THE TALLOW CHANDLERS COMPANY
The first charter of incorporation of this Company bears date the 8th of March 1462, 2 Edward IV., wherein the then members of the Company are described as “our beloved and faithful subjects, the Freemen of the Mystery or Art of Tallough Chandlers of our City of London.”
It is evident, however, that a company, guild, or other association of tallow chandlers existed in London before the date of the above charter, seeing that in the year 1426, or thirty-six years prior thereto, Letters Patent were granted by Henry VI. to the mayor of the City of London, and the master and wardens of the Mystery or Craft of Tallow Chandlers of the same city for the time being, empowering them to search for and destroy all bad and adulterated oils.
Also in the year 1456, or six years prior to the said charter, a grant of arms and crest was made by John Smert, Garter King-at-Arms, to John Priour, John Thurlow, William Blakeman, and Richard Grenecroft, sworn wardens or keepers (gardiens) and several other notable men of the trade and of the Company of Tallow Chandlers (Chandeliers de Suif) of the City of London, on behalf of and in the name of their whole confraternity.
At present there is a livery of 102; the Corporate Income was not returned to the Commissioners. The Trust Income is £220. Maitland says that the Fraternity anciently dealt not only in candles, but also in oils, vinegar, butter, hops, soap, etc.
Stow designates the hall of the Tallow Chandlers “a proper house.” After the Great Fire it was rebuilt (1672). In 1884 a large red brick and terra-cotta building of five stories, standing upon a granite base, was erected on Dowgate Hill instead, and upon the site of the old house of the Company’s clerk and beadle, and the hall is now approached by a vestibule running under this building. The vestibule leads into an open quadrangle, which was diminished when the above-mentioned house was built. It is surrounded by a Tuscan piazza of ten arcades. This piazza in part belongs to the 1672 building. It was restored in 1871. The building itself is of red brick. On the first floor is the great hall, a handsome apartment 50 feet long by 27 feet wide, having a decorated ceiling, and walls wainscotted with oak panelling and looking-glass to a height of 30 feet. On the south wall are three great mirrors; in a broken pediment over the central one are the arms of Charles II. At the north end is a carved oak screen, in the centre of which are the entrance doors, of handsome carved work filled with stained glass, erected in 1894. The screen itself is of the 1672 building. A heavy carved frieze and cornice passes round the hall above the long windows. The pictures include two by Sir Godfrey Kneller. The court parlour is the handsomest room. It is wainscotted to the ceiling, which is magnificently panelled in oak, and richly gilt, having in the centre an oval compartment enclosed by an exquisitely moulded wreath of flowers. The rest is divided into squares and oblongs, filled with groups of flowers and fruit.
An inscription tells us:
“This parlour was wainscotted at the expense of Sir Joseph Sheldon, Knt., a member of this Company and Lord Mayor of this City A.D. 1675. Who also gave this Company a barge with all its furniture.”
On the second floor is the court-room, which is also wainscotted to the ceiling.
Dowgate, the Steelyard, and Cold Harbour were all very near together. The Steelyard was so called from the beam of steel by which goods imported into London were weighed. It stood just where Cannon Street Station now is. It had a fine hall and courtyard, and was for 300 years held by the members of the Hanseatic League, a community of foreigners who enjoyed the monopoly of importing hemp, corn, wax, linen and many other things into England, to the great loss of our own traders. (See London in the time of the Tudors, p. 82.)
Beyond the station is the City of London Brewery. The archway spanning the central entrance to this occupies the site of an earlier arch which once carried the choir and steeple of Allhallows the Less, and led to what Stow speaks of as “the great house called Cold Harbrough.” Its site is now covered by the brewery. The name of the house is conjectured to be a corruption of the German words Colner Herberg (Cologne Inn), which passed into Coln Harbrough, Cole Harbrough, Cold Harbrough, and Cold Harbour. Cologne being one of the principal of the Hanse towns, the proximity of the steelyard makes this derivation appear likely. There are several Cold Harbours in England, none of them remarkable for bleak situations, but most of them existing in places where commerce once greatly throve. The house stood at the water’s edge. It was a large building, with steps leading down to the river through an arched door. About the year 1600 it is represented with five gables facing the water, and rows of mullioned diamond-pane windows—a beautiful building. It had the right of sanctuary, though how or when gained is not known.
