Cripplegate Author Charlene Kwiatkowski Editor Janelle Jenstad Toponymist Janelle Jenstad Encoder Janelle Jenstad Data Manager Tye Landels Junior Programmer Joey Takeda Programmer Martin Holmes Associate Project Director Kim McLean-Fiander Project Director Janelle Jenstad The Map of Early Modern Londonhttp://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/includes.xmlVictoria, BC, Canada
Department of English P.O.Box 3070 STNC CSC University of Victoria Victoria, BC Canada V8W 3W1
2016University of Victoria978-1-55058-519-3 Janelle Jenstad london@uvic.ca

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 Provider: University of Victoria Database: The Map of Early Modern London Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8" TY - ELEC A1 - Kwiatkowski, Charlene ED - Jenstad, Janelle T1 - Cripplegate T2 - The Map of Early Modern London ET - 7.0 PY - 2022 DA - 2022/05/05 CY - Victoria PB - University of Victoria LA - English UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/CRIP1.htm UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/xml/standalone/CRIP1.xml ER - Kwiatkowski, Charlene. Cripplegate. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 05 May 2022, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/CRIP1.htm. Kwiatkowski, Charlene. Cripplegate. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed May 05, 2022. mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/CRIP1.htm. Kwiatkowski, C. 2022. Cripplegate. In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London (Edition 7.0). Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/editions/7.0/CRIP1.htm. Written by Charlene Kwiatkowski for English 520, 2011. Edited by Janelle Jenstad, 2012. Additional research by Janelle Jenstad, 2012. Bebbington, Gillian. London Street Names. London: B.T. Batsford, 1972. Print. Chalfant, Fran C. Ben Jonson’s London: A Jacobean Placename Dictionary. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1978. Print. Dekker, Thomas. The Shoemaker’s Holiday. Ed. R.L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1979. The Revels Plays. Dekker, Thomas. The seuen deadly sinnes of London drawne in seuen seuerall coaches, through the seuen seuerall gates of the citie bringing the plague with them. Opus septem dierum. London: E[dward] A[llde and S. Stafford] for Nathaniel Butter, 1606. STC 6522. Ekwall, Eilert. Street-Names of the City of London. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Print. Hamilton, Dakota L. Thomas, William. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H.C.G. Matthew, Brian Harrison, Lawrence Goldman, and David Cannadine. Oxford UP. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27242. Harben, Henry A. A Dictionary of London. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1918. [Available digitally from British History Online: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/dictionary-of-london.] Hollar, Wenceslaus. A Map or Groundplott of the Citty of London, with the Suburbes Thereof so farr as the Lord Mayors Jurisdiction doeth Extend, by which is Exactly Demonstrated the Present Condition of it, since the Last Sad Accident of Fire, the Blanke Space Signifyng the Burnt Part, & where the House be those Places yet Standing. London: John Overton, 1666. [See more information about this map.] Howe, Elizabeth, and David Lakin. Roman and Medieval Cripplegate, City of London: Archaeological Excavations 1992–8. London: MoLA, 2004. MoLA Monograph 21. Print. Kent, William. An Encyclopedia of London. Ed. Godfrey Thompson. Rev. ed. London: J.M. Dent, 1970. Print. Machyn, Henry. A London Provisioner’s Chronicle, 1550–1563, by Henry Machyn: Manuscript, Transcription, and Modernization. Ed. Richard W. Bailey, Marilyn Miller, and Colette Moore. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2006. [The Map of Early Modern London cites from this edition rather than Nichols’s nineteenth-century edition. We cite by the date of the entry thus: (Machyn 1550–08–04).] Norden, John. London [map.] London, 1593. Reprinted in 1653 with an index entitled A Guide for Cuntrey men In the famous Cittey of London by the help of which plot they shall be able to know how farr it is to any street. As allso to go unto the same without forder troble. London: P. Stent, 1653. British Library. Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription. Ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews. 11 vols. Berkeley : U of California P, 1970–1983. Prockter, Adrian, and Robert Taylor, comps. The A to Z of Elizabethan London. London: Guildhall Library, 1979. Print. [This volume is our primary source for identifying and naming map locations.] Ross, Cathy, and John Clark. London: The Illustrated History. London: Allen Lane, 2008. Smith, Al. Dictionary of City of London Street Names. New York: Arco, 1970. Print. Strype, John. A SURVEY of the CITIES of London and Westminster: CONTAINING the Original, Antiquity, Increase, Modern Estate and Government of those CITIES. London, 1720. An Electronic Edition of John Strype’s <title level="m">A Survey of London and Westminster. Ed. Julia Merritt. hriOnline. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/strype/transcriptions.shtml. Weinreb, Ben, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay, and John Keay. The London Encyclopaedia. 3rd ed. London: Macmillan, 2008. Print. Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford UP. https://www.oed.com/. Stow, John. A Survey of London. Reprinted from the Text of 1603. Ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1908. Remediated by British History Online. [Kingsford edition, courtesy of The Centre for Metropolitan History. Articles written after 2011 cite from this searchable transcription.] The Wall

Originally built as a Roman fortification for the provincial city of Londinium in the second century C.E., the London Wall remained a material and spatial boundary for the city throughout the early modern period. Described by Stow as high and great (Stow 1:8), the London Wall dominated the cityscape and spatial imaginations of Londoners for centuries. Increasingly, the eighteen-foot high wall created a pressurized constraint on the growing city; the various gates functioned as relief valves where development spilled out to occupy spaces outside the wall.

