The Mermaid tavern:
Used to stand on the south side of Cheapside, between Bread and Friday Streets, to attend the meetings of the famous Mermaid Club, said to have been founded by Sir Walter Raleigh.
Here were to be found Spenser, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Carew, Donne, and many others, in eager witty converse. Beaumont well described the brilliancy of these gatherings in his poem to Ben Jonson:
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! Heard words that have been so nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that everyone from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.
The Mermaid Inn was delightful outside and inside, with low panelled rooms, immense fireplaces and dog-grates. Many Monograms, names, and dates were carved on the stone fireplaces.
In later days the Elizabethan poets and dramatists, led by Ben Jonson, went even further afield to the Devil tavern, which stood at No. I, Fleet Street, where they held their meetings in a room called the Apollo, the chief adornments of which, a bust of Apollo and a board with an inscription, Welcome to the oracle of Apollo, are still to be seen in an upper room of Messrs. Child’s Bank, which now occupies the site.
Ben Jonson
(1573–1637)
Ben Jonson tells us that “the first speech in my Catiline, spoken to Scyllds Ghost, was writ after I had parted with my friends at the Devil tavern; I had drank well that night, and had brave notions.”
BacoVision
This is a series of unique Baconian videos ever offered to the public.
York House Water Gate:
The fine old Water Gate in the Embankment Gardens within a few yards of Charing Cross Underground Station is a reminder of the time when noble houses fronted the river and the Thames was almost as much a highway as any Venetian canal. The gate was designed by Inigo Jones as the river entrance for York House, the town mansion of the first Duke of Buckingham, and apart from its beauty is particularly interesting as indicating the old river level before the building of the Embankment.
The portion of Westminster that extends from this point to St. James’ Park was formerly known as York Place, for here stood the palace of the Archbishops of York. Cardinal Wolsey was the last Archbishop to occupy the palace, and at his fall in 1529 this desirable property was immediately appropriated by Henry, who built for himself the royal palace of Whitehall. Inigo Jones in 1619 designed a palace to replace Whitehall. It was to cover an area of 24 acres, but was never built, owing to lack of funds and the civil unrest that preceded the Revolution. Of Inigo’s magnificent design the banqueting house only was completed, and it was from a window of the banqueting house that Charles I., stepped out upon a platform to be executed. An inscription is let into the wall below the window commemorating this fact, but is difficult to decipher.
Holborn and the Inns of Court and Chancery:
The origin of the City of London is almost as unknown as that of Rome itself, and all its earliest history is lost in the misty traditions of the Middle Ages, and to this may be due the fact that the arms it blazons on its shield, and the weird supporters it claims to use, have but little to warrant them but custom and age. Just as Holland denotes the hollow land, so Holborn, or Holeburn, implies the hollow bourne the bourne or river in the hollow. This once forcible little stream descended four hundred feet in a journey of six miles, taking its rise in Ken Wood, the beautifully timbered estate of the Earls of Mansfield at Highgate. After passing through several ponds, skirting the existing Millfield Lane, it crossed the foot of West Hill and continued its course through what is now known as the Brookfield Stud Farm, till, somewhat to the north of Prince of Wales’ Road at Kentish Town, it encountered another stream of almost equal rapidity, the birthplace of which was in the Happy Valley at Hampstead.
The united current then rolled on through Camden Town and St. Pancras towards Battle Bridge at King’s Cross, from whence it flowed through Packington Street, under Rosebery Avenue, into Farringdon Street, creating steep banks on its flanks, which still remain the measure and evidence of its ancient energy; until, finally, it debouched into that tidal estuary from the Thames mediasvally known as the Fleet. Holborn Viaduct, at a much higher altitude, now spans the hollow where once stood Holeburn Bridge, at the wharves on either side of which “boats with corn, wine, firewood, and other necessaries” would unload. In 1598, John Stow knew of this burn only as Turnmill Brook. Now it no longer exists; the damming of its waters for the erection of mills in the Middle Ages, and its absorption by the water companies, have led to its complete disappearance.
The Manor of Holeburn, which was bounded on the east by the southern part of the Farringdon Street portion of this stream, included both sides of Shoe Lane; but how far west or north it originally extended is not known. In the year 1300, Saffron Hill, Fetter (or Faytour) Lane, and Fleet Street were all outside its bounds. Shoe Lane was known as Sho Lane, at one end of which was a well, called Show Well, from which the neighbourhood drew its water.
