Page:Survey of London by John Stow.djvu/181

Bishopsgate Ward 153 was of Pallas, the rest I have forgotten. I myself have reserved, among divers of those antiquities there, one urn, with the ashes and bones, and one pot of white earth very small, not exceeding the quantity of a quarter of a wine pint, made in shape of a hare squatted upon her legs, and between her ears is the mouth of the pot. There hath also been found in the same field divers coffins of stone, containing the bones of men: these I suppose to be the burials of some especial persons in time of the Britons or Saxons, after that the Romans had left to govern here. Moreover, there were also found the skulls and bones of men without coffins, or rather whose coffins (being of great timber) were consumed. Divers great nails of iron were there found, such as are used in the wheels of shod carts, being each of them as big as a man's finger, and a quarter of a yard long, the heads two inches over; those nails were more wondered at than the rest of things there found, and many opinions of men were there uttered of them; namely, that the men there buried were murdered by driving those nails into their heads; a thing unlikely, for a smaller nail would more aptly serve to so bad a purpose, and a more secret place would likely be employed for their burial. But to set down what I have observed concerning this matter, I there beheld the bones of a man lying (as I noted), the head north, the feet south, and round about him, as thwart his head, along both his sides, and thwart his feet, such nails were found, wherefore I conceived them to be the nails of his coffin, which had been a trough cut out of some great tree, and the same covered with a plank, of a great thickness, fastened with such nails; and therefore I caused some of the nails to be reached up to me, and found under the broad heads of them the old wood, skant turned into earth, but still retaining both the grain and proper colour: of these nails, with the wood under the head thereof, I reserved one, as also the nether jaw-bone of the man, the teeth being great, sound, and fast fixed, which, among other many monuments there found, I have yet to show; but the nail lying dry, is by scaling greatly wasted. And thus much for this part of Bishopsgate ward, without the gate; for I have in another place spoken of the gate, and therefore I am to speak of that other part of this ward which lieth within the gate.

And first to begin on the left hand of Bishopsgate street, from the gate you have certain tenements of old time pertaining to a brotherhood of St. Nicholas, granted to the parish clerks of London, for two chaplains, to be kept in the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, near unto the Guildhall of London, in the 27th of