Mediæval London, Volume 2: Ecclesiastical

“Hospital of St. Mary, in the parish of Barking church, that was provided for poor priests and others, men and women in the City of London, that were fallen into frenzy or loss...

In the year of our Lord 1419, John Carpenter completed his great work on the temporal government of the City of London, the _Liber Albus_. It is in this work that we find the on...

The long struggle between the oligarchic and the popular party, which was carried on without cessation for at least two hundred years, was at its acutest and its worst in the th...

If churches and religious houses make up religion, then London of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries surely attained the highest point ever reached in religion. The Church...

Among the Houses mentioned by Arnold FitzThedmar are two or three not considered in the above enumeration. There are the Houses of St. Anne by the Tower Hill, St. James in the T...

On the origin and antiquity of Guilds I have already spoken (vol. i. p. 204). It is impossible to conceive of any time, after men had begun to live in villages and towns, after...

We are now in a position to proceed to the establishment of the Commune. The stages of any important reform are, first, the right understanding of the facts; then a tentative di...

The history of this House belongs to the history of the Knights of St. John, or Knights Hospitallers. The Order was founded about the year 1048, beginning, like all great orders...

Trial by ordeal was always possible in London, yet, in later years, rarely practised. The reason of its rarity was, no doubt, the fact that the accused person was in most cases...

It is strange that an institution which played a large part in the social scheme of the Middle Ages should have fallen so completely into decay as to be absolutely forgotten by...

Pilgrimage, never so great a craze in London as in the country, or in England as in France, plays an important part in the mediæval life. The earliest pilgrimage was, of course,...

The large area included by the Roman Wall was parcelled out, after the Saxon occupation, into manors, socs, or estates, held by private persons. Some of them passed into the pos...

The Priory of St. Mary Overies, or Overy, was one of the most ancient Houses in London. It stood beside the ferry, the south end of which was the long and narrow dock still to b...

There is one branch of ecclesiastical history which has been curiously neglected, that, namely, concerned with the anchorite, ankret, anchoress, or ankress. That is to say, it i...

The Hospital and the Priory of St. Bartholomew were distinct and separate foundations, of which the former was governed by the latter. The traditional history of this foundation...

The absolute oblivion into which this once noble House has fallen, so that there is no longer, among the people living on its very site, any memory or tradition of its existence...

On the 30th day of October, in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five, there was gathered together a congregation to assist at the mournfullest service eve...

The history of the Monastic Life, with its rise and its decay, its work and its importance, has attracted many writers and historians. It has been fiercely assailed; it has been...

This foundation, by reason of its antiquity and religious objects, should have been venerable, but it became, by its claims, privileges, and position, an institution hateful and...

The foundation of this House of Benedictine Nuns was in or about the year 1212, when Alardus de Burnham, who died in 1216, was Dean of St. Paul’s. The right, or permission, to f...

This once rich and flourishing House was founded in the year 1108 by Maud, wife of Henry the First, owing, it is said, to the persuasion, if that pious Queen wanted any persuasi...

The influence of the Church on the daily life of London may be illustrated by a brief Calendar of the Ecclesiastical Year and of the observances of the people. It is needless to...

Whether the Mayor was elected immediately after the concession of the Commune, or a year or two later, as happened in certain French towns, matters very little. The point of imp...

The Abbey of St. Clare, which stood on the site of the church called Holy Trinity, Minories, was founded by Blanche d’Artois in 1293. The following genealogy sufficiently explai...

I have elsewhere spoken of the singular fact that no remains of a Roman theatre or amphitheatre have been found in London, and I have ventured to put forward a theory as to the...

The Dominicans, or Black Friars, came over to England with their Prior, Gilbert de Fraxineto, in the year 1221. There were thirteen of them in company. They were at first receiv...

In the year 1224, being the eighth year of King Henry the Third, there arrived at Dover a small company of nine Religious, being Brethren of the Fratres Minores, the Franciscan...

A Foundation of very human interest was the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acon or St. Thomas of Acres. It is well known that Thomas Becket belonged to a wealthy city family, his fat...

When we think of the great mass of people of Mediæval London, when we think of their laborious and industrious days, the precarious nature of their lives, the perils which atten...

St. Mary of Bethlehem, from which we get the word Bedlam, was founded by Simon FitzMary, sheriff, in 1247. The deed of gift is preserved among the archives of the Bethlehem Hosp...

No city in the world possesses a collection of archives so ancient and so complete as the collection at the Guildhall. Riley, in his Introduction to the _Liber Albus_, begins hi...

The furniture of a London church was elaborate to a degree which astonishes those accustomed to a simple Anglican ritual. It would also, I believe, astonish the modern Catholic...

The House of Austin Friars, _i.e._ of Friars Eremites of the Order of St. Augustine, was founded in the year 1253 by Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, “to the honour o...

Outside Bishopsgate, on the site now occupied by Spital Square, stood that most venerable and most beneficent House called _Domus Dei_, or _Domus Beatæ Mariæ_. It was founded by...

Part of Facsimile of the Original Charter granted by King Richard III. to the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers of the City of London (16th February, 1 Richard III.) 116

In Agas’ Map of London, “Civitas Londinum,” _circa_ 1560 (see end of _London in the Time of the Tudors_), there is represented, lying on the west of Aldersgate Street, an irregu...

We must not forget the Fraternities. There was not, I believe, a single Parish Church which had not its Fraternity. Except for purposes of war, when all marched under order of t...

The Hospital of St. Anthony stood in Threadneedle Street, exactly opposite Finch Lane. It was originally a cell to the House of St. Anthony in Vienne, and was founded as such in...

This House was called that of St. Mary of Graces, or Eastminster, or New Abbey. It was situated without the walls by East Smithfield. Newcourt gives the following account of it:—

The Charter granted by Henry the Second, though apparently full, contained certain omissions which are significant and important. Round has arranged this Charter side by side wi...

On the north bank of the river, between Bridewell and the Temple, stood the House of the White Friars—_Fratres Beatæ Mariæ de Monte Carmeli_,—first founded by Sir Richard Gray i...

This House, the memory of which had almost disappeared, was again restored to Mediæval London by the publication of Dr. Sharpe’s _Calendar of Wills_. And since the original term...

The display at funerals, and the ceremonies observed, the hospitality offered, and the order of the procession, formed a large part in the social life of the time, especially in...

It has been generally believed that the founder of the Convent, dedicated to the Honour of God and the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, was one Jordan Briset about the year 1100....

The Order of Crutched, or Crossed, Friars—“Brethren Crucifer”—was instituted in the twelfth century. Some came over to England towards the end of the thirteenth century. Two Lon...

The Hospital known as _St. Giles-in-the-Fields_ was founded by Maud, Queen of Henry the First, about the year 1117. It was a large foundation, designed for forty lepers, the Mas...

The commonly received opinion as to the Foundation of this Hospital is that it sprang out of an Almonry belonging to Bermondsey Abbey, founded in 1213 by Richard, Prior of that...

The nunnery of Haliwell, or Holywell, was named after a holy spring or well on the eastern extremity of Finsbury Fields, in the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch. There were man...