(WALL2.xml) Bunhill Field Information is not yet available. (BUNH1.xml) Grub Street

Grub Street could be found outside the walled City of London. It ran north-south, between Everades Well Street in the north and Fore Lane in the south. Grub Street was partially in Cripplegate ward, and partially outside the limits of the City of London.

(GRUB1.xml) Whitecross Street Information is not yet available. (WHIT3.xml) Little Wood Street Information is not yet available. (LITT8.xml) Cheapside Street

Cheapside Street, 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 Street 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 Street 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.

(CHEA2.xml) Wood Street

Wood Street ran north-south, connecting at its southernmost end with Cheapside Street and continuing northward to Little Wood Street, which led directly into Cripplegate. It crossed over Huggin Lane, Lad Lane, Maiden Lane (Wood Street), 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.

(WOOD1.xml) Cripplegate Ward

Cripplegate Ward is east of Aldersgate Ward and Farringdon Within Ward, encompassing area both inside and outside the Wall. The ward is named after Cripplegate.

(CRIP2.xml) Cripplegate Conduit

According to Stow, the Conduit in Cripplegate was built under Sir William Eastfield, a mercer [who in] 1438 appoynted his executors of his goods to conuey sweete water from Teyborne, and to build a faire Conduit by Aldermanberie church, which they performed, as also made a Standard in Fleetstreete by Shewland end: they also conveyed water to Cripples gate &c (Stow i. 109).

(CRIP3.xml) St. Giles (Cripplegate)

For information about St. Giles, Cripplegate, a modern map marking the site where the it once stood, and a walking tour that will take you to the site, visit the Shakespearean London Theatres (ShaLT) article on St. Giles, Cripplegate.

(STGI3.xml) Bowyers’ Hall Information is not yet available. (BOWY1.xml) Barbers’ Hall Information is not yet available. (BARB1.xml) Carriers’ Hall Information is not yet available. (CARR2.xml) Plasterers’ Hall Information is not yet available. (PLAS1.xml) Brewers’ Hall Information is not yet available. (BREW1.xml) Barbican Tower

Barbican Tower was a watchtower or barbican to the northeast of the London Wall. According to Stow, Henry III ordered the tower’s demolition in 1267 in response to the Second Barons’ War (Stow 1598, sig. E2v), though Harben suggests that the tower was later rebuilt (Harben). The site was granted to Robert Efforde in 1336 and became Barbican Manor (Stow 1598, sig. E2v).

(BARB3.xml) Islington Information is not yet available. (ISLI1.xml) London Bridge

As the only bridge in London crossing the Thames until 1729, London Bridge was a focal point of the city. After its conversion from wood to stone, completed in 1209, the bridge housed a variety of structures, including a chapel and a growing number of shops. The bridge was famous for the cityʼs grisly practice of displaying traitorsʼ heads on poles above its gatehouses. Despite burning down multiple times, London Bridge was one of the few structures not entirely destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666.

(LOND1.xml) Aldgate

Aldgate was the easternmost gate into the walled city. The name Aldgate is thought to come from one of four sources: Æst geat meaning Eastern gate (Ekwall 36), Alegate from the Old English ealu meaning ale, Aelgate from the Saxon meaning public gate or open to all, or Aeldgate meaning old gate (Bebbington 20–21).

(ALDG1.xml) Bishopsgate Information is not yet available. (BISH2.xml) Guildhall Information is not yet available. (GUIL1.xml) Tower of London Information is not yet available. (TOWE5.xml) Coleman Street Information is not yet available. (COLE1.xml) Fore Street Information is not yet available. (FORE1.xml) London

The city of London, not to be confused with the allegorical character (London).

(LOND5.xml)

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.

The Julian calendar, in use in the British Empire until September 1752. This calendar is used for dates where the date of the beginning of the year is ambigious.

The Julian calendar with the calendar year regularized to beginning on 1 January.

The Julian calendar with the calendar year beginning on 25 March. This was the calendar used in the British Empire until September 1752.

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 Joey Takeda Joey Takeda JT

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.

 Tye Landels-Gruenewald Tye Landels-Gruenewald TLG

Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.

 Cameron Butt Cameron Butt CB

Research Assistant, 2012–2013. Cameron Butt completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2013. He minored in French and has a keen interest in Shakespeare, film, media studies, popular culture, and the geohumanities.

