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Appendix to Churchyard Birds<br />
As background research, I read the relevant sections of John Stow’s Survey of<br />
London, 1598.<br />
It struck me how readily some of his Elizabethan prose could now be turned<br />
into verse. I am appending one example, out of interest. I can hardly claim it as<br />
my own, as it is almost entirely made up of his words (my minor editorial fixes<br />
are in italics).<br />
OF TRONAGE<br />
from John Stow, ‘A Survey of London’, 1598<br />
Here, between the Watergate and Belinsgate<br />
are divers large landing-places...wharfs or quays<br />
for craneage up of wares and merchandise,...<br />
bearing the names of owners...therefore changeable,<br />
so Passeke’s Wharf and...Horner’s Quay, as in<br />
the 26 th of Henry VI. We read also<br />
that in the 6 th of Richard II, John Churchman,<br />
grocer, for the quiet of merchants, did newly build<br />
a certain house upon the quay called Wool Wharf,...<br />
beside the tenement of Paul Salisberrie,...<br />
to serve for tronage, or weighing of wools....<br />
Whereupon the king granted...the aforesaid tronage<br />
held and kept in that house, with easements there<br />
for the balances and weights, and a counting place<br />
for the customer, controllers,...officers of the said<br />
tronage,...with ingress and egress to and from<br />
the same,...and that the king should pay yearly<br />
to the said John, during his life forty shillings<br />
at the terms of St Michael and Easter, by even portions,...<br />
as in the indenture more at large appeareth.<br />
76
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