In two particulars at least the London settlement was less exclusive than some of those elsewhere. The merchants built no church for their own private use, but resorted to the adjacent parish church of All Hallows the More, which stood, until its recent destruction, at the corner of Thames Street and All Hallows Lane. The original church perished in the Great Fire, and with it all the monuments which could be associated with the League; but in the rebuilt church, in the reign of Queen Anne, was placed by one Jacob Jacobsen, no doubt a descendant of one of the original Hanse merchants, a very beautiful screen, as a memorial of the League. The screen is now in St. Margaret's, Lothbury, and over the gate of it still soars the German eagle, but surmounted by the arms of England. Although tradition says that the screen was made in Hamburg, there seems to be but little doubt that its delicate carving is the work of an English chisel, perhaps one of those which had been employed at St. Paul's Cathedral.
A Flemish Gray-Beard from the Steel-yard of London.
Within the enclosing walls of the Steel-yard on the river's banks was a fine garden planted with vines and fruit trees open to the citizens and their wives, who in fine summer weather took their pleasure there and drank the Rhine wines which the merchants imported from Germany and vended at the rate of threepence a flask. This wine was brought over in stone bottles, made principally at Fretchen, near Cologne, which, from a rough-looking face, intended to represent Charlemagne, placed under the lip, were commonly called "Flemish Gray-beards." When the Cannon Street Railway Station, which occupies part of the site of this garden, was built, many of these in a perfect state of preservation were unearthed; of one of which we give an illustration.
With the discovery of America, and the increasing activity of English merchant adventurers, the trade of the Germans declined, and a domestic revolution in Lübeck, in 1537, destroyed the cohesion of the League, which gradually became effaced during the struggles of the Thirty Years' War. In England its charter was first withdrawn in 1552, and, although its influence slightly revived under Mary in consequence of her Spanish and Burgundian connections, it was finally expelled by Elizabeth.
Of the great League and its Kontor, in London, there remains, perhaps, an echo in the expression, "A pound sterling"—a pound of the Easterlings; but the site of its Steel-yard is now a railway station, and its only tangible memorials remaining are some empty wine bottles.
THE ARMS OF THE CITY AND SEE OF LONDON
By J. Tavenor-Perry
"Is this a dagger that I see before me?"—Macbeth.
Argent, a cross gules, in the first quarter a sword in pale, point upwards, of the last. Crest; a dragon's sinister wing, argent, charged with a cross, gules. Supporters; on either side a dragon with wings elevated and addorsed, argent, and charged on the wing with a cross, gules. Motto: "Domine dirige nos."—The City.