St. John's Gate

St. John's gate, St. John's lane; the fourth gate of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.

John's (St) Gate, Clerkenwell, at the southern entrance of St. John's Square, is the only ancient portal now remaining of those monastic buildings once so numerous in the metropolis and its vicinity. It formed the grand south entrance to the Hospital or Priory of St. John of Jerusalem, the chief seat in England of the knights of that order, and was completed by Prior Docwra in the year 1504, "as appeareth," says Stow, "by the inscription over the gatehouse yet remaining." The Hospital or Priory of St. John of Jerusalem at Clerkenwell was founded in 1100 by Jordan Briset and his wife Muriel, and endowed in 1324 with the revenues of the English Knights' Templars. The knights acquired great dignity, estates, and wealth.

The Prior of St. John of Jerusalem is said to be Primus Baro Angliae, the first Baron of England, because, being the last of the Spiritual Barons, he chose to be first of the Temporal. He was a kind of an otter, a Knight half Spiritual and half Temporal.—Selden's Table Talk: Lords before the Parliament.

In the insurrection of 1381 the rebels under Wat Tyler attacked and burned the Priory, and beheaded the prior in the great courtyard (St. John's Square). Succeeding priors continued the rebuilding of the church and houses down to the last prior but one, Thomas Docwra, who, as we have seen, finished the work by the erection of the Gatehouse in 1504. The order of St. John was suppressed by Statute (32 Henry VIII., c. 24) in 1541. To the prior, Sir W. Weston, a pension of £1000 was granted, but, says Stow, "he never received a penny," as he died on the day of the Act coming into operation. The buildings, which were valued at £3385, were retained by the King, and "employed as a store-house for the King's toils and tents, for hunting and for the wars, etc." In his will Henry bequeathed to the Lady Mary (afterwards Queen) "all that our scite, circuit, ambit, precinct, capital messuage, and house, late of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem, situate at Clerkenwell;" but in the following reign it fell into the hands of the Protector Somerset. What followed Stow, who was living at the time, may tell:—

In the 3rd year of King Edward VI. (1549), the church for the most part, to wit the body and side aisles, with the great bell tower (a most curious piece of workmanship, graven, gilt, and enamelled, to the great beautifying of the city, and passing all other that I have seen), was undermined and blown up by gunpowder; the stone thereof was employed in building of the Lord Protector's house in the Strand. That part of the choir which remaineth, with some side chapels, was by Cardinal Pole, in the reign of Queen Mary, closed up at the west end, and otherwise repaired; and Sir Thomas Tresham, knight, was then made lord prior there, with restitution of some lands, but the same was again suppressed in the first year of Queen Elizabeth.—Stow, p. 162.

The buildings afterwards passed into private hands, and were pulled down with the exception of the Gatehouse and some portions of the boundary walls. Foundations of some of the buildings are however still traceable in cellars of the houses in St. John's Square, and the crypt of the choir of the Priory Church beneath the present church of St. John. [See St. John, Clerkenwell]

St. John's Gate stands at the north end of St. John's Lane (a narrow lane running from the south end of St. John Street), and forms the southern entrance into St. John's Square. It consists of a wide arched passage, with rooms on the east and west sides, and an upper storey. On each face are two square projecting towers, and the whole is surmounted by battlements. Over the archway on the south face are five shields, bearing in the centre the arms of England and France, quarterly, on the sides those of the priory (repeated), and of the builder Docwra, with the date of erection. The walls are of brick faced with Reigate stone; the style late Perpendicular. The north postern was cleared away as an obstruction in 1780.

The Gatehouse was inhabited by Sir Roger Wilbraham in 1604. In the next century it was the residence and printing office of Edward Cave, who here published in January 1731 the first number of the Gentleman's Magazine, which continued to be printed here till 1781, when, having passed into the hands of Nichols, it was removed to Red Lion Passage, where it remained for the next forty years. The magazine, as long as it retained a semblance of its original character, bore on its cover an engraving of St. John's Gate. Johnson's connection with the Gentleman^s Magazine, its publisher, and place of publication, commenced in 1738. "He told me," says Boswell, "that when he first saw St. John's Gate, the place where that deservedly popular miscellany was originally printed, he 'beheld it with reverence.'" We need not, however, believe with his enthusiastic biographer that it was on account of the magazine published there. If Johnson beheld St. John's Gate with reverence, it was doubtless as a part of the ancient priory and the associations it called forth. Be that as it may, "The Gentleman's Magazine for many years was his principal source of employment and support," and much of his time was spent, and many of his contributions were written, in St. John's Gate. A well-known anecdote shows that he was in those days glad of an occasional humble dinner here.

Soon after Savage's life was published Mr. Harte [author of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus, who tells the story] dined with Edward Cave, and occasionally praised it. Soon after, meeting him, Cave said, "You made a man very happy t'other day." "How could that be?" says Harte, "nobody was there but ourselves." Cave answered by reminding him that a plate of victuals was sent behind a screen, which was to Johnson, dressed so shabbily, that he did not choose to appear.—Malone, (Croker's Boswell, p. 49, note).

St. John's Gate is also associated with the early career of Garrick, who here made his maiden essay as an actor in London.

Cave had no great relish for mirth, but he could bear it, and having been told by Johnson that his friend [Garrick] had talents for the theatre, and was come to London with a view to the profession of an actor, expressed a wish to see him in some comic character: Garrick readily complied; and, as Cave himself told me, with a little preparation of the room over the great arch of St. John's Gate, and with the assistance of a few journeymen printers, who were called together for the purpose of reading the other parts, represented, with all the graces of comic humour, the principal character in Fielding's farce of The Mock Doctor.—Sir J. Hawkins's Johnson, p. 45.

The doorway in the south-west tower was the entrance to Cave's printing office. For many years the Gatehouse served as a tavern. In 1845 it was condemned by the district surveyor as unsafe, but its destruction was averted by the exertions of Mr. W. P. Griffith, F.S.A., architect,¹ who raised a subscription sufficient to put the entire fabric into substantial repair, and to restore it to something like its original appearance. More in the way of decorative restoration has since been done to the interior, and it is now in a satisfactory condition. Until recently the great room was used for the meetings of the Urban Club. In 1876 St. John's Gate was purchased by Sir Edmund Lechmere on behalf of the resuscitated Order of St. John of Jerusalem, who hold their chapters in the great room; and here is the central office of their admirable affiliated society the St. John Ambulance Association.

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¹ Mr. Griffith's paper in the Transactions of the Middlesex Archaeological Association for 1867 contains a full and careful account of the Gatehouse and the remaining vestiges of the priory.