Shaky Foundations: Some London Churches and their Foundation Legends

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shaky foundations talk text.doc: 1

Shaky Foundations: Some London Churches and their Foundation Legends John Clark

A large poster outside Southwark Cathedral boldly advertises that the cathedral has been ‘Here since 606’; St Pancras Old Church claims to have been a ‘Site of prayer and meditation since 314 AD’. There is of course no historical evidence to support such unfeasibly early (and unfeasibly specific) dates. This presentation will consider the ‘foundation legends’ still attached to a number of London churches. Some have their origins in medieval times, others are more recent. Specific dates seem often to be the inventions of local historians or enthusiastic churchmen in the 19th or even the 20th century. In spite of their obvious unreliability these legends remain popular with parishioners, tourist guides and the church authorities, and are widely quoted – with or without the caveat ‘According to legend…’.

I’ve long been interested in the way some churches make public claims to great age, with unbelievably early – and often very precise – dates, on their information panels, guidebooks and leaflets, and more recently, websites.

My interest was rekindled few years ago when -

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this large poster went up outside Southwark cathedral.

‘Here since 606’ ‘Five services daily’?

It’s obvious moonshine historically.

But it’s not alone as these notices show:

This is my little list – I admit that not all are current claims – but I’m always on the lookout for additions.

The Temple Church: St Paul’s Cathedral: St Peter upon Cornhill: Westminster Abbey: St Pancras Old Church: St Helen Bishopsgate: St Mary le Bow: St Mary Woolnoth: St Bride’s: Southwark Cathedral: St Stephen Walbrook: St Martin Ludgate: All Hallows by the Tower: St Mary, Finchley:

451 BC Temple of Concord Druidic stone circle / Temple of Diana AD 179 cathedral AD 184 / Temple of Apollo AD 314 AD 330 Roman Roman 5th century AD / Roman foundations AD 606 7th century AD / Roman foundations AD 664 AD 675 AD 675 / Roman shrine

I can only deal in detail this evening with a few of these.

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[Note: other versions of this talk include other churches from this list.]

So, to return to Southwark Cathedral.

Unfortunately its origins and history before the foundation of the Augustinian priory of St Mary Overy are obscure – there is no monastic history, not even a series of (faked) charters like those of Westminster.

The earliest historical reference is in Domesday Book, a reference to a ‘minster’ in Southwark – almost certainly on this site; in 1106 the Priory of St Mary Overy, a priory of Augustinian Canons, was founded; after the Dissolution in 1539 the church became the parish church of St Saviour. In the 19th century it escaped demolition when the railway was built, and became a cathedral in 1905.

The poster has gone now, but the extended history back to 606 is repeated -

on an information panel on London Bridge:

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and on a plaque at the west end of the church –

‘For over 1,000 years Christians have worshipped here

AD 606 – a convent AD 1106 – a priory AD 1540 – a parish church AD 1905 - a cathedral’

So what is this tradition?

John Stow (in A summarie of Englyshe chronicles 1565; in his Survey of London 1598), quotes it three times – he heard it from Bartholomew Linsted, the last prior of St Mary Overy (who after the Dissolution in 1539 retired on a pension of £100) –

Linsted’s story:

‘This church was of old time, long before the Conquest, a house of sisters, founded by a maiden named Mary; unto the which house she left... the oversight and profits of a cross ferry over the Thames.

‘This house of sisters was after by Swithen, a noble lady, converted into a college of priests... who built a bridge of timber...

‘...and then in the year 1106 was this church again founded for canons regular by William Pont de la Arche and William Dauncy, knights, Normans.’

This is oral tradition – it contains no dates.

And one can comment that ‘Mary’ is not a typical Anglo-Saxon maiden’s name!

Later historians’ attempts to rationalise the story made it worse.

Already in 1739 William Maitland pointed out that Swithin is usually a man’s name, and in 1765 (Arthur Tiler History & Antiquities of St Saviour’s, Southwark p10) ‘he’ was identified as possibly St Swithin, Bishop of Winchester between 852 and 863.

A 1922 history of the cathedral says ‘we are in the realms of uncertainty’ as far as the nunnery is concerned – but – ‘We are on safer ground when we reach the 9th century, when St Swithun,

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Bishop of Winchester, is said to have dissolved the convent and to have established a College of priests...’

