Roman London is that very stone which the
arch-rebel Jack Cade struck with his bloody sword when he had stormed
London Bridge, and "Now is Mortimer lord of this city" were the words he
uttered too confidently as he gave the blow. Shakespeare, who perhaps
wrote from tradition, makes him strike London Stone with his staff:--

"_Cade._ Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon
London Stone, I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but
claret wine this first year of our reign. And now henceforward it
shall be treason for any that calls me Lord
Mortimer."--_Shakespeare, Second Part of Henry VI._, act iv., sc. 6.

Dryden, too, mentions this stone in a very fine passage of his Fable of
the "Cock and the Fox:"--

"The bees in arms
Drive headlong from the waxen cells in swarms.
Jack Straw at London Stone, with all his rout,
Struck not the city with so loud a shout."

Of the old denizens of this neighbourhood in Henry VIII.'s days, Stow
gives a very picturesque sketch in the following passage, where he
says:--"The late Earl of Oxford, father to him that now liveth, hath
been noted within these forty years to have ridden into this city, and
so to his house by London Stone, with eighty gentlemen in a livery of
Reading tawny, and chains of gold about their necks, before him, and one
hundred tall yeomen in the like livery to follow him, without chains,
but all having his cognizance of the blue boar embroidered on their left
shoulder."

A turning from Cannon Street leads us to Southwark Bridge. The cost of
this bridge was computed at L300,000, and the annual revenue was
estimated at L90,000. Blackfriars Bridge tolls amounted to a large
annual sum; and it was supposed Southwark might fairly claim about a
third of it. Great stress also was laid on the improvements that would
ensue in the miserable streets about Bankside and along the road to the
King's Bench. We need scarcely remind our readers that the bridge never
answered, and was almost disused till the tolls were removed and it was
thrown open to general traffic.

"Southwark Bridge," says Mr. Timbs, "designed by John Rennie, F.R.S.,
was built by a public company, and cost about L800,000. It consists of
three cast-iron arches; the centre 240 feet span, and the two side
arches 210 feet each, about forty-two feet above the highest
spring-tides; the ribs forming, as it were, a series of hollow ma