Many and various were the sports and recreations in which the ancient Londoners indulged on high days and holidays. It is to be feared that they did yield in some measure to the temptations of the maypole, the tavern, the cockpit, the bull-ring, and the gaming-house, and even found their way at times to “the vaulted room of gramarye,” in which the wizard exercised his art. But generally their recreations were of a manly and invigorating kind. They played football in the fields near the Holy Well, wrestled for the ram near Matilda’s Hospital, in St. Giles’s Fields, had horse-races and matches at quintain in Smithfield; and, when the Thames was frozen over, they tied sheep-bones to their feet--skates not having then come into fashion--and tilted against each other with staves in full career. Nor did they, at other times, neglect such aquatic exercises as were likely to train them to skill and hardihood. “A pole,” says the chronicler, “is set up in the middle of the river, and a shield made fast thereto. Then a young man, standing in a boat, which, being rowed by oars and driven by the tide, glides swiftly on, while he with his lance hits the target as the boat passes by, when if he breaks his lance without losing his own footing he performeth well; but if, on the contrary, the lance remains unbroken, he will be tumbled into the water, and the boat passes on. Nevertheless, there are always two boats ready to succour him.” Around the walls of London were houses, and churches, and hospitals; and Fitzstephen, writing with the scene before his eye, tells us that “on all sides, without the suburbs, are the citizens’ gardens or orchards.” But of all the suburbs, Clerkenwell, where stood the Priory of the Knights of St. John, and the great mansion of the De Clares, was the fairest. In fact, Clerkenwell, then a village some distance from London, was one of the most picturesque places in England, having on every side but that towards the city the prospect of wooded hills and uplands, mingled with luxuriant verdure; while the river Holborn, its banks clothed with vines, wound among romantic steeps and secluded dells; and there, among glittering pebbles, was the fountain called “Fons Clericorum,” from which the village took its name, because the youths and students of the city--and the schools of London were frequented by diligent scholars--were in the habit of strolling out, on summer evenings, to take the air and taste the water.