Page:Old and New London, vol. 1.djvu/43

 Venice, executed Cowley's monument in Westminster Abbey, and the statues of Charles I., Charles II., and Gresham, in the old Exchange.

The slab over the eastern side of the arch bore the following inscription, which was all but obliterated by time: — "Erected in the year 1670, Sir Samuel Starling, Mayor; continued in the year 1671, Sir Richard Ford, Lord Mayor; and finished in the year 1672, Sir George Waterman, Lord Mayor."

All these persons were friends of Pepys.

The upper part of the Bar was flanked by scrolls, but the fruit and flowers once sculptured on the pediment, and the supporters of the royal arms over the posterns, had crumbled away. In the centre of each facade was a semi-circular-headed, ecclesiastical-looking window, that cast a dim light into a room above the gate, which was held of the City by Messrs. Childs the bankers, as a sort of muniment-room for their old account books. There was here preserved, among other costlier treasures of Mammon, the private account-book of Charles II. The original Child was a friend of Pepys, and is mentioned by him as quarrelling with the Duke of York on Admiralty matters. The Child who succeeded him was a friend of Pope, and all but led him into the South Sea Bubble speculation.

There is no extant historical account of Temple Bar in which the following passage from Strype (George I.) is not to be found embedded like a fossil; it is, in fact, nearly all that London topographers know of the early history of the Bar :— "Anciently," says Strype, "there were only posts, rails, and a chain, such as are now in Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel bars. Afterwards there was a house of timber erected across the street, with a narrow gateway and an entry on the south side of it under the house." This structure is to be seen in the view of London in the British Museum, 1620 (James I.), and in Hollar"s seven-sheet map of London (Charles II.).

The date of the erection of the "wooden house" is not to be ascertained; but there is the house plain enough in a view of London to which Maitland affixes the date about 1560 (the second year of Elizabeth) ; so we may perhaps safely put it down as early as Edward VI. or Henry VIII. Indeed, if a certain scrap of history is correct — i.e., that bluff King Hal once threatened, if a certain Bill did not pass the Commons a little quicker, to fix the heads of several refractory M.P.s on the top of Temple Bar — we must suppose the old City toll-gate to be as old as the early Tudors.

After Simon de Montfort's death at the battle of Evesham, 1265, Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I., punished the rebellious Londoners, who had befriended Montfort, by taking away all their street chains and bars, and locking them up in the Tower.

The earliest known documentary and historical notice of Temple Bar is in 1327, the first year of Edward III.; and in the thirty-fourth year of the same reign we find, at an inquisition before the mayor, twelve witnesses deposing that the commonalty of the City had, time out of mind, had free ingress and egress from the City to Thames and from Thames to the City, through the great gate of the Templars situate within Temple Bar. This referred to some dispute about the right of way through the Temple, built in the reign of Henry I. In 1384 Richard II. granted a licence for paving Strand Street from Temple Bar to the Savoy, and collecting tolls to cover such charges.

The historical pageants that have taken place at Temple Bar deserve a notice, however short. On the 5th of November, 1422, the corpse of that brave and chivalrous king, the hero of Agincourt, Henry V., was borne to its rest at Westminster Abbey by the chief citizens and nobles, and every doorway from Southwark to Temple Bar had its mournful torch-bearer. In 1502-3 the hearse of Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII., halted at Temple Bar, on its way from the Tower to Westminster, and at the Bar the Abbots of Westminster and Bermondsey blessed the corpse, and the Earl of Derby and a large company of nobles joined the sable funeral throng. After sorrow came joy, and after joy sorrow — Ita vita. In the next reign poor Anne Boleyn, radiant with happiness and triumph, came through the Bar (May 31, 1534), on her way to the Tower, to be welcomed by the clamorous citizens, the day before her ill-starred coronation. Temple Bar on that occasion was new painted and repaired, and near it stood singing men and children — the Fleet Street conduit all the time running claret. The old gate figured more conspicuously the day before the coronation of that wondrous child, Edward VI. Two hogs-heads of wine were then ladled out to the thirsty mob, and the gate at Temple Bar was painted with battlements and buttresses, richly hung with cloth of Arras, and all in a flutter with "fourteen standard flags." There were eight French trumpeters blowing their best, besides "a pair of regals," with children singing to the same. In September, 1553, when Edward's cold-hearted half-sister, Mary Tudor, came through the City, according to ancient English custom, the day