St. Botolph's church, situated on the western side of Aldersgate Street, near Little Britain, is dedicated to a Cornish monk, who is said to have lived in the time of King Lucius, and was buried at Boston (Botolph's town), in Lincolnshire. It is an ancient rectory, formerly in the gift of the dean and canons of St. Martin, and was given along with the college to the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, and at the dissolution to the Bishop of Westminster, who was suppressed by Queen Mary, and the convent restored, to whom it reverted. Queen Elizabeth restored it to the new dean and chapter, who still hold it, subject to the approval of the Bishop and Archdeacon of London. It escaped the fire of 1666, became ruinous, and was patched and repaired at divers times until 1790, when it was rebuilt, a portion of the old church being retained in the eastern wall. It cannot be considered a handsome church exteriorly, but the interior is effective, although of mixed styles. It has a painted window of Christ's agony in the garden, executed in the dark age of glass painting. In another window, by Jas. Pierson, the figure of St. Peter is very fine. Having been spared by the Fire, the church contains a great many monuments of the old citizens of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is one to Daniel Wray, F.R.S., Deputy Teller of the Exchequer, who died in 1783, æt. 83. He was a learned man, and collected a large library of old authors, which his widow presented to the Charter House. Another, a tablet and bust, by Roubiliac, is erected to the memory of Elizabeth Smith, who died in 1750, æt. 15. There is an inscription commencing —
"Not far remote lies a lamented fair,
Whom Heaven had fashioned with peculiar care," etc.
At the north-east corner of Little Britain stood an alien Cluniac Priory, or Hospital, founded in 1377, which was suppressed with other alien houses by Henry V., and the endowments given to the parishioners of St. Botolph's, who founded a brotherhood of the Holy Trinity, in connection with the church, to celebrate masses in the church. It was suppressed temp. Edward VI., and the hall of the priory converted into a vestry and school. There were also two brotherhoods of St. Fabian and St. Sebastian, and a sisterhood of St. Katherine in the church.
St. Anne's Church is also called the Church of St. Anne and St. Agnes, from a tradition that it was built by two sisters so named, and in old records is styled St. Anne in the Willows, from its standing in a grove of those trees. The date of its foundation is not known, but a John de Chambrey was collated to the living in 1322. The rectory was under the patronage of the Dean and Canons of St. Martin's, and went with the college to Westminster. It was destroyed by fire in 1548, restored in 1624, again burnt in 1666, rebuilt by Wren in 1680, when the parish of St. John Zachary was united to it, and again "repaired and beautified" in 1701-3. Within its walls was buried William Gregory, Mayor of London 1451, in a chantry which he had founded. There was a monument to Peter Helwood, who was stabbed in Westminster Hall, in 1640, by John James, a Dominican friar, for his zealous prosecution of the Papists, as a justice of the peace. The inscription says: —
"Reader, if not a Papist bred,
Upon such ashes lightly tread."
The Rev. James Penn, lecturer at the church, was, along with the Rev. S. Aldrich, rector of St. John's, Clerkenwell, appointed to investigate the mystery of the Cock Lane Ghost.
There have been several notable Nonconformist chapels in and about Aldersgate Street. Early in the reign of Charles II., the Society of Friends established a meeting in Bull and Mouth Street, and George Fox frequently preached there. As was common at that time, the congregation was subjected to barbarous persecution. In 1662 a mob assembled, dragged them out into the street, beating and mauling them severely, and killing one outright.