XXX. CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES, NORTH…

XXX. CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES, NORTH

Goldsmiths' Hall--Its Early Days--Tailors and Goldsmiths at Loggerheads--The Goldsmiths' Company's Charters and Records--Their Great Annual Feast--They receive Queen Margaret of Anjou in State--A Curious Trial of Skill--Civic and State Duties--The Goldsmiths break up the Image of their Patron Saint--The Goldsmiths' Company's Assays--The Ancient Goldsmiths' Feasts--The Goldsmiths at Work--Goldsmiths' Hall at the Present Day--The Portraits--St. Leonard's Church--St. Vedast--Discovery of a Stone Coffin--Coachmakers' Hall.

In Foster Lane, the first turning out of Cheapside northwards, our first visit must be paid to the Hall of the Goldsmiths, one of the richest, most ancient, and most practical of all the great City companies.

The original site of Goldsmiths' Hall belonged, in the reign of Edward II., to Sir Nicholas de Segrave, a Leicestershire knight, brother of Gilbert de Segrave, Bishop of London. The date of the Goldsmiths' first building is uncertain, but it is first mentioned in their records in 1366 (Edward III.). The second hall is supposed to have been built by Sir Dru Barentyn, in 1407 (Henry IV.). The Livery Hall had a bay window on the side next to Huggin Lane; the roof was surmounted with a lantern and vane; the reredos in the screen was surmounted by a silver-gilt statue of St. Dunstan; and the Flemish tapestry represented the story of the patron saint of goldsmiths. Stow, writing in 1598, expresses doubt at the story that Bartholomew Read, goldsmith and mayor in 1502, gave a feast there to more than 100 persons, as the hall was too small for that purpose.

From 1641 till the Restoration, Goldsmiths' Hall served as the Exchequer of the Commonwealth. All the money obtained from the sequestration of Royalists' estates was here stored, and then disbursed for State purposes. The following is a description of the earlier hall:--

"The buildings," says Herbert, "were of a fine red brick, and surrounded a small square court, paved; the front being ornamented with stone corners, wrought in rustic, and a large arched entrance, which exhibited a high pediment, supported on Doric columns, and open at the top, to give room for a shield of the Company's arms. The livery, or common hall, which was on the east side of the court, was a spacious and lofty apartment, paved with black and white marble, and very elegantly fitted up. The wainscoting was very handsome, and the ceiling and its appendages richly stuccoed--an enormous flower adorning the centre, and the City and Goldsmiths' arms, with various decorations, appearing in its other compartments. A richly-carved screen, with composite pillars, pilasters, &c.; a balustrade, with vases, terminating in branches for lights (between which displayed the banners and flags used on public occasions); and a beaufet of considerable size, with white and gold ornaments, formed part of the embellishments of this splendid room."

"The balustrade of the staircase was elegantly carved, and the walls exhibited numerous reliefs of scrolls, flowers, and instruments of music. The court-room was another richly-wainscoted apartment, and the ceiling very grand, though, perhaps somewhat overloaded with embellishments. The chimney-piece was of statuary marble, and very sumptuous."

The guild of Goldsmiths is of extreme antiquity, having been fined in 1180 (Henry II.) as adulterine, that is, established or carried on without the king's special licence; for in any matter where fines could be extorted, the Norman kings took a paternal interest in the doings of their patient subjects. In 1267 (Henry III.) the goldsmiths seem to have been infected with the pugnacious spirit of the age; for we come upon bands of goldsmiths and tailors fighting in London streets, from some guild jealousy; and 500 snippers of cloth meeting, by appointment, 500 hammerers of metal, and having a comfortable and steady fight. In the latter case many were killed on both sides, and the sheriff at last had to interpose with the City's posse comitatus and with bows, swords, and spears. The ringleaders were finally apprehended, and thirteen of them condemned and executed. In 1278 (Edward I.) many spurious goldsmiths were arrested for frauds in trade, three Englishmen were hung, and more than a dozen unfortunate Jews.

The goldsmiths were incorporated into a permanent company in the prodigal reign of Richard II., and they no doubt drove a good business with that thriftless young Absalom, who, it is said wore golden bells on his sleeves and baldric. For ten marks--not a very tremendous consideration, though it was, no doubt, all he could get--Richard's grandfather, that warlike and chivalrous monarch, Edward III., had already incorporated the Company, and given "the Mystery" of Goldsmiths the privilege of purchasing in mortmain an estate of £20 per annum, for the support of old and sick members; for these early guilds were benefit clubs as well as social companies, and jealous privileged monopolists; and Edward's grant gave the corporation the right to inspect, try, and regulate all gold and silver wares in any part of England, with the power to punish all offenders detected in working adulterated gold and silver. Edward, in all, granted four charters to the Worshipful Company.

Henry IV., Henry V., and Edward IV. both granted and confirmed the liberties of the Company. The Goldsmiths' records commence 5th Edward III., and furnish much curious information. In this reign all who were of Goldsmiths' Hall were required to have shops in Chepe, and to sell no silver or gold vessels except in Chepe or in the King's Exchange. The first charter complains loudly of counterfeit metal, of false bracelets, lockets, rings, and jewels, made and exported; and also of vessels of tin made and subtly silvered over.

The Company began humbly enough, and in their first year of incorporation (1335) fourteen apprentices only were bound, the fees for admission being 2s., and the pensions given to twelve persons come to only £1 16s. In 1343 the number of apprentices in the year rose to seventy-four; and in 1344 there were payments for licensing foreign workmen and non-freemen.

During the Middle Ages these City companies were very attentive to religious observances, and the Wardens' accounts show constant entries referring to such ceremonies. Their great annual feast was on St. Dunstan's Day (St. Dunstan being the patron saint of goldsmiths), and the books of expenses show the cost of masses sung for the Company by the chaplain, payments for ringing the bells at St. Paul's, for drinking obits at the Company's standard at St. Paul's, for lights kept burning at St. James's Hospital, and for chantries maintained at the churches of St. John Zachary (the Goldsmiths' parish church), St. Peter-le-Chepe, St. Matthew, Friday Street, St. Vedast, Foster Lane, and others.

About the reign of Henry VI. the records grow more interesting, and reflect more strongly the social life of the times they note. In 1443 we find the Company received a special letter from Henry VI., desiring them, as a craft which had at all times "notably acquitted themselves," more especially at the king's return from his coronation in Paris, to meet his queen, Margaret of Anjou, on her arrival, in company with the Mayor, aldermen, and the other London crafts. On this occasion the goldsmiths wore "bawderykes of gold, short jagged scarlet hoods," and each past Warden or renter had his follower clothed in white, with a black hood and black felt hat. In this reign John Chest, a goldsmith of Chepe, for slanderous words against the Company, was condemned to come to Goldsmiths' Hall, and on his knees ask all the Company forgiveness for what he had myssayde; and was also forbidden to wear the livery of the Company for a whole month. Later still, in this reign, a goldsmith named German Lyas, for selling a tablet of adulterated gold, was compelled to give to the fraternity a gilt cup, weighing twenty-four ounces, and to implore pardon on his knees. In 1458 (Henry VI.), a goldsmith was fined for giving a false return of broken gold to a servant of the Earl of Wiltshire, who had brought it to be sold.

In the fourth year of King Edward IV. a very curious trial of skill between the jealous English goldsmiths and their foreign rivals took place at the "Pope's Head" tavern (now Pope's Head Alley), Cornhill. The contending craftsmen had to engrave four puncheons of steel (the breadth of a penny sterling) with cat's heads and naked figures in high relief and low relief; Oliver Davy, the Englishman, won, and White Johnson, the Alicant goldsmith, lost his wager of a crown and a dinner to the Company. In this reign there were 137 native goldsmiths in London, and 41 foreigners--total, 178. The foreigners lived chiefly in Westminster, Southwark, St. Clement's Lane, Abchurch Lane, Brick Lane, and Bearbinder Lane.

In 1511 (Henry VIII.) the Company agreed to send twelve men to attend the City Night-watch, on the vigils of St. John Baptist, and St. Peter and Paul. The men were to be cleanly harnessed, to carry bows and arrows, and to be arrayed in jackets of white, with the City arms. In 1540 the Company sent six of their body to fetch in the new Queen, Anne of Cleves, "the Flemish mare," as her disappointed bridegroom called her. The six goldsmiths must have looked very gallant in their black velvet coats, gold chains, and velvet caps with brooches of gold; and their servants in plain russet coats. Sir Martin Bowes was the great goldsmith in this reign; he is the man whom Stow accused, when Lord Mayor, of rooting up all the gravestones and monuments in the Grey Friars, and selling them for £50. He left almshouses at Woolwich, and two houses in Lombard Street, to the Company.

In 1546 (same reign) the Company sent twenty-four men, by royal order, to the king's army. They were to be "honest, comely, and well-harnessed persons--four of them bowmen, and twelve billmen. They were arrayed in blue and red (after my Lord Norfolk's fashion), hats and hose red and blue, and with doublets of white fustian." This same year, the greedy despot Henry having discovered some slight inaccuracy in the assay, contrived to extort from the poor abject goldsmiths a mighty fine of 3,000 marks. The year this English Ahab died, the Goldsmiths resolved, in compliment to the Reformation, to break up the image of their patron saint, and also a great standing cup with an image of the same saint upon the top. Among the Company's plate there still exists a goodly cup given by Sir Martin Bowes, and which is said to be the same from which Queen Elizabeth drank at her coronation.

The government of the Company has been seen to have been vested in an alderman in the reign of Henry II., and in four wardens as early as 28 Edward I. The wardens were divided, at a later period, into a prime warden (always an alderman of London), a second warden, and two renter wardens. The clerk, under the name of "clerk-comptroller," is not mentioned till 1494; but a similar officer must have been established much earlier. Four auditors and two porters are named in the reign of Henry VI. The assayer, or as he is now called, assay warden (to whom were afterwards joined two assistants), is peculiar to the Goldsmiths.

The Company's assay of the coin, or trial of the pix, a curious proceeding of great solemnity, now takes place every year. "It is," says Herbert, in his "City Companies," "an investigation or inquiry into the purity and weight of the money coined, before the Lords of the Council, and is aided by the professional knowledge of a jury of the Goldsmiths' Company; and in a writ directed to the barons for that purpose (9 and 10 Edward I.) is spoken of as a well-known custom.

"The Wardens of the Goldsmiths' Company are summoned by precept from the Lord Chancellor to form a jury, of which their assay master is always one. This jury are sworn, receive a charge from the Lord Chancellor; then retire into the Court-room of the Duchy of Lancaster, where the pix (a small box, from the ancient name of which this ceremony is denominated), and which contains the coins to be examined, is delivered to them by the officers of the Mint. The indenture or authority under which the Mint Master has acted being read, the pix is opened, and the coins to be assayed being taken out, are inclosed in paper parcels, each under the seals of the Wardens, Master, and Comptrollers. From every 15 lbs. of silver, which are technically called 'journies,' two pieces at the least are taken at hazard for this trial; and each parcel being opened, and the contents being found correct with the indorsement, the coins are mixed together in wooden bowls, and afterwards weighed. From the whole of these moneys so mingled, the jury take a certain number of each species of coin, to the amount of 1 lb. weight, for the assay by fire; and the indented trial pieces of gold and silver, of the dates specified in the indenture, being produced by the proper officer, a sufficient quantity is cut from either of them for the purpose of comparing with it the pound weight of gold or silver by the usual methods of assay. The perfection or imperfection of these are certified by the jury, who deliver their verdict in writing to the Lord Chancellor, to be deposited amongst the papers of the Privy Council. If found accurate, the Mint Master receives his certificate, or, as it is called, quietus" (a legal word used by Shakespeare in Hamlet's great soliloquy). "The assaying of the precious metals, anciently called the 'touch,' with the marking or stamping, and the proving of the coin, at what is called the 'trial of the pix,' were privileges conferred on the Goldsmiths' Company by the statute 28 Edward I. They had for the former purpose an assay office more than 500 years ago, which is mentioned in their books. Their still retaining the same privilege makes the part of Goldsmiths' Hall, where this business is carried on, a busy scene during the hours of assaying. In the old statute all manner of vessels of gold and silver are expected to be of good and true alloy, namely, 'gold of a certain touch,' and silver of the sterling alloy; and no vessel is to depart out of the hands of the workman until it is assayed by the workers of the Goldsmiths' craft.

"The Hall mark shows where manufactured, as the Leopard's head for London. Duty mark is the head of the Sovereign, showing the duty is paid. Date mark is a letter of the alphabet, which varies every year; thus, the Goldsmiths' Company have used, from 1716 to 1755, Roman capital letters; 1756 to 1775, small Roman letters; 1776 to 1795, old English letters; 1796 to 1815, Roman capital letters, from A to U, omitting J; 1816 to 1835 small Roman letters a to u, omitting j; from 1836, old English letters. There are two qualities of gold and silver. The inferior is mostly in use. The quality marks for silver are Britannia, or the head of the reigning monarch; for gold, the lion passant, 22 or 18, which denotes that fine gold is 24-carat; 18 only 75 per cent, gold; sometimes rings are marked 22. The manufacturer's mark is the initials of the maker.

"The Company are allowed 1 per cent., and the fees for stamping are paid into the Inland Revenue Office. At Goldsmiths' Hall, in the years 1850 to 1863 inclusive, there were assayed and marked 85 22-carat watch-cases, 316,347 18-carat, 493 15-carat, 1550 12-carat, 448 9-carat, making a total of 318,923 cases, weighing 467,250 ounces 6 dwts. 18 grains. The Goldsmiths' Company append a note to this return, stating that they have no knowledge of the value of the cases assayed, except of the intrinsic value, as indicated by the weight and quality of the gold given in the return. The silver watch-cases assayed at the same establishment in the fourteen years, 1,139,704, the total weight being 2,302,192 ounces 19 dwts. In the year 1857 the largest number of cases were assayed out of the fourteen. The precise number in that year was 106,860, this being more than 10,000 above any year in the period named. In a subsequent year the number was only 77,608. A similar note with regard to value is appended to the return of silver cases as to the gold." There has been a complaint lately that the inferior jewellery is often tampered with after receiving the Hall mark.

An old book, probably Elizabethan, the "Touchstone for Goldsmith's Wares," observes, "That goldsmiths in the City and liberties, as to their particular trade, are under the Goldsmiths' Company's control, whether members or not, and ought to be of their own company, though, from mistake or design, many of them are free of others. For the wardens, being by their charters and the statutes appointed to survey, assay, and mark the silver-work, are to be chosen from members, such choice must sometimes fall upon them that are either of other trades, or not skilled in their curious art of making assays of gold and silver, and consequently unable to make a true report of the goodness thereof; or else the necessary attendance thereon is too great a burden for the wardens. Therefore they (the wardens) have appointed an assay master, called by them their deputy warden, allowing him a considerable yearly salary, and who takes an oath for the due performance of his office. They have large steel puncheons and marks of different sizes, with the leopard's-head, crowned; the lion, and a certain letter, which letter they change alphabetically every year, in order to know the year any particular work was assayed or marked, as well as the markers. These marks," he adds, "are every year new made, for the use of fresh wardens; and although the assaying is referred to the assay master, yet the touch-wardens look to the striking of the marks." To acquaint the public the better with this business of the assay, the writer of the "Touchstone" has prefixed a frontispiece to his work, intended to represent the interior of an assay office (we should suppose that of the old Goldsmiths' Hall), and makes reference by numbers to the various objects shown--as, 1. The refining furnace; 2. The test, with silver refining in it; 3. The fining bellows; 4. The man blowing or working them; 5. The test-mould; 6. A wind-hole to melt silver in, with bellows; 7. A pair of organ bellows; 8. A man melting, or boiling, or nealing silver at them; 9. A block, with a large anvil placed thereon; 10. Three men forging plate; 11. The fining and other goldsmith's tools; 12. The assay furnace; 13. The assay master making assays; 14. This man putting the assays into the fire; 15. The warden marking the plate on the anvil; 16. His officer holding his plate for the marks; and 17. Three goldsmiths' small workers at work. In the office are stated to be a sworn weigher to weigh and make entry of all silver-work brought in, and who re-weighs it to the owners when worked, reserving the ancient allowance for so doing, which is 4 grains out of every 1 lb. marked, for a re-assay yearly of all the silver works they have passed the preceding year. There are also, he says, a table, or tables, in columns, one whereof is of hardened lead, and the other of vellum or parchment (the lead columns having the worker's initials struck in them, and the other the owner's names); and the seeing that these marks are right, and plainly impressed on the gold and silver work, is one of the warden's peculiar duties. The manner of marking the assay is thus:--The assay master puts a small quantity of the silver upon trial in the fire, and then, taking it out again, he, with his exact scales that will turn with the weight of the hundredth part of a grain, computes and reports the goodness or badness of the gold and silver.

The allowance of four grains to the pound, Malcolm states to have been continued till after 1725; for gold watch-cases, from one to four, one shilling; and all above, threepence each; and in proportion for other articles of the same metal. "The assay office," he adds, "seems, however, to have been a losing concern with the Company, their receipts for six years, to 1725, being £1,615 13s. 11-1/2d., and the payments, £2,074 3s. 8d."

The ancient goldsmiths seem to have wisely blended pleasure with profit, and to have feasted right royally: one of their dinner bills runs thus:--

EXPENSES OF ST. DUNSTAN'S FEAST. 1473 (12 Edward IV.). £ s. d.

To eight minstrels in manner accustomed 2 13 8 Ten bonnets for ditto 0 6 8 Their dinner 0 3 4 Two hogsheads of wine 2 10 0 One barrel of Muscadell 0 6 6 Red wine, 17 qrts. and 3 galls 0 11 10 Four barrels of good ale 0 17 4 Two ditto of 2dy halfpenny 0 6 0 In spice bread 0 16 8 In other bread 0 10 10 In comfits and spice (36 articles) 5 17 6 Poultry, including 12 capons at 8d. 2 16 11 Pigeons at 1-1/2d., and 12 more geese, at 7d. each.

With "butchery," "fishmongery," and "miscellaneous articles," the total amount of the feast was £26 17s. 7d.

A supper bill which occurs in the 11th of Henry VIII. only amounts to £5 18s. 6d., and it enumerates the following among the provisions:--Bread, two bushels of meal, a kilderkin and a firkin of good ale, 12 capons, four dozen of chickens, four dishes of Surrey (sotterey) butter, 11 lbs. of suet, six marrow bones, a quarter of a sheep, 50 eggs, six dishes of sweet butter, 60 oranges, gooseberries, strawberries, 56 lbs. of cherries, 17 lbs. 10 oz. of sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and mace, saffron, rice flour, "raisins, currants," dates, white salt, bay salt, red vinegar, white vinegar, verjuice, the hire of pewter vessels, and various other articles.

In City pageants the Goldsmiths always held a conspicuous place. The following is an account of their pageant in jovial Lord Mayor Vyner's time (Charles II.):--

"First pageant. A large triumphal chariot of gold, richly set with divers inestimable and various coloured jewels, of dazzling splendour, adorned with sundry curious figures, fictitious stories, and delightful landscapes; one ascent of seats up to a throne, whereon a person of majestic aspect sitteth, the representer of Justice, hieroglyphically attired, in a long red robe, and on it a golden mantle fringed with silver; on her head a long dishevelled hair of flaxen colour, curiously curled, on which is a coronet of silver; in her left hand she advanceth a touchstone (the tryer of Truth and discoverer of Falsehood); in her right hand she holdeth up a golden balance, with silver scales, equi-ponderent, to weigh justly and impartially; her arms dependent on the heads of two leopards, which emblematically intimate courage and constancy. This chariot is drawn by two golden unicorns, in excellent carving work, with equal magnitude, to the left; on whose backs are mounted two raven-black negroes, attired according to the dress of India; on their heads, wreaths of divers coloured feathers; in their right hands they hold golden cups; in their left hands, two displayed banners, the one of the king's, the other of the Company's arms, all which represent the crest and the supporters of the ancient, famous, and worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.

"Trade pageant. On a very large pageant is a very rich seat of state, containing the representer of the Patron to the Goldsmiths' Company, Saint Dunstan, attired in a dress properly expressing his prelatical dignity, in a robe of fine white lawn, over which he weareth a cope or vest of costly bright cloth of gold, down to the ground; on his reverend grey head, a golden mitre, set with topaz, ruby, emerald, amethyst, and sapphire. In his left hand he holdeth a golden crozier, and in his right hand he useth a pair of goldsmith's tongs. Beneath these steps of ascension to his chair, in opposition to St. Dunstan, is properly painted a goldsmith's forge and furnace, with fire and gold in it, a workman blowing with the bellows. On his right and left hand, there is a large press of gold and silver plate, representing a shop of trade; and further in front, are several artificers at work on anvils with hammers, beating out plate fit for the forgery and formation of several vessels in gold and silver. There are likewise in the shop several wedges or ingots of gold and silver, and a step below St. Dunstan sitteth an assay-master, with his glass frame and balance, for trial of gold and silver, according to the standard. In another place there is also disgrossing, drawing, and flatting of gold and silver wire. There are also finers melting, smelting, fining, and parting gold and silver, both by fire and water; and in a march before this orfery, are divers miners in canvas breeches, red waistcoats, and red caps, bearing spades, pickaxes, twibills, and crows, for to sink shafts, and make adits. The Devil, also, appearing to St. Dunstan, is catched by the nose at a proper qu, which is given in his speech. When the speech is spoken, the great anvil is set forth, with a silversmith holding on it a plate of massive silver, and three other workmen at work, keeping excellent time in their orderly strokes upon the anvil."

The Goldsmiths in the Middle Ages seem to have been fond of dress. In a great procession of the London crafts to meet Richard II.'s fair young queen, Anne of Bohemia, all the mysteries of the City wore red and black liveries. The Goldsmiths had on the red of their dresses bars of silver-work and silver trefoils, and each of the seven score Goldsmiths, on the black part, wore fine knots of gold and silk, and on their worshipful heads red hats, powdered with silver trefoils. In Edward IV.'s reign, the Company's taste changed. The Liverymen wore violet and scarlet gowns like the Goldsmiths' sworn friends, the Fishmongers; while, under Henry VII., they wore violet gowns and black hoods. In Henry VIII.'s reign the hoods of the mutable Company went back again to violet and scarlet.

In 1456 (Henry VI.) the London citizens seem to have been rather severe with their apprentices; for we find William Hede, a goldsmith, accusing his apprentice of beating his mistress. The apprentice was brought to the kitchen of the Goldsmith's Hall, and there stripped naked, and beaten by his master till blood came. This punishment was inflicted in the presence of several people. The apprentice then asked his master's forgiveness on his knees.

