eat
house which belonged successively to the Scropes and the Nevilles. Here
lived the King-maker Earl of Warwick. His following was so numerous that
every day six oxen were consumed for breakfast alone. His son-in-law,
who had the house afterwards, was the Duke of Clarence--'false,
fleeting, perjured Clarence.'

If you would know how a great merchant of the fifteenth century loved to
be housed, go visit Crosby Hall. It is the only specimen left of the
ancient wealth and splendour of a City merchant. But as one man lived so
did many. We cannot believe that Crosby was singular in his building a
palace for himself.

London with its narrow streets, its crowded courts, and the corners
where the huts and hovels of wood and daub and thatch stood among their
foul surroundings, a constant danger to the great houses of fire and
plague, was a city of great houses and palaces, with which no other city
in Europe could compare. Venice and Genoa had their Crosby Halls--their
merchants' palaces; but London had in addition, the town houses of all
the nobles of the land. In the City alone, without counting the Strand
and Westminster, there were houses of the Earls of Arundel,
Northumberland, Worcester, Berkeley, Oxford, Essex, Thanet, Suffolk,
Richmond, Pembroke, Abergavenny, Warwick, Leicester, Westmoreland. Then
there were the houses of the Bishops and the Abbots. All these before we
come to the houses of the rich merchants. Let your vision of London
under the Plantagenets be that of a city all spires and towers, great
churches and stately convents, with noble houses as great and splendid
as Crosby Hall scattered all about the City within the walls and lining
the river bank from Ludgate to Westminster.

35. AMUSEMENTS.

We have heard so much of the religious Houses, Companies, Hospitals,
quarrels and struggles that we may have forgotten a very important
element in the life of the City--the amusements and pastimes of the
citizens. Never was there a time when the City had more amusements than
in these centuries. You have seen that it was always a rich town: its
craftsmen were well paid: food was abundant: the people were well fed
always, except in times of famine, which were rare. There were taverns
with music and singing: there were pageants, wonderful processions
representing all kinds of marvels, devised by the citizens to please the
King or to please themselves: there were plays representing scenes from
the Bible and fro