Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
mutinous disrespect: flesh and blood--at least, the flesh and blood of a
miser--could endure it no longer; and starting up he caught hold of the
funeral taper, determined to chastise them for their waste. One of them
seeing the old man struggling in the sheet, and thinking it was the
devil or a ghost, and becoming alarmed, caught hold of the butt end of a
broken oar, and at one blow struck out his brains! "Thus," says the
tradition, "he who thought only to counterfeit death, occasioned it in
earnest; and the law acquitted the fellow of the act, as he was the
prime cause of his own death." The daughter's lover, hearing of the
death of old Overs, hastened up to London with all possible speed; but
riding fast, his horse unfortunately threw him, just as he was entering
the city, and broke his neck. This, with her father's death, had such an
effect on the spirits of Mary Overs, that she was almost frantic, and
being troubled with a numerous train of suitors, she resolved to
retire into a nunnery, and to devote the whole of her wealth, which was
enormous, to purposes of charity and religion. She laid the foundation
of "a famous church, which at her own charge was finished, and by her
dedicated to the Virgin Mary." This, tradition says, was the origin of
St. Mary Overs, Southwark, a name which it received in memory of its
beautiful, but unfortunate foundress.
On an old sepulchre, in St. Saviour's church, may be seen to this day,
reclining in no very easy posture, the figure of a poor,
emaciated-looking being; which rumor has declared to be the figure of
John Overs, the ferryman. There is not much to warrant the conclusion,
except, perhaps, the similarity which the mind might discover in the
stone effigy and the aspect with which, in idea, we instinctively endow
all such objects of penury. The figure looks thin enough for a man who
lived on the pickings of stale bones, and musty bread, it must be
allowed; and the countenance certainly looks miserly enough for any
miser; but then the marble tablet above merely tells the passer by that
the body of one William Emerson lyeth there, "who departed out of this
life," one day in June, in the year 1575.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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