NEW QUILL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 September 1940, Page 8

NEW QUILL

FOR OLD STOW OF OLD LONDON. In April every year, the Lord Mayor of London, attended by the Sheriffs, the City Marshal, the sword-bearer, and the mace-bearer, drive in state to the church of St Andrew Undershaft in Leadenhall Street and give John Stow a new quill. If we look in the church we shall find John Stow in the north aisle. His monument shows him at a writing table, a quill in his hand. He has been sitting there for over 300 years, and, every year the Lord Mayor gives him: a new quill, as if he expected Old Stow' to keep on writing all the time.' John was a tailor, but long before he reached mid-life he had little love of sewing and a great love of old days and old ways. Gathering old documents and searching for old records, he col- ! lected books, charters, and inscriptions. |He lent valuable chronicles to Archbishop Parker, and was one of the earliest members of the Society of Antiquarians which the archbishop founded. He published a new edition of Chaucer, adding his own notes to it. He talked with William Camden, and was friendly with all the great antiquarians of his day. ' All his life he was poor John. He was always shabby. Richer in the lore of London than any of his contempora- ' ries, he was so poor that he had to j walk when others rode. In the end, he was left to beg his way through the streets, the government allowing him . to have bowls here and there for col-1 ’ lecting money, though few people car- . ed to give him anything. He was dog- ! ged by poverty from first to last. Otheiantiquarians, jealous of his growing 1 fame, tried to rob him of his good ' name. In Elizabeth’s troubled times he £ was accused of treasuring Popish , bocks. Harassed by simpletons who did not understand what he was trying to do. he found life hard indeed. *’

Strange it is to picture London in Queen Elizabeth’s last years, and to see Old Stow, almost in rags, begging for alms. Ben Jonson walked with him. Shakespeare must have known him. Scholars of his day delighted in his merry conversation and his wonderful knowledge, but he was left to die poor in April, 1605.