Contents.
| PAGE | |
| The Walls and Gates | [1] |
| Episodes in the Annals of Cheapside | [34] |
| Bishopsgate Street Within and Without | [76] |
| Aldersgate Street and St. Martin's-le-Grand | [118] |
| Old Broad Street | [142] |
| Chaucer and the Tabard | [165] |
| The Priory of the Holy Trinity, Aldgate | [178] |
| Convent of the Sisters Minoresses of the Order of St. Clare, Aldgate | [197] |
| The Abbey of St. Mary of Graces, or East Minster | [208] |
| The Barons Fitzwalter of Baynard's Castle | [219] |
| Sir Nicholas Brember, Knight, Lord Mayor of London | [239] |
| An Olden Time Bishop of London: Robert de Braybrooke | [249] |
| A Brave Old London Bishop: Fulco Basset | [262] |
| An Old London Diarist | [269] |
| Index | [291] |
BYGONE LONDON.
The Walls and Gates.
In prehistoric ages the valley of the Thames formed the bed of an estuary or arm of the sea, whose waters flowed over the low lands of Essex, and whose waves dashed against the sloping uplands of Middlesex and Surrey, on whose summits now stand the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces. In process of time, by the deposition of silt brought down from the west, and of sand brought up by the flow of the tide, the estuary was reduced to a river, afterwards still further reduced in width by the embankments made by the Romans along the coast of Essex; and the land intervening between the then and the former shores became a succession of fens and morasses, some of which remained to comparatively modern times, and have their localities indicated by such names as Moorfields, Fenchurch, Marsh-gate, Lambeth, etc.
Amongst these morasses were oases of high and firm land; and beyond, spreading up and over the slopes of the uplands, there grew a dense forest, the home of wolves, boars, and other wild animals. Upon one of these spots of dry land, at the time of the invasion of Cæsar, might be seen a village of wattled or mud-built and thatched huts, inhabited by the Celtic aborigines, with cattle and hogs feeding in the midst, a few patches of cultivated land, and beyond, the forest. This was the nucleus of the mighty London of the present, and is supposed to have occupied a space of some quarter of a mile along the river shore, with Dowgate for its centre, and stretching northward as far as Cheapside. In all probability it would be surrounded by earthworks, ditches, and stockades, for the purpose of defence, and would otherwise be protected by the broad stream of the Thames, and by the Fleet river on the west, and Walbrook on the east.