Old and New London Part 43

"When the lords were met at the Guildhall, the prisoners were brought through the street, tied in ropes, some men, and some lads of thirteen years of age. Among them were divers not of the City, some priests, some husbandmen and labourers. The whole number amounted unto two hundred, three score, and eighteen persons. Eventually, thirteen were found guilty, and adjudged to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Eleven pairs of gallows were set up in various places where the offences had been committed, as at Aldgate, Blanch-appleton, Gratious Street, Leaden Hall, and before every Counter. One also at Newgate, St. Martin's, at Aldersgate, and Bishopsgate. Then were the prisoners that were judged brought to those places of execution, and executed in the most rigorous manner in the presence of the Lord Edward Howard, son to the Duke of Norfolke, a knight marshal, who showed no mercie, but extreme crueltie to the poore yonglings in their execution; and likewise the duke's servants spake many opprobrious words. On Thursday, May the 7th, was Lincolne, s.h.i.+rwin, and two brethren called Bets, and diverse other persons, adjudged to die; and Lincolne said, 'My lords, I meant well, for if you knew the mischiefe that is insued in this realme by strangers, you would remedie it. And many times I have complained, and then I was called a busie fellow; now, our Lord have mercie on me!' They were laid on hurdels and drawne to the Standard in Cheape, and first was John Lincolne executed; and as the others had the ropes about their neckes, there came a commandment from the king to respit the execution.

Then the people cried, 'G.o.d save the king!' and so was the oier and terminer deferred till another daie, and the prisoners sent againe to ward. The armed men departed out of London, and all things set in quiet.

"On the 11th of May, the king being at Greenwich, the Recorder of London and several aldermen sought his presence to ask pardon for the late riot, and to beg for mercy for the prisoners; which pet.i.tion the king sternly refused, saying that although it might be that the substantial citizens did not actually take part in the riot, it was evident, from their supineness in putting it down, that they 'winked at the matter.'

"On Thursday, the 22nd of May, the king, attended by the cardinal and many great lords, sat in person in judgment in Westminster Hall, the mayor, aldermen, and all the chief men of the City being present in their best livery. The king commanded that all the prisoners should be brought forth, so that in came the poore yonglings and old false knaves, bound in ropes, all along one after another in their s.h.i.+rts, and everie one a halter about his necke, to the number of now foure hundred men and eleven women; and when all were come before the king's presence, the cardinall sore laid to the maior and commonaltie their negligence; and to the prisoners he declared that they had deserved death for their offense. Then all the prisoners together cried, 'Mercie, gratious lord, mercie!' Herewith the lords altogither besought his grace of mercie, at whose sute the king pardoned them all. Then the cardinal gave unto them a good exhortation, to the great gladnesse of the hearers.

"Now when the generall pardon was p.r.o.nounced all the prisoners shouted at once, and altogither cast up their halters into the hall roofe, so that the king might perceive they were none of the discreetest sort.

Here is to be noticed that diverse offendors that were not taken, hearing that the king was inclined to mercie, came well apparelled to Westminster, and suddenlie stripped them into their s.h.i.+rts with halters, and came in among the prisoners, willinglie to be partakers of the king's pardon; by which dooing it was well known that one John Gelson, yeoman of the Crowne, was the first that began to spoile, and exhorted others to doe the same; and because he fled and was not taken, he came in with a rope among the other prisoners, and so had his pardon. This companie was after called the 'black-wagon.' Then were all the gallows within the Citie taken downe, and many a good prayer said for the king."

Jane Sh.o.r.e, that beautiful but frail woman, who married a goldsmith in Lombard Street, and was the mistress of Edward IV., was the daughter of a merchant in Cheapside. Drayton describes her minutely from a picture extant in Elizabeth's time, but now lost.

"Her stature," says the poet, "was meane; her haire of a dark yellow; her face round and full; her eye gray, delicate harmony being between each part's proportion and each proportion's colour; her body fat, white, and smooth; her countenance cheerful, and like to her condition.

