Mediæval London, Volume 1: Historical & Social

by Walter Besant

EMBASSY FROM THE KING OF ENGLAND TO ASK THE HAND OF THE LADY ISABELLA OF FRANCE IN MARRIAGE
From Froissart’s Chronicles.

Edward I. was here occasionally. During his reign it was the residence of John, Earl of Surrey, and of his son, John Plantagenet, Earl of Warren and Surrey. Edward III. made the manor part of the Duchy of Cornwall. After the death of the Black Prince the princess lived here with the young Prince Richard. I do not find that Henry IV. was fond of a house which would certainly be haunted—especially the room in which he was to sleep—by the sorrowful shade of his murdered cousin. Nor did Henry V. come here during his short reign. Henry VI. however, made use of Kennington Palace, so did Henry VII.; and the last of the Queens, whose name can be connected with the palace, was Catherine of Arragon.

The name that we especially associate with Kennington Palace is that of Richard II. When the Black Prince died, in 1376, Richard remained at Kennington under the care of his mother and the tutorship of Sir Guiscard d’Angle, “that accomplished knight.”

In the year of his accession, 1377, occurred the great riot of London, which arose out of Wyclyf’s trial in St. Paul’s and the quarrel between the Bishop of London and John of Gaunt. The latter, after the dismissal of Wyclyf, repaired to the house of John de Ypres, close beside the river, where he was sitting at dinner, when one of his following ran hastily to warn him that the people were flocking together with intent to murder him if they could. The Duke therefore hastily ran down to the nearest stairs, took a boat across the river, and fled as quickly as possible to Kennington Palace, where he took shelter with the young Prince Richard and his guardians.

One more reminiscence of Kennington Palace. The last occasion on which Richard lodged there was when he brought home his little bride Isabel, the Queen of eight years. They brought her from Dover, resting on the way at Canterbury and Rochester. At Blackheath they were met by the Mayor and Aldermen, attired with great magnificence of costume to do honour to the bride. After reverences due, they fell into their place and rode on with the procession. When they arrived at Newington, the King thanked the Mayor and permitted him to leave the procession and return home. He himself, with his company, rode by the cross-country lane from Newington to Kennington Palace. I observe that this proves the existence of a path or lane where is now Upper Kennington Lane. At this palace the little Queen rested a night, and next day was carried in another procession to the Tower. The knights rode before, and the French ladies came after. It is pretty to read how Isabel, with her long fair hair falling over her shoulders, and her sweet childish face, sat up and smiled upon the people, playing and pretending to be queen, which she had been practising ever since her betrothal. Needless to say that all hearts were ravished. The good people of London were ever ready to welcome one princess after another, and to lose their hearts to them, whether it was Isabel of France, or Katherine her sister, or Anne Boleyn, or Queen Charlotte, or the fair Princess of Denmark. So great a press was there that many were actually squeezed to death at London Bridge, where the houses only left twelve feet in breadth. Isabel’s queenship proved a pretence; before she was old enough to be Queen, indeed, her husband was in confinement; before she understood that he was a captive, he was murdered, and the splendid extravagant reign was over.

London was, in very truth, a city of Palaces. There were, in London itself, more palaces than in Venice and Florence and Verona and Genoa all together.

The Fitz Alans, Earls of Arundel, had their town house in Botolph Lane, Billingsgate, down to the end of the sixteenth century. The street is, and always has been, narrow, and, from its proximity to the fish-market, is, and always has been, unsavoury. The Earls of Northumberland had town houses successively in Crutched Friars, Fenchurch Street, and Aldersgate Street. The Earls of Worcester lived in Worcester Lane, on the river-bank; the Duke of Buckingham on College Hill—observe how the nobles, like the merchants, built their houses in the most busy part of the town. The Beaumonts and the Huntingdons lived beside Paul’s Wharf; the Lords of Berkeley had a house near Blackfriars; Doctors’ Commons was the town house of the Blounts, Lords Mountjoy. Close to Paul’s Wharf stood the mansion once occupied by the widow of Richard, Duke of York, mother of Edward IV., Clarence, and Richard III. Edward the Black Prince lived on Fish Street Hill, and the house was afterwards turned into an inn. The De la Poles had a house in Lombard Street. The De Veres, Earls of Oxford, lived first in St. Mary Axe, and afterwards in Oxford Court, St. Swithin’s Lane; Cromwell, Earl of Essex, had a house in Throgmorton Street. The Barons FitzWalter had a house where now stands Grocers’ Hall, Poultry. In Aldersgate Street were houses of the Earl of Westmoreland, the Earl of Northumberland, and the Earl of Thanet, Lord Percy, and the Marquis of Dorchester. Suffolk Lane marks the site of the “Manor of the Rose,” belonging successively to the Suffolks and the Buckinghams; Lovell’s Court, Paternoster Row, marks the site of the Lovells’ mansion; between Amen Corner and Ludgate Street stood Abergavenny House, where lived in the reign of Edward II. the Earl of Richmond and Duke of Brittany, grandson of Henry III. Afterwards it became the house of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, who married Lady Margaret, daughter of Edward III. It passed to the Nevilles, Earls of Abergavenny, and from them to the Stationers’ Company. Warwick Lane runs over Warwick House. The Sidneys, Earls of Leicester, lived in the Old Bailey. The Staffords, Dukes of Buckingham, lived in Milk Street. (See Appendix V.)

