Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places.Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 6
Walford, Edward
1872-78
Southwark (continued).-Old London Bridge.
Southwark (continued).-Old London Bridge.
| |
Stow, in his advances as highly probable the hypothesis that when the stone bridge was erected over the Thames the course of the river was temporarily changed, being diverted into a new channel,
| |
Strype, too, seems to support this view, when he writes: But Sir Christopher Wren, and after him Maitland, are of the contrary opinion, and think that Stow confused the ditch of the century with that dug in the time of Knut. | |
Old was said to have been this, however, is, of course, a play upon words, for, in reality, it was built largely out of the produce of a tax on wool. Stow also states that the bridge-gate at the end was of the chief gates of the City of London, and that it stood there long before the Norman Conquest, when the bridge was only of timber. But this supposition again is strongly denied by Maitland. | |
Of itself, and many of the historical scenes that were enacted upon it, we have already spoken in a previous part of this work; but has played too important a part on several occasions, in scenes connected with the bridge, to be altogether lost sight of here. Indeed, the bridge-foot must have seen very fine and gay sights in the old days before the Reformation, in the shape of religious and royal processions. For instance, in , when Richard II. suspended and seized on the Charter of the City of London, and the citizens offered to re-purchase their rights for a sum of money, the king was graciously pleased to travel up to London from Windsor, The ceremony of publicly receiving their Majesties, we are told, began at Wandsworth, when of the citizens of London, well mounted, and habited in livery of colour, rode forth to meet the king. says Thomas of Walsingham,
| |
In , the Priory of , and other parts adjoining the south end, were destroyed by fire, along with the greater part of the bridge itself, which was then of wood. The flames having caught the beams of the bridge, many of the Londoners lost their lives by fire, and others by water, being drowned in attempting to escape. | |
In the reign of Henry III. (A.D. ), was the scene of a conflict between the forces of the king and those of Simon de Montfort, the sturdy Earl of Leicester, which were marched, we are told, through the county of Surrey, and being victorious near the foot of the bridge, forced the king to beat a retreat, while [extra_illustrations.6.9.1] passed in triumph over the bridge into the City: the citizens of London being, nearly to a man, upon his side. | |
Splendid pageants were, doubtless, seen frequently here whilst the Court lived at the Tower, and when was the only way from the south of England into the City. Of some of these we have already spoken in the chapter above referred to, particularly of those in the reign of Richard II., which was, indeed, a memorable reign for . | |
King Henry V. was received here in great state on his return to London after the victory of Agincourt; an event which was celebrated in verse by John Lydgate or Lidgate, the monk of Bury:--
| |
Fabyan tells us, in his that in , on Monday, the , the great stone gate and the tower standing upon it, next , To which Stow piously adds,
| |
It appears from the narratives which have come down to us concerning the insurrections of Wat Tyler, Jack Cade, and Falconbridge, that in the Middle Ages was still somewhat destitute of fortifications; and, probably, its regular defences were those of the circuit of fortifications thrown up by order of the Parliament during the civil war. | |
Jack Cade seems to have made his head-quarters all through his rebellion. In Shakespeare's vivid scenes of this rebellion (), a messenger tells the king:--
| |
Jack Cade, after his skirmish on Blackheath, took up his quarters at the both before and after his entry into the City. On the night of Sunday, , Cade being then in , the city captains, the mayor, aldermen, and commonalty of London, mounted guard upon the bridge. says Hall, in his
| |
During the truce that followed this defence of , a general pardon was procured for Cade and his followers by the Lord High Chancellor, Archbishop Stafford; and all began to withdraw by degrees from with their spoil. Cade, however, was soon afterwards slain, and his dead body having been brought up to London, his head was placed over the south gate of . Mr. Mark A. Lower has been at the trouble of recording the fact that he was slain, not at Hothfield, in Kent, but at Heathfield, near Cuckfield, in Sussex, where a roadside monument is erected in his honour. It bears the following inscription:--
| |
By that awful gate which looked towards , for a period of nearly years, under Tudor and Stuart sovereigns, it must have been a rare thing for the passenger to walk without seeing or more human heads stuck upon a pike, looking down upon the flow of the river below, and rotting and blackening in the sun. The head of the noble Sir William Wallace was for many months exposed on this spot. In Falconbridge- --made South. wark his head-quarters in his impudent attack on London. He arrived here in May, giving out that he came to free King Henry from his captivity; and by way of proof of his intention, burnt part of the bridge, together with some of the houses in the suburbs of . After meeting with defeat, his head and those of of his comrades were stuck together on spears, where they remained visible to all comers, till the elements and the carrion crows had left nothing of them there but the bones. At a later period the head of the pious Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was stuck up here, along with that of the honest and philosophic Sir Thomas More. The quarters of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the son of the well-known poet of that name, were exhibited here, at the end of the bridge, during the reign of Queen Mary. | |
of the most imposing pageants witnessed at was that accorded here by the citizens to [extra_illustrations.6.10.1] , on his return to London, after having been crowned King of France in the church of Notre Dame at Paris; the consisting, if Fabyan may be trusted, of a and figures of representing Nature, Grace, and Fortune; with maidens, all in white, representing the orders of the angelic host, who addressed the king in verses recorded at full length by Lydgate, of which the following stanza may serve as a sample:--
| |
Henry VII. was received here in pomp, after defeating the insurgents, in ; the heads of the leaders of the outbreak, Flamoke and Joseph, being set over the entrance to the bridge. | |
In , Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII., with his bride, Katharine of Aragon, was welcomed here on his way from to witness the rejoicings prepared for them in the City. Stow tells us, in his
How little did she then think of the fate that awaited her! | |
Cardinal Wolsey rode in great state over the bridge, and through the , , and along the Kentish Road, when he left the | |
11 | kingdom in , for the purpose of arranging a marriage between Henry VIII. and the Duchess d'Alencon. years later, the public entry of Cardinal Campeggio, as legate from the Pope, into London, to deal with the question of Henry's divorce from Queen Katharine, must have been a brave sight. The nobility rode in advance from Blackheath towards , then came the cardinal himself, in magnificent robes, then his Next came horsemen and a The procession is said to have grown to miles in length before it reached the City gates. From to the foot of the bridge the road was lined on both sides by the monks and the other clergy, dressed in their various habits, with copes of cloth of gold, silver and gold crosses, and banners, who, we are told, as the legate passed, At the foot of the bridge bishops received the cardinal, the people shouted for joy, whilst all the bells of the City were rung, and the roar of artillery from the Tower and the river-forts --to use Wolsey's own words-
|
In the insurrection of Sir Thomas Wyatt in -, formed the rallying-point for that misguided rebel and his force, some strong. His soldiers, meeting with but little opposition on the south of the Thames, attacked and sacked the palace of the Bishop of Winchester, whose fine library they destroyed. As the artillery in the Tower began to fire on next day, in order to dislodge Sir Thomas, the inhabitants urged him to retreat, in order to save them from loss and destruction. His subsequent movements and his ultimate fate we have already recorded. | |
Stow tells us, in his (vol. i., p. ), that in , the tower at the northern end having become decayed, a new was commenced in its place; and that during the interval the heads of the traitors which had formerly stood upon it were set upon the tower over the gate at , , which consequently came to be called the Traitors' Gate. It may be remembered that John Houghton, the Prior of the Charterhouse, Sir Thomas More, and Bishop Fisher, were among the who were thus treated. | |
About the time when these heads were removed, several alterations and improvements would seem to have been made in the bridge, especially in the erection of a --., a magnificent wood mansion, which formed a Gate and Tower. | |
It is worthy of note that after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, of the captured standards were hung upon at the end looking towards , on the day of Fair,
| |
When the Parliamentary cause was in the ascendant, and King Charles was expected to attack the City, was rapidly fortified, particularly about the foot of , like the other outlying portions of the metropolis ; and of Cromwell's officers, Colonel Rainsborough, with a brigade of horse and foot, was able to hold the whole borough of almost without opposition. | |
On Tuesday, the , King Charles II. entered London in triumph, after having been magnificently entertained in Fields. About in the afternoon he arrived in , and thence proceeded over the bridge into the City, attended by all the glory of London and the military forces of the kingdom. Lord Clarendon, who makes this the concluding scene of his noble gives us but little information as to the details of the king's reception at , though we learn incidentally from his pages that
| |
Bloome, of the continuators of Stow, expressly says that in the Great Fire some of the old houses at the south end of the bridge-several of them built in the reign of King John-escaped the flames. | |
Gothic towers--not uniform in plan, however-defended the southern end of the original bridge, and also of the . At this end of the bridge were, likewise, corn-mills, based on sterlings, which projected far into the river westward. They were covered with a long shed, formed of shingles or thin boards, and could certainly have been no ornament to the structure to which they were an appendage. We have already spoken of the houses and shops--which lined the roadway of old , but we may here make mention of the tradesmen's tokens which were once in use here. A full list of those used in | |
12 | will be found in the appendix to Manning and Bray's Several of these tokens relate to . The author of gives illustrations of several, among which is a copper token, farthing size, having on the side, to speak heraldically, a bear passant, chained; and on the reverse, the words Another copper token shows the same device, with the legend Another displays a sugar-loaf, with the name,
|
The end of , on the side, was known as Bridge-foot. The here was, for some centuries, of the most popular of London taverns; indeed, if we may accept Mr. Larwood's statement, it was the resort of aristocratic pleasure-seekers as early as the reign of Richard III. Thus, in -, it was repeatedly visited by the then Sir John Howard, who went thither to drink wine and shoot at the target. Peter Cunningham, in his adds that the is mentioned | |
| frequently by name by writers of the century. | |
Thus Pepys writes, under date :-- Mr. Larwood observes that the wine sold at this establishment did not meet with the approbation of the fastidious searchers after claret in :--
| |
This old tavern was taken down in , when a quantity of coins, dating as far back as the reign of Elizabeth, were found, as may be seen by a reference to the of that date. | |
We learn from the kIarleian manuscripts that | |
13 | there was here another old inn, known as the kept by Edward Butling, whose advertisement states that he and who, probably, also sold playing-cards, if his sign had any meaning. |
, probably, extended itself gradually on to the bridge itself; the houses being distinguished by signs, some of which have come down to our times, in the works of antiquaries and on tradesmen's tokens and bill-heads. For instance: there is extant a small copper-plate tobacco paper, probably of the reign of Queen Anne, with a coarse and rude engraving of a negro smoking, and holding in his hand a roll of tobacco; above his head is a crown, ships in full sail are behind, and the sun issues from the right-hand corner above; in the foreground are little negroes planting and packing tobacco, and beneath is the name We have also seen another shop bill, of about the same date, displaying, within a rich cartouche frame, a pair of embroidered small-clothes and a glove: beneath is the legend, It is clear, from these notices, that it was very doubtful where ended and actually began. | |
In the century,.the street on the bridge ranked with , , and , as of the principal literary emporia of the City.
