ST. JAMES, GARLICKHITHE
“St. James versus vinitariam” occurs in a document of about 1170;[[5]] “St. James in Garleckhithe” is found written in 1281:[[6]] both names were at that time used without distinction, but the former was eventually dropped. “Vinitarium” or Vintry applied to the general district of the wine trade situated hereabouts; “Garleckhithe,” to the harbour, just below the church, where the garlic-monger made sale of his wares. St. James is the saint here honoured.
The earliest church is well-nigh recordless: it was in part rebuilt and chiefly restored by Richard de Rothing, probably the same who was sheriff in 1326; here, within the walls of his munificence, was he buried. He did not complete the restorations. John de Rothing, Richard’s son, left by will in 1375 money towards completing the repairs, towards the rebuilding of the old belfry, and for re-erecting a doorway in the north side.
It was burnt down in the Great Fire, and rebuilt from designs by Wren, 1676-1683. During the last century the church was several times repaired, but not substantially altered. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1259.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Abbot and Convent of Westminster, 1252; Henry VIII. seized it in 1540 and granted it to Thomas Thirlby, Bishop of Westminster, the same year, viz. January 20, 1540-1541; the Bishop of London, by grant of Edward VI. in 1550, confirmed by Mary, March 3, 1553-1554.
Houseling people in 1548 were 400.
The church measures 75 feet in length, 45 feet in breadth, and 40 feet in height. There are two side-aisles separated from the nave by Ionic columns, six on either side, with a clerestory above. This is interrupted at the centre, and three eastern and three western columns each bear half of it, thus presenting a cruciform appearance. The tower, measuring 20 feet square at the base, rises at the west, surmounted by a dome, lantern, ball finial, and vane; the total height is 125 feet. The transitions are softened by vases and urns. Above the door projects a bracket clock topped by the grotesque figure of St. James in pilgrim’s garb, locally known as “old Jimmy Garlick.” Much of the woodwork in the interior was brought from St. Michael, Queenhithe, when that church was pulled down.
Chantries were founded here: By John Whitthorn, of three chaplains—one Thomas Haverbergh, chaplain, exchanges it with William Gedelston, rector of Ongar ad Castrum, Essex, July 31, 1381; by William Hawye, at the Altar of St Katharine, whose endowment fetched £12 : 18 : 8 in 1548, when Thomas Dale was priest; by John de Oxenford, citizen and vintner, which was augmented by Roger de Fordham, whose will is dated next after the Feast of St. Barnabas, 1349; by Thomas Lincoln and Richard Lyon in 1548, when John Borell was chaplain; by Thomas Bodynge, whose endowment yielded £22 : 10s. in 1548.
Richard Rothing, the reputed founder of this church, was buried here. So also were the following: Walter Nele, vintner, sheriff in 1337; John Oxenford, vintner, mayor in 1341; John Wroth, fishmonger, mayor in 1360; John Bromer, fishmonger, alderman in 1474; William Venor, grocer, mayor in 1389; William Moor, vintner, mayor in 1395; Robert Chichele, grocer, mayor in 1421; James Spencer, vintner, mayor in 1527; Richard Lyons, sheriff in 1374, beheaded by Wat Tyler; Richard Platt, brewer, founder of a free school and almshouses in Hertfordshire. There were tombs of importance: especially curious were those of Richard Lyons and the Countess of Worcester, which had either great brasses or recumbent effigies; also the tombs of Sir George Stanley, K.G., and his first wife; John Stanley; Lord Strange, 1503; and the Countess of Huntingdon. The church owned many precious things: an inventory of its jewels in 1449 is still preserved at Westminster Abbey.
There was a charity school in Maiden Lane, which by the subscription of the whole ward maintained fifty boys.
Arthur Bulkely (died 1553), Bishop of Bangor, was rector here. Also Charles Booth, Bishop of Hereford, 1516.
Adjoining to the church on the south side stood a house called “The Commons”: it had been given by one Thomas Kente for keeping his anniversary in the church. Here dwelt the chantry priests, who held the tenure. When the chantries were suppressed by Edward VI. “The Commons” was valued at 53s. 4d. a year: no fewer than nine “incumbents,” who had life interests in the chantry property of the parish, received pensions under Mary in 1555-1556. The total chantry property fetched £2551 : 3s. In the church was founded a Guild or Fraternity of St. James in 1375: it was practically a religious Benefit Society: the members, men and women, were sworn together for the amendment of their lives: on one Sunday in the year they held an annual feast: they paid entrance fees and periodical subscriptions. A member of seven years’ standing was eligible for a sickness or old age allowance of fourteen-pence a week, and in case of false imprisonment a needy member would be granted a sum of thirteen-pence a week. In the year 1566 the church was repaired. The parish bought the rood-loft which had been taken in Protestant propriety from St. Martin Vintry; the woodwork was utilised for their new fittings. Edmund Chapman, the Queen’s joiner, carried out the work. He was afterwards buried in the church, and his monument narrated that:
Fine pews within this church he made,
And with his Arms support
The table and the seats in choir
He set in comely sort.
Here it was that Sir Richard Steele heard the Common Prayer read so distinctly, emphatically and fervently that inattention was impossible.[[7]] The reader who drew forth his praise was the then rector, Philip Stubbs, afterwards Archdeacon of St. Albans. There is kept in the church a shrouded corpse in a remarkable state of preservation; formerly it was one of the show things for the benefit of the churchkeeper, but though still above ground it is not now publicly exposed. The parish registers date back to 1536, two years before Thomas Cromwell made a general order for the keeping of such records. They are amongst the oldest in the City. Before the Great Fire there stood south of the church, nearly opposite to Vintners’ Hall, a parsonage. In 1670 it was rebuilt and leased to one Richard Corbet for forty-one years.
Opposite, at the corner of Garlick Hill, was Ormond Place, residence of the Earls of Ormond. Farther east, on the same side, stood Ringed Hall. At the west end of the Church of St. Thomas was a lane called by Stow Wringwren Lane, a most interesting survival. Of old not only were wines imported into Vintry ward, but grapes were grown here. The Anglo-Saxon name for wine-press was “winwringa”; that word reversed into “wringa-win” is undoubtedly contained in the corrupted form of “Wringwren.” Perhaps a wine-press stood in the lane; the proximity of “Ringed” Hall seems to strengthen the probability.
The lane called Worcester Place serves to mark the site of Worcester House, the old residence of the Earls of Worcester. One of them, John Tiptoft, Lord High Treasurer of England, dwelt here in the reign of Edward IV. This earl was a patron of Caxton, and a great lover of books; to Oxford University he gave volumes to the value of 500 marks. He was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1470, when, as Fuller puts it, “the axe then did in one blow cut off more learning than was in the heads of all the surviving nobility.” Nevertheless he was known as “The Butcher of England.” He had impaled forty Lancastrians at Southampton, and slain the infant children of Desmond, the Irish chief. One of the countesses of Worcester was buried in the old church of St. James, Garlickhithe, close by. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign the premises were let out in tenements. In 1603 they were in possession of one Matthew Paris, girdler, who left them, by will bearing that year’s date, to his mother Katherine, then living in Aldermanbury.[[8]] The Fruiterers Company were then occupying one or more of the tenements as their Hall, although they were not incorporated until 1606. Their choice of this locality indicates that much of the fruit trade was centred here. Worcester House perished in the Great Fire. The Fruiterers were too poor to establish a new hall, but met in that of the Parish Clerks.
Maiden Lane appears as “Kyrunelane” in 1259. Stow writes it Kerion Lane, “of one Kerion sometime dwelling there,” but this etymology is guesswork, as shown by the earlier forms. Before the Fire the lane contained “divers fair houses for merchants,” says Stow, and the Glaziers’ Hall.
Queen Street was cut shortly after the Great Fire of 1666 in common with King Street, Cheapside, to connect the Guildhall with the Thames; thus the Lord Mayor now had a straight course for his procession when he “took water” at the Three Cranes Stairs on his way to be sworn at Westminster Hall. The new thoroughfare included the present Queen Street Place, and was named New Queen Street in honour of the wife of Charles II. The prefix “New” subsequently vanished. Close to Queen Street in Upper Thames Street is the Vintners’ Hall (see p. [229]). The rectory house of the parish stands on a portion of St. Thomas the Apostle Churchyard; the remainder of the churchyard on this side of the street consists of a small flagged square enclosed by a railing. The portion of the churchyard on the west side of the road, opposite, contains two houses; they are the only houses remaining of the post-Fire rebuilding. In front, the churchyard serves them for a garden; its two fine plane-trees set off their quaint red brick walls and pillared and pedimented doorways. The southern house has a delightful room on the first floor, now used as the board room of the Tredegar Iron Company. The mantel is exquisite, carved with all the beauty of the Grinling Gibbons school; the walls are wainscotted; the doors all solid mahogany, over each a carved panel; the medallion cornice, of minutely beautiful detail, once carried a panelled ceiling now removed. An ante-room has a second delicately carved mantel, and a panelled ceiling.
