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LONDON

BY

WALTER BESANT

AUTHOR OF "ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN"
"FIFTY YEARS AGO" ETC.

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

Copyright, 1892, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._




PREFACE


In the following chapters it has been my endeavor to present pictures of
the City of London--instantaneous photographs, showing the streets, the
buildings, and the citizens at work and at play. Above all, the
citizens: with their daily life in the streets, in the shops, in the
churches, and in the houses; the merchant in the quays and on 'Change;
the shopkeeper of Cheapside; the priests and the monks and the friars;
the shouting of those who sell; the laughter and singing of those who
feast and drink; the ringing of the bells; the dragging of the criminal
to the pillory; the Riding of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen; the river
with its boats and barges; the cheerful sound of pipe and tabor; the
stage with its tumblers and its rope-dancers; the 'prentices with their
clubs; the evening dance in the streets. I want my pictures to show all
these things. The history of London has been undertaken by many writers;
the presentment of the city and the people from age to age has never
yet, I believe, been attempted.

The sources whence one derives the materials for such an attempt are, in
the earlier stages, perfectly well known and accessible to all. Chaucer,
Froissart, Lydgate, certain volumes of the "Early English Text Society,"
occur to everybody. But the richest mine, for him who digs after the
daily life of the London citizen during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, is certainly Riley's great book of _Extracts from the City
Records_. If there is any life or any reality in the three chapters of
this book which treat of the Plantagenet period, it is certainly due to
Riley.

As regards the Tudor period, the wealth of illustration is astonishing.
One might as well be writing of the city life of this day, so copious
are the materials. But it is not to Shakespeare and the dramatists that
we must look for the details so much as to the minor writers, the
moralists and satirists, of whom the ordinary world knows nothing.

The reign of Charles II. directs one to the Plague and to the Fire. I
was fortunate in finding two tracts, one dealing with the plague of
1603, and the other with that of 1625. These, though they are earlier
than Charles II., were invaluable, as illustrating the effect of the
pestilence in causing an exodus of all who could get away, which took
place as much in these earlier years as in 1666. Contemporary tracts on
the state of London after the Fire, also happily discovered, proved
useful. And when the Plague and the Fire had been dismissed, another
extraordinary piece of good fortune put me in possession of certain
household accounts which enabled me to present a bourgeois family of the
period at home.

Where there is so much to speak about, one must exercise care in
selection. I have endeavored to avoid as much as possible those points
which have already been presented. For instance, the growth of the
municipality, the rise of the Guilds and the Companies, the laws of
London, the relations of the City to the Sovereign and the State--these
things belong to the continuous historian, not to him who draws a
picture of a given time. In the latter case it is the effect of law, not
its growth, which is important. Thus I have spoken of the pilgrimizing
in the time of Henry II.; of the Mysteries of that time; things that
belonged to the daily life; rather than to matters of policy, the
stubborn tenacity of the City, or the changes that were coming over the
conditions of existence and of trade. Again, in Plantagenet London one
might have dwelt at length upon the action taken by London in successive
civil wars. That, again, belongs to the historian. I have contented
myself with sketching the churches and the monasteries, the palaces and
the men-at-arms, the merchants and the workmen.

Again, in the time of George II., the increase of trade, which then
advanced by leaps and bounds, the widening of the world to London
enterprise, the part which London took in the conquest of India and the
ejection of France from North America belong to history. For my own part
I have preferred to show the position, the influence, and the work of
the Church at a time generally believed to be the deadest period in the
whole history of the Church of England. This done, I have gone on to
illustrate the day-by-day life of the citizens, with the prices of
things, the management, and the appearance of the City.

One thing remains to be said. Mr. Loftie, in his _History of London_
(Stadford), first gave the world a reconstruction of the ground--the
_terrain_--of London and its environs before ever a house was erected or
an acre cleared. The first chapter of this book--that on Roman London
and After--is chiefly due to a study of this map, and to realizing what
that map means when applied to the scanty records of Augusta. This map
enabled me to recover the years which followed the retreat of the
Romans. I cannot allow this chapter to be called a Theory. It is, I
venture to claim for it, nothing less than a Recovery.

