The Story of London

by Henry B. Wheatley

Arms of London.

The arms of the City of London are simple and of great interest, consisting as they do of the Cross of St. George with the Sword of St. Paul in the dexter quarter, but unfortunately an absurd popular blunder has been prevalent that the sword was really the dagger with which Sir William Walworth killed Wat Tyler.

The history of these arms is fully set forth in Jewitt and Hope’s Corporation Plate, and there illustrated with figures of the old common seal of London, and the first and second mayoralty seals. The facts as there set forth are shortly stated here.

The old common seal is a fine example of the early part of the thirteenth century. Stow in his Survey dates it in 1224, and Gregory in his Chronicle in 1227-1228. Mr. Hope says that the seal may well be of a date circa 1225, and that it certainly was in use in 1246. The obverse of the seal represents a figure of St. Paul, with a sword in his outstretched right hand, and a banner of England in his left hand. ‘The saint is represented as standing in the middle of the city over which he keeps guard; the spire of the cathedral church rises in front of him, and other steeples on each side.... In front of all is the city wall with its ditch, with lofty central gateway and two lesser flanking towers or bastions.’ The legend is: SIGILLUM BARONUM LONDONIARUM.

The first mayoralty seal bears the seated figures of St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Paul with his sword. The legend is Sigillum Maioratus London. and the date circa 1280.

The second mayoralty seal, which was produced a century after the first one, is of very special interest. It bears seated figures of St. Thomas and St. Paul, and in base a shield of the city supported by two lions. The legend is Sigil: Maioratus: Civitatis: London. The record of the making of this seal in 1381 is found in Letter Book K, f. cxxxijb., and Mr. Hope’s remarks on the value of this piece of evidence must be quoted entire: ‘This seal is of special interest, not only from its being a dated example, but because it proves beyond doubt the absurdity of the silly notion that the object in the dexter chief of the city arms is the sword or dagger wherewith Sir William Walworth slew Wat Tyler, instead of being, as it undoubtedly is, the sword of St. Paul. Wat Tyler was killed on June 15, 1381, whereas the new seal of the mayoralty had been formally adopted on April 17, two months before. This seal is also one of the earliest authorities for the city arms. Its silver matrix is still preserved at the Mansion House, but in so worn a condition that little else than the deepest parts can be traced. It is only now used for mercantile documents going abroad.’[266]

To return to the common seal, it may be noticed here that the original reverse had ‘in base a view of the city somewhat resembling that on the obverse, surmounted by a segmental arch. On the top of the arch, seated on a throne or chair of state, is a figure of St. Thomas of Canterbury with cross and pall.’

In accordance with the famous proclamation of Henry VIII. (Nov. 16, 1538) which enacted ‘that Thomas Becket’ should no longer ‘be esteemed, named, reputed nor called a sayncte, but Bysshop Becket, and that his ymages and pictures through the hole realme shalle be putte downe,’ etc., it was enacted in 1539 that this reverse of the common seal should be destroyed.

‘The beautiful reverse of the common seal, after doing duty for over three centuries, was therefore broken up, and presumably its silver used to make a new matrix. This is of the same size as its predecessor, but, in accordance with the resolution, it bears for device simply the city arms, argent a cross gules and in the dexter quarter the sword of St. Paul, with helm, mantling and crest, a dragon’s wing expanded argent charged with a cross gules. The legend is: Londini. Defende. Tuos. Deus. Optime. Cives.’[267]

In connection with the arms it may be noticed that the supporters which are usually described as griffins are really dragons, in allusion to St. George.

CHAPTER IX
Officials of the City

THE chief of the officials of the City of London was for many years after the Conquest the Castellan and Bannerer. When William the Conqueror obtained possession of London he built a castle on the river at each end of the city, to intimidate the Londoners. The Tower was at the east end, and at the west end was what according to Dugdale was called at first The Castle. This was placed under the charge of Baynard, one of the Conqueror’s followers, after whom it came to be known as Baynard’s Castle. The hereditary office of Castellan was held by the family of Fitz-Walter, by virtue of their possession of Baynard’s Castle, the key of the city. The duties attached to this office are among the most important and interesting in the story of mediæval London, and it is to be presumed that Baynard held the various privileges afterwards possessed by the family of Fitz-Walter, but no notice of this is recorded.

Robert Fitz-Richard was the first baron by tenure. He is said to have been the younger son of Richard Fitz-Gilbert, ancestor of the Earls of Clare. He was steward to Henry I., from whom he obtained the barony of Dunmow, and the honour of the soke of Baynard’s Castle, both which had been forfeited to the Crown in 1111 by reason of the felony of William, Baron of Dunmow, son of Ralph Baynard, the Norman associate of William the Conqueror, after whom the castle was named.

In connection with this soke Robert held the hereditary office of Standard-Bearer of the city, the duties of which will be stated further on. He died in 1134, and was succeeded by his son, Walter Fitz-Robert. The latter’s son was Robert Fitz-Walter, the most famous member of the family, and the one who transmitted to his descendants the permanent surname of Fitz-Walter.

This Fitz-Walter was styled ‘Marshal of the Army of God and Holy Church.’ He was one of the twenty-five barons appointed to enforce the observance of Magna Charta obtained from King John.

An ‘agreement [dated 15-25 June 1215] between King John, of the one part, and Robert Fitz-Walter, Marshal of the Army of God and of Holy Church in England, six earls and six barons named, and other earls, barons and freemen, of the other part,’ is preserved in the Public Record Office, and the following description of the document is given in the Catalogue of MSS., &c., in the Museum of the P.R.O. (1902): ‘The earls, barons and others shall hold the City of London, saving the royal revenues, and the Archbishop of Canterbury shall hold the Tower of London, saving the liberties of the city, until the Feast of the Assumption in the seventeenth year of the reign. In the meanwhile, oaths shall be taken throughout England to twenty-five barons, as is contained in the charter for the liberties and security of the realm, and all things shall be done according to the said charter; otherwise the city and the Tower shall be held as above, until all the said things shall be done.’ It is said in a note to this document that ‘none of the thirteen persons who are thus entered into an agreement with the King are mentioned among those upon whose advice he granted the great charter.’

The third baron was himself in trade, and he owned wine ships. He received special privileges from John, and the story of that King’s treatment of his daughter Matilda is supposed to be an unfounded tale.

In the year 1215 the insurgent barons entered the city at Aldgate, largely owing to the assistance of Robert Fitz-Walter, whose position was of a commanding character. He died in 1235.

Walter Fitz-Walter succeeded his father Robert, and died in 1257. He was succeeded by his son Robert Fitz-Walter, the fifth baron.

It is of the latter’s duties and privileges that we possess an account, written by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald in the reign of Elizabeth, extracts from which are given by Dugdale in his Baronage of England, 1675, i. 200:—

‘In time of war [he] should serve the city in manner following, viz.: To ride upon a light horse, with twenty men-at-arms on horseback, their horses covered with cloth or harness, unto the great dore of St. Paul’s Church, with the banner of his arms carried before him; and being come in that manner thither, the Mayor of London, together with the sheriffs and aldermen, to issue armed out of the church unto the same dore on foot, with a banner in his hand, having the figure of St. Paul depicted with gold thereon, but the feet, hands and head of silver, holding a silver sword in his hand.

‘And as soon as he shall see the Mayor, sheriffs and aldermen come on foot out of the church, carrying such a banner, he is to alight from his horse, and salute him as his companion, saying, Sir Mayor, I am obliged to come hither to do my service, which I owe to this city. To whom the Mayor, sheriffs and aldermen are to answer, We give to you, as our banner-bearer for this city, this banner by inheritance of the city, to bear and carry, to the honour and profit thereof to your power.

‘Whereupon the said Robert and his heirs shall receive it into their hands, and the Mayor and sheriffs shall follow him to the dore, and bring him an horse worth twenty pounds. Which horse shall be saddled with a saddle of his arms, and covered with silk, depicted likewise with the same arms; and they shall take twenty pounds sterling, and deliver it to the chamberlain of the said Robert, for his expenses that day,’ etc.[268]

There was a vacant ground opposite the great west door of St. Paul’s where this interesting ceremony took place. The folkmoots were held in the churchyard at the east end of the cathedral.

In 1275 (3 Edw. I.) Robert Fitz-Walter obtained licence from the Crown to convey Baynard Castle and the Tower of Montfichet to the Archbishop of Canterbury for the purpose of the foundation of the House and Church of the Friars Preachers or Blackfriars.[269] In the following year Edward I. confirmed the grant of two lanes adjacent to ‘Castle Baynard and the Tower of Montfytchet for the purpose of enlarging the aforesaid place on condition that the said archbishop should provide the citizens with a more convenient way as he had now done.’[270] In 1277-1278 an alteration was made in the wall of the friary.[271]

When Sir Robert Fitz-Walter conveyed Baynard Castle to the Archbishop he specially reserved all his rights and privileges in the following terms: ‘Provided that by reason of this grant nothing should be extinguished to him and his heirs which did belong to his barony, but that whatsoever relating thereto as wel in rents, landing of vessells and other liberties and priviledges in the City of London or elsewhere without diminution, which to him the said Robert or to that barony had antiently appertained, should be thenceforth reserved.’[272]

We know very little of this Tower of Montfichet, but it must have been closely connected with Baynard Castle. There is a reference to it and its owner in the Chronique de la guerre entre les Anglois et les Ecossois en 1173 et 1174 par Jordan Fantosme (Howlett’s Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II. and Richard I., iii. 339. Rolls Series):

“Gilbert de Munfichet has fortified his castle,
And says that the Clares are leagued with him.”

As Mr. Round points out to me this reference to the Clares must relate to the proprietors of Baynard’s Castle, who, as previously noted, were of the same family as the Clares. Walter Fitz-Robert is also referred to in this metrical chronicle.

The Barons Fitz-Walter possessed many privileges in time of peace, which are set out by Dugdale, among which was the right of punishing by drowning at Woodwharf persons guilty of treason, but it was as constable of Barnard Castle that they enjoyed these privileges as well as the office of bannerer to the City of London. A beautiful seal inscribed ‘Sigillum Roberti Filii Walteri’ was found at Stamford, Lincolnshire, in the reign of Charles II., and is the subject of a paper by John Charles Brooke of the Heralds’ College in Archæologia (vol. v. pp. 211-215): ‘In this seal we see [Fitz-Walter’s] horse elegantly engraved and covered with trappings of his arms, so exquisitely represented, that they evidently appear to be of a much finer texture than those commonly used, the muscles of the animal being seen under them, and as much as engraving can represent drapery, appear to be silk, as described by Glover; and what is remarkable his arms are carved on the rest behind his saddle, which is a rare instance, and evidently alludes to that which the Mayor was to present to him.’

On the seal are represented the arms of Fitz-Walter’s second wife Eleanor, daughter of Robert de Ferrers, Earl of Ferrers and Derby. She was married in 1298 and died in 1304, therefore the date of the seal is fixed within six years. Mr. Brooke refers to another seal of Baron Fitz-Walter which he used, 28 Edw. I. (Anno 1300), and in which the dragon occurring in the former seal beneath the horse is used as a supporter. Robert Fitz-Walter died in 1325, and in 1328 the wardship of his son John was granted by the Mayor and aldermen to his widow Johanna.[273]

In 1347 Sir John Fitz-Walter still claimed to have franchise in the ward of Castle Baynard, but the city entirely repudiated the claim as ‘altogether repugnant to the liberties of the city.’ He caused stocks to be set up in the ward of Castle Baynard, and claimed to make deliverance of men there imprisoned. In consequence of this action, a conference was held by the Mayor, aldermen and commonalty, at which ‘it was agreed that the said Sir John Fitz-Walter has no franchise within the liberty of the city aforesaid, nor is he in future to intermeddle with any plea in the Guildhall of London, or with any matters touching the liberties of the city.’[274]

The Recorder, the chief official of the city, is appointed for life. He was formerly appointed by the city, but since the Local Government Act of 1888 he is nominated by the city and approved by the Lord Chancellor. His duties and his oath are recorded in the Liber Albus. In 1329 Gregory de Nortone, the then holder of the office, obtained an increase of salary—100 shillings yearly, as also his robe of the same pattern as the aldermen’s robes.[275]

The Common Serjeant was formerly appointed by the city, but since 1888 by the Lord Chancellor. He is the recorder’s principal assistant.

The next great official is the Town Clerk, who is appointed by the Common Council and re-elected annually. John de Batequell, clerk of the city, is referred to in Letter Book A,[276] and this is the first recorded mention of the office afterwards known as the common clerk, and later as town clerk. Next to the recorder the town clerk was the chief officer in the local courts of law called the Hustings and the Mayor’s Court.

Among the distinguished men who have held the office two names stand out, viz., John Carpenter and William Dunthorn.

Carpenter, town clerk in the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VI., was elected in 1417. He was called also secretary of the city, a title not applied to any other town clerk. He is best known as the compiler of the Liber Albus, and as founder of the City of London school.

Dunthorn’s (1462) name is associated with the Liber Dunthorn, which contains transcripts from the Liber Albus, Liber Custumarum, Letter Books, etc.

The Chamberlain or Comptroller of the King’s Chamber is appointed by the livery. He was originally a King’s officer, and the office was probably instituted soon after the Conquest. It is mentioned in documents of the twelfth century. On June 28, 1232, the office of ‘King’s chamberlain of London’ was granted for life to Peter de Rivallis. His duties and privileges as stated in the grant are very extensive and important. ‘He shall have for life the custody of the King’s houses at Southampton, and the King’s prise of wine there,’ ‘custody of the King’s Jewry, of the mint of England,’ and ‘all other things pertaining to the office of Chamberlain of London.’ By another grant of the same year the said Peter, Treasurer of Poitiers for life, was given the custody of the ports and coasts of England, saving the port of Dover.[277] When the office is mentioned in 1275 it was combined with the offices of Mayor and coroner.

The functions of coroner were often exercised by the chamberlain and sheriffs, and when the chamberlain was called away from the city by the King he appointed a deputy coroner. The office was sometimes held by the King’s butler, to whom appertained the office of coroner.

William Trente, a wine merchant of Bergerac, was appointed King’s butler on the 25th November 1301 (30 Edw. I.)[278] He became also the King’s chamberlain of the city and coroner of London.[279]

Andrew Horn, a fishmonger by trade, who kept a shop in Bridge Street, held the office of chamberlain for several years. He was the compiler of Liber Horn, which contains charters, statutes, grants, etc. To him also has been attributed the authorship of the law treatise of mediæval times entitled the ‘Mirror of Justice.’[280] He died in 1328.

Many attempts were made by the citizens to get the coronership into their own hands, and at last Edward IV. sold the right to appoint a coroner of their own, independent of the King’s butler, for £7000.[281]

The Remembrancer or State Amanuensis is appointed by the Common Council. The office was held from 1571 to 1584 by a distinguished man, Thomas Norton, M.P., who was joint author with Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, of the tragedy of Gorbaduc. He left a manuscript on the ancient duties of the Lord Mayor and Corporation, an account of which was published by J. Payne Collier in Archæologia (vol. xxxvi. p. 97).

The Common Hunt was an official mentioned in the Liber Albus, where we learn that John Courtenay was appointed to the office in 1417.[282] The office was abolished in the year 1807.

Of officers in immediate attendance on the Mayor may be mentioned the sword-bearer and the sergeant-at-mace.

The first notice of the office of sword-bearer occurs in the Liber Albus (1419), and the first record in the minute books of the appointment of a sword-bearer is in 4 Hen. VI., 1426. Mr. Hope remarks that ‘the absence of earlier notices is most probably due to the

fact that the sword-bearer was appointed, according to the entry in the Liber Allus... as propres costages du Mair, and not at the cost of the city.’

The sword-bearer is remarkable on account of the distinctive head-covering or ‘cap of maintenance’ which is appropriated to his office.[283]

It is not known when the City of London first possessed a mace or maces, but Mr. Hope refers to the Liber Custumarum to prove that as early as 1252 there were sergeants who carried staves of some kind as emblems of authority. ‘We know this from the claim put forth on the occasion of the Iter of the pleas of the Crown held at the Tower in 1321, that the Mayor and citizens of London should have their own porter and usher, and their own sergeants with their staves. As it was shown that the same claim had been successfully made in 1276-1277, and in 1252 it was allowed’ Mr. Hope quotes from Letter Book F a record of the appointment of Robert Flambard as mace-bearer in 1338, and from this it is clear that the office was not then a newly created one.’[284]

For the due carrying on of the business of the Corporation several new offices have at various times been established, but the foregoing are the officials who carried on the work of the city during the Middle Ages. Much of interest might have been added of these men, but it is only necessary here to refer to them generally as those to whom so much of the history of London was due.

The chief business of the city has been carried on for many centuries in the Guildhall, which is of unknown antiquity. It is almost certain that the building was in existence on the same spot as early as the twelfth century. It was rebuilt in 1411, and has been greatly altered at different times since then. The most interesting portion of the old building will be found in the extensive Gothic crypt which is shown in the illustration on page 273. The open timber roof of the Hall was not added until the alterations of 1866-1870 by the late Sir Horace Jones.

CHAPTER X
Commerce and Trade

THE earliest trade recorded as carried on in the British Isles consisted of the exchange of tin with the Gauls, and, perhaps, also with Phœnician traders.

Under Roman rule the agricultural and mineral resources of Britain were more fully developed. Julius Cæsar praised the Southdown mutton, and Rome was supplied with oysters which came from Whitstable and Reculvers (Regulbium), and were carried through the River Stour (forming the western boundary of the Island of Thanet), and were exported from Richborough (Rutupiæ). Corn was exported in large quantities, and Londinium, the principal port for trading with Gaul, was the centre of commerce.

There is no notice of commerce during the early Anglo-Saxon period, but Bede, at the beginning of the eighth century, speaks of London as a great market which traders frequented by land or sea. The letter of protection for English pilgrims given to Offa of Mercia by Charlemagne (A.D. 796), which refers to trade carried on by them, has been called ‘the first English commercial treaty.’ One remarkable fact is that this commerce was mainly in the hands of foreigners. London in the early times was mainly a city of foreigners. Hence the jealousy of the natives, which grew in strength as time went on.

Commerce greatly increased during the reign of Edgar, so that Ethelred his son deemed it time to draw up a code of laws to regulate the Customs to be paid by the merchants of France and Flanders, as well as by the Emperor’s men, but the promulgation of the laws of Athelstane (A.D. 925-929), which ordained that a merchant who had made three sea voyages should be of right a Thane, is a proof of the small number as well as of the importance of such native traders.

We learn from the Colloquies of the Abbot Ælfric (eleventh century) that most of the commodities imported into England were articles of luxury.

The port of Dowgate was granted to the City of Rouen as early as Edward the Confessor’s reign, and the right was afterwards confirmed.[285]

The Confessor also gave a portion of Waremanni-Acra within London, ‘with the wharf belonging to it, and with its market rights and places for merchandise, its stalls and shops, its rents and dues and rights, its toll and wharfage’ to St. Peter’s at Ghent, which grant was confirmed by William I. 1081.[286]

After the Conquest, communication with Normandy naturally increased greatly. Rouen was particularly favoured, and was granted a monopoly of trade with Ireland and freedom of commerce in London. In the twelfth century silver was imported in exchange for meat, fish and wool, which were all sent to the manufacturing districts of the Low Countries. Corn was sometimes exported, but not without a licence.

The House or Gild of the Merchants of Almaines otherwise called the House of the Teutonics, was formed about the year 1169, though the Germans, under the name of Easterlings, are known to have traded here, during the Saxon period. The gild flourished in London as the Merchants of the Steelyard till the time of Elizabeth, when their special privileges were abolished by royal decree.

Hallam tells us that from the middle of the twelfth to the thirteenth century the traders of England became more and more prosperous. The towns on the southern coast exported tin and other metals in exchange for the wines of France. Those on the eastern coast sent corn to Norway, and the Cinque Ports bartered wool against the stuffs of Flanders.

The export, of wool and the import of cloth were prohibited in 1261, and the prohibition was repeated in 1271. The cause of this prohibition may be illustrated by reference to a particular import—woad, which seems to show that a native woollen manufacture existed, although all the finer cloth came from Flanders. The restrictions originally imposed upon the woad merchants would not allow them a settlement in the city nor permit them to store their woad, which they had to sell as best they could on the wharf where it was landed. In 1237, however, the merchants of Amiens, Corby and Nesle were allowed, by special arrangement, greater freedom in the disposal of their woad and other wares. In the end the woad merchants settled in Cannon Street (Candelwykstrete), the very centre of the cloth trade in London, as Lydgate tells us in his London Lyckpenny:—

‘Then went I forth by London Stone,
Throughout all Canwyke Street;
Drapers mutch cloth me offered anone.’[287]

London was the seat of trade in Eastern luxuries, which became known largely through the influence of the Crusades. Silks, fruits, spices and Greek wines were brought here by the Italian fleets which, after 1317, regularly visited England.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the importance of our commerce is shown by the appearance of regulations for its promotion in the Statute Book. The Statute of Merchants is dated 1283-1285, and the Carta Mercatoria 1303.

The trade with Bordeaux was very active, and largely carried on by English ships from London, Bristol, Dover and Hull. Wool, herrings, lead, copper and tin were taken out in these ships, also pilgrims as passengers. The ships returned to England laden with wine, and corn when the home production was short. In 1350 141 ships carried 13,429 tuns of wine from Bordeaux to England. English merchants travelled largely, and made their appearance at the great continental fairs.

As commerce increased the enemies of commerce also increased, and we find therefore that the Thames and the open sea were infested by bands of pirates. Soon after pirates had made a successful descent upon Scarborough, John Philipot, a prominent Londoner, set himself to break up the conspiracy. He fitted out a fleet at his own expense, and, putting to sea, succeeded in capturing the ringleader, a feat which rendered him so popular as to excite the jealousy of the Duke of Lancaster and other nobles. His fellow-citizens showed their appreciation of his character by electing him to succeed Brembre in the mayoralty in October 1378.[288]

How serious this danger really was may be seen from the fact that not even the King was safe. When Henry IV., in order to escape the pestilence raging in London, crossed from Queensborough, in Sheppey, to Leigh, in Essex, on his way to Plashey—though convoyed by Lord Camoys with certain ships of war—narrowly escaped capture by pirates. A vessel containing part of his baggage and retinue, together with his Vice-Chamberlain, fell into the hands of the enemy. This scandal naturally created a great stir, and Lord Camoys was tried on a charge of correspondence with the enemy. He was acquitted, but his innocence appears to have been considered doubtful.

Pirates lurked in the Thames or blockaded the mouth of the river, and to prevent them from landing within the area of the city the streets leading to the river were defended by chains. Still further to defend London from privateers, John Philipot offered to build at his own cost a stone tower 60 king’s feet in height, near Ratcliff, provided the Corporation of London would levy sixpence in the pound on the rental of the city and build a corresponding tower on the opposite side of the river, so that an iron chain might be stretched from one tower to the other to protect the shipping of the river from night attack. The danger was so imminent that the Common Council agreed to the proposal, but, as the alarm died away, this scheme of defence was laid aside.[289]

In 1370 ‘the Mayor, aldermen and commonalty were given to understand that certain galleys, with a multitude of armed men therein, were lying off the foreland of Tanet’ [Thanet], and it was therefore ordered that ‘every night watch shall be kept between the Tower of London and Billingsgate, with 40 men-at-arms and 60 archers,’ which watch the men of the trades underwritten ‘agreed to keep in succession each night, in form as follows: On Tuesday, the drapers and the tailors; on Wednesday, the mercers and the apothecaries; on Thursday, the fishmongers and the butchers; on Friday, the pewterers and the vintners; on Saturday, the goldsmiths and the saddlers; on Sunday, the ironmongers, the armourers and the cutlers; on Monday, the tawers [curriers], the spurriers, the bowyers and the girdlers.’[290]

These pirates gave a great deal of trouble up to a much later date, and the wardenship of the Cinque Ports (then held by Cecil) was a busy post when, as in May 1616, pirate vessels were captured between Broadstairs and Margate.[291]

In connection with the trade and commerce of London, fairs and markets held a very important position, but here it will only be possible to make a passing allusion to them.

Bartholomew Fair, Smithfield, granted to the Prior of St. Bartholomew’s by Henry II., 1133, was for several centuries the great cloth fair of England. Its memory is kept alive by the street which is still known as Cloth Fair. After the dissolution of the monasteries the fair was annually opened by the Mayor, attended by the aldermen. It long outlived its use and reputation, and was not finally abolished until the nineteenth century had run its course for some years.

In the City Letter Books there are references to other less important fairs; thus a fair then only recently established in Soper Lane (now Queen Street, Cheapside), and known as Nane (or Noon) Fair, was abolished about 1307 owing to its being the resort of thieves and cutpurses.[292]

There was also a fair called la novele feyre which was held in the parish of St. Nicholas Acons.[293]

Many fairs were held at different times in Southwark, Westminster, and other places in the neighbourhood of London. How important the great fairs of the Middle Ages were may be seen in one instance among others by the fact that the citizens of London resorted in such numbers to St. Botolph’s Fair, annually held at Boston, county Lincoln, on St. Botolph’s Day (17th June), that all business in the Court of Husting ceased, and the Court was closed for a week.[294]

In the fourth book of the Liber Albus there is a list of letters and other documents relating to markets and fairs, several of which relate to St. Botolph’s Fair.[295]

In Saxon times buying and selling could only be lawfully carried out before the reeve of Folkmote, a practice which necessitated a gathering in towns at fixed times, from which custom grew up the practice of each town having a market day. As a rule this was on a Sunday, and the market-place was often situated in the churchyard, close beneath the sheltering walls of the parish church.

By the Statute Wynton (13 Edw. I.) fairs and markets were forbidden to be held in churchyards; and the Statute 27 Henry VI., cap. 5, was the first enactment intended to enforce a due observance of Sunday. To avoid the scandal of holding fairs and markets on Sundays and upon high feast days it was decreed that ‘Fairs and markets shall not be holden on Sundays or on festivals,’ with the exception of four Sundays in harvest. There is no public right of holding fairs or markets, and the privilege emanates from the prerogative of the Crown.

From the earliest times the streets of London were occupied by the various trades who obtained the privilege of using them as market-places. The market of West Cheap or Cheapside was the chief of these public places, but almost all the trades had their appointed stations in the different streets, and in many cases the trades were not allowed to sell their wares in other places than those assigned to them. In the time of Edward I. it was ordered ‘that all manner of victuals that are sold by persons in Chepe, upon Cornhulle, and elsewhere in the city, such as bread, cheese, poultry, fruit, hides, and skins, onions and garlic, and all other small victuals, for sale as well by denizens as by strangers, shall stand midway between the kennels of the streets as to be a nuisance to no one, under pain of forfeiture of the article.’[296]

‘The pavement in Chepe’ was a recognised market-place for corn, probably situated near the Church of St. Michael le Quern, at the west end of Cheapside. Stocks Market, which stood on the site of the present Mansion House, was founded in 1283, and the rents were appropriated to the maintenance of London Bridge. In 1324 the wardens of the bridge made complaint that certain fishmongers and butchers had of late abandoned the market-house, had erected sheds in the King’s highway and other adjoining places, and sold their flesh and fish there, ‘whereby the rents aforesaid, which formed the greater part of the maintenance of the said bridge, had become immensely reduced to the great peril and damage of the bridge and of the city, and of all passing over such bridge.’

Staples were markets where only certain goods called staple goods were allowed to be sold. The Company of Merchants of the Staple had a monopoly of exporting the staple commodities of England, and certain staple towns (which were constantly changed) were appointed as centres of the trade. The chief export was wool, ‘the sovereign treasure’ of England, wherewith she was said to keep the whole world warm. In 1328, and again in 1334, all staples were abolished and trade was free according to the great charter. Free trade did not last long, and the staple was fixed at Bruges in 1344.

By the Ordinance of Staple 27 Edw. III. (1353) ten staple towns were appointed in England, Wales and Ireland, Westminster and London together being considered as one of the ten. The staple of Bruges was removed from Bruges to Westminster by this Act.

In 1360 part of this Act was repealed. Calais[297] remained a staple till it was temporarily suppressed in 1369 (Statute 43 Edw. III., cap. 1). By this Act the staple of wool was in future to be confined to the following English ports: Newcastle, Hull, Boston, Yarmouth, Queenborough, Westminster, Chichester, Winchester, Exeter, and Bristol.

