of the street, standing back and approached by an archway. Popular
tradition ascribes its origin to the Emperor Constantine in honour
of his mother, which is doubtless an error, but it unquestionably
dates from the Saxon age, as in 1010 the relics of King Edmund the
Martyr were temporarily deposited within its walls, when brought from
East Anglia, to prevent their desecration at the hands of the Danes.
In the twelfth century the advowson appears to have been held by one
Ranulph, as in the reign of Henry II., _circa_ 1180, he and his son,
Robert Fitz-Ranulph, made a grant of it to the Dean and Chapter of St.
Paul's Cathedral. About half a century later, _circa_ 1212, William
Fitz-William, a London goldsmith, and ancestor of the extant Earls
Fitzwilliam, founded in connection with it a priory for nuns of the
order of St. Benedict, which was dedicated to the Holy Cross and St.
Helen, the prioress on her election to swear fealty to the Dean and
Chapter, who transferred to the priory the advowson of the church.
The church seems originally to have had simply a chancel and nave,
without transepts or aisles, but when the priory was attached, it was
duplicated by building another nave, and thus presented the appearance
of a double-aisled church without an intermediate nave. A wall of
division ran along the middle, one of the aisles being appropriated
to the parishioners and the other to the nuns. It is to be feared that
the fair inmates of the nunnery were not always very strict in their
devotional exercises and seclusion from the outer world, and were even
sometimes so naughty as to be subjected to punishments, one of which
was being shut up in the crypt, which still exists, with the gratings,
through which they could hear the service of the church without being
present. Reginald Kentwode, dean of St. Paul's, in his periodical
visitations, found so many "defautes and excesses" that he felt
constrained to draw up a fresh code of rules for the regulation of the
house, the original of which is amongst the Cotton MSS. in the British
Museum.
Willyam Basynge, Sheriff of London, 1309, added considerably to the
buildings, and came to be regarded as the second founder.
The seal of the priory was an oval, representing the Empress Helena
standing by the cross (which she found in the Holy Land and brought
to Europe) with the nails in her hand, and on the opposite side
worshippers in the act of adoration. An impression of it is pendant
from a deed in the possession of the Leathersellers' Company, and an
engraving of it is given in Malcolm's _London Rediv._, vol. iii., p.
548.
At the dissolution of the priory the site was given to Richard
Williams, one of the visitors of the monasteries, in exchange for
certain lands in Huntingdonshire. He assumed the name of Cromwell,
being a kinsman of Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and was ancestor of the
Protector, Oliver Cromwell. The dividing wall in the church was
taken down and the whole of the space appropriated to the use of the
parishioners. The Leathersellers purchased the nuns' hall, and made
it the hall of their company. The priory buildings remained, but in a
ruined state, until 1799, when they were cleared away, and St. Helen's
Place built on the site. A view of the ruins is given in Wilkinson's
_Londina Illustrata_, and a picturesque view of the church and the
Leathersellers' Hall in Malcolm's _London Rediv._, 1803.
The church contained more "altar" tombs with recumbent and kneeling
effigies than any other church in the City, but they suffered terrible
mutilation from the iconoclastic zeal of the Puritans, many of them
having been altogether destroyed. Sir Thomas Gresham had promised
to build a tower, which unhappily he was prevented doing by death,
and it was not until 1699, that it was furnished with a steeple. The
church has undergone many repairs and restorations, notably by Inigo
Jones, 1623-4, and frequently in the plaster and whitewash style of
decoration. The last and most judicious restoration was carried out in
1867-8, and the venerable old church may now be seen, after weathering
so many storms, with its graceful Gothic arches, its groupings of tombs
and monuments, the nuns' grating in the crypt, its grotesque heads,
and over one of the doors the black figure of St. Helena, for which
hundreds of pounds have been offered by foreign Catholics, and refused;
with many of the same features that were looked at by the Greshams, the
Crosbys, and other old parishioners of the Norman, Plantagenet, and
Tudor ages, with the addition of some modern stained windows and an
organ built in 1742, and rebuilt in 1868. The rectory was sold by Queen
Elizabeth to Michael and Edward Stanhope, with the proviso of paying a
stipend of £20 per annum to a vicar. Amongst the tombs are those of Sir
Thomas Gresham, a splendid monument; Sir John Crosby, in full armour,
and his wife, one of the oldest remaining; Sir John Lawrence, the
noble Lord Mayor of the Plague year; Sir John Spencer, "Rich Spencer,"
whose daughter and heiress eloped with her lover, Compton, in a baker's
basket.
St. Ethelburga is a small and very ancient church, squeezed almost
out of sight by intervening parasitic shops; when or by whom founded
not known, but most probably in the Saxon age. In an old print it is
represented with a spire similar to that in Langham Place. It escaped
the fire of 1666, was repaired and "beautified" in 1694, and again in
1701. St. Ethelburga was the daughter of Ethelbert, the first Christian
king of Kent, and patron of St. Augustine; she married Eadwine, King of
Northumbria, the convert of St Paulinus, after whose death, in battle
at the hands of Penda, the Pagan king of Mercia, she fled with her
children and Paulinus to her brother, who had succeeded to the kingdom
of Kent, and who nominated Paulinus to the see of Rochester.
Walter Brune, citizen, and Rosia, his wife, in 1235, founded a priory
of canons and hospital for the sick and needy, dedicated to our
blessed Mary, called St. Mary Spital Without, Bishopsgate. It was
suppressed in 1539, at which time it made up 180 beds, and supplied
the sick occupants with all necessaries at a cost of £478 per annum.
Outside was the pulpit where the famous Spital sermons were preached
at Easter before the Mayor and Corporation, and sometimes royal
personages, by the most eminent City divines. After the dissolution
they were preached at St. Paul's, then in St. Bride's Church, and now
in Christ Church, Newgate Street. The pulpit stood on a site that
now forms the north-east corner of Spital Square. There existed for
120 years in the precincts of Bishopsgate, near Camomile Street, a
curious fraternity called The Papey, a religious house of St. John and
St. Charity, sometimes called St. Augustine's Papey, consisting of
threescore priests, governed by a master and two wardens. Its objects
were to supply the necessities of the poorer clergy by providing them
with lodgings, coals, bread, and ale. Near by stood the church of St.
Augustine-in-the-Wall, the patronage of which was vested in the rich
Priory of the Holy Trinity, who presented to the living four rectors
from 1321 to 1375, but after that no one could be found to accept the
incumbency in consequence of the stinginess of the Priory—the stipend
not being sufficient to live upon—who therefore in 1430 gave the church
to the Papey guild. The fraternity was not rich in funds, and in order
to improve their exchequer they practised the singing of dirges and
attended funerals as professional mourners and dirge singers. The house
was suppressed 2 Edwd. VI.
From the thirteenth to the seventeenth century a conspicuous feature in
the line of road leading northward from Bishopsgate was the Priory of
Bethlehem, with its square-towered church, its gabled houses for the
brethren and sisters' habitations, and its gardens, situated at the
eastern edge of the moorland of Fensbury, a little beyond St. Botolph's
Church, and facing what are now New Street and Devonshire Place. It
was then built quite in the country, with the fens behind, fields
in front, and no houses beyond it. The roadway in front was nothing
more than a beaten trackway, almost impassable in winter, which when
houses came to be built along it, and it assumed the semblance of a
street, was called Bedlam Gate. There is no view extant of the priory,
excepting the bird's-eye view in Aggas' Map, _temp._ Elizabeth, where
there is a continuous line of houses along Bedlam Gate and onward to
St. Leonard's Church, Shoreditch, where the road apparently terminated;
eastward is the Spittel Fyeld, with archers and cattle; and westward,
Finsburie Fyeld, with windmills, bowmen practising at the butts, and
women spreading out linen to dry.
The priory was founded in 1246 by Simon Fitz-Marie, sheriff of London
in the same year, for brethren and sisters, canons of the Order of the
Star of Bethlehem, subject to the Bishop of Bethlehem, to whom they had
to pay one mark yearly at Easter. Their habit was a black gown with a
star embroidered on the breast. When it became a hospital for lunatics
is not known, but there are records of sick persons being nursed there
in 1330, and of insane patients in 1403, when six of the latter and
three of the former were maintained in the house. Weaver tells us that
at one time there was "a house for distraught and lunaticke people"
at Charing Cross, and that some king, he did not know who, not liking
to have an establishment of people of that class so near his palace,
packed them off to Bethlem Priory, which was probably the beginning of
its career as a hospital for the insane.
