“I regret, Mr. Geoffrey Barbican,” recommenced my visitor, after thanking me for having added the above information to his narrative, “I regret that I have so little to lay before you, touching the state and revenues of the Chapel of St. Thomas on London Bridge, at the time of the Dissolution of Monasteries, &c. by the famous act of the 31st year of King Henry VIII.,—1539,—Chapter the 13th. It does not appear that its revenues yielded any considerable profit to the King’s Augmentation Office; but yet it certainly must have existed even in the form of a religious establishment so late as that King’s reign, because we find it mentioned in several lists of those institutions in London made about that period; though it does not appear in the ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus,’ also made by order of the same Monarch. This celebrated and most authentic historical record, was an ecclesiastical survey of England, made in pursuance of an Act of Parliament passed in the 26th of Henry VIII.,—1534,—chapter iii., section x., for the payment of First Fruits, Pensions, &c. to the King. The survey was, of course, executed by Commissioners, and many of the original returns to their enquiries are yet preserved in the First-Fruits and Tenths’ Office, in the Court of Exchequer: whilst the ‘Valor Ecclesiasticus’ itself has been printed under the direction of the Commissioners of Records, in five volumes folio, London, 1810-1821. The survey for the City of London is contained in the first volume, in which we find London Bridge frequently mentioned as receiving certain reserved rents from the property of other establishments. Thus, on page 388, column ii., in the rents paid to divers persons by St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in West Smithfield, 9s. are set down as being paid ‘to the Master or Keeper of the Bridge of London, out of the corner tenement at the Litill Bayly without Ludgate.’ On page 390, column i., Elsyng Spital is stated to pay 33s. 4d. to the Master of London Bridge, out of the tenements in the Parish of St. Benedict, Grace-Church: and on page 431, column ii., it is recorded that the House of the Carthusians was to pay 9s. 4d. to the House of London Bridge: though the Chapel of St. Thomas is never mentioned in the valuation of St. Magnus’ Rectory, which amounted to £71. 7s. 3½d.
“I have hardly less regret in stating our absolute want of information relating to the Bridge Chapel at the Dissolution, than I have to speak of that concerning the Common Seal belonging to the officers of London Bridge. Stow tells us, as you may remember, in volume ii., page 25, of his ‘Survey,’ that ‘at a Common Council, July 14th, Anno 33, Henry VIII.—1540,—it was ordered, that the Seal of the Bridge-House should be changed; because the image of Thomas Becket, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, was graven therein; and a new Seal to be made, devised by Mr. Hall, to whom the old Seal was delivered. Note, this was occasioned by a Proclamation, which commanded the names of the Pope, and Thomas of Becket, to be put out of all books and monuments; which is the reason you shall see them so blotted out in all old Chronicles, Legends, Primers, and Service-books, printed before these times.’ Of these erasures, the best account is in Bishop Burnet’s ‘History of the Reformation of the Church of England,’ London, 1681, folio, volume i., book iii., page 294; where it is asserted that such alterations were but slight, and that the old Mass-books were still in use, until the time of Queen Mary, when the castrated volumes were every where brought in, and destroyed; all Parishes being compelled to furnish themselves with new copies of the Church Offices: and Stow, on page 191 of the second volume of his ‘Survey,’ states that in the book marked D of the City Records, the name of St. Thomas was omitted, in pursuance of the King’s edict.
