It is a morning in May: along the street on either side are houses; here is a rich merchant’s house standing behind its wall, and beside it is a little tenement occupied by a craftsman. Looking up the street one can see green trees here and there, from those of St. Mary Somerset on the south to those of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey on the north. Half-way up we come upon a low wall; looking over it we see a churchyard shaded by trees and covered with graves, the grass growing long and rank; on the west side of the churchyard stands the church—it is a very small church called St. Mary Mounthaw, one of the latest of the City churches, and built originally as a chapel for a private family. Its name shows that the parish was a slice of St. Mary Somerset, just as St. Katherine Coleman was carved out of St. Katherine Cree, and All Hallows the Less out of All Hallows the Great. The door is open—if we look in we see a few women kneeling; there is the murmur of a chantry priest, for it is morning, singing his daily mass; the church is Early English, the roof is high, with beams crossing and recrossing, they are painted red and gold; springing out from the side of the church are angels with outspread wings; high up in the roof itself above the beams is a sky all blue with silver stars. The walls of the church are decorated with bright-coloured paintings from the life of the Blessed Virgin and her Son; the windows are richly painted; the altar is covered with candlesticks, crosses and furniture in white silk, gold, silver, and latoun. There are two noble monuments, each with its effigy and its chapel of white marble: one effigy wears a Bishop’s mitre; another is the image of an Alderman, who was a benefactor to the church. Dozens of candles stuck on iron sticks are burning, with a few great wax tapers paid for by a bequest; at the door sit two old women, beggars. On the north side of the church, and outside it, is a projecting structure half underground. This is the anchorite’s cell (see vol. ii. pt. ii. ch. v.): on the level of the ground is a small aperture protected by a rusty iron grating without glass and without shutter; by this window everything must be handed in to the occupant. If we look through the bars, we see that within there reigns a dim and terrible twilight, for no gleam of sunshine can penetrate this cold and gloomy den, and even on this bright and sunny morning the air is cold and damp like the air of a crypt. On the other side is a narrow slit in the wall, like the leper’s squint, through which the anchorite can witness the Elevation of the Host; at the end of the cell a raised stone serves for an altar, a crucifix stands upon it, and before it the anchorite spends most of his time day and night, praying. The present occupant has been built up into this cell for many years; he subsists on what is brought him. There is never any fear of his being starved or forgotten: he is well provided for, and the people offer him dainties which he will not touch, for he lives on bread and water: sick or well, he will never leave this cell till they find him lying dead on the floor and carry him out. And when the cell is empty there will be no difficulty in finding a successor to occupy his place and fulfil the same dreary austere life.
Let us leave the church and pass on. The street is very narrow, but not so narrow as some. The houses, which are for the most part two and three stories high, are gabled, and the windows are glazed: many of them, such as those on Labour in Vain Hill, do not contain shops but are what we should call private houses, some are let for lodgings to those who come to town on business; and when the lodger is an armiger or a noble, he hangs his scutcheon out of the window, or fixes it on the wall above the door. Thus, Chaucer’s attention, you will remember—see that famous lawsuit tried but the other day, Scrope v. Grosvenor—was first called to the doubtful heraldry on the Grosvenor shield by seeing the scutcheon hanging out of the window in Friday Street. The houses are not in line, but are placed as the builders choose, fronting in various directions and abutting at different depths on the street. Here is a narrow court leading out of the street, it is so narrow that a man standing in the middle can easily touch each side. It contains about a dozen small tenements inhabited by craftsmen, who are all at work in the ground-floor rooms, which are at once workshop, kitchen, and sleeping-room. All about, in the air, one hears the continual noise of work, the sound of hammering, sawing, grating, the ringing of the anvil, the voices of women who quarrel and scold. Now and then rises, all in a moment, without warning, a sudden brawl between two of the working men, at once knives are drawn and in a moment the thing is over, but it leaves a little pool of blood in the middle of the street, and a woman binds up a bleeding arm. We have seen enough of the court. Come back into the street. Here is a gateway and over it a gatehouse, but without battlements or portcullis. Two or three men-at-arms are hanging about the gate, and within is a broad square court in which boys, pages practising tilting, are riding about. There are buildings on all four sides; one of these is a stately hall with a lofty roof and lantern, and the others are noble buildings. This is the town house of a great Baron, who rides with a following of three hundred gentlemen and men-at-arms, and owns manors broad, rich, and numerous. He maintains five hundred people, at least, in his service. Next, there is another gateway and another court with another hall, but not so great. This is the town house of the Bishop of Hereford. There is no tilting or riding in his court: it is, on the other hand, turned into a garden with roses and lilies blossoming in the flower-beds, a fountain sparkling in the sunshine and splashing musically. There is a south aspect, and vines are trained upon the wall; there is a sun-dial, and some seats are placed upon the grass. As for the house, the windows and porches are full of beautiful carved woodwork and shields are carved on the walls. Below the windows are figures in bas-relief representing all the virtues, and the great window of the hall is of painted glass with the family arms of the Bishop, a man of no mean descent, in the centre. Near the Bishop’s house, and like unto it in appearance, but of lesser splendour, is the house of a great merchant, as great men went in the fourteenth century. We will presently enter one of these houses and see how they are furnished. And among the great houses standing side by side, rich and poor together, as it should be, are tenements of the craftsmen, such as we have seen in the narrow court which we have just now passed. In the street itself, dabbling in the water barefooted, are the children, rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, playing, running, and shouting, as they do to this day, and always have done since the beginning of the City.
