Some writers credit the Grocers' Company with the enrolment of five kings, several princes, eight dukes, three earls, and twenty lords. Of these five kings, Mr. Herbert could, however, only trace Charles II. and William III. Their list of honorary members is one emblazoned with many great names, including Sir Philip Sidney (at whose funeral they assisted), Pitt, Lord Chief Justice Tenterden, the Marquis of Cornwallis, George Canning, &c. Of Grocer Mayors, Strype notes sixty-four between 1231 and 1710 alone.

The garden of the Hall must have been a pleasant place in the old times, as it is now. It is mentioned in 1427 as having vines spreading up before the parlour windows. It had also an arbour; and in 1433 it was generously thrown open to the citizens generally, who had petitioned for this privilege. It contained hedge-rows and a bowling alley, with an ancient tower of stone or brick, called "the Turret," at the north-west corner, which had probably formed part of Lord Fitzwalter's mansion. The garden remained unchanged till the new hall was built in 1798, when it was much curtailed, and in 1802 it was nearly cut in half by the enlargement of Princes Street. For ground which had cost the Grocers, in 1433, only L31 17s. 8d., they received from the Bank of England more than L20,000.

The Hall was often lent for dinners, funerals, county feasts, and weddings; and in 1564 the gentlemen of Gray's Inn dined there with the gentlemen of the Middle Temple. This system breeding abuses, was limited in 1610.

In the time of the Commonwealth, Grocers' Hall was the place of meeting for Parliamentary Committees. Among other subjects there discussed, we find the selection of able ministers to regulate Church government, and providing moneys for the army; and in 1641 the Grand Committee of Safety held its sittings in this Hall.



In 1648 the Grocers had to petition General Fairfax not to quarter his troops in the hall of a charitable Company like theirs. In 1649 a grand entertainment was given by the Grocers to Cromwell and Fairfax. After hearing two sermons at Christ's Church, preached by Mr. Goodwin and Dr. Owen, Cromwell, his officers, the Speaker, and the judges, dined together. "No drinking of healths," says a Puritan paper of the time, "nor other uncivill concomitants formerly of such great meetings, nor any other music than the drum and trumpet—a feast, indeed, of Christians and chieftains, whereas others were rather of Chretiens and cormorants." The surplus food was sent to the London prisons, and L40 distributed to the poor. The Aldermen and Council afterwards went to General Fairfax at his house in Queen Street, and, in the name of the City, presented him with a large basin and ewer of beaten gold; while to Cromwell they sent a great present of plate, value L300, and 200 pieces of gold. They afterwards gave a still grander feast to Cromwell in his more glorious time, and one at the Restoration to General Monk. On the latter feast they expended L215, and enrolled "honest George" a brother of the Company.

The Grocers' Hall might never have been rebuilt after the Great Fire, so crippled was the Company, but for the munificence of Sir John Cutler, a rich Grocer, whom Pope (not always regardful of truth) has bitterly satirised.

Sir John rebuilt the parlour and dining-room in 1668-9, and was rewarded by "a strong vote of thanks," and by his statue and picture being placed in the Hall as eternal records of the Company's esteem and gratitude. Two years later Grocers' Hall was granted to the parishioners of St. Mildred as a chapel till their own church could be rebuilt. The garden turret, used as a record office, was fitted up for the clerk's residence, and a meeting place for the court; and, "for better order, decorum, and gravity," pipes and pots were forbidden in the court-room during the meetings.

At Grocers' Hall, "to my great surprise," says vivacious Pennant, "I met again with Sir John Cutler, Grocer, in marble and on canvas. In the first he is represented standing, in a flowing wig, waved rather than curled, a laced cravat, and a furred gown, with the folds not ungraceful; in all, except where the dress is inimical to the sculptor's art, it may be called a good performance. By his portrait we may learn that this worthy wore a black wig, and was a good-looking man. He was created a baronet, November 12th, 1660; so that he certainly had some claim of gratitude with the restored monarch. He died in 1693. His kinsman and executor, Edmund Boulton, Esq., expended L7,666 on his funeral expenses. He served as Master of the Company in 1652 and 1653, in 1688, and again a fourth time."

In 1681 the Hall was renovated at an expense of L500, by Sir John Moore, so as to make it fit for the residence of the Lord Mayor. Moore kept his mayoralty here, paying a rent of L200. It continued to be used by the Lord Mayors till 1735, when the Company, now grown rich, withdrew their permission. In 1694 it was let to the Bank of England, who held their court there till the Bank was built in 1734. The Company's present hall was built in 1802, and repaired in 1827, since which the whole has been restored, the statue of Sir John Cutler moved from its neglected post in the garden, and the arms of the most illustrious Grocers of antiquity set up.

The Grocers' charities are numerous; they give away annually L300 among the poor of the Company, and they have had L4,670 left them to lend to poor members of the community. Before 1770, Boyle says, the Company gave away about L700 a year.

Among the bravest of the Grocers, we must mention Sir John Philpot, Mayor, 1378, who fitted out a fleet that captured John Mercer, a Scotch freebooter, and took fifteen Spanish ships. He afterwards transported an English army to Brittany in his own ships, and released more than 1,000 of our victualling vessels. John Churchman, sheriff in 1385, was the founder of the Custom House. Sir Thomas Knolles, mayor in 1399 and 1410, rebuilt St. Antholin's, Watling Street. Sir Robert Chichele (a relation of Archbishop Chichele), mayor in 1411-12, gave the ground for rebuilding the church of St. Stephen, Walbrook, which his descendant, Sir Thomas (Mayor and Grocer), helped to rebuild after the Great Fire. Sir William Sevenoke was founder of the school and college at Sevenoaks, Kent. Sir John Welles (mayor in 1431), built the Standard in Chepe, helped to build the Guildhall Chapel, built the south aisle of St. Antholin's, and repaired the miry way leading to Westminster (the Strand). Sir Stephen Brown, mayor, 1438, imported cargoes of rye from Dantzic, during a great dearth, and as Fuller quaintly says, "first showed Londoners the way to the barn door." Sir John Crosby (Grocer and Sheriff in 1483), lived in great splendour at Crosby House, in Bishopsgate Street: he gave great sums for civic purposes, and repaired London Wall, London Bridge, and Bishopsgate. Sir Henry Keble (mayor, 1510) was six times Master of the Grocers' Company: he left bequests to the Company, and gave L1,000 to rebuild St. Antholin's, Budge Row. Lawrence Sheriff, Warden 1561, was founder of the great school at Rugby.

"The rivulet or running water," says Maitland, "denominated Walbrook, ran through the middle of the city above ground, till about the middle of the fourteenth century, when it was arched over, since which time it has served as a common sewer, wherein, at the depth of sixteen feet, under St. Mildred's Church steeple, runs a great and rapid stream. At the south-east corner of Grocers' Alley, in the Poultry, stood a beautiful chapel, called Corpus Christi and Sancta Maria, which was founded in the reign of Edward III. by a pious man, for a master and brethren, for whose support he endowed the same with lands, to the amount of twenty pounds per annum."

"It hath been a common speech," says Stow (Elizabeth), "that when Walbrook did lie open, barges were rowed out of the Thames, or towed up so far, and therefore the place hath ever since been called the Old Barge. Also, on the north side of this street, directly over against the said Bucklersbury, was one antient strong tower of stone, at which tower King Edward III., in the eighteenth of his reign, by the name of the King's House, called Cornets Tower, in London, did appoint to be his exchange of money there to be kept. In the twenty-ninth he granted it to Frydus Guynisane and Lindus Bardoile, merchants of London for L20 the year; and in the thirty-second of his reign, he gave it to his college, or Free Chapel of St. Stephen, at Westminster, by the name of his tower, called Cornettes-Tower, at Bucklesbury, in London. This tower of late years was taken down by one Buckle, a grocer, meaning, in place thereof, to have set up and builded a goodly frame of timber; but the said Buckle greedily labouring to pull down the old tower, a piece thereof fell upon him, which so bruised him, that his life was thereby shortened; and another, that married his widow, set up the new prepared frame of timber, and finished the work.

"This whole street, called Bucklesbury, on both sides, throughout, is possessed by grocers, and apothecaries toward the west end thereof. On the south side breaketh out some other short lane, called in records Peneritch Street. It reacheth but to St. Syth's Lane, and St. Syth's Church is the farthest part thereof, for by the west end of the said church beginneth Needlers Lane."

"I have heard," says Pennant, "that Bucklersbury was, in the reign of King William, noted for the great resort of ladies of fashion, to purchase tea, fans, and other Indian goods. King William, in some of his letters, appears to be angry with his queen for visiting these shops, which, it would seem, by the following lines of Prior, were sometimes perverted to places of intrigue, for, speaking of Hans Carvel's wife, the poet says:—

"'The first of all the Town was told, Where newest Indian things were sold; So in a morning, without boddice, Slipt sometimes out to Mrs. Thody's, To cheapen tea, or buy a skreen; What else could so much virtue mean?'"

In the time of Queen Elizabeth this street was inhabited by chemists, druggists, and apothecaries. Mouffet, in his treatise on foods, calls on them to decide whether sweet smells correct pestilent air; and adds, that Bucklersbury being replete with physic, drugs, and spicery, and being perfumed in the time of the plague with the pounding of spices, melting of gum, and making perfumes, escaped that great plague, whereof such multitudes died, that scarce any house was left unvisited.

Shakespeare mentions Bucklersbury in his Merry Wives of Windsor, written at Queen Elizabeth's request. He makes Falstaff say to Mrs. Ford—

"What made me love thee? Let that persuade thee, there's something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot cog, and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn-buds, that come like women in men's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time; I cannot; but I love thee, none but thee, and thou deservedst it." (Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. sc. 3.)

The apothecaries' street is also mentioned in Westward Ho! that dangerous play that brought Ben Jonson into trouble:—

"Mrs. Tenterhook. Go into Bucklersbury, and fetch me two ounces of preserved melons; look there be no tobacco taken in the shop when he weighs it."

