Cripplegate Cripplegate

Location

Cripplegate was one of the original gates in the city wall (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221; Harben). It was the northern gate of a large fortress that occupied the northwestern corner of the Roman city, a site that has been well studied by post–Word War II archaeologists (Howe and Lakin 25-47). It was in use as a gate again by the eleventh century (Howe and Lakin 100). In early modern London, it continued to serve as one of the major northern egress points, leading to Bunhill Field, Grub Street, and Whitecross Street. The gate stood at the north end of Little Wood Street (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221), on a direct route from Cheapside Street via Wood Street. Cripplegate Ward spanned the wall, with the gate marking a spatial (though not political) boundary between the inner and outer halves of the ward. Clearly visible on the Agas map, where it is labelled Creplegate, the gate opened onto an open area where local residents gathered to collect their water from the Cripplegate Conduit (Prockter and Taylor 8). Nearby landmarks included St. Giles, Cripplegate and a number of livery company halls: Bowyers’ Hall, Barbers’ Hall, Carriers’ Hall, Plasterers’ Hall, and the Brewers’ Hall are all known to have been in this area (Prockter and Taylor 8; Howe and Lakin 95, 79).

Name and Etymology

The name of the gate has been variously spelled since the tenth century as Cripelesgate, Ciryclegate, Cirpilegate, or Crepelesgate; later forms of the name include Crepelegate, Cruppelgate, and Crepelgate (Harben; Ekwall 36). The etymology of the gate’s name remains uncertain. The name might derive from either the presence of cripples begging there (Howe and Lakin 60) or from the Anglo-Saxon word crepel meaning a tunnel or an underground passage (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221). In his Survey, Stow describes a popular legend that links the gate with cripples:

The next is the Posterne of Cripplegate, so called long before the Conquest. For I reade in the historie of Edmond king of the East Angles, written by Abbo Floriacensis , and by Burchard somtime Secretarie to Offa king of Marcia, but since by Iohn Lidgate Monke of Bery, that in the yeare 1010 . the Danes spoiling the kingdome of the East Angles, Alwyne Bishoppe of Helmeham , caused the body of king Edmond the Martyre to bee brought from Bedrisworth, (now called Bury Saint Edmondes,) through the kingdome of the East Saxons, and so to London in at Cripplegate , a place sayeth mine Author so called of Criples begging there: at which gate, (it was said) the body entering, miracles were wrought, as some of the Lame to goe vpright, praysing God. Stow

This gate’s proximity to the parish church of St. Giles, Cripplegate may confirm this association; the church was built in 1090 in the name of St. Giles, the patron saint of beggars and cripples. (Stow; Harben)

A circa 1750 engraving depicting cripples at the gate can be seen on Collage (See also Chalfant 6 on the etymology of the gate’s name and its possible connection to beggars).

Harben offers an alternative to this story, drawing from the comments of a Mr. Denton in the records of St. Giles, Cripplegate. Denton questions the etymology of Cripplegate as deriving from cripples having begged there, because this practice would have had to occur for a considerable length of time in order for the name to attach itself to the gate, and the gate was never known by any other name. In addition, cripples did not beg at Cripplegate any more than they did at the other gates. Instead, Denton suggests that Cripplegate and the Barbican were joined by a tunnel providing a covered way, between these two walls. The Anglo-Saxon word for such a fortification was crepel (meaning burrow) (Harben). Both Bebbington and Smith take this position on the gate’s name (Bebbington 103; Smith 55), while the more reliable merely acknowledges the possibility (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221). Smith suggests that sentries crept along this tunnel to take up their positions in bastions (55; see also the St. Giles, Cripplegate website).

Significance

Like all of the city gates, Cripplegate was a guarded fortress affording passage in and out of the city. In his , Stow refers to this gate as a postern (Stow), a means of entrance or exit: placed at the back or side; secondary, lesser, private, hidden; esp. in postern door, postern gate ( postern, adj.1.). While this definition implies that Cripplegate may have been one of the city’s smaller gates at the time Stow was writing, it appears from the record left in Samuel Pepys’ diary that the gate witnessed heavy traffic from those wanting to leave the city for the suburbs in the later seventeenth century. On Wednesday, 21 June 1665, Pepys writes:

So homewards, and to the Cross Keys at Cripplegate, where I find all the town almost going out of town, the coaches and wagons being all full of people going into the country. 6.133

While Pepys does not state where these travellers were headed, it is possible that they were journeying toward Islington, a suburb just northwest of Cripplegate which was a popular destination for Londoners’ outings (Dekker 191 n.52).

