South London
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Title: South London
Author: Walter Besant
Illustrator: Francis Sylvester Walker
Release date: January 16, 2014 [eBook #44683]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTH LONDON ***
SOUTH LONDON
WALTER BESANT'S LONDON BOOKS.
UNIFORM EDITION. Demy 8vo. cloth, 5_s._ net each.
LONDON.
With 125 Illustrations.
'What the late J. R. Green has done for England Sir Walter Besant
has here attempted, with conspicuous success, for Cockaigne. The
Author of "A Short History of the English People" and the historian
of the London citizen share together the true secret of popularity.
Both have placed before the people of to-day a series of vivid and
indelible pictures of the people of the past.... No one who loves
his London but will love it the better for reading this book. He who
loves it not has before him a clear duty and a manifest
pleasure.'--_Graphic._
'Sir Walter Besant knows and loves his London thoroughly, and his
beautifully illustrated book will call up in the minds of those who
bow to the spell a thousand delights of memory and expectation. He
contrives not merely to call back the old London, but to make the
London of the present more living than before.'--_Spectator._
WESTMINSTER.
With 131 Illustrations.
'Sir Walter Besant has told the story of the old city (London) and
its corporate life in a way which has never been surpassed--not even
equalled. The past of the mother of municipal life he has made to
live and breathe in a manner which reduces all other records of
London to the mere dryasdust category. But we like his "Westminster"
even better.... There is nothing but admiration to be expressed as
well for the plan as for the execution.'--_Daily Chronicle._
'Sir Walter Besant has here given us a worthy companion to his
charming book on "London."... From beginning to end the narrative
never flags, the illustrations never fail, and one rises from its
reading with fuller ideas of the historic interest of the place and
a greater veneration for the ancient Abbey and all its relics of the
past.'--_Guardian._
SOUTH LONDON.
With 120 Illustrations.
'To all Londoners who realise the absorbing fascination of the great
world they live in we cordially recommend it as a worthy sequel to
the author's previous volumes. It is written by an enthusiast who is
also an accomplished writer, by a student who is a close observer of
life; and it passes before the reader's imagination a series of
indelible pictures which clothe our prosaic and monotonous South
London with the romance which is its due.'--_Literature._
EAST LONDON.
With 55 Illustrations by PHIL MAY, RAVEN HILL, and JOSEPH PENNELL.
'Sir Walter Besant knows London as no one has known it since Charles
Dickens.... He has given a lifetime to the acquisition of his
knowledge of the great city. He was grey before he attempted to
write his monumental works on "London," "Westminster," and "South
London"--books which have earned him his title as the historian of
London--and he has postponed his book on "East London" until his
sixty-fifth year.... Crammed with antiquarian lore mingled with
human interest and saturated with genuine sympathy for the people is
this study of "East London."... A thoroughly masterly
book.'--_Literary World._
Crown 8vo. cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._
FIFTY YEARS AGO.
With 144 Plates and Woodcuts.
'A series of entertaining chapters, to which the droll illustrations
of George Cruikshank and the inimitable portraits by Daniel Maclise
lend additional effect.... The book is full of movement and colour,
and presents a vivid and interesting picture of the great reign of
Queen Victoria.'--_Speaker._
Small 8vo. cloth (in the ST. MARTIN'S LIBRARY), gilt top, 2_s._ net
each; feather, gilt edges, 3_s._ net each.
LONDON. WESTMINSTER.
SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON. JERUSALEM.
GASPARD DE COLIGNY.
London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 111 St. Martin's Lane, W.C.
* * * * *
[Illustration: F. S. Walker, R.E.
S^t. Saviour's, Southwark.]
SOUTH LONDON
BY
WALTER BESANT
AUTHOR OF
'LONDON' 'WESTMINSTER' 'EAST LONDON' ETC.
[Illustration]
A NEW EDITION
WITH AN ETCHING BY FRANCIS S. WALKER, R.E.
AND 119 ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1912
PREFACE
In sending forth this book on 'SOUTH LONDON,' the successor to my two
preceding books on 'LONDON' and 'WESTMINSTER,' I have to explain in this
case, as before, that it is not a history, or a chronicle, or a
consecutive account of the Borough and her suburbs that I offer, but, as
in the other two books, chapters taken here and there from the mass of
material which lies ready to hand, and especially chapters which
illustrate the most important part of History, namely, the condition,
the manners, the customs of the people dwelling in this place, now, like
Westminster, a part of London: yet, until two or three hundred years
ago, an ancient marsh kept from the overflowing tide by an Embankment,
joined to the Dover road by a Causeway, settled and inhabited by two or
three Houses of Religious: by half a dozen Palaces of Bishops, Abbots,
and great Lords: by a colony of fishermen living on the Embankment from
time immemorial, since the Embankment itself was built: and by a street
of Inns and shops.
I hope that 'SOUTH LONDON' will be received with favour equal to that
bestowed upon its predecessors. The chief difficulty in writing it has
been that of selection from the great treasures which have accumulated
about this strange spot. The contents of this volume do not form a tenth
part of what might be written on the same plan, and still without
including the History Proper of the Borough. I am like the showman in
the 'Cries of London'--I pull the strings, and the children peep. Lo!
Allectus goes forth to fight and die on Clapham Common: William's men
burn the fishermen's cottages: little King Richard, that lovely boy,
rides out, all in white and gold, from his Palace at Kennington--saw one
ever so gallant a lad? The Bastard of Falconbridge bombards the city:
Sir John Fastolfe's man is pressed into Jack Cade's army: the Minters
make their last Sanctuary opposite St. George's: the Debtors languish in
the King's Bench. There are many pictures in the box--but how many more
there are for which no room could be found!
I must acknowledge my obligations, first, to the Editor of the _Pall
Mall Magazine_, where half of these chapters first had the honour of
appearing, for the wealth of illustration of which he thought them
worthy: and next to the artist, Mr. Percy Wadham, who has so faithfully
and so cunningly carried out the task committed to him.
WALTER BESANT.
UNITED UNIVERSITY CLUB:
_September 1898_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 1
II. EARLY HISTORY 25
III. A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 47
IV. THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 69
V. PAGEANTS AND RIDINGS 124
VI. A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 134
VII. THE BOMBARDMENT OF LONDON 153
VIII. THE PILGRIMS 157
IX. THE LADY FAIR 179
X. ST. MARY OVERIES 191
XI. THE SHOW FOLK 206
XII. BELOW BRIDGE 229
XIII. THE LATER SANCTUARY 241
XIV. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 248
XV. THE DEBTORS' PRISON 272
XVI. THE PLEASURE GARDENS 282
XVII. SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 301
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK _Frontispiece_
_Etched by F. S. Walker, R.E._
PAGE
VIEW FROM SOUTHWARK MARSH IN PREHISTORIC TIMES 3
CAUSEWAY ACROSS SOUTHWARK MARSH 7
FISHERS' HUTS AT THE MOUTH OF THE FLEET 9
BARKING CREEK 11
RELICS OF THE STONE AGE 15
A RELIC OF THE STONE AGE 17
RELICS OF THE BRONZE AGE 19
MERCHANTS CROSSING SOUTHWARK MARSH 27
LONDON BRIDGE, A.D. 1000 29
A DANISH HOUSE 31
SHIPS, BAYEUX TAPESTRY 33
A VIKING SHIP 34
SKETCH MAP 37
DIAGRAM 40
THE GOKSTAD SHIP 41
SHIPS OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 43
BAYEUX TAPESTRY 45
THE MONASTERY OF BERMONDSEY 51
BERMONDSEY ABBEY 52
GATEWAY OF BERMONDSEY ABBEY 53
ST. OLAVE, SOUTHWARK 61
'LE LOKE' 63
REMAINS OF THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, FROM THE SOUTH 67
THE LONG BARN 70
SKETCH MAP 71
GATEWAY IN THE HALL, ELTHAM PALACE 75
THE ANCIENT ROYAL PALACE AT GREENWICH 77
SEAL OF THE BLACK PRINCE 83
_From Allen's History of Lambeth_
THE HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK, AS IT APPEARED MDXLIII 85
REMAINS OF ELTHAM PALACE, 1796 91
KING JOHN'S PALACE, KENT 93
_From a Drawing by J. Hassell, 1804_
REMAINS OF ELTHAM PALACE 95
THE MOAT BRIDGE, ELTHAM PALACE 97
GREENWICH, 1662 99
_From a Drawing by Jonas Moore_
GREENWICH HOSPITAL 101
_From a Drawing by Schnebbelie_
LAMBETH PALACE 109
BONNER HALL, LAMBETH 111
RESIDENCE OF GUY FAWKES, LAMBETH 113
_From 'La Belle Assemblée,' November 1822_
BISHOP'S WALK, LAMBETH 114
INTERIOR OF THE HALL, LAMBETH PALACE 115
_From an Engraving dated 1804_
LAMBETH PALACE, FROM THE RIVER 116
LOLLARDS' TOWER, LAMBETH PALACE 117
DOORWAY IN THE LOLLARDS' TOWER 119
LOLLARDS' PRISON 121
WHITE HART INN, SOUTHWARK 137
SURREY END OF LONDON BRIDGE, FROM HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK 139
THE SITE OF SIR JOHN FASTOLF'S HOUSE IN TOOLEY STREET 143
HOUSES IN HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK, 1550 149
OLD HALL, KING'S HEAD, AYLESBURY 158
OLD HALL, AYLESBURY 159
CANTERBURY PILGRIMS 160
15TH CENTURY GOLDSMITH 165
RICH MERCHANT AND HIS WIFE, 14TH CENTURY 165
14TH CENTURY CRAFTSMAN 168
14TH CENTURY MERCHANT 168
14TH CENTURY CRAFTSMAN 168
PEDLAR 175
_From the Stained Window in Lambeth Church_
MINSTRELS, A.D. 1480 177
BOOTH, SOUTHWARK FAIR 181
GREENWICH PARK ON WHITSUN MONDAY 187
_From an Engraving by Rawle, 1802_
A SEAL OF ST. MARY OVERIES 192
SEALS OF ST. MARY OVERIES 193
NORTH-EAST VIEW OF ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK, 1800 194
CRYPT OF ST. MARY OVERIES 195
GATEWAY OF ST. MARY'S PRIORY, SOUTHWARK, 1811 197
_From a Drawing by Whichelo_
REMAINS OF THE OLD PRIORY, ST. MARY OVERIES 199
TOMB OF BISHOP ANDREWS, ST. MARY OVERIES 201
A CORNER IN ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK 203
ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK, 1790 204
WINCHESTER PALACE 207
THE GLOBE THEATRE 209
_From the Crace Collection_
BEAR GARDEN 213
THE BEAR GARDEN AND HOPE THEATRE, 1616 221
INTERIOR OF THE OLD SWAN THEATRE 223
A FÊTE AT HORSELYDOWN IN 1590 231
_From the Painting by G. Hoffnagel, at Hatfield_
THE OLD ELEPHANT AND CASTLE, 1814 233
VIEW NEAR THE STORE-HOUSE, DEPTFORD 235
_From an Engraving by John Boydell, 1750_
GEORGE HOTEL, BOROUGH 239
MINT STREET, BOROUGH 245
OLD HOUSE, STONEY STREET, SOUTHWARK 249
ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL 250
_From an old Print_
SOME ANCIENT HOUSES IN THE LONG WALK, BERMONDSEY 251
JAMAICA HOUSE, BERMONDSEY 252
QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FREE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 253
ANCIENT BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, BOROUGH 254
_From a Drawing by T. Higham, 1820_
THE FALCON TAVERN, BANKSIDE 255
AN OLD MILL, BANKSIDE 256
JOHN BUNYAN'S MEETING HOUSE, BANKSIDE 257
THE OLD TOWN HALL, SOUTHWARK 258
OLD HOUSES IN EWER STREET 259
COURTYARD OF THE DOG AND BEAR INN 261
THE WHITE BEAR TAVERN, SOUTHWARK 263
ALLEN ROPEWALK, SOUTHWARK 265
A SOUTH LONDON SLUM 267
THE OLD TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK 268
ST. GEORGE, SOUTHWARK: NORTH-WEST VIEW 269
_From an Engraving by B. Cole_
REMAINS OF THE MARSHALSEA: N.E. VIEW. A, CHAPEL; B, PALACE COURT 273
_From 'The Gentleman's Magazine,' September 1803_
KING'S BENCH PRISON 275
ANOTHER VIEW OF THE KING'S BENCH PRISON 277
VAUXHALL GARDENS 283
_From the Engraving by J. S. Müller_
VAUXHALL JUBILEE ADMISSION TICKET 285
THE DOG AND DUCK, BETHLEM 289
A DOORWAY, CURLEW STREET, BERMONDSEY 301
IN SNOW'S FIELDS, BERMONDSEY 302
THE TEMPLE FROM THE SURREY BANK 303
HOLY TRINITY, ROTHERHITHE 305
CZAR PETER'S HOUSE, DEPTFORD 307
ALLEYN'S ALMSHOUSES, 1840 309
DULWICH COLLEGE, 1780 311
FROM THE TOWER OF ST. SAVIOUR'S 313
RED CROSS GARDENS, SOUTHWARK 315
ST. SAVIOUR'S DOCK 317
BELOW CHERRY GARDEN PIER 319
THE GEORGE INN 321
LITTLE DORRIT'S WINDOW IN THE MARSHALSEA 321
ALCOVE FROM OLD LONDON BRIDGE, NOW AT GUY'S 323
THE ENTRANCE GATES TO GUY'S 325
A FORMER ENTRANCE TO ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL 327
SOUTH LONDON
CHAPTER I
THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS
I propose to call the series of chapters which are to follow by the
general name of 'South London.' Like their predecessors on 'London' and
'Westminster,' they will not attempt, or pretend, to present a
continuous history of this region--or, indeed, a history at all: they
will endeavour to do for this part of London what their predecessors
have already attempted for the Cities of London and Westminster: that is
to say, they will present such episodes and incidents, with such
characters, as may serve to illustrate the life of the place; the
manners and customs of the people; the characteristics of the Borough
and its outlying suburbs. So far as history means the march of armies
and the clash of armour, we shall here find little history. So far,
also, as history means the growth of our liberties, the struggles by
which they were won; the apparent decay, or defeat, from time to time,
of the spirit of freedom, with its inevitable recovery: the reader and
the student may be referred to the pages of a Stubbs or a Freeman--not
to my humbler page. Great is the work, and worthy to be held in the
highest honour, of those who trace out the irresistible march of
national freedom: I cannot join their company; I must be contented with
the lowlier, yet somewhat useful, task of showing how the people, my
forefathers, lived, and what they thought, and how they sang and
feasted and made love and grew old and died.
My South London extends from Battersea in the west to Greenwich in the
east, and from the river on the north to the first rising ground on the
south. This rising ground, a gentle ascent, the beginning of the Surrey
hills, can still be observed on the high roads of the south--Clapham,
Brixton, Camberwell. It now occupies the place of what was formerly a
low cliff, from ten to thirty or forty feet high, overhanging the broad
level, and corresponding to those cliffs on the other side of the river,
which closed in on either side of Walbrook and made the foundation of
London possible. If we draw a straight line from the mouth of the Wandle
on the west to the mouth of the Ravensbourne on the east, we shall,
roughly speaking, indicate the southern boundary of our district;
unless, as we may very well do, we include Greenwich as well. The whole
of this region constitutes the Great South Marsh: there is no rising
ground, or hillock, or encroaching cliff over the whole of this flat
expanse. Before the river was embanked it was one unbroken marsh: for
eight miles in length by a varying breadth of about two or two and a
half miles, the tidal stream twice in the twenty-four hours submerged
this space. Here and there lay islets or eyots, created, as the
centuries crept on, by the gradual accumulation of branches, roots,
reeds and rubbish, till they rose a few inches above high water; the
spring-tide covered them--sometimes swept them away--then others began
to form. In later times, after the work of embankment had been
commenced, these islets became permanent, and were afterwards known as
Battersea, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Lambhithe, Newington, Kennington.
Even then, for many a long year, they were but little areas rising a
foot or two above the level, covered with sedge, reeds, and tufts of
coarse grass, hardly distinguishable from the rest of the ground around
them. Before the construction of the river wall, no trees stood upon
this morass, no flowers of the field flourished there, no thorns and
bushes grew, no cattle pastured there; the wild deer were afraid of it:
there were no creatures of the land upon it. On the south side rose the
cliff of clay and sand, continually falling and continually receding
before the encroaching tide; on the north side ran the river; beyond the
river the cliff stood up above the water's edge, where the tiny stream,
afterwards named from the Wall, leaped bright and sparkling into the
rolling flood. No man could live upon that marsh: its breath after
sunset and in the night was pestilential.
[Illustration: View from Southwark Marsh in Prehistoric Times.]
Many streams poured into this marsh, and at low tide made their way
across it into the Thames: at high tide their beds were lost in the
shallows. Among them--to use names by which they were afterwards
distinguished--were the Wandle, the Falcon, the Effra, the Ravensbourne,
and others which have disappeared and left no name. And so for
unnumbered years the tide daily ebbed and flowed, and the reeds bent
beneath the breeze, and the clouds scudded overhead, and the wild birds
screamed, far away from the world of men and women, long after men and
women began to wander about this Island called Albion. No one took any
thought of this marsh, any more than they heeded the marshes all along
the lower reaches of the river; and these were surely the most desolate,
dreary stretches of water and mud anywhere in the world. Those who wish
to realise what manner of country it was which stretched away on the
north and south of the Thames may perhaps get some comprehension of it
if they stand on the point at Bradwell in Essex, beside the ruined
Chapel of St. Peter-on-the-Wall, and look out at low tide to east and
north.
In a previous volume dealing with another part of the country called
London I showed to my own satisfaction, and, I believe, that of my
readers, that long before there existed any London at all, except
perhaps a village of a few fishermen with their coracles, Westminster or
Thorney was a busy and crowded place of resort, through which the whole
trade of the country north of the Thames passed on its way to Dover and
the southern ports. This position, new as it was, and opposed to the
general and traditional teaching--opposed, for instance, to the
traditional belief of Dean Stanley--has never been attacked, and may be
considered, therefore, as generally accepted. When or how the trade of
Thorney began, to what extent it developed, we need not here inquire.
Indeed, I know not that any fragments of fact or of tradition exist
which would enable us to inquire. The fact itself, as will be
immediately seen, is of the highest importance as regards the beginning
and early history of the Southern settlements.
The ancient way of trade, then, ran across the island called afterwards
by the Saxons Thorney, the Isle of Bramble, now Westminster. All the
trade of the north passed over that little spot, on which arose a
considerable town for the reception of the caravans. After resting a
night or so at Thorney, the merchants went on their way. Those who
travelled south, making for Dover, crossed over the ford, where there
was afterwards a ferry. This ferry continued until the erection of
Westminster Bridge in the last century: the name still survives in
Horseferry Road. After the passage of the ford, the travellers found
themselves face to face with a mile of dangerous bog, marsh and swamp,
through which they had to plod and plough their way, sinking over their
knees, up to the middle, before they emerged upon the higher ground, now
called Clapham Rise. To the merchants driving their long chains of
slaves and heavily laden packhorses and mules from the north, this was
the worst bit of the whole journey. Every day there were rivers to be
forded, in which some of their slaves might get drowned or might escape;
there were dark woods, in which they might be attacked by hostile
tribes; there were hills to climb; but nowhere, in the whole of their
journey, was there a piece of country more difficult than this great
swamp beyond the Ford of Thorney. They splashed and floundered through
it, over ankles, over knees, up to the middle, up to the neck, in mud
and muddy water. The packhorses sank deep down with their loads; they
took off the loads and laid them on the shoulders of the slaves, who
threw them off into the mud, and let them stay there, while they made a
mad attempt to escape. Horse and mule; slave and slave-load; iron, lead,
and skins: the merchant paid heavy tribute while he crossed the marshes
and waded through the shallows of the broad tidal river.
