ps in
Goldsmith's Row are to be occupied by none but goldsmiths; and all the
goldsmiths who keep shops in other parts of the City are to resort
thither, or to Lombard Street or Cheapside."

The next year we find a tradesman who had been expelled from Goldsmiths'
Row praying bitterly to be allowed a year longer, as he cannot find a
residence, the removal of houses in Cheapside, Lombard Street, and St.
Paul's Churchyard having rendered shops scarce.

In 1637 the king returns again to the charge, and determines to carry
out his tyrannical whim by the following order of the Council:--"The
Council threaten the Lord Mayor and aldermen with imprisonment, if they
do not forthwith enforce the king's command that all shops should be
shut up in Cheapside and Lombard Street that were not goldsmiths'
shops." The Council "had learned that there were still twenty-four
houses and shops that were not inhabited by goldsmiths, but in some of
them were one Grove and Widow Hill, stationers; one Sanders, a drugster;
Medcalfe, a cook; Renatus Edwards, a girdler; John Dover, a milliner;
and Brown, a bandseller."

In 1664 we discover from a letter of the Dutch ambassador, Van Goch, to
the States-General, that a great fire in Cheapside, "the principal
street of the City," had burned six houses. In this reign the Cheapside
market seems to have given great vexation to the Cheapside tradesmen. In
1665 there is a State Paper to this effect:--

"The inquest of Cheap, Cripplegate, Cordwainer, Bread Street, and
Farringdon Within wards, to the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen of
London. In spite of orders to the contrary, the abuses of Cheapside
Market continue, and the streets are so pestered and encroached on that
the passages are blocked up and trade decays. Request redress by fining
those who allow stalls before their doors except at market times, or by
appointing special persons to see to the matter, and disfranchise those
who disobey; the offenders are 'marvellous obstinate and refractory to
all good orders,' and not to be dealt with by common law."

Pepys, in his inimitable "Diary," gives us two interesting glimpses of
Cheapside--one of the fermenting times immediately preceding the
Restoration, the other a few years later--showing the effervescing
spirit of the London 'prentices of Charles II.'s time:--

"1659.--Coming home, heard that in Cheapside there had been but a little
before a gibbet set up, and the picture of Huson hung upon it in