The staple towns continued to be changed, and there were great complaints made by the English in Tudor times that the staple was fixed abroad. We read that ‘the caryage out of wolle to the stapule ys a grete hurte to the pepul of England, though hyt be profitabul both to the prince and to the merchant also.’[298] The changes in the wool trade in England during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries caused an industrial revolution, the effects of which are well marked in our literature. The raw material was no longer exported, but in its place the cloth made here was sent to countries which had formerly supplied us with cloth in exchange for our wool. In consequence the number of wealthy merchants increased. With this prosperity the country became proud, and the lawgivers did all they could to foster the manufactures of the country.[299] A Statute passed in 1463 (3 Edw. IV. cap. 4) prohibited by enumeration the import of almost all wrought goods in order that ‘the English artificers may have employment.’ A similar Act was passed in the reign of Henry VIII., by which foreign books could only be introduced in sheets, so that work should be provided for the English bookbinders. The famous poem written by Adam de Molyneux, Moleyns or Molins, Bishop of Chichester, and Keeper of the Privy Seal (died 1450), which was entitled ‘The Libel of English Policy’ (1437), contains a full account of commodities exchanged between the countries of Western Europe. The full title of this important Libellum shows its object—‘Here beginneth the prologe of the processe of the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye exhorting alle Englande to kepe the see enviroun, and namelye the narowe see, shewynge whate profete commeth thereof, and also worshype and salvacioun to Englande and to alle Englyshe menne.’

The leading idea of the little book, as may be seen from the title, is that which agitates the public mind at the present time, and shows how important it is that England should keep the seas and protect the food and clothing coming to this country.[300]

In connection with the commerce and trade of the country the official weighing of goods was a matter of great importance. As far back as the Saxon period standard weights and measures were preserved in the City of London, and with these the weights and measures throughout the kingdom had to conform. The King’s great Beam or Tron was used for weighing coarse goods by the hundredweight, and the small beam or balance for silks, spiceries and goods sold by the pound weight.

The King’s weigh-house in Fish Street Hill, London, and the Tron Church in Edinburgh remind us of the old weighing machines of the country.

It was formerly the custom to allow a margin to buyers at the Tron. According to the Liber de Antiquis, in 1305 the weigher allowed the buyer a draft of four pounds in every hundredweight.

At the present day there is a survival of this custom in the tea trade and some others, for the importer gives a precisely similar ‘draft’ to the dealer, viz., one pound in every chest of tea of twenty-eight pounds.[301]

Foreigners and strangers were not permitted, as a rule, to take up their residence within the walls of London for a longer period than forty days, and were subject to several restrictions as to trade. Exceptions were, however, made from time to time with various foreign towns. Natives of Denmark enjoyed the privilege of sojourning in London all the year through: in addition to which they had a right to all the benefits of ‘the law of the City of London,’ that is, they were entitled to the right of resorting to fair or to market in any place throughout England. Norwegians had the same right of sojourning in London all the year, but did not enjoy ‘the law of the city,’ as they were prohibited from leaving it for the purposes of traffic.[302]

In February 1303 the King, by the Carta Mercatoria, granted exceptional privileges to foreign merchants, and these concessions caused great indignation among his subjects at home. A tax was exacted from these foreigners, and in 1309 the Friscobaldi were appointed by the King to receive the ‘new custom,’ and two years later he ordered their arrest for failing to render an account of the money received under that head. Their detention, however, was of short duration.[303]

The Act was repealed in 1311, and again enacted in 1322, but with the accession of Edward III. it was again repealed.

Foreign commerce is said to have been better governed than inland trade, for the King had an arbitrary authority in the regulation of trading.

In dealing with the trade of London it is necessary to say something about the origin of Gilds; but this is a most difficult question, respecting which very different opinions are held by writers on the subject.

It will be impossible to discuss these points at all fully in this chapter, and therefore a few dates will be found sufficient for the present purpose.

Mediæval gilds were voluntary associations established for mutual assistance. It is quite easy to show the likeness between them and the Roman Collegia, but to do this is futile, because few now believe in any connection between the two institutions. Similar circumstances often cause similar institutions to arise.

In the Middle Ages few men and women could stand alone, and combination was a positive necessity for existence, and the people soon found that union is strength.

The great authority on this subject is Mr. Toulmin Smith’s work, entitled English Gilds, which was edited by his daughter, Miss Toulmin Smith, and published by the Early English Text Society in 1880.

Prefixed to this great work is Dr. Brentano’s valuable Essay on the History of Gilds, in which he writes: ‘I write to declare here most emphatically that I consider England the birthplace of gilds.’

Some writers have fixed upon the second half of the ninth century as the date of the origin of gilds, but Miss Toulmin Smith points out that among the laws of Ina (A.D. 688-725) are two touching the liability of the brethren of a gild in the case of slaying a thief. Alfred (A.D. 871-879) still further recognised the brotherly gild spirit in his laws as to manslaughter by a kinless man, and again where a man who has no relatives is slain.[304]

Dr. Brentano writes: ‘An already far-advanced development of the gilds is shown by the Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ, the Statutes of the London gilds, which were reduced to writing in the time of King Athelstan. From them the gilds in and about London appear to have united into one gild, and to have framed common regulations for the better maintenance of peace, for the suppression of violence—especially of theft and the aggressions of the powerful families—as well as for carrying out rigidly the ordinances enacted by the King for that purpose.’[305]

A large division of the old gilds were purely social, and there is no trace of Merchant gilds before the Norman Conquest, while craft gilds did not come into existence until early in the twelfth century.

Dr. Brentano writes: ‘Though the merchant gilds consisted chiefly of merchants, yet from the first craftsmen, as such, were not excluded from them on principle, if only such craftsmen possessed the full citizenship of the town, which citizenship—with its further development—depended upon the possession of estates of a certain value situated within the territory of the town. The strict separation which existed between the merchants and the crafts probably arose only by degrees. Originally the craftsmen, no doubt, traded in the raw materials which they worked with.’[306]

Mr. Ashley is of opinion that Dr. Brentano exaggerated both the independence and the economic importance of the trade gilds.[307]

He further writes: ‘We do not know whether there had ever been a Gild Merchant in London; however, in 1191, by the recognition of its Commune, the citizens obtained complete municipal self-government, and, consequently, the recognition of the same rights over trade and industry as a Gild merchant would have exercised.’[308]

Dr. Gross, in his work on the Gild Merchant, says that he can find no evidence of the existence of a merchant gild in London. Still there were trade gilds which were aristocratic in origin, and governed by the great merchants, who were the chief landowners of London.

Mr. C. G. Crump, however, has quite lately found direct mention of the Gild Merchant of London in 1252 in a charter of that date (Charter Roll, 37 Hen. III. m. 20). While pointing out that this was apparently unknown to Dr. Gross, as he decides against the existence of any such institution, he adds: ‘This charter, while it suggests a doubt on the point, is not conclusive, because it is a very exceptional document. There is no other charter of its kind during the whole reign of Henry III., and a Chancery clerk endeavouring to draft a charter to convert a Florentine merchant into a citizen of London might well have thought fit to mention a gild merchant as a matter of common form even if none actually existed.[309]

The year 1180 is an important one in the history of gilds, for then these bodies were required to pay their fines or licences, in token and recognition of their allegiance to the Crown. There were eighteen of these, which were amerced as ‘Adulterine’ gilds—the Goldsmiths, the Pepperers and the Butchers being among them. The document containing this list is translated by Herbert in his work on the Companies,[310] where it is suggested that the fining of these proves that the gilds must have been numerous, because some of them only could have subjected themselves to the penalty.

The Mercers claim an existence at a still earlier date (1172), and when the Saddlers are mentioned immediately after the Conquest they are said to possess ‘ancient statutes.’

Gradually the influence of the craftsmen made itself felt, and the craft gilds came into existence, but the aristocratic traders would not recognise them.

The craftsmen found an enthusiastic patron in Thomas Fitz-Thomas, the popular Mayor (1261-1265). His conduct disgusted Arnold Fitz-Thedmar, the city alderman and chronicler, who complains that ‘this Mayor, during the time of his mayoralty, had so pampered the city populace, that styling themselves the “Commons of the city,” they had obtained the first voice in the city. For the Mayor, in doing all that he had to do, acted and determined through them, and would say to them: “Is it your will that so it shall be?” and then if they answered “Ya, ya,” so it was done. And on the other hand, the aldermen or chief citizens were little or not at all consulted on such matter, but were in fact just as though they had not existed.’[311]

After the Battle of Evesham the city was taken into the King’s hands (1265-1270), and a very despotic and wicked action was perpetrated. Fitz-Thomas and some other prominent citizens were summoned to Windsor, and there were kept prisoners. Some of these regained their liberty, but nothing more was heard of Fitz-Thomas, as Dr. Reginald Sharpe writes: ‘From the time that he entered Windsor Castle he disappears from public view. That he was alive in May 1266, at least in the belief of his fellow-citizens, is shown by their cry for the release of him and his companions, “who are at Windleshores.” ’[312]

The craftsmen lost a valiant friend, but another was raised up in his place. Walter Hervi, who was hated by the aldermen for his democratic opinions, but loved by the Commons, was elected Mayor in 1272. Fresh ordinances for the regulation of various crafts were drawn up, and to these the Mayor, on his own responsibility, attached the city seal. When his year of office expired these so-called charters were called in question, and in 1274 they were examined in the Hustings before all the people and declared void.[313]

The craft gilds were supposed to be defeated, but this was not really so, for the merchants found that the struggle between the trade gilds and craft gilds was an unequal one. They therefore with much worldly wisdom joined the latter, and gradually gained an ascendency in them.

Mr. Ashley affirms that from the reign of Edward II. the gild system was no longer merely tolerated, but it was fostered and extended.[314]

The years which followed the Peace of Bretigny, until war broke out afresh in 1369, witnessed the reorganisation of many of the trade and craft gilds.[315]

In 1376 the gilds wrested for a time from the wards the right of electing members of the city’s Council. The gilds continued to elect until 1384, when the right of election was again transferred to the wards.

The names of the representatives of the gilds forming the first Common Council of the kind are placed on record in Letter Book H, ff. 46b, 47.

The year 1388-1389 was an important one in the history of gilds. The writs of 12 Ric. II. had important effects, and the returns form the chief substance of Mr. Toulmin Smith’s English Gilds. There were two distinct writs: (a) the writ for returns from the social gilds; (b) the writ for returns from craft gilds. Toulmin Smith printed the writs with these side-notes: (a) ‘The Sheriffs of London [and of every shire in England] shall, by authority of the Parliament that lately met at Cambridge, make proclamation calling on the master and wardens of all the social gilds [all gilds and brotherhoods whatsoever] to send up returns before the 2nd day of February A.D. 1388-9.

(b) ‘The Sheriffs of London [and of every shire in England] shall, by authority of the Parliament that lately met at Cambridge, make proclamation calling on the masters, wardens and overlookers of all gilds of crafts holding any charter or letters-patent to send up before the second day of February 1388-9 copies of such charters and letters upon penalty of forfeiture.’

The original writs were returned by the London sheriffs with this endorsement: ‘When and by whom proclamation was made in London and the suburbs—Fleet Street in the suburbs; the Standard, in Westcheap; the Ledenhall, Cornhill; St. Magnus Church, Bridge Street; St. Martin’s Church, Vintry; Southwark.’

In Mr. Toulmin Smith’s book only three of the returns relate to London, and these are not from craft gilds. They are the Gild of Garlekhith, the Gild of St. Katherine, Aldersgate, and the Gild of SS. Fabian and Sebastian, Aldersgate. It is not necessary to give extracts from these returns, but we can obtain a good idea of the objects of these gilds from Mr. Toulmin Smith’s side-notes, which are as follows:—

Garlekhith.—‘The gild was begun in 1375 to nourish good fellowship. All bretheren must be of good repute. Each shall pay 6s. 8d. on entry. There shall be wardens, who shall gather in the payments and yield an account thereof yearly. A livery suit shall be worn. The bretheren and sisteren shall hold a yearly feast. Two shillings a year shall be paid by each. Four meetings touching the gild’s welfare shall be held in each year. Free gifts by the bretheren. Ill-behaved bretheren shall be put out of the gild. No livery-suit shall be sold within a year. On death of any, all the rest shall join in the burial service and make offerings under penalty. In case of quarrel, the matter shall be laid before the wardens. Whoever disobeys their award shall be put out of the gild and the other shall be helped. Weekly help to all seven-year bretheren in old age and in sickness, and to those wrongfully imprisoned. Newcomers shall swear to keep the ordinances. Every brother chosen warden must serve or pay 40s.’

St. Katherine.—‘These are the ordinances of the gild: Oath on entry, and a kiss of love, charity and peace. Weekly help in poverty, old age, sickness, or loss by fire or water, etc. Payments by bretheren and sisteren. Members of the gild shall go to church and afterwards choose officers. Burials shall be attended. The gild shall bear charge of burials. Any brother dying within ten miles round London shall have worshipful burial. All costs thereof shall be made good by the gild. Loans to gild-bretheren out of the gild stock on pledge or surety. Wax lights to be found and used at times named. Further services after death. Newcomers by assent only. Four men shall keep the goods of the gild, and render an account yearly. Assent of all the gild to new ordinances. The goods of the gild are a “vestement, a chalys and a mass-book, pris of x marks.” ’

SS. Fabian and Sebastian.—‘Oath on entry, and a kiss of love, charity and peace. Weekly help in poverty, old age, sickness, or loss by fire or water, etc. The young to be helped to get work. Payments by bretheren and sisteren. Four days of meeting in the year, when all must attend under penalty. Burials shall be attended. The gild shall bear charge of burials. Those dying within ten miles round London shall be fetched to London for burial. Loans to gild-bretheren out of the gildstock on pledge or surety. Wax lights to be found and used at times named. Ill-behaved bretheren shall be put out of the gild. Entry of new bretheren. Four men shall keep the goods of the gild and render an account yearly. Assent of all the gild to new ordinances. Grant of a house in Aldersgate worth £4, 13s. 4d. a year, less quit rent of 13s. a year, the profits of which are applied in aid of the gild.’

These regulations with their general likeness and slight divergencies help us to understand the gild life of the Middle Ages, which, it will be seen, was essentially practical and helpful to the growth of good feeling among those who were brought together in constant intercourse.

The rules of the gilds were often very strict, and men of evil life were put out of the fraternity. Moreover, idlers and ne’er-do-weels were not to expect to be relieved from the funds of the gild. From the ordinances of the Gild of St. Anne in the Church of St. Lawrence Jewry, we learn that ‘if any man be of good state, and use hym to ly long in bed; and at rising of his bed ne will not work but go to the tavern... and in this manner falleth poor... and trust to be holpen by the fraternity: that man shall never have good, ne help of companie, neither in his lyfe nor at his dethe; but he shal be put off for evermore of the companie.’

