William Stow

“ 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. ”

“ Stowe's designers force specific associations upon the mind; elsewhere they are content to manipulate the feelings in such a way as to stimulate merely general fancies to which the visitor himself must put whatever name he wishes. It is consistent with Gilpin's attempt to identify Polypthon with the less public aspects of Stowe that it is he who twice formulates his own responses to a scene: the quotations from Milton (pp. 10 and 52-3) may both describe the formal features of landscape, but they are also expressive of his emotional reactions. ”

“ In them Gilpin refines and enlarges upon the methods and ideas of his Stowe Dialogue. The adjudication between a taste for natural beauties (what his Three Essays term the "correct knowledge of objects" [15] ) and the inclination to adjust them according to painterly criteria (in 1792 termed "scenes of fancy") is more sophisticated and consistent. He still delights in the variety of a landscape; but the roughness that Stowe only occasionally allowed becomes one of his guiding rules in appraising scenery. ”

“ Story, William Wetmore, poet and sculptor, son of preceding; b. 1819.
Stothard, Thomas, artistic designer and book illustrator, as well as painter, born in London, son of an innkeeper; illustrated, among other works, “Pilgrim's Progress,” and along with Turner, Rogers' “Italy” (1755-1834) .
Stourbridge, manufacturing town in Worcestershire; its staple manufactures are glass and pottery.
Stow, John, English antiquary, born in London; bred a tailor; took to antiquarian pursuits, which he prosecuted with the zeal of a devotee that spared no sacrifice ”

“ The same year, in the month of October, began a parliament in the Black Friers, in the which Cardinal Woolsey was condemned in the premunire; this house, valued at £104 15s. 5d., was surrendered the 12th of November, the 30th of Henry VIII. There were buried in this church, Margaret Queen of Scots; Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, translated from their old church by Oldborne; Robert de Attabeto, Earl of Bellimon; Dame Isabel, wife to Sir Roger Bygot, earl marshal; William and Jane Huse, children to Dame Ellis, Countess of Arundell ”

“ At this his commandment the work is nobly begun, even [406] from the foundation, and happily proceedeth till the same was finished: the charges bestowed, or to be bestowed, are not regarded. He granted to this church great privileges, above all the churches in this land, as partly appeareth by this his charter:—
“Edwarde, king, greets William, bishop, and Leofstane, and Aelsie Portreves, and all my burgesses of London friendly, and I tell you, that I have this gift given and granted to Christ and St. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Edmond the Bishop and Mary Magdalen, which chapel was founded about the year 1391 by William Eneshan, citizen and paperer of London, who was there buried, remaineth also one fair built house, of two stories in height, for the mayor and other honourable persons, with the aldermen and sheriffs to sit in, there to hear the sermons preached in the Easter holidays. In the loft over them stood the bishop of London, and other prelates; now the ladies and aldermen’s wives do there stand at a fair window, or sit at their pleasure. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In the year 1351, William Edington, bishop of Winchester, and treasurer of England, a wise man, but loving the king’s commodity more than the wealth of the whole realm, and common people (saith mine author [76] ) caused a new coin, called a groat, and a half-groat, to be coined and stamped, the groat to be taken for four pence, and the half-groat for two pence, not containing in weight according to the pence called easterlings, but much less, to wit, by five shillings in the pound; by reason whereof, victuals and merchandises became the dearer through the whole realm. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ There can be little doubt from the inscription in the chapel, that this worthy man was alive in the year 1454; it is still more certain from the following extract from Stow, that he was dead in 1463: "In the year 1463, the third of Edward the Fourth, Mathew Philip being mayor, in a common counsaile, at the request of [Pg 92] the well-disposed, blessed, and devout woman, Dame Agnes Foster, widow, late wife to Stephen Foster, fishmonger, sometime mayor, for the comfort and reliefe of all the poore prisoners, certaine articles were established. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Stow set a better example. He adopted the 'probable story' of Fabyan, and rejected the 'tradition of later times,' as Mr. Gairdner calls the unsupported calumny of Polydore Virgil.
[15] Dr. Lingard says that 'Clarence and Gloucester, perhaps the Knights in their retinue, despatched young Edward with their swords' (iv. p. 189) . In a foot-note he sees no good reason to doubt Stow. But Stow says nothing of the kind. ”

“ Crutched Friars’ Church became a carpenter’s shop and tennis court; Shakespeare and his friends erected a playhouse on the site of the Black Friars’ monastery. A tavern replaced the church of St. Martin’s le Grand, and far and wide traces of the despoiler and rebuilder were manifest.
Stow had then but just written his invaluable chronicles, and little antiquarian interest prevailed. For the first time in human history men sailed around the globe. New worlds were opening to men’s visions. Not only dreams of wealth without labour, but golden actualities had dazzled the imagination of thousands. ”

“ HOWES, EDMUND (fl. 1607–1631) , chronicler, lived in London, and designated himself 'gentleman.' Undeterred by Stow's neglect, and despite the ridicule of his acquaintances, he applied himself on Stow's death in 1605 to continuations of Stow's 'Abridgement' and of his 'Annales.' The former he undertook, after discovering (he tells us) that no one else was likely to perform it. Howes's first edition of Stow's 'Abridgement, or Summarie of the English Chronicle,' appeared in 1607. ”

“ I'm sorry!"
"It's very hard on Miss Nina," said Harry. "He interferes, and I have no power to stand for her. And, yesterday, he began talking to my wife in a way I can't bear, nor won't! He must let her alone!"
"Sho! sho!" said Mr. Gordon. "See what a boy that is, now! That an't in the least worth while—that an't! I shall tell Tom so. And, Harry, mind your temper! Remember, young men will be young; and, if a fellow will treat himself to a pretty wife, he must expect trials. But Tom ought not to do so. I shall tell him. High! there comes Jake, with the basket and the smoke-house key. ”