ied a shop
of the present front, the modern Mercers' Chapel standing, says Herbert,
exactly on the site of part of the hospital church.

The old hospital gate, which forms the present hospital entrance, had an
image of St. Thomas a Becket, but this was pulled down by Elizabethan
fanatics. The interior of the chapel remains unaltered. There is a large
ambulatory before it supported by columns, and a stone staircase leads
to the hall and court-rooms. The ambulatory contains the recumbent
figure of Richard Fishborne, Mercer, dressed in a fur gown and ruff. He
was a great benefactor to the Company, and died in 1623 (James I.).

Many eminent citizens were buried in St. Thomas's, though most of the
monuments had been defaced even in Stow's time. Among them were ten
Mercer mayors and sheriffs, ten grocers (probably from Bucklersbury,
their special locality), Sir Edward Shaw, goldsmith to Richard III., two
Earls of Ormond, and Stephen Cavendish, draper and mayor (1362), whose
descendants were ancestors of the ducal families of Cavendish and
Devonshire.

William Downer, of London, gent., by his last will, dated 26th June,
1484, gave orders for his body to be buried within the church of St.
Thomas Acon's, of London, in these terms:--"So that every year, yearly
for evermore, in their foresaid churche, at such time of the year as it
shal happen me to dy, observe and keep an _obyte_, or an anniversary for
my sowl, the sowles of my seyd wyfe, the sowles of my fader and moder,
and al Christian sowles, with _placebo_ and dirige on the even, and mass
of requiem on the morrow following solemnly by note for evermore."

Previous to the suppression, Henry VIII. had permitted the Hospital of
St. Thomas of Acon, which wanted room, to throw a gallery across Old
Jewry into a garden which the master had purchased, adjoining the
Grocers' Hall, and in which Sir Robert Clayton afterwards built a house,
of which we shall have to speak in its place. The gallery was to have
two windows, and in the winter a light was ordered to be burned there
for the comfort of passers-by. In 1536, Henry VIII. and his queen, Jane
Seymour, stood in the Mercers' Hall, then newly built, and saw the
"marching watch of the City" most bravely set out by its founder, Sir
John Allen, mercer and mayor, and one of the Privy Council.

In the reign of James I., Mercers' Chapel became a fashionable place of
resort; gallants and ladies crowded there to hear the sermons of the