small, certainly, compared with the Cathedral church of the City and
the Abbey of the West; but stately and ancient; endowed by half a
dozen Sovereigns; consecrated by the memory of seven hundred years,
filled with the monuments of great men and small men buried within her
walls; standing in her own Precinct; with her own Courts, Spiritual
and Temporal; with her own judges and officers; surrounded by the
claustral buildings belonging to Master, Brethren, Sisters, and
Bedeswomen. The church and the hospital had long survived the
intentions of the founders; yet as they stood, so situated, so
ancient, so venerable, amid a dense population of rough sailors and
sailor folk, with such enormous possibilities for good and useful
work, sacred and secular, one is lost in wonder that the consent of
Parliament, even for purposes of gain, could be obtained for their
destruction. Yet St. Katherine's was destroyed. When the voice of the
preacher died away, the destroyers began their work. They pulled down
the church; they hacked up the monuments, and dug up the bones; they
destroyed the Master's house, and cut down the trees in his quiet
orchard; they pulled down the Brothers' houses round the little
ancient square; they pulled down the row of Sisters' houses and the
Bedeswomen's houses; they swept the people out of the Precinct, and
destroyed the streets; they pulled down the Courts, Spiritual and
Temporal, and opened the doors of the prison; they grubbed up the
burying ground, and with the bones and the dust of the dead, and the
rubbish of the foundations, they filled up the old reservoir of the
Chelsea water-works, and enabled Mr.
Cubitt to build Eccleston Square. When all was gone they let the water
into the big hole they had made, and called it St. Katherine's Dock.
All this done, they became aware of certain prickings of conscience.
They had utterly demolished and swept away and destroyed a thing which
could never be replaced; they were fain to do something to appease
those prickings. They therefore stuck up a new chapel, which the
architect called Gothic, with six neat houses in two rows, and a large
house with a garden in Regent's Park, and this they called St.
Katherine's, 'Sirs,' they said, 'it is not true that we have destroyed
that ancient foundation at all; we have only removed it to another
place. Behold your St. Katherine's!' Of course it is nothing of the
kind. It is not St. Katherine's. It is a sham, a house of Shams and
Shadows.
Thus was St. Katherine's destroyed; not for the needs of the City,
because it is not clear that the new docks were wanted, or that there
was no other place for them, but in sheer inability to understand what
the place meant as to the past, and what it might be made to do in the
future. The story of the Hospital has been often told: partly, as by
Ducarel and by Lysons, for the historical interest; partly, as by Mr.
Simcox Lea, in protest against the present we of its revenues. It is
with the latter object, though I disagree altogether with Mr. Lea's
conclusions, that I ask leave to tell the story once more. The story
will have to be told, perhaps, again and again, until people can be
made to understand the uselessness and the waste and the foolishness
of the present establishment in the Park, which has assumed and bears
the style and title of St. Katherine's Hospital by the Tower.
The beginning of the Hospital dates seven hundred and forty years
back, when Matilda, Stephen's Queen, founded it for the purpose of
having masses said for the repose of her two children, Baldwin and
Matilda, She ordered that the Hospital should consist of a Master,
Brothers, Sisters, and certain poor persons--probably the same as in
the later foundation. She appointed the Prior and Canons of Holy
Trinity to have perpetual custody of the Hospital; and she reserved to
herself and all succeeding Queens of England the nomination, of the
Master. Her grant was approved by the King, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and the Pope. Shortly afterwards William of Ypres bestowed
the land of Edredeshede, afterwards called Queenhythe, on the Priory
of Holy Trinity, subject to an annual payment of £20 to the Hospital
of Katherine's by the Tower.
This was the original foundation. It was not a Charity; it was a
Religious House with a definite duty--to pray for the souls of two
children; it had no other charitable objects than belong to any
religious foundation--viz., the giving of alms to the poor, nor was it
intended as a church for the people; in those days there were no
people outside the Tower, save the inhabitants of a few scattered
cottages along the river Wall, and the farmhouses of Steban Heath. It
was simply founded for the benefit of two little princes' souls. One
refrains from asking what was done for the little paupers' souls in
those days.
The Prior and Canons of Holy Trinity without Aldgate continued to
exercise some authority over the Hospital, but apparently--the subject
only interests the ecclesiastical historian--against the protests and
grumblings of the St. Katherine's Society. It was, however, formally
handed over to them, a hundred and forty years later, by Henry the
Third. After his death, Queen Eleanor, for some reason, now dimly
intelligible, wanted to get the Hospital into her own hands. The
Bishop of London took it away from the Priory and transferred it to
her. Then, perhaps with the view of preventing any subsequent claim by
the Priory, she declared the Hospital dissolved.
Here ends the first chapter in the history of the Hospital. The
foundation for the souls of the two princes existed no longer--the
children, no doubt, having been long since sung out of Purgatory.
Queen Eleanor, however, immediately refounded it. The Hospital was, as
before, to consist of a Master, three Brothers, three Sisters, and
bedeswomen. It was also provided that six poor scholars were to be fed
and clothed--not educated, The Queen further provided that on November
the 16th of every year twelve pence each should be given to the poor
scholars, and the same amount to twenty-four poor persons; and that on
November the 20th, the anniversary of the King's death, one thousand
poor men should receive one halfpenny each. Here is the first
introduction of a charity. The Hospital is no longer an ecclesiastical
foundation only; it maintains scholars and gives substantial alms. Who
received these alms? Of course the people in the neighbourhood--if
there were no inhabitants in the Precinct, the poor of Portsoken Ward.
In either case the charity would be local--a point of the greatest
importance. Queen Eleanor also continued her predecessor's rule that
the patronage of the Hospital should remain in the hands of the Queens
of England for ever; when there was no Queen, then in the hands of the
Queen Dowager; failing in her, in those of the King. This rule still
obtains. The Queen appoints the Master, Brothers, and Sisters of the
House of Shams in Regent's Park, just as her predecessors appointed
those of St. Katherine's by the Tower.
Queen Eleanor was followed by other royal benefactors. Edward the
Second, for example, gave the Hospital the rectory of St. Peter's in
Northampton. Queen Philippa, who, like Eleanor, regarded the place
with especial affection, endowed it with the manor of Upchurch in
Kent, and that of Queenbury in Hertfordshire. She also founded a
chantry with £10 a year for a chaplain. Edward the Third founded
another chantry in honour of Philippa, with a charge of £10 a year
upon the Hanaper Office; he also conferred upon it the right of
cutting wood for fuel in the Forest of Essex. Richard the Second gave
it the manor of Reshyndene in Sheppy, and 120 acres of land in
Minster. Henry the Sixth gave it the manors of Chesingbury in
Wiltshire, and Quasley in Hants; he also granted a charter, with the
privilege of holding a fair. Lastly, Henry the Eighth founded, in
connection with St. Katherine's by the Tower, the Guild of St.
Barbara, consisting of a Master, three Wardens, and a great number of
members, among whom were Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke and Duchess of
Norfolk, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, the Earl and Countess of
Shrewsbury, and the Earl and Countess of Northumberland, with other
great and illustrious persons.
This is a goodly list of benefactors. It is evident that St.
Katherine's was a foundation regarded by the Kings and Queens of
England with great favour. Other benefactors it had, notably John
Holland, Duke of Exeter, Lord High Admiral and Constable of the Tower,
himself of royal descent. He was buried in the church, with his two
wives, and bequeathed to the Hospital the manor of Much Gaddesden. He
also gave it a cup of beryl, garnished with gold, pearls, and precious
stones, and a chalice of gold for the celebration of the Holy
Sacrament.
In the year 1546 all the lands belonging to the Hospital were
transferred to the Crown.
At this time the whole revenue of the Hospital was £364 12s. 6d., and
the expenditure was £210 6s. 5d.; the difference being the value of
the mastership. The Master at the dissolution was Gilbert Lathom, a
priest, and the brothers were five in number--namely, the original
three, and the two priests for the chantries. Four of the five had
'for his stipend, mete, and drynke, by yere,' the sum of £8, which is
fivepence farthing a day; the other had £9, which is sixpence a day.
It would be interesting, by comparison of prices, to ascertain how
much could be purchased with sixpence a day. The three Sisters had
also £8 year, and the Bedeswomen had each two pounds five shillings
and sixpence a year. There were six scholars at £4 a year each for
'their mete, drynke, clothes, and other necessaries'; and there were
four servants, a steward, a butler, a cook, and an under-cook, who
cost £5 a year each. There were two gardens and a yard or
court--namely, the square, bounded by the houses of the Brothers, and
the church.
This marks the closing of the second chapter in the history of the
Hospital. With the cessation of saying masses for the dead its
religious character expired. There remained only the services in the
church for the inhabitants of the Precinct in the time of Henry VIII.
