Part 8

Let us consider, therefore, as the most conspicuous feature of Plantagenet London, her great religious Houses. We have seen what they were in Norman London. Already there were there in existence the Cathedral of St. Paul's, with its canons and priests, its army of singing men, clerks, boys, and servants--itself a vast monastic House; the Priory of St. Bartholomew; the House of St. Mary Overies; the Hospital of St. Katherine; the Priory of the Holy Trinity. After three hundred years, when we look again upon the map of London, and mark in color the sites of Monastery, Nunnery, Church, College, and Church-yard, it seems as if a good fourth part of the City area was swallowed up in ecclesiastical Houses. Not so much was actually covered by buildings of the Church, but at least a fourth of the City, counting the gardens and the courts and chapels, belonged to the Church and the religious Houses. Without such a map it is impossible to estimate the enormous wealth of the mediæval Church, its power, and its authority. It is impossible to understand without such a map how enormous was that Revolution which could shake off and shatter into fragments a power so tremendous. Because, as was London, so was every other city. If London had a hundred and twenty churches, Norwich had sixty; York had forty-five. If the country all round London was parcelled out among the religious Houses, so all over the land, manors here, and estates there, broad acres everywhere belonged to the monks. But though their property was enormous, their power was far beyond that conferred by any amount of property, for they held the keys of heaven and kept open the gates of hell.

As for the vast numbers actually maintained by the Church, the single example of St. Paul's Cathedral--of course, the largest foundation in the City--will furnish an illustration. In the year 1450 the Society, a Cathedral body, included the following: the Bishop, the Dean, the four Archdeacons, the Treasurer, the Precentor, the Chancellor, thirty greater Canons, twelve lesser Canons, about fifty Chaplains or chantry priests, and thirty Vicars. Of inferior rank to these were the Sacrist and three Vergers, the Succentor, the Master of the Singing-school, the Master of the Grammar-school, the Almoner and his four Vergers, the Servitors, the Surveyor, the twelve Scribes, the Book Transcriber, the Book-binder, the Chamberlain, the Rent-collector, the Baker, the Brewer, the singing-men and choir-boys, of whom priests were made, the Bedesmen, and the poor folk. In addition to these must be added the servants of all these officers--the brewer, who brewed in the year 1286, 67,814 gallons, must have employed a good many; the baker, who ovened every year 40,000 loaves, or every day more than a hundred, large and small; the sextons, grave-diggers, gardeners, bell-ringers, makers and menders of the ecclesiastical robes, cleaners and sweepers, carpenters, masons, painters, carvers and gilders--one can very well understand that the Church of St. Paul's alone found a livelihood for thousands.

The same equipment was necessary in every other religious foundation. Not a monastery but had its great and lesser officers and their servants. In every one there were the bell-ringers, the singing-men and boys, the vergers, the gardeners, the brewers, bakers, cooks, messengers, scribes, rent-collectors, and all complete as was St. Paul's, though on a smaller scale. It does not seem too much to estimate the ecclesiastical establishments as including a fourth part of the whole population of the City.

The London monasteries lay for the most part either just within or just without the City Wall. The reason is obvious. They were founded when the City was already populous, and were therefore built upon the places where houses were less numerous and ground was of less value.

Let us, in order to visit them all, make a circuit within the City Wall, beginning from the Tower on the East.

The first House at which we stop is the Priory of Crutched Friars, that is, Crossed Friars. They wore a cross of red cloth upon their backs, and carried an iron cross in their hands. The order of the Red Cross was founded by one Conrad, of Bologna, in the year 1169. Some of the Friars found their way to London in the middle of the next century, and humbly begged of the pious folk a house to live in. Of course they got it, and many houses afterwards, with a good following of the citizens. This monastery stood behind Seething Lane, opposite St. Olave's Church. The site afterwards became that of the Navy House, and is still marked by the old stone pillars of the entrance and the open court within. This court is now a receiving house for some railway. Beyond this, on the other side of Aldgate, stood a far more important monastery, that of the Holy Trinity. The site of the place is marked--for there is not a vestige left of the ancient buildings--by a mean little square now called St. James's Square; a place of resort for the poorer Jews. This noble House was founded by Matilda, wife of Henry I., in 1109, for regular Canons of the Order of St. Augustine. The Priory, enriched by many later benefactors, became the wealthiest and most splendid in the City. Its Prior, by virtue of his office, and because the old Knighten Guild had given their property to the Priory, was Alderman of Portsoken ward; the monastery was exempted from ecclesiastical jurisdiction other than the Pope's; its church was great and magnificent, full of stately monuments, carved marbles, and rich shrines; the House was hospitable and nobly charitable to the poor.

