IV
PLANTAGENET – continued
II. PRINCE AND MERCHANT
It is never safe to adopt in blind confidence the conclusions of the antiquary. He works with fragments; here it is a passage in an old deed; here a few lines of poetry; here a broken vase; here the capital of a column; here a drawing, cramped, and out of proportion, and dwarfed, from an illuminated manuscript. This kind of work tends to belittle everything; the splendid city becomes a mean, small town; King Solomon's Temple, glorious and vast, shrinks to the dimensions of a village conventicle; Behemoth himself becomes an alligator; Leviathan, a porpoise; history, read by this reducing lens, becomes a series of patriotic exaggerations. For instance, the late Dr. Brewer, a true antiquary, if ever there was one, could see in mediæval London nothing but a collection of mean and low tenements standing among squalid streets and filthy lanes. That this estimate of the City is wholly incorrect we shall now proceed to show. Any city, ancient or modern, might be described as consisting of mean and squalid houses, because in every city the poor outnumber the rich, and the small houses of the poor are more frequent than the mansions of the wealthy.
When one who wishes to reconstruct a city of the past has obtained from the antiquary all he has discovered, and from the historian all he has to tell, there is yet another field of research open to him before he begins his task. It is the place itself – the terrain – the site of the town, or the modern town upon the site of the old. He must examine that; prowl about it; search into it; consider the neglected corners of it. I will give an example. Fifty years ago a certain learned antiquary and scholar visited the site of an ancient Syrian city, now sadly reduced, and little more than a village. He looked at the place – he did not explore it, he looked at it – he then read whatever history has found to say of it; he proceeded to prove that the place could never have been more than a small and insignificant town composed of huts and inhabited by fishermen. Those who spoke of it as a magnificent city he called enthusiasts or liars. Forty years passed; then another man came; he not only visited the site, but examined it, surveyed it, and explored it. This man discovered that the place had formerly possessed a wall – the remains still existing – two miles and more in length; an acropolis, strong and well situated – the ruins still standing – protecting a noble city with splendid buildings. The antiquary, you see, dealing with little fragments, could not rise above them; his fragments seemed to belong to a whole which was puny and insignificant. This antiquary was Dr. Robinson, and the place was the once famous city of Tiberias, by the shores of the Galilean lake.
In exactly the same manner, he who would understand mediæval London must walk about modern London, but after he has read his historian and his antiquary, not before. Then he will be astonished to find how much is left, in spite of fires, reconstructions and demolitions, to illustrate the past.
Here a quaint little square, accessible only to foot-passengers, shut in, surrounded by merchants' offices, still preserves its ancient form of a court in a suppressed monastery. Since the church is close by, one ought to be able to assign the court to its proper purpose. The hall, the chapter-house, the kitchens and buttery, the abbot's residence, may have been built around this court.
Again, another little square set with trees, like a Place in Toulon or Marseilles, shows the former court of a royal palace. And here a venerable name survives telling what once stood on the site; here a dingy little church-yard marks the former position of a church as ancient as any in the City.
London is full of such survivals, which are known only to one who prowls about its streets, note-book in hand, remembering what he has read. Not one of them can be got from the book antiquary, or from the guide-book. As one after the other is recovered the ancient city grows not only more vivid, but more picturesque and more splendid. London a city of low mean tenements? Dr. Brewer – Dr. Brewer! Why, I see great palaces along the river-bank between the quays and ports and warehouses. In the narrow lanes that rise steeply from the river I see other houses fair and stately, each with its gate-way, its square court, and its noble hall, high roofed, with its oriel-windows and its lantern. Beyond these narrow lanes, north of Watling Street and Budge Row, more of those houses – and still more, till we reach the northern part where the houses are nearly all small, because here the meaner sort and those who carry on the least desirable trades have those dwellings.
