St. Giles in the Fields Church

St. Giles's Church, High-Street, St. Giles's,—on the S. side, about ⅕ of a mile on the L. from High Holborn towards Oxford-st.

St. Giles's in the Fields, the church of, is situated on the south side of the High-street, and receives its addition from the circumstance of being formerly in the Fields, to distinguish it from that of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. This parish was anciently a village of the same name, and its church is supposed to owe its origin to the chapel which belonged to the hospital founded about 1117, by Queen Matilda, consort of Henry I., for the reception of a certain number of leprous persons belonging to the city of London and the county of Middlesex. In 1354, Edward III. granted this hospital to the master and brethren of the order of Burton, St. Lazar, of Jerusalem, in Leicestershire, for certain considerations, for which it became a cell to that order, till the general dissolution of religious houses by Henry VIII., who, in 1545, granted it to Lord Dudley. Soon after this period the chapel or church was made parochial, and on the 20th of April 1547, William Rawlinson was instituted Rector.

The ancient church being very small, and much dilapidated, was taken down in 1623, and a church of brick was erected in its stead. This also became in its turn too small and inconvenient, when the inhabitants applied for an act of parliament to enable them to rebuild it; accordingly the old fabric was taken down in 1730, and the present very handsome edifice, designed by Gibbs, was erected and completed in 1733. This substantial church is built of Portland stone, its interior is seventy-five feet in length, exclusive of the recess for the altar, and sixty feet in width, and is divided into nave and aisles, by Portland stone columns of the Ionic order, which assist the main walls in carrying the roof. The tower and spire are also of Portland stone, and are 160 feet high to the vane.

A new entrance gateway, of great beauty, has been within these twenty years erected, from the designs of William Leverton, Esq., in which is introduced an ancient piece of sculpture, of more curiosity than beauty, representing the Last Judgment.

The church is a rectory, in the county and archdeaconry of Middlesex, in the diocese of London, and in the patronage of the Lord Chancellor. The present rector is the Rev. J.E. Tyler, who was instituted in 1826.

Giles (St.) in-the-Fields, at the east end of Oxford Street was originally a village separated from London and Westminster by broad fields, and its church was so designated to distinguish it from St. Giles, Cripplegate. In 1413 Sir John Oldcastle was charged by the Parliament with having 20,000 rebels "apud villam et parochiam Sancti Egidii extra Barram veteris Templi, London," and forming a great camp there.² It was on this account, perhaps, that five years afterwards St. Giles's field, instead of Smithfield, was selected for his place of execution. Later, when the fields had been encroached on and new streets formed, St. Giles, still in the fields, used to be spoken of as a town. Thus, in 1605, an Act was passed for paving Drury Lane and the Town of St. Giles. The preamble runs: "Whereas the Town of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and that part thereof which leadeth to Holborne, and the lane called Drury Lane, leading firom St. Giles-in-the-Fields towards the Strand and towards New Inn, is of late years, by occasion of the continual rode there, and of the carriages, become deep, foul, and dangerous to all that pass those ways."

The hospital chapel became the parochial church when the parish of St. Giles was formed, and the building remained until 1623, when it was demolished. In 1617 orders were given for building a steeple and buying new bells, but when the alterations were made it was found that some of the walls were so rotten and decayed as to be in danger of falling down, and in the end it was found necessary to pull the whole building down. The sum of £1065 : 9s. was subscribed by 415 householders.

The total number of souls in the parish at this period did not exceed, perhaps not reach, 2000. The subscriptions therefore upon an average exceeded 10s. 6d. for each parishioner, old and young, when 10s. 6d. was equal to 40s. of our money, an example of liberality and munificence rarely equalled.—Parton's Account of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.

Upwards of £450 were received from non-parishioners, and nearly £240 from various parishes of London in addition to that collected from the residents.

The new church was consecrated by Archbishop Laud, as he records in the History of his Troubles, on January 23, 1630–1631. It was built of rubbed brick, and defaced by the Puritans; the church-wardens' accounts exhibiting a payment of 4s. 6d. "to the painter, for washing the twelve apostles off the organ loft." The second Earl of Chesterfield (one of the De Grammont men) lived in Bloomsbury Square, and had a pew in this church, which (December 19, 1689) Lord Weymouth wrote to borrow from him for Lady Nottingham. His reply might have been envied by his grandson:—

As to what your Lordship mentions concerning the Lady Nottingham's desire of having my pew in St. Giles, your Lordship may assure her Ladyship that it is absolutely at her devotion, and that I shall afterward think it the more sanctified by her Ladyship's using it. I doe not know whither I may presume to covenant with her Ladyship for saying one little prayer for me every time she is there, because I believe that her petitions are always granted.—Chesterfield Letters, p. 360.

