THE PRIORY OF THE HOLY TRINITY, OR CHRIST CHURCH PRIORY
This once rich and flourishing House was founded in the year 1108 by
Maud, wife of Henry the First, owing, it is said, to the persuasion, if
that pious Queen wanted any persuasion, of Anselm.
“This church was given to Norman, first canon regular in all England.
The said queen also gave unto the same church, and those that served
God therein, the plot of Aldgate, and the soke thereunto belonging,
with all customs so free as she had held the same, and twenty-five
pound blankes, which she had of the city of Excester, as appeareth by
her deed wherein she nameth the house Christ’s church, and reporteth
Aldgate to be of her domains, which she granteth, with two parts of
the rent of the city of Excester. Norman took upon him to be prior of
Christ’s church, in the year of Christ 1108, in the parishes of St.
Mary Magdalen, St. Michael, St. Katherine, and the Blessed Trinity,
which now was made but one parish of the Holy Trinity, and was in
old time of the Holy Cross or Holy Rood parish. The priory was built
on a piece of ground in the parish of St. Katherine towards Aldgate,
which lieth in length betwixt the King’s street, by the which men
go towards Aldgate, near to the chapel of St. Michael towards the
north, and containeth in length eighty-three ells, half, quarter, and
half-quarter of the king’s iron elm, and lieth in breadth, etc. The
soke and ward of Aldgate was then bounded as I have before showed. The
queen was a means also that the land and English Knighten Guild was
given unto the prior Norman: the honourable man, Geffrey de Glinton,
was a great helper therein, and obtained that the canons might enclose
the way betwixt their church and the wall of the city, etc. This
priory, in process of time, became a very fair and large church, rich
in lands and ornaments, and passed all the priories in the city of
London or shire of Middlesex; the prior whereof was an alderman of
London, to wit, of Portsoken ward.
I read, that Eustacius, the eighth prior, about the year 1264, because
he would not deal with temporal matters, instituted Theobald Fitz
Ivon, alderman of Portsoken ward under him, and that William Rising,
prior of Christ’s church, was sworn alderman of the said Portsoken
ward in the 1st of Richard II. These priors have sitten and ridden
amongst the aldermen of London, in livery like unto them, saving that
his habit was in shape of a spiritual person, as I myself have seen
in my childhood; at which time the prior kept a most bountiful house
of meat and drink, both for rich and poor, as well within the house
as at the gates, to all comers, according to their estates.” (Stow’s
_Survey_, vol. i.)
What happened many years afterwards with the Franciscans happened then
in the case of these brethren of the Augustine Order. Their piety,
their austerity, the endless offering of prayer and praise which
ascended from their chapel deeply moved the hearts of the people. The
endowment at first consisted of £25 a year, equivalent to about £750
a year of our money, if there be any certainty as to the comparative
value of money, together with the proceeds of the port called Aldgate.
In the year 1125 a very singular event greatly increased the
possessions and the wealth of this House. I mean the conveyance of the
property held in trust by the Cnihten Gild to the Priory of the Holy
Trinity.
Twelve years later, Pope Immanuel the First, by a Bull, confirmed the
House in all their possessions, including “two parts of Issues of the
City of Exon the Lands of Lestune, which Prince de Moulins and Adeline
his wife out of piety granted to the same place, the land and the soke
of the English Cnihten Gild, the Church of Bix with its rents, and the
church of Tottenham.” Many other possessions fell to the House as time
went on.
The Priory stood upon a triangular piece of ground, of which Aldgate
and Leadenhall Street, as far as St. Catherine’s Cree Church inclusive,
formed the south-west side; Cree Church Street, King Street, and Duke
Street, the east side; and the wall of London the north side. The
square called St. James’s Place is certainly the site of a former court
of the Priory. The church probably stood on the site of St. James’s
Church, which was built in 1622 partly of materials belonging to the
old church, just as on the site of Grey Friars Church was erected the
present Christ Church. The Precinct of the monastery covered nearly
the whole of four ancient City parishes, viz. St. Mary Magdalene, St.
