The Holder of this blog uses no cookies and collects no data whatsoever. He is only a guest on the Blogger platform. He has made no agreements concerning third party data collection and is not provided the opportunity to know the data collection policies of any of the standard blogging applications associated with the host platform. For information regarding the data collection policies of Facebook applications used on this blog contact Facebook. For information about the practices regarding data collection on the part of the owner of the Blogger platform contact Google Blogger.

Sunday, October 24, 2021

The Night-Watch and Lighting Old London.

After Allhallows Day, “all householders of the better class” were required to hang a lamp outside their doors by London statute. As night descended, the lamp-lighter or watchman for their neighborhood came by to light them and kept them lighted all night.

The following is Robert Chamber’s history of the custom in his Popular Antiquities.

Civilisation, in its slowest progress, may be well illustrated by a glance at the past modes of guarding and lighting the tortuous and dangerous streets of old cities. From the year 1253, when Henry III established night-watchmen, until 1830, when Sir Robert Peel's police act established a new kind of guardian, the watchman was little better than a person who

Disturbed your rest to tell you what 's o'clock.

He had been gradually getting less useful from the days of Elizabeth; thus Dogberry and his troop were unmistakable pictures of the tribe, as much relished for the satirical truth of their delineation in the reign of Anne, as in that of her virgin predecessor. Little improvement took place until the Westminster act was passed in 1762, a measure forced on the attention of the legislature by the impunity with which robbery and murder were committed after dark. Before that year, a few wretched oil lamps only served to make darkness visible in the streets, and confuse the wayfarer by partial glimmerings across his ill-paved path.

Before the great civil wars, the streets may be said to have been only lighted by chance; by the lights from windows, from lanterns grudgingly hung out by householders, or by the watchmen during their rounds; for by a wonderful stretch of parochial wisdom, and penny-wise economy, the watching and lighting were performed at the same time. The watchman of the olden time carried a fire-pot, called a cresset, on the top of a long pole, and thus inarched on, giving light as he bawled the hour, and at the same time, notification of his approach to all thieves, who had thus timeous warning to escape.

The appearance of this functionary in the sixteenth century will be best understood from the engraving here copied from one in Sharp's curious dissertation on the Coventry Mysteries. A similar cresset is still preserved in the armoury of the Tower of London. It is an open-

barred pot, hanging by swivels fastened to the forked staff; in the centre of the pot is a spike, around which was coiled a rope soaked in pitch and rosin, which sputtered and burned with a lurid light, and stinking smoke, as the watchman went his rounds. The watch was established as a stern necessity ; and that necessity had become stern, indeed, before his advent. Roger Hoveden has left a vivid picture of London at night in the year 1175, when it was a common practice for gangs of a 'hundred or more in a company' to besiege wealthy houses for plunder, and unscrupulously murder any one who happened to come in their way. Their 'vocation' was so flourishing, that when one of their number was convicted, he had the surpassing assurance to offer the king five hundred pounds of silver for his life. The gallows, however, claimed its due, and made short work with the fraternity ; who continued, however, to be troublesome from time to time until Henry III., as already stated, established regular watchmen in all cities and borough-towns, and gave the person plundered by a thief the right of recovering an equivalent for his loss from the legal guardians of the district in which it occurred; a wholesome mode of inflicting a fine for the non-performance of a parish duty.

The London watchman of the time of James I., as here depicted, differed in no essential point from his predecessors in that of Elizabeth. He carried a halbert and a horn-lantern, was well secured in a frieze gabardine, leathern-girdled; and wore a serviceable hat, like a pent-house, 

to guard against weather. The worthy here depicted has a most venerable face and beard, shewing how ancient was  the habit for parish officers to select the poor and feeble for the office of watchman, in order to keep them out of the poorhouse. Such 'ancient and most quiet watchmen' would naturally prefer being out of harm's way, and warn thieves to depart in peace by ringing the bell, that the wether of their flock carried ; 'then presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave,' as honest Dogberry advises. Above the head of the man, in the original engraving from which our cut. is copied, is inscribed the cry he uttered as he walked the round of his parish. It is this : 'Lanthorne and a whole candell light, hange out your lights heare!' This was in accordance with the old local rule of London, as established by the mayor in 1416, that all householders of the better class, rated above a low rate in the books of their respective parishes, should hang a lantern, lighted with a fresh and whole candle, nightly outside their houses for the accommodation of foot passengers, from Allhallows evening to Candlemas day. There is another picture of a Jacobean bellman in the collection of prints in the British Museum, giving a more poetic form to the cry. It runs thus:

A light here, maids, haue out your light,

And see your horns be clear and bright,

That so your candle clear may shine,

Continuing from six till nine ;

That honest men that walk along

May see to pass safe without wrong.

The honest men had, however, need to be abed betimes, for total darkness fell early on the streets when the rush-candle burned in its socket; and was dispelled only by the occasional appearance of the watchman with his horn lantern ; or that more important and noisier official, the bellman. One of these was appointed to each ward, and acted as a sort of inspector to the watchmen and the parish, going round, says Stow, 'all night with a bell, and at every lane's end, and at the ward's end, gave warning of fire and candle, and to help the poor, and pray for the dead.'

 

Also at Virtual Grub Street:


  • Your Goose is Cooked! Medieval and Tudor Goose in a Hotche Pot. October 17, 2021. “Medieval and Tudor cook books are not easy to come by.”
  • The Feast of St. Michael: English harvest festival and so much more. September 26, 2021. “The Feast of Michaelmas, celebrated on September 29, was like our Thanksgiving in that it celebrated a successful harvest.”
  • To Where Did Queen Elizabeth I Disappear in August 1564? July 18, 2021. “Leicestershire was in the opposite direction from London. Nichols could discover no more.”
  • Queen Elizabeth I’s Heart and the French Ambassador.  April 3, 2019.  “…the Queen of England, with the permission of her physicians, has been able to come out of her private chamber, she has permitted me… to see her…”
  • Lady Southwell on the Final Days of Queen Elizabeth I.  March 24, 2019.  “her majesty told [Lady Scrope] (commanding her to conceal the same ) that she saw, one night, in her bed, her body exceeding lean, and fearful in a light of fire.”
  • Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
  • Check out the English Renaissance Letter Index for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
  •  

    No comments: