Page:Survey of London by John Stow.djvu/49

Rh charge of cleansing is spared, and great profit made by letting out the banks, with the spoil of the whole ditch.

I am not ignorant of two fifteenths granted by a common council in the year 1595, for the reformation of this ditch, and that a small portion thereof, to wit, betwixt Bishopsgate and the postern called Mooregate, was cleansed, and made somewhat broader; but filling again very fast, by reason of overraising the ground near adjoining, therefore never the better: and I will so leave it, for I cannot help it.

The original foundation of London bridge, by report of Bartholomew Linsted, alias Fowle, last prior of St. Mary Overies church in Southwark, was this: A ferry being kept in place where now the bridge is built, at length the ferryman and his wife deceasing, left the same ferry to their only daughter, a maiden named Mary, which with the goods left by her parents, and also with the profits arising of the said ferry, built a house of Sisters, in place where now standeth the east part of St. Mary Overies church, above the choir, where she was buried, unto which house she gave the oversight and profits of the ferry; but afterwards the said house of Sisters being converted into a college of priests, the priests built the bridge (of timber) as all the other great bridges of this land were, and from time to time kept the same in good reparations, till at length, considering the great charges of repairing the same, there was, by aid of the citizens of London, and others, a bridge built with arches of stone, as shall be shown.

But first of the timber bridge, the antiquity thereof being great, but uncertain ; I remember to have read, that in the year of Christ 994, Sweyn, king of Denmark, besieging the city of London, both by water and by land, the citizens manfully defended themselves, and their king Ethelred, so as part of their enemies were slain in battle, and part of them were drowned in the river of Thames, because in their hasty rage they took no heed of the bridge.

Moreover, in the year 1016, Canute the Dane, with a great navy, came up to London, and on the south of the Thames caused a trench to be cast, through the which his ships were towed into the west side of the bridge, and then with a deep trench, and straight siege, he compassed the city round about.