News from Friends of the City Churches

We tend to forget that our present view of the City and its churches did not just arrive but developed over many centuries and at the cost of much trouble to individuals or institutions, and in spite of, or sometimes because of, natural disasters. We wrote last month of the changes wrought on City churches by the Great Fire. The Annual Fire Sermon held last month at St Magnus the Martyr is a reminder that fires were common and thankfully not usually quite so severe as that in 1666.

Although both London Bridge and St Magnus church were burned down then, a severe fire in 1633 destroyed a third of London Bridge but the church escaped destruction. One wealthy parishioner, Mrs Susanna Chambers, was moved to mark this potentially calamitous event when she came to make her will. On the benefactors’ board we read:
Mrs Susanna Chambers by her last will & testament bearing date 28th December 1640 gave the sum of Twenty-two shillings and sixpence, yearly for a Sermon to be preached on the 12th day of February in every Year within the Church of St Magnus, in commemoration of God’s merciful preservation of the said Church of St Magnus from ruin by the late and terrible Fire on London Bridge.

Four hundred and fifty years ago, fires of an entirely different sort featured in Smithfield, outside the churches of St Bartholomew the Great and the newly created St Bartholomew the Less within St Bartholomew’s Hospital. On 4 February 1555, John Rogers became the first Protestant martyr of the Marian persecutions. An orthodox Catholic priest until he met William Tyndale in Antwerp, he helped him to translate the Bible into vernacular English. All was well when he returned to England under Edward VI in 1547; he was appointed Vicar of St Sepulchre without Newgate, but he was arrested for seditious preaching in 1554 after Mary acceded to the throne, tried and condemned to death. He refused to recant and was burned at the stake.

Benefactions such as Mrs Chambers’ at St Magnus were not uncommon. At St Bartholomew the Great churchyard on each Good Friday morning, hot cross buns are distributed to poor widows, a custom dating from the 17th century. Josiah Butterworth endowed a fund in the 19th century to allow this to occur in perpetuity, although children rather than widows are now recipients.

These and other events within the City have marked the development and history of our churches and sometimes reached beyond the City boundaries.

Friends of the City Churches, St Magnus the Martyr, Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6DN tel 020 7626 1555

e-mail      www.london-city-churches.org.uk