The name Black Friars refers to the Dominican Order of Preachers, who wore a black habit. They first arrived in London in 1221 and founded a monastery in Chancery Lane.
Today it's full of modern office blocks and is a stop for river bus services.
But in the 17th century it was a much different place.
In 1623, 95 people were killed when the floor of a temporary chapel collapsed.
John Strype and Walter Thornbury tell us more about this disaster
In 1623 ninety-five people perished when the floor of a temporary chapel in the Blackfriars district collapsed. Two of our antiquaries, John Strype and Walter Thornbury, have left us vivid descriptions of the event. These differ in both the detail and, particularly, in the style. One was a Divine, the other a Journalist. For these reasons it is informative to compare them. In our introduction we take the opportunity to paint a broad historical backdrop to the tragedy, and to introduce our two authors.
The authors
John Strype (1643- 1737) was an English historian and biographer.His father, also John, was a member of a Huguenot family who, in order to escape religious persecution within Brabant, had settled in East London. He was a merchant and silk throwster. The younger John was educated at St Paul's School, and Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1674 he was licensed by the Bishop of London to preach and expound the word of God, and to perform the office of priest and curate of Leyton while it was vacant, and until his death he received the profits of it. He produced "An Accurate Edition of Stow's Survey of London" in 1720, and which he updated, but in it he also took some unjustifed and substantial liberties with the original text.
Walter Thornbury (1828- 1876) was the son of a London solicitor and a journalist by profession. he was a prolific writer of verse, novels, art criticism and popular historical and topographical sketches. He began his career in 1845 with contributions to Bristol Journal, but wrote later mainly for the Athenaeum. He contributed the first two volumes (1873-74) to the impressive and hugely popular six-volume historical guide "Old and New London" He is said to have died in the lunatic asylum, Bethlem Royal Hospital, (the origin of the word 'Bedlam') and now the Imperial War Museum.
Part 1, by Walter Thornbury
Blackfriars
The name Black Friars refers to the Dominican Order of Preachers, who wore a black habit. They first arrived in London in 1221 and founded a monastery in Chancery Lane. In 1278 they were granted a large parcel of land south of Ludgate Hill and west of Baynard's Castle. This had belonged to the recently persecuted, and dissolved, Order of Templars. The property was bounded on the west by the Fleet river, and on the south by the Thames. Through it ran part of the old Roman City Wall, stretching from Ludgate to the Thames.
On taking possession, the Friars asked for, and received, royal permission to demolish the Roman wall and enclose their entire property with a new wall.
This extended west from Ludgate to the Fleet and thence south to the Thames. It therefore enclosed all the land which had been granted to the Friars. The wall was long in building (there were problems with stability of the foundations along the Fleet), and was not finally completed until 1320. Edward II made many murage grants to pay for the work, and himself had a tower for his private use erected at the confluence of Fleet and Thames. Many of the stones used in its construction came from the ruins of the old Roman wall but also from Normandy and Kent.
The Blackfriars was a rich House and became an important venue for State events. A number of parliaments and trials were held here. In 1382, the convocation of Archbishop and Bishops to decide whether the works of Wycliffe were heretical gathered here but their deliberations were interrupted by a massive earthquake. In the end, they could not decide whether God had caused the earthquake to tell them that Wycliffe was indeed a heretic, or whether they would be wrong to judge that his works were heretical. They finally fudged and referred the matter back to the King (Richard II).It was much used by Henry VIII. In 1522 it was used to house the visiting Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Henry linked it to his new palace of Bridewell on the west bank of the Fleet by a covered bridge. In 1529 the inquiry by Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio, the Papal Legate, into Henry's appeal for divorce from Katherine of Aragon was also held here in May. The Papal Legate refused to grant the divorce and the following October the trial and condemnation of Wolsey himself took place in the same place.
The failure of the divorce proceedings led not only to the downfall of Wolsey, but also to the dissolution of the monasteries, including Blackfriars, when Henry broke with Rome. Blackfriars was suppressed on November 12th 1538.
The King's assessors valued it at £104.15s.5d. (about £42,952.50 in today's money). All the plate and valuables were taken off to the King's Jewel House and the property was granted to Sir Thomas Carwarden, Keeper of the Royal Tents and Master of Revels. Most of the buildings, including the church, were demolished and the materials used to build new townhouses for noblemen and gentlemen. It became a fashionable area.
One of the friary buildings not demolished was the Frater (the dining hall) on the southern edge of the complex. In 1578 the upper floor was turned into the Blackfriars Playhouse, the first indoor theatre in London. The performers here were the choristers of the Chapel Royal, under the direction of Richard Farrant, who lived with his family on the ground floor. Farrant died in 1580 and the theatre outlived him by only four years. In 1596 it was bought and refurbished by James Burbage. It opened in 1597, under his son Richard Burbage, as a full-blown indoor theatre. From then, until it was closed by the Puritans in 1642, it served as a winter alternative to the open-air Globe on the marshy and muddy Bankside. It was demolished in 1655.
Sanctuary
One of the most important possessions of all religious houses in mediaeval and early modern Europe was that of Sanctuary. Originally, it meant that anyone accused of a crime by the State could escape summary justice by taking "sanctuary" in a church and claim a fair hearing before the proper authorities. In time, in Britain, it evolved into the idea and actuality of "The Liberties" associated with a religious establishment. These were areas where the secular authorities were forbidden to enter and which, in time, became refuges for the criminal classes. The most notorious in London was "The Sanctuary" on the north side of Westminster Abbey.
Despite the abuses, the religious authorities defended these rights vigorously. One reason was the right of an accused cleric to be tried under Church, rather than Secular, Law. Church law was notably more lenient – it did not include the death penalty, for example, because no man, or mortal power, had the right to take another's life. Even the Spanish Inquisition and the Witchfinders of 17th century England handed condemned heretics over the secular powers for conviction and execution, for they had no power to impose the death penalty themslves.
To the great frustration of the secular powers, this leniency gave rise to the plea of "Right of Clergy." In the mediaeval and early modern periods, the only poeople capable of writing, of writing even their own names, were clerics. Therefore, if a person could write his name, the presumption must be that he was a cleric, and subject to ecclestiastical, instead of secular law. This was an abuse much used. But it was defended vigourously and enforced with the threat of eternal damnation. To forcibly remove anyone from "Sanctuary" was a sacrilege, and the perpretator was damned to everlasting torment in Hell. Everyone, from the Monarch down to the lowliest thief, believed in the reality of this damnation.
In the case of Blackfriars, the privileges enjoyed by the occupants of the Blackfriars Liberties included a freedom from Watch and Ward and all duties and taxes imposed by the City of London in the form of the Mayor and Court of Aldermen. For this reason, it became a favourite haunt of itinerant artisans (masons, carpenters, feather-workers, actors, artists etc.) who were not allowed to dwell within the city limits.
On the Dissolution of Monasteries the Mayor and Aldermen sought to abolish the Liberties of Blackfriars and include the precinct within the jurisdiction of the City. Henry VIII peremptorily refused as did the Council of Edward VI. The issue came to a head in the reign of Elizabeth with a full-blown clash between the City and the Crown. The case was argued before the Chief Justices with evidence of rights and precedence being presented on both sides. The argument was clearly won by the Queen's Counsel, and the Liberties remained in "the Queen's Verge." The Liberties remained free from the City jurisdiction until 1750.
In the two accounts of the 1623 disaster there are passing references to the "stealth" and "secrecy" of the Catholic Vespers. There were in force, in the England of the time, stringent anti-Catholic laws, and, of all the Catholic religious orders, the Jesuits were the most virulently hated by the puritan/protestant majority.
There is still, in Britain today, a vestige of this anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit prejudice, which became part of the National Psyche with the "Glorious Revolution" at the end of the 17th century. At the state level, no Catholic can become monarch or the monarch's spouse, nor can a Catholic become Prime Minister, which is why Tony Blair had to wait until after his retirement to formally join the Church of his wife and children. At the level of the 'Man-in-the-street' it can be heard in daily conversation, or read in the editorials or on-line comment pages of national newspapers, such as the Times, Telegraph and Guardian. Even the plain goodness of the man, his pivotal role, along with Thatcher and Reagan, in bringing about the fall of Communism, and his stoical and public bearing of a long and painful death did not spare the late Pope, John Paul II, from snide snipings across the entire spectrum of the British Press. He was "The Pope," and that was enough for coluumns of hate. Plus ça Change in Britain).
