South London

nd Battersea which we have agreed to call South London. Thus, to put the map into words, there were buildings all along both sides of the Causeway as far as St. George's Church; in the middle o

the east. A few houses were built already on the low-lying ground near the Causeway; for instance, on the south and south-west of St. Mary Overies. On the east of St. Olave's a single straight lane with no houses ran across

ly with the tides; and because the place was easy of access, by river, to Westminster and the Court, many great men, ecclesiastics and nobles, had their town houses here: the Bishop of Winchester, the Bishop of Rochester, the Prior of Lewes, the Abbot of Hyde, the Abbot of Battle, the Earls of Surrey, Sir John Fastolfe, also the Brandons. Also, because it was easy of access by bridge and

the river, finding shelter on the Lambeth Marsh or the marsh between Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. It was from this unavoidable hospitality to persons escaping from justice that Southwark received a character which has stuck to it till the present day. In the centuries which include the twelfth to the fifteenth, however, South London, so far as it was populated at all, was the residence of great lords and the place of sojourn for merchants from the country. As yet the reputation of Southwark was spotless and its dignity enviable. London itself had no such collection of palaces gathered together so closely. As for the land, that lay low, but was protected by the Embankment from the river. Many rivulets flowed slowly across the misty meadows;

rmondsey Marsh. The houses began near what is now the south end of Blackfriars Bridge; they faced the river, having g

here were also, for the delectation of the righteous and the terror of evil-doers, the visible instruments for correction. In every parish there was the whipping post-one in St. Mary Overy's churchyard, put up after the time of the monks; one at St. Thomas's Hospital; there w

uthwark'-now High Street-from the Bridge to St. Margaret's Hill. But we must not suppose that the markets of Southwark presented

th to meet the King returning from abroad. Cavalcades of pilgrims for Canterbury, Compostella, Seville, Rome, and Jerusalem rode out of Southwark when the spring returned; and every day there arrived and departed long lines of packhorses laden with the produce of the country and with things imported for sale in London City. Pilgrims, merchants, trave

of history. Let us consider the House of Bermondsey, because it i

tery of B

s significant of the seclusion in which the House lay that the only road which connected it with the world was that lane called Bermondsey or Barnsie or Barnabie Lane, which ran from the Abbey to St. Olave's and so to London Bridge. It was not, like Westminster, a place of traffic and resort. It lay a

which, with all its members and all its property-the land which now forms the Ward of Portsoken-went over to the Priory of the Holy Trinity. Religion of a practical and real kind was therefore hereditary in the family.

NDSEY

s the respect of the people who always admire voluntary privation of what they value so much-food and drink; it receives endowments, gifts, foundations of all kinds; it then departs from the ancient rule, and quickly loses its hold upon the people. This is the simple history of Benedictine, Franciscan, Cistercian, an

F BERMOND

ed its Priors from abroad. In the reign of Henry the Fifth the growing dissatisfaction on account of the Alien Priories came to a head, and they were all suppressed, or at least cu

as another holy shrine; at Bermondsey there was a Holy Rood which was daily visited in the summer by pious pilgrims from London. The Rood had been fished up from the Thames, and no one knew its history; but the merit of a pilgrimage to the Abbey and of prayers said before the shrine was considered very

t. Saviour in Bermondsey among while ye abide in London; and let my sister Margery

tention especially to the papers showing the clear and indisputable right of the Mother Convent to the House of Bermondsey. These monks, in fact, did present their case to the King, with the documents. But no one heeded them; they could hardly get a hearing; no

re denied the obedience of all our Monasteries which are 38 in number: nor did our Legal Deeds, nor the Testimonies of your Chronicles avail us anything, and at length, after all our pleading and expenses, we return home moneyless, for in truth, after paying for what we have eaten and drunk, we have but five crowns left, to go back

s above ground one hundred years ago. It is a pity, because there is the association of two Queens, not to spe

ntic, perhaps, of all the stories connected with our line of sovereigns and Queens and Royal Princes. It

distinguished himself at Agincourt in the following of some nobleman unknown. It has been said, with singular ignorance of the time, that he was a private soldier-that is, a man with a pike or a bow, dressed in a leather jerkin which the men threw off when the battle began. The opportunities for a common soldier to distinguish himself in such an action were few, nor do we

ers of the household. He pleased her by his appearance, his accomplishments, and his manners. Tradition says that he danced very well. There is no reason to inquire by what attractions or accomplishments he pleased. The fact remains that he did please the Queen, and that so much that she consented to a secret marriage with him. It was a dangerous step for this Welsh adventurer to take: it was a step which would cover the Q

a discretion beyond all praise. No doubt the ordinary members of the household knew nothing and suspected nothing, because several years passed before any suspicion was awakened. Three sons and one daugh

