The Bridge, as the only approach to the city from the south, was the scene of many wonderful pageants and processions, as our victorious Kings came back from their wars with France, or returned to England with their brides from overseas. Such a magnificent spectacle was the crossing in state of Henry V. after the great victory of Agincourt in the year 1415. The battle, as most of you know, took place in October of that year, and at the end of November the King passed over the Bridge at the head of his most distinguished prisoners and his victorious soldiers, amid the tumultuous rejoicing of London’s jubilant citizens. Yet another strange scene was enacted when Wat Tyler, at the head of his tens of thousands, passed over howling and threatening, after being temporarily held back by the gates which stood at the south end of the Bridge. So the old Bridge lasted on, living through momentous days, till, in the year 1832, it was removed to give place to the new London Bridge which had been erected sixty yards to the westwards. CHAPTER SIX _How the City grew_ (_in the Middle Ages_) London in that period which we speak of as the Middle Ages was indeed a remarkable city. Dotted about all over it, north and south, west and east, were great monasteries and nunneries and churches, for in those days the Church was a tremendous power in the land; while huddled together within its confines were shops, houses, stores, palaces, all set down in a bewildering confusion. Of palaces there was indeed a profusion; in fact, London might well have been called a City of Palaces. But they were not arranged in long lines along the banks of canals, as were those of Venice, nor round fine stately squares, as in Florence, Genoa, and other famous cities of the Continent. London’s palaces nestled in the city’s narrow, muddy lanes, between the warehouses of the merchants and the hovels of the poor. They paid little or no attention to external beauty, but within they were splendid structures. Now, what did this mean? That the common people of London constantly came into contact with the great ones of the land. The apprentice, sent on an errand by his master, might at any moment be held up as Warwick the King-maker, let us say, emerged from his gateway, followed by a train of several hundred retainers all decked out in his livery; or the Queen and her ladies might pass in gay procession to view a tournament in the fields just north of the Chepe. In that way the citizens learned right from their earliest day that London was not the only place in England, that there were other folk in the land, and great ones too, who were not London merchants and craftsmen.