THE CHARTERHOUSE AND ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S
“At length they all to mery London came,
To mery London my most kyndley nurse.”
SPENSER.
In days of old, when London’s present meatmarket was the fashionable
jousting-ground of the time, the knights and squires used to ride to
Smithfield up a road still called Giltspur Street, either from the
armourers who dwelt there, or from the jingling of the champions’ spurs
as they clattered by.
Any Holborn bus will take you to the corner of St. Sepulchre’s where the
dismal bell tolled the passing to Newgate of the condemned criminals. On
the right side of Giltspur Street is St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, that
survived the Great Fire only to be rebuilt in 1730. The history of this
great London hospital goes back eight hundred years, for it belonged to
the Priory, but Sir Thomas Gresham’s father persuaded Henry VIII. to
refound the institution in 1546.
There was once a naïve inscription under the statue of the fat boy whose
stone image is still to be seen at the corner where Cock Lane joins
Giltspur Street, on the left. At this point, once known as Pye Corner,
the Fire of London was stopped in 1666 by blowing up the houses, and the
writing underneath the figure of this extremely obese youth reminded the
passer-by that “the Great Fire ... was occasioned by the sin of
gluttony.” I do not know what authority there was for this allegation.
Whoever was responsible for the tablet probably had running in his
muddled head the names of Pye or Pie Corner and Pudding Lane in Thames
Street where the conflagration started. The fact that it was from the
house of a baker that the flames first spread may likewise have
influenced him, though it is unusual to be gluttonous on bread alone.
The Fire gave the moralist good cause for thought. It was an event so
tremendous, so far-reaching, so overwhelming, that it is strange that
the history books of England do not linger over its significance. For in
less than a week practically every landmark that went to make up the
most interesting old mediæval city in the world was swept away. The
ancient cathedral of St. Paul’s, 89 churches, 4 city gates, 460 streets
and 13,200 houses perished in the flames. With the exception, perhaps,
of the burning of Rome, there has never been so terrible a fire. Pepys
wept to see it.
A wonderful account has been left us by Evelyn:
The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished,
that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate,
they hardly stirr’d to quench it, so that there was nothing heard
or seene but crying out and lamentation, running about like
distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save even their
goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them, so as it
burned both in breadth and length, the Churches, Public Halls,
Exchange, Hospitals, Monuments, and ornaments, leaping after a
prodigious manner from house to house and streete to streete, at
greate distances one from ye other; for ye heate with a long set of
faire and warme weather, had even ignited the air, and prepar’d the
materials to conceive the fire, which devour’d after an incredible
manner, houses, furniture, and everything. Here we saw the Thames
cover’d with goods floating, all the barges and boates laden with
what some had time and courage to save, as, on ye other, ye carts,
&c., carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strew’d
with moveables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both
people and what goods they could get away. Oh the miserable and
calamitous spectacle! such as haply the world had not seen the like
since the foundation of it, nor to be outdone till the universale
conflagration. All the skie was of a fiery aspect, like the top of
a burning oven, the light seen above forty miles round about for
many nights. God grant my eyes may never behold the like, now
seeing above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking
and thunder of the impetuous flames, ye shrieking of women and
children, the hurry of people, the fall of Towers, Houses, and
Churches, was like an hideous storme, and the aire all about so hot
and inflam’d that at last one was not able to approach it, so that
they were forc’d to stand still and let ye flames burn on, wch they
did for neere two miles in length and one in bredth. The clouds of
smoke were dismall, and reach’d upon computation neer fifty miles
in length. Thus I left it this afternoone burning, a resemblance of
Sodom, or the last day. London was, but is no more!
