Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 2
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Chapter X: The Neighbourhood of the Tower.
Chapter X: The Neighbourhood of the Tower.
Of , that historical and blood-stained ground to the north-west of the Tower, old Stow says:--
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Hatton, in (Queen Anne) mentions as The tide of fashion and wealth had not yet set iii strongly westward. An old plan of the Tower in shows us the posts of the scaffold for state criminals, a good deal north of Towel Street and a little northward of Legge Mount, the great north-west corner of the Tower fortifications. In the reign of Edward IV. the scaffold was erected at the charge of the king's officers, and many controversies arose at various times, about the respective boundaries, between the city and the Lieutenant of the Tower. | |
On the scaffold perished, nearly all the prisoners whose wrongs and sorrows and crimes we have glanced at in a previous chapter the great Sir Thomas More, the wise servant of a corrupt king; the unhappy old Countess of Salisbury, who was chopped down here as she ran bleeding round the scaffold; Bishop Fisher, a staunch adherent to the old faith; that great subverter of the monks, [extra_illustrations.2.95.2] ; and the poet Earl of Surrey-all victims of the same bad monarch. | |
Then in the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, in ghastly procession after the masked headsman paced Lord Seymour; in due course followed the brother who put him to death, the proud Pro tector Somerset; then that poor weak young noble, Lady Jane Grey's husband, Lord Guildford Dudley; and [extra_illustrations.2.95.3] , the rash objector to a Spanish marriage. | |
The victims of Charles's folly followed in due time--the dark and arrogant Strafford, who came like a crowned conqueror to his death; then his sworn ally, the narrow-browed, fanatical Laud. The Restoration Cavaliers took their vengeance next, and to passed those true patriots, Stafford, insisting on his innocence to the very last, and Algernon Sydney. The unlucky Duke of Monmouth was the next to lay his misguided head on the block. | |
Blood ceased to flow on after this execution till the Pretender's fruitless rebellions of and brought Derwentwater, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and wily old Lovat to the same ghastly bourne. In Mr. Radcliffe (Lord Derwentwater's brother) was executed here. He had been a prisoner in the Tower for his share in the rebellion of , but succeeded in escaping. He was identified by the barber, who years before had shaved him when in prison. | |
Chamberlain Clarke; who died in , aged (a worthy old city authority, who has been mentioned by us in a previous chapter), well remembered (says Mr. Timbs), as a child, seeing the executioner's axe flash in the sunshine as it fell upon the neck of Mr. Radcliffe. At the last execution which took place on , that of Lord Lovat, , a scaffolding, built near Barking Alley, fell, with nearly persons on it, and of them were killed. Lovat, in spite of his awful situation, seemed to enjoy the downfall of so many Whigs. | |
There is a passage in --a play considered by many persons to be not Shakespeare's. writing at all, and by some others only partly his work--that has much puzzled those wise persons, [extra_illustrations.2.95.4] | |
p.96 | the commentators. The author of the play, which is certainly not quite in the best Shakespearian manner, makes a door-porter say, talking of a mob, This passage seems to imply that there were low theatres in Shakespeare's time near and , or did he refer to the crowd at a execution, and to the mob of sailors at the locality? |
A curious old custom is still perpetuated in this neighbourhood. The of the Tower Liberties are perambulated triennially, when, after service in the church of St. Peter, a procession is | |
formed upon the parade, including a headsman, bearing the axe of execution; a painter, to mark the bounds; yeomen, warders, with halberds; the Deputy Lieutenant and other officers of the Tower, &c. The boundary-stations are painted with a red upon a white ground, while the chaplain of repeats, Another old custom of lighting a bonfire on , on the , was suppressed in the year . | |
The traditions of , apart from the crimson block and the glittering axe, are few, but what there are, are interesting. Poor suffering Lady Raleigh, when driven from the side of her imprisoned husband, as James began to drive him | |
p.97 | faster towards death, lodged on with her son who had been born in the Tower. |
William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, was born on , . The house of his father, the Admiral, was Penn, in of his works, states that It was when he was at school at Chigwell, in Essex, that day, alone in his chamber, he was suddenly surprised with an inward comfort, and surrounded by a visible external glory, that convinced the youth's excited imagination that he had obtained the seal. of immortality. He had, how- | |
| ever, already been deeply impressed by the preaching of a Quaker. In old age this good and wise man fell into difficulties, and actually had to mortgage the province of Pennsylvania for . He died at Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, in . | |
That tender-hearted poet, [extra_illustrations.2.98.1] , the friend of Shadwell-whose poverty and wretchedness Rochester cruelly sneered at in his and whose nature and pathos Dryden praised, though somewhat reluctantly-died, as it is generally thought, of starvation, at the public-house on . He was only thirtyfour when he died. The stories of his untimely death differ. Dr. Johnson's version is that, being naked and in a rage of hunger, he went to a neighbouring coffee-house, and asked a gentleman for a | |
p.98 | shilling. The gentleman generously gave the starving poet a guinea, on which Otway rushed into the nearest baker's, bought a roll, and, eating with ravenous haste, was choked with the mouthful. But Spence was told by Dennis, the well-known critic, and the great enemy of Pope, that an intimate friend of Otway's, being shot by an assassin, who escaped to Dover, for France, Otway pursued him. In the excitement he drank cold water, and brought on a fever, which carried him off. Goldsmith, in the tells a story of Otway having about him when he died a copy of a tragedy which he had sold to Bentley the bookseller for a mere trifle. It was never recovered, but in a spurious forgery of it appeared. |
It was at a cutler's shop on that Felton, that grim fanatic, who believed himself an instrument of Heaven, bought the broad, sharp, tenpenny hunting-knife with which he gave the heavy and sure blow at Portsmouth, that ended the ambition and plots of the Duke of Buckingham, the mischievous favourite of Charles I. | |
That admirable antiquarian artist, Smith, has engraved a view of [extra_illustrations.2.98.2] enriched with medallions evidently of the time of Henry VIII. (probably terra cotta), like those, says Peter Cunningham, at old and . It was not unusual, when coins were found upon a particular spot whereon a house was to be erected, to cause such coins to be represented in plaster on the house. A reproduction of this engraving will be found on the previous page. | |
In , the site of the old postern gate at the south-eastern end of the city wall, used, says Timbs, to be the old rendezvous for enlisting soldiers and sailors, and for arranging the iniquitous press-gangs to scour and . The shops here are hung with waterproof coats, sou'--westers, and other articles of dress; and the windows are full of revolvers,. quadrants, compasses, ship's biscuits, &c., to attract sailors. | |
At the south-west corner of is Tower Docks, where luckless Sir Walter Raleigh, in disguise, after his escape from the Tower in , took boat for Tilbury. That most poetical of all our poets, Edmund Spenser, was born near , in . Very little is known of his parentage, but though poor, it must have been respectable, as he was sent at to Pembroke College, Cambridge, as a humble student or sizar. He dedicated of his early poems to Sir Philip Sidney, that star of Elizabethan knighthood, and began his career by going td Ireland (a country whose wild people he often sketches in his ), as secretary to Lord: Grey of Wilton, the viceroy. He is said to have there commenced his urged on by Sir Walter Raleigh. He seems to have spent about years in that Patmos,: and returned to. London poor and heart-broken, having had his castle burnt down, and his infant child destroyed in the fire. He was buried in , at the expense of the Earl of Essex. The poems of [extra_illustrations.2.98.3] furnished many suggestions to Shakespeare, who probably derived from them the story of , and some of the most beautiful of his heroine's names. Spenser himself drew his inspiration from the Italian poets. | |
The Duke of Buckingham used often to visit in disguise, in his days of political intrigue, a poor astrologer, who drew horoscopes, near . Science was then making great advances, thanks to the inductive system introduced by Bacon; but even Newton practised alchemy, and witches were still burnt to death. | |
The parishes and liberties now called the Tower Hamlets, and since returning members to the , included Hackney, , , Spitalfields, Whitechapel, , St. Katherine's, , Ratcliff, , , Poplar, , , Old Ford, Mile-End, , &c. An alteration was effected by the Reform Bill of , when Hackney was made a separate electoral district, returning members to Parliament. | |
has not many traditions to boast of, though sailors and Tower warders have haunted it for centuries. Its main antiquarian heroes are the [extra_illustrations.2.98.4] and that noble savage, Peter the Great. of this mad earl's maddest freaks brought him to . While in disgrace at court, we believe for his bitter satire on Charles II., called the he robed and bearded himself as an Italian quack or mountebank physician, and under the name of Alexander Bendo, set up at a goldsmith's house, next door to the in , where he advertised that he was sure to be seen His biographer, Bishop Burnet, mentions this; and it is said that the earl surprised his patients by the knowledge of court secrets he displayed. | |
The story of relates to the true founder of the Russian Empire. This extraordinary man, whose strong shoulder helped his country out of the slough of ignorance and obscurity, was born in , and visited Holland in , to learn the art of shipbuilding, having | |