At some time or other, the idea occurred to an unknown person of
engineering genius in advance of his time, that it might not be
impossible to construct a causeway across this marsh; and that such a
causeway would be extremely useful and convenient for those who used the
Thorney Fords. Perhaps the causeway was his own invention; perhaps the
work was the first causeway ever constructed in this country; perhaps
the inventor began on the smallest possible scale, with a very narrow
way across the marsh to the nearest dry ground, which was, of course,
somewhere beyond Kennington; perhaps the work, colossal for the time,
carried the merchants and their caravans across the whole extent of the
marsh--five miles and more--to the rising ground of Deptford or
Greenwich, the nearest point to Dover. The causeway was not unlike those
which now run across the Hackney Marshes; that is to say, it was raised
so high as to be above the highest spring tide, about six feet above the
level of the marsh. It was constructed by driving piles into the mud at
regular intervals, forming a wall of timber within the piles, and
filling up the space with gravel and shingle, brought from
Chelsea--'Isle of Shingle'--or from the nearest high ground, where is
now Clapham Common. The breadth of the causeway, I take it, was about
ten or twelve feet. The construction of the work rendered the passage
across the marsh perfectly easy, and greatly facilitated that part of
the trade of the island which lay in the midland and on the north.
When was this causeway, the first step in road-making, constructed?
Perhaps it was a Roman work. I think, however, that it is older than the
Roman occupation; and for these reasons. When London was first visited
by the Romans it was already a flourishing city with a '_copia
negotiatorum_;' in other words, it had already succeeded in attracting
the greater part of the trade which formerly passed through Thorney. Had
the Romans built the causeway, they would have constructed it along a
line drawn from one of the two old ferries to Deptford. The causeway,
therefore, must have existed when the Romans arrived upon the scene,
together with, as we shall see immediately, the second causeway
connecting the ferry with the first causeway. I dare say the Romans
strengthened the work: turned it from a gravelled way, soft in bad
weather, into one of their hard, firm Roman roads; faced it with stone,
and made it durable. If South London were to be stripped of all its
houses, the two causeways would be found still, hard and firm, beneath
the mass of accumulated soil and rubbish, as the Romans left them.
If you draw a straight line from 'Stanegate,' close to the end of
Westminster Bridge, as far as the beginning of the Old Kent Road, you
will understand the lie of the causeway. And this causeway, understand,
was the very first interference of the hand of man with the marshes
south of the Thames. It was a way across the marsh: not an embankment
against the river, but a way. It did not keep out the tide which flowed
in on the other side--the Battersea side: it was simply a way across the
marsh. For a long time--we cannot tell how long--it remained the
principal way of communication for the trade of Britain between the
north and the south, the midland and the south, the eastern counties and
the south.
[Illustration: Causeway across Southwark Marsh.]
Consider, next, the site of London, as it appeared to the merchants
crossing the causeway. They saw, in the centuries of which no trace or
memory remains, when they turned their eyes northward, first a level of
mud, sprinkled with little eyots of reed and coarse grass, then the
broad river, and beyond the river two streams, one fuller than the
other, each in its own valley--that of the Walbrook was 132 feet wide at
the present site of the Mansion House--falling into the river; a low
cliff ran along the north bank, leaving stretches of marsh, as on the
south, but, where these streams ran into the Thames, approaching close
to the river, and actually overhanging it. On the river they saw
numerous coracles, with fishermen catching salmon and every kind of fish
in their nets. No river in the world was more plentifully stocked with
fish; overhead flew screaming innumerable birds--geese, ducks,
herne--which the trappers trapped, snared, shot with sling and stone by
the thousand. On those cliffs overhanging the river, the travellers by
the causeway saw the huts of the fisherfolk. Then, perhaps, they
remembered the plenty of the markets of Thorney; the abundance of birds,
the vast quantities of fish offered on those stalls. Those who were
curious connected the coracles on the river and the birds that flew up
from the lowlands with these markets; they saw that London--'the place
or fort over the Lake'--was the settlement which furnished Thorney with
a good part of her supplies. And this I verily believe to have been the
real origin and cause of London. It was first settled by the humble folk
who came here for the purpose of catching fish and trapping birds for
the market of Thorney. This is a suggestion only; it will be set aside,
most certainly, by those who are not pleased with the upsetting of old
theories. To those who are able to realise the ancient condition of
things and all it means, the suggestion will be received, I am
convinced, as more than a theory: it will be regarded and accepted as a
discovery.
Let us put it in another way. Thorney was a place of great resort, as I
have shown in these pages already: every day passed into Thorney, and
out of Thorney, long processions or caravans of merchants with
merchandise carried by slaves--the most valuable part of their
merchandise--and by packhorses and mules; they waded through the
northern ford; they rested for a night in one of the inns of the place:
next day they waded through the southern ford, attained the causeway,
and went south. Or else it was the reverse way. The place required a
daily supply of food, and, as there were many travellers, a great
quantity of food. If you go down the river from Thorney, you will find
that the present site of London, on the two hillocks rising out of the
river, was the first and only place where men could put up huts in which
to live while they caught fish and trapped wild birds for Thorney. If,
therefore, the Isle of Bramble was a flourishing centre of trade long
before London was a place of trade at all, then the original London must
have been a settlement of fishermen and trappers who supplied the
markets of Thorney.
[Illustration: Fishers' Huts at the mouth of the Fleet.]
In course of time--we are still in prehistoric times--the site of
London was discovered by seamen and merchant adventurers exploring the
rivers in their ships. It was found cheaper and easier and safer to
carry goods to and from Thorney by way of sea than by land. To coast
along from Dover to the strait between Rum--the Isle of Thanet, and the
mainland--to pass through the strait and up the river, was found easier
and cheaper than to undertake the costly and dangerous march from Dover
to Thorney Ford. This way, then, was by many undertaken; and so a
certain part of the trade along the old causeway was diverted.
The next step was the discovery of London as a port. There was no port
at Thorney: on the site of London were the two natural ports of Walbrook
and the mouth of the Fleet; there was a high ground safer and more
salubrious than that of Thorney; ships began to anchor there, quays were
erected, goods were landed; the high road which we call Oxford Street
was constructed to connect London with the highway of trade--afterwards
Watling Street; and the trade of London began.
Now, if you look once more at the map of the south as it was, you will
observe that London at its first commencement had no communication with
any part of the world except by water. The first road opened was, as I
have said, the connection with Watling Street; what was the next? It was
a connection with the high road to Dover: that connection was the road
which we now call High Street, Borough. These two roads were the first
communication between London and any other place; all the other roads,
to the north and south and west and east, came afterwards. It was
necessary for London to have an open and direct connection, by land as
well as by sea, with the then principal port of the country. The High
Street formed that open communication; it began not far to the west of
St Saviour's Church, opposite the Roman Trajectus, the mediæval ferry,
now St. Mary Overies Dock.
Observe, however, that we are as yet very far from embanking the river,
or draining the marsh, or making it inhabitable. If you walk across
Hackney Marsh by one of its causeways any autumnal morning, especially
after rain, you will understand something of what Southwark looked like.
Two high causeways crossed the marsh, of which as yet not a square foot
had been drained or reclaimed; yet the place was not so wild as it had
been; the wild birds had been partly driven away by the noise and crowd
of London, and by the concourse of ships sailing continually up and
down. There was as yet no bridge. The ferry crossed the river backwards
and forwards all day long. The causeways were crowded with people; but
as yet nothing on the lowlands. Before the marshes could be drained the
river had to be embanked.
[Illustration: Barking Creek]
No one knows when that was done. It was done, however. At some time or
other a high earthwork was raised along the north and south banks of
the river, enclosing the marshes, converting them into pasture and
arable land, and keeping out the tides of Thames. It was a work of the
most signal benefit; it was also a colossal piece of work, measured by
hundreds of miles, for it was continued all round the islets and coast
of Essex. It was a work requiring constant repair, though most of it has
stood splendidly. The wall gave way, however, at Barking in the time of
Henry the Second; at Wapping in the time of Elizabeth; at Dagenham early
in the last century: at each of these places the repair of the wall was
costly and difficult. The embankment left behind it a low-lying ground,
rich and fertile; orchards and woods began to grow and to flourish upon
it; yet it was still swampy in parts, numerous ponds lay about on it,
streams wound their way confined in channels, and let out through the
embankment at low tide by culverts.
Whether the bridge came before the embankment I cannot decide. Yet I
think that the embankment came first; for the existence of
Southwark--that of any part of South London--depended not on the bridge,
but on the embankment and the ferry. Given, however, the embankment; the
two causeways; the bridge; two ferries--one at St. Mary Overies and the
other lower down, opposite the Tower: given, also, direct communication
with Dover, with Thorney--thence with the midlands and the north: there
could not fail to arise a settlement or town of some kind on the south
of the Thames.
Let us next consider the conditions under which the town of Southwark
began to exist and to continue for a great many years.
(1) There was no wall or any means of defence, except the marsh which
surrounded it and prohibited the approach of an army except along the
causeway.
(2) The ground lay low on either side the causeway, and south of the
embankment. Although the tide no longer ebbed and flowed among the reeds
and islets of the marsh, yet it was covered with small ponds, some of
them stagnant, others formed by the many streams which flowed towards
the culverts on the embankment, through which at low tide they escaped
into the Thames; until some kind of drainage was attempted, the place
caused agues and fevers for any who slept in its white miasma. In other
words, not an embankment only, but drainage of some kind, had to be
undertaken before life was possible on the marsh.
(3) There were no quays, no shipping, no merchants, no trade, on the
south side. All merchandise coming up from the south for export at the
port of London, all merchandise landed at the port for the south, had to
be carried across the bridge.
(4) The crowds of people connected with the trade of London--the
porters, carriers, drivers, grooms and stable-boys, stevedores,
lightermen, sailors foreign and native, the _employés_ of the merchants,
their wives, women and children--all these people lived in London
itself; they had their taverns and drinking shops; their sleeping places
and eating places, in London; all the people employed in providing food
and drink and sport, lived on the other side. South London had to be a
place without trade, without noise, without disturbance of workmen,
without broils among the sailors or fights among foreigners.
(5) It stood on the south bank of a river swarming with fish.
(6) The only parts on which houses could be built were along the line of
the causeways, or along the line of the embankment.
These were the conditions. We should expect, therefore, to find the
place thinly inhabited; and to find that the houses were all built
beside or along the raised ways. We should next expect to find along
the causeways that the houses belonged to the wealthier class.
We should expect, further, to find no sailors' or working men's
quarters. The former because there were no ships; the latter because
there were no markets. Lastly, we should not be surprised to find the
place very early occupied by inns and places of accommodation for those
who resorted to London.
All this was, in fact, what did take place. The Roman remains are
numerous; they are all found along the causeways; the existence of a
Roman cemetery shows that it was a place of some importance. I say
_some_, because its very limited extent proves that it was never a large
place. I will return immediately to the Roman remains.
There was, however, one trade, one class of working men which took up
its abode along the embankment of Southwark: it was that of the
fishermen, driven across the river by the growth of London. There was no
room for the fishermen with their coracles and nets along the line of
quays on the north side; they wanted a place to haul up their boats, and
a place to spread their nets,--they could not find either in the north;
nor would the fish be caught in waters troubled perpetually by oars and
keels. The fisherfolk, therefore, put up their huts along the
embankment; for long centuries afterwards the fisherfolk continued to
live in South London. The last remnant of Thames fishermen occupied,
well into the present century, a single court in Lambeth; it is
described as unpaved, unglazed, unlighted, dirty, and insanitary. But
the last salmon had been caught in the river; the Thames fishermen were
by that time almost starved out of existence. I am sure that the south
was always their place of residence; the foreshore offered them what
they could not find on the north bank. To him, however, who considers
the fisheries of the Thames, there are many points on which, for want of
exact information, he may speculate and theorise as much as he pleases.
For instance, later on, there were fishermen living at Limehouse. Some
of the Thames watermen lived here also--the legend of Awdry the ferryman
assigns to him a residence on the south; their favourite place of
residence, however, was St. Katherine's first, and Wapping afterwards.
[Illustration: RELICS OF THE STONE AGE]
The Roman remains found up and down the place prove my assertion that
the people who lived here were what we should call substantial. One need
not catalogue the long list of Roman _trouvailles_; but, to take the
more important, in the year 1819 there was discovered, in taking up the
foundations of some old houses belonging to St. Thomas's Hospital, in
St. Thomas's Street, a fine tesselated pavement, about ten feet below
the surface of the ground. In the following year, in the area facing St.
Saviour's Grammar School, seven or eight feet below the surface, there
was found another, of a more elaborate design. Only a part of this was
uncovered, as the Governors of the School forbade further investigation:
it remains to this day still to be examined and unearthed, under the
present potato and fruit market. At the entrance of King Street, at a
depth of fifteen or sixteen feet, were found a great many Roman lamps, a
vase, and other sepulchral deposits. And in tunnelling for a new sewer
through Blackman Street and Snow Fields, in 1818 and 1819, and again in
Union Street, in 1823, numerous Roman antiquities were discovered. In
Trinity Square was found a coin of Gordianus Africanus. In Deverill
Street, south of the Dover road, other coins were discovered; in St.
Saviour's churchyard, a coin of Antoninus Pius. It has also been proved
that an extensive Roman cemetery existed on the south of the ancient
settlement. In the year 1840, when excavations were going on for the
purpose of building a new wing to St. Thomas's Hospital, another
tesselated pavement was disclosed, with passages and walls of other
chambers, all built on piles, showing that the houses beside the
causeway were thus supported in the marshy ground; Roman coins and
pottery were also found here. Another pavement was discovered on the
opposite side, south of Winchester Palace. On the river bank, at the
corner of Clink Street, an ancient jetty was found; and in the new
Southwark Street, deep down, groups of piles, pointed below, on which
houses had been built. In many of the later buildings Roman tiles have
been found. These remains are quite sufficient to prove that many
wealthy people lived in Roman Southwark, and that they occupied villas
built on piles beside the causeway.
Since, too, from the earliest times Southwark was famous for its inns,
and since the same conditions prevailed in the fourth as in the
fourteenth century, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the people
who drove those long lines of packhorses laden with goods from London
used Southwark as a place in which to deposit merchandise before taking
it across the bridge; they halted in Southwark; they lodged in one of
the inns: the place was most convenient for the City; storage was
cheaper than on the river wharves; for strangers, the place was
cheerful. In one respect, that of being a halting place and a lodging
for traders, Southwark was like Thorney in its palmy days--a place of
entertainment for man and beast. There was no forum here, as in Augusta;
no place of meeting for merchants, such as Thames Street in Plantagenet
times; there was no buying and selling, but there was continual coming
and going, which made the place lively and cheerful.
Such were the origins of the settlements of South London. An embankment,
a causeway, a fishery for the wants of Thorney first and of London next;
then villas, put up by the better sort, attracted here, one believes, by
the fresh air coming up the river with every tide, and by the quiet of
the place. The settlement began quite early in the Roman occupation:
this seems to be proved by the extent of the cemetery. The draining and
drying of the low lands went on meanwhile gradually, gardens and
orchards taking the place of the former marsh.
[Illustration: A RELIC OF THE STONE AGE]
The place has always, save at rare intervals, been entirely defenceless.
The _Pax Romana_ protected it. Remember that London itself was not
walled till the latter part of the fourth century. Why should it be? For
more than three hundred years, for ten generations, the City knew no
wars and feared no invader. The 'Count of the Saxon Shore' beat back,
and kept back, the pirates of Norway and Denmark; the Legions beat back
the marauders of Scotland and Ireland. Southwark, like the City its
neighbour, needed no wall and asked for no defence.
Twice, before the arrival of the East Saxons, we get a glimpse in
history of South London. The first is the rout of the usurper, the
Emperor Allectus, after the battle of Clapham Common.
Towards the close of the third century the succession of usurpers who
sprang up everywhere in the outlying portions of the Empire contained
six who came from Britain. What effect these movements had upon the
security of South London we have no means of learning. The history,
however, of Carausius and his successor Allectus affords material for
reflection. The former, who was of Belgian origin, rose to be the Count
of the Saxon Shore--in other words, Admiral of the Roman Fleet. In this
capacity he kept the seas free from pirates; enriched himself, became
famous for his courage and his generosity; usurped the title of Cæsar,
fought with and defeated the fleets of Maximian, and reigned in Britain
for seven years. His headquarters were Boulogne and Southampton; near
the latter place--at Bittern--is still seen the quay at which his ships
were moored. His rule, of which we know little, was certainly strong and
firm. Coins exist in great numbers of Carausius. They represent his
arrival: 'Expectate, veni'--'Come, thou long-expected!' Then his
triumph: 'Shout IO ten times.' He held gladiatorial sports at London; he
appointed a British senate. Then came the time when he must fight or
die. Like the King of the Grove, the Usurper held his throne on that
condition. Carausius, for some unknown reason, would not fight when the
chance was offered--therefore he died. Another King of the Grove,
Allectus by name, one of his officers, killed him and reigned in his
stead. Then he, too, had to fight for crown and life. He accepted the
challenge; he awaited with an army of Franks and Britons the arrival of
the Roman forces sent to quell him: he awaited them in London. When the
enemy drew near, he led out his men across the Bridge, and gave battle
to the Roman general, Asclepiodotus, on the wild heath south of London,
immediately beyond the rising ground--we now call the place Clapham
Common--and there he fell bravely fighting. He had enjoyed the purple
for three years. Perhaps, when he crossed the Bridge, conscious that he
was going to meet his fate--either to continue an Emperor for another
spell or to die--he reflected that for such a splendid three years' run
it was worth while to risk, and even to lose, his life at the end.
[Illustration: RELICS OF THE BRONZE AGE]
This is, I say, the first glimpse we get of South London in history. We
see the army marching across the Bridge and along the Causeway, shouting
and singing. We see them a few hours later, flying from the field,
rushing headlong over the Causeway, through the lines of villas to the
Bridge. The terrified people, those who lived in the villas, are
running over the Bridge after them. Once across the Bridge, the soldiers
found that there was left in the City neither order nor authority. They
therefore began to sack and pillage the rich houses, and to murder the
inhabitants. Remember that all over the Roman Empire none were permitted
to carry arms except the soldiers. Therefore there could be no defence.
The pillage went on until the victorious general had got his army--or
some of it--across the Bridge. How long it would take to bring up his
troops, whether the Bridge was held by the Franks, whether the defeated
army made any organised opposition, we know not. All we are told is that
the Roman soldiers fought hand to hand with those of the dead Usurper in
the streets of London, and that the latter were all massacred.
In the year 457 we get a second glimpse of Southwark in the flight of
another defeated host. The Britons had gone forth to fight the Saxon
invaders; they met the enemy--Hengist and Æsc his son--at
'Creeganford'--Crayford: they were defeated; four thousand of them were
killed; they fled; they never stopped until they reached London Bridge;
we can see them flying bareheaded, without weapons, along the Causeway
and through the narrow gates of the Bridge. Alas! the old villas along
the Causeway are deserted and in ruins; the place has been desolate for
many years--since the Saxons began to swarm about the country; the
former residents, if they are living still, are behind the walls; and
their sons are carrying on the war which is to last two hundred long
years, and to leave its memories of hatred behind it for fifteen hundred
years at least. The gardens are grown over, the orchards are neglected,
the inns are empty and ruinous.
Before long there falls the silence of death upon the walled City and
the Bridge and the settlements of the South. All alike are deserted: the
tide idly laps the piles of the rotting Bridge; it rolls along the empty
wharves, bearing no keel upon its bosom; there is no boat on the river,
there is no smoke from any house; there is no life, no sign of life, in
the place which had formerly been so crowded and so busy. The timbered
face of the embankment gave way and crumbled into the river; the
Causeway was eaten by the tides here and there; the low grounds once
more became a marsh, and the wild birds returned, undisturbed, to their
former haunts.
I have elsewhere ('London,' ch. i.) described the natural reasons which
led to this desertion of the City. It appears to us strange and almost
impossible that a great city should be so utterly deserted. Where,
however, are the cities of Tadmor, of Tyre, of Carthage? Where are the
great cities of Asia Minor? The conqueror not only took the City and
killed some of the people; he cut off the supplies, and therefore forced
them to go. This was most certainly the case with London. Roger of
Wendover, it is true, tells us that in the year 462 the Saxons took
possession of London, and then successively of York, Lincoln, and
Winchester, committing great devastation. 'They fell on the natives in
every quarter, like wolves on sheep forsaken by their shepherds; the
churches and all the ecclesiastical buildings they levelled with the
ground; the priests they slew at the altars; the holy scriptures they
burned with fire; the tombs of the holy martyrs they covered with mounds
of earth; the clergy who escaped the slaughter fled with the relics of
the saints to the caves and recesses of the earth, to the woods and
deserts and the crags of the mountains.'