You have seen that London was full of rich monasteries, nunneries, colleges, and parish churches, in so much that it might be likened unto the Ile Sonnante of Rabelais. You have now to learn, what I believe no one has ever yet pointed out, that if it could be called a city of churches it was much more a city of palaces. This shall immediately be made clear. There were, in fact, in London itself more palaces than in Verona and Florence and Venice and Genoa all together. There was not, it is true, a line of marble palazzi along the banks of a Grande Canale; there was no Piazza della Signoria, no Piazza della Erbe to show these buildings. They were scattered about all over the City; they were built without regard to general effect and with no idea of decoration or picturesqueness; they lay hidden in narrow winding labyrinthine streets; the warehouses stood beside and between them; the common people dwelt in narrow courts around them; they faced each other on opposite sides of the lanes.
These palaces belonged to the great nobles and were their town houses; they were capacious enough to accommodate the whole of a baron's retinue, consisting sometimes of four, six, or even eight hundred men. Let us remark that the continual presence of these lords and their following did much more for the City than merely to add to its splendor by the erecting of great houses. By their residence they prevented the place from becoming merely a trading centre or an aggregate of merchants; they kept the citizens in touch with the rest of the kingdom; they made the people of London understand that they belonged to the Realm of England. When Warwick, the King-maker, rode through the streets to his town-house, followed by five hundred retainers in his livery; when King Edward the Fourth brought wife and children to the City and left them there under the protection of the Londoners while he rode out to fight for his crown; when a royal tournament was held in Chepe – the Queen and her ladies looking on – then the very school-boys learned and understood that there was more in the world than mere buying and selling, importing and exporting; that everything must not be measured by profit; that they were traders indeed, and yet subjects of an ancient crown; that their own prosperity stood or fell with the well-doing of the country. This it was which made the Londoners ardent politicians from very early times; they knew the party leaders who had lived among them; the City was compelled to take a side, and the citizens quickly perceived that their own side always won – a thing which gratified their pride. In a word, the presence in their midst of king and nobles made them look beyond their walls. London was never a Ghent; nor was it a Venice. It was never London for itself against the world, but always London for England first, and for its own interests next.
Again, the City palaces, the town-houses of the nobles, were at no time, it must be remembered, fortresses. The only fortress of the City was the White Tower. The houses were neither castellated nor fortified nor garrisoned. They were entered by a gate, but there was neither ditch nor portcullis. The gate – only a pair of wooden doors – led into an open court round which the buildings stood. Examples of this way of building may still be seen in London. For instance, Staple Inn, or Barnard's Inn, affords an excellent illustration of a mediæval mansion. There are in each two square courts with a gate-way leading from the road into the Inn. Between the courts is a hall with its kitchen and buttery. Clifford's Inn, Gray's Inn and Old Square, Lincoln's Inn are also good examples. Sion College, before they wickedly destroyed it, showed the hall and the court. Hampton Court is a late example, the position of the Hall having been changed. Gresham House was built about a court. So was the Mansion House. Till a few years ago Northumberland House, at Charing Cross, illustrated the disposition of such mansions. Those who walk down Queen Victoria Street in the City pass on the north side a red brick house standing round three sides of a quadrangle. This is the Herald's College; a few years ago it preserved its fourth side with its gate-way. Four hundred years ago this was the town-house of the Earls of Derby. Restore the front and you have the size of a great noble's town palace, yet not one of the largest. If you wish to understand the disposition of such a building as a nobleman's town-house, compare it with the Quadrangle of Clare, or that of Queens', Cambridge. Derby House was burned down in the Fire, and was rebuilt without its hall, kitchen, and butteries, for which there was no longer any use. As it was before the Fire, a broad and noble arch with a low tower, but showing no appearance of fortification, opened into the square court which was used as an exercising ground for the men at arms. In the rooms around the court was their sleeping accommodation; at the side or opposite the entrance stood the hall where the whole household took meals; opposite to the hall was the kitchen with its butteries; over the butteries was the room called the Solar, where the Earl and Countess slept; beyond the hall was another room called the Lady's Bower, where the ladies could retire from the rough talk of the followers. We have already spoken of this arrangement. The houses beside the river were provided with stairs, at the foot of which was the state barge in which my Lord and my Lady took the air on fine days, and were rowed to and from the Court at Westminster.
There remains nothing of these houses. They are, with one exception, all swept away. Yet the description of one or two, the site of others, and the actual remains of one sufficiently prove their magnificence. Let us take one or two about which something is known. For instance, there is Baynard's Castle, the name of which still survives in that of Baynard's Castle Ward, and in that of a wharf which is still called by the name of the old palace.
