Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

assemblage of ecclesiastics in the great hall of the monastery, January 17, 1382, when there were present 10 bishops, 6 doctors of laws, 30 doctors of theology and 4 bachelors of laws, summoned by William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, to examine and condemn the 24 articles drawn from the writings and teaching of Wyclif. Whilst the assembly were sitting a great earthquake shook the city, whence the meeting was long after known as "the Earthquake Council." 1 A parliament was assembled here in the reign of Henry VI. Here Charles V. of Spain was lodged when on a visit to Henry VIII. Here Henry called a parliament, known in history as the Black Parliament, because it began among the Black Friars in the City, and terminated among the Black Monks in Westminster. Here the subject of Henry's divorce from Katherine of Aragon was publicly tried before Cardinal Campeggio; and here began the parliament in which Wolsey was condemned.

The house and precinct were surrendered to the King on November 12, 1538; and Edward VI. in the first year of his reign sold the hall and the site of the prior's lodgings to Sir Francis Bryan, and in the third year of his reign granted to Sir Thomas Cawarden (Master of the Revels) "the whole house, site or circuit, compass and precinct, of the late Friars Preachers, within the City of London ;" the yearly value being reckoned at £19.2 The church was given to the parishioners of St. Anne's to serve as a parish church. [See St. Anne's, Blackfriars.]

It has already been noticed that Sir Thomas Cawarden had a grant from the Crown of the church and precinct of the dissolved monastery of the Black or Dominican Friars in London. We have found two documents of considerable local interest relative to that foundation among his papers, a Survey taken in the reign of Edward VI. by the King's Surveyor, of the site and soil of the church of the Blackfriars and its appendages, and another of the tenements held by Sir Thomas Cawarden within its precinct. By the first we find that the church was a very noble structure, and must have had a most imposing effect, standing as it did on the steep northern bank of the Thames. It appears from the above document that it had two aisles, a chancel and "a chapel to the same," no doubt a retro-choir or Lady chapel. It was in breadth from the churchyard on the north to the cloister on the south 66 feet; in length from east to west 220 feet; dimensions rather superior to those of that venerable pile, St. Saviours, Southwark. The cloister on the south side was comprised in a square, each side of which measured 110 feet. The chapter house lay west of the cloister, and was 44 feet long by 22 broad. The cemetery on the north of the church was 90 feet in breadth by 200 in length.-The Loseley Manuscripts, edited by A. J. Kempe, 1835, pp. 175-176, note.

The privileges of sanctuary still remained; nor was it easy to dispossess the inhabitants of their little independence. The Mayor, on behalf of the citizens, had sought to obtain its abolition shortly after the dissolution of the Monastery, but the King sent him word that he was as well able to maintain the liberties of the precinct as ever the Friars were. Another attempt was made in the reign of Mary with as little success. We have complete evidence that there was no theatre in Blackfriars before 1596 [see Blackfriars theatre], and yet we know that plays were acted in the precinct long before that year. Stephen Gosson, in his

1 Lechler's Wiclif, Lorimer's trans., vol. ii. p. 233.

2 Strype, B. iii. p. 177.

195

Plays confuted in five actions, published about 1580, expressly mentions the comedies at the Blackfriars, and Lyly's Sapho and Phao, which was acted before Queen Elizabeth in 1584 "by her majesties children and the Boyes of Paules" was also performed in the Blackfriars, possibly in the house of one of the noble inhabitants. The opposition to the players arose among the Puritan inhabitants of the precinct, who, somewhat inconsistently with their religious opinions, as the actors. and dramatists were never tired of telling them, followed the trade of feather-making, and yet were not without their excuses for so doing:

Mrs. Flowerdew. Indeed it sometimes pricks my conscience,

I come to sell 'em pins and looking-glasses.

Bird. I have their custom too for all their feathers :

Tis fit that we, which are sincere professors,

Should gain by infidels.—Randolph's Muses' Looking-glass, 4to, 1638.1 What say you to your feather-makers in the Friars that are of your faction of faith? Are not they with their perukes, and their puffs, their fans, and their huffs, as much pages of Pride, and waiters upon Vanity?-Ben Jonson, Bart. Fair, Act v. Sc. 3. An upstart apocryphal captain

Whom not a Puritan in the Friars will trust

So much as for a feather!-Ben Jonson, Alchemist, Act i. Sc. 1.

Burbage. Why do you conceal your feather, Sir?

Sly. Why, do you think I'll have jests broken upon me in the play, to be laughed at? This play hath beaten all the gallants out of the feathers: Blackfriars hath almost spoilt Blackfriars for feathers.-Webster, Induction to the Malcontent.

Both Ben Jonson and Webster have many other references to the Pilgrim Street seems to have Puritans of Blackfriars and their wares.

been the headquarters of the feather merchants.

