[58] Priory Church of St. Mary Overie, 1881.
[59] Canon Thompson writes to me, ‘The old sexton used to show visitors a bone, which he said was taken from the tomb in 1832. I tried to have this buried in the tomb on the occasion of the last removal, but I was told it had disappeared.’
[60] vol. ii. p. 91.
[61] Bp. Braybrooke’s Register, f. 84.
[62] Braybrooke Register, f. 151.
[63] The date of the resignation by John Gower of the rectory of Great Braxted is nearly a year earlier than the marriage of Gower the poet.
[64] I do not know on what authority Rendle states that ‘His apartment seems to have been in what was afterwards known as Montague Close, between the church of St. Mary Overey and the river,’ Old Southwark, p. 182.
[65] At the same time I am disposed to attach some weight to the expression in Mir. 21774, where the author says that some may blame him for handling sacred subjects, because he is no ‘clerk,’
‘Ainz ai vestu la raye manche.’
This may possibly mean only to indicate the dress of a layman, but on the other hand it seems clear that some lawyers, perhaps especially the ‘apprenticii ad legem,’ were distinguished by stripes upon their sleeves; see for example the painting reproduced in Pulling’s Order of the Coif (ed. 1897); and serjeants-at-law are referred to in Piers Plowman, A text, Pass. iii. 277, as wearing a ‘ray robe with rich pelure.’ We must admit, therefore, the possibility that Gower was bred to the law, though he may not have practised it for a living.