The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-09 00:00:00

THE SAVOY CHAPEL.

The following Notice on the Savoy Chapel wa'
originally privately printed for circulation among thr
parishioners. From the high interest, both architec-
tural and historical, which attaches to this, the only
remaining portion of the Savoy, we have thought that
it would not be uninteresting to the public generally.
to be made acquainted with what has recently bees,
done for the restoration of this beautiful specimen of
Tudor architecture, more especially when it is recol-
lected that the Savoy Chapel was the place in which
the English Liturgy was for the first time publicly
read in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and that it was
the scene of the memorable Conference between the
Episcopalian and Presbyterian Divines on the Book
of Common Prayer, in 1661 :
" On the death, without issue, of Brien de Insula
or De L'lsle, in the year 1233, certain r scattered
houses,' and their gardens, lying without the walls
of London, on the way or street called the Strand,'
reverted to the Crown. This property was granted
by King Henry 111., in 1245, to Peter, Count o•
Savoy, on his arrival to visit his niece Queen Eleanor :
and it would appear that a mansion of some conse-
quence had already been erected on the site of tht
scattered houses,' for the Count lodged here during
his stay in England. The manor retains the name
which it received from this possessor. He bequeathed
it in 1268 to the Convent and Hospital of Mont Joux
but Queen Eleanor, having formed an attachment to
the place, was anxious to recover it from those legatees.
They parted with it for the sum of three hundred
marks ; and in 1283 she bestowed it on her favourite
son Edmund (created in 1267 Earl of Lancaster).
who obtained from his brother, King Edward L,
royal licence to embattle with a wall his manor o
the Savoy,' and here fixed his residence. His grand-
son Henry, third Earl, and created in 1351, Duke 01
Lancaster (being the second English dukedom), re-
paired, or rather rebuilt, the castellated mansion at
the then very large cost of 34,6661. 3s. 4d.; according
to the chroniclers he chose to make this use of money,
which had accrued to him in consequence of his dis-
tinguished services in France, more especially a'
Bergerac. Camden describes the Savoy of this tht
first Duke of Lancaster, as one of the fairest manors
in all England unto which there was none in
the realm to be compared for beauty.'
" In this Palace King John of Prance was lodged
and entertained during his captivity in 1357. On his
second visit to England he again took up his abode in
the Savoy, and he died here in 1363.

" On the failure of the male line of Edmund. A.D

1361, the Dukedom of Lancaster merged in the
Crown ; and on the 13th of November, 1362, King
Edward 111. bestowed it on his own illustrious son,
John of Gaunt, he having married one of the co-
heiresses (who became, ultimately, the sole heiress)
of Henry, Duke of Lancaster.
" During the latter years of his father's long reign
this Prince resided usually in a style of extraordinary
magnificence at the Savoy ; but the protection which
he afforded to the principles of Wickliffe having ex-
cited the populace against him, his palace was sacked
by an insurgent mob in 1381, his treasury rifled, his
moveables carried away, or cast into the Thames, and
the whole building finally burnt to the ground. It
appears from a letter of the Duke to the treasurer of
his household, Sir John de Norfolk, in February,
1382, that his Castle of Hertford also was seized and
plundered, par les memes communes rebels en le temps
del grant rumour. The Duke directs that allowance
shall be made to his butler for wines thus destruz et
perduz ; namely, 18 tonneles et une pipe et trois
quarters d'une pipe des diverses vignes en notre
Manoire de la Savoye ' and a smaller quantity in
nostre Chastel de Hertford.'

" Thus perished the Palace of the Savoy. The
manor descended to John of Gaunt's son, Henry of
Bolingbroke, and on his accession to the throne as
Henry IV., it was vested in the Crown as part of the
Duchy of Lancaster, and thus acquired its peculiar
dignity and privileges as a royal manor.
" There appears no evidence that any royal per-
sonage ever resided here during the period between
the accession of Henry IV. and the latter years of
Henry VII. ; but the records mark from time to
time moneys paid for the improvement of the Savoy
gardens and repairs of the ancient prison attached to
the Liberty. The appointments of the stewards and
high bailiffs of the manor are regularly noted, and
some names of celebrity occur among the successive
holders of these offices.

