 Lessons 19 and 20 of the History of London. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding. The History of London by Walter Besant. Lesson 19. The Pilgrims. In the time when the road connecting village with village and town with town was but an uncertain bridle-path, through woods and over-waste places, where in winter horse, man and wayfarer struggled with bog and quagmire, where robbers lurked in the thickets, and fevers and agues haunted the marsh, where men went armed and every stranger was a foe, it would seem as if most men stayed where they were born, and desired not to court the dangers of the unknown world. In many villages, especially in the remote places of the country, this was the case. The men of Somerset abode where they were born, speaking their own language, a race apart. The men of Norfolk abode in their county, cut off from the rest of the world by fends in the west and sea on the north and east. Their language was not understood by the men of the west or the south country. Had the other conditions of life allowed this isolation to continue undisturbed, the nation could never have been created. We should have remained a scattered collection of tribes, speaking each its own language and developing its own customs. There were three causes which stirred the stagnant waters. The first was war. The barren or feudal lord carried off the young men of the village to fight. Those of them who returned had things to tell of the outside world. They fired the imagination and awakened the enterprise of the lads. The second was trade at the trading-ports. The lads saw and continued to talk with the foreign sailors, the Fleming, the German, the man of Rouen en Bordeaux. Some of them went on board the ships of the merchant adventurers and sailed to foreign lands. Lastly there were the pilgrimages. From the tenth to the fifteenth century there was a rage for pilgrimage. Everybody wanted to become a pilgrim. No money was wanted. There would certainly be found every day some monastery at which bed and a supper would be provided for the pilgrim. It was a joyous company which fared along the road, some riding, some on foot, travelling together for safety, all bound to the same shrine where they would hear the masses and make their vows, and so return light-hearted. It was, in fact, the medieval way of taking a holiday. Sometimes it was to Canterbury where was the shrine of Thomas Beckett that the pilgrims were bound, sometimes to Walsingham where was the miraculous image of the Virgin, sometimes to Glastonbury hallowed by the thorn miraculously flowering every year on Christmas Day, planted by Joseph of Arimathea himself. Sometimes it was farther afield to Compostela in Spain, Rome or even Jerusalem that the pilgrims proposed to go. Chaucer described such a company all starting together, riding from London to Canterbury, on pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Beckett. They are pilgrims, but there is very little piety in their discourse. One can see that whatever the motive, whether for the expiation of sin or any other cause, the journey is full of cheerfulness and enjoyment. The crusades were one outcome of this passion for pilgrimage. Nay, the first crusade itself was little better than a great pilgrimage of the common people, so ignorant that they asked at the sight of every walled town if that was Jerusalem. It was a pilgrimage from which few indeed returned. In England the chief gain from pilgrimage was the bringing together of men from the different parts of the country. Remember that the men of the Norths could not understand the speech of the men of the South. A Norfolk rustic at the present day would hardly understand a man of Devon. There was always danger of forgetting that they all belonged to the same realm, the same nation, and the same race. But the love of pilgrimage spread so wide that it became a danger. The rustic left the plough, the blacksmith his anvil, the carpenter his bench. All left their wives and their children in order to tramp across the country on pilgrimage to some shrine. By day they marched together. At night they sat round the fire in the stranger's room of the monastery, and took their supper and slept on the reeds. A delightful change from the monotony and hard work of the village. But the bishops interposed. Let no one go on pilgrimage without his bishops' license. Let not the monasteries give a bed and supper to any pilgrim who could not show his bishops' license. Then the rustics and the craftmen had to remain at home where they have stayed except when they went out to fight ever since. When the pilgrim, especially the pilgrim who had been over the seas, came home, he was able to entertain his friends with stories he had seen all the rest of his life. Thus the earliest plan of the Holy Sepulchre is one drawn by a pilgrim for the instruction of certain monks who entertained him. The pilgrims were the travellers of the time. They observed foreign manners and customs. They brought home seeds and told of strange food. They extended the boundaries of the world. They prevented the native village from becoming the whole world. They taught and encouraged men to cease from regarding a stranger as an enemy. The world was thus opened out by war, trade and pilgrimage, but most of all by pilgrimage. Lesson 20 St Bartholomew's Hospital The oldest of the city hospitals is that great and splendid foundation which stands in Smithfield, the smooth field. It was first founded by one Rahir, of whom we know little or nothing except that he lived in the reign of Henry I, and that he founded the priory and monastery of St Bartholomew. In the church of St Bartholomew the great you may see a very beautiful tomb said to be his, but the work is of a later date. It is related that while on a pilgrimage to Rome he fell ill and was light to die, and he vowed that if he were restored to health he would erect and establish a hospital for poor sick people. He did recover and he fulfilled his vow. He built the priory of St Bartholomew whose church still stands in part, and beside it established his hospital. The place called Smithfield was then a swampy field used for a horse fair. It was also a place of execution without the city wall. At first the hospital was a very small place. It consisted probably of two large rooms or halls, one for men and one for women, with a chapel. If it had any endowment at all it must have been very small, because the master or hospitaler had to go every morning to the shambles new gate in order to beg meat for the maintenance of the sick. Two hundred years later the hospital was taken in hand by Edward IV, and provided with an establishment of master, eight brethren, priests and four sisters, who served the sick. They were all subject to the rule of St Austin. After the death of Whittington the hospital buildings were repaired by his bequests. On the dissolution of the religious houses the priory and hospital of Bartholomew fell with the rest, but five years later the hospital was refounded and endowed by the king and the city. If you visit a hospital and are taken into a ward you see a row of clean white beds arranged in orderly position on either side of the long room. The temperature is regulated, the ventilation is perfect, there are means by which the patient can be examined in private. The diseases are apportioned to separate wards. Everything is managed with the greatest cleanliness and order. If an operation is performed the patient is kept under chloroform and feels nothing. The physicians are men of the highest scientific reputation. The nurses are trained assistants. The food is the best that can be procured. The poorest man brought to the hospital is treated with the same care, the same science, the same luxuries as the richest. Look, however, at the hospital as founded by Rahir. There is a great hall with a chapel at one end, at which mass is daily sung. The room is narrow and lofty, lit by Norman windows, two or three on a side. There is a lantern in the roof. Under the lantern a fire is burning every day, the smoke rising to the roof. The hall is dark and ill-ventilated, the air foul and heavy with the breath of sixty or seventy-six men lying in beds arranged in rows along the wall. There are not separate beds for each patient, but as the sick are brought in they are laid together side by side in the same bed whatever the disease, so that he who suffers from fever is placed beside another who suffers from palsy. There are four in a bed and in times of pressure even more. Sometimes one arrives who develops the plague when the whole of the patients in the hospital catch the infection and all die together. The surgeons are especially skilled in the dressing of wounds received in battle or in fray. The sisters can tie up a broken limb and stop a bleeding wound. The brethren go about the beds administering the last offices of the church to the dying. The food is scanty, the appliances are rude, there is small hope of recovery. Yet to die in hospital, tended and consoled, instead of in the hut where life has been passed, is something for which to be grateful. Consider into how great, how noble a foundation the little hospital of Rahir has grown. The modern hospital contains six hundred and seventy-six beds. It receives about one hundred and fifty thousand patients every year, of whom seven thousand are inpatients, eighteen thousand outpatients and one hundred and thirty thousand casuals. The eight brethren have become thirty physicians and surgeons besides the assistants called clinical clerks and dressers. The four sisters are now one hundred and fifty-nine sisters and nurses. There is a noble school of medicine, there are museums, libraries, lecture rooms, and there is a residential college for medical students. There is a convalescent hospital in the country. No hospital in the world has a larger or a more noble record than this of St. Bartholomew. And it all sprang from the resolution of one man, who started a humble house for the reception of the sick, in a poor and despised place outside the city wall, but near to the shambles, where one could beg for broken vitals, and for the pieces of meat that the butchers could not sell. Thus out of one good deed, apparently of small importance, has grown a never-ending stream of refreshment and healing. It has lasted for seven hundred years already, there seems no reason why it should ever stop. End of Lesson 20. Recording by Ruth Golding. Lessons 21 and 22 of the history of London. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Ruth Golding. The History of London by Walter Besant. Lesson 21. The Terror of Leprosy. One mile outside the city walls on the west stood for four hundred years the Hospital of St Giles in the Fields. Here was a laser house, i.e. a hospital for lepers. It was founded by Maud, Queen of Henry I. It was dedicated to St Giles, because this saint was considered the protector of cripples. Hence the name Cripple Gate, which really means the Little Gate, was applied to the Church of St Giles, and supposed to mean the gate near the church dedicated to the patron saint of Cripples. A common result of leprosy was to make the sufferer lame and crippled, hence the connection. Generally, however, Lazarus, whom our Lord raised from the dead, was esteemed the saint of lepers, whence a leper's hospital was always called a laser house. In the Middle Ages the mysterious disease called leprosy was an ever-present terror. Other plagues appeared at intervals and disappeared, as the disease remained. It never left the land. It struck the king on his throne, the bishop in his cathedral, the abyss in her nunnery, the soldier in camp, the merchant in his counting-house, the sailor at sea. No class could escape it. Robert Bruce died of it, Orival Bishop of London died of it, Baldwin King of Jerusalem died of it. To this day it prevails in India, at the Cape, in the Pacific Islands, while there are occasional cases found in our own hospitals. The disease was incurable. The man, woman, or child attacked by it would surely and slowly die of it. The leper was unclean, he was thrust out of the town, he had to live apart, or congregated in hospitals with other wretches similarly afflicted. If he walked abroad he wore a grey gown for distinction and carried a clapper as he went along, crying, unclean, unclean, so that the people might stand aside and not so much as touch his garments. And since he could not work with his hands he was permitted to carry into the market a clap-dish, that is to say a bowl or basin in which to receive food and arms. Footnote, Lacroix Science, page 146. End of footnote. Leprosy is supposed to have had its origin in Egypt. The laws laid down in the book of Leviticus for the separation of lepers are stringent and precise. It was believed, partly no doubt on account of these statutes in the book of the Jewish law, that the disease was brought into Western Europe by the crusaders, but this was erroneous because it was in this country before the crusaders. Thus the palace of St. James stands upon the site of a laser-house founded before the conquest for fourteen leperous maidens. This is not the place to describe the symptoms and the results of this dreadful disease. Suffice it to say that the skin thickens, is discoloured and ulcerates, that the limbs swell, that the fingers and toes drop off, that the voice sinks to a whisper, and that the sufferer's mind is weakened by his malady. The fearful scourge was so prevalent that there was not a town, hardly a village, in any country of Europe, which had not in those centuries its lepers and its laser-house great or small. Every effort was made to isolate them. They were not allowed to worship with the rest of the people. They were provided with a separate building or chapel, where, through a hole in the wall, they could look on at the performance of mass. And in addition, as you have seen, they lived apart and took their food apart. As for their houses, the laser-houses, the chief of them all, the place where Abbott possessed some kind of authority over the others, was one built in a village near Melton-Mowbray, called Burton Lasers. The Hospital of St Giles, for instance, became shortly after its foundation a cell or dependency of this house. Whatever the cause of this malady, whether it be contagious, i.e. communicated by touch, or infectious, i.e. communicated by breathing the same air, or hereditary, it is quite certain that it was greatly aggravated by the habits of the time. Bad food, uncleanly habits, bad air, all contributed to the spread of leprosy. Especially it has been considered that the long fasts, during which meat was prohibited, encouraged the disease, not because abstinence from meat is in itself a bad thing, but because the people had to eat fish imperfectly cured or kept too long and unwholesome. Freshwater fish could not be procured in sufficient quantities, and it was impossible to convey fish from the sea more than a certain distance in land. The dreadful appearance of the lepers, their horrible sufferings, produced loathing more than pity. People were horrors stricken at the sight of them. They drove them out of their sight. They punished them cruelly if they broke the rules of separation. They imprisoned any citizen who should harbour a leper. They kept bailiffs at the city gates to keep them from entering. Fourteen of these afflicted persons were required to be maintained in accordance with Queen Maud's Foundation by the Hospital of St Giles. There was also a laser house in the Old Kent Road, Southwark, one between Mile End and Bow, one at Kingsland between Shoreditch and Stoke Newington, one at Knightsbridge, west of Charing Cross, and one at Holloway. On the dissolution of the monasteries all these laser houses were suppressed. Now, since we hear very little more about lepers, and since no new laser houses were built, and since the prohibitions to enter churches, towns, etcetera, are no more renewed, it is tolerably certain that let perceived by the middle of the sixteenth century had practically disappeared. The above will show, however, how great and terrible a thing it was between the ninth and the sixteenth centuries. End of Lesson Twenty-One. Lesson Twenty-Two. The Terror of Famine. Suppose that all the ocean traffic was stopped, that there was no communication or exchange of commodities between our country and another. Suppose that the people of this island depended entirely on their own harvests and their own cattle for their support. You would then easily understand how a single bad year might produce scarcity of food, and a very bad year might produce a famine. That was our condition down to the fifteenth century. Some corn may have been brought over from Prussia or from Hamburg, but there was no regular supply. The country depended on its own harvests. Therefore the fear of a famine or of scarcity was ever present to the people. Many of these famines are on record. In the year 990 a famine raged over the whole of England. In 1126 there was a terrible scarcity. Wheat was sold at six shillings, a horse-load. Now in the twelfth century a shilling meant more than a pound of our money in purchasing power. It is not stated how much constituted a horse-load. It would probably mean the filling of the two baskets hanging on either side of the pack-horse. In 1257, after a wet season and a bad harvest, wheat rose to twenty-four shillings a quarter, a price which prohibited all but the richest from eating wheat and bread. It is said that twenty-thousand perished of starvation. In 1316 after the same cause wheat became so scarce that its price rose to four pounds a quarter. So great was the distress this year that great nobles had to dismiss their retainers. The roads in the country were crowded with robbers. Robberies were openly committed in the streets for the sake of food. In the prisons the unfortunate criminals left to starve, murdered and devoured each other. The people ate carrion and dead dogs. In 1335 there was another time of scarcity and suffering. In 1439 the distress was so great that the people made bread of fern-roots and ivy-berries. Then for the first time we read of the famine being assuaged by the arrival of rye from Prussia. In 1527 a threatened famine was checked by the Hanseatic merchants, who gave or sold a hundred-quarters of wheat to the city, and sent three ships to Danzig for more. In 1593 and in 1597 wheat rose to an enormous price. The last time of scarcity was during the long war with France, which lasted from 1792 to 1815, nearly a quarter of a century. We were then compelled to depend almost entirely upon our own harvests. Wheat went up as high as 103 shillings a quarter. At no time did the poorer classes depend much upon wheat. Rye and oats made the bread of the working people, but bad harvests affected rye and oats as much as wheat. The famine prices of wheat may be explained by the following facts. In the reign of Henry I at ordinary prices, bread enough for one meal for a hundred men could be bought for a shilling, and a whole sheep cost four pence. In the next century, when wheat was at six shillings a quarter, a farthing loaf was to weigh twenty-four ounces wholemeal and sixteen ounces white. When it was at one and six pence a quarter, the farthing loaf was to weigh ninety-six ounces whole grain and sixty-four ounces white. The quarter loaf of four pounds, or sixty-four ounces, now costs five pence, wheat being very cheap. So that prices in time of plenty being supposed the same, money was worth twenty times in that century as much as it is worth now. In the reign of Edward I wheat went down to one shilling a quarter. The food of the craftsman in London was, in ordinary times, plentiful and cheap. The city, as we have seen, was always remarkable for the great abundance of provision which was brought there. And there is every reason to believe that while the rustic fared poorly and was under-fed, the craftsmen of the towns always enjoyed good food and enough of it. This made a time of scarcity hard to bear for one who habitually lived well. Once or twice an attempt was made to provide the city with granaries in case of famine. Thus the origin of Leddenhall, the great city market, was the erecting of a public granary here by Sir Simon Eyre in 1419. Attached to the hall, after the manner of the time, was a chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity, which the founder endowed for sixty priests who were to prepare service every day for those who frequented the market. Another public granary was established in 1610 at Bridewell Palace. This was built to contain six thousand quarters of wheat. Nothing more is heard about these public granaries. Probably the public mind grew more assured on the subject of famine as it became better understood that the loss of one country might be made up from the superfluous harvests of another. The lesson taught by the Hanseatic merchants in sending to Prussia for corn was not likely to be lost. At the present moment, with means of transport always in readiness and the electric wire joining the most distant countries, it might seem that famine was a thing no longer to be feared. There cannot be bad harvests all over the world. Not only can we every year import so much wheat that we need grow little in this country, but we import frozen meat in vast quantities. We bring fruit of all kinds from the most distant countries in so much that there are some fruits, such as apples, oranges, grapes, bananas, which we can enjoy the whole year round. But famine may yet play a great and a disastrous part in our history. We must not forget that we enjoy our present abundance of all things on one of two conditions. First that we are strong enough to protect the waterway and keep it open, or secondly that we remain at peace. The latter we cannot hope to do always. Therefore it is of vital importance that we maintain a strong fleet well equipped, ready to fight at all times and at the shortest notice, superior to any likely combination that may be brought against us. Therefore again it behoves every man in these aisles to be jealous of the fleet, for a time may come when the way of the ocean may be closed and when Great Britain, through the neglect of her rulers, may be starved into a shameful and ruinous surrender. End of Lesson 22 Recording by Ruth Golding Lessons 23 to 25 of the History of London. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Ruth Golding. The History of London by Walter Besant. Lesson 23 St Paul's Cathedral Part 1 When London was converted to Christianity in the year 610, the first bishop of London, Melitus, built a church on the highest ground within the walls of the city. This church he dedicated to St Paul the Apostle, who first preached to the Gentiles. What kind of church this was, whether great or small, whether of wood or of stone, how often rebuilt or repaired, we know not. Probably it was quite a small church at first. This church, or its successor, was taken down in the year 1087, when Bishop Morris began to build a new and far more stately cathedral. Fifty years later most of the church, not yet completed, was burned down. Its building, thus delayed, was continued for nearly two centuries. The steeple was not completed, for instance, till a hundred and fifty years after the commencement of the building. The drawing shows the church as it was in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Old St Paul's was one of the largest churches in Europe. Its length was at least six hundred feet. The spire reached the height of four hundred and sixty feet. The church stood in a large walled enclosure, still kept partly open, though the wall has long since been pulled down, and there have been encroachments on the north side. The church in the fourteenth century was not regarded only as a place for public worship. Masses and services of all kinds were going on all day long. The place was bright, not only with the sunlight streaming through the painted glass, but with wax tapers burning before many a shrine, at some all day and all night. People came to the church to walk about, for rest, for conversation, for the transaction of business, to make or receive payments, to hire servants. The middle aisle of the church, where all this was done, was called Paul's Walk, or Duke Humphrey's Walk. Here were tables where twelve licensed scribes sat writing letters for those who wanted their services. They would also prepare a lease, a deed, a conveyance, any legal document. The church was filled with tombs and monuments, some of these very ancient, some of the greatest interest. Here was one called the Tomb of Duke Humphrey, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who was really buried at St. Albans. On May Day the Waterman used to come to St. Paul's in order to sprinkle water and strew herbs upon this tomb. I know not why. Those who were out of work and went dinniless were said to dine with Duke Humphrey, and there was a proverb, Trash and Trumpery is the way to Duke Humphrey, Trumpery being used in its original meaning, Trumpery, deceit. Among other tombs there were those of the Saxon Kings, Sebi and Ethelred. The first of these was King of the East Saxons. He was converted by Bishop Erkenwald. The second was the elder brother of King Alfred. There were tombs or shrines to many saints now forgotten, that of St. Erkenwald, whose fame rivaled that of Edward the Confessor at Westminster, St. Cuthbert at Durham, and St. Thomas a Beckett at Canterbury, that of St. Etelbert, that of St. Roger, Bishop of London, a cope which St. Roger War is still preserved in the sacristy, and that of St. Wilford. At every one of these shrines miracles were wrought, or believed to be wrought. There was also a miraculous crucifix said to have been discovered by Lucius, the first Christian King of ancient Britain in the year 140. Great gifts were constantly made to this crucifix. Under the Cathedral in the Crypt was a parish church, that of St. Faith's. It is now united with the parish church of St. Augustine's in Watling Street. Outside the church, almost against the south wall, was the parish church of St. Gregory. In the same way, the parish church of St. Margaret's stands outside Westminster Abbey. Within we can see, in imagination, the people walking about. They have not yet begun to stand bareheaded in church. Some dictating to the scribes, some leaning against the tombs, some sitting on the bases of the great round pillars. There were no pews, benches or chairs in the Cathedral. The chantry priests are saying masses in the chapels. The people are kneeling before the golden shrine of St. Erkenwald, resplendent with lights, jewels, gold and silver. Women lay their offerings before the miraculous crucifix, praying for the restoration to health of son or husband. A wedding is celebrated in one chapel. A funeral mass is being said in another. Servants gather about a certain pillar, waiting to be hired. Porters carrying baskets on their heads enter at the north door and tramp through, going out of the south. Precessions of priests and choir pass up and down the aisles. The organ peels and echoes along a long and lofty roof. See, here comes a troupe of men. They carry instruments of music. They are dressed in a livery, a cloak of green. They march together entering at the western doors and tramping through the whole length of the church to the chapel of Our Lady in the east. This is the guild of the minstrels. There were many other guilds attached to the cathedral. You shall learn presently what was the meaning of these guilds. End of Lesson 23 Lesson 24 St Paul's Cathedral, Part 2 Such was Paul's in the 15th century. In the 16th the Reformation came. The candles were all put out. The shrines were destroyed. The altars were taken out of the chapels. The miraculous images were taken away. The church, compared with its previous condition, became a shell. The choir was walled off for public worship. The rest of the church became a place of public resort. The poets of the time are full of allusions to Paul's walk. It was a common thoroughfare, even for men leading packhorses and asses. The cathedral, left to neglect, began to fall into a ruinous condition. An attempt was made at restoration. Funds were collected, but they came in slowly. Lord, who became Bishop of London in 1631, gave an impetus to the work. The celebrated Inigo Jones was appointed architect. In order to prevent the church from being turned into an exchange, he built a west porch, which is shown in some of the pictures of St Paul's. In the time of the Commonwealth, this portico was let off in shops and stalls. The nave of the church actually became a cavalry barrack. When King Charles returned, it was resolved to repair and restore the cathedral, by this time almost in ruins. But while the citizens were considering what should be done, the great fire of London settled the question by burning down all that was left. Then Christopher Wren began the present building. The first stone was laid on June 21st 1675, nine years after the fire. Divine service was performed on December 2nd 1697, the day of thanksgiving for the peace of Reichsweig. The work was completed in 1710, thirty-five years after its commencement. The present church is a hundred feet shorter than its predecessor. Its dome is also a hundred feet lower than the former spire. The grandeur of the building cannot be appreciated by any near view, because the houses block it in on all sides, and the former view from the bottom of Ludgate Hill is now spoiled by the railway bridge. Those who wish to see what St Paul's really is, how splendid a church it is, how grandly it stands above the whole city, must cross the river and look at it from Bankside Southwark. The dome is threefold. It consists of an outer casing of wood covered with lead, a cone of bricks which supports the lantern and cross, and an inner cupola of brick which supports nothing. The towers at the west end are two hundred and twenty-two feet in height. St Paul's, especially since the crowding at Westminster Abbey, is becoming the national burial church. It is already well filled with monuments of British worthies and heroes of this and the last century. Of men distinguished in literature, art and science, there are buried here Dr. Johnson, Hallam, the historian, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter, Turner, the painter, Renny, the engineer who built Waterloo Bridge, Sir William Jones, the great Oriental scholar, and Sir Astley Cooper, the great surgeon. There is also buried here, as he should be, Sir Christopher Ren himself. But those who visit the Cathedral desire most to see the tombs of Wellington and Nelson. The remains of the former lie in a great sarcophagus worked out of a single piece of Cornish porphyry. Those of the admiral were placed first in a coffin made from the main mast of the French ship O'Hill, taken at the Battle of the Nile. This was deposited in a sarcophagus made by Cardinal Woolsey and intended for the burial of King Henry VIII. In the Cathedral, too, you will find the monuments of those splendid fighting men Lord Collingwood, Nelson's friend, Howe and Rodney, Earl St. Vincent, who won the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, Lord Duncan of Camperdown and many others. In the crypt you will find, if you look for it, the brass tablet which marks the spot where lie the remains of a man whose history should be an encouragement to every boy who reads this book. His name was Edward Palmer. Born without family influence, plainly educated at the grammar school of his town, he taught himself in the teeth of all difficulties, that of bad health especially, Arabic, Persian and all the languages which belong to that group. At the age of twenty-four he was so splendid an Oriental scholar that the greatest Orientalist at Cambridge declared that he could teach him nothing. He was elected to a fellowship at St. John's College and became the Lord Armener's Professor of Arabic. He mastered, in addition to his Oriental studies, all the European languages except Russian and the Slavonic group. He explored the desert of the Exodus and the peninsula of Sinai. He did a great deal of literary work. But he was not buried in St. Paul's Cathedral for these studies. In the year 1882, when the Egyptian War broke out, he was sent on a secret mission to the tribes of the desert. He knew them all. He could talk their language as well as his own. He was the equal of any one in his knowledge of Arabic poetry and his power of telling stories. They welcomed him with open arms. The service that he rendered to his country, for which he was honoured with a funeral at St. Paul's, was that he prevented these tribes from destroying the Suez Canal. He succeeded in reaching the British camp at Suez in safety, his task accomplished, the safety of the canal assured. He was murdered in return by a party of Egyptian Arabs sent from Cairo. His bones were recovered by Sir Charles Warren, who further tracked down and hanged every man connected with the murder. The road to possible greatness lies open to all. But the way leads through a difficult and thorny way, only to be passed, as Palmer found, by resolution invincible and by long patient industry. End of Lesson 24 Lesson 25 Paul's Churchyard St. Paul's Cathedral stood in the centre of an oval shaped enclosure, very much like the present St. Paul's Churchyard, say that the houses now in the north are an encroachment. This open space was surrounded by a wall in which were six gates embattled. The first was the Great Western Gate facing Ludgate Hill, the second in Paul's Alley in Patonoste Row, the third at Cannon Alley, the fourth or Little Gate, where is now the entrance into Cheepside, the fifth, St. Augustine's Gate, Watling Street, the sixth at Paul's Chain. Walking round this enclosure we come first upon the Bishop's Palace, standing on the north side of the nave. The palace was provided with a private entrance into the cathedral. Beyond the palace was a very beautiful cloister called Parden Church Hall. In this cloister stood a chapel built by Gilbert, father