Radical London, Clerkenwell Green
Piccadilly Circus is not a circus, you will seen neither elephants nor castles at Elephant and Castle and Covent Garden has been been minus a garden for centuries. London has a habit of acquiring misleading or confusing place names. Similarly Clerkenwell Green is no longer green, though it was once. It`s grass vanished in the 18th century and any semblance to the village green it was once, before London`s rapid expansion in the 18th century, remains a distant memory. History has a habit of repeating itself though and at Clerkenwell Green, it might reasonably be claimed that the voices of protest and dissension, both religious and political, have stubbornly persisted thorough the centuries.
Covering a small area to the north of the City, the `Green` is surrounded by narrow lanes and alleys. There are a couple of pubs, the late 18th century St.James` Church, a court house of the same period and most famously, the Marx Memorial Library. A couple of hundred yards to the east, lie the remains of the medieval Priory of St. John, once the English headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller, where knights embarking on crusade mustered prior to embarking on their journey to the Holy Land. Just to the north, on the site of St.James`s Church, stood the Nunnery of St. Mary. The latter once drew it`s water supply from the `Fons Clericorum`, or `Clerk`s Well`, which gives the area it`s name. Rediscovered in 1924, the medieval well is still visible within an office building now covering the site, parish clerks performed miracle and mystery plays ( plays based on biblical stories) on a nearby stage. Already the locale was becoming synonymous with spectacle and boisterous crowds. In 1301 the Prioress of St Mary`s nunnery complained to King Edward 1st because:
`the people of London lay waste and destroy her corn and grass by their miracle plays and wrestling matches so that she has no profit of them nor can have any unless the King have pity for they are savage folk and we cannot stand against them and cannot get justice by any law.`
Eighty years later, lawlessness on a far greater scale returned during one of the great upheavals of English history. In May 1381 a violent confrontation between the peasantry and King Richard II and his Government broke out, known as the Peasant`s Revolt. The root causes were the socio-economic consequences of the Black Death pandemic described in a previous article and war with France, which was going badly for England. Money was running short in the Royal Exchequer so a new tax known as the Poll Tax was levied on everyone over the age of 14, who was not a beggar. This proved to be a spark to a powder keg. Rebellion broke out in the rural counties to the north and south of London, tax collectors were chased from towns and villages under threat of a savage beating or worse. Their leader, a Kentish man named Wat Tyler, is said to have taken up the cause after killing a tax collector who had attempted to rape his daughter. The rebels were also galvanised by the preaching of John Ball, a priest from Colchester in Essex. Ball was no stranger to controversy owing to his criticism of the Roman Catholic Church and advocacy of social equality, for which he was excommunicated. He is best remembered today for the following quote:
When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?`
Many of Tyler`s followers established themselves at Clerkenwell Green setting ablaze the Priory of St.John, the Prior himself, one the King`s chief tax collectors was summarily beheaded. Ultimately the Rebellion was suppressed, it`s leaders ruthlessly hunted down and executed, but not before Simon of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King`s principal minister, was himself dragged out of the Tower of London by the mob and his head hacked off on Tower Hill. barely a generation later, many followers of the religious reformer John Wycliffe, who rejected papal authority as well as both the dogmas and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, found refuge in Clerkenwell. If arrested they were likely to be subjected to a heretic`s death, either burning at the stake or as happened in 1410 to a certain William the Parchmenter, hanging, drawing and quartering on Clerkenwell Green
The Priory was rebuilt, it`s early 16th century archway entrance is still to be seen and though the Order was disbanded in England in 1540 by order of King Henry VIII, now houses the headquarters of the St.John`s Ambulance Association, a charity set up in 1877 to provide first aid training and practice, as well as medical missions throughout the world. The church was restored yet again following Second World War bomb damage but the 11th century crypt remains beneath what is now a largely 20th century building. During the reign of Elizabeth 1st, the former priory building housed the offices of the Master of The Revels, the Master being responsible for ensuring that plays written for London`s theatres were not libellous or in any way offensive to the government or monarch of the day. It`s fascinating to imagine the great playwrights of the day, among them Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and of course William Shakespeare, being present with their respective companies of actors, to perform plays before the Master. At least 30 of Shakespeare`s plays were licensed here.
Despite the presence of a branch of the Elizabethan government, Clerkenwell retained a reputation for harbouring those intent on sedition and troublemaking. Jesuits and Catholic recusants ( those wishing to return England to papal authority), covertly settled in the area. When discovered, three priests suffered the same fate as William the Parchmenter had in 1410. In the 17th century, all manner of banned religious dissenters, Quakers, Brownists, Schismatics, Familists, Rosicrucians were attracted to Clerkenwell.
Riotous or illegal activity was not restricted to matters of religion, as seen from the events of 1381. Much of the surrounding area was also associated with vice and criminality, in 1422 it was proposed that a notorious local street be demolished `for the abolition of stews within the City`, but being outside the City of London`s walls, the City`s regulations were null and void, so the stews (brothels) remained. Close by in the early 17th century, Priss Fotherington, a gin soaked prostitute known as the `Wandering whore` and the `second best prostitute in London`, who the best was is not recorded, plied her trade. For the more discerning man about town, those preferring to avoid the risk of contracting venereal disease, there was the `Prick Office`, where one might enjoy manual or oral relief. Other entertainment was available in the form of theatre, perhaps a continuation of those riotous medieval miracle plays which so irked the Prioress. The Fountain Playhouse opened it`s doors in 1600, intended as the `fairest playhouse in town` it soon earned a reputation for unruly behaviour, both on and off stage. It`s close neighbour the Red Bull Theatre, was possibly the first theatrical venue at which women appeared on stage. Both closed down in 1642 following a law passed by an increasingly puritanical parliament, though the Red Bull continued staging illegal performances. What the Puritan Oliver Cromwell, who became the Head of State of the English Republic in 1649 and owned a house close to the Green made of this, is not recorded!
