In Little Trinity-street we have Painter-Stainers’ Hall, well worth a visit, although it is so badly lighted, that it is difficult to see the portraits. The principal pictures it contains are, Camden, Charles II. and his queen, William of Orange, by Kneller, and Queen Anne. The company also possesses a curious cup left by the celebrated antiquary Camden, and which is still used at their anniversary dinners. The church of the Holy Trinity was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt: a small chapel, of which we know nothing, stands on the site of the old church.
The church of St. Michael, Queenhithe, is remarkable for nothing except some carving at the east end, and the vane, which resembles a ship, and is said to be large enough to hold a bushel of corn.
The dues derived from the quay of Queenhithe belonged to the queens of England from a very early period, probably ever since the Norman conquest. Mention is made of Eleanor, so famous in our old ballad lore as the rival and poisoner of Fair Rosamond, as possessing all the dues obtained from this royal landing-place. Raising the old drawbridge of London Bridge every time a ship went under, with all the trouble and stoppage of vehicles, when this was the only bridge leading into London, did, no doubt, as much for increasing the traffic of Billingsgate as if a law had been passed to make it a royal quay.
At the foot of Southwark Bridge stands Vintners’ Hall. We can readily imagine that the old company of Vintners have ever been “right royal,” and great advocates for processions; that, when the City conduits ran wine, a great portion of the cost found its way into their coffers. Pepys tells us that, when Charles II. rode through the City the day before his coronation, “Wadlow the vintner, at the sign of the Devil, in Fleet-street, did lead a fine company of soldiers, all young comely men, in white doublets;” and we now find in the hall portraits of Charles II., James II., and others. That prince of rough wits, Tom Brown, in a bantering letter “from a vintner in the City to a young vintner in Covent Garden,” says, “You desire to know whether a vintner may take an advantage of people when they are in their cups, and reckon more than they have had? To which I answer in the affirmative, that you may, provided it be done in the way of trade, and not for any sinister end. This case has been so adjudged, many years ago, in Vintners’ Hall, and you may depend upon it.”
Bow-lane is the only place to obtain a good view of the beautiful tower of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, one of the finest, in our opinion, in the City. This is another of Wren’s edifices, erected after the Fire. It is said to be a model of the former building, and that the great architect was compelled to adopt the style through the conditions of a bequest, according to Malcolm’s statement, of “Henry Rogers, Esq., who, influenced by sincere motives of piety, and affected with the almost irreparable loss of religious buildings, left the sum of 5000l. to rebuild a church in the City of London.” He died before the building was commenced, and left his lady executrix of his will; and so the present church was erected after the model of the one built by Henry Kebles, it is said, who died at the commencement of the fifteenth century. Stowe says it was called Aldermary, because it was the oldest church in the City dedicated to St. Mary. It is said that the crypt of the old church still remains under two of the houses now standing in Bow-lane. The tower, as seen from Bow-lane, is splendid, but little of the church is visible from Watling-street; nor have we any thing further to notice in this old Roman highway, for such, no doubt, it formerly was, saving the church of St. Anthony, or Antholin, rebuilt by Wren, the dome of which is supported by columns. The early prayers at St. Antholin’s are alluded to by our old dramatists. Here we have only to turn up a court, a little farther on, and we are at once in Bow Churchyard, and under the very shadow of the tower in which swing the far-famed bells. Our engraving is a view of Bow Church as seen from Cheapside, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the whole City of London. Old Bow Church would of itself form a history, but, as we have not even described old St. Paul’s, and as we wish to make our readers acquainted with the London of to-day as well as the old City, which never arose again from its ruins, we shall glance briefly at the present neighbourhood, and pass on our way eastward.