[Illustration: ST. PANCRAS (OLD) CHURCH.]
This humble village fane is situated to the north of London, somewhat
more than a mile from Holborn Bars. Persons unacquainted with the site,
may hitherto have considered it as part and parcel of this vast
metropolis: but, lo! here it stands amidst much of its primitive,
peaceful rusticity.
Pancras is still, by courtesy, called a _village_, though its charms may
be of the _rus-in-urbe_ description. It derives its name from the saint
to whom the church is dedicated:[1] it was called St. Pancras when the
Survey of Domesday was taken. The parish is of great extent. Mr. Lysons
states it at 2,700 acres of land, including the site of buildings. It is
bounded on the north by Islington, Hornsey, and Finchley; and on the
west by Hampstead and Marybone. On the south it meets the parishes of
St. Giles's in the Fields, St. George the Martyr, St. George,
Bloomsbury, and St. Andrew's, Holborn.[2] On the east it is bounded by
St. James's, Clerkenwell. Kentish Town, part of Highgate, Camden Town,
and Somer's Town,[3] are comprised within this parish as hamlets. Mr.
Lysons supposes it to have included the prebendal manor of Kentish
Town,[4] or Cantelows, which now constitutes a stall in St. Paul's
Cathedral. Among the prebendaries have been men eminent for their
learning and piety: as Lancelot Andrews, bishop of Winchester, Dr.
Sherlock, Archdeacon Paley, and the Rev. William Beloe, B.D. well known
by his translation of Herodotus.
[1] St. Pancras was a young Phrygian nobleman, who suffered
death under the Emperor Dioclesian, for his zealous adherence to
the Christian faith.
[2] Lysons's Environs, 4to. vol. ii. part ii.
[3] The parish extends in this direction to the foot of Gray's
Inn Lane, and includes part of a house in Queen's Square.
[4] Anciently Kentistonne, where William Bruges, Garter King at
Arms in the reign of Henry V. had a country-house, at which he
entertained the emperor Sigismund.
It would occupy too much space to detail the progressive increase of
this district. When a visitation of the church was made in the year
1251, there were only forty houses in the parish. The desolate situation
of the village in the latter part of the sixteenth century is
emphatically described by Norden, in his _Speculum Britanniæ_. After
noticing the solitary condition of the church, he says, "yet about this
structure have bin manie buildings now decaied, leaving poore Pancras
without companie or comfort." In some manuscription additions to his
work, the same writer has the following observations:--"Although this
place be, as it were, forsaken of all; and true men seldom frequent the
same, but upon devyne occasions; yet it is visyted by thieves, who
assemble there not to pray, but to wait for praye; and manie fell into
their handes, clothed, that are glad when they are escaped naked. Walk
not there too late." Newcourt, whose work was published in 1700, says
that houses had been built near the church. The first important increase
of the parish took place in the neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road.
"Pancras Church," says Norden, "standeth all alone, as utterly forsaken,
old and wether-beten, which, for the antiquity thereof, it is thought
not to yield to Paules in London." It is of rude Gothic architecture,
built of stones and flints, which are now covered with plaster. Mr.
Lysons says, "It is certainly not older than the fourteenth century,
perhaps in Norden's time it had the appearance of great decay; the same
building, nevertheless, repaired from time to time, still remains; looks
no longer 'old and wether-beten,' and may still exist perhaps to be
spoken of by some antiquary of a future century. It is a very small
structure, consisting only of a nave and chancel; at the west end is a
low tower, with a kind of dome."[5] Mr. Lysons speaks of the
disproportionate size of the church to the population of the parish; but
since his time another church has been erected, the splendour and size
of which in every respect accord with the increased wealth and numbers
of the parish.
[5] The visitation of the church in the year 1251, mentions a
very small tower, a good slope font, and a small marble stone
ornamented with copper to carry the _Pax_.
The church and churchyard of Pancras have long been noted as the
burial-place of such Roman Catholics as die in London and its
vicinity.[6] Many of the tombs exhibit a cross, and the initials R.I.P.
(_Requiescat in pace_), which initials, or others analogous to them, are
always used by the Catholics on their sepulchral monuments. Mr. Lysons
heard it assigned by some of that persuasion, as a reason for this
preference to Pancras as a burial-place, that masses were formerly said
in a church in the south of France, dedicated to the same saint, for the
souls of the deceased interred at St. Pancras in England. After the
French revolution, a great number of ecclesiastics and other refugees,
some of them of high rank, were buried in this churchyard; and in 1811,
Mr. Lysons observed that probably about 30 of the French clergy had on
an average been buried at Pancras for some years past: in 1801 there
were 41, and in 1802, 32. Mr. Lysons's explanation of this preference to
Pancras by the Catholics is, however, disputed by the author of
_Ecclesiastical Topography_, who observes that a reason more generally
given is, that "Pancras was the last church in England where mass was
performed after the Reformation."
[6] Strype, in his additions to Stowe, says, the Roman Catholics
have of late _effected_ to be buried at this place.
In the chancel are monuments of Daniel Clarke, Esq. who had been
master-cook to Queen Elizabeth; and of Cooper the artist, whose style
approached so near to that of Vandyke, that he has been called Vandyke
in miniature: he taught the author of Hudibras to paint; his wife was
sister to Pope's mother.
In the churchyard are the tombs of Anthony Woodhead, 1678, who was in
his day, the great champion of the Roman Catholic religion, and was
reputed to have written the Whole Duty of Man; Lady Slingsby, whose name
occurs as an actress in Dryden and Lee's plays, from 1681 to 1689;
Jeremy Collier, 1726, the pertinacious non-juror, who repressed the
immoralities of the stage; Ned Ward, author of the London Spy, 1731;
Leoni, the architect, 1746; Lady Henrietta, wife of Beard, the vocalist,
1753; Van Bleeck, the portrait-painter; Ravenet, the engraver, 1764;
Mazzinghi, 1775, leader of the band at Marylebone Gardens, and father of
Mazzinghi, the celebrated composer; Henry and Robert Rackett, Pope's
nephews; Woollett, the engraver, 1785, to whose memory a monument has
been placed in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey; Baron de Wenzel, the
celebrated oculist, 1790; Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin, author of a
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1797; the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, or
Father O'Leary, the amiable Franciscan friar, 1802; Paoli, the patriotic
Corsican, 1807; Walker editor of the Pronouncing Dictionary; the
Chevalier d'Eon, 1810, of epicene notoriety; and Packer, the comedian,
1806, who is said to have performed 4,852 times, besides walking in
processions; Edwards, professor of Perspective, 1806; Scheemakers, the
statuary, 1808.
In the _Beauties of England and Wales_, it is stated that 23 acres of
land belong to the church; and the great increase of buildings renders
these of considerable value; though it is not known to whom the church
is indebted for this possession.
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