Cheapside by Mr. Pepys--A Saxon Rienzi--Anti-Free-Trade Riots in
Cheapside--Arrest of the Rioters--A Royal Pardon--Jane Shore.

What a wealth and dignity there is about Cheapside; what restless life
and energy; with what vigorous pulsation life beats to and fro in that
great commercial artery! How pleasantly on a summer morning that last of
the Mohicans, the green plane-tree now deserted by the rooks, at the
corner of Wood Street, flutters its leaves! How fast the crowded
omnibuses dash past with their loads of young Greshams and future rulers
of Lombard Street! How grandly Bow steeple bears itself, rising proudly
in the sunshine! How the great webs of gold chains sparkle in the
jeweller's windows! How modern everything looks, and yet only a short
time since some workmen at a foundation in Cheapside, twenty-five feet
below the surface, came upon traces of primeval inhabitants in the shape
of a deer's skull, with antlers, and the skull of a wolf, struck down,
perhaps, more than a thousand years ago, by the bronze axe of some
British savage. So the world rolls on: the times change, and we change
with them.

The engraving which we give on page 307 is from one of the most ancient
representations extant of Cheapside. It shows the street decked out in
holiday attire for the procession of the wicked old queen-mother, Marie
de Medici, on her way to visit her son-in-law, Charles I., and her
wilful daughter, Henrietta Maria.

The City records, explored with such unflagging interest by Mr. Riley in
his "Memorials of London," furnish us with some interesting gleanings
relating to Cheapside. In the old letter books in the Guildhall--the
Black Book, Red Book, and White Book--we see it in storm and calm,
observe the vigilant and jealous honesty of the guilds, and become
witnesses again to the bloody frays, cruel punishments, and even the
petty disputes of the middle-age craftsmen, when Cheapside was one
glittering row of goldsmiths' shops, and the very heart of the wealth of
London. The records culled so carefully by Mr. Riley are brief but
pregnant; they give us facts uncoloured by the historian, and highly
suggestive glimpses of strange modes of life in wild and picturesque
eras of our civilisation. Let us take the most striking _seriatim_.

In 1273 the candle-makers seem to have taken a fancy to Cheapside, where
the horrible fumes of that necessary but most offensive trade soon
excited the ire of the rich citizens, who at