Mr. Toulmin Smith’s returns are taken from the originals in the Public Record Office, and, as has already been noted, by some fatality there are no records of the craft gilds.

The next great point in the history of gilds is connected with their abolition by the Act of 1 Edw. VI. cap. 14 (1547), a most iniquitous measure. Miss Toulmin Smith tells us how her father’s indignation was roused by his researches into the story of the fate of the gilds:—

‘In a MS. note he remarks that for the abolition of monasteries [there was] some colour, and after professed inquiries as to manners; moreover, allowances [were] made to all ranks. But in case of gilds (much wider) no pretence of inquiry or of mischief, and no allowance whatever. A case of pure wholesale robbery and plunder, done by an unscrupulous faction to satisfy their personal greed, under cover of law. No more gross case of wanton plunder is to be found in the history of all Europe; no page so black in English history.’[316]

Of course there is another side to the question, and Mr. Ashley, who discusses very fully the consequences of the Act of Edward VI., thinks that it has been unfairly condemned. He says that, so far as the companies were concerned, the Bill did not propose to take from them anything more than the revenues actually used for religious purposes; and further, that the Statute neither ‘abolished’ nor ‘dissolved’ nor ‘suppressed’ nor ‘destroyed’ the companies, but left all their corporate powers and rights intact, except so far as religious usages were concerned.[317]

We must remember, however, that Mr. Toulmin Smith’s indignation was roused not so much by the forfeiture of certain trusts in the hands of the livery companies as by the robbery of the small gilds all over the country.

The early history of most of the city companies is rather disconnected, and, owing to the loss and destruction of documents, the mode by which the craft gilds were amalgamated with the livery companies is not very easy to follow. Still, the likeness between the two institutions is so marked, and their duties so similar, that there is no difficulty in acknowledging the fusion. To take a single instance, it may be mentioned that the original gild of Goldsmiths had exactly similar public duties to perform that are now performed by the present Goldsmiths’ Company. This connection has usually been taken for granted, but it is necessary to allude to the question here, because Mr. Loftie, a high authority on the history of London, has strongly disputed this connection. In 1883 Mr. Loftie wrote: ‘The identification of the adulterine guilds with the later companies is scarcely possible’[318]; and again in 1887: ‘The Weavers’ Company is not the only one which claims to represent directly an ancient guild, but it is the only one whose claim has anything so like a reasonable foundation.’[319] These are, however, only casual remarks, but in his latest work he has elaborated his attack in the following terms:—

‘Popular errors are very difficult to deal with effectually. One of the most persistent is that which confounds the city guilds with the city companies. Here two widely different things are inextricably confused, and that, too, not in mere catchpenny popular books, but in books pretending to more or less authority. In the common run of London histories, guild means company, and company means guild.... To begin with, there are now no guilds in London. By an Act passed in 1557 all religious guilds were abolished and all guildable property was confiscated. But as there were no guilds not religious, and as the property of guilds was held in trust to provide burials, masses, and sometimes chantries for deceased members, the guilds and their land, and their money and their priestly vestments, and their illuminated manuscripts, all ceased to exist absolutely; and not only so, but it became penal to revive them. A city company which calls itself a guild renders itself liable to forfeiture—a penalty which would, of course, be rather difficult to enforce.’[320]

There are two statements here which may be challenged—one that all gilds were religious, and the other that all gilds were abolished by Act of Parliament.

Certainly the gilds which were not instituted for purposes of trade protection have often been styled religious, but Mr. Toulmin Smith preferred to class them as social gilds, and I think wisely. As already stated, their objects were entirely practical and social. Mr. Toulmin Smith writes: ‘The gilds were lay bodies, and existed for lay purposes, and the better to enable those who belonged to them rightly and understandingly to fulfil their neighbourly duties as freemen in a free state.’

Religious duties were performed, but these were only incidental to the life of the time, and consisted mostly of services connected with the serious occasions in the life of laymen, which were general in the periods that have been styled ‘ages of faith.’

As to the second point, a reference to the Statute 1 Edw. VI. cap. 14, will show us that the craft gilds are exempted from its operation. In the Statutes of the Realm one of the side-notes to the ‘Act whereby certain chantries, colleges, free chapells, and the possessions of the same, be given to the King’s Majesty,’ runs as follows: ‘All brotherhoods or guilds and their possessions, except companies of trade vested in the King.’ The text is ‘other then suche corporations, guyldes, fraternities, companyes and felowshippes of misteryes or craftes.’

I think we must allow that the terms of this Act strongly corroborate the general belief that the old craft gilds and the later companies were so closely connected as to be practically the same. Having dealt with the general question of gilds, we can now pass on to consider the influence of the different trades upon London life.

The origin of the companies seems to have been largely connected with the result of a combination of the numerous sections of a particular trade. Some trades were so important that they could stand alone; thus the Goldsmiths’ Gild became the Goldsmiths’ Company; but most of the other companies were formed by the union of more than one gild.

A marked feature of the old trades of London was the minute subdivisions which took place among them: thus there were hatters, cappers, chapelers (makers of caps), and hurers. The latter were makers of hures, or rough hairy caps. The hurers and cappers were united to the hatters by charter of Henry VII. in the sixteenth year of his reign, and again united in the following year to the haberdashers by the King’s licence under his great seal.

The Company, subsequently known and chartered as the Clothworkers’, was first incorporated by letters-patent of Edw. IV. in 1482, as the ‘Fraternity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Shearmen of London.’ The fullers were taken into union in 1528, thereby constituting the Clothworkers’ Company.

A convincing proof of the connection of the gilds with companies, and the natural succession of the latter from the former, is seen in this case of the Clothworkers’ Company. It appears from a deed dated 15th July 1456 that John Badby did remise, etc., unto John Hungerford and others, citizens and sheremen of London, ‘a tenement and mansion-house, shops, cellars and other the appurtenances, lying in Minchin Lane, and their heirs for ever.’ This is the site of Clothworkers’ Hall, the Clothworkers’ Company being the natural heirs of the Gild of Shearmen.[321]

There is much interest connected with the occupation of the shearman, who sheared the nap of wool. Woollen clothes in the Middle Ages were expected to last a lifetime. When new the nap was very long, and as the clothes became shabby it was customary to have them shorn, a process which was repeated as long as the stuff would bear it. In the delightful old ballad reprinted in Percy’s Reliques, ‘Take thy old cloak about thee,’ the old cloak that had been in wear for forty-four years was likely to be a sorry clout at the end of that time, which would hold out neither wind nor rain. Well might the husband resolve:—

‘For once I’le new appareld bee,
To-morrow I’le to towne and spend,
For I’le have a new cloake about mee.’

But the wife’s plea for thrift, and her statement—

‘Itt’s pride that putts this countrye downe,’

succeeds in the end, and the ballad ends,—

‘As wee began wee now will leave,
And I’le take mine old cloake about mee.’

The aid of the shearman was not merely called in by the poor, for we learn that the Countess of Leicester (Eleanor, third daughter of King John, and wife of Simon de Montfort) in 1265 sent Hicque the tailor to London to get her robes re-shorn.[322]

The date of the ballad was probably early, although the King alluded to in the printed text is King Stephen, in that of the Scotch version Robert, and in the Percy MS. a vague King Henry. The ballad must have had a wide popularity, for Shakespeare alludes to it twice. Iago quotes a whole stanza (Othello, act ii.), and Trinculo evidently alludes to it when he says:—

‘O King Stephano, O Peere: O worthy Stephano,
Looke what a wardrobe here is for thee.’
(Tempest, act iv. sc. i.).

The number of trades connected with clothing were singularly numerous. Besides the shearman (or tondour) there were the feliper, pheliper or fripperer, who dealt in second-hand clothes, and the furbur or furbisher of old clothes.

Dr. Brentano points out that in all manufacturing countries, in England, Flanders and Brabant, as well as in the Rhenish towns, the most ancient gilds were those of the weavers; and Mr. Ashley writes that the first craft gilds to come into notice were the weavers and fullers of woollen cloth. No weaver or fuller might go outside the town to sell his own cloth, and so interfere with the monopoly of the merchants; nor was he allowed to sell his cloth to any save a merchant of the town.[323]

The London Gild of Weavers was recognised by Henry I., and the first charter of incorporation was granted by Henry II. in 1184, when the seal of Thomas à Becket was affixed to the document. The special privileges given to this trade created a strong jealousy among the citizens, and John was induced to suppress the gild.[324] As it had been accustomed to pay the King eighteen marks per annum, he bargained that the citizens should pay twenty marks so that he might not be out of pocket.

The suppression did not continue for long, and in the reign of Henry III. we find the feud between the citizens and the gild again in full force. When the authorities of the gild feared that the citizens would overpower them, they delivered their ‘charter into the Exchequer, to be kept in the treasury there, and to be delivered to them again when they should want it, and afterwards to be laid up in the treasury.’[325]

Mrs. Green says that in 1300 the Mayor had gained the right to preside in the weavers’ court if he chose, and to nominate the wardens of the gild.[326] In the fourteenth year of Edward II. (A.D. 1320-1321) the privileges of the weavers came before a court of law. In spite of the distinguished position that the Gild of Weavers held in its early days, the present Weavers’ Company only stands forty-second in the order of the livery companies.

Many of the old trades of London have been entirely lost sight of, and their names only exist among the patronymics of the people.

The great feud between the victualling and clothing trades of London was one of the most remarkable features of the fourteenth century. Some allusion has been made to this in chapter viii. on the governors of the city, but a reference must also be made here in connection with the history of the London companies.

After the Peasants’ Revolt, London was the battlefield of rival factions. The friends of the King (Richard II.) were found among the great merchants of the victualling trades. In one year sixteen of the twenty-five aldermen were grocers, and Nicholas Brembre was chief of them. The fishmongers, of whom Sir William Walworth was the leader, were scarcely less powerful.

The victuallers were very unpopular, and the public have always specially resented any advance in the price of food. Complaints were rife in the chief cities of the country of the abuses of the victuallers, and an Act (12 Edw. II. cap. 6) was passed to the effect that “no officer of a city or borough shall sell wine or victuals during his office.”

This Act was frequently evaded, and another Act was passed in 1382 (see ante, p. 236). In the end the Act of Edward II. was repealed (3 Hen. VIII. cap. 8, 1511-1512).[327]

John of Northampton, when he became Mayor, took advantage of this Act, and began a policy of aggression directed against the victualling interest. He turned all his enemies off the governing body, and victuallers were forbidden to hold office in the city. These feuds were very serious, and the two leaders were unfortunate in their ends. Brembre was executed in 1388, and John of Northampton was sent to the Tower and imprisoned in Tintagel Castle.

A few words may be said here about the classes of trades represented by the gilds and companies commencing with—

The Bakers.—The price of bread was regulated by law, according to the price of wheat, and the Mayor had the right to levy a ½d. for every quarter of corn sent to the mill. This tax was called pesage from pisa, a corruption of mediæval Latin pensa, a weight. The right was called in question at the Iter held in the Tower in 1321, but the matter was adjourned for the consideration of the King and his Council.[328]

The fraudulent baker had a bad time, for he was sometimes carried about in a tumbrell, and at other times he was put in the pillory. For his first offence the culprit was drawn upon a hurdle from Guildhall through the most populous and most dirty streets, with the defective loaf hanging from his neck. On a second occasion he was drawn from the Guildhall ‘through the great streets of Chepe’ to the pillory, which was usually erected in Cheap or Cheapside, and there he was exposed for one hour. For the third offence he was again drawn on the hurdle, his oven was pulled down, and he was compelled to forswear the trade in London for ever. The use of the hurdle was discontinued in favour of the pillory in the reign of Edward II. Another offence punished by exposure in the pillory, besides short weight and bad quality was the putting of iron in a loaf of bread to increase its weight.[329]

In the famine of 1258, when the Earl of Cornwall’s sixty cargoes of grain arrived, the first thing the King had to do was to issue an ordinance against the greed of the middlemen, known as forestallers and regrators.

No words appear to have been found too strong to hurl at these unfortunate middlemen, but the regratresses or female retailers who bought bread at the markets, and delivered it from house to house, were contented with a small profit. These dealers were privileged by law to receive thirteen batches for twelve, hence the expression ‘a baker’s dozen.’ This seems to have been the extent of their profits. It was once the practice of the baker to give to each regratress who dealt with him sixpence on Monday morning by way of estrene or present, and threepence on Friday as curtasie money, but this was forbidden by public ordinance, and the bakers were ordered to let all such payments in future go towards increasing the size of the loaf, ‘to the profit of the people.’[330]

Corn used to be stored by the city and the companies against times of scarcity, but the origin of the practice is obscure, and no obligation to provide corn appears to have been imposed upon any of the companies by the terms of their charters. Sir Simon Eyre, Mayor in 1435, formed a public granary in Leadenhall. Stow and Fuller eulogise Sir Stephen Brown, who, in 1438, was energetic in his endeavours to get corn stored in the city granaries. In 1578 the farmers of the Bridge House divided the store into twelve equal parts, and the same by lots were appropriated to the twelve companies, to each of them an equal part for the bestowing and keeping of the said corn.

Pannier (or Panyer) Alley, leading from Newgate Street to Paternoster Row, was once the standing place for bakers with their bread panniers. The bakers of London were divided into white bakers and brown or tourte bakers (turturarii), who made a coarse bread of unbolted meal. No maker of white bread was allowed to make tourte, nor a tourte baker to make white bread. House bread was prepared by the bakers of household bread, while hostellers, by whom it was exclusively used, were forbidden to make it. Similar trades were the pastellers, who made pies and other kinds of pastry, pie-bakers and cooks.

Butchers.—The sale of butchers’ meat seems to have been somewhat limited during the Middle Ages in comparison with the population, although the number of butchers within the city walls were quite sufficient to create a considerable nuisance. Smithfield was then the great cattle market, as it remained until our own time. Lean swine were sold there, probably with the purpose of fattening them in the town. The chief meat markets within the city walls were Stocks Market and the flesh shambles of St. Nicholas, in Newgate Street and its vicinity. A lease of the latter place to the butchers, in 1343, is recorded in Riley’s Memorials. The shocking condition of Newgate Street is indicated by such names as Stinking Lane, St. Nicholas’s Shambles, and Blowbladder Street. There was a Butchers’ Bridge on the Thames side, near Baynards Castle, to which the offal was brought from Newgate Street through the streets and lanes of the city, by which ‘grievous corruption and filth have been generated.’ The evil, in fact, was so great that a royal order was issued in 1369 for the removal of Butchers’ Bridge.

