on each side-its broad central space, on which knights once jousted in glittering lists-and the natural fringe of wild London rocket, whose yellow blossoms and pointed leaves strove tenderly to conceal the ravages of time in its stately stone-work, all combined to make Old London Bridge one of the most romantic structures associated with London life in former days.

*

A stranger, entering the city by Aldgate and passing along Leadenhall Street, would come upon the din and bustle of Cheapside, which then formed the principal business street of London. Lombard Street, in which the money-changers have firmly rooted themselves ever since the expulsion of the Jews, branches from its eastern end. Tower Street and Eastcheap, noted for its taverns, formed a lower and parallel line. The plan of the city, based on the nature of its slopes between the two hills on which stood St. Paul's and the Tower, was thus extremely simple-its main streets running parallel to the Thames, and crossed and connected by minor streets at right angles to the river. Beyond the walls, to the west, Fleet Street and the Strand, dotted with pleasant villas whose gardens fringed the stream, formed a continuous line of connection between London and Westminster.

Across the gentle hollow through which the Wallbrook ran down to the Thames, and in which most of the city lay, rose the lofty steeple of Old St. Paul's with its glittering eagle of gilded copper. Within this splendid structure of Caen stone, begun in the reign of Rufus by Bishop Maurice, all that taste could invent, or that gold could buy, was lavished on aisle and altar. Close by the church stood a tall cross of sculptured granite, which had already no doubt become a noted rallyingplace for the citizens.

When Whitington first wore the robes of mayor, the civic courts were held in an "old little cottage in Aldermanberie Street;" but in 1410 a worthy grocer who had climbed to the * Cheapside, from Old English ceapan, to buy; whence also cheap.

civic chair began the building of "a faire and goodly house, more neare unto Saint Laurence Church in the Jurie." After Richard was dead, some of his money went to pave the Great Hall with Purbeck stone, and to glaze some of the windows. Of this building the walls still stand firm and strong. When the Great Fire wrapped its red folds around the structure, everything perished but these solid walls, which stood glowing in the blaze "like a colossal palace of gold."

Religious institutions occupied a very important position in medieval London. Troops of friars-Black, White, and Gray -settled in the pleasantest spots they could secure, and many names on the modern map of London remind us of the districts in which they told their beads and grew fat. Within the southwestern angle of the city wall, close to the Thames, the Dominicans or Black Friars had their monastery and their church. The Carmelites or White Friars settled between Fleet Street and the Thames. The Gray Friars dwelt near Newgate. The magnificent buildings by the Thames, once occupied by the rich and dissolute Templars, had by that time become the abode of studious lawyers, who found the position of the Temple both pleasant and convenient. The old Charterhouse School (now the Merchant Taylors') reminds us of the site where stood the house of the Carthusians; but no order possessed a more delightful dwelling than the Knights of St. John, whose priory, nestling in rich woodland, lay at Clerkenwell, a mile beyond the north-western angle of the wall.

The founding of a Saxon church to St. Peter on an island in the Thames began the abbey and city of Westminster, which took its name from the position of its nucleus with regard to St. Paul's. The famous abbey and no less famous hall stand about two miles west of the city of London, from which luxuriant gardens and orchards once separated them. Though its part in the tragedies of English history had scarcely yet begun, the splendour and grandeur of the Abbey Church, with its clustering

host of satellites-bell-towers, chapels, and almonries-- exceeded all our modern notions of ecclesiastical pomp.

