“God forbid! Mr. Postern,” ejaculated I, “that you should bestow all your tediousness upon me! for truly, from that which you have recited, I have some conception of what the whole must be; and I would rather entreat you now to pass on to some of those same ‘facts, and descriptive scenes of history,’ which you seem to undervalue so much, because they do not drag a wearisome Patent Roll after them. Therefore once more, Master Barnaby, I say, give me a tale.”
“Well,” returned he, “as we have now arrived at rather an eventful period, perhaps you will begin to be more gratified; and here let me remark that the gate of London Bridge being so advantageous, as well as so immediate, an entrance into the very heart of the City, was too often the favourite passage by which the rebels of ancient days marched into the bowels of our hapless land. I have already given you one instance of this, in speaking of the Baronial Wars of the days of King Henry III.; and now, when we have arrived at the Year 1381, the 5th of Richard II., we find another melancholy instance of it in the insurrection of Wat Tyler. Stow notices this but very slightly in his ‘Survey,’ volume i., page 61; though in his ‘Annals,’ to which he there refers, page 283, he gives a much more full account of their proceedings on London Bridge, taken chiefly from the ‘Chronicle’ of Thomas Walsingham, a native of Norfolk, and a Monk of St. Albans Abbey, who lived in the time of Henry VI., and died in 1440; his history commencing at the end of the reign of King Henry III. His principal work, entitled ‘Chronica Thomæ Walsingham, quondam Monachi Sancti Albani,’ will be found in William Camden’s ‘Anglica, Normannica, Hibernica, Cambrica, a Veteribus Scripta,’ Frankfurt, 1603, Folio; where, on page 249 you will find his account of it; but, however, we’ll take the English one of old Stow, from the page which I have already cited.
“‘On which day,’ says he, meaning Thursday, the Feast of Corpus Christi,—or June the 13th,—‘also in the morning, the Commons of Kent brake downe the stew-houses neare to London Bridge, at that time in the hands of the frowes of Flanders, who had farmed them of the Mayor of London. After which, they went to London Bridge, in hope to have entred the Citty; but the Maior,’—the famous Sir William Walworth, you remember,—‘comming thither before, fortified the place, caused the Bridge to be drawne vp, and fastened a great chaine of yron a crosse, to restraine their entry. Then the Commons of Surrey, who were risen with other, cried to the Wardens of the Bridge to let it downe, whereby they mought passe, or else they would destroy them all, whereby they were constrained for feare to let it down, and give them entry, at which time the religious present,’—perhaps he means the Brethren of the Bridge,—‘were earnest in procession and prayer for peace.’
As this fragment of History brought to my recollection a point of Heraldical enquiry, which I had long considered, I here interrupted my visitor, in the following words.
“I cannot, Mr. Barnaby Postern, turn from the days of that most notorious rebel, Wat Tyler, without briefly noticing the dispute concerning the Armorial Ensigns of our goodly City, which claim to have had an honourable augmentation arising from the gallantry of the Lord Mayor of that period. If rhyme might pass for reason and argument, we should then be assured of the origin of the City’s Dagger, from the evidence afforded by those verses, which are inscribed beneath Walworth’s effigy in the Fishmongers’ Hall, above us; and which run—
‘Brave Walworth, Knight, Lord Mayor, yet slew
Rebellious Tyler in his alarmes;
The King therefore did give in lieu
The dagger to the City’s Arms.
In the fourth Year of Richard II., Anno Domini, 1381.’
“This, however, can stand for nothing, and the arguments for, and against, the popular reason for the introduction of the weapon, are best learned from the ancient English Chronicles and Historians of London. The principal Authors who assert that King Richard added the Dagger to commemorate the loyal valour of Walworth, are Richard Grafton, in his ‘Chronicle at large, and meere History of the Affayres of Englande, and Kinges of the same,’ London, 1569, folio, page 340; in the Margin: Raphael Holinshed, in his ‘Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,’ London, 1586, volume ii., page 436: John Speed, in his ‘Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine,’ London, 1611, folio, volume ii., page 596; and Sir Richard Baker, in his ‘Chronicle of the Kings of England,’ London, 1733, folio, page 140.
“Such are the assertors of this very common legend; and the evidence against it, is given, firstly by old Stow, in his ‘Survey,’ volume i., page 506, at that part of it where he is treating of Walworth’s Monument, in the Church of St. Michael, Crooked Lane. He there states, you know, that, in the fourth Year of King Richard II.,—1380,—it was determined, in a Court of the Aldermen and Common Council of the City, that the old seal of the Mayoralty of London should be destroyed, and a new one, engraven with greater skill, then be provided. The device upon the new seal consisted of the effigies of the Saints Peter and Paul, with the Blessed Virgin above them, supported between two Angels, under as many tabernacles. Beneath the feet of the Saints were the Armorial Ensigns of the City, supported by two Lions, and two Serjeants at Arms. Now, Stow’s deductions from this fact are, firstly, that as the Mayor is not called by any title of Knighthood in this Seal, it was made before he received that dignity, and, therefore, before his gallant action in Smithfield, or, the augmentation could have been made to the City Arms. Secondly, he argues, that the Arms were the same in the old seal as in the new, and that, consequently, the weapon was not the dagger of Walworth, but the sword of St. Paul; for when the turbulent Robert Fitz-Walter was Banner-bearer to the City of London, his standard was red, charged with the image of St. Paul in gold, holding a sword, which, together with the head, hands, and feet of the effigy, was silver. These particulars you will also find in Stow’s ‘Survey,’ volume i., page 65; and such is the attempt of this worthy historian to prove the weapon to have been the sword of St. Paul’s Martyrdom, at Aquæ Salviæ, on the 29th of June, A. D. 66. Now, since that holy Martyr is oftentimes called, by the more ancient writers, ‘the titularie patron of London,’ and since her chiefest metropolitan fane was, so early as 610, dedicated to his ever-fragrant memory, there is nothing impossible, or even unlikely, in all this: and that it should have been so, certainly arises from the circumstance that ‘Paul preached in the Islande of Britaine, which cannot be doubted; seeing both Sophronius, Patriarche of Jerusalem, and Theodoret, an ancient Doctor of the Chvrche, doe affirme and approve the same, saying that Fishers, Publicans, and the Tent-maker,’—St. Paul, see Acts xviii. 3,—‘which brought the evangelical light unto all nations, revealed the same unto the Britaines.’
“The only authority adduced by Stow for the support of his novel hypothesis concerning the Dagger of London, is a Manuscript preserved in the City Chamber, and called ‘Liber Dunthorne,’ from William Dunthorne, the name of its author. It is, in form, a large folio volume, written in a very fair, small, black law text, on vellum; and its contents are ancient Civic Laws, commencing with the series of the City Charters, in the first of which, granted by William I., the initial W contains an illumination of the effigy of St. Paul, as already described. I will add only, that this venerable register is bound in wood, covered with rough calf leather, and garnished with brass bosses and clasps, now black with age; whilst on the cover, under a plate of horn, surrounded by a metal frame, is a piece of parchment bearing the name ‘Dvnthorne.’