London City

by Walter Besant

THE CORDWAINERS COMPANY

The Allutarii or Cordwainers appear to have been voluntarily associated together as a craft or mystery from very remote times, probably as early as the Conquest, in close connection with the municipality of London. Its object was to encourage and regulate the trades connected with the leather industry, and included the flaying, tanning, and currying of hides, and also the manufacture and sale of shoes, boots, goloshes, and other articles of leather. In the thirteenth and following centuries several branches separated and formed distinct communities, such as the girdlers, tanners, curriers, and leather sellers.

The first existing Ordinance of the Cordwainers (Allutarii) is found in Liber Horn, folio 339, and was made in the 56th year of King Henry III., Anno Domini 1272.

The Company was originally called the “Allutarii,” and became first connected with the “Coblers” in the 14th century. Maitland explains that the Cobler was not only the maker but the vendor of boots and shoes. As people in cold countries always wanted shoes, the Guild or Fraternity of shoemakers was certainly ancient. In 1375 the “reputable” Cordwainers submitted their ordinances to the mayor. In 1378 we learn that “discreet” men of the trade had authority to seize hides badly tanned. In 1395 the Cordwainers and the Coblers—i.e. the workers in new and old shoes—adjusted their differences, but that in 1409 the dissensions between them broke out again and were once more composed. In 1387 three journeymen cordwainers were haled before the mayor, charged with illegally forming a Fraternity of themselves excluding the masters. Another indication of the existence of an ancient Fraternity is that of the brawling and fighting in 1304 of the cordwainers and the tailors.

The first charter of incorporation was granted by King Henry VI. 1439, whereby, in consideration of the payment of fifty marks, he granted to the freemen of the Mysterie of Cordwainers (Allutariorum) of the City of London that they should be one body or commonalty for ever, that they should every year elect and make of themselves one master and four wardens to rule and govern the said mysterie, and all men and workers of the mysterie and commonalty, and all workmen and workers whatsoever of tanned leather relating to the said mysterie, to search and try black and red tanned leather and all new shoes which should be sold or exposed for sale, as well within the said City as without, within two miles thereof.

The above charter was exemplified and confirmed by the charter 4 and 5 Philip and Mary (June 17, 1557).

The charter or Letters Patent of Queen Elizabeth, dated August 24, in the fourth year of Her Majesty’s reign (A.D. 1562), exemplifies and confirms the exemplification of Philip and Mary.

The charter further grants to them the government of all persons exercising the said trade within the City of London and three miles round about the said City and suburbs, the privilege having previously run only to two miles. Also the power of making bylaws for such purpose is thereby given to the master, wardens, assistants, and commonalty.

King James I., in the tenth year of his reign, granted another charter to the Company.

A new charter was granted by King James II. in the first year of his reign, but it would appear that this charter was afterwards annulled by Act 2 William and Mary, cap. 9; but this same Act restored and confirmed all previous charters.

The first Hall was burned in the Great Fire: it stood in Great Distaff Street; since this street was swallowed up by Cannon Street, the Hall, rebuilt after the Fire, and again in 1788, and greatly altered since then, has now a frontage in Cannon Street.

The livery is now 100; the Corporate Income is £7700; the Trust Income £1600.

Of the cordwainers, Stow speaks as follows:

“In this Distar Lane, on the north side thereof, is the Cordwainers’, or Shoemakers’ hall, which company were made a brotherhood or fraternity, in the 11th of Henry IV. Of these cordwainers I read, that since the 5th of Richard II. (when he took to wife Anne, daughter of Vesalaus, King of Boheme), by her example, the English people had used piked shoes, tied to their knees with silken laces, or chains of silver or gilt, wherefore in the 4th of Edward IV. it was ordained and proclaimed, that beaks of shoone and boots should not pass the length of two inches, upon pain of cursing by the clergy, and by parliament to pay twenty shillings for every pair. And every cordwainer that shod any man or woman on the Sunday to pay thirty shillings.”

