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Database: The Map of Early Modern London
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TY - ELEC
A1 - Devine, Marina
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - Cheapside Cross (Eleanor Cross)
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
PY - 2020
DA - 2020/06/26
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/ELEA1.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/xml/standalone/ELEA1.xml
ER -
RT Web Page
SR Electronic(1)
A1 Devine, Marina
A6 Jenstad, Janelle
T1 Cheapside Cross (Eleanor Cross)
T2 The Map of Early Modern London
WP 2020
FD 2020/06/26
RD 2020/06/26
PP Victoria
PB University of Victoria
LA English
OL English
LK https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/ELEA1.htm
If monuments could speak, the Cheapside Cross would
have told a tale of kingly love, civic pride, and sectarian violence. The Cross, pictured but not labelled on the
Agas map, stood in Cheapside between Friday Street and Wood
Street. St. Peter Westcheap lay to its
west, on the north side of Cheapside. The
prestigious shops of
Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.
Research Assistant, 2010. At the time of his work with
Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–present. Associate Project Director, 2015–present. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC) who maintained the
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
Student contributor enrolled in
Archbishop of Canterbury
Author.
Queen of England
King of England, Scotland, and Ireland
Holy Roman Emperor
King of England
King of England
King of England and Ireland
Queen of England
Queen of England and Ireland
Member of Parliament.
King of England
King of England
King of Scotland
Queen of England and Ireland
King of Spain
Poet.
Sheriff of London
It must be called EBENEZAR: Cheapside Cross and a Puritan Replacement
Cheapside, one of the most important streets in early modern London, ran east-west between the Great Conduit at the foot of Old Jewry to the Little Conduit by St. Paul’s churchyard. The terminus of all the northbound streets from the river, the broad expanse of Cheapside separated the northern wards from the southern wards. It was lined with buildings three, four, and even five stories tall, whose shopfronts were open to the light and set out with attractive displays of luxury commodities (Weinreb and Hibbert 148). Cheapside was the centre of London’s wealth, with many mercers’ and goldsmiths’ shops located there. It was also the most sacred stretch of the processional route, being traced both by the linear east-west route of a royal entry and by the circular route of the annual mayoral procession.
Friday Street passed south through Bread Street Ward, beginning at the cross in Cheapside and ending at Old Fish Street. It was one of many streets that ran into Cheapside market whose name is believed to originate from the goods that were sold there.
Wood Street ran north-south, connecting at its southernmost end with Cheapside and continuing northward to Little Wood Street, which led directly into Cripplegate. It crossed over Huggin Lane, Lad Lane, Maiden Lane, Love Lane, Addle Lane, and Silver Street, and ran parallel to Milk Street in the east and Gutter Lane in the west. Wood Street lay within Cripplegate Ward. It is labelled as Wood Streat
on the Agas map and is drawn in the correct position.
Westminster Abbey was a historically significant church, located on the bottom-left corner of the Agas map. Colloquially known as
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Location:
If monuments could speak, the Cheapside Cross would
have told a tale of kingly love, civic pride, and sectarian violence. By the
time of its demolition in 1643, the Cross was an
ornate structure about twelve metres high. It is visible in a well known long
view of
There are three octangular compartments, and each is supported by eight slender columns. Its height is calculated at about thirty-six feet; the first storey being about twenty feet, the second, ten, and the third, six. Amongst the statues which ornamented the structure may be mentioned, in the first niche, most likely, a contemporaneous pope, round the base of the second were four apostles, and above them was placed the Virgin, with the infant Jesus in her arms. Four standing figures filled the top niche, and a cross, surmounted with the emblematic dove, completed the ornamentation, which was extremely rich.142
For a woodcut image of the Cross as it appeared in the 1640s, see the title page of
In the Cheap Ward section of
[Queene Elianor
a stately crosse of stoneto be erected at each place where her body rested on the way (Stow 1.265–66).with the Queenes Image and armes vpon it
The Cheapside Cross, built at an original cost of
£300, was one of the most elaborate of the twelve Eleanor Crosses (Wheatley 167). It was a site for civic
pageantry and notable events throughout its existence. The Cross was the starting point for jousts and horse
races in the reign of with a bridge from its gatehouse to the ground, over which a choir of maidens, dressed in
virginal white, came out to greet the king, singing,
(Keen 115).Welcome
In 1441, London’s Lord Mayor obtained permission of being by length of time decayed
(Stow
1.266). This new Cross was completed in
1486. During the first half of the Tudor period, the Cross was freshly gilded nearly every decade for important visitors
and occasions: in 1522 for the visit of Their majesties
(149).