The beautiful old church of St. Helen, filled with monuments curious and quaint, was formerly the Church of the Priory of St. Helen. This nunnery was founded by William Basing, dean of St. Paul's, in the reign of Richard I. The church, as it now stands, consists of the old Parish Church and the Nun's Chapel, formerly separated by a partition wall. The Leathersellers' Company acquired some of their ground after the Dissolution, and the old Hall of the Nunnery, afterwards the Leathersellers' Hall, was standing until the year 1799.

On the north of Broad Street stood the splendid House of Austin Friars; that is, the Friars Eremites of the Order of St. Augustine. The House was founded by Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, in the year 1253. It rapidly became one of the wealthiest Houses in the City; its church, very splendid, was filled with monuments. Part of it stands to this day. It is now used by the Dutch residents in London. The quiet courts and the square at the back of the church retain something of the former monastic arrangement and of the old tranquillity. The square is certainly one of the courts of the monastery, but I know not whether the Refectory or the Library or the Abbot's House stood here.

The next great House following the wall westward was that of St. Martin's le Grand, of which I have already spoken. It was a House of Augustine Canons. It formed a Precinct with its own Liberty. William of Wykeham was its most famous Dean. In the sanctuary Miles Forrest, one of the murderers of the two Princes in the Tower, died--"rotted away piecemeal." The Liberty survived long after the Dissolution.

Adjoining St. Martin's was the great Foundation of the Grey Friars.

They were Franciscans. Who does not know the story of St. Francis and the foundation of his great order? They were the Preachers of the poor. The first Franciscans, like the Buddhist priests, lived upon alms; they had no money, no endowments, no books, no learning, no great houses. Those who came to England--it was in the year 1224--nine in number, of whom only one was a priest, were penniless. They first halted in Canterbury, where they were permitted to sleep at night in a room used by day as a school. Four of them presently moved on to London, where they hired a piece of ground on Cornhill, and built upon it rude cells of wattle and clay with their own hands. Already the Dominicans, their rivals--Preachers of the learned and the rich--had obtained a settlement in Oxford. The Franciscans stayed a very short time on Cornhill. In the year 1225 one John Ewin bought and presented to them a piece of ground north of Newgate Street, whither they removed. Their austerity, their poverty, their earnestness, their eloquence drew all hearts towards them. And, as always happens, their very popularity proved their ruin. Kings and queens, great lords and ladies, strove and vied with each other to show their love and admiration for the men who had given up all that the world can offer for the sake of Christ and for pity of their brothers and sisters. They showed this love in the manner common with the world. They forced upon the friars a portion of their wealth; they made them receive and enjoy the very things they had renounced. It is a wonderful record. First, the citizens began. One Lord Mayor built a new choir for their church, with a splendor worthy of the order and of the City; another built the nave to equal the choir; a third built the dormitories--no more wattle and daub for the dear friars; other citizens built Chapter House, Vestry House, Infirmary, and Refectory. Their Library was given by Dick Whittington, thrice Mayor of London. Then came the turn of the great people. Queen Margaret thought the choir of the church should be still more splendid, and added to it or rebuilt it. Queen Isabel and Queen Philippa thought that the nave should be more splendid, and with the help of the Earl and Countess of Richmond, the Earl of Gloucester and his sisters, Lord Lisle and others, built a new nave, 300 feet long, 89 feet broad, and 64 feet high. Here were buried, as in ground far more sacred than that of St. Paul's or any acre of ordinary consecration, Margaret, wife of Edward I.; Isabel, wife of Edward II.; Joan of the Tower, Queen of Scots, daughter of Edward II.; Isabel, daughter of Edward III.; Beatrice, daughter of Henry III.; and an extraordinary number of persons great and honorable in their day. What became of their monuments and of the church itself belongs to Tudor London.

