Old London as it looked from Highgate Hill--The travelers put up at “Ye Swanne” near New Gate--The start for White Hall to see Sir Francis Walsingham and the Queen--Their wonderment at the strange house signs--The saucy apprentices arouse their anger--Old Paule’s Cathedral and some celebrated mansions--The Royal Palace and a state procession--They go to the Globe, Will Shakespeare’s theatre--The boys see their first play in company with Doctor Hollister--Old London Bridge, its curious houses and its grizzly ornaments. When our travelers reached the top of Highgate Hill, from which an extensive view could be had in every direction, they halted to survey the scene. London lay below, stretched along the banks of the Thames, and still several miles distant. In Queen Elizabeth’s reign it was a small place compared with what it is today. Its greatest distance across was then less than two miles, whereas, now it is nearly thirty. Nevertheless, London was by far the greatest city in England and amongst the largest in the world. Jack and his companions looked down upon a closely packed collection of buildings within a wall whose moat, no longer needed for defence, had become half choked with refuse and rank vegetation. The streets were so narrow that, with the exception of Cheapside, which traversed the city from end to end, they were not discernible at that distance. The mass of red-tiled roofs was broken here and there by a market place or a churchyard and agreeably relieved by the gardens which lay at the backs of most of the houses. One hundred and more spires of parish churches shot up in relief against the background of the silvery river, for in those days the Thames was a clear and pure stream upon which swans disported even below London Bridge. Scattering suburbs extended from the walls of the city in several directions. In Elizabeth’s time, the noblemen and wealthier citizens had deserted their old-time palaces and mansions in the filthy and crowded metropolis for healthier residences among the adjacent fields. Perhaps, Baynard Castle, mentioned in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s Richard the Third, was the only one of the old homes of the nobility occupied by its owner at that time. Most of the others had been given over to tenements in which the poorer people crowded. A large part of the London that the boys gazed upon in wonder and admiration was destroyed by the Great Fire in the year 1666.