The street of Holborn was at first simply the King’s Street; afterwards it acquired the name of Holebourne-Bridge-strate. From Newgate to a little way west of St. Sepulchre’s Church the high-road was known as la Baillie; from thence it bore the same name as the river, being carried over the bridge on to the ridge along which the Romans had built their military stoneway, known as Watling Street, out of which, in the year 1300, there turned two streets towards the south, namely, Scho Lane and Faitur Lane, and two towards the north, one called le Vrunelane, afterwards Lyverounelane, then Lyver Lane, now Leather Lane, and the other called Portpool Lane, now Gray’s Inn Road.
London...
Westminster: Originally called Thorney Island, from its having been “overgrown with thorns, and environed with water.” This fact is substantiated by a charter granted in the year 785, by Offa, the Mercian King, wherein the Isle of Thorney is expressly mentioned in conjunction with Westminster, the latter appellation having arisen from the new Minster, then supposed to have been built, being situated to the West, either of London or of St. Paul’s Minster, or Cathedral. (Stow’s Survey of London, p. 377, (1598)
The years 604, 605, and 610, have been assigned as the dates of the foundation of the church at Westminster.
London Stone: a Roman milliarium or milestone, and to have marked the point in London whence all Roman roads radiated and distances were measured. Holinshed mentions Jack Cade striking his sword upon the stone after the storming of London Bridge and announcing himself lord of the city; as does Shakespeare in Henry VI.
St. Ethelburga Church: St. Ethelburga was the wife of Sebert the first Christian king, traditional founder of Westminster Abbey, and the church now standing is one that escaped the Great Fire. Some of its early English Masonry is still retained. According to tradition the church was much frequented by sailors setting out or returning from their voyages. Hudson and many of his crew came here to receive the Holy Sacrament before they left their native shores in 1610. The western arch of the church is said to have formed part of the gateway of St. Helen’s Priory. In St. Helen’s Church adjoining may be seen the tomb of Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls to James I.
The Tower: Has in its time served as palace, prison, fortress, mint and even as a home for lions that were removed in 1834 to the Zoological Gardens. The place was built by the Conqueror in 1078 in order that he might have control over the city, and was used as a palace by all our Kings and Queens until the reign of Charles II.
London in 1593
The leading feature of Elizabethan London was that it was a great port. William Camden, writing in his Britannia, remarked that the Thames, by its safe and deep channel, was able to entertain the greatest ships in existence, daily bringing in so great riches from all parts “that it striveth at this day with the Mart-townes of Christendome for the second prise, and affoordeth a most sure and beautiful Roade for shipping”. (Holland’s translation).
Below the great bridge, one of the wonders of Europe, we see this shipping crowding the river in the maps and views of London belonging to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Tower and the bridge were the city’s defences against attack by water. Near the Tower was the Custom House, where peaceful commerce paid its dues; and between the Custom House and the bridge was the great wharf of Billingsgate, where goods were landed for distribution. Near the centre of the bridge was a drawbridge, which admitted vessels to another great wharf, Queenhithe, at a point midway between London Bridge and Blackfriars. Between the bridge and Queenhithe was the Steelyard, the domain of the merchants of the Hanseatic League.
Along the river front were numerous other wharves, where barges and lighters unloaded goods which they brought from the ships in the road, or from the upper reaches of the Thames. For the river was the great highway of London. It answered the needs of commerce, and it furnished the chief means of transit. The passenger traffic of Elizabethan London was carried on principally by means of rowing-boats. A passenger landed at the point nearest to his destination, and then walked; or a servant waited for him with a saddle-horse.
The streets were too narrow for coaches, except in two or three main arteries. The characteristic of present-day London, at which all foreigners most marvel, is the amount of traffic in the streets. In Elizabethan London this characteristic existed in the chief highway the Thames. The passenger-boats were generally described as “wherries,” and they were likened by Elizabethan travellers to the gondolas of Venice; for instance, by Coryat, in his Crudities, who thought the playhouses of Venice very beggarly compared with those of London, but admired the gondoliers, because they were “altogether as swift as our rowers about London.”
The maps of the period reveal the extraordinary number of “stairs” for landing passengers along both banks of the river, besides the numerous wharves for goods. John Stow, the author of the Survey of London, published first in 1598, and again in a second edition in 1603, describes the traffic on the river. “By the Thames,” he says, “all kinds of merchandise be easily conveyed to London, the principal storehouse and staple of all commodities within this realm. So that, omitting to speak of great ships and other vessels of burthen, there pertaineth to the cities of London, Westminster, and borough of Southwark, above the number, as is supposed, of 2,000 wherries and other small boats, whereby 3,000 poor men at the least be set on work and maintained.” Many of these Watermen were old sailors, who had sailed and fought under Drake. The Armada deliverance was recalled by Drake’s ship, which lay in the river below the bridge.
The voyage of the Earl of Essex to Spain, the expeditions to Ireland and to the Low Countries, formed the staple of the gossip of these old sailors who found employment in the chief means of locomotion in Elizabethan London. There was only the single bridge, but there were several ferries. The principal ferry was from Blackfriars and the Fleet river to a point opposite on the Surrey side, called Paris Garden stairs nearly in a line with the present Blackfriars Bridge. At Westminster was another, from the Horseferry Road to a point a little west of Lambeth Palace almost in the line of the present Lambeth Bridge.
The river was fordable at low tide at this point; horses crossed here whence the name Horseferry and possibly other cattle, when the tide was unusually low. The sea is the home of piety. Coast towns, ports, and havens, reached after voyages of peril, are invariably notable for their places of worship, and for customs which speak touchingly like the blessing of fishermen’s nets, for instance of lives spent in uncertainty and danger. Thus, the leading characteristic of Elizabethan London being its association with the sea and its dependence on the river, we find that its next most striking characteristic was the extraordinary number of churches it contained.
The great cathedral predominated more pronouncedly than its modern successor. From the hill on which it was based it reared its vast bulk; its great spire ascended the heavens, and the multitude of church towers and spires and belfries throughout the city seemed to follow it. The houses were small, the streets were narrow; but to envisage the city from the river, or from the Surrey side, was to have the eye led upwards from point to point to the summit of St. Paul’s. The dignity and piety of London were thus expressed, in contradiction to human foibles and failings so conspicuous in Elizabethan drama.
The spire of St. Paul’s was destroyed by lightning early in the reign of Elizabeth; and the historian may see much significance in the fact that it was not rebuilt, even in thanksgiving and praise for the deliverance from the Great Armada. The piety of London dwindled until it flamed forth anew in the time of the Puritan revolt. The bridge was carried on nineteen arches. It had a defensive gate at the Southwark end, and another gateway at the northern end. In the centre was a beautiful chapel, dedicated to Thomas a Becket, and known as St. Thomas of the Bridge. Houses were built on the bridge, mostly shops with overhanging signs, as in the streets of the city. Booksellers and haberdashers predominated, but other trades were carried on also. After the chapel, the most conspicuous feature of the bridge was Nonesuch House, so called to express the wonder that it was constructed in Holland entirely of wood, brought over the water piece by piece, and put together on the bridge by dovetailing and pegs, without the use of a single metal nail.
Adjoining the northern gateway was an engine for raising water by means of a great wheel operated by the tide. Near the Southwark end were corn-mills, worked on the same principle, below the last two arches of the bridge. The gateway at the Southwark end, so well shown in Visscher’s view of London, was finished in 1579, and the traitors’ heads, which formerly surmounted a tower by the drawbridge, were transferred to it. Travellers from the south received this grim salutation as they approached the bridge, which led into the city; and when they glanced across the river, the Tower frowned upon them, and the Traitors’ Gateway, like teeth in an open mouth, deepened the effect of warning and menace.
But these terrors loomed darkling in the background for the most part. They belonged rather to the time when the Sovereign’s palaces at Westminster and at the Tower seemed to hold London in a grip. The palace at Westminster now languished in desuetude; the Tower was a State prison, and with some ironical intent, perhaps also the abode of the royal beasts, lions, tigers, leopards, and other captives. The Queen passed in her royal barge down the river with ceremonious pageantry from her palace of Whitehall; the drawbridge raised, the floating court passed the Tower as with lofty indifference on its way to Placentia, her Majesty’s palace at Greenwich. Out of the silence of history a record speaks like a voice, and tells us that here, in 1594, Shaksper and his fellows performed at least two comedies or interludes before her Majesty, and we know even the amounts that were paid them for their services.
In the Survey of John Stow we have three separable elements: the archaeology and history of London, Stow’s youthful recollections of London in the time of Henry the Eighth, and Stow’s description of the great change which came over London after the dissolution of the religious houses, and continued in process throughout his lifetime.
The mediaeval conditions were not remote. He could remember when London was clearly denned by the wall, like a girdle, of which the Tower was the knot. No heroic change had befallen; the wall had not been cast down into its accompanying fosse to form a ring-street, as was done when Vienna was transformed from the mediaeval state. London had simply filled up the ditch with its refuse; its buildings had simply swarmed over the wall and across the dike; shapeless and haphazard suburbs had grown up, till the surrounding villages became connected with the city. Even more grievous, in the estimation of Stow, was the change which he had witnessed within the city itself. The feudal lords had departed, and built themselves mansions outside the city. The precincts of the dissolved religious establishments had been converted into residential quarters, and a large proportion of the old monastic gardens had been built upon. The outlines of society had become blurred. Formerly, the noble, the priest, and the citizen were the defined social strata. Around each of these was grouped the rest of the social units in positions of dependence. A new type of denizen had arisen, belonging to none of the old categories the typical Elizabethan Londoner.
The outward aspect of Elizabethan London reflected this social change. On the south of the city, along the line of Thames Street, the wall had entirely disappeared. On the east and west it was in decay, and was becoming absorbed in fresh buildings. Only on the north side of the city, where it had been re-edified as late as 1474, did the wall suggest its uses for defence. In the map of Agas, executed early in the reign of Elizabeth, this portion of the wall, with its defensive towers and bastions, appears singularly well preserved. Thus the condition of the wall suggested the passing of the old and the coming of the new order. The gates which formerly defended the city, where the chief roadways pierced the wall, still remained as monuments, and they were admirably adapted to the purpose of civic pageantry and ceremonial shows. Indeed, the gateway on the Oxford road was rebuilt in 1586, and called Newgate, “from the newness thereof,” and it was the “fairest” of all the gates of London. It is reckoned that this was the year that Shaksper came to London from Stratford-on-Avon; and the assumption is generally allowed that he entered the city by Newgate, which would be his direct road. A new gate, of an artistic and ornamental character, set in the ancient wall, was a sign and a symbol of the new conditions in London, of which Shaksper himself was destined to become the chief result.
Some of the City Guilds are entitled to be called “learned societies” as the Apothecaries, the Parish Clerks, the Stationers, and the Surgeons. By the learned societies of London, were voluntary bodies existing with or without royal patronage, but relying wholly for support on the contributions of their members, which have taken upon themselves the promotion of knowledge in one or more of its branches.
The earliest which can be traced is that Society of Antiquaries which was founded in 1572, the fourteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, at the house of Sir Robert Cotton, under the presidency of Archbishop Parker. It counted among its members Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, William Camden, Sir William Dethicke, Garter, William Lambarde, James Ley, Earl of Marlborough, John Stow, Mr. Justice Whitelock, and other antiquaries of distinction. It is said that James I. became alarmed for the arcana of his Government and, as some thought, for the established Church, and accordingly put an end to the existence of the society in 1604.
Cursitors’ Inn, also in Chancery Lane, was sometimes known as Bacon’s Inn, having been founded, in 1574, by Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. In 1478 it was known as the Bores hedde, and then consisted of one tenement and a large garden, about two and a half acres in extent, bounded on the north by the grounds of the Old Temple and of Staple Inn; on the east by that property of the Convent of Malmesbury which had formerly been known as Lyncolnesynne; and on the south by a lane known as Cursitor Street. The rent was then being paid to the Corporation of the City of London, who were probably feoffees of the bishopric of Lincoln; but in 1561 they purchased it of Edward VI., into whose hands it had come at the dissolution of chantries and chapels; and they, in 1574, granted it to Sir Nicholas Bacon, who there housed the cursitor clerks. There were twenty-four cursitor clerks i.e., Clerks of the Course whose business was to draw up the writs. The Cursitor Baron administered the oaths to the sheriffs, bailiffs, and officers of the Customs, etc. Cursitor Street perpetuates the name of the Inn.
The justiciars, clerks in Chancery, and Serjeants had frequent cause to protest against the manner in which the stream of Holeburn was being defiled. In the Parliament of Barons held in 1307, the Earl of Lincoln, whose Inn was in close proximity, complained that later on, in 1371, a writ was issued by Edward III., to the mayor and sheriffs to the effect that “Upon the open information as well of our Justiciars and our Clerks in Chancery and our other Officers, as of other reputable men now living in Fletestrete, Holebourne and Smythfeld, we have heard that certain butchers of the said city, giving no heed to our Ordinance, have slain large beasts within the said city and have thrown the blood and entrails thereof in divers places near Holbournebrigge and elsewhere in the suburb aforesaid, from which abominations and stenches, and the air affected thereby, sicknesses and very many other maladies have befallen our Officers aforesaid and other persons there dwelling to the no small damage of the same our Officers and others.”
Bibliography:
1. Edward Wedlake Brayley & John Britton. The History of the Ancient Palace and late Houses of Parliament at Westminster, 1836.
2.Will Owen. Old London, 1921.
3. Ditchfield. Vanishing England, 1910.
4. Ditchfield. Memorials of Old London, Vol. I. II. 1908.
5. Ordish. Elizabethan London, 1908.
