Cheapside would seem to present a narrow and confined area for the manœuvres and the combat of mounted knights, yet King Edward held a great Tournament there in the year 1331. We must remember that between the Church of St. Peter in the west and the House of St. Thomas of Acon in the east the street was a great deal wider than it was afterwards: for a length of 750 feet east and west it had a width of something like 150 feet; the space being occupied chiefly by stalls. It narrowed on the east side at the Poultry, and on the west side at St. Peter’s Church, part of the burial ground of which still remains. Stow’s account of what happened at the Tournament is as follows:— “In the middle of the City of London in a street called Cheape, the stone pavement being covered with sand, that the horses might not slide when they strongly set their feet to the ground, the King held a tournament three days together, with the nobility, valiant men of the realm, and other some strange knights. And to the end the beholders might with the better ease see the same, there was a wooden scaffold erected across the street, like unto a tower, wherein Queen Philippa and many other ladies, richly attired, and assembled from all parts of the realm, did stand to behold the jousts: but the higher frame, on which the ladies were placed, brake in sunder, whereby they were with some shame forced to fall down, by reason whereof the knights, and such as were underneath were grievously hurt: wherefore the Queen took great care to save the carpenters from punishment, and through her prayers (which she made upon her knees) pacified the King and Council, and thereby purchased great love of the people. After which time the King caused a shed to be strongly made of stone for himself, the Queen, and other estates to stand on, and there to behold the joustings, and other shows, at their pleasure, by the Church of St. Mary Bow, as is showed in Cordwainer Street Ward.” The stone “selde” or shed, as Stow calls it, was still standing in his time. “Without the north side of St. Mary Bow towards West Cheap a fair building of stone called in record Seldam: a shed which greatly darkeneth the said church; for by means thereof all the windows and doors of that side are stopped up.” Henry IV. granted the place to certain Mercers who established shops there but did not pull it down or alter it, and it remained until the Great Fire as the place from which great personages witnessed City shows. The places most commonly used for tournaments were Smithfield and Tothill Fields. At the former was held a very great tournament thirty years later, in the presence of the King and Queen, and another forty years after there was another when the old King conducted thither, to grace the sports, his mistress Alice Perrers, sitting in a triumphal chariot, as the “Lady of the Sun.”