Pictorial Agency.
ALTAR OF ST. MARY ABCHURCH
The patronage of the church was in the hands of the Prior and Convent of St. Mary Overy, Southwark, who exchanged it to the Master and Wardens of Corpus Christi College near St. Lawrence Pountney, 1448; Henry VIII., who seized it in 1540, and so continued in the Crown till Elizabeth, in 1568, granted it to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, with whom it continued. Elizabeth’s grant was procured by Archbishop Parker, who gave her the rectory of Penshurst in Kent, in order that he might make over the patronage of a London living to his old college.
Houseling people in 1548 were 368.
The church is almost square, measuring 63 feet in length and 60 feet in breadth, and is surmounted by a cupola 51 feet in height supported by pendentives attached to the walls; the latter is decorated with painting by Sir James Thornhill. The altar-piece is adorned with carving, which is considered to be some of Gibbon’s finest work. The steeple consists of a tower of four stories, finished by a cornice, and surmounted by a cupola, lantern, and lead-covered spire, with ball and cross; the total height is about 140 feet. The building is of red brick with Portland stone dressings.
Chantries were founded here: By and for Simon de Wynchecombe, citizen and armourer, in the chapel of Holy Trinity, to which Robert de Bruysor Chesterson was admitted, November 18, 1401—a licence was granted by the King to found this, July 26, 1359; by John Lyttelton; by Simon Wryght.
The church formerly contained monuments to Sir James Hawes and Sir John Branch, mayors in 1574 and 1580; and to Master Roger Mountague, “illustrious Precedent of Bounty and pious Industry.” Against the eastern wall, there is a large monument to Sir Patience Ward, mayor in 1680, and senior member for the City of London in the Convention Parliament of 1688-89.
The parish had no legacies or charitable gifts of any considerable amount. Mrs. Hyde gave £3 : 18s. for bread. The Merchant Taylors Company (the gift of several benefactors) gave £16 : 19 : 6 for coal.
Sherborne Lane.—Stow asserts that originally Langbourn Water, “breaking out of the ground in Fenchurch Street, ran down the same street, Lombard Street, to the west end of St. Mary Woolnoth’s church, where, turning south and breaking into small shares, rills, or streams, it left the name of Share-borne Lane,” or as he had also read it, South-borne Lane, “because it ran south to the river Thames.” Wheatley thinks that Scrieburne, from scir, a share (sciran, to divide), is the more likely etymology. This “long bourne of sweet water,” Stow further relates, “is long since stopped up at the head, and the rest of the course filled up and paved over, so that no sign thereof remaineth more than the names.” The existence of the stream indeed is more than problematical. The lane is narrow, and now occupied wholly by business premises more or less modern. The back of the City Carlton Club shows on the west side, and near the north end is the narrow way into St. Swithin’s Lane at the south end of the street (possibly Plough Alley); and the back way into the old General Post Office “by the sign of the Cock” (east side, north end), both shown in Strype’s 1754 map, have vanished. The former is built up; the latter is occupied by King William Street, which was cut clean through St. Mary Woolnoth’s churchyard and the old General Post Office (formerly the residence of Sir Robert Vyner, Lord Mayor, 1675). Before the Fire the General Postmaster lived “at his house in Sherburne Lane neere Abchurch,” and hither “The Carriers’ Cosmographie, by John Taylor, the Water Poet,” written in 1637, bids repair all who desired to send letters abroad or to various parts of the kingdom.
The name occurs as early as A.D. 1300, and is very frequently referred to in the Calendar of Wills, but under quite another form, viz. as “Shiteburn Lane.” Stow’s derivation of “Sharebone” or “Southbone” Lane will not, therefore, hold.