the Conquest. The 'Gentleman's Magazine' for the years 1760 and 1761 states, that on Wednesday, July 30, were sold to Mr. Blagden, a carpenter in Coleman Street, before the Commissioners of City Lands, the materials of Aldgate for 1771. 10s., of Cripplegate for 917., and of Ludgate for 1487. Two months were allowed for the removal of each of the gates, that of the latter being begun on Monday, August 4th, and Aldgate on Monday, September 1st; but that the removal of Cripplegate was suspended is evident from the existing remains. Bishopsgate, we are told, was sold on Wednesday, December 10th; and on Wednesday, April 22nd, 1761, Moorgate was also sold for 1667., and Aldersgate for 911. Part of the materials of those gates, then lying in Moorfields, were repurchased by the City at the recommendation of Smeaton, the engineer, and cast into the Thames, to strengthen the starlings of old London Bridge, the new centre arch and adjoining piers being endangered by operations connected with the recent alteration.

It may be presumed that the present portion of Cripplegate was repurchased by the proprietor of the inn-yard of that time, for it is one of old standing: and that it was preserved in common with a considerable portion of London wall which forms the southern boundary of the premises. Adjoining the gate the masonry is composed of large blocks of stones, laid without much regularity; but a little further down the yard, the old wall appears to have been compiled with great care and nicety, and exhibits a curious imitation of the workmanship of those Roman portions, where layers of tile intersect successive courses of masonry in regular order. The layer of masonry next the ground is composed of very large squared stones, over which is laid a course of tiles; a space of eleven inches over the tiles is raised by a course of small stones, neatly squared, and laid with great precision three deep; then a double layer of flints, sharply squared. There are three of those courses of stone, and as many of flint, and over that a superstructure of irregular masonry. The lower part of the wall might be put forward as a model of construction, and it maintains the intention of its workmanship, being as perfect in every respect as when the materials were first laid.

Cripplegate was a prison for debtors at an early time. It was rebuilt by the Brewers' Company in 1244, again in 1491 by a legacy bequeathed for the purpose by Edward Shaw, goldsmith, and mayor in 1483; and last, it was repaired in 1663. Over the gate were apartments appropriated for the accommodation of the water bailiff. It had only one postern for footpassengers, situated on the east side. Queen Elizabeth, after her accession to the throne, rode from the Charterhouse on the 28th of November 1558, through Barbican, and entered the City by Cripplegate, proceeding by London Wall on her way to the Tower of London.

The neighbouring church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, is associated with the name of the gate, not only literally but by the character of the saint, to whom it is dedicated as the patron of the mendicant fraternity, which tutelage he divides with St. Martin, and the same legend is related of both, either saint being said to have divided his cloak with a beggar; but in the instance of Egidus, or Giles, it is further stated that the beggar, who was sick, instantly recovered his health and soundness on being arrayed in the moiety of a garment thus bestowed.

The venerable church, founded in the year 1090 by Alfune, the first master of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, has undergone the ordeal by fire once (1545), and that of general repair three several times; and although

the whole building, except the tower, was destroyed in the first catastrophe, yet from the successive evidence of a declining taste, which have been engrafted upon it, the latter calamities may be considered wellnigh as disastrous as the former.

This once noble edifice is the place where Milton desired to be buried near the remains of his father. The entry in the parish register records his death and the locality of his tomb-"12th November 1674, John Milton, gentleman, consumpc'on, chancel." A eurious account of an examination of the remains of Milton, made during a repair of the church in 1790, was drawn up and published by the antiquary Philip Neve. John Fox, the earnest compiler of the Acts and Monuments of the English Church,' has here his monument—a dumb witness compared with the popular 'Book of Martyrs,' a work to be found in companionship with the Bible in many a humble dwelling whose whole library they constitute, and one peculiarly calculated to stir the mind of the unsophisticated reader. Its record of acts of wondrous constancy and endurance, the manifest distinction between the oppressor and the oppressed, the zeal of the narrator admitting no shade of comprise between the blackness of black on the one hand, and the whiteness of white on the other; and the horrible pictures of torture and extremity of human suffering which its pages unfold, suiting it in a remarkable degree to the strong appetite, wellstrung nerve, and unhesitating faith, not without a bias towards the marvellous, of the village patriarch and rustic moralist.

