CHAPTER I
GENERAL

The history of the Monastic Life, with its rise and its decay, its work and its importance, has attracted many writers and historians. It has been fiercely assailed; it has been vehemently defended. In speaking of the Dissolution it was necessary to state plainly the condition into which Monks and Friars had fallen in the early sixteenth century. (See Appendix VIII.) In this place, and as a fitting preface to a review in detail of the Monastic Houses of London, it may be permitted to quote those who could speak in praise of the Religious Life. There are two writers who seem to say all that can be said in favour of Monasticism. The first was contemporary with the Dissolution; his work is in MS. in the British Museum. I quote it at second hand from Cunningham, Growth of English Industry (p. 472):

“There was no person that came to them heavy or sad for any cause that went away comfortless; they never revenged them of any injury, but was content to forgive it freely upon submission, and if the price of corn had begun to start up in the market, they made thereunto with a wain load of corn, and sold it under the market to poor people, to the end to bring down the price thereof. If the highways, bridges, or causeys were tedious to the passengers that sought their living by their travel, their great help lacked not toward the repairing and amending thereof, yea oftentimes they amended them on their own proper charges.

If any poor householder lacked seed to sow his land, or bread, corn, or malt before harvest, and came to a monastery, either of men or women, he would not have gone away without help: for he should have had it until harvest, that he might easily have paid it again. Yea if he had made his moan for an ox, horse, or cow, he might have had it upon his credit, and such was the good conscience of the borrowers in those days that the thing borrowed needed not to have been asked at the day of payment.

They never raised any rent, or took any incomes or garsomes (fines) of their tenants, nor ever broke in or improved any commons, although the most part and the greatest waste grounds belonged to their possessions.

If any poor people had made their moan at their day of marriage to any Abbey, they should have had money given to their great help. And thus all sorts of people were helped and succoured by abbeys: yea, happy was that person that was tenant to an abbey, for it was a rare thing to hear that any tenant was removed by taking his farm over his head, nor he was not afraid of any re-entry for non-payment of rent, if necessity drove him thereunto. And thus they fulfilled the works of charity in all the country round about them, to the good example of all lay parsons that now have taken forth other lessons, that is, nunc tempus alios postulat mores.”

The second writer is Tanner in his Notitia Monastica (Preface):

“John Wethamsted, Abbot of St. Albans, caused above eighty books to be transcribed (there was then no printing) during his abbacy. Fifty-eight were transcribed by the care of one Abbot of Glastonbury, and so zealous were the monks in general for the work that they often got lands given and churches appropriated for the carrying of it on. In all the greater abbeys there were also persons appointed to take notice of the principal occurrences of the kingdom, and, at the end of every year, to digest them into annals. In these records they particularly preserved the memories of their founders and benefactors, the years and days of their births and deaths, their marriages, children, and successors, so that recourse was sometimes had to them for proving persons’ ages and genealogies, though it is to be feared that some of these pedigrees were drawn up from tradition only, and that in most of their accounts they were favourable to their friends and severe upon their enemies. The constitutions of the clergy in their national and provincial synods, and (after the Conquest) even Acts of Parliament were sent to the Abbey to be recorded, which leads me to mention the use and advantage of these religious houses.

First, The choicest records and treasures in the kingdom were preserved in them. An exemplification of the Charter of Liberties granted by King Henry the First was sent to some abbey in every county to be preserved. Charters and inquisitions relating to the County of Cornwall were deposited in the Priory of Bodmin; a great many rolls were lodged in the Abbey of Leicester and Priory of Kenilworth until taken from thence by King Henry the Third. King Edward the First sent to the religious houses to search for his title to the kingdom of Scotland in their leigers and chronicles, as the most authentic records for proof of his right to that crown. When his sovereignty was acknowledged in Scotland, he sent letters to have it inserted in the chronicles of the Abbey of Winchcomb and the Priory of Norwich, and, probably, of many other such places. And when he decided the controversy relating to the crown of Scotland between Robert Bruce and John Baliol, he wrote to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, London, requiring them to enter in their chronicles the exemplifications therewith sent of that decision. The learned Mr. Selden hath his greatest evidences for the dominion of the narrow seas, belonging to the King of Great Britain, from monastic records. The evidences and money of private families were oftentimes sent to these houses to be preserved. The seals of noblemen were deposited there upon their deaths, and even the King’s money was sometimes lodged in them.

Secondly, They were schools of learning and education; for every convent had one person or more appointed for this purpose, and all the neighbours that desired it might have their children taught grammar and church music without any expense to them. In the nunneries, also, young women were taught to work and read English, and sometimes Latin also. So that not only the lower rank of people, who could not pay for their learning, but most of the noblemen’s and gentlemen’s daughters were educated in these places.

Thirdly, All the monasteries were, in effect, great hospitals, and were, most of them, obliged to relieve many poor people every day. They were, likewise, houses of entertainment for almost all travellers. Even the nobility and gentry, when they were upon the road, lodged at one religious house and dined at another, and seldom or never went to inns. In short, their hospitality was such that, in the Priory of Norwich, 1500 quarters of malt, and above 800 quarters of wheat, and all other things in proportion, were generally spent every year.

Fourthly, The nobility and gentry provided not only for their old servants in these houses by corrodies,20 but for their younger children and impoverished friends by making them first monks and nuns, and, in time, priors and prioresses, abbots and abbesses.

Fifthly, They were of considerable advantage to the crown. (1) By the profits received from the death of one abbot or prior to the election, or, rather, confirmation of another. (2) By great fines paid for the confirmation of their liberties. (3) By many corrodies granted to old servants of the crown, and pensions to the King’s clerks and chaplains till they got preferment.

Sixthly, They were likewise of considerable advantage to the places where they had their sites and estates. (1) By causing great resort to them, and getting grants of fairs and markets for them. (2) By freeing them from the Forest Laws. (3) By letting their land at easy rates.

Lastly, They were great ornaments to the country, many of them were really noble buildings, and though not actually so grand and neat, yet, perhaps, as much admired in their times as Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals are now. Many of the abbey churches were equal, if not superior, to our present cathedrals, and they must have been as much an ornament to the country, and employed as many workmen in building and keeping them in repair, as noblemen’s and gentlemen’s seats now [1744] do.”

It will be observed as a doubtful advantage that the nobility and gentry provided for their old servants by corrodies, and had further privileges in the way of making their own “younger children and impoverished friends” monks and nuns, abbots and abbesses. But Tanner belonged to a time when it was still firmly believed that everything good and worth having belonged to gentlefolk, so that, if the Monastic House was of advantage to them, it must necessarily be of advantage to the country. In other respects, also, one cannot altogether agree with the learned writer. If, for instance, the Monastic Houses kept schools open to all comers, what was the need of founding new schools in London in the fifteenth century? Nor can it be accepted as proved that the children of poor parents were admitted either to the abbey or the nunnery school. Let, however, this plea for the Religious stand. There is enough, and too much, to be said on the other side.

“As to the extent of church property,” Milman remarks (v. 201) “in London and the neighbouring counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Essex, the church lands must have been enormous. Hardly a parish in Middlesex which did not belong, certainly so far as manorial rights, to the Bishop of London, the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, the Abbots and Monks of Westminster, and other Religious Houses; the Carthusians, St. John Clerkenwell (Hospitallers), Sion, and many smaller foundations. The chapter of St. Paul’s swept in a broad belt round the north of London till they met the church of Westminster at Hampstead and Paddington. The Abbot of Westminster was almost a Prince of Westminster.”

Again, to quote from the same writer:—

“The wealth of the Clergy, the landed property, even with the tithe, was by no means the whole: and, invaded as it was by aggression, by dilapidation, by alienation through fraud or violence, limited in its productiveness by usage, by burthens, by generosity, by maladministration, it may be questioned whether it was the largest part. The vast treasures accumulated by the Avignonese Pontiffs when the Papal territories were occupied by enemies or adventurers, and could have yielded but scanty revenues, testify to the voluntary or compulsory tribute paid by Western Christendom to her Supreme Court of Appeal. If the Bishops mainly depended on their endowments, to the Clergy, to the monastic houses, oblations (in many cases now from free gifts hardened into rightful demands) were pouring in, and had long been pouring in, with incalculable profusion. Not only might not the altars, hardly any part of the church might be approached without a votive gift. The whole life, the death of every Christian was bound up with the ceremonial of the church: for almost every office was received from the rich and generous the ampler donation, from the poorer or more parsimonious was exacted the hard-wrung fee. Above all, there were the masses, which might lighten the sufferings of the soul in purgatory: there was the prodigal gift of the dying man out of selfish love for himself, the more generous and no less prodigal gift of the bereaved, out of holy charity for others. The dying man, from the King to the peasant, when he had no further use for his worldly riches would devote them to this end: the living, out of profound respect or deep affection for the beloved husband, parent, brother, kinsman, friend, would be, and actually was not less bountiful and munificent. Add to all this the oblations at the crosses of the Redeemer, or the shrines of popular or famous saints, for their intercessory prayers to avert the imminent calamity, to assuage the sorrow, or to grant success to the schemes, it might be, of ambition, avarice, or any other passion, to obtain pardon for sin, to bring down blessing: crosses and shrines, many of them supposed to be endowed with miraculous powers, constantly working miracles. To most of these were made perpetual processions, led by the Clergy in their rich attire. From the basins of gold or the bright florins of the King to the mite of the beggar, all fell into the deep insatiable box which unlocked its treasures to the Clergy. Besides all these estates, tithes, oblations, bequests to the Clergy and the monasteries, reckon the subsidies in kind to the Mendicants in their four Orders—Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Carmelites. In every country of Latin Christendom, of these swarms of Friars, the lowest obtained sustenance: the higher, means to build up and maintain splendid churches, cloisters, houses. They were a vast standing army, far more vast than any maintained by any kingdom in Christendom: at once levying subsidies to an enormous amount and living at free quarters throughout the land.”

Any investigation into the conditions of monastic life brings the reader into many strange and unexpected places. At first, probably, he is impatient over the futility of the life, the loss of the old ideals, the worship of a Rule which is broken away and disregarded at every point, the contrast between the profession of sanctity and the life of idleness. Presently, he begins to understand that at its worst the monastery always presented some kind of example, if only in its freedom from violence, and in a discipline, lax perhaps, but far more severe than could be found outside. And then he observes how much was done by the monastery, and how much was expected of it. I do not suppose that the indiscriminate charity enjoined upon the brethren, and always practised by them, was favourable to the repression of mendicity, and the discouragement of the tramp and masterless man. Still there is always the immediate need of the starving and the sick and the suffering, which should be met without too jealous questioning into records and antecedents. We need not ask what contributions to MediÆval Literature and Learning were made by this or that convent: it is enough to know that here was a Library, and that here the monks set up reading boxes in their cloisters for those who wished to study. The example was there. We need not ask how far the town folk or the village folk were admitted to the monastery school, or if it was used only for the children of noble parents confided to the Abbot for education. The school was there, it was an example. We need not, even, pry too closely into the private lives of the Religious, though I think that as a rule they were as blameless as could be expected, considering the time and the manners: the example was there: the rule of chastity, temperance, obedience, and contempt of wealth.

Again, the reader cannot fail, presently, to understand the eagerness, the pathetic eagerness, with which the people ran after every new Order of Religion which appeared. One after the other, they were Reformers: they would introduce a sterner discipline, fiercer austerities. One after the other they fell off; the pristine zeal cooled; the new Order followed in the same lines as the old; the brethren preserved the letter and threw away the spirit. Most pathetic of all is the respect, the admiration, the awe, with which the people regarded the Franciscans in their first splendid self-devotion. They saw a company to whom nothing was unclean, nothing was beneath their care, no criminal too base, no wretched woman too low for them, no disease too loathsome, no hovel or den too filthy for the bearers of consolation and of succour to approach. What could be too good, too costly, too precious for such men? They would accept no endowment. They lived on the broken meats of charity. Then let their church be adorned; let the pillars bear aloft the roof over chapels and altars ablaze with gold and lights; let their sacred vessels be of gold—nothing less would serve; let the vestments be of cloth of gold and silver. And so on until the dreadful suspicion arose that the Grey Friars were not so holy and so devoted as of old. They lived upon their reputation for a hundred years and more; and for a hundred years to follow they slowly decayed, until there was no reproach too bitter, no invective too vehement, for the poor Franciscan.

Again, as to the uses to which their Houses were put. They were sanctuaries; they were hospitals; they were places of education for the sons of nobles; they were places of training for young ecclesiastics: great ladies, whom it was not politic to punish with imprisonment were sent to a Monastic House, where they were allowed everything except the liberty of leaving it. Thus Queen Katharine of Valois, after the discovery of her secret marriage, was sent to Bermondsey Abbey till she died: Queen Elizabeth Woodville, who surely must have proved all the miseries that belong to a crown, was also sent to Bermondsey. Dame Badlesmere, after her husband’s execution, was sent to the Clares of London. Then we find the King’s clerks expecting a pension for one of their body whenever a new Abbot or Prior was elected: and we find the King sending his old and incompetent servants to the Monastic Houses for maintenance for the remainder of their lives. Of those who professed much, more was expected.

In a word, what we find in these glimpses of monastic life is that it is all so human—so intensely human. Did we expect anything else? Yes, the Rule demands a life that is superhuman: therefore the Rule breaks down. Its weakness is that men cannot endure it; yet they have taken the vows; they cannot break free from the Rule; but they may introduce alleviations and palliatives—in every Monastic House there was the Misericordia, where indulgences were granted and conferred.

So we begin with prejudice and with contempt, and we end with sympathy and pity. After so many years we no longer feel, though we may understand, the exasperation with which the abuse of the Monastic system came to be regarded: the accumulation of vast estates in the hands of a multitude who toiled not neither did they spin: who professed an austere Rule and lived a luxurious life: who despised wealth but enjoyed all that wealth could give: who pretended to pay no regard to birth yet admitted into their ranks none but those of gentle blood: with whom the difference between profession and practice was monstrous and scandalous.

I have said that when the Rule was too hard for men to obey, they made for themselves alleviations.

There was one Rule at least where, so far as one can learn, no alleviations were practised; in this Rule men had to conform or be broken in the attempt. It was the Rule of the Carthusians. It was so austere as to seem well-nigh impossible of observance; but it was observed; nay, it was loved: Sir Thomas More lived with the brethren for a time and practised all their austerities; he would have continued to live with them; he desired nothing better than to live and die under a Rule which repressed all natural desires, but the brethren would not receive him: they sent him out into the world to do a nobler work among the people of his age and of the generations to come.

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CHAPTER II
ST. MARTIN’S-LE-GRAND

This foundation, by reason of its antiquity and religious objects, should have been venerable, but it became, by its claims, privileges, and position, an institution hateful and detestable, long before the Monastic Houses fell into disrepute. It had its origin certainly before the Conquest, but how long before cannot be ascertained. Tradition made Wythred, King of Kent, its founder in the seventh century. We need not trouble ourselves with the reasons which make this tradition impossible. Safe ground is touched about the year 1056, when St. Martin’s was either founded, or endowed, by Ingelric and Girard [Edward], two brothers, for a Dean and Secular Canons. In 1068 a Charter was granted to the College by William:—

“I William, etc.... grant, and by my royal authority for ever corroborate and confirm to God and the Church of the blessed Martin, situate within the walls of London, which the aforesaid Ingelric and Girard his brother, from their own revenues, and in atonement of their faults, honourable built to the praise of God, and for the Canonical Rule therein to be held and observed for ever. Now these are the names of the lands, Estre in Essex, with the Berewic of Maissebery and Norton, and Stanford, and Fobbinge, and Benedict, and Christehal, and Tolesfunte, and Rowenhal, and Angre, together with their appendages, the meadows, pastures, woods, mills, and all to them belonging; and in Benefleot one hide, and in Hoddesdon one hide, also the church of Mealdon with two hides of Land, and the tithes and all things to it appertaining. Moreover also, on my own part, I give and grant to the said Church, for the redemption of the souls of my father and mother, all the land and moor without the postern, which is called Cripelesgate on either side of the postern, to wit, from the Northern angle of the City wall, where a rivulet of springs, near thereto flowing, marks it out (i.e. the moor) from the wall, as far as the running-water which enters the City. I grant to it besides all the Churches and all the tithes, lands also and houses, which the faithful in Christ have already given to it within and without London, or shall in future bestow....

This Charter was renewed or confirmed by Henry the First and by Stephen.

Among the various historical points connected with St. Martin’s, the following may be noted as the most important.

Henry the Second granted to the Canons a free court of all their men and tenants: they were not to be impleaded out of it except before the King and the Chief Justice.

The Saddlers’ Guild became connected with the Church of St. Martin’s—a fact which shows that the college was not wholly regarded as a sanctuary for criminals.

In 1235 Henry the Third upheld the Canons’ Court against the City.

The erection of St. Leonard’s Parish Church on the confines of the Precinct in 1236 points to a restriction of St. Martin’s Church to the College or sanctuary. But there are other instances, e.g. that of St. Catherine Cree, in which a parish church was, for convenience, built outside the Monastic Precinct.

The buildings of St. Martin’s were improved and rebuilt by its Dean, William de Wykeham, about 1367.

Pope Innocent the Third exempted the Royal Chapels from Excommunication or Interdict.

Edward the First forbade Cardinals sent from Rome to receive procuration from St. Martin’s.

In 14 Edw. II. the College, under a Quo Warranto heard at the Tower, relinquished any claim to receive toll within the City.

By Rich. II. St. Martin’s was exempted from tenths, fifteenths, tallages, aids, and all contributions or quotas by the King.

St. Martin’s was by far the largest, the safest, and the best-protected of all the English sanctuaries. The meaning and the development of the theory of sanctuary have been considered already (p. 201). At first it meant little more than a temporary asylum, where criminals could find shelter while they sought for means to redeem their offence by paying the penalty attached by Saxon Law. Every Monastic House, every church, the King’s Palace, were all sanctuaries. But a sanctuary within the walls of the City, which was not a place of temporary refuge, not a place, such as a church, in which the fugitive could be starved into surrender, but a place in which every kind of criminal might find an asylum and safe retreat for life, a place which practically defied the arm of the Law and the hand of Justice, was certain to become an intolerable burden to a law-abiding city. And so St. Martin’s actually did become. Again and again the City of London revolted in vain against its powers; again and again cases were vainly laid in the courts against the Dean and Chapter.

The Precinct is almost exactly occupied by the present Post Office and Telegraph Offices of St. Martin’s-le-Grand.

About the year 1285 it was judged expedient to close a lane leading from St. Vedast, Foster Lane, to St. Nicholas Shambles through the Precinct of St. Martin’s because it had become the safe haunt for thieves and rogues.

In 1381, during Wat Tyler’s rebellion, Roger Legat, “quest monger” or collector, was torn from the High Altar of St. Martin’s and beheaded in Cheapside.

In 1405 the citizens petitioned Henry the Fourth for the abolition of St. Martin’s privileges as to sanctuary, on the ground that it sheltered murderers, thieves, and fraudulent debtors. It was, however, impossible to hope that Henry, who owed his crown largely to the support of the Church, could do anything so contrary to ecclesiastical privilege. It is perhaps astonishing that so simple a plan as the removal of the College bodily to some place in the country, or, at least, without the walls of the City, should not have been suggested.

In 1416 one Henry Kneve, who had taken sanctuary, fled for some reason, leaving behind him a quantity of valuables which he had stolen. These were seized by the Dean’s officers as waif. One would have thought that they would have been restored to their owners.

We have seen (p. 205) the case of the year 1422, when the City fought with all its powers, and by means of its most learned men.

In 1430 the Mayor and Sheriffs withdrew by force from sanctuary a certain Canon. They were, however, compelled to restore him.

One Matthew Philip, Alderman of Aldersgate Ward, denied the right of St. Martin’s Lane, which ran through the Precinct, to be privileged, and demanded certain payments on account of taxes or tallage to be paid there. On being refused, he levied by distress. He, too, had to give way, and offered the Dean, by way of reconciliation, a supper.

It must not be supposed that sanctuary men lived in St. Martin’s for nothing. On the contrary, the great cost of living within the Precinct was a source of considerable profit to the Canons, and was doubtless one of the reasons why the place was continued. Many of the refugees took advantage of the immunities of the place to make counterfeit goldsmiths’ work. Hence the phrase “false St. Martin’s beads.” It is noteworthy, however, that in 1447 the Goldsmiths’ Company, by permission of the Dean, although against the privileges of the place, searched the Precinct, and took away all the counterfeit work they could find, while the Dean consigned the offenders to the College Prison.

St. Martin’s, during the Wars of the Roses, served as a refuge and an asylum for many persons of consideration. William Oldehall, the Duke of York’s Chamberlain, was one of them. Henry demanded his surrender, but withdrew his order. Shortly after, Oldehall was charged with breaking sanctuary in order to commit murder. The Alderman of Aldersgate broke into St. Martin’s and carried him off, but, as in every other case, had to bring him back with gifts of atonement to the Canons.

In 1455 the City was highly provoked by the lawlessness of the sanctuary men. The Mayor and Aldermen, at the head of the citizens, forced the sanctuary and took out the ringleaders. The Dean complained, but it was the time of the outbreak of the Civil Wars, and his complaint appears to have passed unheeded.

In the following year the sanctuary men joined the citizens in attacking aliens. But, indeed, the fact proves nothing except the readiness of the lawless to commit lawless actions.

In 1457 the following Articles were drawn up for the reformation of the sanctuary, no doubt in deference to the complaints of the citizens:—

The Dean was to be sworn to keep the said Articles:

(1) Refugees to make known their reasons for taking sanctuary, and the same to be registered in a book with the refugee’s name.

(2) Refugees to deliver up weapons or armour, except a pointless knife for meat.

(3) A notorious thief entering the sanctuary must give good security for the time he remains there and three months after; failing such security, he is to be committed to ward, in the sanctuary, but may depart from the sanctuary if he will.

(4) The outer gates and posterns of the sanctuary to be closed from 9 P.M. to 6 A.M., Allhallows to Candlemas, and the rest of the year from 9 P.M. to 4 A.M., or till the commencement of the first mass there. Refugees for felony or treason to remain in sanctuary all night.

(5) Fugitives to be deprived of stolen goods they may bring into the sanctuary, and the same to be restored if possible to the owners. No one to buy such goods in the sanctuary, but if such purchase be proved, the buyer to make satisfaction to the owner.

(6) Any sanctuary man leaving the sanctuary to commit crime, is to be put to ward in the sanctuary, and if he wish to depart the sanctuary he shall do so at a given hour in daytime.

(7) Persons guilty of certain offences, as lock-picking, forgers of seals, evidences, workers of counterfeit gold and silver work not to be suffered in the sanctuary. Persons suspected of such to be committed to ward till they find sufficient security.

(8) Vicious persons not to be “suspected” in the sanctuary. If any be there, they to be put to open ward in the daytime till shame cause them to depart, or they amend their evil ways.

(9) That deceitful games be not played in the sanctuary.

(10) Barbers and artificers to keep Sundays as the citizens of London do, if they break this ordinance they to be put in ward. They to use their crafts according to the ordinances of the same City.

(11) Every person taking sanctuary to be sworn on a book, to obey these ordinances.

Among others who took sanctuary in St. Martin’s during the Civil Wars were the Countess of Oxford; Anne Neville, afterwards Richard’s Queen; and Miles Forrest, one of the murderers of the young Princes in the Tower. The tradition was that he “rotted away piecemeal”—probably he was one of the late victims to leprosy, which was then rapidly vanishing.

In 1498 Henry the Seventh endowed the Abbey of Westminster and his Lady Chapel there with St. Martin’s-le-Grand, so that the Abbot became the Dean of the College. A new seal was made. Also a new and a more powerful defender of sanctuary was created. It was not until 1548, when all chantries, free chapels, and brotherhoods were granted to the King, that the College was dissolved and the church was demolished. Even then the privileges of sanctuary survived, though under greatly modified conditions.

The church, as appeared from the excavations in 1818, was more than 200 feet long. After it was pulled down, tenements called the New Rents were erected on its site. On the place of the high altar was a wine tavern.

During the reign of Elizabeth, most of the inhabitants were foreigners—French, German, Dutch, and Scotch. By the freedom of the Precinct they could trade without being free of the City: among them were shoemakers, tailors, buttermakers, goldsmiths, purse-makers, stationers, silk weavers, and silk throwsters. The number of the foreigners of St. Martin’s in 1593 was 196.

In 1697 whatever privileges of sanctuary remained were abolished.

The Act of 1815, providing for the site of the new Post Office, reserved to the inhabitants the right to trade without being freemen of the City; the Court of St. Martin’s remained undisturbed; and the inhabitants were entitled to vote at Parliamentary Elections as Electors of Westminster.

There is an immense mass of material in connection with this ancient House, but the above seems to embody the matters of importance. It may be added that the College possessed considerable property outside Aldersgate; that St. Botolph’s Church was united with St. Martin’s in 1399, and seems to have been farmed to the Priory of St. Bartholomew. The French Protestant Church, now in Soho Square, was situated in St. Martin’s from 1841 to 1877.

St. Martin’s was one of the churches where the Curfew Bell was rung every night; the other churches, from time to time, being those of St. Mary-le-Bow, St. Laurence, St. Giles Cripplegate, and All Hallows Barking.

The common opinion of the citizens in the sixteenth century regarding the sanctuary is set forth by Stow. He, it must be remembered, was able to recollect the actual working of sanctuary, while St. Martin’s was still a living and acting Foundation.

“This St. Martin’s appears to have been a Sanctuary for great Disorders, and a shelter for the loosest sort of People: Rogues and Ruffians, Thieves and Felons and Murderers. From hence used to rush violent persons, Committers of Riots, Robberies, and Manslaughters: Hither they brought in their preys and stolen goods, and concealed them here, and shared or sold them to those that dwelt here. Here were also harboured Picklocks, Counterfeiters of Keys and Seals, Forgers of false Evidences, such as made counterfeit chains, beads, ouches plate, Copper gilt for gold: nay, common strumpets and Bawds, Gamesters and Players at Hazard and Dice, and other unlawful games. And lastly profaners of Sundays, and other Festival days, exercising their crafts thereon.

And again, to this licentiousness was this Sanctuary grown in these times, that in Henry VII.’s reign, one coming hither for Sanctuary, the Sheriffs took him thence by violence, and brought him away. But observe what followed: The Abbot of Westminster (to whom this college now belonged) in the year of Henry VII. exhibited a bill to the king against these sheriffs for arresting and drawing out with force a privileged person, out of the sanctuary of St. Martin’s belonging to the said Abbey. Which matter was heard in the Court of the Star Chamber, before the Lords and others of the King’s Counsel, and Hody and Newton, chief Justices. Which Justices determined that by Law, the Party ought to enjoy the privilege of sanctuary: and the Sheriffs were grievously fined by particular named.” (Stow’s Survey, vol. i.)

After the Dissolution some of the liberties of the place, as we have seen, remained. And the last condition of the precinct was almost worse than the first.

“Because of the Liberty enjoyed by such as lived within these bounds, many Foreigners, English and others, Tradesmen and Artificers, planted themselves here. In 1585 a Survey was taken of all the strangers, being French, German, Dutch and Scots, inhabiting here and their occupations. Many of them were cordwainers, that is shoemakers (which trade still continues there), Taylors (hence the tallymen who sold shreds of Cloth; and Button makers, and Button-mold-makers, that remained there even until the great Fire in my remembrance). Here inhabited also Strangers, Goldsmiths, Purse-makers, Linen-drapers, some Stationers, some Merchants, silk weavers. Here lived also two silk twisters, who I suppose were the first silk throwers in London, and brought the trade into England. And for remembrance sake, I shall set down their names: the one was John James, born under the Dominion of King Philip, and made Denizen the 19th of December, the 10th of the Queen. The other was Anthony Emerick, born also under the obedience of King Philip, and made Denizen the 1st of January an 17 regin ElisabethÆ. There were also upon that survey aforesaid, found to be of householders (Denizens as well as others), their Wives, Children, and Servants, one hundred and fifty in number. Which nevertheless was less by half than was some years before: for in 1569 their number was 269. There was a Constable and a Headborough for this liberty. But divers things here wanted provided for: in respect whereof they that lived out of the Liberty were in better condition. Sundry of the inhabitants refused to watch and ward, when upon occasion they were required, as good subjects and honest neighbours so to do. They refused to contribute to such taxes and payments as were set upon them for Her Majesty’s service, with the rest of their neighbours. Several visited with the sickness would not obey the Orders appointed in that behalf: that is, they would not keep their doors and windows shut, nor keep themselves within their houses: but walked forth, and struck out the red cross set upon their doors, and threatened mischief to any that should come to set crosses there. And some repaired to the Court with their Wares, a thing dangerous to the Queen and Nobility. There was no prison in the said liberty to commit such as should be troublesome and offensive, but the Gatehouse in Westminster: which was in another Shire, and out of the Liberty. And so they that were thus committed, commonly brought their actions against those that committed them, and put them to great trouble.

Hence in the year 1593, the officers and inhabitants petitioned the Lord Treasurer to grant them such good ordinances for the redress of the said disorders, and sufficient authority for the execution of the same, for the good government of the said liberty: and conversation of the people in peace: as to his Lordship’s discreet wisdom should be thought fit. And that they might have a prison and execution of justice within the precinct of their liberty. And that he would send his letters to the Constable and Headborough, to find out a convenient place for such purpose: and to assess all the inhabitants of the liberty to the charge thereof. The Lord Treasurer recommended this matter to Serjeant Owen, and Mr. Lewis, Lawyers: who gave their Judgments, that for all matters for the service of the Queen, the inhabitants were compelled to perform the same. But for other matters, they must make some Bye-Laws and Orders among themselves, to bind themselves to performance.” (Maitland.)

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CHAPTER III
THE PRIORY OF THE HOLY TRINITY, OR CHRIST CHURCH PRIORY

This once rich and flourishing House was founded in the year 1108 by Maud, wife of Henry the First, owing, it is said, to the persuasion, if that pious Queen wanted any persuasion, of Anselm.

“This church was given to Norman, first canon regular in all England. The said queen also gave unto the same church, and those that served God therein, the plot of Aldgate, and the soke thereunto belonging, with all customs so free as she had held the same, and twenty-five pound blankes, which she had of the city of Excester, as appeareth by her deed wherein she nameth the house Christ’s church, and reporteth Aldgate to be of her domains, which she granteth, with two parts of the rent of the city of Excester. Norman took upon him to be prior of Christ’s church, in the year of Christ 1108, in the parishes of St. Mary Magdalen, St. Michael, St. Katherine, and the Blessed Trinity, which now was made but one parish of the Holy Trinity, and was in old time of the Holy Cross or Holy Rood parish. The priory was built on a piece of ground in the parish of St. Katherine towards Aldgate, which lieth in length betwixt the King’s street, by the which men go towards Aldgate, near to the chapel of St. Michael towards the north, and containeth in length eighty-three ells, half, quarter, and half-quarter of the king’s iron elm, and lieth in breadth, etc. The soke and ward of Aldgate was then bounded as I have before showed. The queen was a means also that the land and English Knighten Guild was given unto the prior Norman: the honourable man, Geffrey de Glinton, was a great helper therein, and obtained that the canons might enclose the way betwixt their church and the wall of the city, etc. This priory, in process of time, became a very fair and large church, rich in lands and ornaments, and passed all the priories in the city of London or shire of Middlesex; the prior whereof was an alderman of London, to wit, of Portsoken ward.

I read, that Eustacius, the eighth prior, about the year 1264, because he would not deal with temporal matters, instituted Theobald Fitz Ivon, alderman of Portsoken ward under him, and that William Rising, prior of Christ’s church, was sworn alderman of the said Portsoken ward in the 1st of Richard II. These priors have sitten and ridden amongst the aldermen of London, in livery like unto them, saving that his habit was in shape of a spiritual person, as I myself have seen in my childhood; at which time the prior kept a most bountiful house of meat and drink, both for rich and poor, as well within the house as at the gates, to all comers, according to their estates.” (Stow’s Survey, vol. i.)

What happened many years afterwards with the Franciscans happened then in the case of these brethren of the Augustine Order. Their piety, their austerity, the endless offering of prayer and praise which ascended from their chapel deeply moved the hearts of the people. The endowment at first consisted of £25 a year, equivalent to about £750 a year of our money, if there be any certainty as to the comparative value of money, together with the proceeds of the port called Aldgate.

In the year 1125 a very singular event greatly increased the possessions and the wealth of this House. I mean the conveyance of the property held in trust by the Cnihten Gild to the Priory of the Holy Trinity.

Twelve years later, Pope Immanuel the First, by a Bull, confirmed the House in all their possessions, including “two parts of Issues of the City of Exon the Lands of Lestune, which Prince de Moulins and Adeline his wife out of piety granted to the same place, the land and the soke of the English Cnihten Gild, the Church of Bix with its rents, and the church of Tottenham.” Many other possessions fell to the House as time went on.

The Priory stood upon a triangular piece of ground, of which Aldgate and Leadenhall Street, as far as St. Catherine’s Cree Church inclusive, formed the south-west side; Cree Church Street, King Street, and Duke Street, the east side; and the wall of London the north side. The square called St. James’s Place is certainly the site of a former court of the Priory. The church probably stood on the site of St. James’s Church, which was built in 1622 partly of materials belonging to the old church, just as on the site of Grey Friars Church was erected the present Christ Church. The Precinct of the monastery covered nearly the whole of four ancient City parishes, viz. St. Mary Magdalene, St. Michael, St. Catherine, and the Blessed Trinity, amalgamated into one Parish, with, at first, the Convent Church for Parish Church, called Holy Trinity or Holy Rood. The inhabitants of St. Catherine’s, however, could not be reconciled to the loss of their church, and presently built another for themselves in the Churchyard of the Priory. The Church of St. Michael continued as a ruin, of which the crypt remained one of the most remarkable of the monuments of ancient London, down to the formation of the Underground Railway in the year 1865. It was then, most unfortunately, allowed to be destroyed.

Ancient and rich and venerable as was this Priory, whose monks enjoyed the reputation of splendid hospitality, the House in later years seems to have lost some of the consideration for sanctity which it enjoyed during the first century of its existence. This is shown by the meagre list of monuments belonging to the Priory Church compared with that of the Grey Friars or the Dominicans. Henry Fitz Ailwyn, first Mayor of London; two children of King Stephen; and Geoffrey Mandeville (after his twenty years of dangling above ground) are among the few remarkable names in Stow’s list of those here interred.

I have before me thirty-seven closely written pages containing extracts from ancient documents and archives bearing on the four hundred years’ life of this House. It is a history which might be told once for all by a Dugdale and confided to the shelves of the Society of Antiquaries: it contains the story of the management of a large estate; the usual crop of ecclesiastical quarrels and disputes over rights and claims; the recognition of the said rights by Pope and King; dispensations, faculties, injunctions, and restraints.

For instance, in 1250, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued sentence against Prior, Sub-prior, Sacristan, Cellarer, and Precentor of Holy Trinity for refusing to receive him as Visitor. The sentence is annulled by superior authority. But two years later the Pope ordered the Prior to admit the Archbishop, the Metropolitan, as Visitor. Citizens bequeathed money in order to found an obit, or anniversary for the benefit of their souls; the Bishop of London was consecrated in their Church; the heart of John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, was buried in their church; the Prior, on his election, was sworn as Alderman of Portsoken; citizens of well-known names turn up unexpectedly in these pages; thus, John Bocuinte, son of Geoffrey Bocuinte, and Juliana his wife, sold certain property with fees held of the Priory; Gilbert Fitz Fulk, one of the Aldermen of the thirteenth century, going to the Holy Land, bequeathed, in case of his death, certain lands and houses to the Priory for the good of his soul, and the souls of his father and mother; other citizens desired to be buried in the church; the King asked for the loan of a cart and horses to carry his household gear to Dover; on the election of a new Prior the House was bound to provide a benefice for one of the King’s Clerks—see Tanner’s Notes on Monastic Houses,—others of the King’s officers for divers reasons were maintained by the House—it seems, indeed, a common practice for the King to have invited this House to maintain his old servants. At one time the Priory became owner of the market called Queenhithe. William of Ypres gave it to the House. It was then called Edredes hyde, and the gift was subject to a yearly payment of £20 to the Hospital of St. Katherine by the Tower.

In 1352 we find the brethren seeking assistance in rebuilding this Church and House by offering a “Relaxation” of one year and forty days of “enjoined penance” to any who would assist. The offer to hold good for ten years. At this time the House possessed property in eighty-eight London parishes. In the reign of Edward the Second mention is made of three Grammar schools, of which one is that of the Holy Trinity Priory.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the House flourished and obtained considerable additions to its estates, so that it became the richest of all the London Houses. Its good fortune, however, did not continue. Its property decreased in value; much of it was sold; the decay continued; in the year 1532 the Prior and the Canons held a Chapter in which they recognised that their House was not only sunken and decayed in its rents and emoluments, but that it was entirely reduced and laden with debt. They therefore surrendered their House and remaining lands to the King.

The site was given with all the buildings to Sir Thomas Audley, afterwards Lord Chancellor. Audley offered the great church, just as it stood, with its peal of bells, to the adjacent parish of St. Catherine, meaning that they should pull down the latter and build upon the site. Unhappily, the parishioners were afraid to accept the offer, “having doubts in their heads,” says Stow, “of afterclaps.” If they had accepted, another fine Monastic Church would have been preserved, together with those of St. Mary Overies and St. Bartholomew the Great.

Whereupon Audley pulled down the Church himself with a great deal of expense and labour. On the death of Audley, his daughter and heiress, Margaret, became the second wife of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. The Duke was executed for high treason in 1572; the mansion went to his son, by Margaret, who sold it in 1592 to the Mayor and Corporation of the City.

Some remains of the buildings were standing until recently. The place itself seems to have been occupied by the Jews on their return under Oliver Cromwell. For nearly two hundred years it was almost entirely the Jews’ Quarter in London. Every year they held a kind of Fair on the Feast of Purim in Duke’s Place. The Feast, which falls in the month of Adar, i.e. partly in February and partly in March, commemorates the execution of Haman and the deliverance of the Hebrews. The Fair was held without any authority until early in the nineteenth century, when it was licensed for three days, generally extended to six, the square of Duke’s Place being let for shows. It was found to be a public nuisance, and was suppressed a few years later.

For many years after the destruction of the Priory Church, the inhabitants of the Precinct had no parish church of their own. In 1622, however, St. James’s was built as a parish church for the Precinct. The church became notorious for the irregular marriages without banns or license which were solemnised here. In 1874 the curacy of St. James’s was united with that of St. Catherine Cree, and the former church was pulled down.

The Precinct was privileged, and though within the City, persons not freemen of the City were permitted to trade within its limits.

PRIORY OF HOLY TRINITY AND CHURCH OF ST. KATHERINE CREE

These plans were made by a surveyor named J. Symans in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. From the mention of Sir Thomas Heneage’s garden, their date is probably before 1595, when Sir Thomas, who was Keeper of the Tower Records, died. The first shows the ground floor of the buildings then standing. The original monastery extended from the street, now called Leadenhall Street, northward and eastward to the old Wall. Two semicircular bastions and a third which formed one tower of Aldgate are seen on the plans, which also, among items otherwise unknown hitherto to London topographers, give us the canon’s church as well as that of the parishioners of St. Katherine Cree. Both these buildings have now disappeared. The conventual church in Symans’ plan had already been in part removed by Lord Chancellor Audley, in favour of the “Ivye Chamber.” The “Charncell” is still intact and “owre Ladychapell”; but there is notice of “the north end where the great tower fell Downe” and “the south end now teniment.” By “end,” Symans meant transept. The cloister and the chapter house, one portion of which is labelled “This was the chapell,” the body of the church and a south porch are clearly denoted; while, of the domestic buildings, we distinguish the gatehouse labelled “The way owte of Allgat Streat into Creechurch monastary”: the Dorter, or sleeping quarters of the monks, which open from the cloister; more than one extensive garden; the “Greate Cowrte,” and a number of apartments or separate small holdings, let to various tenants, whose names, Awnsell, Bayle, and Kirwin, for example, occur in several places on the plans. At the north side of “the Great Garden adioyning the Dorter” and close to the city wall, is “A Foundation for new buildings uppon the wall”; this seems to be let to Awnsell, who has also a lease of the garden. The north chancel aisle is let in “new Teniments.” Some relics of the vaults, or “Favlts,” are occasionally disclosed in Leadenhall Street; some Norman arches are figured by Malcolm and there are others in Pennant’s London, 1793, and many other books; but no Tudor plan of the buildings has hitherto been published.

These are quite the most important (archÆologically) of any of the illustrations in this book. Neither of them has been reproduced elsewhere. The originals are in the Marquess of Salisbury’s Hatfield House MSS., and the late Marquess gave permission for them to be used. They were sent to the British Museum for safety and were photographed there. It will be noticed that these plans show not only the disposition of the whole of the priory buildings, church, chapels, cloister, dormitory, etc., but also the ground plan of St. Katherine Cree, the position of the upper bastions of London Wall, and the direction of the lanes and streets thereabouts. They provide the basis for a wealth of discovery.

The second plan is labelled, “This second story or grownd Plat of Creechurch is drawn by J. Symans.” In it we see “Ivy Chamber” and close by the south transept let to “Darsey.” The upper floor of the Dorter, with “the gallery to the Dorter,” “a great Kitchen,” “a privy Kitchen,” and “The Great Tower,” which stood at the north-west corner of the nave, so as to be close to the entrance to “the body of the church,” by the west door, are all seen.

In both the plans the parish church appears where the present one is still, at the corner of Leadenhall Street and St. Mary Axe. This street is inscribed “A lane to London Wall from Allgat Streat”; and, after a turn past one of the smaller priory gates, “The waye from the monastary in to Allgat Streat.” The church fills a corner of the priory wall and is irregular in shape, with apparently a tower at the corner, under which is an entrance to the street. From the frequency of the window openings it would appear to have been in the Perpendicular style. It was in this building that the body of Hans Holbein, the artist, was buried at his death of the plague, while painting in Lord Audley’s house in November 1543. This church was ruinous in 1624. Two years earlier the parishioners nearer Aldgate built themselves a church, St. James’s, Duke’s Place, which stood very near, if not exactly on, the site of the Lady Chapel of the conventual church. It also fell out of repair and was pulled down in 1874, the parish being united with St. Katherine’s, which meanwhile, namely, in 1631, had been rebuilt by Archbishop Laud, and occupies the space shown by Symans, together with a narrow aisle taken from “the church yarde,” on the north side. This may perhaps be defined by a narrow passage shown in the ground plan along the wall of the church, and has hitherto been supposed to have formed part of the cloister. Churches, like this one for parishioners, occur in many other convents—St. Alban’s and Westminster Abbey, for instance.

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CHAPTER IV
THE CHARTER HOUSE

In Agas’ Map of London, “Civitas Londinum,” circa 1560 (see end of London in the Time of the Tudors), there is represented, lying on the west of Aldersgate Street, an irregular square or place called Charter House Square: it has a small church in the middle, and on the north side are monastic buildings; on the north of these are gardens and orchards; one of them with a small building which may be meant for a church enclosed with a wall. Some of these monastic buildings, with later additions and alterations, still remain to the present day; the square remains, but the orchards and gardens are built over, with the exception of the ground once enclosed by the cloister, which is now the play-ground of the Merchant Taylors’ School. Before the middle of the fourteenth century this place formed part of “No Man’s Land,” a swampy plain, covered, like Smithfield and Moorfield, with ponds and reeds and rushes. In the year 1349 the Black Death arrived; and as the City churchyards were becoming so full that they could hold no more, the Bishop of London bought a piece of this ground which he enclosed for a burial-place, building a chapel, “which is now,” says Stow, “enlarged and made a dwelling-house,” and the place was called Pardon Churchyard. It was afterwards used as a burial-place for suicides and criminals and persons who died a violent death. The body was put into a cart, hung with black cloth, belonging to St. John’s Hospital; on the black cloth was the white cross of St. John; within the cart hung a bell which rang with the jolting and the shaking of the hearse—a doleful sound and a doleful sight.

In 1350 or 1351, the plague still continuing, Sir Walter Manny bought thirteen acres of ground, adjacent to the Pardon Churchyard, and gave this to the City as a new burial-ground; the chapel stood somewhere in Charter House Square, perhaps about the middle of it. There used to be a stone cross in this burial-ground with the following inscription:—

“Anno Domini 1349, regnante magn pestilentiÂ, consecratum fuit hoc coemiterium in quo et infra septa presentis monasterii sepulta fuerunt mortuorum corpora plus quam quinquaginta millia prÆter alia multa abhinc usque ad presens: quorum animabus propitietur Deus, Amen.”

In the Charter House Precinct, to this day, whenever the ground is opened bones are found.

Some years later Sir Walter Manny, with Michael de Northburgh, Bishop of London, founded on the spot a House which they at first intended to be only a College of twelve Chaplains, one of whom was to preside; they enlarged their plan, however, and converted this college into a House of Carthusians, whose Prior obtained a Bull of the Pope in 1362 for the acquisition of certain benefices valued at £200 a year. Nine years later, in February 1471-72, the House obtained license to hold twenty acres of ground for their Precinct, together with a Chapel dedicated to the Annunciation of the Virgin. It had already received, by the will of Bishop Michael, who died in 1361, £2000 in money, many rents and tenements, the Bishop’s Library, and his best Vestments. The House was, further, largely endowed by other Kings and Princes. Sir Walter Manny, who died in 1471, was buried in the Choir of the Church.