Michael, St. Catherine, and the Blessed Trinity, amalgamated into one
Parish, with, at first, the Convent Church for Parish Church, called
Holy Trinity or Holy Rood. The inhabitants of St. Catherine’s, however,
could not be reconciled to the loss of their church, and presently
built another for themselves in the Churchyard of the Priory. The
Church of St. Michael continued as a ruin, of which the crypt remained
one of the most remarkable of the monuments of ancient London, down to
the formation of the Underground Railway in the year 1865. It was then,
most unfortunately, allowed to be destroyed.
Ancient and rich and venerable as was this Priory, whose monks enjoyed
the reputation of splendid hospitality, the House in later years seems
to have lost some of the consideration for sanctity which it enjoyed
during the first century of its existence. This is shown by the meagre
list of monuments belonging to the Priory Church compared with that of
the Grey Friars or the Dominicans. Henry Fitz Ailwyn, first Mayor of
London; two children of King Stephen; and Geoffrey Mandeville (after
his twenty years of dangling above ground) are among the few remarkable
names in Stow’s list of those here interred.
I have before me thirty-seven closely written pages containing extracts
from ancient documents and archives bearing on the four hundred years’
life of this House. It is a history which might be told once for all by
a Dugdale and confided to the shelves of the Society of Antiquaries:
it contains the story of the management of a large estate; the usual
crop of ecclesiastical quarrels and disputes over rights and claims;
the recognition of the said rights by Pope and King; dispensations,
faculties, injunctions, and restraints.
For instance, in 1250, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued sentence
against Prior, Sub-prior, Sacristan, Cellarer, and Precentor of Holy
Trinity for refusing to receive him as Visitor. The sentence is
annulled by superior authority. But two years later the Pope ordered
the Prior to admit the Archbishop, the Metropolitan, as Visitor.
Citizens bequeathed money in order to found an obit, or anniversary
for the benefit of their souls; the Bishop of London was consecrated
in their Church; the heart of John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury,
was buried in their church; the Prior, on his election, was sworn
as Alderman of Portsoken; citizens of well-known names turn up
unexpectedly in these pages; thus, John Bocuinte, son of Geoffrey
Bocuinte, and Juliana his wife, sold certain property with fees held of
the Priory; Gilbert Fitz Fulk, one of the Aldermen of the thirteenth
century, going to the Holy Land, bequeathed, in case of his death,
certain lands and houses to the Priory for the good of his soul, and
the souls of his father and mother; other citizens desired to be buried
in the church; the King asked for the loan of a cart and horses to
carry his household gear to Dover; on the election of a new Prior the
House was bound to provide a benefice for one of the King’s Clerks—see
Tanner’s _Notes on Monastic Houses_,—others of the King’s officers for
divers reasons were maintained by the House—it seems, indeed, a common
practice for the King to have invited this House to maintain his old
servants. At one time the Priory became owner of the market called
Queenhithe. William of Ypres gave it to the House. It was then called
Edredes hyde, and the gift was subject to a yearly payment of £20 to
the Hospital of St. Katherine by the Tower.
In 1352 we find the brethren seeking assistance in rebuilding this
Church and House by offering a “Relaxation” of one year and forty
days of “enjoined penance” to any who would assist. The offer to hold
good for ten years. At this time the House possessed property in
eighty-eight London parishes. In the reign of Edward the Second mention
is made of three Grammar schools, of which one is that of the Holy
Trinity Priory.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the House flourished and
obtained considerable additions to its estates, so that it became the
richest of all the London Houses. Its good fortune, however, did not
continue. Its property decreased in value; much of it was sold; the
decay continued; in the year 1532 the Prior and the Canons held a
Chapter in which they recognised that their House was not only sunken
and decayed in its rents and emoluments, but that it was entirely
reduced and laden with debt. They therefore surrendered their House and
remaining lands to the King.
