London, Volume 4
Knight, Charles
1843
LXXXIX.-Something about London Churches at the Close of the Fourteenth Century.
LXXXIX.-Something about London Churches at the Close of the Fourteenth Century.
Any who repairs on a clear day to , and turns his eye towards the City, will be struck with the close juxtaposition into which the church spires are huddled together in that direction. If, after taking this view, he turn his steps to the east, and begin to thread the narrow and tortuous thoroughfares within the circle on which the walls of London once stood, he will be reminded that the existing churches are only a portion of those which existed before the Great Fire. The numerous little grave-yards; with their couples of trees, feeble attempts at green-sward, and a few old dusky monuments which meet him at every corner, are of trafficking London,
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The train of thought thus suggested may move our imaginary rambler, if he be who loves at times to saunter on without any more definite aim than to see what food for thought or fancy he may stumble upon, to allow his imaginings | |
210 | to pierce below the soil, and there detect buried churches of a yet older time. says Maitland, And we further learn, from the same author, that
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City is now a place of mercantile business. The heads that conduct, the fingers that write, the brawny backs and arms that guide waggons, work cranes, and perform the toilsome tasks of porterage, seem to have it all to themselves. The genius of trade reigns paramount, and occupies the whole minds of men so long as they are within the walls. In former days wealthy merchants and shopkeepers, to say nothing of those they employed, had their dwellings in the City: but now the very Bank clerks have their residences in the suburbs; the waggoners and porters inhabit the precincts of the Tower, and the monotonous level of close-packed small houses between the and the , through which the line of the Railway has been excavated, giving rich men an opportunity (which they rarely use) of seeing how poor men live. Human beings still toil in the City, but they scarcely have the appearance of living in the City. There is nothing there but shops and counting-houses. The airy courts and stately structures of City magnates of the days of Queen Anne are inhabited, not by men, but by firms-- That unsubstantial abstraction possesses it entirely. At night the specious vacuum would tenant the City alone, but for the watchmen who patrol the streets; and during the day his human serfs who repair to the tenements he occupies are inspired by him alone, their thoughts are exclusively of pounds, shillings, pence, dry goods, bonds, debentures, and stocks. | |
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is almost tempted to ask the frequent churches what they do there. They are said to be opened on Sundays and sometimes during the week, yet there is a thick coating of dust upon them which almost appears to belie the report. They are scarcely more life-like than the vacant grave-yards, which, to the mind's eye, are filled by the ghosts of old churches, as Banquo's chair was by his unreal spectre, or than the old church of St. Michael's, or the nameless church and chapel of , buried themselves, instead of marking a spot where the more frail and transitory frames of men are buried. To under the influence of such fancies existing churches appear as unreal as those which have passed away, and those which have been destroyed as real as those which survive. All London's churches, past and present, are visible to the imagination, and the city of traders and brokers is transmuted into the city of churches. | |
There is a strange jostling among these architectural spectres, as they rise after another on it looks like a hubbub, though all is silent. Not only churches rise where churches no longer stand, but old occupies the same place as new , and sometimes churches of the olden time plant their corners on part of the area occupied by of our own day. There must be a good and efficient police in the world of dreams: you could scarcely at any great spectacle--the Lord Mayor's procession, or the execution of a Fauntleroy, or the liberation of an Alice Lowe-persuade any people of flesh and bones to occupy the same space, though thereby double the number could be comfortably accommodated, and yet these unintelligent works of man's head or hands do it at once without a murmur. | |