No House commanded greater respect than this of the Carthusians, for the simple reason that while the Rule in other Houses was relaxed, or was scandalously neglected, successive generations of Carthusians showed no change in their austerities and no deviation from their Rule. They came to England about 1180, and settled first at Witham, near Bath. Their austerities are thus described:—

“They wear nothing made from furs or linen, nor even that finely-spun linen garment which we call Staminium; neither breeches, unless when sent on a journey, which at their return they wash and restore. They have two tunics with cowls, but no additional garment in winter, though, if they think fit, in summer they may lighten their garb. They sleep clad and girded, and never after matins return to their beds; but they so order the time of matins that it shall be light ere the lauds begin: so intent are they on their rule, that they think no jot or tittle of it should be disregarded. Directly after the hymns, they sing the prime, after which they go out to work for stated hours. They complete whatever service or labour they have to perform by day without any other light. No one is ever absent from the daily services, or from complines, except the sick. The cellarer and hospitaller, after complines, wait upon the guests, yet observing the strictest silence. The abbot allows himself no indulgence beyond the others, everywhere present, everywhere attending to his flock, except that he does not eat with the rest, because his table is with the strangers and the poor. Nevertheless, be he where he may, he is equally sparing of food and speech; for never more than two dishes are served to him or to his company: lard and meat never but to the sick. From the Ides of September till Easter, through regard for whatever festival, they do not take more than one meal a day except on Sunday. They never leave the cloister but for purpose of labour, nor do they ever speak, either there or elsewhere, save only to the abbot or prior. They pay unwearied attention to the canonical services, making no addition to them except for the defunct. They use in their divine service the Ambrosian chants and hymns, as far as they were able to learn them at Milan. While they bestow care on the stranger and the sick, they inflict intolerable mortifications on their own bodies for the health of their souls.” Add to this list of austerities that they wore a hair cloth next the skin; that they were not permitted to buy fish, but that they might accept it; that they made bread of bran and drank their wine diluted.

The House of the Salutation stood for 200 years. During that long period the Brethren continued the same austerities; there is no record of any falling-off; they remained all their lives within the walls of their House; all that the world knew of them came from their servants and their visitors. Other Houses might relax, into other Houses luxury might creep, but not with the Carthusians, they remained true till the end. The story of the end belongs to that of the Dissolution of Religious Houses. (See London in the Time of the Tudors.)

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CHAPTER V
ELSYNG SPITAL

This House, the memory of which had almost disappeared, was again restored to MediÆval London by the publication of Dr. Sharpe’s Calendar of Wills. And since the original terms of a Religious Foundation, and the subsequent growth of a Religious House by bequest and gift, are not often accessible, I extract from the work (1) the prÉcis of the original will of William de Elsing, mercer, by which this House was created; and (2) a list, with dates, of the various gifts which from time to time were made to the House. Here, then, is the will, dated 1348, in which he confirms his Foundation of 1329.

Elsingg (William de) Mercer.—To Robert his son a tenement with shops and garden in the parish of S. Botolph without Aldrichesgate, and divers rents in the parish of S. Laurence in the Jewry. All his tenements and rents in the parishes of S. Alphege and S. Mary de Aldermanburi, together with the appropriation of the said church of S. Mary in which tenements he had already commenced to build an almshouse of stone and a church, he devises for the maintenance of a hospital for the poor, blind, and indigent of both sexes, under the direction of a prior and convent; and he wills that no one else soever, ecclesiastic or secular, except the said prior and convent and the testator’s executors after named, shall intermeddle in the said house or hospital. And whereas the wants of the poor are too many for his means to completely satisfy, he leaves to the said prior, &c., tenements, shops, rents, &c., in the parishes of S. Laurence in the Jewry, All Hallows de Honylane, S. Martin Pomer in Ismongerelane, S. Mildred in the Poultry, S. Giles without Crepelgate, and All Hallows de Graschirche: also in Conynghoplane in the said parish of S. Mildred and in Cordwanerstrete in the parish of S. Mary le Bow, and in the parish of S. Benedict atte Wodewharf and elsewhere, so that the said prior and convent for the time being maintain chantries for the souls of Robert le Fruyter, Ralph de Holbech and Sir Geoffrey de Holbech, William de Carleton, Bartholomew de Castello, William de Gayton, and others. Notification of the king’s licence in mortmain for the above devises having been obtained; and also of the assent of Sir Ralph (de Stratford) Bishop of London, the Dean and Chapter of S. Paul’s and other parties interested, to the canons of the said Hospital being placed under the rule and order of S. Augustine, with the habit of canons regular of the same order, and to their number being five at the least. The Dean and Chapter of S. Paul’s appointed patrons of the said hospital and to act as wardens during a vacancy. His executors to be guardians of the said Hospital and of all the above tenements and rents until a prior and canons shall have been duly elected and constituted. Dated in the hospital aforesaid Monday next before the Feast of Annunciation of V. Mary (25th March) A.D. 1348.

The Hospital had been already commenced, as the Will states, on the site of a decayed nunnery in Gayspur Lane, London Wall, for the maintenance of blind men.

The House thus founded began to attract bequests. Robert de Elsing, son of the founder, endowed chantries for the souls of his father and others. I find thirty-two bequests in the Calendar of Wills down to the year 1530, and of course these were not all.

In the year 1430 a considerable accession to the property of the Hospital occurred through the then Bishop of London transferring the estates of a decayed House, that of Thele, Hertford, to Elsyng Spital on condition of founding two canons on Thele and three on Elsyng to pray for the souls of certain benefactors of Thele.

On the surrender of Elsyng House its annual income was returned at £193: 15: 5.

The Priory was granted to Sir John Williams, afterwards Lord Williams of Thane, and Keeper of the King’s jewels. He converted the whole into a dwelling-house for himself; the chapel yard he made a garden; the cloisters a gallery, and bedesmen’s rooms into stables. The house was burned down in 1541.

Meantime, the chapel of the Priory had been converted into the Parish Church of St. Alphege. The old church stood on the opposite side of the road, under the wall, like the churches of St. Augustine and All Hallows; its churchyard, on the east of the Chapel, still remains, opposite the entrance of the modern church. The parishioners paid the King £100 for their new church.

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CHAPTER VI
ST. BARTHOLOMEW

The Hospital and the Priory of St. Bartholomew were distinct and separate foundations, of which the former was governed by the latter. The traditional history of this foundation is one of those remarkable stories which belong to a period when things material and things imagined were mixed together, and the visions of a brain, disordered by sickness, or by fasting, or by loneliness, were even more real than the tangible realities of man and matter. In the time of Henry the First there lived about the Court one Rahere, who was a knight, or a minstrel, a gentleman, or a jester, a man of noble extraction, or of obscure origin, whichever you please, for the histories differ. Either before or after his “conversion” Rahere is said to have occupied the stall of Chamberlayne’s Wood at St. Paul’s. It was a time in which there was a great deal of what modern Evangelicals used to call “conviction of sin.” Rahere was one of those so convinced. Like many others at that time, when a wave of religious emotion swept over the whole country, Rahere yearned to deepen his newly found sense of religion by going on pilgrimage. The going on pilgrimage, as a part of mediÆval life, has been treated in another place. Rahere, it is enough to say, followed the common custom of the time when he went on pilgrimage to Rome. This was in 1120. Now, on arriving at Rome, or on the way, he was seized with a malarious fever, insomuch that he was like to die. He therefore prayed to St. Bartholomew, promising to found a Hospital for the poor, should he by the help of the Saint be permitted to recover. Now the bones of St. Bartholomew were found in India, A.D. 1113, only seven years before Rahere’s arrival, and, being brought over to Rome, were placed on an island of the Tiber, where had formerly stood a temple to Æsculapius. Probably Rahere had quite recently visited this place; we remember the eagerness with which the mediÆval folk ran after every new saint, or every new discovery of relics. However that may be, he had a Vision, in which the Saint appeared to him, and granted his recovery on the conditions promised by the supplicant. Rahere, therefore, on his return, proceeded to found the hospital. But the Saint appeared to him: would he do more? Would he found also a Religious House? The spot—Smithfield, the smooth field—was part of the fenny flat that lay north of London Wall: a barren heath covered with springs and ponds, and set with occasional clumps of trees. Horse races were held here, a weekly horse fair, there were stables and grooms and people to look after the horses, they were a rough and rude folk, living without the jurisdiction of the City, and they had no Church nor any religious people among them; it was the place also on which executions were held, and it was accounted infamous. Rahere obeyed the Saint in this respect as well; he erected his hospital, beginning the building in 1123, with the assistance of Richard de Belmeis, then Bishop of London, and the King himself.

Rahere next proceeded to found the Priory of St. Bartholomew beside the Hospital. The House received its first Charter from Henry the First in 1133. In this Charter the King orders his successors to defend the House as jealously as their own crown. The Priory has long since disappeared, with the exception of part of the Church, but the Hospital exists to this day, enlarged and richly endowed, a perennial fountain of life and health, while the church of the Priory, such part of it as still remains, is the noblest mediÆval monument left to London. The Hospital, according to the custom of the time, consisted of a double Hall, or a single Hall with aisles. Between the aisles, or at the end of the Hall, was the Chapel. In either aisle were the beds of the sick: the men on one side, the women on the other. As the patients were brought in, they were put to bed—two, four, even eight in one bed—without any regard to the kind of disease from which they suffered, so that in case of contagion or infection the other occupants of the bed were certain to catch it. One wonders how, in these circumstances, any one ever came out of the Hospital at all, and how any one could expect to recover. But all diseases were not infectious or contagious; and as for the patient, he was probably, from long experience of dirt and confined air, secure as regards many things which would now be fatal; then there was food for him; there was nursing of a kind; if one were thirsty he could drink; if one were hungry he could eat; the sisters were gentle and pitiful; the physician was always in readiness; his remedies were strange and wonderful, but the groundwork was the old wife’s knowledge of herbs and their uses—lore not to be despised;—moreover, the chief terror of death was removed, because the priest was always in the hospital with the last offices of the Church to fortify the dying. The Hall was spacious, lofty, and well lit—a paradise to a fever-stricken wretch from a hovel without chimney, floor, or window; the beds were soft and clean—as cleanliness was then understood; the way of death was made easy, even if the recovery of health were denied.

Rahere himself became the first Prior of his monastery; he died September 20, 1144, and was buried in the Church; the canopied tomb of the fifteenth century, which still stands in the Chancel of St. Bartholomew the Great, is said to cover the dust of the Founder, whose effigy may be twelfth-century work. On the tomb are figured two monks reading in Bibles open at the fifty-first chapter of Isaiah and the third verse:—

“For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody.”

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate text. There are four shields on the tomb, being those of England, London, the Hospital, and the Priory. The tomb itself was desecrated by workmen in 1864. One of the leather sandals was taken off Rahere’s foot, and lost for thirty years; it has now been recovered, and is placed with other things in a small glass case in the church.

Rahere joined the order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine, who were great builders and architects, and, among other things, practised medicine.

Those of the original buildings which remain are small portions of the choir of the church, from which the whole has been restored, and perhaps a portion or fragments of the transepts. The nave has long since been destroyed; the transepts are later. Originally there were an apsidal Lady Chapel and two apsidal side chapels: that on the north side is dedicated to St. Bartholomew; that on the south to St. Stephen. When Rahere died there were thirteen canons for the new Foundation, a number increased to thirty-five under his successor. There can be no doubt, therefore, of the success of the House. The canons were not subject to duty in the Hospital. For the service of the sick there was another Foundation, consisting of a Hospitaller with eight Brothers and four Sisters, under the rule of the Prior. Rahere’s buildings were largely extended by his successor. About the same time was built the gateway into Smithfield, which still, most fortunately, stands, having escaped vandal, builder, landlord, and every danger. The present west front is, of course, modern, and the churchyard occupies the site of the former nave.

In this Priory happened that most disgraceful scene of violence in which the Archbishop of Canterbury, an alien of Provence, was the chief aggressor, when he visited the Priory in defiance of the rights of the Bishop of London and replied to remonstrance by violence. This prelate was Boniface, uncle of Queen Eleanor of Provence, who had been brought to this country with so many of his countrymen and preferred to the highest place that the realm had to offer (see vol. i. p. 29).

We have in this episode a graphic and most suggestive picture of the exasperation caused by the admission of aliens to the offices and dignities which, above all, required a knowledge of the country and its institutions and its prejudices. The rights and privileges of ecclesiastics and of Religious Houses were defended with the greatest possible jealousy and tenacity. It was clearly a privilege of this House that their visitor was the Bishop of London, and that the Archbishop had no right to intrude himself into the House. That he did so is proof of an attempt at encroachment, of which an Englishman would have been incapable. But observe, as well, the arrogance of the Prelate. He seizes the Sub-prior and hurls him against a pillar; the Canons run to his rescue, and the Archbishop is thrown on his back ignominiously, betraying the fact that he is armed beneath his episcopal robes. And his men, his followers, are themselves strangers and aliens—men of Provence, like himself.

It may be observed, as well, that the citizens had their own standard of episcopal duties, if the words are correctly reported. “He is no winner of souls,” they cry: “he is an exacter of money, whom neither God nor any lawful or free election did bring to this promotion.” That the ideal of the people was so far above the practice of the prelates in such cases as this shows, it might be fairly argued, that the parish priest of Chaucer, drawn a hundred and fifty years later, existed already in the thirteenth century.

The restored plan of the Priory is here reproduced by permission of the Rev. Sir Borradaile Savory, Bart.

In 1410 the church was rebuilt “almost anew.” The apse of the east end was removed; a square east end terminating with two large windows was inserted; the Norman Lady Chapel was taken down and the present one erected with a crypt; the Norman Clerestory was taken down and replaced by the present one; the Norman capitals were changed; the stone screen under the North Transept was inserted, probably to give strength to the piers. A Chantry Chapel was built on the north side of the north aisle. In wills of this period St. Katherine’s Chapel is referred to, also a Pardon churchyard. A stone pulpit was put up in the choir. A peal of five bells was given to the church in 1520 by one Thomas Bullesden. This is the oldest peal in London, and the bells are dedicated respectively to St. Bartholomew, St. Anna, St. Peter, St. Katherine, St. Johannes Baptista.

The last Prior but one was Bolton (1506-1522). He built the oriel window on the south side of the Choir. His rebus of a Bolt-in-Tun is in the centre panel. The same rebus is found in the spandril of the door leading into the Vestry Room, and in the brickwork of Canonbury Tower, Islington, which was also built by Bolton. This Tower, with buildings now destroyed, standing in extensive grounds, the boundaries of which can still be made out, was apparently a summer residence of the Canons.

To return to the Hospital, Rahere’s first Hospitaller was Alfune, who built St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, also outside the walls. Alfune used to go into the shambles every morning begging scraps and bits of meat for the sick men and women. He had under his orders eight Brothers of the Hospital, who were priests as well as physicians, and four sisters.

A representation of a mediÆval hospital shows the double hall, the priest is administering the last rites of the Church to one patient, the sisters are sewing up the body of another just dead, mass is being sung at the altar, a visitor is kneeling in prayer. Such is Rahere’s first hospital, such was every mediÆval hospital.

Little is recorded of the Hospital between the Foundation and the Dissolution. In the reign of Henry the Third one Katherine, widow of William Hardell, obtained a grant of a small plot of ground, twenty feet each way, for the purpose of building an anchorite’s cell next to the “chapel of St. Bartholomew”—was that the chapel of the Hospital or the stately church of the Priory? It was the special duty of the anchorite to pray for the prosperity of the House and for the souls of those within it. Perhaps he may have prayed for both Hospital and Priory. In the reign of Edward the Third the Hospital was “confirmed” by the King. In the year 1423 Whittington’s executors repaired the buildings; and in the same year we learn that the Hospital possessed a library, because Sir John Wakening, once a priest in the House, enriched their library by the gift of a beautiful Bible.

In the Collections of a London Citizen21 is the following notice of the Hospital:—

“Bartholomew ys Spetylle. Hyt ys aplace of grete comforte to pore men as for hyr loggyng, and yn specyalle unto yong wymmen that have mysse done that ben whythe chylde. There they ben delyveryde, and unto the tyme of purtfycacyon they have mete and drynke of the placys coste and fulle honestely gydyd and kepte. And in ys moche as the place maye they kepe hyr conselle and hyr worschyppe, God graunte that they doo so hyr owne worschippe that have a-fendyde. Amen.”

Referring to the very copious notes in my hands, I make the following additions to the history which precedes:—

The Charter of Henry the First, 1133, granting the Foundation of the Priory, and addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to Gilbert the Universal, Bishop of London, was printed in 1891 by Dr. Norman Moore from the copy in the Record Office. The reader desirous of more detailed information on this House is also referred to Dr. Norman Moore’s work on the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great. There is a great quantity of literature on the subject of this House. The following list is by no means exhaustive, but it will serve:—Papers may be consulted in the Vetusta Monumenta, vol. ii.; in the Transactions of St. Paul’s Eccl. Soc. vol. ii.; ArchÆologia, vols. xv. and xix.; Notes and Queries—see Indices; the Antiquary—see Indices; the Reliquary—see Indices; the L. and Midd. Arch. Soc. vols. i., ii., iii.; Journal of Brit. Architects, i., xxx., xli.; ArchÆolog. Journal, vols. xli. and xlviii.

In 1362 we find a dispute between the Canons of the Priory and the Brethren of the Hospital concerning the list of the sick. In 1433 the Bishop of London issues ordinances for the better management of the Priory. Another dispute between the Priory and certain persons in the Diocese of Lincoln was thought important enough to demand a Papal commission, the Commissioners being the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, to decide upon it. The Prior and Canons complained in 1310 of the offal thrown out into the Fleet at Holborn Bridge. They succeeded in getting an Ordinance, but as to its enforcement history is mute. We find them, later on, petitioning against the making of holes and ditches in Smithfield—the petition, referring to some temporary grievance, shows that the Priory considered itself as in some sort the guardian of Smithfield. It seems, since the claim is set up in other cases, to have been a custom, in the election of a new Prior, to grant a Pension to one of the King’s clerks. John de Herclaston, clerk, in 1316, addresses a letter to the Prior and Canons claiming such a pension by right of custom. In the same year a certain Nicholas de la Marche begs the Prior to admit him into their House, “because he is an old servant of the King and infirm.” In 1530 we find that one Thomas Cornwall, convicted of heresy, who had been condemned to wear a faggot broidered on his sleeve—a pleasing reminder of orthodoxy—was sent to perpetual custody in the House of St. Bartholomew for disobeying the sentence. The story opens up a large field for hopeless inquiry. How many prisoners for heresy were there in the Houses at the time of the Dissolution? Were they all permitted to go at large? Is there any evidence as to the subsequent history of any of them? As regards Thomas Cornwall, if he was placed “in penance,” i.e. on bread and water, in a solitary cell, he did not, probably, survive to see the Dissolution of his Prison. On the other hand, if he did, it is not very likely that he saw his own private heresy any the nearer to becoming the creed of the Catholic Church.

Of St. Bartholomew’s Fair an account will be found in another place. (See London in the Eighteenth Century, p. 465 et seq.)

On October 25, 1540, Fuller, the last Prior, surrendered the House. The revenue was then £773: 0: 1-1/2; the net income was £693: 0: 10-3/4. The nave was destroyed, and the stones were used by the King for other buildings.

The Priory buildings, consisting of the Prior’s house, the Infirmary, the Dormitory, the Refectory, the cloisters, kitchens, stables, and gardens, were sold to Sir Richard Rich for £1064. The site of the nave, eighty-seven feet in length, became a churchyard, and the choir became a Parish Church. The King appointed the first Rector, after which the patronage belonged to Sir Richard Rich as his successor.

Sir Richard Rich, as Lord Chancellor, presided at the trial of Anne Askew, and, according to report, assisted with his own hands in her torture. He was also present at her execution.

In 1516 Queen Mary gave the Priory to the Black Friars, who lived here until their expulsion in 1559 by Elizabeth.

In Londina Illustrata it is said that the old Parish Church adjoined the Priory Church; that when the Black Friars were turned out, the Priory Church, together with the old Parish Church, was made the Parish Church. In that case the old Parish Church must have been part of the structure of the Priory Church. The account is confused, because the writer goes on to relate that the old Parish Church was pulled down, except the steeple of wood, which became ruinous, and was taken down in 1628, the present tower being then erected.

The Great Fire was happily stopped before it could cross Smithfield.

In 1697 Hogarth was baptized in this church.

In 1863 Restoration was begun. The Lady Chapel had been converted first into a dwelling-house and next into a fringe manufactory; part of the factory projected into the church, and was supported by an iron girder and two iron columns. In the north Transept was a blacksmith’s forge; in the south the boys’ school.

The following is an account of the most interesting Restoration—may one who is no architect be permitted to say the most valuable?—as set forth in the papers prepared for the reopening of the Lady Chapel on May 18, 1897:—

At the commencement of the Restoration in 1863, the floor was lowered to its original level, the pews removed, a dry area formed round the outside of the Church, and the walls and piers, which had perished, were made good. The Apse was also completed on the ground-floor level by the insertion of the two central piers, the storey above being occupied by a fringe manufactory. Some £5000 in all was collected and expended. (Late Rev. J. Abbiss, M.A., Rector.)

In 1884-86 the Fringe Factory, which projected twenty feet into the east end of the Church, and which covered the remains of the Crypt and Lady Chapel, was purchased for £6500.

The Apse was restored at the sole charge of the Patron, the Rev. Canon Phillips. The Church was re-roofed.

The Blacksmith’s Forge, occupying the site of the North Transept, was purchased. The restored portions were reopened on November 30, 1886. (Late Rev. W. Panckridge, M.A., Rector.)

In 1887-92 the South Transept.—The temporary Vestry, which occupied the upper portion of the South Transept Arch, was removed. The Norman Arch on the north side, and the Transition Norman Arch on the south side, were uncovered and brought to light, together with much other work of considerable interest. One bay was added to provide a Baptistery, and to form a suitable approach on the south side of the Church. The Transept now covers about half of the site of the original Transept. It was opened on March 14, 1891.

The Boys’ School was removed from the North Triforium, and new Schools were built adjoining the Church. A Working Men’s Club was built beneath the Schools, at the sole charge of the Rector.

A Memorial Screen was erected beneath the Organ Loft to the late Rector, the Rev. Wm. Panckridge, M.A.

In 1892-93 the north Transept—the Blacksmith’s Forge—was removed, and a shallow Transept rebuilt, giving abutment to the great arches of the Crossing, and providing a Morning chapel, and uncovering much old work. This Transept was opened on June 5, 1893.

A north Porch was built, giving access to the Church from Cloth Fair, and providing a room for the Mission Worker.

A west Porch was built with a room over. The west Front was newly faced with flint and stone, and the approach widened.

A new Pulpit was erected, the gift of the late Sextoness.

A new Organ Case was erected, the gift of Mr. Henry Thomas Withers, in memory of his brother, the late Frederick John Withers.

The north and south Triforia were opened out. The Peal of Bells was re-hung, and the Bell Tower repaired.

In 1895 the Crypt was restored and reopened as a Mortuary Chapel.

In 1897 the Lady Chapel was restored, and was opened as a Morning Chapel by the Bishop of London on May 18, 1897.

Mr. (now Sir) Aston Webb, the Architect in charge of the Work, was guided throughout by the sound principles: (1) never to remove from its position any worked stone.

(2) To add no new work except such as is necessitated by the requirements of the day.

(3) To make new work harmonise with the old, but to differentiate it so that those who come after may never mistake the work of any one century for that of any other.

And, finally, to bear in mind the direction contained in Rahere’s Vision—“Having in Him trust, do thou of the cost of the building doubt thee nought, only give thy diligence, and my part shall be to provide the necessaries, direct, build, and complete the work.” (Rev. Sir Borradaile Savory, Bart., M.A., Rector.)

The Hospital of Saint Bartholomew’s, when it was suppressed, at the same time was valued at a yearly revenue of £35: 5: 7. We make an observation on this hospital similar to that suggested by St. Mary’s Spital. How could the House, we ask, consisting of a Master, eight brethren, and four sisters, be kept on £35: 5: 7 a year? and on what funds were the sick people received and treated? There must have been some organised method of getting subscriptions, donations, alms, and gifts in kind. The story of what happened when the place was taken over by the City shows that voluntary and organised help for the sick was surely no new thing.

“Then also were orders devised for the relief of the poor, the inhabitants were all called to their parish churches, where by Sir Richard Dobbes, then Mayor, their several aldermen, or other grave citizens, they were by eloquent orations persuaded how great and how many commodities would ensue unto them and their City if the poor of divers sorts, which they named, were taken from out their streets, lanes, and alleys, and were bestowed and provided for in hospitals abroad, etc. Therefore was every man moved liberally to grant, what they would impart towards the preparing and furnishing of such hospitals, and also what they would contribute weekly towards their maintenance for a time, which they said should not be past one year, or twain, until they were better furnished of endowment: to make short, ever many granted liberally, according to his ability: books were drawn of the relief in every ward of the city towards the new hospitals.”

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A Foundation of very human interest was the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon or St. Thomas of Acres. It is well known that Thomas Becket belonged to a wealthy city family, his father having been a citizen of Norman extraction. Gilbert Becket died leaving behind him a considerable property in houses and lands. Whether the Archbishop took possession of this property as his father’s son, or whether he gave it to his sister, I do not know. Certain it is that, after his death, his sister Agnes, married to Thomas FitzTheobald de Heiley, gave the whole of the family estates to endow a Hospital dedicated to her brother, Saint and Martyr. Nothing should be kept back, all must be given; one sees the intensity of affection, sorrow, pride, with which the new saint was regarded by his family. There are no churchwomen so zealous as the daughters of the Bishop; there could be no worshippers at the altar of St. Thomas À Becket more devout than his own sister.

The full title of the House was “To the Honour of Almighty God and the Blessed Virgin and the most Glorious Martyr St. Thomas, for a Master and Brethren MilitiÆ Hospitalis S. ThomÆ Martyris Cantuariensis de Acon.”

Newcourt gives two explanations for this dedication and the name of Acon:—

“Radulphus de Diceto, Dean of London, who in his History, intituled, Imagines Historiarum, living Ann. Dom. 1190, ann. 2 Ric. I., when the City of Acres or Acon in the Holy-land (call’d also Ptolemais) was besieg’d by the Christians, writes as follows; About these Days, when the City of Acon was first besieg’d, one William, an English-Man by Nation, being Chaplain to Radulphus de Diceto, Dean of London, when he went to Jerusalem, bound himself by a Vow, that if he should prosperously enter Acon, he would build a Chapel to S. Thomas the Martyr, at his own Charge, according to his Ability, and would procure there, to the Honour of the said Martyr, a Churchyard to be consecrated, which was done. Then many flocking from all parts to serve in this Chappel, William himself as a Token of his Christianity, took on him the Name of Prior, who, whilst he serv’d Bodily as a Souldier of Christ, had an especial Care of the Poor, and he freely bestow’d all his Diligence and Labour, in Burying of the Bodies of such as died, as well naturally, as of others who were slain with the Sword, representing himself in Mans sight, the next Successor of that great Tobias.

My other testimony (saith he) is out of the Theatre of Honour, Lib. 9, cap. ii., where, repeating the Military Orders of the Holy Land, he saith thus, The Order of S. Thomas was instituted by the King of England, Richard, surnamed Coeur de Lyon, after the surprizal of Acres, and being of the English Nation, they held the Rule of S. Augustine, wore a white Habit, and a full red Cross, charged in the middle with a white Scallop, they took for their Patron (as I have heard) the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Metropolitan of England, Thomas Becket, who suffer’d Martyrdom (as his Favourers say) under the King of England, Hen. II. of that Name. Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, who had been five years in the Holy Land, removed the Church there of S. Thomas the Martyr, from an unfit place to a more convenient, and caused the Patriarch of Jerusalem to take Order, that the Brethren of this Church who were before, Lay-men, might be under the Order of the Temples, wearing a Cross on their Breast. He bequeathed also to this House of St. Thomas of Acon 500 Marks. So much M. Paris in vita Hen. III. p. 472, sub Anno 1238.

Hereby it is clear, that the Dedication of this Hospital or Chapel to S. Thomas of Acres or Acon, must have relation to the like Dedication of the Chapel and Holy Order in the City of Acre, in the Holy Land, to the same Archbishop: All these three Dedications being near about one and the same time within few years after the Archbishop’s Death. And it is probable that in Imitation of those Dedications at Acres, this in London might do the like.” (Newcourt’s Repertorium, vol. i. pp. 552-553.)

It was in the year 1171 that Becket’s sister founded the Hospital. It extended at first from Ironmonger Lane to the Old Jewry; later on, the Society bought gardens on the other side of Old Jewry and obtained permission to erect a gallery of communication across the street, so as to get access to their garden. It was from the gallery that Henry the Eighth beheld the Marching Watch (see London in the Time of the Tudors, p. 262). The buildings included a Chancel and Chapel of SS. Stephen and Nicholas. Over the gateway (which is now the entrance of Mercers’ Hall) was a statue of the Saint. This figure which was “newly sette up of late”—(Mar. 14, 1554)—“over ye dore of Sent Thomas of Acon was shamefully mangled: ye hedde and ye right arm being cleane stryken of, ye which Image once before this time had the hedde lykewyse stryken off and was afterwards newly set up and newe eftsoones broken.” Protestant zeal once more attacked this unlucky image. It was in the reign of Elizabeth that some fiery enthusiast destroyed it, and in its place substituted a paper of rebuke on the worship of Saints.

It was quite right and natural that, before the Protestant fury against saint worship, or the intercession of Saints, the people of London should entertain a profound belief in the protection extended to them by their own Saint—one whose name and fame were spread over the whole of Christendom—for instance, refer to the family history of Arnold FitzThedmar (p. 67). Thomas Becket was without any doubt a citizen, and the son of a citizen—even, at the outset, intended for the mercantile life. The Saint, quite early in his beatitude, listened benignantly to the prayers of William, afterwards the Leader with the long Beard, and guided him and his friends safe to port and to victory. Such a story spread, naturally, in all directions. It was the greatest honour for the City to possess such a Saint; every day the pride in St. Thomas grew and was increased by reports and rumours of miracles wrought in answer to the prayers of pilgrims.

There was another reason why St. Thomas became the tutelary Saint of London. The MediÆval enthusiasm over their Saints was liable to wane and fade away, and even to vanish. The old Saxon Saints—where were they? The shrine of St. Erkenwald still blazed with golden vessels and tapers of wax, but miracles were rare: there were still churches dedicated to St. Ethelburga, St. Osyth, St. Swithin, not to speak of the Danes, St. Olaf and St. Magnus, but no one looked any longer for miracles. As the faded images in a fifteenth-century rood screen now appear to the modern ecclesiologist, so the figures of their Saxon saints in the thirteenth century had become mere umbrÆ, shadows of the past. The shrine of Edward the Confessor was still splendid, but the King’s miracles were no longer, so to speak, quoted by the pilgrims and the miracle-mongers. The city wanted a new Saint. Heaven gave them one—all their own—in Thomas of Chepe.

Therefore, on the day when the Lord Mayor was sworn at the Exchequer, he repaired to the chapel of St. Thomas Acon with the Aldermen; after prayer and praise at his altar, they formed a procession and thence marched to St. Paul’s, where they went to the Pardon Churchyard in the precinct of St. Paul’s, where were buried Gilbert Becket and his wife; and thence they marched back to St. Thomas Acon, where every one offered a penny.

Let us consider how such a Foundation as this, not one of the richest, yet always a prosperous House, was enriched and maintained. In the first place, the original endowment was ample, if not plentiful, for the expenses of a modest number of Brethren. But the bequests of grateful or penitent or pious citizens speedily began to pour in. During the three hundred and fifty years of its existence, there never quite ceased, though the violence diminished, a continual stream of gifts. Thus, during the period from 1262 to 1535 (Sharpe’s Wills), about forty perpetual chantries were founded. These bequests show the affection of the citizens for their Saint. But there were greater and more important gifts. Henry the Third, Edward the First, Geoffrey FitzPeter, the Earl of Essex, Edward the Third, Henry the Sixth, were all benefactors to this Hospital. The Mayor and Commonalty were visitors of the House; the Mercers’ Company, on a vacancy in the Mastership, had the right to nominate two or three of the Convent, from whom the brethren were to choose their master.

Between the Hospital and the street, Sir John Allen, Mercer and Mayor in 1525, built a very beautiful Chapel, and on his death in 1544 was buried in it. Over the Chapel was a Hall—Newcourt says the Mercers’ Hall. The Chapel was clearly along the line of the street—if the north side of Chepe was yet in alignment— because, some years after the Dissolution, the body and tomb of Sir John Allen were removed to the Church itself, and the Chapel was divided into shops, and so let out for rent; after the Fire, which consumed the whole, the shops were rebuilt on the same site.

Among the names of those who were buried in this church, we find those of the Butlers—Earls of Ormond; Cavendish, of the fourteenth century; Frowyk; Leigh; and many others. The church is said to have been a “large and noble structure, consisting of a choir and the body of a church with side aisles.” (Newcourt.)

The House was surrendered in 1539, the last master being one Lawrence Gospeller, who received a pension of £66: 13: 4. The annual income was estimated at £277: 3: 4. Through the offices of Sir Richard Gresham, the Mercers purchased the site and opened the church again in 1541 as the Mercers’ Chapel. Here was kept a Free Grammar School, removed after the Fire to the site of St. Mary Colechurch.

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CHAPTER VIII
ST. ANTHONY’S

The Hospital of St. Anthony stood in Threadneedle Street, exactly opposite Finch Lane. It was originally a cell to the House of St. Anthony in Vienne, and was founded as such in the reign of Henry the Third. According to Stow, the Jews had built a synagogue there, which was taken from them and converted into a church dedicated to the Virgin. This church became the Chapel of the Hospital. The House consisted of a master, two priests—afterwards enlarged to fourteen,—and twelve poor men. To the ground thus occupied there was afterwards added a Messuage, with a garden which, under the mastership of John Carpenter (1441), was made into a school and an almshouse. The school received from Henry the Sixth certain manors for the maintenance of five poor scholars at Oxford, allowing ten pence a week for every scholar. This, making allowance for the present value of money, would not mean more than ten shillings a week, which would make a very bare subsistence for a young and hungry student. The general stipend of a chantry priest, which, I suppose, was the lowest form of preferment, was £6 a year, or about 28d. a week.

Henry the Fifth, in the suppression of alien Houses, gave this House its independence. In the year 1474 Edward the Fourth granted the House the same establishment as that of St. Anthony of Vienne, and in 1485 the House was annexed to, and incorporated with, the College of St. George of Windsor. Other gifts and bequests fell to the Society of St. Anthony’s. In 1411 one John Sauvage, desiring to be buried in the church of St. Anthony, and before the altar of St. Katherine, left all his lands and tenements to the Master and Brethren of the Hospital, with the usual conditions as to observing his obit. In 1435 Thomas Knolles, grocer, bequeathed to Friar John Snell, warden, preceptor, or Master of the House of St. Anthony, a shop in the parish of St. Benedict Fynk for the maintenance of a lamp to burn in the chancel of the church of the said House, and for the observance of the obit—not of himself, but of the said warden; a great, and perhaps unique, mark of friendship thus to provide for a friend’s safe and speedy passage through purgatory, rather than his own. In 1484 William Wyse, barber, left his brewery, “le coupe super le Hoop,” in the parish of Allhallows-in-the-Wall, in order to maintain a clerk to instruct the children of St. Anthony’s in singing to music (in cantico organico) and in plain chant (in plano cantico), and to provide for special prayers on behalf of John Carpenter, Bishop of Worcester, the first Master of the School, with the Collect, “Rege quÆsumus, Domine, famulum tuum” while he lives, and upon his death, that beginning “Deus qui inter apostolos.”

A curious privilege is recorded of this House. When the Inspectors of Markets found a pig that was unfit for food, as being too lean, or too old, or from any other cause not proper to be killed, they marked it as such by slitting the animal’s ears. Then the Proctors of St. Anthony’s took possession of the creature, and tied a bill round its neck to denote their ownership. These pigs, and no others, were allowed to run about the streets, and to feed on what they could find, or what was given them. If they grew fat and well, they were killed for the use of the Hospital. But no one ventured to touch them. “But,” says Stow, “if any one gave them bread, they would keep watch for, and daily follow, these donors, whining till they had something given them.” Whereupon was raised a Proverb, “Such an one will follow such an one and whine as it were an Anthony Pig.”

The school was at one time equal in reputation to that of St. Paul, and turned out as many scholars and Bishops—among them Sir Thomas More, Archbishop Heath, and Archbishop Whitgift. It fell into decay after the annexation to St. George’s, Windsor. One Johnson, a Prebendary of Windsor, and Master of St. Anthony’s, seems to have taken advantage of his position to ruin the House. He turned out the bedesmen, dissolved the choir, conveyed away the plate, and sold the bells. Then the school speedily fell into decay.

Once a year—on the 15th of September,—while the school was flourishing, the boys marched in procession from Mile End along Aldgate, down Cornhill to Stocks Market, and thence to Austin Friars, with flags flying and drums beating.

After the Dissolution the church was given to the Walloons, or French Protestants, who kept it, having rebuilt it after the Fire, to recent times.

The school, which was not closed in 1561, was carried on as a Parish Grammar School until the Great Fire destroyed it. Afterwards it was not rebuilt.

It is pleasing to note that the Dissolution of the Houses did not deprive the scholars or the bedesmen of their endowments. In the year 1565 the collector of the rents of the House of St. Anthony shows in his accounts the sum of £17, devoted to the instruction of the scholars in grammar, and £31: 4s. for the stipends of twelve poor persons for one year at the weekly charge of 1s. for each. Also 2s. was paid, as usual, to “le skavinger.”

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The history of this House belongs to the history of the Knights of St. John, or Knights Hospitallers. The Order was founded about the year 1048, beginning, like all great orders, in a small and humble way, with a Hospital for pilgrims at Jerusalem; after the conquest of the city, the Brethren were incorporated into a religious body, bound by vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience; in the year 1118 they became a military body, sworn to defend the Holy Sepulchre. They became, in the course of two centuries, an extremely wealthy body, whose only rivals were the Templars. They wore a red surcoat over their armour, with a Maltese Cross enamelled white and edged with gold for a badge. Their motto was “Pro fide,” with the later addition of “Pro utilitate hominum.”

There were nearly 40,000 knights scattered over the various Priories, Commanderies, and Preceptories of the Order; they were divided into eight “langues”—Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon, England, Germany, and Castile.

The Grand Prior of Clerkenwell ranked as the first Baron of England; he had absolute authority over the English branch; after the suppression of the Templars the Hospitallers obtained a nominal grant of all their estates, but these were so heavily burdened with legal and other charges, that the new owners were not greatly enriched.

The church of the Priory was dedicated by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in 1185. The English branch of the knights grew and prospered; they acquired a great number of manors; they sent abroad companies and contingents wherever fighting was going on against the Moslem; no one could accuse the knights of refusing to act up to their vows as regards fighting. But they became most unpopular; they acquired the reputation, like the Templars, of being oppressive landlords and proud neighbours. In the rising of Wat Tyler, vengeance fell especially upon the Knights Hospitallers. The mob attacked, seized, wrecked, and fired the Priory; they would not allow any effort to stay the flames; they watched it burn for a week; and they destroyed the Prior’s house at Highbury.

When the insurrection was quelled, the knights returned to their ruined Priory and set themselves to rebuild it in greater magnificence; the rebuilding, conducted in the leisurely mediÆval fashion, took nearly two hundred years; it was not until 1504 that the House was completed by Sir Thomas Docwra, then Prior, and this was only one short generation before the suppression of the Order in England and the confiscation of their property.

The Dissolution of the Order took place in 1540. The Act for its suppression was read for the first time in the House of Commons on the 22nd of April, for the second time on the 26th, and for the third time on the 29th. On the 7th May the Order was suppressed. The value of its revenues in England was estimated, according to Stow, at £3385: 19: 8; according to Dugdale, at £2385: 12: 8. The last Prior, Sir William Weston, received from the King the promise of a pension of £1000 a year—an enormous pension considering the value of money. But he died on the day of the suppression.

Unlike many Houses, the Priory, with its noble church, escaped the hands of the destroyer for some time. What happened to it is told by Stow:—

“This Priory church and House of St. John was preserved from spoil or downpulling, so long as King Henry VIII. reigned, and was employed as a store-house for the King’s toils and tents, for hunting, and for the wars, etc.; but in the 3rd of King Edward VI., the church, for the most part, to wit, the body and side aisles, with the great bell tower (a most curious piece of workmanship, graven gilt, and enamelled, to the great beautifying of the city, and passing all other that I have seen), was undermined and blown up with gunpowder; the stone thereof was employed in building of the Lord Protector’s house in the Strand. That part of the choir which remaineth, with some side chapels, was, by Cardinal Pole in the reign of Queen Mary, closed up at the west end, and otherwise repaired; and Sir Thomas Gresham, knight, was then made lord prior there, with restitution of some lands, but the same was again suppressed in the first year of Queen Elizabeth.” (Survey, vol. ii.)

Not even the Templars, at their highest point of splendour, outdid these knights in magnificence and luxury, in pride and in independence. Unpopular as they were, they did not incur the same odium as the Templars. In their pride and their privileges, it is true, they were the equals of the rival Order; they were as hard landlords; but they had this great superiority over the Templars in the fact that they did honestly continue the work for which they were founded: they fought the Moslem without intermission at Acre, at Rhodes, at Cyprus, at Malta, and in the Mediterranean Sea. They preserved the respect of the world for unconquerable courage.

In 1191 the Knights Hospitallers took Acre, which they held till 1292. On losing this, the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land, they retired to Cyprus, where they lay quiet, maturing their plans for fourteen years. It was, no doubt, the knowledge that they were forming plans for another attack on the Saracens which saved them on the downfall of the Templars. In 1308 they conquered Rhodes, which they defended for more than two hundred years. In 1522 they were turned out of this island; the few knights who survived sailed away with about 4000 soldiers and others from Rhodes, and took refuge in Candia, in Sicily, and in Naples, hoping for assistance to retake Rhodes. This assistance was not forthcoming, but they accepted from Charles the Fifth the islands of Malta and Gozo, to which they repaired, with all their archives and relics, in 1530. For two hundred and fifty years after this, the knights continued to fight Turk, Algerine, and Moor in the Mediterranean. In 1798, however, they allowed Napoleon to land without striking a blow.

Their rules were so stringent that it would seem, at first, wonderful how so much pride and luxury should have crept in. But the history of every Monastic House shows how rules can be evaded, or so obeyed as to destroy the spirit while adhering to the letter.

“Poverty, chastity, and obedience: to expect but bread and water and a coarse garment. The clerks to serve in white surplices at the altar. The priests, in their surplices, to convey the Host to the sick, with a deacon or clerk preceding them, bearing a lantern and the sponge filled with holy water. The brethren to go abroad by appointment of the master, but never singly, and to avoid giving offence. No females to be employed for or about their persons; when soliciting alms, to visit churches or people of reputation, and ask their food for charity; if they received none, to buy enough for subsistence; to account for all their receipts to the master, and he to give them to the poor, retaining only one-third part of provisions, the overplus to the poor. The brethren to go soliciting only by permission; to carry candles with them; to wear no skins of wild beasts, or clothes degrading the Order. To eat but twice a day on Wednesday and Saturday; and no flesh from Septuagesima till Easter, except when aged or indisposed. To sleep covered. If incontinent in private, to repent in privacy, and do penance; if the brother was discovered, he was to be deprived of his robe in the church of the town after mass, to be severely whipped, and expelled from the Order; but, if truly penitent, he might be again received; but not without penance and a year’s expulsion, etc.”

If we follow the fortunes of the House after the accession of Elizabeth, we find that the south gate was granted by King James in 1604 to Sir Roger Wilbraham for life. In 1607 the site of the House, containing five acres, was granted to Ralph Freeman and his heirs. The choir, which had been restored or rebuilt by Cardinal Pole, became the property of Sir William Cecil; the Earl of Elgin got it by his marriage with Diana, daughter of the Earl of Exeter; his son, being created Earl of Aylesbury, called it Aylesbury Chapel. In the reign of James the Second a Roman Catholic convent of Benedictine monks was set up in the Precinct of St. John’s. An account of the attempt is given in T. Cromwell’s History of Clerkenwell:—

“It appears, that in the reign spoken of, a certain Father Corker was ‘resident in England to the Elector of Colen’ (Cologne); and that, having first set up a chapel in the Savoy, from which, owing to a dispute with the Jesuits, he was persuaded by the King to remove, ‘he went to St. John’s, corruptly called St. Jone’s, and there built a mighty pretty convent, which the Revolution of 1688 pulled down to the ground, to his very great loss, for as he was Dean of the rosary, he melted down the great gold chalice and patten to help towards this building, supplying the want of them with one of silver just of that make. He counted this convent for the conversion of souls amongst those things which the holy Fathers of the Church allow the church treasure to be spent on.’ This convent seems to have cost the Benedictines considerable sums of money; frequent entries appear in their account-books of that period of amounts paid towards its erection, etc. It is always styled in these books ‘The Factory,’ or, ‘The Factory in Clerkenwell.’”

In the year 1721 the estate was purchased by Simon Michell, and in 1723 he repaired and enlarged the chapel, which he sold to the commissioners for building fifty new churches, for £2950. The church was declared to be a parish church, and the parish assigned to it was the former precinct of the Priory.

The remains of the Priory consist now of the gate, the crypt of the church, some fragments of the ancient walls, and foundations of the former buildings. The crypt, which, until recently, was filled with coffins, has now been cleared; it is one of the most remarkable monuments in London; it was found by excavation to have extended, formerly, much farther to the west; probably to the whole extent of the church.

The Gatehouse consists of the gate itself, with two rooms, one on each side, and a large chamber above. In 1731 it was occupied by Edward Cave the publisher, and from this spot was issued the Gentleman’s Magazine. The associations of Johnson, Goldsmith, and others with the Gate belong to another place.

The Gatehouse served for some time as a tavern. In 1876 it became the Chapter House of the English Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

The Templars

We now turn to the second of the two great Military Orders which belong to the MediÆval Life. The Templar, as well as the Knight Hospitaller, rode through the streets with his following, haughty, rich, luxurious, hated by the people as a hard and cruel landlord; hated by the King for his privileges; by the Church as outside Episcopal jurisdiction; by the City for his pride, and for the vices which were freely attributed to him.

The story of the destruction of the Order of Knights Templars in 1306-1312 is a historical problem that will never, I suppose, be satisfactorily explained. The broad facts are well known. In the year 1305, through the influence of Philippe le Bel, King of France, Bertrand, Archbishop of Bordeaux, was elected Pope and took the title of Clement the Fifth. He was the first of the Popes of Avignon. In return for the tiara, Clement undertook to perform certain acts, in number six. Five of them are known. The sixth, kept a secret, is supposed to have been the suppression of the Templars. There were indeed various reasons why the King—or any king in Western Europe—should desire the suppression of this Order. The knights had grown enormously rich; some idea of their wealth may be obtained by the enumeration of some of the manors they possessed in England alone. Let us take one county, Hertfordshire (C. G. Addison’s Knights Templars, p. 94). In this county formerly they possessed the town and forest of Broxbourne, the manor of Chelsin Templars (Chelsin Templariorum) and the manors of Laugenok, Broxbourne, Letchworth, and Temple Dynnesley; demesne lands at Stanho, Preston, Charlton, Walden, Hiche Chelles, Levecamp and Benigho; the church of Broxbourne, two watermills, and a lock on the river Lea; property at Hichen, Pyrton, Ickilford, Offeley Parva, Walden Regis, Furnivale, Ipolitz, Wandsmyll, Watton, Therleton, Weston, Gravele, Wilien, Leccheworth, Baldock, Datheworth, Russenden, Codpeth, Sumershale, Buntynford, etc., and the church of Weston.

It must not be supposed that Hertfordshire was exceptional in this respect; the whole of England was dotted over with the possessions of the Order. All this land was given to the Order at a time when the first passion for crusading had cooled, and princes began to think that it might be better for the country if men were paid to fight the Saracen. The Templars were at first a very fine regiment, splendidly equipped, and full of valour. To maintain this regiment was surely a good work, almost as good as going to fight in person. The land was given them on the condition that the larger part of the revenues should be sent every year to the Grand Master of the House and Order in Jerusalem. It was held by them, further, on such terms as were never before heard of; the knights were exempt from all taxation aids and “amerciaments”; they could not be compelled to plead except before the King or his Chief Justice; they had power to hold Courts; to impose fines upon their tenants; to hold markets; to try criminals caught on their lands; they could travel without paying toll; they were not obliged to contribute to bridges and other works; they seized the chattels of all felons caught on their lands. Nor was this all: they were exempted from paying tithe; they could not be excommunicated by Bishop or priest; their houses had the right of sanctuary; and they had an Ecclesiastical Court of their own, with a judge, whom they called Conservator Privilegiorum Suorum. The Grand Master and the Brotherhood were subordinate only to the Pope; a large number of priests had been admitted to the Order, which was entirely free from the Church in any country. This great Order, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, numbered, it is said, fifteen hundred knights, with chaplains and serving brothers innumerable. The revenues were, as has been shown, enormous, and not one penny went to the purpose for which the Order had been endowed. The Holy Land had been swept clear of Christians; the Latin Kingdom, the name of which survived, had been destroyed for more than a hundred years; the degenerate grandsons of the Crusaders had long been scattered to the four winds; the Knights Templars and Knights Hospitallers had been expelled from the country, even from the fortified ports: Jaffa and Antioch fell in 1268, Tripoli in 1290, Acre in 1291. Then the Templars, reduced in numbers, retired to Cyprus, whence, in 1300, Jacques de Moray, the last Grand Master, made an unsuccessful attempt to seize Alexandria, and in 1303, when he tried to found a settlement at Tortosa, not only the power of the knights had gone but also their prestige. These dates are necessary, because they show that as soon as the Templars were proved incapable of doing the work for which they existed, then the attack upon them commenced, and not before.

The central house of the Templars in London was called the Temple. At first it was built on the north-east corner of Chancery Lane. Remains of this house were standing until quite modern times. When the Order became richer, the members bought a piece of ground stretching from Whitefriars to Essex House, and there erected a splendid convent, of which the Chapel remains to this day. The Master of the Temple was the Master of the English Templars. There were, however, some fifty Preceptories scattered about the country, monastic establishments, each ruled by a Prior, chiefly inhabited by sick or aged Templars. The site of many of their Preceptories is still preserved by the name, as Temple Combe in Somersetshire, Temple Rothley in Lincolnshire, and others. The Priors of the Preceptories had in their hands the management of the estates and the collection of the rents and dues.

The Temple of London, in consequence of its garrison of knights, its monastic character, and its privilege of sanctuary, became a place in which great lords and even kings deposited their treasure. Queen Berengaria’s dower was placed in the hands of the Templars. Hubert de Burgh made the Temple his bank, and the knights refused to let the King’s officers remove the money and jewels he had given into their care. Kings made the place their residence; King John was there when his barons came to him demanding the “liberties and laws of King Edward.” Henry the Third, after a little quarrel with the Order, became reconciled to them, and lived for a while in the Temple; he made them the guardians of his treasure; he was present at the consecration of the Chancel of their Church in 1240. And he sent certain Castilian Ambassadors to the Temple as his guests. But by the beginning of the fourteenth century there is no doubt that the Templars had become unpopular. The King could not be pleased to think of manors and lordships which produced no revenues for the realm; the nobles grudged the immunities of the Order, and remembered that the lands of the Templars had once belonged to their ancestors before they were piously alienated; merchants could not with patience behold the annual transmission of vast sums of money out of the country; the Bishops lusted after the tithes, and regarded the Templars with suspicion and dislike as a united body over whom they had no authority. Finally, soldiers and military historians remembered that in the last days in Palestine the Order would own no subordination to King, Bishop, or Council; the knights stood apart, a compact body; so far, it was said, from supporting the Cross in the Holy Land, they did their best by their stubborn independence to pull it down. War has no rule more rigid and inflexible than the rule of obedience to one general. This rule the Templars had broken. That they fought with valour no one could deny, but they fought for themselves. Lastly, since there was no more fighting in Palestine, and no hope of any, why go on sending all their treasure out of the country? And what good were the Knights Templars any longer? There had been signs of coming storm after the fall of Acre in 1291. Edward the First seized the money intended to be sent to Cyprus on the ground that the purpose for which it had been sent in former years no longer existed. He gave it up, it is true, at the request of the Pope. Before this he had seized ten thousand pounds belonging to the Templars, and this money he did not return. Edward the Second also took away from the Temple fifty thousand pounds of silver, with a quantity of gold, jewels, and precious stones. That these acts of violence were committed without remonstrance or redress indicates that the power of the Templars had greatly diminished. These considerations—coupled with the intolerable pride of the knights and their splendour, which mocked the smaller gentry—were sufficient to account for the unpopularity of the Order and for the general acquiescence in its suppression. And with societies as well as with men when they become unpopular, sinister rumours began to be whispered, crimes began to be alleged, words began to be reported.

On 6th June 1306 Clement the Fifth addressed an invitation to the Grand Masters of the Templars and the Hospitallers inviting them both to a conference as to the recovery of the Holy Land. It is thought that it was his intention to overwhelm both Orders in one common destruction. Since, however, a great part of the property of the Templars was afterwards given to the Hospitallers, it is not probable that this was the Pope’s intention. Jacques de Moray, Grand Master of the Templars, accepted: the Grand Master of the Hospitallers declined to be present. De Moray arrived in France with sixty knights and a long train of sumpter mules bearing his treasure, estimated at 150,000 golden florins, and a vast quantity of silver. On September 14 the King, without waiting for the Pope’s consent, issued secret orders to all his seneschals instructing them to summon each a powerful force on the night of October 12; not to open the orders until that night, and then to execute them. On that night every Templar in France was arrested. The world heard with amazement that this great and valiant order was guilty of the most frightful crimes. These were arranged under five heads:

(1) That at their initiation they denied Christ and spat upon the Cross.

(2) That they worshipped an idol of some monstrous form.

(3) That they gave and received disgusting kisses at these receptions.

(4) That they omitted the words of consecration in the mass.

(5) That they practised unnatural vices.

There were other and minor charges. Among them, for instance, that the Grand Master claimed the power of granting absolution; that they wore a magical cord; that they were in secret league with the Mohammedans. How these charges arose it is impossible to prove; it was said that they came from one Squin de Florian, a man who had been imprisoned on account of his corrupt life, and according to others a certain Nosso, an apostate Templar, who between them devised and invented the whole.

How those charges became an indictment of the Templars in Paris; how they were tortured until they confessed, and slowly burned to death when they retracted, belongs to the general history of the Order. Here we have only to do with the Templars in London. The French King, Philippe, sent a messenger, one Bernard Peletin, to Edward the Second, his son-in-law, informing him of the detestable crimes of which the Templars were guilty, and urging him to follow his example. Edward refused at first to believe the charges. But the Pope wrote to the same effect; and, against his wishes, Edward had no choice but to arrest the Templars in England, Scotland, and Ireland. The arrest was made on the 8th of January. By this time, the news from Paris had spread over every Preceptory in the country; many anticipated their arrest by flight; but the leaders, the Master of the Temple, the Priors, and the chief officers made no attempt to escape. The knights, with the exception of the Master, who was liberated on bail, were kept prisoners till September in the following year, when the two inquisitors appointed by the Pope arrived. There were in all 229 knights. There is reported to have been a general scramble for the goods and chattels of the knights—no doubt the Temple and the Preceptories were full of silver plate and tapestry and armour. The trial began in the hall of the Bishop of London’s Palace. The first examination in London, Dublin, York, and Lincoln produced nothing. All, without exception, steadfastly denied the charges brought against them. At the same time, as the Pope had sent a bull in which he assumed as already proved the guilt of the Order, and the crime of which the members stood accused, the Inquisition was bound to find the knights guilty. One should observe here that although as yet no torture had been applied, the knights could not be ignorant of what was being done in France, where tortures too dreadful to be written down were applied to the unhappy prisoners. Probably they expected what was to follow. The infamy of the torture, however, belongs to the Pope, not to Edward. The Pope it was who wrote to admonish his dearest son that the “question” should be applied. Edward gave way: he ordered that the prisoners should be confined in separate rooms, and that the inquisitors should visit them, and do with their bodies “whatsoever they should think fit, according to ecclesiastical law.” For three months, therefore, the knights were subjected to question under torture. Not one confessed anything. The Inquisitors then examined witnesses for the prosecution. The evidence was, from beginning to end, hearsay. It discloses a great deal of hatred towards the Templars, since these things could be whispered about them, but there is not the least direct evidence. Then the knights drew up a declaration of faith, which they handed in. It is full and explicit, and asserts their orthodoxy and their belief in the strongest terms. Once more the torture was applied. By this time the prisoners filled the City prisons. Some were in the Tower, some were in the prison of Aldgate, some in that of Cripplegate, some in that of Bishopsgate, some in that of Ludgate, and some in that of Newgate.

They were loaded with fetters; they were placed in solitary confinement; they were kept in dungeons; they were living on bread and water; and thus weakened, they were tortured by the Inquisition and worried by learned doctors of theology, who succeeded at last in getting a confession from two serving brethren and one chaplain. There was nothing in the confessions except what the Inquisitors wanted. However, armed with that, they were able to satisfy the Pope. The process against the Templars was at least more humane in London than in Paris. Torture there was, but at the express command of the Pope; there was no burning, not even of the Master; nor was there any of the accursed slow roasting which makes the French business so atrocious.

What happened in London to terminate the Inquisition was this. The Bishops of London, Winchester, and Chichester had an interview with some of the Templars, and told them that they were clearly guilty of heresy in supposing that the Grand Master had power of absolution, and that it would be well for them, generally, to clear themselves of that and any other heresy of which they might be accused. The prisoners replied that they were anxious to clear themselves of any heresy into which they might have fallen. Observe that there was not one word said about any of the five charges brought by Philip; these were quietly dropped. The Templars, therefore, were publicly reconciled to the Church, and absolved by a form of words in which it was guardedly said that “they could not entirely purge themselves of the heresies set forth in the apostolic bull.” Surely a verdict of not guilty could not be more plainly returned. Then the rest were reconciled. All but William de Moray the Master. He died in prison of a broken heart. At the same time, in Aragon, Portugal, Tarragona, and Germany, the Order, though examined under torture, was pronounced innocent of the charges brought against it. It was said, long afterwards, that with his dying breath Jacques de Moray summoned Pope and King to meet him before the judgment seat of God. Both of them died the year after. Everybody, it is reported, and it was believed, connected with the trials and the cruelties, came to a miserable end. The wretched man who invented the charges, Squin de Florian, was hanged for some new crime. And as for the agonising death of Edward the Second, men whispered that thus and thus had it been done unto him in return for his treatment of the Templars. The voice of the people is difficult to hear in the first decade of the fourteenth century, otherwise one would like to know what they thought of the introduction of torture as a judicial instrument. For until these trials torture was unknown in England. To be tried, to be hanged, to have the hand struck off, to be branded, these things the people understood, but torture they did not understand. Nay, so ignorant were they of the art and method of torture that two Frenchmen were sent for to instruct the executioners. Torture was always regarded, not only by the English people generally, but by the judges and lawyers, with a shrinking and horror which did not exist on the Continent, where they continued to torture prisoners until well into the eighteenth century. There can be no doubt that the later hatred of the Roman Catholic Religion was fomented and kept alive by the reports which came from Spain and Portugal of the tortures inflicted by the Inquisition in the name of that religion. The Tudor sovereigns occasionally inflicted torture. But the judges in 1628 declared that the torture of Villiers, the murderer of Buckingham, was illegal. Considering the wholesale nature of the torture of the Templars, and that the thing was done in the City prisons, and that it was well known to the Mayor and Sheriffs, and therefore, one supposes, to all the world, one would expect some kind of shuddering recollection of the event in the minds of the people, some lingering horror. But there is none. The flames of Smithfield, all laid to the charge of Mary, remain in men’s minds. But the cruel torture of these men, and their unmerited sufferings, passed at once out of mind and were forgotten. For three years and a half the English Templars were in prison. They were arrested in January 1308 and released in 1311. In April 1312, at a Council held at Vienna, the Order was finally suppressed.

The property of the Templars—by order of the Pope—was given to the Knights Hospitallers. Their personal property, their vast heaps of gold and silver plate, their furniture, tapestry, armour, precious stuffs, their sacks of money were seized and scrambled for at the outset. When a rich Preceptory was suddenly left empty and deserted save for a few outdoor servants, anybody, any neighbouring Baron, could step in and clear out the contents. Their manors and lordships, their churches, villages, tolls and rights were given away by King Edward with a lavish hand. No king, as yet, since William the Conqueror, had had so much to give as Edward; nor would any king again have so much till the Dissolution of the Houses. The Pope expostulated. But it was difficult to make the new owners give up their holdings: an Act of Parliament was passed; it proved futile. Later on, in the reign of Edward the Third, another Act was passed, and some of the property was given to the Hospitallers. In France, Philip handed over the whole, but so charged and laden by his own demands that the Hospitallers found themselves none the richer.

The evidence and the confessions suggest certain observations. For instance, the knights wore a magical cord. That there was a cord is clear, and they all wore it, but they were mostly in ignorance of its meaning. It was intended to remind them of their vows of chastity; it was supposed to have been passed round the waist of the Virgin. The cord remained, but its symbolical meaning was lost. Then as to the denial of their religion, the kiss of brotherhood, and so forth. There have been, and are still, many societies of men in which there is a secret form of initiation, with ceremonies which are symbolical. I see no reason at all to doubt that at the initiation of a Templar he was led into the Hall naked or in a shirt only—he was to be penniless, naked, without arms, helpless—all temporal gifts he was to receive from his brethren. Is it too much to suppose that he went through the form of worshipping an idol indicated by a statue or picture while in this naked, prehistoric condition, in order that he might receive his religion also from the knights, and so owe everything in this world and the next to the Brotherhood? Considering other initiations of which one has learned something, I am quite prepared to admit the probability of such a ceremony. As to the origin of the reports and rumours, it is quite enough to live in an ignorant age, to be raised above the common herd by wealth, to be separated from the rest of the world, and to observe secrecy as regards certain forms and ceremonies. Against such men reports and rumours will speedily arise and spread abroad and fill the whole land. And these, it is very certain, will not be reports of virtue or rumours of sanctity.

The transference of the property of the Templars to their rivals makes one doubt that the object of the Pope was plunder. Since we cannot believe that he had destroyed one Order, on account of its wealth and power, only to make another Order richer and more powerful still, it seems certain that the jealousy of the Templars’ wealth was not the cause of the Pontiff’s action. Was it, then, really a belief in the charges brought against them? We have seen that there was no evidence, so far as has been recorded, to support these charges: that in Spain, Portugal, and Germany the Order was found “not guilty”: that a verdict practically amounting to “not guilty” was found in London: and that in Paris only were the knights sentenced to be punished as heretics and relapsed heretics. If Clement the Fifth actually believed in the hearsay evidence of improbabilities amounting to impossibilities, he must have possessed far less of the judicial faculty than belongs even to the ecclesiastical mind. Had such a man been a layman he would be set down as the most mischievous fool that ever sat upon a bench of justice. We will suppose that Clement was not a fool, what then? Why did he write those bulls? Was it in accordance with the sixth condition agreed upon with Philip? Is Philip, and Philip alone, responsible for this terrible crime, the greatest of all the MediÆval crimes? Did he destroy the Order simply and solely for the sake of its wealth? And did he, in order to get a handle, make use of the ignorant and idle gossip which was current as to the morals and customs of the Secret House? And to all these questions it is useless even to suggest an answer.

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CHAPTER X
THE CLERKENWELL NUNNERY

It has been generally believed that the founder of the Convent, dedicated to the Honour of God and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, was one Jordan Briset about the year 1100. Stow speaks as if there was no doubt of the matter at all:—

“Beyond this house of St. John’s, was the Priory of Clerkenwell, so called of Clarks-Well adjoining; which Priory was also founded, about the Year 1100, by Jorden Briset, Baron, the son of Ralph, the son of Brian Briset: Who gave to Robert, a Priest, fourteen Acres of Land, lying in the Field next adjoining the said Clarks-Well, thereupon to build an House for religious persons, which he built to the Honour of God, and the Assumption of our Lady; and placed therein black Nuns. This Jorden Briset gave also to that House one piece of Ground, thereby to build a Windmill upon, etc. Upon the Dissolution of this Priory, it became a Parish Church, called St. James, Clerkenwell.”

Mr. J.H. Round, however, has discovered that the date of the Foundation has been placed too early, and that the founder was not Jordan Briset at all, but a certain person identified as the younger son of a Domesday under-tenant, who had himself founded the Priories of Bricett for Austin Friars and of Stanegate for Cluniac Monks. Both this House and the Priory of St. John adjacent were founded, in Mr. Round’s view, about the year 1145.

The value of the House at the surrender was, according to Dugdale, £262: 19: 0; according to Speed, £282: 16: 5. In the Calendar of Wills there is not a single bequest to the nuns of this House.

Isabella, the last prioress, was a daughter of Sir Richard Sackville. She furnishes another instance tending to prove that the monasteries and nunneries had fallen into the hands of the noble and gentle families. She received a pension of fifty pounds a year on the Dissolution; she died in 1569, and was buried in her own church.

The site of the House was given to the Duke of Norfolk, who exchanged it with the King for another place. Then Walter Henley and John Williams, knights, got a grant of it. It passed through many hands during the next hundred years. Among others, it was possessed by Sir Thomas Challoner, tutor to Prince Henry, son of James the First. He built a spacious house within the Close of the Priory, on the front of which he engraved the following lines, a rare tribute to the memory of the departed Sisters:—

Thus Englished by Fuller:—

Some remains of the cloisters were standing in 1785. They were figured in the Gentleman’s Magazine for that year.

The Church of St. James was originally the choir of the nunnery, and was made a Parish Church on the Dissolution.

“Strype, in his additions to Stow’s account of the church, says, ‘About the year 1623 the steeple fell down, having stood time out of mind without any reparation; nor among the records of that church could any mention be found of any such thing. This Steeple in the rebuilding thereof, and being near finishing, fell again, upon the undertaker’s neglect in not looking into the strength of that upon which he was to rear such a burthen. With the steeple fell the bells, their carriages and frames, beating a great part of the roof down before them, the weight of all these together bearing to the ground two large pillars of the south aisle, a fair gallery over against the pulpit, the pulpit, all the pews, and whatsoever was under or near it.’ The church, however, was thoroughly repaired, and the steeple renewed, by 1627, at the expense of £1400.

On August 25th, 1788, the ground was first prepared for the reception of a new church, which was consecrated on July 10th, 1792, by Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London.” (London and Middlesex Notes, pp. 80-81.)

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CHAPTER XI
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST, OR HOLIWELL NUNNERY

The nunnery of Haliwell, or Holywell, was named after a holy spring or well on the eastern extremity of Finsbury Fields, in the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch. There were many other holy wells around London, especially that in the Strand, west of St. Clement Danes. How one spring came to be accounted holy above other springs, one knows not. However, there can be no doubt that this spring in Shoreditch was a place of considerable resort and great sanctity, which was reason enough why its owner, Robert Fitz Gelran, Canon of St. Paul’s, should enclose it with a wall, and to erect a nunnery over it. The House was built to the honour of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and St. John Baptist for Benedictine nuns. This was done about the year 1127. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, Richard the First, Henry de Hallingbury, Simon, Bishop of Ely, John de Gatesbey, Richard de Beaumes, Bishop of London, Stephen Gravesend, Bishop of London, Sir Thomas Lovell, were the chief benefactors of this House. Richard the First gave the nuns a part of the moor, on which their House was built; he also gave them the church at Dunton, with land in Bedfordshire, at Camberwell, in Surrey, and in the City of London. It is unnecessary to enumerate all the gifts. Very shortly before the Dissolution, the House was rebuilt by Sir Thomas Lovell. He endowed it with more land, and was buried in a chapel built by himself for his sepulchre, little dreaming that in less than a generation the House and the Chapel and all the rest would be destroyed. On the painted windows and on the walls were inscribed the verses:—

Holiwell Nunnery, on surrender, had a yearly revenue of £293 according to Stow, of £347: 1: 3 according to Speed.

In 1553 the following sisters were still living, and in the receipt of pensions:—Sibilla Nudigate, per annum, L li.; Elena Claver, per annum, liij s. iiij d.; Alicia Marteine, per annum, iiij li.; Alicia Goldwell, per annum, iiij li. vj s. viij d.; Beatrica Fitzlewas, per annum, Lxvj s. viij d.; Agnes Bolney, per annum, Liij s. iiij d.

In 1544 Queen Catherine Parr asked for the site for Henry Webbe. His daughter brought the place to her husband, Sir George Peckham. The Church and House being pulled down, houses were built on the site “for the lodgings of noblemen, of strangers born and other.”

In 1785 the last fragment of importance, a stone gateway, was pulled down: there still continued to be shown some walls, a small arch, and part of a doorway in a cellar of a tavern called “The Old King John.”

On the site of the ground belonging to the House were built two of the early theatres—“The Curtain” and “The Theatre.”

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The absolute oblivion into which this once noble House has fallen, so that there is no longer, among the people living on its very site, any memory or tradition of its existence, is not without a parallel in the case of other London Houses. Yet it is remarkable for the reason that its site and its gardens remained open and unbuilt over until a hundred years ago, while, almost within the memory of man, many ruins and portions of the former buildings still remained.

The internal history of the Abbey is naturally without interest. The list of Priors and Abbots has been preserved: there were sixty-nine from the Foundation of the House in 1082 until the Dissolution in 1538. The duration of each Prior’s rule was therefore an average of six years and a half; but many of them died very shortly after their election, a proof that the election went, as a rule, by seniority; or, at least, that the brethren chose for their chief one who was well stricken in years and of long experience.

The House was at first, and for three hundred years, an alien Priory dependent on that of Cluny. It was founded by a citizen of London named Aylwin or Æthelwine Child, in the year 1082. The Cluniacs were brought into this country by William, Earl of Warren, who, with Gunhilda his wife, stayed at Cluny, and was greatly impressed with the sanctity and the devotion of the brethren. He persuaded the Abbot to allow some of the monks to come to England, and in 1077 established a Cluniac House at Lewes. Another followed at Wenlock, and, in 1082, this House of Bermondsey.

Among the benefactors of the House were William Rufus; Mary, sister to the Queen of Henry the First; that King himself; King Stephen; the Earls of Gloucester and Stafford; and many others. In 1390, under Richard the Second, Bermondsey ceased to be an alien Priory, and was made denizen. This was not without a remonstrance from Cluny. Fifty years later three Cluniac monks were sent over to set forth the claims of the Mother House. The brethren stated their case, but could not get any attention paid to their arguments. One of them died in this country, the other two went home having accomplished nothing. A piteous letter to the Abbot of St. Albans explains their position:—

“For the rest, be it known to you, my Lord, that after having spent four months and a half on our journey, and following our Right with the most serene Lord the King and his Privy Council, we have obtained nothing: nay, we are sent back very disconsolate, deprived of our Manors, our Pensions alienated, and what is still worse, we are denied the obedience of all our Monasteries which are 38 in number: nor did our Legal Deeds, nor the Testimonies of your Chronicles avail us anything, and at length, after all our pleading and expenses, we return home moneyless, for in truth, after paying for what we have eaten and drunk, we have but five crowns left, to go back about 260 leagues. But what then? We will sell what we have; we will go on; and God will provide. Nothing else occurs to write to your Paternity: but that as we entered England with joy, so we depart thence with sorrow; having buried one of our Companions—viz. the Archdeacon, the youngest of our company. May he rest in Peace! Amen.”

Meetings of the Council were held at Bermondsey from time to time: in the reign of Henry the Third many of the nobility who had taken the Cross met here in deliberation. In 1213 the then Prior, Richard, founded the almonry in Southwark, which afterwards developed into St. Thomas’s Hospital.

In 1276 there was a dispute between the Bishop of Winchester, who claimed an annual procuration, an entertainment of one day during his Visitation, and the House.

In 1309, by a breach in the River Wall, the lands of the House were so much damaged that the brethren were exempted from the purveyance of hay and corn.

In 1324 Edward the Second issued letters patent for the arrest of the prior, John de Causancia, and certain monks for harbouring rebels. These were probably the adherents of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who, after his defeat at Boroughbridge, took sanctuary in the Abbey. In 1337 the Bishop of Ely excommunicated certain persons for stealing a hawk belonging to him from the cloisters of the Abbey. Many other associations gather round this House. Marmion, Lord of Fontenay, was a benefactor to Bermondsey; the monks sold their lands in Southwark in the reign of Richard the Second to Robert of Paris, from whom the place was called Paris Gardens; Cardinal Beaufort visited the Abbey, and was received in procession by the monks. The Prior Henry, afterwards Abbot of Glastonbury, took an active part in the release of King Richard.

In 1323 the greater church of St. Saviour of Bermondsey and the great altar were dedicated in honour of St. Saviour and the Blessed Virgin and All Saints. On the same day were dedicated three other altars in the church—one of the Cross, one in honour of the Virgin and St. Thomas the Martyr, and one in honour of St. Andrew and St. James and all the Apostles.

Among those buried here were Leofstan, Portreeve of London in 1115; William of Mortain, or Mortaigne, Earl of Cornwall; Mary, daughter of Malcolm the Third of Scotland, and sister to Queen Maud, who died April 18, 1115. The following is the inscription on her tomb:—

Also Matilda, daughter of Guy, Earl of Warwick, who died in 1368; Margaret de la Pole; Anne, widow of Lord Audley, and the murdered Duke of Gloucester, before the removal of his body to Westminster.

But the most illustrious residents of the House were the two Queens who died within its walls.

The first of them was Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry the Fifth, who married secretly Owen Tudor, and was the grandmother of Henry the Seventh. The marriage was not found out for some years. The Queen must have been most faithfully and loyally served, because children cannot be born without observation. Owen Tudor must have conducted matters with a discretion beyond all praise. No doubt the ordinary members of the household knew nothing, and suspected nothing, because several years passed before any suspicion was awakened. Three sons and one daughter, in all, were born. The eldest, Edmund of Hadham, was so called because he was born there; the second, Jasper, was of Hatfield; the third, Owen, of Westminster; the youngest, Margaret, died in infancy.

Suspicions were aroused about the time of the birth of Owen, which took place apparently before it was expected, and without all the precautions necessary, in the King’s House at Westminster. The infant was taken as soon as born to the monastery of St. Peter’s secretly. It is not likely that the Abbot received the child without full knowledge of his parents. He did take the child, however; and here little Owen remained, growing up in a monastery, and taking vows in due time. Here he lived and here he died, a Benedictine of Westminster.

It would seem as if Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, heard some whisper or rumour concerning this birth, or was told something about the true nature of the Queen’s illness, for he issued a very singular proclamation, warning the world, generally, against marrying Queen-dowagers, as if these ladies grew on every hedge. When, however, a year or so afterwards, the fourth child, Margaret, was born, Humphrey learned the whole truth: the degradation, as he thought it, of the Queen, who had stooped to such an alliance with a man of humble rank, and the audacity of the Welshman. He took steps promptly. He sent Katherine with some of her ladies to Bermondsey Abbey, there to remain in honourable confinement: he arrested Owen Tudor, also a priest—probably the priest who had performed the marriage—and his servant, and sent all three to Newgate.

All three succeeded in breaking prison and escaping. At this point the story gets mixed. The King himself, we are told, then a lad of fifteen, sent to Owen commanding his attendance before the Council. Why did they not arrest him again? Owen, however, refused to trust himself to the Council—was not Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, one of them? He asked for a safe-conduct. They promised him one by a verbal message. Where was he, then, that all these messages should be sent backwards and forwards? I think he must have been in Sanctuary. He refused a verbal message, and demanded a written safe-conduct. This was granted him, and he returned to London. But he mistrusted even the written promise; he would not face the Council; he took refuge in the Sanctuary of Westminster, where they were afraid to seize him. And here for a while he remained. It is said that they tried to draw him out by sending old friends, who invited him to the taverns outside the Abbey Precinct. But Owen would not be so drawn. He knew that Duke Humphrey would make an end of him if he could. He therefore remained where he was. I think that he must have had some secret understanding with the King; for one day, learning that Henry himself was with the Council, he suddenly presented himself and pleaded his own cause. The mild young King, tender on account of his mother, would not allow the case to be pursued, but bade him go free.

He departed, and made all haste to get out of such unwholesome air; he made for Wales. Here the hostility of Duke Humphrey pursued him still; he was once more arrested, taken to Wallingford, and placed in the Castle there a prisoner. From Wallingford he was transferred again to Newgate, he and his priest and his servant. Once more they all three broke prison, “foully” wounding a warder in the achievement of liberty, and got back to Wales, choosing for their residence the mountainous parts, into which the English garrisons never penetrated.

When the King came of age, Owen Tudor was allowed to return, and was presented with a pension of £40 a year. It is remarkable, however, that he received no promotion or rank; that he was never knighted; and that the title of Esquire was the only one by which he was known. It certainly seems as if the claim of Owen Tudor to be called a gentleman was not recognised by the King or the heralds. Perhaps Welsh gentility was as little understood by these Normans as Irish royalty—yet, so far as length of pedigree goes, both Welsh and Irish were very superior to Normans.

The two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were placed under the charge of Katherine de la Pole, Abbess of Barking, and sister of the Earl of Suffolk. When the King came of age, he remembered his half-brothers; Edmund was made Earl of Richmond, Jasper, Earl of Pembroke; both ranked before all other English Earls. Edmund was afterwards married to Margaret Beaufort, who, as Countess of Richmond, was the foundress of Christ’s and St. John’s Colleges, Cambridge. Her son, as everybody knows, was Henry the Seventh.

As for Owen Tudor, that gallant adventurer, who began so well on the field of battle, ended as well, fighting, as he should, for his stepson and King, under the badge of the Red Rose. When the Civil Wars began, he joined the King’s forces, though he was then nearer seventy than sixty. He fought at Wakefield; he pursued the Yorkists to Mortimer’s Cross, where another fight took place. The Lancastrians were defeated. Owen was taken prisoner, and was cruelly beheaded on the field. It was right and just that he should so fight and should so die. He survived his Queen twenty-four years.

Katherine lived no more than a year after her imprisonment. She made a will shortly before her death, in which there is not one word about her second husband or her children by Owen Tudor. She says in the preamble: “I trustfully,” addressing her son the King, “and am quite sure, that among all creatures earthly ye best may and will best tender and favour my will, in ordaining for my soul and body, in seeing that my debts be paid and my servants guerdoned, and in tender and favourable fulfilment of mine intent.”

The second Queen, who died at Bermondsey Abbey, was Elizabeth Woodville. Her imprisonment in the Abbey was regarded with great surprise. It was in the year 1486, when the insurrection broke out in Ireland in favour of the pretended Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence: a council was held, after which, without any cause assigned, or the bringing of any charge, the widowed Queen was carried to Bermondsey, where she remained for the rest of her life. The reason commonly accepted was that she knew Edward Plantagenet, and so could prompt and instruct the Pretender in his personation of the prince. Bacon says, “That which is most probable out of the precedent and subsequent acts is that it was the Queen Dowager from whom this action had had the principal source and motive; certain it is she was a busy, negotiating woman, and in her withdrawing chamber had the fortunate conspiracy of the King against Richard the Third been hatched, which the King knew and remembered but too well; and she was at the time extremely discontent with the King, thinking her daughter, as the King handled the matter, not advanced but depressed.”

It is not easy to find much sympathy with this unfortunate woman, yet there are few scenes in history more full of pathos and mournfulness than that in which her boy Richard was torn from her arms; and she knew—all knew—even the Archbishops, when they gave their consent, knew—that the boy was to be done to death. When one talks of Queens and their misfortunes, it may be remembered that few Queens have suffered more than Elizabeth Woodville. In misfortune she sits apart from other Queens, her only companions being Mary Queen of Scots and Marie Antoinette. Her record is full of woe. But in that long war it seems impossible to find one single character, man or woman—unless it is King Henry—who is true and loyal. All—all are perjured, treacherous, cruel, self-seeking. All are as proud as Lucifer. Murder is the friend and companion of the noblest lord, perjury walks on the other side of him, treachery stalks behind him, all are his henchmen. Elizabeth met perjury and treachery with intrigue and plot and counter-plot; she was the daughter of her time. She was accused of being privy to the plots of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck; she was more Yorkist than her husband; she hated the Red Rose long after the Red and the White were united in her daughter and Henry the Seventh. That she was suspected of these intrigues shows the character she bore. We must make allowance; she was always in a false position; Edward ought not to have married her; she was hated by her own party; she was compelled, in the interests of her children, to be always on the defensive; and in her conduct of defence she was the daughter of her age. These things, however, deprive her, somewhat, of the pity which we ought to feel for so many misfortunes.

She, too, had to retire to the seclusion of Bermondsey, where she could sit and watch the ships go up and down, and so feel that the world, with which she had no more concern, still continued. It has been suggested that she retired voluntarily to the Abbey. Such a retreat was not in the character of Elizabeth Woodville, so long as there was a daughter or a kinsman left to fight for. Like Katherine of Valois, she made an end not without dignity. Witness the following clauses in her will:—

“Item, I bequeath my body to be buried with the body of my lord at Windsor, according to the will of my said lord and mine, without pomps entering or costly expenses done thereabout. Item, whereas I have no worldly goods to do the Queen’s Grace, my dearest daughter a pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children, according to my heart and mind, I beseech Almighty God to bless her Grace, with all her noble issue: and with as good a heart and mind as is to me possible, I give her Grace my blessing, and all aforesaid, my children. Item, I will that such small stuff and goods that I have be disposed truly in the contentation of my debts and for the health of my soul as far as they will extend. Item, if any of my blood will any of the said stuff or goods to me pertaining, I will that they have the preferment before any other.”

The position of Bermondsey Abbey would at first appear to have been exactly similar to that of Westminster: both Abbeys stood upon islets slightly raised above high-water mark; all round the islet of each stretched marshes, with other tiny islets here and there, as at Chelsea and Battersea. But there was this difference. In front of Thorney was a ford; at the back of Thorney was a ford; beyond the ford on the south was the high road to Dover; beyond the ford on the north was the high road to the heart of the country. Bermondsey was near the river, but the river here was broad and deep even at low tide; Bermondsey was not situated on the high road of commerce; the high road to Dover was near the Abbey, certainly, but not running right through it, so to speak, as the road ran at Westminster. The Abbey lay quiet and remote, even from Southwark; and after the building of the river wall on the south, whenever that was done, the marshes became low-lying meadows, dotted with ponds and with trees, where cows lay asleep in the sun. The Abbey stood alone, removed from houses, among gardens and orchards; it might almost have been in the country, so quiet and peaceful were the surroundings. But from the river there was heard the yeo-heave-ho of the sailors; the masts and sails could be seen above the river wall; there was heard every day the hymn of praise with which the sailors celebrated their safe arrival in port; and the sound of the multitudinous bells of London was wafted across the river to this peaceful spot.

The Abbey possessed a miraculous Rood, to which people paid pilgrimage. It was one of the many shrines round London which were convenient for a day’s pleasant journey into the country. In the Paston Letters, John Paston writes, “I pray you visit the Rood of Saint Saviour in Bermondsey while ye abide in London, and let my sister Margery go with you to pray to them that she shall have a good husband or she come home again.”

This holy Rood was found in the Thames in 1117, and began almost immediately to work miracles. In 1118 William, Earl of Morton, was “miraculously liberated from the Tower of London through the power of this holy Cross.”

Twenty-two years later, the same William, Earl of Morton, entered the Abbey and took the vows. The Rood was taken down on the same day that the Rood of Grace of Kent was destroyed by the Bishop of Rochester at Paul’s Cross.

One of the last acts of Henry the Seventh was to found an “anniversary” in this House to pray for the good and prosperous estate of the King during his life, for the prosperity of the realm, for the soul of his late Queen Elizabeth—not Elizabeth Woodville, of whom no mention is made, for the soul of Edmund, Earl of Richmond, the King’s father, and of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, his mother; and for the souls of his children.

At the Dissolution, the revenues of the House were valued at £548: 2: 5-1/2. The Abbot, who was made Bishop of St. Asaph, received a pension of 500 marks, or £333: 6: 8 a year. Fifteen years later, in 1553, there were still seven or eight annuitants surviving, viz. one at 15 marks a year; three at 9; two at 8; and smaller annuities amounting to 11 marks a year.

The House and Manor were granted to Sir Robert Southwell, Master of the Rolls. He sold it to Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity College, Oxford. Sir Thomas pulled down many of the monastic buildings, and erected a stately house with the materials. The house with the gardens he sold to Sir Robert Southwell, from whom he had bought it; the Manor he sold to Robert Trapps, citizen and goldsmith.

In 1583 the Earl of Sussex, Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth, died in the House.

The parish church of St. Mary Magdalen was built by the monks for their tenants. The Earl of Sussex had to rebuild it when it was reported to be falling into a ruinous condition.

Among the various benefits conferred upon the country by the monastic houses, that of hospitality was by no means the least. But it is evident that hospitality could only be practised when the House stood near to a highway. As Bermondsey Abbey was removed from any roads or highways, the monks could only carry out their duties towards the poor by placing their almonry on the High Street of Southwark. But the Abbey possessed a school of great repute. Leland, in his Cantu Cygni, written a few years before the Dissolution, says:

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CHAPTER XIII
ST. MARY OVERIES

The Priory of St. Mary Overies, or Overy, was one of the most ancient Houses in London. It stood beside the ferry, the south end of which was the long and narrow dock still to be seen, close to the present church. The other end of the ferry may be also still existing in what is now called Dowgate Dock; it is true that this is not opposite, but it may be surmised that Allhallows Lane led to the north end of the ferry. This ferry existed long before London Bridge was built, and continued long after. Indeed, if we consider the narrowness of the old bridge, the tolls, crowded vehicles blocking the way, and the long delays that must have occurred in getting across the bridge, we may very well understand that it might be more expeditious and cheaper to cross by the ferry than the bridge. Here, at all events, was the ferry, and at the south end was a small convent of nuns engaged in praying for the safety of the travellers. At every starting-point or returning-point for the mediÆval traveller, there was some religious foundation to pray for his safety or to offer praises for his return; at four of the London gates, there were churches dedicated to St. Botolph, the chosen saint of travellers. Outside Cripplegate was the Church of St. Giles. Outside Newgate was the Church of St. Sepulchre. Within Ludgate was the Church of St. Martin. Over Fleet Bridge was the Church of St. Bride. When the first stone bridge was erected over the Thames, a double chapel was built in the midst of it; while it was only a wooden bridge, there was a chapel at either end—the south chapel, singularly, dedicated to a Danish saint. So that I am inclined to believe that the small nunnery on the south of the ferry may possibly have had its sister nunnery or church on the north; if a nunnery, its existence has been clean forgotten; if a church, then All Hallows the Great may have been that church.

The story of the first foundation is entirely legendary; one Mary, daughter of Awdry, ferryman, is said to have founded on the site a small House for nuns before the Conquest. It was converted, according to tradition, by one Swithina into a College of Priests. It was, however, refounded in 1106 by two Norman knights, William Pont de l’Arche, who had a mansion in Dowgate, and William Dauncey, as a House for Canons Regular. William Gifford, Bishop of Winchester, joined in the foundation, and built the nave of the church. Henry the First, another benefactor, gave to the House the Church of St. Margaret in Southwark; King Stephen gave the Canons the House of their founder, Pont de l’Arche. In 1212 the Priory was destroyed by fire. Then Peter de Rupibus took the foundation, still very poor, in hand, and rebuilt the church; he also founded the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, afterwards made into a Parish Church. A hundred years later the unhappy monks sent a petition to Edward the First, stating that the House had fallen into the deepest poverty; that they had not enough to provide the barest necessaries, but were dependent on charity; that their church was ruinous, but that they could not rebuild it; and that they had even suffered the embankment to be carried away, and were in daily terror of an inundation. They managed, however, to get along somehow during the fourteenth century. Early in the fifteenth the House found two more benefactors—Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, and Gower the poet. The latter was buried in the church after residing for some years in the House. His monument may still be seen. A list of the Priors from 1130 to 1540 has been preserved. The House, on the Dissolution, was valued at £624: 6: 8. The Prior received, on the surrender, a pension of £100 a year.

The position of the Priory, close to the Palace of the Bishop of Winchester, made it convenient for many functions. In this church were married, in 1406, Edward Holland, Earl of Kent, and Lucia, daughter of the Lord of Milan. Here also, in 1424, was married James the First, King of Scotland, a poet and scholar, of whom Drummond of Hawthornden wrote that “of former kings it might be said that the nation made the kings, but of this king, that he made the people a nation.” His bride was Joan, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and niece to Cardinal Beaufort.

In 1539 the House was suppressed and given to Sir Anthony Brown, whose son became Lord Montague, giving his name to the ancient cloister of the Monastery. In the following year the church was made parochial, including the Church of St. Mary Magdalen, which stood beside it, as St. Gregory stood beside St. Paul’s, or St. Margaret by Westminster Abbey, or St. Peter-le-Poor beside the Church of the Austin Friars.

A great many monuments are in the church: the chancel, transepts, and tower, with the Lady Chapel, still remain, forming the finest of the old churches in the whole of London.

Here lie buried, according to tradition, Mary, the foundress; the two benefactors, Pont de l’Arche and Dauncey—a wooden figure may represent one of them; John Gower, on whose monument may still be read the words which he wrote for it:—

Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, is buried in the Lady Chapel; Dyer the poet, who died 1607; Edmund Shakespeare, brother of the poet, somewhere in the church; Laurence Fletcher, one of the shareholders in the Globe, who died 1608; Philip Henslow, who died 1616; John Fletcher, who died 1625; Philip Massinger, who died 1639. On the tomb of Richard Humble, who lies with his two wives and his children, are the lines:—

In the Lady Chapel of this church were held many of the trials of the martyrs under the Marian persecution: those, for instance, of Bishop Hooper, John Rogers, Bradford, Crome, Saunders, Ferrar, and Taylor. The death of Gardiner, the persecutor, seemed, to the common people, by the hand of God, in punishment of his cruelties. He was given, however, a magnificent funeral, beginning at this church. Machyn describes it:—

“The xxiiij day of Feybruary was the obsequies of the most reverentt father in God, Sthevyn Gardener, docthur and bysshope of Wynchastur, prelett of the gartter, and latte chansseler of England, and on of the preve consell unto Kyng Henry the viij and unto quen Mare, tyll he ded; and so the after-none be-gane the knyll at Sant Mare Overes with ryngyng, and after be-gane the durge; with a palle of cloth of gold, and with ij whytt branchys, and ij dosen of stayffe-torchys bornyng, and iiij grett tapurs; and my lord Montyguw the cheyffe mornar, and my lord bysshope of Lynkolne and ser Robart Rochaster, comtroller, and with dyvers odur in blake, and mony blake gownes and cotes; and the morow masse of requeem and offeryng done, be-gane the sarmon; and so masse done, and so to dener to my lord Montyguw (’s); and at ys gatt the corse was putt in-to a wagon with iiij welles all covered with blake, and ower the corsse ys pyctur mad with ys myter on ys hed, with ys armes, and v gentyll men bayryng ys v baners in gownes and hods, then ij harolds in their cote armur, master Garter and Ruge-crosse; then cam the men rydyng, carehyng of torchys a lx bornyng, at bowt the corsse all the way; and then sam the mornars in gownes and cotes, to the nombur unto ij C. a-for and be-hynd, and so at sant Gorges cam prestes and clarkes with crosse and sensyng, and ther they had a grett torche gyffynt them, and so to ever parryche tyll they cam to Wunchaster, and had money as many as cam to mett them, and durge and masse at evere logyng.” Wilkinson, who gives several views of the church and the buildings around it, has preserved one taken from the north-east, which shows the whole north side of the church, with the Little Chapel, the Lady Chapel, and the church itself, in the year 1813 (see p. 307). Montague Close, where the view was taken, was very shortly after covered with buildings, which prevented a repetition of a drawing from this point; but in 1825 he procured a sketch of the Little Chapel and part of the Lady Chapel.

