When the priory was destroyed by fire, in 1212, Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, built the chapel to St Mary Magdalene, which formed the south aisle, and was afterwards made a parish church. In 1284 we find that street rules were made concerning the behaviour of the canons when they went to London City or the town of Southwark. When the fire of 1390 once more destroyed a large part of the buildings, John Gower, the poet, gave freely in aid, and lived and was buried within the church, where his monument still stands. Also Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester (d. 1447), gave large gifts of money. James I. of Scotland, the poet, was married here to Johanna Beaufort, 1425. Henry VIII. and his queen were admitted to the Order in 1518; which he dissolved in 1539; The great church became the parish church of St Saviour's, Southwark (q.v.). The rest of the precincts passed to Sir Anthony Brown, whose son became Lord Montague; this family built a house there (thence the name of Montague Close), which lasted until 1828. There were still certain privileges attached to the precincts in Anne's reign, a survival of the liberty of the priory.

(ST) MARY WOOLCHURCH HAW (Mansion House, City)

This church, which stood partly on the site of the present Mansion House, and partly on the open space at its west side, was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. It had been there at least since 1104, when it was presented to Colchester Abbey; at that time it was called St Mary of West Cheap or Newchurch. It was called “Woolchurch-haw” as early as 1260. The derivation is rather uncertain, but the church was probably so called because of the weighing of wool on a beam in its yard. Stow says: “I find amongst the customs of London, written in French in the reign of Edward the Second, a chapter entitled Les Customes de Wolchurch Haw, wherein is set down what was there to be paid for every parcel of wool weighed. This Tronage or weighing of wool till the sixt of Richard the Second was then continued, John Churchman then builded the Custom House upon Wool Key to serve for the said Tronage” (v. Itinerary I. at Custom House).

(ST) MARY WOOLNOTH (Lombard Street, City)

Probably founded by a Wulfnoth of the twelfth century; some say earlier, by a son of Godwin, the great Earl of the eleventh century. Present church built by Hawksmoor, 1727. Patronage until 1252 belonged to Convent of St Helen's: since Dissolution in various private lay hands.

MAYFAIR (north of Piccadilly)

This district takes its name after an annual fair once held, during the month of May, in the neighbourhood of the present Chesterfield House. This fair probably dates no further back than a grant of Charles II., and the connection with the St James's Fair (v. St James's Palace) is probably quite erroneous. It was in the beginning of the eighteenth century in any case that it became famous or notorious. It was suppressed in 1708, and being revived, continued until the reign of George III.

MERCERS’ HALL (Ironmonger Lane, Cheapside, City)

The Mercers’ Guild existed at least as early as the reign of Richard I., for then the sister of Thomas à Becket founded the hospital of St Thomas of Acon to his memory, 1192, on the spot where her brother was born, and made the brotherhood of the Mercers its trustees. It was this hospital which the Mercers’ Company bought from Henry VIII. at the Dissolution, and there built their Hall, which has remained on this spot ever since. The earlier buildings were destroyed at the Great Fire, but the Hall and Chapel were immediately rebuilt, 1672 (some think by Wren), as they exist to day (with alterations). There is a beautiful entrance colonnade, and a magnificent Council Chamber with panelling of the same post-Fire period; also a portrait of Sir Thomas Gresham, by Holbein, and one of Dean Colet. The chapel is supposed to stand on the site of St Thomas à Becket's birthplace. The Legh Grace Cup, used at the Company's banquets, is of great value: it was made 1499.

MERCHANT TAYLORS’ HALL (Threadneedle Street, City)

The Taylors first appear in historical records by quarrelling with the Goldsmiths in 1267. Edward I. in 1299 licensed them to appoint a Master and wardens and hold a feast every midsummer. Edward III. gave the first charter in 1326. The right and duty of the Society was to regulate their trade; no tailor's shop could be opened without their licence and the trader must be a freeman of their guild, while their right of inspecting premises and work was a guarantee of sound craftsmanship. They were early a powerful body; and the three Henries IV., V., and VI., and Edward IV. and Richard III., had all been brethren of the Company. Henry VII. was also; and granted the wider charter of 1502 entitling them to the name of “Merchant Taylors,” with a widened range for their trade.

They have, apparently, had their Hall on the present spot since 1331, before which it was in Basing Lane. The main part of the existing building was built by Farman in 1671; but it was not completely destroyed by the Great Fire, and is partly a restoration; and the crypt of the older building still remains just as it was before the Fire. There are several portraits: Henry VIII. by Bordone, Duke of York by Lawrence, Pitt by Hoppner; and a famous collection of plate.

As a practical illustration of the functions of this Company, it may be mentioned that their officer attended Bartholomew Fair (until its abolition, 1854) to measure every draper's yard by the standard silver yard-stick of the guild.

(ST) MICHAEL, BASSISHAW (Basinghall Street, City)

This church was at the north-east corner of the Guildhall. It is recorded there as early as the first half of the twelfth century, when it was in the patronage of the Priory of St Bartholomew; and had previously been in the possession of the Bishops of London. It went into a succession of private lay hands in 1246, until it reached the Chapter of St Paul's, 1435, where it afterwards still remained. Stow says it had been rebuilt about 1460, chiefly by John Barton, the mercer, and his wife. It was closed a few years ago.

(ST) MICHAEL, CORNHILL (City)

The earliest record of this church is in 1133, when it was placed under the patronage of the Abbots of Evesham, who seem to have held it until 1515; when it went into the hands of its present patrons, the Drapers’ Company. It was burnt at the Great Fire, all except the tower: the rest rebuilt by Wren, 1672, who also rebuilt the tower in 1722 as a copy of the old one. But Sir Gilbert Scott much altered the whole building in 1860. Stow records of the old church: “Robert Fabian, Alderman, that wrote and published a chronicle of England and of France, was buried there” (1513); also Stow's own father, 1559, and grandfather.

(ST) MICHAEL, CROOKED LANE (near London Bridge, City)

The earliest recorded date of their parish church is in 1286, when the patronage was in the hands of the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, and passed to the Archbishop in 1408 at latest. It was the particular care of Sir William Walworth, famous for his striking down of Wat Tyler, in the presence of Richard II., 1381. This famous mayor in the same year endowed a college for a master and nine chaplains to be attached to this Church of St Michael. He died, 1385, and was buried here. The church was rebuilt after the Great Fire; but was demolished, 1831; and the parish joined with St Magnus and St Margaret. Stow says it was “but a small and homely thing” until Walworth added a new choir and chapels. (Cf. with St Michael Royal and St Martin Orgar, with the latter for its small size and with the former for its endowed college.)

(ST) MICHAEL, QUEENHITHE (Upper Thames Street, City)

This parish church was one of the early foundations of the mother church of St Paul's, under whose patronage it always remained. It is first recorded in 1150. It was rebuilt after the Great Fire by Wren in 1677, but was demolished in 1876; only the churchyard remains, in the adjacent Huggin Lane. Stowe says that even in his days the monuments in the church were defaced. The vane of a ship in full sail with a gilded ball, which would hold a bushel of wheat, was on the tower of the demolished church, and is now on the top of the rectory house built on its site; it commemorates the fact that Queenhithe was once a chief place for the corn trade of London, and should be noted as an indication of the mediæval turn of mind which continually linked religion and trade—as in the case of the guilds, with their patron saints and ecclesiastical rites.

(ST) MICHAEL LE QUERNE (Cheapside, City)

This was one of the parish churches of London which has always been in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral. It stood at the east end of Paternoster Row; it was not rebuilt after its destruction by the Great Fire. It is recorded as early as 1181 amongst the possessions of the Cathedral. It took its name as being near the corn (quern) market. Leland, the great antiquary, was buried here, 1552, and Sir Thomas Browne, who wrote “Religio Medici,” was baptized, 1605.

(ST) MICHAEL ROYAL (College Hill, City)

This is Richard Whittington's church. It existed as early as 1282; when it was a gift of the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury; after the Dissolution passing to the Dean and Chapter, and now shared, since merged with St Martin Vintry, with the Bishop of Worcester. “Royal” is derived from La Riole, a place near Bordeaux, whose wine merchants had settled near by, in the place afterwards known as Tower Royal (v. Itinerary III.). Whittington rebuilt this church and endowed, 1424, a college, attached to it, for a master and fellows, with an almshouse or hospital for thirteen poor men; the master to be the parish priest. Stow tells us that “these were bound to pray for the good estate of Richard Whittington and Alice his wife, their founders, and for Sir William Whittington, Knight, and Dame Joan his wife, and for Hugh Fitzwaren and Dame Molde his wife, the fathers and mothers of the said Richard Whittington and Alice his wife, for King Richard II. and Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, special Lords and Promotors of the said Richard Whittington.” The church was destroyed by the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Strong, Wren's chief mason, 1694; the steeple is of 1713. Whittington was buried in the old church, 1423. The College of Fellows disappeared at the Dissolution, but the almshouses remained and were put under the guardianship of the Mercer's Company: they were removed to Highgate, 1800, and their place in College Hill then taken by the Mercers’ school, who rebuilt the premises, 1832; and removed the school to Barnard's Inn (q.v.), 1894.

(ST) MICHAEL WOOD STREET (Cheapside, City)

This parish church is recorded at least as early as 1181; when it appears to have been under the patronage of the Abbots of St Albans, as was the case of the Church of St Alban (q.v.), further along this same street. In Elizabeth's reign the parishioners obtained the living as their own gift, and so it remained until it was demolished. Stow has a story that the head of James IV. of Scotland, slain at Flodden Field, was buried in this church, when the dissolution of Shene monastery disturbed its earlier resting-place.

(ST) MILDRED, BREAD STREET (Cannon Street, City)

There was a church here at least as early as 1170; in 1300 it was in the possession of St Mary Overy, Southwark. Destroyed by the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren, 1683: a good example of his work, without much damaging restorations. The wood carving of pulpit and altar are said to be by Grinling Gibbons. In this church Shelley married Mary, the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, in 1816, whose love he had won beside her mother's grave in St Pancras Churchyard.

(ST) MILDRED POULTRY (Cheapside, City)

This stood where is now the Gresham Life Assurance Society. The church was built on an arched foundation over the Walbrook bed. It seems to have been in the gift of St Mary Overy, Southwark, until it was taken by the Crown at the Dissolution. It was rebuilt after the Fire, but demolished 1872. The earliest record of it is in 1247. St Mildred was a Saxon saint. In the later church Charles Lamb “gave away” the daughter of Admiral Burney on her marriage, and records that he had difficulty in assuming gravity proper to such occasions; which trouble occurred to him also at St Andrew Holborn (q.v.).

THE MONUMENT (Fish Street Hill, City)

This was erected by Sir Christopher Wren, 1671-77, to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666, which broke out on 2nd September at a house in Pudding Lane near by; and continued until the 7th following.

MOORFIELDS (Finsbury Circus, E.C.)

This district, which lay outside the City Wall, about its centre on the north side, was known as “the great fen or moor, which watereth the walls on the north side,” as early as the end of the twelfth century, when Fitzstephen so describes it. Its marshy waters were the same as formed the Wallbrook stream, and it was not until the wall was built that these waters collected; for there was no marsh in Roman days, as is proved by the graves in the gravel beneath. It was in 1415 that Falconer, the mayor, enlarged the small postern, which had been in the wall at this spot from some uncertain time, where, ever since, has remained Moorgate. It then became necessary to build a causeway across the marsh so that the citizens might travel to Islington; and it was found possible to make many gardens, also, which were converted into an archery ground, 1498. In the following years began a long continued process of draining and raising its level; not properly accomplished until the early Stuart period, when it became a favourite pleasure ground for the citizens. But by the end of Charles II.’s reign the building of houses had begun, a process hastened by the need for houses after the Great Fire; but there were still extensive gardens marked here in the map to Strype's 1720 edition of Stow.

MOORGATE (London Wall, City)

This was the last important gate to be opened in the City Walls. There had been a small postern here from an uncertain age; but it was in 1415 that the mayor, Robert Falconer, opened up a substantial gateway, in order that the citizens might find a short cut, by a causeway over the marshes, to Islington and other pleasure resorts in the fields beyond the fen. It was not until the end of the Stuart period, when the Great Fire had made houses scarce, that the district immediately beyond the gate was used for building. The gate was rebuilt in 1672; and finally demolished in 1761, with the other City walls.

NEWGATE (City)

This is an unfortunate name for this gate; since it ranks with Bishopsgate and Billingsgate as certainly tracing its existence to the time of the Roman city. At this spot the Roman road (afterwards termed Watling Street), which came from Chester and St Albans, entered the City of London along a straight lane roughly represented by the present Oxford Street and Holborn. Undoubted remains of a Roman gateway were discovered just north of where the later gate stood over the present street, a little to the east of Giltspur Street. The road thence continued through the City (Watling Street may be a part of it) to the head of London Bridge, and thus crossed the Thames. Newgate got its name, probably, from a rebuilding; Stow thought this (in Henry I.’s reign, he considered), was its first appearance. But it had already been mentioned since the Roman period, in a Saxon charter of A.D. 857. It is called “Nova Porta” as early as 1162. Its gatehouse had become a prison by 1190, and remained as such for felons throughout its history. The gate was destroyed 1767, having been rebuilt after its destruction by the Great Fire.

(ST) NICHOLAS ACON (Lombard Street, City)

This church was in Nicholas Lane; it was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. It probably got its name from some early benefactor: it is called St Nicholas Achim in 1190, and Hacun in 1246. Its earliest record is in 1083, when Godwyn gave it to Malmesbury Abbey; where the patronage remained, apparently, until it was taken by the Crown at the Dissolution. Stow says that Sir Hugh Brice, Lord Mayor and goldsmith, had rebuilt it in 1485.

(ST) NICHOLAS COLE ABBEY (Knightrider Street, City)

The earliest record of this church is 1319; but Stow says it must have been very ancient in his time, for the ground had become so raised around the building that it was necessary to descend into it. It was in hands of St Martin's-le-Grand; soon after Dissolution it went through several private hands until it came to the Crown, when Colonel Hacker, its patron, who commanded the guard at Charles I.’s execution, was executed at the Restoration. The Crown now appoints the priest alternately with the Chapter of St Paul's. It was rebuilt by Wren 1677.

(ST) NICHOLAS OLAVE (Bread Street Hill, City)

This parish church was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. It first appears in 1172, when the Bishop of London presented it to the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, who held it until its destruction. Stow calls it “a convenient church.” A part of the churchyard still remains open ground, to record its position.

(ST) OLAVE, HART STREET (Seething Lane, City)

When this church first appears in the records, 1281, it was in the patronage of the great Neville family, and passed to other private lay persons, until, in 1672, it was vested in trustees for the parishioners. It escaped the Great Fire, and the present building is that of the late Gothic period, of the fifteenth century, after several severe restorations in the reign of Charles I. and 1871. It is substantially the same building which Samuel Pepys attended when he was living near by, in the office of the Navy Board, as its secretary. He was buried beside his wife in this church, 1703; his monument is of 1884 erection; but hers was put up by the husband when she died. There is a brass of Sir Richard Haddon, a mercer (who was Lord Mayor in 1506 and 1512), figured with his wives and children: a monument, of 1608, to Sir James Deane; the kneeling figures of the brothers Paul and Andrew Bayning, aldermen of the end of the reign of Elizabeth; the tomb of Sir Andrew Riccard, who died in 1672, a great merchant of his time. The whole church gives a vivid glance into the City personages and life of the Tudor and Stuart period.

(ST) OLAVE, JEWRY (Cheapside, City)

This church stood on the west side of Old Jewry until it was destroyed in the nineteenth century; all except the tower, which still stands, used as a dwelling-house. It was originally in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, who gave it to the Convent of Butley in 1171; since the Dissolution it had been held by the Crown.

(ST) OLAVE, SILVER STREET (Noble Street, near Aldersgate, City)

This parish church, which Stow calls “a small thing and without any monuments,” was nevertheless of very old foundation; under the patronage of the Chapter of St Paul's, one of the Cathedral's many children scattered all over the City. It was not rebuilt after its destruction by the Great Fire of 1666.

(ST) OLAVE, TOOLEY STREET (Southwark)

This ancient parish church, dedicated to a Danish saint, is almost certainly a survival of the early Danish settlements here before the Norman Conquest. It is recorded in the year 1281 as being in the patronage of the Priory of Lewis, to whom it had been given by the Earl of Warrenne. At the Dissolution it passed to Cromwell, Earl of Essex; then on his attainder, to Queen Anne of Cleves, and then to the Crown. The church of 1740 was badly damaged by fire in 1843, when it was largely rebuilt.

OLD JEWRY (Cheapside, City)

This was in early days the Jewish quarter and the site of their synagogue, which stood at the north-east corner of the street. There is evidence that they had deserted this spot even before they were formally banished from England in 1290. The tower of the Church of St Olave (q.v.) alone remains, used as a dwelling-house. The great merchant, Sir Robert Clayton, had his house in this street in Charles II.’s time.

OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE (Wine Office Court, Fleet Street)

This eating-house, made famous by the custom of Dr Johnson, still stands, in the main, as it was built about the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and still continues its original business. It is a living example of the Fleet Street chop houses which were the haunts of Johnson and his set. There is a chair which is called Johnson's favourite seat. This house must often have been the scene of the conversations, with Boswell himself there to put them down in his notes. In the court also lived Goldsmith for two years from 1760; and he probably wrote “The Vicar of Wakefield” there.

PADDINGTON

This district is not specifically mentioned in the Domesday survey, but it was apparently part of the possessions of the Abbey of Westminster in Anglo-Saxon times; and was certainly therein included by the year 1191, when Abbot Walter bought it from Richard and William de Padington and bequeathed it to his fellow monks for the salvation of his soul, and further to provide “fine manchets, cakes, crumpets, cracknells and wafers,” and a gallon of wine for each monk to drink his health on the anniversary of his death. But soon after the Dissolution of the Abbey by Henry VIII. the manorial rights of Paddington were given to the See of London. In the year 1795 it was still only a detached village of 340 houses; but it began to expand about the same time that Belgravia was growing up on the south side of Hyde Park. The older parish church of St Mary stands on Paddington Green (north-east of the railway station), which marks the position of the old village. This church is as it was built in 1791; it contains the tombs of Mrs Siddons the actress, Benjamin Haydon the painter, and Nollekens the sculptor, the latter with sculpture by himself. To the north of it, with its site still traceable in the churchyard, stood the still older parish church, then dedicated to St James, which was built, 1678, by the Sheldons, who leased the manor at that time. It was the marriage place, 1729, of Hogarth and Jane Thornhill, who had run away with her father's pupil. This 1678 church had in its turn taken the place of a still older one.

PAINTER STAINERS’ HALL (9 Little Trinity Lane, City)

This guild obtained its Charter in 1582, but had existed very long before that date as a recognised society. The earlier hall, which they had possessed since 1532, was destroyed by the fire of 1666, and the existing building was designed soon afterwards by Wren, for the same spot. Note the fine doorway of that period. Lely, Kneller, Reynolds, and Thornhill were among its members.

PALL MALL

There were a few houses here even before the Restoration of 1660; in 1656 eight householders are recorded as living “in the Pall Mall.” The name comes from the game of paille maille, something between golf and croquet, which became fashionable during the early years of the seventeenth century. It was played where the present street now extends. The present Mall, along the north side of St James's Park, was made by Charles II. when Pall Mall was used as a more regular road. The street to-day is chiefly occupied by some of the best-known club houses in London. Beginning at the south-east corner, facing Waterloo Place, is the Atheneum Club, next the Travellers’, then the Reform, then the Carlton, all about the first half of the nineteenth century: there are many other clubs in the street, but not of any particular historical or architectural interest. Nos. 80-83, on the south side, are the centre and west wing of all that remains of the beautiful Schomberg House, which was built during the reign of William III., and takes its name from the Duke of Schomberg, William III.’s famous general, who was killed at the battle of the Boyne; the house was built by his son. Afterwards it was tenanted by the Duke of Cumberland, who fought at Culloden. But perhaps its greatest tenant was Gainsborough, the painter, who lived in the west wing (after the house was divided up into tenements) from 1777-1783, where the beauty and fashion of London flocked to sit for their portraits; Cosway, the miniature painter, occupied the centre in 1787-99. Near Schomberg House once stood the house where Nell Gwynne lived from 1671-1687, when she died there: she talked to Charles over the garden wall at the Mall side, which Charles frequented. Two doors eastward of this house lived Sir William Temple, 1681. Behind the west end of Pall Mall lies Marlborough House (q.v.) overlooking St James's Park. In the earlier next house to Schomberg House, on its west side, lived Mrs Fitzherbert, the morganatic wife of George IV.

(ST) PANCRAS-IN-THE-FIELDS, OLD ST PANCRAS (St Pancras Road)

In the Domesday survey the canons of St Paul's held four hides at St Pancras as a manor, and there is still a canon's stall bearing its name. There is no record telling how much further back the origin of this church goes. It still had the Norman and Early English building standing when it was rebuilt, in the old style, in 1848; so it is old now mainly in form; but there are a few monuments still preserved. Its main interest is in the great age of the parish, and in the more recent burial of William Godwin (d. 1836) and his first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft (d. 1797), in this churchyard, where Percy Shelley afterwards told his love for Mary Godwin their daughter, as they stood by her mother's grave. The bodies of the Godwins were removed to Bournemouth in 1851. A great number of the refugees from the French Revolution were buried in this church; it is not very clear why they chose it.

(ST) PANCRAS, SOPER LANE (off Queen Street, City)

A little churchyard is all that remains of this parish church, which was not rebuilt after the Great Fire. It appears to have been at first under the patronage of the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, who presented it to the Archbishops in 1365, where it remained until its destruction. Stow called it “a small church, but divers rich parishioners therein, and hath had of old time many rich benefactors.”

PARIS GARDEN (south end of Blackfriars Bridge)

Until the reign of Charles II. the Manor of Paris had been a special liberty outside the general jurisdiction of the law, as was the case with its neighbouring manor (on the east) of the Bishops of Winchester. This privilege has existed since the manor had been presented to the Priory of Bermondsey in 1113, and there remained until the Dissolution; but in early days it was leased to the Knights Templars, until their suppression by Edward II. in 1313. Its legal or illegal privileges, which had come from its ecclesiastical ownership, made it a convenient spot for doubtful pastimes, and Stow records that in his time there were “two bear gardens, the old and new places, wherein be kept bears, bulls and other beasts to be baited. As also mastiffs in several kennels nourished to bait them.” Sir Lawrence Gomme has pointed out the discovery of Roman gladiators’ tridents on this spot, as suggesting the probability that this place had been the scene of public sports ever since it was used for the Roman amphitheatre. Henslowe and Alleyn were Masters of the game of Paris Garden, and they leased the Gardens and then, during James I.’s reign, gave dramatic performances as well as baiting shows. Here the Swan Theatre was built in 1596, but demolished by 1633. The Bear Pits were not closed until 1687.

(ST) PAUL'S CATHEDRAL

This great church has been the centre of the ecclesiastical life of London throughout its history, and in earlier days the centre of secular democratic life also, for the meeting-place of the citizens, where the assembly bell was rung, was in the north-east corner of the churchyard, where stood St Paul's Cross; and there still stands its modern substitute. It is possible that this spot had a theological history before Christianity held possession, for tradition has it that there was a temple to Diana here in Roman days. It is possible that there may have been a Roman Christian church. The first authenticated building, however, was the church built by Ethelbert, King of Kent, as a cathedral for Mellitus, ordained first Bishop of London, A.D. 604, by Augustine (the first Archbishop of Canterbury). But his people were not firmly grounded in their new faith, and Mellitus departed in haste for a time. Then, when the Saxons were converted, the Danes brought unrest again. King Alfred rebuilt the church, end of ninth century, but in 962 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records “Paul's monastery was burnt, and in the same year was again founded.” By the eleventh century the Danes, also, were established in the faith and worshipping in St Paul's. Ethelred (1016) and Edward Atheling (1057) were both buried here. It was again burnt in 1087, and very seriously, if not entirely, in the Great Fire of 1136, whereupon began the rebuilding of the church, which took two hundred years to complete, and lasted until the great fire of 1666. This Gothic edifice, not the present Classical revival of Sir Christopher Wren, was the great London church of mediæval times. Soon after the Norman Conquest it held property in almost every ward of the City, and all around London were the manorial estates which supported the Dean and Canons and Bishops. A large area was walled off from the City for the use of the churchyard and the buildings belonging to the cathedral; for example, the Chapter House, the College of the Minor Canons, the Deanery, the Brewhouse; the Bishops’ Palace was in London House Yard, at the north-west end of the nave, until pulled down in 1650, but the bishops had left it about the time of the Reformation. This whole area was a bustling scene of mediæval life. The nave of the cathedral became the promenade of fashion and the resort of merchants after the Reformation, during the reigns of Edward VI., Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. Fuller says that Inigo Jones's portico was devised for holding these secular attendants. The central aisle, which was the chief promenade, became known as “Duke Humphrey's Walk” (because his tomb was its only adornment) or “Paul's Walk.” “It was the fashion of those times…for the principal gentry, lords and courtiers, and men of all professions not merely merchants, to meet in St Paul's Church by eleven and walk in the aisle till twelve; and after dinner from three to six, during which time some discoursed of business, others of news.” There are a few remains of this mediæval building still to be seen in the churchyard on the south side of the present cathedral.

The present church, which Sir Christopher Wren began in 1675 and finished in 1710, is practically of one building, and scarcely requires explanation in detail as does Westminster Abbey, which is the growth of many ages. The chief monuments are: Dr Donne, Dean 1621-31, by Nicholas Stone, which work alone escaped uninjured at the Great Fire of 1666: this is in the south ambulatory of the choir; Duke of Wellington, by Alfred Stevens (d. 1875), in north aisle; Nelson, by Flaxman, in south transept. The choir stalls are carved by Grinling Gibbons. The great men buried in this cathedral include Sir Joshua Reynolds, Turner the landscape painter, Lord Melbourne, Dr Samuel Johnson, John Howard, Marquis Cornwallis, first governor-general of India, and General Gordon. Wren's crypt is of structural interest, and contains Wren's own tomb, with the terse inscription, “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice”; also the “Painters’ Corner,” so called because of the well-known artists who were buried here—some more famous than great. The present Chapter House in St Paul's Churchyard was built about 1700; and the Deanery in the near Dean's Yard, is held to be one of Wren's designs, and still stands, as it was erected soon after the Great Fire, almost hidden from the street by its garden wall. Paul's Bakehouse, a court near by, still remains as it was built about the same time as the Deanery.

(ST) PAUL, COVENT GARDEN

This was originally built by the Earl of Bedford about 1635, to meet the needs of the inhabitants who were flocking at that time to the new houses being erected on his Covent Garden estate. The architect was Inigo Jones. The earl said that a barn would be good enough for his needs, to which Jones replied that it should be the finest barn ever built. This first church was (after restorations) entirely destroyed by fire in 1795, and rebuilt after the original design. St Paul's was the first parish church erected in the older undivided parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields. (Cf. St Anne's, Soho; St James's, Piccadilly; St George's, Hanover Square.) Lady Mary Wortley Montague was baptized here, 1690. The following were buried here: Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset (1645); Samuel Butler of “Hudibras”; Sir Peter Lely, who had died in the adjacent Piazza, 1680; Wycherley, 1715; Grinling Gibbons, 1721; Susannah Centlivre, 1723, the dramatist; Dr Arne, 1778, who wrote the music of “Rule Britannia,” and many things which are much finer but less, famous; Charles Macklin, 1797. Turner the landscape painter was baptized here 1775.

(ST) PETER, CORNHILL (City)

An unsupported tradition, dating from A.D. 700, tells that this church was first built by King Lucius in 199, during the Roman occupation of London. In Stow's words: “There remayneth in this church a table wherein it is written, I know not by what authority, but of a late hand, that King Lucius founded the same church to be an archbishop's see, metropolitan, and chief church of his kingdom, and that it endured the space of 400 years, unto the coming of Augustine the monk. Joceline of Furness, writeth that Thean, the first archbishop of London in the reign of Lucius, builded the said church by the aid of Ciran, chief butler to King Lucius, and also that Eluanus, the second archbishop, builded a library to the same adjoining, and converted many of the Druids, learned men in the pagan law, to Christianity.” The church is mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon Charter of 1040. When the question of its date was raised in 1417, it was held, confirming an earlier judgment of 1399, that the rector of St Peter had precedence over every other in London, on the grounds that his was the oldest church in the City. It was rebuilt by Wren, 1681. It contains some fine wood work, and an illuminated manuscript Bible of 1290. The patronage was presented, 1411, to the mayors of London, who still possess it. In the beginning of the fourteenth century it is recorded in the hands of the Neville family.

(ST) PETER, PAUL'S WHARF (Upper Thames Street, City)

This church was not rebuilt after the Great Fire; only a portion of its churchyard still remains to record it. This parish was formed as early as 1181, at least, when it was under the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, where it remained throughout its history. Stow says that in his time it was a small church with no monuments remaining.

(ST) PETER-LE-POER (Broad Street, City)

This parish church was recorded in 1181 as being in hands of its present patrons, the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's. The existing church was rebuilt by Jesse Gibson, 1791. Stow says it was so called because once a poor parish, but adds: “At this present there be many fayre houses possessed by rich marchants and others.”

(ST) PETER AD VINCULA (Tower of London)

This was the parish church for the inhabitants of the Tower. It probably existed as far back as Henry II.’s time, and there is certain record of Henry III. elaborately renovating it; but it was destroyed by fire in 1512, and the church we now see is, in the main, the new building which was then erected, with traces of the older one) after many violent restorations performed thereon. The sixteenth century roof is the best remaining part of the old building. Its chief interest lies in the burials of famous prisoners, who included Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, the two beheaded wives of Henry VIII.; Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, beheaded 1540; Lord Seymour, the Lord Admiral, beheaded 1549; the Protector Somerset, beheaded 1552; Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, beheaded 1553; Lady Jane Grey and her husband, beheaded 1554; likewise the beheaded bodies of the Earl of Essex, 1600 (v. Essex Street); the Duke of Monmouth, 1685; Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat for the rebellion of 1745. Also was buried here Sir Thomas Eliot, the imprisoned member of the House of Commons, who died in the Tower, 1632, a prisoner for resisting the will of Charles I. There are some sixteenth and seventeenth century monuments of officials of the Tower.

(ST) PETER, WESTCHEAP (Wood Street, Cheapside, City)

The little space, with the solitary tree, at the Cheapside end of Wood Street, is all that remains to commemorate the church which once stood thereon. Its foundation is unrecorded; almost its earliest record is when we read that in 1304 “John Blowe, clerk of the Church of St Peter, in Wodestrete, was indicted…for that he made assault, together with certain of the persons aforesaid, with swords and other arms, on the Friday next before the Feast of All Hallows, disturbing the peace of our Lord the King”: the affray was “in the Chepe of London, to the terror of the people and the scandal of the City.” Stow says the church had lately been rebuilt in his time. The Abbots of St Alban's seem to have been the patrons until the Dissolution, when Henry granted it to the Earls of Southampton, who held it until it was burnt by the Great Fire 1666 and not rebuilt.

PICCADILLY

The origin of the name of this street, one of the most famous in London, is strangely uncertain. There was a Pickadilley Hall at the north-east corner of the Haymarket about 1623, but why so called is doubtful; perhaps because the first owner made his money by the sale of pickadillies, which were the hems or collars common to the costumes of the beginning of the seventeenth century. The ground near this Hall is recorded in 1640 as being already built over by the owner of this house, and called Piccadilly. His widow sold the Hall to Colonel Panton, and it became a fashionable place of amusement, “whither very many of the nobility and gentry of the best quality resorted both for exercise and conversation,” as Hyde, Lord Clarendon, records in his History under the year 1641. This Hall was demolished, 1685. At the opposite corner of the Haymarket stood the Gaming House, at the same period. In Strype's survey of 1720, Piccadilly is said to extend from the top of the Haymarket to St James's Street, where the street began to be called Portugal Street (though in the map this latter street begins almost at St James's Church), which at that time had reached just beyond Devonshire House (then Berkeley House). In George I.’s time the whole street was absorbed by the name Piccadilly.

Famous houses and residents in Piccadilly have been numerous (v. Burlington House, Bond Street, Devonshire House, Apsley House). At No. 80 Sir Francis Burdett was arrested in 1810 and taken to the Tower; Sir William Hamilton and his wife, Lord Nelson's Lady Hamilton, lived at No. 99 in 1800; on the balcony of No. 138 the famous “Old Q.,” the Duke of Queensberry, sat looking at pretty faces, until he died here in 1810; Byron lived next door (now rebuilt); the present Army and Navy Club was formerly used as the town house of Lord Palmerston (1855-1865) during the height of his career; before him the Duke of Cambridge, the brother of George III., had lived there; Coventry House (No. 106) was the residence of the sixth Earl of Coventry from 1764, but it was built sooner. He had married Maria, one of the beautiful Miss Gunnings; he died here, 1809.

PORTMAN SQUARE (Baker Street)

This square was built between 1764-84, on the estate of the family named Portman, who obtained it in 1532. It had formerly been a manor of the Knights of St John at Clerkenwell (q.v.), who held it as early as 1308. It was then known as the manor of Lylleston, under which name it appears in the Domesday survey. The surrounding street names record the names and residences of the Portman family and its branches; for example; Berkeley Street, Lemond Street; Orchard Street (from the family seat at Orchard Portman in Somersetshire), etc. The name of the manor still remains in Lisson Green, a corrupted form of Lylleston Green, near Paddington Station. At the north-west corner of Portman Square (1 Berkeley Street) Mrs Montague gave her Blue-stocking parties.

PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE (Queen Victoria Street)

This gained its name as having formerly held the office of the King's printers; who printed here at least as early as the reign of Charles II., when they published the first London Gazette. The last to work here were Charles Eyre and W. Strahan; and in 1770 they moved to Gough Square, Fleet Street. Printing House Square is now well known for the publishing office of “The Times” newspaper.

QUEEN ANNE'S GATE (Westminster)

This square or street is a very fine example of the domestic architecture of Queen Anne's reign (it was built about 1706) with its beautiful door canopies.

QUEENHITHE (Upper Thames Street)

This landing place, so famous in mediæval London, began its historical career as the property of one Æthedred in the days of Alfred the Great, in the year 899. Its great value was that the property carried with it the right of demanding custom duties from the merchants landing goods at this wharf. Henry I. got possession of it, and gave it to his Queen, Matilda. Next, King Stephen gave it to his friend, William of Ipris Inn, and also, apparently, his Queen Matilda had a share in it; for we find that both she and William gave interests in it to the Priory of Holy Trinity at Aldgate. William's deed of grant ran thus: “Know ye me to have given and granted unto God and to the Church of the Holy Trinity of London, to the prior and canons there serving God in perpetual arms, Edred's Hithe, with the appurtenances, with such devotion, that they shall send every year twenty pounds unto the maintenance of the Hospital of St Katherine's, which hospital they have in their hands, and 100 shillings to the monks of Bermondsey, and 60 shillings to the brethren of the hospital of St Giles, and that which remaineth the said prior and canons shall enjoy to themselves.”

But it returned into royal hands; and we find it called Queen's hithe in the time of Henry II. Henry III. greatly increased its value by ordering the Constable of the Tower to seize many kinds of goods which were landed anywhere else, except at this Queenhithe. This order did damage to the trade at Billingsgate and other wharfs. But the vessels belonging to London citizens were exempt from these regulations. In Henry's reign the Earl of Cornwall granted Queenhithe with its customs to the Corporation of London in return for a yearly rent of £50. Henceforth the wharf was under the control of the Sheriffs of London. But gradually traders ceased to land their goods there, in spite of attempts to force them; and Stow says that by his time Queenhithe was almost deserted.

QUEEN'S SQUARE (Bloomsbury)

So called as being first built in the reign of Queen Anne. There are still houses of that date to be seen on the west side. Dr Johnson often visited his friend Campbell, who lived at the north-west corner. Dr Burney came to live here in 1771, and entertained Captain Cook in 1772; his house looked straight away, without interrupting buildings, to the fields of Hampstead, as Fanny Burney has written.

RANELAGH (Chelsea)

About the year 1743 a place of public entertainment was built in the gardens of a house of Viscount Ranelagh, which had been built by him in 1691 next to the Chelsea Hospital, on its north-east side. This became a fashionable place of amusement. Its central feature was the Rotunda or covered promenade; which Dr Johnson said “was the finest thing he had ever seen”; and Horace Walpole says that in 1744 “every night constantly I go to Ranelagh; which has totally beat Vauxhall. Nobody goes anywhere else—everybody goes there.” The last of its great shows was in 1802. It was entirely demolished and the site converted into gardens.

RED LION SQUARE (High Holborn)

Built originally by Dr Barebone, a son of Praise-God-Barebone of Cromwellian days, about 1690; until when it was open fields. Rossetti, Burne Jones and William Morris have all lived at No. 17, the two latter together, 1856-9. It took its name from the “Red Lion” a famous Holborn inn which stood here.

REGENT STREET (W.)

This street was designed by John Nash as a direct road from the Regent's residence, Carlton House, on the Mall, to Regent's Park, which was laid out with its adjacent Terraces about the same time, and where the Regent intended to build a suburban house. The street was finished between 1813-20. It is an interesting example of the planning of a street as one uniform work. It has been modified since in various ways by new houses here and there taking the place of the original and uniform ones; and the colonnades of the Quadrant were removed; but they can still be seen at the north-west corner of Piccadilly Circus. Waterloo Place at the south end, still retains some of the original Nash buildings, but the harmony is being ruined by new erections.

MONUMENT IN THE RECORD OFFICE OF DR JOHN YOUNG

By Torregiano

REGENT'S PARK (N.W.)

Where Regent's Park now extends was once the hunting place, known in Tudor times as Marylebone (q.v.) Park; which was deforested during the Commonwealth. The present park and the surrounding terraces were after the design of Nash the architect (v. Regent Street), executed about 1812.

ROLLS HOUSE, THE (Record Office, Chancery Lane)

On this spot Henry III., in 1232, founded a house for the use of Jewish converts to Christianity. The expulsion of the Jews from the whole kingdom in 1290 naturally hampered the increase of such persons; and by the year 1371 there were only two converts in residence. In 1377 the practically extinct institution was merged with the new office of the Master of the Rolls (Custos Rotulorum) by the permanent union of the Warden's Office with the former. However, there had before this time been a frequent connection between the two, accounted for by the fact that the Jews were, in mediæval society, always under the peculiar control of the Crown and its officers. From this time, the house in Chancery Lane became chiefly known as the official residence of the Master of the Rolls. Although the record of any converts ceased after 1608, yet the Master of the Rolls was also termed “Keeper of the House of Converts” until 1873, when Sir George Jessel, a Jew, took office. When the Rolls and Chancery side of the judicature were removed to the New Law Courts, the Record Office took the place of the Master's Office: the new building was founded in 1897. The older offices have entirely vanished, except a few monumental remains still preserved in the museum within: the chief being that of Dr John Young (d. 1516), Master of the Rolls to Henry VIII., and friend of Erasmus; his tomb is by Torregiano, and the inscription is famous for its lettering.

ROYAL EXCHANGE (Cornhill and Threadneedle Street, City)

This place of merchants was first erected in 1567 under the guidance of Sir Thomas Gresham and opened by the Queen, Elizabeth, with great state: “she caused the same Bourse by a herald and a trumpet to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, and so to be called from henceforth and not otherwise.” This foundation may be taken as recording the entry of London into the first rank as a city of foreign trade. This first building was destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666. The second which was then erected was in turn destroyed by fire in 1838. The third and existing Royal Exchange was opened 1844, the architect being William Tite. The tessellated pavement of the first building still remains. The gilded vane on the top of the campanile is in the form of Gresham's crest, a grasshopper.

RUSSELL SQUARE (Bloomsbury)

This was built in the opening years of the nineteenth century on the ground of the Dukes of Bedford. Its best known residents were the eminent lawyers who at first inhabited it: No. 21, Sir Samuel Romilly, who committed suicide here, 1818; No. 28 Lord Tenterden; Sir Thomas Lawrence lived at No. 65 for the last twenty years of his life, and died there 1830.

SADDLERS’ HALL (Cheapside, City)

Although the present hall was only built in 1822, this is the third on the same spot; Stow records the first, which was probably built about 1393. It is worthy of notice as the house of a guild which has existed since Saxon days; for a document of about Henry II.’s time writes of its ancient customs, and mentions an alderman Erualdus who was of pre-Conquest date. Edwards I. and III. gave charters; the latter giving the usual powers of controlling the work of its craft for its own and the public good. These charters were extended by several others, including the last of Elizabeth's time. The Saddlers were among the patrons of the neighbouring canons of St Martin-le-Grand, who said two masses every week for the members of the Saddlers’ Guild; and for the sum of eightpence these latter could be buried in the monastery with the full honours due to the canons themselves.

SADLER'S WELLS (Roseberry Avenue)

This early hydropathic establishment arose round a mineral well which was discovered, or rediscovered, in 1683, by a Mr Sadler; who declared it the equal of the Tunbridge Wells. By 1700 it had become a famous, and by 1733 a fashionable resort. Sadler had already, before his discovery of the wells, started a music hall; and the medical cure was combined with gayer affairs. These united attractions kept it in favour until the beginning of the nineteenth century; it was no longer fashionable after about 1770: though its aquatic performances of the early nineteenth century and the great clown, Grimaldi, brought it crowded houses. Then, in 1842, Phelps and Mrs Warner began their Shakespere management which has become historic; it lasted for twenty years: Hamlet ran for 400 nights, and thirty of Shakespere's plays were produced.

ST SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK

Tomb of John Treherne and his Wife

SALISBURY SQUARE (Fleet Street)

This spot took its name from the town house of the Bishops of Salisbury which stood thereon; at the end of the sixteenth century they sold it to the Sackvilles, afterwards Earls of Dorset. Stow, writing in 1598, says that the existing lord “hath greatly enlarged it with stately buildings.” But this house does not seem to have lasted for long, or it was let in tenements (in any case it was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666), since we find Bulstrode Whitelock living in Salisbury Court in 1634. In 1623 the Salisbury Court Theatre was founded in the barn at the backyard of the great house; and in 1671 the Dorset Theatre was built in the adjacent Dorset Street, to the east, for the Duke's Company, which came here with Betterton for its chief player, and he lived in Salisbury Square with the rest of his comrades; also Lady Davenant, and John Dryden lived here. Later, Samuel Richardson, the author of “Pamela,” lived and wrote in the north-west corner, and printed and traded on the east side; Goldsmith was his press corrector for a time.

SANDFORD MANOR HOUSE (Chelsea)

This is the house where persistent tradition says that Nell Gwynne lived part of the time when she was in Charles II.’s favour. After her, Addison is usually said to have been here in 1706, though it is not quite certain that this was his Chelsea home. The house as it stands retains many of its ancient features, in some parts perhaps of the fourteenth century. There is a fine staircase and a wainscoted hall. It is really just over the Chelsea border, in Fulham; near the railway bridge in the King's Road.

(ST) SAVIOUR, SOUTHWARK

Of the existing church of St Saviour, the choir and Lady Chapel are thirteenth century work. The nave is an entirely modern (1890-7) reconstruction of the thirteenth-century one, which was allowed to fall into decay and then pulled down in the early years of the nineteenth century. There is, however, incorporated in it, at the west end, portions of the original wall arcade, and also two doorways dating from the earlier Norman nave of 1106. Other Norman fragments, some possibly earlier than 1106, are in the Harvard Chapel.

The transepts, originally Early English, were considerably altered in the fifteenth century; the south one, at the expense of Cardinal Beaufort, who recorded the fact by placing his coat-of-arms there. In the north transept is a heap of the wooden bosses of the oak roof erected over the nave in 1469.

On the north side of the nave is the effigy of John Gower, the poet, died 1408, the head resting on the volumes of his three principal works.

Though the exact positions of the graves are unknown, stones in the choir bear the names of the dramatists: John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, and Edmund Shakespeare, a brother of William. Their burial here is explained by the proximity of the Elizabethan theatrical district of Bankside (v. Globe Theatre).

The altar screen is the modern shadow of that erected by Bishop Fox in 1520. On the left of the altar is the Jacobean monument of Richard Humble and his two wives. The north choir aisle contains the oldest effigy in the church, an unknown knight in chain armour, carved in oak.

The retro-choir, like the choir, is a fine example of Early English architecture. Here lies Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, a man of great character and learning. The hand of his effigy clasps his famous Manual of Devotion which, written for his own use in his last years, has since appealed to all sects and ages.

The Harvard Chapel memorises the baptism here of John Harvard, the founder of the first American university. The modern stained glass throughout the church very completely records the people connected with the church and district.

If a mediæval Londoner could view to-day his city from London Bridge, the tower of St Saviour's church would be the only one remaining of the spires and towers of his time to welcome him.

SAVOY, THE (Strand)

Immediately adjoining Somerset House, with the boundary line where now runs the approach to Waterloo Bridge, was once the ancient palace of Savoy, so called, says Stow: “of Peter Earl of Savoy and Richmond, son to Thomas, Earl of Savoy, brother to Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, and uncle unto Eleanor, wife to King Henry the third.” Here he had first built his house in 1245; which in 1294 was given to the Earl of Lancaster, Henry III.’s son, and was rebuilt by the fourth earl. In 1356 and 1363 King John of France lived as a prisoner-guest, when it was held to be “the fairest manor in England,” which was perhaps one reason why it was burned to the ground by the peasants when they rose against their lords, under Wat Tyler in 1381. This happened while John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was its possessor. Its restoration was not until the time of Henry VII., who rebuilt it, 1509, for the Hospital of St John Baptist. After dissolution in Edward VI.’s reign, it was re-endowed by Queen Mary; it was finally dissolved, 1702. As so often happened in the case of liberties, or privileged places exempt from the general jurisdiction, this also became a haunt of lawless persons (cf. White Friars (q.v.)); a refuge for those pursued by their creditors and the magistrates; in its chapel clandestine marriages were performed until 1754. This chapel, St John (improperly St Mary) of Savoy, is now the parish church; it was built, 1511, as the chapel of the hospital endowed by Henry VII. The existing building is the restored or rebuilt form of this church; it contains some tombs and brasses of sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Wither, the poet, was buried here, 1667.

(ST) SEPULCHRE (Newgate)

This church has existed just outside the Newgate from at least the beginning of the twelfth century; for Roger, Bishop of Sarum (died 1139) presented it to the priory of St Bartholomew; after the dissolution it came into the hands of St John's College, Oxford, where it still remains. It was badly damaged by the Great Fire, and almost rebuilt by an unknown architect in 1670. There have been many restorations and rebuildings since that time, but the south porch and the tower are still mainly in the form they took in the fifteenth century, when (according to Stow): “one of the Pophams was a great builder there, namely of one fair chapel on the south side of the choir, and also the fair porch of the same church towards the south.” Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's instructor and the author of “The Scholemaster,” was buried here, 1568; also Captain John Smith, 1632, the governor of Virginia and admiral of New England.

SERGEANTS’ INN (Fleet Street)

This was once the Inn of a legal guild or society (analogous to the Inns of Court and Chancery, but for the higher ranks of the legal profession). Stow, writing of 1598, says “so called for that divers judges and sergeants at the law keep a Commons and are lodged there in Term time.” It does not appear to have been formally founded before the time of Henry VIII., and by the end of the eighteenth century the inn was sold and rebuilt for private houses; as it stands, in the main, to-day. There was another Sergeants’ Inn, in Chancery Lane, which lasted until 1876, when the society was dissolved also.

SKINNERS’ HALL (No. 8 Dowgate Hill, City)

This guild was granted its first charter of incorporation by Edward III. in 1327; but like all the guilds, had a much earlier history before its incorporation. It claims to have possessed its present place of habitation since the thirteenth century, with a certain interval; but continuously since Edward III.’s reign. The Hall was destroyed and rebuilt, 1672, after the Great Fire, and in the main, this is the existing building; but the Dowgate front was rebuilt about 1780, and the dining-hall, 1850. The staircase and the cedar parlour are less touched, but the ceiling of the latter is almost new. Stow records that Skinners’ Well in Clerkenwell (q.v.) was “so called for that the Skinners of London held there certaine playes yearely playd of holy Scripture,” etc. It was in the Skinners’ Hall that General Monk dined just before Charles II. came back; and found the royal arms put up in the hall already, and the arms of the Commonwealth removed.

SMITHFIELD

This large open space, which lies outside the north-west wall of the City of London, has for many hundreds of years been an important scene of its history. Fitzstephen, writing at the end of the twelfth century, calls it “planus campus re et nomine,” i.e. “a smooth field both in name and fact.” This gives us the clue to the probable derivation of the name. It was the great market-place (which the neighbourhood still remains) and the great place for sports and tourneys. Stow, writing at the end of Elizabeth's reign, says: “Thus much for encroachments and inclosure of this Smithfield, whereby remaineth but a small portion for the old uses, to wit for markets of horses and cattle, neither for military exercises, as joisting and tournings, and great triumphs which have been there performed before the princes and nobility both of this realm and foreign countries.” Stow gives examples of these tournaments, in one of which, during the reign of Edward III., he tells us “Dame Alice Perrers (the King's concubine) as Lady of the Sun, rode from the Tower of London through Cheap, accompanied of many lords and ladies, every lady leading a lord by his horse bridle, until they came into West Smithfield, and then began a great joist which endured seven days after.” It was in Smithfield on the 15th of June 1381 that Richard II. held conference with Wat Tyler and all his followers ranged behind him; when Walworth, the mayor, struck down the popular leader before their eyes, and Richard only saved himself and his attendants from massacre by a marvellous display of nerve. But the whole incident is a commonplace of the history book. The topographical facts may be interesting to the traveller who wishes to reconstruct the scene in the imagination. It is recorded that Richard and his 200 followers rode to the east side of Smithfield, and drew rein outside the west gate of St Bartholomew's Priory. Before them was the great open market-place, quite empty; and on the other side was the crowd of Tyler's men. Presently their leader rode out and came over to the King, and a discussion ensued. Tyler was not satisfied by the answers and grew restless. Then one of Richard's men spoke insultingly, and Tyler overhead the words and ordered his standard bearer to cut him down. Walworth, the mayor, then struck at Tyler, and another King's man hit a fatal blow. The rebel leader had only strength to ride half way over the open square when he fell dead. His followers were preparing to charge for their revenge, when Richard rode across to them and called out “I will be your chief and captain, you shall have from me all that you seek. Only follow me to the fields without.” Then, he boldly led them out to the meadows around St John's Priory of Clerkenwell; where he held a conference with them until Walworth arrived with several thousand citizens to his assistance. But Richard refused to allow any blows to be struck, and the two parties dispersed in a short time.

Smithfield was also the scene of the burning of those accused of religious heresy. The Catholics burnt the Protestants; the Protestants burnt the Catholics; and the both burnt the Anabaptists. The place of the fires was opposite the west gate of St Bartholomew's, probably where many ashes were discovered in the nineteenth century. It was outside this gate that the nobles sat watching the burning of Anne Askew in 1546. This outer gate was part of the west front of the old Priory.

SOHO SQUARE (off Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road)

This was a very fashionable square in Charles II.’s reign and later. It was built in 1681. Its first occupant was the Duke of Monmouth, who lived in a house designed for him (on the south side) by Wren, which was demolished before 1773. The rectory house, No. 28, standing on part of its site, has a ceiling by Flaxman. From 1708-32 sixteen peers lived in Soho Square. At the south corner of Sutton Street was Carlisle House, originally the residence of the Earls of Carlisle, but most famous for its tenant of 1761-1772, Mrs Cornelys, who opened it as a house of entertainment’; the House of Commons once adjourned to allow its members to attend one of her functions; these balls became the talk of the town for their brilliance and levity, verging on the scandalous. The lady died in the Fleet prison as a bankrupt, after selling milk in Knightsbridge. Falconberg House (now No. 22, part of Messrs Crosse and Blackwell's), with the pilaster front, was the house of Oliver Cromwell's daughter, Lady Falconberg (d. 1712). It is probably the oldest house in the Square, dating from the end of the seventeenth century; it became notorious in later days as the “White House” of “Old Q.” (Duke of Queensbury), and the Marquis of Hertford and their gay friends. At the south-east corner (Greek Street) is the house where lived the great politician, Alderman Beckford, wherein he died, in 1770, the day after Chatham had forced his way into the house to regain some letters he had written to Beckford. The interior is still finely decorated in the eighteenth century style. There is a fine eighteenth-century house standing at the south-west corner of the Square.

SOMERSET HOUSE (Strand)

The ground now covered by this great building was, until the year 1549, occupied by several separate dwellings. Next westward from the old Arundel House (v. Arundel Street) had been an ancient town house of the Bishops of Lichfield, who had been there since the reign of Edward I.; then was the house of the Bishops of Worcester. Both these and the parish church of St Mary-le-Strand, with all their surrounding houses, were demolished in 1549 by the Duke of Somerset (uncle of Edward VI.), the Lord Protector, and on the vacant place he began to build Somerset House. It was not finished when its owner fell from power and was beheaded, 1552. It then reverted to the possession of the Crown, and it became the Court of Anne of Denmark, wife of James I., and of Henrietta Maria, Charles I.’s Queen, and the scene of some early Stuart masques. During this time Inigo Jones was employed to extend and improve the palace. He died here, 1652. Oliver Cromwell's body lay in state here. Henrietta returned to the palace for a short time after the Restoration, but unexpectedly went to live in France. Pepys has much to tell of its life in these days. Then Catherine of Braganza, Charles II.’s Queen, became its mistress, where she remained until 1692. The Government restored it and gave it out in tenements for needy aristocrats and the Royal Academy schools, which were its main uses until it was demolished, 1775; and rebuilt, by Sir William Chambers, in its present form, at the Nation's expense, and used for various semi-public societies, until it was occupied entirely by the Revenue and other departments of State. The east wing was added, 1831 (Smirke); the west wing, facing Wellington Street, in 1853 (Pennethorne).

SOMERS TOWN

This district takes its name from the name of the landowner, Lord Somers, on whose estate it was built during 1786 and the next few years. It was in early days a hamlet of St Pancras (q.v.). Many of the poor refugees of the French revolution came here at the end of the eighteenth century. In the Polygon, which stood in the centre of Clarendon Square, lived William Godwin, when he was writing “Political Justice”; and Mary Wollstonecraft, who became his wife, came to live near him after her marriage, and there died when her child Mary, afterwards the wife of Shelley, was born.

SOUTHWARK

Although this district is now almost in the centre of London, its history is very independent of the City for a large part of their careers. There are grounds for believing that Southwark is the older place of the two. There have been many Roman remains discovered there, and Ptolemy's description, written about A.D. 150, appears to mean that the main city was then on the south side of the river. If this was so, the Roman fort, which stood where Cannon Street Station now is, was not exactly the beginning of London, but rather the outpost of Southwark. But, of course, within clearer history, London has held the chief place, and the name of Southwark means the south fortified place: this name being of Danish origin. It seems to have been a settlement of the Danes (cf. Clement's “Danes” [q.v.]) after they made peace with the English. Anyhow, the earliest certain written record of Southwark is in the Saxon Chronicle of 1023, when it is called “Suthgeweorke.” William the Conqueror destroyed the town, whatever there was of it, immediately after the battle of Hastings, when he marched on London. It appears to have existed as an independent borough of Surrey until the year 1327, when Edward III. put it under the jurisdiction of the City of London, which had complained that Southwark had become a nest of criminals who defied the law of London on the plea that they were beyond its bounds. So at this date, part, at least, of it was granted to the City. The people of Southwark protested with apparently a certain success, for the grant had to be renewed several times. In Henry IV.’s reign the City was granted the right of arresting criminals in Southwark and taking them to Newgate. In Edward IV.’s reign, 1462, it was placed still more completely under the rule of the City; and in 1550 Edward VI. granted to the City the King's manor of Southwark, and also the manor of the dissolved Abbey of Bermondsey with all the civil and criminal jurisdiction appertaining thereto, for which the City paid a capital sum down and a yearly rent. The valuable lands which by this grant passed to the Corporation have remained ever since as part of the Bridge House Estates devoted to the repair of London Bridge. Southwark was at the same time made one of the wards of the City of London with an alderman like the rest; but even to this day, this alderman remains merely an honorary figure, and is not elected like his fellows; and to this day there are no common councillors elected by the people as in the other wards. The Recorder of London became High Steward of Southwark Manor, but this jurisdiction disappeared when Southwark became a municipality of its own in 1899. From 1296, which is almost the beginning of our Parliamentary history, Southwark has returned its members to the House of Commons.

The history of Southwark is made up of the history of several independent units for which one must see the references to St Mary Overy, Winchester House, Paris Garden, Bermondsey Abbey, etc. Perhaps its most famous records are of its inns (v. George Inn).

SPITALFIELDS

This district, lying a little beyond Bishopsgate, takes its name from having been the property of the Priory and Hospital of St Mary Spital, which Walter Brune and Rosie, his wife, founded for Canons regular, in 1197. Stow says that when it was surrendered to Henry VIII.’s officers, it had 180 beds “well furnished for receipt of the poore. For it was an Hospital of great relief.” After the Dissolution the buildings were mainly swept away, and “many faire houses builded for receipt and lodging of worshipful persons.” It was in the pulpit of the churchyard attached to this priory that were preached the famous Spital sermons on every Easter Monday and the two following days, at which attended the mayor and aldermen of the City. This ancient custom was in use at least as early as the end of the fourteenth century, and continues in modern form at Christ Church (q.v.) to this day. The site of the priory is marked in part by the present Spital Square, which probably covers the space of the old cloisters or churchyard or some other open space within the hospital precincts.

STAPLE INN

The French refugees, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685, settled in this district as silk weavers; and Spital Square and the surrounding streets still stand as one of the very best architectural survivals of the domestic dwellings of the early Georgian period, built soon after their arrival.

SPRING GARDENS (Charing Cross)

This spot, at the north-east corner of St James's Park, was a fashionable place of recreation during the reign of James I. and Charles I.: there was a bowling-green, also elaborate dining facilities. But it was almost suppressed during the Commonwealth, and fashion soon migrated to Vauxhall (q.v.) after the Restoration. The gardens were described in 1659 as “an inclosure not disagreeable, for the solemness of the grove is broken by the warbling of the birds, as it opens into the spacious walks at St James's; but the company walk in it at such a rate, you would think that all the ladies were so many Atalantas contending with their wooers.” The price of the dinner at this haunt of fashion was six shillings, which was then a fabulous sum to pay for a meal. The district is now well known as the seat of the London County Council.

STAPLE INN (Holborn)

The Holborn front of this Inn is of 1570-86. The Hall, at the south-west corner of the beautiful courtyard, was built, 1581; it has some stained glass dating from 1500, some portraits, and the arms of the inn, the wool sack, commemorating its origin. The buildings round courtyard built 1729-59. The inn is called “le Stapled Halle” in a will of 1333, and in 1343 it is found in the possession of a tenant who is ordered at various times to perform duties with regard to the wool customs. It is possible that Staple Inn was in its origin the house of a guild in some way responsible for the collection of the duties on wool. In a will of 1505 is given a list of the members of the Inn. In 1529 the freehold of the property came into the possession of Gray's Inn; but at some subsequent time, certainly by 1811, the Society became possessed of the property itself, and had no further connection with Gray's Inn. It was finally dissolved in 1884 and the freehold sold. Dr Johnson here wrote “Rasselas.”

STATIONERS’ HALL (Ludgate Hill, City)

This Company was granted a charter in 1557, but existed much earlier: it is still strictly confined to the members of the book trade in all its branches. The Licensing Act of 1662 compelled all books to be registered at the Hall of this Company, and the Act of 1842 still requires registration before suing for breach of copyright. The present site of their Hall was bought in 1611; the existing building, in the main, is the one erected in 1670 after the destruction of their earlier hall by the Great Fire. The exterior was refaced, 1805; and there were alterations and a new wing added in 1888. It contains portraits of Prior, Steele, and Samuel Richardson; the latter was Master of the Company, 1754.

(ST) STEPHEN, COLEMAN STREET (City)

This parish church was, at least as early as the twelfth century, in the patronage of the canons of St Paul's, who by 1182 had leased it to the Priory of Butley in Suffolk. But it appears to have been made a parish church again in the year 1456, the priory retaining the patronage until the Dissolution, when it passed into the hands of the parishioners. The church was destroyed by the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren in 1676. Stow records a tradition that the church was once a Jewish Synagogue, but this seems on doubtful evidence. Many victims of the plague of 1665 were buried here by a sexton recorded by Defoe in his “Memoirs of the Plague.” The Last Judgment scene over the gate is a copy of the original one in the vestry; it is probably a survival of the earlier church.

(ST) STEPHEN, WALBROOK (City)

A church stood here on the banks of the old City stream, at least as early as 1096. As late as 1300 we find the parish still being rated for the repair of the bridge over which it was necessary to approach the church. The church had been the gift of St John's, Colchester, in 1100, and the Grocers’ Company have been the patrons since 1502. It was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the new building is considered by some to be Wren's greatest creation so far as the interior is concerned: but this has been considerably modified since his time. Sir John Vanbrugh buried here, 1726. The “Martyrdom of St Stephen” picture in this church is called Benjamin West's finest work.

STEPNEY (E.)

The great manor of Stepney, or as it was called in early times Stebunhithe, was in the possession of the Bishops of London at the time of the Domesday survey. It was the balance to the great western manor of Westminster, which belonged to that Abbey. Stepney parish and manor originally extended from the east walls of the City to the River Lea, and from the Thames to the Hackney Marshes in the north. One by one (beginning with Whitechapel at some date in the Stuart period) the single parish was subdivided into smaller ones, as the population increased. After Whitechapel (q.v.) went Shadwell, in Charles II.’s time, and then followed Wapping, Spitalfields, Limehouse, Stratford and Bethnal Green: this list being a good illustration of the growth of London on its east side. In the reign of Edward VI. the bishops surrendered the Manor to the King, who granted it to Thomas Wentworth, his Lord Chamberlain.

St Dunstan Stepney was the mother church of this great manor and parish. It was probably here before Dunstan's time; the existing building is the restored version of the later mediæval church, as it was rebuilt during the fourteenth century, probably. There was a serious fire a few years ago. There are several monuments of interest, one being the altar of Sir Henry Colet, Dean Colet's father, who was a Lord Mayor in Henry VII.’s reign, and had a house near this church: the Dean was once Vicar here; there is also a monument to Sir Thomas Spert, d. 1541, founder of Trinity House. The original manor house of the bishops was in Bethnal Green near the west gate of Victoria Park (note Bishop's Road).

STOKE NEWINGTON (N.)

This district appears in the Domesday Survey as Neutone, where the Canons of St Paul's then held two hides of land; they leased it to various laymen at an early date, but it is at present again in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, who have always held the reversion of the leases and remained the ultimate lords. The old parish church of St Mary almost certainly dates from the Conquest at least, and still stands (with a new one near it) in a restored sixteenth century form. It has a fine monument to John Dudley, the lord of the manor, who died in 1580, and to his wife, who afterwards married Thomas Sutton, who founded the Charterhouse (q.v.). Daniel Defoe lived, in 1710, where is now Defoe Street, and Edgar Allan Poe was at school in Stoke Newington in 1817-19. Until well on in the nineteenth century this whole district was quite rural.

(ST) SWITHIN (Cannon Street, City)

The patron saint of this church died in 862; he was Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of King Egbert. The first church was probably erected soon after his death. The Great Fire destroyed what then was standing. The present church originally built by Wren, 1678, but subsequent alterations make it of little account as his work. Dryden here married Lady Elizabeth Howard, 1663. (See London Stone).

TALLOW CHANDLER'S HALL (No. 5 Dowgate Hill)

The members of this guild had been acknowledged by letters patent as early as 1426, when they were given powers of controlling their trade by the search for and destruction of inferior oils: they were fully incorporated in 1462. Their Hall was here in Stow's time; it was rebuilt in 1672, after the Great Fire of 1666 had destroyed the earlier one; and this Stuart rebuilding still stands, with various restorations in parts. The Court room was wains-cotted in 1675. It was these chandlers who gave their name to Candlewick Street, which is now corrupted into Cannon Street.

TEMPLE, THE (Fleet Street)

A district lying to the south of Fleet Street, at its west end, so-called from its possession by the Knights Templars between 1160 (about) and their suppression in 1308. It was for long called the New Temple, since the former inn of the order had been in Holborn, until this old Temple was sold to the Bishop of Lincoln. The first Church, on the model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, was consecrated, 1185, with great ceremony in presence of Henry II.: this is the part now called the Round Church, in the Transition style. The rest of church is in Early English style, and was consecrated, 1240, in presence of Henry III. and great nobles; reckless restoration of church in 1842. Note recumbent figures of great nobles who were buried here; including three which are probably those of the Earls of Pembroke who died between 1214-1241. they were not Templars but honorary associates of the Order. On porch, eight figures, probably Henry II. and three knights and Queen Eleanor, and three ecclesiastics. Note also tombs of Edmund Plowden (d. 1584), the lawyer (in the triforium, which should be visited for other tombs, also); and John Selden (d. 1654), the great antiquarian. The earlier kings, especially John, often stayed in Temple, for the Knights acted as guardians of the Royal Treasury and jewels. On suppression of the Knights, on excuse of sorcery, Edward II. gave Temple to Earl of Pembroke; and Edward III. gave it to rival Knights of St John, who continued to live at their house in Clerkenwell, and leased Middle Temple to law students (who were probably there already) and Outer Temple to Bishops of Exeter. Wat Tyler's men raided Temple, 1381. On suppression of Order of St John, at Reformation, Temple passed to Crown, who continued lease to lawyers; James I. granted them perpetual lease. Middle Temple Hall finished, 1571; its beautiful oak screen, 1575; Twelfth Night performed here, 1601. Inner Temple Hall, rebuilt 1870, stands on site of Knights Templars’ refectory, of which two small chambers remain at west end, of about same date as Round Church. Division into Inner and Middle Temple probably originated in Knights leasing west part to students or others, and retaining Inner for their own use. Fire of 1666 only came to east end of Church; but fire of 1678 burned many buildings, whereupon Christopher Wren's cloisters, 1681, House of Master of Temple, and buildings in Pump Court, Brick Court, Essex Court and New Court were built about this time. Houses at top of Middle Temple Lane are of sixteenth century; the adjacent gatehouse, facing on Fleet Street, is by Wren, 1684. Goldsmith lived in 2 Brick Court, 1765-77, and died there; he is buried in the Temple churchyard; his tomb is not known, but present stone was erected to his memory. Charles Lamb, born Crown Office Row, at its east end, also lived in Mitre Court Buildings and Inner Temple Lane (but these two latter now modern houses). Dr Johnson lived for few years, from 1760, where Dr Johnson's Buildings now stand. Thackeray lived in Hare Court (rebuilt). King's Bench Walk has fine position and some seventeenth and eighteenth century houses, with dates on doors, on east side, the former, of 1678 date, are by Christopher Wren. The Temple Gardens are the scene in Shakespeare's “Henry VI.” Where the rival nobles choose their badges of the white and red roses. It was in Fountain Court, beside the Middle Temple Hall, that Dickens made Ruth Pinch meet John Westlock (“Martin Chuzzlewit”),

(ST) THOMAS THE APOSTLE (Cannon Street, City)

The little garden in front of the two late seventeenth century houses, at the corner where Cannon Street crosses Queen Street, is all that remains of the churchyard of St Thomas the Apostle; which stood where Queen Street now is. It existed from, at least, 1170, when it was given to the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's. It was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666 and the parish was merged into St Mary, Aldermary.

(ST) THOMAS'S HOSPITAL (Albert Embankment)

This very modern building goes back for its origin to the ancient borough of Southwark and the time of Thomas à Becket; who is said to have established a hospital within the precincts of St Mary Overy Priory. In any case a hospital was removed in 1213 to a more convenient situation on the north side of St Thomas's Street, Southwark (where its last chapel and some of its attached houses still stand), chiefly by the aid of Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester. This institution continued its career, with more or less irregularities, until 1540, when it was surrendered to the Crown. But in 1552 it was bought by the City of London and continued as a hospital for the sick poor. It was re-erected in 1706; and in 1871 was removed from Southwark and rebuilt on its present site on the bank of the Thames, opposite the Houses of Parliament.

TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD (Oxford Street, W.)

The name and situation of this road record the ancient manor of Totehele; which is mentioned in the Domesday Survey as a manor attached to St Paul's; apparently it was once a part of the greater manor of Rugmere, which included St Giles's and Bloomsbury as well. The manor-house stood at the north end of the Road. After a very varied history in the way of tenants, this manor came into the hands of the Dukes of Grafton, the descendants of Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, Charles II.’s mistress; and from them it has descended to the Fitzroys, Lords Southampton, whose ownership is recorded in Fitzroy Square and other local names; they still pay a small rent yearly to that prebendary canon of St Paul's who holds the Tottenhall Stall.

TOWER HILL (near the Tower of London)

“Upon this hill” wrote Stow in 1598, “is always readily prepared at the charges of the city, a large Scaffold and Gallows of Timber, for the execution of such Traitors or Transgressors as are delivered out of the Tower, or otherwise to the Sheriffs of London by writ, there to be executed.” He also records that when Edward IV. attempted to set up gallows and scaffold there on his own responsibility, in 1465, the mayor and Council compelled him to acknowledge that he had no right so to interfere with a spot within the liberties of the City. The scaffold was where now are the Trinity Square Gardens. The historical victims of this place include: Sir Thomas More, 1535; Earl of Surrey, the poet, 1547; the great Protector Somerset (who built Somerset House), 1552; Sir Thomas Wyatt, 1554; Lady Jane Grey's husband, Dudley, 1553; Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1641; Archbishop Laud, 1645; Sir Harry Vane, 1662, who had taken part in the death of Charles I.; Algernon Sidney, 1683; the Duke of Monmouth, 1685; Earl of Derwentwater, for his share in the Old Pretender's rising of 1715; and Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino and Lovat for the rising of the Young Pretender in 1745. Lovat was the last man beheaded in England, and the scaffold disappeared with him.

THE TEMPLE CHURCH

TOWER OF LONDON

William the Conqueror's first tower on this spot was only of earth and wood, but about 1085 he commissioned Gundulph, the Bishop of Rochester to build a stone castle. This was obeyed by the erection of the White Tower and the inner walls during 1085-97. This early part remains substantially the same to-day; except that Wren refaced the Tower with white stone about 1663; and the twelve smaller turrets have been built at various dates along the inner walls. The White Tower contains: (1) in the basement, the sub-crypt or cell called “Little Ease,” where Ralph Flambard was imprisoned in 1100, and afterwards escaped, when his confinement was relaxed; (2) the crypt or prison cell beneath (3) the chapel of St John, and the Banqueting Hall; (4) the Council Chamber, where Richard resigned the Crown to Henry IV. and the royal apartments which were frequently used by the kings up to Henry III.

This central core of the Tower was afterwards extended, in the time of Richard I., when Longchamp dug the moat and built the outer walls; and it was probably the increased garrison, then required, which necessitated the building of a second chapel, the St Peter ad Vincula (q.v.) about 1200. From John's reign (1199-1216) probably date the Devereux, Bell and Wardrobe Towers. It was Henry III., 1216-72, who made the last great changes; especially building, or adding to, new royal apartments to take the place of the more primitive ones in the White Tower. These new apartments were in the south-east corner of the inner ward, but were almost entirely demolished during the Commonwealth. The Cradle, Lanthorn and Byward Towers are of the time of Henry III., and also the Traitors’ Gate (or St Thomas's Tower), which was specially used for prisoners from the Tudor period, and Cradle Tower entrance used by royalty. The Beauchamp Tower is probably of Edward III.’s reign, and became the principal prison house, and the scaffold was just at its door. All these towers have been much restored and rebuilt. Such are the main points of architectural history which it is necessary to keep in mind in order to place the political and human history of the Tower in its proper place.

The Tower was at first a Royal Court in every sense; both as a dwelling, a castle and a council house. But it was less and less used as a residence, as Westminster Palace took its place, and it became more and more a prison. By the time of Henry VIII. it was almost wholly a prison, a fortress and a store house for State papers. Charles II. was the last sovereign to spend a night there.

Amongst its famous prisoners have been: Baliol, 1296, Wallace, 1305, and David Bruce, 1347, of Scotland; King John of France, 1356, the Knights Templars, 1311 (v. Temple), Sir Walter Raleigh, Walpole, 1712, Harley, 1715, Wilkes, 1762; besides those executed on Tower Hill (q.v.) outside, and those prisoners buried in St Peter ad Vincula Chapel (q.v.). The two sons of Edward IV. were, traditionally, murdered in the Bloody Tower, by order of Richard II.; Henry VI. is said to have been murdered in the Wakefield Tower, and the Duke of Clarence (in a butt of malmsey) in the Bowyer Tower.

In the White Tower is an extensive collection of old armour; and in the Wakefield Tower are shown the Crown Jewels.

TRINITY HOUSE (Tower Hill)

This is the Hall of the “Masters, Wardens and Assistants of the Guild, Fraternity or Brotherhood of the Most Glorious and Undividable Trinity and of St Clements in the parish of Deptford Stroud in the county of Kent.” Which is the full title of the society of Trinity House, a guild, founded by Sir Thomas Spert in 1529, whose business is to further the welfare of the shipping interest, by the regulations of lighthouses and in other ways. The existing building was erected in 1795. There are some interesting eighteenth century dwellings on both sides of the Trinity House, in the neighbouring streets (v. Itinerary, No. I.).

TOWER GREEN

Place of Execution in the Foreground

VAUXHALL (South side of Thames)

The first mention of the manor of Vauxhall, or as it was then called, Faukeshall, occurs in the reign of Edward I. It probably takes its name from the Foukes de Brent who had a manor in Lambeth (of which this seems to have been part) about this time (though a Jane Vaux is recorded as owning the site of the garden in 1615). The manor passed to the Black Prince, who gave it to Canterbury Cathedral; and it remained with the dean and chapter after the Dissolution.

Vauxhall Gardens became a fashionable place of amusement at the Restoration of 1660, when they took the place of the (Old) Spring Gardens (q.v.) in St James's Park. They were therefore called, at first, the New Spring Gardens. Here at “Fox Hall,” as he called it, Pepys was in his element; and there are many allusions to these gardens in the dramatists of the Stuarts and Georges—Wycherley, Congreve, Sedley and their set; and Addison sends his Sir Roger de Coverley there. It was still fashionable in Horace Walpole's time, having been revived in 1732 under royal patronage, and continued a “select” place until the beginning of the nineteenth century; and lasted as a more democratic recreation ground until the gardens were closed finally in 1859, and soon built over (note Vauxhall Walk, etc).

(ST) VEDAST (Foster Lane, Cheapside, City)

This church was at first in the patronage of the Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, until 1396. It was rebuilt by Wren after the Fire 1697. Robert Herrick was baptized here 1697; his father being a goldsmith in Cheapside. Foster Lane is a corruption of an earlier St Fastes Lane, or St Vedasti, as it was called in the fourteenth century.

VINTNERS’ HALL (68 Upper Thames Street, City)

The Vintners are one of the Twelve Great Companies of the City; they are recorded 1256, and probably had a still longer career. By letters patent of Edward III., they were given rights of controlling their trade; and more formally incorporated by Henry VI. They were given the site of their present habitation in 1357; the Great Fire destroyed their Hall; it was rebuilt by Wren in 1671, and again partly rebuilt in 1823 and since, with a recent front; but the fine council room of Wren still remains behind, with its Grinling Gibbon's carving and old tapestry and plate. These wine merchants gave the name of their trade to the whole district, which is still called the Vintry Ward.

WALLS OF THE CITY OF LONDON

The Walls of London were an essential feature of its early and mediæval history, and still existed until they were mainly pulled down with the gates, about 1760. They certainly date from the Roman occupation. It is still an open question at what precise time during that occupation the walls were built; the more usual theory ascribes them to about the middle of the fourth century, when the walls were erected to protect the open town (which had grown round the Roman fort) from the raids of the Picts and Scots. How much they fell into decay during the early Saxon times is uncertain; but they were restored by Alfred the Great in 886 to protect the City from the Danes. There were many restorations during the mediæval period. The best fragments of the Wall now available for sight above ground, are in the churchyard of St Alphage in London Wall; in Cripplegate Churchyard; in the General Post Office buildings, where a piece has been opened up to view quite lately; near the south-east corner of the White Tower in the Tower of London.

Outside the walls was a ditch, of 75 feet span at the top and 14 feet depth, beginning about 10 feet from the wall. This ditch was almost certainly also of Roman construction; though Stow declares it was begun in 1211.

The line of the Wall is clearly marked by the present street of London Wall, on the north side of which was the Wall; which continued south-eastwards within the present Houndsditch (marking the Ditch) and Minories, until it reached the Thames by a line running through the middle of the present Tower precincts. From London Wall towards the west, it turned almost due south from the existing bastion in Cripplegate churchyard, until it reached St Anne's Church, in Noble Street; then turned west to Newgate; then went south to the Thames, with an extension from Ludgate to the Fleet when Blackfriars was built, 1285.

WALWORTH (South side of Thames)

This district appears in Domesday as the manor of Waleorde; it was then in the possession of the archbishops of Canterbury; having been given to them by the jester of King Edmund, Nithardus, who held it as his master's gift, and gave it to the church to show his piety; and the cathedral still holds the manorial rights. Its name indicates that it was the worth or village by the wall; which may refer to its situation outside the Wall of Southwark; but much more probably means that it was itself surrounded by a dyke to keep back the floods or high tides which sometimes invaded that low-lying land. It is rather suggestive that the later Newington, which does not appear in the Domesday Survey, subsequently took the first place, and Walworth became merely a hamlet under Newington. The explanation may be that Walworth was invaded by the water, and the New Town was built to take its place.

WARDROBE PLACE (Carter Lane, City)

So called because it was the site of the Royal Wardrobe House, from the time of Edward III. until the Great Fire destroyed it. Edward had bought this building at the death (1359) of Sir John Beauchamp, its former occupier. James I. gave away the royal dresses to the Earl of Dunbar; but the Wardrobe had another function, of enrolling “the secret letters and writing touching the Estate of the Realm,” Stow tells us. After the Great Fire, the office was removed to the Strand; and abolished at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The present quiet little courtyard has still, on its west side, some houses put up soon after the Great Fire of 1666.

WESLEY'S CHAPEL AND HOUSE (City Road)

John Wesley laid the foundation stone of this chapel in 1777; and here he often preached, and was buried in the churchyard, 1791. His house, No. 47, is now open to the public, and contains the room in which he died, and his private chapel and many mementoes.

WESTMINSTER

Westminster is the town which grew up round the Abbey Church and the royal palace; which were in existence at least as early as the time of Edward the Confessor, in the eleventh century (v. Westminster Abbey and Westminster School and Westminster Palace). This spot although it is now absorbed, in the popular estimation, within the greater mass of London, has yet possessed an individuality of its own throughout its history, at least until it was placed in the scope of the London County Council by the Act of 1888. Even now it exists as a separate borough, and shares with its eastern rival the honourable title of “City.” The travellers will note at the street corners the words “the City of Westminster.” They should be a continual reminder that he is in a place which has a distinct history apart from the City of London, though the builder has made them one continuous whole.

Westminster began as the little island of Thorney; surrounded by the marsh land at the mouth of the Tyburn stream, which was sometimes washed by the Thames tides; this island made a momentary resting-place in the ford across the Thames, which connected the great British and Roman Road (Watling Street) that ran from Chester to the Kent coast. Roman remains have been found on this island, beneath the Abbey nave: then grew up the monastery and the King's palace (v. Westminster Abbey and Palace) which gave the settlement its distinctive note. Westminster was the town of the monks and their royal patrons, while London was the city of the merchants.

Throughout the whole of its earlier history, the ground which is now covered by the “West End” of London was, for the greater part, the vast manor of the Abbey, and included within the charge of its parish church of St Margaret (q.v.). Beyond St Margaret's parish, the Abbey owned a large part of Chelsea, and the manor of Paddington, including Westbourne. London was, therefore, all through the mediæval period shut in on the west side by the possessions of the abbots of Westminster. The history of the growth of the West End of London is the history of the break up of the manors of Westminster. In the year 951 Westminster extended from the London City walls along the Fleet side, along Holborn and Oxford Street, until just beyond Bond Street at its north end, and then the boundary line ran almost due south until it reached the Thames half way between Westminster Abbey and Chelsea Hospital. By the year 1222 all the district between Holborn and the Thames, and as far west as St Giles village and the Savoy on the south, had been lopped off and given to other jurisdictions: for example the Danes who settled round St Clement's Danes Church (q.v.) had their piece, and the Savoy (q.v.) district had also gone from the possessions of the abbot. But, on the other hand, by this date, 1222, the Abbey had received huge estates on the west side, which took them over what is now Paddington, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park, the Grosvenor Square district, and Belgravia, Pimlico and a large part of Chelsea. The Crown seized Hyde Park on the Dissolution of the monastery by Henry VIII., and so the break up commenced.

HENRY VII.’S CHAPEL WESTMINSTER; AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS

The historical City of Westminster, in its narrow sense, the town around the Abbey and Palace walls, is the little spot of ground which had originally stood above the marsh in Roman and Saxon and Danish days, until it was gradually in later days surrounded by reclaimed dry land. We must not forget that Westminster is now nine feet above its older level. This original Westminster was, roughly speaking, included within the Thames on the east; College Street, just outside the Abbey garden walls on the south; the west boundary of Dean's Yard, on the west, and New Scotland Yard police offices, on the north. Within these boundaries was Westminster; beyond it was not Westminster; but, rather, the manors belonging to the Abbey.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

The monastery of Westminster was largely endowed by Edward the Confessor when he built a great church here, which was finished in 1065, the year before the Norman Conquest. That is the first absolutely certain fact in its history. But there is fair evidence that Sebert, king of the East Saxons, had built a church here about 616, almost contemporary with the foundation of St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London by Sebert's uncle; though Bede (d. 735) does not mention the fact. There is also a charter of 785 (of uncertain authenticity, however) in which Offa, King of Mercia, granted some land to “the needy people of God in Thorney, on the dreadful spot which is called Westminster.” This, of course, rather assumes that there was a religious body already in existence. After ravages by the Danes it is supposed that Edgar and Dunstan rebuilt the monastery at the end of the tenth century. There are two charters, of 978 and 986, granting land to it, which are generally accepted as authentic documents. The next event in its history was the burial of Harold in 1039; then came the above-mentioned certain fact of Edward the Confessor's extensive building and endowment of the monastery in 1065. This is described by the contemporary chronicler as already founded: “beyond the walls of the City of London, on the aforesaid river Thames, was a monastery to the glory of the blessed Peter,” where a few poor monks, under an abbot, did serve God. William the Conqueror gave various gifts. In his time there were eighty brethren besides the abbot. When the bishop of London claimed jurisdiction over the Abbey in 1212, it was decided by the arbitrators that St Peter's, by ancient right, was free from the rule of the bishopric of St Paul's.

It was Henry III. who began a complete rebuilding of the Abbey, which his son Edward I. continued. Their church is, in the main, the one we now possess, with various additions and restorations given below. At the Dissolution the monastery was abolished and at first a bishop, with dean and chapter, took its place; but the bishopric was abolished in ten years, and the dean and chapter still remain, though the title of City (i.e. the seat of a bishop) was never surrendered.

The following is a summary of the chief dates of the existing church. Of Edward the Confessor's building in 1065 there still remain traces in the Chapel of the Pyx and the adjoining cloister, and the crypt of the Chapter house, and also in several parts of the monastic domestic building (v. Westminster School); of Henry III.’s building, in the Early English style, 1220-69, are the Confessor's Chapel, the ambulatory and its chapels, the transepts, and the Chapter house. The west end of the choir and the first bay of the nave are of Edward I.’s time, in the Early Decorated style; the rest of nave was built, 1340-1498; the west front is of the reigns of Richard III. and Henry VII., except the upper parts of the towers which were designed by Wren in 1714. Henry VII. rebuilt the Lady Chapel (Henry VII.’s Chapel) at the east end, begun in 1502, in the late Perpendicular style. The exterior of this great Abbey has been extensively restored; but the rebuilding of the north transept front (by Pearson, at the end of the nineteenth century) in a modern design, is the only serious piece of vandalism. The whole interior is almost untouched.

The most important objects out of the multitude of interests in the Abbey are in the part east of the transepts, i.e. in the Sanctuary; in Edward the Confessor's Chapel immediately behind the High Altar; in the ambulatory with its chapels forming the apsidal east end of the Abbey, including Henry VII.’s Chapel at the extreme east end; in the Poet's Corner of the south transept.

Beginning in the Sanctuary, before the High Altar, note the mosaic pavement which Abbot Ware brought from Rome in 1268: to the right is a contemporary portrait of Richard II.

In Edward the Confessor's Chapel, behind the High Altar, are the tombs of: Edward the Confessor (in the middle) erected 1269, the gift of Henry III. who built this part of the Abbey; Henry III., himself, designed by William Torel, 1290; Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I., by the same craftsman; Edward I., d. 1307; Henry V., with the helmet, shield, and saddle which he is said to have used at the battle of Agincourt; Edward III., d. 1377; his wife Philippa; Richard II. Behind the High Altar are the two coronation chairs: one of Edward I. in oak, with the stone Scottish coronation chair of Scone, under the seat; this was brought from Scotland by Edward I. in 1297, and on it every English monarch has been seated at the coronation ceremony since that time. The other chair is the one made for Queen Mary in 1689. Between the two chairs are the sword and shield of Edward III. The reliefs on the screen behind the chairs are of the time of Edward IV. and represent the life of Edward the Confessor.

Between the Presbytery and the north ambulatory are the tombs of Aylmer de Valence (d. 1323) and Edmund Crouchback (d. 1296), two Knights Templars, and near them is the effigy of Aveline, Countess of Lancaster, the first wife of the latter (this last is seen from the Sanctuary); also the tomb of Wolfe who was killed at Quebec.

The chapels around the ambulatory, beginning at the corner of the north transept, are named: (1) St John Evangelist. (2) Abbot Islip (d. 1532), whose tomb was destroyed by the Parliamentarians during the Stuart Civil War. (3) St John the Baptist. (4) St Paul. Then we reach the great east (5) Chapel of Henry VII., famous for its roof of fan tracery, the last word in the Perpendicular style. The choir stalls of oak are each assigned to a Knight of the Order of the Bath with his arms in brass; the misereres under the seats are noteworthy for their carvings. The central feature of this chapel is the tomb in metal (by Torregiano) of Henry VII. and his wife; James I. is also buried in the same vault. Queens Elizabeth and Mary I. are buried on the north side of this chapel, and also the supposed remains of the two young princes, Edward V. and his brother, murdered in the Tower. On the south side of Henry VII.’s Chapel is buried Mary Queen of Scots, beheaded 1587; also Margaret of Richmond with a tomb by Torregiano. Mr Lethaby, writing of this and the figures of Henry VII. and his Queen, says: “while not so romantic and unapproachable as the thirteenth century statue of Queen Alianor, these are altogether the greatest sculptures ever wrought in England.” Edward VI., Charles II., William III. and his wife Mary, Queen Anne, George II. are all buried in the south aisle of this chapel. Continuing round the ambulatory, the next chapel is (6) St Nicholas, with some fifteenth and sixteenth century monuments. (7) St Edmund, with the monument of Eleanor de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester and Abbess of Barking (d. 1399), and of John of Eltham (d. 1334), and others of fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. (8) St Benedict, with the tomb of Archbishop Langham (d. 1376), who was once the Abbot of Westminster.

We now come to the south transept, the east side of which is known as the Poet's Corner. In this transept the most important tombs or monuments are those of Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400), whose monument was erected 1555; Edmund Spenser (d. 1598), with a monument put up at the expense of Anne Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery; another to Michael Drayton (d. 1631), erected by the same people, and the epitaph by Ben Jonson; the monuments to William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson (the latter buried in the nave) were both erected in the time of George II., the former after a design by Kent; David Garrick (d. 1779); Handel (d. 1759), whose monument is the last work done by Roubiliac; Milton and Oliver Goldsmith have monuments here, but, like Shakespeare, they are buried elsewhere; Dryden, Prior, Congreve (in the nave), and Addison are buried here; also Beaumont, who has nothing to mark his grave; Tennyson and Browning are both buried here, side by side; Macaulay was buried here, and there is a bust to Thackeray who was buried at Kensal Green.

At the entrance to the ambulatory, on the left side, is the monument described as King Sebert's (d. 616) (and his wife) to whom the first foundation of the Abbey is traditionally ascribed: it was Henry III. who removed the remains to this spot.

In the nave are buried Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Ben Jonson (with the famous inscription “O Rare Ben Jonson”), Nance Oldfield, the actress (d. 1730), David Livingstone, and Robert Stephenson.

In the north transept are buried Pitt, Lord Chatham, William Pitt the Younger (monument in nave), George Canning, Lord Palmerston, Sir Robert Peel, Charles James Fox (monument in the nave), William Ewart Gladstone.

The cloisters are reached by a door in the south aisle of the nave. They are of the thirteenth to fifteenth century work, with one round arch of Edward the Confessor's building still left. In these cloisters are buried Betterton (d. 1710), the great actor of the Stuart period; Samuel Foote (d. 1777).

The Chapter house was built in its present form, 1250 (restored), contains a case with a gorgeous illuminated missal, which gives some adequate idea of the craftsmanship of the period when the great Abbey was mainly built. There is also a case with the charter granted to the Abbey by Edward the Confessor. The Parliaments met in this Chapter house from 1282 until 1547, when they began to sit in St Stephen's Chapel, within the precincts of the palace.

The Chapel of the Pyx, next the Chapter house, was once the treasury house of the king's; it is probably in part Saxon work.

The Jerusalem Chamber (restored) is in the form in which it was erected by Abbot Litlington, about 1386, and was the abbot's withdrawing-room. In it Henry IV. died, 1413, as Shakespeare recorded in his play of “Henry IV.”

To the south, the adjacent building was the Abbots’ Refectory, which is now used as the dining-hall for the Westminster School (q.v.).

WESTMINSTER HALL

This part of Westminster Palace (q.v.), which survived the fire of 1834, was perhaps first built by Edward the Confessor, but certainly erected by William Rufus in 1097. It was mainly rebuilt, in its present form, by Richard II. in 1398, whose building now stands, so far as it has survived the violence of nineteenth century restoration. The roof is the least touched of Richard II.’s building. This Hall has witnessed many great scenes in our national history. It was the meeting-place of many of the early parliaments and councils, the Kings’ greatest hall of entertainment, and the chief seat of justice from the reign of Henry III. until it was removed to the Fleet Street Courts in 1882. This hall has been the place of trial of William Wallace, Oldcastle, Thomas More, the Protector Somerset, the Earl of Strafford, Charles I., the Seven Bishops, Dr Sacheverel, Warren Hastings. Here Richard II., its rebuilder, was deposed from the throne, and Henry IV. proclaimed King; and Cromwell was declared Lord Protector.

WESTMINSTER PALACE

Westminster Hall and the crypt of St Stephen's Chapel are the surviving remnants of the ancient royal Palace of Westminster. Cnut may have resided on Thorney with some regularity for, as a Dane, he was scarcely at home in Saxon London, but Edward the Confessor, who loved ecclesiastical things and theological people, was the first to build a great palace next the Abbey. This stood practically on the same spot which is now covered by the Houses of Parliament, which are the direct descendants of the Royal Palace: just as the authority of the elected members has taken the place of the the autocratic will of the Crown. The Houses of Lords and Commons for a long time used the actual buildings of the palace. Edward the Confessor's palace was extended by William Rufus, who built the hall on its present scale about 1097, and Richard II. rebuilt it in the form we now see in 1398, though it was violently restored by Barry in 1840, when he began to rebuild the State Chambers after the fire of 1834 (v. Westminster Hall). It was Henry III., the King that made building a hobby, who largely rebuilt the palace, as he almost entirely rebuilt the Abbey. The chapel of St Stephen's is of uncertain age, but it was certainly there as early as the time of King John, when it is recorded in 1206. It was probably the palace chapel which took the place of the smaller one of Edward the Confessor's time. Only the crypt, which is of the thirteenth and fourteenth century (after restoration), now remains of the older building, as the upper chapel was destroyed in the fire of 1834: until when it was still being used as the meeting-place of the House of Commons. This upper chapel has been rebuilt, and it represents the house in which the Commons assembled from the time of Edward VI. to the Reform Act of 1832, roughly speaking. St Stephen's cloisters, of Henry VIII.’s time, still stand, after restoration.

Much of this great palace was destroyed by the fire of 1512, when the Court left it for Whitehall (q.v.) (after a temporary use of Bridewell [q.v.]). The remaining buildings were used as parliament houses and law courts, until the second great fire of 1834, which left only the hall and St Stephen's crypt and cloisters, as we have seen.

WESTMINSTER SCHOOL (Dean's Yard, Westminster)

The nucleus of the modern Westminster School is the college of a dean, twelve prebendaries, twelve almsmen and forty scholars, which Queen Elizabeth founded in 1560 as “A public schoole for Grammar, Rethoricke, Poetrie and for the Latin and Greek languages.” (There had been a school connected with the Abbey for centuries before this). Round this central foundation a large number of boys are now educated. The boys have included Ben Jonson, Sir Harry Vane (the younger) George Herbert, Locke, Dryden, Sir Christopher Wren, Bentham, Warren Hastings, Gibbon, and Cowper. The school is chiefly interesting to the traveller in that it occupies in part the site and remains of the ancient monastic domestic building attached to Westminster Abbey. Fragments of Edward the Confessor's buildings are still to be seen in the lower part of the large school-room which was the dormitory of the monks, and in Ashburnham House (q.v.) is the south wall of the Misericorde, while the wall of the refectory runs along the garden of this same house. The school library and some of the classrooms stand on the same spot at the misericorde, and some of it is still preserved in the more modern buildings. The gymnasium is a crypt of the Norman period, probably of Edward the Confessor's Abbey. The College Hall, next the Jerusalem Chamber, was the Abbot's Refectory, built in its present form about 1386. The gateway near Ashburnham house was probably designed by Inigo Jones; but the bulk of the surrounding school buildings were designed by Sir Christopher Wren, carried out by his successor, the Earl of Burlington. The square scholars’ dormitory, on the right of the gate, is certainly of this time (the beginning of the eighteenth century).

WESTBOURNE (north of Hyde Park)

In the year 1222, probably long before, the manor of Westbourne was part of the possessions of the Abbots of Westminster. It took its name from the West Bourne which ran along its east side, dividing it from the next manor of Paddington. It remained as part of the possessions of the Dean and Chapter after the Dissolution, while its neighbour, Paddington, went to the See of London. Westbourne village green has been blotted out by railways and other things: it lay at the north end of Queen's Road (which was once Westbourne Green Lane) near the present Royal Oak railway station, and round it clustered the little hamlet, which was still surrounded by fields when Mrs Siddons had a country cottage there in the early years of the nineteenth century.

WHITECHAPEL (Beyond Aldgate)

The district of Whitechapel, which lies beyond Aldgate, was in early days a hamlet of the great manor of Stepney (q.v.). It was in the later Tudor period that it began to be absorbed by the growth of London towards the east: a proceedings which roused Stow's anger. “Also without the Bars both the sides of the street be pestered with cottages and alleys, even up to Whitechapel Church: and almost half a mile beyond it, into the common field: all which ought to lie open and free for all men. But this common field, I say, being sometime the beauty of this City on that part, is so encroached upon by buildings of filthy cottagers.”

The village church of St Mary Matfelon was still merely a chapel of ease, under the mother church of Stepney, when Stow recorded it; and so it remained until the seventeenth century. But its existence goes much further back, for it is recorded in 1280, and is almost certainly much older. The present church was built in 1882. It was in the gift of the rector of Stepney until 1711, when it was purchased by Brasenose College, Oxford.

WHITEFRIARS (Whitefriars Street, Fleet Street)

This house of the Carmelite or White Friars formed a precinct between Bridewell and the Temple, with short intervening spaces between each. It was founded by Sir Richard Gray, 1241, and this ground was given to them by King Edward I.; Hugh Courtney, Earl of Devon, rebuilt much of the priory in 1350, and, like all these poor friars, they had many wealthy patrons. During the early Edwards’ reigns many councils were held here: thus in 1376 we find Edward III. issuing a writ commanding the Mayor and Sheriff to arrest “William de Wyndesore, Knight, to be taken for a certain quarrel that arose between him and other our lieges, in our presence, at the House of the Brethren of the Order of St Mary of Mount Carmel, in the suburbs of London.” The friary was dissolved, 1538, and the bulk of the buildings soon demolished, for Stow, writing of 1598, says: “In place of this Friers Church he now many fair houses builded, lodgings for Noblemen and others.”

But the precinct retained some of its older right of Sanctuary, which was even extended by Royal Charter, in 1608, so far as debts were concerned, and there grew up therein the notorious district of “Alsatia,” where criminals took refuge with the more harmless debtors; when all legal privileges were finally abolished in 1697 it was long before its vicious taints were cleared away. After the Dissolution, part of the old friary buildings were occupied by the descendants of the Greys, who had always befriended the House; and Henry Grey, Earl of Kent's steward and friend, Selden, the jurist, died here, having been richly endowed by the widowed Countess, and was buried with great state in the Temple Church. The hall of the friary was converted to the use of the Whitefriars Theatre, 1609 (cf. Blackfriars). Remains of a fourteenth century crypt were discovered in 1895, beneath No. 4 Britten Court, Whitefriars Street, where it can still be seen.

WHITEHALL

The only remaining relic of the great houses which have stood at Whitehall is the Banqueting House, built by Inigo Jones in 1622 for James I. But the history of this spot begins far earlier. The first recorded house here was the one possessed by Hubert de Burgh, the Earl of Kent and Justiciar to Henry III.; he presented it, on his death in 1242, to his favourite religious order, the Black Friars, who in their turn sold it, within the next twelve years, to the Archbishops of York, who held it as their town house until Henry VIII. seized it as part of the possessions of the deposed Cardinal Wolsey. Westminster Palace had just suffered from a great fire, so Henry made Wolsey's gorgeous house his principal London palace; and it remained the chief residence of the sovereigns until it was burnt in the reign of William III., and the Court moved to St James's and Kensington Palaces. James I. planned a great rebuilding by Inigo Jones, but only the existing Banqueting House (q.v.), opposite the Horse Guards, was finished. So that the Whitehall of history was in the main the Wolsey Palace, which Henry VIII. much enlarged. Stow says he “builded there a sumptuous gallery and a beautiful gatehouse thwart the high street to St James Park.” This gatehouse, which stood opposite the Banqueting House, was the one said to be designed by Holbein; it was demolished in 1750. There was another gate across the street further south, where Downing Street now comes; it was pulled down in 1725. These two gate barriers are very conspicuous in the early prints.

BANQUETING HALL, WHITEHALL

WHITEHALL, BANQUETING HOUSE (Whitehall, S.W.)

This is all that stands of the old Palace of Whitehall. It is the part which was added by Inigo Jones in 1622, as the first instalment of the new palace which he had designed to take the place of the one belonging to Wolsey and Henry VIII. But the scheme was put on one side for the more urgent matter of the Royal struggles with the Parliament and Cromwell. This banqueting room was the last scene of that struggle on the morning of the 30th of January 1649, when Charles I., after walking from St James's Palace, was led through a specially opened window in the front, on to the scaffold in Whitehall Street, just in front of the present Horse Guards, where he was beheaded. The ceiling is decorated by allegorical paintings by Rubens, but these have been much repainted. They are on canvas painted in 1635. The hall is now occupied by the Royal United Service Museum, containing Cromwell's sword and the dirk used by Nelson when a midshipman, and other warlike curiosities, such as the bugle which sounded the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. There is also a collection of weapons and subjects of the military and naval arts.

WHITE'S CLUB (37-8 St James's Street, S.W.)

This club was a centre of much of the gossip and smart-set history of the eighteenth century. It began its career as a public chocolate house about 1693, its first home being on the west side of this same street, five doors from the south end, and in 1755 it begun its occupation of the present building at No. 37 (the front was rebuilt in 1850). It became a club restricted to its own members in 1736, but still was the property of a proprietor. Its early career was aristocratic and its early fame was for high stakes at cards. Swift repeats a story that the great Earl of Oxford, Robert Harley, “never passed by White's Chocolate House (the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble cullies) without bestowing a curse upon that famous academy, as the bane of half the English nobility.” When Brooke's (q.v.) was established as the fashionable Whig Club, White's was the Tory rival. In these days it has ceased to be political in any direct sense.

WILL'S COFFEE HOUSE (Russell Street, Covent Garden)

This is given as a typical example of a coffee house of the later Stuarts and the early Georges. It stood at the corner of Bow Street and Russell Street, and took its name from Will Urwin, its proprietor. It was apparently in existence under this owner certainly as early as 1674, and is probably the house where Pepys saw Dryden in 1665. It was Dryden who was the hero of the establishment, round whom the other frequenters sat in respectful homage. Here also came Wycherley, Addison, Pope and Congreve. In the first number of the Tatler, 1709, it was announced: “All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment shall be under the article of White's Chocolate House (v. White's); poetry under that of Will's Coffee House; foreign and domestic news you will have from St James's Coffee House” (v. St James's Street). Across the road was the rival Button's Coffee House (q.v.), whither Addison took with him his followers, and Steele and Pope.

WINCHESTER HOUSE (Southwark)

This had been the London house or inn of the Bishops of Winchester from 1107, when it was built by William Gifford, very near the Priory of St Mary Overy, with which the bishops maintained a close connection. It remained their residence until 1626, and their property still longer. Many of the great churchmen have done their work in this house. A fragment of this old lordly house still remains just off Clink Street built into the archway leading to Stoney Street.

But still more famous than the bishops and their mansion was the Liberty of the Clink, which was the precinct or park surrounding their house. It was on this spot, privileged after the mediæval custom (cf. Whitefriars, St Martin-le-Grand and Blackfriars) from the ordinary jurisdiction of the law and its officers, that grew up that neighbourhood of semi-legalised prostitution called the Stews (which were legally suppressed in 1546), and its adjacent bear gardens and early theatres. The Globe (q.v.), the Rose, and the Hope were here, set up beyond the reach of the mayor and aldermen of the City. Here lived Shakespeare and his theatrical contemporaries. In 1663 the Bishops’ Park was let for building purposes.

WORCESTER HOUSE (Strand)

The site of this house, lying to the west of the Savoy, is now mainly occupied by the east side of the Cecil Hotel. The first house on this spot belonged to the Bishops of Carlisle. Stow records it as in the possession of the Earls of Bedford, who had received it at the Reformation, at the time they also received the Convent Garden, over the way. On this last property they built themselves, about 1635, a house which stood where is now Southampton Street, opposite, and the old Carlisle Inn passed into the possession of the Marquis of Worcester. The great Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, became the tenant at the Restoration, and here his daughter married the Duke of York, afterwards James II., in 1660. Hyde lived there until he removed to Clarendon House (v. Bond Street). The house was pulled down, about 1685, by the first Duke of Beaufort, the son of the Marquis of Worcester, and the site used for general buildings.

YORK HOUSE (Buckingham Street, Strand)

Adjoining the Adelphi, in its west side, is another group of streets whose united names spell George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. They are built where once stood the town house of the Bishops of Norwich. This house was acquired by the Archbishops of York in the reign of Mary I., soon after they had lost Whitehall by Wolsey's fall. But they seem to have leased it: and here Francis Bacon, son of one of their tenants, was born, 1560, and lived when he was Lord Chancellor, and there was deprived of his Great Seal on his disgrace, 1621. It then passed into the possession of the royal favourite Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who pulled down the old and began to build a great mansion. It was never finished, and the Water-gate is the only part of it which remains standing. The gate has generally been ascribed to Inigo Jones, but is more probably by Gerbier, the Duke's architect, or even by Nicholas Stone, the great mason, who did the actual work. After Buckingham's assassination his son succeeded, but Cromwell appeared and gave the house to General Fairfax, whose daughter married the exile Buckingham, who returned, and sold the whole property for building in 1672, when the present streets were laid out. At No. 14 Buckingham Street, the house at the south-west corner (rebuilt), lived Samuel Pepys in 1684, and after him Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, the statesman of Queen Anne's reign in 1706. Then the house was rebuilt and Etty the painter lived here from 1826 to 1849; and Stanfield, another famous painter, succeeded him. In a house which once stood opposite, at the south-east corner, but has now been entirely rebuilt, Peter the Great lived during part of his stay in England. The Earl of Dorset, who was a typical gay man and wit about Charles II.’s Court, lived in Buckingham Street in 1681: it was he who wrote “To all you ladies now at land,” and discovered Nell Gywnne. The doorways of No. 17 and 18 Buckingham Street are beautiful examples of the Wren period, when the street was first built. They are very similar to some in the Temple and Essex Street (q.v.). In the adjacent Villiers Street, to the west, lived the other great diarist of the Restoration period, John Evelyn, 1683-1684; and Steele also lived there for two or three years from 1721.

INDEX

A

Abingdon, the Abbey of, 45

Adam, the brothers, architects, 189, 239, 266

Addison, Joseph, 222, 225, 237, 238, 258, 264, 305, 328, 334.

Addle Street, 28, 126

Adelphi, 7, 152, 189

Admiralty, Whitehall, 7, 189

Æthelred, the aldorman, 27

Agas, Ralph, 14

(St) Alban, Wood Street, Church, 40, 190

Albany, the, 190

Albemarle Street, 171

Aldermanbury, 5, 126, 190

Aldermen, Court of, 37, 48, 50, 58, 94

Aldersgate, 191

Aldersgate Street, 191

Aldgate, 10, 34, 66, 192

Aldwych, 40

Alfred the Great, 27, 30, 32

Allhallows Barking Church, 3, 6, 193

Allhallows Church, Bread Street, 193

Allhallows the Great Church, 101, 193

Allhallows, Honey Lane, Church, 194

Allhallows the Less Church, 194

Allhallows Church, Lombard Street, 194

Allhallows Church, London Wall, 195

Allhallows Staining Church, 195

(St) Alphage, 195

Alva, the Duke of, 15, 82

(St) Andrew, Holborn, Church, 71, 196

(St) Andrew Hubbard Church, 196

(St) Andrew Undershaft Church, 6, 197

(St) Andrew by the Wardrobe Church, 197

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 26, 27, 29, 31, 34

Anne, Queen, 92

(St) Anne, Blackfriars, Church, 198

(St) Anne, Soho, Church, 198

(St) Antholin (Budge Row), 88, 198

(St) Antony's Hospital, 199

Apothecaries' Hall, 6, 199

Apsley House, 200

Arlington Street, 200

Armourers' Hall, 125

Arundel Street and House, 149, 200

Artillery Ground, Finsbury, 134

Ashburnham House, 201

Athelstan, King, 27, 30

(St) Augustine Church, 201

Austin Friars, 3, 52, 74, 135-6, 201

B

Bacon, Francis, 335

Bacon, Nicholas, 76, 127

Bakers' Hall, 104, 202

Balham, 39

Bank of England, 93, 137

Bankside, Southwark, 84

Bankside, the, 188

Banqueting Hall, Whitehall, 7, 91

Barber Surgeons' Hall and Guild, 128, 202

Barbican, 127, 203

Barking, the Abbey of, 45

Barnard's Inn, 7, 147, 203

Barnsbury, 204

(St) Bartholomew Exchange Church, 204

(St) Bartholomew the Great Church, 3, 7, 41, 143-4, 204-5

(St) Bartholomew's Hospital, 7, 74, 77, 205-6

Basinghall Street, 206

Battersea, 9, 20, 29, 39, 206-7

Battle Bridge Lane, 185

Baynard Castle, 40, 44, 64, 66, 67, 76, 207-8

Bear Garden, 25, 84

Bear Gardens Lane, 188

à Becket, Thomas, 38

Bede, 26

Bedford Square, 208

Bedford Street, Strand, 208

Belgrave Square and Belgravia, 13, 208

Belle Sauvage Yard, 209

(St) Benet Finck Church, 209

(St) Benet Grasschurch, 209

(St) Benet, Paul's Wharf, Church, 209

(St) Benet Sherehog, Church, 210

Berkeley Square, 7, 210

Bermondsey, 21, 29, 39, 210

Bermondsey, Abbey, 41, 185, 210

Bethnal Green, 211

Billingsgate, 103, 212

Billiter Lane, 111

Bishopsgate, 10, 66, 114, 212

Blackfriars, 52, 56, 74, 122, 213-4

Blackfriars Bridge, 16, 17

Black Prince, the, 58

Bloomsbury, 9, 12, 176-8, 214

Bloomsbury Square, 214

Boadicea, 23

Boar's Head Tavern, 110

Bolt Court, 215

Bolton Street, 172

Bond Street, 20, 215

Borough High Street, Southwark, 186

Botanical Gardens (Chelsea), 181

(St) Botolph, Aldersgate, 215

(St) Botolph, Aldgate Church, 71, 216

(St) Botolph, Billingsgate, Church, 216

(St) Botolph, Bishopsgate, Church, 216

Botolph Gate and Lane, Billingsgate, 102-3

Bow, 9

Bow Church (St Mary le Bow), 3, 217

Bow Lane, 42

Bow Street, 217

Bread Street, 42, 217

Brembre, Nicholas, 59, 60

Brewers' Guild and Hall, 65, 218

(St) Bride Church, 218

Bridewell, 218

Bridgewater House, 168

Broad Street (W.), 170

Bromley by Bow, 9

Brompton, 13, 182

Brooke House, Hackney, 247

Brooke Street, Holborn, 219

Brooks's Club, 219

Buckingham Palace, 30, 220

Bucklersbury, 99, 220

Budge Row, 116

Bunhill Fields, 220

Bunyan, John, 221

Burleigh Street, 151

Burlington House, 221

Bury Street, 221

Bush Lane, 98

Button's Coffee House, 222

C

Cæsar, Julius, 23

Camden Town, 222

Campden House, 222

Camberwell, 9, 21, 39

Cannon Street, 97

Canonbury, 222

Carlton House and Terrace, 13, 223

Carlyle, Thomas, 228

Carpenters' Guild and Hall, 65, 135

Catherine Court (Great Tower Hill), 104

Cavendish Square, 223

Celts, 22, 97

Chancery Lane, 10

Chandlers' Hall, 99

Charing Cross, 14, 223

Charles I., 43, 82, 86-91, 93

Charles II., 13, 15, 92, 94

Charterhouse, 52, 73-4, 144, 155-6 224-5

Charters of the City of London, 31, 33, 35-7, 54

Cheapside, 5, 42, 225-6

Chelsea, 9, 12, 16, 20, 39, 93, 95, 179-82, 226-7, Chelsea Hospital, 8, 227

Chelsea, Old Church, 8, 227

Chesterfield House, 228

Cheyne Walk and Row, 228

Christ Church (Greyfriars), 74, 228-9

Clapham, 9

Clare, the Abbey of, 75, 113, 252

Clare Market, 163

Clarence, Duke of, 100

Clarendon House, 169

Clarges Street, 230

(St) Clement Danes Church, 29, 40, 71, 230

(St) Clement, Eastcheap, Church, 231

(St) Clement's Well, 42

Clerkenwell and Green, 42, 145, 231

Clifford's Inn, 231

Clink, Liberty of the, 185

Cloth Fair, 144

Clothworkers' Hall, 111

Cnut, 27, 28, 29

Cold Harbour, 101

Coleman Street, 125

College Hill, 116-7, 231-2

Common Council, 37, 55, 58-9, 89-91, 92, 94

Commons, House of, 90, 91, 93, 157

Commune of London, 34-6

Cornhill, 5, 107-8

Covent Garden, 12, 88, 163-4, 232-3

Coventry Street, 169

Crane Court, 233

Crayford, battle of, 26

Cremorne Gardens, 233

Cripplegate, 15, 233

Cromwell, Oliver, 91, 165, 243, 270, 310, 333

Cromwell Road (Brompton), 183

Cromwell, Thomas, 136-7, 292

Crosby Hall, 2, 76, 234

Croydon, 9

Crutched Friars, the, 74, 112, 234

Custom House, 104

Cutlers' Hall, 99

D

Danes, 25, 27, 32, 184, 230

Dean Street, 170

Defoe, Daniel, 221, 316

Deptford, 21

Despensers, 55

Devonshire House, 7, 234-5

Dickens, Charles, 178, 187, 204, 235, 242, 243, 244, 251, 317

Dion Cassius, 23

(St) Dionis, Backchurch, 235

Dover House (Whitehall), 235

Dover Street (W.), 171

Dowgate Hill, 97, 99

Drake, Sir Francis, 100

Drapers' Guild and Hall, 59, 65, 92, 136

Drury Lane, 85, 235

(St) Dunstan-in-the-East Church, 236

(St) Dunstan-in-the-West Church, 236

Durham House, 152, 189

Dyers' Guild and Hall, 65, 99

E

Ealing, 9

Earl's Court, 236

Eastminster, Abbey of, 105, 237

Edgware Road, 175

Edmund, King, 29

(St) Edmund, King and Martyr, Church, 237

Edward the Confessor, 11, 29

Edward I., 45-7, 49, 51, 54

Edward II., 53, 54, 56

Edward III., 57, 60, 65

Edward IV., 64-7

Edward VI., 77-9

Edwardes Square, 237

Elizabeth, Queen, 15, 17, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86

Elsing Spital, 41

Ely Place, 237-8

Erasmus, 202

Ermine Street (Roman Road), 24

Essex Street and House, 238

Ethelbert, 26

(St) Ethelburga Church, 3, 6, 238-9

Ethelred the Unready, 28

F

Farringdon Ward Without, 37, 62-63, 78

Featherstone Buildings, 7, 239

Fetter Lane, 141

Finsbury Fields, 84, 134

Fishers' Folly, 132

Fishmongers' Hall and Guild, 59-62, 65, 102, 239

Fitz-Alwyn, Henry, 36, 98

Fitzroy Square, 239

Fitz-Stephen, William, 38-45

Fitz-Thomas, 46-8, 54

Fitz-Walters, Castellains, 38, 44, 64

Fleet Prison, the, 240

Fleet, the River, 10, 16, 17, 20, 138-9

Fleet Street, 10, 14, 19, 20, 141, 143

Foundling's Hospital, 240

Friars, the, 52

Friday Street, 42

Frith Street (Soho), 240

Frith-guild, 28

Fulham and Palace, 9, 20, 39, 96, 240-1

Furnival Inn, 146-7

G

(St) Gabriel Fenchurch, 241

Gainsborough, Thomas, 294

Gaunt, John of, Duke of Lancaster, 59-62

Gaveston, Piers, 53

George IV., 13

(St) George, Botolph Lane, Church, 241

(St) George-in-the-East Church, 241

(St) George, Hanover Square, Church, 241

(St) George, Hart Street, Church, 242

George Inn (Southwark), 242

(St) George the Martyr Church, Bloomsbury, 242

(St) George the Martyr Church, Southwark, 242

Gerrard's Hall, 120

Gerrard Street, 243

Gibbons, Grinling, 209, 217, 257, 274, 288, 297

(St) Giles Cripplegate, Church, 243

(St) Giles-in-the-Fields, 9, 13, 14, 39, 41, 71, 165-6, 243-4

Giltspur Street, 143

Globe Theatre, 84

Golden Square, 244

Goldsmith, Oliver, 222, 238, 256, 258, 292, 305, 328

Goldsmiths' Hall and Guild, 59, 65, 91, 244

Gondomar (the Spanish Ambassador), 87

Gore House, 183

Gough House (Chelsea), 181

Gough Square, 244

Gower, John, 283, 306

Gracechurch Street, 109

Gray's Inn, 7, 245

Great Marlborough Street, 170

Great Pulteney Street, 170

Great Queen Street, 7, 162

Greek Street, 170

Green Park, 20

Greenwich, 9, 12, 39

Grey Coat Hospital, 245

Greyfriars (see Christ Church), 52, 77

Gresham, Sir Thomas, 81-82

Grocers' Hall and Guild, 59, 65, 90, 94, 245-6

Grosvenor Chapel, 172

Grosvenor family (Dukes of Westminster), 173

Grosvenor Square, 12, 13, 246

Grub Street (Milton Street), 246

Guildhall, 3, 6, 28, 56, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 246-7

