12 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



was the theatre of such contests. During the time of 

 the Great Fire, numbers of homeless people camped out 

 there, passing days of discomfort and anxiety about their 

 few remaining household goods. Pepys in his casual 

 way alludes to them : " 5th September, ..." Into Moore- 

 fields (our feet ready to burn, walking through the town 

 among hot coles), and find that full of people, and poor 

 wretches carrying their goods there, and everybody 

 keeping his goods together by themselves (and a great 

 blessing it is to them that it is fair weather for them to 

 keep abroad night and day) ; drunk there and paid 

 twopence for a plain penny loaf." The *' trained bands" 

 used Moorfields as their exercise ground, and no doubt 

 the prototype of John Gilpin disported himself there. 

 As the fields were drained after 1527 they became more 

 and more the favourite resort of citizens of all ranks. 

 Laid out more as a public garden in 1606, they con- 

 tinued the chief open space of the city until a few 

 generations ago. 



The garden of the Drapers' Company was another 

 of the lungs of the City, and the disappearance of the 

 great part of it, also within recent years, is much to be 

 regretted. This land was purchased by the Company 

 from Henry VIII. after the garden had been made by 

 Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and forfeited on his 

 attainder. His method of increasing his garden was 

 simple enough. He appears to have taken what he 

 wanted from the citizens adjoining, and his all-powerful 

 position at the time left them without redress. Stowe 

 describes the way this land was filched away. " This 

 house being finished, and having some reasonable plot 

 of ground left for a garden, hee caused the pales of the 

 gardens adjoining to the north part thereof, on a sudden 