The Accession of James I in 1603 had been a grave disappointment to Catholics. They had hoped for a restoration of their religious freedoms and civil rights, but these never materialised. The Gunpowder Plot in 1605 had been an expression of this frustration and disappointment. That poor, failed, amateur plot served only to entrench anti-Catholic feeling in the Protestant and, growing, Puritan factions.
It is against this background of persecution that both the location and number of worshippers at the religious ceremony is to be understood. It was held in the Liberties of Blackfriars because it was safe. There was no freedom to preach Catholicism outside, and it was certainly not safe for a Jesuit priest to go abroad on the streets of London. There was toleration, of sorts, of the celebration of Mass, but Jesuitical preaching was a dangerous proceeding.
Hence also, the large number of people who attended the ceremony. It was, perhaps, their only chance to hear a gifted and, as many, not only Catholics, thought, Holy, preacher
Part 2, by John Strype
In 1623 Blackfriars was the scene of a most fatal and extraordinary accident. It occurred in the chief house of the Friary, then a district declining fast in respectability. Hunsdon House derived its name from Queen Elizabeth's favourite cousin, the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, and was at the time occupied by Count de Tinier, the French ambassador.
About three o'clock on Sunday, October 26th, a large Roman Catholic congregation of about three hundred persons, worshipping to a certain degree in stealth, not without fear from the Puritan feathermakers of the theatrical neighbourhood, had assembled in a long garret on the third and uppermost storey. Master Drury, a Jesuit preacher of celebrity, had drawn together this crowd of timid people. The garret, looking over the gateway, was approached by a passage having a door opening into the street, and also by a corridor from the ambassador's withdrawing-room.
The garret was about seventeen feet wide and forty feet long, with a vestry for a priest partitioned off at one end. In the middle of the garret, and near the wall, stood a raised table and chair for the preacher. The gentry sat on chairs and stools facing the pulpit, the rest stood behind, crowding as far as the head of the stairs. At the appointed hour Master Drury, the priest, came from the inner room in white robe and scarlet stole, an attendant carrying a book and an hour-glass, by which to measure his sermon. He knelt down at the chair for about an Ave Maria, but uttered no audible prayer. He then took the Jesuits' Testament, and read for the text the Gospel for the day, which was, accordingto the Gregorian Calendar, the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost:-
"Therefore is the kingdom of heaven like unto a man being a king that would make an account of his servants. And when he began to make account there was one presented unto him that owed him ten thousand talents.”
Having read the text, the Jesuit preacher sat down, and putting on his head a red quilt cap, with a white linen one beneath it, commenced his sermon. He had spoken for about half an hour when the calamity happened. The great weight of the crowd in the old room suddenly snapped the main summer beam of the floor, which instantly crashed in and fell into the room below. The main beams there also snapped and broke through to the ambassador's drawing-room over the gate-house, a distance of twenty-two feet. Only a part, however, of the gallery floor, immediately over Father Rudgate's chamber, a small room used for secret mass, gave way. The rest of the floor, being less crowded, stood firm, and the people on it, having no other means of escape, drew their knives and cut a way through a plaster wall into a neighbouring room.
A contemporary pamphleteer, who visited the ruins and wrote fresh from the first outburst of sympathy, says:
"What ear without tingling can bear the doleful and confused cries of such a troop of men, women, and children, all falling suddenly in the same pit, and apprehending with one horror the same ruin? What eye can behold without inundation of tears such a spectacle of men overwhelmed with breaches of mighty timber, buried in rubbish and smothered with dust? What heart without evaporating in sighs can ponder the burden of deepest sorrows and lamentations of parents, children, husbands, wives, kinsmen, friends, for their dearest pledges and chiefest comforts? This world all bereft and swept away with one blast of the same dismal tempest."
The news of the accident fast echoing through London, Serjeant Finch, the Recorder, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen at once provided for the safety of the ambassador's family, who were naturally shaking in their shoes, and shutting up the gates to keep off the curious and thievish crowd, set guards at all the Blackfriars passages. Workmen were employed to remove the debris and rescue the sufferers who were still alive.
The pamphleteer, again rousing himself to the occasion, and turning on his tears, says:-
"At the opening hereof what a chaos! what fearful objects! what lamentable representations! Here some buried, some dismembered, some only parts of men; here some wounded and weltering in their own and others' blood; others putting forth their fainting hands and crying out for help. Here some gasping and panting for breath; others stifled for want of air. So the most of them being thus covered with dust, their death was a kind of burial."