Suffolk House, in Suffolk Lane, stands upon the site of the old Merchant Taylors’ School, and hence also upon the site of the Manor of the Rose.

This was a famous mansion once called Poultney’s Inn, from Sir John Poultney, who dwelt here after his removal from Cold Harbour. This was probably in 1348, for in that year (the year after he founded his college of Corpus Christi, by the church of St. Lawrence Poultney (or Pountney) on Lawrence Poultney Hill) he gave the Cold Harbour to the Earl of Hereford and Essex, for “one Rose at Midsummer, to him and his heirs for all services, if the same were demanded” (Stow). It seems most probable that this light “service” is accountable for the name of the Manor of the Rose. Subsequently the Manor belonged to John Holland, Duke of Exeter, then to William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, attainted and beheaded 1450. His son John, made Duke of Suffolk in 1463, does not appear to have possessed it, but his son John, Earl of Lincoln, owned it at the time of his attainder in 1487. It remained with the Crown until 1495, when it was restored to Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, on whose forfeiture of it by treason it was granted in 1506 to Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who kept possession of it until he was attainted and beheaded in 1521. Shakespeare (Henry VIII., Act i. Sc. 2) alludes to “The Rose within the parish of St. Lawrence Poultney,” in connection with the Duke of Buckingham. After remaining with the Crown for about four years it was granted in 1526 to Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who had recently been created Marquis of Exeter. He was beheaded in 1539, when the property again fell to the Crown. In 1540 it was granted to Robert Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, Earl of Sussex, whose son and grandson held it in turn. In 1560-61 it was sold and shortly after divided into moieties, of which one part was afterwards sold for the use of the Merchant Taylors’ School. All that remained intact of the mansion perished in the Fire of 1666, except a few portions of which the chief were a wall in Ducksfoot Lane, and a crypt extending from Suffolk Lane to Lawrence Poultney Hill. At the rebuilding of the City, No. 3 Lawrence Poultney Hill stood over this crypt, which remained until that house was pulled down in 1894, when, despite the protests of the antiquarians, the crypt was ruthlessly destroyed.

OLD MERCHANT TAYLORS’ SCHOOL, SUFFOLK LANE, CANNON STREET

After the Fire the school was rebuilt on the old site, in 1675, the head-master’s house being erected adjoining it.

The school premises were enlarged at various times, especially in 1829. In 1875 they became too small for the requirements of the school, and the old Charterhouse School having been removed to Godalming, the Charterhouse site was bought by the Merchant Taylors Company for £90,000, and Merchant Taylors’ School was moved to its present quarters. The old premises were taken down, and Suffolk House was erected in part upon their site in 1882.

The pious Robert Nelson, author of the Fasts and Festivals, was born in Suffolk Lane, June 22, 1656. His father, John Nelson, was a wealthy trader to the Levant.

Strype calls Ducksfoot Lane Duxford. The name is, perhaps, a corruption of Duke’s Footmen’s Lane, tradition asserting that this lane contained the servants’ entrance to the Duke of Suffolk’s house, the Manor of the Rose. In that case “footmen” is equivalent to retainers, or men-at-arms, whose quarters would probably be at the back of the mansion. Wilson (History of St. Lawrence Poultney) thinks it was once called Duke’s-foot-lane, meaning a narrow way to the mansion.

The only old house in the Lane is No. 2, which possesses a very interesting interior. The building is now used for offices, but was originally a merchant’s residence. The old dining-room is a fine chamber, having panelled walls profusely decorated with florid designs in raised composition. The panel over the chimney-piece is particularly good. The entablature of the handsome mantel is supported by fluted Ionic pilasters, the frieze filled with flowers and fruit, and the keystone embellished with a curious rural scene. There are several other quaint mantels in the house, one being of coloured marbles exquisitely painted with figures and scenes. The great staircase with its wainscotted walls and fine balusters is a good piece of work. The cellars are very extensive, and there are traces of a subterranean passage which formerly led to the Thames. The staircase and the old dining-room were copied by Mr. John Hare, and staged at the Garrick Theatre for Mr. Pinero’s play The Profligate, first performed in 1889.