During the reign of as they alleged
(1.266). Then, on 21 June 1581, during the night, images on the lowest
level of the Cross were vandalized. Although a
reward was offered, the perpetrators were not found. The Cross remained in this state, with the broken statue of the Virgin
Mary tied to the monument with ropes, until 1595, when partial repairs were
undertaken. In about 1596, a gray marble tabernacle enclosing an alabaster
statue of the goddess Diana was set up under the defaced image of the
resurrected Christ. This statue functioned for a time as a conduit.
A more overt attempt to dismantle the Cross took place in 1599. According to Stow’s revised
The citizens of London had appealed to the Croſs in Cheapſide
hath many in the twilight and morning early which doe reverence before it
(sig. B1r). However, according to Stow,
in
greater number
remonstrated, and a plain gilt cross was set on top (1.267). Henry Wheatley states that the
Cross was altered so much in 1600 that it may
be said to have been rebuilt (167).
Henry Peacham dates the protective iron fence around the monument to
preparations for the coronation of
The Cross still had its adherents. An anonymous ballad sheet published in 1630,
tender care: / to preserue their rich & ſumptuous buildings(19–20), and appeals to the City to save Charing Cross also. Even as the final campaign against the Cross began in 1641,
I the foreſaid(sig. A4r).Iaſper Croſſewas aſſaulted and battered in the Kings highway, by many violent and inſolent-minded people, or rather ill-affected Brethren
Other anonymous writers, however, now proposed that the Cross should be convicted of high treason and beheaded.
chargesagainst the Cross, which consisted mainly of its being the location of
ſpirituall fornication, Idolatry(sig. A4r). The spurious proclamation libellously named several more moderate writers as supporters of the Pope. One of these was the water-poet
And no true Chriſtian juſtly can repine, To let a Croſſe ſtand as a Chriſtian ſigne. Knaves may deface it, fooles may worſhip it, All which may be for want of grace or wit, To thoſe that wrongd the Croſſe this is my curſe, They never may have croſſes [silver coins] in their purſe.
Henry Peacham, writing under the pseudonym of Ryhen Pameach, has the Cross affectingly relate her history to her sister, Charing Cross, as the two commiserate on their present danger. In 1642, as the first skirmishes of the English civil war took place, the Cross was once again defaced (Wheatley 168), and pamphlets anticipated, celebrated, or justified its pending downfall.
By 1643, England was in the thick of civil war, and the forces of King much of London appears to have been overtaken by a new
wave of Puritan religious fervor, manifested especially in a rising tide of
iconoclasm
(450–51). Meanwhile,
After the Restoration, the Cheapside Cross was remembered and mentioned in several histories, pamphlets, and poems. As late as 1663, the spot where the Cross stood was still used for civic events. John Tatham’s 1663 Lord Mayor’s show,
a lively Figure repreſentingwith the figure of London at her feet, and other cities around her (sig. C1r). More humbly, the Chimney Sweepers’AlbionorEngland,
a graceful Ornament to this Famous Citybut also because the Cross had served the sweeps as an informal hiring hall,
we having liberty to wait there every morning for imployment(sig. A2v). However, unlike Charing Cross, the Cheapside Cross has never been reconstructed.