CROSBY HALL.--ST. HELEN'S.--ST. ETHELBURGA'S.--ST. GILES'S, CRIPPLEGATE
Passing by the tiny churchyard of St. Andrew Undershaft, by several narrow
and obscure passages amid crowded business blocks, one comes upon the
famous Crosby Hall on Bishopsgate Street. This presents to-day one of the
most picturesque examples of the beam and plaster houses of the fifteenth
century to be found in England. It was, says Stow, "the highest at that
time in London," that is, about 1475. Doubtless his reference is to a high
turret which once surmounted it, but of which no traces now remain. This
was before the more pretentious Tudor buildings of the next century, of
whose high towers Stow's biographer says: "He could not endure the high
turrets and buildings run up to a great height, which some citizens in his
time laid out their money upon to overtop and overlook their neighbours.
Such sort of advanced works, both towers and chimneys, they built both in
their summerhouses in Moorfields and in other places in the suburbs, and
in their dwelling houses in the City itself. They were like midsummer
Pageants, 'not so much for use and profit as for show and pleasure,'
'bewraying,' said he, 'the vanities of men's minds. And that it was unlike
to the disposition of the ancient citizens, who delighted in the building
of hospitals and almshouses for the poor; and therein both employed their
wits, and spent their wealth in the preferment of the common commodity of
this our city.'"
Crosby House was, as Sir Thomas More relates, where Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, "lodged himself, and little by little all folks drew unto him,
so that the Protector's court was crowded and King Edward's left
desolate." Here he probably planned his treasonable and malicious scheme
for the death of the little princes. In his play of "Richard III.,"
Shakespeare mentions Crosby Hall more than once; doubtless he knew it
well, for ten years before the birth of Milton it seems evident that he
resided in a house hard by. It is quite certain that it is to his
immortalising Crosby Hall that its preservation to this day is due, when
almost everything else that was contemporaneous in secular architecture
has disappeared in its vicinity.
The building has been much restored, and its banquet-hall is now utilised
for a first-class restaurant, where he who will may dine where dukes and
princes dined four centuries ago. Sir Thomas More lived here for several
years, and here doubtless wrote his life of the base king, to the echo of
whose voice these walls had once resounded. Sir Thomas sold the place to
that dear friend to whom he wrote with a coal a sad letter of farewell
from his Tower cell before his execution. Later, his daughter, who loved
the place where her dear father had passed so many days, hired it, and
came here to live.
Some years later, in 1594, the rich mayor of London, Sir John Spencer,
bought the place, and entertained an ambassador from Henry IV. to King
James I. An interesting incident of this visit is related in the memoirs
of this ambassador. It appears that much scandal had been wrought by the
mad pranks and rioting of the attendants of former envoys. What, then, was
the horror of the French duke, when he discovered that one of the young
nobles in his train, on going out of Crosby Hall in quest of sport, had
got into a fight and murdered an English merchant close by in Great St.
Helen's. The duke, determined on making an example, bade all his servants
and attendants range themselves in a row against the wall, and taking a
lighted torch, he looked sharply in the face of each in turn until he
found the terrified face of the guilty man. Determined to wreak speedy
vengeance, he ordered, after the arbitrary method of the times, his
instant decapitation. But the lord mayor pleaded for mercy, and the
youth's life was spared; whereupon, the duke records, "the English began
to love, and the French to fear him more."
This same Lord Spencer, Mayor of London, had one fair daughter, a gay
deceiver of her honoured sire, and as much a lover of fine clothes and
service as any modern dame who orders gowns from Worth's, or buys her
jewels on Bond Street. She loved, or at all events made up her mind to
marry the Earl of Northampton, a man who was _persona non grata_ to her
father, who had no mind to wed his daughter, the greatest heiress in
England, to this gentleman. But the young folks were not daunted. One day
when the mayor gave a sixpence to the baker's boy, who had come with a
covered barrow to bring bread, he learned later that the barrow contained
not bread, but his own naughty Elizabeth, who was trundled off by her
lover in disguise.
