London

by Walter Besant

OLD CHARING CROSS

Who was he—the craftsman? Whence did he come? London has always opened her hospitable arms to foreigners. They still come to the City and settle, enjoying its freedom, and in the next generation are pure English. In the days of Edward the Confessor the men of Rouen and of Flanders became citizens with rights equal to the English. Later on, the names of the people show their origin and the places whence they or their forefathers had come. Then William Waleys is William the Welchman; Walter Norris is Walter of Norway; John Francis is John the Frenchman; Henry Upton is Henry of that town; William Sevenoke, Lord Mayor of London, took his name from the village of Sevenoaks, in Kent, where he was born. The first surnames were bestowed not only with reference to the place of birth, but partly to trades, partly to the place of residence, partly to personal defects or peculiarities. But it is obvious from the earliest names on record how readily London received strangers from any quarter of western Europe, Norway, Denmark, Flanders, Lorraine, Picardy, Normandy, Guyenne, Spain, Provence, and Italy. It is noteworthy in studying the names, first, that, as was to be expected, there is not in the fourteenth century a single trace of British or Roman-British name, either Christian or surname, just as there was not in the Saxon occupation a single trace of Roman customs or institutions; next, that the Saxon names have all vanished. There are no longer any Wilfreds, Ælfgars, Eadberhts, Sigeberts, Harolds, or Eadgars among the Christian names. They have given place to the Norman names of John, Henry, William, and the like. The London craftsman was therefore a compound of many races. The dominant strain was Saxon—East Saxon; then came Norman, then Fleming, and then a slight infusion of every nation of Western Europe.

In the narrow lanes leading north and south of the two great streets of Thames and Chepe the craftsmen of London lived in their tenements, each consisting of a room below and a room above. Some of them followed their trade at home, some worked in shops. There were those who sold and those who made. Of the former, the mercers and haberdashers kept their shops in West Chepe; the goldsmiths in Guthrun's Lane and Old Change; the pepperers and grocers in Soper's Lane; the drapers in Lombard Street and Cornhill; the skinners in St. Mary Axe; the fish-mongers in Thames Street; the iron-mongers in Ironmongers' Lane and Old Jewry; the vintners in the Vintry; the butchers in East Chepe, St. Nicolas Shambles, and the Stocks Market; the hosiers in Hosiers' Lane; the shoemakers and curriers in Cordwainer Street; the paternoster-sellers in Paternoster Row; patten-sellers by St. Margaret Pattens; and so forth.

It is easy, with the help of Stow, and with the names of the streets before one, to map out the chief market-places and the shops. It is not so easy to lay down the places where those dwelt who carried on handicrafts. Stow indicates here and there a few facts. The Founders of candlesticks, chafing-dishes, and spice mortars carried on their work in Lothbury; the coal-men and wood-mongers were found about Billingsgate stairs; since the Flemish weavers met in the church-yard of Lawrence Pountney, they lived presumably in that parish. For the same reason the Brabant weavers probably lived in St. Mary Somerset parish. The furriers worked in Walbrook; the curriers opposite London Wall; upholsterers or undertakers on Cornhill; cutlers worked in Pope's Head Alley; basket-makers, wire-drawers, and "other foreigners" in Blond Chapel, or Blanch Appletone Lane. In Mincing Lane dwelt the men of Genoa and other parts who brought wine to the port of London in their galleys. The turners of beads for prayers lived in Paternoster Row; the bowyers in Bowyer Row; other crafts there are which may be assigned to their original streets. Sometimes, but not always, the site of a company's hall marks the quarter chiefly inhabited by that trade. Certainly the vintners belonged to the Vintry, where is now their hall, and the weavers to Chepe, where they still have their hall. When, however, the management of a trade or craft passed into the hands of a company, there was no longer any reason, except where men had to work together, why they should live together. Since there could be no combined action by the men, but, on the contrary, blind obedience to the Warden, they might as well live in whatever part of the City should be the most convenient. From the absence of great houses, whether of nobles or princes, in the north of the City, one is inclined to believe that great numbers of craftsmen lived in that part, namely, between what is now called Gresham Street and London Wall.

The trades carried on within the walls covered very nearly the whole field of manufacture. A mediæval city made everything that it wanted—wine, spices, silks, velvets, precious stones, and a few other things excepted, which were brought to the port from abroad; but the City could get on very well without those things. Within the walls they made everything. It is not until one reads the long lists of trades collected together by Riley that one understands how many things were wanted, and how trades were subdivided. Clothing in its various branches gave work to the wympler, who made wimples or neckerchiefs for women; the retunder, or shearman of cloth; the batour, or worker of cloth; the caplet-monger; the callere, who made cauls or coifs for the head; the quilter; the pinner; the chaloner, who made chalons or coverlets; the bureller, who worked in burel, a coarse cloth; the tailor; the linen armorer; the chaucer, or shoemaker; the plumer, or feather-worker; the pelliper, pellercer, or furrier; the white tawyer, who made white leather; and many others. Arms and armor wanted the bowyer; the kissere, who made armor for the thighs; the bokelsmyth, who make bucklers; the bracere, who made armor for arms; the gorgiarius, who made gorgets; the taborer, who made drums; the heaulmere, who made helmets; the makers of haketons, pikes, swords, spears, and bolts for crossbows. Trades were thus already divided; we see one man making one thing and nothing else all his life. The equyler made porringers, the brochere made spits, the haltier made halters, the corder made ropes, the sacker made sacks, the melmallere made hammers, and so on.

