London

by Walter Besant

The almshouses, of which there are so many still existing, belong for the most part to a later time. The citizens founded hospitals for the necessitous as well as for the sick; they rebuilt and beautified churches; they endowed charities, and gave relief to poor prisoners. The first almshouses recorded were founded in the fourteenth century by William Elsing, mercer, who, in 1332, endowed a house for the support of a hundred blind men, and by John Stodie, citizen and vintner, Mayor in 1358, who built and endowed thirteen almshouses for as many poor citizens. In 1415 William Sevenoke, citizen and grocer, founded a school and almshouses in his native place, and two years later Whittington founded by will his college and almshouses. The college has been swallowed up, but the almshouses remain, though transferred to Highgate. After this the rich citizens began to remember the poor in their wills, choosing rather, like Philip Malpas, Sheriff in 1440, to give clothing to poor men and women, marriage dowries to poor maidens, and money for the highways than to bequeath the money for the singing of masses or the endowment of charities.

One more amusement must be mentioned, because it is the only one of which the honest Londoners have never wearied. It is mentioned by the worthy Fitz Stephen. It still continues to afford joy to millions. The craftsman of the fourteenth century found it at the Mermaid in Cornhill, or the Three Tuns of Newgate, or the Swan of Dowgate, or the Salutation of Billingsgate, or the Boar's Head of London Stone. He found it in company with his fellows, and whether he took it out of a glass or a silver mazer or a black jack, he took it joyfully, and he took it abundantly. Tosspots and swinkers were they then; tosspots and swinkers are they still.

To set against this eagerness for pleasure, this avidity after sports of every kind, we must remember the continual recurrence of plague and pestilence, especially in the fourteenth century,[13] when the love of shows and feasting was at its highest, and when the Black Death carried off half the citizens. Is it not a natural result? When life is so uncertain that men know not to-day how many will be alive to-morrow, they snatch impatiently at the present joy; it is too precious to be lost; another moment, and the chance will be gone—perhaps forever. As is the merriment of the camp when the battle is imminent, so is the joy of the people between the comings of the plague. Life never seems so full of rich and precious gifts as at such a time. As for the lessons in sanitation that the plague should teach, the people had not as yet begun to learn them. The lay stalls and the river-bank, despite laws and proclamations, continued to be heaped with filth, and the narrow street received the refuse from every house. And, in addition to the occasional plague, there was ever present typhoidal fever striking down old and young.

Perhaps the joy of the present was also intensified by the possibility of famine. At the end of the twelfth century there was a terrible famine. There was one in 1251; there was one in 1314, when "no flesh was to be had ... a quarter of wheat, beans, and peas was sold for twenty shillings." This is something like twenty pounds at present prices. This famine continued throughout the next year, when Stow says "horse-flesh was counted great delicates, the poore stole fatte dogges to eate; some (as it was said), compelled through famine, in hidden places, did eate the fleshe of their owne children, and some stole others, which they devoured. Thieves that were in prison did plucke in pieces those that were newlie brought among them, and greedily devoured them half alive." The uncertainty whether next year would produce any bread at all sweetened the loaf of to-day. In the year 1335 long-continued rains caused a famine. In 1353 there was another; in 1438 the scarcity was so great that bread was made from fern-roots, and so on.

The earliest schools of the City were those of St. Paul's, Westminster, and the Abbey of Bermondsey. Each of the religious houses in turn, as it was erected, opened another school. When, however, Henry V. had suppressed the alien priories, of which four certainly, and perhaps more, belonged to London, their schools were also suppressed. So much was the loss felt that Henry VI., the greatest founder of schools of all the kings, erected four new grammar-schools, namely: at St. Martin's le Grand, St. Dunstan in the West, St. Mary le Bow, and St. Anthony's; and in the following year he made four more, namely: in the parishes of St. Andrew's, Holborn; All Hallows the Great, Thames Street; St. Peter's, Cornhill; and St. Thomas of Acon.

THE STRAND (1547), WITH THE STRAND CROSS, COVENT GARDEN, AND THE PROCESSION OF EDWARD VI. TO HIS CORONATION AT WESTMINSTER

But to what extent education prevailed, whether the sons of craftsmen were taught to read and write before they were apprenticed, I know not. For them the trivium and the quadrivium of the mediæval school, the grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy could not possibly be of use. On the other hand, one cannot understand that the child of a respectable London craftsman should be allowed to grow up to the age of fourteen with no education at all. As for the children of gentle birth, we know very well how they were taught. Their education was planned so as to include very carefully the mastery of those accomplishments which we call good manners. It also included Latin, French, reading, writing, poetry, and music. In the towns the merchants and the better class understood very well the necessity of education for their own needs. The poor scholar, however—the lad who was born of humble parents and received his education for nothing—was a young man well known and recognized as a common type. But he never intended his learning to adorn a trade; rather should it lead him to the university, to the Church, even to a bishopric. It is significant that throughout Riley's Memorials there is no mention of school or of education; there is no hint anywhere how the children of the working-classes were taught. One thing is certain, the desire for learning was gradually growing and deepening in those years; and when the Reformation set the Bible free, there were plenty—thanks perhaps to King Henry's grammar-schools—in the class of craftsmen who could read it. But as yet we are two hundred years from the freeing of the Book.

It is always found that the laws are strict in an inverse proportion to the strength of the executive. Thus, had the laws been properly carried out, London would have been the cleanest and the most orderly town of the present, past, and future. Every man was enjoined to keep the front of his house clean; no refuse was to be thrown into the gutter; no one was to walk the streets at night. When the curfew-bell rang, first from St. Martin's, and afterwards from all the churches together, the gates of the City were closed; the taverns were shut; no one was allowed to walk about the streets; no boats were to cross the river; the sergeants of Billingsgate and Queenhithe had each his boat, with its crew of four men, to guard the river and the quays; guards were posted at the closed gates; a watch of six men was set in every ward, all the men of the ward being liable to serve upon it. These were excellent rules. Yet we find men haled before the Mayor charged with being common roreres (roarers), with beating people in the streets, enticing them into taverns, where they were made to drink and to gamble. Among the common roreres was once found, alas! a priest. What, however, were the other people doing in the street after curfew? And why were not the taverns shut? As is the strength of the ruling arm, so should be the law. We are not ourselves free from the reproach of passing laws which cannot be enforced because they are against the will of the people, and the executive is too weak to carry them out against that will. People, you see, cannot be civilized by statute.