Fitzstephen's London
This description of the city of London, by William Fitzstephen, was written as the opening chapter of his Life of Thomas Becket shortly before 1183. About 25,000 people live in London at this time.
And incense; from the Scythians arms of steel
Well-tempered; oil from the rich groves of palm
That spring from the fat lands of Babylon;
Fine gems from Nile, from China crimson silks;
French wines; and sable, vair and miniver
From the far lands where Russ and Norsemen dwell.” London, as the chroniclers have shown, is far older than Rome. For, owing its birth to the same Trojan ancestors, it was founded by Brutus before Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus. Wherefore they both still use the ancient laws and like institutions. London like Rome is divided into wards. In place of Consuls it has Sheriffs every year; its senatorial order and lesser magistrates; sewers and conduits in its streets, and for the pleading of diverse causes, demonstrative, deliberative and judicial, it has its proper places, its separate courts. It also has its assemblies on appointed days. I do not think that there is any city deserving greater approval for its customs in respect to church-going, honor paid to the ordinances of God, keeping of feast-days, giving of alms, entertainment of strangers, ratifying of bethrothals, contracts of marriage, celebration of nuptials, furnishing of banquets, cheering of guests, and like·wise for their care in regard to the rites of funeral and the burial of the dead. The only plagues of London are ·the immnoderate drinking of fools and the frequency of fires. To that which I have said this also must be added, that almost all Bishops, Abbots and Magnates of England are, as it were, citizens and freemen of the City of London, having lordly habitations there, whither they repair and wherein they make lavish outlay, when summoned to the City by our Lord the King or by his Metropolitan to councils and great assemblies, or drawn thither by their ovm affairs. Furthermore let us consider also the sports of the City, since it is not meet that a city should only be useful and sober, unless it also be pleasant and merry. Wherefore on the seals of the High Pontiffs down to the time when Leo was pope, on the one side of the signet Peter the Fisherman was engraved and over him a key stretched forth from heaven as it were by the hand of God, and around it the verse, “For me thou left’st the ship; take though the key”. And on the other side was engraved a city with this device, “Golden Rome”. Also it was said in praise of Caesar Augustus and Rome: “All night it rains; with dawm the shows return. Caesar, thou shar ‘st thine empery with Jove”. London in place of shows in the theatre and stage-plays has holier days, wherein are shown forth the miracles wrought by Holy Confessors or the sufferings which glorified the constancy of Martyrs. Moreover, each year upon the day called Carnival -- to begin with the sports of boys (for we were all boys once) -- boys from the schools bring fighting-cocks to their master; and the whole forenoon is given up to boyish sport; for they have a holiday in the schools that they may watch their cocks do battle. After dinner all the youth of the City goes out into the fields to a much-frequented game of ball. The scholars of each school have their own ball and almost all the vmrkers of each trade have theirs also in their hands. Elder men and fathers and rich citizens come on horse-back to watch the contests of their juniors, and after their fashion are young again with the young; and it seems that the motion of their natural heat is kindled by the contemplation of such violent motion and by their partaking in the joys of untrammelled youth. Every Sunday in Lent after dinner a “fresh swarm of young gentles” goes forth on war-horses, “steeds skilled in the contest”, of which each is “apt and schooled to wheel in circles round“. From the gates burst forth in throngs the lay sons of citizens, armed with lance and shield, the younger with shafts forked at the end, with steel point removed; “they wake war’s semblanc” and in mimic contest exercise their skill at arms. Many courtiers come too, when the King is in residence; and from the household of Earls and Barons come young men not yet invested ·with the belt of knighthood, that they may there contend together. Each one of them is on fire with hope of victory. The fierce horses neigh, “their limbs tremble; they champ at the bit; impatient of delay they cannot stand sti11”, When at length “the hoof of trampling steeds careers along”, the youthful riders divide their hosts; some pursue those that fly before, and cannot overtake them; others unhorse their comrades and speed by. At the feast of Easter they make sport with naval tourneys, as it were; for a shield being strongly bound to a stout pole in mid-stream, a small vessel, driven on by many an oar and by the river’s flow, carries a youth standing at the prow, who is to strike a shield with his lance. If he break the lance by striking the shield and keep his feet unshaken, he has achieved his purpose and fulfilled his desire. If, however, he strike it strongly without splintering his lance, he is thrown into the rushing river, and the boat of its own speed passes him by. But there are on each side of the shield two vessels moored, and in them are many youths to snatch up the striker who has been sucked dovm by the stream, as soon as he emerges into sight or “once more bubbles on the topmost wave”. On the bridge and the galleries above the river are spectators of the sport “ready to laugh their fill”. On feast-days throughout the summer the youths exercise themselves in leaping, archery and wrestling, putting the stone, and throwing the thonged javelin beyond a mark, and fighting with sword and buckler. “Cythera leads the dance of maidens and the earth is smitten with free foot at moonrise”. In winter on almost every feast-day before dinner either foaming boars or hogs, armed with “tusks lightning swift”, themselves soon to be bacon, fight for their lives, or fat bulls with butting horns, or huge bears, do combat to the death against hounds let loose upon them. When the great marsh that washes the Northern walls of the city is frozen, dense throngs of youths go forth to disport themselves upon the ice. Some gathering speed by a run, glide along, with feet set well apart, over a vast space of ice. Others make themselves seats of ice like millstones, and are dragged along by a number who run before them holding hands. Sometimes they slip owing to the greatness of their speed and fall, every one of them, upon their faces. others there are, more skilled to sport upon the ice, who fit to their feet the shin-bones of beasts, lashing them beneath their ankles, and with iron-shod poles in their hands they strike ever and anon against the ice and are borne along swift as a bird in flight or a bolt shot from mangonel. But sometimes two by agreement run one against the other from a great distance, and, raising their poles, strike one another. One or both fall, not without bodily harm, since on falling they are borne a long way in opposite directions by the force of their own motion; and wherever the ice touches the head, it scrapes and skins it entirely. Often he that falls breaks arm or shin, if he fall upon it. But youth is an age greedy of renown, yearning for victory, and exercises itself in mimic battles that it may bear itself more boldly in true combats. Many of the citizens delight in taking their sport with birds of the air, marlins and falcons and the like, and with dogs that wage warfare in the woods. The citizens have the special privilege of hunting in Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and all Chiltern, and in Kent as far as the river Cray. The Londoners, who are called Trinobantes, repulsed Gaius Julius Caesar who “rejoiced to make no way save with the spilth of blood”. Whence Lucan writes, “To the Britons whom he sought He showed his coward back”. The City of London has brought forth not a few men who subdued many nations and the Roman Empire to their sway, and many others whom valor has “raised to the Gods as lords of earth”, as had been promised to Brutus by the oracle of Apollo,
“Brutus, past Gal beneath the set of sun,
There lies an isle in Ocean ringed with waters.
This seek; for there shall be thine age-long home.
Here for thy sons shall rise a second Troy,
Here from thy blood shall monarchs spring, to whom
All earth subdued shall its obeisance make”. And in Christian times she brought forth the great Emperor Constantine, who gave the city of Rome and all the insignia of Empire to God and the Blessed Peter and Sylvester the Roman Pope, to whom he rendered the office of a groom and rejoiced no longer to be called emperor but rather the Defender of the Holy Roman Church. And that the peace of the Lord Pope might not be shaken with the tumult of the noise of this world by reason of his presence, he himself departed altogether from the city which he had conferred on the Lord Pope, and built for himself the city of Byzantium. And in modern times also she has produced monarchs renowned and magnificent, the Empress Matilda, King Henry the Third, and Blessed Thomas, the Archbishop, Christ’s glorious Martyr, “than whom She bore no whiter soul nor one more dear”, to all good men of the Latin world. Source: An Annotated Translation of the Life of St. Thomas Becket by William Fitzstephen by Leo T. Gourde, Loyola University Chicago MA thesis, 1943 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license).
