the church is a crypt of Norman date, with plain massive columns and groining. Wren used the arches of the old church to support his own superstructure. It is now a vault, and concealed in parts by piles of coffins. There are several views of it in the Vetusta Monumenta; but it is not generally shown. Forty-two feet of the spire were rebuilt by George Gwilt in 1819-1820. The interior of the church was thoroughly "restored" by Mr. (now Sir) A. W. Blomfield in 1878-1879. Observe. -Monument, by T. Banks, R.A., to Bishop Newton, the editor of Milton, and twenty-five years rector of this parish (d. 1782). "Bow-bells" have long been, and are still famous. In the 14th century it was ordered that no person should be seen armed in the streets, and no brewer keep open his doors, " after curfew is rung out at Bowe." The bells were destroyed in the Fire, but the new belfry was supplied with a new peal; "and surely," writes Strype (1720), "for the number and melody of the bells, Bow, since the Fire, surpasseth former times." 1 But the present full peal of ten bells, unmatched for sweetness and melody of tone by any in the City, was not completed till 1762. They were rung for the first time on the King's birthday, June 4, of that year. The largest of the ten weighs 53 cwt. 22 lbs. In the year 1469 it was ordained by a Common Council that the Bow Bell should be nightly rung at nine of the clock. Shortly after, John Donne, mercer, by his testament dated 1472,... gave to the parson and churchwardens. . . two tenements with the appurtenances, since made into one, in Hosier Lane to the maintenance of Bow Bell, the same to be rung as aforesaid, and other things to be observed as by the will appeareth. This Bell being usually rung somewhat late, as seemed to the young men, prentices, and other in Cheape, they made and set up a rhyme against the clerk as followeth : Clerke of the Bow Bell, with the yellow lockes, Whereunto the clerk replying wrote: Stow, p. 96. People born within the sound of Bow-bells are usually called Cockneys. Beaumont and Fletcher speak of "Bow-bell suckers,” i.e. as Mr. Dyce properly explains it, "children born within the sound of Bow-bell." 2 Anthony Clod, a countryman, addressing Gettings, a citizen, in Shirley's Contention for Honour and Riches, says, "Thou liest, and I am none of thy countryman; I was born out of the sound of your pancake-bell," i.e. the Apprentices' Shrove Tuesday bell, when pancakes were in request (as they still are), and the London apprentices held a riotous holiday. Pope has confirmed the reputation of Bow-bells in a celebrated line : Far as loud Bow's stupendous bells resound. 2 Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, vol. iv. p. 186. 1 Strype, B. iii. p. 22. 3 Shirley's Works, vol. vi. p. 297. Sir D. Dunce. Oh Lord! here are doings, here are vagaries! I'll run mad. I'll climb Bow steeple presently, bestride the dragon, and preach cuckoldom to the whole city. Otway, The Soldier's Fortune, 4to., 1681. When Jacob Hall on his high rope shews tricks, The Dragon flutters, the Lord Mayor's horse kicks; State Poems, vol. iv. p. 379. Upon the next public Thanksgiving Day it is my design to sit astride the Dragon on Bow steeple, from whence, after the first discharge of the Tower guns, I intend to mount into the air, fly over Fleet Street, and pitch upon the Maypole in the Strand.-The Guardian, No. 112. The dragon, small as it looks from the pavement, is 8 feet 10 inches long. February 4, 1662-1663.-To Bow Church, to the Court of Arches, where a judge sits, and his proctors about him in their habits, and their pleadings all in Latin.-Pepys. The Court of Arches has long been removed from Bow Church. Bow Church has been for many years used for the confirmation of newly-elected bishops. December 30, 1868.-The ceremony of confirming the election of Archbishop Tait was held at the parish church of St. Mary le Bow, Cheapside. . . After which the Archbishop left and took the oaths at a table placed in the body of the church.-Times, December 31, 1868. A sermon is still preached here annually in August in commemoration of the destruction of the Spanish Armada, in accordance with the will of Mr. J. Chapman, a City merchant who, in 1611, left a sum of money for this purpose. The church serves also for the parishes of Allhallows, Honey Lane, and St. Pancras, Soper Lane. The living is valued at £675; patrons, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Grocers' Company alternately. [For the origin and use of the balcony overlooking Cheapside, see article on Cheapside.] Mary (St.) Le Savoy, the chapel of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist, in the Savoy, built in 1505. It is now a precinct, and called (but improperly) St. Mary-le-Savoy, but as part of the Duchy of Lancaster is the property of the Crown, and hence is commonly known as the CHAPEL ROYAL OF THE SAVOY. [See The Savoy.] The building is of late Perpendicular date, and stands north and south, and the north end was originally ornamented with rich tabernacle work, but much of it had been cut away to make place for modern monuments. Several of the monuments were interesting, the following particularly:-Small recumbent figure, with female kneeling figure in the background, to Sir Robert and Lady Douglas (temp. James I.) Small kneeling figure, under part of the ancient tabernacle work, to the Countess of Dalhousie, daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower, and sister to Mrs. Hutchinson (d. 1663). Small brass of William Chaworth (d. 1582), of the Chaworths of Nottingham. Recumbent figure of a CountessDowager of Nottingham. Tablet to Mrs. Anne Killigrew (d. 1685). Altar-tomb of Sir Richard and Lady Rokeby (d. 1523). Small kneeling figure, over door, with skull in her hand, of Alicia Steward (d. 1572.) Brass, on floor, in the centre of the chapel, marking the grave of Gawain Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld (d. of the plague in London, 1522), the translator of Virgil; the brass serving also for Bishop Halsal. Monument by M. L. Watson, erected 1846, to Dr. Cameron, the last person executed on account of the rebellion of 1745. Tablet, erected by his widow, to Richard Lander, the African traveller (d. 1834). Eminent Persons interred here without monuments. -George, third Earl of Cumberland, father of Lady Anne Clifford (Anne Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery); died in the Duchy House in 1605; bowels alone buried here. George Wither, the poet (d. 1667), "between the east door and south end of the church."1 Lewis de Duras, Earl of Faversham (d. 1709); he commanded King James II.'s troops at the battle of Sedgemoor. The Savoy Chapel was restored 1505-1508; almost rebuilt in 1721; again repaired in 1820; again under Mr. Sidney Smirke in 1843 and 1860. On July 4, 1864, it was entirely destroyed by fire, the walls alone remaining. Her Majesty, who had previously taken much interest in the church, at once notified her intention to restore it at her own cost. This was accordingly done in the most complete and careful manner, under the supervision of Mr. Sidney Smirke, R.A., and the church was reopened by Dean Stanley on November 26, 1865. In its main features it is much as it was before the fire, minus the monuments, but the interior has been more richly embellished. The Queen filled with painted glass the great north window-a representation of the Crucifixion by Willement-as a memorial of the Prince Consort, in place of one erected by the parishioners for the same purpose in 1843, but destroyed by the fire of 1864; and another fine painted glass window of six lights in place of the Cameron monument. A window has been filled with painted glass by the parishioners in commemoration of the recovery of the Prince of Wales in 1872; and another by the Geographical Society in memory of the traveller Lander, whose monument was destroyed in the fire. A new brass plate has also been laid to mark the grave of Gawain Douglas. The handsome pulpit is an offering by the Burgess family of the Strand; and the font and cover are a memorial to William Hilton, R.A., and Peter de Wint, the eminent painter in water-colours, who were interred here. In 1878 the Queen further embellished the interior, and added a new sacristy and porch to the building. The new roof-an enriched copy of the old one-has its 138 panels filled with the arms of the Dukes of Lancaster, and other emblazoned devices. Prior to the Act of 1754 the Savoy Chapel was one of the places notorious for clandestine marriages. By authority. Marriages performed with the utmost privacy, decency and regularity, at the Ancient Royal Chapel of St. John the Baptist in the Savoy, where 1 Wood's Ath. Ox., ed. 1721, vol. ii. p. 396. 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.-The Public Advertiser of January 2, 1754. In Mary (St.) Le Strand, or the New Church in the Strand, built by James Gibbs, architect of the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. the early part of the 13th century a church of St. Mary and the Innocents of the Strand was in existence; it stood on the south side of the Strand, and was pulled down in 1544 by the Protector Somerset to make room and furnish materials for his palace. [See Somerset House.] The first stone of the present church was laid February 25, 1714; it was finished September 7, 1717; consecrated January 1, 1723-1724. This was the first finished of the fifty new churches. Near here stood the old Maypole. Amid that area wide they took their stand, Where the tall Maypole once o'erlooked the Strand, A church collects the saints of Drury Lane. Pope, The Dunciad. The new church in the Strand, called St. Mary-le-Strand, was the first building I was employed in after my arrival from Italy, which being situated in a very public place, the Commissioners for building the fifty churches, of which this is one, spared no cost to beautify it. It consists