Rambles in an Old City / comprising antiquarian, historical, biographical and political associations

by Susan Swain Madders

But there are other pictures still to be seen within the quaint old Elizabethan frame-work of the city’s market-place than scenes of merchandise, in these days

of monster meetings. Who can forget the human gatherings that have many a time and oft, within the limits of even childhood’s memory, been witnessed here, when gable roofs, and parapets, windows, and balconies, church towers, and Guildhall leads, have swarmed with living thousands; gay dressed “totties” and dames, aye, and sober-minded lords of the creation too! all eager and intent to watch from safe quarters some common object of attraction that has drawn together a mighty multitude of the people, with their proverbial love of sight-seeing, an inheritance bequeathed to them by their ancestral pageantries. Slight stimulus is needed to send the heart’s blood of the city through every vein and artery to this centre, where it pulsates in deep and heavy throbs of joy, or hope, or anger, as the case may be; true, in these modern days the common wants and common blessings that have bound the sympathies of the million into one, cause the spectacle of tumultuous hate and bitterness, knocking together of heads, &c, to be a rare manifestation of popular enthusiasm; more frequently one desire, one feeling animates the body aggregate, be it to see the mammoth train of a Hughes or Van Amburgh, the entrée of a royal duke, the failure of a promised fountain bid to play by a new water company, the more successful display of fireworks at the same behest, the popping of some threescore pensioners in honour of some

royal birthday, or the advent of some political election. On each and all of such occasions, and many more, the filling up of the frame-work is a picture of life, of concentrated human power, will, and passion, full of effect; may be, it needs an adequate cause to give it full strength, but everywhere it is full of interest, and the good old city’s market-place would not be fairly chronicled were its monster meetings of sight-seers deemed unworthy a passing comment. Pageantry has been numbered among the chartered rights of the citizens, from the days of “mysteries,” when the itinerant stage, with its sacred drama provided by the church, was the only theatre known, through the age of tournaments, the season of royal visits, Elizabethan processions, and triumphal arches, of guilds, of Georges and dragons, down to the last relic of the spirit of olden times—the chairing of its members; and not even the scant nourishment offered in this nineteenth century, has yet sufficed to starve and wither the seeds thus sown and fostered in the very nature of the people.

In a work that professes not to follow out the thread of history through all its variable windings, or note consecutively all the beads of truth that have been carved by the hand of time, and strung upon its surface, but only here and there to pause, as some gem more glittering than its fellows meets the eye, or some quaint rude relic of a day gone by

lays claim to a passing curiosity, wonder, or pity, we feel at liberty to make a kaleidoscope sort of pattern of our gleanings and notes on the old market-place. Interwoven with its progress, and associated with its memories, must be almost every historical reminiscence, peculiarly belonging to an important municipality, and thriving mart of commerce and manufactures; from the first simple gatherings in the outer court of the castle, to the days when trades and crafts, brought over by Norman intruders, and flourishing under the skilful tutelage of Flemish refugees, clustered together in groups around the old croft, the saddlers, the hosiers, the tanners, the mercers, the parmenters, the goldsmiths, the cutlers, each with their own row, to the time when staples were fixed, or right of wholesale dealing granted—when cloth halls witnessed the measuring and sealing by government inspectors of every manufactured piece of cloth, to ensure fairness of dealing between buyer and seller—when sumptuary laws regulated quantity, quality, and pattern of the dresses of all dutiful and loyal subjects—down through ages of fluctuating vicissitudes of prosperity and adversity—tremulous shakings—and reviving struggles against the tide of competition that has sunk the first and greatest manufacturing city our country once could boast, beneath the level of many a nurseling of yesterday, a mere mushroom in growth and age—from the era

of ultra-carnivorous diet, when boars, peacocks, venison, and porpoise, were scattered in plentiful profusion on the boards of butchers’ stalls, and in the regions of “Puleteria,”—when the potato, brocoli, turnip, onion, and radish, were unknown—the tansy, the rampion, cow cabbage, and salsify, their only substitutes in the days when vegetarians were not;—when quinces, medlars, rude grapes, and mulberries, wild raspberries and strawberries, supplied the place of a modern dessert, with the valuable addenda of hazel, and walnuts, whose beautiful wood even then was prized as an article of manufacture for cups and bowls, under the name of masere—down to the scene of the present day, as it has been pictured already.

Manifold have been the fleeting shadows that have peopled its disc, now bright, now dark, its area now traversed by triumphal arches and gorgeous processions, now serving as a platform for a gallows, whereon a Roberts and a Barber suffered for their loyalty to his majesty, Charles the First; in one age witnessing the rise of an oratory in its very midst, and a chaplain to minister to spiritual cravings, in the heart of material abundance; the next echoing to the ruthless hammers of destructive zealots, sweeping from their path every stone or carving that bore trace of the finger of the “scarlet lady.”

But although a consecutive detail of its rise and progress may not be within the province of our pen,

we may endeavour to trace a few of the leading features of its history since the era of its first rise into existence as a fishing hamlet, when the sea washed its shores, and the huts of a few fishermen, perhaps, were the only habitations scattered over its surface. Here they dwelt, no doubt, in peaceful security, when the huge mound, topped with its towering castle, rose up in their midst, and their sovereigns fixed their dwelling-place within its strongholds, to be succeeded, after the departure of the Romans, by the feudal lords or earls of Danish and Saxon conquerors, in whose time the market-place was the magna crofta or great croft of the castle. At the gates of the ancient castles the markets were continually set, following the precedent of the assemblage of booths that gathered round the gates of the Roman camps. These, from being at first moveable stalls or shelters for goods, grew in after-years into towns, boroughs, and cities, many of them taking their names from the castles or camps, and were called chesters. The country people were not allowed to carry provisions into Roman camps; at each gate was a strong guard, that suffered none to enter the camp without licence from the commanding officer: this guard consisted of one cohort, and one troop at least, from which sprung the modern term of court, or cohort, of guard. The commanding officer of the guard at the gate had

oversight of the market, punished such as sold by false weights and measures, brought bad provisions, or were guilty of any other offence in the market, and arbitrated in all cases of dispute. The Saxons, those exterminating conquerors, who so liberally parcelled out their neighbours’ territory into the famous divisions of the Heptarchy, next figured upon the scene, and the castellans succeeded the officer of the guard in the duties of his office, in later times to be fulfilled by pie-powder courts and clerks of the market. At this period, markets at the castle gates grew so important as to be composed of durable houses, as durable at least as wooden shambles were likely to be; and of such like constructions were the first outlines of the market-place composed, the fishmongers’ and butchers’ shops of the present day being the nearest similitudes that can be found to illustrate their features.