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th all his own ships and all the pirate's ships--including fifteen Spanish vessels which had joined Mercer.

The King pretended to be angry with this private mode of carrying on war, but the thing was done, and it was a very good thing, and profitable to London and to the King himself, therefore when Sir John Philpot gave the King the arms and armour of a thousand men and all his own ships and prize ships, the Royal clemency was not difficult to obtain. I wish that I could state that Whittington had sailed with Sir John on this gallant expedition.

A third trouble arose in the year 1381 on the rebellion of the peasants under John Ball, Wat Tyler, Jack the Miller, Jack the Carter, and Jack Trewman. The rebels held possession of the City for awhile. They destroyed the Savoy, the Temple and the houses of the foreign merchants . They murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prior of St. John's Hospital. Then the citizens roused themselves and with an army of 6,000 men stood in ranks to defend the King.

Then there happened the troubles of John of Northampton, Mayor in 1382. You have learned how trades of all kinds were banded together each in its own Company. Every Company had the right of regulating prices. Thus the Fishmongers sold their fish at a price ordered by the Warden or Master of the Company. It is easy to understand that this might lead to murmurs against the high price of fish or of anything else. This, in fact, really happened. It was a time of great questioning and doubt; the rising of Wat Tyler shows that this spirit was abroad. The craftsmen of London, those who made things, grumbled loudly at the price of provisions. They asked why the City should not take over the trade in food of all kinds and sell it to the people at lower prices. John of Northampton being Mayor, took the popular view. He did not exactly make over the provisioning of the City to the Corporation, but he first obtained an Act of Parliament throwing open the calling of fishmonger to all comers; and then another which practically abolished the trade of grocers, pepperers, fruiterers, butchers, and bakers. Imagine the rage with which such an Act would now be received by London tradesmen!

The next Mayor, however, obtained the rescinding of these Acts. In consequence, fish went up in price and there was a popular tumult, upon which one man was hanged and John of Northampton was sent to the Castle of Tintagel on the Cornish Coast, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In the year 1384, being then about twenty-six years of age, Whittington was elected a member of the Common Council. In the year 1389 he was assessed at the same sum as the richest citizen. So that these ten years of his life were evidently very prosperous. In the year 1393 he was made Alderman for Broad Street Ward. In the same year he was made Sheriff. In the year 1396, the Mayor, Adam Bamme, dying in office, Whittington succeeded him. The following year he was elected Mayor.

In the year 1401, water was brought from Tyburn to Cornhill in pipes, a great and important boon to the City.

In the year 1406 he was again elected Mayor. The manner of his election is described in the contemporary records. After service in the chapel of the Guildhall, the outgoing Mayor, with all the Aldermen and as many as possible of the wealthier and more substantial Commoners of the City, met in the Guildhall and chose two of their number, viz., Richard Whittington and Drew Barentyn. Then the Mayor receiving this nomination retired into a closed chamber with the Aldermen and made choice of Whittington.

In the year 1419 he was elected Mayor for the third and last time, but, counting his succession to Bamme, he was actually four times Mayor. In 1416 he was returned Member of Parliament for the City.

In Whittington's later years began the burning of heretics and Lollards. It is certain that Lollardism had some hold in the City, but one knows not how great was the hold. A priest, William Sawtre, was the first who suffered. Two men of the lower class followed. There is nothing to show that Whittington ever swerved from orthodox opinions.

In 1416, the City was first lighted at night: all citizens were ordered to hang lanterns over their doors. How far the order was obeyed, especially in the poorer parts of the City, is not known.

In 1407 a plague carried off 30,000 persons in London alone. If this number is correctly stated it must have taken half the population.

Many improvements were effected in the City during these years: it is reasonable to suppose that Whittington had a hand in bringing these about. Fresh water brought in pipes: lights hung out after dark: the erection of a house--Bakewell Hall--for the storage and sale of broadcloth: the erection of a store for the reception of grain, in case of famine--this was the beginning of Leadenhall--the building of a new Guildhall: and an attempt to reform the prisons--an attempt which failed.

There was as yet no Mansion House: every Mayor made use of his own private house.

This is, very shortly, an account of Whittington's public life.

