Augustin Friars

Augustin Friars

In Broad Street Ward, on the west side of Old Broad Street.

A priory of Augustinian Friars founded by Humfrey Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex 1253, enlarged 1334, rebuilt 1354 (S. 178) (Cal. P.R. 8 Ed. III. 1334–8, p. 31).

The church consisted of a choir, with north and south aisles, chapels of St. John and St. Thomas, transepts, and nave of two aisles. It had a fine spired steeple, small, high and straight (S. 178). Destroyed 1362 and rebuilt.

At the dissolution of the monasteries the great mansion within the close, with hall, cloyster, etc., was given in 1539 by the King to Sir Richard Ryche (L. and P. H. VIII. XIV. (1), p. 588) and other parts, viz. the church, etc., were given to William Poulett, lord Seynt John, who built a large house called Powlet House, or Winchester House, within the precinct and walls of the Priory 1539 (ib. p. 421).

The west end of the church was enclosed from the steeple and choir and in 1550 granted to the Dutch nation in London (S. 177). It is 153 ft. long and 85 ft. wide.

The steeple and east end were pulled down between 1603 and 1618, in spite of the remonstrances of the Mayor and Aldermen, who described it as one of the beautifullest and rarest spectacles of the City (Strype, ed. 1720, I. ii. 114).

All but the outer walls and columns of the existing church dividing the nave and the aisles were destroyed by fire in 1862, and after this fire it was proposed to pull down the church and erect a chapel on its site. But the determined opposition of the trustees supported by Gilbert Scott to this act of vandalism prevented the destruction of these noble remains, one of the few relics of 14th or 15th century work left in the City.

Gilbert Scott described the building as a noble model of a preaching nave, for which purpose he considers that it was specially designed, being of great size and openness, upwards of 150 ft. by 80 ft. internally, supported by light and lofty pillars sustaining 18 arches. The style is Early Perpendicular.

The church was accordingly restored in 1863–5 under the direction of the architects l'Anson and Lightly.

There is a good account of the church in the Trans. L. and M. Arch. Soc. II. i.

There was a fraternity of the Holy Blood of Wilsnak in Saxony in the Church of the Friars in 1490, and the ordinances of the brotherhood are set out in Trans. L. and M. Arch. Soc. IV. p. 47.

A 14th-century archway and wall have been discovered in the wall of a house standing north side of the nave. Perhaps a portion of the Priory cloisters (M. and H. Notes and Q. VI. p. 69).

The site of the monastery is now occupied by Austin Friars, Great Winchester Street, Little Winchester Street, Austin Friars Passage, the Dutch Church, etc. (q.v.).

See Winchester Place.

Austin Friars, near Broad street, was a priory founded for the Friars Eremites, of the order of St. Augustine, in the year 1253, by Humphry Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex. The Friars of this priory were Mendicants, and continued in the possession of this place till its dissolution by King Henry VIII. since which time the greatest part has been pulled down, and many handsome houses built; but a part of the old church belonging to the priory is still standing. [see Dutch Church]

Austin Friars, Old Broad Street, Broad Street Ward, the house of the Augustine Friars, founded by Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, in the year 1253. Henry VIII., at the Dissolution, bestowed the house and grounds on William Paulet, first Marquis of Winchester, who transformed his new acquisition into a town residence for himself, called, while it continued in his family, by the name of Paulet House and Winchester House (hence Winchester Street adjoining). The church, reserved by the King, was granted by his son "to the Dutch nation in London, to be their preaching place," the "Dutch nation" being the refugees who fled out of the Netherlands, France, "and other parts beyond seas, from Papist persecutors." Edward VI. records the circumstance in his Diary:—

June 29, 1550.—It was appointed that the Germans should have the Austin Friars for their church, to have their service in, for avoiding of all sects of AnaBaptists, and such like.

The grant was confirmed by several successive sovereigns, and is enjoyed by the Dutch to this day. Originally the church was cruciform, had choir, chapels, and "a most fine spired steeple, small, high, and straight." Stow, who tells us this, adds, "I have not seen the like." But the church was then in a bad state, the steeple especially. The Mayor and Corporation "drew up a large letter," August 4, 1600, to the Marquis of Winchester, "in the most pathetic words and moving arguments, exciting him to go in hand with the work" of repairing the steeple, the fall of which, they say, "must needs bring with it not only a great deformity to the whole City, it being for architecture one of the beautifullest and rarest spectacles thereof; but also a fearful eminent danger to all the inhabitants next adjoining." But instead of repairing, the Marquis pulled down the spire and demolished the choir and transepts, leaving only to the Dutch congregation the nave of the old church. This, which Sir Gilbert Scott affirms is "a perfect model of what is most practically useful in the nave of a church," continued to be so used till November 1862, when all but the outer walls and the columns dividing the nave and aisles was destroyed in an accidental fire. The church was carefully and thoroughly restored (1863–1865), at a cost of &pound12,000, under the direction of Messrs. Edward l'Anson and William Lightly, architects, and is now in a more satisfactory condition than it has been since its threatened demolition in 1600.

