Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present

by Thomas Miller

Could the cross, crop-eared old Puritan ever have been like other boys, and gone a bird-nesting? The simile seems to call up such a question, as if in his grim humour he reverted to his youthful days, little dreaming then that he should have to lose his ears and stand in the Westminster pillory. And Laud—he too (after all his pious “anticks,” as Prynne calls the ceremony of the consecration of St. Catherine Cree) was beheaded at the Tower. While we stood within this old church, we pictured those two earnest men in that cold January morning—the one religiously performing his duties, with no doubt reverential awe; the other, with a sneer on his lips, leaning, perhaps, near the effigy of the recumbent knight, and scarcely able to suppress the contempt he felt for the ceremonies which such as he and the stern-souled Cromwell despised, with many others who were so soon to shake a throne, and trample on the “divinity of kings,” as if it were but dust. But we are forgetting Stowe and the adjoining church of St. Andrew’s Undershaft. Why it was so called, the pleasing historian, who has long slept (not undisturbed) within the church, shall tell us in his own sweetly-quaint old language; for though “dead, he yet speaketh,” and never hath London before or since had so pleasing a chronicler. He says, “because that of old time every year, on May-day morning, it was used that an high or long shaft or May-pole was set up there before the south door of the said church.” And he had often seen that “long shaft” set up—perhaps in his younger days danced around it, eyeing askance some citizen’s pretty daughter: it may be she who outlived him, and at her own expense raised the present monument to his memory; and as she came in after-days to look at it, sighed as she thought of the bygone years when they danced, hand in hand, together around the May-pole, or of their walks in the summer evenings, when he pointed out to her some old surviving landmark that to him was hallowed by its historical associations, little thinking then that to him after-ages would be so much indebted for all that is known of ancient London. Peace to his venerable ashes! his shadow seems to fill the old church, and we think only of him. The ribbed roof and “deep-dyed” window are all we can remember; but what the stained glass represents we cared not to inquire, so much was our mind occupied with Stowe and the merry May-days of old London.

We will now turn up Bishopsgate-street, and glance at Crosby Hall (endeared to us through Shakspeare having made mention of it).

Crosby Hall, or Place, was built by Sir John Crosby; who, according to Stowe, obtained a lease of the ground, in 1466, of Alice Ashfield, prioress of the adjoining convent of St. Helen’s, for ninety-nine years, at an annual rent of 11l. 6s. 8d. From grocer and woolman he became alderman of London, and was knighted by Edward IV. in 1471. His monument yet stands in the church of St. Helen.

Sir Thomas More states that it was in Crosby Place where Gloster, afterwards Richard III., planned the murder of the princes in the Tower, and by their removal paved his way to the throne. He says, “By little and little, all folk withdrew from the Tower, and drew to Crosby Place, in Bishopsgate-street, where the Protector kept his household. The Protector had his resort, the king (prince?) in a manner desolate; while some for their business made suit to them who had the doing; some were by their friends secretly warned that it might haply turn them to no good to be too much attendant about the king without the Protector’s appointment; who removed also divers of the prince’s old servants from him, and set new about him. Thus many things coming together, partly by chance, partly of purpose, caused at length, not common people only, who wave with the wind, but wise men also, and some lords eke, to mask the matter and muse thereon.”

Shakspeare makes Gloster appoint the place of meeting with the murderer, after he has given him the warrant, at Crosby Place. Here he also requests the Lady Anne to “repair” while he inters the remains of the king at Chertsey monastery. Marriage and murder were planned under the very roof which we can still look at by that daring duke. It is one of the few remaining places in the City in which the deeds recorded in our history were plotted, and to which afterwards was given an enduring name in the pages of England’s greatest poet.

Here the rich Sir John Spencer resided; and when the Tower was the court-end of London, it was frequently the residence of foreign ambassadors. It is said to have been the dwelling of Sir Thomas More at one period; but this assertion is not well authenticated. The hall, at a first glance, appears somewhat narrow for its height—the latter exceeding its width by about 13 feet, while its length is 54 feet. From the depth of the oriel the dimensions appear magnificent, while the innumerable dyes thrown out from the stained glass carry the imagination back to “feast and revelry,” when beauty and valour there congregated, and all “went merry as a marriage-bell.”

The hall was long used as a packer’s warehouse; and during the period it was thus occupied much damage was done to its ornaments. The work of restoration commenced in 1836, and the building was re-opened in 1842. It is now used as a Literary Institution.

The adjoining church of St. Helen was founded in 1216. What alteration it has undergone, it is difficult to point out. It is a rich storehouse of ancient monuments, and perhaps, with the exception of the little church in the Tower, abounds more in these valuable records than any other building in the City that escaped the Great Fire. Here, as we have before stated, the founder of Crosby Hall is interred. The same altar-tomb also contains the recumbent effigy of Ann his wife.

Here Sir Thomas Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange, is also buried: he died in 1579. The “rich Spencer,” who bought Crosby Hall, and was Lord Mayor in 1594, lies here: he is said to have been worth near a million of money in his day, a sum which, multiplied according to the value of the period, almost throws our Rothschilds into the shades. These are but a few of the many interesting monuments dedicated to the memory of the “grey forefathers” of the City.

On one of the walls stands a richly-sculptured niche, below which runs a row of little open arches, through which the refractory nuns, it is said, were sentenced to hear mass, while they stood in the crypt. These nuns appear to have been an unruly race at times, and must often have caused great anxiety to such worthy prioresses as Alice Ashfield; for it was not safe to entrust them with the “latch-key,” according to what is whispered by a dean of St. Paul’s, who, it seems, made a few unpleasant inquiries about them in 1439, long before Crosby Hall was built, and when all around the nunnery there stood old-fashioned tenements, full of ins and outs, and which required some “sad (grave) woman and discreet” to “keep the keys of the posterngate.”