As We Are and As We May Be

by Walter Besant

Close beside this great house—the site itself now entirely covered by the railway—was the Steelyard. This was the centre of the German trade; here the merchants of the Hanseatic League were permitted to dwell and to store the goods which they imported. The history of the German merchants in London is a very important chapter in that of London. They came here in the year 1250, they formed a fraternity of their own, living together, by Royal permission, in a kind of college, with a great and stately hall, wharves, quays, and square courts. The building is represented, before it was burned down in the Great Fire, as picturesque, with many gables crowded together like the whole of London. Their trade was extremely valuable to them; they imported Rhenish wines, grain of all kinds, cordage and cables, pitch, tar, flax, deal timber, linen fabrics, wax, steel, and many other things. They obtained concession after concession until practically they enjoyed a monopoly. For this they had to pay certain tolls or duties. They were made, for instance, to maintain one of the City gates. They were compelled to live together in their own quarters. Their monopoly lasted for 300 years, during which the London merchants, especially the Association called Merchant Adventurers, who belonged principally to the Mercers' Company, continued to besiege the Sovereign with petitions and complaints. It was not until the reign of Queen Elizabeth that they were finally turned out and expelled the Kingdom. Their house and grounds were converted into a store-house for the Royal Navy. At the same time the old Navy Office, which had formerly stood in Mark Lane, was transferred to the suppressed college and chapel belonging to All Hallows, Barking, in Seething Lane, where you may still see, if you go to look for them, the old stone pillars of the gates and the old courtyard which was originally the court of the college, then the court of the Navy Office, and now the court of the warehouse belonging to the London Docks. As for the unfortunate Steelyard, that, as I said, is now completely covered by the Cannon Street Railway. As you walk under the railway arch you may now look southward and say, 'Here for 300 years lived the Hanseatic merchants—here the fraternity had their warehouses, their exchange, their great Hall. Here the German porters loaded and cleared the ships, the German clerks took notes and kept accounts, and the German merchants bought and sold.' They ventured not far from their own place; the Londoners have never loved foreigners or the sound of an unknown language; they lived here making money as fast as they could and then going home to Lubeck, Bremen, or Hamburg, others coming to take their place.

On Dowgate Hill was another famous old house called the Erber—which is, I suppose, the same word as Harbour. It belonged at successive periods to Lord Scroope, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Salisbury, and to George, Duke of Clarence. This house, too, perished in the Fire. In this street Sir Francis Drake lived, and here are now three Companies' Halls. Close by, on Laurence Poultney Hill, lived Dr. William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood.

In Suffolk Lane the Earls of Suffolk had a great house, and here, before they moved to Charter House, stood the Merchant Taylors' School. Three Companies had their Halls on the riverside—the Watermen's at the bottom of Cold Harbour Lane; the Dyers' at the bottom of Angel Alley; and the Vintners' which still stands close to Southwark Bridge.

Nearly at the end of the street was Baynard's Castle. You may still see the name on the gate of a wharf, and it also gives its name to the ward. This was the western fortress of the City, just as the Tower was the eastern; but with this difference, that Castle Baynard belonged to the City during the troubled time when the Crown and the City were constantly in conflict. The Tower, on the other hand, always belonged to the Crown. Baynard's Castle belonged, in fact, to the FitzWalters, hereditary barons of the City. One of their functions was at the outbreak of a war to appear at the west door of St. Paul's, armed and mounted, with twenty attendants, there to receive from the Lord Mayor the banner of the City, a horse worth £20, and £20 in money. Finally, the castle became, I do not know how, Crown property. It was burned to the ground, but rebuilt by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Within this castle the Duke of Buckingham offered the Crown to Richard III., and here the Privy Council proclaimed Queen Mary. The castle afterwards fell into the hands of the Earls of Shrewsbury. It was destroyed in the Great Fire. It consisted of two courts: the south front of the buildings faced the river, the north front, with the principal entrance, was in Thames Street.

