Chapter III: Part 3

“That platform represents Hell,” said Godmother. “The next one, which as you notice is on a level with the top of the church door, is _Earth_, and the two people upon it are Adam and Eve. You see there are one or two trees, to show that it’s meant for the Garden of Eden.”

“And there’s the serpent!” exclaimed Betty. “He’s wriggling!”

“Yes, there’s a boy inside that painted case representing the serpent, tempting Eve to take the apple. Now look up at the highest platform, level with the church windows. That is Heaven, and the figure with the golden crown, and the priestly robe, stepping from the window on to the platform, means God to the people. You have only to glance at them to understand how full of awe and reverence they are.”

Looking at the faces in the crowd, Betty saw that this was true, for the people were silent and grave. Many of the children, frightened by the black demons and the clanking of their chains, were hiding their heads in their mothers’ skirts, and some were crying.

“It all seems very childish and even absurd to _us_, doesn’t it? But remember these are simple ignorant people who can neither read nor write, and to _them_, it is wonderful. It is through these plays that they have learnt most of the Bible stories they know.”

“It’s awfully interesting!” Betty murmured, feeling that though at first she had been inclined to laugh at what seemed to her a funny performance, the people were so serious that she must be respectful.

“This fourteenth century is the great time for Miracle plays,” explained Godmother, as they walked away from the gaily-coloured crowd grouped round the church. “Most of the people have still very childlike minds, and they depend upon the priests and monks to teach them. We have noticed already how full London is of these priests, and everywhere, as you have seen, there are monasteries. Pay attention to them as we pass, because the next time we see London, nearly all of the monasteries will be in ruins.”

“In ruins? Why?”

“Think of your history. The Reformation is coming, when all the monks will be turned out of their homes, and the great buildings in which they lived will be pulled down, and all the enormous wealth now belonging to the Church will be taken away from it, and given to the State. England will become a Protestant country, and the old form of worship will disappear in London, as in every other town in the land.”

“What a pity about the monasteries,” Betty said. “They are so beautiful and splendid. It’s awful to think of not seeing them again.”

“Yes. You see London now when the Church is all-powerful. The next time you come, its power will be broken, and London will be a Protestant city....”

“Where shall we go now, Godmother?” asked Betty as they left the south side of the city, and recrossed London Bridge.

“Well, it’s almost time we slipped back into our own day. But before we do that, you shall just have a glimpse of the _Chepe_.”

“The _Chepe_? What does _that_ mean?”

“Didn’t we drive down Cheapside this morning?”

“Yes. I remember it. That busy street near St. Paul’s, was Cheapside.”

“And do you remember Bow Church in Cheapside?”

“Yes,” said Betty eagerly. “It has a lovely steeple with a dragon on the top. I always remember it because the bells that Dick Whittington heard, were the bells of Bow Church.”

“Well, come and see Cheapside as it looks now at the end of the fourteenth century. It isn’t called Cheapside yet. The people of London call it the _Chepe_, which is an old English word for _market_. The Chepe (_Cheapside_ in our day) is the great market-place of London. We needn’t walk to it. Just shut your eyes and wish yourself there. A magic visit such as this has many advantages. One of them is that we needn’t tire ourselves with walking.”

Betty did as she was told, and a second later looked round her.

“Oh, Godmother, what a nice place! But it isn’t a bit like _our_ Cheapside. It’s much wider, for one thing—and of course the houses are all different. Oh! it’s lovely.”

They stood in a broad open space paved with cobblestones. On either hand there were quaint houses like those in Thames Street, and among them a few much finer and larger, with carved balconies, and coloured and gilded coats of arms on their walls. “Those are the houses of the wealthy merchants,” said Godmother, pointing to the grander buildings. “Do you remember when we were in the car this morning passing a street out of Cheapside called Wood Street?”

“With a big tree at the corner? Yes!”

“Well, we are standing just about there.”

Betty gasped with astonishment.

“Oh! how difficult it would be to _imagine_ all this if I wasn’t actually seeing it,” she murmured.

Down the middle of the market-place, at intervals, were stone fountains, and close to where she stood (opposite the modern Wood Street), rose a beautiful stone cross.

“That’s one of the crosses put up by Edward the First, in memory of his wife, Eleanor. You remember the story? And that church on the right, is Bow Church.”

“But it doesn’t look a bit like the Bow Church I know!”

“Except for the foundations it’s _not_ the Bow Church we know, but another, built on its ruins. You have to remember that all this market, and in fact _nearly the whole of London_, is going to be swept away by a fire nearly three hundred years later on.”

“In the Great Fire, you mean? In the reign of Charles II? So I suppose _that’s_ why London looks so different in our time?”

“It had to be almost rebuilt, so no wonder it’s different.”

“What a pity!” sighed Betty. “I like it so much better as we see it now.” She scarcely knew which to look at first, the quaint timber houses surrounding the market-place, or the amusing crowd with which it was filled. In the open space before her were arranged wooden booths upon which bread, milk, fruit, poultry and meat were sold, just as in a modern country market. But the crowd round the stalls was very different in appearance from a modern crowd. The noise was terrific, for from every booth came cries from the sellers to buy, buy, buy! and everywhere there was laughter and screaming and singing.

“Why are the houses decorated, I wonder?” asked Betty presently. For beautiful draperies of scarlet and blue and purple were hung over most of the balconies, and banners fluttered from the windows.

