“I do not find, in the preparations for defending London against the Spaniards, in 1588, any orders concerning the guarding of the Bridge; though in the scheme for marshalling the City, then drawn up by Edmund York, and printed in volume ii. of Stow’s ‘_Survey_,’ page 569, it is observed that the Bridge is to be one of the places watched as a gate of London. This, however, was not the first time that the Citizens had been under military discipline, for Stow relates, in the same volume, page 567, that in September, 1586, when so much danger was anticipated from the conspiracies of the Papists, a series of orders was drawn up for their instruction. In these regulations it was stated, that the gates should be shut every night, and the Portcullises put in order; and that one of the stations of the watch by the water-side, should be by the engine which supplied the City with water, which was at the North-West corner of London Bridge, and almost adjoining to the present site of Fishmongers’ Hall. Both these anticipated dangers, however, passed away without any other effect upon London, than that of evincing the courage of the Citizens; and, after the notable defeat of the Armada, eleven of the captured standards were hung upon London-Bridge, towards Southwark, on Monday, September the 9th, the day of the Fair in that place, to the great rejoicing of all who saw them. “Besides the before-mentioned engines for supplying the City with water, there were, however, also Corn Mills erected near London Bridge, at a very early period in the sixteenth century: for Stow, in volume i. of his ‘_Survey_,’ page 42, observes that they were built on the Thames, about the year 1508. These were, however, not the most ancient machines of that nature erected about this place; for in the year 1197, in an exchange of the Manor of Lambethe for the Manor of Darent, made between Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Monks of Rochester, there is a notice of a Mill which ‘the aforesaid Monks have without Southwark on the Thames, towards the East, against the Tower of London.’ You may see the original instrument in the third volume of Dugdale’s ‘_Monasticon Anglicanum_,’ London, ‘In the Savoy,’ 1673, folio, page 4. It was therefore, upon these precedents, for the better supply of the City, in consequence of the dearth and scarcity of corn which had extended for several miles round London, and also on account of the difficulty of grinding meal for the poor, that in March 1588, the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty, petitioned Queen Elizabeth that they might erect four Corn Mills under two roofs on the Thames, near the Bridge, in parts where they could not occasion any injury. On the 1st of April, therefore, a commission was addressed from the Court, at Greenwich, to Mr. Rokesby, Master of St. Katherine’s, Mr. Fanshaw, Master of the Requests, and Mr. Peter Osborn, Remembrancer of the Exchequer, to call before them such persons as should be appointed