the
middle of the street. (John Hewson, who had been a shoemaker, became a
colonel in the Parliament army, and sat in judgment on the king. He
escaped hanging by flight, and died in 1662 at Amsterdam.)

"1664.--So home, and in Cheapside, both coming and going, it was full of
apprentices, who have been here all this day, and have done violence, I
think, to the master of the boys that were put in the pillory yesterday.
But Lord! to see how the trained bands are raised upon this, the drums
beating everywhere as if an enemy were upon them--so much is this city
subject to be put into a disarray upon very small occasions. But it was
pleasant to hear the boys, and particularly one very little one, that I
demanded the business of. He told me that that had never been done in
the City since it was a city--two 'prentices put in the pillory, and
that it ought not to be so."

Cheapside has been the scene of two great riots, which were threatening
enough to render them historically important. The one was in the reign
of Richard I., the other in that of Henry VIII. The first of these, a
violent protest against Norman oppression, was no doubt fomented, if not
originated, by the down-trodden Saxons. It began thus:--On the return of
Richard from his captivity in Germany, and before his fiery retaliation
on France, a London citizen named William with the Long Beard (_alias_
Fitzosbert, a deformed man, but of great courage and zeal for the poor),
sought the king, and appealing to his better nature, laid before him a
detail of great oppressions and outrages wrought by the Mayor and rich
aldermen of the city, to burden the humbler citizens and relieve
themselves, especially at "the hoistings" when any taxes or tollage were
to be levied. Fitzosbert, encouraged at gaining the king's ear, and
hoping too much from the generous but rapacious Norman soldier, grew
bolder, openly defended the causes of oppressed men, and thus drew round
him daily great crowds of the poor.

"Many gentlemen of honour," says Holinshed, "sore hated him for his
presumptious attempts to the hindering of their purposes; but he had
such comfort of the king that he little paused for their malice, but
kept on his intent, till the king, being advertised of the assemblies
which he made, commanded him to cease from such doings, that the people
might fall again to their sciences and occupations, which they had for
the most part left off at the instigation of this William with