Walks in London, vol. I
Hare, Augustus J. C.
1878
Chapter XII: London Bridge and Southwark.
Chapter XII: London Bridge and Southwark.
At the entrance of , upon the right, is the , rebuilt by .-. in , in the place of a Hall of which Jaman was the architect after the Great Fire. It is of those huge palaces of dignified repose which are such a feature of the City. On the landing of the stairs is a statue of Sir William , , painted, but carved in wood by Edward Peirce the statuary, who died in .[n.445.1] On the pedestal is inscribed-
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the dagger of is preserved in the Hall, in a glass-case,. and is certainly of the century, but unfortunately the so-called was borne in the city-arms centuries before the time of Wat Tyler, and represents the sword of St. Paul, the patron of the corporation. | |
On the are portraits of- | |
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In the are- | |
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The contains portraits of | |
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In the is a fine portrait of | |
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In the are some curious old pictures, including a representation of the Pageant of the Fishmongers' Company on , when Sir J. Leman, Fishmonger, became Lord Mayor. The relics here include-
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The Fishmongers' Company were formidable neighbours to , as they had power and they still employ inspectors, who bring in a report of the quantity of unwholesome fish destroyed. A member of the company named Thomas Dogget, who died in , being a determined Whig, left a sum for an orange coat and silver Hanoverian badge to be contended for on the Thames every by young watermen. | |
was built - from designs of John Rennie (son of a farmer in East Lothian) and his sons John and George, at a cost of nearly millions, but is already found insufficient, and will soon () be widened, and probably spoilt. | |
There was a bridge here in Saxon times, defended by towers and bulwarks, where, in , was fought in which Olaf[n.447.1] the king and saint of Norray assisted Ethelred the Unready in defeating the Danes. In the stone bridge was built by Peter, priest of St. Mary Colechurch, in which Thomas à Becket had been baptized. Hence, on the central pier, Colechurch erected a chapel in honour of the sainted archbishop, where, when he died in , he was himself buried. This chapel was of great beauty, having a crypt, connected by a flight of stairs with the river. All the other piers were covered with houses, and towards the side from the end of the century stood a fantastic building of wood, said to have been constructed in Holland, with towers, crowned by domes with gilded vanes. The last building on the side was The heads exposed here included those of William Wallace, ; the Earl of Northumberland, ; and Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More, . Hall says that at the end of a fortnight Fisher's head had to be thrown into the Thames, because the bridge was choked up with people coming to see it, Sir Thomas More's head was removed after a time to make room for others, and would also have been thrown into the Thames, but this opportunity had been watched for by his loving daughter Margaret Roper, who bought it and conveyed it safely away to Canterbury. After the Restoration the heads of some of the regicides were exposed here. On Day in the famous passage at arms in the presence of Richard II. was fought on between Lord Welles and the chivalrous Sir David Lindsay of Gleneck, in which the Scottish knight was completely triumphant.[n.448.1] | |
In the picture of Hogarth's the appearance of the houses on old may be seen. At time the booksellers' shops on had the reputation which those of have now. The infant daughter of Sir William Hewett, a famous clock-maker on the bridge, Lord Mayor of London in , fell from of the overhanging windows and was saved from drowning by the gallantry of his apprentice | |
449 | Edward Osborne, who was eventually rewarded with her hand and a large dowry. Osborne himself was Lord Mayor in , and his great-grandson became Duke of Leeds. Pennant describes the street on shortly before its fall- The narrowness of the arches beneath the bridge, and the consequent compression of the river, made very dangerous. Ray's proverb, shows the popular feeling about its rapids. Cowley describes the river as-
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In its later existence most of the houses on the bridge were inhabited by pin-makers, and it was a fashionable amusement with west-end ladies to drive to buy their pins there. In the last century the old houses, in of which Hans Holbein had lived, were removed after the other. Fuller says of Old - | |
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Immediately beyond , on the left, now half-buried amongst raised streets and railways, is the fine | |
450 | cruciform . It has been sadly mutilated in the present century, but its Lady Chapel and choir are still amongst our best specimens of Early English architecture. They are surrounded by a flower and vegetable market, and a churchyard, in which the great dramatic poet Massinger was originally buried. The entry in the register is This was formerly the church belonging to the priory of , which Stow on the authority of Linsted, the last prior, says was originally founded by Mary Overy, a ferry woman, who, long before the Conquest or the existence of any bridge over the river, devoted her earnings to this purpose. She was buried within the walls of the church, and, by some, its dedication has been supposed to refer to her, as the Virgin Mother is not the St. Mary referred to, having her own chapel-the --annexed to the building. The foundation of Mary Overy was for a House of Sisters, but this was afterwards turned into a College of Priests by Swithin, a noble lady, who is said to have built the timber bridge over the river; and, in , it was refounded for canons regular by William Pont de l«Arche and William Dauncy, Norman knights. At the dissolution the church was made parochial. It had already become known as , for in it was brought as a charge against Joane Baker that she said she was
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The Choir, of the most exquisite and unspoilt Early English architecture, retains its beautiful altar-screen, erected by Fox, Bishop of Winchester, in , and adorned | |
451 | with his device, the pelican. Here Edmund Holland, last Earl of Kent, grandson of the Fair Maid of Kent, was married in to Lucia, eldest daughter of Bernabo Visconti, tyrant of Milan, Henry IV. giving away the bride. In the pavement an inscription marks the grave to which Philip Massinger has been removed from the churchyard. Near it is that of John Fletcher (Beaumont and Fletcher), , of whom Aubrey says that, during the great Plague, he was invited by a Knight in Suffolk or Norfolk to take refuge with him till the danger should be over, but lingered while his tailor made him a suit of new clothes, fell sick, and died. |
On the left of the north transept is the beautiful tomb of John Gower the Poet, . , removed from the Chantrey of St. John, where he had been buried in accordance with his will. He had contributed largely to the restoration of the church, in which, in , he had been married to Alice Groundolf by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester. Stow accurately describes the monument. | |
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The works of Gower upon which his head reposes are-. The , a work upon connubial chastity, written in French after the fashion of the time, which prescribed either French or Latin as the language of poetry, a rule violated by Chaucer. . The | |
452 | , written in Latin. . , written in English, after Chaucer had published his other works, but before the Canterbury Tales. It is on this poem, which represents a dialogue between a lover and his confessor, that the reputation of Gower is founded. It was finished in , and is said to have been written in answer |
to the desire of Richard II., who, meeting the poet day upon the Thames, called him into his barge, and desired him to The edition contained many passages flattering to King Richard, but the time-serving poet afterwards either omitted these altogether or converted them to the praise of his rival and successor | |
453 | Henry IV. Gower was educated for the law at the Middle Temple and is believed there to have contracted a friendship with Chaucer. Their tastes were the same, and Gower was especially attached to the patronage of Thomas of Woodstock, of the uncles of Richard III., as Chaucer was to that of another, John of Gaunt. It is believed, however, that the friendship of the poets was turned to enmity |
before the death of Chaucer. Gower became blind in the year of Henry IV. and died in . A tablet used to hang by his tomb inscribed,
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Against the pillar on the left, adjoining the tomb, are the arms of Cardinal Henry Beaufort, son of John of Gaunt, | |
454 | who was consecrated Bishop of Winchester and came to Winchester House close to this church in the year of Gower's death. Against the same pillar is a curious miniature tomb to William Emerson, , He is represented in his shroud. |
Opposite that of Gower is the tomb, with curious coloured half-figures, of John Bingham, , saddler to Queen Elizabeth and King James I. | |
In the south transept is the strange allegorical tomb of William Austen, , author of There is much grandeur in the figures of the sisters sleeping deeply with their prongs over their shoulders, while waiting for the great final harvest. | |
Next is the tomb of Dr. Lockyer the pill-inventor, with his figure in the costume of Charles II.'s time, reclining upon it, and the inscription- Alas, however, the pills have not survived the dust, and Lockyer is unembalmed. | |
Passing the tomb of Richard Blisse, , and a weird nameless figure in a shroud ascribed by tradition to
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455 | father of Mary Overy,[n.455.1] we enter the south aisle of the choir, containing the tomb of John Trehearne, Gentleman Porter to James I., and his wife, with coloured half-figures, and the epitaph-