But Puritans and players were not the only noteworthy personages who carried out their distinctive professions in Blackfriars at this period. The glass factory was famous at one time. It was likened to Hell

by Dekker. The name remains in Glasshouse yard.

Like the glasse-house furnace in Blackefriers, the bone-fires that are kept there never goe out.-Thomas Dekker, A Knight's Conjuring (Percy Soc., vol. vii. p. 21). Is it because the Brethren's fires

Maintain a glass-house at Blackfriars ?

Bishop Corbet, Upon Fairford Windows, Works, p. 237.

Ben Jonson dated the dedication to his Volpone "from my house in the Black Friars this 11th day of February 1607," and here he laid the scene of the Alchemist. In 1613 Shakespeare bought here a house from Henry Walker for £140.

The house was situated on the west side of St. Andrew's Hill, formerly otherwise termed Puddle Hill or Puddle Dock Hill, and it was either partially on or very near the locality now and for more than two centuries known as Ireland Yard.2-Halliwell Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 7th ed., vol. i. p. 240.

[blocks in formation]

a haberdasher, who occupied the house at the time of Shakespeare's purchase in 1613.-Outlines, vol. ii. p. 346.

Allowed the said Accomptante for Money by him yssued and paid for Workes and Reparacons donne and performed within the tyme of this Accompt at the Blackfryers in making a new Causey Way and a new paire of Staires for the King's Majesty to land to goe to St Anthoney Vandike's house there to see his Paintings, in the months of June and July 1635.1—Audit Office Records, xx. li. ii.

Sir A. Vandyck lived at his house in the Blackfriars from his settlement in England in 1632 till his death in it in 1641. The rent of his house, "at a moderate value," was estimated, in 1638, at £20, and the tithe paid £1:6:8.2 His daughter Justina was born here December 1, 1641, and baptized in St. Anne's, Blackfriars, December 9, 1641, the day of her father's death. Before Vandyck, however, Blackfriars was the recognised abode of painters.

I'll go bespeak me straight a gilt caroch,
For her and you to take the air in: yes,

Into Hyde-Park, and thence into Blackfriars,

Visit the painters, where you may see pictures,

And note the properest limbs, and how to make them.

Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, Act i. Sc. 3.

Cornelius Jansen (d. 1665), lived in the Blackfriars for several years. Isaac Oliver, the miniature painter, was a still earlier resident. He died here in 1617, and was buried in St. Anne's, Blackfriars. Lady Ayres, wishing to have a copy of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's picture to wear in her bosom, 'gave it to Mr. Isaac Oliver the painter in Blackfriars, and desired him to draw it in little after his manner." Painters on glass, or glass-stainers, were among the artists settled here, but Bishop Corbet seems to class them with the Puritans.

[ocr errors]

Collectors as well as artists dwelt within the precinct.

October 23, 1654.—This day I saw one of the rarest collections of achates [agates], onyxes, and intaglios that I had ever seen either at home or abroad, collected by a conceited old hat-maker in Black Friers, especially one achat vase, heretofore the great Earl of Leicester's.-Evelyn.

There were several good houses in the Friary; the chief was called "Hunsdon House," after Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, Queen Elizabeth's cousin and Lord Chamberlain. Here, in an upper chamber, on Sunday, October 26, 1623, while the house was in the occupation of Comte de Tillier, the French ambassador, a sermon was preached by Father Drury, to, it is said, about three hundred people, a congregation too numerous for the strength of the room; for about the middle of the sermon the floor gave way, and ninety-four persons besides the preacher perished. This sad occurrence is familiarly known as "The Fatal Vespers." The Protestants considered the accident as a judgment on the Catholics, and the Catholics attributed it to a plot of the Protestants. Forty-seven bodies were buried by the French ambassador in the courtyard and garden of Hunsdon House. Lord Cobham entertained

1 From the same account the causeway would seem to have been to feet wide, and that to form it piles were driven into the bed of the Thames, and stones taken from the Crown stores in

Scotland Yard.

2 MS. Lambeth, 272.

3 Nichol's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. iii. p. 449.

Queen Elizabeth in his house at Blackfriars, June 26, 1600, on occasion
of the marriage of Lord Herbert, when he presented Her Majesty with
a masque of eight ladies, and the Queen herself danced, and afterwards
stayed the night there.1 The Earl and Countess of Somerset were
living in the Blackfriars when Overbury was murdered.2

The Countess, when under arrest, October 1615, during the inquiry
into the murder, selected the Lord Aubigny's house in the Blackfriars
She remained there, under Sir William Smith's
Lord
as her residence.
charge, till removed to the Tower in the following April.
Herbert of Cherbury: his house was, about 1619, attacked at night
by robbers, who called out to him, "Darest thou come down Welsh-
man." 3

Eminent Persons buried in the Blackfriars Monastery.-Hubert de
He was originally buried
Burgh, Earl of Kent, the founder (d. 1242).
at the Holborn House, but his body was removed here when the
monastery changed its locality. Sir Thomas Brandon, K.G. (d. 1509);
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester (beheaded 1470), one of Caxton's great
encouragers, and Margaret his wife, daughter of the King of Scotland;
the heart of Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I., with that of their son
Alphonso; John of Eltham, Duke of Cornwall, brother of Edward III;
the father and mother of Queen Katherine Parr.

