In the reign of Edward III. the supply of water for the City seems to have been derived chiefly from the river, the local conduits being probably insufficient. The carters, called "water-leders" (24th Edward III.), were ordered by the City to charge three-halfpence for taking a cart from Dowgate or Castle Baynard to Chepe, and five farthings if they stopped short of Chepe, while a sand-cart from Aldgate to Chepe Conduit was to charge threepence.
The Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, the sound of whose mellow bells is supposed to be so dear to cockney ears, is the glory and crown of modern Cheapside. The music it casts forth into the troubled London air has a special magic of its own, and has a power to waken memories of the past. This chef-d'œuvre of Sir Christopher Wren, whose steeple—as graceful as it is stately—rises like a lighthouse above the roar and jostle of the human deluge below, stands on an ecclesiastical site of great antiquity. The old tradition is that here, as at St. Paul's and Westminster, was a Roman temple, but of that there is no proof whatever. The first Bow Church seems, however, to have been one of the earliest churches built by the conquerors of Harold; and here, no doubt, the sullen Saxons came to sneer at the masse chanted with a French accent. The first church was racked by storm and fire, was for a time turned into a fortress, was afterwards the scene of a murder, and last of all became one of our earliest ecclesiastical courts. Stow, usually very clear and unconfused, rather contradicts himself for once about the origin of the name of the church—"St. Mary de Arcubus or Bow." In one place he says it was so called because it was the first London church built on arches; and elsewhere, when out of sight of this assertion, he says that it took its name from certain stone arches supporting a lantern on the top of the tower. The first is more probably the true derivation, for St. Paul's could also boast its Saxon crypt. Bow Church is first mentioned in the reign of William the Conqueror, and it was probably built at that period.
There seems to have been nothing to specially disturb the fair building and its ministering priests till 1090 (William Rufus), when, in a tremendous storm that sent the monks to their knees, and shook the very saints from their niches over portal and arch, the roof of Bow Church was, by one great wrench of the wind, lifted off, and wafted down like a mere dead leaf into the street. It does not say much for the state of the highway that four of the huge rafters, twenty-six feet long, were driven (so the chroniclers say) twenty-two feet into the ground.
In 1270 part of the steeple fell, and caused the death of several persons; so that the work of mediæval builders does not seem to have been always irreproachable.
It was in 1284 (Edward I.) that blood was shed, and the right of sanctuary violated, in Bow Church. One Duckett, a goldsmith, having in that warlike age wounded in some fray a person named Ralph Crepin, took refuge in this church, and slept in the steeple. While there, certain friends of Crepin entered during the night, and violating the sanctuary, first slew Duckett, and then so placed the body as to induce the belief that he had committed suicide. A verdict to this effect was accordingly returned at the inquisition, and the body was interred with the customary indignities. The real circumstances, however, being afterwards discovered, through the evidence of a boy, who, it appears, was with Duckett in his voluntary confinement, and had hid himself during the struggle, the murderers, among whom was a woman, were apprehended and executed. After this occurrence the church was interdicted for a time, and the doors and windows stopped with brambles.
OLD MAP OF THE WARD OF CHEAP—ABOUT 1750
The first we hear of the nightly ringing of Bow bell at nine o'clock—a reminiscence, probably, of the tyrannical Norman curfew, or signal for extinguishing the lights at eight p.m.—is in 1315 (Edward II.). It was the go-to-bed bell of those early days; and two old couplets still exist, supposed to be the complaint of the sleepy 'prentices of Chepe and the obsequious reply of the Bow Church clerk. In the reign of Henry VI. the steeple was completed, and the ringing of the bell was, perhaps, the revival of an old and favourite usage. The rhymes are—
"Clarke of the Bow bell, with the yellow lockes,
For thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes."