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IT is denominated the Great, to distinguish it from its neighbouring ruin, and was called, as we have before noted, ad fænum in the Ropery, from its vicinity to a hay-wharf, and its situation among rope-makers, who antiently had their walks here.

The church is a rectory, founded by the noble family of the Despensers, the favourites of Edward II. and the family presented to the living in the year 1361. From them it passed with the heiress to the earl of Warwick and Salisbury; and' at last to the crown, by settlement from the widow of Richard Nevil, earl of Warwick, upon king Henry VII. Henry VIII. exchanged this church with the archbishop of Canterbury in the thirty-seventh year of his reign, who, for the time being, has continued patron of the living; and it is numbered amongst the peculiars of that see. The antient church was very handsome, with a large cloister on the south side, surrounding the church-yard, and was rich and beautiful within. But it fell in the general conflagration of the city in 1666. The present edifice was finished in 1683, planned by Sir Christopher Wren, but not executed with the same accuracy that it was designed. The church is eighty-seven feet long,

sixty feet broad, and thirty-three feet high to the roof, built of stone, and is very solid. The walls are plain and massy; the ornaments are few and simple, and the windows, though large, in order to enlighten such a considerable breadth, are not numerous. The tower is plain, square, and divided into five stages, but terminates absolutely square and plain, without spire, turret, or pinnacles. The cornice is supported by scrolls, and over these rises a balustrade of solid construction, suitable to the rest of the building. It is well finished and ornamented within, and is very beautiful in its simplicity; without pillars, and the walls are slightly coved from the cornice; the roof is flat, and there are no galleries, except one for the organ. The altar is an elegant design in the Corinthian order, and there are two very good stone figures of Moses and Aaron, about four feet high, as ornaments. A handsome marble altar table is supported by a caryatide. On the front of the organ gallery is a fine figure in alto relievo of Charity treading on Envy and Avarice, very spiritedly expressed. The pulpit, standing against the north wall, has most excellent carved work; and exhibits little naked boys, supporting festoons of fanciful and delicate workmanship.

The chancel is separated from the body of the church by a fine piece of carved work, consisting of small open twisted columns with their arches, in the middle of which are two open carved pilasters (on both sides of the door-case) with their architrave, friese, cornice, and large open pediment of the Composite order; at the upper part of the door-case is carved a large eagle displayed, and over that the queen's arms, with supporters, &c. and these (on the cornice of this partition) between two smaller pediments; in the middle are two shields with fine compartments beautifully carved in

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This exquisite specimen of wrought work was performed at Hamburgh, and presented to the church, as a token of the antient connexion between this country and the Hanse towns, of which the Stilyard in this parish was the principal place of commerce. The agent of the Hanse towns has still a

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pew in the church; but there are no monuments worthy of observation.

Among the rectors are to be noticed the following eminent characters:-WILLIAM LICHFIELD, D. D. who compiled many works sacred and moral, particularly "The Plaint of God unto sinful Man." He composed no less than three thousand and eighty-three sermons, and died in 1447. EDWARD STRONG, D. D. chancellor of the university of Cambridge, bishop of Carlisle, 1468, and of Chichester, 1477. This prelate built Chichester cross. GEORGE DAY, D. D. provost of King's college, Cambridge, and bishop of Chichester, 1543. Under Edward VI. he was deprived and imprisoned, but restored by Mary I. and died in 1556. THOMAS WHITE, D. D. bishop of Peterborough, 1685. WILLIAM CAVE, D. D. canon of Windsor, chaplain to Charles II. and author of "The Lives of the Apostles and Fathers," and other eminent works. WILLIAM VINCENT, D. D. high master of Westminster school, 1788, now dean of Westminster, and author of "The Voyage of Nearchus to the Euphrates," "The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea," and other learned and critical works.

In BUSH LANE is the house of THE GOVERNOR AND COMPANY OF COPPER MINES IN ENGLAND. This company was incorporated by letters patent, in the 3d of William and Mary, 1691. The charter was confirmed by queen Anne in 1710; and by subsequent grants their power of working mines was extended to Ireland, and other parts of the British dominions.

