William Penn’s Baptismal Church

Music at All Hallows by the Tower

Thursday 13th July 2017

 

It started with the Monty Python music and ended with Handel’s Messiah. Uplifting, well played and with an appreciative audience.  Thank you David.

Thursday 13 July
DAVID COOK – Assistant Organist, All Hallows by the Tower

John Philip Sousa
The Liberty Bell

Giovanni Martini
Plaisir d’Amour

Bernard Johnson
Pavane in A

Johann Sebastian Bach
i) Canzona in D minor, BWV 588; ii) Prelude and Fugue in C, BWV 531; iii) Air (from Suite no. 2) arr. W. T. Best

John Stanley
Voluntary in A minor, op. 6 no. 8: Largo; Fugue (Vivace)

Georg Frideric Handel
i) Largo; ii) Hallelujah Chorus (Messiah)
_________________________________________________

 

St Dunstan’s In the East – Churchyard

Quaker Tea Traders – Great Tower Street

One of the Members of the Society of Friends (of Truth) who attended Wanstead Quaker Meeting from the 1850s was Smith Harrison.  He had a large house called Elmhurst at South Woodford.  With his brother Daniel and another Quaker, he established the tea merchants Harrison & Crosfields in Great Tower Street.  When the tea clippers docked in the Pool of London, there was an auction at a coffee shop and Smith would bid there, according to his niece in a letter held in Quaker archives ‘ He buys and sells like no-one else with boldness and success.’  There are also in the archives a ‘Set of Rules for the ‘Harrison & Crosfield Establishment, 3 Great Tower Street’, which is rather charmingly now Starbucks.  The Harrison & Crosfield company sold its tea interests in 1916 to Twinings, but maintained trading interests in areas such as timber.  It became a PLC in 1982 and had by then created the merchants Harcros. It sold Harcros in 1997 to concentrate on chemicals and changed its name to Elementis PLC with no connection to Quakers or to tea.

Another great Quaker tea merchant with connections to the City of London, the Pool of London and now South London was Horniman. By 1891 it was one of the largest tea trading businesses in the world.  The founder and Quaker John Horniman moved to London from Newport, Isle of Wight, to be closer to the bonded warehouses and traders of London Docks in 1852, when it was the biggest tea trading port in the world. Horniman invented and used successfully a range of mechanical devices to fill pre-sealed packages, providing good, untampered quality for customers, rather than loose, often adulterated tea leaf.  The mechanisation also made the costs lower and the profit higher.  Hormiman’s had its offices and factory in Wormwood Street, between Bishopsgate and London Wall.

In the 1870’s Frederick Horniman, a son of the founder, took over the firm and spent some of the family profits supporting his wide areas of interest, a little like Henry Wellcome, by collecting books, natural history items, anthropological artefacts and art.  In 1901 Frederick Horniman presented his museum and its surrounding estate in Forest Hill to the London County Council. After the demise of its successor local authority, the GLC, the Horniman Museum and Gardens became funded by the central goverment in the form of the DCMS.

Horniman’s was sold to its competitor J Lyons in 1918.  The brand is now part of Douwe Egbert, itself part of Mondelez/Kraft, which bought another former ethical Quaker company and brand, Cadbury in 2010.  Former Alderman Paul Judge, RIP, was a former Cadbury manager and then director. Paul understood the Quaker way of life and business, as can be seen from contact here.  Horniman Teas continue to be successful in some territories, notably in Spain.  The Horniman Tea Warehouse is now a well known Nicholson’s Pub Hay’s Wharf.  All a long way from its Quaker and City of London roots.

Chigwell to Wanstead – A William Penn Pilgrimage

William Penn Senior was an Admiral and moved his family from their house, right by the old Roman Wall, perhaps where the Grange Tower Hill Hotel is now, to live in the county, in the pretty, rural village of Wanstead.  His son went to school in Chigwell.

Simple, democratic Quaker son and flamboyant Royalist Admiral father.

Tower Hill then was the centre of the Naval district and as an Admiral the father would have needed to be near the centre of the administration, but not when at sea.  It is likely too that with his son suffering illness, some sources suggest smallpox, it would have suited the family for a number of reasons. A neighbour and also Naval Man was Samuel Pepys, who mentions the Penn family a number of times.  He famous-to-Brits diary was about the period 1660 – 1669 started when young Penn was at Oxford.

Samuel Pepys was a parishioner  of St Olave’s, in the Ward of Tower,  calling it ‘our own church’. Admiral William Penn and others saved the church during the Great Fire of London by blowing up houses nearby to stop the spread of the Fire. He had access to the then nearby naval yards and sailors to help.  This means that ‘our own church’ is one of few medieval building in the City of London.  Another of course is Guildhall. Samuel Pepys and his wife have their burial memorial in the the Church.