And Ben Johnson, in a self-asserting poem to his bookseller, says:—

"Nor have my title-leaf on post or walls, Or in cleft sticks advanced to make calls For termers, or some clerk-like serving man, Who scarce can spell th' hard names, whose knight less can. If without these vile arts it will not sell, Send it to Bucklersbury, there 'twill well."

That good old Norwich physician, Sir Thomas Browne, also alludes to the herbalists' street in his wonderful "Religio Medico:"—"I know," says he, "most of the plants of my country, and of those about me, yet methinks I do not know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside."



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE MANSION HOUSE.

The Palace of the Lord Mayor—The old Stocks' Market—A Notable Statue of Charles II.—The Mansion House described—The Egyptian Hall—Works of Art in the Mansion House—The Election of the Lord Mayor—Lord Mayor's Day—The Duties of a Lord Mayor—Days of the Year on which the Lord Mayor holds High State—The Patronage of the Lord Mayor—His Powers—The Lieutenancy of the City of London—The Conservancy of the Thames and Medway—The Lord Mayor's Advisers—The Mansion House Household and Expenditure—Theodore Hook—Lord Mayor Scropps—The Lord Mayor's Insignia—The State Barge—The Maria Wood.

The Lord Mayors in old times often dwelt in the neighbourhood of the Old Jewry; but in 1739 Lord Mayor Perry laid the first stone of the present dull and stately Mansion House, and Sir Crisp Gascoigne, 1753, was the first Lord Mayor that resided in it. The architect, Dance, selected the Greek style for the City palace.

The present palace of the Lord Mayor stands on the site of the old Stocks' Market, built for the sale of fish and flesh by Henry Walis, mayor in the 10th year of the reign of Edward I. Before this time a pair of stocks had stood there, and they gave their name to the new market house. Walis had designed this market to help to maintain London Bridge, and the bridge keeper had for a long time power to grant leases for the market shops. In 1312-13, John de Gisors, mayor, gave a congregation of honest men of the commonalty the power of letting the Stocks' Market shops. In the reign of Edward II. the Stocks let for L46 13s. 4d. a year, and was one of the five privileged markets of London. It was rebuilt in the reign of Henry IV., and in the year 1543 there were here twenty-five fishmongers and eighteen butchers. In the reign of Henry VIII. a stone conduit was erected. The market-place was about 230 feet long and 108 feet broad, and on the east side were rows of trees "very pleasant to the inhabitants." On the north side were twenty-two covered fruit stalls, at the south-west corner butchers' stalls, and the rest of the place was taken up by gardeners who sold fruit, roots, herbs and flowers. It is said that that rich scented flower, the stock, derived its name from being sold in this market.

"Up farther north," says Strype, "is the Stocks' Market. As to the present state of which it is converted to a quite contrary use; for instead of fish and flesh sold there before the Fire, are now sold fruits, roots and herbs; for which it is very considerable and much resorted unto, being of note for having the choicest in their kind of all sorts, surpassing all other markets in London." "All these things have we at London," says Shadwell, in his "Bury Fair," 1689; "the produce of the best corn-fields at Greenhithe; hay, straw, and cattle at Smithfield, with horses too. Where is such a garden in Europe as the Stocks' Market? where such a river as the Thames? such ponds and decoys as in Leadenhall market for your fish and fowl?"

"At the north end of the market place," says Strype, admiringly, "by a water conduit pipe, is erected a nobly great statue of King Charles II. on horseback, trampling on slaves, standing on a pedestal with dolphins cut in niches, all of freestone, and encompassed with handsome iron grates. This statue was made and erected at the sole charge of Sir Robert Viner, alderman, knight and baronet, an honourable, worthy, and generous magistrate of this City."

This statue of Charles had a droll origin. It was originally intended for a statue of John Sobieski, the Polish king who saved Vienna from the Turks. In the first year of the Restoration, the enthusiastic Viner purchased the unfinished statue abroad. Sobieski's stern head was removed by Latham, the head of Charles substituted, and the turbaned Turk, on whom Sobieski trampled, became a defeated Cromwell.

"Could Robin Viner have foreseen The glorious triumphs of his master, The Wood-Church statue gold had been, Which now is made of alabaster; But wise men think, had it been wood, 'Twere for a bankrupt king too good.

"Those that the fabric well consider, Do of it diversely discourse; Some pass their censure of the rider, Others their judgment of the horse; Most say the steed's a goodly thing, But all agree 'tis a lewd king."

(The History of Insipids; a Lampoon, 1676, by the Lord Rochester.)

The statue was set up May 29, 1672, and on that day the Stocks' Market ran with claret. The Stocks' Market was removed in 1737 to Farringdon Street, and was then called Fleet Market. The Sobieski statue was taken down and presented by the City in 1779 to Robert Viner, Esq., a descendant of the convivial mayor who pulled Charles II. back "to take t'other bottle."

"This Mansion House," says Dodsley's "Guide to London," "is very substantially built of Portland stone, and has a portico of six lofty fluted columns, of the Corinthian order, in the front; the same order being continued in pilasters both under the pediment, and on each side. The basement storey is very massive and built in rustic. In the centre of this storey is the door which leads to the kitchens, cellars, and other offices; and on each side rises a flight of steps of very considerable extent, leading up to the portico, in the midst of which is the door which leads to the apartments and offices where business is transacted. The stone balustrade of the stairs is continued along the front of the portico, and the columns, which are wrought in the proportions of Palladio, support a large angular pediment, adorned with a very noble piece in bas-relief, representing the dignity and opulence of the City of London, by Mr. Taylor."

The lady crowned with turrets represents London. She is trampling on Envy, who lies struggling on her back. London's left arm rests on a shield, and in her right she holds a wand which mightily resembles a yard measure. On her right side stands a Cupid, holding the cap of Liberty over his shoulder at the end of a staff. A little further lolls the river Thames, who is emptying a large vase, and near him is an anchor and cable. On London's left is Plenty, kneeling and pouring out fruit from a cornucopia, and behind Plenty are two naked boys with bales of goods, as emblems of Commerce. The complaint is that the principal figures are too large, and crowd the rest, who, compelled to grow smaller and smaller, seem sheltering from the rain.

Beneath the portico are two series of windows, and above these there used to be an attic storey for the servants, generally known as "the Mayor's Nest," with square windows, crowned with a balustrade. It is now removed.

The Mansion House is an oblong, has an area in the middle, and at the farthest end of it is situated the grand and lofty Egyptian Hall (so called from some Egyptian details that have now disappeared). This noble banquet-room was designed by the Earl of Burlington, and was intended to resemble an Egyptian chamber described by Vitruvius. It has two side-screens of lofty columns supporting a vaulted roof, and is lit by a large west window. It can dine 400 guests. In the side walls are the niches, filled with sculptured groups or figures, some of the best of them by Foley. "To make it regular in rank," says the author of "London and its Environs" (1761), "the architect has raised a similar building on the front, which is the upper part of a dancing-gallery. This rather hurts than adorns the face of the building." Near the end, at each side, is a window of extraordinary height, placed between complex Corinthian pilasters, and extending to the top of the attic storey. In former times the sides of the Mansion House were darkened by the houses that crowded it, and the front required an area before it. It has been seriously proposed lately to take the Poultry front of the Mansion House away, and place it west, facing Queen Victoria Street. In a London Guide of 1820 the state bed at the Mansion House, which cost three thousand guineas, is spoken of with awe and wonder.

There are, says Timbs, other dining-rooms, as the Venetian Parlour, Wilkes's Parlour, &c. The drawing-room and ball-room are superbly decorated; above the latter is the Justice-room (constructed in 1849), where the Lord Mayor sits daily. In a contiguous apartment was the state bed. There is a fine gallery of portraits and other pictures. The kitchen is a large hall, provided with ranges, each of them large enough to roast an entire ox. The vessels for boiling vegetables are not pots, but tanks. The stewing range is a long, broad iron pavement laid down over a series of furnaces. The spits are huge cages formed of iron bars, and turned by machinery.

At the close of the Exhibition of 1851, the Corporation of London, with a view to encourage art, voted L10,000 to be expended in statuary for the Egyptian Hall. Among the leading works we may mention "Alastor" and "Hermione," by Mr. J. Durham; "Egeria" and "The Elder Brother," in "Comus," by Mr. J.H. Foley; Chaucer's "Griselda," by Mr. Calder Marshall; "The Morning Star," by Mr. G.H. Bailey; and "The Faithful Shepherdess," by Mr. Lucas Durrant. In the saloon is the "Caractacus" of Foley, and the "Sardanapalus" of Mr. Weekes.

The duties of a Lord Mayor have been elaborately and carefully condensed by the late Mr. Fairholt, who had made City ceremonies the study of half his life.

"None," says our authority, "can serve the office of Lord Mayor unless he be an alderman of London, who must previously have served the office of sheriff, though it is not necessary that a sheriff should be an alderman. The sheriffs are elected by the livery of London, the only requisite for the office being, that he is a freeman and liveryman of the City, and that he possesses property sufficient to serve the office of sheriff creditably, in all its ancient splendour and hospitality, to do which generally involves an expenditure of about L3,000. There are fees averaging from L500 to L600 belonging to the office, but these are given to the under-sheriff by all respectable and honourable men, as it is considered very disreputable for the sheriff to take any of them.

"The Lord Mayor has the privilege, on any day between the 14th of April and the 14th of June, of nominating any one or more persons (not exceeding nine in the whole) to be submitted to the Livery on Midsummer Day, for them to elect the two sheriffs for the year ensuing. This is generally done at a public dinner, when the Lord Mayor proposes the healths of such persons as he intends to nominate for sheriffs. It is generally done as a compliment, and considered as an honour; but in those cases where the parties have an objection to serve, it sometimes gives offence, as, upon the Lord Mayor declaring in the Court of Aldermen the names of those he proposes, the macebearer immediately waits upon them, and gives them formal notice; when, if they do not intend to serve, they are excused, upon paying, at the next Court of Aldermen, four hundred guineas; but if they allow their names to remain on the list until elected by the livery, the fine is L1,000.



