For much of the thirteenth century the record is one of riots, and massacres, and street-fighting. During this period London was in almost perpetual conflict with the reigning monarch, Henry III, while the aspiring leadership of the city was divided between the optimates and the populares- the old commercial magnates who had comprised the oligarchical commune of the city, as against the representatives of the crafts and trades who were beginning to feel their power. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the magnates tended to be royalist in their sympathy while the populares, sometimes also known as the mediocres, instinctively supported the barons of the realm with whom the king was in open conflict. London, once more, was the key. Whoever controlled the city was close to controlling the kingdom. The periodic baronial wars had this further consequence; there were parties and families within the city who maintained different allegiances, so that the national struggle was played out in miniature within the streets of London. It was truly the epitome of all England.
London Contrasts
A traffic “lock” or jam on Ludgate Hill, sketched by the French artist Gustave Doré towards the close of the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER 5. Loud and Everlasting
London has always been characterised by the noise that is an aspect of its noisomeness. It is part of its unnaturalness, too, like the roaring of some monstrous creature. But it is also a token of its energy and of its power.
From its earliest foundation London rang with the hammers of artisans and the cries of tradesmen; it produced more noise than any other part of the country, and in certain quarters, like those of the smiths and the barrel-makers, the clamour was almost insupportable. But there were other noises. In the early medieval city, the clatter of manufacturing trades and crafts would have been accompanied by the sound of bells, among them secular bells, church bells, convent bells, the bell of the curfew and the bell of the watchman.
It might be surmised that the effect of the bells ended with the Reformation, when London ceased to be a notably pious Catholic city, but all the evidence suggests that the citizens continued to be addicted to them. A German duke entered London on the evening of 12 September 1602, and was astonished by the unique character of the city’s sound. “On arriving in London we heard a great ringing of bells in almost all the churches going on very late in the evening, also on the following days until 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening. We were informed that the young people do that for the sake of exercise and amusement, and sometimes they lay considerable sums of money as a wager, who will pull a bell longest or ring it in the most approved fashion. Parishes spend much money in harmoniously-sounding bells, that one being preferred which has the best bells. The old Queen is said to have been pleased very much by this exercise, considering it as a sign of the health of the people.” This account is taken from The Acoustic World of Early Modern England by Bruce R. Smith, which offers an intimate version of London’s history. There is some suggestion here that the harmony of the bells is in some sense intended to demonstrate the harmony of the city, with the attendant “health” of its citizens, but there is also an element of theatricality or bravura intrinsic to London and Londoners. Indeed there is almost a kind of violence attached to their liking of loud sound. Another German traveller, of 1598, wrote that Londoners are “vastly fond of great noises that fill the ear, such as the firing of cannon, drums, and the ringing of bells, so that it is common for a number of them … to go up into some belfry, and ring the bells for hours together for the sake of exercise.” A chaplain to the Venetian ambassador similarly reported that London boys made bets “who can make the parish bells be heard at the greatest distance.” To the element of display are added aggression and competition.
It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that the very definition of the Londoner should be adduced in terms of loud noise. A Cockney was one who was born within the sound of the bell of St. Mary-le-Bow, in Cheapside, which according to John Stow was “more famous than any other Parish Church of the whole Cittie or suburbs.” Fynes Moryson, in 1617, announced that “Londiners, and all within the sound of Bow-Bell, are in reproach called Cocknies, and eaters of buttered tostes.” Bruce R. Smith has suggested that “cockney” in fact derives from the “cock-shaped weathervane” which once surmounted the belfry of St. Mary-le-Bow and that the Londoners’ identification with the sound came from their own “loud loquaciousness” or “boastfulness.”
As the city grew, so did its level of noise. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, according to Walter Besant’s London, “there was no noisier city in the whole world”; it could be heard from Highgate and from the Surrey hills. Dekker in The Seven deadly Sinnes of London evokes something of the incessant din-“hammers are beating in one place; Tubs hooping in another, Pots clinking in a third, water-tankards running at tilt in a fourth.” Here noise itself is associated with energy, and specifically with the making of money. Sound was intrinsic to the trades of the carpenters and the coopers, the blacksmiths and the armourers. Other occupations, such as dockers and porters, the loaders and unloaders by the wharves, actively employed noise as an agent of business; it was the only way of affirming or expressing their role within the commercial city.
Certain areas produced particular noises. The metal foundries of Lothbury, for example, produced “a loathsome noise to the by-passers, that hath not been used to the like” and the quarter of the blacksmiths was permeated “with the noise of and sound of their hammers amp; anuiles.” There was also the general circumambient noise of the London streets where, according once more to Thomas Dekker, “carts and Coaches make such a thundring” and where “in the open streetes is such walking, such talking, such running, such riding, such clapping too of windowes, such rapping at Chamber doores, such crying out for drink, such buying vp of meate, and such calling vppon Shottes, that at every such time, I verily beleeue I dwell in a Towne of Warre.” Images of violence and assault spring unimpeded from the experience of London sound. In 1598 Everard Guilpin wrote a verse satire upon “the peopled streets” of London, which he depicts as a “hotch-potch of so many noyses … so many severall voyces.” Here the heterogeneity of London is seen as an aspect of its noise. Yet without the perpetual hum of traffic and machines which seems to characterise the noise of contemporary London streets, individual voices would have been heard more clearly. The wooden and plaster houses on either side of the main thoroughfares acted as an echo-chamber, so that one of the characteristics of the sixteenth-century city would be a continual babble of voices making up one single and insistent conversation; it might be termed the conversation of the city with itself.
There were certain places where the voices reached such a pitch and intensity that they could also be characterised as a London sound. The interior of St. Paul’s Cathedral was known for its particular timbre. To quote once more from Bruce Smith’s account, “the noyse in it is like that of Bees, a strange humming or buzze, mixt of walking, tongues, and feet: It is a kind of still roare or loud whisper.” The Royal Exchange, where merchants from all over the world congregated, was “vaulted and hollow, and hath such an Eccho, as multiplies euery worde that is spoken.” At the centre of commerce there is a great reverberation, as if the conduct of finance could only take place within thunder. Then, in the taverns to which the dealers and merchants retired, “men come here to make merry but indeed make a noise.” So, in the places of power and speculation, the insistent sound is that of raised male voices. Samuel Johnson once remarked upon the subject of taverns, “Sir, there is no other place where the more noise you make, the more welcome you are.” It is a suggestive observation, with its implications of theatricality and aggression as part of the London experience; the more “noise” you make, the more you become a true inhabitant of the city. In the theatres, too, there was unabated noise, with the hucksters and the criers and the huddled throng; everybody talking together, breaking nuts, and crying out for ale.