LONDON [HISTORY.
they be all law-worth, as they were in Edward the king's days. And I will that each child be his father's heir after his father's days. And I will not suffer that any man do you wrong, God keep you." William Stigand, the bishop of London, was a Norman, and possibly had some influence with the king in obtaining this charter. A wonderful improvement in the appearance of the cities of the country almost immediately followed the advent of the civilizing Norman. Within a few years the whole area of London must have been changed, and handsome buildings arose as if by magic in all parts of the city. Many Normans had settled in London during the reign of Edward the Confessor, but after the Conquest they swarmed in and naturally became the dominant party. In August 1077 occurred a most extensive fire, such a one, says the Chronicle, as "never was before since London was founded." This constant burning of large portions of the city is a marked feature of its early history, and we must remember that, although stone buildings were rising on all sides, these were churches, monasteries, and other public edifices; the ordinary houses remained as before, small wooden structures. The White Tower, the famous keep of the Tower of London, was commenced by Gundulph, bishop of Rochester, about the year 1078. In 1083 the old cathedral of St Paul's was commenced on the site of the church which Ethelbert is said to have founded in 610. But four years afterwards the chronicler tells us "the holy monastery of St Paul, the episcopal see of London, was burnt, and many other monasteries, and the greatest and fairest part of the whole city." In this same year (1087) William the Conqueror died. In 1090 a tremendous hurricane passed over London, and blew down six hundred houses and many churches. The Tower was injured, and a portion of thereof of the church of St Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside, was carried off and fell some distance away, being forced into the ground as much as 20 feet, a proof of the badness of the thoroughfares as well as of the force of the wind. William Rufus inherited from his father a love for building, and in the year 1097 he exacted large sums of money from his subjects with the object of carrying on some of the undertakings he had in hand. These were the walling round of the Tower, the rebuilding of London Bridge, which had been almost destroyed by a flood, and the erection of the great work with which his name is most generally associated, Westminster Hall. In 1100 Rufus was slain, and Henry I. was crowned in London. This king granted to the citizens their first real charter, in which he promised to observe the laws of the Confessor and to redress many special grievances; but he paid little attention to his engagements, and constantly violated the articles of his charter. When Stephen seized the crown on the death of Henry I., he tried successfully to obtain the support of the people of London. He published a charter confirming in general terms the one granted by Henry, and commanding that the good laws of Edward the Confessor should be observed. The citizens, however, did not obtain their rights without paying for them, and in the year 1139 they paid Stephen one hundred marks of silver to enable them to choose their own sheriffs. In this reign the all-powerfulness of the Londoners is brought very prominently forward. Stephen became by the shifting fortune of war a prisoner, and the empress Matilda might, if she had had the wisdom to favour the citizens, have held the throne, which was hers by right of birth. She, however, made them her enemies by delivering up the office of justiciary of London and the sheriffwick to her partisan Geoffrey, earl of Essex, and attempting to reduce the citizens to the enslaved condition of the rest of the country. This made her influential enemies, who soon afterwards replaced Stephen upon the throne. The Norman era closes with the death of Stephen, 1154.
We have already alluded to the great number of ecclesiastical foundations which marked the Norman period, and will here note some of the chief of these, to show how completely the new buildings must have changed the whole appearance of London, and raised it from a mean congregation of houses to the rank of a city, having features of considerable architectural merit. The college of St Martin-le-Grand within Aldersgate was founded in the year 1056, and its rights were confirmed by the Conqueror in the second year of his reign. He gave the dean and secular priests more land, and added to their privileges. A nunnery of the Benedictine order, dedicated to St Leonard, near Bromley, was founded in the reign of William the Conqueror by William, bishop of London, for a prioress and nine nuns, and in Stephen's reign Sir William Mountfitchet founded an abbey at Stratford Langton, which was subsequently known as West Ham Priory. In 1082 a convent of monks dedicated to St Saviour was founded at Bermondsey by Alwin Child, a wealthy citizen, and seven years afterwards some Cluniac monks came from France and settled in the new convent, of which one of them was chosen the first prior. In 1094 William Rufus added the manor of Bermondsey to the other benefactions of this fortunate monastery, which became very powerful, and was frequently used as a royal residence. At Clerkenwell two religious houses were established in the year 1100, viz., the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem and the priory of St Mary for nuns of the Benedictine order. It was said that the number of monasteries built in the reign of Henry I. was so great that almost all the labourers became bricklayers and carpenters, and there was some discontent in consequence. Matilda or Maud, the wife of Henry I., was much interested in the foundation of these religious houses. She established the priory of Holy Trinity, called Christ Church, which was situated to the north of Aldgate. in 1108, and about 1110 two hospitals, one for lepers at St Giles's-in-the-Fields, and the other for cripples at Cripplegate. The priory of St Bartholomew was founded a few years earlier, and the Benedictine nunnery of St John the Baptist at Halliwell near Shoreditch soon afterwards. The Knights Templars made their first habitation in the neighbourhood of London in 1118, and did not remove from Holborn to Fleet Street until nearly seventy years afterwards. The royal hospital of St Katherine's at the Tower was originally founded by Matilda, wife of King Stephen, and the famous St Stephen's chapel at West minster owes its origin to the king himself. It was, however, rebuilt by Edward II. It will be seen from the above list that a large proportion of these buildings were outside the walls, and this shows how extensive the outskirts of the city had become in Norman times. No doubt many of these religious persons sought out somewhat quiet neighbourhoods, but around each of them would naturally grow up villages formed by those who were chiefly dependent upon the monks and nuns.