This history was written by the Rev Thomas P Stevens, the cathedral’s Succentor and Sacrist 1917-24 – he took personal responsibility for the young cathedral’s publicity and press relations. He was later appointed Hon Canon, and in 1930 wrote a new history under the title: Southwark Cathedral 606 AD – 1930 AD.

This was reprinted several times with appropriate changes of title until 1965.

Stevens’s interpretation

‘There is a persistent tradition that about the year 606 a body of nuns founded a church on the south side of the Thames… There is an ancient and discredited story of a girl named Mary Overy…

‘The nunnery was disbanded in 862, when a college of priests was established by St. Swithun of Winchester.

‘In 1106 the Augustinian Canons came to Southwark and probably absorbed the college.’

Stevens provides no argument in favour of the year 606 – perhaps it’s to allow a polite two years gap after the foundation of St Paul’s cathedral across the river? or simply a round number, exactly 500 years before the foundation of the priory in 1106?

Although today the official guidebook refers only to ‘a tradition that a convent of nuns was founded here, possibly in the 7th century’, Stevens’s version is clearly that adopted by his successors responsible for cathedral publicity today!

It’s good publicity, so it doesn’t have to be true.

…

Now to north of the river, and St Pancras Old Church, behind St Pancras station:

…a medieval chuerch largely rebuilt in 1848.

On the churchyard railings is a notice :

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‘Site of prayer and meditation since 314 AD’

and a local council information panel adds detail (and a caveat in the form of the word ‘possibly’) -

The church ‘stands on one of Europe’s most ancient sites of Christian worship, possibly dating back to the early 4th century’

A brand-new guidebook confirms that the story is believed by church and parish:

‘Believed to have been established circa the 4th century AD, on the site of a Roman temple…’

How did this claim develop, and where does date come from?

As a saint, ‘St Pancras’ is an early dedication, at least he was popular in the 6th/7th century (for example in Canterbury) – although since (if he existed) he was supposedly martyred in Rome in about 300, a dedication as early as 314 is stretching it a bit!

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But there’s already a hint of an early date in John Norden’s 1593 description:

John Norden Speculum Britanniae: Middlesex 1593

‘Pancras Church... standeth all alone as utterly forsaken, old and weatherbeaten, which for antiquitie thereof, is thought not to yeeld to Paules in London.’

Does this mean that it was thought to be older than St Paul’s building (completed in the 13th century) or to predate the cathedral’s foundation in AD 604? – Norden was not an architectural historian.

François Maximilien Misson’s A new Voyage to Italy was a popular travel book – written in French (1691) it was translated into English in 1695. It recommended a visit to the papal archbasilica of St John Lateran, Rome (dedicated in 324), the seat of the Pope as Bishop of Rome, and described as ‘Head and Mother of all Churches’.

But by the time of the 4th edition in 1714, this passage was amended (by an English editor) to read:

‘S. John de Lateran, the Head and Mother, say they, of all Christian Churches, if you except that of St Pancrace, under Highgate, near London.’

To complement this evidence of an 18th-century belief in the church’s great antiquity – a poem published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1749 suggests that St Pancras was the first Christian church in Britain:

‘Prospect from Primrose Hill’ by A.H.

‘The rev’rend spire of ancient Pancras view, To ancient Pancras pay the rev’rence due; Christ’s sacred altar there first Britain saw, And gaz’d, and worshipp’d, with an holy awe.’

William Maitland’s History of London (1739) dismissed this as ‘a vulgar Tradition’, considering that it involved confusion with St Pancras in CANTERBURY, which a medieval legend (according to the 14th-century monk William Thorn) claimed was founded by St Augustine himself on the site of a pagan temple in 597.

About this time also we find the first reference to a ‘Roman encampment’ on this site – in the imaginings of the antiquarian William Stukeley, who interpreted earthworks to the west of the church as the camp of Julius Caesar – and drew his plan of the site, known as ‘The Brill’, in 1758 .

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(Gillian Tindall has suggested that these earthworks were in fact traces of the original medieval village, later moved north to the Kentish Town area)

On his plan Stukeley marked the site of the church – but did not link the church in any way to his Roman site – that was to come much later.