In more ancient times there stood a tower west of Baynard's Castle called Montfichet, but of this building very few memorials remain. Again, there is said to have been a palace on Addle Hill, built by Athelstan. The Wardrobe was another great house acquired by King Edward III., close to the church still called St. Andrew's by the Wardrobe. The memory of this house is still kept up by that very interesting little square, which looks exactly like a place in a southern French town, called Wardrobe Place. One of the court offices was that of Master of the Wardrobe. In old days he resided in this house and actually did take care of the King's clothes. The Queen's wardrobe, on the other hand, was kept in the other royal house, called Tower Royal, the house still surviving in the street so-called. This was formerly King Stephen's palace. In the year 1331 it was granted by the King to his Queen Philippa for her wardrobe. It was then called 'La Réal,' without the addition of the word 'tower,' and the meaning and origin of the name are unknown. The palace stood in the parish of St. Thomas Apostle, the church of which was not rebuilt after the Fire; but the name of the church survives in a small fragment of the street so-called.

There were, therefore, in this small bit of London, at least four royal palaces, besides the great houses of the nobles that I have enumerated. Half the City companies had their Halls here; and even to this day there are standing here and there one or two of the solid houses built by the merchants in the narrow streets north of Thames Street for their private residences. As late as the beginning of the present century the house now called the 'Shades,' close to the Swan Stairs, London Bridge, was built for his own town house by Lord Mayor Garratt, who laid the foundation stone of London Bridge. Of the old merchants' houses, rich with carved woodwork, built with black timber round courts and gardens, not one now remains in the City. But there are one or two remaining in the old inns of Southwark and the Old Bell Inn, Holborn, Yet the last great house built in the City, the Mansion House, was itself originally built round a court.

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You may, if you try, reconstruct Thames Street as it was before the Fire. Its breadth was exactly the same as at present. Eight stately churches stood, each with its own burial-ground, along the street. The palace of Baynard reared its gables on the right as you entered the street from the west. Lower down, on the same side, stood the great House of Cold Harbour, also gabled. The low-gabled warehouses stood round Queenhithe and Billingsgate; the Custom House was thronged with those who came to pay their tolls and clear their dues; the broad court of the Steelyard—covered with boxes, bales, and casks, some exposed, some under sheds—stretched southward, behind its three great gates. On the river-side stood its stately Hall. The Halls of the Companies, great and noble houses, proclaimed the wealth and power of the merchants. On the north side stood the merchants' houses built round their gardens. In those days they had no country houses, and they wanted none. They could carry their falcons out into the fields which began on the other side of the City wall, or across the river in the low-lying lands of Bermondsey and Redriffe. The street was already crammed and thronged with porters, carts, and wheelbarrows; it was full of noise; there were sailors and merchants from foreign parts. Already the Levantine was here, lithe and supple, black of eye, ready of tongue, quick with his dagger; and the Italian, passionate and eager; and the Spaniard, the Fleming, the Frenchman, and the Dutchman. All nations were here, as now, but they were then kept on board their ships or in their own quarters by night. The great merchants walked up and down, conversing, heedless of the noise, to which their ears were so accustomed as to be deaf to them. The merchants had reason to be grave. Always there were wars and rumours of wars; always some pirate from French shores was attacking their ships; their latest venture was too often overdue—the ship had to run the gauntlet of the Algerian galleys, and no one could tell what might have happened; there was plague at Antwerp—it might be lurking in the bales lying on the quay before them; there was civil war brewing; fortune is fickle—he who was rich yesterday may be a beggar to-morrow. Merchants, in those days, did well to be grave.

I have considered, so far, some of the great houses standing in or along this historic street. Let us now note a few of the churches.

All Hallows, Barking, the first walking from the east, commemorates in its name the fact that it formerly belonged to the great convent of Barking in Essex, the gateway of which still stands at the entrance to the churchyard. This church escaped the Fire. Here was buried the poet Surrey, Bishop Fisher, and Archbishop Laud.