Politics and protest never remained far beneath the surface however and throughout the 18th century, assorted radical societies and plotters, dedicated to changing the political system by any means, based themselves in Clerkenwell. By the last decades of the century it had become an area noted for light industry, printers, jewellers, distillers, shoemakers, watch and clock makers, in fact it has been said that by 1800 half of all timepieces in the world were manufactured in Clerkenwell. It is little surprise given the political ferment following events in France and the United States not to mention the Industrial Revolution, that the whiff of revolution was in the air. Perhaps the presence of so many skilled and literate artisans contributed to demands for radical, if not revolutionary reform with which this small area has long been associated? The London Corresponding Society, dedicated to parliamentary reform and universal male suffrage, met at the Bull`s Head Inn, a tavern just east of the Green from 1792. A few years later two secretive organisations, the `United Englishmen` and the` United Irishmen`, both republican in spirit and with the aim of violent revolution to effect change, used local hostelries for their clandestine meetings. Unbeknown to either, their membership was infiltrated by informants, so arrests soon followed. Nevertheless, throughout the following century Clerkenwell remained a favoured location for rallies and mass meetings, sometimes violent, demanding political reform.
It was perhaps for the reasons above, that the authorities decided in the last decades of the 18th century to build a sessions house (court), there was already a prison, a watch-house and a pillory for malefactors nearby. The Middlesex Session House, as it was known, soon became one of the busiest magistrates courts in England, until it`s closure in 1921. Harsh sentences were handed out for minor offences, 20 years imprisonment for stealing a pair of shoes, an elderly woman was given 7 years incarceration for theft of a joint of meat and many were sentenced to `transportation`, effectively a death sentence in an Australian penal colony. Charles Dickens` novels are populated by sympathetically portrayed characters from London`s poor and Clerkenwell was an area he knew well. In his days working as a journalist, the young Dickens reported many court cases here and used both the Court and Clerkenwell, as a setting in his novels. A particularly ferocious magistrate, Allen Stuart Laing (no relation to me), was the basis for Mr Fang, in his novel Oliver Twist.
A lean, long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair, and what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head. His face was stern, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly good for him, he might have brought action against his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy damages.
Dickens fans will know that Oliver Twist, prior to going before Mr Fang, is arrested on Clerkenwell Green, where he is being instructed in the art of picking pockets by the `Artful Dodger`.
Charles Dickens sympathised with those calling for reform of the political system, a campaign which continued throughout his lifetime. Oliver Twist is set against the background of the 1834 Poor Law, the effect of which was to force the destitute and unemployed into workhouses, where harsh conditions acted as a deterrent. From this period on, successive political campaigns sometimes ending in violence, were aimed at improving the lot of the poor, for example trade union representation, reform of the penal system, universal suffrage and Irish home rule. In 1837 the `Tolpuddle Martyrs`, a group of agricultural workers from Tolpuddle in Dorset who had been sentenced to transportation to Australia years before for the crime of forming a trade union, were greeted by a boisterous crowd on the Green following their return. Half a century later in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria`s Golden Jubilee, a large crowd set off from Green, heading to Trafalgar Square to demand the right to assembly. Met with violence from the forces of law and order, this event earned the sobriquet `Bloody Sunday`. It is no suprise then that that World`s first May Day march left from Clerkenwell in 1890, organised by the Social Democratic Foundation, to demand an 8 hour working day.
At 37a Clerkenwell Green stands the Marx Memorial Library. Originally a school, the building dates from the 1730s, however since the late 19th century has housed assorted radical groups including the London Patriotic Society, the Social Democratic Foundation and the socialist 20th Century Press, funded by William Morris. Over the years, prominent activists like John Stuart Mill, Peter Kropotkin and Eleanor Marx ( Karl`s daughter) visited the site. In 1902 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin frequented the premises on a daily basis to publish an underground revolutionary paper called `Iskra`, (The Spark), with the intention of fomenting revolution in Tsarist Russia. In 1933 the Marx Memorial Library was established here and remains to this day, housing a vast resource of literature, documents, magazines, pamphlets on Socialism, Marxism, trade unionism and working class history, which is open to both academics and the general public.
There are two pubs adjacent to the Green, the `Three Kings` and the `Crown Tavern`. Regulars at the latter claim it as the location of Lenin and Stalin`s first meeting in 1905. A nice story but history records this as having taken place in Finland. In any case, it appears Lenin preferred rubbing shoulders in bourgeois Bloomsbury, to hobnobbing with the proletariat in Clerkenwell. Until the 1990s the Guardian, a left leaning national broadsheet newspaper and the Morning Star, Britain`s only communist daily paper, were published close by, continuing the areas heritage. Since then , Clerkenwell Green has undergone rapid gentrification. A new community of architects and interior designers, attracted to the area by the abundance of former warehouses and industrial buildings and potential for regeneration. Organic cafes, voguish shops, smart venues for product launches, montessori nurseries, even the old Session House has emerged as an `all day venue`, complete with an `intimate restaurant and eclectic mix of food and drink vendors`. Were Lenin to re-emerge, then perhaps he would feel more inclined to visit the Crown and it`s new breed of clientele. Yet still, standing in the Green`s centre, shielded from the noise and bustle of surrounding roads,one senses that this is a place apart where history has been made and where questions of political representation, some still with us, were first given voice.