The existence of the Little Chapel is nearly forgotten; yet it will be seen, in considering the church as a whole, that it forms a natural part. In the year 1626 this chapel was selected as a fitting place for the tomb and monument of Lancelot Andrewes, now in the Lady Chapel. From this monument the place was generally called the Bishop’s Chapel.

It is by the greatest good fortune this beautiful church has been preserved. It would most certainly have been taken down, like the exquisite church of the Holy Trinity Priory, like those of Eastminster, Whitefriars, and Blackfriars, but for the interference of Stephen Gardiner, who supported—and doubtless instigated—the parishioners of St. Margaret’s and St. Mary Magdalene, in a petition to the King praying for the church of the Priory as their parish church. The petition was granted, and the church was saved.

Not, certainly, in the life of Stephen Gardiner, but after his death, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, though the church was safe, the Lady Chapel, and, of course, the Little Chapel with it, was desecrated. In Anthony Munday’s edition of Stow, 1633, he tells us to what base uses this noble chapel was put:—

“It is now called, The new Chappell; and indeed, though very old, it now may be cal’d a new one, because newly redeemed from such use and imployment, as in respect of that it was built to, Divine and Religious duties, may very well be branded, with the stile of wretched, base, and unworthy, for that before this abuse, was (and is now) a faire & beautifull Chappell, by those that were then the Corporation (which is a body consisting of 30. Vestry men, sixe of those thirty, Churchwardens) was leased and let out, and this House of God made a Bake-house.

Two very faire doores, that from the two side Iles of the Chancell of this Church, and two that throw the head of the Chancell (as at this day they doe againe) went into it, were lath’t, daub’d, and dam’d up: the faire Pillars were ordinary posts, against which they piled Billets and Bavens; in this place they had their Ovens, in that a Bolting-place, in that their Kneading-trough, in another (I have heard) a Hogs-trough; for the words that were given mee were these, This place have I knowne a Hog-stie, in another a Store-house, to store up their hoorded Meale: and in all of it, something of this sordid kind & condition.

It was first let by the Corporation afore named, to one Wyat, after him to one Peacocke, after him to one Cleybrooke, and last to one Wilson, all Bakers, and this Chappell still imployed in the way of their Trade, a Bake-house, though some part of this Bake-house was sometime turned into a Starch-house.

The time of the continuance of it in this kind, from the first letting of it to Wyat, to the restoring of it againe to the Church; was threescore and some odde yeeres, in the yeere of our Lord God 1624, for in this yeere the ruines and blasted estate that the old Corporation sold it to, were by the Corporation of this time repaired, renewed, well, and very worthily beautified; the charge of it for that yeere, with many things done to it since, arising to two hundred pounds.

This, as all the former Repaires, being the sole cost and charge of the Parishioners.

One Ile in this Chappel, was paved at the onely cost of one Master John Hayman, Taylor, and Merchantaylor, in the yeere 1625.”

It was, therefore, immediately after this restoration that the remains of Bishop Andrewes were deposited in the Little Chapel. May there not have been some thought of preventing further desecration by the monument of this learned Divine?

The Chapel was taken down in 1830. The monument of the Bishop took up nearly the whole of the east end; a marble canopy originally stood over it, but this was broken in 1676 when the roof of the Chapel fell in; there was no altar and there were no services held in the Chapel; there was one other monument of a citizen named Hayman, buried here in the same year as the Bishop. Another monument, erected in 1807, was that of Abraham Newland, chief cashier of the Bank of England. Two stone coffins were preserved in this Chapel; and here were stone steps leading down into the vaults; the Chapel is said to have been quite plain, “with a groined roof, strong ribs, and a stone seat on both sides and at the east end.”

The removal of the Chapel formed part of the restoration work of 1830. At this time the church was in a most dangerous condition, the roof of the nave being so dilapidated that it was impossible to hold service there. Consequently the pews, organ, and monuments were removed to the chancel and transepts; the roof was taken down and the materials sold; and the walls and aisles were simply left exposed to the weather.

Wilkinson thus describes what followed:—

“The roof thus destroyed was a fine specimen of the architecture of the thirteenth century, and possessed the striking peculiarity of having the corbels, whence the ribs of the arches sprang, placed perpendicularly over the columns. Those columns had been already banded with iron, and the walls were green and dark with apparent decay, though it is said that some of the ancient timbers were still in a fine state of preservation; but in pursuance of the above order, the organ was removed to form a temporary termination to the choir, and the nave was uncovered and exposed; in which lamentable state it still continues, August 1834, not unlike the half-ruined edifice of the Cathedral of Llandaff.

The very laudable, zealous, and preserving efforts made for the preservation of the Lady Chapel at the eastern end of the Church, were, however, completely successful; though it was for some time earnestly debated whether it should be destroyed or restored. But even in the vestry the design of demolition was opposed, and on January 28th, 1832, a numerous general meeting for the preservation of the structure took place at the Freemasons’ Tavern, at which a series of Resolutions was passed to that effect. The principal of them were, That the few remaining reliques of Gothic, or Early English Pointed style of architecture in this kingdom, are replete with interest: That the Chapel of Our Lady in St. Saviour’s Church is a splendid specimen of that style of architecture: That as the Parish of St. Saviour has expended £30,000 in the repair of this Church, of which a debt of £8000 is unpaid, it is expedient that a public subscription be commenced to enable the Parish to restore the Lady Chapel; and that a Committee be appointed to promote the restoration by soliciting public subscriptions. Notwithstanding the very great expense, which the rebuilding of St. Saviour’s Church had already proved to the Parish, it was evident, by some of the speeches at this meeting, that the design of demolishing the Lady Chapel was not by any means even partially sanctioned in Southwark, but only that the assistance of the public was required for so costly an undertaking; but it was perhaps almost entirely owing to the unwearied and meritorious exertions of Mr. Thomas Saunders, that so general and lively an interest was excited on the subject. The estimated amount of the restoration was £2500, and by February nearly £1400 had been raised; but the sentiments of the parishioners were most equivocally displayed at the general poll which had been demanded by Mr. Saunders of all the parochial rate-payers, and which took place on February 9th and 10th; the conclusion being a majority of 240 for the restoration of the building. The subscriptions were subsequently continued with great zeal, and were also extended to the restoration of the ancient altar-screen in the choir; for the effecting of all which they were aided by a performance of Sacred Music in the Church, on Thursday, June 21st, 1832, and the delivery of some scientific lectures. The superintendence of the Restoration was gratuitously undertaken by Mr. Gwilt, Mr. Hartley was the contractor for the building, and the first stone of the new works was laid July 28th, 1832. The two annexed modern Exterior Views of this Church will convey an accurate notion of the appearance of the outside of the Lady Chapel before this restoration; excepting that it then showed four dilapidated and tiled gables, and that the part from which the Bishop’s Chapel had been removed was white, whilst the remainder was defaced and discoloured stone, coarsely repaired with brick. In taking down the arch which led into the Bishop’s Chapel was discovered part of the fabric of the lancet-window originally in that place; which became a most valuable model for the restoration of the others. In the present perfected state of this edifice, the eastern end of it exhibits the four original gables, each surmounted by a rich cross, and containing in the point a small triple lancet window, with carved corbelheads and columnated-mullions; with a large window of the same description below. The form of the glazing in the latter consists of large intersected circles and lozenges; with some armorial ensigns, etc., in stained glass. The roofs of the Chapel are covered with lead, and the walls are of flints like those of the other restored parts of the Church, with stone mouldings and quoins; the four buttresses, and the north-east turret containing the staircase are also restored in a similar manner; the latter having loopholes and a low cap of stone. On each side of the building also the peculiar windows have been likewise carefully copied. Within, the Lady Chapel is 42 feet in length, and has the roof divided into nine groined arches, supported by six octangular columns, with circular shafts at their angles. When this place was formerly used for the Consistorial Court of the Bishop of Winchester, and the Visitations of the Deanery of Southwark, the north-east corner was parted off in the manner of a pew, and contained a desk, table, and elevated seat; but the remainder of the space was abandoned to the reception of lumber.

Whilst the restoration of the Chapel was in agitation, a further difficulty appeared in the very narrow frontage to be allowed for it on the south approach forming to the New London Bridge. So early as November 1830, the Wardens of St. Saviour’s addressed a memorial to the Bridge-Committee, soliciting a sufficient space for the exhibition of the structure, and suggesting an opening of 130 feet. On April 19th, 1831, it was resolved by the vestry that the width of 60 feet, offered by the Committee, was altogether inadequate, added to which it was made a condition of that grant that the Lady Chapel should be taken down; and, therefore, in the following October the Wardens memorialised the Lords of the Treasury. In an interview between them, the latter appeared to be in favour of a greater opening, but on January 24th, 1832, the Wardens were informed that not more than 70 feet would be allowed, and that space only on condition of removing the Chapel, if the consent of the Bishop of Winchester could be procured. In a letter on the subject, however, the Bishop declined giving his consent to the London Bridge Company; stating that it could not be alleged that the removal of the Consistorial Court was required for public accommodation, which he viewed as the only justifiable reason for the demolition of a Church, or any part of one. It was then resolved to petition the Committee of the House of Commons appointed on the Bill for Improving the Approaches to the New London Bridge; by which it was decided, on February 29th, 1832, after four days’ deliberation, and by a majority of 17 to 3, that the opening to St. Saviour’s Church should be 130 feet instead of 70, as proposed by the original framers of the Bill. The houses on the west side of Wellington Street opposite the Lady Chapel, are therefore terminated so as to form the sides of a handsome approach to it. From hence at a future time a flight of steps may be formed to the building beneath, and an appropriate rail also erected round the church, but at present the structure is defended on the east only by a high circular enclosure of boards.

The last meritorious work of restoration in St. Saviour’s Church was that of the ancient Altar Screen given in the commencement of the sixteenth century by Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester; a subscription for which was ultimately united with that commenced for the Lady Chapel. To the latter of these funds the present Bishop of Winchester gave £300, and £100 to the Screen; and other large sums were speedily and liberally contributed. Previously to Mr. Gwilt’s restoration of the choir, the eastern wall of the Church was covered with a composition of wood and plaster, ascribed by tradition to Sir Christopher Wren, though apparently without any authority. Above this Screen appeared the mutilated and inelegant broad window of the sixteenth century, the arch of which was sculptured in relievo, in panels; that in the centre having an angel holding a shield, and those at the side, a pelican feeding her young, the emblem of Christ, and the device of Bishop Fox. There was also a carved facia, on which the pelican was repeated, with the holy lamb and oak leaves, the style of all which entirely disagreed with that of the altar-piece below. On the removal of the modern screen, a series of small tabernacle-niches was discovered on the partition behind, the canopies of which had been cut down to almost a level surface; though they still possessed so much beauty as to cause the restoration of the whole to become a circumstance of the greatest interest. This was completed in the commencement of 1834, by Mr. Robert Wallace, the Architect of the Church, Mr. Firth, the Contractor, and Mr. Purdy, the principal Carver; the contract amounting to only the sum of £700. The ancient material of this Screen was Firestone and the stone of Caen; and the restoration has been executed in stone from Painswick, in Gloucestershire, which agrees well with the former. Wherever it was practicable the original work has been retained, but nearly the whole of the ornamental carvings have been wrought from moulds and replaced in the precise situations of the ancient sculpture whence they were taken. The whole screen is lofty, and the general composition of it is divided into three stories in height and as many partitions in breadth. In the centre of the lowest story is a space for the altar, with three tall tablets and canopies above; and on each side is a door with a depressed pointed arch. On each side of the doorways is a niche rising from the ground, flanked by slender buttresses and covered with a triangular tabernacle of two canopied arches, with the angular point in front. In each niche is a tall pedestal with a richly carved head; and above the doors are short double canopies of a similar style, though rising above those on the sides, and breaking the line of a broad frieze of demi-angels, above which is a narrow line of carved pelicans, holy lambs, and scrolls. These terminate the first story; and the above second and third are composed of a large niche in the centre, with a semi-hexagonal canopy, placed between five niches on each side, with pedestals and canopies like those below; whilst a second frieze of angels, etc., parts the two stories. As the story finished the remains of the ancient screen, Mr. Wallace has designed a termination of an entablature of angels supporting shields, with a crown-like cornice above; something similar to which most probably surmounted the original design.” (Londina Illustrata, vol. i.)

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CHAPTER XIV
ST. THOMAS’S HOSPITAL

The commonly received opinion as to the Foundation of this Hospital is that it sprang out of an Almonry belonging to Bermondsey Abbey, founded in 1213 by Richard, Prior of that House. This statement was made by Stow, and has been followed by Strype, Maitland, and others; Wilkinson, however, does not agree with it.

According to Tanner and Dugdale, the Almonry of the Abbey, consisting of an almshouse for converts and a school for poor boys, was attached to the walls of the House, was dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and was under the government of the Monastery Almoner. This Almonry perished with the Abbey in the Dissolution, and had nothing to do with the Hospital of St. Thomas.

It is stated by Tanner that after the Fire of 1212, which destroyed the church of St. Mary Overies together with their Hospital or Almonry, the Prior and brethren erected a Hospital near their ruins in which they established their church for a time. When their own House was rebuilt, Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, transferred the Hospital to the other side of the causeway for some supposed advantages of air. It was built on ground belonging to Amicius, Archdeacon of Surrey, and dedicated to St. Thomas the Martyr. It was always in the patronage of the Bishop of Winchester. A list of the Masters is preserved.

Stow, however, says that the Hospital was held of the Abbey of Bermondsey, and that in the year 1428 Thetford, then the Abbot, sold to the Master of the Hospital the right to keep all the lands belonging to the Abbey and then held by the Hospital at a small rent.

It is impossible to reconcile these statements unless we suppose that the Hospital itself, always separate from, and independent of, the Abbey, was occupying lands of the Abbey of which it desired to keep the control.

On the Dissolution, the House was valued at a yearly income of £309: 1: 11 clear; it had a Master, Brethren, three lay sisters, and made up forty aids for the sick with food and firing.

In 1552 the City bought the House of Edward the Sixth and opened it again as a Hospital.

The place has little history. The brethren had at their gates the right of market for corn and other commodities. The Archdeacon of Surrey, in 1238, had a hall, a chapel, a stable, and a residence in the Hospital. The Bishops of Winchester claimed the right of visitation, which was exercised on more than one occasion.

The old buildings continued until the close of the seventeenth century, when they were taken down and the Hospital was erected in their place. This House remained until it became necessary to destroy it, in order to make way for the railway station and extension on its site. The demolition of old St. Thomas’s is one of the few acts of destruction which one can regard with satisfaction. For the removal of the Hospital to the crowded streets of Lambeth, leaving Guy’s for the eastern part of South London, was unquestionably a great gain to the former, and no loss to the latter, which is fully served by Guy’s.

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CHAPTER XV
ST. GILES-IN-THE-FIELDS

The Hospital known as St. Giles-in-the-Fields was founded by Maud, Queen of Henry the First, about the year 1117. It was a large foundation, designed for forty lepers, the Master, Chaplains, Matrons, and servants.

The original endowment was only £3 a year, which, even in the twelfth century, would not go far towards the support of forty lepers. It appears, however, as if the custom of lepers going about begging with a bowl and a clapper was considered the right thing, because it is said that the Proctor of the House went begging for the lepers. Probably those who could crawl were allowed at the outset to beg for themselves.

But other benefactions fell in. The lepers obtained rents and lands at Isleworth, St. Clement Danes, and round their own house; they also obtained the manor of Feltham in Middlesex; Henry the Second gave them lands at Heston; people left them houses in London; the House became wealthy.

There were many dissensions and disputes as to the rule and management of this House. They were finally terminated by Edward the Third, who placed it under the authority of the House of Burton Lazars, the central Leper Hospital of England.

The area covered by the ground of the Hospital consisted of eight acres, which was afterwards largely increased. The Hospital buildings were situated near to the present church on the west of it; they were surrounded by a triangular wall running along Crown Street (formerly Hog Lane), High Street, and Monmouth Street. At the lower end of what is now the Tottenham Court Road on the west side of it was the Pound: when the gallows was removed from the Elms at Smithfield, it was set up at the north end of the Hospital enclosure opposite to the Pound. On the same spot Sir John Oldcastle had been slowly roasted to death some years earlier.

Criminals in later times, on their way to Tyburn, stopped at St. Giles, there to take their last draught of ale at a tavern named The Bowl.

The lazar houses were probably all governed by similar laws and regulations. Those of Sherburn, near Durham, will stand, therefore, for many others. The house was dedicated to Christ, the Blessed Virgin, Lazarus, and his sisters Martha and Mary. The lepers were under the rule of a steward; there were three priests and four clerks, of whom one was a deacon. During Lent and Advent all the brethren had to receive corporal discipline three times a week in the chapel, and the sisters in like manner in presence of their prioress. Why lepers should be flogged more than ordinary people is not apparent. Perhaps there was some feeling that a loathsome and incurable disease argued the wrath of the Almighty on account of some great crime. The daily allowance of food to the lepers was as follows:—A loaf and a gallon of ale to each; one mess of flesh between two for three days in the week; or of fish, cheese, or butter, on the remaining four; on high festivals a double mess; on St. Cuthbert’s Day, fresh salmon; on Michaelmas Day, four messed on one goose. The dress of lepers generally consisted of a grey gown with a hood, and each one carried a basin and a wooden clapper.

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CHAPTER XVI
ST. HELEN’S

The foundation of this House of Benedictine Nuns was in or about the year 1212, when Alardus de Burnham, who died in 1216, was Dean of St. Paul’s. The right, or permission, to found the House is contained in a deed still preserved.

The seal of the convent represents the finding of the Cross by St. Helen: she stands beside the Cross, holding in her hand the three nails, while a crowd of nuns are on their knees with uplifted hands.

In 1439 the then Dean, Reynold Kentwode, drew up a new set of Rules for the use of the Sisters. The following are the principal clauses:—

“‘Reynold Kentwode, Dean and Chapeter of the Church of Poules, to the religious women, Prioresse and Covent of the Priory of Seynt Eleyns, of owre patronage and jurisdictyon immediat, and every Nunne of the sayde Priory, gretyng in God, with desyre of religyous observances and devocyon. For as moche as in owre visitacyon ordinarye in youre Priorye boothe in the hedde, and in the membris late actually exersyd, we have founded many defautes and excesses, the whiche nedythe notory correccyon and reformacyon, we wyllyng vertu to be cherished, and holy relygion for to be kepte, as in the rules in youre ordyerre, we ordeyne and make certeyne Ordenauns and Injunccyons, weche we sende you wrete and seeled undir owre commone seele, for to be kepte in forme as thei ben articled and wretyn unto you.

Firste, we ordeyne and enjoyne yow, that devyne servyce be don by yow duly nythe and day, and silence duly kepte in the tyme and place, aftir the observaunce of yowre religione.

Also we ordayne and enjoyne you Prioresse and Covente, and eche of you synglerly, that ye make due and hole confession to the confessor assigned be us.

Also we enjoyne yow Prioresse and Covent, that ye ordeyne convenyent place of firmarye, in the wiche youre seeke sustres may be honestly kepte and relevyd with the costes and expences of yowre house, accustomed in the relygion durynge the tyme of heere sikenesse.

Also we enjoyne you Prioresse, that ye kepe youre dortour, and ly thereinne by nythe, aftyr observaunce of yowre religion, without that the case be suche that the lawe and the observaunce of youre religione suffreth yow to do the contrarye.

Also we ordeyne and injoyne yow Prioresse and Covent, that noo seculere be lokkyed withinne the boundes of the cloystere; ne no seculere personnes come withinne aftyr the belle of complyne, except, wym-ment servauntes and made childeryne lerners, also admitte noon, sojournauntes wymment withoute lycence of us.

Also we ordeyne and enjoyne yow Prioresse and Covent, that ye, ne noone of yowre sustres use nor haunte any place withinne the Priory, thoroghe the wiche evel suspeccyone or sclaundere mythe aryse; weche places, for certeyne causes that move us, we wryte not here inne in oure present injunccyone, but wole notyfie to yow Prioresse; nor have no lokyng nor spectacles owte warde, thorght the wiche ye mythe falle in worldlye delectacyone.

Also we enjoyne yow, that alle daunsyng and revelyng be utterlely forborne among yow, except Christmasse and other honest tymys of recreacyone, among youre selfe usyd, in absence of seculers in all wyse.

Also we ordene and injoyne yow Prioresse, that there be made a hache of cenabyle [reasonable?] heythe, crestyd withe pykys of herne, to fore the entre of yowre kechyne, that noo straunge pepille may entre with certeyne cleketts avysed be yow and be yowre st’ward to suche personys as yow and hem thynk onest and conabell.

Also we enjoyne yow Prioresse, that non nonnes have noo keyes of the posterne doore that gothe owte of the cloystere in the churchyard but the Prioresse, for there is moche comyng in and owte unlefulle tymys.’” (Londina Illustrata, vol. i.)

At the Dissolution the revenues of this House were valued, according to Dugdale, at £314: 12: 5, and according to Speed at £376: 6s.

The site and the church were given to Cromwell. Edward the Sixth gave the advowson to the Bishop of London, but it has since returned to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s.

The buildings were purchased by the Leathersellers’ Company, who converted the Nuns’ Hall into their Common Hall, and so it continued until the demolition of all the ancient buildings in 1799.

It appears from Malcolm that he believed the Nuns’ Hall to have been demolished, and a new hall built in 1567. These are his words:—

“We will suppose the monastery of St. Helen demolished, the materials disposed of, and the purchase of the site compleated by the Company. The architect finds a foundation far superior to any their funds would supply, and therefore cases the basement walls with brick, and makes the pavement (ready for his purpose) serve as the floor for the new Hall. And thus far he acted wisely; for his work of 1567 became too ruinous and expensive for repair in 1797, was taken down, and will be forgotten. What remains to be said of the antient crypt? That it would not have required repair for 500 years to come. Had the enormous masses of fungous webs, which depended from the arches of this beautiful work, been carefully swept away, and the walls rubbed with a dry broom, the antient windows re-opened, the earth that clogged the pavement removed, and its other defilements cleared off, these crypts, now scattered in piles of rubbish, would have formed a church how infinitely superior to forty I could name!

The regret with which I saw those slender pillars torn from their bases, and the strong though delicate arches sundered in masses, is still warm to my remembrance. The angles were filled with white sand, a layer of earth, another of sand, a layer of oak chips; one now lays before me. Six hundred years have passed since this wood was cut, and the mark of the axe is fresh upon it, and so on till the spaces were filled.” (Vol. iii. pp. 562-563.)

The representation of the hall given by Wilkinson and that given by Malcolm do not seem to agree in all particulars.

Malcolm adds a view not presented by Wilkinson showing the ruins of the cloisters.

I have elsewhere called attention to the remarkable fact that London possessed, down to the end of the eighteenth century, a greater collection of mediÆval ruins than any city of Europe, and that no one, poet, historian, antiquary, essayist, took the least notice of them. Wilkinson, however, does remark that the group of ruins “reminds us rather of some romantic fragment of antiquity to be found in distant countries than of one situated in the very centre of populous London, and were it not for the modern buildings made out in the background, a spectator might be led to imagine the scene many miles distant from the Metropolis of England.”

This House of Benedictine Nuns pursued its uneventful course for more than three hundred years. Now and then the nuns stopped a lane across their property, or they let their land at long leases, or they inherited new lands, or they mismanaged and wasted their property, or they buried a Prioress and had to elect another. Very little else can be recorded of them. It was on this land that Crosby House was built on a ninety-nine years’ lease. Meantime, the church of St. Helen’s did duty both for the nuns and for the parish.

In the year 1534 the value of the House was estimated at £376: 6s. a year. The property of the nuns shows that this House was always exclusively a London Foundation. They had houses in the City, in Middlesex, Kent, Essex, Hertford, and Buckingham—but these were all home counties. In the country they held little, if any, property.

The collection of facts concerning the last years of the nunnery, made by the late Rev. Thomas Hugo, throws considerable light on the position of the House.

In the first place, the names of the successive Prioresses and those of the Sisters seem to be chiefly of London origin; secondly, the bequests recorded in the Calendar of Wills, twenty-seven in number, are all made by London citizens. They are, moreover, situated in various wards, showing that the House was regarded as belonging to the whole of the City, and not to any part of it. Some of the bequests are made without any specified purpose; some have conditions and duties attached; thus, one is for providing communion wine, while others are to be accompanied by permission of burial in the church.

In reading the disposition and management of their property by the nuns, one cannot avoid the suspicion that they were sometimes under the influence of certain persons not wholly disinterested. Thus, there was one Richard Berde, citizen and girdler. He first takes over a tenement in the parish of St. Ethelburga belonging to the House for a term of forty years at the rent of 20s. He then takes another tenement in the same parish for sixty years at 45s. a year. Then he becomes tenant to the Sisters for the great messuage, or inn, called the “Black Bull,” with cellars, etc., and two adjoining tenements for one-and-twenty years at a rent of £9: 14s. a year. So that he became the holder on long leases of one great house and four tenements. It is perfectly certain, of course, that he intended to sublet them all at a profit to himself, and that the Sisters in this transaction got the worst of it. But Richard Berde got more than this out of the nuns: they made him their seneschal, receiver and collector, with a salary of £12, the annual sum of 20s. for his livery, board and lodging, with allowances of beer and wine, an allowance of fuel, and the free use of a chamber and a parlour. The Dissolution must have been a heavy blow to good Richard Berde: he lost his salary and his allowances; one supposes that he was still allowed to retain his tenancy of the houses. He received a pension of 40s., but what was that compared with the extremely comfortable little job that was taken away?

The name of the last Prioress was Mary Rollesley. What relative was this lady to John Rollesley, gentleman? One asks because John Rollesley seems to have done pretty well with the Sisters, too. He got the manor of Burston from them on a lease for eighty years at a rent of £9. And the year after this concession, he obtained a messuage in the Close of St. Helen’s, which must have been a great house, because it had been occupied by the Bishop of Llandaff, on a lease of fourscore years at a rent of 46s. 8d. More than that, he obtained the lease, for the same time, of ten tenements, also in St. Helen’s Close, at a yearly rent of £15. And on the same day he got two more tenements outside the Close and a marsh at Stebenhithe (Stepney) for a term of sixty years at a rent of £8: 15: 4. Two years later the grateful nuns gave John Rollesley a small pension of four marks a year for good counsel, and Edward Rollesley, gentleman—clearly one of the same family,—received an annuity of 40s. also for good counsel. One of the last acts of the last Prioress was to leave to John Rollesley the manor of Marke, in the parish of Leyton and Walthamstow, for fourscore years at a rent of £8. Probably all the estates of the House were let in this way to men who farmed them, making their profit by subletting them. These facts show how lucky it might be, in the blessed and religious days before the Reformation, for a family to have a Prioress among them.

We note, further, that the nuns paid a chief steward, a receiver, and an auditor; that they paid pension to three chantry chaplains; and yearly payments to the church wardens of St. Mary Bothaw, to the wardens of a fraternity in Bow Church, to the Bishop of Lincoln for procurations, etc., to the Abbess of Barking, and annual doles to the poor on certain days. All these facts, taken together, seem to throw unexpected light upon the ramifications and divisions of ecclesiastical property.

The nuns were dispersed in 1538. Eighteen years later, in 1556, a list of the survivors shows that the last Prioress, Mary Rollesley, and six sisters, still survived. Of these six sisters, five received a pension of £2: 13: 4, and one, who had probably held some conventual post, received a pension of £3: 6: 8. At the Dissolution there were two Chantry Priests who had stipends of £8 and £7 respectively.

A considerable part of the ruins of this House was standing until the end of the eighteenth century. Wilkinson has figured some of the details. The following description is from the Survey of the King’s Offices, taken when the nuns left it (ArchÆologia, vol. xvi. 1806):—

“The late Priorye of Saint Elenes within the Citye of London.

The View and Surveye ther taken the xxith daye of June, in the xxxiij Yeare of the raigne of our Soveraigne Lord Kinge Henrye the viijth, by Thomas Mildmay, one of the King’s Auditors thereunto assigned. That is to saye,

Fyrste, the cheaf entre or cominge into the same late Priory ys in and by the street gate lyying in the pishe of St. Elenes in Bysshopsgate Streat which leadeth to a little cowrte next adjoining to the same gate, havinge chambers, howses, and buyldinges, environinge the same, out of wch cowrte there is an entre leadinge to an inner cowrte wch on the North side is also likewies environed with edificyons and buyldings, called the Stewardes lodging, with a Countinge house apperteninge to the same. Item, next to the same cowrte ther ys a faire Kechinge, withe a pastery house, larder houses, and other howses of office, apperteninge to the same: and at the Est ende of the same Kechyn and entre leadinge to the same hall, with a litle plor adioyning, having under the same hall and plor sondrie bowses of office, next adioyning to the Cloyster ther, and one howse called the Covent plor. Item, iij. fair Chambers adioyninge to the hall, whearof the one over the entree leadinge to the cloyster, thother over the Buttree, and the third over the larder. Item, from the said entre by the hall, to the Cloyster, which cloyster yet remaneth holly leaded, and at the North side of the same cloyster a fare long howse called the Fratree. Item, at thest end of the same Cloyster, a lodginge called the Suppryors lodging, with a little gardin lieng to the same. And by the same lodginge a pare of staires leading to the Dortor, at the Southend whearof ther is a litle hows, wherein the Evidence of the said hows nowe dou remayne, with all howses and lodginges under the same Dortor. Item, at the Westende of the same cloyster, a dore leadinge in to the nunes late Quire, extending from the dore out of the churche yarde unto the lampe or pticyon deviding the priorye from the pisshe which is holly leaded. Item, at thest ende of the said cloyster, an entre leading to a little Garden, and out of the same littell garden to a faire garden called the Covent garden conteninge by estimacn half an acre. And, at the Northend of the said garden, a dore leading to another garden called the Kechin garden: and at the Westende of the same ther is a Dovehowsshe; and in the same garden a dore to a faire Woodyerd, with howses, pticons, and gardens, within the same Woodyerd a tenement with a garden, a stable, and other thapptances to the same belonginge, called Elizabeth Hawtes lodginge.”

Ogilby’s map (see end of London in the Time of the Stuarts) shows the site as it was a hundred years later. There is part of the cloister left, part of the nuns’ garden. As for limits in 1542, the southern boundary of the Nunnery was the partition wall dividing the church of St. Helen’s; the eastern boundary was St. Mary Axe, or perhaps a row of houses on the west side; the western boundary was Bishopsgate Street within, and the northern was Camomile Street, or London Wall, unless there was a row of houses on its south side.

I have before me a voluminous mass of MS. notes referring to this important London House. Most of the notes are of small importance. It must, however, be acknowledged that the chronicles of the House show, perhaps, more quarrels than we find in the monasteries of men.

In 1432 the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s issue ordinances for the Reformation of the Convent. A little earlier the same body excommunicate a certain Jowsa or Joyssa who, after taking the veil as a professed nun of St. Helen’s, left the House and contracted marriage. About the same time there was a scandal concerning the treatment of Joan Heyron, one of the nuns, by the Prioress. Joan had gout in her hands and feet so badly that she could not perform her canonical duties. The Prioress, probably thinking that Joan was shamming, had, therefore, put her in prison, from which the Dean of St. Paul’s ordered her release, and the Pope—no less an authority—gave instructions for her maintenance. This little anecdote opens the door for speculation of a very interesting kind as to the Row Royal which should demand the intervention of the Dean first, and an appeal to the Pope afterwards. One understands, for instance, that Joan Heyron was a Londoner by birth, that she had relations of influence, and that they were not going to stand it. We find the admission of Chantry priests by bequest; petitions to elect a prioress in the room of the late sister deceased; grants of tenements; petitions for a market; and so on.

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CHAPTER XVII
ST. MARY SPITAL

Outside Bishopsgate, on the site now occupied by Spital Square, stood that most venerable and most beneficent House called Domus Dei, or Domus BeatÆ MariÆ. It was founded by Walter Brune and Rosia his wife, for Canons Regular, in the year 1197. Walter, Archdeacon of London, laid the foundation stone, and William, Bishop of London, dedicated it to Jesus Christ and His Mother, by the name of Domus Dei et BeatÆ MariÆ extra Bishopsgate. The place carried on a blameless and most useful existence for three hundred and fifty years. When it was dissolved it was found to contain no fewer than a hundred and eighty beds for the sick poor. Now beds were not considered as intended for one person only, but for as many as, in case of need, could be crammed in, so we may reckon that at least three hundred and sixty poor persons were always received and treated in this House.

The boundaries of the House are laid down by Stow:—

“The Bounds whereof, as appeareth by Composition betwixt the Parson and Prior of the said Hospital, concerning Tythes, begin at Berward’s Lane, toward the South, and extend, in Breadth, to the Parish of St. Leonard, Soresditch, towards the North; and, in Length, from the King’s Street, on the West, to the Bishop of London’s Field, called Lollesworth, on the East. The Prior of this St. Mary Spittle, for the Emortising and Appropriation of the Priory of Bikenacar, in Essex, to his said House of St. Mary Spittle, gave to Henry the Seventh £400, in the 22nd Year of his Reign.

This Hospital, surrendered to Henry the Eighth, was valued to expend £478 wherein, besides Ornaments of the Church, and other Goods pertaining to the Hospital, there were found standing one Hundred and eighty Beds well furnished, for receipt of the Poor of Charity; for it was an Hospital of great Relief....”

“A part of the large Churchyard pertaining to this Hospital, and severed from the rest with a Brick Wall, yet remaineth as of old time, with a Pulpit Cross therein, somewhat like to that in Paul’s Churchyard. And against the said Pulpit on the South Side before the Charnel and Chapel of St. Edmond the Bishop, and Mary Magdalen (which Chapel was founded about the Year 1391 by W. Evesham, Citizen and Pepperer of London, who was there buried), remaineth also one fair builded House of two Stories in height for the Maior, and other honourable Persons, with the Aldermen and Sheriffs to sit in, there to hear the Sermons preached upon Easter Holidays. In the Loft over them stood the Bishop of London, and other Prelates; now the Ladies and Aldermen’s Wives do there stand at a fair Window, or sit at their Pleasure.

And here it is to be noted, that time out of mind it hath been a laudable Custom, that on Good Friday in the Afternoon, some especial learned Man, by Appointment of the Prelates, doth preach a Sermon at Paul’s Cross, treating of Christ’s Passion: and upon the three next Easter Holidays, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the like learned Men, by the like Appointment, do use to preach on the Forenoon at the said Spittle, to persuade the Articles of Christ’s Resurrection: and then on Low Sunday, before Noon, one other learned Man at Paul’s Cross is to make Rehearsal of those four former Sermons, either commending or reproving them, as to him (by Judgment of the learned Divines) is thought convenient. And that done, he is to make a Sermon of himself, which in all were five Sermons in one. At these Sermons so severally preached, the Maior with his brethren and Aldermen are accustomed to be present in their Violets at Paul’s on Good Friday; and in their Scarlets, both they and their Wives, at the Spittle in the Holidays, except Wednesday, in Violet: and the Maior with his Brethren on Low Sunday in Scarlet at Paul’s Cross, continued until this Day.

Touching the Antiquity of this Custom, I find none other than that in the Year 1398. King Richard having procured from Rome Confirmation of such Statutes and Ordinances as were made in the Parliament begun at Westminster, and ended at Shrewsbury, he caused the same Confirmation to be read and pronounced at Paul’s Cross and at St. Mary Spittle, in the Sermons before all the People. Philip Malpas, one of the Sheriffs in the Year 1439 the 18th of Henry VII. gave 20s. by the Year to the three Preachers at the Spittle. Stephen Forster, Maior in the Year 1454 gave 40l. to the Preachers of Paul’s Cross and Spittle. I find also, that the aforesaid House, wherein the Maior and Aldermen do sit at the Spittle, was builded (for that purpose) of the Goods, and by the Executors of Rich. Rawson, Alderman, and Isabel his Wife, in the year 1488. In the year 1594 this Pulpit being old, was taken down, and a new one set up, the Preacher’s Face turned towards the South, which was before toward the West. Also a large house (on the East side of the said Pulpit) was then builded, for the Governors and Children of Christ’s Hospital to sit in: and this was done of the Goods of William Elkins, Alderman, late deceased. But within the first Year, the same House decaying, and like to have fallen, was again (with great cost) repaired at the City’s charge.” (Survey, vol. i)

In Spital Square, Bishopsgate Street Without, we have the site of the cloisters, or perhaps the outer court of the House of St. Mary Spital. At the Suppression its income was £478; and it contained one hundred and eighty hospital beds. This means that the hospital contained accommodation, according to the meaning of the word at the time, for four or five hundred patients. On an estimate of maintenance at £5 a head, one asks with wonder how all these beds were kept up, and whether the Hospital depended partly on voluntary donations. The Hospital of St. Bartholomew, we know, sent its people to beg meat in the Shambles; did St. Mary’s also send men on the same quest?

One custom survived the House—that of the Easter sermons. It was the rule that on Good Friday, in the afternoon, some learned man, by appointment of the Bishop, should preach a sermon at Paul’s Cross on the Passion; that on the three Easter Holidays, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, other learned men should preach in the forenoon at the Spital Cross on the subject of the Resurrection; and that on Low Sunday another learned man should “make rehearsal” at Paul’s Cross of these four sermons, either commending or reproving them. This was surely the one single function in the whole of Christendom in which one preacher was ever invited to criticise publicly the sermons of four other preachers. These sermons were of great antiquity. In the year 1398 Richard the Second made use of them for the publication or the confirming of certain statutes by the Pope. In 1439 Philip Malpas, sheriff, gave twenty shillings annually; in 1454 Stephen Forster gave forty pounds for the preachers; the “house” in which the Mayor and Aldermen, with their wives, sat to hear the sermon at St. Mary Spital, was a kind of double gallery open in front. If the Mayor and Aldermen wore their violet cloaks on Good Friday; their scarlet on Monday and Tuesday at the Spital; their violet on Wednesday; and their scarlet on Low Sunday, as Stow says, the sermons of St. Mary Spital must have been very gorgeous and ceremonial functions.

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CHAPTER XVIII
ST. MARY OF BETHLEHEM

St. Mary of Bethlehem, from which we get the word Bedlam, was founded by Simon FitzMary, sheriff, in 1247. The deed of gift is preserved among the archives of the Bethlehem Hospital. I am indebted for the following copy to the Rev. E.G. O’Donoghue, Chaplain to the Hospital. The name of the principal witness, “Peter Fitz-Alwyn,” is probably a misreading of “Peter Fitz Alan.” The preamble is omitted.

By REASON of my reverence for my Lord Himself and for the same His most tender mother, to the honour and glory also of my Lord Henry the illustrious King of England (may the aforesaid mother of God and her Only Begotten Son take his wife and children under their care and protection!), to the benefit in manifold ways of the City of London, in which I was born, as well as for the salvation of my own soul, and of the souls of my ancestors and descendants, for the salvation of the souls of my parents and of my friends, and specially for the souls of Guy of Marlow, John Durant, Ralph Aswy, of Matilda, Margery, and Dionysia their wives.

I have given and granted (and by this present Deed of Charter have confirmed the gift) to God and the Church of St. Mary of Bethlehem, all that land of mine which I had in the Parish of St. Botolph without Bishopsgate, London,—to wit, all that I had or might have there, in houses, gardens, orchards, fish ponds, ditches, marshes, and all other things appertaining thereto, as defined by their boundaries. These extend in length from the King’s Highway in the East to that Ditch on the West which is called Depeditch, and in breadth to the land which belonged to Ralph Dunning on the North and to the land of St. Botolph’s Church on the South.

To be held and retained as alms bestowed upon the aforesaid Church of Bethlem, free from all secular control, tax, or service for ever, and especially for the Foundation of a Priory there, and for the institution there of a Prior, Canons, and Brothers, and of Sisters as well, so soon as ever Jesus Christ shall have bestowed His grace upon it. These shall solemnly profess in the said place the Rule and Order of the said Church of Bethlem, and shall in the same wear publicly upon their copes and mantles the badge of a Star.

And there shall be celebrated there divine services for the souls aforesaid, and for the souls of all the faithful dead.

But in particular this Priory shall be founded to receive there the Bishop of Bethlem, the Canons, Brothers, and Legates for all time, so often as they shall come thither.

Furthermore to the intent that a Church or Oratory may be erected there, so soon as ever the Lord shall have poured out his grace upon it, under such conditions that the Ordination, the Institution, and the Dismissal of the Prior, Canons, Brothers, and Sisters of the said place, together with the rights of Visitation, Correction, and Reformation, shall for ever belong to the Bishop of Bethlem and his successors and to the Chapter of his Church and of his Legates, so often as they shall come thither, and shall be willing, and shall see that it is expedient to do so, without the contradiction and hindrance of any one, save where there are appertaining to the said land the services due by the Lords Superior.

And for the greater security of this gift

I have placed myself and mine outside the said property, and I have solemnly put in actual possession of it, and have handed over the possession of all things aforesaid to the Lord Godfrey, one of the Prefects of the City of Rome, at this time Bishop-elect of Bethlem (as by our Lord the Pope confirmed), and at this time actually in England, in his own name, and in that of his successors, and in the name of the Chapter of the Church of Bethlem.

And he has received possession of the said property, and has entered upon it in the form prescribed.

Now in token of subjection and reverence the said place in Bishopsgate Without in London shall pay annually in the said City one mark sterling on Easter Day to the Bishop of Bethlem, or his representative on account of its property.

And according as the property of the said place shall by the gift of God and more increase, in like manner the said place shall pay more, in proportion to its income, on the aforesaid date, to its mother church of Bethlem.

This Deed of Gift and the Confirmation of the present Charter of my Foundation I have on behalf of myself and of my heirs made secure and binding.

In the year of our Lord 1247 on the Wednesday after the Feast of S. Luke the Evangelist.

These being Witnesses—

Peter Fitz-Alwyn, then Mayor of London, &c. &c.

This is what the London Citizen (see Collections of a London Citizen) says of the House:—

“A chyrche of Owre Lady that ys namyde Bedlem. And yn that place ben founde many men that ben fallyn owte of hyr wytte. And fulle honestely they ben kepte in that place: and sum ben restoryde unto hyr wytte and helthe agayne. And sum ben a-bydyng there yn for evyr, for they ben falle soo moche owte of hem selfe that hyt ye uncurerabylle unto man. And unto that place ys grauntyde moche pardon, more thenne they of the place knowe.”

This Priory continued for nearly three hundred years, during which period it never obtained any popularity or any substantial increase to its revenues. On searching the Calendar of Wills, we find a few bequests left to the House until 1411. After this date there is no more mention of the House.

Then poverty fell upon it: it received permission to beg for alms; and the Brethren—were there ever any sisters?—as they died were not replaced; between the years 1411 and 1538—that is, for a hundred and twenty-seven years—there is a dead silence in the Wills. We know that there was a chantry here for Lord Basset, who was a benefactor; and we know that Henry the Fourth appointed in 1423 one Robert Dale, and in 1471, one Richard Sneeth as Prior or warden. The House was probably the most conspicuous case in London of a Foundation of which only the shell was left. Its endowments gone, the “special devotion” of the Founder to the Church of Bethlehem no longer understood, the respect for the sacred site of Bethlehem a thing decaying, and, at last, the very Brethren gone. At the Dissolution one man was found in the House, the Master, and he had left off wearing the habit of the Order. Was he quite poor? Did he live alone in the place wandering about the ghostly cloister, singing matins at midnight alone in the mouldering chapel, the roof of which was falling off? Or cultivating the little garden beside the City Ditch for vegetables and roots which formed most of his food? Strange life! Or were the revenues large enough to keep him in comfort with servants to attend upon him, so that he lived in semi-ecclesiastic guise?

There is some obscurity about the conversion of the House into an Asylum for persons of unsound mind. Stow says that it became an asylum, but does not give the date. Newcourt says, that “sometime, a King of England”—which is vague—disliking the presence near the Court of the Lunatic Asylum which stood at Charing Cross, ordered the removal of the inmates to Bethlehem, which would show that the place had fallen into decay some time before the Dissolution. In the year 1523 one Stephen Jennings gave £40 towards the purchase of the patronage of the House, and the Mayor took steps toward carrying out this object when the Dissolution happened, and the place, whose surrender value is not stated, went to the King. The mad people were turned adrift; one knows not where they went or how they fared: in 1546, however, the King gave the House to the City, and the Mayor bought the patronage and houses and tenements belonging to it and replaced the lunatics.