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An epitaph surpassed by that on Miss Barford, which narrates how-
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Close by are niches, supposed to be the tombs of Pont de Arche and Dauncy, the founders of the church; in of them is a cross-legged effigy. Opposite, between the pillars of the choir, is the alabaster tomb of Alderman Richard Humble () and his wives. The inscription is attributed to Francis Quarles-
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Other persons buried here without a monument are Sir Edward Dyer, the Elizabethan pastoral poet, , who lived and died in Winchester House; and Edmond Shakspeare, the poet's younger brother-; the register merely says,
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The beautiful Lady Chapel was used in the time of Mary I. as the consistorial court of Gardiner, Bishop of | |
| Winchester, and here Bishop Hooper and John Rogers, Vicar of St. Sepulchre's, were condemned to be burnt-the popular feeling in favour of the latter being so strong at the time that he had to be conveyed from hence by night in secrecy to Newgate.[n.456.1] | |
Here is the black and white marble tomb of Bishop | |
457 | Lancelot Andrews, , with the inscription The tomb was brought hither from a chapel called the Bishop's Chapel, which formerly existed to the east of the Lady Chapel, where it had a canopy inscribed, Queen Elizabeth, who delighted in the preaching of Andrews, raised him from the Mastership of Pembroke Hall to the Deanery of , but he refused to accept any bishopric in her reign, because he would not submit to an alienation of the ecclesiastical revenue. James I. preferred him to any other divine as a preacher, and selected him to answer Cardinal Bellarmine, who had attacked his In he was made Bishop of Chichester, in Bishop of Ely, in Bishop of Winchester. Endless stories are preserved of the kindness, charity, and the unfailing humility of Bishop Andrews, whom all honoured but himself. He is chiefly remembered now by his composed in his latter years, and of which the manuscript was constantly wet with his tears. His death was received as a public calamity. Archbishop Laud[n.457.1] lamented him as and Milton wrote a Latin elegy upon him, which has been translated by Cowper. |
Near the tomb are kept a number of bosses, from the roof of the nave, preserved when it was pulled down. Their | |
458 | ornaments comprise the arms of , and those of Henry de Briton, Prior, -, but the most curious is that of a painted head, with--a man half-eaten. The present nave, on a different level to the rest of the church, is wholly uninteresting; the grand nave of was wantonly destroyed in . The church tower contains bells, of which are upwards of years old. |
Between and the river stood Winchester House, the old palace of the Bishops of Winchester, built in x -being, says Stow, Here Cardinal Beaufort (half. brother of Henry IV.) celebrated the marriage of his niece, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, with James I. of Scotland, the royal poet, who had seen and loved her from his prison window at Windsor, and doubted whether she was
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Bishop Gardiner- [n.458.1] -lived here in state, with a number of pages of good family, whose education he superintended. It was the last household of the kind, for, after the Reformation, the bishops' houses were filled with their wives and children. Here, out of devotion to his patron the Duke of Norfolk, he arranged little banquets, at which it was arranged that Henry VIII. should meet the Duke's niece, Katherine Howard, then a lovely girl in her teens. | |
In Winchester House was turned into a prison for Royalists by the Presbyterians, and amongst others Sir Kenelm Digby was confined there. Selden says[n.459.1] - | |
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The old Gothic hall was standing in the present century, but there is nothing left of the house now. It was Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, who, in , founded for canons regular the religious house which at the dissolution became , now removed to . | |
Adjoining Winchester House was Rochester House, a residence of the Bishops of Rochester, destroyed in . | |
On , the district between the Bishop of Winchester's park and the spot called , were several little amphitheatres for bear-baiting and bull-baiting, with other popular places of amusement. Most important of these was the Globe Theatre, built in the reign of Elizabeth, where James I. granted a patent to Shakspeare and his associates to play plays, The theatre was burnt during a performance of in , and was rebuilt in the following year. Ben Jonson calls it [n.459.2] An old print represents it as like a high marteilo tower with little slits for windows, and a turret and flag at the top. | |
took its name from Robert de Paris, who leased a house and garden there from the Abbot of , in the reign of Richard II. It had always an immoral reputation, and in the time of Charles I. obtained the name of from an ill-working house established in the old manor by a woman named Holland, who contrived to keep the constables at bay by the help of the moat, which existed till . The was in existence in the time of Henry VIII. Here also were of and
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, on the left of the , with an entrance in , was built by Dance (. ). It owes its foundation to Thomas Guy (born ), son of a coal-merchant at Horsleydown, who became a bookseller. The hospital had a narrow escape of losing the wealth of the rich tradesman. He promised to marry his pretty maid, Sally, and had ordered various repairs to his house previous to his nuptials. Seeing that these were incompletely carried out, Sally, in her capacity of bride elect, ordered them: to be properly finished; an assumption of authority which gave such offence to her betrothed that he broke off his marriage, and determining to remain a bachelor, built and endowed the hospital at a cost of . There is a blackened brass statue of the founder in the courtyard, and another in marble,. in the chapel. | |
We are now in , the town on the south side of the Thames, says Pennant, It is intersected by the great street called , which was the | |
461 | highway between the metropolis and the southern counties, and by which the Canterbury pilgrimages passed out towards the shrine of St. Thomas h Becket. A memorial of these pilgrimages may be seen in a succession of ancient taverns, retaining their picturesque wooden galleries around their courtyards, with the chambers opening from them, like the old inns in the French towns. Of these, , on the left, a little beyond , has a court surrounded by old balustraded galleries. It is mentioned by Shakspeare in his ., when Jack Cade remonstrates with his peasant followers, who are forsaking him and accepting the pardon offered by Buckingham and Clifford, saying-- |
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The describing Jack Cade's rebellion, says, A servant of Sir John Fastolf, named Payne, was only saved from the same fate by the intercession of Robert Poynings, when he was sent from his master's house at Horsleydown to obtain the articles of the rebels' demands. The inn where Cade staid was burnt in and again in , but was rebuilt in the same style, with the wooden balconies used in watching the open-air theatrical performances in the courts below, by which the taverns were made popular. Shakspeare's plays were probably acted in the courtyards of such inns, he himself being an actor. The White Hart is described by Charles Dickens in the
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The next inn, , has double tiers of wooden | |
462 | galleries. It is described by Stow as existing in his time, and is mentioned as early as -- Henry VIII., when its name was the St. George. The original inn was burnt in , but it was rebuilt in the same style. |
But the most interesting of old hostelries was the Tabard, mentioned even in by Stow as for ever celebrated, when and which had become
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Up to a few years before its destruction it was marked by an inscription, which said, It was an old | |
463 | house worthy of Nüremberg, and such as we shall never see again in London, with high roofs and balustraded wooden galleries supported upon stone pillars. A worn faded picture of the Canterbury. Pilgrimage hung from the gallery in front of The front towards the street was comparatively modern, having perished in the fire of , after which, says Aubrey, The ancient sign of the Tabard, says Stow, is
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There was such a completely old-world character in the courtyard of the Tabard that, though Chaucer certainly never saw the inn which has been lately destroyed,[n.464.1] those who visited it in , imbued with the poem, would feel that the balustraded galleries, with the little rooms opening | |
out of them, and the bustling courtyard filled with waggons and wares, represented at least the ghost of the Gothic inn, built by the Abbot of Hyde in on the same site. They would share the sensation of Dryden, who wrote, and would picture the meeting which the poet describes-
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On the left, between and , was the prison of the Marshalsea-used for persons guilty of offences on the high seas or within the precincts of the court. The Marshal of this prison was seized and beheaded by the rebels under Wat Tyler in . Bonner, Bishop of London, was imprisoned for years in the Marshalsea for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to Elizabeth, and died there . His repartee as he was being led to prison is recorded: said a wag. replied Bonner. At the instigation (as he asserted) of Home, Bishop of Winchester, the mob gathered round him as he went and returned from the prison to the court. said to him,
he replied, To another, saying he said, A woman kneeled down and said, To which he said, and so passed on to his lodging.[n.465.1] | |
George Wither the poet, who had been a general in Cromwell's army, was imprisoned at the Restoration in the Marshalsea for having written the satire and while here wrote his best poem, He was released some years before his death. Dickens, in the Preface to describes his search for relics of the Marshalsea- | |
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Connected with the prison was the Marshalsea Court--the seat (sidge) of the Marshal of the King's Household This court was united with that of Queen's Bench in . | |
, was built by John Price (-) upon the site of an old church where General Monk was married to Anne Clarges, and where Bonner, the bloody bishop of London, who died in the Marshalsea, and Rushworth, author of the who died in the , were buried. Opposite the church | |
467 | was a palace of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who married Mary, daughter of Henry VII. A Quakers' Meeting House in , , is connected with the story of the Quaker persecution in the reign of Charles II. It is here that George Fox, the Founder of the Society, was attacked by soldiers with their muskets while he was preaching; and here that, when () a justice of the peace commanded him in the King's name to come down, he replied,
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stands on the site of , and on the open space in front- --the famous fair was held which was granted by Edward VI., and was annually opened on by the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs riding in procession. Fair, which was suppressed in , is commemorated by Hogarth. | |
To the west of , in , , is the great ., founded by Henry Thrale, the friend of Dr. Johnson, who was his executor and sold the business to Messrs. Barclay and Perkins for . said Johnson, on the day of the sale, Thrale's Brewery was built on the site of the oldest Independent or Congregational church in England, founded in x by Henry Jacob, who migrated to Virginia in . During the Long Parliament the Meeting House ventured to open its doors (-I), the congregation having hitherto been
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The streets to the east lead into (Beormond's-Eye--from the island property of some Saxon or Danish noble in the marshes of the Thames), now a poor.crowded district chiefly inhabited by tanners. There was a royal country-palace here, where Henry II. resided with Eleanor of Aquitaine, when she came to England,: and where she gave birth to her son. But no remains exist now either of it or of the Cluniac abbey founded by Aylwin Child in , which became celebrated from its connection with a number of royal ladies. Of these, the was Mary, daughter of Malcolm III. of Scotland, sister of Maud, wife of Henry I., and wife of Eustace, Earl of Boulogne. She died , and was buried here with the inscription- The body of Queen Joanna, widow of Henry IV., who died at Havering-atte-Bower in , rested here in state, on its way to the tomb which she had erected for her husband in Canterbury Cathedral. Katherine de Valois, widow of Henry V., and then wife of Owen Tudor, died here in her year; and here Elizabeth Woodville, widow of Edward IV., was imprisoned by her son-in-law, Henry VII., in , and languished till her death in .[n.468.2] By her touching will, made in the abbey, she says that she leaves | |
469 | her blessing to Elizabeth of York and her other children, The abbey was surrendered in and the last abbot rewarded with the bishopric of St. Asaph . The greater part of the abbey buildings were pulled down by Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity College at Oxford, and the palace of the Ratcliffes, Earls of Sussex, rose upon their ruins. The only relics still remaining of the abbey are a silver alms-dish, preserved in the Church of , and the names of
&c., reminiscences of the monastic gardens and farm, now applied to streets of leather-dressers, leather dyers, horse-hair manufacturers, &c |
, on the river between and , commemorates the town-house of the Abbots of Battle, and the intricacies of the wretched streets called the mark the labyrinth in their gardens. | |
Footnotes: [n.445.1] Horace Walpole. [n.447.1] Commemorated in the singular corrupted name of Tooley (Olaf) Street, on the south bank of the river, where he is patron of the parish. [n.448.1] See the picturesque account in The Lives of the Lindsays. [n.455.1] There is a curious tract called The true History of the Life and sudden Death of old John Overs, the rich Ferryman of London, showing how he lost his life by his own covetousness; and of his daughter Mary, who caused the church of S. Mary Overs in Southwark to be built, and of the building of London Bridge. It narrates how John Overs counterfeited death, thinking to economise by making his household fast for a day, but they feasted instead, whereat he arose in a fury and killed an apprentice, for which he was executed. [n.456.1] Milman's Annals of St. Paul's. [n.457.1] Diary. [n.458.1] Fuller. [n.459.1] Table Talk. [n.459.2] See Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata. [n.464.1] The original inn was standing in 1602. [n.465.1] See Strype [n.468.2] Katherine was buried in the tomb of Henry V. in Westminster Abbey; Elizabeth Woodville in that of Edward IV. at Windsor, in a stone coffin, in accordance with the terms of her will- I bequeath my body to be buried with the body of my lord at Windsor, according to the will of my said lord and mine, without pomps entering or costly expenses done thereabout. |