“Don’t forget it’s May Day. The Lord Mayor is going to ride through the Chepe. He must be coming now. See how the people are hanging out of the windows, and crowding on to the balconies! Let us stand up here on the steps of the cross, and watch.”

In a few moments a pretty May Day procession was seen crossing the market-place, led by a boy playing on a pipe, and followed by young girls and children crowned with flowers, and singing. Then came the clanking of horses’ feet, and soon a stately-looking man riding on a horse whose gay trapping hung low, came into sight. He wore a rich crimson cloak trimmed with fur, and a flat cap of crimson velvet with a plume, and by his side rode several other splendidly-dressed gentlemen.

“Those are the Sheriffs, the men who help the Mayor to govern the city,” Godmother explained. “This Lord Mayor is very popular. Listen to the cheering of the people! And see, they are showering flowers upon him from the windows.”

Just as he passed the cross, the Lord Mayor reined in his steed, lifted his cap and bowed to the applauding crowd, and at the moment, Betty caught sight of the heavy gold chain that lay about his shoulders, and across his tunic.

“Godmother! There’s the very chain you took out of your cabinet,” she cried.

“It is. And do you know the name of the Lord Mayor who wears it? No? Then I’ll tell you. Sir Richard Whittington.”

Betty stared at her. “Not _Dick_ Whittington?”

“Yes—that’s Dick Whittington grown up, and this is the third time he’s been Lord Mayor of London.”

“Why, I’ve been to a pantomime about him!” exclaimed Betty. “I never knew he was a _real_ person.”

“He’s a very real person, as you see.”

“Then it’s true, about his cat, and Bow Bells ringing ‘_Turn again, Whittington_,’ and Alice, the beautiful girl he married, who was his master’s daughter?” asked Betty, all in one breath.

“I’m afraid it’s not _all_ true, though a great deal of it is. In the story, he’s a poor boy who leaves London with a bundle on his back, to seek his fortune. Stopping to rest on Highgate Hill he hears the bells of Bow calling him to return, for he shall be Lord Mayor of London. Well, I’m afraid he wasn’t a poor boy. He was the son of a country gentleman, and he was sent to live with a relation of his, a great London merchant called Sir John Fitzwarren. Dick was an industrious boy while he was learning his trade, and now he has grown very rich. His wife is Alice Fitzwarren, his master’s daughter, and he is Lord Mayor. So a good deal of the story is true after all.”

“But the cat?” said Betty. “Isn’t it true about his lovely cat?”

“_Something_ must be true about the cat, because later on, the image of a cat was put on all the houses that were built with the money Dick Whittington left for that purpose. So a cat must have had something to do with his success. I only wish we knew exactly what it was! Dick Whittington is now so wealthy that he sometimes gives banquets to the King, and he has a splendid house not far from the Chepe.”

“He looks nice and kind,” said Betty.

“He is very generous, and has done much for London. Already he is building a monastery and some almshouses for poor people.”

“Why, there are some Whittington Almshouses at Highgate.”

“Yes. But they were only built about a hundred years ago. They were built, however, with Dick Whittington’s money, and it was a nice thought, wasn’t it, to put them where, according to the story, he heard Bow Bells?”

“They said ‘_Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London!_’ And now he _is_ Lord Mayor, and there he goes riding by. It seems too good to be true that I’ve actually seen him, Godmother!” declared Betty excitedly. “I used to love the picture-book of Dick Whittington we had in the nursery when I was little. And I loved the pantomime about him too. It was so _jolly_ to hear the bells ringing when Dick sat on the stile at Highgate and listened to them.”

“There’s another old rhyme about Bow Bells, which tells a pretty story about these young ’prentices you see all round you, standing at the doors of their masters’ shops and shouting, ‘Buy! buy! buy!’ This is the tale. At one time an order was given by the Lord Mayor that Bow Bell should ring every night at nine o’clock. It was the signal for the shops to be closed. But according to the ’prentices the bell always rang late, and so kept them at work longer than there was any occasion. They were angry about this, and made a rhyme which they wrote out and put up against the clock:

‘Clerk of the Bow Bell, with the yellow lockes,
For thy late ringing, thy head shall have knockes.’

To which the bell-ringer replied in another rhyme,

‘Children of Chepe, hold you all still,
For you shall have the Bow Bell rung at your will.’”

“Oh, how nice of him,” said Betty. “I like the part about the yellow locks. Look! there’s a young man going past now with fair hair almost to his shoulders. He must be rather like that clerk who had to ring Bow Bell.”

“You will remember that rhyme the next time you go down Cheapside in an omnibus and pass Bow Church. Many other things you may remember also. For instance, when you look at the names of some of the streets leading out of the modern Cheapside, they will recall this market-place of the Middle Ages. Do you see, for instance, how certain articles of food like milk and bread and honey are sold in separate places? All the milk sellers have their stalls together, you see, and all the bakers are together over there, and so on. Well, certain streets in or near the modern Cheapside are still called by such names as Milk Street, Bread Street, and so forth, and they mark the very spots where now, bread and milk are being offered for sale. So you will perhaps find Cheapside a more interesting place now that you have seen the _Chepe_ of which it is the remains,” added Godmother with a smile.

“Oh, every time I see it, I shall remember this!” Betty declared as her eyes wandered over the beautiful market-place with its cross and fountains, its picturesque houses brilliant with coloured draperies, and its throng of quaintly-clad lively people. The bells of many churches were ringing and clashing merrily, but she heard the sweet chimes of _one_ above all the rest.

“Bow bells!” she said, looking up at the church. “I wonder if the Lord Mayor is listening to them now, and remembering the time when they said ‘_Turn again, Whittington_’!”

But the last words were uttered in Godmother’s parlour, and outside, a newspaper boy was calling the latest racing news. “_All the winners! All the winners!_” he shouted.

* * * * *

Two or three days later, when Betty happened to be walking down St. James’s Street with her mother, it suddenly occurred to her that they were near the London Museum.

“Do let us go in for a minute,” she urged. “I want to see if there’s anything there that will remind me of the reign of Richard the Second.”

“Why are you interested in Richard the Second?” asked her mother. “Are you doing his reign at school?”

“No. But somehow I seem to know how London looked then. I’ve got a picture of it in my mind, and I can’t think why.”

“Well, we shan’t find any room _labelled_ Richard the Second, of course,” said her mother as they entered the building, “so we’d better look for a room that has to do with the Middle Ages.”

“Here it is!” cried Betty presently. “It says _Mediæval_ London on that doorway. That’s the same as the Middle Ages, isn’t it?”

In this room, when they had looked at cases full of things that were made and used in the fourteenth century, such as bowls, jugs, lanterns, keys, ornaments and a hundred other objects, Betty’s mother all at once said, “Come and see this picture of London in the fourteenth century. Isn’t it a little place? How curious to think it was once like that.”

Betty gazed eagerly at a picture which represented the painter’s idea of the appearance of London about the year 1400.

“Yes, it’s very good,” she declared. “There’s London Bridge, with just a few old houses at one end of it. And there’s all that was built then of the Tower. And that’s the first St. Paul’s Cathedral, with a spire instead of a big dome. Oh! and look, mother! There’s St. Saviour’s in Southwark at the other end of the bridge. Behind it there’s another church called St. Margaret’s, where they used to have Miracle plays. Such funny plays. Only of course they taught the people about the Bible.”

Her mother looked surprised. “You know quite a lot about it, Betty!” she declared.

“It seems somehow as though I’d _seen_ it,” said Betty in a puzzled voice.

“How wonderful it is to think of the country coming up close to that wall that goes round the tiny city,” her mother remarked, still examining the picture. “Fancy being able to walk through green fields in Southwark!”

“The children picked flowers there,” said Betty, rather dreamily, “and came running back over London Bridge with them, and sang, ‘_London Bridge is broken down._’”

“My dear child, what an imagination you have!” laughed her mother.

* * * * *

That same evening, Betty had another reminder of London in the Middle Ages. In the library at home, when she was looking for something to read, she found a book full of poems about London. Some were by new poets and some by writers of long ago. A rather long one was called _London Lackpenny_, and though the spelling and some of the wording was curious, she could make out its sense. It seemed to be about a poor young man who long, long ago came to London, and found it was a difficult place to live in unless one had plenty of pennies.

“Why, he’s talking about the very _Chepe_ I saw!” she thought as she came to a certain verse.

“Then to the Chepe I began me drawne
Where mutch people I saw for to stand.
One offered me velvet, sylke, and lawne,
And other he taketh me by the hande,
‘Here is Paris thred, the fynest in the lande.’
I never was used to such thyngs indede
And wanting mony I myght not spede.
Then I hyed me into Eastchepe;
One cryes rybbs of befe, and many a pye;
Pewter potts they clattered on a heape,
There was harpe, pype, and mynstrelsye.”

“What have you got hold of there?” asked her father, looking over her shoulder. “Oh, that funny ballad written by old John Lydgate in the Middle Ages. I expect it’s quite a good description of Cheapside as it was then.”

“It’s just right. It was exactly like that,” Betty exclaimed, thinking of the booths in the _Chepe_, piled with goods, and all the noise and bustle and shouting, and the sound of music from harps and pipes, mingled with the clashing of church bells.

“How do you know?” asked her father, smiling.

But Betty hadn’t the slightest idea—till she saw Godmother again.

III

In Tudor Days

THE LONDON OF SHAKESPEARE AND QUEEN ELIZABETH

“What are we going to see this morning?” Betty asked on the following Saturday.

“We’re not going to see anything till I know whether you remember at least the _names_ of the kings between Richard the Second and Queen Elizabeth,” returned Godmother firmly.

“Oh, then, it’s to Queen Elizabeth’s time we’re going presently?” Betty exclaimed. “I shall like that. I really _do_ know the kings after Richard the Second, Godmother. So I’ll make haste about them. Henry the Fourth came next, and he was a usurper. Then Henry the Fifth. After him, Henry the Sixth (when the Wars of the Roses began), then Edward the Fourth, next Edward the Fifth, the poor little murdered-in-the-Tower king. After him, Richard the Third, his cruel uncle. Then Henry the Seventh, Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth (who died young), and then his sister Mary, and _then_ his other sister Elizabeth.”

“Well done!” said Godmother, laughing, as Betty rattled off the names. “Well, the reigns of all those sovereigns took up about a hundred and sixty years. So when we magically see London again, it will be a hundred and sixty years older than it was at our last visit.”

“Oh, can’t we go back at once?” Betty urged impatiently.

