Guilds -- England -- London; London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
Chantries were founded here: By and for Simon de Wynchecombe,
citizen and armourer, in the chapel of Holy Trinity, to which Robert
de Bruysor Chesterson was admitted, November 18, 1401—a licence was
granted by the King to found this, July 26, 1359; by John Lyttelton;
by Simon Wryght.
The church formerly contained monuments to Sir James Hawes and Sir
John Branch, mayors in 1574 and 1580; and to Master Roger Mountague,
“illustrious Precedent of Bounty and pious Industry.” Against the
eastern wall, there is a large monument to Sir Patience Ward, mayor
in 1680, and senior member for the City of London in the Convention
Parliament of 1688-89.
The parish had no legacies or charitable gifts of any considerable
amount. Mrs. Hyde gave £3 : 18s. for bread. The Merchant Taylors
Company (the gift of several benefactors) gave £16 : 19 : 6 for
coal.
=Sherborne Lane.=—Stow asserts that originally Langbourn Water,
“breaking out of the ground in Fenchurch Street, ran down the same
street, Lombard Street, to the west end of St. Mary Woolnoth’s church,
where, turning south and breaking into small shares, rills, or streams,
it left the name of Share-borne Lane,” or as he had also read it,
South-borne Lane, “because it ran south to the river Thames.” Wheatley
thinks that _Scrieburne_, from _scir_, a share (_sciran_, to divide), is
the more likely etymology. This “long bourne of sweet water,” Stow
further relates, “is long since stopped up at the head, and the rest of
the course filled up and paved over, so that no sign thereof remaineth
more than the names.” The existence of the stream indeed is more than
problematical. The lane is narrow, and now occupied wholly by business
premises more or less modern. The back of the City Carlton Club shows on
the west side, and near the north end is the narrow way into St.
Swithin’s Lane at the south end of the street (possibly Plough Alley);
and the back way into the old General Post Office “by the sign of the
Cock” (east side, north end), both shown in Strype’s 1754 map, have
vanished. The former is built up; the latter is occupied by King William
Street, which was cut clean through St. Mary Woolnoth’s churchyard and
the old General Post Office (formerly the residence of Sir Robert Vyner,
Lord Mayor, 1675). Before the Fire the General Postmaster lived “at his
house in Sherburne Lane neere Abchurch,” and hither “_The Carriers’
Cosmographie_, by John Taylor, the Water Poet,” written in 1637, bids
repair all who desired to send letters abroad or to various parts of the
kingdom.
The name occurs as early as A.D. 1300, and is very frequently referred
to in the _Calendar of Wills_, but under quite another form, viz. as
“Shiteburn Lane.” Stow’s derivation of “Sharebone” or “Southbone” Lane
will not, therefore, hold.
=St. Swithin’s Lane.=—Oxford Court in this lane was so called from John
de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, who died here in 1562.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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