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The Peculiar Case of a Royal Peculiar: A Problem of Faculty at the Tower of London
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2022
Extract
Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, less formally known as the Tower of London or simply ‘the Tower’, was the seat of royal power in England for several centuries following its construction by William the Conqueror in 1078. While now a popular tourist attraction, it remains the home of the Crown Jewels, is a working barracks and maintains many ceremonial traditions of state. Two chapels are located within its walls. Foremost of these is the late eleventh-century chapel of St John the Evangelist (St John's), located within the White Tower, noted as a rare surviving example of early Anglo-Norman ecclesiastic architecture. To the north-west, the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula (St Peter's) has an equally remarkable history and is a building of singular importance even within the Tower complex. Its origins may be traced, like many London parish churches, to a small, private house-church in the ninth century, before being subsumed within the boundaries of the fortress. The chapel, the latest of three documented iterations, was constructed between 1519 and 1520 and is the burial place of many notable figures, including the sixteenth-century queens Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey, together with Cardinal John Fisher and the former Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More, both now venerated as martyrs and saints in the Roman Catholic Church.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2022
Footnotes
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The research presented in this article is the result of the work of a number of organisations including Historic Royal Palaces, Historic England, the Diocese of London, the Royal Household and the Chapels Royal. I would also like to thank Dr Lee Prosser, Dr Jane Sidell, Dr Laura Tompkins and Dr Alden Gregory, whose expertise and guidance was invaluable.
References
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10 Choosing Diocesan Bishops: The report of the steering group appointed to follow up the recommendation of ‘Working with the Spirit’, GS1465, available at <https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2018-10/gs1465-choosing%20diocesan%20bishops.pdf>, accessed 7 June 2022.
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13 Historic Royal Palaces and the Royal Household, Memorandum of Understanding (2018), v.3.c.
14 Ibid.
15 Archaeological Areas Act 1979. Section 61(8) includes a provision that excludes ecclesiastical buildings from being scheduled monuments; however, as both St Peter's and St John's form part of the Tower of London, they are not exempt from the legal requirement for SMC. This is in order to preserve the Tower of London as a complex group of individual buildings, the settings of each being integral to the others.
16 A burial licence may also be acquired for such works from the Ministry of Justice but was not applicable in this instance as there is no record of the burial ground of St Peter's being deconsecrated. It is therefore not discussed in detail here (see the Church of England (Miscellaneous Provisions) Measure 2014).
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19 Cameron, Report of the Review Group, p 89.
20 Care of Cathedrals Measure 2011; Heritage and Renewal: the report of the Archbishops Commission on Cathedrals (London, 1994), pp 115–123. Except, as set out in s 23(2) of the Care of Cathedrals Measure 2011, where the archaeological significance of that cathedral has been proven to not justify the appointment of a cathedral archaeologist.
21 Cameron, Report of the Review Group, p 88.
22 Professional guidance in this instance can be found through the Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Burials in England, Guidance for Best Practice for the Treatment of Human Remains Excavated from Christian Burial Grounds in England (2017), available at <https://apabe.archaeologyuk.org/pdf/APABE_ToHREfCBG_FINAL_WEB.pdf>, accessed 7 June 2022; P Mitchell and M Brickley (eds), Updated Guidelines to the Standards for Recording Human Remains (Reading, 2017), available at <https://www.babao.org.uk/assets/Uploads-to-Web/14-Updated-Guidelines-to-the-Standards-for-Recording-Human-Remains-digital.pdf>, accessed 7 June 2022.
23 Cameron, Report of the Review Group, pp 88–89.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid, p 90.
26 Ibid, pp 90–91.
27 Ibid, p 90.
28 St Peter's and St John's benefit from the guidance of such professionals through their association with HRP but this does not replace the governing body of the chapels.
29 Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act 1836.
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34 Ibid.
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43 Ibid, p 1146; Denton, English Royal Free Chapels, pp 1–15; Bent, ‘English chapel royal’, p 81.
44 Denton English Royal Free Chapels, p 129; A Ashbee and J Harley, ‘Records of the English Chapel Royal’, (2007) 54:4 Fontes Artis Musicae 481–521 at 485; N Saul, St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2005), p 1.
45 W Bliss and C Johnson (eds,) Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: papal letters. Vol. 3 1342–1362 (London, 1897), p 383.
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47 The National Archives (TNA), MINT 18/35.
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49 Ashbee and Harley, Cheque Books of the Chapel Royal, p xiii.