The Goldsmiths' searches for bad and defective work were arbitrary enough, and made with great formality. "The wardens," say the ordinances, "every quarter, once, or oftener, if need be, shall search in London, Southwark, and Westminster, that all the goldsmiths there dwelling work true gold and silver, according to the Act of Parliament, and shall also make due search for their weights."

The manner of making this search, as elsewhere detailed, seems to have resembled that of our modern inquest, or annoyance juries; the Company's beadle, in full costume and with his insignia of office, marching first; the wardens, in livery, with their hoods; the Company's clerk, two renter wardens, two brokers, porters, and other attendants, also dressed, following. Their mode of proceeding is given in the following account, entitled "The Manner and Order for Searches at Bartholomew Fayre and Our Ladye Fayre" (Henry VIII.):--

"Md. The Bedell for the time beyng shall walke uppon Seynt Barthyllmewes Eve all alonge Chepe, for to see what plaate ys in eury mannys deske and gyrdyll. And so the sayd wardeyns for to goo into Lumberd Streate, or into other places there, where yt shall please theym. And also the clerk of the Fellyshyppe shall wayt uppon the seyd wardeyns for to wryte eury prcell of sylur stuffe then distrayned by the sayd wardeyns.

"Also the sayd wardeyns been accustomed to goo into Barth'u Fayre, uppon the evyn or daye, at theyr pleasure, in theyre lyuerey gownes and hoodys, as they will appoint, and two of the livery, ancient men, with them; the renters, the clerk, and the bedell, in their livery, with them; and the brokers to wait upon my masters the wardens, to see every hardware men show, for deceitful things, beads, gawds of beads, and other stuff; and then they to drink when they have done, where they please.

"Also the said wardens be accustomed at our Lady day, the Nativity, to walk and see the fair at Southwark, in like manner with their company, as is aforesaid, and to search there likewise."

Another order enjoins the two second wardens "to ride into Stourbrydge fair, with what officers they liked, and do the same."

Amongst other charges against the trade at this date, it is said "that dayly divers straungers and other gentils" complained and found themselves aggrieved, that they came to the shops of goldsmiths within the City of London, and without the City, and to their booths and fairs, markets, and other places, and there bought of them old plate new refreshed in gilding and burnishing; it appearing to all "such straungers and other gentils" that such old plate, so by them bought, was new, sufficient, and able; whereby all such were deceived, to the grete "dys-slaunder and jeopardy of all the seyd crafte of goldsmythis."

In consequence of these complaints, it was ordained (15 Henry VII.) by all the said fellowship, that no goldsmith, within or without the City, should thenceforth put to sale such description of plate, in any of the places mentioned, without it had the mark of the "Lybardishede crowned." All plate put to sale contrary to these orders the wardens were empowered to break. They also had the power, at their discretion, to fine offenders for this and any other frauds in manufacturing. If any goldsmith attempted to prevent the wardens from breaking bad work, they could seize such work, and declare it forfeited, according to the Act of Parliament, appropriating the one half (as thereby directed) to the king, and the other to the wardens breaking and making the seizure.

The present Goldsmiths' Hall was the design of Philip Hardwick, R.A. (1832-5), and boasts itself the most magnificent of the City halls. The old hall had been taken down in 1829, and the new hall was built without trenching on the funds set apart for charity. The style is Italian, of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The building is 180 feet in front and 100 feet deep. The west or chief façade has six attached Corinthian columns, the whole height of the front supporting a rich Corinthian entablature and bold cornice; and the other three fronts are adorned with pilasters, which also terminate the angles. Some of the blocks in the column shafts weigh from ten to twelve tons each. The windows of the principal story, the echinus moulding of which is handsome, have bold and enriched pediments, and the centre windows are honoured by massive balustrade balconies. In the centre, above the first floor, are the Company's arms, festal emblems, rich garlands, and trophies. The entrance door is a rich specimen of cast work. Altogether, though rather jammed up behind the Post-office, this building is worthy of the powerful and wealthy company who make it their domicile.

The modern Renaissance style, it must be allowed, though less picturesque than the Gothic, is lighter, more stately, and more adapted for certain purposes.

The hall and staircase are much admired, and are not without grandeur. They were in 1871 entirely lined with costly marbles of different sorts and colours, and the result is very splendid. The staircase branches right and left, and ascends to a domed gallery. Leaving that respectable Cerberus dozy but watchful in his bee-hive chair in the vestibule, we ascend the steps. On the square pedestals which ornament the balustrade of the first flight of stairs stand four graceful marble statuettes of the seasons, by Nixon. Spring is looking at a bird's-nest; Summer, wreathed with flowers, leads a lamb; Autumn carries sheaves of corn; and Winter presses his robe close against the wind. Between the double scagliola columns of the gallery are a group of statues; the bust of the sailor king, William IV., by Chantrey, is in a niche above. A door on the top of the staircase opens to the Livery hall; the room for the Court of Assistants is on the right of the northernmost corridor. The great banqueting-hall, 80 by 40 feet, and 35 feet high, has a range of Corinthian columns on either side. The five lofty, arched windows are filled with the armorial bearings of eminent goldsmiths of past times; and at the north end is a spacious alcove for the display of plate, which is lighted from above. On the side of the room is a large mirror, with busts of George III. and his worthy son, George IV. Between the columns are portraits of Queen Adelaide, by Sir Martin Archer Shee, and William IV. and Queen Victoria, by the Court painter, Sir George Hayter. The court-room has an elaborate stucco ceiling, with a glass chandelier, which tinkles when the scarlet mail-carts rush off one after another. In this room, beneath glass, is preserved the interesting little altar of Diana, found in digging the foundations of the new hall. Though greatly corroded, it has been of fine workmanship, and the outlines are full of grace. There are also some pictures of great merit and interest. First among them is Janssen's fine portrait of Sir Hugh Myddleton. He is dressed in black, and rests his hand upon a shell. This great benefactor of London left a share in his water-works to the Goldsmiths' Company, which is now worth more than £1,000 a year. Another portrait is that of Sir Thomas Vyner, that jovial Lord Mayor, who dragged Charles II. back for a second bottle. A third is a portrait (after Holbein) of Sir Martin Bowes, Lord Mayor in 1545 (Henry VIII.); and there is also a large picture (attributed to Giulio Romano, the only painter Shakespeare mentions in his plays). In the foreground is St. Dunstan, in rich robes and crozier in hand, while behind, the saint takes the Devil by the nose, much to the approval of flocks of angels above. The great white marble mantelpiece came from Canons, the seat of the Duke of Chandos; and the two large terminal busts are attributed to Roubiliac. The sumptuous drawing-room, adorned with crimson satin, white and gold, has immense mirrors, and a stucco ceiling, wrought with fruit, flowers, birds, and animals, with coats of arms blazoned on the four corners. The court dining-room displays on the marble chimney-piece two boys holding a wreath encircling the portrait of Richard II., by whom the Goldsmiths were first incorporated. In the livery tea-room is a conversation piece, by Hudson (Reynolds' master), containing portraits of six Lord Mayors, all Goldsmiths. The Company's plate, as one might suppose, is very magnificent, and comprises a chandelier of chased gold, weighing 1,000 ounces; two superb old gold plates, having on them the arms of France quartered with those of England; and, last of all, there is the gold cup (attributed to Cellini) out of which Queen Elizabeth is said to have drank at her coronation, and which was bequeathed to the Company by Sir Martin Bowes. At the Great Exhibition of 1851 this spirited Company awarded £1,000 to the best artist in gold and silver plate, and at the same time resolved to spend £5,000 on plate of British manufacture.

From the Report of the Charity Commissioners it appears that the Goldsmiths' charitable funds, exclusive of gifts by Sir Martin Bowes, amount to £2,013 per annum.

Foster Lane was in old times chiefly inhabited by working goldsmiths.

"Dark Entry, Foster Lane," says Strype, "gives a passage into St. Martin's-le-Grand. On the north side of this entry was seated the parish church of St. Leonard, Foster Lane, which being consumed in the Fire of London, is not rebuilt, but the parish united to Christ Church; and the place where it stood is inclosed within a wall, and serveth as a burial-place for the inhabitants of the parish."

On the west side of Foster Lane stood the small parish church of St. Leonard's. This church, says Stow, was repaired and enlarged about the year 1631. A very fair window at the upper end of the chancel (1533) cost £500.

In this church were some curious monumental inscriptions. One of them, to the memory of Robert Trappis, goldsmith, bearing the date 1526, contained this epitaph:--

"When the bels be merrily rung, And the masse devoutly sung, And the meate merrily eaten, Then shall Robert Trappis, his wife and children be forgotten."

On a stone, at the entering into the choir, was inscribed in Latin, "Under this marble rests the body of Humfred Barret, son of John Barret, gentleman, who died A.D. 1501." On a fair stone, in the chancel, nameless, was written:--

"LIVE TO DYE.

"All flesh is grass, and needs must fade To earth again, whereof 'twas made."

St. Vedast, otherwise St. Foster, was a French saint, Bishop of Arras and Cambray in the reign of Clovis, who, according to the Rev. Alban Butler, performed many miracles on the blind and lame. Alaric had a great veneration for this saint.

In 1831, some workmen digging a drain discovered, ten or twelve feet below the level of Cheapside, and opposite No. 17, a curious stone coffin, now preserved in a vault, under a small brick grave, on the north side of St. Vedast's; whether Roman or Anglo-Saxon, it consists of a block of freestone, seven feet long and fifteen inches thick, hollowed out to receive a body, with a deeper cavity for the head and shoulders. When found, it contained a skeleton, and was covered with a flat stone. Several other stone coffins were found at the same time.

The interior of St. Foster is a melancholy instance of Louis Quatorze ornamentation. The church is divided by a range of Tuscan columns, and the ceiling is enriched with dusty wreaths of stucco flowers and fruit. The altar-piece consists of four Corinthian columns, carved in oak, and garnished with cherubim, palm-branches, &c. In the centre, above the entablature, is a group of well-executed winged figures, and beneath is a sculptured pelican. In 1838 Mr. Godwin spoke highly of the transparent blinds of this church, painted with various Scriptural subjects, as a substitute for stained glass.

"St. Vedast Church, in Foster Lane," says Maitland, "is on the east side, in the Ward of Farringdon Within, dedicated to St. Vedast, Bishop of Arras, in the province of Artois. The first time I find it mentioned in history is, that Walter de London was presented thereto in 1308. The patronage of the church was anciently in the Prior and Convent of Canterbury, till the year 1352, when, coming to the archbishop of that see, it has been in him and his successors ever since; and is one of the thirteen peculiars in this city belonging to that archiepiscopal city. This church was not entirely destroyed by the fire in 1666, but nothing left standing but the walls; the crazy steeple continued standing till the year 1694, when it was taken down and beautifully rebuilt at the charge of the united parishes. To this parish that of St. Michael Quern is united."

Among the odd monumental inscriptions in this church are the following:--

"Lord, of thy infinite grace and Pittee Have mercy on me Agnes, somtym the wyf Of William Milborne, Chamberlain of this citte, Which toke my passage fro this wretched lyf, The year of gras one thousand fyf hundryd and fyf, The xii. day of July; no longer was my spase, It plesy'd then my Lord to call me to his Grase; Now ye that are living, and see this picture, Pray for me here, whyle ye have tyme and spase, That God of his goodnes wold me assure, In his everlasting mansion to have a plase. Obiit Anno 1505."

"Here lyeth interred the body of Christopher Wase, late citizen and goldsmith of London, aged 66 yeeres, and dyed the 22nd September, 1605; who had to wife Anne, the daughter of William Prettyman, and had by her three sons and three daughters.

"Reader, stay, and thou shalt know What he is, that here doth sleepe; Lodged amidst the Stones below, Stones that oft are seen to weepe. Gentle was his Birth and Breed, His carriage gentle, much contenting; His word accorded with his Deed, Sweete his nature, soone relenting. From above he seem'd protected, Father dead before his Birth. An orphane only, but neglected. Yet his Branches spread on Earth, Earth that must his Bones containe, Sleeping, till Christ's Trumpet shall wake them, Joyning them to Soule againe, And to Blisse eternal take them. It is not this rude and little Heap of Stones, Can hold the Fame, although't containes the Bones; Light be the Earth, and hallowed for thy sake, Resting in Peace, Peace that thou so oft didst make."

Coachmakers' Hall, Noble Street, Foster Lane originally built by the Scriveners' Company, was afterwards sold to the Coachmakers. Here the "Protestant Association" held its meetings, and here originated the dreadful riots of the year 1780. The Protestant Association was formed in February, 1778, in consequence of a bill brought into the House of Commons to repeal certain penalties and liabilities imposed upon Roman Catholics. When the bill was passed, a petition was framed for its repeal; and here, in this very hall (May 29, 1780), the following resolution was proposed and carried:--

"That the whole body of the Protestant Association do attend in St. George's Fields, on Friday next, at ten of the clock in the morning, to accompany Lord George Gordon to the House of Commons, on the delivery of the Protestant petition." His lordship, who was present on this occasion, remarked that "if less than 20,000 of his fellow-citizens attended him on that day, he would not present their petition."

Upwards of 50,000 "true Protestants" promptly answered the summons of the Association, and the Gordon riots commenced, to the six days' terror of the metropolis.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXI. CHEAPSIDE TRIBUTARIES, NORTH:--WOOD STREET

Wood Street--Pleasant Memories--St. Peter's in Chepe--St. Michael's and St. Mary Staining--St. Alban's, Wood Street--Some Quaint Epitaphs--Wood Street Compter and the Hapless Prisoners therein--Wood Street Painful, Wood Street Cheerful--Thomas Ripley--The Anabaptist Rising--A Remarkable Wine Cooper--St. John Zachary and St. Anne-in-the-Willows--Haberdashers' Hall--Something about the Mercers.

Wood Street runs from Cheapside to London Wall. Stow has two conjectures as to its name--first, that it was so called because the houses in it were built all of wood, contrary to Richard I.'s edict that London houses should be built of stone, to prevent fire; secondly, that it was called after one Thomas Wood, sheriff in 1491 (Henry VII.), who dwelt in this street, was a benefactor to St. Peter in Chepe, and built "the beautiful row of houses over against Wood Street end."

At Cheapside Cross, which stood at the corner of Wood Street, all royal proclamations used to be read, even long after the cross was removed. Thus, in 1666, we find Charles II.'s declaration of war against Louis XIV. proclaimed by the officers at arms, serjeants at arms, trumpeters, &c., at Whitehall Gate, Temple Bar, the end of Chancery Lane, Wood Street, Cheapside, and the Royal Exchange. Huggin's Lane, in this street, derives its name, as Stow tells us, from a London citizen who dwelt here in the reign of Edward I., and was called Hugan in the Lane.

That pleasant tree at the left-hand corner of Wood Street, which has cheered many a weary business man with memories of the fresh green fields far away, was for long the residence of rooks, who built there. In 1845 two fresh nests were built, and one is still visible; but the sable birds deserted their noisy town residence several years ago. Probably, as the north of London was more built over, and such feeding-grounds as Belsize Park turned to brick and mortar, the birds found the fatigue of going miles in search of food for their young unbearable, and so migrated. Leigh Hunt, in one of his agreeable books, remarks that there are few districts in London where you will not find a tree. "A child was shown us," says Leigh Hunt, "who was said never to have beheld a tree but one in St. Paul's Churchyard (now gone). Whenever a tree was mentioned, it was this one; she had no conception of any other, not even of the remote tree in Cheapside." This famous tree marks the site of St. Peter in Chepe, a church destroyed by the Great Fire. The terms of the lease of the low houses at the west-end corner are said to forbid the erection of another storey or the removal of the tree. Whether this restriction arose from a love of the tree, as we should like to think, we cannot say.

St. Peter's in Chepe is a rectory (says Stow), "the church whereof stood at the south-west corner of Wood Street, in the ward of Farringdon Within, but of what antiquity I know not, other than that Thomas de Winton was rector thereof in 1324."

The patronage of this church was anciently in the Abbot and Convent of St. Albans, with whom it continued till the suppression of their monastery, when Henry VIII., in the year 1546, granted the same to the Earl of Southampton. It afterwards belonged to the Duke of Montague. This church being destroyed in the fire and not rebuilt, the parish is united to the Church of St. Matthew, Friday Street. "In the year 1401," says Maitland, "licence was granted to the inhabitants of this parish to erect a shed or shop before their church in Cheapside. On the site of this building, anciently called the 'Long Shop,' are now erected four shops, with rooms over them."

Wordsworth has immortalised Wood Street by his plaintive little ballad--

THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN.

"At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears, Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years; Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard In the silence of morning the song of the bird.

"'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? she sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

"Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

"She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade; The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colours have all passed away from her eyes."

Perhaps some summer morning the poet, passing down Cheapside, saw the plane-tree at the corner wave its branches to him as a friend waves a hand, and at that sight there passed through his mind an imagination of some poor Cumberland servant-girl toiling in London, and regretting her far-off home among the pleasant hills.

St. Michael's, Wood Street, is a rectory situated on the west side of Wood Street, in the ward of Cripplegate Within. John de Eppewell was rector thereof before the year 1328. "The patronage was anciently in the Abbot and Convent of St. Albans, in whom it continued till the suppression of their monastery, when, coming to the Crown, it was, with the appurtenances, in the year 1544, sold by Henry VIII. to William Barwell, who, in the year 1588, conveyed the same to John Marsh and others, in trust for the parish, in which it still continues." Being destroyed in the Great Fire, it was rebuilt, in 1675, from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren. At the east end four Ionic pillars support an entablature and pediment, and the three circular-headed windows are well proportioned. The south side faces Huggin Lane, but the tower and spire are of no interest. The interior of the church is a large parallelogram, with an ornamented carved ceiling. In 1831 the church was repaired and the tower thrown open. The altar-piece represents Moses and Aaron. The vestry-books date from the beginning of the sixteenth century, and contain, among others, memoranda of parochial rejoicings, such as--"1620. Nov. 9. Paid for ringing and a bonfire, 4s."

The Church of St. Mary Staining being destroyed in the Great Fire, the parish was annexed to that of St. Michael's. The following is the most curious of the monumental inscriptions:--

"John Casey, of this parish, whose dwelling was In the north-corner house as to Lad Lane you pass; For better knowledge, the name it hath now Is called and known by the name of the Plow; Out of that house yearly did geeve Twenty shillings to the poore, their neede to releeve; Which money the tenant must yearlie pay To the parish and churchwardens on St. Thomas' Day. The heire of that house, Thomas Bowrman by name, Hath since, by his deed, confirmed the same; Whose love to the poore doth hereby appear, And after his death shall live many a yeare. Therefore in your life do good while yee may, That when meagre death shall take yee away; You may live like form'd as Casey and Bowrman-- For he that doth well shall never be a poore man."

Here was also a monument to Queen Elizabeth, with this inscription, found in many other London churches:--

"Here lyes her type, who was of late The prop of Belgia, stay of France, Spaine's foile, Faith's shield, and queen of State, Of arms, of learning, fate and chance. In brief, of women ne'er was seen So great a prince, so good a queen.

"Sith Vertue her immortal made, Death, envying all that cannot dye, Her earthly parts did so invade As in it wrackt self-majesty. But so her spirits inspired her parts, That she still lives in loyal hearts."

There was buried here (but without any outward monument) the head of James, the fourth King of Scots, slain at Flodden Field. After the battle, the body of the said king being found, was closed in lead, and conveyed from thence to London, and so to the monastery of Shene, in Surrey, where it remained for a time. "But since the dissolution of that house," says Stow, "in the reign of Edward VI., Henry Gray, Duke of Suffolk, lodged and kept house there. I have been shown the said body, so lapped in lead. The head and body were thrown into a waste room, amongst the old timber, lead, and other rubble; since which time workmen there, for their foolish pleasure, hewed off his head; and Launcelot Young, master glazier to Queen Elizabeth, feeling a sweet savour to come from thence, and seeing the same dried from moisture, and yet the form remaining with the hair of the head and beard red, brought it to London, to his house in Wood Street, where for a time he kept it for the sweetness, but in the end caused the sexton of that church to bury it amongst other bones taken out of their charnel."

"The parish church of St. Michael, in Wood Street, is a proper thing," says Strype, "and lately well repaired; John Iue, parson of this church, John Forster, goldsmith, and Peter Fikelden, taylor, gave two messuages and shops, in the same parish and street, and in Ladle Lane, to the reparation of the church, the 16th of Richard II. In the year 1627 the parishioners made a new door to this church into Wood Street, where till then it had only one door, standing in Huggin Lane."

St. Mary Staining, in Wood Street, destroyed by the Great Fire, stood on the north side of Oat Lane, in the Ward of Aldersgate Within. "The additional epithet of staining," says Maitland, "is as uncertain as the time of the foundation; some imagining it to be derived from the painters' stainers, who probably lived near it; and others from its being built with stone, to distinguish it from those in the City that were built with wood. The advowson of the rectory anciently belonged to the Prioress and Convent of Clerkenwell, in whom it continued till their suppression by Henry VIII., when it came to the Crown. The parish, as previously observed, is now united to St. Michael's, Wood Street. That this church is not of a modern foundation, is manifest from John de Lukenore's being rector thereof before the year 1328."

St. Alban's, Wood Street, in the time of Paul, the fourteenth Abbot of St. Alban's, belonged to the Verulam monastery, but in 1077 the abbot exchanged the right of presentation to this church for the patronage of one belonging to the Abbot of Westminster. Matthew Paris says that this Wood Street Church was the chapel of King Offa, the founder of St. Alban's Abbey, who had a palace near it. Stow says it was of great antiquity, and that Roman bricks were visible here and there among the stones. Maitland thinks it probable that it was one of the first churches built by Alfred in London after he had driven out the Danes. The right of presentation to the church was originally possessed by the master, brethren, and sisters of St. James's Leper Hospital (site of St. James's Palace), and after the death of Henry VI. it was vested in the Provost and Fellows of Eton College. In the reign of Charles II. the parish was united to that of St. Olave, Silver Street, and the right of presentation is now exercised alternately by Eton College and the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's. The style of the interior of the church is late pointed. The windows appear older than the rest of the building. The ceiling in the nave exhibits bold groining, and the general effect is not unpleasing.

"One note of the great antiquity of this church," says Seymour, "is the name, by which it was first dedicated to St. Alban, the first martyr of England. Another character of the antiquity of it is to be seen in the manner of the turning of the arches to the windows, and the heads of the pillars. A third note appears in the Roman bricks, here and there inlaid amongst the stones of the building. Very probable it is that this church is, at least, of as ancient a standing as King Adelstane, the Saxon, who, as tradition says, had his house at the east end of this church. This king's house, having a door also into Adel Street, in this parish, gave name, as 'tis thought, to the said Adel Street, which, in all evidences, to this day is written King Adel Street. One great square tower of this king's house seemed, in Stow's time, to be then remaining, and to be seen at the north corner of Love Lane, as you come from Aldermanbury, which tower was of the very same stone and manner of building with St. Alban's Church."

