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to kill the Devil at the first blow, actually struck out his brains.’ It is added, that the servant was acquitted, and the Ferryman made accessary and cause of his own death. The estate of Overs then fell to his daughter, and her lover hearing of it, hastened up from the country; but, in riding post, his horse stumbled, and he brake his neck on the highway. The young heiress was almost distracted at these events, and was recalled to her faculties only by having to provide for her father’s interment; for he was not permitted to have Christian burial, being considered as an excommunicated man, on account of his extortions, usury, and truly miserable life. The Friars of Bermondsey Abbey were, however, prevailed upon, by money, their Abbot being then away, to give a little earth to the remains of the wretched Ferryman. But upon the Abbot’s return, observing a grave which had been but recently covered in, and learning who lay there, he was not only angry with his Monks for having done such an injury to the Church, for the sake of gain, but he also had the body taken up again, laid on the back of his own Ass, and, turning the animal out at the Abbey gates, desired of God that he might carry him to some place where he best deserved to be buried. The Ass proceeded with a gentle and solemn pace through Kent Street, and along the highway, to the small pond once called St. Thomas a Waterings, then the common place of execution, and shook off the Ferryman’s body directly under the gibbet, where it was put into the ground, without any kind of ceremony. Mary Overs, extremely distressed by such a succession of sorrows, and desirous to be free from the importunity of the numerous suitors for her hand and fortune, resolved to retire into a cloister; which she shortly afterwards did, having first provided for the foundation of that Church which still commemorates her name.

      “Such is the story related by this tract; and, if it were possible, one might suppose, that the pious maiden, out of her filial love, had placed that effigy in her fane, which I before mentioned to be sculptured in memory of her father; since it would, by no means, improperly represent the cadaverous features of the old Waterman. The figure, itself, is of the third form of the classes of Sepulchral Monuments, invented by Maurice Johnson, Esq.—namely, tables with effigies or sculptures—and the last of the arrangement adopted by Smart Lethullier, Esq., that is to say—the representation of a skeleton in a shroud, lying either under, or on, a table tomb. Richard Gough, you know, in his ‘Sepulchral Monuments,’ London, 1786–96, folio, volume i., part 1, Introduction, page cxi. where you will find all these particulars, attributes most of these figures to the fifteenth century, and Audery certainly died very long before the time of William I. However this may be, as I am laying before you all the illustrations of Bridge history, both authentic and traditional, which are now to be found, I must not omit to add, that the supposed effigy of Audery is six feet eight inches in length; and represents his decayed body lying in its winding-sheet. His hair is turned up in a roll above his head, though in the ‘History of Southwark,’ by M. Concannen, Junior, and A. Morgan, Deptford, 1795, octavo, page 101, Note, he is erroneously stated to have ‘a shorn crown,’ and is, therefore, supposed to represent Linsted, the last Prior of St. Mary’s.

      “Captain Francis Grose has inserted this figure, not very respectably engraven, in his ‘Antiquities of England and Wales,’ London, 1773–87, royal quarto, six volumes, in the Addenda attached to volume iv., plate iii.; and he observes, on page 36, that ‘it is a skeleton-like figure, of which the usual story is told, that the person thereby represented attempted to fast forty days, in imitation of Christ,’ as he remarks on the preceding page, but died in the attempt, having first reduced himself to that appearance. The best engraving of this effigy was published in ‘Mr. J. T. Smith’s Antiquities of London, and its Environs,’ London, 1791, quarto.

      “Be this figure, however, who it may, the Waterman or the Priest, his tomb has outlived both his name and his dust. Whether he only carried passengers over the River Thames, or was occupied in teaching them how to cross that last fatal River—which John Bunyan quaintly tells you hath no Bridge—‘after life’s fitful fever he sleeps well,’—

      “Aye, and so shall I soon,” cried I, stretching myself, and interrupting Mr. Postern; “let him rest in peace, my good Sir, and come out of Church now; for, truly, it’s high time to close your Sermon, and let us hear somewhat about a River which hath a Bridge, that was once the wonder of the world.”

      “I thank you,” replied my narrator, “I thank you, Mr. Geoffrey Barbican, for recalling me to the subject of our conversation; for this is the very point at which I would proceed with my history. You know, Sir,” continued he, in a much brisker tone, “I have already observed to you, that the First Wooden Bridge was erected much farther to the East than yonder stone bulwark; for when King William I. granted a Charter to the foundation of St. Peter’s Abbey, at West-Minster, in the second year of his reign, AD 1067, he confirmed to the Monks serving God in that place, a Gate in London, then called Butolph’s Gate, with a Wharf which stood at the head of London Bridge. This has ever been received as a well-established fact; for Stow relates it in his ‘Survey,’ volume i., pages 22 and 58; and Mr. John Dart, in his ‘History and Antiquities of the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Westminster,’ London, 1723, folio, volume i., page 20, supports it, in his List of Benefactors to the Abbey, in the time of King Edward the Confessor.

      “The record is also given at length, by Stow, in English; but you may see it in the original Latin, in a curious Manuscript in the Cotton Library, marked Faustina, A. iii., which is entitled, ‘A Registry of the Regal and Pontifical Charters, Privileges, Agreements, and Covenants, of the Bishops and Abbots of the Church of the blessed Peter of Westminster; many whereof are Saxon ones, written in the Norman-Saxon characters.’ This volume is a little stout quarto, written in a small fair Church text, on parchment; adorned with many vermillion initial letters, and rubrics, or heads of chapters. The Charter to which I have now referred you, chapter xliv., is the last but one in the reign of King William I., folio 63, b, of the modern pagination; and, put into English, is as follows:—

      “ ‘Concerning the lands of Almodus, of St. Butolph’s Gate, and of the Wharf at the head of London Bridge.

      “ ‘William, King of England, to the Sheriffs and all Ministers, as, also, to his faithful subjects of London, French and English, greeting: Know ye, that I have granted unto God and to St. Peter of Westminster, and to the Abbot Vitalis, the House which Almodus, of the Gate of St. Botolph, gave to them when he was made a Monk; that is to say, his Lord’s Court, with his Houses, and one Wharf which is at the head of London Bridge, and others of his lands in the same City, like as King Edward more fully and beneficially granted them: and I will and command that they shall enjoy the same well, and quietly, and honourably, with sake and soke, and shall hold all the customs and laws of the aforesaid. And I defend them that none shall do them any injury. Witness, Walkeline, Bishop of Winchester, and William, Bishop of Durham, and R., Earl of Mell., and Hugh, Earl of Warwick.’

      “And now let me remark that, by this we are informed that the City end of the Bridge was not anciently the foot of it, which is asserted by the evidence of Richard Newcourt, in his ‘Ecclesiastical History of the Diocess of London,’ London, 1708–10, folio, volume i., page 396, where he says, that ‘St. Magnus’ Church is sometimes called, in Latin, the Church of St. Magnus the Martyr, in the City of London, near the foot, or at the foot, of London Bridge.’

      “This First Wooden Bridge, however, was not fated to stand long; for, on the sixteenth of November, the feast of St. Edmund the Archbishop, in the year 1091, ‘at the hour of six, a dreadful whirlwind from the South-East, coming from Africa, blew upon the City, and overthrew upwards of six hundred houses, several Churches, greatly damaged the Tower, and tore away the roof and part of the wall of the Church of St. Mary le Bow, in Cheapside. The roof was carried to a considerable distance, and fell with such force, that several of the rafters, being about twenty-eight feet in length, pierced upwards of twenty feet into the ground, and remained in the same position as when they stood in the Chapel.’

      “The best accounts of this terrible event are to be found in the ‘Chronicle’ of Florence of Worcester, page 457, which was literally copied into the ‘Annales’ of Roger de Hoveden, Chaplain to King Henry II., printed in the ‘Scriptores post Bedam,’ already cited, page 462;—in William of Malmesbury, page 125;—and in the ‘Chronicle’ of John of Brompton, which I have also before quoted, page 987.

      “During

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