We must add to this list the houses more or less connected with the sovereigns. Such as the King’s Ward Mote, the Tower Royal, the Erber, Cold Harbour, Baynard’s Castle, Crosby House, Bridewell, the Savoy, the great nobles’ houses along the riverside, which came later; the Halls of the City Companies; the town houses of Bishops and Abbots, especially those on the south side; the town houses of the country gentry, such as those of Pont de l’Arche in the reign of Henry I., or of Sir John Fastolf in the fifteenth century; the houses in the City used for trade and official business such as Blackwell and Guildhall; and the houses of the great City merchants such as those of Philpot, Whittington, and Picard, and we have a list not to be equalled by that of any other area of the same size.

Of the architecture of London churches before the Fire we need not speak—one or two, especially St. Helen’s, St. Ethelburga, St. Bartholomew the Great, and St. Mary Overies, survive to show us what they were; that is to say, it is impossible in most cases to know at what period a church, long since destroyed, was built, repaired, or rebuilt. The general opinion is that these ancient churches were not remarkable, as a rule, for beauty or splendour. Outside each lay its churchyard, a narrow enclosure continually being encroached upon as land grew dear. Before the Fire a great many of the churches were hidden from the streets by the houses which had been built upon part of the churchyards. The present condition of St. Ethelburga is an example of this; other examples occur in the houses which stand on the north side of St. Mary le Bow, on the north side of St. Alphege, and all round St. Katherine Colman. The swallowing up of churchyards is shown by the miserable fragments remaining of those belonging to St. Peter, Thames Street, St. John the Baptist, St. Olave, Silver Street, St. Osyth, St. Martin Outwich, while the restoration lately completed of St. Martin, Ludgate Hill, proved that the so-called Stationers’ Garden on the north side of the church had once been the burial-ground. And there are many other instances. The architecture of the Monastic Houses belongs to all contemporary buildings of the kind. That which may still be studied at Westminster consisted of a noble church, as splendid, as stately, and as rich as the brothers could afford or could effect by the help of their friends. Beside the church was the cloister, which was the actual living-place of the brethren. There they walked, sat, worked, and talked. Within the cloister was the garth, the open space which was sometimes turned into a garden, and sometimes served as a burying-ground; monks were also buried beneath the stones of the cloister. The open carved work in later times was glazed; the hard stones—seats and floor—were covered with cloth and carpet; there were desks for those who studied. On one side of the cloister was the Chapter House, where the monks assembled every morning. On the other side was the Abbot’s House. On the fourth side was the Refectory, a hall which the Brethren loved to make stately, like the church; not for purposes of gluttony, but of hospitality, and because they were jealous of the fair fame of the House. Besides these buildings were the library, the Scriptorum, the Calefactory, the Dormitories, the kitchen and cellar, the Misericorde, the Infirmary, and the gardens. All these things belong to every Monastic House. In London there was so great a number of them, that we passed House after House as we walked along the wall, and saw spire after spire, tower after tower; they circled London as with a chain of fortresses to keep out the hosts of hell. We come next to the great noble’s town house, and the rich merchant’s house. We have already regarded the appearance of such a house. It was entered by a gate of architectural beauty, without a portcullis or a ditch, for there was no fortified house in the City except the Tower; though many of the houses were so strongly built, and protected by gates so massive, that any sudden outbreak of the mob could be kept back; thus the house of the Hanseatic merchants possessed gates massive enough to keep out the mob until relief arrived, or the foreign merchants could make good their retreat upon the river. You may learn the appearance of such a house from that of Hampton Court or any old College of Oxford or Cambridge. It consisted of at least two square Courts and a Hall between; a guard-room over the gate; a stable; a place for arms; a kitchen with buttery, cellar, storehouses, and a garden. Round the courts ran buildings two storeys high; the rooms were long and low and only used as sleeping-rooms.