The ‘foreign’ butchers, or those who did not possess the freedom of the city, brought their meat to shambles just outside the civic boundary. On the west, near St. Clement’s Church in the Strand, there was a Butcher Row, and in the east, immediately beyond Aldgate, was another Butcher Row. This last still exists as ‘Aldgate Market,’ and consists of a row of butchers’ shops on the south side of the High Street. Formerly imported animals were killed behind the shops.

The unfortunate tradesmen had to submit to public enactment, by which the exact price of the commodities they sold was fixed. In the reign of Edward I. the carcase of the best ox was sold for 13s. 4d., of the best pig for 4s., of the best sheep for 2s. The ill-treated butcher had no redress, for a provision was added to the order that if any person should withdraw himself from the trade by reason of the said ordinance he should lose the freedom of the city, and be compelled to forswear the trade for ever.[331]

These instances of interference with trade continued for centuries, and we learn that in 1533 it was enacted that butchers should sell their beef and mutton by weight—beef for ½d. a pound, and mutton for 3/4d. Stow, in relating this, adds that at this time, and not before, ‘foreign’ butchers were allowed to sell their flesh in Leadenhall Market.

Fishmongers.—The information relating to the sale of fish in the City Records proves how largely the population of London in the Middle Ages depended upon its ample supply. There was great variety, and a large number of enactments were made as to the sale. The fish mentioned in the Liber Albus as being sold in the London market are: Sturgeon, cod, ray, herring, bass, conger, sole, mackerel, sur-mullet, turbot, porpoise, haddock, sea-ling, sprats, salmon, shad, eels, pike, barbel, roach, dace, dabs, flounders, lampreys, smelts, stickelings, oysters, mussels, cockles, whelks, scallops, and stock fish (imported from Prussia). Of these, sprats, herrings, mussels, whelks and oysters are most often mentioned, but lobsters, crabs and shrimps are not alluded to.

Fish was not allowed to be sold retail upon the quays. The stalls in Stocks Market were occupied by the fishmongers on fish days, and by the butchers on flesh days. Other retail markets for fish were held by the wall of St. Margaret’s Church, New Fish Street, by the wall of St. Mary Magdalen’s in Old Fish Street, and in Westcheap. Stow writes of the first of these places: ‘In this Old Fish Street is one row of small houses, placed along in the midst of Knightrider Street which row is also off Bread Street ward. These houses, now possessed by fishmongers, were at the first but moveable boards or stalls set out on market days to show their fish there to be sold; but procuring license to set up sheds, they grew to shops, and by little and little to tall houses of three or four stories in height.’ Salmon, cod, and herrings are mentioned in the Liber Albus as being sold in the shops in the neighbourhood of Queenhithe.

Old Fish Street, and Old Fish Street Hill which run from it to the Thames, with Queenhithe as their landing-quay, formed the chief fish market of London before Billingsgate supplanted Queenhithe.

A curious regulation is found in a royal ordinance in existence as early as the reign of Henry III., by which the first boat in the season with fresh herrings from Yarmouth was forced to pay double custom at the quay.

Fishmongers selling fish in large quantities to their customers were to sell by the basket, such basket to be capable of containing one bushel of oats, and, if found deficient, to be burnt in open market. Each basket was also to contain one kind of sea-fish, and the fishmongers were warned not to colour their baskets; or, in other words, not to put good fish on the top and inferior beneath. Very stringent regulations were also made with respect to the size of nets used for fishing in the Thames, and any such which were contrary to these regulations were ruthlessly destroyed.

The trade of the Stock fishmonger was quite distinct from that of the ordinary fishmonger, and these belonged respectively to two separate companies. They were united in 1537. Thames Street was formerly known as Stockfishmonger Row. The Abbot of St. Alban’s enjoyed the privilege of buying fish directly of the fishermen, for which he paid the bailiff of the market a fee of one mark per annum. The monks, however, appear to have taken an undue advantage of their privilege, and an order was issued by the Hallmote of the Fishmongers, temp. Edward I., ‘that good care be taken that the buyers of the abbey take out of the city fish for the use of the abbot and convent only.’[332]

Poulterers.—Many of the streets of London must have been almost impassable from the stalls of the traders and the chaffering of the buyers and sellers. This evil grew, and the complaints of obstruction were great. Endeavours were made to provide covered markets, but so many of the trades had special stands appropriated to them, as we see on all sides by the names of the streets, that it was impossible to dislodge them.

Free poulterers had several special localities appropriated to their use. One was Cornhill—they were ordered to stand at the west side of St. Michael’s Church, and were strictly forbidden to sell to the east of the Tun, the site of which and the Conduit are now marked by an unused pump, nearly facing No. 30 Cornhill. Another standing was close by, and still retains the name of the Poultry. Stow tells that it was once known as Scalding Alley, because the poultry which the poulterers sold was scalded there. Still another standing was in Newgate Street, close by the butchers’ shambles. ‘Foreign’ poulterers were ordered to sell their wares at the corner of Leadenhall, known as the Carfukes (or Carfax).

The articles dealt in by poulterers were rabbits, game, eggs and poultry. Eggs were brought to market in baskets on men’s backs, and poultry upon horses. The prices of poultry, like those of other food, were assessed by the Mayor from time to time, and duly proclaimed. In the reign of Edward I. the best hen was sold for 3d., the best rabbit, with the skin, for 5d., and without for 4d., 100 eggs (120 to the hundred) for 8d., a partridge for 3d., a plover for 2d., and eight larks for 1d.[333]

The body of London citizens suffered from one great evil in marketing, and that was that lords and great people were allowed the pick of the market. It was a common practice for the purveyors and servants of these great people to visit the various markets between midnight and prime (6 a.m.), after which hour the poorer classes were allowed to market. It is thus ordered by a proclamation of Edward I., that no poulterer, fishmonger or regrator shall buy any kind of victuals for re-sale until prime has been run out at St. Paul’s, ‘so that the buyers for the King and the great lords of the land and the good people of the city may make good their purchases, so far as they shall need.’[334]

Grocers.—The grocers (properly ‘grossers,’ or wholesale sellers in gross) were for some time the chief of the victualling companies. They were originally known as the pepperers of Soper Lane, and the apothecaries were associated with the grocers until they were incorporated as a distinct company in 1617.

By various charters and ordinances the company of grocers was entrusted with the examining, sorting and passing of spices and drugs. They were empowered to enter the shops of grocers, druggists, confectioners, tobacconists and tobacco cutters within the city and three miles around it, to seize and confiscate adulterated and unwholesome goods, and to fine and, in default of payment, imprison delinquent dealers.

Brewers and Vintners.—A passing allusion must be made to the sale of drink in London, which has always been very considerable. Mr. Riley tells us that there is no mention of milk as an article of sale or otherwise in the Liber Albus, and butter must have been of very inferior quality, for it was sold by liquid measure. The ale tavern, or ale-house, was a distinct establishment from the wine tavern. In 1309 the number of taverns in London was 354, whilst the number of brewers amounted to no less than 1334.[335]

The ale brewed was a very different product from what we understand by the term now, as malt liquor was not hopped in those days. Hops were not used in the making of beer until the early years of the sixteenth century. Mr. Riley says that the best ale was no better than sweet wort, and so thin that it might be drunk in potations ‘pottle deep,’ without danger to the head. The smallest measure mentioned in the Liber Albus is the quart, so that it was evidently drunk in large quantities. It was used immediately after being made, as may be inferred from the fact that, according to the Domesday of St. Paul’s, the brewings at the Cathedral brewery took place twice a week throughout the year. Immediately after a brewing was finished it was the duty of the brewer (or rather brewster, for the business was almost entirely in the hands of women until the beginning of the sixteenth century) to send for the ale-conner of the ward in order to taste the ale. If this officer was not satisfied with its quality, he, with the assent of his alderman, set a lower price upon it, which upon sale thereof was not to be exceeded. Fine, imprisonment, and even punishment by pillory was the result of reiterated breaches of the Assize. The Assize price of ale varied at different periods. At one time it was 3/4d. per gallon and no more, but later the price was 1½d. for the best, and 3/4d. to 1d. for the second quality.[336]

The vintners were an important body, and were mostly located in the Vintry, a district which has kept its name to the present time. The Vintners’ Company consisted of vinetarii, or wine importers and merchants, and tabernarii, tavern keepers, or retailers of wine.

The public taste in wine was not a very refined one in the Middle Ages, or possibly the liquor did not keep very well, as new wine was preferred to old. It was enacted that after the arrival of new wine at a tavern none of it should be sold before the old was disposed of. There is no allusion in the Liber Albus to bottles or flasks, and all the wine seems to have been drawn from the wood. Taverners who sold sweet wines were forbidden to deal in other kinds. The sweet wines enumerated are Malvesie, the modern Malmsey, a Greek wine sold in the reign of Richard II. at 16d. per gallon; Vernage (Vernaccia), a red Tuscan wine, sold at 2s.; Crete, sold at 1s; and wine of Provence, sold at the same price, probably a kind of Roussillon. By royal writ of 39 Edw. III., only three taverns for the sale of sweet wines were in future to be permitted within the city,—in Cheap, Walbrook, and Lombard Street. In the class of non-sweet wines were Rhenish, sold in the reign of Richard II. at 8d. per gallon, and Red (Vermaille) at 6d. Other wines came from Gascony, Burgundy, Rochelle, and Spain.

No wine was permitted to be sold till it had been submitted to a scrutiny, and been duly gauged. In the reign of Edward III. four vintners were chosen yearly to assess the prices of wine. King’s Prisage, or Custom, was taken according to a certain scale on all imported wines. The wine taverns were furnished with a pole projecting from the gable of the house, and supporting a sign, or a bunch of leaves at the end (the bush of the proverb, ‘Good wine needs no bush’). In one ordinance it is stated that the poles of the taverns of Cheapside and elsewhere were of such a length as to be in the way of persons on horseback, and so heavy as to cause the risk of greatly damaging the houses; in consequence of this it was enacted that from thenceforth no sign-pole should be more than seven feet in length.[337]

No ale or wine tavern was allowed to remain open after curfew.

The clothing trades are well represented among the city companies. The Mercers head the list of the ‘Twelve,’ and the freemen were originally ‘chapmen in small or mixed wares,’ that is, those articles which were sold retail by the little balance or small scale, in contradistinction to those things sold by the beam, or in gross, and they did business in the Mercery, Cheapside. Wadmal, a coarse woollen stuff, lake or fine linen, fustian, felt, etc., were among these smallwares. Gradually the mercers of Cheap extended their dealings, became vendors of silks and velvets (temp. Henry VI.), and formed a mixed body of merchants and shopkeepers, leaving the smallwares, or mercery proper, to the haberdashers. Sir William Stone held the position of mercer to Queen Elizabeth, and supplied her with her wardrobe.

The Haberdashers imported a cloth at first styled halberject, and in the fourteenth century hapertas, from which, as Mr. Riley suggests, the term ‘haberdasher’ probably originated. Subsequently the Hurers and the Hatters joined them.

The Merchant Taylors and Linen Armourers are in some documents styled ‘Mercatores Scissores,’ ‘Scissors of London,’ ‘Scissors and Fraternity of St. John Baptist,’—titles alike pointing to their being anciently both tailors and cutters, and also making the padding and interior lining of armour, as well as manufacturing garments. Tailors made dresses for both sexes, their prices, as usual, being regulated by public enactment. By ordinance of the reign of Edward III. it is declared that ‘Tailors shall henceforth take for a robe, garnished with silk, 18d.; for a man’s robe, garnished with thread and buckram, 14d.; also a coat and hood, 10d.; also for a lady’s long dress, garnished with silk and cendale, 2s. 6d.; also for a pair of sleeves for changing, 4d.’[338]

The Drapers’ Company is the third on the list of the twelve great companies, and the second of the clothing companies, the Mercers being the first. Henry Fitz-Ailwin, the first Mayor of London, was a freeman of the Drapers’ Gild, to which he left by will an inn, called the Chequer, in the parish of St. Mary Bothaw.

The Skinners represented the trade that dealt with furs. The furs mentioned in the Liber Albus as imported are, marten skins, rabbit skins, dressed woolfels, Spanish squirrel skins, and grysoevere or grey work. In the reign of Edward I. an enactment was made that ‘no woman, except a lady who is in the habit of using furs, shall have a hood furred with dressed woolfel’ (pelure). Women of ill-fame were forbidden at one period to wear minever or other furs, though at a later date they were permitted to use lambs’ wool and rabbit skin. No mixed work, formed of different kinds of skins, was allowed to be made, and no new fur was to be worked up with the old.[339]

‘The skynner unto the feeld moot also,
His hous in London is to streyt and scars
To doon his craft; sum tyme it was nat so.{317}
O lordës, yeve unto your men hir pars
That so doon, and acqwente hem bet with Mars,
God of bataile; he loueth non array
That hurtyth manhode at preef or assay.’
(The Regement of Princes, by Thomas Hoccleve, II. 477-483.)

The Clothworkers’ Company, formed by a junction of the Gilds of Shearmen and Fullers, has already been alluded to.

The minor companies connected with the clothing trades require some notice here. The Cordwainers held a prominent position, but in the reign of Edward I. (1303) there were public complaints of frauds and irregularities brought against them, and charges were made that they mixed inferior with the superior leathers. They were continually at feud with the Cobblers, and every endeavour was made to keep the two trades distinct. The cordwainers were forbidden to mend shoes and the cobblers to make them. Moreover, throughout the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there were fixed regulations not only that cordwainers should use new leather in making shoes, but that cobblers should be restricted wholly to the use of old leather in mending them. The latter were even punished for having new leather in their possession.[340]

In the reign of Edward III. the prices fixed for boots and shoes were: a pair of shoes made of cordwain, 6d.; made of cow leather, 5d.; a pair of boots made of cordwain, 3s, 6d.; made of cow leather, 3s.[341] This shows that boots were then very dear.