By the end of the 18th century, we are told, St Pancras vicar Rev Benjamin Mence (1750-96) had seen ‘a manuscript in the Vatican Library mentioning that St Pancras Church was built in the 9th century’ and Rev Weldon Champneys (1797-1810) was said to have claimed to have seen documents in the Vatican proving that St Pancras was founded in the 4th century – no-one else has been able to identify these documents – or even to find the original statements by the vicars!

According to Samuel Palmer St Pancras: Being Antiquarian, Topographical, and Biographical Memoranda... 1873, the church is ‘said to be the first Christian place of worship erected in the county of Middlesex in the 8th or 9th century’

A local historian in 1906 thought such ‘persistent tradition has a possible foundation’ (the ‘no smoke without fire’ argument) but would not commit to a date.

In the rebuilding works of 1848, various pieces of stonework were recovered (a drawing of them by John Wykham Archer is now in the British Museum).

They included an altar slab with five consecration crosses. The Rev J Carter Rendell (vicar 1912-26) claimed that these crosses could only be matched with one on an ancient tombstone on the Scottish island of Eileach An Naoimh (between Jura and Mull) – reputedly that of Eithne, mother of St Columba, so 6th-century in date – proving the St Pancras was founded (perhaps by St Augustine!) at about that time.

And according to the recent information panel: ‘Legend has it that the stone belonged to St. Augustine of Canterbury’!

(Note however that Pamela Taylor consulted John Blair about the style of this slab and its crosses, and he commented that it could have been ‘current until at least the 14th century’.)

While the Rev Rendell was going for a 6th-century date, another author was pushing it even earlier.

In 1919 Montagu Sharpe, former chairman of the Middlesex County Council and amateur archaeologist, suggested that Roman Middlesex was ‘centuriated’ – divided up into grid by a series of equally spaced roads covering the whole county:

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Montagu Sharpe Middlesex in British, Roman and Saxon Times 1919

– and if he moved the grids around sufficiently, landmarks like the Wealdstone and Gospel Oak, and particularly ancient churches, often coincided with crossroads – or at least stood on the line of a road. The churches were clearly successors to pagan Roman ‘compita’ or ‘compitalia’ (wayside shrines) – and represented the conversion of pagan temples to Christian churches by missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons in the 6th or 7th century.

Perhaps not surprisingly St Pancras one of these compita!

In 1935, the then mayor of the metropolitan borough of St Pancras, Charles Denyer, wrote St Pancras through the Centuries – and suggested that possibly the church, like the Canterbury St Pancras, had been converted from a pagan shrine by Augustine.

But the final step was taken in a history of St Pancras Church and Parish published in 1955 – by Charles E Lee – I assume this was the noted railway historian, but he was also churchwarden of St Pancras and seems to have let local patriotism outweigh his historical judgement. Lee combines Sharpe’s compitum with Stukeley’s Roman camp.

Lee concluded:

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‘Widespread and widely-accepted tradition is in favour of the great antiquity of a Church on this site, possibly as early as 313 or 314…

‘There can be little doubt that a Roman encampment was situated opposite the site of St. Pancras Church about this period, and that the church is on the site of a Roman Compitum [shrine], which served as a centre of public worship and public meeting…

‘It seems probable that the Roman Compitum at St. Pancras was adapted to Christian worship shortly after the restoration of religious freedom in 313 (taking its name from the recently-martyred Pancras).

So we have a foundation legend that is still less than 60 years old.

…

Another of Sharpe’s compita/churches was St Mary Finchley…

so we find local historian Fred Davis attributing to ‘historians’ the idea that this church stood on the site of a Roman compitum shrine – although clearly by ‘historians’ he means just Montagu Sharpe:

‘Another theory as to the origin of the church is that it stands on the site of what was once a pagan worshipping place, which before the coming of Augustine was used by the Saxons. Should we wonder why they chose this spot on which to erect their ‘chapel’, historians suggest that it could previously have been the site of a Roman compitum…’

Fred Davis St Mary-at-Finchley: A Short History and Guide 1983

Note, however, that he describes this as ‘another theory’…

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…the one favoured on the church’s own website attributes the foundation to St Erkenwald in 675 as a chapel for woodsmen felling timber to build St Paul’s:

‘According to one tradition, the church was founded on this site by Bishop Erkenwald of London about the year AD 675. It was to serve the workmen who felled the timber used in the construction of old Saint Paul's Cathedral.’

