have already regarded the appearance of such a house. It was entered by a gate of architectural beauty, without a portcullis or a ditch, for there was no fortified house in the City except the Tower; though many of the houses were so strongly built, and protected by gates so massive, that any sudden outbreak of the mob could be kept back; thus the house of the Hanseatic merchants possessed gates massive enough to keep out the mob until relief arrived, or the foreign merchants could make good their retreat upon the river. You may learn the appearance of such a house from that of Hampton Court or any old College of Oxford or Cambridge. It consisted of at least two square Courts and a Hall between; a guard-room over the gate; a stable; a place for arms; a kitchen with buttery, cellar, storehouses, and a garden. Round the courts ran buildings two storeys high; the rooms were long and low and only used as sleeping-rooms. [Illustration: HALL OF THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN] One will find the houses more unclean than the streets. What can one expect? The floors are strewn thick with rushes, and it is costly to change them; they lie, therefore, thick with accumulations of refuse—bones, grease, and every abomination. Rushes are warm even after they are dirty, and warmth comes before cleanliness. Yet if we were to go into those houses where the better sort of citizens live, we should find sweet herbs and fragrant branches and strong perfumes scattered about to counteract the close and evil-smelling atmosphere of the sleeping-rooms. Let us consider the construction and the furniture of a London citizen’s house. Not, that is, such a house as Crosby Hall, which was a palace, or that of the Earl of Warwick, which was a barrack as well as a Palace, but the house of the substantial merchant, one of the better sort, say the house of a retail trader, and the house of a craftsman. Among the treasures collected by Riley may be found the specifications for building a new house. It is evidently a house meant for a man of position, one William de Hanington, a pelterer, _i.e._ a skinner or furrier: a member of a most wealthy and flourishing trade at a time when men and women of every consideration wore furs for half the year. Whatever the position of this pelterer, the house designed for him was evidently, though the dimensions are not given, large and commodious. Here are the exact words:—