When their baby came, some time later, grandpapa was wheedled into a
reconciliation, and the gay young bride again lived in Crosby Place, the
past forgiven. As an illustration of what wealthy ladies in Milton's
boyhood demanded for their pleasure, a quotation from her letter written
to her husband shortly after marriage, may prove entertaining: "I pray
and beseech you to grant me, your most kind and loving wife, the sum of
L2,600 quarterly to be paid. Also I would, besides that allowance, have
L600 quarterly to be paid, for the performance of charitable works; and
those things I would not, neither will be, accountable for. Also I will
have three horses for my own saddle, that none should dare to lend or
borrow; none lend but I, none borrow but you. Also I would have two
gentlewomen ... when I ride a hunting or a hawking, or travel from one
house to another, I will have them attending; so for either of these said
women, I must and will have for either of them a horse. Also I will have
six or eight gentlemen. And I will have my two coaches, one lined with
velvet to myself, with four very fine horses; and a coach for my women,
lined with cloth and laced with gold, otherwise with scarlet and laced
with silver, with four good horses. Also I will have two coachmen. Also,
at any time when I travel, I will be allowed not only coaches and spare
horses for me and my women, but I will be having such carriages as shall
be fitting for all; orderly, not pestering my things with my women's nor
theirs with their chambermaids, nor theirs with their washmaids.... And I
must have two footmen; and my desire is that you defray all the charges
for me. And for myself, besides my yearly allowance, I would have twenty
gowns of apparel. Also I would have to put me in my purse L2,000 and L200,
and so you to pay my debts. Also I would have L6,000 pounds to buy me
jewels, and L4,000 to buy me a pearl chain. Now, seeing I have been and am
so reasonable unto you, I pray you do find my children apparel and their
schooling, and all my servants, men and women, their wages.... So for my
drawing-chambers in all houses, I will have them delicately furnished,
both with hangings, couch, canopy, glass, carpet, chairs, cushions, and
all things thereunto belonging.... I pray you when you be an earl to allow
me L2,000 more than I now desire, and double attendance."
The Countess of Pembroke, sister of Sir Philip Sidney and friend of Ben
Jonson, once lived as mistress in the halls of Crosby Place. The latter's
epitaph upon her is well known:
"Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse:
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death, ere thou canst find another
Good and fair and wise as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee."
Crosby Hall originally occupied far more ground than is indicated by that
part of it which stands to-day. A wine cellar with finely groined roof
probably belonged to a crypt of its chapel, which has vanished. In its
great hall, fifty-four feet long and forty feet high, one sees to-day, in
beautiful modern workmanship, the arms of St. Helen's Priory, the earliest
proprietor of the place; of Sir John Crosby, its builder; of the
"crook-backed tyrant," Richard, and of the wise, the gentle, the learned
author of the "Utopia." Its "louvre," or opening in the roof, is found in
ancient halls in lieu of a chimney. This hall, however, has a regular
fireplace, but perhaps of later construction. The louvre now is closed by
the same piece of woodwork that formerly was raised above it. The
beautiful carved roof itself is now as it was over four centuries ago, the
chief glory of the place. Beneath it the most accomplished musicians of
the past discoursed sweet music, and the noble, the learned, and the
fashionable gathered at the hospitable board. Not unlikely, the author of
"Comus" and "Lycidas," in the days before its owner fought under Charles
I., may have been among their company.
In Milton's blind old age, Crosby Hall became a Presbyterian
meeting-house, and for a century afterward devout worshippers sang psalms
beneath its carved oak roof, which had echoed for two hundred years to
sounds of mirth and feasting.
A little to the left of Crosby Hall, through a low gateway, the sightseer
passes from the noisy thoroughfare into a quiet court. Its pavement covers
the ancient garden of Crosby Place. But it is not all paved. A small green
churchyard still occupies a part of the site of the ancient priory of St.
Helen's, and surrounds the low Gothic church to which one descends a few
steps from the modern pavement.
Helena, the mother of Constantine, according to tradition, discovered the
tomb of Christ and thereupon was canonised. From remote antiquity a church
in her honour has stood here. Three centuries before Milton's day, the
Benedictine nuns built a priory close by the ancient church. They built
their church, and finally, getting possession of St. Helen's, incorporated
it with their own. To-day the ends of the two naves, with a little cupola
at the intersection, present an irregular and picturesque aspect; the
interior, likewise, by its irregularities, recalls the curious origin of
the structure. An agreeable harmony of differing forms and proportions has
been accomplished. The old, old church, dim even on a sunshiny June day,
is pervaded by a strange charm. Business has crowded to its very walls;
but the rumble of the streets is dulled by the intervening structures of
modern prosaic type that hem in its peaceful solitude. Unlike the last
three churches of which we have spoken, its doors are open all day long,
and the traveller has not to make painful search amid warehouses and down
cross streets for the sexton's keys. St. Helen's is large enough and
beautiful enough to lure the frequent visitor; and perhaps it is a welcome
refuge to many a perplexed and overwearied man of business, who, for a few
moments, now and then, flees from his office and commercial cares, to rest
and lift his thoughts to heavenly things within this sanctuary.
