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THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

MARCH, 1831.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

EXCAVATIONS FOR THE CITY APPROACHES TO LONDON bridge.

March 25.

Mr. URBAN, THE very deep excavations which are now making for purposes connected with forming the northern approaches of the New London Bridge, between 30 and 40 feet below the surface of the ground on which the city now stands, must put the antiquary upon the alert. Such an opportunity, perhaps, has never before presented itself of obtaining a section of the factitious surface of the streets of modern London and its substratum, or of demonstrating some facts connected with the foundation of the city. But to speak in the first place of the immediate scene of these excavations, which have now approached so near as almost to undermine the south wall of the little church of St. Michael, Crooked-lane, the successor of a very ancient structure, which Stow says at first was a

small and homely thing, and the ground thereabout a filthy plot, being used by the butchers of Eastcheap as a laystall. W. de Burgo in 1317 gave two messuages in Candlewick-street to this Church. John Lovekin, mayor of London, rebuilt it, and was buried with his lady in the choir, under a fair tomb, bearing their recumbent images in alabaster. The bold Sir William Walworth, who made such short work with the chief of the radicals of his day, sometime a servant of the said Lovekin, (for when in England has sober worth and honesty been incapable of rising to wealth and honour?) rebuilt the choir, added side chapels, and founded a college for a master and nine priests. Sir William dying in 1385, was buried in the chapel north of the choir.* Stow says his monument was defaced temp.

* I was present at that portion of the last service which took place in this sacred edifice, and as this may be said to have completed its history, I may be allowed to put the particulars on record. During last week the walls of the city exhibited the following placard, "St. Michael's Church, Crooked-lane, being about to be pulled down for the approaches of the new London Bridge, divine service for the last time will take place on Sunday morning next, 20 March, 1831, when a Sermon will be preached by the Rector, the Rev. W. W. Dakins, F.S.A. Chaplain to his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, for the benefit of one hundred poor children of the Charity-schools of Bridge, Candlewick, and Dowgate Wards, Divine service to begin at 11 o'clock." While the Curate, on the occasion above announced, was reading the second lesson, a piece of plaister fell from over the circular east window, and descended near Dr. Dakins, who was seated within the Communion rails; this occasioned some alarm in the congregation, but they were tranquillized by an address from the pulpit by Dr. Dakins, it being generally thought that some idle person had thrown a fragment of rubbish through the window, in which there appeared a broken pane. Further to compose the assembly, the ninety-third psalm was given out, during the singing of which a shower of loosened plaister descended over the Communion-table, the Rector hastily retired from his seat, the major part of the congregation rushed out in consternation, the communion plate was tremblingly removed from the apparently dangerous place by one of the attendants, and that portion of the assembly who had the presence of mind to observe no alteration in the perpendicular of the walls, or fissures in the ceiling, retired through the west door, giving their contribution towards the charity, which by this unfortunate occurrence must have fallen very short of expectation. The last words which were chanted on this venerable consecrated site, were not inexpressive of the stability of the Church uni. versal under all worldly mutations.

"With glory clad! with strength arrayed,

The Lord that o'er all nature reigns,
The world's foundations strongly laid,

And the vast fabric still sustains.

"How

196 Excavations for the City Approaches to London Bridge. [March,

Edw. VI., when this college fell into the hands of the crown, but was renewed by the fishmongers; who, from ignorance of true history, in his epitaph, following a fabulous book, made him the slayer of Jack Straw instead of Wat Tyler.

The only existing traces of Walworth's college will be soon swept away; these are two pointed arches in the wall bounding the church-yard of St. Michael; wherein, by the bye, the disinterment of the dead (a painful desecration!) is now in progress. Stow notices an ancient house in Crooked-lane called the leaden porch,† belonging temp. Edw. IV. to Sir John Merston, knight, in his time converted into a tavern called the Swan, possessed of strangers selling Rhenish wine. Above Crooked-lane, at the corner of Eastcheap, he says was a great house builded of stone, belonging to Edward the Black Prince, who was in his life-time lodged there; this was

afterwards turned into a common hostelrie, having the Black Bell (qu. Bull?) for its sign. This, therefore, was the city residence of the Princes of Wales, and thus the extravagancies of Prince Henry and his companions at the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, on which Shakspeare has so delightfully amplified, will be found to have taken place within a stone's throw of the Prince's own dwelling; and it is moreover probable, extraordinary as the assertion may sound to modern ears, that the riot in which the king's sons were embroiled, occurred at a cook's shop, having that ancient dainty the Boar's Head for its sign; for,' says my venerable authority, "of old time, when friends were disposed to be merry, they went not to dine and sup in taverns, but to the cook's. the year 1410, the 11th of Henry the Fourth, upon the even of St. John the Baptist, the king's sons, John

