Oak Apple Day, 1672, was a gala day for the market. Then it was that Sir Robert Vyner inaugurated the “nobly great statue of King Charles II. on horseback” which he had, at his own charge, caused to be set upon the conduit at the north end of the same. The King was represented in armour, his head uncovered; the horse trampled beneath its feet the fallen form of Oliver Cromwell. The whole, which was of white marble, stood upon a freestone pedestal 18 feet high, carved with the royal arms and niches containing dolphins. Handsome iron gates and rails enclosed this loyal tribute to a great king. That day the market conduit ran with wine; three years afterwards Sir Robert Vyner was Lord Mayor. Alas! the glory of the statue, as of the monarch it portrayed, was short-lived. It was soon criticised as a clumsy work, and the revelation of its history turned it into a laughing-stock. Early in the eighteenth century it was discovered that the loyal Vyner had found somewhere abroad a statue of John Sobieski, King of Poland, conqueror of the Turks at Choozim. The statue represented the King’s horse trampling on a Turk. It lay on the sculptor’s hands. Sir Robert, seeing the means of paying his sovereign a compliment without great expense, obtained the statue, and secured Latham to substitute the head of Charles for that of the Pole. The downtrodden Turk was christianised into Cromwell, only, unfortunately, Latham omitted to alter the Turk’s turban, which remained intact and incongruous upon Oliver’s head, and served as a confirmation of the story. There is a lampoon on the statue worth quoting. It occurs in Lord Rochester’s History of the Insipids (1676):
Could Robert Vyner have foreseen
The glorious triumphs of his master,
The Woolwich Statue gold had been,
Which now is made of alabaster:
But wise men think had it been wood
’Twere for a bankrupt king too good.
When Stocks conduit was removed, the “ridiculous statue” was relegated to the rubbish heaps of Guildhall; finally the Common Council granted it to Mr. Robert Vyner, a descendant of Sir Robert, in 1779, and it was taken by its new owner to adorn his country seat at Gantly Park, Lincolnshire. The year 1737 saw the end of Stocks Market in this place. On March 12 the sheriffs petitioned the House of Commons to remove it to Fleet Ditch, and to erect the Mansion House upon its site. Their prayer was granted; the market was removed at Michaelmas 1737, and the ancient market-place was enclosed with a broad fence. In its new home the name which it had borne for 255 years was lost, and it became known as the Fleet Market. At Michaelmas 1829, exactly 82 years after its removal, it was closed and the site cleared to form Farringdon Street. St. Christopher le Stocks, so called from its proximity to the market, stood on part of the site of the present Bank of England. Seven streets now meet before the Bank and pour forth omnibuses, cabs, and other vehicles in an endless stream of traffic. Below are the white-bricked subways of the electric railway which form a safe crossing for those who cannot ford the river of traffic.
St. Christopher le Stocks stood on the north side of Threadneedle Street in the ward of Broad Street. The date of its foundation is unknown. The building was much injured by the Great Fire and subsequently repaired. In 1780, after the Gordon Riots, it was taken down and its site is now covered by part of the Bank of England. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1280.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The family of Nevil in 1281; the Bishop of London, 1415, in whose successors it continued up to 1783.