St James Church, Clerkenwell

St James Church, Clerkenwell, is an Anglican parish church in Clerkenwell, London, England.

The parish of St James, Clerkenwell, has had a long and sometimes lively history. The springs which give Clerkenwell its name are mentioned during the reign of Henry II. The parish clerks of London used to perform their mystery plays, plays based on Biblical themes, in the neighbourhood, sometimes in the presence of royalty. In approximately 1100 a Norman baron named Jordan Briset founded an Augustine nunnery dedicated to St Mary, which became wealthy and influential. It had a place of pilgrimage at Muswell Hill, and the parish kept an outlying tract of territory there until the nineteenth century.

At the dissolution of the nunnery under Henry VIII its church, which by then seems to have acquired a second dedication to St James, was taken into use by its parishioners who had already been using a part of it for some considerable time. The site of the nunnery was granted to Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, in 1540 but the freehold of the church passed through various hands until it was conveyed in 1656 to trustees on behalf of the parishioners, who at the same time obtained the right to appoint the vicar. Unlike other parishes, they retained it after the Restoration of 1660. Elections of vicars were held, with all the excitement and paraphernalia of parliamentary elections, right down to the early years of this century and a distinctly Low Church tradition was thereby established. This did not prevent a long struggle in the latter years of the eighteenth century with Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. This strong-minded and evangelical lady had taken over a building in the parish called Spa Fields Chapel, and insisted on appointing her own chaplains to preach there. The vicar was furious, and his action against her in the ecclesiastical courts was the cause of her secession from the Church of England.

In 1596, the playwright George Peele was buried in the church.

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