Stories of London Part 4

[Ill.u.s.tration: NO. 14. PLACENTIA, THE OLD PALACE AT GREENWICH.]

Those were stirring times. Often sailors came home with wonderful tales to tell; and thus, in September, 1580, a ship, called the _Pelican_, sailed into Plymouth Sound, and all England rang with the news of her coming, for she was Admiral Drake's ship. Nearly three years before he and his sailors had left England in her; they had fought the Spanish, they had taken great treasure, money and jewels, and they had sailed round the world. Now they were safe home again.

Do you wonder that the Queen wanted to see the ship which had made such a voyage? She told Drake to bring the _Pelican_ round to Deptford, which is very near Greenwich; and she went on board and took part in a great feast which was given in her honour; and she knighted Drake on the deck of his own ship. How proud Englishmen were of him! One of them said the _Pelican_ ought to be hoisted up to the top of the tower of St. Paul's Cathedral, to take the place of the spire which had been destroyed by lightning some time before. Was not this a mad plan? Of course, it was never carried out. For many a year the old ship lay in Deptford {50} Dockyard just as the Victory lies now in Portsmouth Harbour; and people used to visit her, and even have supper on board her. When she was very old she was broken up; out of some of her timbers a chair was made and presented to Oxford University.

Do you remember what happened in 1588? This was the year of the Invincible Armada, when England had to prepare ships and sailors and soldiers to protect herself from the Spanish. What help did London give? She was asked for fifteen ships and five thousand men. "Give us two days," said her citizens, "to consider what we can do"; and in two days they answered, "We will send thirty ships and ten thousand men to serve our country."

London, then, had certainly plenty of ships; and many a sea-captain besides Frobisher sailed down the river past Placentia on his way to some far-off port; for London merchants were eager to trade with all parts of the world; and after the defeat of the Spanish Armada they knew that the wide ocean, east and west, lay open before them. No Spaniard now could forbid English ships to sail on any sea.

Drake had seen for himself and had brought home word of the spices and great wealth of the East Indies. But they were very far off, and the cost of fitting out ships for so long a voyage was very great; great, too, were the dangers these ships would have to face--dangers of sea and storm, of savage people and an unknown land; could any one merchant risk so much? The Lord Mayor called together some London merchants to consider this question, and they answered, "The losses which would ruin one would hardly be felt if {51} borne by many; let us, then, form a company to trade with the East." Thus began the East India Company; its birthday was the very last day of the sixteenth century. It had at first only four ships and less than five hundred men; before it came to an end, two hundred and fifty-eight years later, it was ruling nearly all India.

I have another story to tell you which began nearly twenty years before the East India Company's birthday. In December, 1581, a young man came to Placentia, bringing letters to the Queen from her soldiers in Ireland, where there had been war and great trouble. He was carefully dressed and wore a new plush cloak, for this was, I think, his first visit to Court, and the Queen loved to see everyone about her well and beautifully dressed. Perhaps he had only just arrived; perhaps the Queen had been out in her barge and was coming up from the riverside to her palace; however it may have been, she came to a very muddy place in the road, which is not at all surprising, since in December there is often a great deal of rain. The Queen looked at the puddles and stopped, and the young man sprang forward, swept his plush cloak from his shoulders and spread it over the mud for her to step on that so she might pa.s.s on without soiling her shoes. I feel sure you know the young man's name--it was Walter Raleigh. Is it any wonder that he became a great favourite with the Queen? An old story says that soon after this he wrote with a diamond on the gla.s.s of a window in the palace:--

"Fain would I climb, yet fear to fall."

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And the Queen saw it, and wrote beneath it:--

"If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all."

His heart did not fail him; he became captain of her Guard, and he rose higher and higher in her service.

Raleigh was the first Englishman to think how splendid it would be if some of his countrymen would go to America and make homes for themselves there, and so build up a greater England beyond the seas.

He sent out ships to explore, and twice he sent out men to settle in the new land. Some the Indians killed; some found the work of building houses and clearing away the forests far harder than they had expected; and the Indians often attacked them, and food was sometimes so scarce they almost died of hunger. Do you wonder they lost heart and came back to England? Thus it seemed that Raleigh's plan quite failed; but it did not really, for about twenty years later, a company, like the East India Company, was formed, called the Virginia Company. It sent out some settlers who sailed from London in the year 1606, and they did what Raleigh's men had failed to do--built themselves homes, and cleared and tilled the land. Thus began the British Dominions beyond the Seas.

One thing Raleigh did which must not be forgotten. The men he sent to explore in America saw potatoes and tobacco growing there, and learnt from the Indians how to use them. When they came home they showed Raleigh the plants they had brought back with them. He tried smoking tobacco, and I {53} think he must have liked it very much, for he used to give his friends pipes with silver bowls and teach them how to smoke. And he planted potatoes in the garden of a house he had in Ireland; his were the very first Irish potatoes. A few years later both potatoes and tobacco were growing in the garden of one of those fine houses in the Strand of which I have told you; people thought them very rare and curious plants.

