British Monarchs who Ended Badly: Part 5, Henry VIII and His Six Queens

The Tudor Dynasty, which ruled England and Wales from 1485 to 1603, is the most written about of any royal house in British history.  The Tudors might well be one of the most important job creators of the past few centuries. Tudor and Co. have inspired innumerable biographies, novels, plays, and films, not all of them bad. 

I cannot possibly provide enough detail here to satisfy all the curious. Therefore, I will keep it fairly brief and barebones. I regret that means leaving out many of the salacious bits.

The Tudor Period was ushered in by Henry Tudor, who defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The half-Welsh Henry VII ruled until his death in 1509, probably of tuberculosis. 

He was a rather boring king, but that was probably not a bad thing after decades of disorder. He was a shrewd and apparently an amiable fellow. His great achievement was to bring relative stability and increase the power of the monarchy after the chaos of the Wars of the Roses. [Image: Henry VII, 1505]

Henry VII was a notorious tightwad. After the Italian navigator John Cabot returned from a voyage of discovery to North America in 1497, the king presented him a reward of £10. 

To be sure, £10 was worth a lot more than now, especially since Liz Truss became Prime Minister. Henry could be generous with his family, but no one would accuse him of being extravagant. He was, however, adept at extracting money from his subjects. In his portrait above, you can see he has his eyes on your moneybags. 

Perhaps Henry VII can be forgiven for his miserliness. The government had become cash poor during the previous period of anarchy. Henry VII managed to restore its finances. Just in time. His son Henry VIII was a lavish spender. One of his first acts was to execute his father's hated chief tax collectors, Empson and Dudley.

 [Image: Henry VIII in the 1530s]

Henry VIII became king by accident. His older brother Arthur was heir. As part of a treaty with Spain, his father had married Arthur at 14 off to a Spanish princess, Catharine of Aragon, in 1501. But Arthur died the next year, probably of the mysterious "sweating sickness" that was epidemic at the time. [Image: Catherine of Aragon]

Hoping to keep the marriage alliance going, Henry VII proposed marrying Catherine to his second son, the future Henry VIII. Because the Bible contained conflicting passages on whether a man could marry his brother's widow, Henry VII applied for and got a papal dispensation allowing the match. 

Other complications delayed the match, one of which was young Henry's opposition. But after he became king in 1509, he married Catherine. He seems to have been happy enough with her at first. But he grew less happy as the years passed, and she did not produce a male heir. They had only one child, Mary. 

Henry believed that only a male would be able to preserve his new dynasty. In the late 1520s, he decided God was punishing him for marrying Catherine -- that the marriage was not valid according to the Bible. Implied in this was the idea that the pope had made a mistake in granting a dispensation and the marriage should be annulled. 

This was not a popular idea in Rome, nor with Catherine's powerful nephew, the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V, who pushed the pope to deny Henry's appeal. The presence of his armies in Italy gave his views considerable force.

Henry was not a Protestant nor was he anti-Catholic in doctrine. A few years before, he had written a pamphlet denouncing Martin Luther's attacks on the Roman Church. For this work, the pope of the time awarded Henry the title of "Defender of the Faith," which British monarchs still flaunt. 

But Henry was desperate to rid himself of Catherine. She was now in her 40s and he believed she could never give him the male heir he so desired. He had also begun a relationship with the woman he thought could do the job: Anne Boleyn. Her ambitious family threw her at him. Lust and political need did the rest. The pair met and wooed at Carew Manor in Beddington, Surrey, just a short walk from my current residence. 

[Image: Anne Boleyn]

Things got messy. Anne got pregnant. The pope refused to grant the annulment. Henry responded by declaring that the pope had no authority in England. 

In effect, the Church in England became the Church of England, the Anglican Church. The King replaced the pope as its Supreme Head. All of this was done through legal means, by Acts of Parliament. 