  WALTER BESANT.

    UNITED UNIVERSITY CLUB:
        _May 2, 1892_.




CONTENTS


CHAP.                                                               PAGE

   I. AFTER THE ROMANS                                                 1

  II. SAXON AND NORMAN                                                43

 III. PLANTAGENET                                                    105

  IV. PLANTAGENET--_CONTINUED_                                       155

   V. PLANTAGENET--_CONTINUED_                                       215

  VI. TUDOR                                                          263

 VII. TUDOR--_CONTINUED_                                             320

VIII. CHARLES THE SECOND                                             371

  IX. GEORGE THE SECOND                                              429

      INDEX                                                          501




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                    PAGE

_Stowe's Monument, in North Aisle of St. Andrew Undershaft_            2

_Roman Marble Sarcophagus._ Guildhall                                  4

_Statues of Mercury, Apollo, and Jupiter or Neptune: found
in the Thames, 1837_                                                   6

_Bronze Articles for Domestic Use_                                     8

_Bronze Fibulae and other Ornaments: found in London_                  11

_Roman Pavement: Leadenhall Street_                                   14

_Bronze Bust of the Emperor Hadrian: found in the Thames._
British Museum                                                        17

_A Bit of Roman Wall._ From a Photograph by W. H. Grove,
174 Brompton Road                                                     20

_Lamps and Lamp-stand_                                                23

_Sepulchral Cists, etc.: found in Warwick Square, Newgate
Street, 1881._ British Museum                                         32

_Roman Keys._ Guildhall                                               34

_Toilet Articles--Hair-pins; Hair-pin (Sarina, Wife of Hadrian);
Bone Comb and Case (Cloakham); Bone Comb (Lower Thames Street)_       36

_Statuettes: found in Thames Street, 1889._ Guildhall                 39

_Roman Amphorae_                                                       41

_London Stone, Cannon Street, as it appeared in 1800_                 45

_Battle between Two Armed Knights_                                    49

_River Tilting in the Twelfth Century_                                52

_Crypt: Remains of the Collegiate Church of St. Martin-le-Grand,
N.E._                                                                 54

_The Founder's Tomb, St. Bartholomew the Great, E.C., founded 1123_   57

_South Ambulatory, Church of St. Bartholomew, founded 1123_           61

_St. Katherine's by the Tower_                                        64

_Interior of the Church of St. Katherine's by the Tower_              65

_Dowgate Dock_                                                        68

_St. Saviour's Dock_                                                  70

_North-east View of St. Saviour's_                                    73

_Plan of Saxon Church, Bradford-on-Avon_                              76

_Saxon Church, Seventh or Eighth Century, Bradford-on-Avon_           77

_Sculptured Angel, Saxon Church_                                      78

_View of Interior of Saxon Church, showing very remarkable
Chancel Arch and Entrance_                                            79

_First Stone London Bridge, begun A.D. 1176_                          82

_Crypt, or Lower Chapel, of St. Thomas's Church, London Bridge_       84

_West Front of Chapel on London Bridge_                               85

_Part of London Wall in the Church-yard of St. Giles, Cripplegate_    88

_Entrance to Knights Hospitallers_                                    90

_Buildings of Knights Hospitallers_                                   91

_Crypt in Bow Church, from the North Side, near the East
End of the Nave_                                                      95

_Interior of Porch of the Parish Church of St. Alphege, London
Wall, formerly the Chapel of the Priory of St. Elsynge Spital_        97

_The Arms and Seals of the Prior and Convent of St. Saviour
at Bermondsey_                                                       101

_A City Monument_                                                    107

_Ruins (1790) of the Nunnery of St. Helen, Bishopsgate Street_       110

_St. Helen's, Bishopsgate_                                           113

_South-west View of the Interior of the Church of St. Helen,
Bishopsgate Street_                                                  116

_Church of St. Augustin (St. Austin)_                                119

_Church of Austin Friars_                                            122

_Christ's Hospital, from the Cloisters_                              126

_The Charter House_                                                  130

_Ruins of the Convent of Nuns Minories, 1810_                        133

_Bow