A description of the most noble city of London
Among the noble cities of the world that are celebrated by Fame, the City of London, seat of the Monarchy of England, is one that spreads its fame wider, seids its wealth and wares further, and lifts its head higher than all others. It is blessed in the wholesomeness of its air, in its reverence for the Christian faith, in the strength of its bulwarks, the nature of its situation, the honor of its citizens, and the chastity of its matrons. It is likewise most merry in its sports and fruitful of noble men. Of these things it is my pleasure to treat, each in its own place. There “the mild sky doth soften hearts of men, not that they may be “weak slaves of lust”, but that they may not be savage and like unto beasts, may, rather, that they may be of a kindly and liberal temper. In the Church of St. Paul is the Episcopal See. Once it was Metropolitan, and it is thought that it will be so again, if the citizens return to the island, unless perchance the Archiepiscopal title of the Blessed Martyr Thomas and the presence of his body preserve that honor for all time at Canterbury, where it now resides. But since St. Thomas has adorned both these cities, London in his rising and Canterbury by his setting, each city has, in respect of the Saint himself, something further that it may urge not without justice, one against the other. Also as concerns Christian worship, there are both in London and the suburbs thirteen greater conventual churches, and a hundred and twenty-six lesser parochial. On the East stands the palatine Citadel, exceeding great and strong, whose walls and bailey rise from very deep foundations, their mortar being mixed with the blood of beasts. On the West are two strongly fortified castles, while thence runs continuously a great ·wall and high, with seven double gates, and with towers along the North at intervals. On the South, London was once walled and towered in like fashion, but the Thames, that mighty river, teeming with fish, which runs on that side vvith the sea’s ebb and flow, has in course of time washed away those bulwarks, undermined and cast them down. Also upstream to the West the Royal Palace rises high above the river, a building beyond compare, with an outwork and bastions, two miles from the City and joined thereto by a populous suburb. On all sides, beyond the houses, lie the gardens of the citizens that dwell in the suburbs, planted with trees, spacious and fair, adjoining one another. On the North are pasture lands and a pleasant space of flat meadows, intersected by running vmters, which turn revolving mill-wheels with merry din. Hard by there stretches a great forest with wooded glades and lairs of wild beasts, deer both red and fallow, wild boars and bulls. The cornfields are not of barren gravel, but rich Asian plains such as “make glad the crops” and fill the barns of their farmers “with sheaves of Ceres’ stalk”. There are also around London in the suburbs most excellent wells, whose vmters are sweet, wholesome and clear, and whose “runnels ripple amid pebbles bright”. Among those Holywell, Clerkenwell, and St. Clement’s Well are most famous and are visited by thicker throngs and greater multitudes of students and of the young men of the City, who go out on summer evenings to take the air. In truth a good City when it has a good Lord. This City wins honor by its men and glory by its arms and has a multitude of inhabitants, so that at the time of the calamitous wars of King Stephen’s reign the men going forth from it to be mustered were reckoned twenty thousand armed horsernen and sixty thousand foot-soldiers. The citizens of London are everywhere regarded as illustrous and renowned beyond those of all other cities for the elegance of their fine manners, raiment and table. The inhabitants of other towns are called citizens, but those of this are called barons. And with them a solemn oath ends all strife. The matrons of London.are very Sabines. In London the three principal churches to wit the Episcopal See of the Church of St. Paul, the Church of the Holy Trinity, and the Church of St. Martin, have famous schools by privilege and in virtue of their ancient dignity. But through the personal favor of some one or more of those learned men who are known and eminent in the study of philosophy there are other schools licensed by special grace and permission. On holy days the masters of the schools assemble their scholars at the churches whose feast day it is. The scholars dispute, some in demonstrative rhetoric, others in dialectic. Some “hurtle enthymemes”, others with great skill employ perfect syllogisms. Some are exercised in disputation for the purpose of display, which is but a wrestling bout of wit, but others that they may establish the truth for the sake of perfection. Sophists ·who produce fictitious arguments are accounted happy in the profusion and deluge of their words; others seek