Desperate for cash by now, Henry followed the break from Rome by seizing a money pit. He dissolved the monasteries and confiscated their land and wealth, much of which he sold to eager buyers. The idea probably came from Thomas Cromwell, who had become Henry's right-hand man. Cromwell superintended the dissolution. [Image: Thomas Cromwell]

Some of the clergy, and some among the laity opposed Henry VIII's break with Rome. Many of them paid with their lives, notably Sir Thomas More, who had been Lord Chancellor for a season. 

As everybody knows, Henry had his new church grant his annulment. He married Anne. She gave him a child, but alas it was a girl, Elizabeth. She had several miscarriages. The royal couple's relationship soured. 

Henry, looking ahead to wife number three, accused Anne of treason, incest, and adultery. The court meekly complied and she was beheaded a few days later. The ever magnanimous king paid for an expert French executioner to perform the job with a sword. No ordinary axeman for an English queen. 

Henry had already selected wife number three, Jane Seymour. Jane gave Henry his desired male heir, Prince Edward. He took precedence over Mary and Elizabeth. Jane's tenure as Mrs. Henry Tudor was tragically short. She died shortly after the birth of an infection. But at least she wasn't beheaded. [Image: Jane Seymour]

To celebrate the birth of his long-desired son, Henry began to build a new magnificent palace, Nonsuch, near Cheam in Surrey. It was completed in 1538. [Image: A model of Nonsuch. The palace was demolished in the 1680s]

Henry was now in the market for wife number four. Thomas Cromwell, who had become the king's chief minister had an idea. He arranged a marriage alliance with the daughter of a German prince, Anne of Cleves. 

Henry liked her portrait, but not the real Anne. The pair did not hit it off, and he quickly arranged to have the marriage annulled. Probably because she (wisely) did not oppose him, Henry treated Anne generously and she lived in England until her death in 1557, arguably the happiest of Henry's six wives. [Image: Anne of Cleves]

Thomas Cromwell did not fare so well. Henry had him beheaded for treason and corruption. The real reasons for his fall are unclear, but may have been related to the Cleves match and alliance. Being close to an increasingly paranoid Henry was a lot like being close to Joseph Stalin. A whiff of suspicion could be enough to prove one's undoing. 

With his exquisite sense of timing, Henry married his next wife, Catherine Howard the day Cromwell was beheaded. Wife number five did not last long either. She ended up like Anne Boleyn, with her head on the block, after Henry accused her of adultery. Two of her accused lovers enjoyed the same fate. [Image: Portrait of a Young Lady believed to be Catherine Howard]

Wife number six, Catherine Parr, was more fortunate, if you believe that being married to a volatile, fat old man with ulcerous, boil covered legs is a pleasant fate. She was somehow able to keep the aging Henry content. She avoided an annulment and kept her head, which is quite a feat considering the fate of his other wives. 

Henry VIII died in 1547, aged 55. In his final years his waistline ballooned to 54 inches (140 cm). He had "mobility issues" and had to be moved about with the use of mechanical contraptions. Most historians reject the old theory that he died of syphilis. The cause of his demise is still debated. 

Paradoxically, the reign of Henry VIII was probably a fairly good one for many of his ordinary subjects. He generally kept the country out of war and maintained internal peace. He was intelligent, talented, handsome, and well educated. From the 1530s on, however, he was sometimes mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

On his death, the throne passed to his ten-year-old son, Edward VI, beginning another period of turmoil.  

If you have trouble remembering the fate of Henry's wives, this little mnemonic device helps: 

"Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived."

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Henry VIII's Lost Palace: Nonsuch

In 1538, Henry VIII began construction of a large palace on some 700 acres of royal land between Cheam and Ewell in Surrey. (Image: portrait after Hans Holbein the Younger)

Henry built the palace to celebrate the birth of a male heir, the future Edward VI. In his long quest for this son, he had broken with the Church of Rome, divorced one wife, and beheaded another. His third wife, Jane Seymour, died giving birth to Edward.