Let us try to picture a day's life in that old London whose landmarks, as seen by Whitington, have been described. When the bell of St. Paul's began at six o'clock to ring the hour of Prime, the markets woke into the active bustle of business. At Queenhythe and at Billingsgate boats with fresh fish and vessels with foreign merchandise paid their customs, and landed what they bore. The wharfs groaned under quarters of sea-coal, coombs of corn, trussels of leather, karks of nuts, codas of sulphur, karres of lead, ciphes of salt, stock fish from Pruz (Prussia), and a thousand other things the names of which sound strange to modern ears. First to the markets, before Prime rang, came the stewards and cooks of the people of quality, who by civic law had the pick of the poultry, fish, fruit, and other delicacies exposed for sale. No poor hawker or monger durst fill his little basket until the great substantial men had provided their dinners for the day. The hour of Tierce-eight in the morning-saw the markets pretty well cleared of all their perishable stuff. The tide of traffic was then flowing, fullstream, in Chepe and Cornhill. There the booths stood with their wares displayed in full view of every lounger. Velvets and silks for courtly dress, long-cloth dyed deep blue with woad, homespun goods and yarns, lay piled in rows to tempt the gallant as he swaggered by with his cropped head and monster sleeves, or the simple country maiden who had jolted that morning in her father's cart from Celtic Islington, in company with a pile of the cheeses for which that hamlet was famed. Passing along the narrow straggling streets, the upper stories of whose timbered houses jutted over the path below, one might see, through the openings in the booths and stalls, workmen of various kinds and obsolete names busily plying their crafts. Venders of "hot peascods," "strawberry ripe," "cherries in the rise,” mackerel, oysters, and other perishable delicacies, stood

out on the street between the kennels, deafening the ear with

their mingled clamours.

trudged the ballad-singer.

the corner of the street.

Through the din of these scenes

Suddenly a crowd appears round A poor wretch, condemned for selling a rotten partridge, or for gambling with false dice, comes past on a hurdle bound for the pillory. Every booth and stall sends out its little group of starers, although the thing often happens many times a day. Every eye has followed the crowd, until it can be seen no more, when a startling cry strikes through the row of loungers. From the projecting upper room of an armourer's house comes the cry of "Fire!"-frightful always, but trebly so in a city built of wood and chiefly roofed with stubble, dry as tinder. In defiance of express law a fire has been lighted in a grate standing close to a lath partition, which, of course, has soon burst into a blaze. The bedel sounds long roaring blasts on his horn. The neighbours rush bare-armed to the scene; for one house fairly on fire in medieval London meant a whole street or many streets laid in ashes. Thanks to the ever-ready barrel of water, which stands in summer before every door, and the ladder which leans beside it, the fire is got under before it has done much damage. Had the walls of the house a newly built one-not been of stone raised sixteen feet above the ground, and had its roof not been of tiles, hundreds would have slept that night without a roof to cover them.

The Londoner in these times took care to amuse himself. School-boys on Shrove Tuesday turned the class-room into a cock-pit. When there was ice on the city moat or the swamp of Moorditch, skates of bone carried rejoicing crowds in swift curves over the surface. There were city tiltings, and boatjousts on the summer stream. On many a fine afternoon archery practice was laid aside, and a gay stream went flowing southward over London Bridge to witness the bear baiting and bullbaiting in the Southwark Rings.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE KINGMAKER.

A war of nobles-Cade's rebellion --The protectorship-St. Albans-The Kingmaker-Four years' pause-Northampton-Wakefield---Mortimer's Cross-Edward king-Towton-The private marriage-The great quarrel-Warwick in exile-Edward's turn-Barnet Heath-PecquignyEdward's death.

WE

E must now shut our thoughts up almost entirely in England for half a century. The country, just freed from the exhaustion of a great French war, was plunging into the War of the Roses-so called from the emblems chosen by the rival houses, the Lancastrians wearing a red and the Yorkists a white rose. The peculiarity of that great civil war lies in the fact that it was essentially a war of nobles, in which the great bulk of the English people had little interest and took little part. The strength of Lancaster lay with the northern barons and the High Church party; York was supported by the reformers in Church and State, and by the trading cities of the south. The peasantry took little part in the struggle. Except where the desolating blight of actual battle fell, they gathered their harvests as usual. Among them, however, a great work was silently going on, of deeper national and human moment than the fate of a crown or the ascendency of a certain line. Villenage-in other words, slavery—was perishing on English soil.

The abortive rebellion of Jack Cade (1450) formed a short