“The same was built by Thomas Wood, goldsmith, one of the sheriffs of London in the year 1491. It contained in number ten dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly built, four stories high, beautified towards the street with the goldsmith’s arms and the likeness of _woodmen_, in memory of his name, riding on monstrous beasts, all of which were cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt. The said front was again new painted and gilt over in the year 1594, Sir Richard Martin being then mayor, and keeping his mayoralty in one of them.” The Row, however, before this embellishment, had existed in the same place, and covered adjoining parts of Cheapside, betwixt Bread Street end and the Cross in Cheap. This beautiful monument is now gone, but it stood at the west end of the street, in the middle of an open space from which St. Martin-le-Grand (still one of the London parishes) branches out on the one hand, and St. Paul’s churchyard on the other. The “churchyard,” still retaining its name, is now filled with gay shops, mostly for the sale of silks, feathers, and other female gear, and quite equal to the resplendent shops of the West End of London. The Cross in Cheap was one of a series which Edward I. built at every place where the body of his wife, Queen Eleanor, rested on the way from Herdeley in Lincolnshire to Westminster, where she was buried. In 1629 the appearance of the goldsmiths’ shops is thus described: “At this time the city greatly abounded in riches and splendor, such as former ages were unacquainted with; then it was beautiful to behold the glorious appearance of goldsmiths’ shops in the South Row of Cheapside, which in a continued course reached from the Old ’Change to Bucklersbury, exclusive of four shops only of other trades in all that space.” Another reason that had been early alleged for the concentration of the guild was that “it might be seen that their works were good and right”; for as early as 1327 complaints were made of the substitution of paste for real gems, and of plated ware for genuine metal. Some of the fraternity were wont to hide themselves in by-lanes and obscure turnings, and buy stolen plate, melt it down, and resell it secretly to merchants about to put to sea. “And so they made also false work of gold and silver, as bracelets, lockets, rings, and other jewels; in which they set glass of divers colors, counterfeiting real stones, and put more alloy in the silver than they ought, which they sold to such as had no skill in such things. And that the cutlers in their workhouses covered tin with silver so subtilly, and with such slight,[3] that the same could not be discerned and severed from the tin; and by that means they sold the tin so covered for fine silver, to the great damage and deceit of the king and his people.”