 Kim McLean-Fiander Kim McLean-Fiander KMF

Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–2020. Associate Project Director, 2015. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to The Map of Early Modern London from the Cultures of Knowledge digital humanities project at the University of Oxford, where she was the editor of Early Modern Letters Online, an open-access union catalogue and editorial interface for correspondence from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. She is currently Co-Director of a sister project to EMLO called Women’s Early Modern Letters Online (WEMLO). In the past, she held an internship with the curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, completed a doctorate at Oxford on paratext and early modern women writers, and worked a number of years for the Bodleian Libraries and as a freelance editor. She has a passion for rare books and manuscripts as social and material artifacts, and is interested in the development of digital resources that will improve access to these materials while ensuring their ongoing preservation and conservation. An avid traveler, Kim has always loved both London and maps, and so is particularly delighted to be able to bring her early modern scholarly expertise to bear on the MoEML project.

 Janelle Jenstad Janelle Jenstad JJ

Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and PI of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. She has taught at Queen’s University, the Summer Academy at the Stratford Festival, the University of Windsor, and the University of Victoria. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media (Routledge). She has prepared a documentary edition of John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Renaissance and Reformation,Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, Elizabethan Theatre, Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism, and The Silver Society Journal. Her book chapters have appeared (or will appear) in Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society (Brill, 2004), Shakespeare, Language and the Stage, The Fifth Wall: Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism, Performance and Theatre Studies (Arden/Thomson Learning, 2005), Approaches to Teaching Othello (Modern Language Association, 2005), Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2007), New Directions in the Geohumanities: Art, Text, and History at the Edge of Place (Routledge, 2011), Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter, 2016), Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives (MLA, 2015), Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana, 2016), Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota, 2017), and Rethinking Shakespeare’s Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018).

 Martin D. Holmes Martin D. Holmes MDH

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.

 Charlene Kwiatkowski Charlene Kwiatkowski CK

Student contributor enrolled in English 520: Representations of London at the University of Victoria in Summer 2011. MA student, English.

 Abbot of Fleury

French abbot and historian.

 Ælfwine of Elmham Ælfwine Bishop of Elmham

Bishop of Elmham 1019-1030.

Wikipedia Thomas Adams Thomas Adams

Clergyman.

ODNB Wikipedia Burchard of Würzburg Burchard Bishop of Würzburg

Bishop of Würzburg 741–754. Secretary of Offa.

ODNB Wikipedia Charles II Charles II King of England King of Scotland King of Ireland

King of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1660-1665.

ODNB Wikipedia Edmund the Martyr Edmund the Martyr King of East Anglia

King of East Anglia 855-869.

ODNB Wikipedia Edward VI Edward VI King of England King of Ireland

King of England and Ireland 1547-1553. Buried at Henry VII’s Chapel.

EB ODNB Wikipedia Edward IV Edward IV King of England

King of England 1461-1470 and 1471-1483.

EB ODNB Wikipedia Peter Elers Peter Elers

Water bailiff at Cripplegate.

 Elizabeth I Elizabeth I Queen of England Queen of Ireland Gloriana Good Queen Bess

Queen of England and Ireland 1558-1603.

ODNB EB Wikipedia Firk Firk

Dramatic character in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday.

 Henry VI Henry VI King of England

King of England 1422-1461 and 1470-1471.

ODNB Wikipedia Henry VII Henry VII King of England

King of England and Lord of Ireland 1485-1509. Buried at Henry VII’s Chapel.

ODNB Wikipedia John Lydgate John Lydgate

Poet and monk of Bury.

EB ODNB Wikipedia Margaret of Anjou Margaret Queen consort of England

Queen of consort England 1445-1461 and 1470-1471. Wife of Henry VI.

EB ODNB Wikipedia Offa Offa King of Mercia

King of Mercia 757-796.

EB ODNB Wikipedia Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys

Naval officer and diarist. Husband of Elizabeth Pepys.

EB ODNB Wikipedia Rafe Rafe

Dramatic character in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday.

 Richard III Richard III King of England

King of England and Lord of Ireland 1483-1485.

EB ODNB Wikipedia Sir John Robinson Sir John Robinson Sheriff Mayor

First Baronet. Sheriff of London 1657-1658. Mayor 1662-1663. Member of the Clothworkers’ Company.

MASL ODNB Wikipedia Sir Edmund Shaw Sir Edmund Shaw Sheriff Mayor

Sheriff of London 1474-1475. Mayor 1482-1483. Member of the Goldsmiths’ Company. Monument at Mercers’ Hall.

MASL ODNB Wikipedia John Stow John Stow

Historian and author of A Survey of London. Husband of Elizabeth Stow.

MoEML ODNB Wikipedia William Thomas William Thomas

Scholar, administrator, and alleged traitor.

ODNB Wikipedia Richard Neville Richard Neville the Kingmaker

Sixteenth Earl of Warwick and Sixth Earl of Salisbury. Son of Richard Neville.

EB ODNB Wikipedia

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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 London Encyclopoedia 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 Survey, 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 (OED 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 1 Edward IV . 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 The seuen deadly sinnes of <ref target="#LOND5">London</ref> drawne in seuen seuerall coaches, through the seuen seuerall gates of the citie bringing the plague with them, 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 The Shoemaker’s Holiday (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 Eirenopolis, 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.