There are several chapels of ease to this parish. Lewisham gave birth and sepulture to the excellent Dr. BRIAN DUPPA, bishop of Winchester, 1660. He is said to have received 50,000l. for fines soon after his translation from Salisbury to Winton. It is certain that he remitted no less than 30,000l. to his tenants, and left 16,000l. to be expended in acts of charity and munificence. He left legacies to Christchurch, Oxford, of which he had been dean; and to All Souls, in that university, of which he had been fellow; as well as to the cathedrals of Chichester, Salisbury, and Winchester, of which he had been bishop; besides 300l. towards rebuilding St. Paul's cathedral. He also founded an almshouse at Richmond. He was such a pious prelate that the profligate Charles II. craved his blessing on his knees, as the bishop lay on his death-bed, in 1662. Bishop Duppa was author of several books of devotion and sermons. There is a head of him before his

"Holy Rules and Helps of Devotion." *

A considerable portion of Blackheath is in this parish, including Dartmouth Row, and Lewisham Hill. The earl of Dartmouth, in 1682, obtained the grant of a market to be held twice a week upon Blackheath, and two annual fairs. The market has been discontinued for many years; but the fairs, for cattle only, is held annually on the 12th of May, and the 11th of October.

SYDENHAM, a hamlet of Lewisham, is noted for its pleasant situation, and for the extensive views from its hill, which form the most beautiful, the most interesting, and enchanting scenes.

The chapel here was formerly a dissenting meeting house, rendered famous by the ministry of Dr. John Williams, author of the Greek Concordance, and other learned works, who was pastor here many years.

We quit this article by noticing the excellent Grammar School and Almshouses, founded by the reverend Mr. Abraham Colfe. The former for the education of thirty-one boys, five of whom were to be from Lewisham, ten from

The master is to

Greenwich, eight from Deptford, one from Lee, one from Charlton, three from Eltham, and three from Woolwich; in addition to which, every incumbent minister in the hundred of Blackheath, and of Chiselhurst, have the privilege of sending one son for education here. be examined and approved by the head masters of Westminster, St. Paul's, and Merchant Taylors Schools; by the president of Sion College, the ministers of the hundred of Blackheath, and of Chiselhurst; and to be chosen by them, in conjunction with the wardens of the Leathersellers Company, and the lord of the manor, who has the privilege of nominating a Westminster scholar, to stand in election with one, two, or three candidates nominated by the other electors. The master is not to undertake any church duty, without leave of the trustees, by whom he may be displaced if he be guilty of any notorious behaviour.

The Almshouses are for six poor godly householders of this parish, sixty years of age and upwards, and able to say the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Mr. Colfe also bequeathed other annual benefactions; besides founding an English school for thirty-one boys, to be taught reading, writing, psalm-singing, and the accidence. All the above foundations are under the guidance of the Leathersellers Company.

A school for girls was instituted in 1699, to which Dr. Stanhope bequeathed 1507. and his lady 50l. To the interest of these sums are added two-thirds of the sacrament collections, amounting to a salary of twenty guineas per annum for the mistress, besides coals and candles.

At the entrance to the village, near the church, is a stately mansion, now used as a boarding school, which was built in 1680 by Sir John Letheullier, a rich Turkey merchant, and sheriff of London in 1674.

Returning to the great Kent road, we arrive at

DEPTFORD.

This place does not feem to have been inhabited by, or

éven

* Horsley, in his Britannia Romana, p. 343, informs us, that in the year 1690, a Janus's head was found in the road to New Cross, near St.

Thomas's

even known to the Romans, on account of its marshy situation; the tide also flowing over the greatest part of the land, might have occafioned the Roman way to have taken a more southern direction than the present road.

The antient name appears to have been Depeford, on account of the ford over the Ravensbourn, till a wooden bridge was erected over that river, which was replaced, in 1628, by a stone bridge near its influx into the Thames.

Deptford was the principal seat of Gilbert de Maminot, a Norman baron, in the time of William I. His son, Walcheline de Maminot, having been appointed warden of the Cinque Ports, maintained them in favour of the empress Maud; but being reduced to the last extremity, he surrendered Dover castle to king Stephen. Upon the accession of Henry II. he again surrendered it to that monarch, and retired into Normandy, where he died without iffue. This nobleman was a great benefactor to the abbey of Bermondsey, to which, in the year 1157, he gave ten shillings rent out of the mill at Deptford.

Whilst the family of Maminot held this place, they erected a castle, and esteemed it the head of their barony *;

the

Thomas's watering place, one side of which represented the countenance of a bearded man, with the horns and ears of a ram, a jewel, or other ornament suspended on each side of the head, which was crowned with laurel; on the opposite side was the countenance of a young woman, in antient head attire, which at the same time that it covered the head, projected from it. The whole was entire, and seemed to have been fixed on a square terminus, and was one foot and an half high. It was afterwards deposited in the collection of Dr. Woodward. Hasted, in his History of Kent, has preserved a figure of this Roman remain.

* Sir Henry Spelman informs us, that "the Saxon Theinge, or lord of the town, (whom the Normans called a Baron) had of old jurisdiction over them of his own town, (being as it were his colony); and as Cornelius Tacitus saith, did agricolis suis jus dicere. For those whom we now call Tenants, were in those antient times but husbandmen dwelling upon the soil of the lord, and manuring the same, on such conditions as the lord assigned; or else such as were their followers in the wars, and had therefore portions of ground appointed unto them in respect of that

service;