Convent of the Sisters Minoresses of the Order of St Clare, Aldgate.
Wondrously different was Plantagenet London from that of the Victorian era: different in every respect, notably in size, population, and aspect. It was chiefly comprised within the walls, which commenced at the Postern Gate of the Tower, and completed the circuit at the river near the present Blackfriars Bridge. There were a few outlying groups of houses and villages; a road along the river strand through the little village of Charing to Westminster, and marshes on the north, with causeways to the villages of Clerkenwell, Hoxton, and Islington. It was, however, an eminently picturesque city, with its gabled and timbered houses, its monastic edifices, and its church towers. It was computed that then two-thirds of the entire space was occupied by religious edifices and their grounds. Towards the end of the fourteenth century there were within the walls, eight friaries, five priories, four nunneries, five collegiate establishments, seventeen hospitals with resident brotherhoods, nine other religious fraternities, and more than one hundred parish churches. At that time the court end of the town was the neighbourhood of the Tower. There royalty dwelt; and clustering round were the mansions of nobles and the town houses of bishops and abbots.
The locality immediately under notice was a road running from the Tower postern, outside the City wall and ditch, to Aldgate, along what is now called the Minories. Aldgate, or Ealdgate, so named from its antiquity, was the eastern outlet from the City, the great Essex road running eastward therefrom. Immediately within the gate stood the magnificent priory of the Holy Trinity, founded by Matilda, Queen of Henry I., and close by was the town house of the Barons Nevil, afterwards Earls of Westmoreland, who gave an abbess to the convent of St. Clare. Outside the gate there stretched an open expanse of country, with foliaged trees, meadows, and silver streamlets, where, on holidays, the young citizens gambolled, practised archery, and, in the more secluded parts, whispered in the ears of the young citizenesses "the old, old tale." Looking eastward, the low square-towered church of the village of Stebenhede (Stepney) by the riverside morasses might be seen; and nearer London, its chapel-of-ease, at the villa Beatæ Mariæ Matfelon, on the Essex road, whilst more to the north might be discerned the priory of St. Mary Spittal, founded a century previously. Here, outside the gate, in the year of grace 1293, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and Blanche, his countess, whilom Queen of Navarre, founded the convent of Minoresses of the order of St. Clare, dedicated to the "Blessed St. Mary," and amply endowed it with lands and messuages. St. Clare, Clara, Claire, or Chiara, as the name is rendered in different tongues, was born of a noble and wealthy family at Assisi, 1193, died 1253, and was canonized 1256. She was exceedingly beautiful, and had many offers of marriage, but when quite young, despite the opposition of her parents, resolved to dedicate herself to God. St. Francis had just then founded the Franciscan branch of the Mendicant Orders, and lived with ten "Frati Minores," in a hut on the Porziunculo, near Assisi, living austere lives, in absolute poverty, depending upon charity for their daily food, and maintaining strict silence, excepting when it was absolutely necessary to speak. To them Clare fled, and desired to be admitted as a nun of the order. She was followed by her kinsfolk, but clung with such tenacity to the altar, that they were compelled to leave her. She then founded the Order of Poor Clares, or Sisters Minoresses, with rules of the most rigid austerity, relating chiefly to abstinence, poverty, and silence. Their bed was the bare earth, they usually went barefooted, and were habited in grey robes, girdled with a knotted rope, and a white coif on the head. Within fifty years after her death, however, they were released from the vow of poverty, and the others were modified, from which time they accumulated property, built themselves comfortable houses, and indulged in social converse. The first convent was erected outside the walls of Assisi, but afterwards removed within, where a splendid church—the church of Santa Chiara d'Assisi—was erected over her tomb. In pictures St. Clare is usually represented either with the Pix, to denote piety, or the lily, the emblem of purity. She was generally spoken of by the nuns as the "Madre Serafico."