The only use of the Hospital was now as a charity. Fortunately, the
place was not, like the Priory of the Holy Trinity, granted to a
courtier, otherwise it would have been swept away just as that Priory,
or that of Elsing's Spital, was swept away. It continued after a while
to carry on its existence, but with changes. It was secularized. The
Masters for a hundred and fifty years, not counting the interval of
Queen Mary's reign, were laymen. The Brothers were generally laymen.
The first Master of the third period was Sir Thomas Seymour; he was
succeeded by Sir Francis Flemyng, Lieutenant General of the King's
Ordnance. Flemyng was deprived by Queen Mary, who appointed one
Francis Mallet, a priest, in his place. Queen Elizabeth dispossessed
Malet, and appointed Thomas Wilson, a layman and a Doctor at Laws.
During his mastership there were no Brothers, and only a few Sisters
or Bedeswomen. The Hospital then became a rich sinecure. Among the
Masters were Sir Julius Cæsar, Master of the Rolls; Sir Robert Acton;
Dr. Coxe; three Montague brothers, Walter, Henry, and George; Lord
Brownker; the Earl of Feversham; Sir Henry Newton, Judge of the High
Court of Admiralty; the Hon. George Berkeley; and Sir James Butler.
The Brothers had been re-established--their names are enumerated by
Ducarel--one or two of them were clerks in orders, but all the rest
were laymen. They still received the old stipend of £8 a year, with a
small house. As for the rest of the greatly increased income it went
to the Master after the manner common to all the old charities. During
the latter half of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth
century St. Katherine's by the Tower consisted of a beautiful old
church standing with its buildings clustered round it--a Master's
house, rich in carved and ancient wood-work, with its gardens and
orchards; its houses for the Brothers, Sisters, and Bedeswomen, each
of whom continued to receive the same salary as that ordained by Queen
Eleanor. Service was held in the church for the inhabitants of the
Precinct, but the Hospital was wholly secular. The Master devoured by
far the greater part of the revenue, and the alms-people--Brothers,
Sisters, and Bedeswomen--had no duties to perform of any kind.
In the year 1698 this, the third chapter in the life of the Hospital,
was closed. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Somers, held in that year a
Visitation of the Hospital, the result of which is interesting,
because it shows, first, a lingering of the old ecclesiastical
traditions, and, next, the sense that something useful ought to be
done with the income of the Hospital. It was therefore ordered in the
new regulations provided by the Chancellor that the Brothers should be
in Holy Orders, and that a school of thirty-five boys and fifteen
girls should be maintained by the Hospital. It does not appear that
any duties were expected of the Brothers. Like the Fellows of colleges
at Oxford and Cambridge, they were all to be in priests' orders, and
for exactly the same reason, because at the original foundations of
the colleges, as well as of the Hospital, the Fellows were all
priests. As for the Master, he remained a layman. This new order of
things, therefore, raised the position of the Brothers, and gave a new
dignity to the Hospital; further, the School as well as the Bedeswomen
defined its position as a charity. It still fell far, very far, short
of what it might have done, but it was not between the years 1698 and
1825 quite so useless as it had been. A plan of the Precinct, with
drawings of the church, within and without, and of the monuments in
the church, may be found in Lysons. The obscurity of the Hospital, and
the neglect into which it fell during the last century, are shown by
the small attention paid to it in the books on London of the last
century, and the early years of the present century. Thus, in
Harrison's 'History of London,' though nearly every church in the City
and its immediate suburbs is figured, St. Katherine's is not drawn. In
Strype (edition 1720) there is no drawing of St. Katherine's; in
Dodsley's 'London,' 1761, it is described but not figured; and
Wilkinson, in his 'Londina Illustrata,' passes it over entirely. The
Hospital buildings consisted of a square, of which the north side was
occupied by the Master's house, with a large garden behind, and the
Master's orchard between his garden and the river; on the east and
west sides were the Brothers' houses; and on the south side of the
square was the church and the chapter-house. On the east of the church
was the burying-ground. South of the church was the Sisters' close,
with the houses occupied by the Sisters and the Bedeswomen. The old
Brothers' houses were taken down and rebuilt about the year 1755, and
the Master's house, an ancient building, full of carved timber-work,
had also been taken down, so that in the year 1825, when the Hospital
was finally destroyed, the only venerable building standing in the
Precinct was the church itself. To look at the drawings of this old
church and to think of the loving care with which it would have been
treated had it been allowed to stand till this day, and then to
consider the 'Gothic' edifice in Regent's Park, is indeed saddening.