I do not suppose that Roger of Wendover (he died in 1237) had access to
documents of the time. I would rather incline to the belief that, given
certain undoubted facts of battle, murder, and sacrilege, he presented
the world with a little embroidery of his own. An Assault on London is,
however, possible; in which case the desertion of the City would be only
hastened. With the ruin and desolation of Augusta came also the ruin of
the southern settlement.
This silence--this desolation--lasted some hundred years. Then the men
of Essex--the East Saxons--came down, a few at a time, and took
possession of the deserted City; the merchants began timidly to bring
their ships again with goods for trade; the East Saxons learned the
meaning of bargains; Augusta was dead, but London revived. The City
preserved its ancient name, but the southern settlement lost its name.
We know not what the Romans or the Britons called it, but the Saxons
called it Southwark. And they repaired the embankment and restored the
ancient causeways, and cleared away the ruins.
Another point of difference: in London the new streets, laid out without
rule or order, grew by degrees; they did not follow the old Roman
streets, which were quite obliterated and utterly forgotten--one cannot
imagine a more decisive proof of complete desertion and ruin. In
Southwark, on the other hand, the streets remained the same--they were
the two causeways and the embankment--because none others were then
possible. High Street, Borough, is still, as it always has been, the
ancient causeway connecting the new port of London with the Dover road.
Between the years 600 and 1000 Southwark suffered the vicissitudes which
must happen in a period of continual warfare to an undefended suburb. In
times of peace, when trade was possible, the place was what the
Icelander Snorro Thirlesen calls an 'emporium.' All the merchandise
carried to London from the south for export lay there waiting to be
carried across the quays: the merchants themselves found accommodation
there. But we cannot believe that when the Danish fleets brought their
fierce warriors to the very walls of London, Southwark--or any other
settlement--would continue to exist unfortified. That the place remained
without a wall, except for certain temporary walls put up by the Danes,
proves that it was regarded by itself as of small importance. This is
also proved by another fact--namely, that the place was always occupied
without defence. When, for instance, the Danes held London for twelve
years, leaving it a wreck and a ruin, can we believe that any people
remained in Southwark? In times of peace the fishermen lived here for
greater convenience of their work; London by this time was impossible
for them, because it was walled all along the river side. If peace was
prolonged, inns were set up for the merchants: people built houses along
the causeway. When war began again, and the enemy once more appeared,
Southwark was again abandoned. This is the history of South London for a
thousand years--alternate occupation and abandonment.
There exists a very singular heresy concerning Southwark. I would deal
with it tenderly, because one, if not more, of the heretics is a
personal friend of my own. It is that the site of the first or original
London was on the South; that Roman London stood on the site of
Southwark; and that, at some time or other, there was a transference of
sites, the whole of Roman London migrating to the other side. It is even
maintained that the name of Walworth proves that there was once a wall
round the city of the south. To me the name of Walworth indicates the
proximity of the high causeway running through its midst. The
consideration of the site--the marshy, wet, and unwholesome site--is
quite sufficient for me. At no time, not even in the time of the Lake
dwellers, have marshes been selected by choice for the building of
cities. Before the Embankment and the Causeway, the South of London was
impossible for the residence of man.
The transference of sites is a theory often called in to account for,
and make possible, other theories. Thus, the late James Fergusson
invented the transference of sites in order to bolster up certain
theories of his own on the Holy Places of Jerusalem. Here, however,
there is no theory: only a statement by a geographer evidently ignorant
of the boundaries of an obscure province of a district in a distant
country which he had never seen. London, Ptolemy said, was in Kent. All
the Roman remains, as we have seen, are found by the Causeway and the
Embankment--there never could have been any wall; and, indeed, the only
answer that is required to such a theory is to point to the natural
conditions of the site. Is it conceivable that people would settle
themselves in a marsh when they had firm and dry ground across the
river?
CHAPTER II
EARLY HISTORY
Southwark, then, had no reason for existence at all except for its
connection with London by bridge and ferry, and especially by bridge.
Before the Ferry and the Bridge there was no Southwark. The history of
Southwark is closely connected with the Bridge. It was on the south end
of the Bridge that all the fighting took place, London very generously
handing over her battles to her daughter of the south. I propose, in
this chapter, to discourse about the Bridge and one or two of its
earlier battles.
It is sometimes stated, confidently, that before the Bridge there was
the Ferry. Why? To carry people across the river and 'dump' them down in
the marsh? But people had no business in the marsh. First came the
Bridge and the Causeway to connect it with the Dover road. Then traffic
began to cross the Bridge and to meet the Dover road. But as yet there
was no ferry. Then came the Embankment, and the appearance of houses
along the Causeway and on the Embankment. As the trade of London
increased, so Southwark--I would we had the Roman name--increased in
proportion. Inns were created for the convenience of merchants, trade
was drawn from Thorney on the south by the Bridge, just as it was
diverted on the north by the military way connecting the great high road
with London. When the Causeway was always filled with caravans and long
trains of heavily laden packhorses; when the inns were crowded with
merchants and their slaves; when the Bridge was all day covered with
passengers and carriers; then the Ferry was demanded as a quicker and an
easier way of getting across. Two Ferries, there were; perhaps more. One
of these ran from Dowgate Dock to St. Mary Overies; the other crossed
the river lower down, nearer the Tower. So things remained for nearly
two thousand years--say, from A.D. 100 to A.D. 1750. If a man wanted to
get across the river, he did not make his way to London Bridge, and
painfully walk across amid the carriers and the caravans, the plunging
horses and the droves of oxen; he stepped into the boat and was ferried
across. We must not look on the Bridge as a means of getting across the
river for the people: it was not; it was the means of conveying
merchandise to and fro; it was a construction most important for
military purposes; it was a barrier to prevent a hostile fleet from
getting higher up the river; but, for the ordinary passenger, the boat
was the quicker and the easier means of conveyance.
When was the Bridge built? It is impossible to say. It was not there
A.D. 61, when Queen Boadicea's troops sacked the City and murdered the
people. It was there when Allectus led his troops out to fight the Roman
legions. It was there very early in the Roman occupation, as is proved
by the quantities of Roman coins of the four centuries of their tenure
found in the bed of the river on the site of the old Bridge. It is also
proved by the fact that Southwark was a settlement of the wealthier
class, who could not have lived in a place absolutely without supplies,
had there been no bridge. We may take any time we please for the
construction of the Bridge, so long as it is quite early--say, before
the second century.
The building of the Bridge can be arrived at with such great certainty
that I have no hesitation in presenting a drawing of it. As this Bridge
has never before been figured by the pencil of any artist, it will be
well for me to indicate the steps by which its reconstruction has been
made possible.
[Illustration: Merchants crossing Southwark Marsh]
The Britons themselves were quite unable to construct a bridge of any
kind, unless in the primitive methods observed at Post Bridge and Two
Bridges, on Dartmoor, by a slab of stone laid across two boulders. The
work, therefore, was certainly undertaken by Roman engineers. We have,
in the next place, to inquire what kind of bridge was built at that time
by the Romans. They built bridges of wood and of stone; many of these
stone bridges still remain, in other cases the pieces of hewn stone
still remain. The Bridge over the Thames, however, was of wood. This is
proved by the fact that, had it been of the solid Roman construction in
stone, the piers would be still remaining; also by the fact that London
had to be contented with a wooden bridge till the year 1176, when the
first bridge of stone was commenced. Considerations as to the
comparative insignificance of London in the first century, as to the
absence of stone in the neighbourhood, and as to the plentiful supply of
the best wood in the world from the forests north of the City, confirm
the theory that the Bridge was built of wood. We have only, therefore,
to learn how Roman engineers built bridges of wood elsewhere, in order
to know how they built a bridge of wood over the Thames. And this we
know without any doubt.
First: they drove piles into the bed of the river--not upright piles,
but inclined at an angle; they placed two piles side by side, and
opposite to these two more; they connected the two piles by ties and the
opposite piles with them by transverse girders. Across them they laid a
huge beam--a tree roughly hewn, and across these beams they laid the
floor of stout planks. The weight of beams and planks and the parapet
put up afterwards, with perhaps other planks for greater safety, pressed
down the piles and held them in place. To prevent the current from
carrying them away, each double pair of piles was protected by a
'starling,' formed by driving upright smaller piles in front at the
piers and enclosing a space, which was filled up with stones, so that
the force of the current was not felt by the great piles.
In this way the Roman Bridge was built. You will understand it better
from the drawing, which shows the Bridge taken from the Embankment near
the present site of St. Mary Overies Church. The gate is the river-gate
in the long straight wall which ran along the bank of the river. The
wall, it is obvious, must have been pierced at several points for the
convenience of trade and the quays: one supposes that these posterns
could be easily closed and defended. This river-wall, we shall presently
see, was standing in the time of Cnut. Some parts of it stood until the
building of the stone Bridge in the last quarter of the twelfth century.
The Roman Bridge was also the Saxon Bridge, the Danish Bridge, and the
Norman Bridge.
In course of time the river-wall was removed, bit by bit: its
foundations still lie under the pavement and the warehouses. The gate
was altered. I do not suppose there was much of the original structure
left when the East Saxons took possession of the City after a hundred
years of desertion and decay. But a gate of some kind there must always
have been. The breadth of the Bridge allowed, according to FitzStephen,
two carts to pass each other. That means about sixteen feet. Like the
very ancient stone bridges of Saintes and Avignon, the Bridge was from
sixteen to twenty feet broad. The river-gate stood at the south end of
Botolph Lane, some seventy feet east of the present Bridge: the second
Bridge--the first of stone--stood between the first and third, having
St. Magnus' Church on the north and St. Olave's on the south side;
together with its own chapel of St. Thomas on the Bridge itself, to
place it under the special protection of the saints most dear to London
hearts.
[Illustration: London Bridge, A.D. 1000]
The Bridge, and especially the south end of it, was a field of battle
whenever the way of war came near to London. The first glimpse, as we
have seen, which we catch of it is when Allectus and his forces crossed
the river by the Bridge to give battle to the legions of Asclepiodotus
on the Heath beyond the rising ground. A few hours later, on the same
day, their columns routed, their general dead, we see the defeated
troops once more flying across the narrow Bridge. There was no one to
lead them, or they could have held the Bridge against all comers; there
was no drawbridge to pull up, or they could have kept the Romans out by
that expedient. One wonders if all their officers were lying dead on
the field, with Allectus, for the troops, who were Franks for the most
part, seem to have left the Bridge without a guard, and the river-gate
wide open, while they melted into little companies, who ran about the
City pillaging the houses and murdering the unfortunate people.
By the Roman law the people were unarmed: no one could carry arms except
the soldiers. The law was a safeguard against rebellion; but it opened
the door to military revolts, and it destroyed the military spirit among
the civil population--always a most dangerous thing for a State. The
Roman legions poured into the City; they found Allectus' Franks at their
murderous work, and they cut them down. If it is true, as stated by the
historians, that they were all cut off to a man, London must have been a
horrible shambles.
The second glimpse of the Bridge is also that of a routed army flying
across the narrow way to seek shelter between the walls. It is in the
year 467. They are the Britons flying from their defeat in Kent. After
this there is silence--absolute silence, leaving not so much as a
whisper, a tradition, or a legend; the silence that can only mean
desertion--silence for a hundred and fifty years.
[Illustration: A Danish House]
When London reappears, it is in humble guise: the City has shrunk within
her ancient walls; and these have fallen into decay. Southwark no longer
exists. We learn that the Bridge has been repaired, because there is
easy communication with Canterbury. Yet in the Danish troubles there is
no fighting on or for the Bridge. Why? simply because there were no
defenders of the Bridge on the south. In 819 and in 857 the Danes
entered London and 'slaughtered numbers,' apparently without opposition.
In 872 they occupied London, apparently without opposition. We hear of
no siege, of no fighting on the Bridge; of no shelter behind the walls.
Yet there was a defence at York, at Reading, at Nottingham--behind the
walls. Why not in London? Because in London the walls, 5,500 yards in
length, had become too long to man, or to defend, or to repair. The
Danes ran into the City through the shattered gate; they leaped over the
broken wall. What happened to the people; what street fighting was
carried on, what slaughter, what plunder, what horrible treatment of
women--we may understand from the page of the historian Saxo relating
other sacks and sieges by the gentle Dane. As for the trade, the wealth,
the name and fame of London--they all perished together. It was a ruined
city, with a miserable population of craftsmen enslaved by the Dane,
that Alfred reconquered. The Bridge itself was broken down; the
settlements of the south were deserted: even the fishermen had left the
Thames above and below London, and sought for safety in the retired
creeks and safe backwaters along the coast of Essex. The London
fisherman sallied forth in his coracle from the marshes behind Canvey
Island, and from the slopes of Hadleigh. Alfred repaired the walls and
the Bridge and rebuilt the gates. Something like peace was restored to
the City and order to the country. Then trade, which welcomes the first
appearance of safety, began again. If the merchant feared the pirates of
the Foreland, he could march across the Bridge to Dover; or he could
land at Dover and march across Kent to the Bridge. Then the old
settlements on the south Causeway were rebuilt and new inns sprang up,
and Southwark began again.
A hundred years of rest from the 'army,' as the 'Chronicle' calls the
Danes, gave Southwark time to grow. It is spoken of by the Danish
historian as an 'emporium.' I understand from the use of this word that
the trade of London was carried on principally by way of Dover, because
the seas were swarming with pirates. Southwark was a halting-place and a
resting-place, such as Thorney had been of old.
The prosperity of the settlement, however, received another blow when
the Danes once more, mindful of their former victories, sailed up the
river with hope of again taking London. Southwark was defenceless. There
was never any wall about the place: its population was migratory. When
the enemy appeared the people of Southwark retreated across the Bridge.
The Danes landed, pillaged, and burned; they then went away. Some of the
people returned, especially the fishermen, whose huts were easily
repaired. When, however, the attacks became more frequent, and the Danes
appeared every year, Southwark was deserted. But in London itself they
were grievously disappointed; for their grandfathers had told them that
it was a feeble and a helpless place, perfectly incapable of resistance,
with walls through whose wide gaps a whole army could march; and they
fondly expected to find it in the same condition. But it had been
growing, unseen by them, in population and resource and power.
In the year 992 the City showed its strength in a manner which was
extremely startling to the Danes; for it equipped a great fleet, manned
the ships with stout-hearted citizens, sent the ships down the river,
met the Danish fleet, engaged them, and routed them with great
slaughter. Two years later they returned, eager for revenge--the revenge
which they vainly sought in six successive sieges. The army on this
occasion consisted of Norsemen and Danes in alliance, under the two
kings, Olaf of Norway and Swegen of Denmark. They were firmly resolved
to take the City: with their warriors they would attack it by land, with
their ships by water. They had no ladders; they had no knowledge of
mining; they had no battering-rams; they could, and doubtless did,
endeavour to break down the gates with trunks of trees; but the gates
were well manned and well defended. On the river-side one half of the
town kept open their communications; the other half were exposed to the
arrows of the sailors, but had arrows of their own. How long the siege
lasted I know not; the 'Chronicle,' all too brief, tells us only that
the enemy discovered that they could not prevail, and that they
withdrew.
[Illustration: SHIPS, BAYEUX TAPESTRY]
The appearance of a Danish or Norwegian fleet, whose ships were models
to King Alfred when he founded the English Navy, must not be gathered
from the drawings of the Bayeux tapestry, where the ships are
conventional in treatment. We have, fortunately, one actual surviving
specimen of a ship of King Olaf's time. It is the famous ship of
Gokstad, in Norway. Look at the two pictures on this and following page.
One is taken from the tapestry, the other is the Gokstad vessel. The
former carries about a dozen men, rather high out of the water, with
straight sides, and would certainly capsize. The latter is a long,
light, swift vessel, built for speed, and able to sail over quite
shallow water; she is constructed on lines which, for beauty or for
usefulness, cannot be surpassed even at the present day: she rides
lightly, drawing very little water. She is clinker built; the planks
overlying each other are fastened with iron bolts, riveted and clinched
on the inside. She is built of oak; her length from stem to stern, over
all, is 78 feet; her keel is 66 feet; her breadth is 16½ feet; her depth
is no more than 4 feet; the third plank from the top is twice as thick
as the others; she is pierced by portholes for as many oars. The ship is
pointed at both ends; she is steered by a rudder attached to the side of
the stern; on each side hang 16 shields; she carried 64 rowers, and
probably as many men besides. The decorations lavished on the ship were
profuse. The figure-head was gilt, the stern was gilt, the shields were
gilt; the ships were painted in long lines of bright colour--you can
see that in the ships of the Bayeux tapestry. The whole of the
vessel--bows, figure-head, gunwale, stern-post--were covered with
carvings; the sails were decorated with embroideries; the mast was gilt.
Verily the 'fleet shone as if it were on fire.'
[Illustration: A Viking Ship]
Such were the ships which came up, nearly a hundred in company, with
Olaf and Swegen. Low in the water they came, the oars sweeping in a
long, measured swish of the water: swiftly flying up the broad river,
the sunshine lighting up the colours and the gilding of the ships, and
the bright arms of the company on board. It was a company of tall and
strong men; young, every one, with long fair hair and blue eyes. From
the grey walls of the town, from the Bridge on the river, the citizens
saw the splendid array rushing up to destroy them if they could. At the
Bridge, the foremost stop: they go no farther; those behind cry
'Forward!' and those in front cry 'Back!' The Bridge would suffer none
to pass; and so, jammed together, perhaps lashed together, as when Olaf
was to meet his death five years later in his last splendid sea-fight,
they essayed to take the city by assault. They shot arrows with red-hot
heads over the walls, to strike and set light to the thatch; they shot
arrows at the citizens on the walls; they tried to scale the piles of
the Bridge. If they could get within the City, these splendid savages,
there would be slaughter and pillage, ravishing of women, firing of the
thatch, the roar of flames and the clashing of weapons, and next day
silence, long teams of slaves and of treasure lifted into the ships,
bows turned outward; and the fleet would leave behind it a London once
more desolate and naked and forlorn, as when the East Saxon entered
towards the end of the sixth century. It was a day of fate, and big with
destiny. Had the Danes succeeded, we know not what might have been the
history of London and of England.
When they were beaten off, the people of Southwark went back to their
homes, and the daily business of life was carried on as usual. We may
observe that if there had been a permanent settlement here--a town of
any importance--they would have built a wall to protect it. But there
was never any wall; the place could be approached by the Causeway or by
the river; no one ever at any time thought of protecting Southwark.
But now a worse time fell upon the place, as well as upon London. The
whole country, almost unresisting, was ravaged by the Danes: Swegen came
over and proved the English weakness, and saw that time would help him,
if he waited. Time did help him, and famine helped him as well.
In 1009 occurred the second siege of London, this time by Thurkitel, who
afterwards entered into the service of Ethelred. He ravaged Kent and
Essex, took up his winter quarters on the Thames, apparently at
Greenwich, and laid siege to the City--but in vain. It is of course
obvious that without ladders, mines, battering-rams, or wooden towers,
the City could never be taken. The people beat him off at every assault
with great loss. It seems as if the whole valour in England was at the
moment concentrated in London.
The third siege of London was in 1013, when Swegen returned. This time,
mindful of his former failure, and of Thurkitel's failure, he left his
ships at Southampton; he marched upon London by way of Winchester, which
he took on the way; but although he came up from the south, he did not
attack from the south, nor did he encamp on the south. The reason is
obvious: the Causeway was narrow; to fight on the Bridge was to engage a
mere handful of men; there was no place except that and the Causeway.
Swegen, therefore, passed over the ford of Westminster, and attacked the
walls on the north side. Within the City was Thurkitel, now in the
English service; by his help or counsel, the Londoners drove Swegen off
the field. He withdrew. But all England rapidly submitted to his arms;
therefore London, too, seeing that it was useless to hold out alone,
sent hostages and submitted. It is reported that they were terrified at
the threats of Swegen: he would cut off their hands and their feet; he
would tear out their eyes; he would burn and destroy--and so forth. But
these promises were the common garnish of besiegers; they no more
frightened the defenders of London at this time than they frightened the
defenders of any other city.
