London City

by Walter Besant

We may consider this group as connected with Newgate Street and the streets to the north, and Paternoster Row with the streets and lanes to north and south. These lie partly in the ward of Farringdon Within and partly in that of Farringdon Without.

Probably at or before the beginning of the thirteenth century, certainly in its latter half, the present two wards of Farringdon Without and Farringdon Within formed but one ward under one alderman. That ward in early records is found named, as are most other wards, after its successive aldermen, thus: “Ward of Anketin de Auvergne” (1276-77) (Riley’s Memorials); “the ward which was that of Ralph le Fevre” (1278); “Ward of William de Farndone” (1283); “Warda Willelmi de Farendone infra et extra” (1286-87). Yet just before the last date the ward was called after the two City gates which it contained, thus: “Warda de Lodgate et Neugate: Willelmus de Farndon [aldermannus]” (c. 1285) (Sharpe, Calendar of Wills); and so it continued some time, for we find: “Warda Ludgate et Neugate presentat Nicholaum de Farndon [aldermannum]” (1293). In each case the whole ward, both within the gates and without, is intended, but it is said that the part without the gates was sometime known as the “Ward of Fletestrete” (Riley’s Memorials). In the fourteenth century the name of William de Farendone became permanently attached to this ward, as: [warda] “Farndon Infra [et] Farndon Extra: Nicholaus de Farndon [aldermannus]” (1319-20) (Sharpe); [warda] “Farndone infra et extra” (1320) (Riley); “Warda de Farndone” (1320); “Garde de Faryngdone” (1383). In 1393 the ward was made into two wards, each with its separate alderman. Henceforward the aldermanry without the walls was known by an equivalent to the present style, as: “Ward of Farndone Without” (1415) (Riley); “Ward of Faryndone Without” (1416) (Riley); “Ward of Faryngdon Without” (1444) (Catalogue of Ancient Deeds); “Warde of Faringdon Extra, or Without” (1598) (Stow); and so on with varieties of spelling.

The Roman gate of the west stood a little to the north of the later gate. The massive alcoves of the gate were uncovered in Giltspur Street near the end of the nineteenth century.

According to Stow, the “New Gate” was erected by Henry I. to relieve the traffic which had been stopped by the enclosures of St. Paul’s Precinct. Formerly, he said, the traffic had been conducted along a single street leading from Aldgate to Ludgate. There is evidently some confusion here. The “West Gate” is mentioned in a charter dated 857. It is possible that it means Ludgate; it is not, however, probable that the Saxons allowed the trade of the north and the west, which was brought down the great highway to the marsh of Thorney and was then, even before the Roman occupation, diverted along Oxford Street and Holborn, to resume its old course across the Marsh and Thorney Island, or that they would have gone out of their way to construct a new line of route along the present Piccadilly and the Strand.

It seems perfectly certain that the old line of trade was followed, partly because trade always does follow in accustomed lines, and partly because there was no reason why it should not do so. I read, therefore, the history of Newgate as follows:—The Roman Highway lay along Oxford Street and Holborn; it crossed the valley of the Fleet by a causeway through the mud and by a bridge over the stream—the causeway kept in place by piles and the bridge also resting on wooden piles. On the other side, the causeway sloped up the bank to the west gate, which stood on the hill as part of the Roman wall. When the Saxons in the sixth century came in to the City the causeway and the bridge had been swept away and destroyed; the old gate was ruinous. The merchants themselves, when they resumed the former trade, found it easier to break through the wall than to clear away the ruins of the old gate. They then made their own causeway and built their own bridge over the marshy valley and the stream. When Alfred restored the walls, he accepted the new gate and probably strengthened it, and built up the wall over the old Roman gate. This gate it was which Henry I. rebuilt, not, as Stow says, built. By this time, however, Ludgate had been opened as a postern; another causeway and another bridge had been built across the valley, and houses were springing up along the rising ground of Fleet Street and the Strand. And it is also quite possible that the rebuilding of the gate led to some reconstruction of the line of way through the City.

Henry I., therefore, rebuilt New Gate.

It was a prison from the first. All the City gates were prisons, the upper chambers being strong and easily guarded by the permanent watch below. Newgate, however, became a more important prison than any of the others, “as appeareth,” says Stow, “by records in the reign of King John and of other kings.”

It would take a whole volume to pass in review the prisoners of Newgate. Let me take one—an obscure person—because he belongs to the life of London, whereas the better known prisoners belong to the history of the country. It was on the eve of Pentecost, 1388, that William Wotton, Alderman of Dowgate, went to the Shambles in Newgate Street and asked of one Richard Bole, a butcher, the price of certain pieces of beef. Richard replied that it was four shillings. “That,” said the Alderman, “is too dear.” Quoth Richard, impudently, “I do verily believe that the meat is too dear for thee; who, I suppose, never bought as much meat as that, for thine own use.” Observing, then, that the inquirer wore an Alderman’s hood, he asked, “Art thou an Alderman?” “Yes,” William Wotton replies; “why askest thou?” Whereupon he said, “It is a good thing for thee and thy fellows, the Aldermen, to be so wise and wary, who make but light of riding on the Pavement, as some among ye have been doing.” Here we have reference to some grievance of the day. Why should the Aldermen ride upon the pavement? One supposes that the pavement was meant for the convenience of the stalls and not intended for horses. It was constructed in 1339.

However, William Wotton very speedily had this impudent butcher laid by the heels in Newgate. He was haled before the Mayor and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, after which he was to carry a lighted taper through the Shambles and Chepe as far as St. Lawrence Lane, when he was to offer his taper at the Guildhall Chapel. His fellows of the same trade, however, petitioned, and the imprisonment was remitted; but he walked in procession bearing that lighted taper, an object-lesson to those who would beard an Alderman.

In the fifteenth century the want of ventilation and the confinement of many in so narrow a place bred gaol-fever, which never afterwards left the prison. In 1419 the gaolers of Newgate all died, and prisoners to the number of sixty-four.