The old City grows gradually clearer to the vision when we think of all these trades carried on within the walls. There were mills to grind the corn; breweries for making the beer—one remains in the City still; the linen was spun within the walls, and the cloth made and dressed; the brass pots, tin pots, iron utensils, and wooden platters and basins were all made in the City; the armor, with its various pieces, was hammered out and fashioned in the streets; all kinds of clothes, from the leathern jerkin of the poorest to the embroidered robes of a princess, were made here; nothing that was wanted for household use in the country but was made in London town. Some of those trades were offensive to their neighbors. Under Edward I., for instance, the melters of tallow and lard were made to leave Chepe, and to find a more convenient place at a distance from that fashionable street. The names of Stinking Lane, Scalding Lane, and Sheer Hog sufficiently indicate the pleasing effect of the things done in them upon the neighbors. The modern City of London—the City proper—is a place where they make nothing, but sell everything. It is now quite a quiet city; the old rumbling of broad-wheeled wagons over a stone-laid roadway has given way to the roll of the narrow wheel over the smooth asphalt; the craftsmen have left the City. But in the days of Whittington there was no noisier city in the whole world; the roar and the racket of it could be heard afar off—even at the rising of the Surrey Hills or the slope of Highgate, or the top of Parliament Hill. Every man in the City was at work except the lazy men-at-arms of my lord's following in the great house that was like a barrack. They lay about waiting for the order to mount and ride off to the border, or the Welsh march, or to fight the French. But roundabout these barracks the busy craftsmen worked all day long. From every lane rang out without ceasing the tuneful note of the hammer and the anvil; the carpenters, not without noise, drove in their nails, and the coopers hooped their casks; the blacksmith's fire roared; the harsh grating of the founders set the teeth on edge of those who passed that way; along the river-bank, from the Tower to Paul's stairs, those who loaded and those who unloaded, those who carried the bales to the warehouses, those who hoisted them up, the ships which came to port and the ships which sailed away, did all with fierce talking, shouting, quarrelling, and racket. Such work must needs be carried on with noise. The pack-horses plodded along the streets, coming into the City and going out. Wagons with broad wheels rumbled and groaned along; the prentices bawled from the shops; the fighting-men marched along to sound of trumpet; the church bells and the monastery bells rang out all day long, and all night too. And at the doors of the houses or the open windows, where there was no glass, but a hanging shutter, sat or stood the women, preparing the food, washing, mending, sewing, or spinning, their children playing in the street before them. There are many towns of France, especially Southern France, which recall the mediæval city. Here the women live and do their work in the door-ways; the men work at the open windows; and all day there is wafted along the streets and up to the skies the fragrance of soup and onions, roasted meats and baked confections, with the smell of every trade which the people carry on.

Everything was made within the walls of the City. When one thinks upon the melting of tallow, the boiling of soap, the crushing of bones, the extracting of glue, the treatment of feathers and cloth and leather, the making and grinding of knives and all other sharp weapons, the crowding of the slaughter-houses, the decaying of fruit and vegetables, the roasting of meat at cooks' shops, the baking of bread, the brewing of beer, the making of vinegar, and all the thousand and one things which go to make up the life of a town, the most offensive of which are now carried on without the town; when one considers, further, the gutter, which played so great a part in every mediæval city; the gutter stream, which was almost Sabbatical, because it ceased to run when people ceased to work; the brook of the middle of the street, flowing with suds, the water used for domestic and for trade purposes, and with everything that would float or flow; when, again, one thinks of the rags and bones, the broken bits and remnants and fragments, the cabbage-stalks and pea-pods and onion-peelings which were thrown into the street, though against the law, and of the lay stalls, where filth and refuse of every kind were thrown to wait the coming of carts, even more uncertain than those of a modern vestry—when, I say, one thinks of all these things, and of the small boundaries of the City, and its crowded people, and of its narrow streets, one understands how there hung over the City day and night, never quite blown away even by the most terrible storm that ever wept o'er pale Britannia, a richly confected cloud of thick and heavy smell which the people had to breathe.

They liked it; without it, the true Londoner languished. The mediæval smell, the smell of great towns, has left London, but in old towns of the Continent, as in the old streets of Brussels, it meets and greets us to the present day. Breathing this air with difficulty, and perhaps with nausea, you may say, "Such and such was the air in which the citizens of London delighted when Edward III. was King."

The craftsman in those days had to do good work, or he would hear of it. He had to obey his company, or he would hear of it; and he had to take, with outward show of contentment, the wages that were assigned to him, or he would hear of it. He might be imprisoned, or put in pillory. We shall see a few cases of his punishment presently. As a final punishment he might be thrust outside the gates of the City, and told to go away and to return no more.

Then, one fears, there would be nothing left for the craftsman but to turn ribaud, if he was clever enough to learn the arts of ribauderie; or to sink into the lowest depth and become a villein, bound to the soil.