"I give my body and stones to those masons that cannot telle how to frame the like againe, to keepe by them for a patterne; for in time there will be more crosses in London than ever there was yet.
"I give my ground whereon I stood to be a free market-place.
"JASPER CROSSE, HIS EPITAPH.
'I look for no praise when I am dead,
For, going the right way, I never did tread;
I was harde as an alderman's doore,
That's shut and stony-hearted to the poore.
I never gave alms, nor did anything
Was good, nor e'er said, God save the King.
I stood like a stock that was made of wood,
And yet the people would not say I was good;
And if I tell them plaine, they're like to mee—
Like stone to all goodnesse. But now, reader, see
Me in the dust, for crosses must not stand,
There is too much cross tricks within the land;
And, having so done never any good,
I leave my prayse for to be understood;
For many women, after this my losse,
Will remember me, and still will be crosse—
Crosse tricks, crosse ways, and crosse vanities,
Believe the Crosse speaks truth, for here he lyes.
"I was built of lead, iron, and stone. Some say that divers of the crowns and sceptres are of silver, besides the rich gold that I was gilded with, which might have been filed and saved, yielding a good value. Some have offered four hundred, some five hundred; but they that bid most offer one thousand for it. I am to be taken down this very Tuesday; and I pray, good reader, take notice by the almanack, for the sign falls just at this time, to be in the feete, to showe that the crosse must be laide equall with the grounde, for our feete to tread on, and what day it was demolished; that is, on the day when crosses were first invented and set up; and so I leave the rest to your consideration."
Howell, the letter writer, lamenting the demolition of so ancient and visible a monument, says trumpets were blown all the while the crowbars and pickaxes were working. Archbishop Laud in his "Diary" notes that on May 1st the fanatical mob broke the stained-glass windows of his Lambeth chapel, and tore up the steps of his communion table.
"On Tuesday," this fanatic of another sort writes, "the cross in Cheapside was taken down to cleanse that great street of superstition." The amiable Evelyn notes in his "Diary" that he himself saw "the furious and zelous people demolish that stately crosse in Cheapside." In July, 1645, two years afterwards, and in the middle of the Civil War, Whitelocke (afterwards Oliver Cromwell's trimming minister) mentions a burning on the site of the Cheapside cross of crucifixes, Popish pictures, and books. Soon after the demolition of the cross (says Howell) a high square stone rest was "popped up in Cheapside, hard by the Standard," according to the legacy of Russell, a good-hearted porter. This "rest and be thankful" bore the following simple distich:—
"God bless thee, porter, who great pains doth take;
Rest here, and welcome, when thy back doth ache."
There are four views of the old Cheapside cross extant—one at Cowdray, one at the Pepysian library, Cambridge. A third, engraved by Wilkinson, represents the procession of Mary de Medicis, on her way through Cheapside; and another, which we give on page 331, shows the demolition of the cross.
The old London conduits were pleasant gathering places for 'prentices, serving-men, and servant girls—open-air parliaments of chatter, scandal, love-making, and trade talk. Here all day repaired the professional water-carriers, rough, sturdy fellows—like Ben Jonson's Cob—who were hired to supply the houses of the rich goldsmiths of Chepe, and who, before Sir Hugh Middleton brought the New River to London, were indispensable to the citizen's very existence.
The Great Conduit of Cheapside stood in the middle of the east end of the street near its junction with the Poultry, while the Little Conduit was at the west end, facing Foster Lane and Old Change. Stow, that indefatigable stitcher together of old history, describes the larger conduit curtly as bringing sweet water "by pipes of lead underground from Tyburn (Paddington) for the service of the City." It was castellated with stone and cisterned in lead about the year 1285 (Edward I.), and again new built and enlarged by Thomas Ham, a sheriff in 1479 (Edward IV.). Ned Ward (1700), in his lively ribald way describes Cheapside conduit (he does not say which) palisaded with chimney-sweepers' brooms and surrounded by sweeps, probably waiting to be hired, so that "a countryman, seeing so many black attendants waiting at a stone hovel, took it to be one of Old Nick's tenements."