A HISTORY OF LONDON The dynastic struggles which follow are not marked in any way in the history of the house except by the burial in their church of nobles who died on the scaffold or the battlefield/" for this church, like those of the other London friars, was a favourite place of sepulture with persons of high degree.^' The friary probably profited considerably in this way: the Marquis of Berkeley gave the convent ;riOO for perpetual masses for the soul of his first wife Joan, who was buried there ; ^^ and Sir Thomas Brandon, who married the marquis's widow, bequeathed ^60 in 1509 to establish a chantry for the marquis and this lady.23 In the reign of Henry VIII some light is thrown on the condition of the priory. In 1525 some of the friars were put in the Tower because a friar had died in their prison.^^ Whether any- thing was discovered detrimental to the priory or not, it was to this house that Dr. Barnes was sent in 1526 after he had done penance at St. Paul's for his heretical opinions. ^^ Little re- straint can have been put on him as the account of a heretic shows to whom he sold an English New Testament. Tyball went to the Austin Friars for the express purpose of getting the book and found Barnes in his rooms and several people with him, among them a merchant.** As Barnes was allowed to receive any visitors he chose he can have had little difficulty in obtaining these books, for the convent was surrounded by foreign merchants ^' who lived in houses within the close.-* Apart, however, from the views of individual friars the priory's attitude with regard to the king's marriage and the questions arising from it is easily explicable. Cromwell lived near, and in 1532 began to build his huge house on land leased from the convent and adjoining their churchyard.*' He therefore had exceptional
- ° Stow, Surv. of Land. (ed. Str)-pe), ii, 115. John
de Vere, earl of Oxford, beheaded in 1463, and many of the barons slain at Bamet in 1 47 1, were buried in this church. " Among those buried here were Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Essex, 1 36 1, (Nicolas, Test. Vet. 66) ; Lucia, daughter of Bernaby Visconti, lord of Milan, and wife of the earl of Kent, died 1424 ; Richard, earl of Arundel, beheaded 1397; Aubrey de Vere, son and heir of the earl of Oxford ; the marquis of Berkeley under his will of 1491 ; and Edward duke of Buckingh.im, beheaded in 152 1 (Stow, op. cit. ii, 115, 116). " Dugdale, Baronage of Engl, i, 365. " Nicolas, Test. Vet. 497. "^ Monum. Francisc. ii, 191. " Diet. Nat. Biog. iii, 254. " L. and. P. Hen. VIII, iv (2), 42 1 8. "' It had long been a foreign quarter, lived close to the church. Ibid, x, 351. the Spaniards wished to celebrate the emperor's vic- tory in Afi-ica in the church of the Austin Friars, but the provincial refused leave until he knew the king's pleasure. Ibid, ix, 330. '* Ibid, vii, 1670. " Ibid. V, 1028. Chapuys In IS3S opportunities for interference and influence,-* of which he undoubtedly took advantage. He found a willing instrument in the prior, George Brown, who identified himself with the king's side,*' and was duly rewarded afterwards by being chosen to be one of the commissioners to visit all the houses of friars in England.'" The principles of the rest of the house were not likely to prove an obstacle to Cromwell's wishes if some anonymous information about 1534 against the friars be true. In this it is said that the services were scamped and neglected while the friars sat drinking in bad company ; there was no common refectory, but they dined in sets in their rooms ; no rules were kept, and the authority of the prior, who was incapable of maintaining discipline, was utterly disregarded. Although Brown does not seem to have been prior at this date '* he must be held in some measure responsible for a state of things which could not have been of sudden development." As is not unusual, the friars, while forgetting their duties, had a keen idea of their rights, and in October, 1532, six of them had to do penance for a contest with the priest of St. Dunstan's in the East over the body of a stranger who had died in that parish.'* When in August, 1538, their church was used by the Lutheran preacher who came in the train of the Saxon and Hessian ambassadors " the end of the friary must have been felt to be near. In the following November the house was surrendered by the prior Thomas Hamond and twelve friars. The income of the convent, estimated at
- ^57 OS. 4^'.,'^ was derived from tenements in
various London parishes, St. Benet Fink,"
- He appears to have had something to do with
the election of Thomas Hamond as sub-prior. Ibid, vi, 1270. " It was Brown who in his Easter sermon in 1 53 3 recommended the people expressly to pray for Queen Anne, at which they left the church. Ibid, vi, 391. '"Ibid, vii, 233, sec. 18. He was then pro- vincial. " The jealousy of the alien friars which the writer displays, and his petition that the prior may be dis- missed, show that the informer was one of the friars. Ibid, vii, 1670. " There is no date to the document, which occurs among the papers of 1534. As Brown was provincial in April of that )ear, the prior referred to was probably Thomas Hamond. " The house could hardly have become indebted to the extent of ;^3oo in a few months. L. and P. Hen. VIII, vii, 676. " Ibid, vi, 1270. " Ibid, xiii (2), 232. »« Ibid. 806. " Stow, Sarc. of Land, ii, 115. The plate amounted to 200 oz. in gilt and 176 oz. of silver gilt. Monastic Treas. 19 (Abbotsford Club). As the house was or had been in debt, some may have been sold.
- « L. and. P. Hen. VIII, xviii (i), 982.
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