Читать книгу Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral - George Worley - Страница 6

The history of St. Saviour's takes us back to those distant days when Southwark was but a marsh, and when there was no bridge across the Thames. John Stow, historian and antiquary (1525–1605), was acquainted with Bartholomew Linstede, the last of the Priors, and gives the following account of its origin on his authority:

East from the Bishop of Winchester's house, directly over against it, standeth a fair church, called St. Mary-over-the-Rie, or Overie; that is, over the water. This church, or some other in place thereof, was, of old time, long before the Conquest, a house of sisters, founded by a maiden named Mary; unto the which house and sisters she left, as was left to her by her parents, the oversight and profits of a cross ferry, or traverse ferry over the Thames, there kept before that any bridge was built. This house of sisters was after by Swithun, a noble lady, converted into a college of priests, who in place of the ferry built a bridge of timber, and from time to time kept the place in good reparations; but lastly, the same bridge was built of stone; and then in the year 1106 was this church again founded for canons regular by William Pont de la Arch, and William Dauncey, Knights, Normans.

Stow's account has been disputed in several particulars. Although it may be taken for granted that there was a cross-ferry before there was a bridge, it does not follow that the bridge immediately superseded it; and it has been suggested, as more likely, that both means of transit were used for some time simultaneously, as is the case to-day at other places.

If the first London Bridge was built by Roman engineers during the Roman occupation, it may be assumed that the bridge existed before the church. That the first bridge was a Roman structure has been almost proved by the discovery of Roman coins and other relics among the débris of the original work during the erection of later bridges. We have an evidence of the antiquity of the site in some Roman tesserae, discovered in 1832, while a grave was being dug in the south-east corner of the churchyard, and still preserved in the pavement, near the entrance, in the south aisle of the choir. These tesserae, with the pottery, tiles, coins, lachrymatories, sepulchral urns, etc., excavated from time to time in and about the church, are clear indications of an important Roman settlement.

It is known that after the destruction of Roman London by Boadicea, a great many Romans made their escape into Southwark, where they continued to live, and contributed greatly to the size and importance of the southern suburb. The principal buildings sprang up round the site of St. Saviour's Church, and it has been reasonably conjectured that a temple stood on the very spot that the church now occupies.[1]

It is true that no trace of this temple has been discovered; but the conjecture is not inconsistent with the known principles of the early Christian missionaries, in their contact with paganism, as illustrated in the history and traditions of other important churches.

Stow's phrase, "long before the Conquest," though somewhat ambiguous, has been thought to point to a date posterior to the Roman occupation. Some authorities, therefore, contend that the Romans had erected London Bridge and left the country before St. Mary's was founded, and consequently the bridge the antiquary mentions as built by "Swithun, a noble lady," was not the first. Again, it is doubtful whether the sub-title "Overie" means "of the ferry," or "over the river," or whether the form "Overies," which the word sometimes takes, does not suggest a derivation from "Ofers," "of the bank or shore," a meaning contained in the modern German Ufer. John Overy, or Overs, was the father of Mary, but whether the surname was derived from the place, or vice versa, is uncertain. In any case, the name, whether by accident or design, includes a reference to the foundress as well as to the locality of her foundation.[2]

Stow is obviously wrong, however, as to the person who converted the House of Sisters into a College of Priests, who was not a lady, but St. Swithun, Bishop of Winchester (852–862), whose devotion to the building of churches and bridges is well known.

The character of the foundation, altered by St. Swithun, was again altered in 1106, under Bishop William Giffard, with the co-operation of the two Norman knights to whom Stow refers. They not only erected the first Norman nave, but made a radical change within by abolishing the "College of Priests," in whose place they introduced "Canons regular" of the Augustinian Order, governed by a Prior, thus transforming the Collegiate Church into a monastery. Except as regards the sex of the inmates, the change was a reversion to the idea of the foundress.[3]

