CHAPTER II

THE CITIZENS

There was never a time when the sober citizen was more sober, more responsible, more filled with a sense of his authority and dignity. “The man,” says the wise king, “who is diligent in business shall stand before princes.”

They did stand before princes, these merchants of London; as their prosperity leaped up increasingly year after year, they became the creditors, at least, of princes, for Elizabeth borrowed freely and repaid unwillingly—yet in spite of this too notorious weakness, she retained to the end the deepest affection of her people.

It has been a matter of reproach to the City that it seemed at this time wholly given over to trade and the interests of trade. To reproach a city which has always been a trading city with caring chiefly for the interests of trade seems somewhat unreasonable. But is it true that London has ever been wholly devoted to trade? I cannot find such a time in the whole long history of the City: certainly not in the reign of Elizabeth, when London cheerfully raised her men and her ships for the repulse of the Armada; and cheerfully gave the Queen whatever money she asked for; at the same time, while trade became larger than before, while the individual merchants became of more importance, the City certainly lost some of its political importance and was less dreaded, while it was more caressed, by the Sovereign.

It was, moreover, with the better class, a deeply religious age; men were not afraid or ashamed of proclaiming, or of showing, their religion. When Francis Drake saw the Atlantic on one side and the Pacific on the other, he fell on his knees in the sight of the company and prayed aloud, that God would suffer him to sail upon that unknown sea: if a cutpurse was hanged, he never failed to make a moving speech, deeply religious, while on the ladder. All classes preserved as yet the Catholic practice of going often to church; they studied the Bible; they made their ’prentices attend services; they listened patiently to sermons; doctrine was considered a vital point. By the end of the sixteenth century those who favoured the old Faith were either dead or silenced; to the common people the old Faith meant a return to the flames in Smithfield; torture at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition if any should haply fall into Spanish hands; and slavery under the Spanish King should he achieve the conquest of the country; whereas the new Faith meant freedom of thought, increased wealth, advancing trade, fighting the Spaniard and capturing the Spanish galleons. Religion, therefore, was allied with prosperity.

I have spoken of the sober guise of the London merchant. That sober guise belonged to the places where the merchant was mostly found: to the Royal Exchange, for instance, or Thames Street, beside the quays and warehouses. We must not think that there was no longer brightness of colour and even splendour in the streets. The rich liveries of the great nobles were chiefly seen on the river—remember that the front of the Palace faced the river, that the back belonged to the Strand, and that the river was London’s principal highway. Their varlets lolled about on the river stairs or escorted their master in his barge, but hardly belonged to the City. A Court gallant was dressed as extravagantly as he could afford, or as his estate would bear. He carried manors on his back, broad acres in his velvet cloak, with golden buckles and lace trimming, a year’s rents in his fantastic doublet slashed and puffed, in his silken hose, in his splendid sword, his scabbard and the handle set with gold, in his rings, his scents, his gloves and in his chains. But the Court gallant seldom showed on Thames Street.

In Norman and Plantagenet London there were no shops, nor was there anything sold in the streets except in the market-places, and the streets set aside for retail trade. But in the Tudor time Street Cries had already begun. We find, for instance, the following pleasant verses:—

“Who liveth so merry in all this land As doth the poor widow that selleth the sand? And ever shee singeth as I can guesse, Will you buy any sand, any sand, mistress?

The broom-man maketh his living most sweet, With carrying of broomes from street to street; Who would desire a pleasanter thing, Than all the day long to doe nothing but sing?

The chimney-sweeper all the long day, He singeth and sweepeth the soote away; Yet when he comes home altho’ he be weary, With his sweet wife he maketh full merry.

The cobbler he sits cobbling till none, And cobbleth his shoes till they be done; Yet doth he not feare, and so doth say, For he knows his worke will soone decay.

Who liveth so merry and maketh such sport As those that be of the poorest sort? The poorest sort wheresoever they be, They gather together by one, two, and three.

Broomes for old shoes! pouch-rings, bootes and buskings! Will yee buy any new broomes? New oysters! new oysters! new new cockels! Cockels nye! fresh herrings! Will yee buy any straw? Hay yee any kitchen stuffe, maides? Pippins fine, cherrie ripe, ripe, ripe! Cherrie ripe! etc.

