CHRIST’S HOSPITAL, FROM THE CLOISTERS

Their church was 300 feet long, 89 feet wide, and 64 feet 2 inches high. It contained an immense number of monuments, because the ground was supposed to be the holiest in all London. Here were buried Margaret, daughter of Philip, King of France, and second wife of Edward the First; Isabel, daughter of Philip le Bel of France, and wife of Edward the Second—with her, the heart of the husband whom she had betrayed; Joan of the Tower, daughter of Edward the Second, and wife of Edward Bruce, King of Scotland; Lady Isabel Fitzwarren, Isabel, Countess of Bedford, daughter of Edward the Third; Eleanor, Duchess of Brittany; Beatrice, Duchess of Brittany; Eleanor, Duchess of Buckingham; Lady de Lisle; the Countess of Devon; Margaret, Duchess of Norfolk; Eleanor, Duchess of Northumberland; and an immense number of great and noble persons. Had the church with all its monuments survived, there would have been no church in the country, or, perhaps, in any other country, more crowded with names of personal and historical interest. Of London worthies, we find the gallant John Philpot once Mayor; Nicholas Brembre also Mayor, who finished his career with a traitor’s death; John Gisors sometime Mayor; many of the Blunts—Lords Mountjoy, who married into London families—the wife of Edward Blunt, Lord Mountjoy, was the widow of one Mayor and the daughter of another; William Blunt, Lord Mountjoy, married the daughter of Henry Keble, mercer. There were a vast number besides, some of whom are enumerated by Stow, who tells us that the church had ten great tombs of alabaster and marble—he means tombs with chapels and carved work. Of less costly tombs there were some score. In the Dissolution all the glorious marble and alabaster work was sold for fifty pounds or thereabouts by Sir Martin Bower, Goldsmith. The revenue of the House was no more than £32: 10s.

“Ye Plat of ye Graye Friers” A.D. 1617.
from an unpublished drawing preserved at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

A larger image is available [here].

An examination of those London Wills (Sharpe’s Calendar of Wills) which contain any mention of the Grey Friars shows that out of fifty-three nearly all are bequests of money “for a trental of masses”; for a Dirige and a Placebo in the church; for “masses”; for prayers; in some cases a charity is founded; in many the testator wishes to be buried in the church; in a great many cases money is left to all the orders of friars in the City, which are sometimes named, but generally not. I have elsewhere called attention to the remarkable fact that the stream of bequests and legacies to the Religious Houses becomes narrowed early in the fifteenth century and dries up altogether before the end.

The extent of the Grey Friars’ monastery can be traced by considering the present site of Christ’s Hospital. The school, unable to extend itself on the east, west, or north, spread out beyond the wall, which was at this point taken down soon after the foundation of the school. The monastery, therefore, was bounded on the north side by the wall; on the east by King Edward Street, formerly Butcher’s Hall Lane, and by old Stinking Lane; on the west by the wall and Newgate; and on the south by Newgate Street. It occupied, that is to say, a corner of the city of irregular shape, being 600 feet from east to west; 300 feet at its greatest breadth from north to south; and 80 feet, or perhaps 100, at its least breadth; an area, that is, of about 45,000 square feet. The Cloisters, in which lie buried a considerable multitude of London citizens, were asphalted and used for the boys’ playing field; some fragments of the old building still remain. As for the old monastery, it has entirely perished—church—cloisters—everything in the Fire of 1666. The monuments, we know, had gone long before.

While I write, the place itself is doomed. The spirit of barbarous vandalism has seized upon the school. Before long the school which, for three hundred years, has been the object of so much pride and affection among the citizens, will exist no longer. Another school—a new school, not the same—will be called by the name, and will be found somewhere in the country, and the Bluecoat school, with all its memories of Grecians, and of the young King Edward, and of the Grey Friars, will be swept away and blotted out. It is pitiful; it is wonderful that such things should be possible.