CHAPTER IX.
ALL HALLOWS, BARKING.—ST. OLAVE’S.—ST. CATHERINE CREE’S.—ST. ANDREW UNDERSHAFT
t the end of Great Tower Street is the church of All Hallows, Barking, anciently known as “Berkynge Church by the Tower.” The edifice, which is situated close to Mark Lane Station on the Metropolitan Railway, ranks as the oldest parish church with a continuous history as such in the city of London. One hundred and fifty years before the union of the seven kingdoms under Egbert, over four hundred years before the Conqueror and the building of the White Tower, a thousand years before the boy Milton visited its historic site, the foundation of the church was laid. For six hundred years a close connection existed between the court and this church when the Tower was a royal residence.
Some traces of old Norman work remain, but the present building belongs to the Perpendicular type, and assumed nearly its present shape about one hundred years before Milton’s age.
From its nearness to the Tower, the church became the burial-place of some of its victims. Here was placed the headless body of Lord Thomas Grey, uncle of Lady Jane, who was beheaded in 1554 for taking part in the rebellion under Wyatt. The heart of Richard the Lion Heart was once placed under its high altar. After his execution on Tower Hill, the body of Archbishop Laud rested here some years, and was “accompanied to earth with great multitudes of people, whom love or curiosity or remorse of conscience had drawn together, and decently interred ... according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, in which it may be noted as a remarkable thing, that being, whilst he lived, the greatest champion of the Common Prayer Book ... he had the honour, being dead, to be buried in the form therein provided, after it had been long disused and almost reprobated in most of the churches of London.”
Two hundred and fifty years later an Archbishop Laud Commemoration was celebrated here, and where the scaffold stood on Tower Hill services were held.
The chief interest of the church for American visitors may be the baptismal register, in which is recorded the baptism, during Milton’s early manhood, of Sir William Penn’s infant son, the apostle of peace, who was destined to found a great state in the New World. The Great Fire of 1666 touched the church so closely that Pepys tells us the “dyall and part of the porch was burnt.” Its interior is beautifully preserved. Its old brasses attract so many who desire to make rubbings that a snug sum for church purposes has been raised by the small fees charged. The church possesses the oldest indenture for the construction of an organ known in England. Its date is 1519.
On the south side of Tower Street, at number 48, was formerly a public house painted with the head of the Czar of Muscovy. Here Peter the Great, when he was studying the dockyards and maritime establishments of England under William III., used to resort with his attendants and smoke his pipe and drink beer and brandy. Near by is Muscovy Court, a present reminder of the ancient name.