“It was in this year, you may remember, that the forces of Henry VII., which were proceeding to Scotland, were suddenly recalled to subdue a commotion raised in Cornwall, in consequence of a subsidy voted by Parliament, in 1496. The rebels were headed by one Thomas Flamoke, a Lawyer and a gentleman; and a Blacksmith, or Farrier, of Bodmin, called Michael Joseph; both of them, says Stow, in his ‘Annals,’ page 479, ‘men of stout stomackes.’ Under these leaders, then, they penetrated even to Blackheath, but on their march were so valiantly opposed in Kent, that numbers of the insurgents fled from their company. On Blackheath the Royal troops were already encamped under several valiant commanders, by whom the rebels’ retreat was immediately cut off; and in a short engagement which ensued on June the 22nd, Flamoke and Joseph were both taken prisoners. On the 28th following they were executed at Tyburn; and their quarters were to have been erected in various places in Cornwall, but Hall states, in his ‘Chronicle,’ folio 43 b, that, as it was supposed it would incite the Cornishmen to new insurrections, they were set up in London: and their heads greeted Henry VII. on London Bridge, as he triumphantly returned over it from Blackheath.
“During this same year, London Bridge appears to have been repaired to some extent, although it is probable that the only notice of it may exist in the manuscript records of the Bridge Comptroller. In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ however, for October 1758, volume xxviii., page 469, is a Letter from Joseph Ames, Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, and Author of the ‘Typographical Antiquities,’ containing three inscriptions engraven on stone, found in pulling down a part of the edifice. These, it is supposed, were laid in the building at the different times of its repair, specified by their several dates; but though so very ancient, yet the descriptive account states that, ‘they are all as fresh as if new cut;’ they being then in the possession of Mr. Hudson, the Bridge-Master. The oldest inscription is sculptured upon a stone 9¾ inches in height, by 16¾ inches long;
the letters being raised and blacked, and the words, within a border, being ‘Anno Domini,’ with the date of 1497, in small black-letters, and ancient Arabic figures. I shall introduce the other stones to your notice in the years to which they refer; and only now remark, that they are engraven in Plate 1, Numbers I. II. III. page 470, of the work to which I have already referred you, whence they were copied into Gough’s ‘Sepulchral Monuments,’ volume ii., part i., page cclxvi., plate xxv.
“Hitherto, Mr. Geoffrey Barbican, I have quoted you an abundance of authorities which make mention of the history, or appearance, of London Bridge, but notwithstanding my researches I find only a very few ancient representations of it. If, however, you would see an interesting and sweetly-touched portraiture of it about the year 1500, look into that stout roan-coated folio, marked 16 F. ii. xv. in the Royal Library of Manuscripts in the British Museum, and you will be enraptured. The volume professes to treat of ‘Grace entiére sur le gouvernement du Prince,’ and it is written in prose and verse, in the common large black script of the fifteenth century, on vellum, with most noble illuminations, executed in the best style of the best period of the art in England, and by one of the most gifted of the Brethren of St. Luke. The Author of the poems was Charles, Duke of Orleans, father of Louis XII.; and this particular copy of his works seems to have been illuminated for Henry the Eighth, when Prince of Wales; for it not only contains numerous initial letters and borders richly coloured and embossed with gold; but in the frontispiece, on the first page, are his father’s well known badges of the red and white roses; the former of which are supported by the white hound, and red dragon: with glorified white roses in the margin. The poems are divided into several books of various amatory subjects, as ‘Venus et Cupidon,’—‘Epitres d’Abelard et Eloise,’—‘Les Demandes d’Amours;’ and the second division of the volume is adorned with a large and beautiful illumination representing the Duke of Orleans in the Tower, sending despatches to his friends abroad. The Tower, wharf, and river before them, occupy the whole foreground of the painting; and in the back appears the East side of London Bridge, with numerous houses standing upon it, the Chapel of St. Thomas reaching down to the sterlings, and the violent fall of the river through the different arches; whilst, beyond it, rise the spires of several Churches, especially the very high one of old St. Paul’s, and the other buildings of London erected along the banks of the Thames. It is, indeed, hardly possible to give you an adequate idea of the spirit and beauty of this view of London Bridge in the Year 1500,
the colouring is so vivid and harmonious: a sky of ultra-marine blue is spread over the whole of the back-ground, against which the distant buildings appear in white, the nearer ones being touched with different shades of brown. You will, however, find a fair copy of this noble painting, engraved by Basire, in Gough’s ‘History of Pleshy,’ which I have already cited, page 193; and the same plate has also been published as an additional illustration to the Rev. T. D. Fosbrooke’s ‘Encyclopædia of Antiquities,’ London, 1825, volume ii., page 923.
