Let us now leave the wall and begin to walk about the streets of the City—we are still, it must be remembered, in the fourteenth century. The first and most distinctive feature of every mediæval city, as compared with its modern successor, is the number of its churches and of its monastic foundations. The latter, it is true, are situated outside the very heart of the City—thus, there are no convents in Thames Street. The Dominicans, as we have seen, were at first outside the wall: one religious foundation there was in Cheapside itself, but that was due to the birthplace of a saint; all the rest were placed near the wall, either within or without, one reason being that they were founded late when the inner part of the City was already filled up, and another, that they were founded, for the most part, with slender endowments, so that they were compelled to get land where it was cheapest. But the churches stand in every street; one cannot escape the presence of a church; and the minute size of the parishes proves, among other things, the former density of the population. Take, for instance, that part of Thames Street which extends from St. Peter’s Hill to Little College Street. That is a length of 1600 feet by a breadth averaging 400 feet. This area, which is divided along the upper part by Thames Street, consists almost entirely of warehouses, wharves, and narrow lanes leading to the river stairs; the south of it consists of that curious little collection of inhabited streets, the whole of which was reclaimed from the foreshore; there are a tangle of narrow lanes and noisome courts lying among and between the wharves, which lanes and courts are always foul and stinking, inhabited by the people belonging to the service of the Port. There are actually five parishes in that little district. The first of them, St. Peter’s, contains not quite two acres; the second, St. Mary Somerset, about four acres; the third, St. Michael’s, Queenhithe, about two acres and a half; the fourth, St. James, Garlickhithe, the same; and the fifth, St. Martin Vintry, about three acres and three-quarters. Five parishes in this little slip of land! But if we take the whole slip of land, which we call the riverside—an area of a mile in length by about 400 feet in width, we find that there are no fewer than eighteen parishes in it. All the churches now within the City, together with those which must have been burned or destroyed, are standing in the century we are considering. So frequent are the churches, so scanty the dimensions of the parish, that the most remarkable feature in the architecture and appearance of the City is the church which one sees in every street and from every point of view. These churches have been already rebuilt over and over again. At first they were small wooden structures, like that at Greenstead, Chipping Ongar, with their walls composed of trunks cut in half and placed side by side. A few were of stone, for the name of St.