The site was given with all the buildings to Sir Thomas Audley,
afterwards Lord Chancellor. Audley offered the great church, just
as it stood, with its peal of bells, to the adjacent parish of St.
Catherine, meaning that they should pull down the latter and build upon
the site. Unhappily, the parishioners were afraid to accept the offer,
“having doubts in their heads,” says Stow, “of afterclaps.” If they
had accepted, another fine Monastic Church would have been preserved,
together with those of St. Mary Overies and St. Bartholomew the Great.
Whereupon Audley pulled down the Church himself with a great deal of
expense and labour. On the death of Audley, his daughter and heiress,
Margaret, became the second wife of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. The
Duke was executed for high treason in 1572; the mansion went to his
son, by Margaret, who sold it in 1592 to the Mayor and Corporation of
the City.
Some remains of the buildings were standing until recently. The place
itself seems to have been occupied by the Jews on their return under
Oliver Cromwell. For nearly two hundred years it was almost entirely
the Jews’ Quarter in London. Every year they held a kind of Fair on the
Feast of Purim in Duke’s Place. The Feast, which falls in the month
of Adar, _i.e._ partly in February and partly in March, commemorates
the execution of Haman and the deliverance of the Hebrews. The Fair
was held without any authority until early in the nineteenth century,
when it was licensed for three days, generally extended to six, the
square of Duke’s Place being let for shows. It was found to be a public
nuisance, and was suppressed a few years later.
For many years after the destruction of the Priory Church, the
inhabitants of the Precinct had no parish church of their own. In 1622,
however, St. James’s was built as a parish church for the Precinct. The
church became notorious for the irregular marriages without banns or
license which were solemnised here. In 1874 the curacy of St. James’s
was united with that of St. Catherine Cree, and the former church was
pulled down.
The Precinct was privileged, and though within the City, persons not
freemen of the City were permitted to trade within its limits.
PRIORY OF HOLY TRINITY AND CHURCH OF ST. KATHERINE CREE
These plans were made by a surveyor named J. Symans in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. From the mention of Sir Thomas Heneage’s garden,
their date is probably before 1595, when Sir Thomas, who was Keeper
of the Tower Records, died. The first shows the ground floor of the
buildings then standing. The original monastery extended from the
street, now called Leadenhall Street, northward and eastward to the
old Wall. Two semicircular bastions and a third which formed one tower
of Aldgate are seen on the plans, which also, among items otherwise
unknown hitherto to London topographers, give us the canon’s church
as well as that of the parishioners of St. Katherine Cree. Both these
buildings have now disappeared. The conventual church in Symans’ plan
had already been in part removed by Lord Chancellor Audley, in favour
of the “Ivye Chamber.” The “Charncell” is still intact and “owre
Ladychapell”; but there is notice of “the north end where the great
tower fell Downe” and “the south end now teniment.” By “end,” Symans
meant transept. The cloister and the chapter house, one portion of
which is labelled “This was the chapell,” the body of the church and
a south porch are clearly denoted; while, of the domestic buildings,
we distinguish the gatehouse labelled “The way owte of Allgat Streat
into Creechurch monastary”: the Dorter, or sleeping quarters of the
monks, which open from the cloister; more than one extensive garden;
the “Greate Cowrte,” and a number of apartments or separate small
holdings, let to various tenants, whose names, Awnsell, Bayle, and
Kirwin, for example, occur in several places on the plans. At the
north side of “the Great Garden adioyning the Dorter” and close to
the city wall, is “A Foundation for new buildings uppon the wall”;
this seems to be let to Awnsell, who has also a lease of the garden.
The north chancel aisle is let in “new Teniments.” Some relics of the
vaults, or “Favlts,” are occasionally disclosed in Leadenhall Street;
some Norman arches are figured by Malcolm and there are others in
Pennant’s _London_, 1793, and many other books; but no Tudor plan of
the buildings has hitherto been published.
[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.