Heaven hath his soul, and only we So Death thou missest of thy ends, A Bill in Parliament being engrossed for the erection of a church for the French Protestants in the churchyard of this parish, after the Great Fire, the parishioners offered reasons to the Parliament against it; declaring that they were not against erecting a church, but only against erecting it in the place mentioned in the Bill; since by the Act for rebuilding the city, the site and churchyard of St. Martin Orgar was directed to be enclosed with a wall, and laid open for a burying-place for the parish. The tame statue of that honest but commonplace monarch, William IV., at the end of King William Street, is of granite, and the work of a Mr. Nixon. It cost upwards of £2,000, of which £1,600 was voted by the Common Council of London. It is fifteen feet three inches in height, weighs twenty tons, and is chiefly memorable as marking the site of the famous "Boar's Head" tavern. The opening of the Cannon Street Extension Railway, September, 1866, provided a communication with Charing Cross and London Bridge, and through it with the whole of the South-Eastern system. The bridge across the Thames approaching the station has five lines of rails; the curves branching east and west to Charing Cross and London Bridge have three lines, and in the station there are nine lines of rails and five spacious platforms, one of them having a double carriage road for exit and entrance. The signal-box at the entrance to the Cannon Street station extends from one side of the bridge to the other, and has a range of over eighty levers, coloured red for danger-signals, and green for safety and going out. The hotel at Cannon Street Station, a handsome building, was erected after the design by Mr. Barry. It has been largely used for public meetings since the demolition of the "London Tavern." CHAPTER XLIX. CANNON STREET TRIBUTARIES AND EASTCHEAP. Budge Row-Cordwainers' Hall-St. Swithin's Church-Founders' Hall-The Oldest Street in London-Tower Royal and the Wat Tyler MobThe Queen's Wardrobe-St. Antholin's Church-"St. Antlin's Bell"-The London Fire Brigade-Captain Shaw's Statistics-St. Mary Aldermary-A Quaint Epitaph-Crooked Lane-An Early "Gun Accident"-St. Michael's and Sir William Walworth's Epitaph-Gerard's Hall and its History-The Early Closing Movement-St. Mary Woolchurch-Roman Remains in Nicholas Lane-St. Stephen's, Walbrook -Eastcheap and the Cooks' Shops-The "Boar's Head"-Prince Hal and his Companions-A Giant Plum pudding-Goldsmith at the "Boar's Head "-The Weigh-house Chapel and its Famous Preachers-Reynolds, Clayton, Binney. BUDGE ROW derived its name from the sellers of budge (lamb-skin) fur that dwelt there. The word is used by Milton in his "Lycidas," where he sneers at the "budge-skin" doctors. antiquary, left £16. Their charities include Came's bequest for blind, deaf, and dumb persons, and clergymen's widows, £1,000 yearly; and in 1662 the "Bell Inn," at Edmonton, was bequeathed for poor freemen of the Company. Cordwainers' Hall, No. 7, Cannon Street, is the third of the same Company's halls on this site, The church in Cannon Street dedicated to St. and was built in 1788 by Sylvanus Hall. The Swithin, and in which London Stone is now enstone front, by Adam, has a sculptured medal-cased, is of a very early date, as the name of the lion of a country girl spinning with a distaff, emblematic of the name of the lane, and of the thread used by cordwainers or shoemakers. In the pediment are their arms. In the hall are portraits of King William and Queen Mary; and here is a sepulchral urn and tablet, by Nollekens, to John Came, a munificent benefactor to the Company. The Cordwainers were originally incorporated by Henry IV., in 1410, as the "Cordwainers and Cobblers," the latter term signifying dealers in shoes and shoemakers. In the reign of Richard II., every cordwainer that shod any man or woman on Sunday was to pay thirty shillings." Among the Company's plate is a piece for which Camden, the rector in 1331 is still recorded. Sir John Hind, Lord Mayor in 1391 and 1404, rebuilt both church and steeple. After the Fire of London, the parish of St. Mary Bothaw was united to that of St. Swithin. St. Swithin's was rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire. The Salters' Company formerly had the right of presentation to this church, but sold it. The form of the interior is irregular and awkward, in consequence of the tower intruding on the north-west corner. The ceiling, an octagonal cupola, is decorated with wreaths and ribbons. In 1839 Mr. Godwin describes an immense soundingboard over the pulpit, and an altar-piece of carved oak, guarded by two wooden figures of Moses and Aaron. There is a slab to Mr. Stephen Winmill, twenty-four years parish clerk; and a tablet commemorative of Mr. Francis Kemble and his two wives, with the following distich : "Life makes the soul dependent on the dust; The angles at the top of the mean square tower are bevelled off to allow of a short octagonal spire and an octagonal balustrade. The following epitaphs are quoted