ST. PETER AD VINCULA
For history see p. 292.
The earliest date of an incumbent is 1355.
The patronage of the church has always been in the hands of the Crown; it was constituted a rectory with a rector and three chaplains by Edward III., February 10, 1353-54.
The chapel consists of a nave and chancel and an aisle on the north side, separated from the nave by columns of the Decorated period of architecture. It is 66 feet in length, 54 feet in width, and 25 feet in height.
In this church are buried: Anne Boleyn; Katherine Howard; Sir Thomas More; Cromwell, Earl of Essex; Lady Shrewsbury; Admiral Lord Seymour; the Protector Somerset; John Dudley, Earl of Northumberland; Lady Jane Grey; Lord Guilford Dudley; Sir Thomas Overbury; Sir John Elcot; Okey the Regicide; the Duke of Monmouth; Lords Lovat, Kilmarnock, and Balmerino, and others of lesser note.
The Minories lies within Portsoken Ward. Stow says:
“This Portsoken which roundeth as much as the Franchise at the gate, was sometime a guilde and had this beginning as I have reade. In the dayes of King Edgar more than 600 yeres since, there were thirteen knights wellbeloved to the king and realme (for service by them done) which requested to name a certain portion of land on the east part of the Citte, left desolate and forsaken by the inhabitants by reason of too much servitude. They besought the king to have this land, with the Libertie of a guilde for ever; the king granted to their request with conditions following that is that each of them should victoriously accomplish three combates, one above the ground, one under ground, and the thirde in the water, and after this at a certaine day in East Smithfield they should run with speares against all commers, all which was gloriously performed.”
Of the Minories, Stow says:
“From the west part of this Tower Hill towards Ealdegate being a long continual street amongst other smaller buildings in that row there was sometimes an abbey of Nunnes of the order of St. Clare called the Minories.”
This abbey was founded in 1293 by Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, King Edward I.’s brother, and was suppressed in 1539. For account see Mediæval London, vol. ii. p. 329.
The Minories was later noted for its gunsmiths. “In place of this house of Nunnes is now builded divers faire and large houses, for armour, and the habiliments of war.”
HOLY TRINITY, MINORIES
On the suppression of the abbey its chapel became a parish church for the inhabitants of the old monastic precincts. It escaped the Great Fire, but was entirely rebuilt in 1706, at the expense of Daniel King, Lady Pritchard and the parishioners. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1595.
The patronage of the church originally in the hands of the Crown passed by its union with St. Botolph, Aldgate (1899), to the Bishop of London.
The building is very unpretentious. Since 1899 it has been used as a Sunday School and parish institute. It has no proper tower, only a turret at the west end. There is some fine carving at the west end, preserved from the old church and bearing the date 1620.
No chantries were founded here.
The church contains monuments to Colonel William Legge, Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance to Charles I. and Charles II., who died in 1672, also his son, first Lord Dartmouth, Admiral of the Fleet, who died in 1691. When the vaults were examined in 1849 a head was brought to light, said to be that of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey, which had been preserved from decay by sawdust; it is now kept in a glass case in the vestry of St. Botolph, Aldgate. The church was attended by Sir Isaac Newton, when Master of the Mint.
Daniel King was donor of £200 and Lady Pritchard of £100 in 1706, for the rebuilding of the church. No legacies or bequests are recorded by Stow.