“Maitland and Entick, at page 44 of their History, are not much more believing than Lambarde, the Lawyer; for they assert that the Convent of Bermondsey, founded by Alwin Child, a Citizen of London, in the year 1082, was the first religious house on the South side of the River, within the Bills of Mortality. The second, say they, speaking after Sir William Dugdale in his ‘_Monasticon Anglicanum_,’ London, 1661, folio, pages 84, 940, was the Priory of St. Mary Overies, founded by William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester, in the reign of King Henry I. Now Bishop Tanner, in his ‘_Notitia Monastica_,’ best edition by James Nasmith, Cambridge, 1787, folio, XX. Surrey,--for you know the book is unpaged and arranged alphabetically under Counties, of which Pennant heavily complains,--is inclined to think that Stow was in the right, although he had not discovered any thing either in print or manuscript to support his narrative. He is also willing to believe, that Bishop Giffard did not do more for St. Mary Overies, than rebuild the body of the Church: and, certainly, that he did not, in 1106, place Regular Canons there, since he refers to Matthew of Westminster to prove that they were then but newly come into England, and placed in that Church; whilst Bishop Giffard was himself in exile until the year 1107. The ‘_Domesday Book_,’ also, the most veritable and invaluable record of our land, thus hints at a Religious House in Southwark; which, as that Survey was made about the year 1083, was, of course, long anterior to the times of which I spake last. You will find the passage in Nichols’ edition of the register, London, 1783, folio, volume i. _Sudrie_, folio 32 a, column 1; and the words are as follow. ‘The same Bishop,’--that is to say, Odo, Bishop of Baieux,--‘has in Southwark one Monastery, and one Harbour. King Edward held it on the day he died.’--January the 5th, 1066--‘Whoever had the Church, held it of the King. From the profits of the Harbour, where ships were moored, the King had two parts.’ ‘Now,’ concludes the worthy Dr. Tanner, ‘if _Monasterium_ here denote any thing more than an ordinary Church, it may be thought to mean this Religious House, there being no pretence for any other in this Borough to claim to be as old as the Confessor’s time, or, indeed, as the making of the Domesday Book, A. D. 1083.’ _Vide_ Sign. U u 2; _Notes_ r, and s.