ST. SEPULCHRE
This church was rebuilt, Stow says, about the time of Henry VI. or Edward IV., mainly by “one of the Pophames.” The greater part was destroyed by the Great Fire, and in 1670 it was again rebuilt, by whom is uncertain. It received considerable alterations in 1738, 1837, 1863, 1875, and again 1878-80. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1249.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Roger, Bishop of Sarum (1107-39), who gave it to the Prior and Convent of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield ; Henry VIII., who seized it and so it continued in the Crown up to 1609, when James I. gave the advowson of the Vicarage to Francis Philips and others; the President and Scholars of St. John’s College, Oxford, who presented to the Vicarage in 1662, and in whose successors it continued.
Houseling people in 1548 were 3400.
The church consists of a nave, chancel, and two side-aisles, and an adjunct on the north side called the chapel of St. Stephen; it measures 150 feet in length, 81 feet in width, and 149 feet 11 inches in height, to the summit of the tower. The organ was built by Renatus Harris, and is considered one of his finest productions; its case is said to have been the work of Grinling Gibbons.
A chantry was founded here by: John de Tamworth, who had a licence from the King to assign one messuage and sixteen cottages in the suburbs of London, for a chaplain to sing for his soul, on certain days in this church, February 20, 1373-74. Here also was founded the Brotherhood of Our Lady and St. Stephen, endowed by various persons with rents, etc., which fetched £9 : 13 : 4 in 1548.
Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth’s tutor, and author of Toxophilus and the Scholemaster, who died in 1568, was buried here, but has no memorial. Here also the remains of Captain John Smith were interred in 1631; he was Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New England, and author of the General History of Virginia. His monument has perished, but there is a replica of the original inscription on a plate on the south wall. Sir Robert Peake, a distinguished cavalier and engraver, was also interred here in 1667, but no one else of eminence appears to have been buried in the church.
In 1605 Robert Dowe gave £50 to the parish on condition that the night before every execution a hand-bell, which he presented, should be rung in front of the condemned prisoners’ dungeon, and an exhortation given them. His donation has now passed into the hands of the Charity Commissioners. No names of benefactors are recorded by Stow. According to the Record of the Parish Clerk of 1732 the donations of the poor, for ever, amounted to £250, besides which there were forty-seven other donations of less value than £40 or £20 per annum. Richard Reeves left £100 per annum. In addition, the stock of money given by eight persons was £500, and eight others gave £128 : 15s. per annum to provide coals and fuel.
There were two charity schools, one for fifty boys and one for fifty girls, and without the Liberty there were two for thirty boys and twenty girls. There were also three almshouses, for eight poor people, who had from 5s. to 15s. paid them every quarter by the Company of Armourers.
Rowland Lee (d. 1543), D.D., Bishop of Lichfield, was a rector here; also C. Blake (1664-1739), divine and poet; and John Rogers, who was burnt at Smithfield, 1555.
Giltspur Street, which is alternately called by Stow Knightrider’s Street, is obviously connected with the knights riding to Smithfield.
At the south end is a low building with the inscription, “The water house erected 1791.” To the north of this are the schools, in a long low building covered with rough stucco. Little wych-elms and limes shadow the small playground before them. The row of houses succeeding are all similar—plain, severe brick; in the middle is the White Hart Hotel. Green Dragon Yard is closed by iron gates; the next court is very small. Near Windmill Court is the Plough public-house. The houses here are either brick or stucco; some old, some modern.
At the north end, on the Fortune of War public-house, at the corner of Hosier Lane, is a quaint little stucco figure of a fat child about a couple of feet high. This is Pie Corner, the spot where the Great Fire ended.
Cock Lane is a filthy, narrow little street, and looks almost deserted, as many of the buildings are untenanted. Bits of paper and refuse bestrew the pavement, grimy old warehouses stand in melancholy disorder with dirty little yards between. It is chiefly associated with the ridiculous imposture known as the Cock Lane Ghost, which deceived even Dr. Johnson. For Smithfield see p. [357].
Turning now to the streets south of Newgate, we find Warwick Lane is mentioned in the Guildhall MSS. as early as 1206; by Riley (Mem.) in 1313, and in the Calendar of Wills in 1364; in Eldedene Street (Old Dean Street) Hon. Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, had a town house. In the Chronicle of the Mayors and Sheriffs a brief account of his murder by the mob is presented.
Warwick Inn, Stow says, was formerly described as a messuage in Eldedene Lane in 28th Henry VI., when Cecily, Duchess of Warwick, possessed it. There were other houses in the Lane in the fourteenth century. It was in this house that the Earl of Warwick maintained his following of 600 men when he was in London.
We have already read (pp. [4], [6]) of the beheading of Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, in Cheapside; he was seized as he was riding towards his hostel in “Eldedeaneslane” to dine there; and just then he was proclaimed a traitor: upon hearing of which he took to flight and rode towards St. Paul’s church, where he was met and instantly dragged from his horse, and carried into “Chepe”: and there he was despoiled, and his head cut off. Also one of his esquires, William Walle by name, and John de Padington, warden of the said bishop’s manor, were beheaded the same day in Chepe. On the same day towards Vespers came the choir of St. Paul’s and took the headless body of the bishop into St. Paul’s, where they were given to understand that he had died under sentence, upon which the body was carried to the church of St. Clement [Danes].
About the same date is a grant by Godfrey de Acra, chaplain to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, and to a perpetual chaplain who shall celebrate for him and his benefactors in the chapel of St. James, in St. Paul’s, of all his houses, rents, etc., in the parish of St. Faith, “inter vicum veteris Decani versus occidentem et vicum Cecilie de Turri versus orientem.” He made provision for the maintenance of the chaplain, and for the distribution of the money on his anniversary: Thomas Fitz Thomas, Mayor of London, and eleven others are named as witnesses (Historical MSS., Com. Rep. IX. Pt. I. p. 9a).
Sir John Paston (1475) writes to his brother, John Paston, or to his uncle, William Paston, in Warwick Lane. The street had, therefore, in the fifteenth century received its new name after the great house of the Earl of Warwick. In 1496 William Paston wills that all “godes moveable in Warwikes Inn” shall be sold to pay his debts. When Charles V. came to England in 1522, two houses in Warwick Lane were assigned to his retinue—that of Mistress Lewes having a little entry, a hall, two chambers, and three feather beds; the other that of Edward Sharnebroke having one hall, four chambers, two parlours, a chapel, four feather beds, with houses of office, and a stable for eight horses.
In the Historical MSS. Report IX. there are many deeds and documents in which this street is mentioned. Roman remains have been found here.
In the street stood the College of Physicians built by Wren.
The first house of the College was that of Linacre, physician to Henry VIII., the founder of the College in Knightrider Street: the Physicians then moved to Amen Corner and, after the Fire, to Warwick Lane, where they continued until 1823 when the new College in Pall Mall East was opened by Sir Henry Halford.
There were two famous inns in Warwick Lane, of which one was the Bell.
“Archbishop Leighton used often to say that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an Inn; it looking like a pilgrim’s going home, to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it. He added that the officious tenderness and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying man; and that the unconcerned attendance of those that could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance. And he obtained what he desired; for he died [1684] at the Bell Inn in Warwick Lane.”
THE OXFORD ARMS, WARWICK LANE
The inn has gone, but Old Bell Inn Yard, now a railway booking-office wagon yard, is there to mark the site. On the west side was an equally famous inn, the Oxford Arms.
At the Oxford Arms Inn lived John Roberts, from whose shop issued the majority of the squibs and libels on Pope. The inn was south of Warwick House.
Views of this picturesque old inn have been preserved in the Crace collection.
The Cutlers’ Hall adds vivid colour to Warwick Lane farther north by its brilliant red brick, and its handsome frieze in relief. It is faced with red sandstone. The next few houses look doubly grimy by contrast with their neighbour.