In considering the Palace of Westminster, we have the choice, as regards time, of any year we please between the accession of Edward the Confessor and the removal of Henry VIII. to York House. Let us take the close of the fourteenth century; let us attempt to restore the Palace as it was in the reign of Richard II. It was a time when that shadowy, intangible force called Chivalry was most active. Yet at best it was never stronger than its successor, which we now call Honor. Chivalry taught loyalty, even unto death; protection of the weak; respect for women; fidelity in love; mercy to the conquered; charity to the poor; obedience to the Church; fidelity to the spoken word--you may find these teachings in the pages of Froissart. Knights who obey these precepts are greatly extolled by poets; yet the opposites of these things are continually reported by historians. I think that we may roughly, but certainly, ascertain the chief besetting sins of any age by looking for the contraries, which will be the things which preachers and poets do mostly extol. It has been remarked that antiquarians are prone to fall into the incurable vice of looking at the past through the wrong end of the telescope. This comes from constantly endeavoring to reconstruct the past out of an insufficient number of fragments. Of course the result is that everything is reduced in size. Thus, many antiquarians, being afflicted with this disease, have found themselves unable to see anything but a collection of miserable hovels in that London of the fourteenth century which was a city of nobles’ palaces, merchants’ stately houses, splendid churches, monastic buildings, beautiful and lofty, side by side with warehouses, wharves, ships riding at anchor, crowded streets, and rich shops. No antiquary, however, is wrong in showing that Westminster was, at this time, nothing more than a City--as yet not called a City--gathered round the Church and the Court. To those who journeyed thither from London by the river highway, a line of noble houses faced the river, each with its stairs, its barges, and its water gate. Thus, taking boat at Queenhithe, the traveler passed, among others, Baynard’s Castle, Blackfriars’ Abbey, Bridewell Palace, Whitefriars, the Temple, Durham House, the Savoy, York House, before he reached the King’s Stairs at Westminster. At the back of these houses, where is now Fleet Street and the Strand, there were no houses in the fourteenth century, except just outside Ludgate. As late as 1543, according to the map of Anthony van den Wyngreede, the houses of Westminster were all gathered together in that little triangle opposite Westminster Hall, whose northern boundary was the stream running down Gardener’s Lane and cutting off Thorney. All beyond was open country lying in fields and meadows.