Catholic London: Drinking Edition

This time it's personal

More can and will be said about Wycliffe, Archbishop Courtenay and those dastardly Lollards.  It did occur to me, however, that a quick side trip to the middle of the 16^th century and then the late 20^th century might be in order.  The Earthquake Synod took place in 1382.  We do not get down to the real business of martyrdom back at St. Giles in the Fields until 1414.  There’s time. I will try to keep this firmly based, as always, on telephone-photography of questionable merit rather than rehearsing history.

Leaving Church Entry the other day, I cut across Ludgate Hill to the Old Bailey and took a left toward Holborn Viaduct at the Church where John Smith – Pocahontas’s John Smith – is buried.  I will get back to that Church in due course.  My destination, I am happy to report dear readers, was beer.  Not just any beer, mind, but at beer at the Ye Olde Mitre.

That is the entry from Hatton Garden.  Sir Christopher Hatton happened to be one of Queen Elizabeth I’s “favorites” at one point.  All the land hereabouts once belonged to the Bishop of Ely.  No medieval / early-modern Bishop would be seen in public without a London Palace.  It turns out that the Queen became rather smitten with Sir Christopher.  So much so that she put the “word” to the Bishop of Ely that maybe he might want to lease all the land to Sir Christopher Hatton at a very reasonable rate.  Bearing in mind that the average “lease” granted on a freehold property in England to this day usually starts out at 900 years, it’s still Hatton Garden.

The pub itself lies a ways down that little alley:

In the time of Sir Christopher and Gloriana this area sported a cherry tree.  It is reported that Elizabeth and Christopher danced around that very tree and, dare I say it dear tender Papists, there “thei dyd dispoorte.”

I have not had the food, only the beer.  This is where the people generally eat the food with the beer:

This is where one goes to drink and smoke:

Of course, St. Robert Southwell lived not far from here approximately 40 to 45 years after this pub opened.  Did he drink here?  I can find no evidence.  Did any of the other Jesuit martyrs drink here?  It had to have happened – there were just so many of them and, for reasons which will have to await the 17^th century, they went to Mass sometimes nearby.

I used to work on Hatton Garden, the street.  It is London’s diamond district.  A non-descript building I will later pass as we follow some martyrs from the Fleet Prison to Tyburn used to be the De Beers building.  That building used to contain over 90% of all the world’s cut & gem quality diamonds.

In fact, I remember a specific day there.  In 1993, on a Saturday, I had the opportunity to run into the office so that the pregnant person who lived in my house (and would have our daughter six months, four days later) could spend some quality, and very loudly emotional, time with her parents. I parked the car not far down the street from the entrance to the Ye Olde Mitre.

It was on that day in 1993, I became aware of St. Ethelburga’s Church in Bishopsgate, about a mile and a half from where I had parked my car. 

So I’m off to St. Ethelburga’s.  Until then, which will be in just a little while, I remain, as ever

Your perambulating Papist,

Peregrinus