ST. MICHAEL ROYAL
St. Michael Royal on College Hill derived its name Royal from the adjacent lane “La Riole” (see p. [223]); it was sometimes called St. Michael Paternoster from Paternoster Lane. “Paternoster-cherch” is first found written in the Calendar of Wills (Court of Hustings, Part I. p. 3) in 1259; “St. Michael de Paternoster-cherch” in 1284; and “Paternostercherche near la Rayole” in 1301. It was rebuilt by Sir Richard Whittington. Early in the fifteenth century the old church was small, frail, and ruinous: it stood where it now stands, but north and east lay unbuilt spaces, green with grass, and possibly tree-planted. Across the green to the north stood “The Tabard,” the dwelling-house of Whittington, who rebuilt the church on a larger scale, granting land of his own for the purpose in 1411. The site available measured 113 feet long from east to west, just as now there is a graveyard 26 feet long. The new building had a castellated parapet: the tower stood at the west end, square, embattled, surmounted by a great cross. Beneath the tower a great doorway opened upon Paternoster Lane. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt by Edward Strong, Wren’s master-mason, in 1694; the steeple was added in 1713. The church of St. Martin Vintry was not rebuilt after the Fire, its parish being annexed to this. The parishes of Allhallows the Great and Allhallows the Less were also annexed in 1893. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1282.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1282; the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury from 1550 to 1666, when St. Martin Vintry was annexed and the patronage was alternate with the Bishop of Worcester.
Houseling people in 1548 were 213.
The church is oblong in shape, 67 feet in length, 47 feet in width, and 38 feet in height. The oak altar-piece is said to be the work of Grinling Gibbons, and above it there is a painting by William Hilton, R.A., presented in 1820 by the directors of the London Institution. The tower is square and contains three stories terminated by a cornice and parapet, with vases at the angles; it is surmounted by a shallow dome on four arches, and encircled by Ionic columns. Above this the steeple is octagonal, crowned by a pedestal with finial and vane. The total height is 128 feet 3 inches. The church was repaired and the interior arrangements remodelled in 1864; in 1895 was again repaired; at this date the carved woodwork and the organ case from Allhallows the Great were utilised on the demolition of that church. Beneath the tower is preserved a carving of the royal arms (William and Mary); this stood above the reredos before the placing of the picture there in 1820. The tower contains one bell.
A chantry was founded here by Lawrence Duket in 1289.
The church contained but few monuments of note. There was one in memory of John Haydon, mercer, Sheriff 1582, and benefactor of the parish. Sir Richard Whittington, the founder of the church, was also commemorated; he was buried here with his wife, and the traditional site of the tomb, which was destroyed in the Great Fire, is where the sanctuary rail and organ are.
The only monument of any interest in the present building is one to Sir Samuel Pennant, who died 1750, during his mayoralty; he died of gaol fever, caught in discharging his duty in visiting Newgate. There is a memorial tablet to Jacob Jacobsen on the west wall; Bishop Wadington’s arms can be seen in the south-west window.
Reginald Peacock, Bishop of Chichester, 1449, was rector here; also William Ive (d. 1485), Vice-Chancellor of Oxford; Humphrey Hody (1659-1707), Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford; and Richard Smith (1500-1563), Dean of Douai and a great pillar of the Catholic Church.
Under Whittington’s will, the church became collegiate in 1424. A college of St. Spirit and St. Mary, the college house, the almshouse, also of Whittington’s foundation, and a parcel of ground then a garden, but intended for consecration as a new churchyard, were grouped north of the church, between that and Whittington’s own dwelling. They probably composed a quadrangle. The almshouse was called “God’s House or Alms-house or the hospital of Richard Whittington.” It was for twelve poor folk, men and women, and a “tutor” who had custody of the goods, and was to preserve order. He had a separate apartment—the twelve others lived more together; all dined and supped in common hall. They were to pray daily for their founder, his wife and others; to behave seemly; to read, work, or meditate; to dress in dark brown, “not staring nor blazing in colour.” The college house was for the accommodation of five fellows or chaplains, two clerks, and four choristers; these composed the collegiate staff. The fellows were secular priests, that is to say, not regulars or conventual clergy; they were to be masters of art, poor men, unbeneficed. One of them was to occupy the position of master. The church ceased as a rectory when it became a collegiate. The then rector was appointed the first master and he was to continue his parochial duties.
Before the end of the century the members had formed themselves into a fraternity—Fraternitas Scantæ Sopluæ—for the reading of a divinity lecture. A little later a divinity reader was provided by a bequest, and another legacy was allotted to the fellows, so that each should deliver two additional sermons every year, either in the City or out. Whittington’s estates originally produced £63 per annum for the college and £40 per annum for the almshouse. At the suppression of the former, under Edward VI., the value was returned at only £20 : 1 : 8 per annum; the college house and garden were sold for £92 : 2s. to Armagil Waad, or Wade, Clerk of the Council, in 1548. The almshouse was not then affected, but was and is administered by the Mercers Company. It was rebuilt after the Great Fire. In 1808 the almshouse people were removed to Highgate. The Mercers’ School, rebuilt in Old Jewry in 1670, removed to Budge Row in 1787, and burnt down and removed to 20 Red Lion Court, opposite to St. Antholin’s, Watling Street, in 1804, was settled in the old almshouses on their becoming empty. In 1832 the premises were rebuilt. Externally they present a plain structure of stone, with a great projecting cornice; the interior is spacious, the flagged playground still preserves a suggestion of collegiate cloisters. Here almsmen walked, here college fellows paced, here hearty schoolboys shouted—now all is silent and untenanted. The Mercers’ School is now removed to Holborn.