p.99 | resolved to establish a Russian navy. Having worked among the Dutch as a common labourer, he finally came to England for months, to visit our dockyards and perfect himself in ship-building. While in England he lived alternately in , Strand (bottom house on the left-hand side), and Evelyn's house at Deptford. After a hard day's work with adze and saw, the young Czar, who drank like a boatswain, used to resort to a public-house in , and smoke and drink ale and brandy, almost enough to float the vessel he had been helping to construct. says Barrow, Peter's biographer,
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Bakers' Hall hides itself with humility in , . The as Mr. Peter Cunningham calls it, repaired by Mr. James Elmes, the author of the was (says Stow) some time the dwelling-house of Alderman Chichley, Chamberlain of London, who was descended from the celebrated Chichley, Archbishop of Canterbury, ambassador from Henry IV. to the Pope. He accompanied Henry V. to the French war. His life was spent in a -handed warfare-against the Pope and against the Wickliffites. This generous prelate improved Canterbury Cathedral and , and founded All Souls' College at Oxford. The London bakers were originally divided into and bakers. The chief supply of bread (says Strype) came from Stratford-le-Bow. By a somewhat tyrannical edict of the city, the loaves were required to be heavier in weight than the London loaves. | |
In the uncongenial atmosphere of Little , that fat, lazy, and good-natured poet, [extra_illustrations.2.99.1] , wrote his fine poem of published in . In a letter to Aaron Hill, dated , he says, Thomson was the son of a Roxburghshire clergyman, and was educated for the Church --a profession which, however, he never entered. He came to London in , and published his a poem whose broadly-painted landscapes remind us of those of Wilson and contemporaneous painters, just as Byron's poems remind us of Turner. In Thomson went abroad, as travelling tutor with the son of Lord Chancellor Talbot. There was no return to dingy Little for the epicurean poet, who soon after obtained some Government sinecures, among others the post of Surveyor-General to the Leeward Islands, and became patronised by the Prince of Wales. Thomson's poem of the did much to foster our national love of Nature, but the poet's is, after all, his a poem full of the poet's idiosyncrasy. | |
of the strangest corruptions of the names of London streets occurs in the Tower precincts. A place once called as if built with the fees of some Tower executioner, should really have been for here (says Strype) poor refugees from were allowed to lodge in Queen Mary's reign, after Calais and its vicinity had been recovered from our strong grip by the French. | |
, , running northward to , was originally (says Stow) called Sidon Lane, and in his time there were fair and large houses there. The old chronicler of London mentions among the distinguished residents the wily Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's principal secretary. This great counter-plotter against the Jesuits in Spain died , and the next night, at o'clock, was quietly buried in Paul's Church. Walsingham's name occurs perpetually in Elizabethan annals, and no by darker or more secret means fought better for Elizabeth against the dangerous artifices of Mary Queen of Scots, whose ways were dark indeed. | |
The garrulous, gallant, and inimitable Pepys was living in this lane, to be near his work at the Navy Office adjoining, the very year the Great Fire broke out. He describes putting his head out of window at the alarm, and going quietly to sleep again, on the , about of the morning, when his handsome wife called him up and told him of new cries of fire, it being come to Barking Church (Allhallows, Barking), In Strype's time had become but there were still merchants living there. | |
The old Navy Office in Seething or Sidon Lane had the chief entrance in , and the smaller in the lane. It stood (says | |
p.100 | Cunningham) on the site of a chapel and college attached to the church of Allhallows, Barking, which had been suppressed and pulled down in the year (Edward VI.). The consecrated ground remained a garden-plot during the troubles of Edward's reign, the rebellions of Mary's reign, and the glorious days of Elizabeth, till at length Sir William Winter, surveyor of Elizabeth's ships, built on it a great timber and brick storehouse for merchants' goods, which grew into a Navy Office. Cunningham found among the Audit Office enrolments an entry that in , the purchasemoney of the [extra_illustrations.2.100.1] , , was handed over to Sir William Chambers, the architect of the Government offices in the new . |
Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.2.95.2] Cromwell.Earl of Essex [extra_illustrations.2.95.3] Sir Thomas Wyat [extra_illustrations.2.95.4] More led to execution [extra_illustrations.2.98.1] Thomas Otway [extra_illustrations.2.98.2] a curious old house on Tower Hill [extra_illustrations.2.98.3] Spenser [extra_illustrations.2.98.4] Earl of Rochester [extra_illustrations.2.99.1] James Thomson [extra_illustrations.2.100.1] old Navy Office, |
