Mediæval London, Volume 1: Historical & Social

by Walter Besant

Just beyond the turn of the wall we come to Aldersgate. There appears to be no tradition concerning the date of this gate. It was one of the first four gates of the City; and it has been enlarged by the addition of a great framework house on the south side, and another on the east side, the latter of which is remarkable for the possession of a very deep well within its walls. Outside the gate is yet another church of St. Botolph. Beyond the church you may observe the modest buildings of a Fraternity. It is an Alien House called the Brotherhood of St. Fabian and St. Sebastian. Beyond the House of this Brotherhood are two or three great houses belonging to nobles. The cluster of religious houses in this neighbourhood may account for the number of houses which very early began to grow up around them. Under the wall is the Hospital of St. Bartholomew; beyond the Hospital is the Priory; beyond the Priory is the House of the Carthusian Friars; and on the west of these are the houses of the Knights Hospitallers and the Clerkenwell Nuns. Standing on the wall we command an excellent view of these buildings: grouped about in picturesque beauty, they stand among trees and gardens; beyond them, close to the City wall, lies the level plain of Smithfield with its trees and ponds, with its Horse Fair and its Cloth Fair, with its race-course and its gibbet, the place of amusements, the place of executions, the place of ordeal.

Beyond Aldersgate the wall runs west for a little, when it turns south again and passes Newgate. This is a goodly and a strong gate, and beside it stands the prison of which, at another time, we will speak at length. As we have said, Newgate, like Bishopsgate, was not built upon the site of the Roman Gate but near it. This is the traditional history of the gate:—

“This gate was first erected about the reign of Henry the First or of King Stephen, upon this occasion. The Cathedral Church of St. Paul, being burnt about the year 1086 in the reign of William the Conqueror, Mauritius, then Bishop of London, repaired not the old church, as some have supposed, but began the foundation of a new work, such as men then judged would never have been performed: it was to them so wonderful for heighth, length, and breadth, as also in respect it was raised upon arches or vaults, a kind of workmanship brought in by the Normans, and never known to the artificers of this land before that time. After Mauritius, Richard Beaumore did wonderfully advance the work of the said church, purchasing the large streets and lanes round about, wherein were wont to dwell many lay-people, which grounds he began to compass about with a strong wall of stone and gates. By means of this increase of the church territory, but more by enclosing of ground for so large a cœmitery or churchyard, the high and large street stretching from Aldgate in the east to Ludgate in the west, was in this place so crossed and stopped up, that the carriage through the city westward was forced to pass without the said churchyard wall on the north side, through Paternoster row; and then south, down Ave Marie lane; and again west, through Bowyer row to Ludgate; or else out of Cheap, or Watheling Street to turn south through the old Change; then west through Carter lane, again north up Creed lane and then west to Ludgate. Which passage, by reason of so much turning, was very cumbersome and dangerous both for horse and man. For remedy whereof a new gate was made, and so called, by which men and cattle, with all manner of carriages, might pass more directly (as before) from Aldgate, through west Cheap by St. Paul’s, on the north side: through St. Nicholas Shambles and Newgate market to Newgate, and from thence to any part westward over Holborn bridge, or turning without the gate into Smithfield, and through Iseldon to any part north and by west. This gate hath of long time been a gaol or prison for felons and trespassers, as appeareth by records in the reign of King John and of other kings; amongst the which I find one testifying, that in the year 1218, the 3rd of King Henry the Third, the King writeth unto the Sheriffs of London, commanding them to repair the gaol of Newgate for the safe keeping of his prisoners, promising that the charges laid out should be allowed unto them upon their accompt in the Exchequer.”

Continuing our walk we overlook the Fleet River, which is much choked with filth and rubbish, especially from things thrown into it from the Fleet prison, whose walls it washes and whose refuse it receives. Perhaps after heavy rains it becomes a cleaner stream. Over against it rises the steep slope of Holborn crowned with its ancient church of St. Andrew. The broad road on which it stands is the military road, which branched off from the Roman road, when London Bridge was built. Formerly, and long after the building of the Bridge, the highway between the north and the south ran across the marshes round Westminster, and over Thorney Island itself.

Ludgate—perhaps, we do not know—was built as a postern before the Conquest. It was rebuilt or strongly repaired, in the year 1215, by the Barons when they entered the City and pillaged the Jews, as already mentioned. Ludgate is now—in this fourteenth century—also a prison concerning which more will be said hereafter.

