The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

GREENWICH AND OTHER SOUTH-EASTERN SUBURBS
OF LONDON

Greenwich

Occupying as it does a unique position on the Thames, which is here often crowded with British and foreign shipping, owning in the group of buildings collectively known as the Hospital one of the masterpieces of eighteenth-century domestic architecture, and in its park one of the most beautiful open spaces near the capital, whilst its Observatory gives to it the distinction of a leader in astronomical research, Greenwich has long ranked as one of the most important and popular suburbs of London. It is mentioned as Grénawic in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and its history, which is intimately bound up with that of England, can be traced back to the time of Alfred the Great, when it was a mere scattered hamlet, the home of a few poor fishermen. In the days of the protracted struggle with the invading Northmen, their fleet often lay at anchor for months together near Greenwich, within easy reach of their camp on the high ground at the edge of Blackheath, now known as East and West Coombe, that until quite recently retained traces of their defensive earthworks. It was near Greenwich that the noble St. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been taken prisoner at the siege of that town in 1001, was massacred by the Danes on April 1, 1002, in revenge for his persistent refusal to buy his life at the expense of his friends, and it is supposed to have been on the actual scene of his martyrdom that the parish church was built many centuries afterwards.

The manor of Greenwich, with that of Lewisham, to which it originally belonged, was given by Ethelruda, a niece of King Alfred, to the monks of the Abbey of St. Peter at Ghent, who held it till it was seized by the Crown after the disgrace of Bishop Odo of Bayeux. When in 1414 the alien religious houses were suppressed, it was granted by Henry V. to the newly founded Abbey of Sheen, but later it again reverted to the Crown. There seems to have been a royal residence and chapel at Greenwich as early as the thirteenth century, for it is related that on a certain occasion King Edward I. made an offering of seven shillings and his son, the future Edward II., one of three shillings and sixpence, at each of the holy crosses in the chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin at Greenwich, though exactly where that chapel was situated there is no evidence to show. Later, Henry IV. made his will, dated 1408, at his manor-house of Greenwich, and his son Henry V. bestowed the estate on Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, for his life. On his death in 1417 it was given to Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, uncle of the king, and some few years afterwards two hundred acres of land were added to the property, whilst permission was granted to its owner to build on to the manor-house, a concession confirmed and increased in 1437. The duke, aided by his wife Eleanor, quickly converted the ancient residence into a palace, to which he gave the name of the Pleasaunce, or Placentia, that occupied the site of the western wing of the present hospital—the crypt of its chapel being still preserved beneath the portion now used as a museum—and he began to build the tower that now forms part of the famous Observatory. In 1447, however, Duke Humphrey's work was suddenly cut short by his death, and the greatly improved property reverted to the Crown, to which it has ever since belonged. The park was added to and stocked with deer by Edward IV., and Henry VII. greatly improved the palace, building a brick front on the riverside. He also completed the tower begun by Duke Humphrey, and built a convent close to the palace for the Grey Friars, to whom Edward IV. had already, in 1480, given a chantry and a little chapel dedicated to the Holy Cross, that probably formed the nucleus of the new monastery. Henry VIII. was born at Placentia, and to the end of his life he had a very great affection for it, sparing no expense to beautify it. In its chapel he was married to his first wife, Katharine of Aragon; in its hall he presided over many stately banquets, and took part in its park in many a brilliant tournament. He and his court generally spent Christmas at Greenwich, and it was there, in 1511, that the first masked ball took place in England. The Princess Mary was born at Greenwich in 1516, and a year later her aunt, Mary, Queen-Dowager of France, was married with much pomp and ceremony, in the chapel of Placentia, to the Duke of Suffolk. In 1517 no less than three queens—Katharine of Aragon, Margaret of Scotland, and Mary, Queen-Dowager of the same country—were together at Greenwich, and in 1527 a grand entertainment was given there to the French ambassadors, who had come to ask the hand of the Princess Mary, then eleven years old, for the Duke of Orleans, the second son of the King of France, although she was already affianced to the Emperor Charles V. It was at Placentia, too, that the fickle Henry VIII. spent part of his honeymoon with Anne Boleyn, and thence that the newly wedded pair made their triumphal progress up the river for the coronation of the bride at Westminster on May 15, 1533, escorted by a long procession of gaily decked barges, bearing the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, the officers of the royal household, the bishops, and great nobles with their retinues, making up such a goodly pageant as had never before been seen on the Thames. In the autumn of the same year the Princess Elizabeth was born at Greenwich, and baptized in the chapel of the Grey Friars convent. For the next two years the happiness of her father and mother in each other seemed to be complete; they were often together at Placentia, dividing most of their time between it and Hampton Court Palace, but after the birth at the latter of Anne Boleyn's still-born son, the clouds that had already begun to gather before that event became more threatening than ever. At a tournament held in the palace park at Greenwich on May Day 1536, Henry found the excuse he had been long looking for for the condemnation of his wife. The unfortunate queen accidentally dropped a handkerchief, and the king chose to assume that it was meant as a signal for one of the competing knights. Without vouchsafing a word of explanation he started from his seat, called to a few attendants to follow him, and hastened off to London, ordering as he went the execution of Anne's brother. The next morning the same measure was meted out to the queen herself; she was hurried off to the Tower, her request that she might be allowed to take leave of her child being refused. On the 19th of the same month she was executed, her husband, to whom she had addressed a most pathetic appeal, having steadily declined to see her again. The death a year later of her successor, soon after the birth of the future King Edward VI., must have appeared a judgment on the double crime of murder and bigamy, for the king was married to Jane Seymour the day before the death of Anne, and it is just possible that even Henry's hardened conscience may have reproached him, for he avoided Greenwich, with its melancholy associations, for some little time after the loss of his third queen. In January 1540, however, it was the scene of the magnificent reception of the hated Anne of Cleves, whose reluctant suitor had decided to divorce her before the ceremony at which he promised to cherish her till death should part him from her. On the occasion of this mock marriage, that was celebrated in the private chapel of Placentia, the whole of the park and of the adjoining Blackheath, in spite of the inclement season of the year, was dotted with tents and pavilions of cloth of gold for the accommodation of the queen and her ladies. To quote from Hall's Chronicle, the 'esquires gentlemen pensioners and serving men (were so) well horsed and apparelled that whoever well viewed them might say that they for tall and comely personages and clean of limb and body' were able to give the greatest prince in Christendom a mortal breakfast if he were the king's enemy.' In the opinion of this partial chronicler, however, Henry himself, when he rode forth from the palace attended by all his great nobles and the foreign ambassadors, far excelled them all, so rich was his apparel, so gorgeous the trappings of his steed, 'so goodly his personage and his royal gesture.'