The picture I have seen of her was such as she rose out of her bed in the morning, having nothing on but a rich mantle cast under one arme over her shoulder, and sitting on a chair on which her naked arm did lie. Sh.o.r.e, a young man of right goodly person, wealth, and behaviour, abandoned her after the king had made her his concubine. Richard III., causing her to do open penance in St. Paul's Churchyard, _commanded that no man should relieve her_, which the tyrant did not so much for his hatred to sinne, but that, by making his brother's life odious, he might cover his horrible treasons the more cunningly."

An old ballad quaintly describes her supposed death, following an entirely erroneous tradition:--

"My gowns, beset with pearl and gold, Were turn'd to simple garments old; My chains and gems, and golden rings, To filthy rags and loathsome things.

"Thus was I scorned of maid and wife, For leading such a wicked life; Both sucking babes and children small, Did make their pastime at my fall.

"I could not get one bit of bread, Whereby my hunger might be fed, Nor drink, but such as channels yield, Or stinking ditches in the field.

"Thus weary of my life, at lengthe I yielded up my vital strength, Within a ditch of loathsome scent, Where carrion dogs did much frequent;

"The which now, since my dying daye, Is Sh.o.r.editch call'd, as writers saye;[6]

Which is a witness of my sinne, For being concubine to a king."

Sir Thomas More, however, distinctly mentions Jane Sh.o.r.e being alive in the reign of Henry VIII., and seems to imply that he had himself seen her. "He (Richard III.) caused," says More, "the Bishop of London to put her to an open penance, going before the cross in procession upon a Sunday, with a taper in her hand; in which she went in countenance and face demure, so womanly, and albeit she were out of all array save her kirtle only, yet went she so fair and lovely, namely while the wondering of the people cast a comely red in her cheeks (of which she before had most miss), that her great shame was her much praise among those who were more amorous of her body than curious of her soul; and many good folk, also, who hated her living, and were glad to see sin corrected, yet pitied they more her penance than rejoiced therein, when they considered that the Protector procured it more of a corrupt intent than any virtuous intention.

"Proper she was, and fair; nothing in her body that you would have changed, but if you would, have wished her somewhat higher. Thus say they who knew her in her youth; albeit some who now see her (for yet she liveth) deem her never to have been well-visaged; whose judgment seemeth to me to be somewhat like as though men should guess the beauty of one long departed by her scalp taken out of the charnel-house. For now is she old, lean, withered, and dried up--nothing left but shrivelled skin and hard bone. And yet, being even such, whoso well advise her visage, might guess and devine which parts, how filled, would make it a fair face.

"Yet delighted men not so much in her beauty as in her pleasant behaviour. For a proper wit had she, and could both read well and write, merry in company, ready and quick of answer, neither mute nor full of babble, sometimes taunting without displeasure, and not without disport."

FOOTNOTES:

[6] But it had this name long before, being so called from its being a common _sewer_ (vulgarly called _sh.o.r.e_) or drain. (See Stow.)

CHAPTER XXVII.

CHEAPSIDE SHOWS AND PAGEANTS.

A Tournament in Cheapside--The Queen in Danger--The Street in Holiday Attire--The Earliest Civic Show on record--The Water Processions--A Lord Mayor's Show in Queen Elizabeth's Reign--Gossip about Lord Mayors' Shows--Splendid Pageants--Royal Visitors at Lord Mayor's Shows--A Grand Banquet in Guildhall--George III. and the Lord Mayor's Show--The Lord Mayor's State Coach--The Men in Armour--Sir Claudius Hunter and Elliston--Stow and the Midsummer Watch.

We do not hear much in the old chronicles of tournaments and s.h.i.+vered spears in Cheapside, but of gorgeous pageants much. On coronation days, and days when our kings rode from the Tower to Westminster, or from Castle Baynard eastward, Cheapside blossomed at once with flags and banners, rich tapestry hung from every window, and the very gutters ran with wine, so loyal and generous were the citizens of those early days.