The Hospital-Priory does not appear to have been very amply provided
with funds, as in 1403 some of the houses were alienated, for the
purpose seemingly of raising money, and the brethren had to go abroad
collecting alms for the sustenance of the inmates. In 1523, one Stephen
Gunnings, a merchant tailor, left £40 in trust to the Corporation for
purchasing the house, to be continued as a receptacle for lunatics,
and the Mayor took some steps for that purpose; but before they were
carried out it was granted to the Corporation, after the Dissolution,
by King Henry VIII., who placed it in charge of the governors of
Christ's Hospital in 1556, and the following year transferred it to
the governors of Bridewell. In 1555 the income, arising chiefly out
of rents, amounted to £43 4s. 8d. per annum, and by 1632 they were
valued at £470, which, not being all forthcoming, was inadequate for
the support of the house, and the Spital preachers were directed to
appeal to their hearers on its behalf, there being then forty-four
lunatics within the walls, the revenues paying only two-thirds of
the cost of their maintenance. Besides, there were so many pressing
cases for admission, that it became necessary to discharge many of the
half-cured and less violent patients, to whom were granted licences
for begging, and they went abroad, dressed fantastically, singing "mad
songs," and imploring food or money. They went by the name of "Tom o'
Bedlams," and are alluded to by Shakespeare in _King Lear_, where he
says—
"With a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam."
In the reign of Elizabeth the church and chapel were taken down, and
houses built on the site; and in the following century, the buildings
having become ruinous and much too small for the constantly increasing
patients, it was resolved to build a new and larger hospital. The
Corporation made a grant of land on the southern margin of Finsbury
Moors, where the Liverpool Street railway stations now stand, and the
public contributed £17,000 towards its erection. It was commenced in
1644, and completed in 1676; and in 1732 two wings were added, which
made the entire length of the building 540 feet, with a depth of forty
feet. The style adopted was that of the Tuileries in Paris, which so
offended Louis XIV. that he caused some out-offices of a more useful
and less dignified character to be built in the style of St. James's
Palace, London. It was adorned with figures of raving and melancholy
madness from the chisel of Caius Cibber, which are now in the hall of
the present hospital.
The estates belonging to the hospital afterwards rapidly increased in
value, and at the beginning of the present century the governors found
themselves in a position to build a larger and better-planned building,
and purchased a large plot of land in St. George's Fields, which with
the new hospital cost £100,000. The total income is now about £20,000
per annum.
Until towards the end of the last century the insane were treated in
a most barbarous way. Nakedness, chains, scourgings, and solitary
confinement were their lot, calculated rather to intensify than
alleviate their aberration of intellect, without any of the modern
appliances of modern asylums—music, flowers, prints, books, amusements,
cheerful society, and comparative liberty—which are now found to be
essential towards their recovery. A good idea of the old style of
madhouse may be obtained from the eighth plate of Hogarth's series
of "The Rake's Progress," which represents a scene in the Moorfields
Bedlam.
A few years ago a skeleton of a dwarf with fetters on the legs was dug
up near Bishopsgate, supposed to be that of a patient of Bedlam. The
road in front of the second hospital was formerly called "Old Bethlem"
and was changed to Liverpool Street in honour of Lord Liverpool, Prime
Minister 1812-27.
The Hon. Artillery Company, which originated here, removed to the
present Artillery Ground in City Road in 1622, and has numbered amongst
its officers Charles II., when Prince of Wales; James II., when Duke
of York, after the Restoration; and George IV., when Prince of Wales,
as Captain in Command. The old Artillery Ground in Bishopsgate Street
has left reminiscences of its existence in the names of Artillery Lane,
Artillery Passage, Gun Street, and Fort Street.