The Norman work of this period is the earliest of which any traces remain in the present church, unless the doubtful signs on a shaft in the exterior are to be taken as evidence of Saxon workmanship. This shaft is attached to the north wall of the Chapel of St. John-the-Divine (now used as a clergy vestry), which is perhaps the oldest part of the fabric. The undoubted Norman remains consist of three arches in the same chapel, where their outline is just discernible among the brickwork; the fragment of a string-course, with billet moulding, on the inner wall of the north transept; a portion of the Prior's entrance to the cloisters; the old Canons' doorway; and an arcaded recess. Of these, it may be briefly remarked that the remains of the Prior's door, showing the mutilated shafts and the zigzag moulding of the jambs, are preserved, in situ, in the outer face of the north wall to the new nave. The outline of the Canons' entrance, obviously of much simpler moulding, will be seen on the inner side of the same wall, towards the west end. The Norman recess lies still farther to the west on the same side.

Quite recently a valuable relic of the same period has been discovered in the north-east corner within the above-mentioned chapel (by the side of the new Harvard window)—apparently part of the original arcading to the apse.

Early in the thirteenth century London was visited by one of those great fires, which occurred at rather frequent intervals, before the greatest of all, in 1666, led to the rebuilding of the city, and better means for its protection. The date of the particular fire is sometimes given as 1207, sometimes as 1212 or 1213. It is not unlikely that there were several, in one or other of which London Bridge, Southwark, and the church were seriously injured. (Vide Stow and Harleian MSS., No. 565.)

The repairs were soon taken in hand by Peter de la Roche, otherwise de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester (1205–1238), who altered the nave into the Early English, which was then generally superseding the heavier Norman work, and shortly afterwards built the choir and retro-choir in a still lighter and more ornate style. The architecture gives us the approximate date of de la Roche's work as the early part of the thirteenth century, which is about as near as we can get to it in the absence of a more precise record than that it was "begun after the fire." In consequence of this, or some previous fire, the Canons were led to found a hospital close to the Priory for the relief of the distress and disease caused by the disaster. During the restorations by Peter de Rupibus, in or about 1228, he had the hospital transferred to a more favourable site in the neighbourhood, where the air was fresher and water more abundant, and dedicated it to St. Thomas of Canterbury, to whom the chapel on London Bridge was also dedicated.[4]

In addition to all this excellent work, Bishop de Rupibus built a chapel for the parishioners, the conventual church being reserved for the Prior and monks. This chapel stood in the angle between the walls of the choir and south transept, and was called St. Mary Magdalene Overy.

In the reign of Richard II there was another fire, involving repairs; and then, as well as in the reign of Henry IV, Perpendicular features were introduced by Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester (1405–1447), aided by John Gower, the "Father of English Poetry." The Cardinal is said to have restored the south transept at his own expense, and is there commemorated in a sculptured representation of his hat and coat of arms affixed to a pier by the door. The difference in style between the two transepts shows that on the north to be of somewhat earlier date, though it was probably not left untouched by the restorers. The poet Gower founded a chantry in the Chapel of St. John Baptist, in the north aisle, where he was eventually buried, and where daily masses were said for the repose of his soul before the Reformation. His monument was transferred to the south transept during the "repairs and beautifications" of 1832, but is now restored to its original place over the poet's remains in the fifth bay (from the west), of the north aisle of the nave. The chapel and chantry have unfortunately disappeared.

In 1469 the stone roof of the old nave fell down. The accident has been attributed to the removal, in the reign of Richard II, of the flying buttresses by which the vault was originally supported, as is still the case with the choir walls. Another roof of groined oak was soon substituted, as less likely to suffer from its own weight. That it was not a specially light structure, however, may be inferred from the massive bosses preserved from it, and now to be seen on the floor of the north transept.

FORMER WESTERN DOORWAY.

From Moss and Nightingale's "History" (1817–18).ToList

The crowning piece of work, which very shortly preceded the ruin brought about by the Dissolution, was set upon the Priory Church by Bishop Fox in 1520, in the magnificent altar-screen, which through all its mutilations has borne witness to his work in his favourite device of the "Pelican in her piety," and the humorous allusion to his name, in the figure of a man chasing a fox, among its sculptured ornaments. The west end of the church was considerably altered, and a new western doorway inserted, with a six-light window above it, at about the same time; when also the upper stages of the tower were erected. The window is said to have been altered for the worse in the seventeenth century, and in its last phase the whole façade presented what Mr. Dollman describes as "a heterogeneous mass of masonry and brickwork," not worth preserving when the modern restoration was taken in hand. The flying buttresses have been reproduced in the new nave, and the chief doorway placed in the south-west corner, which the architect was led to believe was its original position.

