CHAPTER XXXII

CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES, NORTH (continued)

Milk Street—Sir Thomas More—The City of London School—St. Mary Magdalen—Honey Lane—All Hallows' Church—Lawrence Lane and St. Lawrence Church—Ironmonger Lane and Mercers' Hall—The Mercers' Company—Early Life Assurance Companies—The Mercers' Company in Trouble—Mercers' Chapel—St. Thomas Acon—The Mercers' School—Restoration of the Carvings in Mercers' Hall—The Glories of the Mercers' Company—Ironmonger Lane.

In Milk Street was the milk-market of Mediæval London. That good and wise man, Sir Thomas More, was born in this street. "The brightest man," says Fuller, with his usual quaint playfulness, "that ever shone in that via lactea." More, born in 1480, was the son of a judge of the King's Bench, and was educated at St. Anthony's School, in Threadneedle Street. He was afterwards placed in the family of Archbishop Morton, till he went to Oxford. After two years he became a barrister, at Lincoln, entered Parliament, and opposed Henry VII. to his own danger. After serving as law reader at New Inn, he soon became an eminent lawyer. He then wrote his "Utopia," acquired the friendship of Erasmus, and soon after became a favourite of Henry VIII., helping the despot in his treatise against Luther. On Wolsey's disgrace, More became chancellor, and one of the wisest and most impartial England has ever known. Determined not to sanction the king's divorce, More resigned his chancellorship, and, refusing to attend Anne Boleyn's coronation, he was attainted for treason. The tyrant, now furious, soon hurried him to the scaffold, and he was executed on Tower Hill in 1535.

This pious, wise, and consistent man is described as having dark chestnut hair, thin beard, and grey eyes. He walked with his right shoulder raised, and was negligent in his dress. When in the Tower, More is said to have foreseen the fate of Anne Boleyn, whom his daughter Margaret had found filling the court with dancing and sporting.

"Alas, Meg," said the ex-chancellor, "it pitieth me to remember to what misery poor soul she will shortly come. These dances of hers will prove such dances that she will sport our heads off like foot-balls; but it will not be long ere her head will dance the like dance."

It is to be lamented that with all his wisdom, More was a bigot. He burnt one Frith for denying the corporeal presence; had James Bainton, a gentleman of the Temple, whipped in his presence for heretical opinons; went to the Tower to see him on the rack, and then hurried him to Smithfield. "Verily," said Luther, "he was a very notable tyrant, and plagued and tormented innocent Christians like an executioner."

The City of London School, Milk Street, was established in 1837, for the sons of respectable persons engaged in professional, commercial, or trading pursuits; and partly founded on an income of £900 a year, derived from certain tenements bequeathed by John Carpenter, town-clerk of London, in the reign of Henry V., "for the finding and bringing up of four poor men's children, with meat, drink, apparel, learning at the schools, in the universities, &c., until they be preferred, and then others in their places for ever." This was the same John Carpenter who "caused, with great expense, to be curiously painted upon a board, about the north cloister of Paul's, a monument of Death, leading all estates, with the speeches of Death, and answers of every state." The school year is divided into three terms—Easter to July; August to Christmas; January to Easter; and the charge for each pupil is £2 5s. a term. The printed form of application for admission may be had of the secretary, and must be filled up by the parent or guardian, and signed by a member of the Corporation of London. The general course of instruction includes the English, French, German, Latin, and Greek languages, writing, arithmetic, mathematics, book-keeping, geography, and history. Besides eight free scholarships on the foundation, equivalent to £35 per annum each, and available as exhibitions to the Universities, there are the following exhibitions belonging to the school:—The "Times" Scholarship, value £30 per annum; three Beaufoy Scholarships, the Solomons Scholarship, and the Travers Scholarship, £50 per annum each; the Tegg Scholarship, nearly £20 per annum; and several other valuable prizes. The first stone of the school was laid by Lord Brougham, October 21st, 1835. The architect of the building was Mr. J.B. Bunning, of Guildford Street, Russell Square, and the entire cost, including fittings and furniture, as nearly £20,000. It is about 75 feet wide in front, next Milk Street, and is about 160 feet long; it contains eleven class-rooms of various dimensions, a spacious theatre for lectures, &c., a library, committee-room, with a commodious residence in the front for the head master and his family. The lectures, founded by Sir Thomas Gresham, on divinity, astronomy, music, geometry, law, physics, and rhetoric, which upon the demolition of Gresham College had been delivered at the Royal Exchange from the year 1773, were after the destruction of that building by fire, in January, 1838, read in the theatre of the City of London School until 1843; they were delivered each day during the four Law Terms, and the public in general were entitled to free admission.

In Milk Street stood the small parish church of St. Mary Magdalen, destroyed in the Great Fire. It was repaired and beautified at the charge of the parish in 1619. All the chancel window was built at the proper cost of Mr. Benjamin Henshaw, Merchant Taylor, and one of the City captains.

This church was burnt down in the Great Fire, and was not rebuilt. One amusing epitaph has been preserved:—