Defoe Tomb
Ruin and neglect mark what was once a green and beautiful spot—Bunhill Fields—long the chief burial place for Nonconformists, its aged and grime-covered stones now tottering in decay, and at war with the noise of factory life comingfrom every side. Its original name was Bonehill Fields, because it was a principal place of burial at the time of the great plague. John Bunyan was buried here in 1688, and his tomb is still to be seen. His memory recalls chiefly his great book "Pilgrim's Progress," although he wrote many others—sixty in all. The "Pilgrim's Progress" was written while he was in Bedford Jail, where he was confined for twelve years for being a Dissenter. During this time he supported his family by making lace. Here, too, is the tomb of Daniel DeFoe, who was the son of a butcher of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and whose fame also rests upon a single book, "Robinson Crusoe," although he too wrote many others. Near by are the tombs of Isaac Watts and Susannah, the mother of John Wesley.
In a house in Bunhill Row, whose site is covered now by the offices of a company of well-diggers, John Milton died in 1674. Over the doorway there is a tablet marking the spot. Milton moved here in 1664, the street then being called Artillery Walk, from the nearby Artillery Grounds. Here he wrote the last part of "Paradise Lost," and made arrangements for its publication, by which he was to receive five pounds down, with the further promise of an additional five pounds if an edition of 1300 was sold, and still another five pounds if still another edition of 1300 was sold. Here, too, he wrote "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes."
Facing the eastern entrance to Bunhill Fields, in City Road, is the chapel built in 1778 for John Wesley, the founder and preacher of the Methodist Church; and behind the chapel is the tombstone showing where Wesley was buried in 1791. He died in the house No. 47, next the chapel.
A commemorative window in the church of St. James in Curtain Road close by Holywells Street, marks the location of the Curtain Theatre of Shakespeare's time, which stood on the church site. Here, so the tale goes, the première of "Hamlet" was given, and Shakespeare, standing at the door, held the horses of those who attended the performances. But that he did this is notat all certain. Like most of the theatres of that time, this house was so arranged that the roof extended only over the stage and galleries, leaving the central space, or pit, open to the sky. A curtain of silk, running on an iron rod and opening both ways from the middle, hid the stage before the performance began.
All the district about Finsbury Square was once the marshy ground of Moorfields, a promenade of the 18th century. The name Finsbury happened in an old ballad, which tells of a Knight who went to the crusades and who forbade his two daughters to marry until his return. The Knight never came back alive, but his head was sent to the daughters when they had grown old and were still unmarried. This gruesome relic they buried near by their home, and gave their father's name to his resting place, as told in the ballad:
Old Sir John Fines he had the nameBeing buried in that place,Now, since then, called Finsbury,To his renown and grace;Which time to come shall not outwearNor yet the same deface.
Finsbury Pavement was the promenade of Moorfields, and was for a very long time the one solid roadway in that marshy part of town.
The church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall was built in 1765 on a bastion of the old Roman wall that enclosed old London. Close to the church door at the back of the ancient burying ground, a bit of the wall is still to be seen.
Bishopsgate is one of the few very old streets that escaped the Great Fire. It is strangely narrow, and its hurrying throngs add to the general picturesqueness of the high-roofed structures and the quaint many-angled windows that line its sides.
Where Bishopsgate Within ends and Bishopsgate Without begins a gate was cut through the wall of old London. One part was within the wall and one part without the wall, hence the name of the street. At this gateway were four churches. St. Botolph, Without Bishopsgate, dedicated to the popular English saint, stands on the site of one of those early churches. Inthis church John Keats, who afterwards wrote so delicately of the Eve of St. Agnes and the Grecian Urn, was baptised.
Old White Hart Tavern stood a few yards north of St. Botolph, Without Bishopsgate. It was much the same in arrangement as the other old inns that existed when people travelled entirely by coach. Three sides of the cobbled stone interior yard were lined with guests' rooms, and in front of these extended a heavy wooden balcony. The inn yard was customarily the resort of showmen and musicians. Sometimes a temporary stage was set up, backing the entrance to the inn and fronting the gallery, so the occupants of the rooms could witness the performances. The White Hart Tavern has survived in name chiefly because Hobson, a famous Cambridge carrier, always stopped here when he came to London. When at home Hobson rented horses and had an unbreakable rule of letting them only in their regular turn. This created the saying: "Hobson's choice: that or none." When Hobson died his elegy was written by Milton.
The street called Houndsditch was a moat beyond the wall of the city in very long ago times and was used often as a burying ground for dead dogs. Into this ditch the headless body of Edric, the murderer of Edmund Ironsides, was flung, after his crime had placed Canute on the throne. He claimed as his promised reward the highest place in the city, and the Danish king cried out: "The treason I like, but the traitor hate; behead the fellow, and as he claims my promise, place his head on the highest pinnacle of the Tower." And this was done.
Readers of Dickens' "Old Curiosity Shop," and who is there has not read it, will recall Bevis Marks where Miss Sally Brass lived with her brother Sampson; where the Marchioness, the tiny domestic, and Dick Swiveller, the law clerk, did their visiting. Bevis Marks is close by Houndsditch, and started existence as a garden plot of the Abbots of St. Edmunds, but it is a very commonplace spot indeed in these times.
At the point where Bishopsgate Street Within ends and Bishopsgate Street Without begins,the City wall crossed. On a house just where Camomile Street touches Bishopsgate is a tablet affixed telling of the gate that was once in the old wall just here.
Very timid in appearance is the church of St. Ethelburga, and said to be the smallest church in London. It huddles away, in Bishopsgate Street Within, just to the north of St. Helen's Place, between houses which cover its old burying ground, and its tiny entrance way flanked by shop windows. It has stood here since 1366, having been spared by the Great Fire.
Until quite recently, Crosby Hall, a building of the early 15th century, stood on the east side of Bishopsgate Street Within. In its last days it was said to be the only example of a mediæval London house in the Gothic style. Originally set up by a former grocer who with the passing years came to be Sir John Crosby, Alderman, it came into the possession of the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. Owning many masters (among them Sir Thomas More whohere wrote his life of Richard III.), it was converted at various times into a prison, a meeting-house, a storehouse, a concert hall, and in its last days a restaurant.
Turning from Great St. Helen's, you come suddenly upon the curious 13th century church of St. Helen's, in a square of ancient houses, often alluded to as the Westminster Abbey of the City. Originally it was a church of the Priory of the Nuns of St. Helen's, founded about 1145, by "William, son of William the Goldsmith," and it contains many interesting memorials. Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, lies buried here, and Shakespeare was a parishoner here in 1598.
At the junction of Throgmorton Street and Old Broad, on the north side of the road is an open space leading into the courtway of Austin Friars. Here is the Dutch Church; all that remains of the renowned Augustinian Monastery founded in the 13th century. In this church was buried the Earl of Arundel, son of theBlack Prince and the Fair Maid of Kent; and many another famous nobleman; and here are buried all those of noble birth who were killed at the Battle of Barnet.
Threadneedle Street is a very old road, stretching in early days far to the south and west. It got its name from the three needles appearing on the arms of the Needlemakers' Company. Some of its old outlines are covered by the Bank of England, which has been irreverently nicknamed the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.
Through a district of wholesale dealers in linens and laces, Bread Street extends, joining Cannon Street to Cheapside. Midway between these, on a building at Watling Street, is a sculptured bust of John Milton with the inscription:
MILTON
Born in Bread Street
1608
Baptised in the Church of
All Hallows
Which Stood Here Ante
1878
The original All Hallows church destroyed in the Great Fire was rebuilt by Wren and finally demolished in 1878.
Milton was born in this same Bread Street, near Cheapside, where a warehouse numbered 53 now stands. His father was a scrivener—a writer who prepared contracts, deeds and other documents, and the house in which he lived and in which Milton was born bore the sign of "The Spread Eagle." Signs in those days had great significance, for the houses were not numbered, and distinctive sign boards were used in all professions and trades. In former years a bust and a tablet marked the spot, but when the present building was set up, the bust was taken down, and now stands on a shelf inside the building on the third floor.
At the Watling Street corner of Old Change may be found the Church of St. Augustine, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1683. R. H. Barham, author of the amusing "Ingoldsby Legends," was rector here for thirteen years prior to his death in 1845.
Watling Street is the present day form of an old Roman road that extended from London to Dover.
Further to the south is all that is left of a very old thoroughfare called Knightrider Street. In long ago times it was a direct way from the Tower to Smithfield, and came by its name in memory of the knights who clattered through it on their way to the tourneys at Smithfield.
Around a corner, on the north side of Queen Victoria Street, St. Nicholas Cole Abbey stands, the first church to be completed by Wren after the Great Fire.
Shelley the poet married his second wife, Mary Godwin, in 1816, in the church of St. Mildred which is in Bread Street very close to where Queen Victoria and Cannon streets meet. It was in the first year of her marriage that Mrs. Shelley wrote her remarkable novel "Frankenstein."
Cannon Street is part of the chief road ofRoman London, and had been a main road for the Britons before the invasion of the Romans. At a meeting point of this road with several others was the Roman central milestone from which distances on all roads were measured. Here a stone was set up 2000 years ago, and all that remains of it to-day is called "London Stone," and may yet be seen. It is set in the outer wall of the Church of St. Swithin, the saint who controls the weather, in Cannon Street, and is protected with an iron lattice work. This stone was superstitiously looked upon as something that afforded protection to citizens and a defence for the city. The Kentish rebel, Jack Cade, so believed it when he entered London in 1450, calling himself John Mortimer and made straight for London Stone. Arrived there, he struck it with his sword and declared himself lord of the city. Shakespeare has him say in Henry VI.:
"Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign. And now henceforth it shall be treason for any that calls me other than Lord Mortimer."
London Stone remained by the roadside until 1742, when being in danger of extinction as an interferer with traffic, it was placed close by the church door. In 1798 it was given the place in the church wall where it is now.
St. Mary, Abchurch, was finished by Wren in 1689. Here was buried—the monument can still be seen—Sir Patience Ward, a Lord Mayor of London, under whose administration the Monument to the Great Fire was built.
The official residence of the Lord Mayor, the Mansion House, was built 150 years ago, on a spot where a fish market called Stocks Market had been since 1282. The market was named from a pair of "stocks" which long stood on the spot and were used for the exhibition of offenders, and which continued near by after the market was established.
Where Lombard Street touches King William Street, is the church of St. Mary Woolnoth, anold church rebuilt by Nicholas Hawksmoor, the "domestic clerk" of Sir Christopher Wren. Here John Newton, the friend of Cowper the poet, was rector for 28 years, and here he was buried.
The thoroughfare of bankers, Lombard Street, got its name from the Longbards, rich bankers who settled in the district during the reign of Edward II. They used as their emblem three golden balls, derived from the lower part of the arms of the Dukes of Medici. These continue to this day as the sign of the money lenders. Many romantic associations belong to this street. Here lived, with her goldsmith husband, Jane Shore, described by King Edward IV. as "the merriest harlot of his reign," and who after the king's death was accused of witchcraft by the Duke of Gloucester, put in open penance at Paul's Cross, and made to walk through Fleet Street with a lighted taper in her hand.