Laurence Pountney Hill.—Stow calls this hill St. Laurence Hill. The part from Cannon Street to Suffolk Lane was formerly Green Lettice Lane, but was renamed under the present title only, on the widening of Cannon Street, 1853-54. The two houses at the corner of Suffolk Lane are splendid specimens of early eighteenth-century architecture. Both are finished with a handsome cornice. The doorways of both are side by side and have lintels and architraves of such rich carving as to be unsurpassed in the City by any doorways of similar size and style. The lintels are both concave: that on the southern house contains garlands of flowers, a cherub’s head, and the date 1703, that on the northern consists of a large scallop shell having in it two naked children. The staircase in the northern house, with its fine twisted balusters, is one of the best original staircases left in the City. The southern house has been modernised for business premises and spoiled. Next below is a plot recently bared, where was the vault alluded to under Suffolk Lane.

At the north-east corner of Ducksfoot Lane is an old house, a good specimen of the domestic architecture after the Fire. Next to it eastwards is the southern half of St. Lawrence Pountney Churchyard now disused. It contains three trees and several tombs. In summer a large-leafed plant covers almost the whole area. Across the enclosure is another fine old house, now used for offices, containing handsome rooms and a fine balustered well-staircase.

Dr. William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, came to live with his brother Eliab opposite St. Lawrence Pountney Church, after the surrender of Oxford. Both Eliab and another brother Daniel were rich and distinguished merchants on the hill. Richard Glover, the author of Leonidas, was also an eminent merchant on this hill.

The character of Laurence Pountney Lane on both sides (except the modern warehouses on the east side at the corner of Upper Thames Street) is that of the rebuilding after the Fire. Perhaps as a whole this lane preserves this character better than any other thoroughfare in the ward. At the Upper Thames Street end, on the west side, is a house which, though rebuilt on the Upper Thames Street front, retains the old side wall. This is still pierced with narrow windows filled with little squares of glass in lead-work. On the same side of the lane are several carved lintels, and well-panelled deeply recessed doorways. Near the lower end is an old house beneath which is an archway leading to a courtyard, cellars, and offices. The house is partly tenanted by Messrs. Cooper, Box & Co., who first made beaver hats here in 1830 or thereabouts. The back part at the end of the yard, and the front windows were added about 1855. The cellars at the rear of the yard used to contain the vats in which the beaver hats were dyed. The lease of the house dating from shortly after the Fire is still in existence. In the yard is an arched doorway of stone, and solid arches of the same material support the walls of the house in the basement cellars. The stone no doubt came out of the ruins of buildings destroyed in the Fire; possibly some of it from the Manor of the Rose.

At the beginning of 1543 Master Arundel kept a house of entertainment in this lane, much resorted to by the gay young men of that time. Henry, Earl of Surrey, the poet, was summoned before the Privy Council to answer certain charges, when Mistress Arundel, being examined, said that the Earl of Surrey and other young noblemen frequented her house. They ate meat in Lent and committed other improprieties. At Candlemas they went out at 9 o’clock at night, with stone bows, and did not return till past midnight; and next day there was a great clamour of breaking of windows, both of houses and churches, and shouting at men in the street, and the voice was that those hurts were done by my lord and his company. Again at night, rowing on the Thames, they used these stone bows to shoot, as she was told, “at the queens on the Bankside” (MS. quoted by Froude, vol. iv. p. 253).

St. Lawrence Poultney or Pountney was situated on the west side of Laurence Pountney Lane, between Cannon Street and Thames Street in the Ward of Candlewick Street. Thomas Cole added to it a chapel of Jesus, for a master and a chaplain, and this together with the parish church was made into a college by John Poultney and confirmed by Edward III. At the suppression of the religious houses it was valued at £97 : 17 : 11 and surrendered in the reign of Edward VI. The church was burnt down by the Great Fire and its parish annexed to that of St. Mary Abchurch. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1318.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The chaplains of this college; Henry VIII., who seized it and so continued in the Crown till Queen Elizabeth granted it to Edward Dorening and Roger Rant as an appendage of the manor of East Greenwich.

