CHARTERHOUSE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 11 October 1924, Page 16

CHARTERHOUSE.

MANY ILL-FATED OWNERS, NOW A HOME FOR OLD MEN AND BOYS. HISTORIC LONDON BUILDING. The- boyr. have gone from Charterhouse in the City of London, taking their studies, their pjav, and their noise '•lr-cwlicro. and the old monastic foundations are left to the quiet enjoyment ‘and. the care of the. poor brothers, states Waite; - G. Bell in the Daily Telegraph. Here the two ends of life used to intermingle. Young hopefuls with rlie world at their feet before them; old iron too often broken by the world, ,-ome into Charterhouse to spend their last days. In Thackeray’s- delightful creation of Colonel Neweome is embodied the. poor brother of Charterhouse. one and all old gentlemen who, like him, have played their part well, -but whom worldly success has passed by. ' it is a restful backwater of the capital. out of the stream and the turmoil that encompasses it about. Nothing, J imagine ever happens in Charterhouse, and the even tenor of its life knows no greater disturbance than is occasioned by the presence of a party of visitors, often from distant lands, passing through. It is not shut out from London, as are many historical places, by lock and seal. The governors duly appraise the value of their possession, and allow a well-informed guide at convenient hours to show round those who apply at the gate. In its day Charterhouse has loomed large in story. . You associate it with the great religious upheaval of the Reformation, and with stirring events which, had ‘they not miscarried, would have shaken Elizabeth’s throne. For two centuries it was one of the great monastic houses of London. Not one of the Carthusian cells actually survives. but in the covered cloister-walk the ■ atmosphere comes back of a-, time when behind the doors and hatches here the white-clad monks passed their lives in silence, engaged in meditation aiyl religious exercise, and meeting only in the church. Many who notice on the exterior wall of Washhouse court the Cross and the letters “I.H. ” marked in the brick mistake these last to be a memorial of John Houghton,, the last Prior of Charterhouse. Probably the final letter is miss'ng. and it is the mutilated sj'mbol. “1.H.5.” PRIOR JOHN HOUGHTON. John Houghton; had been twenty years a Carthusian when troubles came upon the. house. A son of an old English family, he had been educated at Cambridge, where lie. must have been the contemporary of Latimer. Those twenty years he and the monks about him had lived apart from : the world, knowing little of what took place outside their own walls, sharing in uothing of it. The embittered conflicts in the State were matters for others. They were confronted with the Act of Supremacy, and required to acknowledge King Henry VIII. as supreme head of the Church. They refused. - Houghton declared, when, pressed by his Judges, that he had resolved originally to imitate the example of His Master before Herod, and say nothing. “But since you urge me.,” he went on, “that I may sat'-sfy my own conscience and the eonsiccnce of those others,” he would speak. “You can produce on your side,” he said, “but the. Parliament of a single kingdom; I, on. mine, have the whole Christian world except that kingdom. Nor have you all even of your own people. The lesser part is with you. The majority, who seem to be with you, do not dissemble, to gain favour with the King, or for fear they should lose their honours and their dignities.”

He neither looked for mercy nor desired it. “This is the judgment of the world,” he declared when he heard his fate. It can never have been, in doubt. Houghton and others condemned were brought out in their ecclesiastical habits, a thing never before done, to suffer at Tyburn the terrible punishment for treason. After the quartering, the Prior’s parboiled arm was hung up as a bloody sign over the gateway of Charterhouse, whence two of the brethren recovered and buried it. Three of their number were afterwards taken from the house and hanged; two were hanged in chains at York; of ten sent to the loathsome prison dungeons of Newgate and there chained separately to pillars nine died miserably of gaol fever and filth; the tenth, whom this treatment did not kill, suffered execution. So Charterhouse passed to the King. His maw was satiated with the spoils of the Church, and he had no use for it. For a few years the monastic house emained dc-sclate, with no better emnicymont. than as a storage place for military lumber, till in 1545 bv letters ontent it came into possession of Lord North, and a new phase of its eventful history began. Of subsequent owners. Thomas How ird. fourth Duke of Norfolk, is the one who. as a builder, made most additions to Charterhouse as it has come down to our time. He bought the pro perty, and converted it into his town residence. IDs is the great, hall wheren the visitor may linger longest. Its •rirved screen., carrying a gallery for musicians, bears his initials and the late 1:>71. His, too. is the great stair mse, itself a magnificent piece of work', uid the long gallery; he decorated, if ■c- (I d not actually build, the Great T amber. Norfolk was a poor sort of conspira- ')!• lacking myst of the essentials for 'hat perilous calling He became drawn nto the Ridolfi plot against Queen : T-znboth. designed to hr mg Mary Queen of Scots to the English Throne, ■nd deeply enmeshed in it. Elizabeth, having knowledge of the intrigue to u:ng about li’s marriage with the Reotish Queen, significantly warned him “to be careful upon what pillrw lie 'aid his bead.” The rdot was know" bv too many ever to have had minds ‘ha"ce of success. J-Tere in Chartrr’ousc its details wre worked out Once Cecil had the threads in- h’s hamb 'die confessions of con federate.';, under fear of torture cn the rack, disclosed ■ill. The visitor to-day will be shown die spot “under the mptte hard by the wyndewc-s syde in the entrve towards my Lord's bed-chamber.” where was found concealed a letter from Mary to Norfolk, and tin place under the roof tiles where the secret cypher for correspondent was hidden and recovered. Norfolk lies with the little company before the altar of St. Peter and Yineula wllhin the Tower, and’there were laid two oilier owners of Charterhouse —Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who purchased it as a residence for his daughter-in-law, the pathetic Lady lane Gray, and his son Guilford Dudley, till the former should become Queen of England; and Philip, Earl of Arundel.

Two of these three perished by the axe upon Tower Hill, and the third died a prisoner in the Tower. SUTTON’S FOUNDATION.

Charterhouse a : - a dwelling seemed fated after the monks had been turned out from it. Who should want it? Fortunately the hour brought the man, and Charterhouse. In-day holds greater than the nam-'s of anv of those recalled, that of Thomas Sutton. He was Elizabeth’s Master-General of Ordnance.- He had raised himself high in worldly prosper'.tv. some shrewd dealings in coal greatly assisting. It has even been claimed for him that he was the pioneer of mining in the Durham coalfields. His wife’s death left him free in old age to carry to completion a scheme he had long entertained for founding a hospital for the support of poor men and a school for the education of the young, to which his fortune was devoted, and Charterhouse is the result. The famous school has been transferred to country quarters at Godaiming, in Surrey. Alone the poor brothers remain. It- may interest to recall their qualifications at the foundation. They should be no rogues of common beggars, but such poor persons as could bring testimony and certificate of good behaviour and soundness in- religion, decrepit or old captains either at sea or land in the King’s service, soldiers maimed or impotent. merchants fallen into decay through shipwreck, casualty, fire, or other evil accident, and those who had been captives cf the Turks. A tablet placed beneath a window in Preacher’s Court identifies the room occupied by Captain Light, a blind pensioner; whom Thackeray visited when lie was about to describe the death of Colonel Neweome. I can do no better than close with the words of the Rev. Gerald Davies, Master of Charterhouse, and its most accomplished historian: “To Light’s room a boy, Irving, conducted Thackeray, wlio sat there silent, listening to the talk and hearing the chapel bell go for evening chapel. It was then, I think, that the beautiful ‘Aclsuni’ incident, which few men, Carthusians or non-Carthus-ians, care to read with anyone else siting in the room, took shape in Thackeray’s mind.”