by Strype: JOHN ROGERS, DIED 1576. "Like thee I was sometime, But now am turned to dust; As thou at length, O earth and slime, Of the Company of Clothworkers A long time in the Livery I lived of the same. Then Death that deadly stroke did give, My loving wife and children two My place behind supply; That they in him may dye.” George Bolles, LORD MAYOR OF LONDON, DIED 1632. "He possessed Earth as he might Heaven possesse ; His charity was better felt than knowne, Founders' Hall, now in St. Swithin's Lane, was formerly at Founders' Court, Lothbury. The Founders' Company, incorporated in 1614, had the power of testing all brass weights and brass and copper wares within the City and three miles round. The old Founders' Hall was noted for its political meetings, and was in 1792 nicknamed "The Cauldron of Sedition." Here Waithman made his first political speech, and, with his felloworators, was put to flight by constables, sent by the Lord Mayor, Sir James Sanderson, to disperse the meeting. Watling Street, now laid open by the new street leading from Blackfriars to the Mansion House, is the oldest street in London. It is part of the old Roman military road that, following an old British forest-track, led from London to Dover, and from Dover to South Wales. The name, according to Leland, is from the Saxon atheling-a noble street. At the north-west end of it is the church of St. Augustine, anciently styled Ecclesia Sancti Augustini ad Portam, from its vicinity to the south-east gate of St. Paul's Cathedral. This church is described on page 349. Tower Royal, Watling Street, preserves the memory of one of those strange old palatial forts that were not unfrequent in medieval Londonhalf fortresses, half dwelling-houses; half courting, half distrusting the City. "It was of old time the king's house," says Stow, solemnly, "but was afterwards called the Queen's Wardrobe. By whom the same was first built, or of what antiquity continued, I have not read, more than that in the reign of Edward I. it was the tenement of Simon Beaumes." In the reign of Edward III. it was called "the Royal, in the parish of St. Michael Paternoster;" and in the 43rd year of his reign he gave the inn, in value £20 a year, to the college of St. Stephen, at Westminster. In the Wat Tyler rebellion, Richard II.'s mother and her ladies took refuge there, when the rebels had broken into the Tower and terrified the royal lady by piercing her bed with their swords. "King Richard," says Stow, "having in Smithfield overcome and dispersed the rebels, he, his lords, and all his company entered the City of London with great joy, and went to the lady princess his mother, who was then lodged in the Tower Royal, called the Queen's Wardrobe, where she had remained three days and two nights, right sore abashed. But when she saw the king her son she was greatly rejoiced, and said, 'Ah! son, what great sorrow have I suffered for you this day!' The king answered and said, 'Certainly, madam, I know it well; but now rejoyce, and thank God, for I have this day recovered mine heritage, and the realm of England, which I had near-hand lost."" Richard II. was lodging at the Tower Royal at a later date, when the "King of Armony," as Stow quaintly calls the King of Armenia, had been driven out of his dominions by the "Tartarians;" and the lavish young king bestowed on him £1,000 a year, in pity for a banished monarch, little thinking how soon he himself, discrowned and dethroned,. would be vainly looking round the prison walls for one glance of sympathy. This "great house," belonging anciently to the kings of England, was afterwards inhabited by the first Duke of Norfolk, to whom it had been granted by Richard III., the master he served at Bosworth. Strype finds an entry of the gift in an old ledger-book of King Richard's, wherein the Tower Royal is described as "Le Tower," in the parish of St. Thomas Apostle, not of St. Michael, as Stow has it. The house afterwards sank into poverty, became a stable for "all the king's horses," and in the fire the parish of St. John Baptist, Watling Street, was annexed to that of St. Antholin, the latter paying five-eighths towards the repairs of the church, and the former the remaining threeeighths. made a point of attending these early prayers. Lilly, the astrologer, went to these lectures when a young man; and Scott makes Mike Lambourne, in "Kenilworth," refer to them. Nor have they been overlooked by our early dramatists. Randolph, Davenant, and others make frequent allusions in their plays to the Puritanical fervour of this parish. The tongue of Middleton's "roaring girl" was "heard further in a still morning than St. Antlin's bell." The interior of the church was peculiar, being covered with an oval-shaped dome, which was supported on eight columns, standing on high plinths. The exterior of the building, says Mr. Godwin, was of pleasing proportions, and showed great powers of invention. As an apology for In the heart of the City, and not far from adding a Gothic spire to a quasi-Grecian church, London Stone, was a house which used to