He lived, I believe, on the north side of St. Michael's Paternoster Royal. I think so because his College was established there after his death, and as he had no children it is reasonable to suppose that his house would be assigned to the College. There is nothing to show what kind of house it was, but we may rest assured that the man who could entertain the King and Queen in such a manner was at least well housed. There is a little court on this spot which is, I believe, on the site of Whittington's house. They used to show a house in Hart Street as Whittington's, but there was no ground for the tradition except that it was a very old house.

Whittington married his master's daughter, Alice Fitzwarren. He had no children, and he died in 1423 when he was sixty-five years of age.

Such was the real Whittington. A gentleman by birth, a rich and successful man, happy in his private life, a great stickler for justice, as a magistrate severe upon those who cheat and adulterate, a loyal and patriotic man, and always filled with the desire to promote the interests of the City which had received him and made him rich.

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 ?600 a year, or an estate worth ?20,000: 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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hitherto our attention has been confined to the City within the walls. It is time to step outside the walls.

All this time, i.e. ever since peaceful occupation became possible, a town had been growing up on the west side of London. You have seen that formerly there spread a broad marsh over this part. Some rising ground kept what is now the Strand above the river, but Westminster, except for certain reed-grown islets, was nothing but a marsh covered over twice in the day by the tide. The river thus spreading out over marshes on either bank was quite shallow, and could in certain places be forded. The spot where any ford existed afterwards became a ferry. Lambeth Bridge spans the river at one such place, the memory of which is now maintained in the name of the Horseferry Road. The largest of these islets was once called Thorney, i.e. the Isle of Thorns. If you will take a map of Westminster, shift the bank of the river so as to make it flow along Abingdon Street, draw a stream running down College Street into the Thames; another running into the Thames across King Street, and draw a ditch or moat connecting the two streams along Delahaye Street and Princes Street you will have Thorney, about a quarter of a mile long, and not quite so much broad, standing just above high water level. This was the original Precinct of Westminster.

Read what was written by Jeremy Taylor, a great divine, on Westminster Abbey:--

'A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchre of Kings.... There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle their dust and pay down their symbol of mortality; and tell all the world that when we die our ashes shall be equal to kings, and our accounts easier, and our pains or our crowns shall be less.'

After the removal of the Court the Hall became the Law Courts. It is almost incredible that three Courts sat in this Hall, cases being heard before three Judges at the same time. In addition to the Courts, shops or stalls were ranged along the walls where dealers in toys, milliners, sempstresses, stationers and booksellers sold their wares. A picture exists showing this extraordinary use of the Hall.

It is more difficult to restore ancient Westminster than any part of the City. We must remember that the great Hall formed part of a square or quadrangle on which were the private rooms of the Sovereign, the State rooms of audience and banquet, the official rooms of the King's ministers and servants; this court led into others--one knows not how many--but certainly as many as belong to the older part of Hampton Court, which may be taken as resembling Westminster Palace in its leading features. The courts were filled with men-at-arms, serving men, pages, and minstrels. They went backwards and forwards on their business or they lay about in the sun and gambled. Sometimes there crossed the court some great noble followed by two or three of his servants on his way to a Council: or a bishop with his chaplain, to have speech with the King: or a group of townsmen after a brawl, who had been brought here with ropes about their necks, uncertain whether all would be pardoned or half a dozen hanged, the uncertainty lending a very repentant and anxious look to their faces. Or it would be the Queen's most Excellent Highness herself with her ladies riding forth to see the hunt. This was the daily life of the Court: we read the dry history of what happened but we forget the scenery in which it happened--the crowds of nobles, bishops, abbots, knights, men-at-arms, serving men, among whom all these things took place. We are apt to forget, as well, the extraordinary brightness, the colour, the glitter and gleam that belonged to those times when every man went dressed in some gay livery wearing the colours and the crest of his lord. Who rides there, the hart couchant--the deer at rest--upon his helm? A Knight belonging to the Court: one of the Knights of King Richard the Second. Who march with the bear and ragged staff upon their arms? They are the Livery of the Earl of Warwick. The clash and gleam of arms and armour everywhere: colour on the men as well as the women: colour on the trappings of the horses: colour on the hanging arras of the wall: colour on the cloth of scarlet which they hang out of the windows when the royal pageant rides along.