Baynard's Castle stood first on the river-bank close to the Fleet Tower and the western extremity of the wall. The great house which afterwards bore this name was on the bank, but a little more to the east. There was no house in the City more interesting than this. Its history extends from the Norman Conquest to the Great Fire – exactly six hundred years; and during the whole of this long period it was a great palace. First it was built by one Baynard, follower of William. It was forfeited in A.D. 1111, and given to Robert Fitzwalter, son of Richard, Earl of Clare, in whose family the office of Castellan and Standard-bearer to the City of London became hereditary. His descendant, Robert, in revenge for private injuries, took part with the Barons against King John, for which the King ordered Baynard's Castle to be destroyed. Fitzwalter, however, becoming reconciled to the King, was permitted to rebuild his house. It was again destroyed, this time by fire, in 1428. It was rebuilt by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, on whose attainder it reverted to the crown. During one of these rebuildings it was somewhat shifted in position. Richard, Duke of York, next had it, and lived here with his following of four hundred gentlemen and men at arms. It was in the hall of Baynard's Castle that Edward IV. assumed the title of king, and summoned the bishops, peers, and judges to meet him in council. Edward gave the house to his mother, and placed in it for safety his wife and children before going out to fight the battle of Barnet. Here Buckingham offered the crown to Richard.
Alas! why would you heap these cares on me?
I am unfit for state and majesty;
I do beseech you – take it not amiss —
I cannot, nor I will not, yield to you.
Henry VIII. lived in this palace, which he almost entirely rebuilt. Prince Henry, after his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, was conducted in great state up the river, from Baynard's Castle to Westminster, the Mayor and Commonalty of the City following in their barges. In the time of Edward VI. the Earl of Pembroke, whose wife was sister to Queen Catharine Parr, held great state in this house. Here he proclaimed Queen Mary. When Mary's first Parliament was held, he proceeded to Baynard's Castle, followed by "2000 horsemen in velvet coats with their laces of gold and gold chains, besides sixty gentlemen in blue coats with his badge of the green dragon." This powerful noble lived to entertain Queen Elizabeth at Baynard's Castle with a banquet, followed by fireworks. The last appearance of the place in history is when Charles II. took supper there just before the Fire swept over it and destroyed it.
Another house by the river was that called Cold Harborough, or Cold Inn.
This house stood to the west of the old Swan Stairs. It was built by a rich City merchant, Sir John Poultney, four times Mayor of London. At the end of the fourteenth century it belonged, however, to John Holland, Duke of Exeter, son of Thomas Holland, Duke of Kent, and Joan Plantagenet, the "Fair Maid of Kent." He was half-brother to King Richard II., whom here he entertained. Richard III. gave it to the Heralds for their college. They were turned out, however, by Henry VII., who gave the house to his mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond. His son gave it to the Earl of Shrewsbury, by whose son it was taken down, one knows not why, and mean tenements erected in its place for the river-side working-men.
Another royal residence was the house called the Erber. This house also has a long history. It is said to have been first built by the Knight Pont de l'Arche, founder of the Priory of St. Mary Overies. Edward III. gave it to Geoffrey le Scrope. It passed from him to John, Lord Neville, of Raby, and so to his son Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, the stanch supporter of Henry IV. From him the Erber passed into the hands of another branch of the Nevilles, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick. The King-maker resided here, with a following so numerous that six oxen were daily consumed for breakfast alone, and any person who was allowed within the gates could take away as much meat, sodden and roast, as he could carry upon a long dagger. After his death, George, Duke of Clarence – "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence" – obtained a grant of the house, in right of his wife, Isabel, daughter of Warwick. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, succeeded, and called it the King's Palace during his brief reign. Edward, son of the Duke of Clarence, then obtained it. In the year 1584 the place, which seems to have fallen into decay, was rebuilt by Sir Thomas Pulsdon, Lord Mayor. Its last illustrious occupant, according to Stow, was Sir Francis Drake.
