being sufficiently regarded, it was further provided "to appease contentions that might arise among neighbours, upon enclosure between land and land, that twelve aldermen of the city should be chosen in full husting, and these swore to attend the mayor* in making the proposed regulations.' By these magistrates the dimensions of the walls were to be regulated, which were to be at least three feet in thickness, and sixteen feet in height. The citizens at this period had arisen to a very high degree of importance, and preponderance in the scale of politics: for when John earl of Moreton, the king's brother, during his absence in the Holy Land, had assembled the nobility and bishops to deliberate on the tyrannical exactions of William Longchamp, one of the regents, he conjoined with them the citizens, by whose unanimous vote Longchamp was disgraced +. This determination was so grateful to prince John and the rest of the regency that they swore to maintain the city in its ancient privileges. Her riches also were so profuse, that the ready compliance in raising one thousand five hundred marks towards her sovereign's ransom, during his imprisonment, on his return from the crusades, obtained * At the commencement of Richard's reign the chief magistrate of London was denominated bailiff; Henry Fitz Alwyn first assumed the title of mayor in the year above mentioned. + One reason of disgust, which the Londoners took at lord chancellor Longchamp, was, the encroachments he had made on their limits, in his works at the Tower. For, in encompassing the premises of that fortress with a wall and a ditch, he broke in and deprived both the church of the Holy Trinity, the hospital of St. Catharine, and the city of London of their properties, in an arbitrary manner. Having enclosed the square tower and the castle with an outward wall of stone embattled, he caused a deep ditch to be dug round, from the south east point by the north side, to the south west corner of the said wall, in order to environ it with the river Thames. In which work, the mill belonging to the hospital of St. Catharine, and standing on the place now called Irongate, was removed, and part of a garden, which they had let to the king at six marks per ann. was laid waste. And a piece of ground next Smithfield, belonging to the priory of the Holy Trinity, without Aldgate, worth half a mark per ann, was taken from it. And the city was deprived of all the ground from the White Tower to the postern gate. Entick. for for her a charter of confirmation; and when Richard was received with civic pomp, on his return from captivity, the magnificence displayed on the occasion was so great, as to induce a German nobleman in his suite, jocosely to observe, "That had the emperor been acquainted with the affluence of Richard's subjects, he would have demanded, a more exhor. bitant sum for his release." To show Richard's sentiments of the loyalty of the city on this and other acts of beneficence, he granted that most important charter, which establishes her authority as conservatrix of the river Thames. Indeed, the fidelity of the citizens to Richard, joined to their general rectitude, gained his utmost confidence, so that when it was resolved to fix a standard for weights and measures for the whole realm, the king committed the execution thereof to the sheriffs of London and Middlesex; whom he commanded to provide measures, gallons, iron rods, and weights for standards, to be sent to the several counties of England. In 1193, corn was risen to 18s. 4d. per quarter. John, though in general defective in his government, was very liberal in his benefits to the citizens; among others the sheriffwick of Middlesex was confirmed to them; but it is evident that want of money was the king's inducement for these kindnesses; in 1215, they were obliged to subscribe two thousand marks towards liquidating the national debt; but fearful that they should be offended by such an imposition, John granted them the privilege of chusing their chief magistrate, who had hitherto exercised his authority by royal appointment. The apprehensions under which John laboured, on account of his usurpation of the throne, which really belonged to his nephew prince Arthur, and the attachment which the city had ever expressed to the king's person government, must have instilled something of gratitude into the monarch's mind; and may in some measure account for the profusion of chartered privileges, which at various times he lavishly dispensed. Happy would it have been for him had he abided by his integrity, and forborne their violation. But his political intrigues, his military efforts, his Vol. I. No. 3. thoughtless and 4449 I P thoughtless expenditure, and his rapacity, involved the nation and city in the greatest difficulties, from which he had neither the spirit nor wisdom to relieve them. His wants were gratified by the most unjustifiable and arbitrary methods; and when these could not be supplied he had recourse to coercion; so that the blood and treasure of the kingdom were wantonly squandered in his unprofitable measures. In addition to the city's distresses during this inauspicious reign, her new bridge was destroyed by fire, and three thousand persons fell victims in their efforts to save it from destruction. The wanton tyranny of John now arrived to such a pitch, that he demanded of the principal barons of the realm security for that allegiance which his conduct had rendered of little value; among others who had felt the hand of violence and oppression was Robert Fitzwalter, castellan and standard bearer to the city; this nobleman, rather than suffer the insults which John had frequently bestowed on his brethren, retired to France; this conduct so irritated the king, who was disappointed in not having such an opponent in his power, that he vented his fury on the noble palace in which he had resided, called Baynard's Castle, and utterly demolished it. The consequence of these pitiful oppressions and of national resistance was the confirmation of Magna Charta, which either granted, or secured very important liberties or privileges to every rank of men in the kingdom. By the thirteenth article of this Charter it is provided, "That the city of London, and all other cities, burghs, and towns, and ports of the kingdom, should enjoy all their free customs, both by land and water." From what has been advanced, it appears that London had made a considerable progress both in her political and commercial consequence during John's reign. Her spirit, her power, and her wealth, asserted, acquired, or purchased important privileges, the benefit of which she even now enjoys. William of Malmsbury records her at this time as "a noble city, renowned for the opulence of her citizens, and crowded with the merchants who resort thither with their various commodities." The traffic for corn was wholly engrossed by the London London merchants, "who had their grainaries always filled, whence all parts of the kingdom were supplied*." It was also now that the representatives of London, jointly with those of the Cinque Ports, were dignified with the title of Barons, an appellation which they at present enjoy. John is said to have been the first monarch who coined what has since been denominated sterling or easterling money; which obtained this name from the circumstance of his sending for artists from the German states to rectify and regulate the silver coinage; gold coin not having yet been appropriated as a circulating medium of commerce. It is curious to observe that an income of 107. per annum, at the time we are describing, would have gone as far in housekeeping as 150l. of our present currency. Wheat was 3s. per quarter, or about 9s. of our time; Rochelle wine 20s. per ton, Anjou wine 24s. and the best French wine, at about 26s. 8d. or about 80s. at present. The manner of living during this Anglo-Norman period was grossly extravagant. Of the luxury of those times it will be sufficient to produce a single instance. Fitz-Stephen tells us, that an archbishop of Canterbury paid for a single dish of eels five pounds, amounting, according to the most moderate computation, to four-score pounds of our money, but, in reality, to almost double that sum. Were a prelate of the age of George III. foolish or profuse enough to lay out 1807. upon a whole supper, he would be justly paragraphed in the chronicles of the times. But the extravagance of the entertainments was compensated, it will be said, by the soberness of the hours. The time of dining, even at court, and in the families of the proudest barons, was nine in the morning, and of sup, ping, five in the afternoon. These hours were considered not only as Lavourable to business, but as conducive to health. The proverbial jingle of the day gives us a picture of the division of time in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Lever à cinq, diner à neuf, To rise at five and dine at nine, Hunter. It is indisputable that Henry III. was a weak prince in point of government, but that he was also a great encourager of the arts is fully demonstrated. Let it be remembered, that Henry's reign was the period whence parliamentary freedom' dates its origin. This reign was also an era of monastic structures. The terrors of purgatory, the influence of the saints in their intercession, and the tyranny of superstition were so powerfully impressed, that no one who had a hope of comfort in this life, or wished for salvation in the next, could be exempted from such kind of sacrifice. Among other's in various parts of England, the following were erected in London: St. Mary of Bethlehem, without Bishopsgate, the Priory of St. Helen, the Carmelite or White Friars, in Fleet Street, the Franciscans or Grey Friars, in Newgate Street, the Augustine Friars, near Broad Street, the Hospital at the Savoy, besides refounding of Westminster Abbey. Although Henry was unjust in his decisions, and oppressive in his measures towards the capital; he was not able to curb her improvements; for like the pine which is said to increase under pressure, London, in 1237, acquired more solid benefit from a purer and more perennial source than all the smiles of court favour could furnish From the year 1218 is to be dated the right which the city. enjoys to the lands, purchased out of the forest of Middle sex. * The year 1235 also is memorable from a little city incident, which has contrived to transmit its remembrance to our times by means of an annual ceremony at swearing in the sheriffs, Sep. 30, before the Cursitor Barons of the Exchequer, which is performed with much solemnity by one of the aldermen, in presence of the Lord Mayor, who goes into and continues in the court covered. One Walter le Bruin, a farrier, obtained a grant from the crown, of a certain spot of ground in the Strand, in the parish of St. Clement Danes, whereon to erect a forge for carrying on his business. For this the city was to pay annually an acknowledgement or quit-rent of six horse-shoes, with the nails appertaining, at the king's Exchequer, Westminster. The forge and manufacture exist no longer, but the acknowledgement, after a lapse of so many ages, continues still to be paid. Hunter. ་་་ The |