Whitefriars, London

Whitefriarsis an area in the Ward ofFarringdon Withoutin the City of London. Until 1540, it was the site of aCarmelitemonastery, from which it gets its name.

History

The coat of arms of the Carmelite order.

The area takes its name from the medieval Carmelite religious house, known as the White Friars, that lay here between about 1247 and 1538.Only a crypt remains today of what was once a late 14th centurypriorybelonging to a Carmelite order popularly known as the White Friars because of the white mantles they wore on formal occasions.During its heyday, the priory sprawled the area fromFleet Streetto theThames.At its western end was the Temple and to its east was Water Lane (now called Whitefriars Street). A church, cloisters, garden and cemetery were housed in the ground.

Mount Carmel in northern Israel.

The roots of the Carmelite order go back to its founding onMount Carmel,which was situated in what is todayIsrael,in 1150. The order had to flee Mount Carmel to escape the wrath of theSaracensin 1238. Some members of the order found a sympathizer inRichard, Earl of Cornwall,and brother ofKing Henry III,who helped them travel to England, where they built a church onFleet Streetin 1253. A larger church supplanted this one a hundred years later.

Whitefriars on the Wyngaerde panorama

The Whitefriars crypt

A vaulted cellar of the medieval friary survives under the modern 65 Fleet Street building. The 14th-century cellar was probably part of the White Friars prior's mansion. The medieval remains were lifted up on a crane during the construction of the modern building in 1991 and then replaced (in a slightly altered location); the cellar or 'crypt' can be viewed from Magpie Alley to the south of Fleet Street.

Burials

• John de Mowbray, 1st Earl of Nottingham
• Robert Knolles
• Robert Mascall
• Richard Empson
• SirHenry Bromflete,Baron Vessy
• Sir Matthew Gough
• Alice Ferriby, first wife ofHumphrey Coningsby (judge)

Dark side

Whitefriars was known as ared-light districtin early modern England; and (under the name ofAlsatia) as a haunt of criminals,being a place of sanctuary until 1697.

Alsatia

Not to be confused withAlsace.

"The Squire of Alsatia", a dandy and rogue of restoration London, fromMarcellus Laroon's seriesThe Cryes of London

Alsatiawas the name given to an area within Whitefriars that was once privileged as asanctuary.It spanned from theWhitefriarsmonasteryto the south of the west end ofFleet Streetand adjacent tothe Temple.Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries it was proofed against all but a writ of theLord Chief Justiceor of the Lords of thePrivy Council,becoming a refuge for perpetrators of every grade of crime.

It was named after the ancient name forAlsace,a region outside legislative and juridical lines,and first appeared in print in a 1688 play byThomas Shadwell,The Squire of Alsatia.To this day it remains used as a term depicting an area beyond the law.

The execution of a warrant in Alsatia, if at any time practicable, was attended with great danger, as all united in a maintenance in common of the immunity of the place. It was one of the last places of sanctuary used inEngland,abolished byAct of ParliamentnamedThe Escape from Prison Actin 1697.Aside from whitefriars, eleven other places in London were named in the Act:The Minories,The Mint,Salisbury Court,Fulwoods Rents,Mitre Court,Baldwins Gardens,The Savoy,The Clink,Deadmans Place,Montague Close,and Ram Alley.Further acts in the 1720s abolished sanctuary in The Mint andStepney.

In the reign ofEdward I., a certainSir Robert Gray,moved by qualms of conscience or honest impulse, founded on the bank of the Thames, east of the well-guarded Temple, aCarmeliteconvent, with broad gardens, where the white friars might stroll, and with shady nooks where they might con their missals.Bouverie Streetand Ram Alley were then part of their domain, and there they watched the river and prayed for their patrons' souls. In 1350Courtenay, Earl of Devon,rebuilt theWhitefriars Church,and in 1420 a Bishop of Hereford added a steeple. In time, greedy hands were laid roughly on cope and chalice, andHenry VIII., seizing on the friars' domains, gave his physician—thatDoctor Buttsmentioned byShakespeare—the chapter-house for a residence.Edward VI.—who, with all his promise, was as ready for such pillage as his tyrannical father—pulled down the church, and built noblemen's houses in its stead. The refectory of the convent, being preserved, afterwards became theWhitefriars Theatre.The mischievous right of sanctuary was preserved to the district, and confirmed byJames I., in whose reign the slum became jocosely known as Alsatia— from Alsace, that unhappy frontier then, and later, contended for by French and Germans—just asChandos Streetand that shy neighbourhood at the north-west side of theStrandused to be called the Caribbee Islands, from its countless straits and intricate thieves' passages. The outskirts of the Carmelite monastery had no doubt become disreputable at an early time, for even inEdward III.'s reign the holy friars had complained of the gross temptations ofLombard Street(an alley nearBouverie Street). Sirens and Dulcineas of all descriptions were ever apt to gather round monasteries. Whitefriars, however, even as late asCromwell's reign, preserved a certain respectability; for here, with his supposed wife, theDowager Countess of Kent,Seldenlived and studied.

— According to Walter Thornbury, in his 1878 bookOld and New London