When the churches of or centuries are thus assembled together, it is clear that, like human beings, they stand in the relationship of ancestors and descendants to each other. The present is the lawful son and heir of Bishop Maurice's . Some families of churches (like that we have just named) have come in course of time to own and occupy broader lands than their forefathers did, exactly as the case is with human mortals. Other families, again, die out (as has been the lot of old neighbour, St. Gregory), and their property falls into the hands of strangers. These stone walls have their genealogical trees as well as the creatures who build them; some bourgeoning gaily, and with many branches growing broader as they rise (large parishes subdivided, and the portions settled as dowries upon filial churches and ci-devant chapels of ease); some going off in a leafless point, like a Scotch fir killed by a blight, or choked by the overshadowing of a lustier tree (as in the case of the aforesaid St. Gregory and the churches not rebuilt after the fire). | |
Great though the show made by the churches within the City wall be at present, it is nevertheless evident, from the remarks already made, that their numbers have fallen off from what they once were. The Great Fire thinned their ranks: many a stately spire toppled down in the midst of it, never to be rebuilt. And more than a century before that event the Reformation had wrought sad havoc in their ranks. If we were called upon to fix the time when churches most did flourish in the City-when the greatest number of contemporary churches were to be found within its wall--the end of the and the beginning of the century is the period we should select. The church-building Church had then reached the highest development and culture it was destined to attain | |
212 | in this country. It had raised the population from a state of savage life to a high degree of culture, spiritual and intellectual: like the soul of man, it had over-informed and worn-out its tenement, and had nothing for it but to die. It is wonderful how every form which social civilisation, civil or ecclesiastical, assumes, is created and destroyed by the same elements. The same disregard of the vulgar gauds of this world, and yearning after a higher and more spiritual existence, which animated the monks of the Benedictine and Augustine orders, the friars of the brotherhoods of St. Francis and St. Dominic, who built up the Romish Church as it existed at the close of the century, animated the Wickliffes, Jerones of Prague and Johns of Huss, Luthers, Calvins, and Knoxes, to whom it was given to destroy it, and rear their respective modifications of Protestantism on its ruins. Brother Jack himself (to borrow the phraseology of the ) did not tear the tags, tassels, and embroidery from his coat with more reckless disregard of the rents he made in the texture of the good cloth upon which they had been sowed, than did his precursors the founders of the mendicant orders. And Hildebrand himself did not set his feet upon the neck of the civil power with a prouder or firmer tread than did at a later period, and within a narrower circle, Pope Calvin of Geneva. The forms and ceremonies of the Romish Church--the studies to which those ambitious of occupying the high places in her hierarchy were prompted--the morals and faith they taught the members of their congregations from the high-altar, the pulpit, or by the side of the sickbed, created a new soul in men's bosoms; and that soul, when created, necessarily burst from within the scaffolding which had been employed in raising it, shattering mere forms in its onward and spiritual flight. It was not because they were bad that the forms of the old faith were trampled down, but because they had made men independent of themselves: the crutch of the invalid was an incumbrance to the healthy man. It was not because the ministers of the old faith had become less pure than their predecessors that a new race of teachers superseded them, but because, like Captain Bobadil, they had made every of their pupils as good or nearly as good as themselves in spiritual fence, and more advanced teachers were required. |
About the close of the century (at least in England) the Romish Church was in the full flush of its power and usefulness. It had, aided by cooperating influences to which it is not at present necessary to advert, raised and improved men from what they had been, but not so far as to enable them to dispense with its services. It was incorporated with the domestic as well as with the public life of society; its influence was seen and felt everywhere. Its bodily presence was seen in church, chapel, and altarage, abbey, convent, and hospital: its spiritual presence was felt in the numerous links of guilds and confessorships, which bound every individual to his church and its ministers, making the national religion a part of his daily occupations. The market was held before the church-door, and the public fountains were placed near the church, that the water might be blessed. St. Giles Cripplegate had its and St. Michael le Quern, at the west end of , its conduit. Chaucer has put into the mouth of his Wife of Bath a playful picture of the omnipresence of the Church: it may have been meant as a sarcasm (for Chaucer lies under the suspicion of Lollardism), yet is it conceived in no harsh spirit, and is exactly the | |
