other sort writes, "the cross in
Cheapside was taken down to cleanse that great street of superstition."
The amiable Evelyn notes in his "Diary" that he himself saw "the furious
and zelous people demolish that stately crosse in Cheapside." In July,
1645, two years afterwards, and in the middle of the Civil War,
Whitelocke (afterwards Oliver Cromwell's trimming minister) mentions a
burning on the site of the Cheapside cross of crucifixes, Popish
pictures, and books. Soon after the demolition of the cross (says
Howell) a high square stone rest was "popped up in Cheapside, hard by
the Standard," according to the legacy of Russell, a good-hearted
porter. This "rest and be thankful" bore the following simple distich:--

"God bless thee, porter, who great pains doth take;
Rest here, and welcome, when thy back doth ache."

There are four views of the old Cheapside cross extant--one at Cowdray,
one at the Pepysian library, Cambridge. A third, engraved by Wilkinson,
represents the procession of Mary de Medicis, on her way through
Cheapside; and another, which we give on page 331, shows the demolition
of the cross.

The old London conduits were pleasant gathering places for 'prentices,
serving-men, and servant girls--open-air parliaments of chatter,
scandal, love-making, and trade talk. Here all day repaired the
professional water-carriers, rough, sturdy fellows--like Ben Jonson's
Cob--who were hired to supply the houses of the rich goldsmiths of
Chepe, and who, before Sir Hugh Middleton brought the New River to
London, were indispensable to the citizen's very existence.

The Great Conduit of Cheapside stood in the middle of the east end of
the street near its junction with the Poultry, while the Little Conduit
was at the west end, facing Foster Lane and Old Change. Stow, that
indefatigable stitcher together of old history, describes the larger
conduit curtly as bringing sweet water "by pipes of lead underground
from Tyburn (Paddington) for the service of the City." It was
castellated with stone and cisterned in lead about the year 1285 (Edward
I.), and again new built and enlarged by Thomas Ham, a sheriff in 1479
(Edward IV.). Ned Ward (1700), in his lively ribald way describes
Cheapside conduit (he does not say which) palisaded with
chimney-sweepers' brooms and surrounded by sweeps, probably waiting to
be hired, so that "a countryman, seeing so many black attendants waiting
at a stone hovel, took it to be one of Old