The end of Swegen, as everybody knows, was that St. Edmund of Bury
killed him for doubting his saintliness.
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP]
We now come to the three successive sieges by King Cnut. The expedition
with which he proposed to reduce London was far finer and more powerful
than that of Olaf and Swegen. The poetic description of it says that the
ships were counted by hundreds; that they were manned by an army among
whom there was never a slave, or a freeman son of a slave, or one
unworthy man, or an old man. Freeman asks what nobility meant if all
were nobles? A strange question for one so learned! The nobles of
Denmark were simply the conquering race; nobility consisted in free
birth, and in descent from the conquering race, not the conquered: it
was not necessarily a small caste; it might possibly include the larger
part of the people.
Cnut anchored off Greenwich and prepared for his siege. First of all, he
resolved that the Bridge should no longer bar the way. He therefore cut
a trench round the south of the Bridge, by means of which he drew some
of his ships to the other side of it. He then cut another trench round
the whole of the wall. In this way he hoped to shut in the City and cut
off all supplies: if he could not take the place by storm, he would
starve it out. There are no details of the siege, but as Cnut speedily
abandoned the hope of success and marched off to look after Edmund, his
investment of the City was certainly not a success.
He met Edmund and fought two battles with him; with what result history
has made us acquainted. He then returned and resumed the siege of
London. Edmund fought him again, and made him once more raise the siege.
When Edmund went into Wessex to gather new forces, Cnut began a third
siege, in which, also, 'by God's help,' he made no progress.
In twenty years, therefore, the City of London was besieged six times,
and not once taken.
Antiquaries have written a good deal on the colossal nature of the canal
constructed by Cnut; they have looked for traces of it in the south of
London before it was covered over by houses; they have gone as far
afield as Deptford in search of these traces; they have even found them;
and to the present day every writer who has mentioned the canal speaks
of it and thinks of it with the respect due to a colossal work. Freeman
himself called it a 'deep ditch.' How deep it was, how long it was, how
broad it was, I am going to explain.
It was in the year 1756 that the painstaking historian, William
Maitland, F.R.S., announced that he had been so fortunate as to light
upon the course of the long-lost trench of King Cnut.
He had found certain evidence, he said, of its course, in a direction
nearly east and west from the then 'New Dock' of Rotherhithe to the
river at the end of Chelsea Reach, through Vauxhall Gardens. The proofs
were, first, certain depressions in the ground; next, the discovery of
oaken planks and piles driven into the ground for what he thought was
the northern fence of the canal, near the Old Kent Road; and next a
report that, in 1694, when the wet dock of Rotherhithe was constructed,
a quantity of hazel, willow, and other branches were found pointing
northward, with stakes to keep them in position, forming a kind of water
fence, such as, it is said, is still in use in Denmark. It will be seen
that Mr. Maitland's theory has but a small basis of evidence, yet it
seems to have been generally accepted--partly, I suppose, because it was
so colossal.
The canal thus cut would actually be a little over four miles and a half
in length. Another writer, seeing the difficulties of so great a work,
suggests another course. He would start from the site of the New Dock,
Rotherhithe, and end on the other side of London Bridge, a course of
only three and three-quarter miles!
Let us ask ourselves why it should be a 'deep' ditch; why it should be a
long ditch; why it should be a broad ditch.
Wherever Cnut began his trench, whether at Rotherhithe or nearer the
Bridge, he would have the same preliminary difficulties to encounter:
that is to say, he would have to cut through the Embankment of the river
at either end, and he would have to cut through the Causeway in the
middle. In these cuttings he would perhaps have to take down two or
three houses, huts, or cabins, all deserted, because the people had all
run across the Bridge for safety at the first sight of the Danes, if
there were any people at the time living in Southwark--which I doubt.
We may, further, take it for granted that Cnut had officers of sense and
experience on whom he could depend for carrying out his canal in a
workmanlike manner. A people who could build such perfect ships would
certainly not waste time and labour in constructing a trench which would
be any longer or deeper or wider than was absolutely necessary.
[Illustration]
Now the shortest canal possible would be that in which he was just able
to drag his vessels round without destroying the banks. In other words,
if a circular canal began at C B, and if we drew an imaginary circle
round the middle of the canal, what was required was that the chord D F,
forming a tangent to the middle circle, should be at least as long as
the longest vessel. Now (see diagram)--
AD² - AE² = DE².
If _r_ is the radius, AD and 2_a_ the breadth BC, and 2_b_ the length of
the chord DF--
_r_² - (_r_ - _a_)² = _b_² ∴ _r_ = (_a_² + _b_²)/2_a_.
This represents the length of the radius in terms of the length and
breadth of the largest vessel in the fleet, and is therefore the
smallest radius possible for getting the ships through. Now, the ship of
Gokstad, already described, was undoubtedly one of the finest of the
vessels used by Danes and Normans. The poets certainly speak of larger
ships, but as a marvel. Nothing is said about Cnut bringing over ships
of very great size. Now, that vessel was 66 feet in length, considering
the keel, which is all we need consider; 16½ feet in breadth, and 4 feet
in depth. She drew very little water; therefore a breadth of canal less
than the breadth of the vessel was enough. Let us make the chord 70 feet
in length, so that _b_ = 35. Let us make the breadth of the canal 12
feet. Therefore 2_a_ = 12 or _a_ = 6 and _r_ = 105 feet very nearly.
Measuring, therefore, 105 feet on either side of London Bridge, we
arrive at a possible commencement of Cnut's work. That is to say, if he
made a semicircular canal, in that case the length of the canal would be
320 yards, which is certainly an improvement on four miles and a half,
or even three miles and three-quarters.
[Illustration: THE GOKSTAD SHIP]
There is, however, more to consider. Why should Cnut make a semicircle
when an arc would serve his turn? All he had to do was to draw an arc of
a circle with the radius just found, to clear any obstacles in the way
of approach to the Bridge, and use that arc for his canal. This is most
certainly what he did: I am quite certain he adopted this method,
because it was the only sensible thing to do. He would thus get off with
a canal about fifty yards long, of which the only difficulty would be
the cutting through the Embankment and the Causeway.
What would be the depth of the canal? Look at this section of the
Gokstad ship. With her breadth of sixteen feet, she had only four feet
in depth; without her company and crew, and their arms and provisions,
she would thus draw no more than a few inches--certainly not more than
eight inches or so. Freeman's deep canal therefore comes to eight inches
at the most. But there is still another consideration which lessened the
labour materially. The ground behind the Embankment was a little lower
than the river at high tide: the Danes, therefore, had only to construct
a low wooden containing-wall of timber on each side in order to make
their canal without excavating an inch. When that was done, the cutting
of the Embankment let in the tide and did the rest. In this simple
manner do we reduce Cnut's colossal work of a deep canal, four miles and
a half long, into a piece of construction and demolition which would
take a large body of men no more than a few hours.
If, however, there actually was any digging to be done, we must remember
that the ground was a level; that there were no stones or rocks in the
way, and that it consisted of a soft black _humus_, the result of ages
of successive growths of sedge and coarse grass, formerly washed twice a
day by the brackish waters of a tidal river. The object of the canal
once attained, the ships drawn back again, Cnut, of course, left the
place to be repaired by any who pleased. The broken Embankment let in
the tide; the broken Causeway cut off any approach to the river; but
Southwark was deserted. When things settled down a little, workmen were
sent across from London, and the broken places were repaired. Then all
traces of the canal disappeared.
Thirty-six years later, in 1052, Earl Godwine arrived at Southwark with
a fleet and an army. He had no difficulty in passing the Bridge; he
waited till flood-tide, and then sailed through 'on the south side.' It
is quite impossible to explain this statement, or to make it agree with
the difficulty felt by Cnut. The Bridge may have sustained some damage;
there may have been a drawbridge; or Godwine's ships may have been
smaller: one knows nothing. I merely state the fact as the Chronicler
gives it.
One more glimpse of the Bridge from Southwark before we pass on to more
modern times.
[Illustration: Ships of William the Conqueror]
After Hastings, William marched northwards. Arrived near London, he
advanced to Southwark, where he found the Bridge closed to him--closed,
I believe, by knocking away some of the upper beams. This, of course, he
expected; his friends within the City, of whom he had many, kept him
acquainted with the changing currents of popular opinion. It is commonly
stated that the citizens were terrified by the sight of Southwark in
flames at his command. Southwark in flames! A few fishermen's huts were
all that remained of the suburb, whose population since the time of the
_Pax Romana_ had been so precarious and so changeful. Five hundred years
of battle, war between kings and tribes, invasion and ravage by Dane and
Norseman, had not left of Southwark, once so beautiful a suburb,
anything more than these poor huts and ruins of huts. William's soldiers
burned them, because wherever a soldier of that period appeared, the
thatch always caught fire spontaneously. William saw the flames, and
regarded them not, any more than he regarded the flames that followed in
his track all the way from Senlac. He gazed across the river, and
remembered that twice had London defied all the strength of Swegen; that
three times had London beaten off the great King Cnut when all England
had surrendered; that in six sieges London had always been victorious;
he knew, because his friends in the City would allow no mistake on that
point, that the spirit of the citizens was as high now as it had been
then; that they still remembered with pride the defeat of Cnut; and that
not a few were anxious to treat William the Norman as they had treated
Cnut the Dane. One knows not, exactly, what things went on within the
walls; what exhortations, what wild talk, what faction fight; how the
citizens rolled, and surged, a mass of wild faces, about their Folk-mote
by St. Paul's. But of one thing we may be quite certain: that William
did not expect the citizens to be afraid of him; and that, in fact, they
were not afraid of him, whether he set fire to the huts of Southwark or
not; they were not afraid of William, whatever the historians say. As
for the Bridge, the old Roman Bridge, by this time there could hardly
have been a single pile remaining of the original structure; yet it was
constantly repaired.
We may restore to Norman London, therefore, not only the grey wall
rising out of the level ground, without any ditch or moat outside, but
also the Bridge of wooden piles with the transverse girders and beams
for additional security, so that the old Bridge contained a whole forest
of timbers like those which support the roof of an ancient hall. It was
continually receiving damage. In the year 1091, a mighty whirlwind blew
down a good part of London, houses and churches and all. It has been
assumed that the Bridge was also destroyed; but the 'Chronicle' is
silent on the subject. In 1092 there was a great fire in London; it is
again assumed that the Bridge was destroyed, but again the 'Chronicle'
is silent. In 1097, however, it is plainly stated that the Bridge had
been almost washed away, and that it was repaired.
[Illustration: BAYEUX TAPESTRY]
In 1136 the most destructive fire ever experienced by London, save that
of 1666, spread through the whole City, from London Bridge, which it
greatly damaged, all the way to St. Clement Danes on the west, and
Aldgate on the east. One wonders what ancient monuments--walls of Roman
churches, villas, and baths, still surviving halls and chambers of the
Forum--were destroyed in this fire; Saxon houses of the better sort,
with their great halls and courtyards; small Saxon churches of wood or
stone, with low towers and little windows. Possibly there was no great
loss: it was already seven hundred years since Augusta was deserted.
Roman remains must have been scanty; the City was chiefly built of wood,
with thatched roofs; the splendour of the latter centuries had not yet
commenced. The Bridge, however, was either wholly or in part destroyed.
It was repaired, because, fifty years later, FitzStephen, in his
description of the City, speaks of the citizens watching the water
sports from the Bridge. Indeed, the Bridge was now absolutely necessary
to the City. A hundred years of order in the City--with the seas cleared
of pirates, the Danes kept down, and merchants filling the river with
ships, and the quays with merchandise--crowded the Bridge all day long
with trains of packhorses, and the less frequent rude carts with broad
grunting wheels which would have quite taken the place of the horse but
for the bad roads. Southwark, during this period of rest, had become
once more a town, or at least a village. Still, along the Embankment
stood the thatched huts of the fisherfolk; but they were pushed farther
east and west every year, until Lambeth and Rotherhithe were their
quarters when the fish deserted the river and their occupation was gone.
The Roman inns were gone, but new ones were springing up in their
places. Bishops and abbots were looking on Southwark as a place of fine
air, open to every breeze and free from the noise and crowd of London;
ecclesiastical foundations were already springing into existence. In a
word, the settlements of the south, after four hundred years of ruin and
desertion, were once more beginning a new existence. The day when
William rode up to the south end of the Bridge, and looked across upon a
City that had not yet made up its mind about his reception, marked a new
birth for the long-suffering suburb of the Embankment and the Causeway.
A hundred years later still--in 1176--they began to build their Bridge
of Stone.
CHAPTER III
A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY
The earliest maps of South London are those of the sixteenth century.
But it is perfectly easy from them and from the historical facts to draw
a map of all that country lying between Deptford and Battersea which we
have agreed to call South London. Thus, to put the map into words, there
were buildings all along both sides of the Causeway as far as St.
George's Church; in the middle of the Causeway stood St. Margaret's
Church, facing St. Margaret's Hill; on the right-hand side, just under
the Bridge, was St. Olave's Church. The Bridge was thus protected on the
north by St. Magnus, on the south by St. Olave--two Danish saints--and
in the middle by the patron saint of its chapel, St. Thomas à Becket.
There were houses along the Embankment on either side, but more on the
west of the Causeway than on the east. A few houses were built already
on the low-lying ground near the Causeway; for instance, on the south
and south-west of St. Mary Overies. On the east of St. Olave's a single
straight lane with no houses ran across country to Bermondsey Abbey; on
the west of the Causeway another lane led to Kennington Palace, from
which another lane led to the Causeway from Lambeth and Westminster to
the Dover Road. That was the whole extent of Southwark.
The place was essentially a suburb. There were no trades or industries
in it, except that of fishing; the fishermen had their cottages dotted
about all along the Embankment; a few watermen lived here, but that was
perhaps later: other working men there were none, save the cooks and
varlets of the great houses, and the 'service' of the inns. Because the
air was fresh and pure, blown up daily with the tides; and because the
place was easy of access, by river, to Westminster and the Court, many
great men, ecclesiastics and nobles, had their town houses here: the
Bishop of Winchester, the Bishop of Rochester, the Prior of Lewes, the
Abbot of Hyde, the Abbot of Battle, the Earls of Surrey, Sir John
Fastolfe, also the Brandons. Also, because it was easy of access by
bridge and river to the City, the merchants brought their goods and
warehoused them here in the inns at which they stayed, while they went
across the river and transacted their business. It was a suburb which,
in modern times, would be described as needing no poor rate. Later on
there grew up, as we shall see, a class of the unclassed--a population
of rogues and vagabonds, thieves, and sanctuary birds.
The government of the place as a whole was difficult, or rather
impossible. There were several 'Liberties;' the Liberty of Bermondsey;
that of the Bishop of Winchester; that of the King; that of the Mayor.
The last contained the part of the Borough lying between St. Saviour's
Dock on the west and Hay's Dock on the east, with a southern limit just
including St. Margaret's Church. This very small district was called the
Gildable Manor: it was conceded by the King to the City of London in the
thirteenth century in order to prevent the place from becoming the home
and refuge of criminals from the City. As the other liberties remained
outside the jurisdiction of the City, the alleviation gained was not
very great: criminals still dropped across the river, finding shelter on
the Lambeth Marsh or the marsh between Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. It
was from this unavoidable hospitality to persons escaping from justice
that Southwark received a character which has stuck to it till the
present day. In the centuries which include the twelfth to the
fifteenth, however, South London, so far as it was populated at all,
was the residence of great lords and the place of sojourn for merchants
from the country. As yet the reputation of Southwark was spotless and
its dignity enviable. London itself had no such collection of palaces
gathered together so closely. As for the land, that lay low, but was
protected by the Embankment from the river. Many rivulets flowed slowly
across the misty meadows; many ponds lay about the flats; there was an
abundant growth of trees everywhere, so that parts of the land were dark
at midday by reason of the trees growing so close together. The rivulets
were pretty little streams; willows grew over them; alders grew beside
them; they were coloured brown by the peaty soil; on their banks grew
wild flowers--the marsh mallow, the anemone, the hedgehog grass, the
frogbit, the crowfoot, and the bitter-wort; orchards flourished in the
fat and fertile soil. The people had almost forgotten the special need
of their Embankment. Yet when, in the year 1242, the Embankment at
Lambeth was broken down, the river rushed in and covered six square
miles of country, including all that part which is now called Battersea.
Remember, however, that as yet there was not a single house upon the
whole of Lambeth Marsh, nor upon the whole of Bermondsey Marsh. The
houses began near what is now the south end of Blackfriars Bridge; they
faced the river, having gardens behind them. On the other side of the
Bridge the houses extended farther, going on nearly opposite to Wapping.
The place was well provided with prisons; every Liberty had its own
prison. Thus there were the Clink of the Winchester Liberty, that of the
Bermondsey Liberty, the 'White Lion' of Surrey, the King's Bench, and
the Marshalsea, all in the narrow limits we have laid down. And there
were also, for the delectation of the righteous and the terror of
evil-doers, the visible instruments for correction. In every parish
there was the whipping post--one in St. Mary Overy's churchyard, put up
after the time of the monks; one at St. Thomas's Hospital; there was the
pillory for neck and hands, generally with somebody on it, but the
pillory was movable; there was the cage--one stood at the south end of
the Bridge--women had to stand in the cage; there were stocks for feet
wandering and trespassing; there were pounds for stray animals.
Markets were held in the churchyard of St. Margaret's; in the precinct
of Bermondsey Abbey; and along the street called 'Long Southwark'--now
High Street--from the Bridge to St. Margaret's Hill. But we must not
suppose that the markets of Southwark presented the same crowded
appearance, and were carried on with the same noise and bustle, as those
of Chepe and Newgate on the other side.
Everything, in those days, was quiet and dignified in Southwark. The
Princes of the Church arrived and departed, each with his retinue of
chaplains and secretaries, gentlemen and livery. Kings and ambassadors
rode up from Dover through Long Southwark and across the Bridge. The
mayor and aldermen in new cloaks of red murrey and gold chains sallied
forth to meet the King returning from abroad. Cavalcades of pilgrims for
Canterbury, Compostella, Seville, Rome, and Jerusalem rode out of
Southwark when the spring returned; and every day there arrived and
departed long lines of packhorses laden with the produce of the country
and with things imported for sale in London City. Pilgrims, merchants,
travellers, all put up at the Southwark inns. The place was nothing but
a collection of inns; the ecclesiastics stayed here for a few weeks and
then went away; the great lords came here when they had business at
Court and then went away again; the merchants came and went: by itself
the place had, as yet, no independent life or character of its own at
all.
There were two Monastic Houses. Both were stately; both are full of
history. Let us consider the House of Bermondsey, because it is less
generally known than the other of St. Mary Overy or Overies.
[Illustration: The Monastery of Bermondsey]
The Abbey of St. Saviour, Bermondsey, was the Westminster of South
London. Like Westminster, Bermondsey stood upon a low islet in the midst
of a marsh; at the distance of half a mile on the north ran the river;
half a mile on the west was the Causeway; half a mile on the south was
the Dover road. It is significant of the seclusion in which the House
lay that the only road which connected it with the world was that lane
called Bermondsey or Barnsie or Barnabie Lane, which ran from the Abbey
to St. Olave's and so to London Bridge. It was not, like Westminster, a
place of traffic and resort. It lay alone and secluded, separated from
the noise and racket of life. When the marsh had been gradually drained
and the Embankment continued through Rotherhithe to Deptford and beyond
the Greenwich levels, the Abbey lands round the islet became extremely
fertile and wooded and covered with sheep and cattle.
The House was founded in the year 1182 by one Ailwin Childe, a merchant
of the City, an Alderman also and one of the ruling families of London.
He was the son of an elder Ailwin, who was a member of that 'Knighten
Guild' which, with all its members and all its property--the land which
now forms the Ward of Portsoken--went over to the Priory of the Holy
Trinity. Religion of a practical and real kind was therefore hereditary
in the family. The elder Ailwin became a monk, the younger founded a
monastery; his son, the third of the family of whom we know anything,
became the first Mayor of London, and remained Mayor for twenty-four
years--the rest of his life.
