Blood of the Martyrs

June 27^th 

On this day in 1556, some 20000 people gathered in Stratford to witness the burning at the stake by the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor of eleven Protestants accused of  heresy.  The eleven were Henry Allington, Laurence Parman, Henry Wye, William Hallywel, Thomas Bowyer, George Searles, Edmund Hurst, Lyon Cawch, Ralph Jackson, John Derifall, John Routh, Elizabeth Pepper and Agnes George.  There is a memorial to them  in the church of  St John in Stratford.

There is another memorial to other Protestant martyrs of the time, including John Rogers, John Bradford and John Philpot, in West Smithfield, which is visited on our Wednesday morning walk  “Historic Smithfield, Clerkenwell and Holborn – Fanfare and Plainsong” walk ( see picture below).  

Many of those done to death here were later buried in the priory church of St Mary in nearby Clerkenwell (which after the Dissolution of the Monasteries became the parish church of St James).

By way of balance, there are various  memorials to the countless Catholics executed by the Protestant Tudors – and Stuarts - in the church of St Etheldreda in Holborn, which is also visited on our Wednesday morning walk  “Historic Smithfield, Clerkenwell and Holborn – Fanfare and Plainsong”.

There is another, near the site of the infamous “Tyburn Tree”, on Tyburn Convent.

Summer of Blood

 June 15^th 

On this day in 1381, the Peasants’ Revolt came to an end when one of its leaders was killed at West Smithfield.

The site is visited on our Wednesday morning walk “Historic Smithfield, Clerkenwell and Holborn – Fanfare and Plainsong".

There’s a little bit about the Revolt in my book, “The Lost City of London”, which reads as follows:

“In the immediate aftermath of the “Black Death”, the demand for labour came to greatly exceed the supply, City- and country- wide.  At the same time, the work-force had its wages frozen,  under the Ordinance of Labourers of 1349; and then became subject to an understandably even more unpopular, and extremely unjustly enforced,  Poll Tax in 1377.  Civil unrest followed in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, which  came to a head in a confrontation, at West Smithfield, between on the one side  a thousands-strong peasant mob (*), and on the other, heavily-armed knights and henchmen, officers of the City, and the  then boy-King Richard II, as chronicled by Froissart.  The revolt also effectively ended then and there, with the death of one of its  leaders,  Wat Tyler, at the hands of the Fishmonger and Lord Mayor of London William Walworth - whose dagger is to this day exhibited  in Fishmongers’ Hall.  (The other leader of the revolt, incidentally, was Jack Straw, after whom Jack Straw’s Castle on Hampstead Heath is named).
(*) By this time, the  mob had already slaked its blood-thirst by sacking some Establishment buildings in the City, including the Savoy Palace and the Tower of London, and killing many  of their occupants (among them the unfortunate Archbishop of Canterbury, Sudbury), together with many other innocent by-standers - especially foreigners”. 

Readers interested in further details should refer to Dan Jones’s (no relation) excellent “Summer of Blood”.  

To book a place on any scheduled walk, or to arrange a private walk, please email lostcityoflondon@sky.com or ring 020 8998 3051

Further information  is available on our website www.lostcityoflondon.co.uk

And for updates, news and promotions, why not visit (and 'Like') the Lost City of London Facebook page

The Wooden "O"

12^th June  - According to the Shakespearean scholar Steve Sohner, on this day in 1599, the original  “Globe Theatre” was opened in Southwark (see also the April 22^nd blog on “Shakespeare in London”).   

The site of the original “Globe” is visited on our Thursday afternoon walk “Historic Southwark – Shakespeare’s London and more”, together with Sam Wanamaker’s reconstruction  on Bankside.

A special themed walk on “The London that Shakespeare knew” is also available on request.

Romantic antics during a back-stage tour of the Reconstructed Globe

To book a place on any scheduled walk, or to arrange a private walk, please email lostcityoflondon@sky.com or ring 020 8998 3051

Further information  is available on our website www.lostcityoflondon.co.uk

And for updates, news and promotions, why not visit (and 'Like') the Lost City of London Facebook page

Royal Exchange

June 7^th  According to de Loriol, on this day in 1566, the first stone of the original “Royal Exchange” was laid.  The building was the brainchild of the financier and philanthropist Sir Thomas Gresham, and was modelled on the bourse he had seen in Antwerp.  

Much to the disgust of native Londoners, the architect was a foreigner.  On a related note, a  census taken in the City on this day in 1567 revealed the presence of 

“40 Scots, 428 Frenchmen, 45 Spaniards, 140 Italians, 2030 Dutch, 44 Burgundians, 2 Danes and 1 Liegois”.

