Excerpt from The Records of St. Bartholomew's Priory, Vol. 1: And of the Church and Parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield Some personal explanation of how it fell to my lot to write this book seems necessary. During the second half of the nineteenth century two great efforts were made to restore this church to a more worthy condition for Divine worship, and also to restore it to its proper rank as one of the great churches of the land. The first effort commenced in 1863, the second in 1884 the latter is still not fully spent. My family had been connected with the parish since 1828, when my grandfather, John Evans, came to reside in Bartholomew Close, and from No. 60 my father and mother were married in the parish church of St. Bartholomew the Great in 1844. In consequence, I suppose, of this long association with the parish, I was, in 1884, appointed Honorary Secretary to the Restoration Committee and Rector's Warden of the church. In this dual capacity I have had occasion to search the records of the place and the results I have year by year made public by means of open lectures delivered in the church. As I have often been asked to publish these lectures in the form of a book I am now doing so, and in a fuller manner than is possible in a lecture. It has been my endeavour to trace the history of the monastery of St. Bartholomew from the time of its foundation to the time of its suppression, and to show the causes which led to the practical separation of the hospital from the priory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.