be in Wren, oddly enough, crowned the spire with a small Composite capital, which looked like the top of a pencil-case. The district of St. Antholin is now incorporated with that of St. Mary Aldermary, in Bow Lane. The church was rebuilt by John Tate, a mercer, in 1513; and Strype mentions the erection in 1623 of a rich and beautiful gallery with fifty-two compartments, filled with the coats-of-arms of kings and nobles, ending with the blazon of the Elector Palatine. A new morning prayer and lecture was established here by clergymen inclined to Puritanical principles in 1599. The bells began to ring at five in the morning, and were considered Pharisaical and intolerable by all High Churchmen in the neighbourhood. The extreme Geneva party habited by the Lord Mayor or one of the sheriffs, situated so near to the Church of St. Antholin that there was a way out of it into a gallery of the church. The commissioners from the Church of Scotland to King Charles were lodged here in 1640. At St. Antholin's preached the chaplains of the commission, with Alexander Henderson at their head; "and curiosity, faction, and humour brought so great a conflux and resort, that from the first appearance of day in the morning, on every Sunday, to the shutting in of the light, the church was never empty." Dugdale also mentions the church. "Now for an essay," he says, "of those whom, under colour of preaching the Gospel, in sundry parts of the realm, they set up a morning lecture at St. Antho line's Church in London; where (as probationers walls is a tablet to the memory of that celebrated for that purpose) they first made tryal of their surgeon of St. Bartholomew's for forty-two years, abilities, which place was the grand nursery whence Percival Pott, Esq., F.R.S., who died in 1788. most of the seditious preachers were after sent Pott, according to a memoir written by Sir James abroad throughout all England to poyson the Cask, succeeded to a good deal of the business people with their anti-monarchical principles." of Sir Cæsar Hawkins. Pott seems to have entertained a righteous horror of amputations. In Watling Street are the head-quarters of the Metropolitan Salvage Corps; and here, down to very recently, was the chief station of the London Fire Brigade. The latter now has its head-quarters in Southwark Bridge Road. Some years ago the Metropolitan Board of Works consolidated and re-organised, under Captain Shaw, the whole system of the Fire Brigade into one homogeneous municipal institution. To the general working and maintenance of the Brigade, Her Majesty's Government contribute £10,000 per annum; the insurance companies £21,135; a metropolitan rate produces £60,330; and a few smaller items bring up the total to £94,415. Under the old system there were seventeen fire-stations, guarding an area of about ten square miles, out of 110, which comprise the metropolitan district. From Captain Shaw's report for 1879, it appears that at the close of that year the strength of the brigade was as follows :52 land fire stations and 4 floating stations, 113 fire-escape stations, 40 steam fire-engines, 113 manual fire-engines, 130 fire-escapes and long scaling ladders, upwards of 150 miles of telegraph lines, besides vans, barges, steam-tugs, and hose carts; the number of firemen, including chief officer, superintendents, and all ranks, is entered as 452. The number of men employed on the several watches kept up throughout the metropolis is at present 104 by day, and 188 by night, making a total of 292 in every 24 hours; the remaining men are available for general work at fires. If Stow is correct, St. Mary's Aldermary, Bow Lane, was originally called Aldermary because it was older than St. Mary's Bow, and, indeed, any other church in London dedicated to the Virgin; but this is improbable. The first known rector of Aldermary was presented before 1288. In 1703 two of the turrets of the church were blown down. In 1855 a building, supposed to be the crypt of the old church, fifty feet long and ten feet wide, and with five arches, was discovered under some houses in Watling Street. In the chancel is a beautifully sculptured tablet by Bacon, with this peculiarity, that it bears no inscription. Surely the celebrated "Miserrimus" itself could hardly speak so strongly of humility or despair. Or can it have been, says a cynic, a monument ordered by a widow, who married again before she had time to write the epitaph to the "dear departed?" On one of the The following curious epitaph is worth preserving : "Heere is fixt the epitaph of Sir Henry Kebyll, Knight, Yet vertue ouerlies the grave, her fame doth not decay ; Who, being dead, of vertuous fame none should seek to de- The execution of whose gift, or where the fault should be, yeere. God move the minds of wealthy men their works so to bestow As he hath done, that, though they dye, their vertuous fame may flow." This quaint appeal seems to have had its effect, for in 1626 a Mr. William Rodoway left £200 for the rebuilding the steeple; and the same year Mr. Richard Pierson bequeathed 200 marks on the |