WE have now in our narrative of the city history arrived at a period regarding which innumerable books exist, teeming with information. London was particularly fortunate in having attracted the attention of an acute and patient observer like Stow, before the bloom of the middle ages had been rudely wiped off. He saw it as it was left by Whittington and Large, still but half ruined by Thomas and his master, and before the great fire had made it into modern London. That the fire spared Stow's monument in the little church upon Cornhill was only an accident, but amid such widespread destruction, when some of the grandest buildings in Europe were sacrificed, it was perhaps a good omen for the future that the curious terra-cotta figure of the antiquarian tailor still sits where his widow set it in the side aisle of St. Andrew Undershaft. Mr. Thoms has well remarked that " the devouring element, as if pitying his fate, and honouring his labours, spared the monument of him who had so carefully preserved the history of London's greatness."

Stow's general accuracy is remarkable, but when, in our own day, another and almost equally painstaking interpreter of old records arose, a few mistakes and errors were detected. , whose premature

The name of Richard Whittington, who was four times mayor in the early years of the century, is as familiar as nursery tales can make it.[1]  The country lad of good family was sent up to London at thirteen to make his fortune. He was accredited to a wealthy mercer, who like himself came from the west country, and taking the oath of industry, obedience, and duty, imposed upon apprentices, entered the office, as we should say, of John Fitz Warren. This must have been about , and king Edward was still alive.

The boy may have seen the last tournament of the old monarch, and Alice Perrers riding to Cheapside as the Lady of the Sun, and sitting on the balcony where the motherly Philippa had sat when she was a girl queen. He may have watched the rising walls of the " Charter House," and heard from an eye-witness of the burial in the pest-field behind of the 50,000 victims of the great plague. He may have seen the Canterbury pilgrims set out, nay, he may have been acquainted with Geoffrey Chaucer, who was alive till the end of the century. He must have often looked at the gay banners hung out from houses where some great country baron was lodging while parliament sat,t and was probably a spectator of

In due time the apprentice [3]  was made free of the mercers' company, which numbered King . himself among its members: and he seems to have very soon attracted the attention of his sovereign. He had subscribed five marks in towards the defence of the city, and ten years later he pays 10£., from which we may judge of the prosperity of his affairs in the interval. In Richard took upon himself to make Whittington mayor on the death of Adam Bamme during his year of office.: The arbitrary nature of this step does not seem to have given any offence. The citizens were too much occupied with other and more important affairs. The blank "charts," or cheques, already mentioned, were being signed, and the appointment of a popular merchant was acquiesced in willingly, as is proved by his regular election to serve as mayor again in the following year. There was disquietude in the city. The king's affairs were more and more involved. There was a constant dread of invasion. The river was but half protected, and a few years before a Scots pirate had shown himself off the Nore, and had only been driven away by an expedition fitted out at the cost of a private citizen, Sir John Philpot. There were warm disputes over the elections of aldermen, and new regulations were adopted, which practically placed the power

Meanwhile, the new Guildhall was fast approaching completion.[4]  The old Guildhall, the place of meeting of the ancient senate of the city from time immemorial, had been situated in Aldermanbury, a street in the ward of Cripplegate, to which it gave a name. Strange to say, we do not know when the old site was abandoned. Some remains of its buildings were still extant in the time of Stow, but as we know that the Guildhall chapel was built in the reign of ., on a site adjoining that of the new Guildhall, it is evident that the removal had then already taken place. Stow speaks of the older hall on this new site as being little better than a cottage. The old hall in Aldermanbury may have been burnt[5]  and a sudden removal may have been rendered necessary: but if so, the removal probably took place before the final arrangement respecting wards, which I have ventured to assign to the government of Sir Ralf Sandwich. That this is likely appears by a glance at the ward map, by which it will be seen that the site of the Guildhall itself is a reservation taken out of the ward of Bassishaw and annexed to that of Cheap. The new site may have

In order to provide for the new building many expedients were resorted to of a somewhat questionable nature. Thus a payment was imposed upon apprentices, upon persons taking up their freedom, and upon the enrolment of deeds; and fines were imposed on small offenders, who had hitherto stood in the pillory in Cheap or sat in the stocks in the poultry market. A sum of 100£. was, moreover, taken from the tolls of London Bridge for six years which should have gone to repairs.