tminster. The infant was taken as soon as born to the monastery of St. Peter's, secretly. It is not likely that the Abbot received the child without full knowledge of his parents. H

as if these ladies grew on every hedge. When, however, a year or so afterwards, the fourth child, Margaret, was born, Humphrey learned the whole truth: the degradation, as he thought it, of the Queen, who had stooped to such an alliance, and the humble rank and the audacity

ent backwards and forwards? I think he must have been in Sanctuary. He refused a verbal message, and demanded a written safe-conduct. This was granted him, and he returned to London. But he mistrusted even the written promise; he would not face the Council: he took refuge in the Sanctuary of Westminster, where they were afraid to seize him. And here for a while he remained. It is said that they tried to draw him out by sending old friends who invited him to the tave

ngford, and placed in the Castle there a prisoner. From Wallingford he was transferred again to Newgate, he and his priest and his servant. Once more they all three broke prison, '

ver knighted; and that the title of Esquire was the only one by which he was known. It certainly seems as if the claim of Owen Tudor to be called a gentleman was not recognised by the King

ge he remembered his half-brothers: Edmund was made Earl of Richmond, Jasper Earl of Pembroke; both ranked before all other English Earls. Edmund was afterwards mar

vil Wars began he joined the King's forces, though he was then nearer seventy than sixty. He fought at Wakefield; he pursued the Yorkists to Mortimer's Cross, where another fight took place. The L

lsh gentleman was not, after all, a matter for shame or concealment. Katharine carried down to the Abbey a disorder which she calls of long standing and grievous. It killed her in less than a year after her imprisonment among the orchards and meadows of the Precinct. It is said that her remorse during her last days was very deep; not for her second marriage, but for having allowed her accouchement of the King to take place at Windsor, a pla

AVE, S

to be paid. And she says not one word about her children by Owen Tudor. She confesses by this silence that she is ashamed. She confesse

and favour my will, in ordaining for my soul and body, in seeing that my debts be paid and my servants guerdoned, and in tender and favourable fulfilment of

ueen of Scots and Marie Antoinette. Her record is full of woe. But in that long war it seems impossible to find one single character, man or woman-unless it is King Henry-who is true and loyal. All-all-are perjured, treacherous, cruel, self-seeking. All are as proud as Lucifer. Murder is the friend and companion of the noblest lord; perjury walks on the other side of him; treachery stalks behind him: all are his henchmen. Elizabeth met perjury and treachery with intrigue and plot and counter-plot: she was the daughter of her time. She was accused of being privy to the plots of Lambert Simnel and Perki

LO

ore concern, still continued. It has been suggested that she retired voluntarily to the Abbey. Such a retreat was not in the character of Elizabeth Woodville, so l

ard any of my children, according to my heart and mind, I beseech God Almighty to bless her Grace with all her noble Issu

thout paying a pilgrimage to the venerable and beautiful church which glorifies Southwark. There were great marriages and great functions held in the Church of St. Mary Overy: Gower, that excellent poet whom the professors of literature praise and nobody reads, died and lies buried in this church; it was the church of the playerfolk: here lie buried Edmund Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, and Philip Henslow. Here lie buried, in that 'sure and certain hope' which the Church allows even to them, the rufflers, 'roreres' and sinners of Bank S

oked on unmoved while the most innocent and most holy men in the country-the blameless Carthusians-suffered death as traitors; they looked on at the death of Sir Thomas More; when witches were burned they looked on. It was when they saw their own brothers, sisters, cousins, dragged out and put to death without a cause, that they began to doubt and to question. Nay, I think it was not the manner of death that affected them, because burning was a thing so common: it was the sentence itself passed on honest and godly folk, and the behaviour of the people at their death. Tender women chained to the stake suffered without a groan, only praying loudly till death came; people remembered, they recalled with tears afterwards, how the martyr and his wife and his children knelt on the gro

's Hospital belongs to both

were no houses, except farm buildings for the monastery's labourers; there were no poor, no sick, and no orphans. So that, when the great fire of 1213 destroyed Southwark and crossed the river by the Bridge into London, the monks of St. Saviour's bethought them that to make their almonry useful it would be well to rebuild it half a mile to the west, on the Southwark Causeway. This was done, and the Hospital of St. Mary was united with it, and t

OF THE BISHOP OF WIN

ds the end these contributions fell off sadly). There was plenty of life and colour in the streets: serving men in bright liveries of the great Houses-the Bishops of Winchester and Rochester, the Abbots of Lewes, Hyde, and Battle-went about their errands; there were Gilds, notably

ks, or put in pillory, and so made to feel the heinousness of his offence. This punishment was like that which is inflicted on a schoolboy: the thing done, the boy is taken back to favour. The eighteenth century branded him, imprisoned him, transported him, made a brute of him, and then hanged him. Did a woman speak despitefully of authority? Presumptuous quean! Set her up in the cage beside