His dynasty now secure (he thought) he wanted to celebrate, show off his wealth and power, and add another hunting lodge to his collection. But not just another lodge. A lodge fit for a great king, as he saw himself. 

Henry named the palace Nonsuch, he said, because there would be nothing else like it. A foreign visitor is said to have written "This which no equal has in art or fame, Britons deservedly do Nonsuch name." It sounds like Henry may have paid him to write that. Building the Palace consumed a vast proportion of the royal budget. It was not completely finished when Henry died in 1547. 

The land is now a public park named for the palace. A visitor to Nonsuch Park today would find little evidence that a massive, ornate Tudor palace once stood there. All that is left is part of the foundations. 

In one of history's great blunders, King Charles II gave Nonsuch Palace to his mistress, The Duchess of Cleveland, in 1670. With his permission, she had it demolished twelve years later, selling off parts of it to pay off gambling debts. 

Only a few paintings and drawings exist to give us an idea of what Nonsuch Palace looked like. The first image below is a watercolor done in the late 1560s. The others are paintings from around 1600.

About ten years ago, Ben Taggart created a model of what Nonsuch Palace is believed to have looked like. His model was based on the work of an archaeologist begun in 1959.

Although the Palace is long gone, a large house can be visited in Nonsuch Park. It is called Nonsuch Mansion, and is sometimes mistakenly labeled in photos as "Nonsuch Palace"

The Mansion was built between 1731 and 1743 by Joseph Thompson. 

Samuel Farmer bought the house in 1799 and employed Jeffrey Wyattville to enlarge and rebuild it in the Tudor Gothic style. It incorporates some details and a block of stone from Henry VIII's demolished Palace. The stone is inscribed "1543 Henry VIII in the 35th year of his reign." (English translation from Latin). 

In 1937 the Farmer family sold Nonsuch Mansion to the local authorities of Sutton Borough and the Borough of Epsom and Ewell. It is normally open to visitors and has been used as a wedding venue. In this abnormal year of the Covid-19 pandemic it has been serving as a vaccination center for the local area. 

Carew Manor, where Tudors came to play.

How would you like to go to school in a mansion where Tudor Kings and Queens once stayed? In the grounds of Beddington Park in Surrey sits a large red brick building of considerable interest. Today it houses Carew Academy, but for centuries it was the seat of the aristocratic Carew family. 

Visitors to the manor included Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Elizabeth I, and James I. They came to hunt, fish, meet lovers, and discuss politics.

The rise of the Carews of Beddington dates from the late 14th century, when Nicholas Carew arrived in the area. He was a descendant of the Carews of Carew Castle in Pembrokeshire. He married the daughter of the manor's owners and the estate passed into his family. Nicholas rose to the high post of Keeper of the Privy Seal. 

Sir Richard Carew, who owned the house from 1492 to 1520, either created or greatly enlarged the park now known as Beddington Park. In St. Mary's Church, next door to the manor, the Carew family chapel contains the impressive tomb and effigy of Sir Richard.

  

Richard's son, Sir Nicholas Carew was a favorite of Henry VIII and a member of his Privy Chamber. Henry hunted and courted Anne Boleyn at Carew Manor, while still married to Katherine of Aragon. After Henry had Anne executed for alleged adultery in 1536, he courted Jane Seymour at the manor. (Image: Sir Nicholas Carew, by Hans Holbein the Younger)

Unfortunately for Sir Nicholas, Henry had him executed as well, for alleged treason. He was beheaded on Tower Hill in March 1539. One popular explanation is that Carew beat the king at bowls. The real reason has to do more with politics. Carew had alienated the king by championing Princess Mary, daughter of Henry and Katherine of Aragon. 

Carew had also fallen afoul of Thomas Cromwell, the king's chief minister. With those two against you, your days were numbered. Anyway, Henry never let friendship get in the way of a good beheading. Cromwell himself soon fell to the axe.

