CHAPTER XX

ST. KATHERINE’S BY THE TOWER

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 ever heard in any church. The place was the Precinct of St. Katherine’s, the church was that known as St. Katherine’s by the Tower—the most ancient and venerable church in the whole of East London—a city which now has but two ancient churches left, those of Bow and of Stepney, without counting the old tower of Hackney.

Suppose it was advertised that the last and the farewell service, before the demolition of the Abbey, would be held at Westminster on a certain day; that after the service the old church would be pulled down; that some of the monuments would be removed, the rest destroyed; that the bones of the illustrious dead would be carted away and scattered, and that the site would be occupied by warehouses used for commercial purposes. One can picture the frantic rage and despair with which the news would everywhere be received; one can imagine the stirring of the hearts of all those who in every part of the world inherit the Anglo-Saxon speech; one can hear the sobbing and the wailing which accompany the last anthem, the last sermon, the last prayer.

St. Katherine’s by the Tower was the Abbey of East London: poor and 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’ 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. With the bones and the dust of the dead, and the rubbish of the foundations, they filled up the old reservoir of the Chelsea waterworks, 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.

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 Stebenhuthe (Stepney). It was simply founded for the benefit of two little princes’ souls.

The Prior and Canons of Holy Trinity without Aldgate continued to exercise some authority over the Hospital, but apparently 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 of 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 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 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 Sheppey, and one hundred and twenty 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: 12: 6, and the expenditure was £210: 6: 5; 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 a 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 the Eighth.

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 secularised. 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 Mallet 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 Brouncker; 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 35 boys and 15 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 foundation 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 been, but it was not, between the years 1698 and 1825, quite so useless as before.

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 18th century, are shown by the small attention paid to it in the books on London of the 18th century and the early years of the last century. 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, thirty feet high and twenty-five 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 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 of 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 mortales, nascimur uno: Sunt hominum morbi mille sed una salus.”

And to the memory of Robert Beadles, freemason, 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 belonged to all trades, but chiefly to those which necessitate going 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 sail-makers 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. Verstegen, the antiquary, was born here, and here lived Raymond Lully. During the last century the Precinct came 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.