The History of London by Walter Besant (best classic books TXT) 📕

unable to face the stress and anxiety of making this fresh start. The men advanced in life; the men of anxious and timid mind; the incompetent and feeble: were crushed. They became bankrupt: they went under: in the great crowd no one heeded them: their sons and daughters took a lower place: perhaps they are still among the ranks into which it is easy to sink; out of which it is difficult to rise. The craftsmen were injured least: their Companies replaced their tools for them: work was presently resumed again: their houses were rebuilt and, as for their furniture, there was not much of it before the fire and there was not much of it after the fire.

The poet Dryden thus writes of the people during and after the fire:

Those who have homes, when home they do repair,
To a last lodging call their wandering friends:
Their short uneasy sleeps are broke with care
To look how near their own destruction tends.

Those who have none sit round where once it was
And with full eyes each wonted room require:
Haunting the yet warm ashes of the place,
As murdered men walk where they did expire.

The most in fields like herded beasts lie down,
To dews obnoxious on the grassy floor:
And while the babes in sleep their sorrow drown,
Sad parents watch the remnant of their store.

54. ROGUES AND VAGABONDS.

The aspect of the City varies from age to age: the streets and the houses, the costumes, the language, the manners, all change. In one respect however, there is no change: we have always with us the same rogues and the same roguery. We do not treat them quite after the manner followed by our forefathers: and, as their methods were incapable of putting a stop to the tricks of those who live by trickery, so are ours; therefore we must not pride ourselves on any superiority in this direction. A large and very interesting collection of books might be formed on the subject of rogues and vagabonds. The collection would begin with Elizabeth and could be carried on to the present day, new additions being made from year to year. But very few additions are ever made to the customs and the methods of the profession. For instance, there is the confidence trick, in which the rustic is beguiled by the honest stranger into trusting him. This trick was practised three hundred years ago. Or there is the ring-dropping trick, it is as old as the hills. Or there is the sham sailor--now very rarely met with. When we have another war he will come to the front again. We have still the cheating gambler, but he has always been with us. In King Charles the Second's time he was called a Ruffler, a Huff, or a Shabbaroon. The woman who now begs along the streets singing a hymn and leading borrowed children, did the same thing two hundred years ago and was called a clapperdozen. The man who pretends to be deaf and dumb went about then, and was known as the dummerer. The burglar was then the housebreaker. Burglary was formerly a far worse crime than it is now, because the people for the most part kept all their money in their houses, and a robbery might ruin them. The pickpocket plied his trade, only he was then a cutpurse. The footpad lay in wait on the lonely country road or among the bushes of the open fields at the back of Lincoln's Inn. The punishments, which seem so mild under the Plantagenets, increased in severity as the population outgrew the powers of the government. Instead of plain standing in pillory, ears were nailed to the post and even sliced off: whippings became more commonly administered, and were much more severe: heretics were burned by Elizabeth as well as by Mary, though not so often. After the civil wars we enter upon a period when punishment became savage in its cruelty, of which you will presently learn more. Meantime remark that when the City was less densely populated, and when none lived outside the wards and walls, the people were well under the control of the aldermen and their officers: they were also well known to each other: they exercised that self-government--the best of any--which consists in refusing to harbour a rogue among them. If in every London street the tenants would refuse to suffer any evildoer to lodge in their midst, the police of London might be almost abolished. But the City grew: the wards became densely populated: then houses and extensive suburbs sprang up at Whitechapel, Wapping, outside Cripplegate, at Smithfield north of Fleet Street, Lambeth, Bermondsey and Rotherhithe: the aldermen no longer knew their people: the men of a ward did not know each other: rogues were harboured about Smithfield and outside Aldgate: the simple machinery for enforcing order ceased to be of any use: and as yet the new police was not invented. Therefore the punishments became savage. Since the government could not prevent crime and compel order, they would deter.

