Scattered here and there on the more elevated parts were a few hamlets, mere clusterings of a few cottages, claybuilt, with cross timberings and straw-thatched roofs, with holes for chimneys, and in the walls latticed openings to admit light to the interiors. These were the abodes of cowherds, who tended their masters' cattle in the marshes, swineherds who drove their charges into the neighbouring forest to pick up the fallen acorns, fishermen who plied their daily toil on the river, and a few artizans, carpenters, smiths, and wrights, such as are now met with in remote country villages. These people were wretchedly poor, half-starved, ill-clad, and profoundly ignorant, the slaves of monkish superstition, and the downtrodden serfs of the nobles. Yet had they within them the old Saxon instinct of freedom and liberty, and they were the men who in the following reign ranged themselves under the banners of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. Westward stood the Tower of London, frowning grimly on the river bank—at once a palace, a fortress, and a prison. Stretching northward therefrom, was the eastern wall of the City terminating in Aldgate, whence ran the road into Essex. Within the gate, with its tower overtopping the wall, might be seen the magnificent Priory of the Holy Trinity, founded by Matilda, the Saxon Queen of Henry I., in the year 1108, and outside, along the road now called the minories, the humbler and more lowly built convent of the Nuns Minoresses of the Order of St. Clare, founded in 1239, by Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. And hard by, close to the gate, was the Church of St. Botolph, formerly belonging to the knights of the Cnighten guild, now to the Holy Trinity Priory. Close by the landing place was the hospital of St. Katherine, founded in 1148, by Matilda, Queen of Stephen, for the repose of the souls of her children—Baldwin and Matilda; refounded in 1273 by Eleanor, widow of King Henry III. Eastward was St. Chad's Well, round which grew up a hamlet, so called, since corrupted to Shadwell. Further on lay the hamlet of Stebenhithe (Stepney), with its low broad-towered church. North-westward of it, in the Essex Road, was the chapel of St. Mary Matfellon, whose name has given rise to much discussion, without any satisfactory result. Afterwards it was called the White Chapel, and hence it gave the name to the line of road running from Aldgate. Northward might be discerned the priory and hospital of St. Mary Spittle, a timber building with an angle turret, founded by Walter Brune and his wife, in the year 1197; and not far distant, on the west, the priory of St. Helen, with its hall, hospital, cloisters, and crypt, founded in 1210 by William Fitz-William, and dedicated to the Holy Cross and St. Helen, mother of the Emperor Constantine.