those of Ben Jonson. Nor would there be any improbability in the idea of Shakspeare and Jonson being present at such a fête, as Shakspeare lived at St. Saviour's, and is very likely to have been invited to a festival in the adjoining parish; but the date of the picture is somewhat too early to be consistent with that notion.
Of the churchlike-looking building with a tower, at the right of the picture, I cannot give any account, unless it be "The Hermitage," marked on the plan. Of that place, however, I have not been able to learn anything, except that in the account of the churchwardens of St. Olave's, in 1615, they account for having received £13 of Mr. Jarvice Partridge, an attorney for Mr. Anthony Thomas and Mr. Arundale, for charges recovered against them in the suit between them and the governors of the grammar school, for the way from Crucifix Lane over Horsadown, unto the "Hermitage House," being Mr. Anthony Thomas's land, commonly called Westrame's Rents. Its situation was, as will be seen by the plan, near the head of St. Saviour's Dock, so called from the Abbey of St. Saviour, Bermondsey, to which the stream was formerly navigable for barges and boats; and as Mr. Anthony Thomas was the successor of the Knights of St. John, the hermitage, which stood on his land, had most probably in former times belonged to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem; and it was no uncommon thing for such hermitages to have chapels attached to them, as at Highgate, where the hermit was authorized by a royal grant of King Edward III. to take a toll for repairing the road. The hermitage at Highgate, which had a tower, became a chapel for the devotions of the inhabitants.[1]
- ↑ Hermitages were generally founded by an individual upon the ground of some religious house, who, after the death of the first hermit,