St. Helen's is noted for its tombs, and has been called the Westminster
Abbey of the "City." Here lies that noted and remarkable man, Sir Thomas
Gresham. The visitor to the upper floor of the National Portrait Gallery,
in those rooms where hang the portraits of the Elizabethan era, will
remember the strong face and figure, elegantly clad, of the man whose
bones rest here, and of whom we shall have more to say in connection with
his college and the exchange which rose under his direction. His monument
is a large marble slab full of fossil shells, and raised table high. The
date is 1579. From the beautiful, great window of the Nun's Church, the
coloured rays of his own arms fall on his tomb.
Upon the wall behind it are niches; one of them faced by a little carved
arcade, through which, it is said, the nuns who were in disgrace listened
to the mass from the crypt below. A large ugly piece of masonry on the
same wall near the farther end once contained the embalmed body of Francis
Bancroft, whose face was visible through the glass lid of his coffin. A
few years since both body and tomb were placed within the crypt. According
to his will, on the occasion of an annual memorial sermon for which he had
arranged, his body was exhibited to certain humble folk for whom he had
erected, in expiation of his misdeeds, the almshouses now at Mile End.
Browning has with characteristic power depicted the Roman Jew scourged to
the Christian church, and forced to hear a sermon once a year for his
conversion. Perhaps some later poet may find as gruesome a theme for his
sarcastic pen in the scene which imagination conjures up when these feeble
and aged recipients of the gift of this erratic snob were yearly brought
to listen to the tale of his benefactions, and to gaze upon his
shrivelling corpse. Bancroft as a magistrate had been so unpopular that
the people tried to upset his coffin on its way to the tomb, and pealed
the bells.
The oldest monument in the church is to Thomas Langton, chaplain, buried
in the choir in 1350. One tomb bears the remarkable name of Sir Julius
Caesar. The inscription is in form of a legal document with a broken seal,
in which Sir Julius gives his bond to Heaven to surrender his life
whenever it shall please God to call him. If one would see Sir Julius as
Milton saw him, let him look upon his portrait that hangs in the National
Portrait Gallery with his great contemporaries.
The obdurate father-in-law, the rich Sir John Spencer of Crosby Hall, is
commemorated, by his son-in-law, the Earl of Northampton, in a stately
alabaster tomb. The figures of Sir John and his wife rest under a double
canopy, and at their feet kneels the runaway daughter, in the enormous
stiff crinoline of 1609, the date of her father's death. Some thousand men
in mourning cloaks are said to have attended his funeral. The tomb of Sir
John Crosby and his wife, of 1475, the beautiful and perfectly preserved
tomb of Oteswich and his wife, of the time of Henry IV., and the fine
figure of a girl reading, are a few of the works of art that deserve
careful attention. The beauty of that which antedates the Tudor and Stuart
periods, as contrasted with the works of art of those periods, is almost
as marked as it is at Westminster Abbey.
When Milton lived he must have seen still standing the refectory and
cloisters, and the old hall of the nuns, which was later used by the
Company of Leathersellers. The whole group of buildings, with the
adjacent gardens, must have formed a highly picturesque reminder of the
days before King "Hal" had ruthlessly swept his besom of destruction over
the many houses in the land which sheltered nuns and friars.
During Milton's life there stood on Bishopsgate Street the first
charitable institution for the insane that was ever established. Its name,
"Bethlehem Hospital," was corrupted into Bedlam, and has become a term of
general application to scenes of disorder. Just after Milton's death, it
was removed to Southwark, where the gray dome of the present structure
rises conspicuous amid the London smoke.
Passing northeast along the crowded thoroughfare of Bishopsgate Street,
but a short distance from St. Helen's, the student of antiquities may see,
almost concealed by parasitic houses, the little ancient church of St.
Ethelburga. He will need to cross the street in order to perceive the name
inscribed in large letters upon the church, beneath the short tower and
cupola, and above the clock and the shop that masks its front. In Milton's
boyhood, this church was ancient, and had been standing for at least three
hundred and fifty years, for it is mentioned as early as 1366. Here
Chaucer may have knelt to say his Paternosters.
The visitor should time his coming to the middle of the day, when the door
opening upon the sidewalk is unlocked, and he may enter into the solemn
little sanctuary, and at the farther end step out into the tiny garden at
the rear. Here, if it be summer, he may sit in this shady retreat and
meditate upon the history of the bit of ancient wall said by the verger to
be a Roman wall, the fragments of which are preserved here. The church
itself is plain and bare; simply a Gothic nave, with no side aisles. Its
chief interest to some may be its antique organ, of uncertain date, but
old enough from its appearance to have been heard by the little lad from
Bread Street whose soul was full of music. One can easily imagine the
father of John Milton, who was himself so skilled in the great art,
bringing his son to every church within his neighbourhood that boasted
such an instrument.
The church stands on the site of a much older one, and is named from the
daughter of the French princess, Bertha, who brought to Canterbury, to the
home of her Saxon husband, Ethelbert, the Christian religion, which was
then new to pagan England. Visitors to the little church of St. Martin's
at Canterbury will recall the font in which this king was baptised into
the faith of his wife.
Not far down Bishopsgate Street, upon the opposite side from St.
Ethelburga's, when Milton lived, stood a house with such a marvellous
carved front with oriel windows, that when it made way for a modern
business block, it was transferred to the South Kensington Museum, where
it may now be seen in one of its lofty halls. In Milton's youth, Sir Paul
Pindar, its owner, was the richest merchant in the kingdom, and often
loaned money to James I. and his son Charles. As ambassador to
Constantinople, he did much to improve England's trade in the East. On his
return, when Milton was a schoolboy of a dozen years at St. Paul's School,
he brought, among his other treasures, a great diamond, valued at L30,000,
which he loaned to the king to wear at his opening of the Parliaments; it
was afterward sold to Charles I. Twenty years later, when Cromwell and
Milton were fighting for the rights of Englishmen, and Charles's strength
was failing, this same Paul Pindar provided funds for the escape of Queen
Henrietta Maria and her children.
He gave L10,000 for the restoration, before the fire, of St. Paul's
Cathedral. But his loyalty to the house of Stuart was put to a hard test,
for the king borrowed such enormous sums that he was all but ruined. When
Milton walked down Bishopsgate Street, past his quaint dwelling-house, he
must have seen the mulberry-trees planted in the park to please James I.
by his devoted subject. These ancient mulberry-trees disappeared only
within the memory of men now living.
Passing westward along the northern site of the old city wall, in search
of the few landmarks that escaped the Great Fire and still remain, we come
to that church of all others most dear to Milton lovers. St. Giles's,
Cripplegate, is not easily entered on Sunday, except during hours of
service. But a courteous question to the burly guardian of the peace who
patrols the neighbourhood may effect an unlocking of the gates and a quiet
stroll through the green garden that surrounds the church upon two sides.
The big policeman is a good talker, and relates with gusto the ravages of
the great fire a few years since, which came so near as to melt the lead
upon the church roof.
The massive wall which forms a corner of the green yard is a bastion of
the city wall in the time of Edward IV. Possibly the long, narrow bricks
which still gleam red in the lower part may be a lingering remnant of the
old Roman wall. Certainly they are the type that the Romans were wont to
use. The policeman assures us that there are mysterious "submarine"
passages leading from this wall, and one may well believe almost anything
as one thinks of the strange sights that it has witnessed. High walls
of business blocks of nondescript style replace the gaps made by the
recent fire, which fortunately stopped before it touched the narrow,
gabled houses of wood which cluster close about the church. These give
almost the only example to-day in London of the type of building which
housed the poorer class of Londoners of Milton's time.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. GILES CRIPPLEGATE IN 1737
Dedicated to St. Giles, who lived about the year 700; founded in 1090;
destroyed by fire in 1545, and rebuilt within the Liberty but without the
City of London.
_From an old engraving._]
The church is on the site of an older one of 1090, and was built about one
hundred years before Milton's birth. It is late Perpendicular, and has
some good detail.