All those who visit London are recommended by the guide-books to see the famous Blue-coat School. The main entrance is at the end of a narrow lane leading north from Newgate Street. On the right hand of the lane stands a great ugly pile built by Wren twenty years after the Great Fire. This is Christ Church, and it stands on part of the site of the old church of the Grey Friars. At the Dissolution, Henry VIII. made their church into a parish church, assigning to it the two parishes of St. Nicolas Shambles and St. Ewin, together with the ground occupied by the Monastery. The church within is as ugly as it is without. One shudders to think of the change from the great and splendid monastic church. On the other side of the lane is an open space, a church-yard now disused. The old church covered both this open space and the area of the modern church. Behind it stood the cloisters, the burial-ground, and the monastic buildings of the House, covering a great extent of ground. Those who go through the gate find themselves in a large quadrangle asphalted. This is now part of the boys' play-ground; their feet run every day over the old tombs and graves of the Grey Friars' burial-ground; the soil, though not accounted so sacred as that within the church itself, was considered greatly superior to that of any common church-yard. Most of the dead were buried in the habit of the Grey Friars, as if to cheat Peter into a belief of their sanctity. On the south of the quadrangle two or three arches may be observed. These are the only fragments remaining of the cloisters. The view of Christ's Hospital after the Great Fire of 1666 shows the old courts of the Abbey. The church formerly extended over the whole front of the picture; the buildings now seen are wholly modern; the cloistered square was the church-yard; the Hall stood across the north side of the first court; beyond were the courts appropriated to the service of the monks; the cells, libraries, etc., were round the great court and the small courts on the right. The Franciscan House is gone; the Friars are gone. Let us not think, however, that their work is gone. On the contrary, all that was good in it remains. That is the quality and the test of good work. It is imperishable. If you ask what is this work and where it may be found, look about you. In the prosperity of the City; in the energy, the industry, the courage, the soberness of its people; in whatever virtues they possess, the Franciscans have their share; the Grey Friars, who went straight at the people--the rough, common, ignorant people--and saved them from the destruction of those virtues which built up this realm of Britain. The old ideas change; what is to-day faith becomes to-morrow superstition; but the new order is built upon the old. It was a part of the training necessary for the English people that they should pass under the teaching of the Friars.

In the south-western corner of the City Wall were lodged the Dominicans or Black Friars.

These, the Preaching Friars, came to England two years before their rivals, the Franciscans. Their first settlement was in the country lane which now we call Chancery Lane. After a residence there of fifty years they removed to this corner of the town, which was, so to speak, made for them--that is, the City Wall which formerly ran straight from Ludgate to the river was pulled down and rebuilt farther west along the bank of the Fleet. Within the piece of ground thus added the Black Friars settled down, and because the ground had not formerly belonged to the City, it now became a Precinct of its own, enclosed by its own wall, with its four gates not amenable to the City and pretending to a right of Sanctuary. Edward I. and his Queen Eleanor were great benefactors to the Dominicans. Of the church and the stately buildings of the proud order not a trace remains. In the Guildhall Museum may be seen a drawing of some ruined vaults belonging to the Abbey, which were discovered on enlarging the premises of the _Times_ some years ago. There is nothing above-ground. The Dominicans, however, never succeeded in winning the affections of the people to the same extent as the Franciscans. They were learned; they insisted strongly on doctrine; but they were harder of heart than the Grey Friars. It was the Dominicans who encouraged the planting of the Inquisition.

All these Houses were within the walls. Without were others, as rich and as splendid. South of Fleet Street, between Bridewell Palace and the Temple, was the House of the Carmelites, called the White Friars. These also were an Order of Mendicants. The _Fratres Beatæ Mariæ de Monte Carmelo_ sprang from the hermits who settled in numbers on the slopes of Mount Carmel. They were formed into an order by Almeric, Bishop of Antioch, and were first introduced into Europe about the year 1216, by Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem. They got their house in London from Edward I.; but their chief benefactor was Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire. They, too, had their Sanctuary, afterwards called Alsatia. This privilege was not abolished till the year 1697.

Beyond the Carmelites were the Templars, but the suppression of the Order removed them from the scene in the year 1310.

The Priories of St. Bartholomew and of St. John belong to Norman London. On the north of Bartholomew's, however, stood the house of the Carthusians. The Carthusian Order was a branch of the Benedictine Rule, to which the Cluniacs and Cistercians also belonged.

The house of the Salutation of the Mother of God--which was its full title--was founded in the year 1371 by Sir Walter Manny. Those who know their Froissart know that gallant Knight well and can testify to his achievements; how he entreated King Edward for the citizens of Calais; how he rescued the Countess of Montfort besieged in the castle of Hennebont, and, for his reward, was kissed--he and his companions--not once, but two or three times, by that brave lady; these and many other things can be told of this noble Knight. Not the least of his feats was the foundation of this House of Religion.

When we speak of the Plague of London we generally mean that of 1664-65. But this was only the last, and perhaps not the worst, of the many plagues which had visited the City. Thirteen great pestilences fell upon the City between the years 1094 and 1625--in the last year 35,000 died. That is to say, one plague happened about every forty years, so that there never was a time when a recent plague was not in the minds of men. Always they remembered the last visitation, the suddenness and swiftness of destruction, the desolation of houses, the striking down of young and old, the loss of the tender children, the sweet maidens, the gallant youth. Life is brief and uncertain at the best; but when the plague is added to the diseases which men expect, its uncertainty is forced upon the minds of the people of every condition with a persistence and a conviction unknown in quiet times when each man hopes to live out his three score years and ten.

