“Well,” returned he, “as we have now arrived at rather an eventful period, perhaps you will begin to be more gratified; and here let me remark that the gate of London Bridge being so advantageous, as well as so immediate, an entrance into the very heart of the City, was too often the favourite passage by which the rebels of ancient days marched into the bowels of our hapless land. I have already given you one instance of this, in speaking of the Baronial Wars of the days of King Henry III.; and now, when we have arrived at the Year 1381, the 5th of Richard II., we find another melancholy instance of it in the insurrection of Wat Tyler. Stow notices this but very slightly in his ‘_Survey_,’ volume i., page 61; though in his ‘_Annals_,’ to which he there refers, page 283, he gives a much more full account of their proceedings on London Bridge, taken chiefly from the ‘_Chronicle_’ of Thomas Walsingham, a native of Norfolk, and a Monk of St. Albans Abbey, who lived in the time of Henry VI., and died in 1440; his history commencing at the end of the reign of King Henry III. His principal work, entitled ‘_Chronica Thomæ Walsingham, quondam Monachi Sancti Albani_,’ will be found in William Camden’s ‘_Anglica, Normannica, Hibernica, Cambrica, a Veteribus Scripta_,’ Frankfurt, 1603, Folio; where, on page 249 you will find his account of it; but, however, we’ll take the English one of old Stow, from the page which I have already cited. “‘On which day,’ says he, meaning Thursday, the Feast of Corpus Christi,--or June the 13th,--‘also in the morning, the Commons of Kent brake downe the stew-houses neare to London Bridge, at that time in the hands of the frowes of Flanders, who had farmed them of the Mayor of London. After which, they went to London Bridge, in hope to have entred the Citty; but the Maior,’--the famous Sir William Walworth, you remember,--‘comming thither before, fortified the place, caused the Bridge to be drawne vp, and fastened a great chaine of yron a crosse, to restraine their entry. Then the Commons of Surrey, who were risen with other, cried to the Wardens of the Bridge to let it downe, whereby they mought passe, or else they would destroy them all, whereby they were constrained for feare to let it down, and give them entry, at which time the religious present,’--perhaps he means the Brethren of the Bridge,--‘were earnest in procession and prayer for peace.’ As this fragment of History brought to my recollection a point of Heraldical enquiry, which I had long considered, I here interrupted my visitor, in the following words.