Until 1607 Cold Harbour had been outside the City jurisdiction, for it is one of the places added to the City’s rule by the charter of James I. to the mayor, commonalty, and citizens of London in that year. It must have been deserted by its original inhabitants, the Cologne merchants, before the reign of Edward II. It belonged to the Poultney family, and was for some time called Poultney’s Inn.
“In the year 1397, 21 Richard II., John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon, was lodged there, and Richard II., his brother, dined with him. It was then counted a right fair and stately house: but in the next year following Edmond, Earl of Cambridge, was there lodged, notwithstanding the said house still retained the name of Poultney’s Inn in the reign of Henry VI., the 26th of his reign” (Stow).
In 1410 Henry IV. gave it to Henry, Prince of Wales, for life. Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., lodged here temporarily; in the reign of Henry VIII., the Bishop of Durham’s house, already mentioned, “being taken into the King’s hands,” Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, was lodged in “the Cold Harbrough.” This Bishop of Durham remained here until 1553, when he was deposed from his bishopric and Cold Harbour was taken from him. It was granted by Edward VI., together with its appurtenances and six houses or tenements in the parish of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East, and certain lands in Yorkshire, to the Earl of Shrewsbury and his heirs. Edward VI. is said to have given it to the Earl at the instance of the Duke of Northumberland, “who practised to gain as many of the nobility as he could to his purpose.” It then became known as Shrewsbury House. Francis, fifth Earl of Shrewsbury, who died in 1560, and his son, the sixth Earl, the guardian for fifteen years of Mary, Queen of Scots, took it down, “and in place thereof built a great number of small tenements, now letten out for great rents to people of all sorts” (Stow). The Earl died in 1590. The tenements were destroyed in the Fire of 1666. No remains of the building exist unless Wren utilised some of the stones in rebuilding Allhallows the Great. Hubbard, writing in 1843, says that a foundation wall of the house and the ancient stairs still survived in his time.
Stow calls The Erber a “great old house” and says that Geoffrey Scroope held it by gift of Edward III. in 1341. It subsequently belonged to John Nevil, Earl of Raby, who appears to have died some years prior to 1396. The last of the honourable family of the Scroopes to possess it was William de Scroope, Knt., who lived in the reign of Henry IV. He gave it for life to his brother Ralph Nevil, Earl of Westmoreland, who married, as his second wife, Joan, daughter of the Duke of Lancaster. Ralph Nevil died, seised of the Erber, in 1426, and his wife in 1441. Their son Richard Nevil, Earl of Salisbury, was lodged here in 1547. He died in 1460, and the Erber passed to his son Richard, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, “the king-maker,” who was slain at the battle of Barnet Field in 1471. In 1474, George, Duke of Clarence, who had married Isabel, daughter of “the king-maker,” then received it from Edward IV. who gave it to him and his heirs so long as there was living male issue of the Marquis Montacute. If the said male issue should die during the duke’s life, then the duke to remain seised for life, taking precedence of the rights of all others than the marquis and his issue. The Duke of Clarence died in 1479. After his death, Edward, his son, was seised of the Erber, and George, Duke of Bedford, son of John Nevil, Marquis Montacute, dying without male issue in 1483, the lands remained in the hands of Edward till 1500, when he was attainted and the lands thus came to the Crown. Here they remained until 1512, when Henry VIII. gave them to John, Earl of Oxford, and his heirs male. In 1513 the King gave the reversion to Sir Thomas Bulleyn, Knt., and his male heirs. In 1514 he restored Margaret, daughter and heir to George, Duke of Clarence, and to all the lands of Richard, Earl of Salisbury, “who by colour of restitution entered, and was attainted in 1540. So the lands came back to the Crown, and were given in the next year to Sir Philip Hoby, who in 1545 sold the Erber to one Doulphin, a draper, who in 1553 sold it to the Drapers Company. Strype, who gives these particulars, says that notwithstanding this account “by some lawyers and historians in those days,” it appears by the Rolls (1405) that there was a surrender of the Erber from Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland, to the King for the use of John Darrel, and Walter de Arkham; that Richard III. possessed it under the name of “The King’s Palace,” and that one Ralph Dowel, a yeoman of the Crown, was keeper of this place. Dowel seems to have repaired not only the Erber, but also other houses belonging to it, “particularly a brewhouse called the Chequer,” as appears by a ledger-book of the King’s in which the accounts of Dowel are said to be examined by John Hewyk, one of the King’s auditors. Orders were given to Lethington, bailiff of the lordship of the Clavering in Essex, “to content him,” but £14 : 18 : 3 still remained in arrears due to him for the repairs. Stow says that the Erber had been lately rebuilt by Sir Thomas Pullison, and that it was afterwards inhabited by Sir Thomas Drake.