The incumbent at this time was John Sharp, afterwards Archbishop of York; "a man of learning and fervent piety, a preacher of great fame, and an exemplary parish priest."¹ From this pulpit he preached a sermon against Popery which gave the direst offence to James II., and led to the establishment of the High Commission Court with Judge Jeffreys at the head of it.

The present church is a substantial structure of Portland stone, and comprises chancel with altar recess, nave with aisles divided from it by columns of the Ionic order (65 feet long by 60 feet wide), and a stone tower and spire 165 feet high to the vane. The building was commenced in 1731, after articles of agreement had been entered into with Henry Flitcroft, the architect, who contracted to take down the old church and build a new one on the same ground before the end of 1733. It was preached in for the first time on April 14, 1734. In St. Giles the architect has followed too closely Gibbs's church of St Martin's. The cost of the church was partly defrayed out of the fund provided for building the fifty new churches, a mode of appropriating the fund which was very strongly and properly objected to at the time. Parliament was petitioned for this purpose, and the petition of the parish was strenuously supported by the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, and other eminent parishioners, to whom the thanks of the parish were voted. It was opposed by Dawes, Archbishop of York, and five bishops with eleven temporal peers, who protested on five grounds, the chief one being that it was a bad precedent to rebuild old churches out of a fund appropriated for building new ones.

Eminent Persons buried in.—George Chapman, the translator of Homer (d. 1634): Inigo Jones erected an upright oblong tomb to his memory, at his own expense, still to be seen in the churchyard, against the south wall of the church; the monument part alone is old; the inscription is a copy of all that remained visible. The celebrated Lord Herbert of Cherbury (d.1648). James Shirley, the dramatist, and his wife, buried in the same grave on October 29, 1666. [See Fleet Street] Richard Penderell, "preserver and conduct to his sacred Majesty King Charles II., after his escape from Worcester fight" (d. 1671); there is an altar tomb to his memory in the churchyard. Andrew Marvell (died 1678).

Ten years afterwards, vizt., in 1688, the town of Kingston upon Hull, to testify her faithful remembrance of his honest services to her, collected a sum of money to erect a monument to his memory in the place of his burial in the above church, and procured an able hand to compose an Epitaph; but the parson of the parish would not permit the monument or inscription to be placed there.—Biog. Brit. p. 3057 (where the Epitaph is given).
     He lies interred under y^e Pews in y^e South side of St. Giles' Church in y^e Fields, under the window wherin is painted in glasse a red lyon (it was given by the innholder of the Red Lion Inn in Holborn) and is y^e —— window from the east.—This account I had from the sexton that made his grave.—Aubrey, Letters by Eminent Persons, vol. iii. p. 438.

Thompson, the editor of Marvell's works, searched in vain, in 1774, for his coffin; he could find no plate of an earlier date than 1722. Oliver Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh, executed at Tyburn in 1681 (his body afterwards removed to Landsprug, in Germany). Major Michael Mohun, the celebrated actor (d. 1684). The profligate Countess of Shrewsbury, of whom Walpole reports the almost incredible anecdote of her having in the costume of a page held the horse of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, while the duke killed her husband in a duel (d. 1702). John Browne, dramatist (d. 1703 or later). Sir Roger L'Estrange, the celebrated political writer (d. 1704).

The only monument of interest at present in the church is a recumbent figure of the Duchess Dudley, created a duchess in her own right by King Charles I. (d. 1669). This monument was preserved when the church was rebuilt, as a piece of parochial gratitude to one whose benefactions to the parish had been both frequent and liberal. The duchess is buried at Stoneleigh, in Warwickshire.

Over the street entrance to the churchyard is the Lich Gate, or Resurrection Gate, containing a bas-relief of the Day of Judgment, set up on the gate of the old church in 1687. The old gate was "of red and brown brick;" the present one, of stone, was erected about 1804, W. Leverton, architect. It was removed for street improvements in 1864–1865.

The church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields has been twice robbed of its communion-plate—in 1675 and 1804; yet the parish (famous for its Rookery, and long the abode of wretchedness, so that St. Giles has become synonymous for squalor and dirt) could show its pound, its cage, its round-house and watch-house, its stocks, its whipping-post, and at one time its gallows.

Adjoining the old church of St. Pancras is a burial-ground appertaining to the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, but now united to the adjoining burial-ground of St. Pancras, and converted into a garden open to the public. The chapel was built and the ground laid out in 1804. Here, distinguished by an altar or table-tomb of brick, surmounted by a thick slab of Portland stone, are the graves of John Flaxman, the sculptor, his wife and sister. Here also is the tomb of Sir John Soane, architect of the Bank of England.

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² Foxe, vol. iii. p. 369.

¹ Macaulay's History of England, chap. vi.