of Thomas Becket. Many monuments and tombs of great persons stood within this cloister, which was also remarkable for its dances of death. This was a series of paintings representing death as a skeleton armed with a dart, leading by the hand men and women of every degree from the highest to the lowest. There were formerly many examples of such dances. Next to the cloister was the library, the catalogue of which still exists to show what a scholar's collection of books then meant. Next to the library stood the College of the Minor Cannons. Then came Charnel Chapel, beneath which was a crypt filled with human bones taken from the churchyard. Remember that this has been a burial place ever since the year 610 when a church was first built here. From the year 610 till the year 1840, or for a period of twelve hundred years, new graves were continually made in this ground. Who can guess how many thousands lie buried here? Every handful of the dust is a handful of human remains. From time to time, however, the bones were collected and placed in this crypt of Charnel Chapel. The chapel itself was apparently a large building, for when it was pulled down the materials were used by the Duke of Somerset at the Reformation in building Somerset House in the Strand. There are yet standing some portions of the original house so that the stones of Charnel Chapel may still be seen. As for the crypt, they carried away the bones which made a thousand cartloads and laid them over Finsbury fields, covering them with ground on which were erected three windmills. The site is marked by the street called Windmill Street. Next to Charnel Chapel stood the famous Paul's Cross. This famous place was a pulpit cross from which sermons might be preached in the open air. Several London churches had their open air pulpits. Notably St. Michael's Corn Hill, St. Mary's Spittle, without Bishop's Gate, at this cross a sermon was preached every Easter to the Lord Mayor and Alderman. When Paul's Cross was erected is not known, it probably stood on the site of some scaffold or steps from which the people were anciently harangued, for this was the place of the folk-mote or meeting of the people. Here were read aloud and proclaimed the King's Laws and Orders. Here the people were informed of war and peace. Here papal bulls were read. There was a cross standing here in the year 1256. Very likely it was already ancient. In the year 1387 it was ruinous and had to be repaired. It was again repaired or rebuilt in 1480. Paul's Cross played a very important part in the Reformation. Here the Rude of Bexley, which was a crucifix where the eyes and lips were made to move, and the people were taught that it was miraculous, was exposed and broken to pieces. Here the famous images of Walsingham and Ipswich, the object of so many pilgrimages, were brought to be broken to pieces before the eyes of the people. Here Latimer preached, a man of the people who could speak to them in a way to make them understand. Had it not been for the preaching of Latimer and others like him in plain language, the Reformation would have been an attempt, and probably a failure, to enforce upon the people the opinions of certain scholars. Paul's Cross did not perish in the fire. It was taken down in the year 1643 or thereabouts in order to be rebuilt, but this was not done, and when the fire destroyed the cathedral Paul's Cross was forgotten. Its site may be seen in the churchyard at the northeast corner of the choir marked by a flat stone, but it must be remembered that the old church was wider but farther south. On the south side of Paul's churchyard we pass in succession the beautiful chapter house, the church of St. Gregory and the denary. Close to the western gate are residences for the canons. South of the enclosure are the Cathedral Brewhouse and Bakehouse. Such are some of the buildings in Paul's churchyard. The cathedral establishment supported a great army of priests and people. For many of them, perhaps for most, there were residences of some kind either within the enclosure or close beside it. Thus the priests, including Bishop, Dean, Archdeacons and Canons, a hundred and thirty in number. Then there were the inferior officers, yet persons of consideration and authority, such as Sacrist, Armina, Bookbinder, Chief Brewer, Chief Baker, with all their servants, scribes, messengers, bookbinders, illuminators and copyists, singing men and choir boys, and women to keep the church clean. When we add that the brewer had to provide two hundred gallons of beer a day, it is obvious that there must have been a good many people belonging to the cathedral who lived in the enclosure called the churchyard. End of Lesson 25 Recording by Ruth Golding Lessons 26 and 27 of the history of London. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Ruth Golding. The history of London by Walter Besant. Lesson 26 The Religious Houses If we take a map of London in the 14th century and lay down upon it all the monasteries and religious houses that then existed, we shall find twenty all rich and splendid foundations without counting those of Westminster and the villages within a few miles of London's stone. These were built for the most part either just within or just without the city wall. The reason was that the city was less densely populated near the wall than lower down along the riverside. Every one of these societies was possessed of estates in the country and streets and houses in the city. Every one then retained, besides the monks or friars and nuns, a whole army of officers and servants. A great monastery provided employment for a very large number of people. In every separate estate which belonged to it the monastery wanted tenant farmers, foresters and hunters, laborers, stewards and bailiffs, a curate or vicar in charge of the church and all the officers who are required for the management of an estate. For the house itself there were wanted first the service of the chapel, apart from the singing which was done by the brethren, the school, the library, lawyers and clerks to administer the estates and guard the rights and privileges of the house. The brew house, bake house, kitchen, cellar, stables, with all the officers and servants required in a place where everything was made in the house. The architects, surveyors, carpenters and people wanted to maintain the buildings. It is not too much to reckon that a fourth part of the population of London belonged in some way or other to the monasteries, while these houses were certainly the best customers for the wines, silks and spices which were brought to the keys of Queen Hythe and Billingsgate. It is generally believed that the monasteries, besides relieving the sick and poor and teaching the boys and girls, threw open their doors readily to any poor lad who desired to take the vows of the order. All this is a misconception. There were the same difficulties about relieving the poor as there are with us at the present moment. That is to say, indiscriminate charity then, as now, turned honest working men into paupers. This the monks and friars understood very well. They were therefore careful about their charities. Also in many houses the school was allowed to drop into disuse, and as regards the admission of poor boys it was done only in cases where a boy showed himself quick and studious. It has been the glory of the church in all ages that she has refused to recognize any barrier of birth, but she has also been careful to preserve her distinctions for those who deserve them. Most of the brethren in a rich foundation were of gentle birth and good family. If a poor boy asked to join a monastery, he was lucky if he was allowed to become one of its servants and to wear its livery. Then his livelihood was assured. There is every reason to believe that the rule of the brethren, strict for themselves, was light and easy for their servants. You may find out for yourselves where the London monasteries were, by the names of streets now standing on their sites. Thus, following the line of the wall from the tower north and west, you find St Catherine's Dock, where stood St Catherine's Hospital. The Mineries marks the house of the minorites or sisters of St Clair. Great St Helens is on the site of St Helens nunnery. Spittle Square stands where St Mary's Spittle formerly received the sick. Black Friars, Charter House and Bartholomews still keep their name. Austin Friars is the name of a court, and the Friars Church still stands. White Friars is still the name of a street. Grey Friars is Christ's Hospital. The Temple is now the lawyer's home. Part of the Church of the Knights Hospitalers is still to be seen. Three great houses, it is true, have left no trace or memory behind. East Minster, or the Cistercian Abbey of St Mary of Grace, which stood north of St Catherine's, and was a very great and stately place indeed. The Priory of the Holy Trinity, which stood where is now Duke's Place, north of the Church of St Catherine Cree. And St Mary of Bethlehem, which stood just outside Bishop's Gate. The memory of Bermondsy Abbey and St Mary Overy on the south side of the river has also departed, but the Church of the latter still stands, the most beautiful church in London, next to Westminster Abbey. But besides all these religious houses employing thousands of people, there were in the City of London no fewer than 126 parish churches. Many of the parishes were extremely small, a single street or half a street. Many of the churches were insignificant, but many were rich and costly structures, adorned and beautified by the piety of many generations. All were endowed with funds for the saying of masses for the dead, so that there were many priests to every parish. Consider these things, and you will understand that the City was filled with ecclesiastics, priests, friars, servants of the Church. At every corner rose a church. To one standing on the other bank of the river, the City presented a forest of spires and towers. The Church then occupied a far larger part of the daily life than is now the case even with Catholic countries. All were expected to attend a daily service. The trade companies went to church in state. Young men belonged to a guild. The ringing of the bells was never silent. No one could escape if he desired from the Church. No one did desire to escape because everyone belonged to the Church. You must understand not only that the Church was so great and rich that it owned and ruled a very large part of the country, but also that the people all belonged to the Church. It was part of their life as much as their daily work, their daily food, their daily rest. End of Lesson 26 Lesson 27 Monks, Friars and Nuns We must not speak of monks indiscriminately as if they were all the same. There were as many varieties among the orders as there are sects among Protestants, and as much rivalry and even hatred of one with the other. Let us learn some of the distinctions among them. Monks were first introduced into Western Europe in the year 529. There had long been brotherhoods, hermits and solidaries in the East where they existed before the Christian Age. St. Benedict founded at Monte Cassino in Campania, a monastery for twelve brethren in that year. The Benedictines are the most ancient order. They have also been always the most learned. The priory of the Holy Trinity in London was Benedictine. Several branches sprang out of this order, mostly founded with the view of practicing greater austerities. Among them were the Carthusians, a very strict order. In London they had the Charter House, a name which is a corruption of Chartres, their original house. And the Cistercians, founded at Sito in France, they had Eastminster or the Abbey of St. Mary of Grace. All these were monks. The Augustine or Austin Friars pretended to have been founded by Augustine, but were not constituted until the year 1256. They had the monastery of Austin Friars in London. There were several branches of this order. There were next the three great mendicant orders, Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites. These were the popular orders. The monks remained in their houses alone, separated from the world. The Friars went about among the people. By their vows they were to possess nothing of their own. They were to sleep where they could. They were to beg their food and raiment. They were to preach to the people in the streets and in their houses. They were to bring the rites of the church to those who would not enter the doors of the church. None were to be too poor or too miserable for them. In their humility they would not be called fathers, but brothers, fratres, friars. In their preaching they used every way by which they could move the hearts of the people. Some thundered, some wept, some made jokes. They preached in the midst of the markets, among the sports of the fair, wherever they could get an audience together. The Franciscans, who had Greyfriars house, now the Bluecoat School, were founded by St Francis of Assisi in the beginning of the thirteenth century. They came over to England and appeared in London a few years later. On account of their austerities and the faithfulness with which the earlier Franciscans kept their vows and the earnestness of their preaching, they became very popular in this country. Their name, Greyfriars, denotes the colour of their dress. The old simplicity and poverty did not last long. It must, however, be acknowledged that wealth was forced upon them. The Dominicans were founded by St Dominic about the year 1215. Sixty years later they came to London and established themselves in the place still known by their name, Blackfriars. Their dress was white with a black cloak. They were never so popular as the Franciscans, perhaps because they insisted more on doctrine and were associated with the Inquisition. The third of the mendicant orders was the Carmelite. They were the Whitefriars, their dress being white with a black hood. Their house was in Fleet Street. Here was a sanctuary whose privileges were not abolished till the year 1697. Other orders represented in London were the Cluniacs, a branch of Benedictines. They had the Abbey of St Saviour in Bermondsey, the Black Cannons established at St Bartholomews, the Cannons regular of St Augustine, who had the Sothec Priory of St Mary Overy, the Knights Templars and the Knights of St John. As a general rule, it is enough to remember that the monks were Benedictines with their principal branches of Carthusians, Cistercians and Cluniacs, that the Friars were those named after Augustine, Dominic, Francis and Mount Carmel, that the monks remained in their houses practising a life of austerity and prayer so long as they were faithful to their vows, and that the Friars weren't about among the people, preaching and exhorting them. Of the nunneries some were Benedictine, some Franciscan, that of the minorites belonged to the latter order, that of St Helens to the former. The religious houses were dissolved at the Reformation. You must remember that if it had not been for the existence of these houses, most of the arts, science and scholarship of the world would have perished utterly. The monks kept alive learning of all kinds, they encouraged painting, they were discoverers and inventors in science, they were the chief agriculturists and gardeners, they offered an asylum to the poor and the oppressed. The friendship of the poor, said Bernard, makes us the friends of kings, and in an age of unrestrained passions, they showed an example of self-restraint and austerity. The Friars did more, they were poor among the poor, no one was below their care and affection. They had nothing, they would take nothing at first, till the love and gratitude of the people showered gifts upon them, and even against their will, if they still retained any love for poverty, they became rich. End of Lesson 27 Recording by Ruth Golding Lessons 28 and 29 of the History of London. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Ruth Golding. The History of London by Walter Besant Lesson 28 The London Churches Before the Great Fire of London, there were 126 churches and parishes in the city. Most of these were destroyed by the fire, and many were never rebuilt at all. Two or even three and four parishes were united in one church. Of late years, there has been a destruction of city churches, almost as disastrous as that of the fire. Those who have learned from this book and elsewhere to respect the monuments of the past and to desire their preservation should do their utmost to prevent the demolition of these churches in consideration of their history and their association with the past. Looking at a picture of London after the fire, you will certainly remark the great number of spires and towers. London, in fact, was then, and much more so before the fire, a city of churches. Those which are here represented, and those which now remain, are nearly all the work of Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul's. Many of them are very beautiful internally. Many have been decorated and adorned with the most splendid carved woodwork. About many there cling the memories of dead men and great men who worshipped here, and made gifts to the church, and were buried here. Let us show, by a few examples, how worthy these city churches are of preservation and respect. First, many of them stand on the sites of the most ancient churches in the history of London. Those about Thames Street, dedicated to St Peter, St Paul, the Cathedral, St James, probably represent Christian temples of Rome in London. The church of St Martin's Ludgate Hill was traditionally built by a British prince. That of St Peter, could be seen as a that of St Peter Corn Hill by a Roman general. The tradition proves at least the antiquity of the churches. St Augustine's preserves the memory of the preacher who converted the Saxons. St Olives and St Magnus mark the Danish rule. St Dunstons, St Alphage, St Ethelberger, St Swithin, St Botolf commemorate Saxons saints. Why, for instance, are there three churches all dedicated to St Botolf just outside city gates? Because this saint, after whom the Lincolnshire town of Ikenhoe changed its name to Botolf's town, now Boston, was considered the special protector of travellers. Then the names of churches still commemorate some fact in history. St Mary Wollnoth marks the wall market. St Oceith's, the name exists in size lain, was changed into St Bennett's Shear Hog or Skin the Pig, because the stream called Wallbrook, which ran close by, was used for the purpose of assisting this operation. St Austen's was the chapel of Austen Friar's monastery. St Andrew's undershaft tells that the city maypole was hung up along its wall. St Andrew's by the wardrobe commemorates the existence of the palace formerly called the King's Wardrobe. In St Michael's Bassishore survives the name of an old city family, the Basings. In St Martin's Orgas, now destroyed, we have another old city name, Orga. Or again there are the people who are buried or were baptized in these churches. In All Hallow's Bread Street, now pulled down, was baptized the greatest poet of our country, John Milton. For this cause alone the church should never have been suffered to fall into decay. It was wickedly and wantonly destroyed for the sake of money its site would fetch in the year 1877. When you visit Bow Church Cheapside, look for the tablet to the memory of Milton, now fixed in that church. It belonged to All Hallow's Bread Street. Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thoughts are past, the next in majesty, in both the last. The force of nature could no further go, to make a third she joined the other two. Christ's Church Newgate stands on part of the site once occupied by the splendid Church of the Grave Friars. Four queens lie buried here, and an immense number of princes and great soldiers and nobles. Very few people of the thousands who daily walk up and down Fleet Street know anything about the statue in the wall of St. Dunstan's Church. This is the statue of Queen Elizabeth which formerly stood on the west side of Ludgate. This gate was taken down in the year 1760, and some time after the statue was placed here. One of the sites of London before the old church was pulled down was a clock with the figure of a savage on each side who struck the hours and the quarters on a bell with clubs. London has seldom been without some such show. As long ago as the fifteenth century there was a clock with figures in Fleet Street. Tindall, the reformer, and Baxter, the famous non-conformist, were preachers in this church. St. Mary LeBeau was so called because it was the first church in the city built on arches, bows, of stone. The church is most intimately connected with the life and history of the city. Beau Bell rang for the closing of the shops. If the ringer was late, the Prentice boys reminded him pretty plainly. Clark of the Beau Bell with thy yellow locks in thy late ringing thy head shall have knocks. To which the Clark replied, Children of Cheep, hold you all still, for you shall have Beau Bell ring at your will. St. Mary's Woolnoth was for many years the church of the Reverend John Newton, once the poet Cooper's friend. He began his life in the merchant service and was for many years engaged in the slave trade. For these reasons, their antiquity, their history, their associations, the destruction of the city churches ought to be resisted with the utmost determination. You who read this page may very possibly become parishioners of such a church. Learn that, without the consent of the parishioners, no church can be destroyed. A meeting of parishioners must be called. They must vote and decide. Do not forget this privilege. The time may come when your vote and yours alone may retain for your posterity a church rich in history and venerable with the traditions of the past. End of Lesson 28 Lesson 29 The Streets You have seen how the walls surrounded Roman London. The same wall which defended and limited Augusta defended and limited Plantagenet London. Outside the wall on the east, there continued to extend wide marshes along the river, moorlands and forest on the north, marshes with rising ground on the west, marshes on the south. Whopping was called whopping in the woes, wash or ooze, meaning in the marsh. Bermondsy was Bermond's island standing in the marsh. Battersea was Battersea's island, or perhaps island of boats. Chelsea was the island of Chesil or Shingle. Westminster Abbey was built on the Isle of Thorns. The monasteries standing outside the wall attracted a certain number of serving people who built houses round them. Some of the riverside folk, boat builders, lightermen and so forth, were living in the precinct of St Catherine just outside the tower. All