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.

[Illustration: PLAN OF HOLY TRINITY PRIORY (Ground Floor Story).

PLAN OF HOLY TRINITY PRIORY (Second Floor Story).

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.

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 magnâ pestilentiâ, consecratum fuit hoc
 cœmiterium 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.

[Illustration: THE CHARTER HOUSE

From the Grangerised edition of Brayley’s _London and Middlesex_ in
Guildhall Library.]

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_.)

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.

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.

[Illustration: CONJECTURAL RESTORATION OF THE BUILDINGS OF THE PRIORY
CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT AS EXISTING IN PRIOR BOLTON’S TIME
(ABOUT A.D. 1530)]

[Illustration: PART OF THE CHOIR

_With the REMAINS of the SOUTH TRANSEPT of the CHURCH of S^t.
BARTHOLOMEW the Great_.

IN WEST SMITHFIELD

London. _Published 25 March 1821 by Robert Wilkinson, 125 Fenchurch
Street._]

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.

[Illustration: TOMB OF PRIOR RAHERE

In the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great.]

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.

[Illustration: THE GATE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S PRIORY

From the Grangerised edition of Brayley’s _London and Middlesex_ in
Guildhall Library.]

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 Citizen_[21] 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.”

[Illustration: ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE LESS

From the Grangerised edition of Brayley’s _London and Middlesex_ in the
Guildhall Library.]

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.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT]

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.

[Illustration: EASTERN CLOISTER OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S PRIORY

From the Grangerised edition of Brayley’s _London and Middlesex_ in
Guildhall Library.]

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.”

CHAPTER VII

ST. THOMAS OF ACON

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.

[Illustration: SEAL OF THE HOSPITAL OF ST. THOMAS OF ACON

From John Watney’s _Some Account of the Hospital of St. Thomas of
Acon_.]

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 Cœur 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.

[Illustration: BECKET RECEIVING A LETTER FROM HENRY II. CONSTITUTING
HIM CHANCELLOR.

CONSECRATION OF BECKET TO SEE OF CANTERBURY.

BECKET APPROACHING THE KING WITH DISAPPROBATION.]

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.

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.”

CHAPTER IX

THE PRIORY OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM

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.

[Illustration: THE PRIORY OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM, LONDON

_Londina Illustrata_, vol. i.]

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.”

[Illustration: CRYPT OF ST. JOHN’S CHURCH, CLERKENWELL]

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.

[Illustration: “THE TEMPLARS”: AN ANCIENT HOUSE AT HACKNEY

Drawn and engraved by S. Rawle.]

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.

[Illustration: KNIGHT TEMPLAR]

[Illustration: KNIGHT TEMPLAR:

TEMPLE CHURCH]

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.

[Illustration: AN EFFIGY AT THE TEMPLE CHURCH, ERRONEOUSLY DESCRIBED AS
THAT OF GEOFFREY DE MANDEVILLE]

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.

[Illustration: _Photochrom Co. Ltd_

INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE CHURCH]

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.

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:—

    “Casta Fides superest, velare tecta Sorores
      Ista relagatæ deseruere licet:
    Nam venerandus Hymen his vota jugalia servet,
      Vestalemque focum mente fovere studet.”

Thus Englished by Fuller:—

    “Chaste Faith still stays behind though hence be flown
      Those veyled nuns who here before did rest:
    For reverend marriage wedlock vows doth own,
      And sacred flames keep here in loyal brest.”

[Illustration: ANCIENT CLOISTERS IN CLERKENWELL]

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.)

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:—

    “All ye nuns of Haliwell
    Pray ye both day and night
    For the soul of Sir Thomas Lovell
    Whom Harry the Seventh made knight.”

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.”

CHAPTER XII

BERMONDSEY ABBEY

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.”

[Illustration: THE ARMS AND SEALS OF THE PRIOR AND CONVENT OF S^T.
SAVIOUR AT BERMONDSEY

  _W. B. Grove._]

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:—

    “Nobilis hic tumulata jacet Comitissa Maria:
      Actebus hæc nituit: larga benigna fuit.
    Regum sanguis erat: morum probitate vigebat,
      Compatiens in opi: vivit in arce Poli.”

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.”

[Illustration: BERMONDSEY ABBEY]

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.”

[Illustration: _Drawn by C. J. M. Whichello._   _Engraved by B. Howlett._

A GENERAL VIEW OF THE REMAINS OF BERMONDSEY ABBEY, SURREY

As it appeared in the year 1805, with the adjacent country. Taken from
the steeple of the Church of St. Mary Magdalen.]

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:

    “And hail thou, too, O House of Charity, the nurse
    Of many students helped by Gifford’s purse.
    Thou happy, snowy swan, hast thy serene abode,
    Where Burmsey of her well-known isles is proud—
    Well-known, indeed, for there is seen the shrine
    Where her priests labour in the work Divine.”

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.

[Illustration: This figure of a Knight Templar; carved in wood, &
painted, was taken up to make room for Lockyer’s Monument; and was
afterwards placed upright, against the North wall, near the Vestry door.

This Monument is placed on the ground under the North window in the
Spiritual Court, & is traditionally said to be in memory of Old Overie,
father of Mary Overie, foundress of the Priory.

From the Grangerised edition of _London and Middlesex_ in Guildhall
Library.]

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.

[Illustration: GOWER’S MONUMENT, ST. MARY OVERIES]

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.

    “The fairest and the freshest yonge flower
    That e’er I saw, methought, before that hour.”

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:—

    “En toy qui es Filz de Dieu le Père,
    Sauvé soit qui gist sous cest pierre.

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:—

    “Like to the damask rose you see,
    Or like the blossom on the tree,
    Or like the dainty flower of May,
    Or like the morning of the day,
    Or like the sun, or like the shade,
    Or like the gourd which Jonas had,
      Even so is Man; Man’s thread is spun,
      Drawn out, and cut, and so is done.
    The rose withers, the blossom blasteth;
    The flower fades, the morning hasteth;
    The sun sets, the shadow flies,
    The gourd consumes, and Man he dies.”

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.

[Illustration: BISHOP ANDREWES’ TOMB, ST. MARY OVERIES]

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