hurch and surrounding district. The new dedication was
suggested by, and intended to perpetuate the memory of, the convent of
that name in Bermondsey (founded by Alwin Child, a London citizen, in
1082), which shared the fate of its companions at the Dissolution.

Soon after the amalgamation, St. Margaret's Church was secularized,
and divided into three portions for use respectively as a Sessions'
Court, a Court of Admiralty, and a prison. It stood on the ground
where the old Southwark Town Hall was afterwards built, itself a
perpetuation of the secular uses to which the deconsecrated church was
put before it was destroyed. A relic of St. Margaret's survives in the
shape of a monumental slab to Aleyn Ferthing, five times Member for
Southwark, about the middle of the fourteenth century. The stone was
discovered in 1833 during some excavations on the site of the old
church, and transferred to St. Saviour's, where it is imbedded in the
pavement of the retro-choir. From 1540 the Priory Church and Rectory
were leased to the parishioners by the Crown, at a rental of about L50
per annum, till 1614, when the church was purchased right out from
James I for the sum of L800.

The Corporation into whose hands the newly constituted parish of St.
Saviour's passed in 1540 consisted of thirty vestrymen, of whom six
were churchwardens.[5]

The latter, as representatives of the ancient _Seniores
Ecclesiastici_, were charged with the protection of the edifice and
church furniture, but the records show that they had no special
veneration for either. The Act of 1540, appointing them to St.
Saviour's, had formed them into a Corporation in continuation of the
_Perpetual Guild or Fraternity of the Assumption_, incorporated in
1449. This Guild was afterwards merged in the Churchwardens of St.
Margaret's, whence the existing officers were transferred to St.
Saviour's on the amalgamation of the parishes, and others added to
their number. With the help of their fellow vestrymen they soon set to
work to render the Collegiate Church more convenient. To secure an
easy communication between that church and the adjacent chapel of St.
Mary Magdalene, they cut through the south wall of the choir, and
constructed four clumsy arches in it, thus opening the way from one
building to the other. From that time forward the smaller of the two
was used as a vestibule, and the other chapels and chantries
pertaining to the larger church were doomed to destruction