BOOKS.
SOUTHWARK AS IT WAS.* How pleasant is the sustaining enthusiasm of a genuine antiquary, who collects an infinite variety of details by diligent search in the lumber-rooms of local and general history, and throughout his endless labours keeps a cheerful -countenance and unwearied spirit ! Mr. Rendle, a medical gentleman who has lived in Southwark since 1814, is one of this kind. Besides labouring steadfastly in his arduous pro- fession, which gave him a personal and wide knowledge of the locality, he has indulged his useful passion for searching out, collecting, and arranging in due order the immense series of traditions and facts which, put together, revive for us, as it were, the birth, growth, and life of Southwark, for so many centuries the great and unique outlet from London City to the Southern. Counties and the Continent. His present and former book may be regarded as the biography of a re- markable suburb of old London now absorbed in the over- growing and land-devouring Metropolis, and at length barely -distinguishable from the once outlying villages which, gathered round the central nucleus, have become fused into one whole. Southwark differs from the other external districts in an important condition. It was always, from the dimmest antiquity, united and tied on to the City, in fact, its southern portal, closely connected with though not strictly a part of it, and even when partially annexed, not sharing in the full municipal life, and only indirectly represented in the Common Council. The senior Alderman represented the ward of Bridge Without, but the ward had nothing to say to the choice of its nominal Alderman. Considering the part which Southwark played in the economy of London, and how essential it was as a line of communication, we must say that the suburb was somewhat shabbily treated by its powerful step- father.
Southwark owed its existence to the fact that the land or marsh on which it stood was opposite the City, and that the point of passage over the river—first a ferry, and much later a bridge—was established there between the Middlesex and Surrey shores. It is assumed that the Romans embanked the Thames ; and they certainly must have secured in some way a solid causeway through the low lands lying within the deep loop of the stream, to the great Dover road. In like manner the Saxons must have kept up some communication; but it is not until near the end of their rule that we have rumours of a bridge, which became a substantial entity after the Norman era had set in. The conquerors possessed them- selves of the lands beyond the river, and from that time Southwark became visibly and solidly a limb of London. Always important, because through its swamps lay the great road to the South, the murder of Thomas Becket gave an impetus to its fortunes, and made Long Southwark a street of inns, a halting-place and starting-point for travellers and pil- grims, a place of business for traders and merchants. Hence, we have " The Tabard," " The White Hart," " The Bear," The George," and many more wooden structures which were veritable caravanserais, covering large areas, with ample accom- modation for man and horse, guest and servant. At an earlier period, the buildings were religious edifices of more solid con- traction, or the houses of nobles. The town, if we may so call it, ran along the river-bank or on the main thoroughfare, and be- yond were the fields, woods, and marshes, up to the rising ground -which ran and runs athwart the broad end of the loop. Bishops, Abbots, and Peers had dwellings or lodgings in what was then South London, just as, at a later period, Charles Brandon and Iris Royal spouse had a palace near what became the Mint of .evil fame. But the principal historical characteristic of the district was really the Inns, which, besides those known to fame through poesy and history, were to be counted by the score. It is the life clustering in and around these comfortable asylums of the wayfarer which Mr. Rendle, in his pleasant, gossiping manner, has so well brought back from the dark recesses of a long-buried past. Incidentally, of course, he tells us much more, for, although inns and inn-life are in the foreground, many other shadows of human existence flit around as he moves in imagination from place to place. The shifting manners and customs, the laws or rules
• The Inns of Old Southwark, and their Associations. By William Beadle, P.R.0 S.; and Philip Norman, F.S.A. London : Longlaans and Co.
kept and not kept, the rude economics, the good and evil institutions, the terrors of justice and injustice, the mighty insurrections, the destructive fires and oft-recurring desolating pestilences, slaying sometimes an eighth, some- times a fourth of the people; the fairs, street-shows, plays, impostures,—all are described or indicated with such an approach to accuracy as old maps and records permit. The physical changes going on from century to century are sketched, and the reader, especially if he brings active imaginative help, passes from the almost tenantless swamp which the Roman administrators began to reclaim, through the picturesque mediaeval period, and later more rapid de- velopments, to the sea of houses, offices, and factories, and the roaring tide of life and traffic, in our own day. What a transit it is !—from the Roman Prefect to the conquering Norseman ; from the Canterbury Pilgrims to the Continental express ; from the hamlet scattered about a bridge-head to the masses of brick and stone which reach and run over the little hills to the South,—and all, during the ages, pouring through the great outlet to our Southern shores.
