The History of Medieval London. Walter Besant
but of lesser splendour, is the house of a great merchant, as great men went in the fourteenth century. We will presently enter one of these houses and see how they are furnished. And among the great houses standing side by side, rich and poor together, as it should be, are tenements of the craftsmen, such as we have seen in the narrow court which we have just now passed. In the street itself, dabbling in the water barefooted, are the children, rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, playing, running, and shouting, as they do to this day, and always have done since the beginning of the City.
Shall we next enter the City at Ludgate and walk about its streets from there? Ludgate is half-way up the hill that rises above the valley of the Fleet; passing through it we stand before the west front of St. Paul’s. The noble church must be reserved for another occasion. We walk through the churchyard, and so by the north-east gate of the Precinct find ourselves in Chepe.
This is the greatest market of the City. Hither come the craftsmen, for to each craft is assigned its own place in the market. Not only do the trades work together, but they sell their wares together, so that there is no underselling, and everything is offered at a fixed price.
There is a great deal to be said for this custom. It is convenient for the apprentice to live and work in the atmosphere, so to speak, of his own trade, and to see all day long his own industry. It is also convenient for men of the same craft to work together, first, because solitary labour is bad for a man, next, because hours of labour can only be enforced when men work in companies, third, because bad work cannot be successfully palmed off as good where all work is in common, and, last, if any other reason were wanted, because in some trades tools are costly, and by this method can be held and used in common. Out of this working in common spring the fraternities and guilds and, in fulness of time, the companies. There also grows up, what would never have arisen out of solitary labour, the pride and dignity of trade. The dignity of trade will be greatly increased when the City Companies become rich and strong, and when each fraternity can carry on occasions of state its own banners and insignia, and can wear its own distinctive dress.
There were changes in the quarters of trade from time to time owing to causes which we can only guess.
“Men of trades and sellers of wares in this City have oftentimes since changed their places, as they have found their best advantage. For whereas mercers and haberdashers used wholly then to keep their shops in West Cheap; of later time they held them on London Bridge, where partly they do yet remain. The Goldsmiths of Gutheron’s Lane and the Old Exchange are now, for the most part, removed into the south side of West Cheap. The pepperers and grocers of Soper’s Lane are now in Bucklersbury, and other places dispersed. The drapers of Lombard Street and of Cornhill are seated in Candlewick Street and Watheling Street. The skinners from St. Marie Pellipers, or at the Axe, into Budge Row and Walbrook. The stockfish-mongers in Thames Street. Wet-fish-mongers in Knightriders Street and Bridge Street. The ironmongers of Ironmongers’ Lane and Old Jury into Thames Street. The vintners from the Vinetree into divers places. But the brewers for the most part remain near to the friendly water of Thames. The butchers in East Cheap, St. Nicholas Shambles, and the Stockes market. The hosiers, of old time, in Hosier Lane, near unto Smithfield, are since removed into Cordwainer Street, the upper part thereof, by Bow Church, and last of all into Birchovers Lane by Cornhill. The shoemakers and curriers of Cordwainer Street removed, the one to St. Martin’s le Grand, the other to London wall near to Moorgate. The founders remain by themselves in Lothbury. The cooks or pastelars, for the more part, in Thames Street; the other dispersed into divers parts. The poulters of late removed out of the Poultry, betwixt the Stockes and the Great Conduit in Cheap, into Grass Street and St. Nicholas Shambles. Bowyers from Bowyers’ Row by Ludgate into divers parts; and almost worn out with the fletchers. The paternoster bead-makers and text-writers are gone out of Paternoster Row, and are called stationers of Paul’s Churchyard. The patten-makers, of St. Margaret Pattens Lane, are clean worn out. Labourers every work-day are to be found in Cheap, about Soper’s Lane end. Horse-coursers and sellers of oxen, sheep, swine, and such like, remain in their old market of Smithfield.”
THE OLD FOUNTAIN IN THE MINORIES, BUILT ABOUT 1480, DEMOLISHED 1793
From an old print.
West Chepe is a broad place covered with movable stalls arranged in prescribed order; and this arrangement marks out the streets. On the north and south are large “selds,” which are warehouses and shops in which the servants have their sleeping-rooms, but there is, as yet, very little order or regularity observed in the erection of the seld. Already many of the stalls, especially on the south side, are shops with houses above them. In the midst of Chepe is the Standard, as important a part of the City as Paul’s Cross, for it is the old Town Cross, the Cross that marks the centre of the City, and round the Standard are stalls for fish and vegetables; there are also “stations” for the sale of small things. There are other associations connected with the Standard—it has been used for execution. In the time of the present King’s grandfather, Edward, first of the name, were some who had their right hands struck off for rescuing a prisoner: only the other day we saw two fishmongers beheaded here. Not far from the Standard is Queen Eleanor’s Cross, which is opposite Wood Street.
The “Frame” houses are beginning to be built on the south side of Chepe. They are not, like the palaces of the wealthy merchants and the nobles, built round a court, but are simply developments of the ordinary citizen’s house, decorated and better built. The “frame” is of strong and thick oak, folded in with plaster, and the front, carried up to three or four stories, is covered with carved woodwork; here are shields and the arms of the trade to which the owner belongs, here are effigies and carvings of men and creatures, here are bright paintings in red and blue and gold. We have passed through Chepe and are in the Poultry.
This large house, with its solid gate and its spacious court, is the residence of the Lord Mayor for the year. Observe that the posts outside his gates are gilded, a pretty decoration for the street. Yet it is not in pride that the Chief Magistrate of the City sets up two pillars of gold before his house, it is the City custom thus to mark the house of Mayor, Alderman, or Sheriff. The posts may be painted or they may be gilt. When Proclamations of the King are read they are set up on these posts, and they who read them do so bareheaded, to show their respect for King and Mayor.
Let us not forget to notice the “Room-lands” of which there were many, though now they are greatly reduced in number and in space. There was the broad space round St. Paul’s Cathedral, the place where the Folk Mote assembled. This area was in course of time partly covered with buildings, and with graves and receptacles for bones: another vacant area was that at the north-west corner of the City Wall, where the Franciscans built their House: West Chepe was a Room-land: East Chepe was another: and there were broad spaces designedly left unbuilt upon at Billingsgate, Queenhithe, and Dowgate. The Coal Exchange stands upon the site of the Billingsgate Room-land.
The changes that crept over London during the centuries we are considering were so slow and so imperceptible that the ordinary observer must have thought the world was standing still. Always there had been the Church with its services, always the Friar in the street, always the market and the selds: he did not know, because he had no power of judging, that the City was growing richer, that the standard of comfort had risen immensely, that life was not so rude as it had been, that, perhaps, there was less violence. As much uncertainty there always was, for in the midst of life we are in death, and there were many terrors—the pestilence that stalked the streets, invisible, by day and by night, fire, famine, and war. The population of the City did not increase so fast as its wealth; there were more stately houses, more carved work, more gold and silver cups, finer tapestry, finer weapons, but the world, in the eyes of the ordinary citizen, stood still: as things had been, so they were still, so they would be till the end of all things; there was no hope, no thought of a larger and nobler humanity, all his hope lay beyond the world. Let us remember this fact, because it explains a great deal of mediæval history.
West Chepe was the heart of the City: but it was not the Exchange. There was no Exchange. The merchants met in the most convenient place, that is to say, for foreign trade, in Thames Street. They had their houses for the most part in the sloping streets north of Thames Street; here