The Project Gutenberg eBook of the Story of London, by Henry B. Wheatley.

“But the bravest man in battel
Was brave Lord Willoughby.”

There is a special fascination to us now in a picture of Elizabethan London, for with its history are bound up some of the most interesting incidents in the lives of the statesmen and other great men of the spacious days of the great Queen; and have we not Shakespeare and Ben Jonson among those who have portrayed the various places for us.

London has always appealed to the imagination of the adventurous country youth to be the home of golden promise. If he can only get there he believes that his successful career has commenced, but it appears that in Elizabeth’s reign there was pretty much the same difficulty in obtaining employment as there is now. This is illustrated by a curious account of the early life of John Sadler, a native of Stratford-on-Avon, and one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, which has come down to us. “He joined himself to the carrier, and came to London, where he had never been before, and sold his horse in Smithfield, and having no acquaintance in London to recommend him or assist him he went from street to street, and house to house, asking if they wanted an apprentice, and though he met with many discouraging scorns and a thousand denials he went on till he lighted on one Mr. Brokesbank, a grocer in Bucklersbury, who, though he long denied him for want of sureties for his fidelity, and because the money he had (but ten pounds) was so disproportionate to what he used to receive with apprentices, yet upon his discreet account he gave of himself and the motives which put him upon that course, and promise to compensate with diligent and faithful service whatever else was short of his expectation, he ventured to receive him upon trial, in which he so well approved himself that he accepted him into his service, to which he bound him for eight years.”

The outdoor life of his time, with the men and women who frequented the streets, is brought vividly before our eyes in Ben Jonson’s plays. The useful and useless members of society pass across the stage. The water-carriers who congregate around the conduits are represented by Cob in Every Man in His Humour.

Before Sir Hugh Myddelton made the New River and brought to men’s houses, all water that was wanted had to be fetched from the conduits. The men who supplied the town drew off the water into large wooden tankards, broad at the bottom, but narrow at the top, which held about three gallons. This vessel was borne upon the shoulder, and to keep the carrier dry two towels were fastened over him, one to fall in front and the other to cover his back.

The narrowness of the old London streets is strikingly shown in The Devil is an Ass, where the lady and her lover speak gentle nothings to each other from the windows of two contiguous buildings.

All the fashions of his time—the rapier fighting of the gallants, the smoking madness of all classes at a time when tobacco was supposed to be the panacea for all the ills of human nature, the custom of garnishing conversation with oaths—are introduced into the books of Ben Jonson. The poet’s love of good liquor and social intercourse made him a frequenter of inns. His acquaintance with the two rival taverns of Cheapside—the Mermaid and the Mitre—must have commenced early, because the names of both occur in the first quarto of Every Man in His Humour (1601); in the later folio edition the Mitre is changed to the Star and the Mermaid to the Windmill. The ever-memorable Mermaid was situated on the south side of Cheapside, between Bread Street and Friday Street. From the mention of this tavern in the first draft of Every Man In His Humour it may be inferred that Jonson was a frequenter before the famous club, consisting of Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Carew, Donne, Selden and others, was established by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603.

The Mitre was a rival house, and some writers tried to write it up at the expense of the Mermaid. Thus Middleton has the following dialogue in his comedy, Your Five Gallants (1608):—

Gold. Why, the Mitre, in my mind, for neat attendance, diligent boys, and—Push! excels it far.

The Windmill, in the old Jewry, which occupies so prominent a position in the revised edition of Every Man in His Humour, was a house with a long history. It was first of all a synagogue for the Jews of the neighbourhood; then it was granted by Henry III. to the prior and brethren of the Order of friars called the Fratres de Sacca, and in 1439 it was occupied by Lord

Mayor Robert Large. In 1492 Sir Hugh Clopton, the worthy who built Clopton Bridge at Stratford-on-Avon, kept his mayoralty in the mansion, which, a hundred years afterwards, was turned into a tavern.

The Devil, in Fleet Street, was one of the most famous of the places of entertainment of the time. It is not known when Ben Jonson started the “Apollo” Club here, but it was probably not long before 1616, when the Devil is an Ass was acted.

Herrick, in his well-known ode, mentions several other taverns to which Ben and “his sons” resorted:—

“Ah, Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we thy guests
Meet at those lyric feasts
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tun?
Where we such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad;
And yet each verse of thine
Outdid the meal, outdid the frolic wine.”

It was in Jonson’s day that the suburbs, which (as previously referred to) had long been treated with disfavour, were gradually asserting themselves, and the poet was particularly at home in the understanding of their peculiarities. Of the northern suburbs the fullest mention is to be found in A Tale of a Tub, where we read of Totten Court, Kentish Town, Maribone, Kilborne, Islington and Belsize, and the fields near Pancras.

If we look for Hoxton in a modern map of London we shall find it near Old Street, St. Luke’s, not far from the centre of the present London, but in Jonson’s time it was a country place, cut off from the city by Moorfields. Knowell’s house (Every Man in His Humour) was at Hogsden, which was then, according to Stow, “a large street with houses on both sides.” Master Stephen describes his uncle’s property as “Middlesex land,” and he himself is called a country gull, in opposition to Master Matthew, the town gull. Ben had reason to remember Hoxton, for it was in the fields close by that he fought and nearly killed Gabriel Spenser. Moorfields remained for several years in an almost impassable condition, but in 1511 regular dykes and bridges of communication over them were made, in order partially to drain the rotten ground.

In the play so frequently referred to we find Turnbull mentioned by Bobadil, among other disreputable places, as one of the “skirts of the town.” Turnbull, or, more properly, Turnmill Street, was situated near Clerkenwell Green, and was known as the haunt of ruffians, thieves and disorderly persons. Justice Shallow boasted to Falstaff of the wildness of his youth and the feats he had done in Turnbull Street.

On the west the Oxford Road, commencing at the village of St. Giles, was in the country, and where Stratford Place now stands was a cottage among trees and hedges called the Lord Mayor’s Banqueting House, which was used by the city magnates when they hunted at Bayswater and Hyde Park. This is alluded to in The Devil is an Ass:—

“But got the gentlewoman to go with me
And carry her bedding to a conduit-head,
Hard by the place towards Tyburn which they call
My Lord Mayor’s banqueting house.”

“Eastward for Ratcliff!” is a cry in the Alchemist. Ratcliff, which Stow remembered as a highway, with fair elm trees on each side, in later times became the synonym of all that is dangerous and disreputable in London streets.

The actor William Kemp, in describing his remarkable morris dance from London to Norwich (1600), writes: “Being past Whitechappel and having left fair London, multitudes of Londoners left not me, eyther to keepe a custome which many holde, that Mile-end is no walke without a recreation at Stratford Bow with cream and cakes, or else for love they beare towards me, or perhaps to make themselves merry if I should chance (as many thought) to give over my morrice within a mile of Mile-end.”

Shakespeare lived outside the city walls, and although we cannot exactly tell the position of his houses it is pretty certain that he lived both in the parish of St. Helen, Bishopsgate, and in the Clink on the Bankside.

Stuart London followed Tudor London, but with the death of James I. in 1625 the older history may be said to close, for there was a considerable change during the reign of Charles I. The upper classes moved westward to Lincoln’s Inn and Great Queen Street and Covent Garden. The great architect, Inigo Jones, built houses for them in both these districts.

There was a certain stagnation in the movements of the population during the period of the Commonwealth, but at the Restoration of Charles II. a new life came into existence. The exiled Cavaliers returned to their country and found their fathers’ houses in the City of London either occupied by others or unfitted for their reception. In consequence, they migrated to a district far from the city. The builders were busy in covering fields with houses, and Pall Mall, where the game of that name had been played, was planned out as a fine street, which it remains to the present day. Lords Clarendon, Burlington and Berkeley erected mansions in Piccadilly, and Lord St. Albans created St. James’s Square. Many others followed the example of these leaders of Society, and the upper classes were completely cut off from the city. The contemptuous references to the traders of London, which are first noticed in Elizabeth’s reign, became common. The cits were laughed at, and the courtiers poured out a torrent of abuse upon all those who lived in the east.