to trick their opponents by the use of fallacies. Some orators from time to time in rhetorical harangues seek to carry persuasion, taking pains to observe the precepts of their art and to omit naught that appertains thereto. Boys of different schools strive one against another in verse or contend concerning the principles of the art of grammar or the rules governing the use of past and future. There are others who employ the old wit of the cross-roads in epigrams, rhymes and metre; with “Fescennine License “ they lacerate their comrades outspokenly, though mentioning no names; they hurl “abuse and gibes“, they touch the foibles of their comrades, perchance even of their elders with Socratic wit, not to say “bite more keenly even than Theon’s tooth”, in their “bold dithyrambs”. Their hearers “ready to laugh their fill”, “With wrinking nose repeat the loud guffaw”. Those that ply their several trades, the vendors of each several thing, the hirers out of their several sorts of labors are found every morning each in their separate quarters and each engaged upon his own peculiar task. Moreover there is in London upon the river’s bank, amid the wine that is sold from ships and wine-cellars, a public cookshop. There daily, according to the season, you may find viands, dishes roast, fried, and boiled, fish great and small, the coarser flesh for the poor, the more delicate for the rich, such as venison and birds both big and small. If friends, weary with travel, should of a sudden come to any of the citizens, and it is not their pleasure to wait fasting till fresh food is bought and cooked, “let servants bring water for hands and bread”; meanwhile they hasten to the river, and there all things that they desire are ready to their hand. However great the infinitude of knights or foreigners that enter the city or are about to leave it, at whatever hour of night or day, that the former may not fast too long nor the latter depart without their dinner, they turn aside thither, if it so please them, and refresh themselves each after his own manner. Those who desire to fare delicately, need not search to find sturgeon or “Guinea-fowl” or “Ionian francolin “, since all dainties that are found there are set forth before their eyes. Now this is a public cook-shop, appropriate to a city and pertaining to the art of civic life. Hence that saying which we read in the Gorgias of Plato, to wit that the art of cookery is a counterfit of medicine and a flattery of the fourth part of the art of civic life. In the suburb immediately outside one of the gates there is a amooth field, both in fact and in name. On every sixth day of the week, unless it be a major feast-day on which solemn rites are prescribed, there is a much frequented show of fine horses for sale. Thither come all the Earls, Barons and Knights who are in the City, and with them many of the citizens, whether to look or buy. It is a joy to see the ambling palfreys, their skin full of juice, their coats aglisten, as they pace softly, in alternation raising and putting dovm the feet on one side together; next to see the horses that best befit Esquires, moving more roughly, yet nimbly, as they raise and set down the opposite feet, fore and hind, first on one side and then on the other; then the younger colts of high breeding, unbroken and “high-stepping with elastic tread“, and after them the costly destriers of graceful form and goodly stature, “with quivering ears, high necks and plump buttocks”. As these show their paces, the buyers watch first their gentler gait, then that swifter motion wherein their fore feet are thrown out and back together, and the hind feet also, as it were, countervise. When a race between such trampling steeds is about to begin, or perchance between others which are likewise, after their kind, strong to carry, swift to run, a shout is raised, and horses of the baser sort are bidden to turn aside. Three boys riding these fleet-foot steeds, or at times two as may be agreed, prepare themselves for the contest. Skilled to command their horses, they “curb their untamed mouths with jagged bits “, and their chief anxiety is that their rival shall not gain the lead. The horses likewise after their fashion lift up their spirits for the race; “their limbs tremble; impatient of delay, they cannot stand still”. When the signal is given, they stretch forth their 1imbs, they gallop away, they rush on with obstinate speed. Their riders, passionate for renown, hoping for victory, vie with one another in spurring their swift horses and lashing them forward with their switches no less than they excite them by their cries. You would believe that “all things are in motion”, as Heraclitus maintained, and that the belief of Zeno was wholly false, when he claimed that motion was impossible and that no man could ever reach the finish of a race. In another place apart stand the wares of the country folk, instruments of agriculture, long-flanked swine, cows with swollen udders, and “wooly flocks and bodies huge of kine“. Mares stand there, meet for plougs, sledges and two-horsed carts; the bellies of some are big with young; round others move their offspring, new-born, sprightly foals, inseparable followers. To this city, from every nation that is under heaven, merchants rejoice to bring their trade in ships. “Gold from Arabia, from Sabaea spiceAnd incense; from the Scythians arms of steel
