In exactly the same manner, he who would understand mediæval London must walk about modern London, but after he has read his historian and his antiquary, not before. Then he will be astonished to find how much is left, in spite of fires, reconstructions and demolitions, to illustrate the past.
Here a quaint little square, accessible only to foot-passengers, shut in, surrounded by merchants' offices, still preserves its ancient form of a court in a suppressed monastery. Since the church is close by, one ought to be able to assign the court to its proper purpose. The hall, the chapter-house, the kitchens and buttery, the abbot's residence, may have been built around this court.
Again, another little square set with trees, like a Place in Toulon or Marseilles, shows the former court of a royal palace. And here a venerable name survives telling what once stood on the site; here a dingy little church-yard marks the former position of a church as ancient as any in the City.
London is full of such survivals, which are known only to one who prowls about its streets, note-book in hand, remembering what he has read. Not one of them can be got from the book antiquary, or from the guide-book. As one after the other is recovered the ancient city grows not only more vivid, but more picturesque and more splendid. London a city of low mean tenements? Dr. Brewer—Dr. Brewer! Why, I see great palaces along the river-bank between the quays and ports and warehouses. In the narrow lanes that rise steeply from the river I see other houses fair and stately, each with its gate-way, its square court, and its noble hall, high roofed, with its oriel-windows and its lantern. Beyond these narrow lanes, north of Watling Street and Budge Row, more of those houses—and still more, till we reach the northern part where the houses are nearly all small, because here the meaner sort and those who carry on the least desirable trades have those dwellings.
CHURCH OF ST. PAUL'S, BEFORE THE FIRE
You have seen that London was full of rich monasteries, nunneries, colleges, and parish churches, in so much that it might be likened unto the Ile Sonnante of Rabelais. You have now to learn, what I believe no one has ever yet pointed out, that if it could be called a city of churches it was much more a city of palaces. This shall immediately be made clear. There were, in fact, in London itself more palaces than in Verona and Florence and Venice and Genoa all together. There was not, it is true, a line of marble palazzi along the banks of a Grande Canale; there was no Piazza della Signoria, no Piazza della Erbe to show these buildings. They were scattered about all over the City; they were built without regard to general effect and with no idea of decoration or picturesqueness; they lay hidden in narrow winding labyrinthine streets; the warehouses stood beside and between them; the common people dwelt in narrow courts around them; they faced each other on opposite sides of the lanes.
These palaces belonged to the great nobles and were their town houses; they were capacious enough to accommodate the whole of a baron's retinue, consisting sometimes of four, six, or even eight hundred men. Let us remark that the continual presence of these lords and their following did much more for the City than merely to add to its splendor by the erecting of great houses. By their residence they prevented the place from becoming merely a trading centre or an aggregate of merchants; they kept the citizens in touch with the rest of the kingdom; they made the people of London understand that they belonged to the Realm of England. When Warwick, the King-maker, rode through the streets to his town-house, followed by five hundred retainers in his livery; when King Edward the Fourth brought wife and children to the City and left them there under the protection of the Londoners while he rode out to fight for his crown; when a royal tournament was held in Chepe—the Queen and her ladies looking on—then the very school-boys learned and understood that there was more in the world than mere buying and selling, importing and exporting; that everything must not be measured by profit; that they were traders indeed, and yet subjects of an ancient crown; that their own prosperity stood or fell with the well-doing of the country. This it was which made the Londoners ardent politicians from very early times; they knew the party leaders who had lived among them; the City was compelled to take a side, and the citizens quickly perceived that their own side always won—a thing which gratified their pride. In a word, the presence in their midst of king and nobles made them look beyond their walls. London was never a Ghent; nor was it a Venice. It was never London for itself against the world, but always London for England first, and for its own interests next.