WATCHMAN, BELLMAN, and BILLMAN.
Plates I. II. III.
It has been observed in the Introduction, that of all the callings, that of the Watchman is perhaps of the highest antiquity; and as few writers can treat on any subject without a quotation from honest John Stowe, the following extract is inserted from that valuable and venerable author:
“Then had yee, besides the standing watches, all in bright harnesse, in every ward and streete of this citie and suburbs, a marching watch that passed thro’ the principal streets thereof, to wit, from the Little Conduit by Paule’s gate, thro’ West Cheape, by the Stocks, thro’ Cornehill, by Leadenhall to Aldgate, then backe downe Fen-church Street, by Grasse Church, about Grasse-church Conduit, and by Grasse Church Streete into Cornehill, and through it into Cheape again, and so broke up. The whole way ordered for this marching watch extended to 3200 taylors yards of assize. For the furniture thereof with lights there were appointed 700 cressets, 500 of them being found by the Companies, and the other 200 by the Chamber of London.[8] Besides the which lights, every Constable in London, in number more then 240, had his cresset; the charge of every cresset was in light two shillings and four pence, and every cresset had two men, one to beare or hold it, another to beare a bagge with light, and to serve it; so that the poore men pertaining to the cressets, taking wages, besides that every one had a strawne hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the morning, amounted in number to almost 2000. The marching watch contained in number 2000 men, part of them being old souldiers, of skill to be captaines, lieutenants, serjeants, corporals, &c. Wiflers, drummers, and fifes, standard and ensigne bearers, sword-players, trumpeters on horsebacke, demilaunces on great horses, gunners with hand-guns, or halfe hakes, archers in coates of white fustian, signed on the breast and backe with the armes of the City, their bowes bent in their hands, with sheafes of arrowes by their sides, pikemen in bright corslets, burganets, &c. holbards, the like Billmen in Almaine rivets, and apernes of mayle, in great number.”[9]
Mr. Douce observes, that these watches were “laid down 20 Henry VIII.;” and that “the Chronicles of Stow and Byddel assign the sweating sickness as a cause for discontinuing the watch.”
“Anno 1416. Sir Henry Barton being maiar, ordained lanthorns and lights to be hang’d out on the winter evenings, betwixt Alhallows and Candlemas.”
Mr. Warton, in his notes to Milton’s Poems, observes, that anciently the Watchmen who cried the hours used the following or the like benedictions, which are to be found in a little poem called “The Bellman,” inserted in Robert Herrick’s Hesperides:
“From noise of scare-fires rest ye free,
From murder, Benedicite.
From all mischances, that may fright
Your pleasing slumbers in the night;
Mercie secure ye all, and keep
The goblin from ye while ye sleep.” 1647.