Well-tempered; oil from the rich groves of palm
That spring from the fat lands of Babylon;
Fine gems from Nile, from China crimson silks;
French wines; and sable, vair and miniver
From the far lands where Russ and Norsemen dwell.” London, as the chroniclers have shown, is far older than Rome. For, owing its birth to the same Trojan ancestors, it was founded by Brutus before Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus. Wherefore they both still use the ancient laws and like institutions. London like Rome is divided into wards. In place of Consuls it has Sheriffs every year; its senatorial order and lesser magistrates; sewers and conduits in its streets, and for the pleading of diverse causes, demonstrative, deliberative and judicial, it has its proper places, its separate courts. It also has its assemblies on appointed days. I do not think that there is any city deserving greater approval for its customs in respect to church-going, honor paid to the ordinances of God, keeping of feast-days, giving of alms, entertainment of strangers, ratifying of bethrothals, contracts of marriage, celebration of nuptials, furnishing of banquets, cheering of guests, and like·wise for their care in regard to the rites of funeral and the burial of the dead. The only plagues of London are ·the immnoderate drinking of fools and the frequency of fires. To that which I have said this also must be added, that almost all Bishops, Abbots and Magnates of England are, as it were, citizens and freemen of the City of London, having lordly habitations there, whither they repair and wherein they make lavish outlay, when summoned to the City by our Lord the King or by his Metropolitan to councils and great assemblies, or drawn thither by their ovm affairs. Furthermore let us consider also the sports of the City, since it is not meet that a city should only be useful and sober, unless it also be pleasant and merry. Wherefore on the seals of the High Pontiffs down to the time when Leo was pope, on the one side of the signet Peter the Fisherman was engraved and over him a key stretched forth from heaven as it were by the hand of God, and around it the verse, “For me thou left’st the ship; take though the key”. And on the other side was engraved a city with this device, “Golden Rome”. Also it was said in praise of Caesar Augustus and Rome: “All night it rains; with dawm the shows return. Caesar, thou shar ‘st thine empery with Jove”. London in place of shows in the theatre and stage-plays has holier days, wherein are shown forth the miracles wrought by Holy Confessors or the sufferings which glorified the constancy of Martyrs. Moreover, each year upon the day called Carnival -- to begin with the sports of boys (for we were all boys once) -- boys from the schools bring fighting-cocks to their master; and the whole forenoon is given up to boyish sport; for they have a holiday in the schools that they may watch their cocks do battle. After dinner all the youth of the City goes out into the fields to a much-frequented game of ball. The scholars of each school have their own ball and almost all the vmrkers of each trade have theirs also in their hands. Elder men and fathers and rich citizens come on horse-back to watch the contests of their juniors, and after their fashion are young again with the young; and it seems that the motion of their natural heat is kindled by the contemplation of such violent motion and by their partaking in the joys of untrammelled youth. Every Sunday in Lent after dinner a “fresh swarm of young gentles” goes forth on war-horses, “steeds skilled in the contest”, of which each is “apt and schooled to wheel in circles round“. From the gates burst forth in throngs the lay sons of citizens, armed with lance and shield, the younger with shafts forked at the end, with steel point removed; “they wake war’s semblanc” and in mimic contest exercise their skill at arms. Many courtiers come too, when the King is in residence; and from the household of Earls and Barons come young men not yet invested ·with the belt of knighthood, that they may there contend together. Each one of them is on fire with hope of victory. The fierce horses neigh, “their limbs tremble; they champ at the bit; impatient of delay they cannot stand sti11”, When at length “the hoof of trampling steeds careers along”, the youthful riders divide their hosts; some pursue those that fly before, and cannot overtake them; others unhorse their comrades and