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ludicrous manner in which a bold, spirited person would express her sense of a power which she could not help reverencing, though she did not feel herself much bettered by it :
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The good lady appears to regret that the father confessors have superseded the fairies, just as some sentimental souls regret that rectors have superseded the priests; and yet she would have been as loth to have the incubi brought back as her modern types would be to see restored. It is curiosity that recommends the past, but present use that endears the good we really have. It may be necessary to explain the office and dignity of the to whom the Wife of Bath attributes such power and universality. Chaucer shall do it for us. The poet's enumeration of the pilgrims in his company is constructed on the principle of placing the highest in rank foremost. The knight, the prioress, and the monk come ; after them, and before the merchant, the clerk of Oxford, the serjeant at law, and the franklin, comes the friar, who was a This, we learn from the account given of him, was a friar who collected the alms by which his house was supported within a certain district- He was a licentiate of his order, had went well dressed, had taste and talent for music, was familiar with franklins all over the country, and had influence over the wives of the better class of citizens. He could unbend in jolly company- and yet he never in his merriment compromised his dignity; for mine host of the who suited his address to every man's bearing, speaks to him with respect- This is a sarcastic, but scarcely unfair, picture of a choice spirit of the powerful orders of mendicant friars. $ At the close of the century London was tolerably well stored with this class of ministers of religion. There were the Black Friars in the south-west angle of the city, whose church, built in , by Robert Kilmarley, archbishop of Canterbury, occupied the area of the Castle of Mountfichet and lanes adjoining. Where Christchurch Hospital now stands was the pleasant site of the Grey Friars. From John Iwyn, citizen of London, they had all his lands and houses in the parish of St. Nicholas Shambles; the Mayor and commonalty gave them more; in the wealthy citizens clubbed to build them a house and church; in the consort of Edward I. began a stately and spacious church for them, which was years a-building; and in Sir Richard Whittington built them a library, and laid out in furnishing it with books. Not far from Blackfriars, although outside of the City walls, between the Temple and , were the White Friars, who in the century held a reputation for learning above any of the mendicant orders in England. At the south-east corner of , in Ward, was the house of the Crutched or Crossed Friars. The Friars Eremites of the order of St. Augustine, also mendicants, had a house, the site of which is still | |
215 | kept in remembrance by in . The poor brethren of St. Augustine Papey, at the north end of Street, the brotherhood of the threescore priests skilled in singing dirges, and others who attended solemn funerals, may fairly be classed with the mendicants. All England was their diocese, but doubtless so rich a field of it as London would not be left untilled-at all events it was the hive to which these busy bees duly brought home their gathered honey at certain seasons. |
The monks, it would appear from Chaucer, were a more aristocratical race. The company which trudged to Canterbury, was composed of the middle classes: but then, as now, these middle classes died, by insensible degrees, into the nobles at end, and into the labourers at another. Chaucer's knight was a warrior to stand at a king's right hand; and Chaucer's monk was a fair companion for the knight. The limitour was good company for the jolly franklin; but the monk and knight, though it was no derogation to them to associate with him, belonged to a higher circle. A noblefellow was that monk. A scholar he was, after the fashion of his day, though his taste lay towards the belles-lettres, not to crabbed science. When his turn comes to tell a tale, he begins, like James or Bulwer in our day, with a preface intended to show his learning. He astonishes his hearers by telling how many books he has in his cell, and condescendingly explains that -- And then he launches into a high-flown moral illustration, in which Lucifer, Sampson, Holofernes, Nero, Count Ugolino, and Julius Caesar figure-so sublime, and long-winded, and that Harry Bailey is obliged to stop him. Somewhat worldly-minded, our monk is as rich and dignified clergymen are apt to become; the gauds and vanities of time have more hold on his affections than is beseeming in a man whose business it is to point the way to eternity. But he is at bottom of good principles, a sound counsellor at need, and decorous in his conduct. He is painted by Chaucer with the rich power of a Titian or a Rubens:-- And then the state in which this jolly churchman rides!- There is a dash of the voluptuous in the characters both of the friar and the monk; and yet how marked is the difference between them There is a dignity | |
216 | and about the of the forming as strong a contrast to the eyes of the limitour, twinkling like stars in a frosty night, as could be wished, to distinguish the rich priest, who had and who set his heart upon from the plausible gentleman beggar, whose
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London was quite as well supplied with these stately pillars of the monastic order as with their more popular brethren. The priory of St. Bartholomew, next door to the Grey Friars, was founded by Rahere, who was himself the prior, and the establishment retained its courtly character to the last. What is now Sion College was a college of regular canons of the order of St. Augustin. East of was a Cistercian abbey, founded by Edward III., called the Abbey of the Graces, subject to the monastery of Beaulieu. at the corner of , called , or ithe sin the Wall, belonged to the Cistercian convent of Gerendon, in Leicestershire, who kept of their monks stationed there; and many of the principal monasteries in England had similar permanent agencies in the capital. The Carthusian Monastery in Smithfield was founded in . The power and pride of the Knights Hospitallers rendering them especially obnoxious to the populace, their magnificent house of St. John of Jerusalem was burned by the insurgents of Kent and Essex in , but speedily rebuilt more splendid than before.. | |
But of all these monastic princes none, in point of local dignity and importance, came near the Prior of the Holy Trinity at . The origin of Portsoken (or the franchise at the gate) is lost in the meagre traditions of Saxon antiquity. A legend there is of its being won, by some stout Saxon warriors, in the days of King Edgar by knightly service in fenced lists, during a long summer day. The tale has a strong family resemblance to many other legends of chivalry, and has just as much or as little title to be believed as most of them. William the Conqueror and Henry I. are said to have confirmed the liberties of the heirs of these knights by special charters. Matilda, the Saxon wife of Henry ., founded the Priory of the Holy Trinity, within , in : it is said to have been the house of regular canons established in England. In according to some, or according to others, the barons of London, who held the English Cnichten-gild, which lay without the walls of the City at , and extended to the Thames, bestowed it upon the Church of the Holy Trinity, and took themselves the habit of the order. The parishes of St. Michael, , St. Catherine, and the Blessed Trinity, were incorporated into ; and the Church of the Priory was made the parish church. The Prior, powerful through the tithes of his large parish, powerful through his broad lands, was still more powerful from his being, as proprietor of Cnichten-gild or Portsoken, an Alderman of London. He sat and rode among the Aldermen of London in the same livery, only the prior's habit was in shape that of a spiritual person. Stow, who records the fact, mentions that he had himself, when a child, seen the Prior of the Holy Trinity in this array. | |
We pass over the nunneries, though the image of Madame Eglantine rises | |
217 | up to detain us. Doubtless they, too, had Prioresses (at times) with foreheads with with French with ladylike manners, and a brooch on which was and who, like that most elegant of devotion's handmaidens, And pleasant it would be to gossip of them, as the old chroniclers furnish occasion; but at present we have other game in view. They are here mentioned simply lest they should be left out from the estimate of the clerical element in London about and before A.D. . The Black Friars backed by the White Friars, and the Grey Friars backed by the Priory of St. Bartholomew, with the minor stations of in the Wall, and Elsing Spital, may seem a tolerable ecclesiastical garrison for the west-end of the City of London of those days. But this was only a small part of the fortalices of the Church which bristled on the Capitoline hill of the spiritualities of Lud's Town. Almost the whole space between the Grey Friars and was occupied by the wealthy and independent collegiate church of St. Martin, with its surrounding sanctuary. And centrically placed within the ring formed by , the Grey Friars, and the Black Friars, was the metropolitan Church of St. Paul, with a body-guard of smaller churches rising round it. The Cathedral and its cemetery were encompassed with a wall by Richard, Bishop of London, in . The wall extended from the north-east corner of , along , to the north end of the old Exchange in ; thence it ran southwards to ; and, passing on the north side of that thoroughfare, it turned up to its great western gateway in . About the beginning of the century this wall became dilapidated, and to prevent irregularities, which took place in consequence, a grant was obtained in from Edward II. At the south-west angle of the Cathedral was the parish church of St. Gregory; the vault under the choir was used as the parish church of St. Faith. Near the north-cast angle was the church of St. Augustin; east of the Episcopal Palace, which occupied the north-west angle of the enclosure, was the Chapel of Pardon Church Haw; adjoining to Canon Alley, in the cast, was the Charnel Chapel; nearly in front of it, in the middle of the churchyard, was the Cross where sermons were preached weekly. When calls to mind that Ludgate, and St. Ewen's (near the north-east corner of ), were stuck in between the churches of the Black Friars and the Grey Friars; that St. Andrew's and St. 