along the Strand were great men's houses, one of which, the Somerset House, still stands in altered form, and another Northumberland House was only pulled down a few years ago. Southwark had a single main street with a few branches east and west. It also contained several great houses, and was provided with many inns for the use of those who brought their goods from Kent and Surrey to London Market. It was also admitted as a ward. On either side of the high street lay marshes. The river was banked, hence the name Bankside, but it is not known at what time. That part of the wall fronting the river had long been pulled down, but the stairs were guarded with iron chains, and there was a river-police which rode about among the shipping at night. The streets and lanes of London within the walls were very nearly the same as they are at present, except for the great thoroughfares constructed within the last thirty years. That is to say, when one entered at Ludgate and passed through Paul's churchyard, he found himself in the broad street, the marketplace of the city, known as Cheep. This continued to the place where the royal exchange now stands, where it broke off into two branches, Corn Hill and Lombard Street. These respectively led into Leddenhall Street and Fenchurch Street, which united again before Aldgate. Another leading thoroughfare crossed the city from London Bridge to Bishopsgate, and another Thames Street, by far the most important, because here the merchant adventurers, those who had ships and imported goods, met for the transaction of business. The rough cobbled pavement of Thames Street was the exchange of Whittington and the merchants of his time, who all had their houses on the rising ground, among the narrow lanes, north of the street. You have seen what splendid houses a London merchant loved to build. What kind of house did the retailer and the craftsman occupy? It was of stone in the lower parts, but the upper story was generally of wood, and the roof was too often thatched. The window was glazed in the upper part, but had open work and shutter for the lower half. This half, with the door, stood open during the greater part of the year. The lower room was the living room, and sometimes the workroom of the occupant. The upper floor contained the bedrooms. There was but one fireplace in the house, that in the living room. At the back of the house was generally a small garden, but besides these houses there were courts, dark, narrow, noisome, where the huts were still wattle and daub, that is, built with posts, the sides filled in with branches or sticks and clay or mud, the fire in the middle of the floor, the chimney overhead. And still, as in Saxon times, the great danger to the city was from fire. Men of the same trade still congregated together for convenience. When all lived together the output would be regulated, prices maintained, and wages agreed upon. Nothing was more hateful to the medieval trader than forestalling and regretting. To forestall was to buy things before they arrived at market with intent to sell at a higher price. To regret was to buy up in the market and sell again in the same market at an advanced price. To undersell your neighbour was then also an unpardonable crime. You discover therefore that trade in Plantagenet London was not like trade in Victorian London. Then all men of the same trade stood by each other and were brothers. Now, too often, men of the same trade are enemies. The names of streets show the nature of the trades carried on in them. Turners and makers of wooden cups and platters, wood street. Ironmongers in their lane. Poultry sellers, the poultry, bakers, bread street, and so on. Cheap was the great retail market of the city. It was built over, gradually, but in early times it was a broad market covered with stalls, like the marketplace of Norwich, for instance. These stalls were ranged in lines and streets. Churches stood about among the lines. Then the stalls, which had been temporary wooden structures, were changed into permanent shops, which were also the houses of the tenants. The living room and kitchen were behind the shop. The master and his family slept above, and the apprentices slept under the counter. End of Lesson 29 Recording by Ruth Golding Lessons 30-32 of the history of London. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Ruth Golding. The History of London by Walter Besant Lesson 30 Whittington, Part 1 The story of Dick Whittington has been a favourite legend for many generations. The boy, coming up to London, poor and friendless, lying, despairing on the green slope of Highgate, resolved to return to the country since he confined no work in London. The falling upon his ears of the bells of Bowe, wafted across the fields by the south wind, every child knows all this. What did the bells say to him? The soft and mellow bells, calling to him across four miles of fields. Turn again Whittington, turn again Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. Turn again Whittington. He did turn, as we know, and became not once, but four times, Lord Mayor of London, and entertained kings, and was the richest merchant of his time, and all through a cat. We know how the cat began his fortune. That is the familiar legend. Now you shall learn the truth. There was a Dick Whittington, and he was Lord Mayor of London. To be accurate he was Mayor of London, for the title of Lord Mayor did not yet exist. He was not a poor and friendless lad by any means. He belonged to a good family, his father Sir William Whittington Knight, being owner of an estate in Herefordshire called Solas Hope, and one in Gloucestershire called Pauntley. The father was buried at Pauntley Church, where his shield may still be seen. Richard was the youngest of three sons, of whom the eldest, William, died without children, and the second, Robert, had sons of whom one guy fought at Agincourt. From the second son there are descendants to this day. Richard, at the age of fourteen, was sent to London where he had connections. Many country people had connections in London who were merchants. Remember that in those days it would be impossible for a boy to rise from poverty to wealth and distinction by trade. Such a lad might rise in the church, or even, but I know not of any instance by distinguished valour on the field of battle. Most certainly he would be apprenticed to a craft, and a craftsman he would remain all his life. Whittington was a gentleman, that was the first and necessary condition to promotion. He came to London not to learn a craft at all, but to be apprenticed to his cousin Sir John Fitzwarren, Mercer and Merchant Adventurer. The Mercers were the richest and most important company in London. The Merchant Adventurers were those, the foremost among the Mercers, who owned ships which they dispatched abroad with exports, and with which they imported stuffs and merchandise to the port of London. Whittington's master may have had a shop or stall in cheap, but he was a great importer of silks, satins, cloth of gold, velvets, embroideries, precious stones, and all splendid materials required for an age of splendid costume. What is the meaning of the cat's story? Immediately after Whittington's death the story was spread about. When his executors repaired Newgate they placed a carven cat on the outside. When Whittington's nephews a few years later built a house in Gloucester they placed a carven cat over the door in recognition of the story. All sorts of explanations have been offered. First that there never was any cat at all. Next that by a cat is meant a kind of ship, a collier. Thirdly that the cat is symbolical and means something else. Why need we go out of our way at all? A cat at that time was a valuable animal, not by any means common. In certain countries where rats were a nuisance a cat was very valuable indeed. Why should not the lad entrust a kitten to one of his master skippers with instructions to sell it for him in any Leventine port at which the vessel might touch? Then he would naturally ever afterwards refer to the sale of the cat the first venture of his own as the beginning and foundation of his fortune. But you must believe about the cat whatever you please. The story has been told of other men. There was a Portuguese sailor named Alfonso who was wrecked on the coast of Guinea. He carried a cat safely ashore and sold her to the king for her weight in gold. With this for his first capital he rapidly made a large fortune. Again one Diego Almagro, a companion of Pizarro, bought the first cat ever taken to South America for six hundred pieces of eight. And the story is found in Persia and in Denmark and I dare say all over the world. Yet I believe in its literal truth. In the year thirteen seventy-eight Whittington's name first appears in the city papers. He was then perhaps twenty-one, but the date of his birth is uncertain, and was already in trade, not as yet very far advanced, for his assessment shows that as yet he was in the lowest and poorest class of the wholesale mercies. End of Lesson thirty Lesson thirty-one Whittington part two For nearly fifty years after this Whittington leads an active, busy, prosperous life. It was a distracted time full of troubles and anxieties. A charter obtained in thirteen seventy six, two or three years before he began business, was probably the real foundation of Whittington's fortune, for it forbade foreign merchants to sell by retail. This meant that a foreign ship, bringing wine to the port of London, could only dispose of her merchandise to the wholesale vintners, or one bringing silk, could only sell it to wholesale mercies. The merchants no doubt intended to use this charter for the furtherance of their own shipping interests. This important charter, presented by the King, was nearly lost a little after when there was trouble about Wycliffe. The great scholar was ordered to appear at St Paul's Cathedral before the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, to answer charges of heresy. He was not an unprotected and friendless man, and he appeared at the Cathedral under the protection of the powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, son of King Edward III. The Bishop of London rebuked the Duke for protecting heretics, so the Duke, enraged, threatened to pull the Bishop out of his own church by the hair of his head. The people outside shouted that they would all die before the Bishop should suffer indignity. John of Gaunt rode off to Westminster, and proposed that the Office of Mayor should be abolished, and that the Marshal of England should hold his court in the city, in other words, that even the liberties and charters of the city should be swept clean away. Then the Londoners rushed to the Savoy, the Duke's palace, and would have sacked and destroyed it, but for the Bishop. This story indicates the kind of danger to which, in those ages, the city was liable. There were no police, a popular tumult easily and suddenly became a rebellion. No one knew what might happen, when the folk met together and wild passions of unreasoning fury were aroused. Another danger of the time for the peaceful merchant, for some years the navigation of the North Sea and the Channel was greatly impeded by a Scottish privateer or pirate named Mercer. In vain had the city made representations to the King, nothing was done, and the pirate grew daily stronger