The king confiscated Carew's estates, and the manor fell into other hands for a time. It was recovered by his son, Sir Francis Carew (1530?-1611) in 1554, during the reign of Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary). 

Mary's successors, Elizabeth I and James I, visited Carew Manor during Francis' time, Elizabeth at least fourteen times. It is likely that royal visitors hunted deer in the large manor park, now Beddington Park and beyond to Mitcham.

An oft-told story relates that Francis delighted Elizabeth by presenting her with cherries out of season. Cherries were a symbol of virginity, the perfect gift for the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth's long-time favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester also visited in the 1580s, and enjoyed fishing for trout in the nearby River Wandle. (Image: Robert Dudley)

Despite entertaining royals, Francis avoided involvement in politics, perhaps because of his father's fate. He served in one parliament, but never held any government position or received any favors from the monarchs, a fact he was apparently quite proud of. His stance may have hurt the family's revenues, however.

Francis substantially rebuilt the house. He created a renowned garden and added what is believed to be England's first orangery. He never married. After his death, the manor passed to his nephew Nicholas Throckmorton, on condition he change his name to Carew. 

The Carews fell on hard times during the following decades. They backed the losing Royalist side in the Civil War  of the 1640s and mismanaged their wealth. 

The house became rundown, and another Nicholas Carew undertook major rebuilding in the early 18th century, adding to the family debt. Soon after the work was completed, a fire destroyed the interior of one of the wings. Debts piled up, exacerbated by reckless gambling. In 1859 the house was sold.

After undergoing major alterations, Carew Manor reopened in 1866 as the Royal Female Orphanage. That era ended in 1939, and as mentioned above, it is now a school, Carew Academy. Little of the original structure remains, but the 15th century great hall with its arch-braced hammer beam roof survives and is Grade 1 listed.

The hall is occasionally open to visitors.

St. Mary's Church, Beddington Park, a Little Gem in South London

I have walked by St. Mary's Church in Beddington Park, Surrey many times. The other day the church was open for visiting and I wandered in for a look about. I found an interior of artistic beauty and considerable historical interest. 

There has been a church on the site since Anglo-Saxon times. It was probably a wooden church. It is listed in Domesday Book (1086) a survey of most of England and Wales carried out by orders of England's first Norman king, William the Conqueror. 

Most of the present church dates from the 14th and 15th centuries, including the tower. But just past the tower, on the right of the central aisle, one comes to a Purbeck marble font dating from the 12th century.

The roof of the nave and chancel are wooden and highly decorated. The organ screen was designed and made in the workshop of arts and crafts pioneer William Morris in the late 19th century. It is believed that Morris painted part of the screen. 

View of the organ screen, on left.

To the right of the chancel is the Carew Chapel, which probably dates from the late 15th century. The chapel was dedicated originally to the family that owned Carew Manor next door. Many Carews were commemorated and buried under here.

The chapel contains an impressive tomb, a monument to Richard Carew (d. 1520). On the front of it a man, his wife, and seven children are portrayed. This was Sir Nicholas Throckmorton and his family. Sir Nicholas inherited the estate after the death of a later Carew,  his uncle Francis, and adopted the Carew name. 

  
There is much more to see at St Mary's, which is certainly worth a visit.  

Tennis: the Early Years, 1874-1930s.

(Image above) "Lawn Tennis" by Louis Prang, 1887.

Lawn tennis evolved from a much older medieval game. Real tennis, as it is usually called nowadays, is played in indoor courts with walls the balls can be hit off of.[1] Originally, the balls were hit with the hand, first bare, then gloved. This gave it its French name, jeu de paume. Rackets replaced hands in the 16^th century and sore hands gave way to sore elbows.

