St Giles-in-the-Fields

The history of the ancient parish church of St Giles-in-the-Fields

St. Giles-In-The-Fields. Part 1, 1101-1645 It?s Part in History By Rev. Gordon Taylor, FSA (first published 1971 as a pamphlet) Researched and revised by Jim Murray 2003.

St. Giles-in-the-Fields began its existence in 1101 when Matilda (Eadgyth, known as Matilda), Queen of Henry 1. took the first steps to found a hospital for lepers in the fields to the west of London. It is believed that this was done at the suggestion of her confessor, St Anselm, and that it was connected with her release from nun?s vows in order that, as the grand-daughter of Edmund Ironside (d.1016), she could marry the son of the Conqueror and thus unite the Saxon and Norman lines.

Her father was Malcolm 111 (Canmore), King of Scotland, and of Margeret, grand-daughter of Edmund Ironside. Her great grand-father was King Duncan 1, who was murdered by Macbeth. Her son was Prince Willian who was lost in the foundering of ?The White Ship? off Barfleur in 1120, after which Henry 1 was said to have ?never smiled again?

The Hospital of St. Giles-in-the-Fields stood within a large walled compound delineated by today?s Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue and St. Giles High Street. The chapel of this Hospital served both the leper inmates and the population of the village of St. Giles, which grew around a new monastic foundation. It is possible that the hospital was placed at the western end of what later called ?the old village? (Alde Wych), situated where High Holborn and Drury Lane now meet, for early deeds of the Hospital mention ?Aldwych Cross? at this point, and as early as the 15th century Drury Lane was the ?Via de Aldwych?. The earliest reference that can be found to a Parish of St. Giles is in 1222 during a dispute between the See of London and the Abbey of Westminster over boundaries.

Gifts which were made to the Hospital by Henry 11 during the years 1166 and 1189, enable us to look upon him as virtually its second founder. Pope Alexander 1V (1254-1261) took the Hospital under the special protection of the Papacy in a bull which expressly denounced persons who interfered with its rights. In 1299 it was made tributary to the Hospital of Burton Lazars in Leicestershire, and it thus became a cell of that house, and a member of the Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem. St Giles Hospital was dissolved in 1539.
>p>In 1545 Henry V111 bestowed it and its precincts, but not its chapel, on John Dudley, Lord Lisle, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, who was executed in 1553 for attempting to alter the succession from the Tudors to the Dudley?s, and for activating resisting the accession of Mary 1 to the throne. Through his attainder his lands passed into the hands of Queen Mary, but after the accession of Elizabeth, his surviving son Robert Dudley, who was the new Queen?s favourite, and who became Earl of Leicester in 1564, appears to have received back the manor-house of St. Giles, which lay to the north-west of the Church and fronted Hog Lane (later Charing Cross Road), and it became known as Dudley House. Here lived for many years until her death aged 90 in 1669 Alicia Lady Dudley, the wife of the Earl of Leicester?s natural son, Robert Dudley, by Lady Sheffield. He has deserted Alicia in 1605, when he went to live in Italy with a mistress. Alicia was created a Duchess in her own right by Charles 1 in 1645, and during a life of exemplary piety she became an important benefactress to the church and parish of St. Giles.

The former chapel of the Hospital became wholly a parish church in 1547, when its first Rector was appointed. This first St. Giles Church was pulled down in 1624, and another was erected in its place in 1630 and consecrated by Bishop Laud. This replacement was itself pulled down a century later, and the present St. Giles Church, presumably the third to stand on the site, was designed and built by Henry Flitcroft, a protégé of Lord Burlington, and opened for worship in 1734.

These successive St. Giles Churches witnessed some noteworthy events in history which occurred in or close to them, and their rectors and representatives from time to time got themselves involved in the national issues of the day. Sir John Oldcastle, the Lollard leader, was ?hung and burnt hanging? for treason and heresy not far from the gate of the church in 1417, his heresy being the desire to possess the Bible in the English language. To Fox and others a century later he was a martyr. Ballard and four others who were concerned in Babington?s Plot in 1586 were executed at St. Giles Pound, which then stood approximately where Shaftesbury Avenue crosses St. Giles High Street today. The unusual width of High Holborn west of the junction with Drury Lane enabled it in days gone by to serve as a kind of village green, under the name ?Broad St Giles?s?. Hence for a time it became London?s second Tyburn, following Smithfield, as a place of public execution.

Shortly after Roger Manwaring, who had become rector in 1616, was appointed Chaplain to Charles 1 in 1626 he preached two sermons before him on ?Religion and Allegiance? which brought troubles on both himself and the Kind. In the first, Manwaring declared that ?the King?s royal command imposing taxes and loans without consent of Parliament did so far bind the conscience of the subjects of his kingdom that they could not refuse the payment without the peril of damnation?, while in the second he further maintained that ?the authority of Parliament was not necessary for raising aids and subsidies?. These discourses were printed and published, and the substance of them was repeated in St. Giles Church, a third sermon in the same strain being added to them for good measure. Parliament regarded his actions as offences and prosecuted him. He was fined £1,000, imprisoned and declared unfit to hold ecclesiastical office. In 1629 he made submission to the House on his knees and received pardon. But his services to the Royalist cause were remembered, and he became Dean of Worcester in 1633 and Bishop of St. David?s in 1635. When Archbishop Laud was tried in 1643 and executed in January 1645, these proceedings formed one of the accusations against him, as he had been Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633. Manwaring himself did not at that time escape unscathed, for he was charged that as Dean of Worcester he had not only permitted the ?popish innovation? whereby the King?s Scholars entered the cathedral two by two (instead of the customary more disorderly fashion) but also exhibited a sociability and joviality unbefitting his office. He was imprisoned by the Long Parliament, lost all his preferment?s and disappeared into poverty and obscurity.

Related links: St Giles and St George's Workhouse; www.workhouses.org.uk/StGiles

http://www.stgilesonline.org/heritage-resources/history.php

Jim Murray

Contributed by Jim Murray