“You must, doubtless, recollect that in November 1501, Arthur, Prince of Wales, and son to King Henry VII., was married to Katherine, daughter of Ferdinand V., King of Spain, and that on Friday, the 12th of that month, the young Princess was conveyed from Lambeth, through London, to witness the pageants which had been prepared by the Citizens to do honour to her nuptials. The whole City was full of triumph and splendour; and Stow, in his ‘Annals,’ page 482, says that on London Bridge there was ordained a costly pageant of St. Katherine and St. Ursula, with many virgins. ‘I passe ouer,’ says Hall, in a very brilliant paragraph, folio, liii a, and using that most powerful oratorical figure called Paralepsis, or Omission, which declares that of which it denies saying any thing:—‘I passe ouer,’ says the old Chronicler,—‘the wyse deuises, the prudent speches, the costly woorkes, the conninge portratures practised and set foorth in vij goodly beautifull pageauntes erected and set vp in diuers places of the Cite. I leaue also the goodly ballades, the swete armony, the musicall instrumentes, which sounded with heavenly noyes on every side of the strete. I omit farther the costly apparel both of goldsmythes woorke and embraudery, the riche jewelles, the massy cheynes, the styrrynge horsses, the beautifull bardes and the glytteryng trappers bothe with belles and spangles of golde. I pretermyt also the ryche apparell of the Pryncesse, the straunge fasshion of the Spanishe nacion, the beauty of the Englishe ladyes, the goodly demeanoure of the young damoselles, the amourous countenaunce of the lusty bachelers. I passe ouer also the fyne engrayned clothes, the costly furres of the Citizens standing on skaffoldes, rayled from Gracechurche to Paules. What should I speake of the oderiferous skarlettes, the fyne veluet, the plesaunt furres, the massye chaynes, which the Mayre of London with the Senate, sitting on horseback, at the Litle Condyte in Chepe, ware on their bodyes, and about their neckes. I will not molest you with rehersyng the ryche arras, the costly tapestry, the fyne clothes bothe of golde and syluer, the curious veluettes, the beautiful sattens, nor the pleasaunt sylkes, which did hang in every strete wher she passed, the wyne that ranne continually out of the condytes, the graueling and rayling of the stretes nedeth not to be remembered.’ I have given you the whole of this fine, but certainly extended, extract, that you may derive from it some general idea of the pageantry of this festival, concerning which our Bridge historians are, in general, altogether silent.
“The night of Thursday, November 21st, 1504, was rendered memorable by a dreadful Fire, which commenced at the sign of the Pannier, at the Northern end of London Bridge, where six tenements were consumed, ‘that could not be quenched.’ Fabyan and Holinshed tell us this in their ‘Chronicles,’ page 534 and volume II., page 791; adding, that on the 7th of the following month certain other houses were also destroyed, near St. Botolph’s Church, in Thames Street. It was, probably, when the repairs occasioned by these conflagrations were completed, that another of those sculptured stones which I lately mentioned, was placed at the Bridge. It measures 10 inches in height, by 13¾ inches broad; and, carved in the same characters, and figures, as the former, are the words ‘Anno Domini 1509.’ At the end of the date is an arbitrary mark of a cross charged with a small saltire, which is supposed to have been the old device for Southwark, or the estate of London Bridge: and you know that the Arms used for those places are still Azure, an Annulet, ensigned with a Cross pateé, Or interlaced with a saltire conjoined in base, of the second. I have yet to mention a third sculptured stone, which, it is supposed, records the public benefits conferred by Sir Roger Achiley, Draper, upon the City during his Mayoralty in 1511. This tablet is 11½ inches wide, by 9½ high; and the inscription is ‘Anno’—the City sword—‘Domini. R. 1514 A;’ these letters being the initials of that very eminent Citizen, who was then senior Alderman, representing the Ward of Bridge Within. Such were the other two Ancient stones found at London Bridge in 1758.