The Great Fire of 1666 made an enormous change in the topography of London, and caused great misery, but it is supposed to have been a blessing in disguise as it cleared out many a centre of plague and disease.

When we read of the heroism of the homeless Londoner we must feel proud of our ancestors. They had lost everything, but they did not sit down and wring their hands. When the streets were destroyed by fire the river became more than ever a highway, and boats filled with the goods of the sufferers covered the waters. Moorfields formed a handy open space, and soon streets of huts were raised to shelter the homeless families. Wren, England’s greatest architect, John Evelyn, the most accomplished man of his time and the model of a Royalist gentleman, and Robert Hooke, the great philosopher, were all three, ready within a few hours of the fire with plans for the rebuilding of the city, but none of the plans were adopted although all had their good points, and Wren’s especially would certainly have given us fine avenues and convenient thoroughfares.

The difficulties in carrying out these schemes would no doubt have been very great, and it is useless now to regret that a great opportunity was lost.

Wren and Hooke were appointed to superintend the progress of the work of making London arise anew out of its ashes. The Act of Parliament passed to regulate the work of rebuilding was a very practical, and altogether excellent, statute. In fact, the way in which all concerned in the complicated business of raising a new city worked in unison is worthy of every praise. At the same time that they proceeded with their labours they did not allow the trade and business of the countr

centre to fall out of gear, and this does the greatest credit to all concerned, both governors and governed.

While the burnt town remained a waste there must have been overwhelming inconveniences, but no time was allowed to be lost, and in the end a new city arose infinitely superior in comfort and convenience to that which had gone before, although certainly it was not so picturesque.

Before passing on to take a rapid view of the later periods of London life some mention may be made of a few of the interesting buildings that escaped the fire and have not previously been alluded to in these pages.

Outside the confines of the city to the west grew up from early times a district with many various associations. Curious traditions and odd customs gather round the history of the parish of St. Clement Danes, where Westminster and London met, which still suggest many points of special interest well worthy of fuller investigation than they have as yet received.

The accompanying view shows Temple Bar and the old-world houses of Butcher Row. The first mention of Temple Bar is in a grant of land “extra barram Novi Temple” in 1301. At that time there was no building, but merely posts, rails and chain to mark the extent of the liberties of London. In course of time a gate was erected, and the one which existed at the time of the Great Fire was pulled down, and a new gate was erected in 1670-1672 from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren. This, after existing for two centuries as one of the best-known objects in London, was removed in the winter of 1878-1879. The stones remained exposed to the weather for ten years before Temple Bar was re-erected at the entrance to the late Sir Henry Meux’s private grounds at Theobalds, Waltham Cross. The erection was completed on 3rd December 1888, and the gate in its new position and restored condition presents a very handsome appearance, showing it to be worthy of its great architect.

The history of Butcher Row is crowded with incidents in the lives of authors and the unfortunate hangers-on to literature. The timber-framed house, with projecting upper storeys and barge-boarded gables, the front decorated with fleurs-de-lis and coronets, was known as Beaumont House, and it is said that Sully, then Marquis of Rosny, supped and slept there on his arrival in London (1603) as Ambassador to James I.

Butcher Row was pulled down in 1813, and Pickett Street was erected in its place. This street was pulled down to make way for the new Law Courts, and now nearly the whole northern portion of St. Clement’s parish has been cleared away. A great improvement has been made, but in order to obtain this many picturesque houses of interest have had to be destroyed.

Returning within the Bar to the city, and walking up Chancery Lane, we come to Lincoln’s Inn Gateway, one of the three historical gateways of importance in London; the other two being St. John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, and the entrance to St. James’s Palace. This gatehouse of brick was built by Sir Thomas Lovell, K.G., son of the executor of Henry VII., and bears the date upon it of 1518. This interesting building, although perfectly sound and in good condition, was shored up a few years ago when old chambers by the side of it were pulled down and rebuilt, and it then narrowly escaped destruction. Efforts were successfully made to save the gate, and it is to be hoped that it may remain to give distinction to Chancery Lane for many years. Returning to Chancery Lane, and crossing Holborn, we come to Gray’s Inn. The fine hall, which is full of associations of the deepest interest, was built between the years 1555 and 1560. Of the hall which it replaced there is no record, save that in 5 Edw. VI.