The wall of London at first passed in a direction due south to the river from this gate, which was on the hill just without the Church of St. Martin. Between the wall and the Fleet was a small piece of wet and undesirable ground on which the Dominicans were permitted to settle; it was their precinct, outside the jurisdiction of the City. Presently the Friars were allowed to pull down the City walls beside them. This was in 1276. The King ordered the City to apply some of the murage dues to building a new wall on the banks of the Fleet, so as to include the House of the Dominicans. Three years later the order was renewed, yet the wall remained unfinished. The lack of zeal probably meant a growing disbelief in the importance of the wall, especially that part of it which overlooked the muddy banks and the mouth of the Fleet. The wall, however, was finished in due course.

We have now completed our circuit of the City wall and have seen what was in the immediate neighbourhood of London. Farmhouses and pasture lands in the direction of Stepney and Mile End; beyond them, which we could not see, the low-lying lands and marshes of the river Lea. North of Bishopsgate is a line of houses, three or four stately monasteries, and inns for travellers; north of Moorgate a vast marsh crossed by causeways, given over chiefly to kennels; beyond the moor, the pleasant village of Iselden. At Cripplegate, a suburb populous but composed entirely of craftsmen; outside Aldersgate, stately monasteries, a noble hospital for the sick, a tract of ground, flat, dotted with ponds, with some small clusters of trees upon it, decorated by a gibbet on which hang always the mouldering remains of some poor dead wretches, a gallows-tree on which half a dozen can be comfortably hanged at once. This place is also the site of a great cloth fair held once a year, of a horse fair once a week; and a part is given over to the Jews for their burial-place. On the west, looking out from Ludgate, there is the slope to the Fleet River, with its bridge; the street beyond with its one or two great houses and its shops and taverns beginning to spring up; beyond this street there is the rising slope of the Strand, with its glittering streamlets. And standing on the southern tower of the wall we can look across the river, and see on the other side, the immense marsh that extends from Redriff to Battersea, and the gentle rise of the Surrey Hills beyond. Along that southern marsh there are few houses as yet. Southwark is little more than a High Street. There are one or two houses belonging to Bishop, Abbot, and noble; there are the infamous houses on Bankside; there is the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth, but on this side there is little more.