“Not quite at once. The car is here, and I’m going to take you to the Royal Exchange.”

Much as she loved the magic part of these Saturdays, Betty also enjoyed the drives through modern London, especially as she knew the magic would come later. So she gladly followed Godmother into the waiting car.

“The Royal Exchange?” she began, almost before they were seated. “I’ve been past it often. It’s that big place near the Bank and the Mansion House. But I don’t know what it’s for.”

“It’s the great centre for English trade affairs. There, everything that has to do with England’s commerce is discussed by the merchants who meet to talk and arrange their business.”

In a very short time they reached that busy part of the City where, close together, stand the Bank of England, the Mansion House, and the Royal Exchange. But before the car drew up, Godmother had called Betty’s attention to the names of two streets close by, and also, a moment later, to a curious sign hanging from a house. The first street was called Gresham Street, and the sign not far from it was a large gilded grasshopper over a door in Lombard Street.

“I want you to remember these,” she said. “Now we’ll go into the courtyard of the Exchange and look at the pictures.”

Betty followed her up a flight of steps in front of the great building, and found that the walls of a corridor running on all four sides of the courtyard within the entrance, had large pictures painted upon them. She soon discovered that much of the history not only of London, but of England, was shown by these pictures.

Before two or three of them she lingered with special interest.

“Oh, Godmother, look! Here’s the market-place of London in Roman times. The market-place we _saw_.” And again, as another scene with which she had memories caught her eye, “Godmother, there’s dear old Dick Whittington giving alms to the people. He was dressed just like that when we saw him last Saturday, and so were the boys and girls in the _Chepe_!”

She would like to have stayed much longer before the painted scenes (some of them represented things that had happened only a year or two ago, such, for instance, as the fight at Zeebrugge, and the Thanksgiving Service after the War)—but Godmother hurried her away.

“We’ll come again when we’ve seen a little more of London in the Past,” she said. “I want you now, only just to remember that you’ve seen the Royal Exchange of to-day.”

They drove back through Cheapside, Fleet Street and the Strand into Whitehall, where Betty looked up at that statue of King Charles the First on horseback, which stands with its back to Trafalgar Square.

“As we shall be in London of Queen Elizabeth’s time this afternoon,” said Godmother, “it may be useful to notice all that we are passing now. Where you see that statue of Charles the First, there stood in Elizabeth’s day, one of the crosses to the memory of Queen Eleanor. Remember that, for one thing. We’re passing the Horse Guards, with the soldiers on horseback outside. Remember exactly where the gateway stands. Now look at this line of houses and buildings on the left—Scotland Yard among them. Imagine them all swept away, what would you see?”

“The river,” replied Betty. “The Victoria Embankment first, and then the river.”

“Yes. Well, keep this picture of the present Whitehall in your head, because you will look upon a very different one this afternoon.”

Betty smiled in anticipation of “the magic time” that was coming. “I do wonder what London will be like in Queen Elizabeth’s day!” she exclaimed. “Do you think we shall see her? And Shakespeare too, perhaps?”

“Possibly,” said Godmother. “Here we are at home, and if you like, you may amuse yourself by looking at an old map I’ve got upstairs, made towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth. You will see that though London has grown bigger since the days of Dick Whittington, it is still full of open spaces and large gardens, even _within_ the walls. And outside them, where now we have miles and miles of streets, it was still nearly all open country, except on the south side of the river, where you will see some interesting buildings marked.”

Betty was interested in the quaint old map, but it was one thing to look at a map, and quite another to walk in the actual streets it represented, and she longed for the afternoon.

* * * * *

“How shall we get back to-day?” she asked when the time came.

“There are many ways of getting into the Past,” Godmother replied. “Sometimes a single word, or the sight of a picture, or a line of poetry is the magic that will send one there in the twinkling of an eye. To-day we will try one line from a poem written by a man called William Dunbar. No one has ever praised London better than this poet, who saw the city in the sixteenth century, though about fifty years before Elizabeth came to the throne. Shut your eyes, take this book in your hand, and say after me the line with which each verse of Dunbar’s poem ends:

“_London, thou art the flower of Cities all_,” repeated Betty obediently....

“Now you may look!” said Godmother after a pause and as Betty’s eyes flew open, she added, “We are in the middle of the sixteenth century. Elizabeth is Queen, and here we are once more on London Bridge.”

They were standing by the tower at the entrance gate, looking towards the tower at the other end, leading into Southwark, but Betty did not at first recognize it as the same bridge on which she had stood in the Middle Ages.

“Why, it looks more like a _street_ than a bridge,” she cried. And indeed when they began to walk across it, she and Godmother _were_ in a street. Gabled houses lined the parapets on either hand, shutting out any view of the river, and at the foot of all the houses, were shops. Half-way across the bridge stood a fantastic-looking house which Godmother said was called _Nonsuch_,—a perfectly delightful name, Betty decided. Then came an open space from which one could look up and down the river before the houses and shops closed in again and extended right up to the gate and towers at the Southwark end of the bridge.

“Oh, how it’s altered!” cried Betty. “But the little Chapel of St. Thomas is there still, and it’s the same bridge, of course, only built over with all these funny old houses. And how the dress of the people has altered too,” she went on. “Look at this lady coming with the enormous ruff round her neck.”

