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St Stephen Coleman Street

St Stephen Coleman Street, also called St Stephen's in the Jewry, was a  church and sometime a parish in the City of London, in the Coleman Street Ward. The church stood on the west side of Coleman Street (which runs south from the London Wall to Gresham Street), towards the southern end. It is first recorded in the late 12th century as a chapel annexed to the parish church of St Olave, a rectoriate, which stood further south midway down the west side of the Old Jewry (which runs south from Gresham Street to Cheapside and the Poultry). The other City church dedicated to the protomartyr was south of the Poultry at St Stephen Walbrook.

John Stow mistakenly inferred, from its location in the old Jewish quarter, that the building had been used as a synagogue. From the late 12th century the advowson of the rectory belonged, under the Diocese of London, to the prior and convent of Butley Priory in Suffolk. Although St Stephen's was commonly described as a parish church, it was not formally separated from St Olave's until the third quarter of the 15th century, when (after a long legal wrangle) it was endowed as a perpetual vicarage and parish (1457) and incorporated (1468). The parish so created, at some 27 acres, was the largest in the City.

Both St Stephen's and St Olave's remained in the possession of Butley until the priory's dissolution in 1538, when the advowson of St Stephen's reverted to the Crown. In the last quarter of the 16th century it was granted to the vestry and parishioners. The ruins of the medieval church, apart from the tower, were demolished after the Great Fire of 1666. The church was then rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren on its old foundations and the upper part of the tower was repaired. This second church was destroyed by bombing in 1940 and was not rebuilt after the War. The parish was then united with that of St Margaret Lothbury.

Close to the London Guildhall, parishioners included many Drapers, Mercers, Leathersellers, Curriers and Girdlers. The parish contained several narrow lanes crossing east and west, including Swan Alley, Bell Alley, Church Alley and others, where a Lollard conventicle arose during the 1520s. Various figures connected with the English Renaissance theatre were of this parish. St Stephen's was a strong centre of radicalism during the 17th century, first under its minister John Davenport, who led part of his congregation to found New Haven Colony, Connecticut in 1637, and then under his successor John Goodwin, when the King's enemies were active here.

Substantial records survive for the church and parish, commencing with the "Vellum Book", a Book of Record mainly of church property, begun in 1466. There are also churchwardens' accounts (from 1486), parish registers (from 1538), tithe rate and poor rate assessments (from 1592) and vestry minutes (from 1622).

The Butley advowson
Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St Paul's, in 1181 recorded that St Olave's was held from the Canons of St Paul's by the Prior and Convent of Butley in Suffolk (founded 1171). The founder of Butley Priory, Ranulf de Glanvill, was appointed Chief Justiciar of England in 1180, and died at the Siege of Acre in 1190. Before 1192 the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's granted St Olave's, together with two (of three) parts of the church of St Stephen's (out of the fee of Ralph de Ardern, Ranulf's son-in-law), to Butley Priory to hold forever from them as Vicars of the parsonage of St Olave, under the Diocese of London. Gilbert, first prior of Butley, acknowledged receipt under his seal, witnessed by Diceto. The third part of St Stephen's was later granted to Butley by Simon de London.

From the time of King John onwards, references to the "parish" of St Stephen Coleman Street occur. Around 1290 (at the time of the expulsion of the Jewry) the advowson of St Stephen's is said to have been held by Walter de Norwico, but Butley was holding in 1302-03. In 1319 two citizens, Roger "le Bourser" (i.e. "the Purser") and Walter Grapefige, made bequests of lands or rents to establish chantries at St Stephen's. These were unlicenced, but received approval by royal pardon in 1321.

