The History of Medieval London. Walter Besant

to Westminster and was crowned with due ceremony.

      In the second year of his reign he granted a Charter to the City in which he confirmed all past privileges and liberties. The Mayor, Recorder, and Aldermen past the chair, were appointed perpetual justices as long as they continued to be Aldermen. They were also constituted justices of Oyer and Terminer for the trying of all malefactors within their jurisdiction; they were exempt from serving on Juries or on Foreign Assizes, and from having to undertake certain offices; they were empowered to hold a Fair in the Borough of Southwark; and they received certain other privileges connected with waifs, strays, and treasure trove. Three other Charters were granted by Edward. All of them will be found in the Appendix.

      The year 1463 was taken up by another campaign in the north, with sieges of castles, and with the usual crop of treasures, perjuries, arrests, and beheadings. Surely there was never any war or contest more disgraced by change of sides, broken oaths, and villainies, than this War of the Roses.

      Edward returned to London in February 1463, and was received by a procession of barges. It has been observed, doubtless, that the mediæval citizens were at all times perfectly regardless of the season: they had a Riding in January, a Coronation in December, a water procession in February quite as happily as in July or August. Yet it is very certain that the climate was as capricious and as uncertain then as now.

      In 1464 the King married secretly Elizabeth, the young widow of Sir John Grey, and daughter of Lord Rivers. The Queen was crowned in May 1465. In the same year the unfortunate King Henry was taken prisoner, and brought to the Tower of London. At this point we may take up the somewhat tangled story of Alderman Coke. In the early years of King Edward’s reign Coke was treated with special favour by the King. Other Aldermen were made plain Knights. Coke was made a Knight of the Bath. He had a town-house and a country seat, Gidea Hall in Essex. It was this Coke who, when he was made Lord Mayor, finding at an entertainment that the most honourable seat at the table, which belonged to himself, had been taken by the Lord High Treasurer, refused to sit down at all, and with the Aldermen and the citizens retired to his own house, where he gave a dinner.

      Coke in 1465 was impeached of treason. What kind of treason? Gregory says that many men both of London and of other towns were also impeached. Treason was everywhere. Every man’s dearest friend conspired against him. When one sees the things that were done by great lords we may believe the charges against the merchants. The times, moreover, were doubtful. It behoved men who were afraid of losing their substance, if not their heads, to be ready at any moment for a change. Therefore Alderman Sir Thomas Coke, K.C.B., may very well have carried on treasonable correspondence with the other side. He was arrested, released on bail, arrested again, his effects seized, and his wife committed to the care of the Lord Mayor. He was acquitted, but in spite of his acquittal he was sent to the Bread Street Compter, and thence to the King’s Bench, and there kept till he paid £8000 to the King, and £800 to the Queen. Moreover, the servants of Lord Rivers had pillaged his house in Essex, destroyed the deer in his park, killed his rabbits and his fish, carried off all his brass and his pewter, and Lord Rivers obtained the dismissal of the judge who acquitted him. When Henry VI. was restored Coke had his property restored, but on power being regained by Edward, he fled. He was caught, imprisoned, and then pardoned, with everybody else concerned. Coke is an ancestor both of Sir Francis Bacon and the Marquis of Salisbury.

      In a few years the proverbial instability of fortune was again illustrated, together with the wisdom—the cunning of a fox—of keeping in with both parties. It was Edward’s lavish gifts to the Queen’s brothers and cousins, and his neglect of the few great nobles left, that caused the next disturbances. The defection of Warwick, and the Rebellion of Lincolnshire, hardly belong to London history. But it must be recorded that the rebels reached Charing Cross, that they found in the “Palace called the Mews” Lord Rivers and his son, whom they beheaded, and that they captured the King. Edward, however, found means to escape and reached London, where he was received with loyal assurances. And so the war began again, as may be read in the History of England.