The church consisted of the nave and chancel with two aisles, built by
Bishop Beckington, formerly the Master. The east window, 30 feet high
and 25 feet wide, had once been most beautiful when its windows were
stained. The tracery was still fine; a St. Katherine's wheel occupied
the highest part, and beneath it was a rose; but none of the windows
had preserved their painted glass, so that the general effect of the
interior must have been cold. The carved wood of the stalls and the
great pulpit, presented by Sir Julius Cæsar, may still be seen in the
Regent's Park Chapel, where are also some of the monuments. Of these
the church was full. The finest (now in Regent's Park) was that of
John Holland, Duke of Exeter, and his two wives. There was one of the
Hon. George Montague, Master of the Hospital, who died in the year
1681; and there was the monument with kneeling figures of one Cutting
and his wife, with his coat of arms. The seats of the stalls are
curiously carved, as is so often found, with grotesque figures--human
birds, monkeys, lions, boys riding hogs, angels playing bagpipes,
beasts with human heads, pelicans feeding their young, and the devil
with hoof and horns carrying off a brace of souls. There was more than
the customary wealth epitaphs. Thus, on the tablet to the memory of
the daughter of one of the Brothers was written:
'Thus we by want, more than by having, learn
The worth of things in which we claim concern.'
On that of William Cutting, a benefactor to Gonville and Caius,
Cambridge, is written:
'Not dead, if good deedes could keep men alive,
Nor all dead since good deedes do men revive.
Gunville and Kaies his good deedes maie record,
And will (no doubt) him praise therefor afford.'
On the tablet of Charles Stamford, clergyman:
'Mille modis morimur mortaies, nascimur uno:
Sunt hominum morbi milie sed una salus.'
And to the memory of Robert Beadles, free-mason, one of His Majesty's
gunners of the Tower, who died in the year 1683:
'He now rests quiet, in his grave secure;
Where still the noise of guns he can endure;
His martial soul is doubtless now at rest,
Who in his lifetime was so oft oppressed
With care and fears, and strange cross acts of late,
But now is happy and in glorious state.
The blustering storm of life with him is o'er,
And he is landed on that happy shore
Where 'tis that he can hope and fear no more.'
There they lay buried, the good people of St. Katherine's Precinct.
They were of all trades, but chiefly belonged to those who go down to
the sea in ships. On the list of names are those of half a dozen
captains, one of them captain of H.M.S. _Monmouth_, who died in the
year 1706, aged 31 years; there are the names of Lieutenants; there
are those of sailmakers and gunners; there is a sergeant of Admiralty,
a moneyer of the Tower, a weaver, a citizen and stationer, a Dutchman
who fell overboard and was drowned, a surveyor and collector--all the
trades and callings that would gather together in this little
riverside district separated and cut off from the rest of London.
Among the people who lived here were the descendants of them who came
away with the English on the taking of Calais, Guisnes, and Hames.
They settled in a street called Hames and Guisnes Lane, corrupted into
Hangman's Gains. A census taken in the reign of Queen Elizabeth showed
that of those resident in the Precinct, 328 were Dutch, 8 were Danes,
5 were Polanders, 69 Were French--all hat-makers--2 Spanish, 1
Italian, and 12 Scotch. Verstegan, the antiquary, was born here, and
here lived Raymond Lully. During the last century the Precinct cane to
be inhabited almost entirely by sailors, belonging to every nation and
every religion under the sun.
This was the place which it was permitted to certain promoters of a
Dock Company to destroy utterly. A place with a history of seven
hundred years, which might, had its ecclesiastical character been
preserved and developed, have been converted into a cathedral for East
London; or, if its secular character had been maintained, might have
become a noble centre of all kinds of useful work for the great
chaotic city of East London. They suffered it to be destroyed. It has
been destroyed for sixty years. As for calling the place in Regent's
Park St. Katherine's Hospital, that, I repeat, is absurd. There is no
longer a St. Katherine's Hospital. As well call the garish new
building on the embankment Sion College. That is not, indeed, Sion
College. The London Clergy, who, of all people, might have been
expected to guard the monuments of the past, have sold Sion College
for what it would fetch. The site of the Cripplegate nunnery; of
Elsing's Spital for blind men; of Sion College, or Clergy House, has
been destroyed by its own trustees. The sweet old place, the
peacefullest spot in the whole city, with its long low library, its
Bedesmen's rooms, and its quiet reading room, is gone. You might just
as well destroy Trinity College, Cambridge, and then stick up a modern
wing to Somerset House, and call that Trinity. In the same way St.
