Part 7 (2/2)

Andrew's-by-the-Wardrobe commemorates the existence of the Palace formerly called the King's Wardrobe. In St. Michael's Ba.s.sishaw survives the name of an old City family--the Basings. In St. Martin Orgar's--now destroyed--we have another old City name--Orgar.

Or, again, there are the people who are buried or were baptised in these churches.

In All Hallows, Bread Street, now pulled down, was baptised the greatest poet of our country, John Milton. For this cause alone the church should never have been suffered to fall into decay. It was wickedly and wantonly destroyed for the sake of the money its site would fetch in the year 1877. When you visit Bow Church, Cheapside, look for the tablet to the memory of Milton, now fixed in that church. It belonged to All Hallows, Bread Street.

Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn: The first in loftiness of thought surpa.s.sed, The next in majesty--in both the last.

The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third she joined the other two.

Christ Church, Newgate, stands on part of the site once occupied by the splendid church of the Grey Friars. Four Queens lie buried here, and an immense number of princes and great soldiers and n.o.bles.

Very few people, of the thousands who daily walk up and down Fleet Street, know anything about the statue in the wall of St. Dunstan's Church. This is the statue of Queen Elizabeth which formerly stood on the west side of Lud Gate. This gate was taken down in the year 1760, and some time after the statue was placed here. One of the sights of London before the old church was pulled down was a clock with the figure of a savage on each side who struck the hours and the quarters on a bell with clubs. London has seldom been without some such show. As long ago as the fifteenth century there was a clock with figures in Fleet Street.

Tyndal the Reformer, and Baxter the famous Nonconformist were preachers in this church.

St. Mary le Bow, was so called because it was the first church in the City built on arches--bows--of stone. The church is most intimately connected with the life and history of the City. Bow Bell rang for the closing of the shops. If the ringer was late the prentice boys reminded him pretty plainly.

'Clarke of the Bow Bell with thy yellow lockes: In thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes.'

To which the clerk replied:

'Children of Chepe, hold you all stille: For you shall have Bow Bell ring at your will.'

St. Mary's Woolnoth was for many years the church of the Rev. John Newton, once the poet Cowper's friend. He began his life in the merchant service and was for many years engaged in the slave trade.

For these reasons--their antiquity, their history, their a.s.sociations--the destruction of the City churches ought to be resisted with the utmost determination. You who read this page may very possibly become paris.h.i.+oners of such a church. Learn that, without the consent of the paris.h.i.+oners, no church can be destroyed. A meeting of paris.h.i.+oners must be called: they must vote and decide. Do not forget this privilege.

The time may come when your vote and your's alone, may retain for your posterity a church rich in history and venerable with the traditions of the past.

29. THE STREETS.

You have seen how the wall surrounded Roman London. The same wall which defended and limited Augusta defended and limited Plantagenet London.

Outside the wall on the east there continued to extend wide marshes along the river; moorlands and forest on the north; marshes with rising ground on the west; marshes on the south. Wapping was called Wapping in the Wose (Wash or Ouze), meaning in the Marsh: Bermondsey was Bermond's Island, standing in the marsh: Battersea was Batter's Island, or perhaps Island of Boats: Chelsea was the Island of Chesel or s.h.i.+ngle: Westminster Abbey was built on the Isle of Thorns. The monasteries standing outside the wall attracted a certain number of serving people who built houses round them: some of the riverside folk--boat-builders, lightermen, and so forth--were living in the precinct of St. Katharine, just outside the Tower: all along the Strand were great men's houses, one of which, the Somerset House, still stands in altered form, and another, Northumberland House, was only pulled down a few years ago.

Southwark had a single main street with a few branches east and west: it also contained several great houses, and was provided with many Inns for the use of those who brought their goods from Kent and Surrey to London Market. It was also admitted as a ward. On either side of the High Street lay marshes. The river was banked--hence the name Bank Side--but it is not known at what time.

That part of the wall fronting the river had long been pulled down, but the stairs were guarded with iron chains, and there was a river police which rowed about among the s.h.i.+pping at night.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHEPE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]

The streets and lanes of London within the walls were very nearly the same as they are at present, except for the great thoroughfares constructed within the last thirty years. That is to say, when one entered at Lud Gate and pa.s.sed through Paul's Churchyard, he found himself in the broad street, the market place of the City, known as Chepe. This continued to the place where the Royal Exchange now stands, where it broke off into two branches, Cornhill and Lombard Street.

These respectively led into Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street, which united again before Aldgate. Another leading thoroughfare crossed the City from London Bridge to Bishopsgate, and another, Thames Street, by far the most important, because here the merchant adventurers--those who had s.h.i.+ps and imported goods--met for the transaction of business.

The rough cobbled pavement of Thames Street was the Exchange of Whittington and the merchants of his time, who all had their houses on the rising ground, among the narrow lanes north of the street. You have seen what splendid houses a London merchant loved to build. What kind of house did the retailer and the craftsman occupy? It was of stone in the lower parts, but the upper storey was generally of wood, and the roof was too often thatched. The window was glazed in the upper part, but had open work and shutter for the lower half: this half, with the door, stood open during the greater part of the year. The lower room was the living room, and sometimes the work room of the occupant. The upper floor contained the bed rooms. There was but one fireplace in the house--that in the living room. At the back of the house was generally a small garden. But, besides these houses, there were courts dark, narrow, noisome, where the huts were still 'wattle and daub,' that is, built with posts, the sides filled in with branches or sticks and clay or mud, the fire in the middle of the floor, the chimney overhead. And still, as in Saxon times, the great danger to the City was from fire.

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