caused all necessary preparations to be made for the extraordinary scene he meditated, appeared before the church on the 16th of January, 1630-1. At his approach persons stationed near the door called out in a loud voice, "Open, open, ye everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may enter in." The archbishop then entered, and, falling upon his knees in the church and extending his arms, exclaimed "This place is holy, the ground is holy; in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy." Rising, he went towards the Chancel, throwing dust from the floor into the air on his way, bowed, went in procession round the church, repeated two psalms and a prayer. He then cursed all who should profane the place, bowing at the close of every sentence, and blessed all who had advanced the erection. What took place after the sermon is best described in the words of Prynne, every sentence of whose pungent and humorous satire must have cut deep, and given earnest of the coming retribution for the bold Puritan's cropped ears and slit nose. He says, "When the bishop approached near the communion-table, he bowed with his nose very near the ground some six or seven times; then he came to one of the corners of the table and there bowed himself three times; then to the second, third, and fourth corners, bowing at each corner three times; but when he came to the side of the table where the bread and wine was, he bowed himself seven times; and then, after the reading of many prayers by himself and his two fat chaplains (which were with him, and all this while were upon their knees by him, in their surplices, hoods, and tippets), he himself came near the bread, which was cut and laid in a fine napkin, and then he gently lifted up one of the corners of the said napkin, and peeping into it till he saw the bread (like a boy that peeped into a bird's-nest in a bush), and presently clapped it down again and flew back a step or two, and then bowed very low three times towards it and the table. When he beheld the bread, then he came near and opened the napkin again, and bowed as before; then he laid his hand upon the gilt cup, which was full of wine, with a cover upon it; so soon as he had pulled the cup a little nearer to him, he let the cup go, flew back, and bowed again three times towards it; then he came near again, and, lifting up the cover of the cup, peeped into it; and seeing the wine, he let fall the cover on it again, and flew nimbly back and bowed as before. After these and many other apish, antick gestures, he himself received and then gave the sacrament to some principal men only, they devoutly kneeling near the table; after which, more prayers being said, this scene and interlude ended." When Prynne applied the epithet interlude to these ceremonies, he was no doubt aware that it derived fresh force from the associations of the place; the churchyard of St. Katherine Cree seems to have been a popular place for the exhibition of dramatic interludes properly so called. Among entries of a similar nature in the parish books we read, under the date 1565, “Received of Hugh Grymes, for licence given to certain players to play their interludes in the churchyard, from the feast of Easter, An. D'ni. 1565, until the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, next coming, every holyday, to the use of the parish, the sum of 27s. 8d." Scaffolds, it appears, were erected all round the churchyard. Performances took place on Sundays, but in connection with this point, and the sacred character of the place, it is to be observed that the pieces performed would be of a religious

character, though with a plentiful admixture of the ordinary jests and practical fun. Of the three churches pulled down with St. Katherine's on the erection of Trinity Priory, we have probably a remnant of one of them-St. Michael's, in the beautiful crypt that still exists beneath a house near the pump at Aldgate, a most curious and interesting piece of antiquity.

Let us now turn into Bishopsgate Street, and from thence into the area at the back of Crosby Place, where a path runs between the fine young trees just putting forth their delicately green foliage, and through the centre of the bright level sward of the churchyard of St. Helen's to the church. The remarkable aspect of the exterior must strike every one. The ends of two naves or bodies of separate churches placed side by side, with a little turret at the intersection above, is the idea at once impressed. The interior shows us that this is no fanciful notion; the double church being there still more evident, although intimately connected together. An irregular, but far from unpleasing or unpicturesque effect is thus produced. One set of lofty pointed arches differs from another, ranges of windows extend along walls for a certain distance, and then unaccountably stop; the long aisle as the northernmost of the two churches appears to be-on one side, is balanced by a chancel occupying merely the eastern extremity of the other; the two great eastern windows extending side by side from the floor to the roof are not alike, yet is neither subordinate to the other; but every individual form is beautiful, and constructed of the same elements; and it

is surprising the harmony that may be thus produced even where the artistical laws of combination are violated. An air of indescribable antiquity, too, prevailing over and through all, tends powerfully to the same effect. In the part that now appears as an aisle, a long row of carved seats against the wall catches the eye, and the inquiry into their use explains the peculiar architectural exhibition around us. Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, and discoverer, in her own belief, of the very cross on which Christ was crucified and the very sepulchre where he was entombed, and who built on the spot a church, was of course canonized, and enjoyed all the honours pertaining, all the Christian world over, to that state of beatitude. Here there was a church dedicated to her from a very remote period, of which the nave of the present building is the descendant. About 1212 William Fitzwilliam, a goldsmith, founded on the same locality a priory of Benedictine nuns, and probably built a church for them, against that of St. Helen's; when the latter came into the possession of the nuns, which it did at no very distant period, it may have been thought desirable to lengthen the nuns' church to range with that of St. Helen's (hence the blank wall in the north-east corner, on which are the Bonds' and other monuments), and to throw them open to each other, or divided at least merely by the screen. between the intercolumniations, which we know to have existed here until the Reformation. The seats we have alluded to were those used by the nuns. Among the monuments of St. Helen's which most imperatively demand notice, we may first mention the oldest and most valuable-Sir John Crosby and his lady's, an exquisite specimen of the sculpture of the fifteenth century, exhibiting their effigies side by side, on a table monument; the costume is remarkable, particularly the head-dresses, and in all its details carefully defined. On one side near him, beneath an ambitious-looking Elizabethan canopy with double arches, lies Sir W. Pickering, one of the courtiers of the virgin queen, who is said to have aspired to a share of her throne, and who could plead as a justification of his hopes the possession of qualifications which make Strype call him the finest gentleman of the age in learning, arts, and warfare. Still farther, on the same side, directly before the great window of the nuns' church, and with the coloured rays from his own arms in the said window falling upon his tomb, lies Sir Thomas Gresham; that tomb, as becomes the eminent man whose remains it guards, is simplicity itself-a very large square slab, raised table high, bearing his sculptured arms, but no adornments, no inscription. Of the tablets and other memorials on the wall beyond Gresham's monument, the most remarkable are those to Sir William Bond, a distinguished merchant adventurer, who died in 1576, and his son's, Martin Bond, one of Elizabeth's captains at Tilbury. A still more interesting feature of this wall is the beautiful niche, with a row of open arches below, through which the nuns, according to Malcolm, heard mass on particular occasions (during punishment?) from the crypt below. By the way, the nuns of St. Helen's seem to have been somewhat wild and unruly, if we may judge from the complaints made by Kentwode, Dean of St. Paul's, who visited them in 1439. He makes many suspicious remarks about the employing of some "sad woman and discreet" to shut cloister doors, and keep keys, about not using nor haunting "any place within the priory [the precincts of which were extensive], through the which evil suspicion or slander might arise," about for

bearing to dance and revel except at Christmas," and other honest times of recreation," and so on.* At the other end of the nuns' church, an immense square mass of masonry, with urns rising at intervals, marks the place of interment of one Richard Bancroft, founder of the almshouses at Mile End, and who is understood to have exhibited this generosity in his last days as an atonement for conduct of a very different nature previously. His monument, we need hardly state, was a provision of his own, and from it yearly, for some time, his body was taken out (for which conveniences had been made), on the occasion of the preaching of the commemoration sermon (also founded by himself), and exhibited to the almsmen. Returning to the eastern part of the church, we find in the chancel, that occupies the south-east corner, the remarkable monument of Sir Julius Cæsar, Master of the Rolls, who died in 1636. It is a beautiful tabletomb, the workmanship of Nicholas Stone, who received for it one hundred guineas, and on the top exhibits a piece of black marble in the form of a parchment deed, inscribed with writing, and having a dependent seal. On reading the inscription we find it is truly in form a legal document, applied to an odd purpose: Sir Julius Cæsar gives his bond to Heaven to resign his life whenever it shall please God to call him, and the whole is duly signed and sealed.

