says--

"Then to the Chepe I gan me drawn,
Where much people I saw for to stand;
One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn;
Another he taketh me by the hand,
'Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land.'
I never was used to such things indeed,
And, wanting money, I might not speed."

In 1622 the traders of the Goldsmiths' Company began to complain that
alien traders were creeping into and alloying the special haunts of the
trade, Goldsmiths' Row and Lombard Street; and that 183 foreign
goldsmiths were selling counterfeit jewels, engrossing the business and
impoverishing its members.

City improvements were carried with a high hand in the reign of Charles
I., who, determined to clear Cheapside of all but goldsmiths, in order
to make the eastern approach to St. Paul's grander, committed to the
Fleet some of the alien traders who refused to leave Cheapside. This
unfortunate monarch seems to have carried out even his smaller measures
in a despotic and unjustifiable manner, as we see from an entry in the
State Papers, October 2, 1634. It is a petition of William Bankes, a
Cheapside tavern-keeper, and deposes:--

"Petition of William Bankes to the king. Not fully twelve months since,
petitioner having obtained a license under the Great Seal to draw wine
and vent it at his house in Cheapside, and being scarce entered into his
trade, it pleased his Majesty, taking into consideration the great
disorders that grew by the numerous taverns within London, to stop so
growing an evil by a total suppression of victuallers in Cheapside, &c,
by which petitioner is much decayed in his fortune. Beseeches his
Majesty to grant him (he not being of the Company of Vintners in London,
but authorised merely by his Majesty) leave to victual and retail meat,
it being a thing much desired by noblemen and gentlemen of the best rank
and others (for the which, if they please, they may also contract
beforehand, as the custom is in other countries), there being no other
place fit for them to eat in the City."

The foolish determination to make Cheapside more glittering and showy
seems again to have struck the weak despot, and an order of the Council
(November 16) goes forth that--"Whereas in Goldsmith's Row, in
Cheapside and Lombard Street, divers shops are held by persons of other
trades, whereby that uniform show which was an ornament to those places
and a lustre to the City is now greatly diminished, all the sho