Close to the Palace, the Abbey. That too belongs to the time. Within the Abbey precincts the people are almost as crowded as in the Palace. But it is a different crowd. There is not so much colour: no arms or armour: an orderly crowd: there are the Benedictine monks themselves, with their crowd of servants, cooks, and refectory men: brewers: bakers: clothiers: architects, builders and masons: scribes and lawyers: foresters and farmers from the estates: stewards: cellarers: singing boys: organists--for the Abbey Church of St. Peter is as great and as rich and maintains as large an army of servants as the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.

In the time of the Plantagenets the punishments inflicted on wrongdoers were much more lenient than those which followed in later years. There is none of that brutal flogging which grew up in the last century, the worst time in the whole history of the country, for the people. This flogging not only in the army and navy but also for such offences as vagrancy, lasted even into the present century. In the year 1804 six women were publicly flogged at Gloucester for this offence. Under Whittington this barbarous cruelty would not have been done. There were, it is true, certain punishments which seem excessively cruel. If a man struck a sheriff or an alderman he was sentenced to have his right hand chopped off. That is, indeed, worse than hanging. But, consider, the whole strength of London lay in its power to act and its resolution always to act, as one man. This could only be effected by habitual obedience to law and the most profound respect to the executive officers. Therefore the worst penalty possible--that which deprived a man of his power to work and his power to fight--which reduced him to ruin--which made his innocent children beggars--which branded him till death as a malefactor of the most dangerous kind--was inflicted for such an offence. Here, again, mercy stepped in; for, when the criminal was brought out for execution, if he expressed contrition the offended officer, represented by the Alderman of the Ward--begged that he might be pardoned.

For burglary criminals were ruthlessly hanged. This crime is bad enough now; it is a crime which ought at all times to be punished with the utmost rigour. But in these days what is it that a burglar can carry away from an ordinary house? A clock or two: a silver ring: a lady's watch and chain: a few trinkets: if any money, then only a purse with two or three pounds. The wealth of the family is invested in various securities: if the burglar takes the papers they are of no use to him: there is a current account at the bank; but that cannot be touched. Books, engravings, candlesticks, plated spoons--these are of little real value. Formerly, however, every man kept all his money--all his wealth--in his own house; if he was a rich merchant he had a stone safe or strong box constructed in the wall of his cellar or basement--I have seen such a safe in an old house pulled down about seven years ago. If he was only a small trader or craftsman he kept his money in a box: this he hid: there were various hiding places: behind the bed, under the hearthstone--but they were all known. A burglar, therefore, might, and very often did, take away the whole of a man's property and reduce him to ruin. For this reason it was very wisely ordered that a burglar should be hanged.

There was one punishment always in reserve--the worst of all. This was deprivation of the privileges of a freeman and banishment from the City. 'Go,' said the Mayor. 'Thou shalt dwell with us; trade with us; converse with us; no more. Go.' And so that source of trouble was removed.

We have seen how the trades formed companies--every trade having its own company. It must not, however, be understood that the working man gained much power by their unions. They were organised: they had to obey: obedience was very good for them as it is for all of us, always; but it must be obedience to a corporate body, not to a master. This they did not understand and they tried to form 'covins' or trades unions of their own. The City put down these attempts with a stern hand. The trade companies ruled hours of work, wages, and standard of work. Lastly, though there was no City police to guard the streets, there were certain laws for the maintenance of order. Nobody under the rank of knight was to carry arms in the streets: no one was to walk about the street after nine at night: houses were not to be built over streets. In a word, there were not many laws; but the people were law abiding. And this, perhaps, as much as anything else, explains the greatness of London.

Another factor, less generally understood, assisted and developed the power of London.

It was also the position of the City as the centre of the country; not geographically, which would give Warwick that position, but from the construction of the roads and from its position on the Thames. But, to repeat, the use and wont of the City to act together by order of the Mayor, principally made it so great a power. Whatever troubles might arise, here was a solid body--'24,000 men at arms and 30,000 archers,' all acting on one side. The rest of the country was scattered, uncertain, inclined this way and that. The City, to use a modern phrase, 'voted solid.' There were no differences of opinion in the City. And that, even more than its wealth, made London a far more important factor, politically, than the barons with all their following.

Such is a brief account of London from this map. The original is the property of the Corporation and is kept in the Guildhall Library. A facsimile reprint has been made.

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