“We have thus come down to the times of that most eminent and laborious Antiquary, John Leland, to whose works I have already made some slight illustrative references; and the volume to which I am now about to request your attention, is one of the most rare, and curious, though not the greatest, of his productions. Let me remind you, however, before I mention the work itself, that Leland was, very probably, born in the Parish of St. Michael le Quern, London, in September, about the year 1506; that he was educated at St. Paul’s School, in both the Universities, and in France; that he made a literary and an antiquarian tour, of amazing minuteness and research, by virtue of a commission from King Henry VIII., in 1533; and that he died in a state of mental derangement, April the 18th, 1552, having lived about five years under its heaviest pressure. The particular volume of his writings to which I would refer you, as containing much original and curious matter concerning London Bridge, is a Latin poem, written in verses of five feet, yet not strictly in pentameters, entitled ‘Kykneion Asma, Cygnea Cantio: A Swan’s Song: the Author, John Leland, the Antiquary.’ Of this book there are two editions; a quarto, printed at London in 1545; and a duodecimo, also published here in 1658: though the poem and commentary were again inserted in the 9th volume of Hearne’s edition of ‘Leland’s Itinerary;’ since, as he states in his Preface thereto, they ‘ought to be looked upon as part of the Itinerary;’ and that they were grown so very rare, that though twice reprinted, they had sold, even so far back as 1712, for forty shillings in auctions. Bishop Nicolson, in his ‘English Historical Library,’ page 3, characterises this work as ‘a poetical piece of flattery, or a panegyric on King Henry; wherein the author brings his Swan down the River of Thames, from Oxford to Greenwich, describing, as she passes along, all the towns, castles, and other places of note within her view. And the ancient names of these, being sometimes different from what the common herd of writers had usually given, therefore, in his commentary on this Poem, he alphabetically explains his terms, and, by the bye, brings in a great deal of the ancient geography of this island.’ The first passage that I shall cite you from this curious volume, is from page 8, verse 213, edition 1658; which commences ‘Mox et nobilium domos virorum;’ but as I have, for the first time, done it into English verse, I will repeat you only my paraphrase, rather than the original Latin, observing that I have strictly adhered to all the actual facts.
‘More plainly now, as o’er the tide
With swift, but gentle course we glide;
The sight embraces in its ken
Those dwellings of illustrious men,
Where Thames upon his banks descries
The brave, the courteous, and the wise.
But, Oh! that sight too well recalls
The name of one, whose love was shrined
Within his river-seated halls,
Less richly furnish’d than his mind!
For Wisdom had endow’d his heart
With all that gilds mortality;
But he was man, and Death’s keen dart
Changed so much of him as could die,
Into his body’s native earth,
To give his soul an heavenly birth.
Yet, whilst we muse on Time’s career,
And hail his care-worn kindred here,
The streaming river bears us on
To London’s mighty Babylon:
And that vast Bridge, which proudly soars,
Where Thames through nineteen arches roars,
And many a lofty dome on high
It raises towering to the sky.
‘There are, whose truth is void of stain,
Who write, in Lion Richard’s reign,
That o’er these waves extended stood
A ruder fabric framed of wood:
But when the swift-consuming flames
Destroy’d that bulwark of the Thames,
Rebuilt of stone it rose to view,
Beneath King John its splendours grew,
Whilst London pour’d her wealth around,
The mighty edifice to found;
The lasting monument to raise
To his, to her eternal praise,
Till, rearing up its form sublime,
It stands the glory of all time!
‘Yet here we may not longer stay
But shoot the Bridge and dart away,
Though, with resistless fall, the tide
Is dashing on the bulwark’s side;
And roaring torrents drown my song
As o’er the surge I drift along.’
“Such then, Mr. Barbican, is my rapid version of those interesting verses contained in the ‘Cygnea Cantio;’ and we shall next refer to the famous passage in the Commentary upon it, though, in order to be perfectly explicit, I must previously mention some of the circumstances which caused it to be written.
“John Bale, an intimate friend, and most fervent admirer of Leland, admits, in the Preface attached to his ‘New Year’s Gift,’ that he was not quite free from the weakness of boasting and vain-glory. An instance of this is to be found in the Commentary on that part of the ‘Cygnea Cantio,’ where he is speaking of London Bridge; and you will find the passage referred to in a work to which I have been greatly indebted for these notices of Leland and his writings:—‘The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries John Leland, Thomas Hearne, and Anthony à Wood,’ Oxford, 1772, 8vo., volume i., page 47, where it is also stated, that London Bridge was then the subject of much public attention. By far the most curious reference to Leland’s invective, however, is to be seen in an original Letter written from Hearne to Bagford, and preserved in the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts, No. 5910, Part iv. at the end; whence I shall give it you in all its original simplicity.
‘Oxf. 11th July, 1714.
“‘Sir,