Old and New London, Volume I / A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places

by Walter Thornbury

MILTON'S HOUSE MILTON'S BURIAL-PLACE

The following epitaph (1569) is worth preserving:—

"Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur."—Apoc. 14.
"To William Dane, that sometime was
An ironmonger; where each degree
He worthily (with praise) did passe.
By Wisdom, Truth, and Heed, was he
Advanc'd an Alderman to be;
Then Sheriffe; that he, with justice prest,
And cost, performed with the best.
In almes frank, of conscience cleare;
In grace with prince, to people glad;
His vertuous wife, his faithful peere,
Margaret, this monument hath made;
Meaning (through God) that as shee had
With him (in house) long lived well;
Even so in Tombes Blisse to dwell."

"Bread Street," says Stow, "is so called of bread there in old times then sold; for it appeareth by records, that in the year 1302, which was the 30th of Edward I., the bakers of London were bound to sell no bread in their shops or houses, but in the market here; and that they should have four hall motes in the year, at four several terms, to determine of enormities belonging to the said company. Bread Street is now wholly inhabited by rich merchants, and divers fair inns be there, for good receipt of carriers and other travellers to the City. It appears in the will of Edward Stafford, Earl of Wylshire, dated the 22nd of March, 1498, and 14 Henry VII., that he lived in a house in Bread Street, in London, which belonged to the family of Stafford, Duke of Bucks afterwards; he bequeathed all the stuff in that house to the Lord of Buckingham, for he died without issue."

The parish church of "St. Augustine, in Watheling Street" was destroyed by the Great Fire, but rebuilt in 1682. Stow informs us that here was a fraternity founded A.D. 1387, called the Fraternity of St. Austin's, in Watling Street, and other good people dwelling in the City. "They were, on the eve of St. Austin's, to meet at the said church, in the morning at high mass, and every brother to offer a penny. And after that to be ready, al mangier ou al revele; i.e., to eat or to revel, according to the ordinance of the master and wardens of the fraternity. They set up in the honour of God and St. Austin, one branch of six tapers in the said church, before the image of St. Austin; and also two torches, with the which, if any of the said fraternity were commended to God, he might be carried to the earth. They were to meet at the vault at Paul's (perhaps St. Faith's), and to go thence to the Church of St. Austin's, and the priests and the clerks said Placebo and Dilige, and in matins, a mass of requiem at the high altar."

"There is a flat stone," says Stow, "in the south aisle of the church. It is laid over an Armenian merchant, of which foreign merchants there be divers that lodge and harbour in the Old Change in this parish."

St. Mildred's, in Bread Street, was repaired in 1628. "At the upper end of the chancel," says Strype, "is a fine window, full of cost and beauty, which being divided into five parts, carries in the first of them a very artful and curious representation of the Spaniard's Great Armado, and the battle in 1588; in the second, the monument of Queen Elizabeth; in the third, the Gunpowder Plot; in the fourth, the lamentable time of infection, 1625; and in the fifth and last, the view and lively portraiture of that worthy gentleman, Captain Nicolas Crispe, at whose sole cost (among other) this beautiful piece of work was erected, as also the figures of his vertuous wife and children, with the arms belonging to them." This church, burnt down in the Great Fire, was rebuilt again.

St. Mildred was a Saxon lady, and daughter of Merwaldus, a West-Mercian prince, and brother to Penda, King of the Mercians, who, despising the pomps and vanities of this world, retired to a convent at Hale, in France, whence, returning to England, accompanied by seventy virgins, she was consecrated abbess of a new monastery in the Isle of Thanet, by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, where she died abbess, anno 676.

On the east side of Bread Street is the church of Allhallows. "On the south side of the chancel, in a little part of this church, called The Salter's Chapel," says Strype, "is a very fair window, with the portraiture or figure of him that gave it, very curiously wrought upon it. This church, ruined in the Great Fire, is built up again without any pillars, but very decent, and is a lightsome church."

"In the 22nd of Henry VIII., the 17th of August, two priests of this church fell at variance, that the one drew blood of the other, wherefore the same church was suspended, and no service sung or said therein for the space of one month after; the priests were committed to prison, and the 15th of October, being enjoined penance, they went at the head of a general procession, barefooted and bare-legged, before the children, with beads and books in their hands, from Paul's, through Cheap, Cornhill," &c.