Part 16
Death by hanging or pillory. These were almost the only punishments. The cases before the Mayor's Court remind us of the remarkable resemblance we bear to our ancestors. They are monotonous because they read like the cases in a modern Police Court. Giles Pykeman goes in terror of his life, because certain persons threaten him, but they find surety for good behavior. John Edmond Commonger, convicted of passing off bad oats for good--pillory. John William, for passing off rings of latten as rings of gold--pillory. Nicolas Mollere, for spreading false news--pillory, with a whetstone round his neck to mark the offence. Heavens! if this offence were again made penal. John Mayn, indicted for being a leper--banished out of the city. Robert Brebason, stock fish-monger, charged with assault in presence of the Mayor. Not a case for pillory this: let him be imprisoned for a year and a day in Newgate. Alice Sheltoir, charged with being a common scold--to the thew. John Rykorre, cordwainer, for forging a bond--pillory.
As an illustration of the times I give the story of William Blakeney. He was a shuttle-maker by trade, but a pilgrim by profession. He dressed for the part with long hair, long gown, and bare feet. He loitered about in places where men resorted--taverns and such--and there entertained all comers with travellers' tales. He had been everywhere, this pious and adventurous pilgrim. He had seen Seville, city of sacred relics; Rome, the abode of his Holiness the Pope; he had even seen the Pope himself. He had been to the Holy Land, and stood within the very sepulchre of our Lord. And what with the strange creatures he had met with in those far-off lands, and the men and women among whom he had sojourned, and the things he could tell you, and the things which he postponed till the next time, the story would fill volumes. For six years he lived in great comfort, eating and drinking of the best, always at the expense of his hearers. This man must have been an unequalled story-teller. Six years of invention ever fresh and new! Then he was found out--he had never been a pilgrimage in his life. He had never been out of sight of the London walls. So he stood in pillory--this poor novelist, who would in these days have commanded so much respect and such solid rewards--he stood in pillory, with a whetstone round his neck, as if he had been a common liar! And then he had to go back to the dull monotony of shuttle-making, and that in silence, with nobody to believe him any more. Well, he shortly afterwards died, I am convinced, of suppressed fiction. But perhaps his old friends rallied round him, and by the light of the fire he still beguiled the long evenings by telling for the hundredth time of the one-eyed men, and the men with tails, and the men who have but one leg, and use their one foot for an umbrella against the scorching sun--all of whom he had seen in the deserts on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus, where St. Paul was converted.
On a day in the beginning of October, 1382, there was great excitement in the parish of St. Mildred, Poultry. A certain mazer, or silver cup, the property of Dame Matilda de Eye, had been stolen. Now, whether Alan, the water-carrier, had his suspicions, or whether he was himself suspected, or whether he wished to fix the guilt on somebody else, I know not, but he repaired to the house of Robert Berewold, of great repute for art magic, and inquired of him as to the real thief. Whereupon Robert took a loaf, and in the top of it fixed a round peg of wood, and four knives at the four sides, so as to present the figure of a cross. He then did "soothsaying and art magic" over the loaf. After which he declared that Johanne Wolsy was the person who had stolen the cup.
This thing being bruited abroad, and the voice of the indignant Johanne ascending to the ears of the Aldermen, the said Robert was attached to make answer to the Mayor and commonalty as in a plea of deceit and falsehood. Answer there was none. Whereupon Robert stood in pillory for one hour, the loaf, peg, and knives hung about his neck; and on the following Sunday he went to the parish church--it is now pulled down--and in the presence of the congregation confessed that he had falsely defamed the same Johanne. Meantime Alan, one may believe, had consigned the mazer to a safe place, and joined in the congratulations of Johanne's friends.
Would you know how a young married couple set up house-keeping? Here is the inventory of the household furniture of such a pair in the fourteenth century. It is not the only document of the kind which exists, but it is interesting because it forms part of a story which remains unfinished.
The inventory belongs to the year 1337. The proprietor's name was Hugh le Bevere; that of his wife Alice. Hugh le Bevere was a craftsman of the better sort, but not a master. He was so well off that the furniture of his house, including clothes, was valued at £12 18_s._ 4_d._, which, being interpreted into modern money, means about £200. He had been married but a short time when the events occurred which caused this inventory to be drawn up. The newly-married pair lived in a house consisting of two rooms, one above the other. The lower room, which was kitchen and keeping-room in one, was divided from the houses on either side by solid stone walls; it had a chimney and a fireplace; the walls were hung round with kitchen utensils, tools, and weapons; a window opened to the street, the upper part of which was glazed, while the lower part could be closed by a stout shutter; the door opened into the street; there was another door at the back, which opened upon a buttery, where there stood ranged in a row six casks of wine. One folding-table and two chairs served for their wants, because they were not rich enough to entertain their friends. A ladder led to the upper room, which was an attic or garret, built of wood and thatched with rush. Here was the bed with a mattress, three feather beds, and two pillows. A great wooden coffer held their household gear; here were six blankets and one serge, a coverlet with shields of sendall (a kind of thin silk), eight linen sheets, four table-cloths. The clothes, which were laid in chests or hung upon the wall, consisted of three surcoats of worsted and ray; one coat with a hood of perset (peach-colored cloth), and another of worsted; two robes of perset; one of medley, furred; one of scarlet, furred; a great hood of sendall with edging; one camise (only one!) and half a dozen savenapes (aprons). One perceives that the inventory omits many things. Where, for instance, were the hosen and the shoon? For kitchen utensils there were brass pots, a grate, andirons, basins, washing vessels, a tripod, an iron horse, an iron spit, a frying-pan, a funnel, and two ankers--_i.e._ tubs. They had one candlestick "of lattone;" two plates; an aumbrey (cabinet or small cupboard); curtains to hang before the doors to keep out the cold; cushions and a green carpet; and for the husband a haketon, or suit of leather armor, and an iron head-piece. Of knives, forks, wooden plates, cups, glasses, or drinking measures there is nothing said at all. But it is evident that the house was provided with everything necessary for solid comfort; plenty of kitchen vessels, for instance, and plenty of soft feather-beds, blankets, pillows, curtains, and sheets.
Every morning at six o'clock, after a hunch of bread, a substantial slice of cold meat, and a pull at the black-jack of small ale, Hugh le Bevere walked off to his day's work. Then Alice, left at home, washed and scoured, made and mended, cooked the dinner, talked to the neighbors, and, when all was done, sat in the door-way enjoying the sunshine and spinning busily.
They had been married but a short time. There were no children. Then--one knows nothing; one must not judge harshly; there may have been jealousy; there may have been cause for jealousy; perhaps the woman had a tongue unendurable (fourteenth-century tongues were cruelly sharp); perhaps the man had a temper uncontrolled (in that century there were many such); but no one knows, and, again, we must not judge--then, I say, the end came, suddenly and without warning. When it was all over, some of the neighbors thought they had heard high words and a smothered shriek, but then we often think we have heard what probably happened. In the morning Hugh le Bevere went not forth to his work as usual; Alice did not open the door; the shutters remained closed. The neighbors knocked; there was no answer. They sent for the Alderman, who came with his sergeants, and broke open the door. Alas! alas! They found the body of Alice lying stark and dead upon the floor; beside her sat her husband with white face and haggard eyes, and the evidence of his crime, the knife itself, lying where he had thrown it.
They haled him to the Lord Mayor's Court. They questioned him. He made no reply at first, looking as one distraught; when he spoke, he refused to plead. For this, in later times, he would have been pressed to death. What was done to him was almost as bad; for they took him to Newgate, and shut him up in a cell with penance--that is to say, on bread and water--until he died.
