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7 THE CHURCHES IQI cathedral had eaten up all the space where at first they had held their folkmote. We have all read about the meeting in Smithfield when Richard II . — put himself at the head of the people | and when Walworth stabbed Wat Tyler. It is hardly worth while to point out for the hundredth time that Walworth’s dagger does not figure on et ggg ar the city shield—nor any dagger, but the sword of St. Paul, the emblem of his martyrdom. It would not be easy, even for a person very learned in London topography, to piece together a view of what Smithfield was like in those days—with the monastery of the Canons on its eastern side, and the old hospital buildings, perhaps halftimbered gables like those of the hospitals at Warwick and Coventry, to the south. On the edge of the steep hill leading down towards the Fleet was a gibbet, perhaps two or three gibbets, with decaying skeletons hanging to
