London

by Walter Besant

All these Houses were within the walls. Without were others, as rich and as splendid. South of Fleet Street, between Bridewell Palace and the Temple, was the House of the Carmelites, called the White Friars. These also were an Order of Mendicants. The Fratres Beatæ Mariæ de Monte Carmelo sprang from the hermits who settled in numbers on the slopes of Mount Carmel. They were formed into an order by Almeric, Bishop of Antioch, and were first introduced into Europe about the year 1216, by Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem. They got their house in London from Edward I.; but their chief benefactor was Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire. They, too, had their Sanctuary, afterwards called Alsatia. This privilege was not abolished till the year 1697.

Beyond the Carmelites were the Templars, but the suppression of the Order removed them from the scene in the year 1310.

The Priories of St. Bartholomew and of St. John belong to Norman London. On the north of Bartholomew's, however, stood the house of the Carthusians. The Carthusian Order was a branch of the Benedictine Rule, to which the Cluniacs and Cistercians also belonged.

The house of the Salutation of the Mother of God—which was its full title—was founded in the year 1371 by Sir Walter Manny. Those who know their Froissart know that gallant Knight well and can testify to his achievements; how he entreated King Edward for the citizens of Calais; how he rescued the Countess of Montfort besieged in the castle of Hennebont, and, for his reward, was kissed—he and his companions—not once, but two or three times, by that brave lady; these and many other things can be told of this noble Knight. Not the least of his feats was the foundation of this House of Religion.

When we speak of the Plague of London we generally mean that of 1664-65. But this was only the last, and perhaps not the worst, of the many plagues which had visited the City. Thirteen great pestilences fell upon the City between the years 1094 and 1625—in the last year 35,000 died. That is to say, one plague happened about every forty years, so that there never was a time when a recent plague was not in the minds of men. Always they remembered the last visitation, the suddenness and swiftness of destruction, the desolation of houses, the striking down of young and old, the loss of the tender children, the sweet maidens, the gallant youth. Life is brief and uncertain at the best; but when the plague is added to the diseases which men expect, its uncertainty is forced upon the minds of the people of every condition with a persistence and a conviction unknown in quiet times when each man hopes to live out his three score years and ten.

In the year 1347 there happened a dreadful plague. It began in Dorsetshire and spread over the whole of the south country, reaching London last. After a while the church-yards were not large enough to hold the dead, and they were forced to enclose ground outside the walls. The Bishop of London, therefore, bought a piece of ground north of Bartholomew's, called No Man's Ground, which he enclosed and consecrated, building thereon a "fair chapel." This place was called the Pardon Church-yard. It stood, as those who know London will be interested to know, beyond the north wall of the present Charter House.

Two years later, the plague still continuing, Sir Walter Manny bought a plot of thirteen acres close to this church-yard, and built a chapel upon it—it stood somewhere in the middle of the present Charterhouse Square—and gave it for an additional church-yard. More than fifty thousand persons were buried here in one year, according to Stow; but the number is impossible, unless the whole of London died in that year. There used to be a stone cross standing in the church-yard with the following inscription:

Anno Domini 1349, regnante magna pestilentia, consecratum fuit hoc coemiterium in quo et infra septa presentis monasterii sepulta fuerunt mortuorum corpora plus quam quinquaginta millia praeter alia multa abhinc usque ad presens: quorum animabus propitietur Deus. Amen.

The old Pardon Church-yard afterwards became the burial-place of suicides and executed criminals. To this sad place the bodies of such were carried in a cart belonging to St. John's Hospital; the vehicle was hung over with black, but with a St. John's Cross in front, and within it hung a bell which rang with the jolting and the shaking of the cart—a mournful sight to see and a doleful sound to hear.