About the commencement of the seventeenth century St. Alban's, being in a state of great decay, was surveyed by Sir Henry Spiller and Inigo Jones, and in accordance with their advice, apparently, in 1632 it was pulled down, and rebuilt anno 1634; but, perishing in the flames of 1666, it was re-erected as it now appears, and finished in the year 1688, from Wren's design.

In the old church were the following epitaphs:--

"Of William Wilson, Joane his wife, And Alice, their daughter deare, These lines were left to give report These three lye buried here; And Alice was Henry Decon's wife, Which Henry lives on earth, And is the Serjeant Plummer To Queen ELIZABETH. With whom this Alice left issue here, His virtuous daughter Joan, To be his comfort everywhere Now joyfull Alice is gone. And for these three departed soules, Gone up to joyfull blisse, Th' almighty praise be given to God, To whom the glory is."

Over the grave of Anne, the wife of Laurence Gibson, gentleman, were the following verses, which are worth mentioning here:--

"MENTIS VIS MAGNA.

"What! is she dead? Doth he survive? No; both are dead, And both alive. She lives, hee's dead, By love, though grieving, In him, for her, Yet dead, yet living; Both dead and living, Then what is gone? One half of both, Not any one. One mind, one faith, One hope, one grave, In life, in death, They had and still they have."

The pulpit (says Seymour) is finely carved with an enrichment, in imitation of fruit and leaves; and the sound-board is a hexagon, having round it a fine cornice, adorned with cherubims and other embellishments, and the inside is neatly finniered. The altar-piece is very ornamental, consisting of four columns, fluted with their bases, pedestals, entablature, and open pediment of the Corinthian order; and over each column, upon acroters, is a lamp with a gilded taper. Between the inner columns are the Ten Commandments, done in gold letters upon black. Between the two, northward, is the Lord's Prayer, and the two southward the Creed, done in gold upon blue. Over the commandments is a Glory between two cherubims, and above the cornice the king's arms, with the supporters, helmet, and crest, richly carved, under a triangular pediment; and on the north and south side of the above described ornaments are two large cartouches, all of which parts are carved in fine wainscot. The church is well paved with oak, and here are two large brass branches and a marble font, having enrichments of cherubims, &c.

In a curious brass frame, attached to a tall stem, opposite the pulpit is an hour-glass, by which the preacher could measure his sermon and test his listeners' patience. The hour-glass at St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, was taken down in 1723, and two heads for the parish staves made out of the silver.

Wood Street Compter (says Cunningham) was first established in 1555, when, on the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel in that year, the prisoners were removed from the Old Compter in Bread Street to the New Compter in Wood Street, Cheapside. This compter was burnt down in the Great Fire, but was rebuilt in 1670. It stood on the east side of the street, and was removed to Giltspur Street in 1791. There were two compters in London--the compter in Wood Street, under the control of one of the sheriffs, and the compter in the Poultry, under the superintendence of the other. Under each sheriff was a secondary, a clerk of the papers, four clerk sitters, eighteen serjeants-at-mace (each serjeant having his yeomen), a master keeper, and two turnkeys. The serjeants wore blue and coloured cloth gowns, and the words of arrest were, "Sir, we arrest you in the King's Majesty's name, and we charge you to obey us." There were three sides--the master's side, the dearest of all; the knights' ward, a little cheaper; and the Hole, the cheapest of all. The register of entries was called the Black Book. Garnish was demanded at every step, and the Wood Street Compter was hung with the story of the prodigal son.

When the Wood Street counter gate was opened, the prisoner's name was enrolled in the black book, and he was asked if he was for the master's side, the Knight's ward, or the Hole. At every fresh door a fee was demanded, the stranger's hat or cloak being detained if he refused to pay the extortion, which, in prison language, was called "garnish." The first question to a new prisoner was, whether he was in by arrest or command; and there was generally some knavish attorney in a threadbare black suit, who, for forty shillings, would offer to move for a habeas corpus, and have him out presently, much to the amusement of the villanous-looking men who filled the room, some smoking and some drinking. At dinner a vintner's boy, who was in waiting, filled a bowl full of claret, and compelled the new prisoner to drink to all the society; and the turnkeys, who were dining in another room, then demanded another tester for a quart of wine to quaff to the new comer's health.

At the end of a week, when the prisoner's purse grew thin, he was generally compelled to pass over to the knight's side, and live in a humbler and more restricted manner. Here a fresh garnish of eighteen pence was demanded, and if this was refused, he was compelled to sleep over the drain; or, if he chose, to sit up, to drink and smoke in the cellar with vile companions till the keepers ordered every man to his bed.

Fennor, an actor in 1617 (James I.), wrote a curious pamphlet on the abuses of this compter. "For what extreme extortion," says the angry writer, "is it when a gentleman is brought in by the watch for some misdemeanour committed, that he must pay at least an angell before he be discharged; hee must pay twelvepence for turning the key at the master-side dore two shillings to the chamberleine, twelvepence for his garnish for wine, tenpence for his dinner, whether he stay or no, and when he comes to be discharged at the booke, it will cost at least three shillings and sixpence more, besides sixpence for the booke-keeper's paines, and sixpence for the porter.... And if a gentleman stay there but one night, he must pay for his garnish sixteene pence, besides a groate for his lodging, and so much for his sheetes ... When a gentleman is upon his discharge, and hath given satisfaction for his executions, they must have fees for irons, three halfepence in the pound, besides the other fees, so that if a man were in for a thousand or fifteene hundred pound execution, they will if a man is so madde have so many three halfepence.

"This little Hole is as a little citty in a commonwealth, for as in a citty there are all kinds of officers, trades, and vocations, so there is in this place, as we may make a pretty resemblance between them. In steede of a Lord Maior, we have a master steward to over-see and correct all misdemeanours as shall arise.... And lastly, as in a citty there is all kinds of trades, so is there heere, for heere you shall see a cobler sitting mending olde showes, and singing as merrily as if hee were under a stall abroad; not farre from him you shall see a taylor sit crosse-legged (like a witch) on his cushion, theatning the ruine of our fellow prisoner, the Ægyptian vermine; in another place you may behold a saddler empannelling all his wits together how to patch this Scotchpadde handsomely, or mend the old gentlewoman's crooper that was almost burst in pieces. You may have a phisition here, that for a bottle of sack will undertake to give you as good a medicine for melancholly as any doctor will for five pounds. Besides, if you desire to bee remouved before a judge, you shall have a tinker-like attorney not farre distant from you, that in stopping up one hole in a broken cause, will make twenty before hee hath made an end, and at last will leave you in prison as bare of money as he himself is of honesty. Heere is your cholericke cooke that will dresse our meate, when wee can get any, as well as any greasie scullion in Fleet Lane or Pye Corner."

At 25, Silver Street, Wood Street, is the hall of one of the smaller City companies--the Parish Clerks of London, Westminster, Borough of Southwark, and fifteen out parishes, with their master wardens and fellows. This company was incorporated as early as Henry III.(1233), by the name of the Fraternity of St. Nicholas, an ominous name, for "St. Nicholas's clerk" was a jocose nom de guerre for highwaymen. The first hall of the fraternity stood in Bishopsgate Street, the second in Broad Lane, in Vintry Ward. The fraternity was re-incorporated by James I. in 1611, and confirmed by Charles I. in 1636. The hall contains a few portraits, and in a painted glass window, David playing on the harp, St. Cecilia at the organ, &c. The parish clerks were the actors in the old miracle plays, the parish clerks of our churches dating only from the commencement of the Reformation. The "Bills of Mortality" were commenced by the Parish Clerks' Company in 1592, who about 1625 were licensed by the Star Chamber to keep a printing-press in their hall for printing the bills, valuable for their warning of the existence or progress of the plague. The "Weekly Bill" of the Parish Clerks has, however, been superseded by the "Tables of Mortality in the Metropolis," issued weekly from the Registrar-General's Office, at Somerset House, since July 1st, 1837. The Parish Clerks' Company neither confer the freedom of the City, nor the hereditary freedom.

There is a large gold refinery in Wood Street, through whose doors three tons of gold a day have been known to pass. Australian gold is here cast into ingots, value £800 each. This gold is one carat and three quarters above the standard, and when the first two bars of Australian gold were sent to the Bank of England they were sent back, as their wonderful purity excited suspicion. For refining, the gold is boiled fifteen minutes, poured off into hand moulds 18 pounds troy weight, strewn with ivory black, and then left to cool. You see here the stalwart men wedging apart great bars of silver for the melting pots. The silver is purified in a blast-furnace, and mixed with nitric acid in platinum crucibles, that cost from £700 to £1,000 apiece. The bars of gold are stamped with a trade-mark, and pieces are cut off each ingot to be sent to the assayer for his report.

"I read in divers records," says Stow, "of a house in Wood Street then called 'Black Hall;' but no man at this day can tell thereof. In the time of King Richard II., Sir Henry Percy, the son and heir of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had a house in 'Wodstreate,' in London (whether this Black Hall or no, it is hard to trace), wherein he treated King Richard, the Duke of Lancaster, the Duke of York, the Earl Marshal, and his father, the Earl of Northumberland, with others, at supper."

The "Rose," in Wood Street, was a sponging-house, well known to the rakehells and spendthrifts of Charles II.'s time. "I have been too lately under their (the bailiffs') clutches," says Tom Brown, "to desire any more dealings with them, and I cannot come within a furlong of the 'Rose' sponging-house without five or six yellow-boys in my pocket to cast out those devils there, who would otherwise infallibly take possession of me."

The "Mitre," an old tavern in Wood Street, was kept in Charles II.'s time by William Proctor, who died insolvent in 1665. "18th Sept., 1660," Pepys says, "to the 'Miter Taverne,' in Wood Street (a house of the greatest note in London). Here some of us fell to handycap, a sport that I never knew before." And again, "31st July, 1665. Proctor, the vintner, of the 'Miter,' in Wood Street, and his son, are dead this morning of the plague; he having laid out abundance of money there, and was the greatest vintner for some time in London for great entertainments."

In early life Thomas Ripley, afterwards a celebrated architect, kept a carpenter's shop and coffee house in Wood Street. Marrying a servant of Sir Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister of George I., this lucky pushing man soon obtained work from the Crown and a seat at the Board of Works, and supplanted that great genius who built St. Paul's, to the infinite disgrace of the age. Ripley built the Admiralty, and Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for his early patron, Walpole, and died rich in 1758.

Wood Street is associated with that last extraordinary outburst of the Civil War fanaticism--the Anabaptist rising in January, 1661.

On Sunday, January 6, 1661, we read in "Somers' Tracts," "these monsters assembled at their meeting-house, in Coleman Street, where they armed themselves, and sallying thence, came to St. Paul's in the dusk of the evening, and there, after ordering their small party, placed sentinels, one of whom killed a person accidentally passing by, because he said he was for God and King Charles when challenged by him. This giving the alarm, and some parties of trained bands charging them, and being repulsed, they marched to Bishopsgate, thence to Cripplegate and Aldersgate, where, going out, in spite of the constables and watch, they declared for King Jesus. Proceeding to Beech Lane, they killed a headborough, who would have opposed them. It was observed that all they shot, though never so slightly wounded, died. Then they hasted away to Cane Wood, where they lurked, resolved to make another effort upon the City, but were drove thence, and routed by a party of horse and foot, sent for that purpose, about thirty being taken and brought before General Monk, who committed them to the Gate House.

"Nevertheless, the others who had escaped out of the wood returned to London, not doubting of success in their enterprise; Venner, a wine-cooper by trade, and their head, affirming, he was assured that no weapons employed against them would prosper, nor a hair of their head be touched; which their coming off at first so well made them willing to believe. These fellows had taken the opportunity of the king's being gone to Portsmouth, having before made a disposition for drawing to them of other desperate rebels, by publishing a declaration called, 'A Door of Hope Opened,' full of abominable slanders against the whole royal family.

"On Wednesday morning, January 9, after the watches and guards were dismissed, they resumed their first enterprise. The first appearance was in Threadneedle Street, where they alarmed the trained bands upon duty that day, and drove back a party sent after them, to their main guard, which then marched in a body towards them. The Fifth Monarchists retired into Bishopsgate Street, where some of them took into an ale-house, known by the sign of 'The Helmet,' where, after a sharp dispute, two were killed, and as many taken, the same number of the trained bands being killed and wounded. The next sight of them (for they vanished and appeared again on a sudden), was at College Hill, which way they went into Cheapside, and so into Wood Street, Venner leading them, with a morrion on his head and a halbert in his hand. Here was the main and hottest action, for they fought stoutly with the Trained Bands, and received a charge from the Life Guards, whom they obliged to give way, until, being overpowered, and Venner knocked down and wounded and shot, Tufney and Crag, two others of their chief teachers, being killed by him, they began to give ground, and soon after dispersed, flying outright and taking several ways. The greatest part of them went down Wood Street to Cripplegate, firing in the rear at the Yellow Trained Bands, then in close pursuit of them. Ten of them took into the 'Blue Anchor' ale-house, near the postern, which house they maintained until Lieutenant-Colonel Cox, with his company, secured all the avenues to it. In the meantime, some of the aforesaid Yellow Trained Bands got upon the tiles of the next house, which they threw off, and fired in upon the rebels who were in the upper room, and even then refused quarter. At the same time, another file of musketeers got up the stairs, and having shot down the door, entered upon them. Six of them were killed before, another wounded, and one, refusing quarter, was knocked down, and afterwards shot. The others being asked why they had not begged quarter before, answered they durst not, for fear their own fellows should shoot them."

The upshot of this insane revolt of a handful of men was that twenty-two king's men were killed, and twenty-two of the fanatics, proving the fighting to have been hard. Twenty were taken, and nine or ten hung, drawn, and quartered. Venner, the leader, who was wounded severely, and some others, were drawn on sledges, their quarters were set on the four gates, and their heads stuck on poles on London Bridge. Two more were hung at the west end of St. Paul's, two at the Royal Exchange, two at the Bull and Mouth, two in Beech Lane, one at Bishopsgate, and another, captured later, was hung at Tyburn, and his head set on a pole in Whitechapel.

The texts these Fifth Monarchy men chiefly relied on were these:--"He shall use his people, in his hand as his battle-axe and weapon of war, for the bringing in the kingdoms of this world into subjection to Him." A few Scriptures (and but a few) as to this, Isa. xli. 14th verse; but more especially the 15th and 16th verses. The prophet, speaking of Jacob, saith: "Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument, having teeth; thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff; thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away," &c.

"Maiden Lane," says Stow, "formerly Engine Lane, is a good, handsome, well-built, and inhabited street. The east end falleth into Wood Street. At the north-east corner, over against Goldsmiths' Hall, stood the parish church of St. John Zachary, which since the dreadful fire is not rebuilt, but the parish united unto St. Ann's, Aldersgate, the ground on which it stood, enclosed within a wall, serving as a burial-place for the parish."

The old Goldsmiths' Church of St. John Zachary, Maiden Lane, destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt, stood at the north-west corner of Maiden Lane, in the Ward of Aldersgate; the parish is annexed to that of St. Anne. Among other epitaphs in this church, Stow gives the following:--

"Here lieth the body of John Sutton, citizen, goldsmith, and alderman of London; who died 6th July, 1450. This brave and worthy alderman was killed in the defence of the City, in the bloody nocturnal battle on London Bridge, against the infamous Jack Cade, and his army of Kentish rebels."

"Here lieth William Brekespere, of London, some time merchant, Goldsmith and alderman, the Commonwele attendant, With Margaryt his Dawter, late wyff of Suttoon, And Thomas, hur Sonn, yet livyn undyr Goddy's tuitioon. The tenth of July he made his transmigration. She disissyd in the yer of Grase of Chryst's Incarnation, A Thowsand Four hundryd Threescor and oon. God assoyl their Sowls whose Bodys lye undyr this Stoon."

This church was rated to pay a certain annual sum to the canons of St. Paul's, about the year 1181, at which time it was denominated St. John Baptist's, as appears from a grant thereof from the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's to one Zachary, whose name it probably received to distinguish it from one of the same name in Walbrook.

St. Anne in the Willows was a church destroyed by the Great Fire, rebuilt by Wren, and united to the parish of St. John Zachary. "It is so called," says Stow, "some say of willows growing thereabouts; but now there is no such void place for willows to grow, more than the churchyard, wherein grow some high ash-trees."

"This church, standing," says Strype, "in the churchyard, is planted before with lime-trees that flourish there. So that as it was formerly called St. Anne-in-the-Willows, it may now be called St. Anne-in-the-Limes."

St. Anne can be traced back as far as 1332. The patronage was anciently in the Dean and Canons of St. Martin's-le-Grand, in whose gift it continued till Henry VII. annexed that Collegiate Church, with its appendages, to the Abbey of Westminster. In 1553 Queen Mary gave it to the Bishop of London and his successors. One of the monuments here bears the following inscription:--

"Peter Heiwood, younger son of Peter Heiwood, one of the counsellors of Jamaica, by Grace, daughter of Sir John Muddeford, Kt. and Bart., great-grandson to Peter Heiwood, of Heywood, in County Palatine of Lancaster, who apprehended Guy Faux with his dark lanthorn, and for his zealous prosecution of Papists, as Justice of the Peace, was stabbed in Westminster Hall by John James, a Dominican Friar, An. Dom. 1640. Obiit, Novr. 2, 1701.

"Reader, if not a Papist bred, Upon such ashes gently tred."

The site of Haberdashers' Hall, in Maiden Lane, opposite Goldsmiths' Hall, was bequeathed to the Company by William Baker, a London haberdasher, in 1478 (Edward IV.). In the old hall, destroyed by the Great Fire, the Parliament Commissioners held their meetings during the Commonwealth, and many a stern decree of confiscation was there grimly signed. In this hall there are some good portraits. The Haberdashers' Company have many livings and exhibitions in their gift; and almhouses at Hoxton, Monmouth, Newland (Gloucestershire), and Newport (Shropshire); schools in Bunhill Row, Monmouth, and Newport; and they lend sums of £50 or £100 to struggling young men of their own trade.

The haberdashers were originally a branch of the mercers, dealing like them in merceries or small wares. Lydgate, in his ballad, describes the mercers' and haberdashers' stalls as side by side in the mercery in Chepe. In the reign of Henry VI., when first incorporated, they divided into two fraternities, St. Catherine and St. Nicholas. The one being hurrers, cappers, or haberdashers of hats; the other, haberdashers of ribands, laces, and small wares only. The latter were also called milliners, from their selling such merchandise as brooches, agglets, spurs, capes, glasses, and pins. "In the early part of Elizabeth's reign," says Herbert, "upwards of £60,000 annually was paid to foreign merchants for pins alone, but before her death pins were made in England, and in the reign of James I. the pinmakers obtained a charter."

In the reign of Henry VII. the two societies united. Queen Elizabeth granted them their arms: Barry nebule of six, argent and azure on a bend gules, a lion passant gardant; crest or, a helmet and torse, two arms supporting a laurel proper and issuing out of a cloud argent. Supporters, two Indian goats argent, attired and hoofed or; motto, "Serve and Obey." Maitland describes their annual expenditure in charity as £3,500. The number of the Company consists of one master, four wardens, forty-five assistants, 360 livery, and a large company of freemen. This Company is the eighth in order of the chief twelve City Companies.

In the reign of Edward VI. there were not more than a dozen milliner's shops in all London, but in 1580 the dealers in foreign luxuries had so increased as to alarm the frugal and the philosophic. These dealers sold French and Spanish gloves, French cloth and frieze, Flemish kersies, daggers, swords, knives, Spanish girdles, painted cruises, dials, tablets, cards, balls, glasses, fine earthen pots, salt-cellars, spoons, tin dishes, puppets, pennons, inkhorns, toothpicks, fans, pomanders, silk, and silver buttons.

The Haberdashers were incorporated by a Charter of Queen Elizabeth in 1578. The Court books extend to the time of Charles I. only. Their charters exist in good preservation. In their chronicles we have only a few points to notice. In 1466 they sent two of their members to attend the coronation of Elizabeth, queen of Edward IV., and they also were represented at the coronation of the detestable Richard III. Like the other Companies, the Haberdashers were much oppressed during the time of Charles I. and the Commonwealth, during which they lost nearly £50,000. The Company's original bye-laws having been burnt in the Great Fire, a new code was drawn up, which in 1675 was sanctioned by Lord Chancellor Finch, Sir Matthew Hale, and Sir Francis North.

The dining-hall is a lofty and spacious room. About ten years since it was much injured by fire, but has been since restored and handsomely decorated. Over the screen at the lower end is a music gallery, and the hall is lighted from above by six sun-burners. Among the portraits in the edifice are whole lengths of William Adams, Esq., founder of the grammar school and almshouses at Newport, in Shropshire; Jerome Knapp, Esq., a former Master of the Company; and Micajah Perry, Esq., Lord Mayor in 1739; a half-length of George Whitmore, Esq., Lord Mayor in 1631; Sir Hugh Hammersley, Knight, Lord Mayor in 1627; Mr. Thomas Aldersey, merchant, of Banbury, in Cheshire, who, in 1594, vested a considerable estate in this Company for charitable uses; Mr. William Jones, merchant adventurer, who bequeathed £18,000 for benevolent purposes; and Robert Aske, the worthy founder of the Haberdashers' Hospital at Hoxton.

Gresham Street, that intersects Wood Street, was formerly called Lad or Ladle Lane, and part of it Maiden Lane, from a shop sign of the Virgin. It is written Lad Lane in a chronicle of Edward IV.'s time, published by Sir Harris Nicolas, page 98. The "Swan with Two Necks," in Lad Lane, was for a century and more, till railways ruined stage and mail coach travelling, the booking office and head-quarters of coaches to the North.

Love Lane was so named from the wantons who once infested it. The Cross Keys Inn derived its name from the bygone Church of St. Peter before mentioned. As there are traditions of Saxon kings once dwelling in Foster Lane, so in Gutter Lane we find traditions of some Danish celebrities. "Gutter Lane," says Stow, that patriarch of London topography, "was so called by Guthurun, some time owner thereof." In a manuscript chronicle of London, written in the reign of Edward IV., and edited by Sir N.H. Nicolas, it is called "Goster Lane."

Brewers' Hall, No. 19, Addle Street, Wood Street, Cheapside, is a modern edifice, and contains, among other pictures, a portrait of Dame Alice Owen, who narrowly escaped death from an archer's stray arrow while walking in Islington fields, in gratitude for which she founded an hospital. In the hall window is some old painted glass. The Brewers were incorporated in 1438. The quarterage in this Company is paid on the quantity of malt consumed by its members. In 1851 a handsome schoolhouse was built for the Company, in Trinity Square, Tower Hill.