St. Martin Vintry stood at the south corner of Royal or Queen Street, Upper Thames Street. Authentic history dates back to the Conqueror’s reign, when Ralph Peverell gave the Church of St. Martin, London, to the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Gloucester. In a document at St. Paul’s (Hist. MSS. Comm. Rep. IX.) of the year 1257 “St. Martin de Beremanes churche” is met with. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries “St. Martin de Barmannes-cherche” and St. Martin Vintry are both used. The church was rebuilt in the beginning of the fifteenth century, several bequests having been left for the purpose. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of the church, St. Michael Royal. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1250.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Bishop of Winchester; Ralph Peverell; Abbot and Convent of St. Peter’s, Gloucester, from 1388; Henry VIII.; Bishop of Worcester by grant of Edward VI., in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the parish was annexed to St. Michael Royal.
Houseling people in 1548 were 460.
A chantry was founded here by John Gisors or Jesores, for himself and Isabel his wife, to which Geoffrey Stowe was admitted chaplain, September 5, 1368.
Very few monuments of interest are recorded by Stow. Sir John Gisors, mayor in 1311, was buried here; also Sir Ralph Austrie and Sir Cuthbert Hacket, mayors. A considerable number of those commemorated were “Vinetarii.”
According to Stow, there were no bequests or legacies belonging to the church, or for public uses; though there were a few for the poor. The Stationers Company was donor of £2 : 10s., for bread; the Dyers Company was donor of £4 every two years, for clothing; and George Lucas was donor of £2.
In St. Martin, Vintry, there was a workhouse, and thirteen almshouses founded by Sir Richard Whittington, each person being allowed 3s. 10d. a week.
Bruno Ryves (1596-1677), who suffered much persecution in Puritan times, Dean of Chichester and of Windsor, was rector here.
The site became a burial-ground. A part is now covered with buildings, but the remainder forms a small square, planted with trees—three great elms, two small limes, one large plane: six trees in all—really quite a leafy wood for the City! The paths and flower-beds are well tended. A few gravestones impart an aspect of sepulchral solemnity. Thus the site of St. Martin Vintry is not wholly effaced.
The Vintry stood east of Queenhithe; it was a wharf on which “the merchants of Bordeaux craned their wine out of lighters and other vessels, and then landed and made sale of them within forty days after, until the 28th of Edward I., at which time the said merchants complained that they could not sell their wines, paying poundage, neither hire houses nor cellars to lay them in.”
This was remedied by building storehouses with vaults and cellars for storage, where formerly had stood a row of cooks’ shops.
On the Vintry wharf were three cranes standing. They gave the name to Three Cranes Lane. At Three Cranes Stairs, in 1552, the Duke of Somerset was landed on his way to the Tower. In 1554 Queen Mary landed here, when she paid a visit to the Guildhall and “showyd hare mynde unto the Mayor, aldermen, and the whole craftes of London in hare owne person.”
On the south side of Thames Street, just above the Three Cranes wharf and opposite to St. Martin Vintry, stood a large house built of stone and timber; below it were vaults for the stowage of wines, for it was a wine merchant’s mansion known as “The Vintry.” John Gisors, vintner, mayor 1311, 1312, and 1314, constable of the Tower, dwelt here; also Henry Picard, vintner, Lord Mayor, 1356. In the year 1363 Picard sumptuously feasted in this house Edward III.; John II. of France, the Black Prince’s prisoner; David, King of Scots; the King of Denmark; the King of Cyprus, and many nobles. Truly an illustrious gathering. It is said that the toast of “five times five,” still drunk, owed origin to this feast of the five kings. Picard kept his hall for all comers that were willing to play dice with him; his wife, the Lady Margaret, kept her chamber to the same intent for the princesses and ladies. The King of Cyprus won fifty marks from Picard, but afterwards lost a hundred marks and was at pains to conceal his chagrin. “My Lord and King,” said the host, “be not agrieved, I covet not your gold but your play, for I have not bid you hither that I might grieve you, but that amongst other things I might try your play.” Thereupon Picard restored the monarch’s marks and good humour at one and the same time, “plentifully bestowing of his own among the retinue.” Moreover, he gave rich gifts to King Edward and to the nobles and knights who had that day dined with him “to the great glory of the citizens of London.” (Stow).