When William Penn Jnr left home, in 1660, to seek his fortune, his father would have a number of career failure and successes, the outcome of which in simple terms was that the King, after the period of the ‘Republic’ under Oliver Cromwell, agreed to honour a debt to the father by giving land in the Colonies.  This was most of the land between New Jersey and Maryland.  The son inherited and was able to apply his Quaker Principles to creating a new, woody and perfect land (wood is Sylva in Latin).  The son named it after his father, at least in his own mind, but it is clearly his own surname too.  Pennsylvania.  A good American source about the Penns, Pepys and Pennsylvania is here.  https://pennsylvaniahistory.wordpress.com/tag/samuel-pepys/

Young Penn was brought up in rural Wanstead and would walk along the equivalent of the A113, about 15 miles to school and back.  From Chigwell School he went to Oxford where he was sent down for his extreme and anti-establishment views, then after two years travelling on the continent, to Lincoln’s Inn to train in the Law but again did not appear to complete his studies.

The Chigwell to Wanstead journey from school back home looked like this on the sunny 2017 August Bank Holiday weekend.  It is difficult to imagine children walking so far to school and back, but of course it is challenging to verify now how the journey was completed, but we know he had his basic, foundation education at Chigwell School and it served him well.

Nearby on Wanstead Flats, is the modern Quaker Meeting House, with a Quaker Burial Ground, since with the headstone of former City of London resident and heroine, Elizabeth Fry.  She had moved to Barking which along with West Ham, Plaistow and South Woodford were rural places, in previous generations, that people with financial means could move and retire to.  This link explains the reasons for the  1980 move of Elizabeth Fry’s headstone, with her husband’s, from Barking to Wanstead. http://www.parksandgardens.org/places-and-people/site/8973

 

Flowers for Anne Boleyn_Tower of London

Every 19th May in recent years there are deliveries of flowers for the grave of Anne Boleyn in the Chapel of St  Peter ad Vincula (1519) on the Green at the Tower of London.  She was executed on the orders of her husband Henry VIII and now her followers commemorate the event by sending modern flowers for the Tudor Grave in the St Peter ad Vincula, the Parish Church of the ‘village’ of the Tower of London.  Her execution was 19th May 1536.  The Church of England with the Monarch as Head of the State and Head of the Church took the place of the Catholic Church after the Pope refused in 1527 to allow Henry to divorce or annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

I had the privilege recently of visiting both St Peter ad Vincula and St John’s Chapel (1080) in the White Tower in the company of the  knowledgeable and passionate Royal Chapels administrator.  He claims that his office in the Crypt of St Peter is the oldest in London, but it is not the City of London as the Tower of London has a different set of protocols and historical context.  In fact every 3 years there is a ceremony to  confirm their separation, during the Annual ‘Beating of the Bounds’ a great and remaining tradition of marking and confirming the Ward of Tower boundary.  There is a mock battle played out between the Governor of the Tower of London with his Yeoman Warders (Beefeaters) and representative of the Ward of Tower, including the Alderman. During the Middle Ages the boundary was always in dispute and the event this year commemorated an occasion in 1698 when a riot took place between the people of the Tower and those of the Parish.

Two other important traditions were explained to me when I also had the honour to visit the Governor of the Tower of London, the senior administrator.  There is the Event when the new Constable of the Tower of London takes up his post and residence as the Queen’s or more precisely the Monarch’s representative. From 2016 this is General Sir Nicholas Houghton and he became the 160th Constable at the Ceremony of the Keys on 6th October 2016.  The Golden Keys represent the security of the Tower of London, the Crown Jewels held there and the Monarchy itself.  An ancient ‘tax’ that the Constable, sometimes called the Warden, could take from ships entering the Pool of London were called the Constable’s Dues.  Now there is a Navy tradition, including the Brazilian, French and Royal Navy, of leaving a Barrel of Rum or other spirits to continue this ancient rite from time to time, given notice to arrange the Event.

Source

The Official Address of the Church of St Peter ad Vincula is 35 Tower Hill, St Katharine’s & Wapping, London and for voting, rates and urban service points of view The Tower of London is actually now in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.  So The Tower of London is definitely not in the City of London and looks across to City Hall, the Offices for London Mayor, Saddiq Khan. Andrew Parmley, The Lord Mayor of London, a one year post, is a different person and represents the City of London, of course.

Source Twitter

Twitter

Working out in the Ward of Tower, based out of Soho Gyms, America Square, here opposite City Hall outside the Tower of London.

Grave of William Penn Jnr (1644 – 1718)

Although born in the Ward of Tower, William Penn Jnr left London to live in Wanstead when he was 6 years old, due to ill-health.  He died in Berkshire and was buried at Jordan’s Quaker Meeting House in the beautiful Chiltern Hills.  London Quakers who pay their quaker dues are able also have the Quaker Burial Ground as their final resting place.

During the time of William Penn’s life it was not possible for Quakers, who lived and worked across London, to be buried in the City of London.  Instead Quakers and other ‘dissenters’ from the Anglican Church has burial grounds just outside the City of London boundaries, now in the London Borough of Islington.  The Quaker Garden is close to the better known Bunhill Fields, which is tended now by the City of London Corporation and includes the final resting place of poet and artist William Blake.

The Quaker Garden, as it is now called, was the final resting place of over 30,000 Quakers including the founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), George Fox.

 

Paul Judge and Quaker Values

I met Paul Judge in late March 2017. He understood Quaker values as he worked for top Quaker firm Cadbury and added value to some of their non-mainstream brands in forming Premier Brands. He sold Premier Brands in 1990, aged 41, from which Paul became personally wealthy. Paul was asked and interested to help in promoting the idea of a Quaker Plaque in the Lombard Street area of the City of London, where Gracechurch Street Quaker Meeting House served the local Quaker community until the late 19th century. Barclay’s Bank. Lloyd’s Bank and Glaxo Smith Klein all formally acknowledge their Quaker roots from this small area of the City.  https://PettigrewCandlewick.wordpress.com/ 

Paul also knew, as a former Sheriff of the City of London, that William Penn Jnr, later the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, but born in the Ward of Tower, would later become part of the famous Old Bailey Bushell’s Case.  The Jury refused to take the Judge’s direction of Penn being guilty of ‘preaching’ in the street, outside Gracechurch Quaker Meeting House.  The Bushell Case outcome became an important part of our Law for juries  ‘to give their verdict, according to their Convictions.’  There is a plaque at the Old Bailey to commemorate this important and critical example of ‘speaking truth to power’.

William Penn Jnr – his first spiritual experience aged 12

‘William Penn later recalled that his first spiritual experience occurred when he was in his twelfth year and felt in the presence of God as a brightening of the room and a sensation of inward peacefulness. Between the ages of twelve and fifteen, he experienced additional similar spiritual revelations. Later as an adult, expressing God in this way would become the very center of his religion.’

Source : Boundaries (Candlewick Press 2014)

 

Where was William Penn’s family home in the Ward of Tower?

William Penn Jnr was born in the Ward of Tower, he later founded Pennsylvania

After their marriage they lived in “Tower Gardens and the navy quarters where they were only able to afford two rooms”. When (Admiral Sir) William Penn was promoted in 1644, he and Margaret moved to a house that belonged to Charles II:

“…built with brick linings backward and adjoining to the east side of a former tenement, consisting of one hall, a parlour and a kitchen…with divided cellar underneath same and, above stairs, in first storey two fair chambers and on second storey two more and two garrets over the same with a yard before the same, now in possession of William Penn.”

It was in this house that the Quaker, William Penn (1644 -1718), was born on 14^th October, 1644. With his father frequently absent at sea for long periods of time, It was Margaret who was to have the greater influence on the emotional and religious development of her son.

Source

William Penn at Chigwell School

1655: William Penn (Later the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia in the USA) was as pupil at Chigwell School. Travelling daily to the School from his home in Wanstead.

Source

Penn was born in 1644, the son of a naval captain. The first year of his life was spent in cheap lodgings on Tower Hill. In 1648 the young boy developed smallpox and to aid his recovery the family moved into the country, living at Wanstead in Essex. William’s first education was in a school at Chigwell where the headmaster saw that ‘the buds of virtue were stirred up’ and William learned the ‘three Rs’ and Greek and Latin. In 1654 Penn’s father was sent on an expedition to San Domingo and when this was a failure, he was dismissed from all his commands.

William had a religious experience at the age of 11 which he never forgot, and which left him convinced that he was dedicated to a holy life.

Source

 

This is now the Library of Chigwell School and the original building.  William Penn’s religious experience was in one of the upper rooms, now a History Room.  When I visited the School, one of the history teachers told me that from time to time the school has periods of Quaker silent worship in the room to commemorate the experience.

 

Maps

Pre 1666 City of London

Source: BBC

1755

 

Source: British Library