“On the 7th of March, 1642, the two Houses of Parliament ordered that the City of London should be fortified, for its better security and safety; and on the day following the order was printed, in small quarto, a copy of which is in the King’s Collection of Tracts in the British Museum, volume 97; and of which, if I repeat you a portion of the title, you will receive all the information contained in the pamphlet itself. ‘_An Ordinance and Declaration of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, that the Lord Mayor and Citizens of the City of London, for the better securing and safetie thereof, shall have full power and authority, according to their discretion, to trench, stop, and fortifie all high-waies leading into the said City, as well within the Liberties, as without, as they shall see cause. And for the better effecting thereof, shall impose upon all the inhabitants within the same, upon every house worth £5. a year, six pence, and every house of greater rent, after the rate of two pence in the pound._’ Another copy of this ordinance was printed in April, 1643, and is to be found in volume 104 of the same collection. Maitland, in his ‘_History_,’ volume i., pages 368, 369, also mentions an act of Common Council passed for the same purpose, February the 23rd, 1642-43: and gives a plan of the fortifications erected round the City. It was enacted, says he, that ‘all the passages and ways leading to the City should be shut up, excepting those entering at Charing Cross, St. Giles’s in the Fields, St. John’s Street, Shoreditch, and Whitechapel; and that the exterior ends of the said streets should be fortified with breast-works and turnpikes, musket-proof; and all the sheds and buildings contiguous to London-Wall without, be taken down; and that the City Wall, with its bulwarks, be not only repaired and mounted with artillery, but, likewise, that divers new works be added to the same at places most exposed.’ When this act had been confirmed by the above ordinances of Parliament, the fortifications were commenced and carried on with considerable rapidity; men, women, and children, were employed upon the works; and, in a short time, an earthern rampart, with redoubts, horn-works, batteries, forts, and bulwarks, was erected round the Cities of London and Westminster, and the Borough of Southwark. We have no particular account, however, of the manner in which London Bridge was fortified at this period; and the great events which took place in the history of the Civil Wars seem to have swallowed up every circumstance connected with this edifice. We learn, indeed, that in the year 1647, the Parliamentary Army entered the City, whilst the Corporation was engaged in an irresolute debate as to the measures to be adopted for its defence: when frequent conciliatory messages passed between the chief Officers and London; and, the less to alarm the Metropolis, the soldiers were quartered at some distance from it. ‘However, in this calm,’--says Lord Clarendon, who relates these circumstances in his ‘_History_,’ volume iii., part i., book x., page 104,--‘they sent over Colonel Rainsborough with a brigade of horse, and foot, and cannon, at Hampton Court, to possess Southwark, and those works which secured that end of London Bridge; which he did with so little noise, that in one night’s march he found himself master, without any opposition, not only of the Borough of Southwark, but of all the works and forts which were to defend it; the soldiers within shaking hands with those without, and refusing to obey their officers which were to command them: so that the City, without knowing that any such thing was in agitation, found in the morning that all that avenue to the Town was possessed by the enemy; whom they were providing to resist on the other side, being as confident of this that they had lost, as of any gate in the City.’