In Milton's time many Puritans lived in the parish, and a manuscript book preserved in the vestry records that there was "Collected for the children of New England uppon 2 Sabath daies following in february, 1643, £2, 8. 9." This was a goodly sum for those days, and was doubtless much appreciated by the English cousins, who in their bare pine meeting-houses beside the tidal Charles remembered that the Puritans who remained at home were called to wage a fiercer fight with priestcraft, prerogative, and privilege than they, with poverty.
The church to-day is but a fraction of its former size, in fact, hardly more than the choir of the noble building which Rahere erected. The entire length of the church as it left his hand is supposed to have been 225 feet. In 1539 Sir Richard Rich bought church and priory for little more than £1,000, and the thirteen evicted canons were pensioned off.
Close by old St. Bartholomew's is Smithfield, so near that, in the reign of the Tudors, the ruddy light of martyrs' fagots must have cast a glow upon its roof and its walls must have resounded to the screams of sufferers in their last agonising moments.
On the south side of Smithfield, in Milton's day, rose St. Bartholomew's Hospital, founded by Henry VIII., upon the site of Rahere's earlier one. The great Harvey, the physician of Charles I., who discovered the circulation of the blood, was physician to this hospital for thirty-four years, and here, in 1619, he lectured on his great discovery. The present structure dates from a period early in the eighteenth century.
Directly opposite St. Bartholomew's Church, in 1849, excavations three feet below the surface exposed to view a mass of unhewn stones, blackened as by fire, and covered with ashes and human bones, charred and partially consumed. This marked the spot where martyrs, facing eastward toward the great gate of St. Bartholomew's, were chained to the stake. The prior was generally present on such occasions. An old print of the burning of Anne Askew displays a pulpit erected for the sermon, and raised seats for the numerous spectators who came to view the spectacle with probably no more shrinking than the Londoners of the early nineteenth century viewed the hangings at Newgate.