Plantagenet (1154-1485). – Henry II. appears to have been to a certain extent prejudiced against the citizens of London on account of their attitude towards his mother, and he treated them with some severity. On several occasions he exacted large sums from the city, which, although they were euphemistically styled dona, can not be considered as free gifts. The severity appears to have been necessary, and was attended with good results. The streets were in a most dangerous condition at night, and bands of a hundred and more would sally forth to rob the houses of the wealthy. In 1175 some of these men were taken prisoners, and one of them was found to be a citizen of good credit and considerable wealth named "John the Olde." He offered the king five hundred marks for his life, but Henry was inflexible, and after the man had been hanged the city became more quiet. In 1176 the rebuilding of London Bridge with stone was commenced by Peter of Colechurch. This was the bridge which after much subsequent tinkering was pulled down early in the present century. It consisted of twenty stone arches and a drawbridge. There was a gatehouse at each end and a chapel or crypt in the centre, dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury, in which Peter of Colechurch the architect was buried in 1205. In 1184 the Knights Templars removed from Holborn to the New Temple in Fleet Street, and in the following year the beautiful Temple church was built. All this activity of building proves that the citizens were wealthy and their city handsome. This is corroborated by the interesting work of Fitzstephen, the monk of Canterbury, which was written at this time. Fitzstephen has left us the first picture of London, and a very vivid one it is. He speaks of its wealth, commerce, grandeur, and magnificence, – of the mildness of the climate, the beauty of the gardens, the sweet, clear, and salubrious springs, the flowing streams, and the pleasant clack of the watermills. Even the vast forest of Middlesex, with its densely wooded thickets, its coverts of game, stags, fallow deer, boars, and wild bulls is pressed into the description to give a contrast which shall enhance the prosperous beauty of the city itself. Fitzstephen's account of the sports of the people is particularly interesting. He tells how, when the great marsh that washed the walls of the city on the north (Moorfields) was frozen over, the young men went out to slide and skate and sport on the ice. Skates made of bones have been dug up of late years in this district. This sport was allowed to fall into disuse, and was not again prevalent until it was introduced from Holland after the Restoration. In the first year of Richard I. the court of aldermen ordained that for the future houses should not be built of wood, but that they should have an outside wall of stone raised 16 feet from the ground, and be covered with slate or baked tile. This ordinance must have fallen into desuetude, for the houses continued largely to be built of wood. We learn that most of the houses were plastered and whitewashed. One of the earliest objections which the Londoners made to the use of sea-coal was that the smoke from it blackened the white walls of their buildings. The first mayor of London was Henry Fitz Alwin, who was elected in 1189, and held the office until 1212.[1]
London had to pay heavily towards Richard's ransom; and, when the king made his triumphal entry into London after his release from imprisonment, a German nobleman is said to have remarked that had the emperor known of the wealth of England he would have insisted on a larger sum. The Londoners were the more glad to welcome Richard back in that the head of the regency, Longchamp, bishop of Ely, was very unpopular from the encroachments he made upon the city with his works at the Tower. The first charter by which the city claims the jurisdiction and conservancy of the river
- ↑ He was first admitted to the chief magistracy as bailiff, and there appears to have been considerable variety in the titles used at this time. We learn from the Liber Albus that the chief officer was sometimes called "justiciar" and "chamberlain."
