CHAPTER XII

BERMONDSEY ABBEY

The absolute oblivion into which this once noble House has fallen, so that there is no longer, among the people living on its very site, any memory or tradition of its existence, is not without a parallel in the case of other London Houses. Yet it is remarkable for the reason that its site and its gardens remained open and unbuilt over until a hundred years ago, while, almost within the memory of man, many ruins and portions of the former buildings still remained.

The internal history of the Abbey is naturally without interest. The list of Priors and Abbots has been preserved: there were sixty-nine from the Foundation of the House in 1082 until the Dissolution in 1538. The duration of each Prior’s rule was therefore an average of six years and a half; but many of them died very shortly after their election, a proof that the election went, as a rule, by seniority; or, at least, that the brethren chose for their chief one who was well stricken in years and of long experience.

The House was at first, and for three hundred years, an alien Priory dependent on that of Cluny. It was founded by a citizen of London named Aylwin or Æthelwine Child, in the year 1082. The Cluniacs were brought into this country by William, Earl of Warren, who, with Gunhilda his wife, stayed at Cluny, and was greatly impressed with the sanctity and the devotion of the brethren. He persuaded the Abbot to allow some of the monks to come to England, and in 1077 established a Cluniac House at Lewes. Another followed at Wenlock, and, in 1082, this House of Bermondsey.

Among the benefactors of the House were William Rufus; Mary, sister to the Queen of Henry the First; that King himself; King Stephen; the Earls of Gloucester and Stafford; and many others. In 1390, under Richard the Second, Bermondsey ceased to be an alien Priory, and was made denizen. This was not without a remonstrance from Cluny. Fifty years later three Cluniac monks were sent over to set forth the claims of the Mother House. The brethren stated their case, but could not get any attention paid to their arguments. One of them died in this country, the other two went home having accomplished nothing. A piteous letter to the Abbot of St. Albans explains their position:—

“For the rest, be it known to you, my Lord, that after having spent four months and a half on our journey, and following our Right with the most serene Lord the King and his Privy Council, we have obtained nothing: nay, we are sent back very disconsolate, deprived of our Manors, our Pensions alienated, and what is still worse, we are 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 about 260 leagues. But what then? We will sell what we have; we will go on; and God will provide. Nothing else occurs to write to your Paternity: but that as we entered England with joy, so we depart thence with sorrow; having buried one of our Companions—viz. the Archdeacon, the youngest of our company. May he rest in Peace! Amen.”

Meetings of the Council were held at Bermondsey from time to time: in the reign of Henry the Third many of the nobility who had taken the Cross met here in deliberation. In 1213 the then Prior, Richard, founded the almonry in Southwark, which afterwards developed into St. Thomas’s Hospital.

In 1276 there was a dispute between the Bishop of Winchester, who claimed an annual procuration, an entertainment of one day during his Visitation, and the House.

In 1309, by a breach in the River Wall, the lands of the House were so much damaged that the brethren were exempted from the purveyance of hay and corn.

In 1324 Edward the Second issued letters patent for the arrest of the prior, John de Causancia, and certain monks for harbouring rebels. These were probably the adherents of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who, after his defeat at Boroughbridge, took sanctuary in the Abbey. In 1337 the Bishop of Ely excommunicated certain persons for stealing a hawk belonging to him from the cloisters of the Abbey. Many other associations gather round this House. Marmion, Lord of Fontenay, was a benefactor to Bermondsey; the monks sold their lands in Southwark in the reign of Richard the Second to Robert of Paris, from whom the place was called Paris Gardens; Cardinal Beaufort visited the Abbey, and was received in procession by the monks. The Prior Henry, afterwards Abbot of Glastonbury, took an active part in the release of King Richard.

In 1323 the greater church of St. Saviour of Bermondsey and the great altar were dedicated in honour of St. Saviour and the Blessed Virgin and All Saints. On the same day were dedicated three other altars in the church—one of the Cross, one in honour of the Virgin and St. Thomas the Martyr, and one in honour of St. Andrew and St. James and all the Apostles.

Among those buried here were Leofstan, Portreeve of London in 1115; William of Mortain, or Mortaigne, Earl of Cornwall; Mary, daughter of Malcolm the Third of Scotland, and sister to Queen Maud, who died April 18, 1115. The following is the inscription on her tomb:—

“Nobilis hic tumulata jacet Comitissa Maria: Actebus hæc nituit: larga benigna fuit. Regum sanguis erat: morum probitate vigebat, Compatiens in opi: vivit in arce Poli.”

Also Matilda, daughter of Guy, Earl of Warwick, who died in 1368; Margaret de la Pole; Anne, widow of Lord Audley, and the murdered Duke of Gloucester, before the removal of his body to Westminster.

But the most illustrious residents of the House were the two Queens who died within its walls.

The first of them was Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry the Fifth, who married secretly Owen Tudor, and was the grandmother of Henry the Seventh. The marriage was not found out for some years. The Queen must have been most faithfully and loyally served, because children cannot be born without observation. Owen Tudor must have conducted matters with 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 daughter, in all, were born. The eldest, Edmund of Hadham, was so called because he was born there; the second, Jasper, was of Hatfield; the third, Owen, of Westminster; the youngest, Margaret, died in infancy.

