SOUTH-EAST VIEW OF STEPNEY CHURCH
Meantime, there were great sights to be seen and no hinderance to his seeing them.
When there any ridings were in Chepe,
Out of the shoppe thider would he lepe:
And till that he had all the sights y seen,
And danced well he would not come again.
For the continued noise and uproar of the City, for its crowds, for its smells, the people cared nothing. They were part of the City. They loved everything that belonged to it—their great cathedral; their hundred churches; their monasteries; their palaces and the men-at-arms; the nobles, priests, and monks; the Mayor and Aldermen; the ships and the sailors; the merchants and the craftsmen; the ridings and the festivals and the holy days; the ringing, clinging, clashing of the bells all day long; the drinking at the taverns; the wrestling and the archery; the dancing; the pipe and tabor; the pageants, and the mumming and the love-making—all, all they loved. And they thought in their pride that there was not anywhere in the whole habitable world—witness the pilgrims and the ship-captains, who had seen the whole habitable world—any city that might compare with famous London Town.
FOOTNOTES
[13] Plague in 1348, 1361, 1367, 1369, 1407, 1478, 1485, and 1500.
[14] Cunningham, Growth of English Industry, p. 416.