Nick's tenements."

In the reign of Edward III. the supply of water for the City seems to
have been derived chiefly from the river, the local conduits being
probably insufficient. The carters, called "water-leders" (24th Edward
III.), were ordered by the City to charge three-halfpence for taking a
cart from Dowgate or Castle Baynard to Chepe, and five farthings if they
stopped short of Chepe, while a sand-cart from Aldgate to Chepe Conduit
was to charge threepence.

The Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, the sound of whose mellow bells is
supposed to be so dear to cockney ears, is the glory and crown of modern
Cheapside. The music it casts forth into the troubled London air has a
special magic of its own, and has a power to waken memories of the past.
This _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Sir Christopher Wren, whose steeple--as graceful
as it is stately--rises like a lighthouse above the roar and jostle of
the human deluge below, stands on an ecclesiastical site of great
antiquity. The old tradition is that here, as at St. Paul's and
Westminster, was a Roman temple, but of that there is no proof
whatever. The first Bow Church seems, however, to have been one of the
earliest churches built by the conquerors of Harold; and here, no doubt,
the sullen Saxons came to sneer at the masse chanted with a French
accent. The first church was racked by storm and fire, was for a time
turned into a fortress, was afterwards the scene of a murder, and last
of all became one of our earliest ecclesiastical courts. Stow, usually
very clear and unconfused, rather contradicts himself for once about the
origin of the name of the church--"St. Mary de Arcubus or Bow." In one
place he says it was so called because it was the first London church
built on arches; and elsewhere, when out of sight of this assertion, he
says that it took its name from certain stone arches supporting a
lantern on the top of the tower. The first is more probably the true
derivation, for St. Paul's could also boast its Saxon crypt. Bow Church
is first mentioned in the reign of William the Conqueror, and it was
probably built at that period.

There seems to have been nothing to specially disturb the fair building
and its ministering priests till 1090 (William Rufus), when, in a
tremendous storm that sent the monks to their knees, and shook the very
saints from their niches over portal and arch, the roof of Bow Church
was, by one great wrench of the wind, lifted off, and wafted down like a