This done, they buried the unfortunate Alice, and made the inventory of all the chattels, which the City confiscated, and sold for £12 18_s._ 4_d._, out of which, no doubt, they paid for the funeral of the woman and the penance of the man. The rest, one hopes, was laid out in masses, as far as it would go, for the souls of the hapless pair. Death has long since released Hugh le Bevere; he has entered his plea before another Court; but the City has never learned why he killed his wife, or if, indeed, he really did kill her.
Of Plantagenet London this is my picture. You see a busy, boisterous, cheerful city; with the exception of the cities of Ghent and Bruges and Antwerp, the busiest and the most prosperous city of the western world, with the greatest liberty of the people, the greatest plenty of all good things, and the happiest conditions of any town. You have seen that though the sovereign was King within as well as without the walls, there was no other Over-Lord; the royal hand was sometimes heavy, but its weight was better to bear than the internal dissensions that ravaged the Italian cities; it was better that London should suffer with the rest of the country than that she should sit, like Venice, secure and selfish beside her quays, though the people of the land behind were torn with civil wars and destroyed by famine and overrun by a foreign enemy.
When we think of this period let us never forget its external splendor--the silken banners, the heralds in their embroidered coats, the livery of the great lords, the Mayor and Aldermen in their robes riding to hear mass at St. Paul's, the cloth of gold, the vair and miniver, the ermine and the sable, the robes of perset and the hoods of sendall, the red velvet and the scarlet silk, the great gold chains, the caps embroidered with pearls, the horses with their trappings, the banners and the shields, the friars jostling the parish priests, the men-at-arms, the city ladies, as glorious with their raiment as the ladies of the court, the knights, the common folk, the merchant, and the prentice. Mostly I like to think of the prentice. One always envies the young; theirs is the inheritance. The prentice lived amid these glories, which seemed like pageants invented entirely for his delight. It was time when the fleeting shows and vanities of life were valued all the more because they were so fleeting. He looked around, and his heart swelled with the joy of thinking that some day these things would fall to him if he was lucky, diligent, and watchful. His was the threefold vow of industry, obedience, and duty. By keeping this vow he would attain to the place and station of his master.
Meantime, there were great sights to be seen and no hinderance to his seeing them.
When there any ridings were in Chepe, Out of the shoppe thider would he lepe: And till that he had all the sights y seen, And danced well he would not come again.
For the continued noise and uproar of the City, for its crowds, for its smells, the people cared nothing. They were part of the City. They loved everything that belonged to it--their great cathedral; their hundred churches; their monasteries; their palaces and the men-at-arms; the nobles, priests, and monks; the Mayor and Aldermen; the ships and the sailors; the merchants and the craftsmen; the ridings and the festivals and the holy days; the ringing, clinging, clashing of the bells all day long; the drinking at the taverns; the wrestling and the archery; the dancing; the pipe and tabor; the pageants, and the mumming and the love-making--all, all they loved. And they thought in their pride that there was not anywhere in the whole habitable world--witness the pilgrims and the ship-captains, who had seen the whole habitable world--any city that might compare with famous London Town.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Plague in 1348, 1361, 1367, 1369, 1407, 1478, 1485, and 1500.
[14] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry_, p. 416.
VI
TUDOR
I. SPRING-TIME AMONG THE RUINS
If the London of the Third Edward was a city of palaces, that of Queen Elizabeth was a city of ruins.
Ruins everywhere! Ruins of cloisters, halls, dormitories, courts, and chapels, and churches. Ruins of carved altar-pieces, canopies, statues, painted windows, and graven fonts. Ruins of old faiths and old traditions. Ruins everywhere. Only consider what became of the monastic buildings. King Edward's Cistercian House, called the New Abbey, or Eastminster, was pulled "clean down," and in its place storehouses for victuals and ovens for making ships' biscuits were set up. On the abbey grounds were erected small tenements for poor working-people, the only inhabitants of that neighborhood where is now the Mint. Sir Arthur Darcie it was who did this. The Convent of St. Clare, called the Minories, was similarly treated, its site converted into storehouses. The old buildings are always said to have been entirely pulled down, but their destruction was never thorough. Walls were everywhere left standing, because it was too much trouble to pull them down. For instance, the north wall of the present mean little Church of the Holy Trinity, Minories, ugliest and meanest of all modern London churches, was formerly part of the wall of the nuns' chapel.
More fortunate than the other monastic churches, that of the Austin Friars was allowed to remain standing. The nave was walled off and assigned to the Dutch residents, with whom it has continued to this day. You may attend the service on Sunday, and while the preacher in the black gown addresses his scanty audience in the language which, though it sounds so much like English, you cannot understand, you may look about you, and think of the Augustine Brothers who built this church. In their time it was filled with monuments, of which not a single one now remains. The nave was greatly damaged by a fire in 1862, but the walls and columns of the ancient church remain. The rest of the church, including the finest and most beautiful spire in the whole city, was all pulled down by the Marquis of Winchester, who broke up and sold the whole of the monuments for £100. In this church were buried, among other illustrious dead, the great Hubert de Burgh; Edmund Plantagenet, half brother to Richard II.; the barons who fell at the battle of Barnet; Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, beheaded 1397; the Earl of Oxford, beheaded 1463; and Edward Strafford, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded 1521. Winchester House, which stood till fifty years ago, was built on part of the abbey grounds; Cromwell House, on a site where now stands the Drapers' Hall, on another part.
The Priory of the Holy Trinity, granted to Sir Thomas Audley, fared worse still, for the whole church--choir, transepts, nave, steeple, and all--was, with great labor, pulled down, and the whole materials and monuments sold for paving or building stones at sixpence a cart-load. The ring of nine bells was divided between Stepney Church and St. Katherine Cree, where, I believe, they still hang and do their duty. So much, and that is all, is left of this proud foundation. Sir Thomas Audley, who obtained the precinct by gift of the King, built a house upon it. His daughter and heiress marrying the Duke of Norfolk, the house and grounds were named after their new owner. Duke's Place and Duke Street preserve the new name. The former, now a mean square, crowded with Jews engaged in the fruit trade, is certainly the site of one of the courts of the old priory. It is at the back of St. Katherine Cree Church in Leadenhall Street. Strange, that of this most rich and splendid house not a vestige should remain either of name, or building, or tradition.
Crutched Friars' Church was made into a carpenter's shop and a tennis court. Their refectory, a very noble hall, became a glass-house, and was burned to the ground in the year 1575.
St. Mary's Spital, outside Bishopsgate, which had been a hospital with one hundred and eighty beds, was entirely destroyed and built over. But Spital Square, which now remains, marks the site of the church-yard, where stood (in the north-east corner) the famous spital pulpit, from which, for three hundred years, sermons were preached at Easter before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and the citizens. It is an illustration of English conservatism that long after the hospital was demolished, and when the pulpit stood in an ordinary square of private residences, the same custom was kept up, with the same official attendance of the corporation.
The Nunnery of St. Helen's became the property of the Leathersellers' Company. The nuns' chapel still remains forming the north part of a church, which, for its antiquity and its monuments, is one of the most interesting in London. The nuns' refectory formed the Company's Hall until the year 1790, when, with its ancient crypt, it was pulled down to make way for the present St. Helen's Place. Considerable ruins of the nunnery remained until the same time.
The Church of the Knights Hospitallers was blown up with gunpowder; its ruins and those of the priory buildings remained for many years. The Charter House was first given by Henry VIII. to Sir Thomas Audley, passed from him to Lord North, to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, to Lord North again, to the Duke of Norfolk, to the Crown, to the Earl of Suffolk, and to Thomas Sutton. The last transfer was in 1611. Sutton endowed it as a charity under the name of the Hospital of King James. This noble foundation has ever since existed as a hospital for decayed gentlemen and a school for boys. Some of the old monastic buildings yet survive in the Charter House. Its name of the Hospital of King James has long been forgotten. The place has been celebrated by Thackeray, and it is, at this day, the most beautiful and the most venerable monument of old London.