The church was taken down in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It does not appear that the House had any property, because the patients were maintained by their friends, or if these were too poor, by a charge upon the parish. There was accommodation for sixty patients. Five years after the King’s gift, license was granted to John Whitehead, proctor of the House, to ask for alms in the dioceses of London, Ely, and Lincoln.

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CHAPTER XIX
THE CLARES

The Abbey of St. Clare, which stood on the site of the church called Holy Trinity, Minories, was founded by Blanche d’Artois in 1293. The following genealogy sufficiently explains the connection of Blanche with this country and with London:—

The House was founded in 1293 for the reception of “certain nuns devoted to the service of God, St. Mary and St. Francis, expected shortly to arrive and to settle in this realm.” The first nuns were Frenchwomen, brought over by Blanche. They belonged to the Order called Clares, their name being that of St. Clare, the foundress of the Franciscan nuns, who was canonised in 1253, two years after her death. They called themselves Sorores Minores—as their Franciscan Friars were Fratres Minores; they were also called “rich Clares,” because they were allowed to possess endowments and lands; others of the same Order being “poor Clares,” who subsisted entirely on the charity of the people. They were also called Urbanists, because their rule had been revised by Pope Urban; and they were inclusÆ, that is to say, forbidden, except by reason of pestilence, war, or fire, to go outside the convent walls.

The endowments began with three tenements and four parcels of ground near, or upon, the site of the House, together with some houses in West Chepe, yielding £30 a year.

Subsequent endowments included a large number of messuages, tenements, wharves, and shops in London and Whitechapel. It would be interesting to ascertain how much of London actually belonged to the Religious Houses.

The infant Convent received three Bulls from Pope Boniface VIII. In the first he received the House, with all its buildings and property, under his own peculiar jurisdiction. In the second he declared the House free from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the third he pronounced the House inviolable, and ordered the Bishop of London to consecrate for the nuns all the Church plate and sacred vessels.

In the reign of Edward the Second the King exempted the sisters, on account of their poverty, from all tallage payable to the Crown for their lands and houses in London.

In the reign of Edward the Third they obtained a grant of thirty marks a year, and another of twenty marks from private persons. They also obtained from Isabella, mother of Edward the Third, the advowsons of three churches, on the condition of praying for the soul of the late King. Edward the Third also endowed them with lands and houses.

The writer of a paper in ArchÆologia enumerates many gifts of messuages, etc., made to the sisters during the two hundred and fifty years of their existence. In the Calendar of Wills between 1341 and 1519, I find twenty-five bequests to this House, of which all but seven belong to the fourteenth century.

A considerable mass of ruins of the Convent House remained standing down to the end of the eighteenth century, when most of them were destroyed. In 1706 it was found that the north wall of the present church of the Holy Trinity was part of the wall of the Sisters’ Chapel; in 1793, in digging the foundations of a house, in Haydon Square, a massive stone wall was discovered, certainly part of the House, as it formed the boundary of the parish. On the west side of the Square the houses in 1803 were part of the original building, the walls being of stone, even the partitions between the rooms. In 1797 a fire, which consumed many of the houses south of the church, from the Minories to Haydon Square, eastward, laid open the remains of a Hall which seemed to be the Refectory.

Stow has the following particulars concerning this House:—

“The License for founding it bore Date 21 E. I. to the Abbess of St. Clare without Aldgate. There was a Charter granted 9 E. II. that the Sisters Minoresses without Aldgate should be quit of Tallage on account of their Lands and Tenements in the City of London. In another Charter 14 E. II. it is called the Abby of the Minoresses of St. Mary of the Order of St. Clare without the Walls of the City: In which Charter are confirmed certain Messes of theirs in the Vintry, in Wood Street, Lad Lane, Old Fish Street, and one Mess and two Shops in Lombard Street, Christ’s Church Lane, and Shirburgh Lane; gotten of divers well affected Persons: What the Charters and Liberties of these Minoresses were, may be seen by the Confirmation thereof in 1 H.V. and Anno 16 and 25 and 2 H. 4, which remain in the Tower Records. The Manour of Apeldercome was granted to the Prioress of the Minoresses without Aldgate, 1 H. IV. and 22 H. VI. A Mess called the Herteshorn, in the Parish of St. Mary Matfelon, was granted to them by Nicholas Walshe, 7 E. IV. To all the rest let this be added.

That this House was first erected to receive Nuns that were to be brought over by Blanch, Queen of Navarre, Wife to the abovesaid Earl Edmund: And they were professed to serve God, the blessed Virgin, and St. Francis; as appears by this Charter of Licence, which the said Edmund obtained of the King his Brother the 21st of his Reign.”

The House attracted and maintained the greatest respect of the citizens. This is shown by the bequests which were showered upon the sisterhood; these were continued far into the fifteenth century, long after the stream of benefactions had ceased for the other religious houses of London. It is also shown by the request of many ladies that they should be buried in the Chapel of the Nuns—among them was Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, who died in 1506, only thirty years before the Dissolution. It has already been noticed in another place that there is nowhere to be found any scandal, or suggestion of scandal, concerning the Religious women of the London Houses.

The House has no history. For two hundred and fifty years the sisters carried on their quiet lives; they produced no saint; they enjoyed no ecstatic visions; they obeyed the Rule with such modifications as were introduced from time to time; their lives were monotonous, but they had their little distractions. One event alone is recorded of them—the plague of 1515—when within these walls alone twenty-seven of the sisters were carried off, besides the lay sisters and the servants.

At their dissolution their income amounted to £318: 16: 5. If we consider that the stipend of a Chantry Priest was no more than £6 or £7 a year, on which he could live, we may multiply this income by ten at least, and we may conclude that the number of sisters, making allowance for the maintenance of the House, was not more than thirty, and perhaps less, the tendency in the latter days, when there were few bequests, being to keep down the number of the sisterhood, therefore they were well off.

The Clares were not included in Cardinal Wolsey’s first suppression of the smaller Houses of 1528, nor in that of 1536. The Abbess, however, Lady Elizabeth Savage, resigned her charge in 1538, the year before the final Act was passed.

For two years the place remained empty and deserted. In 1540 however, the King granted the House to the See of Bath and Wells for a London residence. The Bishop at that time was John Clarke, a man whose share in the momentous events of the day has somehow been passed over by historians.

He was born about the year 1480; he took the degrees of B.A. and M.A. at Cambridge; he studied law at Bologna; he took Holy Orders and received many benefices, including the Mastership of the Maison Dieu at Dover. Since these preferments were scattered about in many counties, it is evident that he performed none of the duties. He was otherwise occupied. In 1519 he was sent by the King with a message to Louise of Savoy; he was made Archdeacon of Colchester, Dean of Windsor, Judge of the Court of the Star Chamber; and he was charged in 1521 with the presentation of King Henry’s work against Luther. He remained at Rome as the King’s Ambassador and the servant of Wolsey for four years; he was employed in an embassy to the Court of France, and was sent a second time to Rome. He returned with Cardinal Campeggio. By this time he had been promoted to the Bishopric of Bath and Wells.

He did not long enjoy his London residence. In the same year in which he received the gift, he was sent on an embassy to the Duke of Cleves, and, with his servants, was poisoned. He came back to die in January 1541, and was buried in the Chapel of the Clares.

The House was once more taken over by the Crown, being exchanged by Bishop Barber for other property in 1548. Edward granted it to the Duke of Suffolk in 1552. It does not appear, however, that Lady Jane Grey, his daughter, was ever resident at the House of the Clares. The Duke was executed on the 23rd of February 1554. We may believe that some of the old sanctity was still lingering about the Chapel of the vanished nuns. There is some reason to believe that the head of the Duke was brought to the Chapel and buried before the altar. In 1852 the then Earl of Dartmouth was inspecting the vaults under the modern church, where some of his ancestors are buried. He came upon something that might have been a basket full of sawdust. On examination there was found to be a head well preserved, with the marks of decapitation on the neck. The features resembled those of the beheaded Duke, and it seems probable that either by his own request, or by the pious care of a servant, the head was brought here to be laid in the Duke’s own Chapel, the former Chapel of the Sorores Minores InclusÆ.

After the accession of Queen Elizabeth, the Precincts of the Abbey remained, like many other Precincts, a quiet place, in whose Close houses were built. The church was granted to the people of the place on the condition of their maintaining a minister for the parish, which occupied exactly the same site as the former Abbey.

It was a small parish, no more than 255 feet in length, facing the City Wall. The old buildings were gradually pulled down, and the materials used for the new houses, but enough remained, even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, to form a picturesque collection of ruins. A fire in 1767 destroyed most of the buildings. As to the church, it became that of the Holy Trinity; it was repaired in 1618, in 1624, in 1636; it escaped the Fire of London. But most unfortunately it was taken down in 1740—with the exception of the north Wall—and rebuilt a mean and poor little church, which will remain standing as a Church House while the Parish, consisting of Haydon Green and little else, has been absorbed in that of St. Botolph, Aldgate. The new church contained something of the old chapel: the font, the reredos, the pavement before the altar, the monuments which were put up on the north wall. The church plate is also rich and curious. The charities are very small, amounting to no more than £13 a year in all.

The church was at one time—about the close of the seventeenth century— a favourite place for weddings. In 1697 there were 956; sometimes there were six, eight, or ten weddings in one day. The reason seems to have been that the church claimed to be a peculiar, and exempt from the visitation of the ordinary, therefore licenses were not required for this church any more than for St. James’s, Duke Place, or the Fleet, or May Fair.

A Roman sarcophagus, discovered within this parish, is now preserved in the British Museum.

The church is much richer in associations than would be expected from its outward appearance. There is a brass to Constance Lucy, one of the well-known Lucy family; there is the tomb of Sir John Pelham and his son; there are buried here the first Lord Dartmouth, son of Colonel William Legge, and thirty-two of his descendants; there is a portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, with the tradition that he once lived in Haydon Square and worshipped in this church; Miles Coverdale preached here, as the historian of the church, Dr. Kinns found, on eleven occasions. The tomb of Colonel William Legge, who lived in the Abbey, bears his shield, on which are impaled the arms of the Washington family, with the stars and stripes which are the origin of the American flag. The connection of the Washingtons and the Legges is given by Dr. Kinns in the following pedigree:—

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CHAPTER XX
ST. KATHERINE’S BY THE TOWER

On the 30th day of October, in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five, there was gathered together a congregation to assist at the mournfullest service ever heard in any church. The place was the Precinct of St. Katherine’s, the church was that known as St. Katherine’s by the Tower—the most ancient and venerable church in the whole of East London—a city which now has but two ancient churches left, those of Bow and of Stepney, without counting the old tower of Hackney.

Suppose it was advertised that the last and the farewell service, before the demolition of the Abbey, would be held at Westminster on a certain day; that after the service the old church would be pulled down; that some of the monuments would be removed, the rest destroyed; that the bones of the illustrious dead would be carted away and scattered, and that the site would be occupied by warehouses used for commercial purposes. One can picture the frantic rage and despair with which the news would everywhere be received; one can imagine the stirring of the hearts of all those who in every part of the world inherit the Anglo-Saxon speech; one can hear the sobbing and the wailing which accompany the last anthem, the last sermon, the last prayer.

St. Katherine’s by the Tower was the Abbey of East London: poor and small, certainly, compared with the Cathedral church of the City and the Abbey of the West, but stately and ancient; endowed by half a dozen Sovereigns; consecrated by the memory of seven hundred years, filled with the monuments of great men and small men buried within her walls; standing in her own Precinct; with her own Courts, Spiritual and Temporal; with her own judges and officers; surrounded by the claustral buildings belonging to Master, Brethren, Sisters, and Bedeswomen. The church and the hospital had long survived the intentions of the founders; yet as they stood, so situated, so ancient, so venerable, amid a dense population of rough sailors and sailor folk, with such enormous possibilities for good and useful work, sacred and secular, one is lost in wonder that the consent of Parliament, even for purposes of gain, could be obtained for their destruction. Yet St. Katherine’s was destroyed. When the voice of the preacher died away, the destroyers began their work. They pulled down the church; they hacked up the monuments, and dug up the bones; they destroyed the Master’s house, and cut down the trees in his quiet orchard; they pulled down the Brothers’ houses round the little ancient square; they pulled down the row of Sisters’ and the Bedeswomen’s houses; they swept the people out of the Precinct, and destroyed the streets; they pulled down the Courts, Spiritual and Temporal, and opened the doors of the prison; they grubbed up the burying-ground. With the bones and the dust of the dead, and the rubbish of the foundations, they filled up the old reservoir of the Chelsea waterworks, and enabled Mr. Cubitt to build Eccleston Square. When all was gone they let the water into the big hole they had made, and called it St. Katherine’s Dock. All this done, they became aware of certain prickings of conscience. They had utterly demolished and swept away and destroyed a thing which could never be replaced; they were fain to do something to appease those prickings. They therefore stuck up a new chapel, which the architect called Gothic, with six neat houses in two rows, and a large house with a garden in Regent’s Park, and this they called St. Katherine’s. “Sirs,” they said, “it is not true that we have destroyed that ancient foundation at all; we have only removed it to another place. Behold your St. Katherine’s!” Of course it is nothing of the kind. It is not St. Katherine’s. It is a sham, a house of Shams and Shadows.

The beginning of the Hospital dates seven hundred and forty years back, when Matilda, Stephen’s Queen, founded it for the purpose of having masses said for the repose of her two children, Baldwin and Matilda. She ordered that the Hospital should consist of a Master, Brothers, Sisters, and certain poor persons—probably the same as in the later foundation. She appointed the Prior and Canons of Holy Trinity to have perpetual custody of the Hospital; and she reserved to herself and all succeeding Queens of England the nomination of the Master. Her grant was approved by the King, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Pope. Shortly afterwards William of Ypres bestowed the land of Edredeshede, afterwards called Queenhythe, on the Priory of Holy Trinity, subject to an annual payment of £20 to the Hospital of Katherine’s by the Tower.

This was the original foundation. It was not a Charity; it was a Religious House with a definite duty—to pray for the souls of two children; it had no other charitable objects than belong to any religious foundation—viz. the giving of alms to the poor, nor was it intended as a church for the people; in those days there were no people outside the Tower, save the inhabitants of a few scattered cottages along the river wall, and the farmhouses of Stebenhuthe (Stepney). It was simply founded for the benefit of two little princes’ souls.

The Prior and Canons of Holy Trinity without Aldgate continued to exercise some authority over the Hospital, but apparently against the protests and grumblings of the St. Katherine’s Society. It was, however, formally handed over to them, a hundred and forty years later, by Henry the Third. After his death, Queen Eleanor, for some reason, now dimly intelligible, wanted to get the Hospital into her own hands. The Bishop of London took it away from the Priory and transferred it to her. Then, perhaps with the view of preventing any subsequent claim of the Priory, she declared the Hospital dissolved.

Here ends the first chapter in the history of the Hospital. The foundation for the souls of the two princes existed no longer—the children, no doubt, having been long since sung out of Purgatory. Queen Eleanor, however, immediately refounded it. The Hospital was, as before, to consist of a Master, three Brothers, three Sisters, and bedeswomen. It was also provided that six poor scholars were to be fed and clothed—not educated. The Queen further provided that on November the 16th of every year twelve pence each should be given to the poor scholars, and the same amount to twenty-four poor persons; and that on November the 20th, the anniversary of the King’s death, one thousand poor men should receive one halfpenny each. Here is the first introduction of a charity. The Hospital is no longer an ecclesiastical foundation only; it maintains scholars and gives substantial alms. Who received these alms? Of course the people in the neighbourhood—if there were no inhabitants in the Precinct, the poor of Portsoken Ward. In either case the charity would be local—a point of the greatest importance. Queen Eleanor also continued her predecessor’s rule that the patronage of the Hospital should remain in the hands of the Queens of England for ever; when there was no Queen, then in the hands of the Queen Dowager; failing her, in those of the King. This rule still obtains. The Queen appoints the Master, Brothers, and Sisters of the House of Shams in Regent’s Park, just as her predecessors appointed those of St. Katherine’s by the Tower.

Queen Eleanor was followed by other royal benefactors. Edward the Second, for example, gave the rectory of St. Peter’s in Northampton. Queen Philippa, who, like Eleanor, regarded the place with especial affection, endowed it with the manor of Upchurch in Kent, and that of Queenbury in Hertfordshire. She also founded a chantry with £10 a year for a chaplain. Edward the Third founded another chantry in honour of Philippa, with a charge of £10 a year upon the Hanaper Office; he also conferred upon it the right of cutting wood for fuel in the Forest of Essex. Richard the Second gave it the manor of Reshyndene in Sheppey, and one hundred and twenty acres of land in Minster. Henry the Sixth gave it the manors of Chesingbury in Wiltshire, and Quasley in Hants; he also granted a charter, with the privilege of holding a fair. Lastly, Henry the Eighth founded, in connection with St. Katherine’s by the Tower, the Guild of St. Barbara, consisting of a Master, three Wardens, and a great number of members, among whom were Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, and the Earl and Countess of Northumberland, with other great and illustrious persons.

This is a goodly list of benefactors. It is evident that St. Katherine’s was a foundation regarded by the Kings and Queens of England with great favour. Other benefactors it had, notably John Holland, Duke of Exeter, Lord High Admiral and Constable of the Tower, himself of royal descent. He was buried in the church, with his two wives, and bequeathed to the hospital the manor of Much Gaddesden. He also gave it a cup of beryl, garnished with gold, pearls, and precious stones, and a chalice of gold for the celebration of the Holy Sacrament.

In the year 1546 all the lands belonging to the Hospital were transferred to the Crown.

At this time the whole revenue of the Hospital was £364: 12: 6, and the expenditure was £210: 6: 5; the difference being the value of the mastership. The Master at the dissolution was Gilbert Lathom, a priest, and the brothers were five in number—namely, the original three, and the two priests for the chantries. Four of the five had “for his stipend, mete, and drynke, by yere,” the sum of £8, which is fivepence-farthing a day; the other had £9, which is sixpence a day. It would be interesting, by comparison of prices, to ascertain how much could be purchased with sixpence a day. The three sisters had also £8 a year, and the bedeswomen had each two pounds five shillings and sixpence a year. There were six scholars at £4 a year each for “their mete, drynke, clothes, and other necessaries”; and there were four servants, a steward, a butler, a cook, and an under-cook, who cost £5 a year each. There were two gardens and a yard or court—namely, the square, bounded by the houses of the brothers, and the church.

This marks the closing of the second chapter in the history of the Hospital. With the cessation of saying masses for the dead its religious character expired. There remained only the services in the church for the inhabitants of the Precinct in the time of Henry the Eighth.

The only use of the Hospital was now as a charity. Fortunately the place was not, like the Priory of the Holy Trinity, granted to a courtier, otherwise it would have been swept away just as that Priory, or that of Elsing’s Spital, was swept away. It continued after a while to carry on its existence, but with changes. It was secularised. The Masters for a hundred and fifty years, not counting the interval of Queen Mary’s reign, were laymen. The brothers were generally laymen. The first Master of the third period was Sir Thomas Seymour: he was succeeded by Sir Francis Flemyng, Lieutenant-General of the King’s Ordnance. Flemyng was deprived by Queen Mary, who appointed one Francis Mallet, a priest, in his place. Queen Elizabeth dispossessed Mallet and appointed Thomas Wilson, a layman and a Doctor at Laws. During his mastership there were no Brothers, and only a few Sisters or Bedeswomen. The Hospital then became a rich sinecure. Among the Masters were Sir Julius CÆsar, Master of the Rolls, Sir Robert Acton, Dr. Coxe; three Montague brothers—Walter, Henry, and George; Lord Brouncker; the Earl of Feversham; Sir Henry Newton, Judge of the High Court of Admiralty; the Hon. George Berkeley, and Sir James Butler. The Brothers had been re-established—their names are enumerated by Ducarel—one or two of them were clerks in orders, but all the rest were laymen. They still received the old stipend of £8 a year, with a small house. As for the rest of the greatly increased income, it went to the Master after the manner common to all the old charities. During the latter half of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth century, St. Katherine’s by the Tower consisted of a beautiful old church standing with its buildings clustered round it—a Master’s house rich in carved and ancient wood-work, with its gardens and orchards, its houses for the Brothers, Sisters, and Bedeswomen, each of whom continued to receive the same salary as that ordained by Queen Eleanor. Service was held in the church for the inhabitants of the Precinct, but the Hospital was wholly secular. The Master devoured by far the greater part of the revenue, and the alms-people—Brothers, Sisters, and Bedeswomen—had no duties to perform of any kind.

In the year 1698 this, the third chapter in the life of the Hospital, was closed. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Somers, held in that year a Visitation of the Hospital, the result of which is interesting because it shows, first, a lingering of the old ecclesiastical traditions, and, next, the sense that something useful ought to be done with the income of the Hospital. It was therefore ordered in the new regulations provided by the Chancellor that the Brothers should be in holy orders, and that a school of 35 boys and 15 girls should be maintained by the Hospital. It does not appear that any duties were expected of the Brothers. Like the Fellows of colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, they were all to be in priests’ orders, and for exactly the same reason, because at the original foundation of the colleges, as well as of the Hospital, the Fellows were all priests. As for the Master, he remained a layman. This new order of things, therefore, raised the position of the Brothers, and gave a new dignity to the Hospital; further, the School, as well as the Bedeswomen, defined its position as a Charity. It still fell far, very far, short of what it might have been, but it was not, between the years 1698 and 1825, quite so useless as before.

A plan of the Precinct, with drawings of the church, within and without, and of the monuments in the church, may be found in Lysons. The obscurity of the Hospital, and the neglect into which it fell during the 18th century, are shown by the small attention paid to it in the books on London of the 18th century and the early years of the last century. The Hospital buildings consisted of a square, of which the north side was occupied by the Master’s house, with a large garden behind, and the Master’s orchard between his garden and the river; on the east and west sides were the Brothers’ houses, and on the south side of the square was the church and the Chapter House. On the east of the church was the burying-ground. South of the church was the Sisters’ close, with the houses occupied by the Sisters and the Bedeswomen. The old Brothers’ houses were taken down and rebuilt about the year 1755, and the Master’s house, an ancient building, full of carved timber work, had also been taken down, so that in the year 1825, when the Hospital was finally destroyed, the only venerable building standing in the Precinct was the church itself. To look at the drawings of this old church, and to think of the loving care with which it would have been treated had it been allowed to stand till this day, and then to consider the “Gothic” edifice in Regent’s Park, is indeed saddening. The church consisted of the nave and chancel, with two aisles built by Bishop Beckington, formerly the master. The east window, thirty feet high and twenty-five wide, had once been most beautiful when its windows were stained. The tracery was still fine; a St. Katherine’s wheel occupied the highest part, and beneath it was a rose; but none of the windows had preserved their painted glass, so that the general effect of the interior must have been cold. The carved wood of the stalls, and the great pulpit presented by Sir Julius CÆsar, may still be seen in the Regent’s Park Chapel, where are also some of the monuments. Of these the church was full. The finest (now in Regent’s Park), was that of John Holland, Duke of Exeter, and his two wives; there was one of the Hon. George Montague, Master of the Hospital, who died in the year 1681; and there was the monument with kneeling figures of one Cutting and his wife, with his coat of arms. The seats of the stalls are curiously carved, as is often found, with grotesque figures: human birds, monkeys, lions, boys riding hogs, angels playing bagpipes, beasts with human heads, pelicans feeding their young, and the devil with hoof and horns carrying off a brace of souls. There was more than the customary wealth of epitaphs. Thus, on the tablet to the memory of the daughter of one of the brothers was written:

On that of William Cutting, a benefactor to Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, is written:

On the tablet of Charles Stamford, clergyman:

And to the memory of Robert Beadles, freemason, one of his Majesty’s gunners of the Tower, who died in the year 1683:

There they lay buried, the good people of St. Katherine’s Precinct. They belonged to all trades, but chiefly to those which necessitate going down to the sea in ships. On the list of names are those of half a dozen captains, one of them captain of H.M.S. Monmouth, who died in the year 1706, aged 31 years; there are the names of lieutenants; there are those of sail-makers and gunners; there is a sergeant of Admiralty, a moneyer of the Tower, a weaver, a citizen and stationer, a Dutchman, who fell overboard and was drowned, a surveyor and collector—all the trades and callings that would gather together in this little riverside district separated and cut off from the rest of London. Among the people who lived here were the descendants of them who came away with the English on the taking of Calais, Guisnes, and Hames. They settled in a street called Hames and Guisnes Lane, corrupted into Hangman’s Gains. A census taken in the reign of Queen Elizabeth showed that of those resident in the Precinct 328 were Dutch; 8 were Danes; 5 were Polanders; 69 were French—all hat-makers—2 Spanish, 1 Italian, and 12 Scotch. Verstegen, the antiquary, was born here, and here lived Raymond Lully. During the last century the Precinct came to be inhabited almost entirely by sailors, belonging to every nation and every religion under the sun.

This was the place which it was permitted to certain promoters of a Dock Company to destroy utterly. A place with a history of seven hundred years; which might, had its ecclesiastical character been preserved and developed, have been converted into a cathedral for East London; or, if its secular character had been maintained, might have become a noble centre of all kinds of useful work for the great chaotic city of East London. They suffered it to be destroyed. It has been destroyed for sixty years. As for calling the place in Regent’s Park St. Katherine’s Hospital, that, I repeat, is absurd. There is no longer a St. Katherine’s Hospital.

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CHAPTER XXI
CRUTCHED FRIARS

The Order of Crutched, or Crossed, Friars—“Brethren Crucifer”—was instituted in the twelfth century. Some came over to England towards the end of the thirteenth century. Two London citizens, Ralph Hoster and William Sabernes, being greatly attracted by the sanctity of the Friars, took for them three tenements at an annual rent of 13s. 4d. of the Holy Trinity Priory, and for themselves either entered the Order or took up the Fraternity of the Order. Twenty years later, the Community had obtained enough money to enable them to buy other houses of the same Priory and to build a convent for themselves. The site was a piece of ground lying east of Seething Lane. The Friars carried in their hands a cross, and were also distinguished by wearing a cross of red cloth on their backs. The House, unlike other Friaries, seems to have held certain lands in Suffolk and certain Houses in the City: perhaps lands and houses were only endowments of an obit or an annual remembrance for the donor and his family. Like all the Friaries, this House was always poor: at the surrender it was valued at no more than £52: 13: 4. Stow cannot enumerate more than twenty worthies of London who were buried here. Of these the most important was Sir John Milbourne, who founded almshouses in the year 1521 for thirteen bedesmen, who were bound every day to attend the eight o’clock mass at Our Lady’s Altar, founded by Sir John Milbourne, there to pray for their benefactor’s soul. The will of the founder illustrates the change which had fallen upon men’s minds. Milbourne had not got beyond the belief in masses and prayers for the dead; but he had got beyond the belief in the perfunctory service of a chantry priest; he would keep poor men past work from want; this would be a more meritorious work than the endowment of a priest who should have nothing in the world to do except to say a daily mass; the prayers of a bedesman ought to be at least as efficacious as those of a paid chantry priest.

The Crutched Friars surrendered in 1539. Their house and estates were valued at £52: 13: 4, as stated above. The church and buildings were pulled down; a carpenter’s shop with a tennis-court and other places were built upon its site. The hall was turned into a glass-house, and thirty-five years after the Dissolution, was burned down. There were thus no remains or ruins of the House left at all; unless it were vaults or crypts.

On its site were erected later on the Navy House,—Pepys’s Navy House—and at the present day an open court, once, probably, the site of the cloister of the Brethren Crucifer, may still be seen. It now belongs to some Railway Company. First, a cloister of Friars, then a glass-house and tennis-court, next a Navy Office, and lastly, Receiving House for a Railway—here is a sequence of uses which Sir John Milbourne would hardly be able to foresee. After the Dissolution, the place appears to have attracted many persons as a residence, presumably from the quiet that still lingered about the Precinct. Here Dr. Turner had his Botanical Garden, one cannot doubt—on the site of the Monastic Garden. He dedicated his book, The New Herbal, 1568, to Queen Elizabeth, from “my house at London in the Crossed Fryers.” Dr. White Kennett, Minister of St. Botolph, Aldgate, 1699-1728, lived in “Crutchet Fryers,” and Pepys’s Diary is, of course, filled with references to the Navy Office, Crutched Friars.

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CHAPTER XXII
AUSTIN FRIARS

The House of Austin Friars, i.e. of Friars Eremites of the Order of St. Augustine, was founded in the year 1253 by Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, “to the honour of God, and the Blessed Mother, the Virgin, and for the health of the souls of himself, his ancestors, and his descendants.” The House was enriched in 1344 by the munificence of Reginald Cobham, and in the year 1354 the great-grandson of the founder built the church, of which a portion of the nave still remains. This Church, one of the noblest in London, possessed a spire, or flÈche, which, like that of the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, was the pride and admiration of the whole city. Like all the churches of the Friaries, it was for many years esteemed a specially holy place for burial. Among those whose dust lies in this spot are Edmund, first son of Joan the Fair, mother of Richard the Second; Humphrey Bohun, the founder; Richard, Earl of Arundel, Surrey, and Warren; Sir Francis Courtenay; the Earl of Pembroke; John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, beheaded 1463; Edward, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded 1521; many of the Barons slain at Barnet Field; and a long list of noble knights and dames besides. The Austin Friars came over here in the year 1251; they found a welcome not only in London, but elsewhere; they had, for instance, houses at Oxford and many other places. The Augustines turned out many scholars; among them the principal opponent of Wyclyf. The Order, in fact, unlike that of St. Francis, was one which professed to cultivate learning. The monastic dress of an Austin Friar was a long black gown with broad sleeves and a fine cloth hood; a white habit and scapulary, with a black leathern belt buckled with ivory.

This was never a rich House, but it always retained a certain steady reputation, not only as a centre of learning and letters, but also for a more scrupulous enforcement of discipline than was found among several other branches.

Austin Friars was essentially a London House. Yet it was never so popular as many other Houses. It appears by an examination of the London Wills that the Austin Friars were not so much regarded by the citizens as, for instance, the Grey Friars; or even as some of the smaller Houses such as Elsyng Spital. It was customary with wealthy and pious persons to leave money to all the orders of Friars in the City, and even to every Friar individually. The Augustine Brotherhood are not, it is true, omitted in these pious gifts, but there are few bequests of any value; a tenement is named, here and there, certain houses to be sold and divided between the Augustine Friars and others; there is occasionally a gift of wax or some such small matter. One Will in connection with this House is noticeable. It is that of William Calley, Draper, dated 1515. He leaves to the Honourable Company of Drapers, and to their successors, certain tenements in the Parish of St. Margaret, Lothbury, so that the said Company shall keep an obit within the “Frere Augustynes” of London for the benefit of his soul, for the soul of Mawde his wife, and others named; the bequest being also charged with certain charitable gifts. The Company and Wardens of the Craft are to attend the said obit, and afterwards to take such refection and repast as the said Freres “ordyn and prepaire.” And, by a codicil, William Calley wishes to be buried in the church of the Augustines, a privilege for which substantial fees were exacted by the brethren.

The references to this House are not voluminous, nor are they of very great importance. A paper on the Church by Mr. G.H. Birch has been published in the St. Paul’s Eccles. Soc., vol. i. Its piers, he points out, are Perpendicular, its windows Late Decorated, the arcades built probably in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and the nave wider than that of any English cathedral except, perhaps, Chichester. The roof, before the fire of 1862, was a waggon roof with the beams belonging to the same date as the arcades.

It may be noted that in the construction of their own church the Friars had to destroy the ancient parish church of St. Olave, Broad Street, but they built on a site adjoining the church of St. Peter-le-Poor a parish church in its place.

The House had four seals, one of the thirteenth century, two of the fourteenth, and one of the fifteenth. The seal of the Prior-General of the Order contains a figure of St. Catherine, crowned and holding a wheel.

In the year 1895 the demolition of certain houses on the north of the church brought to light what appeared to be the remains of the Cloister, together with bosses, on one of which was represented, apparently, a female figure carrying a wheel. A paper on this discovery was communicated by Mr. Allen Walker to The Builder (Feb. 29, Ap. 4, 1896). (See also Midd. and Herts. N. and Q., ii. pp. 86, 136.)

A good many references to this House belong to the period immediately following the Dissolution. There is the petition of St. Peter-le-Poor against the destruction of the flÈche. (L. and Midd., i., ii., 17.)

On the surrender of Austin Friars its revenues were valued at £57: 0: 4. The brethren, of whom there were no more than thirteen, subscribed to the acknowledgment of the Royal Supremacy in 1534. They were finally dispersed on the 12th of November 1549. Although the revenues of the House were then esteemed at so small a sum, we must remember that the Friars did not profess to hold property; they were supposed to live on the alms of the people. George Brown, one of those who signed the Acknowledgment, was made Archbishop of Dublin; the rest received small pensions. The site was granted in portions to Sir Thomas Wriothesley; to Sir W. Paulett, afterwards Marquis of Winchester; and to Sir Richard Rich. On the site of the House and the Cloister, Winchester House was built; the splendid monuments of the church were broken up, and the materials sold and carried away in cartloads for the sum of £100 in all. The lovely spire was taken down in spite of the vehement protests of the Mayor; the chancel and the transepts were destroyed, and only the nave was left, and, in part, stands to this day. Some thirty years ago this fragment was greatly injured by fire, but was restored after a fashion, and at the present day, with its scanty congregation of Dutch, by which congregation it has been used ever since the suppression, it allows the visitor to understand of how large and spacious a church it formed a portion.

In Wyngaerde’s map, and in Agas’s map (see end of London in the Time of the Tudors), there is a rude sketch of this House as it stood before the suppression, or immediately afterwards. In both there is a manifest indication for the position of the cloisters. They stood on the north of the church, the transept and the north wall of the nave serving for two sides. The transept has long since gone—and on the site stand modern houses. In the wall of one of these was found some years ago a stone arch. This was noted by some antiquary, but nothing more was done. In February 1896, however, during the demolition of this House, the arch was found again, and before it was taken down its place was marked and it was photographed, together with certain carved stones lying in the ground. There is very little doubt from its position that this arch was an entrance, perhaps from the Prior’s House, to the eastern cloister.

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CHAPTER XXIII
GREY FRIARS

In the year 1224, being the eighth year of King Henry the Third, there arrived at Dover a small company of nine Religious, being Brethren of the Fratres Minores, the Franciscan Order, not yet known in this country. Five of these were priests, the remaining four were laymen. They pushed on without delay as far as Canterbury, where they halted and begged permission to begin their missionary work in that city. They were allotted a room in which they slept at night, and in the daytime they used it as a school. After a little it was resolved to attempt the foundation of a branch in London. Therefore, while the priests remained at Canterbury, the laymen were sent to London to look about them. They first lodged for a fortnight with the Preaching Friars in Holborn. They then hired a house in Cornhill, of John Travers, one of the Sheriffs, where they built—presumably in the garden—rude cells of wattle and clay, and began their preaching and ministration among the poor of the City. Very quickly it became noised abroad that a new and saintly Order of Religion had arrived in the country; that its followers were absolutely unlike all other Religious; that their austerity, the strictness of their Rule, their earnestness, their eloquence, their poverty—for they owned nothing—absolutely nothing—not even church furniture, and lived on alms, simply on whatever was bestowed upon them by the charitable—were things never before known among men; and that their lives were spent not in prayers and Litanies, but in work among the dregs of the people; that none were too base, too low, too degraded, too loathsome by disease for the offices of these good friars. The impression produced by this phenomenon was only strengthened when John Ewen, Mercer, bought a piece of ground in the parish of St. Nicholas Shambles and gave it to the brethren for their use, on which they might build a house and church. Then all the citizens began to vie with each other in making splendid gifts to the church of these Franciscans—for themselves they took nothing, save, as before, the broken victuals and crusts given them by the charitable. William Joyner, Mayor, built the Choir; Henry Waleys, Mayor, built the Nave; Walter Potter, Alderman, built the Chapter House; Thomas Filcham built the Vestry House; Gregory Rokesley, Mayor, built the Dormitories and furnished them; Bartholomew of the Castle built the Refectory; Peter de Heyland built the study; Richard Whittington, Mayor, founded the Library. Nor was the support of the Franciscans limited to the citizens. Queens, Princesses, and great lords helped to endow the House and to make these poor mendicants rich. Queen Margaret, Queen Isabel, Queen Philippa; the Earls of Gloucester, Richmond, and Pembroke; the Countesses of Pembroke and Norfolk, all gave money, plate, lands, or buildings to the Friars. One Queen thought the choir ought to be more splendid, and rebuilt it; another thought the nave ought to be more splendid, and rebuilt it; no gift could be too lavish, no buildings too costly for religious men so truly and unfeignedly religious. In our eyes it is pathetic to observe the hope and confidence always ready to be renewed, always doomed to disappointment, with which the people turned from one professedly ascetic order which—alas!—had fallen from its first profession and had now become rich, fat, and lazy, to another beginning with the best intentions, itself destined before long to fall off from the early zeal and the first austerities. Who could retain the pristine austerity when all these gifts came pouring in? When the broken victuals became a steady shower of all the good things that the earth had to give? And the despised and poverty-stricken brothers, lean, hungry, hollow-eyed, filled with the fever of faith and zeal, had become transformed into the sleek and comfortable Friars of whom all men spoke well?

Their church was 300 feet long, 89 feet wide, and 64 feet 2 inches high. It contained an immense number of monuments, because the ground was supposed to be the holiest in all London. Here were buried Margaret, daughter of Philip, King of France, and second wife of Edward the First; Isabel, daughter of Philip le Bel of France, and wife of Edward the Second—with her, the heart of the husband whom she had betrayed; Joan of the Tower, daughter of Edward the Second, and wife of Edward Bruce, King of Scotland; Lady Isabel Fitzwarren, Isabel, Countess of Bedford, daughter of Edward the Third; Eleanor, Duchess of Brittany; Beatrice, Duchess of Brittany; Eleanor, Duchess of Buckingham; Lady de Lisle; the Countess of Devon; Margaret, Duchess of Norfolk; Eleanor, Duchess of Northumberland; and an immense number of great and noble persons. Had the church with all its monuments survived, there would have been no church in the country, or, perhaps, in any other country, more crowded with names of personal and historical interest. Of London worthies, we find the gallant John Philpot once Mayor; Nicholas Brembre also Mayor, who finished his career with a traitor’s death; John Gisors sometime Mayor; many of the Blunts—Lords Mountjoy, who married into London families—the wife of Edward Blunt, Lord Mountjoy, was the widow of one Mayor and the daughter of another; William Blunt, Lord Mountjoy, married the daughter of Henry Keble, mercer. There were a vast number besides, some of whom are enumerated by Stow, who tells us that the church had ten great tombs of alabaster and marble—he means tombs with chapels and carved work. Of less costly tombs there were some score. In the Dissolution all the glorious marble and alabaster work was sold for fifty pounds or thereabouts by Sir Martin Bower, Goldsmith. The revenue of the House was no more than £32: 10s.

An examination of those London Wills (Sharpe’s Calendar of Wills) which contain any mention of the Grey Friars shows that out of fifty-three nearly all are bequests of money “for a trental of masses”; for a Dirige and a Placebo in the church; for “masses”; for prayers; in some cases a charity is founded; in many the testator wishes to be buried in the church; in a great many cases money is left to all the orders of friars in the City, which are sometimes named, but generally not. I have elsewhere called attention to the remarkable fact that the stream of bequests and legacies to the Religious Houses becomes narrowed early in the fifteenth century and dries up altogether before the end.

The extent of the Grey Friars’ monastery can be traced by considering the present site of Christ’s Hospital. The school, unable to extend itself on the east, west, or north, spread out beyond the wall, which was at this point taken down soon after the foundation of the school. The monastery, therefore, was bounded on the north side by the wall; on the east by King Edward Street, formerly Butcher’s Hall Lane, and by old Stinking Lane; on the west by the wall and Newgate; and on the south by Newgate Street. It occupied, that is to say, a corner of the city of irregular shape, being 600 feet from east to west; 300 feet at its greatest breadth from north to south; and 80 feet, or perhaps 100, at its least breadth; an area, that is, of about 45,000 square feet. The Cloisters, in which lie buried a considerable multitude of London citizens, were asphalted and used for the boys’ playing field; some fragments of the old building still remain. As for the old monastery, it has entirely perished—church—cloisters—everything in the Fire of 1666. The monuments, we know, had gone long before.

While I write, the place itself is doomed. The spirit of barbarous vandalism has seized upon the school. Before long the school which, for three hundred years, has been the object of so much pride and affection among the citizens, will exist no longer. Another school—a new school, not the same—will be called by the name, and will be found somewhere in the country, and the Bluecoat school, with all its memories of Grecians, and of the young King Edward, and of the Grey Friars, will be swept away and blotted out. It is pitiful; it is wonderful that such things should be possible.

A plan of Grey Friars in the year 1617, when the old buildings were not yet all destroyed, and the plan of the House could still be made out, is preserved in Bartholomew’s Hospital, and has been reproduced by the London and Midd. ArchÆological Society, vol. v. p. 420. It shows that the north side of Newgate Street consisted of a row of tenements belonging to the Goldsmiths’ Company: the Bridge house and St. Bartholomew’s; behind the tenements and south of the wall lay the Precinct of Grey Friars. The church, with its middle and two side aisles, its great west window, its high roof and its Clere-story, might be re-drawn from the sketch in the plan; the Great and Little Cloisters are still standing with the old courts and gardens, the Brewhouse and the Bakehouse, the Mill and the great and small gates; the wall running along the north side is pierced by a gate connecting the Precinct with Smithfield, and the wall of the Precinct running along the east side is Stinking Lane.

There is not much that is important in the MS. notes referring to this House. In 1340 a great storm battered to the ground part of the church, especially the west end. In 1360 we find certain persons after murdering the Porter of Newgate Prison, taking sanctuary in the Grey Friars’ Church. This points to flight and pursuit, since the Sanctuary of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, a much safer place, was only a few minutes’ run down the street.

At the time of the Dissolution, as has already been stated, the condition and reputation of the Friars were as bad as they could be; their buildings were falling into ruin; they were selling their gold and silver vessels and the lead off their roofs; the Franciscans of London had dwindled down to fifteen only when the House surrendered. The Head of the House alone of his Order received a pension.

For a time the place served as a storehouse for all kinds of things, especially merchandise taken from the French. In the first year of Edward the Sixth all the tombs, altars, stalls, walks of the choir, and altars in the church were pulled up and sold—of course as so much marble and stone in the rough.

When the House was given to the City there are enumerated the Fratry, the Library, the Dorter, the Chapter House, the Great Cloister, the Little Cloister, and the chambers and buildings which had been in the recent occupancy of certain persons named.

Some of the buildings which escaped the Great Fire were still standing at the end of the eighteenth century. The south side of the Cloisters was not yet swept away; on the north side some of the walls and windows of Whittington’s Library were standing. The western walk of the Cloister was under the Great Hall, which, with Whittington’s Buildings, were pulled down in 1827.

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CHAPTER XXIV
THE DOMINICANS

The Dominicans, or Black Friars, came over to England with their Prior, Gilbert de Fraxineto, in the year 1221. There were thirteen of them in company. They were at first received by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who invited the Prior to preach, and being greatly pleased with his discourse, became the patron of the Order in England.

Their first quarters were in Holborn on the south side, part of the site of Lincoln’s Inn. Here they built a House and church, and their gates opened upon Holborn on the west side of Chancery Lane. They remained here for more than fifty years, when, in 1276, Gregory de Rokesley, the Mayor, granted the Archbishop of Canterbury permission to stop up certain lanes adjoining Castle Baynard and Montfichet. This was for the purpose of enabling the Dominicans to build a new House on the foreshore or banks of the River Fleet without the wall of the City. The Friars, however, were permitted to take down the wall between Ludgate Hill and the river, and to use the stones of Montfichet Castle for their new buildings. The King ordered the City at the same time to build a new wall along the side of Ludgate Hill, and so south along the bank of the Fleet to the Thames. Of their first House little is known. There was once a convocation of their Order held there attended by four hundred Friars to confer on their own affairs. It is reported that the assemblage was entertained on one day by the King, on the next by the Queen, and on other days by the Bishop of London and the Abbots of St. Albans, Waltham, and Westminster.

If we consider the buildings of the second House we shall find ourselves assisted to a certain extent by the disposition of the courts and lanes at the present moment. Thus, the boundaries of the Precinct are those of the present parish of St. Anne. It is therefore proved that the Friars began by taking down the old wall of the City between Ludgate Hill and the river, in order to build over that part of their Precinct which came to them on the other side of the wall. Again, since the site of a burial-ground within a city is almost always ancient, we may conclude that any burial-ground now within the parish was formerly within the Precinct. And if we have the measurements of the Church, we may lay it down accurately, provided we have a single angle or corner with which to start.

Now, the burial-ground of St. Anne’s still remains untouched. Its length from east to west is about 60 feet. The church of the Friars was 220 feet long and 66 feet broad. It probably consisted of chancel and nave, or antechapel without transepts; the Cloister was a square of 110 feet; the Chapter House on the west was 44 feet by 22 feet. If the chancel was 60 feet long, which is a very fair proportion, it just fits in south of the present burial-ground, while the block of buildings looking upon Church Court corresponds with the breadth of the church. Laying down the church, therefore, with these data, we find the Cloister also fits in with its square of 110 feet, now partly occupied by the Court of the Apothecaries’ Hall.

The rest of the buildings, the dormitories, the Chapter House, the Refectory, the Great Hall, the Misericordia, were all contained in the square of the north-west angle. To place them lower down below the church and cloisters would be to ruin the effect of the group of buildings from the river, a thing abhorrent to the mediÆval mind. The lower space, representing an area of more than three acres, was doubtless filled up with gardens, orchards, and offices. In appearance the House was said to resemble a fortress, because it had the battlements and towers of the City wall on two sides. (See Appendix IX.)

If for many generations the Franciscans were of all the Religious the most loved, their rivals, the Black Friars, who were considered the most stalwart defenders of the Faith, were the most respected for their learning. Even when the people threatened to destroy their House, in consequence of their arrogance, they still retained the general respect for learning. Their Precinct was a Sanctuary, so also was that of the Grey Friars; their strong-rooms and treasure-houses were used for the storing of the National Records, Acts, and Charters; they numbered among their body the greatest scholars, theologians, and jurists; their hall was used for the meeting of Parliament, and their church for the hearing of great cases. In the year 1382, for instance, Archbishop Courtenay held in the Blackfriars’ Church his court for the condemnation of Wyclyf’s opinions: and here was held, from day to day, and from week to week, the great trial before Cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey concerning the divorce of Queen Catherine. In the Hall of the Dominicans was assembled one of the Parliaments of Henry the Sixth; here was commenced the so-called “Black” Parliament of Henry the Eighth.

There are many other historical notes connected with this Order in London. Here are one or two of the more important:—

In 1258 the King gave orders that the Dominicans were to have at their desire freestone for making carved statues in stone and a pedestal for the statue of the Virgin; lead for their aqueduct, and other materials for the forwarding of their work. Obviously, therefore, they were engaged in building at their old House.

In 1326, when the Queen and her son issued letters to the citizens of London exhorting them to aid in destroying the enemies of the country, and Hugh le Despenser in especial, it was at the House of the Friars Preachers that the Mayor and Aldermen received the commonalty in conference. A little later occurs the very curious story (Chron. of Mayors and Sheriffs, p. 267) of the removal of Edward the Second to Berkeley Castle for fear that he might be carried off by the abetting and procurement of a Brother Thomas Dunheved, a Dominican, who, with many others of that Order, conspired with him. This Brother Thomas had been sent to the Pope from Edward to pray for a divorce from Isabel; he now raised a body of men in the King’s service, was unsuccessful, was taken prisoner, confined in Pontefract Castle, and was killed while endeavouring to escape. There were evidently two parties among the Preaching Friars.

Later on we hear of a quarrel between the Duke of York and the Duke of Somerset, and of the spoiling of the goods of the latter by the people of the former at the Friars Preachers’.

The place was also one at which Royal and distinguished persons were entertained. The Dominicans, for instance, received Charles the Fifth of Spain on his visit to Henry the Eighth. It was in the Hall, called the Parliament Chamber, that Wolsey was found guilty on a PrÆmunire. The brethren, of course, took no part in these functions; but the fact that they were held in their House proves the position which they occupied. They did not, being mendicants, and without property, entertain Royal persons at their own charges. The sentence on Wolsey was the last event of importance connected with the Black Friars. Within a very few years after the holding of that Court, the proud Dominicans were turned into the street. Their whole property consisted of a few houses within the Precinct, which were valued at an annual rental of £104: 15: 4, so that, like the Franciscans, they remained actually mendicant to the very end. The respect in which these Friars were held, especially by the better sort, is shown by the list of great people buried in their church. Among the names we find those of Margaret, Queen of Scots; Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent; the children of the Earl of Arundel; Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward the First, whose heart lay here; the Earls of March and Hereford; the Duchess of Exeter, and many more. The House was surrendered in 1539. It does not appear that anything was done with it in the lifetime of Henry the Eighth. Very possibly he kept the place as convenient for holding Parliaments on occasion; it was also, and had been, at least since the time of Edward the Second, a house where Records and Charters were kept. Edward the Sixth granted the Hall and the site of the Prior’s House to Sir Francis Bryan; three years afterwards he gave the whole Precinct to Sir Thomas Cawardine.

We have seen that the Liberties of Sanctuary, especially that of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, were always a great trouble and annoyance to the City. Now the Precincts both of the Grey Friars and the Black Friars were claimed—though there were no more Friars—by those who had succeeded in the ownership of the Precincts as being without the jurisdiction of the City, and privileged, whether for those who took Sanctuary in the Precinct, or for those who carried on trade to be free of the City. This claim was stoutly resisted by the City authorities, and in 1586 the case was heard in Court before the Chief Justices.

There was a small church called the Church of St. Anne, which appears to have stood beside the great church, just as St. Margaret’s stands beside the Abbey; St. Gregory beside St. Paul’s; St. Peter’s beside the Austin Friars. The Precinct became the Parish of St. Anne. The old church of St. Anne seems to have perished with the Friars’ church. Perhaps it was an aisle. Then they built another church, which was nothing more than an upper chamber. As for the liberties and privileges of the Precinct, these were gradually forgotten and lost like those of the Grey Friars. The church was unroofed for the sake of the lead; it was then divided into two parts, part becoming a carpenter’s yard, and part converted into stables. The church, according to Wyngaerde, had no transepts, so that it would be easy to divide it. The Hall remained standing for some time longer, and was used for a Theatre—Burbage’s Theatre,—and some of the Shakespearian plays were acted there.

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the Precinct was “much inhabited” by noblemen and gentlemen. Afterwards the place became the residence of feather-dressers and glass-blowers—because it was still outside the City,—and later still of artists. “Thence into Blackfriars, visit the painters where you may see pictures” (Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass). Vandyck died here in 1641; Cornelius Jansen lived here; Isaac Oliver died here. There is one spot in modern Blackfriars which may still be recognised as part of the ancient house of the Dominicans. Passing through Playhouse Yard at the back of the Times office, and turning into a narrow lane called Church Entry, there is the small disused burial-ground of which I have already spoken. An open yard on the other side of the court apparently formed part of the Friars’ cemetery, just as at Westminster, where, the cloisters being reserved for the brethren, there might be a burial-ground outside the church. On the east of this yard is a fragment of ancient wall, and in a carpenter’s shop (No. 7 Ireland Yard) there is still (April 1900) remaining a single arch which once formed part of the House. I know not to what building this arch belonged; the site was afterwards a mortuary and a Watch house, but I know not which of these uses was the earlier.

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CHAPTER XXV
WHITEFRIARS

On the north bank of the river, between Bridewell and the Temple, stood the House of the White Friars—Fratres BeatÆ MariÆ de Monte Carmeli,—first founded by Sir Richard Gray in the year 1241. King Edward the First gave them ground in Fleet Street; their House was enlarged and beautified in 1350 by Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devon. John Lovekyn, Mayor of London, gave them a lane running from Fleet Street to the river, in order to extend the west end of their church. Sir Robert Knowles, in the reign of Henry the Fourth, rebuilt the church. The London House of White Friars was always a house of humble pretensions and small consideration, although from time to time it received the patronage of wealthy benefactors.

The buildings of the House were apparently of no great account. After the Dissolution they became ruinous and were pulled down. A small part of the crypt, apparently, of the church was discovered a few years ago to be still in existence. It is beside the cellar of a house in a small court.

I find in an old and very scandalous story that one John le Moigne, together with William Portehors, of the Carmelite Friars, London, and others were accused of slaying by night a certain Friar Gilbert de Stretton of the Order, and afterwards breaking open the treasury and stealing £300 belonging to Sir Eustace de la Hacha. John le Moigne was found not guilty. There appear to have been two other trials in the same case. In the first of these two one William Crepyn took the place of John le Moigne, the other prisoners being the same. In the second case Bartholomew Portehors, one supposes a brother of the Friar, stood his trial with the same set of prisoners and was acquitted. Nothing is said of Friar William and the others. We may hope that their innocence was also fully proven.

Trials were occasionally heard at this House. In 1313 John de Ely, for taking gifts from men of London and hindering the King’s right, was tried before the King’s Council at the Carmelite Friars, convicted, and sent to Newgate.

The Rolls of Chancery were for some time kept in this House. In the Paston Letters two of the family desire to be buried in the Church of the “Fryers Preachers”; Sir John Paston, however, in his will, desired to be buried in the church of the White Friars.

The White Friars surrendered their House in 1538. It was valued with their property at £62: 7: 3. There seems to have been no delay in pulling down the church and buildings of this House, and very shortly after the suppression, according to Stow, noblemen and others built upon the site. Sir John Cheke, tutor to Edward the Sixth, lived in one of the new houses. Unfortunately the right of Sanctuary, which belonged to the Precinct while it was a Monastic establishment, continued to be claimed after it became secularised. In the year 1609 the right was formally granted by a charter of James the First, not only to this Precinct but to that of Blackfriars. This privilege, which transformed Whitefriars into the notorious Alsatia, continued till the year 1697, when it was finally abolished. Part of the House was allowed to remain, and become the residence of some of the Greys. John Selden, jurist and author, lived in it 1651 to 1654, when he died.

The buildings were so entirely destroyed that all trace of them above ground had vanished apparently in Stow’s time. Nor was it until the other day known where the church of the Friars actually stood. In the autumn of 1895, however, a discovery was made which seems to throw light on the matter. On the west side of Whitefriars Street, low down, is a small court called Britten’s Court, containing half a dozen houses, apparently about two hundred years old. One of these, Number 4, was placed in the hands of Messrs. Lumley, Land Agents and Auctioneers, 22 St. James’s Street, for sale. On examining the house, Mr. Lumley found that it contained a small cellar under the court itself. This cellar, nearly filled up with rubbish, had been used as a storehouse for wood and coal. On examination, it turned out to be a crypt, in dimensions a square of 12 feet 3, with a height of 8 feet above the present level of the excavation, and a height from the crown of the vault to the pavement of the court of about 2 feet 6 inches. The crypt belongs to late fourteenth-century work. Eight ribs meet in a rose in the centre. The roof is of church stone, such as was used in the construction of Westminster Abbey. In the north-west corner is an old doorway.

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CHAPTER XXVI
ST. MARY OF GRACES

This House was called that of St. Mary of Graces, or Eastminster, or New Abbey. It was situated without the walls by East Smithfield. Newcourt gives the following account of it:—

“In the Year 1348 (23 Edw. III.), the first Great Pestilence in his time began and increased so sore, that for want of room in Church-yards to bury the Dead of the City, and of the Suburbs, one John Corey, Clerk, procured of Nicholas, Prior of the Holy Trinity within Ealdgate, one Toft of ground near East Smithfield for the burial of them that died, with condition, that it might be call’d, The Church yard of the Holy Trinity; which Ground he caused by the aid of divers Devout Citizens to be inclos’d with a Wall of Stone, and the same was dedicated by Ralph Stratford, Bishop of London, where innumerable Bodies of the Dead were afterwards buried, and a Chapel built in the same Place to the Honour of God. To which King Edward setting his Regard (having been in a Tempest on the Sea, and in peril of drowning made a Vow to build a Monastery to the Honour of God, and the Lady of Grace, if God would grant him Grace to come safe to Land) builded a Monastery, causing it to be call’d East-minster, placing an Abbot, and Monks of the Cistertian or White Order there.

In Order whereunto the said King Edward, by his Letters Patents bearing date at Westminster, March 29, in the 24th of his reign (1349) for the first Founding and Endowment of this Abbey, gave to the Abbot and Monks thereof, all those Messuages, with the Appurtenances at Tower Hill, which he had of Joh. Cory aforesaid, in pure and perpetual Alms. Ordering this House to be call’d, Liberam Capellam Regiam BeatÆ MariÆ de Gratiis. And afterwards by other Letters Patents, dated Octob. 5, in the 50th of his Reign, he gave and granted to John, Duke of Lancaster, Simon, Archbishop of Canterbury, John, Bishop of Lincoln, and others, certain Mannours and Lands, which he purchased in Kent, and elsewhere, for the farther Endowment of this Abbey, which they after his Death granted and confirm’d to the said Abbot and Monks for a certain term of Years.

But these lands being for certain Causes seiz’d into the hands of King Richard II. as forfeited, he, by his Letters Patents, dated Aug. 3, in the 12th of his Reign by advice of his Counsel, gave and granted the Rents, Issues and Profits of those Mannours and Lands, which were the Mannours of Leybourne, Gravesend, Leach, Wattingbury, Gore, Parrock and Bykenore, with their Appurtenances, together with the Advowsons of the Church of Bykenore, and of the Churches of the other places above-named, with all other their Appurtenances in the County of Kent. As also the Reversion of the Mannour of Gomshalf with its Appurtenances, in the County of Surry, after the Death of Thomas de Stanes, to pray for the Good Estate of the said King whilst alive, and for his Soul when dead, and for the Soul of his Grandfather King Edw. III. and for the Souls of all his Progenitors, his Heirs, and Successors, and all the Faithful deceas’d, according to the Intention and Will of his said Grandfather. And farther, gave Licence to the Said John, Duke of Lancaster, and John, Bishop of London, the surviving Feoffees of Edw. III. to release and quit-claim the said Mannours and Lands to the said Abbot and Monks, and their Successors, as appears by his Letters Patents, dated at Notingham, July 3.

William de S. Cruce, late Abbot of Geranden of the Cistertian Order, was at the King’s instance made the first Abbot of this House, to whom the King gave £20 per ann. for the Maintenance of himself and his Monks, March 24, 1349.

Will. de Warden was made Abbot of this House, Aug. 27, 1360.

This Abby was surrender’d Anno. 1539 (30 Hen. VIII.), and was valued at £546: 0: 10 per Ann., Dugdale; £602: 11: 10, Speed.

Since which time the said Monastery being by King Hen. VIII. in the 34. of his Reign granted to Sir Arthur Darcy, Knight, was clean pull’d down. And of late time in place thereof is built a large Store-house for Victual, and convenient Ovens are built there for baking of Bisquets to serve Her Majesties Ships: and it is the Victualling Office for the Royal Navy to this day; the Grounds adjoining and belonging formerly to the said Abbey, are occupied by small Tenements built thereon.” (Newcourt, i. pp. 465-466.)

To this account it may be added that the House does not seem to have attracted many other benefactors, while in the Calendar of Wills there are only six bequests to the Abbey. One testator devises money for the buildings; one gives a small sum of money; three leave houses; one founds a chantry. It may be presumed that the proportion of bequests to this House compared with those made to others was the same with the wills not presented in these two volumes. Yet its surrender value, as we have seen, was considerable. In the first volume of the Transactions of the Lond. and Midd. ArchÆological Association is published an early representation of the Abbey, taken probably just before the Dissolution.

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CHAPTER XXVII
THE SMALLER FOUNDATIONS

Among the Houses mentioned by Arnold FitzThedmar are two or three not considered in the above enumeration. There are the Houses of St. Anne by the Tower Hill, St. James in the Temple, St. James in the Wall, St. Stephen’s at Westminster, St. Thomas’ Chapel of the Bridge, St. James in the Field, St. Mary Magdalen Guildhall, St. Mary Rouncevall, and St. Ursula in the Poultry. There are one or two others which shall here be briefly mentioned.

Concerning many of these Houses, so little is known that the list becomes merely a catalogue. The position of these smaller Houses in the City in some respects corresponded to that of the humbler Dissenting Chapels of the present day. That is to say, although at the time there could be no thought of separation or of schism, the poor folk found themselves more at home in the smaller Houses. With them they had their Craft Fraternities; their priests were not the great Ecclesiastical Lords of the stately Abbeys and priories, but of humbler guise, men accessible to themselves.

The Order of Penitence or Fratres de SaccÂ

The Order of Penitence grew out of the teaching of Francis of Assisi very early in his career. It was brought under rule by the Bull “Significatum est,” dated December 16, 1221, but it is said to have existed before this date.

Among other things, the order actually forbade the carrying of arms. They anticipated the Quakers, they anticipated the Peace Society, they were many centuries in advance of mankind. Like the Quakers, they did not understand that the very existence of a people under the conditions of the time—and of our time as well—rests upon force and strength of arms.

The great innovation designed by the Third Order was concord; this fraternity was a union of peace, and it attempted to bring before astonished Europe a new truce of God.

The second essential obligation of the Brothers of Penitence appears to have been that of reducing their wants as far as possible, and while preserving their fortunes, to distribute to the poor, at proper intervals, such portions of the revenue as remained after contenting themselves with the strict necessaries of life.

To carry on with contentment and uprightness the duties of their calling; to seek a holy inspiration for the slightest actions of life; to find in the infinitely little and ephemeral events of existence, the things apparently the most commonplace, the handiwork of the Almighty; to keep pure from debasing deeds, words, thoughts, ambitions, and interests, to use things as if not possessing them, like the servants in the parable who knew that they would have to give an account of the talents confided to them; to close their hearts to hatred; to open them wide to pity; to give their aid to the old, the poor, the infirm, the diseased, the outcast and the abandoned: such were the other essential duties of this most excellent Order of Penitence.

The letter to all Christians in which these thoughts break forth is a living souvenir of St. Francis’s teachings to the Tertiaries. To represent these latter to ourselves in a perfectly concrete form, we may resort to the legend of St. Lucchesio, whom tradition makes the first Brother of Penitence.

And the history of the first Brother of Penitence may be thus condensed into a short narrative:—

A native of a little city of Tuscany, he quitted it to avoid its political enmities, and established himself at Poggibonsi, not far from Sienna, where he continued to trade in grain. Already rich, it was not difficult for him to buy up all the wheat, and, selling it in a time of scarcity, realise enormous profits. But he was disturbed in conscience: he was convinced—it is exactly like the report of a Salvation Army meeting—by the preaching of Francis of Assisi: he was enabled to see himself from the outside—which is indeed the beginning of all repentance and conviction: he resolved to bestow the whole of his superfluous wealth upon the poor, and to keep nothing at all but his house with a small garden and one ass. From that time he was to be seen devoting himself to the cultivation of his ground and the conversion of his house into a sort of free hostelry, which was filled with the poor and the sick. He not only welcomed them, but he sought them out, even to the malaria-infested Maremma, often returning with a sick man astride on his back and preceded by his ass bearing a similar burden. The resources of the garden were necessarily limited: when there was no other way, Lucchesio took a wallet and went from door to door asking alms, but most of the time this was needless, for his poor guests, seeing him so diligent and so good, were better satisfied with a few poor vegetables from the garden, shared with him, than with the most copious repast. In the presence of their benefactor, so joyful in his destitution, they forgot, it is said, their own poverty—one reads with doubt this statement,—and the habitual murmurs of the poor, half-starved and diseased creatures were transformed into outbursts of admiration and gratitude. Conversion had not killed in him all family ties: Donna Bona his wife, became his fellow-labourer, and when in 1260 he saw her gradually fading away, his grief was too deep to be endured. “You know, dear companion,” he said to her when she had received the last sacraments, “how much we have loved one another while we could serve God together: why should we not remain united until we depart to the ineffable joy? Wait for me. I also will receive the sacraments, and go to heaven with you.”

So he spoke, and called back the priest to administer them to him. Then after holding the hands of his dying consort, comforting her with gentle words, when he saw that her soul was gone, he made over her the sign of the cross, stretched himself beside her, and calling with love upon Jesus, Mary, and St. Francis, he fell asleep for eternity.

The Order, therefore, known as Penitentiarii or Fratres de Sacc Order, consisted of both men and women: the latter were Sorores de Poenitentia. They might be married, in which case conjugal abstinence was enjoined on certain days; but they could not marry after admission; they might individually or collectively hold property. They came over in the year 1257, and they remained until 1307, when their Order was dissolved. They had for their House the old Jewish Synagogue of Old Jewry, and apparently were always quite a small fraternity. Beside their London House there were seven Houses of the Order in England, viz. at Lynn, whose Prior was the head of the Order; at Canterbury, Cambridge, Norwich, Worcester, Lincoln, and Leicester.

Their House, on the suppression in 1307, was handed over to Robert FitzWalter: it was the same house which afterward belonged to Robert Large, to whom Caxton was apprenticed; it stood at the north-east corner of the Old Jewry.

St. James on the Wall

If one stands in the south-west part of St. Giles’ churchyard, Cripplegate, one can observe the bastion of the old stone wall which still exists there. Within this bastion, in the corner of the wall at the end of Monkwell Street, was formerly a small religious House, a cell of Garendon Abbey called St. James’s in the Wall; it was originally a Hermitage, and it was placed in the corner no doubt for the same reason that the Greyfriars’ was placed in the next corner going westward, as in a place unoccupied and out of the way of business.

The founder of the Hermitage is said to have been Henry the Third. Wilkinson (Londina Illustrata) thinks that it was founded as a Chantry Chapel endowed for a single priest; but the Hermit appears at a very early period. There is a deed quoted by Wilkinson, dated 1253, which mentions the Chapel. In 1275 it is found that the guardian of the place was the Mayor of London. He was appointed by the King for a curious reason—viz. to prevent the spoliation of the place and the robbery of the chalices, vestments, etc., on the decease of the Hermit. The custody of the Hermitage, a few years later, was transferred to the Constable of the Tower, Anthony Beck, afterwards Bishop of Durham. In 1299 the care of the cell was given to the Abbey of Garendon in Leicestershire, I know not why. Newcourt relates an anecdote of the Hermit of 1311, which illustrates the jealousy always felt by parish priests of Hermits and others who intruded into their office:—

“I find, that in the year 1311 (Ralph de Baldock, being then Bp. of London), and Thomas de Wyreford, an Hermit of this Cell (a presumptuous, troublesome Man, it seems) took upon him to hear Confessions of People of the neighbouring Parishes, to enjoyn Penances, to grant Indulgences for 500 Days to such as frequented his Hermitage, and the like, having no lawful Authority so to do. For which Offences he was judicially proceeded against by the Bishop, and pronounc’d Guilty, and to be a Transgressor of the Canons; whereupon he was admonish’d to make Satisfaction for the same, within 15 days, and inhibited to do the like, as also were the People warn’d not to follow, or to be seduc’d by him, under Pain of Excommunication.” (Newcourt, vol. i.)

In 1315 the custody of the place was committed to one Walter Kemesey: in 1343 William de Lyons was the Hermit. In 1347 the Abbey of Garendon sent two chaplains here to pray for the soul of the Earl of Pembroke, who was killed in a tournament on the day of his third marriage, and of his widow, who retired from the world, and devoted herself to acts of piety and charity.

In 1543 the site of the Hermitage was granted by Henry the Eighth to William Lambe, citizen and clothworker, one of the gentlemen of the King’s-house here.

The Fire seems to have damaged, but not destroyed, this Chapel. It was rebuilt with considerable alterations, and continued to be used as a church until its demolition in 1825, when a crypt of great interest was found below. It is described in the Gentleman’s Magazine of May 1825 by Mr. A.J. Kempe.

“He there states that the recent demolition of the upper part of Lambe’s Chapel for the purpose of rebuilding it gave access to the curious vault occupying the space beneath. After descending ten or twelve narrow steps, a low vaulted chamber was entered, 26 feet long from east to west, and 20 feet broad; having in it originally nine short round columns, six of which were remaining, supporting the groined roof of the apartment. The capitals of these columns were Saxon, ornamented with leaves and volutes at the angles, and the capitals of the four corner pillars were placed diagonally to the square of the building. Some of the intersecting stone ribs springing from the columns were plain, and others were adorned with zigzag, twisted, and other ancient mouldings; specimens of which, with one of the pillars, and a plan of the directions of the arches, are given on the right hand of the lower part of the present Engraving of old Lambe’s Chapel. On the other side of the corresponding part of the same Plate is a Section of the ornamented mouldings from one of the arches; and leaning against the wall, in the Interior View at the top of the Plate, is represented a Ground-plan of the Crypt, with the Outside of the Chapel. The material of which this Crypt was constructed was freestone, of a reddish colour, the surface being very considerably decomposed; and several modern brick walls intersected the building.” (Londina Illustrata, vol. i.)

The Rolls House

The very curious and interesting history of the “Rolls House” was told for the first time, as regards its original objects, by Mr. W.P.W. Phillimore, Editor of the London and Middlesex Note-Book, 1896. I refer the reader to that paper for fuller details. In this place the leading facts only are taken.

Newcourt, after relating the origin of the House, says that the number of converts decayed when the Jews were banished in 1290; therefore the House in 1377 was given to William Burstall, Keeper of the Rolls: that, nevertheless, “such of the Jews as have in this Realm been converted to Christianity have been relieved there.” It will be seen that this bald statement conveys a very erroneous idea of the place and its history.

In 1232 Henry the Third made an annual grant of 700 marks for the maintenance of those Jews who had been converted to Christianity, for finding them a home and for building them a church. This sum was to be paid out of the Exchequer until the House should possess property of its own equivalent. At the same time the King founded a similar House at Oxford. The number of converts became comparatively large: in 1256 the King’s almoner provided cloth for 150 robes for the converts; in 1257, 171 tunics for Easter and 164 for Pentecost; in 1265 the House was enlarged; in 1267 a third chaplain was added; in 1275 the chapel was enlarged; in 1280 King Edward sanctioned certain rules for the government of the House, especially ordering that the inmates should work at their own handicraft, and if they were able to earn their own living, they should not be allowed to draw the allowance made to all. He also granted to the converts half the value of all their possessions, the whole of which belonged by right to himself; with the chevage or head tax of all the Jews in England. This chevage for 1281 amounted to £14: 14: 9, which, at 3d. a head, means only 1179 Jews in all England—a figure which by no means agrees with the number of those who were banished in 1290.

The revenues of the House for this year were a little over £50, in addition to which they had the annual grant from the Exchequer of £53: 6: 8.

In 1290 the number of converts had gone down to 80. The original occupants of the House must by this time have died and their children have become merged in the general population. The absence of any traditional caste or class, such as that of the Cagots in the South of France, is a proof that this absorption into the general population was complete.

In that year the converts petitioned the King for a Keeper who would look after their interests. It is noted that during the next hundred years many of the Keepers of the Domus Conversorum were also Keepers of the Rolls.

However, the King answered the petition by fixing the allowance for the House at £202: 0: 4, out of which the Fabric was to be kept up, the Master, Chaplains, and Clerk were to be paid, and the converts were to receive weekly allowances. On the death of a convert the amount of the grant was to be decreased. It was evidently supposed that the converts would die off. This, however, did not take place. On the other hand, though the numbers rapidly decreased, the House was never without new converts. Mr. Phillimore does not say where these converts came from: if there were no Jews left in England there could be no converts made in this country.

In 1308 the converts complained that their allowances were not paid. The King ordered an inquiry. It was found that out of all the inmates in 1290, 34 were dead, twelve had left the House, and 56 were still living there. The King thereupon granted a reduced payment of £123: 10: 6.

In 1330-1 there were 8 men and 13 women converts.

In 1334 there were 7 men and 13 women.

In 1337-8 there were 13 men and as many women.

In 1350 there were 2 men and 2 women.

In 1351 Henry de Ingleby had only 1 convert under his care.

In 1371 William de Burstall, who was Keeper of the Rolls, was made Keeper of the Domus Conversorum: there were then two converts. In 1377, on learning that William de Burstall had repaired the dilapidated buildings, Edward the Third provided that the two offices should be held together.

In 1386 payments were asked for the Keeper, one chaplain, one clerk, and three converts.

It is very curious to find that the supply of converts continued; only once did they wholly cease; there was sometimes only one; then three, four, eight, five, two, and so on. Where, I repeat, did they come from? One woman was named Elizabeth Portugall—evidently a Portuguese Jewess; another was called Elizabeth Baptista; another was “Kateryn Wheteley,” sometime called Aysa Rudeywa; another, Mary Coke, alias “Omell Fayll Isya.”

Thomas Cromwell was made Keeper in 1534. In his term of office he held a Court of Law at the House: yet it was not without converts. In 1550, when John Beaumont became keeper, he had but one convert, the above-named Mary Coke.

When Mary Coke died in 1551 (?), there followed a period of 26 years when there were no converts at all. In 1578 Yehoude Mende appears followed by Fortuna Massa, Philip Ferdinando and Elizabeth Ferdinando. In 1606-7 there were four converts. And then the allowances cease.

One Paul Jacob petitioned King James to grant him assistance, but he was not received into the Domus. That part of its history was closed.

In 1708 we hear that the buildings were much dilapidated: in 1717 the Rolls House was built upon the site of the Domus. And the Chapel was used as a muniment room for depositing the rolls of Chancery, until their removal to the Public Record Office.

Chapel of St. Mary Magdalen and All Saints Guildhall

The foundation of a college dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen is said by Stow to have taken place in 1299. It appears to have been so much enriched seventy years later by Adam Francis and Henry de Frowick as to have become a new Foundation. A third benefactor, Peter Fantore, died before his intentions were carried out. It was endowed for five chaplains who were to pray for the souls of the Founders, their wives, and their children, King Edward the Third, and all departed Kings, Mayors, Wardens, Sheriffs, and Chamberlains of the City. In the year 1430, the buildings, having become ruinous, were pulled down and others erected on the south side of them. In 1450 the parish clerks obtained leave to have a Guild dedicated to St. Nicholas in the Chapel, with two chaplains and seven almspeople.

At the Dissolution the College had a Warden, seven chaplains, three clerks, and four choristers. The Chapel was given to the Mayor and Aldermen, for whom services were held in it on certain occasions.

In the year 1785 the Chapel was made into a Court of Requests, and so remained until the year 1820, when it was taken down.

The Chapel and College of Leadenhall

This very ancient market was the property of the City as early as the first quarter of the fourteenth century. The College was founded by Simon Eyre, draper and Mayor, in 1445, when he also built a granary.

It was to consist of a Warden, five secular priests, six clerks, and two choristers to sing mass daily: there were also to be three schoolmasters with an usher; one master, to wit, with an usher, for grammar; one for writing; and one for singing; the masters were to have a yearly stipend of £10; every other priest £8; every clerk £5: 6: 8; and every chorister £3: 6: 8. Stow says that the conditions of the will were not carried out as regards the services in the Chapel and the free school.

But, in 1466, a Fraternity of the Holy Trinity was founded in connection with the Chapel by three priests. It consisted of 60 priests with other brothers and sisters. They performed divine service every market day in the afternoon, and once a year they had a solemn service with a procession of all the Fraternity. The property of this Fraternity amounted to £7: 10s. yearly.

The chapel escaped the Great Fire. It was pulled down in 1812. Wilkinson thus describes it:—

“This Chapel projected eastward from the exterior of the eastern cloisters of Leadenhall, from which it was entered by a large arched doorway, having the arms of the founder over the centre; and on each side of the interior arch was a perforated Gothic screen, of exquisite workmanship. The building was oblong, and was divided on the exterior sides into four parts, by buttresses reaching nearly to the roof, and separating as many large windows of the depressed pointed arch form, each parted into three lights, by stone mullions with cinquefoil arches; the window at the eastern end being considerably larger than the other, and containing five lights. On the outside the Chapel was almost completely enclosed by a case of wooden sheds, which reached nearly to the bases of the windows. It was covered with rafters and tiling of the coarsest modern workmanship, instead of the ancient roof, which had been pointed, and was supported within by carved brackets of chestnut wood, resting on corbels let into the walls against the buttresses: but of those brackets, only the scrolls and one fragment remained when the building was destroyed. Within the Chapel, at the south-west corner, was a small oaken door curiously studded and panelled, opening into a square apartment, which had probably been the sacristy; against the walls of which Mr. John Thomas Smith discovered some slight remains of painted figures. One of these exhibited the cheek, ear, and side of a head, with long yellow hair, flowing over blue and red drapery; the whole very much resembling the paintings discovered in St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, executed in the reign of Edward III. Those at Leadenhall, however, were neither embossed nor gilded; but were outlined and shaded with red ochre.” (Wilkinson, vol. ii.)

The Nunnery of Kilburn

This small House, a cell to the Abbey of Westminster, is, in history, chiefly an account of the jealousies of the Bishop of London and the Abbot of Westminster as to the Episcopal jurisdiction.

Its history is curious. One Godwyn, a recluse, built a hermitage at Kilburn on some land belonging to himself. He conveyed the land to the Abbey of Westminster, by whom a small convent was built on the spot for three ladies, maids of honour to Matilda, Queen of Henry the First. Godwyn became Warden for life, and the Abbey made provision for the maintenance of the nuns.

On the foundation of the nunnery, Gilbert, the Bishop of London, exempted it from his own jurisdiction. This exemption was questioned by Roger le Noir, Bishop in 1229. In 1231 a composition was entered into between the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s on the one side and the Abbot of Westminster on the other.

“By virtue of this agreement the bishop for the time being was to have access to the cell of Kilburn, to be received with procession, to preach, hear confessions, and enjoin penances; but without being entitled to any claim for procurations. It was also conceded that the secular priest, or warden, who was set over the house by the abbat, should, upon his appointment, be presented to the Bishop and pay canonical obedience to him, but to be removable by the abbat alone. That the prioress of the house, though appointed by the abbat and his successors, should be under obedience to the bishop, saving in all things the canonical reverence and subjection which she owed of old to the abbat. That, however, the entire ordering or regulation of the house, concerning matters and persons within its precinct, with the correction of excesses and reformation of its abuses, and the institution or destitution of the prioress and nuns, should belong to the abbat and his successors for ever; provided, that in case any matters requiring persons abiding there, should be neglected by him for the space of a month after warning having been given to him (or in his absence to the Prior) by the bishop, then, upon clear evidence of such neglect of reformation, it should be lawful for the bishop himself to proceed toward correcting and reforming them in such manner as ‘prout secundum Deum viderit expedire.’ It was further ordained that no monk but the abbat (or in vacancy, absence, or illness, the prior) should go near the nuns to hear their confessions and enjoin penance. That the bishop should, when requested by the abbat, perform the office of blessing or consecrating the nuns, but that no other bishop should be in future introduced or admitted at Kilburn to perform any episcopal ceremony. Finally, that neither the bishop nor his chapter should, by reason of this composition, challenge any jurisdiction or subjection over the abbat and monks of Westminster, nor in anything derogate from the rights of the aforesaid nuns, or their cell.” (London and Middlesex Notes, pp. 422-423.)

The House received a good many benefactions, but always remained a small Foundation. The revenues, when it was dissolved, amounted to sums variously stated between £74: 7: 11 and £121: 14s. The inventory of all the goods belonging to the nunnery of Kilburn, the 11th day of May, 28th of Henry the Eighth, seems to show that the House was well and completely furnished. It contained a Hall; five chambers for the ladies of the House: Kitchen, Buttery, Pantry, Larder, Brew-house, Bake-house, Cellar; three chambers for the Chaplain and the Husbandmen; the Confession chamber; and the church.

No remains are now to be seen of this House. The last Prioress was Anne Browne.

The Nunnery of Stratford-le-Bow

This Priory was in the Parish of Bromley, but so near to the hamlet of Stratford-le-Bow that it was commonly called after it. The House has been sometimes confused with a Convent of White Monks in the Parish of West Ham, called the Abbey of Stratford Langthorne.

The nunnery, dedicated to St. Leonard, is said to have been founded by William, Bishop of London, in the reign of William the Conqueror. It was always a small house. We read of certain donations and benefactions—lands at Haseling field; the Church of Northim, afterwards called Norton Mandeville; gifts by Henry the Second; the Manor of Bromley; lands held by Idonea Cricket in the reign of Edward the First, by the service of holding the King’s napkin at the Coronation.

Here was buried Elizabeth, sister of Queen Philippa, and daughter of William, Earl of Hainault.

At the Dissolution there were a Prioress and nine nuns. The revenues of the House were estimated, according to Dugdale, at £108: 1: 11-1/2, and according to Speed at £121: 16s. At this time the maintenance of a chantry priest being £5 or £6 a year, the ten nuns would require about £50 for their maintenance, leaving £70 for the House and the service. Sibilla Kirke, the last prioress, received a pension of £15 a year. She was still living in 1553.

The site of the Priory, the advowson of the Church, and the Manor of Bromley, were given to Sir Ralph Saddler. The Chapel is now the Parish Church of Bow.

St. Augustine’s Papey

The history of this interesting house, previously almost unknown, was rescued by the late Rev. Thomas Hugo, who read a paper on the subject before the London and Middlesex ArchÆological Society (vol. v.).

It was founded in 1442 by four priests of London, viz. Thomas Symmeson, Rector of All Hallows in the Wall; William Cleve, Priest of the Charity of St. John the Baptist in the Church of St. Mary Aldermary; William Barneby, a Chantry Priest in St. Paul’s Cathedral; and John Stafford, Priest in London. The Foundation was a Hospital or College for aged and impotent Priests. The Churches of the time were filled with Chantry Priests, each of whom had to live upon the very small endowment of a Chantry—generally £6 or £7 a year, sometimes less—in return for a Mass said every day for the soul of the Founder. When age fell upon these men, and they could no longer perform the one simple duty of their life, what could they do? How could they live? We cannot believe that an old and impotent Priest was ever suffered to starve. At the same time, until the charity of the Papey was founded, the lot of many must have been precarious and dependent and most miserable.

The Papey was situated within the wall just at the north end of the street now called “St. Mary Axe.” In the Collections of a London Citizen (Camden Society) it is written “Pappy Chyrche in the walle be twyne Aldgate and Bevysse Markes. And hit ys a grete Fraternyte of prestys and other segular men. And there were founde of almys certayne prestys both blynde and lame that be empotent: and they have day masse and xiiij a weke, barber, and launder, and one to dresse and provyde for hyr mete and drynke.” They also had allowance of bread and coal, with one aged man and his wife to keep the house clean.

The Church and parish of St. Augustine had recently been incorporated with that of All Hallows in the Wall. It was therefore a disused church which was first placed at the service of these poor priests. The Rector of All Hallows, in addition, gave over to their use a certain messuage with a garden which had been given to All Hallows by a late citizen. The community, so formed, was to be in honour of St. Charity and St. John the Evangelist. This name, however, was never given to the house by the people, who called it still St. Augustine, qualified by the words De Papey—i.e. of the papes or fathers who lived there. The Foundation was poor; but it possessed a house at Baynard’s Castle, six cottages and two messuages in Pavyn Alley; there was also the messuage in Bevis Marks given them by the Rector of All Hallows. This is all the property that can be proved to belong to them. Those of the members who could walk and sing sometimes attended the funerals of great persons, and in this way added something to the slender revenues of the House. At the time of the foundation there were twenty-four brethren and fifteen sisters—it does not appear how the sisters were elected or for what cause.

The history of the House is not marked, so far as I know, by a single event. It lasted for 106 years, being suppressed by the Act of 2 Ed. VI. for the suppression of all chantries, hospitals, and similar foundations. The value of the land and property of the Foundation was returned at £23: 11: 8. William Nevill purchased the House for £102. There were then six old priests but no sisters. These, one records with satisfaction, were all provided with small pensions: the Master receiving sixty-six shillings and eightpence a year, a little over twopence-farthing a day, and the brethren forty shillings, a little under 1-1/3d. a day. The church was pulled down, and an Apothecary set up his shop on the site, the Churchyard was converted into a garden, and the Priests’ House became a private residence. Thus was thrown down and destroyed a Foundation which might have continued doing good work unto the present day. There is not, in fact, among all the numerous charities, foundations, and endowments belonging to the Church, a single House at the present day which at all corresponds with this ancient Foundation of St. Augustine Papey.

The late foundation of the House, at a time when bequests to the religious House had begun to fall off before they ceased altogether, sufficiently accounts for its poverty. One or two bequests only, and these apparently of small account, are on record. (See Appendix X.).

Whittington College

The College of St. Spirit and St. Mary, founded by Whittington, whose intention was carried out by his executors, was for a Master, four Fellows, Clerks, Choristers, etc., together with an Almshouse. Fortunately the Almshouse was separated by the executors from the College, so that it was spared when the College was suppressed. The following is a portion of the original ordinances of the Charity drawn up by the executors:—

“The fervent Desire and best Intention of a prudent, wyse and devout man that be to cast before and make seure the State and thende of the short liffe with Dedys of Mercy and Pite: and namely to provyde for such pouer Persons which grevous Penuere and cruel Fortune have oppressed, and be not of power to gete their lyving either by Craft or by any other bodily Labour: whereby that at the day of the last Jugement, he may take his part with hem that shal be saved. This considering the foresaid worthy and notable Merchaunt Richard Whittington, the which while he leved had ryght liberal and large hands to the Needy and Poure People, charged streitly, in his Death-bed, us his foresaid Executors, to ordeyne a House of Almes after his Deth, for perpetual sustentacion of such poure people as is tofore rehersed: and therupon fully he declared his Wyll unto us. And we wylling after our power to fullfil thentent of his commendable Wille and holesome Dessre in this part, as we be bound.

First, Yfounded by us, with sufficient Authorite, in the Church of Seint Mighells, in the Royolle of London: where the foresaid Richard and Dame Alice his Wife be biried, a commendable College of certain Prestes and Clerkis; to do there every day divine Service for the aforesaid Richard and Alice.

We have founded also, after the Wille abovesaid, a House of Almes for XIII pouere folk successively for evermore; to dwell and to be susteined in the same House. Which house is situated and edified upon a certain Soyl that we bought therefore, late in the Parish of Seinte Mighel abovesaid: that is to say, Bytweene the foresaid Church and the Wall that closeth in the voyd place, behind the heigh Auter of the same Church in the Southside, and our great Tenement, that was late the House of the aforesaid Richard Whyttington in the Northside. And it stretcheth fro the dwelling place of the Master and the Prestis of the College abovesaid. The which also we did late to be now added in the Eastside unto a great voyd place of our Land. The which by the help of God we purpose to do be hallowed Lawfully for a Churchyard to the same Church within short time in the Westside.” (Stow, i. bk. iii. pp. 3-4.)

And the ordinances for the poor folk are as follows:—

“To be twelve pouer Folks alonely of Men or Women togiddre; after the sad Discretition and good Conscience of the Overseers underwrit, and Conservators of the same House, to be provided and admitted.

The which every day, when due and convenient time is, shal pray for evermore, for al the now being alive, and also for the bypast, to God; Whose names of great Specialty been expressed in these Statutes underwrit.

To be one Principal, which shal pass al other in power and Reverence, and be called TUTOR. The Office and Charge of him shal be the goods of the Almes-house, which shal come to his hands, well and truly to minister. The Goods dissevered to gather again togidre; to the Use of the Almes-house: And at the Husbandry of the same house, in as much as he may goodly oversee, dispose and ordain; inforcing himself to edifie and nourish Charity and Peace among his Felawes.

The Poor folks unto the said Tutor evermore shal obey.

The thirteen poor folke to be hable in Conversation, and honest in Living.

The same House to be called for ever God’s House, or Almes house, or the Hospital of Richard Whyttington.

The L. Maior to be overseer of the said Almeshouse: and the Keepers of the Commonalty of the Craft of Mercers to be called for evermore Conservators of the foresaid House.

The Tutor to have a Place by himself, that is to say, a Cell or little House, with a Chimney and a Prevy, and other Necessaries. In the which he shall Lyegge and rest. And that he may aloon and by himself, without Let of any other Persoon intend to the Contemplation of God, if he woll.

Every Tutour and poor folk every day first whan they rise fro their Bedds, kneeling upon their knees, sey a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria, with special and herty recommendacion-making of the foresaid Richard Whyttington and Alice, to God, and our Blessed Lady Maidyn MARY. And other times of the day, whan he may be best and most commody have leisure thereto, for the Staat of al the Souls abovesaid, Say three or two Sauters of our Lady at the least: that is to say, threies seaven Ave Marias, with XV pater nosters, and three Credes. But if he be letted with febleness, or any other reasonable cawse, One in the day at the least, in case it may be: that is to say, after the Messe, or when Complyn is don, they come togidder within the College about the Tomb of the aforesaid Rich. Whyttington and Alice, and they that can sey, shal sey for the Soules of the seid Richard and Alice, and for the Soules of al Christen people, this Psalm de Profundis with the Versicles and Oriosons that longeth thereto. And they that can shal sey three Pater nosters, three Ave Marias, and oon Crede. And after this doon, the Tutour, or oon of the eldest men of theym that sey openly in English, God have mercy on our Founders Souls and al Chrysten. And they that stond about shal aunswer and say, Amen.

That they be bound to dwell and abide continewally in the seid Almes house, and bounds thereof: And that every day, booth at meet and sopier, they eet and be fed within the said Almes house. And while they be at meet, or soupier, they absteyn thanne from veyn and ydel words. And if they wol any thyng talk, that it be honest and profitable.

That the Overclothyng of the Tutour and pouer folk be derk and brown of colour; and not staring ne blaising; and of esy prised, according to their Degree.” (Stow, i. bk. iii. pp. 4-5.)

The Almshouse, removed from its former place behind the church of St. Michael Royal, is still in existence at Highgate.

We may pass rapidly through the few remaining small Houses.

Denton’s Hospital is entered as one of them, but it never existed except in the intention of the Founder, Robert de Denton. He obtained, in 1369, the Royal license to found a Hospital for distracted priests and others, but could not carry out his intentions, and instead founded a chantry at the House of St. Katherine by the Tower.

Of Charing Cross Hospital I find nothing but a tradition that one of the Kings, being annoyed by the presence of the patients so near the Court, ordered their removal to Bethlehem Hospital.

St. Michael, Crooked Lane. This College was founded by Sir William Walworth, who united certain Chantries and added lands and certain houses, and so formed a College for the support of a Master and nine priests.

Barking College was attached to the Church of All Hallows, Barking. Richard the First founded and endowed here a Chapel to the Virgin. John, Earl of Worcester, added a Brotherhood with a Master and Brethren endowed from the alien Houses of Tooting, Bow, and Okeburn. Richard the Third rebuilt the Chapel and founded a college with a Dean and six Fellows. It was dissolved by Edward the Sixth, the buildings pulled down, and the ground converted into a garden.

Holme’s College of St. Paul’s was founded by Roger Holme, Chancellor of St. Paul’s, in 1395, as a college of seven Priests, whose services were held in the Chapel of the Holy Ghost. The College buildings stood in the parish of St. Gregory, south of the Cathedral Precinct.

