The Charterhouse includes some of the last bits of Elizabethan architecture in London (along with the Staple Inn, Middle Temple Hall and parts of the Tower). The property faces a wooded green (Charterhouse Square) just off Charterhouse Street and only a few steps from Aldersgate Street. The name is a corruption of ‘Chartreuse’, the place in France where the Carthusian order was founded.
This lovely and quaint bit of Old London traces its history back to a terrible plague which occurred in 1348. People died so rapidly that the bodies were simply thrown into pits outside the city walls. The bishop of London, Ralph Stratford, grieved that these burials were in unsanctified ground, consecrated three acres of land not far from the Smithfield for a burying ground and erected a chapel where masses could be said for the souls of the victims. The place was called Pardon Churchyard (later New Church Hawe), and Stow says that some 50,000 persons were interred here.
A few years later, in 1361, another bishop of London named Michael de Northburgh left in his will a large sum of money to endow a Carthusian monastery at Pardon Churchyard. The Carthusian order had been founded in 1080 by Bruno, a German priest, and was known for its severe discipline. An additional thirteen acres were added to the original three in 1371 by the famous knight, Sir Walter de Manny. At this time the first prior, John Lustote, was nominated.
The Order apparently gained a good reputation for maintaining the discipline and holy life prescribed by Bruno, and Thomas More himself lived under the rigorous rule of the monastery for four years toward the end of the fifteenth century, but without taking vows. When the Carthusians were suppressed in 1535 the prior and some of the brothers suffered most cruelly. As they were being led from the Tower of London More observed to his daughter Margaret Roper, ‘Seest thou that these blessed Fathers be now as cheerful in going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriages’.
For the next seventy-six years this immense and valuable property was tossed about like a royal bauble. In the process, of course, it was considerably altered, though fragments of the original monastery including the gate still remain. First Henry VIII gave it to two of the caretakers, then to Sir Thomas Audley, speaker of the House of Commons, then to Sir Edward North, one of the king’s privy councillors. The Duke of Northumberland had it for a time before his execution, then Lord North took it back again and was nearly bankrupted by entertaining Queen Elizabeth several times. His son sold it to the Duke of Norfolk, but it reverted to the crown when this unfortunate gentleman was beheaded for conspiring to marry Mary, Queen of Scots. Later it was given to the Duke’s son, Lord Thomas Howard. King James (who of course was Mary’s son) was a guest of Howard for several days and made him Earl of Suffolk. Eventually Howard sold it to the remarkable philanthropist, Thomas Sutton.
With Sutton begins the period of the Charterhouse’s greatest fame. Sutton was nearing the end of his adventurous life and had no heir to whom he could leave his vast fortune. All sorts of people, including King James, were after his money, but what decided the issue for the old man was a letter from the Bishop of Exeter which began as follows:
The very basest element yields gold. The savage Indian gets it, the servile apprentice works it, the very Midianitish camel may wear it, the miserable worldling admires it, the covetous Jew swallows it, the unthrifty ruffian spends it. What. are all these better for it? Only good use gives praise to earthly possessions... To be a friend to this Mammon is to be an enemy to God; but to make friends with it is royal and Christian.
Accordingly, Sutton bought the Charterhouse for the purpose of founding a charity hospital for aged pensioners and a school for boys of poor parents. It was called ‘the greatest gift in England, either in Protestant or Catholic times, ever bestowed by any individual’. Letters patent for the hospital were issued in June 1611. Sutton died the following December.
From this notable act of Christian charity grew one of the most famous public schools in England. By the early nineteenth century it numbered over 600 boys, and the list of old Carthusians who attained national and even international fame is extensive. While most of these names of lord chancellors, chief justices, generals, judges, bishops and scholars may now be unfamiliar, lasting fame has been achieved by John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church; William M. Thackeray the novelist, Joseph Addison, essayist, poet and statesman; Sir Richard Steele, author and politician; Richard Lovelace and Richard Crashaw, poets; Rodger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island; Max Beerbohm, author and friend of G. K. Chesterton; and Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts.
In 1935 most of the old Charterhouse School property with its playing fields was purchased by St Bartholomew’s Hospital and soon disappeared forever. The pensioner’s hostel, however, still remains. This includes the medieval stone arch that is the entryway from the street and Charterhouse Square, the lovely Elizabethan Great Hall with the date 1611 over the doorway, the Chapel containing the elaborate tomb of the founder and other parts such as the Chapel Cloisters, the Master’s Court, the Great Chamber and the Wash-House Court. Due to decreased revenue the present number of brethren is about forty. They must be bachelors or widowers over sixty, members of the Church of England, and either retired military, clergy, doctors, lawyers, artists or professional men. While Charterhouse Square is public, permission must be obtained to visit the Hostel.