For the continued noise and uproar of the City, for its crowds, for its smells, the people cared nothing. They were part of the City. They loved everything that belonged to it--their great cathedral; their hundred churches; their monasteries; their palaces and the men-at-arms; the nobles, priests, and monks; the Mayor and Aldermen; the ships and the sailors; the merchants and the craftsmen; the ridings and the festivals and the holy days; the ringing, clinging, clashing of the bells all day long; the drinking at the taverns; the wrestling and the archery; the dancing; the pipe and tabor; the pageants, and the mumming and the love-making--all, all they loved. And they thought in their pride that there was not anywhere in the whole habitable world--witness the pilgrims and the ship-captains, who had seen the whole habitable world--any city that might compare with famous London Town. FOOTNOTES: [13] Plague in 1348, 1361, 1367, 1369, 1407, 1478, 1485, and 1500. [14] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry_, p. 416. VI TUDOR I. SPRING-TIME AMONG THE RUINS If the London of the Third Edward was a city of palaces, that of Queen Elizabeth was a city of ruins. Ruins everywhere! Ruins of cloisters, halls, dormitories, courts, and chapels, and churches. Ruins of carved altar-pieces, canopies, statues, painted windows, and graven fonts. Ruins of old faiths and old traditions. Ruins everywhere. Only consider what became of the monastic buildings. King Edward's Cistercian House, called the New Abbey, or Eastminster, was pulled "clean down," and in its place storehouses for victuals and ovens for making ships' biscuits were set up. On the abbey grounds were erected small tenements for poor working-people, the only inhabitants of that neighborhood where is now the Mint. Sir Arthur Darcie it was who did this. The Convent of St. Clare, called the Minories, was similarly treated, its site converted into storehouses. The old buildings are always said to have been entirely pulled down, but their destruction was never thorough. Walls were everywhere left standing, because it was too much trouble to pull them down. For instance, the north wall of the present mean little Church of the Holy Trinity, Minories, ugliest and meanest of all modern London churches, was formerly part of the wall of the nuns' chapel. [Illustration: BOAR IN EASTCHEAP]