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]