The name College Hill does not occur in Stow, but Newcourt’s map of 1658 so styles it: it bore reference to Whittington’s College. As the Duke of Buckingham’s “Litany” (1679) has it, there was thus “Nought left of a College, but College Hill.” Ogilby’s post-Fire map (1677) names the street College Hill only so far north as Cloak Lane; above that it was Tower Royal Street: both portions are now reckoned as College Hill as far as Cannon Street. At the corner of the present Maiden Lane was situated, in the fourteenth century, the house and tavern of Richard Chaucer, vintner, step-grandfather to Geoffrey Chaucer, the poet. Perhaps the latter dwelt here.
After the Great Fire “a very large and graceful building” with great courtyards was erected on College Hill. Here lived the second and last Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, “for the more security of his trade, and convenience of driving it among the Londoners.” This dissolute but clever courtier was nicknamed “Alderman Buckingham” and satirised by Dryden as “Zimri” who was “everything by starts and nothing long.” The house was sometime the residence of Sir John Lethieullier, merchant and alderman, sheriff in 1674; it has since disappeared, but portions of the courtyard remain. One of these is Newcastle Court, on the west of College Hill, now merely a yard between backs of great houses, and a postern entrance to the Cloak Lane Police Station.
WHITTINGTON’S HOUSE
Of the general houses which Strype (1720) says were “well built and inhabited by merchants and others,” none remain, except Nos. 3 and 4 on the west side, of which the latter has a quaintly carved tympanum above the front door: and Nos. 21 and 22 on the east side. The two last or some part of them stand upon the site of “The Tabard,” Whittington’s own dwelling-house. Here are two stories of cellars in the northern house, whose foundation walls are built from stones possibly once forming the materials of Whittington’s mansion. Both premises have massive staircases, and the southernmost possesses some well-carved doorcases. The little courtyards before them are each entered through a great porch with timbered sides, and heavy panelled doors shut it off from the street. The arched gateways of the porches are pedimented, the tympanums filled with a profusion of luxuriant carvings—grotesque heads, drapery, garlands of flowers and fruit. Above the gateways stand porch-rooms; still higher little latticed dormer windows peep out of the quaint, tiled roofs. The porches are the pride of the hill, and well serve to mark so illustrious a site.
Stow calls Dowgate Hill “the high street called Downgate,” and by that he doubtless includes both the hill on the north side of Thames Street and Dowgate Dock on the south side of the same. The east side is now wholly occupied by the immense wall of Cannon Street hotel and station. Only a portion of the former is in the ward. Beneath the latter, opening upon the street, are several cellars called Dowgate vaults. Previously to the erection of the station a lane called Chequer Yard ran from opposite Dyers’ Hall to Bush Lane. Stow terms it Chequer Lane, or Alley, “of an inn called the Chequer.” Its former name, he says, was Carter Lane, “of carts and carmen having stables there.” Strype calls it “a pretty good open space.” Malcolm (1802) says Chequer Yard then consisted of a vast range of warehouses, many stories in height, always filled with tobacco, cotton, coffee, etc. Amongst these were the Plumbers’ Hall warehouses. Here formerly stood Plumbers’ Hall (see Appendix) and the Chequer Inn. “The Chequer” is mentioned as a brew-house so early as the reign of Richard III., when it appears to have appertained to the Erber. It was rebuilt as an inn after the Great Fire, and stood in a courtyard on the south side of the lane, near the west end. It had a gate and a passage into Dowgate Hill. Strype (1720) says it was “an inn of no great account, being chiefly for livery stables and horses.” In Strype’s 1754 edition all mention of the inn is omitted, so that it had, presumably, vanished during the intervening thirty-four years. At the north-west corner of Chequer Yard was the site of the Erber (p. 245). Previously to the erection of the station, the hill forked opposite to Skinners’ Hall and turned into Cannon Street by two narrow lanes. Of these the north-eastern was Turnwheele Lane, “from a turnpike in the middle thereof”; the north-western retained the name of Dowgate Hill. They had between them at the fork a block of buildings. When the station was built, Turnwheele Lane was covered and Dowgate Hill was widened by absorbing the block. Towards “the upper end of the hill, stood the fair Conduit-upon-Dowgate,” mentioned by Stow as “castellated, and made in the year 1568, at charges of the citizens.” In Ryther’s map, 1604 (British Museum), it is shown to stand in the middle of Dowgate Hill opposite the end of Cloak Lane. It was destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt. Allen, in his History of London, places it at the south-east corner of Walbrook, in Walbrook ward; evidently he is mistaken. On the west side the ward begins at the corner of Cloak Lane, of which only a part of the southern side is in Dowgate. Thence proceeding southwards is Tallow Chandlers’ Hall (see p. [243]).
At 8 Dowgate Hill is