Pope's Head Alley, the footway leading south from the Royal Exchange, from Cornhill to Lombard Street, is where in the earliest yearsof the 13th century, King John had his City palace. The roadway took its name from the famous tavern of the Pope's Head, which after 1430 stood for three hundred years on the westerly side.
To the south of the Royal Exchange, in Change Alley, centred, in the first quarter of the 18th century, the excitement attending the South Sea Bubble affair. This was the great stock gambling scheme by which the South Sea Company, holding a monopoly of the trade with the South Seas, and trading on the extravagant ideas the public had of such trade, created an extraordinary desire in many persons to participate in the fabulous profits. The company was carried on by fraud and deceit until the bubble burst and caused disaster and ruin to thousands of unwise investors. Gay, in his "Panegyrical Epistle," writing of the South Sea project said:
Why did 'Change Alley waste thy precious hoursAmong the fools who gaped for golden showers?No wonder they were caught by South Sea schemesWho ne'er enjoyed a guinea but in dreams.
Garraway's Coffee House in Change Alley was used chiefly by the Bubble traders in 1720. At this house in 1651, tea was first sold in England, the proprietor in his announcement recommending it as a cure for all disorders. It certainly has been used extensively ever since. Next door was Jonathan's Coffee House, another tavern of long existence. Both places were burned in 1748, and a bank now marks where they once were.
Plough Court opens out of the south side of Lombard Street. The court is notable as the birthplace of Alexander Pope, and his father here kept a linen draper shop.
In the church of St. Edmund, which has stood for a century and a quarter on the north side of Lombard Street, Joseph Addison was married in 1716, just after the amazing success of his "Tragedy of Cato," to the Dowager Countess of Warwick—a marriage which Thackeray referred to as "his splendid but dismal union." Three years later Addison died.
Quaint and curious is the position of All Hallows, known as the invisible church, literally buried by surrounding houses and approached only through a narrow alley on the north side of Lombard Street. It was in an open space when it was completed in 1694, but the buildings of the City have gradually crowded about it, as though trying to crush it out of existence.
St. Margaret Pattens, in Eastcheap at the Rood Lane corner, is a church of 1678, designed by Wren, and taking its name from the district in which, in the 17th century, pattens were generally sold. Dr. Thomas Birch, author of the "Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth," was long its rector. He died in 1766 and was buried beneath the chancel.
Mincing Lane borrowed its name from the Minchens or nuns of St. Helen, and this order once owned all the ground hereabouts.
The Elephant, a tavern of great note, stood where is now the northwest corner of FenchurchStreet at Ironmonger's Alley. It was a massive building of stone, and one of the few in this neighbourhood sturdy enough to resist the Great Fire. When the flames rushed by leaving a desert of ruins on every side, the Elephant was a refuge for many who were left homeless. It was taken down in 1826. At the Elephant lived the great picture satirist, William Hogarth, in 1697, at a time when he was very poor indeed.
At the northern end of Mark Lane, crowded about by business houses, may be seen a fine old church tower. In the Great Fire of 1666, this tower of All Hallows, Staining, escaped though the church itself was destroyed. It is reached by narrow Star Alley, on the west side of Mark Lane, and stands in a bit of the old churchyard which is now the court of the Clothworkers' Hall. It was to All Hallows that Queen Elizabeth came to offer up thanks after her deliverance from the Tower.
Hart Street is very short, which makes it easy to discern where once was the house of RichardWhittington, the Lord Mayor of London, on the north side of the road where the fourth house east of Mark Lane now stands. Here, in "Whittington's Palace," Henry V. visited the Mayor, and here Whittington destroyed the king's note for a debt of 60,000 pounds. At which the king cried out: "No other king has had such a subject." To which Whittington bowed low and made answer: "Sire, never had subject such a king." Perhaps they were both right.
The picturesque gateway decorated with skulls, in narrow Seething Lane by Hart Street, is an entrance way to the old church of St. Olave, which escaped the Great Fire. This is the church frequented by Samuel Pepys, who lived close by in Seething Lane. The pew he occupied is still to be seen here, facing the memorial to Mrs. Pepys on the north side of the church. It was from the tower of St. Olave that Pepys watched the great City burn. Both he and his wife were buried here. The skulls surmounting the gate were in remembrance of the plague of 1665, when 100,000 persons died, andmany of the victims were buried in this churchyard. In the register yet may be seen entry of the burial of Mary Ramsey, with the fatal letter "P" beside it, for she it is who was supposed to have brought the plague into London.
Aldgate Pump, which has not been in use since 1875, stands at the junction of Leadenhall and Fenchurch streets. Dickens mentions the old pump very often in his books. In "Dombey and Son," Mr. Toots walked to the pump and back for relaxation; and to this neighbourhood Fagan removed secretly when he feared the result of the revelations of Oliver Twist.
The Aldgate was the principal eastern gate of the City in Roman days and later. In 1374 the rooms above the gate were leased by the corporation to Chaucer the poet, for life. In 1471, the gate was attacked by Thomas Neville, the Bastard of Falconbergh, when at the moment of success he was separated from his men and killed. It was demolished in 1760, and there is now no trace of it.
The church of St. Catherine Cree, in Leadenhall Street since 1631, was built on the foundations of an older church. Hans Holbein lived close by the original church, and was buried here when, in 1546, he died of the plague.
In Leadenhall Street at the St. Mary Axe corner, the turreted church of St. Andrew Undershaft takes its name from the fact that in olden times there stood before it, towering above its height, a tall shaft. The church, built in 1520, is almost five hundred years old. To this day the passer-by wonders at the big rings of iron set in its wall. In these rings the shaft or Maypole rested after the May-day sports were over. In the reign of Edward VI. the Maypole was burned, because a preacher at Paul's Cross had told the people they had made an idol of it by naming their parish church "under the shaft." The tomb of John Stow, author of the "Survey of London," is still to be seen here. Stow was a tailor, and his book is thought to be the most important work on London ever written. His efforts were not regarded in his lifetime, and being in great poverty when he was 80 yearsold, he applied to James I. for aid, receiving only a license to beg for a living—which he did. He died in 1605.
