Let us consider the monuments of the City. There remains of Saxon London nothing. Of Norman London, the great White Tower, the crypt of Bow, the crypt of St. John's Priory (outside the City), part of the church of Bartholomew the Great, part of St. Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate; there is nothing more.[2]
The cathedral of St. Paul's when Fitz Stephen wrote was slowly rising from its ashes. It had been already twice destroyed by fire. First, the church founded by Mellitus and beautified by Bishop Cedd and King Sebbi was burned to the ground in the year 961. We know nothing at all of this building or of its successor, which was destroyed in the year 1086. Bishop Maurice began to rebuild the church in the following year, but it was two hundred years before it was completed. This cathedral therefore belongs to a later period. That which was destroyed in 1084 must have resembled in its round arches and thick pillars the cathedral of Durham.
The church and the various buildings which belonged to it in the reign of Henry I. were surrounded by a wall. This wall included the whole area now known as St. Paul's Church-yard, and as far as Paternoster Row on the north side. There were six gates to the wall; the sites of two are preserved in the names of St. Paul's Alley and Paul's Chain. The Bishop's Palace was on the north-west corner; the chapter-house was on the south side of the church; on the north was a charnel-house and a chapel over it; close beside this was a small enclosure called Pardon Church-yard, where a chapel was founded by Gilbert à Becket, the saint's father. This enclosure was afterwards converted into a beautiful cloister, painted with a Dance of Death, called the Dance of St. Paul's. Close beside Pardon Church-yard was the chapel of Jesus, serving for the parish church of St. Faith until the chapel was destroyed, when the parish obtained the crypt for its church. St. Faith's is now coupled with St. Augustine's.
CRYPT: REMAINS OF THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. MARTIN-LE-GRAND, N.E.
Of the thirteen large conventual churches mentioned by Fitz Stephen, we may draw up a tolerably complete list: St. Martin-le-Grand, St. Katherine's by the Tower, St. Mary Overies, Holy Trinity Priory, St. Bartholomew's Priory, St. Giles's Hospital, St. Mary of Bethlehem, the priory of St. John of Jerusalem, the nunnery afterwards turned into Elsing's Spital, the nunnery of St. John Baptist, Hollywell, the nunnery of Clerkenwell, the new Temple in Fleet Street, and the old Temple in Holborn, perhaps make up the thirteen. I cannot believe that Fitz Stephen could have included either Barking Abbey or Merton Abbey in his list.
The most ancient monastic foundation, next to that of St. Paul's, was St. Martin's House or College. Why St. Martin was so popular in this country, which had so many saints of her own, is not easily intelligible. Perhaps the story of the partition of the cloak at the gate of Amiens, while the saint was still a soldier, struck the imagination of the people. Certainly the saint's austerities at Ligujé would not attract the world. In London alone there were the church of St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, said to have been founded in very early Saxon times, that of St. Martin's Outwich, of St. Martin Orgar, St. Martin Pomary, and St. Martin Vintry—five parish churches to attest his sanctity and his popularity.
St. Martin-le-Grand, sanctuary and collegiate church, was a Liberty to itself. Here criminals found safety and could not be arrested, a privilege which lasted long after the dissolution of the religious houses. Among the deans of St. Martin's was William of Wykeham.
One church only of the whole thirteen still stands. Part of the present church of St. Bartholomew the Great is that actually built by Rahere, the first founder, in the beginning of the twelfth century.