In

and Thomas, being in Eastcheap at supper, or rather breakfast, for it was after the watch had broken up, betwixt two or three of the clock after midnight, a great debate happened between their men and other of the Court, &c. &c." Lidgate's song, called London Lickpenny,' tells us, he continues, “that in Eastcheap the cooks cried hot ribs of beef roasted, pies well baked; there was clattering of pewter pots, harp,§ pipe, and sawtrie." The customers of the cooks in Eastcheap had no doubt their wine brought them in these pewter "cannikins," from the vintner's cellars on the river side hard by; and this arrangement had existed from a very early date; for, says Fitz Stephen, "Est in Londonia supra ripam fluminis inter vina, in navibus et cellis, vinaria venalia, publica coquina."|| Honest William Stephanides goes on then to describe the dainties which may be promptly had for money to refresh the weary traveller; and tells us, that while the meats are cooking, the table set out, and the vessels for ablution produced, one runs down to the river's bank, where all more that is wanted (desiderabilia) are to be found; the bread and meat having been before named, these desiderabilia must have been the wines.

Let the Antiquary now therefore watch the progress of the mattock and the spade; for the northern approaches of that majestic structure the new London Bridge are destined to pass over ground rendered sacred by no ordinary historical recollections. The bones of the champion of civil order, Sir William Walworth, may not have yet found their last resting place, and the foundation-stones of the dwelling of the heroes of Poitiers and Azincour, may in a few days see the light to be obliterated for ever.

My next notice will contain some

"How surely 'stablish'd is thy throne

Which shall no change or period see;"

-and here the Psalm was broken off. I have since understood that there was no real ground for alarm, but that some persons having been on the flat roof of the Church to examine its state previously to removal, had, from the concussion occasioned by the tread of their feet, loosened a portion of the plaister of the ceiling beneath.

+ A covering of lead being in these days a costly distinction for a building, sometimes gave a name to the whole edifice; we have a striking example of this in that emporium for civic gastronomists Leadenhall.

Survey of London, Candlewicke-street Ward, edit. 1613, p. 404.

Those who quaff their wine at the Shades hard by, are at this day regaled with the clear enlivening notes of the harp.

Descriptio Nobilissimæ Civit. London. De dispositione urbis.

1

1831.]

St. Saviour's Church.-Archbishop Tregury.

observations on the wall, which FitzStephen roundly asserts bounded old London towards the Thames, "Similiterque ab austro Londonia murata et turrita fuit ;" and I shall be able to show, on the information of a zealous and intelligent young antiquary, who has had the best opportunity possible of ascertaining this fact, what that wall probably was. I am afraid worthy Stephanides must give up the towers. I shall also make some remarks on the evidence which the works of the New Bridge may have afforded, of the sacking of London by Boadicea.

I shall at the same time offer one or two suggestions relative to the completion of the repairs and restoration of ST. SAVIOUR'S CHURCH, which as a feature connected with the New Bridge, if too onerous a matter for the parish (as I fear it may be), ought to be made one of public undertaking and expense. There is surely in these disjointed and divided times, enough of public taste, public spirit, and respect for fanes long hallowed by the worship of the Almighty, to effect an object of such obvious expediency. A. J. K.

Mr. URBAN,

Tredrea, Cornwall, March 2. YOU will much gratify me, and 1 may venture to add, many other correspondents, by inserting in your most excellent Repository, which has now survived one century with a spirit and vigour that give promise for its continuing through another, some particulars of an individual sprung from this country, who must have been a man of talent and of learning sufficient for adding lustre to any origin; but who is now almost entirely forgotten, his family having long since become extinct, and the records of the University, of the Church, of the Diocese, and of the Province over which he presided, having in great measure perished in the devastations of civil war, and especially of those aggravated by religious dissensions.

Mr. Lysons, in his History of Cornwall, states that in the parish of St. Wenn is situated Tregury, Tregurra, or Tregurtha, the seat of a family so called, of whom was Michael de Tregury, Archbishop of Dublin, who died in 1471. The last heir male of the elder branch of this family, died in the reign of Henry the Fifth, leaving three daughters coheirs, who sold this bar

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ton to the family of Botreaux, from whom it passed successively, by inheritance or sale, through the families of Hungerford, Hastings, Edgcumbe, Parkins, and Vivian, to Mr. William Hals, who wrote the Parochial History of Cornwall, and resided here in the latter part of his life. The estate, now called Tregotha, is the property of Thomas Rawlings, Esq.

This brief notice of the Archbishop scarcely made any impression on my mind beyond a mere recollection of the circumstances, when a Cornish gentleman informed me that he had observed a monument to this Prelate in the Cathedral at Dublin. I then took the liberty of applying, through Mr. Dawson, Member for the County of Londonderry, to his brother the Dean of St. Patrick's, who not only gave me every information and reference that is known to exist, but also a drawing of the monument, of which I have sent a wood engraving.—Since this was engraved, I have seen a tracing from an old drawing in the possession of Sir William Betham, Ulster King at Arms, which shows that the sides of the original altar tomb were adorned with trefoil-headed arches rising from short pillars.

