“I have made it evident then, and, indeed, it is agreed to on all sides, that there _was_ a Wooden Bridge over the Thames, at London, at least as early as the year 1052; and Maitland, at page 44 of his History, is inclined to believe that it was erected between the years 993 and 1016, at the public cost, to prevent the Danish incursions up the River. John Stow, however, in volume i., page 57, of his ‘_Survey_,’ attributes the building of the first Wooden Bridge over the Thames, at London, to the pious Brothers of St. Mary’s Monastery, on the Bankside. He gives you this account on the authority of Master Bartholomew Fowle, _alias_ Fowler, _alias_ Linsted, the last Prior of St. Mary Overies; who, surrendering his Convent on the 14th of October, 1540,--in the 30th year of Henry VIII.,--had a pension assigned him of £100 per Annum, which it is well known, that he enjoyed until 1553. This honest gentleman you find spoken of in John Stevens’s ‘_Supplement to Sir William Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum_,’ London, 1723, folio, volume ii., page 98; and from him old Stow states, that, ‘a Ferry being kept in the place where now the Bridge is built, the Ferryman and his wife deceasing, left the said Ferry to their only daughter, a maiden named Mary; which, with the goods left her by her parents, as also with the profits rising of the said Ferry, built a house of Sisters in the place where now standeth the East part of St. Mary Overies Church, above the choir, where she was buried. Unto the which house she gave the oversight and profits of the Ferry. But afterwards, the said house of Sisters being converted into a College of Priests, the Priests built the Bridge of Timber, as all the other great Bridges of this land were, and, from time to time, kept the same in good reparations. Till at length, considering the great charges of repairing the same, there was, by aid of the Citizens of London, and others, a Bridge built with arches of stone, as shall be shewed.’ “The first who attacks this story is William Lambarde, the Perambulator of Kent, in his ‘_Dictionarium Angliæ Topographicum et Historicum_,’ London, 1730, quarto, page 176; wherein he scruples not to call Prior Fowler ‘an obscure man,’ whom he charges with telling this narrative, ‘without date of time, or warrant of writing,’ and then sums up his remarks in these words. ‘As for the first buildinge, I leave it to eche man’s libertye what to beleve of it; but as for the name Auderie, I think Mr. Fowler mistoke it, for I finde bothe in the Recordes of the Queene’s Courtes and otherwise, it signifieth over the water, as Southrey, on the South side of the water: the ignorance whereof, might easily dryve Fowler--a man belyke unlearned in the Saxon tongue,--to some other invention.’