Some of the chantries belonging to this parish were: £2 : 10s., the gift of John Wybert; £2, the gift of Katherine Parry; £1 : 10s., the gift of Mr. Mosyer.
Candlewick and Bridge Wards maintained sixty boys and forty girls.
John Seton (d. 1568), Prebendary of York, author of Dialectica; William Cotton (d. 1621), Bishop of Exeter; Samuel Hasnet, Archbishop of York 1629, are among the notable rectors.
On the east side, higher up, stood the Church and burial-ground of St. Leonard’s Milk Church, also destroyed by the Fire and not rebuilt (see p. [266]). The most important building in Fish Street is, of course, the Monument.
For The Monument we quote the account taken by Maitland from the life of Sir Christopher Wren:
“In the year 1671, the Surveyor began the building of the great fluted column of Portland Stone, and of the Dorick Order (commonly called the Monument of London, in memory of the burning and rebuilding of the City), and finished it in 1677. The Artificers were obliged to wait sometimes for Stones of proper scantlings; which occasioned the work to be longer in execution than otherwise it would have been. The altitude from the pavement is two hundred and two feet, the diameter of the shaft or body of the column is fifteen feet, the ground bounded by the Plinth or lowest part of the pedestal is twenty-eight feet square, and the pedestal in height is forty feet. Within is a large staircase of black marble, containing three hundred and forty-five steps, ten inches and an half broad, and six inches rising. Over the Capital is an Iron Balcony, encompassing a Cippus or Meta, thirty-two feet high, supporting a blazing urn of brass gilt. Prior to this, the Surveyor (as it appears by an original drawing) had made a design of a pillar of somewhat less proportion, viz.: fourteen feet in diameter, and after a peculiar device: For, as the Romans expressed by Relievo, on the pedestals, and round the shafts of their Columns, the history of such actions and incidents as were intended to be thereby commemorated; so this Monument of the conflagration and resurrection of the City of London was represented by a pillar in flames; the flames, blazing from the loopholes of the shaft (which were to give light to the stairs within), were figured in brasswork gilt, and on the top was a Phoenix rising from her ashes, of brass gilt likewise.” The total expense was about £14,500.
THE MONUMENT IN 1752
From a drawing by Signor Canalsti.
The height (202 feet) is supposed to be equal to its distance eastward from the house in Pudding Lane in which the Fire broke out. Inside are 345 steps, by which any one after paying 3d. may ascend to the caged-in platform near the top. The pedestal has Latin inscriptions on the north, south, and east panels. In 1681 a further inscription, running round the base of the pedestal, was added as follows:
This pillar was set up in perpetual remembrance of that most dreadful burning of this Protestant City begun and carried on by ye treachery and malice of ye Popish factio, in ye beginning of Septem in ye year of our Lord 1666 in order to ye carrying on their horrid plott for extirpating the Protestant religion and old English liberty, and the introducing Popery and slavery.