John Crosby, the wealthy merchant and founder of Crosby Place, also did
good service, and placed the knight's arms on the parts that they
repaired. The City Companies also came to the rescue, and kept the walls
in good order.

[Illustration: SOUTH VIEW OF OLD ST. PAUL'S WHEN THE SPIRE WAS STANDING.

_From an old print._]

Within these walls the pulse of the city life beat fast. The area
enclosed was not large, only about the size of Hyde Park, but it must
have been the busiest spot on earth; there was life and animation in
every corner. In the city the chief noblemen had houses, or inns, as
they were called, which were great buildings capable of housing a large
retinue. We read of Richard, Duke of York, coming in 1457 to the city
with four hundred men, who were lodged in Baynard's Castle; of the Earl
of Salisbury with five hundred men on horseback lodging in the Herber, a
house at Dowgate belonging to the Earl of Warwick, who himself stayed
with six hundred men at his inn in Warwick Lane, where, says Stow,
"there were oftentimes six oxen eaten at a breakfast." Eight hundred men
were brought by the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, and one thousand five
hundred by the Earl of Northumberland, the Lord Egremont, and the Lord
Clifford. The houses of these noble owners have long since disappeared,
but the memory of them is recorded by the names of streets, as we shall
attempt to show in a subsequent chapter. Even in Stow's time, who wrote
in 1598, they were ruinous, or had been diverted from their original
uses. The frequent visits of these noble persons must have caused
considerable excitement in the city, and provided abundant employment
for the butchers and bakers.

The great merchants, too, were very important people who had their fine
houses, of which the last surviving one was Crosby Hall, which we shall
describe presently, a house that has been much in the minds of the
citizens of London during the present year. Stow says that there were
many other houses of the same class of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and that they were "builded with stone and timber." In such
houses, which had a sign swinging over the door, the merchant and his
family lived and dined at the high table in the great hall, his
'prentices and servants sitting in the rush-strewn "marsh," as the lower
portion of the hall was anciently named. These apprentices played an
important part in the old city life. They had to serve for a term of
seven