“Ah! my good Sir,” answered the Historian of London Bridge, “if my memory were equal to your praise of it, it were, indeed, worth boasting of; but in my broken narrative I can shew you but here and there an isolated fact, whilst to the greater part of the story, we are obliged to say with _Master Shallow_, ‘Barren! Barren! Beggars all! Beggars all!’” “Take a draught out of the fragment of Master Shallow’s fat friend here,” returned I, pointing to the Sack Tankard, “and set out afresh, my old kinsman; but pray let us have the spur on the other leg now, and give us a little History to lighten our Law; with which request,--Here’s my service to you!” Mr. Postern bowed as I drank, and after having followed my example, thus continued. “You must doubtless remember, my good Sir, that during those unhappy Baronial wars which lasted nearly the whole of the extended reign of Henry III. it was supposed that Queen Eleanor of Provence opposed the Sovereign’s agreeing to the Barons’ demands; and that in revenge for this, how very uncivilly the Citizens treated her at London Bridge. Matthew of Westminster tells the story under the year 1263, in his ‘_Flores Historiarum_.’ London, 1570, folio, Part ii. page 315; and he, as you will recollect, was a Benedictine Monk of Westminster, who flourished, as Bishop Nicholson supposes in his ‘_Historical Libraries_,’ page 66, about the year 1307, when his history ends. The event to which I allude was, that as the Queen was going by water to Windsor, just as her barge was preparing to shoot the Bridge, the populace intercepted her progress, attacked her with vehement exclamations and reproaches, and endeavoured to sink her vessel, and deprive her of life by casting heavy stones and mud into her boat. Upon this, she was compelled to return to the Tower, where the King had garrisoned himself, as the City had declared for the Barons, whence she was removed to the Bishop of London’s Palace, at St. Paul’s. It was in the latter end of the same year, that Simon de Montfort, the sturdy Earl of Leicester, and the Baronial leader, marched his forces through the County of Surrey towards London, in the hope that his friends, Thomas Fitz-Richard, then Lord Mayor, Thomas de Pynlesdon, Matthew Bukerel, and Michael Tony, with whom was connected an immense multitude of the common rabble, would open the Bridge Gates to him. When the King, however, became acquainted with the Earl’s design, he left the Tower, and encamped with his troops about Southwark, to oppose his passage. As the Earl of Leicester relied more upon the assistance of the Citizens, than on the valour of his own soldiers, he vigorously attacked the King’s troops, expecting that the Londoners would favour his entrance. Henry, however, had still several adherents in the City; and, indeed, Thomas Wikes, in his ‘_Chronicon_,’ page 58, as it is printed in volume ii. of Gale’s ‘_Scriptores_,’ already cited, tells