[Illustration: BERMONDSEY ABBEY]
The whole of history from the ninth to the fifteenth century is full of
a pathetic longing after a religious Order, if that could be found, of
true and proved sanctity. One Order after the other arises; one after
the other challenges respect for reputed holiness of a new and hitherto
unknown kind: in fact, it commands the respect of the people who always
admire voluntary privation of what they value so much--food and drink;
it receives endowments, gifts, foundations of all kinds; it then departs
from the ancient rule, and quickly loses its hold upon the people. This
is the simple history of Benedictine, Franciscan, Cistercian, and all
the rest. However, at the close of the eleventh century the Cluniac was
in the highest repute for a rigid Rule, strictly kept: and for an
austerity strictly enforced. It was a Cluniac House which Ailwin Childe
set up in Bermondsey, and which Earl de Warren, who also founded the
Cluniac House of Lewes, enriched.
[Illustration: GATEWAY OF BERMONDSEY ABBEY]
This Priory, with thirty-seven other Houses, was an Alien owing
obedience to the Abbot of Cluny. A large part of its revenues,
therefore, was sent out of the country, and it received its Priors from
abroad. In the reign of Henry the Fifth the growing dissatisfaction on
account of the Alien Priories came to a head, and they were all
suppressed, or at least cut off from obedience to the Mother Convent.
The Priory of Bermondsey was therefore raised to the dignity of an
Abbey, with an English Abbot, and so continued until the Dissolution.
The Abbey was one of the many places of pilgrimage dotted about round
London--places accessible in a single day's journey. Thus there were the
three shrines of Willesden, Muswell Hill, and Gospel Oak, each
possessing an image of the Virgin to which miraculous powers were
attributed. At Blackheath there was another holy shrine; at Bermondsey
there was a Holy Rood which was daily visited in the summer by pious
pilgrims from London. The Rood had been fished up from the Thames, and
no one knew its history; but the merit of a pilgrimage to the Abbey and
of prayers said before the shrine was considered very precious. It was,
moreover, an easy pilgrimage. A boat taken below the Bridge would take
the pilgrim over to the opposite shore in a few minutes, where a cross
standing before a lane leading out of 'Short Southwark' showed him the
way. It was but half a mile to the Abbey of St. Saviour and the Holy
Rood.
'Go,' writes John Paston in 1465 to his mother, 'visit the Rood of
North door and St. Saviour in Bermondsey among while ye abide in London;
and let my sister Margery go with you to pray to them that she may have
a good husband or she come home again.'
One can hardly expect that the Abbot of Cluny should resign this
valuable possession without a remonstrance. He made, in fact, the
strongest possible remonstrance. In 1457 he sent over three monks with
orders to lay the case before the King, and to invite his attention
especially to the papers showing the clear and indisputable right of the
Mother Convent to the House of Bermondsey. These monks, in fact, did
present their case to the King, with the documents. But no one heeded
them; they could hardly get a hearing; no one replied to their
arguments. This neglect was perhaps the cause why one of them died while
in this country. The other two went home again, having accomplished
nothing. One of them on the eve of their departure wrote a piteous
letter to the Abbot of St. Albans:--
For the rest, be it known to you, my Lord, that after having spent
four months and a half on our journey, and following our Right with
the most serene Lord the King and his Privy Council, we have
obtained nothing: nay, we are sent back very disconsolate, deprived
of our Manors, our Pensions alienated, and, what is still worse, we
are denied the obedience of all our Monasteries which are 38 in
number: nor did our Legal Deeds, nor the Testimonies of your
Chronicles avail us anything, and at length, after all our pleading
and expenses, we return home moneyless, for in truth, after paying
for what we have eaten and drunk, we have but five crowns left, to
go back about 260 leagues. But what then? We will sell what we have:
we will go on: and God will provide. Nothing else occurs to write to
your Paternity: but that as we entered England with joy, so we
depart thence with sorrow: having buried one of our Companions--viz.
the Archdeacon, the youngest of our company. May he rest in Peace!
Amen.
There is not at the present moment a single stone of this stately House
visible, though there were many remains above ground one hundred years
ago. It is a pity, because there is the association of two Queens, not
to speak of many great Lords of state Functions, and of Parliaments,
connected with this House secluded in the Marsh.
The first of the two Queens is Katharine of Valois, widow of Henry the
Fifth. The story is the most romantic, perhaps, of all the stories
connected with our line of sovereigns and Queens and Royal Princes. It
is not a new story, and yet it is not so well known that any apology is
needed for telling it once more.
Henry died August 31, 1422. His widow, Katharine, began to live in the
seclusion fitted for her sorrow and her widowhood. Among her household,
the office of Clerk to the Wardrobe was filled by a young and handsome
Welshman named Owen Tudor, or Theodore. He was the son of a plain Welsh
gentleman of slender means, if any, who was in the service of the Bishop
of Chester. He distinguished himself at Agincourt in the following of
some nobleman unknown. It has been said, with singular ignorance of the
time, that he was a private soldier--that is, a man with a pike or a
bow, dressed in a leather jerkin which the men threw off when the battle
began. The opportunities for a common soldier to distinguish himself in
such an action were few, nor do we ever hear of a king raising a man
from the ranks, as Henry raised Owen Tudor, to the post of Esquire to
the Body. It is possible, but most improbable, that Owen Tudor was
regarded as a common soldier: since his father was a gentleman in the
service of the Bishop of Chester, he himself would go to war as a
gentleman in the service and wearing the livery of some noble lord.
In this way, however, his promotion began. When the King married, Owen
Tudor was attached to the household of the Queen. After the death of
Henry he accompanied the Queen and remained in her service as Clerk to
the Wardrobe. In this office he had to buy whatever was wanted by the
Queen--her silk, her velvet, her cloth of gold. He was therefore brought
into much closer and more direct relation with the Queen than other
officers of the household. He pleased her by his appearance, his
accomplishments, and his manners. Tradition says that he danced very
well. There is no reason to inquire by what attractions or
accomplishments he pleased. The fact remains that he did please the
Queen, and that so much that she consented to a secret marriage with
him. It was a dangerous step for this Welsh adventurer to take: it was a
step which would cover the Queen with dishonour should it become known.
That the widow of the great and glorious Henry, chief captain of the
age, should be able to forget her husband at all; should be capable of
union with any lower man; should ally her royal line with that of a man
who could only call himself gentleman after the fashion of Wales: would
certainly be considered to bring dishonour on the King, the royal
family, and the country at large.
The marriage was not found out for some years. The Queen must have been
most faithfully and loyally served, because children cannot be born
without observation. Owen Tudor must have conducted matters with a
discretion beyond all praise. No doubt the ordinary members of the
household knew nothing and suspected nothing, because several years
passed before any suspicion was awakened. Three sons and one daughter,
in all, were born. The eldest, Edmund of Hadham, was so called because
he was born there; the second, Jasper, was of Hatfield; the third, Owen,
of Westminster; the youngest, Margaret, died in infancy.
Suspicions were aroused about the time of the birth of Owen, which took
place apparently before it was expected and without all the precautions
necessary, in the King's House at Westminster. The infant was taken as
soon as born to the monastery of St. Peter's, secretly. It is not likely
that the Abbot received the child without full knowledge of his
parents. He did take the child, however; and here the little Owen
remained, growing up in a monastery, and taking vows in due time. Here
he lived and here he died, a Benedictine of Westminster.
It would seem as if Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, heard some whisper or
rumour concerning this birth, or was told something about the true
nature of the Queen's illness, for he issued a very singular
proclamation, warning the world, generally, against marrying Queen
dowagers, as if these ladies grew on every hedge. When, however, a year
or so afterwards, the fourth child, Margaret, was born, Humphrey learned
the whole truth: the degradation, as he thought it, of the Queen, who
had stooped to such an alliance, and the humble rank and the audacity of
the Welshman. He took steps promptly. He sent Katharine with some of her
ladies to Bermondsey Abbey, there to remain in honourable confinement:
he arrested Owen Tudor, a priest--probably the priest who had performed
the marriage--and his servant, and sent all three to Newgate.
All three succeeded in breaking prison, and escaped. At this point the
story gets mixed. The King himself, we are told, then a lad of fifteen,
sent to Owen commanding his attendance before the Council. Why did they
not arrest him again? Owen, however, refused to trust himself to the
Council--was not Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, one of them? He asked for
a safe-conduct. They promised him one by a verbal message. Where was he,
then, that all these messages should be sent backwards and forwards? I
think he must have been in Sanctuary. He refused a verbal message, and
demanded a written safe-conduct. This was granted him, and he returned
to London. But he mistrusted even the written promise; he would not face
the Council: he took refuge in the Sanctuary of Westminster, where they
were afraid to seize him. And here for a while he remained. It is said
that they tried to draw him out by sending old friends who invited him
to the taverns outside the Abbey Precinct. But Owen would not be so
drawn. He knew that Duke Humphrey would make an end of him if he could.
He therefore remained where he was. I think that he must have had some
secret understanding with the King; for one day, learning that Henry
himself was with the Council, he suddenly presented himself and pleaded
his own cause. The mild young king, tender on account of his mother,
would not allow the case to be pursued, but bade him go free.
He departed; he made all haste to get out of an unwholesome air: he made
for Wales. Here the hostility of Duke Humphrey pursued him still: he was
once more arrested, taken to Wallingford, and placed in the Castle there
a prisoner. From Wallingford he was transferred again to Newgate, he and
his priest and his servant. Once more they all three broke prison,
'foully' wounding a warder in the achievement of liberty, and got back
to Wales, choosing for their residence the mountainous parts into which
the English garrisons never penetrated.
When the King came of age Owen Tudor was allowed to return, and was
presented with a pension of £40 a year. It is remarkable, however, that
he received no promotion, or rank; that he was never knighted; and that
the title of Esquire was the only one by which he was known. It
certainly seems as if the claim of Owen Tudor to be called a gentleman
was not recognised by the King or the heralds. Perhaps Welsh gentility
was as little understood by these Normans as Irish royalty--yet, so far
as length of pedigree goes, both Welsh and Irish were very superior to
Normans.
The two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were placed under the charge of
Katharine de la Pole, Abbess of Barking, and sister of the Earl of
Suffolk. When the King came of age he remembered his half-brothers:
Edmund was made Earl of Richmond, Jasper Earl of Pembroke; both ranked
before all other English Earls. Edmund was afterwards married to
Margaret Beaufort, who as Countess of Richmond was the foundress of
Christ's and St. John's Colleges, Cambridge. Her son, as everybody
knows, was Henry VII.
As for Owen Tudor, that gallant adventurer, who began so well on the
field of battle, ended as well, fighting, as he should, for his step-son
and King, under the badge of the Red Rose. When the Civil Wars began he
joined the King's forces, though he was then nearer seventy than sixty.
He fought at Wakefield; he pursued the Yorkists to Mortimer's Cross,
where another fight took place. The Lancastrians were defeated. Owen was
taken prisoner, and was cruelly beheaded on the field. It was right and
just that he should so fight and should so die. He survived his Queen
twenty-four years.
The unfortunate Katharine, whose _mésalliance_ gave us the strongest
sovereigns we have ever had over us, did not long survive the disgrace
of discovery. As to public knowledge of the fact, one cannot learn how
widely it was extended. Probably it grew by degrees: chroniclers speak
of it without reserve, and when the sons grew up and were acknowledged
by the King there was no pretence at concealment. To be the son of a
French Princess and a Welsh gentleman was not, after all, a matter for
shame or concealment. Katharine carried down to the Abbey a disorder
which she calls of long standing and grievous. It killed her in less
than a year after her imprisonment among the orchards and meadows of the
Precinct. It is said that her remorse during her last days was very
deep; not for her second marriage, but for having allowed her
accouchement of the King to take place at Windsor, a place against which
she was warned by the astrologer. 'Henry of Windsor shall lose all that
Henry of Monmouth shall win.' Alas! had Henry of Windsor been Henry of
Monmouth himself, he would have lost all there was to lose. Could there
be a worse prospect, had Katharine understood the dangers, of
hereditary disease? On the one side the grandson of a leper and the son
of a consumptive; on the other side, the grandson of a madman and a
Messalina.
[Illustration: ST. OLAVE, SOUTHWARK]
Katharine dictated her will a few days before her death. She asks for
masses for her soul: for rewards for her servants: for her debts to be
paid. And she says not one word about her children by Owen Tudor. She
confesses by this silence that she is ashamed. She confesses by this
silence that, being a Queen, and of a Royal House, she ought not in her
widowhood to have been mated with any less than a King.
'I trustfully,' she says in the preamble, addressing her son the King,
'and am right sure, that among all creatures earthly ye best may and
will best tender and favour my will, in ordaining for my soul and body,
in seeing that my debts be paid and my servants guerdoned, and in tender
and favourable fulfilment of mine intent.' The words are full of queenly
dignity; but--where is the mention of her children? Perhaps, however,
she knew that the King would provide for them.
Another Queen died here: the Queen 'to whom all griefs were
known'--Elizabeth Woodville. It is not easy to feel much sympathy with
this unfortunate woman, yet there are few scenes of history more full of
pathos and of mournfulness than that in which her boy was torn from her
arms; and she knew--all knew--even the Archbishops, when they gave their
consent, knew--that the boy was to be done to death. When one talks of
Queens and their misfortunes, it may be remembered that few Queens have
suffered more than Elizabeth Woodville. In misfortune she sits apart
from other Queens, her only companions being Mary Queen of Scots and
Marie Antoinette. Her record is full of woe. But in that long war it
seems impossible to find one single character, man or woman--unless it
is King Henry--who is true and loyal. All--all--are perjured,
treacherous, cruel, self-seeking. All are as proud as Lucifer. Murder is
the friend and companion of the noblest lord; perjury walks on the other
side of him; treachery stalks behind him: all are his henchmen.
Elizabeth met perjury and treachery with intrigue and plot and
counter-plot: she was the daughter of her time. She was accused of being
privy to the plots of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck: she was more
Yorkist than her husband; she hated the Red Rose long after the Red and
the White were united by her daughter and Henry the Seventh. That she
was suspected of these intrigues shows the character she bore. We must
make allowance: she was always in a false position; Edward ought not to
have married her; she was hated by her own party; she was compelled in
the interests of her children to be always on the defensive; and in her
conduct of defence she was the daughter of her age. These things,
however, deprive her, somewhat, of the pity which we ought to feel for
so many misfortunes.
[Illustration: 'LE LOKE']
She, too, had to retire to the seclusion of Bermondsey, where she could
sit and watch the ships go up and down, and so feel that the world, with
which she had no more concern, still continued. It has been suggested
that she retired voluntarily to the Abbey. Such a retreat was not in
the character of Elizabeth Woodville, so long as there was a daughter
or a kinsman left to fight for. Like Katharine of Valois, she made an
end not without dignity. Witness the following clause in her will:--
_Item._ Whereas I have no worldly goods with which to do the Queen's
Grace, my dearest daughter, a pleasure, neither to reward any of my
children, according to my heart and mind, I beseech God Almighty to
bless her Grace with all her noble Issue, and, with as good a heart
and mind as may be, I give her Grace aforesaid my blessing and all
the aforesaid my children.
In this chapter it has been my endeavour to restore an ecclesiastical
foundation which has somehow dropped out of history and become no more
than a name. If this were a history of South London it would be
necessary to devote an equal space to other houses; to the churches and
to the two ancient hospitals 'Le Loke' and St. Thomas's. It is
impossible, even in these narrow limits, to speak of the religious
foundations of South London without mention of the other great House,
more ancient than that of Bermondsey. Few Americans who visit London
leave it without paying a pilgrimage to the venerable and beautiful
church which glorifies Southwark. There were great marriages and great
functions held in the Church of St. Mary Overy: Gower, that excellent
poet whom the professors of literature praise and nobody reads, died and
lies buried in this church; it was the church of the playerfolk: here
lie buried Edmund Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, and
Philip Henslow. Here lie buried, in that 'sure and certain hope' which
the Church allows even to them, the rufflers, 'roreres' and sinners of
Bank Side and Maiden Lane; the brawlers and the topers and the strikers
of the Bear Garden and the Bull Baiting. Here were tried notable
heretics: Hooper and Rogers, and many more, while Gardiner and Bonner
thundered and bullied. From this church the martyrs went forth to meet
the flames. The people of Southwark needed not to cross the river in
order to learn such lessons as the martyrdoms had to teach them. The
stake was set up in St. George's Fields, where they could read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest the undesigned teaching of Bonner and his
friends.
It is the custom of historians to point to the martyrdom of Cranmer and
the Bishops as the chief cause of the overwhelming Protestant reaction.
So great was the horror, they say, of the people at the death of the
Archbishop, that the whole nation was roused--and so on. For myself I
like to think that, as the people would feel now, so, _mutatis
mutandis_, they felt then. Was there any such mighty horror felt in
London when Cranmer died in Oxford? Not so much horror, I believe, as
when from their own ranks, from their own houses, from their own
families, men and women and boys were taken out and led to execution.
Violent deaths--by beheading, by hanging, by the flames--were witnessed
every day. How many were hanged by Henry VIII.? The deaths of nobles did
not touch the people; they looked on unmoved while the most innocent and
most holy men in the country--the blameless Carthusians--suffered death
as traitors; they looked on at the death of Sir Thomas More; when
witches were burned they looked on. It was when they saw their own
brothers, sisters, cousins, dragged out and put to death without a
cause, that they began to doubt and to question. Nay, I think it was not
the manner of death that affected them, because burning was a thing so
common: it was the sentence itself passed on honest and godly folk, and
the behaviour of the people at their death. Tender women chained to the
stake suffered without a groan, only praying loudly till death came;
people remembered, they recalled with tears afterwards, how the martyr
and his wife and his children knelt on the ground for one last prayer
before the stake; they remembered how the sufferer stepped into his
place with a smiling face and welcomed the fiery lane that led him to
the place where he longed to be: was this, they asked, the courage
inspired of God, or of the devil? They remembered how another washed
his hands in the mounting and roaring flames; how the clouds parted at
the prayer of another, and the smiling sun of heaven shone upon him; and
it was even like unto the countenance of the Blessed Lord. The sight and
the remembrance of the sufferings of their own folk, not the execution
at a distance of an Archbishop and a few Bishops, moved the people and
remained with them, and enveloped the Church of Rome with a hatred from
which it has not wholly recovered even in these latter days.
The foundation of St. Thomas's Hospital belongs to both the great Houses
of Southwark.
It was the general Rule in all religious Houses that there should be a
provision for the poor, the sick, and those who were orphans. St. Mary
Overy had a hospital adjoining the priory which was an almshouse
certainly, and probably an orphanage as well. It was under the care of
the Archdeacon of Surrey. Attached to St. Saviour's was an almonry
intended for the same purpose. But the Abbey was entirely secluded: it
lay far from any highway; there were no houses, except farm buildings
for the monastery's labourers; there were no poor, no sick, and no
orphans. So that, when the great fire of 1213 destroyed Southwark and
crossed the river by the Bridge into London, the monks of St. Saviour's
bethought them that to make their almonry useful it would be well to
rebuild it half a mile to the west, on the Southwark Causeway. This was
done, and the Hospital of St. Mary was united with it, and the new
foundation which Bishop Peter de Rupibus most liberally endowed was
named after St. Thomas. At first it was not a hospital especially for
the sick, as St. Bartholomew's and St. Mary of Spittal. It was a
fraternity like St. Catherine's by the Tower, for brethren and sisters
under a master, with bedesmen and women, and a school, and an infirmary;
but not, as St. Bartholomew's was from the beginning altogether, only a
hospital for the sick.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, FROM
THE SOUTH]
As for the religious life of the place, it was in most respects like
that of London. There were no houses for Friars, but the Friars came
across the river _en quête_, 'mumping,' on their begging rounds; and in
the taverns were put up boxes for the contributions of the faithful
(towards the end these contributions fell off sadly). There was plenty
of life and colour in the streets: serving men in bright liveries of the
great Houses--the Bishops of Winchester and Rochester, the Abbots of
Lewes, Hyde, and Battle--went about their errands; there were Gilds,
notably that of St. George, which had their processions and their days:
there were crosses and images of saints, at which the passer-by doffed
his hat--in the wall of Lambeth Palace was an image of St. Thomas à
Becket overlooking the river, to which every waterman and bargee paid
reverence.
