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evening, they had stage-plays and bonfires in the streets.' The great Mayings and May-games, however, made by the Governors and Masters of this City,' with the triumphant setting up of the great Shaft, or May-pole, before the Church of St. Andrew in Cornhill, have not been so freely used as before,' since that insurrection of youths against Aliens, on May-day, 1517.'*

In the months of June and July, on the Vigils of Festival Days, and on the same Festival Days in the evenings, after sunset, there were usually made bonfires in the streets, 'every man bestowing either wood or labour towards them.' The more wealthy, also, before their doors, near to the said bone-fires, would set out tables on the Vigils furnished with sweet bread and good drink; and on the Festival Days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit, and be merry with them in great familiarity, praysing God for his benefits bestowed on them.'†

Next to the May-day spectacles, the most splendid of the annual City exhibitions, was the procession of the Marching Watch, at Midsummer, on the Vigils of St. John the Baptist, and of St. Peter and St. Paul. On these evenings, it was a custom for the Citizens to adorn their doors with green birch, fennel, St. John's wort, orpin, white lillies, and other plants and flowers intermingled with lamps of glass, with oil burning in them; and some hung out branches of iron curiously wrought with hundreds of lamps lighted at once, which made a goodly shew,' particularly in New Fish Street, Thames Street, &c. At this time the City Watch appears to have consisted of different bodies, viz. the Standing Watches, which consisted of Citizens, clad all in bright harness,' who formed the regular safe-guards of the Wards

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See preceding Volume, p. 241–245.

"These were cailed bone-fires [good-fires], as well of amity amongst neighbours, that being before at controversie, were there by the labour of others reconciled, and made of bitter enemies, loving friends; as also for the virtue that a great fire hath, to purge the infection of the ayre.' Stow's Surv. p. 84. Edit. 1633.

Wards and Suburbs; and the Marching Watch, which paraded through the principal streets of the City in grand cavalcade; the whole number of persons composing the procession amounting to nearly 4000. This latter spectacle was so costly and pompous, that Henry the Eighth, whose passion for shew and pageantry often furnished a theme for historical record, was several times a witness of its setting forth,' on the evenings above-mentioned.*

In the twenty-fourth of Henry the Eighth, anno 1533, an Act was passed for sufficiently paving' the street-way between Charing Cross and the Strand Cross (near Somerset House), and the owners of the lands adjoining were adjudged to defray the charge, the Strand not being yet a continued street. In the following year, another Act was passed for paving with stone,' the street between Holborn Bridge and Holborn Bars, at the west end thereof,' and also the streets of Southwark;' and every person was made liable to maintain the pavement before his owu door, under the forfeiture of sixpence to the King for every square yard.

The

The Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the subsequent demolition of most of the buildings connected with ecclesiastical establishments, occasioned a great alteration in the aspect and local character of the Metropolis during the reign of this Sovereign. It has been judiciously remarked by a contemporary writer, that the unkennelling of the Romish Fox,' as it was then termed, must in this City have produced a very singular effect. splendour of the monastic buildings had, from the time of the Saxons, been gradually expanding: age after age increased their number, enlarged their size, and added to their ornaments. These fabrics, venerable for their antiquity, still more venerable as monuments of the unaffected piety of their founders, and highly respectable as specimens of the architectural taste, and depositaries of the effusions of the literary and graphic genius of former

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Sec preceding Volume, p. 238, 239, note; and Stow's Lond. p. 7985. Edit. 1633.

former centuries, were, in the course of a few years nearly annihilated.'*

- The Dissolution of the Monasteries was effected between the years 1536 and 1540. Previously to this era, the various religious edifices and their respective appendages, within the walls of London, occupied nearly two-thirds of the entire area; and about one-fifth of the whole population is supposed to have been associated in the numerous communities and brotherhoods which then separated the drones from the working-bees.' It must be remembered also, in respect to the ground covered by Monastic Foundations, that the Bishops of almost every See, and the Superior of every principal Religious House in England, had a residence either within the City, or in its vicinity.

Independently of the more splendid establishments of St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, the Metropolis and its Suburbs, at the time immediately prior to the Reformation, contained all the variety of Ecclesiastical Institutions and Buildings enumerated in the following list.

FRIARIES and ABBIES. Black Friars, between Ludgate and the Thames; Grey Friars, near Old Newgate, now Christ's Hospital; Augustine Friars, now Austin Friars, near Broad Street; White Friars, near Salisbury Square; Crouched, or Crossed Friars, St. Olave's Hart Street, near Tower Hill; Carthusian Friars, now the Charter House, Charter-Ilouse Square; Cistercian Friars, or New Abbey, East Smithfield; Brethren de Sacca, Old Jewry.

PRIORIES. St. John of Jerusalem, Clerkenwell; Holy Trinity, or Christ Church, within Aldgate; St. Bartholomew the Great, near Smithfield; St. Mary Overies, Southwark, near London Bridge; St. Saviour's, Bermondsey.

NUNNERIES. Benedictine Nunnery, Clerkenwell; St. Helen's, Bishopsgate Street; St. Clare's, Minories; Holywell, between Holywell Lane and Norton Falgate.

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⚫ Eur. Mag. Vol. LI. p. 417; article Vestiges, &c.

COLLEGES, &c. St. Martin's le Grand; St. Thomas of Acres, Westcheap; Whittington's College and Hospital, Vintry Ward; St. Michael's College and Chapel, Crooked Lane; Jesus Commons, Dowgate.

CHAPELS, &c. St. Stephen's, Westminster; Our Lady of the Pew, Strand; St. Anne's, Westminster; St. Esprit, or the Holy Ghost, Strand; Rolls Chapel, or Domus Conversorum, Chancery Lane; St. James in the Wall, Chapel and Hermitage, Monkwell Street; Mount Calvary Chapel, near Goswell-Street Road; St. Mary's Chapel, and Pardon Chapel, in St. Paul's Church-yard, and two other Chapels also; Guildhall Chapel ; Chapel of our Lady, Barking Parish; Corpus Christi, Poultry; St. Anthony's Chapel, Hospital, and School, Threadneedle Street; Chapel and Almshouses in Petty France; Lady Margaret's Almshouses, Almonry, Westminster; Henry the Seventh's Almshouses, near the Gatehouse, Westminster; St. Catherine's Chapel and Hermitage, near Charing Cross; Pardon Chapel, Wilderness Row, St. John's Street.

HOSPITALS, having resident Brotherhoods or Sisterhoods. St. Giles's in the Fields, near St. Giles's Church; St. James's, now St. James's Palace; Our Lady of Rounceval, Charing Cross; Savoy, Strand; Elsing Spital, now Sion College; Corpus Christi, in St. Lawrence Pountney; St. Papey, near Bevis Marks; St. Mary Axe; Trinity, without Aldgate; St. Thomas, Mercer's Chapel; St. Bartholomew the Less, near Smithfield; St. Giles and Corpus Christi, without Cripplegate; St. Mary of Bethlehem, near London Wall; St. Mary Spital, without Bishopsgate; St. Thomas, Southwark; the Lok Spital or Lazar House, Kent Street, Southwark; St. Katherine's, below the Tower.

FRATERNITIES, &c. St. Nicholas, Bishopsgate Street; St. Fabian and St. Sebastian, or the Holy Trinity, Aldersgate Street; St. Giles, Whitecross Street; the Holy Trinity, Leadenhall; St. Ursula le Strand; Hermitage, Nightingale Lane, East Smithfield. Corpus Christi, St. Mary Spittle; Corpus Christi, St. Mary Bethlehem; Corpus Christi and St. Mary, Poultry.

ARCHIEPISCOPAL

ARCHIEPISCOPAL and EPISCOPAL RESIDENCES. Lambeth Palace; York Place, Whitehall; Durham House, Strand; INNS of the Bishops of Bath, Chester, Llandaff, Worcester, Exeter, Lichfield, and Carlisle, all in and near the Strand; Bishop of Hereford's Inn, Old Fish-Street; Ely House, Holborn, now Ely Place; Bishop of Salisbury's Inn, Salisbury Square; Bishop of St. David's Inn, near Bridewell Palace; Bishop of Winchester's House, Southwark, near St. Mary Overies; Bishop of Rochester's Inn, adjacent to ditto.

RESIDENCES of ABBOTS and PRIORS, mostly called INNS. Abbot of St. Alban's, near Lothbury; Abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, in St. Olave's, Southwark; Abbot of Battle, Southwark, near London Bridge; Abbot of Bury, near Aldgate, toward Bevis Marks; Abbot of Evesham, near Billeter Lane; Abbot of Glastonbury, near St. Sepulchre's, Smithfield; Abbot of Hyde, within the Tabard Inn, immortalized by Chaucer, in Southwark, and afterwards at St. Mary Hill; Prior of Hornchurch, Fenchurch Street; Abbot of Leicester, near St. Sepulchre's, Smithfield; Prior of Lewes, in Southwark; Abbot of St. Mary's, York, St. Peter's Place, near Paul's Wharf; Prior of Necton Parke (suppressed by Henry V.), Chancery Lane; Prior of Okeburne, Castle Lane, Upper Thames Street; Abbot of Peterborough, at Peterborough Place, near St. Paul's; Abbot of Reading, near Baynard's Castle; Abbot of Ramsay, Beech Lane, Whitecross Street; Abbot of Salop, in Smithfield; Prior of Sempringham, Cow Lane, Smithfield; Prior of Tortington, in St. Swithin's Lane; Abbot of Vale Royal, Fleet Street; Abbot of Waltham, at Billingsgate.

When a comparison is made between the extent of ground thus occupied by Religious and Ecclesiastical Foundations, and that covered with merchants' warehouses, mansions, and cottages, or assigned to the purposes of trade and commerce, as wharfs, quays, shops, &c. the difference appears so striking, that a person unacquainted with its history, would at once infer that London had been a City of priests and monks rather than a commercial

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