The precinct no longer exists, but is now a part of the ward of Farringdon Within. The latest attempt to assert its privileges was made 1735, when in the July of that year the Court of Common Council brought an action in the Court of King's Bench against Daniel Watson for opening a shop and vending shoes in the Blackfriars without being free of the City. The defendant pleaded the privileges of the precinct, but the Court gave it in favour of the City. [See King's printing house; Times Newspaper Office (see Printing-house Square); Apothecaries' Hall; St. Anne's, Blackfriars; Playhouse Yard; Ireland Yard.]

Blackfriars Bridge. The original Blackfriars Bridge was the design of Robert Mylne, a native of Edinburgh, and originally called Pitt Bridge. [See Chatham Place.] The Act empowering its construction was passed in 1756; the first pile was driven June 7, 1760, and the first stone laid October 31, 1760. A question seriously "whether a bridge from Blackfriars to discussed at the time was On Wednesday, November 19, Southwark would be a public benefit." 1768, it was made passable as a bridle-way; and it was finally and generally opened on Sunday, November 19, 1769. The entire cost was about £300,000, of which little more than half was expended on constructing the bridge. There was a toll of one halfpenny for every foot-passenger, and one penny on Sundays, but this led to riots, in one of which, June 7, 1780, the mob broke into the toll houses, carried off and then set them on fire. Government ultimately bought the the money, toll, and on June 22, 1785, the bridge was made free. Mylne had 1 Howes, ed. 1631, p. 1035.

2 Amos's Overbury, p. 41.

3 Life, p. 72.

adopted the elliptical arch, Gwyn, his competitor, the semicircular one: the press took up the matter, and Dr. Johnson (the friend of Gwyn) wrote three several letters in the Gazetteer in opposition to Mylne. Blackfriars Bridge consisted of nine elliptical arches, the piers of which were adorned with Ionic columns, and was 955 feet in length from wharf to wharf. Sixty years had scarcely passed before the bridge showed signs of insecurity, mainly due to the increased scour caused by the removal of Old London Bridge. In 1833 a thorough examination of it was made by Messrs. Walker and Burges, who reported that it needed immediate and extensive repairs, which they were directed to carry out. The foundations were strengthened, the cutwaters recased, the roadway lowered, and a solid parapet substituted for the open balustrade. These works cost close upon £100,000. It was admitted that the picturesque beauty of the bridge was destroyed, but it was said that it had been rendered more convenient and would now last for centuries. An idle prophecy: these works were completed at the end of 1840, and as early as 1860 the demolition of the bridge was declared to be urgent. It was taken down and a temporary wooden bridge substituted. The designs of Mr. J. Cubitt, C.E., being adopted, the foundation stone of the new Blackfriars Bridge was laid by the Lord Mayor on July 20, 1865; and it was opened by the Queen in state on November 6, 1869. It consists of five iron arches, the shore arches being 155 feet in span, the next 175 feet each, and the centre arch 185 feet. A cast-iron balustrade surmounts the arches. In front of each pier is a short shaft, 7 feet in diameter, of polished granite with Portland stone capitals: these were intended to carry bronze groups, and some such crowning ornaments seem essential to the completion of the design, but have not as yet been supplied. The bridge is 75 feet wide between the parapets. The effect of the bridge is much injured by the proximity of the ugly lattice-girder bridges carrying the London, Chatham and Dover Railway across the Thames, which shut out the view of St. Paul's, so striking from the original Blackfriars Bridge.

Blackfriars Road. An Act was passed 1769 to make a road from the south end of Blackfriars Bridge to the turnpike road across St. George's Fields, and near to the house called the Dog and Duck. It was known as Great Surrey Street until about 1829. It is about two-thirds of a mile in length. West Side.-Rotunda, built for the Leverian Museum; afterwards converted into the Surrey institution [which see]. Christ Church, Surrey, built about 1740; the site of the church is a part of Old Paris Garden. Great Charlotte Street. Stamford Street. Peabody Square-the great square of model tenements erected by the Trustees of the Peabody Fund on the site of the Magdalen Hospital. Surrey Theatre. East Side.-Goods Depôt of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Starting place for the South London tramcars. Southwark Street. Surrey Chapel, an octagonal building at the corner of Charlotte Street, built by the

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »