find an accurate description of the then state of Rahere's famous establishment. The grant included the capital messuage or mansion-house, the close called Great St. Bartholomew, the Fermery, Dorter, &c., before mentioned, fifty-one tenements lying within the precincts of the said close, five other messuages and tenements, water from the conduit-head at Canonbury (the country residence of the Priors at Islington), and lastly, the fair of St. Bartholomew. The grant concludes with the words: "And whereas the great close of St. Bartholomew hath been before the memory of man used as a parish within itself, and distinct from other parishes; and the inhabitants thereof had their parish church and churchyard within the church of the late Monastery and Priory, and to the same church. annexed, and have had divine service performed by a curate from the appointment of the Prior and Convent; and whereas a certain chapel, called the Parish Chapel,' with part of the great parish church, have been taken away, and the materials sold for our use; nevertheless, there still remains a part fit for erecting a parish church, and already raised and built: we do grant to the said Richard Rich, Knt., and to the present and future inhabitants within the great close, that part of the said church of the said late Monastery or Priory which remains raised and built to be a parish church for ever for the use of the said inhabitants.” The parish was declared to be distinct and separate from other parishes, and a void piece of ground, eighty-seven feet long by sixty broad, next adjoining the west side of the church, was to be taken for a churchyard. Such is the origin of the parish, the present church, and churchyard. The parish formerly possessed numerous and valuable privileges, derived no doubt from those of the Priory, some of which have been lost. Of those that still exist, one of the most striking is that any resident may keep a shop, or exercise whatever calling or trade he pleases, without becoming free of the City. The parishioners are also exempt from serving on juries or ward offices; they appoint their own constables subject to the control of the City magistrates, and tax themselves for paving, watching, lighting, &c. One or two brief notices of events of a minor importance connected with the church may here be given. The original structure had a fine peal of six bells, which were taken out and sold to the neighbouring church of St. Sepulchre. During the reign of Mary a partial attempt was made to revive something of the olden aspect and purpose of the place, by giving it to the Black or Preaching Friars, as their conventual church. But in the very first year of her sister and successor's reign the friars were driven gut, and the place appropriated as before.*

We have already given one picture of a peculiar and primitive kind, that used to be often presented in the churchyard; the cloisters, it appears, in later times,

* In the Londini Illustrata' an opinion is expressed that the church was erected on a Saxon foundation. The reasons given are these "The Saxons generally made their churches with descents into them; and it is observable that all the entrances into this church are by descents of several steps; whereas the Normans built their churches with ascents. The Saxons made their lights and roofs small and mean; the Normans, on the contrary, made theirs high and large. The few churches that the Saxons had of stone were low with thick walls, and consequently dark and damp; those of the Normans were far more stately, lightsome, and pleasant. And the late Mr. Carter, who drew, engraved, and published specimens of Ancient Architecture, was decidedly of opinion, from drawings he had taken in this church of capitals, ornaments, tiers of columns, and arches, that the workmanship was Saxon, and long prior to the arrival of the Normans." Whatever may have been the cause of this discrepancy, it seems, from the absence of any mention of such Saxon building in the manuscript, that there was no church here prior to the erection of Rahere's.

had also its picture, but one of a very different kind, if we may trust its delineator, in the pages of the Observator' of August 21, 1703. We must premise that within the space of a century or so there stood a gateway, leading to the wood-yard, kitchen, and other inferior offices. A mulberry-tree grew near it, and beneath its branches people were accustomed to promenade. In process of time this spot and the adjoining cloisters had become, according to the writer we have mentioned, notorious for the bad characters who resorted to it. "Does this market of lewdness," asks the author of the paper, "tend to anything else but the ruin of the bodies, souls, and estates of the young men and women of the City of London, who here meet with all the temptations to destruction? The lotteries to ruin their estates; the drolls, comedies, interludes and farces, to poison their minds with lust, &c. What strange medley of lewdness has not this place long since afforded:-lords and ladies, aldermen and their wives, squires and fiddlers, citizens and rope-dancers, jack-puddings and lawyers, mistresses and maids, masters and 'prentices! This is not an ark like Noah's, which received the clean and unclean; only the unclean beasts enter this ark, and such as have the devil's livery on their backs."

We have dwelt thus long upon the history of the Priory, not only on account of the intrinsic importance of the establishment, but also from its being so generally little known. Except in and around the church there are no visible evidences of its original splendour, and these, not being particularly conspicuous, must be sought for. In the accomplishment of this task we now, however, approach what may be called the more generally interesting part of our subject— the description of the present remains, the contrast these present to their former state, and the more interesting memories which the place affords. As it were impossible to do justice to these matters in our present number, we shall conclude this paper with a notice of an appendage of St. Bartholomew, scarcely less interesting than itself:—we refer to Canonbury, the place so well known as the residence of Goldsmith, in one of the rooms of the tower of which was written, under a pressing pecuniary necessity, that most admirable of fictions, the 'Vicar of Wakefield.' These pressing necessities unfortunately occurred very often; and another and less agreeable memory of Canonbury House than that of the composition of the Vicar of Wakefield' is that Goldsmith here frequently hid himself for fear of arrest. The warm-hearted bookseller, Newberry, for whom Goldsmith wrote so much, then rented the house. From hence the poet was frequently accustomed to set out, with some or other of his numerous and distinguished list of friends, on excursions through the surrounding country. The beauties of Highgate and Hampstead, distinctly visible from his windows, no doubt were often a temptation to him to throw aside his books. Various other literary men have lived at Canonbury; amongst whom we may mention Chambers, the author of the Cyclopædia known by his name. Nor are interesting names belonging to men of a different class wanting. Here the "Rich Spencer," for instance, of whom and his moderate-minded daughter we have spoken in a former paper,* lived, and has bequeathed to Canonbury some noticeable recollections. In a curious pamphlet, entitled 'The Vanity of the Lives and Passions of Men, by D. Papillon, gent., 1651,' occurs the following remarkable passage, in con

* Crosby Place.

nexion with this great millionaire of the sixteenth century:-" In Queen Elizabeth's days a pirate of Dunkirk laid a plot, with twelve of his mates, to carry away Sir John Spencer; which if he had done, fifty thousand pounds had not redeemed him. He came over the seas on a shallop with twelve musketeers, and in the night came into Barking Creek, and left the shallop in the custody of six of his men, and with the other six came as far as Islington, and there hid themselves in ditches near the path in which Sir John always came to his house; but, by the providence of God, Sir John, upon some extraordinary occasion, was forced to stay in London that night, otherwise they had taken him away; and they, fearing they should be discovered in the night time, came to their shallop, and so came safe to Dunkirk again." The author adds that he obtained this story from a private record. At Sir John's death in 1609 some thousand men were present, in mourning cloaks and gowns, amongst whom were three hundred and twenty-four persons who had each a basket given to him containing a black gown, four pounds of beef, two loaves of bread, a little bottle of wine, a candlestick, a pound of candles, two saucers, two spoons, a black pudding, a pair of gloves, a dozen of points to tie his garments with, two red herrings, four white herrings, six sprats, and two eggs. We must add to these reminiscences of the family, that his daughter, the writer of the letter transcribed in Crosby Place,' is said to have been carried off from Canonbury in a baker's basket by Lord Compton, who became her husband, and who at her father's death was unable to bear with equanimity the immense fortune that devolved to him: he was distracted for some time afterwards. His death happened under strange circumstances:Yesterday se'nnight the Earl of Northampton (he had now succeeded to this earldom), Lord President of Wales, after he had waited on the King at supper, and he had also supped, went in a boat with others to wash himself in the Thames, and so soon as his legs were in the water but to the knees, he had the colic, and cried out, Have me into the boat again, or I am a dead man!' and died in a few hours afterwards, June 24, 1630."*

The manor appears to have been originally presented to the priory by Ralph de Berners, in the time of Edward I., and most probably obtained its present name on the erection (about 1362, that date having long existed on one of the walls) of a place of residence for the first Canon or Prior, and from that circumstance:-bury signifying mansion or dwelling-house. There seems to exist a kind of tradition that at this or some earlier period a fortified mansion stood on the spot, of which the moat in front is still a remain. All the ancient parts, however, that now meet our gaze, are attributed to Prior Bolton, the predecessor of Fuller, who surrendered the possessions of the canons to the king. This is the man of whom Hall writes in the following curious passage:-"The people" (saith he), "being feared by prognostications which declared that in the year of Christ 1524 there should be such eclipses in watery signs, and such conjunctions, that by waters and floods many people should perish, people victualled themselves, and went to high grounds for fear of drowning, and especially one Bolton, which was Prior of St. Bartholomew's in Smithfield, builded him a house upon Harrow on the Hill, only for fear of this flood: thither he went and made provision of all things necessary within him, for the space of two months." Stow Stow says that

*Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. ii. p. 39.

this was not so indeed," as he had been credibly informed," and that his predecessor was following a fable then on foot." Bolton was the parson of Harrow as well as Prior of St. Bartholomew, and therefore repaired the parsonage-house; but he builded there nothing "more than a dovehouse, to serve him when he had foregone his Priory." This is he also to whom Ben Jonson alludes when he speaks "Of prior Bolton, with his bolt and ton;"

referring to the rebus on his name, of which the Prior is said to have been the inventor, and for which he certainly had an inventor's love, for we find it everywhere in the church, in some of the houses of Bartholomew Close, and here again at Canonbury. Although great alterations have been made in this place (a house of entertainment opened within its park walls for instance), yet there is much remaining to interest the visitor. We should have been glad to have commenced our notice with a brief glimpse of the room still pointed out as that in which Goldsmith wrote, but being, we presume, deemed even too precious for exhibition, we must, as Stow says, "overpass it." Immediately behind the tower is a house now used as a boarding-school, which is supposed to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth, and to have even been occasionally inhabited by her; and the internal evidence is certainly of a formidable character. The staircase alone would show that it has been a very splendid mansion: but there are more important parts. The drawing-room, now divided into three apartments, has evidently originally formed but one, with a circular end, and a richly ornamented ceiling, bearing representations of ships of war, medallion heads of ancient heroes, as Alexander and Julius Cæsar; and in combination with these decorations are a variety of scroll-work ornaments, with the thistle strikingly predominant. In the centre are the initials E. R. The material is a most delicately wrought stucco. The mantelpiece is also well worthy of attention; it contains figures, arms, caryatides, and an endless variety of other ornaments. The whole forms one of the most superb pieces of workmanship conceivable. In the same house a room, called the Stone Parlour, on the ground-floor, has also a stuccoed ceiling, embossed and with pendants, and a decorated mantelpiece, with figures of the Cardinal Virtues. Adjoining this house is that which was Prior Bolton's, now occupied also as a boarding-school. It stands on a beautiful lawn, somewhat elevated, and must have originally commanded a beautiful prospect; as a part of which, and not the least interesting part, was the splendid establishment of which the resident here was master: the peculiarly dense smoke of cloud was as yet a thing unknown, and but few buildings intervened, so that the Prior could see it at all times. The most interesting feature of this mansion is a stone passage or corridor leading to the kitchen and other offices, in which is a Tudor door of a peculiarly elegant shape, containing Bolton's rebus. Among the other noticeable matters are a mantelpiece of the period of Elizabeth, and a curious coat of arms with some uncouth supporters, apparently goats, painted, and with an inscription of a later period, stating them to belong to "Sir Walter Dennys, of Gloucestershire, who was made a knight by bathing at the creation of Arthur Prince of Wales, in November, 1489," &c. From the house we pass to the lawn, which is terminated by a wall with a raised and embowered terrace, from which we look over on the other side to the kitchen-garden, the New River, and thence onwards

towards London. At each extremity of this wall is an octagonal garden-house, built by Prior Bolton-the one to the left having a small Gothic window in the basement story. Proceeding along the wall towards the other, we find it in the grounds of another mansion; this also contains the Prior's rebus. The spot here is at the same time so beautiful and yet so antique in its character, that we have only to forget the lapse of three centuries, and expect to see the stately abbot himself coming forth into his pleasance, book in hand perhaps, to enable him to forget the little vexations of his government, or the darker shadows of the coming Reformation, which, fortunately for him, he did not live to see his death took place in 1532. The fig and mulberry trees, probably planted by him,―certainly no recent denizens of the soil,-appear here in all their perfection. On the wall which runs up to the house occurs another rebus, near to a stone basin called the fish-pond, where the Prior probably kept some of the choicest of the finny tribe for the supply of his table. We cannot quit this very interesting place without a tribute of admiration to the taste and munificence of its principal founder. Next to Rahere, his is the great memory of the Priory-we meet with him everywhere. The church, the beautiful oriel window which overlooks it, Rahere's tomb, which he carefully and admirably restored, the gardens and buildings of Canonbury, all speak of an enlightened and generous mind; and we do not see that it is at all necessary to quarrel with him because he took care to refer their merit to its right owner by the everlasting bolt in ton.