It appears that few records are extant of the Prelates and Dignitaries of Dublin, prior to the Reformation, in places where they might most reasonably have been expected to be found; and the monument itself would have perished but for the care and attention of the celebrated Doctor Jonathan Swift, who, with the Chapter, exactly a hundred years ago, rescued it from a dilapidated chapel, and carried the monument to its present situation in the Cathedral.

Michael Tregury attained his reputation for learning at the University of Oxford. He was Junior Proctor in the year 1434, under which Anthony Wood gives the following notice of him in his “ Fasti." He " was now Fellow of Exeter college, and about these times Principal of several Halls that successively stood near to the said college. But the King having a special respect for him (being now accounted the almost ornament of the University) made him Prefect or Governor of [the College at] Caen in Normandy, lately erected by King Henry the Fifth of England; which office he performing with singular ap

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1831.] Michael de Tregury, Archbishop of Dublin.

plause, became at length, through divers preferments (of which the Deanery of St. Michael of Pencryche* was one) Archbishop of Dublin in Ireland."

The foundation of the College or University of Caen, is again mentioned by Wood in his Annals, under 1417. In consequence, he says, of discontents regarding preferment and tithes, "the corruptness of provisions, and especially the wars between England and France, many dispersed themselves to other places. And because Normandy, Angiers, Poyctou, Aquitaine, Bretagne, Gascoigne, and other places that were subject to the Crown of England, could not for that reason exercise their Scholastical Acts at Paris publicly and without murmurings, they receded to Caen in Normandy,† and studied there. Which place Henry the Fifth, of England, made an University, causing one Michael Tregorie, an Oxford Doctor, sometime Fellow of Exeter College, to be Governor and Reader there, to the end that the doctrine of the University of Oxford might dilate itself and take root in those parts."

The following memoir is extracted from Ware's History of Ireland, vol. i. p. 359:

"Before the close of the same year (1449), Michael Tregury, a native of Cornwall, and Doctor of Divinity of the University of Oxford, was consecrated Archbishop of this See. He was a man of such great eminence for learning and wisdom, that in the year 1418 King Henry the Fifth invited him over to Caen in Normandy, to take upon him the government of a College, which that Monarch had then founded in the said city; to whom he joined, out of the Mendicant Friars, learned professors in all sciences. There he is said for a long time to have discharged the trust committed to him with great applause, both by his public prelections and writings. A Catalogue of his works may be seen in Bale and Pits. At last, upon the death of Talbot in 1449, he was promoted to this See by a papal provision, and was the same year, on the 10th of February (English style), restored to

The Deanery of Penkridge in Herefordshire was not, however, an early preferment of Tregury, it having been annexed to the see of Dublin as early as the reign of King Johu.

"Jo. Rous, in lib. de Regibus, MS."
"Pits, de Script. 663."

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the temporalities by King Henry the Sixth, whose Chaplain he was: [But was obliged to submit himself to the King's favour, and renounce every clause in his Bull, prejudicial to the Crown. He was called into the Privy Council immediately, and had twenty pounds per annum granted him by the King, pro sano consilio, for giving good counsell, as his predecessors, Archbishops of Dublin, who were of the Council, had; and in 1453 King Henry the Sixth, for securing an arrear of two years and a half, and the growing salary, granted him a custodium on the manor of Tassagard, and the town of Ballachise, parcel thereof, to continue during the time he should be Archbishop of Dublin.¶

"In certain Annals ascribed to Dudley Firbisse, there is a mention made under the year 1453, that an Archbishop of Dublin was taken prisoner at Sea. I must leave the passage to the credit of the Annalist, not having met any hint of it elsewhere. There is extant in the Black Book of the Archbishop of Dublin (p. 82), a copy of a Bull of Pope Pius the Second, dated the 23d of November, 1462, and directed to the Bishop and Archdeaconry of Ossory, commanding them to pronounce excommunicated, Geofrey Harold, Thomas and Edmund his sons, Patrick Birne, Thady Sheriff, Thomas Becagh, Robert Burnell, and other laymen of the City and Diocese of Dublin, for laying violent hands on this Prelate, and committing him to prison; and that they should keep them under excommunication until they went to Rome for absolution, with the testimonials of the Bishop and Archdeacon. The reason of this insult is no where mentioned, that I can find. He repaired the Manor House of Tawlaght, and died there in a very advanced age, on the 21st of December, 1471; having governed this See about twenty-two years. His remains were conveyed to Dublin, attended by the Clergy and Citizens, and buried in St. Patrick's Church, near St. Stephen's Altar [as § See the act of restitution of his temporalties, in Rymer's Fœdera, tom. xi. P. 260.

By Sir George Shuckburgh's Tables, printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1798, this sum would be equal to almost six and a half times as much as the same nominal sum at the commencement of the present century; that is, 130l. a year.

Rymer's Fœdera, tom. xi. p. 325.

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