Everyone lent a hand; even King Charles came down from Whitehall and
worked hard beside his meanest subject--doing something useful for once
in a way. But it was a case of saving what one could and fleeing. Some
stacked their treasures in the churches (the booksellers of Paternoster
Row stored their books in St. Paul’s), but of the churches nothing was
left. Some buried their valuables underground and perhaps recovered them
two years afterwards, when the last of the rubbish was cleared away. By
the end of that fatal September the whole of the large district of
Moorfields, north of the city, was one vast camp of the homeless, and
there they stayed in shacks and shelters till the city was rebuilt, much
as the unfortunate people of devastated France were living during the
years of the Great War.
The trade of London ceased for a time; there were no shops, the
merchants had lost their goods, the warehouses were gutted, all records
of debts and commercial transactions were destroyed, there were no
schools, no almshouses.
Yet in four short years the English, with the same dogged energy that
they were putting recently into the making of trenches and dugouts, had
practically rebuilt their capital city. The churches, of course, took a
long time to finish; the beautiful and numerous halls of the City
Companies were not replaced in a day, but nearly 10,000 houses were up,
and since those seventeenth-century workmen were just Englishmen, with
no foreigners at hand to tell them to “ca’ canny,” everything was in a
fair way to completion.
As for Sir Christopher Wren, that amazing architect who stamped the
impress of his genius on the great city as we know it, who shall give
him enough honour? He designed and erected over forty public buildings,
amongst them the lovely and unique cluster of churches that lie around
St. Paul’s, yet for this work he was rewarded by the miserable salary of
£100 a year, with £200 a year for the rebuilding of the great cathedral.
ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT
“The citye of London that is to me so dere and sweete.”
CHAUCER.
Opposite St. Bartholomew’s Hospital is Smithfield, new and blatant, and
smelling hideously of raw meat. Take courage and go on northwards, for
in a few minutes you will come to the most wonderful old church in
London--older than any other except the chapel in the White Tower. There
is something about the almost primitive simplicity of its massive stone
pillars that carries one back more directly to the times of the Norman
conquerors than a thousand long descriptions gathered from history
books.
What you see is only the choir and transept of a much larger church
built for the Priory of St. Bartholomew by the founder Rahere in or
about the year 1102. His tomb is on the left as you enter, and high up
on the right is the lovely oriel window where Prior Bolton, who died in
1532, could sit or kneel at his ease, without even the trouble of coming
downstairs from his house, and look down into the church he did so much
to rebuild and restore.
[Illustration: RAHERE’S TOMB IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S CHURCH]
St. Bartholomew’s has had a turbulent history. There is the dramatic
story of Archbishop Boniface of Lambeth Palace, a Savoyard who took it
into his crafty head that he would like to annex the offertory of St.
Bartholomew’s. On a certain Sunday morning he set out from Lambeth, with
a train of attendants with mail armour under their robes. The
description of what happened is delicious in Matthew Paris’s words, as
quoted by Stowe:
Amongst other memorable matters, touching this priorie, one is of
an Archbishop’s Visitation, which Matthew Paris hath thus. Boniface
(sayeth he) Archbishoppe of Canterbury, in his Visitation came to
this priorie, where being received with procession in the most
solemne wise, hee said that hee passed not upon the honor, but came
to visite them, to whom the Canons aunswered that they having a
learned Bishop, ought not in contempt of him to be visited by any
other; which aunswere so much offended the Archbishop that he
forthwithe fell on the Supprior, and smote him on the face, saying,
indeede, indeede, dooth it become you English Traytors so to
aunswere mee, thus raging with oaths not to bee recited, hee rent
in peeces the rich Cope of the Supprior, and trode it under his
feete, and thrust him against a pillar of the Chauncell with such
violence, that hee had almost killed him: but the Canons seeing
their supprior thus almost slayne, came and plucked off the
Archbishoppe with such force that they overthrewe him backwardes,
whereby they might see that he was armed and prepared to fight, the
Archbishoppe’s men seeing theyr master downe, being all strangers
and their master’s countrimen born at Prowence, fell upon the
canons, beat them, tare them, and trod them under feete, at length
the Canons getting away as well as they could, ran bloody and myry,
rent and torne, to the Bishoppe of London to complaine, who had
them goe to the king at Westminster, and tell him thereof,
whereupon some of them went thether, the rest were not able, they
were so sore hurt, but when they came to Westminster, the king
would neither heare nor see them, so they returned without
redresse, in the mean season the whole Citie was in an uprore, and
ready to have rung the Common bell, and to have hewed the
Archbishoppe into small pieces, who was secretly crept to Lambhith,
where they sought him, and not knowing him by sight, sayd to
themselves, where is this Ruffian, that cruell smiter, hee is no
winner of soules, but an exactor of money, whome neyther God, nor
any lawfull or free election, did bring to this promotion, but the
king did unlawfully intrude him, being utterly unlearned, a
stranger borne, and having a wife etc: but the Archbishop conveyed
himselfe over, and went to the king with a great complaint against
the Canons, whereas himself was guilty.