Davis dismisses this, but I haven’t yet discovered who started the story!

In 2009 the Finchley Society sponsored an information panel to go up in front of the church – the draft text, I understand, attributed its origin to a Roman compitum – at the last minute an astute member of the society spotted this and complained that it was nonsense. The text was amended, and it now rather innocuously says that ‘some people believe that this was a sacred site in Saxon times’!

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Now back to the City, to St Martin Ludgate –

Now there’s a blank door at the west end of the south wall, but until very recently there was a faded

painted panel in a niche:

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The text tells us: ‘King Cadwal built the first Church here, just inside the Lud Gate, some 1300 years ago. His remains are said to be buried in the crypt.’

Who was Cadwal?

If we consult history books we find three candidates for the identity of ‘Cadwal’:

1. The Welsh king Cadwallon (Catgublaun) of Gwynedd – killed in battle against Oswald of Anglian Northumbria in 634

2. his son Cadwallader (Catgualart) – who died of plague in 664(?)

3. and the Saxon king Caedwalla of the Gewissae or West Saxons – who according to Bede renounced the throne, and died on pilgrimage Rome in 689.

At this point we need to introduce Geoffrey of Monmouth – born, probably in Monmouth, at the end of the 11th century, perhaps of Welsh or Breton ancestry.

He was an Augustinian canon in Oxford, became bishop elect of St Asaph in 1151, and died in about 1155.

His History of the Kings of Britain, completed in about 1138, recounts the fictional exploits of fictitious kings from the time of Brutus, Trojan exile and founder of London as New Troy or

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Trinovantum – his account was taken as truth, and became the standard ‘British history’ for the next 400 years or so.

But in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history, instead of three kings, we find two, with the Saxon king neatly merged and elided. (Note that Geoffrey might claim to be excused in part, since he identified Bede’s Gewissae, an older name for the West Saxons, with the Gewissei, the people of Gwent in Wales!)

Geoffrey’s two kings are:

1. Cadwallo of Britain – victor over the Saxons – who died on 17 November in an unspecified year, after 48 years reign

2. and his son Cadwallader – who was driven into exile, and died (like Caedwalla) on pilgrimage to Rome in 689.

Of the first, Cadwallo, Geoffrey tells us:

‘The Britons embalmed his body with balsam and spices, and with great skill placed it in a bronze effigy. This they placed, armed and mounted on an impressive bronze horse, high on London’s western gate, as a memorial to his great victory and to intimidate the Saxons. Beneath it they also built a church dedicated to St Martin, in which to hold masses for the king and for the faithful departed.’

Presumably the church of St Martin below west gate is St Martin Ludgate; unlike the painted panel, Geoffrey says nothing about Cadwallo’s remains being buried in the crypt.

In the extraordinary monument Geoffrey describes, he clearly has in mind a Roman triumphal arch – surmounted with a bronze equestrian statue like that of Marcus Aurelius in Rome.

A coin of the Roman emperor Claudius, celebrating his conquest of Britain, depicts such a triumphal arch:

Whether any such arch with a bronze statue on ever stood in London another matter! – though fragments from larger-than-life-size Roman bronze statues have indeed been found in London… and perhaps fragments of a large equestrian statue were found during building works near Ludgate in Geoffrey’s own time and inspired his story.

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Now up Ludgate Hill to St Paul’s cathedral

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…and the belief that it stands on the site of the Temple of Diana (as was claimed – and illustrated by a reconstruction drawing – in an SPCK guidebook published in 1937, still in print in the 1960s)

It was a medieval commonplace, that churches stood on sites of pagan temples, so a 14th-century discovery in building works at St Paul’s of a pit full of oxskulls, was assumed to represent the ‘sacrifices of gentiles’ (pagans). But the identification with Diana comes later, in the late 16th century.

John Stow and William Camden both refer to this discovery, but disagree about its significance - Diana or Jupiter?

