Elizabeth Wells Gallup.
A WORD OR TWO ON CANONBURY TOWER.
Baconiana, London.
There are several suggestive points of connection to be noted between the old conventual buildings of Canonbury and our Francis St. Alban. There are also obscure particulars well worthy of inquiry.
Originally the property of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, Canonbury House is generally supposed to have been built in 1362, ten years after Edward III. had exempted the Priory of St. Bartholomew from the payment of subsidies, in consequence of their great outlay in charity. Stow says that William Bolton (Prior from 1509 to 1532) rebuilt the house, and probably erected the fine square tower of brick. Nichol, in his “History of Canonbury,” mentions that Bolton’s rebus of a bolt in a tun was still to be seen, cut in stone, in two places on the outside facing Wells’ Row. The original house covered the whole space now called Canonbury Place, and had a small park, with garden and offices. Prior Bolton either built or repaired the Priory and beautiful Church of St. Bartholomew, but at his death the connection between Canonbury and monasticism ceased.[10]
The Tower House was now given by Henry VIII. to John Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, afterwards Viscount Lisle, father of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, whose history has lately risen into fresh and startling importance in consequence of certain deciphered history to be submitted to the world’s judgment. John Dudley was executed as a traitor when Mary was proclaimed Queen in 1553. The Tower then again became Crown property, and Queen Mary gave it to “Rich Spencer,” the magnificent alderman of whom history speaks so fully, giving us even that which it denied us with regard to Francis St. Alban—details of his funeral obsequies. It is from this Sir John Spencer (father-in-law of Lord Compton) that Sir Francis “Bacon,” when Attorney-General (1616), leased Canonbury Manor.[11]
The internal arrangements and decorations of Canonbury House are commented on in detail by Lewis, who describes the elaborate ornamental carving, emblematic figures and devices, ships, flowers, foliage, and other objects which Baconians have learnt to associate with the symbolic method of teaching of the Renaissance, and pre-eminently of the “Great Master” himself, but which in the regulation literature of our day are described as “specimens of taste for ornamental carving and stucco work that prevailed about the time of Elizabeth.” There are also medallions of three great men who seem to have been in a way models to our Francis—types of the nobler Pioneer, the mighty Conqueror, the Master Builder, Alexander the Great, namely Julius Cæsar, Titus Vespasian. Then with the arms of the Dudleys may be seen the arms of Queen Elizabeth in several places, and her initials, “E. R.” with the date—1599, at which time the premises were fitted up by Sir John Spencer.
“On the white wall of the staircase, near the top of the Tower, are some Latin hexameter verses comprising the abbreviated names of the Kings of England from William the Conquerer to Charles I., painted in Roman character an inch in length, but almost obliterated. The lines were most probably the effusion of some poetical inhabitant of an upper apartment in the building during the time of the monarch last named, such persons having frequently been residents of the place.”
Thomas Tomlins, in his “History of Islington,” writes thus:
“The Earl and Countess, by description Lord and Lady Compton, by indenture 15th February, Jac. 1616, let to the Right Hon. Francis Lord Verulam, Visct. St. Albans, by the name of Sir Francis Bacon Knight,[12] His Majs. Attorney General, all that mansion and garden belonging to what is called Canonbury House, in the Parish of Islington * * * for 40 years from Lady-day, 1617.”