The Savoy, always an abused sinecure, that made the master a rogue and its inmates professional beggars, was finally suppressed in the reign of Queen Anne.[204] It was then used as a barrack for five hundred soldiers, and as a deserters’ prison, till the approaches to Waterloo Bridge rendered its removal necessary.
Savoy Street occupies the site of the old central Henry VII.’s Tudor gate. Coal wharves cover the site of the ancient front of the hospital, and the houses in Lancaster Place, leading to Waterloo Bridge, another part of its area.
In 1661, the year after the restoration of Charles II., a celebrated conference between the Church of England bishops and the Presbyterian divines took place, with very small result, in the Bishop of London’s lodgings in the Savoy. Among the twelve bishops were Sheldon and Gauden, the author of Ikon Basilike: among the Presbyterians Baxter, Calamy, and Reynolds. They were to revise the Liturgy, and to discuss rules and forms of prayer; but there was so much distrust and reserve on both sides, that at the end of two months the conference came to an untimely end.[205] It was the bishops’ hour of triumph, and no concessions could be expected from them after their many mortifications. In the same year Charles II. established a French church in the Savoy, and Dr. Durel preached the first sermon to the foreign residents in London, July 14, 1661.[206]
In Queen Anne’s time, after its suppression, the Savoy became, like the Clink and Whitefriars, a sanctuary for fraudulent debtors. On one occasion, in 1696, a creditor entering that nest of thieves to demand a debt, was tarred and feathered, carried in a wheelbarrow into the Strand, and there bound to the May-pole; but some constables coming up dispersed the rabble and rescued the tormented man from his persecutors.[207]
Strype, writing about 1720 (George I.), describes the Savoy as a great ruinous building, divided into several apartments. In one a cooper stored his hoops and butts; in another there were rooms for deserters, pressed men, Dutch recruits, and military prisoners. Within the precinct there was the king’s printing-press, where gazettes, proclamations, and Acts of Parliament were printed; and also a German Lutheran church, a French Protestant church, and a Dissenting chapel; besides “harbours for refugees and poor people.”[208] The worthy writer thus describes the hall of the old hospital:—
“In the midst of its buildings is a very spacious hall, the walls three foot broad, of stone without and brick and stone inward. The ceiling is very curiously built with wood, having knobs in one place hanging down, and images of angels holding before their breasts coats of arms, but hardly discoverable. One is a cross gules between four stars, or else mullets. It is covered with lead, but in divers places open to the weather. Towards the east end of the hall is a fair cupola with glass windows, but all broken, which makes it probable the hall was as long again, since cupolas are wont to be built about the middle of great halls.”
In 1754 (George II.) clandestine marriages were performed at the Savoy church; and the advantages of secrecy, privacy, and access by water were boldly advertised in the papers of the day. The Public Advertiser of January 2, 1754, contains the following impudent and touting advertisement:—
“By Authority.—Marriages performed with the utmost privacy, secrecy, and regularity, at the ancient royal chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have been kept from the time of the Reformation (being two hundred years and upwards) to this day. The expense not more than one guinea, the five shilling stamp included. There are five private ways by land to this chapel, and two by water.”
At this time the Savoy was still a large cruciform building, with two rows of mullioned windows facing the Thames; a court to the north of it was called the Friary. The north front, the most ornamented, had large pointed windows and embattled parapets, lozenged with flint.
At the west end, in 1816, stood the guard-house, or military prison, its gateway secured by a strong buttress, and embellished with Henry VII.’s arms and the badges of the rose and the portcullis: above these were two hexagonal oriel windows.