Page:Old and New London, vol. 1.djvu/419

Guildhall.] a balcony over the entrance to the interior courts, and were removed to brackets on each side the great west window.

Stow describes the statues over the great south porch of King Henry VI.'s time as bearing the following emblems: the tables of the Commandments, a whip, a sword, and a pot. By their ancient habits and the coronets on their heads, he presumed them to be the statues of benefactors of London. The statue of our Saviour had disappeared, but the two bearded figures remaining, he conjectured, were good Bishop William and the Conqueror himself. Four lesser figures, two on each side the porch, seemed to be noble and pious ladies, one of them probably the Empress Maud, another the good Queen Philippa, who once interceded for the City. These figures were taken down during Dance's injudicious alterations in 1789. They lay neglected in a cellar until Alderman Boydell obtained leave of the Corporation to give them to Banks, the sculptor, who had taste enough to appreciate the simple earnestness of the Gothic work. At his death they were given again to the City. These figures were removed from the old screen in 1865, and were not replaced in the new one.

THE CRYPT OF GUILDHALL. (see page 386).

Stow, in relation to the Guildhall statues, and to the general demolition of "images" that occurred in his time, states, "these verses following" were made about 1560, by William Elderton, an attorney in the Sheriff's Court at Guildhall:—

The true renovation of this great City hall commenced in the year 1864, when Mr. Horace Jones, the architect to the City of London, was entrusted with the erection of an open oak roof, with a central louvre and tapering metal spire. The new roof is as nearly as possible framed to resemble the roof destroyed in the Great Fire. Many southern