“Come,” said Stow, “there remains the Royal Exchange. This we will see and so an end until to-morrow.”
The Royal Exchange was lit up with candles. The upper walk or _pawne_[4] I found to be a collection of shops, all as light as day. Music was playing and the place was full of people; not the sober merchants, but the City madams and their daughters, the gallants, and the ’prentices. “In the summer,” said Stow, “the place is open till nine of the clock, in the winter till ten. Many come here just as they go to Paul’s in the morning, because they have no other place to go to and no money to spend in the tavern. Know you not the lines?
‘Though little coin thy purseless pockets line, Yet with great company thou’st taken up; For often with Duke Humphrey thou dost dine; And often with Sir Thomas Gresham sup.’”
Other walks, many other walks, I have taken about London in company of good old John Stow: we have walked together along Thames Street, which is surely the very heart of the City, and in Chepe, and among the gardens of the northern part. In these walks about the streets, even then so old and so venerable, the old man waxed eloquent over the houses of the past where the great nobles had each his palace, which was also a barrack in the City of London. It was not only in and about Thames Street: all over the City he led me, prattling in his kindly garrulity. “There were kings’ palaces here once,” he said: “the Tower Royal where Richard’s mother dwelt; and the King’s Wardrobe—I can show you that; and Baynard’s Castle, which is now rebuilt and remains a noble house; and Crosby Hall, where the third Richard sojourned for a while; and the Stone House in Lombard Street that they call King John’s Palace, but I know not with what truth; and Cold Harbour where Prince Hal once lived; and the Savoy which was John of Gaunt’s. And there were the town houses of the noblemen. What a stately house was that of the Northumberlands outside Aldgate! It is now a printing-house. And they had another house in Aldgate Ward with broad gardens, now turned into bowling-greens. And there is the house called the Erber on the east side of Dowgate. The Earl of Warwick had it, then the Duke of Clarence had it, and when it was rebuilt Francis Drake had it. There is Gresham’s Mansion in Broad Street, which has become a noble college for the instruction of youths in the liberal arts, so that some say that London will become like unto Oxford or Cambridge. And Whittington’s house beside the church of St. Michael, now an almshouse, which was once also a college for priests. And there is the house which once belonged to Sir Robert Large, when Caxton was his ’prentice, at the corner of Old Jewry; formerly it was a Jews’ Synagogue, and afterwards the House of the Brethren of the Sack. Alas! most of these houses are now in decay and inhabited by poor folk. The nobles come no more to town.” Yet he showed me the house of Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s Secretary. It was in Seething Lane. “We look for these palaces now, along the river, between Bridewell and Westminster,” he said.