This once rich and flourishing House was founded in the year 1108 by Maud, wife of Henry the First, owing, it is said, to the persuasion, if that pious Queen wanted any persuasion, of Anselm.
“This church was given to Norman, first canon regular in all England. The said queen also gave unto the same church, and those that served God therein, the plot of Aldgate, and the soke thereunto belonging, with all customs so free as she had held the same, and twenty-five pound blankes, which she had of the city of Excester, as appeareth by her deed wherein she nameth the house Christ’s church, and reporteth Aldgate to be of her domains, which she granteth, with two parts of the rent of the city of Excester. Norman took upon him to be prior of Christ’s church, in the year of Christ 1108, in the parishes of St. Mary Magdalen, St. Michael, St. Katherine, and the Blessed Trinity, which now was made but one parish of the Holy Trinity, and was in old time of the Holy Cross or Holy Rood parish. The priory was built on a piece of ground in the parish of St. Katherine towards Aldgate, which lieth in length betwixt the King’s street, by the which men go towards Aldgate, near to the chapel of St. Michael towards the north, and containeth in length eighty-three ells, half, quarter, and half-quarter of the king’s iron elm, and lieth in breadth, etc. The soke and ward of Aldgate was then bounded as I have before showed. The queen was a means also that the land and English Knighten Guild was given unto the prior Norman: the honourable man, Geffrey de Glinton, was a great helper therein, and obtained that the canons might enclose the way betwixt their church and the wall of the city, etc. This priory, in process of time, became a very fair and large church, rich in lands and ornaments, and passed all the priories in the city of London or shire of Middlesex; the prior whereof was an alderman of London, to wit, of Portsoken ward.
I read, that Eustacius, the eighth prior, about the year 1264, because he would not deal with temporal matters, instituted Theobald Fitz Ivon, alderman of Portsoken ward under him, and that William Rising, prior of Christ’s church, was sworn alderman of the said Portsoken ward in the 1st of Richard II. These priors have sitten and ridden amongst the aldermen of London, in livery like unto them, saving that his habit was in shape of a spiritual person, as I myself have seen in my childhood; at which time the prior kept a most bountiful house of meat and drink, both for rich and poor, as well within the house as at the gates, to all comers, according to their estates.” (Stow’s Survey, vol. i.)
What happened many years afterwards with the Franciscans happened then in the case of these brethren of the Augustine Order. Their piety, their austerity, the endless offering of prayer and praise which ascended from their chapel deeply moved the hearts of the people. The endowment at first consisted of £25 a year, equivalent to about £750 a year of our money, if there be any certainty as to the comparative value of money, together with the proceeds of the port called Aldgate.
In the year 1125 a very singular event greatly increased the possessions and the wealth of this House. I mean the conveyance of the property held in trust by the Cnihten Gild to the Priory of the Holy Trinity.
Twelve years later, Pope Immanuel the First, by a Bull, confirmed the House in all their possessions, including “two parts of Issues of the City of Exon the Lands of Lestune, which Prince de Moulins and Adeline his wife out of piety granted to the same place, the land and the soke of the English Cnihten Gild, the Church of Bix with its rents, and the church of Tottenham.” Many other possessions fell to the House as time went on.
The Priory stood upon a triangular piece of ground, of which Aldgate and Leadenhall Street, as far as St. Catherine’s Cree Church inclusive, formed the south-west side; Cree Church Street, King Street, and Duke Street, the east side; and the wall of London the north side. The square called St. James’s Place is certainly the site of a former court of the Priory. The church probably stood on the site of St. James’s Church, which was built in 1622 partly of materials belonging to the old church, just as on the site of Grey Friars Church was erected the present Christ Church. The Precinct of the monastery covered nearly the whole of four ancient City parishes, viz. St. Mary Magdalene, St. Michael, St. Catherine, and the Blessed Trinity, amalgamated into one Parish, with, at first, the Convent Church for Parish Church, called Holy Trinity or Holy Rood. The inhabitants of St. Catherine’s, however, could not be reconciled to the loss of their church, and presently built another for themselves in the Churchyard of the Priory. The Church of St. Michael continued as a ruin, of which the crypt remained one of the most remarkable of the monuments of ancient London, down to the formation of the Underground Railway in the year 1865. It was then, most unfortunately, allowed to be destroyed.
Ancient and rich and venerable as was this Priory, whose monks enjoyed the reputation of splendid hospitality, the House in later years seems to have lost some of the consideration for sanctity which it enjoyed during the first century of its existence. This is shown by the meagre list of monuments belonging to the Priory Church compared with that of the Grey Friars or the Dominicans. Henry Fitz Ailwyn, first Mayor of London; two children of King Stephen; and Geoffrey Mandeville (after his twenty years of dangling above ground) are among the few remarkable names in Stow’s list of those here interred.
I have before me thirty-seven closely written pages containing extracts from ancient documents and archives bearing on the four hundred years’ life of this House. It is a history which might be told once for all by a Dugdale and confided to the shelves of the Society of Antiquaries: it contains the story of the management of a large estate; the usual crop of ecclesiastical quarrels and disputes over rights and claims; the recognition of the said rights by Pope and King; dispensations, faculties, injunctions, and restraints.
For instance, in 1250, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued sentence against Prior, Sub-prior, Sacristan, Cellarer, and Precentor of Holy Trinity for refusing to receive him as Visitor. The sentence is annulled by superior authority. But two years later the Pope ordered the Prior to admit the Archbishop, the Metropolitan, as Visitor. Citizens bequeathed money in order to found an obit, or anniversary for the benefit of their souls; the Bishop of London was consecrated in their Church; the heart of John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, was buried in their church; the Prior, on his election, was sworn as Alderman of Portsoken; citizens of well-known names turn up unexpectedly in these pages; thus, John Bocuinte, son of Geoffrey Bocuinte, and Juliana his wife, sold certain property with fees held of the Priory; Gilbert Fitz Fulk, one of the Aldermen of the thirteenth century, going to the Holy Land, bequeathed, in case of his death, certain lands and houses to the Priory for the good of his soul, and the souls of his father and mother; other citizens desired to be buried in the church; the King asked for the loan of a cart and horses to carry his household gear to Dover; on the election of a new Prior the House was bound to provide a benefice for one of the King’s Clerks—see Tanner’s Notes on Monastic Houses,—others of the King’s officers for divers reasons were maintained by the House—it seems, indeed, a common practice for the King to have invited this House to maintain his old servants. At one time the Priory became owner of the market called Queenhithe. William of Ypres gave it to the House. It was then called Edredes hyde, and the gift was subject to a yearly payment of £20 to the Hospital of St. Katherine by the Tower.
In 1352 we find the brethren seeking assistance in rebuilding this Church and House by offering a “Relaxation” of one year and forty days of “enjoined penance” to any who would assist. The offer to hold good for ten years. At this time the House possessed property in eighty-eight London parishes. In the reign of Edward the Second mention is made of three Grammar schools, of which one is that of the Holy Trinity Priory.