In 1422 Whittington laid an information before his successor in the mayoralty, Robert Childe, against the Brewers' Company, for selling dear ale, when they were convicted in the penalty of £20; and the masters were ordered to be kept in prison in the chamberlain's custody until they paid it.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

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:--

"HERE LIETH THE BODY OF SIR WILLIAM STONE, KNT.

"As the Earth the Earth doth cover, So under this stone Lyes another; Sir William Stone, Who long deceased, Ere the world's love Him released; So much it loved him, For they say, He answered Death Before his day; But, 'tis not so; For he was sought Of One that both him Made and bought. He remain'd The Great Lord's Treasurer, Who called for him At his pleasure, And received him. Yet be it said, Earth grieved that Heaven So soon was paid.

"Here likewise lyes Inhumed in one bed, Dear Barbara, The well-beloved wife Of this remembered Knight; Whose souls are fled From this dimure vale To everlasting life, Where no more change, Nor no more separation, Shall make them flye From their blest habitation. Grasse of levitie, Span in brevity, Flower's felicity, Fire of misery, Wind's stability, Is mortality."

"Honey Lane," says good old Stow, "is so called not of sweetness thereof, being very narrow and small and dark, but rather of often washing and sweeping to keep it clean." With all due respect to Stow, we suspect that the lane did not derive its name from any superlative cleanliness, but more probably from honey being sold here in the times before sugar became common and honey alone was used by cooks for sweetening.

On the site of All Hallows' Church, destroyed in the Great Fire, a market was afterwards established.

"There be no monuments," says Stow, "in this church worth the noting; I find that John Norman, Maior, 1453, was buried there. He gave to the drapers his tenements on the north side of the said church; they to allow for the beam light and lamp 13s. 4d. yearly, from this lane to the Standard.

"This church hath the misfortune to have no bequests to church or poor, nor to any publick use.

"There was a parsonage house before the Great Fire, but now the ground on which it stood is swallowed up by the market. The parish of St. Mary-le-Bow (to which it is united) hath received all the money paid for the site of the ground of the said parsonage."

All Hallows' Church was repaired and beautified at the cost of the parishioners in 1625.

Lawrence Lane derives its name from the church of St. Lawrence, at its north end. "Antiquities," says Stow, "in this lane I find none other than among many fair houses. There is one large inn for receipt of travellers, called 'Blossoms Inn,' but corruptly 'Bosoms Inn,' and hath for a sign 'St. Lawrence, the Deacon,' in a border of blossoms or flowers." This was one of the great City inns set apart for Charles V.'s suite, when he came over to visit Henry VIII. in 1522. At the sign of "St. Lawrence Bosoms" twenty beds and stabling for sixty horses were ordered.

The curious old tract about Bankes and his trained horse was written under the assumed names of "John Dando, the wier-drawer of Hadley, and Harrie Runt, head ostler of Besomes Inne," which is probably the same place.

St. Lawrence Church is situate on the north side of Cateaton Street, "and is denominated," says Maitland, "from its dedication to Lawrence, a Spanish saint, born at Huesca, in the kingdom of Arragon; who, after having undergone the most grievous tortures, in the persecution under Valerian, the emperor, was cruelly broiled alive upon a gridiron, with a slow fire, till he died, for his strict adherence to Christianity; and the additional epithet of Jewry, from its situation among the Jews, was conferred upon it, to distinguish it from the church of St. Lawrence Pulteney, now demolished.

"This church, which was anciently a rectory, being given by Hugo de Wickenbroke to Baliol College in Oxford, anno 1294, the rectory ceased; wherefore Richard, Bishop of London, converted the same into a vicarage; the advowson whereof still continues in the same college. This church sharing the common fate in 1666, it has since been beautifully rebuilt, and the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, thereunto annexed." The famous Sir Richard Gresham lies buried here, with the following inscription on his tomb:--

"Here lyeth the great Sir Richard Gresham, Knight, some time Lord Maior of London; and Audrey, his first wife, by whom he had issue, Sir John Gresham and Sir Thomas Gresham, Knights, William and Margaret; which Sir Richard deceased the 20th day of February, An. Domini 1548, and the third yeere of King Edward the Sixth his Reigne, and Audrey deceased the 28th day of December, An. Dom. 1522."

There is also this epitaph:--

"Lo here the Lady Margaret North, In tombe and earth do lye; Of husbands four the faithfull spouse, Whose fame shall never dye. One Andrew Franncis was the first, The second Robert hight, Surnamed Chartsey, Alderman; Sir David Brooke, a knight, Was third. But he that passed all, And was in number fourth, And for his virtue made a Lord, Was called Sir Edward North. These altogether do I wish A joyful rising day; That of the Lord and of his Christ, All honour they may say. Obiit 2 die Junii, An. Dom. 1575."

In Ironmonger Lane, inhabited by ironmongers temp. Edward I., is Mercers' Hall, an interesting building.

The Mercers, though not formally incorporated till the 17th of Richard II. (1393), are traced back by Herbert as early as 1172. Soon afterwards they are mentioned as patrons of one of the great London charities. In 1214, Robert Spencer, a mercer, was mayor. In 1296 the mercers joined the company of merchant adventurers in establishing in Edward I.'s reign, a woollen manufacture in England, with a branch at Antwerp. In Edward II.'s reign they are mentioned as "the Fraternity of Mercers," and in 1406 (Henry IV.) they are styled in a charter, "Brothers of St. Thomas à Becket."

Mercers were at first general dealers in all small wares, including wigs, haberdashery, and even spices and drugs. They attended fairs and markets, and even sat on the ground to sell their wares--in fact, were little more than high-class pedlers. The poet Gower talks of "the depression of such mercerie." In late times the silk trade formed the main feature of their business; the greater use of silk beginning about 1573.

The mercers' first station, in Henry II.'s reign, was in that part of Cheap on the north side where Mercers' Hall now stands, but they removed soon afterwards higher up on the south side. The part of Cheapside between Bow Church and Friday Street became known as the Mercery. Here, in front of a large meadow called the "Crownsild," they held their little stalls or standings from Soper's Lane and the Standard. There were no houses as yet in this part of Cheapside. In 1329 William Elsing, a mercer, founded an hospital within Cripplegate, for 100 poor blind men, and became prior of his own institution.

In 1351 (Edward III.), the Mercers grew jealous of the Lombard merchants, and on Midsummer Day three mercers were sent to the Tower for attacking two Lombards in the Old Jewry. The mercers in this reign sold woollen clothes, but not silks. In 1371, John Barnes, mercer, mayor, gave a chest with three locks, with 1,000 marks therein, to be lent to younger mercers, upon sufficient pawn and for the use thereof. The grateful recipients were merely to say "De Profundis," a Pater Noster, and no more. This bequest seems to have started among the Mercers the kindly practice of assisting the young and struggling members of this Company.

In the reign of Henry VI. the mercers had become great dealers in silks and velvets, and had resigned to the haberdashers the sale of small articles of dress. It is not known whether the mercers bought their silks from the Lombards, or the London silk-women, or whether they imported them themselves, since many of the members of the Company were merchants.

Twenty years after the murder of Becket, the murdered man's sister, who had married Thomas Fitz Theobald de Helles, built a chapel and hospital of Augustine Friars close to Ironmonger Lane, Cheapside. The hospital was built on the site of the house where Becket was born. He was the son of Gilbert Becket, citizen, mercer and portreeve of London, who was said to have been a Crusader, and to have married a fair Saracen, who had released him from prison, and who followed him to London, knowing only the one English word "Gilbert." The hospital, which was called "St. Thomas of Acon," from Becket's mother having been born at Acre, the ancient Ptolemais, was given to the Mercers' Fraternity by De Hilles and his wife, and Henry III. gave the master and twelve brothers all the land between St. Olave's and Ironmonger Lane, which had belonged to two rich Jews, to enlarge their ground. In Henry V.'s reign that illustrious mercer Whittington, by his wealth and charity, reflected great lustre on the Mercers' Company, who at his death were left trustees of the college and almshouses founded by the immortal Richard on College Hill. The Company still preserve the original ordinance of this charity with a curious picture of Whittington's death, and of the first three wardens, Coventry, Grove, and Carpenter.

In 1414, Thomas Falconer, mercer and mayor, lent Henry V., towards his French wars, ten marks upon jewels.

In 1513, Joan Bradbury, widow of Thomas Bradbury, late Lord Mayor of London, left the Conduit Mead (now New Bond Street), to the Mercers' Company for charitable uses. In pursuance of the King's grant on this occasion, the Bishop of Norwich and others granted the Mercers' Company 29 acres of land in Marylebone, 120 acres in Westminster, and St. Giles, and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, of the annual value of £13 6s. 8d., and in part satisfaction of the said £20 a year. The Company still possess eight acres and a half of this old gift, forming the north side of Long Acre and the adjacent streets, one of which bears the name of the Company. Mercer Street was described in a parliamentary survey in 1650 to have long gardens reaching down to Cock and Pye Ditch, and the site of Seven Dials. In 1544 the three Greshams (at the time the twelve Companies were appealed to) lent Henry VIII. upon mortgaged lands £1,673 6s. 8d. In 1561, the wardens of the Mercers' Company were summoned before the Queen's Council for selling their velvets, satins, and damasks so dear, as English coin was no longer base, and the old excuse for the former high charges was gone. The Mercers prudently bowed before the storm, promised reform, and begged her Majesty's Council to look after the Grocers. At this time the chief vendors of Italian silks lived in Cheapside, St. Lawrence Jewry, and Old Jewry.

During the civil wars both King and Parliament bore heavily on the Mercers. In 1640 Charles I. half forced from them a loan of £3,030, and in 1642 the Parliament borrowed £6,500, and arms from the Company's armoury, valued at £88. They afterwards gave further arms, valued at £71 13s. 4d., and advanced as a second loan £3,200. The result now became visible. In 1698, hoping to clear off their debts, the Mercers' Company engaged in a ruinous insurance scheme, suggested by Dr. Assheton, a Kentish rector. It was proposed to grant annuities of £30 per cent. to clergymen's widows according to certain sums paid by their husbands.

"Pledging the rents of their large landed estates as security for the fulfilment of their contracts with usurers, the Mercers entered on business as life assurance agents. Limiting the entire amount of subscription to £100,000, they decided that no person over sixty years of age should become a subscriber; that no subscriber should subscribe less than £50--i.e., should purchase a smaller contingent annuity than one of £15; that the annuity to every subscriber's widow, or other person for whom the insurance was effected, should be at the rate of £30 for every £100 of subscription. It was stipulated that subscribers must be in good and perfect health at the time of subscription. It was decided that all married men of the age of thirty years or under, might subscribe any sum from £50 to £1,000; that all married men, not exceeding sixty years of age, might subscribe any sum not less than £50, and not exceeding £300. The Company's prospectus further stipulates 'that no person that goes to sea, nor soldier that goes to the wars, shall be admitted to subscribe to have the benefit of this proposal, in regard of the casualties and accidents that they are more particularly liable to.' Moreover, it was provided that 'in case it should happen that any man who had subscribed should voluntarily make away with himself, or by any act of his occasion his own death, either by duelling, or committing any crime whereby he should be sentenced to be put to death by justice; in any or either of these cases his widow should receive no annuity, but upon delivering up the Company's bond, should have the subscription money paid to her.'

"The Mercers' operations soon gave rise to more business-like companies, specially created to secure the public against some of the calamitous consequences of death. In 1706, the Amicable Life Assurance Office--usually, though, as the reader has seen, incorrectly, termed the First Life Insurance Office--was established in imitation of the Mercers' Office. Two years later, the Second Society of Assurance, for the support of widows and orphans, was opened in Dublin, which, like the Amicable, introduced numerous improvements upon Dr. Assheton's scheme, and was a Joint-Stock Life Assurance Society, identical in its principles with, and similar in most of its details to, the modern insurance companies, of which there were as many as one hundred and sixty in the year 1859."

Large sums were subscribed, but the annuities were fixed too high, and the Company had to sink to 18 per cent., and even this proved an insufficient reduction. In 1745 they were compelled to stop, and, after several ineffectual struggles, to petition Parliament.

The petition showed that the Mercers were indebted more than £100,000. The annuities then out amounted to £7,620 per annum, and the subscriptions for future amounts reached £10,000 a year; while to answer these claims their present income only amounted to £4,100 per annum. The Company was therefore empowered by Act of Parliament, 4 George III., to issue new bonds and pay them off by a lottery, drawn in their own hall. This plan had the effect of completely retrieving their affairs, and restoring them again to prosperity.

Strype speaks of the mercers' shops situated on the south side of Cheapside as having been turned from mere sheds into handsome buildings four or five storeys high.

Mercers' Hall and Chapel have a history of their own. On the rough suppression of monastic institutions, Henry VIII., gorged with plunder, granted to the Mercers' Company for £969 17s. 6d. the church of the college of St. Thomas Acon, the parsonage of St. Mary Colechurch, and sundry premises in the parishes of St. Paul, Old Jewry, St. Stephen, Walbrook, St. Martin, Ironmonger Lane, and St. Stephen, Coleman Street. Immediately behind the great doors of the hospital and Mercers' Hall stood the hospital church of St. Thomas, and at the back were court-yards, cloisters, and gardens in a great wide enclosure east and west of Ironmonger Lane and the Old Jewry.

St. Thomas's Church was a large structure, probably rich in monuments, though many of the illustrious mercers were buried in Bow Church, St. Pancras, Soper Lane, St. Antholin's, Watling Street, and St. Benet Sherehog. The church was bought chiefly by Sir Richard Gresham's influence, and Stow tells us "it is now called Mercers' Chappell, and therein is kept a free grammar school as of old time had been accustomed." The original Mercers' Chapel was a chapel toward the street in front of the "great old chapel of St. Thomas," and over it was Mercers' Hall. Aggas's plan of London (circa 1560) shows it was a little above the Great Conduit of Cheapside. The small chapel was built by Sir John Allen, mercer and mayor (1521), and he was buried there; but the Mercers removed this tomb into the hospital church, and divided the chapel into shops. Grey, the founder of the hospital, was apprenticed to a bookseller who occupied one of these shops, and after the Fire of London he himself carried on the same trade in a shop which was built on the same site. Before the suppression, the Mercers only occupied a shop of the present front, the modern Mercers' Chapel standing, says Herbert, exactly on the site of part of the hospital church.

The old hospital gate, which forms the present hospital entrance, had an image of St. Thomas à Becket, but this was pulled down by Elizabethan fanatics. The interior of the chapel remains unaltered. There is a large ambulatory before it supported by columns, and a stone staircase leads to the hall and court-rooms. The ambulatory contains the recumbent figure of Richard Fishborne, Mercer, dressed in a fur gown and ruff. He was a great benefactor to the Company, and died in 1623 (James I.).

Many eminent citizens were buried in St. Thomas's, though most of the monuments had been defaced even in Stow's time. Among them were ten Mercer mayors and sheriffs, ten grocers (probably from Bucklersbury, their special locality), Sir Edward Shaw, goldsmith to Richard III., two Earls of Ormond, and Stephen Cavendish, draper and mayor (1362), whose descendants were ancestors of the ducal families of Cavendish and Devonshire.

William Downer, of London, gent., by his last will, dated 26th June, 1484, gave orders for his body to be buried within the church of St. Thomas Acon's, of London, in these terms:--"So that every year, yearly for evermore, in their foresaid churche, at such time of the year as it shal happen me to dy, observe and keep an obyte, or an anniversary for my sowl, the sowles of my seyd wyfe, the sowles of my fader and moder, and al Christian sowles, with placebo and dirige on the even, and mass of requiem on the morrow following solemnly by note for evermore."

Previous to the suppression, Henry VIII. had permitted the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, which wanted room, to throw a gallery across Old Jewry into a garden which the master had purchased, adjoining the Grocers' Hall, and in which Sir Robert Clayton afterwards built a house, of which we shall have to speak in its place. The gallery was to have two windows, and in the winter a light was ordered to be burned there for the comfort of passers-by. In 1536, Henry VIII. and his queen, Jane Seymour, stood in the Mercers' Hall, then newly built, and saw the "marching watch of the City" most bravely set out by its founder, Sir John Allen, mercer and mayor, and one of the Privy Council.

In the reign of James I., Mercers' Chapel became a fashionable place of resort; gallants and ladies crowded there to hear the sermons of the learned Italian Archbishop of Spalatro, in Dalmatia, one of the few prize converts to Protestantism. In 1617 we look in and find among his auditors the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, and Lords Zouch and Compton. The chapel continued for many years to be used for Italian sermons preached to English merchants who had resided abroad, and who partly defrayed the expense. The Mercers' School was first held in the hospital and then removed to the mercery.

The present chapel front in Cheapside is the central part alone of the front built after the Great Fire. Correspondent houses, five storeys high, formerly gave breadth and effect to the whole mass. Old views represent shops on each side with unsashed windows. The first floors have stone balconies, and over the central window of each room is the bust of a crowned virgin. It has a large doorcase, enriched with two genii above, in the act of mantling the Virgin's head, the Company's cognomen displayed upon the keystone of the arch. Above is a cornice, with brackets, sustaining a small gallery, from which, on each side, arise Doric pilasters, supporting an entablature of the same order; between the intercolumns and the central window are the figures of Faith and Hope, in niches, between whom, in a third niche of the entablature, is Charity, sitting with her three children. The upper storey has circular windows and other enrichments.

The entrance most used is in Ironmonger Lane, where is a small court, with offices, apparently the site of the ancient cloister, and which leads to the principal building. The hall itself is elevated as anciently, and supported by Doric columns, the space below being open one side and forming an extensive piazza, at the extremity whereof is the chapel, which is neatly planned, wainscoted, and paved with black and white marble. A high flight of stairs leads from the piazza to the hall, which is a very lofty apartment, handsomely wainscoted and ornamented with Doric pilasters, and various carvings in compartments.

In the hall, besides the transaction of the Company's business, the Gresham committees are held, which consist of four aldermen, including the Lord Mayor pro tempore, and eight of the City corporation, with whom are associated a select number of the assistants of the Mercers. In this hall also the British Fishery Society, and other corporate bodies, were formerly accustomed to hold their meetings.

The chief portraits in the hall are those of Sir Thomas Gresham (original), a fanciful portrait of Sir Richard Whittington, a likeness of Count Tekeli (the hero of the old opera), Count Panington; Dean Colet (the illustrious friend of Erasmus, and the founder of St. Paul's school); Thomas Papillon, Master of the Company in 1698, who left £1,000 to the Company, to relieve any of his family that ever came to want; and Rowland Wynne, Master of the Company in 1675. Wynne gave £400 towards the repairing of the hall after the Great Fire.

In Strype's time (1720), the Mercers' Company gave away £3,000 a year in charity. In 1745 the Company's money legacies amounted to £21,699 5s. 9d., out of which the Company paid annually £573 17s. 4d. In 1832, the lapsed legacies of the Company became the subject of a Chancery suit; the result was that money is now lent to liverymen or freemen of the Company requiring assistance in sums of £100, and not exceeding £500, for a term, without interest, but only upon approved security.

The present Mercers' School, which is but lately finished, is a very elegant stone structure, adjoining St. Michael's Church, College Hill, on the site of Whittington's Almshouses, which had been removed to Highgate to make room for it.

The school scholarship is in the gift of the Mercers' Company, and it must not be forgotten that Caxton, the first great English printer, was a member of this livery.

Subsequently to the Great Fire, says Herbert, there was some discussion with Parliament on rebuilding the Mercers' School on the former site of St. Mary Colechurch. That site, however, was ultimately rejected, and by the Rebuilding Act, 22 Charles II. (1670), it was expressly provided that there should be a plot of ground, on the western side of the Old Jewry, "set apart for the Mercers' School." Persons who remember the building, says Herbert, describe it whilst here as an old-fashioned house for the masters' residence, with projecting upper storeys, a low, spacious building by the side of it for the school-room, and an area behind it for a playground, the whole being situate on the west side of the Old Jewry, about forty yards from Cheapside.

The great value of ground on the above spot, and a desire to widen, as at present, the entrance to the Old Jewry, occasioned the temporary removal of the Mercers' School, in 1787, to No. 13, Budge Row, about thirty yards from Dowgate Hill (a house of the Company's, which was afterwards burnt down). In 1804 it was again temporarily removed to No. 20, Red Lion Court, Watling Street; and from thence, in 1808, to its present situation on College Hill. The latter premises were hired by the Company, at the rent of £120, and the average expense of the school was £677 1s. 1d. The salary of the master is £200, and £50 gratuity, with a house to live in, rent and taxes free. Writing, arithmetic, and merchant's accounts were added to the Greek and Latin classics, in 1804; and a writing-master was engaged, who has a salary of £120, and a gratuity of £20, but no house. There are two exhibitions belonging to the school.

With the Mercers' Hospital, in the Middle Ages, many curious old City customs were connected. The customary devotions of the new Lord Mayor, at St. Thomas of Acon Church, in the Catholic times, identify themselves in point of locality with the Mercers' Company, and are to be ranked amongst that Company's observances. Strype has described these, from an ancient MS. he met with on the subject. The new Lord Mayor, it states, "after dinner," on his inauguration day (the ceremony would have suited much better before dinner in modern days), "was wont to go from his house to the Church of St. Thomas of Acon, those of his livery going before him; and the aldermen in like manner being there met together, they came to the Church of St. Paul, whither, when they were come, namely, in the middle place between the body of the church, between two little doors, they were wont to pray for the soul of the Bishop of London. William Norman, who was a great benefactor to the City, in obtaining the confirmation of their liberties from William the Conqueror, a priest saying the office De Profundis (called a dirge); and from thence they passed to the churchyard, where Thomas à Becket's parents were buried, and there, near their tomb, they said also, for all the faithful deceased, De Profundis again. The City procession thence returned through Cheapside Market, sometimes with wax candles burning (if it was late), to the said Church Sanctæ Thomæ, and there the mayor and aldermen offered single pence, which being done, every one went to his home."

On all saints' days, and various other festivals, the mayor with his family attended at this same Church of St. Thomas, and the aldermen also, and those that were "of the livery of the mayor, with the honest men of the mysteries," in their several habits, or suits, from which they went to St. Paul's to hear vespers. On the Feast of Innocents they heard vespers at St. Thomas's, and on the morrow mass and vespers.

The Mercers' election cup, says Timbs, of early sixteenth century work, was silver-gilt, decorated with fretwork and female busts; the feet, flasks; and on the cover is the popular legend of an unicorn yielding its horn to a maiden. The whole is enamelled with coats of arms, and these lines--

"To elect the Master of the Mercerie hither am I sent, And by Sir Thomas Leigh for the same intent."

The Company also possess a silver-gilt wagon and tun, covered with arabesques and enamels, of sixteenth century work. The hall was originally decorated with carvings; the main stem of deal, the fruit, flowers, &c., of lime, pear, and beech. These becoming worm-eaten, were long since removed from the panelling and put aside; but they have been restored by Mr. Henry Crace, who thus describes the process:--

"The carving is of the same colour as when taken down. I merely washed it, and with a gimlet bored a number of holes in the back, and into every projecting piece of fruit and leaves on the face, and placing the whole in a long trough, fifteen inches deep, I covered it with a solution prepared in the following manner:--I took sixteen gallons of linseed oil, with 2 lbs. of litharge, finely ground, 1 lb. of camphor, and 2 lbs. of red lead, which I boiled for six hours, keeping it stirred, that every ingredient might be perfectly incorporated. I then dissolved 6 lbs. of bees'-wax in a gallon of spirits of turpentine, and mixed the whole, while warm, thoroughly together.

"In this solution the carving remained for twenty-four hours. When taken out, I kept the face downwards, that the oil might soak down to the face of the carving; and on cutting some of the wood nearly nine inches deep, I found it had soaked through, for not any of the dust was blown out, as I considered it a valuable medium to form a substance for the future support of the wood. This has been accomplished, and, as the dust became saturated with the oil, it increased in bulk, and rendered the carving perfectly solid."

The Company is now governed by a master, three wardens, and a court of thirty-one or more assistants. The livery fine is 53s. 4d. The Mercers' Company, though not by any means the most ancient of the leading City companies, takes precedence of all. Such anomalous institutions are the City companies, that, curious to relate, the present body hardly includes one mercer among them. In Henry VIII.'s reign the Company (freemen, householders, and livery) amounted to fifty-three persons; in 1701 it had almost quadrupled. Strype (1754) only enumerates fifty-two mayors who had been mercers, from 1214 to 1701; this is below the mark. Halkins over-estimates the mercer mayors as ninety-eight up to 1708. Few monarchs have been mercers, yet Richard II. was a free brother, and Queen Elizabeth a free sister.

Half our modern nobility have sprung from the trades they now despise. Many of the great mercers became the founders of noble houses; for instance--Sir John Coventry (1425), ancestor of the present Earl of Coventry; Sir Geoffrey Bullen, grandfather of Queen Elizabeth; Sir William Hollis, ancestor of the Earls of Clare. From Sir Richard Dormer (1542) sprang the Lords Dormer; from Sir Thomas Baldry (1523) the Lords Kensington (Rich); from Sir Thomas Seymour (1527) the Dukes of Somerset; from Sir Baptist Hicks, the great mercer of James I., who built Hicks' Hall, on Clerkenwell Green, sprang the Viscounts Camden; from Sir Rowland Hill, the Lords Hill; from James Butler (Henry II.) the Earls of Ormond; from Sir Geoffrey Fielding, Privy Councillor to Henry II. and Richard I., the Earls of Denbigh.

The costume of the Mercers became fixed about the reign of Charles I. The master and wardens led the civic processions, "faced in furs," with the lords; the livery followed in gowns faced with satins, the livery of all other Companies wearing facings of fringe.

"In Ironmonger Lane," says Stow, giving us a glimpse of old London, "is the small parish church of St. Martin, called Pomary, upon what occasion certainly I know not; but it is supposed to be of apples growing where now houses are lately builded, for myself have seen the large void places there." The church was repaired in the year 1629. Mr. Stodder left 40s. for a sermon to be preached on St. James's Day by an unbeneficed minister, in commemoration of the deliverance in the year 1588 (Armada); and 50s. more to the use of the poor of the same parish, to be paid by the Ironmongers.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXIII. GUILDHALL

The Original Guildhall--A fearful Civic Spectacle--The Value of Land increased by the Great Fire--Guildhall as it was and is--The Statues over the South Porch--Dance's Disfigurements--The Renovation in 1864--The Crypt--Gog and Magog--Shopkeepers in Guildhall--The Cenotaphs in Guildhall--The Court of Aldermen--The City Courts--The Chamberlain's Office--Pictures in the Guildhall--Sir Robert Porter--The Common Council Room--Pictures and Statues--Guildhall Chapel--The New Library and Museum--Some Rare Books--Historical Events in Guildhall--Chaucer in Trouble--Buckingham at Guildhall--Anne Askew's Trial and Death--Surrey--Throckmorton--Garnet--A Grand Banquet.

The Guildhall--the mean-looking Hôtel de Ville of London--was originally (says Stow) situated more to the east side of Aldermanbury, to which it gave name. Richard de Reynere, a sheriff in the reign of Richard I. (1189), gave to the church of St. Mary, at Osney, near Oxford, certain ground rents in Aldermanbury, as appears by an entry in the Register of the Court of Hustings of the Guildhall. In Stow's time the Aldermanbury hall had been turned into a carpenter's yard.

The present Guildhall (which the meanest Flemish city would despise) was "builded new," whatever that might imply, according to our venerable guide, in 1411 (12th of Henry IV.), by Thomas Knoles, the mayor, and his brethren the aldermen, and "from a little cottage it grew into a great house." The expenses were defrayed by benevolences from the City Companies, and ten years' fees, fines, and amercements. Henry V. granted the City free passages for four boats and four carts, to bring lime, ragstone, and freestone for the works. In the first year of Henry VI., when the citizens were every day growing richer and more powerful, the illustrious Whittington's executors gave £35 to pave the Great Hall with Purbeck stone. They also blazoned some of the windows of the hall, and the Mayor's Court, with Whittington's escutcheons.

A few years afterwards one of the porches, the Mayor's Chamber, and the Council Chamber were built. In 1501 (Henry VII.), Sir John Shaw, mayor, knighted on Bosworth Field, built the kitchens, since which time the City feasts, before that held at Merchant Taylors' and Grocers' Hall, were annually held here. In 1505, Sir Nicholas Alwin, mayor in 1499, left £73 6s. 8d. to purchase tapestry for "gaudy" days at the Guildhall. In 1614 a new Council Chamber, with a second room over it, was erected, at an outlay of £1,740.

In the Great Fire, when all the roofs and outbuildings were destroyed, an eye-witness describes Guildhall itself still standing firm, probably because it was framed with solid oak.

Mr. Vincent, a minister, in his "God's Terrible Voice in the City," printed in the year 1667, says: "And amongst other things that night, the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle, which stood the whole body of it together in view for several hours together, after the fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the timber was such solid oake), like a bright shining coal, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass."

Pepys has some curious notes about the new Guildhall.

"Sir Richard Ford," he says, "tells me, speaking of the new street"--the present King Street--"that is to be made from Guildhall down to Cheapside, that the ground is already, most of it, bought; and tells me of one particular, of a man that hath a piece of ground lying in the very middle of the street that must be; which, when the street is cut out of it, there will remain ground enough of each side to build a house to front the street. He demanded seven hundred pounds for the ground, and to be excused paying anything for the melioration of the rest of his ground that he was to keep. The Court consented to give him £700, only not to abate him the consideration, which the man denied; but told them, and so they agreed, that he would excuse the City the £700, that he might have the benefit of the melioration without paying anything for it. So much some will get by having the City burned. Ground, by this means, that was not fourpence a foot afore, will now, when houses are built, be worth fifteen shillings a foot."

In the "Calendar of State Papers" (Charles II., February, 1667), we find notice that "the Committee of the Common Council of London for making the new street called King Street, between Guildhall and Cheapside, will sit twice a week at Guildhall, to treat with persons concerned; enquiry to be made by jury, according to the Act for Rebuilding the City, of the value of land of such persons as refuse to appear."

The Great Hall is 153 feet long, 50 feet broad, and about 55 feet high. The interior sides, in 1829, were divided into eight portions by projecting clusters of columns. Above the dados were two windows of the meanest and most debased Gothic. Several of the large windows were blocked up with tasteless monuments. The blockings of the friezes were sculptured; large guideron shields were blazoned with the arms of the principal City companies. The old mediæval open timber-work roof had been swallowed up by the Great Fire, and in lieu of it there was a poor attic storey, and a flat panelled ceiling, by some attributed to Wren. At each end of the hall was a large pointed window; the east one blazoned with the royal arms, and the stars and jewels of the English orders of knighthood; the west with the City arms and supporters. At the east end of the hall (the ancient dais) was a raised enclosed platform, for holding the Court of Hustings and taking the poll at elections, and other purposes. The panelled wainscoting (in the old churchwarden taste) was separated into compartments by fluted Corinthian pilasters. Over these was a range of ancient canopied niches in carved stone, vulgarly imitated by modern work on the west side. Our old friends Gog and Magog, before Dance's improvements, stood on brackets adjoining a balcony over the entrance to the interior courts, and were removed to brackets on each side the great west window.

Stow describes the statues over the great south porch of King Henry VI.'s time as bearing the following emblems: the tables of the Commandments, a whip, a sword, and a pot. By their ancient habits and the coronets on their heads, he presumed them to be the statues of benefactors of London. The statue of our Saviour had disappeared, but the two bearded figures remaining, he conjectured, were good Bishop William and the Conqueror himself. Four lesser figures, two on each side the porch, seemed to be noble and pious ladies, one of them probably the Empress Maud, another the good Queen Philippa, who once interceded for the City. These figures were taken down during Dance's injudicious alterations in 1789. They lay neglected in a cellar until Alderman Boydell obtained leave of the Corporation to give them to Banks, the sculptor, who had taste enough to appreciate the simple earnestness of the Gothic work. At his death they were given again to the City. These figures were removed from the old screen in 1865, and were not replaced in the new one.

Stow, in relation to the Guildhall statues, and to the general demolition of "images" that occurred in his time, states, "these verses following" were made about 1560, by William Elderton, an attorney in the Sheriffs Court at Guildhall:--

"Though most the Images be pulled downe. And none be thought remain in Towne. I am sure there be in London yet Seven images, such, and in such a place As few or none I think will hit, Yet every day they show their face; And thousands see them every yeare, But few, I thinke, can tell me where; Where Jesus Christ aloft doth stand, Law and Learning on either hand, Discipline in the Devil's necke, And hard by her are three direct; There Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance stand; Where find ye the like in all this Land?"

The true renovation of this great City hall commenced in the year 1864, when Mr. Horace Jones, the architect to the City of London, was entrusted with the erection of an open oak roof, with a central louvre and tapering metal spire. The new roof is as nearly as possible framed to resemble the roof destroyed in the Great Fire. Many southern windows have been re-opened, and layer after layer of plaster and cement scraped from the internal architectural ornamentation. The southern windows have been fitted with stained glass, designed by Mr. F. Halliday, the subjects being--the grant of the Charter, coining money, the death of Wat Tyler, a royal tournament, &c. The new roof is of oak, with rather a high pitch, lighted by sixteen dormers, eight on each side. The height from the pavement to the under-side of the ridge is 89 feet, the total length is 152 feet; and there are eight bays and seven principals. The roof, which does great credit to Mr. Jones, is double-lined oak and deal, slated. The hall is lighted by sixteen gaseliers. A screen, with dais or hustings at the east end, is of carved oak. There is a minstrels' gallery and a new stone floor with coloured bands.

The fine crypt under the Guildhall was, till its restoration in the year 1851, a mere receptacle for the planks, benches, and trestles used at the City banquets.

"This crypt is by far the finest and most extensive undercroft remaining in London, and is a true portion of the ancient hall (erected in 1411) which escaped the Great Fire of 1666. It extends half the length beneath the Guildhall, from east to west, and is divided nearly equally by a wall, having an ancient pointed door. The crypt is divided into aisles by clustered columns, from which spring the stone-ribbed groins of the vaulting, composed partly of chalk and stone, the principal intersections being covered with carved bosses of flowers, heads, and shields. The north and south aisles had formerly mullioned windows, long walled up. At the eastern end is a fine Early English arched entrance, in fair preservation; and in the south-eastern angle is an octangular recess, which formerly was ceiled by an elegantly groined roof, height thirteen feet. The vaulting, with four centred arches, is very striking, and is probably some of the earliest of the sort, which seems peculiar to this country. Though called the Tudor arch, the time of its introduction was Lancastrian (see Weale's 'London,' p. 159). In 1851 the stone-work was rubbed down and cleaned, and the clustered shafts and capitals were repaired; and on the visit of Queen Victoria to Guildhall, July 9, 1851, a banquet was served to her Majesty and suite in this crypt, which was characteristically decorated for the occasion. Opposite the north entrance is a large antique bowl of Egyptian red granite, which was presented to the Corporation by Major Cookson, in 1802, as a memorial of the British achievements in Egypt." (Timbs.)

"There was something very picturesque," says Brayley, "in the old Guildhall entrance. On each side of the flight of steps was an octangular turreted gallery, balustraded, having an office in each, appropriated to the hall-keeper; these galleries assumed the appearance of arbours, from being each surrounded by six palm-trees in iron-work, the foliage of which gave support to a large balcony, having in front a clock (with three dials) elaborately ornamented, and underneath a representation of the sun, resplendent with gilding; the clock-frame was of oak. At the angles were the cardinal virtues, and on the top a curious figure of Time, with a young child in his arms. On brackets to the right and left of the balcony were the gigantic figures of Gog and Magog, as before-mentioned, giving, by their vast size and singular costume, an unique character to the whole. At the sides of the steps, under the hall-keeper's office, were two dark cells, or cages, in which unruly apprentices were occasionally confined, by order of the City Chamberlain; these were called 'Little Ease,' from not being of sufficient height for a big boy to stand upright in them."

The Gog and Magog, those honest giants of Guildhall who have looked down on many a good dinner with imperturbable self-denial, have been the unconscious occasion of much inkshed. Who did they represent, and were they really carried about in Lord Mayor's Shows, was discussed by many generations of angry antiquaries. In Strype's time, when there were pictures of Queen Anne, King William and his consort Mary, at the east end of the hall, the two pantomime giants of renown stood by the steps going up to the Mayor's Court. The one holding a poleaxe with a spiked ball, Strype considered, represented a Briton; the other, with a halbert, he opined to be a Saxon. Both of them wore garlands. What was denied to great and learned was disclosed to the poor and simple. Hone, the bookseller, or one of his writers, came into possession of a little guide-book sold to visitors to the Guildhall in 1741; this set Mr. Fairholt, a most diligent antiquary, on the right track, and he soon settled the matter for ever. Gog and Magog were really Corineus and Gogmagog. The former, a companion of Brutus the Trojan, killed, as the story goes, Gogmagog, the aboriginal giant.

Our sketch of City pageants has already shown that two hundred years ago giants named Corineus and Gogmagog (which ought to have put our antiquaries earlier on the right scent) formed part of the procession. In 1672 Thomas Jordan, the City poet, in his own account of the ceremonial, especially mentions two giants fifteen feet high, in two several chariots, "talking and taking tobacco as they ride along," to the great admiration and delight of the spectators. "At the conclusion of the show," says the writer, "they are to be set up in Guildhall, where they may be daily seen all the year, and, I hope, never to be demolished by such dismal violence (the Great Fire) as happened to their predecessors." These giants of Jordan's, being built of wickerwork and pasteboard, at last fell to decay. In 1706 two new and more solid giants of wood were carved for the City by Richard Saunders, a captain in the trained band, and a carver, in King Street, Cheapside. In 1837, Alderman Lucas being mayor, copies of these giants walked in the show, turning their great painted heads and goggling eyes, to the delight of the spectators. The Guildhall giants, as Mr. Fairholt has shown, with his usual honest industry, are mentioned by many of our early poets, dramatists, and writers, as Shirley, facetious Bishop Corbet, George Wither, and Ned Ward. In Hone's time City children visiting Guildhall used to be told that every day when the giants heard the clock strike twelve they came down to dinner. Mr. Fairholt, in his "Gog and Magog" (1859), has shown by many examples how professional giants (protectors or destroyers of lives) are still common in the annual festivals of half the great towns of Flanders and of France.

In the middle of the last century, says Mr. Fairholt, in his "Gog and Magog," the Guildhall was occupied by shopkeepers, after the fashion of our bazaars; and one Thomas Boreman, bookseller, "near the Giants, in Guildhall," published, in 1741, two very small volumes of their "gigantick history," in which he tells us that as Corineus and Gogmagog were two brave giants, who nicely valued their honour, and exerted their whole strength and force in defence of their liberty and country, so the City of London, by placing these their representatives in their Guildhall, emblematically declare that they will, like mighty giants, defend the honour of their country and liberties of this their city, which excels all others as much as those huge giants exceed in stature the common bulk of mankind.

The author of this little volume then gives his version of the tale of the encounter, "wherein the giants were all destroyed, save Goemagog, the hugest among them, who, being in height twelve cubits, was reserved alive, that Corineus might try his strength with him in single combat. Corineus desired nothing more than such a match; but the old giant, in a wrestle, caught him aloft and broke three of his ribs. Upon this, Corineus, being desperately enraged, collected all his strength, heaved up Goemagog by main force, and bearing him on his shoulders to the next high rock, threw him headlong, all shattered, into the sea, and left his name on the cliff, which has ever since been called Lan-Goemagog, that is to say, the Giant's Leap. Thus perished Goemagog, commonly called Gogmagog, the last of the giants."

The early popularity of this tale is testified by its occurrence in the curious history of the Fitz-Warines, composed, in the thirteenth century, in Anglo-Norman, no doubt by a writer who resided on the Welsh border, and who, in describing a visit paid by William the Conqueror there, speaks of that sovereign asking the history of a burnt and ruined town, and an old Briton thus giving it him:--"None inhabited these parts except very foul people, great giants, whose king was called Goemagog. These heard of the arrival of Brutus, and went out to encounter him, and at last all the giants were killed except Goemagog."

Dance's entrance to the courts was made exactly opposite the grand south entrance. Four large tasteless cenotaphs, more fit for the Pantheon of London, St. Paul's, than for anywhere else, are erected in Guildhall--to the north, those of Beckford, the Earl of Clarendon, and Nelson; on the south, that of William Pitt.

The monument to Beckford, the bold opposer of the arbitrary measures of a mistaken court and a misguided Parliament, is by Moore, a sculptor who lived in Berners Street. It represents the alderman in the act of delivering the celebrated speech which is engraved on the pedestal, and which, as Horace Walpole (who delighted in the mischief) says, made the king uncertain whether to sit still and silent, or to pick up his robes and hurry into his private room. At the angles of the pedestal are two female figures, Liberty and Commerce, mourning for the alderman.

The monument of the Earl of Chatham, by Bacon (executed in 1782 for 3,000 guineas), is of a higher style than Beckford's, and, like its companion, it is a period of political excitement turned into stone. If it were the custom to delay the erection of statues to eminent men twenty years after their death, how many would ever be erected? The usual cold allegory, in this instance, is atoned for by some dignity of mind. The great earl (a Roman senator, of course), his left hand on a helm, is placing his right hand affectionately on the plump shoulders of Commerce, who, as a blushing young débutante, is being presented to him by the City of London, who wears a mural crown, probably because London has no walls. In the foreground is the sculptor's everlasting Britannia, seated on her small but serviceable steed, the lion, and receiving into her capacious lap the contents of a cornucopia of Plenty, poured into it by four children, who represent the four quarters of the world. The inscription was written by Burke.

Nelson's fame is very imperfectly honoured by a pile of allegory, erected in 1811 by the entirely forgotten Mr. James Smith, for £4,442 7s. 4d. This deplorable mass of stone consists of a huge figure of Neptune looking at Britannia, who is mournfully contemplating a very small profile relief of the departed hero, on a small dusty medallion about the size of a maid-servant's locket. To crown all this tame stuff there are some flags and trophies, and a pyramid, on which the City of London (female figure) is writing the words "Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar." With admirable taste the sculptor, who knew what his female figures were, has turned the City of London with her back to the spectator. At the base of this absurd monument two sailors watch over a bas-relief of the battle of Trafalgar, which certainly no one of taste would steal. The inscription is from the florid pen of Sheridan.

Facing his father, the gouty old Roman of the true rock, stands William Pitt, lean, arrogant, and with the nose "on which he dangled the Opposition" sufficiently prominent. It was the work of J.G. Bubb, and was erected in 1812, at a cost of £4,078 17s. 3d.; and a pretty mixture of the Greek Pantheon and the English House of Commons it is! Pitt stands on a rock, dressed as Chancellor of the Exchequer; below him are Apollo and Mercury, to represent Eloquence and Learning; and a woman on a dolphin, who stands for--what does our reader think?--National Energy. In the foreground is what guide-books call "a majestic figure" of Britannia, calmly holding a hot thunderbolt and a cold trident, and riding side-saddle on a sea-horse. The inscription is by Canning. The statue of Wellington, by Bell, cost £4,966 10s.

The Court of Aldermen is a richly-gilded room with a stucco ceiling, painted with allegorical figures of the hereditary virtues of the City of London--Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude--by that over-rated painter, Hogarth's father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, who was presented by the Corporation with a gold cup, value £225 7s. In the cornices are emblazoned the arms of all the mayors since 1780 (the year of the Gordon riots). Each alderman's chair bears his name and arms.

The apartment, says a writer in Knight's "London," as its name tells us, is used for the sittings of the Court of Aldermen, who, in judicial matters, form the bench of magistrates for the City, and in their more directly corporate capacity try the validity of ward elections, and claims to freedom; who admit and swear brokers, superintend prisons, order prosecutions, and perform a variety of other analogous duties; a descent, certainly, from the high position of the ancient "ealdormen," or superior Saxon nobility, from whom they derive their name and partly their functions. They were called "barons" down to the time of Henry I., if, as is probable, the latter term in the charter of that king refers to the aldermen. A striking proof of the high rank and importance of the individuals so designated is to be found in the circumstance that the wards of London of which they were aldermen were, in some cases at least, their own heritable property, and as such bought and sold and transferred under particular circumstances. Thus, the aldermanry of a ward was purchased, in 1279, by William Faryngdon, who gave it his own name, and in whose family it remained upwards of eighty years; and in another case the Knighten Guild having given the lands and soke of what is now called Portsoken Ward to Trinity Priory, the prior became, in consequence, alderman, and so the matter remained in Stow's time, who beheld the prior of his day riding in procession with the mayor and aldermen, only distinguished from them by wearing a purple instead of a scarlet gown.

Each of the twenty-six wards into which the City is divided elects one alderman, with the exception of Cripplegate Within and Cripplegate Without, which together send but one; add to them an alderman for Southwark, or, as it is sometimes called, Bridge Ward Without, and we have the entire number of twenty-six, including the mayor. They are elected for life at ward-motes, by such householders as are at the same time freemen, and paying not less than thirty shillings to the local taxes. The fine for the rejection of the office is £500. Generally speaking, the aldermen consist of those persons who, as common councilmen, have won the good opinion of their fellows, and who are presumed to be fitted for the higher offices.