'Pulchre's kept up the line of communication between the White Friars and St. Bartholomew's; that there was a nest of churches, of of which only the churchyards remain, immediately east of le Grand; and that all the churches now remaining between and and Hill on the north, and the Thames on the south, with a few more, as St. Anne's Blackfriars, were there in the century, is puzzled to imagine how any room could be left for any dwellinghouses on that sacred hill, except those which are known to have been inhabited |
218 | by the Bishop, Dean, Canons Residentiary and Canons Minor, and the members of the various religious orders. |
The difficulty is not much lessened when turns to look at the rest of the space within and immediately around the City walls. In order to show the full difficulty of conceiving how the dwelling-houses of the citizens could get wedged in among so many churches, we must recall to mind the appearance which London in those days presented. The great fen, in winter a lake, which Fitz-Stephen describes as lying in his time immediately north of the City, had undergone little alteration. It remained a marshy depression till the bones were emptied upon it from the Charnel-house at the Reformation, and the level of the soil raised and dried, that the archers might be enabled to walk over it dry-shod, that a madhouse might next be erected there, and that in due time the edifices of Grub Street might. find a firm foundation. A small stream, rising on the east side of Smithfield, ran down into this marsh, crossing the line of the present . The surplus water of the marsh was drained off by , which ran down to the Thames nearly in the line of , , and Dowgate. Near rose another brook, or burn, which ran at westward along Fenchurch and Lombard Streets, and then turning to the south before it reached the site of the , ran down to the Thames parallel to . The little valleys in which and Langburn (or Sherburn) flowed were sunk considerably below the eminences which bounded them, although the building, destroying, and rebuilding of more than centuries have almost raised them to the same level. At the western base of the eminence on which stands was the deep valley of the Fleet, in that part of its course parallel with . The part of the City contained within the walls is well known; , or Street, and lines connecting their extremities, with the Tower on hand and the junction of the Fleet and Thames on the other, mark its limits with sufficient exactness. But it must be remembered that all the ground within them was far from being built up. Large spaces were allotted to the houses and gardens of the nobility: the mansion subsequently called , where the square of that name now stands; Crosby Hall; the possessions of the Arundel family, where now is : Baynard's Castle took up a great deal of room; and so did the , and the factory of the Hanseatic merchants. The City had not spread itself over the and the fields beyond them; the swamp above alluded to hemmedits progress in the direction of the north; Smithfield was still a free space for tilts and tournaments without the wall, as was within it; only between the Temple and , , the Fleet, and the Thames, a City without the walls appears to have grown up nearly as populous as the City within them-which does not, however, imply crowding houses or a dense population. Here the palace's of the bishops and their gardens occupied no inconsiderable space. | |
And now, keeping these things in mind, let us turn our attention to the number of parish churches and chapels which sprung up in this double City, in addition to the monasteries, the cathedrals, and the collegiate churches, during the latter part of the century. A catalogue of them all would be a sad infliction on the reader's patience; and, after he had read it (or skipped it), he would scarcely have a more exact idea of the real state of matters than he can gain by | |