From a book which is a concreto of detail, it is hard to select illustrative passages for special notice, and we can only make an arbitrary selection. Shakespeare, of course, haunts Mr. Rendle, but he can make little of him. If the poet ever resided in Southwark during the summer to be near his place of business, the Globe, the site of which, like other interesting spots, is swallowed up by the great Anchor Brewery, our author has not lighted on his house or lodging further than that it was near the Bear Garden ; yet, after all, it may have been at one of the big inns. Shakespeare invented Falstaff, and Mr. Rendle vehemently desires to see a suggestion of the character in Sir John Fastolfe, who lived, at least for some time, in Stoney Lane, Tooley Street. Yet no two characters could be more unlike. Fastolfe was a good soldier, who has fared ill with the chroniclers and historians. But he was a terrible man of business, a shrewd accumulator, not always just, and never a sensual spendthrift. Mr. Rendle, who connects Fastolfe with the herring trade, the centre of which, on the Thames, was at the place below bridge anciently styled, as Mr. Gairdner shows, " Herlynflet "—that is, Herringfleet- actually infers that Sir John selected salted herrings as the main portion of the convoy with which he successfully fought his way to Orleans, because he had a "pecuniary interest" in the sale of these useful fishes. The real reason, however, is given by Monstrelet, who records his victory, when he says :—" The battle was ever afterwards called the Battle of Herrings, because great part of the convoy consisted of herrings and other articles of food suitable to Lent." Nothing can be plainer. Shakespeare himself, who is unjust to the baddish Knight of the Garter, has the real Fastolfe among his characters. He " ran away " from the Battle of Rouvroy, where Talbot was taken ; but the truth is, that if his soldierly advice had been taken, Talbot would not have been surprised, nor have met the defeat which he courted. In fact, Fastolfe was not a mere fighter ; he had in him the elements of a General But although, through Waynflete, he gave so much South- wark property, including " The Boar's Head," to Magdalen College, he was not by any means a good man. The specula- tion that the name "Queen Mab " was derived from the con- temporary Mabbe family, living in Southwark, does not seem to us more happy than the comments on Fastolfe.
We have said that the erudition of Mr. Rendle flourishes in and around the inns, but that he rightly, indeed inevitably, travels beyond them, when illustrating manners and customs. We find, for example, visible proofs of Vestry dinners at the expense of the parish, in the shape of reckonings savouring strongly of ample meat and drink. We see from a bill for one
year's sacramental wines at St. Saviour's in 1593-94, more than seventy-one gallons were charged for, and only threepence for bread. Mr. Rendle also refers to the Token Books of St. Saviour's, and gives an instructive account of them :— " They are," he writes "common books of writing-paper with brown covers such as might have been used in a chandler's shop. The parish being a large one, it was divided into three districts : one for the Borough side, the oldest part of Southwark ; one for the Bankside, or Liberty of the Clink ; one for the Manor of Paris Garden ; and each had its separate book. The wardens went once every year to each house in the parish, and in those books they entered, against each street, court, or alley, the name of every person of sixteen years old and over, bound by law to take the Sacrament at the parish church, or abide the severe consequences ; to each person a ticket of lead or pewter was given, to be delivered up at the table, and where it could be afforded a small sum for the poor with it."
A suggestive perambulation, whether strictly carried out or not. It is remarked pathetically, in an official tax-paper on the population of the Liberty of the Clink, that among them were one hundred and fifty " very poor people, widows and others, all ready to take and not one of them fit to give ;" and these, whether they went to church or not, were receivers, not donors. We find that Philip Henslowe, famous play- manager of Shakespeare's time, took " five tokens " in 1600 for his house near the Clink ; and he is comprehensively described by Mr. Rendle as, next to the King (James) and the Bishop, " the Bankside potentate, freeholder, leaseholder, dyer, maltman, pawnbroker, stew-holder, banker, owner of playhouses and bear-gardens," and, moreover, "churchwarden and leading vestryman." We may be sure that he duly handed in his tokens and kept well with the powers that were. Such illustrative little indications of life and manners abound, but we must be content to indicate the general character of a book which should find many loving readers. It is creditable that such a heterogeneous pile of materials should have been brought into fairly good order. The illustrations are excel- lent, the maps are -well selected, and the index ample. Altogether, it is a volume which should be prized for reading or reference by the lovers of ancient things.
Previous page
