As Mr Doyne Bell points out, the peculiar dedication of the church to St Peter in Chains shows that it has been used since its foundation as a church more for the use of the prisoners in the fortress than for the sovereigns and their courts, whose place of devotion was the chapel of St John in the White Tower. With the exception of the church in Rome dedicated to St Peter ad Vincula, there is no other church besides this one in the Tower, so named. To those who see this building for the first time its general aspect must cause disappointment, so small and almost mean does it appear, and like a hundred similar churches scattered all over the country. But St Peter’s has undergone endless changes and alterations, and comparatively little is left of the building of Edward III. The exterior of the building belongs to the Tudor period. Before the last restoration, in 1867, Lord de Ros wrote, “It is inconceivable what pains have been taken in comparatively modern times to disfigure this interesting chapel.” But this reproach cannot be applied to the latest restoration, which was done with extreme care and good taste.
Interior of Sᵗ. Peter’s Chapel.
The larger portion of the present building dates from the reign of Henry VIII., when many alterations were made, the windows, with the exception of the one over the west door, the arches in the interior, and the timbered roof, being then placed as we see them now.
The list of interments in this chapel commences with the reign of Henry VIII. This list is one of the most interesting things in connection with the chapel.
When the Reformed Faith ousted Popery the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London over this chapel ceased, and it has ever since remained a benefice donative over which the Bishop has no power of visitation or deprivation, since the Tower itself is extra-parochial. Private marriages could be solemnised at St Peter’s, and in Ben Jonson’s “Every Man in his Humour,” this privilege is alluded to. One unlucky curate of the chapel, however, was sent to prison in James the First’s reign for having performed marriages and christenings in the chapel, and only secured his liberty through the influence of Sir William Waad, the Lieutenant of the Tower. Another clergyman named Hubbock and his son were excommunicated in 1620 by Laud for committing the same offence. Later on, however, the right of solemnising marriages and christenings in this chapel was allowed, and still continues.
Samuel Pepys has described in one of his vivid word pictures a visit he paid to the chapel after the Restoration, when he occupied one of the hideous pews that then choked the floor, and which were only removed a few years ago. “February 28, 1663–4. Lord’s Day. The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir J. Robinson, would needs have me by coach home with him; where the officers of his regiment dined with him. I did go and dine with him, his ordinary table being very good, and his lady a very high carried, but a comely big woman, I was mightily pleased with her. After dinner to chapel in the Tower with the Lieutenant, with the keys carried before us; and I sat with the Lieutenant in his pew in great state. None it seems of the prisoners in the Tower that are there now, though they may, will come to prayers there.” With a monstrous gallery built in the reign of George II. for the use of the troops of the garrison, with the ugly square wooden pews, in one of which Pepys sat “in great state”; with the pavement all broken and defaced, with walls and columns whitewashed, and with the handsome carved Tudor ceiling coated with lath and plaster, it is no wonder that to any one with a respect for antiquity or love of beauty, St Peter’s in the Tower must have presented a sad spectacle before its restoration. And it was not until 1862 that any steps were taken to remove what was nothing less than a public disgrace. The improvements were commenced by re-opening the old doorway at the west end, which had been bricked up, the window of Edward I.’s time was also restored, the broken fragments having been collected and replaced in their original position. The lath and plaster which for a century or more had disfigured the ceiling were removed, and the finely carved old chestnut beams once more uncovered.
Further improvements were carried out during the time that Sir Charles Yorke was Constable, in the year 1876. Sir John Taylor, the head of the Office of Works, drew up the plans of this restoration, and, aided by Mr Salvin, the work of renovation commenced. There was much to be done, and it was certainly done well. The pews were the first excrescence to be removed, and the pavement, which was as uneven as that of St Mark’s at Venice, was taken up and a new one laid down. During this operation it was discovered that the ground had been used as a general place of burial, for besides those whose mutilated bodies had been placed under the pavement after execution, large numbers of other individuals had been interred here, and at a very shallow depth below the pavement. It was deemed necessary to remove these remains to the crypt before the new floor could be placed. Great care was taken to identify any remains of the illustrious dead, but in most cases it was impossible to do so owing to the ground having been so much disturbed and the bones scattered. Even greater care was taken when the floor of the chancel was reached, for it was known that the bodies of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, and of the Dukes of Northumberland and Somerset had been buried there. In 1877 the restoration of the Chapel was completed. Many interesting discoveries had been made, and needless to say, but for its state of decay, none of the poor fragments of mortality of the victims of their own ambition or the tyranny of monarchs, would have been disturbed. It was necessary to identify what remained of poor Anne Boleyn in order that above her bones the tombstone should bear its record of what lay below. “The forehead,” writes Mr Doyne Bell, “and lower jaw were small and especially well formed. The vertebrae were particularly small, especially one joint (the axlas), which was that next to the skull, and they bore witness to the queen’s ‘lyttel neck.’” The remains of another of Henry’s victims were found lying in the chancel, and belonged to the old Countess of Salisbury, Margaret Clarence. Near these some bones were found which were believed to have been those of Queen Catherine Howard, but her body, having been placed in quicklime, few traces of it remained. In this “dread abode” were also laid bare the bones of the Duke of Northumberland, and a portion of the Duke of Monmouth’s skeleton.
Near the entrance door is a memorial tablet on which a list of the most notable persons buried within the chapel is engraved—a list of thirty-four persons, commencing with Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, buried here in 1534, and ending with Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, in 1747. The old antiquarian, John Stowe, thus sums up with brief simplicity the illustrious dead that lie under the pavement of the chapel. “Here lieth before the high altar in St Peter’s Church, two Dukes between two Queens, to wit, the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland, between Queen Anne and Queen Katherine, all four beheaded.” No record that Lady Jane Grey and her husband were interred in St Peter’s exists. It would not be easy to find a place in which so many remarkable dead are grouped together as in this little spot of English ground. Beneath our feet lies all that was mortal of what was once Northumberland and Somerset, Arundel and Norfolk; gentle Anne Boleyn and saint-like Jane Grey’s calm presence seem to linger near their graves: here, too, the once brilliant Monmouth moulders before the high altar; and hard by rest the faithful little band of Jacobites—Kilmarnock and brave Balmerino, and the wily old fox, Simon Fraser of Lovat.
One of the earliest and handsomest monuments in St Peter’s is that to Sir Richard Cholmondeley and his wife Elizabeth. The knight and his lady are lying side by side, sculptured in alabaster. Sir Richard, who was Lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Henry VII., wears plate armour, his hand rests on his helmet, his feet on a lion; round his neck he wears the collar of SS. As was then the custom, this monument has been painted and gilded, traces of its decoration still remaining. This tomb was opened in 1876, but was found to contain only some fragments of the stone font of the chapel of Edward the Third’s time. Sir Richard had been knighted for his conduct on the field of Flodden. During his Lieutenancy of the Tower a riot broke out between the Londoners and some of the Lombard merchants, and Sir Richard, who seems to have been cursed with a bad temper, by way of quietening the brawlers, discharged the guns of the fortress against the city. Hall, in his chronicle, quaintly notices this act of the Lieutenant as follows:—