The buildings of the East India Company were to be found where Lime Street touches Leadenhall at the northeast corner. There Charles Lamb, the essayist and critic, worked. He entered the accountants' office of the company and worked each day at his desk for thirty years until he was retired on a pension. He has said that he found recreation in his writings, and that his true works were to be found in the hundreds of folios he had filled for the East India Company and that were filed away in their archives. The East India was a commercial company of renown, which came into existence in 1599 having its main offices here where had been the home of Lord Craven. The building was restored many times, and finally removed in 1862.
There is nothing to be seen of an historic old church in narrow Cornhill Street, so hemmedin is it, except a tower above the roofs topped by a windvane in the shape of a great key. Yet this church of St. Peter's, which has been here since 1681, is most interesting, for the claim is set up that it stands on the earliest consecrated ground in England. In the vestry a tablet tells of how it was "originally founded in 179 A. D. by Lucius, the first Christian King of this land, then called Britaine."
The house where Thomas Gray, the writer of the "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," was born, used to be where the building numbered 41 Cornhill now stands.
A carved doorway of quaint design, between two shop windows, and a tower above the housetops, are all that may be seen of the church of St. Michael's in narrow Cornhill. This church was built by Wren when he was 90 years old.
In a passageway leading out of Brick Lane at No. 120 is still to be seen the large room, pleasantly and airily situated at the top of a safe and commodious ladder, where, in "Pickwick Papers," Dickens located "The Brick Lane Branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance Association." It is as Dickens pictured it, except that now the Mission Hall is below at the foot of the ladder, and the former mission room at the top is now a shop. It was here that Brother Tadger stumbled up the ladder with Mr. Stiggins, and in the room above Sam Weller and his father found the ladies drinking tea "until such time as they considered it expedient to leave off." And if they are still in England it is safe to say that they have never left off but are still drinking tea.
In Commercial Street, Whitechapel, at the corner of Flower and Dean Street, is a dull and superior looking four story clothier's wareroom. Though it does not seem it, this building has a history, for years ago and until 1882 it was a cooking depot for the workers of this neighbourhood, conducted upon the co-operative system. Dickens, in the "Uncommercial Traveller" paper called "The Boiled Beef of New England," gives an account of the workings and merits of this establishment.
The Minories leads from the Tower to Aldgate High Street. Black and grim at the head of this thoroughfare, rises the spire of the church of St. Botolph. This structure, built in 1744, is on the site of an ancient church. Here is still preserved the head of the Duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey, a relic formerly kept in the church of Holy Trinity.
Off this busy street called Minories, the first turning south of Aldgate is a narrow hidden way called Church Street. Here, literally buriedfrom sight, is the tiny yellow and ancient church of Holy Trinity, once belonging to an abbey of Minorites which was founded by Blanche, Queen of Navarre, now used as a parish chapel of St. Botolph Aldgate. Many persons sought out this church in the past, to look upon the head of the Duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey, who was executed on nearby Tower Hill in 1554, and whose head was preserved as a relic here for more than three centuries until its removal to St. Botolph Aldgate where it is now.
The Little Wooden Midshipman, marking Sol Gills' instrument shop told of in "Dombey and Son," is now used as a sign by an instrument maker at 9 Minories E. The firm employing the sign formerly were located in Leadenhall Street, just as was Sol Gills' shop which Dickens has made so real to all of us.
In Wellclose Square beyond the Tower, is a building that is more than three hundred years old, and in it are still to be seen the oldest police cells in London. Under them is the entranceto a subway which tradition says once led direct to the Tower. The house is now used as a club. The cells are in the rear of the building, and reached by a winding stone stairway. They are dark and stifling. Many names and inscriptions are carved on the wooden walls. There is still to be deciphered the name of Edward Burk hanged for murder; that of Edward Ray, December 27, 1758, and another inscription reading "Francis Brittain, June 27, 1758. Remember the poor debtors."
The Tower of London
The Tower of London, quite the most ancient and historic of English fortresses, begun by William the Conqueror, has been successively a royal palace, a State Prison, and is to-day a barracks and an arsenal. The most ancient portion of the fortress, The White Tower, is still standing. In this Tower of London, Richard II. while imprisoned, was deposed; Henry VI. was murdered by the Duke of Gloucester; the Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV., was drowned in a butt of wine; the princes, Edward V. and his brother, were murdered by order of their uncle, Duke of Gloucester, who thereaftertook possession of the throne as Richard III. Here Henry VIII. received in state all his wives before he married them; here were imprisoned countless subjects, among them Archbishop Cranmer; Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Southampton, and Prince James of Scotland. Here Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, while a prisoner, his "History of the World." Here were executed Queen Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. On the Thames side may still be seen the double water gate, called the Traitors' Gate, through which prisoners charged with high treason were brought into the Tower. Through this gate passed the princess who was afterwards Queen Elizabeth, exclaiming as she entered: "Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs; and before Thee, O God, I speak it." Rich in memories, indeed, is this grimmest of grim monuments consecrated by time and the tears and blood of many captives.