In Edward IV.’s reign the cordwainers stood up for the defence of their trade against the decree of the Pope. They were decidedly in the wrong, but one cannot but admire their pluckiness. The story is told in William Gregory’s Chronicle of London, which is thus paraphrased by Dr. James Gairdner, the editor: ‘The Pope issued a Bull that no cordwainer should make any pikes [at the toes of the shoes] more than two inches long, or sell shoes on Sunday, or even fit a shoe upon a man’s foot on Sunday, on pain of excommunication. Neither was the cordwainer to attend fairs on a Sunday under the same penalty; for not only were fairs held on that day, but the cordwainer’s services, it must be supposed, were required at the fairs to adjust the dandy’s chaussure, just as much as, in a later age, the barber’s aid was necessary to dress his wig. The papal Bull was approved by the King’s Council and confirmed by Act of Parliament; and proclamation was consequently made at Paul’s Cross that it should be put in execution. Yet, with all this weight of authority against a silly fashion, the dandy world had its own ideas upon the subject, and some men ventured to say they would wear long pikes in spite of the Pope, for “the Pope’s curse would not kill a fly.” The cordwainers, too, had a vested interest in the extravagance, though some of their own body had been instrumental in getting the Pope’s interference. They obtained privy seals and protections from the King to exempt them from the operation of the law, which soon became a dead letter; and those who had applied to the Pope to restrain their practices were subjected to much trouble and persecution.’[342]

The Leathersellers had still more to do with leather than the cordwainers, and the same complaints were made against them for passing off inferior for superior leather. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries several ordinances were issued regulating the trade of the leathersellers in the City of London, and for the prevention of deceit in the manufacture and sale of their wares.

Pursers or Glovers were incorporated with the leathersellers in 1502, but in 1638 a new company of glovers was formed.

The Girdlers made belts or girdles for men and women. They were also called Ceinturiers and Zonars. In 1217 (1 Hen. III.) Benedict Seynturer was one of the sheriffs of London. The company still exists, although it cannot be said that the calling survived the reign of Charles II.

The Goldsmiths’ Company stands almost alone, on account of the great services to the State which it performs in connection with the important trade it represents, and also in connection with the tryal of the gold and silver coins in the Pyx of His Majesty’s Mint, a service which has been performed without intermission, at any-rate since the year 1281. This history also contains a strong argument in favour of the received opinion that the companies are the lineal descendants of the gilds, for the craft of goldsmiths performed by Statute the same duties of assaying vessels of gold and silver that the present company does. The Act (28 Edw. I., cap. 20) recites that: ‘The wardens of the craft shall go from shop to shop among the goldsmiths to essay if their gold be of the same Touch that is spoken of before.’

According to Stow’s Chronicle a variance fell between the fellowships of Goldsmiths and Taylors in 1268, ‘causing great ruffling in the city and many men to be slain, for which riot thirteen of the captains were hanged.’

By the first charter (1 Edw. III., 1327), ‘the company were allowed to elect honest, lawful and sufficient men, but skilled in the trade, to enquire of any matters of complaint, and who might, in consideration of the craft, reform what defects they should find therein, and punish offenders. 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; and that no silver or plate 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 that the persons of the said trade might inform themselves whether the sellers came lawfully by such vessel or not; whereas of late not only the merchants and strangers brought counterfeit sterling in the realm, and also many of the trade of goldsmiths kept shops in obscure turnings and by-lanes and streets, but did buy vessels of gold and silver secretly, without enquiring whether such vessel were stolen or lawfully come by, and melting it down, did make it into plate, and sell it to merchants travelling beyond seas, that it might be exported; and so they made false work of gold and silver, which they sold to those who had no skill in such things. These abuses and deceptions this charter provides against by ordaining 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.’

The King’s Exchange for the receipt of bullion was situated in the street leading from Cheapside to Knight-riders Street, known from the early part of the seventeenth century as Old ‘Change. The London goldsmiths chiefly inhabited Cheapside, Old ‘Change, Lombard Street, Foster Lane, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Silver Street, Goldsmiths’ Street, Wood Street, and the lanes about Goldsmiths’ Hall. That part of the south side of Cheapside from Bread Street to the Cross was called Goldsmiths’ Row. It was described in enthusiastic terms by Stow as ‘the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops that be within the walls of London or elsewhere in England... the same was [re]built by Thomas Wood, goldsmith, one of the Sheriffs of London, in the year 1491. It containeth in number ten fair dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly built four storeys high, beautified towards the street with the goldsmiths’ arms and the likeness of Woodmen, in memory of his name, riding on monstrous beasts, all which is cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt: these he gave to the goldsmiths, with stocks of money, to be lent to young men having those shops. This said front was again new painted and gilt over in the year 1594; Sir Richard Martin being then Mayor and keeping his mayoralty in one of them.’

Sir Walter Prideaux, in his valuable Memorials of the Goldsmiths’ Company, says that the native and the 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 ‘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.

All the livery companies possessed a class of young unmarried members called ‘The Bachelors,’ and in the Goldsmiths’ Company a special place was reserved for their lodging. This was known as Bachelors’ Alley or Court, and was situated between Foster Lane and Gutter Lane. The lodgings were supplied at ‘very small and easy rents,’ the greatest not to exceed 8s. per annum. The tenants could continue as long as they were unmarried, but difficulties arose by reason of attempts at underletting without authority, and disorderly persons gave much trouble. In 1595 an order was promulgated ‘that from henceforth no goldsmith shall have his dwelling in any of the tenements in Bachelors’ Alley before he be admitted by the wardens for the time being; and that everyone so admitted shall forthwith enter into a bond to deliver to the wardens, at his departure, the key of his tenement, and quietly to quit possession of the same.’

Sir Walter Prideaux states that at the early period of the first charter the goldsmiths 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. Saint Dunstan was the patron saint of the company, and feasts were held on his day, when also bells were set ringing. This saint’s likeness in wood (gilt) formed the figure-head of the company’s barge. There was also a Chapel of St. Dunstan in St. Paul’s Cathedral which was attached to the company.

In the foregoing remarks there are some references to the livery companies, but these are introduced more particularly on account of the light thrown by them upon the trade of London. The work of the gilds was devoted to the trades which they represented, but in course of time many of the companies lost touch with the trades whose names they bore. This largely came about in a quite natural way, and the privilege of introduction to a company by patrimony caused the addition to the list of freemen of a large number of those who were engaged in other occupations.

The relative position in precedence of the various companies have continually altered, and there is no information to show how the twelve chief companies have attained that commanding position.

The feuds between the trades continued to comparatively late times. Pepys relates, in 1664, how there was a fray in Moorfields between the butchers and the weavers, between whom there had ever been a competition for mastery. At first the butchers knocked down all the weavers that had green or blue aprons, but at last the butchers were fain to pull off their sleeves that they might not be known, and were soundly beaten out of the field.[343]

Some note must be made here of the Jews and of the Italian moneylenders who for so long carried on the financial business of the country.

One of the many hardships which the Jews suffered in this country was that wherever they might dwell they were compelled to bury their dead in London. This regulation was abolished by Henry II. in 1177.

The cruel calumny that the Jews at Lincoln crucified a Christian child brought them into great trouble, and in 1256 one hundred and two Jews were brought from Lincoln to Westminster charged with this crime. Eighteen of them were hanged, and the remainder lay in prison for a long time.

Clipping of money became very general about 1278, and the Jews were supposed to be the chief culprits. Those who were suspected, with their Christian accomplices, were arrested, and at the end of the trial 300 Jews were condemned to be hanged as well as three Christians. Nearly all the goldsmiths and moneyers escaped the death penalty. In 1290 came the final blow, when every Jew was expelled from England. It is difficult to understand Edward I.’s motive in banishing a class of men who were so useful to him. In Stow’s Chronicle it is said that as their houses were sold ‘the King made a mighty mass of money,’ but the action certainly added to his difficulties, and drove him to resort to the Italian financiers, who were no more popular with the citizens than the Jews. The expulsion was ascribed to the instigation of the King’s mother, Eleanor, widow of Henry III., but it certainly expressed the will of the nation. Stow gives the number of Jews banished as 15,060, but this is probably an exaggeration. The number of London Jews is estimated at 2000.

The Old Jewry was originally the Ghetto of London, and the burial-place of the Jews was on the site of Jewin Street. Mr. Joseph Jacobs, who compiled a valuable account of the Old Jewry, is of opinion that the Jews no longer lived in this place at the time of the expulsion. There was a Jewry within the Liberty of the Tower in the thirteenth century, and there is still a Jewry Street, Aldgate.

The republics of Italy during the Middle Ages were the home of finance, and had advanced far before the other states of Europe in wealth and civilisation. The necessities of the great countries of Europe, caused by the Crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were the opportunity of companies of moneylenders, who acted as the Pope’s collectors.

Before the close of the reign of Henry III. the Italians had gained a firm footing in England as merchants and moneylenders. Citizens of Sienna, Lucca and Florence came here, and fought with the Jews for the financial control of the country.

Matthew Paris relates that Roger, Bishop of London, anathematised the Caorsins and banished them from his diocese in 1235 in spite of the support of ‘judges that were servants (familiaribus) to the Caorsins, whom they had elected for their will.’[344]

In the early years of Edward I.’s reign, there were four companies of merchants of Sienna acting under the title of ‘Campsores Papæ.’ In his ninth year the keepers of the Exchange delivered £10,000 to Lombard merchants (as they are styled in the record) in part payment of sums they had lent to the King. It is recorded that between the twenty-third and twenty-seventh years of his reign Edward I. contracted a debt to the Friscobaldi alone of not less than £15,800.[345]

The King wanted much money for his wars, and, as he could no longer look to the Jews he was forced to apply for aid to the Italians. These loans grew so formidable that they caused considerable financial embarrassments in the reign of Edward II.

There were a large number of companies such as the Ricciardi, the Bardi, the Peruzzi, and the Spini, but the Friscobaldi, of which family there were several companies, occur most frequently in London history. Amerigo de’ Friscobaldi was constable of Bordeaux in the first year of Edward II.’s reign.

Here are two entries from the city records:—

‘14 Feb. 1299-1300.—Thursday after the Feast of St. Valentine came John de Pounteysse, goldsmith, and acknowledged himself bound to Faldo Jamiano, of the society of Frescobaldi, in the sum of £8 and 45d. sterling, to be paid at Easter next.’[346]

‘2 Feb. 1305-6.—Andrew le Mareschal acknowledged himself indebted to Bettinus Friscobalde and his partners, merchants of the company of Friscobaldi, in the sum of £102, 13s. 4d.’[347]

The loans in the reign of Edward III. were very considerable, and the unpopularity of the Italians was great. In 1376 a petition was presented to the King by the Mayor, Aldermen and Commons of the City of London against usurious foreign moneylenders dwelling in London, asking that the Lombards might be forbidden from dwelling in the city, or acting as brokers and buying and selling by retail which they alleged to be against their ancient franchises. The King answered the petition to the effect that if the citizens would put the city under good government for the future no foreigner should be allowed to dwell, act as broker, or sell by retail in London or the suburbs save and except the merchants of the Hanse towns.[348]

On the whole we must extend our sympathy to the Italians, for the King was not very prompt in paying his debts, and he considered it immoral to have promised any interest. The effect was that he ruined many of these unfortunate foreigners. The name of Lombard Street occurs in the city books in 1382, and was in common use at the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is a remarkable fact that the locality in which the Italian financiers first settled in London should obtain a name which has continued to the present day as a synonym of finance, and was used by the late Mr. Bagehot as the title of his great work.

Matthew Paris tells us that the houses which the Italian moneylenders built for themselves were so costly that, although at one period the Italians were anxious to leave the kingdom to escape the persecutions they suffered from, they were constrained to remain by the loss they feared to incur by deserting their houses.[349]

In 1456 a serious attack was made upon the houses of the Lombards by the mercers and other crafts led by William Cantelowe, alderman and mercer, who was summoned before the King’s Council and imprisoned. We learn also from the Paston Letters that two of the men who joined in the attack were hanged (ed. J. Gairdner, 1872, vol. i. p. 387). In Gregory’s Chronicle it is said that the Lombards were compelled to quit London and take up their residence in Southampton and Winchester. Dr. James Gairdner writes of this outbreak: ‘The withdrawal of the Lombard merchants in all probability produced a sensible effect upon the commerce of the city; for they made a bye-law among themselves that no individual merchant of Northern Italy should henceforth go to London and trade there.’ This ordinance the Signory of Venice ratified by a decree of the Senate, and prohibited, under a heavy fine, all Venetian vessels from visiting the port of London.[350]

In spite of all this turmoil affairs settled down again, and the foreigners appear to have returned to their London houses.

In connection with the introduction of Italian bankers into London, the popular derivation of bankrupt from a broken bench is naturally called to mind, and I have tried to find some allusion in the city records to a broken bench in Lombard Street, but without success.

In Florio’s A New Worlde of Wordes; or, Dictionarie in Italian and English (1598), we find the following entries:—

‘Banca, a bench or a forme.

‘Bancarotta, a bankrupt.’

In Torriano’s edition of Florio (1650) we come upon these amplified entries—

‘Banca-rotta, a bankrout merchant, one that hath broken his credit.

‘Banca fallito, a bank broken, a merchant’s credit crackt.’

This is the explanation that commends itself to Dr. Murray (New English Dictionary), who writes that he cannot trace the reference to a broken bench earlier than that of Dr. Johnson, who introduced the suggestion with the formula ‘it is said.’

There is, however, an early note bearing on this derivation in Sir John Skene’s remarkable little book, De Verborum Significatione (1641),[351] where we read under the words ‘Dyour, Dyvour’ this explanation: ‘In Latine, cedere bonis, quhilk is most commonly used amongst merchandes to make bankrout, bankrupt or bankrompue; because the doer thereof, as it were, breakis his bank, stalle or seete quhair he used his traffique of before.’

No earlier date for the use of the word than the reign of Henry VIII. has been found by Professor Skeat or Dr. Murray, but surely an earlier reference must be lurking somewhere. In the First Folio of Shakespeare the word is printed ‘bankeroute’ (pronounced as four syllables), but this was altered in later editions to bankrupt. There can be no doubt that the word is directly derived from bancarotta, and that the form bankrupt is an afterthought of the learned to connect it with the Latin language.

The point that has to be accounted for is the strange appropriation of an expression meaning broken bench or broken bank to the individual whose credit is broken. This one would naturally expect to be a secondary meaning.

In concluding this chapter it is necessary to make an allusion to the Statute merchant (11 Edw. I.) for the recovery of debts. The first two Letter Books of the City of London are chiefly concerned with recognisances of debts, and they are of great value as illustrating the commercial intercourse of the citizens of London in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with Gascony and Spain, more especially in connection with wine and leather.