Houseling people in 1548 were 270.

No benefactors are recorded by Stow. There are few monuments recorded, and those of little note: John Oliffe, alderman, was buried in the church in 1577; also Robert and Henry Radcliffe, Earls of Sussex.

William Latymer was master of this college; he was prosecuted for complaining with John Hooper, of Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London.

In Martin’s Lane a high tower resembling the steeple of a church projects at the end of a block of modern buildings. The old clock, which is attached and hangs out over the street, makes the resemblance to a church more noticeable. The building was erected on the site of the old church of St. Martin Orgar. The churchyard below is comparatively large and includes a row of trees. It is considerably above the level of the street. At the east end are some old seventeenth or eighteenth century houses with rusticated woodwork beneath their gables. On the west side of the lane No. 7 is an old eighteenth-century house, a fine specimen, with brick courses across its frontage.

St. Martin Orgar was situated in St. Martin’s Lane, near Candlewick Street. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to St. Clement’s, Eastcheap. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1348.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Orgarus, who gave it about 1181 to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, who held it up to 1666, when the church was burnt down.

Houseling people in 1548 were 280.

Chantries were founded here by: William Cromer, whose endowment fetched £30 : 15 : 4 in 1548, when John Carre was priest; John Weston, who gave to the Augmentation of Our Lady’s Mass to be “songe by note” £12 : 18 : 8 a year in 1548; William Oreswicke, whose endowment for two chaplains fetched £13 : 5 : 0 in 1548.

The church contained monuments to: William Crowmer, mayor, who built a chapel on the south side of the church, and who was buried there in 1433; Sir Humphrey Browne, Lord Chief Justice (d. 1562); Sir Allen Cotton, lord mayor (d. 1628). There was also a monument to Queen Elizabeth.

According to Stow the parish enjoyed the benefits of many benefactors. Among others, Benedict Barnham was donor of £10 yearly; Thomas Nicolson of £5; Sir Humphrey Walwyn of £5; and James Hall of three tenements to the value of £18 : 10 : 0.

Brien Walton (d. 1661), Bishop of Chester, was rector here.

Crooked Lane has been partly destroyed to make way for the approach to London Bridge, which has also swallowed up St. Michael’s Lane and Great Eastcheap. In Crooked Lane stood a house before the Fire called “the Leaden Porch,” which belonged to one Sir John Sherston in the fifteenth century. The lane also contained St. Michael’s Church, the burial-place of William Walworth.

St. Michael, Crooked Lane, was situated on the east side of Miles’s Lane, Great Eastcheap, and was one of the thirteen “Peculiars” in the City, subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was repaired and redecorated in 1610, but burnt down by the Great Fire and rebuilt from Wren’s designs in 1687; the steeple was not built till 1698. In 1831 the building was pulled down, its parish being united with those of St. Magnus and St. Margaret. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1286.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, before 1286; the Archbishop of Canterbury, who presented in 1408, in whose successors it continued up to 1848, when the church was annexed to St. Magnus the Martyr.

Houseling people in 1548 were 354.

The church built by Wren, which was without aisles, measured 78 feet in length and 46 feet in breadth. The tower was surmounted by a circular lantern in three stages, supporting a cupola with a lofty vane and cross, and reached a height of about 100 feet.