Edmund Plantagenet, surnamed Crouchback, was the second son of King Henry III.; born 1245, died 1295. In his eighth year, 1253, he was created Earl of Chester, and invested by the Pope with the title of King of Sicily and Apulia, but neither was of much value, as the former was soon afterwards transferred to his elder brother Edward, afterwards King Edward I., and Conrad, the real King of Sicily, was still living. He was afterwards created Earl of Leicester, 1264, and Earl of Lancaster, 1267. He fought in the wars of Gascony, Wales, and Scotland, and was two years in Palestine. He had grants of the forfeited castles and manors of the rebel barons, Simon de Montfort, Ferrers, Earl of Derby, and Nicholas de Segrave, and had licence, 21 Edward I., to castellate his house, the Savoy, in the Strand. His death occurred in France; he had invested Bordeaux, and not being able to reduce it, grief brought on a disease which terminated fatally. His body was brought to England and buried in Westminster Abbey, but not until, in accordance with the instructions in his will, all his debts were paid. He married, first, Aveline, daughter and heiress of William de Fortibus, Lord of the Seigniory of Holderness, Co. York, who d.s.p. the following year. Secondly, he married Blanche, daughter of Robert, Earl of Artois (third son of King Louis VIII., of France), and relict of Henry, King of Navarre, by whom he had issue Thomas, second Earl, who, after heading the rising of the barons against Gaveston, temp. Edward II., was taken prisoner at Boroughbridge, Co. York, beheaded at Pontefract, and attainted 1321. Henry, his brother, was restored in the earldoms, whose son Henry was created Duke of Lancaster, 1351, but d.s.p.m., leaving issue Maude and Blanche, the latter of whom married John of Gaunt, Earl of Richmond, afterwards Duke of Lancaster, by whom she had issue Henry of Bolingbroke, afterwards King Henry IV.
Piously disposed, as we may charitably suppose them to have been, or perchance for the welfare of their souls—as it was usual, in that age, to make bargains with Heaven to build religious houses as the price of exemption from the pains of purgatory—the Earl and Countess built the nunnery in the precincts of the court, and filled it with nuns of the order of St. Clare, brought over from some Continental convent by Queen Blanche, "to serve God, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Francis," for which they had a licence from King Henry III. Stow informs us that the frontage of the convent was fifteen perches twenty-seven feet in length, with all needful interior appliances, and garden land; doubtless a pleasant home for the Sisters, with its outlook over the Essex fields and the river Thames, with its quaintly-fashioned vessels passing up and down. It was well endowed by its founders, but had other benefactors as well, and had messuages in the Vintry, Wood Street, Lad Lane, Lombard Street, Christ Church Lane, Shirburgh Lane, etc. The Sisterhood also held the Manor of Apuldercome, and had a grant from William Walshe, 7 Edward IV., of a messuage, called Harteshorn, in the parish of St. Mary Matfelon.
The original licence for the foundation is dated 21 Edward I. A charter was granted to "the sisters Minoresses, without Aldgate," quitting them of tallage of their land in the City, dated 9 Edward II.; and in the fourteenth of the same reign, another to "the Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Mary of the order of St. Clare, without the walls of the City," confirming the holding of certain lands and messuages "gotten of divers well-affected persons." Other charters of confirmation were granted to the Sisterhood, 2 Henry IV., and 1, 16, 25 Henry V.
The Sisters of St. Clare flourished here for a period of 246 years, praying, fasting, and mortifying the flesh, with intervals possibly of laughing, feasting, and enjoyment of their pleasant home; or it may be, as we know is often the case, even with the Angelic sex, when thrown together for days and years, the fasting and feasting and prayer might be mixed up with ingredients of wrangling, envy, and jealousy, until it all came to an end, when the ruthless Tudor king laid his sacrilegious hands on the monastic establishments, and spared not even the homes of the gentler sex, and the house of the Sisters Minoresses was surrendered by Dame Elizabeth Salvage, 1539.
During these two-and-a-half centuries the Sisters witnessed many important events in the annals of England; the deposition and murder of kings Edward II. and Richard II., the usurpation of Henry VI. and Richard III., the Wars of the Roses, the rise of Lollardism, the Interdict of the Kingdom under John, the Reformation, the introduction of the press, and the birth of English literature under Chaucer and Gower. It may be that the prioress who rode to Canterbury with Chaucer's pilgrims was the head of the Aldgate Minoresses.