Costume was bright and splendid in the Middle Ages, and heraldry kept alive the habit of contrasting and mingling colours. Citizens were wealthy, and, moreover, lavish of their wealth.

In these processions and pageants, Cheapside was always the very centre of the show. There velvets and silks trailed; there jewels shone; there spearheads and axe-heads glittered; there breastplates and steel caps gleamed; there proud horses fretted; there bells clashed; there the mob clamoured; there proud, warlike, and beautiful faces showed, uncapped and unveiled, to the seething, jostling people; and there mayor and aldermen grew hottest, bowed most, and puffed out with fullest dignity.

In order to celebrate the birth of the heir of England (the Black Prince, 1330), a great tournament was proclaimed in London. Philippa and all the female n.o.bility were invited to be present. Thirteen knights were engaged on each side, and the tournament was held in Cheapside, between Wood Street and Queen Street; the highway was covered with sand, to prevent the horses' feet from slipping, and a grand temporary wooden tower was erected, for the accommodation of the Queen and her ladies.

But scarcely had this fair company entered the tower, when the scaffolding suddenly gave way, and all present fell to the ground with the Queen. Though no one was injured, all were terribly frightened, and great confusion ensued. When the young king saw the peril of his wife, he flew into a tempest of rage, and vowed that the careless carpenters who had constructed the building should instantly be put to death.

Whether he would thus far have stretched the prerogative of an English sovereign can never be known (says Miss Strickland), for his angelic partner, scarcely recovered from the terror of her fall, threw herself on her knees before the incensed king, and so effectually pleaded for the pardon of the poor men, that Edward became pacified, and forgave them.

When the young princess, Anne of Bohemia, the first wife of the royal prodigal, Richard II., entered London, a castle with towers was erected at the upper end of Cheapside. On the wooden battlements stood fair maidens, who blew gold leaf on the King, Queen, and retinue, so that the air seemed filled with golden b.u.t.terflies. This pretty device was much admired. The maidens also threw showers of counterfeit gold coins before the horses' feet of the royal cavalcade, while the two sides of the tower ran fountains of red wine.

On the great occasion when this same Anne, who had by this time supped full of troubles, and by whose entreaties the proud, reckless young king, who had, as it were, excommunicated the City and now forgave it, came again into Chepe, red and white wine poured in fountains from a tower opposite the Great Conduit. The King and Queen were served from golden cups, and at the same place an angel flew down in a cloud, and presented costly golden circlets to Richard and his young wife.

Two days before the opening of Parliament, in 1423, Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V., entered the city in a chair of state, with her child sitting on her knee. When they arrived at the west door of St. Paul's Cathedral, the Duke Protector lifted the infant king from his chair and set him on his feet, and, with the Duke of Exeter, led him between them up the stairs going into the choir; then, having knelt at the altar for a time, the child was borne into the churchyard, there set upon a fair courser, and so conveyed through Cheapside to his own manor of Kennington.

Time went on, and the weak young king married the fair amazon of France, the revengeful and resolute Margaret of Anjou. At the marriage pageant maidens acted, at the Cheapside conduit, a play representing the five wise and five foolish virgins. Years after, the corpse of the same king pa.s.sed along the same street; but no huzzas, no rejoicing now. It was on the day after the restoration of Edward IV., when people dared not speak above a breath of what might be happening in the Tower, that the corpse of Henry VI. was borne through Cheapside to St. Paul's, barefaced, on a bier, so that all might see it, though it was surrounded by more brown bills and glaives than torches.

By-and-by, after the fierce retribution of Bosworth, came the Tudors, culminating and ending with Elizabeth.

