Nooks and Corners of Old London Part 2

O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, Whose graceless children scorn to own thee; Yet thou hast greater cause to be Ashamed of them than they of thee.

On one side of the church of St. Alphage, which was at first a leper hospital, there is yet to be seen a barred window through which the afflicted could look and could hear the service, though they were not permitted to enter the church. Across the road is a fragment of the old Roman wall, railed off and preserved, and with it a bit of the greensward that once formed part of the churchyard of St. Alphage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Defoe Tomb]

Ruin and neglect mark what was once a green and beautiful spot--Bunhill Fields--long the chief burial place for Nonconformists, its aged and grime-covered stones now tottering in decay, and at war with the noise of factory life coming from every side. Its original name was Bonehill Fields, because it was a princ.i.p.al place of burial at the time of the great plague. John Bunyan was buried here in 1688, and his tomb is still to be seen. His memory recalls chiefly his great book "Pilgrim's Progress," although he wrote many others--sixty in all. The "Pilgrim's Progress" was written while he was in Bedford Jail, where he was confined for twelve years for being a Dissenter. During this time he supported his family by making lace. Here, too, is the tomb of Daniel DeFoe, who was the son of a butcher of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and whose fame also rests upon a single book, "Robinson Crusoe," although he too wrote many others. Near by are the tombs of Isaac Watts and Susannah, the mother of John Wesley.

In a house in Bunhill Row, whose site is covered now by the offices of a company of well-diggers, John Milton died in 1674. Over the doorway there is a tablet marking the spot. Milton moved here in 1664, the street then being called Artillery Walk, from the nearby Artillery Grounds. Here he wrote the last part of "Paradise Lost," and made arrangements for its publication, by which he was to receive five pounds down, with the further promise of an additional five pounds if an edition of 1300 was sold, and still another five pounds if still another edition of 1300 was sold. Here, too, he wrote "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes."

Facing the eastern entrance to Bunhill Fields, in City Road, is the chapel built in 1778 for John Wesley, the founder and preacher of the Methodist Church; and behind the chapel is the tombstone showing where Wesley was buried in 1791. He died in the house No. 47, next the chapel.

A commemorative window in the church of St. James in Curtain Road close by Holywells Street, marks the location of the Curtain Theatre of Shakespeare's time, which stood on the church site. Here, so the tale goes, the premiere of "Hamlet" was given, and Shakespeare, standing at the door, held the horses of those who attended the performances. But that he did this is not at all certain. Like most of the theatres of that time, this house was so arranged that the roof extended only over the stage and galleries, leaving the central s.p.a.ce, or pit, open to the sky. A curtain of silk, running on an iron rod and opening both ways from the middle, hid the stage before the performance began.

All the district about Finsbury Square was once the marshy ground of Moorfields, a promenade of the 18th century. The name Finsbury happened in an old ballad, which tells of a Knight who went to the crusades and who forbade his two daughters to marry until his return. The Knight never came back alive, but his head was sent to the daughters when they had grown old and were still unmarried. This gruesome relic they buried near by their home, and gave their father's name to his resting place, as told in the ballad:

Old Sir John Fines he had the name Being buried in that place, Now, since then, called Finsbury, To his renown and grace; Which time to come shall not outwear Nor yet the same deface.

Finsbury Pavement was the promenade of Moorfields, and was for a very long time the one solid roadway in that marshy part of town.

The church of All Hallows-on-the-Wall was built in 1765 on a bastion of the old Roman wall that enclosed old London. Close to the church door at the back of the ancient burying ground, a bit of the wall is still to be seen.

Bishopsgate is one of the few very old streets that escaped the Great Fire. It is strangely narrow, and its hurrying throngs add to the general picturesqueness of the high-roofed structures and the quaint many-angled windows that line its sides.

Where Bishopsgate Within ends and Bishopsgate Without begins a gate was cut through the wall of old London. One part was within the wall and one part without the wall, hence the name of the street. At this gateway were four churches. St. Botolph, Without Bishopsgate, dedicated to the popular English saint, stands on the site of one of those early churches. In this church John Keats, who afterwards wrote so delicately of the Eve of St. Agnes and the Grecian Urn, was baptised.

Old White Hart Tavern stood a few yards north of St. Botolph, Without Bishopsgate. It was much the same in arrangement as the other old inns that existed when people travelled entirely by coach. Three sides of the cobbled stone interior yard were lined with guests' rooms, and in front of these extended a heavy wooden balcony. The inn yard was customarily the resort of showmen and musicians. Sometimes a temporary stage was set up, backing the entrance to the inn and fronting the gallery, so the occupants of the rooms could witness the performances. The White Hart Tavern has survived in name chiefly because Hobson, a famous Cambridge carrier, always stopped here when he came to London. When at home Hobson rented horses and had an unbreakable rule of letting them only in their regular turn. This created the saying: "Hobson's choice: that or none."

