Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol I
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Fleet Street--General Introduction.
Fleet Street--General Introduction.
Alas, for the changes of time! The Fleet, that little, quick-flowing stream, once so bright and. clear, is now a sewer! but its name remains immortalised by the street called after it. | |
Although, according to a modern antiquary, a Roman amphitheatre once stood on the site of the , and Roman citizens were probably interred outside Ludgate, we know but little whether Roman buildings ever stood on the west side of the City gates. Stow, however, describes a stone pavement supported on piles being found, in , near the end of ; so that we may presume the soil of the neighbourhood was originally marshy. The British settlers there must probably have been restless spirits, impatient of the high rents and insufficient room inside the City Walls, and willing, for economy, to risk the forays of any Saxon pirates who chose to steal up the river on a dusky night and sack the outlying cabins of London. | |
There were certainly rough doings in in the Middle Ages, for the City chronicles tell us of much blood spilt there and of many deeds of violence. In (Henry III.) we find, for instance, Henry de Buke slaying a man named Le Ireis, or Le Tylor, of Fleet Bridge, then fleeing to the church of St. Mary, , and there claiming sanctuary. In (Edward II.) of the king's not very respectable or law-fearing household were arrested in for a burglary; and though the weak king demanded them (they were perhaps servants of his Gascon favourite, Piers Gaveston, whom the barons afterwards killed), the City refused to give them up, and they probably had short shrive. In the same reign, when was full of bushes and thickets, could hardly have been continuous. Still, some shops in were, no doubt, even in Edward II.'s reign, of importance, for we find, in , a bootmaker supplying the luxurious king with In Richard II.'s reign it is especially mentioned that Wat Tyler's fierce Kentish men sacked the Savoy church, and part of the Temple, and destroyed forges which had been originally erected on each side of St. Dunstan's Church by the Knight Templars. The Priory of St. John of Jerusalem had paid a rent of for these forges, which same rent was given for more than a century after their destruction. | |
The poet Chaucer is said to have beaten a saucy Franciscan friar in , and to have been fined for the offence by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple; so Speight had heard from who had seen the entry in the records of the Inner Temple. | |
In King Henry IV.'s reign another crime disturbed . A goldsmith was murdered by ruffians in , and his body thrown under the . | |
In (Henry VI.) a strange procession startled London citizens. Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, did penance through for witchcraft practised against the king. She and certain priests and necromancers had, it was said, melted a wax figure of young King Henry before a slow fire, praying that as that figure melted his life might melt also. Of the duchess's confederates, the Witch of Ely was burned at , a canon of died in the Tower, and a culprit was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. The duchess was brought from , and [extra_illustrations.1.32.2] , from whence, with a tall wax taper in her hand, she walked bareheaded to , where she offered at the high altar. Another day she did penance at , ; a day at St. Michael's, , the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, and most of the Corporation following. She was then banished to the Isle of Man, and her ghost, they say, still haunts Peel Castle. | |
And now, in the long panorama of years, there rises in a clash of swords and a clatter of bucklers. In (Henry VI.) the general effervescence of the times spread beyond Ludgate, and there was a great affray in between the hot-blooded youths of the Inns of Court and the citizens, which lasted days; the chief man in the riot was of , named Harbottle; and this irrepressible Harbottle and his fellows only the appearance of the mayor and sheriffs could quiet. In (in the same reign) there was a more serious riot of the same kind; the students were then driven back by archers from the Conduit near to their several inns, and some slain, including who certainly ought to have known better and kept closer to his parchments. Even the king's meek | |
33 | nature was roused at this; he committed the principal governors of Furnival's, Clifford's, and Barnard's inns to the castle of Hertford, and sent for several aldermen to Windsor Castle, where he either rated or imprisoned them, or both. [extra_illustrations.1.33.1] |
