Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula

in a Royal Perculiar with an awesome choir.

The name means “St. Peter in Chains” and this little chapel, tucked in the corner near the building which houses the Crown Jewels and next to the Tower Green, has been the parish church of the Tower of London since 1520.

The building has a long and illustrious history. While the Tower of London originally started existence as a royal residence and fortification for the city of London, it became a place of imprisonment and, for six lucky people who happened to be close personal friends of a king or queen, a place of execution that was more private than the public spectacle of losing their lives on Tower Hill. These six who were beheaded upon the Tower Green are Queens Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey (the so-called nine-days’ queen) as well as Lady Jane’s husband Thomas Dudley, Jane, Viscountess of Rochford who was Catherine Howard’s lady in waiting, and Queen Elizabeth I’s pet Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex.

Jane, Viscountess of Rochford, was executed on a block still wet with Catherine Howard’s blood. Lady Jane Grey, who was a mere 17 years old at the time of her death, was even more privileged. She got to watch from a window as her husband Thomas Dudley was separated from his head and had his body hauled away on a cart, and then she watched the wardens setting up the scaffold for her own execution later that day. These executed six were buried quietly under the floor of the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula, which is about 50 feet from the place inside the Tower of London where they were all put to death.

In the intervening years, this chapel fell into disrepair, to the extent it appalled Queen Victoria and she ordered the chapel to be renovated and restored. She commanded a commission to accomplish the job and one of the duties with which she entrusted them was digging up the six people who had been executed inside the Tower and assuring they had a decent resting place. In the process of digging up these six, workers discovered 1,500 bodies that had been buried under the chapel, which is an astonishing number considering how small the chapel is. Of the 1,500, they have only identified 33, which includes the six named above. Those six were reburied under the altar of the chapel with a placard marking the location of their grave and the names of the people buried there. The others were buried elsewhere.

Yeoman warders, often called “Beefeaters”, who live and work in the Tower of London have St. Peter ad Vincula as their home church. If their children are christened at the chapel, they are then eligible to be married at the chapel, but hopefully after they have reached an age of much greater maturity. If they are married in the chapel, they may have an honor guard of four yeoman warders dressed in full ceremonial dress. Aside from the weddings of the children of the yeoman warders, the only other time the yeoman guard wear full ceremonial dress is in the presence of royalty.