Some earlier entries in this register are of sufficient interest to attract attention. During 1560 there is a curious reference to the burial of “a poor starved Callis man” which may mean a callisman (a beggar), or a destitute refugee from Calais, which had been lost to England two years earlier. In 1591, 1596, and 1599 there were buried in the church two sons and a daughter of the famous Robert, Earl of Essex, favourite of Elizabeth, which Earl “possessed a house in Seething Lane, in this parish.” Entries regarding persons of less fame, but surely of considerable interest to us as suggesting the state of the poor at that time, occur in the seventeenth century. One is “a poore soldier, dying in the streetes in ye night whose name was unknowne” (February 18, 1606); another is “a poore boy that dyed in the streetes” (1620); and yet another is “one unknowne, starved on Tower Hill” (January 15, 1627). With the entries for January 1 and 2, 1644, we are introduced to the period of the Civil War, during which time Tower Hill was the scene of frequent executions and Allhallows Barking received the headless bodies of many of the victims. Against the dates just mentioned there are the names of John Hotham, Esq., “beheaded for betraying his trust to the State,” and Sir John Hotham, Knt., “beheaded for betraying his trust to the Parliament.” Sir John Hotham and his son were beheaded in consequence of a design to deliver up Hull to the King, which place they held for the Parliamentary forces. With these melancholy entries we may place another of the seventeenth day of the following June, which records the burial of “Dorathie, daughter of Sir John Hotham, Knt., and the Ladie Elizabeth his wife,” and tells of the passing away of the grief-stricken child, “who desired to be buried here with her father.” On April 23, 1650, the entry, “Colonel Andrewes beheaded; buried in ye chancel,” refers to Colonel Eusebius Andrewes, “an old Loyalist, condemned to suffer as a traitor. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, dying with much firmness and courage.”
On leaving the vestry we may notice, behind the door leading into the church, a recently discovered and much-damaged piscina, or place of ablution for the priests serving at the altar. This was accidentally found when the walls were stripped of their plaster, in 1904. From its position it would lead one to suppose that the altar rails were at one time carried along on the top of the present altar steps. But of this we have no conclusive proof.
The best view of the interior of the church is to be obtained from this standpoint. The high pitch of the excellently restored roof, the grace and lightness of the chancel pillars as contrasted with the massiveness of those in the nave, the imposing appearance of the handsome organ case—all these striking features will leave one of the most lingering impressions of the building as a whole, apart from its interest in detail, with those who pause here as before a remarkable picture.
On the easternmost pillar of the chancel there will be noticed the memorial to John Kettlewell, the celebrated Non-juror, who died in 1695, and, by his own desire, was buried “in the same grave where Archbishop Laud was before interred.” His funeral rites were solemnised by Bishop Ken, who read the Burial Office, and the whole Evening Service, at Allhallows Barking on the occasion. Ken, deprived of his see, thus, for the last time, exercised his ministry within the Church of England.
South Aisle.—Beneath the window at the east end of this aisle the Colleton monument, “from the chisel of Scheemakers,” almost rivals its neighbour in the North Aisle by its heavy dulness, but the altar-tomb against the south wall is an early monument worthy of careful examination. Like the Croke altar-tomb already described, it dates back to the fifteenth century and is the more ancient of the two. A gilt brass plate at the back of the tomb is graven with a representation of the Resurrection. It is not now possible to ascertain to whose memory the tomb was erected: possibly it commemorates the founder of a chantry chapel attached to this chancel aisle.
The beautifully carved font-cover, executed in whitened wood—not plaster, as many suppose—is the work, and some think the masterpiece, of Grinling Gibbons, whose incomparable works of art, the carving of fruit and flowers and decorative scroll-work, in wood, are to be seen in other parts of this church, in other City churches, and in many a manor-house and ancient hall throughout England. This font-cover will repay the most careful study. Gibbons’ signature, so to speak, may be found in the “split pea-pod” near the feet of one of the figures.
The brasses in this aisle are of singular interest. The elaborate brass near the altar-tomb, with its ornamental border, is a 1546 memorial to William Thynne, one of the Masters of the Household under Henry VIII. He was the first to edit a complete edition of Chaucer’s works, “to show that England had her classics as well as other nations.” When this brass was taken up and restored in 1861 it was found to be engraved on both sides. The supposition is that, at the dissolution of the monasteries, “when many treasures found their way into the markets”—as one writer puts it, with just a touch of cynicism—a larger brass, which had covered the tomb of some dignitary of the Church, was cut down to the size of the figures we see on this Thynne slab, and the back of the former engraving became the front of the present one. Thynne “married Ann, daughter of William Bonde, Esq., of the city of London, who now lies by his side. He left three daughters and one infant son, Francis, who became a distinguished antiquarian, and held the office of Lancaster Herald. The extreme youth of this child prevented his inheriting his father’s prestige at Court, which in consequence descended to his nephews, one of whom was Sir John Thynne of Longleat, founder of the noble house of Bath.” The small circular brass (1389) near by, bearing an inscription in Norman-French, is the oldest in the City, and records the resting-place of William Tonge, a generous benefactor to Allhallows in the fourteenth century. The larger Rusche brass, laid down in 1498, has had its precatory invocation erased by the over-zealous Puritans, but is otherwise in good preservation. The engraving is rough and bold. The details of the costume are true to contemporary drawings of the period, and the position of the dog will recall what was said with regard to the tracings
on the Virby stone in the North Aisle. Farther west lies the Rawson brass, dated 1518, also mutilated by the iconoclasts of the mid seventeenth century. The central figure is that of Christopher Rawson, “freeman of the ancient Guild of the Mercers,” and the other figures represent “Margaret and Agnes his wyves.” In his will he mentions “a chantry in the chapel of St. Anne in the church of Allhallows Barking” where prayers for “his own soul and the souls of his wyves and children” were to be said. Canon Mason, in an article which appeared in the Nineteenth Century for May 1898, says: “From a theological point of view [this is] perhaps the most interesting monument in the church. From the mouths of the three figures issue scrolls, which unite over their heads in an invocation to the Blessed Trinity. But these scrolls are in one respect unique.” Reference is made to the wording of the scrolls, “Salva nos, Libera nos, and Iustifica nos, O beata Trinitas.” “‘Save us’ and ‘Deliver us’ are of course expressions common enough; ‘Vivifica nos,’ ‘Quicken us,’ occurs in a similar context in mediæval services; but search may be made without finding anywhere else, I believe, in liturgical formulas or in sepulchral inscriptions, another example of ‘Justify us.’... In the year 1518 the controversies about justification raised on the Continent by Luther had not begun to convulse England; and indeed Rawson’s invocation takes no side in the controversy. He does not say whether he hopes to be justified by faith or justified by works, but he has laid hold upon the long-forgotten word, and craves that the blessing contained in it, whatever that might consist of, may be given to him and to his wives.” The Basano slab, of 1624, lies above “one of the King’s servants,” and the adjoining tomb of Dame Anne Masters, who died in 1719, records the wife of Sir H. Masters, City Alderman, and mother of nineteen children, which goodly company of descendants occupy much burial-space round the Rawson tomb.