The name of Milk Street, in a locality formerly given over to the sellers of milk, has crept into history because it was here that Sir Thomas More the great Lord Chancellor was born, on the east side of the way, near Cheapside in 1480. He was found guilty of high treason when he refused to acknowledge the lawfulness of the marriage of Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn and was beheaded in the Tower, the grim Tower whose frowning walls hide many dark secrets. One of the most important of London taverns, The Mermaid, stood in Cheapside beyond Friday Street and close to Bread Street on the south side of the road. Ben Jonson founded the Mermaid Club at this house in 1603, and here met in social converse Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Dr. Donne, Selden and many another author. It is recorded that here assembled "more talent and genius than ever met before or since." The house, among so many others, was destroyed in the Great Fire. In the epistle of Beaumont to Jonson, the Mermaid is spoken of thus: What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid; heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life. In Friday Street, strangely enough, the Wednesday Club had its meetings, and in 1694 were held the conferences, headed by William Paterson, Scotch merchant, which resulted in the establishment of the Bank of England, the first joint-stock bank of England. Friday Street was, in other days, the heart of the district of fishmongers, and came by its name because of Friday being the market-day and fish-market-day as well. In Cheapside, where Wood Street joins it, stood a cross, set up by Edward I., to mark one of the spots where the funeral bier of his beloved Queen Eleanor rested on the journey from Lincoln to Westminster Abbey. This cross was finally destroyed in 1643, during the mayoralty of Isaac Pennington, as under the Commonwealth it came to be regarded as a relic of superstition. [Illustration: The famous Plane Tree--Wood Street, Cheapside] Where Wood Street joins Cheapside, close by the northwest corner, grows a plane-tree, in a spot surrounded on three sides by houses, on ground estimated to be worth one million pounds an acre. Although the space is amply large for a building, and although innumerable legal efforts have been made to build here, the tree is protected in the leases of the nearby houses--evidently indefinitely protected under the "ancient lights" laws which prevent shutting off light from windows. Still further is the tree safe from invasion because it grows on ground that was once part of the churchyard of St. Peters--a church destroyed in the Great Fire--and an English law prevents building on sacred ground without a special act of Parliament. This is the tree that Wordsworth knew and loved, and of which he wrote in "Poor Susan":