A stained glass window in memory of Sir Robert Knollys (pronounced “Knowles”), c.1325 – 1407, sited in All Hallows-by-the-Tower, an ancient Anglican church overlooking the Tower of London. The many roses depicted in the coat of arms are significant. Picture: Adapted from a photograph by Andy Scott (CC BY-SA 4.0).
21 June 2023
By Tim Koch
Tim Koch is temporarily Something In The City.
All over Britain many weird and wonderful archaic traditions, ceremonies and customs are preserved, performed and passed on. However, if there is an “epicentre of eccentricity”, it must be the City of London. “The City” (as it is known) covers a little more than one square mile, has a resident population of less than nine thousand and is the capital’s main financial district. It is not “Greater London” which is an area of 670 square miles and is home to 10 million people.
The City fiercely guards its independence as an enclave surrounded by the 32 boroughs that form Greater London. Most famously there is a Lord Mayor of The City of London, one of the world’s oldest continuously elected civic offices, dating back to 1189. The Lord Mayor is non-affiliated politically and is not elected by a popular vote. He or she heads the City of London Corporation, the governing body of the so-called Square Mile and is an international ambassador for the UK’s financial and professional services sector. The office is entirely separate from the directly elected Mayor of London, an American-style political office created in 2000 for the governance of Greater London.
The church of All Hallows-by-the-Tower claims to date from 675. It survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 but was badly damaged by enemy bombing in 1940. As befits something 1,400 years old, many stories are attached to the place. American readers may be interested to know that it was the place where William Penn was baptised in 1644 and where John Quincy Adams married a London girl in 1797.
It is against this background that, on 19 June, I found myself in a strange little procession winding its way through the City of London’s meandering medieval street system starting from the area’s oldest church, All Hallows-by-the-Tower, stopping briefly to cut a rose in a small urban public garden and then delivering the bloom to the City’s magnificent town hall (known as the Guildhall).
Leaving All Hallows. Our two-by-two line of people, containing a mixture of archaic dress, morning dress and lounge suits, bemused local workers (who are used to this sort of thing) but which both confused and delighted passing tourists.At the head of the procession was Robbie Coleman, Barge Master of the Watermen’s Company (right) and the Watermen’s Company Beadle, Tony Parker (left). Behind them were two Doggett’s winners. Following on was the Master of the Watermen’s Company, Sir David Wootton (right) and David Risley, an altar server at All Hallows Church. Behind the two Davids was, partly obscured here, the Reverend Sophia Acland, Associate Vicar of All Hallows. Following on and mostly out of view here were various Watermen’s Company officers, members and guests.
The unlikely origins of this little parade goes back to building permit violation of 1381. The All Hallows Church website explains:
Sir Robert Knollys was a prominent citizen of London and an experienced soldier who assisted King Richard II in putting down the Peasants’ Revolt (of 1381). He lived with his wife, Lady Constance, in a house on… what is now Seething Lane in the parish of All Hallows by the Tower.
During one of his absences fighting abroad… Lady Constance is reputed to have become annoyed with the chaff dust blowing from wheat threshing ground opposite their house, so she bought the property and had it turned into a rose garden. She also had a footbridge built over the lane, in order to avoid the mud when crossing to the garden,
This was evidently done without the medieval equivalent of planning permission and incurred the wrath of the Lord Mayor of the time, Sir William Walworth. For constructing the bridge and obtaining the garden, Sir Robert and his wife were summoned before the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs, and on the 23rd July 1381 were ordered to pay as rent for their garden one red rose, payable each year on the Feast of St John the Baptist.
The rose payment was no more than a peppercorn rent, a symbolic fine upon Sir Robert, a leading citizen and a successful and respected soldier… The footbridge has long since disappeared, but the legal requirement for the payment of this annual quit-rent has become established as one of the City’s traditions.
The payment of the rose fine ceased on Sir Robert’s death in 1407 but the ceremony was revived in the early 1920s by the Vicar of All Hallows, the Rev PB “Tubby” Clayton, and has been organised by the Watermen’s Company since 1960.
The procession from All Hallows reaches the site where Lady Knollys grew her roses, today called Seething Lane Garden. Her purchase of the threshing ground was also a shrewd investment as, at the time, London land prices were rapidly rising.
The Watermen’s involvement with Knollys Rose was late but not inappropriate as the Seething Lane site has old aquatic connections. The Navy Office where diarist Samuel Pepys lived and worked in the 1660s once stood there and, until recently, the land was owned by the Port of London Authority who had their headquarters there.
The current Master of the Watermen’s Company, Sir David Wootton, plucks a single rose to take to the Guildhall and present to the Lord Mayor in annual payment of the fine imposed upon Sir Robert and Lady Knollys 642 years before.The procession (plus rose) moves from the Seething Lane Gardens towards the Guildhall.Acting verger, David Risley, carries the Knollys Rose for 2023.The arrival at the Guildhall, a building with its origins dating to 1440 but which has been altered (voluntarily and involuntarily) every century since.The current and 694th Lord Mayor of the City of London, Nicholas Lyons, was unable to attend as he was at the funeral of Sir David Brewer, the Lord Mayor 2005 – 2006. Lyons’ place was taken by his immediate predecessor, Vincent Keaveny, shown here with his back to the camera.In the magnificent ballroom of the Guildhall, Sir David Wootton, Master of the Watermen’s Company, prepares to give the Knollys Rose to the Lord Mayor’s representative.Sir David Wootton presents the rose to Alderman Vincent Keaveny. Alderman Vincent Keaveny graciously accepts the rose from Sir David Wootton (himself a City Alderman who was Lord Mayor 2011 – 2012) and expressed the hope that it was not too distressing for Sir David, a son of the White Rose County of Yorkshire, to be associated with a red rose, the symbol of Yorkshire’s enemy in the Wars of the Roses, Lancashire.The presentation of the Knollys Rose in 1954. Sir Noel Bowater (left), Lord Mayor, accepts the rose from Captain Sir Gerald Curteis, Deputy Master of Trinity House. The clergyman in the background is Tubby Clayton, the vicar of All Hallows who revived the custom in the early 1920s.The presentation of 1963. In the background on the left is Tom Phelps, then Barge Master of the Watermen’s Company.After the ceremony in the Guildhall was finished, it was onto Watermen’s Hall on St Mary at Hill, EC3.A convivial lunch was served in the Hall’s Freemen’s Room with The Master in The Chair.My thanks to my host, Kensington RC/Auriol Kensington RC stalwart, Jimmy Pigden, a man who has been actively rowing for nearly 70 years. We are pictured in front of the Company’s arms displayed above the fireplace in the Court Room of Watermen’s Hall.
