ILFORD ALMSHOUSES
It will be seen that we are now a good way removed from the Saxon Hall with the people sleeping on the floor, yet Bacon's house lineally descends from that beginning. All the old houses in London were built in this way, as may be illustrated by many which retain the old form, as well as by those which remain. Hampton Court, for instance, built by Wolsey; Northumberland House, recently taken down; Gresham House, taken down a hundred years ago; Somerset House, still standing, though much altered; the old Navy Office, the court of which still remains; some of the old almshouses, notably Trinity Almshouse, in the Whitechapel Road; Emanuel, Westminster; and the Norfolk Hospital, Greenwich, Gray's Inn, Clifford's Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard's Inn—which contains the oldest house in London—are admirable specimens of Bacon's house; while in the old taverns, of which a few imperfect specimens still exist, we have the galleries which Bacon would construct within his court.
In the reign of Elizabeth, while the merchants were growing richer and increasing in number and in wealth, the great nobles were gradually leaving the city. Those who remained kept up but a remnant of their former splendor. Elizabeth refused license for the immense number of retainers formerly allowed; she would suffer a hundred at the most. It was a time rather for the rise of new families than the continued greatness of the old. The nobles, as they went away, sold their London houses to the citizens. Thus Winchester House and Crosby Hall went to merchants; Derby House to the College of Heralds; Cold Harbor was pulled down in 1590, and its site built over with tenements; the Duke of Norfolk's house, on the site of Holy Trinity Priory, was shortly after destroyed, and the place assigned to the newly-arrived colony of Jews. Barnard's Castle alone among the city palaces remained in the possession of a great noble until the fire came and swept it away.
OLD TAVERN
Great beyond all precedent was the advance of trade in this golden age. Elizabeth was wise and wisely advised in the treatment of the City and the merchants. Perhaps she followed the example of King Edward the Fourth. Perhaps she remembered (but this I doubt) that she belonged to the City by her mother's side, for her great-grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, had been Lord Mayor a hundred years before her accession. But the rapid growth of London trade seems to me chiefly due to the wisdom of one man—Sir Thomas Gresham.
This great man, even more than Whittington, is the typical London merchant. Not a self-made man at all, but coming of a good old country stock—always a master, always of the class which commands. Nearly all the great London merchants have, as has already been stated, belonged to that class. His family came originally from Gresham, in Norfolk; his father, Sir Richard, was Lord Mayor; his uncle, Sir John, also Lord Mayor, saved Bethlehem Hospital at the dissolution of the religious houses. Not a poor and friendless lad, by any means; from the outset he had every advantage that wealth and station can afford. He was educated at Gonville (afterwards Gonville and Caius) College, Cambridge. It was not until he had taken his degree that he was apprenticed to his uncle, and he was past twenty-four when he was received into the Mercers' Company.