Talking of the ancient aldermen, Kemble, in his learned work, "The Saxons in England," says:--"The new constitution introduced by Cnut reduced the ealdorman to a subordinate position. Over several counties was now placed one eorl, or earl, in the northern sense a jarl, with power analogous to that of the Frankish dukes. The word ealdorman itself was used by the Danes to denote a class--gentle indeed, but very inferior to the princely officers who had previously borne that title. It is under Cnut, and the following Danish kings, that we gradually lose sight of the old ealdormen. The king rules by his earls and his huscarlas, and the ealdormen vanish from the counties. From this time the king's writs are directed to the earl, the bishop, and the sheriff of the county, but in no one of them does the title of the ealdorman any longer occur; while those sent to the towns are directed to the bishop and the portgeréfa, or prefect of the city. Gradually the old title ceases altogether, except in the cities, where it denotes an inferior judicature, much as it does among ourselves at the present day."

"The courts for the City" in Stow's time were:--"1. The Court of Common Council. 2. The Court of the Lord Maior, and his brethren the Aldermen. 3. The Court of Hustings. 4. The Court of Orphans. 5. The Court of the Sheriffs. 6. The Court of the Wardmote. 7. The Court of Hallmote. 8. The Court of Requests, commonly called the Court of Conscience. 9. The Chamberlain's Court for Apprentices, and making them free."

In the Court of Exchequer, formerly the Court of King's Bench (where the Mayor's Court is still held), Stow describes one of the windows put up by Whittington's executors, as containing a blazon of the mayor, seated, in parti-coloured habit, and with his hood on. At the back of the judge's seat there used to be paintings of Prudence, Justice, Religion, and Fortitude. Here there is a large picture, by Alaux, of Paris, presented by Louis Philippe, representing his reception of an address from the City, on his visit to England, in 1844. This part of the Guildhall treasures also contains several portraits of George III. and Queen Charlotte, by Reynolds' rival, Ramsay (son of Allan Ramsay the poet), and William III. and Queen Mary, by Van der Vaart. There is a pair of classical subjects--Minerva, by Westall, and Apollo washing his locks in the Castalian Fountains, by Gavin Hamilton.

"The greater portion of the judicial business of the Corporation is carried on here; that business, as a whole, comprising in its civil jurisdiction, first, the Court of Hustings, the Supreme Court of Record in London, and which is frequently resorted to in outlawry, and other cases where an expeditious judgment is desired; secondly, the Lord Mayor's Court, which has cognisance of all personal and mixed actions at common law, which is a court of equity, and also a criminal court in matters pertaining to the customs of London; and, thirdly, the Sheriffs' Court, which has a common law jurisdiction only. We may add that the jurisdiction of both courts is confined to the City and liberties, or, in other words, to those portions of incorporated London known respectively, in corporate language, as Within the walls and Without. The criminal jurisdiction includes the London Sessions, held generally eight times a year, with the Recorder as the acting judge, for the trial of felonies, &c.; the Southwark Sessions, held in Southwark four times a year; and the eight Courts of Conservancy of the River."

Passing into the Chamberlain's Office, we find a portrait of Mr. Thomas Tomkins, by Reynolds; and if it be asked who is Mr. Thomas Tomkins, we have only to say, in the words of the inscription on another great man, "Look around!" All these beautifully written and emblazoned duplicates of the honorary freedoms and thanks voted by the City, some sixty or more, we believe, in number, are the sole production of him who, we regret to say, is the late Mr. Thomas Tomkins. The duties of the Chamberlain are numerous; among them the most worthy of mention, perhaps, are the admission, on oath, of freemen (till of late years averaging in number one thousand a year); the determining quarrels between masters and apprentices (Hogarth's prints of the "Idle and Industrious Apprentice" are the first things you see within the door); and, lastly, the treasurership, in which department various sums of money pass through his hands. In 1832, the latest year for which we have any authenticated statement, the corporate receipts, derived chiefly from rents, dues, and market tolls, amounted to £160,193 11s. 8d., and the expenditure to somewhat more. Near the door numerous written papers attract the eye--the useful daily memoranda of the multifarious business eternally going on, and which, in addition to the matters already incidentally referred to, point out one of the modes in which that business is accomplished--the committees. We read of appointments for the Committee of the Royal Exchange--of Sewers--of Corn, Coal, and Finance--of Navigation--of Police, and so on. (Knight's "London," 1843.)

In other rooms of the Guildhall are the following interesting pictures:--Opie's "Murder of James I. of Scotland;" Reynolds' portrait of the great Lord Camden; two studies of a "Tiger," and a "Lioness and her Young," by Northcote; the "Battle of Towton," by Boydell; "Conjugal Affection," by Smirke; and portraits of Sir Robert Clayton, Sir Matthew Hale, and Alderman Waithman. These pictures are curious as marking various progressive periods of English art.

A large folding-screen, painted, it is said, by Copley, represents the Lord Mayor Beckford delivering the City sword to George III., at Temple Bar; interesting for its portraits, and record of the costume of the period; presented by Alderman Salomons to the City in 1850. Here once hung a large picture of the battle of Agincourt, painted by Sir Robert Ker Porter, when nineteen years of age, assisted by the late Mr. Mulready, and presented to the City in 1808.

The Common Council room (says Brayley) is a compact and well-proportioned apartment, appropriately fitted up for the assembly of the Court of Common Council, which consists of the Lord Mayor, twenty aldermen, and 236 deputies from the City wards; the middle part is formed into a square by four Tuscan arches, sustaining a cupola, by which the light is admitted. Here is a splendid collection of paintings, and some statuary: for the former the City is chiefly indebted to the munificence of the late Mr. Alderman John Boydell, who was Lord Mayor in 1791. The principal picture, however, was executed at the expense of the Corporation, by J.S. Copley, R.A., in honour of the gallant defence of Gibraltar by General Elliot, afterwards Lord Heathfield; it measures twenty-five feet in width, and about twenty in height, and represents the destruction of the floating batteries before the above fortress on the 13th of September, 1782. The principal figures, which are as large as life, are portraits of the governor and officers of the garrison. It cost the City £1,543. Here also are four pictures, by Paton, representing other events in that celebrated siege; and two by Dodd, of the engagement in the West Indies between Admirals Rodney and De Grasse in 1782.

Against the south wall are portraits of Lord Heathfield, after Sir Joshua Reynolds; the Marquis Cornwallis, by Copley; Admiral Lord Viscount Hood, by Abbott; and Mr. Alderman Boydell, by Sir William Beechey; also, a large picture of the "Murder of David Rizzio," by Opie. On the north wall is "Sir William Walworth killing Wat Tyler," by Northcote; and the following portraits: viz., Admiral Lord Rodney, after Monnoyer; Admiral Earl Howe, copied by G. Kirkland; Admiral Lord Duncan, by Hoppner; Admirals the Earl of St. Vincent and Lord Viscount Nelson, by Sir William Beechey; and David Pinder, Esq., by Opie. The subjects of three other pictures are more strictly municipal--namely, the Ceremony of Administering the Civic Oath to Mr. Alderman Newnham as Lord Mayor, on the Hustings at Guildhall, November 8th, 1782 (this was painted by Miller, and includes upwards of 140 portraits of the aldermen, &c.); the Lord Mayor's Show on the water, November the 9th (the vessels by Paton, the figures by Wheatley); and the Royal Entertainment in Guildhall on the 14th of June, 1814, by William Daniell, R.A.

Within an elevated niche of dark-coloured marble, at the upper end of the room, is a fine statue, in white marble, by Chantrey, of George III., which was executed at the cost to the City of £3,089 9s. 5d. He is represented in his royal robes, with his right hand extended, as in the act of answering an address, the scroll of which he is holding in the left hand. At the western angles of the chamber are busts, in white marble, of Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, by Mrs. Damer; and the Duke of Wellington, by Turnerelli.

The members of the Council (says Knight) are elected by the same class as the aldermen, but in very varying and--in comparison with the size and importance of the wards--inconsequential numbers. Bassishaw and Lime Street Wards have the smallest representation--four members--and those of Farringdon Within and Without the largest--namely, sixteen and seventeen. The entire number of the Council is 240. Their meetings are held under the presidency of the Lord Mayor; and the aldermen have also the right of being present. The other chief officers of the municipality, as the Recorder, Chamberlain, Judges of the Sheriffs' Courts, Common Serjeant, the four City Pleaders, Town Clerk, &c., also attend.

The chapel at the east end of the Guildhall, pulled down in 1822, once called London College, and dedicated to "our Lady Mary Magdalen and All Saints," was built, says Stow, about the year 1299. It was rebuilt in the reign of Henry VI., who allowed the guild of St. Nicholas for two chaplains to be kept in the said chapel. In Stow's time the chapel contained seven defaced marble tombs, and many flat stones covering rich drapers, fishmongers, custoses of the chapel, chaplains, and attorneys of the Lord Mayor's Court. In Strype's time the Mayors attended the weekly services, and services at their elections and feasts. The chapel and lands had been bought of Edward VI. for £456 13s. 4d. Upon the front of the chapel were stone figures of Edward VI., Elizabeth with a phoenix, and Charles I. treading on a globe. On the south side of the chapel was "a fair and large library," originally built by the executors of Richard Whittington and William Bury. After the Protector Somerset had borrowed (i.e., stolen) the books, the library in Strype's time became a storehouse for cloth.

The New Library and Museum (says Mr. Overall, the librarian), which lies at the east end of the Guildhall, occupies the site of some old and dilapidated houses formerly fronting Basinghall Street, and extending back to the Guildhall. The total frontage of the new buildings to this street is 150 feet, and the depth upwards of 100 feet. The structure consists mainly of two rooms, or halls, placed one over the other, with reading, committee, and muniment rooms surrounding them. Of these two halls the museum occupies the lower site, the floor being level with the ancient crypt of the Guildhall, with which it will directly communicate, and is consequently somewhat below the present level of Basinghall Street. This room, divided into naves and aisles, is 83 feet long and 64 feet wide, and has a clear height of 26 feet. The large fire-proof muniment rooms on this floor, entered from the museum, are intended to hold the valuable archives of the City.

The library above the museum is a hall 100 feet in length, 65 feet wide, and 50 feet in height, divided, like the museum, into naves and aisles, the latter being fitted up with handsome oak book-cases, forming twelve bays, into which the furniture can be moved when the nave is required on state occasions as a reception-hall--one of the principal features in the whole design of this building being its adaptability to both the purpose of a library and a series of reception-rooms when required. The hall is exceedingly light, the clerestory over the arcade of the nave, with the large windows at the north and south ends of the room, together with those in the aisles, transmitting a flood of light to every corner of the room. The oak roof--the arched ribs of which are supported by the arms of the twelve great City Companies, with the addition of those of the Leather-sellers and Broderers, and also the Royal and City arms--has its several timbers richly moulded, and its spandrils filled in with tracery, and contains three large louvres for lighting the roof, and thoroughly ventilating the hall. The aisle roofs, the timbers of which are also richly wrought, have louvres over each bay, and the hall at night may be lighted by means of sun-burners suspended from each of these louvres, together with those in the nave. Each of the spandrils of the arcade has, next the nave, a sculptured head, representing History, Poetry, Printing, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Philosophy, Law, Medicine, Music, Astronomy, Geography, Natural History, and Botany; the several personages chosen to illustrate these subjects being Stow and Camden, Shakespeare and Milton, Guttenberg and Caxton, William of Wykeham and Wren, Michael Angelo and Flaxman, Holbein and Hogarth, Bacon and Locke, Coke and Blackstone, Harvey and Sydenham, Purcell and Handel, Galileo and Newton, Columbus and Raleigh, Linnæus and Cuvier, Ray and Gerard. There are three fire-places in this room. The one at the north end, executed in D'Aubigny stone, is very elaborate in detail, the frieze consisting of a panel of painted tiles, executed by Messrs. Gibbs and Moore, and the subject an architectonic design of a procession of the arts and sciences, with the City of London in the middle.

Among the choicest books are the following:--"Liber Custumarum," 1st to the 17th Henry II. (1154-1171). Edited by Mr. Riley.--"Liber de Antiquis Legibus," 1st Richard I., 1188. Treats of old laws of London. Translated by Riley.--"Liber Dunthorn," so called from the writer, who was Town-clerk of London. Contains transcripts of Charters from William the Conqueror to 3rd Edward IV.--"Liber Ordinationum," 9th Edward III., 1225, to Henry VII. Contains the early statutes of the realm, the ancient customs and ordinances of the City of London. At folio 154 are entered instructions to the citizens of London as to their conduct before the Justices Itinerant at the Tower.--"Liber Horn" (by Andrew Horn). Contains transcripts of charters, statutes, &c.--The celebrated "Liber Albus."--"Liber Fleetwood." Names of all the courts of law within the realm; the arms of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, &c., for 1576; the liberties, customs, and charters of the Cinque Ports; the Queen's Prerogative in the Salt Shores; the liberties of St. Martin's-le-Grand.

A series of letter books. These books commence about 140 years before the "Journals of the Common Council," and about 220 years before the "Repertories of the Court of Aldermen;" they contain almost the only records of those courts prior to the commencement of such journals and repertories. "Journals of the Proceedings of the Common Council, from 1416 to the present time."--"Repertories containing the Proceedings of the Court of Aldermen from 1495 to the present time."--"Remembrancia." A collection of correspondence, &c., between the sovereigns, various eminent statesmen, the Lord Mayors and the Courts of Aldermen and Common Council, on matters relating to the government of the City and country at large." Fire Decrees. Decrees made by virtue of an Act for erecting a judicature for determination of differences touching houses burnt or demolished by reason of the late fire which happened in London."

Of the many historical events that have taken place in the Guildhall, we will now recapitulate a few. Chaucer was connected with one of the most tumultuous scenes in the Guildhall of Richard II.'s time. In 1382 the City, worn out with the king's tyranny and exactions, selected John of Northampton mayor in place of the king's favourite, Sir Nicholas Brember. A tumult arose when Brember endeavoured to hinder the election, which ended with a body of troops under Sir Robert Knolles interposing and installing the king's nominee. John of Northampton was at once packed off to Corfe Castle, and Chaucer fled to the Continent. He returned to London in 1386, and was elected member for Kent. But the king had not forgotten his conduct at the Guildhall, and he was at once deprived of the Comptrollership of the Customs in the Port of London, and sent to the Tower. Here he petitioned the government.

Having alluded to the delicious hours he was wont to spend enjoying the blissful seasons, and contrasted them with his penance in the dark prison, cut off from friendship and acquaintances, "forsaken of all that any word dare speak" for him, he continues: "Although I had little in respect (comparison) among others great and worthy, yet had I a fair parcel, as methought for the time, in furthering of my sustenance; and had riches sufficient to waive need; and had dignity to be reverenced in worship; power methought that I had to keep from mine enemies; and meseemed to shine in glory of renown. Every one of those joys is turned into his contrary; for riches, now have I poverty; for dignity, now am I imprisoned; instead of power, wretchedness I suffer; and for glory of renown, I am now despised and fully hated." Chaucer was set free in 1389, having, it is said, though we hope unjustly, purchased freedom by dishonourable disclosures as to his former associates.

It was at the Guildhall, a few weeks after the death of Edward IV., and while the princes were in the Tower, that the Duke of Buckingham, "the deep revolving witty Buckingham," Richard's accomplice, convened a meeting of citizens in order to prepare the way for Richard's mounting the throne. Shakespeare, closely following Hall and Sir Thomas More, thus sketches the scene:--

Buck. Withal, I did infer your lineaments, Being the right idea of your father, Both in your form and nobleness of mind: Laid open all your victories in Scotland, Your discipline in war, wisdom in peace, Your bounty, virtue, fair humility; Indeed, left nothing fitting for your purpose Untouch'd, or slightly handled, in discourse; And, when my oratory drew toward end, I bade them that did love their country's good Cry, "God save Richard, England's royal king!"

Glo. And did they so?

Buck. No, so God help me, they spake not a word; But, like dumb statues or breathing stones, Stared each on other, and look'd deadly pale. Which when I saw I reprehended them, And ask'd the mayor what meant this wilful silence? His answer was, the people were not us'd To be spoke to but by the recorder. Then he was urg'd to tell my tale again-- "Thus saith the duke, thus hath the duke inferr'd;" But nothing spoke in warrant from himself. When he had done, some followers of mine own At lower end o' the hall, hurl'd up their caps, And some ten voices cried, "God save King Richard!" And thus I took the vantage of those few-- "Thanks, gentle citizens and friends," quoth I; "This general applause and cheerful shout, Argues your wisdom, and your love to Richard:" And even here brake off, and came away.

Anne Askew, tried at the Guildhall in Henry VIII.'s reign, was the daughter of Sir William Askew, a Lincolnshire gentleman, and had been married to a Papist, who had turned her out of doors on her becoming a Protestant. On coming to London to sue for a separation, this lady had been favourably received by the queen and the court ladies, to whom she had denounced transubstantiation, and distributed tracts. Bishop Bonner soon had her in his clutches, and she was cruelly put to the rack in order to induce her to betray the court ladies who had helped her in prison. She pleaded that her servant had only begged money for her from the City apprentices.

"On my being brought to trial at Guildhall," she says, in her own words, "they said to me there that I was a heretic, and condemned by the law, if I would stand in mine opinion. I answered, that I was no heretic, neither yet deserved I any death by the law of God. But as concerning the faith which I uttered and wrote to the council, I would not deny it, because I knew it true. Then would they needs know if I would deny the sacrament to be Christ's body and blood. I said, 'Yea; for the same Son of God who was born of the Virgin Mary is now glorious in heaven, and will come again from thence at the latter day. And as for that ye call your God, it is a piece of bread. For more proof thereof, mark it when you list; if it lie in the box three months it will be mouldy, and so turn to nothing that is good. Whereupon I am persuaded that it cannot be God.'

"After that they willed me to have a priest, at which I smiled. Then they asked me if it were not good. I said I would confess my faults unto God, for I was sure he would hear me with favour. And so I was condemned. And this was the ground of my sentence: my belief, which I wrote to the council, that the sacramental bread was left us to be received with thanksgiving in remembrance of Christ's death, the only remedy of our souls' recovery, and that thereby we also receive the whole benefits and fruits of his most glorious passion. Then would they know whether the bread in the box were God or no. I said, 'God is a Spirit, and will be worshipped in spirit and truth.' Then they demanded, 'Will you plainly deny Christ to be in the sacrament?' I answered, 'That I believe faithfully the eternal Son of God not to dwell there;' in witness whereof I recited Daniel iii., Acts vii. and xvii., and Matthew xxiv., concluding thus: 'I neither wish death nor yet fear his might; God have the praise thereof, with thanks.'"

Anne Askew was burnt at Smithfield with three other martyrs, July 16, 1546. Bonner, the Chancellor Wriothesley, and many nobles were present on state seats near St. Bartholomew's gate, and their only anxiety was lest the gunpowder hung in bags at the martyrs' necks should injure them when it exploded. Shaxton, the ex-Bishop of Salisbury, who had saved his life by apostacy, preached a sermon to the martyrs before the flames were put to the fagots.

In 1546 (towards the close of the life of Henry VIII.), the Earl of Surrey was tried for treason at the Guildhall. He was accused of aiming at dethroning the king, and getting the young prince into his hands; also for adding the arms of Edward the Confessor to his escutcheon. The earl, persecuted by the Seymours, says Lord Herbert, "was of a deep understanding, sharp wit, and deep courage, defended himself many ways--sometimes denying their accusations as false, and together weakening the credit of his adversaries; sometimes interpreting the words he said in a far other sense than that in which they were represented." Nevertheless, the king had vowed the destruction of the family, and the earl, found guilty, was beheaded on Tower Hill, January 19, 1547. He had in vain offered to fight his accuser, Sir Richard Southwell, in his shirt. The order for the execution of the duke, his father, arrived at the Tower the very night King Henry died, and so the duke escaped.

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, another Guildhall sufferer, was the son of a Papist who had refused to take the oath of supremacy, and had been imprisoned in the Tower by Henry VIII. Nicholas, his son, a Protestant, appointed sewer to the burly tyrant, had fought by the king's side in France. During the reign of Edward VI. Throckmorton distinguished himself at the battle of Pinkie, and was knighted by the young king, who made him under-treasurer of the Mint. At Edward's death Throckmorton sent Mary's goldsmith to inform her of her accession. Though no doubt firmly attached to the Princess Elizabeth, Throckmorton took no public part in the Wyatt rebellion; yet, six days after his friend Wyatt's execution, Throckmorton was tried for conspiracy to kill the queen.

The trial itself is so interesting as a specimen of intellectual energy, that we subjoin a scene or two:--

Serjeant Stamford: Methinks those things which others have confessed, together with your own confession, will weigh shrewdly. But what have you to say as to the rising in Kent, and Wyatt's attempt against the Queen's royal person in her palace?

Chief Justice Bromley: Why do you not read to him Wyatt's accusation, which makes him a sharer in his treasons?

Sir R. Southwell: Wyatt has grievously accused you, and in many things which have been confirmed by others.

Sir N. Throckmorton: Whatever Wyatt said of me, in hopes to save his life, he unsaid it at his death; for, since I came into the hall, I heard one say, whom I do not know, that Wyatt on the scaffold cleared not only the Lady Elizabeth and the Earl of Devonshire, but also all the gentlemen in the Tower, saying none of them knew anything of his commotion, of which number I take myself to be one.

Sir N. Hare: Nevertheless, he said that all he had written and confessed before the Council was true.

Sir N. Throckmorton: Nay sir, by your patience, Wyatt did not say so; that was Master Doctor's addition.

Sir R. Southwell: It seems you have good intelligence.

Sir N. Throckmorton: Almighty God provided this revelation for me this very day, since I came hither for I have been in close prison for eight and fifty days, where I could hear nothing but what the birds told me who flew over my head.

Serjeant Stamford told him the judges did not sit there to make disputations, but to declare the law; and one of those judges (Hare) having confirmed the observation, by telling Throckmorton he had heard both the law and the reason, if he could but understand it, he cried out passionately: "O merciful God! O eternal Father! who seest all things, what manner of proceedings are these? To what purpose was the Statute of Repeal made in the last Parliament, where I heard some of you here present, and several others of the Queen's learned counsel, grievously inveigh against the cruel and bloody laws of Henry VIII., and some laws made in the late King's time? Some termed them Draco's laws, which were written in blood; others said they were more intolerable than any laws made by Dionysius or any other tyrant. In a word, as many men, so many bitter names and terms those laws.... Let us now but look with impartial eyes, and consider thoroughly with ourselves, whether, as you, the judges, handle the statute of Edward III. with your equity and constructions, we are not now in a much worse condition than when we were yoked with those cruel laws. Those laws, grievous and captious as they were, yet had the very property of laws, according to St. Paul's description, for they admonished us, and discovered our sins plainly to us, and when a man is warned he is half armed; but these laws, as they are handled, are very baits to catch us, and only prepared for that purpose. They are no laws at all, for at first sight they assure us that we are delivered from our old bondage, and live in more security; but when it pleases the higher powers to call any man's life and sayings in question, then there are such constructions, interpretations, and extensions reserved to the judges and their equity, that the party tried, as I am now, will find himself in a much worse case than when those cruel laws were in force. But I require you, honest men, who are to try my life, to consider these things. It is clear these judges are inclined rather to the times than to the truth, for their judgments are repugnant to the law, repugnant to their own principles, and repugnant to the opinions of their godly and learned predecessors."