Some of the punishments of the time were ordered by the Church. There
was whipping, but not the terrible murderous flogging of the eighteenth
century; there were hangings, but not for everything. Mostly to the
credit of the Church, punishment was designed not to crush a man, but to
shame him into repentance, and to give him a chance of retrieving his
character. A man might be set in the stocks, or put in pillory, and so
made to feel the heinousness of his offence. This punishment was like
that which is inflicted on a schoolboy: the thing done, the boy is taken
back to favour. The eighteenth century branded him, imprisoned him,
transported him, made a brute of him, and then hanged him. Did a woman
speak despitefully of authority? Presumptuous quean! Set her up in the
cage besides the stoulpes of London Bridge, that everyone should see her
there and should ask what she had done. After an hour or two take her
down; bid her go home and keep henceforth a quiet tongue in her head.
This leniency was only for offences moral and against the law. For
freedom of thought or doctrine there was Bishop Bonner's better way. And
it was a way inhuman, inflexible, unable to forgive.
CHAPTER IV
THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON
All round London, like beads upon a string, were dotted Royal Houses,
Palaces, and Hunting Places. On the north side were Westminster,
Whitehall, St. James's, Kensington, Shene, Theobald's, Hatfield,
Cheshunt, King's Langley, Hunsdon, Havering-atte-Bower, Stepney, the
Tower; on the south side were Kennington, Eltham, Greenwich, Kew,
Hampton, Windsor, a tradition attaching to Streatham, and the House of
Nonesuch, built by Henry VIII. at Cheam. Most of these royal houses are
now clean forgotten. Eltham preserves some ruins left of Edward IV.'s
buildings; it still shows the moat and the old bridge, and the line of
its former wall; but tradition, which has quite forgotten its memories
of the Edwards and the Tudors, describes it as the Palace of King John.
The sailors--now, alas! also gone--have deprived Greenwich of Edward VI.
and Elizabeth. Theobald's is gone altogether, Nonesuch is wholly cleared
away. Of Kennington, of which I have to speak in this place, not one
stone remains upon another; not a vestige is above ground; the people on
the spot know of no remains underground; its very memory is gone and
forgotten: there is not even a tradition left, although part of the
ruins were still standing only a hundred years ago.
The reason for this oblivion is not far to seek. The palace was
deserted; it was pulled down before 1607--Camden says that even then
there was not a stone remaining--there was not a single house within
half a mile in every direction. There was no one, when the last stones
had been carted away, left to remember or to remind his children that
there had been a palace on this spot. Another house was built here, but
no tradition attached to it. Two hundred years passed, and then came the
destruction of the second house; in 1745 there was not even a cottage
near the spot. This being so, it is not difficult to understand why the
site was forgotten.
[Illustration: THE LONG BARN]
The moat remained, however, and apparently some of the substructures; a
building of stone and thatch, part of the offices of the palace, also
stood. They called it the 'Long Barn,' and when the distressed
Protestants were brought over here in 1700 as many as the place would
hold were crammed into the Long Barn. Market gardens lay all over the
country between Kennington Road and Lambeth, and on the site of the
palace there was not a single person left who could carry on the
tradition of the king's house that once stood here. Roque, the map-maker
of 1745, knew nothing about it. In 1795 the Long Barn was taken down. At
the beginning of the century houses began to rise here and there;
streets began to be formed: at least three streets cross the gardens and
the site of the palace; but there is not one tradition of a place which,
as we shall see, was full of history for six hundred years. 'Is this
fame?' might ask the king who crowned himself here, the king who died
here, the king who was brought up here, the kings who kept their
Christmas feast here, the kings who here received their brides, held
Parliament, and went out a-hunting.
The king who crowned himself here was Harold Harefoot, son of Cnut--that
is to say, it was at 'Lambeth,' and there was no other house at Lambeth.
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP]
The king who died in this house was that young Dane who appears to have
been an incarnation of the ideal Danish brutality. He dragged his
brother's body out of its grave and flung it into the Thames; he
massacred the people of Worcester and ravaged the shire; and he did
these brave deeds and many others all in two short years. Then he went
to his own place. His departure was both fitting and dramatic. For one
so young it showed with what a yearning and madness he had been
drinking. He went across the river--there was, I repeat, no other house
in Lambeth except this, so that it must have been here--to attend the
wedding of his standard-bearer, Tostig the Proud, with Goda, daughter of
the Thane Osgod Clapa, whose name survives in his former estate of
Clapham. A Danish wedding was always an occasion for hard drinking,
while the minstrels played and sang and the mummers tumbled. When men
were well drunken the pleasing sport of bone throwing began: they threw
the beef bones at each other. The fun of the game consisted in the
accident of a man not being able to dodge the bone which struck him, and
probably killed him. Archbishop Alphege was thus killed. The soldiers
had no special desire to kill the old man: why couldn't he enter into
the spirit of the game and dodge the bones? As he did not, of course he
was hit, and as the bone was a big and a heavy bone, hurled by a
powerful hand, of course it split open his skull. One may be permitted
to think that perhaps King Hardacnut, who is said to have fallen down
suddenly when he 'stood up to drink,' did actually intercept a big beef
bone which knocked him down; and as he remained comatose until he died,
the proud Tostig, unwilling to have it said that even in sport his king
had been killed at his wedding, gave out that the king fell down in a
fit. This, however, is speculation.
Forty years after this event, when Domesday Book was compiled, the place
was in the possession of a London citizen, Theodric by name and a
goldsmith by trade. It was still a royal manor, because the goldsmith
held it of Edward the Confessor. It was then valued at three pounds a
year. It is impossible to arrive at the meaning of this valuation. We
may compare it with that of other estates, with the rental and price of
other lands, with the cost of provisions, and with the wages and pay of
servants and officers; and when we have done all, we are still very far
from understanding the value of money then or at any subsequent time.
There are, you see, so many points which the writers on the value of
money do not take into consideration. There is the price of bread; but
then there were so many kinds of bread--wheaten bread, barley bread, oat
bread, rye bread; and how much bread did a family of the working class
consume? Flesh, fish, fowl, but how much of either did the working
classes enjoy? Rent? But on the farms the "villains" paid no rent.
There is, in a word, not only the market prices that have to be
considered, but the standard of comfort--always a little higher than the
practice--and the daily relations of the demand to the supply. So that
when we read that this manor of Kennington was worth three pounds a year
we are not advanced in the least. As most of the land was still marshy
and useless, we may understand that the value was low.
We next hear of Kennington in 1189, when King Richard granted it on
lease, or for life, to Sir Robert Percy with the title of Lord of the
Manor. Henry III. came here on several occasions; here he held his
Lambeth Parliament. He kept his Christmas here in 1231. Great was the
feasting and boundless the hospitality of this Christmas, at which this
king lavished the treasures of the State.
The site of the palace is indicated in the accompanying map. If you walk
along the Kennington Road from Bridge Street, Westminster, you presently
come to a place where four roads meet, Upper Kennington Lane on the
left, and Lower Kennington Lane on the right; the road goes on to the
Horns Tavern and Kennington Park. On the right-hand side stood the
palace. In the year 1636 a plan of the house and grounds was executed;
but by that time the mediæval character of the place was quite
forgotten. It was a square house, probably Elizabethan; the home of King
Henry III. at some time or other had been completely taken away. The
site of the moat, however, was left, and there was still standing the
'Long Barn.' The only way to find out what the palace really was in the
thirteenth or fourteenth century is to compare it with another palace
built under much the same conditions, and intended to serve the same
purpose. Fortunately there still stand, some miles to the east of
Kennington, at Eltham, important remains of such a contemporary palace,
with a description of the place as it was before it was allowed to fall
into ruins.
We are not at this moment concerned with the history of Eltham.
Sufficient to note that it was a great and stately place for five
hundred years and more; that it passed through the hands of Bishop Odo;
of the Mandevilles; of the De Vescis; of Bishop Anthony Bec; and of
Geoffrey le Scrope of Masham. As a royal residence its history begins
with Henry III., who kept his Christmas here in 1270, and ends with
Elizabeth, who came over here occasionally from Greenwich. Here
Isabella, wife of Edward II., gave birth to a son, John of Eltham. The
greatest builder at Eltham was Edward IV.
The house in 1649, fifty years after Elizabeth had visited it, is said
to have contained a chapel, a banqueting-hall, rooms on the ground floor
and first floor called the King's side and the Queen's side. There were
buildings and rooms of all kinds round the courtyard. The number of
chambers in all was very great, and it is said, further, that the large
courtyard covered a whole acre in extent. Such an area would give about
two hundred and ten feet to each side of a square. This would be large
for a college at Oxford or Cambridge. It would cover about the same area
as that of New Palace Yard. There were, however, other courts; four
courts in all are spoken of. The lesser courts were used for the
'service,' the kitchens, butteries, pantries, stables, rooms for the
servants, the barracks for the men-at-arms who accompanied the king, the
grooms, armourers, makers and menders, bakers and brewers, cooks and
scullions, and the women servants, and the wives and the children. A
strong stone wall, battlemented, with loopholed turrets, surrounded the
palace; a broad and deep moat defended the wall; the bridge which
crossed the moat had a drawbridge; the gate had its portcullis. The
palace, in a word, was a fortress, for there was never a king in England
who would have dared to keep his court, or to sleep, in an unfortified
manor house, or outside a fortress--certainly not Henry III. or Edward
IV.--unless, of course, it was on the tented field in the midst of his
army.
The existing remains of the palace correspond to this description. There
is the moat, deep and broad; there is the bridge, the drawbridge gone.
Within, the most important ruin is that of Edward IV.'s banqueting hall.
This is a most noble chamber, with a roof of oak as perfect as when it
was built; the two magnificent bays remain, with the double row of
windows. It would be difficult to find a finer banqueting hall in the
whole country than that of Eltham. In the grounds, the traces of the
wall and those of other buildings ought to make it possible, with a very
little excavation, to trace a plan of the whole house.
[Illustration: Gateway in the Hall, Eltham Palace]
As was Eltham, so was Kennington. Both places were built for the same
purpose about the same time. Both were castles erected on a plain
without the aid of hillock, mound or running stream--unless the moat at
Kennington was fed by one of the many streams of South London. The plan
of 1636 shows approximately the line of the wall; the stream or the
ditch marks the course of the moat; the 'Long Barn' on the east side of
the palace belonged to the 'service'--it was kitchens, stables, armoury,
brewery, or granary. The house itself had its principal entrance on the
north. This is certain, because all the supplies were brought by what
is now Kennington Road either from Westminster Ferry or from Southwark.
A gate on this side simplified the transference which took place when
the court moved from one place to another; when everything--bedding,
blankets, utensils of all kinds, plate, _batterie de cuisine_, the
workmen with their tools, the wardrobe of king and queen--was packed up
and carried from Westminster over the ferry to Kennington, or from
Kennington to Woolwich. Provisions and goods sent up from the City were
also landed at Stangate, Lambeth, so as to get as short a land journey
as possible. For these reasons I place the principal gate at the north.
I have seen it stated--I know not with what truth--that the people of
the streets now on the site have found substructures beneath their
houses. If so, one would expect, what one cannot find, some tradition to
account for the existence of these stone vaults.
Such was the vanished Palace of Kennington: a fortress of the Lambeth
Marsh, a place for keeping Christmas, a royal residence; now completely
vanished.
Two other royal houses there were in South London, neither of which can
be compared with Kennington. Greenwich, for instance, which appears in
history from the time of King Alfred. Edward I., Henry IV., Henry V.,
Edward IV., Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth--all had
more or less to do with Greenwich. When Henry VIII. completed his
buildings here he deserted Eltham; he left, that is, the mediæval
fortress for the modern house. His Greenwich was not fortified. The
accompanying view of it shows that it possessed none of the
characteristics of the ancient residence, half castle, half manor house.
Greenwich, however, before Henry rebuilt it, was a fortified castle. Had
we a plan of Greenwich of the fourteenth century it would most certainly
resemble those of Eltham and of Kennington, with certain small
differences, just as one Benedictine monastery resembles in its general
disposition another Benedictine monastery, and one Norman castle in
general terms, and allowing for the site, resembles another.
The other house of which I have spoken is that of Nonesuch. This house
was not a reconstruction and an adaptation with much of the ancient
work: it was newly built and furnished entirely by Henry VIII. There was
no suspicion of battlements, no pretence at a fortification; the house
stood open and unprotected save by the order maintained by the strong
king. It was not beautiful according to our ideas; nor was it what we
now call a Tudor house; it bears upon it every mark of the builder's
interference with the architect. The outside walls of Nonesuch were
decorated by certain bas-reliefs representing subjects from the heathen
mythology. The house was pulled down by the Duchess of Cleveland, to
whom Charles II. gave it. Nonesuch, however, has nothing to do with
Kennington, and must not detain us.
[Illustration: The Ancient Royal Palace at Greenwich]
Let us next consider what it means when the king is said to have kept
his Christmas at a place.
During the festival--for twenty days--he kept open house, nominally.
That is to say, all comers received food and drink: his guests, one
supposes, were bidden. Every day during the festival the king sat at the
feast wearing his crown and his robes of royal state. Richard II., the
most prodigal of all princes that ever lived, entertained every day no
fewer than ten thousand persons at his palace. What the number was at
Christmas no one knows. In addition to the ordinary following of the
court--a huge army of chaplains, canons, scribes, secretaries, gentlemen
archers, and servants--there were the bishops and abbots, the peers and
barons, who came to the Christmas feast, each attended by his own
following of knights and esquires and men in livery. For the
entertainment of this enormous company what a huge establishment would
be needed! The organisation was complete; everything was in departments,
each under the yeomen: the chambers, the wardrobe, the kitchens, the
stables, the cellars. Yet what an army in each department! Then, since
at Christmas time we look for amusement, there was the Master of the
Revels, and with him an extensive and variegated following; among them
were all those who played on the different instruments of music, those
who sang, the buffoons, tumblers, and mummers, the dancing girls. It was
in the time of Henry III. that these performances were brought over for
the delectation of the English court--perhaps with the pious intention
of showing what joys and attractions awaited the Crusaders in the Holy
Land itself.
Hall's account of the festivities of a Christmas a hundred and fifty
years later than the time of Richard II. is as follows:--
'The Kyng this yere kept the feast of Christmas at Grenewiche, wher was
suche abundance of viands served to all comers of any honest behaviour,
as hath been few times seen; and against New Yeres night was made, in
the Hall, a castle, gates, towers, and dungion, garnished with
artilerie, and weapon after the most warlike fashion: and on the frount
of the castle was written, Le Fortresse Dangerus, and within the castle
were six ladies clothed in russet satin laide all over with leves of
golde, and every owde knit with laces of blewe silke and golde; on ther
heddes, coyfes and cappes all of golde. After this castle had been
carried about the hal, and the Quene had behelde it, in came the Kyng
with five other appareled in coates, the one half of russet satyn,
spangled with spangles of fine golde, the other halfe riche cloth of
gold; on their heddes cappes of russet satin embroudered with workes of
fine gold bullion. These six assaulted the castle: the ladies seyng them
so lustie and coragious were content to solace with them, and upon
farther communication to yeld the castle, and so thei came down and
daunced a long space. And after the ladies led the knightes into the
castle, and then the castle sodainly vanished out of their sight.
'On the daie of the Epiphanie at night, the Kyng with XI other were
disguised after the manner of Italie, called a maske, a thing not seen
afore in Englande; they were apparelled in garments long and brode,
wrought all with gold, with visers and cappes of gold; and after the
banket doen, these maskers came in with six gentlemen disguised in
silke, bearing staffe torches, and desired the ladies to daunce; some
were content, and some that knew the fashion of it refused, because it
was not a thing commonly seen. And after they daunced and commoned
together as the fashion of the maske is, thei tooke their leave and
departed. And so did the Quene and all the ladies.'
When the Christmas festivities ceased, the servants packed up the gear:
the napery, plate, gold and silver cups, dishes, pillows, curtains,
tapestry and carpets. They were all laid upon waggons, the broad-wheeled
creaking waggons which were dragged slowly over the uneven and heavy
lanes by teams of horses or by bullocks. The queen and her ladies were
carried in chairs or carriages, or went on horseback; the king and his
followers rode; and so they went back to Westminster. The ferry carried
over the heavy goods and the horses: the royal barges received the
court. After them marched the whole rout--the two thousand archers
without whom Richard never moved; the armies of servants; lastly, when
the last procurable cup had been drained, the musicians and the mummers
and the singers marched off sadly. A whole twelvemonth before another
Christmas! They marched in the direction of the City, and that night, as
they report, there was strange revelry in the inns of Southwark. The
house was left in charge of a warden, who had with him the principal
officers of the palace, the yeomen of the wardrobe, of the cellars, of
the kitchens, and so forth; the organisation being kept up in readiness,
though the king might not come back for years. This fact was illustrated
a short time ago, when I was interested in watching the progress of a
certain genealogy. About the year 1540 a certain younger son left his
house; it was necessary to connect him with his own descendants. The
link was found in the fact that this younger son had been received by
Carey, warden of Hunsdon House, who made him one of his yeomen; a
cheerless appointment, like a college in perpetual vacation, the warden
and yeomen, representing the Master and Fellows, dining every day in the
dismantled hall, and wandering about the empty courts and silent
gardens. Palaces, like theatres, have their times of emptiness, during
which it is best to keep out of them. For my own part, I think the true
way of enjoying a palace is to frequent it as Froissart did: to hear all
that was said and to put down all that was done, but not to be an actor
in a drama which reeks of blood; not even the splendid mounting can
destroy that dreadful reek. How many people are murdered about the court
of England from Richard II. to Henry VII.? Richard murders his uncle,
Henry IV. murders his cousin, Henry V. murders his uncle; Henry VI., it
is true, murders no one, but then he lives in a time when there is a
perpetual series of murders. What an awful time! Froissart, who looked
on at part of the drama, achieved deathless renown for his history,
while in the whole of that court there was no one whose head was safe on
his shoulders except Froissart. Unfortunately, he says little about this
palace which we are considering.
There are many names of kings and princes connected with this house of
Kennington. Edward I. was here occasionally. During his reign it was the
residence of John Earl of Surrey, and of his son, John Plantagenet Earl
of Warren and Surrey. Plenty of histories could be made out of these and
other names, had the writer time or the reader patience. In truth, the
reader's patience is more to be considered than the writer's time, for
the writer, at least, has the joy of hunting up names and notes and
allusions, and of piecing together what, after all, his reader may not
find of interest enough to carry him through. Edward III. made the manor
part of the Duchy of Cornwall. After the death of the Black Prince the
princess lived here with the young Prince Richard. I do not find that
Henry IV. was fond of a house which would certainly be haunted--especially
the room in which he was to sleep--by the sorrowful shade of his
murdered cousin. Nor did Henry V. come here during his short reign.
Henry VI., however, made use of Kennington Palace; so did Henry VII.;
and the last of the queens whose name can be connected with the palace
was Catherine of Arragon.
I do not know when the palace was destroyed. You have seen the place as
it was figured in 1636, when it was only an ordinary square house. The
plan was drawn when Charles I. leased it to Sir Francis Cottington. The
destruction of the old house and the building of the new must have taken
place during the hundred years between 1530 and 1630. When the new house
was taken down I do not know.
The name that we especially associate with Kennington Palace is that of
Richard II. When the Black Prince died, in 1376, Richard remained at
Kennington under the care of his mother and the tutorship of Sir
Guiscard d'Angle, 'that accomplished knight.' The young prince started
with the finest possible chances of popularity. His father was not only
the greatest captain of his age, but he was also, in the latter years of
his life, on the popular side against the old King and his supporters;
the boy was endowed with a singular beauty of person, and, when he
pleased, with a sweetness of manner most unusual even among princes,
with whom affability is the first essential in princely manners. In
addition to this he was destined to show on two occasions courage which
almost amounted to insensibility--first, when he dispersed Wat Tyler's
mob, and next, when he seized the reins of government. History shows how
he threw away all his chances in reckless extravagance.