As Elizabeth of York (Henry VII.'s consort) went from the Tower to Westminster to be crowned, the citizens hung velvets and cloth of gold from the windows in Chepe, and stationed children, dressed like angels, to sing praises to the Queen as she pa.s.sed by. When the Queen's corpse was conveyed from the Tower, where she died, in Cheapside were stationed thirty-seven virgins, the number corresponding with the Queen's age, all dressed in white, wearing chaplets of white and green, and bearing lighted tapers.

As Anne Boleyn, during her short felicity, proceeded from the Tower to Westminster, on the eve of her coronation, the conduit of Cheapside ran, at one end white wine, and at the other red. At Cheapside Cross stood all the aldermen, from amongst whom advanced Master Walter, the City Recorder, who presented the Queen with a purse, containing a thousand marks of gold, which she very thankfully accepted, with many goodly words. At the Little Conduit of Cheapside was a rich pageant, full of melody and song, where Pallas, Venus, and Juno gave the Queen an apple of gold, divided into three compartments, typifying wisdom, riches, and felicity.

When Queen Elizabeth, young, happy and regal, proceeded through the City the day before her coronation, as she pa.s.sed through Cheapside, she smiled; and being asked the reason, she replied, "Because I have just heard one say in the crowd, 'I remember old King Harry the Eighth.'"

When she came to the grand allegory of Time and Truth, at the Little Conduit, in Cheapside, she asked, who an old man was that sat with his scythe and hour-gla.s.s. She was told "Time." "Time?" she repeated; "and Time has brought me here!"

In this pageant she spied that Truth held a Bible, in English, ready for presentation to her; and she bade Sir John Perrot (the knight nearest to her, who held up her canopy, and a kinsman, afterwards beheaded) to step forward and receive it for her; but she was informed such was not the regular manner of presentation, for it was to be let down into her chariot by a silken string. She therefore told Sir John Perrot to stay; and at the proper crisis, some verses being recited by Truth, the book descended, "and the Queen received it in both her hands, kissed it, clasped it to her bosom, and thanked the City for this present, esteemed above all others. She promised to read it diligently, to the great comfort of the bystanders." All the houses in Cheapside were dressed with banners and streamers, and the richest carpets, stuffs, and cloth of gold tapestried the streets. At the upper end of Chepe, the Recorder presented the Queen, from the City, with a handsome crimson satin purse, containing a thousand marks in gold, which she most graciously pocketed. There were trumpeters at the Standard in Chepe, and the City waits stood at the porch of St. Peter's, Cornhill. The City companies stretched in rows from Fenchurch Street to the Little Conduit in Chepe, behind rails, which were hung with cloth.

On an occasion when James I. and his wife visited the City, at the Conduit, Cheapside, there was a grand display of tapestry, gold cloth, and silks; and before the structure "a handsome apprentice was appointed, whose part it was to walk backwards and forwards, as if outside a shop, in his flat cap and usual dress, addressing the pa.s.sengers with his usual cry for custom of, 'What d'ye lack, gentles?

What will you buy? silks, satins, or taff--taf--fetas?' He then broke into premeditated verse:--

"'But stay, bold tongue! I stand at giddy gaze!

Be dim, mine eyes! What gallant train are here, That strikes minds mute, puts good wits in a maze?

Oh! 'tis our King, royal King James, I say!

Pa.s.s on in peace, and happy be thy way; Live long on earth, and England's sceptre sway,'" &c.

Henrietta Maria, that pretty, wilful queen of Charles I., accompanied by the Duke of Buckingham and Ba.s.sompierre, the French amba.s.sador, went to what the latter calls _s.h.i.+pside_, to view the Lord Mayor's procession.

She also came to a masquerade at the Temple, in the costume of a City lady. Mistress Ba.s.sett, the great lace-woman of Cheapside, went foremost of the Court party at the Temple carnival, and led the Queen by the hand.

But what are royal processions to the Lord Mayor's Show?

