12 LONDON PARKS 0 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 
