convent of that name in Bermondsey (founded by Alwin Child, a London citizen, in 1082), which shared the fate of its companions at the Dissolution.

Soon after the amalgamation, St. Margaret's Church was secularized, and divided into three portions for use respectively as a Sessions' Court, a Court of Admiralty, and a prison. It stood on the ground where the old Southwark Town Hall was afterwards built, itself a perpetuation of the secular uses to which the deconsecrated church was put before it was destroyed. A relic of St. Margaret's survives in the shape of a monumental slab to Aleyn Ferthing, five times Member for Southwark, about the middle of the fourteenth century. The stone was discovered in 1833 during some excavations on the site of the old church, and transferred to St. Saviour's, where it is imbedded in the pavement of the retro-choir. From 1540 the Priory Church and Rectory were leased to the parishioners by the Crown, at a rental of about £50 per annum, till 1614, when the church was purchased right out from James I for the sum of £800.

The Corporation into whose hands the newly constituted parish of St. Saviour's passed in 1540 consisted of thirty vestrymen, of whom six were churchwardens.[5]

The latter, as representatives of the ancient Seniores Ecclesiastici, were charged with the protection of the edifice and church furniture, but the records show that they had no special veneration for either. The Act of 1540, appointing them to St. Saviour's, had formed them into a Corporation in continuation of the Perpetual Guild or Fraternity of the Assumption, incorporated in 1449. This Guild was afterwards merged in the Churchwardens of St. Margaret's, whence the existing officers were transferred to St. Saviour's on the amalgamation of the parishes, and others added to their number. With the help of their fellow vestrymen they soon set to work to render the Collegiate Church more convenient. To secure an easy communication between that church and the adjacent chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, they cut through the south wall of the choir, and constructed four clumsy arches in it, thus opening the way from one building to the other. From that time forward the smaller of the two was used as a vestibule, and the other chapels and chantries pertaining to the larger church were doomed to destruction, as being no longer required under the altered conditions. The proceedings which strike us as most sacrilegious occurred in the Lady Chapel. Perhaps they cannot be better described than in Stow's graphic words:

That the description is not exaggerated is proved by the parish registers, which also show that the state of things went on for some years and did not improve with time. On 15th May, 1576, for instance, a vestry order is recorded in which the lessee of the chapel is called upon to repair certain broken windows and remove nuisances. In the following December, a further entry states that fourteen members of the vestry went in a body to the chapel to see whether their orders had been attended to, having allowed the lessee more than six months to act on the notice. They found the place turned into a stable "with hogs, a dung-heap and other filth" about, and were thereupon empowered to take legal proceedings to keep the tenant up to his contract.[6]

In the reign of Edward VI the Prayer-book and its vernacular services were introduced. The people had hardly got used to them before the accession of Queen Mary, and the consequent papal reaction, restored the Latin mass, around which most of the religious controversies of the time were furiously raging. During that brief reign the retro-choir was turned to more respectable use as a Spiritual Court, though the memories attaching to it in that character constitute a gloomy chapter in its history which we would gladly eliminate.

On Monday, 28th January, 1555, and the two following days, a commission, appointed by the Cardinal Legate, sat there for the trial of certain preachers and heretics. It was presided over by Bishops Gardiner, of Winchester, and Bonner, of London, and included eleven other Bishops, besides several eminent laymen. On the first day the proceedings were open to the public, but as the crowd was inconvenient, and the example or logic of the accused thought likely to be contagious, the doors were closed on the Tuesday and Wednesday, except to a few privileged spectators. The trials ended in the condemnation of six clergymen of high standing, viz.:

1. The Rev. Lawrence Saunders, Rector of Allhallows', Bread Street.

2. The Rev. John Bradford, Prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral.

3. The Rev. John Rogers, Prebendary of St. Paul's, and Vicar of St. Sepulchre's, Newgate Street.

4. The Rev. Rowland Taylor, Rector of Hadleigh, Suffolk.

5. The Right Rev. Robert Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's, and

6. The Right Rev. John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, all of whom were afterwards burnt. They are commemorated in the windows of the chapel, which include the Ven. John Philpot, Archdeacon of Winchester, who suffered at the same time, though his examination was held elsewhere. The odium of this melancholy transaction of course rests on the presiding Bishops, neither of whom was afterwards anxious to take the undivided responsibility. Bishop Gardiner did not long survive it. He died on the 13th November, in the same year, at Whitehall, whence his body was conveyed, via Southwark, to Winchester for interment. The funeral procession went by water from Westminster to St. Mary Overy, where his obsequies were performed, and his intestines buried before the high altar, in order that the honour of holding his remains might be shared by the two principal churches in his diocese.[7]

Immediately on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, steps were taken to reconcile the conflicting elements within the Church of England, whose extreme representatives had been brought into violent collision in the previous reign. A compromise was offered to them in a new Prayer-book, which aimed at combining the principles of the first and second books of Edward VI, in order to comprehend within the pale of the Church those who had been excluded from it by a rigid interpretation of the rubrics on either hand. On one side the rubrics of Edward's second book were modified so as to allow greater liberty in the use of ornaments and vestments, while on the other, the sentences employed at the distribution of the elements in Holy Communion, which had been held to support two opposite theories of the Sacrament in the previous books, were united in the new one, as involving no real contradiction.

Notwithstanding the rubric which was inserted in Elizabeth's book for the retention of the ornaments in use under Edward VI, an order was