It is generally admitted that by the sixteenth century the monastic institutions had so far departed from the ideal of their founders, and outlived their usefulness, as to call for some drastic measures for their improvement. Steps had been taken from time to time with this object, before the reign of Henry VIII, when a combination of circumstances, into which we need not now enter, enabled the King to carry out his scheme for the Dissolution of the monasteries, comprising the two chief classes of abbeys and priories into which they were divided. The coming storm was heralded at St. Mary's on 11th November, 1535 on which date, "by command of the king," a solemn procession was held in the church to inaugurate its downfall by a Litany, in which the Prior and Canons took part, "with their crosses, candlesticks and vergers before them," as if in mockery of the state of which they were so soon to be deprived. The "Act of Suppression," passed in 1536, sealed the fate of the smaller foundations, to be followed three years later by the "voluntary surrender" of their property by the larger monasteries, thus making a clean sweep of the whole. The last Prior, Linstede, has been blamed for so far acquiescing in the measure as to accept a pension from the royal bounty; but with the fate of the last Abbot of Glastonbury before him, who had been hanged for his resistance, he probably thought that his own opposition would only have led to a useless martyrdom without averting the fall of his priory. It may be mentioned, as having some bearing on our history, that part of the wealth released by the Act was applied to the foundation of six new bishoprics, thus by a strange coincidence bringing up the English dioceses to the number of twenty-four, originally fixed upon by Pope Gregory the Great, while his successor was set at defiance by the measures through which they were created.

St. Mary Overy now enters on a new phase of existence. We have seen that it had become a double church, by union with the church, or chapel, of St. Mary Magdalene, the one a conventual, the other a public, place of worship. In the immediate neighbourhood there was a third church, dedicated to St. Margaret, which had been founded by Bishop Giffard in 1107, and granted to the fraternity at St. Mary's by charter of Henry I. By an Act of 1540, the year of Linstede's surrender, the whole were united into a single parish, under the title of St. Saviour's, thenceforward the official designation of the Collegiate Church and surrounding district. The new dedication was suggested by, and intended to perpetuate the memory of, the convent of that name in Bermondsey (founded by Alwin Child, a London citizen, in 1082), which shared the fate of its companions at the Dissolution.

Soon after the amalgamation, St. Margaret's Church was secularized, and divided into three portions for use respectively as a Sessions' Court, a Court of Admiralty, and a prison. It stood on the ground where the old Southwark Town Hall was afterwards built, itself a perpetuation of the secular uses to which the deconsecrated church was put before it was destroyed. A relic of St. Margaret's survives in the shape of a monumental slab to Aleyn Ferthing, five times Member for Southwark, about the middle of the fourteenth century. The stone was discovered in 1833 during some excavations on the site of the old church, and transferred to St. Saviour's, where it is imbedded in the pavement of the retro-choir. From 1540 the Priory Church and Rectory were leased to the parishioners by the Crown, at a rental of about £50 per annum, till 1614, when the church was purchased right out from James I for the sum of £800.

The Corporation into whose hands the newly constituted parish of St. Saviour's passed in 1540 consisted of thirty vestrymen, of whom six were churchwardens.[5]

The latter, as representatives of the ancient Seniores Ecclesiastici, were charged with the protection of the edifice and church furniture, but the records show that they had no special veneration for either. The Act of 1540, appointing them to St. Saviour's, had formed them into a Corporation in continuation of the Perpetual Guild or Fraternity of the Assumption, incorporated in 1449. This Guild was afterwards merged in the Churchwardens of St. Margaret's, whence the existing officers were transferred to St. Saviour's on the amalgamation of the parishes, and others added to their number. With the help of their fellow vestrymen they soon set to work to render the Collegiate Church more convenient. To secure an easy communication between that church and the adjacent chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, they cut through the south wall of the choir, and constructed four clumsy arches in it, thus opening the way from one building to the other. From that time forward the smaller of the two was used as a vestibule, and the other chapels and chantries pertaining to the larger church were doomed to destruction, as being no longer required under the altered conditions. The proceedings which strike us as most sacrilegious occurred in the Lady Chapel. Perhaps they cannot be better described than in Stow's graphic words:

The chapel was leased and let out, and the House of God made a bakehouse. Two very fair doors … were lathed, daubed, and dammed up, the fair pillars were ordinary posts, against which they piled billets and bavens. In this place they had their ovens, in that a bolting place, in that their kneading trough, in another (I have heard) a hog's trough, for the words that were given me were these: "This place have I known a hog-stie, in another a storehouse to store up their hoarded meal, and in all of it something of this sordid kind and condition."

That the description is not exaggerated is proved by the parish registers, which also show that the state of things went on for some years and did not improve with time. On 15th May, 1576, for instance, a vestry order is recorded in which the lessee of the chapel is called upon to repair certain broken windows and remove nuisances. In the following December, a further entry states that fourteen members of the vestry went in a body to the chapel to see whether their orders had been attended to, having allowed the lessee more than six months to act on the notice. They found the place turned into a stable "with hogs, a dung-heap and other filth" about, and were thereupon empowered to take legal proceedings to keep the tenant up to his contract.[6]

In the reign of Edward VI the Prayer-book and its vernacular services were introduced. The people had hardly got used to them before the accession of Queen Mary, and the consequent papal reaction, restored the Latin mass, around which most of the religious controversies of the time were furiously raging. During that brief reign the retro-choir was turned to more respectable use as a Spiritual Court, though the memories attaching to it in that character constitute a gloomy chapter in its history which we would gladly eliminate.

On Monday, 28th January, 1555, and the two following days, a commission, appointed by the Cardinal Legate, sat there for the trial of certain preachers and heretics. It was presided over by Bishops Gardiner, of Winchester, and Bonner, of London, and included eleven other Bishops, besides several eminent laymen. On the first day the proceedings were open to the public, but as the crowd was inconvenient, and the example or logic of the accused thought likely to be contagious, the doors were closed on the Tuesday and Wednesday, except to a few privileged spectators. The trials ended in the condemnation of six clergymen of high standing, viz.:

1. The Rev. Lawrence Saunders, Rector of Allhallows', Bread Street.

2. The Rev. John Bradford, Prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral.

3. The Rev. John Rogers, Prebendary of St. Paul's, and Vicar of St. Sepulchre's, Newgate Street.

4. The Rev. Rowland Taylor, Rector of Hadleigh, Suffolk.

5. The Right Rev. Robert Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's, and

6. The Right Rev. John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, all of whom were afterwards burnt. They are commemorated in the windows of the chapel, which include the Ven. John Philpot, Archdeacon of Winchester, who suffered at the same time, though his examination was held elsewhere. The odium of this melancholy transaction of course rests on the presiding Bishops, neither of whom was afterwards anxious to take the undivided responsibility. Bishop Gardiner did not long survive it. He died on the 13th November, in the same year, at Whitehall, whence his body was conveyed, via Southwark, to Winchester for interment. The funeral procession went by water from Westminster to St. Mary Overy, where his obsequies were performed, and his intestines buried before the high altar, in order that the honour of holding his remains might be shared by the two principal churches in his diocese.[7]

Immediately on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, steps were taken to reconcile the conflicting elements within the Church of England, whose extreme representatives had been brought into violent collision in the previous reign. A compromise was offered to them in a new Prayer-book, which aimed at combining the principles of the first and second books of Edward VI, in order to comprehend within the pale of the Church those who had been excluded from it by a rigid interpretation of the rubrics on either hand. On one side the rubrics of Edward's second book were modified so as to allow greater liberty in the use of ornaments and vestments, while on the other, the sentences employed at the distribution of the elements in Holy Communion, which had been held to support two opposite theories of the Sacrament in the previous books, were united in the new one, as involving no real contradiction.

