A great many benefactors have left money to the prison, amounting in all to about £60 a year. In addition, the Lord Mayor allowed the prisoners a basket of broken meat every day; and provisions of some kind were every day, to some small extent, bestowed upon them by the markets. Besides which there were two grates, one in Ludgate, and the other on the Blackfriars side, where all day long a man stood crying, “Pity the poor prisoners.” There were about fifty of the prisoners “on the Charity,” as it was called. But the warders and turnkeys, by their exactions, got most of the money.
Ludgate Hill was formerly Bowyer Lane. On the south, until a few years ago, were to be seen some fragments of London Wall, now vanished.
On the top of Ludgate Hill, and on the west side of St. Paul’s, Digby, Grant, Winter, and Bates were executed, January 30, 1606, for their participation in the Gunpowder Plot.
The houses on the south side of the hill were set back when the street was widened in modern times. On the north side there are several old ones.
ST. MARTIN, LUDGATE
This church was rebuilt in 1437 for Sir John Michael, then mayor, but was destroyed by the Great Fire, and rebuilt from the designs of Wren in 1684. The benefice was united with the united benefices of St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, and St. Gregory by St Paul’s, by Order in Council, 1890. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1322.
The patronage of the church, long before 1322, was in the hands of: The Abbot and Convent of Westminster; Henry VIII., who seized it and granted it to the Bishop of Westminster, January 20, 1540-41; the Bishop of London, by grant of Edward VI., 1550, confirmed by Queen Mary, March 3, 1553-54, in whose successors it continued.
Houseling people in 1548 were 476.
The interior of the church is noticeable as being broader and higher than it is long, its width being 66 feet, height 59 feet, and length 51 feet. The appearance is rendered cruciform by four composite columns, which, with pilasters on the walls, support entablatures at the angles of the church. The ceiling is lowered in the quadrangular corners thus formed. The tower rises at the centre of the south front, and contains three stories; this is concluded by a cornice, above which there is a narrow stone stage surmounted by an octagonal cupola, with a lantern and balcony. The steeple is completed by a tapering spire, with ball, finial, and vane; its height is 158 feet. It is said to have been especially built by Wren to form a foreground to the towering dome of St. Paul’s.
Chantries were founded here by: William Sevenoke, whose endowment fetched £3 : 6 : 8 in 1548; Michael de London and John le Hatte, augmented by Roger Payn, William Pows, Simon Newell, and Thomas Froddashame, to which John de Derby was admitted as chaplain, January 11, 1392-93, on being vacated by Roger Shirrene; William Alsone, who also founded chantries in Northants and Derbys.