104 Mr. N. F. Robarts’s 
I must not conclude without some reference to the famous 
Rood of Bermondsey. This is said to have been found upon the 
banks of the Thames, and caused the Abbey to be one of the 
famous places near London for pilgrimages. 
Prayers said before the shrine were considered very precious. 
In 1465 John Paston wrote to his mother: ‘‘Go visit the Rood 
of North door & St. Saviour in Bermondsey among while ye 
abide in London, & let my sister Margary go with you to pray 
to them that she may have a good husband or she come home 
again.’ I don’t know if the prayer was answered. 
It is recorded that on the demolition of the Abbey church Sir 
Thomas Pope caused the Rood of Grace to be removed and “ set 
up on the common in Horseleydown,” at the end of the present 
Crucifix Lane. 
We read that in 15388 (?1559), in the mayoralty of Sir 
Richard Graham, as follows: ‘‘M. Graham, may?. On Saynt 
Matthies day thapostull the xxiiii day of February Sonday 
did the Bishop of Rochester preche at Polls Cross & had 
standyng afore hym all his sermon tyme the pictur of the 
Roode of Grace in Kent & was gretely sought with pilgrims and 
when he had made an ende of his sermon the pictur was torn 
all to peces, then was the pictor of Saynte Saviour that had stand 
in Barmsey Abbey many yeres in Southwarke takyn doon.”” We 
must remember that the word ‘‘ picture’’ at the above date was 
used for statues and carvings, as well as paintings. 
So few remains of the Abbey have been preserved, that I must 
not conclude without alluding to a beautiful piece of plate, now 
in St. Mary Magdalen’s, which I cannot better do than by reading 
the description given by Rev. T. 8. Cooper in the ‘‘ Church Plate 
of Surrey” (‘ Surrey Arch. Journ.’). 
‘‘Not earlier than the fifteenth century, and not very early in 
that. 
“15 Cent. Prare. — This remarkable and most interesting 
piece of plate is said to have belonged originally to Bermondsey 
Abbey, and to have come into the possession of the parish church 
at the dissolution of that monastery in 15387. That it once be- 
longed to the Abbey seems very probable, but, since no mention 
of it occurs in Ed. VI.*’s ‘Inventory of Church Goods,’ it can 
hardly have come into possession of the parish so early as is 
supposed. On the reverse side of the boss is an indented lion’s 
head, uncrowned, which I had thought from its resemblance to 
the head of the lions or leopards of the royal arms as used by 
Henry III. and onwards might be a Goldsmiths’ Hall mark, but 
which Mr. Cripps thinks ‘is much more like an ownership mark’: oS 
in this case it would be a stamp used in the Abbey. 
‘In the centre of this beautiful plate is represented a lady 
about to place a helmet on the head of a kneeling knight. To 
