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The Survey of London

LONDON

CITY

Pictorial Agency.
INTERIOR OF ROYAL EXCHANGE.—(Page [128])

LONDON
CITY

BY

SIR WALTER BESANT

LONDON

ADAM & CHARLES BLACK

1910

PREFACE

With this volume we begin what may be called the second part of the Survey. All that has preceded it has dealt with the history of London as a whole; now we turn to London in its topographical aspect and treat it street by street, with all the historical associations interwoven in a continuous narrative with a running commentary of the aspect of the streets as they were at the end of the nineteenth century, for the book is strictly a Survey of London up to the end of the nineteenth century. Sir Walter Besant himself wrote the greater part of the volume now issued, calling it “The Antiquities of the City,” and it is exclusively confined to the City. For the topographical side of the great work, however, he employed assistants to collect material for him and to help him; for though, as he said, he had been “walking about London for the last thirty years and found something fresh in it every day,” he could not himself collect the mass of detail requisite for a fair presentation of the subject. In the present volume, therefore, embedded in his running commentary, will be found detailed accounts of the City Companies, the City churches and other buildings, which are not by his hand. A word as to the plan on which the volume is made may be helpful. In cases where the City halls are standing, accounts of the Companies they belong to are inserted there in the course of the perambulation; but where the Companies possess no halls, the matter concerning them is relegated to an Appendix. The churches, however, being peculiarly associated with the sites on which they are standing, or stood, are considered to be an integral part of the City associations, and churches, whether vanished or standing, are noted in course of perambulation. A distinction which shows at a glance whether any particular church is still existing or has been demolished is made by the type; for in the case of an existing church the name is set in large black type, as a centre heading, whereas with a vanished church it is given in smaller black type set in line.

The plan of the book is simplicity itself; it follows the lines of groups of streets, taken as dictated by common sense and not by the somewhat arbitrary boundaries of wards. The outlines of these groups are clearly indicated on the large map which will be found at the end of the volume.

CONTENTS
THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE CITY

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE CITY

It seems convenient in treating of the history and archæology of the City to take the streets in groups, each group being in connection with the main street to which it belongs. We may in this fashion conveniently arrange the streets as follows:—

GROUP I

Cheapside.—We begin with the true heart of London, West Chepe, as it was formerly called, and the streets lying north and south of this marketplace. St. Paul’s Churchyard and Foster Lane mark our western boundary; Princes Street and Walbrook, our eastern; Gresham Street (formerly Cateaton Street) is on the north, and Cannon Street on the south.

By the time of Queen Elizabeth we find the West Chepe, with its streets north and south, laid out with something like the modern regularity. We must therefore go back to earlier centuries to discover its origin.

West Chepe, from time immemorial, has been the most important market of the City. It was formerly, say in the twelfth century, a large open area. This area contained no fewer than twenty-five churches, of which nine still exist. The churches are dotted about in apparent disorder, which can be partly explained. For the market of Chepe was extended in fact from the Church of St. Michael le Querne on the west, to that of St. Christopher le Stock on the east, and lay between the modern Gresham Street in the north and Watling Street in the south.

It is ordered in Liber Albus that all manner of victuals are to be sold between the kennels of the streets. The so-called streets were narrow lanes, many of which remain to the present day.

There was, however, a principal way, not a street in our sense of the word, on either side of which, on the north and on the south, as well as along the middle, were stalls and shops. These stalls were at first mere wooden sheds; the goods were exposed by day and removed at night; in course of time they became permanent shops with living rooms at the back and an upper chamber. Among the sheds stood “selds.” The seld was a building not unlike the present Covent Garden Market, being roofed over and containing shops and store-houses. Several “selds” are mentioned in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These were the “great-seld” in the Mercery, called after the Lady Roisia de Coventre. This was near the house of St. Thomas of Acon, where now stands the Mercers’ Hall. There was also the “great seld of London,” in the ancient parish of St. Pancras, therefore on the south side of Cheapside. There was again the “seld of Fryday Street serving for foreign tanners, and time out of mind occupied with these wares”; and there was a seld held in 1304 by John de Stanes, mercer.

In the Liber Albus the seld is distinguished from the “shop, the cellar or solar.” It is also alluded to in the same book as the place where wool and other commodities are sold. Bakers were forbidden to store their bread in selds longer than one night. The seld was therefore a warehouse, a weighing place, as well as a shop. Since we hear nothing about selds in the Calendar of Wills after the fourteenth century, we may infer that a change had been made in the methods of the market. The change in fact was this. North and south of what is now Cheapside were arranged in order the stalls of those who sold everything; these stalls were protected from the weather; the various branches or departments of the market were separated by narrow lanes. It is impossible at this time to assign all the various trades accurately each to its own place—in fact, they always overlapped; but we can do so approximately. The names of the streets belonging to Cheapside are a guide. For instance, Wood Street, Milk Street, Honey Lane, Ironmonger Street, Old Jewry, the Poultry, Scalding Alley, Soper Street, Bread Street, Friday Street, Old Change, explain a great part of the disposition of the ancient market.

When we consider that twenty-five churches stood in or about the great market, and that they were all presumably more ancient than the Conquest, we may deduce the fact that the stalls very early became closed shops, and in many cases permanent houses of residence, and that the market contained a large resident population by which industries were carried on as well as shops. With certain wares, such as milk, honey, wood, spices, mercery, salt-fish, poultry, meat, and herbs, there was no other industry than that of receiving, packing, and distributing. We therefore find few churches between Wood Street and Ironmonger Lane, the chief seat of these branches; while on the south side, for the same reason, there are still fewer churches.

The South Chepe was occupied by money-changers, salt-fish dealers, leather-sellers, bakers, mercers, pepperers, and herb-sellers. Soap-makers were there also at one time, but they were banished to another part of the City before the time of Edward the Second. “Melters,” i.e. of lard and tallow, were also forbidden to carry on their evil-smelling trade in West Chepe so far back as 1203.

A brief study, therefore, enables us to understand, first, why the churches stand thickly in one part and thinly in another; next, that West Chepe was a vast open market containing a resident population, crowded where industries were carried on, and sparse where the goods were simply exposed for sale; and, thirdly, that the place could be easily converted into a tilting ground, as was done on many occasions, by clearing away the “stationers,” that is to say, the people who held stalls or stations about the crosses in Cheapside. On one occasion, at least, this was done, to the great indignation of the people.

There are certain places in the country, and on the Continent, where the mediæval market is still preserved in its most important features. For instance, there is the market-place of Peterborough, which is still divided by lanes, and which has areas allotted to the different trades; and that of Rheims, where the ancient usages are preserved and followed, even to the appearance of Autolycus, the Cheap Jack, and the Quack, who may be seen and heard on every market day.

We may take Stow’s description of the Elizabethan Chepe:

“At the West end of this Poultrie, and also of Bucklesbury, beginneth the large street of West Cheaping, a market place so called, which street stretcheth west till ye come to the little conduit by Paule’s gate, but not all of Cheape ward. In the east part of this street standeth the great conduit of sweet water, conveyed by pipes of lead underground from Paddington for the service of this city, castellated with stone, and cisterned in lead, about the year 1285, and again new built and enlarged by Thomas Ilam, one of the sheriffs 1479.

“About the midst of this street is the Standard in Cheape, of what antiquity the first foundation I have not read. But Henry VI., by his patent dated at Windsor the 21st of his reign, which patent was confirmed by parliament 1442, granted license to Thomas Knolles, John Chichele, and other, executors to John Wells, grocer, sometime mayor of London, with his goods to make new the highway which leadeth from the city of London towards the palace of Westminster, before and nigh the manor of Savoy, parcel of the Duchy of Lancaster, a way then very ruinous, and the pavement broken, to the hurt and mischief of the subjects, which old pavement then remaining in that way within the length of five hundred feet, and all the breadth of the same before and nigh the site of the manor aforesaid, they to break up, and with stone, gravel, and other stuff, one other good and sufficient way there to make for the commodity of the subjects.

“And further, that the Standard in Cheape, where divers executions of the law beforetime had been performed, which standard at the present was very ruinous with age, in which there was a conduit, should be taken down, and another competent standard of stone, together with a conduit in the same, of new, strongly to be built, for the commodity and honour of the city, with the goods of the said testator, without interruption, etc.

“Of executions at the Standard in Cheape, we read, that in the year 1293 three men had their right hands smitten off there, for rescuing of a prisoner arrested by an officer of the city. In the year 1326, the burgesses of London caused Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exceter, treasurer to Edward II., and other, to be beheaded at the standard in Cheape (but this was by Paule’s gate); in the year 1351, the 26th of Edward III., two fishmongers were beheaded at the standard in Cheape, but I read not of their offence; 1381, Wat Tyler beheaded Richard Lions and other there. In the year 1399, Henry IV. caused the blank charters made by Richard II. to be burnt there. In the year 1450, Jack Cade, captain of the Kentish rebels, beheaded the Lord Say there. In the year 1461, John Davy had his hand stricken off there, because he had stricken a man before the judges at Westminster, etc.

“Then next is a great cross in West Cheape, which cross was there erected in the year 1290 by Edward I. upon occasion thus:—Queen Elianor his wife died at Hardeby (a town near unto the city of Lincoln), her body was brought from thence to Westminster; and the king, in memory of her, caused in every place where her body rested by the way, a stately cross of stone to be erected, with the queen’s image and arms upon it, as at Grantham, Woborne, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Dunstable, St. Albones, Waltham, West Cheape, and at Charing, from whence she was conveyed to Westminster, and there buried.

“This cross in West Cheape being like to those other which remain to this day, and being by length of time decayed, John Hatherle, mayor of London, procured, in the year 1441, license of King Henry VI. to re-edify the same in more beautiful manner for the honour of the city, and had license also to take up two hundred fodder of lead for the building thereof of certain conduits, and a common granary. This cross was then curiously wrought at the charges of divers citizens: John Fisher, mercer, gave six hundred marks toward it; the same was begun to be set up 1484, and finished 1486, the 2nd of Henry VII.

“In the year 1599, the timber of the cross at the top being rotted within the lead, the arms thereof bending, were feared to have fallen to the harming of some people, and therefore the whole body of the cross was scaffolded about, and the top thereof taken down, meaning in place thereof to have set up a piramis; but some of her majesty’s honourable councillors directed their letters to Sir Nicholas Mosley, then mayor, by her highness’ express commandment concerning the cross, forthwith to be repaired, and placed again as it formerly stood, etc., notwithstanding the said cross stood headless more than a year after. After this (1600) a cross of timber was framed, set up, covered with lead, and gilded, the body of the cross downward cleansed of dust, the scaffold carried thence. About twelve nights following, the image of Our Lady was again defaced, by plucking off her crown, and almost her head, taking from her her naked child, and stabbing her in the breast, etc. Thus much for the cross in West Cheape” (Stow’s Survey, 1633, pp. 278-80).

CHEAPSIDE CROSS (AS IT APPEARED ON ITS ERECTION IN 1606).
From an original Drawing in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge.

The cross was the object of much abuse by the Puritans, who at last succeeded in getting it pulled down. “On May 2nd, 1643, the Cross of Cheapside was pulled down. A troop of horse and two companies of foot waited to guard it; and, at the fall of the top cross, drums beat, trumpets blew, and multitudes of caps were thrown into the air.... And the same day, at night was the leaden popes[^[1]] burnt in the place where it stood, with ringing of bells and a great acclamation” (Wilkinson’s Londina Illustrata).

To continue Stow’s account:

“Then at the west end of West Cheape Street, was sometime a cross of stone, called the Old Cross. Ralph Higden, in his Policronicon, saith, that Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exceter, treasurer to Edward II., was by the burgesses of London beheaded at this cross called the Standard, without the north door of St. Paul’s church; and so is it noted in other writers that then lived. This old cross stood and remained at the east end of the parish church called St. Michael in the Corne by Paule’s gate, near to the north end of the old Exchange, till the year 1390, the 13th of Richard II., in place of which old cross then taken down, the said church of St. Michael was enlarged, and also a fair water conduit built about the 9th of Henry VI.

“In the reign of Edward III., divers joustings were made in this street, betwixt Sopers 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 Cheape, 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 other some strange knights. And to the end the beholders might with the better ease see the same, there was a wooden scaffold erected across the street, like unto 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; but the higher frame, in which the ladies were placed, brake in sunder, whereby they were with some shame forced to fall down, by reason whereof the knights and such as were underneath, were grievously hurt; wherefore the queen took great care to save the carpenters from punishment, and through her prayers (which she made upon her knees) pacified the king and council, and thereby purchased great love of the people. After which time the king caused a shed to be strongly made of stone, for himself, the queen, and other estates to stand on, and there to behold the joustings, and other shows, at their pleasure, by the church of St. Mary Bow, as is showed in Cordwainer street ward” (ibid.).

In 1754 Strype writes:

“Cheapside is a very stately spacious street, adorned with lofty buildings; well inhabited by Goldsmiths, Linen-Drapers, Haberdashers, and other great dealers. The street, which is throughout of an equal breadth, begins westward at Paternoster Row, and, in a straight line, runs to the Poultry, and from thence to the Royal exchange in Cornhill. And, as this Street is yet esteemed the principal high street in the City, so it was formerly graced with a great Conduit, a Standard, and a stately Cross; which last was pulled down in the Civil Wars. In the last Part, almost over-against Mercers Chapel, stood a great Conduit; but this Conduit, standing almost in the Middle of the street, being incommodious for Coaches and Carts, was thought fit by the Magistracy, after the great Fire, to be taken down, and built no more.”

The great Conduit of Chepe, commenced in 1285, brought the water from Paddington, a distance of 3½ miles. It stood opposite Mercers’ Hall and Chapel. It was a stone building long and low, battlemented, enclosing a leaden cistern. In the year 1441 at the west end of Chepe and in the east end of the Church of St. Michael le Querne, the smaller conduit was erected. Both conduits were destroyed in the Great Fire—the larger one was not rebuilt. The Standard opposite Honey Lane was in later years fitted with a water cock always running. At the Standard many public executions took place (Strype, vol. 1. p. 566).

Hardly any street of London is more frequently mentioned in annual documents than Chepe. There are many ancient deeds of sale and conveyances still preserved at the Guildhall, relating to property in Chepe. In the Calendar of Wills, houses, etc., in Chepe are bequeathed in more than two hundred wills there quoted; many ordinances concerning Chepe are recorded in Riley’s Memorials.

Stow has given some of the history of Chepe. His account may be supplemented by a few notes on other events and persons connected with the street.

The antiquity of the street is proved by the discovery of Roman coins, Roman tesserae, Romano-British remains of various kinds, and Saxon jewels. It is not, however, until the thirteenth century that we find historical events other than the conveyance, etc., of land and tenements in Cheapside.

In the thirteenth century a part of Cheapside, if not the whole, was called the Crown Field; the part so called was probably confined to a space on the east of Bow Church.

In the year 1232 we find the citizens mustering in arms at Mile End and “well arrayed” in Chepe.

In 1269 it is recorded that the pillory in Chepe was broken, and so remained for a whole year by the negligence of the bailiffs, so that nobody could be put in pillory for that time. The bakers seized the opportunity for selling loaves of short weight—even a third part short. But in 1270, on the Feast of St. Michael, the sheriffs had a new pillory made and erected on the site of the old one. Then the hearts of the bakers failed them for fear, and the weight of the loaves increased.

In 1273 the Mayor removed from Chepe all the stalls of the butchers and fishmongers, together with the stalls which had been let and granted by the preceding sheriffs, although the persons occupying them had taken them for life and had paid large sums for their leases. This was a political move, the intention being to deprive the stall-keepers of their votes. The Mayor, however, defended the action on the ground that the King was about to visit the City, and that it behoved him to clear the way of refuse and encumbrances.

In the year 1326 a letter was sent by the Queen and her son Edward calling upon the citizens of London to aid with all their power in destroying the enemies of the land, and Hugh le Despenser in especial. Wherefore, when the head of Hugh was carried in triumph through Chepe, with trumpets sounding, the citizens rejoiced.

In October of the same year when the Bishop of Exeter, Walter de Stapleton, was on his way to his house in “Elde Dean’s Lane” to dine there, he was met by the mob, dragged into Chepe with one of his esquires, and there beheaded. Another of the Bishop’s servants was beheaded in Chepe the same day.

On the birth of Edward III. on November 13, 1312, the people of London made great rejoicings, holding carols, i.e. dances and songs, in Chepe for a fortnight, while the conduits ran wine.

In 1482 a grocer’s shop in Cheapside with a “hall” over it—perhaps a warehouse—was let for the rental of £4 : 6 : 8 per annum. The owner of the shop was Lord Howard, created Duke of Norfolk in 1483.

References to Cheapside multiply as we approach more modern times. In 1522, when Charles V. came to England, lodgings were appointed for his retinue. Among them was a house in Cheapside, a goldsmith’s. It contained one parlour, one kitchen, one chamber, and one bed. The murder of Dr. Lambe in 1631, the execution of William Hacket in 1591, the burning of the Solemn Covenant in 1661,—these are incidents in the history of Cheapside. Many other events belonging either to the history of the City or of the realm have been mentioned elsewhere.

In the sixteenth century one of the sights of London was the Goldsmiths’ Row, built in 1491 on the site of certain shops and selds. Stow calls the Row “a most beautiful frame of faire houses and shops consisting of ten faire dwellinghouses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, builded foure stories high, beautified towards the street with the Goldsmith’s Arms and the likeness of woodmen, in memory of his name, riding on monstrous beasts all richly painted and gilt.” Maitland, who certainly could not remember it, says that it was “beautiful to behold the glorious appearance of the Goldsmith’s shops in the South row of Cheapside, which in a course reached from the Old Change of Bucklersbury exclusive of four shops only, of three trades, in all that space.”

Coming now to a description of Cheapside as it is at present, we find a statue of Sir Robert Peel standing on a block of granite. The whole is more than 20 feet in height. The statue was put up in 1855, and on the pedestal is the inscription of Peel’s birth and death. On the north of Cheapside is a large stone block of building in one uniform style with shops on the ground floor. This contains the Saddlers’ Hall, and in the middle is the great entrance way solidly carried out in stone.

THE SADDLERS COMPANY

The date of the formation of the Company, and the circumstances under which it was founded, are unknown. It existed at a very remote period. There is now preserved in the archives of the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin’s-le-Grand a parchment containing a letter from that foundation, in which reference is made to the then ancient customs of the Guild. This document is believed to have been written about the time of Henry II., Richard I., or John, most probably in the first of these reigns. In this letter reference is made to “Ernaldus, the Alderman of the Guild.” This Ernaldus is stated by Mr. Alfred John Kempe, in his work Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin’s-le-Grand, to have lived before the Conquest, by which it may be inferred that the Company is of Anglo-Saxon origin.

King Edward I., A.D. 1272, granted a charter. King Edward III., by his charter 1st December, 37 Edward III., A.D. 1363, granted that as well in the City of London as in every other city, borough, or town where the art of Saddlers is exercised, one or two honest and faithful men of the craft should be chosen and appointed by the Saddlers there dwelling to superintend and survey the craft. This charter was exemplified and confirmed by Henry VI., Henry VII., and Henry VIII.

Richard II., by charter 20th March, 18 Richard II., A.D. 1374, granted to the men of the mystery of Saddlers of the City of London, that for the good government of the mystery they may have one commonalty of themselves for ever, and that the men of the same mystery and commonalty may choose and appoint every year four keepers of the men of the commonalty to survey, rule, and duly govern the same. Furthermore, that the keepers and commonalty, and their successors, may purchase lands, to the yearly value of twenty pounds, for the sustentation of the poor, old, weak and decayed persons of the mystery, and this charter was exemplified, ratified, and confirmed by Edward IV.

Queen Elizabeth, by charter 9th November, 1 Elizabeth, A.D. 1558, exemplifies, ratifies, and confirms the previous charters, and reincorporates the Company by the name of the wardens or keepers and commonalty of the mystery or art of Saddlers of the City of London. The charter names and appoints four wardens to hold office from the date of the charter until the 14th August then following, and authorises them to keep within their common hall an assembly of the wardens or keepers or freemen of the same mystery, or the greater part of them, or of the wardens, and of eight of the most ancient and worthy freemen, being of the assistants of the mystery, and that the wardens and eight of the assistants at least being present shall have full power to treat, consult, and agree upon the articles and ordinances touching the mystery or art aforesaid, and the good rule, state, and government of the same. Power is given to elect four wardens on the 14th August yearly. Power of giving two votes is given to the master at doubtful elections. Powers are also given for the government and regulation of the trade.

This is one of the most ancient, as it is also one of the most interesting, of the City Companies. Their original quarter was at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. The saddle played an important part in every man’s life at a time when riding was the only method of travelling.

The saddlers were connected with the Church of St. Martin’s-le-Grand and made some kind of convention with the Canons, the nature of which is uncertain. Probably the Canons promised them their aid in support of their rights and privileges, in return for which their religious gifts and fees were paid to the Church of St. Martin. The mystery of saddlery, like all others, overlapped, and encroached upon, other mysteries and crafts. Then there followed quarrels. Thus in 1307 (Riley, Memorials, p. 156) there was an affray between the saddlers on one side and the loriners, joiners, and painters on the other, on account of such encroachments. The quarrel was adjusted by the Mayor and Aldermen. Another trouble to which so great a trade was liable, was the desire of the journeymen to break off into fraternities of their own. This pretension was seriously taken in hand in 1796, and such fraternities were strictly forbidden.

The Company has had three halls, all on the same site. The first was burned in the Great Fire; the second in 1822; the present hall was built after the second fire, and is at No. 141 Cheapside.

At the corner of Wood Street is what remains of the churchyard of St. Peter’s, Westcheap, the building of which was destroyed in the Great Fire: a railed-in space, gravel covered and uninteresting, except for the magnificent plane-tree which spreads its branches protectingly over the low roofs in front. On the walls of the old houses near are fixed two monuments, and a little stone tablet rather high up, with the inscription:

“Erected at the sole cost and charges of the Parish of St. Peter’s, Westcheap, A.D. 1687,”

followed by the names of the churchwardens.

The Church of St. Peter, Westcheap, was also called SS. Peter and Paul. After the Great Fire its parish was annexed to that of St. Matthew, Friday Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1302.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Abbot of St. Alban’s before 1302. Henry VIII. seized it and granted it in 1545 to the Earl of Southampton, in whose successors it continued up to 1666.

Houseling people in 1548 were 360.

A chantry was founded here at the Altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Nicholas de Faringdon, Mayor of London, 1313 and 1320, for himself and Rose his wife, to which Lawrence Bretham de Faversham was admitted chaplain, October 24, 1361; the endowment fetched £29 : 3 : 4 in 1548, when Sir W. Alee was priest. There was another at the Altar of the Holy Cross.

Sir John Munday, goldsmith, Mayor, was buried here in 1527; also Sir Alexander Avenon, Mayor in 1569; and Augustine Hind, clothworker, Alderman, and Sheriff of London, who died in 1554.

The only charitable gifts recorded by Stow are: £2 : 4 : 4, the gift of Sir Lionel Ducket; 3s. 4d., the gift of Lady Read; 7s. 6d., the gift of Mr. Walton.

John Gwynneth, Mus. Doc. and author, was rector here in 1545; also Richard Gwent, D.D., and William Boleyn, Archdeacon of Winchester.

ST. MARY-LE-BOW

But the ornament of Cheapside is St. Mary-le-Bow, which derived its additional name from its stone “bows” or arches. The date of its foundation is not known, but it appears to have been during or before the reign of William the Conqueror. The court of the Archbishop of Canterbury was held here before the Great Fire; and though the connection between the church and the ecclesiastical courts has ceased, it is still used for the confirmation of the election of bishops. The “Court of Arches” owes its name to the fact that it was held in the beautiful Norman crypt which still survives. The church has been made famous, Stow observes, as the scene of various calamities, of which he records details. In 1469 the Common Council ordained the ringing of Bow Bell every evening at nine o’clock, but the practice had existed for already more than a century; in 1515 the largest of the five bells was presented by William Copland. The church was totally destroyed in 1666, as well as those of St. Pancras, Soper Lane and Allhallows, Honey Lane; the two last were not rebuilt, their parishes being annexed to St. Mary’s. Wren began building the present church in 1671 and completed it in 1680. The cost was greater than any other of Wren’s parish churches by £3000, £2000 of which was contributed by Dame Williamson. The steeple was repaired by Sir William Staines in the eighteenth century, and again in 1820 by Mr. George Gwilt. In 1758, seven of the bells were recast, new ones were added, and the ten were first rung in 1762 in honour of George III.’s birthday; the full number now is twelve. In 1786 the parish of Allhallows, Bread Street, was united with this.

The earliest date of an incumbent is 1242.

The patronage of the church has always been in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury and his successors, but Henry III. presented to it in 1242.

Houseling people in 1548 were 300.

The church measures 65 feet in length, 63 feet in breadth, and 38 feet in height; it contains a nave and two side aisles. The great feature of the building is the steeple, which is the most elaborate of all Wren’s works and only exceeded in height by St. Bride’s. It rises at the north-west end of the church and measures 32 square feet at the base. The tower contains three storeys. The highest is surmounted by a cornice and balustrade with finials and vases, and a circular dome supporting a cylinder, lantern, and spire. The weather-vane is in the form of a dragon, the City emblem. The total height is 221 feet 9 inches. The Norman crypt already mentioned still remains, consisting of three aisles formed by massive columns; it probably formed part of the building in William I.’s time.

Chantries were founded here:

By John Causton, to which John Steveyns was admitted chaplain, December 2, 1452; by John Coventry, in the chapel of St. Nicholas; by Henry Frowycke, whose endowment fetched £15 : 10s. in 1548; by John de Holleghe, whose endowment produced £7 in 1548; by Dame Eleanor, Prioress of Winchester, whose endowment yielded £4 in 1548.

The original church does not appear to have contained many monuments of note. Among the civic dignitaries buried here was Nicholas Alwine, Lord Mayor in 1499, whose name is familiar to readers of The Last of the Barons.

Sir John Coventry, Mayor in 1425, was also buried here.

There is a tablet fixed over the vestry-room door, commemorating Dame Dionis Williamson, who gave £2000 towards the building of the church. On the west wall a sarcophagus commemorates Bishop Newton, rector, who won celebrity by his edition of Milton first published in 1749.

The parish possessed a considerable number of charities and gifts:

George Palin was donor of £100, to be devoted to the maintenance of a weekly lecture.

Mr. Banton, of £50 for the same purpose. There were others, to the total amount of £60.

There was one Charity School belonging to Cordwainer and Bread Street Wards for fifty boys and thirty girls, who were put to employments and trades when fit.

The following are among the notable rectors:

Martin Fotherby (d. 1619), Bishop of Salisbury; Samuel Bradford (1652-1731), Bishop of Gloucester; Samuel Lisle (1683-1749), Bishop of Norwich; Nicholas Felton (1556-1626), Bishop of Bristol; Thomas Newton (1704-1782), Bishop of Bristol; and William Van Mildert (1765-1836), Bishop of Llandaff, and later the last Prince-Bishop of Durham.

Quaint sayings and traditions have gathered more thickly about St. Mary’s than about any of the City churches. Dick Whittington’s story has made the name familiar to every British child; while to be born “within sound of Bow Bells” is more dignified than to own oneself a Cockney. In sooth-saying we have the prophecy of Mother Shipton that when the Grasshopper on the Exchange and the Dragon on Bow Church should meet, the streets should be deluged with blood. They did so meet, being sent to the same yard for repair at the same time, but the prophecy was not fulfilled.

The ringing of the Bow bells in the Middle Ages signified closing-time for shops, and the ringer incurred the wrath of the apprentices of Chepe if he failed to be punctual to the second.

We now proceed to the Poultry.

Stow thus describes the place:

“Now to begin again on the bank of the said Walbrooke, at the east end of the high street called the Poultrie, on the north side thereof, is the proper parish church of St. Mildred, which church was new built upon Walbrooke in the year 1457. John Saxton their parson gave thirty-two pounds towards the building of the new choir, which now standeth upon the course of Walbrooke.”

Strype says of it:

“The Poultry, a good large and broad Street, and a very great thoroughfare for Coaches, Carts, and foot-passengers, being seated in the Heart of the City, and leading to and from the Royal Exchange; and from thence to Fleet Street, the Strand, Westminster, and the western parts: and therefore so well inhabited by great tradesmen. It begins in the West, by the old Jewry, where Cheapside ends, and reaches the Stocks market by Cornhill. On the North side is Scalding Alley; a large place, containing two or three Alleys, and a square Court with good buildings, and well inhabited; but the greatest part is in Bread Street Ward, where it is mentioned.”

Roman knives and weapons have been found in the Poultry. The valley of the Walbrook, 130 feet in width, began its slope here. Nearly opposite Princes Street, a modern street, there was anciently a bridge over the stream. We find in the thirteenth century an inquest held here over the body of one Agnes de Golden Lane, who was found starved to death, a rare circumstance at that time, and only possible, one would think, considering the charity of the monastic houses, in the case of a bedridden person forgotten or deserted by her own people. In the fourteenth century there are various bequests of shops and tenements in the Poultry. In the fifteenth century we find that there was a brewery here, near the Compter; how did the brewer get his water? In the same century the Compter—which was one of the two sheriffs’ prisons—seems to belong to one Walter Hunt, a grocer. In the sixteenth century one of the rioters of 1517 was hanged in the Poultry; there was trouble about the pavements and complaints were made of obstructions by butchers, poulterers, and the ancestors of the modern coster, who sold things from barrows, stopping up the road and refusing to move on. Before the Fire there were many taverns in the Poultry; some of them had the signs which have been found belonging to the Poultry.

The later associations of the place have been detailed by Cunningham:

“Lubbock’s Banking-house is leased of the Goldsmiths, being part of Sir Martin Bowes’s bequest to the Company in Queen Elizabeth’s time. The King’s Head Tavern, No. 25, was kept in Charles II.’s time by William King. His wife happening to be in labour on the day of the King’s restoration, was anxious to see the returning monarch, and Charles, in passing through Poultry, was told of her inclination, and stopped at the tavern to salute her. No. 22 was Dilly, the bookseller’s. Here Dr. Johnson met John Wilkes at dinner; and here Boswell’s life of Johnson was first published. Dilly sold his business to Mawman. No. 31 was the shop of Vernor and Hood, booksellers. Hood of this firm was father of the facetious Tom Hood, and here Tom was born in 1798” (Hand-book of London).

Here is a little story. It happened in 1318. One John de Caxtone, furbisher by trade, going along the Poultry—one charitably hopes that he was in liquor—met a certain valet of the Dean of Arches who was carrying a sword under his arm, thinking no evil. Thereupon John assaulted him, apparently without provocation, and drawing out the sword, wounded the said valet with his own weapon. This done, he refused to surrender to the Mayor’s sergeant, nor would he give himself up till the Mayor himself appeared on the spot. We see the crowd—all the butchers in the Poultry collected together: on the ground lies the wounded valet, bleeding, beside him is the sword, the assailant blusters and swears that he will not surrender, the Mayor’s sergeant remonstrates, the crowd increases, then the Mayor himself appears followed by other sergeants, a lane is made, and at sight of that authority the man gives in. The sergeants march him off to Newgate, the crowd disperses, the butchers go back to their stalls, the women to their baskets, the costers to their barrows. For five days the offender cools his heels at Newgate. Then he is brought before the Mayor. He throws himself on the mercy of the judge, sureties are found for him that he will keep the peace, and he consents to compensate the wounded man.

For Stocks Market, St. Mary Woolchurch Haw, on the site of which the Mansion House stands, and the vicinity, formerly included in the Poultry, see Group III.

At the east end of the Poultry is Grocers’ Alley, formerly Conyhope Lane, of which Stow says:

“Then is Conyhope Lane, of old time so called of such a sign of three conies hanging over a poulterer’s stall at the lane’s end. Within this lane standeth the Grocers’ hall, which company being of old time called Pepperers, were first incorporated by the name of Grocers in the year 1345.” The Grocers’ Hall really opens into Princes Street.

THE GROCERS COMPANY

The Company’s records begin partly in Norman-French, partly in Old English, as follows: “To the honour of God, the Virgin Mary, St. Anthony and All Saints, the 9th day of May 1345, a Fraternity was founded of the Company of Pepperers of Soper’s Lane for love and unity to maintain and keep themselves together, of which Fraternity are sundry beginners, founders, and donors to preserve the said Fraternity.”

(Here follow twenty-two names.)

The same twenty-two persons “accorded to be together at a dinner in the Abbot’s Place of Bury on the 12th of June following, and then were chosen two the first Wardens that ever were of our Fraternity,” and certain ordinances were agreed to by assent among the Fraternity, providing that no person should be of the Fraternity “if not of good condition and of this craft, that is to say, a Pepperer of Soper’s Lane or a Spicer in the ward of Cheap, or other people of their mystery, wherever they reside”; for contributions among the members, for the purposes of the Fraternity, including the maintenance of a priest; the wearing of a livery; arbitration by the Wardens upon disputes between members; attendance at Mass at the Monastery of St. Anthony on St. Anthony’s Day, and at a feast on that day or within the octave, at which feast the Wardens should come with chaplets and choose and crown two other Wardens for the year ensuing; attendance at the funerals of members; the taking of apprentices; assistance of unfortunate members out of the common stock; and that “any of the Fraternity may according to his circumstance and free will devise what he chooses to the common box for the better supporting the Fraternity and their alms.”

From external evidence it appears that for two centuries at least before 1345 there had existed a Guild of Pepperers, who had superseded the Soapers in Soper’s Lane, and probably absorbed them. The twenty-two Pepperers, who in 1345 founded the social, benevolent, and religious fraternity of St. Anthony, were of “good condition,” probably the most influential and wealthy men in the Pepperers’ guild; in founding the new brotherhood “for greater love and unity” and “to maintain and assist one another,” they did not desert their old guild, but formed a new fraternity within it. They did not seek, apparently, to alter the institution of the Guild of Pepperers, nor did they adopt a distinctive title for themselves; but the movement was obviously an important one, and attracted notice and jealousy, which was perhaps increased by the foreign connections of some of the members. So rapidly did the Company gain favour and strength that in 1383, not forty years after its foundation, there were one hundred and twenty-nine liverymen of whom not less than sixteen were Aldermen. At that time, no doubt, the Company exercised a preponderating influence in the City of London.

The new brotherhood was styled the Fraternity of St. Anthony from 1348 to 1357. After this year there is an hiatus in the Company’s records, and when these recommence in 1373 the title is “company” or “fraternity” of “gossers,” “grosers,” “groscers,” or “grocers.”

The origin of the term “grocer” and its application to the Company are involved in considerable obscurity. As far as can be ascertained, the first use of the word, officially, is against the Company from without, and in an aspect of reproach. It occurs in a petition to the King and Parliament in 1363, against the new fraternity that “les Marchantz nomez Grossers engrossent toutes maneres de marchandises vendables.”

It is by no means improbable that the term, first suggested by less successful rivals in trade, was adopted by the leading dealers “en gros” for the name of the company, which formed round the Fraternity of St. Anthony, and probably absorbed the whole Guild of Pepperers.

From this time forward the Company began to act with energy in the interests of trade. In 1394 we find them, together with some Italian merchants, presenting a petition to the Corporation complaining of the unjust mode of “garbling,” i.e. cleansing or purifying spices and other “sotill wares.” The petition was entertained, and the Company were requested to recommend a member of their own body to fill the office, and on their nomination Thomas Halfmark was chosen and sworn garbeller of “spices and sotill ware.”

The fraternity, after holding their meetings for three years at the Abbot of Bury’s, assembled in 1348 at Fulsham’s house at the Rynged Hall, in St. Thomas Apostle, close to St. Anthony’s Church in Budge Row, Watling Street, where they at this time obtained permission to erect a chantry, etc., and called themselves the Fraternity of St. Anthony. They ultimately collected at Bucklersbury (“Bokerellesbury”), at the Cornet’s Tower, which had been used by Edward III. at the beginning of his reign as his exchange of money and exchequer. Here the Company began to exercise the functions entrusted to them of superintending the public weighing of merchandise.

In 1411 a descendant of Lord FitzWalter, who, in the reign of Henry III., had obtained possession of the chapel of St. Edmund which adjoined his family mansion, sold the chapel to the Company for 320 marks, and in the next reign the Company purchased the family mansion and built their Hall upon the site. The foundation stone was laid in 1427 and the building was completed in the following year. The expenses were defrayed by the contributions of members. Five years later the garden was added.

In 1428 the Company’s first charter of incorporation was granted by King Henry VI., and they became a body politic by the name of “Custodes et Communitas Mysterii Groceriæ Londini.” Nineteen years later the same king granted to the Company the exclusive right of garbling throughout all places in the kingdom of England, except the City of London.

In 1453 the Company, having the charge and management of the public scale or King’s Beam, made a regular tariff of charges. It appears that to John Churchman, grocer, who served the office of sheriff in 1385, the trade of London is indebted for the establishment of the first Custom House. Churchman, in the sixth year of Richard II., built a house on Woolwharf Key, in Tower Street Ward, for the tronage or weighing of wools in the port of London, and a grant of the right of tronage was made by the King to Churchman for life. It is probable that Churchman, being unable of himself to manage so considerable a concern as the public scale, obtained the assistance of his Company, and thus the management of the weigh-house and the appointment of the officers belonging to it came into the hands of the Grocers Company.

Henry VIII. granted to the City of London the Beam with all appurtenances, and directed its management to be committed to some expert in weights. The City thereupon gave the management to the Company, only requiring one-third of the profits. The Company enjoyed, uninterruptedly, these privileges up to 1625, when a dispute arose with the City, and an agreement was made whereby the Company were to appoint four under-porters, and present four candidates for Master Porter, the Lord Mayor to choose one of them. Several disputes followed with the Corporation, who in 1700 ejected the officers appointed by the Company, and tried their right at law. No result is reported, but the Company filled up vacancies after that date, and up to 1797, when a Bill was passed for making Wet Docks at Wapping, and this appears to have had the effect of depriving the Company of their privileges.

The Company throughout this period kept, in common with others, a store of corn, according to ancient custom, for the supply of the poor at reasonable prices when bread was dear.

The Company was also bound to maintain an armoury at their Hall.

At the time of the Great Plague in 1665 the Company were assessed in various sums of money for the relief of the poor, and they also provided a large quantity of coals.

The next year the Great Fire of London inflicted losses on the Company from which it did not recover for nearly a century. The Company’s Hall and all the adjacent buildings (save the turret in the garden, which fortunately contained the records and muniments of the Company) and almost all the Company’s houses were destroyed. The silver recovered from the ruins of the Hall was remelted and produced nearly 200 lbs. weight of metal; this was sold for the Company’s urgent present necessities. In 1668 Sir John Cutler came forward and proposed to rebuild the parlour and dining-room at his own charge. In the same year ninety-four members were added to the Livery. The next year a petition was presented to Parliament praying for leave to bring in a Bill to raise £20,000 by an equal assessment upon the members of the Company of ability. The application to Parliament failed, and an effort was then made to raise the £20,000 among the members, but only £6000 was subscribed.

In January 1671 a Special Court was summoned to consider a Bill exhibited in Parliament by some of the Company’s creditors, praying for an Act for the sale of the Company’s Hall, lands, and estates to satisfy debts; and to make members of the Court liable for debts incurred. A Committee was appointed and in 1672 the Hall was, at the instance of the Governors of Christ’s Hospital, sequestered, and the Company ejected till 1679, when, after great difficulties and impediments, money was borrowed to pay off the debts and get rid of the intruders. In 1680 the Court of Assistants agreed that the most effectual way of regaining public confidence was to rebuild the Hall.

In order to prevent a second sequestration an Inquisition was taken in 1680 before Commissioners for Charitable Uses, and, pursuant to a decree made by those Commissioners, a period of twenty years was allowed to the Company to discharge their debts. The next year, to secure an accession of influence and talent for the support of the Company, sixty-five members were added to the Court, and a number of Freemen were summoned, and eighty-one members added to the Livery.

In 1683 the Company arranged, by arbitration, their difficulties with the Governors of Christ’s Hospital, and their prospects appeared more hopeful when the celebrated Writ of Quo Warranto was issued by King Charles II. against the City charters and liberties. The Company, with the view of propitiating the King, by deed under seal, voluntarily surrendered the powers, franchises, privileges, liberties, and authorities granted or to be used or exercised by the Wardens and Commonalty, and the right of electing and nominating to the several offices of Wardens, Assistants, and Clerk of the Company, and besought his Majesty to accept their surrender. Charles II. obtained judgment upon the Quo Warranto against the City, and all the redress that the Company could obtain was the grant of another charter under such restrictions as the King should think fit. His successor, James II., with a view to secure the goodwill and support of the City, sent for the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and voluntarily declared his determination to restore the City charters and liberties as they existed before the issuing of the Writ of Quo Warranto; and subsequently Judge Jeffreys came to Guildhall and delivered the charters with two grants of restoration to the Court of Aldermen.

The history of the Company during the eighteenth century is an account of pecuniary difficulties and the gradual extrication by the public spirit and foresight of the members.

As regards the profession or trade of the members, a return exists of the whole numbers for the year 1795 when the Court contained 32, the livery numbered 81, and the freemen 228. Of these, 40 were Grocers.

The number of the Livery returned in 1898 was 183. The Corporate Income was £37,500; the Trust Income was £500.

The advantages of being a member of the Company are as follows:

(1) Freemen are entitled to apply on behalf of their children for the Company’s presentations (six in number) to Christ’s Hospital; for the Company’s Scholarships for free education at the City of London School. The orphan children of freemen are alone eligible for the three presentations to the London Orphan Asylum.

Freemen are entitled to take apprentices.

Freemen, and widows and daughters of freemen, in needy circumstances may apply for relief, either temporary or permanent. Loans to freemen are practically abolished.

(2) Twelve months after a liveryman has been elected he is entitled, provided he live within twenty-five miles of the polling place, Guildhall, to be put upon the Register of Voters for the City, which entitles him to a vote at the election of Members of Parliament for the City; a liveryman is also entitled to vote at the election of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London. The livery receive invitations from the Master and Wardens to the four public dinners in the months of November, February, May, and July, in each year, and at every fifth dinner an invitation for a friend as well.

In some years when the honorary freedom of the Company is bestowed on distinguished personages, there is an extra public dinner to which the livery are invited. At the public dinner in May, called the Restoration Feast, a box of sweetmeats is presented to every guest. Liverymen, and the widows and daughters of liverymen in needy circumstances may apply for relief, either temporary or permanent.

The Hall of the Company has always occupied the same site since the first erection in 1427, when the Wardens bought part of the demesne of Lord FitzWalter in Conyhope Lane.

This building perished in the Great Fire of 1666. A new hall was built, but in 1798-1802 this building was pulled down and rebuilt. Alterations and additions were made in 1827, when the present entrance into Princes Street was constructed. There were formerly three ways of access to the hall—one from the Old Jewry; one by the lane called Grocers’ Alley; and one by Scalding Lane from St. Mildred, Poultry, of which a scrap of the churchyard still remains. The two lanes opened on a small Place on the north side of which was Grocers’ Hall and on the south side the Poultry Compter.

The hall destroyed in 1666 would have become by this time historical as the place to which the Houses removed from Westminster in 1642 after the attempt to seize the five members on 4th January of that year. The Committee appointed by both Houses met first at Guildhall and adjourned to Grocers’ Hall to “treat of the safety of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland.” It was in this hall that the City entertained the Houses, June 17, 1645, in the midst of the Civil War, and on June 7, 1649, when the Civil War was over. For forty years, 1694-1734, the Grocers’ Hall was rented and occupied by the Governors and Company of the Bank of England.

The Company numbered among its members Charles II., James II., William III., the Earl of Chatham, William Pitt, George Canning, and many others.

In the eighteenth century, the “Lane” was chiefly occupied by houses called spunging houses; here persons were confined by the sergeants belonging to the Poultry Compter, so that they might come to some compromise with their creditors, and not be taken into prison. Hawkesworth, essayist and man of letters, was originally clerk to an attorney in this court. Boyse, the ragged poet, was confined in one of the spunging houses. Here he wrote the Latin letter to Cave:

Inscription for St. Lazarus’s Cave.

Hodie, teste coelo summo,

Sine pane, sine nummo;

Sorte positus infeste,

Scribo tibi dolens moeste.

Fame, bile, tumet jecur:

Urbane, mitte opem, precor,

Tibi enim cor humanum

Non a malis alienum:

Mihi mens nec male grato,

Pro a te favore dato.—Alcæeus.

Ex gehenna debitoria,

Vulgo domo spongiatoria.

The Alley led to an open court. In this open place in 1688 a cart-load of seditious books was burned.

The east side of the Place is at present occupied by one wall of the Gresham Life Assurance Society, a magnificent building facing Poultry. It has finely proportioned polished granite columns with Corinthian capitals adding strength to the frontage, and a balcony with parapet running horizontally across the front. This was rebuilt in 1879. It stands on the site of St. Mildred, Poultry.

The Church of St. Mildred, Poultry, was situated on the north side of the Poultry. It was rebuilt in 1456, and, after being destroyed by the Great Fire, again rebuilt in 1676, when the parish of St. Mary Colechurch was annexed. In 1872 it was taken down, and the parish joined to St. Olave, Jewry. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1247. The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Prior and Convent of St. Mary Overy, Southwark, 1325; Henry VIII., 1541, and so continued in the Crown.

Houseling people in 1548 were 277.

Chantries were founded here by Solomon Lanfare or Le Boteler, citizen and cutler, at the Altar of Blessed Virgin Mary, to which Wm. de Farnbergh was admitted chaplain, October 4, 1337; by Hugh Game, poulterer, who endowed it with rents, which fetched £10 in 1548, when John Mobe was priest; by John Brown, for himself, his wife, Margaret his daughter, and Giles Walden, etc., to which John de Cotyngham was admitted chaplain, April 6, 1366. One John Mymmes had licence from Richard II. to found the Guild of Fraternity of Corpus Christi here; the endowment fetched £10 : 8 : 8 in 1548, when John Wotton was priest thereof. Here was a “Little Chapell” valued at 60s. in 1548.

Thomas Ashehill was buried here; he gave great help in rebuilding the church about 1450; also Thomas Morstead, chirurgeon to Henry IV., V., and VI., and one of the sheriffs of London. In more recent times, Wm. Cronne was commemorated; he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the College of Physicians, and died in 1706.

A great number of benefactors are recorded by Stow, of which the most notable are: William Watson, of £100, whereof £65 was received; William Tudman, of £247 in all, for various charities; Sarah Tudman, of £80; Lady Elizabeth Allington, £200, towards rebuilding.

One free school is recorded, called Mercers’ School (Stow).

John Williams (d. 1709), Bishop of Chichester, 1696, was rector here; also Benjamin Newcome, D.D., Dean of Rochester.

On the east side of Grocers’ Hall Court stood the Poultry Compter.

Strype describes the place and its government.

ST. MILDRED, POULTRY

“Somewhat west to this Church is the Poultry Compter, being the Prison belonging to one of the Sheriffs of London, for all such as are arrested within the City and liberties thereof. And, besides this Prison, there is another of the same Nature in Wood Street for the other Sheriff; both being of the same nature, and have the like officers for the Execution of the concerns belonging thereunto, as shall be here taken notice of. So that what is said here for Poultry Compter, belongs also to Wood Street Compter.

“The Charge of those prisons is committed to the Sheriffs.

“Unto each Compter also belongs a Master Keeper; and under him two Turnkeys, and other servitors.

INSIDE THE POULTRY COMPTER

“The poorer sort of prisoners, as well in this Compter, as in that in Wood Street, receive daily relief from the sheriff’s table, of all the broken meat and bread. And there are divers gifts given by several well disposed people, towards their subsistence. Besides which, there are other benevolences frequently sent to all the prisons by charitable persons; many of which do conceal their names, doing it only for charity sake. And there are other gifts, some for the releasement of such as lie in only for prison fees; and others, for the release of such, whose debts amount not to above such or such a sum” (Strype, vol. i. p. 567).

This was the only prison in London with a ward set apart for Jews. “Here died Lamb, the conjuror (commonly called Dr. Lamb), of the injuries he had received from the mob, who pelted him (June 13, 1628), from Moorgate to the Windmill in the Old Jewry, where he was felled to the ground with a stone, and was thence carried to the Poultry Compter, where he died the same night. The rabble believed that the doctor dealt with the devil, and assisted the Duke of Buckingham in misleading the king. The last slave imprisoned in England was confined (1772) in the Poultry Compter. This was Somerset, a negro, the particulars of whose case excited Sharpe and Clarkson in their useful and successful labour in the cause of negro emancipation” (Cunningham’s Hand-book of London).

When Whitecross Street Prison (1815-1870) was erected, the prisoners were removed there from the Poultry, and the site of the Compter was built upon partly by a Congregational Chapel, the congregation of which removed to the Holborn Viaduct when the City Temple was built.

The prison was burned down in the Fire, whereupon the prisoners were taken to Aldgate until it was rebuilt. It was an ill-kept, unventilated, noisome place.

It is worthy of note that the earliest bequest to the Compter mentioned in the Calendar of Wills belongs to the fifteenth century, and that most of the legacies to the prisoners were made after the Reformation and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In some of them we find mention of the “Hole” and of the “Twopenny Ward.”

In 1378 there was an altercation between the Mayor and one of the sheriffs. Allusion is made to that sheriff’s “own compter” in Milk Street, which may be taken for that of Wood Street, as the Compter lay between the two, though it stood in Bread Street until the year 1555. In the year 1382 a sumptuary law was issued restricting the dress of women of loose life, and those who offended were to be taken to one of the Compters. In 1388 we find the porter of a Compter insulting Adam Bamme, alderman, for which he was removed from his office. We find also a householder taken to the Compter for refusing to pay his rates and abusing the collector. In 1413, an old man named John Arkwythe, a scrivener, was summoned by Alderman Sevenoke for allowing the escape of a certain priest caught in adultery in St. Bride’s Church. John Arkwythe lost his temper, clutched the Alderman by the breast and threatened him. They sent him to Newgate, but, considering his age, they let him go, only depriving him of the freedom of the City. In 1418, one William Foucher, for contempt of Court, was sent to solitary imprisonment in the Compter, and prohibited from speaking to any one except those who should counsel him repentance and amendment.

From these cases it would appear that the Compters were used partly as houses of detention before trial, and that trial was frequently deferred in order that the offender might endure a term of imprisonment in addition to the pillory, or the release on finding security, which would follow.

West of Grocers’ Alley is the Old Jewry, one of the most interesting places in the whole of London on account of its having been the Ghetto, though not a place of humiliation, for the Jews of London. When they came to London they received this quarter for their residence; why this place, so central, so convenient for the despatch of business, was assigned to them, no one has been able to discover. In the learned work of Mr. Joseph Jacobs (The Jews of Angevin England) he shows that Jews were in Oxford and Cambridge as well as in London in the time of the Normans.

The older name of the street was Colechurch Street. In the Receipts and Perquisites of the Tower from the Jews of London are found the following:

[The sense of this entry is doubtful. Perhaps the two pounds were forfeited and 60 is wrongly transcribed for 40 (lx. for xl.).] (Guildhall MS. 129, vol. ii. p. 95a.)

It thus appears that the Jewry was walled in with gates. Had it been a simple street, a thoroughfare, there could have been no objection to any one passing through. As for the teaching of the Church respecting Jews, these extracts from Mr. Jacob’s book will show the hatred which was inculcated towards them.

“If any Christian woman takes gifts from the infidel Jews or of her own will commits sin with them, let her be separated from the church a whole year and live in much tribulation, and then let her repent for nine years. But if with a pagan let her repent seven years.

“If any Christian accepts from the infidel Jews their unleavened cakes or any other meat or drink and share in their impieties, he shall do penance with bread and water for forty days; because it is written ‘to the pure all things are pure.’

“It is allowable to celebrate mass in a church where faithful and pious ones have been buried. But if infidels or heretics or faithless Jews be buried, it is not allowed to sanctify or celebrate mass; but if it seem suitable for consecration, tearing thence the bodies or scraping or washing the walls, let it be consecrated if it has not been so previously.”

The earliest mention of the Jews occurs in the Terrier of St. Paul’s, 1115:

“In the ward of Haco ... in the Jew’s street (?Old Jewry) the land of Lusbert, in the front on the west side, is 32 feet in breadth. Towards St. Olave’s is fourscore and fifteen feet; again towards St. Olave’s is 65 feet, and in the front 13 feet. The land in the front is 73 feet, and in depth 41 feet, and pays 10s.”

In 1264, and again in 1267, the popular hatred of the Jews broke out with unmistakable violence. They fled to the Tower, while the mob destroyed and sacked their buildings.

In 1290 they were banished.

Their synagogue, which stood in the north-east corner of the present street, was given to the Fratres de Saccâ (see Mediæval London, vol. ii. p. 365), and on their dissolution it was ceded to Robert FitzWalter and converted into a merchant’s residence. Here lived and died Robert Large to whom Caxton was apprenticed.

The later history of the street may be quoted from Cunningham:

“The last turning but two on the east side (walking towards Cateaton Street) was called Windmill Court, from the Windmill Tavern, mentioned in the curious inventory of ‘Innes for Horses seen and viewed,’ preparatory to the visit of Charles V. of Spain to Henry VIII., in the year 1522. ‘From the Windmill,’ in the old Jewry, Master Wellbred writes to Master Knowell, in Ben Jonson’s play of Every Man in his Humour. Kitely, in the same play, was a merchant in the Old Jewry. The house or palace of Sir Robert Clayton (of the time of Charles II.), on the east side, was long a magnificent example of a merchant’s residence, containing a superb banquetting-room, wainscotted with cedar, and adorned with battles of gods and giants. Here the London Institution was first lodged; and here, in the rooms he occupied as librarian, Professor Porson died (1808). Dr. James Foster, Pope’s ‘modest Foster’—

Let modest Foster, if he will, excel

Ten Metropolitans in preaching well—

was a preacher in the Old Jewry for more than twenty years. He first became popular from Lord Chancellor Hardwicke stopping in the porch of his chapel in the Old Jewry, to escape from a shower of rain. Thinking he might as well hear what was going on, he went in, and was so well pleased that he sent all his great acquaintances to hear Foster.”

Alexander Brown, the cavalier song-writer, was an attorney in the Lord Mayor’s Court in this street, and Bancroft, who built the almshouses of Mile End, was an officer in the court. Sir Jeffrey Bullen, Lord Mayor, 1457, lived in this street, where he was a mercer.

In the fifteenth century there was standing in Old Jewry, north of St. Olave’s Church, and extending to the north end of Ironmonger Lane and down the lane as far as St. Martin’s Church, a large building of stone “very ancient,” the history and purpose of which were unknown except that Henry VI. appointed one John Stert, keeper of the place, which he called his principal palace in the Old Jewry. It was standing when Stow was a boy, but he says the outward stone-work was little by little taken down, and houses built upon the site. It was known as the Old Wardrobe. I know of no other reference to this place, but one would like to learn more. The taking away of the stone “little by little” accounts in like manner for the gradual disappearance of the ruins of the monastic houses.

The modern street is not of much interest. The City Police Office is in a court of some size near the north end. The Old King’s Head is in an elaborate building faced with red sandstone, and a grimy blackened old brick house close by contains the Italian Consulate.

In Frederick Place are two rows of Georgian houses in dull brick, varying only slightly in detail. The iron link-holders of a past fashion still survive on the railings before some of the houses. No. 8, at the south-eastern corner, contains some curious and interesting mantels. One of these has a central panel representing a boar hunt; this is in relief enclosed in a large oval. There are fine details also in other fireplaces in the house.

But these are not the only objects of interest in Frederick Place, for in exactly the opposite corner, the north-west, in a house numbered 4, are one or two fireplaces which surpass these in beauty if not in quaintness. In one of the rooms there is a very high and well-proportioned white marble mantelpiece, with singularly little decoration, which is yet most effective. All these houses are now used as offices by business men, and the evidences of bygone domestic occupation add a human interest to the daily routine.

St. Mary Colechurch was situated in the Poultry at the south-west corner of the Old Jewry. It was burnt down in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Mildred, Poultry. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1252.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of Henry III., who presented to it one Roger de Messendene, April 21, 1252; then the Master and Brethren of St. Thomas de Acon; afterwards Henry VIII., who granted it to the Mercer’s Company, April 21, 1542.

Houseling people in 1548 were 220.

Chantries were founded here by Thomas de Cavendish, late citizen and mercer, at the Altar of St. Katherine, to which Roger de Elton was instituted chaplain, March 15, 1362-63; Agnes Fenne, who left by Will, dated March 28, 1541, £140 to maintain a priest for twenty years; Henry IV. granted a licence to William Marechalcap and others to found a Fraternity in honour of St. Katherine, February 19, 1399-1400; a further licence was granted by Henry VI., June 19, 1447, the endowment of which fetched £9 in 1548, when Robert Evans was Chaplain.

No monuments are recorded by Stow. In this church St. Thomas à Becket and St. Edmund were baptized. The parish had one gift-sermon, but no other gifts or legacies are recorded.

Thomas Horton (d. 1673), Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, 1649, was a rector here.

The Church of St. Olave, Jewry, stood on the west side, near the middle of Old Jewry, and was sometimes called St. Olave, Upwell. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt in 1673. It was subsequently taken down. The tower, which alone was left, is now part of a dwelling-house. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1252.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted it in 1171 to the Prior and Convent of Butley, Suffolk, when it became a vicarage. Henry VIII. seized it, and so it continues in the Crown.

Houseling people in 1548 were 198.

The open space, belonging to the ancient graveyard, abuts on Ironmonger Lane.

A chantry was founded here by John Brian, rector, who died in 1322, and a licence was granted by the King, August 20, 1323; Robert de Burton, chaplain, exchanged with William de Aynho, June 15, 1327. In 1548 the endowment fetched £13 : 1 : 4.

Robert Large, Mayor in 1440, and donor of £200 to the church, was buried here. Among the later monuments is one in memory of Sir Nathaniel Herne, Governor of the East India Company; he died 1679.

The church was not rich in charitable gifts and legacies. Among the benefactors, Sir Thomas Hewet gave £5 : 4s. yearly; Henry Lo gave £10 for ever; Gervase Vaughan gave a house, rented at £14 per annum, to provide bread for the poor every Sunday.

On the west side of Old Jewry there was a free school, said to be founded by Thomas à Becket in 1160, for 25 scholars. There were two almshouses for 9 poor widows of armourers, each of whom received 6s. per quarter, and 9 bushels of coal a year; those past labour received £1 a quarter. These were the gift of Mr. Tindal, citizen and armourer of London.

Anthony Ellys, D.D. (1690-1761), Bishop of St. David’s, was rector, also Joseph Holden Pott (1759-1847), Archdeacon of London.

Old Jewry runs through into Gresham Street, which is roughly parallel with Cheapside.

Gresham Street, formerly called Catte, Cateaton, or Ketton Street, or Cattling Street, when changed to its present name also swallowed up Lad Lane and Maiden Lane.

Catte Street is mentioned in a deed dated the Saturday after Ascension 1294, in which Hugh de Vyenne, Canon of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, grants to the master and scholars of Balliol, inter alia, four shillings of yearly rent from the tenement held by Martin the arbitrator, in Catte Street, opposite the church of St. Lawrence, also the same amount from the tenement of Adam de Horsham opposite the church.

On the Feast of Ascension in the year 1360 a case of great interest was heard at the Hustings of common pleas.

In this case, John de Wyclif, Master of Balliol, Oxford, was attached to make answer to Nicholas Marchant in a plea of distresses taken. Wyclif is accused of having made an unlawful seizure upon the freehold of Nicholas in the parish of St. Lawrence, Jewry, on Wednesday after the Feast of St. Gregory that year. From the pleading it appears that the house was once the property of “one Thippe, wife of Isaac of Suthwerk, a Jewess”; after her exit from England it came to King Edward, grandfather of Edward III. Their tenement in Catte Street was given (so the pleadings show) by that king to Adam de Horsham, mercer, uncle of Nicholas above named, at a rent of one penny per annum to the King. Wyclif joins the suit. Nicholas has to pay arrears and is amerced [hitherto Wyclif’s mastership of Balliol was ascribed to date from 1361, hence the importance of this MS.] (Historical MS. Commission, Report IV., p. 448).

There is another ancient mention of Catte Street, belonging to the year 1281, in which one Aaron, a wealthy Jew and a money-lender, contracts with Rudolph the mason for the building of a house in Catte Street.

From Aldermanbury westward to Wood Street, Gresham Street was formerly called Lad Lane. The name occurs certainly as early as 1301, as containing a house belonging to Coke Bateman, a Jew. It is first found in the Calendar of Wills in 1362, after which we hear no more of it till 1419. Here a Roman pavement was found.

One of the most important of the old coaching inns, the Swan with two Necks, stood in Lad Lane. From this place an amazing number of coaches and wagons set out every day. The sign is still to be seen over the entrance to the London and South Western Railway Company’s yard.

The street was widened in 1845. It has a picturesque appearance, for the houses project irregularly at the corners of the cross streets. The Church of St. Lawrence occupies part of the north side.

ST. LAWRENCE, JEWRY

The date of the foundation of St. Laurence or Lawrence, Jewry, is not known, but the church was burnt down by the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren 1671-76, when the parish of St. Mary Magdalene was annexed. The new building was erected at the expense of the parishioners, assisted by a liberal subscription from Sir John Langham. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1321. The patronage of the church was in the hands of Henry de Wickenbroke, who, May 30, 1294, gave the Rectory to Balliol College, Oxford, when a Vicarage was here ordained, and in this college it still continues.

Houseling people in 1548 were 148.

The church measures 82 feet in length, 71 feet in breadth, and 39 feet in height. It contains only one aisle, on the north side, separated from the rest of the building by Corinthian columns. Above the columns is a richly worked entablature, which is continued all round the church. The east front has a façade formed by four Corinthian columns with entablature, supporting the pediment. The tower, which is three storied, is surmounted by a square turret, supporting a square pedestal, and above this by an octagonal spirelet with a ball and vane; the vane is in the form of St. Laurence’s emblem, the gridiron. The total height is 160 feet.

Chantries were founded here: For William de Kancia at the Altar of St. John, July 10, 1321; by Thomas Wytton at the Altar of Virgin Mary, the endowment of which fetched £8 : 4 : 8 in 1548, when Thomas Sandlord was chaplain; by William Myldreth at the Altar of St. Michael the Archangel, the endowment of which yielded £7 : 6 : 8 in 1548, when Rowland Robynsonne was chaplain; by Simon Bonyngton, whose endowment fetched £22 : 13 : 4 in 1548 when Thomas Sylvester was chaplain; by Simon Bartlett, whose endowment yielded £5 : 4 : 8 in 1548, when Thomas Ballard was chaplain; by Simon Gosseham, for two chaplains, whose endowment fetched £14 : 6 : 8 in 1548, when Thomas Begley and Henry Whorleston were the priests.

Pictorial Agency.
ST. LAWRENCE, JEWRY

The old church was the burying-place of a considerable number of eminent citizens. Among them were: Richard Rich, ancestor of the Earls of Warwick and Holland, who died in 1469; Sir Geffney Bullen, Lord Mayor in 1459 and great-great-grandfather to Queen Elizabeth; Sir Richard Gresham, Lord Mayor in 1537 and father of Sir Thomas Gresham; Sir Michael Dormer, Lord Mayor in 1541; Roger Thorney, who founded a Fellowship at Jesus College, Cambridge; Dame Alice Avenon, a benefactress to the parish. Against the west wall there is a monument displaying three busts, in memory of Alderman Sir William Halliday, sheriff in 1617; this was erected in 1687 by Dame Margaret Hungerford in place of that destroyed by the Fire. Dr. John Wilkins, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and vicar here in 1662, was buried under the north wall of the chancel. There are monuments also to John Tillotson, lecturer here for some years, and to Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, the celebrated preacher, who succeeded Wilkins as vicar. On the western part of the south wall a large monument commemorates Mrs. Sarah Scott, who died in 1750, leaving £700 for parish purposes. Sir John Langham was a donor of £250 for the purpose of church repairing, etc., and no gifts or bequests belonging to the parish are recorded by Stow, except two weekly lectures each at £30 per annum, the donors of which are not stated by him. There was one Grammar School, kept over the vestry. William Bell, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1494 was a rector here; also William White, Master of Balliol College, Oxford 1125-39; Edward Reynolds (1629-1698), Bishop of Norwich; Seth Ward (1617-1689), Bishop of Exeter; John Mapletoft (1631-1721), President of Zion College; and Benjamin Morgan Cowie (1816-1900), Dean of Exeter.

Gresham College stands at the end of a row of uniform plaster-faced houses. The College itself is a great yellow-plastered building with disproportionately heavy cornice and rigid balconies.

Drawn by J. Coney.
SS. ANNE AND AGNES

In Guildhall Yard is a fine view of the ornamental gateway of the Guildhall. On the east is the Guildhall Tavern, and on the west, beyond the church, is an open space, formerly the churchyard, with a few plane-trees dotted about, and a fountain of Gothic design, erected in 1866, with statues upon it representing St. Lawrence and the Magdalene.

St. Martin’s House, on the north side, is a modern red sandstone building.

St. Anne’s Churchyard, with one or two plane-trees of good size, makes a break in the line of modern houses beyond.

SS. ANNE AND AGNES, ALDERSGATE

This church stands on the north side of Gresham Street, towards the west end. The date of the foundation of the original church is uncertain, but mention is made of it in a deed dating between 1193-1212, in St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was damaged by fire in 1548, reconstructed and again destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666. The present building was completed by Wren in 1681. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1322.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of:

The Dean and Canons of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, 1322; the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1510; the Bishop of Westminster by grant of Henry VIII., January 11, 1540-41; the Bishop of London and his successors by grant of Edward VI., July 4, 1550; confirmed by Queen Mary, March 3, 1553-54.

Houseling people in 1548 were 300.

The present building is of brick, and measures 53 feet square, and 35 feet in height. Within this area four Corinthian columns form another square. The tower, rising at the west, measures 14 feet at the base and culminates in a vane; the total height is 95 feet.

A chantry was founded here by Thomas Juvenal and Alice his wife at the Altar of St. Nicholas; to which Richard Grant was instituted chaplain, April 10, 1363.

The church formerly contained monuments to Stephen Brackynbury, gentleman, Usher to Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. William Gregory, Mayor of London, 1461, was buried here, but no monument remained in 1598.

The principal benefactors were William Gregory, alderman and skinner, and John Werke, goldsmith, both of whom bequeathed a number of houses to the parish in the fifteenth century.

Some of the most notable rectors were: John Hopton (d. 1558), Bishop of Norwich; Samuel Freeman, Dean of Peterborough, 1691; and Fifield Allen, Archdeacon of Middlesex.

At the corner of Noble Street is the churchyard of St. John Zachary, which parish is now incorporated with St. Anne and St. Agnes. This is a fairly large piece of ground surrounded by brick houses. There are many upright tombstones among the blackened shrubs within. Beyond there is a large building of red brick finished with piers of polished granite.

The Church of St. John Zachary, which was situated in Maiden Lane, was burnt down in the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of St. Anne, Aldersgate. It was built or founded by a monk named Zachary. The earliest date of an incumbent is some year between 1217 and 1243.

The church has always been in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, from the earliest record up to 1666, when the parish was annexed to that of St. Anne and St. Agnes.

Houseling people in 1548 were 240.

Chantries were founded here by Thomas Lichfield in 1320; for Roger Beynyn and Isabel his wife before 1322.

Stow records that the monuments in this church were well preserved in his time. Some of the most notable persons commemorated were: Sir James Pemberton, who founded a free school in Lancashire, and was donor of many other charitable gifts (died 1613); Philip Strelley (d. 1603), benefactor to the parish, and Henry de Spondon, rector here in 1366.

There were some small legacies belonging to the parish, but few names are recorded by Stow. Colonel Henry Drax was donor of £20, and his wife of £30. Philip Strelley, of 40s. a year.

By the subscribers of the united parishes thirty boys and twenty girls were taught, clothed, and put out as apprentices.

William Byngham, founder of Christ Church College, Cambridge, was rector here.

In Gresham Street are also the halls of two City Companies.

THE HABERDASHERS COMPANY

It has been surmised that the haberdashers were originally a branch of the mercers, and formed a trade association for the protection and general supervision of the trade carried on by the haberdashers and milliners. They are supposed to have existed as early as the year 1372, being mentioned in the City records as having then promulgated their first ordinances. By the Company’s earlier minute books they seem to have been at one time associated with the felt-makers.

The first charter granted to the Haberdashers Company was by Henry VI. (June 3, 1448); it authorised and empowered the liegemen of the mystery of haberdashers to erect and found a guild or fraternity in honour of St. Katherine. The charter grants that the fraternity shall be a perpetual and incorporate fraternity of haberdashers of St. Katherine of London, to hold lands to themselves and their successors and with a common seal.

Henry VII. by charter united the crafts of hurriers and hatter merchants into one craft, and by another charter, 17th Henry VII., he united the hurriers and hatter merchants with the craft of haberdashers, and declared they should be one craft and perpetual commonalty by the name of Merchant Haberdashers.

Henry VIII.—November 1511—by charter of this date confirmed previous charters, and, on the application of the Merchant Haberdashers, altered and translated the style of the said guild into the name of the Master and Four Wardens of the Guild of Fraternity of St. Katherine, of the Craft of Haberdashers, in the City of London. It enacted that no foreigner or stranger in London should make any caps or hats for the use of any stranger, unless admitted by the master and wardens, under pain or forfeiture of the thing made, one half to go to the Mayor and Commonalty of the City, and the other to the use of the mystery or craft aforesaid.

Philip and Mary—1557—by charter of this date confirmed all previous charters.

Elizabeth—June 19, 1578—by charter confirmed all previous charters, and it is under this charter that the Company is now governed.

It is thought there can be little doubt that the Haberdashers Company was originally established for trade purposes, and was in former times associated with other trades, as the felt-makers and hatters. The before-mentioned charters of incorporation gave the Company considerable powers for regulating the trade in haberdashery, and for enforcing its orders in reference thereto, and these powers were no doubt exercised for many years. In course of time, however, the business or trade of haberdashery became so interwoven with other trades, such as drapers, milliners, mercers, hosiers, etc., that there is no longer any distinct business of haberdashery. The Company, however, being anxious to help those who are engaged in it have for the last eight or nine years advertised that the sum of £100 will be annually awarded as prizes to the actual inventors of new patterns, designs, or specimens of articles of haberdashery proper, provided such inventors were not manufacturers or dealers. No control is now exercised by the Company in reference to the trade of haberdashery.

Freemen are eligible for pensions and gifts if in needy circumstances. The children of freemen have the privilege of competing for certain exhibitions in the gift of the Company.

Liverymen are also eligible for the pensions and gifts under similar circumstances, and their children have like privileges for competing in exhibitions. They are also eligible (provided their fathers or grandfathers are not members of the governing body) for educational grants which are made voluntarily by the Company annually towards defraying the cost of education, and liverymen’s children who have distinguished themselves in their studies are also eligible for four exhibitions of £40 each, also voluntarily given by the Company and tenable for three years, for the purpose of pursuing their studies in the higher branches of learning. The children of liverymen and freemen have also a priority of claim over outsiders for admission to the Company’s Aske’s Schools at Hatcham and West Hampstead and Acton.

The members of the governing body, on attending courts and committees (but not otherwise), receive fees for their attendance.

The present number of pensioners is 152, and the amount paid to them £2999 : 10s.

The present number of recipients of annual gifts is 40, and the amount paid to them £215 : 2s.

It is believed that few, if any, of the recipients of the above pensions and gifts carry on or have carried on the trade the name of which is borne by the Company. Considerable grants are made every year to poor clergy and poor hatters.

In addition to the above yearly gifts various sums are from time to time voluntarily granted to poor members of the Company, their widows and families, amounting in 1879 to £276 : 10s.

The Hall is at 77 Gresham Street. It was built by Wren but burned down in 1864.

The Trust Income of the Company is expended in schools and almshouses, the most important schools being Aske’s, referred to above. There are other almshouses at Monmouth, at Newland in Gloucestershire, and at Newport, Salop. There are also schools at Monmouth, Pontypool, Newport, Salop, and Bunbury connected with the Company. They give several exhibitions, and they grant pensions and give large subscriptions to philanthropic objects.

THE WAX CHANDLERS COMPANY

There is no documentary evidence in the possession of the Wax Chandlers’ Company of an earlier date than 45th Edward III., A.D. 1371, which is a petition to the Court of Aldermen of the City of London for leave to choose searchers for bad wares, and for approval of byelaws then submitted for the regulation of the craft. The prayer of this petition seems to have been acceded to, for Walter Rede and John Pope were in the same year chosen and sworn to oversee the said craft, and the defaults from time to time found to present to the mayor and aldermen, etc. These documents are set out (p. 104) in the Report of the Commissioners on Municipal Corporations in England and Wales dated 1837. That the craft of wax chandlers had an association previous to this date there are no documents to show, although from the petition it would appear that it had, but without power to enforce obedience to its orders.

The following is a list of the charters, etc., granted at various times to the Company:

1. Charter of 1 Richard III., 1484. 2. Grant of arms, 2 Richard III., 1485. 3. Further grant of arms, 28 Henry VIII., 1536. 4. Exemplification and confirmation of said charter of Richard III. by Philip and Mary, 7th June, 4 and 5 Philip and Mary. 5. Letters Patent of confirmation of said charter by Queen Elizabeth, 2 Elizabeth, 1560. 6. Ditto, ditto. King James I., 2 James I., 1604. 7. Charter of 15 Charles II., 1663. 8. Byelaws pursuant to last-mentioned charter, and the statute 19 Henry VII., approved and signed and sealed by the Lord Chancellor and two Chief Justices of the King’s Bench and Common Pleas, dated June 28, 1664, referred to at p. 100 of the above-mentioned report. 9. Charter of 1 James II., 1685 (this charter was avoided under the General Statute).

At present they have a livery of twenty-seven, a Corporate Income of £1370, a Trust Income of £230, and a hall in Gresham Street.

The use of wax tapers and candles not only in the churches, but also in the houses of the wealthy sort, caused the material to be valuable and the mystery of preparing it prosperous. The Company was in fact in great credit until the Reformation, when the greater part of its work—that of providing lights for the churches—vanished.

In ancient documents the Guildhall Yard is mentioned frequently, as might be expected. In Agas’s map the yard is enclosed, and entered by a gateway. Some of the land belonged to Balliol College, Oxford. It was widened by taking off part of the churchyard of St. Lawrence, Jewry. Here were the taverns of the Three Tuns and the White Lyon. Sir Erasmus de la Fountaine had property here and gave his name to Fountain Court.

A passage out of Guildhall Yard and others out of Basinghall Street and Cateaton Street led to the two courts of Blackwell or Bakewell Hall.

BLACKWELL HALL, 1819

Of this historic mansion Stow speaks at some length. He says that it was built upon vaults of stone brought from Caen in Normandy, and that it was covered over in painting and carved stone with the arms of the Basings or Bassings, viz. “a gyronny of twelve points gold and azure.” This family when Stow writes was “worn out.” In the 36th year of Edward III., one Thomas Bakewell was living in this house. In the 20th of Richard II., for a sum of £50, licence was given to transfer this hall with certain messuages appertaining to the mayor and commonalty of the City. Here was established the year after, by Whittington, thrice Mayor, a weekly market for cloth, no foreigners being allowed to sell cloth anywhere except in Blackwell Hall and in the courts thereof. In the year 1588 the house, being decayed, was taken down and rebuilt. In the Great Fire the Hall was destroyed, together with a great quantity of cloth stored by country manufacturers in its warehouses. “What,” says Lord Clarendon, “have we lost in clothe if the little Company [the stationers] lost £200,000 in books?”

“The late edifice of Blackwell Hall appears to have been erected about the year 1672, and it exhibited the dull and prison-like appearance of the older storehouses of London, in the unglazed transom-windows with iron bars, contained in the front. The attic was ornamented with a cornice and pediment, and in the centre was a heavy stately stone gateway between two Doric columns, surmounted by the royal arms, carved in a panel above; and the city arms, impaling those of Christ’s Hospital, supported by winged boys, were sculptured in the head of the arch. The disposition of the interior consisted of two quadrangular open courts, one beyond the other, surrounded by buildings of freestone. Within the Hall were several large rooms or warehouses, both above and on the ground floor, in which the factors employed by the clothiers exposed their cloths on the established market days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the first being the principal. These apartments formed the Devonshire, Gloucester, Worcester, Kentish, Medley, Spanish, and Blanket Halls, etc., in which one penny was charged for the pitching of each piece of cloth, and one halfpenny per week each for resting there. The profits paid to Christ’s Hospital arising from those charges are said to have produced £1000 yearly” (Wilkinson’s Londina Illustrata, vol. ii. p. 36).

The changes gradually made in the cloth trade caused the decay of the market. In 1815 an Act was passed enabling the Mayor and Corporation to pull down the hall of St. Mary Magdalene Chapel, which was stated to be in a ruinous condition, and to replace it by buildings for courts.

The present Art Gallery, the Museum, the Library, Guildhall Buildings, the Courts, etc., stand upon the site of the Hall, the Chapel, and the adjacent ground. The Hall was taken down in 1819.

The Guildhall, like the Mansion House, Royal Exchange, etc., is so woven in with the history of the City that an account of it must be sought in the historical volumes preceding this.

We may return to the Poultry by the next north and south thoroughfare, namely:

Ironmonger Lane, which is frequently mentioned in early deeds and documents. As early as the middle of the twelfth century documents are spoken of in “Ismongers’ Lane,” in the parish of St. Mary Colechurch. In 1245 there are shops, solars, and cellars in the street. Riley (Mem. 128. 15) presents two most interesting inquests connected with two murders in this street. The lane is called variously Ismongers’, Iremongers’, and Ironmongers’.

On the east side of this street, near Cheapside, was the Church of St. Martin Pomeroy.

St. Martin Pomeroy is supposed by Stow to have gained its second name from an apple garden there, but it was more probably from a family named Pomeroy. In 1629 the church was repaired, but it was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being united to that of St. Olave, Jewry. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1361.

Photo. Sandell, Ltd.
MERCERS’ HALL

The patronage of the church before 1253 was in the hands of Ralph Tricket, who gave it in 1253 to the Prior and Canons of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield; after the Reformation it continued in the Crown up to 1666, when it was annexed to St. Olave.

Houseling people in 1548 were 120.

Chantries were, founded here: For Henry atte Roth, chandeler, to which Richard Scot was admitted, February 7, 1391-92; for William Love, to which Stephen Benet was collated, January 24, 1391-92. Only two monuments are recorded by Strype, neither of which commemorate persons of eminence. There was a free school, said to have been founded by Thomas à Becket, in the Old Jewry, for twenty-five scholars. There were also two almshouses for nine widows of Armourers or Braziers, the gift of Mr. Tindal, citizen and armourer of London.

John Kingscote, Bishop of Carlisle, 1462, was rector here.

In Ironmonger Lane is the Mercers’ Hall.

THE MERCERS COMPANY

The Mercers, although not incorporated until the year 1393 (17th Richard II.), were in very early times associated voluntarily for the purposes of mutual aid and comfort. They come to light as a fraternity first in the time of Henry II., for Gilbert à Becket, the father of St. Thomas of Canterbury, is said to have been a mercer; and in the year 1192, Agnes de Helles, sister of St. Thomas, and her husband, Thomas Fitztheobald de Helles, in founding the hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, which is distinctly stated to have been built on the spot where the future archbishop was born, constituted the fraternity of mercers patrons of the hospital. The hospital and the Company were intimately connected until the Reformation, and afford a good example of the connection of secular guilds and ecclesiastical foundations in the Middle Ages, secular guilds being established for the promotion of trade and almsdeeds, and ecclesiastical foundations for devotion and almsdeeds.

It is probable that a guild could not be carried on without the King’s licence at this early date; and it would seem a necessary interference that the mercers had a licence at the time of Henry II., from their not appearing among the “adulterine” guilds, or guilds set up without the King’s licence, which were fined in 1180 for being established without such licence.

The Merchant Adventurers Company gradually became detached from the Mercers Company in the course of the fifteenth century, especially by the opening of the trade with Flanders in the year 1497; and yet more so in 1564, when Queen Elizabeth, by charter, constituted the Merchant Adventurers a distinct body politic or corporation in England; but the Mercers Company still kept up an intimate connection with the “Brotherhood beyond the Sea,” the last link connecting the two companies being only severed by the Great Fire of London in 1666, which destroyed the office which the Merchant Adventurers held of the mercers under Mercers’ Hall.

It is probable, however, that trade in former times was separated into main divisions, the staple and the miscellaneous, now known as mercery. Silk, when first imported, fell in England into the latter division, hence the combined appellation “silk mercers”; but on the Continent the word was applied to the vendors of all goods carried about for sale. Cervantes, speaking of the original history in Arabic of Don Quixote, says he purchased it of a book mercer; and Guicciardini, in his description of the Netherlands, speaks of merceries as well of silk as of other materials, and in another place says that mercery comprehends all things sold by retail or by the little balance or scales. Skinner, in his Etymologicon, published in 1671, says “that a mercer was mercator peripateticus” or an itinerant merchant.

The master and wardens superintended the taking of apprentices by their members, searching the weights and measures of shopkeepers belonging to the Company, and otherwise regulating their commercial dealings. The Company appointed brokers of mercery wares, under the first charter to the City by Edward II., by which it was declared that there should be no brokers in the City but those chosen by the merchants in the mysteries in which they exercised their office, and under the charter of Edward III., which declared that none should exercise the office of broker in foreign merchandise in London unless chosen by the merchants of the mysteries in which they should act. The Company also appointed a common meter of linen cloth and silk, a common weigher of raw silk, and tackle porters to do their work at the waterside. The Company no longer appoint to any of these offices, because of the different methods of carrying on business which have obtained in modern times.

In the 13th year of Edward II. the Companies had advanced towards the phase of “Livery Companies.” “Moultz des gens de Mesters en Loundres furent vestus de suite.”

The Company seem to have exercised some supervision over the retailers of silk and other mercery wares previous to the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but such supervision was probably not founded on any legal basis, as a petition to the privy council at the commencement of that queen’s reign, praying that these rights should be recognised, was unsuccessful.

The numbers of the Company have been recruited by the admission of apprentices, and from the sons of mercers, who have from very early times been always entitled to the freedom; and one reason for the smallness of the Company may probably have been the old custom, established so long ago as 1347, that no strangers should be admitted to the freedom without the consent of the generality. The Company has never been very numerous. In 1347, when it was refounded, 103 persons paid their entrance fees; in 1527 the Company numbered 144; in 1707, when most numerous, 331; and on December 31, 1880, 166.

The earliest date of which there is a record in the Company’s books is the year 1347, when it was reorganised, if not refounded.

The statement that no one should take as an apprentice one who had carried packs through the country, called pedlars, seems to show that a mercer at this time had ceased to be, if he had ever been, a pedlar.

Previous to the charter granted by Richard II., the mercers did not pretend to be a corporation, but simply a member of the City. In their petition to Parliament in 10th Richard II., against Nicholas Brembre, then mayor, they call themselves “the folk of the mercerie, a member of the city.” The Company, having at this time no hall of their own, assembled either in the house of one of the wardens, or in the hall or church of the hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, the site of which is now occupied by their chapel and hall, and subsequently occasionally at the Prince’s Wardrobe in the Old Jewry. They had then no landed property, and their income was derived from subscriptions, apprentice fees, and fines, and amounted to about £20 a year.

The Company’s first charter, enrolled at the Record Office (the original of which has been lost), is dated at Westminster the 13th January, 17th Richard II. (1393).

The most important event in the early history of the Mercers Company was the appointment of the Company as trustees of the charities of Sir Richard Whittington, several times master or principal warden of the Company, and four times Lord Mayor of London. He died in the year 1422-23. It is not necessary to enumerate precisely the munificent works of charity which were carried out by Sir Richard Whittington in his lifetime, or by his executors after his death; suffice it to say that he, or they by his direction, rebuilt the parish church of St. Michael Royal, rebuilt the prison of Newgate, built or repaired the City conduits, contributed very largely to the building of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and of the Guildhall, to the library of the Corporation of London, and the library of the Greyfriars, and established a chaplain at St. Paul’s. Whittington appointed John Coventry, John White, John Carpenter, and William Grove to be executors of his will, which was proved in March 1422-23. On the 12th November, 3rd Henry VI. (1424), his executors obtained a charter from the King to found Whittington college and almshouses. Of both these foundations the Mercers Company were made trustees.

The Company’s second charter was granted by Henry VI. at the prayer of the executors of Whittington.

On the accession of Edward IV. it became necessary for the quieting of men’s titles that the grants made by the Lancastrian kings should be confirmed, and accordingly the statute 1st Edward IV. cap. 1 was passed, by which it was enacted that all liberties and franchises granted by Henry IV., Henry V., and Henry VI., to counties or corporations, and among others to the wardens and commonalty of the Mystery of Mercers of the City of London, should be of the same force and virtue as if they had been granted by kings reigning de jure. The Mercers Company is the only company named in the Act, the others being included in general words.

MERCERS’ HALL

1463. This year is a most important one in the Company’s annals, as in it the court of assistants was first established. The business of the Company having very much increased, both on account of their connection with the Merchant Adventurers Company and also from the management of the trusts of Whittington, Abbot, and Estfield, it was felt that the whole burden of the Company’s affairs should not be cast upon the wardens, and that it was not desirable that the generality should be constantly called together. For many years previous to this date it had been the practice that the wardens, and the aldermen free of the Company, and their peers, should hold assemblies for the devising of ordinances or other matters, their deliberations being afterwards submitted to a general court for approval. On the 23rd of July 1463, at a general court of the Company, the following resolution was passed: “It is accorded that for the holding of many courts and congregations of the fellowship it is tedious and grievous to the body of the fellowship, and specially for matters of no great effect, that hereafter yearly shall be chosen and associate to the custoses for the time being, 12 other sufficient persons to be assistants to the said custoses, and all matters by them, or most part of them, finished, to be holden firm and stable, and the fellowship to abide by them.”

The rest of the history of the Mercers Company is mainly occupied by a recital of charities which were placed in their hands to administer. It is sufficient to call attention to the many and splendid endowments which have been placed in the hands of the Company.

The general court appoint three trustees of the Prisons’ Charities Trust, decide when the corporate seal shall be affixed, and determine the amount of fees which shall be paid for attendance at general courts, courts of assistants, and committees. The fee paid to a member for his attendance at general courts and courts of assistants is £4 : 4s., and to a member attending a committee, £2 : 2s.

(1) A freeman is entitled from Lady Campden’s legacy for loans, and from the money legacies for loans, to have the loan of not more than £500 without interest for not more than five years, giving approved security.

He is entitled, if his circumstances warrant it, and within the limits of the Company’s nominations, to have his sons placed in Christ’s Hospital under Daniel Westall’s gift, and clothed, boarded, and educated there from eight years old to fifteen, and perhaps to nineteen; and his daughters educated out of the Company’s funds at an expense not exceeding £50 per annum, from nine years of age to fifteen, and if they show reasonable proficiency and ability to seventeen, under regulations approved by the general court.

He is also entitled in case of old age, misfortune, or infirmity to receive relief proportioned to his circumstances out of the Company’s or out of Sir Richard Whittington’s estate, which was left to the Company specially for that purpose; and his widow and daughters are entitled to relief under similar circumstances.

(2) Liveryman.—A liveryman is entitled to the same advantages as a freeman, and in addition is invited to three dinners in the course of the year. He has the right to attend common hall, and to vote at elections of lord mayors and sheriffs and of such other officers of the Corporation of London as are elected by the livery; and if resident within a radius of twenty-five miles from the City, to vote at elections of members of Parliament for the City of London.

He is eligible, and if of sufficient position and standing he is generally called in rotation by the court of assistants, to be a member of their body.

(3) Master, Warden, or otherwise a member of the governing body.—A member of the court of assistants is summoned to general courts as well as to meetings of the court of assistants (which are held weekly, except during Christmas and Easter weeks and six weeks in August and September). He is also eligible to be placed on committees appointed by the court and on the Gresham committee.

He is invited to dine at all dinners in the Company’s hall.

He recommends in rotation to appointments to Mercers’ School, and to out-pensions on the Whittington estate, and to the Whittington almshouses.

The court of assistants appoint nine governors of St. Paul’s School under the provisions of the scheme, and also governors and members of the council and of the executive committee of the City and Guilds of London Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education.

The master and wardens are members of every committee appointed by the Company. They distribute Alderman Walthall’s and Lady Hungerford’s gifts, appoint preachers in Mercers’ Chapel under various gifts, and are ex officio governors of St. Paul’s School.

They also receive under various wills of benefactors to the Company certain small annuities, and are entitled to the surplus of Blundell’s estate, which surplus amounted in 1880 to £205 : 9 : 9.

A member of the Company will probably come on to the court of assistants when he is about forty-five years of age, and he remains a member for life.

The Company does not carry on any trade or occupation whatever.

The Mercers’ Hall is interesting as standing on the site of the ancient House of St. Thomas Acon. On the dissolution the Mercers purchased the buildings of the House.

The Mercers had occupied a house adjoining for more than a hundred years before this acquisition. The Religious House itself was undoubtedly on the site of the house where Thomas was born. The buildings were destroyed in the Great Fire. The second hall was built on the same site with another chapel in which service is held every Sunday evening. Fragments of the ancient buildings can still be seen. The present hall is said to have been designed by Wren. The entrance in Cheapside was built in 1879.

Among the more distinguished members of this great Company have been Whittington, Caxton, and Sir Thomas Gresham, Sir Henry Colet, Sir Baptist Hicks. The present number of the livery is returned in Whitaker as 187; the Corporate Income as £48,000; the Trust Income as £35,000.

For an account of the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, which at first extended from Ironmonger Lane to Old Jewry, see Mediæval London, vol. ii. p. 262.

King Street was constructed after the Fire, in order to give a nobler approach to the Guildhall. Pepys refers to the ground having been already bought in December 1667. Strype says that “it is well inhabited by Norwich Factors and other wholesale dealers of wealth and reputation.” He calls it New King Street.

Trump Street or Trump Alley is not named in Agas, Stow, or Ogilvy; Strype calls it Duke Street.

The mention of John Carsyl, Tromppour, Trumper or Trumpet-maker (1308), also of William Trompeor (1321) and William le Trompour, gives Riley occasion for the following notes:

“The persons who followed this trade mostly lived, in all probability, in Trump Street, formerly Trump Alley (a much longer street then than it is now), near the Guildhall; their principal customers not improbably being the City waits, or watchmen; each of whom was provided with a trumpet, also known as a “wait,” for sounding the hours of the watch, and giving the alarm. In reference to this trade it deserves the remark, that the only memorial that has come down to us of the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin, and of St. Mary Magdalen and all Saints, formerly adjoining the Guildhall, is a massive stone coffin (now in the Library at Guildhall) with its lid, whereon is sculptured a cross between two trumpets, and around its margin the following inscription: Godefrey le Trompour: gist: ci: Deu: del: ealme: eit: merci. ‘Godefrey the Trompour lies here, God on the soul have mercy.’ In Trump Alley, close adjoining, he probably lived, sold trumpets, and died—if we may judge from the character of the writing, in the latter half of the fourteenth century” (Riley’s Memorials, p. xxi).

St. Lawrence Lane.—“Antiquities in this lane I find none other, than that among many fair houses, there is one large inn for receipt of Travellers called Blossoms inn, but corruptly Bosoms inn, and hath to sign St. Laurence the Deacon, in a border of blossoms or flowers” (Stow’s Survey).

Cunningham adds as follows:

“When Charles V. came over to this country in 1522, certain houses and inns were set apart for the reception of his retinue, and in St. Lawrence Lane, at ‘the signe of Saint Lawrence, otherwise called Bosoms yn, xx beddes and a stable for lx horses’ were directed to be got ready. The curious old tract about Bankes and his bay horse (Maroccus Extaticus) is said to be by ‘John Dando, the wier-drawer of Hadley, and Harrie Runt, head ostler of Besomes Inne.’”

The inn was also called “Bossamez” Inn and Boscham’s Inn.

Honey Lane Market was established soon after the Fire. Strype thus speaks of it (vol. i. p. 566):

“Adjoining to this street, on the north side, is Honey Lane, being now, as it were, an alley with a Freestone pavement, serving as a passage to Honey Lane Market; the former Lane, and other buildings, being since the fire of London converted into this market. Among which buildings, was the Parish Church of St. Allhallow’s, Honey Lane; and, because it was thought fit not to rebuild it, the parish is united to St. Mary-le-Bow. This Market is well served, every Week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, with Provisions. The Place taken up by this Market is spacious. In the middle is a large and square Market-house, standing on pillars, with rooms over it, and a bell-tower in the midst. There are in the market one hundred and thirty-five standing stalls for butchers, with racks, blocks, and others necessaries, all covered over, to shelter them from the injury of the weather; and also several stalls for fruiterers. The west end of the market lieth open to Milk Street, where there is a cock of conduit water for the use of the market. There are two other passages into it, that is, one out of St. Lawrence’s Lane, besides that which comes out of Cheapside; which passages are inhabited by grocers, Fishmongers, Poulterers, Victuallers, and Cheesemongers.”

Complaints are found in the wardmote book of people making fires in the market; of butchers killing sheep and lambs there; and of the annoyance caused by the farmers letting soil and refuse lie about the place. Honey Lane, which led to it, is said by Stow to be so called, being a dark and narrow place, on account of the constant washing required to keep it clean—a far-fetched derivation. The name is indeed very ancient. In a grant, dated 1203-15, made by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s to one Richard de Corilis mention is made of “Huni” Lane, and in another grant of the same period the house in question, “a stone built house,” is mentioned in between Milk Street and “Huni” Lane. There was one Elias de Honey Lane in 1274.

The market was closed in 1835 and the City of London School built on its site. The school has now been removed to the Embankment and the place is let out in offices.

The Church of Allhallows, Honey Lane, stood on the north side of Cheapside in Honey Lane. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and the parish was then annexed to St. Mary-le-Bow. Honey Lane Market was on the site of the church. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1327.

The patronage was in the hands of: Simon de Creppyng, citizen, who presented in 1327; several private persons, among whom was Thomas Knoles, Mayor of London, 1399; the Grocers Company, 1471-1666, when it was annexed to St. Mary-le-Bow.

Houseling people in 1548 were 150.

CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL, MILK STREET

Chantries were founded here for John Fourneys, citizen, and Katherine his wife, at the Altar of Blessed Virgin Mary, August 22, 1396 (Pat. 20 Rd. II. p. i. m. 21), and by Alexander Speat, Thomas Trompington, John Downe, and Henry Edelmeton. Sir John Norman, Mayor of London, 1453, was buried in this church. No bequests or charitable gifts are recorded in Parish Clerk’s Summary of 1732.

Among the notable rectors were Thomas Garrard, who was burnt at Smithfield, and John Young, Bishop of Gallipoli.

Milk Street is one of the streets of Cheapside which peculiarly recalls the site of the old market by its name. There is not much recorded of this street. Sir Thomas More was born here, “the brightest star,” says Fuller, “that ever shone in that via Lactea.” In the Calendar of Wills the street is repeatedly mentioned as containing shops. The earliest date on which it occurs is 1278. In Riley’s Memorials we find a cook living here in 1351; in 1377 the sheriff has “his own Compter” in this street; in 1390 one Salamon Salaman, a mercer of Milk Street, gets into trouble for having putrid fish in his possession; and in 1391 one William of Milk Street, no name or trade given, is falsely imprisoned by means of a conspiracy.

Milk Street in the thirteenth century was the residence of certain Jews. Thus in 1247 Peter the Jew had a house there; and in 1250 leave was granted to John Brewer to build a chapel in his house, formerly that of Benedict the Jew; and in 1285 Cresse the Jew had a house there. In 1294 Martin the Arbalestin lived in Milk Street; and in 1285 the mayor had his residence there, his house being rented of the Prior of Lewes.

The Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Milk Street, formerly stood on the east side, towards the south end of Milk Street, Cheapside. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Lawrence, Jewry. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1162.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s continuously from 1162, until it was burnt down, when the parish was annexed; the Dean and Chapter now share the alternate patronage of the amalgamated parish (see Hist. MSS. Rept. ix. p. 18^bc 19^a as to a lawsuit concerning the patronage).

Houseling people in 1548 were 220.

Chantries were founded here by: Robert de Kelsey, about 1334, for himself, Julian his wife, Hen. de Galeys, and Sara de Eldham, to which Hen. de Kelsey was admitted chaplain, September 5, 1336; the above Robert de Kelsey endowed it with the “Caufare” in Westcheap, which fetched £3 : 14 : 8 in 1548; John Offam, whose endowment fetched £14 : 9 : 6 in 1548, when William Baker was priest; Thomas Kelsey, whose endowment fetched £12 : 13 : 4 in 1548.

A great number of the monuments in this church had been defaced by Stow’s time. He records the interment of Thomas Knesworth, mayor in 1505; Sir John Langley, mayor in 1576. No names of benefactors are recorded by him.

Lawrence Bothe, Bishop of Durham 1457, of York 1476, was rector here; also John Bullingham (d. 1598), Bishop of Gloucester.

Wood Street or Lane is the next important thoroughfare westward. It is supposed by Stow to have been so called because it was built wholly of wood; but Stow suggests also an alternative derivation, that it may have been named after one Thomas Wood, sheriff in 1491. The latter suggestion must be ruled out, because in 1394 a testator bequeathed his “mansion” in Wood Street. It is worthy of note that the first mention of the street is of houses, rents, and tenements, and so it continues until the end of the thirteenth century, when we begin to hear of shops; in 1349 a brewery is spoken of—the water, as in the case of Mugwell Street, must have been furnished by one of the numerous City wells. There were many inns in Wood Street: the Bell, the Coach and Horses, the Castle, and the Cross Keys. The Castle is still commemorated in a stone slab.

The Church of St. Michael, Wood Street, was sometimes called St. Michael Hogge or Huggen from one of that name who lived in the lane which runs down by the church. It was destroyed by the Great Fire (with the exception of the steeple) and rebuilt by Wren, who completed it in 1675, when the parish of St. Mary Staining was annexed. It was repaired in 1888, and taken down at the end of the nineteenth century. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1150.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Abbot of St. Albans before 1150; Henry VIII., who seized it in 1540 and sold it in 1543 to William Burwell; John Marsh and others in trust for the parish—it so continued up to 1666, when St. Mary Staining was annexed and the patronage was alternately in the Crown and parishioners.

Houseling people in 1548 were 317.

The latest church was very plain and measured 63 feet in length, 42 feet in breadth, and 31 feet in height. The east front had four Ionic pilasters supporting a pediment, and in the spaces between the columns there were three circular-headed windows. The tower, which was connected with the church by a porch, contained three stories, terminated by a parapet which was surmounted by a narrow spire with a vane; the total height was 130 feet.

Richard de Basingstoke founded a chantry here before 1359, probably at the Altar of St. John Baptist. Amongst those buried in the old church was Alderman John Lambarde, sheriff, 1551, who was father to Stow’s great friend William Lambard, the antiquary; he died in 1554. The church contained a monument to Queen Elizabeth.

The legacies of charity left to the parish were: 8s. per annum, of which Lady Read was donor; 5s. per annum, of which Mr. Hill was donor; £2 for 20 years, of which Mr. Longworth Cross was donor; £1 per annum, of which Mr. Bowman was donor. There were also ground-rents amounting to £36 : 4s. leased for 61 years.

Anthony Ellis or Ellys (1690-1761), Bishop of St. David’s, was a rector here; also Thomas Birch (1705-66), Secretary to the Royal Society, 1752-65.

The modern Wood Street, for a considerable distance after Gresham Street, is one series of immensely high warehouses, on which the vertical lines of bricks between the plate-glass windows are the most prominent feature. The effect of these lines is rather neat and workmanlike; horizontally beneath the windows are carved stone designs of flowers and fruit in very heavy relief. On the other side of the street are the entries into Pickford’s Yard under an old eighteenth-century house of the plainer sort.

The Church of St. Alban, Wood Street, is too far north to fall within our present section; but as it belongs to this street it must find a place here.

ST. ALBAN, WOOD STREET

The Church of St. Alban, the only one remaining in this street, is on the west side, in the Cripplegate Ward. In 1632 it was pulled down, but was rebuilt in 1634, probably by Inigo Jones, but was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the present building is the work of Wren, who completed it in 1685. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1244.

The patronage of the church, as far as can be traced, was in the hands of: St. Alban’s Abbey, who exchanged it in 1077 to Westminster Abbey; St. James’ Hospital, Westminster, presented before 1244; Provost and Fellows of Eton, 1477, with whom it remained up to 1666, when the parish of St. Olave, Silver Street, was annexed and the patronage shared alternately with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

Houseling people in 1548 were 300.

The church is in a quasi-Gothic style and somewhat after the model of the church destroyed by the Fire. It measured 33 feet in height, 66 feet in length, and 59 feet in breadth, and has two side aisles divided from the central portion by clustered columns and flat pointed arches. The church terminates at the east in an apse, containing three stained-glass windows. It has been greatly altered and modernised, the most striking alteration being the formation of the apse and the substitution of three smaller windows for the original large east window. The tower attains a height of 85 feet and terminates in an open parapet; it is surmounted by eight pinnacles of 7 feet each, giving a total altitude of 92 feet. On the north side there is a small churchyard, separating the church from Little Love Lane.

There was a chantry founded here by Roger Poynel before 1366. The church formerly contained monuments to Sir John Cheke (1514-57), tutor of Edward VI. and others.

The donors of charitable gifts were: William Peel, of St. Mary Savoy, who bequeathed an annuity of £10 in 1623 for the use of the poor; Gilbert Keat; Susan Ibel, £40 for providing coals for the poor; Richard Wynne, £20 to be distributed among eight poor people, at 2s. 6d. apiece; Thomas Savage, citizen and goldsmith, donor of premises in Holborn Bridge; Mr. Londson, £1 : 6s. per annum for bread for the poor, through the Company of Embroiderers.

There was a charity school for fifty boys and twenty-five girls, supported by voluntary contributions from the Church of St. Alban and others, from which the boys were apprenticed and the girls placed out to service. The parish had in 1732 a workhouse hired in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate.

The following are some of the notable vicars of the church: William Watts (d. 1649), chaplain to Charles I.; John Adams (1662-1720), chaplain to William III. and Queen Anne.

Foster Lane was originally St. Vedast’s. It is mentioned in a document of 1281 as St. Fauster’s, which was actually a corruption of St. Vedast’s. It was, before the Fire, a neighbourhood much frequented by goldsmiths and jewellers; William Fleetwood, Recorder of London in 1571, dated some of his letters to Lord Burleigh from Foster Lane.

St. Vedast’s Church, commonly known as St. Fauster’s or Foster’s. It was severely damaged by the Fire, and rebuilt by Wren; the steeple was erected in 1697, the old one having been retained until then. The parish was united after the Fire with St. Michael-le-Querne, and St. Matthew, Friday Street, to which St. Peter, Westcheap, had been annexed. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1291.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury; the Archbishop of Canterbury before 1396, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the parish of St. Michael-le-Querne was annexed and the patronage was alternately shared with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s up to 1882, when St. Matthew, Friday Street, with St. Peter, Westcheap, were annexed; the patronage is now in the hands of the Bishop of London for two turns, the Duke of Buccleugh for one turn.

Houseling people in 1548 were 460.

The church measures 69 feet in length, 51 feet in breadth, and 36 feet in height, and consists of a nave and south aisle separated by arches supported on four Tuscan columns. The steeple, which rises at the south-west, consists of a tower, surmounted by three stages, the lowest of which is concave, the second convex, and the third an obelisk-shaped spire; the total height is about 160 feet.

Chantries were founded here: By Galfridus atte gate for himself and his wives Joan and Alice, about 1447, when Edmund Brennyng was admitted chaplain—the lands fetched £8 : 6 : 8, which was augmented by Christopher Tury and yielded in all £14 : 10s. in 1548, when John Markehame was priest, “of the age of 59 years, of mean qualities and learning”; by William de Wyndesore for himself and Tolonia his wife; by John de Wyndesore, brother of the above William; by Mr. Cote in 1530, who gave £160 to purchase lands for the endowing of it, which were not purchased, but one Mr. Hayton, in 1548, finds a priest; by William Tryston, who endowed it £6 : 14 : 4, which was augmented by Simon Atwoll to £18 : 5 : 2 in 1548, when Albert Copeman was priest, “of the age of 39 years, of mean qualities and mean learning.”

John Longson, Master of the Mint, was buried in this church in 1583. Among the later interments Stow records those of: William Fuller, D.D., Dean of Durham, who suffered imprisonment for his loyalty in the times of the rebellion; Sir John Johnson, Alderman of the City, who died in 1698; and William Hall, deputy of this ward, who died in 1680; Robert Herrick was baptized here in 1591. No legacies or gifts are recorded by Stow.

Drawn by G. Shepherd.
CHURCH OF ST. VEDAST

Thomas Rotherham (1423-1500), afterwards Archbishop of York, was rector here; also Isaac Maddox (1697-1759), Bishop of St. Asaph and of Worcester; Adam Moleynes (or Molyneux, d. 1450), LL.D., Bishop of Chichester, who was slain by the marines at Portsmouth, incited by Richard, Duke of York; Thomas Blage (d. 1611), Dean of Rochester; Nathaniel Marshall (d. 1730), Canon of Windsor.

In Gresham Street, between Foster Lane and Gutter Lane corners, is the Goldsmiths’ Hall.

THE GOLDSMITHS COMPANY

The Goldsmiths Company is mentioned in the year 1180, when it appears to have been a voluntary association. It doubtless had its origin in a combination of goldsmiths, for their mutual protection, and to guard the trade against fraudulent workers. In the year 1300 the existence of the Company is recognised by a statute, viz., the 28th Edward I., cap. 80, which provides for the standards of gold and silver, and enacts that all articles of those metals shall be assayed by the wardens of the craft, to whom certain powers of search are also given.

The first of the Company’s charters was granted to them by Edward III., in the first year of his reign (1327).

It states that it had been theretofore ordained that all those who were of the goldsmiths’ trade should sit in their shops in the High Street of Cheap (Cheapside), and that no silver or plate, nor vessel of gold or silver, ought to be sold in the City of London, except at the King’s Exchange, or in the said street of Cheap amongst the goldsmiths, and that publicly, to the end the persons of the said trade might inform themselves whether the sellers came lawfully by such vessel or not; that no gold or silver shall be manufactured to be sent abroad but what shall be sold at the King’s Exchange, or openly amongst the goldsmiths, and that none pretending to be goldsmiths shall keep any shops but in Cheap.

By two subsequent charters Edward III. confirmed and extended the privileges before granted, and he gave the Company licence to purchase and hold tenements and rents to the value of £20 per annum, for the relief of infirm members.

Richard II., by letters patent of the sixteenth of his reign, after reciting that Edward III. had allowed the Company of the said craft to accept charitable donations, and to purchase estates as aforesaid, and that they might retain a chaplain to celebrate Mass amongst them every day, confirmed the liberties granted by Edward III. and granted and licensed the men of the craft that thenceforth they may be a perpetual community or society amongst themselves.

Henry IV., by letters patent of his fifth year, recited and confirmed the preceding charters of Edward III. and Richard II.

Henry VI., by letters patent of his first year, also recited and confirmed the charter of Henry IV.

Edward IV., by letters patent of his second year, recited and confirmed the charters of his predecessors.

Moreover, he granted that the said then wardens and their successors may be a corporation or body corporate to consist of and be called the Wardens and Commonalty of the Mystery of Goldsmiths of the City of London. That they may be capable in law to purchase, take, and hold in fee and perpetuity lands, tenements, rents, and other possessions whatsoever of any persons whomsoever that shall be willing to give, devise, and assign the same to them. That they may have perpetual succession and a common seal.

Henry VII., by letters patent of the twentieth year of his reign, confirmed the whole of the preceding charters, and on account of the Company being opposed in their trade search and assay, granted by Edward IV., gave them the additional power to imprison or fine defaulters in the trade at their discretion; to seize and break unlawful work; to compel the trade, within three miles of the City, to bring their work to the Company’s common hall, to be assayed and stamped; and gave them power for ever, when it was not standard, to utterly condemn the same, without rendering account to the Crown.

The whole of the liberties and franchises granted to the Company by the preceding charters are set forth and confirmed by inspeximus charters of 1st of Henry VIII., 1st of Edward VI., 1st of Mary, 3rd of Elizabeth, 2nd of James I., and 18th of Charles II.

The Company also received a charter from James II. dated 4th of May in the first year of his reign, whereby, amongst other things, that monarch reserved to the Crown a right of control over the appointment of the wardens and clerk. The statute was made void by the Act of Parliament 2nd William and Mary, cap. 8.

The Company have also a copy of that part of the following patent which relates to their property, viz. 4th of Edward VI. The King to Augustine Hynde, and others.

The Company have also an exemplification under the great seal of letters patent granted to them by James I., in the seventeenth year of his reign (July 24, 1619), confirming to them the possession of a large quantity of property in the City of London.

The powers of the Company are exercised at the present time chiefly under the Acts of 12th George II., cap. 26, and 7th and 8th Victoria, cap. 22.

As before stated, it appears that the Company was at first a voluntary association, and had for its chief objects the protection of the mystery or craft of goldsmiths; but it was evidently also formed for religious and social purposes, and for the relief of the poor members.

From a drawing by Thos. H. Shepherd.
GOLDSMITHS’ HALL, 1835

The powers exercised by this voluntary association over the craft were subsequently confirmed to them by their charters. The wardens fined workmen for making wares worse than standard, entered their shops and searched for and seized false wares, settled disputes between masters and apprentices, and frequently punished rebellious apprentices by flogging, levied heavy fines upon members for slander and disobedience of the wardens, and for reviling members of the livery; and generally exercised a very powerful and absolute control, not only over the members of the fellowship, but also over all other persons exercising the goldsmiths’ trade.

For the purpose of the assay they had an assay office in the early part of the fourteenth century. The statute of 28th Edward I. enacts that no vessel of gold or silver shall depart out of the hands of the workman until it is assayed by the wardens of the craft, and stamped with the leopard’s head; the leopard being at that time part of the royal arms of England.

The Company and its members, even at this early period, appear to have acted as bankers and pawnbrokers. They received pledges, not only of plate, but of other articles, such as cloth of gold and pieces of napery.

The London goldsmiths were divided into two classes, natives and foreigners. They inhabited chiefly Cheapside, Old Change, Lombard Street, Foster Lane, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Silver Street, Goldsmiths’ Street, Wood Street, and the lanes about Goldsmiths’ Hall. Cheapside was their principal place of residence; the part of it on the south side, extending from Bread Street to the Cross, was called “the Goldsmiths’ Row.” The shops here were occupied by goldsmiths, and here the Company possess many houses at the present time. The Exchange for the King’s coin was close by, in what is now called Old Change.

The native and foreign goldsmiths appear to have been divided into classes, and to have enjoyed different privileges. First, there were the members of the Company, who were chiefly, but not exclusively, Englishmen; their shops were subject to the control of the Company; they had the advantages conferred by the Company on its members, and they made certain payments for the support of the fellowship. The second division comprised the non-freemen, who were called “Allowes,” that is to say, allowed or licensed. There were the “Allowes Englis,” “Allowes Alicant,” “Alicant Strangers,” “Dutchmen,” “Men of the Fraternity of St. Loys,” etc. All these paid tribute to the Company, and were also subject to their control. The quarterage paid by the members, and the tribute so paid by the “Allowes,” constituted the Company’s original income. We find frequent mention of efforts made by the English goldsmiths to prevent foreign goldsmiths from settling in London, but they did not succeed. The wise men of the craft probably knew that the best artists were foreigners, and were willing to profit by observation of their works and mode of working. In 1445, thirty-four persons, who were strangers, were sworn, and paid 2s. a head. In 1447 Carlos Spaen paid £8 : 6 : 8 to the alms of St. Dunstan, to be admitted a freeman, and in 1511 John de Loren paid £20 for the same object.

The wardens also frequently obliged foreigners applying for the freedom to produce testimonials from the authorities of the towns abroad where they had resided.

The government of the trade under the Company’s charters continued up to the reign of Charles the Second. But some time before this period, and in the interval between it and the passing of the Act of the 12th George II., cap. 26, the powers which had been granted to the Company began to be questioned, and the Company experienced difficulty in putting them into force. In 1738 the Company considered it expedient to obtain an Act of Parliament.

And the 12th George II., cap. 26, passed in 1739, was prepared by the officers of the Company, brought into Parliament by them, with the assent of the government of the time, and all the cost of soliciting it and getting it passed was paid for by the Company, although it is a public Act.

Under this Act the Assay Office is regulated. The Company are empowered thereby to make charges for the assaying and marking plate sufficient only to defray the expenses of the office, and are prohibited from making any profit thereby or deriving any pecuniary advantage therefrom.

It may here be mentioned that at a very early period we find members of the governing body of the Company, both wardens and assistants, who were not of the craft. Amongst others, the leading bankers, themselves the descendants in trade of the old goldsmiths, from the time of the Stuarts to the present time, have been some of the most conspicuous members of the body. Amongst them we find the names of Sir Martin Bowes, who was Master of the Mint in the reign of Elizabeth; Sir Hugh Myddelton, the enterprising founder of the New River; Sir Francis Child, of Temple Bar; Sir Charles Duncombe, Sir James Pemberton, Sir Robert Vyner; and in the 19th century, Robert Williams and Thomas Halifax, Henry Sykes Thornton, William Banbury, John Charles Salt, Herbert Barnard, William Newmarch, William Cunliffe Brooks, Robert Ruthven Pym, Arthur B. Twining, Charles Hoare, and Robert Williams, jun.

It remains to mention the connection of the Company with the coinage of the realm in what is called the trial of the Pyx, an office which has been performed by the Company ever since the reign of Edward I. Its object is to ascertain that the metal of which the gold and silver money coined by the Mint is composed is standard, and that the coins themselves are of the prescribed weight.

This duty was performed in ancient times at uncertain intervals, and usually had for its immediate object the giving an acquittance to the Mint Master, who was bound to the Crown by indentures to coin money of the prescribed fineness and weight. But the Coinage Act of 1870 provides for and establishes an annual trial, and since that date the Pyx has been brought to Goldsmiths’ Hall and tried annually.

In 1900, for the first time, at the request of H.M.’s Treasury, a Pyx from each of the Colonial Mints coining Imperial Coinage was tried.

Formerly a jury of competent freemen, summoned by the wardens, was charged by the Lord Chancellor, who subsequently received their verdict.

The jury is sworn by the Crown Remembrancer, who, the trial having been made and the verdict of the jury reduced to writing, attends at the Hall and receives them; after which their names are published in the Gazette.

The number of the livery is 150. The Hall is in Foster Lane.

Privileges of membership:

A freeman of the Company has no advantages as such, except that if he be a deserving man and in need of pecuniary assistance he is eligible to receive, and would certainly receive, aid from the Company, either by pension or donation.

When the Guild first had a Hall we know not, but the Hall has stood on its present site for upwards of 550 years.

About 1340, land and a house at St. Vedast Lane and Ing Lane[^[2]] corner, formerly belonging to Sir Nicholas de Segrave, was bought. This land still underlies part of the present Hall, and was in the midst of the gold- and silver-smiths’ quarter. In 1407, Sir Dru Barentine built the Goldsmiths a second Hall, wherefrom a gallery led to his house. Within the great hall were arras hangings, streamers, banners, tapestried benches, worked cushions, and a screen bearing their patron’s (St. Dunstan’s) silver-gilt statue bejewelled. There were chambers, parlour, ‘say-house, chapel with coloured hangings, great kitchen, vaults, granary, armoury, clerk’s house, beadle’s house, assayer’s house. This Hall decayed. Borrowing money, they built a third and larger, 1635-40, Stone being surveyor.

After the Great Fire they repaired and partly rebuilt their Hall, 1666-69, raising money slowly. Jarman was architect. The buildings, brick and stone, surrounded a paved quadrangle entered through the Doric archway in Foster Lane.

The great hall was “magnificent” with marbled floor, moulded ceiling, pillared screen, high wainscot, painted banners, costly plate. Within 140 years they found this Hall decaying. They pulled it down and built the present (fourth) Hall in 1830-35, Philip Hardwick being architect.

Like the Drapers, the Goldsmiths Company has taken up the cause of Technical Higher Education.

On the west side of Foster Lane stood also St. Leonard’s Church, which was the parish church for St. Martin’s-le-Grand. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of Christ Church, Newgate Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1291.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: the Dean and Canons of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, 1291; the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1509; Henry VIII., who seized it in 1540; the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, 1553-54, in whose successors it continues, they being the alternate patrons of Christ Church, Newgate Street.

Houseling people in 1548 were 452.

A chantry was founded here by and for William de Wyndesore, at the Altar of Virgin Mary, before 1368, when his endowment fetched £3 : 13 : 4. There are few charities recorded by Stow.

The church of St. Mary Staining was situated on the north side of Oat Lane, Foster Lane, and derived its name Staining from Painter Stainers dwelling there; or, according to some from stein, the Saxon for stone, other churches being built of wood. It was repaired and redecorated in 1630, and was burnt down in the Great Fire, but not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Michael, Wood Street; the site of this church was made a burying-ground. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1270.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prioress and Convent of St. Mary, Clerkenwell; Henry VIII., and so continued in the Crown till the Great Fire, when the parish was annexed to St. Michael, Wood Street.

Houseling people in 1548 were 98.

Two monuments only are recorded by Stow, one in memory of George Smithes, goldsmith and alderman, who died in 1615, and the other of Sir Arthur Savage, knighted at Cadiz in 1596, who was General of Queen Elizabeth’s forces in France at the siege of Amiens; he died in 1632.

The parish received three legacies, payable yearly, namely: 15s. 6d. from Lady Read and Mr. Hill; £1 : 4s. from Mr. Lawne; and 1s. 6d. from Mr. Dean.

What Gresham Street is on the north of our present section, so Watling Street is on the south. It runs roughly parallel with Cheapside and Poultry. Stow says of it:

“Then for Watheling Street, which Leland called Atheling, or Noble Street; but since he showeth no reason why, I rather take it to be so named of that great highway of the same calling. True it is that at the present the inhabitants thereof are wealthy drapers, retaillers of woollen cloths, both broad and narrow, of all sorts, more than in any one street of this city.”

How came Watling Street, the old country road, into the City? The old Roman road, as it approached the Thames, passed down the Edgware Road. Where is now the Marble Arch it divided into two, of which the older part crossed the marsh, and so over Thorney Island? The other ran along what is now Oxford Street and Holborn.

It then crossed the valley of the Fleet and entered the City at the New Gate. If now we draw a line from Newgate to London Stone, just south of its present position, we shall find that it passes the north-east course of St. Paul’s precinct, cutting it off, so to speak, and meets the present Watling Street where it bends to the south of Bow Lane; it then follows the old Budge Row as far as the Stone. That was the original Watling Lane of the City. The Saxons, however, who found the streets a mass of confused ruins, built over part of the old Watling, and continued it as far as the south-east course of St. Paul’s. The street has few antiquities apart from its churches.

There is no mention of Watling Street in Riley’s Memorials.

In the Calendar of Wills we find shops in this street in 1307, a brewery in 1341, a widow’s mansion in 1349, and shops in 1361, “lands, tenements, and rents” in 1373, a house called “le Strelpas” in 1397. The other references to Watling Street are those of “tenements” only.

The yearly procession of the City rectors with the mayor and aldermen started from St. Peter’s, Cornhill, marched along Chepe as far as St. Paul’s Churchyard, turning to the south and so to “Watling Street Close,” which was the eastern entrance to the churchyard.

After the Fire, while the rubbish was being cleared away, on the east of the street were discovered nine wells in a row. They were supposed to have belonged to a street of houses from Watling Street to Cheapside. But one hardly expects to find a well in every house.

In Watling Street and its continuation, Budge Row, were the following churches, beginning at the west end: St. Augustine’s; Allhallows, Bread Street; St. Mary Aldermary; St. Anthony’s. For St. Augustine’s see p. [62], and for Allhallows see p. [58].

ST. MARY ALDERMARY

The Church of St. Mary Aldermary stands in a triangle formed by Bow Lane, Queen Victoria Street, and Watling Street. It is called Alder, Older, or Elder, Mary, from its being the oldest church in the City having that dedication. Sir Henry Keble, Lord Mayor in 1510, began to rebuild it, and left at his death £1000 towards its completion; this was augmented by William Rodoway and Richard Pierson in 1626. The building was destroyed by the Great Fire, but rebuilt by Wren in 1681-82. For this purpose the legacy of £5000 was applied, which had been left by Henry Rogers for the rebuilding of a church; stipulation, however, was made that the new church should be an exact imitation of Keble’s, so that Wren was forced to adopt methods very different from his own. The building was greatly restored in 1876-77. The church now serves for four parishes—its original one, that of St. Thomas the Apostle, of St. Antholin, and of St. John the Baptist. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1233.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of Henry III., 1233; the Prior and Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1288, who exchanged it with the Archbishop of Canterbury, 1401, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the parish of St. Thomas was annexed; and thus the Archbishop shared the patronage alternately with the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

Houseling people in 1548 were 400.

The church is in the Tudor style of architecture, and consists of a nave, chancel, and two side aisles, separated from the central part by clustered columns and slightly pointed arches. It is 100 feet long, 63 feet broad, and about 45 feet high. The north side of the chancel is longer than the south, which gives the church a somewhat curious appearance. The tower, the upper portion of which was rebuilt about 1701, contains four storeys, with an open parapet, and is surmounted by four pinnacles. The total height is 135 feet.

Sir Henry Keble, the founder of the original church, was buried here, and a monument erected to him in 1534; also Sir William Laxton, mayor, 1556, and Henry Gold, one of the rectors here, who was executed at Tyburn in 1534. “The Holy Maid of Kent” was also buried here. The monuments in the present church are of little interest. Over the west door there is a Latin inscription recording the munificence of Henry Rogers. Mr. Garret gave £100 to the lecturer of this church, to endure as long as the Gospel was preached. The particulars of the numerous other gifts and charities did not come into the possession of Stow. There were two almshouses for the poor of the Salters Company, who are four in number, each of whom has an allowance of 1s. per week.

Thomas Browne (d. 1673), chaplain to Charles I., was rector here; also Robert Gell (1595-1665), Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge; Offspring Blackall (1654-1716), Bishop of Exeter; White Kennett (1660-1728), Bishop of Peterborough; Henry Ware, Bishop of Chichester; Henry Gold, who was executed at Tyburn, 1534; George Lavington, D.D. (1684-1762), Bishop of Exeter.

Budge Row, northward, was spelt Begerow in 1376. Of it Stow says: “So called of Budge fur and the Skinners dwelling there.”

At the south-western corner of Sise Lane, in Budge Row, there is a rectangular railed-in space about a dozen feet by six, sheltered by the corner of the adjoining house. Against the wall, facing eastward, is a monument in stone of considerable size. Two columns with Corinthian capitals support an architrave, and enclose a view in slight relief of St. Antholin’s as it was. Beneath the view are the words:

Here stood the parish church of St. Antholin, destroyed in the Great Fire, A.D. 1666, rebuilt 1677 by Sir Christopher Wren, architect.

On the bases of the columns are inscribed the names of the churchwardens of St. Antholin’s and St. John Baptist’s, Walbrook, respectively. While the following inscription is beneath:

The change of population in the City during two centuries rendering the church no longer necessary, it was taken down A.D. 1875, under the Act of Parliament for uniting City Benefices; the funds derived from the sale of the site were devoted in part to the Restoration of the neighbouring church of St. Mary Aldermary, where are also erected the monumental tablets removed from St. Antholin, and the erection at Nunhead of another church dedicated to St. Antholin greatly needed in that thickly populated district.

And again, right across the bases of the pillars and the stone, run the words:

In a vault beneath are deposited the greater part of the human remains removed from the Old church. The remainder are laid in a vault in the City of London Cemetery at Ilford, where also a monument marks the place of interment.

The Church of St. Anthony or Antholin stood on the north side of Budge Row, at the corner of Shoe Lane, in Cordwainer Street Ward. It derived its name from being dedicated to St. Anthony of Vienna, who had a cell here founded by Henry II., but it is not known when the church was first built. About 1399 it was rebuilt, and again in 1513, but the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed it. From Wren’s design it was rebuilt, and completed in 1682; it was remarkable for its tower, with a spire all of freestone. In 1874 the building (except the steeple) was taken down, and in 1876 the steeple was also demolished, the materials of which were sold for £5. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1181.

The patronage of the church was always in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted one part to John, son of Wizo the goldsmith, about 1141.

Houseling people in 1548 were 240.

In 1623 a very beautiful gallery was added to the church, every division of which (52 in number) was filled with the arms of kings, queens, and princes of the kingdom, from Edward the Confessor to Frederick, Count Palatine of the Rhine.

Chantries were founded here by: Nicholas Bole, citizen and skinner, at the Altar of St. Katherine, to which William Pykon was admitted chaplain, 1390, on the resignation of Richard Hale—the endowment fetched £6 : 13 : 4 in 1548, when Robert Smythe was chaplain; John Grantham, whose endowment fetched £4 in 1548.

In this church Thomas Hind and Hugh Acton, benefactors to the parish, were buried. There was also a monument to William Daunsey, mercer and alderman of the City.

Some of the donors of gifts and charities were: the Mercers and Drapers, of £6 respectively; Sir William Craven and William Parker, £100, to which £118 were added by the parishioners, for establishing a daily lecture. There were a considerable number of charities in this parish.

Among the rectors of this church were William Colwyn, who made a recantation at St. Paul’s Cross, Advent 1541, and Thomas Lamplugh (1615-91), Archbishop of York.

On the opposite side of the street extends for some way a really old brick building, evidently built immediately after the Fire. Over a centre window is a curved pediment of brickwork. Beneath, an opening leads into a yard, and the building is used by Stationers. The west side of the lane is modern.

St. Pancras Lane was formerly Needlers’ Lane. The church, the parish, the chantries and endowments, and the parishioners are mentioned frequently in the Calendar of Wills. The earliest entry there is of A.D. 1273, where John Hervy bequeaths to Juliana his daughter his mansion in the parish of St. Pancras, and to his daughter Johanna his shop in the parish of Colechurch. The Lane, except that it contained two parish churches, was of little importance.

Pancras Lane is an open space, once the graveyard of St. Pancras, Soper Lane. The houses are dull brick and stucco. The graveyard bears a great similarity to all that is left of the others; it is covered with dingy gravel and decorated by blackened evergreens. The iron gate bears a little shield telling that it was erected in 1886. There are one or two tombs still left.

The Church of St. Pancras, Soper Lane, stood near a street called Soper Lane, but since the Fire called Queen Street. It was repaired 1621, and in 1624 Thomas Chapman the younger built a porch to it. The building was destroyed by the Great Fire, when its parish was annexed to that of St. Mary-le-Bow. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1312.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, who granted it, April 25, 1365, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the church was destroyed in the Great Fire and the parish annexed to St. Mary-le-Bow.

Houseling people in 1548 were 146.

Chantries were founded here by: John Causton at the Altar of St. Anne, which was augmented by Simon Rice and Lettice his wife, before 1356, to which William de la Temple was presented by the King, January 10, 1374-75—the endowment was valued at £13 in 1548, when Adam Arnolde was priest; Margaret Reynolds, who bequeathed £233 : 6 : 8, which the Mercers had, and guaranteed a rent charge of £8 : 13 : 4 for the same to find a priest.

The church originally contained monuments to John Stockton, mercer and mayor, 1470; Richard Gardener, mercer and mayor, 1478; and Thomas Knowles, twice Lord Mayor.

Two charitable gifts are recorded by Stow, the donors of which were Thomas Chapman, whose benefaction was lost by Stow’s time, and Thomas Chapman his son, to the amount of £11 : 3 : 8.

Only a few steps farther on is another melancholy little spot, with a stone slab on the wall near with inscription as follows: “Before the dreadful Fire, Anno 1666, stood the church of St. Benet Sherehog.” The railing and low wall were put up in 1842. Within the enclosure stands a tomb over the “Family Vault of Michael Davison, 1676.”

The church was called St. Benet Sherehog, from one Benedict Shorne, or Shrog, or Shorehog, who was connected with it in the reign of Edward II. It was repaired in 1628, but destroyed by the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to St. Stephen, Walbrook, and its site made into a burying-ground. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1285.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Prior and Convent of St. Mary Overy, of Southwark, 1324; then the Crown, since Henry VIII. seized it in 1542.

Houseling people in 1548 were 300.

Chantries were founded here: For Ralph le Fever and Lucy his wife—the endowment fetched £3 : 11 : 8 in 1548, when Anthony Gyplyn, lately deceased, had been priest; for Thomas Romayn and Julia his wife, to which John de Loughebourgh was admitted, August 12, 1326.

Edward Hall, who wrote the large chronicle from Richard II. to Henry VIII., was buried here. The church formerly contained a monument to Sir Ralph Warren, twice Lord Mayor of London, who died in 1553. Mrs. Katherine Philips of Cardigan, the poetess, who died in 1664, was also buried here.

Only one charitable gift is recorded by Stow in this parish, that of £5 per annum left by Mr. Davison for keeping his family vault in repair. Some of this was used for charitable purposes.

John Wakering (d. 1425), Bishop of Norwich, was rector here.

Queen Street was constructed in part after the Fire, and covers the old Soper Lane, so called from the soap-makers who formerly lived here (though Stow wants to derive the name from an ancient resident). The south end, leading to the river, seems to have been the later part.

Soper Lane is mentioned in the Calendar of Wills as early as 1259, when Nicholas Bat, a member of the old City family of that name, bequeathed to his wife rents in Sopers’ Lane.

Here, in 1297, there sprang up an evening market—“Eve Chepynge”—called the New Fair. It was established against the knowledge of the mayor by “strangers, foreigners, and beggars,” and was the cause of many deeds made possible by selling in the dark, and of much strife and violence. Therefore it was abolished.

In the reign of Edward II. Soper Lane was the market-place of the Pepperers; seventy years later of the Curriers and Cordwainers. In the reign of Queen Mary there were many shops here for the sale of pies.

In the year 1316 the “good folks in Soper Lane, of the trade of Pepperers,” agreed upon certain regulations for the observance of the trade and the prevention of dishonesty.

In 1375 we find cordwainers between Soper Lane and the Conduit.

The name of Size Lane is derived from St. Osyth.

For Bucklersbury we will first let Stow speak:

“Bucklersbury, so called of a manor and tenements pertaining to one Buckle, who there dwelt and kept his courts. This manor is supposed to be the great stone building, yet in part remaining on the south side of the street, which of late time hath been called the Old 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 Walbrooke did lie open, barges were rowed out of the Thames, or towed up so far, and therefore the place hath ever since been called the Old Barge.

“Also on the north side of this street, directly over against the said Bucklersbury, was one ancient and strong tower of stone, the which tower King Edward III., in the 18th of his reign, by the name of the king’s house, called Cornet stoure in London, did appoint to be his Exchange of money there to be kept. In the 29th he granted it to Frydus Guynysane and Landus Bardoile, merchants of Luke, for twenty pounds the year. And in the 32nd he gave the same tower to his college or free chapel of St. Stephen at Westminster, by the name of Cornet Stoure at Bucklersbury in London. This tower of late years was taken down by one Buckle, a grocer, meaning in place thereof to have set up and built a goodly frame of timber; but the said Buckle greedily labouring to pull down the old tower, a part thereof fell upon him, which so sore bruised him that his life was thereby shortened, and another that married his widow set up the new prepared frame of timber, and finished the work.

“This whole street called Bucklersbury on both the sides throughout is possessed of grocers and apothecaries towards the west end thereof: on the south side breaketh out one other short lane called in records Peneritch street; it reacheth but to St. Sythe’s Lane, and St. Sythe’s church is the farthest part thereof, for by the west end of the said church beginneth Needler’s Lane, which reacheth to Soper Lane, as is aforesaid” (Stow’s Survey, p. 276).

The origin of the name of Bucklersbury is Bukerel, and not Buckle; Bukerel was the name of an old City family. Andrew Bukerel was mayor from 1231 to 1236.

Many Roman antiquities, pavements, bronzes, Samian ware, spoons, etc., have been found in Bucklersbury. A bronze armlet also found there may belong to pre-Roman times. The street is mentioned in many ancient documents, beginning with the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth century there were tenements here known as “Sylvestre tour” assigned by the Dean of St. Stephen, Westminster, to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, druggists, furriers, herbalists, and tobacconists had shops in Bucklersbury.

In 1688 there was a Roman Catholic chapel in Bucklersbury, which was one of those destroyed or burned by the mob, chiefly consisting of London apprentices, during the riots pending the arrival of the Prince of Orange.

An argument between the Dean and Canons of St. Paul’s and a carpenter of Bucklersbury shows that the parish of St. Benet Sherehog was called in 1406 the parish of St. Osyth, in which part of Bucklersbury stood. In 1455 the former name is given to the parish.

Bucklersbury was cut in two when Queen Victoria Street was made. The upper portion consists chiefly of large modern many-windowed business houses. Near the north-east corner there is an old brick house containing part of Pimm’s restaurant. In the southern half Barge Yard is modern. The Bourse Buildings, occupied by a great number of engineers, accountants, and business men of all sorts, take up a large part of the street.

Passing westward we come to Bow Lane, which was formerly called in the lower part Hosier Lane, from the trade of those who occupied it, and in the upper part, for a similar reason, Cordwainers’ Street.

The street spoken of in the Calendar of Wills by the name of Hosier Lane belonged to the parish of St. Sepulchre without the wall. The same street is mentioned in Riley’s Memorials.

For the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow see p. [10].

In its modern aspect Bow Lane is not uninteresting.

A covered entry, inappropriately named New Court, leads into a fascinating corner. There is a gateway really and ruinously old; it is said to have survived the Fire. The ironwork pattern is lost now in meaningless and broken twists, though there is a semblance of what might have been a monogram over the centre gate. The houses all round the court evidently date from the period directly after the Fire. That facing the street is of red brick toned by age, and is said to have been the residence of a Lord Mayor. The others are of dark brick, picked out in red. No. 5 contains the offices of the Financial World.

Beyond it a narrow passage leads at an angle round to the churchyard. A more spacious way runs beside the church itself. At the corner of this is a polished granite drinking fountain, erected in 1859, supporting green painted dolphins.

In the churchyard a scene of confusion and turmoil daily takes place on the pavement which lies over the bones of the “ancient dead.” Great wooden crates and packing-cases are littered about. They are from that large modern building on the west, facing the church, belonging to warehousemen and manufacturers. But one old seventeenth-century house, of a date immediately succeeding the Fire, remains, on the south side of the churchyard, facing Cheapside. Its quiet blackened bricks and flat windows have beheld many a change of scene on the stage before it. The ground-floor windows and doorway are connected by an ornamental cornice. The red bricks of the church in Bow Lane contrast with a long narrow building of the eighteenth century which is squeezed against them. These contrast with the gaping cellars and basements of the more modern buildings.

Of Bread Street there is very early mention. In 1204 the leprous women of St. James’s received a charter respecting a certain tenement in Chepe, at the head of Bread Street; in 1290 this tenement again becomes the subject of a charter. In 1263 there was a fire which consumed a part of Bread Street.

“So called of bread in old time there sold: for it appeareth by records, that in the year 1302, which was the 30th of Edward I., the bakers of London were bound to sell no bread in their shops or houses, but in the market: and that they should have four hall-motes in the year, at four several terms, to determine of enormities belonging to the said Company.

“Bread Street is now wholly inhabited by rich traders; and divers fair inns be there, for good receipt of carriers and other travellers to the city. It appears in the will of Edward Stafford, Earl of Wyltshire, dated the 22nd of March, 1498, and 14 Hen. VII., that he lived in a house in Bread-street in London, which belonged to the family of Stafford, Duke of Bucks afterwards; he bequeathing all the stuff in that house to the Lord of Buckingham, for he died without issue” (Strype, vol. i. pp. 686-687).

The bakers gave continual trouble to the City by their light-weight loaves and their bad bread. When they were “wanted” by the alderman they gat themselves out of the City and to their hills beyond the jurisdiction of the mayor. It was ordained, in order to meet this difficulty, that the servants who sell the bread thus complained of should be punished as if they were masters. It was also discovered that “hostelers and habergeons” bought bread in the market and sold it to their guests at a profit. This was not allowed in mediæval times. It was ordered that every loaf was to be bought of a baker, with his special stamp, and sold at the price regulated by the assize of bread.

But there were others besides bakers who used the market of Bread Street, Cheapside; it became a place for cooks. In 1351, one Henry Pecche bought a caper pasty of Henry de Passelowe, cook at the Stocks, and found on opening it that the fowl was putrid. The case coming before the mayor, experts were called in, among them six cooks of Bread Street and three of Ironmonger Lane. The story shows how the exclusive character of a market had to be broken up for the conveniences of the people. Here we have cooks carrying on their trade in three different parts of the great market of Chepe. A few years later, one of the Bread Street cooks, John Welburgh Man by name, was convicted by the evidence of his neighbours of selling a pie of conger, knowing the fish to be bad.

In 1595 a singular discovery was made at the north-east end of this street. In the construction of a vault was found, 15 feet deep, a “fair” pavement, and at the farther end a tree sawed into five steps—Stow says: “which was to step over some brook running out of the west towards Walbrooke; and upon the edge of the said brook, as it seemeth, there were found lying along the bodies of two great trees, the ends whereof were then sawed off, and firm timber as at the first when they fell, part of the said trees remain yet in the ground undigged. It was all forced ground until they went past the trees aforesaid, which was about seventeen feet deep or better; thus much hath the ground of this city in that place been raised from the main.”

The first turning to the east going down Bread Street was, until recently, called the Spread Eagle Court. One of the corner houses of this court is supposed to have been the work-place of John Milton, whose father traded under the sign of the “Spread Eagle.” He was baptized in the church of Allhallows. House and church were destroyed in the Fire, but the register remains.

On the corner house between Watling and Bread Streets is a stone slab fixed to the wall; this bears a bust of the poet in alto relievo. The rest of the building, which runs along Watling Street as far as Red Lion Court, is in new red brick, dated 1878. It has ornamental brickwork and festoons here and there, and the roof terminates in curiously shaped gables, some of which follow the old shell pattern. The doorways and windows are carried out in stone. The penthouse pediment over Milton’s bust is also in brick. Beneath, two little red cherubs hold a laurel wreath. Below the head is the one word—Milton; and lower follows the inscription:

Born in Bread Street, 1608.

Baptized in the Church of Allhallows, which stood here ante 1678.

The Mermaid, like many other London inns, stood in a court with an entrance from Friday Street and from Bread Street.

On the west side of Bread Street, on a site which, when Stow wrote, was occupied by “large houses for merchants and fair inns for passengers,” stood the Bread Street Compter, one of the two sheriffs’ prisons. As we have seen, it was later removed to Wood Street.

Behind St. Mildred’s Church stood Gerard’s Hall, the entrance from Basing Lane. Of this place Stow speaks at length:

“On the south side of this lane is one great house, of old time built upon arched vaults, and with arched gates of stone, brought from Caen in Normandy. The same is now a common hostrey for receipt of travellers, commonly and corruptly called Gerards hall, of a giant said to have dwelt there. In the high-roofed hall of this house sometime stood a large fir pole, which reached to the roof thereof, and was said to be one of the staves that Gerard the giant used in the wars to run withal. There stood also a ladder of the same length, which (as they say) served to ascend to the top of the staff. Of later years this hall is altered in building, and divers rooms are made in it. Notwithstanding, the pole is removed to one corner of the hall, and the ladder hanged broken upon a wall in the yard. The hosteler of that house said to me, ‘the pole lacketh half a foot of forty in length’: I measured the compass thereof, and found it fifteen inches.

“I read that John Gisors, mayor of London in the year 1245, was owner thereof, and that Sir John Gisors, knight, mayor of London, and constable of the Tower 1311, and divers others of that name and family, since that time owned it. William Gisors was one of the sheriffs 1329. More, John Gisors had issue, Henry and John; which John had issue, Thomas; which Thomas deceasing in the year 1350, left unto his son Thomas his messuage called Gisor’s Hall, in the parish of St. Mildred in Bread Street: John Gisors made a feoffment thereof, 1386, etc. So it appeareth that this Gisor’s Hall, of late time by corruption hath been called Gerard’s Hall for Gisor’s Hall; as Bosom’s inn for Blossom’s inn, Bevis Marks for Buries Marks, Marke Lane, for Marte Lane, Belliter Lane for Belsetter’s Lane, Gutter Lane for Guthuruns Lane, Cry Church for Christ’s Church, St. Michel in the Querne for St. Michel at corne, and sundry such others. Out of this Gisor’s Hall, at the first building thereof, were made divers arched doors, yet to be seen, which seem not sufficient for any great monster, or other man of common stature to pass through, the pole in the hall might be used of old time (as then the custom was in every parish), to be set up in the summer as May-pole, before the principal house in the parish or street, and to stand in the hall before the screen, decked with holme and ivy, at the feast of Christmas. The ladder served for the decking of the may-pole and roof of the hall. Thus much for Gisor’s hall, and for that side of Bread street, may suffice” (Stow’s Survey, 393-394).

GERARD’S HALL CRYPT IN 1795

The crypt of this house escaped the Fire. On its site was erected an inn called Gerard’s Hall, which contained seventy-eight bedrooms, and was one of the principal hotels of the City. The whole was removed for the construction of Cannon Street; Basing Lane, which ran from Bread Street to Bow Lane, disappeared at the same time.

ST. MILDRED, BREAD STREET

The Church of St. Mildred, Bread Street, still stands. It is on the east side of the street, a little to the south of Cannon Street, and is supposed to have been rebuilt in 1300 by Lord Trenchaunt, of St. Alban’s, knight, whose monument was in the church. It was destroyed by the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren in 1683, when the parish of St. Margaret Moses was annexed. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1170.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of St. Mary Overy, Southwark, who had it in 1300, and granted it to John Incent and John Oliver, 1333; the above Prior and Convent.

Houseling people in 1548 were 216.

The present church measures 62 feet in length, and 36 feet in breadth, while the total height, to the summit of the cupola, is 52 feet. The interior remains practically in its original state. The carvings about the altar-piece and pulpit are attributed to Grinling Gibbons. The steeple, which rises at the south-east, consists of a plain brick tower, lantern, and slender spire culminating in a ball and vane. The total height is 140 feet, but only the upper portion is visible, owing to the buildings surrounding it.

A chantry was founded here by Stephen Bull, citizen, of which Thomas Chapman was chaplain, April 26, 1453.

The church originally contained monuments to: Lord Trenchaunt, a great benefactor, who was buried here about 1300; also Sir John Shadworth, mayor, 1401, who gave a parsonage house and other gifts to the church. Here too John Ireland and Ellis Crispe were buried in 1614 and 1625, the grandfather and father of Sir Nicholas Crispe, the devoted adherent of Charles I., who is greatly eulogised for his loyalty by Dr. Johnson; he died in 1666.

Few details of the charities belonging to the parish are recorded by Stow; Thomas Langham and Mr. Coppinger being the only names mentioned besides those commemorated by monuments.

Thomas Mangey (1688-1755), D.D., Prebendary of Durham, was a rector here; also Hugh Oldham (d. 1519) of Exeter.

The Church of Allhallows, Bread Street, stood on the east side of the street. In 1625 the building was repaired, but ruined by the Great Fire shortly after. It was subsequently rebuilt. In 1878 it was taken down. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1284.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Prior and Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury; Archbishop of Canterbury, April 24, 1365, by gift (1284-85) from the above, in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when St. John’s, Watling Street, was annexed to it, these being annexed to St. Mary-le-Bow by Order in Council dated July 21, 1876.

Houseling people in 1548 were 300.

On the south side of the chancel there was a small part of the church, called “The Salters’ Chapel,” containing a window with the figure of the donor, Thomas Beaumont, wrought upon it. The church originally had a steeple, but in 1559 it was destroyed by lightning and not restored. The King granted a licence to Roger Paryt and Roger Stagenhow to found a guild in honour of our Lord, April 12, 1394 (Pat. 17 Rd. II. p. 2 m. 15). Some of the most notable monuments were those of Thomas Beaumont of the Company of Salters, John Dunster, a benefactor of the church, and Arthur Baron.

The following were among the numerous benefactors: David Cocke, £100; William Parker, £100; John Dunster, £200, to be laid out in lands and tenements; Edward Rudge, £200, to be laid out in lands and tenements; Lady Middleton, £100.

The most notable rectors of the church were: William Lyndwood (d. 1446), Chancellor to the Archbishop of Canterbury; Thomas Langton (d. 1501), Bishop of St. David’s. John Milton was baptized in this church.

A tablet formerly affixed to the exterior of the church in commemoration of the event was put up outside St. Mary-le-Bow after the destruction of Allhallows.

Friday Street.—“So called,” says Stow, “of fishmongers dwelling there, and serving Friday’s market.” In the roll of the Scrope and Grosvenor controversy, the poet Chaucer is recorded as giving evidence connected with this street, for when he was once in Friday Street he observed a sign with the arms of Scrope hanging out; and on his asking what they did there, was told they were put there by Sir Robert Grosvenor.

Cunningham also notes as follows: “The Nag’s Head Tavern, at the Cheapside corner of Friday Street, was the pretended scene of the consecration of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The real consecration took place in the adjoining church of St. Mary-le-Bow; but the Roman Catholics chose to lay the scene in a tavern. ‘The White Horse,’ another tavern in Friday Street, makes a conspicuous figure in the Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele. In this street, in 1695, at the ‘Wednesdays Clubs,’ as they were called, certain well-known conferences took place, under the direction of William Paterson, which ultimately led to the establishment of the Bank of England.”

In the year 1247, certain lands in Friday Street are held by the nuns of “Halliwelle.” In 1258, one William Eswy, mercer, bequeathed to the Earl of Gloucester all his tenements in Friday Street for 100 marks, wherein he was bound to the Earl, and for robes, capes, and other goods received from him. In 1278, Walter de Vaus left to Thomas, his uncle, shops in Friday Street. Therefore in the thirteenth century the street was already a lane of shops. The date shows that the former character of Chepe market as a broad open space set with booths and stalls had already undergone great modifications. Other early references to the street show that it was one of shops. Chaucer’s evidence shows that a hundred years later there were “hostelers” or “herbergeours” living there.

In 1363, certain citizens subscribed money as a present to the King. Among them is one Thomas, a scrivener of Friday Street, and in 1370 we find one Adam Lovekyn in possession of a seld which has been used for time out of mind by foreign tanners. He complains that they no longer come to him, but keep their wares in hostels and go about the streets selling them in secret.

In Friday Street at the corner in Watling Street is a railed-in space, all that remains of an old churchyard, the churchyard of St. John the Evangelist. This is a piece of ground containing very few square yards, separated from the street by high iron railings, and filled with stunted laurel bushes and other evergreens. A hard gravel walk runs round a circular bed of bushes, and on one side stands a raised tomb-like erection. On the wall are one or two slabs indicating the names of those who are buried in the vault below.

The Church of St. John the Evangelist was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to Allhallows, Bread Street, and both of these to St. Mary-le-Bow, by Order in Council, 1876. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1354.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, before 1354; Henry VIII. seized it in 1540; the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1546 up to 1666, when it was annexed to Allhallows, Bread Street.

Houseling people in 1548 were 100.

A chantry was founded here by William de Angre, before 1361, whose endowment fetched £8 : 13 : 4 in 1548, when John Taylor was chaplain. No monuments of any note are recorded by Stow.

In the north part of Friday Street is Blue Boar Court on the east side. This court was rebuilt in 1896, but previous to this was surrounded by old houses. One of these, No. 56, was interesting as having been the City home of Richard Cobden until 1845. It is said that this house was built on the site of a garden attached to Sir Hugh Myddelton’s house in Cheapside. The cellars beneath the building once covered the bullion belonging to the Bank of England. This was at the time when the Bank was in a room of the old Grocers’ Hall.

The Church of St. Matthew, Friday Street, was situated on the west side of the street near Cheapside. It was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren in 1685; it was then made the parish church for this and St. Peter’s, Westcheap, which was annexed to it. About 1887 the building was pulled down. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1322.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Abbot and Convent of St. Peter, Westminster, 1322, then Henry VIII., who seized it and gave it to the Bishop of Westminster, January 20, 1540-41; the Bishop of London, March 3, 1553-54; it continued in his successors up to 1666, when St. Peter’s, Cheapside, was annexed, and the patronage was shared alternately with the patron of that parish.

Houseling people in 1548 were 200.

The church was plain, without aisles, measuring 64 feet by 33 feet and having a tower 74 feet high.

Chantries were founded here: By Adam de Bentley, goldsmith, for himself and Matilda his wife, to which Adam Ipolite de Pontefracto was admitted chaplain, June 14, 1334; by Thomas Wyrlyngworth, at the Altar of St. Katherine, to which John Donyngton was admitted chaplain, November 13, 1391: the King granted his licence, June 16, 1404; by John Martyn, whose endowment fetched £10 in 1548, when Henry Coldewell was priest, “70 years of age, meanly learned”; for Nicholas Twyford, miles, about 1400.

The church originally contained monuments to Sir Nicholas Twyford, goldsmith and mayor, who died 1583, also Sir Edward Clark, Lord Mayor in 1696. Sir Hugh Myddelton, the designer of the New River, was a parishioner, and was buried here in 1631.

A legacy of £5 a year was left to the poor of the parish by Mrs. Cole.

James Smith, Edward Clark, and others contributed to the furnishing of the necessities of the church. The parish was to receive £240 out of the “cole-money” for the use of the parish or poor (Stow).

John Thomas (1691-1766), Bishop of Lincoln, 1744, of Sarum 1761-66, was rector here; also Edward Vaughan (d. 1522), Bishop of St. David’s; John Rogers, who was burnt at Smithfield, 1555; Lewis Bayley (d. 1631), Bishop of Bangor, and Michael Lort (1725-90), Vice-President of Society of Antiquaries; Henry Burton, the ardent Puritan, who was put in the pillory and imprisoned for his religious opinions and attacks.

The Church of St. Margaret Moses was situated on the east side of Friday Street, opposite Distaff Lane, now merged in Cannon Street, and derived its name from one Moses, who founded it. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of St. Mildred, Bread Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1300.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Robert Fitzwalter, the founder, who gave it in 1105 to the Priors and Canons of St. Faith, Horsham, Norfolk, being confirmed to that house by Pope Alexander III. in his Bill dated at Turin, May 26, 1163; Edward III., who seized it from St. Faith, as an alien priory, and so it continued in the Crown till the parish was annexed to St. Mildred, Bread Street, in 1666.

Houseling people in 1548 were 240.

Chantries were founded here by: Nicholas Bray, whose endowment fetched £8 : 16 : 8 in 1548, when John Griffyn was “priest of the age of 46 years, of virtuous living and of small learning”; John Fenne, whose endowment yielded £9 : 10s. in 1548, when John Brightwyse was “priest of the age of 46 years, of honest behaviour and indifferently learned”; Gerard Dannyell, whose endowment fetched £8 in 1548, when Nicholas Prideoux was priest.

The church originally contained monuments to Sir Richard Dobbes, mayor, 1551; Sir John Allot, mayor, 1591.

Only two legacies are recorded by Stow: 18s. per annum, the gift of John Bush; 16s. per annum, the gift of John Spot.

John Rogers, who was burnt at Smithfield in 1555, was rector here.

Distaff Lane.—“On the west side of Friday Street, is Mayden lane, so named of such a sign, or Distaffe lane, for Distar lane, as I read in the record of a brew-house called the Lamb, in Distar Lane, the 16th of Henry VI. In this Distar Lane, on the north side thereof, is the Cordwainers, or Shoemakers’ hall, which company were made a brotherhood or fraternity, in the 11th of Henry IV. Of these cordwainers I read, that since the fifth of Richard II. (when he took to wife Anne, daughter to Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia), by her example, the English people had used piked shoes, tied to their knees with silken laces, or chains of silver or gilt, wherefore in the 4th of Edward IV. it was ordained and proclaimed, that beaks of shoone and boots, should not pass the length of two inches, upon pain of cursing by the clergy, and by parliament to pay twenty shillings for every pair. And every cordwainer that shod any man or woman on the Sunday, to pay thirty shillings.

“On the south side of this Distar Lane, is also one other lane, called Distar Lane, which runneth down to Knightrider Street, or Old Fish Street, and this is the end of Bread Street Ward” (Stow’s Survey, p. 393).

The other lane was afterwards called Little Distaff Lane. Another name for this street was Maiden Lane. There was another Maiden Lane in Thames Street, and a third in Lad Lane, and a fourth on Bank side.

Distaff Lane is absorbed by Cannon Street, and the “Little Distaff Lane” has been promoted by the omission of the adjective.

Old Change.—Of this street Stow tells us everything that is of interest:

“A street so called of the King’s exchange there kept, which was for the receipt of bullion to be coined. For Henry III., in the 6th year of his reign, wrote to the Scabines and men of Ipre, that he and his council had given prohibition, that none, Englishmen or other, should make change of plate or other mass of silver, but only in his Exchange at London, or at Canterbury. Andrew Bukerell then had to farm the Exchange, and was mayor of London, in the reign of Henry III. In the 8th of Edward I., Gregory Rockesly was keeper of the said Exchange for the king. In the 5th of Edward II., William Hausted was keeper thereof; and in the 18th, Roger de Frowicke.

“These received the old stamps, or coining-irons, from time to time, as the same were worn, and delivered new to all the mints in England, as more at large in another place I have noted.

“This street beginneth by West Chepe in the north, and runneth down south to Knightrider Street; that part thereof which is called Old Fish Street, but the very housing and office of the Exchange and coinage was about the midst thereof, south from the east gate that entereth Pauls churchyard, and on the west side in Baynard’s castle ward.

“On the east side of this lane, betwixt West Cheape and the church of St. Augustine, Henry Walles, mayor (by license of Edward I.), built one row of houses, the profits rising of them to be employed on London Bridge” (Stow’s Survey, p. 35).

Lord Herbert of Cherbury lived in a “house among gardens near the Old Exchange.”

St. Paul’s School was founded by Dean Colet in 1509, and the schoolhouse stood at the east end of the Churchyard, facing the Cathedral. It was destroyed by the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren, and then again taken down and rebuilt in 1824, and subsequently removed to Hammersmith to the new building designed by Alfred Waterhouse, R.A., in 1884. For further, see “Hammersmith” in succeeding volume. The old site in St. Paul’s Churchyard is now covered by business houses.

ST. AUGUSTINE

At the corner of Old Change and Watling Street stands St. Augustine’s Church.

It was burnt down by the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren in 1682, and the parish of St. Faith’s annexed to it. The steeple, however, was not completed till 1695. As it possessed no proper burying-ground of its own, a portion of the crypt of St. Paul’s was used for the interment of parishioners. The earliest date of an incumbent was 1148.

The patronage of the church was always in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted it to Edward, the priest, in 1148.

Houseling people in 1548 were 360.

The present church measures about 51 feet in length, 30 feet in height, and 45 feet in breadth; it is divided into a nave and side aisles by six Ionic columns and four pilasters. The steeple rises at the south-west, consisting of a tower, lantern, and spire. It is 20 feet square at the base, and has three stories. The lantern is very slender. The total altitude is 140 feet. No chantries are recorded to have been founded here. The ancient church contained few monuments of note. The present building has a tablet to the memory of Judith (died 1705), the first wife of the eminent lawyer William Cowper.

Some of the benefactors were: Thomas Holbech, rector of the parish, 1662, who gave £100 towards finishing the church; Dame Margaret Ayloff, £100. After the parish of St. Faith’s was annexed, gifts to the amount of £700 were received from various sources.

William Fleetwood (1656-1723), Bishop of St. Asaph, was rector here; also John Douglas (1721-1807), Bishop of Carlisle and of Sarum, and Richard H. Barham (1788-1845), author of The Ingoldsby Legends.

With this we end the first section of the City.

GROUP II

The second group of streets will be those lying north of Gresham Street, with Noble Street and Monkwell Street on the west, and Moorgate Street on the east. This part of the City is perhaps less rich in antiquities and associations than any other. The north part was, to begin with, occupied and built over with houses much later than the south. For a long time the whole area north of Gresham (then Cateaton) Street and within the Wall presented the appearance of gardens and orchards with industrial villages as colonies dotted here and there, each with its parish church and its narrow lane of communication with the great market of Chepe. Some of the names, as Oat Lane, Lilypot Lane, Love Lane, preserve the memory of the gardens and their walks.

In this district grew up by degrees a great many of the industries of the City, especially the noisy trades and those which caused annoyance to the neighbours, as that of the foundry, the tanyard, the tallow chandlers.

An examination of the Calendar of Wills down to the fifteenth century is in one sense disappointing, because it affords no insight into the nature of the trades carried on in the area before us. On the other hand, it curiously corroborates the theory that this part of the City was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries purely industrial, because among the many entries referring to this quarter there is but one reference, down to the seventeenth century, of any shops. There are rents, tenements—“all my Rents and Tenements” several times repeated; land and rents—“all my Land and Rents”; there are almshouses, Halls of Companies, gardens; but there are no shops, and that at a time when the streets and lanes about Cheapside are filled with shops!

The Companies’ Halls offer some index to the trades of the quarter. There are still Broderers’ Hall, Curriers’ Hall, Armourers’ Hall, Coopers’ Hall, Parish Clerk’s Hall, Brewers’ Hall, Girdlers’ Hall; and there were Haberdashers’ Hall, Mercers’ Hall, Wax Chandlers’ Hall, Masons’ Hall, Plaisterers’ Hall, Pinners’ Hall, Barber Surgeons’ Hall, Founders’ Hall, Weavers’ Hall, and Scriveners’ Hall, which have now been removed elsewhere or destroyed. These trades, we may note, are for the most part of the humbler kind.

Coleman Street is described by Stow as “a fair and large Street on both sides built with divers fair houses, besides alleys with small tenements in great numbers.”

Cunningham enumerates the chief events connected with the street:

“The five members accused of treason by Charles I. concealed themselves in this street. ‘The Star,’ in Coleman Street, was a tavern where Oliver Cromwell and several of his party occasionally met.... In a conventicle in ‘Swan Alley,’ on the east side of this street, Venner, a wine-cooper and Millenarian, preached the opinions of his sect to ‘the soldiers of King Jesus’” (see London in the Time of the Stuarts, p. 68 et seq.). “John Goodwin, minister in Coleman Street, waited on Charles I. the day before the King’s execution, tendered his services, and offered to pray for him. The King thanked him, but said he had chosen Dr. Juxon, whom he knew. Vicars wrote an attack on Goodwin, called ‘The Coleman-street Conclave Visited!’ Justice Clement, in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour, lived in Coleman Street; and Cowley wrote a play called Cutter of Coleman-street. Bloomfield, author of ‘The Farmer’s Boy,’ followed his original calling of a shoemaker at No. 14 Great Bell-yard in this street.”

ST. STEPHEN, COLEMAN STREET

The Church of St. Stephen, Coleman Street, was “at first a Jews’ synagogue, then a parish church, then a chapel to St. Olave’s in the Jewry, now (7 Edward IV.) incorporated as a parish church” (Stow). It is situated on the west side of Coleman Street, near to the south end. It was consumed by the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1311.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted it to the Prior and Convent of Butley; Henry VIII. seized it, and in the Crown it continued till Queen Elizabeth granted it, about 1597, to the parishioners, in whose successors it continued.

Houseling people in 1548 were 880.

The church is plain, long and narrow, without any aisles, measuring 75 feet in length and 35 feet in breadth. The steeple, which rises at the north-west, consists of a stone tower, a lantern, and small spire, the total height being about 65 feet.

Chantries were founded here by: William Grapefig, for which the King granted a licence, August 6, 1321, and to which John de Maderfield was admitted chaplain, June 23, 1324; Rodger le Bourser, for which the King granted his licence, August 1, 1321; Stephen Fraunford and John Essex, both citizens of London, of which John de Bulklegh was chaplain, who died in 1391: founded July 1361; Edward IV., who endowed it with lands, etc., which fetched £50 : 5 : 4 in 1548.

Anthony Munday, the dramatist, arranger of the City pageants and the continuation of Stow’s Survey, who died in 1633, was buried here.

A very large number of legacies and charitable gifts are recorded by Stow, amongst which are: £640, the gift of Christopher Eyre, for the building and maintenance of six almshouses; £100, the gift of Sir Richard Smith, for coals for the poor; £100, the gift of Hugh Capp, for lands for the poor; £400, the gift of Barnard Hyde, to purchase land for six poor people for ever.

In White Alley there were six almshouses built by Christopher Eyre for six poor couples, each of whom were allowed £4 per annum.

Richard Lucas (1648-1715), author of several theological works, was a rector here; also John Davenport (1597-1670), he was one of the leaders of a party who went over to America in 1637, and founded Newhaven in Connecticut. He had a design of founding a university (Yale), but this was not carried into effect until sixty years later.

Over the stuccoed gateway of the churchyard is a skull and cross-bones, with an elaborate panel in relief below, representing the Last Judgment; this is a replica in oak of the original panel, which was removed, for its better preservation, to the Vestry.

As for the present street the most notable building is the Armourers’ Hall.

THE ARMOURERS AND BRASIERS COMPANY

The trade of armourer was of great importance in the ages when men went out to war clad in iron. There were many kinds of armour. Some were taught to make helmets and some corslets. There was armour of quilted leather worn under the armour or acting as armour.

T. H. Shepherd.
THE ARMOURERS’ AND BRASIERS’ ALMSHOUSES, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT (1857)

A great number of people lived by the making of armour. The custom of wearing armour decayed gradually, not rapidly. It is still kept up for purposes of show but no longer for any use in defence.

The origin of the Company of Armourers and Brasiers is lost in antiquity. The Company was, however, founded previously to the beginning of the fourteenth century, for records are in existence showing that at that time (1307-27) the Company had vested in it the right of search of armour and weapons. It would appear from documents in the possession of the Company that as early as the year 1428 the Company was in the possession of a hall. In the year 1453 the Company was incorporated by a charter from King Henry VI. by the title of “The Fraternity or Guild of St. George of the Men of Mistery of Armorers of our City of London,” and had licence granted to it to appoint a chaplain to its chapel in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

It is believed that the Company of Brasiers was incorporated about the year 1479 by Edward IV., and that the craft of bladesmiths was incorporated with the Company of Armourers about the year 1515, but the Company has no authentic evidence in its possession as to these facts.

In the year 1559, Queen Elizabeth granted a charter of Inspeximus, confirming the Letters Patent of King Henry VI.

In the year 1618, King James I., in consideration of the sum of £100, granted Letters Patent confirming the title of the Fraternity or Guild of St. George of the Men of Mystery of Armourers in the City of London, to the messuages and lands then held by it. The greater part of these messuages and lands is still in the possession of the Company.

In the year 1685, King James II. granted Letters Patent to the Company which (inter alia) directed that all edge tools and armour, and all copper and brass work wrought with the hammer within the City of London, or a radius of five miles therefrom, should be searched and approved by expert artificers of the Company.

In the year 1708 the Company of Armourers was, by Letters Patent granted by Queen Anne, incorporated with the Brasiers under the corporate title of “The Company of Armourers and Brasiers in the City of London.” In this charter it is recited that of late years many of the members of the Company of Armourers had employed themselves in working and making vessels, and wares of copper and brass wrought with the hammer, and that for want of powers to search and make byelaws to bind the workers of such wares in the City of London, frauds and deceits in the working of such goods and vessels had increased, and power was thereby granted to the Company of Armourers and Brasiers to make byelaws for the government of the Company; and also of all persons making any work or vessel of wrought or hammered brass or copper, in the Cities of London and Westminster, or within a radius of five miles thereof, and with authority to inflict fines and penalties against persons offending against such byelaws. And the Company was invested with power to inspect and search for all goods worked or wrought with the hammer and exposed to sale within such limits as aforesaid. No person was allowed to sell or make armour or vessels, or wares of copper or brass wrought with the hammer, unless he was a member or had been apprenticed to a member of the Company.

It would appear that the master and wardens exercised a very extensive jurisdiction in ancient days, fining and punishing members of the Company for social offences as well as for infringements of the byelaws of the Company, and hearing and adjudicating upon all questions arising between members of the Company and their apprentices, and also inflicting fines on persons making or selling goods of an improper quality.

This Company is still in the habit of binding apprentices to masters engaged in the trades of workers of brass and copper, and of pensioning infirm members of those trades. Their workshops were situated close to London Wall, below Bishopsgate, probably in order to remove their hammering as far as possible from the trading part of the City.

The Company is governed by a Master, an Upper Warden and a Renter Warden, with eighteen assistants, and, together with the livery, now number 91. The Hall is at 81 Coleman Street. Stow mentions the Hall on the north end of Coleman Street and on the east side of it. “The Company of Armourers were made a Fraternity or Guild of St. George with a Chantry in the Chapel of St. Thomas in Paul’s Church in the 1st of Henry VI.”

On the north side of King’s Arms Yard extends the elaborate and very handsome building of the Metropolitan Life Assurance Society, which has its entrance at the corner of Moorgate Street. This has deeply recessed windows, and the corner is finished off by an octagonal turret which begins in a projecting canopy over the door, and is carried up to the roof. In niches here and there are small stone figures. This building is the work of Aston Webb and Ingress Bell in 1891. Opposite, in great contrast, are oldish brick houses, very plain in style. Round the northern corner into Coleman Street is carried a building which is chiefly remarkable for the amount of polished granite on its surface. On the west, a little higher up, is another entrance of the Wool Exchange from which a large projection overhangs the street. There is a lamb in stonework over the door.

Basinghall Street (or Bassishaw Street) runs from London Wall to Gresham Street. The street used to contain the Masons’, Weavers’, Coopers’, and Girdlers’ Halls. Only the Girdlers’ and Coopers’ Halls now remain. The names Basinghall and Bassishaw are frequently supposed to have the same origin. Riley, however, quotes a passage in which (A.D. 1390) there is mention of the “Parish of St. Michael Bassishaw in the Ward of Bassyngeshaw,” which he considers indicates that the word Basseshaw is Basset’s haw, and Bassyngeshaw is Basing’s haw, referring to two families and not one. There is a great number of references to Basings and to Bassets. Yet the names seem to refer to the same place. Thus in 1280 and 1283 we hear of houses in Bassieshaw. In 1286 we hear of houses in Bassinge haw. Basinghall was the hall or house of the Basings, an opulent family of the thirteenth century. Solomon and Hugh Basing were sheriffs in 1214; Solomon was mayor in 1216; Adam Basing was sheriff in 1243. Basinghall passed into the hands of a family named Banquelle or Bacquelle. John de Banquelle, Alderman of Dowgate, had a confirmation and quit claim to him of a messuage in St. Michael, Bassieshawe, in 1293.

At the south-west corner of Basinghall Street was a fine stone house built by a “certain Jew named Manscre, the son of Aaron.” Thomas Bradberry (d. 1509) kept his mayoralty there.

THE GIRDLERS COMPANY

The Girdlers Company traces its existence to a very early period, and cannot, in the strict sense of the word, be said to have been founded. It is believed to have been a fraternity by prescription, which owed its origin to a lay brotherhood of the order of Saint Laurence, maintaining themselves by the making of girdles and voluntarily associating for the purpose of mutual protection and for the regulation of the trade which they practised, and the maintenance of the ancient ordinances and usages established to ensure the honest manufacture of girdles with good and sound materials.

The earliest public or State recognition of the Company of which it now possesses any evidence consists of Letters Patent of the first year of King Edward III., A.D. 1327, addressed to them as an existing body, as “les ceincturiers de notre Citée de Loundres,” by which the “ancient ordinances and usuages” of the said trade are approved and their observance directed. The King also grants licence to the girdlers that they shall have power to elect one or two of their own trade to seek out false work and present it before the mayors or chief guardians of the places where found, who shall cause the same to be burnt and those who have worked the same to be punished; all amercements resulting therefrom to belong to the mayors of the places where the false work is found.

Some ten years later we find the girdlers presenting a code of laws for the governance of their trade to the mayor and aldermen; therefore, though their charter enabled them to search into and discover bad work, it gave them no power to make laws for the safeguarding of the trade. Moreover, the charter gave them no power over wages, nor did it compel the workers of the trade to join the Fraternity, nor did it empower them to hold land, to sue or to be sued. Considering these omissions, the document quoted by Riley ought not, strictly speaking, to be considered a charter.

The said Letters Patent were confirmed in 1 Richard II. (1377) and 2 Henry IV. (1401), and the Company was incorporated in 27 Henry VI. (1448) by the Master and Guardians of the Mystery of Girdlers of the City of London.

Further confirmations were made in 2 Edward IV., 10 Elizabeth, 15 Charles I., and 1 James II.

No important change in the original constitution of the Company was made by any of the charters prior to that of 10 Elizabeth, which directed that the three arts or mysteries called Pinners, Wyerworkers, and Girdlers should be joined and invited together into one body corporate and polity, and one society and company for ever, and did incorporate them by the name of the Masters and Wardens or Keepers of the Art and Mystery of Girdlers, London.

It does not appear that the Pinners and Wyerworkers brought any accession of property to the Girdlers.

The Hall has always been in Basinghall Street. Here it is mentioned by Stow along with Masons’ Hall and Weavers’ Hall.

No. 1 on the east of Basinghall Street was probably built early in the nineteenth century; the buildings which follow it are chiefly modern. The whole street is rather fine, though too narrow for much effect. There are in it many great “houses,” “chambers,” and “buildings” occupied in floors. Gresham Buildings are faced with dark-coloured stone and rise comparatively high. The ground-floor walls on the exterior are covered with the most elaborate stonework representations of flowers and foliage. The City of London Court in the passage known as Guildhall Buildings is picturesquely built in a perpendicular style of Gothic. A great square stone building opposite was built in 1890, and next to it a plain Portland stone edifice contains the Lord Mayor’s court office. The City Library and Museum form a picturesque group of buildings in the west of Basinghall Street.

Near at hand is the Coopers’ Hall with a narrow frontage.

THE COOPERS COMPANY

The Coopers Company was incorporated in 1501 by charter of King Henry VII., dated 29th April, in the sixteenth year of his reign. There is no record, however, of any anterior charter. There is no doubt that the Coopers were one of the early mysteries or brotherhoods of the City of London, though it is difficult to assign a correct date of their origin. The Company’s archives, however, show that the Company had existed for a considerable period prior to the date of its incorporation. A subsequent charter was granted on the 30th August, in the thirteenth year of King Charles II. This is the governing charter, and its provisions regulate the management of the Company to the present day. Under the statute of 23 Henry VII. cap. 4, power is given to the wardens of the Company with one of the mayor’s officers to gauge all casks in the City of London and the suburbs, and within two miles’ compass without the suburbs, and to mark such barrels when gauged. By a subsequent Act, 31 Elizabeth, cap. 8, “for the true gauging of vessels brought from beyond the seas, converted by brewers for the utterance and sale of ale and beer,” brewers were prohibited from selling or putting to sale any ale or beer in any such vessels within the limits before mentioned before the same should be lawfully gauged and marked by the master and wardens of the Coopers Company. The Company do not now exercise, and have not for a considerable period exercised, any control over the trade of coopers.

It is quite certain that a craft so technical and so useful as that of the cooper must have been constituted as a guild as soon as craftsmen began to work together at all. In the year 1396 (Riley, p. 541), “the goodmen of the trade of Coopers” presented a code of ordinances for the regulation of the trade. They complained that certain persons of the trade were in the habit of making casks out of wood which had been used for oil and soap casks, so that ale or wine put into these casks was spoiled. Therefore it is certain that their guild did not possess authority over the trade at that time. This is shown again in 1413, when certain Master Coopers again complained to the mayor that one Richard Bartlot, fishmonger, had made 260 vessels called barrels and firkins of unseasoned wood and of false measure. These vessels were ordered to be destroyed. Perhaps in order to prevent similar practices, it was decreed that every cooper should mark his work by his own trade-mark.

The Corporate Income of the Company is given in 1898 as £2400; the Trust Income as £5000; the number of the livery as 200. Their Hall is 71 Basinghall Street, on the site of two previous halls.

Close by is the “Wool Exchange and Colonial Office” with an open entry supported by polished granite pillars, whose capitals are carved as rams’ heads. This is rather a fine building, with segmental windows set closely all across the frontage. Bevois House, just completed, takes a good line of curvage and is of white stone. Before Guildhall Chambers there is an old house built of narrow red bricks, with semicircular pillars on each side of the centre window frame, and above, on a slab of stone, the date 1660. The site of St. Michael’s Church is here. A row of straight ordinary business houses succeeds. On the east are Guildhall Chambers, plastered houses built round an asphalt court. The centre one has a small portico with Ionic columns; the rest of the court is plain and severe, but not ineffective.

The Church of St. Michael, Bassishaw, was situated on the west side of Basinghall Street. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, but destroyed by the Great Fire, and again rebuilt, by Wren, between 1676 and 1679. In 1895 the church was closed, a commission having been issued in 1893 by the Bishop of London to inquire into the expediency of uniting this with the parishes of St. Lawrence, Jewry, and St. Mary Magdalene, Milk Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1286.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Canons of St. Bartholomew’s about 1140, given by the Bishop of London; Henry III.; Thomas de Bassinges, 1246, who left it to his wife by will dated 1275; Henry Bodyk, 1327, who left it to Johanna his wife; Nicholas de Chaddesdon, who sold it in 1358 to Sir John de Beauchamp, brother to the Earl of Warwick; Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, 1435, in whose successors it continues.

Houseling people in 1548 were 500.

The present church measures 70 feet in length, 50 feet in breadth, and 42 feet in height, and includes a nave and two side aisles separated by Corinthian columns. The ceiling is divided into panels, and is pierced with openings to admit the light. The tower, which rises at the west, contains four stories concluded by a cornice and parapet; above this is a lead-covered octagonal lantern in two stages surmounted by a short spire with ball, finial, and vane. The total height is 140 feet.

Chantries were founded here: By John Hannem, citizen, before 1326; by John Asche, whose endowment, “called the bell on the hope,” fetched £3 : 6 : 8; by James Yardeford, Knt., whose endowment yielded £16 in 1548.

A considerable number of monuments are recorded by Stow, the most notable of which are those of Sir John Gresham (d. 1556), Lord Mayor of London, uncle to the more famous Sir Thomas Gresham; and Dr. Thomas Wharton (d. 1673), a physician who gained great glory from his labours during the Plague of 1665.

The parish received a large number of gifts and charities, some of which were as follows: £9 from Lady Anne Vaughan, for lectures; £10 from Sir Wolstan Dixey, for lectures; £20 from Lady Anne Bacon; £70 from Sir Robert and Lady Ducie.

George Gardiner (d. 1589), chaplain to Queen Elizabeth and Chancellor of Norwich, was rector here; also George Lavington (1684-1762), Bishop of Exeter 1746-47.

Drawn by G. Shepherd.
ST. MARY, ALDERMANBURY, IN 1814

Aldermanbury is another ancient City street. The name, according to Stow, is derived from the Court of Aldermen formerly held in the first Guildhall, the ruins of which, on the east side of the street, were standing in his day. They had then been converted into a carpenter’s shop. Here, in 1383, Sir Robert Tressilian, Lord Chief Justice, had his residence. At the north end of this street, before the memory of men living in 1415, a postern had been built leading from the City to the moor. In Riley’s Memorials there is a full account of a crowded meeting of citizens in the Guildhall, July 2, 1415, to consider the state of the moor and certain nuisances outside the postern and within Bishopsgate. It was resolved to lay out the moor, then a waste place, in gardens to be allotted to citizens at a certain rental. The street is frequently mentioned from the thirteenth century. In the sixteenth century the street had become a place of residence for the better sort. “Here be divers fair houses on both sides meet for merchants and men of worship.”

ST. MARY, ALDERMANBURY

This church is of very ancient date, as appeared from a sepulchral inscription, said to have been in the old church, dated 1116. The building was destroyed by the Great Fire, and re-erected by Wren in 1668-76. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1200.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who, June 1113, appropriated it to Elsing Spital, with certain restrictions. The living is now in the gift of the parishioners.

Houseling people in 1548 were 371.

The church measures 72 feet in length, 45 feet in breadth, and 38 feet in height, and includes two aisles separated by six Corinthian columns from the nave. Externally, the church is rather imposing. The east front has a handsome cornice and pediment, with carved scrolls and figures. The steeple, which rises at the west, consists of a tower completed by a cornice and parapet. This is surmounted by a square turret in two stages, and a concave roof tapering to a point, with a finial and vane; the total height is about 90 feet. There is a churchyard on the south side, open to the public for several hours daily.

Chantries were founded here: By William Estfelde, augmented by Stephen Bockerell, at the Altar of St. George, for Stephen, Isabella his wife, and William his son, before 1363; by Henry Bedeyk—the advowson thereof was released to Sir John de Beauchamp by John de Bovenden and Katherine his wife, in 1359; by Adam de Bassyng.

A considerable number of citizens of repute were buried in the old church, amongst whom the two most interesting to posterity are Henry Condell (d. 1627) and John Heminge (d. 1630), the fellow-actors of Shakespeare and editors of the folio of 1623. The celebrated divine Edmund Calamy (the elder) was rector here for some years, and was buried in 1666 beneath the ruined building with which he had been so long connected. In the register of the church the marriage of Milton with his second wife Katherine Woodcock, 1656, is entered. The remains of Judge Jeffreys, interred in the Tower after his death there in 1689, were removed here and deposited in a vault beneath the communion table in 1693.

According to Stow, there were no legacies or bequests to the church, but a legacy to the poor, by the Lady Gresham, of £3 per annum, paid by the Mercers Company.

Among other celebrated rectors are Edmund Calamy the younger, and Dr. Kennett (d. 1728), author of Kennett’s Register, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough.

ST. ALPHAGE

At the north end of Aldermanbury at the corner of London Wall, is the Church of St. Alphage. This parish church originally stood on the other side, against the Wall. It is dedicated to St. Alphage, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was canonised in 1012. Its old churchyard may still be seen. It is built on part of the site of the hospital and priory founded by William Elsing in 1329 and 1332. The priory harboured one hundred poor blind men, and suffered suppression along with the rest at the Dissolution. Under Henry VIII. a remnant of the priory church became parochial and was extensively repaired and rebuilt in 1624, 1628, and 1649. It escaped the Great Fire, but was taken down in 1774 and the present building erected by Sir William Staines and opened in 1777. Part of the original structure may still be seen in the porch. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1137.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Deans and Canons of St. Martin’s-le-Grand before 1324, from whom it passed to the Abbot and Convent of Westminster from 1505; the Bishop of Westminster by grant of Henry VIII., January 20, 1540; the Bishop of London by gift of Edward VI. in 1550, confirmed by Mary, March 3, 1553-54, in whose successors it continued.

Houseling people in 1548 were 345.

The present church possesses two fronts, an eastern and north-western; the north-west door leads into a porch, the pointed arches of which show it to have once formed part of the old priory church. This is the only relic of past times. The interior is plain, the ceiling flat, and there are no aisles.

A chantry was founded here by John Graunte, whose endowment yielded £15 : 10 : 8 in 1548.

The church contains a handsome monument on the north wall to Sir Rowland Hayward, Lord Mayor in 1570 and 1591; it was placed on the south side of the old church. On the same wall, farther east, a marble monument commemorates Samuel Wright, who at his death in 1736 left charitable bequests to the extent of £20,950.

PORCH OF ST. ALPHAGE, LONDON WALL, 1818.

Some of the donors of gifts were Sir Rowland Hayward, 20d. for bread every Sabbath day for the poor, 1591, and John Brown, £30 for church repairs, 1629.

There was a school for fifty boys and twenty-five girls, who were clothed and educated and put out to trades and service at the charge of the ward. There were also ten almshouses for ten men and ten women, each of whom was allowed £4 per annum, founded by the Rev. Dr. Thomas White. Part of the almshouses in Monkwell Street belonged to this parish.

A notable rector of this church was Philip Stubbs (1665-1738), Archdeacon of St. Alban’s.

Just opposite to Philip Street is still preserved the old churchyard of St. Alphage, a rectangular railed-in space with ivy growing over the old wall that forms the backbone. On a slab near the centre is the inscription:

The burial ground of St. Alphage containing part of the old Roman City wall. Closed by Act of Parliament 1853. Laid out as a garden 1872.

To the west of the churchyard once stood Sion College. This was built in 1623 with almshouses attached, according to the will of Dr. Thomas White, vicar of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West. It stood on the site of Elsing Spital (see Mediæval London, vol. ii. p. 248).

SION COLLEGE, LONDON WALL, 1800
From an original drawing in the possession of the President and Fellows of Sion College.

Sion College had a fine library left by the will of Dr. John Simson, rector of St. Olave, Hart Street, and a third of these books was burnt in the Great Fire, which almost destroyed the College. Up to 1836 the College enjoyed the privilege of receiving a gratuitous copy of every published book. The City clergy were Fellows of the College. In 1886 a new building on the Embankment was opened to take the place of the old one, and now the ancient site is covered by business houses.

THE CURRIERS COMPANY

The Curriers were incorporated by James I. in April 30, 1606, for a master, two wardens, twelve assistants, and 103 liverymen.

The exact date of the origin of the Company is unknown, but it must have had some sort of existence previous to 1363, for in that year it is recorded that the Company contributed five marks to aid King Edward III. in carrying on his wars with France.

There are no documents in existence referring to the origin of the Company.

Many indications of the antiquity of this Fraternity occur. It was attached to the White Friars’ Church in Fleet Street. The Curriers settled in Soper Lane; they asked for ordinances in 1415; they were authorised to appoint the City scavengers.

Their Hall is the third erected on the same site; it was founded in 1874. The first Hall perished in the Fire. The quarter where the curriers lived and worked was in the north facing London Wall, where they built their Hall.

Of Addle Street Stow says: “The reason of which name I know not.” It may have been derived from “Ethel,” meaning noble. In it is the Brewers’ Hall.

THE BREWERS COMPANY

In the year 1445 the Brewers were first incorporated. Like many other trades, they had been associated long before. Thus in 1345 the Brewers (Riley’s Memorials, p. 225) are treated as a body, being ordered not to use the water of the Chepe conduit for making beer and ale, seeing that it was wanted for the supply of the citizens. (Fishmongers at the same time were forbidden to use the water for washing their fish.)

The original charter of February 22, 1445, granted by Henry VI., after citing the Brewers Company as one of the ancient mysteries, incorporates the Company into one body and perpetual community.

The charter granted 11th November, 2 Elizabeth, and the charter of August 29, 1563, confirm the previous charter of Henry VI.

The charter of July 13, 21 Elizabeth, appears to have been granted owing to the great increase of persons engaged in and practising the trade of brewing. The charter incorporates all persons in or about the City of London or the suburbs, or within two miles of the City.

The charter of 6th April, 15 Charles I., recites previous charters, but increases the jurisdiction of the corporation over the brewing trade in or about the City of London to a limit of four miles.

This charter of Charles I. confers a great deal of power on those in authority over the trade. It allows them to make rules and ordinances, and generally to exercise supervision over all members of the trade in and about the City, and within a four-mile radius.

Byelaws on the strength of this charter were framed for the Company on July 9, Charles I., 1641.

The charter of 18th March, 1 Charles II., after reciting the charter of 22nd February, 16 Henry VI., the confirmation of the said charter by Queen Elizabeth on August 29, 1563, and a surrender of the right to elect master, warden, or assistant, incorporates the Company again, nominates William Carpenter to be master till June 24, 1686, further nominates wardens and assistants; provides for the institution of search and quarterage, and for the binding of apprentices; gives the corporation the right to inspect brew-houses within certain limits, and to inflict penalties; orders that every assistant elected shall be a communicant, and allows the commonalty to distil aqua-vitæ or spirits.

The deed of July 1, 1684, surrenders the Company’s charter and all rights appertaining to it.

The charter of 18th March, James II., after reciting the charter of 16 Henry VI., and 4 Elizabeth, 1563, and the surrender of their charter by the Company, orders all brewers within eight miles of the City or suburbs of London to be of the corporation; establishes search and quarterage payments according to the number of servants employed; gives the Company power to make laws or set penalties; grants a licence in mortmain to purchase lands up to the value of £60; orders every master, warden, assistant, and clerk to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and to subscribe the declaration; orders each person elected to be a communicant.

The Company have a copy of byelaws drawn up in the year 1714, and signed by all the members of the court.

The present constitution, orders, rules, and conditions, as drawn up by the master, wardens, and assistants, were made on July 13, 1739. They provide for the holding of the courts; the election of masters, wardens, and assistants; for certain penalties for refusing to serve; for the auditing of accounts, for the election to the livery and freedom; for binding apprentices; for making the search and quarterage; for certain restrictions in the case of freemen; for power for the master and wardens to sue for penalties; for the taking of the oaths, and the signing of the declarations.

In February 13, 1857, the byelaws were altered under the Act of 6 William IV., as far as regards the taking of oaths, and an order was made that a declaration should be substituted for the oath.

The Company is governed by a master, three wardens, and twenty-six assistants.

This Company is one of the richest of the City Companies; it has an annual income of £2500 and administers Trusts and charities to the extent of £25,000 more; it has a livery of 47; it admits none but members of the trade. The Company has always, as might be expected, been rich and flourishing.

THE BRODERERS COMPANY

The first charter of the Company of Broderers, or embroiderers, is dated in 1561, and this is the earliest definite evidence now in the possession of the Company of the date of its existence as a Company, though the association existed long before incorporation. In an indenture of conveyance of certain of the Company’s property in Gutter Lane, dated 5 Henry VIII., one Thomas Foster (the grantee) is described as a citizen and broyderer, and “The wardens of the mystery of broyderers within the city of London” are described as a definite body in the will of the same Thomas Foster.

25th October, 3 Elizabeth, 1561.—Original charter of Queen Elizabeth.

Incorporates the freemen of the mystery or art of the broderers of the City of London and the suburbs by the name of Keepers or Wardens and Society of the Art or Mystery of the Broderers of the City of London, to have perpetual succession and a common seal, to bring and defend actions, and especially in the City of London to hold lands of the annual value of £30, for the assistance and support of poor men and women of the mystery.

Grants powers to the keepers or wardens from time to time to make good and salutary statutes and ordinances for the good regulation and government of the mystery and the freemen thereof, which shall be inviolably observed.

Grants to the keepers or wardens power to overlook and govern the art and all using the same in the City and suburbs thereof, the City of Westminster, Saint Katherine’s in Middlesex, and the borough of Southwark, and to punish all men for not truly working or selling.

20th April, 7 James I., 1609.—Original charter of James the First.

Contains only a recital and confirmation of the charter of Queen Elizabeth without any alteration or addition.

The above is an abstract of the subsisting charter of the Company.

It was the Broderers who produced the palls used by many Companies at the funerals of their members. They also made the pulpit cloths and altar cloths of the churches, the vestments of the clergy, the caparison of horses, and the decoration of arms and armour.

The livery in 1900 was 28. Their Trust Income about £32 : 9s. The beautiful art of embroidery is encouraged by this Company by scholarships at the Royal School of Art Needlework, Decorative Needlework Society, and Clapton and Stamford Hill Government School of Art.

Milton Street, one of the dreariest and dullest of thoroughfares, deserves some comment, having originally been that Grub Street for ever associated with starveling authors. In 1600 it was inhabited by bowyers, fletchers, bowstring-makers and such occupations. There were many bowling alleys and dicing houses. Andrew Marvell speaks of the Puritans of Grub Street.

It was in the eighteenth century that the poorer sort of literary men seem to have lived here.

Swift and Pope both ridiculed Grub Street writers; and Swift’s advice to Grub Street verse-writers is worth quoting:

I know a trick to make you thrive:

Oh! ’tis a quaint device:

Your still-born poems shall survive,

And scorn to wrap up spice.

Get all your verses printed fair,

Then let them well be dried:

And Curll must have a special care

To leave the margin wide.

Lend these to paper-sparing Pope,

And when he sits to write,

No letter with an envelope

Could give him more delight.

When Pope has filled the margin round,

Why then recall your loan;

Sell them to Curll for 50 pound,

And swear they are your own!

Let us commemorate some of the Grub Street poets and a few others of the same obscure kind. The names of those selected justify my assertion that the miseries of poets fell only on those who were profligate, indolent, or incapable.

Samuel Boyse, a colonist, so to speak, of Grub Street, since he evidently belonged to that and no other quarter, was not a native of London, but of Dublin, where his father was a dissenting minister of great name and fame. The young man was sent to Glasgow University, where he brought his university career to a close by marrying a wife at the age of nineteen. As he had no means of his own, he was obliged to take his wife, with her sister, to Dublin, where his father supported them, selling an estate he had in Yorkshire to defray his son’s debts. On his father’s death Samuel Boyse removed to Edinburgh, where he published a volume of poems and wrote an elegy on the death of Lady Stormont.

He had many introductions, but his natural indolence forbade his taking advantage of them. He seems to have been unable to converse with persons in higher life, and when letters failed he made no further effort to win their favour. Like all the poets of Grub Street, he was of a grovelling habit, and loved to make friends with men of low life and habit; at the same time he was selfishly extravagant, and would feast upon a casual guinea while his wife and child were starving at home. The casual guinea he mostly got by writing begging letters.

GRUB STREET HERMIT

At one time he was so far reduced that he had no garment of any kind to put on; all, including his shirts, were at the pawnbrokers; he sat up in bed with a blanket wrapped round him through which he had cut a hole for his arm, in which condition he wrote his verses. He died in 1749 in a lodging in Shoe Lane. A friend endeavoured to get up a subscription to save him from a pauper’s funeral. It was in vain; the parish officers had to take away the body.

The man was a hopeless tenant of Grub Street, without foresight, without prudence, without care, except for the present, without dignity or self-respect; his poetry was third-rate, yet there are fine passages in it; he had scholarly tastes, especially for painting and music, and in heraldry he was well skilled. In a word, Samuel Boyse is quite the most illustrious example of the poetaster who has failed to reach even the lower levels of genius; whose life was utterly contemptible; who would have brought, had such a man been worth considering, discredit by his sordidness and his want of principle, morals, and honour, upon the profession of letters.

Another case is that of Thomas Britton. He was born about the year 1650 at Higham Ferrers. He was apprenticed to a small coalman in Clerkenwell and followed the same trade. He walked the streets carrying his sack on his back, dressed in the blue frock of his profession. When he had disposed of his coal he walked home, looking at the book-stalls and picking up bargains. It was a splendid time for picking up bargains. There were still the remnants of the old Monastic libraries and MSS. together with the old books which had escaped the Great Fire.

Many collectors used to search about among the same book-stalls. Britton became known to them and was employed by them. The Earls of Oxford, Pembroke, Sunderland, and Winchelsea, and the Duke of Devonshire, were among those collectors.

Presently it was discovered that the small coalman, besides being an excellent hand at discovering an old book, was also a very good musician. Then the wonderful spectacle was to be seen of the great ones of the earth—the aristocracy, the wits, the musicians—assembling in an upper room of an itinerant pedlar of small coals to hear a concert of music. Handel played the harpsichord here; Dubourg played the violin. These concerts were begun in 1678 and continued for many years. Britton himself played the viol de gamba. But he was not only a musician and a bibliophile, he was also an antiquarian; he was a collector of music; in addition to all these things, he was also a chemist and had a laboratory of his own. He died in 1714, aged about sixty-four. He was buried in Clerkenwell Churchyard.

Let us not forget the famous Tom Brown. Though most of his life was spent in London, he was a native of Shifnal in Shropshire. He was sent to Christ Church, Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a linguist, a scholar, and a writer of pieces which were certainly witty whatever else they might be. He was so brilliant as a wit that he found it necessary to exchange Oxford for London, where he nearly starved. However, he obtained, just in time to save him, the school of Kingston-on-Thames, which he held for a while, giving it up after a very short tenure of office. Once more he came to London, and became poet, satirist, descriptive writer, and libeller. He was one of the earliest authors by profession, having, in fact, no other means of livelihood than the proceeds of his writings. There is very little known concerning his life; he is said to have been deficient in the courtliness which was necessary in the society of Addison and the wits of society; indeed, he belonged to a somewhat earlier time. He had no patron among the nobility, though it is related that he was once invited to dinner by the Earl of Dorset, who placed a bank-note for £50 under his plate. This was the solitary exception, however. Nothing is known as to his private circumstances, though it would be extremely interesting to learn what sums he received for his Dialogues, Letters, and Poems. He closed a short, merry, godless, waggish life at the early age of forty-one, a fact which suggests drink and good living, with other easy ways of shortening life. He is said—which one readily believes—to have died in great poverty, and he was buried in the cloister of Westminster Abbey.

An unfortunate poet named William Pattison belongs to Grub Street. He was the son of a farmer in Sussex. By the kindness of Lord Thanet he was sent to school and to Cambridge. He quarrelled, however, with the tutor of this College, and took his name off the boards. He then went up to London intending to live by his pen. It was a very bad time for living by the pen, and the boy, for he was no more, arrived with a very slender equipment of experience and knowledge. He began by soliciting subscriptions for a volume of poems; he seems to have had no friends; but he made some impression at the coffee-house by clever talk. When he had brought out his poems and spent all the subscription money, he fell into absolute indigence and was forced to accept a post as assistant in the shop of the notorious Curll. Before he did that, he wrote to Lord Burlington a poem called Effigies Authoris, in which he said that he was destitute of friends and money, half-starved, and reduced to sleeping on a bench in St. James’s Park. To another person he writes, “I have not enjoyed the common necessaries of life these two days.” He did not long continue in this post of bookseller’s assistant, because small-pox attacked him and he died. He was not yet twenty-two years of age.

Not with less glory mighty Dulness crowned

Shall take through Grub Street her triumphant round,

says Pope in “The Dunciad.”

Among others who lived in Grub Street was Foxe the martyrologist. General Monk is said to have had a house in a court off Grub Street. As to the origin of the later name of the street, it is in doubt, some asserting it was from a builder named Milton, and others that it was so called from Milton’s many residences in the neighbourhood. The latter explanation sounds probable; Milton lived at different times in Aldersgate Street, in Jewin Crescent, in Little Britain, and in Bunhill Fields, all within the district.

Eastward is Moorgate Street Station, and not far from it St. Bartholomew’s Church, founded in 1850 to meet new demands. Northward in White Street is the City of London College. This is a very large building occupying all the space between White’s Court and Finsbury Street. The lower part is red brick and above is glazed white brick. The character of the building changes just before the corner, having stone facings and a turret angle, which springs from above the first floor. This institution was founded in 1848 and was first established at Crosby Hall. It removed to Sussex Hall, Leadenhall Street, in 1881, and the present building was opened in 1884. In 1895 the secondary portion in White Street, connected with the main building by means of a bridge, was added. The institution was first established as Metropolitan Evening Classes. In 1891 it became, under a scheme of the Charity Commissioners, one of the constituent Institutes of the City Polytechnic. It is in union with the Society of Arts, the Science and Art Department, and the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute. The number of individual students in attendance during the session 1894-95 was 2257 (College Calendar, 1895-96). Besides languages, sciences, and arts, the curriculum includes a practical knowledge of technical subjects. There is accommodation for 4000 students.

In Redcross Street the long line of wall bounding the yard of the Midland Railway goods station occupies much of the east side. Beyond this is a grey brick house partly stone faced, and very ugly, with “Lady Holles’ School for Girls, founded 1702,” running across the front. The west side of the street is all composed of manufactories and warehouses in various styles.

There is a tree-covered space in the middle of Bridgewater Square. Along the south side is Tranter’s Temperance Hotel, a dingy building, in the same style as the houses in the street just mentioned. On the west near the south end are one or two old tiled houses. On the north the new building of the Cripplegate Without Boys’ School rises high, with narrow frontage and projecting bow window in the centre resting on a bracket. Up near the roof is the figure of a boy in a long coat standing in a niche. At this school there is accommodation for 260 boys; of these 150 are clothed by Trust, and an outfit on leaving and a situation found for all who pass the VIIth Standard.

The houses on either side of the school are of recent date, but from that on the west, to the west corner, stretches a long row of old houses with windows under the tiles on the roof. The west side of the square is almost wholly eighteenth century, in the usual style. The staircases are panelled, and have spiral balusters. The rooms are all completely wainscotted, and have heavily recessed fireplaces. The entrance ways are completely panelled, and many door lintels and window frames are perilously askew.

ST. GILES, CRIPPLEGATE

By far the most interesting object in the ward without the Walls is the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, which stands at the south end of Red Cross Street. It was built about 1090 by Alfure, who became the first Hospitaller of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; the building was replaced by a second church, towards the end of the fourteenth century, and this was burnt down in 1545. It was at once rebuilt, and escaped the Great Fire of 1666, and has remained substantially the same up to the present time. It is of exceptional interest in contrast with the uniformity of Wren’s City churches. In 1791 the pitch of the roof was raised, and during the latter half of the eighteenth century there was extensive restoration. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1181.

The patronage of the church has been in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who received it from Almund the priest in 1100, or thereabouts, up to the present time.

Houseling people in 1548 were 2440.

This church is in the Perpendicular style and contains a nave, chancel, and two side aisles separated from the central part by clustered columns and pointed arches. The total length is 146 feet 3 inches, and the height 42 feet 8 inches; the total height of the steeple 146 feet 3 inches, that of the four pinnacles rising from the corners of the parapet of the tower 12 feet 9 inches.

Chantries were founded in the church: By Richard Chaurye, whose endowment fetched £4 in 1548; by Matthew Ashebye, whose endowment yielded £9 : 7 : 8 in 1548. The King granted his licence to found the Fraternity of Our Lady and St. Giles, September 21, 1426; there were several chantries endowed here by John Bullinger, William Lake, and William Serle, and by William Grove and Richard Heyworth.

From a drawing by W. Pearson.
ST. GILES, CRIPPLEGATE

Among the several memorial windows of the church the most interesting is that at the west of the south aisle, comprising three subjects, erected in memory of Edward Alleyne, the founder of Dulwich College. The earliest monument now existing is of Thomas Busby, who died in 1575. On the west wall, at the end of the north aisle, is a tablet commemorating the martyrologist John Foxe, who died in the parish in 1587. Sir Martin Frobisher was buried here, but it was not till 1888 that a monument was erected to his memory, on the eastern part of the south wall. On the same wall, farther west, John Speed is commemorated, author of various works dealing with the history of Great Britain. The chief interest attaching to this church is the fact that in it John Milton was buried in 1674; there is a stone commemorating him. In 1793 a monument in the shape of a bust was erected to him at the expense of Samuel Whitbread, and in 1862 a cenotaph designed by Edmund Woodthorpe was placed in the south aisle. The church contains numerous other monuments, a great many of which have a considerable degree of interest; many of them have been erected to the memory of benefactors and vicars. It was here that the wedding of Oliver Cromwell was solemnised in 1620; the register also contains entries to another family whose name is also linked with Milton’s—that of the Egerton’s, Earls of Bridgewater.

The greatest of the benefactors recorded by Stow seems to have been Throckmorton Trotman, who gave to the parish £547 in all. In later times, Sir William Staines, Lord Mayor in 1800, was a liberal donor, founding and endowing four almshouses for decayed parishioners; also the Rev. Frederick W. Blomberg, D.D., vicar of this church in 1833.

There was a school for 150 boys in the Freedom; also another for 50 girls, supported by the donation of the Lady Eleanor Holles, the Haberdashers’ Free School. There were six almshouses, founded by Mr. Allen, also the Lorrimer’s almshouses.

John Buckeridge (d. 1631), Bishop of Rochester, was vicar here; also William Fuller (d. 1659), Dean of Durham; Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Bishop of Chichester, Ely, and Winchester; John Rogers, (1679-1729), chaplain to the Prince of Wales (afterwards George II.); John Dolben (1625-86), Archbishop of York; William H. Hale (1795-1870), Master of Charterhouse.

The churchyard contains a drinking fountain in the shape of the old Cripplegate, which is neatly laid out and intersected by a public footpath; there is also an interesting relic, a bastion of the old London Wall, 36 feet wide and about 12 feet high, the most perfect fragment of the wall now existing. It is of inconsiderable height, not more than 12 feet, and made of many odd pieces of different kinds of stone, laid in cement. It looks solid enough to last another 400 years. Ivy grows over it and over the adjoining wall, which is a modern addition. Within this bastion was formerly a small religious house called St. James-on-the-Wall (see Mediæval London, vol. ii. p. 368). The backs of great warehouses and the east side of the box-like vicarage surround the churchyard. Over the entry from Fore Street are several very old houses. We are outside the limits of the Fire here, as the date of the entry, 1660, testifies. This entry has a semicircular canopy or pediment containing this date, and the names of the churchwardens of the period, deeply and clearly cut. On either side are the representations of two large hour-glasses. A skull and cross-bones on the one side, and an hour-glass on the other, are carved in relief below, and the whole is covered with plaster. The backs of the houses are covered with overlapping pieces of wood which rise right up to the gable ends. Facing the street, there are projecting bays running up the front containing windows.

The street, London Wall, until the middle of the eighteenth century, consisted of a south row of houses facing the wall itself. In two places the space before the wall was occupied by churchyards, that of Allhallows-on-the-Wall and that of St. Alphage. Farther to the east, St. Martin Outwich also had a burial-ground beside the wall. The pulling down of the wall, the building of houses upon it and against it on either side, was the work of many years. To this day there are houses on the north side of the street to which access is gained by a step, showing that they were built actually on the wall. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a long piece of wall, where is now the opening to Finsbury Square, was taken down to allow of more sunshine in the front of Bethlehem Hospital. The appearance of the street at that time was very pleasing. Sion College, the churches of Allhallows and St. Alphage, and the Armourers’ Hall, with the venerable wall on the north, gave it a very striking and picturesque character. It is a great pity that the wall was taken down. The distance marked by the length of a lane connecting London Wall with the south side of Fore Street gives the breadth of the wall and of the town ditch beyond.

LONDON WALL

At the east end of London Wall is the church of

ALLHALLOWS, LONDON WALL

This church stands on the old Roman wall erected in the third century, and probably marks the site of one of the earliest Christian churches built in this country.

The earliest authentic records give particulars of a church on the present site, which dates from the year A.D. 1300, and there is little doubt that it replaced an earlier structure, which had stood since the Norman Conquest, and had fallen into disrepair. In A.D. 1474 Allhallows Chapel was constructed, probably for the accommodation of the Ankers, or Anchorites, who were closely associated with the church. The most famous of these was Sir Simon, or Master Anker, the author of a devotional book which has been preserved in the British Museum, entitled The Fruits of Redemption, who was a great benefactor to Allhallows.

In A.D. 1527 a new aisle was added to the church. Possibly Sir Simon, when he attached himself to Allhallows, discarded the loft over the chapel, and settled himself in a cell in the bastion of the old Roman wall, which now forms the vestry. If, as is probable, he had taken a vow never to emerge from his retirement, it may be that when the new aisle was added he was persuaded to place his eloquence at the disposal of the parishioners, by consenting to preach on condition that a private passage was made from his cell leading straight into the pulpit. This would explain why, when the present church was built, the conditions were reproduced by which the pulpit is not accessible from the church, but can only be reached by a staircase leading through the vestry.

The list of rectors can only be traced back to A.D. 1335, but there is an interesting record in the Croniques de Londres, which mentions that in A.D. 1320 the priest of Allhallows (whose name is not given) was murdered by Isabel de Bury, who took refuge in the church, but the Bishop of London would not allow her to seek sanctuary there, so she was seized, and was hanged five days afterwards.

The patronage of Allhallows was for many centuries in the hands of the Prior and Convent of Holy Trinity, Aldgate. At the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century it passed to the Crown, and since then has belonged to the Lord Chancellor.

The church was fortunate enough to escape destruction during the Great Fire in 1666, but it fell into a ruinous state about a century later, and had to be demolished. The present structure, for the erection of which a special Act of Parliament was passed, was commenced in A.D. 1765, and cost £3000. The architect was George Dance the younger, and it was his brother, Sir Nathaniel Dance Holland, R.A., who presented to the church the magnificent painting which hangs over the altar. It was a copy made by himself of the famous picture in the Church of the Conception at Rome by Pietro Berretini di Cortona, a Florentine painter of repute who died in 1669. The subject is the restoration to sight of Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul) by Ananias at Damascus. The fifteenth-century monk in the crowd gives a quaint touch of mediævalism to the scene.

The architecture of the church deserves a passing notice. The plan is intended to reproduce a modified Roman Basilican church, but the evidences of the Greek revival are shown in the character of the Ionic capitals of the interior columns, as well as in the famous Greek honeysuckle ornament, which appears both in the Roman barrel-vault of the ceiling and in the frieze round the interior walls. The church is almost unique in representing the transition stage between the Italian renaissance and the short-lived introduction of the Greek style.

Among the most famous rectors during the nineteenth century were the Rev. William Beloe, the well-known translator of Herodotus and Aulus Gellius; the Rev. Robert Nares, the Shakespearian glossary writer; and the Rev. George Davys, who was tutor to the late Queen Victoria, and became successively Rector of Allhallows, Dean of Chester, and Bishop of Peterborough.

Returning to our section, from which we have somewhat strayed, we find Wood Street has been already described.

In Noble Street stood the houses of Sir Nicholas Bacon and Sergeant Fleetwood, Recorder of London. This street is dismissed by Stow in a few words; it faced the City Wall westward, and so long as the Wall was preserved there was an open space of twenty feet at least free from buildings, while without there was the City Ditch. It began at the end of Foster Lane, having the Church of St. John Zachary in the east, and on the west, separated by a block of houses, the Church of St. Anne-of-the-Willows. Going up the street we pass Lilypot Lane, Oat Lane, leading to St. Mary Staining Church (see p. [47]), and two or three courts.

At the south end of Noble Street was Engain Lane, called also Maiden Lane, Ingelene Lane, or Ing Lane. Here a Roman pavement was found (Proceedings of Soc. Antiq. Series, i. 2. p. 184). Riley, in his Introduction to the Memorials, thinks that this lane is lost. He supposes, however, that the St. Michael “Hoggene Lane” was St. Michael Queenhithe, instead of St. Michael by Huggin Lane, which is adjacent.

A continuation of Maiden Lane is St. Anne’s Lane or Distaff Lane.

In 1339, William de Clif bequeaths tenements in Igene Lane “elsewhere called Ing Lane and Engaynes end, afterwards Maiden Lane” (Prideaux, Goldsmiths’ Company, vol. i. p. 4). In 1560, “Mother Lowndes” had a melting furnace in Maiden Lane. In 1627, Lord Nowell had the lease of a house in the lane. In 1642, Lord Campden wanted to purchase the messuage of which he held a lease, but was refused. In Staining Lane stood the almshouses of the Haberdashers for the men of that Company.

In the modern Noble Street the new Post Office Hotel is a conspicuous object on the east. Close by is Ye Noble Restaurant. Lilypot Lane is one consecutive series of the less ornamental style of modern brick and stone warehouses. Ye Olde Bell next to Oat Lane is evidently an old house, and, seen in the vista of the street, has a considerable bow forward. It is plastered. The coat-of-arms over the wooden doorway of the Coachmakers’ Hall arrests attention for a moment. Then we see Nos. 16 and 17 on either side over the entry of Fitchett’s Court, which are really old. They are of roughened red brick, dating from the rebuilding after the Fire. Fitchett’s Court is a narrow stone-flagged cul de sac lined on either side with similar houses. At the upper end is a modern glass-roofed building. It is inhabited chiefly by manufacturers’ agents, but is quaint, with a projecting bowed window near the entry, and a dark woodwork doorway with two carved brackets supporting the cornice. The house mentioned above in Noble Street on the north of the Court is The Royal Mail Tavern. The remainder of this street contains no point of interest. The Coachmakers’ Hall stands on the east side of Noble Street, north of Oat Lane.

THE COACHMAKERS COMPANY

The Hall stands on the site of Shelley House, owned by Sir Thomas Shelley temp Henry IV. Afterwards it was named Bacon House by Nicholas Bacon. “A plain man, direct and constant, without all finesse and doubleness,” who dwelt here till the Queen, Elizabeth, made him Lord Keeper in 1558, when he moved hence. He was the father of Lord Bacon, the philosopher. He sometime rebuilt this house, and was buried in St. Paul’s, where his effigy yet remains. After the Lord Keeper’s departure, William Fleetwood, Recorder of London, lived here between 1575 and 1586, yet he seems to have died in a house of his own building, in Noble Street, to the north of this (1593-94). By continual industry, advanced by natural good parts, he attained to the name of an eminent lawyer. He was a man of a merry conceit, eloquent and very zealous against vagrants, mass-priests, and papists. In 1638, Sir Arthur Savage and others sold the house to one Charles Bostock, scrivener. Now, the Common Scriveners had been a Company of this City by prescription, time out of mind. They made regulations for their profession in 1373; in 1390 they began their Common Paper, a book of ordinances and signatures, still extant. Yet there is no account of any Hall for them. In 1497 they met at the dwelling-place of Henry Woodcock, their warden; in 1557 at Wax Chandlers’ Hall. Their Charter of Incorporation (January 28, 1616-17) ordained a Hall, so in 1631 they bought Bacon House for £810. After the Great Fire of 1666 they rebuilt this.

Afterwards the Coachmakers Company treated for its purchase, and bought it with houses in Oat Lane, for £1600, raised by gift. For though coaches had become common since the seventeenth century began, and the Coach and Coach-Harness Makers had been incorporated in 1677, they had up till then no Hall.

Early in the nineteenth century the Hall had become a warehouse, whose counting-house retained the Coachmakers’ arms and a name-list of their benefactors. In 1841 they rebuilt it; in 1843 furnished it anew by subscription.

In 1870, borrowing money, they built the present Hall.

THE COACH AND COACH-HARNESS MAKERS COMPANY

The date of the first charter is 31st May, 29 Charles II., 1677, and is for the general protection and supervision of the trade of coachmakers and coach-harness makers.

In the early days of the Company, the master, wardens, and assistants used to visit all the workshops within the prescribed limits of the Company’s sphere of action, but that seems to have engendered bad feelings among the various members of the trade, and so gradually fell into desuetude; but in 1864 the Company granted the free use of the hall for the operative Coachmakers’ Industrial Exhibition, which was opened under the auspices of the Marquis of Lansdowne and the Very Reverend Dean Milman, D.D. From that time to the present the Company have continuously offered prizes to those connected with the trade.

At present the number of the livery is 115. The Corporate Income is £970; there is no Trust Income. The Company have of late held exhibitions and offered prizes for the encouragement of coach-building.

St. Olave’s Churchyard is on the south side of Silver Street. A stone inscription tells us that the road was widened 8 feet in 1865 just at this point. The disused graveyard is now open to the public as a recreation ground, and the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association have distributed seats about among the old tombs. Low down by the steps at the entrance is a stone slab bearing a heading of a skull and cross-bones, and beneath the following words:

This was the parish church of St. Olave’s, Silver Street, destroyed by the Dreadful Fire in the year 1666.

ST. OLAVE, SILVER STREET

This church was situated on the south side of Silver Street, in Aldersgate Ward. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Alban’s, Wood Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1343.

The patronage of the church was always in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

Houseling people in 1548 were 130.

No monuments of any interest are recorded.

The parish received two charitable gifts: a messuage purchased for £58, the gift of Roger James; and £5 : 10s., to be paid every tenth year, the gift of Bernard Hyde.

In Silver Street, No. 24 is the Parish Clerks’ Hall.

PARISH CLERKS

The Parish Clerks were first incorporated by 12 Henry III., 1232, and confirmed by 14 Henry IV., 1412. In 1547, the first year of Edward VI., all lands and properties belonging to fraternities not being mysteries and crafts, were declared Crown possessions; thus the Parish Clerks suffered the loss of their hall in Bishopsgate, which was sold to Sir Robert Chester in 1548. In vain they disputed the King’s claim; in vain obtained powerful support in the City, and hoped to win the day: Sir Robert pulled down their hall, and they were homeless. Then they took quarters at the north-west corner of Broad Lane in the Vintry; the site is now thrown into the roadway of Queen Street Place. Immortal Machyn, in his diary, 1562, records that, after service at the Guildhall chapel and procession, that year the Parish Clerks went to “their own” hall to dine; this was the Broad Lane house. Little enough is known of the premises: the Clerks were paying thirty-one nobles (£10 : 6: 8) rent in 1583; in 1592 they commenced publishing the Bills of Mortality; on renewing the lease in 1628, for forty years, they handed to “the superior” £40 as fine. By this time they had been reincorporated by the 8 James I., 1611, and were confirmed by 12 Charles I., 1636. They seem to have covered their rent from 1648 onwards by letting the lower rooms and cellars on lease for £11 per annum. In 1625 the Star Chamber granted them permission to set up a printing-press in this hall for the purpose of issuing the weekly Bills of Mortality. Here also the Company appointed its own joiner, carpenter, and bricklayer, nor omitted to secure the all-important cook. By 1637 the bricklayer had new-tiled the roof; he charged £12: also the joiner had wainscotted the parlour, but the Clerks thought his bill of £13 rather too much; he must include “some convenient work in addition,” to be set up above the three doors in the newly wainscotted room, then they would pay him and appoint him their official joiner. The Great Fire destroyed this hall two years before the lease was up. For some time the Court of the Company wandered from tavern to tavern, but in 1671 ultimately settled at their present hall in Silver Street.

Monkwell Street, anciently written Mugwell, Muggewell, or Mogwell Street, was so called, according to Stow, after a well in the Hermitage of St. James at the north end of the street. The Hermitage was a cell belonging to Garendon Abbey where two or three of the brethren resided as chaplains. There is no doubt about the house or the Hermitage, and very possibly there was a well within its small precinct. At the same time the ancient form of the name, Mugwell, does not suggest the word Monk. It seems probable that the name was originally Mugwell, and that after the Dissolution the memory of the well was kept up by a corruption of the name. The street appears to have been outside the industries of North London. It is mentioned many times in the Calendar of Wills, but never in connection with workshops or trading shops. Between 1277 and 1576 there are the entries of the street. They all speak of rents, tenements, and houses. In the year 1349 we find a brewery in the street. This naturally inclines us to think that there must have been a well—? Mugwell—to supply the brewery. In Riley’s Memorials it is mentioned once only in connection with a tourelle of London Wall near the street. The Hermitage was succeeded by Lamb’s Chapel.

THE BARBERS

This Fraternity should also be of extreme antiquity. When or why the barbers took upon themselves the practice of surgery I do not know. It was the custom of the Roman Catholic Church to allow ecclesiastics to become physicians on the condition (Council of Tours, 1163) that they abstained from fire and steel; Rabelais, for instance, in the fifteenth century, practised medicine subject to this condition. But some kinds of surgery are necessary: bone-setting, for instance, which was understood and performed by the common people; dentistry, which at first fell into the hands of barbers but afterwards became a separate mystery practised by itinerants; cupping, blood-letting, the dressing of wounds, and amputations also fell into the hands of the barbers. But not of all the barbers. Surgery advanced by degrees; it became a distinct profession before it was recognised.

That the barbers practised blood-letting is proved by an ordinance of 1307 forbidding them to put blood in their windows in view of folks. In 1308, Richard le Barber is presented to the mayor and admitted Master over the trade of Barbers. He swore to make scrutiny among the craft, and if he found any keeping brothels or acting unseemly he would distrain upon them. The oath indicates that barbers were suspected of keeping disorderly houses; in fact they looked after the bagnios, which were always regarded with well-founded suspicion. Barbers were often appointed as gatekeepers. The reason would seem difficult to find, until it is remembered that it was strictly forbidden that lepers should enter the City, and that barbers were better able than other men from their medical knowledge to detect them.

The earliest admission of a surgeon is recorded in the year 1312. John of Southwark is described as “cirurgicus.” Clearly he was that and nothing else; not a shaving man at all.

Some of them were wealthy. For instance, Hamo the Barber in 1340 was assessed at £10 as his contribution towards a forced loan of £5000 to the King.

In the year 1376, the fraternity was ruled by two masters representing the two divisions of barbers—who could also let blood and draw teeth—and surgeons.

In the year 1388, the King sent writs all over the kingdom to inquire into the constitution of the guilds and fraternities then existing in the country. The returns appear to have been lost. But the return sent in by the barbers still exists in a copy preserved at Barbers’ Hall. It is published in extenso in Mr. Sidney Young’s book. It is a long document, and it pours a flood of light upon the guilds and their laws. The original is in Norman French.

Since the barbers were not yet incorporated, they had no authority except over their own members. They could not, therefore, prevent the formation of a Fraternity of Surgeons, who practised without any reference to the barbers. In 1376, the barbers, no doubt because of this rival guild, complained against incompetent persons practising surgery, and prayed that two masters should rule the craft, and that none should be admitted without examination. In 1390, the Surgeons’ Guild obtained powers to appoint five masters for the directing of those practising surgery and of women as well as men. The surgeons thereupon tried to exercise the right of scrutiny over the barbers, who claimed and obtained the protection of the City.

In the year 1461, Edward IV. granted the barbers a Charter of Incorporation.

The preamble to the Letters Patent, 1 Edward IV., by which the Company were incorporated, recites that the Freemen of the Mystery of Barbers of the City of London, using the Mystery or Faculty of Surgery, had for a long time exercised and sustained and still continued to exercise and sustain great application and labour, as well about the curing and healing wounds, blows, and other infirmities as in the letting of blood and drawing of teeth, and that by the ignorance and unskilfulness of some of the said barbers, as well freemen of the said City as of others being foreign surgeons, many misfortunes had happened to divers people by the unskilfulness of such barbers and surgeons in healing and curing wounds, blows, hurts, and other infirmities, and that it was to be feared that the like or worse evils might thereafter ensue unless a suitable remedy was speedily provided in the premises.

And it was thereby granted to the freemen of the said mystery of barbers in the said City of London, that the said mystery and all the men of the said mystery, should be one body, and one perpetual community, with power for electing two masters or governors, and that the said masters or governors and commonalty and their successors might make statutes and ordinances for the government of the said mysteries. And that the masters or governors for the time being, and their successors, should have the survey, search, correction, and government of all the freemen of the said City being surgeons, using the mystery of barbers in the said City, and other surgeons being foreigners practising the mystery of surgery within the said City and suburbs thereof, and the punishment of them for offences in not perfectly executing, performing, and using the said mystery, and should have the survey of all manner of instruments, plaisters, and other medicines, and the receipts used by the said barbers and surgeons for the curing and healing of sores, wounds, hurts, and such like infirmities. And that no barber using the said mystery of surgery within the said City or suburbs should be thereafter admitted to exercise the same mystery unless he had first been approved of as well instructed in that mystery by the said masters or governors, or their successors sufficiently qualified in that behalf.

By the Act of Parliament of 32 Henry VIII., after reciting that within the said City of London there were then two several and distinct companies of surgeons exercising the science and faculty of surgery, the one company called the Barbers of London, and the other called the Surgeons of London, and that the former were incorporated by the Letters Patent of 1 Edward IV., but the latter had not any manner of incorporation; it was enacted that the two several and distinct companies, and their successors, should from thenceforth be united and made one entire and whole body corporate, which should thereafter be called by the name of Masters or Governors of the Mystery or Commonalty of Barbers and Surgeons of London.

The Letters Patent of 1 James and 5 Chas. I., granted and confirmed to the united companies: All and singular the manors, messuages, lands, tenements, customs, liberties, franchises, immunities, jurisdictions, and hereditaments of the united companies of barbers and surgeons then held by them and enjoyed under any letters patent of any former kings and queens or by colour of any lawful prescription, with power to make byelaws, annual elections, appoint examiners of surgeons, and that no person should exercise surgery within the cities of London and Westminster or within the distance of seven miles of the said cities, unless previously examined; and by the public letters testimonial of the said company, under their common seal, and admitted to exercise the said art or mystery of surgery under the penalty therein mentioned; and that all persons so examined and admitted as aforesaid might exercise the art in any other places whatsoever of the kingdom of England, with power to appoint lectures for instruction in the principles and rudiments in the art of chirurgery.

By the Act of 18 Geo. 2, cap. 15, after reciting the before-mentioned Acts, and that the barbers had for many years past been engaged in a business foreign to and independent of the practice of surgery, and the surgeons being then become a numerous and considerable body, and finding their union with the barbers inconvenient in many respects, and in no degree conducive to the progress of the art of surgery, and that a separation of the corporation of barbers and surgeons would contribute to the improvement of surgery, it was enacted that the said union and incorporation of barbers and surgeons should, after June 24, 1745, be dissolved, and the surgeons were constituted a separate and distinct body corporate by the name of the Master, Governors, and Commonalty of the Art and Science of Surgeons of London; and the barbers were thereby constituted a body corporate and commonalty perpetual, which should be called by the name of the Master, Governors, and Commonalty of the Mystery of Barbers of London.

The Barbers Company, since their separation from the surgeons, have continued to conduct the affairs of the Company.

The Hall of the Company is mentioned by Stow with certain particulars of their history:

“In this west side is the Barbers-Chirurgeons’ hall. This Company was incorporated by means of Thomas Morestede, esquire, one of the sheriffs of London 1436, chirurgeon to the kings of England, Henry IV., V., and VI.: he deceased 1450. Then Jaques Fries, physician to Edward IV., and William Hobbs, physician and chirurgeon for the same king’s body, continuing the suit the full time of twenty years, Edward IV., in the 2nd of his reign, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, became founders of the same corporation in the name of St. Cosme and St. Damiane. The first assembly of that craft was Roger Strippe, W. Hobbs, T. Goddard, and Richard Kent; since the which time they built their hall in that street, etc.”

The number of the livery is about 120. There are no particulars as to the Corporate Income of the Company. The Trust Income is about £650 per annum.

GROUP III

The third group of streets is that which is bounded on the south by Cannon Street, on the east by Bishopsgate Street and Gracechurch Street, and on the west by Moorgate Street, Princes Street, and Walbrook, and northward by the City limits.

This, with Cheapside, includes the very heart and centre of the City. In it are the streets called Cornhill, Lombard Street, Threadneedle Street, Throgmorton Street, Lothbury, Princes Street, and Broad Street. Here were formerly the ecclesiastical foundations of the Austin Friars and St. Anthony’s. Here are the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England, the Mansion House, the offices of many Banks and of Companies; the site of such well-known houses as the Baltic, the South Sea House, Garraway’s, the Jerusalem, the London Tavern. In Lombard Street we have the first house of City Firemen and the first Post Office. In Broad Street is the site of Gresham House, afterwards Gresham College, founded with such a noble ambition, fallen now to so poor a place.

In this place it is proposed to take the principal streets and lanes and to set down whatever points of interest have not been touched upon in the large History of London.

Cornhill has been a crowded street from time immemorial. Stow says that there was here a corn market. It does not seem proved, however, that there ever was one here. Loftie points out that the London corn market was on the east side of St. Michael-le-Querne, opposite Bread Street. It has been suggested that the family of Coren Hell or Corn Hill gave their name to the ward. In 1125 there is Edward Heep Cornhill among those engaged in the conveyance of the Portsoken to the Holy Trinity Priory. But a market of some sort was most certainly held here, and it may have been originally a corn market.

We must not suppose that the division of trades and markets was ever rigidly observed. If there were bakers in Bread Street, there may have been bakers elsewhere for the general convenience. Then in 1347 (Riley’s Memorials, p. 236) there was a corn market in Gracechurch Street and another in Newgate Street. The market was opposite the Franciscan House, so that perhaps we may accept Stow’s statement and conclude that the corn market of Cornhill gradually receded eastward into Gracechurch Street, where it was presently absorbed by Leadenhall Market, which is reckoned by Stow as in Cornhill.

In 1310 proclamation was made in the City as follows:

“It is ordered and commanded on the King’s behalf, that no man or woman shall be so daring or so bold as from henceforth to hold a common market for any manner of merchandise in the highway of Chepe after the hour of None, as heretofore they have done; nor yet in any other place within the City, save only upon Cornhulle; and that, from Matins until the hour of None, and not after: on pain of forfeiture of the goods so carried there to sell, by way of holding common market there” (Riley’s Memorials, p. 75).

The hour of “None” is from two to three. What was the meaning of this proclamation? Why must the markets of Chepe be closed at three while those of Cornhill remained open? But in 1369, because many cheats had been possible by selling things after dark, it was ordered that at the ringing of the bell upon the Tun at sunset (not the bell of St. Mary-le-Bow, which only belonged to West Chepe), all shops and stalls were to be closed.

The Tun, of which mention has often been made in other volumes of this book, was a small prison, something like a tun, built by Henry le Waleys in 1282. Beside it was a conduit built by the same citizen. And there was a standard for Thames water brought there by the contrivance of one Peter Morris, a Dutchman. Distances were reckoned from the standard of Cornhill.

Here were stocks for the sturdy beggar, the lazar, should he venture into the City, and fraudulent dealers. Here was a pillory for similar offenders; one William Felde stood in it in 1375 for cheating hucksters of ale. Here Gyleson also, in 1348, was so put to public shame for selling putrid pork, some of which was burned under his nose to his unspeakable discomfort.

The earliest occupants of Cornhill, according to Strype, were drapers. It is, however, certain that other trades were established there. Thus in 1302 there is a baker of Cornhill; in 1318 a bakehouse opposite the Pillory; in 1345 the City poulterers are ordered not to sell east of the Tun on Cornhill, while the “foreign” poulterers are sent to Leadenhall; in 1342, “false” blankets are burned in Cornhill; in 1347 there is a turner of Cornhill; in 1364 a tailor; in 1365 the pelterers are ordered to carry on their business in Cornhill, Walbrook, and Budge Row only; in 1372 the blacksmiths are confined for the exhibition of their wares to Gracechurch Street, St. Nicholas Fleshambles’ (Newgate), and the Tun of Cornhill.

The punishment of common clerks illustrated by Stow is noted elsewhere. As regards the Tun, he writes:

THE PUMP IN CORNHILL, 1800

“By the west side of the foresaid prison, then called the Tun, 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 Tiborne, 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 bawds, scolds, and other offenders. As in the year 1468, the 7th of Edward IV., divers persons being common jurors, such as at assizes were forsworn for rewards, or favour of parties, were judged to ride from Newgate to the pillory in Cornhill, with mitres of paper on their heads, there to stand, and from thence again to Newgate, and this judgment was given by the mayor of London. In the year 1509, the 1st of Henry VIII., Darby, Smith, and Simson, ringleaders of false inquests in London, rode about the city with their faces to the horse tails, and papers on their heads, and were set on the pillory in Cornhill, and after brought again to Newgate, where they died for very shame, saith Robert Fabian.

“The foresaid conduit upon Cornhill, was in the year 1475 enlarged by Robert Drope, draper, mayor, that then dwelt in that ward; he increased the cistern of this conduit with an east end of stone and castellated it in comely manner” (Stow’s Survey, p. 208).

In the time of Stow there were still standing some of the old houses, built of stone in accordance with the regulations of Henry Fitz Aylwin and other mayors. The danger of fire was thus diminished. But those houses which in many cases were built round open courts, covering a large space and of no more than two stories in height, were gradually taken down and houses of four or five stories built in their place, a fact which must be remembered when we read of the Great Fire. All those broad courts and open spaces which might have checked the Fire at so many points were gone in 1666, and replaced by high houses standing together and by narrow courts.

The Royal Exchange, the Bank of England, and the Mansion House are so mixed up with the general history of London that they must be sought for in the volumes that have preceded this.

The Weigh-house was the place where all merchandise brought across the sea was taken to be weighed at the King’s beam. “This house hath a master, and under him four master porters, with porters under them: they have a strong cart, and four great horses, to draw and carry the wares from the merchants’ houses to the beam and back again” (Stow, p. 73). The house was built by Sir Thomas Lovell, “with a fair front of tenements towards the street.” The cart therefore was taken into an inner court through a gateway, as we might expect.

There were many taverns in and about Cornhill.

In the sixteenth century was still standing one of the old stone houses of which we have spoken. This was popularly known as “King John’s House.” Now at the granting of the commune to the City, John lodged at the house of Richard Fitz Richer, the sheriff. Possibly this was the house. Pope’s Head Alley marks the site of the Pope’s Head Tavern, which had the ancient arms of England, three leopards between two angels, engraved in stone on the front. Stow thinks it may have been a royal palace.

A perspective view of Cornhill at the present day gives a very fine effect. The sides are lined with large buildings on the erection of which no time or expense has been spared, and the protuberant stone decoration and the lines of enriched windows give on the whole an appearance of wealth and dignity. Yet, taken singly, there are few of these buildings that deserve any commendation. There is a sameness and want of originality. Everywhere are round-headed windows and stone foliage; everywhere the same shaped roof projections and pinnacles. The flagged space in front of the Royal Exchange is decorated by trees in tubs, and on it stands an equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington. This was executed by Sir Francis Chantrey in 1844. The Royal Exchange lines the side of the street for some distance and all round the ground-floor are shops, etc. Beyond it is a second open space. The statue here facing southward is of Rowland Hill. The figure is on a block of polished granite.

Beyond Finch Lane the Union Bank of Australia stands out as one of the exceptions to the general monotony of the street. It is of white stone, in a severe style without undue excrescences, and the chief ornament is a row of sculpturesque figures supporting the cornice.

On the south side of Cornhill an entrance to St. Peter’s Church first attracts attention.

ST. PETER, CORNHILL

This church is possibly the most ancient in the City. It was practically rebuilt in the reign of Edward IV. and thoroughly renovated in 1632, but so damaged by the Great Fire that after attempts at restoration it had to be rebuilt. The present building was erected by Wren in 1680-81. The earliest known date of an incumbent is 1263—one John de Cabanicis. There is an unbroken succession since John de Exeter, 1282.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the family of Nevil before 1263, one of whom, Lady Alice Nevil, conveyed it in 1362 to Richard, Earl of Arundell, for a term of years; in 1380 to Thomas Coggeshall and others; in 1402 to Hampweyde Bohern, Earl of Hereford. It was again conveyed about, or shortly before, 1395 to Robert and Margaret Rykedon and others, who presented to it in 1405; it was confirmed to Richard Whittington and others in 1408, who in turn confirmed it in 1411 to the Mayor and Commonalty of London, in whose successors it continued.

Houseling people in 1548 were 500.

The church measures 80 feet in length, 47 feet in breadth, and 40 feet in height, and contains a nave and two aisles separated from the central portion by Corinthian columns. There is a very fine screen, one of the only two erected in the City of London, and the only one remaining in its original position. The steeple, which rises at the south-west, attains a height of 140 feet, and consists of a tower and cornice surmounted by a cupola, an octagonal lantern, and a spire, terminating in St. Peter’s emblem, the Key. The view of the exterior is blocked on the north by intervening houses, but on the south the church is open to the churchyard.

Chantries were founded here by Roger FitzRoger previous to 1284; by Nicholas Pycot at the Altar of St. Nicholas in 1312; by Philip de Ufford at the Altar of St. Katherine in 1321; by Robert de la Hyde at the Altar of St. George in 1328; by William Elliot (William of Kingston) at the Altar of the Holy Trinity, for himself, Sarah and Alynor his wives, and for his father and mother in 1375; by John Foxton at the Altar of St. George in 1382; by John Waleys at the same altar in 1409; and by Dame Alice Brudenel in 1437 to the Altar of St. Nicholas. There were also chantries founded by Richard Morley, Peter Mason, and John Lane. The Guild or Fraternity of St. Peter was established in this church by Henry IV. in 1403 at the intercession of Queen Johanna, William Aghton being rector. The valuation of the Rectory temp Henry VIII. was £39 : 5 : 7½, to which was added tenths from the chantries amounting to £14 : 14 : 4.

A large number of monuments are recorded by Stow, some of the most notable of which were in memory of: William of Kingston; Margery Clopton, widow of Robert Clopton; Sir Christopher Morice, Master Gunner of England to Henry VIII.; Sir Henry Huberthorne, Merchant Taylor, and Lord Mayor of the City; Francis Breerewood, Treasurer of Christ’s Hospital; Sir William Bowyer. John Carpenter, the famous Town Clerk of London and compiler of the Liber Albus, was also buried here. In the vestry is an interesting tablet copy of one hanging in St. Paul’s Cathedral from A.D. 1300, and preserved from the Great Fire, to the effect that this church was the first founded in London, and that it was erected by King Lucius in 179—a legend which Stow himself appears not to have believed. There is here, also, the old key-board and organ-stops used by Mendelssohn when he played in St. Peter’s in 1840 and 1842. The portraits of Bishop Beveridge and Bishop Waugh, both of whom were rectors here for some years, hang on the walls. A fine manuscript Vulgate, with illuminations, written for the Altar of the Holy Trinity in St. Peter’s, is also preserved in the vestry.

Drawn by G. Shepherd.
ST. PETER’S, CORNHILL

Among the most important charities were those of: Laurence Thompson, 1601, who left £100 in trust for tea, coal, and bread for the poor of the parish. William Walthal, 1606, who left £246 : 13 : 4, £200 of which was to be lent to the struggling shopkeepers of the parish, the interest to be distributed in bread and coal. The Robert Warden (1609) bequest for Ash Wednesday sermons and Sunday bread to be administered through the Poulterers Company. The Lucy Edge (1630) bequest for the weekly lecture. Sir Benjamin Thorowgood’s (1682) bequest of three shops at the west end of the church for the maintenance of the organ and organist; and the Gibbs’ bequest (1864). Of these, all, with the exception of the Lucy Edge and Gibbs’ bequests, which provide for the Thursday lecturer, and part of the Robert Warden bequest, which provides for the Ash Wednesday sermon before the Poulterers Company, have been appropriated, with other endowments, by the City Parochial Charities, out of which common fund a yearly allowance is made for the upkeep of the Church.

John Hodgkin, Bishop of Bedford, 1537, was rector here; also John Taylor (d. 1554), Bishop of Lincoln; Francis White (d. 1638), Bishop of Ely; William Beveridge (1637-1708), Bishop of St. Asaph; John Waugh, Bishop of Carlisle, 1723—he is buried in front of the present altar.

Next door to the church is another of the exceptions in the street, a well-designed terra-cotta building. The building is in a late Perpendicular or Tudor style, and is appropriately named Tudor Chambers. St. Peter’s Alley leads to the graveyard at the back of the church, which is cut in two by an abnormally broad sweeping way up to the centre door. Plainly built chambers of many stories look down on the dusty evergreens of the churchyard. The next object of interest is the deeply recessed and beautifully ornamented porch of St. Michael, which stands back a little from the line of the street. By the side of the church is St. Michael’s Alley, which leads us to the graveyard. In this a small cloister or entry with vaulted roof leads through to the churchyard, a space of newly turned soil with a fringe of the inevitable evergreen bushes.

The great London coffee-house was set up in St. Michael’s Alley in 1652 by one Pasqua Rosee.

ST. MICHAEL, CORNHILL

The body of St. Michael’s Church was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren in 1672; the tower was injured and pulled down in 1722, when the present tower, also the work of Wren, was erected. In 1858 it was greatly altered by Sir Gilbert Scott. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1287.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Alnoth the priest, before 1133, who granted it to the Abbot and Convent of Evesham, who gave it in 1133 to Sparling the priest; the Abbot and Convent of Evesham, who granted it in 1505 to Simon Hogan, who bequeathed it to the Drapers’ Company, who presented to it in 1515, and in whose successors it continued.

The church measures 87 feet in length, 60 feet in breadth, and 35 feet in height, and contains two aisles divided from the nave by Doric columns. The church was originally in the Italian style, but the alterations in 1858-60 by Sir Gilbert Scott give the appearance of a nineteenth-century imitation of mediævalism. The tower is Gothic in architecture, and contains three stories crowned by a parapet from the angles of which four pinnacles rise up. The total height is 130 feet. The church has always been famous for its bells, of which it possesses 12.

Chantries were founded here by: Walter de Bullingham, to which John de Bourge was admitted chaplain, August 22, 1390; Thomas Baker augmented the endowment by £2 : 18 : 8; Ralph More was chaplain in 1548, “a man of 50 yrs. who hath lyen bedridden this 18 years”; Simon Smith; William Comerton at the Altar of Blessed Virgin Mary; Hamo Box, for which the King granted his licence, July 28, 1321; William Rus, whose endowment for this and other purposes fetched £27 : 13 : 4 in 1548, when William Penne was priest “of the age of 38 years, and of indifferent learning and hath none other living but this his yearly stipend of £8”; Andrew Smythe, who endowed it with lands, etc., which fetched £12 in 1548, when John Paddye was priest “of the age of 26 years, indifferently learned, having no other living or promotion over and above his stipend of £7 : 6 : 7”; Simon Mordonne, mayor, 1368, who left tenements valued at £9 in 1548, when John Campyon was priest, “of the age of 66 years, a good singer and indifferently well learned, having none other living besides this his stipend of £6 : 18 : 4”; John Langhorne, who endowed it with tenements which yielded £10 : 8s. in 1548, when Abail Mortcock was priest, “of the age of 36 years, whose qualities, conversation, and learning is as the other and hath none other living but this his stipend of £6 : 13 : 4.” The King granted his licence to Peter Smart and others to found a guild in honour of St. Anne and Our Lady, September 27, 1397, which was valued at £17 : 13 : 4 in 1548, when Sir William Bryck was chaplain “of the age of 33 years, moderately well learned.” John Shopman and others have licence to found a guild in honour of Blessed Virgin Mary with special devotion to St. Michael the Archangel, October 4, 1442.

CONFECTIONER’S SHOP, CORNHILL

Alderman Robert Fabian (d. 1513) was buried here in 1513; he compiled an elaborate chronicle, The Concordance of Histories, dealing with France as well as England. This church is specially connected with the antiquary John Stow, and both his father and grandfather were buried here. Against the north walk there is a monument in memory of John Vernon, erected in place of one consumed by the Fire, by the Merchant Taylors in 1609; he was a donor of several large legacies. In 1609 John Cowper was buried here—founder of a family whose memory is still preserved in connection with Cowper’s Court, Cornhill. To this family the poet Cowper belonged.

The parish was extremely rich in charitable gifts. Brass tablets are affixed to the sides of the tower recording the dates, etc., of repairs, and the benefactors in connection, amongst whom are the following: Sir John Langham, £500; Sir Edward Riccard, £100; James Clotheroe, £50. Other benefactors were Robert Drope, donor of £30, and his wife Jane, afterwards Viscountess Lisle, of £90.

William Brough (d. 1671), Dean of Gloucester, and author of several religious works, was rector here; also Robert Poole-Finch (1724-1803), chaplain of Guy’s Hospital and a preacher of some eminence.

No. 15 Cornhill is the oldest shop of its class in the Metropolis. The window is set in a carved wooden framework, painted green, which encloses the small glass panes in three arches. It was established as a confectioner’s shop in the time of George I., and it is a confectioner’s still. Within, the low roof and thick woodwork testify its age. It might easily be overlooked, as the brick house rising above it presents no noticeable feature.

Of Change Alley one has to note that Jonathan’s Coffee-house was the resort of those who dealt and dabbled in stocks.

GARRAWAY’S COFFEE-HOUSE

Why did ‘Change Alley waste thy precious hours,

Among the fools who gap’d for golden show’rs?

No wonder if we found some poets there,

Who live on fancy and can feed on air;

No wonder they were caught by South-Sea schemes,

Who ne’er enjoyed a guinea but in dreams.

Here also were Garraway’s and Robins’ Coffee-houses. In 1722 “the better sort,” according to Defoe, who carried on business as a hosier in Freemason’s Court, met at these coffee-houses before going to the Exchange.

The present Stock Exchange was not erected till the year 1801.

Strype thus speaks of the Alley as it was after improvements:

“Exchange Alley, that lies next eastward, hath two passages out of Cornhill; one into Lombard Street, and another bending east into Birchin Lane. It is a large Place vastly improved, chiefly out of an house of Alderman Backwall’s, a Goldsmith, before the Great Fire, well built, inhabited by tradesmen; especially that passage into Lombard Street against the Exchange, and is a place of a very considerable concourse of Merchants, seafaring men and other traders, occasioned by the great Coffee houses, Jonathan’s and Garraway’s, that stand there. Chiefly now brokers, and such as deal in buying and selling of Stocks, frequent it. The Alley is broad and well paved with free-stones, neatly kept. The Fleece Tavern, seated in Cornhill, hath a passage into this Alley, being a very large house and of great resort.” At No. 41 Thomas Gray the poet was born on December 24, 1716.

Change Alley is at present a winding and tortuous thoroughfare. It bears the date 1886 over the western entry, and contains many red and glazed white brick houses. Close by this entry is the Bakers’ Chop House, a curious little old building with projecting windows of dark wood.

In the next portion of Change Alley is a well-built red brick building by R. Norman Shaw, with a slab on the north-east corner bearing the inscription:

The site of Garraway’s Coffee House, rebuilt 1874;

and beneath is a large stone grasshopper.

Gracechurch Street, called also Grass church, Garscherche, and Gracious Street, was formerly a market for hay, corn, malt, cheese, etc. There was uncertainty about the name, for in 1329 we find it written Grescherche Street, in 1333 Grascherche Street, a form of the name which is afterwards repeated.

In 1275 there is a will by one Martin de Garscherche bequeathing property to his sons and daughters; in 1294, 1311, and 1324, we hear of tenements in Garscherche, which seems as if the place was then an open market, not yet settled down to a street; perhaps, however, the dignity of a street was sometimes conferred upon it, for in 1296 there is mention of Leadenhall in Garscherch Street, and in 1342 it is also named as a street.

In 1320 one of the supervisors of shoes was Richard le Cordewaner of “Gras cherche”; in 1347 a jury of “Graschirche,” consisting of a butcher and eleven others, accused John de Burstalle of selling corn at more than the legal price, and he was sent to prison for forty days; in 1372 it was ordained that the blacksmiths should send their work either to “Graschirche” or to the “Pavement” by St. Nicholas Fleshambles, or by the Tun on Cornhill, and should stand by their work openly. Therefore the market here was not confined to hay and corn. In 1386 one Thomas Stokes was in trouble for pretending to be an officer and taker of ale for the household of the King, under which pretence he marked with an arrowhead several barrels in the brewery of William Roke of Graschirche. There was therefore a brewery in the market. One finds so many breweries scattered about the City that one asks how they got the water; it must certainly have been drawn up from a local well. Another case of personating an officer of the King was that of William Redhede in 1417, who tried to carry off certain bushels of wheat at Graschirche pretending that they were for the King. He was clapped into prison and then put in pillory. “Upon the three market days ensuing he was to be taken each day from the Prison of Newgate to the Market called ‘le Cornmarket’ opposite to the Friars Minors and there the cause of the judgment aforesaid was to be proclaimed: and after that he was to be taken through the middle of the high street of Chepe to the Pillory on Cornhille; and upon that he was to be placed on each of those three days there to stand for one hour each day, the reason of his sentence being then and there proclaimed, and after that he was to be taken from thence through the middle of the high street of Cornhill to the Market of Graschirche aforesaid, where like proclamation was to be made: and from thence back to prison.”

Roman remains, such as vases, bronzes, coffins, have been found in this street.

In 1654 Brethmer, citizen of London, gave to the Church at Canterbury his messuage at “Gerscherche” as also the Church of Allhallows, Lombard Street.

The street is continually mentioned in connection with tenements, messuages, houses, and rents.

In more modern times Richard Tarleton the actor lived in Gracechurch Street, at the sign of the Saber. Probably he acted in the courtyard of the Cross Keys in the same street, licensed in 1570, but only for that year. Many pageants and processions were conducted through Gracechurch Street.

In Gracechurch Street at the corner of Fenchurch Street was St. Benet’s Church.

St. Benet, Grasschurch, was so called after St. Benedict. The date of its foundation is unknown. It was burnt down in the Great Fire, rebuilt and finished in 1685. In 1868 the building was pulled down, and in 1869 and 1870 the site was occupied by offices. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1170.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted it about 1142 to Algarus the priest, for his life.

Houseling people in 1548 were 223.

A chantry was founded here in the chapel of St. Mary and St. Katherine for Lady Joan Rose; the endowment fetched £14 : 3 : 4 in 1548.

Few notable monuments in this church are recorded by Stow. It originally contained Queen Elizabeth’s monument. The parish was rich in charitable gifts, some of the donors of which were: Mrs. Doxie of £50, for the better maintenance of the parson; Lady Elizabeth Newton £40, and many others whose names are not recorded.

In modern Gracechurch Street, at the corner of Eastcheap, is a fine new building of the National Provident Institution for Mutual Life Assurance. The courts opening out of the street are lined with countless window reflectors and are very monotonous. The Russian Bank is fine and of great height; on the west there is a long line of brick and stucco buildings which can boast no style at all. The street is given over to merchants, solicitors, bankers, agents, etc. The great building at the corner of Lombard Street is the City Linen Company Bank, and is conspicuous by reason of its stone ornamentation.

The northern portion of the street is not remarkable for architectural beauty. The street consists chiefly of great square blocks of buildings interspersed with dull early nineteenth-century brick boxes. In Bell Yard there is an almost unbroken line of old houses on the south side, and at the end the half-embedded gilt bell over a public-house points to the name-derivation. On the east of Gracechurch Street a high arch of rusticated stone leads to Leadenhall market (see p. [160]). Gracechurch Buildings follow, and Bull’s Head Passage, leading to Skinner’s Place, is lined by open stalls. The flat end of St. Peter’s, Cornhill, faces Leadenhall Buildings.

Lombard Street.—Shops and tenements are mentioned belonging to Lombard Street in the fourteenth century. The Calendar of Wills has a reference in the year 1327. Riley’s earliest reference is 1382.

When the street first received its name is not known. Stow ventures back no further than Edward II., but there were Italian merchants before that time:

“Then have ye Lombard Street, so called of the Longobards, and other merchants, strangers of divers nations assembling there twice every day, of what original or continuance I have not read of record, more than that Edward II., in the 12th of his reign, confirmed a messuage, sometime belonging to Robert Turke, abutting on Lombard Street, toward the south, and toward Cornehill on the north, for the merchants of Florence, which proveth that street to have had the name of Lombard Street before the reign of Edward II. The meeting of which merchants and others there continued until the 22nd of December, in the year 1568; on the which day the said merchants began to make their meetings at the burse, a place then new built for that purpose in the ward of Cornhill, and was since by her majesty, Queen Elizabeth, named the Royal Exchange.”

The Lombards came over at first as collectors of the papal revenue; but they did much more than this: they opened up trade between the Italian towns and London—every year the fleets of Genoa and Venice brought goods from the East and from the Mediterranean. Moreover, the Italians in England sent wool from England instead of precious metals by way of Florence, if not other cities. Their wealth enabled them to take the place of the Jews in their expulsion; if the City was suddenly and heavily taxed they made advances to the merchant who could not immediately realise. Of course they charged heavy interest—as heavy as the necessities of the case permitted—and they became unpopular. The lending of money, forbidden and held in abhorrence, was absolutely necessary for the conduct of business: those who carried on this trade naturally lived together, if only to be kept in knowledge of what was going on. And as the progress of trade went on, their power increased year by year. Lombard Street, where they lived, was the daily mart of the London merchants before the erection of the Exchange.

POPE’S HOUSE IN PLOUGH COURT

“Jane Shore’s husband was a goldsmith in this street; so at least the old ballad, printed in Percy’s Reliques, would lead us to believe. No. 68, now Messrs. Martin, Stones and Martin’s (bankers), occupies the site of the house of business of Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange. When Pennant wrote, the Messrs. Martin still possessed the original grasshopper that distinguished his house. ‘How the Exchange passeth in Lombard Street’ is a phrase of frequent occurrence in Sir Thomas Gresham’s early letters. No. 67, now in the occupation of Messrs. Glyn and Co. (bankers), belongs to the Goldsmiths’ Company, to whom it was left by Sir Martin Bowes, an eminent goldsmith in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Guy, the founder of Guy’s Hospital, was a bookseller in this street. The father of Pope, the poet, was a linendraper in Lombard Street; and here, in 1688, his celebrated son was born. Opposite the old-fashioned gate of the Church of St. Edmund the Martyr is a narrow court, leading to a Quakers’ Meeting-house where Penn and Fox frequently preached” (Cunningham’s Handbook).

The house in which Pope is said to have been born is that at the end of Plough Court.

Between the Church of St. Edmund and the west end of the street were two mansions formerly belonging, one to William de la Pole, Knight Banneret, and “King’s Merchant” in the reign of Edward III., and afterwards to his son, Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, and the other to Sir Martin Bowes, mayor, 1545. Here also was the Cardinal’s Hat Tavern, one of the oldest of the City taverns, mentioned in 1492.

The modern street gives a general impression similar to that of Cornhill. Everywhere we are confronted by solid banks and insurance offices, which seem to divide the ground between them.

George Yard contains the imposing building of the Deutsche Bank in London, as well as a couple of large houses let in flats, and presents a decidedly dignified appearance. The Bank is an immense building, with a granite-columned portico, and rusticated stonework round it.

Of the two churches now remaining in this street, one is

ST. EDMUND, KING AND MARTYR

This church was anciently called by some St. Edmund Grass-Church, because of its proximity to the grass market. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren in 1690. In 1864 and 1880 the church was restored. After the Great Fire, the parish of St. Nicholas Acon was annexed. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1150.

The patronage was in the hands of the Prior and Convent of Holy Trinity, London, but Henry VIII. seized it and granted it to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1545, in whose successors it continues.

Houseling people in 1548 were 240.

The present church measures 59 feet in length, 40 feet in breadth, and 57 feet 9 inches in height. It is singular from its standing north and south, but this was forced upon Wren by the position of the ground at his disposal. There are no aisles. The steeple, which rises at the south, consists of a three-storied tower and octagonal lantern and spire, and a pedestal supporting a finial and vane. The lantern is ornamented at the angles by flaming urns, in allusion to the Great Fire. A projecting clock is attached to the face of the second story and is a prominent feature in Lombard Street. The total height is 136 feet.

Chantries were founded here: By Thomas Wyllys for himself and Christian his wife, whose endowment fetched £24 in 1548, when Richard Auncell was chaplain; by and for Matilda at Vane, relict of John Atte Rose, dedicated to SS. John, Peter, and Thomas the martyr, to which John Reynes was admitted chaplain on the resignation of William Belgrave, September 25, 1382; by Richard Toky for himself and Matilda his wife, to which William Howes de Blackolm was admitted chaplain, October 20, 1362; by John Longe, whose endowment fetched £35 in 1548, when William Myller and Edward Mamyn or Hamonde were chaplains.

The old church contained a monument to John Shute, a painter-stainer, who wrote one of the earliest English works on Architecture. He died in 1563. On the east wall a monument commemorates Dr. Jeremiah Milles, Dean of Exeter, President of the Society of Antiquaries, and rector of the united parishes, who died in 1784.

Addison was married in this church to the Dowager Countess of Warwick and Holland in 1716.

This parish was not rich in charitable gifts. Some of the donors were: Richard Jaie of 45s. for bread, etc., for the poor; Mrs. Joan Lowen of 52s.; Mrs. Anne Whitmore, £5.

ALLHALLOWS, LOMBARD STREET

This church went by the name of Allhallows “Grasse Church” from its proximity to the grass and hay market. It was consumed by the Great Fire, but subsequently rebuilt and completed by Wren in 1694. The parish of Allhallows was one of the thirteen “Peculiars” of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the City of London. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1279.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Brihterus, citizen of London, who in 1052 gave it to the Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury; the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, in whose successors it continued, who first presented to it in 1552.

Houseling people in 1548 were 300.

The interior of the church is constructed on a rectangular plan, without aisles, and with only one pillar, rising at the centre of the west gallery. It is 84 feet in length, 52 feet in breadth, and the height 30 feet. The church contains much good woodwork, the carved oak altar-piece being especially fine. The stone tower, which rises at the south-west, is divided into three stories, the lowest of which has a large doorway at its south face; the second is pierced by a circular-headed window, and the third by square openings with louvres, each surmounted by a cornice. The height of the tower is about 85 feet. The church is entered by a porch and vestibule through a doorway in the tower.

Chantries were here founded by: John Chircheman, citizen, and Richard Tasburgh, late parson of Heylesdon County, Norfolk, July 15, 1392 (Pat. 16 Richard II. p. i. m. 25); John Buck, whose endowment yielded £40 : 6s. in 1548; John Maldon, whose endowment yielded £20 : 3 : 4 in 1548, when Edward Hollonde was priest; William Trystor, who endowed it with £6 : 6 : 8 in 1548.

The most notable of the monuments in this church is to the memory of Simon Horsepoole, Sheriff of London in 1591.

The sole donor of charities seems to have been this same Simon Horsepoole, who appointed to this parish £4 : 4s. per annum.

The original church was indebted for its south aisle, steeple, and other sections to John Warner, Robert Warner, and the Pewterers.

Clothes were found for forty boys, as well as books, and the boys were put out as apprentices by a Society of Langbourn Ward.

The most notable rectors were: Robert Gilbert, Bishop of London, 1436; Thomas Langton (d. 1501), Bishop of St. David’s and Sarum, and of Winchester; Francis Dee (d. 1638), Bishop of Peterborough.

At the corner formed by the junction of Lombard and King William Streets stands the Church of

ST. MARY WOOLNOTH

“The church was founded by Wulfnuth, son of Earl Godwin, about the time of the Confessor. This name was corrupted into Woolnoth” (Rev. J. M. S. Brooke, Rector). It was rebuilt, according to Newcourt, from its very foundations about 1438. Though damaged by the Great Fire, it was not destroyed, and Wren repaired and rebuilt various parts in 1677. In 1716 the building was pulled down and the present church, the work of Nicholas Hawksmoor, was commenced and finished in 1727. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1252.

The patronage of the church, before 1252, was in the hands of: The Prioress and Convent of St. Helen’s, London; then Henry VIII., who seized it and granted it to Sir Martin Bowes, Alderman and Mayor of London, whose son and heir, Thomas Bowes, sold it to William Pelham, December 19, 1571; Robert Viner Miles, and several other persons, the last being Sir George Broke-Middleton, who presented to it in 1883.

Houseling people in 1548 were 300.

The interior of the church is almost square. It contains twelve Corinthian columns, placed at the angles in groups of three, and supporting an entablature prolonged to the walls by means of pilasters. There is a clerestory above, pierced on its four sides by semicircular windows. The tower, which rises at the west, contains the doorway in its basement story; the cornice is surmounted by a pedestal supporting composite columns, and the summit is divided into two turrets with balustrades above. The north front has three niches, each enclosing two Ionic columns on pedestals; the south front is plain.

Chantries were founded here by: Gregory de Rokeslie, Mayor of London, 1275-81, for himself and Amicia his wife, to which John de Pory was admitted chaplain, July 15, 1333; Thomas Noket, for himself and for Alice, wife of Gregory de Norton, called atte Shire, at the Altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Anne, in the south side of the church, to which William Weston was admitted chaplain, January 28, 1400-1401; the endowment fetched £13 : 6 : 8 in 1548, when William Wentors, or Ventrys, and Richard Browne were chaplains; Henry Brige, Knt., whose endowment yielded £13: 13 : 4 in 1548, when John Meres was priest.

Sir Hugh Brice, keeper of the King’s Exchange under Henry VII., was buried in this church; he built a chapel here called the “Channel”; also Sir Thomas Ramsey, Lord Mayor in 1577; William Hilton, Merchant Taylor and Taylor to Henry VIII., and Sir Martin Bowes, patron of the church for over thirty years.

Among the later monuments, Stow records one in memory of Sir William Phipps, who discovered a sunken Spanish ship in 1687 containing silver to the value of £300,000 sterling, and one commemorating Sir Thomas Vyner, goldsmith, and Mayor of London, who died in 1665.

The list of legacies and bequests was too long for insertion, Stow says, but was to be seen by any one in the Parish Book. He records a gift of £1 : 6s. per annum from Sir Nicholas Rainton, and one of £3 : 15 : 8 paid by the Merchant Taylors.

Richard Rawlins (d. 1536), Bishop of St. David’s, was rector here; also John Newton, author of “Olney Hymns.”

King William Street contains few associations of interest, having been built, as its name implies, in the reign of the fourth monarch of that name, whose statue on a pedestal, which outrivals every other in the City on the score of weight alone, stands at the south end. This is the work of W. Nixon and was set up in December 1844. The figure is 15 feet 3 inches high, and the whole statue weighs 20 tons. Special arrangements had to be made for carrying the Metropolitan Railway beneath it. The statue is on the site of the Boar’s Head Tavern, noted in old days as a famous rendezvous, and familiar to readers of Shakespeare from Falstaff’s frequent resort thither. Goldsmith and Washington Irvine have written on the Boar’s Head Tavern, which rose again after the Fire; the sign of the later house is preserved in the Guildhall Museum.

King William Street was cut through various lanes, which are now dealt with. At the north end in Gresham Place is Gresham Club, which was built in 1844; the architect was Henry Flower. It is for merchants and City men; the entrance fee is twenty guineas, annual subscription eight guineas, and the membership is limited to 500. It is a grey stone building with triangular stone pediments projecting over the upper windows.

Pictorial Agency.
ST. MARY WOOLNOTH

St. Clement’s Lane leads to St. Clement’s Church. I find a reference to rents in Clement’s Lane in 1322. In 1371 the “good folk” of Candelwyke Street and Clement’s Lane petitioned the mayor against certain plumbers who proposed to melt their lead in a place hard by called the Woodhaugh; they said that the vapours were noxious and even fatal to human life, that trustworthy people would depose to the mischief caused by inhaling these fumes, and that the shaft of the furnace was too low. In the end the plumbers were allowed to go on with their work, provided that they raised the shaft. In the lane was the bank in which Samuel Rogers was a partner.

In Church Court, we come to the ancient graveyard of St. Clement, a minute space with one great shapeless tomb in the centre of the asphalt and a few small erect tombstones in the little border running inside the railings.

ST. CLEMENT, EASTCHEAP

The Church of St. Clement was destroyed by the Great Fire, but rebuilt by Wren in 1686, when St. Martin’s Orgar was annexed to it. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1309.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1309; then Henry VIII., who seized it and gave it to the Bishop of Westminster in 1540; next the Bishop of London, by Mary, March 3, 1553-54, in whose successors it continues.

Houseling people in 1548 were 271.

The present building measures 64 feet in length, 40 feet in breadth, and 34 feet in height. It has one aisle on the south side, separated from the rest of the church by two high-based columns. The square tower at the south-west is built of brick, with stone dressings, and contains three stories, with a cornice and balustrade above. The total height is 88 feet.

Chantries were founded here: by John Chardeney for himself and Margaret his wife, to which William Hocchepound was admitted chaplain, July 23, 1371, at the Altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary; for William Ivery.

There were very few monuments in this church originally. In the west window is a memorial to Thomas Fuller, the church historian, Bishop Bryan Walton, and Bishop Pearson. Fuller and Pearson were lecturers here for some time; the preaching of Pearson on the Creed and Thirty-nine Articles made him famous. Walton, the compiler of the Polyglot Bible, was created Bishop of Chester, 1660. The stained-glass window on the southern side was erected in 1872 by the Clothworkers’ Company in memory of Samuel Middlemore, who died in 1628, leaving a charitable bequest to the parish. Henry Purcell and Jonathan Battishill, the musical composers, who were organists at the church, are commemorated by brass tablets.

There were several gifts belonging to the parish, but the names of the donors are not recorded by Stow.

Sir Thomas Gooch (1674-1754), Bishop of Bristol, of Norwich and of Ely, was rector here.

St. Nicholas Lane, also one of the most ancient lanes in London. In 1258 we find that one Ralph was chaplain in the Church of St. Nicholas Acon. In 1275 the church is endowed with a small rent; in 1279, a testator bequeaths his “Stone house” in the lane; and in many subsequent entries the lane is mentioned. The dedication of the church may possibly indicate the date of its foundation. It was in the eleventh century that the bones of St. Nicholas were brought from Myra in Asia Minor, then in the hands of the Mohammedans, to Bari on the Adriatic, where they still lie. There grew up quite suddenly an extraordinary belief in the power of this saint. Pilgrimages were instituted, in which thousands flocked to his tomb; miracles were multiplied at the sacred spot; the churches without end were dedicated to his name of Nicholas. In England 372 churches are said to be named after him. It would be interesting to learn the date of this dedication. May we, however, connect this saint of Italian pilgrimage with the coming of Italian merchants to London? St. Nicholas was the protector of sailors, virgins, and children. Cunningham calls him also the protector of merchants, but of merchants as sailors. His emblem was the three purses, round and filled with gold, or the three golden balls. We may therefore at least assume that this was the church of the “Lombards” and the financiers from Italy. The churchyard still remains, a square patch of ground, railed in, very similar to the generality of such quiet little spaces. It has asphalt paths running in and out of stunted evergreen bushes. Nicholas Passage runs on the south side, and near is the Acorn public-house, an old house, with its sign of a huge gilt acorn hanging over the door.

St. Nicholas Acon was situated on the west side of Nicholas Lane, near Lombard Street; it was burnt down in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Edmund the King and Martyr, and its site turned into a burying-ground. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1250.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of Godwin: and Thurand his wife gave it in 1084 to the Abbot and Convent of Malmesbury; Henry VIII. seized it, 1542, and so it continued in the Crown up to 1666, when it was annexed to St. Edmund the King; since then the patronage is alternately in the Crown and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Houseling people in 1548 were 154.

Johanna Macany, who left large legacies to the parish about 1452, was buried in this church, also John Hall, Master of the Company of Drapers; he died in 1618.

No legacies or gifts are recorded by Stow except that of Johanna Macany, of which he gives full details.

Maurice Griffith, Bishop of Rochester in 1554, was rector here.

Of Birchin Lane Stow says it should be Birchover Lane. It is also spelt Berchernere and Borcherveres Lane. It is frequently mentioned in the Calendar of Wills. In 1260 there is “land” in the lane; in 1285 there is a mansion house; there are a bakehouse and shops in 1319; in 1326, a tenement; twenty years later, other tenements; in 1358, a place called “la Belle”; in 1363, lands and a tenement; and in 1372, tenements in “Berchers” Lane. In 1386 and the following century we have it spelled Birchin Lane. In 1348, Riley quotes the name as Bercherners Lane.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the lane was inhabited by “fripperers,” i.e. old-clothes men. Here was Tom’s Coffee-house, frequented by Garrick. Chatterton wrote a letter to his sister from this house. In a court leading out of Birchin Lane is the George and Vulture, a well-known tavern, which still preserves the custom of serving chops and steaks on pewter.

Abchurch Lane gives its name to the church of St. Mary Abchurch, which, according to Stow, is also Upchurch (see below). The parish of Abchurch or Abbechurch is mentioned as early as 1272 and 1282, and tenements in Abbechurch Lane are devised by a testator of the year 1297.

ST. MARY ABCHURCH

The additional name signifies “Up-church,” and is accounted for by the position of the edifice on rising ground. The church was burnt down by the Great Fire and rebuilt in 1686 from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren, when the parish of St. Lawrence Pountney was annexed. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1323.