to them a piece of ground north of Newgate Street, whither they removed. Their austerity, their poverty, their earnestness, their eloquence drew all hearts towards them. And, as always happens, their very popularity proved their ruin. Kings and queens, great lords and ladies, strove and vied with each other to show their love and admiration for the men who had given up all that the world can offer for the sake of Christ and for pity of their brothers and sisters. They showed this love in the manner common with the world. They forced upon the friars a portion of their wealth; they made them receive and enjoy the very things they had renounced. It is a wonderful record. First, the citizens began. One Lord Mayor built a new choir for their church, with a splendor worthy of the order and of the City; another built the nave to equal the choir; a third built the dormitories – no more wattle and daub for the dear friars; other citizens built Chapter House, Vestry House, Infirmary, and Refectory. Their Library was given by Dick Whittington, thrice Mayor of London. Then came the turn of the great people. Queen Margaret thought the choir of the church should be still more splendid, and added to it or rebuilt it. Queen Isabel and Queen Philippa thought that the nave should be more splendid, and with the help of the Earl and Countess of Richmond, the Earl of Gloucester and his sisters, Lord Lisle and others, built a new nave, 300 feet long, 89 feet broad, and 64 feet high. Here were buried, as in ground far more sacred than that of St. Paul's or any acre of ordinary consecration, Margaret, wife of Edward I.; Isabel, wife of Edward II.; Joan of the Tower, Queen of Scots, daughter of Edward II.; Isabel, daughter of Edward III.; Beatrice, daughter of Henry III.; and an extraordinary number of persons great and honorable in their day. What became of their monuments and of the church itself belongs to Tudor London.
All those who visit London are recommended by the guide-books to see the famous Blue-coat School. The main entrance is at the end of a narrow lane leading north from Newgate Street. On the right hand of the lane stands a great ugly pile built by Wren twenty years after the Great Fire. This is Christ Church, and it stands on part of the site of the old church of the Grey Friars. At the Dissolution, Henry VIII. made their church into a parish church, assigning to it the two parishes of St. Nicolas Shambles and St. Ewin, together with the ground occupied by the Monastery. The church within is as ugly as it is without. One shudders to think of the change from the great and splendid monastic church. On the other side of the lane is an open space, a church-yard now disused. The old church covered both this open space and the area of the modern church. Behind it stood the cloisters, the burial-ground, and the monastic buildings of the House, covering a great extent of ground. Those who go through the gate find themselves in a large quadrangle asphalted. This is now part of the boys' play-ground; their feet run every day over the old tombs and graves of the Grey Friars' burial-ground; the soil, though not accounted so sacred as that within the church itself, was considered greatly superior to that of any common church-yard. Most of the dead were buried in the habit of the Grey Friars, as if to cheat Peter into a belief of their sanctity. On the south of the quadrangle two or three arches may be observed. These are the only fragments remaining of the cloisters. The view of Christ's Hospital after the Great Fire of 1666 shows the old courts of the Abbey. The church formerly extended over the whole front of the picture; the buildings now seen are wholly modern; the cloistered square was the church-yard; the Hall stood across the north side of the first court; beyond were the courts appropriated to the service of the monks; the cells, libraries, etc., were round the great court and the small courts on the right. The Franciscan House is gone; the Friars are gone. Let us not think, however, that their work is gone. On the contrary, all that was good in it remains. That is the quality and the test of good work. It is imperishable. If you ask what is this work and where it may be found, look about you. In the prosperity of the City; in the energy, the industry, the courage, the soberness of its people; in whatever virtues they possess, the Franciscans have their share; the Grey Friars, who went straight at the people – the rough, common, ignorant people – and saved them from the destruction of those virtues which built up this realm of Britain. The old ideas change; what is to-day faith becomes to-morrow superstition; but the new order is built upon the old. It was a part of the training necessary for the English people that they should pass under the teaching of the Friars.
In the south-western corner of the City Wall were lodged the Dominicans or Black Friars.
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