The main features, therefore, of every great house, whether in town or country, from the seventh to the twelfth century, were the hall, the solar built over the kitchen and buttery, and the ladies’ bower.

There was also the garden.  In all times the English have been fond of gardens.  Bacon thought it not beneath his dignity to order the arrangement of a garden.  Long before Bacon, a writer of the twelfth century describes a garden as it should be.  “It should be adorned on this side with roses, lilies, and the marigold; on that side with parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood, coriander, sage, savery, hyssop, mint, vine, dettany, pellitory, lettuce, cresses, and the peony.  Let there be beds enriched with onions, leeks, garlic, melons, and scallions.  The garden is also enriched by the cucumber, the soporiferous poppy, and the daffodil, and the acanthus.  Nor let pot herbs be wanting, as beet-root, sorrel, and mallow.  It is useful also to the gardener to have anise, mustard, and wormwood....  A noble garden will give you medlars, quinces, the pear main, peaches, pears of St. Regle, pomegranates, citrons, oranges, almonds, dates, and figs.”  The latter fruits were perhaps attempted, but one doubts their arriving at ripeness.  Perhaps the writer sets down what he hoped would be some day achieved.

The indoor amusements of the time were very much like our own.  We have a little music in the evening; so did our forefathers.  We sometimes have a little dancing; so did they, but the dancing was done for them.  We go to the theatres to see the mime; in their days the mime made his theatre in the great man’s hall.  He played the fiddle and the harp; he sang songs, he brought his daughter, who walked on her hands and executed astonishing capers; the gleeman, minstrel, or jongleur was already as disreputable as when we find him later on with his ribauderie.  Again, we play chess; so did our ancestors.  We gamble with dice; so did they.  We feast and drink together; so did they.  We pass the time in talk; so did they.  In a word, as Alphonse Karr put it, the more we change, the more we remain the same.

Out-of-doors, as Fitz-Stephen shows, the young men skated, wrestled, played ball, practiced archery, held water tournaments, baited bull and bear, fought cocks, and rode races.  They were also mustered sometimes for service in the field, and went forth cheerfully, being specially upheld by the reassuring consciousness that London was always on the winning side.

The growth of the city government belongs to the history of London.  Suffice it here to say that the people in all times enjoyed a freedom far above that possessed by any other city of Europe.  The history of municipal London is a history of continual struggle to maintain this freedom against all attacks, and to extend it and to make it impregnable.  Already the people are proud, turbulent, and confident in their own strength.  They refuse to own any other lord but the king himself;