for the virtue that a
great fire hath to purge the infection of the air. On the vigil of Saint
John Baptist, and on Saint Peter and Paul, the apostles, every man's
door being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St. John's wort,
orpin, white lillies, and such-like, garnished upon with beautiful
flowers, had also lamps of glass, with oyl burning in them all the
night. Some hung out branches of iron, curiously wrought, containing
hundreds of lamps, lighted at once, which made a goodly show, namely, in
New Fish Street, Thames Street, &c."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CHEAPSIDE: CENTRAL.

Grim Chronicles of Cheapside--Cheapside Cross--Puritanical
Intolerance--The Old London Conduits--Mediaeval Water-carriers--The
Church of St. Mary-le-Bow--"Murder will out"--The "Sound of Bow
Bells"--Sir Christopher Wren's Bow Church--Remains of the Old
Church--The Seldam--Interesting Houses in Cheapside and their
Memories--Goldsmiths' Row--The "Nag's Head" and the Self-consecrated
Bishops--Keats' House--Saddler's Hall--A Prince
Disguised--Blackmore, the Poet--Alderman Boydell, the
Printseller--His Edition of Shakespeare--"Puck"--The Lottery--Death
and Burial.

The Cheapside Standard, opposite Honey Lane, was also a fountain, and
was rebuilt in the reign of Henry VI. In the year 1293 (Edward I.) three
men had their right hands stricken off here for rescuing a prisoner
arrested by an officer of the City. In Edward III.'s reign two
fishmongers, for aiding a riot, were beheaded at the Standard. Here
also, in the reign of Richard II., Wat Tyler, that unfortunate reformer,
beheaded Richard Lions, a rich merchant. When Henry IV. usurped the
throne, very beneficially for the nation, it was at the Standard in
Chepe that he caused Richard II.'s blank charters to be burned. In the
reign of Henry VI. Jack Cade (a man who seems to have aimed at removing
real evils) beheaded the Lord Say, as readers of Shakespeare's
historical plays will remember; and in 1461 John Davy had his offending
hand cut off at the Standard for having struck a man before the judges
at Westminster.

Cheapside Cross, one of the nine crosses erected by Edward I., that
soldier king, to mark the resting-places of the body of his beloved
queen, Eleanor of Castile, on its way from Lincoln to Westminster Abbey,
stood in the middle of the road facing Wood Street. It was built in 1290
by Master Michael, a mason, of Canterbury. From an old pai