South London. Walter Besant
river with ships, and the quays with merchandise – crowded the Bridge all day long with trains of packhorses, and the less frequent rude carts with broad grunting wheels which would have quite taken the place of the horse but for the bad roads. Southwark, during this period of rest, had become once more a town, or at least a village. Still, along the Embankment stood the thatched huts of the fisherfolk; but they were pushed farther east and west every year, until Lambeth and Rotherhithe were their quarters when the fish deserted the river and their occupation was gone. The Roman inns were gone, but new ones were springing up in their places. Bishops and abbots were looking on Southwark as a place of fine air, open to every breeze and free from the noise and crowd of London; ecclesiastical foundations were already springing into existence. In a word, the settlements of the south, after four hundred years of ruin and desertion, were once more beginning a new existence. The day when William rode up to the south end of the Bridge, and looked across upon a City that had not yet made up its mind about his reception, marked a new birth for the long-suffering suburb of the Embankment and the Causeway. A hundred years later still – in 1176 – they began to build their Bridge of Stone.
CHAPTER III
A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY
The earliest maps of South London are those of the sixteenth century. But it is perfectly easy from them and from the historical facts to draw a map of all that country lying between Deptford and 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 of the Causeway stood St. Margaret's Church, facing St. Margaret's Hill; on the right-hand side, just under the Bridge, was St. Olave's Church. The Bridge was thus protected on the north by St. Magnus, on the south by St. Olave – two Danish saints – and in the middle by the patron saint of its chapel, St. Thomas à Becket. There were houses along the Embankment on either side, but more on the west of the Causeway than on 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 country to Bermondsey Abbey; on the west of the Causeway another lane led to Kennington Palace, from which another lane led to the Causeway from Lambeth and Westminster to the Dover Road. That was the whole extent of Southwark.
The place was essentially a suburb. There were no trades or industries in it, except that of fishing; the fishermen had their cottages dotted about all along the Embankment; a few watermen lived here, but that was perhaps later: other working men there were none, save the cooks and varlets of the great houses, and the 'service' of the inns. Because the air was fresh and pure, blown up daily 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 river to the City, the merchants brought their goods and warehoused them here in the inns at which they stayed, while they went across the river and transacted their business. It was a suburb which, in modern times, would be described as needing no poor rate. Later on there grew up, as we shall see, a class of the unclassed – a population of rogues and vagabonds, thieves, and sanctuary birds.
The government of the place as a whole was difficult, or rather impossible. There were several 'Liberties;' the Liberty of Bermondsey; that of the Bishop of Winchester; that of the King; that of the Mayor. The last contained the part of the Borough lying between St. Saviour's Dock on the west and Hay's Dock on the east, with a southern limit just including St. Margaret's Church. This very small district was called the Gildable Manor: it was conceded by the King to the City of London in the thirteenth century in order to prevent the place from becoming the home and refuge of criminals from the City. As the other liberties remained outside the jurisdiction of the City, the alleviation gained was not very great: criminals still dropped across 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; many ponds lay about the flats; there was an abundant growth of trees everywhere, so that parts of the land were dark at midday by reason of the trees growing so close together. The rivulets were pretty little streams; willows grew over them; alders grew beside them; they were coloured brown by the peaty soil; on their banks grew wild flowers – the marsh mallow, the anemone, the hedgehog grass, the frogbit, the crowfoot, and the bitter-wort; orchards flourished in the fat and fertile soil. The people had almost forgotten the special need of their Embankment. Yet when, in the year 1242, the Embankment at Lambeth was broken down, the river rushed in and covered six square miles of country, including all that part which is now called Battersea.
Remember, however, that as yet there was not a single house upon the whole of Lambeth Marsh, nor upon the whole of Bermondsey Marsh. The houses began near what is now the south end of Blackfriars Bridge; they faced the river, having gardens behind them. On the other side of the Bridge the houses extended farther, going on nearly opposite to Wapping.
The place was well provided with prisons; every Liberty had its own prison. Thus there were the Clink of the Winchester Liberty, that of the Bermondsey Liberty, the 'White Lion' of Surrey, the King's Bench, and the Marshalsea, all in the narrow limits we have laid down. And there 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 was the pillory for neck and hands, generally with somebody on it, but the pillory was movable; there was the cage – one stood at the south end of the Bridge – women had to stand in the cage; there were stocks for feet wandering and trespassing; there were pounds for stray animals.
Markets were held in the churchyard of St. Margaret's; in the precinct of Bermondsey Abbey; and along the street called 'Long Southwark' – now High Street – from the Bridge to St. Margaret's Hill. But we must not suppose that the markets of Southwark presented the same crowded appearance, and were carried on with the same noise and bustle, as those of Chepe and Newgate on the other side.
Everything, in those days, was quiet and dignified in Southwark. The Princes of the Church arrived and departed, each with his retinue of chaplains and secretaries, gentlemen and livery. Kings and ambassadors rode up from Dover through Long Southwark and across the Bridge. The mayor and aldermen in new cloaks of red murrey and gold chains sallied forth 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, travellers, all put up at the Southwark inns. The place was nothing but a collection of inns; the ecclesiastics stayed here for a few weeks and then went away; the great lords came here when they had business at Court and then went away again; the merchants came and went: by itself the place had, as yet, no independent life or character of its own at all.
There were two Monastic Houses. Both were stately; both are full of history. Let us consider the House of Bermondsey, because it is less generally known than the other of St. Mary Overy or Overies.
The Abbey of St. Saviour, Bermondsey, was the Westminster of South London. Like Westminster, Bermondsey stood upon a low islet in the midst of a marsh; at the distance of half a mile on the north ran the river; half a mile on the west was the Causeway; half a mile on the south was the Dover road. It is 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