To see this closely-crowded neighbourhood thoroughly would require many "ups and downs." Old Fish-street was formerly the great fish-market of London, when Queenhithe rivalled Billingsgate, and was the greatest landing quay in the City; the church of St. Mary Somerset, built by Wren, stands here. The former church was called St. Mary's Mounthaut, or Mounthaw, as I find it spelt in an old pamphlet, which states that Mr. Thrall was "sequestered and shamefully abused" when the clergymen of London had to make room for the Puritans. Old Fish-street-hill had then two churches, but after the Great Fire that of St. Mary's Mounthaw was not rebuilt. This is the old Saxon name of the berry of the hawthorn, and there was a time when Old Fish-street-hill was celebrated for its hawthorns, when it was called Hagthorn-hill or Mounthaw, long before old St. Mary's was built upon it. The pamphlet I have alluded to was printed in 1661, and is entitled, "A general Bill of the Mortality of the Clergy of London, or a brief Martyrology and Catalogue of the learned, grave, religious, and painful Ministers of the City of London, who have been imprisoned, plundered, and barbarously used, and deprived of all livelihood for themselves and their families, in the late Rebellion, for their constancy in the Protestant religion established in this kingdom, and their loyalty to the king under that _grand_ Persecution. London: printed against Bartholom' Day." This pamphlet, as the date shews, was issued soon after the restoration of Charles II., no doubt with the view of giving him a broad hint that their loyalty and sufferings ought not to be forgotten in the then "good time coming." Whether or not any thing was done for them by the "Merry Monarch," we have no means of ascertaining. We shall occasionally refer to this curious list, to shew the sufferings of the clergy during the period of the Commonwealth. Stowe tells us that the monuments of the old church of St. Mary Somerset were defaced; but whether by time or sacrilegious hands, he says not, nor can we now know, for the Great Fire destroyed all the traces that time had so long spared. We would rather the old church with the poetical name had been rebuilt on the ancient Hawthorn Mount than this. Stowe thinks that the old name of St. Mary Somerset was Summer Hithe. Summer and hawthorns! how we love the memory of the old historian for calling up these pleasant associations! We may be wrong in the name, but, for the sake of the poetry, we must picture the pretty Saxon maids, before London was a city, wandering down Mounthaw to Summer-wharf between long lines of hawthorn hedges, to see their lovers return from fishing in the Thames, or to watch the arrival of some corn-barque lower down the bank by Queenhithe. In Fish-street we have still a portion of the old burial-ground that belonged to St. Mary's Mounthaw.