When Hobson died his elegy was written by Milton.

The street called Houndsditch was a moat beyond the wall of the city in very long ago times and was used often as a burying ground for dead dogs. Into this ditch the headless body of Edric, the murderer of Edmund Ironsides, was flung, after his crime had placed Canute on the throne.

He claimed as his promised reward the highest place in the city, and the Danish king cried out: "The treason I like, but the traitor hate; behead the fellow, and as he claims my promise, place his head on the highest pinnacle of the Tower." And this was done.

Readers of d.i.c.kens' "Old Curiosity Shop," and who is there has not read it, will recall Bevis Marks where Miss Sally Bra.s.s lived with her brother Sampson; where the Marchioness, the tiny domestic, and d.i.c.k Swiveller, the law clerk, did their visiting. Bevis Marks is close by Houndsditch, and started existence as a garden plot of the Abbots of St.

Edmunds, but it is a very commonplace spot indeed in these times.

At the point where Bishopsgate Street Within ends and Bishopsgate Street Without begins, the City wall crossed. On a house just where Camomile Street touches Bishopsgate is a tablet affixed telling of the gate that was once in the old wall just here.

Very timid in appearance is the church of St. Ethelburga, and said to be the smallest church in London. It huddles away, in Bishopsgate Street Within, just to the north of St. Helen's Place, between houses which cover its old burying ground, and its tiny entrance way flanked by shop windows. It has stood here since 1366, having been spared by the Great Fire.

Until quite recently, Crosby Hall, a building of the early 15th century, stood on the east side of Bishopsgate Street Within. In its last days it was said to be the only example of a mediaeval London house in the Gothic style. Originally set up by a former grocer who with the pa.s.sing years came to be Sir John Crosby, Alderman, it came into the possession of the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III. Owning many masters (among them Sir Thomas More who here wrote his life of Richard III.), it was converted at various times into a prison, a meeting-house, a storehouse, a concert hall, and in its last days a restaurant.

Turning from Great St. Helen's, you come suddenly upon the curious 13th century church of St. Helen's, in a square of ancient houses, often alluded to as the Westminster Abbey of the City. Originally it was a church of the Priory of the Nuns of St. Helen's, founded about 1145, by "William, son of William the Goldsmith," and it contains many interesting memorials. Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, lies buried here, and Shakespeare was a parishoner here in 1598.

At the junction of Throgmorton Street and Old Broad, on the north side of the road is an open s.p.a.ce leading into the courtway of Austin Friars.

Here is the Dutch Church; all that remains of the renowned Augustinian Monastery founded in the 13th century. In this church was buried the Earl of Arundel, son of the Black Prince and the Fair Maid of Kent; and many another famous n.o.bleman; and here are buried all those of n.o.ble birth who were killed at the Battle of Barnet.

Threadneedle Street is a very old road, stretching in early days far to the south and west. It got its name from the three needles appearing on the arms of the Needlemakers' Company. Some of its old outlines are covered by the Bank of England, which has been irreverently nicknamed the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.

THREE

MILTON'S BIRTHPLACE, LAMB'S WORKSHOP, AND SOME OTHER THINGS

Through a district of wholesale dealers in linens and laces, Bread Street extends, joining Cannon Street to Cheapside. Midway between these, on a building at Watling Street, is a sculptured bust of John Milton with the inscription:

MILTON Born in Bread Street 1608 Baptised in the Church of All Hallows Which Stood Here Ante 1878

The original All Hallows church destroyed in the Great Fire was rebuilt by Wren and finally demolished in 1878.

Milton was born in this same Bread Street, near Cheapside, where a warehouse numbered 53 now stands. His father was a scrivener--a writer who prepared contracts, deeds and other doc.u.ments, and the house in which he lived and in which Milton was born bore the sign of "The Spread Eagle." Signs in those days had great significance, for the houses were not numbered, and distinctive sign boards were used in all professions and trades. In former years a bust and a tablet marked the spot, but when the present building was set up, the bust was taken down, and now stands on a shelf inside the building on the third floor.

At the Watling Street corner of Old Change may be found the Church of St. Augustine, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1683. R. H. Barham, author of the amusing "Ingoldsby Legends," was rector here for thirteen years prior to his death in 1845.