Katherine's by the Tower was destroyed sixty years ago.
Let me repeat that the Hospital suffered four changes.
First, it was founded by Queen Matilda, for the repose of her
children's souls. Next, it was dissolved and again founded, and
subsequently endowed as a Religious House with chantries, certain
definite duties of masses for the dead, certain charitable trusts, and
other functions. Thirdly, when the Mass ceased to be said it was
secularized completely. Service was held in the church, but the
Hospital became a perfectly secular charity, supporting a few
almspeople with niggard hand, and a Master in great splendour.
Fourthly, it was again treated as a semi-ecclesiastical foundation,
for reasons which do not appear. At the same time, while its charities
were enlarged, no duties were assigned to the Brothers, who seem to
have been considered as Fellows, forming the Society, and, therefore,
like the Fellows at Oxford and Cambridge, obliged to be in Holy
Orders. Lastly, as we have seen, it was destroyed.
After the Hospital had been destroyed, a scheme for the management of
the revenues was suggested to Lord Elden, then Lord Chancellor, and
afterwards approved by Lord Lyndhurst. The question before the
Chancellor was, one would think, the following: 'Here is an annual
revenue of £5,000 and more, released by the destruction of the
Hospital. How can it be best applied for the general good or for the
benefit of the crowded city around the site of the old Hospital?'
That, however, was not the view of the Lord Chancellor. He said,
practically:
'Here is a large property which has hitherto been devoted to the use
of maintaining in idleness, and not as a reward or pension for good
work done, a Master, three Brothers, three Sisters, and ten poor
women. The ecclesiastical purposes for which the property was
originally got together have long since utterly vanished. The church
in which service used to be held is abolished, and the place where it
stood is turned into a dock. We will build a new church where none is
wanted, we will perpetuate the waste of all this money; the stipends
of the Brothers and Sisters shall be raised; to the Brothers shall be
assigned, nominally, the service in the chapel, but they shall have a
chaplain or reader, to prevent this duty from becoming onerous; the
Sisters shall have nothing at all to do; the Bedeswomen shall be
deprived of their houses and shall receive no advance in their pay,
but they shall be doubled in number. Twenty Bedesmen shall also be
added with the same pay, viz., £10 a year, or 4s. a week.[NOTE: Note
that in 1545 each Bedeswomen received 10d, a week, and each Sister
3s., so that the proportion of Bedeswoman's pay to Sister's pay was
then as 1:3'6. But Lord Lyndhurst takes away the houses from the poor
women and gives them no more pay, so that, without _counting the loss
of their houses_, the Bedeswoman's pay under Victoria is to the
Sister's pay as 1:19. The Victorian Bedeswoman was therefore
relatively reduced in proportion to the Sister six-fold compared with
her Tudor predecessor.] The Master shall have a beautiful house with a
garden, conservancy, stabling for seven horses, and £1,200 a year,
besides comfortable perquisites. He shall have no duties except the
presidency of the chapter. And in order that the thing may not seem
perfectly and profoundly ridiculous there shall be a school of
twenty-four boys and twelve girls.'
This was the solution proposed and adopted by two eminent Chancellors,
and carried into effect for thirty years. During the years 1858-1863
the average revenue was £7,460 8s. 2-3/4d. Of this sum the Master,
Brethren, and Sisters absorbed with their buildings £4,102 8s.
2-3/4d.; the management expenses Were £909 5s. 6d.; the chapel cost
£211 17s. 11d., sundries amounted to £141 6s. 10-3/4 d.; and the
useful portion of the expenditure was represented by the sum of £554
9s. 7-1/2 d. Absolute uselessness--for the chapel was by no means
wanted--is represented by £6,904, and usefulness by £554--a proportion
of very nearly 12-1/2:1.
Yet another opportunity occurred of dealing rationally with this large
property.
In the year 1871 a Royal Commission was appointed to examine 'into
several matters relative to the Royal Hospital of St. Katherine near
the Tower.' The question might again have been raised how best to
apply the large revenues for the general good. The Commissioners had
before them quite clearly the way in which the seven thousand and odd
pounds a year was being spent; they could arrive as easily as
ourselves at the proportion above set forth, viz.:
Waste : usefulness :: 12-1/2 : 1.