The earliest civic show on record, writes Mr. Fairholt, who made a specialty of this subject, took place in 1236, on the pa.s.sage of Henry III. and Eleanor of Provence through the City to Westminster. They were escorted by the mayor, aldermen, and 360 mounted citizens, apparelled in robes of embroidered silk, and each carrying in their hands a cup of gold or silver, in token of the privilege claimed by the City for the lord mayor to officiate as chief butler at the king's coronation. On the return of Edward I. from the Holy Land the citizens, in the wildness of their loyalty, threw, it is said, handfuls of gold and silver out of window to the crowd. It was on the return of the same king from his Scotch victories that the earliest known City pageant took place. Each guild had its show. The Fishmongers had gilt salmon and sturgeon, drawn by eight horses, and six-and-forty knights riding seahorses, followed by St. Magnus (it was St. Magnus' day), with 1,000 hors.e.m.e.n.

Mr. Fairholt proved from papers still preserved by the Grocers' Company that water processions took place at least nineteen years earlier than the usual date (1453) set down for their commencement. Sir John Norman is mentioned by the City poet as the first Lord Mayor that rowed to Westminster. He had silver oars, and so delighted the London watermen that they wrote a ballad about him, of which two lines only still exist--

"Row thy boat, Norman, Row to thy leman."

In the troublous reign of Henry VI. the Goldsmiths made a special stand for their privileges on Lord Mayor's day. They complained loudly that they had always ridden with the mayor to Westminster and back, and that on their return to Chepe they sit on horseback "above the Cross afore the Goldsmiths' Row; but that on the morrow of the Apostles Simon and Jude, when they came to their stations, they found the Butchers had forestalled them, who would not budge for all the prayers of the wardens of the Goldsmiths, and hence had arisen great variance and strife." The two guilds submitted to the Lord Mayor's arbitration, whereupon the Mayor ruled that the Goldsmiths should retain possession of their ancient stand.

The first Lord Mayor's pageant described by the old chroniclers is that when Anne Boleyn "came from Greenwich to Westminster on her coronation day, and the Mayor went to serve her as chief butler, according to ancient custom." Hall expressly says that the water procession on that occasion resembled that of Lord Mayor's Day. The Mayor's barge, covered with red cloth (blue except at royal ceremonies), was garnished with goodly banners and streamers, and the sides hung with emblazoned targets. In the barge were "shalms, s.h.a.gbushes, and divers other instruments, which continually made goodly harmony." Fifty barges, filled with the various companies, followed, marshalled and kept in order by three light wherries with officers. Before the Mayor's barge came another barge, full of ordnance and containing a huge dragon (emblematic of the Rouge Dragon in the Tudor arms), which vomited wild fire; and round about it stood terrible monsters and savages, also vomiting fire, discharging squibs, and making "hideous noises." By the side of the Mayor's barge was the bachelors' barge, in which were trumpeters and other musicians. The decks of the Mayor's barge, and the sail-yards, and top-castles were hung with flags and rich cloth of gold and silver. At the head and stern were two great banners, with the royal arms in beaten gold. The sides of the barge were hung with flags and banners of the Haberdashers' and Merchant Adventurers' Companies (the Lord Mayor, Sir Stephen Peac.o.c.k, was a haberdasher). On the outside of the barge shone three dozen illuminated royal escutcheons. On the left hand of this barge came another boat, in which was a pageant. A white falcon, crowned, stood upon a mount, on a golden rock, environed with white and red roses (Anne Boleyn's device), and about the mount sat virgins, "singing and playing sweetly." The Mayor's company, the Haberdashers, came first, then the Mercers, then the Grocers, and so on, the barges being garnished with banners and hung with arras and rich carpets. In 1566-7 the water procession was very costly, and seven hundred pounds of gunpowder were burned. This is the first show of which a detailed account exists, and it is to be found recorded in the books of the Ironmongers' Company.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LORD MAYOR'S PROCESSION. (From Hogarth's "Industrious Apprentice.") (_See page 323._)]