"The Lord Mayor is elected by the Livery of London, in Common Hall assembled (Guildhall), on Michaelmas Day, the 29th of September, previous to which election the Lord Mayor and Corporation attend church in state; and on their return, the names of all the aldermen who have not served the office of Lord Mayor are submitted in rotation by the Recorder, and the show of hands taken upon each; when the sheriffs declare which two names have the largest show of hands, and these two are returned to the Court of Aldermen, who elect one to be the Lord Mayor for the year ensuing. (The office is compulsory to an alderman, but he is excused upon the payment of L1,000.) The one selected is generally the one next in rotation, unless he has not paid twenty shillings in the pound, or there is any blot in his private character, for it does not follow that an alderman having served the office of sheriff must necessarily become Lord Mayor; the selection rests first with the livery, and afterwards with the Court of Aldermen; and in case of bankruptcy, or compounding with his creditors, an alderman is passed over, and even a junior put in his place, until he has paid twenty shillings in the pound to all his creditors. The selection being made from the nominees, the Lord Mayor and aldermen return to the livery, and the Recorder declares upon whom the choice of the aldermen has fallen, when he is publicly called forth, the chain put round his neck, and he returns thanks to the livery for the honour they have conferred upon him. He is now styled the 'Right Honourable the Lord Mayor elect,' and takes rank next to the Lord Mayor, who takes him home in the state carriage to the Mansion House, to dine with the aldermen. This being his first ride in the state coach, a fee of a guinea is presented to the coachman, and half-a-guinea to the postilion; the City trumpeters who attend also receive a gratuity. The attention of the Lord Mayor elect is now entirely directed to the establishment of his household, and he is beset by applications of all sorts, and tradesmen of every grade and kind, until he has filled up his appointments, which must be done by the 8th of November, when he is publicly installed in his office in the Guildhall.

"The election of mayor is subject to the approbation of the Crown, which is communicated by the Lord Chancellor to the Lord Mayor elect, at an audience in the presence of the Recorder, who presents him to the Lord Chancellor for the purpose of receiving Her Majesty's pleasure and approbation of the man of the City's choice. This ceremony is generally gone through on the first day of Michaelmas term, previous to receiving the judges. The Lord Mayor elect is attended to the Chancellor's private residence by the aldermen, sheriffs, under-sheriffs, the swordbearers, and all the City officers. In the evening he gives his first state dinner, in robes and full-dressed.



"On the 8th of November the Lord Mayor elect is sworn into office publicly in Guildhall, having previously breakfasted with the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House; they are attended at this ceremony, as well as at the breakfast, by the members and officers of the Court of the Livery Company to which they respectively belong, in their gowns. After the swearing in at Guildhall, when the Mayor publicly takes the oaths, accepts the sword, the mace, the sceptre, and the City purse, he proceeds with the late Mayor to the Mansion House, and they conjointly give what is called the 'farewell dinner;' the Lord Mayor elect proceeding to his own private residence in the evening, a few days being allowed for the removal of the late Lord Mayor.

"The next day, being what is popularly known as 'Lord Mayor's day,' and which is observed as a close holiday in the City, the shops are closed, as are also the streets in all the principal thoroughfares, except for the carriages engaged in the procession. He used formerly to go to Westminster Hall by water, in the state barge, attended by the state barges of the City Companies, but now by land, and is again sworn in, in the Court of Exchequer, to uphold and support the Crown, and make a due return of all fines and fees passing through his office during the year. He returns in the same state to Guildhall about three o'clock in the afternoon (having left the Mansion House about twelve o'clock), where, in conjunction with the Sheriffs, he gives a most splendid banquet to the Royal Family, the Judges, Ministers of State, Ambassadors, or such of them as will accept his invitation, the Corporation, and such distinguished foreigners as may be visiting in the country. At this banquet the King and Queen attend the first year after their coronation; it is given at the expense of the City, and it generally costs from eight to ten thousand pounds; but when the City entertained the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., and the allied Sovereigns in 1814, it cost twenty thousand pounds. On all other Lord Mayor's days the expense is borne by the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs, the former paying half, and the latter one-fourth each; the Mayor's half generally averaging from twelve to fourteen hundred pounds.

"The next morning the new Lord Mayor enters upon the duties of his office. From ten to twelve he is engaged in giving audience to various applications; at twelve he enters the justice-room, where he is often detained until four in the afternoon, and this is his daily employment. His lordship holds his first Court of Aldermen previous to any other court, to which he goes in full state; the same week he holds his first Court of Common Council, also in state. He attends the first sessions of the Central Criminal Court at Justice Hall, in the Old Bailey; being the Chief Commissioner, he takes precedence of all the judges, and sits in a chair in the centre of the Bench, the swordbearer placing the sword of justice behind it; this seat is never occupied in the absence of the Lord Mayor, except by an alderman who has passed the chair. The Court is opened at ten o'clock on Monday; the judges come on Wednesday; the Lord Mayor takes the chair for an hour, and then retires till five o'clock, when he entertains the judges at dinner in the Court-house, which is expected to be done every day during the sitting of the Court, which takes place every month, and lasts about eight days; the Lord Mayor and the sheriffs dividing the expenses of the table between them.

"Plough Monday is the next grand day, when the Lord Mayor receives the inquest of every ward in the City, who make a presentment of the election of all ward officers in the City, who are elected on St. Thomas's Day, December 21st, and also of any nuisances or grievances of which the citizens may have to complain, which are referred to the Court of Aldermen, who sit in judgment on these matters on the next Court day. In former times, on the first Sunday in Epiphany, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Corporation, went in state to the Church of St. Lawrence, Guildhall, and there received the sacrament, but this custom has of late years been omitted.

"If any public fast is ordered by the King, the Lord Mayor and Corporation attend St. Paul's Cathedral in their black robes; and if a thanksgiving, they appear in scarlet. If an address is to be presented to the throne, the whole Corporation go in state, the Lord Mayor wearing his gold gown. (Of these gowns only a certain number are allowed, by Act of Parliament, to public officers as a costly badge of distinction; the Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls are among the privileged persons.) On Easter Monday and Tuesday the Lord Mayor attends Christ Church (of which he is a member), on which occasion the whole of the blue-coat boys, nurses, and beadles, master, clerk, and other officers, walk in procession. The President, freemen, and other officers of the Royal Hospital attend the church to hear the sermon, and a statement of the income and expenditure of each of the hospitals, over which the Mayor has jurisdiction, is read from the pulpit. A public dinner is given at Christ's Hospital on the Monday evening, and a similar one at St. Bartholomew's on the Tuesday. On the Monday evening the Lord Mayor gives the grandest dinner of the year in the Egyptian Hall, at the Mansion House, to 400 persons, at which some of the Royal Family often attend, a ball taking place in the evening. The next day, before going to church, the Lord Mayor gives a purse of fifty guineas, in sixpences, shillings, and half-crowns, to the boys of Christ's Hospital, who pass before him through the Mansion House, each receiving a piece of silver (fresh from the Mint), two plum buns, and a glass of wine. On the first Sunday in term the Lord Mayor and Corporation receive the judges at St. Paul's, and hear a sermon from the Lord Mayor's chaplain, after which his lordship entertains the party at dinner, either on that day or any other, according to his own feeling of the propriety of Sunday dinners.

"In the month of May, when the festival of the Sons of the Clergy is generally held in St. Paul's, the Lord Mayor attends, after which the party dine at Merchant Taylors' Hall. Some of the Royal Family generally attend; always the archbishop and a great body of the clergy. In the same month, the Lord Mayor attends St. Paul's in state, to hear a sermon preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, at which all the bishops and archbishops attend, with others of the clergy; after which the Lord Mayor gives them a grand dinner; and on another day in the same month, the Archbishop of Canterbury gives a similar state dinner to the Lord Mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, and the bishops, at Lambeth Palace." In June the Lord Mayor used to attend the anniversary of the Charity Schools in St. Paul's in state, and in the evening to preside at the public dinner, but this has of late been discontinued.

"On Midsummer Day, the Lord Mayor holds a common hall for the election of sheriffs for the ensuing year; and on the 3rd of September, the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs used to go in state to proclaim Bartholomew Fair, now a thing of the past. They called at the gaol of Newgate on their way, and the governor brought out a cup of wine, from which the Lord Mayor drank.

"On St. Matthias' Day (21st September) the Lord Mayor attends Christ's Hospital, to hear a sermon, when a little Latin oration is made by the two senior scholars, who afterwards carry round a glove, and collect money enough to pay their first year's expenses at college. Then the beadles of the various hospitals of which the Lord Mayor is governor deliver up their staves of office, which are returned if no fault is to be attributed to them; and this is done to denote the Mayor's right to remove them at his will, or upon just cause assigned, although elected by their respective governors."

On the 28th of September, the Lord Mayor swears in the sheriffs at Guildhall, a public breakfast having been first given by them at the hall of the Company to which the senior sheriff belongs. On the 30th of September, the Lord Mayor proceeds with the sheriffs to Westminster, in state; and the sheriffs are again sworn into office before the Barons of the Exchequer. The senior alderman below the chair (the next in rotation for Lord Mayor) cuts some sticks, delivers six horse-shoes, and counts sixty-one hob-nails, as suit and service for some lands held by the City under the Crown. The Barons are then invited to the banquet given by the sheriffs on their return to the City, at which the Lord Mayor presides in state.

"The patronage of the Lord Mayor consists in the appointment of a chaplain, who receives a full set of canonicals, lives and boards in the Mansion House, has a suite of rooms and a servant at command, rides in the state carriage, and attends the Lord Mayor whenever required. He is presented to the King at the first levee, and receives a purse of fifty guineas from the Court of Aldermen, and a like sum from the Court of Common Council, for the sermons he preaches before the Corporation and the judges at St. Paul's the first Sundays in term. The next appointment the Lord Mayor has at his disposal is the Clerk of the Cocket Office, whom he pays out of his own purse. If a harbour master, of whom there are four, dies during the year, the Lord Mayor appoints his successor. The salary is L400 a year, and is paid by the Chamberlain. He also appoints the water-bailiff's assistants, if any vacancy occurs. He presents a boy to Christ's Hospital, in addition to the one he is entitled to present as an alderman; and he has a presentation of an annuity of L21 10s. 5d., under will, to thirteen pensioners, provided a vacancy occurs during his year of office. L4 is given to a poor soldier, and the same sum to a poor sailor.

"The powers of the Lord Mayor over the City, although abridged, like the sovereign power over the State, are still much more extensive than is generally supposed. The rights and privileges of the chief magistrate of the City and its corporation are nearly allied to those of the constitution of the State. The Lord Mayor has the badges of royalty attached to his office—the sceptre, the swords of justice and mercy, and the mace. The gold chain, one of the most ancient honorary distinctions, and which may be traced from the Eastern manner of conferring dignity, is worn by him, among other honorary badges; and, having passed through the office of Lord Mayor, the alderman continues to wear it during his life. He controls the City purse, the Chamberlain delivering it into his hands, together with the sceptre, on the day he is sworn into office. He has the right of precedence in the City before all the Royal Family, which right was disputed by the Prince of Wales, in St. Paul's Cathedral, during the mayoralty of Sir James Shaw, but maintained by him, and approved and confirmed by the King (George III.). The gates of the City are in his custody, and it is usual to close the only one now remaining, Temple Bar, on the approach of the sovereign when on a visit to the City, who knocks and formally requests admission, the Mayor attending in person to grant it, and receive the visit of royalty; and upon proclaiming war or peace, he also proceeds in state to Temple Bar, to admit the heralds. Soldiers cannot march through the City, in any large numbers, without the Mayor's permission, first obtained by the Commander-in-chief.

"The Lieutenancy of the City of London is in commission. The Lord Mayor, being the Chief Commissioner, issues a new commission, whenever he pleases, by application to the Lord Chancellor, through the Secretary of State. He names in the commission all the aldermen and deputies of the City of London, the directors of the Bank, the members for the City, and such of his immediate friends and relations as he pleases. The commission, being under the Great Seal, gives all the parties named therein the right to be styled esquires, and the name once in the commission remains, unless removed for any valid reason.

"The Lord Mayor enjoys the right of private audience with the Crown; and when an audience is wished for, it is usual to make the request through the Remembrancer, but not necessary. When Alderman Wilson was Lord Mayor, he used to apply by letter to the Lord Chamberlain. In attending levees or drawing-rooms, the Lord Mayor has the privilege of the entree, and, in consideration of the important duties he has to perform in the City, and to save his time, he is allowed to drive direct into the Ambassadors' Court at St. James's, without going round by Constitution Hill. He is summoned as a Privy Councillor on the death of the King; and the Tower pass-word is sent to him regularly, signed by the sovereign.

"He has the uncontrolled conservancy of the river Thames and the waters of the Medway, from London Bridge to Rochester down the river, and from London Bridge to Oxford up the river. He holds Courts of Conservancy whenever he sees it necessary, and summons juries in Kent, from London and Middlesex, who are compelled to go on the river in boats to view and make presentments. In the mayoralty of Alderman Wilson, these courts were held in the state barge, on the water, at the spot with which the inquiry was connected, for the convenience of the witnesses attending from the villages near. It is usual for him to visit Oxford once in fourteen, and Rochester once in seven years.[9]

"Alderman Wilson, in 1839, was the last Lord Mayor (says Fairholt, whose book was published in 1843) who visited the western boundary; and he, at the request of the Court of Aldermen, made Windsor the principal seat of the festivities, going no farther than Cliefden, and visiting Magna Charta island on his return. Alderman Pirie was the last who visited the eastern boundary, the whole party staying two days at Rochester. The Lord Mayor is privileged by the City to go these journeys every year, should he see any necessity for it; but the expense is so great (about L1,000) that it is only performed at these distant periods, although Alderman Wilson visited the western boundary in the thirteenth, and Alderman Pirie in the fifth year. A similar short view is taken as far as Twickenham yearly, in the month of July, at a cost of about L150, when the Lord Mayor is attended by the aldermen, the sheriffs, and their ladies, with the same show and attendance as on the more infrequent visits. His lordship has also a committee to assist in the duties of his office, who have a shallop of their own, and take a view up and down the river, as far as they like to go, once or twice a month during summer, at an expense of some hundreds per annum.

"The Lord Mayor may be said to have a veto upon the proceedings of the Courts both of Aldermen and Common Council, as well as upon the Court of Livery in Common Hall assembled, neither of these courts being able to meet unless convened by him; and he can at any time dissolve the court by removing the sword and mace from the table, and declaring the business at an end; but this is considered an ungracious display of power when exercised.

"The Lord Mayor may call upon the Recorder for his advice whenever he may stand in need of it, as well as for that of the Common Serjeant, the four City pleaders, and the City solicitor, from whom he orders prosecutions at the City expense whenever he thinks the public good requires it. The salary of the Recorder is L2,500 per annum, besides fees; the Common Serjeant L1,000, with an income from other sources of L843 per annum. The solicitor is supposed to make L5,000 per annum.

"The Lord Mayor resides in the Mansion House, the first stone of which was laid the 25th of October, 1739. This house, with the furniture, cost L70,985 13s. 2d., the principal part of which was paid from the fines received from persons who wished to be excused from serving the office of sheriff. About L9,000 was paid out of the City's income. The plate cost L11,531 16s. 3d., which has been very considerably added to since by the Lord Mayors for the time being, averaging about L500 per annum.

"Attached to the household is—

L s. d.

The chaplain, at a salary of 97 10 0 The swordbearer 500 0 0 The macebearer 500 0 0 Water-bailiff 300 0 0 City marshal 550 0 0 Marshal's man 200 0 0 Clerk of the Cocket Office 80 0 0 Gate porter 6 6 0 Seven trumpeters 29 9 0

"These sums, added to the allowance to the Lord Mayor, and the ground-rent and taxes of the Mansion House (amounting to about L692 12s. 6d. per annum), and other expenses, it is expected, cost the City about L19,038 16s. 10d. per annum. There are also four attorneys of the Mayor's court, who formerly boarded at the Mansion House, but are now allowed L105 per annum in lieu of the table. The plate-butler and the housekeeper have each L5 5s. per annum as a compliment from the City, and in addition to their wages, paid by the Lord Mayor (L45 per annum to the housekeeper, and L1 5s. per week to the plate-butler). The marshal's clothing costs L44 16s. per annum, and that of the marshal's man L13 9s. 6d.

"There is also—

L s. d.

A yeoman of the chamber, at 270 0 0 Three Serjeants of ditto,[10] each 280 0 0 Master of the ceremonies 40 0 0 Serjeant of the channel 184 10 0 Yeoman of the channel 25 0 0 Two yeomen of the waterside, each 350 0 0 Deputy water-bailiff 350 0 0 Water-bailiff's first young man 300 0 0 The common hunt's young man 350 0 0 Water-bailiff's second young man 300 0 0 Swordbearer's young man 350 0 0

"These sums and others, added to the previous amount, make an annual amount of expense connected with the office of Lord Mayor of L25,034 7s. 1d.

"Most of the last-named officers walk before the Lord Mayor, dressed in black silk gowns, on all state occasions (one acting as his lordship's train-bearer), and dine with the household at a table provided at about 15s. a head, exclusive of wine, which they are allowed without restraint. In the mayoralty of Alderman Atkins, some dispute having arisen with some of the household respecting their tables, the City abolished the daily table, giving each of the officers a sum of money instead, deducting L1,000 a year from the Lord Mayor's allowance, and requiring him only to provide the swordbearer's table on state days."

The estimate made for the expenditure at the Mansion House by the committee of the Corporation, is founded upon the average of many years, but in such mayoralties as Curtis, Pirie, and Wilson, far more must have been spent. It is said that only one Lord Mayor ever saved anything out of his salary.

"Sir James Saunderson, Mayor in 1792-3, left behind him a minute account of the expenses of his year of office, for the edification of his successors. The document is lengthy, but we shall select a few of the more striking items. Paid—Butcher for twelve months, L781 10s. 10d.; one item in this account is for meat given to the prisoners at Ludgate, at a cost of L68 10s. 8d. The wines are, of course, expensive. 1792—Paid, late Lord Mayor's stock, L57 7s. 11d.; hock, 35 dozen, L82 14s. 0d.; champagne, 40 ditto, at 43s., L85 19s. 9d.; claret, 154 ditto, at 34s. 10d. per dozen, L268 12s. 7d.; Burgundy, 30 ditto, L76 5s. 0d.; port, 8 pipes, 400 dozen, L416 4s. 0d.; draught ditto, for Lord Mayor's day, L49 4s. 0d.; ditto, ditto, for Easter Monday, L28 4s. 3d.—L493 12s. 3d.; Madeira, 32 dozen, L59 16s. 4d.; sherry, 61 dozen, L67 1s. 0d.; Lisbon, one hogshead, at 34s. per dozen, L62 12s. 0d.; bottles to make good, broke and stole, L97 13s. 6d.; arrack, L8 8s. 0d.; brandy, 25 gallons, L18 11s. 0d.; rum, 6-1/2 ditto, L3 19s. 6d. Total, L1,309 12s. 10d."



"These items of costume are curious:—Lady Mayoress, November 30.—A hoop, L2 16s. 0d.; point ruffles, L12 12s. 0d.; treble blond ditto, L7 7s. 0d.; a fan, L3 3s. 0d.; a cap and lappets, L7 7s. 0d.; a cloak and sundries, L26 17s. 0d.; hair ornaments, L34 0s. 0d.; a cap, L7 18s. 0d.; sundries, L37 9s. 1d. 1793, Jan. 26.—A silk, for 9th Nov., 3-1/2 guineas per yard, L41 6s. 0d.; a petticoat (Madame Beauvais), L35 3s. 6d.; a gold chain, L57 15s. 0d.; silver silk, L13 0s. 0d.; clouded satin, L5 10s. 0d.; a petticoat for Easter, L29 1s. 0d.; millinery, for ditto, L27 17s. 6d.; hair-dressing, L13 2s. 3d. July 6th.—A petticoat, L6 16s. 8d.; millinery, L7 8s. 8d.; mantua-maker, in full, L13 14s. 6d.; milliner, in full, L12 6s. 6d. Total, L416 2s. 0d. The Lord Mayor's dress:—Two wigs, L9 9s. 0d.; a velvet suit, L54 8s. 0d.; other clothes, L117 13s. 4d.; hats and hose, L9 6s. 6d.; a scarlet robe, L14 8s. 6d.; a violet ditto, L12 1s. 6d.; a gold chain, L63 0s. 0d.; steel buckles, L5 5s. 0d.; a steel sword, L6 16s. 6d.; hair-dressing, L16 16s. 11d.—L309 2s. 3d. On the page opposite to that containing this record, under the head of 'Ditto Returned,' we read 'Per Valuation, L0 0s. 0d.' Thus, to dress a Lord Mayor costs L309 2s. 0d.; but her Ladyship cannot be duly arrayed at a less cost than L416 2s. 0d. To dress the servants cost L724 5s. 6d."

Then comes a grand summing-up. "Dr. The whole state of the account, L12,173 4s. 3d." Then follow the receipts per contra:—" At Chamberlain's Office, L3,572 8s. 4d.; Cocket Office, L892 5s. 11d.; Bridge House, L60; City Gauger, L250; freedoms, L175; fees on affidavits, L21 16s. 8d.; seals, L67 4s. 9d.; licences, L13 15s.; sheriff's fees, L13 6s. 8d.; corn fees, L15 13s.; venison warrants, L14 4s.; attorneys, Mayor's Court, L26 7s. 9d.; City Remembrancer, L12 12s.; in lieu of baskets, L7 7s.; vote of Common Council, L100; sale of horses and carriages, L450; wine (overplus) removed from Mansion House, L398 18s. 7d. Total received, L6,117 9s. 8d. Cost of mayoralty, as such, and independent of all private expenses, L6,055 14s. 7d."



That clever but unscrupulous tuft-hunter and smart parvenu, Theodore Hook, who talked of Bloomsbury as if it was semi-barbarous, and of citizens (whose wine he drank, and whose hospitality he so often shared) as if they could only eat venison and swallow turtle soup, has left a sketch of the short-lived dignity of a mayor, which exactly represents the absurd caricature of City life that then pleased his West-end readers, half of whom had derived their original wealth from the till. Scropps, the new Lord Mayor, cannot sleep all night for his greatness; the wind down the chimney sounds like the shouts of the people; the cocks crowing in the morn at the back of the house he takes for trumpets sounding his approach; and the ordinary incidental noises in the family he fancies the pop-guns at Stangate announcing his disembarcation at Westminster. Then come his droll mishaps: when he enters the state coach, and throws himself back upon his broad seat, with all imaginable dignity, in the midst of all his ease and elegance, he snaps off the cut-steel hilt of his sword, by accidentally bumping the whole weight of his body right—or rather, wrong—directly upon the top of it.

"Through fog and glory," says Theodore Hook, "Scropps reached Blackfriars Bridge, took water, and in the barge tasted none of the collation, for all he heard, saw, and swallowed was 'Lord Mayor' and 'your lordship,' far sweeter than nectar. At the presentation at Westminster, he saw two of the judges, whom he remembered on the circuit, when he trembled at the sight of them, believing them to be some extraordinary creatures, upon whom all the hair and fur grew naturally.

"Then the Lady Mayoress. There she was—Sally Scropps (her maiden name was Snob). 'There was my own Sally, with a plume of feathers that half filled the coach, and Jenny and Maria and young Sally, all with their backs to my horses, which were pawing with mud, and snorting and smoking like steam-engines, with nostrils like safety valves, and four of my footmen behind the coach, like bees in a swarm.'"

Perhaps the most effective portion of the paper is the reverse of the picture. My lord and lady and their family had just got settled in the Mansion House, and enjoying their dignity, when the 9th of November came again—the consummation of Scropps' downfall. Again did they go in state to Guildhall; again were they toasted and addressed; again were they handed in and led out, flirted with Cabinet ministers, and danced with ambassadors; and at two o'clock in the morning drove home from the scene of gaiety to the old residence in Budge Row. "Never in the world did pickled herrings or turpentine smell so powerfully as on that night when we re-entered the house.... The passage looked so narrow; the drawing-room looked so small; the staircase seemed so dark; our apartments appeared so low. In the morning we assembled at breakfast. A note lay upon the table, addressed 'Mrs. Scropps, Budge Row.' The girls, one after the other, took it up, read the superscription, and laid it down again. A visitor was announced—a neighbour and kind friend, a man of wealth and importance. What were his first words? They were the first I had heard from a stranger since my job. 'How are you, Scropps? Done up, eh?'

"Scropps! No obsequiousness, no deference, no respect. No 'My lord, I hope your lordship passed an agreeable night. And how is her ladyship, and her amiable daughters?' No, not a bit of it! 'How's Mrs. S. and the gals?' This was quite natural, all as it had been. But how unlike what it was only the day before! The very servants—who, when amidst the strapping, stall-fed, gold-laced lackeys of the Mansion House, and transferred, with the chairs and tables, from one Lord Mayor to another, dared not speak, nor look, nor say their lives were their own—strutted about the house, and banged the doors, and spoke of their missis as if she had been an old apple-woman.

"So much for domestic miseries. I went out. I was shoved about in Cheapside in the most remorseless manner. My right eye had a narrow escape of being poked out by the tray of a brawny butcher's boy, who, when I civilly remonstrated, turned round and said, 'Vy, I say, who are you, I wonder? Why are you so partiklar about your hysight?' I felt an involuntary shudder. 'To-day,' thought I, 'I am John Ebenezer Scropps. Two days ago I was Lord Mayor!'"

"Our Lord Mayor," says Cobbett, in his sensible way, "and his golden coach, and his gold-covered footmen and coachmen, and his golden chain, and his chaplain, and his great sword of state, please the people, and particularly the women and girls; and when they are pleased, the men and boys are pleased. And many a young fellow has been more industrious and attentive from his hope of one day riding in that golden coach."

"On ordinary state occasions," says "Aleph," in the City Press, "the Lord Mayor wears a massive black silk robe, richly embroidered, and his collar and jewel; in the civic courts, a violet silk robe, furred and bordered with black velvet. The wear of the various robes was fixed by a regulation dated 1562. The present authority for the costumes is a printed pamphlet (by order of the Court of Common Council), dated 1789.

"The jewelled collar (date 1534)," says Mr. Timbs, "is of pure gold, composed of a series of links, each formed of a letter S, a united York and Lancaster (or Henry VII.) rose, and a massive knot. The ends of the chain are joined by the portcullis, from the points of which, suspended by a ring of diamonds, hangs the jewel. The entire collar contains twenty-eight SS, fourteen roses, thirteen knots, and measures sixty-four inches. The jewel contains in the centre the City arms, cut in cameo of a delicate blue, on an olive ground. Surrounding this is a garter of bright blue, edged with white and gold, bearing the City motto, 'Domine, dirige nos,' in gold letters. The whole is encircled with a costly border of gold SS, alternating with rosettes of diamonds, set in silver. The jewel is suspended from the collar by a portcullis, but when worn without the collar, is hung by a broad blue ribbon. The investiture is by a massive gold chain, and, when the Lord Mayor is re-elected, by two chains."

Edward III., by his charter (dated 1534), grants the mayors of the City of London "gold, or silver, or silvered" maces, to be carried before them. The present mace, of silver-gilt, is five feet three inches long, and bears on the lower part "W.R." It is surmounted with a royal crown and the imperial arms; and the handle and staff are richly chased.

There are four swords belonging to the City of London. The "Pearl" sword, presented by Queen Elizabeth when she opened the first Royal Exchange, in 1571, and so named from its being richly set with pearls. This sword is carried before the Lord Mayor on all occasions of rejoicing and festivity. The "Sword of State," borne before the Lord Mayor as an emblem of his authority. The "Black" sword, used on fast days, in Lent, and at the death of any of the royal family. And the fourth is that placed before the Lord Mayor's chair at the Central Criminal Court.

The Corporate seal is circular. The second seal, made in the mayoralty of Sir William Walworth, 1381, is much defaced.

"The 'gondola,' known as the 'Lord Mayor's State Barge,'" says "Aleph," "was built in 1807, at a cost of L2,579. Built of English oak, 85 feet long by 13 feet 8 inches broad, she was at all times at liberty to pass through all the locks, and even go up the Thames as far as Oxford. She had eighteen oars and all other fittings complete, and was profusely gilt. But when the Conservancy Act took force, and the Corporation had no longer need of her, she was sold at her moorings at Messrs. Searle's, Surrey side of Westminster Bridge, on Thursday, April 5th, 1860, by Messrs. Pullen and Son, of Cripplegate. The first bid was L20, and she was ultimately knocked down for L105. Where she is or how she has fared we know not. The other barge is that famous one known to all City personages and all civic pleasure parties. It was built during the mayoralty of Sir Matthew Wood, in 1816, and received its name of Maria Wood from the eldest and pet daughter of that 'twice Lord Mayor.' It cost L3,300, and was built by Messrs. Field and White, in consequence of the old barge Crosby (built during the mayoralty of Brass Crosby, 1771) being found past repairing. Maria Wood measures 140 feet long by 19 feet wide, and draws only 2 feet 6 inches of water. The grand saloon, 56 feet long, is capable of dining 140 persons. In 1851 she cost L1,000 repairing. Like her sister, this splendid civic barge was sold at the Auction-mart, facing the Bank of England, by Messrs. Pullen and Son, on Tuesday, May 31, 1859. The sale commenced at L100, next L200, L220, and thence regular bids, till finally it got to L400, when Mr. Alderman Humphrey bid L410, and got the prize. Though no longer civic property, it is yet, I believe, in the hands of those who allow it to be made the scene of many a day of festivity."

FOOTNOTES:

[9] A new Act for the conservancy of the Thames came into operation on September 30th, 1857, the result of a compromise between the City and the Government, after a long lawsuit between the Crown and City authorities.

[10] These functionaries carve the barons of beef at the banquet on Lord Mayor's Day.



CHAPTER XXXIX.

SAXON LONDON.

