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EDWARD VI. (1537–1553)

From a portrait by Holbein at Windsor Castle.

There were other events connected with the City besides these constant alarms about the change of Faith. Traitors were executed, notably the two Seymours; rebels were drawn, hanged and quartered, notably the four Captains of the Cornish Rising; the sweating sickness appeared again in 1550 and lasted for six months, carrying off men only and sparing women and children. The cloister of St. Paul’s, commonly called the Dance of Death, and the Charnel House of St. Paul’s, were destroyed and carried away; there were risings in Cornwall, Norfolk, and Yorkshire; a woman named Joan of Kent was burned at Smithfield for heresy; then happened the famous murder of Arden of Faversham, for which his wife, his maid, and one of the murderers were all burned; three men and one woman hanged; a Dutchman named George of Paris was burned for heresy in Smithfield.

An important acquisition, however, was gained by the City in 1550. The Borough of Southwark consisted of three manors, the Guildable Manor, the King’s Manor, and the Great Liberty Manor. Edward III. had granted the first of these to the City. Edward IV. had confirmed and amplified this grant, giving the City the right of holding a yearly Fair in the month of September together with a Court of Pie Powder. The City next claimed the right of holding a market twice a week in Southwark. On this claim there were disputes. Finally the City bought all the rights of the Crown in Southwark for the sum of £647:2:1. They thus obtained a recognised right to hold four weekly markets, and to administer the whole borough excepting the two prisons of the Marshalsea and the King’s Bench, and the Duke of Suffolk’s House.