Stories of London

by E. L. Hoskyn

In those hard cruel days men thought little of pain and suffering; but Francis had love and sympathy, not only for men, but for animals and for all things. In one of his poems he calls the moon his sister, and the sun his brother; and he gives thanks for "our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble and precious and clean," and for "our brother fire; he is bright and pleasant and very mighty and strong." We hear of him preaching to the birds, and bidding them be thankful for their feather-clothes and wings.

Soon other men joined themselves to him to live and teach as he did, and they were called Franciscans, the Monks of St. Francis; and sometimes the Grey Friars, because, like St. Francis, they wore grey gowns; and they are also called the Begging Friars, because they too had taken Poverty for their bride, and might own neither houses nor lands; even food they must earn by the labour of their own hands, or kindly people must give it to them. All their time, all their thoughts must be given to helping the poor, the sick, and the wretched; and where they were, there the Friars must go, so they made their homes chiefly in the towns; and at first, while they kept the rules of St. Francis very strictly, even these homes did not really belong to them.

In 1224 nine Franciscans came to England—the very first to come here. Four of them went straight to London. There the poorer people lived on the marshy land near the Thames, huddled together in huts built of mud and wattle; and in such homes there must have been plenty of sickness and misery. For a short time the four Grey Friars lived on Cornhill. Perhaps they thought they had no right to live in so pleasant a place when there was such great misery down by the river; certainly, soon so many people came about them that this first home was too small for them. Now, a London citizen had some property "in Stynkyng Lane and in the parish of St. Nicholas Shambles." Do you know what shambles are? In them animals are killed for food; they cannot be nice places to live in. This property the citizen gave to the Friars, and there they made their new home. By their good deeds they must very quickly have won the respect of the Londoners, for some gave them more lands, and others helped in building a church and monastery for them. This monastery was close to the place where the London General Post Office now stands.

In those days the monasteries did most of the work which is now done by schools, libraries, hospitals, hotels, and workhouses; no doubt the Franciscans did their full share of it in London. But as the years passed on and the first monks died, the younger men who took their places became less strict in keeping the rules of St. Francis; many people gave money and lands to the Order, and it became rich and great, and changed very much. Before a hundred years had passed away, in place of their first church, a new one had been built for them, one of the grandest in the land; its floor and pillars were all of marble. St. Francis told his followers that they needed no books but a Prayer-Book; before long the Grey Friars not only had books, but two hundred years after they settled in London Richard Whittington gave them a library. They no longer gave all their time to caring for the poor and wretched, for we hear of some of them teaching at Oxford and Cambridge; indeed, one of the most learned men of the age, Roger Bacon, was a Grey Friar.

Thus the years passed on until Henry VIII. became King. Do you remember how he treated the monks of the Charter House? I have no such story to tell you of the Grey Friars, for they gave up to the King their monastery and all they possessed when he called on them to do so.

Were the monks missed? Who did the work they had once done? At first much of it was left quite undone. Here is a little bit of a letter which the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Richard Gresham, wrote to the King, in 1538, on this very subject:—Someone, he says, must come to the "ayde and comfort of the poor, syke [sick], blynde, aged and impotent persons beyng not able to help themselffs, nor havyng no place certen where they may be refreshed or lodged at, tyll they be holpen and cured of their diseases and sickness." And he goes on to ask that three ancient hospitals may be given over to the Mayor and Aldermen of the City to carry on once more their old work. King Henry thought this was a wise plan, and in 1546 he gave to London Rahere's old hospital, St. Bartholomew's, and the Grey Friars' monastery.

Nothing more seems to have been done for five years. Yet the poor needed help greatly; and under Henry's son, Edward VI., we hear of sermons being preached, of the King, the Bishop of London, and the Mayor consulting together and making a new plan—that the house of the Grey Friars should be set aside as a hospital or home for "fatherless children and other poore mens children," where they should be fed, clothed, taught, and properly looked after. Thus Edward VI. is often spoken of as the chief founder of the new charity, but I think Henry VIII. and Sir Richard Gresham had more to do with it; don't you? Yet it was the City's charity, and the citizens provided the money needed for it. Before the next winter set in nearly 400 boys and girls were lodged in the old Grey Friars; the next Christmas Day (1552), the children, 340 in number, "all in one livery of russet cotton," lined the road as the Lord Mayor and Aldermen passed in procession to St. Paul's Cathedral. "The next Easter they were in blew [blue] at the Spittle [hospital], and so have continued ever since"; and from these "blew" clothes the school has taken one of its names—the Blue-Coat School. Its other name is Christ's Hospital.

Hundreds of boys have worn the long blue gown and yellow stockings, and some of them have become famous men. I will tell you the name of only one of these, Charles Lamb; for he has written about the school as he knew it, and perhaps you have read Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare"; he and his sister Mary wrote them.

Facing page 32 is a picture of [Blue-Coat boys>], with their gowns tucked up, playing football. Until a short time ago, people in the busy street called Holborn could look through the bars which separated the playground from it, and watch the boys at play. They can do this no longer, for the old buildings have been pulled down, and part of the ground they stood on has been bought for the General Post Office; and in the year 1902 the school, like the Charter House School, moved away into the country, to Horsham.