Black Prince and the Fair Maid of Kent; and many another famous nobleman; and here are buried all those of noble birth who were killed at the Battle of Barnet.

Threadneedle Street is a very old road, stretching in early days far to the south and west. It got its name from the three needles appearing on the arms of the Needlemakers' Company. Some of its old outlines are covered by the Bank of England, which has been irreverently nicknamed the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.

THREE

MILTON'S BIRTHPLACE, LAMB'S WORKSHOP, AND SOME OTHER THINGS

HROUGH a district of wholesale dealers

TH

in linens and laces, Bread Street extends, joining Cannon Street to Cheapside. Midway between these, on a building at Watling Street, is a sculptured bust of John Milton with the inscription:

MILTON

Born in Bread Street

1608

Baptised in the Church of

All Hallows

Which Stood Here Ante

1878

The original All Hallows church destroyed in the Great Fire was rebuilt by Wren and finally demolished in 1878.

Milton was born in this same Bread Street, near Cheapside, where a warehouse numbered 53 now stands. His father was a scrivener—a writer who prepared contracts, deeds and other documents, and the house in which he lived and in which Milton was born bore the sign of "The Spread Eagle." Signs in those days had great significance, for the houses were not numbered, and distinctive sign boards were used in all professions and trades. In former years a bust and a tablet marked the spot, but when the present building was set up, the bust was taken down, and now stands on a shelf inside the building on the third floor.

At the Watling Street corner of Old Change may be found the Church of St. Augustine, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1683. R. H. Barham, author of the amusing "Ingoldsby Legends," was rector here for thirteen years prior to his death in 1845.

Watling Street is the present day form of an old Roman road that extended from London to Dover.

Further to the south is all that is left of a very old thoroughfare called Knightrider Street. In long ago times it was a direct way from the Tower to Smithfield, and came by its name in memory of the knights who clattered through it on their way to the tourneys at Smithfield.

Around a corner, on the north side of Queen Victoria Street, St. Nicholas Cole Abbey stands, the first church to be completed by Wren after the Great Fire.

Shelley the poet married his second wife, Mary Godwin, in 1816, in the church of St. Mildred which is in Bread Street very close to where Queen Victoria and Cannon streets meet. It was in the first year of her marriage that Mrs. Shelley wrote her remarkable novel "Frankenstein."

Cannon Street is part of the chief road of

Roman London, and had been a main road for the Britons before the invasion of the Romans. At a meeting point of this road with several others was the Roman central milestone from which distances on all roads were measured. Here a stone was set up 2000 years ago, and all that remains of it to-day is called "London Stone," and may yet be seen. It is set in the outer wall of the Church of St. Swithin, the saint who controls the weather, in Cannon Street, and is protected with an iron lattice work. This stone was superstitiously looked upon as something that afforded protection to citizens and a defence for the city. The Kentish rebel, Jack Cade, so believed it when he entered London in 1450, calling himself John Mortimer and made straight for London Stone. Arrived there, he struck it with his sword and declared himself lord of the city. Shakespeare has him say in Henry VI.:

"Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command that the conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign. And now henceforth it shall be treason for any that calls me other than Lord Mortimer."