Lancaster College was founded by Henry the Fourth and the executors of John of Gaunt in connection with the Cathedral: the College buildings were also in the Parish of St. Gregory.

Another College in connection with the Cathedral was that of the Minor Canons, founded by Richard the Second. They had houses adjoining the Precinct and a Common Hall within the Precinct.

The College of St. Lawrence Poulteney, in connection with that church, consisted of a Master or Warden, thirteen priests, clerks, and choristers.

In Dowgate stood a small college of Priests called Jesus Commons: Stow says that it was a “House well furnished with Brass, Pewter, Napery, Plate, etc., besides a fair Library well stored with books: all which of old time were given to a number of priests that should keep Commons there.” Evidently a quiet and peaceful College, not unlike All Souls, Oxford.

St. James’ in the Fields, a hospital founded from time immemorial, for leprous virgins of the City, was suppressed by Henry the Eighth. St. James’s Palace stands upon its site.

St. Mary Rouncevall or Runcevall, at Charing Cross, a hospital, suppressed as an alien House by Henry the Fifth, was refounded as a Brotherhood by Edward the Fourth, provided with new statutes for a Master, Wardens, Brethren, and Sisters by Henry the Seventh, and suppressed again by Edward the Sixth. Northumberland House, with its gardens, used to occupy exactly the Precinct of St. Mary Rouncevall. It was built, as Northampton House, in the year 1614.

Beside this House was a modest Hermitage, named after St. Catherine, founded by Edward the First (see also Appendix XI.).

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CHAPTER XXVIII
FRATERNITIES

We must not forget the Fraternities. There was not, I believe, a single Parish Church which had not its Fraternity. Except for purposes of war, when all marched under order of the King, the first attempt at union was the Parish Fraternity. The Parish Church has always been the natural centre round which gathered the temporal as well as the spiritual concerns of the Parish. The Fraternity, dedicated to the Patron Saint of the Parish, was a union of all for the protection of all: the members maintained those who were sick and old, educated and apprenticed the orphans, protected the widows, celebrated masses for the dead. They formed themselves into one family. How, then, do we find so many Fraternities belonging to separate trades? Two explanations are possible. One, that the parishes became entirely composed of men practising the same trade, with their families: the other that a large proportion of men engaged in one trade lived in the parish. In the former case, the Fraternity of the Parish Church became the Fraternity of one trade: in the other case it was reasonable that men carrying on the same trade should live as much together as possible, for convenience, use of tools, acquisition of raw material, and regulation as to production: that they should break off from one common parish Fraternity and constitute their own Fraternity for their own advantage.

Thus we have the Fraternity of St. Anthony, consisting of Pepperers; that of St. Nicholas, consisting of Parish Clerks; of Corpus Christi consisting of Cloth-workers; of St. George, consisting of Armourers; of St. John the Baptist, consisting of Merchant Taylors; and that of St. Mary, consisting of the Drapers. (See Appendix XII.)

In other words, the Companies did not spring out of the Fraternities: the union of men working at the same trade grew up slowly: the Fraternity was the first outward proof that such union had been formed: it consecrated the union. When the Company was finally formed, it only laid down as definite law what had been for many years a custom; the Fraternity was in no way touched by the new Charter; thus, the Religious side of the union went on and flourished until all such Fraternities were destroyed.

There were, however, other Fraternities. I find, in the fourteenth century, mention of over a hundred: of these, by far the larger number are the Parish Church Fraternities. Then there are the Trade Fraternities mentioned above, and those representing some form of religious fervour by which the Church provided an outlet for enthusiasts.

Such were the Fraternities of the Holy Cross, of the Light of the Holy Cross, of the Holy Trinity, of Jesus, of the Holy Ghost, of the Assumption of the Virgin, of the Resurrection of Christ. Annual services and processions, certain vows of abstinence and chastity, alms, some kind of outward decoration, distinguished the Brethren and helped to make life seem fuller of interest, and themselves of more importance. Meantime, the real importance of the Fraternities in the history of London is that they first showed the way to common action, and made the independence, the dignity, and the wealth of trade possible.

A Fraternity of importance was that of Aldersgate, originally a Hospital for the Poor. It was an Alien Foundation: therefore, on the suppression of all such Houses by Henry the Fifth, it was given, with the lands, to the Parish of St. Botolph’s, Aldersgate, and a Fraternity of the Holy Trinity took its place. This Fraternity had its own Chapel. It endured to the time of Henry the Eighth.

Close beside it was the Chapel of another small Religious body called the Chapel of Mount Calvary without Aldersgate.

Yet a third house outside Aldersgate was the Hospital of the Abbot of Walden, founded 15 Ed. II.

The Fraternity of St. James, Garlickhithe, was governed by rules which have been preserved by Stow:—

“In the Worship of God Almighty our Creator, and his Moder Saint Marie, and Allhallows and Saint James Apostle, a Fraternite is begon of gode Men in the Church of Saint James the Yer of our Lord 1375, for Amendement of her Lyves, and of her Sowls, and to nourish more Love among the Brethren and Sustrein of the Brederhede. And ech of theym had sworen upon the Book to performe the Pointes undernethe at her Power.

Fyrst, All who wisscheth, other schul be in the same Brederhede, they schul nothing of goodloos Conditions and Bering: and that he love God and holy Chirche, and his Neybours, as holy Chyrch maketh mencion.

Who that entreth in the same Fraternite, he shal geve at the Entrie to the common Box vi s. viiid.

The foreseid Brethrehede will, that there be Wardeyns thereof. Which Wardeyns shal gather the Quartridge of the Bretheren and Sustren, and trewelick yield her Account thereof every Yer once, to the Wardeyns that have been tofore hem of the Bretherhede, with other wysest of the Bretherhede.

Also the Bretheren and Sustren every Yer shul be clothed in Suyt and every Man pay for that he hath.

Also the Bretheren and Sustren, at one Assent in Suyt byforeseid shul every Yer commin hold togeder, for to nourish more Knowledg and Love, a Feast. Which Feast shal be the Sonday after the day of St. James Apostle, and every pay their xxd.

At four Tyme other once in the Yer two Shill. at firmast tofore the Day of the Account of the Maisters. So that the Wardeyn mowe her Account yelderlich, etc.

Every Brother or Suster that ben of the Fraternite, yf he be of Power, he shal geve somewhat in Maintenance of the Fraternite, what hym lyketh.

Also yf ther be in Bretherhede ony Riotour, other Contekour other soche by whom the Bretherhede might be enslaundered he shal be put out thereof, into Tyme that he have hym amended of the Defoults beforeseyd, etc.

Yf any of the forseid Bretherhede falle in soch Mischefe that he hath noght, ne for Elde other Mischefe of Feebleness helf himself: and have dwelled in the Bretherhede seven Yeres, and doen thereto al the Duties within the Tyme: every Wyk aftyr, he shal have of the common Box xiiiid. Terme of his Lyfe: but he be recoveryd of the Mischefe.

Also if any of the foreseid be imprisoned falsely by any other by false Conspiracie, and have noght for to fynd hym with, and have also ben in the Bretherhede seven Yeres, etc., he shall have xiiid. during his Imprisonment every Wyk.”

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CHAPTER XXIX
HOSPITALS

Stow provides a list of Hospitals in the City and suburbs “that have been of old time and now presently (1598) are.”

“Hospital of St. Mary, in the parish of Barking church, that was provided for poor priests and others, men and women in the City of London, that were fallen into frenzy or loss of their memory, until such time as they should recover, was since suppressed and given to the hospital of St. Katherine by the Tower.

St. Anthony’s.

St. Bartlemew, in Smithfield.

St. Giles in the Fields, a hospital for leprous people.

St. John of Jerusalem, by West Smithfield, a hospital of the Knights of the Rhodes.

St. James in the Field, a hospital for leprous virgins of the City of London.

St. John at Savoy, a hospital for relief of one hundred poor people, founded by Henry VII., suppressed by Edward VI.: again new founded, and endowed, by Queen Mary.

St. Katherine, by the Tower of London.

St. Mary Within Cripplegate, a Hospital founded by William Elsing.

St. Mary Bethlehem, without Bishopsgate, was an hospital, founded by Simon Fitzmary.

St. Mary without Bishopsgate, a hospital and priory called St. Mary Spital.

St. Mary Rouncevall, by Charing Cross.

St. Thomas of Acon, in Cheap.

St. Thomas in Southwark.

A hospital there was without Aldersgate, a cell to the house of Cluny, of the French order, suppressed by King Henry V.

A hospital without Cripplegate, also a like cell to the said house of Cluny, suppressed by King Henry V.

A third hospital in Oldborne, being also a cell to the said house of Cluny, suppressed by King Henry V.

The hospital or almshouse called God’s House, for thirteen poor men, with a college, called Whittington College, founded by Richard Whittington.

Christ’s Hospital, in Newgate Market.

Bridewell, now an hospital, or house of correction, founded by King Edward VI., to be a workhouse for the poor and idle persons of the city, wherein a great number of vagrant persons be now set a-work, and relieved at the charges of the citizens. Of all these hospitals, being twenty in number, you may read before in their several places, as also of good and charitable provisions made for the poor by sundry well-disposed citizens.”

The care of the sick, and especially of the helpless and incurable, is one of the first duties recognised by men when they begin to associate. Stow says that the hospital for leprous women at St. James’s existed from time immemorial. Leprosy is the most incurable of all diseases; it devours body and mind; it renders the unhappy victim helpless. The Lazar House, therefore, was very naturally founded before any other hospital. Those of London already mentioned were St. James’s on the site of the present Palace; and St. Giles’s, Holborn, founded by Matilda, Queen to Henry the First. To these were afterwards added, in the 20th year of Edward the Third, four Locks for lepers—viz. one in the Old Kent Road, one in the Mile End Road, one at Kingsland, and one at Knightsbridge; all, it will be observed, at a convenient distance from the city walls. In the reign of Edward the Fourth one William Pole, yeoman of the Crown, being afflicted with leprosy, founded a Hospital for lepers at Highgate. Three hundred years before this, King Stephen founded a Lazar House at Great Ilford in Essex, which still exists as an Almshouse.

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX I
LIST OF WARDS OF LONDON

ROT. HUNDRED’, 3 ED. I
Order of Wards

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APPENDIX II
LIST OF ALDERMEN

(Supposed to be dated c. 1285-1286; from Calendar of Wills, Pt. i. p. 702)

The following is a copy of the earliest list of Aldermen of the City of London preserved among the records of the Corporation (Letter-Book A, fol. 116), together with the names of the wards they respectively represented. It is not dated, but there is good reason for conjecturing it to have been written circa 14 Edward the First [A.D. 1285-1286].

Nomina propria Wardarum Civitatis Londoniarum et nomina Aldermannorum

On Tuesday next before the Feast of St. Botolph [17 June], anno 21 Edward I. [A.D. 1293], the chief men of every ward, in the presence of Sir John le Bretun, Warden of London, elected for themselves an Alderman, whom they presented to the said Warden, saying that whatsoever the Alderman so elected should, in conjunction with the Warden, determine upon for the government of the City and the keeping of the King’s peace, they would ratify and accept without challenge.

The following are the names of the Aldermen presented to the Warden by each ward on that occasion, being the next earliest list to the foregoing preserved among the Corporation Records (Letter-Book C, fol. vi.):—

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APPENDIX III
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ALDERMEN WHOSE NAMES ARE AFFIXED TO DEEDS IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

(From the Liber Trinitatis)

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APPENDIX IV
LIST OF PARISHES

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APPENDIX V
PATRONAGE OF CITY CHURCHES

The patronage of the London Churches in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is given by the Chronicler called Arnold.

The Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s had nineteen London benefices in their gift. The Archbishop of Canterbury had seven.

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APPENDIX VI

The “Glossarial Index of Festivals,” published in the Liber Custumarum, will throw light upon the religious life of London. The alphabetical table is followed by a yearly table for convenience.

Adventus Domini. The Advent of Our Lord; the four weeks preceding Christmas, devoted by the Church to preparation for the Advent of Christ.

Almes. The Feast of All Souls, 2nd November.

Andreae Apostoli, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Andrew, the Apostle, 30th November.

Ascensio Domini. The Ascension of Our Lord. A movable Festival held on Thursday in Rogation Week, the week next but one before Pentecost, or Whitsun, Week.

Barnabae Apostoli, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Barnabas, the Apostle, 11th June.

Bartholomaei Apostoli, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Bartholomew, the Apostle, 24th August.

Benedicti, Translatio Sancti. The Translation of Saint Benedict, 11th July.

Carnilevaria. The last day of the Carnival, or season preceding Lent. Shrove Tuesday.

Carniprivium. The beginning of Lent.

Chaundelour, Chaundeloure, Chaundelure. Candlemas; the Purification of the Virgin Mary, 2nd February. See Mariae, Purificatio Sanctae.

Circumcisionis Domini Festum. The Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord, 1st January.

Clausum Paschae. The Close of Easter, or Sunday after Easter.

Clementis, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Clement, 23rd November.

Crucis Sanctae Exaltatio. The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, 14th September. This Feast commemorated the raising of the Cross on which Our Saviour suffered, after its Invention, or Discovery, by Saint Helena, A.D. 307 or 325.

Dies Sabbati. The Sabbath day, Saturday.

Dunstani, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Dunstan, 19th May.

Edmond, le jour Seint; Edmundi Regis, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Edmund, the King, 20th November.

Edwardi Regis et Confessoris, Translatio Sancti. The Translation of Saint Edward, King and Confessor, 13th October.

Epiphania Domini. The Epiphany, or Manifestation, of Our Lord, 6th January. See Tiphayne.

Gregorii Papae, Festum (Dies) Sancti. The Feast of Saint Gregory, the Pope, 12th March.

Hillarie, la Sent; Hillere, la Seint; Hillarii, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Hillary, 13th January.

Hippolyti Martyris, Natale Sancti. The Nativity of Saint Hippolytus, the Martyr, 13th and 22nd August; there having been two Martyrs of this name.

Indictio. A given year of the Indiction; so called from the Edicts of the Roman Emperors; for as one such Edict was supposed to appear every fifteen years, the years were reckoned by their distance from the last Indiction. This mode of reckoning was employed, at Rome more particularly, from the time of the Nicene Council (A.D. 325), but was introduced into England so early as the time of King Edgar.

Innocentium Dies (Festum) Sanctorum. The Feast of the Holy Innocents, Childermas Day, 28th December.

Jacobi Apostoli, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint James, the Apostle, 25th July.

Johan, la Feste Seint: Johannis Baptistae Nativitas. The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, Saint John’s day, 24th June.

Johannis Baptistae, Decollatio Sancti. The Decollation of Saint John, the Baptist, 29th August.

Kalendarum Maii Caput. The beginning (or 18th) of the Calends of May, 14th April.

Lucae Evangelistae Festum; Lucie, la Feste Seinte. The Feast of Saint Luke, the Evangelist; 18th October according to the Romish Calendar, 13th October according to that of Carthage.

Marci Evangelistae, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Mark, the Evangelist, 25th April.

Margaretae, Festum Sanctae. The Feast of Saint Margaret, 20th July.

Mariae, Festum Sanctae. The Feast (of the Nativity) of Saint Mary, 8th September.

Mariae, Festum Annuntiationis Beatae. The Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Mary, Lady Day, 25th March. See Nostre Dame.

Mariae, Purificatio Sanctae (or Beatae). The Purification of Saint Mary, or Candlemas, 2nd February. See Chaundelour.

Mariae Virginis, Festum Assumptionis Beatae. The Feast of the Assumption, or ascent into heaven, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 15th August.

Mariae Magdalene, Festum Sanctae (or Beatae). The Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, 22nd July.

Martin, la Feste Seint; Martini, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Martin, or Martinmas, 11th November.

Matthiae Apostoli, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Matthias, the Apostle, 24th February.

Michaelis, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Michael, or Michaelmas, 29th September (passim).

Michel, les Utaves de Seint. The Octaves of Saint Michael; one week after Michaelmas. See Octabae.

Natale Domini. The Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Day, 25th December.

Nostre Dame (Daume) en Quarenne. (The Feast of) Our Lady in Lent; Lady Day, or the Feast of the Annunciation. See Mariae, Festum Annuntiationis.

Nowel. Christmas.

Octabae. The Octave, or Octaves. The eighth day after a festival inclusively, in other words, that day week. The celebration of the Octave is said to have arisen in the fact that the early Christians celebrated their festivals for eight days, but made the last of those days the one of greatest solemnity, on the authority of Leviticus, xxiii. 36. Octabas was the A.S. name for the Octave.

Omnium Sanctorum Festum. The Feast of All Saints, or All-Hallows, 1st November.

Pasche; Pasqe. Easter.

Passionis Festum. The Feast of the Passion. The period between the fifth Sunday in Lent and Easter Sunday. Since the Reformation, the term “Passion Week” has been applied solely to the last week in Lent.

Pauli, Conversio Sancti. The Conversion of Saint Paul, 25th January.

Pentecoste; Pentecouste. Pentecost, or Whitsuntide.

Perpetuae et Felicitatis, Festum Sanctarum. The Feast of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, 7th March. These Saints are said to have suffered martyrdom in the reign of the Emperor Valerian.

Petri ad Vincula, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Peter’s Chains, or Saint Peter in Prison, 1st August.

Petri in Cathedra, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Peter’s Chair; in commemoration of his founding the Cathedra, or Church, of Antioch, 22nd February.

Petri et Pauli, Festum Apostolorum. The Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, 29th June.

Philippi et Jacobi, Festum Apostolorum. The Feast of the Apostles Philip and James, 1st May.

Quadragesima; Quareme. Quadragesima, or Lent, the Fast of forty days before Easter.

Ramis Palmarum, Dominica in. Palm Sunday, the First Sunday before Easter.

Simonis et Judae, Festum Apostolorum. The Feast of the Apostles Simon and Jude, 28th October.

Swithini, Dies Sancti. The day (of the Deposition) of Saint Swithun, or Swithin, 2nd July.

Swithini, Translatio Beati; Swythan, la Feste Seint. The Feast of the Translation of Saint Swithin, 15th July.

Symonis et Judae, Festum Apostolorum. See Simonis et Judae, Festum.

Thomae Apostoli, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Thomas, the Apostle, 21st December.

Thomae Martyris, Festum Beati; Thomae Martyris, Translatio Sancti. The Translation of Saint Thomas, the Martyr, 7th July. The Passion of Saint Thomas of Canterbury was 29th December; it is not clear whether, in the first instance, that or his Translation is meant.

Tiphayne. The Epiphany, 16th January; a corruption of Theophania, the Manifestation of God. But in the Greek Church the words ?e?f??e?a and ?p?f??e?a were used as synonymous expressions for the day of Our Saviour’s Nativity. See Suicer’s Thesaurus, i. p. 1200, and Hampson’s Med. Ævi Kalendar ii. s.vv. Epiphania and Theophania.

Trinitatis, Festum Sanctae; Trinite, Feste de la; Jour de la. The Feast of the Trinity, the Sunday after Pentecost, or Whitsuntide.

Trinitatis Sanctae Octabae. The Octave of the Holy Trinity; the Sunday after Trinity Sunday.

Valentini, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Valentine. Probably that celebrated on the 14th February; but there were other festivals in honour of persons of this name, 16th April, 16th July, 13th November, and 9th and 16th December.

Vincentii Martyris, Festum Sancti. The Feast of Saint Vincent, the Martyr, 22nd January.

(Liber Custumarum, Riley, vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 841-844.)

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APPENDIX VII
AN ANCHORITE’S CELL22

“Soon after the present work was begun a strange hole was discovered in the chancel wall, just at the turn of the apse on the north side. It is about 4 feet high and 20 inches wide. There is no stonework. A roughly rectangular hole has been broken through the flint wall, and the sides of it plastered to something like a smooth face. There is no provision for or mark of a door. And it was difficult to assign any reason for the making of the hole. Yet it was certain that some reason for it had been. Rough as it is, there is enough care bestowed on its making to show that it was not one of the openings sometimes left in the walls of buildings for the convenience of bringing things in during their construction, and blocked up when done with. Besides, it is too small for such a use. It was suggested that it may have been made to bring in a coffin at some funeral. But it is too small for that also: and it needs to be shown why men should have broken through the wall to bring in a coffin when it was much easier to bring it in by a door. Then it was guessed that it might belong to some extinct stove for warming the church; but neither the position nor anything in the form of the hole seemed likely for that use. It is too small to have been the entrance to a vestry, though the position is a proper one; and certainly there must have been a door had that been its purpose. Yet if the hole had ever more than a temporary use, it must have led to some chamber outside, for the church could not have been used if it were open to the weather.

Some further light was thrown on the place a few months ago when a coating of modern cement was stripped off the outside of the wall. Then was found a second hole about the same size as the first, but cut only part way through the wall. It is plastered inside with clay, and was filled up with flints and clay. Rather above these holes, and east and west of them respectively, are two smaller ones, such as may have received the ends of timbers. These also were found stopped with clay. The annexed illustration explains the work better than any description.

It seems that a little wooden hut has been built at some time against the wall of the church. The smaller holes give its length from east to west—about eight feet inside—and perhaps also its greatest height, about six feet. But this last and the width from north to south are uncertain, for there is nothing to show what was the shape of the roof, and if there were ever any foundations they are not to be found now. The walls were probably of stud and clay daubing, and the roof thatch.

The place can hardly have been other than an anker’s den. And it must surely have been one of the least commodious. It is remarkable that so few such have been identified, for the numbers of ankers in England must at one time have been considerable. There is a good deal about them in the second volume of the new edition of Mr. Bloxam’s Gothic Architecture, and Mr. Bloxam would assign to ankers most of the habitable chambers attached to churches, over vestries and porches and elsewhere. Very likely some such were used by ankers of the easier sort: but I think more were occupied by secular clerks and chaplains, and the anker’s place was a hut built outside against the wall, under the eaves of the church, as is said in the thirteenth-century Ancren Riwle, which tells us more about ankers than any other book I know of.

A cell was so placed that the anker need not leave it, either for worship or for any other reason. There was a window opening through which he might join in the worship at the altar, and at times receive the sacrament. And there was another window or hatch to the outside through which necessaries might be received and conversation held with visitors or servants. A window or squint is often found from a chamber over a vestry towards the high altar, and there is sometimes one from a porch chamber: but being on upper floors they could not well have the other window, so I take most of them not to have been ankerholds. Though as the degree of strictness varied much and seems for the most part to have been fixed only by the anker himself, it is possible that some may have been so used. The anker of the strictest sort was inclusus—permanently shut up in his cell which he entered with the license and blessing of the bishop. Such an one could scarcely have inhabited an upper chamber. Whether our Bengeo Anker was inclusus or not is uncertain. The entrance to his cell had no door, but it may have been blocked, and a squint or loop towards the altar formed the blocking. If it were open a curtain must have been hung across it, perhaps a black cloth with a white cross like that ordered in the Riwle to be put to the ‘parlour’ window.

The recess in the church wall west of the doorway is the anker’s seat and perhaps his sleeping place. And his bones may lie below: for it seems to have been a custom for ankers to prepare their own graves within their cells.”

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APPENDIX VIII
THE MONASTIC HOUSES

List of Religious Houses and Parish Churches

The religious Houses and Churches of the City and its suburbs which existed in the fifteenth century are enumerated in Arnold’s Chronicle. Arnold, who lived and wrote towards the end of the fifteenth century, belongs to MediÆval London, which Stow, of a hundred years later, certainly did not. We shall adopt, therefore, from Arnold’s list, as a guide to this survey of MediÆval London, the Churches and ecclesiastical foundations which he considers as especially belonging to London. His own spelling is followed here.

• Seint Martin’s Graunte
• Cryst Chirche
• The Chartur hous
• Elsyngspitel
• Seynt Barthu Priory
• Seynt Barthu Spitel
• Seynt Thoms of Acres
• Seint Antonis
• Seynt Johes in Smythfeld
• Clerkenwell Nonry
• Halywelle Nonry
• Barmondsay Abbey
• Seint Mary Ouery Priory
• Seint Thoms Spitel
• Saint Giles in the Felde
• Seynt Helen’s Nonry
• Seynt Mary Spitel
• Seynt Mary at Beethelem
• The Menures Nonry
• Seynt Anne at the Tourhil
• Seynt Katerins
• The Crouched Fryers
• The Friers Augustines
• The Fryours Mynors
• The Fryours P’chars
• Seynt James in the Wall
• The Whit Fryers
• Seint Peter at Westm Abbey
• Seynt James in the Temple
• Seynt Stephenys at Westminster
• Seint Thoms Chapel of the Bridge
• Seynt James in the Fields
• Seynte Mary Magdalene Yeldhall
• Seynt Mary Rouncyuale
• Seynt Ursula chapel in the Poultry

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APPENDIX IX
A DOMINICAN HOUSE

The following Notes are from the ArchÆolog. Journal:—

“The traditions of the Dominican order required that the buildings should be arranged quadrilaterally, enclosing a plot of ground which formed the cloistral cemetery for the deceased of the community, one side being occupied by the church; but no fixed rule was adopted for the distribution of the offices. This is apparent from the plans of several of the English priories founded within the same period of twenty years. At Gloucester, Bristol, and Stamford, the church formed the north side of the quadrangle, whilst at Norwich and Canterbury it was on the south, and at Newcastle-on-Tyne it was on the east, being probably regulated by the conveniences of the localities; and even orientation was not uniformly preserved. The culinary offices at Gloucester were evidently on the south, whilst at Canterbury they stood on the west.

The early Dominican churches were exceeding simple in arrangement and severe in details. A good example of them existed at Canterbury where the choir, nave, and two aisles were all included under one long unbroken roof, and a porch at the west end afforded entrance to the congregation. The church at Gloucester, consisting of choir, nave, north chapel or transept, and north aisle, being rebuilt about the beginning of the sixteenth century, departed somewhat from this plan, inasmuch as the chapel was covered with a distinct transverse roof. It occupied only about three-fourths of the side of the quadrangle, the rest being completed by monastic buildings. In the church were three altars; the steeple with two bells and the aisle have disappeared.

The rest of the buildings which complete the quadrangle, about 73 feet square, are doubtless the original structures of the thirteenth century. The dormitory forming the second storey of the south side, with its exterior stairs, is still perfect, even to the stone partitions of the separate cells. On the ground floor was probably the refectory. The triplet window in the south gable of the west building is deserving of notice. But the interiors of all these buildings have been so much changed and adapted for modern requirements, that it is difficult to ascertain their monastic destinations. The cellaring is extensive, but presents little worthy of remark.”

BLACKFRIARS PRIORY

(Survey made ante 1552)

[A Document of the Loseley MSS. at Loseley Hall, Guildford]

Blakfryer Survey.23

Sm~?xlvi li vjs viijd vlt~ . xiij li vjs. xiijd. de redditibz woodman & vlt~ xx li de redd Saunders in toto?lxxix li. xiijs. iiijd.

Itm A gallery ou24 the water cominge owt of the townedyche at Holbo^rne runynge into the temys abuttynge vpon the highe waye leadinge from brydwell to the watersyd on the west syd and vpon the tenemente of James la forheye on the est syd conteyninge that waye in lengethe xlij fote and abuttinge vpon A payre of stayers and waye leadinge from the blackfryers to bryd well ou25 the seid diche on the northe syde and vpon the seide dyche runynge in to the temys on ye sothe syde conteyninge in breddethe that wage xiiij fote.

Itm James la fforher broderer holdeth one tenemente abutinge vpon the seid highe waye on the northe parte & vpon A garden therto adioyninge vpon the sothe syde conteyninge in bredethe that waye xiiij fote and abutt vpon the aforseide gallery on the weste syd and vpon the tenemente of John Taylor on the est syd conteynynge in length that waye xxxj fote wt A garden adioyninge to the same tenemente on the northe syd and upon A garden And howse of ...26 More or Creswell on the sothe syd conteynunge that waye at the west end abuttinge vpon the seide dyche xxiiij fote and at the est end abuttinge vpon the garden of the seide tenement of John Taylor xxxj foote and in lenge from the east ende to the weste end on the sowthe syde xxix ffoote and on the northe syd xxxj ffoote payinge therefore by year ... lxvjs. viijd.

John Taylor Carpenter holdeth a tenemente Abuttinge vpon the tenemente of James la fforheys on the weste syde and vpon the tenemente of Robt Damanye on the easte syde conteyninge that waye in lengthe xxx ffote and upon A garden thereto belonginge on the sowthe syde and vpon the seid highewaye on the northe syd conteyninge in breddethe that waye xiiij foote w^t A garden to the seid tenemente adioyninge on the northe syd and upon A garden of ... Mr. Creswells on the sowthe syd conteyninge in breddethe that waye att the weste ende xxxj fote and at the eeste ende xlv ffoote & abuttinge v[p]on the garden of the tenemente of James la fforhaye on the west syde & vpon the garden of the tenement of Robt Damany on the este syd cont~ in breddethe yt waye at the northe end xxx ffoot and at the sowthe ende xxx ffoote payinge ... lxvjs. xiijd.

Robt Damany bokebynder holdethe A tenemente abutt on the seid highwaye on the northe syde Conteynynge in lengethe xxiiij foote and vpon A garden to the same belonginge on the sothe syde Conteyninge in lengethe xvij ffote and on the weste syd vpon the seide highe waye vidz27 from the highwaye to the tenement28 of John Tayler x foote and upon the seide tenemente of John tayler xiiij ffoo beinge in the hole breddethe at that the weste ende xxiiij foote and abuttynge on the este syde vpon A tenemente in the tenure of Maryan Turner in breddethe xiiij ffoote and vpon the garden of the tenement of the seide Maryan in breddethe x foote beinge in the hole breddethe at y^l easte ende xxiiij ffoote w29 A garden therto adioyninge on the northe syde conteyne in lengethe xvij fote and on the sowthe syde vpon A garden f30 Mr. Creswel xvij ffoote &c. on the weste syde vpon J. Taylers garden coÑ xlv ffoote and on the easte syde vpon the gardens of the tenementes of Thomas Gemyny and ... coÑ l^te31 ffoote payinge therefore ... lxvjs. viijd.

Maryan Turner ffounder holdethe A Tenemente abuttinge vpon the seid highewaye on the Northe syde and coÑ in lengethe that waye xl foote and on the sowthe syd vpon a garden plott to the same tenement belonginge & coÑ xix foote and vpon A garden of the tenemente of Nicholas ...32 sadler cont xiiij fote and vpon the tenement of Robt Damanye vij ffoote in the hole on that syde xl^te ffoote abutinge on the weste syde vpon the tenement of Robt Damanye & coÑ xiiij ffote and on the easte syd vpon the garden of the tenement of Nicholas ... sadler iij foote and vpon the tenemente of John de Horse hatmaker xj foote in the hole at that ende xiiij foote. / w^t A garden therto adioynynge on the northe syde & coÑ xix ffoote and abuttinge vpon the garden of the tenement of ... Taylor on the sowthe syde & coÑ xix foote and vpon the tenem~ of Robt Damany on the weste syde coÑ x ffoote and vpon the garden of the tenement of Nicholas ... the sadler on the easte syde coÑ ix ffoote. / payinge therefore ad ij^os Ai Diuios33—— lxvjs. viijd. John de Horse hattmaker holdethe A tenement abuttinge on the northe syde vpon the seide highewaye cont xxxj ffoote &c. / on the sowthe syd vpon A tenement of Nicholas ... sadler coÑ xviij ffoote and vpon the garden of the tenement of the seide Nicholas xiiij f. in the hole on that syde xxxij ffoote. / abutt^d on the weste vpon the tenement of Maryan turner coÑ xi ffoote & vpon an highewaye leadynge from Ludgate to the bridge of the blacke ffryers on the easte syde coÑ xj ffoote payinge therefore by yeare ad ij^os Ai diuinos ... lxs.

N?i?c?h?o?l?a?s? ? ?S?a?d?l?e?r? [erased thus in the MS.].

A bridge and Stayers on the towne diche comynge ffrom Holbo^rne bride34 and forby Brydewell into the temys abuttyng weste vpon the highewaye leadinge forby brydewell to the temys coÑ x fote brode abuttinge sothe and northe vpon the seid diche coÑ on eache syde xxxix ffote. / w^t A lane leadinge ffrom the seide bridge to the highwaye leadinge from ludgate to the black ffryers bridge and abutt easte upon y^t highewaye coÑ ... ffoote and abutt weste vpon the seide bridge of bridewell coÑ xij ffoote abutt sothe vpon all the seide tenemente of James la fforhaye John Tayler Robt Damany, Maryan Turner and John de horse. / and abutt northe vpon ... coÑ in lengethe from the easte to the weste Clii foote pased in lv pace. /

Itm the same lane is betwene brydewell bridge and the tenement of J Damany xix foote brode and lij ffoote longe and betwene y^t tenement and the highe waye leading to the blackfryers bridg x ffoote brode and Ci35 ffoote longe.

Nicholas ... Sadler holdethe A tenemente abuttinge easte vpon an highe waye leadinge from Ludgate to the bridge of the blacke fryers coÑ xv ffoote / abuttinge weste vpon A garden belongynge to the same tenemente coÑ xiij foote / abuttinge northe vpon the tenemente of John de horse coÑ xviij foote and sothe vpon the tenent of Edward Charratt Tayler coÑ xxviij ffoote w^t A garden therto belongynge abutt~ easte vpon thys seid tenemente coÑ xiij foote / weste vpon the garden of the tenement of Maryan turner coÑ x ffoote sowthe vpon the garden of the tenem^t of Edw^rd Charrat tayler coÑ xij ffoote / and northe vpon the tenement of Maryan turner coÑ xij foote ... lxvj s. viij d.

Edward Sharratt Tayler holdeth A tenement abuttynge easte upon the high waye leadinge from ludgate to bridge of y^e blackffryers coÑ xxx ffoote / weste upon A garden belonginge to the same tenemente coÑ xxx ffoote Sowthe vpon the tenement Thomas Gemeny coÑ xxxv ffoote and northe vpon the tenement of Nicholas ... con xxviij ffoote w^t A garden th to adjoininge & abuttinge easte coÑ xxx^t ffoote. / weste vpon the garden of the tenement of Robt Damany coÑ xxv fote / Northe vpon the gardens of the tenemente of Maryan turner xviij ffoote and Nicholas his garden xiij fote in the hole on that syd xxxj fote and Sowthe vpon the garden of the tenement of Thomas gemeny coÑ xxiiij ffoot‘ payinge vj^li xiijs. iiijd.

Thomas Gemeny printer holdethe A tenemente Abuttinge easte vpon the seid highewaye to the blackefryers bridge & coÑ xxxiii ffoote and weste vpon A garden to the same belongynge con xxx ffoote / Northe vpon the tenemente of Edward Sharrat tayler coÑ xxxv^ts foote / and Sowthe vpon A garden of Mr. More or Mr. Cresswell coÑ xxviij ffoote. / w^t A garden thereto adioyninge and abutt easte coÑ xxx ffoote weste vpon y^e garden of ye tenement of Rbt Damany coÑ xxviij ffoote. / Northe vpon the garden of the tenemente of Edward Charrat tayler coÑ xxiiij ffoote and sothe vpon A garden of one Mr. More or Mr. Cresswell coÑ xxviij ffoote payinge vj^li xiijs. iiijd.

John Potter broderer holdethe A tenemente36 abuttynge weste vpon the seid high waye to the blackffryers bridge & coÑ xxvij^t ffoote. / Easte vpon A garden of Mr. Gernyng^egams in the tenure of one Thomas Nasshe Capper coÑ xxvij ffoote Sowthe vpon A stable of the same Mr. Gernynghm~ in the tenure of Sr Thomas Saunders knighte coÑ xviij ffoote and Northe vpon a tenemente of the seide Mr. gernynghm~ in the tenure of the seide T. Nasshe coÑ xviij ffoote payinge ad ij^os Ai Diuios eq^a lz [ad duos Anni divisiones equales] liijs. iiijd.

... Scryven gent holdeth A tenemente abutt northe vpon the seid highe waye to the blacke fryers bridge coÑ xxx^ts[37] foote and weste vpon the same highe waye coÑ l^ts37 ffoote. / Sowthe vpon the tenemente of Jame ffremounte widowe coÑ xxiiij ffoote. / and Easte vpon A vacante place w^ch was the bodie of the Churche coÑ lxij^ts ffote and vpon the yarde of A howse in y^e tenure of T. ffillyppes xv ffoote in the hole on that syde lxxvij ffoote wt a lofte saylinge38 ou the entry of the tenemente of the seide Jame ffremounte widowe. / being in lengethe xxviij ffoote and in breddethe xij ffoote. / ... viij li.

Jame ffremounte wydowe holdethe A tenemente whereof the entrye is under the seid tenemente of J (?) ... Scryven and thother39 ioines [joines] under the lodginge of the lord Cobam the hole abuttinge easte vpon the late body of the churche of the blacke ffryers xxviij ffoote by est? [estimation] and vpon the late Cloyster of the same churche xxj ffoote in the hole on that syde xlix ffoote by estimacion. / weste vpon certen howses one in the tenure of Mr. Harper coÑ xlix foote & vpon y^e seid high waye iiij ffoote beinge the rome of her dore in the hole liij ffoote. Northe vpon the seid tenement of ... Scryven xxiiij foote vpon the wall of the seide late bodie of the churche towarde theste40 syde xx ffoote & upon the seid howses in the tenure of Mr. harper towards the weste syde xv ffoote in y^e hole on that syde deductynge seven ffoote of the butt ageanst Mr. harpers howses w^ch is also A pcell of the xxiiij foote abutted ageanst ... Scryvens tenemente lij ffoote. and on the Sowthe side abutting vpon certen howses in the tenure of the lorde Cobhm~ coÑ lii ffoote. / payinge by yeare liijs. iiijd.

BLACKFRIARS SURVEY

[A document at Loseley Hall, near Guildhall, relating to the Blackfriars, 2 Ed. VI.]

[Howesses At the blacke ffryars in London.41

A Survey42 of certen Edifices bildinge and vo[yde] grounde ... [a word illegible? “&c.”] taken the ... [blank in MS.] of Marche in the ij yere of the rayne of Kinge Edward the vj^th by ... [blank in MS.].

FFIRSTE A voyde grounde w^th A decayed Galerye theryn and voyde romes therunder wheryn owlde tymber and carte wheles doe lye cont in lengeth iiij/xx x viij [i.e. 98] foote abuttinge ageanste bridewell diche on the weste ende beinge there in breddethe at that ende lxxiiij foote abuttinge on the este ende to the comune highe waye and lane that goethe to the comune stayre at the temmes side ? beinge in breddethe at that ende iiij/xx x iiij (94) foote And abuttinge on the Northe side to the ladie or Mrs. Harpars garden and to one ffraunsis garden And on the Sowthe syde to S? [Sir] Xpoffer Mores garden w^ch galery runnethe alonge by the northe side of the seide voyde grounde from the est ende te the weste ende as it is above bounded. /

Itm Cutchyn yarde an owlde cutchyn an entree or passage Joyninge to the same cont in lengethe xx/iiij iiij (84) foote, abuttinge on the weste syde to the lane aforseide and beinge in breddethe at that ende lxviij foote / and abuttinge ageanste the owlde buttrye on the este side beinge there in breddethe at that ende lxxiiij foote Abuttinge on the sowthe syde to Mr. Portmarys parler nexte the lane And to my lorde Cobhm~s brack wall and garden on the Northe syde. /

Itm an owlde buttery and enterye or passage w^th a greate Stayre therin w^th Sellers therunder w^th a halle place at the upper ende of the Stayre and an entree there to the frater over the same butterye all w^ch conteyne in lengethe xxxv^ts ffoote / and in breddethe iiij/xx x v (95) fooet abuttinge to the cloyster on the Easte ende and the Cutchin aforseide at the weste ende and on the Northe syde to the lorde Cobhm~s howse and on the Sowthe syde to A blynde pler that my lorde43 Warden did claim.

Itm A howse44 called the upper frater [?] in lengethe Cvij foote and in breddethe lij foote /

Itm vnder the same A hall A pler A lytle Chaumber A litle Cutchen therunder w^th iiij^or small sellers and darke holes therunder of the same lengethe and breddethe aforeseide /

Itm A voyde rome cont in lengethe xxx^t foote and in breddethe xvij foote //

Itm a Chaumber called the Duchie Chaumber w^th a darke loginge therunder cont in lengethe l45 foote and in breddethe xvj foote.

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APPENDIX X
THE PAPEY

“The Hospital of Le Papey was founded in the year 1442, by Thomas Symminesson, William Cleve, William Barnaby, and John Stafford, priests in the diocese of London. Symminesson, otherwise written Symmesson, and Symson, was Rector of All Saints, or All Hallows, on the Wall; Cleve was priest of the charity of St. John Baptist in the church of St. Mary Aldermary; Barnaby was a chantry priest in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul; and of Stafford I know no more than that he was a priest in the city of London. The Hospital was founded for those of their own Order whom age or sickness disabled from the active performance of the duties of their function.” (Late Rev. Thomas Hugo in London and Midd. ArchÆological Soc., vol. v.)

“The name of the Hospital was derived from that of the church which, as we shall see, was appropriated to it, ordinarily known as St. Augustine’s de Papey.” (Ibid. 187.)

“The charter of foundation is as follows. It will supply various particulars of interest which I have hitherto omitted for the sake of brevity.

To all the sons of our Holy Mother the Church to whom and to whose knowledge these letters or the contents of them shall come, and those whom the writing underneath do touch or shall hereafter touch, Thomas Symminesson, Parson [vicar or curate, note in margin] of the Parish Church of All Saints at the Wall of the City of London, together with the Church of St. Augustine Pappey, of the same city, by ordinary authority, and for true, lawful, and honest causes, joined, annexed, and incorporated to the same Church of All Saints; and William Cleve, chaplain of the Chantry founded at the altar of St. John Baptist in the Church of the Blessed Mary of Aldermary Church of London; and William Barnaby, one of the chaplains of the Chantry in the Cathedral Church of S. Paul in London; and John Stafford, chaplain of the City of London, send greeting in our Lord everlasting.

Know you all by these presents that the most excellent prince in Christ, and our Lord and Master, the famous Henry the Sixth, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, of his special grace, sure knowledge, and mere motion, by advice and assent of this great council, by his letters patents, the tenor of which is underwritten, to us and to others hath graciously granted and given license for him and his heirs, as much as in him is, that we three, or any two of us, may begin, make, found, ordain, unite and establish, in the honour of St. Charity and S. John Evangelist, a certain perpetual Fraternity of Brotherhood, as well of ourselves and other Chaplains of Chantries and hirelings [conducts, note in margin] as of other honest men whatsoever, in some place convenient and honest of the said City which we shall provide for that purpose, for the relief and sustaining of poor priests destroyed [decayed, in margin] through poverty and detained by diseases, having nothing to live on, but, as well to the great displeasure of God as the reproach to the Clergy and shame to Holy Church, do miserably beg, to pray devoutly as well for the healthy state and happy prosperity of our said lord the king and kingdom of England, and of the nobility and peers, of the Brethren also and Sisters of the Fraternity aforesaid and also for the souls of all the Faithful Departed, as in the aforesaid royal letters patent, to which and the contents of the same we refer you, and which in the same here inserted is more fully contained.

Wherefore we, William Cleve, William Barnaby, and John Stafford, the Chaplains aforesaid,—considering that the premises are good, godly, and meritorious, and firmly minding effectually to perform and surely to fulfil them, and to found such aforesaid perpetual Fraternity, in the Name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Glorious Virgin Mary, St. Charity, and St. John Evangelist, in whose honour the aforesaid Fraternity by the King’s license given and granted, as is said, is founded and ordained [the rights of all and singular persons interested ... in this part given and conceded], begin and proceed after this order.” (Ibid.)

“As so little is known of this ancient church and parish of St. Augustine, I may perhaps be doing some of my readers a service, by giving them here all the information which is believed to be extant, in addition to that already included in the present memoir. Stow says that an Earl of Oxford had his inn within its boundaries, and that the last will of Agnes, Lady Bardolph, anno 1403, was dated from thence in these words: ‘Hospitio, &c., from the Inn of the Habitation of the Earl of Oxford, in the parish of St. Augustine’s de Papey, London.’ When or by whom the church was founded I know not. But the names of the rectors, so far as they are preserved in the episcopal registers, are as follows:

Stephen de Benytone, clerk, presented by the prior and convent of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, xiij Kal. April (20 March), 1321-2.

Roger Oxecumb, ————?

Adam Long, priest, by the death of R.O., presented by the same, 21 October, 1372.

Adam Nunne, chaplain, by the death of A.L., presented by the same, 19 January, 1395-6.

I presume that he was the last rector. When he died, or otherwise vacated his benefice, I have no means of determining. But, on his avoidance, the church seems, as already mentioned, to have been too poor to be worth accepting, and was incorporated accordingly in the manner described. May I suggest, though with considerable hesitation, that the little graveyard still noticeable in Camomile Street, and once used as a place of sepulture by the neighbouring but not adjoining parish of St. Martin Outwich, still marks the site of this ancient church?” (Ibid.)

“The brethren of the hospital were selected for their age and infirmities. Poor they necessarily were on admission, and the slender revenues of the house were barely sufficient to supply the common needs of human existence. With the exception of their home and the benefactions previously recorded, I know not of any property belonging to them, save the following:—First, a tenement at Baynard’s Castle, which is incidentally mentioned in a memorandum in the Cottonian MS., of which a literal copy here follows:—

Of the vaute in our ten’t at Bayn^d castell—

Be it Remembryd that in o^r howse at Bayn^d Castell ys a drawght of the which the entry into the vaute. ys. vj. fote fro the Reredoce of the Chy’ney beneth in the Kechyn and ij. fote & di’ fro the wall-plate or ground sell of the est syde of the sayd Kechyn.