"There was also a nun, a prioress,
That of her smiling was full simple and coy;
Her greatest oath was but by Saint Eloy;
And she was cleped Madame Eglantine.
Full well she sang the service divine,
Entuned in her nose full sweetley;
And French she spake full fair and fetisly,
After the school of Stratford-atte-Bow."
From their own windows they would see many a gay cavalcade of barons, knights, and ladies issue from the portals of the Tower to follow the sport of hawking in the fields, or play at some martial or other game, and many a brilliant procession going forth to tournament in Smithfield, or coronation in Westminster. They would behold the coronation pageants and feasts in the Tower of Richard II., the marriage of the rival Roses in the persons of Henry VII. and the Princess Elizabeth, and that of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Arragon, when a splendid tournament was held hard by. Their soft hearts would also often be awakened to compassion at hearing of the bloody deeds perpetrated in their neighbourhood, the murder of the young princes by their uncle, Richard of Gloucester, and the decapitation of Lord Cobham, Bishop Fisher, Sir Thomas More, Queen Anne Boleyn, and many another noble and distinguished personage. From their lattices, too, they would look upon the riding forth of the barons of the realm through Aldgate to attend the Parliament of Edward I., 1299, held at the mansion of Lord Mayor Wallis, at Stepney; the Wat Tyler mob rushing along, "with shouts and cries as if all the devils of hell had come in their company," to ransack the Tower, chop off the heads of the Lord Chancellor and Treasurer, and rudely kiss the King's mother, the "Fair Maid of Kent," and Princess of Wales, in 1381; and again in 1450, that of the Jack Cade insurgents, when they took Lord Say and Sele from the Tower and beheaded him in Cheapside.
After the dissolution, the Priory became the residence of John Clerke, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1523-41, Master of the Rolls, and Diplomatist, who was poisoned in Germany, when sent on an Embassy to the Duke of Cleves, to explain to him why Henry VIII. had divorced his sister; after whom it was inhabited by some officials of the Tower, and in 1552 was granted to Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, by King Edward VI. Afterwards it became a storehouse for arms, and workshops for the fabrication of implements of warfare, but does not seem to have been of high repute, as Dryden says, "a comic writer who does not cause laughter, or a serious dramatist who does not excite emotion, is no more a good poet than is a Minories gunsmith a good workman."
The Abbey of St. Mary of Graces, or East Minster.
It was in the autumn of the year 1347, that a storm-shattered vessel might be seen threading its way up the Thames. Its single broad sail was rent in divers places, its single mast broken, and considerable portions of its lofty poop and its high pointed stem reft away. It had come from Calais, and in mid-channel had encountered a terrific tempest, every soul on board deeming himself lost, and offering up heartfelt prayers to the Virgin or his favourite saint for succour, or for intercession in case of death. Nevertheless, like English mariners in every after, and indeed former age, the crew depended not on prayers alone, but battled manfully with the winds and the waves, and at length with great difficulty succeeded in getting their vessel into the river, and slowly ascended its reaches, with their rent sail fluttering in the still boisterous wind.
It was said of one our Norman monarchs, when he desired to pass over into Normandy, whilst a storm was raging and the seamen represented the perilous nature of the attempt, "Who ever heard of a King being lost at sea? go I will, and at once, storm or no storm," and he did go, arriving safely at his destination. Perchance the fact of this Calais ship having a king aboard, with the immunity of kings from shipwreck, may have had something to do with its escape from destruction, at any rate it did survive the peril, and its having done so was the cause of the establishment of the Abbey of St. Mary of Graces.
