Page:Survey of London by John Stow.djvu/60

32 time a parish. This postern was re-edified by William Hampton, fishmonger, mayor, in the year 1472. In the year also, 1511, the third of Henry VIII., Roger Acheley, mayor, caused dikes and bridges to be made, and the ground to be levelled, and made more commodious for passage, since which time the same hath been heightened. So much that the ditches and bridges are covered, and seemeth to me that if it be made level with the battlements of the city wall, yet will it be little the drier, such is the moorish nature of that ground.

The next is the postern of Cripplegate, so called long before the Conquest. For I read in the history of Edmond, king of the East Angles, written by Abbo Floriacensis, and by Burchard, sometime secretary to Offa, king of Marcia, but since by John Lidgate, monk of Bury, that in the year 1010, the Danes spoiling the kingdom of the East Angles, Alwyne, bishop of Helmeham, caused the body of King Edmond the Martyr to be brought from Bedrisworth (now called Bury St. Edmondes), through the kingdom of the East Saxons, and so to London in at Cripplegate; a place, saith mine author, so called of cripples begging there: at which gate, it was said, the body entering, miracles were wrought, as some of the lame to go upright, praising God. The body of King Edmond rested for the space of three years in the parish church of St. Gregorie, near unto the cathedral church of St. Paul. Moreover, the charter of William the Conqueror, confirming the foundation of the college in London, called St. Martin the Great, hath these words: "I do give and grant to the same church and canons, serving God therein, all the land and the moore without the postern, which is called Cripplegate, on either side the postern." More I read, that Alfune built the parish church of St. Giles, nigh a gate of the city, called Porta Contractorum, or Cripplesgate, about the year 1099.

This postern was sometime a prison, whereunto such citizens and others, as were arrested for debt or common trespasses, were committed, as they be now, to the compters, which thing appeareth by a writ of Edward I. in these words : "Rex vic. London. salutem: ex graui querela B. capt. & detent. in prisona nostra de Criples gate pro x. l. quas coram Radulpho de Sandwico tunc custod. ciuitatis nostræ London. & I. de Blackwell ciuis recognit. debit. etc." This gate was new built by the brewers of