Of the three remaining churches, St. Giles Cripplegate, Lambeth, and St. Margaret's Westminster, that alone our space will allow us to mention, we can speak but briefly. St. Giles was built by Alfune, the man who rendered Rahere such efficient assistance in the erection of St. Bartholomew's Priory, Smithfield, and derives the concluding part of its designation from the gate in the great wall, near which it was erected (one of the finest remaining pieces of that wall is still preserved in the churchyard), and which was called the cripple gate, from the number of deformed persons who haunted it to beg. The church was partially burnt in the sixteenth century, but a single glance at the tower and exterior walls shows how much remains of a date anterior to that event. Here rest, in addition to Milton and his father, Fox the martyrologist, Speed the historian, and "Sir Martyn Furbisher, Knt.," who is generally, but incorrectly, said to have been buried at Plymouth, where he was brought after receiving his death-wound in the assault on Croyzon, near Brest. His name is entered as we have transcribed it (from Malcolm) under the date 1594-5 Jan. 14. Numerous other interesting recollections of St. Giles might be mentioned; we must confine ourselves to two: here, on the 22nd of August, 1620, were married Oliver Cromwell and Elizabeth Bouchier; and in connexion with Cromwell's friend and secretary the great poet before mentioned, we cannot but feel interested in observing in the parish registers the frequent mention of the names of Brackley, Egerton, and Bridgewater, dear to the lovers of Milton and Comus;' the family of Bridgewater having had a house in the immediate neighbourhood.

The present Lambeth Church is of the period of Edward IV. From its connexion with the palace adjoining, several of the archbishops have been interred in it, including Bancroft, Tenison, Hutton, and Secker. Bishops Thirlby and Tunstal also repose within its walls. A military-looking memorial to Robert Scot records the services of one of Gustavus Adolphus's English followers, and

* See Dugdale's' Monasticon,' and Malcolm, vol. iii. p. 548.

the inventor of leathern artillery, which he used with great effect in the service of the Swedish monarch. In one of the windows is a painted figure of a man (said to be a pedlar) and a dog; according to tradition, the piece of land known as Pedlar's Acre was given to the parish by the individual here commemorated. The churchyard has a monument to the Tradescants, famous antiquaries during the reigns of the Charleses, who lived at Lambeth, and formed there the first Muscum of Curiosities of which we have any record in England. Their garden. also was very valuable for the amazing number and variety of plants they had collected in it, from all parts of the world.

The crection of St. Margaret's, Westminster, was owing to the desire of the Confessor to relieve the monks of the Abbey that he had so magnificently rebuilt from the inconveniences attending its use as a parish church: hence that proximity to the grander structure, which would hardly have been permitted under any other circumstances, and which almost makes it seem a part of it, viewed but from a short distance. St. Margaret's has been twice rebuilt;—in the reign of Edward I. by the princely-minded merchants of the Staple, and again in that of Edward IV.: from which period we may justly date the present structure, in spite of the extensive repairs that have taken place in 1735 and in 1803. Here lies the illustrious Printer, of whom we read in the parish registers: "1478. Item, the day of burying William Caxton, for ii. torches and iiii. tapers at a low mass;" and a similar entry, under the year 1491, shows the fitting honours that were paid to his memory: a handsome tablet has been placed in the church of late years by the Roxburgh Club. Here also was buried Skelton, the satirical poet of Henry VIII.'s reign, who was fain to take and to keep the Abbey sanctuary, out of Cardinal Wolsey's way; Lord Howard of Effingham, Elizabeth's gallant Lord High Admiral, who had the chief defence of the kingdom intrusted to his charge, at the period of the Spanish Armada, and to whose and to his lady's memory there is here a sumptuous monument, with their effigies; Sir Walter Raleigh, brought hither after his execution in the neighbouring Palace Yard; that "great man," as Malcolm twice calls him, Sir Philip Warwick, who, if our readers remember him at all, will most probably recollect him merely as giving an interesting description of Cromwell's appearance in the House of Commons, as a young member; and, lastly, Milton's wife, Catherine, buried here, Feb. 10, 1657, the "late espoused saint" of his pathetic and beautiful 23rd sonnet. The church, as the place of assemblage for the Members of the House of Commons during the sittings of Parliament, is kept in excellent order, and exhibits many interesting features. The architecture, where ancient, is beautiful; and more particularly the altar recess, with its lofty groined roof, its panelled niches, and fresco designs. But the painted eastern window is the grand attraction of St. Margaret's. This represents the whole history of the Crucifixion in what is considered the most masterly style of the art, and the effect is truly gorgeous. The history of this window is worthy of commemoration. It was made by the orders of the magistrates of Dort, in Holland, as a suitable present to Henry VII., for the chapel erected by him in the Abbey; hence the figure of that monarch at his devotions, and the red and white roses introduced into the picture. Henry, however, dying before it was completed, the window fell into the hands of the