History of London — 14 - Lessons 33 - 35: Gifts and Bequests, The Palaces and Great Houses, and Amusements

33. GIFTS AND BEQUESTS.

The stream of charity which has so largely enriched and endowed the City of London began very early.

You have seen how Rahere built and endowed Bartholomew's, and how Queen Maud founded the Lazar House of St. Giles.

The fourteenth century furnishes many more instances.

Thus William Elsinge founded in 1332 a hospital for a hundred poor blind men: in 1371 John Barnes gave a chest containing 1,000 marks to be lent by the City to young men beginning trade.

You have heard how one Mayor went out to fight a pirate and slew him and made prizes of his vessels.

Another when corn was very dear imported at his own expense a great quantity from Germany.

Another gave money to relieve poor prisoners: another left money for the help of poor householders: another provided that on his commemoration day in the year 2,400 poor householders, of the City should have a dinner and every man two pence.

This means in present money about L600 a year, or an estate worth L20,000: another left money to pay the tax called the Fifteenth, for three parishes: another brought water in a conduit from Highbury to Cripplegate.

But the greatest and wisest benefactor of his time was Whittington.

In his own words: 'The fervent desire and busy intention of a prudent, wise, and devout man, should be to cast before and make secure the state and the end of this short life with deeds of mercy and pity, and especially to provide for those miserable persons whom the penury of poverty insulteth, and to whom the power of seeking the necessaries of life by act or bodily labour is interdicted.'

With these grave words, which should be a lesson to all men, rich or poor, Whittington begins the foundation of his College.

If a man were in these days to found a College he would make it either a school for boys or a technical school--in any case a place which should be always _working_ for the world.

In those days, when it was universally believed that the saying of masses was able to lift souls out of punishment, a man founded a College which should _pray_ for the world.

Whittington's College was to consist of a Master and four Fellows--who were to be Masters of Arts--with clerks, choristers, and servants.

They were every day to say mass for the souls of Richard and Alice Whittington in the church of St. Michael's Paternoster Royal--which church Whittington himself had rebuilt.

Behind the church he founded and built an almshouse for thirteen poor men, who were to have 16_d.

_ each per week, about 7_s.

_ of our money, with clothing and rooms on the condition of praying daily for their founder and his wife.

Part of the ground for the building was granted by the Mayor and Corporation.

The College continued until the Dissolution of the Religious Houses--that is, for one hundred and fifty years: the almshouse continues to this day: but it has been removed to Highgate: on its site the Mercers' Company has established a school.

Whittington, further, built a library for the Franciscan House; part of the building still remains at Christ's Hospital.

It was 129 feet long and 31 feet broad.

He also gave the friars 400_l.

_ to buy books.

He restored and repaired the Hospital of St. Bartholomew's, to which he gave a library.

He paved and glazed the new building of Guildhall: he gave large sums for the bridge--and the chapel on the bridge--at Rochester--as a merchant he was greatly interested in keeping this important bridge in order: he repaired Gloucester Cathedral--the cathedral church of his native diocese: he made 'bosses,' i. e. taps of water, to the great aqueduct: he rebuilt and enlarged Newgate Prison;

and he founded a library at Guildhall.

Many of these things were done after his death by his executors.

Such were the gifts by which a City merchant of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries sought to advance the prosperity of the citizens.

Fresh water in plenty by 'bosses' here and there: the light of learning by means of libraries: almshouses for the poor: mercy and charity for the prisoners: hospitals for the sick: help for the young: prayers for the dead.

These things he understood.

We cannot expect any man to be greatly in advance of his age.

Otherwise we should find a Whittington insisting upon cleanliness of streets: fresh air in the house: burial outside the City: the abolition of the long fasts which made people eat stinking fish and so gave them leprosy: the education of the craftsmen in something besides their trade: the establishment of a patrol by police: and the freedom of trade.

He did not found any school.

That is a remarkable omission.

One of his successors, Sir William Sevenoke, founded a school for lads of his native town Sevenoaks: another, Sir Robert Chichele, founded a school, an almshouse, and a college in his native town of Higham Ferrers.

A

friend of his own, Sir John Niel, proposed to establish four new grammar schools in the City.

And yet Whittington left no money for a school.

We may be quite sure that there was a reason for the omission.