and are some of the signs of the publishers established and mentioned on the title-pages of books published at this date. | |
John Bunyan at time certainly used to preach in a chapel in ; but, in all probability, the author of is using the vagueness of after-dinner talkers when he says that the converted tinker lived on . Perhaps he was led into the error by the fact that of Bunyan's lesser books was published there. | |
The Bridge House and Yard in [extra_illustrations.6.13.2] are closely connected with the history of the bridge itself. For Stow tells us, in his (vol. ii., p. ), that they were so called as being | |
14 | He adds that this Bridge House and that it covers for the bridge. The Bridge House, in fact, was long used as a receptacle of provisions for the navy, and as a store-house for the public in times of dearth; ovens were attached to it, in which the biscuit for the Royal Navy was baked. It was also used on certain occasions as a banqueting-hall, when the Lord Mayor came in his official capacity to the borough. of these occasions was at the opening of [extra_illustrations.6.14.1] , of which we shall have more to say presently. We may state here, however, that the fair was instituted in the reign of Edward VI., and was held annually in the month of September. observes the author of
|
writes the author of the work above quoted, From the same work we learn that a cross, charged with a small saltire, is supposed to have been the old heraldic device for or the estate of ; and we know that the arms used for those places are still Azure, an amulet, ensigned with a cross patee, Or, interlaced with a saltire, conjoined in base of the . | |
The following just remarks on the general aspect of in the Middle Ages are taken from Dr. R. Paule's -- Such must have been, speaking generally, the appearance of centuries ago. | |
In the time of Elizabeth, if we may rely on the statements of the appears to have consisted of a line of street extending from the bridge nearly to where now is the , formerly called , then the high road to Canterbury and Dover, and of which only the part near was lined with houses a line of street, | |
15 | including Tooley or Street, extending from the to ; another line of street running westward by to where is now the ; and, lastly, , branching off from to Church. Excepting near , there were at that time scarcely any back or cross streets. Near were the Bishop of Winchester's palace, the Globe Theatre, the and for baiting bulls and bears. The of , , , and were then separated from , and from each other also, by open fields. [extra_illustrations.6.15.1] |
Towards the end of the century had extended itself considerably. The houses on the east side of now stretched to and , which thus became joined on to the metropolis, though Fields, on the western side, still remained open country. Back streets, also, and alleys had been formed on either side of , as far as . In the early part of the eighteenth century the buildings of extended along the river-side as far as ; and in the opposite direction was continued to and even beyond , where the river bends to the southward. Later still, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the opening of led to the formation of ; and towards the close of the century, Fields were enclosed and laid out in new streets. Since the commencement of the present century, Marsh--which formerly separated from Lambeth--has been covered with new streets and buildings; and in every direction has spread itself till it has united itself with all the surrounding villages, from Greenwich in the far east to Battersea in the far west, and combined them into large town, having a population of about , of which proper may be regarded as the nucleus. | |
In a little less than years after the Great Fire of London-namely, in - was visited by a fire which did, in proportion, almost equal damage with the conflagration which has become historical. writes Mr. C. Walford, in the
he adds,
| |
The king (Charles II.) was so much touched by the sight, which recalled vividly the scenes which he had witnessed years before, that he went down the river in his state-barge to , in order It is difficult, however, to see how a king could be of more use in such an emergency than a good chief-fireman, or even of as much service. The buildings being as yet, like those of Old London, chiefly of timber, lath, and plaster, the fire spread extensively; and its further progress was only stayed
| |
Old , and the street winding southward from it, were situated about a feet eastward of the present bridge and its approach from the . The building of New was actually commenced on the , whenthe coffer-dam for the southern pier was driven into the bed of the river; the stone was laid in ; and the bridge was publicly opened by William IV. and Queen Adelaide on the Ist of . writes Lucy Aikin, in September of that year,
| |
16 | |
Footnotes: [] See Vol. II., pp. 9-17. [extra_illustrations.6.9.1] De Montfort [extra_illustrations.6.10.1] Henry VI. [] See Vol. III., p, 125, and Vol. IV., p. 289. [] See Vol. IV., p. 335. [] See Vol. II., p. 15. [extra_illustrations.6.13.2] Tooley Street [extra_illustrations.6.14.1] Southwark Fair [extra_illustrations.6.15.1] Opening of New London Bridge |