Suspicions were aroused about the time of the birth of Owen, which took place apparently before it was expected, and without all the precautions necessary, in the King’s House at Westminster. 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. He did take the child, however; and here little Owen remained, growing up in a monastery, and taking vows in due time. Here he lived and here he died, a Benedictine of Westminster.

It would seem as if Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, heard some whisper or rumour concerning this birth, or was told something about the true nature of the Queen’s illness, for he issued a very singular proclamation, warning the world, generally, against marrying Queen-dowagers, 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 with a man of humble rank, and the audacity of the Welshman. He took steps promptly. He sent Katherine with some of her ladies to Bermondsey Abbey, there to remain in honourable confinement: he arrested Owen Tudor, also a priest—probably the priest who had performed the marriage—and his servant, and sent all three to Newgate.

All three succeeded in breaking prison and escaping. At this point the story gets mixed. The King himself, we are told, then a lad of fifteen, sent to Owen commanding his attendance before the Council. Why did they not arrest him again? Owen, however, refused to trust himself to the Council—was not Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, one of them? He asked for a safe-conduct. They promised him one by a verbal message. Where was he, then, that all these messages should be sent 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 taverns outside the Abbey Precinct. But Owen would not be so drawn. He knew that Duke Humphrey would make an end of him if he could. He therefore remained where he was. I think that he must have had some secret understanding with the King; for one day, learning that Henry himself was with the Council, he suddenly presented himself and pleaded his own cause. The mild young King, tender on account of his mother, would not allow the case to be pursued, but bade him go free.

He departed, and made all haste to get out of such unwholesome air; he made for Wales. Here the hostility of Duke Humphrey pursued him still; he was once more arrested, taken to Wallingford, 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, “foully” wounding a warder in the achievement of liberty, and got back to Wales, choosing for their residence the mountainous parts, into which the English garrisons never penetrated.

When the King came of age, Owen Tudor was allowed to return, and was presented with a pension of £40 a year. It is remarkable, however, that he received no promotion or rank; that he was never 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 or the heralds. Perhaps Welsh gentility was as little understood by these Normans as Irish royalty—yet, so far as length of pedigree goes, both Welsh and Irish were very superior to Normans.

The two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were placed under the charge of Katherine de la Pole, Abbess of Barking, and sister of the Earl of Suffolk. When the King came of age, 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 married to Margaret Beaufort, who, as Countess of Richmond, was the foundress of Christ’s and St. John’s Colleges, Cambridge. Her son, as everybody knows, was Henry the Seventh.

As for Owen Tudor, that gallant adventurer, who began so well on the field of battle, ended as well, fighting, as he should, for his stepson and King, under the badge of the Red Rose. When the Civil 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 Lancastrians were defeated. Owen was taken prisoner, and was cruelly beheaded on the field. It was right and just that he should so fight and should so die. He survived his Queen twenty-four years.

Katherine lived no more than a year after her imprisonment. She made a will shortly before her death, in which there is not one word about her second husband or her children by Owen Tudor. She says in the preamble: “I trustfully,” addressing her son the King, “and am quite sure, that among all creatures earthly ye best may and will best tender 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 mine intent.”

The second Queen, who died at Bermondsey Abbey, was Elizabeth Woodville. Her imprisonment in the Abbey was regarded with great surprise. It was in the year 1486, when the insurrection broke out in Ireland in favour of the pretended Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence: a council was held, after which, without any cause assigned, or the bringing of any charge, the widowed Queen was carried to Bermondsey, where she remained for the rest of her life. The reason commonly accepted was that she knew Edward Plantagenet, and so could prompt and instruct the Pretender in his personation of the prince. Bacon says, “That which is most probable out of the precedent and subsequent acts is that it was the Queen Dowager from whom this action had had the principal source and motive; certain it is she was a busy, negotiating woman, and in her withdrawing chamber had the fortunate conspiracy of the King against Richard the Third been hatched, which the King knew and remembered but too well; and she was at the time extremely discontent with the King, thinking her daughter, as the King handled the matter, not advanced but depressed.”

It is not easy to find much sympathy with this unfortunate woman, yet there are few scenes in history more full of pathos and mournfulness than that in which her boy Richard was torn from her arms; and she knew—all knew—even the Archbishops, when they gave their consent, knew—that the boy was to be done to death. When one talks of Queens and their misfortunes, it may be remembered that few Queens have suffered more than Elizabeth Woodville. In misfortune she sits apart from other Queens, her only companions being Mary Queen 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 Perkin Warbeck; she was more Yorkist than her husband; she hated the Red Rose long after the Red and the White were united in her daughter and Henry the Seventh. That she was suspected of these intrigues shows the character she bore. We must make allowance; she was always in a false position; Edward ought not to have married her; she was hated by her own party; she was compelled, in the interests of her children, to be always on the defensive; and in her conduct of defence she was the daughter of her age. These things, however, deprive her, somewhat, of the pity which we ought to feel for so many misfortunes.

