But on leaving the city walls, the buildings were much less extensive; for though the village of Holborn was now joined to London, the backs of the houses, particularly on the north side, opened into gardens and fields; part of Gray’s Inn lane were the only houses that extended beyond the main street; great part of High Holborn had no existence, and St. Giles’s was a village contiguous to no part of London. If we turn to the Strand, we also find, that spacious street had gardens on each side, and to the north, fields behind those gardens, except a few houses where is now the west end of Drury lane. On the south side of the street, the gardens generally extended to the Thames; though some of the nobility had houses on the back of their gardens, next the water side. Covent Garden, so called from its belonging to the convent at Westminster, extended to St. Martin’s lane, and the field behind it reached to St. Giles’s. That lane had few edifices besides the church; for Covent Garden wall was on one side, and a wall which inclosed the Mews, on the other, and all the upper part was a lane between two hedges, which extended a little to the west of the village of St. Giles’s. Hedge lane was also a lane between two hedges; the extensive street now called the Hay Market, had a hedge on one side, and a few bushes on the other. Neither Pall Mall, St. James’s street, Piccadilly, or any of the streets or fine squares in that part of the town, were built; and Westminster was a small town on the south west, and south sides of St. James’s Park. Lambeth was, at that time, a little village at a considerable distance from Southwark, and there were no buildings on the south bank of the Thames, till a row of houses began opposite to White Friars, and extended along the river, with gardens, fields, or groves behind them, till almost opposite the Steel Yard, where several streets began: the Borough extended a considerable distance from the bridge to the south, and the buildings to the east as far as the Tower. This was the state of this great metropolis, so lately as in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and how inconsiderable soever it must appear, when compared with its present dimensions, yet, by order of that Queen, a proclamation was published, by which all persons were forbid to build upon new foundations, and this order was twice repeated in the following reign. On the 1st of January 1559, the Litany, as now used, was first read in all the churches of London; and about this time the populace not only destroyed all the statues and pictures of the saints in the churches, but most of their rich robes, altar cloths, books, and sepulchral banners.