219 | being told that in the comparatively little and straggling London we have been attempting to describe, there were quite as many churches, monastic establishments, hermitages, and some odd chapelries not included, as there were in London immediately before the Great Fire, and at least - more than are to be found within the same area at present. Some of these dated from the Saxon ages. St. Botolph's, St. Edmund's, and St. Ewen aforesaid, by their very names betray their origin. St. Alban's (north side of , and east side of ) is said by Matthew of Paris to have been the chapel of King Offa; and a square tower, which was still standing near it in , was imagined by some of our word-torturing antiquaries, who derived from Ethel (, to have been part of Athelstane's palace. St. Gregory's was in existence in , when it gave shelter for years to the remains of King Edward the Martyr, which were removed thither while the Danes were ravaging East Anglia. But by far the greater part of the churches of London are of a more recent date than the Conquest; and of the majority of them written contemporary records go no further back than the century, while of many it is known with certainty that they were built in that century. It was a busy time in London, what with rearing new churches and furbishing up the old. |
But something may be done to help to form a picture of the appearance and distribution of London ecclesiastical buildings as they then stood without running over the whole bead-roll of them. The clerical citadel on the hill of has been portrayed above. To what has been said of the new town (such it was then) which overhung the Fleet on its west bank between Oldborne and the Thames, it is only necessary to add the churches of St. Bride (which had rectors before ), St. Dunstan's in the West (the advowson of which was transferred from the crown to the Bishop of London in that year), and of the Temple. On the extremity of the ridge of ground which, stretching southward fromn Highbury, and forming the eastern bound of the great swamp below the north city wall, gave rise to the stream which ran where Fenchurch is on its west side, and to several rills which lost themselves in the marshes of Ratcliffe, were the Abbey of our Lady of Graces, the approached by mariners ascending the Thames, built by Edward III. after he had encountered a tempest at sea; the Church and Hospital of St. Katherine's, near the Tower; the Abbey of the nuns of St. Clare, called the ; the House of the Crossed or ; the Church of St. Botolph's before ; the Priory of the Holy Trinity; the Hospital of St. Mary Spital. Along the eminence between the Thames and the upper course of Langburn, which extended from St. Katherine's near the Tower to the mouth of that rivulet, were the churches of St. Peter in the Tower, Allhallows Barking, St. Dunstan's in the East, and St. Magnus on the Bridge. On the side of the same rising ground, which sloped northwards to Langburn, were St. Katherine's Coleman, Allhallows Staining, St. Bennet Gracechurch, St. Michael's , St. Gabriel's, &c. Parallel to this eminence was the high ground between the marsh below the wall and the shallow valley drained by Langburn. On it, proceeding westward from the Priory of the Holy Trinity, were the churches of St. Katherine Cree, St. Andrew , St. Dionis Backchurch, Allhallows , St. Helen's Church and Monastery, the churches of St. Ethelburga, Abchurch, , St. Bennet Finck, | |
220 | St. Bartholomew Exchange, Allhallows on the Wall, and St. Christopher. On the tongue of land which stretched down from this ridge to the Thames between Langburn and , were Woolchurch and Woolnoth, , , St. Martin Ongars, St. Stephen , St. Swithin, Allhallows the Great, Allhallows the Less, and St. Lawrence Pountney. On the declivities of the hill crowned by the Cathedral, towards the brook which crossed the line of on its way to the marsh, to and to the Thames, stood churches which it would be waste of time to recapitulate: St. Giles Cripplegate, St. Alphage on the Wall, and Aldermary, St. Mary de Arcubus, or Bow Church, the great centre of Cockney-land, in the Vintry, and many more. |
Having thus mapped out the local position of some of the leading churches, and indicated their relative positions, things more are requisite to convey a just notion of their appearance, as their neighbourly spires towered up above the surrounding fields, in close juxtaposition, emulous each of rising nearer to heaven than its neighbours.. , the straggling, semi-rural appearance of London in that age must be kept in mind. The brooks which channelled its surface were not embanked, much less vaulted over. Here and there was a wharf or bridge to be seen on the banks of the Thames, where the King's customs were collected, where the Hanseatic ships or Genoese galleys lay, but for the most part they were much as the washing of the river had shaped them, deformed rather than ornamented by human cutting and carving. The lanes or roads twisted and winded in the most unaccountable manner; few, if any of them, were paved, and all sorts of slatternliness lay ankle-deep in them, after the fashion of which we read in the Straggling groups of houses arose here and there within the area, with garden-grounds around and between them, overhung with trees, some tolerably cultivated, but all. sufficiently slovenly. The houses of the nobility, the royal castles and towers, the sanctuary of , the precincts of the Cathedral, and most of the monastic houses, were walled and battlemented, and fit to stand a vigorous siege. The City wall gave a factitious unity to the section of the City which lay within it, but where it was not seen the area had more the appearance of a number of villages and fortalices crowding together than of a town such as modern notions picture it. | |
