the engraving by R. Elstrack.
It was, indeed, to be expected that his preaching would be popular in all classes down to the very humblest. How should it be otherwise? He addressed all who could be moved by noble and generous inspirations. He preached against the enormous wealth of the clergy and the Religious Houses, wealth which choked up and destroyed the springs of piety; against the vices which too many of the clergy flaunted impudently in the face of the world, sloth, luxury, gluttony, intemperance, and incontinence: he preached in favour of personal righteousness, purity, and faith: it is significant that no new Monastic Houses were founded; that on the other hand, men like Whittington, Carpenter, Niel, and Sevenoke, in the City were founding schools, endowing libraries, rebuilding prisons, erecting almshouses, but never endowing monasteries. Whittington, for instance, gave a library to Grey Friars: he built and endowed an almshouse called God’s House: he founded the College of the Holy Spirit for five fellows, clerks, conducts, and servants: he restored the hospital of St. Bartholomew: he provided “bosses” or taps of fresh water in various parts of London: he rebuilt Newgate: he gave money for a library at the Guildhall. Of other civic benefactors in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we must record the names of Sir John Philpot, who destroyed the pirates: of Sir William Sevenoke, who founded a grammar school in his native town: of Sir Robert Chichele, who gave money to provide a dinner and two-pence once a year to 2400 poor householders: of Sir John Wells, who brought water from Tyburn: of Sir William Estfried, who constructed a conduit from Highbury to Cripplegate: of John Carpenter, town clerk, who has given us the Liber Albus, and who founded a small charity which in time grew into the City of London School: of Sir John Niel, master of the hospital of St. Thomas Acon in Chepe, who proposed to found four new City schools: of William Byngham, who founded at Cambridge the small college called God’s House for twenty-four scholars, which afterwards developed into the illustrious and venerable College of Christ: of William Elsinge, who founded the Spital for a hundred poor men which afterwards became Sion College: of John Barnes, who left money to be lent to young men beginning in business: of Philip Malpas, who left the then large sum of £125 a year for the relief of poor prisoners, besides great benefactions to the poor, and a sum of money then yielding £25 a year for Preachers on the three Easter Holydays at St. Mary Spital. When we remember that a priest could then live on £6 a year—does that include his lodging?—the remuneration for three sermons seems generous indeed. Robert Large belongs to the latter half of the fifteenth century: he left a great sum of money in various bequests, including the very useful charity of a marriage dot for poor Maids. There were others, but these may suffice. They sufficiently prove the wealth of the donors, because a man thinks first of his own children or nephews: when he has provided for them, and not till then, he may consider how best to dispose of the residue. They prove also what is known from other sources of information that the endowment of monastic houses had practically ceased. Whittington, it is true, founded a college, but the chief duty of the Fellows was to sing masses daily and for ever for the repose of his own soul and that of his wife. I know nothing that shows the decay of the old belief in monks and friars more clearly than the list of fourteenth and fifteenth century benefactions and endowments. “Let us have libraries for scholars, and almshouses for the aged poor,” says Whittington, and endowed them. “Let us have schools,” says Sevenoke, Carpenter, and Byngham, and they endow them. But for the rich monks of the Holy Trinity, St. Mary of Grace, of St. Albans, of St. Peter’s—nothing.
Grove and Boulton.
THE PORCH OF THE CHURCH OF ST. ALPHAGE, LONDON WALL, FORMERLY THE CHAPEL OF THE PRIORY OF ELSINGE SPITAL
Henry could not afford to quarrel either with the Church or with the City. He passed the statute De comburendis haereticis and the Bishops began to light those baleful fires of Smithfield which, far more than wealth, far more than luxury, alienated the hearts of the people from the Church.
The first of London Martyrs was a priest of St. Osyth’s in the City. At the head of a narrow lane south of Cheapside called Size Lane—or St. Osyth’s Lane—is one of those tiny enclosures which in the City mark the site of a former church and churchyard, encroached upon by successive generations, surrounded by high walls, a melancholy reminder of the past. Here was the church of St. Osyth, and on this spot were preached the doctrines of Wyclyf by William Sautre. He was chosen as the first victim on account of his personal popularity. The greater the man, the more terrible would be the example. Already he had been tried and convicted of heresy. He was now tried and convicted as a relapsed heretic. He denied the doctrine of transubstantiation, which has always been the heretic’s stumbling-block. They burned him at Smithfield after a ceremony of degradation at St. Paul’s. Sharpe thinks that he was sentenced by special order of the King, because it took place before the passing of the Statute.
In the year 1410 was burnt a humble working man, a tailor—but the Chronicle and Stow call him a clerk—of Worcester, named John Bradby. The Prince of Wales, already a zealot in the cause of orthodoxy, was present. The poor wretch was placed in a cask surrounded with faggots. At the agonised shrieks of the wretched man, the Prince ordered him to be taken out, and offered him life and enough to live upon if he would confess the true faith. The man refused and was put back again into the cask. The story is thus related in the Chronicle:—
“This same yere there was a clerk that beleved nought on the sacrament of the auter, that is to seye Godes body, which was dampned and brought into Smythfield to be brent, and was bounde to a stake where he schulde be brent. And Henry, prynce of Walys, thanne the kynges eldest sone, consailed him for to as forsake his heresye, and holde the righte wey of holy chirche. And the prior of seynt Bertelmewes in Smythfield broughte the holy sacrament of Godes body, with xii torches lyght before, and in this wyse cam to this cursed heretyk: and it was asked hym how he beleved: and he ansuerde, that he belevyd well that it was halowed bred and nought Godes body: and thanne was the toune put over him, and fyre kindled thereinne: and whanne the wrecche felte the fyre he cried mercy: and annon the prynce comanded to take away the toune and to quench the fyre, the whiche was don anon at his comaundement: and thanne the prynce asked him if he would forsake his heresye and taken hym to the feith of holy chirche, whiche if he wold don, he schuld have hys lyf and good ynowe to lyven by: and the cursed schrewe wold nought, but contynued forth in his heresye: wherefore he was brent.”
Besides the weapon of the stake the King gave the clergy other help in suppressing heresy. He put a price upon the head of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, who was considered the leader of the Lollards. His importance is indicated by the huge rewards offered for his capture. Information which would lead to his arrest would be rewarded by 500 marks: actual arrest would be rewarded with a thousand marks: the city or borough which should take him should be forever free of all taxes, tallages, tenths, fifteenths, and other assessments. Conventicles were forbidden; and, to prevent the performance of heretical services, no one was allowed to enter a church after nine in the evening or before five in the morning.
In the year 1407 there occurred a pestilence in the City which carried off, Stow says, thirty thousand in London alone. Nothing, however, is said about it in Holinshed, or in the Chronicle.
In 1409 there was a great and noble tournament held between the Hainaulters and the English.
In order to gratify the richer part of the commonalty by keeping out the country, those who flocked into the towns and wanted to learn trades and be apprenticed, Henry passed a law forbidding any to be apprenticed who had not land to the extent of 20s. a year. The act was repealed, however, in the next reign.
Everything points to a condition of great prosperity in the City before the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses. After every restoration of order the prosperity of London goes up by leaps and bounds. Many important buildings were erected: the Guildhall was removed to its present site from its former site in Aldermanbury “and of an olde and lytel cottage, made unto a fayre and goodly house”: Leadenhall Market was built: the walls of the City were repaired and strengthened: the City Ditch was drained out