She, too, had to retire to the seclusion of Bermondsey, where she could sit and watch the ships go up and down, and so feel that the world, with which she had no more 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 long as there was a daughter or a kinsman left to fight for. Like Katherine of Valois, she made an end not without dignity. Witness the following clauses in her will:—

“Item, I bequeath my body to be buried with the body of my lord at Windsor, according to the will of my said lord and mine, without pomps entering or costly expenses done thereabout. Item, whereas I have no worldly goods to do the Queen’s Grace, my dearest daughter a pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children, according to my heart and mind, I beseech Almighty God to bless her Grace, with all her noble issue: and with as good a heart and mind as is to me possible, I give her Grace my blessing, and all aforesaid, my children. Item, I will that such small stuff and goods that I have be disposed truly in the contentation of my debts and for the health of my soul as far as they will extend. Item, if any of my blood will any of the said stuff or goods to me pertaining, I will that they have the preferment before any other.”

The position of Bermondsey Abbey would at first appear to have been exactly similar to that of Westminster: both Abbeys stood upon islets slightly raised above high-water mark; all round the islet of each stretched marshes, with other tiny islets here and there, as at Chelsea and Battersea. But there was this difference. In front of Thorney was a ford; at the back of Thorney was a ford; beyond the ford on the south was the high road to Dover; beyond the ford on the north was the high road to the heart of the country. Bermondsey was near the river, but the river here was broad and deep even at low tide; Bermondsey was not situated on the high road of commerce; the high road to Dover was near the Abbey, certainly, but not running right through it, so to speak, as the road ran at Westminster. The Abbey lay quiet and remote, even from Southwark; and after the building of the river wall on the south, whenever that was done, the marshes became low-lying meadows, dotted with ponds and with trees, where cows lay asleep in the sun. The Abbey stood alone, removed from houses, among gardens and orchards; it might almost have been in the country, so quiet and peaceful were the surroundings. But from the river there was heard the yeo-heave-ho of the sailors; the masts and sails could be seen above the river wall; there was heard every day the hymn of praise with which the sailors celebrated their safe arrival in port; and the sound of the multitudinous bells of London was wafted across the river to this peaceful spot.

The Abbey possessed a miraculous Rood, to which people paid pilgrimage. It was one of the many shrines round London which were convenient for a day’s pleasant journey into the country. In the Paston Letters, John Paston writes, “I pray you visit the Rood of Saint Saviour in Bermondsey while ye abide in London, and let my sister Margery go with you to pray to them that she shall have a good husband or she come home again.”

This holy Rood was found in the Thames in 1117, and began almost immediately to work miracles. In 1118 William, Earl of Morton, was “miraculously liberated from the Tower of London through the power of this holy Cross.”

Twenty-two years later, the same William, Earl of Morton, entered the Abbey and took the vows. The Rood was taken down on the same day that the Rood of Grace of Kent was destroyed by the Bishop of Rochester at Paul’s Cross.

One of the last acts of Henry the Seventh was to found an “anniversary” in this House to pray for the good and prosperous estate of the King during his life, for the prosperity of the realm, for the soul of his late Queen Elizabeth—not Elizabeth Woodville, of whom no mention is made, for the soul of Edmund, Earl of Richmond, the King’s father, and of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, his mother; and for the souls of his children.

At the Dissolution, the revenues of the House were valued at £548: 2: 5-1/2. The Abbot, who was made Bishop of St. Asaph, received a pension of 500 marks, or £333: 6: 8 a year. Fifteen years later, in 1553, there were still seven or eight annuitants surviving, viz. one at 15 marks a year; three at 9; two at 8; and smaller annuities amounting to 11 marks a year.

The House and Manor were granted to Sir Robert Southwell, Master of the Rolls. He sold it to Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity College, Oxford. Sir Thomas pulled down many of the monastic buildings, and erected a stately house with the materials. The house with the gardens he sold to Sir Robert Southwell, from whom he had bought it; the Manor he sold to Robert Trapps, citizen and goldsmith.

In 1583 the Earl of Sussex, Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth, died in the House.

The parish church of St. Mary Magdalen was built by the monks for their tenants. The Earl of Sussex had to rebuild it when it was reported to be falling into a ruinous condition.

Among the various benefits conferred upon the country by the monastic houses, that of hospitality was by no means the least. But it is evident that hospitality could only be practised when the House stood near to a highway. As Bermondsey Abbey was removed from any roads or highways, the monks could only carry out their duties towards the poor by placing their almonry on the High Street of Southwark. But the Abbey possessed a school of great repute. Leland, in his _Cantu Cygni_, written a few years before the Dissolution, says:

“And hail thou, too, O House of Charity, the nurse Of many students helped by Gifford’s purse. Thou happy, snowy swan, hast thy serene abode, Where Burmsey of her well-known isles is proud— Well-known, indeed, for there is seen the shrine Where her priests labour in the work Divine.”