Shall we next enter the City at Ludgate and walk about its streets from there? Ludgate is half-way up the hill that rises above the valley of the Fleet; passing through it we stand before the west front of St. Paul’s. The noble church must be reserved for another occasion. We walk through the churchyard, and so by the north-east gate of the Precinct find ourselves in Chepe.
This is the greatest market of the City. Hither come the craftsmen, for to each craft is assigned its own place in the market. Not only do the trades work together, but they sell their wares together, so that there is no underselling, and everything is offered at a fixed price.
There is a great deal to be said for this custom. It is convenient for the apprentice to live and work in the atmosphere, so to speak, of his own trade, and to see all day long his own industry. It is also convenient for men of the same craft to work together, first, because solitary labour is bad for a man, next, because hours of labour can only be enforced when men work in companies, third, because bad work cannot be successfully palmed off as good where all work is in common, and, last, if any other reason were wanted, because in some trades tools are costly, and by this method can be held and used in common. Out of this working in common spring the fraternities and guilds and, in fulness of time, the companies. There also grows up, what would never have arisen out of solitary labour, the pride and dignity of trade. The dignity of trade will be greatly increased when the City Companies become rich and strong, and when each fraternity can carry on occasions of state its own banners and insignia, and can wear its own distinctive dress.
There were changes in the quarters of trade from time to time owing to causes which we can only guess.
“Men of trades and sellers of wares in this City have oftentimes since changed their places, as they have found their best advantage. For whereas mercers and haberdashers used wholly then to keep their shops in West Cheap; of later time they held them on London Bridge, where partly they do yet remain. The Goldsmiths of Gutheron’s Lane and the Old Exchange are now, for the most part, removed into the south side of West Cheap. The pepperers and grocers of Soper’s Lane are now in Bucklersbury, and other places dispersed. The drapers of Lombard Street and of Cornhill are seated in Candlewick Street and Watheling Street. The skinners from St. Marie Pellipers, or at the Axe, into Budge Row and Walbrook. The stockfish-mongers in Thames Street. Wet-fish-mongers in Knightriders Street and Bridge Street. The ironmongers of Ironmongers’ Lane and Old Jury into Thames Street. The vintners from the Vinetree into divers places. But the brewers for the most part remain near to the friendly water of Thames. The butchers in East Cheap, St. Nicholas Shambles, and the Stockes market. The hosiers, of old time, in Hosier Lane, near unto Smithfield, are since removed into Cordwainer Street, the upper part thereof, by Bow Church, and last of all into Birchovers Lane by Cornhill. The shoemakers and curriers of Cordwainer Street removed, the one to St. Martin’s le Grand, the other to London wall near to Moorgate. The founders remain by themselves in Lothbury. The cooks or pastelars, for the more part, in Thames Street; the other dispersed into divers parts. The poulters of late removed out of the Poultry, betwixt the Stockes and the Great Conduit in Cheap, into Grass Street and St. Nicholas Shambles. Bowyers from Bowyers’ Row by Ludgate into divers parts; and almost worn out with the fletchers. The paternoster bead-makers and text-writers are gone out of Paternoster Row, and are called stationers of Paul’s Churchyard. The patten-makers, of St. Margaret Pattens Lane, are clean worn out. Labourers every work-day are to be found in Cheap, about Soper’s Lane end. Horse-coursers and sellers of oxen, sheep, swine, and such like, remain in their old market of Smithfield.”
THE OLD FOUNTAIN IN THE MINORIES, BUILT ABOUT 1480, DEMOLISHED 1793
From an old print.