chapter xliv

., is the last but one in the reign of King William I., folio 63, b, of the modern pagination; and, put into English, is as follows:--

“‘Concerning the lands of Almodus, of St. Butolph’s Gate, and of the Wharf at the head of London Bridge.

“‘William, King of England, to the Sheriffs and all Ministers, as, also, to his faithful subjects of London, French and English, greeting: Know ye, that I have granted unto God and to St. Peter of Westminster, and to the Abbot Vitalis, the House which Almodus, of the Gate of St. Botolph, gave to them when he was made a Monk; that is to say, his Lord’s Court, with his Houses, and one Wharf which is at the head of London Bridge, and others of his lands in the same City, like as King Edward more fully and beneficially granted them: and I will and command that they shall enjoy the same well, and quietly, and honourably, with sake and soke, and shall hold all the customs and laws of the aforesaid. And I defend them that none shall do them any injury. Witness, Walkeline, Bishop of Winchester, and William, Bishop of Durham, and R., Earl of Mell., and Hugh, Earl of Warwick.’

“And now let me remark that, by this we are informed that the City end of the Bridge was not anciently the foot of it, which is asserted by the evidence of Richard Newcourt, in his ‘_Ecclesiastical History of the Diocess of London_,’ London, 1708-10, folio, volume i., page 396, where he says, that ‘St. Magnus’ Church is sometimes called, in Latin, the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr, in the City of London, near the foot, or at the foot, of London Bridge.’

“This First Wooden Bridge, however, was not fated to stand long; for, on the sixteenth of November, the feast of St. Edmund the Archbishop, in the year 1091, ‘at the hour of six, a dreadful whirlwind from the South-East, coming from Africa, blew upon the City, and overthrew upwards of six hundred houses, several Churches, greatly damaged the Tower, and tore away the roof and part of the wall of the Church of St. Mary le Bow, in Cheapside. The roof was carried to a considerable distance, and fell with such force, that several of the rafters, being about twenty-eight feet in length, pierced upwards of twenty feet into the ground, and remained in the same position as when they stood in the Chapel.’

“The best accounts of this terrible event are to be found in the ‘_Chronicle_’ of Florence of Worcester, page 457, which was literally copied into the ‘_Annales_’ of Roger de Hoveden, Chaplain to King Henry II., printed in the ‘_Scriptores post Bedam_,’ already cited, page 462;--in William of Malmesbury, page 125;--and in the ‘_Chronicle_’ of John of Brompton, which I have also before quoted, page 987.

“During the same storm, too, the water in the Thames rushed along with such rapidity, and increased so violently, that _London Bridge was entirely swept away_; whilst the lands on each side were overflowed for a considerable distance. I cannot help observing how slightly, and erroneously, the ‘_Annals of Waverley_’ notice this most dreadful devastation; for at page 137, of the best edition by Dr. Thomas Gale, volume ii. of his ‘_Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores_ xv.’ Oxford, 1691, folio, they merely state that ‘a vehement wind struck down London the 6th of the kalends of November,’--that is to say, on the 27th of October,--‘at the hour of six!’ I doubt not but the truth was, that the good Monks of Waverley Abbey in Surrey felt nothing of this _ventus vehemens_ themselves, and therefore gave a much more trivial record of it, than if it had shaken but a single bell in the turrets of their own _Cenobium_. The ‘_Annals of Waverley_,’ you know, were, down to about 1120, almost a translation from the ‘_Saxon Chronicle_,’ executed in the twelfth century. The following year, 1092, the sixth of the reign of William Rufus, was marked by a season fatal to bridges in general; although there is no mention that our’s at London participated in the destruction. This fact is related by William of Malmesbury, page 125, and by Roger de Hoveden, page 464, in these words:--‘Also, in his sixth year, there was such an excessive rain, and such high floods, the rivers overflowing the low grounds that lay near them, as the like was remembered by none. And afterward, in the winter, ensued a sudden frost; whereby the great streams were congealed in such a manner that they could draw two hundred horsemen and carriages over them; whilst at their thawing, many bridges, both of wood and stone, were borne down, and divers water mills were broken up and carried away!’

“Frequent destructions by fire seem, also, to have been a very general fate of all our ancient buildings; for, in 1093, the wooden houses and straw roofs of the London Citizens were again in flames, and a great part of the City was thus destroyed.

“Too soon after this calamity, at a most inauspicious time for commencing, or executing, expensive public works, in 1097, King William Rufus imposed a heavy tax upon his subjects for the re-building of London Bridge,--though _that_ might very well be defended,--the erecting of the palace of West-Minster Hall, and the construction of a wall round the Tower. The ‘_Saxon Chronicle_’ speaks of these ill-advised undertakings in the blended tones of sorrow and of anger. ‘This was, in all things,’ says that faithful old history, at pages 316, 317, ‘a very heavy-timed year, and beyond measure laborious from the badness of the weather, both when men attempted to till the land, and, afterwards, to gather the fruits of their tilth; and from unjust contributions they never rested. Many counties also, that were confined to London by work, were grievously oppressed, on account of the wall that was building about the Tower, and _the Bridge that was nearly all afloat_, and the King’s Hall that they were building at West-Minster; and many men perished thereby.’

“Our brave old River of Thames itself, however, is of the same changeful nature as Luna, the mistress of his tides; for, if at one time, he overflows his banks, blows up his Bridge, or drowns an invading army, by the fury of his waves; at another season he contracts his waters into their narrowest channel, or draws them back into his urn, without leaving enough to float a wherry over his bed. Of this I shall give you several instances, as we get lower down the stream of time; and now only remark, in chronological order, that on the 6th of the Ides of October, _videlicet_ the 10th, in the 15th Year of the reign of Henry I. 1114, the River was so dried up, and there was such want of water, that between the Tower of London and the Bridge, and even under it, ‘a great number of men, women, and children,’--says Stow, in his ‘_Survey_,’ volume i. page 58,--‘did wade over both on horse and foot,’ the water coming up to their knees.

“The original account of this is to be found in the ‘_Annales_’ of Roger de Hoveden, page 473; from whom we derive the additional information, that this defect of water commenced in the middle of the night preceding, and lasted until the darkest part of the next. The same historian, also, records, on the same page, that in the year 1115, the winter was so severe, that all throughout England the Bridges were broken by the ice.

“But although London Bridge was an edifice to which there was a continual and heavy cost attached, yet its possessions were, even anciently, very extensive; for you find that so early as in the 23d year of Henry I., A. D. 1122, Thomas de Ardern, and Thomas his son, gave to the Monks of Bermondsey, and the Church of St. George in Southwark, the tenth of his Lord’s corn lands in Horndon, and the immense sum of Five Shillings per annum rent, out of the Lands pertaining to London Bridge. Calculate this, my good Sir, at twenty times its present value; for we know that in the Great Charter of King John,