Apart from active crime, vagrancy was a great scourge. Wars and civil wars left crowds of idle soldiers who had no taste for steady work: they became vagrants: there was also--and there is still--a certain proportion of men and women who will not work: they become vagrants by a kind of instinct: they are born vagabonds. Laws and proclamations were continually passed for the repression of vagrants. They were passed on to their native place: they were provided with passes on their way. But these laws were always being evaded, and vagrants increased in number. Under Henry VIII. a very stringent statute was passed by which old and impotent persons were provided with license to beg, and anybody begging without a license was whipped. But like all such acts it was imperfectly carried out. For one who received a whipping a dozen escaped. Stocks, pillory, bread and water, all were applied, but without visible effect, because so many escaped. London especially swarmed with beggars and pretended cripples. They lived about Turnmill Street, Houndsditch and the Barbican, outside the walls. From time to time a raid was carried on against them, and they dispersed, but only to collect again. In the year 1575, for instance, it is reported that there were few or no rogues in the London prisons. But in the year 1581, the Queen observing a large number of sturdy rogues during a drive made complaint, with the result that the next day 74 were arrested: the day after 60, and so on, the catch on one day being a hundred, all of whom were 'soundly paid,' i.e. flogged and sent to their own homes. The statute ordering the whipping of vagabonds was enforced even in this present century, women being flogged as well as men. No statutes, however, can put down the curse of vagrancy and idleness. It can only be suppressed by the will and resolution of the people themselves. If for a single fortnight we should all refuse to give a single penny to beggars: if in every street we should all resolve upon having none but honest folk among us: then and only then, would the rogue find this island of Great Britain impossible to be longer inhabited by him and his tribe.



55. UNDER GEORGE THE SECOND.

PART I.

THE WEALTH OF LONDON.

If a new world was opened to the adventurous in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, this new world two hundred years later was only half explored and was constantly yielding up new treasures. The lion's share of these treasures came to Great Britain and was landed at the Port of London. The wealth and luxury of the merchants in the eighteenth century surpassed anything ever recorded or ever imagined. So great was their prosperity that historians and essayists predicted the speedy downfall of the City: the very greatness of their success frightened those who looked on and remembered the past.

Though the appearance of the City had changed, and its colour and picturesqueness were gone, at no time was London more powerful or more magnificent. There were no nobles living within the walls: only two or three of the riverside palaces remained along the Strand: there were no troops of retainers riding along the streets in the bright liveries of their masters: the picturesque gables, the latticed windows, the overhanging fronts--all these were gone: instead of the old churches rich with ancient carvings, frescoes in crimson and blue, marble monuments and painted glass, were the square halls--preaching halls--of Wren with their round windows, rich only in carved woodwork: the houses were square with sash windows: the shop fronts were glazed: the streets were filled with grave and sober merchants in great wigs and white ruffles. They lived in stately and commodious houses, many of which still survive--see the Square at the back of Austin Friars Church for a very fine example--they had their country houses: they drove in chariots: and they did a splendid business. Their ships went all over the world: they traded with India, not yet part of the Empire: with China, and the Far East: with the West Indies, with the Levant. They had Companies for carrying on trade in every part of the globe. The South Sea Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Turkey Company, the African Company, the Russian Company, the East India Company--are some. The ships lay moored below the Bridge in rows that reached a mile down the river.

All this prosperity grew in spite of the wars which we carried on during the whole of the last century. These wars, though they covered the Channel and the Bay of Biscay with privateers, had little effect to stay the increase of London trade. And as the merchants lived within the City, in sight of each other, their wealth was observed and known by all. At the present day, when London from nightfall till morning is a dead city, no one knows the wealth of the merchants and it is only by considering the extent of the suburbs that one can understand the enormous wealth possessed by those men who come up by train every day and without ostentation walk among their clerks to their offices in the City. A hundred and fifty years ago, one saw the rich men: sat in church with them: sat at dinner with them on Company feast days: knew them. The visible presence of so much wealth helped to make London great and proud. It would be interesting, if it were possible, to discover how many families now noble or gentle--county families--derive their origin or their wealth from the City merchants of the last century.

In one thing there is a great change. Till the middle of the seventeenth century it was customary for the rank of trade to be recruited--in London, at least--from the younger sons. This fashion was now changed. The continual wars gave the younger sons another career: they entered the army and the navy. Hence arose the contempt for trade which existed in the country for about a hundred and fifty years. It is now fast dying out, but it is not yet dead. Younger sons are now going into the City again.

The old exclusiveness was kept up jealously. No one must trade in the City who was not free of the City. But the freedom of the City was easily obtained. The craftsman and the clerk remained in their own places: they were taught to know their places: they were taught,