“But they’re still very gay, aren’t they?” remarked Godmother. “Here’s a fine young man approaching, with his long crimson silk stockings and his slashed doublet, and the little red velvet cloak hanging from one shoulder. You see the men are quite as gaily dressed as the women. Just as they were in the fourteenth century. Only now the costume both for men and women has changed.”

“London’s grown bigger since we last saw it,” said Betty, looking right and left up and down the river from the open space where she stood.

“It’s had nearly two hundred years to do it in. But though the buildings cluster more thickly, the old wall, as you notice, still remains, and people enter or leave London through its gates. There’s one of them, you see. It’s called Aldgate, which means Old Gate, because it was one of the first to be built.”

“Is that where Aldgate Street is now?”

“Yes. Beyond it, as you know, in our day, London stretches on and on, northwards and eastwards. But though there _are_ buildings outside the gates, as you may see, they are set in green fields, and there is still country just beyond the gates of London. Now let us wander about a little to discover what changes there are since the last time we were in the Past. Let us see how much of the old has gone, and what there is that’s new.”

They began their walk along the river bank, and very soon Betty saw here and there, great spaces in which sometimes a wall, sometimes a column was left standing. Otherwise, except for a litter of stones, nothing remained of the buildings but ruins.

“What have they been doing here, Godmother?” she asked in surprise.

“Pulling down monasteries, colleges for priests, and hospitals that were looked after by monks and nuns.”

“But _why_?”

“Now you’ll have to think of your history. About fifty years ago, counting that we are now in the year 1590, Elizabeth’s father, Henry the Eighth, was reigning. Remember his quarrel with the Pope. Remember how he made his subjects become Protestants. The monasteries were the homes of the monks, so they were swept away because they represented the old Roman Catholic faith. When Elizabeth came to the throne, London was as full of ruins as it had formerly been full of monasteries. Now, as we shall see, new buildings are everywhere rising on the sites of the old religious houses. But as yet there hasn’t been time to build over _all_ of them. This, for instance,” she pointed to the crumbling walls and broken pillars at which Betty was sadly gazing, “is still nothing but a heap of ruins.”

“What was it?”

“A college for priests, called the College of St. Spirit, built by our old friend Dick Whittington.”

“Oh, what a shame!” cried Betty. “It’s dreadful to come back to London and find so many beautiful places gone or spoilt, Godmother.”

“Yes, it’s sad, I agree. Though it’s true that the power of the Church had grown _too_ great, and most of the clergy had become rich and idle, it seems unnecessary to destroy the beauty of churches and monasteries because the people to whom they belonged were unworthy. However, nothing can remain as it was for ever, you know, and though we shall find much that was beautiful in the fourteenth century vanished for ever, we shall also see new beautiful things that have sprung, or are springing into life in _this_, the sixteenth century. Let us go and look at some of them. We’ll go first to the Royal Exchange.”

“Why, we’ve just been there!”

“Not to the one we’re going to see, though it stands in exactly the same place. We’ll walk to it through the Chepe.”

“It was called _Cheapside_ this morning when we drove down it,” said Betty, smiling. “How funny it is to think it should be really the same place.”

“More or less on the same _ground_, at any rate,” Godmother returned. “Here we are.”

“It isn’t so very much altered from the time we saw it when Richard the Second was king, is it?” Betty remarked, looking round. “Though some of the houses are larger and grander,” she added.

“You see many of them are built of brick and stone now. How handsome they are! This sixteenth century is the age for beautifully-built dwelling-houses. We shall see many of them along the Strand presently, and scattered about all over the City as well.”

“There’s Queen Eleanor’s cross, and there are the fountains and the booths and the funny shops, just as they were,” Betty observed.

“The same crowds, the same noise, the same bustle!” Godmother agreed. “The costume of the people is different, that’s all. They look very well off and happy, don’t they? England has become richer and much more prosperous lately. There are signs of it everywhere as you will not be long in discovering.”

“But there are lots of the old houses left,” Betty said.

They had turned out of the Chepe, and were walking down a narrow lane bordered on either side by the timber houses she remembered from her last visit to old-time London,—houses whose top stories so nearly met, that only a narrow strip of sky was visible between them.

“Yes, and they will last till the Great Fire sweeps them all away in less than a hundred years’ time. Now here we are at the Royal Exchange.”

They were out of the narrow lane now, and there, rising in front of them, was a fine, foreign-looking building of brick and stone with a high sloping roof, and pinnacles at the corners, upon each one of which was placed a huge metal grasshopper.

“Do you remember the name of the street I pointed out to you near this spot this morning?” asked Godmother.

“Yes. _Gresham_ Street. And we saw a big gilt grasshopper, something like those up there, hanging out from a doorway, in another street close by,” Betty answered.

“Well, Gresham Street is named after the man who built that Exchange,—Sir Thomas Gresham. And the grasshopper in Lombard Street is the Gresham crest. London in this reign of Elizabeth has become very rich and prosperous. Well, its riches and its prosperity have been so greatly increased by Sir Thomas Gresham, that I must tell you something about him. He is a great merchant who in this year, 1590, has a goldsmith’s shop in Lombard Street at the sign of the Grasshopper. For though he has been knighted, and now has a great house in Bishopsgate Street, he still keeps his shop. When he was a younger man, he went to Antwerp, where there was a fine building for the use of the merchants in that city. Now in London, there was no convenient place for the use of merchants who wanted to discuss business, so on his return, Thomas Gresham built that Exchange you see before you, and made it as much as possible like the Exchange he had seen in Antwerp. That, you see, accounts for its foreign appearance. He then presented the mansion to the City of London, and invited Queen Elizabeth to open it, and it was _she_ who called it The _Royal_ Exchange—(a name our present Exchange still keeps). Well, at the time at which we’ve arrived now, it has been open about twenty years, and has been so useful for commerce, that the trade of London has enormously increased. There are, of course, other reasons for the present wealth of the City, some of which we shall find out later. But that Royal Exchange has greatly helped its prosperity.”