Hay any wood to cleave? Give eare to the clocke! Beware your locke! Your fire and your light! And God give you good night! One o’clocke!”

Sumptuary laws were constantly renewed and continually broken. Yet the mass of the people obeyed the unwritten law by which a man’s station was shown by his dress. For more on this subject see the Chapter on Dress.

The ordering of the household was strict. Early hours were kept; in summer servants and apprentices were up at five; in winter at six or seven; there were rules as to attendance at morning and evening prayers; there was to be no quarrelling; no striking; no profane language.

It is said that coaches were introduced in this reign; but there had always been coaches, _i.e._ wheeled conveyances of a kind. Such a carriage, belonging to the fourteenth century, is figured in J. J. Jusserand’s _English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages_—a cumbrous unwieldy thing, yet still a coach. What really happened in this century was the introduction of a much more convenient kind of coach from Holland.

Stow laments the mud and the splashing in the streets. “The coachman rideth behind the horse tails, lasheth them, and looketh not behind him; the drayman sitteth and sleepeth on his dray and letteth his horse lead him home.” Most of the City streets, however, were so narrow and so much obstructed by houses standing out, for as yet there was no alignment except in streets like Chepe, which were highways and market streets, that no wheeled vehicle could pass at all.

There was very little more lighting at night than there had been in the preceding centuries. If a London dame ventured out of the house after dark, the ’prentice carried a link before her. Some of the old shops or sheds with “solars” over them remained in Stow’s time; the last of them stood in Clare Market, and was pulled down a few years ago. See the accompanying photograph of it. Stow says that stalls had become sheds, _i.e._ roofed stalls; and then shops, _i.e._ enclosed stalls; and then “fair houses.” He instances a block of houses called Goldsmiths’ Row, between Bread Street and the Cross, which contained ten dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, “all in one frame, uniformly built.” They were four stories high. The shops seem to have been open, but perhaps the upper part was protected with a shutter or with glass.

Inland communication was conducted by means of carts and coaches. Harrison[5] complains of the new fashion: “Our Princes and the Nobilitie have their cariage commonlie made by carts, wherby it commeth to passe that when the Queene’s Majestie dooth remove from anie one place to another, there are usuallie 400 carewanes, which amount to the summe of 2400 horses, appointed out of the counties adjoining, whereby hir cariage is conveied safelie unto the appointed place. Hereby also the ancient use of sumpter horses is in maner utterlie relinquished, which causeth the traines of our princes in their progresses to shew far lesse than those of the kings of other nations.”

During this long reign, in spite of plague and pestilence, the population of London increased, and the suburbs extended, as we have seen, in all directions. The increase of population was due (1) to the increase of trade in London, which required a great accession of ship-builders, boat-builders, makers of the various gear required for ships, seamen, lightermen, porters, stevedores, and the like; (2) to the large number of immigrants from France and the Low Countries; and (3) to the number of persons released from the Religious Houses. That is to say, this last is generally represented as one of the causes. To me it seems as if the influence of these people on the population of London must be regarded as quite insignificant. There were some 8000 monks, nuns, and friars who were sent into the world. Many of those who were in priests’ orders obtained places in parish churches, conforming by degrees to the changes of doctrine; the monks and nuns had pensions; many of the latter went abroad; of the friars many were absorbed in the general population; a certain number, one knows not how many, refused to work, and joined the company of rogues and masterless men, but there seems nothing to show how many of them settled in London.

Here is a simple calculation of the population in 1564. There was a great plague in that year. The total number of deaths in the City for the year is stated to have been 23,660, of whom 20,136 died of plague. This leaves 3524 deaths from ordinary causes. Now, if the average mortality of the City was twenty in the thousand, we should have a population of 176,200. If, which is more likely, the average mortality was twenty-five in the thousand the population was 140,960. In the time of King James, but after much devastation by the plague, the population of London was estimated at 130,000.

It has been said that there is no street in London in which one cannot find a church and a tree. It is indeed remarkable to observe the large number of trees still existing and flourishing in the City of London, especially since the City churchyards have been converted into gardens. Of the old private gardens there are now left but few: one in St. Helen’s Place; one behind the Rectory of St. Andrew’s by the Wardrobe; the Drapers’ Gardens, much curtailed; and the churchyards above mentioned, which have been converted into gardens. In the sixteenth century, however, London was still full of gardens, in the north part of the City much more than in the south. Every house had its garden behind; for the most part narrow, yet carefully cultivated and full of trees and flowers. If you take the part of London that has been least meddled with, the north-west corner of the City, for instance—that part bounded by London Wall on the North; by Monkwell and Noble Streets on the West; by Gresham Street on the South; and by Moorgate on the East—you will find that the blocks between the older streets are intersected everywhere by courts, alleys, narrow lanes and buildings. These were all, including the ancient churches, taken out of the gardens. Formerly, for instance, between Basinghall Street and Coleman Street there were very long gardens behind the houses; these have been used for lanes of connection, and for workmen’s houses, such as Lilypot Lane and Oat Lane. Hidden away behind the houses is Sadler’s Hall; here also, hidden away behind houses, is Haberdashers’ Hall; here were the courtyards of inns, which formed among the gardens convenient ground for their great open courts and their stables. In this way the gardens of London gradually disappeared. In the sixteenth century, however, there were a great many still left: London presented an appearance of greenery and waving branches wherever one turned off the main roads. The chief authority on the gardens of the time is Harrison, who tells us what herbs, fruits, and roots were then grown, as well as the medicinal plants then so much cultivated.

Harrison[6] says, speaking of the flower gardens:—

“If you look into our gardens annexed to our houses, how wonderfullie is their beauty increased, not onelie with floures which Colmella calleth _Terrena sydera_, saying, ‘Pingit et in varios terrestria sydera flores,’ and varietie of curious and costlie workmanship, but also with rare and medicinable hearbes sought up in the land within these fortie yeares; so that in comparison of this present, the ancient gardens were but dunghills and laistowes to such as did possess them.

And even as it fareth with our gardens so dooth it with our orchards, which were never furnished with so good fruit, nor with such varietie as at this present. For beside that we have most delicate apples, plummes, peares, walnuts, filberds, etc., and those of sundrie sorts, planted within fortie yeares passed, in comparison of which most of the old trees are nothing woorth; so have we no less store of strange fruit, as abricotes, almonds, peaches, figges, corne-trees in noblemen’s orchards. I have seen capers, orenges, and lemmons, and heard of wild olives growing here, beside other strange trees, brought from far, whose names I know not. So that England for these commodities was never better furnished, neither anie nation under their clime more plentifullie indued with these and other blessings from the most high God, who grant us grace withall to use the same to His honour and glorie! and not as instruments and provocations unto further excesse and vanitie, wherewith His displeasure may be kindled, least these His benefits doo turne unto thornes and briers unto us for our annoiance and punishment which He hath bestowed upon us for our consolation and comfort.”

The London garden was not only a place of recreation in the summer; it also furnished flowers for the pretty custom of decorating the rooms and strewing the floors; the gardens furnished pot herbs for the kitchen and sweet herbs for the walls and floors; branches also of fragrant woods, such as fir and pine, were hung up on the walls. I know not if this is a common custom still maintained in America; but in Hawthorne’s house at Concord the rooms are still decorated and made fragrant with branches of pine such as the writer used in his lifetime. The floor of the great hall was strewn with rushes, brought chiefly from the upper reaches and low-lying grounds of the river. These rushes were of various kinds: some of them were grasses, such as that called mat-weed, of which beds were made as well as floors strewn.

The chief authorities on the London garden are Bacon in his _Essays_, and Gerard in his _Herbal_. Francis Bacon wrote his essays in Gray’s Inn, whose garden he laid out and planted by request of the Benchers. His essay on the garden was written, as he says himself, for the climate of London.

“And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells, so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find nothing of their sweetness, yea, though it be in a morning’s dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow, rosemary little, nor sweet marjoram. That which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet, especially the white double violet, which comes twice a year, about the middle of April and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk-rose; then the strawberry leaves dying, which yield a most excellent cordial smell. Then the flower of the vines; it is a little dust like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth. Then sweetbriar, then wall-flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlour or lower chamber window. Then pinks and gilliflowers, especially the matted pink and clove gilliflowers. Then the flowers of the lime-tree. Then the honeysuckles, so they be somewhat afar off; of bean-flowers I speak not, because they are field-flowers. But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three—that is, burnet, wild thyme, and water-mints. Therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.”