For nearly three centuries the Austin Friars was a favourite burial place for the greatest nobles and the wealthiest citizens. Strype (Survey, B. ii. p. 115) names many distinguished personages; but a longer enumeration is preserved in Harl. MS., 6003, and in No. 544 of the same collection. John Vere, Earl of Oxford, beheaded 1643, and others who suffered on Tower Hill, and "many of the barons slain at Barnet Field, 1471," were buried there. A volume containing the marriage, baptismal, and burial registers from 1571 to 1874, edited by W.J.C. Moens, was privately printed and issued to subscribers in 1885. The church contains some very good decorated windows, restorations, or rather careful copies, of the originals. The interior is 150 feet long, divided into nine bays. The extreme width is 79 feet 7 inches, the nave being 34 feet 11 inches between centres of the shafts, and each side 22 feet 4 inches. The inner walls are of hard chalk, the exterior of Kentish rag. The fittings are of course arranged in accordance with the practice of the Dutch Church.

On the west end over the skreen is a fair library, inscribed thus: "Ecclesiæ Londino-Belgicæ Bibliotheca, extructa sumptibus Mariæ Dubois, 1659." In this library are divers valuable MSS., and Letters of Calvin, Peter Martyr, and others, foreign Reformers.—Strype, B. ii. p. 116.

Happily this collection of books was saved from the Fire, and shortly after was presented by the congregation to the City, and deposited in the Guildhall Library.

Lord Winchester died in 1571, and was succeeded by his son, who sold "the monuments of noblemen, buried there, for &pound100 made fair stabling for horses, in place thereof, and sold the lead from the roofs and laid it anew with tile."¹ In 1602 the necessities of the fourth Marquis of Winchester were such, that he was compelled to part with his house and property in Austin Friars to John Swinnerton, a merchant, afterwards Lord Mayor. Sir Philip Sidney's friend, Fulke Greville, then an inhabitant of Austin Friars, communicates his alarm about the purchase to the Countess of Shrewsbury, another tenant of the Marquis of Winchester, in that quarter:—

Since my return from Plymouth, I understand my Lord Marquis hath offered his house for sale, and there is one Swinnerton, a merchant, that hath engaged himself to deal for it. The price, as I hear, is £5000, his offer &pound4500 so as the one's need, and the other's desire, I doubt will easily reconcile this difference of price between them. In the mean season I thought it my duty to give your ladyship notice, because both your house and my lady of Warwick's are included in this bargain; and we, your poor neighbours, would think our dwellings desolate without you, and conceive your ladyship would not willingly become a tenant to such a fellow.—Letter, September 23, 1602 (Lodge's Illus., 8vo ed., vol. ii. p. 580.

In 1612 a petition was presented to the Lord Treasurer from the "Dutch Church in London, called the Austin Friars, or Jesus Temple," begging "that the tenure of the land which they have bought of the Marquis of Winchester for a churchyard may be changed into free soccage, it being now held in capite."² Lady Anne Clifford (Ann Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery) was married to the Earl of Dorset in her mother's chambers in Austin Friars House, February 25, 1608–1609.³ Erasmus, during one of his visits to London (1513), lodged in Austin Friars, and took his meals in the Convent. Malt liquor did not agree with him, and he complains of the difficulty of procuring good wine.⁴ Sir Thomas Wentworth (Lord Strafford) writes to Lord Darcy from Austin Friars, January 9, 1621: Dr. Mead gave up his house in Crutched Friars in 1711, and removed to Austin Friars. Here (1735) Richard Gough, the antiquary, was born; and here, at No. 18, lived James Smith, one of the authors of the Rejected Addresses. A second James Smith coming to the place after he had been many years a resident, produced so much confusion to both, that the last comer waited on the author and suggested, to prevent future inconvenience, that one or other had better leave, hinting at the same time, that he should like to stay. "No," said the wit, "I am James the First; you are James the Second; you must abdicate." One of the last of the remaining old houses in Austin Friars was demolished in the spring of 1888. [See Drapers' Hall and Gardens.]

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¹ Stow, p. 67.
² Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1611–1618, p. 133.
³ Birch's Prince Henry, p. 140.
⁴ Johnson's Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 42.