RELIGIOUS HOUSES but his hermitage, of course, was not necessarily in that neighbourhood. A hermit is mentioned twice in the fourteenth century as living near the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, in 1361, and in 1371 when a bequest was made to Richard de Swepeston by name and to Geoffrey his companion.^* There was also in 1361 a hermit at Charing Cross, whose cell must have been the hermitage known in the fifteenth century as the chapel of St. Katharine.^' The profession of hermit lent itself easily to fraud, and the impostor who in 14 12 was sentenced to the pillory for pretending to be a hermit*" was probably not the only one of his kind. He is described as going about ' bare- footed and with long hair, under the guise of sanctity saying that he had made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Rome, Venice and the city of Seville in Spain ; and under colour of such falsehood he had and received many good things from divers persons, to the defrauding and in manifest deceit of all the people.' No such inducement to deceive offered itself in the case of the anchorites, I who had to obtain the licence of the bishop to become recluses and whose cells were generally attached either to a parish church or to a reli- gious house *^ in order to ensure them the means of subsistence, for in an unfrequented place they might have starved. Katharine wife of William Hardel constructed for herself in 1227 an anker-hold by the chapel of St. Bartholomew's Hospital,*^ and mention is made in 1228 of an anchorite by the church of 'AH Saints Colman,'*' and in 1255 of an < inclusa ' of St. Margaret Pattens.^^ Behind the chapel of St. Peter at the Tower of London there was an anker-hold known as the hermitage of St. Eustace, mentioned as early as 1236, when the king ordered a penny to be paid every day to the recluse of this place, of which he was patron.** On one occasion it was granted by Henry III to a woman, Idonia de " Sharpe, Cal. of Wills, ii, 107. "Ibid, ii, 147. In Anchoresses of the West, 240, these are said to be recluses, but authority for the statement is not given. " The chapel was granted to the king's servitor, Edmund Tankard, in 1462. Cal. of Pat. 1 46 1 -7, p. 214. The hermitage is mentioned in a lease by tbe abbot of Westminster, I 5 19. Doc. of D. and C. of Westm. Westm. parcel 3, pt. 4. "Letter Bk. I, fol 1 1 3, cited by Riley, Memorials of Land. 584.
- ' Fosbroke, op. cit. 492, 494. The author of
Piers the Plowman knew London well, and while referring to wandering hermits in disparaging terms he evidently approved of anchorites. Piers the Plow- man (ed. Skeat), i, 2, 3.
- ^ Rot. Lit. Claus. (Rec. Com.), Ii, 18 1-5.
" In the will of Richard de Elmham, canon of St. M.irtin's, Jrch. fouiii. xxiv, 343.
- '» Guildhall MS. Ill, fol. 1260.
- Bayley, Hist, of the Tower of Lond. 125.
Boclaund,*^ but in 137 1 it was held by a man.*« At the latter date there was another cell in the immediate neighbourhood, for the Swans- nest, the abode of John Ingram, an anchorite *' in 1371 and 1380,*^ was close to St. Katharine's Hospital. A cell was built in the turret of the wall near Aldgate by a recluse named John*^ who was living there in 1257-8,^ but in 1325 the place seems to have survived in name only.^' It is true Simon Appulby, priest, made his profession as an anchorite in 15 13 before the bishop of London in the priory of Holy Trinity,'^ which must have been quite close to the spot, and this would argue that the cell had not disappeared ; it is however more likely that Appulby lived in the monastery. The ankerhold attached to the abbey of Westminster " may possibly be traced back to the thirteenth century, since Nicholas the hermit of Westminster occurs in the Pipe Rolls from 1242 to 1245.^* B"' the notices are more frequent later. To the anchorite monk in the church of Westminster, John Bares, citizen of London, left 20i. by will in 1384.^' It is reported that the monk recluse there ussd his influence to secure adherents to the party of the lords appellant against Richard 11.°" Henry V after his father's death confessed to Humphrey of Lambeth, the anchorite of West- minster. Sir John London, recluse in the church of St. Peter, who figures in the list of benefactors of Syon Monastery,^' received a be- quest of ;^io in 1426 from thedukeof Exeter.*' The cell was sometimes occupied by a woman : Henry VI in 1443 gave an annuity of 6 marks to the anchoress there,'" and forty years after- wards a similar annuity was granted also to a female recluse by Richard III.*^
- Tbid. '"Sharpe, op. cit. ii, 147.
" He is called a recluse in a will of 1376. Ibid, ii, 189. " Ibid, ii, 147, 228. " Hund. R. fRec. Com.) i, 413, 420. He is here described as a hermit, but it is evident from a fine of 1257-8 that he was a recluse. '" Hardy and Page, op. cit. 39. " The garden on the south side of Aldgate called 'The Hermitage' was then leased for 10/. a year to Peter de Staundone. Sharpe, Cal of Letter Bk. E, 193. " Lond. Epis. Reg. Fitz James, fol. 41.
- ' It was on the south of the chancel of St.
Margaret's. See Lease of 1730 among Doc. of D. and C. of Westm. Westm. Extra. No. 1 4. " Guildhall MS. Ill, fol. 956, 988, 1004. " Lond. Epis. Reg. Braybrook, fol. 389-90. '« Stow, Ann. (ed. 161 5), 318. " Steele, op. cit. 240. "Add. MS. 22285, fob 70- " Nichols, Royal mils, 250. "" Harris Nicholas, Proc. and Old. of the Privy Council, v, 282. " Steele, op. cit. 240. 587