and bolder. Then Sir John Philpot, the Mayor, did a very patriotic thing. He built certain ships of his own, equipped them with arms, went on board as captain or admiral, and manned them with a thousand stout fellows. He found the pirate off Scarborough, fell upon him, slew him with all his men, and returned to London Port with all his own ships and all the pirate's ships, including fifteen Spanish vessels which had joined Mercer. The King pretended to be angry with this private mode of carrying on war, but the thing was done, and it was a very good thing, and profitable to London and to the King himself. Therefore when Sir John Philpot gave the King the arms and armour of a thousand men, and all his own ships and prize ships, the royal clemency was not difficult to obtain. I wished that I could state that Whittington had sailed with Sir John on this gallant expedition. A third trouble arose in the year 1381 on the rebellion of the peasants under John Ball, Watt, Tyler, Jack the Miller, Jack the Carter, and Jack Truman. The rebels held possession of the city for a while. They destroyed the Savoy, the Temple, and the houses of the foreign merchants. This shows that they had been joined by some of the London people. They murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury and the prior of St John's Hospital. Then the citizens roused themselves, and with an army of six thousand men stood in ranks to defend the King. Then there happened the troubles of John of Northampton, Mayor in 1382. You have learned how trades of all kinds were banded together each in its own company. Every company had the right of regulating prices. Thus the fishmongers sold their fish at a price ordered by the warden or master of the company. It is easy to understand that this might lead to murmurs against the high price of fish or of anything else. This in fact really happened. It was a time of great questioning and doubt. The rising of what Tyler shows that this spirit was abroad. The craftsmen of London, those who made things, grumbled loudly at the price of provisions. They asked why the city should not take over the trade in food of all kinds, and sell it to the people at lower prices. John of Northampton, being Mayor, took the popular view. He did not exactly make over the provisioning of the city to the corporation, but he first obtained an act of parliament, throwing open the calling of fishmonger to all comers, and then another which practically abolished the trade of grocers, peppers, fruiterers, butchers and bakers. Imagine the rage with which such an act would now be received by London tradesmen. The next Mayor, however, obtained the rescinding of these acts. In consequence, fish went up in price, and there was a popular tumult upon which one man was hanged, and John of Northampton was sent to the Castle of Tintagel on the Cornish coast, where he remained for the rest of his life. End of Lesson 31. Lesson 32, Whittington, Part 3 In the year 1384, being then about twenty-six years of age, Whittington was elected a member of the Common Council. In the year 1389 he was assessed at the same sum as the richest citizen, so that these ten years of his life were evidently very prosperous. In the year 1393 he was made alderman for Broad Street Ward. In the same year he was made sheriff. In the year 1396 the Mayor, Adam Bam, dying in office, Whittington succeeded him. The following year he was elected Mayor. In the year 1401 water was brought from Tyburn, now the northeast corner of Hyde Park, to Corn Hill in Pipes, a great and important boon to the city. In the year 1406 he was again elected Mayor. The manner of his election is described in the contemporary records. After service in the Chapel of the Guildhall, the outgoing Mayor, with all the alderman and as many as possible of the wealthier and more substantial commoners of the city, met in the Guildhall, and chose two of their number, Viz Richard Whittington and Drew Barenton. Then the Mayor receiving this nomination retired into a closed chamber with the alderman and made choice of Whittington. In the year 1419 he was elected Mayor for the third and last time, but counting his succession to Bam he was actually four times Mayor. In 1416 he was returned Member of Parliament for the city. It was not a new thing for a citizen to be made Mayor more than once. Three during the reign of Edward III were Mayor four times, two three times, seven twice. In Whittington's later years began the burning of heretics and lullards. It is certain that lullardism had some hold in the city, but one knows not how great was the hold. A priest, William Sorter, was the first who suffered. Two men of the lower class followed. There is nothing to show that Whittington ever swerved from orthodox opinions. In 1416 the city was first lighted at night. All citizens were ordered to hang lanterns over their doors. How far the order was obeyed, especially in the poorer parts of the city, is not known. In 1407 a plague carried off 30,000 persons in London alone. If this number is correctly stated it must have taken half the population. Many improvements were effected in the city during these years. It is reasonable to suppose that Whittington had a hand in bringing these about. Fresh water brought in pipes, lights hung out after dark. The erection of a house, Bakewell Hall, for the storage and sale of broadcloth. The erection of a store for the reception of grain in case of famine. This was the beginning of Ledden Hall. The building of a new guild hall, and an attempt to reform the prisons, an attempt which failed. In his last year of office Whittington entertained the king Henry V and his queen. There was as yet no mansion house. Every mayor made use of his own private house. The magnificence of the entertainment amazed the king. Even the fires were fed with cedar and perfumed wood. When the queen spoke of this costly gift the mayor proposed to feed the fire with something more precious still. He then produced the king's bonds to the value of sixty thousand pounds which he threw into the fire and burned. This great sum would be a very considerable gift even now. In that time it represented at least six times its present value. The mayor therefore gave the king the sum of three hundred and sixty thousand pounds. This is, very shortly, an account of Whittington's public life. He lived, I believe, on the north side of St. Michael's Patanoster Royal. I think so, because his college was established there after his death, and as he had no children, it is reasonable to suppose that his house would be assigned to the college. There is nothing to show what kind of house it was, but we may rest assured that the man who could entertain the king and queen in such a manner was at least well housed. There is a little court on this spot, which is, I believe, on the site of Whittington's house. They used to show a house in Hart Street as Whittington's, but there was no ground for the tradition except that it was a very old house. Whittington married his master's daughter, Alice Fitzwarren. He had no children, and he died in fourteen twenty-three when he was sixty-five years of age. Such was the real Whittington, a gentleman by birth, a rich and successful man, happy in his private life, a great stickler for justice, as a magistrate severe upon those who cheat and adulterate, a loyal and patriotic man, and always filled with the desire to promote the interests of the city which had received him and made him rich. Lessons thirty-three to thirty-five of the history of London. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding. History of London by Walter Besant. Lesson thirty-three. Gifts and bequests. The stream of charity which has so largely enriched and endowed the City of London began very early. You have seen how Raheer built and endowed Bartholomews, and how Queen Maude founded the Laserhouse of St Giles. The fourteenth century furnishes many more instances. Thus William Elsinge founded in thirteen thirty-two a hospital for a hundred poor blind men. In thirteen seventy-one John Barnes gave a chest containing a thousand marks to be lent by the city to young men beginning trade. You have heard how one mare went out to fight a pirate and slew him and made prizes of his vessels. Another, when corn was very dear, imported at his own expense a great quantity from Germany. Another gave money to relieve poor prisoners. Another left money for the help of poor householders. Another provided that on his commemoration day in the year two thousand four hundred poor householders of the city should have a dinner and every man two pence. This means in present money about six hundred pounds a year or an estate worth twenty thousand pounds. Another left money to pay the tax called the fifteenth for three parishes. Another brought water in a conduit from Highbury to Cripplegate. But the greatest and wisest benefactor of his time was Whittington. In his own words the fervent desire and busy intention of a prudent, wise and devout man should be to cast before and make secure the state and the end of this short life with deeds of mercy and pity, and especially to provide for those miserable persons whom the penury of poverty insulteth and to whom the power of seeking the necessaries of life by act or bodily labour is interdicted. With these grave words which should be a lesson to all men rich or poor, Whittington begins the foundation of his college. If a man were in these days to found a college he would make it either a school for boys or a technical school, in any case a place which should be always working for the world. In those days when it was universally believed that the saying of masses was able to lift souls out of punishment, a man founded a college which should pray for the world. Whittington's college was to consist of a master and four fellows who were to be masters of arts, with clerks, choristers and servants. They were every day to say mass for the souls of Richard and Alice Whittington in the Church of St. Michael's Patonoster Royal, which Church Whittington himself had rebuilt. Behind the Church he founded and built an arms-house for thirteen poor men, who were to have sixteen pence each per week, about seven shillings of our money, with clothing and rooms, on the condition of praying daily for their founder and his wife. Part of the ground for the building was granted by the Mayor and Corporation. The college continued until the dissolution of the religious houses, that is, for one hundred and fifty years. The arms-house continues to this day, but it has been removed to Highgate. On its site, the Mercer's Company has established a school. Whittington further built a library for the Franciscan house. Part of the building still remains at Christ's Hospital. It was one hundred and twenty-nine feet long and thirty-one feet broad. He also gave the friars four hundred pounds to buy books. He restored and repaired the Hospital of St Bartholomew's to which he gave a library. He paved and glazed the new building of Guildhall. He gave large sums for the bridge and the chapel on the bridge at Rochester. As a merchant he was greatly interested in keeping this important bridge in order. He repaired Gloucester Cathedral, the Cathedral Church of his native diocese. He made bosses, i.e. taps of water, to the Great Aqueduct. He rebuilt and enlarged Newgate's prison, and he founded a