Chantries were founded here: By William Walworth (mayor 1380) of five chaplains; he endowed it with lands, etc., which fetched £20 : 13 : 4 in 1548, when the priests were William Berte, Thomas Harper, William Hale, William Clayton, and John Nesehame; by John Rothinge, who left £6 yearly, which is appropriated to finding a Walworth chaplain; by Walter Morden, who endowed it with the “bores hedde” in Eastcheap, valued at £4 a year; by William de Burgo, who had the King’s licence June 21, 1318, whose endowment fetched £6 : 13 : 4 in 1548; by Pentecost Russel and Gerard de Staundon at the altar of St. Thomas Martyr and St. Edmund; the King granted his licence July 14, 1321, for himself, his father and mother, and G. de Staundon, late parson of Stevenage, Herts; by Henry Grubbe, for which the King granted his licence April 20, 1371; by Roger Steere, who endowed it with tenements valued at £8 : 8 : 0 yearly, which is spent towards finding the Walworth chaplains; by William Jordan, who left £5 : 16 : 8 to find a priest, but this was also appropriated to the Walworth chaplains; by Robert Brocket, who endowed it with £7 a year; by John Longe, who left 10s. per annum; March 10, 1380-81—the King granted his licence to William Walworth, citizen and merchant of London, to unite diverse chantries in this church, founded by Pentecost Russell; Matilda and Roger Steere; John Harewe; John Abell; W. Burgh; Henry Grubbe; William Jordan; Walter Mordon; and Thomas atte Leye, which by changes of time are insufficient to maintain these chantries, and he was further empowered to found a college of one master and nine chaplains there.

The church formerly contained monuments to: John Lovekin, fishmonger, four times Lord Mayor, through whom the church, 1348, 1358, 1365, and 1366, was rebuilt; also Sir William Walworth, the mayor who overthrew Wat Tyler—he enlarged the church with a new choir and side-chapels and founded a college in connection with it; Sir John Brug, mayor 1520, donor of £50.

No legacies or charitable gifts are recorded by Stow.

John Poynet (d. 1556), Bishop of Rochester and of Winchester, was rector here; also Adam Molens or Molyneux (d. 1450), Bishop of Chichester, who was slain at Portsmouth by the Marines, incited by Richard, Duke of York; Giovanni Giglii (d. 1498), Bishop of Worcester.

At the end of Swan Lane is Old Swan Pier, beneath which are the famous Old Swan Stairs; these now consist of stone steps followed by a flight of wooden ones, descending straight into the water. Stow calls them “a common stair on the Thames.” In 1441, when the Duchess of Gloucester did penance at Christchurch-by-Aldgate, she landed here, and walked the rest of the way. When persons did not care to risk “shooting London Bridge,” it was customary for them to land at these stairs, walk to the other side of the bridge, and then take to the water again. Pepys in his Diary (1661) mentions taking Mr. Salisbury to Whitehall: “But he could not by any means be moved to go through the bridge, and we were fain to go round by the Old Swan Pier”; and Boswell says that he and Johnson “landed at the Old Swan and walked to Billingsgate,” where they took oars for Greenwich.

The race for Doggett’s Coat and Badge, open to watermen, is rowed between the Old Swan and the White Swan at Chelsea. Near these stairs was John Hardcastle’s counting-house, where were first brought forth the Hibernian Society, the London Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Religious Tract Society.

At the end of Swan Lane (west side) is the entrance to the subway called Waterside. It passes beneath Tennants’, Commercial, and Dyers’ Hall wharves, in front of Red Bull Wharf (the only place where it emerges into the open), and ultimately runs under the City of London Brewery into All Hallows Lane. In Strype’s 1754 map the whole of the riverside from Swan to All Hallows Lane is shown as a broad path (40 feet wide) open to the water, and called New Key, upon which debouch all the lanes leading from Thames Street to the shore. It was part of a design of Wren for improving the river-bank after the Great Fire. In a map of 1819 the “key,” though mostly open, is shown to be a subway under a portion of the brewery. It is marked as a “Public Way.” It has been gradually covered over by the extension of the brewery and the wharves, so that now what was once a riverside walk has become a subway, from which the water is nowhere visible, unless one of the wharf doors happens to be open.

The Fishmongers’ Hall rises squarely beside London Bridge, and not far off is the Monument, with an absurd chevaux de frise of spikes rising from its golden ball, and representing flames, very much as they are represented in the contemporary illustrations of the Fire. St. Magnus’s white steeple makes a good foreground.