Chronicles of London Bridge. Richard Thompson
Falstaff used to drink o’nights in East Cheap; for the recipé for brewing it was found, written in a very ancient hand upon a piece of vellum, when the Boar’s Head was pulled down many a long year ago. Drink, then, worthy Mr. Barbican; drink, good Sir;—you’ll find it excellent beverage, and I’ll pledge you in kind.”
Upon this invitation, I drank of my visitor’s tankard; and believe me, reader, I never yet tasted any thing half so delicious; for it fully equalled the eulogium which Shakspeare’s jovial knight pronounces upon it in the Second part of “King Henry the Fourth,” Act iv. sc. iii.; where the merry Cavalier of Eastcheap tells us, that “a good Sherris sack hath a two-fold operation in it: it ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish, and dull, and crudy vapours which environ it: makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes; which, delivered o’er to the voice, (the tongue,) which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent Sherris is—the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice: but the Sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme. It illumineth the face; which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then, the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their Captain, the heart; who, great, and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour comes of Sherris: so that skill in the weapon is nothing, without Sack: for that sets it a-work: and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till Sack commences it, and sets it in act and use.—If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them, should be—to forswear thin potations, and addict themselves to Sack!”
Truly, indeed, I felt all those effects in myself; whilst my visitor appeared to be so inspired by it, that, as if all the valuable lore relating to London Bridge had been locked up until this moment, he opened to me such a treasure of information concerning it, that, I verily believe, he left nothing connected with the subject untouched. He quoted books and authors with a facility, to which I have known no parallel; and, what is quite as extraordinary, the same magical philtre enabled me as faithfully to retain them. Indeed, the posset and his discourse seemed to enliven all my faculties in such a manner, that the very scenes of which my companion spake, appeared to rise before my eyes as he described them. When Mr. Postern had pledged me, therefore, by drinking my health, in a very formal manner, he thus commenced his discourse.
“You very well know, my good Mr. Barbican, that Gulielmus Stephanides, or, as the vulgar call him, William Fitz-Stephen, who was the friend and secretary of Thomas à Becket, a native of London, and who died about 1191, in his invaluable tract ‘Descriptio Nobilissimæ Civitatis Londoniæ,’ folio 26, tells us that to the North of London, there existed, in his days, the large remains of that immense forest which once covered the very banks of this brave river. ‘Proxime patet ingens foresta,’ &c. begins the passage; and pray observe that I quote from the best edition with a commentary by that excellent Antiquary Dr. Samuel Pegge, published in London, in the year 1772, in quarto. Ever, Mr. Barbican, while you live, ever quote from the editio optima of every author whom you cite; for, next to a knowledge of books themselves, is an acquaintance with the best editions. But to return, Sir; in those woody groves of yew, which the old citizens wisely encouraged for the making of their bows, were then hunted the stag, the buck, and the doe; and the great Northern road, which now echoes the tuneful Kent bugle of mail-coach-guards, was then an extensive wilderness, resounding with the shrill horns of the Saxon Chiefs, as they waked up the deer from his lair of vert and brushwood. The very paths, too, that now behold the herds of oxen and swine driven town-ward to support London’s hungry thousands, then echoed with the bellowing of savage bulls, and the harsh grunting of many a stout wild boar. But, as you have observed, I am to describe scenes, and you are to moralise upon their changes, so we’ll hasten down again to the water-side, only observing, that the site of the ancient British London is yet certainly marked out to you, by the old rhyming stone in Pannier Alley, by St. Paul’s, which saith:—
‘WHEN YV HAVE SOVGHT THE CITY ROVND, YET STILL THIS IS THE HIGHEST GROVND.’
“Now, Julius Cæsar tells you in his Commentaries ‘De Bello Gallico,’ lib. v. cap. xxi. that ‘a British town was nothing more than a thick wood, fortified with a ditch and rampart, to serve as a place of retreat against the incursions of their enemies.’ Here, then, stood our good old city, upon the best ’vantage ground of the Forest of Middlesex; the small hive-shaped dwellings of the Britons, formed of bark, or boughs, or reeds from the rushy sides of these broad waters, being interspersed between the trees; whilst their little mountain metropolis, the ‘locum reperit egregiè naturâ, atque opere munitum,’ a place which appeared extremely strong, both by art and nature—as the same matchless classic called those primitive defences—was guarded on the North by a dark wood, that might have daunted even the Roman Cohorts; and to the South, where there was no wilderness, morasses, covered with fat weeds, and divided by such streams as the Wall-brook, the Shareburn, the Fleta, and others of less note, stretched downward to the Thames. As Cæsar and his Legions marched straight from the coast, worthy old Bagford was certainly in the right, when, in a letter to his brother-antiquary Hearne, he said, that the Roman invader came along the rich marshy ground now supporting Kent Street—in truth very unlike the road of a splendid conqueror—and, entering the Thames as the tide was just turning, his army made a wide angle, and was driven on shore by the current close to yonder Cement Wharf, at Dowgate Dock. This you find prefixed to Tom Hearne’s edition of Leland’s ‘Collectanea de Rebus Britannicis,’ London, 1774, 8vo., volume i. pp. lviii. lix.: and many an honest man, since ‘the hook-nosed fellow of Rome,’ before a bridge carried him over the waters dry-shod, has tried the same route, in preference to going up to the Mill-ford, in the Strand, or York-ford which lay still higher. In good time, however, the Romans, to commemorate their own successful landing there, built a Trajectus, or Ferry, to convey passengers to their famous military road which led to Dover. But history is not wholly without the mention of a Bridge over the Thames near London, even still earlier than this period; for, when Dion Cassius is recording the invasion of Britain by the Emperor Claudius I., AD 44, he says—‘The Britons having betaken themselves to the River Thames, where it discharges itself into the Sea, easily passed over it, being perfectly acquainted with its depths and shallows: while the Romans, pursuing them, were thereby brought into great danger. The Gauls, however, again setting sail, and some of them having passed over by the Bridge, higher up the River, they set upon the Britons on all sides with great slaughter; until, rashly pursuing those that escaped, many of them perished in the bogs and marshes.’ This passage, which it must be owned, however, is not very satisfactory, is to be found in the best edition of the ‘Historiæ Romanæ,’ by Fabricius and Reimar, Hamburgh, 1750–52, folio, volume ii. page 958; in the 60th Book and 20th Section. The Greek text begins, ‘Ἀναχωρησάντων δ’ ἐντεῦθεν τῶν Βρεττανῶν ἐπὶ τὸν Ταμέσαν ποταμὸν,’ &c.; and the Latin—‘Inde se Britanni ad fluvium Tamesin.’ I have only to remind you that Dion Cassius flourished about AD 230. Before we finally quit Roman London, however, I must make one more historical remark. The inscription on the monument which I quoted from Pannier Alley, is dated August the 27th, 1688; and if even at that period—through all the mutations of the soil, and more than sixteen centuries after the Roman Invasion—the ground still retained its original altitude, it yet further proves on how admirable a site our ancient London was originally erected:—well worthy, indeed, to be the metropolis of the world. This also is remarked by honest Bagford, in his work already cited, where, at page lxxii., he says—‘For many of our ancient kings and nobility took delight in the situation of the old Roman buildings, which were always very fine and pleasant, the Romans being very circumspect in regard to their settlements, having always an eye to some river, spring, wood, &c. for the convenience of life, particularly an wholesome air. And this no doubt occasioned the old Monks, Knights Templars, and, after them, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, as also the Friars, to settle in most of the Roman buildings, as well private as public, which thing, if duly considered, will be found to be a main reason why we have so few remains of them.’
“As I have always considered