Edward Stow

“ Edward I. renewed and confirmed that charter of liberties granted by his father. And in the 10th year of the same Edward, Henry Wales being mayor, a great controversy did arise between the said mayor, and the merchants of the Haunce of Almaine, about the reparations of Bishopsgate, then likely to fall, for that the said merchants enjoyed divers privileges in respect of maintaining the said gate, which they now denied to repair; for the appeasing of which controversy the king sent his writ to the treasurer and barons [209] of his Exchequer, commanding that they should make inquisition thereof ”

“ Thomas; but in the 27th of the same King Edward, the staple of wool, before kept at Bruges in Flanders, was ordained by parliament to be kept in divers places of England, Wales, and Ireland, as at Newcastle, Yorke, Lincoln, Canterbury, Norwich, Westminster, Chichester, Winchester, Excester, Bristow, Carmardyn, etc., to the great benefit of the king and loss unto strangers and merchants: for there grew unto the king by this means (as it was said) the sum of one thousand one hundred and two pounds by the year, more than any his predecessors before had received ”

“ The 11th of Edward I., John Perkham, Archbishop of Canterbury, commanded the Bishop of London to destroy all the Jews’ synagogues in his diocese. The 16th of the said Edward, all the Jews in England were in one day apprehended by precept from the king, but they redeemed themselves for twelve thousand pounds of silver; notwithstanding, in the 19th of his reign, he banished them all out of England, giving them only to bear their charge, till they were out of his realm: the number of Jews then expulsed were fifteen thousand and sixty persons. ”

“ Henry Picard, vintner, mayor 1357, in the year 1363, did in one day sumptuously feast Edward III., king of England, John, king of France, David, king of Scots, the king of Cyprus, then all in England, Edward, prince of Wales, with many other noblemen, and after kept his hall for all comers that were willing to play at dice and hazard. ”

“ In the 12th year of the reign of King Edward II., it was ordered by parliament that every city of the realm should make out soldiers against the Scots; at which time London was appointed to send two hundred men, and Canterbury, being then one of our best cities, forty, and no more: and this proportion of five to one is now in our age increased, at the least five to one, both in soldiers and subsidy. As for the other services that London hath done in times of peace, they are to be measured by consideration of the commodities, whereof I will speak anon. ”

“ His most important single plates were ‘The Three Women at the Sepulchre,’ after Benjamin West, which he issued himself; and a portrait of Lord Frederick Campbell, after Edridge. His latest employment was upon the illustrations to Wilkinson's ‘Londina Illustrata,’ 1811–23. Falling into intemperate habits, Stow died in obscurity and poverty. ”

“ John Stow, the father, was, like John Gilpin, a citizen of credit and renown; and if he had a place of business in Cornhill, he did not sleep there, as vulgar tailors might. Not he! he had his country house, Sir, and that where you now might look for one in vain—“at the backside of Throgmorton-street.” It was then a rural district, and the old tailor tabernacled with gentility. His immediate neighbour was no less a man than the minister Cromwell. John had a garden forty-four feet long, for which he paid “six and eightpence” annual rent ”

“ Stowe’s life. First twin daughters arrived and were named Eliza Taylor and Harriet Beecher. Two years later Henry Ellis was born. Then came Frederick William, named for the Prussian King for whom his father had a great admiration. Georgiana May followed and Samuel Charles was the next. This, omitting the last little one whose life was sacrificed in the cholera epidemic, made the circle of five who went with the little mother when she preceded her husband to the new home in Maine. Soon after her arrival there her seventh child was born and was named Charles Edward. ”

“ JOHN STOW, THE ANTIQUARIAN TAILOR.
“Such a man
Might be a copy to these younger times.”
All’s Well that Ends Well.
It has been well said of John Stow, that he was, in his way, a sort of Hebrew of the Hebrews; a citizen born of a citizen; like his father, a tailor; but he was in himself a tailor, “and something more.”
He was born in Cornhill, the year that the gossips there were admiringly eloquent on the glories of the royal tournament and ball at Greenwich, where Henry VIII. helped to break three hundred lances before supper ”

“ And now that he was cleared it would be manly and nice to go and ask him to be friends again.
"He can hardly do anything if I don't give him [Pg 183] the chance," he told himself. "I will do it as soon as I get back to school on Monday."
His head full of the tracks of lame horses and light traps, he had taken his way across towards Stow Wood, the scene of that tragedy—for tragedy he believed there had surely been—and as he walked over the common he reflected that those marks had led away in the direction of Great Stow; and in Great Stow or just beyond it, Lord Elgert lived. ”

“ However that may have been, we now lay our course for Stow, a tiny hamlet nestling in a wild rocky cirque called Ragged Kingdom. Our route lies over Stow Hill, whose summit is marked by the blackened cairn of the 'Diamond Jubilee' bonfire.
But lusty appetites, begotten of fresh air and hours of steady tramping, now demand instant satisfaction. So down we sit, and, whilst feasting our eyes on the beauties of the landscape, we regale the inner man on more material fare: the pile of sandwiches becoming 'small by degrees, and beautifully less,' as the moments flit by. ”

“ Being in the neighbourhood of St. Mary Axe, it occurred to me we might go on to St. Andrew Undershaft to see Stow's monument. The church is open from 12 to 2, and I asked Mrs. D. whether she would have lunch before, or after, the visit. She said she thought "two churches running" might be "rather dry," and, taking the hint, I came to a halt at the nearest restaurant.
The beefsteak was tough but the ale was good, and Mrs. D. declared, as we rose from the table, that she felt quite equal to another church, but she hoped it was not an underground one. ”

“ But many were young gallants, and those were evidently come to show the splendor of their dress and to mark and follow the newest fashions, which, like women, they learned from each other.
"These lads," said Stow, again echoing my thoughts, "were also better on board a stout ship bound for the West Indies than at home spending their fortunes on their backs, and their time in pranking before the other gallants. Yet they are young. Folly sits well on the young. In youth we love a brave show, if only to please the maidens. ”

“ Sir James Harrington’s Oceana, p. 40. Lond. 1656.
69 True it is, that this divertisement of bear-baiting was not altogether unknown in the age of Elizabeth, and, as it seemeth, not much misliked of master Stow himself, who hath very graphically described it. He is speaking of the Danish embassador’s reception and entertainment at Greenwich in 1586. “As the better sort, saith he, had their convenient disports, so were not the ordinary people excluded from competent pleasure. ”

“ Both shaft and strip are finished off by rough corbels a little above the floor level. [39] But Stow is an exceptional church. As a rule, we find the strip-frame retained purely as a flat hood-mould to doorways and windows, without a trace of that individuality of style which distinguishes it at Stow, and preserving a still more distant kinship to the work at Barton.
“Long-and-short” work pursues a more hardy existence. Quoining was necessary, and the “long-and-short” method was at once serviceable and fairly ornamental. ”

“ A beautiful smile passed over her face, as she opened her eyes and looked on them all, and said,—
"No, my poor friends, I don't suffer. I'm come to the land where they never suffer. I'm only so sorry for you! Edward," she said to him, "do you remember what you said to me once?—It has come now. You must bear it like a man. God calls you to some work—don't shrink from it. You are baptized with fire. It all lasts only a little while. It will be over soon, very soon! Edward, take care of my poor people. Tell Tom to be kind to them. My poor, faithful, good Harry! ”

“ Stow acts as attorney for various Adelaide companies, and his mining interests on the fields are extensive. His belief in the future of Hannan's and the fields generally is assuring, and is based on critical experience of our auriferous country. Neither over nor under estimating, he is confident of a bright destiny for the colony.
Mr. Stow is a man, shrewd, cultured, and clever in his mental status, with a fund of untiring energy which can propel with easy motion the pliable intellectual oars. ”

“ The 'prentices of Cheapside were a conspicuous feature of the street at this period. During the day they paraded up and down in front of their masters' shop, crying "What d'ye lack; what d'ye lack?" followed by an enumeration and laudation of the articles within, and the wonderful bargains to be picked up; and in the evening listening eagerly for the sound of the curfew bell as the signal for shutting up shop. Stow tells us that in his time the bell-ringer was sometimes late, and that the 'prentices, precursors of the "Early Closing Movement" of our own time, addressed him as follows ”

“ Chalmers's British Poets, vol. iv., p. 91.
[38] "After which, once ended," says Stow, "the preacher gat him home, and never after durst look out for shame, but kept him out of sight like an owle; and when he once asked one that had been his olde friende, what the people talked of him, all were it that his own conscience well shewed him that they talked no good, yet when the other answered him, that there was in every man's mouth spoken of him much shame, it so strake him to the hart, that in a few daies after, he withered, and consumed away."—Brayley, vol. i., p. 312. ”

“ Stow was an indifferent tailor, yet excellent author. Speed was both; and he was more fortunate than his brother antiquary and tailor. After he had served in Cheshire, [297] he settled in London as master, and he had Sir Fulke Greville for a customer. The men, wide as they were apart socially, were brothers intellectually; and both loved and comprehended literature. Sir Fulke paid his tailor after a better fashion than that of most fine gentlemen of his day. He took the artisan from his board, and set him a student at his books. ”

“ The truth is (saith John Stow, our countryman and diligent traveller in the old estate of this my native city) that it is now named Portsoken Ward, and given in time past to the religious house within Aldgate. Howbeit first Otwell, the archovel, Otto, and finally Geffrey Earl of Essex, constables of the of London, withheld that portion from the said house until the reign of King Stephen, and thereof made a vineyard to their great commodity and lucre. The Isle of Ely also was in the first times of the Normans called Le Ile des Vignes. ”

“ Stow finally denounced with asperity all Grafton's historical work (cp. Address to the Reader, 1573) . There seems little doubt that his capacity as an historian was greater than Grafton's, and that the victory finally rested with him (Ames, Typogr. Antiq. ed. Dibdin, iii. 422–7) .
But Stow had other troubles. His studies inclined him to conservatism in religion, and he never accepted the reformed doctrine with much enthusiasm. His zeal as a collector of documents laid him open to the suspicion of Elizabeth's ministers. ”

“ Apparently Stow set up basins for alms in the streets, but the citizens were chary of contributions. In 1605 William Warner, in a new edition of his ‘Albion's England,’ illustrated the neglect of literary merit by the story of Stow's poverty. ”

“ He ordered them to desist and go within doors, and upon their asking him why, instead of explaining the order, which they had no knowledge of, he threatened to send them to the compter, and after a little altercation, seized one of the youths to commit him to prison. "But," says Stow, "the 'prentices resisted the alderman, taking the young man from him, and cried, ''Prentices! 'prentices! clubs! ”

“ An error in the foregoing inscription has been corrected by the venerable Stow. "Whereas," saith he, "it hath been far spread abroad by vulgar opinion, that the rebel smitten down so manfully by Sir William Walworth, the then worthy Lord Maior, was named Jack Straw, and not Wat Tyler, I thought good to reconcile this rash-conceived doubt by such testimony as I find in ancient and good records. ”

“ All at once another shout went up—a shout of amazement and incredulity. A great sensation spread everywhere. The Bones list had now reached thirteen; only two more to be given, and Allison of the crew, Dudley, and Harvey, chairman of the News, all rated sure men, were left. Who was to be rejected? Stover fought his way to where the three were standing white and silent, surrounded by the gaping crowd. Some one caught his arm. It was Le Baron, beside himself with excitement, saying:
"Good God, Dink! you don't suppose they're going to turn down Harvey or Allison?" ”

“ Le Baron, passing, stopped Stover, saying excitedly:
"Say, Dink, watch out for the crowd who go Keys and let me know, will you? I mean the men in our crowd?"
"Sure I will."
Stover was in the throng, with a strange, sharp memory of Le Baron's drawn face. It was a silent mass, waiting, watch in hand, trying stoically to face down the suspense of the last awful minutes. Men he knew stared past him unseeing. Some were carefully dressed, and others stood in sweater and jersey, biting on pipes that were not lit. ”