Perhaps he was afraid of the growing spirit of doubt and inquiry.

Boys who learn grammar and rhetoric may grow into men who question and argue; and so, easily and naturally, get bound to the stake and are consumed with the pile of faggots.

Everything was provided except a school for boys.

Libraries for men; but not a school for boys.

The City of London School was founded by Whittington's executor, John Carpenter.

There must have been reasons in Whittington's mind for omitting any endowment of schools.

What those reasons were I cannot even guess.

34. THE PALACES AND GREAT HOUSES.

When you think of a great city of the thirteenth or fourteenth century you must remember two things.

First, that the streets were mostly very narrow--if you walk down Thames Street and note the streets running north and south you will be able to understand how narrow the City streets were.

Second, that the great houses of the nobles and the rich merchants stood in these narrow streets, shut in on all sides though they often contained spacious courts and gardens.

No attempt was made to group the houses or to arrange them with any view to picturesque effect.

It has been the fashion to speak of mediaeval London as if it were a city of hovels grouped together along dark and foul lanes.

This was by no means the case.

On the contrary, it was a city of splendid palaces and houses nearly all of which were destroyed by the Great Fire.

You have seen how the City was covered with magnificent buildings of monasteries and churches.

Do not believe that the nobles and rich merchants who endowed and built these places would be content to live in hovels.

[Illustration: DURHAM, SALISBURY, AND WORCESTER HOUSES.

] The nobles indeed wanted barracks.

A great Lord never moved anywhere without his following.

The Earl of Warwick, called the King Maker, when he rode into London was followed by five hundred men, wearing his colours: all of these had to find accommodation in his town house.

This was always built in the form of a court or quadrangle.

The modern Somerset House, which is built on the foundations of the old house, shows us what a great man's house was like: and the College of Heralds in Queen Victoria Street, is another illustration, for this was Lord Derby's town house.

Hampton Court and St. James's, are illustrations of a great house with more than one court.

Any one who knows the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge will understand the arrangement of the great noble's town house in the reign of Richard II.

On one side was the hall in which the banquets took place and all affairs of importance were discussed.

The kitchen, butteries and cellars stood opposite the doors of the hall; at the back of the hall with a private entrance were the rooms of the owner and his family: the rest of the rooms on the quadrangle were given up to the use of his followers.

Baynard's Castle--the name yet survives--stood on the river bank not far from Blackfriars.

It was a huge house with towers and turrets and a water gate with stairs.

It contained two courts.

It was at last, after standing for six hundred years, destroyed in the Great Fire, and was one of the most lamentable of the losses caused by that disaster.

The house had been twice before burned down, and that which finally perished was built in 1428. Here Edward IV.

assumed the Crown: here he placed his wife and children for safety before going forth to the Battle of Barnet.

Here Buckingham offered the Crown to Richard.

Here Henry VIII.

lived.

Here Charles II.

was entertained.

Eastward, also on the river bank and near the old Swan Stairs, stood another great house called Cold Harbour.

It belonged to Holland, Dukes of Exeter, to Richard III.

and to Margaret, Countess of Richmond.

North of Thames Street near College Hill was the Erber, another great house which belonged successively to the Scropes and the Nevilles.

Here lived the King-maker Earl of Warwick.

His following was so numerous that every day six oxen were consumed for breakfast alone.

His son-in-law, who had the house afterwards, was the Duke of Clarence--'false, fleeting, perjured Clarence.'

If you would know how a great merchant of the fifteenth century loved to be housed, go visit Crosby Hall.

It is the only specimen left of the ancient wealth and splendour of a City merchant.

But as one man lived so did many.

We cannot believe that Crosby was singular in his building a palace for himself.

London with its narrow streets, its crowded courts, and the corners where the huts and hovels of wood and daub and thatch stood among their foul surroundings, a constant danger to the great houses of fire and plague, was a city of great houses and palaces, with which no other city in Europe could compare.

Venice and Genoa had their Crosby Halls--their merchants' palaces; but London had in addition, the town houses of all the nobles of the land.

In the City alone, without counting the Strand and Westminster, there were houses of the Earls of Arundel, Northumberland, Worcester, Berkeley, Oxford, Essex, Thanet, Suffolk, Richmond, Pembroke, Abergavenny, Warwick, Leicester, Westmoreland.

Then there were the houses of the Bishops and the Abbots.

All these before we come to the houses of the rich merchants.

Let your vision of London under the Plantagenets be that of a city all spires and towers, great churches and stately convents, with noble houses as great and splendid as Crosby Hall scattered all about the City within the walls and lining the river bank from Ludgate to Westminster.

35. AMUSEMENTS.

We have heard so much of the religious Houses, Companies, Hospitals, quarrels and struggles that we may have forgotten a very important element in the life of the City--the amusements and pastimes of the citizens.

Never was there a time when the City had more amusements than in these centuries.

You have seen that it was always a rich town: its craftsmen were well paid: food was abundant: the people were well fed always, except in times of famine, which were rare.

There were taverns with music and singing: there were pageants, wonderful processions representing all kinds of marvels, devised by the citizens to please the King or to please themselves: there were plays representing scenes from the Bible and from the Lives of the Saints: there were tournaments to look at.

Then there were the Festivals of the year, Christmas Day, Twelfth Day, Easter, the Day of St. John the Baptist, Shrove Tuesday, the Day of the Company, May Day, at all of which feasting and merriment were the rule.

The young men, in winter, played at football, hockey, quarterstaff, and single stick.

They had cock fighting, boar fights, and the baiting of bulls and bears.

On May Day they erected a May-pole in every parish: they chose a May Queen: and they had morris-dancing with the lads dressed up as Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Little John, Tom the Piper, and other famous characters.

[Illustration: BEAR-BAITING.

(_From the Luttrell Psalter.

_)] Then they shot with the bow and the cross-bow for prizes: they had wrestlings and they had foot races.

The two great festivals of the year were the Eve of St. John the Baptist and the Day of the Company.

[Illustration: SHOOTING AT THE BUTTS WITH THE LONG-BOW.

] On the former there took place the March of the Watch.

Bonfires were lit in the streets, not for warmth but in order to purge and cleanse the air of the narrow streets: at the open doors stood tables with meat and drink, neighbour inviting neighbour to hospitality.

Then the doors were wreathed with green branches, leaves, and flowers: lamps of glass were hanging over them with oil burning all the night: some hung out branches of iron curiously wrought with hundreds of hanging lights.

And everywhere the cheerful sounds of music and singing and the dancing of the prentice lads and girls in the open street.

Through the midst of this joyousness filed the Watch.

Four thousand men took part in this procession which was certainly the finest thing that Mediaeval London had to show.

To light the procession on its way the City found two hundred cressets or lanterns, the Companies found five hundred and the constables of London, two hundred and fifty in number, each carried one.

The number of men who carried and attended to the cressets was two thousand.

Then followed the Watch itself, consisting of two thousand captains, lieutenants, sergeants, drummers and fifers, standard bearers, trumpeters, demilances on great horses, bowmen, pikemen, with morris-dancers and minstrels--their armour all polished bright and some even gilded.

No painter has ever painted this March: yet of all things, mediaeval, it was the most beautiful and the most mediaeval.

On the day of the Company, i. e. the Company's Saint's Day, all the members assembled in the Hall, every man in a new livery, in the morning.

First they formed in procession and marched to church, headed by priests and singing boys, in surplices: after these walked the servants, clerks, assistants, the chaplain, the Mayor's sergeants, often the Lord Mayor himself.

Lastly came the Court with the Master and Wardens followed by the Livery, i. e. the members.

After church they returned in like manner to the Hall, where a great banquet awaited them, music played in the gallery: the banners of the Company were hung over their heads: they burned scented wood: they sat in order, Master and Wardens and illustrious guests at the high table: and the freemen below, every man with his wife or some maiden if he were unmarried.

After dinner the loving cup went round: the minstrels led in the players: and they had dramatic shows, songs, dances and 'mummeries' for the rest of the day.

Do not think of mediaeval London as a dull place--it was full of life and of brightness: the streets were narrow perhaps, but they were full of colour from the bright dresses of all--the liveries of the Companies--the liveries of the great nobles--the splendid costume of the knights and richer class.

The craftsman worked from daylight till curfew in the winter: from five or six in the summer: he had a long day: but he had three holidays: he had his evenings: and his Sundays.

A dull time was going to fall upon the Londoners, but not yet for two hundred years.