Apart from its role as a fortification, Cripplegate took on other functions. Stow writes that it was sometimes used as a prison (Stow), a practice that Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay date to the fourteenth century (212). Like London Bridge, Cripplegate was used to display the bodies of traitors. One such body was that of William Thomas, clerk of the privy council to Edward VI. After his execution in 1554 for his involvement in the Wyatt rebellion, his body was hung over Cripplegate and his head displayed on London Bridge (Hamilton). Henry Machyn records that Thomas was hanged and after his head struck off and then quartered. And the morrow after his head was set on London Bridge and three quarters set over Cripplegate (Machyn 1554-05-18).

Monarchical figures have passed through Cripplegate, or at least attempted to. On 28 November 1558, Queen Elizabeth entered the city at Cripplegate (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 212). Henry Machyn records that Her grace rod thrugh barbecan & crepulgat (Machyn 1558-11-28). In 1461, during the Wars of the Roses, Lancastrians Henry VI and Queen Margaret arrived at Cripplegate following their defeat of Warwick the Kingmaker at the battle of St. Albans. Pro-Yorkist citizens promised to provide them with food as long as their entourage kept out of the city, yet Henry and his consort, with their troops, were forced to retire north once news came that Edward, Earl of March, with the help of his cousin, the Earl of Warwick, had rallied Warwick’s army and was preparing to march on London at Cripplegate. A determined crowd rushed to Cripplegate to deny Henry and Margaret’s wagons access into the city. Shortly after, Edward and Warwick entered the city. Edward was to become England’s first Yorkist king as King Edward IV, although the final victory of the war went to the Lancastrians when Henry Tudor defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221; Kent 235). This historical event was dramatized by Thomas Heywood in . Although control of the gates is hotly contested in the play, and much of the action in scenes 2–9 occurs around the gates, only Aldgate and Bishopsgate are named.

History

The gate was rebuilt a number of times, first in 1244 by the Brewers of London and then in 1491, after Edmond Shaw, Goldsmith and mayor of London, left 400 marks for the reparation of the gate in his testament (Stow). From 1336-37, pieces of wood from the Guildhall were used for its repair (Harben). In 1663, the gate was repaired again with an added foot postern and the following inscription:

This Gate was Repaired and Beautified, and the Foot Postern new made at the Charge of the City of London, the 15th Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord K. Charles the Second, and in the Maioralty of Sir John Robinson, Knt. and Baronet, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and Alderman of this Ward, Anno Dom. 1663. Strype 1.4.18

The rooms over this gate also served as the residence for the water bailiff of the city, whom Strype identifies as Peter Elers at the time he was writing during the early eighteenth century (Strype 5.8.164). It was common for rooms above the city gates to be let out to civic officials. The gate survived the Great Fire of 1666 , although the surrounding ward was devastated (Howe and Lakin 95). Hollar’s 1666 map of the fire damage shows the gate looking very much as it did in Norden’s 1653 map. In 1760, the gate was taken down so the street could be widened. The materials were sold for 91 pounds to Mr. Blagden, a carpenter in Coleman Street. A fragment of the old gate temporarily remained in the yard of the White Horse Inn (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221; Harben).

A plaque now marks the site of Cripplegate in Wood Street by Fore Street. Across the street, a City of London building named The Postern recalls the former gate. While the gate no longer exists, sections of the wall remain standing nearby in the Barbican complex (Ross and Clark 65).

Literary References

A number of literary references draw upon the connection between the gate and cripples. In , written in 1606, Thomas Dekker describes the entrance of the fifth sin, Apishness, into London:

This Signior Ioculento (as the diuell would haue it) comes prawncing in at Cripplegate, and he may well doe it, for indeede all the parts hee playes are but cou’d speeches ſtolne from others, whoſe voices and actions hee counterfeſtes: but ſo lamely, that all the Cripples in tenne Spittle-houſes, ſhwe not more halting. Dekker 30

In (1599), Firk mocks Rafe, his fellow journeyman who has recently returned home lame from fighting in France. His comment, Thou lie with a woman—to build nothing but Cripplegates! suggests Rafe’s lameness and impotency after coming back from war (Dekker 14.72-73). In , an ecclesiastical work describing London as the City of Peace, seventeenth-century preacher and author Thomas Adams links Recompense with Cripplegate because it is a lame way to achieve peace:

It is the lameſt way to peace, yet a way: it is a halting gate, but a gate. It were far better comming into this Citie by any of the former gates, yet better at this then none. All come not in by Innocence, nor all by Patience, nor all by Beneficence: but if they haue failed in theſe, they muſt be admitted by recompence, or not at all. Adams sig. D10r

These literary examples show that, whatever the origin of its name, Cripplegate was firmly associated with cripples in the cultural imagination.