From a very remote period has the company of Leathersellers been
connected with Bishopsgate Street and its vicinity. In the Norman age
the tanners, curriers, and leather dressers clustered about Cripplegate
and further eastward, where the stream of Walbrook entered the City,
that locality being the Bermondsey of the period. The Company is
supposed to have been formed in the Saxon times, but little or nothing
is known of it until 1372, when the wardens and seniors presented
a petition to the Corporation praying that stringent measures might
be put in force against fraudulent craftsmen who used inferior dyes
for staining their skins. They were incorporated in 1397-8, and were
re-incorporated by Henry VI. in 1444, with power to elect four wardens
and fifteen members of the court, and to use a seal with arms. The
charter is a magnificent specimen of penmanship, and beautifully
illuminated. There is a picture extant of the king presenting the
charter to the four kneeling wardens in livery dresses of red and blue,
furred at the edges, descending to the knees, and fastened at the waist
with a girdle garnished with white metal. By this charter they were
empowered to regulate the mystery in London, which powers were enlarged
by Henry VII., who extended their supervision of the trade throughout
the kingdom. In 1604 James I. granted them a new charter, which, like
that of Henry VI., is a wonderfully fine specimen of art, with an
emblazonry of the company's arms and an illumination of eight liverymen
in their robes of office—black gowns trimmed with "foins," hoods of
scarlet, and black flat caps.
The first hall of the company was built in 1445, in the parish of All
Saints' by the Wall, south of the present Finsbury Circus, where now
stand Leathersellers Buildings. A century after it became too small,
and a portion of the site and buildings of the dissolved priory of St.
Helen was purchased in 1543, and the nuns' hall converted into that of
the company, which, with alterations and embellishments, came to be for
a long time the finest livery hall in London. The ceiling was enriched
with beautiful pendants, and at the end was a splendid Elizabethan
screen, elaborately decorated. In the courtyard was a pump with the
figure of a mermaid, from whose breast issued wine on gala occasions.
It was the work of Cibber, who gave it in 1679, in payment of his
admission fee to the membership of the company.
In 1799 the hall was sold along with other of the priory buildings,
to clear the site for the building of St. Helen's Place. A new hall
was built on the same site, but with new fittings, all the antique
decorations of the old hall having been disposed of. This, the third
hall, was destroyed by fire in 1819, the valuable collection of
records being fortunately saved, and the present hall, occupying the
north-east corner of St. Helen's Place, was built 1820-22.
The first record book of the company commences November 12th, 1472,
with the following as the earliest entry:—
"Wyllyam J. Curtes gave to us this boke,
For to regystre every wardenn's tyme in;
Pray for hym when ye doe loke,
That God will reward hym. Amen."
There are almshouses of the company in Clarke's Court, St. Helen's;
White's Alley, Coleman Street; and Hart Street, Cripplegate.
Excepting the Borough High Street, perhaps no street in London had
so many famous old inns, with galleried court-yards, cross-timbered
walls, quaint gables, and latticed windows, as Bishopsgate Street,
established for the accommodation of carriers and travellers from the
north-eastern towns. Amongst them were the White Hart; formerly the
Magpie, which stood by the gateway of Bethlem Priory, supposed to have
been originally the hostelry of the priory, afterwards an inn for
travellers who arrived after the gate was shut for the night. It seems,
from a date on the wall, to have been rebuilt in 1480, and was standing
in 1810, when a view was taken representing it with a double range of
bay windows. It was again rebuilt in 1829, and stood at the corner of
Liverpool Street. The Bull, where Burbage and his companions obtained
a patent from Queen Elizabeth for the performance of theatricals in
the quadrangle, the spectators occupying the surrounding galleries.
This was the inn to which old Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, resorted,
from whom came the saying of "Hobson's choice"—that or none. On a wall
of the inn was his effigy, in fresco, clutching a money bag, with an
inscription—"The fruitful mother of a hundred more."
The Green Dragon, an old Tudor house. The Catherine Wheel still a
carriers' house. The King's Head, at the corner of Spital Square. The
Wrestlers, a large inn, and the Angel, were in existence _temp._ Henry
VI. The City of London Tavern, with pillared facade, famous in modern
times for its public dinners, was converted, in 1839, into the Wesleyan
Centenary Hall, established in commemoration of the centennial year of
the formation of the Society of Methodists.
