NORTH-EAST VIEW OF ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK, 1800
In 1539 the House was suppressed, the canons were put out, and the place was given to Sir Anthony Brown, whose son became Viscount Montague and gave his new name to the ancient close of the Monastery. In the following year the Church was made a Parish Church, including the church of Mary Magdalene, which stood beside the Priory Church, as St. Peter-le-Poor stood beside St. Austin, St. Gregory beside St. Paul's, and St. Margaret beside Westminster Abbey Church together with the Parish Church of St. Margaret in the High Street. The nave gradually became ruinous and was taken down in 1838, when a new nave, the memory of which makes the whole Borough shudder when it is mentioned, was put up. Its floor was raised above that of the transepts, and it was treated as a separate building, divided from the transepts by a brick wall. This terrible building has now been taken down and a nave rebuilt after the pattern of the original structure of the fourteenth century. Thus reconstructed, the church will soon, it is hoped, become the Cathedral Church of the Diocese of Southwark. At present it has not the Cathedral organisation, being without a Dean, or Canons, or a Chapter. The Church can boast of more monuments and of a more distinguished company of the dead than can be found in most London churches. Here are buried, probably, Mary herself, the original founder, if she is not a legendary person: Pont de l'Arche and d'Auncey, the founders: a long line of unknown and forgotten Priors and Canons of the Augustinian House: John Gower, on whose monument can still be read the prayers he wrote for his own soul:
En toy qui es Filz de Dieu le Père
Sauvé soit qui gist sous cest pierre.
CRYPT OF ST. MARY OVERIES
The monument was repaired and painted in 1832 by the first Duke of Sutherland. Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, is buried in the Lady Chapel, where his monument can be seen in black and white marble; Dyer the poet, who died 1607; Edmund Shakespeare, 'player,' poet and writer, buried somewhere in the Church, 1607; Laurence Fletcher, one of the shareholders in the Globe, also buried in the Church, 1608; Philip Henslow, the manager, buried in the chancel, 1616; John Fletcher, buried in the Church, 1625; Philip Massinger, a 'stranger,' i.e. belonging to some other parish, buried in the Church, 1639. There are three stones in the chancel, inscribed with the names of John Fletcher, Edmund Shakespeare, and Philip Massinger, but merely to record that they are buried somewhere in the Church.