I.—Essex House, formerly Leicester House and Exeter Inn

Abstract

The London Inn of the bishops of Exeter in the fourteenth century occupied the greater part of the space between the Temple and the bishop of Bath's Inn. The whole site was probably at one time the property of the Knights of the Temple, to whom Henry II in 1173 granted the church of St. Clement Danes. In the thirteenth century the advowson of St. Clement's together with certain messuages opposite to the church had passed into the possession of the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre at Warwick. When or how this took place I have not discovered. But these messuages, like the Temple, were held of the Honour of Leicester, and when in 1280 the Inn of the Canons opposite St. Clement's Church was granted to William de Breuse, bishop of Llandaff, for life, the grant was made with the assent of Edmund, earl of Lancaster, to whom that Honour belonged. In 1323 Walter de Stapledon, bishop of Exeter, was anxious to provide a London Inn for his see, and for that purpose desired to acquire the property of the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre in St. Clement Danes. With a view thereto he purchased from Walter de Cantelupe land at Snitterfield in Warwickshire with the advowson of the church there. In the following year he obtained the king's permission to exchange this property for five messuages and the advow-son of St. Clement Danes together with some land at Hornsey. The exchange was confirmed by two fines levied in Michaelmas Term 1325. From another source it appears that the Canons had held four messuages together with the reversion to a fifth which had been demised for life to William de Bereford. Bereford, who was Chief Justice of the Common Bench, died in 1326, and Stapledon then became fully possessed of the property. The messuages were stated in 1324 to be held of the king as of the Honour of Leicester, having come into the king's hands through the forfeiture of Thomas ot Lancaster in 1322; it was not known of whom the advowson was held.