adjoining the road leading as above, is, to this day, called the King's Field. This abbey, and its environs, took up a great extent of land; for, on the north-east side, fronting this view, were the large gardens and orchards, encompassed with the antient stone wall still entire, and more than half a mile round, enclosing a piece of ground of twelve acres, which is now, and has been for a number of years, rented by gardeners, to supply the London markets; and famous for producing the best artichokes in England. On the left hand of the road, leading from Water Street to the east front of the abbey, are fine meadows, extending from the back part of the High Street up to the building or abbey farm; and, opposite the long garden wall, on the right side of the said road, and, without doubt, much more lands now converted into gardens and tenements, formerly lay open and belonged to it." In the principal street, which is wide and contains many handsome houses and shops, is situated the PARISH CHURCH *. This *There are two burial-grounds, one adjacent to, and the other on a hill, higher than the top of the church, a little way on the road leading to Dover. In no printed account of Kent has any hint been suggested respecting the time when this inclosure was allotted for the interment of the dead. Perhaps a research into the history of a chantry, in the parish of Dartford, may tend to a discovery of this hitherto obscure point. From several antient MSS. it appears, that there was formerly in, or near, Dartford, a little chapel or chantry dedicated to St. Edmund, a Saxon king and martyr. John de Bykenore, of this parish, is imagined to have been the founder of it; a chaplain was, at least, licensed to it, upon his nomination, as early as the year 1326; and his widow, Joan, and Robert Bykenore, were successively patrons of it till 1371, when the prioress and the sisters of the nunnery then at Dartford, as before noticed, are mentioned as being possessed of that right. Five marks a year was the original allowance to the chaplain, but there are grounds for suspecting that care had not been taken at first to secure the legal payment of this pension. A deed of endowment, under the common seal of the nunnery, seems not to have been delivered to the bishop of the diocese till 1463, in which, however, a field, called the Tanner's Field, was declared to be charged with this annual stipend. Under this instrument the chaplain became also entitled to a house, with some fresh and salt marslı appertaining ! This fabric stands near the river, in the eastern part of the town, and is dedicated to the Holy Trinity; it is a spacious edifice, and consists of a nave, chancel, and aisles, with an embattled tower, at the west end: the church was repaired at the expense of the parishioners, in the year 1793. Over the arch of the east window of the chancel, now stopped up, but made in the time of Edward the Third, by HAYMO DE HETHE, bishop of Rochester, is the head of that prelate, in stone. A mural monument, in the chancel, commemorates Sir JOHN SPILMAN, a German, who first introduced the manufacture of paper into this kingdom, in the reign of Elizabeth; she granted him the subordinate manor of Portbridge, or Bycknore, in Dart ford. appertaining to the same, to two acres and an half of land at Fulwick, and to one acre more of land opposite to the chapel of St. Edmund. By the will of Thomas Yngledew, a chaplain, who died in 1462, he was to be buried before the altar of the chapel of St. Edmund the king and martyr; and Thomas Worship, who had probably been an officiating priest in the same chantry, desired his body to be interred at the door of the chapel lately founded in the cemetery of St. Edmund in Dartford, above the charnel, on the west side, at the very entrance of the said door. This chantry was presented as ruinous in 1496; and in 1516, six parishioners were summoned to answer to a charge of neglecting the repairs of it. Most probably, no money was ever appropriated for this purpose, nor was it easy to prevail upon the inhabitants to subject themselves to the burden of supporting this building. The chantry was, however, dissolved in the reign of king Edward VI. and, having been founded for superstitious purposes, the revenues of it were granted to the crown by act of parliament. That the burial-ground under our review was the cemetery of the chapel of St. Edmund is no unlikely conclusion; and the foundation of an edifice, which may still be traced, adds some weight to this conjecture. Before a traveller leaves this repository of the dead, perhaps he may observe an epitaph cut on a head of stone, placed to the memory of a child of three years old; and, there being an inscriptive simplicity in the lines, he certainly will not be dissatisfied with another perusal of them. They are as follow: When the archangels' trumpets blow, And souls to bodies join; What crowds will wish their stay below VOL. V. No. 108. X Equally ford, which had previously been an appendage to the priory. In the thirty-first of Elizabeth, who knighted him, and to whom he was also jeweller, he obtained a license for the sole gathering, for ten years, of all rags, &c. necessary for the making of such paper. He died in 1607, at the age of fifty-five: his effigies, with that of his lady, arc exhibited on the monument kneeling at a desk. Near this, in the pavement, is a slab, inlaid with brasses, of a male and female under a rich canopy, with labels proceeding from their mouths, and a mutilated inscription beneath their feet: these represent RICHARD MARTYR, and his wife, both of whom died at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Several other inlaid slabs are in different parts of the church, and some are very curious. On one of them, in what is termed the south chancel, is a male figure, and two escutcheons in brass, with indents for a female, &c. and the following mutilated inscription going round the verge: dmi millesimo quingentesimo octavo, et Ellenor uxor ejus, que obijt die mensis Februarij ano. dmi M°.—LXXVII° Quorum animbs ppcietur Deus Amen. Between each word in this inscription, are ornamental figures, as a bell, a tun, a leaf, a rose, a trefoil slipped, a dog, a mallet, a leopard's head, a crescent, &c. Among the remaining memorials, are several for the BEERS and TWISTLETONS, of Horseman's Place, in this parish, and other respectable families*. Equally descriptive, and not less pleasing, is another on an infant, near the above. The following are the lines: So fades the lovely blooming flower, In this burial-ground is a monument to the memory of the first wife of William Perfect, M. D. of West Malling, in this county; who has rendered his name famous in this and succeeding ages, by his great and unparalleled success in the cure of insane persons, and for his tenderness in the treatment of those unfortunate maniacs who have claimed his care and attention. * Hasted. Beauties of England and Wales. The The charitable benefactions for the use of the poor, are numerous; an almshouse was founded here, under a licence from Henry the Sixth; and in an antient rental, it is called the Spytell House, where the leprous inhabet and dwell.'* It was in Dartford that the rebellion of Walter Hillier, the tyler, broke out in the reign of Richard II. On account of its great thoroughfare, this town is populous and thriving, and has many handsome buildings. A good market is held every Saturday, which is well supplied with corn, butchers meat, poultry, &c. and an annual fair is held on the 2d of August. Dartford is also famed for its artichokes; and gunpowder of a peculiar quality, manufactured here, is called Dart: ford powder. Richard Wich, vicar of this town, and afterwards of Harmondsworth, in Middlesex, was burnt on Tower Hill, London, June 17, 1440. Stow, in his Annals, thus mentions the circumstance: "Sir Richard Wich, vicar of Hermetsworth, in Essex, or Middlesex, sometime vicar of Dertford, in Kent, who had be fore abjured, was burnt on the Tower Hill the 17 of June. After whose death was great murmur among the people, for some said he was a good man and an holy, and put to death by malice and some said the contrary, so that many men and women went by night to the place where he was burnt, and offered their money, images of wax, and other things, making their prayers, kneeling, and kissing the ground, bare away with them. the ashes of his body for holy reliques, &c. This endured eight dayes, till the mayor and aldermen ordained men of armes, to restraine the people, who apprehended many and sent them to prison, amongst whom was the vicar of Berking church, (Thomas Virby) beside the Tower, in whose parish all this was done, who had received the offering of the simple people. And to excite them to offer more fervently to the fulfilling of his false covetousness, he had medled ashes with the powder of spices, and strewed them in the place where the priest was burnt, and so the simple people were deceived, weening the sweete savour had * Hasted. Beauties of England and Wales. come of the ashes of the dead priest: all which the said vicar of Berking church confessed in prison. This have I noted the more at large, because some have written the vicar of Berking to be burnt, though he better deserved then the other." A little distance from the summit of Dartford Hill is the open plain, upon which king Edward III. is imagined to have held the tournament before-mentioned; and the duke of York, in the reign of Henry VI. certainly assembled here a numerous army. It is by many called Dartford Brim, by some the Brimpt, and by others the Brink; but Brent, which signifies Burnt, is the antient name; and Rapin, in his detail of the latter transaction, stiles it, from Hall's Chronicle, the Burnt Heath; whence it acquired that appellation is not known. In digging the gravel-pit at the north-east corner of this ground, a few years since, the labourers discovered the skeletons of several bodies, eight in one part, and four in another. When the assizes were held at Dartford, the Brent is supposed to have been the place of execution, and therefore these were imagined to have been the bones of criminals who had suffered death under the sentence of the law *. About two miles and a half south of this town is the village of DARENT, pronounced DARNE. It originally be * One branch of what is usually stiled the Roman Watling Street is supposed to have been continued from the bank of the Thames, a little above Lambeth Palace, through Rochester and Canterbury to Dover; but, by the alterations and improvements upon the turnpike road, particularly on Blackheath, Shooter's Hill, and Bexley Heath, the traces of the old Roman way are almost obliterated. Beyond Dartford Brent, however, there is much less difficulty in discovering the remains of it. East south-east is nearly the point of direction of the Watling Street in Kent; and soon after the traveller comes upon the fine open plain just mentioned, if he falls into a track that runs between the turnpike road and the road leading to Green Street Green, it will convey him into a lane, still often termed the Roman road; and not without reason, since in divers parts, it appears in a plain ridge. In some places the hedge stood upon it, but in others, for many yards together, it lies between the present highway and the hedge on the left; especially near a farm house, the true name of which is Blacksole, though vulgarly called Hungergut Hall. longed |