Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present

John Stuart Mill · en
Still the Londoners seem always to have been a flower-loving people, and
although the stern Puritans banished their May-poles and Whitsuntide
games, they were revived again at the Restoration, and continued, but
with little alteration, until the middle of the last century. Even
chatty old Pepys allowed his wife to go down into the neighbourhood of
Greenwich, so that she might rise early and wash her face in May-dew;
and bluff Hal, attended by his queen and nobles, went out to "do
observance to the May" at Shooter's Hill. We cannot help marvelling,
while such a love for the beauties of nature prevailed, that no such
thing as a regular flower-market should exist. It is true the dramatists
mention the smell that pervaded Bucklersbury; and no doubt a few
centuries back this was the chief spot where the country-people
assembled and sold the flowers and fruits they brought from the country.
That thitherward they came, streaming from the wild woods of Hampstead
and Highgate, or from the wilder wastes on which Norwood now stands,
each bearing their burden into "Bucklersbury at simple-time," when only
one bridge spanned across the Thames.

Yet it must have been a merry London when, to quote the words of an old
chronicler, "the king himself rose early in the morning to fetch May or
green boughs--he fresh and richly appareled; and all his knights,
squires, and gentlemen clothed in white satin; his guards and yeomen of
the crown in white sarsenet. And so went every man with his bow and
arrows, shooting to the wood; and so repaired again to the court, every
man with a green bough in his cap." This was the time when, although
London was without its Covent Garden Market, in May, according to
Herrick's description:

    "Each field became a street--each street a park,
     Made green, and trimm'd with trees.
     Devotion gave each house a bough, a branch;
               Each porch and door
     With white-thorn neatly was inwove,
     As if they were the cooler shades of love."

In the first volume of the _Illustrated London News_ we find the
following description of the church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden.