happened when the people went to Blackfriars instead of the Bank for their play, would be felt by the whole fraternity of watermen. We have arrived at the time when the bear baiting attracted less than the play acting: when the amphitheatres were turned into theatres: and when Bankside became the residence of the poets and the players. They came; unfortunately the other people did not go away. There remained the tribe of them who made the music and found the dancers and the tumblers, the mummers and the conjurers: there remained the men--a rough and brutal lot--who looked after the bears and the dogs: the men who wielded quarterstaff and showed sword play, a swaggering and bullying company: there remained the young bloods who came over from their peaceful shops and warehouses to enjoy the sport and the conversation and talk of the place: there remained the ribald crew of men and women who naturally belong to such gatherings. There was another population at Westminster outside the King's House like unto this at Southwark: these, too, existed for the amusement of the King's courtiers and men-at-arms. The Southwark folk existed for the amusements of not the highest class of London City. The poets came, therefore, to this place in order to be near these theatres: they brought no improvement in example, in morals, or in manners: they lived among the people, and their lives were mostly as disorderly and their morals as loose as the company among whom they walked and talked. Southwark in the early sixteenth century, it may be noted, consisted of two parts, the one wholly distinct from the other. The first part was the High Street with its four churches of St. George's, St. Margaret's, St. Olave's, and St. Mary Overies: in the High Street were the two Debtors' Prisons: in the High Street was the ancient hospital: there also was the long succession of inns, stately, ample, frequented by merchants and capable of stabling an immense number of packhorses, and of receiving as many waggons as could fill the courtyard. The Palaces were mostly gone, turned into inns or tenements. The whole place was a great House of Call. It had no industries, it had no crafts: it had no civic or corporate existence. But it was respectable.