ELIZABETHAN LONDON
CHAPTER I
WITH STOW
Let us climb the steps that lead to the City Wall at the Tower postern, and make a circuit by means of the Wall. We walk on the five-foot way designed for the archers. It is grass-grown between the stones. On the battlements the wall-flower grows luxuriously with the green fumitory and the red flowers of the kiss-me-quick. Looking over the Wall we perceive that the ditch is nearly filled up: all kinds of rubbish have been shot into it; there are small ponds of water here and there, and on the opposite bank are gardens in patches and what we call allotments. “Alas!” says our guide, who continually laments the past, “I remember when the ditch was full, and when the boys came to bathe in it and were sometimes drowned in it. Then fish abounded and men angled from the bank.” We begin our walk. “I remember,” our guide goes on, talking while he leads the way, “running along the Wall when I was a boy, nearly sixty years ago. It was a favourite pastime to run from gate to gate. That was before the suppression of the Religious.” He sighed—Was he then regretting that event? “All the Houses were standing then. One thought they would stand for ever. Yet the axe was already laid to the tree: there was internal decay and external contempt, though we boys knew nothing of it. The friars in vain searched the boxes put up for them in the shops: no one would give them alms; if they went into a house, no one would give them so much as a crust of bread; there were but fifteen left in Grey Friars, and they were selling their vessels of silver and gold when they were called upon to surrender. But still their churches made a brave show. All day long the bells were ringing—’twas a city of bells. They rang from cathedral and parish church; from monastery and nunnery; from college of priests and from chapel and from spital. They rang for festivals and fasts; for pageants and ridings; for births and deaths; for marriages and funerals; for the election of City officers; for the King’s birthday; for the day and the hour; they rang in the baby; they rang out the passing soul; they rang merrily in honour of the bride; they rang for work to begin and for work to cease; the streets echoed the ringing of bells all day long; for miles round London you could hear with the singing of the larks the ringing of the bells.
“A third part of the City belonged to the Houses and the Church. Why, thousands of honest people lived by working for St. Paul’s and the parish churches and the monks and nuns. Look around you now.” We were close to Aldgate. Stow pointed to the south-east. Near the Tower stood a venerable church in a precinct surrounded by a stone wall and containing a cloister, houses round it, a garden, a school-house, and a burial-ground. “Behold the last of them!” he said. “St. Katherine’s, the smallest of all the Foundations, still exists; but changed—Ah!—changed. Where are the rest?” On the north of St. Katherine’s was another precinct marked out by a wall, and within it broken walls, broken windows, and rough timber store-houses. “There was once Eastminster,” said Stow. “Who is mindful of our Lady of Grace and her Cistercians? They are forgotten. Look Citywards. Yon ruins are those of the Crutched Friars. What is left to mark their abode of two hundred years and more? Their hall was converted into a glass-house and is burned down; their church contains now a carpenter’s shop and a tennis court. Turn your eyes more to the north. Those are the ruins of St. Helen’s Nunnery: their chapel is part of the parish church; their hall is now the Hall of the Leathersellers’ Company; their gardens also belong to that honourable Company. Or yonder, where you may behold the precinct of the Holy Trinity Priory. The Prior was also Alderman of Portsoken Ward and rode among the other Aldermen, but in habit ecclesiastical, as I myself have seen. The House kept open table for rich and poor; a noble and hospitable House it was, but in the end decayed by reason of too great hospitality. The church was pulled down and levelled with the ground—Proh Pudor!—the courts remain, but with other buildings; and now is that venerable and regal Foundation clean forgotten. Behold”—he pointed outside the Wall—“the place where the Sorores Minores, the sisters of St. Clare, lived for many years. The walls of their refectory still stand; on the site of their cloister is a fair and large store-house for armours and habiliments of war, with work-houses serving unto the same purpose. Alas! Poor Sisters! To this end has come their House of Peace and Prayer.”
“Nevertheless, Master Stow, the City is more prosperous than before.”
“I know not; I know not,” he said impatiently. “What do I know about wealth and prosperity? Let us go on.” So he left off talking about the churches and monasteries and pointed to the houses beyond the Wall. “The suburbs,” he said, “have not greatly increased of late years. There has been too much plague among us. And, indeed, it would seem that we are never to be rid of plague. The Queen’s Council forbade the building of new houses. As well forbid the rising of the tide. There are now—as you can plainly see—a line of cottages on both sides of the road as far as Whitechapel Church. But who is to hinder? There is a line of houses along the riverside as far as Ratcliffe and even Limehouse, where once were elms so noble. But who is there to hinder? Masterless men are they, and sea-faring men and common cheats and rogues, who live beside the river, beyond the jurisdiction of the Mayor and safe from the wholesome cart tail and the penance of pillory.
A True and Exact Draught of the TOWER LIBERTIES, survey’d in the Year 1597 by Gulielmus Haiward and J. Gascoyne.
E. Gardner’s Collection.