Outside Cripplegate the houses begin again, leaving, between, the lower Moorfields dotted with ponds; there are houses lining the road outside Aldersgate. The courts are still standing of St. Bartholomew’s Priory, Charter House, St. John’s Priory, and the Clerkenwell Nunnery; Smithfield is surrounded with houses; Bridewell with its two square courts stands upon the river bank; Fleet Street is irregular in shape, the houses being nowhere in line; the courts of Whitefriars are still remaining. The Strand has all its great houses facing the river; their backs open upon a broad street with a line of mean houses on the north side. On the south of the river there is a line of houses on the High Street; a line of houses along the river bank on either side; and another one running near Bermondsey Abbey. Within the walls we observe that some of the Religious Houses have quite disappeared; Crutched Friars, for instance; there is a vacant space which is probably one of the courts of St. Helen’s; the Priory of the Holy Trinity preserves its courts, but there is no sign of the church; there are still visible the courts and gardens of Austin Friars; there is still the great court of the Grey Friars; but the buildings of Blackfriars seem to have vanished entirely. [Illustration: BRIDEWELL PALACE AND THE ENTRANCE TO THE FLEET RIVER AS THEY APPEARED IN 1660 E. Gardner’s Collection.] But Sir Thomas More has left us a description of London in his time. It is a description in terms too vague, yet interesting. He calls the City Amaurote and the Thames he calls the Anyder. “The River Anyder riseth four and twenty miles above Amaurote, out of a little spring: but being increased by other small floods and brooks that run into it: and, among others, two somewhat bigger ones. Before the City, it is half a mile broad (hardly so much now as it was in former days being pent in and straitned to a narrower space, by the later buildings on each side): and further, broader. By all that space that lyeth between the Sea and the City, and a good sort of land also above, the water ebbs and flows six hours together, with a swift tide; when the sea flows in to the length of thirty miles, it fills all the Anyder with salt water, and drives back the fresh water of the river; and somewhat further, it hangeth the sweetness of fresh water with saltness: but a little beyond that, the river waxeth sweet, and runneth foreby the City fresh and pleasant; and when the sea ebbs and goes back again, this fresh water follows it almost to the very fall into the sea. [Illustration: LONDINIUM FERACISSIMI ANGLIÆ REGNI METROPOLIS]