We rejoice to say that, in spite of all the efforts of his enemies, this gentleman escaped the scaffold, and lived to enjoy happier times.

Lastly, we come to one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators; not one of the most guilty, yet undoubtedly cognisant of the mischief brewing.

On the 28th of March, 1606, Garnet, the Superior of the English Jesuits (whose cruel execution in St. Paul's Churchyard we have already described), was tried at the Guildhall, and found guilty of having taken part in organising the Gunpowder Plot. He was found concealed at Hendlip, the mansion of a Roman Catholic gentleman, near Worcester.

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XXXIV. THE LORD MAYORS OF LONDON

The First Mayor of London--Portrait of him--Presentation to the King--An Outspoken Mayor--Sir N. Farindon--Sir William Walworth--Origin of the prefix "Lord"--Sir Richard Whittington and his Liberality--Institutions founded by him--Sir Simon Eyre and his Table--A Musical Lord Mayor--Henry VIII. and Gresham--Loyalty of the Lord Mayor and Citizens to Queen Mary--Osborne's Leap into the Thames--Sir W. Craven--Brass Crosby--His Committal to the Tower--A Victory for the Citizens.

The modern Lord Mayor is supposed to have had a prototype in the Roman prefect and the Saxon portgrave. The Lord Mayor is only "Lord" and "Right Honourable" by courtesy, and not from his dignity as a Privy Councillor on the demise or abdication of a sovereign.

In 1189, Richard I. elected Henry Fitz Ailwyn, a draper of London, to be first mayor of London, and he served twenty-four years. He is supposed to have been a descendant of Aylwyn Child, who founded the priory at Bermondsey in 1082. He was buried, according to Strype, at St. Mary Bothaw, Walbrook, a church destroyed in the Great Fire; but according to Stow, in the Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate. There is a doubtful half-length oil-portrait or panel of the venerable Fitz Alwyn over the master's chair in Drapers' Hall, but it has no historical value. But the first formal mayor was Richard Renger (1223), King John granting the right of choosing a mayor to the citizens, provided he was first presented to the king or his justice for approval. Henry III. afterwards allowed the presentation to take place in the king's absence before the Barons of the Exchequer at Westminster, to prevent expense and delay, as the citizens could not be expected to search for the king all over England and France.

The presentation to the king, even when he was in England, long remained a great vexation with the London mayors. For instance, in 1240, Gerard Bat, chosen a second time, went to Woodstock Palace to be presented to King Henry III., who refused to appoint him till he (the king) came to London.

Henry III., indeed, seems to have been chronically troubled by the London mayors, for in 1264, on the mayor and aldermen doing fealty to the king in St. Paul's, the mayor, with blunt honesty, dared to say to the weak monarch, "My lord, so long as you unto us will be a good lord and king, we will be faithful and duteous unto you."

These were bold words in a reign when the heading block was always kept ready near a throne. In 1265, the same monarch seized and imprisoned the mayor and chief aldermen for fortifying the City in favour of the barons, and for four years the tyrannical king appointed custodes. The City again recovered its liberties and retained them till 1285 (Edward I.), when Sir Gregory Rokesley refusing to go out of the City to appear before the king's justices at the Tower, the mayoralty was again suspended and custodes appointed till the year 1298, when Henry Wallein was elected mayor. Edward II. also held a tight hand on the mayoralty till he appointed the great goldsmith, Sir Nicholas Farindon, mayor "as long as it pleased him." Farindon gave the title to Farringdon Ward, which had been in his family eighty-two years, the consideration being twenty marks as a fine, and one clove or a slip of gillyflower at the feast of Easter. He was a warden of the Goldsmiths, and was buried at St. Peter-le-Chepe, a church that before the Great Fire stood where the plane-tree now waves at the corner of Wood Street. He left money for a light to burn before our Lady the Virgin in St. Peter-le-Chepe for ever.

The mayoralty of Andrew Aubrey, Grocer (1339), was rather warlike; for the mayor and two of his officers being assaulted in a tumult, two of the ringleaders were beheaded at once in Chepe. In 1356, Henry Picard, mayor of London, was an honoured man, for he had the glory of feasting Edward III. of England, the Black Prince, John King of Austria, the King of Cyprus, and David of Scotland, and afterwards opened his hall to all comers at cards and dice, his wife inviting the court ladies.

Sir William Walworth, a fishmonger, who was mayor in 1374 (Edward III.) and 1380 (Richard II.), was that prompt and choleric man who somewhat basely slew the Kentish rebel, Wat Tyler, when he was invited to a parley by the young king. It was long supposed that the dagger in the City arms was added in commemoration of this foul blow, but Stow has clearly shown that it was intended to represent the sword of St. Paul, the patron saint of the Corporation of London. The manor of Walworth belonged to the family of this mayor, who was buried in the Church of St. Michael, Crooked Lane, the parish where he had resided. Some antiquaries, says Mr. Timbs, think the prefix of "Lord" is traceable to 1378 (1st Richard II.), when there was a general assessment for a war subsidy. The question was where was the mayor to come. "Have him among the earls," was the suggestion; so the right worshipful had to pay £4, about £100 of our present money.

And now we come to a mayor greater even in City story and legend than even Walworth himself, even the renowned Richard Whittington, the hero of our nursery days. He was the son of a Gloucestershire knight, who had fallen into poverty. The industrious son, born in 1350 (Edward III.), on coming to London, was apprenticed to Hugh Fitzwarren, a mercer. Disgusted with the drudgery, he ran away; but while resting by a stone cross at the foot of Highgate Hill, he is said to have heard in the sound of Bow Bells the voice of his good angel, "Turn again, Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London." What a charm there is still in the old story! As for the cat that made his fortune by catching all the mice in Barbary, we fear we must throw him overboard, even though Stow tells a true story of a man and a cat that greatly resembles that told of Whittington. Whittington married his master's daughter, and became a wealthy merchant. He supplied the wedding trousseau of the Princess Blanche, eldest daughter of Henry IV., when she married the son of the King of the Romans, and also the pearls and cloth of gold for the marriage of the Princess Philippa. He became the court banker, and lent large sums of money to our lavish monarchs, especially to the chivalrous Henry V. for carrying on the siege of Harfleur, a siege celebrated by Shakespeare. It is said that in his last mayoralty King Henry V. and Queen Catherine dined with him in the City, when Whittington caused a fire to be lighted of precious woods, mixed with cinnamon and other spices; and then taking all the bonds given him by the king for money lent, amounting to no less than £60,000, he threw them into the fire and burnt them, thereby freeing his sovereign from his debts. The king, astonished at such a proceeding, exclaimed, "Surely, never had king such a subject;" to which Whittington, with court gallantry, replied, "Surely, sire, never had subject such a king."

Whittington was really four times mayor--twice in Richard II.'s reign, once in that of Henry IV., and once in that of Henry V. As a mayor Whittington was popular, and his justice and patriotism became proverbial. He vigorously opposed the admission of foreigners into the freedom of the City, and he fined the Brewers' Company £20 for selling bad ale and forestalling the market. His generosity was like a well-spring; and being childless, he spent his life in deeds of charity and generosity. He erected conduits at Cripplegate and Billingsgate; he founded a library at the Grey Friars' Monastery in Newgate Street (now Christ's Hospital); he procured the completion of the "Liber Albus," a book of City customs; and he gave largely towards the Guildhall library. He paved the Guildhall, restored the hospital of St. Bartholomew, and by his will left money to rebuild Newgate, and erect almshouses on College Hill (now removed to Highgate). He died in 1427 (Henry VI.). Nor should we forget that Whittington was also a great architect, and enlarged the nave of Westminster Abbey for his knightly master, Henry V. This large-minded and munificent man resided in a grand mansion in Hart Street, up a gateway a few doors from Mark Lane. A very curious old house in Sweedon's Passage, Grub Street, with an external winding staircase, used to be pointed out as Whittington's; and the splendid old mansion in Hart Street, Crutched Friars, pulled down in 1861, and replaced by offices and warehouses, was said to have cats'-heads for knockers, and cats'-heads (whose eyes seemed always turned on you) carved in the ceilings. The doorways, and the brackets of the long lines of projecting Tudor windows, were beautifully carved with grotesque figures.

In 1418 (Henry V.) Sir William de Sevenoke was mayor. This rich merchant had risen to the top of the tree by cleverness and diligence equal to that of Whittington, but we hear less of his charity. He was a foundling, brought up by charitable persons, and apprenticed to a grocer. He was knighted by Henry VI., and represented the City in Parliament. Dying in 1432, he was buried at St. Martin's, Ludgate.

In 1426 (Henry VI.) Sir John Rainewell, mayor, with a praiseworthy disgust at all dishonesty in trade, detecting Lombard merchants adulterating their wines, ordered 150 butts to be stove in and swilled down the kennels. How he might wash down London now with cheap sherry!

In 1445 (Henry VI.), Sir Simon Eyre. This very worthy mayor left 3,000 marks to the Company of Drapers, for prayers to be read to the market people by a priest in the chapel at Guildhall.

It is related that when it was proposed to Eyre at Guildhall that he should stand for sheriff, he would fain have excused himself, as he did not think his income was sufficient; but he was soon silenced by one of the aldermen observing "that no citizen could be more capable than the man who had openly asserted that he broke his fast every day on a table for which he would not take a thousand pounds." This assertion excited the curiosity of the then Lord Mayor and all present, in consequence of which his lordship and two of the aldermen, having invited themselves, accompanied him home to dinner. On their arrival Mr. Eyre desired his wife to "prepare the little table, and set some refreshment before the guests." This she would fain have refused, but finding he would take no excuse, she seated herself on a low stool, and, spreading a damask napkin over her lap, with a venison pasty thereon, Simon exclaimed to the astonished mayor and his brethren, "Behold the table which I would not take a thousand pounds for!" Soon after this Sir Simon was chosen Lord Mayor, on which occasion, remembering his former promise "at the conduit," he, on the following Shrove Tuesday, gave a pancake feast to all the 'prentices in London; on which occasion they went in procession to the Mansion House, where they met with a cordial reception from Sir Simon and his lady, who did the honours of the table on this memorable day, allowing their guests to want for neither ale nor wine.

In 1453 Sir John Norman was the first mayor who rowed to Westminster. The mayors had hitherto generally accompanied the presentation show on horseback. The Thames watermen, delighted with the innovation so profitable to them, wrote a song in praise of Norman, two lines of which are quoted by Fabyan in his "Chronicles;" and Dr. Rimbault, an eminent musical antiquary, thinks he has found the original tune in John Hilton's "Catch That, Catch Can" (1658).

The deeds of Sir Stephen Forster, Fishmonger, and mayor 1454 (Henry VI.), who by his will left money to rebuild Newgate, we have mentioned elsewhere (p. 224). Sir Godfrey Boleine, Lord Mayor, 1457 (Henry VI.), was grandfather to Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth. He was a mercer in the Old Jewry, and left by his will £1,000 to the poor householders of London, and £2,000 to the poor householders in Norfolk (his native county), besides large legacies to the London prisons, lazar-houses, and hospitals. Such were the citizens, from whom half our aristocracy has sprung. Sir Godfrey Fielding, a mercer in Milk Street, Lord Mayor in 1452 (Henry VI.), was the ancestor of the Earls of Denbigh, and a privy councillor of the king.

In Edward IV.'s reign, when the Lancastrians, under the bastard Falconbridge, stormed the City in two places, but were eventually bravely repulsed by the citizens, Edward, in gratitude, knighted the mayor, Sir John Stockton, and twelve of the aldermen. In 1479 (the same reign) Bartholomew James (Draper) had Sheriff Bayfield fined £50 (about £1,000 of our money) for kneeling too close to him while at prayers in St. Paul's, and for reviling him when complained of. There was a pestilence raging at the time, and the mayor was afraid of contagion. The money went, we presume, to build ten City conduits, then much wanted. The Lord Mayor in 1462, Sir Thomas Coke (Draper), ancestor of Lord Bacon, Earl Fitzwilliam, the Marquis of Salisbury, and Viscount Cranbourne, being a Lancastrian, suffered much from the rapacious tyranny of Edward IV. The very year he was made Knight of the Bath, Coke was sent to the Bread Street Compter, afterwards to the Bench, and illegally fined £8,000 to the king and £800 to the queen. Two aldermen also had their goods seized, and were fined 4,000 marks. In 1473 this greedy king sent to Sir William Hampton, Lord Mayor, to extort benevolences, or subsidies. The mayor gave £30, the aldermen twenty marks, the poorer persons £10 each. In 1481, King Edward sent the mayor, William Herriot (Draper), for the good he had done to trade, two harts, six bucks, and a tun of wine, for a banquet to the lady mayoress and the aldermen's wives at Drapers' Hall.

At Richard III.'s coronation (1483), the Lord Mayor, Sir Edmund Shaw, attended as cup-bearer with great pomp, and the mayor's claim to this honour was formally allowed and put on record. Shaw was a goldsmith, and supplied the usurper with most of his plate. Sir William Horn, Lord Mayor in 1487, had been knighted on Bosworth field by Henry VII., for whom he fought against the "ravening Richard." This mayor's real name was Littlesbury (we are told), but Edward IV. had nicknamed him Horn, from his peculiar skill on that instrument. The year Henry VII. landed at Milford Haven two London mayors died. In 1486 (Henry VII.), Sir Henry Colet, father of good Dean Colet, who founded St. Paul's School, was mayor.

Colet chose John Percival (Merchant Taylor), his carver, sheriff, by drinking to him in a cup of wine, according to custom, and Perceval forthwith sat down at the mayor's table. Percival was afterwards mayor in 1498. Henry VII. was remorseless in squeezing money out of the City by every sort of expedient. He fined Alderman Capel £2,700; he made the City buy a confirmation of their charter for £5,000; in 1505 he threw Thomas Knesworth, who had been mayor the year before, and his sheriff, into the Marshalsea, and fined them £1,400; and the year after, he imprisoned Sir Lawrence Aylmer, mayor in the previous year, and extorted money from him. He again amerced Alderman Capel (ancestor of the Earls of Essex) £2,000, and on his bold resistance, threw him into the Tower for life. In 1490 (Henry VII.) John Matthew earned the distinction of being the first, but probably not the last, bachelor Lord Mayor; and a cheerless mayoralty it must have been. In 1502 Sir John Shaw held the Lord Mayor's feast for the first time in the Guildhall; and the same hospitable mayor built the Guildhall kitchen at his own expense.

Henry VIII.'s mayors were worshipful men, and men of renown. To Walworth and Whittington was now to be added the illustrious name of Gresham. Sir Richard Gresham, who was mayor in the year 1537, was the father of the illustrious founder of the Royal Exchange. He was of a Norfolk family, and with his three brothers carried on trade as mercers. He became a Gentleman Usher Extraordinary to Henry VIII., and at the tearing to pieces of the monasteries by that monarch, he obtained, by judicious courtliness, no less than five successive grants of Church lands. He advocated the construction of an Exchange, encouraged freedom of trade, and is said to have invented bills of exchange. In 1525 he was nearly expelled the Common Council for trying, at Wolsey's instigation, to obtain a benevolence from the citizens. It is greatly to Gresham's credit that he helped Wolsey after his fall, and Henry, who with all his faults was magnanimous, liked Gresham none the worse for that. In the interesting "Paston Letters" (Henry VI.), there are eleven letters of one of Gresham's Norfolk ancestors, dated from London, and the seal a grasshopper. Sir Richard Gresham died 1548 (Edward VI.), at Bethnal Green, and was buried in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry. Gresham's daughter married an ancestor of the Marquis of Bath, and the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Braybrooke are said to be descendants of his brother John, so much has good City blood enriched our proud Norman aristocracy, and so often has the full City purse gone to fill again the exhausted treasury of the old knighthood. In 1545, Sir Martin Bowes (Goldsmith) was mayor, and lent Henry VIII., whose purse was a cullender, the sum of £300. Sir Martin was butler at Elizabeth's coronation, and left the Goldsmiths' Company his gold fee cup, out of which the Queen drank. In our history of the Goldsmiths' Company we have mentioned his portrait in Goldsmiths' Hall. Alderman William Fitzwilliam, in this reign, also nobly stood by his patron, Wolsey, after his fall; for which the King, saying he had too few such servants, knighted him and made him a Privy Councillor. When he died, in the year 1542, he was Knight of the Garter, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He left £100 to dower poor maidens, and his best "standing cup" to his brethren, the Merchant Taylors. In 1536 the King invited the Lord Mayor, Sir Raphe Warren (an ancestor of Cromwell and Hampden, says Mr. Orridge), the aldermen, and forty of the principal citizens, to the christening of the Princess Elizabeth, at Greenwich; and at the ceremony the scarlet gowns and gold chains made a gallant show.

In Edward VI.'s reign, the Greshams again came to the front. In 1547, Sir John Gresham, brother of the Sir Richard before mentioned, obtained from Henry VIII. the hospital of St. Mary Bethlehem as an asylum for lunatics.

In this reign the City Corporation lands (as being given by Papists for superstitious uses) were all claimed for the King's use, to the amount of £1,000 per annum. The London Corporation, unable to resist this tyranny, had to retrieve them at the rate of twenty years' purchase. Sir Andrew Judd (Skinner), mayor in 1550, was ancestor of Lord Teynham, Viscount Strangford, Chief Baron Smythe, &c. Among the bequests in his will were "the sandhills at the back side of Holborn," then let for a few pounds a year, now worth nearly £20,000 per annum. In 1553, Sir Thomas White (Merchant Taylor) kept the citizens loyal to Queen Mary during Wyatt's rebellion, the brave Queen coming to Guildhall and personally re-assuring the citizens. White was the son of a poor clothier; at the age of twelve he was apprenticed to a London tailor, who left him £100 to begin the world with, and by thrift and industry he rose to wealth. He was the generous founder of St. John's College, Oxford. According to Webster, the poet, he had been directed in a dream to found a college upon a spot where he should find two bodies of an elm springing from one root. Discovering no such tree at Cambridge, he went to Oxford, and finding a likely tree in Gloucester Hall garden, began at once to enlarge and widen that college; but soon after he found the real tree of his dream, outside the north gate of Oxford, and on that spot he founded St. John's College.

In the reign of Elizabeth, many great-hearted citizens served the office of mayor. Again we shall see how little even the best monarchs of these days understood the word "liberty," and how the constant attacks upon their purses taught the London citizens to appreciate and to defend their rights. In 1559, Sir William Hewet (Clothworker) was mayor, whose income is estimated at £6,000 per annum. Hewet lived on London Bridge, and one day a nurse playing with his little daughter Anne, at one of the broad lattice windows overlooking the Thames, by accident let the child fall. A young apprentice, named Osborne seeing the accident, leaped from a window into the fierce current below the arches, and saved the infant. Years after, many great courtiers, including the Earl of Shrewsbury, came courting fair Mistress Anne, the rich citizen's heiress. Sir William, her father, said to one and all, "No; Osborne saved her, and Osborne shall have her." And so Osborne did, and became a rich citizen and Lord Mayor in 1583. He is the direct ancestor of the first Duke of Leeds. There is a portrait of the brave apprentice at Kiveton House, in Yorkshire. He dwelt in Philpot Lane, in his father-in-law's house, and was buried at St. Dionis Backchurch, Fenchurch Street.

In 1563 Lord Mayor Lodge got into a terrible scrape with Queen Elizabeth, who brooked no opposition, just or unjust. One of the Queen's insolent purveyors, to insult the mayor, seized twelve capons out of twenty-four destined for the mayor's table. The indignant mayor took six of the twelve fowls, called the purveyor a scurvy knave, and threatened him with the biggest pair of irons in Newgate. In spite of the intercession of Lord Robert Dudley (Leicester) and Secretary Cecil, Lodge was fined and compelled to resign his gown. Lodge was the father of the poet, and engaged in the negro trade. Lodge's successor, Sir Thomas Ramsay, died childless, and his widow left large sums to Christ's Hospital and other charities, and £1,200 to each of five City Companies; also sums for the relief of poor maimed soldiers, poor Cambridge scholars, and for poor maids' marriages.

Sir Rowland Heyward (Clothworker), mayor in 1570. He was an ancestor of the Marquis of Bath, and the father of sixteen children, all of whom are displayed on his monument in St. Alphege, London Wall.

Sir Wolston Dixie, 1585 (Skinner) was the first mayor whose pageant was published. It forms the first chapter of the many volumes relating to pageants collected by that eminent antiquary, the late Mr. Fairholt, and bequeathed by him to the Society of Antiquaries. Dixie assisted in building Peterhouse College, Cambridge. In 1594, Sir John Spencer (Clothworker)--"rich Spencer," as he was called--kept his mayoralty at Crosby Place, Bishopsgate. His only daughter married Lord Compton, who, tradition says, smuggled her away from her father's house in a large flap-topped baker's basket. A curious letter from this imperious lady is extant, in which she only requests an annuity of £2,200, a like sum for her privy purse, £10,000 for jewels, her debts to be paid, horses, coach, and female attendants, and closes by praying her husband, when he becomes an earl, to allow her £1,000 more with double attendance. These young citizen ladies were somewhat exacting. From this lady's husband the Marquis of Northampton is descended. At the funeral of "rich Spencer," 1,000 persons followed in mourning cloaks and gowns. He died worth, Mr. Timbs calculates, above £800,000 in the year of his mayoralty. There was a famine in England in his time, and at his persuasion the City Companies bought corn abroad, and stored it in the Bridge House for the poor.

