The Augustine friars, in Broad street.
And the white friars, or Carmelites, in Fleet street.
The convents of women were, that of Clerkenwell.
That of St. Helen, within Bishopsgate.
That of St. Clare, in the Minories.
And that of Holiwell by Shoreditch.
The guilds or fraternities were, the brotherhood of St. Fabian and St. Sebastian, in St. Botolph’s, Aldgate.
The fraternity and chapel of the Holy Trinity, in Leadenhall; and innumerable others, founded in most churches.
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the far greatest part of this metropolis was contained within the walls, and even in these narrow limits were many gardens, which have been since converted into lanes, courts, and alleys. The buildings of London were, on the west, bounded by the monastery of St. Catharine’s; East Smithfield was open to Tower hill, and Rosemary lane was unbuilt. The Minories were built only on the east side, which fronted the city wall: cattle grazed in Goodman’s Fields, and Whitechapel extended but a little beyond the bars, and had no houses to the north; for Spitalfields, which of themselves would now compose a very large town, were then really fields, separated from each other by hedges and rows of trees. Houndsditch consisted only of a row of houses fronting the city wall, and the little yards and gardens behind them also opened into those fields. Bishopsgate street, Norton Falgate, and the street called Shoreditch, were then however built as far as the church, but there were only a few houses and gardens on each side, and no streets or lanes on either hand. Moorfields lay entirely open to the village of Hoxton; and Finsbury Fields, in which were several windmills, extended to the east side of Whitecross street. Chiswell street was not erected, and St. John’s street extended by the side of the priory of St. John of Jerusalem, to the monastery of Clerkenwell, and Cow Cross, which opened into the fields.
But on leaving the city walls, the buildings were much less extensive; for though the village of Holborn was now joined to London, the backs of the houses, particularly on the north side, opened into gardens and fields; part of Gray’s Inn lane were the only houses that extended beyond the main street; great part of High Holborn had no existence, and St. Giles’s was a village contiguous to no part of London.