EBOOK MIRROR OF LITERATURE, NO. 380 ***
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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.
VOL. 14, No. 380.] SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1829. [PRICE 2d.
MERCERS' HALL, AND CHEAPSIDE
[Illustration: Mercers' Hall, and Cheapside]
The engraving is an interesting illustration of the architecture of the
metropolis in the seventeenth century, independent of its local
association with names illustrious in historical record.
In former times, when persons of the same trade congregated together in
some particular street, the mercers principally assembled in West Cheap,
now called Cheapside, near where the above hall stands, and thence
called by the name of "the Mercery." In Lydgate's _London Lyckpenny_,
are the following lines alluding to this custom:
Then to Chepe I began me drawne,
When much people I saw for to stand;
One offered me velvet, silk and lawne
And another he taketh me by the hand.
Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land.
Pennant thus describes the principal historical data of the spot:
"On the north side of Cheapside, (between Ironmonger Lane and Old
Jewry,) stood the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon, founded by Thomas
Fitz-Theobald de Helles, and his wife Agnes, sister to the turbulent
Thomas Becket, who was born in the house of his father, Gilbert,
situated on this spot.
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