North of the City, the Charterhouse — the Carthusian house of London — offers in a single place the whole English Reformation in miniature: a convent of silent monks, it became the scene of a martyrdom, then a sumptuous courtier's house, before ending as an almshouse and a school.
A martyred convent
Founded in 1371 by Sir Walter Manny, on ground that had served as a burial place for the victims of the Black Death, the London Charterhouse sheltered Carthusian monks, vowed to silence, solitude and prayer in their individual cells. In 1535, when Henry VIII demanded of all the oath acknowledging his supremacy over the Church, Prior John Houghton and his brothers refused. The repression was atrocious: the prior was hanged, disembowelled and quartered at Tyburn — one of the first put to death for the Reformation — and several monks died in prison, chained and starved. These Carthusians are among the first and most famous martyrs of the English Reformation. The convent was dissolved in 1537, its goods seized.
From ruin to courtier's house
Like so many religious houses, the Charterhouse then passed into the hands of courtiers. Sir Edward North acquired it in 1545 and turned it into a great Tudor house: galleries, a great hall, state apartments. Queen Elizabeth I stayed here for a few days in 1558, before her coronation, holding council with her ministers. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, bought it in 1564 and renamed it 'Howard House'; it was here that, caught up in the Ridolfi plot in favour of Mary Queen of Scots, he was placed under house arrest — a ciphered letter found under a doormat undid him, and he was executed in 1572. The place thus embodies the great transfer of the English Renaissance: the wealth of the Church tipping towards the new aristocracy, with its splendours and its perils. In 1611 the rich Thomas Sutton made it a charitable foundation — an almshouse for old men and a school — that carried the name of Charterhouse on for centuries.
What to see
- The Great Hall and the Tudor galleries of the house.
- The remains of the cloister of the old Charterhouse (the 'Norfolk Cloister').
- The memory of the Carthusian martyrs of 1535.
- The setting of Charterhouse Square, a preserved enclave north of the City.
Seeing it differently
Look, in the stone, for the seam between the two Charterhouses: here the austere plan of the monks' cells, there the panelling and the ceilings of a courtier's house. Along the 'Norfolk Cloister', think of the duke under house arrest who paced there awaiting his fate. And in the great hall, imagine the young Elizabeth, days from being crowned, holding council in a place still haunted by the martyrdom of monks who died for refusing the supremacy of her own father. In a single enclosure, the Charterhouse holds prayer, blood, power and charity together — the whole Reformation in a shortcut of stone.
Did you know?
The very severity of the Carthusian rule made the martyrdom the more striking: these monks already lived as dead to the world, in silence and privation. Their obstinate refusal to swear, even under torture, struck contemporaries — so much so that their story inspired, much later, tales and paintings. A convent vowed to silence became, by its death, one of the strongest voices against the Reformation.
Notes
The Charterhouse lies at Charterhouse Square, north of the City of London; it is today a foundation housing a small museum and homes for elders.
Quiz
- What kind of monks occupied the Charterhouse?
- Carthusians
- Franciscans
- Jesuits
- What did the convent become after the dissolution of 1535?
- A Tudor courtier's house
- A fortress
- A theatre
- Why were the monks executed in 1535?
- They refused to acknowledge the king's supremacy
- They had stolen the royal treasure
- They had plotted with Spain