Then there were six cottages or chambers in Panyer Alley, in the parish of St. Michael-le-Querne, belonging to them; and two messuages in the same alley, some particulars of which I have found in the Patent Roll of the 17th of Elizabeth.” (Ibid.)

“The church was pulled down, and on its site ‘one Grey, an apothecary, built a stall and a hayloft.’ At the time that Stow wrote his ‘survey,’ in or about the year 1598, a dwelling-house occupied the site of the church, and the churchyard was turned into a garden plot. The priests’ house would appear to have been kept standing, and the names of Mr. Morris, of Essex, Sir Francis Walsingham, and Mr. Barrett, also of Essex, are mentioned as those of its tenants.

The last record that I can supply of the outraged and pillaged brethren, thus banished from their ancient home, is that contained in the pension book of Cardinal Pole, where four of them are enumerated as then, 1556, living and receiving pensions:—Robert Ffoxe, who, it will be remembered, had been the last master, receiving a yearly pension of lxvj s. viij d.; Richard Bee and George Stroger, the last wardens, each with a pension of liij s. iiij d.; and John Mardocke, with one of xl s. Two of the six who witnessed the suppression of their house, Richard Birchall and John Barrett, had, it would appear, died during the interval.” (Ibid.)

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APPENDIX XI
CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT

I. Almshouses (From Stow)

The following is a list of charitable endowments:—

Those of Sir John Milborne’s, draper, Mayor in 1531, founded in Woodroffe Lane for 13 poor men and their wives.

Those at Bishopsgate for the Parish Clerks, all that remained of a suppressed Brotherhood.

Those at Little St. Helen’s for 7 poor persons belonging to the Leathersellers.

Those in Gresham Street founded by Sir Thomas Gresham, for 8 poor persons.

St. Anthony’s Hospital. A School and Almshouses.

In Spittle Lane or Stodil Lane, the Vintners’ Almshouses for 13 poor people.

In Monkeswell St. those founded by Sir Ambrose Nicholas, Mayor 1575, for 12 poor people.

In White Cross Street the houses a brotherhood used as an almshouse and suppressed.

In Beech Lane the Drapers’ Company founded almshouses for 8 poor people.

In Golding Lane Richard Gallard’s for 13 poor people.

In Stayning Lane the Haberdashers’ Almshouses for 10 poor people.

In Bread Street Salters’ Almshouses for 8 poor people.

In Trinity Lane Ironmongers’ Houses for 8 poor people.

In Peter’s Hill David Smith’s for 6 poor widows.

On College Hill Whittington’s College and almshouses for 13 poor men.

II. Charitable Endowment Generally

As for charities and charitable endowments generally, one cannot do better than quote Stow himself:—

“I myself, in that declining time of charity, have oft seen at the Lord Cromwell’s gate in London more than two hundred persons served twice every day with bread, meat, and drink sufficient; for he observed that ancient and charitable custom, as all prelates, noblemen, or men of honour and worship, his predecessors, had done before him; whereof somewhat to note for example, Venerable Bede writeth, that prelates of his time having peradventure but wooden churches, had notwithstanding on their board at their meals one alms dish, into the which was carved some good portion of meat out of every other dish brought to their table; all which was given to the poor, besides the fragments left, in so much as in a hard time, a poor prelate wanting victuals, hath caused his alms dish, being silver, to be divided among the poor, therewith to shift as they could, till God should send them better store.

Such a prelate was Ethelwald, Bishop of Winchester, in the reign of King Edgar, about the year of Christ 963: he in a great famine sold away all the sacred vessels of his church for to relieve the almost starved people, saying that there was no reason that the senseless temples of God should abound in riches, and lively temples of the Holy Ghost to lack it.

Walter de Suffilde, Bishop of Norwich, was of the like mind; about the year 1245, in a time of great dearth, he sold all his plate, and distributed it to the poor every pennyworth.

Robert Winchelsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, about the year 1093, besides the daily fragments of his house, gave every Friday and Sunday, unto every beggar that came to his gate, a loaf of bread sufficient for that day, and there were usually, every such alms day, in time of dearth, to the number of five thousand, and otherwise four thousand, at the least; more, he used every great festival day to give one hundred and fifty pence to so many poor people, to send daily meat, bread and drink, to such as by age or sickness were not able to fetch his alms, and to send meat, money, and apparel to such as he thought needed it.

I read, in 1171, that Henry II., after his return into England, did penance for the slaughter of Thomas Becket, of whom (a sore dearth increasing) ten thousand persons, from the first of April, till new corn was inned, were daily fed and sustained.

More, I find recorded, that in the year 1256, the 20th of Henry III., William de Haverhall, the King’s treasurer, was commanded, that upon the day of the Circumcision of our Lord, six thousand poor people should be fed at Westminster, for the state of the king, queen, and their children. The like commandment the said King Henry gave to Hugh Gifford and William Browne, that upon Friday next after the Epiphany, they should cause to be fed in the great hall at Windsore, at a good fire, all the poor and needy children that could be found, and the king’s children being weighed and measured, their weight and measure to be distributed for their good estates. These few examples for charity of kings may suffice.

I read, in the reign of Edward III., that Richard de Berie, Bishop of Durham, did weekly bestow for the relief of the poor eight quarters of wheat made into bread, besides his alms dish, fragments of his house, and great sums of money given to the poor when he journeyed. And that these alms dishes were as well used at the tables of noblemen as of the prelates, one note may suffice in this place.

I read, in the year 1452, that Richard, Duke of York, then claiming the crown, the Lord Rivers should have passed the sea about the King’s business, but staying at Plimmoth till his money was spent, and then sending for more, the Duke of Sommerset sent him the image of St. George in silver and gold, to be sold, with the alms dish of the Duke of Glocester, which was also of great price, for coin had they none.

To end of orders and customs in this city, also of great families kept by honourable persons thither repairing, and of charitable alms of old times given, I say, for conclusion, that all noble persons, and other of honour and worship, in former times lodging in this city, or liberties thereof, did without grudging bear their parts in charges with the citizens, according to their estimated estates, as I have before said, and could prove by examples; but let men call to mind Sir Thomas Cromwell, then Lord Privy seal, and vicar-general, lying in the city of London; he bare his charges to the great muster there in A.D. 1539; he sent his men in great number to the miles end, and after them their armour in cars, with their coats of white cloth, the arms of this city; to wit, a red cross, and a sword, on the breast and back; which armour and coats they wear amongst the citizens, without any difference, and marched through the city to Westminster.”

The following additions are from the list compiled by Stow; a few of the foundations have been already considered in the chapters of the Religious Houses:—

It will be observed that these endowments number eleven founded during the fourteenth century, twenty-three founded during the fifteenth, and thirty-two founded in the sixteenth century. Attention has already been called to the decay of bequests for charities and masses for the soul, ‘mind-days,’ and gifts to friars and religious persons during the fifteenth century; it is interesting to note how, while the old fashion of bequest is decaying, the new fashion is advancing.

“The citizens of London, time out of mind, founded an hospital of St. James in the fields for leprous women of their city.

In the year 1197, Walter Brune, a citizen of London, and Rosia, his wife, founded the hospital of Our Lady, called Domus Dei, or St. Marie Spittle.

In the year 1247, Simon Fitzmary, one of the sheriffs of London, founded the hospital of St. Mary called Bethlem, also without Bishopsgate.

In the year 1283, Henry Wallis, then mayor, built the Tun upon Cornhill, to be a prison for nightwalkers, and a market-house called the Stocks, both for fish and flesh, standing in the midst of the city. He also built divers houses on the west and north side of Paule’s churchyard; the profits of all which buildings are to the maintenance of London Bridge.

In the year 1332, William Elsing, mercer of London, founded Elsing Spittle within Cripplegate for an hundred poor blind men.

Sir John Poultney, draper, four times mayor, in 1337 built a fair chapel in Paule’s church, wherein he was buried. He founded a college in the parish church of St. Laurence, called Poultney: he built the parish church called Little Allhallowes, in Thames Street; the Carmelite friars church in Coventry: he gave relief to prisoners in Newgate and in the Fleet, and ten shillings a year to St. Giles’ Hospital by Oldborne for ever, and other legacies long to rehearse.

John Stodie, vintner, mayor 1358, gave to the vintners all the quadrant wherein the Vintners’ hall now standeth, with all the tenements round about, from Stodies Lane, wherein is founded thirteen alms houses for so many poor people, &c.

John Lofken, fishmonger, four times mayor, 1367, built an hospital called Magdalen’s, in Kingston upon Thames; gave thereunto nine tenements, ten shops, one mill, one hundred and twenty-five acres of land, ten acres of meadow, one hundred and twenty acres of pasture; more, in London, he built the fair parish church of St. Michael in Crooked Lane, and was there buried.

John Barnes, mayor 1371, gave a chest with three locks, and one thousand marks therein, to be lent to young men upon sufficient pawn, and for the use thereof, to say de profundis, or Pater noster, and no more: he also was a great builder of St. Thomas Apostle’s parish church, as appeareth by his arms there, both in stone and glass.

This Sir Robert Knoles, thus worthily infranchised a citizen, founded a college with an hospital at Pontefract: he also built the great stone bridge at Rochester, over the river of Medway, &c.

John Churchman, grocer, one of the sheriffs, 1386, for the quiet of merchants, built a certain house upon Wool Wharf, in Tower ward, to serve for tronage or weighing of wools, and for the customer, comptroller, clerks, and other officers to sit, &c.

Adam Bamme, goldsmith, mayor 1391, in a great dearth, procured corn from parts beyond the seas, to be brought hither in such abundance as sufficed to serve the city, and the countries near adjoining; to the furtherance of which good work he took out of the orphans’ chest in the Guildhall two thousand marks to buy the said corn, and each alderman laid out twenty pounds to the like purpose.

Thomas Knoles, grocer, mayor 1400, with his brethren the aldermen, began to new build the Guildhall in London, and instead of an old little cottage in Aldermanberie Street, made a fair and goodly house, more near unto St. Laurence Church in the Jurie: he re-edified St. Anthony’s church, and gave to the grocers his house near unto the same, for relief of the poor for ever. More, he caused sweet water to be conveyed to the gates of Newgate and Ludgate for relief of the prisoners there.

John Hinde, draper, mayor 1405, newly built his parish church of St. Swithen by London Stone.

Thomas Falconer, mercer, mayor 1414, made the postern called Mooregate, caused the ditches of the city to be cleansed, and did many other things for good of the same city.

William Sevenoke, grocer, mayor 1419, founded in the town of Sevenoke, in Kent, a free school for poor men’s children, and thirteen alms houses: his testament saith, for twenty poor men and women.

Richard Whittington, mercer, three times mayor, in the year 1421 began the library of the Grey Friars in London, to the charge of four hundred pounds: his executors with his goods founded and built Whittington college, with alms houses for thirteen poor men, and divinity lectures to be read there for ever. They repaired St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in Smithfield; they bare some charges to the glazing and paving of the Guildhall; they bare half the charges of building the library there, and they built the west gate of London, of old time called Newgate, &c.

John Carpenter, town-clerk of London, in the reign of Henry V., caused with great expense to be curiously painted upon board, about the north cloister of Paule’s, a monument of Death leading all estates, with the speeches of Death, and answer of every state. This cloister was pulled down 1549. He also gave tenements to the City, for the finding and bringing up of four poor men’s children with meat, drink, apparel, learning at the schools in the universities, &c., until they be preferred, and then other in their places for ever.

Robert Chichley, grocer, mayor 1422, appointed by his testament, that on his minde day, a competent dinner should be ordained for two thousand four hundred poor men, householders of this city, and every man to have two pence in money. More, he gave one large plot of ground, thereupon to build the new parish church of St. Stephen, near unto Walbrooke.

John Rainwell, fishmonger, mayor 1427, gave tenements to discharge certain wards of London of fifteenths and other payments.

John Wells, grocer, mayor, 1433, was a great builder of the chapel or college of the Guildhall, and was there buried. He caused fresh water to be conveyed from Tyborne to the standard in West Cheape for service of the City.

William Eastfield, mercer, 1438, appointed his executors of his goods to convey sweet water from Tyborne, and to build a fair conduit by Aldermanberie church, which they performed, as also made a standard in Fleet Street by Show Lane end; they also conveyed water to Cripplegate, &c.

Stephen Browne, grocer, mayor 1439, sent into Prussia, causing corn to be brought from thence; whereby he brought down the price of wheat from three shillings the bushel to less than half that money.

Philip Malpas, one of the sheriffs 1440, gave by his testament one hundred and twenty-five pounds, to relieve poor prisoners, and every year for five years, four hundred shirts and smocks, forty pairs of sheets, and one hundred and fifty gowns of frieze, to the poor; to five hundred poor people in London six shillings and eight pence; to poor maids’ marriages one hundred marks; to highways one hundred marks; twenty marks the year to a graduate to preach; twenty pounds to preachers at the Spittle the three Easter holidays, &c.

Robert Large, mercer, mayor 1440, gave to his parish-church of St. Olave in Surrey two hundred pounds; to St. Margaret’s in Lothberie twenty-five pounds; to the poor twenty pounds; to London bridge one hundred marks; towards the vaulting over the water-course of Walbrooke two hundred marks; to poor maids’ marriages one hundred marks; to poor householders one hundred pounds, &c.

Richard Rich, mercer, one of the sheriffs, 1442, founded alms houses at Hodsdon in Hertfordshire.

Simon Eyre, draper, mayor 1346, built the Leaden hall for a common garner of corn for the use of this city, and left five thousand marks to charitable uses.

Godfrey Bollein, mayor of London, 1458, by his testament, gave liberally to the prisons, hospitals, and lazar houses, besides a thousand pounds to poor householders in London, and two hundred pounds to poor householders in Norfolke.

Richard Rawson, one of the sheriffs, 1477, gave by testament large legacies to the prisoners, hospitals, lazar houses, to other poor, to highways, to the water-conduits, besides to poor maids’ marriages three hundred and forty pounds, and his executors to build a large house in the churchyard of St. Marie Spittle, wherein the mayor and his brethren do use to sit and hear the sermons in the Easter Holidays.

Thomas Ilam, one of the sheriffs, 1480, newly built the great conduit in Cheape, of his own charges.

Edward Shaw, goldsmith, mayor 1483, caused the Cripplegate of London to be newly built of his goods, &c.

Thomas Hill, grocer, mayor 1485, caused of his goods the conduit of Grasse Street to be built.

Hugh Clopton, mercer, during his life a bachelor, mayor 1492, built the great stone-arched bridge at Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, and did many other things of great charity, as in my Summary.

Robert Fabian, alderman, and one of the sheriffs, 1494, gathered out of divers good authors, as well Latin as French, a large Chronicle of England and of France, which he published in English, to his great charges, for the honour of this city, and common utility of the whole realm.

Sir John Percivall, merchant-taylor, mayor 1498, founded a grammar-school at Macklefield in Cheshire, where he was born; he endowed the same school with sufficient lands for the finding of a priest master there, to teach freely all children thither sent, without exception.

The Lady Thomasine his wife founded the like free school, together with fair lodgings for the schoolmasters, scholars, and other, and added twenty pounds of yearly revenue for supporting the charges, at St. Mary Wike in Devonshire, where she was born.

Stephen Gennings, merchant-taylor, mayor 1509, founded a fair grammar-school at Ulfrimhampton in Staffordshire, left good lands, and also built a great part of his parish church, called St. Andrew’s Undershaft, in London.

Henry Keble, grocer, mayor 1511, in his life a great benefactor to the new building of Old Mary church, and by his testament gave a thousand pounds towards the finishing thereof; he gave to highways two hundred pounds; to poor maids’ marriages one hundred marks; to poor husbandmen in Oxford and Warwick shires one hundred and forty ploughshares, and one hundred and forty coulters of iron; and in London, to seven almsmen sixpence the week for ever.

John Collet, a citizen of London by birth and dignity, dean of Paule’s, doctor of divinity, erected and built one free school in Paule’s churchyard, 1512, for three hundred and fifty-three poor men’s children to be taught free in the same school, appointing a master, a surmaster, and a chaplain, with sufficient stipends to endure for ever, and committed the oversight thereof to the mercers in London, because himself was son to Henry Collet, mercer, mayor of London, and endowed the mercers with lands to the yearly value of one hundred and twenty pounds or better.

John Tate, brewer, then a mercer, mayor 1514, caused his brewhouse, called the Swan, near adjoining to the hospital of St. Anthonie in London, to be taken down for the enlarging of the said church, then newly built, a great part of his charge. This was a goodly foundation, with alms houses, free school, &c.

George Monox, draper, mayor 1515, re-edified the decayed parish church of Waltonstow, or Walthamstow, in Essex; he founded there a free school, and alms houses for thirteen alms people, made a causeway of timber over the marshes from Walthamstow to Lock Bridge, &c.

Sir John Milborne, draper, mayor 1522, built alms houses, fourteen in number, by the Crossed Friers church in London, there to be placed fourteen poor people; and left to the Drapers certain messuages, tenements, and garden plots, in the parish of St. Olave in Hart Street, for the performance of stipends to the said alms people, and other uses.

Robert Thorne, merchant-taylor, deceased a bachelor in the year 1532, gave by his testament to charitable actions more than four thousand four hundred and forty pounds, and legacies to his poor kindred more than five thousand one hundred and forty-two pounds, besides his debts forgiven, &c.

Sir John Allen, mercer, mayor of London, and of council to King Henry VIII., deceased 1544, buried in St. Thomas of Acres in a fair chapel by him built. He gave to the city of London a rich collar of gold to be worn by the mayor, which was first worn by Sir W. Laxton. He gave five hundred marks to be a stock for sea-coal; his lands purchased of the king, the rent thereof to be distributed to the poor in the wards of London for ever. He gave besides to the prisons, hospitals, lazarhouses, and all other poor in the city, or two miles without, very liberally, and long to be recited.

Sir William Laxton, grocer, mayor 1545, founded a fair free school at Owndale in Northamptonshire, with six alms houses for the poor.

Sir John Gresham, mercer, mayor 1548, founded a free school at Holt, a market-town in Norfolk.

Sir Rowland Hill, mercer, mayor 1550, caused to be made divers causeways both for horse and man; he made four bridges, two of stone, containing eighteen arches in them both; he built one notable free school at Drayton in Shropshire; he gave to Christ’s Hospital in London five hundred pounds, &c.

Sir Andrew Jud, skinner, mayor 1551, erected one notable free school at Tunbridge in Kent, and alms houses nigh St. Helen’s Church in London, and left to the Skinners lands to the value of sixty pounds three shillings and eight pence the year; for the which they be bound to pay twenty pounds to the schoolmaster, eight pounds to the usher, yearly, for ever, and four shillings the week to the six alms people, and twenty-five shillings and fourpence the year in coals for ever.

Sir Thomas White, merchant-taylor, mayor 1554, founded St. John’s college, Oxford, and gave great sums of money to divers towns in England for relief of the poor, as in my Summary.

Edward Hall, gentleman, of Gray’s Inn, a citizen by birth and office, as common serjeant of London, and one of the judges in the Sheriffs’ court; he wrote and published a famous and eloquent chronicle entitled, The Uniting of the Two Noble Families, Lancaster and Yorke.

Richard Hills, merchant-taylor, 1560, gave five hundred pounds towards the purchase of a house called the manor of the Rose, wherein the merchant-taylors founded their free school in London; he also gave to the said merchant-taylors one plot of ground, with certain small cottages on the Tower hill, where he built fair alms houses for fourteen sole women.

About the same time William Lambert, Esq., born in London, a justice of the peace in Kent, founded a college for the poor, which he named of Queen Elizabeth, in East Greenwich.

William Harper, merchant-taylor, mayor 1562, founded a free school in the town of Bedford, where he was born, and also buried.

Sir Thomas Gresham, mercer, 1566, built the Royal Exchange in London, and by his testament left his dwelling house in Bishopsgate Street to be a place for readings, allowing large stipends to the readers, and certain alms houses for the poor.

William Patten, gentleman, a citizen by birth, a customer of London outward, justice of peace in Middlesex, the parish church of Stokenewenton being ruinous, he repaired, or rather new built.

Sir Thomas Row, merchant-taylor, mayor 1568, gave to the merchant-taylors lands or tenements, out of them to be given to ten poor men, clothworkers, carpenters, tilers, plasterers, and armourers, forty pounds yearly, namely, four pounds to each; also one hundred pounds to be lent to eight poor men; besides he enclosed with a wall of brick nigh one acre of ground, pertaining to the hospital of Bethlem, to be a burial for the dead.

Ambrose Nicholas, salter, mayor 1576, founded twelve alms houses in Monke’s well Street, near unto Creple’s gate, wherein he placed twelve poor people, having each of them sevenpence the week, and once every year five sacks of coals, and one quarter of a hundred faggots, all of his gift for ever.

William Lambe, gentleman and cloth worker, in the year 1577, built a water-conduit at Oldborne cross to his charges of fifteen hundred pounds, and did many other charitable acts, as in my Summary.

Sir T. Offley, merchant-taylor, mayor, deceased 1580, appointed by his testament the one half of all his goods, and two hundred pounds deducted out of the other half given to his son Henry, to be given and bestowed in deeds of charity by his executors, according to his confidence and trust in them.

John Haydon, sheriff 1583, gave large legacies, more than three thousand pounds, for the relief of the poor, as in my Summary.

Barnard Randolph, common serjeant of London 1583, gave and delivered with his own hand, nine hundred pounds towards the building of water-conduits, which was performed. More, by testament he gave one thousand pounds to be employed in charitable actions; but that money being in hold fast hands, I have not heard how it was bestowed, more than of other good men’s testaments—to be performed.

Sir Wolston Dixie, skinner, mayor 1586, founded a free school at Bosworth, and endowed it with twenty pounds land by year.

Richard May, merchant-taylor, gave three hundred pounds toward the new building of Blackwell hall in London, a market place for woollen cloths.

John Fuller, Esq., one of the judges in the sheriffs’ court of London, by his testament, dated 1592, appointed his wife, her heirs and assigns after his decease, to erect one alms house in the parish of Stikoneth,46 for twelve poor single men, aged fifty years or upwards, and one other alms house in Shoreditch, for twelve poor aged widow women of like age, she to endow them with one hundred pounds the year, to wit, fifty pounds to each for ever, out of his lands in Lincolne shire, assured ever unto certain fiefs in trust, by a deed of feoffment. Item: more, he gave his messuages, lands, and tenements, lying in the parishes of St. Benet and St. Peter, by Powle’s wharf in London, to feoffees in trust, yearly for ever, to disburse all the issues and profits of the said lands and tenements, to the relieving and discharge of poor prisoners in the Hole, or two penny wards in the two compters in London, in equal portions to each compter, so that the prisoners exceed not the sum of twenty-six shillings and eight pence for every one prisoner at any one time.

Thus much for famous citizens have I noted their charitable actions, for the most part done by them in their lifetime. The residue left in trust to their executors, I have known some of them hardly (or never) performed; wherefore I wish men to make their own hands their executors, and their eyes their overseers, not forgetting the old proverb:—

One worthy citizen merchant-taylor, having many years considered this proverb foregoing, hath therefore established to twelve poor aged men, merchant-taylors, six pounds two shillings to each yearly for ever. He hath also given them gowns of good broad cloth, lined thoroughly with bays, and are to receive every three years’ end the like new gowns for ever.

And now of some women, citizens’ wives, deserving memory, for example to posterity shall be noted.

Dame Agnes Foster, widow, sometime wife to Stephen Foster, fishmonger, mayor 1455, having enlarged the prison of Ludgate in 1463, procured in a common council of this city, certain articles to be established for the ease, comfort, and relief of poor prisoners there, as in the chapter of gates I have set down.

Avice Gibson, wife unto Nicholas Gibson, grocer, one of the sheriffs 1539, by license of her husband, founded a free school at Radclyffe, near unto London, appointing to the same, for the instruction of sixty poor men’s children, a schoolmaster and usher with fifty pounds; she also built alms houses for fourteen poor aged persons, each of them to receive quarterly six shillings and eight pence the piece for ever; the government of which free school and alms houses she left in confidence to the Coopers in London.

Margaret Danne, widow to William Danne, ironmonger, one of the sheriffs of London, gave by her testament to the ironmongers, two thousand pounds, to be lent to young men of that company, paying after the rate of five pounds in the year for every hundred; which one hundred pounds so rising yearly to be employed on charitable actions as she then appointed, but not performed in more than thirty, years after.

Dame Mary Ramsey, wife to Sir Thomas Ramsey, mayor about the year 1577, being seised of lands in fee simple of her inheritance to the yearly value of two hundred and forty-three pounds, by his consent gave the same to Christ’s Hospital in London towards the relief of poor Children there.”

---

APPENDIX XII

The following is a list, by no means complete, of the fraternities of London:—

---

INDEX

lass="pginternal">204

Baptista, Elizabeth, 372

Barber, Bishop, 332

Bardolph, Agnes, Lady, 412

Barking, Abbess of, 320

Barn, 33

Barnaby, William, 377, 411

Barnes, John, 415

Baroncin, Sir, 204

Barons, the, 77;

of the City, 73, 93;

and Longchamp, 15

Barrett, Mr., of Essex, 412;

John, 412

Bartholomew of the Castle, 349

Basing, 32, 43;

Hugh de, 105;

Robert de, 28;

Thomas de, 27, 29

Baskets, Keeper of, 145

Basset, Lord, 327

Bat, Gerard, 44;

Nicholas, 44

Bath, 32, 213

Battencurt, Luke de, 50

Battle, Ordeal by, 193-200;

famous cases of, 196-200

Battles—Evesham, 49, 50;

Lewes, 49;

Mortimer’s Cross, 292;

Wakefield, 292

Beadles, Robert, 340

Beaufort, Cardinal, 290, 300;

Henry, Bishop of Winchester, 299;

Margaret, Countess of Richmond, 292, 295

Beaulieu, Sanctuary of, 202

Beaumont, John, 372;

Lady, 23

Bec, Richard, 412

Beck, Anthony, 368

Becket, Agnes, 263;

Gilbert, 263, 266;

Thomas, 32, 263, 264, 414

Beckington, Bishop, 339

Bede, 413;

Mary, 333

Bedel, the, 87, 89

Bedford, Isabel, Countess of, 350

Bedlam, 325, 29

Bullesden, Thomas, 256

Bunge, Reginald de, 44

Buntynford, 275

Burford, John de, 99

Burgh, Hubert de, 277, 357

Burial, order of, 223-224

Burnham, Alardus de, 313

Bursar, the, 145

Burstall, William de, 370, 372

Burston, Manor of, 318

Bury, Adam de, 134

Butcher, 51

Butcher’s Hall Lane, 352

Butler, the King’s, 90

Butler, Sir James, 338;

Margaret, 333

Bykemore, Manor of, 364

Cade, Jack, 206

Caen, 12

CÆsar, Sir Julius, 338

Cagots, the, 371

Calendar of the Ecclesiastical Year, 164-169

Calendar of Letters, the, 7

Calendar of Wills, Sharpe’s, 71, 83, 84, 147, 148, 170, 171, 211, 248, 249, 284, 318, 327, 330, 350, 364, 393

Calendarium CamerÆ, London, 6

Callere, Robert le, 99

Calley, William, 345

Camberwell, Surrey, 286

Cambridge, Guild of, 108, 109;

House of the Order of Penitence at, 368

Camden Society, publications of the, 7

Camomile Street, 321, 412

Campeggio, Cardinal, 332, 356

Candia, 272

Candlewick Street, 23

Canterbury, 67, 348;

Archbishop of, 243, 363;

House of Order of Penitence at, 368;

Pilgrimages, 182, 204, 217, 220, 228, 250, 266, 300, 358, 411, 415;

St. Peter, 420;

St. Peter, Cornhill, 26, 55, 72, 167, 171;

St. Peter’s, Austin Friars, 358;

St. Peter-le-Poor, 300, 346;

St. Peter’s, Westminster, 130;

St. Saviour’s, restoration of, 304-308;

St. Saviour of Bermondsey, 290;

St. Sepulchre’s, 192, 297;

St. Stephen, Walbrooke, 416;

St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, 374;

St. Swithin, 23, 415;

St. Thomas of Acon, 77, 167, 266, 417;

St. Thomas Apostle, 415;

Stepney, 334;

Stokenewenton, 418;

Tottenham, 242;

Walthamstow, Essex, 417;

Westminster Abbey, 132, 176, 201, 300, 358;

Weston, 275;

Whitefriars, 302, 361;

Willesden, 189

Church furniture, 159-163

Churchman, John, 415

Cicely, Duchess of York, 148

Ciprian, Henry, Canon of Waltham, 204

Citizens’ rights of election, 10

City, the, and Barons’ War, 49;

and the Commune, 11, 15, 20;

condition, 56, 57;

Edward and the, 57;

election to offices, 70;

extension and expansion of, 21;

factions, 36;

and farm of Middlesex, 33;

and fines, 104;

freedom of, 409

Cricket, Idonea, 376

Criminal cases, methods of hearing, 80

Cripplegate, 26, 170, 234, 416;

hermit of, 171

Crome, 300

Cromwell, 316;

Thomas, 273, 372, 414

Crosby House, 316

Crown, Dr., 189

Crown Street, 311

Cruce, William de S., 364

Crucifixion, case of, 138

Crux parva, 159

Cubitt, Mr., 335

Cunningham, 97, 227

Curfew, 57, 93, 238

Custodes, 51, 58

Customs, collectors, 60

Cutting, William, 340

Cyprus, 272, 276, 278

Dacre, Lord, son of, 209

Dale, Robert, 327

Damanye, Robert, 408, 409

Danegeld, 9, 97, 101

Danne, Margaret, 419;

William, 419

Darcy, Sir Arthur, 364

Dartmouth, Lord, 332, 333

Datheworth, 275

Dauncey, 300;

William, 297

Death inflicted for religious reasons, 138

Debt, pleas relating to, 70

Debtors, 10

Delpit, M. Jules, 6, 7

De Monarchia, 194

Denham, William de, 27

Denton, Robert de, 380

Deodand, the custom of, 91

De Officiis, 194

Depeditch, 325

Despenser, Hugh le, 356

De Veres, 32

Devizes, Richard of, 16

Devon, Countess of, 350

“Dialogue de Scaccario,” 92

Gardiner, Stephen, 300;

funeral of, 301, 302

Gates, 94;

Mooregate, 417;

Newgate, 417

Gatesbey, John de, 286

Gaunt, John of, 59, 210

Gayspur Lane, London Wall, 248

Gayton, William de, 248

Gemyny, Thomas, 408, 409

Gennings, Stephen, 414

Gentleman’s Magazine, 285, 369

Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, 15

Geoffrey of Mandeville, 8

Gernynghams, Mr., 409

Ghent, 35

Gibson, Avice, 417;

Nicholas, 417

Gifford, Hugh, 414;

William, 297

Gilbert, Bishop of London, 374

Gilbert the Universal, 257

Giraldus Cambrensis, 16

Girard, 234

Gisors, John de, 99, 350

Glastonbury, 182;

Abbot of, 228

Glinton, Geoffrey de, 241

Gloucester, Duke of, 290, 414;

Earl of, 50, 54, 288, 349;

Humphrey, Duke of, 291;

Robert, Earl of, 286

Godchep, Hamond, 99

Godfrey, Lord, 326

Godwin, Earl, 191

Godwyn, 374

Goldsmith, 51, 274

Goldwell, Alicia, 286

Gomshalf, Manor of, 364

Gonfala, fraternity of the, at Rome, 216

Gore, Manor of, 364

Gospatric, 103

Gospeller, 267

Gothic Architecture, Mr. Bloxam’s, 404

Gower, 182, 299;

John, 300

Gozo, 272

Granary, Keeper of the, 145

Grapefig, 260

Holbeach, Guild of, 111

Holbech, Sir Geoffrey de, 248;

Ralph de, 248

Holborn, 32, 33, 85, 348, 354

Holinshed, 38, 40, 136, 138, 198

Holland, Edward, Earl of Kent, 299;

John, Duke of Exeter, 337, 340

Holme, Roger, 380

Holy Rood of Bermondsey, shrine of, 187

Hooper, Bishop, 300

Horne, Andrew, 4, 6;

John, 27

Horse, John de, 408

Hospitaller, the, 145

Hospitals, 229;

bequests to, 221;

Lazar Houses, list of, 386, 387;

for lepers, 221;

list of, in city and suburbs, 385;

Bethlehem, 47, 221, 325, 380, 418, 421;

Burton Lazars, 311;

Charing Cross, 380, 381;

Chelsea, 230;

Christ’s, 352, 417, 419;

Denton’s, 380;

Domus Dei, 322, 414;

Elsing Spittle, 415;

Greenwich, 230;

Guy’s, 310;

Le Loke of Southwark, 221;

Magdalen’s, Kingston-on-Thames, 415;

Papey, the, 411-412;

Pontefract, 415;

St. Anthony’s, 268, 269;

St. Bartholomew’s, 192, 221, 250-253, 256, 257, 262, 352, 415;

St. Giles’, by Oldborne, 247, 264, 346

London Stone, 23

London Wall, 250, 321

Long Acre, 209

Longbeard, William, 36, 40, 52, 56, 70

Longchamp, Osbert de, 104

Longchamp, William, 12, 13, 14;

and the Barons, 15;

deposed, 16

Losely Hall, Guildford, 407

Losely MSS., 407

Lot, 9

“Love days,” 135

Lovekyn, John, 360

Lovell, Philip, 106;

Sir Thomas, 286

Lucchesio, Saint, 366

Lucy, Constance, 333

Ludgate, 297;

Hill, 354;

Nicholas de, 117

Ludlow, Guild of, 111

Lullay, 205

Lully, Raymond, 341

Lumley, Messrs., 361

Lychnoscopes, 172

Lydgate, John, 165

Lynn, Guild of, 111

Lynn, House of Order of Penitence at, 368

Lyons, William de, 369

Lysons, 339

Mackyn, 301

Madox, 102, 198;

Thomas, 105

Magnus Liber de Charti et Libertatibus Civitatis, 6

Maison Dieu at Dover, the, 331

Maitland, 31, 240, 309

Malcolm, 316

Mallet, Frances, 338

Malpas, Philip, 205, 323, 418

Malta, 272

Mandeville, Geoffrey de, 103, 242

Manny, Sir Walter, 245, 246

Manorial Rights, 24

Manors, 24;

ecclesiastical, 26;

the City, Mysteries, 89

Naples, 272

Napoleon, 272

Nasshe, Thomas, 409

Navy House, 343

Navy Office, Crutched Friars, 343

Nevill, Hugh de, 103;

William, 378

Neville, Anne, 238

New Forest, the, 199

Newcourt, 263, 266, 267, 327, 363, 368, 370

Newgate, 21, 75, 352;

Gaol, 80;

Street, 352

Newington, 32

Newland, Abraham, 304

Newton, 239;

Sir Henry, 338;

Sir Isaac, 333

Nicholas, 363, 408, 409

Nicholas, Ambrose, 420

Norfolk, Countess of, 349;

Duke of, 284;

Elizabeth, Duchess of, 331;

Margaret, Duchess of, 350

Norman, 241

Normandy, 12

Northampton House, 381

Northampton, John of, 27, 28, 32, 58, 60, 86, 89

Northburgh, Michael de, 246

Northumberland, Eleanor, Duchess of, 350

Northumberland House, 381

Norton, 33

Nottingham, Earl of, 62

Norwich, Guild of, 111;

House of Order of Penitence at, 368

Nosso, 278

Notitia Monastica, 228, 243

Novices, Master of the, 145

Nudigate, Sibilla, 286

Nunne, Adam, 412

Nunneries—Clerkenwell, 284-285;

Kilburn, 374-376;

St. Clare, 330-333;

St. Helen’s, rules of, 313-321;

ass="indx">Pulteneye, John de, 85

Punishment, Pilgrimage of, 181

Punishments, 58, 84, 116, 117;

guild, 120

Purdy, 308

Pyrton, 275

Quasley, Hants, 337

Queenbury, Hertfordshire, Manor of, 337

Queenhithe, 57, 336

Queen’s Gold, 70, 104

Rabelais, 150, 213

Radwell, 190

Rahere, 250, 253;

trial of, 254

Rainwell, John, 416

Ramsey, Sir Thomas, 419;

Dame Mary, 419

Randolph, Barnard, 418

Rawson, Isabel, 323;

Richard, 323, 416

Ray Street, 190

Reading, 15

Rebellion, Jack Straw’s, 154

Recordatorium, 6

Recorder, the, 75, 80, 89

Records, preservation of, 228

Reeve of the Borough, the, 42

Refectorer, the, 145

Refham, Richer de, 99

Reliefs, 105

Religion, decay of respect for, 148;

doctrine of, 218;

history of, in London, 132, 133

Religious, scandalous lives of the, 137

Religious Houses, 130, 140;

dissolution of, 147;

as hospitals, 229;

list of, 406;

offices in, 144-145;

as schools of learning, 229;

and Wars of Roses, 142;

Augustines of Hedington, 185;

Austin Friars, 344-347;

Barking College, 380;

Bermondsey Abbey, 288-296;

Blackfriars Priory, 407-410;

Bow, 380;

Charing Cross Hospital, 380;

Charter House, 22, 67, 284

Row, Sir Thomas, 418

Royston, 175

Rugmere (St. Giles), 32

Rule, the, 145

Rupibus, Peter de, 264, 298, 309

Russenden, 275

RutupiÆ, 213

Sabernes, William, 342

Sackville, Isabella, daughter of Sir Richard, 284

Sacrist, the, 145

Saddler, Sir Ralph, 377

St. Agatha, 169

St. Albans, 140, 288

St. Anne, 169, 256

St. Anthony, 169

St. Anthony’s, bequests to, 268

St. Anthony in Vienne, House of, 268

St. Appolus, 168

St. Asaph, Bishop of, 295

St. Clare, 329

St. Clement’s, 26 note

St. Edmund’s Bury, 182

St. Erkenwald, in St. Paul’s, shrine of, 188

St. George’s, Windsor, 269

St. Giles’ Churchyard, Cripplegate, 368

St. Helen’s Close, 319

St. Iago of Compostella, shrine of, 184

St. James’s Place, 242

St. Laurence Jewry, 170

St. Luke, Brethren of, at Antwerp, 216

St. Mary Axe, 377

St. Nicholas Shambles, 236

St. Paul’s, Dean and Chapter of, 374

St. Paul’s Cathedral, visitation of churches belonging to, in 1297 and 1458, 159. See Churches

St. Paul’s Eccles. Soc. vol. i., 345

St. Peter’s in Northampton, Rectory of, 337

St. Peter’s Monastery, 291

St. Pol, Mary de, 171

St. Thomas À Becket, 37, 67, 77, 266, 309;

shrine of, 187

St. Vedast, Foster Lane, 236

Sampson, Elizabeth, 189

Sanctuary, 276;

abuses of, 205;

Bulls relative to, 212;

case of Hawke, 210;

liberties of, 358;

procedure in the claim of, 45, 199

Tottenhall, 32

Tottenham Court Road, 311

Tower, Canonbury, Islington, 256

Tower of London, 15, 40, 50, 57, 59, 62, 93, 142, 171, 205, 336, 385

Tower Hill, 32, 363, 418

Trade of London, 50;

and Fraternities, 382;

Guilds, 58;

Guilds, as Players, 216;

list of trades, 119;

regulation of, 54, 93, 113;

unions, the first, 49, 54, 64

Trade, History of, 97

Trapps, Robert, 296

Travers, John, 42, 348

Treason, charge of, 61, 62

Treasure troves, 96

Treasury, the Royal, contributions of London to, 102;

robbery of, 142

Trente, William, 90, 99

Tresilian, Sir Robert, 210;

Lord Chief Justice, 62

Trials, 48, 360;

Brembre’s, 62;

by ordeal, 191;

under Marian persecution, 300;

Queen Catherine’s divorce, 356;

Rahere’s, 254;

of the Templars, 280

Tripoli, 276

Tudor, Owen, 290, 291, 292

Tully, 194

Turner, Dr., 343;

Maryan, 408, 409

Twyford, 32

Tyborne, 34, 311, 416

Tyler, Wat, 204, 316, 320, 368, 373, 374

Willesden, 32

William, Bishop of London, 322, 376;

of Langland, 182;

of Ypres, 243

William Rufus, 289

Williams, John, 284;

Sir John, 249;

Lord, of Thane, 249

Willibald, 179

Wills, The Fifty Earliest English, 148

Wills, enrolled in Court of Hustings, 84;

and bequests, 148;

from Doctors’ Commons, 148;

William de Elsing’s, 248

Wilson, Thomas, 338

Wimbledon, Richard, 42

Winchelsey, Robert, Archbishop of Canterbury, 413

Winchester, 20, 182, 198, 301;

Bishop of, 299-309;

House, 346;

Marquis of, 346

Wincock, 33

Windsor, 15, 47

Wines, 96

Winter, Nicholas de, 96

Winton, Nicholas de, 27

Witches, trial of, 191

Witham, in Bath, 246

Withers, Frederick John, 261;

Henry Thomas, 261

Wodestok, 44, 46

Wolsey, Cardinal, 136, 211, 331, 332, 356

Women, 92

Woodstock, Thomas of, 60, 62

Wood Street, 330

Woodville, Elizabeth, 210, 221, 293, 294

Wool Wharf, Tower Ward, 415

Worcester, John, Earl of, 380

Worcester, 189;

House of Order of Penitence at, 368;

Guilds, 111

Wren, Sir Christopher, 307

Wriothesley, Sir Thomas, 346

Wunibald, R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.

FOOTNOTES:

1 “In France the Communal Constitution was during this period encouraged, although not very heartily, by Lewis the Sixth, who saw in it one means of fettering the action of the barons and bishops and securing to himself the support of a strong portion of his people.” (Stubbs.)

2 Spelt anciently Mortaigne, but not to be confused with the present French town of Mortagne.—Ed.

3 J.H. Round, Commune of London.

4 For the oath of the Mayor, see p. 76.

5 It is interesting to note the places mentioned in this document. They are the Old Temple (in Holborn, at the N.E. corner of Chancery Lane); Jews’ Street, i.e. the old Jewry; St. Olave’s Jewry; Market Street (Cheapside); Fish Street; St. Margaret’s Church; St. Peter’s, Cornhill; Chepe; the Flete; Aldermanberie; St. Clement’s; and St. Paul’s.

The measurements of the land show that it was divided up for the houses and their gardens very much as suburban land is now parcelled out; the lots are generally 30 feet wide by 100 feet long, which is about the space now occupied by a small suburban house. The rent of such a piece of ground was about 2s.

6 See also Appendices I. and II.

7 The Manor had, in the interval, been sold to William de Farndon.

8 Or Vyel.

9 FitzThedmar (Riley’s edit.), p. 59.

10 See illustration, p. 199, London in the Time of the Tudors.

11 This may mean the Aldermen only, or it may mean all tenants in capite, or it may mean that the Mayor and Aldermen were to be responsible for the election.

12 The Seal of Newgate.

13 Frank-almoigne, or free alms. A tenure by a spiritual corporation, by spiritual service only.—Ed.

14 T. Madox, History of the Exchequer.

15 Deep plates or porringers for soup.—Ed.

16 History and Development of Gilds, 1870, pp. 98-100.

17 Canterbury Tales. Notes, p. 118.

18 History of England, vol. ii. p. 433.

19 I am indebted for this passage, and for the translation, to my friend Mr. Philip Wicksteed.

20 Allowances of meat, drink, and clothing which the heirs of founders could claim as a right.—Ed.

21 By William Gregory.

22 ArchÆological Journal.

23 Endorsed.

24 Read over.

25 Read over.

26 Blank here in the MS.

27 Viz.

28 Read tenement.

29 Read with.

30 Read of.

31 50.

32 This is the occupation, not the surname.

33 I.e. at the two half years (ad duos Anni divisiones).

34 ? Bridge.

35 101.

36 NÕ [nota] there is w^tholden from the same one lofts by the capper standing ou [over] the nether pte of this tenemente.

37 50.

38 Read over.

39 NÕ [nota] she hathe payd to Bowcher a q^rt^rs rente dewe at mydsom 1552 and she muste have a chimny by couenute.

40 Read the east.

41 Endorsement.

42 ... the black [frya]rs besides ludgate in the Citie of London.

43 I.e. Lord Cobham.

44 Memord the lord warden clameth the seide hall plor and Cutchyn.

45 Read 50.

46 Stepney.

Genealogical Tables

• 1. Robert, Comte d’Artois = Maude of Brabant
• 11. Blanche b. 1250, d. 1300. = Henri le Gros,
• King of Navarre,
• m. 1270, d. 1274.
• 111. Jeanne = Philippe le Bel.
• = Edmund, Earl of Lancaster = Adeline
• King of Sicily, b. 1245,
• m. 1274, d. 1296.
• 2nd son of Henry III., called Crouchback.
• 112. Thomas, E. of Lancaster
• beheaded 1322.
• 113. Henry
• 114. John
• 115. Daughter

---

• 1. Lawrence Washington = Margaret Butler.
• of Sulgrave, d. 1616.
• 11. Sir William Washington = Anne Villiers.
• d. 1643.
• 111. Elizabeth = William Legge.
• 1111. The Earls of Dartmouth.
• 12. Laurence Washington = Amphilis.
• 121. John = Ann Pope.
• 1211. Laurence = Mildred Warner.
• 12111. Augustine = Mary Bede.
• 121111. George Washington.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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