‘That there stood of old time a Temple of Diana in this place some have conjectured, and arguments there are to make this their conjecture good.’

William Camden Britannia 1586 (trans Philemon Holand 1610)

‘Which thing, they say, confirmed greatly the opinion of those which have reported, that of old time there had been a temple of Jupiter, and that there was daily sacrifices of beasts.’

John Stow Survey of London 1598

Indeed ‘arguments there are’, in Camden, Dugdale and later:

the pit full of oxskulls (similar perhaps to a more recent discovery at Yeavering in Northumbria, also identified by the excavator as representing sacrifices)

the annual custom of presenting the carcase of a stag at the high altar in procession (a quitrent ceremony according to Stow)

a nearby building know mysteriously as ‘Diana’s Chambers’

the discovery during building works after the Great Fire of ‘sacrificing vessels with hunting scenes’- in fact ordinary Roman domestic samian ware

a small bronze figurine of Diana found nearby

the discovery in the 19th century of a stone altar with a figure of a huntress (or hunter) identified as Diana – from the site of Goldsmiths’ Hall – nearly a quarter of a mile from the cathedral.

Such was the influence of William Camden’s opinion that when in 1722 William Stukeley produced the first attempt to reconstruct the appearance and layout of Roman London in a map, he included a prominent Templum Dianae:

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William Stukeley’s map of ‘LONDINIVM Augusta’ 1722

The concept of a Temple of Diana on this site was dismissed by Christopher Wren, and debated by archaeologists in the 19th century – there is NO ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE to support it.

…but it was still in the SPCK guidebook from 1937 to the 1960s.

But even if Roman Temple of Diana is forgotten, the idea of a pagan temple of some form is still with us -

Elizabeth Gordon – Prehistoric London its mounds and circles 1914 - says:

‘On the highest ground on the western hillock, where St. Paul’s now stands, might have been seen silhouetted against the sky, the mighty unhewn monoliths of the Druidic circle, the seat of the Arch-Druid of Caer Troia. No trace of the circle remains….’ – although Peter Ackroyd still favours the idea.

…

William Stukeley’s map of Roman London also shows temple-like buildings on the sites of three churches, St Mary le Bow, St Mary Woolnoth and St Helen Bishopsgate. Roman remains had indeed been found on all three sites.

St Helen’s Bishopsgate:

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According to guidebooks there is a ‘popular tradition’ that this church was built by the Roman emperor Constantine:

‘…said to have been erected to her [St Helena’s] memory by her son Constantine.’

J E Cox The Annals of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, London 1876

‘There is a popular tradition that a Christian church was originally built here in the fourth century, on the site of a pagan temple, by the Emperor Constantine on his conversion to Christianity, and dedicated by him in pious memory of his mother Helena, the reputed discoverer of the True Cross, who according to one account was a British lady, daughter of Coel II, Prince of the Trinobantes.’

A Short Account of the Ancient Historic Parish and Priory Church of S. Helen, Bishopsgate… 1950

Constantine’s mother was (St) Helena – in a more familiar story she was a Turkish barmaid who married the emperor Constantius Chlorus, their son Constantine being declared emperor when his father died in York on a visit to Britain in 306. Constantine became Christian in 312. Helena herself was said to have discovered the ‘True Cross’ in 326 or 7, and died in 330.

Helen’s British connection is found in an alternative legend, in which she is perhaps confused with a figure in Welsh mythology, Helen of the Hosts – builder of roads and fortifications. Already in the early 12th century she was identified as the daughter of Coel (old King Cole), eponymous founder of Colchester (where her statue stands on the town hall), and as builder of the city walls of London.

…

finally, a church with a legend which is rather older than those we’ve looked at so far

St Peter Cornhill

It’s early date is the only one confirmed by legal statute.

The east façade of the present, post Great Fire, Wren church faces on to Gracechurch St – it is now undecorated but a few years ago there was a prominent painted inscription –

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…claiming that it was ‘reputedly the oldest church site in the City, AD 179’

(Note that ‘reputedly’ is one of those words used today as a sort of let-out clause for absurd historical claims; ‘alleged to’ ‘said to’ or a reference to ‘persistent tradition’ are others.)

