its church and later in a great chamber which will be of singular interest to us, and from as early as 1311 was often found a convenient meeting-place for the Privy Council. In 1522 it was the lodging of the Emperor Charles V, and a wooden bridge and gallery were carried over the Fleet, to facilitate communications with his train in Bridewell palace. In 1529 its parliament chamber was the scene of the legatine sittings which tried the case of divorce between the same Emperor's niece Katharine and the conscience-stricken Henry VIII.[1]
By this time the friars had ceased to be a power in the land. Those of the convent had numbered seventy in 1315; there were no more than sixteen or seventeen in 1538.[2] Parts of the buildings, now all too spacious, were let out as residences. It was, perhaps, the neighbourhood of the Wardrobe, whose Master had an official residence contiguous to the east wall of the precinct, which made the Blackfriars a favourite locality for those about the Court. A list of 'them that hath lodgings within the Blak Freers', which was drawn up in 1522, probably in connexion with the imperial visit, contains the names of Lord Zouch of Harringworth, Lord Cobham, Sir William Kingston, then carver and afterwards comptroller of the household, Sir Henry Wyatt, afterwards treasurer of the chamber, Sir William Parr, Sir Thomas Cheyne, afterwards warden of the Cinque ports and treasurer of the household, Jane, widow of Sir Richard Guildford, formerly master of the horse, and Christopher More, a clerk of the exchequer.[3] It is to be feared that some of these tenants cast a covetous eye upon the fee-simple of their dwellings, and that it was not all zeal for church reform which made Lord Cobham, for example, write to Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet and son of Sir Henry, on 7 October 1538, 'No news, but I trust there shall not be a friar left in England before you return'.[4] Cobham and his friends had not long to wait. The deed by which the friars surrendered their property into the hands of the King is dated 12 November 1538. The annual income, derived from the rented premises, was reckoned as £104 15s. 5d., but of course this in no way represents the capital value of the site and buildings.[5] The partition of spoils, under the supervision of the Court of
- ↑ Stowe, Survey, i. 9, 27, 40, 64, 339; ii. 14, 44, 89; (1720) i. 3. 177; Halle, ii. 150; Nicolas, Acts of Privy Council, passim; Rot. Parl. v. 171; Clapham, 58; V. H. i. 498; Brewer, iv. 2483; Riley, Memorials of London, 90; Baldwin, 154, 261, 355, 358, 499; Gairdner, Paston Letters, i. 426, 'for the ease of resorting of the Lordys that are withinne the toun'.
- ↑ V. H. i. 498.
- ↑ Brewer, iii. 2. 1053.
- ↑ Ibid. xiii. 2. 215.
- ↑ Rymer, xiv. 609; Brewer, xiii. 2. 320.