Let us now leave the wall and begin to walk about the streets of the City—we are still, it must be remembered, in the fourteenth century. The first and most distinctive feature of every mediæval city, as compared with its modern successor, is the number of its churches and of its monastic foundations. The latter, it is true, are situated outside the very heart of the City—thus, there are no convents in Thames Street. The Dominicans, as we have seen, were at first outside the wall: one religious foundation there was in Cheapside itself, but that was due to the birthplace of a saint; all the rest were placed near the wall, either within or without, one reason being that they were founded late when the inner part of the City was already filled up, and another, that they were founded, for the most part, with slender endowments, so that they were compelled to get land where it was cheapest. But the churches stand in every street; one cannot escape the presence of a church; and the minute size of the parishes proves, among other things, the former density of the population. Take, for instance, that part of Thames Street which extends from St. Peter’s Hill to Little College Street. That is a length of 1600 feet by a breadth averaging 400 feet. This area, which is divided along the upper part by Thames Street, consists almost entirely of warehouses, wharves, and narrow lanes leading to the river stairs; the south of it consists of that curious little collection of inhabited streets, the whole of which was reclaimed from the foreshore; there are a tangle of narrow lanes and noisome courts lying among and between the wharves, which lanes and courts are always foul and stinking, inhabited by the people belonging to the service of the Port. There are actually five parishes in that little district. The first of them, St. Peter’s, contains not quite two acres; the second, St. Mary Somerset, about four acres; the third, St. Michael’s, Queenhithe, about two acres and a half; the fourth, St. James, Garlickhithe, the same; and the fifth, St. Martin Vintry, about three acres and three-quarters. Five parishes in this little slip of land! But if we take the whole slip of land, which we call the riverside—an area of a mile in length by about 400 feet in width, we find that there are no fewer than eighteen parishes in it. All the churches now within the City, together with those which must have been burned or destroyed, are standing in the century we are considering. So frequent are the churches, so scanty the dimensions of the parish, that the most remarkable feature in the architecture and appearance of the City is the church which one sees in every street and from every point of view. These churches have been already rebuilt over and over again. At first they were small wooden structures, like that at Greenstead, Chipping Ongar, with their walls composed of trunks cut in half and placed side by side. A few were of stone, for the name of St. Mary Staining commemorates such a church. After the Conquest a rage for building set in, builders and masons came over from the Continent in numbers, and the period of Norman architecture began. Still, however, the parish churches continued to be small and dark. But the City grew richer: the nobles who lived in the City and the merchants began to rebuild, to decorate, and to beautify their churches: they pulled down the old churches, they built them up again larger and lighter, in Early English first and next in Decorated Style. Small the City churches continued and remained, but to some of them were added gateways and arches. Adorned as they were by the pious care of the citizens, for generation after generation, by this fifteenth century they had become beautiful. The citizens had filled the windows with painted glass, they had covered the bare walls with paintings, they had erected tombs for themselves with fine carved work and figures in marble and alabaster, they had covered the carved font with a carved tabernacle, they had glorified the roof with gold and azure, they had given the chancel carved seats, they had adorned the altars, they had given organs, they had endowed the church with singing men and boys, and they had bestowed upon it such collections of plate, furniture, rich robes, candlesticks, and altar cloths, as makes one wonder where the Church found room to stow everything. Everybody knows the Treasury of Notre Dame, of St. Denys, of Aix-la-Chapelle. The cupboards are crammed with ecclesiastical gear and relics and reliquaries. We must realise that the same thing, on a smaller scale, is to be seen, in the fourteenth century, in every parish church of London. We look into church after church. There are treasures in every one, treasures that the priests and the sacristans bring out with pride. And the monuments over the graves of City worthies bring out very strongly, as we stand in the churches and read the names, the fact that the members of the great distributing Companies, largely, if not entirely, belong to families of gentle birth: upon this fact there will be more to say in another place. Another point is that there are few monuments older than this—the fourteenth-century. Thus, taking half a dozen of the churches as we walk about the streets, we find that a monument of the thirteenth century occurs in one or two cases only. What does this mean? That the monuments of all the merchants who died in London and are buried in the City churches have been removed or wantonly destroyed? I think not. It has another meaning. The erection of monuments to the dead belongs to a very primitive stage of civilisation, and it is also found in an advanced stage; in times of continual uncertainty and warfare it does not always exist: nor does the craftsman or the rustic desire a post-mortem memory. The citizens of London before this time have not generally nourished the desire of posthumous honour. They left money for masses, or to beautify the church; or they founded doles for the Mind Day, but not for the erection of a monument. This desire seems to belong to a time when the conditions of life have been smoothed and some of the old miseries have abated. Not that the dangers of fire, famine, or pestilence ever weigh heavily upon the minds of a people actively engaged; or that they are bowed down by the consciousness that war, with a painful death on the field, is always a possibility for them; or that they find life intolerable by reason of its diseases, its chances, its changes, or its brevity. But it is quite certain that they do realise so vividly the world to come, that in all their transactions it is acknowledged in words, if not really felt, to be of far greater importance than the world in which they live. Since, after a time of Purgatory, one is going for ever to sit among the Saints, what matters it whether one’s name is preserved or not? When many of the old dangers are abated; when fortune is more stable; when wealth accumulates; when the growth of the City brings dignity, honour, and authority to the citizens,—then it may become natural for the people to erect monuments in memory of the men whose personality in life has been large and full of dignity; and then every man will begin to desire such a monument in memory of those surprising achievements of which he alone is conscious. Every family will begin to desire such a commemoration, if only to swell the family pride, and to make the church itself proclaim the glory of the line. But in the thirteenth century these aspirations were rare. Henry of London Stone, first Mayor and Mayor for five-and-twenty years, was one of those thus honoured.

Let us exchange generalities for a single example.

We are standing at the entrance of a narrow lane leading north from Thames Street. It is the street called Fish Street Hill or Labour in Vain Hill. On the south-east corner stands the very ancient church of St. Mary Somerset. It is placed a little back from Thames Street with part of its churchyard on the south side: it is a large and handsome church; the churchyard is planted with trees and the graves are mounds of grass. We enter the street, which presents a steep incline: down the middle runs a tiny stream, for there has been rain; offal, bones, grease, fish-heads, dirty water, refuse of all kinds float down this stream, which, after a heavy shower, keeps the street comparatively clean and wholesome. There are, however, fortunately, other scavengers besides the rain; they swoop down out of the sky, they alight in the street, they tear the offal with their beaks and claws, they carry it up to the house-tops; these are the kites and crows, who build their nests on the church towers and roofs, and find their food in the refuse thrown out into the streets. Were it not for these birds, London streets would be intolerable.