Indeed in 1979 the church held celebrations for its 18th centenary.

The church itself now rarely hosts services. It is used as a ‘Study Centre’ and for ‘youth group meetings’, and seems not to stress its great antiquity, but -

As London church foundation legends go, this is actually quite an old one, recorded on brass plate hanging inside in the vestry:

This brass plate is apparently a replacement for a ‘hanging tablet’ that was destroyed in the Great Fire. The Chronicler Ralph Holinshed (1577) and the London historian John Stow, buried nearby in St Andrew Undershaft, both saw the tablet hanging in the church that recorded the story, and it was copied out several times before it was destroyed.

‘in the year of our Lord God 179, Lucius the first Christian king of this land... founded the first church in London, that is to say, the church of St Peter upon Cornhill; and he founded there an archbishop’s see...and made that church the metropolitan and chief church of this kingdom’ –

which it remained until coming of St Augustine, and the removal of the archbishopric to Canterbury.

So who was Lucius King of Britain?

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Bede (731) says that this king wrote a letter to Pope Eleutherius (pope c 177) asking to be baptised – the information he took from the Liber Pontificalis may be a misunderstanding of a papal record.

Later chroniclers repeat the story – but also elaborate it, with the suggestion that the whole of Britain was converted this time by Roman missionaries. Geoffrey of Monmouth (of course) takes it further: not only was Lucius converted, but he established an ecclesiastical hierarchy, with archbishops in London, York and Caerleon, replacing three ‘archflamens’ (pagan chief priests) – a concept, incidentally, he purloined from canon law, from the delightfully named ‘False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore’ – written in the mid 9th century.

The implication, then, is that Lucius built cathedrals in these same cities, London, York and Caerleon, but Geoffrey did NOT pinpoint their locations – where were they?

Geoffrey also tells us:

‘[Lucius] departed this life in the city of Gloucester and received honourable burial in the church of the metropolitan see [in ecclesia primae sedis] in the Year of Our Lord 156.’

Presumably the ‘metropolitan’ see was that of the ‘archbishop of London’ – but there is some ambiguity, and some took it to mean that Lucius was buried in Gloucester. Thus the hanging tablet in St Peter’s said:

‘And hee was buried (after some Chronicles) at London: and after some Chronicles, hee was buried at Glocester, at that place where ye Order of St Francis standeth now.’

These are the ruins of Gloucester Greyfriars – the Franciscan friary founded c 1231 – but can’t find a chronicle that actually claims this was Lucius’s burial site – certainly the story is not known in Gloucester.

However, the phrase ‘…, at that place where ye Order of St Francis standeth now’ indicates it was written before the Dissolution of the Gloucester Greyfriars in 1538. Comparison of the language and spelling of the transcripts of the pre-Fire original suggest the text was originally written considerably earlier – perhaps around 1400.

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At the end of the 14th century disputes arose about which of the rectors of City churches took precedence in the great annual procession to St Paul’s cathedral on Whit Monday, attended by the Mayor and Aldermen in state. The parishioners of St Peter’s Cornhill were claiming that their rector should take precedence over all other London clergy, in the place of honour just ahead of the Mayor, since theirs was the most senior church – founded as a cathedral by King Lucius.

They quoted a 1399 judgement to this effect by Thomas Stowe, Doctor of Laws (Archdeacon of London, later Dean of St Pauls) and Official of London, and ‘many others learned in the law’, on behalf of William Aghtone, the then rector.

This was reinforced by a ruling by the Mayor and Aldermen on 27 May 1417:

‘… did award and enact… that the then rector of the Church of St Peter aforesaid, and all his successors… successively, of right, and for the honour of that most sacred Basilica of St Peter (which was the first church founded in London, namely, in the year of Our Lord 199, by King Lucius, and which was the Metropolitan See for four hundred years and more), shall go after all other Rectors of the same city, in all and singular Processions within the City aforesaid, on the Monday in the week of Pentecost… occupying the last and most dignified place.’

City of London Letter Book I: 27 May 1417

At this time, the church had a very active rector, John Whitby – with local schoolmaster and grammarian John Seward he compiled a cartulary in 1425 which included, as its contents list shows, copies of various documents in support – including a papal letter:

‘Of the personz of Seynt Peturz afore seid Goyng in generall processionz.