By the Statute of Acton Burnel (11 Edw. I.) it was enacted (inter alia) that recognisances of debts should be taken before the Mayor and a clerk appointed by the King. Nevertheless within a very short while after the passing of this Statute and notwithstanding its express provision to the contrary, we find the Mayor, sheriffs and aldermen declaring that such recognisances should be made before the city chamberlain, who might, if he liked, receive, as he frequently did, the recognisances at his own house instead of at the Guildhall.[352]

It was ordered that the recognisances should bear ‘the debtor’s seal and also the King’s seal,’ to be provided for the purpose. This latter seal appears to be no longer in existence. From impressions of it preserved at King’s College, Cambridge, and elsewhere, it is found to have been circular, and nearly three-quarters of an inch in diameter, with the King’s bust between two castles, with a lion of England in base. Legend—‘S⁺ Edm Reg⁺ Angl⁺ ad recogn Debitor⁺.’[353]

The following entry from Letter Book A forms an interesting illustration of the contents of these books:—

‘Laurence de Gisors acknowledged before H. le Galeis the Mayor that he owed Sir Philip le Taylor a cask of wine to be delivered on a certain love day (diem amoris) because the said Laurence killed a dog belonging to him.’

CHAPTER XI
The Church and Education

THE influence of the Church during the mediæval period was great. In London the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s (secular canons) held the first place after the bishop, then came other bodies of secular and regular canons, followed by the monks and friars and officers of the hospitals, etc. Last in rank, but most esteemed by the people, came the rectors and vicars of the various parishes. Here was a large army of persons forming the officials of the Church, and the buildings of the Church occupied a very large portion of the city and of the land beyond its walls.

Between the secular and the regular clergy a great feud always existed. During the Saxon period the number of religious houses was few, but a great increase occurred almost immediately after the Conquest. Monasteries grew in number rapidly during the Norman period, but in time the monks having grown rich and lazy the need of a revival became evident. The great movement of evangelisation which took place during the early Plantagenet period when the friars came from Italy to England caused a religious revolution.

Poverty and humility were the great principles of the friars, but these were soon forgotten, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries all the regulars became equally obnoxious to the reformers. Wycliffe and his followers preached against them, and writers with such different views as Langland and Chaucer had little but evil to say of them. Chaucer condemns monks and friars alike, and reserves his praise for the poor parish priest.

We must first deal with the bishop and the secular clergy, and then consider the conditions relative to the establishment of the regulars, ending with a note on education in London during the Middle Ages.

The Cathedral Church of St. Paul’s is of great antiquity, and was established in the first period of Saxon Christianity. There have been three buildings on the same site, and the first was erected in the earliest years of the seventh century by Mellitus the missionary bishop and Ethelbert, King of Kent. Although this church existed for nearly five centuries no record whatever remains of it. Sir Gilbert Scott wrote: ‘I am not aware that we have any information as to the Cathedral built by the companions of Augustine (Mellitus and Justus) at London and Rochester. Curiously enough there continues to this day at Rochester, and continued to the seventeenth century in our own St. Paul’s equally as at Canterbury, a crypt beneath the elevated sanctuary, no doubt the lineal successor and representative of those erected by these missionary bishops, in imitation of the great basilica at Rome, whence they had been sent to evangelise this distant region.’[354]

Erkenwald, whose shrine stood at the back of the high altar in the oldest church, was the fourth bishop (A.D. 675-693), and it was at his house in London that Archbishop Theodore, the organiser of the Church of England, was reconciled to Bishop Wilfrid after their long estrangement.[355] Aelfun, or Alhunus, was Bishop of London in 1012, and performed the burial service over Aelfah (or Alphage), Archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered by the Danes and buried in St. Paul’s.

William, the chaplain of Edward the Confessor, was consecrated in 1051. He was driven from England with the other foreign prelates in the following year, but returned to his See and died in 1075. It was he who was addressed as ‘William Bishop’ in William the Conqueror’s charter to the citizens of London.

The first Church of St. Paul’s was destroyed by fire at the end of the eleventh century, but the exact time is not certain as Matthew of Westminster and Roger of Wendover give conflicting dates for the rebuilding. There seems to be no doubt that the second cathedral was commenced by Bishop Maurice, and as he was not consecrated until 1085 the date given by Dugdale, 1083, must be wrong. Probably the received date of 1087 (the last year of William the Conqueror’s reign) is more correct. Fire again did great damage in the year 1136, but the work of rebuilding proceeded slowly, and in 1221 the steeple was finished; the choir was rebuilt and the whole building was nearly completed by 1283.

Old St. Paul’s was a very grand building, which took a prominent position among the cathedrals of the country. It was longer than Winchester, and the height of the choir was the same as Westminster; that of the nave was rather less.[356]

The crowning glory of old St. Paul’s was its elegant spire, but the building itself had many beauties, the magnificent rose window at the east end of the Lady Chapel, with the beautiful seven-light window beneath, being among these. This grand building, therefore, standing on a hill in the most prominent position of city, was for several centuries the great ornament of London, bringing in harmony all the picturesque elements of the mediæval town.

In the year 1314 the cross fell, and the steeple of wood being ruinous, was taken down and rebuilt with a new gilt ball. Many relics were found in the cross, which were replaced in the new cross, and the new pommel or ball was made of sufficient size to contain ten bushels of corn. A Chronicle in Lambeth Palace Library contains an account of the solemn dedication of these relics, which is quoted by Canon Benham: ‘On the tenth of the calends of June 1314, Gilbert, Bishop of London, dedicated altars, namely those of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of St. Thomas the Martyr, and of the Blessed Dunstan, in the new buildings of the Church of St. Paul, London. In the same year the cross and the ball, with great part of the Campanile of the Church of St. Paul, were taken down because they were decayed and dangerous, and a new cross, with a ball well gilt, was erected; and many relics of divers saints were, for the protection of the aforesaid Campanile, and of the whole structure beneath, placed within the cross, with a great procession, and with due solemnity, by Gilbert the bishop, on the fourth of the nones of October, in order that the Omnipotent God and the glorious merits of His saints, whose relics are contained within the cross, might deign to protect from all danger of storms.’[357]

In 1444 the spire was nearly destroyed by lightning and was not repaired until 1462. In the severe fire of 1561 the spire was destroyed and never rebuilt, although the rest of the Cathedral was restored in 1566. The great height of the steeple gave point to many a proverb, and in Lodge’s Wounds of Civil War (1594) a clown talks of the ‘Paul’s steeple of honour,’ meaning by that phrase the highest point that could be attained.[358] The choristers ascended the spire to a great height on certain saints’ days, and chanted prayers and anthems, a custom still observed in the tower of Magdalen College, Oxford, on May Day. The last observance of the custom at St. Paul’s is said to have taken place in the reign of Mary I.[359]

The western front was originally a plain Norman façade of great size, which was flanked by two strong stone towers. The one on the north was connected with the Bishop’s Palace, while that on the south was called the Lollards’ Tower, and was used as the Bishop’s prison ‘for such as were detected for opinions in religion contrary to the faith of the Church’ (Stow’s Survey).[360]

St. Paul’s Churchyard was formerly an enclosure, and not a thoroughfare. The public route to Cheapside from Ludgate Hill passed up the Old Bailey and along Newgate Street. The Cathedral Close is thus described by the late Dr. Sparrow Simpson: ‘The wall erected about 1109, and, by letters-patent of Edward I., greatly strengthened in 1285, extends from the N.E. corner of Ave Maria Lane, runs eastward along Paternoster Row to the north end of Old ‘Change in Cheapside, thence southward to Carter Lane, and on the north of Carter Lane to Creed Lane, back to the Great Western Gate. There are six entrances to the enclosure. The first is the Great Western Gate, by which we have just entered; the second, in Paul’s Alley in Paternoster Row, leading to the postern gate of the Cathedral; the third at Canon Alley; the fourth, or Little Gate, where S. Paul’s Churchyard and Cheapside now unite; the fifth, S. Augustine’s Gate, at the west end of Watling Street; the sixth, at Paul’s Chain.’[361]

The great western gate spanned the street towards the ends of Creed Lane and Ave Maria Lane. On entering the gate the west front of the Cathedral came in view. The old Church of St. Gregory adjoined the main building at the south-west corner. It stood in the same position to the first Cathedral, and within its walls the body of St. Edmund, king and martyr, was preserved for a time before it was carried to Bury St. Edmund’s for honourable burial. The early history of this church is lost, and it is not known whether it was destroyed with the first Cathedral, and rose again from its ashes like the second Cathedral, or whether it continued for a time in its original state. It was pulled down before 1645, and not rebuilt. On the northern side of the nave of the Cathedral stood the Bishop’s Palace, a large and gloomy building.[362]

Still further to the north (past the palace and its grounds) was the cemetery, called Pardon Church Haugh. Here was a cloister painted with the subjects of the Danse Macabre or Dance of Death, commonly known as the Dance of Paul’s. John Lydgate translated out of French the old verses that explained these paintings. Over the east quadrant of the cloister was the Cathedral Library, built by Walter Sherington,

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in Henry VI.’s time, and Canon Residentiary. At one time the library was ‘well furnished with fair-written books in vellum.’

In the midst of the churchyard was a chapel, first founded by Gilbert, the father of Thomas à Becket, and rebuilt by Dean More in the reign of Henry V. Near by was Minor Canons’ Hall, and the College of Minor Canons, or Peter’s College. The Charnel House, with a chapel over it, stood at the north-east, not far from Paul’s Cross.[363] This building existed in the reign of Edward I., and the chapel contained some monuments and alabaster figures. Among the historians of St. Paul’s there is some little confusion respecting these various chapels.

Paul’s Cross holds a very prominent position in the history of the religious life of the Middle Ages and for many years after. In ages when the voice of the people was largely inarticulate the preacher has often been the man to make it heard. Stow describes the Cross as having ‘been for many ages the most solemn place in this nation, for the greatest divines and most eminent scholars to preach at,’ and Carlyle calls it a kind of Times newspaper. It is worthy of remark that the position of Paul’s Cross was near the place where the ancient folkmoots were held, and the former continued the traditions of the latter.

At the east end of the Cathedral was St. Paul’s School, founded by Dean Colet, and the famous Bell Tower, formed of wood covered with lead, and containing the common bell, which called the people to their folkmoots, and afterwards four bells, known as the Jesus Bells, because they specially belonged to Jesus Chapel, in the crypt of the Cathedral. As the open space at the east end was claimed by the citizens as a place for their assemblies in folkmoots, so the space at the west end was reserved for the military displays in connection with the appearance of Fitz-Walter as Bannerer of the city.

On the south side of the close, and to the west of the transept, was the old octagonal Chapter House, with its own two-storeyed cloister (built in 1332). This was a small but beautiful building.[364]

Close by stood the house of the Chancellor. On the south-west is the Deanery, first built by Ralph de Diceto, and more westward various houses for the use of the canons. On the south side of the Cathedral also stood the dormitory, refectory, kitchen, bakehouse and brewery of the college. The brewhouse became subsequently the Paul’s Head tavern.

This brief list of the buildings in the old Cathedral Close will give some idea of the arrangement of the College of Secular Canons, and the houses which they occupied.

Having walked round the close we may now enter the Cathedral church at the western end where were three gates or entries. The middle gate had a massive pillar of brass, to which the leaves of the great door were fastened. In the nave were twelve noble Norman bays with Norman triforium and pointed clerestory windows. It is probable that originally the roof of the nave was a flat painted ceiling, but Mr. Ferrey supposes that a vaulted roof was

added in 1255; apparently this was originally of wood, but that stone vaulting was intended may be inferred from the flying buttresses in some of the pictures of the Cathedral.

The view along the nave, as represented in Hollar’s engraving is very fine, and reminds one of the noble nave at Ely. Both the nave and choir had twelve bays counting from the west door. The second bay of the north side contained the Court of Convocation, and close by was the font near which Sir John Montacute desired in his will (1388) to be buried. ‘If I die in London, then I desire that my body may be buried in St. Paul’s, near to the font wherein I was baptized.’ In the tenth bay was the Chantry Chapel of Thomas Kempe, bishop of the diocese (1448-1489), and rebuilder of Paul’s Cross.

In the eleventh bay, on the south side, was the tomb of Sir John Beauchamp, K.G. (d. 1358), Constable of Dover Castle, and son to Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. This tomb was commonly called after Duke Humphrey, and the nave of the church from this misnomer went by the name of Duke Humphrey’s Walk. On May Day watermen and tankard-bearers came to the tomb early in the morning, strewed herbs upon it and sprinkled it with water. At the foot of this tomb was the image of the Virgin, before which a lamp was kept perpetually burning, and every morning after matins a short office was said before it. A taper was also kept burning before the Great Crucifix, near to the north door, fabulously said to have been discovered by King Lucius, A.D. 140. Richard Martin, Bishop of St. David’s in the reign of Edward IV., had a special veneration for this crucifix, and left an annual gift to the choristers that they might sing before it Sancte Deus fortis.[365]

In the north aisle was the famous Si quis door, on which notices were fixed; originally these were probably purely ecclesiastical, but in course of time all classes made their wants known there. Decker writes: ‘The first time that you venture into Paul’s, pass through the body of the church like a porter, yet presume not to fetch so much as one whole turn in the middle aisle, no, nor to cast an eye to Si quis door, pasted and plastered up with serving-men’s supplications, before you have paid tribute to the top of Paul’s steeple with a single penny.’

Bishop Hall, in his Satires, shows that Churchmen could be hired there too—

‘Sawst thou ever Si quis patched on Paul’s church door,
To seek some vacant vicarage before?’

This practice is alluded to by Chaucer:—

‘He sette not his benefice to hyre,
And leet his sheepe encombred in the myre,
And ran to Londoun unto Saint Paules,
To seken hym a chaunterie for soules.’
(Prologue to Canterbury Tales.)

Passing from the nave to the transept we notice that the central tower was treated as a lantern internally, and was open to the base of the spire. The choir was cut off by a screen with a central archway; on each side of the entrance were four canopies with figures beneath them. An ascent of twelve steps took the worshipper to the level of the choir pavement.