We are fortunate in having left one house at least, or a fragment of one, out of the many London palaces. The Fire of 1666 spared Crosby Place, and though most of the old mansion has been pulled down, there yet remains the Hall, the so-called Throne Room, and the so-called Council Room. The mansion formerly covered the greater part of what is now called Crosby Square. It was built by a simple citizen, a grocer and Lord Mayor, Sir John Crosby, in the fifteenth century; a man of great wealth and great position; a merchant, diplomatist, and ambassador. He rode north to welcome Edward IV. when he landed at Ravenspur; he was sent by the King on a mission to the Duke of Burgundy and to the Duke of Brittany. Shakespeare makes Richard of Gloucester living in this house as early as 1471, four years before the death of Sir John Crosby, a thing not likely. But he was living here at the death of Edward IV., and here he held his levées before his usurpation of the crown. In this hall, where now the City clerks snatch a hasty dinner, sat the last and worst of the Plantagenets, thinking of the two boys who stood between him and the crown. Here he received the news of their murder. Here he feasted with his friends. The place is charged with the memory of Richard Plantagenet. Early in the next century another Lord Mayor obtained it, and lent it to the ambassador of the Emperor Maximilian. It passed next into the hands of a third citizen, also Lord Mayor, and was bought in 1516 by Sir Thomas More, who lived here for seven years, and wrote in this house his Utopia and his Life of Richard the Third. His friend, Antonio Bonvici, a merchant of Lucca, next lived in the house. To him More wrote his well-known letter from the Tower. William Roper, More's son-in-law, and William Rustill, his nephew; Sir Thomas d'Arcy; William Bond, Alderman and Sheriff, and merchant adventurer; Sir John Spencer, ancestor of Lord Northampton; Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and sister of Sir Philip Sidney —
The gentlest shepherdess that lived that day;
And most resembling, both in shape and spirit
Her brother dear —
the Earl of Northampton, who accompanied Charles I. to Madrid on his romantic journey; Sir Stephen Langham – were successive owners or occupants of this house. It was partly destroyed by fire – not the Great Fire – in the reign of Charles II. The Hall, which escaped, was for seventy years a Presbyterian meeting-house; it then became a packer's warehouse. Sixty years ago it was partly restored, and became a literary institution. It is now a restaurant, gaudy with color and gilding. The Duc de Biron, ambassador from France in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was lodged here, with four hundred noblemen and gentlemen in his train. And here also was lodged the Duc de Sully.
In a narrow street in the City, called Tower Royal – Tour De La Reole, built by merchants from Bordeaux – survives the name of a house where King Stephen lived in the short intervals when he was not fighting; King Richard II. gave it to his mother, and called it the Queen's Wardrobe; he afterwards assigned it to Leon III., King of Armenia, who had been dispossessed by the Turks. Richard III. gave it to John, Duke of Norfolk, who lived here until his death at the battle of Bosworth Field. There is no description of the house, which must have had a tower of some kind, and there is no record of its demolition: Stow only says that "of late times it has been neglected and turned into stabling for the king's horses, and is now let out to divers men, and is divided into tenements."
The Heralds' College in Queen Victoria Street, already mentioned, stands on the site of Derby House. Here the first Earl, who married the mother of Henry VII., lived. Here the Princess Elizabeth of York was the guest of the Earl during the usurpation of Richard. The house was destroyed in the Fire and rebuilt in a quadrangle, of which the front portion was removed to make room for the new street.
