Near In the same western porch are the monuments of James Palmer, 1659, and Emery Hill, 1677, founders of the Almshouses which are called by their names. In the north aisle is the curious but much injured Flemish monument and bust of Cornelius Vandun of Breda, 1577, builder of the almshouses in Petty France-"souldier with King Henry at Turney, Yeoman of the Guard, and Usher to King Henry, King Edward, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth: a careful man for poore folke, who in the end of this toune did build for poore widowes twenty houses, of his owne cost." Another monument, with quaint verses, commemorates the late deceased virgin, Mistris Elizabeth Hereicke." the north-east door is the monument of Mrs. Joane Barnett, 1674, who sold oatmeal cakes by the church door, and left money for a sermon and the maintenance of poor widows. In the north-eastern porch are many monuments with effigies offering interesting examples of costume of the time of James I., and that to Lady Dorothy Stafford, 1604, whose mother Ursula was daughter of the famous Countess of Salisbury, the only daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, brother of King Edward the Fourth :-" She served Queen Elizabeth forty years, lying in the bedchamber, esteemed of her, loved of all, doing good all she could, a continual remembrancer of the suite of the poor." A tablet, with a relief of his death, commemorates Sir Peter Parker, 1814. In the chancel is buried John Skelton, 1529, the satirical poet laureate called by Erasmus "Britannicarum literarum lumen et decus," who died in Sanctuary, to which he was driven by the enmity of Wolsey, excited by his squibs on bad customs and bad clergy. Near him (not in the porch) rests another court poet of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth— Thomas Churchyard, 1604, whose adventurous life was one long romance. His best work was his "Legende of Jane Shore." "He was one of those unfortunate men who wrote poetry all his days, and lived a long life, to complete his misfortune." * Camden gives his epitaph, which has disappeared.t Near these graves is that of a poet of the Commonwealth, James Harrington, 1677, author of the republican romance called "Oceana." Here also was buried Milton's beloved second wife, Katherine Woodcocke (Feb. 10, 1602), who died in childbirth a year after her marriage to the poet. In the south-eastern porch is the stately tomb of Marie, Lady Dudley, 1620:-"She was grandchilde to Thomas, Duke of Norfolke, the second of that surname, and sister to Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral of England, by whose prosperous direction, through the goodness of God in defending his handmaid Queen Elizabeth, the whole fleet of Spain was defeated and discomfited." She married first Edward Sutton, Lord Dudley, and secondly Richard Mountpesson, who is represented kneeling beside her. A tablet by Westmacott, erected in 1820, commemorates William Caxton, the printer, 1492, who long worked in the neighbouring Almonry and is buried in the churchyard. A brass plate was put up here in 1845 to Sir Walter Raleigh, beheaded close by, and buried beneath the altar. Exiled to the vestry, but preserved there, are the "State Arms" put up in the church under the Puritan rule, but a crown has been added. After the Restoration, the church authorities rushed into the opposite extreme of loyal display, and a triumphal arch used to be erected inside the church annually in commemoration of the time of the king's return, till it fell and killed a carpenter in the beginning of the last century. The churchwardens for a hundred and fifty years have held with their office the possession of a very curious Horn Snuff-box, inside the lid of which is a head of the Duke Cumberland engraved by Hogarth in 1746, to commemorate the Battle of Culloden. Successive churchwardens have enclosed it in a succession of silver cases, beautifully engraved with representations of the historical events which have occurred when they held office, so that it has become a really valuable curiosity. Before leaving this church one may notice the marriage, at its altar, of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, grandfather of Mary II. and Anne, with Frances, daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury; and the baptism, at its font (Nov. 1640), of Barbara Villiers, the notorious Duchess of Cleveland. The restoration of the church is contemplated, which, it is to be hoped may conduce to the preservation, not (as is so often the case in London) to the ruin, of its monuments, which afford so many quiet glimpses of Elizabethan and Jacobean History. The Churchyard of St. Margaret's is closely paved with tombstones. Wenceslaus Hollar, the engraver (1677), is said to lie near the north-west angle of the tower. Here also are buried Sir William Waller, the Parliamentary general (1668), and Thomas Blood, celebrated for his attempt to steal the regalia (1680). The bodies of the mother of Oliver Cromwell; of Admiral Blake (who had been honoured with a public funeral); of Sir Thomas Constable and Dr. Dorislaus, concerned in the trial of Charles I.; of Thomas May, the poet and historian of the Commonwealth, and others famous under the Protectorate, when exhumed from the Abbey, were carelessly interred here. One cannot leave the churchyard without recalling its association with the poet Cowper, while he was a Westminster boy. "Crossing St. Margaret's Churchyard one evening, a glimmering light in the midst of it excited his curiosity, and, instead of quickening his speed, he, whistling to keep up his courage the while, went to see whence it proceeded. A gravedigger was at work there by lanternlight, and, just as Cowper came to the spot, he threw up a skull which struck him on the leg. This gave an alarm to his conscience, and he reckoned the incident as amongst the best religious impressions which he received at Westminster."-Southey's Life of Cowper. On the south and west of the Abbey and the precincts of Westminster School is a labyrinth of poor streets. Vine Street commemorated the vineyard of the Abbey. Many of the old Westminster signs are historical-the Lamb and Saracen's Head, a record of the Crusades; the White Hart, the badge of Richard II.; the Rose, the badge of the Tudors. In the poverty-stricken quarter, not far from the river, is St. John's Church, the second of Queen Anne's fifty churches, built (1728) from designs of Archer, a pupil of Vanbrugh. It has semi-circular apses on the east and west, and at each of the four corners one of the towers which made Lord Chesterfield compare it to an elephant on its back with its four feet in the air. The effect at a distance is miserable, but the details of the church are good when you approach them. Churchill, the poet, was curate and lecturer here (1758), and how utterly unsuited for the office we learn from his own lines : "I kept those sheep, Which, for my curse, I was ordain'd to keep, Ordain'd, alas! to keep through need, not choice. . . Sleep, at my bidding, crept from pew to pew." Horseferry Road, near this, leads to Lambeth Bridge, erected in 1862 on the site of the horse-ferry, where Mary of Modena crossed the river in her flight from Whitehall (Dec. 9, 1688), her passage being "rendered very difficult and dangerous by the violence of the wind and the heavy and incessant rain." At the same spot James II. crossed two days after in a little boat with a single pair of oars, and dropped the great seal of England into the river on his passage. The large open space called Vincent Square is used as a playground by the Westminster Scholars. In Rochester Row, on the north of the square, is St. Stephen's Church, built by Miss Burdett Coutts in 1847, and opposite this Emery Hill's Almshouses of 1708. At the end of Rochester Row towards Victoria Street is the Grey Coat School, a quaint building of 1698, with two statues in front in the costume of the children for whom it was founded. In the narrow streets near this is Tothill Fields Prison, built 1836. The gate of the earlier prison here, called Bridewell, is preserved in the garden. At the end of Victoria Street, opposite the entrance to Dean's Yard, is a very picturesque Memorial Column, by Scott, in memory of the old Westminster boys killed in the Crimean war; and at the corner of Great George Street is a |