As one enters the church from the garden, the first monument on his right
is Milton's, which contains his bust, under a Gothic canopy. The poet's
bones lie by his father's, under the pavement near the choir. According to
the evidence of a little book written about 1790, it seems that his coffin
was opened by irresponsible persons, who found the lead much decayed and
easily bent back the top. A servant-maid for a consideration let in
sightseers through a window, some of whom, after satisfying their
curiosity in gazing on the well-preserved figure, snatched hair and teeth
and even an arm-bone to carry away as relics. A later authority questions
whether it is certain that the grave thus desecrated was indeed Milton's
or another's, and leaves a grain of comfort in the thought that perhaps
his honoured remains still rest untouched by vandals.
Within this church Ben Jonson was married in 1623, and here Oliver
Cromwell, a sturdy youth of twenty-one, married his bride on August 22d in
1620. Little thought the parson, as he and Elizabeth Bourchier knelt
before him, to be joined in holy wedlock, that one day he would be
entitled not only "Protector of England," but "Protector of
Protestantism." A marvellous man, this Oliver, whose deeds left much to be
forgiven by a later age, for they sometimes had more of the spirit of
Joshua than of the Founder of the Christian Faith, and yet as a lover of
England, and a minister to the court of Queen Victoria from England's
lusty kin beyond the sea has said:
"He lived to make his simple oaken chair
More terrible, more grandly beautiful,
Than any throne before or after of a British king.
* * * * *
One of the few who have a right to rank
With the true Makers; for his spirit wrought
Order from Chaos; proved that right divine
Dwelt only in the excellence of truth;
And far within old Darkness' hostile lines
Advanced and pitched the shining tents of Light
Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell,
That--not the least among his many claims
To deathless honour--he was MILTON'S friend,
A man not second among those who lived
To show us that the poet's lyre demands
An arm of tougher sinew than the sword."
--_"A Glance Behind the Curtain," Lowell._
One grave within the church may have been dear to Milton besides that of
his honoured father. As he lived only one generation removed from the
martyrs of Smithfield, he must often have pored over the record of their
heroism and cruel deaths, by Fox, the famous martyrologist. Near the west
door lies the slab above his grave. The date is 1587. Here, no doubt,
Milton, who, as has been said, at different times had dwellings near the
church, must often have entered within its doors and paused.
Says the historian Marsden: "Fox placed the Church of England under
greater obligations than any writer of his time, and had his recompense in
an old age of poverty and shame.... Nor were his writings undervalued even
then; they were commanded to be chained up in churches by the side of the
homilies and the English Bible;... thus the 'Book of Martyrs' stood
amongst the high, authentic records of our Church, whilst its venerable
author yet lived."
Frobisher, the great navigator, is also buried within the church.
On the left wall, as one faces the choir, is a curious doggerel
inscription to one Busbie. If it be on a Sunday afternoon, and the
children have gathered for the Sunday school, it may be interesting to
pause a bit, as we have done, before the epitaph, and, while copying it,
to lend a half ear to the teaching that goes on within hearing. Three
small boys sit on a bench before a solemn youth who holds a book and
instructs their infant minds as follows: "Who is God? Where is God? How
many persons are there in the Godhead? Keep still there--don't answer
until it is your turn. When God put Adam and Eve out of Eden, what did he
promise them?" "That they should be saved," mumbles one youngster. "Whom
did he promise should save them?" "His Son." "What do we call his Son?"
"Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." The next class and all the others
scattered through the church are progressing in Christian nurture in much
the same way, and one wonders whether the pedagogical skill of the
teachers has advanced one whit in all the hundreds of years since the
church was built. We hear no "opening exercises," no joyous singing, no
tender, earnest talk about right-doing and the temptations that little
boys on Fore Street may encounter on Monday morning. There is nothing but
a purely formal catechising of these eager, impressionable little souls
as to a theology that they cannot understand, and a history of the world
which their first lesson on geology will undermine. This modern Sunday
school is the one blot upon the memory of the beautiful old church so dear
to every lover of Milton.
On a week day one may stand on Redcross Street, and behold, as did the
travellers in "The Hand of Ethelberta," "the bold shape of the tower they
sought, clothed in every neutral shade, standing clear against the sky,
dusky and grim in its upper stages, and hoary gray below, where every
corner of stone was rounded off by the waves of wind and storm. All people
were busy here; our visitors seemed to be the only idle persons that the
city contained; and there was no dissonance--there never is--between
antiquity and such beehive industry.... This intramural stir was a
fly-wheel, transparent by infinite motion, through which Milton and his
day could be seen as if nothing intervened."