Among places of minor interest in Southwark, which doubtless Milton well knew, was the "Tabard Inn," the starting-point of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims. This stood on High Street, and was not demolished until 1875. In Milton's time it was inscribed: "This is the Inne where Sir Jeffrey Chaucer and the nine and twenty pilgrims lay in their journey to Canterbury anno 1380." It had then a more modern façade than Chaucer saw. The Globe Theatre of Shakespearian fame was then on the site of the present brewery of Barclay, Perkins, & Co. The visitor to the region just south of London Bridge who would see a bit of quaint domestic architecture that recalls the past, would do well to seek out, amid the noisy, hideous streets, a tiny green oasis, bordered by what is known as the Red Cross Hall and cottages. Thanks to Miss Octavia Hill and her friends, the little Gothic hall, with its frescoes of civic heroes, designed by Walter Crane, and its little row of picturesque gabled houses, stand here as a rest and solace to weary eyes and hearts that hunger amid ugliness for beauty. Just such houses Milton saw at every turn in the beautiful old London that he knew.
No church in Southwark and only two or three in London are of so great interest to the antiquarian as St. Saviour's or St. Mary Overy's, whose curious name is explained in every guide-book. It has a record of more than a thousand years. Chaucer, Cruden, the author of the "Concordance," Doctor Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Baxter, and Bunyan were closely connected with this church and parish. In one of its chapels, in the generation preceding Milton, beneath its three-light window, the Bishops of Winchester and London, and others acting for the see of Rome, tried and condemned to death by the flames seven ministers of Christ. Their only crime was opposition to the "usurpations of the Papal Schism." Among these were the rector of the church in which a half century later Milton was baptised, Bishop Hooper, who was burned at Gloucester, and John Rogers, the famous martyr of Smithfield. Another heretic, more fortunate than these seven, had just previously been condemned to the stake and pardoned for the sake of his musical talents. In this stately edifice, which has recently been admirably restored, lies the dust of many dear to lovers of poetry. Chaucer's fellow poet, friend, and teacher, John Gower, lies under a lofty Gothic canopy; his sculptured head rests on three large volumes, which represent his works. Milton's contemporaries, Massinger and Fletcher, lie buried in the same grave. The latter died of the plague when Milton was at Cambridge. His well-known poem on "Melancholy," beginning: