THE SOUTHWARK OF CHAUCER

“Such was old Chaucer; such the placid mien
Of him who first with harmony informed
The language of our fathers. These ancient walls
Have often heard him, while his legends blythe
He sang, of love or knighthood or the wiles
Of homely life; through each estate and age
The fashions and the follies of the world
With cunning hand pourtraying."

-Anon.

ONE day in early spring during the reign of Edward III a short, plump man, with pointed beard and elvish expression,

"Hos'd within a stock of red,
A buttoned bonnet on his head,"

made his way across London Bridge to Southwark. This was no less a person than Geoffrey Chaucer, the man to whom later ages have given the proud title "Father of English poetry."

Let us try to imagine the Southwark on which he gazed when he emerged from beneath the Traitor's Gate.

A number of houses and shops clustered at the outlet of the bridge. On the right lay the Priory of St. Mary Overie, with its church and quiet cloistered garth. This Augustinian house would be well known to Chaucer, for his great friend John Gower, of whom we shall think in a later chapter, was resident therein. Close behind rose the palace of the Bishop of Winchester, with its landing place on the river bank, and its gardens and park stretching westward till they met the neighbouring manor of Paris Garden. A stately palace was this, built by Bishop Gifford in 1107, and destined to be the home of many a famous churchman. Beyond the fields, away to the east was another religious house-the Abbey of Bermondsey. Doubtless it was very familiar to Chaucer and his contemporaries, for many visitors went there to see the famous 'Rood of Grace," a wooden crucifix found near the Thames, and also to benefit by the healing skill of the monks.

The Southwark of Chaucer 27 Taking its name from "Beormund" - Saxon landowner and "ey"- an island in the marsh, the Abbey or Priory as it was then called had been built by a London merchant, Aylwin Child, in 1082. The monks were of the Cluniac brotherhood, owing obedience to the Abbot of Cluny in Normandy. At the particular time of which we are thinking, viz. the reign of Edward III, the priory ceased to be an "alien" one, passed into the hands of the king and became an Abbey. The monastic buildings were very extensive and magnificent, and the monks maintained a splendid hospitality. Katharine, widow of Henry V, and ancestress of the Tudors, and Elizabeth Woodville, the unhappy widow of Edward IV, were distinguished guests in later

days.

Closer to the bridge, in what is now Tooley Street, Chaucer would see "a great house of stone and timber," the town house of the Abbot of Battle, while on the other side of the main road stood the house of the Prior of St. Pancras "one great house of stone with arched gates."

Let us follow in imagination Chaucer's walk down the one main road. Sweet scents of the country meet us as we go, for the open fields are near at hand; heavily laden waggons roll by on their way from distant villages; young men hurry past to archery practice at the butts, away over the fields at Newington, for these are the days of Crécy and Poitiers, and the glorious achievements of the English bowmen.

But Chaucer is on other things intent. Half way down the main street he has halted, turned in under a wide wooden gateway, from which swings a sleeveless coat or "tabard," and entered a wide courtyard. Buildings are on three sides of this, and a wooden gallery supported by slender wooden shafts runs round two of the sides. This is the town house of the Abbot of Hyde, built in the closing years of Edward I. The Abbot still retains part of the building, but the greater part is given up to travellers, especially to pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. The host is Henry Bailly, a jovial man of good standing – member of Parliament for Southwark, and probably a descendant of a Bailiff of the time of Henry III.

We follow up the wooden staircase, peep into the long Pilgrims' room, where the trestle tables are being covered with white cloths, and wooden platters and drinking horns are being set out for visitors, then take our stand by Chaucer's side on the gallery and look down on the motley crowd below.

Jesters, jugglers, minstrels, and strolling players come in to entertain the guests, for the inn yards of those days were practically the only homes of the secular showmen. The galleries of the inns provided accommodation for the better-off folk.

To-day there is an unusual bustle; tomorrow one of the "conducted parties" for which the Tabard Inn is famous will depart to Canterbury. Such pilgrimages are great levellers of rank, and as we stand by Chaucer we note many varieties among the arrivals. Here is an elderly knight who has fought in fifteen deadly battles and yet is "as meeke as is a maide." His dress is plain and bears the marks of wear; but his son, the squire, wears a mantle richly embroidered "as if it were a meede al ful of freshe floures." They are attended by a sturdy yeoman, the type of those who won the field of Crécy. The Church contributes her share to the pilgrimage. Here is a monk, "a manly man," fonder of horses and hunting than study and preaching; and here, a country parson "Criste's loore and his apostles twelve, he taughte, but first he folwed it hym selve." A youthful nun, a prioress, smiling and dainty, whose quiet dignity wins the respect of all, and a handsome bold-faced matron, the wife of Bath, who has had five husbands, and is quite willing to take a sixth, represent the feminine side.

Space forbids that we should enumerate more; there are twenty-nine in all, and you may find them for yourself in the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, where every stanza is a masterpiece of description.

At length the bustle of arrival is over, the. horses are safely stabled and the guests sit down to the supper, at which the "nappy strong ale of Southwark" adds to the jollity. Supper ended, the jovial host offers to go with them on their journey and act as guide, and finally proposes that on the way each shall tell a story to lighten the journey, the best story-teller to be rewarded by a supper at the Tabard on their return. The proposal is gladly accepted, and early next morning they are astir. Some go across the road to the Church of St. Margaret for a last service, and for a blessing from the Gild of Brotherhood, whose duty it was to speed pilgrims on their way. Then they mount their horses, which in all probability they have hired at the inn. Pilgrimage horses were branded to prevent stealing, and the fee for hiring was Is. from London to Rochester, Is. from Rochester to Canterbury, and 6d. from Canterbury to the coast.

Soon all are riding gaily down the High Street, pausing perhaps by St. George's Church for a parting blessing from the Gild of Brethren there, then into Kent Street, the modern Tabard Street, and away between the fields until they reach a little pond, St. Thomas-a-Watering, where the host calls for a halt, and the story-telling begins.

Here we must leave them, for the record of their tales, incomplete as it is, belongs to the great pageant of English literature, and we must return to the Story of Southwark and the fate of this famous inn.

To-day, warehouses and a modern public house mark the site, and everything save the name and the memory has departed.

How long the Tabard, as Chaucer knew it, remained, we cannot say with certainty.

After the dissolution of the monasteries, it passed from the Abbot of Hyde into the hands of Thomas and John Masters, and the name was changed to Talbot-meaning a pet dog, but again we do not know when, or by whom. After the great Southwark fire of 1676 it was rebuilt, probably on the old plan, and a succeeding landlord put up the sign: "This is the inn where Sir Jeffry Chaucer and the nine and twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury 1383."

The sign was painted out in 1831, and the inn deteriorated rapidly. In its later days it depended largely on coach and country traffic, and after the introduction of railways its mainstay was gone. It was sold by auction in 1865 and demolished a few years later, to be rebuilt in its present form in 1875.

Yet to the thoughtful mind, the site is classic ground, for it was here that the English language first found expression in a master-piece of literature.

In the concluding words of this chapter we will think of other inns which have suffered a similar fate, although they cannot boast so historic a past.

With one possible exception, they date from a later age than Chaucer's, and in the rush of modern needs and improvements they have been swept away, leaving just a name of a public house, or a blind alley, to remind us of what has been. They were the clubs of other days where "culture, learning and refinement gathered." Two of them, The George and The White Hart are associated imperishably with Dickens, and in this connection we shall think of them in a later chapter.

The first-mentioned is standing to-day, and is a picturesque reminder of past glories. It is first mentioned in 1554, and was then called St. George, but the prefix was dropped in later years in deference to popular prejudice against things Popish. In 1670 it was almost entirely destroyed by fire. Rebuilt, it fell a victim to the fire of 1676, whereby, as an old chronicle says: "Those eminent innes the Queen's Head, the Talbot, the George, the White Hart, the King's Head and the Green Dragon, together with the prison of the Counter, the Meal market and about 500 dwelling houses were burned down, blown up, and wholly destroyed."

The present George Inn was rebuilt, apparently on the same plan, and forms a splendid example of the inns which were the prototype of the Elizabethan theatre.

The White Hart, on the same side of High Street, stood on the site of a house occupied by Jack Cade during the rebellion of 1450. Shakespeare, in Henry VI, Part 2, mentions the rebels being in Southwark.

The Queen's Head which stood next to the Tabard, was named originally The Crossed Keys, but its name was changed towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, for a reason obvious to all who know the religious temper of the times. An interesting point in its history is that it was at one time the property of John Harvard, the founder of the famous American University. This inn survived longer than its contemporaries and was finally destroyed in1900.

The name Falcon Dock is a reminder of a once famous inn which stood on Bankside, and was one of the largest inns in Surrey. Shakespeare and his contemporaries may have resorted thither, but there are no records of such association.