Cheapside.]

as having dark chestnut hair, thin beard, and grey eyes. He walked with his right shoulder raised, and was negligent in his dress. When in the Tower, More is said to have foreseen the fate of Anne Boleyn, whom his daughter Margaret had found filling the court with dancing and sporting.

"Alas, Meg," said the ex-chancellor, "it pitieth me to remember to what misery, poor soul, she will shortly come. These dances of hers will prove such dances that she will sport our heads off like foot-balls; but it will not be long ere her head will dance the like dance."

It is to be lamented that with all his wisdom, More was a bigot. He burnt one Frith for denying the corporeal presence; had James Bainton, a gentleman of the Temple, whipped in his presence for heretical opinions; went to the Tower to see him on the rack, and then hurried him to Smithfield. "Verily," said Luther, "he was a very notable tyrant, and plagued and tormented innocent Christians like an executioner."

The City of London School, long situated in Milk Street, was established in 1837, for the sons of persons engaged in commercial or trading pursuits; and partly founded on an income of £900 a year, derived from certain tenements bequeathed by John Carpenter, town-clerk of London, in the reign of Henry V., "for the finding and bringing up of four poor men's children, with meat, drink, apparel, learning at the schools, in the universities, &c., until they be preferred, and then others in their places for ever." This was the same John Carpenter who "caused, with great expense, to be curiously painted upon a board, about the north cloister of Paul's, a monument of Death, leading all estates, with the speeches of Death, and answers of every state." The school year is divided into three terms-Easter to July; August to Christmas; January to Easter; and the charge for each pupil is £2 5s. a term. The printed form of application for admission may be had of the secretary, and must be filled up by the parent or guardian, and signed by a member of the Corporation of London. The general course of instruction includes the English, French, German, Latin, and Greek languages, writing, arithmetic, mathematics, book-keeping, geography, and history. Besides eight free scholarships on the foundation, equivalent to £35 per annum each, and available as exhibitions to the Universities, there are the following exhibitions belonging to the school :-The "Times" Scholarship, value £30 per annum; three Beaufoy Scholarships, the Solomons Scholarship, and the Travers Scholarship, £50 per annum each; the Tegg Scholarship, nearly £20 per annum; and

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several other valuable prizes. The first stone of the school was laid by Lord Brougham, October 21st, 1835. The architect of the building was Mr. J. B. Bunning, of Guildford Street, Russell Square, and the entire cost, including fittings and furniture, was nearly £20,000. It is about 75 feet wide in front, next Milk Street, and is about 160 feet long; it contains a spacious theatre for lectures, &c. In 1880 the school was removed to a fine new site at the east end of the Thames Embankment, between White and Black Friars. The lectures, founded by Sir Thomas Gresham, on divinity, astronomy, music, geometry, law, physics, and rhetoric, which upon the demolition of Gresham College had been delivered at the Royal Exchange from the year 1773, were after the destruction of that building by fire, in January, 1838, read in the theatre of the City of London School until 1843; they were delivered each day during the four Law Terms. The building is now utilised as a clubhouse.

In Milk Street stood the small parish church of St. Mary Magdalen, destroyed in the Great Fire. It was repaired and beautified at the charge of the parish in 1619. All the chancel window was built at the proper cost of Mr. Benjamin Henshaw, Merchant Taylor, and one of the City captains.

This church was burnt down in the Great Fire and was not rebuilt. One amusing epitaph has been preserved :

"HERE LIETH THE BODY OF SIR WILLIAM Stone, Knt.

"As the Earth the

Earth doth cover,
So under this stone
Lyes another;
Sir William Stone,

Who long deceased,
Ere the world's love

Him released;
So much it loved him,
For they say,
He answered Death
Before his day;
But, 'tis not so;

For he was sought
Of One that both him
Made and bought.
He remain'd

The Great Lord's Treasurer,
Who called for him

At his pleasure,
And received him.
Yet be it said,

Earth grieved that Heaven
So soon was paid.

“Here likewise lyes

Inhumed in one bed,
Dear Barbara,

The well-beloved wife

Of this remembered Knight;

Whose souls are fled

From this dimure vale

To everlasting life, Where no more change,

Nor no more separation,
Shall make them flye

From their blest habitation.
Grasse of levitie,
Span in brevity,
Flower's felicity,
Fire of misery,
Wind's stability,
Is mortality."

"Honey Lane," says good old Stow, "is so called not of sweetness thereof, being very narrow and small and dark, but rather of often washing and sweeping to keep it clean." With all due respect to Stow, we suspect that the lane did not derive its name from any superlative cleanliness, but more probably from honey being sold here in the times before sugar became common, when honey alone was used by cooks for sweetening.

On the site of All Hallows' Church, destroyed in the Great Fire, a market was afterwards established.

"There be no monuments," says Stow, "in this church worth the noting; I find that John Norman, Maior, 1453, was buried there. He gave to the drapers his tenements on the north side of the said church; they to allow for the beam light and lamp 13s. 4d. yearly, from this lane to the Standard. "This church hath the misfortune to have no bequests to church or poor, nor to any publick use.

"There was a parsonage house before the Great Fire, but now the ground on which it stood is swallowed up by the market. The parish of St. Maryle-Bow (to which it is united) hath received all the money paid for the site of the ground of the said parsonage."

All Hallows' Church was repaired and beautified at the cost of the parishioners in 1625.

Lawrence Lane derives its name from the church of St. Lawrence, at its north end. "Antiquities," says Stow, "in this lane I find none other than among many fair houses. There is one large inn for receipt of travellers, called 'Blossoms Inn,' but corruptly Bosoms Inn,' and hath for a sign 'St. Law“ rence, the Deacon,' in a border of blossoms or flowers." This was one of the great City inns set apart for Charles V.'s suite, when he came over to visit Henry VIII. in 1522. At the sign of "St. Lawrence Bosoms" twenty beds and stabling for sixty horses were ordered.

The curious old tract about Bankes and his trained horse was written under the assumed names

of "John Dando, the wier-drawer of Hadley, and Harrie Runt, head ostler of Besomes Inne," which is probably the same place.

St. Lawrence Church is situate on the north side of Cateaton Street, "and is denominated," says Maitland, "from its dedication to Lawrence, a Spanish saint, born at Huesca, in the kingdom of Arragon; who, after having undergone the most grievous tortures, in the persecution under Valerian, the emperor, was cruelly broiled alive upon a gridiron, with a slow fire, till he died, for his strict adherence to Christianity; and the additional epithet of Jewry, from its situation among the Jews, was conferred upon it, to distinguish it from the church of St. Lawrence Pulteney, now demolished.

"This church, which was anciently a rectory, being given by Hugo de Wickenbroke to Baliol College in Oxford, anno 1294, the rectory ceased; wherefore Richard, Bishop of London, converted the same into a vicarage; the advowson whereof still continues in the same college. This church sharing the common fate in 1666, it has since been beautifully rebuilt, and the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, thereunto annexed." The walls of the vestry-room are encased with carved oak, and the ceiling is enriched with plaster foliage, and also by a painting of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, by Thornhill. Dr. Tillotson was married in this church in 1663-4, and buried in 1694, three years after his promotion to the see of Canterbury.

The famous Sir Richard Gresham lies buried here, as the inscription on his tomb shows. There is also this epitaph:

"Lo here the Lady Margaret North,
In tombe and earth do lye;
Of husbands four the faithfull spouse,
Whose fame shall never dye.
One Andrew Franncis was the first,
The second Robert hight,
Surnamed Chartsey, Alderman;

Sir David Brooke, a knight,
Was third. But he that passed all,
And was in number fourth,
And for his virtue made a Lord,
Was called Sir Edward North.
These altogether do I wish

A joyful rising day;
That of the Lord and of his Christ,
All honour they may say.

Obiit 2 die Junii, An. Dom. 1575."

In Ironmonger Lane, inhabited by ironmongers temp. Edward I., is Mercers' Hall, an interesting building.

The Mercers, though not formally incorporated till the 17th of Richard II. (1393), are traced back by Herbert as early as 1172. Soon afterwards

they are mentioned as patrons of one of the great London charities. In 1214, Robert Spencer, a mercer, was mayor. In 1296 the mercers joined the company of merchant adventurers in establishing, in Edward I.'s reign, a woollen manufacture in England, with a branch at Antwerp. In Edward II.'s reign they are mentioned as "the Fraternity of Mercers," and in 1406 (Henry I.) they are styled in a charter, "Brothers of St. Thomas à Becket."

