With the death of Richard we may fitly close the history of Mediæval London. The City no longer stands in isolation surrounded by its grey old walls: on the East and North suburbs are rising outside the walls: along the roads stand inns and taverns and houses for half a mile beyond the gates: Westminster is joined to London by a mile of Palaces as well as by the river highway: the old danger that the City might become another Venice—a state in itself—is gone: the other danger, that it would be seized by any King and deprived of its liberties is also gone. London was the chief town of the kingdom: the centre of the Parliament: the centre of intellectual life. Its institutions were by this time fully grown and fully formed. PART II SOCIAL AND GENERAL CHAPTER I GENERAL VIEW [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF LONDON IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY] Let us go back to the fourteenth century; let us walk about London in the reign of Edward III., great Captain and glorious Sovereign. Before we enter the City we will first stand upon the wall and look out upon the country outside. The wall itself, of Roman origin so far as the foundation and the core, has been faced and refaced and repaired over and over again. It is provided still, however, as in Roman times, with round bastions about 250 feet apart. One of these bastions, much rebuilt, overlooks, beyond the ditch, the church and churchyard of St. Giles, Cripplegate; the towers, erected at irregular intervals, belong to a period after the Romans. The wall is twenty-two feet high; the height of the towers is forty feet. The wall kept out the Danes in six successive sieges, it kept out Earl Godwin in 1052. [Illustration: THE WHITE TOWER] The most important repairs which the wall has lately received are those of the Barons in 1215, who, after entering the City by Aldgate, breaking into the Jews’ houses, pillaging them of their valuables, and taking away all their money, used the stones of their houses for the repair of the gates and the wall. In the year 1257 Henry III. caused the wall to be again repaired and strengthened. In 1282 the south-west corner was shifted west in order to enclose the House of the Dominicans lately removed from their old house in Holborn. This new part of the wall rose along the bank of the Fleet. It was built, but very slowly, by the Corporation. Once more, in 1328, the walls were repaired, and again in 1386, when there was a scare about a French invasion, and the citizens in great haste repaired the wall and the gates and cleared out the ditch. The frequency of the repair seems to indicate bad and slovenly work. In 1477 the wall was strengthened in many places. After this, little or nothing seems to have been done for it.