Thofficiallz of londone jugement.....292.a. A record in the chambre of londone. …. 296. The Mairez of londone exemplificatione of this record aforeseyd. … 297.b. The popiz bille upon this juggement. … 399.b. [=299.b.] Tharchidekne of londone Process upon thaforeseid bille. … 300.b.’

London Metropolitan Archives, Guildhall MS 04158

Was it John Whitby who commissioned the hanging tablet, to publicise the official recognition of the church’s claim to seniority?

There is possibly one much earlier reference to Lucius’s foundation of St Peter’s church, in a Chronicle attributed to Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London from 1306 to 1313.

In 1639 the Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher (a man with a reputation for painstaking accuracy in his dating of the Creation to 4004 BC) wrote:

‘…also in the Chronicle of Ralph de Baldock Bishop of London we read thus: In the Year of Our Lord 179 King Lucius founded the first church in London, that is, the church of St Peter of Cornhill, & there was the Metropolitan see for four hundred and more years, until the coming of St Augustine, apostle of the English. There are similar words on the hanging Table, which is still to be seen in that temple of St Peter of ‘Mons Frumentarius’ or Cornehill, (vulgarly called Cornwell).’

James Ussher Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates (1639) p 36

Unfortunately, although several other authors refer to Ralph Baldock’s Chronicle, it has not been seen since the 17th century, when it was in the cathedral library – was it perhaps destroyed in the Great Fire?

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One can only surmise how this story of the origin of St Peter’s church started. We can dismiss the idea that it was REALLY founded in the 2nd century AD by a REAL king Lucius. But it may have something to do with fact that the medieval church erected above ruins of one of the largest Roman buildings north of Alps, Roman London’s basilica and forum:

In 1984 Warwick Rodwell drew attention to a number of cases where Christian churches had been erected in cities on the sites of major Roman buildings like forums and baths, and suggested in the case of St Peter’s ‘might even hint at the conversion of part of the masonry structure into a post-Roman basilican church’. But the basilica was demolished soon after AD 300, so we must envision the reuse of a prominent site, not continuity within the same structure.

Or were medieval Londoners simply aware that St Peter’s had stood among the ruins of a church-like structure as big as St Paul’s cathedral – and assumed it was an ancient, and therefore Lucian, cathedral?

In any case, the church’s claim to foundation by Lucius was clearly already well known in the 14th century – but its actual origin remains a mystery.

…

Some of these claims to early foundation dates are inspired guesswork; some, for example in the case of Southwark Cathedral, are modern attempts to rationalise a longstanding but unhistorical tradition; for some, as at St Peter Cornhill, tradition may include a grain of truth – it may be a medieval attempt to rationalise by applying Geoffrey of Monmouth’s historical fiction of King Lucius’s cathedral to a tradition that St Peter’s WAS indeed the oldest church in the city.

What they all seem to aspire to is proof of continuity of Christian worship on the same site over the longest possible period.

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Postscript-------------------------------------

St Martin in the Fields…

… where there is the possibility for a new foundation legend to develop.

In its guidebooks and publicity this church has not previously claimed an early history before the first documentary mention of it in 1222 – although in the light of discoveries of stone sarcophagi and Anglo-Saxon burials made during the building of the present church by James Gibbs in 1721-26 archaeologists have had interest in site, particularly since the original suggestions by Martin Biddle and Alan Vince in 1984 that the site of the Saxon town of Lundenwic lay in the Strand/Aldwych area. Thus St Martin’s was a ‘possible early church’ in this early urban area, left behind ‘in the fields’ when King Alfred moved settlement back inside the Roman walls to the east in 886.

But excavations in 2006 uncovered late Roman AND early Saxon burials – there was ‘possible’ continuity of occupation and burial on the site – of all London churches this perhaps has the best claim to origins in the Roman period!

For a while following the completion of the archaeological investigation and the new works, there was an information panel displayed in the crypt:

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‘This has been a sacred site for many centuries’

Is that what these ‘foundation legends’ are all about? – they express a desire for continuity of sacredness ‘for many centuries’?

Shaky Foundations: Some London Churches and their Foundation Legends

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