In 1322 the Bishop of London Stephen Gravesend acknowledged to Prior William de Geyton his rightful seisin of St Olave's and the annexed chapel of St Stephen, and impropriated their fruits and benefits to Butley as the true parsons. Those whom the priory presented were to be instituted by the London diocese, which was to assign their maintenance. The rector John Bryan died leaving premises in the Old Jewry (noting their former Jewish owners) to maintain a chantry for himself at St Olave's. This was licenced in advance of his probate in July 1323. Walter de Turpested succeeded him.
 * Impropriation, 1322

Benefactions, chantries and fraternities
In 1348 Stephen de Fraunsard, citizen and Girdler, left a rent-charge on lands in the parish for a chantry on behalf of his family. In 1361 John Essex, citizen and Draper, wishing to be buried "before the altar of the fraternity" in St Stephen's, provided for a chantry, and made bequests to the church and its ministers. Thomas Howard was then rector, succeeded in 1362 by John de Lexham. In 1363 Adam Godman, citizen, requested burial beside Alice his first wife in the tomb before the door of St Stephen's, and left to Alice his second wife the premises in Church Alley which he had from John Essex, with remainder to St Stephen's to celebrate masses for him. These renovations or enlargements of the Fraunsard endowment later became the subject of legal inquisitions.

The Little Fraternity of Our Lady was founded at St Stephen's on 7 May 1368. This was to raise the cost of 31 pounds of wax every year, to keep a hanging branch light of five candles burning before an image of St Mary on the rood beam. The brothers and sisters gathered on the Feast of the Assumption (15 August) wearing special robes (if they could afford them) and a hood (obligatory) to attend solemn sung Mass for Our Lady in the church. The penalty for part- or non-attendance was two pounds of wax. During the Mass each member made an offering of one penny. Afterwards they went to the house of their appointed Senior, and ate or drank together at their own expense, the host tendering a just account. The Fraternity of St Nicholas, which began in 1369, was to fund the lights before the image of St Nicholas, to nourish love and charity among them, and to raise money for the poor.

A major landowner in the parish was Sir Nicholas Brembre, Grocer, Mayor of London in 1377 and 1383-1385, and M.P. for the City in 1382. A favourite of Richard II, he fell victim to Thomas of Woodstock's faction and was condemned and executed. From his escheated lands, Nicholas Exton (Mayor) allowed issues of 6 marks due to John Butley, daily chaplain of the Fraunsard chantry, who successfully petitioned for its renewal. The Crown thereafter appointed the Fraunsard and Essex chantry chaplains directly, namely William Pritewell (1397, 1401), Thomas Hunte (1416) and John Braunche (1419).

Meanwhile, Thomas Kymbell was rector until 1388, when succeeded by John Winter. Richard Glemsford, fellmonger (1384), and his widow Juliana (1394), made important bequests to the church and its ministers, including an Antiphonary, a Legendary, two "cantelcopes" and a chalice, and appointed a chantry. William King's bequests of 1393 for his family obit at St Stephen's, and for chantries there and elsewhere, included the gift of a Psalter to the church. Richard de Kyryngton succeeded John Foster as rector in 1399, and his successor John Belgrave, who fell into debt with the priory, was replaced by Roger Helwys in December 1428.

Towards parochial status, 1431-1453
Over the next 20 years there was a concerted move to establish St Stephen's as an independent parish. This was prompted through a chantry bequest out of a nearby brewery called "Le Cokke on the Hoop" (also called the "Cock and Garland" ), which was held in two moiety titles. In 1431 John Sokelyng (alias Sydyngbourne) placed his bequest in the hands of Roger Gaynesborough, rector of St Olave's with St Stephen's annexed, and of the wardens of St Stephen's. If they failed to implement it, the bequest should transfer to the Guildhall authorities to do so. The Mystery of Leathersellers and Pursers, granted ordinances in 1398, sought to establish themselves more fully. Centred upon Allhallows, London Wall, they had defeated some chantry tenures around their "western estate" by escheat, but the lands so released, having reverted into private hands, did not become their own until a purchase of 1458 and a bequest of 1472. In 1425 John Arnold served as a Master of the Fraternity, and his attention turned to their "eastern estate" near the north end of Coleman Street. Arnold had two sons named John, the elder a clergyman and the younger a leatherseller.
 * Le Cokke on the Hoop

