Chronicles
OF
LONDON BRIDGE.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY D. S. MAURICE, FENCHURCH STREET.

Chronicles
OF
LONDON BRIDGE:
BY
AN ANTIQUARY.

LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER, AND CO.

CORNHILL.

M.DCCC.XXVII.

TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL
JOHN GARRATT, ESQ.
ALDERMAN OF THE WARD OF BRIDGE WITHIN;
WHO, AS
LORD MAYOR OF LONDON,
LAID THE FIRST STONE
OF THE
NEW LONDON BRIDGE,
ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15th, 1825;
These Chronicles
ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.

PREFACE.

The plan of narrative adopted in the ensuing pages, is recommended by both the sanction and the example of very learned antiquity; since, without referring to the numerous classical volumes, which have been written upon the same principle, two of the most ancient and esteemed works on English Jurisprudence have honoured it with their selection. Of the accuracy of the historical events here recorded, the authorities so explicitly cited are the most ample proofs; and, that they might be the more generally interesting, whatever may have been their original language, the whole are now given in English: so that an argument should lose none of its effect from its too erudite obscurity, nor an illustration any of its amusement by requiring to be translated.

The collection and arrangement of these materials have been a labour so unexpectedly toilsome and extended, as, it is hoped, fully to excuse every delay in the work’s appearance; and, but for the valuable aid of those numerous friends who have so kindly assisted its progress, it must have still been incomplete. Of these, the first and the most fervent has been John Garratt, Esq., who, by a singularly happy coincidence, was at once the founder of the New London Bridge, as Lord Mayor, and a native, and Alderman, of the Ward containing the Old one. Of other benefactors to these sheets, the names of Henry Smedley, Esq.; H. P. Standley, Esq.; Henry Woodthorpe, Esq., Town Clerk; Mr. Joseph York Hatton;