Whittington's second, or to speak more exactly, his third mayoralty was in and was marked by a return of the plague, of which it was reported that thirty thousand people died. The year must, in fact, have been

On the accession of Henry V. these horrors became more, rather than less, frequent. With some difficulty the new king was persuaded to commit Lord Cobham, his old companion in arms, to the Tower, whence, however, he very soon escaped and commenced to organise his followers and take measures for an armed rising. Meanwhile there was a great convocation of the clergy at St. Paul's which lasted a fortnight,[11]  and when it was over, Archbishop Arundel and many other bishops called the people together on Sunday at the cross, and solemnly accursed Sir John Oldcastle and all his supporters. Immediately after Christmas the rising began. Suspicious bodies of men were to be seen assembling among the thickets between London and St. Giles'. On the 8th January, , the king and his brothers and the bishops took the field against the rebels, whom they found in great force beyond St. Giles' "between and the highway toward ." [12]  The first person they took up proved to be a squire of Oldcastle's, and they seem thereupon to have arrested wholesale all the passengers they met on the road. No resistance

While these tragical scenes were being enacted, London was plunged into a whirl of agitation of another kind by news of the victory of Agincourt. War, as usual,

Whittington or his executors have also the credit of founding the first city library. It consisted of a very considerable stock of books, and Stow says they erected a " fair and large library " for it and for the other manuscripts belonging to the corporation, adjoining closely to the Guildhall chapel. In the reign of ., his uncle, the Protector Somerset, sent for the books, and carried them away in " three carres," promising to restore them shortly. But the promise was never fulfilled, and London, till our own day, was left without a library. New and restored buildings for St. Bartholomew's Hospital, the pavement and glazing of the new Guildhall, the stocks market, where the Mansion House now stands, the opening of " drinking bosses," or taps, in the public conduits, and an almshouse for thirteen poor men, which still subsists,[18]  were among the objects to which his wealth was devoted. His example was followed by many other public-spirited citizens, and all generations of Londoners have been taught from their infancy to revere the name of Whittington.

Carpenter,[19]  his executor, also deserves a few lines of remembrance. He was of a very different character from the merchant princes with whom he associated and was one of the first writers and readers of whom we know that, though in a sense a clerk, he was not in orders. He was appointed town clerk or " secretary of the city" in , and is immortalized by the composition of the famous " Liber Albus," or " White Book" of London records, which has proved so valuable to the historian.[20]  Like Sir Thomas More at a later period he was a lay brother of the Charterhouse, and seems indeed to have been attached to other ecclesiastical fraternities, but without taking orders. He is venerated as the first founder of the city school, and seems, like Neel, the master of St. Thomas of Acons,[21]  and other enlightened men of the day, to have been anxious in the cause of education. The printing press had not yet been invented, but men's minds were being prepared for the outburst of the new learning which the end of the century was to see. Two years before Carpenter's death, his friend Robert Large, the mercer, was mayor; and among Large's apprentices was a boy from , whose name was destined to become at least as famous as that of Whittington himself. When we come to mention Caxton, it seems as if the clouds of the middle ages were already rolling away, and the new light of the renascence breaking at once upon the page. But ere Large's apprentice had become master of the " English nation " at Bruges, and had learnt the wondrous art from Colard Mansion, London had to suffer many things, to see the hero of Agincourt on his bier, to witness the fall of the