In 1609, Sir Thomas Campbell (Ironmonger), mayor, the City show was revived by the king's order. In 1611, Sir William Craven (Draper) was mayor. As a poor Yorkshire boy from Wharfedale, he came up to London in a carrier's cart to seek his fortune. He was the father of that brave soldier of Gustavus Adolphus who is supposed to have privately married the widowed Queen of Bohemia, James I.'s daughter. There is a tradition that during an outbreak of the plague in London, Craven took horse and galloped westward till he reached a lonely farmhouse on the Berkshire downs, and there built Ashdown House. The local legend is that four avenues led to the house from the four points of the compass, and that in each of the four walls there was a window, so that if the plague got in at one side it might go out at the other. In 1612, Sir John Swinnerton (Merchant Taylor), mayor, entertained the Count Palatine, who had come over to marry King James's daughter. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and many earls and barons were present. The Lord Mayor and his brethren presented the Palsgrave with a large basin and ewer, weighing 234 ounces, and two great gilt loving pots. The bridegroom elect gained great popularity by saluting the Lady Mayoress and her train. The pageant was written by the poet Dekker. In this reign King James, colonising Ulster with Protestants, granted the province with Londonderry and Coleraine to the Corporation, the twelve great and old Companies taking many of the best. In 1613, Sir Thomas Middleton (Goldsmith), Basinghall Street, brother of Sir Hugh Middleton, went in state to see the water enter the New River Head at Islington, to the sound of drums and trumpets and the roar of guns. In 1618, Sir Sebastian Harvey (Ironmonger) was mayor: during his show Sir Walter Raleigh was executed, the time being specially chosen to draw away the sympathisers "from beholding," as Aubrey says, "the tragedy of the gallantest worthy that England ever bred."

In 1641 Sir Richard Gurney (Clothworker), and a sturdy Royalist, entertained that promise-breaking king, Charles I., at the Guildhall. The entertainment consisted of 500 dishes. Gurney's master, a silk mercer in Cheapside, left him his shop and £6,000. The Parliament ejected him from the mayoralty and sent him to the Tower, where he lingered for seven years till he died, rather than pay a fine of £5,000, for refusing to publish an Act for the abolition of royalty. He was president of Christ's Hospital. His successor, Sir Isaac Pennington (Fishmonger), was one of the king's judges, who died in the Tower; Sir Thomas Atkins (Mercer), mayor in 1645, sat on the trial of Charles I.; Sir Thomas Adams (Draper), mayor in 1646, was also sent to the Tower for refusing to publish the Abolition of Royalty Act. He founded an Arabic lecture at Cambridge, and a grammar-school at Wem, in Shropshire. Sir John Gayer (Fishmonger), mayor in 1647, was committed to the Tower in 1648 as a Royalist, as also was Sir Abraham Reynardson, mayor in 1649. Sir Thomas Foot (Grocer), mayor in 1650, was knighted by Cromwell; two of his daughters married knights, and two baronets. Earl Onslow is one of his descendants. Sir Christopher Packe (Draper), mayor in 1654, became a member of Cromwell's House of Lords as Lord Packe, and from him Sir Dennis Packe, the Peninsula general, was descended.

Sir Robert Tichborne (Skinner), mayor in 1656, sat on the trial of Charles I., and signed the death warrant. Sir Richard Chiverton (Skinner), mayor in 1657, was the first Cornish mayor of London. He was knighted both by Cromwell and by Charles II., which says something for his political dexterity. Sir John Ireton (Clothworker), mayor in 1658, was brother of General Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law.

The period of the Commonwealth did not furnish many mayors worth recording here. In 1644, the year of Marston Moor, the City gave a splendid entertainment to both Houses of Parliament, the Earls of Essex, Warwick, and Manchester, the Scotch Commissioners, Cromwell, and the principal officers of the army. They heard a sermon at Christ Church, Newgate Street, and went on foot to Guildhall. The Lord Mayor and aldermen led the procession, and as they passed through Cheapside, some Popish pictures, crucifixes, and relics were burnt on a scaffold. The object of the banquet was to prevent a letter of the king's being read in the Common Hall. On January 7th the Lord Mayor gave a banquet to the House of Commons, Cromwell, and the chief officers, to commemorate the rout of the dangerous Levellers. In 1653, the year Cromwell was chosen Lord Protector, he dined at the Guildhall, and knighted the mayor, John Fowke (Haberdasher).

The reign of Charles II. and the Royalist reaction brought more tyranny and more trouble to the City. The king tried to be as despotic as his father, and resolved to break the Whig love of freedom that prevailed among the citizens. Loyal as some of the citizens seem to have been, King Charles scarcely deserved much favour at their hands. A more reckless tyrant to the City had never sat on the English throne. Because they refused a loan of £100,000 on bad security, the king imprisoned twenty of the principal citizens, and required the City to fit out 100 ships. For a trifling riot in the City (a mere pretext), the mayor and aldermen were amerced in the sum of £6,000. For the pretended mismanagement of their Irish estates, the City was condemned to the loss of their Irish possessions and fined £50,000. Four aldermen were imprisoned for not disclosing the names of friends who refused to advance money to the king; and, finally, to the contempt of all constitutional law, the citizens were forbidden to petition the king for the redress of grievances. Did such a king deserve mercy at the hands of the subjects he had oppressed, and time after time spurned and deceived?

In 1661, the year after the Restoration, Sir John Frederick (Grocer), mayor, revived the old customs of Bartholomew's Fair. The first day there was a wrestling match in Moorfields, the mayor and aldermen being present; the second day, archery, after the usual proclamation and challenges through the City; the third day, a hunt. The Fair people considered the three days a great hindrance and loss to them. Pepys, the delightful chronicler of these times, went to this Lord Mayor's dinner, where he found "most excellent venison; but it made me almost sick, not daring to drink wine."

Amidst the factions and the vulgar citizens of this reign, Sir John Lawrence (Grocer), mayor in 1664, stands out a burning and a shining light. When the dreadful plague was mowing down the terrified people of London in great swathes, this brave man, instead of flying quietly, remained at his house in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, enforcing wise regulations for the sufferers, and, what is more, himself seeing them executed. He supported during this calamity 40,000 discharged servants. In 1666 (the Great Fire) the mayor, Sir Thomas Bludworth (Vintner), whose daughter married Judge Jeffries, is described by Pepys as quite losing his head during the great catastrophe, and running about exclaiming, "Lord, what can I do?" and holding his head in an exhausted and helpless way.

In 1671 Sir George Waterman (mayor, son of a Southwark vintner) entertained Charles II. at his inaugural dinner. In the pageant on this occasion, there was a forest, with animals, wood nymphs, &c., and in front two negroes riding on panthers. Near Milk Street end was a platform, on which Jacob Hall, the great rope-dancer of the day, and his company danced and tumbled. There is a mention of Hall, perhaps on this occasion, in the "State Poems:"--

"When Jacob Hall on his high rope shows tricks, The dragon flutters, the Lord Mayor's horse kicks; The Cheapside crowds and pageants scarcely know Which most t'admire--Hall, hobby-horse, or Bow."

In 1674 Sir Robert Vyner (Goldsmith) was mayor, and Charles II., who was frequently entertained by the City, dined with him. "The wine passed too freely, the guests growing noisy, and the mayor too familiar, the king," says a correspondent of Steele's (Spectator, 462), "with a hint to the company to disregard ceremonial, stole off to his coach, which was waiting in Guildhall Yard. But the mayor, grown bold with wine, pursued the 'merry monarch,' and, catching him by the hand, cried out, with a vehement oath, 'Sir, you shall stay and take t'other bottle.' The 'merry monarch' looked kindly at him over his shoulder, and with a smile and graceful air (for I saw him at the time, and do now) repeated the line of the old song, 'He that is drunk is as great as a king,' and immediately turned back and complied with his host's request."

Sir Robert Clayton (Draper), mayor in 1679, was one of the most eminent citizens in Charles II.'s reign. The friend of Algernon Sidney and Lord William Russell, he sat in seven Parliaments as representative of the City; was more than thirty years alderman of Cheap Ward, and ultimately father of the City; the mover of the celebrated Exclusion Bill (seconded by Lord William Russell); and eminent alike as a patriot, a statesman, and a citizen. He projected the Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital, built additions there, helped to rebuild the house, and left the sum of £2,300 towards its funds. He was a director of the Bank of England, and governor of the Irish Society. He was mayor during the pretended Popish Plot, and was afterwards marked out for death by King James, but saved by the intercession (of all men in the world!) of Jeffries. This "prince of citizens," as Evelyn calls him, had been apprenticed to a scrivener. He lived in great splendour in Old Jewry, where Charles and the Duke of York supped with him during his mayoralty. There is a portrait of him, worthy of Kneller, in Drapers' Hall, and another, with carved wood frame by Gibbons, in the Guildhall Library.

In 1681, when the reaction came and the Court party triumphed, gaining a verdict of £100,000 against Alderman Pilkington (Skinner), sheriff, for slandering the Duke of York, Sir Patience Ward (Merchant Taylor), mayor in 1680, was sentenced to the ignominy of the pillory. In 1682 (Sir William Pritchard, Merchant Taylor, mayor), Dudley North, brother of Lord Keeper North, was one of the sheriffs chosen by the Court party to pack juries. He was celebrated for his splendid house in Basinghall Street, and Macaulay tells us "that, in the days of judicial butchery, carts loaded with the legs and arms of quartered Whigs were, to the great discomposure of his lady, 'driven to his door for orders.'"

In 1688 Sir John Shorter (Goldsmith), appointed mayor by James II., met his death in a singular manner. He was on his way to open Bartholomew Fair, by reading the proclamation at the entrance to Cloth Fair, Smithfield. It was the custom for the mayors to call by the way on the Keeper of Newgate, and there partake on horseback of a "cool tankard" of wine, spiced with nutmeg and sweetened with sugar. In receiving the tankard Sir John let the lid flop down, his horse started, he was thrown violently, and died the next day. This custom ceased in the second mayoralty of Sir Matthew Wood, 1817. Sir John was maternal grandfather of Horace Walpole. Sir John Houblon (Grocer), mayor in 1695 (William III.), is supposed by Mr. Orridge to have been a brother of Abraham Houblon, first Governor of the Bank of England, and Lord of the Admiralty, and great-grandfather of the late Viscount Palmerston. Sir Humphrey Edwin (Skinner), mayor in 1697, enraged the Tories by omitting the show on religious grounds, and riding to a conventicle with all the insignia of office, an event ridiculed by Swift in his "Tale of a Tub," and Pinkethman in his comedy of Love without Interest (1699), where he talks of "my lord mayor going to Pinmakers' Hall, to hear a snivelling and separatist divine divide and subdivide into the two-and-thirty points of the compass." In 1700 the Mayor was Sir Thomas Abney (Fishmonger), one of the first Directors of the Bank of England, best known as a pious and consistent man, who for thirty-six years kept Dr. Watts, as his guest and friend, in his mansion at Stoke Newington. "No business or festivity," remarks Mr. Timbs, "was allowed to interrupt Sir Thomas's religious observances. The very day he became Lord Mayor he withdrew from the Guildhall after supper, read prayers at home, and then returned to his guests."

In 1702, Sir Samuel Dashwood (Vintner) entertained Queen Anne at the Guildhall, and his was the last pageant ever publicly performed, one for the show of 1708 being stopped by the death of Prince George of Denmark the day before. "The show," says Mr. J.G. Nicholls, "cost £737 2s., poor Settle receiving £10 for his crambo verses." A daughter of this Dashwood became the wife of the fifth Lord Brooke, and an ancestor of the present Earl of Warwick. Sir John Parsons, mayor in 1704, was a remarkable person; for he gave up his official fees towards the payment of the City debts. It was remarked of Sir Samuel Gerrard, mayor in 1710, that three of his name and family were Lord Mayors in three queens' reigns--Mary, Elizabeth, and Anne. Sir Gilbert Heathcote (mayor in 1711), ancestor of Lord Aveland and Viscount Donne, was the last mayor who rode in his procession on horseback; for after this time, the mayors, abandoning the noble career of horsemanship, retired into their gilt gingerbread coach.

Sir William Humphreys, mayor in 1715 (George I.), was father of the City, and alderman of Cheap for twenty-six years. Of his Lady Mayoress an old story is told relative to the custom of the sovereign kissing the Lady Mayoress upon visiting Guildhall. Queen Anne broke down this observance; but upon the accession of George I., on his first visit to the City, from his known character for gallantry, it was expected that once again a Lady Mayoress was to be kissed by the king on the steps of the Guildhall. But he had no feeling of admiration for English beauty. "It was only," says a writer in the Athenæum, "after repeated assurance that saluting a lady, on her appointment to a confidential post near some persons of the Royal Family, was the sealing, as it were, of her appointment, that he expressed his readiness to kiss Lady Cowper on her nomination as lady of the bed-chamber to the Princess of Wales. At his first appearance at Guildhall, the admirer of Madame Kielmansegge respected the new observance established by Queen Anne; yet poor Lady Humphreys, the mayoress, hoped, at all events, to receive the usual tribute from royalty from the lips of the Princess of Wales. But that strong-minded woman, Caroline Dorothea Wilhelmina, steadily looked away from the mayor's consort. She would not do what Queen Anne had not thought worth the doing; and Lady Humphreys, we are sorry to say, stood upon her unstable rights, and displayed a considerable amount of bad temper and worse behaviour. She wore a train of black velvet, then considered one of the privileges of City royalty, and being wronged of one, she resolved to make the best of that which she possessed--bawling, as ladies, mayoresses, and women generally should never do--bawling to her page to hold up her train, and sweeping away therewith before the presence of the amused princess herself. The incident altogether seems to have been too much for the good but irate lady's nerves; and unable or unwilling, when dinner was announced, to carry her stupendous bouquet, emblem of joy and welcome, she flung it to a second page who attended on her state, with a scream of 'Boy, take my bucket!' In her view of things, the sun had set on the glory of mayoralty for ever.

"The king was as much amazed as the princess had been amused; and a well-inspired wag of the Court whispered an assurance which increased his perplexity. It was to the effect that the angry lady was only a mock Lady Mayoress, whom the unmarried Mayor had hired for the occasion, borrowing her for that day only. The assurance was credited for a time, till persons more discreet than the wag convinced the Court party that Lady Humphreys was really no counterfeit. She was no beauty either; and the same party, when they withdrew from the festive scene, were all of one mind, that she must needs be what she seemed, for if the Lord Mayor had been under the necessity of borrowing, he would have borrowed altogether another sort of woman." This is one of the earliest stories connecting the City with an idea of vulgarity and purse pride. The stories commenced with the Court Tories, when the City began to resist Court oppression.

A leap now takes us on in the City chronicles. In 1727 (the year George I. died), the Royal Family, the Ministry, besides nobles and foreign ministers, were entertained by Sir Edward Becher, mayor (Draper). George II. ordered the sum of £1,000 to be paid to the sheriffs for the relief of insolvent debtors. The feast cost £4,890. In 1733 (George II.), John Barber--Swift, Pope, and Bolingbroke's friend--the Jacobite printer who defeated a scheme of a general excise, was mayor. Barber erected the monument to Butler, the poet, in Westminster Abbey, who, by the way, had written a very sarcastic "Character of an Alderman." Barber's epitaph on the poet's monument is in high-flown Latin, which drew from Samuel Wesley these lines:--

"While Butler, needy wretch! was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give. See him, when starved to death, and turned to dust, Presented with a monumental bust. The poet's fate is here in emblem shown-- He asked for bread, and he received a stone."

In 1739 (George II.) Sir Micajah Perry (Haberdasher) laid the first stone of the Mansion House. Sir Samuel Pennant (mayor in 1750), kinsman of the London historian, died of gaol fever, caught at Newgate, and which at the same time carried off an alderman, two judges, and some disregarded commonalty. The great bell of St. Paul's tolled on the death of the Lord Mayor, according to custom. Sir Christopher Gascoigne (1753), an ancestor of the present Viscount Cranbourne, was the first Lord Mayor who resided at the Mansion House.

In that memorable year (1761) when Sir Samuel Fludyer was elected, King George III. and Queen Charlotte (the young couple newly crowned) came to the City to see the Lord Mayor's Show from Mr. Barclay's window, as we have already described in our account of Cheapside; and the ancient pageant was so far revived that the Fishmongers ventured on a St. Peter, a dolphin, and two mermaids, and the Skinners on Indian princes dressed in furs. Sir Samuel Fludyer was a Cloth Hall factor, and the City's scandalous chronicle says that he originally came up to London attending clothier's pack-horses, from the west country; his second wife was granddaughter of a nobleman, and niece of the Earl of Cardigan. His sons married into the Montagu and Westmoreland families, and his descendants are connected with the Earls Onslow and Brownlow; and he was very kind to young Romilly, his kinsman (afterwards the excellent Sir Samuel). The "City Biography" says Fludyer died from vexation at a reprimand given him by the Lord Chancellor, for having carried on a contraband trade in scarlet cloth, to the prejudice of the East India Company. Sir Samuel was the ground landlord of Fludyer Street, Westminster, cleared away for the new Foreign Office.

In 1762 and again in 1769 that bold citizen, William Beckford, a friend of the great Chatham, was Lord Mayor. He was descended from a Maidenhead tailor, one of whose sons made a fortune in Jamaica. At Westminster School he had acquired the friendship of Lord Mansfield and a rich earl. Beckford united in himself the following apparently incongruous characters. He was an enormously rich Jamaica planter, a merchant, a member of Parliament, a militia officer, a provincial magistrate, a London alderman, a man of pleasure, a man of taste, an orator, and a country gentleman. He opposed Government on all occasions, especially in bringing over Hessian troops, and in carrying on a German war. His great dictum was that under the House of Hanover Englishmen for the first time had been able to be free, and for the first time had determined to be free. He presented to the king a remonstrance against a false return made at the Middlesex election. The king expressed dissatisfaction at the remonstrance, but Beckford presented another, and to the astonishment of the Court, added the following impromptu speech:--

"Permit me, sire, to observe," are said to have been the concluding remarks of the insolent citizen, "that whoever has already dared, or shall hereafter endeavour by false insinuations and suggestions to alienate your Majesty's affections from your loyal subjects in general, and from the City of London in particular, and to withdraw your confidence in, and regard for, your people, is an enemy to your Majesty's person and family, a violator of the public peace, and a betrayer of our happy constitution as it was established at the Glorious and Necessary Revolution." At these words the king's countenance was observed to flush with anger. He still, however, presented a dignified silence; and accordingly the citizens, after having been permitted to kiss the king's hand, were forced to return dissatisfied from the presence-chamber.

This speech, which won Lord Chatham's "admiration, thanks, and affection," and was inscribed on the pedestal of Beckford's statue erected in Guildhall, has been the subject of bitter disputes. Isaac Reed boldly asserts every word was written by Horne Tooke, and that Horne Tooke himself said so. Gifford, with his usual headlong partisanship, says the same; but there is every reason to suppose that the words are those uttered by Beckford with but one slight alteration. Beckford died, a short time after making this speech, of a fever, caught by riding from London to Fonthill, his Wiltshire estate. His son, the novelist and voluptuary, had a long minority, and succeeded at last to a million ready money and £100,000 a year, only to end life a solitary, despised, exiled man. One of his daughters married the Duke of Hamilton.

The Right Hon. Thomas Harley, Lord Mayor in 1768, was a brother of the Earl of Oxford. He turned wine-merchant, and married the daughter of his father's steward, according to the scandalous chronicles in the "City Biography." He is said, in partnership with Mr. Drummond, to have made £600,000 by taking a Government contract to pay the English army in America with foreign gold. He was for many years "the father of the City."

Harley first rendered himself famous in the City by seizing the boot and petticoat which the mob were burning opposite the Mansion House, in derision of Lord Bute and the princess-dowager, at the time the sheriffs were burning the celebrated North Briton. The mob were throwing the papers about as matter of diversion, and one of the bundles fell, unfortunately, with considerable force, against the front glass of Mr. Sheriff Harley's chariot, which it shattered to pieces. This gave the first alarm; the sheriffs retired into the Mansion House, and a man was taken up and brought there for examination, as a person concerned in the riot. The man appeared to be a mere idle spectator; but the Lord Mayor informed the court that, in order to try the temper of the mob, he had ordered one of his own servants to be dressed in the clothes of the supposed offender, and conveyed to the Poultry Compter, so that if a rescue should be effected, the prisoner would still be in custody, and the real disposition of the people discovered. However, everything was peaceable, and the course of justice was not interrupted, nor did any insult accompany the commitment; whereupon the prisoner was discharged. What followed, in the actual burning of the seditious paper, the Lord Mayor declared (according to the best information), arose from circumstances equally foreign to any illegal or violent designs. For these reasons his lordship concluded by declaring that, with the greatest respect for the sheriffs, and a firm belief that they would have done their duty in spite of any danger, he should put a negative upon giving the thanks of the City upon a matter that was not sufficiently important for a public and solemn acknowledgment, which ought only to follow the most eminent exertions of duty.

In 1770 Brass Crosby (mayor) signalised himself by a patriotic resistance to Court oppression, and the arbitrary proceedings of the House of Commons. He was a Sunderland solicitor, who had married his employer's widow, and settled in London. He married in all three wives, and is said to have received £200,000 by the three. Shortly after Crosby's election, the House of Commons issued warrants against the printers of the Middlesex Journal and the Gazetteer, for presuming to give reports of the debates; but on being brought before Alderman Wilkes, he discharged them. The House then proceeded against the printer of the Evening Post, but Crosby discharged him, and committed the messenger of the House for assault and false imprisonment. Not long after, Crosby appeared at the bar of the House, and defended what he had done; pleading strongly that by an Act of William and Mary no warrant could be executed in the City but by its ministers. Wilkes also had received an order to attend at the bar of the House, but refused to comply with it, on the ground that no notice had been taken in the order of his being a member. The next day the Lord Mayor's clerk attended with the Book of Recognisances, and Lord North having carried a motion that the recognisance be erased, the clerk was compelled to cancel it. Most of the Opposition indignantly rose and left the House, declaring that effacing a record was an act of the greatest despotism; and Junius, in Letter 44, wrote: "By mere violence, and without the shadow of right, they have expunged the record of a judicial proceeding." Soon after this act, on the motion of Welbore Ellis, the mayor was committed to the Tower. The people were furious; Lord North lost his cocked hat, and even Fox had his clothes torn; and the mob obtaining a rope, but for Crosby's entreaties, would have hung the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms. The question was simply whether the House had the right to despotically arrest and imprison, and to supersede trial by jury. On the 8th of May the session terminated, and the Lord Mayor was released. The City was illuminated at night, and there were great rejoicings. The victory was finally won. "The great end of the contest," says Mr. Orridge, "was obtained. From that day to the present the House of Commons has never ventured to assail the liberty of the press, or to prevent the publication of the Parliamentary debates."

At his inauguration dinner in Guildhall, there was a superabundance of good things; notwithstanding which, a great number of young fellows, after the dinner was over, being heated with liquor, got upon the hustings, and broke all the bottles and glasses within their reach. At this time the Court and Ministry were out of favour in the City; and till the year 1776, when Halifax took as the legend of his mayoralty "Justice is the ornament and protection of liberty," no member of the Government received an invitation to dine at Guildhall.

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