London

by Walter Besant

This noble and wealthy merchant rebuilt the Church of St. Michael, called Paternoster in the Royal, and attached to it a College of St. Spirit and St. Mary for a master, from fellows, clerks, conducts, and choristers, together with an almshouse for thirteen poor men. They were all bound to pray for the soul of Sir Richard Whittington and his wife, Dame Alice; also for those of Sir William Whittington and Dame Joan, his wife, the parents of the founder. The college was swept away at the Dissolution; the almshouse remained and was rebuilt after the Fire. They are now removed to Highgate, but a conventual feeling still lingers about the buildings at the back of the church.

Then follows St. Michael's College, Crooked Lane.

Sir William Walworth, the valiant Mayor who killed Wat Tyler, founded a college of one master and nine chaplains to say mass in St. Michael's Church, the choir and the aisles of which he rebuilt.

And there was also Jesus Commons.

This Foundation seems to have resembled that of All-Souls, Oxford, in that its fellows had no duties to perform except the services of their chapel. It is described as a fair house in Dowgate (no doubt built round a small quadrangle), well furnished with everything and containing a good library, all for the use of those who lived there—a peaceful, quiet place, without any history. One thinks of the day when it had to be dissolved, and the poor old priests, who had lived so long in the house, were driven forth into the streets. Not even submission to the king's supremacy could save the tenants of Jesus Commons. The house itself was pulled down and tenements built in its place.

A somewhat similar House was a small and very interesting Foundation called the Papey. It was a college for poor and aged priests. In any old map the church called St. Augustine Papey may be seen at the north end of St. Mary Axe nestled under the wall, with a piece of ground adjoining, which may have been a garden and may have been a burial-ground. We find the poor old priests taking part in funerals, and, I daresay, in any other function by which their slender provision might be augmented.

Next to the Colleges come the Hospitals. St. Bartholomew's, most ancient and richest, belongs to Norman London.

One who walks along the street called London Wall will chance upon a church-yard, on the north side of which still stands a fragment of the old wall. This church-yard, narrow and small, is surrounded on three sides by warehouses; on the fourth side it looks upon the street. On the other side of the street is a large block of warehouses, the monument of a most disgraceful and shameful act of vandalism. On this spot stood Elsing Spital. It was founded in the year 1329 as a priory and hospital for the maintenance of a hundred blind men by one William Elsing, its first Prior. On the dissolution of the religious houses, Elsing's Spital surrendered with the rest, and was dissolved. What became of the blind men is not known. Then they took the fine Priory Church, and having pulled down the north aisle—on the site of which houses were built—they converted the rest of the church into the parish church of St. Alphege, which had previously stood in Cripplegate. The site of the old church was turned into a carpenter's yard. The porch of St. Alphege remains of the ancient buildings. Of Sion College, which in course of time succeeded Elsing's Spital, we will speak in another place.