OLD JEWRY, ST. LAWRENCE CHURCH, MANSION HOUSE, LONDON STONE, &c. OLD JEWRY, THE ORIGINAL BURIAL PLACE OF THE JEWS.-EXPULSION OF THE JEWS.-DR. LAMBE AND THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.-ST. OLAVE'S CHURCH.-ST. LAWRENCE JEWRY.-ST. THOMAS OF ACON.-GILBERT A BECKET.-MERCERS' COMPANY.-THE POULTRY.-MANSION HOUSE.-STOCKS MARKET.SIR JOHN CUTLER.-BUCKLERSBURY.-INDIAN HOUSES.-ST. STEPHEN'S WALBROOK. -LONDON STONE. PRIOR OF TORTINGTON'S "INNE." the west of Lothbury is the Old Jewry, so intimately associated with the persecution of the Jews in England during the reign of our Norman sovereigns. Previously to the reign of Henry the First, the only burialplace which the bigotry of our ancestors permitted to the Jews in England was in London, whither, in the words of Holinshed, they were "constrained to bring all their dead corpses from all parts of the realm." It was not till the year 1117, that they "obtained from King Henry a grant to have a place assigned them, in every quarter where they dwelled, to bury their dead bodies."* In the Old Jewry was their great synagogue, and in this quarter they continued to increase and multiply till 1283, when John Perkham, Archbishop of Canterbury, commanded the Bishop of London to destroy all the Jews' synagogues in the metropolis. Seven years afterwards, Edward the First, on his return from France, issued his famous edict which drove the * Holinshed's "Chronicles," vol. ii., p. 175. VOL. II. 24 Jews from the kingdom. The number thus expelled is said to have been fifteen thousand and sixty. Whether rightfully or wrongfully, they were accused, not only of having practised usury to a ruinous extent, but also of having adulterated the coin of the realm. Suddenly, then, their persons were seized in every part of England; their property was confiscated, and a moiety of it only bestowed on those who consented to embrace Christianity. To the honour of the Jews be it spoken, that, notwithstanding the temptation of retaining possession of their darling gold, only a few were to be found who consented to purchase their lives, and all that makes life palatable, at the expense of their conscience. Two hundred and eighty were hanged in London alone. The remainder, after having been stripped of their possessions, were driven forth to seek asylums in other countries. It was not till the seventeenth century that the Jews again appeared in any numbers in England. The "Jewerie," as it was styled, appears to have extended along both sides of what is now Gresham Street, from St. Lawrence Lane and the church of St. Lawrence on the west, to Basinghall Street and the Old Jewry on the east, and southward between the Old Jewry and Ironmonger Lane as far as Church Court. The detestation in which, in the olden time, the Jews were held by the common people of England, led to more than one furious attack on their colony in the "Jewerie." In 1262, a quarrel having taken place in one of the neighbouring churches between a Christian and a Jew, in which the Christian was mortally wounded, the Jew flew for refuge to his own people, but, having been overtaken by the neighbours of the deceased, was summarily put to death. Not satisfied, however, with this act of revenge, the infuriated mob poured into the "Jewerie,” and indiscriminately pillaged and slew every Jew whom they met. In 1264, a Jew having been convicted of exacting usurious interest from a Christian, another irruption took place into their colony, when their synagogue and other valuable property were destroyed. But the Old Jewry has other interesting associations besides its connection with the Jews. Here, in the fifteenth century, the unfortunate Henry the Sixth had a mansion, which he styled his "principal palace in the Old Jewry.” It was a large stone building, commonly called the Old Wardrobe, and when Stow wrote had only recently been demolished. Tradition informs us that at the corner of Old Jewry and Cheapside stood the house in which Thomas à Becket first saw the light. Here too it was that the infamous Dr. Lambe was beaten and trampled to death by an exasperated mob. This aged and disreputable mountebank, who united in his own person the professions of a physician, a caster of nativities, and a fortune-teller, had been guilty of a long catalogue of crimes. In 1607, he had been found guilty of sorcery and witchcraft, practised on the body of Thomas Lord Windsor, and, agreeably with the terms of his sentence, was undergoing imprisonment in the King's Bench Prison, when he committed a still more serious offence, in which a little girl of eleven years of age was his victim. For this latter crime he was sentenced to death, but in consequence of his possessing some secret and powerful influence at court, which the world attributed to the unpopular favourite, the first George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, he obtained a pardon. His death took place in the manner we have stated, on the 13th of June, 1628. Not that the mob troubled themselves much about his vices or his crimes: his chief offence in their eyes being his connection with the detested Buckingham. Yet, though men spoke of him as the "Duke's 372 ST. OLAVE'S OLD JEWRY. devil," it may be questioned whether Buckingham ever even set his eyes on the wretched mountebank. Carte, for instance, affirms that they never met, and Carte's assertion is in a great degree borne out by a fact which not long since came to light, that Lambe was at one time actually engaged in a conspiracy against the Duke's life.* At all events Lambe owed his fearful death to the current belief of his intimacy with Buckingham. Almost at the last gasp, he was rescued by the authorities from the hands of the infuriated populace and carried into the adjoining Compter in the Poultry, but he survived only till the following day. It was certainly a remarkable coincidence, as noticed by Lord Clarendon among other "predictions and prophecies,” that Dr. Lambe should have correctly foretold both the time of his own death, and that of Buckingham. It was another striking coincidence, that on the day on which Lambe was torn to pieces by the mob, Buckingham's picture fell down in the High Commission Chamber at Lambeth; an incident, which, in a superstitious age, was eagerly hailed as a prognostic of his fall. On the west side of the Old Jewry stands St. Olave's Church, another of Sir Christopher Wren's structures erected shortly after the destruction of the old church by the fire of London. Stow records the names of several persons who were buried in this church between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, but whose monuments no longer exist. Among them may be mentioned a monument to Giles Dewes, servant to Henry the Seventh and Henry the Eighth, who died in 1535. His epitaph recorded that he was "clerk of their libraries, and schoolmaster for the French tongue" to Arthur Prince of Wales and his sister Mary, afterwards Queen of France. Robert Large, mercer and citizen, the * See Bishop Goodman's "Memoirs," vol. ii., p. 377. ST. LAWRENCE JEWRY. 373 master of Caxton, was also buried in this church. The only monument of any interest which is now to be seen in the church, is that of Alderman Boydell the eminent engraver. On the east side of the Old Jewry stood, in the reign of Charles the Second, the magnificent mansion of Sir Robert Clayton. Dr. James Foster, whose name has been immortalized by Pope, was for many years a preacher in the Old Jewry :— "Let modest Foster, if he will, excel Ten Metropolitans in preaching well." Professor Porson died in the Old Jewry in 1808, in the apartments which he occupied as Librarian of the London Institution. Close to the Old Jewry is the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, dedicated to St. Lawrence, who, during the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, is said to have suffered martyrdom by being extended on a gridiron and burnt to death. The church, notwithstanding its simplicity of style, is allowed to be one of the chastest and most beautiful of Wren's structures. It appears to have been originally founded about the year 1293, shortly after the expulsion of the Jews from this district. The old church having been destroyed by the fire of London, the present building was erected in 1671. The façade, at the east end in King Street, has been greatly admired. The appearance of the interior, also, with its Corinthian columns, its decorated ceiling, and its finely ornamented doorways and pulpit of polished oak, is extremely rich and pleasing. The vestry is perhaps the handsomest in London. The ceiling, containing a painting by Sir James Thornhill, representing St. Lawrence being received into heaven after his martyrdom, is richly stuccoed, and the walls are completely panelled with fine old oak. |