Trinity Square, Tower Hill, is of an irregular shape, including an oval garden. It is named after Trinity House, which stands on the north side. In Ogilby’s map is a part of Great Tower Hill. Cooper’s Row was then called Woodruff Lane; George Street was then George Yard, where was the postern of the wall. North of George Street there is still a long piece of the wall standing within certain warehouses. Here are also other walls and fireplaces which are said to have belonged to a workhouse. I cannot, however, discover that there was any workhouse on this spot. This is apparently the same part of the wall that is figured in Wilkinson’s Londina Illustrata.
Trinity House.—Maitland’s account of the house and the corporation is as follows:
“In Water Lane is situated Trinity House which belongs to an ancient Corporation of Mariners, founded in King Henry VIII.’s time, for the Regulation of Seamen, and security and convenience of ships and mariners on our coasts. In the said King’s reign lived Sir Thos. Spert, Knight, Comptroller of the Navy to that King; who was the first founder and master of the said society of Trinity House; and died Anno 1541, and was buried in the chancel of Stepney church. To whose memory the said Corporation, Anno 1622, set up a monument there for him eighty years and one after the decease of the said Spert, their founder. And by an inscription antienter than that set up by the said corporation, lost long since in the church, but preserved by Norden; we learn, that this gentleman had three wives, Dame Margery, Dame Anne, and Dame Mary, all lying in the chancel there; and that his Coat of Arms was Two Launces in Saltier, between four Hearts, on a Chief, a ship with the sails furled. He was commander of the biggest ship then that the sea bore, namely, Henry Grace de Dieu, built by King Henry VIII. near the beginning of his reign.
“The house, where the corporation usually meets, belonged to them before the great Fire, but how long I know not. They took a long lease and rebuilt it. This house was burnt down about the year 1718 again, but is now by the said Brotherhood built up fairly a second time.
“This corporation one of the considerablest in the Kingdom, is governed by a master, four wardens, eight assistants, and the eldest brothers of the Company, as they are called, one and thirty in all. The rest of their Company are called Younger Brothers, without any fixed number: For any seafaring men that will, are admitted into the Society under that name: But they are not in the Government.
TRINITY HOUSE, TOWER HILL
“Their service and use is, that they appoint all pilots: They set and place the buoys and seamarks for the safe direction of ships in their sailing. For which they have certain duties payable by Merchant-men. They can licence poor seamen, antient and past going to sea, to exercise the calling of a waterman upon the Thames, and take in fares, tho’ they have not been bound to any one free of the Watermen’s Company. They do maintain in pensions at this time two thousand poor seamen, or their widows; every one of which have at least half-a-crown paid them every first Monday in the month, and some more, besides accidental distressed seamen.
“They have three fair Hospitals, built by themselves; two at Deptford, and one at Mile End, near London. That at Mile End is a very handsome structure with a fair chapel, and is peculiar for decayed Sea-Commanders, masters of vessels, or such as have been pilots, and their widows.
“And thus as they do a great deal of good, so they have large revenues to do it with: Which arise partly, from sums of money given and bequeathed unto them for charitable uses, partly from Houses and Lands also given them, and particularly and chiefly from ballast. For they only have, by Act of Parliament, the benefit of providing ballast for ships in the Thames; and all ships that take in ballast pay them 12d. a ton: For which it is brought to their ship’s side. They have also certain light-houses, as at Scilly and Dungeness in the West. To which Houses all ships pay one half-penny a tun.”