Before the death of Henry V., and during the mayoralty of Sir Henry Barton in I416, the lighting of the streets with lamps was made compulsory. On the 13th August, , a weathercock was set on the steeple of St. Paul's. King Henry died during the course of the same month, his body passed in solemn procession through the city in the November following, and nearly a year later an almost equally melancholy procession took its place. Could the citizens have foreseen the troubles coming on the kingdom, no appearance would have been more sad than that of the infant Henry VI. in . The widowed queen and her little son set out from Windsor for London on Saturday (the 13th November). They rested at Staines, and on the morrow the king was being carried toward his mother's chair in order to continue the journey when " he shriked and cryed and sprang and wolde nought be caryed forthere: wherefore he was borne ayeyne into the inne and there he bood the Soneday al day." [22] It seemed as if the infant king foresaw the misery he was to endure in the city to which he was being taken for the first time. On Wednesday the cavalcade passed through London, and the boy " with a glad chere sate in his modres lappe in the chare."[23]  Then the baby king's uncles led him into St. Paul's, where he was made to kneel at the altar. When we think of the tall columns and overarching vault, of the wide marble steps, the lofty canopy, and the poor little child, not three years old, " looking gravely and sadly about him," as if feeling already the weight of two usurped crowns,

The streets of London immediately became the battlefield of rival factions. Gloucester, the regent, was personally popular. "Good Duke Humfrey " is not even yet altogether forgotten. Though his grave is in St. Alban's Abbey, a tomb in old St. Paul's was appropriated to him by the people, and his tragical fate made the deepest impression on the citizens. We read that during the mayoralty of Sir John Coventry in , he warned the city of a design to seize it which had been formed by his rival, the bishop of Winchester. Shops were shut, men-at-arms called out, the gates locked, and the bishop's adherents were successfully excluded. This is an example of the state of things which prevailed more or less for nearly fifty years. A very brief summary of them will suffice. The young king was crowned at in , and coming to London was met on Blackheath with great ceremony and conducted through the city to Wesminster by the mayor and chief citizens. A few years later, on the breaking out of war between England and the Duke of Burgundy, not only did the city furnish and maintain a contingent for the defence of Calais, but, what is not so pleasant to record, the people in London rose and murdered a number of Flemings and other subjects of the duke who had been trading here. In January, , the body of queen Katharine, the widow of Henry V., rested at St. Paul's on its way from Bermondsey Abbey, where she had died, to . Her second husband, Owen Tudor, was actually at the time a prisoner in , hard by, and in the course of the following year broke out, " hurtynge foule his kepere, but at the last," adds the chronicler,[24]  piously, "blessyd

As an example of the city life of the time, we may take the story of the widow of , of which some particulars have survived. She found a poor Breton, who had perhaps wandered over with the followers of Joan of Navarre, who, when she married ., was dowager duchess of Brittany. The widow, out of charity, took him home to her house and treated him kindly. In return, he murdered her and carried off all she possessed. Being detected, he fled across the river to , and took sanctuary. On one or two occasions the mayor and sheriffs had invaded sanctuary, as, for example, when a soldier in got safe into St. Martin-le-Grand, while actually on his way to be hanged, but they had been obliged by the fulminations of holy Church to give up their prey." [25] The Breton was starved out, but, in accordance with the ecclesiastical rule, he was allowed to go, on condition of forswearing the realm, and departing to Dover, and across the sea as quickly as possible.[26]  "Bareheaded, barefooted, ungirt, a white cross placed in his hand, he was sent forth on his painful pilgrimage." But though he had escaped the law, " as he went his way it happed him to come by the same place where he had done that cursed deed, and women of the same parish came out with stones and dirt, and there made an end of him in the high street, so that he went no further, notwithstanding the constables and other men also which

The meagreness of the city annals during this reign would be extreme but for the rebellion of Cade, one of the strangest events we meet with in all London history. Who Cade was, what he wanted, how he contrived to make himself leader of the regular ish levies, and to overawe the city for so many weeks, and why his power so suddenly collapsed, we shall probably never know. Our acquaintance, too, with the state of the civic parties is of the slightest. There are indications now and then of the existence of political views. Some of the city rulers are more popular than others. There is occasionally a sign of emotion among those below, of repression by those above: a reference, too vague to tell us much, to the existence of "the commons." In short, the old days of isolation were past. The citizens of London were no longer a peculiar people, dwelling in a close-walled town, surrounded by fordless morasses and impenetrable forests. They could no longer indulge in political rivalries which did not concern any one but themselves. The old days of Fitz-Thedmar and his chronicle, in which London is described as a kingdom within a kingdom, self-contained, self-governing, were gone for ever. The suburbs took the citizens far into . was directly under their governance. They lived in villas at Stepney and even at . London had become part of England: and already the old patriotism of the citizens to their city was growing weak. It is difficult, once the first half of the fifteenth century has been reached, to dissociate the history of London from the history of

The ish men, disgusted like every one else at the misgovernment of the kingdom, had been foremost in the deposition and assassination of the weak king's weak minister, Suffolk. In they wanted a leader, and Cade offered himself. He was an old soldier, and knew how to organise an army. Calling himself Mortimer, he led some twenty thousand men over the wooded hills of Dartford to the , and encamping at Blackheath, issued his orders and levied his contributions on the city for a month, during which the king fled to Kenilworth, and the city magistrates seem to have been simply paralysed with fear. Of the mayor, Thomas Chalton, we hear absolutely nothing, except that after Cade had defeated the king's general near Sevenoaks, and had returned and made his head-quarters at the White Hart in , he called a meeting of the common council, at which was debated, not the question how to oppose the rebel, but whether he was to be allowed to enter the city. The lower classes it is evident sympathised with Cade. He promised them immunity from taxation and all the other benefits which every leader of the kind has always offered to the credulity of the populace. He demanded and obtained contributions, but ordered that they should be levied on the foreign merchants only. The archbishop of Canterbury and other great men had interviews with him, in which they were surprised at his discretion, but they naturally could not persuade him to retire or to lay down his command. Robert Home alone among the aldermen seems to have

This moderation did not last long. On the following day (3rd July) he again entered the city, having retired to for the night. He repaired to Guildhall, where the trembling mayor and aldermen were assembled. Here he ordered them to bring Lord Say[29]  from the Tower,[30]  and to arraign him before the mayor and the king's judges who were then sitting. Robert Horne was summoned at the same time, but escaped on his wife's payment of 500 marks for his liberty. Say desired to be tried by his peers, but the impatient rebel, taking him forcibly from the custody of the city officers, dragged him into Cheap and beheaded him in company with a thief and murderer named Hawarden, Say's body being stripped and dragged naked through the streets, so that, as the chronicler declares, the flesh clave to the stones all the way from Cheap to . A former sheriff of , Crowmer, who was Say's son-in-law, and

Meanwhile the kingdom was being gradually aroused to the fact of the existence of Richard of, the heir of the line of . He had no position and asserted none, in respect of the crown, which had been confirmed by parliament to ., a descendant it is true of a junior branch, but claiming in the male line, while, had he made any claim, could only have done so through the Mortimer family, whose heir he had lately become. The Mortimers had,- by the marriage of Edmund, third earl of March, with the daughter of Lionel of Antwerp, inherited his position as the third of king Edward's four sons, while Henry VI. only represented John, the fourth son. But, in addition, was, by his father's side, descended from Edmund of Langley, the fifth son of ., and was thus as much a Plantagenet as his cousin the king.[33] 

The side which London would take in the coming contest was to determine its result. Up to the city was loyal to Henry. had marched up from the west with a large army, and hoped the gates would have been opened to him. But entrance being denied, he crossed the at Kingston, and took up a position

A short peace ensued, but the troubles were only beginning. One of the contemporary authorities[39]  complains bitterly of the state of affairs in the city. The king's debts increased daily, yet payment there was none. The hearts of the people were turned away from them that had the land in governance. Commerce must have suffered grievously. The Flemings had been alienated as we have seen. Normandy and the French possessions, except Calais, had been lost. But Warwick held Calais firmly, and attacking a Spanish fleet took some rich prizes. He defeated an attempt of the Lancastrian party to oust him, and at the climax of the war landed at Sandwich, and conducting with himself the young earl of March, sent a herald to know how London was disposed. " They that were not friendly to the earls counselled the mayor and the commonalty for to lay guns at the bridge for to keep them out, and so a little division there was among the citizens, but it was soon ceased." Twelve aldermen went out and assured the earls of a welcome, and on the , they entered London. A convocation at St. Paul's was turned into a political meeting. Warwick once more harangued the people on behalf of March and himself, setting forth the misrule of the king's government, but avowing loyalty to his person, and expressing their determination "to declare and excuse their innocence or else to die in the field." Warwick then made his father, Salisbury, ruler of the city, and set forth to meet the royal army at Northampton, taking March, and the pope's legate, the