The present hall has the great distinction, according to Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, of being “one of the only two buildings now remaining in London in which, so far as we know, any of the plays of Shakespeare were performed in his own time.”[385] The other, of course, being the Middle Temple Hall, where Twelfth Night was acted on February 2, 1601-2.

The Comedy of Errors was played on the evening of Innocents’ Day (December 28), 1594, in the hall, before a crowded audience; some of the guests from the Inner Temple created a disturbance because they were not properly accommodated, and this led to an official inquiry. Mr. Sidney Lee thinks it probable that Shakespeare himself was not present, as he was acting on the same day before the Queen at Greenwich. Another performance of the play was given in the hall by the Elizabethan Stage Society on December 6, 1895.[386]

George Gascoigne’s Jocasta, adapted from the Phœnissæ of Euripides, was acted in the Refectory in 1566. Gray’s Inn was famous for its masques and revels, and on July 7, 1887, in honour of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, the Benchers of Gray’s Inn presented in the hall, to a distinguished audience, the Masque of Flowers, which had been performed before James I. on Twelfth Night, two hundred and sixty-four years before.

Gray’s Inn had a brilliant roll of members in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it is Bacon’s spirit that seems to haunt the whole place. He helped the students in preparing their revels, probably wrote a masque or masques, and planted trees in the gardens, the arrangement of which he is believed to have super-intended. His name remains in Verulam Buildings.

Returning to Holborn, and walking a little to the west, we come to the impressive front of Staple Inn, the most remarkable street front of old houses still in existence in London. The origin of the place is unknown, and nothing satisfactory has been discovered respecting the meaning of the name, or as to what it was before it came into the occupation of the Inn of Chancery. There is a tradition that it originally belonged to the merchants of the Staple. It was purchased by the Benchers of Gray’s Inn in 1529, and in Elizabeth’s reign there were 145 students in term, and 69 out of term. It was bought in 1884 by the Prudential Assurance Company for £68,000, and the Holborn front was restored and cleared from plaster covering the timber beams.

There are now very few old street fronts of interest in London, one or two in the Strand, and some in the great roads out of London, but a few years ago there were many still remaining in the Whitechapel and Mile End Roads, and in Bishopsgate Street Without. In the latter street (No. 169) there was until lately the remains of the mansion of Sir Paul Pindar, an eminent English merchant (who died in 1650), distinguished for his love of architecture, and the magnificent sums he gave towards the restoration of old St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1617-1618 the house was occupied by the Venetian Embassy. In its last days it was used as a public-house, with the sign of “Sir Paul Pindar’s Head.” When it was pulled down the front was obtained for the South Kensington Museum, where it was re-erected.

The London of Johnson and Hogarth was not a handsome city, but it was a social one, and we owe to these two men many vivid pictures of the life lived in it. They were both true Londoners, but they were not alone in their love for their city, for a marked feature in the character of the eighteenth-century Londoner was his intense feeling that here only was life to be lived with true enjoyment. Much of the life was frivolous, and some of it worse than that, but among the respectable classes the opportunities for social intercourse were greater than now, when large numbers of the workers live out of London, some in the north, and some in the south, and it takes as long to get from Hampstead to Croydon as to travel a hundred miles into the country.