library at Guildhall. Many of these things were done after his death by his executors. Such were the gifts by which a city merchant of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries sought to advance the prosperity of the citizens. Fresh water in plenty by bosses here and there, the light of learning by means of libraries, arms houses for the poor, mercy and charity for the prisoners, hospitals for the sick, help for the young, prayers for the dead. These things he understood. We cannot expect any man to be greatly in advance of his age. Otherwise we should find a whitting-turn insisting upon cleanliness of streets, fresh air in the house, burial outside the city, the abolition of the long fasts which made people eat stinking fish and so gave them leprosy, the education of the craftsmen in something besides their trade, the establishment of a patrol by police and the freedom of trade. He did not found any school. That is a remarkable omission. One of his successors, Sir William Sevenoak, founded a school for lads of his native town Sevenoaks. Another, Sir Robert Chitchield, founded a school, an arms house, and a college in his native town of Higham Tharras. A friend of his own, Sir John Neal, proposed to establish four new grammar schools in the city, and yet Whittington left no money for a school. We may be quite sure that there was a reason for the omission. Perhaps he was afraid of the growing spirit of doubt and inquiry. Boys who learn grammar and rhetoric may grow into men who question and argue, and so easily and naturally get bound to the stake and are consumed with the pile of faggots. Everything was provided except a school for boys, libraries for men, but not a school for boys. The City of London School was founded by Whittington's executor, John Carpenter. There must have been reasons in Whittington's mind for omitting any endowment of schools. What those reasons were, I cannot even guess. End of Lesson 33 Lesson 34 The Palaces and Great Houses When you think of a great city of the 13th till 14th century, you must remember two things. First, that the streets were mostly very narrow. If you walk down Thames Street, and note the streets running north and south, you will be able to understand how narrow the city streets were. Second, that the great houses of the nobles and the rich merchants stood in these narrow streets, shut in on all sides, though they often contained spacious courts and gardens. No attempt was made to group the houses or to arrange them with any view to picturesque effect. It has been the fashion to speak of medieval London as if it were a city of hovels grouped together along dark and foul lanes. This was by no means the case. On the contrary, it was a city of splendid palaces and houses, nearly all of which were destroyed by the great fire. You have seen how the city was covered with magnificent buildings of monasteries and churches. Do not believe that the nobles and rich merchants who endowed and built these places would be content to live in hovels. The nobles indeed wanted barracks. A great lord never moved anywhere without his following. The Earl of Warwick called the kingmaker when he rode into London was followed by five hundred men wearing his colours. All of these had to find accommodation in his townhouse. This was always built in the form of a court or quadrangle. The modern Somerset House, which is built on the foundations of the Old House, shows us what a great man's house was like. And the College of Heralds in Queen Victoria Street is another illustration, for this was Lord Derby's townhouse. Hampton Court and St James's are illustrations of a great house with more than one court. Anyone who knows the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge will understand the arrangement of the great nobles' townhouse in the reign of Richard II. On one side was the hall in which the banquets took place, and all affairs of importance were discussed. The kitchen, butteries, and cellars stood opposite the doors of the hall. At the back of the hall, the back of the hall, with a private entrance, were the rooms of the owner and his family. The rest of the rooms on the quadrangle were given up to the use of his followers. Baynard's Castle, the name yet survives, stood on the river bank not far from Blackfriars. It was a huge house with towers and turrets, and a water gate with stairs. It contained two courts. It was, at last, after standing for six hundred years, destroyed in the Great Fire, and was one of the most lamentable of the losses caused by that disaster. The house had been twice before burned down, and that which finally perished was built in 1428. Here Edward IV assumed the crown. Here he placed his wife and children for safety before going forth to the Battle of Barnet. Here Buckingham offered the crown to Richard. Here Henry VIII lived. Here Charles II was entertained. Eastwood, also on the river bank and near the old swan stairs, stood another great house, called Cold Harbour. It belonged to Holland, Dukes of Exeter, to Richard III, and to Margaret, Countess of Richmond. North of Thames Street near College Hill was the Erber, another great house which belonged successively to the Scropes and the Nevels. Here lived the kingmaker Earl of Warwick. His following was so numerous that every day six oxen were consumed for breakfast alone. His son-in-law, who had the house afterwards, was the Duke of Clarence, false, fleeting, purgered Clarence. If you would know how a great merchant of the 15th century loved to be housed, go visit Crosby Hall. It is the only specimen left of the ancient wealth and splendour of a city merchant. But as one man lived so did many, we cannot believe that Crosby was singular in his building a palace for himself. London, with its narrow streets, its crowded courts, and the corners where the huts and hovels of wood and daub and thatch stood among their foul surroundings, a constant danger to the great houses of fire and plague, was a city of great houses and palaces with which no other city in Europe could compare. Venice and Genoa had their Crosby halls, their merchants' palaces, but London had in addition the townhouses of all the nobles of the land. In the city alone, without counting the strand and Westminster, there were houses of the earls of Arundel, Northumberland, Worcester, Barkley, Oxford, Essex, Thanet, Suffolk, Richmond, Pembroke, Abergeveny, Warwick, Leicester, West Melond. Then there were the houses of the bishops and the abbots. All these before we come to the houses of the rich merchants. Let your vision of London under the Plantagenets be that of a city all spires and towers, great churches and stately convents, with noble houses as great and splendid as Crosby Hall, scattered all about the city within the walls, and lining the river bank from Ludgate to Westminster. End of Lesson 34 Lesson 35 Amusements We have heard so much of the religious houses, companies, hospitals, quarrels and struggles that we may have forgotten a very important element in the life of the city, the amusements and pastimes of the citizens. Never was there a time when the city had more amusements than in these centuries. You have seen that it was always a rich town, its craftsmen were well paid, food was abundant, the people were well fed always, except in times of famine which were rare. There were taverns with music and singing. There were pageants, wonderful processions, representing all kinds of marvels devised by the citizens to please the king or to please themselves. There were plays representing scenes from the Bible and from the lives of the saints. There were tournaments to look at. Then there were the festivals of the year, Christmas Day, Twelfth Day, Easter, the Day of St John the Baptist, Shrove Tuesday, the Day of the Company, May Day, at all of which feasting and merriment were the rule. The young men in winter played at football, hockey, quarter-staff and single stick. They had cock-fighting, boar-fights and the baiting of bulls and bears. On May Day they erected a may-pole in every parish. They chose a may-queen and they had Morris dancing with the lads dressed up as Robin Hood, Fryer Tuck, Little John, Tom the Piper and other famous characters. Then they shot with the bow and the crossbow for prizes. They had wrestlings and they had foot-races. The two great festivals of the year were the Eve of St John the Baptist and the Day of the Company. On the former there took place the March of the Watch. Bonfires were lit in the streets, not for warmth, but in order to purge and cleanse the air of the narrow streets. At the open doors stood tables with meat and drink, neighbour inviting neighbour to hospitality. Then the doors were wreathed with green branches, leaves and flowers. Lamps of glass were hanging over them with oil burning all the night. Some hung out branches of iron curiously wrought with hundreds of hanging lights. And everywhere the cheerful sounds of music and singing and the dancing of the Prentice lads and girls in the open street. Through the midst of this joyousness filed the Watch. Four thousand men took part in this procession, which was certainly the finest thing that Medieval London had to show. To light the procession on its way, the city found two hundred Crescets or lanterns, the company's found five hundred, and the constables of London, two hundred and fifty in number, each carried one. The number of men who carried and attended to the Crescets was two thousand. Then followed the Watch itself, consisting of two thousand captains, lieutenants, sergeants, drummers and fifers, standard bearers, trumpeters, demilances on great horses, bowmen, pikemen, with Morris dancers and minstrels, their armour all polished bright and some even gilded. No painter has ever painted this march, yet of all things Medieval it was the most beautiful and the most Medieval. On the day of the company, i.e. the company's saint's day, all the members assembled in the hall every man in a new livery in the morning. First they formed in procession and marched to church, headed by priests and singing boys in surpluses. After these walked the servants, clerks, assistants, the chaplain, the mayor's sergeants, often the Lord Mayor himself. Lastly came the court with the master and wardens followed by the livery, i.e. the members. After church they returned in like manner to the hall where a great banquet awaited them. Music played in the gallery. The banners of the company were hung over their heads. They burned scented wood. They sat in order, master and wardens and illustrious guests at the high table, and the freemen below, every man with his wife, or some maiden if he were unmarried. After dinner the loving-cup went round. The minstrels led in the players, and they had dramatic shows, songs, dances and mummeries for the rest of the day. Do not think of Medieval London as a dull place. It was full of life and of brightness. The streets were narrow perhaps, but they were full of colour from the bright dresses of all, the liveries of the companies, the liveries of the great nobles, the splendid costume of the knights and richer class. The craftsman worked from daylight till curfew in the winter, from five or six in the summer. He had a long day, but he had three holidays, he had his evenings and his Sundays. A dull time was going to fall upon the Londoners, but not yet for two hundred years.