London (England) -- History; London (England) -- Social life and customs
Now behold what may happen as a punishment for avarice! The old man one
day, devising a way to save a few meals--for at a time when death is in
the house who can think upon eating and drinking?--pretended that he was
dead, and laid himself out with a white sheet over him. Alas! He was
cruelly mistaken. His servants, learning what had happened, loudly and
openly rejoiced, stripped the larder of all that it contained, set the
casks flowing, opened the bottles, and began to feast and sing. It was
more than the old man could endure. He sprang from his bed and rushed
among them; they fled, shrieking, because they thought it was his ghost;
one, bolder than the rest, stood his ground to face the ghost, and
banged the apparition over the head with the butt-end of a broken oar,
so that the unlucky ghost fell down dead in real earnest. What happened
when they came to bury him may be read in the book above referred to.
The miser's fortune thereupon devolved upon his daughter. She
immediately sent for her lover, who hastened to obey his mistress. Alas!
on his way the unlucky knight was thrown from his horse and was killed.
The girl, distracted by this misfortune, founded a convent of sisters at
the south end of the ferry, and taking refuge in her own Foundation,
retired from the world. Here in course of time she died. Later on,
another pious lady changed the convent of sisters to a college of
priests, and very early in the twelfth century two Norman knights, named
Pont de l'Arche and D'Ansey, founded here a great priory, of which the
present Church of St. Saviour was then the chapel. The Effigy of Pont de
l'Arche (or perhaps it is that of his friend D'Ansey) is still to be
seen, with no inscription upon it, in the church. The chancel, the two
transepts, and the Ladye Chapel now remain of the old church with its
later additions, and at this moment they are rebuilding the nave in
something like the former style.
[Illustration: ST. SAVIOUR'S DOCK]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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