A Glance at Saxon London—The Three Component Parts of Saxon London—The First Saxon Bridge over the Thames—Edward the Confessor at Westminster—City Residences of the Saxon Kings—Political Position of London in Early Times—The first recorded Great Fire of London—The Early Commercial Dignity of London—The Kings of Norway and Denmark besiege London in vain—A Great Gemot held in London—Edmund Ironside elected King by the Londoners—Canute besieges them, and is driven off—The Seamen of London—Its Citizens as Electors of Kings.

Our materials for sketching Saxon London are singularly scanty; yet some faint picture of it we may perhaps hope to convey.

Our readers must, therefore, divest their minds entirely of all remembrance of that great ocean of houses that has now spread like an inundation from the banks of the winding Thames, surging over the wooded ridges that rise northward, and widening out from Whitechapel eastward to Kensington westward. They must rather recall to their minds some small German town, belted in with a sturdy wall, raised not for ornament, but defence, with corner turrets for archers, and pierced with loops whence the bowmen may drive their arrows at the straining workers of the catapult and mangonels (those Roman war-engines we used against the cruel Danes), and with stone-capped places of shelter along the watchmen's platforms, where the sentinels may shelter themselves during the cold and storm, when tired of peering over the battlements and looking for the crafty enemy Essex-wards or Surrey way. No toy battlements of modern villa or tea-garden are those over which the rough-bearded men, in hoods and leather coats, lean in the summer, watching the citizens disporting themselves in the Moorfields, or in winter sledging over the ice-pools of Finsbury. Not for mere theatrical pageant do they carry those heavy axes and tough spears. Those bossed targets are not for festival show; those buff jackets, covered with metal scales, have been tested before now by Norsemen's ponderous swords and the hatchets of the fierce Jutlanders.

In such castle rooms as antiquaries now visit, the Saxon earls and eldermen quaffed their ale, and drank "wassail" to King Egbert or Ethelwolf. In such dungeons as we now see with a shudder at the Tower, Saxon traitors and Danish prisoners once peaked and pined.

We must imagine Saxon London as having three component parts—fortresses, convents, and huts. The girdle of wall, while it restricted space, would give a feeling of safety and snugness which in our great modern city—which is really a conglomeration, a sort of pudding-stone, of many towns and villages grown together into one shapeless mass—the citizen can never again experience. The streets would in some degree resemble those of Moscow, where, behind fortress, palace, and church, you come upon rows of mere wooden sheds, scarcely better than the log huts of the peasants, or the sombre felt tents of the Turcoman. There would be large vacant spaces, as in St. Petersburg; and the suburbs would rapidly open beyond the walls into wild woodland and pasture, fen, moor, and common. A few dozen fishermen's boats from Kent and Norfolk would be moored by the Tower, if, indeed, any Saxon fort had ever replaced the somewhat hypothetical Roman fortress of tradition; and lower down some hundred or so cumbrous Dutch, French, and German vessels would represent our trade with the almost unknown continent whence we drew wine and furs and the few luxuries of those hardy and thrifty days.

In the narrow streets, the fortress, convent, and hut would be exactly represented by the chieftain and his bearded retinue of spearmen, the priest with his train of acolytes, and the herd of half-savage churls who plodded along with rough carts laden with timber from the Essex forests, or driving herds of swine from the glades of Epping. The churls we picture as grim but hearty folk, stolid, pugnacious, yet honest and promise-keeping, over-inclined to strong ale, and not disinclined for a brawl; men who had fought with Danes and wolves, and who were ready to fight them again. The shops must have been mere stalls, and much of the trade itinerant. There would be, no doubt, rudimentary market-places about Cheapside (Chepe is the Saxon word for market); and the lines of some of our chief streets, no doubt, still follow the curves of the original Saxon roads.

The date of the first Saxon bridge over the Thames is extremely uncertain, as our chapter on London Bridge will show; but it is almost as certain as history can be that, soon after the Dane Olaf's invasion of England (994) in Ethelred's reign, with 390 piratical ships, when he plundered Staines and Sandwich, a rough wooden bridge was built, which crossed the Thames from St. Botolph's wharf to the Surrey shore. We must imagine it a clumsy rickety structure, raised on piles with rough-hewn timber planks, and with drawbridges that lifted to allow Saxon vessels to pass. There was certainly a bridge as early as 1006, probably built to stop the passage of the Danish pirate boats. Indeed, Snorro Sturleson, the Icelandic historian, tells us that when the Danes invaded England in 1008, in the reign of Ethelred the Unready (ominous name!), they entrenched themselves in Southwark, and held the fortified bridge, which had pent-houses, bulwarks, and shelter-turrets. Ethelred's ally, Olaf, however, determined to drive the Danes from the bridge, adopted a daring expedient to accomplish this object, and, fastening his ships to the piles of the bridge, from which the Danes were raining down stones and beams, dragged it to pieces, upon which, on very fair provocation, Ottar, a Norse bard, broke forth into the following eulogy of King Olaf, the patron saint of Tooley Street:—

"And thou hast overthrown their bridge, O thou storm of the sons of Odin, skilful and foremost in the battle, defender of the earth, and restorer of the exiled Ethelred! It was during the fight which the mighty King fought with the men of England, when King Olaf, the son of Odin, valiantly attacked the bridge at London. Bravely did the swords of the Volsces defend it; but through the trench which the sea-kings guarded thou camest, and the plain of Southwark was crowded with thy tents."

It may seem as strange to us, at this distance of time, to find London Bridge ennobled in a Norse epic, as to find a Sir Something de Birmingham figuring among the bravest knights of Froissart's record; but there the Norse song stands on record, and therein we get a stormy picture of the Thames in the Saxon epoch.

It is supposed that the Saxon kings dwelt in a palace on the site of the Baynard's Castle of the Middle Ages, which stood at the river-side just west of St. Paul's, although there is little proof of the fact. But we get on the sure ground of truth when we find Edward the Confessor, one of the most powerful of the Saxon kings, dwelling in saintly splendour at Westminster, beside the abbey dedicated by his predecessors to St. Peter. The combination of the palace and the monastery was suitable to such a friend of the monks, and to one who saw strange visions, and claimed to be the favoured of Heaven. But beyond and on all sides of the Saxon palace everywhere would be fields—St. James's Park (fields), Hyde Park (fields), Regent's Park (fields), and long woods stretching northward from the present St. John's Wood to the uplands of Epping.

As to the City residences of the Saxon kings, we have little on record; but there is indeed a tradition that in Wood Street, Cheapside, King Athelstane once resided; and that one of the doors of his house opened into Addle Street, Aldermanbury (addle, from the German word edel, noble). But Stow does not mention the tradition, which rests, we fear, on slender evidence.

Whether the Bread Street, Milk Street, and Cornhill markets date from the Saxon times is uncertain. It is not unlikely that they do, yet the earliest mention of them in London chronicles is found several centuries later.

We must be therefore content to search for allusions to London's growth and wealth in Saxon history, and there the allusions are frequent, clear, and interesting.

In the earlier time London fluctuated, according to one of the best authorities on Saxon history, between an independent mercantile commonwealth and a dependency of the Mercian kings. The Norsemen occasionally plundered and held it as a point d'appui for their pirate galleys. Its real epoch of greatness, however ancient its advantage as a port, commences with its re-conquest by Alfred the Great in 886. Henceforward, says that most reliable writer on this period, Mr. Freeman, we find it one of the firmest strongholds of English freedom, and one of the most efficient bulwarks of the realm. There the English character developed the highest civilisation of the country, and there the rich and independent citizens laid the foundations of future liberty.

In 896 the Danes are said to have gone up the Lea, and made a strong work twenty miles above Lundenburgh. This description, says Earle, would be particularly appropriate, if Lundenburgh occupied the site of the Tower. Also one then sees the reason why they should go up the Lea—viz., because their old passage up the Thames was at that time intercepted.

"London," says Earle, in his valuable Saxon Chronicles, "was a flourishing and opulent city, the chief emporium of commerce in the island, and the residence of foreign merchants. Properly it was more an Angle city, the chief city of the Anglian nation of Mercia; but the Danes had settled there in great numbers, and had numerous captives that they had taken in the late wars. Thus the Danish population had a preponderance over the Anglian free population, and the latter were glad to see Alfred come and restore the balance in their favour. It was of the greatest importance to Alfred to secure this city, not only as the capital of Mercia (caput regni Merciorum, Malmesbury), but as the means of doing what Mercia had not done—viz., of making it a barrier to the passage of pirate ships inland. Accordingly, in the year 886, Alfred planted the garrison of London (i.e., not as a town is garrisoned in our day, with men dressed in uniform and lodged in barracks, but) with a military colony of men to whom land was given for their maintenance, and who would live in and about a fortified position under a commanding officer. It appears to me not impossible that this may have been the first military occupation of Tower Hill, but this is a question for the local antiquary."

In 982 (Ethelred II.), London, still a mere cluster of wooden and wattled houses, was almost entirely destroyed by a fire. The new city was, no doubt, rebuilt in a more luxurious manner. "London in 993," says Mr. Freeman, in a very admirable passage, "fills much the same place in England that Paris filled in Northern Gaul a century earlier. The two cities, in their several lands, were the two great fortresses, placed on the two great rivers of the country, the special objects of attack on the part of the invaders, and the special defence of the country against them. Each was, as it were, marked out by great public services to become the capital of the whole kingdom. But Paris became a national capital only because its local count gradually grew into a national king. London, amidst all changes, within and without, has always preserved more or less of her ancient character as a free city. Paris was merely a military bulwark, the dwelling-place of a ducal or a royal sovereign. London, no less important as a military post, had also a greatness which rested on a surer foundation. London, like a few other of our great cities, is one of the ties which connect our Teutonic England with the Celtic and Roman Britain of earlier times. Her British name still remains unchanged by the Teutonic conquerors. Before our first introduction to London as an English city, she had cast away her Roman and imperial title; she was no longer Augusta; she had again assumed her ancient name, and through all changes she had adhered to her ancient character. The commercial fame of London dates from the early days of Roman dominion. The English conquest may have caused a temporary interruption, but it was only temporary. As early as the days of AEthelberht the commerce of London was again renowned. AElfred had rescued the city from the Dane; he had built a citadel for her defence, the germ of that Tower which was to be first the dwelling-place of kings, and then the scene of the martyrdom of their victims. Among the laws of AEthelstan, none are more remarkable than those which deal with the internal affairs of London, and with the regulation of her earliest commercial corporations. Her institutes speak of a commerce spread over all the lands which bordered on the Western Ocean. Flemings and Frenchmen, men of Ponthieu, of Brabant, and of Luettich, filled her markets with their wares, and enriched the civic coffers with their toils. Thither, too, came the men of Rouen, whose descendants were, at no distant day, to form a considerable element among her own citizens; and, worthy and favoured above all, came the seafaring men of the old Saxon brother-land, the pioneers of the mighty Hansa of the north, which was in days to come to knit together London and Novgorod in one bond of commerce, and to dictate laws and distribute crowns among the nations by whom London was now threatened. The demand for toll and tribute fell lightly on those whom the English legislation distinguished as the men of the Emperor."