St. Mary Bothaw was situated on the east side of Turnwheele Lane, Cannon Street. The date of foundation is unknown. Newcourt mentions Adam Lambyn as a rector, who died 1279. In the Taxation Book of Pope Nicholas IV., 1291, the church occurs as Sancte Marie de Bothaw. It was destroyed by the Great Fire, but not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of St. Swithin. Stow supposes, for want of a better theory, that “this church being near unto the Down-Gate in the river of Thames, hath the addition of Bothaw, or Boat Haw, of near adjoining to a haw or yard, wherein of old time boats were made, and landed from Downgate to be mended.” Strype mentions that it seems “of old to be called St. Mary de Bothache,” and Mr. Loftie in his London City (1891) says that the name is “most likely from ‘la board hatch,’ a wooden gate-lock called also in some ancient documents ‘Board-Hatch.’” The map by Agas c. 1560, and Hollar’s view of London, call the church St. Mary Buttolph Lane. It is somewhat remarkable that Dowgate is almost the only one of the older City gates which has no Church of St. Botolph near by, as at Billingsgate, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, and Aldersgate. The term St. Mary Bothol occurs more than once in records of the sixteenth century. Can it be that the name bears witness to the existence of a St. Botolph’s Church here, which was dedicated to the Virgin, with the name Botolph attached as a remembrance of the former appellation? The earliest date of an incumbent is 1281.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, before 1281; the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury from 1552 up to the time it was annexed to St. Swithin in 1666.
Houseling people in 1548 were 182.
Chantries were founded here: By Lady Joan Fastolf, to which Robert Kirke was instituted, May 10, 1445; by and for John, son of Adam de Salusbury, who endowed it with a tenement called the “Key” in Coleman Street, which fetched £7 in 1548; by and for John Hamond, before 1387; by James le Butler; by Hugh Fostall.
Many noble persons were buried here, as appeared from the arms in the windows, the defaced tombs, and print of plates torn up and carried away. The most remarkable, perhaps, was that of Sir Henry Fitz-Alwine, draper, the first Lord Mayor of London, who continued in his position for twenty-four years. Here, too, Robert Chicheley, grocer and mayor of London in 1422, was buried; he appointed by his will that 2400 poor men should each have a good dinner on his birthday, and he also gave a plot of land for the building of the parish church, called St. Stephen’s, Walbrook.
No charitable gifts are recorded by Stow.
At the construction of Cannon Street station and hotel, in 1866-68, the churchyard was built over. Its site is now immediately under the steps leading from the hotel to the forecourt, and is occupied by part of a corridor, a carpenter’s shop, a knife-cleaning room, and a coal cellar, all of which belong to the hotel basement.
The north-western side of the station forecourt stands upon the site of Turnwheele Lane, a narrow turning which formerly led from Cannon Street by a westerly slope into Dowgate Hill, which it joined opposite the northern boundary of Skinners’ Hall. Stow calls it “a little lane with a turnpike in the middle thereof.” Strype (1720) terms it Turnwheele Lane, but the New Remarks of London (1732) style it Turnmill Lane. By the eastern side of the station runs Allhallows Lane leading northward into Bush Lane. The church of Allhallows the Great stood here until 1898, and east of it was Allhallows the Less.
Allhallows the Great was situated on the south side of Thames Street. This church has been known, at various times, as All Saints, Allhallows-ad-foenum, Allhallows-in-the-Hay, Allhallows-in-the-Ropery (“because,” says Stow, “of hay sold thereunto at Hay Wharf, and ropes of old time made and sold in the high street”), Allhallows the More (“for a difference from Allhallows the Less”), Allhallows the Great, which has been the name at least since the Fire. Of its first foundation there is no record, but from the fact that the riverside is the oldest inhabited part of the City it may be nearly coeval with the establishment of Christianity in London. The first actual mention of it is in 1361 when, according to Newcourt, one Thomas de Wodeford was rector. In 1627 and 1629 it was repaired and redecorated, and a gallery built at the west end, but the whole was destroyed by the Great Fire. In 1683 it was rebuilt, the architect being Wren, and Allhallows the Less, its neighbour, united with it by Act of Parliament. In 1877 the tower and north aisle were taken down to widen Thames Street. The church was taken down in 1898. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1279.
The patronage was in the hands of the family of Le Despensers before 1314; Richard Beauchamp; Richard Nevil, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, 1465; George, Duke of Clarence, before 1480; Edward, eldest son of Isabel, Duchess of Clarence, 1480; Edward IV.; Henry VII., as a gift from Anne, widow of Richard Nevil, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury; Henry VIII.; the Archbishop of Canterbury, by exchange, 1569, in whose successors it continues.
Houseling people in 1548 were 550.
There was a large cloister originally on the south side of the church, but it was in a considerable state of ruin in 1627.
The plan was nominally an oblong square, but, owing probably to the desire of Wren to make use of the old foundations, its walls were neither built parallel nor four-square. The length was 87 feet, the height 33 feet, and the width 60 feet, of which the nave was made 48 feet wide and a north aisle 12 feet wide. To the north aisle was also attached a heavy square tower, occupying a portion of the aisle. The elevation was finished with a cornice and parapet. The tower rose above the second division from the east to a height of 86 feet. The church was celebrated for its beautiful woodwork, which, on its demolition, was removed to St. Michael Royal.
Chantries were founded here by: Richard de Preston, citizen and grocer, at the Altar of St. Katherine, for himself and Agnes his wife, and to which Alfred Lyndon was admitted chaplain in 1396; Peter Cosin whose will is dated 1291 (Pat. 43 Edward III. p. 2 m. 12); Sir Nicholas Lovin for himself and dame Margaret his wife; William Lichfield, augmented by Thomas Westhowe, both of which endowments fetched £8 : 16 : 8 in 1548; and William Peston.
The church formerly contained monuments to: William Lichfield, Doctor of Divinity; John Brickles, a great benefactor. Queen Elizabeth’s monument, “If Royal Vertues, etc.,” was also in this church.
Two charity schools were erected in 1715, consisting of thirty boys and twenty girls supported by voluntary subscriptions from the inhabitants of the ward.
Among the notable rectors of this church are: Thomas White (1628-98), Bishop of Peterborough; Hon. James York, Bishop of Ely, 1781; Robert Richardson, D.D. (1732-81), Dean of Lincoln; Edward Waddington (d. 1731), Bishop of Chichester; William Vincent (1739-1815), Dean of Westminster; William Cave, author (1637-1713).
In 1877 a new vestry was built on the south side of the church. It is approached from Allhallows Lane by steps, through an arched doorway, above which stands what is called “the tower,” a mean erection and a mere apology for a tower. Its height does not extend beyond the church roof. The vestry is fitted with the panelling and the pedimented doorway brought from the old north aisle, from which also come the two fantastically and beautifully carved wooden shields, now placed respectively over the fireplace and the door. The ceiling is a neat piece of panelling. The room is used for the holding of the Dowgate wardmotes. The churchyard (south of the church) is much higher than the lane at its side. It contains one tree, several tombs, and in the north-west corner the vestry-room. The enclosure remains an open space even after the demolition of the church.
Allhallows Church was dismantled in 1894. The screen, the pulpit, the altar rails, the brass candelabra, and some of the woodwork went to St. Margaret, Lothbury; the organ case, the font rails, the statues of Moses and Aaron, most of the carved woodwork, the monuments, and the stained-glass arms of Bishop Waddington went to St. Michael, Paternoster Royal. The carved-wood altar was allotted to the new Church of Allhallows, North St. Pancras, which was to be erected partially from the funds arising out of the sale. The clock by Ericke was bought by a gentleman connected with the City of London Brewery, where it now stands. The site and the materials of the fabric were sold by auction on July 31, 1894, for £31,100.