Thomas Erpingham, who takes such
prominent place in the city, and church walls, and gateways, his arms
figuring here in the stone-work between every two of the upper story of
windows. In its primitive condition the church boasted of three chapels,
one of them subterranean, three altars, two lights, and an image of St.
Peter of Malayn; the choir was decorated with panel paintings, which
found their way at the Reformation to the parlour of some private
dwelling-house close by, whose walls they yet adorn. Two guilds were
held there, the guild of St. William and the Holy Rood. In 1538, when
the axes and hammers of King Henry were busy over the face of the land,
and bonfires of libraries were being made in the precincts of every
monastery, the house and church of the Black Friars was saved.
Deputations to his majesty from the corporation of the city, successfully
negotiated the transfer of the building to its possession, on
consideration of the sum of eighty-one pounds being paid into the Royal
Treasury. Mention is made in old records of a handsome library belonging
to this as well as the Carmelite Monastery; their fate perhaps may be
conjectured by that of many others of the time. Bale mentions the fact
of a merchant buying the contents of two noble libraries for forty
shillings, to be used as waste paper, and ten years were occupied in thus
consuming them. The chancel of the church has retained its character as
a place of worship almost unvaryingly until the present day, at one time
being leased to the Dutch, and in later times used as a chapel by the
inmates of the workhouse; occasionally, however, it has served the
purpose of a playhouse; as we find on record, injuries sustained by the
breaking down of partitions at the performance of "interludes" in it upon
Sundays, in the thirty-eighth of Henry the Eighth. The king's players we
also find similarly occupying the nave or hall in Edward the Sixth's
reign, during Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday before Christmas. The
cloisters and other portions of the monastery were in the reign of Anne,
upon the first establishment of workhouses for the poor, appropriated to
that purpose, the groined roofings to this day forming the ceilings of
pauper kitchens and outhouses. The sole trace of ecclesiastical
furniture lingering in the nave is a stone altar in one corner, much more
noted as the place of gathering in after-times for the brethren of the
St. George's Guild than for any rel