CRUTCHED FRIARS
The Order of Crutched, or Crossed, Friars—“Brethren Crucifer”—was
instituted in the twelfth century. Some came over to England towards
the end of the thirteenth century. Two London citizens, Ralph Hoster
and William Sabernes, being greatly attracted by the sanctity of the
Friars, took for them three tenements at an annual rent of 13s. 4d.
of the Holy Trinity Priory, and for themselves either entered the
Order or took up the Fraternity of the Order. Twenty years later, the
Community had obtained enough money to enable them to buy other houses
of the same Priory and to build a convent for themselves. The site was
a piece of ground lying east of Seething Lane. The Friars carried in
their hands a cross, and were also distinguished by wearing a cross
of red cloth on their backs. The House, unlike other Friaries, seems
to have held certain lands in Suffolk and certain Houses in the City:
perhaps lands and houses were only endowments of an obit or an annual
remembrance for the donor and his family. Like all the Friaries, this
House was always poor: at the surrender it was valued at no more
than £52: 13: 4. Stow cannot enumerate more than twenty worthies of
London who were buried here. Of these the most important was Sir
John Milbourne, who founded almshouses in the year 1521 for thirteen
bedesmen, who were bound every day to attend the eight o’clock mass
at Our Lady’s Altar, founded by Sir John Milbourne, there to pray for
their benefactor’s soul. The will of the founder illustrates the change
which had fallen upon men’s minds. Milbourne had not got beyond the
belief in masses and prayers for the dead; but he had got beyond the
belief in the perfunctory service of a chantry priest; he would keep
poor men past work from want; this would be a more meritorious work
than the endowment of a priest who should have nothing in the world to
do except to say a daily mass; the prayers of a bedesman ought to be at
least as efficacious as those of a paid chantry priest.
The Crutched Friars surrendered in 1539. Their house and estates were
valued at £52: 13: 4, as stated above. The church and buildings were
pulled down; a carpenter’s shop with a tennis-court and other places
were built upon its site. The hall was turned into a glass-house, and
thirty-five years after the Dissolution, was burned down. There were
thus no remains or ruins of the House left at all; unless it were
vaults or crypts.
On its site were erected later on the Navy House,—Pepys’s Navy
House—and at the present day an open court, once, probably, the site
of the cloister of the Brethren Crucifer, may still be seen. It now
belongs to some Railway Company. First, a cloister of Friars, then
a glass-house and tennis-court, next a Navy Office, and lastly,
Receiving House for a Railway—here is a sequence of uses which Sir
John Milbourne would hardly be able to foresee. After the Dissolution,
the place appears to have attracted many persons as a residence,
presumably from the quiet that still lingered about the Precinct. Here
Dr. Turner had his Botanical Garden, one cannot doubt—on the site of
the Monastic Garden. He dedicated his book, _The New Herbal_, 1568,
to Queen Elizabeth, from “my house at London in the Crossed Fryers.”
Dr. White Kennett, Minister of St. Botolph, Aldgate, 1699-1728, lived
in “Crutchet Fryers,” and Pepys’s Diary is, of course, filled with
references to the Navy Office, Crutched Friars.