Henry B. Wheatley

“ The first fact is the constant onward march of London towards the fulfilment of its great destiny. Trouble surrounded it on all sides, but, in spite of them all, the citizens gained strength in adversity, so that at the Conquest the city was in possession of those special privileges which were cherished for centuries, never given up, but increased when opportunity occurred. Patient waiting was therefore rewarded by success, and London by the endeavours of her men grew in importance and stood before all other cities in her unique position. ”

“ On each side of these dames were seven virgins, all clothed in white; those on the right presented the King with the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost—sapience, intelligence, good counsel, strength, cunning, pity, and dread of God; those on the left with the seven gifts of grace—the crown of glory, the sceptre of clemency and pity, the sword of might and victory, the mantle of prudence, the shield of faith, the helmet of health, and the girdle of love and perfect peace. ”

“ Thanks to the labours of many scholars [61] we seem to know Chaucer, who died five centuries ago, better than many great men who have lived nearer our own days, and, strange to say, although we take him as a representative of the Middle Ages—and he was that—he was so imbued with the modern spirit that we cannot but feel that he is at one with us in his views of the life around him. He was associated with all parts of London, so that in a walk through the town with him we can illustrate our journey from the facts known of his life and with extracts from his works. ”

“ It is impossible to exaggerate the enormous influence of the Norman Conquest. The Saxon period was as thoroughly mediæval as the Norman period, but our full knowledge of history begins with the Conquest because so few historical documents exist before that event. Moreover, the mode of life in Saxon and Norman London was so different that it would only lead to confusion to unite the two in one picture. ”

“ London was so full of religious houses, both within and without the walls, that when the great dissolution took place in Henry VIII.’s reign, large portions of the town were left desolate. Doubtless the time had come for this great revolution, or, otherwise, even that King could never have carried it through. ”

“ Swithin the Mayor and citizens assembled near the Tower, when King Richard, clad in white garments, came forth with a great multitude in his suite, also dressed in white. The streets were hung with cloth of gold and silver and silken stuff, and the conduits ran wine for three hours. At the upper end of Cheapside was erected a castle with four towers. In the towers were placed four beautiful virgins, of stature and age like to the King, apparelled in white; these damsels on the King’s approach blew in his face leaves of gold and threw on him and his horse counterfeit golden florins. ”

“ The King married Margaret of Anjou in 1445, and on approaching London, on the way to her coronation, the Queen was met on Blackheath by the Mayor, aldermen and sheriffs and the principal members of the gilds, attired in ‘browne blue,’ with embroidered sleeves and red hoods on their heads, every craft having its cognisance, who brought her with great triumph to Westminster. ”

“ London was a flourishing, populous and opulent city, the chief emporium of commerce in the island, and the residence of foreign merchants. Properly it had become an Angle city, the chief city of the Anglian nation of Mercia, but the Danes had settled there in great numbers, and they had many captives whom they had taken in the late wars. Thus the Danes preponderated over the free Angles, and the latter were glad to see Alfred come and restore the balance in their favour. ”

“ The solid foundation of facts proving the condition of the earliest London are the waste, marshy ground, with little hills rising from the plains, and the dense forest on the north—a forest that remained almost up to the walls of the city even in historic times, animal remains, flint instruments, and pile dwellings. ”

“ They had no means of breaking into the city, and if they remained long where they were they would inevitably have been starved.
‘Walworth guarded the bridge, and sent to the peasants, bidding them, in the name of the King and the city, come no nearer to London.’ [41] If there had been no treachery it would have been easy to keep the rebels outside till they were forced by hunger to desist from their endeavours to enter, for time was on the side of the besieged, but the peasants had friends and well-wishers within, and the city being divided against itself, fell. ”

“ London fought an uphill fight with Winchester for the position of chief city of Southern England. Under Egbert London grew in importance, but Winchester, the chief town of Wessex, was still the more important place politically. In the trade regulations enacted by Edgar in the tenth century London took precedence of Winchester: ‘Let one measure and one weight pass such as is observed at London and at Winchester.’ In the reign of Edward the Confessor London had become the recognised capital of England. ”

“ M. Jusserand, in his interesting study of Piers Plowman, says of Langland: ‘He tells us what he has seen and nothing else; his sole guide is the light that shines over the town where Truth is imprisoned.’ He{73} continues: ‘It clears the darkness of the London lanes, where, under the pent-roof of their shops, the merchants make Gyle, disguised as an apprentice, sell their adulterated wares; it brightens the hovel in Cornhill where the poet lodges his emaciated body; it throws its rays on the scared faces of sinners for whom the hour of punishment has rung. ”

“ Comfort, as we understand it, could not have existed in the Middle Ages, but the life seems to have been fairly agreeable to those who lived it, and it is only fair to give credence to such witnesses as Fitz-Stephen, who knew ‘the noble city of London’ well, and could only write of it in terms of hearty praise. ”

“ Almost on every holyday in winter, before dinner, foaming boars and huge-tusked hogs, intended for bacon, fight for their lives, or fat bulls or immense boars are baited with dogs. When that great marsh which washes the walls of the city on the north side is frozen over, the young men go out in crowds to divert themselves upon the ice. ”

“ Fleet Street and the Strand were not the important thoroughfares during the Middle Ages that Holborn was. The roads were much neglected, and no one traversed them who could travel by boat on the Thames, which was literally the Silent Highway of London.
When the gates of London were closed at eight o’clock at night, and the inhabitants were ruled with an iron hand, it was somewhat a sign of reproach to live outside the walls. This feeling continued for centuries, and the name of ‘suburbs’ was long held in little respect. ”

“ We may allow that the masses have a right to demonstrate and urge upon their rulers a change of so fundamental a nature as serfdom, which affected them all more or less, but an evil which the rulers were very remiss in attempting to redress. At the same time no government can exist if mob law is triumphant and if an irresponsible mass of people is allowed to demand changes which require much consideration by a legislative body, as Wat Tyler’s followers did. ”

“ One of the most persistent is that which confounds the city guilds with the city companies. Here two widely different things are inextricably confused, and that, too, not in mere catchpenny popular books, but in books pretending to more or less authority. In the common run of London histories, guild means company, and company means guild.... To begin with, there are now no guilds in London. By an Act passed in 1557 all religious guilds were abolished and all{300} guildable property was confiscated. ”

“ In taking stock of diseases and epidemics in London, we may note that many of the pestilences previous to the Black Death were due to famine. Dr. Creighton says of the year 1258 that ‘so great was the pinch in London from the failure of the crops and the want of money that fifteen thousand are said to have died of famine and of a grievous and widespread pestilence that broke out about the Feast of the Trinity, 19th May.’ The number is that given by Matthew Paris, and Dr. Creighton adds: ‘It suggests a larger population in the capital than we might have been disposed to credit. ”

“ York, however, could not then have had anything like 10,000 inhabitants. Fitz-Stephen greatly exaggerated the population of London. He wrote: ‘The city is ennobled by her men, graced by her arms, and peopled by a multitude of inhabitants, so that in the wars under King Stephen there went out to a muster of armed horsemen, esteemed fit for war, twenty thousand, and of infantry sixty thousand.’ Hallam agrees generally with Peter of Blois’ calculation, for he supposes London to have had a population in John’s reign of at least 30,000 or 40,000. ”

“ Such a physician, if he survived, would no doubt have been able to acquire some experience of the disease during its continuance, and if he had chosen to put this down in plain words when the epidemic was over he might have done some service to medical history, but unfortunately when the disease had once disappeared the physicians seemed to have lost all interest in the subject, and it is only in rare instances that the medical literature of the plague contains any account of contemporary epidemics. ”

“ The action of the Popes, already alluded to, in forbidding the clergy to interfere in any matter connected with the shedding of blood as incompatible with the holy office caused the clergy to devote themselves specially to medicine, and the duties of the barbers were thereby largely extended.
Mr. D’Arcy Power has drawn attention to a matter which is of the greatest interest in the history of the profession, viz., that two types of surgeons flourished side by side in London during the Middle Ages—the military surgeons who formed the aristocracy of the profession, and the barber surgeons. ”

“ London within the walls was a considerable city in the Middle Ages, although it only contained the same area that was walled in during the later Roman period. The relics of this wall, continually renewed with the old materials, are so few, and the old area is so completely lost sight of in the larger London, that it is necessary to point out the line of the walls before dealing further with the habits of the Londoners. ”

“ The contemptuous references to{388} the traders of London, which are first noticed in Elizabeth’s reign, became common. The cits were laughed at, and the courtiers poured out a torrent of abuse upon all those who lived in the east.
The Great Fire of 1666 made an enormous change in the topography of London, and caused great misery, but it is supposed to have been a blessing in disguise as it cleared out many a centre of plague and disease.
When we read of the heroism of the homeless Londoner we must feel proud of our ancestors. ”

“ Wren and Hooke were appointed to superintend the progress of the work of making London arise anew out of its ashes. The Act of Parliament passed to regulate the work of rebuilding was a very practical, and altogether excellent, statute. In fact, the way in which all concerned in the complicated business of raising a new city worked in unison is worthy of every praise. ”

“ The people must have been closely packed in some parts of London, but gardens and open spaces within the walls were not uncommon. The statistics of the Middle Ages are not to be relied upon, as they largely consisted of the wildest guesses. Kings and Parliaments were continually deceived as to the produce of a tax, owing to the impossibility of knowing the number of the people upon whom it was to be levied.
During the latter part of the Saxon period the numbers of the population of the country began to decay; this decay, however, was arrested by the Norman Conquest. ”

“ It is a remarkable fact that the locality in which the Italian financiers first settled in London should obtain a name which has continued to the present day as a synonym of finance, and was used by the late Mr. Bagehot as the title of his great work.
Matthew Paris tells us that the houses which the Italian moneylenders built for themselves were so costly that, although at one period the Italians were anxious to leave the kingdom to escape the persecutions they suffered from, they were constrained to remain by the loss they feared to incur by deserting their houses. ”