Fleet Street in seven centuries : being a history of the growth of London beyond the walls into the Western Liberty, and of Fleet Street to our time / by Walter George Bell ; with a foreword by Sir William Purdie Treloar, Bt.
- Walter George Bell
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Fleet Street in seven centuries : being a history of the growth of London beyond the walls into the Western Liberty, and of Fleet Street to our time / by Walter George Bell ; with a foreword by Sir William Purdie Treloar, Bt. Source: Wellcome Collection.
659/712 page 583
![in a decree of court: “That the vicar hath a cure of above 1,000 house-dwelling people, and but a small portion to live upon, his curate’s wages, the said yearly pension, the tenths and charges being deducted.’’ The cure had, indeed, been pretty thoroughly stripped. Not only the payment hitherto made to the Abbot became profit to the King, but the Statute of Chantrys threw into the Royal hands a rich endowment that Roger de la Hay had, in the year 1413, given to the vicars for ever, that a priest should be perpetually kept within St. Dunstan's Church to pray for the souls of himself and of Christina, Johanna, and Alice, his wives.1 In fact, the prayers had long been abandoned, and the money used for repair of the church fabric. For all the vicar’s trouble and pleading, Edward held the seized chantry, only giving to the vicar as a right what he had hitherto enjoyed from the Abbot as a grace, namely, the reduction of the pension to £10 ; with this threat held over him, that should he molest the purchasers of the chantry lands, or their tenants, the full £18 and all arrears became payable. Elizabeth granted the pension to Edward Haughton and Thomas Smith, through whom it passed to the first Earl of Dorset. With it went the presentation to the church, Lord Dudley having earlier held the advowson by grant of Edward the Sixth. The vicarage had from early times possessed a parsonage house in Fleet Street. It faced the street adjoining the church, on land which extended back to Clifford’s Inn garden, a house then standing having been granted, under licence of King Edward the Third in the year 1362, to John de Brampton, parson of St. Dunstan's West, “ to hold to the said John and his successors parsons of the said church for the rector’s manse thereof, so that he and his successors celebrate Divine service in the said church for the health of the King and the grantors, and on the anniversary of the said David [David de Ravendale, one of the grantors] every year after his death, and for the souls of the faithful departed, distributing to the poor on that day five pence or the value thereof. The document is dated in “ the said church, and is attested by John Peeche, Mayor, and the Sheriffs of London. 2 The house fell into the hands of Henry the Eighth as part of the possessions of the Abbey of Alnwick. The next attempt seems to have been to strip the impoverished clergy¬ man of his parsonage ; for in Elizabeth’s reign Dr. White, who held the incumbency for forty-eight years, petitioned the Queen that he should not be able to live by the vicarage alone, if any other, by lease or otherwise, should take over his head the parsonage, and he asked that a grant of the parsonage house might be made to him without fine. There is a document signed by the great Lord Burghley, the 29th January, 1577, directing that Dr. White should have a grant of the parsonage for his lifetime without fine. After him the vicars continued to enjoy the parsonage (or its profits), for when in 1624 Dr. Donne leased the tithes, a proviso expressly excepted the vicarage and two adjoining houses. 1 Hustings Wills, ii, 406. 2 Close Roll, 36th Edward III, Cal., p. 420-21.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31366193_0659.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