In Ordish’s _Shakespeare’s London_ will be found an excellent analysis of Gerard’s _Herbal_ as it deals with the gardens of the City and its suburbs. In it also is an enumeration of the principal gardens of the time, especially those of the Inns of Court. To these may be added the gardens belonging to those of the City Companies whose Halls were in the north part of the City, and those not yet built over which had once formed part of the monastic precincts, not to speak of the private gardens which were in many cases—such as the house of Sir Thomas Gresham in Broad Street—large and spacious. (_See_ Appendix VII.)

The allusions to London and to City customs in Shakespeare are numerous, but not, as a rule, instructive. That is to say, he speaks of streets and places which we know from other sources. The Tower, the Bridge, Smithfield, Fish Street, St. Magnus Corner, the Savoy, the Tower Royal (King Richard’s Palace), Westminster Hall, Eastcheap, Bankside, the Temple, Cheapside, London Stone, Baynard’s Castle, Blackfriars, Paris Garden, are mentioned with the familiarity of one who lived in the City and knew all the streets intimately. It is pleasant to find them playing their parts in the immortal plays, but, as I said above, they teach us nothing.

In 1568, to escape the cruelties of Alva, a vast number of Flemings came across the sea and were received hospitably. In order to prevent their arrival proving an injury to the crafts of London, they were scattered about, finding homes in Norwich, Colchester, Maidstone, Sandwich, and Southampton, as well as in London. In the next generation they appear to have been completely merged in the English population, and the custom, common among persons of foreign descent, of anglicising their names has made it very difficult to discover the Flemish origin of a family. The earlier Flemish settlers in England were regarded with hatred. It would seem that another colony of Flemings came over before this immigration in the year 1568; they were settled in Suffolk. In 1594 a good many Portuguese came over as retainers to Don Antonio, and settled here. Among them was the Balthazar who became confectioner to King James and founded almshouses at Tottenham. There were Italians, probably connected with the Italian trade, for the “Lombardi,” the Pope’s men, were gone; they had a service at the Mercers’ Chapel every Sunday. There were also a great many “Dutch,” among whom were numbered the Flemings. Thus, in 1567, a census was taken of “foreigners” in London. There were found to be 4851 altogether, of whom 3838 were Dutch, and 720 French. A few years later the French Ambassador reports that there were 13,700 strangers in London, of whom a third were going to be turned out.

Of the hatred and suspicion entertained towards foreigners by Londoners we have many proofs. “They scoff and laugh at foreigners,” says the Duke of Wurtemberg, “and, moreover, one dares not oppose them, else the street boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and strike to the right and left unmercifully without regard to person.” Isaac Casaubon in James the First’s reign complained that he had never been so badly treated as by the people of London: they threw stones at his windows; they pelted his children and himself with stones. The Venetian Ambassador of 1497 testifies to the same effect; in 1557 his successor says that it is impossible to live in London on account of the insolence with which foreigners are treated.

At the same time it must be remembered that there were quarters assigned to foreigners, and that the people must have been accustomed to see these residents going about the streets. Perhaps they were only insolent to foreign nobles, and those whose dress and language were not familiar to them. The Hanse merchants had their house beside Dowgate, Petty Almaigne; the Flemings had theirs on the east side of the Bridge, Petty Flanders: the French had a place in Bishopsgate Ward called Petty France. It was in Petty Flanders that certain Jews resided under the guise of Flemings, just as in the fourteenth century they passed themselves off as Lombards. The Flemings built the Exchange: it was designed after the Antwerp Bourse, by a Fleming; the workmen were specially brought over, and appear to have been unmolested.

In February 1831 there was swept away, with all the buildings in the place called the King’s Mews, where Trafalgar Square now is, a small building called Queen Elizabeth’s Bath. It was a square building of fine brick. It was certainly a Bath, and had a groined roof ascribed by Mr. William Knight who sketched it to the fifteenth century. It was an interesting building of which nothing seems known. Nobody has noticed it except a writer in _Archæologia_ (vol. xxv.), who gives a plan and drawing of the curious place. Like the Sanctuary at Westminster it would have been entirely forgotten but for the hand of a single antiquary, who rescued it from oblivion at the last moment.

GOVERNMENT AND TRADE OF THE CITY