Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral: Formerly the Collegiate Church of St. Saviour, Otherwise St. Mary Overie. A Short History and Description of the Fabric, with Some Account of the College and the SeeWorley, George
History
Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral: Formerly the Collegiate Church of St. Saviour, Otherwise St. Mary Overie. A Short History and Description of the Fabric, with Some Account of the College and the See
Worley, George
Southwark Cathedral (London, England)
The next bay is occupied by a short two-light window (at present
plain), and by =John Gower's Tomb= in the space below. This fine
monument was removed to the east side of the south transept during the
destructive alterations of the early nineteenth century, but had been
worse treated by its friends in 1748, when a large sum was spent on
its "embellishment." Its history, combined with that of the Priors who
erected it, may be summed up in the opening words of the inscription
which was placed in a marble tablet at the back of the tomb to
commemorate the embellishment referred to, not without a touch of
sarcasm, though, of course, unintentional: "Hoc viri inter inclytos
memorandi." Gower died in 1408, eight years after his friend Chaucer.
He had been a liberal benefactor to the Church, and founded a chantry
in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, where he was eventually buried.
The chapel and chantry are no more, but the monument marks the spot,
having been restored in 1894 to its first position. It is in the
Perpendicular style, and consists of an altar-tomb, with a dado,
ornamented by seven panels in front, on which lies the effigy of the
poet, surmounted by a canopy of three ogee arches, with an inner order
of five cusps, and terminating in crocketed pinnacles. There is a
pilaster set angle-wise at each end, banded at the separate divisions
of the monument, and also rising into crocketed pinnacles. There are
similar pinnacles between the arches of the canopy. Behind the canopy
is a screen, divided into open panels of three trefoil-headed lights.
The cornice at the top is modern, and the hands and nose of the figure
are restorations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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