cloaks had so often raised to the terror of their masters, and "Clubs! Clubs!" was echoed through Chepe and Cornhill; and in a short space the streets were filled. The buckler-play ceased; the alderman had fled. The materials of mischief were at hand. The spark burst into a flame when the cry went forth-"Down with the Lombards!"

It was long after midnight when the riot had ceased. At a house called Greengate, near Leadenhall, dwelt a calender of worsted, a native of Picardy, whose home was a great resort of foreigners; and the furious people rifled his house and destroyed his workshops. In Blanchechapelton, in Aldgate, dwelt stranger cordwainers; the people threw the boots and shoes into the streets, but they could not find the workmen, for they had fled for their lives. In Newgate there were imprisoned some artificers for molesting the strangers; the gaol was broken and the prisoners released. The demon of mischief was at last satisfied.

The first beam of the May morning was lighting the cross of the great spire of Paul's, and yet a crowd lingered in the gray dawn. They gathered, as they had gathered under happier auspices, before the church of St. Andrew Undershaft. There, in an open space, near where now stands the India House, lay a mighty shaft, from which the church derived its name. It was 'the Great Shaft of Cornhill,' famous under that name in the days of Chaucer-the wondrous May-pole, which, being set up with all revelry of song and morris-dance on

VOL. I.

K

May morning, stood higher than the church-steeple. The wearied and excited crowd rushed to their less dangerous work with renewed strength. The shaft was reared, and then went up a shout, which would have awakened the heaviest sleeper in Aldgate—if any were asleep on that morning, when the rites of May were done with such evil observance. There was not only the shout of riot, but the boom of war. The lieutenant of the Tower discharged his ordnance against the city, and the civic power had been raised, and men in harness came in great force against the rioters, who had dwindled down to some three hundred apprentices. The great shaft of St. Andrew soon looked down upon Cornhill in solitude and silence; the apprentices were hurried to the Tower.

There stood in the shade of the adjoining shambles two men observing this scene. As the watch stopped and questioned them, one of the two gave a countersign, and the watch passed on. The street was at length perfectly tranquil.

"Sebastian," said the man of authority, "I came in a lucky hour to your rescue."

The other replied in English, but with a foreign accent, "Master More, I am grateful. It is hard that I should be molested in my secret chamber, poring over my charts at midnight, and planning how I could carry your nation's ships by the shortest cut to the New World. Yes, Master More, it is hard; you have saved my life, but my papers are destroyed."

"And yet these people," said the sheriff, "are to be pitied even in their fury. I could have stopped them, if that dull alderman had not come in with his watch and ward. I said to them, 'Ye are breaking the laws; some of ye will be hanged, others banished. Silly apprentices, when ye are cast upon a strange land with nothing but your craft to give ye bread, how would ye like the foreigner to maltreat you, as ye would maltreat these aliens?' An Englishman, Master Sebastian Cabot, is fierce as his country's mastiff; the kind voice may subdue him, when the rough hand is lifted in vain. But come; this gear is mended, and I must bestow you in my lodgings."

As the two friends quietly walked from Cornhill to the Temple, they discoursed much, in spite of the late fear and fatigue.

"Sebastian," said More, "methinks it is some twenty years, as you have often told me, since you first saw the American continent from the prow of your father's ship. You saw that continent a year

before Columbus."

"In the same year of 1497," replied Cabot, "Vasco di Gama sailed from the Tagus on his first voyage to India.”

"Mighty events," said More, "that will change the face of the world. And here-with the wealth of these countries at the command of enterprise and labour-we are fighting in our streets because a few aliens bear away the poor payments for skill and industry. Master Cabot, I think I see God's

hand in these revelations of distant empires, of which the wisest of antiquity never dreamed."

"I am a blunt sailor, Master More," said Cabot, "tossed on the rough Adriatic, a boy before the mast-a Bristol mariner when my father adopted England for his country. I love that country, though its people be sometimes rude and jealous. You have let the Spaniard seize upon the empire of the Pacific. Be it yours to command the shores of the Atlantic. It shall go hard if I do not find you the North-West passage."

"Sebastian," said More, "a man like you is worth a legion of conquerors. The world will be civilised by commerce, and not by arms.'

*

"The trinkets," said Cabot, "that we exchanged twenty years ago with the savages of Prima Vista, have given them new desires which are the spurs to new industry."

"Will the time ever arrive," interrupted More, "when those regions, now the hunting grounds of a few starving tribes, shall be peopled by Europeans? You tell me of a country of forests and lakes. Will there be ships on those waters, and towns in those woods? Shall our seamen go fearlessly across the ocean which divides us, and give the handiworks of our looms for the native products of the New Land? That time is a long way off."

"But it will come," replied Cabot, "if Governments do not retard it. Henry the Seventh bar

* The name by which the Cabots designated the first spot they saw of the North American continent.

gained with my father that, out of the profits of every voyage, he, the king, should receive a fifth in merchandise or money. The practice is not likely to grow rusty."

"Well, well, my friend," said More, "we will talk further of these things. But now the sun is up, so a merry May-morning to you. Come in."

Four days after the Shaft of St. Andrew had been set up, there was a fearful tragedy enacted in London. There came into the city the Duke of Norfolk, with fourteen hundred men in harness; and they stood in the streets, and spake opprobrious words to the citizens; and, according to the chronicler, "Proclamations were made that no women should come together to babble and talk, but that all men should keep their wives in their houses," so remorseless is military discipline. And the duke kept the "oyer and determiner." The buckler-play on May Even cost the lives of fifteen unhappy wretches, of whom the most were apprentices. What was done with the rest, the old chronicler, Hall, shall relate:

66

Thursday, the twenty-second day of May, the King came into Westminster Hall, for whom, at the upper end, was set a cloth of estate, and the place hanged with arras: with him was the Cardinal, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earls of Shrewsbury, of Essex, of Wiltshire, and of Surrey with many lords and others of the King's council. The Mayor and Aldermen, and all the chief of the