In 994, Olaf king of Norway, and Sweyn king of Denmark, summoning their robber chieftains from their fir-woods, fiords, and mountains, sailed up the Thames in ninety-four war vessels, eager to plunder the wealthy London of the Saxons. The brave burghers, trained to handle spear and sword, beat back, however, the hungry foemen from their walls—the rampart that tough Roman hands had reared, and the strong tower which Alfred had seen arise on the eastern bank of the river.

But it was not only to such worldly bulwarks that the defenders of London trusted. On that day, says the chronicler, the Mother of God, "of her mild-heartedness," rescued the Christian city from its foes. An assault on the wall, coupled with an attempt to burn the town, was defeated, with great slaughter of the besiegers; and the two kings sailed away the same day in wrath and sorrow.

During the year 998 a great "gemot" was held at London. Whether any measures were taken to resist the Danes does not appear; but the priests were busy, and Wulfsige, Bishop of the Dorsaetas, took measures to substitute monks for canons in his cathedral church at Sherborne; and the king restored to the church of Rochester the lands of which he had robbed it in his youth.

In 1009 the Danes made several vain attempts on London.



In 1013 Sweyn, the Dane, marched upon the much-tormented city of ships; but the hardy citizens were again ready with bow and spear. Whether the bridge still existed then or not is uncertain; as many of the Danes are said to have perished in vainly seeking for the fords. The assaults were as unsuccessful as those of Sweyn and Olaf, nineteen years before, for King Ethelred's right hand was Thorkill, a trusty Dane. "For the fourth time in this reign," says Mr. Freeman, "the invaders were beaten back from the great merchant city. Years after London yielded to Sweyn; then again, in Ethelred's last days, it resisted bravely its enemies; till at last Ethelred, weary of Dane and Saxon, died, and was buried in St. Paul's. The two great factions of Danes and Saxons had now to choose a king."

Canute the Dane was chosen as king at Southampton; but the Londoners were so rich, free, and powerful that they held a rival gemot, and with one voice elected the Saxon atheling Edmund Ironside, who was crowned by Archbishop Lyfing within the city, and very probably at St. Paul's. Canute, enraged at the Londoners, at once sailed for London with his army, and, halting at Greenwich, planned the immediate siege of the rebellious city. The great obstacle to his advance was the fortified bridge that had so often hindered the Danes. Canute, with prompt energy, instantly had a great canal dug on the southern bank, so that his ships might turn the flank of the bridge; and, having overcome this great difficulty, he dug another trench round the northern and western sides of the city. London was now circumvallated, and cut off from all supply of corn and cattle; but the citizen's hearts were staunch, and, baffling every attempt of Canute to sap or escalade, the Dane soon raised the siege. In the meantime, Edmund Ironside was not forgetful of the city that had chosen him as king. After three battles, he compelled the Danes to raise their second siege. In a fourth battle, which took place at Brentford, the Danes were again defeated, though not without considerable losses on the side of the victors, many of the Saxons being drowned in trying to ford the river after their flying enemies. Edmund then returned to Wessex to gather fresh troops, and in his absence Canute for the third time laid siege to London. Again the city held out against every attack, and "Almighty God," as the pious chroniclers say, "saved the city."

After the division of England between Edmund and Canute had been accomplished, the London citizens made peace with the Danes, and the latter were allowed to winter as friends in the unconquered city; but soon after the partition Edmund Ironside died in London, and thus Canute became the sole king of England.

On the succession of Harold I. (Canute's natural son), says Mr. Freeman, we find a new element, the "lithsmen," the seamen of London. "The great city still retained her voice in the election of kings; but that voice would almost seem to have been transferred to a new class among the population. We hear now not of the citizens, but of the seafaring men. Every invasion, every foreign settlement of any kind within the kingdom too, in every age, added a new element to the population of London. As a Norman colony settled in London later in the century, so a Danish colony settled there now. Some accounts tell us, doubtless with great exaggeration, that London had now almost become a Danish city (William of Malmesbury, ii. 188); but it is, at all events, quite certain the Danish element in the city was numerous and powerful, and that its voice strongly helped to swell the cry which was raised in favour of Harold."

It seems doubtful how far the London citizens in the Saxon times could claim the right to elect kings. The latest and best historian of this period seems to think that the Londoners had no special privileges in the gemot; but, of course, when the gemot was held in London, the citizens, intelligent and united, had a powerful voice in the decision. Hence it arose that the citizens both of London and Winchester (which had been an old seat of the Saxon kings) "seem," says Mr. Freeman, "to be mentioned as electors of kings as late as the accession of Stephen. (See William of Malmesbury, "Hist. Nov.," i. II.) Even as late as the year 1461, Edward Earl of March was elected king by a tumultuous assembly of the citizens of London;" and again, at a later period, we find the citizens foremost in the revolution which placed Richard III. on the throne in 1483. These are plainly vestiges of the right which the citizens had more regularly exercised in the elections of Edmund Ironside and of Harold the son of Cnut.

The city of London, there can be no doubt, soon emancipated itself from the jurisdiction of earls like Leofwin, who ruled over the home counties. It acquired, by its own secret power, an unwritten charter of its own, its influence being always important in the wars between kings and their rivals, or kings and their too-powerful nobles. "The king's writs for homage," says a great authority, "in the Saxon times, were addressed to the bishop, the portreeve or portreeves, to the burgh thanes, and sometimes to the whole people."

Thus it may clearly be seen, even from the scanty materials we are able to collect, that London, as far back as the Saxon times, was destined to achieve greatness, political and commercial.



CHAPTER XL.

THE BANK OF ENGLAND.

The Jews and the Lombards—The Goldsmiths the first London Bankers—William Paterson, Founder of the Bank of England—Difficult Parturition of the Bank Bill—Whig Principles of the Bank of England—The Great Company described by Addison—A Crisis at the Bank—Effects of a Silver Re-coinage—Paterson quits the Bank of England—The Ministry resolves that it shall be enlarged—The Credit of the Bank shaken—The Whigs to the Rescue—Effects of the Sacheverell Riots—The South Sea Company—The Cost of a New Charter—Forged Bank Notes—The Foundation of the "Three per Cent. Consols"—Anecdotes relating to the Bank of England and Bank Notes—Description of the Building—Statue of William III.—Bank Clearing House—Dividend Day at the Bank.

The English Jews, that eminently commercial race, were, as we have shown in our chapter on Old Jewry, our first bankers and usurers. To them, in immediate succession, followed the enterprising Lombards, a term including the merchants and goldsmiths of Genoa, Florence, and Venice. Utterly blind to all sense of true liberty and justice, the strong-handed king seems to have resolved to squeeze and crush them, as he had squeezed and crushed their unfortunate predecessors. They were rich and they were strangers—that was enough for a king who wanted money badly. At one fell swoop Edward seized the Lombards' property and estates. Their debtors naturally approved of the king's summary measure. But the Lombards grew and flourished, like the trampled camomile, and in the fifteenth century advanced a loan to the state on the security of the Customs. The Steelyard merchants also advanced loans to our kings, and were always found to be available for national emergencies, and so were the Merchants of the Staple, the Mercers' Company, the Merchant Adventurers, and the traders of Flanders.

Up to a late period in the reign of Charles I. the London merchants seem to have deposited their surplus cash in the Mint, the business of which was carried on in the Tower. But when Charles I., in an agony of impecuniosity, seized like a robber the L200,000 there deposited, calling it a loan, the London goldsmiths, who ever since 1386 had been always more or less bankers, now monopolised the whole banking business. Some merchants, distrustful of the goldsmiths in these stormy times, entrusted their money to their clerks and apprentices, who too often cried, "Boot, saddle and horse, and away!" and at once started with their spoil to join Rupert and his pillaging Cavaliers. About 1645 the citizens returned almost entirely to the goldsmiths, who now gave interest for money placed in their care, bought coins, and sold plate. The Company was not particular. The Parliament, out of plate and old coin, had coined gold, and seven millions of half-crowns. The goldsmiths culled out the heavier pieces, melted them down, and exported them. The merchants' clerks, to whom their masters' ready cash was still sometimes entrusted, actually had frequently the brazen impudence to lend money to the goldsmiths, at fourpence per cent. per diem; so that the merchants were often actually lent their own money, and had to pay for the use of it. The goldsmiths also began now to receive rent and allow interest for it. They gave receipts for the sums they received, and these receipts were to all intents and purposes marketable as bank-notes.

Grown rich by these means, the goldsmiths were often able to help Cromwell with money in advance on the revenues, a patriotic act for which we may be sure they took good care not to suffer. When the great national disgrace occurred—the Dutch sailed up the Medway and burned some of our ships—there was a run upon the goldsmiths, but they stood firm, and met all demands. The infamous seizure by Charles II. of L1,300,000, deposited by the London goldsmiths in the Exchequer, all but ruined these too confiding men, but clamour and pressure compelled the royal embezzler to at last pay six per cent. on the sum appropriated. In the last year of William's reign, interest was granted on the whole sum at three per cent., and the debt still remains undischarged. At last a Bank of England, which had been talked about and wished for by commercial men ever since the year 1678, was actually started, and came into operation.