Mercers were at first general dealers in all small wares, including wigs, haberdashery, and even spices and drugs. They attended fairs and markets, and even sat on the ground to sell their wares-in fact, were little more than high-class pedlers. The poet Gower talks of "the depression of such mercerie." In late times the silk trade formed the main feature of their business; the greater use of silk beginning about 1573.

The mercers' first station, in Henry II.'s reign, was in that part of Cheap on the north side where Mercers' Hall now stands, but they removed soon afterwards higher up on the south side. The part of Cheapside between Bow Church and Friday Street became known as the Mercery. Here, in front of a large meadow called the "Crownsild," they held their little stalls or standings from Soper's Lane and the Standard. There were no houses as yet in this part of Cheapside. In 1329 William Elsing, a mercer, founded an hospital within Cripplegate, for 100 poor blind men, and became prior of his own institution.

In 1351 (Edward III.), the Mercers grew jealous of the Lombard merchants, and on Midsummer Day three mercers were sent to the Tower for attacking two Lombards in the Old Jewry. The mercers in this reign sold woollen clothes, but not silks. In 1371, John Barnes, mercer, mayor, gave a chest with three locks, with 1,000 marks therein, to be lent to younger mercers, upon sufficient pawn and for the use thereof. The grateful recipients were merely to say "De Profundis," a Pater Noster, and no more. This bequest seems to have started among the Mercers the kindly practice of assisting the young and struggling members of this Company. In the reign of Henry VI. the mercers had become great dealers in silks and velvets, and had resigned to the haberdashers the sale of small articles of dress. It is not known whether the mercers bought their silks from the Lombards, or the London silk-women, or whether they imported them themselves, since many of the members of the Company were merchants.

Twenty years after the murder of Becket, the murdered man's sister, who had married Thomas

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Theobald de Hilles, built a chapel and hospital of Augustine Friars close to Ironmonger Lane, Cheapside. The hospital was built on the site of the house where Becket was born. He was the son of Gilbert Becket, citizen, mercer and portreve of London, who was falsely said to have married a fair Saracen, who had released him from prison in the East, where he had gone crusading, and followed him to London, knowing only the one English word "Gilbert." The hospital, which was called "St. Thomas of Acon," from Becket's mother having been born at Acre, the ancient Ptolemais, was given to the Mercers' Fraternity by De Hilles and his wife, and Henry III. gave the master and twelve brothers all the land between St. Olave's and Ironmonger Lane, which had belonged to two rich Jews, to enlarge their ground. In Henry V.'s reign that illustrious mercer Whittington, by his wealth and charity, reflected great lustre on the Mercers' Company, who at his death were left trustees of the college and almshouses founded by the immortal Richard on College Hill. The Company still preserve the original ordinance of this charity, with a picture of Whittington's death, and portraits of the first three wardens, Coventry, Grove, and Carpenter.

In 1414, Thomas Falconer, mercer and mayor, lent Henry V., towards his French wars, ten marks on a security of jewels.

In 1513, Joan Bradbury, widow of Thomas Bradbury, late Lord Mayor of London, left the Conduit Mead (now New Bond Street) to the Mercers' Company for charitable uses. In pursuance of the King's grant on this occasion, the Bishop of Norwich and others granted the Mercers' Company 29 acres of land in Marylebone, 120 acres in Westminster, and St. Giles, and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, of the annual value of £13 6s. 8d., and in part satisfaction of the said £20 a year. The Company still possess eight acres and a half of this old gift, forming the north side of Long Acre and the adjacent streets, one of which bears the name of the Company. Mercer Street was described in a parliamentary survey in 1650 to have long gardens reaching down to Cock and Pye Ditch, and the site of Seven Dials. In 1544 the three Greshams (at the time the twelve Companies were appealed to) lent Henry VIII. upon mortgaged lands £1,673 6s. 8d. In 1561, the wardens of the Mercers' Company were summoned before the Queen's Council for selling their velvets, satins, and damasks so dear, as English coin was no longer base, and the old excuse for the former high charges was gone. The Mercers prudently bowed before the storm, promised reform, and begged her Majesty's Council to look after the Grocers. At this time the chief vendors of