LONDON
BY
WALTER BESANT
AUTHOR OF "ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN"
"FIFTY YEARS AGO" ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
{iv}Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
{v}
PREFACE
In the following chapters it has been my endeavor topresent pictures of the City of London—instantaneous photographs,showing the streets, the buildings, and the citizensat work and at play. Above all, the citizens: with theirdaily life in the streets, in the shops, in the churches, and inthe houses; the merchant in the quays and on 'Change;the shopkeeper of Cheapside; the priests and the monksand the friars; the shouting of those who sell; the laughterand singing of those who feast and drink; the ringing ofthe bells; the dragging of the criminal to the pillory; theRiding of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen; the river with itsboats and barges; the cheerful sound of pipe and tabor;the stage with its tumblers and its rope-dancers; the 'prenticeswith their clubs; the evening dance in the streets. Iwant my pictures to show all these things. The history ofLondon has been undertaken by many writers; the presentmentof the city and the people from age to age has neveryet, I believe, been attempted.
The sources whence one derives the materials for suchan attempt are, in the earlier stages, perfectly well knownand accessible to all. Chaucer, Froissart, Lydgate, certainvolumes of the "Early English Text Society," occur toeverybody. But the richest mine, for him who digs afterthe daily life of the London citizen during the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries, is certainly Riley's great book ofExtracts from the City Records. If there is any life or{vi}any reality in the three chapters of this book which treat ofthe Plantagenet period, it is certainly due to Riley.
As regards the Tudor period, the wealth of illustration isastonishing. One might as well be writing of the city lifeof this day, so copious are the materials. But it is not toShakespeare and the dramatists that we must look for thedetails so much as to the minor writers, the moralists andsatirists, of whom the ordinary world knows nothing.
The reign of Charles II. directs one to the Plague and tothe Fire. I was fortunate in finding two tracts, one dealingwith the plague of 1603, and the other with that of 1625.These, though they are earlier than Charles II., were invaluable,as illustrating the effect of the pestilence in causingan exodus of all who could get away, which took place asmuch in these earlier years as in 1666. Contemporary tractson the state of London after the Fire, also happily discovered,proved useful. And when the Plague and the Firehad been dismissed, another extraordinary piece of goodfortune put me in possession