often figures in the chronicles of Elizabeth's reign. On visit it is particularly said that she often graciously stopped her coach to speak to the poor; and a green branch of rosemary given to her by a poor woman near Fleet ridge was seen, not without marvellous wonder of such as knew the presenter, when her Majesty reached . In the same reign we are told that the young Earl of Oxford, after attending his father's funeral in Essex, rode through to , attended by score horsemen, all in black. Such was the splendid and proud profusion of Elizabeth's nobles. | |
James's reign was a stormy for . any a time the [extra_illustrations.1.33.2] snatched their clubs (as we read in ), and, vaulting over their counters, joined in the fray that surged past their shops. In particularly, prentices having abused [extra_illustrations.1.33.3] , the Spanish ambassador, as he passed their master's door in , the king ordered the riotous youths to be whipped from to . In , however, the apprentices rose in force, and shouting quickly released the lads and beat the marshalmen. If there had been any resistance, another sturdy 'prentices would soon have carried on the war. | |
Nor did Charles's reign bring any quiet to , for then the Templars began to draw out their swords. On the , the Templars, having chosen a Mr. Palmer as their Lord of Misrule, went out late at night into to collect his rents. At every door the jovial collectors winded the Temple horn, and if at the blast the door was not courteously opened, my lord cried majestically, and a sturdy smith burst the panels open with a huge sledge-hammer. The horrified Lord Mayor being appealed to soon arrived, attended by the watch of the ward and men armed with halberts. At o'clock on the Sunday night the monarchs came into collision in Hare Alley (now ). The Lord of Misrule bade my Lord Mayor come to him; but Palmer omitting to take off his hat, the halberts flew sharply round him, his subjects were soundly beaten, and he was dragged off to the Compter. There, with soiled finery, the new year's king was kept days in durance, the attorney-general at last fetching the fallen monarch away in his own coach. At a court masque soon afterwards the king made the rival potentates join hands; but the King of Misrule had, nevertheless, to refund all the he had exacted, and repair all the doors his too handy gunner had destroyed. The very next year the quarrelsome street broke again into a rage, and persons lost their lives. Of the rioters, were executed within the week. of these was John Stanford, of the duke's chamber, and the other Captain Nicholas Ashurst. The quarrel was about politics, and the courtiers seem to have been the offenders. | |
In Charles II.'s time the pillory was sometimes set up at the Temple gate; and here the wretch [extra_illustrations.1.33.4] , amidst showers of unsavoury eggs and the curses of those who had learnt to see the horror of his crimes. said Judge Withers to this man, The pillory had no fixed place, for in we find a Scotchman suffering at the end for telling a victualler that his house would be fired by the Papists; and the next year a man stood upon the pillory at the end of for insulting Lord Coventry, as he was starting as ambassador for Sweden. | |
In the reign of Queen Anne those pests of the London streets, the [extra_illustrations.1.33.5] seem to have infested . These drunken desperadoes--the predecessors of the roysterers who, in the times of the Regency, [extra_illustrations.1.33.6] broke windows, and stole knockers-used to find a cruel pleasure in surrounding a quiet homeward-bound citizen and pricking him with their swords. Addison makes worthy Sir Roger de Coverley as much afraid of these night-birds as Swift himself; and the old baronet congratulates himself on escaping from the clutches of who had followed him half-way down . He, however, boasts that he threw them out at the end of , where he doubled the corner, and scuttled safely into his quiet lodgings. | |
From Elizabethan times downwards, was a favourite haunt of showmen. Concerning these popular exhibitions Mr. Noble has, with great industry, collected the following curious enumeration : | |
says our trusty authority, in , speaks of In were to be seen for a penny; and years later the giants of St. Dunstan's clock caused the street to be blocked up, and people to lose their time, their temper, and their money. During Queen Anne's reign, however, the wonders of were at their height. In a model of Amsterdam, feet long by feet wide, which had taken years in making, was exhibited in ; a child, years old, without thighs or legs, and eighteen inches high, was to be seen a great Lincolnshire ox, hands high, yards long, as lately shown at Cambridge, was on view and were exhibited daily In , at the in (by ), was exhibited the mentioned in the ; and here, in , eclipsing the deceased [extra_illustrations.1.34.2] and Higgins, greatly startled sight-seeing London.
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In old times was rendered picturesque, not only by its many gable-ended houses adorned with quaint carvings and plaster stamped in patterns, but also by the countless signs, gay with gilding and painted with strange devices, which hung above the shop-fronts. Heraldry exhausted all its stores to furnish emblems for different trades. Lions blue and red, falcons, and dragons of all colours, alternated with heads of John the Baptist, flying pigs, and hogs in armour. On a windy day these huge masses of painted timber creaked and waved overhead, to the terror of nervous pedestrians, nor were accidents by any means rare. On the (Queen Anne), a signboard opposite , , having loosened the brickwork by its weight and movement, suddenly gave way, fell, and brought the house down with it, killing persons, of whom was the queen's jeweller. It was not, however, till (George II.) that these dangerous signboards were ordered to be placed flat against the walls of the houses. | |
When Dr. Johnson said, he proposed no very easy task. The streets in his early days, in London, had no side-pavements, and were roughly paved, with detestable gutters running down the centre. From these gutters the jumbling coaches of those days liberally scattered the mud on the unoffending pedestrians who happened to be crossing at the time. The sedan-chairs, too, were awkward impediments, and choleric people were disposed to fight for the wall. In , when Lord Eldon came to London as a schoolboy, and | |
35 | put up at that humble hostelry the in , he describes coming home from with his brother in a sedan. Turning out of into , some rough fellows pushed against the chair at the corner and upset it, in their eagerness to pass . Dr. Johnson's curious nervous habit of touching every street-post he passed was cured in , by the laying down of side-pavements. On that occasion it is said English paviours in bet that they would pave more in a day than Scotchmen could. By o'clock the Englishmen had got so much ahead that they went into a public-house for refreshment, and, afterwards returning to their work, won the wager. [extra_illustrations.1.35.1] |
In the Wilkes' riot of , the mob burnt a large jack-boot in the centre of , in ridicule of [extra_illustrations.1.35.2] ; but a more serious affray took place in this street in , when the noisy Wilkites closed the Bar, to stop a procession of loyal citizens for St. James's, to present an address denouncing all attempts to spread sedition and uproot the constitution. The carriages were pelted with stones, and the City marshal, who tried to open the gates, was bedaubed with mud. Mr. Boehm and other loyalists took shelter in About of the frightened citizens, passing up , got to the palace by a devious way, a hearse with white horses and black following them to . Even there the Riot Act had to be read and the Guards sent for. When Mr. Boehm fled into in his alarm, he sent home his carriage containing the address. The mob searched the vehicle, but could not find the paper, upon which Mr. Boehm hastened to the Court, and arrived just in time with the important document. | |
The treason trials of brought more noise and trouble to . Hardy, the secretary to the London Corresponding Society, was a shoemaker at No. ; and during the trial of this approver of the French Revolution, Mr. John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon) was in great danger from a crowd. he says,
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There was great consternation in in , when [extra_illustrations.1.35.3] , attended by persons on horseback, passed publicly through it to return thanks at . Many persons in alarm barricaded their: doors and windows. Still greater was the alarm in , when the queen's funeral procession went by, after the deplorable fight with the at Cumberland ate, when of the rioters were killed. | |
With this rapid sketch of a few of the events in the history of , we begin our patient peregrination from house to house. | |
Footnotes: [extra_illustrations.1.32.2] landed at the Temple Stairs [extra_illustrations.1.33.1] DeFoe in the Pillory [extra_illustrations.1.33.2] ready 'prentices [extra_illustrations.1.33.3] Gondomar [extra_illustrations.1.33.4] Titus Oates stood [extra_illustrations.1.33.5] Mohocks, [extra_illustrations.1.33.6] boxed the Charlies, [extra_illustrations.1.34.2] Clarke [extra_illustrations.1.35.1] Union Bank, Fleet Street [extra_illustrations.1.35.2] Lord Bute [extra_illustrations.1.35.3] Queen Caroline |