Notwithstanding the rubric which was inserted in Elizabeth's book for the retention of the ornaments in use under Edward VI, an order was issued in the first year of her reign (18th September, 1559), for the sale of certain "Popish ornaments" at St. Saviour's, to meet the expenses of repairing the church, and in consideration of the purchase of the new lease. A list of the ornaments so disposed of may be interesting:

Two small basons of silver, parcel gilt, weighing 22 ounces, with a salver, double gilt, and a paten, parcel gilt.

Two altar-cloths, and a vestment of black velvet and crimson satin, embroidered in gold and silver.

A cope and vestment (deacon and sub-deacon) of green velvet, with flowers of gold.

Three copper cases, 43 pieces of stuff, and 4 "aules."

The whole of which were sold for £14 5s. 8d.

Other articles sold included:

A painted cloth from before the rood, realizing 7s.

Two altar-cloths of white fustian, 16s.

Two altar-cloths of white damask, with flowers of green and gold, 21s.

Two altar-cloths, pea-green and white damask, 17s.

Two altar-cloths of green and white satin, with letters of gold, 58s.

One altar-cloth of satin, 17s.

Three vestments of blue damask, with crimson velvet crosses, 42s.

A white damask cope; "a little narrow thing like a valance," with the name of Jesus in gold—sold for 8d.

Candlesticks, censers, with "other broken brass," "as little bells and such like," containing in weight, 34 lb., sold at 6d. a pound.

In pursuance of this destructive work an order was given on 31st May, 1561, "That all the church books in Latin be defaced and cut according to the injunctions of the Bishop"; the effect of which has been to deprive us of many valuable parish records which happened to be written in the Latin language, in addition to the more distinctly ecclesiastical books expressly included in the order.

On the very next day another order followed to the effect, "That the Rood Loft be taken down, and made decent and comely as in the other churches in the City." The changes which all this implies in the adornment and accessories of religious worship under Queen Elizabeth, were supplemented by the teaching from the pulpit. This was chiefly done by the "Preaching Chaplains" introduced at St. Saviour's in that reign. The first appointments were made in 1564, when two Chaplains assumed office, and divided the preaching between them.

The arrangement, allowing two men to act simultaneously but quite independently of each other, remained in force till our own times, though its disadvantages soon began to appear. The Chaplains, though committed by their appointment to the general doctrines of the Reformation, were by no means bound to agree on the many debatable questions to which the Reformation had given rise, and did not always convey the same doctrines to their people, or work harmoniously together. It was not, however, till the year 1868 that this inconsistency was corrected by merging the two offices into one; and in 1883 the measure was supplemented by an Act which abolished the office of Chaplain altogether, and made him who then held it the first Rector.

It may here be added that the parishioners had acquired the right of appointment to the pastorate by their purchase of the church in 1614; but the scandals attending the public election at every vacancy led to its abolition in 1885, when the right was transferred to the Bishop of the diocese by Act of Parliament.[8]

In 1618 Dr. Lancelot Andrewes was appointed Bishop of Winchester, where he died in 1626. During his episcopate he often visited St. Saviour's, as the most important church in his diocese, next to his own cathedral. His pronounced churchmanship occasionally brought him into strong contrast with the Chaplains, who usually went much further in the Puritan direction than their Bishop, while they were themselves apt to be pushed forward or restrained by the parishioners. The latter, as holding the appointment in their hands, had established a sort of censorship over their pastors, which they were not slow to exercise against any tendency to "unsound" teaching. The records of the parish show that the Chaplains had to ask leave of absence when they wanted a holiday, and were otherwise kept in excellent order by their lay superiors.

About this time considerable alterations were made in the interior of the church to bring it into line with the current spiritual discipline. In or about 1615 galleries were set up for the first time across the north and south transepts, and in 1618 a screen and gallery in place of the old rood loft between the nave and choir, were "worthily contrived and erected." Somewhere between this date and 1624 an inner porch, of semi-classical design, was inserted at the west end.

That closed and rented pews were introduced at this period may be inferred from the following Representation, made by the churchwardens to the Bishop of the diocese in 1639: