The main streets of the City were not mean at all; they were broad, well built, picturesque. If here and there a small tenement reared its timbered and plastered front among the tall gables, it added to the beauty of the street; it broke the line. Take Chepe, for instance, the principal seat of retail trade. At the western end stood the Church of St. Michael le Quern where Paternoster Row begins. On the north side were the churches of St. Peter West Chepe, St. Thomas Acon, St. Mary Cole Church, and St. Mildred. On the south side were the churches of St. Mary le Bow and St. Mary Woolchurch. In the streets running north and south rose the spires of twenty other churches. On the west side of St. Mary le Bow stood a long stone gallery, from which the Queen and her ladies could witness the tournaments and the ridings. In the middle was the "Standard," with a conduit of fresh-water; there were two crosses, one being that erected by Edward I., to mark a resting-place of his dead Queen. Round the "Standard" were booths. At the west end of Chepe were selds, which are believed to have been open bazaars for the sale of goods. Another cross stood at the west end, close to St. Michael le Quern. Here executions of citizens were held; on its broad road the knights rode in tilt on great days; the stalls were crowded with those who came to look on and to buy, the street was noisy with the voices of those who displayed their wares and called upon the folk to buy—buy—buy. You may hear the butchers in Clare Market or the costers in Whitecross Street keeping up the custom to the present day. The citizens walked and talked; the Alderman went along in state, accompanied by his officers; they brought out prisoners and put them into the pillory; the church bells clashed, and chimed, and tolled; bright cloth of scarlet hung from the upper windows if it was a feast day, or if the Mayor and Aldermen had a riding; the streets were bright with the colors of that many-colored time, when the men vied with the women in bravery of attire, and when all classes spent upon raiment sums of money, in proportion to the rest of their expenditure, which sober nineteenth-century folk can hardly believe. Chaucer is full of the extravagance in dress. There is the young squire—
Embroidered was he as if it were a mead
All full of freshest flowers, white and red.
NORTH-EAST VIEW OF CROSBY HALL, SHOWING PART OF THE INTERIOR OF THE GREAT HALL.
Or the carpenter's wife—
A seynt [girdle] she wered barred all of silk
In barm cloth eke as white as mornë milk
Upon her lendes [loins] full of many a gore.
White was her smock and browded all before,
And eke behind on her coler about
Of cole black silk within and eke without.
Or the wife of Bath, with her scarlet stockings and her fine kerchiefs. And the knights decked their horses as gayly as themselves. And the city notables went clad in gowns of velvet or silk lined with fur; their hats were of velvet with gold lace; their doublets were of rich silk; they carried thick gold chains about their necks, and massive gold rings upon their fingers.
With all this outward show, this magnificence of raiment, these evidences of wealth, would one mark the small tenements which here and there, even in Chepe, stood between the churches and the substantial merchants' houses? We measure the splendors of a city by its best, and not by its worst.