Where Trinity Gardens are now, to the west of the Tower and at the end of Great Tower Hill, stood the scaffold where political and state prisoners were sent from the Tower to be executed. With few exceptions, only queens were executed within the Tower walls, so that the greater number of historical executions took place outside them. Here met death, Protector Somerset, Sir John More, Cromwell, Earl of Essex; James Fitzroy, Duke of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and many another. The last execution on Tower Hill, and the last person beheaded in England, was Simon, Lord Lovat, in 1747. In his last moments he said how remarkable it seemed that a great gathering should think it worth while to assemble to see a grey head taken off. A stone in Trinity Square Gardens marks the exact site of the scaffold. These gardens are a touch of pleasing contrast close beside grimy warehouses, and in the daytime the constant din of business life throbs on every side, an offset to their quietness. Otway, the poet, lived and died on Tower Hill, and on Tower Hill William Penn was born.
At the head of Tower Street is the church of All Hallows, Barking, founded by the nuns ofBarking Abbey during the reign of Richard I. Bloody Judge Jeffreys, the leader of the Bloody Assizes, was married here, as was also John Quincy Adams. William Penn, born close by, was here baptised.
When Peter the Great visited London in 1698, he frequented a tavern which stood on the spot where The Czar's Head is now opposite the church of All Hallows, Barking.
Lower Thames Street is as old as the City itself. It is enclosed by tall warehouses and shipping marts. Chaucer, sometimes called the father of English poetry, lived in this street, where his father was a vintner.
St. Dunstan's-in-the-East stands where St. Dunstan's Hill and Idol Lane meet, between Little Thames and Tower streets. In the building of this church Wren made his first effort at perching a steeple upon quadrangular columns. Though the work was much criticised, the architect was well satisfied with the effect.Once when told that a violent windstorm had toppled over all the steeples of the City churches Wren exclaimed, "Not St. Dunstan's, I'm sure." For many years Archbishop Morton, the tutor of Sir Thomas More, was rector of this church.
Further to the west, St. Mary at Hill was damaged in the Great Fire and afterwards repaired and reconstructed by Wren in 1672. Here Dr. Young, author of the tranquil "Night Thoughts," was married in 1731. For many years John Brand, the author of "The Popular Antiquitus," was rector of this church and was buried here.
The bad language of Billingsgate is proverbial all over the world. Since the reign of Elizabeth there has been a market where Billingsgate Market is now—the chief fish mart of London. Originally it was a place for the sale of all sorts of provisions, but has been exclusively set apart for the sale of fish since the time of William III., and the wharf of Billingsgate is the oldest on the Thames.
On Fish Street Hill is a fluted Doric stone column, two hundred feet high, crowned by a flaming urn of brass. This was erected in 1671 as a memorial of the Great Fire of 1666. It has 345 steps leading to the top. When the Monument was first set up an inscription was put on it which wrongly traced the cause of the Great Fire to "the treachery and malice of the Popish faction, in order to carry out their horrid plot for extirpating the Protestant religion." And Pope, writing of the Monument, and referring to the charge of the inscription as without foundation, said:
Where London's column, pointing to the skies,Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies.
On the spot where King William joins Cannon Street is the statue of King William IV. Here for generations stood a celebrated tavern called the Boar's Head. Shakespeare speaks often of this house in his plays, making it the scene of the revels of Falstaff and the Prince (afterwards Henry V.). The original tavern was destroyed in the Great Fire but was immediatelyrebuilt. In 1739 it was doubtless the principal tavern of London. In 1831 it was demolished.
The church of St. Clement, Eastcheap, close by the statue of William IV. in King William Street, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The parishoners were very proud of their church when it was finished and they gave the great architect a hogshead of wine costing £4 2s. 0d., and then were so pleased with their own liberality that this fact was placed in the church records and the entry may be seen to this day.
In Pudding Lane south of the Monument the Great Fire of 1666 started, raged for six days and destroyed three-quarters of London.
Miles Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter, who made the first complete English translation of the Bible in 1535, was at one time rector of the church of St. Magnus the Martyr at the foot of Fish Street Hill. He was buried here andto the right of the altar is a tablet explaining that:
On the 4 of October 1535, thefirst complete English versionof the Bible was published underhis direction.
The first London Bridge was begun in 1176 and completed in 1209 under the direction of Peter of Colechurch chaplain of the church of St. Mary, Colechurch, in the Poultry. Narrow and poorly paved, at each end was a fortified gate, with a chapel in the centre. On the gatehouse were exposed from time to time heads of poor fellows executed for treason. There were twenty arches and a drawbridge for vessels, for most of the arches were too narrow to permit the passage of boats. Afterwards houses were built on the bridge so that it greatly resembled a regular street. When the inhabitants needed water they lowered buckets by ropes from their windows. In 1481 the houses tottered in decay and fell in one block into the river. They were replaced and not finally removed until 1757. Wat Tyler andhis followers entered the City over this bridge, and Jack Cade and his rebel army chose the same way. Until 1769, London Bridge was the only archway over the Thames. The present structure was commenced in 1825, taking the place of the old bridge but about sixty yards further up the river.
In the church of St. Michaels on College Hill, built by Sir Christopher Wren, there is a memorial window to Dick Whittington who was buried in the old church on this site—a church that was destroyed by the Great Fire.
St. James Garlickhithe in Thames Street, erected in 1683, came by its name because in earlier times garlic was usually sold close by along the waterside. Steele has recorded that it was in this church he first really came to understand the Common Prayer. For here he "heard the service read so distinctly, so emphatically, and so fervently, that it was next to an impossibility to be inattentive."
Of the church of St. Mary, Somerset, in Upper Thames Street, only the tower of the original structure remains, that being spared by a special Act of Parliament when the old church was demolished in 1868.
Where the red brick church of St. Benet's, Paul's Wharf, is now, used to be an earlier church, destroyed in the Great Fire. In the older church Inigo Jones was buried in 1652, and his tomb was not restored when the present structure was set up by Wren in 1682.