At a Guildhall inquest of 1436 before Sir Henry Frowyk (Mayor) it was claimed that St Stephen's Coleman Street had been a parish church from time immemorial, and not an annexed chapel: that Butley Priory had acquired the advowson from Walter de Norwico after 1281-82 without licence: and that the Appropriation of 1322 was therefore invalid. Accepting this, the Crown presented John Arnold, clerk, as vicar of St Stephen's, thus expelling the prior (William Randeworth, 1410-1444) from his rights. In 1438 John Arnold (father) made a fiduciary testament providing for his own chantry and reciting properties for the Fraunsard, Essex and Godman chantries and others, and conveying them in reversion to the "rector" John Arnold and the churchwardens of St Stephens. This was not enrolled until 1453.
 * Challenge

These churchwardens included Arnold himself and John Osyn (two of the 15 leading Leathersellers in whose name Henry VI awarded the Company its foundation Charter in 1444 ), and the prominent mercer Hugh Wyche, executor for the wealthy parishioner John Spalding in 1443. In April 1445 Arnold, Osyn, Thomas Bygg and others as feoffees took conveyance of premises in Allhallows abutting on St Stephen's parish, the Company's first acquisition of real property for its corporate use: other purchases soon followed. By inquest of February 1446 Simon Eyre, draper (Mayor) found that the Bourser, Grapefige, Essex and Godman chantry grants had been unlicenced, and seized the premises into the King's hands, granting their issues in frankalmoin to John Arnold and the churchwardens of St Stephen's, led by Hugh Wyche, Alexander Stratton and John Osyn.

By a further inquest in February 1448 John Gedney (Mayor) found that the chantry endowments had no secular heirs (in default of licences), and escheated them to the King. Henry regranted the issues to minister and churchwardens as before, adding the names of Richard Andrewe (King's Secretary) and others to be remembered in prayer. However he immediately reversed this, entrusting the premises to Robert Tromy for a consideration. There followed extensive legal proceedings at the King's Bench, in which John Arnold did not prevail.

William Poley succeeded Prior Randeworth at Butley in 1444, and set out to recover the priory's rights. He brought claim that St Stephen's was not a parish church but a chapel annexed to St Olave's; that William de Geyton (and all his predecessors) had been seised of it in 1322 when church and chapel were impropriated to Butley, and after John Bryan died; and that Henry V had pardoned all gifts, alienations and mortmains made without licence. John Arnold, summoned in March 1449 to say why his letters should not be revoked, failed to appear, and therefore the prior was restored to possession. Robert Tromy did not defend his title. On 30 March 1451, in the mayoralty of Nicholas Wyfold, the Glovers and Glover-Pursers were incorporated with the Leathersellers. In April 1451 Wyfold's inquest found that St Stephen's was a parish church, but that Butley's original acquisition from Ralph de Diceto and Simon de London had been without licence, so that the Crown was the true patron. John Arnold (the Vicar) was replaced by William Darsett, on whose resignation the king presented John Bagott in September 1451. Alexander Stratton died in 1450 and John Osyn late in 1451, leaving his executors to settle with his feoffees (Hugh Wyche, Thomas Bygge, and others) over his property in the parish. In September 1452 Henry VI, considering the prior's expenses, granted the advowson to him and his successors, and put the matter out of Crown hands.
 * Fightback

The parish established
The minister and parishioners remained at loggerheads with the prior, and they agreed to arbitration. Archbishop Bourchier, Thomas Kempe Bishop of London, William Waynflete Bishop of Winchester, Sir John Fortescue Chief Justice, and the doctors of both laws Robert Stillington and John Druell, decreed that St Olave's and the church or chapel of St Stephen's annexed had been lawfully held "as one" by William de Geyton, and were lawfully impropriated "as one", and that Prior William and successors should now have undisturbed possession. St Stephen's was to be newly endowed as a perpetual vicarage, to which the prior and convent were to present suitable ministers, paying them annually £11 from the tithes, fruits and oblations. A bipartite indenture dated 9 July 1457 was signed by the arbitrators and by both parties to confirm that all dispute between them was now finished. The minister's advocate Dr Richard Wetton and 29 leading parishioners signed.
 * Arbitration and resolution, 1457

So the parish of St Stephen's came into formal being, with its own vicar, William Pawle (presented 1457), who soon resigned. William Leeke, appointed October 1459, shaped the parish over the next 20 years. Hugh Wyche served as alderman for the Ward from 1458 to 1468, and as Mayor in 1461-62: other wealthy mercers lived and died as parishioners, making Mass-bequests, like Thomas Barby (1464), or the Company Warden Robert Skrayngham, who had a pew in the Lady chapel and asked to be buried there in 1468. These three elder mercers had all contributed to the January 1461 prest for Warwick's last expedition. Alderman Wyche became parishioner of St Margaret Lothbury, and had his tomb there in 1468, but left payment to St Stephen's to remember his former parson.

Completing the parish foundation, in February 1468 King Edward IV awarded to William Leeke, his churchwardens and parishioners, a corporate status with one common seal. The chantry premises seized in 1446 were so decayed that their revenues could no longer support separate chaplains. Edward now re-granted them collectively to the parish in frankalmoin, for one chaplain to celebrate divine service daily for the donors and families, and for the souls of Richard, Duke of York, Edmund, Earl of Rutland and Richard Nevill, Earl of Salisbury (who had died after the Battle of Wakefield). The parish was to repair the tenements. John Sokelyng's obit (from "Le Cokke") was to be kept fully, on behalf of all benefactors and parishioners, with ringing of bells, placebo and dirige on the eve and Mass of Requiem on the morrow of his anniversary. The "cock in a hoop" motif became associated with the church and can still be seen in parish boundary markers.
 * Incorporation, 1466

William Leeke began the "Vellum Book" of St Stephen's in August 1466, opening with a calendar of feasts and an inventory of church goods and furnishings. The duties of the wardens and two clerks (English, 1466) appear at length, together with Provincial ordinances for the duties of the priest and election of the churchwardens (Latin, 1468) and similar records. The wills of various benefactors are copied in. A bag containing charters and other muniments of the church was unlawfully removed by one John Modwall of Southwark at this time.

The 1466 inventory tells much about the church. In the body of it were side-altars to Our Lady of Pity, to St James (martyr) and to the Holy Trinity, all with various hangings, and places of devotion to St Anne, St Sythe, St Katherine, St Mary Magdalene, St John, St Clement, St Christopher and St Nicholas, with images and branch lights. There was also a chapel of Our Lady with its own altar and psalter chained, and a place dedicated to St George. The many books, kept in chests and aumbries, included some old missals, graduals, antiphoners and manuals not of the Sarum Use (with replacements supplied by Leeke and Crowton), a Martyrology, a great and small Legendary, ordinals and processionals. There were many banners, cloths and altar hangings with religious subjects, but no mention is made of heraldry in the church.
 * The church in 1466

In the chancel were images of St Saviour and St Stephen, and a Resurrection. the high altar had various liturgical cloths and covers, a chained Psalter, and a new Missal given by John Crowton, a gentleman parishioner who had signed the 1457 indenture and died c. 1465. A series of silver-gilt chalices (with images of the Holy Trinity, the Agnus Dei, the Vernicle, and St Stephen), cruets, chrismatory and other receptacles for the Host, a monstrance and pax were among the utensils of the altar, together with latten standards and branch lights. Sundry reading-desks included one in the rood loft for reading from the Legendary. A portable gilded Easter Sepulchre had small gilt figures of angels and knights, and banners and pennons to surround it. Suites of vestments had been given by John Osyn (red with golden lions), John Crowton (white bustian with red roses) and William Leeke (white damask). Among many richly ornamented robes were some of cloth of gold. Vestments, crozier and mitre were kept for a Boy Bishop and his assistants.