Half a dozen great houses do not make a city of palaces. That is true. Let us find others. Here, then, is a list, by no means exhaustive, drawn up from the pages of Stow. The Fitz Alans, Earls of Arundel, had their town house in Botolph Lane, Billingsgate, down to the end of the sixteenth century. The street is and always has been narrow, and, from its proximity to the fish-market, is and always has been unsavory. The Earls of Northumberland had town houses successively in Crutched Friars, Fenchurch Street, and Aldersgate Street. The Earls of Worcester lived in Worcester Lane, on the river-bank; the Duke of Buckingham on College Hill: observe how the nobles, like the merchants, built their houses in the most busy part of the town. The Beaumonts and the Huntingdons lived beside Paul's Wharf; the Lords of Berkeley had a house near Blackfriars; Doctor's Commons was the town house of the Blounts, Lords Mountjoy. Close to Paul's Wharf stood the mansion once occupied by the widow of Richard, Duke of York, mother of Edward IV., Clarence, and Richard III. Edward the Black Prince lived on Fish Street Hill; the house was afterwards turned into an inn. The De la Poles had a house in Lombard Street. The De Veres, Earls of Oxford, lived first in St. Mary Axe, and afterwards in Oxford Court, St. Swithin's Lane; Cromwell, Earl of Essex, had a house in Throgmorton Street. The Barons Fitzwalter had a house where now stands Grocers' Hall, Poultry. In Aldersgate Street were houses of the Earl of Westmoreland, the Earl of Northumberland, and the Earl of Thanet, Lord Percie, and the Marquis of Dorchester. Suffolk Lane marks the site of the "Manor of the Rose," belonging successively to the Suffolks and the Buckinghams; Lovell's Court, Paternoster Row, marks the site of the Lovells' mansion; between Amen Corner and Ludgate Street stood Abergavenny House, where lived in the reign of Edward II. the Earl of Richmond and Duke of Brittany, grandson of Henry III. Afterwards it became the house of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, who married Lady Margaret, daughter of Edward III. It passed to the Nevilles, Earls of Abergavenny, and from them to the Stationers' Company. Warwick Lane runs over Warwick House. The Sidneys, Earls of Leicester, lived in the Old Bailey. The Staffords, Dukes of Buckingham, lived in Milk Street.
Such a list, numbering no fewer than thirty-five palaces – which is not exhaustive and does not include the town houses of the Bishops and great Abbots, nor the halls of the companies, many of them very noble, nor the houses used for the business of the City, as Blackwell Hall and Guildhall – is, I think, sufficient to prove my statement that London was a city of palaces.
Nothing, again, has been said about the houses of the rich merchants, some of which were much finer than those of the nobles. Crosby Hall, as has been seen, was built by a merchant. In Basing Lane (now swallowed up by those greedy devourers of old houses, Cannon Street and Queen Victoria Street), stood Gerrard's Hall, with a Norman Crypt and a high-roofed Hall, where once they kept a Maypole and called it Giant Gerrard's staff. This was the hall of the house built by John Gisors, Mayor in the year 1305. The Vintners' Hall stands on the site of a great house built by Sir John Stodie, Mayor in 1357. In the house called the Vintry, Sir Henry Picard, Mayor, once entertained a very noble company indeed. Among them were King Edward III., King John of France, King David of Scotland, the King of Cyprus, and the Black Prince. After the banquet they gambled, the Lord Mayor defending the bank against all comers with dice and hazard. The King of Cyprus lost his money, and, unfortunately, his Royal temper as well. To lose the latter was a common infirmity among the kings of those ages. The Royal Rage of the proverb is one of those subjects which the essayist enters in his notes and never finds the time to treat. Then up spake Sir Henry, with admonition in his voice: Did his Highness of Cyprus really believe that the Lord Mayor, a merchant adventurer of London, whose ships rode at anchor in the Cyprian King's port of Famagusta, should seek to win the money of him or of any other king? "My Lord and King," he said, "be not aggrieved. I court not your gold, but your play; for I have not bidden you hither that you might grieve." And so gave the king his money back. But John, King of France, and David, King of Scotland, and the Black Prince murmured and whispered that it was not fitting for a king to take back money lost at play. And the good old King Edward stroked his gray beard, but refrained from words.
Another entertainer of kings was Whittington. What sayeth the wise man?
"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings."
They used to show an old house in Hart Lane, rich with carved wood, as Whittington's, but he must have lived in his own parish of St. Michael's Paternoster Royal, and, one is pretty certain, on the spot where was afterwards built his college, which stood on the north side of the church. Here he entertained Henry of Agincourt and Katherine, his bride, with a magnificence which astonished the king. But Whittington knew what he was doing; the banquet was not ostentation and display; its cost was far more than repaid by the respect for the wealth and power of the city which it nourished and maintained in the kingly mind. The memory of this and other such feasts, we may be very sure, had its after effect even upon those most masterful of sovereigns, Henry VIII. and Queen Bess. On this occasion it was nothing that the tables groaned with good things, and glittered with gold and silver plate; it was nothing that the fires were fed with cedar and perfumed wood. For this princely Mayor fed these fires after dinner with nothing less than the king's bonds to the amount of £60,000. In purchasing power that sum would now be represented by a million and a quarter.