By the riverside just to the east of where the Fleet stream flowed into the Thames and in the district south of the present Queen Victoria Street stood Bayard's Castle, where the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., lived. Here the crown of England was offered him, and here he with pretence of humility at first refused it. The remains of the castle were swept away in the Great Fire. This was the second castle of the name on this site, the first having been that of Robert Fitz Walter a malcontentBaron who fled after refusing allegiance to King John, who in return destroyed his castle. It was here that King John made violent but unsuccessful love to the Baron's daughter, Maud Fitz Walter.
Close by where the Victoria Embankment ends at Blackfriars Bridge and extending broadly to the north was the Black Friars Monastery, dating from 1276. This Monastery grew in time to great importance because of the favours bestowed upon it by Edward I. Here this king deposited the heart of his beloved queen Eleanor although her body was placed in Westminster Abbey. And it was here, in 1529, Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio gave judgment against Catherine of Aragon in her divorce.
Playhouse Yard covers the site of the first theatre set up in the Blackfriars neighbourhood. The larger part of the Monastery was demolished by Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the King's Revels, when it was granted to him byEdward VI. Cawarden's executor, Sir William More, continued the demolition, granting a bit of the site for the Blackfriars Theatre to James Burbage the actor. Burbage conducted the Blackfriars Theatre as a private playhouse, in contrast to the public theatres of the time. Nobility supported it almost entirely. Unlike the other playhouses the pit as well as the galleries was entirely roofed over. Also in the pit there were seats, an unusual feature. In ordinary theatres the pit was filled with persons who ate, drank and made merry while the play went on as best it could, but at the Blackfriars nothing of the sort was permitted. There was, too, an unusually good orchestra, the musicians paying for the privilege of performing here where they were sure of attracting the attention of the nobility.
Famous Bridewell Prison, founded by King Edward VI., stood on what is now the westerly side of New Bridge near by Tudor Street. Fleet Brook occupied the space which is now New Bridge Street, extending as far as to the Holborn Viaduct of this day. The prison got its namefrom the holy spring of St. Bride's in this neighbourhood, the waters of which were supposed to effect miraculous cures. Before the prison was built, the site was occupied by the Palace of the Bridewell. Here the Lords of Court together with the Mayor and Aldermen were summoned by Henry VIII. when he was smitten with love for Anne Boleyn, to hear of the scruples that tormented him because of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. It was here, too, that Shakespeare places an act of his play of Henry VIII.
The wonderful City of London was once a cluster of huts on a wooded slope of ground which in these days is known as Ludgate Hill. Roman London was enclosed by a wall which extended from about where the Tower is now to Ludgate Hill, and from Ludgate Circus to the Thames River. It had several gates now called to mind by the streets Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate. This wall was built of brick and cement as hard as stone. The old Lud Gate stood about three parts of the waydown Ludgate Hill and the name was derived from the legendary king, Lud. It was removed in 1760.
St. Martin's Church on Ludgate Hill was built by Wren, but an older church stood there before the Great Fire, and in this Cadwallo, King of the Britons was buried in 677. The tall and simple spire of the present structure contrasts strangely with nearby St. Paul's, and it is with St. Martin's partly in mind that one poet wrote:
Lo, like a bishop upon dainties fed,St. Paul's lifts up his sacredotal head;While his lean curates, slim and lank to view,Around him point their steeples to the blue.
On the west side of Old Bailey the second house south of Ship Court, numbered 68, is where Jonathan Wild world-famed thief and receiver of stolen goods, lived. He was hanged at Tyburn in 1725 and true to himself to the last stole the pocket-book of the parson who accompanied him in the cart on the way to the gallows.Henry Fielding wrote of the career of this noted criminal in his novel "Jonathan Wild."
Where Farringdon Street is now once flowed the Fleet Brook, so wide that ships sailed through it as far as to where Holborn Viaduct is to-day. In its course the Fleet passed through a deep cut called the Hole Bourne. From this came the name Holborn. The Viaduct of to-day bridges the Hole Bourne of old. On the east side of the Fleet Brook lay the notorious Fleet Prison for debtors close by where Fleet Lane is in this day. The main gate house of the prison was on the site of the nearby Congregational Memorial Hall. The clandestine Fleet marriages in this noisome place became notorious, being performed without let or hindrance and with no regard for existing laws, by unscrupulous clergymen among the debt prisoners encouraged by attendants who reaped ill gotten gains for their services. Outside the prison regular "runners" gathered in couples and gave every opportunity and encouragement for quick and illegal marriage. It was not unusual for two hundred marriages to take placein a single day. In this prison Mr. Pickwick of Dickens' "Pickwick Papers," was confined after he refused to pay the damages awarded to Mrs. Bardell. In 1846 the Fleet was demolished.
In the narrow passageway called Gunpowder Alley, jutting off Shoe Lane to the westward, Richard Lovelace died in a cellar, literally of starvation, in 1658. The house on the north side, second from Shoe Lane, stands on the site. Lovelace was the handsomest and most accomplished of the group of poets who gathered around Queen Henrietta. He was committed to prison in 1646 on account of his rebellious sympathy for Charles I., and on his release went to France to raise a regiment. He wrote to Lucy Sacheverell, to whom he was engaged, the poem containing the lines:
I could not love thee, dear, so muchLoved I not honour more.
But the lady receiving news of his supposed death in France was married when he returned.
Fleet Street, still the centre of the newspaper and printing industries, is reminiscent of the literary associations of many decades. It takes its name from Fleet Brook which once crossed it at its eastern end. The stream still exists and now in the form of a great sewer flows under Farringdon Street and New Bridge Street, emptying into the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge. It was through Fleet Street in 1448 that Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, walked on her way to St. Paul's bareheaded, bearing a lighted candle as penance for having made a waxen figure of the king, that melted before a fire as she would have had his life slowly waste away.
At the east end of Fleet Street, surrounded by buildings is St. Bride's Church. It is only a few steps from Fleet Street if you happen to be familiar with any of the narrow ways that pierce into the centre of the block. But if you do not know the mystery of the block you will walk all around the church within sight of its two hundred and odd feet high steeple without coming to it. The church was builtby Wren in 1680. In the centre aisle is the grave of Samuel Richardson the author who lived close by in Salisbury Square and who died in 1761. Beside the church in the present St. Bride's Lane Milton lived with a tailor named Russell. He moved here in 1640, and here wrote his treatises "Of Practical Episcopacy," "Of Reformation" and some others.
From 76 Fleet Street Salisbury Court is entered communicating direct with Salisbury Square. In the house numbered 9 at the southwest corner of the Square Samuel Richardson, the printer-novelist author of "Clarissa Harlowe," had his printing office and here Oliver Goldsmith for a time acted as a reader for him. Johnson was a friend of Richardson and often came to his printing shop, as did Hogarth the great satirist.
Tudor Street cuts through the very centre of the district once called "Alsatia" occupying the space between the river and Fleet Street. This was a cant name for Whitefriars. The neighbourhoodhad certain privileges of sanctuary derived from an old convent of the Carmelites or White Friars and was the abode of lawless classes. Scott immortalised it in the "Fortunes of Nigel."
Wine Office Court opens from Fleet Street and a few yards from the entrance is the Cheshire Cheese, the famous low-ceilinged, sanded-floored dining place of Dr. Johnson, looking doubtless much as it did in the days when Johnson and Goldsmith so often dined here together.
Goldsmith lived for a long time in Wine Office Court at No. 6 and it is here he is said to have written the "Vicar of Wakefield." His house has been replaced by a modern structure and the old Vicar and his daughters Olivia and Sophia would hardly feel at home now.
At the top of Wine Office Court is Gough Square and in a corner house numbered 17 may be found a tablet telling that Dr. SamuelJohnson once lived within. That was almost one hundred and fifty years ago but the house is very little changed outwardly. Within it is wholly given up to business. Of all the houses Johnson occupied in London this is the only one still standing. Here the greater part of his dictionary was written and here Mrs. Johnson died.
In Bolt Court the last years of Dr. Johnson's life were spent in the house No. 8, long since demolished. Here he died in 1784.
Johnson's Court a blind alley off Fleet Street was not named for Dr. Samuel Johnson although many persons believe so because Dr. Johnson lived here for a time on the site where No. 7 is now. The old "Monthly Magazine" had offices here in 1833, when Charles Dickens came and through the oaken doorway with uncertain hand dropped his first manuscript into the yawning opening of the letter box, that might or might not bring back good news.
At the head of Crane Court which opens out of Fleet Street is the spot selected by Sir Isaac Newton as "the middle of town and out of noise." Newton was president of the Royal Society and that body occupied the house from 1710 to 1762. The old house was burned in 1877 and a modern structure erected.
Fetter Lane evidently had an ill start taking its name from its early inhabitants the "Faitours" or beggars.
St. Dunstan's-in-the-West with its wondrous tower of fretwork is in Fleet Street close by Chancery Lane and is a restoration of 1831.
In Fleet Street opposite the gateway to the Temple once stood the old Cock Tavern which was swept away when Temple Bar was removed, and now exists in modern form close by on the south side. A cock is still the sign of the place, said to have been carved by Grinling Gibbons.It is this tavern that Tennyson speaks of in his "Will Waterproof's Lyric":
Oh plump head waiter at The CockTo which I most resort.
Samuel Pepys went often to the Cock Tavern, once with the elegant Mrs. Knipp and has left the record that they ate a lobster, sang and made merry until midnight—at which Mrs. Pepys was much annoyed.
Child's Bank close by the Temple Bar Griffin on the south side of Fleet Street, is the oldest of England's banking houses dating from the time of Charles I. when the first Francis Child, an apprentice to William Wheeler the goldsmith, married his master's daughter and by thrift and industry founded the fortunes of the great institution. The present bank stands on the site of the old Devil Tavern that for two hundred years was the haunt of men of letters. Here Ben Jonson had his social headquarters gathering around him in the famous Apollo Room wits of all degree.
In his day, Oliver Goldsmith was a most conscientious member of the shilling whist that met at the Devil Tavern. Several practical jokers in the club were quite in sympathy one evening when Goldsmith arrived and explained that he had given the cabman a guinea instead of a shilling. At the next meeting Goldsmith was surprised at being summoned to the door by a cabman who returned the guinea. He was quite overpowered and collected small sums from the other members, contributing heavily himself, and rewarded the cabman. He was still expatiating upon the honesty of the lower classes when one of the guests asked to see the returned guinea. It was counterfeit and in reality so was the cabman. Goldsmith realising that he had been imposed upon by his facetious colleagues retired amid a burst of much laughter.
Two doors to the south of the Devil Tavern towards the east Bernard Lintot had his bookshop. John Gay the poet who wrote "The Beggar's Opera," went himself to impress upon the book man the importance of having hisbooks exposed for sale, and afterwards, in 1711, said in his "Trivia":
Oh, Lintot, let my labours obvious lieRanged on thy stall for every envious eye.
The Temple lies between Fleet Street and the river, with Essex Street on the west and Whitefriars on the east. It is a wide area of quaint buildings, strange windings and uncertain by-ways relieved by unexpected open spaces and magnificent gardens—a place to wander in if you are fond of wandering, and to get lost in if you make up your mind to wander and do not mind getting lost. For hundreds of years this has been hallowed ground in sacred history. It was the quarters of the Knights Templars, a religious order founded in the twelfth century to protect the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the recruiting point for Crusaders. When the Order was dissolved in 1313 the Temple became Crown property. In 1346 it was leased to theprofessors of common law and since then has been a school of law, and a great centre of learning in England.
