A plan of Grey Friars in the year 1617, when the old buildings were not yet all destroyed, and the plan of the House could still be made out, is preserved in Bartholomew’s Hospital, and has been reproduced by the London and Midd. Archæological Society, vol. v. p. 420. It shows that the north side of Newgate Street consisted of a row of tenements belonging to the Goldsmiths’ Company: the Bridge house and St. Bartholomew’s; behind the tenements and south of the wall lay the Precinct of Grey Friars. The church, with its middle and two side aisles, its great west window, its high roof and its Clere-story, might be re-drawn from the sketch in the plan; the Great and Little Cloisters are still standing with the old courts and gardens, the Brewhouse and the Bakehouse, the Mill and the great and small gates; the wall running along the north side is pierced by a gate connecting the Precinct with Smithfield, and the wall of the Precinct running along the east side is Stinking Lane.
There is not much that is important in the MS. notes referring to this House. In 1340 a great storm battered to the ground part of the church, especially the west end. In 1360 we find certain persons after murdering the Porter of Newgate Prison, taking sanctuary in the Grey Friars’ Church. This points to flight and pursuit, since the Sanctuary of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, a much safer place, was only a few minutes’ run down the street.
At the time of the Dissolution, as has already been stated, the condition and reputation of the Friars were as bad as they could be; their buildings were falling into ruin; they were selling their gold and silver vessels and the lead off their roofs; the Franciscans of London had dwindled down to fifteen only when the House surrendered. The Head of the House alone of his Order received a pension.
For a time the place served as a storehouse for all kinds of things, especially merchandise taken from the French. In the first year of Edward the Sixth all the tombs, altars, stalls, walks of the choir, and altars in the church were pulled up and sold—of course as so much marble and stone in the rough.
When the House was given to the City there are enumerated the Fratry, the Library, the Dorter, the Chapter House, the Great Cloister, the Little Cloister, and the chambers and buildings which had been in the recent occupancy of certain persons named.
Some of the buildings which escaped the Great Fire were still standing at the end of the eighteenth century. The south side of the Cloisters was not yet swept away; on the north side some of the walls and windows of Whittington’s Library were standing. The western walk of the Cloister was under the Great Hall, which, with Whittington’s Buildings, were pulled down in 1827.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
THE DOMINICANS
The Dominicans, or Black Friars, came over to England with their Prior, Gilbert de Fraxineto, in the year 1221. There were thirteen of them in company. They were at first received by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who invited the Prior to preach, and being greatly pleased with his discourse, became the patron of the Order in England.
Their first quarters were in Holborn on the south side, part of the site of Lincoln’s Inn. Here they built a House and church, and their gates opened upon Holborn on the west side of Chancery Lane. They remained here for more than fifty years, when, in 1276, Gregory de Rokesley, the Mayor, granted the Archbishop of Canterbury permission to stop up certain lanes adjoining Castle Baynard and Montfichet. This was for the purpose of enabling the Dominicans to build a new House on the foreshore or banks of the River Fleet without the wall of the City. The Friars, however, were permitted to take down the wall between Ludgate Hill and the river, and to use the stones of Montfichet Castle for their new buildings. The King ordered the City at the same time to build a new wall along the side of Ludgate Hill, and so south along the bank of the Fleet to the Thames. Of their first House little is known. There was once a convocation of their Order held there attended by four hundred Friars to confer on their own affairs. It is reported that the assemblage was entertained on one day by the King, on the next by the Queen, and on other days by the Bishop of London and the Abbots of St. Albans, Waltham, and Westminster.