The next thing to be minded is to guard against imagining that all the churches we have named or hinted at were lofty, imposing, or even respectable specimens of architecture. Wren's report upon the construction of and old Paul's shows that, though the artistical taste of that age was tolerably developed, its mechanical skill was not great. The multiplication of churches was owing, in no small degree, to men's anxiety to have a church of their own- dedicated to their favourite saint, frequented by the inmates of the special cluster of houses in which they dwelt, or by the guild to which they belonged. A church would be often run up in haste in this manner without much forecast as to how itself or its ministers were to be kept upright and alive for the future. It would be small and unshapely, with no greater permanent fund than the scanty tithes of the little district the bishop was persuaded to allot to it and the inhabitants thereof. The zeal of its founders would be apt to cool, or at least their children would care less about it than they had cared. But the priest who was | |
221 | placed in it, and his successors, would have an interest in keeping up the fabric. This is not said in the mere material or worldly sense of interest. Devotion to his saint, love for his flock, an allowable pride in keeping his church in good order or improving its appearance, the amiable vanity of keeping his congregation together, and laying down the law to it and amending it, would be so many spurs to such priests as are still to be found among the rude peasantry of Ireland (suggarth aroon!) to identify themselves with their church. It is amusing and something better at the same time to note, in turning over the old records of these edifices, the shifts to which the good fathers were often driven to keep up the foundation and to make ends meet with themselves. In year we read of the parson of Allhallows, , obtaining licence, in , to receive a gift for himself and his successors of a piece of ground adjoining the chancel in , of the length of feet and breadth of ; and in , of his successor in office being permitted to appropriate a spot of ground, feet long and broad, for the building of a chapel contiguous to the church. Thus scantlings of land crept by degrees together and formed a tolerable field. |
It was mainly by the foundation of chapelries and altarages that the parsons of those small parishes were enabled to subsist. And it was these altarages and the voluntary guilds of the citizens that so completely identified the Church with the whole domestic life of the citizens of London. The wealthy citizens of Chaucer are all members of a guild:-- Such personal ornament, it may be thought, is inconsistent with the homely picture we have drawn of the London town of Chaucer's time; but without going so far as Persia or Turkey, where men expend all their money on gay apparel, and dwell within bare walls of no costly structure, we would remind our readers of what may be seen every Sunday in the moorlands of the low country north of the Tweed. There the cottages are still built of unhewn rag-stone, or of and thatched, it may be, with heather. The chimney is upright posts, tied round with straw ropes; and more smoke finds its way out by the door and the broken windows than by the legitimate opening for its exit. The floor is trodden clay; the rafters, unconcealed by lathing and plaster, have derived | |
222 | from the perennial smoke-cloud which enwreathes them a glossy jet-black hue equal to any japan. Before the window is a dunghill; before the door a pool containing its drainings; and against the gable of the hut a peat-stack. Here would scarcely look for personal cleanliness, nor is it to be found on weekdays; but on each recurring Sabbath the maidens of these unsightly dwellings issue from them, in apparel washed in the clear brook which murmurs near, and bleached on the flowery lea, pure and spotless as those in glistening raiment whom Bunyan saw in his vision. |
The nature of the religious guilds, or may be gathered from the regulations of the begun in the year in the church of St. James Garlickhithe, The object of the association is declared to be The party admitted a member must and Members are to pay entry money; quarterly; and Wardens are appointed to collect the contributions, and account yearly. Loose livers are to be expelled. Such as have been years members, and are overtaken by incurable disease, shall be allowed weekly for life. Such as are shall have a-week during their imprisonment.
