Church of St Peter ad Vincula, within The Tower of London = Burial place of Anne Boleyn + many more

Описание: The Church of St Peter ad Vincula, at The Tower of London. Burial place of Queens Anne Boleyn - Catherine Howard - The Lady Jane Grey + burial place of Martyrs, like St Thomas More & The Blessed John Fisher + many many more souls. Recorded on Wednesday 29th March 2023.
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(History of the Church)

The original foundation date and location for the chapel is unknown. The chapel has been destroyed, rebuilt, relocated and renovated several times. Some have proposed that the chapel was founded before the Norman conquest of England as a parish church, predating the use of the area as a fortification. Others have concluded the chapel was founded by Henry I (r. 1100–1135), and perhaps consecrated on 1 August 1110 on the feast of St Peter ad Vincula. The chapel would have been outside the Tower's original perimeter walls so that the king could be seen worshiping in public. It would have stood in contrast to the king's use of the more private St John's Chapel, established around 1080 by William I inside the White Tower.

St Peter ad Vincula had been a parish church for at least a century before it became the chapel for the inhabitants of the Tower in the middle of the thirteenth century in the reign of Henry III, and the crypt under the church was built at that time. On 10 December 1241, Henry III issued a writ of liberate to have the ecclesia sancti Petri infra ballium Turris nostrae London (church of St Peter within the bailey of our Tower of London) enhanced. The writ indicates that by 1241 the chapel had been brought within the Tower walls. This structure had two chancels, dedicated to St Mary, and to St Peter; the latter contained Royal stalls that were wainscoted and painted, and there were two altars dedicated to St. Nicholas and St. Katherine.

During the reign of Henry III, the church had an enclosed cell for an anchorite, which would have been directly attached or located nearby. Henry III supported the living expenses of at least three different recluses, both men and women, at the Tower's anchorhold: Brother William, Idonee de Boclaund (an anchoress), and Geoffrey le Hermit.

The chapel's dedication to "St Peter ad Vincula" has several possible meanings in the Norman-English context. The most obvious is in reference to the Liberation of Peter from prison, as first mentioned in Acts 12:3-19. The first prisoner of the Tower, Ranulf Flambard, the Norman Bishop of Durham, was incarcerated by Henry I on 15 August 1100.

The existing building was rebuilt for Henry VIII by the then Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Richard Cholmondeley (whose tomb is in the Church), between 1519 and 1520, after a fire destroyed the church in 1512. The rebuilt chapel was probably designed by William Vertue.