50 Kisby, ‘Officers and office-holding at the English court’, p 5.
51 Ashbee and Harley, Cheque Books of the Chapel Royal, p xiii; Ashbee and Harley, ‘Records of the English Chapel Royal’.
52 Baldwin, Chapel Royal, p 40.
53 K Mears, The Tower of London: 900 years of English history (London, 1988), p 62.
54 Galbraith, ‘The Tower as an Exchequer record office’, pp 233–236; Impey, White Tower, p 150; TNA, E101, 469/3.
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58 Ashbee and Harley, Cheque Books of the Chapel Royal, pp xviii–xix. The cheque books document various aspects of the chapel royal's activities, including the membership of the institution, alongside day-to-day liturgical functions and purchasing of Mass paraphernalia and decorative fittings and furnishings.
59 Register of the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula: marriages 1580–1752; baptisms 1587–1821; burials 1550–1821.
60 Keay, Elizabethan Tower of London, p 40.
61 Excerpt of the copy of the Hayward and Gascoyne map of 1597 made for the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1741 (HRP02178), <http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/crace/a/007zzz000000008u00042000.html>, accessed 13 June 2022.
62 Parnell, ‘Ordnance storehouses at the Tower of London’, p 171; H Colvin, The History of the King's Works, vol iii: 1485–1660 (part I) (London, 1975), p 264, n 2.
63 Llewellyn, Chapels in the Tower of London, p 16.
64 Baldwin, Chapel Royal, p 55.
65 ‘October 1646: An Ordinance for the abolishing of Archbishops and Bishops within the Kingdom of England, and Dominion of Wales, and for setling of their Lands and Possessions upon Trustees, for the use of the Commonwealth’, in C H Firth and R S Rait (eds), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (London, 1911), pp 879–883, available at <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/pp879-883>, accessed 23 September 2021.
66 M Harmes, Bishops and Power in Early Modern England (London, 2015), p 86; M Harmes, ‘The universality of discipline: restoration of the English episcopacy 1660–1688’, (2010) 33:1 Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 55–79; A Whiteman, ‘The re-establishment of the Church of England, 1660–1663’, (1955) 5 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 111–131.
67 H Colvin, The History of the King's Works, vol V: 1660–1782 (London, 1976), p 383.
68 TNA, Work 5/25.
69 TNA, MPH 1/893/6.
70 G Keevill, HM Tower of London: the Parade Ground: a report on its archaeological potential, 2018; Oxford Archaeological Unit, TOL 6 (Oxford, 1995); Pre-Construct Archaeology, TOL 101 (London, 2006); Historic Royal Palaces, TOL 157 (London, 2016), all in HRP Archive, Tower of London. An Iron Age burial was discovered in the Inner Ward to the north of the Lanthorn Tower in the twentieth century but this was excluded from this assessment due to its considerable age.
71 TNA, MPH 1/893/6.
72 HRP Archive, Tower of London, HRP21183.
73 TNA, MPH 1/910/5.
74 McGregor, ‘Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula’, p 3.
75 Order in Council, 8 August 1845, TNA, PC 2/227 (emphasis added). See also Barber, ‘What is a peculiar?’, pp 304–305.
76 Mellows, Chapels Royal within the Tower, pp 33, 111.
77 Ecclesiastical Exemption (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Order 1994.
78 Mellows, Chapels Royal within the Tower, pp 111–112.
79 McGregor, ‘Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula’, pp 3–5.
80 Ibid, p 4.
81 Ibid, p 4–5.
82 Ibid, p 5.
83 TNA, Work 14/1/16.
84 Mellows, Chapels Royal within the Tower, p 38, citing Lord Chamberlain's Memorandum of 17 September 1965.
85 McGregor, ‘Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula’, p 5. This is an important distinction as, while the same individual may be invested with both of these titles, that individual cannot issue authority in one role while acting in the capacity of the other.
86 McGregor, ‘Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula’, p 5.
87 Mellows, Chapels Royal within the Tower, p 32.
88 Historic Royal Palaces and the Royal Household, Memorandum of Understanding.
89 Cameron, Report of the Review Group, p 77.
90 Order in Council, 8 August 1845, TNA, PC 2/227.
91 Cameron, Report of the Review Group, p 78.
92 Mellows, Chapels Royal within the Tower, p 32.
93 Cameron, Report of the Review Group, p 97.
94 Ibid, pp 77, 79.
95 Ibid p 89; Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2018.