speed by. At the feast of Easter they make sport with naval tourneys, as it were; for a shield being strongly bound to a stout pole in mid-stream, a small vessel, driven on by many an oar and by the river’s flow, carries a youth standing at the prow, who is to strike a shield with his lance. If he break the lance by striking the shield and keep his feet unshaken, he has achieved his purpose and fulfilled his desire. If, however, he strike it strongly without splintering his lance, he is thrown into the rushing river, and the boat of its own speed passes him by. But there are on each side of the shield two vessels moored, and in them are many youths to snatch up the striker who has been sucked dovm by the stream, as soon as he emerges into sight or “once more bubbles on the topmost wave”. On the bridge and the galleries above the river are spectators of the sport “ready to laugh their fill”. On feast-days throughout the summer the youths exercise themselves in leaping, archery and wrestling, putting the stone, and throwing the thonged javelin beyond a mark, and fighting with sword and buckler. “Cythera leads the dance of maidens and the earth is smitten with free foot at moonrise”. In winter on almost every feast-day before dinner either foaming boars or hogs, armed with “tusks lightning swift”, themselves soon to be bacon, fight for their lives, or fat bulls with butting horns, or huge bears, do combat to the death against hounds let loose upon them. When the great marsh that washes the Northern walls of the city is frozen, dense throngs of youths go forth to disport themselves upon the ice. Some gathering speed by a run, glide along, with feet set well apart, over a vast space of ice. Others make themselves seats of ice like millstones, and are dragged along by a number who run before them holding hands. Sometimes they slip owing to the greatness of their speed and fall, every one of them, upon their faces. others there are, more skilled to sport upon the ice, who fit to their feet the shin-bones of beasts, lashing them beneath their ankles, and with iron-shod poles in their hands they strike ever and anon against the ice and are borne along swift as a bird in flight or a bolt shot from mangonel. But sometimes two by agreement run one against the other from a great distance, and, raising their poles, strike one another. One or both fall, not without bodily harm, since on falling they are borne a long way in opposite directions by the force of their own motion; and wherever the ice touches the head, it scrapes and skins it entirely. Often he that falls breaks arm or shin, if he fall upon it. But youth is an age greedy of renown, yearning for victory, and exercises itself in mimic battles that it may bear itself more boldly in true combats. Many of the citizens delight in taking their sport with birds of the air, marlins and falcons and the like, and with dogs that wage warfare in the woods. The citizens have the special privilege of hunting in Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and all Chiltern, and in Kent as far as the river Cray. The Londoners, who are called Trinobantes, repulsed Gaius Julius Caesar who “rejoiced to make no way save with the spilth of blood”. Whence Lucan writes, “To the Britons whom he sought He showed his coward back”. The City of London has brought forth not a few men who subdued many nations and the Roman Empire to their sway, and many others whom valor has “raised to the Gods as lords of earth”, as had been promised to Brutus by the oracle of Apollo,
“Brutus, past Gal beneath the set of sun,
There lies an isle in Ocean ringed with waters.
This seek; for there shall be thine age-long home.
Here for thy sons shall rise a second Troy,
Here from thy blood shall monarchs spring, to whom
All earth subdued shall its obeisance make”. And in Christian times she brought forth the great Emperor Constantine, who gave the city of Rome and all the insignia of Empire to God and the Blessed Peter and Sylvester the Roman Pope, to whom he rendered the office of a groom and rejoiced no longer to be called emperor but rather the Defender of the Holy Roman Church. And that the peace of the Lord Pope might not be shaken with the tumult of the noise of this world by reason of his presence, he himself departed altogether from the city which he had conferred on the Lord Pope, and built for himself the city of Byzantium. And in modern times also she has produced monarchs renowned and magnificent, the Empress Matilda, King Henry the Third, and Blessed Thomas, the Archbishop, Christ’s glorious Martyr, “than whom She bore no whiter soul nor one more dear”, to all good men of the Latin world. Source: An Annotated Translation of the Life of St. Thomas Becket by William Fitzstephen by Leo T. Gourde, Loyola University Chicago MA thesis, 1943 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license).
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