“It’s quite different from the one we have now,” said Betty, “and it looks as though it ought to last for ages. Why isn’t it standing in _our_ day?”

“Because it was burnt down in the Great Fire, like so many other beautiful and interesting things. Then another one was built, and that also was burnt. So there have been _two_ Royal Exchanges on the same spot as that on which the third—our present one—stands.”

“Sir Thomas Gresham, in this reign, is rather like what Dick Whittington was in the reign of Richard the Second, I suppose?” Betty remarked. “Dick Whittington was a great merchant too, who did a lot of good for London.”

“Yes, London has been very fortunate in having generous merchants.”

“Now let us go back to London Bridge, and see if we can find other reasons besides the Exchange for the increase of wealth and luxury in this city.”

As Betty followed her, she looked back at Sir Thomas Gresham’s quaint building with its sloping roof, its high middle tower, and the gilded grasshoppers on its pinnacles. It was a very different place indeed from the one she had visited this very morning with all the roar and bustle of modern London round about it, but its _purpose_ was the same. For now, as then, the Royal Exchange is the centre of London’s enormous trade.

When they reached the river again, Betty noticed at once how much more crowded the shipping had become than it was in the fourteenth century.

On the side of the bridge towards the Tower, the broad sheet of water was filled with ships of a shape and build strange to her eyes, but picturesque and delightful in appearance. They were small, and had enormously high prows, coloured and gilded, and were hung with many gay flags and streamers.

“Some of those ships have sailed across the Atlantic to the strange newly-discovered country of America,” said Godmother. “Let us go down on to the quay, where you see the crowd of little boys round that sunburnt sailor. He is telling them all sorts of travellers’ tales, you may be sure.”

Betty ran eagerly down a slimy wooden staircase on to the quay that was thronged with sailors unloading some ships that had newly arrived. A rough, strong-looking man with a face burnt almost black by the sun, and large gold rings hanging from his ears, was talking to a group of men and boys who listened breathlessly to stories about gold and jewels, about marvellous animals and still more marvellous men, about wonderful islands under hot blue skies, all of which the sailor had seen in his travels.

Glancing at his audience, Betty saw by their faces how his words stirred their imagination and filled them with excitement.

“Such stories of foreign travel are being told in every inn by sailors who have come back from new lands,” said Godmother. “All through the present reign of Elizabeth, great English sailors like Drake and Hawkins, of whom you’ve heard, have been making voyages, and coming back to London with gold and all sorts of merchandise.”

“That’s one of the reasons why London is getting so rich, then?” Betty asked.

“One of the chief reasons. England has already beaten the Spanish Armada and become ‘Mistress of the Seas,’ and the ships you see here, go to and from this port of London increasing its trade and its riches every day. Now you understand why that Exchange built by Sir Thomas Gresham was so much needed as a meeting-place for merchants to arrange the enormous amount of business the sailors have won for them. London is becoming more and more a city of merchants, living in beautiful houses. We will go and look at one of them. It is called Crosby Place, and it’s not far from the Royal Exchange which we have just seen.”

“Crosby?” echoed Betty. “But I thought it was somewhere in Chelsea? There’s a Crosby Hall there. I passed it only the other day!”

“I’ll explain that to you in a minute, when we’ve seen where the house stands now, where it was built, and where it ought to have remained—in Bishopsgate Street.”

Before very long they had reached a most beautiful and stately mansion. It was of immense size, with windows wonderfully sculptured in stone-work. It had a long noble hall and splendid gateways and outside staircases leading to doors entering the building at different levels. A big garden surrounded it.

“Oh, what a lovely place!” exclaimed Betty.

“It has such a wonderful history,” Godmother said, “that I must tell you at least some of it.”

“It was built by a merchant, a rich grocer called Sir John Crosby, in the reign of Edward IV, so already in this reign of Elizabeth it’s a hundred years old.”

“Who lives in it now?” asked Betty.

She was watching with interest the men and women moving about the courtyard in the costume of Elizabeth’s time, the men with slashed sleeves to their bright-coloured doublets, and the women in brocade skirts, with big ruffs standing up at the back of the neck.

“The Mayor of London, a merchant called Sir John Spencer, owns Crosby Place now. You see what splendid homes the merchants of this reign possess! The nobles are leaving London and selling their palaces to the rich traders. But before Sir John Spencer bought it, many famous people from time to time had lived at Crosby Place. One of them was Richard the Third before he became king, and it was in that great hall that he heard the news of the murder of his little nephews in the Tower. Another celebrated man who lived here for a time, was Sir Thomas More, and here, as it is thought, he wrote his most famous book.”

“You mean _Utopia_, don’t you?” Betty asked. “We had a lesson about it in school yesterday!”

