ation of war against Louis
XIV. proclaimed by the officers at arms, serjeants at arms, trumpeters,
&c., at Whitehall Gate, Temple Bar, the end of Chancery Lane, Wood
Street, Cheapside, and the Royal Exchange. Huggin's Lane, in this
street, derives its name, as Stow tells us, from a London citizen who
dwelt here in the reign of Edward I., and was called Hugan in the Lane.

That pleasant tree at the left-hand corner of Wood Street, which has
cheered many a weary business man with memories of the fresh green
fields far away, was for long the residence of rooks, who built there.
In 1845 two fresh nests were built, and one is still visible; but the
sable birds deserted their noisy town residence several years ago.
Probably, as the north of London was more built over, and such
feeding-grounds as Belsize Park turned to brick and mortar, the birds
found the fatigue of going miles in search of food for their young
unbearable, and so migrated. Leigh Hunt, in one of his agreeable books,
remarks that there are few districts in London where you will not find a
tree. "A child was shown us," says Leigh Hunt, "who was said never to
have beheld a tree but one in St. Paul's Churchyard (now gone). Whenever
a tree was mentioned, it was this one; she had no conception of any
other, not even of the remote tree in Cheapside." This famous tree marks
the site of St. Peter in Chepe, a church destroyed by the Great Fire.
The terms of the lease of the low houses at the west-end corner are said
to forbid the erection of another storey or the removal of the tree.
Whether this restriction arose from a love of the tree, as we should
like to think, we cannot say.

St. Peter's in Chepe is a rectory (says Stow), "the church whereof stood
at the south-west corner of Wood Street, in the ward of Farringdon
Within, but of what antiquity I know not, other than that Thomas de
Winton was rector thereof in 1324."

The patronage of this church was anciently in the Abbot and Convent of
St. Albans, with whom it continued till the suppression of their
monastery, when Henry VIII., in the year 1546, granted the same to the
Earl of Southampton. It afterwards belonged to the Duke of Montague.
This church being destroyed in the fire and not rebuilt, the parish is
united to the Church of St. Matthew, Friday Street. "In the year 1401,"
says Maitland, "licence was granted to the inhabitants of this parish to
erect a shed or shop before their church in Cheapside. On the si