The Old Church—Its origin—The new St. Luke’s—Old dedication revived—Henry VIII.’s Marriage to Jane Seymour in the Lawrence Chapel—Princess Elizabeth—The squint and lepers—The plague at Chelsea—The Hungerford memorial—The Bray tomb—Anecdotes of the Rev. R. H. Davies’ incumbency.

THE Old Church is first mentioned as the Parish Church of Chelsea in 1290, when the Pope granted “relaxation” to penitents visiting it on All Saints’ Day. It was then, as now, dedicated to All Saints, though for 300 years in between it has been known as St. Luke’s (like the modern Parish Church in Sydney Street). The late Rev. R. H. Davies, for nearly sixty years known and loved at the Old Church, has suggested that the nucleus of the building may have been the Lawrence Chapel, belonging as library and chapel to the Manor House; it is obviously the oldest part of the church, and the chancel and nave have been later added, as the growth of the parish demanded more church room. Many distinct enlargements are recorded, and that of 1670 almost doubled its size and gave it the present square tower.

At that date our riverside village was a fashionable country place. Mr. Pepys writes of taking boat up to Chelsea of a Sunday to see the pretty young ladies who flocked to the church and made very sweet singing. But presently the tide of fashion ebbed away from the Thames side, and building and population congregated further north: in 1824 St. Luke’s, Sydney Street, was consecrated as the Parish Church, and the mother by the river became the daughter of the new building.

In 1910, after the latest and most sympathetic of restorations, the dedication to All Saints was revived; I always regret that the Saxon form, All Hallows’ found in some old documents, was not chosen, to denote that a church—if not this actual building—existed here from before Norman times.

Let us begin our survey at the Lawrence Chapel, on the north side. Here, tradition says, Henry VIII. was married to Jane Seymour, in haste and secrecy to secure the bride’s position, three days after the execution of Anne Boleyn. The marriage was openly repeated with great ceremony ten days later: Jane Seymour is said to have been a damsel who loved delicate eating, and to have been wooed by Henry with many presents of game and venison from the King’s Larder, a house for the preparation of royal dainties on the riverside now demolished.

The altar, before which they were married, stood under the east window of the Lawrence Chapel, now occupied by the tomb of Sir John Lawrence; it is good to remember that of this rather questionable marriage was born Edward VI., who gave us our prayer book.

Under the little window in the north wall (filled lately with quite unnecessary modern glass), is the seat assigned by tradition to Elizabeth, when, as a somewhat neglected Princess, she lived with her step-mother, “Katheryn the Queene,” at Chelsea Place.

Some of the original oak pews remain in the Lawrence Chapel, and a panel with a mitre on it recalls the residence of the Bishops of Winchester in Chelsea; some queer little benches for two persons, very narrow and high-backed, tell of a time and a rule when lounging in church was unknown!

The north wall is dated 1350, and the fact that its roofing differs entirely from that of the chancel and other chapels, supports the suggestion that it had been the Manor library.

The Lawrence monuments are interesting. Thomas Lawrence, the banker and goldsmith of Lombards’ Row, appears with all his Elizabethan family about him. His epitaph is often quoted:

Thus Thomas Lawrence spekes to Tymes ensuing:
That Death is sure, and Tyme is past renuing!

He was the father of Mrs. Sara Colvile, whose rising figure blocks a beautifully carved window—worth seeing from the vestry side—and of Sir John Lawrence, whose epitaph begins with the trenchant lines:

When bad men dy, and turn to their last Sleepe,
What Stir, the Poets and Ingravers keepe!

The Italian triumphal arch, for which the chancel arch was cut, and the symmetry of the church for ever dislocated, is to the memory of one Richard Gervaise, 1563, son of a mercer and sheriff of London, who may have been a business partner or relative of the Lawrences; the brasses of Sir Henry and Lady Christina Waver, 1460, have been stolen from the pavement, where many other Lawrence names are recorded.

The Lawrence Chapel subsequently became the property of the Rawlings family, whose crest appears on several of the pew doors, and in 1894 the Rev. R. H. Davies succeeded in securing it for the church.

The squint, or hagioscope, shows a glimpse of the altar in the chancel, and tradition has it that lepers used to assemble at the little north door (now leading into the new vestry) or at the north windows to witness the elevation of the Host, without contaminating the congregation; for lepers, I hope we may read, sufferers from ague and marsh-fever, which was a prevailing scourge of the low lands about the river.

By the by, it is outside the north wall that the plague victims were buried in a long grave, when the plague visited Chelsea in 1626, and Lady Danvers, mother of George Herbert, nursed her stricken neighbours so bravely. The Chelsea plague-fosse has never been disturbed. A provincial plague-pit known to me was opened in the course of new road-making a few years ago, and four labourers died of a strange, malignant fever. Whether this was the result of coincidence, or of superstitious fear, or of real infection, I cannot say, but we do well, I think, to leave our Chelsea plague-pit unmeddled with!

The chancel of the Old Church was built in the thirteenth century, and the nave added much later: the magnificent roof of oak arched beams, like the ribs of a ship, was discovered under the plaster in 1910. The altar, a fine Jacobean table, and the enclosing rails are of Charles I.’s time, when Archbishop Laud decreed that rails should encircle the altar; the east window put in, in 1857, to lessen the glare of light at morning service is fairly harmless, and harmonises with the shadowy church better than more brilliant glass would do. The very beautiful cross and candlesticks were given in 1910, in memory of Charles Kelly, Esq.

The aumbry, now used as a credence table, was discovered plastered over in 1855; it was originally intended for a safe, in which the church plate could be kept, and the bar and hinge settings can be traced.

To the left of the altar is the Hungerford Memorial slab. Thomas Hungerford, a knight of Wiltshire, married a Chelsea heiress, Drusilla Maidenhead, daughter of Lord Sandys. Hungerford served under four sovereigns; he was present at the “wining of Bologne,” as he calls the Siege of Boulogne in Henry VIII.’s reign, and died “at the adge of seventy yeres.” He was obviously a prophet of reformed spelling!

The Bray tomb, now crammed under the chancel wall to clear the approach to the altar, is the oldest of our monuments. Its brasses have been torn away and its carving obscured by plaster. The Brays were Lords of the Manor previous to the Lawrences, and probably the Lawrence Chapel was originally their property. This tomb commemorates four generations of Brays, the last being Sir John Bray, 1557, the order of whose funeral has been preserved at the College of Arms, and has been reproduced in modern pageantry. Lately the Bray family, residing in Surrey, have restored this ancestral tomb. Sir Reginald Bray, of this family, was the architect of Henry VII. Chapel at Westminster.

A tiny door in the wall used to lead to the old vestry. Here Mr, Davies, for so many years incumbent of the Old Church, spent much of his time, which was always at the service of inquiring visitors. He had many excellent stories to tell of his adventures in the vestry. Once he was “held up” there for many hours by a bogus photographer who, pretending to take pictures of the church, plugged up the vestry door and broke open the alms boxes. The incumbent sat quietly reading and writing, secure in the knowledge that he had cleared the boxes that morning, until he was presently retrieved by his family, who supposed that he had forgotten the dinner-hour! Had the thief known where to look, the real parish funds were at the moment in the vestry itself.

Another time Mr. Davies showed a pair of visitors round the church and was about to receive a small tip for his trouble, when he hastened to explain that he was the parson, not the caretaker, and was delighted to have been available as guide. A sovereign was substituted for the intended gratuity, which he gratefully accepted for the poor of his parish. Later, after the visitors had left, one of them came hurrying back and explained that they had inadvertently run short of money for a return journey. Might they borrow back the sovereign, which should be posted to Mr. Davies in the course of a few hours? Of course the money was relinquished—and never heard of again!

Mr. Davies himself told me these anecdotes, as delightfully as he always told a story; they seem to have become part of the history of the church he so dearly loved. A third—the appearance of Sir Thomas More’s ghost—belongs to the next chapter, with other More gossip.

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