Eight years before the great Queen died, Raleigh went himself to South America, and sailed far up the River Orinoco. He found a fertile land and friendly Indians, who told him wonderful stories of the great "city of Manoa" which was (so they said,) rich beyond the dreams of man; El Dorado, the Golden City, the Spanish called it. Raleigh never forgot these stories; more than twenty years later they helped to bring him back to America.

When Elizabeth died and James I. came to the throne he fell into disgrace, for some people said he had plotted against the King; so he was tried, found guilty, and condemned to death. But he was not killed; year after year he was kept a prisoner in the Tower of London.

How did he pa.s.s his days there? was he very dull and sad? I think not.

Part of the time his wife and son lived with him; he was very much interested in the new science of chemistry, and he worked at it and tried experiments in his cell; he began to write a wonderful History of the World; and I think he thought and dreamed much about Manoa, his Golden City, and the riches which lay hidden in South America. The Spanish said these riches were {54} all theirs; but Raleigh did not believe this, and he thought Englishmen could so easily get possession of some of them. After many years he tried to persuade King James to let him cross the Atlantic and sail up the Orinoco to find a gold-mine he had heard of there; he said if only he might go and open it up, it would bring great wealth to the King. Had he another hope, I wonder, hidden away in his heart, of which he did not speak--that he might also search for and find his Golden City? However this may be, he certainly tried to persuade the King, and he succeeded, for James said, "Yes, you may go," though he well knew that Raleigh could not go to South America and bring home gold without offending the Spanish, and England was then at peace with Spain. So Raleigh sailed away. After fifteen months he came home with a sad tale to tell;--everything had gone wrong, the Spanish had killed many of his men, and he had found no gold. James sent him back to the Tower; and four months later, in the year 1618, he was beheaded, because (so he was told,) he had once plotted against the King. Thus died the last of the great men of Queen Elizabeth's Court who had done so much for England.

How different London is now from the London of Queen Elizabeth's reign!

Old St. Paul's and its high tower,--I will tell you in the next story what became of them. The Globe Theatre, too, has quite disappeared.

Busy shops have taken the places of the beautiful old houses in the Strand; nothing now reminds us of them except the names of some of the streets which turn off it; and Somerset House, the great building where {55} now some of the business of the nation is carried on, is so called because it stands on the place where the Duke of Somerset, who lived in Edward VI.'s reign, began to build a palace for himself.

If you go down the river to Greenwich, will you see Queen Elizabeth's pleasant palace? Ah, no. Sixty years after she died it was so out of repair that Charles II. ordered it to be pulled down and a new one built in its place. This new palace was not finished until William and Mary's reign. Then there was a great war with France, and the Queen begged the King to finish the palace and to turn it into a hospital for sailors who had been wounded or crippled in one of the great sea-fights. So it came to pa.s.s that, instead of Placentia, we now have Greenwich Palace; you will find a picture of it facing p. 48.

Perhaps you are thinking, "At any rate the Tower has not changed, and London still has a Lord Mayor." But even the Tower has changed, for in Queen Elizabeth's time it was a royal palace as well as a prison. She did not use it often; perhaps she did not like it, for she had been a prisoner there herself when her sister Mary was Queen. Now our Kings never live there; and prisoners are not kept there; and for more than a hundred and fifty years no one has been beheaded there. I must tell you of one other change, for I am sure it will interest all children.

In Queen Elizabeth's reign, if you had gone to see the Tower, you would have been shown also the lions and other wild animals which, from very early times, had been kept there in dens near the part which is called, after them, the Lion Tower. Now you must go to the Zoological Gardens {56} to see wild animals; there are none in the Tower; they were all sent away to the Zoo not long before Queen Victoria began to reign.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NO. 15. THE FIRE OF LONDON]

From the Fres...o...b.. Stanhope A. Forbes, R.A., in the Royal Exchange

_By permission of the Artist and the Sun Insurance Office_

_See page_ 61

As for the Lord Mayor, he is still the first magistrate of London, and he still takes the leading place in all London's affairs, just as he did in Queen Elizabeth's reign. No, his work and duties have not changed, except that, as London has grown greater and more important, they have grown greater and more important also.

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VII.