“Yes, I’m glad you have heard of it. After he had been here some years, Sir Thomas More sold Crosby Place to a great friend of his, an Italian merchant, who, after the execution of his friend, let the mansion to the husband of Margaret Roper—More’s daughter.”

“Poor Margaret Roper!” exclaimed Betty. “I expect she was glad to come back to the house her father had lived in, don’t you, Godmother? But she’s dead now, I suppose—in this reign of Elizabeth, I mean?”

“Yes. Crosby Place belongs now to the Mayor of London, as I’ve already said, and before long, his daughter, a very extravagant lady, married to Lord Northampton, will come to live here. I’ll show you (when we slip back into our own day) an amusing letter from her to her husband in which she explains how she must have all her houses furnished. She was so rich that this Crosby Place was only one of them. But no doubt she filled it with all the things she mentions in her letter, ‘cushions, carpets, silver warming-pans, fair hangings,’ and so forth.

“Another woman of a very different sort will also come to live here very shortly. I mean Sir Philip Sidney’s fascinating sister, the Countess of Pembroke, of whom you will read if you don’t know anything about her already.”

“I do know a little. Sir Philip Sidney wrote the _Arcadia_ for her, didn’t he? It _does_ seem strange to think I’m in Queen Elizabeth’s reign and that some of these famous people must be alive,” said Betty. “But, Godmother, you haven’t told me how the Hall of this beautiful house comes to be at _Chelsea_ now?”

“I must finish its story quickly. A good many years ahead this splendid Crosby Place will be partly burnt down, though its Great Hall will escape. It will fall partly into ruins and actually be used as a warehouse! Then almost in my day it will be restored, and finally become a restaurant. I remember having lunch there not so many years ago. But at last, not long before you were born, Betty, the Hall,—all that remained of this Crosby Place you are magically seeing now,—was pulled down to make room for modern buildings. But because it was so celebrated, and held so many memories of famous people, it was taken down carefully, and as well as possible put together again and built up on Chelsea Embankment.”

“It’s not a bit the same thing as having it here, where it belongs, though,” Betty objected. “It’s dreadful, I think.”

“I quite agree with you. It ought to have remained here in Bishopsgate Street. But let us enjoy our magic sight of it while we can, before we have to return to our own century.”

* * * * *

Just at the moment, Betty turned round quickly to look after a boy who passed, wearing a long dark blue coat, with a red leather belt round the waist, yellow stockings and a little white tab or cravat at his neck.

“Why, there’s a Blue Coat boy!” she exclaimed. “Whatever is he doing in London in the reign of Elizabeth?”

“He might better ask _you_ that question,” returned Godmother, laughing, “for he belongs to this age, and you don’t. But he reminds me that we ought to go and look at some of the great schools, and as you’re interested in that boy, we’ll see _his_ school first.”

A short walk brought them in sight of a stately pile of buildings.

“If we were back in our own century,” said Godmother, “this spot on which we are standing, would be Newgate Street. Remember that, and now think of London as we saw it in the reign of Richard the Second. Do you remember the Grey Friars?”

“Yes, the monks in grey robes, with bare feet? There were hundreds of them about.”

“Well, that’s their splendid church and monastery, though the monks themselves are no longer there.”

“Henry the Eighth turned them out, I suppose?” asked Betty.

“Yes, he turned them out, and gave their dwelling to the City of London. Then his son, the young Protestant King Edward VI, came to the throne. Now only a few days before he died, Edward listened to a very touching sermon from one of the new Protestant bishops, about the need for looking after poor children who were fatherless. He was so impressed, that he set apart this Grey Friars’ monastery to be a school for orphan boys for ever, and called it _Christ’s Hospital_.”

“And it’s still a school for them, isn’t it?” Betty exclaimed eagerly. “Why, my cousin Dick goes to it. But it’s not in London now. Dick goes to school somewhere in the country.”

“It’s only about twenty years ago that Christ’s Hospital, or, as we generally call it now, _the Blue Coat School_, was moved to Horsham in Sussex. Up to that time it stood here. At first, as you see, the boys were lodged and taught in the monastery that once belonged to the Grey Friars. Long years afterwards, the monastery part was pulled down and new houses built. But the school still stood on the old ground, and forty years ago, boys played over the place where hundreds of Grey Friars were buried. Now they play in green fields in the country, and live in red-brick newly-built houses, and have a new red-brick chapel instead of this ancient church.”

“Isn’t there _any_ of it left in our time?” asked Betty.

Godmother shook her head. “Another and quite a different church stands on its site, and instead of the old Courts of Christ’s Hospital, you will see when you come to this place in our day, a huge modern building—the London Post Office.”

Betty sighed. “What a pity! But even though the school is moved, I’m glad the boys still wear the same dress as they did in Edward the Sixth’s time. That makes even the new school still interesting, doesn’t it?”

“There go some of them,” said Godmother, pointing to where in the distance two or three yellow-stockinged boys were running across a courtyard surrounded by walls that even in the reign of Elizabeth were ancient. “I saw their descendants playing football when I passed near Horsham in the train the other day. And from the look of them, they might have been the very same lads.”

“That is what’s so interesting about London,” Betty remarked. “Though it’s so changed now—in the time to which _we_ belong, I mean—things that belong to the Past go on. In a different way, of course. But there’s always something about them to show what they had to do with the Past, isn’t there?”

“Yes, if it’s only the name of a street,” Godmother agreed. “Nearly every name in London is a magic key unlocking a door into some part or other of the Past. I’m glad you’re beginning to find London not quite so dull,” she added in a teasing voice.

“It’s simply wonderful—when you see it by magic,” Betty returned.

“Every one can see it by magic if they take a little trouble,” was Godmother’s reply.

“Are there any more big schools we can see?” Betty asked, as they turned away from the great monastery that once held the Grey Friars, and was now peopled by boys.

“Several. The century we are in, the sixteenth, is the great time for the starting of schools, many of which, like Christ’s Hospital, are great schools to this day. For instance, close to St. Paul’s, whose spire you can see from here, is the famous school of St. Paul’s, begun, or _founded_, as we say, by Dean Colet, when Elizabeth’s father, Henry the Eighth, was reigning. It’s been more than fifty years in existence already.”

“And now it’s at Hammersmith. Why, my brother Harry goes there!”

“So that makes it about four hundred years old in our day, doesn’t it?” said Godmother. “But it’s still the same school. Then over there, is Charter House, where the boys are lodged in a monastery once belonging to certain monks called the _Carthusians_. They remained there till _my_ day. But now, like the Blue Coat boys, they have moved into the country—to Godalming. They still call themselves Carthusians, though, in memory of the old monastery from which they came. We’ll go and see all that is left of Charter House when we slip back into our own age. It’s still very interesting and beautiful. Just now we must move on, for there’s so much in Elizabethan London to look at, that we can’t spend too long over the schools. We’ll go back to London Bridge, because it’s on the way to something I particularly want to show you.”

In a moment as it seemed, they were there, for one of the convenient things about these magic visits, as Betty had of course noticed, was that they were able to whisk from one place to another in a few seconds, instead of having to walk a long way to reach different parts of London.

“Are we going over to Southwark?” she asked, when they were half-way across the Bridge.

“Yes, but before we get there I must explain what we are going to see, and find out how much you know about the great men who are living now in this sixteenth century with Elizabeth reigning. We’ll sit down in the porch of the Chapel of St. Thomas.”

“This is where we sat before, two hundred years ago, when Richard the Second was king,” murmured Betty.

“And there are the English people still coming and going over London Bridge as almost in the same place they come and go in our own century to-day! People of the same character,—the descendants of those men and women we saw in the fourteenth century, and of these we see now in their doublets and hose, their ruffs and hoops. It’s only their dress that changes after all,” said Godmother, as though speaking to herself. “The Great War has proved that.... But I mustn’t forget we are in the sixteenth century now, and not the twentieth,” she added, smiling, “and you shall tell me, Betty, the names of some of the great men who are either living in London now, or at least often come to it.”

“Well, Sir Francis Drake, and Sir John Hawkins, and Sir Walter Raleigh,” began Betty, thinking hard.

“Yes, those are three of the great sailors. Now let us have some of the great writers.”

“Shakespeare, and Kit Marlowe, and——” Betty hesitated. “Oh yes, Edmund Spenser and Ben Jonson, and——”

Godmother nodded. “There are many more, but let us keep to the four men you’ve mentioned. Out of those four, three of them are play-writers, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson. When you see a Shakespeare play now, you go to a big theatre, don’t you, where according to what you can afford, you sit either in the stalls or dress circle, or upper circle, or pit, or gallery? Facing you, is a large stage, with scenery arranged to represent the different scenes of the play as they pass, and sometimes this scenery is very beautiful. Curtains go up and down to hide, or to reveal the stage at the right moments, and the audience sits in comfort in what is often a fine building.”

“Yes,” said Betty, nodding her head.

“Now, remembering our modern theatres, come and see the places in which Shakespeare’s plays are acted in this sixteenth century in which we find ourselves!”

They went on over the bridge to that part of Southwark lying along the shore of the river, which is now called Bankside. But instead of the modern warehouses and breweries lining the river, with the streets of South London stretching away and away beyond, Betty saw only a single row of small gabled houses along the top of a mound.

“Before that bank was thrown up, all the ground on this south side of the river was under water at high tide,” explained Godmother. “Now, as you see, meadows and gardens stretch behind these houses and it is all fertile land.”

“What are those funny-looking buildings dotted about in the fields?” Betty asked. “I don’t mean the inns, because I remember them, from the time of Richard the Second. There’s the _Tabard_, where we saw the pilgrims. But there are two or three buildings sticking up like towers. Do you see?”

“Those are the theatres. Come and see one of them. We’ll go into one that has just been built—_The Globe_, as it is called.”

Betty followed the old lady wonderingly as she led the way to the right, along a path by the river till they came close to a curious, tall, six-sided building. Over its door was an inscription in Latin.

“What does it mean?” Betty asked, as she gazed at this strange “theatre.”

“Well, we may translate it ‘_All the world’s a stage_.’”

“Why, that’s in ‘Shakespeare!’”

“Yes, and no doubt Shakespeare had that very inscription in mind when he wrote the line a few years ago—remember we are in Elizabeth’s reign!—in _As you Like It_.”

“Are they acting now? The play can’t have begun yet. There’s such a noise going on inside.”

Betty glanced about her at the crowd entering the theatre. Every now and then a boat rowed across from the opposite shore, would land a company of richly-dressed young men who, laughing and swaggering, pushed their way through the throng and went into the building.

“We’ll go too,” said Godmother.