CHAPTER X.

THE TOWER AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.

ROM the statue of William IV. at the foot of King

FR

At the end of

William Street, Little East Cheap and Great Tower Street lead to the Tower of London. This is one of the busiest parts of the City, movement is impeded, and all the side streets teem with bustle and traffic. Great Tower Street is the Church of Allhallows, Barking, which derives its surname from having been founded by the nuns of Barking Abbey before the reign of Richard I., who added a chantry in honour of the Virgin where the north chancel aisle now is. This chantry-" Berking Chapel "contained a famous image of the Virgin placed there by Edward I. in consequence of a vision before his father's death, in which she assured him that he should subdue Wales and Scotland, and that he would be always victorious, whilst he kept her chapel in repair. To the truth of this vision he swore before the Pope, and obtained an indulgence of forty days for all penitents worshipping here at her shrine. In the instrument which set this forth, prayer is especially asked for the soul of Richard I., "whose heart is buried beneath the high altar": the lion-heart, however, is really in the museum at Rouen, having been exhumed from

the cathedral, where it was deposited when the king's body was buried at Fontevrault.

The church, which is chiefly Perpendicular, is entered on the south by a handsome modern Decorated door. The interior has all the charm which want of uniformity gives, and its old ironwork (observe the sword-rests of three LordsMayor the last of 1727-over the Corporation Pew), its ancient monuments, and numerous associations give it a peculiar interest. Making the circuit of the church we may notice

North Aisle. The beautiful canopied altar tomb of John Croke, Alderman and Skinner, 1477, and his wife Margery, 1490, who bequeathed her "great chalys of silver guilt" to the church, to have the souls of herself and her husband more "tenderly prayed for." They are represented, in brass, accompanied by small groups of their sons and daughters, with prayers coming from their lips: these, and the coats of arms, are enamelled, not incised.

The figure of Jerome Bonalius, 1583, an Italian (probably the Venetian Consul), kneeling at a desk.

Brass of Thomas Virby, Vicar, 1453.

Brass of John Bacon, 1437, and his wife, very well-executed figures with flowing draperies. He was a woolman and is represented on his bag. The inscription is in raised letters.

Pavement of North Aisle. The grave of George Snayth, 1651, "sometimes auditor to William Lawd, late Archbishop of Canterbury." Snayth, a witness of the archbishop's will, who bequeathed to him £50, desired to rest near his master. (The windows in this aisle commemorate the escape of the church in the Great Fire.)

The Altar, beneath which the headless body of Archbishop Laud was buried by his steward George Snayth, January 11, 1644. It is curious that Laud, the champion of the Book of Common Prayer, was buried according to the ceremonies of the Church of England, long after it was disused in most of the London churches. His body was removed to St. John's College, Oxford, in 1663.

Nave. Brass of Roger James, 1563, bearing the arms of the Brewers' Company; and the noble Flemish brass of Andrewe Evyngar, citizen and salter, and his wife Ellyn, 1536, which has all the delicacy of a Memling picture and is well deserving of study. Evyngar was

the son of a brewer at Antwerp, where his monument was probably executed. There is only one brass superior to it in England-in the Church of St. Mary Cray at Ipswich. On the upper part of this monument is a representation of the Virgin seated in a chair with the dead Christ upon her knees. On the right are the arms of the Salters' Company, on the left those of the Merchant Adventurers of Hamburg. The symbols of the four Evangelists appear at the angles of the inscription (from the litanies of the Sarum breviary), "Ne reminiscaris domine delicta nostra vel parentum nost. neque vindictam sumas de peccatis nostris." Above and below the figures are the words (from the second and third nocturn of the office for the dead, and the responsory in the second nocturn of the same), "Sana domine animam meam quia peccavi tibi. Ideo deprecor majestatem ut tu Deus deleas iniquitatem

meam."

Monument of John Kettlewell the Nonjuror, 1695, who desired "to lie in the same grave where Archbishop Laud was before interred." This voluminous author was the Vicar of Coleshill, deprived in 1690 for refusing to take the oaths to William and Mary. His funeral service was performed by Bishop Ken. He "so happily and frankly explained all the details of our duty, that it is difficult to say whether he more formed the manners of men towards evangelical virtue, or exemplified it in his own life."

South Aisle. A canopied tomb of c. 1400, with a small enamel of the Resurrection.

Brass of John Rusche, 1498; and that of Christopher Rawson, Merchant of the Staple, 1518, and his two wives, for the repose of whose souls he founded a chantry in the chapel of St. Anne.