There are two divisions of the Temple, the eastern or Inner Temple; the western or Middle Temple. The Inner Temple came by its name being nearest the City; the Middle Temple because it was between the Inner and Outer Temples. The Outer Temple vanished long ago. In 1609, James I. conveyed the Temple property by grant to the benchers of the Inner and Middle Temple—two of the Inns of Court.
The Inns of Court are four—the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn and Gray's Inn. These are societies formed for the study of law and custom has given them the exclusive privilege of deciding who may be called to the bar. Their quarters were called Inns of Court originally because as students of law they belonged to "the King's Court." In the 15th century there were ten other Seminaries calledInns of Chancery offshoots from the four parent societies. In the Inns of Chancery fees were low and suited to the middle classes—the Inns of Court being patronized by the aristocracy.
The inner Temple gateway in the Strand opposite Chancery Lane leads after a few yards directly to the Temple Church, literally buried here close to the busiest street in London. This is the famous Round Church, the chapel of the Inner Temple in which the Knights Templars worshipped, and is the only real relic left of the Knights Templars. It has stood here since 1185, one of the four round churches of England, built in imitation of the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. In early days lawyers received their clients in this church. It was arranged in the manner of an exchange, each lawyer having his regular standing place.
To the north of the Temple Church is a plain slab recording that Oliver Goldsmith author of the "Vicar of Wakefield," lies buried here.
William Cowper the poet lived for years in the Inner Temple, where he several times tried to commit suicide but failed in each attempt.
Charles Lamb was born in 1775 at No. 2 Crown Office Row in rooms overlooking the Temple Garden.
In Temple Garden, best seen from Crown Office Row, you look upon the spot where Shakespeare had the partisans first choose the red rose or the white as the badge of the houses of York or Lancaster. In "King Henry VI.," this picking is stirringly told of and the Earl of Warwick exclaims:
And here I prophesy, the brawl to-dayGrown to this faction, in the Temple Gardens,Shall send, between the red rose and the white,A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
Middle Temple is entered from Fleet Street close by Temple Bar Memorial, by way of MiddleTemple Lane, through a brick gateway designed by Wren and built in 1684. Middle Temple Lane divides Middle from Inner Temple. It is narrow, crooked and dark, a survival of the long past. Here are houses with overhanging upper floors, and law stationers' shops on the lane level or below it. Off from the thoroughfare are dingy nooks and odd courts. In one such, Brick Court, at No. 2, were Oliver Goldsmith's last lodgings and here he died in 1774. The learned Blackstone lived in the same building on the floor below Goldsmith and complained that he was much disturbed on occasions when the author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" and the "Deserted Village" gave supper parties that were "filled with roaring comic songs."
The turning beyond Brick Court opens on the Hall of the Middle Temple, a perfect example of Elizabethan architecture, and where Shakespeare's charming comedy of "Twelfth Night" was first performed. In the Hall is preserved a table made of wood from one of the ships of the Great Armada on which the death warrantof Mary Queen of Scots was signed by Elizabeth.
Before the Hall of Middle Temple is Fountain Court, a spot seeming far away from London. In it is the Temple Fountain. The doves that drink of the water here are as tame and as faded as the dusty foliage and the skeletons of trees hereabouts. Here Ruth Pinch the sweet girl of Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" came often to meet her brother Tom and afterwards her lover John Westlock.
From Fountain Court at the north is New Court and then on a few steps further is Devereux Court where may be seen a bust of Lord Essex by Colley Cibber, put here to mark the site of the Grecian Coffee House, sacred to the legal profession.
The house in Fleet Street forming the east corner of the entrance to Inner Temple Lane was the famous coffee-house called Nando's, in the 18th century. This house was built for theconvenience of Henry, Prince of Wales, in the reign of James I.
Obscured in dust and gloom the Sergeants' Inn, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery, still stands in Fleet Street at Chancery Lane.
A grimy and narrow passage in Fleet Street, a few steps east of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, so insignificant that it would easily pass unnoticed, is really an entrance to Clifford's Inn, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery. Clifford's is now completely hidden by the church and other buildings but reveals a mine of quaint corners and romantic associations to one fortunate enough to stumble upon it in a day's ramble.
It was in winding Chancery Lane that the dean of anglers Izaak Walton kept a linen draper shop in the years from 1627 to 1647.
In Bishop's Court off Chancery Lane Dickens, in "Bleak House," saw fit to place therag and bottle shop of Crook, where that strange old man died a death due to spontaneous combustion. Mr. Vholes the lawyer of the Chancery Court also in "Bleak House," had his offices in Symond's Inn on the other side of Chancery Lane where Chichester Rents is now.
Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court, was built in 1310 and there remains no trace of the original. The front on Chancery Lane and the gatehouse there were designed in 1518. Through an odd little pathway from Chancery Lane the Stone Buildings are easily reached. These were set up in the hope of rebuilding the entire Inn but this was not done. Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, here maintained a town house in the 13th century and the grounds extended all about the present site and have taken his name as their own.
The gardens of Lincoln's Inn Fields were laid out by the great architect Inigo Jones. Up to the first quarter of the 18th century Lincoln's Inn Fields was a favorite duelling ground. Herealso Babington and others who conspired for the freedom of Mary Queen of Scots were executed in 1586. Lord William Russell was also executed here in 1683 because he was supposed to have been concerned in the Rye House Plot. Altogether the gardens may be said to have many gory associations of which their present appearance gives no hint.