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In the Charnel Chapel, on the north side of , were brotherhoods, of which, the Fraternity of All Souls, was founded in . says Maitland,
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The influence of such unions for the exercise of benevolence, and for mutual defence against oppression, animated by the mystic enthusiasm of devotional feelings, may easily be imagined. The eagerness shown by kings and nobles to be received into them indicates the power of the fraternities. But it is with their influence on the citizens we have to do. It was they that made the burgess feel himself a limb of the church--that brought the church to sit by his fireside, and made it a partner in all his enterprises. This was the unheeded root of which | |
223 | the visible stems were the chapels dedicated by mariners, the churches round which markets and fairs were held, the consecration of the great acts of the community. The of the citizens of London was held in the churchyard of . In time of war, the banner-bearer of the City came, with his personal and his own banner displayed, to the great west door of , where he was met by the Mayor and aldermen, of whom the Prior of the Holy Trinity was . There he received from the Mayor a horse, and money for his expenses, and the banner of St. Paul. The banner-bearer then directed the Mayor to choose a marshal for the host, and the Mayor and burgesses to warn the commons, and, taking in his hand the banner of St. Paul, he bore it to , where the Mayor and he intrusted it to whom they thought proper. And when the banner and the host marched against an enemy, the Lord of the Banner named sage persons out of every ward to look to the keeping of the City during their absence. These solemnities were imposing; but it was in the religious guilds that men were trained to feel and act thus on great occasions. |
It was in this school, too, that the predilection for pilgrimages, if not contracted, was fostered. The pilgrimage made to Canterbury by the haberdasher and his guild-brethren was the necessary consequence of the tastes they acquired in their fraternity. There were many follies about these pilgrimages. The Wife of Bath, and still more the Cook of London, were not made much better by them-but were they made any worse? And the Knights' high-soaring thoughts had their wings strengthened, and the Franklin heard much edifying discourse, and Chaucer collected matter for his deathless poem. | |
So with regard to the clerical establishments of London, it is not meant to attribute to them any Utopian perfection. Chaucer glances at those clergymen who Nay, he has left us a picture of a cheat as well as a muckworm wearing the garb of a canon. And we learn from Maitland that when Robert de Braybrooke was appointed Bishop of London in , he found that But these sad stories of the personal profligacy of priests, are mere illustrations of the truth that the flesh is weaker than the spirit which seeks to give law to it. But for the teaching of the priests the multitude would never have known that there was anything improper in such conduct as has been counted to them for a crime. Though were guilty, taught all men how to become virtuous, and made them more virtuous than they would otherwise have been. is not to blame because, through occasional mistakes, rotten and unsound materials were | |
224 | built into its walls. The Church was no more to blame because hypocrites occasionally wore the clerical garb, than because the houseless ruffians of London slept in in , when the wall was dilapidated. The citizens might learn a spice of superstitious folly from their clerical instructors, but the good lessons preponderated on the whole. We must take the Londoners of the century as men, and not despise their spiritual jewels because they are found imbedded in a matrix of earth. |
