On the south side of Smithfield, in Milton’s day, rose St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, founded by Henry VIII., upon the site of Rahere’s earlier one. The great Harvey, the physician of Charles I., who discovered the circulation of the blood, was physician to this hospital for thirty-four years, and here, in 1619, he lectured on his great discovery. The present structure dates from a period early in the eighteenth century.
Directly opposite St. Bartholomew’s Church, in 1849, excavations three feet below the surface exposed to view a mass of unhewn stones, blackened as by fire, and covered with ashes and human bones, charred and partially consumed. This marked the spot where martyrs, facing eastward toward the great gate of St. Bartholomew’s, were chained to the stake. The prior was generally present on such occasions. An old print of the burning of Anne Askew displays a pulpit erected for the sermon, and raised seats for the numerous spectators who came to view the spectacle with probably no more shrinking than the Londoners of the early nineteenth century viewed the hangings at Newgate.
Of the two hundred and seventy-seven persons who in Mary’s reign here perished for their faith, none is more lovingly remembered in Old England or in New England than John Rogers, the first martyr in the Marian persecution, to whom we have already referred. For a century or more, Calvinistic New England taught its children from that quaint little book known as the “New England Primer,” and now treasured in many families as a curiosity. No one among its wretched little woodcuts struck such a solemn awe into the child’s mind,—making the courage of the soldier on the battle-field shrink to nothing in comparison, as that picture where John Rogers, surrounded by his wife and nine children and another at the breast, testified to his faith within the flames. “That which I have preached I will seal with my blood,” said the indomitable man, when offered pardon for recantation. “I will never pray for thee,” quoth his angry questioner. “But I will pray for you,” said Master Rogers. History does not record that his little children saw their father die, but only that they met him on the way, and sobbed out their farewells. But enough; we need not enter on the hideous story of this spot in the generation that followed this martyr.
In early days, Smithfield, or Smoothfield, was the Campus Martius for sham fights and tilts. All sorts of sports, archery, and bowls, and ball games were played here, and it was a resort for acrobats and jugglers. In 1615, says Howes, “The City of London reduced the rude, vast place of Smithfield into a faire and comely order, which formerly was never held possible to be done, and paved it all over, and made divers sewers to convey the water from the new channels which were made by reason of the new pavement; they also made strong rails round about Smithfield, and sequestered the middle part into a very fair and civil walk, and railed it round about with strong rails, to defend the place from annoyance and danger, as well from carts, as all manner of cattle, because it was intended hereafter that in time it might prove a fair and peaceable market-place, by reason that Newgate Market, Moorgate, Cheapside, Leadenhall, and Gracechurch Street, were immeasurably pestered with the unimaginable increase and multiplicity of market folks. And this field, commonly called West Smithfield, was for many years called Ruffian’s Hall, by reason it was the usual place of frays and common fighting during the time that sword and bucklers were in use. But the ensuing deadly fight with rapier and dagger suddenly suppressed the fighting with sword and buckler.” In his “Henry IV.,” Shakespeare makes Page say of Bardolph: “He’s gone to Smithfield to buy your worship a horse.” To which Falstaff replies: “I bought him in Paul’s, and he’ll buy me a horse in Smithfield; an I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were manned, horsed, and wived.”
Ben Jonson’s merry play, “Bartholomew Fair,” written in 1613, gives a good account of the babel of entreaties and advertising boasts that assailed the ears of the unwary customer: “Will your worship buy any gingerbread, gilt gingerbread; very good bread, comfortable bread? Buy any ballads? New ballads! Hey!
“Now the fair’s a filling!
O, for a tune to startle
The birds of the booths here billing
Yearly with old St. Bartle.
“Buy any pears, pears, very fine pears! What do you lack, gentleman? Maid, see a fine hoppy-horse for your young master. Cost you but a farthing a week for his provender.
“Buy a mouse-trap, a mouse-trap, or a tormentor for a flea?
“What do you lack? fine purses, pouches, pin cases, pipes? a pair of smiths to wake you in the morning, or a fine whistling bird?
“Gentlewomen, the weather’s hot; whither walk you? Have a care of your fine velvet caps; the fair is dusty. Take a sweet delicate booth with boughs, here in the way, and cool yourself in the shade, you and your friends. Here be the best pigs. A delicate show-pig, little mistress, with sweet sauce and crackling, like de bay-leaf i’ de fire, la! T’ou shalt ha’ the clean side o’ the table-clot’ and de glass vashed!”