In the year 1347 there happened a dreadful plague. It began in Dorsetshire and spread over the whole of the south country, reaching London last. After a while the church-yards were not large enough to hold the dead, and they were forced to enclose ground outside the walls. The Bishop of London, therefore, bought a piece of ground north of Bartholomew's, called No Man's Ground, which he enclosed and consecrated, building thereon a "fair chapel." This place was called the Pardon Church-yard. It stood, as those who know London will be interested to know, beyond the north wall of the present Charter House.

Two years later, the plague still continuing, Sir Walter Manny bought a plot of thirteen acres close to this church-yard, and built a chapel upon it--it stood somewhere in the middle of the present Charterhouse Square--and gave it for an additional church-yard. More than fifty thousand persons were buried here in one year, according to Stow; but the number is impossible, unless the whole of London died in that year. There used to be a stone cross standing in the church-yard with the following inscription:

Anno Domini 1349, regnante magna pestilentia, consecratum fuit hoc coemiterium in quo et infra septa presentis monasterii sepulta fuerunt mortuorum corpora plus quam quinquaginta millia praeter alia multa abhinc usque ad presens: quorum animabus propitietur Deus. Amen.

The old Pardon Church-yard afterwards became the burial-place of suicides and executed criminals. To this sad place the bodies of such were carried in a cart belonging to St. John's Hospital; the vehicle was hung over with black, but with a St. John's Cross in front, and within it hung a bell which rang with the jolting and the shaking of the cart--a mournful sight to see and a doleful sound to hear.

Twenty-two years later, when there had been upward of a hundred thousand persons buried in the new church-yard, Sir Walter Manny, now grown old and near his end, bought ten acres more, which he gave to the ground, and established here a House of Carthusians, called the Salutation. At first he thought of making a college for a warden, a dean, and twelve secular priests. On the advice, however, of Simon Sudbury, Bishop of London, he abandoned that project and established a House of Carthusians.

The Cistercian Order was founded by one Stephen Harding, originally a monk of Sherborne. He is said by William of Malmesbury to have left his convent and to have gone into France, where he practised "the Liberal arts" until he fell into repentance, and was received into the monastery of Molesmes, in Burgundy. Here he found a little company of the brethren who were not content with the Rule of the House, but desired instruction and a rule more in accordance with their Founder's intention. They seceded, therefore, and established themselves at Citeaux, then entirely covered with woods. This is their manner of life set forth by the Chronicler:

Certainly many of their regulations seem severe, and more particularly these: they wear nothing made with furs or linen, nor even that finely spun linen garment which we call Staminium;[8] neither breeches, unless when sent on a journey, which at their return they wash and restore. They have two tunics with cowls, but no additional garment in winter, though, if they think fit, in summer they may lighten their garb. They sleep clad and girded, and never after matins return to their beds; but they so order the time of matins that it shall be light ere the lauds[9] begin; so intent are they on their rule, that they think no jot or tittle of it should be disregarded. Directly after these hymns they sing the prime, after which they go out to work for stated hours. They complete whatever labor or service they have to perform by day without any other light. No one is ever absent from the daily services, or from complines, except the sick. The cellarer and hospitaller, after complines, wait upon the guests, yet observing the strictest silence. The abbat allows himself no indulgence beyond the others--everywhere present--everywhere attending to his flock; except that he does not eat with the rest, because his table is with the strangers and the poor. Nevertheless, be he where he may, he is equally sparing of food and speech; for never more than two dishes are served either to him or to his company; lard and meat never but to the sick. From the Ides of September till Easter, through regard for whatever festival, they do not take more than one meal a day, except on Sunday. They never leave the cloister but for purpose of labor, nor do they ever speak, either there or elsewhere, save only to the abbat or prior. They pay unwearied attention to the canonical[10] services, making no addition to them except for the defunct. They use in their divine service the Ambrosian chants[11] and hymns, as far as they were able to learn them at Milan. While they bestow care on the stranger and the sick, they inflict intolerable mortifications on their own bodies, for the health of their souls.

When we consider this death in life, this, suppression of everything which makes life, this annihilation of aims, ambitions, and natural affections, this destruction of love, emotion, and passion, this mere monotony of breathing, this wearisome futility and vanity, this endless iteration of Litanies; when we remember that hundreds of thousands in every Christian country, men and women, voluntarily entered upon this life, knowing beforehand what it was, and that they patiently endured it, we can in some measure realize the intensity and the reality of the torments which they believed to be provided for the vast majority of mankind. There grew up, in the course of years, rich monks and luxurious monks; but in the early days of each order there was the austerity of the Rule. And though here and there we find a brother who rises to a spiritual level far above the letter of his Order, the religion of the ordinary brother was little more than the fear of Hell, with a sense of gratitude to the Saints for snatching him out of the flames.