All that night and part of the next day the workmen spent in removing the bodies, and the inquest was then held. It was found that the main beams were only ten inches square, and had two mortise-holes, where the girders were inserted, facing each other, so that only three inches of solid timber were left. The main beam of the lower room, about thirteen inches square, without mortise-holes, broke obliquely near the end. No wall gave way, and the roof and ceiling of the garret remained entire.
Father Drury perished, as did also Father Rudgate, who was in his own apartment, underneath. Lady Webb, of Southwark, Lady Blackstone's daughter, from Scroope's Court, Mr. Fowell, a Warwickshire gentleman, and many tradesmen, servants, and artisans-ninety-five in all-perished.
Some of the escapes seemed almost miraculous. Mistress Lucid Penruddock fell between Lady Webb and a servant, who were both killed, yet was saved by her chair falling over her head. Lady Webb's daughter was found alive near her dead mother, and a girl named Elizabeth Sanders was also saved by the dead who fell and covered her. A Protestant scholar, though one of the very undermost, escaped by the timbers arching over him and some of them slanting against the wall. He tore a way out through the laths of the ceiling by main strength, then crept between two joists to a hole where he saw light, and was drawn through a door by one of the ambassador's family. He at once returned to rescue others.
There was a girl of ten who cried to him,
"Oh, my mother!-oh, my sister! They are down under the timber."
He told her to be patient, and by God's grace they would be quickly got forth. The child replied,
"This will be a great scandal to our religion."
One of the men that fell said to a fellow-sufferer,
"Oh, what advantage our adversaries will take at this!"
The other replied,
"If it be God's will this should befall us, what can we say to it?"
One gentleman was saved by keeping near the stairs, while his friend, who had pushed near the pulpit, perished.
Many of those who were saved died in a few hours after their extrication. The bodies of Lady Webb, Mistress Udall, and Lady Blackstone's daughter, were carried to Ely House, Holborn, and there buried under the chapel. In the fore courtyard, by the French ambassador's house, a huge grave, eighteen feet long and twelve feet broad, was dug, and forty-four corpses piled within it. In another pit, twelve feet long and eight feet broad, in the ambassador's garden, were buried fifteen more. Others were interred in St. Andrew's, St. Bride's, and Blackfriars churches.
The list of the killed and wounded is curious, from its topographical allusions.
Amongst other entries, we find "John Halifax, a water-bearer" (in the old times of street conduits the water-bearer was an important person); "a son of Mr. Flood, the scrivener, in Holborn; a man of Sir Ives Pemberton; Thomas Brisket, his wife, son, and maid, in Montague Close; Richard Fitzgarret, of Gray's Inn, gentleman; Davie, an Irishman, in Angell Alley, Gray's Inn, gentleman; Sarah Watson, daughter of Master Watson, chirurgeon; Master Grimes, near the 'Horse Shoe' tavern, in Drury Lane John Bevan, at the ' Seven Stars', in Drury Lane; Francis Man, Thieving Lane, Westminster," etc.
As might have been expected, the fanatics of both parties had much to say about this terrible accident. The Catholics declared that the Protestants, knowing this to be a chief place of meeting for men of their faith, had secretly drawn out the pins, or sawn the supporting timbers partly asunder. The Protestants, on the other hand, lustily declared that the planks would not bear such a weight of Romish sin, and that God was displeased with their pulpits and altars, their doctrine and sacrifice.
One zealot remembered that, at the return of Prince Charles from the madcap expedition to Spain, a Catholic had lamented, or was said to have lamented, the street bonfires, as there would be never a fagot left to burn the heretics.
"If it had been a Protestant chapel," the Puritans cried, "the Jesuits would have called the calamity an omen of the speedy downfall of heresy." A Catholic writer replied "with a word of comfort," and pronounced the accident to be a presage of good fortune to Catholics and of the overthrow of error and heresy. This zealous, but not well-informed, writer compared Father Drury's death with that of Zuinglius, who fell in battle, and with that of Calvin, "who, being in despair, and calling upon the devil, gave up his wicked soul, swearing, cursing, and blaspheming." So intolerance, we see, is neither specially Protestant nor Catholic, but of every party. "The Fatal Vespers," as that terrible day at Blackfrials was afterwards called, were long remembered with a shudder by Catholic England.
In a curious old pamphlet entitled "Something Written by Occasion of that Fatall and Memorable Accident in the Blacke-friers, on Sonday, being the 26th October, 1623, stilo antiquo, and the 5th November, stilo nova, or Romano," the author relates a singular escape of one of the listeners." [Note: Stilo antiquo, stilo nova; Old Style and new style. The Julian Calendar was replaced by the new and more accurate Gregorian in 1582 in the Carholic countries of Europe. It dropped 10 days to bring the calendar back into synchronization with the seasons and introduced the Leap Year rule to preserve the sunchronisation. It was adopted by Britain in 1752.]
"When all things were ready," he says, "and the prayer finished, the Jesuite tooke for his text the gospell of the day, being (as I take it) the 22nd Sunday after Trinity, and extracted out of the 18th of Matthew, beginning at the 21st verse, to the end. The story concerns forgiveness of sinnes, and describeth the wicked cruelty of the unjust steward, whom his maister remitted, though he owed him 10,000 talents, but he would not forgive his fellow a xoo pence, whereupon he was called to a new reckoning, and cast into prison, and then the particular words are, which he insisted upon, the 34th verse: 'So his master was wroth, and delivered him to the jaylor, till he should pay all that was due to him.' For the generall, he urged many good doctrines and cases; for the particular, he modelled out that fantasie of purgatory, which he followed with a full crie of pennance, satisfaction, paying of money, and such like.
"While this exercise was in hand, a gentleman brought up his friend to see the place, and bee partaker of the sermon, who all the time he was going up stairs cried out, ' Whither doe I goe? I protest my heart trembles;' and when he came into the roome, the priest being very loud, he whispered his friend in the eare that he was afraid, for, as he supposed, the room did shake under him; at which his friend, between smiling and anger, left him, and went close to the wall behind the preacher's chaire. The gentleman durst not stirre from the staires, and came not full two yards in the roome, when on a sudden there was a kinde of murmuring amongst the people, and some were heard to say, 'The roome shakes;' which words being taken up one of another, the whole company rose up with a strong suddainnesse, and some of the women screeched. I cannot compare it better than to many passengers in a boat in a tempest, who are commanded to sit still and let the waterman alone with managing the oares, but some unruly people rising overthrowes them all.
"So was this company served; for the people thus affrighted started up with extraordinary quicknesse, and at an instant the maine summer beame broke in sunder, being mortised in the wall some five foot from the same; and so the whole roofe or floore fell at once, with all the people that stood thronging on it, and with the violent impetuosity drove downe the nether roome quite to the ground, so that they fell twenty-four foot high, and were most of them buried and bruised betweene the rubbish and the timber; and though some were questionlesse smothered, yet for the most part they were hurt and bled, and being taken forth the next day, and laid all along in the gallery, presented to the lookers-on a wofull spectacle of fourscore and seventeen dead persons, besides eight or nine which perished since, unable to recover themselves."
London's History :: Discover its great, its strange, its seedy and its inspired past!"While this exercise was in hand, a gentleman brought up his friend to see the place, and bee partaker of the sermon, who all the time he was going up stairs cried out, ' Whither doe I goe? I protest my heart trembles;' and when he came into the roome, the priest being very loud, he whispered his friend in the eare that he was afraid, for, as he supposed, the room did shake under him; at which his friend, between smiling and anger, left him, and went close to the wall behind the preacher's chaire. The gentleman durst not stirre from the staires, and came not full two yards in the roome, when on a sudden there was a kinde of murmuring amongst the people, and some were heard to say, 'The roome shakes;' which words being taken up one of another, the whole company rose up with a strong suddainnesse, and some of the women screeched. I cannot compare it better than to many passengers in a boat in a tempest, who are commanded to sit still and let the waterman alone with managing the oares, but some unruly people rising overthrowes them all.
"So was this company served; for the people thus affrighted started up with extraordinary quicknesse, and at an instant the maine summer beame broke in sunder, being mortised in the wall some five foot from the same; and so the whole roofe or floore fell at once, with all the people that stood thronging on it, and with the violent impetuosity drove downe the nether roome quite to the ground, so that they fell twenty-four foot high, and were most of them buried and bruised betweene the rubbish and the timber; and though some were questionlesse smothered, yet for the most part they were hurt and bled, and being taken forth the next day, and laid all along in the gallery, presented to the lookers-on a wofull spectacle of fourscore and seventeen dead persons, besides eight or nine which perished since, unable to recover themselves."