      On October the 1st, Edward fled to Scotland where he was certain to find safety at least. The Queen, then enceinte, took refuge in the Sanctuary. The Tower of London was surrendered to the Mayor, who held it until the arrival of Warwick and Clarence. But Henry was removed from his prison to the State apartments. There appears to have been no order maintained or attempted in the City during these distractions. Every man made haste to change his side, and the caps that had been tossed up for Edward now darkened the sky for Henry with equal zeal. There was a rising of the City rabble, headed by one Sir Geoffrey Gates, whose character is vaguely summed up by Maitland in the words, “of abandoned principles.” The mob, under his leading, spoiled the foreign merchants—Lombards, Flemings, and others—and then, probably having met with some resistance, they got over to Southwark, where they robbed, burned, and destroyed and ravished through all the Borough, together with St. Catherine’s, Limehouse, and Ratcliffe, the City not attempting anything until the arrival of Warwick, when the mob was dispersed and the ringleaders hanged.

      SHIPS OF THE PERIOD

       From MS. in Brit. Mus. Reg. 15, Ed. IV.

      Henry was once more a King, and lodged in the Bishop’s Palace. The Parliament, summoned in haste, met in St. Paul’s Chapter House and called Edward a usurper. But the Mayor took care to be sick and confined to his bed. Coke occupied his place, which seems to increase the probability of that alleged treason. The restoration of the unfortunate Henry lasted for six months. In April, Edward entered London again with the customary rejoicings, sallied forth immediately, met Warwick at Barnet, defeated and slew him, and returned for more rejoicings and in order to lead Henry clad in a long gown like a bedesman back to the Tower, and then marched into the west, where Tewkesbury witnessed the final destruction of the Lancastrian cause.

      Then followed, as concerns London, the gallant attempt of the captain known as the Bastard of Falconbridge. We may look upon this leader as a freebooter and as a pirate, or we may look upon him as a loyal and faithful follower of Warwick. From either point of view it is a striking episode in the history of the time as well as the history of London. Moreover, it is one of the few early recorded appearances of the English sailor.

      Thomas, the Bastard of Falconbridge, was an illegitimate son of William Nevill, Lord Falconbridge or Falconberg, Earl of Kent, and brother of the Earl of Warwick. He had received the freedom of the City in the year 1454, seventeen years before his attempt. (Sharpe, London and the Kingdom.) This distinction was in recognition of his services in connection with the destruction of pirates at the mouth of the Thames. As for his age, if he were about twenty-five at that time, he would be about forty when he led his men to the siege of London. He was by no means an unknown or an obscure person. The Earl of Warwick4 had made him Vice-Admiral of the Sea, “so that none should pass from Calais to Dover for the succour of Edward,” a post of no mean responsibility. Then, Grafton tells us, being driven into need and poverty, he became a pirate, and through his robbery and “shameful spoyling” got together a great navy of ships. We need not believe in the piracy; he probably held the navy for the Earl of Warwick, for whom he seems to have had a sailor-like fidelity. Nor is there anything to show need and poverty. Hearing, however, that his patron was again in the field, the Bastard resolved on striking a blow for him. He landed, therefore, on the coast of Kent and raised a large force of Kentishmen, who seem to have forgiven Henry for his perfidy in the Cade business and now joined the stout-hearted sailor who called himself Captain of King Henry’s people in Kent. He was not therefore a rebel, he was a soldier on the side of the Red Rose. He sent his ships up the Thames with orders to await his coming in the Pool off Blackwall; and with 17,000 men he marched through Kent and appeared before the gates of London Bridge. He wrote to the Mayor from Blackheath asking for permission to pass through the City, promising that no violence would be committed by any of his men. What the ships were to do meanwhile does not appear. It looks, however, very much like an attempt to seize the City. It is certain, further, that he had not received the news of Barnet, or of the death of his illustrious cousin. The Battle of Barnet was fought on 13th April. News could certainly reach the City on the same day, within two or three hours. But it was very possible that in those disturbed times, the ordinary channels of communication