(ob. 1724), presented to the living by Bolingbroke in gratitude for a good story told him by Swift, and impeached before the House of Commons for his political sermons, 1709-10. He was, says Bishop Burnet "a bold insolent man, with a very small measure of religion, virtue, learning, or good sense; but he resolved to force himself into popularity and preferment, by the most petulant railings at dissenters and low churchmen, in several sermons and libels, written without either chasteness of style or liveliness of expression." The Duchess of Marlborough describes him as "an ignorant impudent incendiary; a man who was the scorn even of those who made use of him as a tool."

Almost opposite St. Andrew's Church, on the left, is the entrance of Ely Place, marking the site of the grand old palace of the Bishops of Ely, once entered by a great gateway, built by Bishop Arundel in 1388. The palace was bequeathed to the see by Bishop John de Kirkeby, who died in 1290. Here, in 1399, died "Old John of Gaunt, timehonoured Lancaster," his own palace of the Savoy having been burnt by the rebels under Wat Tyler. "It fell, about the feast of Christmas," says Froissart, "that Duke John of Lancaster-who lived in great displeasure, what because the king had banished his son out of the realm for so little cause, and also because of the evil governing of the realm by his nephew, King Richard-(for he saw well, if he long persevered, and were suffered to continue, the realm was likely to be utterly lost)—with these imaginations and others, the duke fell sick, whereon he died; whose death was greatly sorrowed by all his friends and lovers." It is here that, according to Shakspeare, Richard's dying uncle thus addressed him :

"A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
And yet, incagèd in so small a verge,

The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
Oh, had thy grandsire, with a prophet's eye,
Seen how his son's son would destroy his sons,

From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,
Deposing thee before thou wert possessed,
Which art possessed now to depose thyself.
Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,
It were a shame to let this land by lease:
But, for thy world, enjoying but this land,
Is it not more than shame to shame it so ?
Landlord of England art thou, and not king."

The garden of Ely House was great and famous. Saffron Hill still bears witness to the saffron which grew there, and Vine Street to its adjacent vineyard, while its roses and its strawberries are both matters of history. Holinshed describes how (on the 13th of June, 1483), while the lords were sitting in council at the Tower, "devising the honourable solemnity of the young King (Edward V.'s) coronation," the Protector came in, and requested the Bishop of Ely to send for some of his strawberries from his garden in Holborn. The scene is given by Shakspeare.

Gloucester comes in and says—

"My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn,
I saw good strawberries in your garden there;
I do beseech you, send for some of them!"

and the Bishop replies

"Marry, I will, my lord, with all my heart."

The Bishop then goes out to send for the strawberries, and, on his return, finds Gloucester gone, and exclaims

"Where is my lord of Gloucester? I have sent for those strawberries ;"

and Lord Hastings replies

"His grace looks cheerfully and smooth this morning.
There's some conceit or other likes him well,

When that he bids good-morrow with such spirit."

But a few minutes after Gloucester, returning, accuses Hastings of witchcraft, and he is hurried off to be beheaded in the Tower courtyard below.

Another record of the fertility of the Ely Place garden will be found in the fact that when, to please Elizabeth, Bishop Cox leased the gatehouse and garden to her favourite, Sir Christopher Hatton, for a quit-rent of a red rose, ten loads of hay, and £10 yearly, he retained the right not only of walking in the gardens, but of gathering twenty bushels of roses yearly! Sir Christopher Hatton expended a large sum upon Ely Place, and petitioned Elizabeth to alienate to him the whole of the house and gardens. She immediately desired Bishop Cox to do so, but he refused, saying that "in his conscience he could not do it, being a piece of sacrilege;" that he was intrusted with the property of the see "to be a steward, and not a scatterer." The Bishop was, however, eventually obliged to consent to the alienation of the property to Sir Christopher till all the money he had expended upon Ely Place should be repaid by the see. It was when the Queen found his successor, Dr. Martin Heton, unwilling to fulfil these terms, that she addressed to him her characteristic note

"Proud Prelate! I understand you are backward in complying with your agreement: but I would have you know that I, who made you what you are, can unmake you; and if you do not forthwith fulfil your engagement, by God I will immediately unfrock you. ELIZA

BETH."

The money which Sir Christopher had expended upon Ely

Place was borrowed from the Queen, and it was her demanding a settlement of their accounts which caused his death. "It broke his heart," says Fuller, "that the queen, which seldom gave loans, and never forgave due debts, rigorously demanded the payment of some arrears which Sir Christopher did not hope to have remitted, and did only desire to have forborne: failing herein in his expectation, it went to his heart, and cast him into a mortal disease. The queen afterwards did endeavour what she could to recover him, bringing, as some say, cordial broths unto him with her own hands; but all would not do. There's no pulley can draw up a heart once cast down, though a queen herself should set her hand thereunto." Sir Christopher died in Ely House, September 20, 1591. His residence here gave a name to Hatton Garden, which now occupies a great part of the site of the gardens of Ely Place. Here the beautiful Lady Hatton, widow of Sir Christopher's nephew, was courted at the same time by Lord Bacon and Sir Edward Coke, the famous lawyer. She married the latter, but soon quarrelled with him and refused him admittance to her house, with the same success with which she and her successors repelled the attempts of the Bishops of Ely to recover the whole of their property, though they retained the old buildings beyond the gateway, where Laney, Bishop of Ely, died in 1674-5. It was not till the death of the last Lord Hatton in 1772 that the two hundred years' dispute was settled, when the bishops resigned Ely Place to the Crown for No. 37, Dover Street, Piccadilly, which they still possess. In the reign of James I., Ely Place was inhabited by Gondomar, the famous Spanish ambassador.

The only remaining fragment of old Ely House is the chapel, dedicated to St. Etheldreda (630), daughter of Anna, King of the West Angles, and wife of Egfrid, King of Northumberland, whose society she forsook to become Abbess of Ely and foundress of its cathedral. She was best known after death by the popular name of St. Awdry. A fair was held in her honour, at which a particular kind of beads was sold called St. Awdry or Tawdry beads. Gradually these grew to be of the shabbiest and cheapest description, and became a by-word for anything shabby or flimsy whence our familiar word "tawdry" commemorates St. Etheldreda. The chapel, long given up to the Welsh residents in London, is now in the hands of Roman Catholics, who have treated it with the utmost regard for its ancient characteristics. The walls of the ancient crypt are left with their rugged stonework unaltered. The ceiling

is not vaulted, and the roof is formed by the chapel floor, but some stone pillars have been supplied in the place of the solid chestnut posts by which it was once sustained. A solemn half-light steals into this shadowy church from its deeply recessed stained windows, and barely allows one to distinguish the robed figures of the nuns who are constantly at prayers here. The church has not been "restored" into something utterly unlike its original state, as is usually the case in England.

In the upper church, which retains its grand old decorated window, the last "Mystery" was publicly performed in England-the Passion-in the time of James I. It was here also that John Evelyn's daughter Susanna was married (April 27, 1693) to William Draper, by Dr. Tenison, then Bishop of Lincoln. Cowper, in the "Task," commemorates