Ludgate

After a thousand years, during which the city grew and flourished exceedingly, one Lud became its king.

He built walls and towers, and among other things the famous gate whose name still survives in the street called Ludgate.

King Lud was succeeded by his brother Cassivelaunus, in whose time happened the invasion of the Romans under Julius Caesar.

Troynovant, or London, then became a Roman city.

After these various rebuildings there would seem to be little left of the original wall.

That, however, a great part of it continued to be the hard rubble core of the Roman work seems evident from the fact that the course of the wall was never altered.

The only alteration was when they turned the wall west at Ludgate down to the Fleet River, and so to the confluence of the Fleet and the Thames.

The river side of the wall was also allowed to be removed.

Like this morning, you saw five.

They would have got over to Ludgate.

They left the office at about eight o'clock this morning because I was just briefing them on something.

They would have got over to Ludgate Circus about 8.15, which is where they were deploying.

And I think by about quarter to ten, so in about an hour and a half, they'd had five bikes seized.

And I'm pretty sure they would have done lots of fixed penalty notices.

these reports had scarcely died away when the wonder of every good citizen, male and female, was utterly absorbed and swallowed up by a royal proclamation, in which Her Majesty, strongly censuring the practice of wearing long Spanish rapiers of preposterous length, as being a bullying and swaggering custom tending to bloodshed and public disorder, commanded that on a particular day therein named, certain grave citizens should repair to the city gates and there in public break all rapiers worn or carried by persons claiming admission that exceeded though it were only by a quarter of an inch three standard feet in length royal proclamations usually take their course let the public wonder never so much on the appointed day two citizens of high repute took up their stations at each of the gates, attended by a party of the city guard, the maimed body to enforce the queen's will, and take custody of all such rebels, if any, as might have the temerity to dispute it, and a few to bear the standard measures and instruments for reducing all unlawful sword-blades to the prescribed dimensions.

In pursuance of these arrangements, Master Graham and another were posted at Ludgate, on the hill before St. Paul's.

A pretty numerous company were gathered at this sport, for besides the officers in attendance to enforce the proclamation, there was a motley crowd of lookers-on of various degrees, who raised from time to time such shouts and cries as the circumstances called forth.

A spruce young courtier was the first who appeared.

Others fell off or slunk away in knots of two or three, others whispered together in groups, and before a numerous guard which then rode up could muster in the street, it was nearly empty.

Those who carried Master Graham to the bed upstairs were shocked to see a woman lying beneath the window with her hands clasped together.

After trying to recover her in vain, they laid her near the citizen, who still retained, tightly grasped in his right hand, the first and last sword that was broken that day at Ludgate.

The giant uttered these concluding words with sudden precipitation, and on the instant the strange light which had filled in the hall faded away.

His helm was silver, and pale was he, and the horse he rode was of ivory.

up and down down the hill of ludgate up the hill of fleet to and fro and east and west with people flows the street Even the King of England, On Temple Bar, must beat, For leave to ride to Ludgate, Down the hill of Fleet.

mrs earth makes silver black mrs earth makes iron red but mrs earth can not stain gold nor ruby red mrs earth the slenderest bone whitens in her bosom cold but mrs earth can change my dreams no more than ruby or gold mrs earth and mr sun can tan my skin and tire my toes but all that i'm thinking of ever shall think why neither knows old shell over by walter de la mere Read for LibriVox.org. Come, said old Shellover.

What, says Creep.

Up and Down by Walter de la Mare.

Read for LibriVox.org. Down the hill of Ludgate, up the hill of Fleet, to and fro, and east and west, with people flows the street.

Even the King of England on Temple Bar must beat, for leave to ride to Ludgate, down the hill of Fleet.

End of poem.

This recording is in the public domain.

So, and which is that rusty clock, sir? You?

The clock at Ludgate, sir.

It ne'er goes true.

but thou goest falser not thy father's cares can keep thee right when that insensible work obeys the workman's art lets off the hour and stops again when time is satisfied but thou runn'st on and judgment thy main wheel beats by old stops as if the work would break begun with long pains for a minute's ruin much like a suffering man brought up with care at last bequeathed to shame and a short prayer

We have to remember in the first place that the London with which we are now concerned was a walled city, and that the territory which lay within the walls, that is, the metropolis proper, represented but a very small portion of what is now included within the civic area.

Newgate, Ludgate, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, and Aldersgate still mark out and perpetuate by their names the narrow lines of those protecting walls which held snug and secure the mere handful of folk of which London was then composed.

At nine o'clock in the evening, when Bow Bell rang and the voices of the other city churches took up the curfew strain, the gates were shut for the night, and the citizens retired to their dwellings under the protection of armed watchmen who guarded their slumbers along the walls.

Westward from Fleet Street and Holborn, beyond which so much of modern London lies, the city had not then penetrated.

There are seven in all.

You've got Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate.

Lots of gates.

Yes.