It was on the second of February, 1224, during the pontificate of Honorius III. and the reign of King Henry III., S. Francis of Assisi being still alive, that a small band of Franciscan friars landed at Dover. There were four priests and five lay-brothers. Five of this number stopped at Canterbury to found a house, and the remainder came on to London. The simplicity of their manners and mode of life made them popular at once, and they speedily acquired the means of building a house and church. Among other benefactors, John Ewin, or Iwin, a citizen of London, gave them an estate, as he says in the deed of conveyance, "for the health of my soul, in pure and perpetual alms," and became a lay-brother in the house, leaving behind him, when he died, a holy memory as a strict and devout observer of the rule. A large church adapted to their wants was completed in the year 1327, and dedicated to "the honor of God and our alone Saviour Jesus Christ." It was three hundred feet long, eighty-nine feet broad, and seventy-four feet high. Queen Margaret gave two thousand marks towards it, and the first stone was laid in her name. John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, and his niece, the Countess of Pembroke, gave the hangings, vestments, and sacred vessels. Isabella, the mother of Edward III., and Philippa, his queen, also gave money for its completion. The thirty-six windows were the gifts of various charitable persons. The western window, being destroyed in a gale, was restored by Edward III., "for the repose of the soul" of his mother, who had just been buried before the choir. In 1380, Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, erected new stalls in the choir, at a cost of three hundred and fifty marks. Many nobles were buried here—four queens, four duchesses, four countesses, one duke, two earls, eight barons, thirty-five knights—in all, six hundred and sixty-three persons of quality. Among them was Margaret, the second wife of Edward I., and granddaughter of S. Louis, King of France. She was buried before the high altar. In the choir lay Isabella, wife of Edward II.—
"She-wolf of France with unrelenting fangs,
Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate"—
beneath a monument of alabaster, with the heart of her murdered husband on her breast! Near her lay her daughter Joanna, wife of Edward Bruce of Scotland. Here too was buried Lady Venitia Digby, so celebrated for her beauty, the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, who erected over her a monument of black marble.
In the middle ages the great ones of the world, at the approach of death, the all-leveller, feeling the nothingness of earthly grandeur and riches, often sought to be buried among Christ's poor ones, and not unfrequently in their habit, not thinking "in Franciscan weeds to pass disguised," but as an act of faith in the evangelical counsels, and a recognition of the importance of being clothed with Christ's righteousness. It was a public confession that the vain garments they had worn in the world had been as poisonous to them as the tunic Hercules put on. Dante laid down to die in the cowl and mantle of a Franciscan. Cervantes was buried in the same habit. Louis of Orleans, who was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy, was buried among the Celestin monks in the habit of their order. Anne of Brittany, twice Queen of France, wore the scapular of the Carmelites, and wished it to be sent with her heart in a golden box to her beloved Bretons.
The Grey Friars' church was destroyed at the great fire, and the monastery greatly injured. There are still some portions of it remaining, however, which are at once recognized. Some of the books of the old monastic library are still preserved—a library founded by Sir Richard Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London, the hero of the nursery rhyme, to whom the Bowbells sounded so auspiciously. He laid the foundation of this library in 1421, and gave four hundred pounds towards furnishing it. The remainder of the books were given, or collected by one of the friars.
It seems that, after all, Edward VI. was not the founder of the modern institution of Christ's Hospital. He merely gave it its name, and added to the endowment. When the monastery was suppressed by his father, it was given to the municipality of London, and the city authorities conceived the idea of converting it into a refuge for poor children. It was chiefly endowed by the citizens themselves, though aided by grants from Henry VIII. and Edward VI.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
The Life of S. Alphonsus Liguori. By a Member of the Order of Mercy. New York: P. O'Shea. 1873.
The Life of the Same. By the Rt. Rev. J. Mullock, D.D., Bishop of Newfoundland. New York: P. J. Kenedy. 1873.