Minories

Minories

South out of Aldgate High Street, at No. 81, to Tower Hill (P.O. Directory).

The name seems to have been given to the street at the end of the 16th or begining of the 17th century. Stow mentions the street, but not by name. But it is named in Ryther's map, 1608.

"Bisshoppes Place, without Aldgate, late called the Mynores," 32 H. VIII. (H. MSS. Com. Wells MSS. 227–8).

Other names: "The Mynorytts," 1599–1600 (H. MSS. Com. Salisbury, X. p. 39). "Great Minories" (P.C. 1732–Strype, 1755).

Name derived from the Abbey of St. Clare, called the Abbey of the Minoresses of St. Mary of the Order of St. Clare, which stood on this site (Strype, ed. 1720, ii. p. 14).

See St. Clare Without Aldgate.

After the dissolution the abbey was granted, 35 H. VIII., to the Bishops of Bath and Wells (H. MSS. Com. Wells MSS. 231), and Wm. Knight appears to have been consecrated Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1541 in the chapel of the Bishop of Bath's House situate in the Minories, Aldgate (Kinns, 191).

The abbey precincts were exchanged by Bishop Barlow soon after 1548 with the Duke of Somerset for other property, and were given by the Duke to his brother, Lord Seymour, who was attainted and beheaded, so that the property reverted to the Crown.

It was granted to Henry Duke of Suffolk in 1552 by name of "The Minory House" (Kinus, 202).

Minories, is a spacious str. betn Aldgate High str. N. and Great Tower hill S. L. 460 Yds, and from T L. Nd, 210 Yds; it is a little without the Wall of London. Stow says, here was an Abbey of Nuns of the Order of St. Clare, called the Minories, founded by Edmund Brother to King Edw. I. in the year 1293, which was surrender'd in the 30th of Hen. VIII. and that near this Nunnery was a Farm kept by one Goodman, and also by his Son, from whom 'tis very probable, the Fields there had the name of Goodmans fields. Note, That part within the Railes on the E. side, and near the middle of this str. is in the Parish of Trinity Minories, and all the rest of the str. in the Parish of St. Bottolph Aldgate.

The Minories, of which there is the Great and the Little; the Great is a broad and spacious Street, into which you enter out of Aldgate Street over against St. Botolphs Church, and runneth Southward into Little Tower Hill; having on the West Side London Wall, where anciently the City Ditch went, as in Houndsditch, and used for the casting of Filth thereon; and so lay open: Which being found incovenient, noisome, and dangerous, it was filled up, and the Ground converted to other Uses.

Minories. This street extends from Aldgate street to Tower hill. The middle part of the east side is called the Little Minories; this part is railed in, and is out of the liberties of the city. Here anciently stood an abbey of nuns of the order of St. Clare, called the Minoresses; whence the street obtained the name of the Minories. See the article Trinity in the Minories.

Minories,—op. Aldgate-church, where the numbers begin and end, viz 1 and 159, it extends to Tower-hill.

Minories, the, is a wide handsome street, extending from opposite the church in Aldgate High-street to Tower-hill, opposite the principal entrance to the St. Katherine Docks. It derives its name from a convent of the nuns of St. Clare, called Minoresses, founded by Blanche, Queen of Navarre, wife of Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, in 1293, having occupied its site.—[See St. Trinity, in the Minories.

Minories (The), a street between Aldgate and the Tower, inhabited at one time by gunsmiths and armourers, and so called from

An abbey of nuns of the order of St. Clare, called the Minories, founded by Edmond Earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby, brother to King Edward III., in the year 1293. ... This house was surrendered by Dame Elizabeth Salvage, the last abbess there, unto King Henry VIII. in the 30th of his reign, the year of Christ 1539. In place of this house of nuns is now built divers fair and large storehouses for armour and habiliments of war, with divers workhouses serving to the same purpose: there is a small parish church for inhabitants of the close called St. Trinitie's [Trinity Church in the Minories].—Stow, p. 48.

September 22, 1573.—Indenture of bargain and sale of the site of the capital messuage and mansion house, formerly called the Minories, without Aldgate, by William Marquis of Winchester to the Queen, her heirs and successors for ever. A note of the evidences of the conveyance recites that the building is "to be used by her as a magazine or store house."—Cal. State Pap. 1547–1580, p. 230.

April 2, 1617.—Indenture of conveyance of the great storehouse, square court and great garden [of the Minories] from Ant Lowe to Sir Richard Morrison.—Cal. State Pap. 1611–1618, vol. ii. p. 456.

This house of Sir R. Morrison's was afterwards rented by Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland. He lived here in great state, driving eight horses in his coach "to surpass his son Carlisle, and the Spanish Ambassador with his six carrion mules."² In 1619 we find the Commissioners of Buildings certifying that certain new buildings had been "erected at the Minories, near the Tower, contrary to Proclamation;" and in July of the following year an Order in Council was issued respecting "abuses crept into the management of the Tower, the Minories, and adjoining houses, formerly reserved for gunners, wheelwrights, and other artificers connected with the Ordnance," and directing that certain leases of lands in and about the Tower be called in.¹ As late as Strype's time (1720) the Minories was "chiefly of note for the gunsmiths there inhabiting and driving a considerable trade."² It is now a place of general trade, without a gunsmith from end to end.

He who works dully on a story, without moving laughter in a comedy, or raising concernments in a serious play, is no more to be accounted a good poet, than a gunsmith of the Minories is to be compared with the best workman of the town.—Dryden, Preface to the Mock Astrologer 4to, 1671.

The Mulcibers who in the Minories sweat,
And massive bars on stubborn anvils beat,
Deform'd themselves, yet forge those stays of steel,
Which arm Aurelia with a shape to kill.
Congreve to Sir Richard Temple.

Myself heard William Earl of Pembroke relate with much regret towards him that he [Sir Walter Raleigh's Lord Cobham] dyeed in a room ascended by a ladder, at a poor woman's house in the Minories, formerly his laundress, rather of hunger than any more natural disease.—Works of Francis Osborn, Esq., ed. 1701, p. 381.

William Sharp, the great line engraver, was born, 1749, in Haydon Court in the Minories. His father was a grenadier.

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² Cal. State Pap. 1623–1625, p. 110.

¹ Cal. State Pap., 1619–1623, pp. 36, 160.
² Strype, B. ii. p. 28.