Watling Street is the present day form of an old Roman road that extended from London to Dover.

Further to the south is all that is left of a very old thoroughfare called Knightrider Street. In long ago times it was a direct way from the Tower to Smithfield, and came by its name in memory of the knights who clattered through it on their way to the tourneys at Smithfield.

Around a corner, on the north side of Queen Victoria Street, St.

Nicholas Cole Abbey stands, the first church to be completed by Wren after the Great Fire.

Sh.e.l.ley the poet married his second wife, Mary G.o.dwin, in 1816, in the church of St. Mildred which is in Bread Street very close to where Queen Victoria and Cannon streets meet. It was in the first year of her marriage that Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley wrote her remarkable novel "Frankenstein."

Cannon Street is part of the chief road of Roman London, and had been a main road for the Britons before the invasion of the Romans. At a meeting point of this road with several others was the Roman central milestone from which distances on all roads were measured. Here a stone was set up 2000 years ago, and all that remains of it to-day is called "London Stone," and may yet be seen. It is set in the outer wall of the Church of St. Swithin, the saint who controls the weather, in Cannon Street, and is protected with an iron lattice work. This stone was superst.i.tiously looked upon as something that afforded protection to citizens and a defence for the city. The Kentish rebel, Jack Cade, so believed it when he entered London in 1450, calling himself John Mortimer and made straight for London Stone. Arrived there, he struck it with his sword and declared himself lord of the city. Shakespeare has him say in Henry VI.:

"Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign. And now henceforth it shall be treason for any that calls me other than Lord Mortimer."

London Stone remained by the roadside until 1742, when being in danger of extinction as an interferer with traffic, it was placed close by the church door. In 1798 it was given the place in the church wall where it is now.

St. Mary, Abchurch, was finished by Wren in 1689. Here was buried--the monument can still be seen--Sir Patience Ward, a Lord Mayor of London, under whose administration the Monument to the Great Fire was built.

The official residence of the Lord Mayor, the Mansion House, was built 150 years ago, on a spot where a fish market called Stocks Market had been since 1282. The market was named from a pair of "stocks" which long stood on the spot and were used for the exhibition of offenders, and which continued near by after the market was established.

Where Lombard Street touches King William Street, is the church of St.

Mary Woolnoth, an old church rebuilt by Nicholas Hawksmoor, the "domestic clerk" of Sir Christopher Wren. Here John Newton, the friend of Cowper the poet, was rector for 28 years, and here he was buried.

The thoroughfare of bankers, Lombard Street, got its name from the Longbards, rich bankers who settled in the district during the reign of Edward II. They used as their emblem three golden b.a.l.l.s, derived from the lower part of the arms of the Dukes of Medici. These continue to this day as the sign of the money lenders. Many romantic a.s.sociations belong to this street. Here lived, with her goldsmith husband, Jane Sh.o.r.e, described by King Edward IV. as "the merriest harlot of his reign," and who after the king's death was accused of witchcraft by the Duke of Gloucester, put in open penance at Paul's Cross, and made to walk through Fleet Street with a lighted taper in her hand.

Pope's Head Alley, the footway leading south from the Royal Exchange, from Cornhill to Lombard Street, is where in the earliest years of the 13th century, King John had his City palace. The roadway took its name from the famous tavern of the Pope's Head, which after 1430 stood for three hundred years on the westerly side.

To the south of the Royal Exchange, in Change Alley, centred, in the first quarter of the 18th century, the excitement attending the South Sea Bubble affair. This was the great stock gambling scheme by which the South Sea Company, holding a monopoly of the trade with the South Seas, and trading on the extravagant ideas the public had of such trade, created an extraordinary desire in many persons to partic.i.p.ate in the fabulous profits. The company was carried on by fraud and deceit until the bubble burst and caused disaster and ruin to thousands of unwise investors. Gay, in his "Panegyrical Epistle," writing of the South Sea project said:

Why did 'Change Alley waste thy precious hours Among the fools who gaped for golden showers?

No wonder they were caught by South Sea schemes Who ne'er enjoyed a guinea but in dreams.

Garraway's Coffee House in Change Alley was used chiefly by the Bubble traders in 1720. At this house in 1651, tea was first sold in England, the proprietor in his announcement recommending it as a cure for all disorders. It certainly has been used extensively ever since. Next door was Jonathan's Coffee House, another tavern of long existence. Both places were burned in 1748, and a bank now marks where they once were.

Plough Court opens out of the south side of Lombard Street. The court is notable as the birthplace of Alexander Pope, and his father here kept a linen draper shop.