Clerkenwell Priory: Hospitaller Headquarters and Royal Residence in London
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Crusader, English, Knights Hospitaller
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page15 sections
History
Clerkenwell Priory was the English headquarters and residence of the Grand Prior of the Hospitallers in London, United Kingdom. Founded during the reign of Henry II by Jordan Briset, a Norman baron, it developed into a major medieval religious and administrative centre for the Catholic military and religious order that cared for pilgrims and defended Christian interests in the eastern Mediterranean. The priory followed the Rule of Saint Augustine, a set of regulations for communal religious life, prayer, discipline, and administration.
Foundation and Hospitaller rule
Briset founded the priory alongside a Benedictine nunnery. Its church was consecrated in 1185 by Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Henry II later held an aulic council, or formal royal council, at Clerkenwell. Heraclius urged the king to support a new crusade and offered him the crown of Jerusalem, but the barons refused to let Henry lead the expedition himself. In anger, Heraclius declared that Henry was worse than a Saracen and recalled the king’s earlier conflict with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury murdered in 1170 after a dispute with Henry over ecclesiastical authority.
The priory continued to serve the Hospitallers as an English institutional base. Thomas Malory was later buried in its church. In 1237, the Hospitaller prior Theodoric, a German-born knight, led other knights and paid attendants from Clerkenwell toward the Holy Land. They travelled with a large sum of money and about thirty shields, processing through the City toward the bridge so that spectators could bless them and pray for their mission.
Clerkenwell was the only Hospitaller priory in England unable to support itself financially. It had to maintain and entertain the Grand Prior, pensioners, and guests from the royal court. In 1337, its expenditure exceeded total revenue, which amounted to at least £8,000. Royal visitors included King John in 1212, Edward, Prince of Wales, and Eleanor of Castile in 1265, Henry IV in 1399, and Henry V in 1413.
Destruction and rebuilding
Additions were made to the complex during the reign of Edward I, but a mob during the Peasants’ Revolt burned it down. Despite this destruction, a royal council met at Clerkenwell in 1485. On that occasion, Richard III publicly abandoned his earlier plan to marry his niece Elizabeth of York.
The complex was fully rebuilt by 1504. Sir Thomas Docwra, the penultimate Grand Prior, erected its grand south gate and was later buried in the priory church. William Camden described the rebuilt establishment as palace-like, with a fine church and a very tall, finely worked tower-steeple that formed a notable ornament of the city.
Dissolution and later religious use
In 1502, Henry VII was chosen as Protector of the Hospitallers but did not provide the men and money he had promised for the defence of Rhodes against Suleyman the Magnificent. The Ottoman sultan’s forces captured Rhodes in 1522. Afterward, the Hospitallers’ Grand Master, L’Isle Adam, was received by Henry VIII, who initially confirmed the knights’ privileges at his request.
Henry VIII later dissolved Clerkenwell Priory and the rest of the order during the Dissolution, the confiscation and suppression of England’s monasteries and other religious institutions after the king’s break with papal authority. He accused the Hospitallers of treasonously upholding the Bishop of Rome as supreme head of the Church. The last prior, William Weston, and the other officers received small annuities and did not oppose the dissolution. Most of the knights retired to Malta, while three who remained in England were executed as traitors.
Henry VIII granted the priory church to John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, for £1,000 and used the church and the rest of the complex to store hunting nets. In 1540, ten newly appointed serjeants-at-law, senior English legal practitioners, held a major banquet at St John’s for London’s mayor, aldermen, the Lords, and the Commons, distributing rings to the guests. Another feast in 1531 reportedly consumed thirty-four large cattle, thirty-seven dozen pigeons, and fourteen dozen swans.
Edward VI granted the remaining priory lands to other noblemen. During the third year of his reign, the priory church was undermined and blown up with gunpowder. Stone from its body, side aisles, and great bell-tower was reused in the Lord Protector’s house in the Strand, while other stone was used for the porch of All Hallows Lombard Street. The choir later fell into poor condition.
Mary I revived the Hospitallers and restored their possessions. Her Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Pole, built a new west front for the priory church and repaired its side chapels. The church was restored sufficiently for the Merchant Taylors’ Guild to celebrate Mass there, with offerings made and the choir hung with tapestries.
When Elizabeth I came to the throne, the order was again sent back to Malta. During her reign, Edmund Tylney, the Master of the Revels, lived in the priory buildings with the craftsmen and stage crews who worked on court plays and masques. The complex’s great hall was used for rehearsals.
Conversion into a chapel and parish church
After the Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland, James VI and I granted the buildings to Lord Aubigny and moved the Revels Office to St Peter’s Hill. The buildings later passed to Sir William Cecil and then to the Earl of Elgin. In 1623, Joseph Hall reopened the repaired choir. During the reign of Charles I, the Earl of Elgin converted the church into the Aylesbury Chapel, his private chapel.
The chapel later became a Presbyterian meeting-house and remained one until 1710. Sacheverell rioters removed its pews and burned them outside the nearby house of Bishop Gilbert Burnet. The chapel was enlarged in 1721. In 1723, the commissioners responsible for building fifty new churches bought it for £3,000 and converted it into the parish church of St John Clerkenwell.
Remains
The surviving fabric of Clerkenwell Priory is concentrated in St John’s Gate, formerly Docwra’s south gate, and an Early English crypt beneath the neighbouring parish church of St John Clerkenwell. Other fragments of the priory church were incorporated into the later church or reused in buildings elsewhere.
Surviving priory structures
St John’s Gate
Docwra’s south gate is the principal surviving element of the priory complex. Erected during the rebuilding completed by 1504, it now stands in St John’s Square as St John’s Gate. Much of the gate was reconstructed during the Victorian period, preserving the name and position of the former entrance while giving the surviving structure its present form.
Early English crypt
An Early English crypt survives beneath St John Clerkenwell. The Early English style was an English Gothic phase associated with pointed arches, ribbed vaulting, and related medieval forms. A crypt is a chamber below a church, used for burial, worship, or structural support. This surviving underground space belongs to the medieval architectural remains preserved beneath the later parish church.
Former church fabric
Church walls and interior fragments
The former priory church contained a main body, side aisles, a choir, side chapels, a west front, and a great bell-tower. The tower was described as finely worked, carved, gilded, and enameled. By 1878, the later parish church still retained one of the large painted windows, together with remains of Docwra’s rebuilding in the south and east walls. Capitals and rib mouldings from the earlier church were incorporated beneath the pews of St John Clerkenwell.
Reused stone and dispersed fragments
After the church was demolished, stone from its body, side aisles, and great bell-tower was reused in the Lord Protector’s house in the Strand. Further material went into the porch of All Hallows Lombard Street. The priory arch stone was later taken to Exmouth in Devon, where it was incorporated into a building used by the local branch of the St John Ambulance Brigade.
Later adaptations of the church
Choir and Aylesbury Chapel
The choir was repaired and reopened in 1623 before the church was converted into the Aylesbury Chapel. The chapel was enlarged in 1721 and subsequently became the parish church of St John Clerkenwell. The former choir was in severely deteriorated condition by the time of John Fuller’s description, while surviving medieval elements continued to be incorporated into the later building.
Great hall
The priory’s great hall survived long enough to serve a new function during Elizabeth I’s reign. Edmund Tylney used it for rehearsals by the craftsmen and stage crews preparing court plays and masques, linking one of the complex’s principal medieval communal spaces with the work of the Tudor court theatre.
