London. Walter Besant
60,000 for the foot. We will discuss the question of population later on. Meantime one may remark that a force of 80,000 always ready to be called out means a population of 320,000 at least, which is indeed absurd, especially when we consider that the population of London, as shown by the poll-tax of Richard II., was only about 40,000.
There were three principal schools, but sometimes other schools were opened "by favor and permission." We are not told what schools these were; but there was always a school of some kind attached to every monastery and nunnery. The boys were taught Latin verse, grammar, and rhetoric; they disputed with each other in the churches on feast-days, especially about the "principles of grammar, and the rules of the past and future tenses" – truly, an agreeable pastime.
The different trades of the City were allotted their own places of work and sale. Fitz Stephen does not name the various quarters, but they can be easily ascertained from Stow, though the place assigned to each was sometimes changed. Thus, the chief market and trading-place of the City was always Cheap, a broad, open place with booths and sheds for the exposure of wares, on the north and south. The names of the streets leading out of Cheap indicate the trades that were carried on in them. The streets called Wood, Milk, Iron, Honey, Poultry, mark the site of certain markets on the north. Those named after Bread, Candles, Soap, Fish, Money-changing, are shown on the south. Along the rivers were breweries, of which one remains to this day; artificers of various kinds were gathered together in their own streets about the town. This custom of congregation was useful in more ways than one: it gave dignity to the craft and inspired self-respect for the craftsmen, it kept up the standard of good work, it made craftsmen regard each other as brethren, not as enemies; it gave them guilds, of which our trades-unions, which think of nothing but wages, are the degenerate successors; and it brought each trade under the salutary rule of the Church.
There was then – there has always been – a great plenty of food in the city of London; on the river-bank, among the vintners, there were eating-houses where at all times of the day and every day there were cooked and sold meat and fish and every kind of food. Once a week, on Friday, there was a horse-fair in Smithfield without the walls; at this fair there were races every week.
The young men of the City were greatly addicted to sports of all kinds: they skated in winter, they tilted on the water and on land, they fought, wrestled, practised archery, danced, and sang. They were a turbulent, courageous, free and independent youth, proud of their city and its wealth, proud of their power and their freedom, proud of the trade which came to their quays from every part of the world. What says Fitz Stephen?
"Aurum mittit Arabs: species et thura Sabæus:
Arma Scythes: oleum palmarum divite sylva
Pingue solum Babylon: Nilus lapides pretiosos:
Norwegi, Russi, varium grisum, sabelinas:
Seres, purpureas vestes: Galli, sua vina."
The good cleric is a little mixed in his geography. The Arabs certainly had no gold to send; the Sabæans were, however, Arabs of Saba, in Arabia Felix: they sent myrrh and frankincense; spices came from another country. Why does he assign arms to the Scythians? Egypt had turquoise mines, but no other precious stones. The purple garments of the Seres, or Chinaman, are silks. Norway and Russia still send sables and other furs, and France, happily, still sends claret.
The city (Fitz Stephen adds), like Rome, is divided into wards, has annual sheriffs for its consuls, has senatorial and lower magistrates, sewers and aqueducts in its streets – its proper places and separate courts for cases of each kind, deliberative, demonstrative, judicial – and has assemblies on appointed days. I do not think there is a city with more commendable customs of church attendance, honor to God's ordinances, keeping sacred festivals, almsgiving, hospitality, confirming betrothals, contracting marriages, celebration of nuptials, preparing feasts, cheering the guests, and also in care for funerals and the interment of the dead. The only pests of London are the immoderate drinking of fools, and the frequency of fires. To this may be added that nearly all the Bishops, Abbots, and Magnates of England are, as it were, citizens and freemen of London, having their own splendid houses to which they resort, where they spend largely when summoned to great Councils by the King or by their Metropolitan, or drawn thither by their own private affairs.
A noble picture of a noble city!
Let us consider the monuments of the City. There remains of Saxon London nothing. Of Norman London, the great White Tower, the crypt of Bow, the crypt of St. John's Priory (outside the City), part of the church of Bartholomew the Great, part of St. Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate; there is nothing more.2
The cathedral of St. Paul's when Fitz Stephen wrote was slowly rising from its ashes. It had been already twice destroyed by fire. First, the church founded by Mellitus and beautified by Bishop Cedd and King Sebbi was burned to the ground in the year 961. We know nothing at all of this building or of its successor, which was destroyed in the year 1086. Bishop Maurice began to rebuild the church in the following year, but it was two hundred years before it was completed. This cathedral therefore belongs to a later period. That which was destroyed in 1084 must have resembled in its round arches and thick pillars the cathedral of Durham.
The church and the various buildings which belonged to it in the reign of Henry I. were surrounded by a wall. This wall included the whole area now known as St. Paul's Church-yard, and as far as Paternoster Row on the north side. There were six gates to the wall; the sites of two are preserved in the names of St. Paul's Alley and Paul's Chain. The Bishop's Palace was on the north-west corner; the chapter-house was on the south side of the church; on the north was a charnel-house and a chapel over it; close beside this was a small enclosure called Pardon Church-yard, where a chapel was founded by Gilbert à Becket, the saint's father. This enclosure was afterwards converted into a beautiful cloister, painted with a Dance of Death, called the Dance of St. Paul's. Close beside Pardon Church-yard was the chapel of Jesus, serving for the parish church of St. Faith until the chapel was destroyed, when the parish obtained the crypt for its church. St. Faith's is now coupled with St. Augustine's.
Of the thirteen large conventual churches mentioned by Fitz Stephen, we may draw up a tolerably complete list: St. Martin-le-Grand, St. Katherine's by the Tower, St. Mary Overies, Holy Trinity Priory, St. Bartholomew's Priory, St. Giles's Hospital, St. Mary of Bethlehem, the priory of St. John of Jerusalem, the nunnery afterwards turned into Elsing's Spital, the nunnery of St. John Baptist, Hollywell, the nunnery of Clerkenwell, the new Temple in Fleet Street, and the old Temple in Holborn, perhaps make up the thirteen. I cannot believe that Fitz Stephen could have included either Barking Abbey or Merton Abbey in his list.
The most ancient monastic foundation, next to that of St. Paul's, was St. Martin's House or College. Why St. Martin was so popular in this country, which had so many saints of her own, is not easily intelligible. Perhaps the story of the partition of the cloak at the gate of Amiens, while the saint was still a soldier, struck the imagination of the people. Certainly the saint's austerities at Ligujé would not attract the world. In London alone there were the church of St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, said to have been founded in very early Saxon times, that of St. Martin's Outwich, of St. Martin Orgar, St. Martin Pomary, and St. Martin Vintry – five parish churches to attest his sanctity and his popularity.
St. Martin-le-Grand, sanctuary and collegiate church, was a Liberty to itself. Here criminals found safety and could not be arrested, a privilege which lasted long after the dissolution of the religious houses. Among the deans of St. Martin's was William of Wykeham.
One church only of the whole thirteen still stands. Part of the present church of St. Bartholomew the Great is that actually built by Rahere, the first founder, in the beginning of the twelfth century.
The story of Rahere is interesting but incomplete, and involved in many difficulties. He is variously said to have been the king's minstrel, the king's jester, a knight of good family, and a man of low origin, who haunted great men's tables and made them laugh – nothing less than the comic person of the period, entirely given over to the pleasures of the world. In short, the customary profligate, who presently saw the error of his ways, and was converted. The last statement is quite possible, because, as is well known, there was at this time a considerable revival of religion.
See Loftie's