At the west end there is a bas-relief to Samuel Thorpe (died 1791): this is only interesting as being the work of the elder Bacon.
Sir John Gayer bequeathed £200 for charitable purposes, amongst them a fee for a sermon to be preached on October 16 annually, and though the charity is now diverted, yet the “Lion sermon,” in commemoration of the donor’s delivery from a lion in Arabia, is still kept up.
There was a charity school at the end of Cree Church Lane, in which forty boys were clothed and taught, by subscriptions from the inhabitants of the ward.
Roger Maynwaring (1590-1653), Bishop of St. David’s, was a perpetual curate here; also Nicholas Brady (1659-1726), joint author of Tate and Brady’s version of the Psalter.
The north of Leadenhall Street between St. Katherine Cree and Aldgate, from the year 1130 and the suppression of the Religious Houses, was covered with the buildings of the Priory of the Holy Trinity already described (see Mediæval London, vol. ii. p. 241).
The buildings of the Priory were given by the King to Sir Thomas Audley in 1531 after the surrender.
The Earl of Suffolk, son of the Duke who was beheaded in 1572, sold the house and precinct to the City of London, and built Audley End in Essex. The City seems to have pulled down the mansion and laid out the grounds in streets and courts. The disposition of these seems to preserve, to a certain extent, that of the old Priory.
When the people began to settle in the precinct, they found themselves, although so close to St. Katherine Cree, without a parish church. They therefore petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury, who obtained permission of the King to build a new church here, and to erect a new parish. The church was finished and dedicated to St. James in 1622. The memory of the consecration is described at length by Strype. This quarter was assigned to the Jews by Oliver Cromwell in 1650. Here is the Great Synagogue of the German Jews.
St. James’s was one of the most notorious of the many places for irregular marriages, those without licence, because as standing in the ancient precinct of the Priory it was without the jurisdiction of the bishop.
St. James’s, Duke’s Place, escaped the Great Fire of 1666.