[2] Here William Wordsworth was moved to write of "Poor Susan" who, hearing the song of a thrush in the busy London thoroughfare, was transported by the vision of a stream flowing through the fields and her solitary cottage in the countryside.

In the Middle Ages Cheapside formed part of the processional concourse through the city towards Westminster, and regularly witnessed all the pageantry of Coronation processions, royal and diplomatic entries and, from the time of Edward I until the 16th century, of the tourneys and civic spectacles including the annual "Midsummer Watch".

Walter Hervey, alderman of Cheap, who at the end of the reign of King Henry III was elected Mayor by folkmoot, sought to reorganize the Guilds and Crafts of London and issued several charters.

When these were repudiated by his successor Henry le Walleis in 1273 and by Gregory de Rokesley, Hervey, coming from the Guildhall, assembled a great crowd of supporters at St Peter's church in Chepe, and promised to maintain their charters if he could.

[28] The Wards of Farringdon Within and Without took their name from this family through their long proprietary jurisdiction,[29] and from the important role of the elder Nicholas during the turmoil of the 1320s, so that the chantry in St Peter's acquired a foundational civic meaning.

Her Wood Street neighbours of various trades, William and Isabella Irby, Haberdashers (who were also buried at St Peter's), and Joanna, widow of alderman Thomas Carleton, citizen and Broderer, received precious items for remembrance.

The parish accounts record this as from the London Court of Husting in the reign of Richard II, specifying that the chaplain shall not be "ouircome of custumable dronkelyness",[44] but it was licensed among the letters patent of Henry IV in April 1402.

[47] From 1405 he served on commissions (on occasion with Richard Whittington) to deliberate in important cases of appeal against judgements, particularly concerning maritime or Admiralty affairs, including the unjust capture of ships of Brittany.

Each altar had its own array of textiles, richly coloured and embroidered frontals with appliqué gold motifs and suites of "steyned cloths" with images of the saints for use at special feast days.

[67] Wyght is Rector in the Lay Subsidy of 1436;[68] he may have held the benefice for some time, for in 1447 Robert Wyght, clerk, and Richard Barnet (Town Clerk of London 1438–1446[69]) together, acting as trustees, held the remainder of lands (formerly of Thomas Monk and John Askwyth) in St Andrew Holborn, St Giles-without-Cripplegate and Westminster, which they then (4 April, 24 Henry VI) demised to William Horn, citizen and Draper, heir of John Askwyth's widow Alice Horn (deceased).

[85] At this same time, 1484–1486, the Cheapside Cross was re-constructed and "curiously wrought" with carved figures of Our Lady and Child, the Resurrection of Jesus, King Edward the Confessor, and others, under a licence granted to the Mayor in 1441, from public benefactions.

[87] Parson John Alcock died early in 1491/2 leaving instructions that he was to be buried before the high altar in the middle chancel of St Peter's "in the place which I have made and ordeyned convenient for the same".

It contained many bequests in favour of St Peter's, including "myn ymage of Jhū of sylver and gilte to stande on the high awter", and made parson John Chaunterell Overseer to his executors.

[115] Dr Robinson was rich in plate and textiles, and his will favours his parish at Barley in Hertfordshire, and Royston Priory; it refers to his chamber in Cambridge, and his books of Divinity, Astronomy and Humanity, of Canon and Civil Law.

[138] As Cranmer's Commissary and chief legal draftsman he was closely involved in the reform of canon law[139] and enforcement of the royal Supremacy, and was active in detecting heresy and receiving surrenders of monasteries.

After a heraldic funeral procession,[170] his friends and executors, with discretion striking out two lines of Protestant formula from his will,[171] raised his tomb in the south wall of St Peter's church,[172] where it remained when most others had been removed.

[174] The appearance of the church tower at this date is suggested in the panorama of Edward VI's Coronation procession through Cheapside, which survives only as an 18th-century copy of a lost contemporary mural at Cowdray House.

[175] Although the cityscape is compressed, a plain square tower, crenellated, with paired belfry windows and a pyramidal roof is shown in the correct position on the west side of Wood Street, among houses just north (i.e. forward) of the Cheapside Cross.

[194] In 1560 the Wardship of Farringdon Within had passed from alderman Thomas Curteys, the eminent Pewterer, to Richard Chamberlin, Ironmonger,[195] who was constituted Master of that Company by Queen Elizabeth's confirmation charter to them in that year.

[209][210] Following the libel of John Stubbs, Sympson was among the city rectors summoned in 1579 by Dr William Aubrey to hear a proclamation against the spreading of civil disquiet by preachers, commanding them not to entangle themselves with secular matters.

[217] The Dean and chapter of Canterbury Cathedral appointed him Rector of St John the Evangelist Friday Street in 1580 (until 1586), with which he held the Crown benefice of Greens Norton, Northamptonshire (Peterborough) from 1584 to 1589.

[221] Following the Star Chamber decree of 1586 regulating printing, in 1588 Richard Judson was among the select group of clergymen deputed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London to license or censor books for publication, through the Worshipful Company of Stationers.

[226] Judson frequently signed the church accounts until 1601,[227] and was active in both parishes: he officiated at the funeral of Lord Mayor Martin Calthorp at St Peter le Poer in May 1589,[228] and presumably for Avenon's at Westcheap in 1590.

Sir Richard Martin, alderman for Farringdon Within 1578–1598, completed Calthorp's term as Mayor, was Master of the Goldsmiths in 1592–93, served his own Mayoralty in 1594, and had his second marriage at St Peter Westcheap in 1599.

As the surmounting cross fell into decay, royal approval was given for its repair in 1600, "respecting especially the antiquitie and continuance of that monument, an ancient ensigne of Christianitie",[232] not least to avoid giving encouragement to the more radical dissenting factions.

[253][254] In 1641 Votier made his will, complaining that Martha had "carried herself treacherously and rebelliously towards me about the space of twenty years, and not becoming a wife of a peaceable conversation" – and that her brother had never paid him more than half his marriage settlement money.

[258] But the emergence of Presbyterian governance[259] underlay irreconcileable differences which arose between him and the elders and wardens of St Peter's, Votier refusing to meet them or to accept arbitration, or to say against whom he felt grievances.

The celebrated Wood Street plane tree (see below) was planted here both to perpetuate the memory of the former church and to beautify the spot in its crowded surroundings as a suitable graveyard and garden, at a date not exactly known, as part of the same process of transformation.

This gives much sharper point to Poor Susan's dream of escaping from London to her countryside home, and to the poem's final (printed 1800, later suppressed) verse in which she, in her father's house, will "hear the thrush sing from a tree of its own".

In her 1958 book “The Virgin of Aldermanbury”, Madeleine Henrey writes passionately about this little corner of the City, revealing it also to be a favourite spot for her father-in-law, who in the late 19th century was curate at nearby St Botolph’s Aldersgate.