which the illuminator had, no doubt, personally witnessed in his own time. The other, which has also been engraven in the same work, page 113, plate xv. shews two armed knights getting ‘grysly together,’ as the ‘_Morte d’Arthur_’ calls it, in boats;
and you will find it under the 60th Psalm, ‘_Dominus repulisti nos_,’ &c.
“Stow, in his ‘_Survey_,’ volume i. page 301, mentions a very rude imitation of this kind of jousting on the water at London; when he says, ‘I have seen also in the summer season, upon the River of Thames, some rowed in wherries, with staves in their hands, flat at the fore-end, running one against another, and, for the most part, one or both of them were overthrown and well ducked.’ In Queen Mary’s Manuscript, under the psalm of ‘_Misericordiam et judicium cantabo_,’ is also a representation of two fiends hurling a Monk from a rude stone Bridge; but as I rather think that did not occur at London, I mention it no farther.
“But now, to return to our subject:--Stow relates the particulars of the great fire of 1135-36, at page 58 of his ‘_Survey_,’ citing in the margin the ‘_Annals of Bermondsey_,’ and the ‘_Book of Trinity Priory_,’ as his authorities. The latter of these is, perhaps, now no more; but in the former you may find the conflagration mentioned at page 13 b, where it is said to have happened in the year 1135, and to have extended to the Church of St. Clement Danes. It was probably in the Register of Trinity Priory, that Stow found a notice that London Bridge was not only repaired, but a new one erected of elm timber, in 1163, by the most excellent Peter of Colechurch, Priest and Chaplain; since I find it in none of the historians with whom I am acquainted. It is, however, much better authenticated that the same pious architect began his labours upon the first stone one in 1176; for, in the ‘_Annals of Waverley_,’ at page 161, you find the following entry.--‘1176. In this year, the Stone Bridge at London is begun by Peter, the Chaplain of Colechurch.’ Here, therefore, ends the history of the infancy of London Bridge: and a very chargeful infancy it was, for, as old Stow says, ‘it was maintained partly by the proper lands thereof, partly by the liberality of divers persons, and partly by taxations in divers shires, as I have proved, for the space of 215 years,’--And now, Mr. Geoffrey Barbican, your very good health.”