The magnificent Church of the Dominicans, or Black Friars, was destroyed. Either the hall of the abbey or a portion of the church was used as a storehouse for the "properties" of pageants--strange fate for the house of the Dominicans, those austere upholders of doctrine. A play-house was erected by Shakespeare and his friends among the ruins, which remained standing for a long time. Only a few years ago the extension of the _Times_ offices in Printing House Square brought to light many substantial remains. The Abbey of Bermondsey furnished materials and a site for a great house for the Earl of Sussex. A tavern was built on the site, of the Church of St. Martin's le Grand. The Church of St. Bartholomew's Priory was pulled down to the choir, which was converted into a parish church. The bells were put up in the tower of St. Sepulchre. The Church of the Grey Friars was spared; but as for its monuments--consider! There were buried here the queens of Edward I. and Edward II., the queen of David Bruce, an innumerable company of great lords, nobles, and fighting men, with their dames and daughters. The place was a Campo Santo of mediæval worthies. Their monuments, Stow writes, "are wholly defaced. There were nine tombs of alabaster and marble, environed with 'strikes' of iron, in the choir, and one tomb in the body of the church, also coped with iron, all pulled down, besides sevenscore gravestones of marble." The whole were sold for £50 or thereabouts by Sir Martin Bowes, goldsmith and Alderman of London. Surely the carved marble and sculptured alabaster did not teach the hated papistical superstitions; yet they all went; and it was with bare walls, probably washed white or yellow to hide the frescos, that the building became the parish now called Christ Church. The monastery buildings were converted into the Bluecoat School.
Such was the fate of the greater houses. Add to these the smaller foundations, all whelmed in the common destruction; the colleges, such as that of St. Spirit, founded by Whittington; that founded by Walworth; that founded by Richard III., attached to Allhallows Barking; St. John's, Holywell; St. Thomas of Acon, a rich foundation with a lovely church; the College of Jesus; the Hospital of St. Anthony; Jesus Commons; Elsing Spital; and we begin to realize that London was literally a city of ruins.
It is at first hard to understand how there should have been, even among the baser sort, so little reverence for the past, so little regard for art; that these treasure-houses of precious marbles and rare carvings should have been rifled and destroyed without raising so much as a murmur; nay, that the very buildings themselves should have been pulled down without a protest. Once only the citizens remonstrated. It was in the hope of saving from destruction the lofty and most beautiful spire of Austin Friars, but in vain. It seems to us impossible that the tombs of so many worthies should have been destroyed without the indignation of all who knew the story of the past. Yet in our own day we have seen--nay, we see daily--the wanton and useless destruction of ancient buildings. Winchester House, which ought to have been kept as a national monument, was pulled down in 1839; Sir Paul Pinder's house, another unique specimen, vanished only yesterday; within the last few years a dozen city churches have been destroyed, in total disregard to their historical associations. At this very moment the church where John Carpenter, Whittington's executor and the founder of the City of London school, the church whose site has been consecrated as long as that of any church in the city, where King Alfred may have worshipped, is standing roofless, waiting to make way for offices not wanted. Nay, the very city clergy themselves, the official guardians of all that is venerable, have, in our own days--the actual, living city clergy!--basely sold their most beautiful old house, Sion College, and built a new and garish place on the Thames Embankment, which they call Sion College! It is unfortunately too true that there is not, at any time or with any people, reverence for things venerable, old, and historical, save with a few. The greater part are careless of the past, unable to see or feel anything but the present. The city clergy of to-day are no better than Sir Thomas Audrey, Sir Arthur Darcie, and the rest.