Guilds, Trade, 43, 46-47, 48-49, 54, 58-62, 65, 69, 71, 80, 85, 93

Guy's Hospital, 186

H

Hackney, 9, 18, 20, 40, 96, 247

Haggerston, 248

Half Moon Street (Piccadilly), 248

Hammersmith, 96

Hampton, 9

Hampstead, 9, 17, 39, 96

Hanover Square, 248

Hans Place, 180

Hatton Garden, 248

Haymarket, 248-9

Hazlitt, William, 196, 198, 240

(St) Helen, Bishopsgate, Church, 3, 6, 41, 74, 249-50

Henry I., 33

Henry II., 38

Henry III., 45-8

Henry IV., 63, 65

Henry VI., 64-66

Henry VII., 65, 68, 98

Henry VIII., 69, 70, 72, 77

Henry VIII., King, 15

Heralds' College, 250

Hertford House, 174

Hervey, Walter, Mayor, 48-49

Highgate, 96

Hogarth, William, 205, 206, 232, 243, 266, 293

Holbein, 202, 228, 261, 266, 285

Holborn, 16, 17, 19, 146, 250-1

Holborn Bars, 10, 147

Holborn Hill, 16, 146, 251

Holborn Viaduct, 16

Holland House, 251

Holy Trinity, Aldgate, the Priory of, 18, 41, 252

Holy Trinity, the Minories, 252-3

Holywell, 42, 84

Honey Street, 42

Honourable Artillery Company, 135

Horseferry Road, 156-7

Horse Guards, Whitehall, 7

Hoxton, 39, 253

Huggin Lane, 128

Hungerford Market, 153

Hyde Park, 253

I

Innholder's Hall and Guild, 99, 253-4

Ipris Inn, 117-8

Ironmonger Lane, 42

Ironmonger's Hall, 111, 254

Isabella, Queen of Edward II., 55-56

Islington, 9, 12, 39, 96, 254

J

James I., 86-7

(St) James, Clerkenwell, Church, and Nunnery, 74, 254-5

(St) James, Garlickhithe, Church, 255

(St) James's Palace, 3, 7, 12, 30, 92, 255-6

(St) James's Park, 20, 93, 256

(St) James, Piccadilly, Church, 256

(St) James's Square, 13, 257

(St) James's Street, 257-8

Jermyn Street, 258

Jews, 51, 303

John, King, 19, 33, 34-8

(St) John the Baptist, Priory, Shoreditch, 258

(St) John the Baptist, Dowgate Hill, 259

(St) John's Church, Clerkenwell, 144, 259

(St) John the Evangelist, Westminster, 259

(St) John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 7, 260

(St) John of Jerusalem Priory, Clerkenwell, 3, 7, 41, 61, 74, 144, 260-1

(St) John Zachary Church, 261

(St) John's Wood, 261

Johnson, Dr Samuel, 140, 141, 215, 230, 245, 246, 260, 267, 292, 302, 314, 317

Jones, Inigo, 161-2, 164, 203, 232, 244, 249, 251, 261, 270, 333, 335

K

(St) Katherine Coleman Church, 261

(St) Katherine Cree Church, 261

(St) Katherine's Hospital, 41, 75, 105, 262

Kennington, 9, 39, 60, 262-3

Kensington, 3, 9, 10, 39, 95, 179, 183, 263

Kensington Gore, 183

Kensington Palace, 263

Kensington Square, 264

Kentish Town, 264

Kew, 9

King's Bench Prison, 78, 187

King's Cross, 264-5

Knighten Guild (v. Portsoken), Knightrider Street, 117

Knightsbridge, 12, 265

L

Lamb, Charles, 196, 229, 239, 268, 288, 317

Lambeth, 9, 22, 39, 88, 96, 265-6

Lambeth Palace, 266

Landsdowne House, 266-7

Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 88, 319

(St) Lawrence Jewry Church, 267

(St) Lawrence Poultney Church, 101, 267

Lea, River, 16, 18

Leadenhall Street and Market, 25, 76, 109, 268

Leathersellers' Guild and Hall, 75

Lee, 39

Leicester Square, 13, 93, 268-9

(St) Leonard, Eastcheap, Church, 269

(St) Leonard, Foster Lane, Church, 269

(St) Leonard, Shoreditch, Church, 89, 269

Lewis, battle of, 47

Lewisham, 9, 39

Lime Street, 115

Lincoln, Earl of, 17

Lincoln's Inn, 3, 7, 13, 270

Lincoln's Inn Fields, 5, 85, 88, 160-2, 270-1

Lindsay House, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 7, 271

Lollards, 59, 166

Lombard Street and Lombards, 51, 63, 70, 106, 271-2

London Bridge, 28, 29, 34, 46, 79, 272

London, the City of, 2, 5, 10, 11, 14, 22, 23, 25, 31, 69, 70-71, 77, 78, 85, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95

London County Council, 96

London Stone, 25, 34, 97, 273

Long Acre, 165

Longchamp, William, 35

Lothbury, 137

Low Countries, the (Flanders), 15, 81-82

Ludgate, 23, 273

M

Magna Carta, 37-8, 43

(St) Magnus Church, 273

Maiden Lane, 164

Manchester Square, 274

Mansfield Place 176

Mansion House, 99, 274

(St) Margaret, Lothbury, Church, 18, 274

(St) Margaret, New Fish Street, Church, 275

(St) Margaret Pattens, 275

(St) Margaret, Westminster, 275

Mark Lane, 112

Marlborough House, 275

Marshalsea Prison, 78, 187

(St) Martin-in-the Fields Church, 71, 276

Martin-le-Grand, St 41, 70, 75, 276

(St) Martin's Lane, 13, 277

(St) Martin, Ludgate, Church, 277

(St) Martin Orgar Church, 101, 277

(St) Martin Outwich Church, 277

(St) Martin Pomroy Church, 25, 124, 278

(St) Martin Vintry Church, 278

Marylebone, 9, 19, 39, 45, 96, 279-80

Marylebone Court House, 174

(St) Mary Abchurch, 280

(St) Mary, Aldermanbury, Church, 280

(St) Mary Aldermary Church, 280

(St) Mary Axe Church, 281

(St) Mary of Bethlehem, the Priory of, 75, 77, 281

(St) Mary Bothaw Church, 281

(St) Mary Colechurch, 281.

(St) Mary-at-Hill Church, 282

(St) Mary Magdalene, Milk Street, Church, 282

(St) Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, Church, 282

(St) Mary Mounthaw Church, 282

(St) Mary Somerset Church, 283

(St) Mary Staining Church, 283

(St) Mary-le-Strand, 283

(St) Mary Overy Priory, 41, 283-4

(St) Mary Spital, 18, 75

(St) Mary Woolchurch Haw Church, 99, 284

(St) Mary Woolnoth Church, 284 Matilda, 34

(St) Matthew, Friday Street, Church, 287

May Day Riots, 1517, 70

Mayfair, 284

Meard Court, 170

Mellitus, 26, 27

Mercers' Guild and Hall, 75, 285

Merchant Taylors' Hall and Guild, 6, 57, 65, 285

St Michael, Bassishaw, Church, 286

(St) Michael, Cornhill, Church, 286

(St) Michael, Crooked Lane, Church, 101, 286

(St) Michael, Queenhithe, Church, 287

(St) Michael le Querne Church, 287

(St) Michael Royal Church, 287

St Michael, Wood Street, Church, 288

Middlesex, 33, 45, 48

Middle Temple Hall, 3, 7, 317

(St) Mildred, Bread Street, Church, 288

(St) Mildred Poultry Church, 288

Milk Street, 42

Milton, John, 192, 193, 205, 218, 243, 271, 280, 328

Milton Street, 126

Mitre Court, 141

Monk, Duke of Albemarle, 92

Monopolies, trading, 83, 86-7

Montfiquit Tower, 40, 122

Montford, Simon de, 46, 47

Monument, the, 289

Moorfields, 289

Moorgate, 18, 289

More, Sir Thomas, 74, 227, 228, 234, 329

N

Nash (the architect), 13, 302-3

Nelson, Horatio, 200, 215, 225, 241

Neville family, 100, 112, 268, 275, 291

Nevill's Court, 141

Newcastle House, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 7, 162, 270

Newgate, 290

(St) Nicholas Acon Church, 290

(St) Nicholas Cole Abbey Church, 290

(St) Nicholas Olave Church, 291

Northampton, John of, mayor, 59-62

North Street, 156

Northumberland Avenue, 159, 224

Northumberland, Duke of (Earl of Warwick), 77-9

Northumberland House, Aldgate, 76

Northumberland House, Strand, 224

Northumberland House, Aldersgate, 191

Norton Folgate, 133

Notting Hill, 20

O

Olaf, King of Norway, 28

(St) Olave, Hart Street, Church, 6, 112, 291

(St) Olave, Jewry, Church, 291

(St) Olave, Silver Street, Church, 291

(St) Olave, Tooley Street, Church, 292

Old Cheshire Cheese, the (Fleet Street), 292

Old Jewry, 292

Old Street, 134

Ormond Place, 118

Oxford, Earls of, de Veres, 98, 100, 263

Oxford Street, 20, 173

P

Paddington, 9, 12, 292

Painter-Stainers' Hall, 293

Pall Mall, 93, 293-4

(St) Pancras-in-the-Fields Church, 39, 45, 294

(St) Pancras, Soper Lane, Church, 294

Paradise Row (Chelsea), 181

Paris Garden, 188, 295

Parish Churches of the City of London, 40-41

Park Place, 169

(St) Paul's Cathedral, 6, 19, 25, 27, 32, 34, 37, 45, 47, 53, 56, 60, 67, 76, 92, 122-3, 295-7

(St) Paul's Churchyard, 35, 122-3

(St) Paul, Covent Garden, Church, 297

Peasants' Rebellion, 61

Peckham, 9, 21, 39

Penn, William, 193, 251, 265

Pepys, Samuel, 256, 275, 291, 321, 334, 336

(St) Peter, Cornhill, Church, 40, 107, 297

(St) Peter, Paul's Wharf, Church, 298

(St) Peter-le-Poer Church, 298

(St) Peter ad Vincula Church Tower, 298

(St) Peter, Westcheap, Church, 299

Philpot, John, 59, 60

Piccadilly, 19, 20, 93, 169, 171, 299-300

Pimlico, 20

Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, 4

Pope's Head Tavern, 107

Portland Place, 174

Portman Square, 13, 300

Portsoken Ward, 63, 113-4, 252

Poultney, Sir John, 101

Printing House Square, 300

Ptolemy, 23

Q

Queen Anne Gate, 301

Queenhithe, 301

Queen's Square, 302

R

Racquet Court, Fleet Street, 140

Ranelagh, 302

Red Lion Square, 302

Regent's Park, 303.

Regent Street, 13, 302-3

Richard I., 34

Richard II., 60-3, 308-9, 329

Richard III., 64, 67

Richardson, Samuel, 305, 314

Richmond, 9, 96

Rolls House, the, 303

Romans in London, 22-5, 97-8

Rose Theatre, 84

Royal Exchange, 81-2, 107, 303-304

Rugmere, 19, 39

Russell Square, 304

S

Sadlers' Hall, 304

Sadler's Wells, 96, 304

Salisbury House (Strand), 152

Salisbury Square, 305

Salters' Hall, 98

Sandford Manor House, 305

Saussure, de, 95

Savile Row, 169

(St) Saviour's, Southwark, 8, 185, 305-6

Savoy and Palace Chapel, 7, 60, 61, 306-7

Saxons, 25, 26, 123

Scrope Inn, 121, 146

Sebert, King, 26

Sellinger Wharf, 185

(St)Sepulchre Church (Newgate), 80, 143, 307

Sergeants' Inn, 307

Serpentine, Hyde Park, 19

Seven Dials, 165

Shakespere, William, 83-5, 122, 242, 245, 269, 335

Sharpe, Dr Reginald, 28

Shoe Lane, 17, 139

Shoreditch, 9, 134, 269

Shrewsbury House (Chelsea), 181

Skinners' Guild and Hall and Well, 65, 92, 99, 145, 308

Sloane Street, 180

Sloane Terrace, 180

Smithfield, 10, 42, 61, 80, 308-9

Soho Square, 13, 93, 309-10

Somerset House, 150, 310

Somerset, the Protector, 74, 77-9, 310

Somers Town, 311

South Audley Street, 172

South Kensington, 13

Southwark, the Borough of, 9, 10, 12, 23, 29, 31, 39, 78, 95, 184-8, 311-2

Spencer House, 169

Spitalfields, 312-3

Spital Sermons, 133, 329

Spring Gardens, 313

Stafford House, 168

Staple Inn, 3, 7, 147, 313

Stapleton, Walter, Bishop of Exeter, 56, 238

Stationers' Hall, 130, 314

Steelyard, the, 80, 82, 100

Stephen, King, 34

(St) Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, 7

(St) Stephen, Coleman Street, Church, 314

(St) Stephen, Walbrook, Church, 6, 18, 99, 314

Stepney, 3, 9, 39, 45, 114, 315

Stock's Market, 99, 106

Stoke Newington, 9, 134, 315

Stow, John, 14, 17, 18, 22, 71, 98, 99, 102, 113, 197

Strafford, Earl of, Thomas Wentworth, 88-9

Strand, 13, 19, 40, 93, 148

Strand Lane, 149

Suffolk House (Southwark), 187

Suffolk Lane, 101

Sweyn, 27, 28

Swift, Jonathan, 221, 257

(St) Swithin Church, 97, 98, 316

(St) Swithin's Lane, 98-9

T

Tabard Inn, 187, 242

Tacitus, 23

Tallow-Chandlers' Hall, 99, 316

Temple, the, 7, 41, 46, 52, 61, 74, 140-1, 316-7

Temple Bar, 10, 79, 142

Temple Church, 7, 316-7

Thackeray, W. M., 178, 225, 264, 317, 328

Thames, River, 16, 90

Theatres, 83-5, 122, 127, 134, 213, 335

(St) Thomas Acon Church, 75

(St) Thomas the Apostle Church, 318

(St) Thomas's Hospital, 186, 318

Thorney, 11, 20, 24, 30

Thornhill, Sir James, 170, 243, 267, 277

Tooley Street, 184

Torregiano, 303, 327

Tottenham, 91

Tottenham Court Road, 318

Tower Hill, 74, 79, 318-9

Tower of London, 2, 6, 27, 32, 33, 35, 40, 66, 67, 79, 81, 104-5, 319-20

Tower, Royal, 60, 116

Trafalgar Square, 19, 160, 223

Trinity House, 104, 320-1

Trinity House Almshouses, 114

Turner, J. M. W., 228, 297

Tyburn, the Stream and Manor, 19, 20, 175, 279

Tyler, Wat, 61, 309

V

Vauxhall, 321

(St) Vedast, Foster Lane, Church, 321

Victoria Street, 20

Vintners' Guild and Hall, 65, 119, 321-2

W

Walbrook Stream and Street, 11, 18, 20, 21, 97-9, 289

Wall of London, 6, 15, 18, 24, 39, 122, 126, 322

Walpole, Horace, 220, 233, 251, 302

Walpole House (Chelsea), 180

Walworth, 9, 322-3

Walworth, Sir William, Mayor, 60, 61, 309

Wardens of London, 46, 50-1

Wardrobe Place, 121-2, 323

Wards of City, 37, 44

Wars of the Roses, 64

Warwick Lane, 76, 130

Washington, George, 253

Watermen's Hall and Guild, 103-104

Watling Street, 11, 24, 129, 143

Weavers' Hall and Guild, 91

Wells, outside City of London, 42

Wesley, John, 323

Westbourne stream, 19, 20, 175-6, 331

“West End,” the, 13, 92-3, 95, 324

Westminster Abbey, 4, 7, 154-7, 325-9

Westminster, the City of, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 78-9, 89, 90, 93, 95, 153-160, 323-5

Westminster Hall, 7, 22, 88, 89, 91, 329

Westminster Palace, see also Westminster Hall, 30, 40, 77, 157, 329-30

Westminster School, 330-1

Whitechapel, 9, 70, 71, 331

Whitefriars, 52, 53, 74, 332

Whitehall, 30, 88, 89, 90, 91, 157-8, 332-3

Whitehall Banqueting House, 333

White's Club, 333-4

Whittington, Richard, 43, 60, 63, 65, 75, 205, 229, 231-2, 287-8

William the Conqueror, 31, 32

William III., 92, 94

Will's Coffee House, 334

Winchester, 34

Winchester House (Austin Friars), 135-6, 334-5

Windsor, 47-8

Witan, 29

Wolsey, Cardinal, 70, 333

Woolwich, 9

Worcester House (Strand), 151, 335

Wren, Sir Christopher, 190, 198, 201, 218, 227, 230, 231, 253, 255, 263, 267, 274, 275, 278, 282, 285, 289, 290, 296, 298, 309, 314, 317, 319, 321, 330, 331

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 79, 209

Wycliffe's party, 58-60

Y

York House, 335-6

PRINTED BY
TURNBULL AND SPEARS,
EDINBURGH