A SOUTH LONDON SLUM
Thus, in Foul Lane, now just south of St. Mary Overies, was the entrance to the Green Dragon Inn. This inn was anciently the town house of the Cobhams. This family left Southwark, and the house, with some alterations, became an Inn. When carriers began to ply between London and the country towns, Tunbridge was connected by a carrier's cart with the Green Dragon. Early in the eighteenth century it became the Southwark post-office. Another and a much more important inn for carriers and waggons was the King's Head. Taylor, the Water Poet, says that 'carriers come into the Borough of Southwark out of the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey: from Reigate to the Falcon: from Tunbridge, Seavenoks, and Staplehurst to the Katherine Wheel, and others from Sussex thither; Dorking and Ledderhead to the Greyhound: some to the Spurre, the George, the King's Head: some lodge at the Tabbard or Talbot: many, far and wide, are to be had almost daily at the White Hart.'
The White Hart is, if possible, a more historical inn than Chaucer's Tabard itself. It was the headquarters of Jack Cade, as has already been related in [chapter vi]. In front of this inn one Hawarden was beheaded: and also in front of this inn the headless body of Lord Say, after being dragged at the horsetail from the Standard at Chepe, was cut up in quarters, which were displayed in various places in order to strike terror into the minds of the people.
THE OLD TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK
I have spoken sufficiently of Chaucer already. The Tabard Inn, from which the famous Company set out, was named after the ornamented coat or jacket worn by Kings at Coronations, and by heralds, or even by ordinary persons. In the fourteenth century it was the town house of the Abbot of Hyde, Winchester. Does this mean that the Abbot allowed the place to be used as an ordinary inn? It is clear that Chaucer speaks of it as an ordinary inn. Yet in 1307 the Bishop of Winchester licenses a chapel at the Abbot's Hospitium in the Parish of St. Margaret, Southwark. At the Dissolution it is surrendered as 'a hostelry called the Taberd, the Abbot's place, the Abbot's stable, the garden belonging, a dung place leading to the ditch going to the Thames.' It is explained in Spight's 'Chaucer,' 1598, that the old Tabard had much decayed, but that it had been repaired 'with the Abbot's house adjoining.' Until the inn was finally pulled down, a room used to be shown as that in which Chaucer's Company assembled. This, however, was not the room, though it may have been rebuilt on the site of the old room. For on Friday, May 26, 1676, a destructive fire broke out, which raged over a large part of the Borough and destroyed the Queen's Head, the Talbot, the George, the White Hart, the King's Head, the Green Dragon, the Borough Compter, the Meat Market, and about 500 houses. St. Thomas's Hospital was saved by a change of wind, which also seems to have saved St. Mary Overies.