Walter Besant

“ The return of the Black Prince with his royal captive after the battle of Poitiers was an occasion for such a display as the City always loved. A thousand of the citizens, richly clad and well mounted, met the Prince at Southwark: the King of France rode a splendid charger: beside him the victorious Prince rode a little galloway. At the foot of London Bridge they were met by the Mayor, Aldermen, Sheriffs, and the several craftsmen in their liveries and colours. All through the streets the houses were hung with tapestries and glittered with arms and armour of all kinds. ”

“ The reign of Henry III. should have taught the citizens the great lesson that a charter is only a recognition and a promise: a recognition of ancient rights and liberties achieved, and a promise to respect these rights and liberties. When a king ascended the throne, who had no regard for oaths or charters, and who was strong enough to enforce his will, what became of the rights and liberties? The City had to learn that more than a king’s word was necessary. “Make a law,” is the cry of the weak and ignorant. “Let us defend what laws we have,” is the cry of the strong. ”

“ London was too small as yet, even with a hundred thousand people, to do much harm to her noble river. The swans still delighted to float and swim about London Bridge; salmon came up to be caught in mid-stream; and even the town ditch, which also received a good deal of the refuse, continued to be full of good fish. There were scavengers—not only the rain, the frost, the sun, the wind, and the kites, but men appointed to do for the householder then what they do now: to remove the refuse. ”

“ During the greater part of this long reign London was weak and ignorant. The weakness of London—the alternate fits of rage and apathy—as, one after the other, her liberties were taken from her, is to be explained by the fact that the City was divided within itself. London united and of one mind could have dictated terms to king or barons. The secret of the successful and long-continued oppression of the City is the internal dissension of the people.
I must reserve for another chapter the history of the King’s encroachments and the internal dissensions. ”

“ Always the riverside of London has been a place remarkable for its life, and vividness, its riot and noise, the cheerful cry of battle, the inspiriting song of the tippler, and the dulcet voice of love.
Every sailor was a fighting man. Until the reign of Henry IV. it was easy to turn a merchant ship into a man o’ war by placing in her the little “castles” from which the bowmen could work. Henry IV. seems to have begun the practice of building ships exclusively for fighting; his son had three very large ships called the Trinity, the Grace de Dieu, and The Holy Ghost ”

“ The charter of Oxford expressly instructs the burghers or citizens that in cases of dispute they should refer to London. And the charters, not only of Oxford, but of Exeter, Gloucester, etc., conferred on the burgesses the same privileges and customs as those enjoyed by the citizens of London. This fact makes the early charters of London far more valuable than if they stood alone. We see London as the fountain of liberties, the exemplar, the free City, to which all the lesser cities looked as an example and a model. ”

“ It was a noisy, bustling city full of life and animation; the people were always ready to fight, always dreading fire, famine, and plague, yet always hopeful; and the City was always young as befits a city continually at work.
The Trade of London covers the exports and the imports, the industries and the productions, the wants and the luxuries, the superfluities and the extravagances, of the City. There was no great change in these respects during the whole period from the Norman Conquest to the accession of the Tudors. ”

“ Below the busy and honest life of industry, hidden away in the holes and corners of the labyrinthine City, was the life of the rogues, the vagrants, the masterless men. If anything were wanted to prove the ever-present existence of this population, one need only read the Proclamations and Acts passed from time to time. Every outbreak of foreign or civil war added to the number of those who, once being taken from their work, would never return to it, and so became tramps, highway robbers, common thieves. The nomad instinct provides another contingent of those who cannot or will not work ”

“ All about, in the air, one hears the continual noise of work, the sound of hammering, sawing, grating, the ringing of the anvil, the voices of women who quarrel and scold. Now and then rises, all in a moment, without warning, a sudden brawl between two of the working men, at once knives are drawn and in a moment the thing is over, but it leaves a little pool of blood in the middle of the street, and a woman binds up a bleeding arm. ”

“ There was rancour against the Duke of Lancaster for other reasons, apart from this insult to the Bishop. It was rumoured that he had the design of abolishing the Mayor and of appointing a Custos in his place; and that he held that the Marshal of England should have the right of arresting criminals in London as well as in other parts of the kingdom. The quarrel at St. Paul’s was only the last drop in the cup. That strange wildfire which seizes mobs, beginning one knows not where, and spreading one knows not how, flamed up in the London streets. The mob would have the Duke’s life. ”

“ And now is London left behind us; there is no more trade along the banks of the river save a little at Westminster. These stairs upon the bank, and these carved and painted barges belong to the Palaces of the Bishops, Abbots, and great Lords. We pass Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, Burleigh House, the Savoy, Bedford House, Durham House, York House, all with gardens, terraces, and spacious courts. And so we come to the King’s Stairs, Westminster. Here is the King’s Palace, a crowded, busy, noisy place, and beyond is the Abbey of St. Peter, rich and famous. A noble church it is ”

“ Every citizen who remembered those few terrible days when the wildest mob ever seen in London streets held possession of the City, and when they remembered what the better sort had to endure, robbery, fire, and murder, looked on that act as the salvation of himself as well as of the City. The alienation of the City which followed was due solely to the King’s long-continued exactions and his arbitrary disregard of Charters. ”

“ There is no more huddling around the fire, perhaps without candles, going off to bed as soon as is possible, rising before the break of day, sitting all day long in a workshop darkened by the lowering of the shutters as well as by the dreary grey skies of winter, working with frozen fingers, living on salt meat for six months except for the fast days and the forty days of Lent, when for a change there was salted fish. ”

“ Since, after a time of Purgatory, one is going for ever to sit among the Saints, what matters it whether one’s name is preserved or not? When many of the old dangers are abated; when fortune is more stable; when wealth accumulates; when the growth of the City brings dignity, honour, and authority to the citizens,—then it may become natural for the people to erect monuments in memory of the men whose personality in life has been large and full of dignity; and then every man will begin to desire such a monument in memory of those surprising achievements of which he alone is conscious. ”

“ There are, however, fortunately, other scavengers besides the rain; they swoop down out of the sky, they alight in the street, they tear the offal with their beaks and claws, they carry it up to the house-tops; these are the kites and crows, who build their nests on the church towers and roofs, and find their food in the refuse thrown out into the streets. Were it not for these birds, London streets would be intolerable. ”

“ Nothing, again, is said of any amusements, we are not in the gardens of the Castle, we are in a City street, the house is one of a cluster, each house facing a different way, perhaps, gabled, the storeys projecting one above the other, we look out across the narrow street upon another house like this. At the back is a small garden, the doors are all open and the housewives come out and talk to each other about the prices of everything, which have gone up horribly within the memory of people still young ”

“ In that same year—1235—the Bishop of London “perceiving that the Caursines openly multiplied their usury without shame and led a most filthy life, harassing the Religious with various injuries and amassing heaps of riches from the numbers who were forced to submit to their yoke,” arose and admonished them to desist from their practices and to do penance for their misdeeds. But what is a Bishop of London compared with the Pope of Rome? The Caursini laughed at the Bishop; they appealed to Rome; they procured an order that the Bishop, then old and ill, should repair to Rome with his complaints. ”

“ There was never any question about obeying the government of London, there was never any popular rising against the government of London. It was natural and it was proper that the Aldermen should be the rulers, and if any one had the temerity to strike an Alderman or refuse to obey his ruling, it was just and proper to the people themselves for that man to have his hand struck off; and in the same way it was understood by everybody that in defence of the King, their “Overlord,” it might be necessary to go forth and fight. ”

“ The popular imagination has always presented the City of London as paved with gold; the popular tradition has always delighted to present the rise of the humble village boy from the poor apprentice to the rich merchant, Alderman, and Mayor. ”

“ We must realise that the same thing, on a smaller scale, is to be seen, in the fourteenth century, in every parish church of London. We look into church after church. There are treasures in every one, treasures that the priests and the sacristans bring out with pride. And the monuments over the graves of City worthies bring out very strongly, as we stand in the churches and read the names, the fact that the members of the great distributing Companies, largely, if not entirely, belong to families of gentle birth: upon this fact there will be more to say in another place. ”

“ The moral of the ballad is obvious. If you wish to go to law, you should go to London; and if you wish to go to London, you should first of all fill your purse.
We want to get at the mind of the people. We have seen that the women at least did not read, and of book-learning the London craftsman had none. But they must have had ideas, subjects of conversation, current beliefs,—what were they? Towards the end of the fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century, there can be no doubt that there was everywhere a spirit of restlessness and questioning. ”

“ It would mean that every working man would have to pay half-a-crown for himself, half-a-crown for his wife, and half-a-crown for every one in his house over fifteen years of age, say four half-crowns, or ten shillings in all. How long would a Government last which should impose such a tax? The tax produced in London alone no more than £1000. It was a fatal impost for the country, for it proved the cause of the rebellion, the most formidable rising of the peasantry which this country ever had to encounter, that named after Wat Tyler. ”

“ Continuing our walk we overlook the Fleet River, which is much choked with filth and rubbish, especially from things thrown into it from the Fleet prison, whose walls it washes and whose refuse it receives. Perhaps after heavy rains it becomes a cleaner stream. Over against it rises the steep slope of Holborn crowned with its ancient church of St. Andrew. The broad road on which it stands is the military road, which branched off from the Roman road, when London Bridge was built. ”

“ What you see from the river is the embattled wall on the river side, one side of the Hall, some windows of the dormitories, stone houses built on wooden columns, also the great weighing-beam and the courtyard. The front of this fortress—for it is nothing less—contains three gates, viz. two small gates easily closed, and one great gate, seldom opened. You see that they have their own watergate and stairs. In everything they must be independent of the London folk, with whom they never mix if they can keep separate. The men live here under strict rule and discipline; they may not marry ”

“ Stories of the banquets and gifts of the great citizens show a command of ready money which the most princely of the nobles never possessed, though probably few of the citizens could compare, as far as wealth went, with the first among the nobles.
The magnificence of the banquet at which Whittington made a gift to the King, astonished both the King and his bride; probably there was not, in all England and France together, another man who could have provided such a banquet. ”

“ The humbler man, the well-to-do burgher, and even the craftsman, there is every reason to believe, fared well and plentifully: they lived on beef and mutton, meat pies, pork, capons, wild birds, and sea fish. The wild birds were brought up in great quantities from the counties of Essex and Suffolk; there was a plentiful supply of fish; from all the country round along every track that they called a highway, down the rivers—the Thames, the Brent, the Wandle, the Fleet, the Lea, the Ravensbourne, came boats and barges laden with farm produce. ”

“ We remember that curious little episode when Thomas of Woodstock quarrelled with Nicholas Brembre the Mayor, and punished the citizens by withdrawing—he and his men and as many of his friends as would go with him—out of the City. To lose at one blow the maintenance of many thousand men was ruin. Imagine the consternation at Fishmongers’ Hall, Bakers’ Hall, Butchers’ Hall, among the Vintners, the Brewers, the Cooks, the Poulterers! ”

“ The interests of beer are concerned. The crowd is justly indignant, words of reproach and contumely greet the culprit; she hides her face in terror and in shame. It seems a light thing to stand up for an hour or two before the people. It is anything but light, it is grievous, it is a lifelong disgrace; women have been known to fall down dead in such a case, overwhelmed and heartbroken with the public exposure. ”