Page:Survey of London by John Stow.djvu/126

98 hospital called Magdalen's, in Kingstone upon Thames; gave thereunto nine tenements, ten shops, one mill, one hundred and twenty-five acres of land, ten acres of meadow, one hundred and twenty acres of pasture, etc.; more, in London, he built the fair parish church of St. Michael in Crooked lane, and was there buried.

John Barnes, mayor 1371, gave a chest with three locks, and one thousand marks therein, to be lent to young men upon sufficient pawn, and for the use thereof, to say De profundis, or Pater noster, and no more: he also was a great builder of St. Thomas Apostle's parish church, as appeareth by his arms there, both in stone and glass.

In the year 1378, John Filpot, sometime mayor, hired with his own money one thousand soldiers, and defended the realm from incursions of the enemy, so that in small time his hired men took John Mercer, a sea-rover, with all his ships, which he before had taken from Scarborrow, and fifteen Spanish ships, laden with great riches.

In the year 1380, Thomas of Woodstocke, Thomas Percie, Hugh Calverley, Robert Knoles, and others, being sent with a great power to aid the duke of Brytaine, the said John Filpot hired ships for them of his own charges, and released the armour, which the soldiers had pawned for their battles, more than a thousand in number. "This most noble citizen," saith Thomas Walsingham, "that had travailed for the commodity of the whole realm, more than all other of his time, had often relieved the king by lending him great sums of money and otherwise, deceased in A.D. 1384, after that he had assured lands to the city for the relief of thirteen poor people for ever."

In the year 1381, William Walworth, then mayor, a most provident, valiant, and learned citizen, did by his arrest of Wat Tyler (a presumptuous rebel, upon whom no man durst lay hands), deliver the king and kingdom from the danger of most wicked traitors, and was for his service knighted in the field.

Nicholas Brembar, John Filpot, Robert Laund, Nicholas Twiford, and Adam Francis, aldermen, were then for their service likewise knighted; and Sir Robert Knoles, for assisting of the mayor, was made free of this city.

This Sir Robert Knoles, thus worthily infranchised a citizen, founded a college with an hospital at Pontefract: he also built the great stone bridge at Rochester, over the river of Medway, etc.

John Churchman, grocer, one of the sheriffs, 1386, for the