Neither the doomed Catherine Howard nor the more fortunate Catherine Parr, who, but for the fact that she survived her husband, would probably have shared the fate of her predecessor, were ever at Greenwich, but the palace there was the home for a short time of Edward VI., who spent the Christmas of 1552 there, and died in it in 1553. Queen Mary, too, occasionally resided at Placentia, leading an extremely quiet life, that was one day disturbed by an alarming incident, for a salute from a passing vessel was fired by mistake from a loaded gun, and a ball pierced the wall of the room in which she sat with her ladies, fortunately without injuring anyone.

It was Queen Elizabeth who restored to her birthplace something of the éclat it had enjoyed during her father's lifetime. She spent the greater part of several summers there, celebrating on April 23 the fête of St. George, the patron-saint of England, with great pomp, receiving foreign ambassadors in state, and giving audience to her own faithful subjects when it suited her humour and convenience. In the first year of her reign she reviewed in her park at Greenwich a large company of London volunteers, who had banded themselves together to aid her against the rebel Duke of Norfolk, and it was in the palace that she held her first chapter of the Order of the Garter, after which she went to supper with her devoted adherent, the Earl of Pembroke, at his seat of Baynard's Castle, who, the repast over, attended her whilst she indulged in her favourite pastime of boating on the Thames, the royal barge attended by hundreds of smaller craft passing to and fro again and again, to the delight of the crowds assembled on the banks to watch the brilliant scene.

Many significant stories are told of the doings of the maiden queen at Greenwich; how, for instance, she caused a dishonest purveyor of poultry to be hanged on the complaint of a farmer who boldly intercepted her on one of her progresses, crying in a loud voice, in spite of all the efforts of the attendants to silence him, 'Which is the Queen? Which is the Queen?' Elizabeth herself replied to him, listened to all he had to say, and granted his request without more ado, although he dared to assume that she had devoured the hens and ducks seized by her servant, declaring that she could eat more than his own daughter, who was blessed with a very good appetite.