A truly royal gift.
It was not given to many merchants, "sounding always the increase of their winning," thus to thrive and prosper. Most of them lived in more modest dwellings. All of them lived in comparative discomfort, according to modern ideas. When we read of mediæval magnificence we must remember that the standard of what we call comfort was much lower in most respects than at present. In the matter of furniture, for instance, though the house was splendid inside and out with carvings, coats of arms painted and gilt, there were but two or three beds in it, the servants sleeping on the floor; the bedrooms were small and dark; the tables were still laid on trestles, and removed when the meal was finished; there were benches where we have chairs; and for carpet they had rushes or mats of plaited straw; and though the tapestry was costly, the windows were draughty, and the doors ill-fitting. When, with the great commercial advance of the fourteenth century, space by the river became more valuable, the disposition of the Hall, with its little court, became necessarily modified. The house, which was warehouse as well as residence, ran up into several stories high – the earliest maps of London show many such houses beside Queenhithe, and in the busiest and most crowded parts of the City; on every story there was a wide door for the reception of bales and crates; a rope and pulley were fixed to a beam at the highest gable for hoisting and lowering the goods. The front of the house was finely ornamented with carved wood-work. One may still see such houses – streets full of them – in the ancient City of Hildesheim, near Hanover.
On the river-bank, exactly under what is now Cannon Street Railway Station, stood the Steelyard, Guildæ Aula Teutonicorum. In appearance it was a house of stone, with a quay towards the river, a square court, a noble Hall, and three arched gates towards Thames Street. This was the house of the Hanseatic League, whose merchants for three hundred years and more enjoyed the monopoly of importing hemp, corn, wax, steel, linen cloths, and, in fact, carried on the whole trade with Germany and the Baltic, so that until the London merchants pushed out their ships into the Mediterranean and the Levant their foreign trade was small, and their power of gaining wealth small in proportion. This strange privilege granted to foreigners grew by degrees. At first, unless the foreign merchants of the Hanse towns and of Flanders and of France had not brought over their wares they could not have sold them, because there were no London merchants to import them. Therefore they came, and they came to stay. They gradually obtained privileges; they were careful to obey the laws, and give no cause for jealousy or offence; and they kept their privileges, living apart in their own college, till Edward VI. at last took them away. In memory of their long residence in the city, the merchants of Hamburg in the reign of Queen Anne presented the church where they had worshipped, All Hallows the Great, with a magnificent screen of carved wood. The church, built by Wren after the Fire, is a square box of no architectural pretensions, but is glorified by this screen.
The great (comparative) wealth of the City is shown by the proportion it was called upon to pay towards the king's loans. In 1397, for instance, London was assessed at £6,666 13s. 4d., while Bristol, which came next, was called upon for £800 only; Norwich for £333, Boston for £300, and Plymouth for no more than £20. And in the graduated poll tax of 1379, the Lord Mayor of London had to pay £4 – the same as an Earl, a Bishop, or a mitred Abbot, while the Aldermen were regarded as on the same line with Barons, and paid £2 each.
Between the merchant adventurers, who sometimes entertained kings and had a fleet of ships always on the sea, and the retail trader there was as great a gulf then as at any after-time. Between the retail trader, who was an employer of labor, and the craftsman there was a still greater gulf. The former lived in plenty and in comfort. His house was provided with a spacious hearth, and windows, of which the upper part, at least, was of glass. The latter lived in one of the mean and low tenements, which, according to Dr. Brewer, made up the whole of London. There were a great many of those, because there are always a great many poor in a large town. Nay, there were narrow lanes and filthy courts where there were nothing but one-storied hovels, built of wattle and clay, the roof thatched with reeds, the fire burning in the middle of the room, the occupants sleeping in old Saxon fashion, wrapped in rugs around the central fire. The lanes and courts were narrow and unpaved, and filthy with every kind of refuse. In those crowded and fetid streets the plague broke out, fevers always lingered, the children died of putrid throat, and in these places began the devastating fires that from time to time swept the City.