Henry was not kept long in London, but was allowed to cross to his manors at and Eltham. In October, parliament settled the reversion of the crown on the duke of, and again for a brief season there was peace. But before the end of the year the fighting was renewed, and in a way disastrous to the cause the Londoners favoured. On the last day of December the queen's army defeated and killed the duke of at Wakefield, and a few days later the earl of Salisbury was beheaded by the people of Pontefract. A second battle took place at St. Alban's, and Warwick was forced to retire upon London.

The Londoners, meanwhile, dreading the queen's vengeance and hearing that she had promised her northern soldiers the sack of the city, sent envoys entreating her favour, at the same time, however, shutting the gates against certain men-at-arms, whom she had sent on before her. March had been fighting in the west, where he had defeated a gathering of Lancastrians, and put to death, among others, Owen Tudor, who, old as he was, had done good service in the cause of his stepson. The queen and her army, joined by the poor king after the battle at St. Alban's, turned back from London on hearing that Warwick and March had effected a junction. The citizens, free for the moment from apprehension, welcomed Edward of with acclamation. He reached London on the 28th February, and proceeded to his mother's house at Baynard's Castle, where the citizens crowded to his standard clamouring to be led against the slayers " of the noble duke Richard, his father." A council of lords was summoned. Henry was declared to have forfeited the crown, and the people were summoned to a great meeting to signify their will. The Cheap was no longer available for a folkmote. But they assembled in thousands in Smithfield and the open space northward towards Clerkenwell, known as St. John's Field, and being asked if they would have the young earl for their king, the air was filled with the old cry of " Yea, Yea !" and London elected . as it had elected so many of his predecessors.

After Edward's marriage, his policy, no longer directed exclusively by Warwick, was nevertheless unswerving in its favour towards the Londoners. The alliance with Burgundy in , which opened again a vast trade between England and the Low Countries, was extremely welcome to the city merchants. Edward himself engaged in commercial ventures, and sent his own

returned in triumph once more: the mayor, Stockton, accompanied by the aldermen and sheriffs, one of whom was the famous John Crosby, [40] went out with a vast multitude to the fields beyond Islington to meet him, and on the highway he knighted them, to the number of twelve, including the recorder. The same night saw the last act of the dismal tragedy of Henry of . He was found dead in his lodging in the Tower, of " pure displeasure and melancholy " said the Yorkists, of poison said others.[41]  The next day his body was brought to St. Paul's and shown to the people. Was any old man present to recall the day when, eightand-forty years before, Henry, as a little child, had kneeled in royal loneliness before the altar of the same church ?

[1] Messrs. Besant and Rice, in their charming little account of Whittington and his times, have made extensive use of Riley, but have breathed life into the dry bones, and presented us with a picture as vivid as it is accurate. t See evidence of Chaucer in the Scrope and Grosvenor Case, p. 178: " Being asked if he knew of any interruption or challenge made by Sir Robert Grosvenor, or by his ancestors, or by any one in his name, to the said Sir Richard (Scrope) or any of his ancestors of that name, he replied that he was on one occasion in Friday Street in London, and as he passed through the street he saw hanging out a new sign made with the said arms, and asked whose town house it was which had hanging without it these arms of Scrope."

[2] Stow, p. 7.

[3] Messrs. Besant and Rice accept the authenticity of the story of Whittington's first commercial venture with the cat (p. 137)1 There is a misprint of 1379 for 1397 in Besant and Rice. The king's writ is in Riley, p. 544, from Letter-book ld.

[4] Riley, p. 545. I am disposed to think that part at least of the beautiful crypt, now so shamefully ill-used, is of older date than the building above.

[5] Stow says it was a carpenter's yard in his time. History repeats itself. The crypt of the newer Guildhall is a carpenter's yard now.

[6] So called from the Banquelles, who succeeded the Cliffords and Basings. The original ' manor-house," so to speak, may well have stood on the spot.

