The Story of London

by Henry B. Wheatley

We see from this quotation that the position of the inhabitant of a walled town was not a happy one. Still he was more favoured than his neighbour who lived in the country. A few examples will show us what the city life was, and these specific instances are necessary, for so many centuries have passed since Englishmen lived in a walled town that without them it is barely possible for us to conceive what this life of suspicion and fear of danger was really like.

The one thing which we do see distinctly is the gradual emancipation of the Englishman from the wearing thraldom of his position. He went on gradually in his course, always bearing towards the light, and he gained freedom long before the citizens of other countries. In the fifteenth century we find that galling laws here in England were allowed to fall into desuetude in favour of freedom, while the same rules were retained in foreign countries. Some of our countrymen objected to this, and English merchants were irritated to find that while the regulation enjoining every alien merchant during his residence in London to abide in the house of a citizen assigned to him as a host by the magistrates had fallen into abeyance, the restriction was rigidly enforced abroad. The writer of the remarkable Libelle of Englyshe Polycye (1437) alludes to this feeling:—

‘What reason is’t that we should go to host in these countries and in this English coast they should not so, but have more liberty than we ourselves?’[17]

The citizens had to put up with constant surveillance. The gates were closed early in the evening, and at curfew all lights, as well as fires, had to be put out. Night-walkers, male and female, and roysterers generally had a bad time of it, but probably they were very ill-behaved, and in many cases they doubtless deserved the punishment they received. In the year 1100 Henry I. relaxed these stringent regulations, and restored to his subjects the use of lights at night. The streets were first lighted by lanterns in 1415.

London within the walls was a considerable city in the Middle Ages, although it only contained the same area that was walled in during the later Roman period. The relics of this wall, continually renewed with the old materials, are so few, and the old area is so completely lost sight of in the larger London, that it is necessary to point out the line of the walls before dealing further with the habits of the Londoners. It was long supposed that the Ludgate was the chief entrance to the city from the west, but, in spite of its name, there can be little doubt that for some centuries the great western approach was made through Newgate. We will therefore commence our walk round the walls with that gate.

Although there can be no doubt that here was a gate in the Roman period, we have little or no record of its early history. One of its earlier names was Chamberlain’s Gate. The ‘new’ gate was erected in the reign of Henry I., and in a Pipe Roll of 1188 it is mentioned as a prison. In 1414 the prison was in such a loathsome condition that the keeper and sixty-four of the prisoners died of the prison plague. In consequence of this it was decided to rebuild the gate. Richard Whittington was the moving spirit in this rebuilding, and it is supposed that he paid the expenses. In the course of excavations made in 1874-1875 for the improvement of the western end of Newgate Street, the massive foundations of Whittington’s gate were discovered several feet below the present roadway.

The wall passed north through the precincts of Christ Church (Christ’s Hospital), formerly occupied by the Grey Friars (or Franciscans). The town ditch, which was outside the walls, and arched over about the year 1553, ran through the Hospital grounds. The wall then turned round to the north of Newgate Street, and passed into St. Martin’s-le-Grand, where, in 1889, the foundations of several houses on the west side were exposed while the excavations for the latest addition to the General Post-Office were being proceeded with.

The great bell of the Collegiate Church of St. Martin’s tolled the curfew hour when all the gates of the city were to be shut. The great gates were shut at the first stroke of the bell at St. Martin’s and the wickets opened; at the last stroke the wickets were to be closed, and not to be opened afterward that night unless by special precept of the Mayor. The ringing of the curfew of St. Martin’s was to be the signal for the ringing ‘at every parish church, so that they begin together and end together.’[18] In an Ordinance (37 Edward III., 1363) the bell at the Church of our Lady at Bow was substituted for that at St. Martin’s.

Outside the walls were Smithfield, where the tournaments were held, and Giltspur Street, where the knights bought their spears, and armour might be repaired when tournaments were going on.

Within the gate were the Grey Friars, Stinking Lane (now King Edward Street), and the Butchers’ Shambles in Newgate Street.