John Warde, mercer, alderman of Coleman Street until 1476, was Sheriff in 1470-71. William Whyte, draper, alderman here 1482-1496, was Sheriff in 1482-83 and Mayor in 1489-90. Signatories to the 1457 indenture were still active: John Stondon, currier, in 1474 made bequests to the church and was buried in the Lady chapel. His widow Margery remarried, but was buried beside him in 1491, endowing the Paschal light to burn at Eastertide for ten years. Robert Ewell, leatherseller, one of four who had accused Prior William of duplicity, was churchwarden in 1475: his Company later kept his annual obit at St Stephen's with bread, ale and cheese. William Leeke, worthy leader of his flock, died in 1478, succeeded by Robert Shepherd, B.D., who served through the reign of Richard III. Prior William Poley of Butley died in 1483.
 * Parishioners

Merchant dynasties
John Senderell, instituted vicar in 1486, served through seven years of Henry VII's reign. The earliest account-books are of his time. After two brief incumbencies, in November 1495 John Hartland, M.A. began a 22-year term lasting well into the time of Henry VIII. Through this period, mercers were among the wealthiest parishioners, not least William Eston (died 1496) (a parish family in three generations). Two Staplers of Calais, Richard Noneley, grocer (died 1497), and Richard Pontesbury, Warden mercer (died 1504), were of a Shrewsbury merchant community in the parish. Pontesbury's associate was Thomas Grafton, whose son (Pontesbury's apprentice), died a parishioner in that year of 1504. Pontesbury's body was borne to Acton, but masses were said for him at St Stephen's and his name was entered in the Fraternity's bederoll. Most prominent of these however was Pontesbury's fellow Warden, and in 1502 Master of the Mercers, Thomas Bradbury (c.1440-1510), a Merchant Adventurer. Apprentice of Richard Ryche (died 1464), he made a late marriage to Joan, widow of Thomas Bodley, took her eldest son as apprentice, and embarked on a civic career. He sat in parliament in 1495, and served as Sheriff with Stephen Jenyns in the mayoralty of John Percival (1498) and as alderman for Coleman Street from 1503. In 1509 he succeeded Jenyns as Lord Mayor, but died in office on 10 January 1509/10. He was buried in the St Stephen's Lady chapel, with two trentals of masses sung by the friars of London.
 * Thomas Bradbury

Dame Joan Bradbury founded a perpetual chantry at St Stephen's for her husbands, making the Mercers' Company its trustees, and arranging to leave them her residence in Gresham Street. Royal licence of 1513 associated her chantry with prayers for the King, his grandmother, Bishop Nykke and Thomas Wolsey and for Joan and her brother. Joan's daughter Dionysia Bodley developed the family's interests by marriage to the mercer and Stapler of Calais Nicholas Leveson (died 1539), of a family which, with Stephen Jenyns and his associates, were leading representatives of the Wolverhampton merchant community in London. This dynasty became centred upon St Andrew Undershaft, which Jenyns rebuilt. Dame Joan, who also founded Saffron Walden grammar school, remarried, but at her death in 1530 was buried beside Thomas Bradbury in the Lady Chapel at St Stephen's, making Nicholas and Dionysia Leveson her executors.

Augustine Rivers, Prior of Butley 1509-1528, presented Roger Wentworth (1513) and Richard Peerson (1521) to St Olave's, and in 1517, on the death of Hartland, presented Henry Forth S.T.B. to St Stephen's. Just then Rivers was playing host in Suffolk to Mary Tudor, the king's sister, and had leased Staverton Park from the Duke of Norfolk. John Tylney, grocer and Stapler of Calais, buried before the image of the Holy Trinity at St Stephen's in 1518, was son of alderman Ralph Tylney (five times Master Grocer, 1486-1498 ), who bore the same arms as Norfolk's consorts. Prior Rivers presented Forth's successor, William Pachett, in December 1524.
 * Prior Rivers

During the 1520s a busy conventicle of Lollards grew up at the heart of the parish. John Hacker was the leader of a sect drawn from the surrounding parishes who for six years met in a house in Bird's Alley, beside the church, to read and teach from English scriptures and other Wycliffite texts. "Old Father Hacker", as he was called, had numerous disciples in London, men and women. This was an important centre for the movement, for Hacker travelled about distributing books among his associates at Braintree, Witham and Colchester in Essex, at Witney, Oxfordshire, and elsewhere, and a man was kept in lodgings in Coleman Street to translate the Apocalypse into English. In 1527 while Bishop Tunstall was abroad his Chancellor conducted a Canonical visitation and the sect was discovered. Under heavy pressure Hacker revealed the names of many of his followers, who were subjected to close inquisition and made to abjure their doctrines. One who abjured but later returned to his beliefs was John Worthington, burned in 1531.
 * The Coleman Street Lollards