The STILYARD, Corruptly STEELYARD, lies close to Cosin's Lane, so called from William Cosin, who dwelt here, and was sheriff of London, 1306. This was originally the hall of the Almaine, Hanseatic or German merchants; and where they had warehouses for wheat, rye, and other grain; as also for cables, ropes, pitch, tar, masts, hemp, flax, linen, wainscots, wax, steel, &c. Henry III. in the forty-fourth year of his reign, 1259, at the request of his brother Richard, - earl of Cornwall, and king of the Romans, granted, “that all and singular the merchants, having a house in the city of London, commonly called Guilda Aula Teutonicorum, should

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be maintained and upholden through the whole realm, by all such freedom, and free usages or liberties, as by the king, and in his noble progenitors' time, they had enjoyed," &c.

Under Bishopsgate, we have mentioned that these merchants engaged to repair that gate, for this the mayor and citizens "granted to the said merchants their liberties, which they long enjoyed; as namely, amongst the other things, that they might lay up their grain, which they brought into this realm, in inns, and sell it in their garners, within the space of forty days after they had laid it up, except by the mayor and citizens they were expressly forbidden, because of dearth, or other reasonable occasions. Also they might : have their alderman, as they had been accustomed, provided always he were of the city, and presented to the mayor and aldermen of the city, as often as any should be chosen, and should take the oath before them to maintain justice in their courts, and to behave themselves in their office according to law, and as it stood with the customs of the city."

A grant of such privilege might probably have suited the exigency of those early times, when commerce was in its infancy; but as navigation and expansive commercial intercourse increased, it was found necessary to abridge and ultimately to annul such impolitic grants to aliens. This was evident about the time of Henry IV. when the English began to trade for themselves into the eastern parts of the globe; for the Easterlings, or merchants of the Dutch Hanse, were so offended, that they captured several of their ships and goods, and offered them several other injuries; which occasioned great complaints and differences between king Henry and Conradus de Junigen, then master general of the Dutch order in Prussia with the Hanse towns, and feveral embassies passed on that occasion; the result of which was, "That the said king Henry IV. finding, by the said privileges granted to foreigners, his own subjects (to the great prejudice of the realm) very much crippled in their trade, did revoke such parts of the privileges of the aforesaid Dutch company, as were inconsistent with the carrying

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on trade by the natives of this realm:" and for the bet ter encouragement of his own subjects, did, in the fifth year of his reign, grant his first charter to the Merchants. trading into the East-Land, containing many great privileges and immunities: which had a good effect for the bringing of the trade much more into the hands of the natives of this realm than it was before. King Edward IV. for their more ample encouragement, did, in the second year of his reign, gant another large charter to the Merchants of England, especially to those residing in the Netherlands; with several additional immunities and privileges.

In king Edward the VIth's reign the Steelyard merchants behaved so scandalously, that his majesty seized upon their charter.

In the first and second of Philip and Mary was granted a charter to the Russia company, afterwards confirmed by act of parliament in the eighth year of Queen Elizabeth.

Until this time, though the trade of England was carried on much more by the natives than had been formerly, yet had the society of the Dutch Hanse at the Steelyard a superior advantage over them, by means of their well regulated societies, and the privileges they enjoyed; insomuch that almost the whole trade was driven by them to that degree, that Queen Elizabeth herself, when she came to have a war, was forced to buy the hemp, pitch, tar, powder, and other naval provisions which she wanted, of foreigners, at very enormous rates. Nor were there any stores of either in the land to supply her occasions on a sudden, but what, at vast prices, she prevailed with them to procure for her, even in time of war, her own subjects being then but very inconsiderable traders.

To remedy which, no better expedient could be found by Elizabeth and her council, than by encouraging her own subjects to be merchants; which she did by erecting out of them several societies of merchants, as that of the East-land company, and other companies; by which means, and by cancelling many of the privileges of the Dutch Hanse society, the trade in general, by degrees, came to

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