" In the will of King Henry VII. (dated 31st of
March, 1509) it is recited that the establishment of
royal hospitals doth tend to the performance of the
seven great works of charity and mercy, and that the
same seven works do stand most constantly in six of
them ;—to wit, in visiting the sick, ministering meat
and drink to the hungry and thirsty, and clothing to
the naked, and lodging to the miserable poor, and in
burying the dead bodies of Christian people. It is
then stated that the King had begun to erect a
common hospital in his palace, called the Savoy,
beside Charing-cross, and Intended, with God's grace.
to finish the same according to a plan which was de-
vised for the same, and signed with his own hand ;'
that he had endowed it with lands and tenements to
the yearly value of five hundred marks to maintain
one hundred beds garnished to receive, and lodge
nightly, one hundred poor folks, as also a certain
number of priests, and other ministers and servitors ;'
that in case the hospital should not be finished at hi.,
death, his executors were 'as soon as goodly might
be done' to fulfil his design, and that for the first pro-
vision thereof, the building, the garnishing of the
hundred beds, the purchase of books, chalices, vest-
ments, &c., requisite for 'the Chapel of the said ,
hospital,' &c., he had delivered in ready money I
beforehand the sum of ten thousand marks to the
Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's. In the second
year of his reign King Henry VIII. accordingly
granted to the Bishop of Winchester and his father's
other executors, by letters patent, under the seal of
the Duchy of Lancaster, the site of the manor of the
Savoy, in trust for the completion of the plan above-
mentioned; and two years later he re-confirmed this
grant, and gave the executors licence to found a per-
petual hospital, consisting of a Master Chaplain, and
four other chaplains, to be incorporated by the name
of the Hospital of King Henry the Seventh of the
Savoy. The Abbot of Westminster was to be the
visitor of the institution, and take care that prayers
and masses were regularly said in the Chapel for the
souls of King Henry VII. and his royal predecessors.
" In the first of Edward VI. the hospital was one
of the many institutions declared to be illegal as
directed to superstitious purposes; and the master and
chaplains by a surrender, enrolled in Chancery, gave
it up to the King. In the fourth of Philip and Mary,
however, the hospital was re-established for the old
purposes, and with its old statutes—the only difference
being, that as there was no longer any Abbot of
Westminster, the functions of visitor were to be in
the Sovereign. It does not appear to what use the
revenues of the Savoy endowment had been applied
during this brief abrogation, but Stowe mentions that
the beds and other furniture had been granted to the
hospitals of St. Thomas and Bridewell, and that on
the re-establishment 'the ladies of the court and
maydens of honour stored the same anew with beddes,
bedding, and other furniture, in very ample manner :
a thing not to be forgotten.'
" The hospital does not seem to have been again
interfered with, or its resources diverted from the
original purposes of charity, though some variations
occurred in the manner of appointing the masters,
during the interval between the re-foundation by
Philip and Mary and the Restoration of Charles IL
" Very soon after the great Fire of London, the
Savoy suffered under a minor devastation of the same
sort. The apartments allotted to the chaplains, called
die Brothers' Lodgings, were wholly destroyed, and
it is probable that they never were rebuilt.
" Towards the end of the calamitous war with

Holland the greatest difficulty had been found in pro-
viding fit accommodation for our wounded seamen
and soldiers, and shortly after the Peace was signed—
the same inconvenience still pressing—Charles 11. was
advised to convert the dormitory of the Savoy hospital
into a military and marine infirmary. Presently
(1675) the lodgings of the sisters and servitors were
occupied in a similar manner. As the invalids re-
covered, or died off, companies of the Foot Guard
took possession of the chambers, and thus by degrees
the remaining buildings received a totally new desti-
nation. They became a regular barrack.
" The last visitation of the hospital was held in
July, 1702, by the Lord Keeper, Sir Nathan Wright,
as visitor of all hospitals of royal foundation. There
was at the time no master, but four chaplains ap-
peared, and on the allegation that the statutes had not
been conformed to—as how could they have been ob-
served, when the chambers and beds were seized on
and detained for the use of the military ?—the visitor
deprived the chaplains of their places, and the ho-
spital was declared to be dissolved.

" A Bill was soon afterwards laid before Parlia-
ment, to enable Queen Anne to apply the revenues of
the dissolved hospital to whatever charitable objects
her Majesty might think fit. It states that the parish
of St. Mary, in the Strand, had long been without a
church—that it was expedient to conjoin that parish
and the Precinct of the Savoy—and proposed that
the minister of the Savoy should thenceforth be the
rector of the united parish. The Bill, however, was
opposed, on the ground that its objects were not in
conformity with the charitable purpose of the original
foundation at the Savoy. It was lost accordingly,
and has never been revived.

" It would appear that the people residing near the
chapel had, from a very early period, been much in
the habit of attending Divine service there, but that
it first came to be looked upon as in the nature of a
parish church, in consequence of the sweeping de-
struction of sacred edifices by which the Protector
Somerset cleared the space destined for his great
palace in the Strand and its splendid gardens.
Among the churches which he thus levelled to the
ground was that of St. Mary-le-Strand. No attempt
to rebuild that church was thought of until the begin-
ning of the last century, and the existing
_edifice was
not opened for worship _
unti1.1723.