Reformation, 1530-1562
Wolsey had Butley Priory earmarked for closure when Prior Rivers died in 1528, but Thomas Sudbourne's election averted this. As Wolsey fell and Prior Thomas sought favour with Cromwell, he presented Richard Kettyll, Bachelor of Law, to St Stephens. His stipend still £11 per annum, Kettyll's vicariate spanned the years of the English Reformation. In March 1538 Butley Priory was dissolved, and the advowson of St Stephen's passed to the Crown. In September 1538 the parish register commences, written on paper, in a beautifully controlled gothic script. Kettyll himself was apparently the scribe, at least from mid-record on 5 September 1542 where the black-letter entries are resumed in a more cursive hand which continues unbroken down to 1562. He often appears as witness in parish wills.

In June 1542 Kettyll and his wardens took a new inventory. The church as it then stood had its chancel with high altar, nave with north and south aisles, pulpit, image of St Stephen and side altar to St Mary, rood-screen with rood above, the Lady chapel with its altar and mausoleum, and a tower with bells. The five lesser bells from the peal of nine of the Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate (dissolved 1531) were acquired by the parish. Many of the textiles, the three suites of vestments, and the altar plate, are recognizable from the 1466 listing. Missals not of Sarum use had been sold. Four separate "coats" for seasonal uses are described for the figure of Our Lady at the side altar. A black cloth for the high altar bore the arms of Thomas Bradbury and his wife, and there were five pennons for him in the Lady chapel.

The commissioners for the 1547 Chantries Act recorded that Richard Kettyll served the cure for 800 communicants. In addition to the priest and obit out of lands granted by Edward IV, three active anniversary obits were listed. The appropriated chantry estates were soon parcelled within major Augmentation grants. The priests' cottages in Ball Alley went in August 1548; four messuages supporting a priest, anniversary and lights, in September-November 1548, and two messuages, with shops, cellars, solars, gardens, etc., supporting anniversaries and a priest were disposed of in May 1549; a sum for the priest and anniversary of Joan Bradbury was granted to the Trustees for the City Companies in July 1550. The ornaments were listed again when church goods were seized in 1552-53.
 * Closure of the chantries

The reversal of 1554 was soon felt. William Hunter, an Essex youth apprenticed to a silk-weaver in the parish, refused the priest's summons to receive Communion at the Easter Mass, and was warned that he would be taken before the Bishop of London (Bonner). His master (fearing he would endanger his household) sent the youth home to Brentwood where, after imprisonment and condemnation in London, he was burned in 1555. Meanwhile, Corpus Christi Day 1554 (24 May) was celebrated with a Romish procession: in West Smithfield John Street, joiner, a young married parishioner of St Stephen's, passed under a Canopy occupied by the priest who, fearing an assault, dropped the Pyx. Street claimed he was merely passing through the crowd, but the priest accused him of wielding a dagger and attempting to seize the sacrament. Imprisoned in the Newgate dungeon, he became delirious and was consigned to Bedlam. In October the parishioner Cuthbert Beeston, a merchant Draper, was imprisoned for having and selling protestant books sent by preachers exiled to the continent.

Marian wills
NB Cuthbert Beeston, imprisoned 1554 for selling prohibited books (Foxe, A & M, VI, p. 561), d. 1581 making SSCS bequests for gospel sermons:
 * D. Hickman, 'From Catholic to Protestant: the changing meaning of testamentary religious provisions in Elizabethan London', in N. Tyacke (ed.), England's Long Reformation, 1500-1800 (The Neale Colloquium in British History), (University College London press, 1998), pp. 117-39, at p. 129.
 * Alice Starkey (PCC 1554, More), RK witness
 * William Bradfote (1555), tallow chandler, bur at SSCS, prot formula
 * John Baron (PCC 1557, Wrastley)
 * William Shipton (-ditto-), currier, long will. Mary & celestial co.
 * Robert Smythe (-ditto-), mercer, prot formula, bur in SSCS near wife, RK wit. + Codicil

