Meantime, the chapel of the Priory had been converted into the Parish Church of St. Alphege. The old church stood on the opposite side of the road, under the wall, like the churches of St. Augustine and All Hallows; its churchyard, on the east of the Chapel, still remains, opposite the entrance of the modern church. The parishioners paid the King £100 for their new church.

[CHAPTER VI]
ST. BARTHOLOMEW

The Hospital and the Priory of St. Bartholomew were distinct and separate foundations, of which the former was governed by the latter. The traditional history of this foundation is one of those remarkable stories which belong to a period when things material and things imagined were mixed together, and the visions of a brain, disordered by sickness, or by fasting, or by loneliness, were even more real than the tangible realities of man and matter. In the time of Henry the First there lived about the Court one Rahere, who was a knight, or a minstrel, a gentleman, or a jester, a man of noble extraction, or of obscure origin, whichever you please, for the histories differ. Either before or after his “conversion” Rahere is said to have occupied the stall of Chamberlayne’s Wood at St. Paul’s. It was a time in which there was a great deal of what modern Evangelicals used to call “conviction of sin.” Rahere was one of those so convinced. Like many others at that time, when a wave of religious emotion swept over the whole country, Rahere yearned to deepen his newly found sense of religion by going on pilgrimage. The going on pilgrimage, as a part of mediæval life, has been treated in another place. Rahere, it is enough to say, followed the common custom of the time when he went on pilgrimage to Rome. This was in 1120. Now, on arriving at Rome, or on the way, he was seized with a malarious fever, insomuch that he was like to die. He therefore prayed to St. Bartholomew, promising to found a Hospital for the poor, should he by the help of the Saint be permitted to recover. Now the bones of St. Bartholomew were found in India, A.D. 1113, only seven years before Rahere’s arrival, and, being brought over to Rome, were placed on an island of the Tiber, where had formerly stood a temple to Æsculapius. Probably Rahere had quite recently visited this place; we remember the eagerness with which the mediæval folk ran after every new saint, or every new discovery of relics. However that may be, he had a Vision, in which the Saint appeared to him, and granted his recovery on the conditions promised by the supplicant. Rahere, therefore, on his return, proceeded to found the hospital. But the Saint appeared to him: would he do more? Would he found also a Religious House? The spot—Smithfield, the smooth field—was part of the fenny flat that lay north of London Wall: a barren heath covered with springs and ponds, and set with occasional clumps of trees. Horse races were held here, a weekly horse fair, there were stables and grooms and people to look after the horses, they were a rough and rude folk, living without the jurisdiction of the City, and they had no Church nor any religious people among them; it was the place also on which executions were held, and it was accounted infamous. Rahere obeyed the Saint in this respect as well; he erected his hospital, beginning the building in 1123, with the assistance of Richard de Belmeis, then Bishop of London, and the King himself.

CONJECTURAL RESTORATION OF THE BUILDINGS OF THE PRIORY CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT AS EXISTING IN PRIOR BOLTON’S TIME (ABOUT A.D. 1530)

A larger image is available [here].