Four hundred years ago, seeking refuge from prying Protestant eyes, 300 Catholics crammed into a Blackfriars residence to hear Mass. For many, it would be their final prayer.
The Fatal Vespers of 1623 was one of the most tragic disasters in London’s history, killing 95 and leaving many more seriously injured.
But despite the huge loss of innocent life, some religiously fervent Londoners turned on the victims, deeming it God’s will that the papists had died.
The Fatal Vespers wasn’t as gruesome as The Great Plague of London, nor was its legacy as monumental as The Great Fire of London.
But as an insight into the zealotry and religious fervour that gripped London under King James I, it’s invaluable.
The Historical Backdrop
When King James I ascended to the English throne in 1603, he reassured his contemporaries he would not persecute Catholics who practised their religion discreetly.
However, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, itself partly a symptom of opposition to the Protestant king, changed everything.
James I introduced new penalties against Catholics and a new Oath of Allegiance that demanded worshipers deny the Pope’s authority over the English king.
Against this backdrop of religious persecution, London’s significant Catholic population were forced to worship behind closed doors.
The Disaster
So on Sunday, October 26, or November 5 for those adhering to the Catholic church’s ‘New Calendar’, roughly 300 people gathered at Hunsdon House in Blackfriars.
As the residence of the French Ambassador, Hunsdon House had diplomatic immunity. Away from the prying eyes of the English authorities, it was regularly used as a place of Catholic worship.
That evening Robert Drury, a noted and distinguished preacher, was leading the service. Eager to hear his sermon, hundreds huddled into a third-floor room in Hunsdon House.
But the timber building apparently wasn’t designed to withhold such a weight and the floor’s main beam snapped.
A wave of people crashed through to the floor below where its beams snapped again. While some people escaped the fall, fortunately standing on a section of floor that remained firm, many fell two entire storeys – roughly 22 feet.
95 people including the two Jesuit preachers were killed while many others sustained serious injuries.
The Aftermath
Today, one might expect such a serious disaster to be met with an outpouring of sympathy.
But with the religious atmosphere so tense, and suspicion of Catholics rampant, many interpreted the incident as divine intervention.
One contemporary vicar, in a venomous attack on popery, declared that those who died had been a “multitude of blind ignorant people” whose “detestable idolatrie” had offended God.
As late as 1657, Puritan minister Samuel Clarke, produced an explicitly providentialist account of the incident.
The Fatal Vespers, also known as the Dole-ful Evensong, remains the greatest peacetime tragedy in central London since the Medieval era.
Historians have yet to pin down exactly where Hunsdon House was. It’s rumoured that the dead, prohibited from consecrated burial, were thrown into pits on the site.