The important brass of William Thynne, " chefe clerk of the kechyn" to Henry VIII., who "departed from the prison of his frayle body" in 1546. This brass is a palimpsest, the other side being engraved with the figure of an ecclesiastic, and was evidently one of the monastic brasses torn up at the Dissolution. Thynne wears the chain which was the badge of court officers, for he was Clerk of the Kitchen, Clerk of the Green Cloth, and Master of the Household to Henry VIII. He was the "Thynnus Aulicus"- the courtier, of Erasmus,* and was the originator of the wealth and power of the Thynne family. His father was Thomas Boteville, of an ancient family which came from Poitou in the reign of John, and which acquired the name of Thynne from John of th' Inn, one of its members who resided in an Inn of Court. William Thynne edited the first edition of the Works of Chaucer in 1532, which he dedicated to Henry VIII., and which was

* Epistolæ xv. 14.

complete, with the exception of "the Plowman's tale," which was then suppressed by the king's desire, but which appeared in the edition of 1542, which was edited by his son Francis, who narrates

"This tale when Kinge Henry the Eigth had redde he called my father unto him and said: 'William Thynne, I doubt this will not bee allowed; for I suspect the bishoppes will call thee in question for ytt.' To whome my father, being in great favore with his prince, sayed, 'If your grace be not offended I hope to be protected by you.' Whereupon the king did bidd hym go his waye and feare not. All which notwithstanding my father was called in question by the bishopps and heaved at by Cardinall Wolseye his olde enemeye for many causes, but mostly for that my father had procured Skelton to publish his Collin Cloute against the Cardinall, the most part of which book was compiled in my father's house at Erith in Kent."

The only son of William Thynne was Francis, the Lancaster Herald, a distinguished antiquary, who assisted Holinshed in his chronicles, "seeing," says Fuller, "the shoulders of Atlas himself may be weary, if not sometimes beholden to Hercules to relieve him." Of his nephews, one was William, Steward of the Marches, who has a noble alabaster tomb in Westminster Abbey, and another Sir John Thynne of Longleat, who founded the House of Bath.

Brass of Elizabeth (1540) wife of W. Denham, Alderman and Sheriff, whose portrait is in the Ironmongers' Hall.

The carvings of the Font are by Gibbons.

The Parish Register records the baptism, October 23, 1644, of "William, son of William Penn and Margarett his wife, of the Tower Liberty." The eldest son of Sir William Penn (Commander in Chief of the Navy under the Duke of York, Knighted in 1665) was born “on the east side of Tower Hill, within a court adjoining to London Wall." "Being turned out of doors by his father for his Quaker opinions, he obtained a grant (in consideration of his father's services) from Charles II. of land in the province of New Netherlands in America, where he became the founder of "Pennsylvania." Returning to England, he died at Beaconsfield in 1718."

In the Churchyard of Allhallows was buried Humfery Monmouth, Alderman, the great benefactor of the early reformers, who harboured and helped Tyndale, was imprisoned for heresy by Sir Thomas More, and who be

* Letter from P. Gibson to William Penn, the Quaker.

queathed money for "four godly ministers" (Mr. Latimer, Dr. Barnes, Dr. Crome, and Mr. Taylor) "to preach reformed doctrines" in the church where he was buried. From its nearness to the Tower, this church also became the burialplace of several of its victims. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, the Cardinal of St. Vitalis who was never allowed to wear his hat, his grave being "digged by the watches with their halberds," was laid here (without his head, which was exposed on London Bridge) "without coffin or shroud," near the north door, in 1535, but was afterwards moved that he might be near his friend Sir Thomas More in the Tower. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (beheaded for quartering the arms of Edward the Confessor, though he had a license to do so from the Heralds' College), "the first of the English nobility that did illustrate his birth with the beauty of learning," was also buried here in 1546, but was moved to Framlingham in 1614. Here still reposes Lord Thomas Grey (uncle of Lady Jane), beheaded in 1554 for taking part in the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt, and his perhaps may be the headless skeleton lately found at the west end of the nave.t

The sign of the Czar's Head (No. 48), opposite this church, marks a house where Peter the Great, when in England, used to booze and smoke with his boon companions.

We now emerge on Tower Hill, a large plot of open ground, surrounded with irregular houses. In one of these lived Lady Raleigh while her husband was imprisoned in the Tower. Where the garden of Trinity Square is now planted,

• Camden.

For further details as to this church, consult "Collections in Illustration of the Parochial Hist. of Allhallows, Barking," by Joseph Maskell,