London

by Walter Besant

On the north side of the Priory and adjacent to it lay the twin Foundation of Briset, the Priory of Black Nuns. Its church, at the Dissolution, became the Parish Church of St. James Clerkenwell. Jordan Briset and his wife were buried in this church.

The Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem was situated at first outside Bishopsgate, close to St. Botolph's Church. This ancient Foundation, of which our Bethlehem Hospital is the grandchild, was endowed by one Simon Fitz Mary, Sheriff in the year 1247. It was designed for a convent, the monks being obliged to receive and entertain the Bishop of Bethlehem or his nuncio whenever either should be in London. It is said to have become a hospital within a few years of its foundation. In the year 1347 the brethren were all engaged in collecting alms. This was one of the lesser Houses, though it survived the rest and became the great and splendid Foundation which still exists. A little farther north, and on the opposite side of Bishopsgate Street, stood the great House of St. Mary Spital—Domus Dei et Beatæ Virginis—founded in the year 1197 by Walter Brune and Rosia his wife. It was originally a Priory of Canons Regular. At some time in its history, I know not when, it was converted into a hospital, like its neighbor of Bethlehem. It would be interesting to learn when this change became even possible. It must have been long after its foundation, when the old prayer-machine theory had lost something of its earliest authority, and, in the face of the mass of human suffering, men began to ask whether the machinery engaged in iterating litanies might not be made more useful in the alleviation of suffering. For whatever cause, the House of God and the Blessed Virgin became St. Mary Spital, and at the time of the Dissolution there were no fewer than one hundred and eighty beds in the House. Near St. Mary Spital was Holywell Nunnery. On the south side of Aldgate, outside the wall, stood the famous Abbey of St. Clare, called the Minories, founded by Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, in the year 1293, for the reception of certain nuns brought over by his wife, Blanche, Queen of Navarre, who were professed to serve God, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Francis.

There is a church, one of the meanest and smallest of all the London churches, standing in the ugliest and dreariest part of the City, called the Church of the Holy Trinity, Minories, which is often visited by Americans because the arms of Washington are to be seen here; and by antiquaries, because the head of the Duke of Suffolk, executed on Tower Hill, is preserved here. The north wall of this church is part of the wall of the Clare Sisters' Church, and is all that remains in that squalid place of the noble Foundation.

Sir Walter Manny's Carthusian House was not the only Foundation arising out of the great Plague of 1348. On the north-east of the Tower arose at the same time a very stately House, dedicated to the Honor of God and the Lady of Grace. It began exactly in the same way as the Carthusians', by the purchase of a piece of ground in which to bury those who died of the plague. John Corey, Clerk, first bought the ground, calling it the Church-yard of the Holy Trinity. One Robert Elsing gave five pounds, and other citizens contributing, the place was enclosed and a chapel built on it. Then Edward III., remembering a certain vow made during a certain tempest at sea, in which he was only saved by the miraculous interposition of the Virgin Mary herself, built here a monastery which he called the House and King's Free Chapel of the Blessed Virgin of Grace—"in memoriam Gratiarum." The House obtained the Manor of Gravesend and other rich benefactions. There is little history that I have discovered belonging to it. The people commonly called it either New Abbey or Eastminster, and when it was surrendered its yearly value was £546, equivalent to about £10,000 a year as prices now obtain.

RUINS OF THE CONVENT OF NUNS MINORIES, 1810

On the south side of Thames, besides St. Mary Overies already noticed, there were two great Houses.

The first of these, St. Thomas's Hospital, was founded in the year 1213 by Richard, Prior of Bermondsey, for converts and poor children. He called it the Almery. Two years afterwards the Bishop of Winchester, Peter de Rupibus, now founded the place for Canons Regular. After the Dissolution it was purchased by the City of London for a hospital for the sick and poor.

The second, Bermondsey Abbey, though founded as early as 1081 by one Alwyn Childe, Citizen, and probably one of Fitz Stephen's thirteen conventual churches, and a most interesting House from many points of view, hardly comes within our limits. Portions of the Abbey were standing until the beginning of this century. All the then existing remains were figured by Wilkinson; I have not been able to find a fragment of it now remaining above-ground. Underground, vaults, arches, and crypts undoubtedly remain, and will be discovered from time to time as excavations are made for new buildings. These great Houses, all richly endowed with broad manors, devoured a good part of the whole country. Their schools, their learning, and their charities are matters of sentiment if not of history. For the time came when the school should become free of the monastery, and when the vast estates formed for the benefit of the monks should pass into the hands of the community. Charity to the poor is a thing beautiful in itself; better than to relieve the poor is to lessen the necessity of poverty.