The original “Royal Exchange” was burnt down in the Great Fire of 1666.  An eye-witness, one Thomas Vincent, wrote:

“The Royal Exchange itself, the glory of the merchants, is now invaded with much violence.  And when once the fire was entered, how quickly did it run round the galleries, filling them with flames; then descendeth the stairs, compasseth the walks, giving forth flaming volleys, and filleth the courts with sheets of fire.  By and by, down fall all the kings upon their faces, and the greatest part of the stone building after them, with such a noise as was dreadful and astonishing”.

A replacement was built in 1669, and burnt down in 1838; a second replacement, in turn built in 1844.  

The Royal Exchange today - built in 1844

The grasshopper on the top of the building is Gresham’s insignia.

The “Royal Exchange” is visited  on our Friday afternoon walk “Tower to Temple – The Heart of the City”.

Our Friday afternoon walk starts at Tower Hill tube station at 2pm, and finishes at Temple tube station. It lasts approximately 2 hours.

This walk can also be booked privately for other days and times (please note that this particular walk is best experienced on week-days, because the Inns of Court are inaccessible at the week-end)

Reservation is required for both scheduled and private walks. To book a place, please email lostcityoflondon@sky.com  or ring 020 8998 3051

Further information about this and our other walks is available on our website www.lostcityoflondon.co.uk

And for updates, news and promotions, why not visit (and 'Like') the Lost City of London Facebook page

'Immortal with a Kiss' - 1st June

1st June -  On this day in 1593, the colourful Christopher Marlowe, poet, playwright and supposed spy, was buried in an unmarked grave in the church of St Nicholas in Deptford. Born the same year as Shakespeare, Marlowe was only 29 when he died. He had been fatally stabbed (on or around 30th May) under mysterious circumstances in a tavern also in Deptford. The Coroner's Inquisition at the time concluded that he had been killed by Ingram Frizer in self-defence, during an argument about a bill (or 'reckoning') - for further information, follow the link at the end of this blog post.

Plaque in St Nicholas' graveyard

St Nicholas Church, Deptford

It is believed that Marlowe’s tragic death is alluded to, as “a great reckoning in a little room”, in his friend Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

The “Rose Theatre” in Southwark, where Marlowe’s plays, including Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Massacre at Paris and possibly also Dido, Queen of Carthage, were performed, alongside Shakespeare’s, is visited on our Thursday afternoon walk “Historic Southwark – Shakespeare’s London and more” (see also April 23rd blog post).

The London of Shakespeare and his contemporaries is covered on all of our walks, perhaps most particularly our Thursday morning one “Aldgate, Bishopsgate and beyond – Priories and Play-Houses” and the Thursday afternoon one “Historic Southwark – Shakespeare’s London and more”. 

A special themed half-day walk on “The London that Shakespeare knew” is also available on request.

Reservation is required for both scheduled and private walks. To book a place, please email lostcityoflondon@sky.com  or ring 020 8998 3051

Further information about this and our other walks is available on our website www.lostcityoflondon.co.uk

And for updates, news and promotions, why not visit (and 'Like') the Lost City of London Facebook page

* * * * * * * * * * * 

  

POSTSCRIPT 

MARLOWE - THE 'DEAD SHEPHERD' OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORK

Christopher Marlowe

There are some who assert (unconvincingly, in my view) that Marlowe was in fact the true author of all the plays attributed to Shakespeare, and that he did not really die in 1593, but carried on writing secretly while hiding in Italy, shipping back the works supposedly written by Shakespeare. Putting that aside, Marlowe's literary influence on Shakespeare is widely acknowledged, and indeed some linguistic scholars have pointed to internal evidence that Marlowe may have contributed significantly, as a co-author, to some of Shakespeare's early dramas, such as Titus Andronicus. 

As mentioned above, Shakespeare references Marlowe in 'As You Like It' - believed to have been written in 1599. The play includes lines thought to refer to Marlowe's death, spoken by the clown Touchstone: 

When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a
man's good wit seconded with the forward child
Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a
great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would
the gods had made thee poetical.

William Shakespeare

The play also includes a direct quotation from Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander' (published posthumously in 1598, but possibly available to Shakespeare earlier in manuscript form).

Phoebe, besotted with Rosalind dressed as Ganymede, says as an aside:

 Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might:
'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' 

Allusions to Marlowe, and quotations from his work, also appear in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing and the Merry Wives of Windsor, among others.

Further information about the relationship between Marlowe's work and that of Shakespeare, and about the peculiar circumstances of Marlowe's death (leading some to think it was an assassination, and others to infer that the death was faked), can be found  on the Marlowe Society's website here  including the (translated) text of the Coroner's Inquisition here - a document not discovered until 1925.