Seventeenth century
Early in the 17th century, St. Stephen's became a Puritan stronghold. The church was renovated at the cost of the parishioners in 1622, and a gallery was added over the south aisle in 1629. John Davenport, the vicar appointed in 1624, later resigned to become a Nonconformist pastor. It was during his Puritan incumbency that the playwright and Shakespeare collaborator Anthony Munday was buried in the church in 1633. In that year Davenport departed for the United Netherlands, but returned in 1636 and, in company with Theophilus Eaton and a company centred upon a core of parishioners of St Stephen's, in 1637 sailed for New England. Finding Boston torn by religious dissent they diverted to Long Island Sound, where they founded the plantation of New Haven Colony, Connecticut.

Davenport's successor, John Goodwin (instituted 1633), was also a prominent Puritan preacher. Dame Margaret Wroth, a patron sympathetic to his views, who died in 1635 and was buried here beside her husband's parents, left benefactions for sermons to be preached on the anniversaries of her own burial and that of her daughter. Goodwin was ejected from St Stephen's in 1645 for setting up a covenanted community within his parish and was briefly imprisoned after the Restoration for his political views. The five Members of Parliament impeached by Charles I repaired to Coleman Street in early 1642 when his troops were searching for them, and during the Commonwealth, communion was only allowed to those passed by a committee comprising the vicar and 13 parishioners – two of whom had signed the death warrant of Charles I.

"St. Stephen Coleman Street... began to develop its radicalism only after its parishioners gained control of the pulpit by purchasing their impropriation and advowson in 1590, thus gaining the right to appoint the preacher(s) of their choosing. St. Stephen Coleman Street would become such an important enclave of radical Puritanism in the 1630s..." - K.E. Sawyer, '"Unspottyd lambs of the Lord": Presbyterianism and the people in Elizabethan London' (Master's thesis, Louisiana State University 2010), p. 102 (LSU Digital Commons pdf)


 * J.L. Rockey (ed.), History of New Haven County, Connecticut, 2 vols (W.W. Preston and Co., New York 1892), I, pp. 7-26 and 176 (IA).
 * (A.W. McClure, Lives of John Wilson, John Norton, and John Davenport, The Lives of the Chief Fathers of New England, Vol. II (Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, Boston 1846).)
 * F.B. Dexter, 'Sketch of the Life and Writings of John Davenport', Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, II (1877), pp. 205-38.
 * F.J. Bremer, Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, A Puritan in Three Worlds (Yale University Press, 2012)
 * D.A. Williams, 'London Puritanism: the parish of St Stephen's, Coleman Street', The Church Quarterly Review vol 160 (1959), pp. 464-82.
 * D.A. Kirby, 'The Parish of St Stephen's Coleman Street, London' (B Litt thesis, Oxford University 1969)
 * D.A. Kirby, The Radicals of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, London, 1624-1642 (Corporation of London, 1970).
 * E.S. More, 'The New Arminians: John Goodwin and his Coleman Street Congregation' (Ph.D Diss., University of Rochester 1980)
 * E.S. More, 'John Goodwin and the origins of the New Arminianism', Journal of British Studies 22 no. 1 (Autumn 1982), pp. 50-70 (Jstor).
 * J. Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution: Religion and Intellectual Change in Seventeenth-Century England (Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2008), Google Preview.
 * E. Freshfield, 'Some Remarks upon the Book of Records and History of the Parish of St. Stephen, Coleman Street', Archaeologia Vol. 50 (1887), pp. 17-57, at pp. 18-19 and pp. 22-33 (IA).
 * W. Thornbury, 'Cripplegate', in Old and New London, Vol. 2 (London, 1878), pp. 229-245 (British History Online).
 * Mrs Attoway, a source with refs and another.
 * Church of Christ in Swan Alley, in Fenstanton Records pp. 345-51 (Internet Archive).
 * Thomas Venner in State Trials, etc, p. 67 ff (Google)
 * Cobbett Parliamentary History on Venner, at p. 186 ff (Google)