Here also rest from their ingenious and learned labours-Robert Glover, Somerset herald; the chronicler John Speed, and Thomas Hawley, clarencieux king-at-arms, all of whom delved in the fields of antiquarian lore. Among the monuments is that of Constance Whitney, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Whitney, of Whitney. Her mother was the fourth daughter of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlcote. This is the lady of whom it is related that the sexton attempted to purloin a ring which she had carried to the tomb, and thus awoke her from a trance, or cataleptic lethargy, which had been mistaken for death. Her monument is a clumsy representation of the resurrection; and the appearance of the body rising from the tomb has given origin to the tradition, to the disparagement of the character of sextons.

A remembrance of Thomas Busbie, a former charitable inhabitant of the parish, celebrates his bounty in a poetical tribute, of which the following verse may suffice as an example:

"This Busbie, willing to relieve the poore

With fire and with bread,

Did give the house wherein he dwelt,

Then called the Queen's Head," etc.

The tower retains some fine vestiges, which appear in the first round of the belfry, being a large and beautiful window, now built up, and, facing it, the arch which served as the great west entrance to the church. These remains are in a style two centuries later than the foundation of the church. The arch has been richly carved, and the exterior moulding appears to have contained figures similar to that at the south entrance to Lincoln Cathedral. Earlier vestiges appear in the lesser windows and doors, one of which is of the Anglo-Norman form. The patronage of St. Giles was originally in private hands, till it descended to one Alemund, a priest, who granted it, after the death of himself and his eldest son Hugh, to the dean and chapter of St. Paul's, whereby they became not

only ordinaries of the parish, but likewise patrons of the vicarage from that time to the present. St. Giles is one of the few City churches which escaped the great fire of 1666.

The south side of St. Giles's churchyard is bounded by London Wall, and one of the afore-mentioned towers, or bulwarks, forms the northern boundary of the Clothworkers' Almshouses, founded about the year 1577 by William Lamb, citizen and clothworker, and gentleman of the chapel to Henry VIII. Of this William Lamb little is known, except that he was born at Sutton Valens, in Kent, was thrice married, and was buried in the church of St. Faith's, under St. Paul's. These particulars were recorded in an inscription upon a pillar of the old church, destroyed in the great fire, but his memory is preserved in his charities. These included benefactions to his native town, in the foundation of a free grammar-school, with the annual allowance of 201. for the master and 10. for an usher, and an almshouse for six poor people, with an endowment of 10 yearly; to the free-school at Maidstone, in the same county, 101. per annum for the education of needy men's children; and to the poor clothiers in Suffolk, Bridgenorth, and Ludlow, 300l. In London he was a benefactor to the parish church of St. Giles without Cripplegate, in the gift of 151 towards the bells and chimes; to the Stationers' Company, for the relief of twelve poor people of the parish of St. Faith under St. Paul's, at the rate of 12d. in money, and 12d. in bread to each of them, on every Friday through the year; and for the relief of children in Christ's Hospital, 61. per annum, and 100l. to purchase land. To St. Thomas's Hospital, in Southwark, he gave 4l.; besides other charities to the prisons, and for portioning poor maids. He left to the Clothworkers' Company his dwelling-house, a little to the south-west of Cripplegate, with lands and tenements to the value of 30l. per annum, for paying a minister to read Divine service on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, every week, in the chapel adjoining to his house, called St. James's in the Wall, by Cripplegate, and for clothing twelve men with a frize gown, one lockram shirt, and a good strong pair of winter shoes, already made for wearing, to be given to such as are poor and honest, on the first of October. The chapel or hermitage of St. James in the Wall was a cell to the abbey of Gerondon, in Leicestershire, for two Cistercian monks. A well near at hand was the property of the monks, hence the name of the neighbouring Monkwell Street. This hermitage is stated by Maitland to have been founded in the reign of Edward I.; but a very ancient deed, in the possession of the learned antiquary Sir Henry Spelman, published by Stow, shows that it was in existence in the previous reign, and the evidence of remains existing upon the spot go to prove that even then it was a religious site of considerable antiquity.

Evidence of the antiquity of this foundation exists in a crypt, under the chapel, of pure Norman architecture. The vaulted roof has been supported by nine short columns, six of which remain; the capitals are peculiar, and appear to have been extremely well wrought. The ribs which form the groining are ornamented with zigzag mouldings in Caen stone. The crypt has been twenty-six feet from east to west by twenty feet in breadth, the size of the chapel above, but it is partly demolished.

The chapel was, in 1275, committed to the protection of the mayor, and afterwards placed under the superintendence of the Constable of the Tower, on account, as it is stated, of the "rents, chalices, books, vestments, images, bells, relics, charters, royal grants, apostolical privi

leges, utensils, and other goods of the said hermitage without Cripplegate, being diverted or carried, unless placed under some certain custody."

A chantry was here founded for the souls of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and Lady Mary his wife, which was endowed with ten tenements in Fleet Street.

This chapel, with its appurtenances, appear to have been granted to Lamb, whose musical skill, or other merits, had probably rendered him a favourite with King Henry, who gave largely when gratified or in the humour: witness his gift of "a faire house, with divers tenements, sometime belonging to a late dissolved priory," to "Mistris Cornewallies and her heires, in reward of fine puddings (as it was commonly said), wherewith she had presented him. Such was the princely liberality of those times." Lamb turned the gift, however obtained, to good account; and his pious disposal of the world's goods has entitled him to a place among London's worthies:

"Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans, blest,

The young who labour, and the old who rest."

His monument is in the chapel. In a pediment are the arms of the Clothworkers' Company and the date 1612. The effigy is represented in the act of giving from a goodly purse.

Of Lamb's further gift to the City, Stow says:-"Neere unto Hobborne he founded a fair conduit, and a standard with a cocke at Holborn Bridge, to convey thence the waste. These were begun the six-and-twentieth day

of March 1577."

The first of these is understood to have been situated somewhere near the end of Red Lion Street; but its exact site being a matter of question,

the following observations are appended, with a view of establishing the exact locality:-The public-house called the sign of "The Lamb," near the north end of Lamb's Conduit Street, formerly known as the "Lamb and Flag," has for its sign the figure of a lamb cut in stone, the right fore-leg being bent so as to have sustained a banner charged with a red cross, such as typifies the Agnus Dei. A near examination of this figure sufficed to satisfy the writer that it was a device of no recent workmanship, nor originally intended to do duty over the entrance to a public-house, but that in fact it had been one of the lambs, a rebus

on the name of the founder, which are said to have stood upon each of the conduits, and this probably had been appropriated for its present destination on the removal of that from which this street derives its name. The figure is carved in stone, and retains in the base a large bolt-head, such as may have served to secure it by being riveted in the stonework of the edifice, of which, no doubt, it was formerly embellished.

This discovery suggesting further observation, the writer entered the yard belonging to the public-house, and, with the assistance of mine host of the "Lamb," lifted a trap-door in the pavement of the coach-house, and descended by a short flight of steps into a brick vault. Here, with a stout cane for lack of a divining rod, he probed in the ground until a hollow sound gave token of the wooden cover of a well, and the same being laid bare by means of a spade, plied by a good-natured groomwho, however, declined the guerdon of the first draught from the spring thus rediscovered, preferring the option of the sophisticated beverage of the neighbouring tap-the fountain of the old conduit was revealed. The identity of the site appears to be precisely corroborated by the result of subsequent inquiry.