vely supporting the Yorkist cause. But with the
accession of Edward IV. all this was changed, and in 1474 they were
reinstated in all their privileges, and embarked on a new era of
prosperity in London.

The close connection of the King with the house of Burgundy interested
him in the fortunes of the League in Flanders. His sister, Margaret of
York, was married to Charles the Bold at Damme, one of the principal
Kontors of the League, at which ceremony he was present; and he
attended, later on, a great Chapter of the Knights of the Golden Fleece
in Bruges, as the stall-plate bearing his arms in the choir of Notre
Dame testifies to this day. He granted the Flemish merchants special
privileges of exemption from taxation--as, for instance, to the makers
of dinanderie at Middleburg by Bruges, that the goods sent from hence to
England should be admitted free.

In 1479 the guild rebuilt Bishopsgate, which had again fallen into bad
repair, and this time we know that it was built of brick, although the
image of the bishop on the side towards the city was carved in stone;
and this date synchronises with that great period of brick building in
England which included the halls of Gifford, Hargraves, Oxburg, and West
Stow, and portions of the college at Eton. The Guildhall of the
Steel-yard seems also to belong to this date, for it was just then the
area of the enclosure was much extended. We have, unfortunately, but
very inadequate accounts of what must have been a very important
structure, although remains of it existed to the middle of the last
century; but we know that its gable was surmounted by the imperial
eagle. The interior, no doubt, was of a magnificence which would bear
comparison with the halls of the League in Flanders and Germany, and we
know that it contained two large paintings by Holbein of the triumphs of
Poverty and Riches, which, later, found their way into the collection of
Henry, Prince of Wales, and were destroyed in the fire at Whitehall.

In two particulars at least the London settlement was less exclusive
than some of those elsewhere. The merchants built no church for their
own private use, but resorted to the adjacent parish church of All
Hallows the More, which stood, until its recent destruction, at the
corner of Thames Street and All Hallows Lane. The original church
perished in the Great Fire, and with it all the monuments which could be
associated with the League; but in the rebuilt church, in the r