There were many reminiscences of mediæval times on the Surrey side. At Bermondsey were to be seen the extensive remains of the great abbey of St. Saviour. After the Dissolution its name became transferred to the church near the end of London Bridge, formerly known as St. Mary Overies, the splendid fane which in our time has worthily become the cathedral of Southwark. Between this church and the church of St. George were many inns, among them the Tabard, where travellers to and from Canterbury and Dover, or Winchester and Southampton, introduced an element of novelty, change, and bustle; where plays were performed in the inn yards before the playhouses were built on Bankside. At the end of Bankside, looking towards the church of St. Saviour, stood Winchester House, the London residence of the Bishop of Winchester since the twelfth century. Here Cardinal Beaufort and Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, had lived in great state. The site, including the park, which extended parallel with the river as far as Paris Garden, was formerly the property of the priory of Bermondsey. This area was under the separate jurisdiction of the Bishops of Winchester, and was called their "Liberty." Here, in the early years of Queen Elizabeth, were two amphitheatres—one for bull-baiting, the other for bear-baiting. There were also ponds for fish, called the Pike Ponds.[4] The great Camden records an anecdote of these ponds or stews, "which are here to feed Pikes and Tenches fat, and to scour them from the strong and muddy fennish taste." All classes delighted in the cruel sport of bear-baiting on the Bankside: ambassadors and distinguished foreigners were always conducted to these performances; on special occasions the Queen had them at the palace.
In 1583 one of the amphitheatres fell down, and when re-erected it was built on the model of the playhouses.[5] It then became known as the Bear Garden; the bull-baiting amphitheatre dropped out of existence; perhaps it was reconstructed by Henslowe as his Rose theatre. The point is not of much importance, except as regards the evolution of the playhouse.
The second playhouse built on the Surrey side after the Rose was the Swan, opened in 1596. This was erected on a site in the manor of Paris Garden, separated only by a road from the Liberty of Winchester. The playhouse was in a line with the landing-stairs, opposite Blackfriars.
After the Globe playhouse was built in 1599, the other playhouses—Henslowe's Rose and Langley's Swan—ceased to flourish. Here the outward facts corresponded with the inward: a lovely flower had opened into bloom on the Bankside; what was unnecessary to its support drooped earthward like a sheath.
Opposite Paris Garden, across the river, was Blackfriars; and here the change from the ancient order to what was distinctively Elizabethan London was most manifest. The ancient monastery had existed here from 1276, when the Dominican or Black Friars moved hither from Holborn, until 1538, when the establishment was surrendered to King Henry VIII. It possessed a magnificent church, a vast palatial hall, and cloisters. Edward VI. had granted the whole precinct, with its buildings, to Sir Thomas Cawarden, the Master of the Revels. It became an aristocratic residential quarter; and in the earlier period of Queen Elizabeth's reign plays were performed here, probably in the ancient hall of the monastery, by the children of Her Majesty's chapel and the choir-boys of St. Paul's. At a later period—viz., in 1596—James Burbage, who built the theatre in Shoreditch, built a new playhouse in the precinct, or more probably adapted an existing building—the hall or part of the church—to serve the purpose of dramatic representation. This playhouse, consequently, was not open to the weather at the top like the common playhouses, and it was distinguished as the "private" theatre at Blackfriars.
The west wall of the precinct was built along the bank of the Fleet river. Across the river opposite was the royal palace of Bridewell, which Edward VI. had given to the city of London to be a workhouse for the poor and a house of correction. This contiguity of a house for the poor and the remains of a monastery suggests a reflection on the social problem of Elizabethan London.
Before the Reformation the religious houses were the agencies for the relief of the poor, the sick, the afflicted. The unemployed were assisted with lodging and food on their way as they journeyed in search of a market for their labour, paying for their entertainment at the religious houses by work either on the roads in the neighbourhood or on the buildings or in the gardens and fields, according to their trades and skill. It would seem that King Henry did not realise the importance and extent of this feature in the social economy, because, after he had suppressed the religious establishments, he complained very reproachfully of the number of masterless men and rogues that were everywhere to be found, especially about London. The good Bishop Ridley, in an eloquent appeal addressed to William Cecil, represented the poor and sick and starving in the streets of London in the person of Christ, beseeching the king to succour the poor and suffering Christ in the streets of London by bestowing his palace of Bridewell to be a home for the homeless, the starving, and the sick, where erring ones could be corrected and the good sustained. The good young monarch granted the bishop's request, and Bridewell Hospital was thus founded to do the social work in which Blackfriars monastery on the other side of the Fleet river had formerly borne its share. But single efforts of this kind were quite unequal to cope with the social difficulty; and early in the reign of Elizabeth the first Poor Law was passed and a system of relief came into operation.
To meet the difficulty of unemployment, it was part of the policy of Queen Elizabeth's Government to encourage new industries, whether due to invention and discovery or to knowledge gained by visiting foreign countries to learn new processes and manufactures; the inventor or the introducer of the novelty was rewarded with a monopoly, and he received a licence "to take up workmen" to be taught the methods of the new industry. One of the manufactures which had been thus stimulated was glass-making; and in the precinct of Blackfriars was a famous glass-house or factory, a reminiscence of which still exists in the name Glasshouse Yard. It has been shown how the crafts and trades of Elizabethan London gravitated to separate areas: Blackfriars precinct was famous as the abode of artists; one may hazard the guess that some of the portraits of Elizabethan and Jacobean players in the Dulwich Gallery may have been painted here. In the reign of Charles I. Vandyke had his studio in Blackfriars, where the king paid him a visit to see his pictures. The precinct was famous also as the abode of glovers; and in the reigns of James and Charles it became a notorious stronghold of Puritans. The existing name of Playhouse Yard, at the back of The Times newspaper office, affords some indication of the site of the theatre; and the name Cloister Court is the sole remnant of the cloisters of Blackfriars monastery.
The eastern boundary of the precinct was St. Andrew's Hill, which still exists. On the site of the present church of St. Andrew in the Wardrobe stood a church of the same dedication in Elizabethan London. Stow wrote of "the parish church of St. Andrew in the Wardrobe, a proper church, but few monuments hath it." Near the church (the site being indicated by the existing court called the Wardrobe) was a building of State, which Stow calls "the King's Great Wardrobe." The Elizabethan use of the Wardrobe is described by Stow thus: "In this house of late years is lodged Sir John Fortescue, knight, master of the wardrobe, chancellor and under-treasurer of the exchequer, and one of her majesty's most honorable privy Council."