The royal personage who passed through the peril of the Straits was none other than the victor of Creci and Calais, the illustrious Plantagenet, Edward the Third. The three sons of Philip IV. of France having successively died without issue, his nephew, Philip of Valois. according to the Salique law, became his successor, but Edward of England claimed the throne as son of the daughter of Philip IV., and entered France to assert his claim. He met his rival, Philip VI., at Creci, with 36,000 men, opposed to the French army of 130,000, and obtained a great victory, 36,000 of the French being slain and the rest taking to flight. He then marched to Calais, which he invested and took after a most obstinate defence of twelve months, on August 4th 1347, after which occurred the famous historic incident of the six brave burghers of Calais presenting themselves before the victor in their shirts, and with ropes round their necks, as voluntary victims to sate the vengeance of the king and save their town, and their subsequent pardon at the intercession of the Queen. Notwithstanding the obstinate defence of the town, the King could scarcely do less than accede to Philippa's request, since within its walls she had presented him with a fair daughter, afterwards called Margaret of Calais.
His Queen and the newly-born princess were with him in the frail bark when it was tossed hither and thither, and its timbers riven by the storm, and in the midst thereof he prostrated himself and made a solemn vow, calling upon the nobles and ecclesiastics who accompanied him to bear witness thereto, that if God in His mercy should permit him to land safely in England, he would build and endow on the spot where he landed a monastery to the honour of God and our Lady of Graces.
At length, after beating up the river as well as they were able with their broken rudder and shattered sails, the mariners drew the vessel alongside the shore a little to the east of East Smithfield, when the royal party landed, and passed, amid the acclamations of the few people congregated on the river bank, to the Tower, and offered up thanks in the chapel for their deliverance.
Very different in aspect was the district eastward of Aldgate and the Tower when King Edward and his retinue landed there, from what it presents at present, with its docks, wharves, and warehouses, its stately ships and steam-vessels, to which the ship of King Edward might have served as a boat slung on davits by their side; its wilderness of houses, countless miles of the squalid homes of wretchedness, poverty, and crime; with multitudes of lofty chimneys, belching forth volumes of black smoke rising from the midst, and railways traversing it in every direction, accompanied by the incessant thunder of rushing trains, and the screeching whistle of the locomotive.
The scene that presented itself to the monarch when stepping upon the river bank from his vessel was that of a flat expanse of pasture land and marshes, stretching away northward and eastward, protected from inundation by the embankment of the river, the work of the Romans, which, however, was not always effectual, as the Thames frequently overflowed defective portions of the bank and laid the land under water. There were also many rills and streamlets meandering along from the high lands of the north, which lost themselves in the marshes or found an outlet into the river.
Scattered here and there on the more elevated parts were a few hamlets, mere clusterings of a few cottages, claybuilt, with cross timberings and straw-thatched roofs, with holes for chimneys, and in the walls latticed openings to admit light to the interiors. These were the abodes of cowherds, who tended their masters' cattle in the marshes, swineherds who drove their charges into the neighbouring forest to pick up the fallen acorns, fishermen who plied their daily toil on the river, and a few artizans, carpenters, smiths, and wrights, such as are now met with in remote country villages. These people were wretchedly poor, half-starved, ill-clad, and profoundly ignorant, the slaves of monkish superstition, and the downtrodden serfs of the nobles. Yet had they within them the old Saxon instinct of freedom and liberty, and they were the men who in the following reign ranged themselves under the banners of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw.
Westward stood the Tower of London, frowning grimly on the river bank—at once a palace, a fortress, and a prison. Stretching northward therefrom, was the eastern wall of the City terminating in Aldgate, whence ran the road into Essex. Within the gate, with its tower overtopping the wall, might be seen the magnificent Priory of the Holy Trinity, founded by Matilda, the Saxon Queen of Henry I., in the year 1108, and outside, along the road now called the minories, the humbler and more lowly built convent of the Nuns Minoresses of the Order of St. Clare, founded in 1239, by Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. And hard by, close to the gate, was the Church of St. Botolph, formerly belonging to the knights of the Cnighten guild, now to the Holy Trinity Priory. Close by the landing place was the hospital of St. Katherine, founded in 1148, by Matilda, Queen of Stephen, for the repose of the souls of her children—Baldwin and Matilda; refounded in 1273 by Eleanor, widow of King Henry III. Eastward was St. Chad's Well, round which grew up a hamlet, so called, since corrupted to Shadwell. Further on lay the hamlet of Stebenhithe (Stepney), with its low broad-towered church. North-westward of it, in the Essex Road, was the chapel of St. Mary Matfellon, whose name has given rise to much discussion, without any satisfactory result. Afterwards it was called the White Chapel, and hence it gave the name to the line of road running from Aldgate. Northward might be discerned the priory and hospital of St. Mary Spittle, a timber building with an angle turret, founded by Walter Brune and his wife, in the year 1197; and not far distant, on the west, the priory of St. Helen, with its hall, hospital, cloisters, and crypt, founded in 1210 by William Fitz-William, and dedicated to the Holy Cross and St. Helen, mother of the Emperor Constantine.
Here, then, on the north side of St. Katherine's Hospital, and eastward of Little Tower Hill, King Edward laid the foundations of the monastery, and made it subject to the monastery of Beaulieu, in France, of which he was the founder. It was called also East Minster, or New Minster without the walls.
"In the charter of endowment, dated March 2nd, 1349, he gave the abbot and monks all those messuages, with the appurtenances at Tower Hill, which he had of John Corey, in pure and perpetual alms, ordering the house to be called 'The Royal Free Chapel of St. Mary of Graces.'"
In another charter it is said, "The king founded this house in remembrance and acknowledgement of the goodness of Almighty God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom he had often called upon and found helpful to him by sea and by land; in wars and other perils, and therefore ordered this house to be called 'The King's Free Chapel of the Blessed Virgin of Graces, in memoriam Gratiarum.'"
He imported some monks from Beaulieu to occupy the house, and appointed Walter de Sta Cruce first president of the chapel, "whom he enjoined kindly to receive and treat the said religious who were to profess religion in the said chapel."
The house was a stately building of the new decorated Gothic, with its floriated windows, crocketted pinacles, flying buttresses, and clustered pillars, presenting a fair aspect to passers by on the river, as it stood a little way back from the bank, glowing in its pristine freshness and beauty. And the boatmen would rest on their oars and listen to the matins or vespers chanted by the brethren within its walls.
In the 50th year of his reign, the King further augmented the endowment by placing the Manors of Poplar, of Gravesend, and other manors in Kent, in trust for the abbey.
Of the Abbots, the names of but few have survived. William de Santa Cruce, formerly Abbot of Geronden, was the first, to whom the king made an allowance of £20 per annum for the maintenance of the household.
William Warden, probably his successor, was Abbot in 1360. Paschalis occurs in a record of the eighth Henry V., 1418. John Langton is named, in 1495, in a bequest from Jane Hall, of a tenement for her soul's health. In 1494 he was presented to the vicarage of Gedington, and in 1498, by Sir T. Lovelace, to that of Stokedanbey in the diocese of Lincoln. John, probably the same, occurs in 1503. Henry More made his profession as Abbot in 1516.
The house was surrendered in 1539, when the revenues were estimated at £602 12s. 6d. gross, and £546 10s. net per annum.
Dugdale says: "Of the manner of the surrender we find no account which gives occasion to guess that it was done by such as were in no authority, and therefore it was thought fit to conceal the knowledge thereof. It was granted by Henry VIII., 34th, to Sir Arthur D'Arcy; was clean pulled down, and of late times, in place thereof, is built a large storehouse for victuals, and convenient ovens are built there for baking biskets for the Royal Navy, and it is the victualling office for the same to this day. The grounds adjoyning, and belonging formerley to the said abbey, have small tenements built thereon."
Maitland, 1772, in his History of London, says that a portion of the original building was then standing, "now converted into a bisket bake-house," which is probably an error, as Dugdale states that it was "clean pulled down."
In the Chapter House, Westminster, there is an impression of the seal of the abbey, appended to an indenture for the foundation of Henry VII.'s Chapel. In the centre is the Virgin with the infant Jesus, with a royal personage—probably Edward III.—kneeling in prayer on the dexter side, and a group of figures on the left. Underneath is a shield of the Royal arms, and the legend, SIGIL LUM COMVNE MONASTERIJ BEATE MARIE DE GRACIIS.