The choir was naturally the most gorgeous portion of the Cathedral. The architecture was pure and noble, and the carved woodwork of the canons’ stalls was famous for its beauty. The reredos and high altar, dedicated in honour of St. Paul, formed the chief attraction of the choir. There was also an altar to the north, dedicated in honour of St. Ethelbert, king and confessor, and one to the south, dedicated to St. Mellitus. Six more steps led to the sanctuary, from which the worshipper could pass behind the altar screen. Eastward of the screen was the famous shrine of St. Erkenwald. Mention has already been made of the original tomb in the first Cathedral. Legend reports that in the fire of the eleventh century the saint’s resting-place alone remained unharmed. On 14th November 1148 his bones were transferred to a more noble tomb. Gilbert de Segrave laid the first stone of a still more magnificent shrine in 1314, in which the body of the saint was placed on 1st February 1326. This was for a long period the most famous of the tombs of old St. Paul’s, to which pilgrims flocked from distant parts, and riches of all kinds were lavished upon it. A canon of the church, Walter de Thorpe, gave to it all his gold rings and jewels; the Dean and Chapter in 18 Edward II. presented a rich store of gold and silver and precious stones; in the 31st of Edward III. three goldsmiths were engaged upon it for a whole year, at wages of 8s. a week for one and 5s. a week for each of the others. King John of France, when he was a prisoner in England, made an offering of twelve nobles, and Richard de Preston, citizen and grocer, presented a remarkable sapphire in the reign of Richard II. This stone was supposed to cure infirmities of the eyes, and the donor directed proclamation to be made of its great virtues. Dean Evere in 1407 provided an endowment for the lights which burned before the shrine.[366]

The choir was full of tombs and brasses, many of them of great importance. On the north side stood the stately tomb of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (d. 1399), with recumbent figures of the Duke and his second wife, Constance of Castile. Special offices were performed at several of the shrines, especially those of St. Erkenwald and St. Thomas of Lancaster, as the grandson of Henry III. was popularly styled, although he was never canonised. On the 28th of June 1323 Edward II. sent a letter to Stephen Gravesend, Bishop of London, commanding him to prohibit the reverence paid to Thomas of Lancaster in the Cathedral.[367]

The high altar was the scene twice a year of a strange custom, which was kept up for several centuries. Sir William le Band in 1275 commenced to give yearly a doe in winter and a fat buck in summer to be offered at the altar and then distributed to the resident canons. These were given in lieu of twenty-two acres of land lying within the lordship of Westlee in Essex, to be enclosed within his park of Toringham, so that the knight appears to have made a very good bargain. The reception of the buck and doe was ‘till Queen Elizabeth’s days solemnly performed at the steps of the quire by the canons of this Cathedral, attired in sacred vestments, and wearing garlands of flowers on their heads, and the horns of the buck carried on the top of a spear in procession round about within the body of the church, with a great noise of horn-blowers.’[368]

As already stated the choir was rebuilt early in the thirteenth century, and in 1255 it was considerably extended. Previously a street ran close to the east end, from Watling Street to Cheapside, and here stood the old Church of St. Faith. The exact site of the houses was marked by nine wells in a row which were found by Wren. When this street was built over and the church pulled down the parishioners were provided with a church in the Crypt. About the middle of the north side of the choir was a low-arched door, and from this six-and-twenty steps led down to St. Faith’s, at the eastern end of which was the Jesus Chapel.[369]

We have now traced the principal features of the exterior and interior of old St. Paul’s, and a few words may be said of the body who governed the Cathedral.

Bishop Stubbs, in the remarkable Preface which he added to the Master of the Rolls’ edition of the Historical Works of Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London, at the end of the twelfth century, has given a vivid picture of the ecclesiastical greatness of London during the reigns of Henry II. and Richard I. Ralph was the friend of Fitz-Stephen, the biographer of Becket, and before he became dean he had held the office of archdeacon.

Stubbs writes: ‘The fact that the Cathedral of Canterbury was in the hands of a monastic chapter left St. Paul’s at the head of the secular clergy of southern England. It was an educational centre too, where young statesmen spent their leisure in something like self-culture. London with its 40,000 inhabitants had 120 churches all looking to the Cathedral as their mother. The resident canons had to exercise a magnificent hospitality, carefully prescribed in ancient Statutes; twice a year each of them had to entertain the whole staff of the Cathedral and to invite the Bishop, the Mayor, the sheriffs, aldermen, justices and great men of the Court.’

The dean was a capable head, and his government stands out in history as one of the most successful during a very difficult period.

‘Early in 1187 Ralph lost his old friend and patron, Bishop Foliot, and the See of London was not filled up for nearly three years. Within a few weeks after Foliot’s death he had to receive the Archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin, who visited the church on mid-Lent Sunday, and he took advantage of the opportunity to obtain from him an injunction forbidding the persons who were in charge of the temporalities of the See to interfere with the spiritual officers in the discharge of their duties.’

How important a body the Chapter of St. Paul’s really was may be inferred from the remarkable fact stated by Serjeant Pulling in his work on The Order of the Coif that among the canons in the reign of Henry III. were as many as ten of the Judges at Westminster Hall.

The early history of the parishes of London is one of great difficulty and complexity. Although some of the parishes must be of great antiquity, we have little authentic information respecting them before the Conquest. The dedications of many of the churches indicate their great age, but the constant fires in London not only destroyed the buildings but also the records within the buildings. The original churches appear to have been very small, as may be judged from their number. It is not easy, however, to understand how it was that when the parishes were first formed so small an area was attached to each. Mr. Loftie is of opinion that there is no proof that London was divided into more than three or four parishes until the time of Alfred, or, indeed, till much later.[370]

He has written a very instructive chapter on ‘the Church in London’ in his London (Historic Towns, 1887), but he is not able to give any very definite information. Moreover, he doubts whether it is wise to take for granted the early dedications of, for instance, such churches as are named in honour of Sts. Alphage, Magnus and Olave, or of Sts. Ethelburga and Osyth.

The parish church of which we have the most authentic notice before the Conquest is St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in existence many years before the Priory of the Nuns of St. Helen’s was founded. In 1010 the remains of St. Edmund, King and Martyr, were removed from Edmundsbury in order that they might not fall into the hands of the Danes, and deposited in the Church of St. Helen, where they remained three years. Many of the London churches were small, but some were of considerable size. When the religious houses were dissolved the churches of some of these became the most important of the parish churches.

The Church of St. Mary le Bow in Cheapside (better known as Bow Church) is named from having been the first in London built on arches of stone, and the Norman Crypt is of great interest. When Wren built his church he used these arches of the old churches to support his own superstructure. This crypt also gives its name to the Court of Arches which was held here.

In the Liber Albus there is a chapter on the periodical visits of the Mayor to various churches on certain saints’ days, such as to St. Thomas’s at the Feast of All Saints (November 1), to St. Peter’s on Cornhill on the Monday in the Feast of Pentecost, and to St. Bartholomew’s and St. Michael le Quern on other occasions.[371]

The position of the parish priest was a good one in the eyes of the parishioners, who looked up to him as a friend, and resented the interference with his duties by monks and chantry priests. Among the parish priests the highest rank was conceded to the rector of St. Peter’s, Cornhill. The mediæval writers, who are mostly vituperative when speaking of monks and friars, have little but good to say of the parson.

The great evil of lay rectorship, which has done so much to injure the Church, was largely introduced by the monasteries.

Bishop Stubbs, in his Introduction to the Historical Works of Ralph de Diceto, writes: ‘S. Paul’s stood at the head of the religious life of London, and by its side, at some considerable interval, however, S. Martin’s-le-Grand, S. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, and the great and ancient foundation of Trinity, Aldgate.’[372]

Besides the Chapter of St. Paul’s, there were several other bodies of secular canons. One of these was at the Collegiate Church of St. Martin-le-Grand, within Aldersgate, which church was founded about A.D. 1056, and its privileges confirmed by William the Conqueror. It had special rights as a royal free chapel, and its privileges of sanctuary were given by Henry VIII. to the Abbot and Convent of Westminster. Others were the College of St. Michael, Crooked Lane, founded by William Walworth in 1380; Barking College, Holmes’s College, and several other colleges in London, besides the Collegiate Chapel of St. Stephen, Westminster.

The canons regular of the Order of St. Austin occupied the Priory of Christ Church or Holy Trinity, the Priory of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield; the Priory of St. Mary Overy, in Southwark, and many hospitals.

These canons were less strict than monks, but lived under one roof, had a common dormitory and refectory. They were well shod, well clothed, and well fed. Monks always shaved, but canons wore beards, and caps on their heads.

The chief rule of the canons regular was that of St. Augustine (or Austin), Bishop of Hippo, A.D. 395. The Order was little known until the tenth or eleventh centuries, and was not brought to England until after the Norman Conquest, and the designation of Austin canons was not adopted until some years afterwards.

The Priory of Christ Church or the Holy Trinity within Aldgate was a house of the first importance in London, and the Pope absolved it from all jurisdiction. Norman, the first prior, was the first canon regular of his Order in England.

The priory was founded in 1108 by Queen Maud, and in 1125 the land and soke of Cnichten Gild (now Portsoken Ward) were assigned to it. The prior became an alderman of London by reason of possessing the soke without the port or gate called Aldgate, an honour continued to his successors till the dissolution of the religious houses, when the church was surrendered and the site of the priory granted by Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor.

The great Benedictine monastery of Black Monks was situated at Westminster, away from the city, as was usual. This was the only monastic house subject to the rule of St. Benedict in the neighbourhood of London, but the houses of nuns, of which there were many dotted over the suburbs of London, were governed by the rule of St. Benedict. Among these may be mentioned the nunneries of Barking, Clerkenwell, Halliwell at the eastern extremity of Finsbury Fields, St. Helen’s, Bishopgate, Kilburn and Stratford at Bow.

As time proceeded there was a widespread desire for a stricter rule among the monks, and reforms of the Benedictine rule were instituted at Cluni (A.D. 910), Chartreux (about 1080), and Citeaux (1098). All these reforms were represented in London.

Cluniac Order.—This reform was begun by Bernon, Abbot of Gigni, in Burgundy, and perfected by Odo, Abbot of Cluni. The first charter of the Order was dated A.D. 910. The Order was first brought to England by William, Earl of Warren, son-in-law to William the Conqueror, who built the first house at Lewes, in Sussex, about 1077. The Priory of Bermondsey, in Surrey, was founded by Aylwin Child, citizen of London, about 1082. The manor of Bermondsey and other revenues were granted by William Rufus. The original priories were subject to the heads of the parent foreign houses, but John Attilburgh, prior of Bermondsey, having procured the erection of his priory into an abbacy, himself became the first of the abbots in 1399.

If we are to believe the word of the satirist, we may judge that the rule of the Cluniac Order was hard, for we are told that—

‘When you wish to sleep they awake you,’

and

‘When you wish to eat they make you fast.’

There were cells attached to the Cluniac house of Bermondsey at Aldersgate, Cripplegate and Holborn.

Carthusians.—Bruno first instituted the Order at Chartreux, in the diocese of Grenoble in France, about 1080. The rule was confirmed by Pope Alexander III. about 1174. This was the most strict of any of the religious Orders. The monks never ate flesh, and were obliged to fast on bread, water and salt one day in every week. No one was permitted to go out of the bounds of the monastery except the priors and procurators or proctors, and they only upon the necessary affairs of their houses. When the Order was brought to England in 1178 the first house was started at Witham, in Somersetshire. In all there were nine houses of the Order in England. One of these was the Charterhouse of London, which was not founded until 1371 by Sir Walter Manny, K.G.

Until Henry II. founded the Carthusian house at Witham it is said that there was no such thing known in England as a monk’s cell, as we understand the term. It was a peculiarity of the Carthusian Order, and when it was first introduced it was regarded as a startling novelty for any privacy or anything approaching solitude to be tolerated in a monastery. The Carthusian system never found much favour in England.

Cistercians.—The Cistercian Order was named after Cistertium or Cîteaux, in the bishopric of Chalons in Burgundy, where it was founded in 1098 by Robert, Abbot of Molesme, in that province. St. Bernard was a great promoter of the Order, and founded an abbey at Clairvaux about 1116, and after him the members of the Order were sometimes named Bernardines.

It was usual to plant these monasteries in solitary and uncultivated places, and no other house, even of their own Order, was allowed to be built within a certain distance of the original establishment. This makes it surprising to learn that there were two separate houses of this Order in the near neighbourhood of London.

A branch of the Order came to England about 1128, and their first house was founded at Waverley in Surrey. Very shortly after (about 1134) the Abbey of Stratford Langthorne, in Essex, was founded by William de Montfichet, who endowed it with all his lordship in West Ham.

It was not until two centuries afterwards that the second Cistercian house in the immediate neighbourhood of London was founded. This was the Abbey of St. Mary Graces, East Minster or New Abbey, without the walls of London, which Edward III. instituted in 1350 after a severe scourge of plague (the so-called Black Death.)

The two great military Orders—the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem and the Templars—followed the Augustinian rule, and both were settled in London. The Knights Hospitallers were founded about 1092 by the merchants of Amalfi, in Italy, for the purpose of affording hospitality to pilgrims in the Holy Land. The Hospital or Priory of St. John was founded in 1100 by Jordan Briset and his wife, Muriel, outside the northern wall of London, and the original village of Clerkenwell grew up around the buildings of the knights. A few years after this the Brethren of the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem, or Knights of the Temple, came into being at the Holy City, and they settled first on the south side of Holborn, near Southampton Buildings. They removed to Fleet Street or the New Temple in 1184, when, as Spenser terms it, ‘they decayd through pride,’ and the Order after much persecution was suppressed in England, as it had been in other countries, by command of the Pope. The house in Fleet Street was given in 1313 by Edward II. to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, at whose death, in 1323, the property

passed to the Knights of St. John, who leased the New Temple to the lawyers, still the occupants of the district.

The Templars wore a long flowing white mantle with a red cross on the left breast. The Knights Hospitallers originally wore a black robe with a cross, but subsequently, when the Order was reconstructed on the model of the Templars, they wore a red mantle with a white cross on the shoulder. After Palestine was lost the original body passed (1) to Acre, (2) to Cyprus, (3) to Rhodes, and (4) to Malta.

The Templars left their beautiful church to continue for centuries one of the most interesting architectural relics of a past age. The buildings of the Knights Hospitallers at Clerkenwell passed through more vicissitudes, and when the religious houses were suppressed by Henry VIII. these were mostly destroyed. The gateway which was completed in 1504 by Prior Docwra still stands, but no portion of the church or other buildings remain above ground.