The Story of London. Henry B. Wheatley
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CHAPTER II
The Walled Town and its Streets
IN the mediæval city the proper protection of the municipality and the citizens largely depended upon the condition of the walls and gates. The government of town life was specially congenial to the Norman, and the laws he made for the purpose were stringent; while the Saxon, who never appreciated town life, preferred the county organisation. Thus it will be found that, as the laws of the latter were too lax, those of the former were too rigorous.
Riley, referring to the superfluity of Norman laws, describes them as ‘laws which, while unfortunately they created or protected few real valuable rights, gave birth to many and grievous wrongs.’ He proceeds to amplify this opinion, and gives good reason for the condemnation he felt bound to pronounce: ‘That the favoured and so-called free citizen of London, even—despite the extensive privileges in reference to trade which he enjoyed—was in possession of more than the faintest shadow of liberty, can hardly be allowed, if we only call to mind the substance of the … enactments and ordinances, arbitrary, illiberal and oppressive: laws, for example, which compelled each citizen, whether he would or no, to be bail and surety for a neighbour’s good behaviour, over whom it was perhaps impossible for him to exercise the slightest control; laws which forbade him to make his market for the day until the purveyors for the King, and the “great lords of the land,” had stripped the stalls of all that was choicest and best; laws which forbade him to pass the city walls for the purpose of meeting his own purchased goods; laws which bound him to deal with certain persons and communities only, or within the precincts only of certain localities; laws which dictated, under severe penalties, what sums and no more he was to pay to his servants and artisans; laws which drove his dog out of the streets, while they permitted “genteel dogs” to roam at large: nay, even more than this, laws which subjected him to domiciliary visits from the city officials on various pleas and pretexts; which compelled him to carry on a trade under heavy penalties, irrespective of the question whether or not it was at his loss; and which occasionally went so far as to lay down rules at what hours he was to walk in the streets, and incidentally, what he was to eat and what to drink.’[16]
We see from this quotation that the position of the inhabitant of a walled town was not a happy one. Still he was more favoured than his neighbour who lived in the country. A few examples will show us what the city life was, and these specific instances are necessary, for so many centuries have passed since Englishmen lived in a walled town that without them it is barely possible for us to conceive what this life of suspicion and fear of danger was really like.
The one thing which we do see distinctly is the gradual emancipation of the Englishman from the wearing thraldom of his position. He went on gradually in his course, always bearing towards the light, and he gained freedom long before the citizens of other countries. In the fifteenth century we find that galling laws here in England were allowed to fall into desuetude in favour of freedom, while the same rules were retained in foreign countries. Some of our countrymen objected to this, and English merchants were irritated to find that while the regulation enjoining every alien merchant during his residence in London to abide in the house of a citizen assigned to him as a host by the magistrates had fallen into abeyance, the restriction was rigidly enforced abroad. The writer of the remarkable Libelle of Englyshe Polycye (1437) alludes to this feeling:—
‘What reason is’t that we should go to host in these countries and in this English coast they should not so, but have more liberty than we ourselves?’[17]
The citizens had to put up with constant surveillance. The gates were closed early in the evening, and at curfew all lights, as well as fires, had to be put out. Night-walkers, male and female, and roysterers generally had a bad time of it, but probably they were very ill-behaved, and in many cases they doubtless deserved the punishment they received. In the year 1100 Henry I. relaxed these stringent regulations, and restored to his subjects the use of lights at night. The streets were first lighted by lanterns in 1415.
London within the walls was a considerable city in the Middle Ages, although it only contained the same area that was walled in during the later Roman period. The relics of this wall, continually renewed with the old materials, are so few, and the old area is so completely lost sight of in the larger London, that it is necessary to point out the line of the walls before dealing further with the habits of the Londoners. It was long supposed that the Ludgate was the chief entrance to the city from the west, but, in spite of its name, there can be little doubt that for some centuries the great western approach was made through Newgate. We will therefore commence our walk round the walls with that gate.
Although there can be no doubt that here was a gate in the Roman period, we have little or no record of its early history. One of its earlier names was Chamberlain’s Gate. The ‘new’ gate was erected in the reign of Henry I., and in a Pipe Roll of 1188 it is mentioned as a prison. In 1414 the prison was in such a loathsome condition that the keeper and sixty-four of the prisoners died of the prison plague. In consequence of this it was decided to rebuild the gate. Richard Whittington was the moving spirit in this rebuilding, and it is supposed that he paid the expenses. In the course of excavations made in 1874–1875 for the improvement of the western end of Newgate Street, the massive foundations of Whittington’s gate were discovered several feet below the present roadway.
The wall passed north through the precincts of Christ Church (Christ’s Hospital), formerly occupied by the Grey Friars (or Franciscans). The town ditch, which was outside the walls, and arched over about the year 1553, ran through the Hospital grounds. The wall then turned round to the north of Newgate Street, and passed into St. Martin’s-le-Grand, where, in 1889, the foundations of several houses on the west side were exposed while the excavations for the latest addition to the General Post-Office were being proceeded with.
The great bell of the Collegiate Church of St. Martin’s tolled the curfew hour when all the gates of the city were to be shut. The great gates were shut at the first stroke of the bell at St. Martin’s and the wickets opened; at the last stroke the wickets were to be closed, and not to be opened afterward that night unless by special precept of the Mayor. The ringing of the curfew of St. Martin’s was to be the signal for the ringing ‘at every parish church, so that they begin together and end together.’[18] In an Ordinance (37 Edward III., 1363) the bell at the Church of our Lady at Bow was substituted for that at St. Martin’s.
Outside the walls were Smithfield, where the tournaments were held, and Giltspur Street, where the knights bought their spears, and armour might be repaired when tournaments were going on.
Within the gate were the Grey Friars, Stinking Lane (now King Edward Street), and the Butchers’ Shambles in Newgate Street.
St. Paul’s had its enclosed churchyard, so that the main thoroughfare for centuries passed round it from Newgate Street to Cheapside. The name of Cheap tells of the general market held there, and the names of several of the streets out of Cheapside tell of the particular merchandise appropriated to them, as Friday Street (Friday’s market for fish), Milk Street and Bread Street. At the west end of Cheapside was the Church of St. Michael le Querne (or at the Corn), which marked the site of the Corn Market. It was destroyed in the Great Fire. At the east end of this church stood the Old Cross, which was taken down in the year 1390, and replaced by the Little Conduit, which is described as standing by Paul’s gate. There is an engraving of this church and the conduit, with the water-pots of the water-carriers dotted about.
The wall passed north along the side of St. Martin’s-le-Grand till it came to Aldersgate, close by the Church of St. Botolph. The exact spot is marked by No. 62 on the east side of the street. Stow’s etymologies of London names are seldom very satisfactory, but he never blundered worse than when he explained Aldgate as old gate and Aldersgate as the older gate; but his explanation has been followed by many successive writers, who do not seem to have seen the impossibility of the suggestion. One of the earliest forms of the name is Aldredesgate, showing pretty conclusively that it was a proper name.
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