But in spite of Henry III.’s refusal to see the outraged sub-prior and
his loyal canons they had their revenge in time.
The final result of that little Sunday morning jaunt of Archbishop
Boniface was that he was obliged to build the chapel of Lambeth Palace
about the year 1247 as a penance for having tried to encroach on the
right of the holy Prior of St. Bartholomew’s.
The quaint gateway by which one enters the scene of the exploits of
these energetic churchmen adds a special charm to the place. The timbers
of the old Elizabethan house above it were only discovered in 1915, when
some of the tiles that long concealed them were loosened.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT]
ST. JOHN’S GATE
“For knighthood is not in the feats of Warre,
As for to fight in quarrel right or wrong.
But in a cause which truth can not defarre.”
STEPHEN HAWES.
Not very far away, stretching across St. John’s Lane, on the other side
of Smithfield and the Charterhouse Road, is another gate, dating from
1504, with the arms of Prior Docwra, Who built it, above the archway.
This was once the south entrance of the great Priory of the Knights
Hospitallers of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, one of the richest
and most powerful of the religious houses that spread over London in the
Middle Ages. With the exception of this gate and of the Norman crypt in
the church of St. John adjoining (the keys are at the caretaker’s, 112
Clerkenwell Road), nothing is left of that great monastery that the
people grew to hate for its pride. When Wat Tyler led his band of
peasants to burn and pillage, they burnt and pillaged with special zest
the manors of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, wherever they found
them, and particularly the priory in London, incidentally beheading the
Grand Prior. The buildings rose again and lasted till the reign of
Edward VI., when they were blown up and pulled down and some of the
stone used to build the Somerset House of the day.
But the old gate still stands, austere and turret-crowned, and we may
still “behold it with reverence,” like Dr. Johnson. The modern
representatives of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which devotes
itself to ambulance and hospital work and did admirable service in the
war, went back in 1887 to live within its ancient walls.
There are many things of interest in the gatehouse that make the trouble
of writing to the secretary of the Order for permission to see them
worth while. There are relics from Malta and Rhodes, an Elizabethan
chimneypiece in the chancery, and other souvenirs, but the coffer that
contains these treasures is more interesting than anything it holds, and
that every passer-by may see.
THE CHARTERHOUSE
“I never think of London, which I love, without thinking of that
palace which David built for Bathsheba.”--LOWELL.
Coming back to Charterhouse Street and turning to the left, five
minutes’ walk will bring you to Charterhouse Square, where you can find
one of the most lovely and gracious things in all London.
People often bewail the passing of old London without knowing that
within this short distance from Holborn Circus they can see a perfect
specimen of a sixteenth-century nobleman’s house. There it stands, only
needing the addition of a little furniture of the period, that
[Illustration: Sᵗ. John’s Gate Clerkenwell Residence of Edward Cave]
would never be missed from South Kensington Museum, and you could see
exactly how my Lord Howard lived when he entertained--and plotted
against--his royal mistress three hundred years ago.
One does not like to think of the number of people who leave London
without ever having seen the Charterhouse. It is one of the most
beautiful places in all London, and its story is packed with romance,
intrigue, adventure and benevolence.
The tale falls into three parts. It is begun by that gallant Hainaulter,
Sir Walter de Manny, as the English called Walter, Lord of Mausny near
Valenciennes, who came over to England in the train of Philippa of
Hainault.
According to Froissart he was a “very gentil parfyte knighte,” and when
he saw the ghastly heaps of dead bodies of plague-stricken people lying
in the streets in 1349, he bought from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital a
piece of land called No Man’s Land and caused the dead to be decently
buried there. Their bodies at rest, he had thought for their souls, and
on March 25, 1349, he laid the foundation-stone of a chapel where the
relations might pray for their dead. Twenty years later Sir Walter Manny
laid another stone, that of the first cell for the Carthusian monks he
brought over from France. The wives and sisters of the dead had prayed
so long in the chapel that the right could not be taken from them, so
for once the strict Carthusian rule was relaxed and a special place was
set apart for the womenkind to come and pray.
Sir Walter Manny died in 1372. He was buried at the foot of the step of
the great altar in the chapel that may be seen to-day, and in the
Charterhouse his Carthusian monks prayed according to the tenets of
their faith for a hundred and sixty-five years more before the last
prior, John Houghton, having been hung on Tyburn Tree, and many of the
brothers tortured, the rest submitted to the king’s will. The House of
the Salutation of the Mother of God in the Charterhouse near London was
dissolved shortly afterwards.
The second phase of the Charterhouse story is a very different one.
Twice during the following years it was prepared for the coming of a
fair queen, whose head was bowed on Tower Hill instead of in the old
chapel.
Charterhouse was granted to that wily old courtier, Sir Edward North, in
1545, and eight years later he “conveyed” it to John Dudley, Earl of
Northumberland, the father-in-law of Lady Jane Grey. The Earl of
Northumberland never wanted it for himself, as he had already Durham
House in the Adelphi, but there was his son Guildford with his fair
young wife to be lodged fittingly. So he brought up much furniture from
Kenilworth and stored it hard by, little dreaming that his bold plans
would miscarry and that he would die on Tower Hill a year before the
children whose home he had planned shared the same fate.
North was granted the Charterhouse again by Queen Mary, and when
Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 she stayed six days there before
her coronation.
Three years later she paid the old house another visit, but North died
in 1564 and Charterhouse passed into the hands of crafty, brilliant,
fickle Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk.
* * * * *
Once more Charterhouse, now known as Howard House, was to be prepared
for a royal mistress, and in a royal manner.
The new owner, buoyed with hopes of a marriage with Mary, Queen of
Scots, began to put his new house in order. He added the screen in the
great hall and the “Tarrass Walk,” the lovely tapestry room, the
duchess’s withdrawing-room and the magnificent great staircase.
* * * * *
On the 6th of August, 1568, Elizabeth came in state from Hampton Court
to Howard House, to pay a visit to her disloyal servant, already
plotting against her and arranging the duchess’s salon for her rival.
The air was thick with intrigue, and by the autumn the rumour of the
marriage with Mary had reached Elizabeth. Norfolk denied it, but a year
later the truth came out, and he spent some time in the Tower, to be
released, under surveillance, when the Black Death threatened that
district.
He had learned no lesson. Either a devouring ambition or the attraction
of the most fascinating woman in Europe lured him on. Plots and
counterplots were hatched in the long gallery that now forms part of the
upper-story quarters of the Master and Registrar of Charterhouse. Mary’s
emissaries were seized--one of them, called Bailly, has carved the
lesson these events taught him in the Beauchamp Room in the Tower--and
the luckless queen was betrayed in her turn, even as Elizabeth had been,
by the man who so short a time before had decorated the Charterhouse to
receive her as a bride.
He told, like a coward, the place where her cipher was hidden under a
tile in the Charterhouse, but nothing could save his own neck, and he
followed his father and his two girl cousins, Anne Boleyn and Katherine
Howard, in June 1572.
* * * * *
The next owner of Howard House, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, was only
a boy of fifteen when he inherited his father’s property, but he was of
sterner stuff, for he refused to abjure the Roman Catholic faith he had
embraced, even to see his wife and children, before he died, worn out,
and under sentence of death, in 1595. Elizabeth had kept him prisoner in
the Beauchamp Tower for ten years, and it
[Illustration: THE CHARTERHOUSE FROM THE SQUARE]
was there, in 1587, that he carved the words, “The more suffering for
Christ in this world, so much the more glory with Christ in the life to
come.”
He had lived very little at the Charterhouse, and when it passed into
the hands of his half-brother Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, the
fortunes of the old house changed with the advent of the great English
Admiral who could swear with truth “‘Fore God I am no coward,” when he
was admiral of the squadron at Flores in the Azores, “and the little
_Revenge_ ran on right into the heart of the foe.”
Lord Thomas Howard was one of the honoured, trusted servants of
Elizabeth, and she came once more in 1603, not long before her death, to
pay him a visit in the Charterhouse.
In a few months James I. came there, even as she had done, to spend the
days before his coronation as the guest of the son of the man who had
been his mother’s false suitor.
But brave Lord Thomas Howard was building a new house at Audley End, and
needing money he sold Howard House for £13,000 to Sir Thomas Sutton. The
brilliant days of the Charterhouse as a nobleman’s mansion were at an
end--another chapter was concluded and the third phase of the story was
to begin.
Sir Thomas Sutton, the new owner, was the Lord Rhondda of the sixteenth
century. He was a Lincolnshire man with a wide knowledge of men and
things, whose military profession never prevented his having a keen eye
for business. He made a large fortune before he died in 1611, leaving
the provision to found a hospital for eighty impoverished gentlemen and
a school for forty boys, under the name of the Hospital of King James in
Charterhouse.
There was much discussion, “about it and about,” before Sir Thomas
Sutton’s chosen trustees could carry out his wishes. James I., true son
of his father Darnley, had to be placated by a _pourboire_ of £10,000,
and even Bacon, jealous at not being among the trustees, tried to
belittle the bequest and advise that the money should be used for his
master’s benefit instead of for the poor. Sir Edward Coke, Lady Hatton’s
husband, steered the hospital through the shoals that surrounded its
launching and the more dangerous peril of the king’s genial idea that
the Charterhouse revenues might fitly be used to pay for his army. The
Charterhouse was founded, and for three hundred years the school has
produced great Englishmen and the hospital harboured men who have found
that in the evening of a working life the stars do not always appear.
Among the Charterhouse scholars have been the bearers of great names
such as Lovelace and Crashaw, Addison and Steele, John Wesley, Sir Henry
Havelock, Thackeray, Leech, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Lord Alverstone and
many others. The school was removed in 1872 to Godalming, and the
buildings were taken over by the Merchant Taylors’ Company for their
boys’ school.
The hospital for the poor brothers no longer harbours eighty men. Their
number is reduced to sixty owing to the depreciation in the value of Sir
Thomas Sutton’s land and the fact that since the Charterhouse has always
been considered a wealthy foundation no further bequests have ever been
made to bring the number once more up to the four score of the founder’s
intention.
That, briefly told, is the dramatic tale of the Charterhouse. You will
readily believe it all if you take the District Railway to Aldersgate
Street and go and see the Charterhouse for yourself. Its beauty is
unimpaired by time. The Guesten Hall where the poor brethren take their
meals, the great sixteenth century carved staircase, the chapel where
Colonel Newcome sat, the false duke’s arcade, and the old gatehouse--all
are there and many more things to recall the most dramatic pages of
England’s history.