[Illustration: SEAL OF THE BLACK PRINCE
(_From Allen's History of Lambeth_)]
After the death of the Black Prince it was resolved by the Lord Mayor to
pay a visit to Prince Richard at Kennington, with a riding worthy of the
City. The day chosen was the Sunday before Candlemas (February 2). One
has frequent occasion to remark generally upon City pageants, that the
people in these processions and their pageants were entirely regardless
of winter cold or summer heat; they rode forth upon a pageant as
cheerfully in the cold of February as in the sunshine of August. On this
occasion, one hundred and thirty-two citizens on horseback, with
trumpets and other musical instruments, and a vast number of
_flambeaux_, assembled at Newgate in the afternoon, and marched through
the City and over the bridge to Kennington Palace beyond the Borough.
First rode eight-and-forty men in the habits of esquires--with red
coats, say gowns, and vizards. Then followed the same number apparelled
as knights in the same livery. Then rode one singly, a very majestic
figure, who represented the Pope, followed by his four-and-twenty
cardinals. They were followed by ten men dressed in black, with black
vizards, representing legates from the Pope of Hell. This accounts for
one hundred and thirty-two out of the whole number. The last man is not
described. To them must be added pages and henchmen and whifflers, with
men carrying the presents. This cavalcade, which gave the greatest joy
to the citizens, all the way was followed by an enormous company of
'prentices and craftsmen and children, crowding after it and shouting.
When it arrived at Kennington Palace they all dismounted and entered the
hall, where they found the Princess of Wales, the young Prince, and
their attendants, together with the Duke of Lancaster and other great
lords. The court was first solemnly saluted by the masquers, who then
produced dice and invited the Prince to play with them. Would you
believe it?--every time the Prince threw, he won, which was in itself a
remarkable circumstance. He carried off his winnings: a bowl of pure
gold, chased and decorated; a drinking cup also of gold, and a gold
ring. They then invited the Princess and the Duke of Lancaster and
other nobles present, each of whom also won and carried off a gold
ring. This done, the music played, and they were all invited to supper
in the hall with the Prince and the Princess his mother. After supper,
the tables were taken away--they were only planks laid on trestles and
covered with white cloths--and the floor being cleared, the masquers had
the honour of dancing with the royal party. Finally, at a late hour, the
_flambeaux_ were lighted, and the masquers rode home, well pleased with
the reception they had met and the courtesy of the best behaved boy in
the world.
In the same year occurred the great riot of London, which arose out of
Wyclyf's trial in St. Paul's and the quarrel between the Bishop of
London and John of Gaunt. The latter, after the dismissal of Wyclyf,
repaired to the house of John de Ypres, close beside the river, where he
was sitting at dinner when one of his following ran hastily to warn him
that the people were flocking together with intent to murder him if they
could. The Duke therefore hastily ran down to the nearest stairs, took a
boat across the river, and fled as quickly as possible to Kennington
Palace, where he took shelter with the young Prince Richard and his
guardians. The mob, finding that the Duke was gone, made their way to
the Savoy, his palace, threatening to burn and destroy all: they did
actually murder one poor priest because he resembled the Duke in
countenance; they were then persuaded by the Bishop of London to go home
without doing any more mischief. What would have happened one knows not,
but the death of the old King gave an opportunity of patching up the
peace between the Duke of Lancaster and the citizens. Hearing that
Edward was _in extremis_, the Mayor and Aldermen waited on the Princess
of Wales and Prince Richard informing them of the King's critical
situation, and beseeching the Prince's favour to the City; they also
begged him to interfere for the better accommodation of the Duke's
differences with them. It is pleasing to find that John of Gaunt
freely forgave the City and became reconciled to the citizens; a
reconciliation which paved the way to the subsequent popularity of his
son Henry.
[Illustration: The High Street Southwark as it appeared MDXLIII]
It might be argued that the various impressions as regards London
produced on the mind of this prince explain his conduct towards the
citizens when he grew older. The first experiment he had of the citizens
was when they rode over in a goodly company clad in red cloaks with gold
chains and finely appointed horses to visit him at Kennington: he
remembered that their appearance betokened great wealth; that they
tossed about gold cups as if they were of wood. This is a kind of
impression which does not easily die away.
His second impression of the City was when his uncle, John of Gaunt,
came flying from the City, having barely escaped with his life, the
people having gone on to wreck, if they could, his palace of the Savoy.
A turbulent and dangerous people, then, as well as rich; a people to be
kept down.
He next saw the City when he rode through it on his way to be crowned at
Westminster. All the way there was nothing but rich tapestry, carpets,
scarlet, cloth, masquers clad in velvet, pageants with cloth of gold,
and the streets filled with men and women dressed in rich furs and
silks, such as only great barons could afford. This third impression
confirmed the first.
His next impression was that of the City lying prostrate at the mercy of
a large mob, unable to move or to help itself. He went into the City
almost alone; he, by one single act of splendid courage, put an end to
the insurrection. A City cowardly, therefore, and unable to act
together. It was his City, moreover--the _Camera Regis_. Should not a
prince do what he pleases with his own?
When we read of his subsequent treatment of the City: how he believed
its treasures to be inexhaustible; how he believed that it had no power
to resist; how he made the way easy for his cousin to supplant him, let
us bear in mind the lessons which the Londoners themselves provided for
him in his youth.
This King seizes on the imagination of all who think about him. His is
one of the strangest of all the strange figures which crowd the National
Portrait Gallery. Richly endowed with artistic instincts; a lover of
music and all the fine arts; of singularly winning manners; the
comeliest man in his whole kingdom; splendid in raiment, magnificent in
his court, colossal in his personal pride, prodigal and extravagant
beyond compare; the King whom those who knew him in his youth never
ceased to love; for whose soul--not for the soul of Henry
IV.--Whittington, for instance, left money for masses--this is a figure
among our English kings which has no parallel.
One more reminiscence of Kennington Palace. The last occasion on which
Richard lodged there was when he brought home his little bride Isabel,
the queen of eight years. They brought her from Dover, resting on the
way at Canterbury and Rochester. At Blackheath they were met by the
Mayor and Aldermen, attired with great magnificence of costume to do
honour to the bride. After reverences due, they fell into their place
and rode on with the procession. When they arrived at Newington, the
King thanked the Mayor and permitted him to leave the procession and
return home. He himself, with his company, rode by the cross-country
lane from Newington to Kennington Palace. I observe that this proves the
existence of a path or lane where is now Upper Kennington Lane. At this
palace the little queen rested a night, and next day was carried in
another procession to the Tower. The knights rode before, and the French
ladies came after. It is pretty to read how Isabel, with her long fair
hair falling over her shoulders, and her sweet childish face, sat up and
smiled upon the people, playing and pretending to be queen, which she
had been practising ever since her betrothal. Needless to say that all
hearts were ravished. The good people of London were ever ready to
welcome one princess after another, and to lose their hearts to them,
whether it was Isabel of France, or Katharine her sister, or Anne
Boleyn, or Queen Charlotte, or the fair Princess of Denmark. So great a
press was there that many were actually squeezed to death on London
Bridge, where the houses only left twelve feet in breadth. Isabel's
queenship proved a pretence: before she was old enough to be queen,
indeed, her husband was in confinement; before she understood that he
was a captive, he was murdered, and the splendid extravagant reign was
over. The son of the usurper, young Harry of Monmouth himself, desired
to take the place of Richard; his father also desired the match, for the
sake of the dowry. Isabel, child as she was still, had the heart of a
woman; she had learned to love her handsome, courteous, accomplished
lord, who died before he could claim her; she refused absolutely to
marry the son of his murderer. They tried to move her resolution by
persuasion; they did not dare to force her: let us believe that Harry of
Monmouth would not stoop to force the girl to marry him. There was
nothing therefore left to do, but to send her home to what was certainly
the most miserable court or palace in the world--that of her mad father.
In the end, she married her cousin, the poet Charles of Orleans. You may
read the verses which he made upon her death. Isabel died in childbirth
in her twenty-second year. As for Harry of Monmouth, as all the world
knows, he was obliged to content himself with Isabel's younger sister,
Katharine; we have just read about that queen, and how she stooped to a
suitor below her own degree. I think she was made of clay not so fine as
that of Isabel, her sister.
2. ELTHAM PALACE
The second in our chain of suburban Palaces was the Royal House of
Eltham, already mentioned in connection with Kennington. The place
itself seems to have been a settlement of some kind, a town or village,
in very ancient times. In the thirteenth century it was considered of
importance enough to receive the grant of a market day every Tuesday,
and a Fair for three days every year, namely, the day before the Feast
of the Trinity, the Feast itself, and the day after. In the fourteenth
century the market day was altered to Monday, but the Fair remained; in
the fifteenth century the market day returned to Tuesday and the Fair
was changed to three days on the Eve of St. Peter and St. Paul, on the
Feast itself, and on the day after. The market and the Fair have long
since been discontinued. The importance of both depended on the
occasional presence of the Court, and when that was removed altogether
from the place there was no longer any necessity for either market or
Fair Day. Eltham then became a small agricultural village lying in the
midst of woods, with nothing but scattered villages for many miles
round. So long as it contained one of the recognised Palaces, even
though years might pass by without a visit from the sovereign, there
was, attached to the house, the permanent staff to a Governor or warder,
with chiefs of the various departments and the men or assistants under
them. The occupation of the Palace by such a staff gave the place a kind
of garrison, and created a demand for provisions and for all sorts of
things. On those rare occasions when the Court was actually in Residence
at Eltham, the market had to furnish supplies, to which all the country
round had to contribute; nothing short of provisions for the maintenance
of thousands of people daily. At Eltham the difficulty may have been
very great; no doubt word would be sent long beforehand if the King
proposed to keep Christmas there. The yeomen of the kitchen had the beef
put in the pickling tubs in November--vast quantities of beef, for,
Christmas or not, the staple food of everybody in the winter was salt
beef. At the Palace of Kennington things were easier. It lay within easy
reach of the London market; so was Westminster. Greenwich was accessible
by ships from the lower reaches of the Thames as well as from London.
Eltham, no doubt, depended upon the rich and fruitful country in which
it stood. At eight miles from London, the markets there were of very
little use. The annals of the Palace are simple, rather than scanty; in
fact, there is plenty of mention made of the Palace, yet very little of
importance is recorded concerning it. All that is recorded of it belongs
to peace and festivity and the season of Christmas. Eltham was given by
William the Conqueror to his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl
of Kent. After the disgrace of Odo, and the confiscation of his estates,
the manor belonged partly to the Queen and partly to the Mandevilles.
Thence it passed into the hands of the De Vesci family. From them it
went to the Scropes, and from them to various holders in succession.
There was a Palace, or House, here of some kind in very ancient times.
The historian says that he cannot ascertain when the Palace was built
(see p. 74). Since the origin of the House is unknown, he argues that it
must have been ancient. Now, concerning its connections with our Kings
and Queens, there is quite a long list. All these lists would have to be
catalogued, and even then be forgotten. For instance, the following list
of visits I borrow from Lysons. But I cannot pretend that it is of much
interest.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF ELTHAM PALACE, 1796]
In the year 1270 Henry III. kept Christmas at his Palace of Eltham with
the Queen and his nobles. After this the name of Anthony Bec, Bishop of
Durham and Patriarch of Jerusalem, is connected with the place. He built
a great deal, but I know not if any ruins of his yet remain. He died at
Eltham in 1311, presumably in the Palace, for there seem to have been no
other buildings. Now we come back to the kings, and we find historical
associations in plenty, though not of a kind which is moving or
interesting. It does not excite our curiosity much to learn that this
king or that king kept Christmas here, and yet that is the kind of
association which I have to offer. Edward the Second was often here:
perhaps the seclusion of the place enabled him to play his favourite
games with his followers without being overseen. One of his sons, John
of Eltham, was born here. Edward III., when still under age, had a
Parliament at Eltham in 1329. In 1347 his son Lionel kept Christmas for
him at Eltham. In 1364 he entertained here the French king John, his
prisoner. In 1375 he held another Parliament here, when the Commons
petitioned him to make Richard, his grandson, Prince of Wales. Richard
the Second, as we should expect, regarded Eltham with a peculiar
affection; it was beautiful; the buildings were splendid. It was a long
way from the City which took upon itself to remonstrate with his
extravagance. Three times at least he kept Christmas here: on the last
he entertained Leo, King of Armenia, with great splendour and profusion.
Henry the Fourth kept Christmas four times in the Palace. On the first,
the Aldermen of London and their children went down from the City to
perform a masque before the King, who received it well. At that moment
he was certain to receive everything well that came from the City. On
his last visit the disease broke out which killed him. Henry the Fifth
was here once, in 1414: Henry the Sixth once, in 1429. Edward the Fourth
was a second Founder, so much did he add to the buildings. Among other
things, he built a new front to the Palace and is said to have built the
Banqueting Hall itself. His festivities rivalled those of Richard the
Second. Here his daughter Bridget, afterwards a nun of Dartford, was
born. Henry the Seventh was another builder: he stayed at Eltham often.
Henry the Eighth came here once at least, but he preferred Greenwich as
a residence as soon as that house was built. Elizabeth also came here
only once or twice, preferring Greenwich, and James the First is only
recorded to have visited Eltham once. After this time Eltham ceased to
be a Palace. In 1646 Robert Earl of Essex died here[1]; the Manor was
sold after Charles's death. After the Restoration it reverted to the
Crown; the rest of the history concerns its occupancy by private
families. On the death of Charles the Palace was surveyed; it is
described as being built of brick, stone, and timber; it contained (see
p. 74) one chapel, a hall, 36 rooms and offices below stairs, with two
large cellars; and above stairs 17 lodging houses on the King's side, 12
on the Queen's side, and 9 on the Prince's side; and 78 rooms in the
offices round the courtyard, which contained one acre of ground: the
house was out of repair and uninhabitable. There were gardens attached
to the house. A moat surrounded the house, of width 60 feet, except in
the forest, where it was 115 feet. The moat still exists on the north
side, and can be traced all round. Of the buildings little remains
except the old Banqueting Hall, a truly beautiful ruin; the roof, with
its fine woodwork, is happily still standing, but shored up and
supported. The windows are mostly blocked up; fragments only remain of
the other buildings; but it is said to be possible, in the gardens at
the back, to trace out the courts and the foundations of the chapel and
offices. The Palace is approached by a bridge of about the same date as
the Palace, viz. the fourteenth century. It crosses the moat, and with
its picturesque ivy-clad arches and the Banqueting Hall on one side, and
the Court House on the other, it is as lovely an approach to the ruin as
could well be imagined or created.
[Illustration: KING JOHN'S PALACE, KENT
(_From a Drawing by J. Hassell, 1804_)]
One of the last visits of the King to Eltham was in the year 1575, when
Henry held one of the tournaments in which in his early manhood he so
much delighted. This is Holinshed's account of it:--
'After the parlement was ended, the king kept a solemne Christmasse at
his manor of Eltham; and on the Twelfe night in the hall was made a
goodlie castell, woonderouslie set out, and in it certeine ladies and
knights; and when the king and queene were set, in came other knights
and assailed the castell, where manie a good stripe was giuen; and at
the last the assailants were beaten awaie. And then issued out knights
and ladies out of the castell, which ladies were rich and strangelie
disguised; for all their apparell was in braids of gold, fret with
moouing spangls of siluer and gilt, set on crimson sattin, loose and not
fastned: the mens apparell of the same sute made like Iulis of
Hungarie; and the ladies heads and bodies were after the fashion of
Amsterdam. And when the dansing was doone, the banket was serued in of
two hundred dishes, with great plentie to euerie bodie.'
[Illustration: Remains of Eltham Palace]
There is little more to be said about Eltham, which is a place so
beautiful that it ought to have a more interesting history. Kings and
Courts delight me not, nor do I take pleasure in reading about
tournaments and masques.
There is no figure in the history of Eltham so pleasant to think upon as
that of little Prince Richard, the lovely boy who was going to become
such an extravagant King. One would like to have seen Edward
entertaining his prisoner, King John of France; and one wonders what
sort of figure was played by the Armenian Leo in the presence of
Richard's splendour: but perhaps he knew the Court of Constantinople,
and smiled at the splendour of the barbaric north.
Once more, how did they provide for the maintenance of so many guests?
To feed two thousand every day is a great undertaking. We are accustomed
to believe that the roads in winter were so bad as to be impassable.
Now, everything had to be brought there, whatever the condition of the
roads. And they were bye-roads, not high roads. The guests, too, and the
nobles and their retainers, had to arrive by those roads. As was stated
above, due notice was certainly given: a vast quantity of salt
provisions was laid down in readiness: for the rest, the country was
fertile and well cultivated. The Park contained deer--but they could not
kill all; the Thames, only three miles away--but then, the roads!--was
full of salmon and every kind of fish: the banks of the lower reaches
and those of the Ravensbourne--again, those roads!--were the homes of
myriads of wild birds. Still, one feels that the inland communications
of the fourteenth century must have been a great deal better than those
of the seventeenth century in order to allow of Christmas being kept in
magnificence and profusion by two thousand people in a country village.
[Illustration: The Moat Bridge Eltham Palace]
The views which accompany this account are taken from Lysons: they were
engraved in the year 1796. There is not much difference in the present
aspect: the moat has been opened again: the buildings represented on the
south side of the Hall have vanished: and the place itself which had
been used as a barn is now empty, and is only thrown open for visitors
or the drilling of Volunteers.
3. GREENWICH PALACE
The Green Village lying on the slope of a gentle hill, with marshes on
either side of it--the marsh of the Ravensbourne on one side, and the
Woolwich or the Greenwich marsh on the other side of it--is as old as
history itself. Its position as the landing-place, or point of approach,
to the lands of Kent, a place where ships might lie, pirates and
invaders might seize and hold as a base of operations, very early called
attention to its natural advantages. Here the Danes encamped in 1011;
here they brought the venerable Alphege and murdered him, throwing beef
bones at his head. As the throwing of bones was a favourite evening
pastime with the Danes, they probably meant little at first beyond a
friendly reminder or an invitation to take part in the game: as the
Archbishop made no response they threw the bones in earnest (see p. 72).
The people of Greenwich have long since forgotten that the place was
once a Royal Residence, and that there are historical memories connected
with Greenwich of interest almost equal to those of Westminster, and far
more important and interesting than those of Eltham.
Let us perform the perfunctory task of cataloguing some of these
memories.
In the year 1408, Henry IV. dates his will from Greenwich.
In 1417 Henry V. granted the manor for life to Thomas Beaufort, Duke of
Exeter, who afterwards died here.
In 1443 it was granted to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, with permission
to fortify and embattle the manor house, and to enclose a park of 200
acres. This was the true beginning of Greenwich Palace. Humphrey rebuilt
the house, which he called Placentia, the House of Pleasance: he
enclosed the Park and he built a Tower on the spot where the Royal
Observatory now stands. On his death, in 1447, the place reverted to the
Crown. Edward the Fourth took great pleasure in the place and beautified
it at much cost. In 1466 he granted the Manor, Palace, and Park, to the
Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, for life. The marriage of Richard Duke of
York and Anne Mowbray was here solemnised with the usual rejoicings.
[Illustration: GREENWICH, 1662
(_From a Drawing by Jonas Moore_)]
With Henry VII. also Greenwich was a favourite place of residence. He
added a brick front on the riverside (see p. 77). Here Henry the Eighth
was born on June 28, 1491. He was baptised in the Parish Church, the
predecessor of the present church. He, too, loved Greenwich above all
other Palaces, and made it during the early years of his reign the scene
of the festivities and entertainments which he loved so much. Here he
married Katharine of Arragon on June 3, 1510. Here he held the great
tournament in which he himself, Sir Edward Howard, Charles Brandon, and
Edward Neville challenged all comers. In 1512 and in 1513 he kept
Christmas here 'with great solemnity, dancing, disguisings, and mummers
in a most princely manner.' Holinshed gives an account of two
entertainments held by the King at Greenwich--one a tournament in June,
the other at Christmas:--
'This yeare also in Iune, the king kept a solemne iustes at Greenewich,
the king & sir Charles Brandon taking vpon them to abide all commers.
