On the return of Edward from the Holy Land, he was received by the City with every appearance of joy, all the houses being hung with silk and tapestry, while the conduits ran with wine.
He was crowned at Westminster Abbey with his Queen Eleanor on August 19, 1274. The ceremony took place in the Abbey Church very much as we see it, though without later additions of chapel and western towers. The Abbey had been rebuilt by Henry III. though as yet it was not finished. The Queen-mother, Eleanor of Provence, was present. The day after the coronation Alexander III. of Scotland did homage. In honour of the occasion five hundred horses were let loose among the crowd for any to take who could. One would like a picture of the scramble which followed, and an enumeration of the dead and wounded when all the horses had been ridden away.
QUEEN ELEANOR OF CASTILE
From the effigy in Westminster Abbey.
In the City the contest between the two parties was continued. The old party tried to obtain the election of their man Philip le Taillour, but were beaten by the common sort who elected Walter Hervey. An appeal was made to the King: a committee of ten, five on each side, were to agree upon a Mayor. The names of the members of this committee on both sides show pretty plainly the real nature of the quarrel. For one side are Walter Merton, William le Polter, John Adrian, Henry de Coventry, and Thomas Basyng, all members of old City families; on the other side are Robert Grapefige, Alan the Capmaker, and Bartholomew the Grocer. It was while the dispute was still unsettled that the old King had died, and Walter Merton told the people at Paul’s Cross that they should have their Mayor. The new Mayor and Sheriffs set themselves to regulate the trade of the City, especially the sale of bread, meal, and provisions generally, and to pass laws for the punishment of those who gave short weight or adulterated food. The laws being passed, the City Fathers, as was customary in those times, sat down with the consciousness of having done their duty. The appointment of an executive force to insist upon the observance of the laws was an expedient not yet invented by the wit of man.
It is, however, another illustration of the upheaval and discontent of the people that in the third year of this reign, the juries of the wards made a presentment to the King complaining that although the City ought not to be tallaged except by order of the King, yet it had been on several occasions tallaged by the Mayor; and that although all the citizens were equal as regards their freedom and privileges, yet some of the Aldermen and others had obtained charters from Henry III. exempting them from tallage: in so much that all the tallage fell upon the middle sort and the poor, to their great loss and oppression.
The King further considered the complaints against the Jews for usury. They were forbidden to practise their trade; and it was ordained, as a mark of infamy, that every usurer should wear upon his breast a badge, the “breadth of a paveline,” in sign of his trade. This law was levelled at the Italian merchants, the men of the Pope, who traded in money and refused to obey any laws against the practice except those of the Pope. As for the unfortunate Jews, being deprived of the only trade open to them—if they were really deprived, but I think the edict was never enforced,—they took to clipping and diminishing the King’s coin—if they really did do so, but one doubts—and were all seized and imprisoned in one day: out of those so arrested in the City, two hundred and eighty were executed. Alas! poor Jews!
It is an illustration of the melancholy condition to which London was reduced by the late disastrous reign that in the year 1281 it was reported to the King that London Bridge had become so ruinous that it might any moment fall down. This was in consequence of the Queen of Henry III. having spent the revenues and rents upon herself, and left the fabric to fall into ruin, in so much that in 1282 a great frost happening, five of the piers were carried away by the ice. Edward ordered a toll of one penny for every horseman and one halfpenny for every saleable pack of goods that crossed the bridge, the toll to continue for three years. Grants of land, made to the City by Edward I. and following kings for the repair of the Bridge, prove that the citizens had recovered their ancient rights as to its custody.
Nor were the City Gates in much better case than the Bridge. Thus, the Hanseatic merchants enjoyed the privilege of trading in the City on the condition of keeping one of the Gates—Bishopsgate—in repair, and of defending it in case of siege. The condition was imposed by Henry III., but the merchants neglected the Gate so that it had by this time fallen into ruin. On being called upon to fulfil their contract they at first refused, but when the case was decided against them by the Court of Exchequer, they performed their duty with zeal, and a hundred and fifty years later, when the gate again fell into decay, they pulled it down and rebuilt it.