On the eastern side of the street, within and near to the gate, were
certain tenements belonging to a fraternity of St. Nicholas, which
were given (27 Henry VI.) to the Company of Parish Clerks for the
maintenance of two chaplains in the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene,
near the Guildhall, and behind these stood the hall of the Parish
Clerks, and seven almshouses for the poor, to one of whom was given
sixteenpence and the other six ninepence per week.
The Post-office, which had been in Cloak Lane, Dowgate, was removed
after the fire of 1666, to the Black Swan, in Bishopsgate Street,
whence it was removed to Lombard Street, and subsequently to St.
Martin-le-Grand.
We have noticed the palatial character of the Bishopsgate quarter
of Roman Londinum, vestiges of its splendour having been frequently
disinterred in recent times, in attestation of the fact. A
thousand years afterwards it again became a district of sumptuous
mansions—palaces, not of the Roman patricians, but of the merchant
princes of the modern metropolis of the world. Most fortunately, the
ravages of the great fire of '66 only extended to the borders of the
ward, and thus have been preserved to us those precious architectural
relics of Crosby House; and the churches of St. Helen and St.
Ethelburga. The quaint old house of Sir Paul Pindar, has just been
taken down.
Sir John Crosby was born _circa_ 1420, and died in 1475; he was a
grocer (a wholesale merchant) and woolman, and at one time Mayor of the
Staple at Calais. He was elected an alderman in 1465; served the office
of sheriff in 1471, in which year he was knighted by Edward IV., and
represented the City in Parliament in the year 1461. He was a zealous
Yorkist, in high favour with Edward IV., particularly distinguished
himself in the defence of the City against the Lancastrian admiral,
the Bastard of Fauconbridge, and is introduced by Heywood, in his
drama of _King Edward IV_. In 1466 he took on lease from the Prioress
of St. Helen's certain tenements for a period of ninety-nine years,
at a rent of £11 6s. 8d. per annum, which he demolished, and built on
the site "ye highest and fairest house in ye citie," which he did not
enjoy long, as it was only completed four years before his death. Of
its grandeur we may form some conception from what remains of it after
the fire of 1674, especially the great hall, fifty-four feet long,
twenty-seven and a half feet broad, and forty feet high, with its oriel
windows eleven feet in breadth, and extending from the floor to the
ceiling, and its timbered roof of surpassing beauty. Around this old
mansion many most interesting historical associations have clustered.
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, inhabited it for some time, and it figures
in Shakespeare's pages as the place where he concocted his plot for
the murder of his nephews, his marriage with his niece, which he could
not accomplish, and the usurpation of the throne. From 1516 to 1523,
it was the abode of Sir Thomas More, where it is supposed he wrote his
_Utopia_.
It has been occupied by several aldermen, some of whom held their
mayoralty there, amongst others, Alderman Bond, who added a turret to
the building; Sir John Spencer, who built a large warehouse behind it;
Sir Bartholomew Read, Lord Mayor, who entertained Catherine of Arragon
for two or three days within its walls, previous to her marriage with
Prince Arthur. The Emperor Maximilian lodged there when in London in
1502; Queen Elizabeth came there in 1594 to witness a masque by some
law students, and the famous Countess of Pembroke made it her residence
for some time, where it is probable Shakespeare visited her. During the
Civil War it was made a prison for captured Royalists, after which
the great hall was converted into a Presbyterian chapel. In 1678 the
drawing-room and throne room were used as warehouses by the East India
Company, and afterwards as a packer's workrooms, when they sustained
a great deal of mutilation. In 1831, it was advertised to be sold for
demolition, but some spirited persons came forward and rescued it
from that fate, besides restoring and repairing it. From 1842 to 1860
it was a literary institute, and is now a restaurant, the proprietor
having with great good taste preserved all the old features, and in
the necessary additional buildings has adhered to the same style. It
is supposed to have consisted originally of two quadrangles, separated
by the great hall, and that it had a facade of 100 feet in length to
Bishopsgate Street.
Sir John gave 500 marks towards the restoration of St. Helen's Church,
and his arms were placed on the walls and in the windows. He was thrice
married, and had an only son, who died without issue, the line thus
becoming extinct.