First came the ladies all in white and red silke, set vpon coursers
trapped in the same sute, freated ouer with gold; after whom followed a
founteine curiouslie made of russet sattin, with eight gargils spowting
water: within the founteine sat a knight armed at all peeces. After
this founteine followed a ladie all in blacke silke dropped with fine
siluer, on a courser trapped in the same. Then followed a knight in a
horsselitter, the coursers & litter apparelled in blacke with siluer
drops. When the fountein came to the tilt, the ladies rode round about,
and so did the founteine, and the knight within the litter. And after
them were brought twi goodlie coursers apparelled for the iusts: and
when they came to the tilts end, the two knights mounted on the two
courses abiding all commers. The king was in the founteine, and sir
Charles Brandon was in the litter. Then suddenlie with great noise of
trumpets entred sir Thomas Kneuet in a castell of cole blacke, and ouer
the castell was written "The Dolorous Castell," and so he and the earle
of Essex, the lord Howard, and other ran their courses with the king and
sir Charles Brandon, and euer the king brake most speares, and likelie
was so to doo yer he began, as in former time; the prise fell to his
lot; so luckie was he and fortunat in the proofe of his prowes in
martiall actiuitie, whereto from his yong yeers he was giuen....
'After this parlement was ended, the king kept a solemne Christmasse at
Greenwich, with danses and mummeries in most princelie maner. And on the
Twelfe daie at night came into the hall a mount, called the rich mount.
The mount was set full of rich flowers of silke, and especiallie full of
broome slips full of cods, and branches were greene sattin, and the
flowers flat gold of damaske, which signified Plantagenet. On the top
stood a goodlie beacon giuing light, round about the beacon sat the king
and fiue other, all in cotes and caps of right crimson veluet,
embrodered with flat gold of damaske, their cotes set full of spangles
of gold. And foure woodhouses drew the mount till it came before the
queene, and then the king and his companie descended and dansed. Then
suddenlie the mount opened, and out came six ladies all in crimsin
sattin and plunket, embrodered with gold and pearle, with French hoods
on their heads, and they dansed alone. Then the lords of the mount
tooke the ladies and dansed togither: and the ladies reentered, and the
mount closed, and so was conueied out of the hall. Then the king shifted
him, and came to the queene, and sat at the banket, which was verie
sumptuous.'
[Illustration: GREENWICH HOSPITAL
(_From a Drawing by Schnebbelie_)]
Other tournaments were held here in 1517, 1526, and 1536.
Here Charles Brandon married Mary, Dowager Queen of France. Six or seven
times more Henry kept Christmas at Greenwich. In 1543, the last
occasion, he entertained twenty-one Scottish gentlemen, taken prisoners,
and released them without a ransom, being to the end, whatever else he
was, a Prince of most Princely gifts and graces.
Queen Mary was born at Greenwich in 1515. Cardinal Wolsey was her
godfather.
King Edward the Sixth died here.
Queen Elizabeth was born here on September 7, 1533. She, too, spent much
of her time at Greenwich.
King James also much delighted in this place: he added to the brickwork
by the riverside: he also walled the park and laid the foundations of
the house afterwards called the House of Delight. The Queen, who
received the Palace in jointure, carried on this House, which was
afterwards completed by Inigo Jones for Henrietta Maria. It was called
the King's House, the Queen's House, or the Ranger's Lodge. It was not
until 1807 that the house was granted to the Commissioners of the Royal
Naval Asylum.
Separated from town by five miles of road, and four of river, it was
thus easily accessible in all weathers and independent of the condition
of the roads. In other respects the position of the place was
unrivalled: it was on a slope rising from the river in front, and from
lowlands on either side; it was swept night and day by the sharp fresh
breeze that came up with the tide from the sea; behind it, on a high
level, lay an expanse of heath, dry and wholesome; there was no better
air to be got than the air of Greenwich; that of Eltham, with its
stagnant marsh and thick woods, was close and aguish in comparison: for
view, the broad river rolled along the Palace front and bent round to
east and west, so that one could see all the shipping in front; all in
Limehouse Reach; and all in Blackwall Reach. As the tide ebbed and
flowed, the navies and the trade of London passed up and down, outward
bound or homeward bound. Sitting at her window, or walking on her
terrace, Queen Elizabeth could for herself learn what was meant by the
foreign trade of London: what was meant by the exports and imports: she
could see every kind of ship that floats come sailing up the river,
streamers flying, dipping the peak in salute: she could understand the
coasting trade and the Flemish trade: she could ask what the hoys and
ketches, the lighters, and the barges carried up to the Port of London
in such numbers: she could herself, and often did, embark upon the
stream in summer, when the sun was sinking in the west, to see the ships
more closely and to enjoy the fresh, cool air of the river. Witness the
sad history of Thomas Appletree.
It was on the 17th day of July in the year 1579, about nine o'clock of
the evening, that an accident happened which might have had fatal
consequences. The Queen was taking the air in her private barge, between
Greenwich and Deptford. With her were the French Ambassador, the Earl of
Lincoln, and other great persons, discoursing affairs of state.
Unfortunately for themselves, four young fellows were out in a small
boat at the same time, and on the same part of the river. They were
Thomas Appletree, a young servant of Francis Carey, two singing boys of
the Queen's choir, and another. Thomas Appletree had possessed himself
of a 'caliver' or arquebus, which he was so ill advised as to load with
ball and then fire it at random up and down the river. One of these
haphazard discharges carried the bullet straight to the Queen's barge,
where it passed through both arms of the oarsman nearest Her Majesty.
The man thus unexpectedly wounded, finding himself bleeding like a
pig--for it was a flesh wound--threw himself down, bawling and roaring
out that he was murdered. The Queen comforted him with the assurance
that he should be properly cared for, and ordered the barge to be taken
back to the shore at once. The man, being treated, speedily recovered.
Meantime, who had dared to fire a gun at the Queen's barge? The question
was very quickly answered, and the Lords in Council had the four lads
brought up before them. It appearing that the only guilty person was
Thomas Appletree, the other three were suffered to depart, and Thomas
was tried. It was ascertained that there could be no question as to the
loyalty of Thomas's master, Francis Carey, therefore the whole guilt
rested on the shoulders of the unlucky serving man, whose only fault had
been foolhardiness in firing his gun at random. He was therefore
sentenced to be hanged, with the usual accompaniments, for treason.
Accordingly, on the 20th day of July he was taken from Newgate and
conducted on a hurdle with great ceremony to Tower Hill, and so through
the postern to Ratcliff, where, opposite the place where the offence was
committed, they had put up a gibbet on which the unhappy Thomas
Appletree was to be hanged. He had made a dolorous journey on his
hurdle, weeping copiously all the way, and many of the people weeping
with him. Arrived at the gallows, he mounted the ladder, and, if the
chronicler repeats faithfully, he made a most admirable use of the last
moments which remained to him. It is, indeed, truly remarkable to
observe how admirably all those who were taken out to die acquitted
themselves, whether it was a peer to be beheaded for treason, or a
Catholic priest to be hanged, drawn, and quartered for being a priest.
Appletree, for his part, spoke so movingly that the people all wept with
him. Then the hangman put the rope round the condemned man's neck, and
the bitterness of death entered into his soul. But the people cried,
'Stay! Stay!' and at that moment there came riding up the Queen's
Vice-Chamberlain, Sir Christopher Hatton. But think not that the
Vice-Chamberlain hastily proclaimed the royal pardon. Not at all. He
left Thomas on the ladder for a while; he made an oration on the
heinousness of the offence: he made everybody kneel while he prayed for
the safety of the Queen: and then, when all hearts were softened and all
eyes bedewed, he pronounced the Queen's pardon, which the prisoner
acknowledged in suitable language. Thomas Appletree was then taken back
to the Marshalsea, where he remained, one hopes, a very short time after
this. We may be quite sure that whatever destiny was in store for this
young man, shooting at random with a caliver or arquebus would have
nothing to do with it.
Another association of Greenwich is that of Sir John Willoughby's
departure for the Arctic seas. He was going to endeavour to open a new
way for trade round the N.E. Arctic sea along the north coast of Asia.
He embarked at Ratcliff Stairs: you may take boat there to this day. As
he passed down the river, with flags and streamers flying, they brought
out the little King Edward, who was dying, to see the sailing of the
stout old sailor. So with firing of guns the ships passed on their way,
and they carried the dying King back to his bed. In a day or two Edward
was dead. In six months, or it might be less, Willoughby was dead too,
frozen to death in his cabin, where the Russians found him, his dead
hand on his papers.
If you wish to know what state was kept by Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich,
you will find an account of it in Hentzner, that excellent traveller who
remarked so much, and put all down on paper.
'We arrived at the Royal Palace of Greenwich, reported to have been
originally built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and to have received
very magnificent additions from Henry VII. It was here Elizabeth, the
present Queen, was born, and here she generally resides; particularly
in Summer, for the Delightfulness of its Situation. We were admitted by
an Order Mr. Rogers had procured from the Lord Chamberlain, into the
Presence-Chamber, hung with rich Tapestry, and the Floor, after the
English fashion, strewed with Hay,[2] through which the Queen commonly
passes in her way to chapel: At the Door stood a Gentleman dressed in
Velvet, with a Gold Chain, whose Office was to introduce to the Queen
any Person of Distinction, that came to wait on her: It was Sunday, when
there is usually the greatest Attendance of Nobility. In the same Hall
were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, a great Number
of Counsellors of State, Officers of the Crown, and Gentlemen, who
waited the Queen's coming out; which she did from her own Apartment,
when it was Time to go to Prayers, attended in the following Manner:
'First went Gentlemen, Barons, Earls, Knights of the Garter, all richly
dressed and bare-headed; next came the Chancellor, bearing the Seals in
a red-silk Purse, between Two: One of which carried the Royal Scepter,
the other the Sword of State, in a red Scabbard, studded with golden
Fleurs de Lis, the Point upwards: Next came the Queen, in the
Sixty-fifth Year of her Age, as we were told, very majestic; her Face
oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her Eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her
Nose a little hooked; her Lips narrow, and her Teeth black (a Defect the
English seem subject to, from their too great Use of Sugar): she had in
her Ears two Pearls, with very rich Drops; she wore false Hair, and that
red; upon her Head she had a small Crown, reported to be made of some of
the Gold of the celebrated Lunebourg Table:[3] Her Bosom was uncovered,
as all the English Ladies have it, till they marry; and she had on a
Necklace of exceeding fine Jewels; her Hands were small, her Fingers
long, and her Stature neither tall nor low; her Air was stately, her
Manner of Speaking mild and obliging. That Day she was dressed in white
Silk, bordered with Pearls of the Size of Beans, and over it a Mantle of
black Silk, shot with Silver Threads; her Train was very long, the End
of it borne by a Marchioness; instead of a Chain, she had an oblong
Collar of Gold and Jewels. As she went along in all this State and
Magnificence, she spoke very graciously, first to one, then to another,
whether foreign Ministers, or those who attended for different Reasons,
in English, French and Italian; for, besides being well skilled in
Greek, Latin, and the Languages I have mentioned, she is mistress of
Spanish, Scotch, and Dutch: Whoever speaks to her, it is kneeling; now
and then she raises some with her Hand. While we were there, W. Slawata,
a Bohemian Baron, had Letters to present to her; and she, after pulling
off her Glove, gave him her right Hand to kiss, sparkling with Rings and
Jewels, a Mark of particular Favour: Where-ever she turned her Face, as
she was going along, everybody fell down on their Knees.[4] The Ladies
of the Court followed next to her, very handsome and well-shaped, and
for the most Part dressed in white; she was guarded on each Side by the
Gentlemen Pensioners, fifty in Number, with gilt Battleaxes. In the
Antichapel next the Hall where we were, Petitions were presented to her,
and she received them most graciously, which occasioned the Acclamation
of, Long live Queen ELIZABETH! She answered with, I thank you, my good
PEOPLE. In the Chapel was excellent Music; as soon as it and the Service
was over, which scarce exceeded half an hour, the Queen returned in the
same State and Order, and prepared to go to Dinner. But while she was
still at Prayers, we saw her Table set out with the following Solemnity.
'A Gentleman entered the Room bearing a Rod, and along with him another
who had a Table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three Times
with the utmost Veneration, he spread upon the Table, and after kneeling
again they both retired. Then came two others, one with the Rod again,
the other with a Salt-seller, a Plate and Bread; when they had kneeled,
as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the Table, they
too retired with the same Ceremonies performed by the first. At last
came an unmarried Lady (we were told she was a Countess), and along with
her a married one, bearing a Tasting-knife; the former was dressed in
white Silk, who, when she had prostrated herself three Times, in the
most graceful Manner, approached the Table, and rubbed the Plates with
Bread and Salt with as much Awe as if the Queen had been present: When
they had waited there a little while, the Yeomen of the Guard entered,
bare-headed, cloathed in Scarlet, with a golden Rose upon their Backs,
bringing in at each Turn a Course of twenty-four Dishes, served in
plate, most of it Gilt; these Dishes were received by a Gentleman in the
same Order they were brought, and placed upon the Table, while the
Lady-taster gave to each of the Guards a mouthful to eat, of the
particular dish he had brought, for Fear of any Poison. During the Time
that this Guard, which consists of the tallest and stoutest Men that can
be found in all England, being carefully selected for this Service, were
bringing Dinner, twelve Trumpets and two Kettle-drums made the Hall ring
for Half an Hour together. At the end of this Ceremonial a Number of
unmarried Ladies appeared, who, with particular solemnity, lifted the
Meat off the Table, and conveyed it into the Queen's inner and more
private Chamber, where, after she had chosen for herself, the rest goes
to the Ladies of the Court.
'The Queen dines and sups alone, with very few Attendants; and it is
very seldom that any Body, Foreigner or Native, is admitted at that
Time, and then only at the Intercession of somebody in Power.'
On the Restoration, Charles at first resolved to pull down the Palace
and build it anew. For this purpose he consulted various persons, and
after many delays began the building. He only succeeded, however, in
erecting what is now the west wing of the Hospital. But it never again
became a Royal Residence. In 1694, the Palace was converted into a
Hospital for the Royal Navy. This splendid institution, one of the
glories of Great Britain, and a standing monument of the nation's
gratitude to her sailors, and an ever present invitation to enter the
navy, was closed, with that stupid indifference to sentiment which so
often distinguishes the acts of our Government, in the year 1870.
4. LAMBETH PALACE
[Illustration: Lambeth Palace]
The now huge town of Lambeth presents few points of interest either to
the visitor or to the historian. There are no buildings of any antiquity
except the Palace and the Church. There are no modern buildings at all
worth notice. There have been two or three memorable houses which we
shall do well to touch upon: but they are not so memorable as to deserve
long description. The Bishops of Rochester had a house in the Marsh--the
site is in Carlisle Place, Westminster Road, at the back of St. Thomas's
Hospital, close to Lambeth Palace. It was in this house that, in 1531, a
wretched man named Robert Roose, in the Bishop's service as cook,
wilfully, as was alleged, poisoned a large number of people, and was
boiled to death in oil--the only instance, I believe, of this dreadful
punishment. The wretched man was tied naked to a post and slowly lowered
into the boiling fluid. Fisher was the last Bishop of Rochester who
lived in this house. The buildings, with losses and additions, existed
in some form or other till 1827. The house, indeed, had a strangely
chequered history. The Bishop of Rochester exchanged it with the Crown
for a house thought more convenient in Southwark, close to Winchester
House. The Crown gave it to the Bishop of Carlisle, who seems to have
let it on lease: thus it lost its ecclesiastical character altogether
and became given over to entirely secular uses. It was at one time a
pottery: then a tavern, and even a notorious and disorderly house: then
a dancing master taught his accomplishments in the house: then it became
a school. Finally, the gardens were built over, the operations
disclosing many interesting gates and 'bits.'
Another house was that belonging to the Duke of Norfolk: it was called
Norfolk House, and it stood on the other side of the Palace, on the site
now marked by Paradise Street. Here lived the old Duke whose life was
saved by the death of Henry the Eighth; here was brought up the
accomplished Earl of Surrey whose life would have been saved had Henry
died a few days earlier. Leland, the antiquary and scholar, was the
Earl's tutor. The widow of Dr. Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury,
obtained the house. Her heirs ceased to live in it; the house was
neglected, probably because no tenant could be found for it. Finally, it
was pulled down. It is interesting to note the town houses which stood
upon the Bank from Rotherhithe to Battersea: that of the Prior of Lewes;
of Sir John Fastolfe; of the Augustines; the House of St. Mary Overies;
Winchester House; Rochester House; Norfolk House; and later, the house
of the St. Johns at Battersea. There are none between Bankside and
Lambeth; that part of the Embankment which lies between Blackfriars and
Westminster Bridge has no history and no associations.
[Illustration: BONNER HALL, LAMBETH]
Another noteworthy Lambeth house was that called Copt Hall, afterwards
Vauxhall, situated opposite to the gardens afterwards called Vauxhall.
In this house the unfortunate Arabella Stuart lived for a time. A good
deal might be written about Copt Hall, but not in this place.
The houses of the Archbishop, the Bishop of Rochester, and the Duke of
Norfolk stood close together and clustered round the church. The reason
was the necessity of building on or near to the Embankment. Exactly
opposite the south porch of the church may be observed a small and
somewhat decayed street grandly called the High. The name and the
situation close to the church indicate an individual and separate
existence of the town or village of Lambeth, of which this was the
principal street and the centre. The village, in fact, did exist from
very early times; its population for the most part earned their
livelihood as Thames fishermen. They were the lineal successors of that
fortunate Edric to whom St. Peter appeared when he consecrated the
Abbey. There was another colony of Thames fishermen lower down the river
on Bermondsey Wall. When William the Conqueror is said to have burned
Southwark it was the fishermen's cottages which he destroyed. None of
these lived between Bankside and Westminster, which is proved by the
fact that there is no church near the river wall at that place. The
Thames fishermen lingered on, though the fishery grew poorer, until
about 1820, when they were reduced to a single court in Lambeth. The
place is described as mean and rickety, with neither paving nor lamps;
the woodwork of the cottages broken; the roofs burst and tottering; the
windows stuffed with rags or mended with paper; the children in rags;
the court a receptacle for everything.
Lambeth as it is has mostly sprung into existence in the nineteenth
century, during which its population has been actually multiplied by
ten, and more than ten, rising from 27,000 in 1801 to 295,000 in 1891,
an enormous increase. The principal reason of this development is the
introduction of a great many industries--potteries, vinegar factories,
distilleries, salt warehouses, bottle factories, and so forth.
Lambeth certainly cannot be called a beautiful town nor a desirable
place of residence. The perambulator looks about in vain for streets
noble, striking or picturesque; he looks in vain for houses beautiful or
ancient; there is nothing to reward him. Old houses there were before
the great increase began, but they exist no more; the place is dull; in
parts it is dirty; everywhere it is without character or distinction.
It has, however, a pretty park called after the famous Vauxhall Gardens,
on whose site it stands. The park is new, but it is well laid out and
planted; already it is a pretty piece of greenery, and, with Kennington
and Battersea Parks, offers a much wanted breathing place for the
multitudes of that quarter. It is adorned, or enriched, or ennobled, by
a statue of Henry Fawcett, who died in a house on this spot. The
statesman, attired in a costume strictly of the period, is sitting in a
chair, pretending not to be aware that behind him stands an angel with
outstretched wings, crowning him with laurel. He is obviously
embarrassed by the situation. He feels that he ought to be dressed in
some kind of Court costume--if he knew what--in order to receive the
angel; or the angel might have assumed a frock coat in compliment to the
statesman. The wings were probably in the way.
[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF GUY FAWKES, LAMBETH
(_From 'La Belle Assemblée,' Nov. 1822_)]
Lambeth Palace, whose history I am not going to narrate, plays a very
considerable part in the History of England. In 1232 and in 1234,
Parliament was held here. In 1261 and 1280 Councils were held here. In
1412 Archbishop Arundell, the kindly Christian who was so anxious to
burn heretics, issued from this Palace a condemnation as heretical of a
great many opinions, insomuch that it became obviously dangerous to have
any opinions at all. This, however, was the condition of mind most
desired by the Church of Arundell's time and of his views. It is
needless to recount the many occasions when Kings and Queens were
entertained at Lambeth Palace. Cardinal Pole died here. It was sometimes
a prison. Queen Elizabeth entrusted to the care of the Archbishop at
Lambeth, Bishops Tonstal and Thirlby, the Earl of Essex, the Earl of
Southampton, Lord St
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