[7] Or St. Benet Sherehog, Size Lane. Newcourt points out that John Newton was the parish priest here from 1396 to 1427. Some authorities bring Sawtree from St. Osyth's in Essex, where he may have been the abbot's vicar.

[8] The Greyfriars' Chronicle simply records :-" That yere a prest was brent in Smythfelde, that was called Sir William Sautre for erysse." " A lollard and an eritik approved afore alle the clergye" (Tyrrell's 'Chronicle'). The spelling of the newly-defined offence dots not seem to have yet been settled.

[9] 'Chronicle,' printed in 1827, p. 92. I have, for the most part, modernised the spelling.

[10] Mr. Green says he was a layman, named Thomas Badby (i. 535).

[11] It assembled on St. Edmund's Day (20th Nov.) and sat " tyl the iiij day of Decembre," 1413.

[12] This circumstantial account is in Tyrrell's 'Chronicle,' p 97. For the ancient topography of the district, see vol. ii. chapter xxi.

[13] Tyrrell, p. 106.

[14] There has been some conflict of opinion as to the spot on which he suffered, but the 'English Chronicle,' edited by Mr. Davies for the Camden Society, expressly mentions " Sent Gilis feld."

[15] Feb. 2nd.

[16] Tyrrell, p. 108.

[17] Besant and Rice, p. 174. Mr. Brewer says (' Life of Carpenter,' p. 23) that Whittington's will was made in September, 1421, and proved in 1423. The king's licence for rebuilding Newgate prison was obtained on the 23rd May.

[18] On Highgate Hill.

[19] 'Life of John Carpenter,' by Thomas Brewer. London, 1856

[20] It was printed in the original Latin for the Rolls Series in 1859, and translated by Mr. Riley for the corporation in 1861.

[21] Whose school survived as the Mercers'. See above, p. 114.

[22] Tyrrell, 'Chronicle,'p. 112.

[23] Tyrrell, p. 165. Miss Yonge ('Cameos,' ii. 353) and others have mentioned a tall white horse on which the queen sat bearing the child.

[24] 'Chronicle,' printed 1827, by Ed. Tyrrell, p. 123.

[25] Kempe, 'St. Martin-le-Grand,' p. 117. The contemporary report is very quaint:-" There came out (of) the Panyer-Aley, five of his fellowship, not being of your franchises, but strangers, betwix the Bocherie and the Bole, hed and bereft from the said officer the foresaid sowdeor, with daggers drawn, and brought him with them into the Sanctuarie," &c. The Bowl was probably a tavern. The soldier's name was Knight.

[26] See Palgrave, 'The Merchant and the Friar,' p. 189, for an account of the usage on these occasions.

[27] Modernised from Tyrrell, 'Chronicle,' p. 117.

[28] 'English Chron.' (Cam. Soc.), p. 66.

[29] Sir James Fiennes. He lived at Knole, and is called "lord lieutenant " in Mr. Cooper's account of the affair in ' Archæologia Cantiana,' vol. vii.

[30] On the outbreak of the rebellion Say, who had been Lord Chamberlain, was committed to the Tower by the king.

[31] Tyrrell's ' Chronicle' says nine, and the Cam. Soc.' Chronicle,' ten.

[32] i. 564. The Camden Society's 'Chronicle,' quoted above, says that Cade was wounded unto the death and carried in a cart towards London, and " be the wey he deide."

[33] The only occasions on which this surname was used in the family were when this duke began to set up pretensions to the crown, and when Edward IV bestowed it on his bastard son, Arthur.

[34] Previously Old Dean's Lane.

[35] First part of ' Henry VI.,' act 2, sc. 4.

[36] See further particulars in Mr. Gairdner's ' Introduction to the Paston Letters,' vol. i., p. cxxxi.

[37] 'Greyfriars Chronicle,' p. 20.

[38] After the battle of Lewes in 1264.

[39] 'English Chronicle,' Cam. Soc., p. 79.

[40] Crosby was never mayor.

[41] Shakespeare makes Gloucester stab him. (' HenryVI.,' 3rd part, act v. vi.)