During the eighteenth century London continued to grow, but it became uglier every day. The original growth was along the course of the river, but near the middle of the century a little building was commenced to the north of Oxford Street, when Cavendish Square and the surrounding streets were laid out. Soon afterwards the New Road from the Angel at Islington to the Edgware Road (now re-named Pentonville, Euston, and Marylebone Roads) was planned. The opening of this road greatly facilitated the locomotion of the town, but it was disliked by the dwellers in what was then thought

to be the north of London, who had their view of the country cut off. When Queen Square was built in the reign of Queen Anne it was left open to the north, as it has remained to this day, in order to enable the inhabitants to have a view of Hampstead and Highgate. The gardens of Bedford House, which stood on the north side of Bloomsbury Square, had an uninterrupted view of the country, and the Duke of Bedford strongly opposed in the House of Lords the Bill for making the New Road. On this opposition Horace Walpole cynically remarked to Conway (March 25, 1756): “A new road through Paddington has been proposed to avoid the stones; the Duke of Bedford, who is never in town in summer, objects to the dust it will make behind Bedford House, and to some buildings proposed, though if he was in town he is too short-sighted to see the prospect.”

The gardens of Bedford House were famous for their beauty and for the trees which flourished there, “the ancient stems” of “the light and graceful acacia” being specially mentioned by Walpole.

Behind Montagu House (now the British Museum) was Capper’s Farm, which extended to Tottenham Court Road. The old farmhouse still exists behind Messrs Heal & Son’s shop, No. 195 Tottenham Court Road.

Near where University College in Gower Street now stands was a wild district known as the Field of Forty Footsteps, which had a bad repute as the scene of a sanguinary duel about the time of the Monmouth Rebellion between two brothers who were both killed.

No grass would grow over the footsteps trodden by the duellists, which were said to be recognisable until the year 1800 when the ground was built over.

A little further east, where Cromer Street now stands, was a wayside inn named “The Boot,” which is made by Dickens in his Barnaby Rudge the meeting-place of the Gordon Rioters of 1780.

Even after these fields were built upon, the air continued so good that the gardens round about produced excellent fruit. When Lord Eldon lived at No. 42 Gower Street at the beginning of the nineteenth century his peaches and vegetables were famous. Nectarines were grown at 6 Upper Gower Street in 1800, and grapes were also successfully cultivated there.

The district north of the New Road is of a clayey soil and without a sufficient water supply, so that the ground remained unbuilt upon until at the beginning of the nineteenth century several new Water Companies came into existence and the building operations were commenced. Since that time the suburbs have continued to increase, and a great start was given to the increased growth of the town after the holding of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Before the middle of the nineteenth century the growth of London had been continually increasing, but it was not until after 1851 that the abnormal growth set in.

The Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1851 bought a large property at Brompton and the district of South Kensington sprang into existence. The glass and iron forming the Exhibition buildings were transferred to Sydenham, and the Crystal Palace was erected there. Soon this rural district, where gipsies once told fortunes, was covered with houses.

This was the beginning of the onward march of bricks and mortar, which is going on still so rapidly that on all sides we have to travel by rail for miles before we get out of the labyrinth of buildings.

When we see on all sides of us modern buildings where interesting old buildings once stood, we are apt to jump to the conclusion that all signs and relics of Mediæval London have passed away, but this is not so, for there is still much to see in out-of-the-way places if we go about the search with intelligence. From what we see we may reconstruct much of the old topography in our mind’s eye. The first thing to do is to follow the course of the wall, and mark out the position of the gates. This can easily be done by studying an old map. Some remains of the wall are still to be seen.

Many most interesting remains of Roman London will be found in the Guildhall Museum.

There are few remains left of the Saxon period, but some bits are to be seen at Westminster. Of Norman buildings we have portions of the Tower, of Great St. Bartholomew’s Church, the ‘Round’ of the Temple Church, and the Crypt of Bow Church, Cheapside.

Of later ages there are a few relics of the religious houses which have already been referred to. All the churches which escaped the ravages of the Great Fire have their points of interest. Lambeth Palace, although much of it is comparatively modern, has a most venerable appearance and is certainly one of the most important relics of past ages that the present London has to boast.

Westminster Hall, Abbey, Church and School are of transcendent interest, and some relics of the old Abbey buildings still exist in connection with the School.

Of secular buildings there are Crosby Hall, Middle Temple Hall, Gray’s Inn Hall, and some others.

It is impossible to print a detailed list of all the places that should be visited, but these few notes will give some slight indication of what little is left of Mediæval London.

INDEX