Milton was born in this same Bread Street, near Cheapside, where a
warehouse numbered 53 now stands. His father was a scrivener--a writer
who prepared contracts, deeds and other documents, and the house in
which he lived and in which Milton was born bore the sign of "The Spread
Eagle." Signs in those days had great significance, for the houses were
not numbered, and distinctive sign boards were used in all professions
and trades. In former years a bust and a tablet marked the spot, but
when the present building was set up, the bust was taken down, and now
stands on a shelf inside the building on the third floor.
At the Watling Street corner of Old Change may be found the Church of
St. Augustine, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1683. R. H. Barham,
author of the amusing "Ingoldsby Legends," was rector here for thirteen
years prior to his death in 1845.
Watling Street is the present day form of an old Roman road that
extended from London to Dover.
Further to the south is all that is left of a very old thoroughfare
called Knightrider Street. In long ago times it was a direct way from
the Tower to Smithfield, and came by its name in memory of the knights
who clattered through it on their way to the tourneys at Smithfield.
Around a corner, on the north side of Queen Victoria Street, St.
Nicholas Cole Abbey stands, the first church to be completed by Wren
after the Great Fire.
Shelley the poet married his second wife, Mary Godwin, in 1816, in the
church of St. Mildred which is in Bread Street very close to where Queen
Victoria and Cannon streets meet. It was in the first year of her
marriage that Mrs. Shelley wrote her remarkable novel "Frankenstein."
Cannon Street is part of the chief road of Roman London, and had been a
main road for the Britons before the invasion of the Romans. At a
meeting point of this road with several others was the Roman central
milestone from which distances on all roads were measured. Here a stone
was set up 2000 years ago, and all that remains of it to-day is called
"London Stone," and may yet be seen. It is set in the outer wall of the
Church of St. Swithin, the saint who controls the weather, in Cannon
Street, and is protected with an iron lattice work. This stone was
superstitiously looked upon as something that afforded protection to
citizens and a defence for the city. The Kentish rebel, Jack Cade, so
believed it when he entered London in 1450, calling himself John
Mortimer and made straight for London Stone. Arrived there, he struck it
with his sword and declared himself lord of the city. Shakespeare has
him say in Henry VI.:
"Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone,
I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but claret wine this
first year of our reign. And now henceforth it shall be treason for any
that calls me other than Lord Mortimer."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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