SMITHFIELD EST SMITHFIELD-the Smiffle of Thackeray, campus planus re et nomine, Smooth Field alike in fact and name, as Fitzstephen (temp. Henry II) described it—is a place of many memories, the scene of many occurrences, some brilliant, some tragic, some memorable in history. For some eight centuries its great space afforded room for a horse and cattle market, which became the largest in the world. Here the humbler citizens ran races and held their quintain matches, and, as the chroniclers tell us, many famous jousts took place, attended by Kings, Princes and Nobles. They would come -Stow says-from the Tower Royal in the Vintry Ward, "knights well armed and mounted," along Knightrider Street and thence to Creed Lane," and so out at Ludgate towards Smithfield," which they entered by the street still called Giltspur Street, "when they were there to tourney, joust or otherwise to show activities before the King and states of the realm." Mortimer and, amid the festivities of Bartholomew Fair, the patriot Wallace were executed in Smithfield, as the place of execution before Tyburn became associated with the gallows tree. It was in Smithfield that the young king, Richard II, with his back to the west gate of St. Bartholomew's Priory which faces us in Plate XXVI, confronted the rebels under Wat Tyler, whom the Mayor, Walworth, struck down, and whose wounds proved beyond the skill of the surgeons of the adjoining hospital. It was in Smithfield that men suffered for their alleged heresy, the last victim being an unfortunate Arian in the reign of James the First, and the tale of the sufferers being reckoned backward for several centuries. In Smithfield, too, at Bartholomew Fair, one of the great fairs of the world, there was seen every year until 1855 the vast overflow of booths and stalls and shows, for which there had long ceased to be room within the ancient precincts of St. Bartholomew's Priory. The picture shows the Priory's west gate, a fine relic of 13th century work, still serving as a barrier to the ancient close. A. R. |