This is so called from having been consecrated on that well-known festival of the Latin Church, the 1st of August, probably in the reign of Henry I (1100-1135).
The chapel was rebuilt at the end of the 13th century. It was burnt in 1512 and almost entirely rebuilt, and has since then undergone a great deal of repair.
Here it is, in the memorable words of Stow, writing in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, that there lie before the high altar "two dukes between two queens, to wit, the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Northumberland, between Queen Anne and Queen Kathrine, all four beheaded."
Here also are buried Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford Dudley, the Duke of Monmouth, and the Scottish lords, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, beheaded for their share in the rebellion of 1745. The last burial in the chapel was that of Sir John Fox Burgoyne, Constable of the Tower, in 1871.