Real tennis was widely played in the “courts” of Europe, and it is still played in the UK and a few other countries. Several real tennis courts survive at Oxford, Cambridge, Hampton Court Palace and Falkland Palace in Scotland. Henry VIII and Mary Queen of Scots both loved the game. Legend has it that Henry was playing it at Hampton Court while Anne Boleyn was being executed. The image below is of the real tennis court at Falkland Palace in Fife, Scotland.

Real tennis probably originated in France, and it was in the royal tennis court at Versailles that one of the most pivotal events of the French Revolution occurred. When an angry Louis XVI ordered them locked out of their chamber during the meeting of the Estates-General in June 1789, representatives of the Third Estate moved to the nearby royal tennis court and took an oath not to disband until they had produced a constitution. The “Tennis Court Oath” was the effective beginning of the revolution. [Image: Jacques David, “The Oath of the Tennis Court” c. 1794]

The man often credited with inventing lawn tennis was an Englishman, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, but others in the UK and America had a hand in its creation. The first lawn tennis club opened in Leamington Spa in 1874. Wingfield patented an hourglass-shaped court and published a book of rules for lawn tennis in the same year. In 1875, the Marylebone Cricket Club drew up a slightly different set of rules which, with some changes, govern the sport today. Wingfield’s odd-shaped court did not catch on, either, being replaced by the rectangular court we know today. [Image: Wingfield’s hourglass court and his book of rules.]

One of the hourglass courts survives at the house of scientist Charles Darwin, at Down in Kent.  

1875 proved an important year for lawn tennis in another way. A croquet club in Wimbledon, England, adopted lawn tennis as a second sport, setting aside one lawn for the new game. The Croquet Club  was founded by “six gentlemen” in 1868. The Wimbledon club held its first gentlemen’s singles championship in 1877 to raise funds. At the same time, it changed its name to the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club. The first “Wimbledon” champion, Spencer Gore, was nonchalant about it all. “Lawn tennis,” he said, “will never rank among our great games.” 

Great or not, the game soon became fashionable among the leisured and moneyed classes. Companies began to advertise equipment and outfits for playing tennis. As the ad below shows, the outfitters borrowed some fashions from existing sports such as boating, golf, and cricket. 

Despite the emphasis here on male attire, ladies also quickly took up the game. Playing tennis in long skirts on top of layers of petticoats, bustles, corsets, long drawers and stockings must have been a major challenge.

During the 1880s, lawn tennis had become the main focus of Wimbledon’s AELTC. In 1882, its members voted to drop “croquet” from the club’s name. In 1884, the Wimbledon club added ladies’ singles and gentlemen’s doubles championships. In 1913, the AELTC added ladies’ doubles and mixed doubles. International competition began in these early years. The US Open began in 1881, the French Open (now Roland Garros) in 1891, and the Australian Open in 1905. The Davis Cup, originally called The International Lawn Tennis Challenge, began in the late 1890's. The image below shows an International  Challenge match in Melbourne in 1912.

Lawn tennis might have really taken off at that point, if it hadn’t been for the outbreak of The Great War in 1914. For the next four years, many tennis countries were preoccupied by the military struggle. Amidst the appalling carnage, tennis competitions were halted.

On a less grim note, the war helped to change fashions, particularly for women. Petticoats, bustle and corset gave way to simpler, more comfortable modes of dress, using much less fabric, which was needed for military uniforms. The new fashion trends passed into women’s tennis attire. The French phenomenon Suzanne Lenglen paved the way at Wimbledon in the 1920s in a daring, some thought scandalous, outfit exposing her arms and a bit of thigh. 

Women were quicker to adopt a new style of attire than men. Most of them continued to play in long trousers into the 1930s and beyond. In 1933, the UK's Bunny Austin became the first male player to appear on Wimbledon Centre Court in shorts, shocking at least some observers of the game.  [Valerie Warren, Tennis Fashions: Over 125 Years of Costume Change (Wimbledon, 2002]

By the 1930's, lawn tennis had matured as a game and produced superlative athletes. It was no longer played only on lawns but was yet to produce mega incomes for the top players.  

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[1] The word “real” seems to imply that lawn tennis is artificial, but likely derives from the Spanish and Portuguese word for royal, “real.” It is often called "royal tennis" in the UK.

Bedlam! London's Bethlem Hospital and the Word it gave us.

In our language today, "bedlam" usually means a scene of mad and noisy confusion. It was once a common or generic term for a madhouse. The word "bedlam" derives from an institution with a very long history, London's Bethlem Hospital. It was originally a medieval monastic foundation, the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, founded in 1247 to care for sick paupers. By the 15th century at the latest, it was specializing in the care of "mad" people and the name had become corrupted to Bethlem, or Bedlam. 

When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the 1530's, he gave Bethlem to London, and it became a public hospital. By the 17th century, the original building had become inadequate and the city replaced it with a new structure at Moorfields, just outside the walls. The image below is of this second Bedlam, opened in 1676.

During the 18th century, Bedlam became a popular attraction. People could visit on certain days, to see the "lunatics." Some histories claim that the public came to stare at and cruelly taunt the patients. Others argue that the public openness brought in money and helped prevent mistreatment. 

In the 1730's, William Hogarth famously depicted a scene in Bedlam in his didactic series, "The Rake's Progress." The rake, who has gone mad as a result of debauchery and debt, is shown at the center, naked, raving, with his head shaved. He is surrounded by stock caricatures of lunatics, including religious maniacs, megalomaniacs, melancholics, and would be popes and kings.

Public visits were banned in the late 18th century. In the following decades, the building deteriorated badly, and a parliamentary investigation in 1814-15 revealed scandalous conditions. Patients were often filthy and ragged, sometimes beaten and chained up. One patient, James Norris, an American sailor who had been chained to a wall in a metal harness for years, became an icon of a reform movement that was gathering pace by the early 19th century.

The movement was inspired by advocates of what became known as "moral treatment, or "moral therapy." One of the most effective spokesmen for moral treatment was a French doctor, Philippe Pinel, who has been immortalized in a famous, if romanticized, painting. 
It shows Pinel ordering the chains removed from women patients at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris in the early 1790's. Pinel's methods became widely known after he published his Treatise on Insanity in 1806. 

Another important inspiration for "lunacy reformers" came from an English institution, the Retreat, near York. The Retreat, opened in 1796, was the idea of a Quaker tea merchant, William Tuke, disturbed by mistreatment of patients at the nearby York Asylum. The Retreat adopted the principles of moral treatment and soon became world famous, especially after Tuke's grandson Samuel published A Description of the Retreat in 1813. Below is an early image of The Retreat.

Moral treatment was essentially a psychological therapy. The idea was that the mad retained a modicum of reason and human instincts and could best be managed -- and often cured -- by appealing to their feelings or emotions and their desire for acceptance. 

Promoters of moral therapy downplayed the use of medical therapies, which often involved bleeding and harsh purgatives. They denounced physical punishments, chains and low diet for "maniacs," which often bordered on starvation. Kind treatment, they argued, was more effective in "managing" patients. 

At the Retreat, the patients were informed that they were part of a family, and the routines were designed to imitate family life as much as possible. Patients were encouraged to help in cleaning, gardening, and other work. 

Moral therapists did not abandon all means of coercion and control. A controlled order was essential to the system. Moral therapy sometimes involved the revoking of privileges, isolation, and mechanical restraint for unacceptable behavior. And above all, the patients were institutionalized, sometimes for many years.

