London. Walter Besant
Katherine's by the Tower was first founded by Matilda, wife of King Stephen. This, the most interesting of all the city foundations, has survived, in degraded form, to the present day. Its appearance when it was pulled down, sixty years ago, and as it is figured, was very much unlike the original foundation by Queen Matilda. Yet the life of this old place had been continuous. For seven hundred years it remained on the spot where it was first established. Matilda first founded St. Katherine's, as a hospitale pauperum, for the repose of the souls of her two children who died and were buried in the Holy Trinity Priory. It was to consist of thirteen members – "Brothers and Sisters." It was endowed with certain estates which the society, after this long lapse of time, still enjoys; the sisters had the right of voting at chapter meetings – a right which they still retain. The hospital was placed in the charge or custody of the prior of Holy Trinity. A hundred years later there was a dispute as to the meaning of the right of custody, which the priory maintained to be ownership. In the end Queen Eleanor obtained possession of the place, and greatly increased its wealth and dignity. Under her it consisted of a master, three brothers in orders, three sisters, and ten bedeswomen. They all lived in their college round the church of St. Katherine. Queen Philippa, another benefactor, further endowed the hospital, adding two chaplains and six poor scholars. Philippa's new charter, with the building of a splendid church, raised the hospital to a position far above the small foundation of poor men and women designed by Matilda. It now stood within its precinct of eleven acres, possessed of its own courts, spiritual and temporal, its own law officers, and even its own prison. Its good-fortune in being considered the private property of the Queen Consort caused it to escape the general suppression of the religious houses. It lived on – albeit a sleepy life – a centre of religion and education to the poor people among whom it was placed. It should have lived there till this day; it should have become the Westminster Abbey of East London; but greed of gain destroyed it. Its venerable buildings – its chapel, college, cloisters, and courts were all destroyed sixty years ago in order to construct on their site the docks called St. Katherine's, which were not wanted for the trade of the City. In order to construct docks, in rivalry with other docks already established, this most precious monument of the past – the Abbey Church of East London – was ruthlessly destroyed. Who would believe such a thing? The dust and ashes of the nameless dead which filled its burying-yard were carried away and used to fill up certain old reservoirs, on the site of which were built streets and squares; and in Regent's Park they stuck up a new chapel, with half a dozen neat houses round it, and called that St. Katherine's by the Tower. Some day this foundation, with its income of £10,000 a year, must be sent back to East London, to which it belongs. Poor East London! It had one – only one – ancient and venerable foundation, and they have wantonly and uselessly destroyed it.
Everybody who visits London goes to see the Temple Church and the courts formerly trodden by the Templars, now echoing the hurried feet of lawyers and their clerks. Their beautiful church, however, is that of the new Temple. There was an older Temple than this. It stood at the north-east corner of Chancery Lane. It was certainly some kind of quadrangular college with its chapel, its hall, its courts, and its gardens. When the Templars moved to their new quarters, it passed into other hands and ceased to be a monastic place. Some of its buildings survived until the sixteenth century.
Is the legend of St. Mary Overies too well-known a story to be retold? Perhaps there are some readers who have not read the Chronicles of London Bridge, where it is narrated.
Long years ago, before there was any London Bridge at all, a ferry plied across the river between what is now Dowgate Dock and that now called St. Saviour's Dock – both of which exist untouched, save that the buildings round them are changed. At one time the ferry-master – he appears to have sat at home and taken the money while his servants tugged at the oar – was one Awdrey. There was no competition in the ferry trade of the time, so that this worthy employer of labor grew rich. As he became old, however, he fell into the vice common to rich men who are also old – that is to say, he became avaricious, covetous, and miserly; he suffered acutely from this failing, in so much that he grudged his servants their very food. This miser had a daughter, a lovely damsel named Mary, of whom many young knights became amorous. To one of these she lost her heart; and, as too commonly happens, to the poorest, a thing which her father could not countenance. The knight, therefore, not being able to get the consent of Awdrey père, removed to another place, guarding still the memory of his Mary, and still beloved by her. As there was no post in those days, and neither could write, they exchanged no letters, but they preserved their constancy and fidelity.
Now behold what may happen as a punishment for avarice! The old man one day, devising a way to save a few meals – for at a time when death is in the house who can think upon eating and drinking? – pretended that he was dead, and laid himself out with a white sheet over him. Alas! He was cruelly mistaken. His servants, learning what had happened, loudly and openly rejoiced, stripped the larder of all that it contained, set the casks flowing, opened the bottles, and began to feast and sing. It was more than the old man could endure. He sprang from his bed and rushed among them; they fled, shrieking, because they thought it was his ghost; one, bolder than the rest, stood his ground to face the ghost, and banged the apparition over the head with the butt-end of a broken oar, so that the unlucky ghost fell down dead in real earnest. What happened when they came to bury him may be read in the book above referred to.
The miser's fortune thereupon devolved upon his daughter. She immediately sent for her lover, who hastened to obey his mistress. Alas! on his way the unlucky knight was thrown from his horse and was killed. The girl, distracted by this misfortune, founded a convent of sisters at the south end of the ferry, and taking refuge in her own Foundation, retired from the world. Here in course of time she died. Later on, another pious lady changed the convent of sisters to a college of priests, and very early in the twelfth century two Norman knights, named Pont de l'Arche and D'Ansey, founded here a great priory, of which the present Church of St. Saviour was then the chapel. The Effigy of Pont de l'Arche (or perhaps it is that of his friend D'Ansey) is still to be seen, with no inscription upon it, in the church. The chancel, the two transepts, and the Ladye Chapel now remain of the old church with its later additions, and at this moment they are rebuilding the nave in something like the former style.
"There were in London," Fitz Stephen says, "a hundred and twenty-six parish churches besides the cathedral and conventual churches." Whatever the population may have been, the City has never, in her most crowded days, when nearly half a million lived within her walls, wanted more churches. A list of them may be found in Strype and Stow. Some of them – twenty-five, I think – were never rebuilt after the great fire. Many of them, in these days, have been wantonly and wickedly destroyed. Most of the churches were doubtless small and mean buildings. Fortunately, we are able to show, by the survival of one monument, what some of these little parish churches of London were like in the Saxon and early Norman times. There remains at Bradford-on-Avon, a little town of Wiltshire, a church still complete save for its south porch, built by St. Aldhelm in the eighth century. There are other partly Saxon and so-called Saxon remains. There is the most curious church of Greenstead in Essex, whose walls are trunks of oak-trees. Perhaps some of the London churches may have been built in the same way, but it is more probable that the piety of the parishioners made them of stone.6 The accompanying figure shows the Bradford church. It is very small; the plan shows the arrangement of nave, chancel, and north porch; it had a south porch, but that is gone. The walls are of thick stone; the nave is 25 feet 2 inches long, and 13 feet 2 inches broad; the chancel is 13 feet 2 inches long, and 10 feet broad. The height of the nave to the wall plates is 25 feet 3 inches; of the chancel is 18 feet. The chancel opens out from the nave, not with a broad arch, but with a narrow door only 2 feet 4 inches broad – a very curious arrangement. The doors of the south and north porches are of the same breadth. The church must have been very dark, but, then, windows in a cold climate, if you have no glass, must be as small in size and as few in number as possible. It was lit by a small window in the eastern wall of the north porch, no doubt by another in the south porch, by a small window in the south wall of the nave near the chancel, and by a fourth small window in the south wall of the chancel, so placed that the light, and sometimes the sun, should fall upon the altar during celebration of mass. The church was thus imperfectly lit by four small windows, each with its round arch. The people knelt on
Loftie calls attention to the name of our Church St. Mary Staining,