That great financial genius, William Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England, was born in 1658, of a good family, at Lochnaber, in Dumfriesshire. He is supposed, in early life, to have preached among the persecuted Covenanters. He lived a good deal in Holland, and is believed to have been a wealthy merchant in New Providence (the Bahamas), and seems to have shared in Sir William Phipps' successful undertaking of raising a Spanish galleon with L300,000 worth of sunken treasure. It is absurdly stated that he was at one time a buccaneer, and so gained a knowledge of Darien and the ports of the Spanish main. That he knew and obtained information from Captains Sharpe, Dampier, Wafer, and Sir Henry Morgan (the taker of Panama), is probable. He worked zealously for the Restoration of 1688, and he was the founder of the Darien scheme. He advocated the union of Scotland, and the establishment of a Board of Trade.

The project of a Bank of England seems to have been often discussed during the Commonwealth, and was seriously proposed at the meeting of the First Council of Trade at Mercers' Hall after the Restoration. Paterson has himself described the first starting of the Bank, in his "Proceedings at the Imaginary Wednesday's Club," 1717. The first proposition of a Bank of England was made in July, 1691, when the Government had contracted L3,000,000 of debt in three years, and the Ministers even stooped, hat in hand, to borrow L100,000 or L200,000 at a time of the Common Council of London, on the first payment of the land-tax, and all payable with the year, the common councillors going round and soliciting from house to house. The first project was badly received, as people expected an immediate peace, and disliked a scheme which had come from Holland—"they had too many Dutch things already." They also doubted the stability of William's Government. The money, at this time, was terribly debased, and the national debt increasing yearly. The ministers preferred ready money by annuities for ninety-nine years, and by a lottery. At last they ventured to try the Bank, on the express condition that if a moiety, L1,200,000, was not collected by August, 1699, there should be no Bank, and the whole L1,200,000 should be struck in halves for the managers to dispose of at their pleasure. So great was the opposition, that the very night before, some City men wagered deeply that one-third of the L1,200,000 would never be subscribed. Nevertheless, the next day L346,000, with a fourth paid in at once, was subscribed, and the remainder in a few days after. The whole subscription was completed in ten days, and paid into the Exchequer in rather more than ten weeks. Paterson expressly tells us that the Bank Act would have been quashed in the Privy Council but for Queen Mary, who, following the wish of her husband, expressed firmly in a letter from Flanders, pressed the commission forward, after a six hours' sitting.

The Bank Bill, timidly brought forward, purported only to impose a new duty on tonnage, for the benefit of such loyal persons as should advance money towards carrying on the war. The plan was for the Government to borrow L1,200,000, at the modest interest of eight per cent. To encourage capitalists, the subscribers were to be incorporated by the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. Both Tories and Whigs broke into a fury at the scheme. The goldsmiths and pawnbrokers, says Macaulay, set up a howl of rage. The Tories declared that banks were republican institutions; the Whigs predicted ruin and despotism. The whole wealth of the nation would be in the hands of the "Tonnage Bank," and the Bank would be in the hands of the Sovereign. It was worse than the Star Chamber, worse than Oliver's 50,000 soldiers. The power of the purse would be transferred from the House of Commons to the Governor and Directors of the new Company. Bending to this last objection, a clause was inserted, inhibiting the Bank from advancing money to the House without authority from Parliament. Every infraction of this rule was to be punished by a forfeiture of three times the sum advanced, without the king having power to remit the penalty. Charles Montague, an able man, afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, carried the bill through the House; and Michael Godfrey (the brother of the celebrated Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, supposed to have been murdered by the Papists), an upright merchant and a zealous Whig, propitiated the City. In the Lords (always the more prejudiced and conservative body than the Commons) the bill met with great opposition. Some noblemen imagined that the Bank was intended to exalt the moneyed interest and debase the landed interest; and others imagined the bill was intended to enrich usurers, who would prefer banking their money to lending it on mortgage. "Something was said," says Macaulay, "about the danger of setting up a gigantic corporation, which might soon give laws to the King and the three estates of the realm." Eventually the Lords, afraid to leave the King without money, passed the bill. During several generations the Bank of England was emphatically a Whig body. The Stuarts would at once have repudiated the debt, and the Bank of England, knowing that their return implied ruin, remained loyal to William, Anne, and George. "It is hardly too much to say," writes Macaulay, "that during many years the weight of the Bank, which was constantly in the scale of the Whigs, almost counterbalanced the weight of the Church, which was as constantly in the scale of the Tories." "Seventeen years after the passing of the Tonnage Bill," says the same eminent writer, to show the reliance of the Whigs on the Bank of England, "Addison, in one of his most ingenious and graceful little allegories, described the situation of the great company through which the immense wealth of London was constantly circulating. He saw Public Credit on her throne in Grocers' Hall, the Great Charter over her head, the Act of Settlement full in her view. Her touch turned everything to gold. Behind her seat bags filled with coin were piled up to the ceiling. On her right and on her left the floor was hidden by pyramids of guineas. On a sudden the door flies open, the Pretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in the other a sword, which he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks down fainting; the spell by which she has turned all things around her into treasure is broken; the money-bags shrink like pricked bladders; the piles of gold pieces are turned into bundles of rags, or fagots of wooden tallies."

In 1696 (very soon after its birth) the Bank experienced a crisis. There was a want of money in England. The clipped silver had been called in, and the new money was not ready. Even rich people were living on credit, and issued promissory notes. The stock of the Bank of England had gone rapidly down from 110 to 83. The goldsmiths, who detested the corporation that had broken in on their system of private banking, now tried to destroy the new company. They plotted, and on the same day they crowded to Grocers' Hall, where the Bank was located from 1694 to 1734, and insisted on immediate payment—one goldsmith alone demanding L30,000. The directors paid all their honest creditors, but refused to cash the goldsmiths' notes, and left them their remedy in Westminster Hall. The goldsmiths triumphed in scurrilous pasquinades entitled, "The Last Will and Testament," "The Epitaph," "The Inquest on the Bank of England." The directors, finding it impossible to procure silver enough to pay every claim, had recourse to an expedient. They made a call of 20 per cent. on the proprietors, and thus raised a sum enabling them to pay every applicant 15 per cent. in milled money on what was due to him, and they returned him his note, after making a minute upon it that part had been paid. A few notes thus marked, says Macaulay, are still preserved among the archives of the Bank, as memorials of that terrible year. The alternations were frightful. The discount, at one time 6 per cent., was presently 24. A L10 note, taken for more than L9 in the morning, was before night worth less than L8.

Paterson attributes this danger of the Bank to bad and partial payments, the giving and allowing exorbitant interest, high premiums and discounts, contracting dear and bad bargains; the general debasing and corrupting of coin, and such like, by which means things were brought to such a pass that even 8 per cent. interest on the land-tax, although payable within the year, would not answer. Guineas, he says, on a sudden rose to 30s. per piece, or more; all currency of other money was stopped, hardly any had wherewith to pay; public securities sank to about a moiety of their original values, and buyers were hard to be found even at those prices. No man knew what he was worth; the course of trade and correspondence almost universally stopped; the poorer sort of people were plunged into irrepressible distress, and as it were left perishing, whilst even the richer had hardly wherewith to go to market for obtaining the common conveniences of life.

The King, in Flanders, was in great want of money. The Land Bank could not do much. The Bank, at last, generously offered to advance L200,000 in gold and silver to meet the King's necessities. Sir Isaac Newton, the new Master of the Mint, hastened on the re-coinage. Several of the ministers, immediately after the Bank meeting (over which Sir John Houblon presided), purchased stock, as a proof of their gratitude to the body which had rendered so great a service to the State.

The diminution of the old hammered money continued to increase, and public credit began to be put to a stand. The opposers of Paterson wished to alter the denomination of the money, so that 9d. of silver should pass for 1s., but at last agreed to let sterling silver pass at 5s. 2d. an ounce, being the equivalent of the milled money. The loss of the re-coinage to the nation was about L3,000,000. Paterson, who was one of the first Directors of the Bank of England, upon a qualification of L2,000 stock, disagreed with his colleagues on the question of the Bank's legitimate operations, and sold out in 1695. In 1701, Paterson says, after the peace of Ryswick, he had an audience of King William, and drew his attention to the importance of three great measures—the union with Scotland, the seizing the principal Spanish ports in the West Indies, and the holding a commission of inquiry into the conduct of those who had mismanaged the King's affairs during his absence in Flanders. Paterson died in 1719, on the eve of the fatal South Sea Bubble.

When the notes of the Bank were at 20 per cent. discount, the Government (says Francis) empowered the corporation to add L1,001,171 10s. to their original stock, and public faith was restored by four-fifths of the subscriptions being received in tallies and orders, and one-fifth in bank-notes at their full value, although both were at a heavy discount in the market.



The past services of the Bank were not forgotten. The Ministry resolved that it should be enlarged by new subscriptions; that provision should be made for paying the principal of the tallies subscribed in the Bank; that 8 per cent. should be allowed on all such tallies, to meet which a duty on salt was imposed; that the charter should be prolonged to August, 1710; that before the beginning of the new subscriptions the old capital should be made up to each member 100 per cent.; and what might exceed that value should be divided among the new members; that the Bank might circulate additional notes to the amount subscribed, provided they were payable on demand, and in default they were to be paid by the Exchequer out of the first money due to the Bank; that no other bank should be allowed by Act of Parliament during the continuance of the Bank of England; that it should be exempt from all tax or imposition; and that no contract made for any Bank stock to be bought or sold should be valid unless registered in the Bank books, and transferred within fourteen days. It was also enacted that not above two-thirds of the directors should be re-elected in the succeeding year. These vigorous measures were thoroughly successful.

The charter was at the same time extended to 1710, and not even then to be withdrawn, unless Government paid the full debt. Forgery of the Company's seal, notes, or bills was made felony without benefit of clergy. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, one of the Bank Directors, gained L60,000 by this scheme. The Bank is said to have offered the King at this time the loan of a million without interest for twenty-one years, if the Government would extend the charter for that time. Bank stock, given to the proprietors in exchange for tallies at 50 per cent. discount, rose to 112. The Bank had lowered the interest of money. As early as 1697 it had proposed to have branch Banks in every city and market town of England.