In the reign of Edward the Third they obtained a grant of thirty marks a year, and another of twenty marks from private persons. They also obtained from Isabella, mother of Edward the Third, the advowsons of three churches, on the condition of praying for the soul of the late King. Edward the Third also endowed them with lands and houses.
The writer of a paper in Archæologia enumerates many gifts of messuages, etc., made to the sisters during the two hundred and fifty years of their existence. In the Calendar of Wills between 1341 and 1519, I find twenty-five bequests to this House, of which all but seven belong to the fourteenth century.
A considerable mass of ruins of the Convent House remained standing down to the end of the eighteenth century, when most of them were destroyed. In 1706 it was found that the north wall of the present church of the Holy Trinity was part of the wall of the Sisters’ Chapel; in 1793, in digging the foundations of a house, in Haydon Square, a massive stone wall was discovered, certainly part of the House, as it formed the boundary of the parish. On the west side of the Square the houses in 1803 were part of the original building, the walls being of stone, even the partitions between the rooms. In 1797 a fire, which consumed many of the houses south of the church, from the Minories to Haydon Square, eastward, laid open the remains of a Hall which seemed to be the Refectory.
Stow has the following particulars concerning this House:—
“The License for founding it bore Date 21 E. I. to the Abbess of St. Clare without Aldgate. There was a Charter granted 9 E. II. that the Sisters Minoresses without Aldgate should be quit of Tallage on account of their Lands and Tenements in the City of London. In another Charter 14 E. II. it is called the Abby of the Minoresses of St. Mary of the Order of St. Clare without the Walls of the City: In which Charter are confirmed certain Messes of theirs in the Vintry, in Wood Street, Lad Lane, Old Fish Street, and one Mess and two Shops in Lombard Street, Christ’s Church Lane, and Shirburgh Lane; gotten of divers well affected Persons: What the Charters and Liberties of these Minoresses were, may be seen by the Confirmation thereof in 1 H. V. and Anno 16 and 25 and 2 H. 4, which remain in the Tower Records. The Manour of Apeldercome was granted to the Prioress of the Minoresses without Aldgate, 1 H. IV. and 22 H. VI. A Mess called the Herteshorn, in the Parish of St. Mary Matfelon, was granted to them by Nicholas Walshe, 7 E. IV. To all the rest let this be added.
That this House was first erected to receive Nuns that were to be brought over by Blanch, Queen of Navarre, Wife to the abovesaid Earl Edmund: And they were professed to serve God, the blessed Virgin, and St. Francis; as appears by this Charter of Licence, which the said Edmund obtained of the King his Brother the 21st of his Reign.”
The House attracted and maintained the greatest respect of the citizens. This is shown by the bequests which were showered upon the sisterhood; these were continued far into the fifteenth century, long after the stream of benefactions had ceased for the other religious houses of London. It is also shown by the request of many ladies that they should be buried in the Chapel of the Nuns—among them was Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, who died in 1506, only thirty years before the Dissolution. It has already been noticed in another place that there is nowhere to be found any scandal, or suggestion of scandal, concerning the Religious women of the London Houses.
The House has no history. For two hundred and fifty years the sisters carried on their quiet lives; they produced no saint; they enjoyed no ecstatic visions; they obeyed the Rule with such modifications as were introduced from time to time; their lives were monotonous, but they had their little distractions. One event alone is recorded of them—the plague of 1515—when within these walls alone twenty-seven of the sisters were carried off, besides the lay sisters and the servants.
At their dissolution their income amounted to £318: 16: 5. If we consider that the stipend of a Chantry Priest was no more than £6 or £7 a year, on which he could live, we may multiply this income by ten at least, and we may conclude that the number of sisters, making allowance for the maintenance of the House, was not more than thirty, and perhaps less, the tendency in the latter days, when there were few bequests, being to keep down the number of the sisterhood, therefore they were well off.
The Clares were not included in Cardinal Wolsey’s first suppression of the smaller Houses of 1528, nor in that of 1536. The Abbess, however, Lady Elizabeth Savage, resigned her charge in 1538, the year before the final Act was passed.
For two years the place remained empty and deserted. In 1540 however, the King granted the House to the See of Bath and Wells for a London residence. The Bishop at that time was John Clarke, a man whose share in the momentous events of the day has somehow been passed over by historians.