He set in comely sort.
Here it was that Sir Richard Steele heard the Common Prayer read so distinctly, emphatically and fervently that inattention was impossible.[[7]] The reader who drew forth his praise was the then rector, Philip Stubbs, afterwards Archdeacon of St. Albans. There is kept in the church a shrouded corpse in a remarkable state of preservation; formerly it was one of the show things for the benefit of the churchkeeper, but though still above ground it is not now publicly exposed. The parish registers date back to 1536, two years before Thomas Cromwell made a general order for the keeping of such records. They are amongst the oldest in the City. Before the Great Fire there stood south of the church, nearly opposite to Vintners’ Hall, a parsonage. In 1670 it was rebuilt and leased to one Richard Corbet for forty-one years.
Opposite, at the corner of Garlick Hill, was Ormond Place, residence of the Earls of Ormond. Farther east, on the same side, stood Ringed Hall. At the west end of the Church of St. Thomas was a lane called by Stow Wringwren Lane, a most interesting survival. Of old not only were wines imported into Vintry ward, but grapes were grown here. The Anglo-Saxon name for wine-press was “winwringa”; that word reversed into “wringa-win” is undoubtedly contained in the corrupted form of “Wringwren.” Perhaps a wine-press stood in the lane; the proximity of “Ringed” Hall seems to strengthen the probability.
The lane called Worcester Place serves to mark the site of Worcester House, the old residence of the Earls of Worcester. One of them, John Tiptoft, Lord High Treasurer of England, dwelt here in the reign of Edward IV. This earl was a patron of Caxton, and a great lover of books; to Oxford University he gave volumes to the value of 500 marks. He was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1470, when, as Fuller puts it, “the axe then did in one blow cut off more learning than was in the heads of all the surviving nobility.” Nevertheless he was known as “The Butcher of England.” He had impaled forty Lancastrians at Southampton, and slain the infant children of Desmond, the Irish chief. One of the countesses of Worcester was buried in the old church of St. James, Garlickhithe, close by. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign the premises were let out in tenements. In 1603 they were in possession of one Matthew Paris, girdler, who left them, by will bearing that year’s date, to his mother Katherine, then living in Aldermanbury.[[8]] The Fruiterers Company were then occupying one or more of the tenements as their Hall, although they were not incorporated until 1606. Their choice of this locality indicates that much of the fruit trade was centred here. Worcester House perished in the Great Fire. The Fruiterers were too poor to establish a new hall, but met in that of the Parish Clerks.
Maiden Lane appears as “Kyrunelane” in 1259. Stow writes it Kerion Lane, “of one Kerion sometime dwelling there,” but this etymology is guesswork, as shown by the earlier forms. Before the Fire the lane contained “divers fair houses for merchants,” says Stow, and the Glaziers’ Hall.
Queen Street was cut shortly after the Great Fire of 1666 in common with King Street, Cheapside, to connect the Guildhall with the Thames; thus the Lord Mayor now had a straight course for his procession when he “took water” at the Three Cranes Stairs on his way to be sworn at Westminster Hall. The new thoroughfare included the present Queen Street Place, and was named New Queen Street in honour of the wife of Charles II. The prefix “New” subsequently vanished. Close to Queen Street in Upper Thames Street is the Vintners’ Hall (see p. [229]). The rectory house of the parish stands on a portion of St. Thomas the Apostle Churchyard; the remainder of the churchyard on this side of the street consists of a small flagged square enclosed by a railing. The portion of the churchyard on the west side of the road, opposite, contains two houses; they are the only houses remaining of the post-Fire rebuilding. In front, the churchyard serves them for a garden; its two fine plane-trees set off their quaint red brick walls and pillared and pedimented doorways. The southern house has a delightful room on the first floor, now used as the board room of the Tredegar Iron Company. The mantel is exquisite, carved with all the beauty of the Grinling Gibbons school; the walls are wainscotted; the doors all solid mahogany, over each a carved panel; the medallion cornice, of minutely beautiful detail, once carried a panelled ceiling now removed. An ante-room has a second delicately carved mantel, and a panelled ceiling.
St. Martin Vintry stood at the south corner of Royal or Queen Street, Upper Thames Street. Authentic history dates back to the Conqueror’s reign, when Ralph Peverell gave the Church of St. Martin, London, to the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Gloucester. In a document at St. Paul’s (Hist. MSS. Comm. Rep. IX.) of the year 1257 “St. Martin de Beremanes churche” is met with. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries “St. Martin de Barmannes-cherche” and St. Martin Vintry are both used. The church was rebuilt in the beginning of the fifteenth century, several bequests having been left for the purpose. It was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, its parish being annexed to that of the church, St. Michael Royal. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1250.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Bishop of Winchester; Ralph Peverell; Abbot and Convent of St. Peter’s, Gloucester, from 1388; Henry VIII.; Bishop of Worcester by grant of Edward VI., in whose successors it continued up to 1666, when the parish was annexed to St. Michael Royal.
Houseling people in 1548 were 460.
A chantry was founded here by John Gisors or Jesores, for himself and Isabel his wife, to which Geoffrey Stowe was admitted chaplain, September 5, 1368.