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL

The Cathedral of the City of London is called St. Paul's. In the picture beside this page you can see its great dome and golden cross, the top of which is nearly as many feet above the ground as there are days in the year. For more than thirteen hundred years G.o.d has been worshipped on the spot where St. Paul's now stands; before that, many people think, a Roman temple stood there; and before that, again, perhaps the ancient Londoners worshipped there the G.o.d Lud, of whom I have told you; since that time the number of the years has grown from hundreds to thousands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NO. 16. ST. PAUL'S FROM THE RIVER]

Let us fancy what this country was like more than thirteen hundred years ago. The English had conquered it and given it their name and language. The Christian Faith, which the Britons had learnt while the Romans were ruling them, had been almost quite forgotten except in the western part of the land; for in the east very many of the English had settled, and they were heathen. Do you remember that Pope Gregory the Great, when he was still just a simple priest, had seen some English children in the slave-market at Rome, and thought they were fair as angels? He never forgot these children, and when he became Pope he sent his friend, Augustine, and some priests to England to teach its people the Christian Faith. {58} These missionaries landed in Kent and were kindly received by its King, Ethelbert, whose wife, Bertha, was already a Christian. In time he was baptized; and the old historian Bede tells us that he "builded in the Citie of London St. Paules Church"; and its first Bishop was that Mellitus to whom the fisherman Edric brought the message that St. Peter had consecrated his own abbey on Thorney.

In time Ethelbert died, and Mellitus was made Archbishop of Canterbury; then the men of London became heathen again. There is a curious old tale about this, and though it is just a story, not real history, I will tell it to you. Do you remember that the monks said Sebert, King of the East Saxons, rebuilt St. Peter's Abbey? Do you not think, then, that he must have cared enough about the Christian Faith to teach it to his sons? Yet after his death they went back to the old Faith. It chanced that one day, when Mellitus was holding the solemn service of the Ma.s.s, they broke open the door of the church, rushed in and ordered him to give them "white bread" such as he used to give their father; they meant the Bread used in the Ma.s.s. How could Mellitus give it to men who did not believe the Faith in which such Bread is a holy thing?

He refused, and in their anger they turned him out of London; and, as I said, the Londoners went back to their old religion. Truly it took a long time and much teaching to make them really Christians.

Near the end of the seventh century we hear of another Bishop of London, called Erkenwald. He did much to make St. Paul's beautiful and splendid. {59} And he cared for his people too,--the men, women and children, who lived scattered about in the wild forests which then lay round London; and in order that he might visit, help and teach them, he used to drive in a cart from place to place over rough roads, and often where there were no roads. He was so good that people said he was a saint; and so when he died and his body was buried in St. Paul's, his grave there was greatly honoured,--it was even said that miracles were worked there. Is it there still? Ah, no; it was destroyed long ago, as you shall hear presently. Yet London ought not to forget this old Bishop since it is said that one of her streets is called after him, for in his days it seems that the old Roman walls had fallen into ruins, and it is said that Erkenwald built a new city-gate ever since called, after him, Bishopsgate. If you look at a map which shows the streets of London, you will find Bishopsgate and Bishopsgate Street near Liverpool Street Station. This story shows us that Erkenwald was a good citizen as well as a good Bishop.

The years pa.s.sed on; the Normans came and conquered England; and now we have come to real history.

Near the end of William I.'s reign, St. Paul's was burnt down, and the Bishop of London of that day began to build in its place a cathedral so grand and large that men thought it would never be finished, "it was to them so wonderful for height, length, and breadth." Yet little by little it grew until--but not for more than two hundred and twenty-five years--it stood complete with its great steeple, {60} the highest in Europe, towering up 520 feet into the air. This is the Cathedral to which in later days Queen Elizabeth came to return thanks to G.o.d for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Here Sir Philip Sidney was buried.

Perhaps you remember that, as he lay dying on a battlefield in the Netherlands, someone brought him a drink of cold water which seemed to him the most delicious thing in all the world, so thirsty was he because of his wounds. Then he saw a poor soldier looking at it with longing eyes, and he would not drink it, "for," he said, "his need is greater than mine; give it to him."

In the days of Oliver Cromwell the poor Cathedral was used as a barrack for soldiers and as a stable for their horses. There is now in the British Museum a printed paper ordering the soldiers not to play nine-pins and other games there between nine o'clock at night and six in the morning, because their noise and shouts while they played greatly disturbed the people who lived near the churchyard. Long before this the great steeple had been struck by lightning and burnt down, and the whole Cathedral had fallen out of repair; thus, when Cromwell died and Charles II. became King, there was much talk as to what was to be done for it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD ST. PAUL'S. Burnt down in 1666.]

The summer of the year 1666--the year after the Great Plague--was very hot; an east wind blew for weeks together, so the old crowded wooden houses of the City must have been as dry as tinder, when, on September 2, a fire broke out in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane. At first, I suppose, the neighbours watched it and thought it just such a fire as they had {61} seen many a time before; but how could they have felt when it spread from house to house, and leapt from street to street?

when days pa.s.sed and still it spread? Some people ran about like distracted creatures, not even trying to save their possessions; others fled away to the fields outside the City, carrying with them all they could. Imagine them huddling under the hedges for shelter and looking back at the crimson sky, for an old writer tell us "all the sky was of a fiery aspect like the top of a burning oven, and the light" was "seen above forty miles round about for many nights." The melting lead of the roof of St. Paul's ran "down the streets in a stream, and the {62} very pavements were glowing with a fiery redness, so as no horse or man was able to tread on them."