Old and New London Part 79

"When he left Earth rich bounty dy'd, Mild courtesie gave place to pride; Soft Mercie to bright Justice said, O sister, we are both betray'd.

White Innocence lay on the ground, By Truth, and wept at either's wound.

"Those sons of Levi did lament, Their lamps went out, their oyl was spent.

Heaven hath his soul, and only we Spin out our lives in misery.

So Death thou missest of thy ends, And kil'st not him, but kil'st his friends."

A Bill in Parliament being engrossed for the erection of a church for the French Protestants in the churchyard of this parish, after the Great Fire, the paris.h.i.+oners offered reasons to the Parliament against it; declaring that they were not against erecting a church, but only against erecting it in the place mentioned in the Bill; since by the Act for rebuilding the city, the site and churchyard of St. Martin Orgar was directed to be enclosed with a wall, and laid open for a burying-place for the parish.

The tame statue of that honest but commonplace monarch, William IV., at the end of King William Street, is of granite, and the work of a Mr.

Nixon. It cost upwards of 2,000, of which 1,600 was voted by the Common Council of London. It is fifteen feet three inches in height, weighs twenty tons, and is chiefly memorable as marking the site of the famous "Boar's Head" tavern.

The opening of the Cannon Street Extension Railway, September, 1866, provided a communication with Charing Cross and London Bridge, and through it with the whole of the South-Eastern system. The bridge across the Thames approaching the station has five lines of rails; the curves branching east and west to Charing Cross and London Bridge have three lines, and in the station there are nine lines of rails and five s.p.a.cious platforms, one of them having a double carriage road for exit and entrance. The signal-box at the entrance to the Cannon Street station extends from one side of the bridge to the other, and has a range of over eighty levers, coloured red for danger-signals, and green for safety and going out. The hotel at Cannon Street Station, a handsome building, is after the design by Mr. Barry. Arrangements were made for the reception of about 20,000,000 pa.s.sengers yearly.

CHAPTER XLIX.

CANNON STREET TRIBUTARIES AND EASTCHEAP.

Budge Row--Cordwainers' Hall--St. Swithin's Church--Founders'

Hall--The Oldest Street in London--Tower Royal and the Wat Tyler Mob--The Queen's Wardrobe--St. Antholin's Church--"St. Antlin's Bell"--The London Fire Brigade--Captain Shaw's Statistics--St. Mary Aldermary--A Quaint Epitaph--Crooked Lane--An Early "Gun Accident"--St. Michael's and Sir William Walworth's Epitaph--Gerard's Hall and its History--The Early Closing Movement--St. Mary Woolchurch--Roman Remains in Nicholas Lane--St.

Stephen's, Walbrook--Eastcheap and the Cooks' Shops--The "Boar's Head"--Prince Hal and his Companions--A Giant Plum-pudding--Goldsmith at the "Boar's Head"--The Weigh-house Chapel and its Famous Preachers--Reynolds, Clayton, Binney.

Budge Row derived its name from the sellers of budge (lamb-skin) fur that dwelt there. The word is used by Milton in his "Lycidas," where he sneers at the "budge-skin" doctors.

Cordwainers' Hall, No. 7, Cannon Street, is the third of the same Company's halls on this site, and was built in 1788 by Sylva.n.u.s Hall.

The stone front, by Adam, has a sculptured medallion of a country girl spinning with a distaff, emblematic of the name of the lane, and of the thread used by cordwainers or shoemakers. In the pediment are their arms. In the hall are portraits of King William and Queen Mary; and here is a sepulchral urn and tablet, by Nollekens, to John Came, a munificent benefactor to the Company.

The Cordwainers were originally incorporated by Henry IV., in 1410, as the "Cordwainers and Cobblers," the latter term signifying dealers in shoes and shoemakers. In the reign of Richard II., "every cordwainer that shod any man or woman on Sunday was to pay thirty s.h.i.+llings." Among the Company's plate is a piece for which Camden, the antiquary, left 16. Their charities include Came's bequest for blind, deaf, and dumb persons, and clergymen's widows, 1,000 yearly; and in 1662 the "Bell Inn," at Edmonton, was bequeathed for poor freemen of the Company.

The church in Cannon Street dedicated to St. Swithin, and in which London Stone is now encased, is of a very early date, as the name of the rector in 1331 is still recorded. Sir John Hind, Lord Mayor in 1391 and 1404, rebuilt both church and steeple. After the Fire of London, the parish of St. Mary Bothaw was united to that of St. Swithin. St.

Swithin's was rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire. The Salters' Company formerly had the right of presentation to this church, but sold it. The form of the interior is irregular and awkward, in consequence of the tower intruding on the north-west corner. The ceiling, an octagonal cupola, is decorated with wreaths and ribbons. In 1839 Mr. G.o.dwin describes an immense sounding-board over the pulpit, and an altar-piece of carved oak, guarded by two wooden figures of Moses and Aaron. There is a slab to Mr. Stephen Winmill, twenty-four years parish clerk; and a tablet commemorative of Mr. Francis Kemble and his two wives, with the following distich:--

"Life makes the soul dependent on the dust; Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres."

The angles at the top of the mean square tower are bevelled off to allow of a short octagonal spire and an octagonal bal.u.s.trade.

The following epitaphs are quoted by Strype:--

JOHN ROGERS, DIED 1576.

"Like thee I was sometime, But now am turned to dust; As thou at length, O earth and slime, Returne to ashes must.

Of the Company of Clothworkers A brother I became; A long time in the Livery I lived of the same.

Then Death that deadly stroke did give, Which now my joys doth frame.

In Christ I dyed, by Christ to live; John Rogers was my name.

My loving wife and children two My place behind supply; G.o.d grant them living so to doe, That they in him may dye."

GEORGE BOLLES, LORD MAYOR OF LONDON, DIED 1632.

"He possessed Earth as he might Heaven possesse; Wise to doe right, but never to oppresse.

His charity was better felt than knowne, For when he gave there was no trumpet blowne.

What more can be comprized in one man's fame, To crown a soule, and leave a living name?"

Founders' Hall, now in St. Swithin's Lane, was formerly at Founders'

Court, Lothbury. The Founders' Company, incorporated in 1614, had the power of testing all bra.s.s weights and bra.s.s and copper wares within the City and three miles round. The old Founders' Hall was noted for its political meetings, and was in 1792 nicknamed "The Cauldron of Sedition." Here Waithman made his first political speech, and, with his fellow-orators, was put to flight by constables, sent by the Lord Mayor, Sir James Sanderson, to disperse the meeting.

Watling Street, now laid open by the new street leading to the Mansion House, is probably the oldest street in London. It is part of the old Roman military road that, following an old British forest-track, led from London to Dover, and from Dover to South Wales. The name, according to Leland, is from the Saxon _atheling_--a n.o.ble street. At the north-west end of it is the church of St. Augustine, anciently styled _Ecclesia Sancti Augustini ad Portam_, from its vicinity to the south-east gate of St. Paul's Cathedral. This church was described on page 349.

Tower Royal, Watling Street, preserves the memory of one of those strange old palatial forts that were not unfrequent in mediaeval London--half fortresses, half dwelling-houses; half courting, half distrusting the City. "It was of old time the king's house," says Stow, solemnly, "but was afterwards called the Queen's Wardrobe. By whom the same was first built, or of what antiquity continued, I have not read, more than that in the reign of Edward I. it was the tenement of Simon Beaumes." In the reign of Edward III. it was called "the Royal, in the parish of St. Michael Paternoster;" and in the 43rd year of his reign he gave the inn, in value 20 a year, to the college of St. Stephen, at Westminster.

In the Wat Tyler rebellion, Richard II.'s mother and her ladies took refuge there, when the rebels had broken into the Tower and terrified the royal lady by piercing her bed with their swords.

"King Richard," says Stow, "having in Smithfield overcome and dispersed the rebels, he, his lords, and all his company entered the City of London with great joy, and went to the lady princess his mother, who was then lodged in the Tower Royal, called the Queen's Wardrobe, where she had remained three days and two nights, right sore abashed. But when she saw the king her son she was greatly rejoiced, and said, 'Ah! son, what great sorrow have I suffered for you this day!' The king answered and said, 'Certainly, madam, I know it well; but now rejoyce, and thank G.o.d, for I have this day recovered mine heritage, and the realm of England, which I had near-hand lost.'"

Richard II. was lodging at the Tower Royal at a later date, when the "King of Armony," as Stow quaintly calls the King of Armenia, had been driven out of his dominions by the "Tartarians;" and the lavish young king bestowed on him 1,000 a year, in pity for a banished monarch, little thinking how soon he, discrowned and dethroned, would be vainly looking round the prison walls for one look of sympathy.

This "great house," belonging anciently to the kings of England, was afterwards inhabited by the first Duke of Norfolk, to whom it had been granted by Richard III., the master he served at Bosworth. Strype finds an entry of the gift in an old ledger-book of King Richard's, wherein the Tower Royal is described as "Le Tower," in the parish of St. Thomas Apostle, not of St. Michael, as Stow has it. The house afterwards sank into poverty, became a stable for "all the king's horses," and in Stow's time was divided into poor tenements. _Sic transit gloria mundi._

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. ANTHOLIN'S CHURCH, WATLING STREET.]

The church of St. Antholin, in Watling Street, is the only old church in London dedicated to that monkish saint. The date of its foundation is unknown, but it must be of great antiquity, as it is mentioned by Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul's at the end of the twelfth century. The church was rebuilt, about the year 1399, by Sir Thomas Knowles, Mayor of London, who was buried here, and whose odd epitaph Stow notes down:--

"Here lyeth graven under this stone Thomas Knowles, both flesh and bone, Grocer and alderman, years forty, Sheriff and twice maior, truly; And for he should not lye alone, Here lyeth with him his good wife Joan.

They were together sixty year, And nineteen children they had in feere," &c.

The epitaph of Simon Street, grocer, is also badly written enough to be amusing:--

"Such as I am, such shall you be; Grocer of London, sometime was I, The king's weigher, more than years twenty Simon Street called, in my place, And good fellows.h.i.+p fain would trace; Therefore in heaven everlasting life, Jesu send me, and Agnes my wife," &c.

St. Antholin's perished in the Great Fire, and the present church was completed by Wren, in the year 1682, at the expense of about 5,700.

After the fire the parish of St. John Baptist, Watling Street, was annexed to that of St. Antholin, the latter paying five-eighths towards the repairs of the church, the former the remaining three-eighths. The interior of the church is peculiar, being covered with an oval-shaped dome, which is supported on eight columns, which stand on high plinths.

The carpentry of the roof, says Mr. G.o.dwin, displays constructive knowledge. The exterior of the building, says the same authority, is of pleasing proportions, and shows great powers of invention. As an apology for adding a Gothic spire to a quasi-Grecian church, Wren has, oddly enough, crowned the spire with a small Composite capital, which looks like the top of a pencil-case. Above this is the vane. The steeple rises to the height of 154 feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CRYPT OF GERARD'S HALL (_see page 556_).]

The church was rebuilt by John Tate, a mercer, in 1513; and Strype mentions the erection in 1623 of a rich and beautiful gallery with fifty-two compartments, filled with the coats-of-arms of kings and n.o.bles, ending with the blazon of the Elector Palatine. A new morning prayer and lecture was established here by clergymen inclined to Puritanical principles in 1599. The bells began to ring at five in the morning, and were considered Pharisaical and intolerable by all High Churchmen in the neighbourhood. The extreme Geneva party made a point of attending these early prayers. Lilly, the astrologer, went to these lectures when a young man; and Scott makes Mike Lambourne, in "Kenilworth," refer to them. Nor have they been overlooked by our early dramatists. Randolph, Davenant, and others make frequent allusions in their plays to the Puritanical fervour of this parish. The tongue of Middleton's "roaring girl" was "heard further in a still morning than St. Antlin's bell."

In the heart of the City, and not far from London Stone, was a house which used to be inhabited by the Lord Mayor or one of the sheriffs, situated so near to the Church of St. Antholin that there was a way out of it into a gallery of the church. The commissioners from the Church of Scotland to King Charles were lodged here in 1640. At St. Antholin's preached the chaplains of the commission, with Alexander Henderson at their head; "and curiosity, faction, and humour brought so great a conflux and resort, that from the first appearance of day in the morning, on every Sunday, to the shutting in of the light, the church was never empty."

Dugdale also mentions the church. "Now for an essay," he says, "of those whom, under colour of preaching the Gospel, in sundry parts of the realm, they set up a morning lecture at St. Antholine's Church in London; where (as probationers for that purpose) they first made tryal of their abilities, which place was the grand nursery whence most of the seditious preachers were after sent abroad throughout all England to poyson the people with their anti-monarchical principles."

In Watling Street is the chief station of the London Fire Brigade. The Metropolitan Board of Works has consolidated and reorganised, under Captain Shaw, the whole system of the Fire Brigade into one h.o.m.ogeneous munic.i.p.al inst.i.tution. The insurance companies contribute about 10,000 per annum towards its maintenance, the Treasury 10,000, and a Metropolitan rate of one halfpenny in the pound raises an additional sum of 30,000, making about 50,000 in all. Under the old system there were seventeen fire-stations, guarding an area of about ten square miles, out of 110 which comprise the Metropolitan district. At the commencement of 1868 there were forty-three stations in an area of about 110 square miles. From Captain Shaw's report, presented January 1, 1873, it appears that during the year 1872 there had been three deaths in the brigade, 236 cases of ordinary illness, and 100 injuries, making a total of 336 cases. The strength of the brigade was as follows:--50 fire-engine stations, 106 fire-escape stations, 4 floating stations, 52 telegraph lines, 84 miles of telegraph lines, 3 floating steam fire-engines, 8 large land steam fire-engines, 17 small ditto, 72 other fire-engines, 125 fire-escapes, 396 firemen. The number of watches kept up throughout the metropolis is 98 by day, and 175 by night, making a total of 273 in every twenty-four hours. The remaining men, except those sick, injured, or on leave, are available for general work at fires.

If Stow is correct, St. Mary's Aldermary, Watling Street, was originally called Aldermary because it was older than St. Mary's Bow, and, indeed, any other church in London dedicated to the Virgin; but this is improbable. The first known rector of Aldermary was presented before the year 1288. In 1703 two of the turrets were blown down. In 1855 a building, supposed to be the crypt of the old church, fifty feet long and ten feet wide, and with five arches, was discovered under some houses in Watling Street. In the chancel is a beautifully sculptured tablet by Bacon, with this peculiarity, that it bears no inscription.

Surely the celebrated "Miserrimus" itself could hardly speak so strongly of humility or despair. Or can it have been, says a cynic, a monument ordered by a widow, who married again before she had time to write the epitaph to the "dear departed?" On one of the walls is a tablet to the memory of that celebrated surgeon of St. Bartholomew's for forty-two years, Percival Pott, Esq., F.R.S., who died in 1788. Pott, according to a memoir written by Sir James Cask, succeeded to a good deal of the business of Sir Caesar Hawkins. Pott seems to have entertained a righteous horror of amputations.