of two orders, in the upper of which the lights are placed; the wall of the lower, being solid to keep out noises from the street, is adorned with niches. There was at first no steeple designed for this church, only a small campanile or turret; a bell was to have been over the west end of it; but at the distance of eighty feet from the west front there was a column 250 feet high, intended to be erected in honour of Queen Anne, on the top of which her statue was to be placed. My design for this column was approved by the Commissioners, and a great quantity of stone was brought to the place for laying the foundation of it, but the thoughts of erecting that monument being laid aside upon the Queen's death, I was ordered to erect a steeple instead of the campanile first proposed. The building being then advanced twenty feet above ground, and therefore admitting of no alteration from east to west, I was obliged to spread it from north to south, which makes the plan oblong which should otherwise have been square.-Gibbs in his Book of Architecture, fol. 1728, which illustrates this edifice. In the interior is a tablet to James Bindley (d. September 1818), the great book collector. It was the first monument erected in the church. James Cradock (d. 1826), the friend of Johnson and Goldsmith, lies in the vaults. The exterior having been found to be in a dangerous state, a considerable renovation of the stonework has been (1889) carried out. An attempt was made to obtain the demolition of the church for the purpose of widening the Strand, but fortunately it has not been successful. The living is in the gift of the Lord Chancellor. Mary (St.) Magdalen, BERMONDSEY, erected 1680, on the site of an older foundation, built by the priors of Bermondsey Abbey for the use of their tenants; and, at the dissolution of religious houses, converted into a parish church. The register records the singular ceremony observed at the reunion of a man and his wife, after a long absence, during which the woman had married another husband. The man's name was Ralph Goodchild, and the remarriage took place August 1, 1604. The form was as follows: : The Man's speech.-Elizabeth, my beloved wife, I am right sorie I have so longe absented mysealfe from thee, whereby thou shouldest be occasioned to take another man to be thy husband. Therefore I do now vowe and promise, in the sighte of God and this companie, to take thee againe as mine own, and will not onlie forgive thee, but also dwell with thee, and do all other duties unto thee, as I promised at our marriage. The Woman's speech. -Ralphe, my beloved husband, I am right sorie that I have, in thy absence, taken another man to be my husband; but here, before God and this companie, I do renounce and forsake him, and do promise to kepe myselfe only unto thee during life, and to performe all duties which I first promised unto thee in our marriage. Francis le Piper, an indifferent artist, included by Vertue and Walpole in their Anecdotes of Painting in England, was buried in this church in 1740. Mary (St.) Magdalen, MILK STREET, a church in Cripplegate Ward, on the site lately occupied by the City of London School; it was destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt. The church of the parish is St. Lawrence Jewry. In this parish lived Bishop Latimer's "good nurse good Mrs. Latham," who when he was "in a faint sickness," as he writes November 8, 1537, "seeing what case I was in hath fetched me home to her own house, and doth pamper me with all diligence." Four years afterwards she was presented" for "maintaining in her own house Latimer, Barnes, Garret, Jerome, and divers others." "1 Mary (St.) Magdalen, OLD FISH STREET, at the junction of Knightrider Street and Old Change; a small church in Castle Baynard Ward, destroyed in the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren. It served as well for the parish of St. Gregory-by-St. Paul's. R. H. Barham, author of the Ingoldsby Legends (d. 1845), was buried in this church, of which he was for nearly twenty years rector. Dr. Thomas Lodge, the dramatist and contemporary of Shakespeare, was of this parish. The church was much injured by fire on December 2, 1886, and the accident furnished the suggestion that the church might very well be dispensed with. Steps were accordingly taken to pull it down, the living being united with St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill. Mary (St.) Magdalen and All Saints, a chapel or college adjoining Guildhall, was in existence as early as 1280. It was rebuilt on another site on the south side of Guildhall in 1429, and at the dissolution of religious houses was bought by the mayor and commonalty as a chapel to their hall. Service was performed here weekly when Strype, in 1720, made his additions to Stow's Survey. It was afterwards converted into the Court of Requests. It remained until 1820. The three statues of Edward VI., Queen Elizabeth, and 1 Foxe, vol. v. p. 444. |