The reformers who investigated Bethlem Hospital in 1815 were aware of the work of Pinel, the Tukes, and other examples of moral treatment. Their reports to Parliament led to the building of a new hospital south of the Thames at St. George's Fields. (below, c.1820) 

  
The new Bethlem gradually adopted many of the principles of moral treatment, or tried to. The same was true of the hundreds of public lunatic asylums (later renamed mental hospitals) established during the Victorian era. The system worked reasonably well in small institutions with adequate staff. Some asylums claimed to cure a high percentage of patients, as high as 90 percent. The claims were undoubtedly inflated, but in some cases, at least, the asylums functioned as refuges or retreats for the suffering.  

But the institutions grew ever larger in the late 19th century, holding hundreds, even thousands of patients, many of them with chronic conditions the institutions could do little for. Costs soared. Those responsible for funding sought economies of scale that inevitably undermined the methods of moral treatment. 

The following image, of Bethlem's men's gallery in the 1860's, illustrates the problem. It is clean, orderly, and bright. But the seemingly endless gallery, the barred windows, and the patients wandering about indicate that all is not well.

Conditions were often much worse elsewhere. Huge, underfunded asylums, despite the best efforts of many doctors and nurses, became warehouses where moral treatment became routine if applied at all. Individuals became lost in the mass. Many remained in the asylums for years, often for life. Scandals became common, with overuse of mechanical restraints, poor diet and sanitation, endless boredom, and sometimes abuse of patients.

In the late 20th century, most of the old asylums/mental hospitals closed down or were converted into acute, short stay institutions. Deinstitutionalization was encouraged by the development of new psychotic drugs, evidence of abuse of patients, and a desire to save money.

Advocates of deinstitutionalization, like those who promoted asylums, were hailed as reformers. Patients, they argued, could be better treated in the community, in a more natural setting than an institution. The results of "community care" have been mixed at best, often bedeviled by inadequate funding  A new crop of reformers now advocate a renewed attempt at creating therapeutic communities within hospitals.

Bethlem Hospital continues to treat and care for mentally ill and emotionally disturbed patients. It relocated to its current location near Beckenham, on the outer fringes of southeast London, in 1930.

And what of the old building at St. George's Fields? The wings were knocked down but the central part of the building remains. It has housed the Imperial War Museum since 1936. Appropriate, perhaps.

    

   


  
  

This Church is a Film Star: London's St. Bartholomew's

The Church of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London is probably familiar to you.  Even if you have never been there in person, you almost surely have seen it on the big or little screen. It has been used in many popular films and TV shows, including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love, Amazing Grace, The Other Boleyn Girl, Richard II, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. 

The church's stardom helps explain why it was the first parish church in England to charge tourists an entrance fee.  For a parish church it is quite large, which may explain its attraction to film-makers. Being in the heart of London doesn't hurt either.

The church, which stands just to the south of the famous meat market of Smithfield, dates from 1123, when a man of some wealth named Rahere, founded the Priory of St. Bartholomew, with an attached hospital. Rahere had recovered miraculously from a fever while on a pilgrimage to Rome, and in a dream the saint instructed him to set up a monastic foundation, or so said Rahere. 

The hospital, the oldest in London, is next door inside a high wall. The wall contains a memorial to William Wallace, Braveheart, who was executed for treason nearby, one of many people who met that fate here, including the heretics/martyrs burned under Bloody Mary. 

A statue of Henry VIII, father of Bloody Mary and Elizabeth I, stands over the entrance gate to the hospital, legs splayed, looking very kingly indeed. The statue was his reward for dissolving the monastic foundations and giving the hospital to the City. 

Since Henry’s time the hospital has been a secular establishment, known affectionately as “Bart’s.”  Another interesting and just as old church sits inside the hospital walls known as St. Bartholomew the Less. The “Less” is not a put-down, but was coined to distinguish it from its larger namesake nearby. Both are part of the same parish of the Church of England today.

How convenient. In one little place, you might be cured of illness (not likely), executed (more likely), and given the necessary rites to speed your way to heaven (unlikely).

Just to the south of Bart's Hospital lies the former site of London’s notorious Newgate Prison, now replaced by the Central Criminal Court. But that is another story.