embellished it in a magnificent manner.

But the structure

has wholly disappeared, and we have only its remembrance, in the name of the ward where it was situated.

In 1488, the parliament passed a very salutary act for the healthfulness and convenience of the capital, by which the slaughtering of cattle was prevented within its precincts, as an intolerable nuisance; the same parliament also confirmed the city's right to the conservancy of the river Thames.

The year 1493, was remarkable for an act of Henry's resentment, which occasioned a severe blow to trade. The Duchess of Burgundy's protection of Perkin Warbeck, so irritated the king, that he strictly forbad every species of commerce between England and Burgundy, which occasioned the greatest distress to the English Merohants Adventurers; more especially, as the Hanseatic merchants took the advantage of importing foreign merchandize, to the detriment of the English trader. A commotion was the consequence; their hall and warehouses in Thames Street were plundered by the populace: several of whom were after. wards convicted, and suffered death for the offence.

That the city was in high favour with the court at this period, is evident from the account of Robert Fabian, sheriff, and author of the Chronicle, which goes under his name, Henry gave a sumptuous entertainment at Westminster to Ralph Anstry, the lord mayor, whom he knighted on the occasion, accompanied by the whole court of aldermen, and a great number of the commonalty; the revelry of which continued till next morning at day-light: but the avaricious Henry soon made the city pay for this conviviality, by extorting, through the means of the infamous Empson and Dudley, prodigious sums, upon the most scandalous and oppressive expedients *.

But

One of their earliest victims was Sir William Capel, an alderman of London, who, under sundry obsolete penal statutes, was convicted, and adjudged to pay a fine of 2,7001. which by powerful intercession was mitigated to 1,600 l. In executing these detestable purposes, the very fountain of equity was poisoned juries were packed, were cajoled, were menaced, and bribed into the commission of perjury; and 0 2 the

But the citizens, ever loyal, though always suffering, not only opened their purse strings to supply the king's exigencies upon the report of Perkin Warbeck's invasion from Scotland; but though law was set aside; though the king's authority was assumed by his minions to sanction the grossest acts of oppression, so that the malignant scourge of rebellion burst from its den, and on its appearance in Cornwall, Lord Audley, with a part of the disaffected, appeared before the gates of London, and threw the city into confusion; yet by the prudent and gallant conduct of the lord mayor, and sheriffs, the public peace was duly maintained, and the city ably defended; the king was enabled to place himself at the head of the royal army, and, by the joint endeavours of the citizens and his other subjets, to re-establish himself on a throne which he did not deserve.

An act of public generosity performed by a patriotic individual, in the year 1495, is of too much importance, not to have a distinguished place in our annals, Sir Henry Colet, father of the beneficent founder of St. Paul's School, who, during his second mayoralty, had effectually preserved the peace of the city, when the Cornish rebels had threatened its demolition, signalized his disinterested loyalty, by giving his personal security in support of his sovereign's honour, at the time that the rest of the corporation, had refused to join as hostages for a treaty of peace and mercantile intercourse between England and Flanders. The transaction is thus recorded:

"In the month of Febr. xi. Hen. VII. was concluded an amyte and entrecourse between this land and Flaunders; and for the assurance of the same, above and besyde both the seles of eyther prynces, was granted to dyverse townys of this lande to be bounde, among the whiche London was one: which

the subject's great security for life and property was converted into the means of attacking both the one and the other. The abuse had become so flagrant, that parliament found it necessary to interpose, by defining the qualifications of London jurors, and by enacting additional penalties to be inflicted on the crimes of perjury and bribery in persons serving on juries. Stat. at Large, 11 H, VII.

sealing,

sealing, when it sholde have been perfourmed, the commons of the citie wolde not be agreable theyr sele sholde passe: and albeit that my Lord Derby, my Lord Tresorer, the Chyef Justyce of England, Maister Bray, and the Maister of the Rolls, by the king's commandment, came to Guildhall, to extorte the sayd commons for the same; yet in no wyse they wolde not be agreable that the towne sele sholde pass, but besought the sayd lordes to grant unto thyin respite of vi dayes, trustyng in that season to shew in writyng soch consyderacyons unto the king's grace and his counsaill, that his grace sholde be therewith well contented: whiche was to thym graunted, and thereupon dyvers billes were dyvysed. Albeit, that for the hasty spede of my Lorde Chamberleyne, which at that tyme was redy to departe to Caleys, to kepe suche appoyntment as was before concluded, the mayrs sele was taken only, as in the maner folowith:

"TO ALL CHRYSTEN PEOPLE, these present letters beholding or herying, HENRY COLET, knyght, nowe mayor of the cite of LONDON, in the relme of ENGLAND, helth in our Lorde everlastynge. Where as bi twene the high and myghty prynce, my soveragne Lorde HENRY, by the grace of God, king of England and of France, and Lorde of Ireland, on that one partye, and the noble prynce Phely p, Tharchduke of Austry, and Duke of Burgoyne on the other party; certayne treatyes of amyte and intercourse of merchandysing and other communicacyon of merchaunts concernynge the profyte of both prynces, theyr relmes and subjettes, the xxiii daye of the month of Februarye last past, at London, were finally concluded and determyned. Knowe ye me the say'd HENRY, at the requeste and commandment of my said soveragne lorde, and at the contemplacyon of his letters to me in that behalfe directed and delvvered of good faythe, to have promysed and ME AND MYN HEIRS, to the sayd Prynce Phelyp, Tharchduke to his heyres and successours, under PLEGGE and BOND OF ALL MY GOODS PRESENT AND TO COME, to have bound and by thes presents promyse and bynde that I shall procure, instaunce, and, as moche as in me is, shall do, that the same my lord the kyng,

his heyres and successours, all the sayd entrecourse and amyte, and all and singular in the same conteyned and specyfyed, well, fully, and truly shall holde, observe, and fullfylle; and, by his subjettes and servants in that theym concerne, well and truly shall do, to be holdyn, observed, and fullfylled; and to the contrarient doers and brekers of the same, shall ministre, or doo to be ministred, justice. In witness whereof, the scale of armes of me the sayd HENRY to these presents I have put, wryten at London, the fyrst daye of the moneth of Maye, in the year of our Lord God, M CCCC XCVI, and the XI yere of the reygne of my sayd soveragn Lord Henry the VII*."

The dangerous state to which the metropolis had been exposed during the Cornish revolt, suggested a plan for a more permanent mode of general defence, than had hitherto been established; for this purpose, some cultivated land in Finsbury manor, was laid out into fields, which were in. closed for the use of archers, and thence called the Artillery Ground, which to the present period bears the same name, and answers the same purpose.

The year 1498 was propitious to the commerce of the London merchants with those of Flanders. The Archduke Philip sent commissioners to London to settle the terms of accommodation; which Henry, ever alive to his interest, had acceded to, though resentful against the Duchess of Burgundy for the active part she had taken to embitter his government; nor would he give his entire consent, till a provision was inserted in the treaty, "that no English rebel should be harboured in the Low Countries," in which was particularly comprehended the demesnes of the Duchess, who had been Warbeck's great patroness. The Flemings were so gratified by this participation of interests, that they denominated it Intercursus Magnus: the English merchants were received with public honours when they returned to Antwerp to resume their functions-they entered in procession, and both parties welcomed reviving commerce with every expression of mutual satisfaction and joy.

• MSS. Cotton. Vitell, A, 16,

Sir John Shaw, the chief magistrate in 1503, erected spacious apartments in Guildhall, for the accommodation of the city magistrates and their company on public festivals, suitable to their dignity and opulence; before this time, the Grocer's Hall had been the place appointed for civic entertainments. This year also, the ancient river of Wells (afterwards called Fleet Ditch) was cleared and made navigable for small craft to Oldbourn Bridge; Houndsditch also, which had obtained its name from the carrion cast into it, and was besides a public nuisance, now partook its share of improvement, andwas arched over and paved.

The insatiable Henry wishing to exact the enormous sum of five thousand marks from the citizens, gulled them into a compliance with his extortion, by a fresh charter of confirmation, which checked the encroachments of foreign merchants, regulated the qualifications of brokers, renewed the city's right to the office of gauger, and as a protection to the woollen trade, established "The fellowship of Merchant Adventurers of England," and ultimately prohibited the Merchants of the Steel-Yard, from exporting cloths to the Low Countries.

The last acts of Henry's life were proportionably consistent with those of the preceding; for the spirit of extortion, cruelty and aggression, kept pace with his superstition, even his pretended piety, generosity, and compassion, were bestowed at the public expence. The beautiful and stately pile at the east end of Westminster Abbey, on which this monarch's name is imposed, as well as other religious edifices which he reared, proceeded only from religious terror, unaided by compunction. He died as he had lived, with a conscience which had a fearful reckoning to settle; and a dismal prospect of futurity.

Their

Thomas Knesworth, two years after his mayoralty had been honorably terminated, with Shore and Groves, the sheriffs, were under a plea of malversation in office, thrown into the Marshalsea, and, without form of process, obliged to purchase their pardon by the payment of 1,4001. Christopher Hawes, alderman, was indicted and cast into prison;