Stowe tells us that the monuments of the old church of St. Mary Somerset were defaced; but whether by time or sacrilegious hands, he says not, nor can we now know, for the Great Fire destroyed all the traces that time had so long spared. We would rather the old church with the poetical name had been rebuilt on the ancient Hawthorn Mount than this. Stowe thinks that the old name of St. Mary Somerset was Summer Hithe. Summer and hawthorns! how we love the memory of the old historian for calling up these pleasant associations! We may be wrong in the name, but, for the sake of the poetry, we must picture the pretty Saxon maids, before London was a city, wandering down Mounthaw to Summer-wharf between long lines of hawthorn hedges, to see their lovers return from fishing in the Thames, or to watch the arrival of some corn-barque lower down the bank by Queenhithe. In Fish-street we have still a portion of the old burial-ground that belonged to St. Mary’s Mounthaw.
St. Nicholas’s Cold Abbey stands at the corner of Old Fish-street-hill, and is one of the first churches completed after the Fire. There is nothing either remarkable about this church or the neighbouring one called St. Mary’s Magdalen in Old Fish-street, except that both were rebuilt by Wren. In the pamphlet before alluded to I find the following entry: “St. Maudlin, Old Fish-street, Dr. Griffith sequestered, plundered; wife and children turned out of doors; his wife dead with grief. Mr. Weld, his curate, assaulted, beaten in the church, and turned out.” Rather rough handling of the old royalist clergymen in the stormy times of Cromwell. What talk there must have been amongst the parishioners of old St. Mary’s Magdalen, or Maudlin, when the Ironsides walked into the ancient City churches, and thus dragged out and beat the venerable pastors. These brief entries bespeak volumes; and yet we wish the details were more fully given. Some of the worthy citizens no doubt dealt a blow or two in defence of their ministers. Poor Mr. Chestlin seems to have made his escape for a time only to be recaptured. “St. Matthew’s, Friday-street, Mr. Chestlin sequestered, plundered, and imprisoned in Newgate, whence being let out, he was forced to fly, and since imprisoned again in Peter House.”
Peter House stood in Aldersgate-street, and was used by Cromwell as a prison at this period, as were also several other celebrated houses.
Friday-street was famous in former times for its taverns. Our engraving represents the Saracen’s Head, which was taken down about seven years ago.
The stone beside the door in the wall of Allhallow’s, Bread-street, and in Watling-street, tells us that here John Milton was baptised on the 20th of December, 1608—that is, in the old church before the Fire. The well-known lines, commencing “Three poets in three distant ages born,” &c., are engraved on the same stone that records the date of Milton’s baptism. We wish that all the City churches had their names engraved on some stone, like that of Allhallow’s, Bread-street. We shall scarcely be believed, when we say, that in one or two instances the people living next the church did not know its name. When we consider how many churches are crowded together here, on the space of a few acres of ground, we think it would be of service to strangers visiting London, and to thousands who reside in the City and suburbs, to have the names either legibly engraved or painted on each building. Lower down is the church of St. Mildred, also built by Wren. The interior is rather pleasing, and there is some beautiful work about the pulpit; but we know nothing of any interest connected with the church or the street, beyond that Milton was born in it, which, to dreamers like ourselves, makes Bread-street hallowed ground, although the Fire has swept away every trace of the building in which the God-gifted poet first saw the light. That this, the spot on which the great poet was born, was classic ground long centuries ago, the portion of the Roman wall, and the ancient lamp (which we have engraved), and which were discovered in Bread-street about five years ago, fully prove. Who can tell what foot, renowned in Roman history, may have trampled on the spot where the author of Paradise Lost was born?