Springfield daily republic. [volume] (Springfield, O. [Ohio]) 1887-1888, 1888-04-28

one more illustration of what a national pas
sion for gain may do and when the undoing
IAN never more be, how men may sigh and
wonder and shake heads, trihe
less thick than the fathers own, but
still thick enough to prevent too
sui iden entrance Of unpleasant facts.
We are not far behind them in our own
tendencies, but there is certain satisfaction
in recording an especially fagrant case of
destroying certain and time honored good,
merely for trihing addition to the annual
register of national receipts.
On this spot, where ships of every nation
are disgorging strange cargoes, stood for 700
years church known as the Abbey of East
London, and Walter Besant has lately told
its story. A church, ''poor and small, COM
pared with the Abbey of the West, but stately
and ancient; endowed by half dozen sover-
eigns; consecrated by the memories of 700
wears; filled with the monuments of great
men and small men buried within her walls,
standing in her own precinct; with her
own courts, spiritual and temporal;
with her own judges and officers; sur
rounded by the claustral building be-
longing to masters, brethren, sisters and
bedeswomen. The church and the hospital
had long survived the intentions of the found
ers; yet as they stood, SO ancient and vener-
able, amid dense population of rough sailors
and sailor folk, with such enormous possibiD
ties for good and useful work, sacred and
secular, one is lost in wonder that the con-
sent of parliament could be obtained for
their destruction.
There is less wonder, when one reflects that
the date of the outrage was 1S25-a year and
a time in which there was small thought of
any claim Of the poor or the worker, save
here and there in an isolated mind So there
came to the old church its final service, and
with sounds of weeping and wailing the last
words were spoken and the gray, ivy covered
walls given to their fate "When the voice
of the preacher died away the destroyers be-
gan their work They pulled down the church,
they hacked up the monuments and dug up
the bones; they destroyed the masters house
and cut down the trees in his quiet orchard;
they pulled down the brothers houses round
the little ancient square; they pulled down
the row of sisters and bedeswomen's houses;
thee swept the people out Of the precinct and
destroyed the streets: they pulled down the
courts and opened the doors of the prison;
they grubbed up tie burying ground, and
with the bones and the dust of the dead and
the rubbish of the foundations they filed up
the reservoir When all was gone they let
the water into the big hole they had made
and called it ST. katherines dock"
What remains then of the old founda-
tion' Nothing but the revenue, begin
ming with that from the founder,
but belonging certainly to that locality
which the founder had chosen. She,
Matilda, Stephens queen, the sorrowful
mother of twa dead children, thought only
of making bridge for the little princes
souls from purgatory to heaven, by the har-
monious voices of the master, the brothers
ana sisters" 1t was religious house with q
definite purpose. that of praying for the souls
OF these two children, and when her grant of
money had been swallowed up and the first
purpose ceased, other kings and queens saw
that here was worthy work to be done, and
ia their turn endowed it anew When the
reformation abolished purgatory, the church
still went on with service for the inhabitants
Of the vicinity, but in time part of the rev.
enue was diverted for school, thirty-five
boys and fifteen girls being maintained by
the hospital This was little, but better than
nothing, and the work went on till 1925 and
the crown passed upon it.
When this was accomplished, some twinges
of conscience came to the doers, and thus it
CHANGED that as a memorial the buildings in