instruments, and sometimes the robes worn at the service. There was the sacristan, who had charge of the sacred vessels and all things appertaining to the altar and its service (the sacristan and sub-sacristan alone slept in the church). The almoner, who managed the doles of the convent and looked after the poor. The cellarer, who had charge of all the food required in the abbey. The treasurer or bursar, who managed the accounts, paid the servants' wages, &c. The kitchener or cook. The infirmarer who had charge of the sick. The porter, who kept the keys and admitted all comers to the convent. The refectioner, who had the charge of the pantry. The father of the novices, who directed the younger monks. The chamberlain, who looked after all appertaining to the cells, clothes, and bedding. Then, too, the more learned monks or those who had a vocation for teaching, undertook the different schools for the rich and the poor, for here were sent the children of the aristocracy to be trained in all good nurture and holy learning, and here were gathered the children of the poor, and those who shewed signs of talent had an opportunity given them to make the best of it.

Amongst their buildings was the scriptorium, where some were continually occupied in making copies of the whole or parts of the Bible and other works in that exquisite penmanship that remains to this day, and is at the distance of 1000 years able to be read as clearly as print. Here they beautifully and lavishly ornamented their MSS. with. those exquisite illuminations that make their missals and their service books dainty works of art.

There was the refectory, where all had their meals together, whilst one read aloud a lesson from Holy Scripture, or from the lives of the Saints. There was the infirmary, where not only their own sick were nursed. There were

the guest chambers where many a one wearied with the toils and anxieties of life would for a little time lay aside his earthly cares, and seeking for a nearer communion with his Maker, would consider his latter end; and after a time of quiet and rest would again come out into the world refreshed and ready to bear his part again in the struggle of life.

Here the weary found rest, the ignorant were taught, the poor were tended, and it is well to remember that it was not till after the dissolution of the monasteries that any poor law was needed in England. What was given as an offering to God and from love to man is now forced from us by the law of the land; and the result is to make, in the richest country in the world, the poorer classes thriftless and improvident paupers.

It is common to sneer at the learning of the Middle Ages; but even before the 15th century when, what is called "the revival of learning" took place, a man could not be considered uneducated who could speak and write three languages; and all who made any pretension to learning could do this. Latin and French were taught as a matter of course, and English was never wholly laid aside.

But the commoner arts of life were also practised in the monastery. No lands were so well cultivated as Church lands; no gardens so luxuriant as the convent gardens. Music, architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, history, gorgeous embroidery, were all practised in the cloister, and, speaking generally, in the cloister alone. It is well to remember that, omitting St. Paul's, the two finest churches in London-Westminster Abbey and St. Saviour's-are convent churches, and that the finest of modern hospitals, St. Thomas's, close to Westminster Bridge, is but the development of the hospitium of St. Thomas à Becket, itself the offspring of St. Mary's of the Ferry.

CHAPTER IV.

SOUTHWARK IN THE MIDDLE AGES-Continued.

THE LAST DAYS OF EDWARD III. AND RICHARD II.'S REIGN.

N my last chapter I endeavoured to give such a sketch of Southwark in the Middle Ages as would serve for a background to the figures I wish to reproduce; and so many shadows of the past flit before me, that my only difficulty will be to group them on the canvas. How shall I arrange Wat Tyler and Gower, and William of Wykeham and Chaucer? for they are all strangely enough linked together, however slightly.

The gorgeous reign of Edward III., with its military ardour, which made war appear but a series of tournaments, and veiled its horrors with the brilliancy, the romance, the generosity, and the courtliness of the period, was passing away. And yet, before we think of them as bygone, let me recall to you one magnificent procession which must have passed through the Old Kent Road and up the Boro', and, the gates being opened, over London Bridge, and wending its way through the City, passing city mansions and noblemen's houses, stopped at the Duke of Lancaster's Palace, at the Savoy. I allude, of course, to the magnificent procession which welcomed King John of France as an honored guest, rather than, as he was in reality, a landless king and a prisoner. Southwark saw that splendid caval

cade with which our earliest history books have made us all familiar, when the captive King rode on a magnificent white horse, whilst his victor, the Prince of Wales (whom we all know best by the name of the Black Prince), rode by his side, as Froissart says, on a little black hackney. And that this was no ostentatious pretence at humility is certain from the graceful consideration shewn throughout to the King's feelings, for on his voyage to England he and his retinue were in a ship by themselves that "he might be more at his ease."

But these days of England's pride and triumph had fled. The Black Prince, on his return to England, with ruined health from the south of France, made his home at Kennington. His palace is gone, but the spot on which it stood still forms part of the Duchy of Cornwall, and belongs to our present Prince of Wales. He endeavoured, so far as his failing health would allow, to remedy the abuses that had increased during his father's later years. He found his ambitious brother, John of Gaunt, playing for power, his father sunk in sensuality and a prey to a disgraceful mistress, Alice Perrers. It must have been a grievous thing to his great soul to see all his life's work undone, England a chaos, and his father and his son, at the mercy of evils, only too clearly foreseen. He died in 1376, and Edward roused himself to proclaim the young Richard Earl of Chester and Prince of Wales, and at a festival of the Knights of the Garter on St. George's day, at Windsor, to knight him, and set him at the feast that followed, above his own sons at table. But it was only a momentary flash; back fell the old King into his disgraceful obscurity, and "The swarm, that in his noontide beams were born,

left him in his ignoble slavery at Shene, and made their

way to the little Court, held at Kennington by the Dowager Princess of Wales and her son Prince Richard.

Foremost among the throng who paid their court to the young Prince were the citizens of London, and Stowe gives us an amusing account of the Mayor and Corporation going as Christmas Mummers, in quaint disguises, for the delectation of the young Richard. It was very early in the year 1377, on the Sunday before Candlemas (or the Feast of the Purification, which occurs on the 2nd of February), that "Hither came in the night one hundred and thirty citizens, disguised and well horsed, in a mummery, and with sounds of trumpet, sackbuts, cornets, shalms, and other minstrels, and innumerable torchlights of wax, rode from Newgate, through Cheape, over the bridge, through Southwarke, and so to Kennington, beside Lambeth, where the young Prince remained with his mother and the Duke of Lancastere, his uncle, the Earls of Cambridge, (afterwards Duke of York), Hertford, Warwicke, and Suffolke, with divers other lords. In the first rank did ride forty-eight in the likeness and habit of esquires, two and two together, clothed in red coats and gowns of serge or sandal (?) with comely visors on their faces; after them came riding fortyeight Knights in the same livery of colour and stuff; then followed one, highly arrayed like an Emperor, and after him some distance one stately attired like a pope, whom followed twenty-four Cardinals, and after them, eight or ten with black visors not amiable, as if they had been legatees from some foreign Princes."

These maskers after they had entered Kennington, alighted from their horses, and entered the hall on foot; which done, "the Prince, his mother, and the lords, came out of the chamber, into the hall, whom the said mummers did salute, showing by a pair of dice upon the table their

C