style="font-size:15px;"> Rahere, therefore, among the rest, pilgrimized to Rome. Now it happened that on the way, either going or returning, he fell grievously sick and was like to die. As medical science in those days commanded but small confidence, men naturally turned to the saints, and besieged them with petitions for renewed health. Rahere betook himself to St. Bartholomew, to whom he promised a hospital for poor men should he recover. Most fortunately for London, St. Bartholomew graciously accepted the proposal, and cured the pilgrim. Rahere therefore returned: he chose the site, and was about to build the hospital, when the saint appeared to him and ordered him to found, as well, a church. Rahere promised. He even went beyond his promise: he founded his hospital of St. Bartholomew, which still exists, a perennial fountain of life and health, and, besides this, a priory for canons regular, and a church for the priory. The church still stands, one of the most noble monuments in London. One Alfune, who had founded the church of St. Giles Cripplegate, became the first Hospitaller, going every day to the shambles to beg for meat for the sick poor. Rahere became the first prior of his own foundation, and now lies buried in his church within a splendid tomb called after his name, but of fifteenth-century work.
The mysterious part of the story is how Rahere, a simple gentleman, if not a jester, was able to raise this splendid structure and to found so noble a hospital. For, even supposing the hospital and priory to have been at first small and insignificant, the church itself remains, a monument of lavish and pious beneficence. The story, in order to account for the building of so great a church, goes off into a drivelling account of how Rahere feigned to be a simple idiot.
A great many people every year visit this noble church, now partly restored. Very few of them take the trouble to step round to the back of the church. Yet there are one or two things worth noting in that nest of low courts and squalid streets. Cloth Fair, for instance, still possesses a few of its old timbered and gabled houses. But on the other side a small portion of the old monastery church-yard yet remains, and, in a row of two or three cottages, each with a tiny garden in front: a cottage-garden close to Smithfield – survives a memory of the garden which once stretched over this monastery court.
Some of the other foundations enumerated were only recently founded when Fitz Stephen wrote, and rightly belong to Plantagenet London. But the noble foundation of the Holy Trinity, Aldgate, was due to Matilda, queen of Henry I., who also founded St. Giles's Hospital, beside St. Giles-in-the-Fields. And the priory of St. John of Jerusalem, the chief seat in England of the Knights Hospitallers, was founded in the year 1100, by Jordan Briset, and Muriel, his wife.
St. 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
