suddenly enter upon the quiet of a secluded churchyard, filled in early spring with bright green foliage. Here, c. 1216, the Priory of the Nuns of St. Helen's was founded by William Basing, Dean of St. Paul's. The old Hall of the Nuns was only removed in 1799. Their Church remains,

and from the number of monuments connected with the City of London within its walls it has become a kind of Westminster Abbey for the City, and is of the highest interest. Lately the number of these monuments has been greatly increased by the destruction, in 1874, of the ancient

Church of St. Martin Outwich (so called from its founder, John de Oteswitch), and the removal to St. Helen's of all the tombs which it contained.

The church consists of two aisles, separated by perpendicular arches, with chapels attached at the south-east. Only a very small portion of the building is used for congregational purposes, and till a few years ago a large part of the west end, screened off, and always known as "The Void," was only used for funerals. The whole building is surrounded with monuments. An inscription over the west door reminds us that "This is none other than the house of God," but the usual entrance is by the handsome Jacobean door on the south side of the building. The small altar-tomb with incised figures opposite the entrance is that of William and Magdalen Kirwen of 1594. On the left of the door is the stately alabaster tomb of the rich Sir John Spencer (1609), raised by Lord Northampton to his well-deserving father-in-law." "Some thousand men in mourning cloakes" assisted at his funeral.* The figures of Sir John and his wife (Alicia Bromfeld) repose under a double canopy; the heiress daughter, almost eclipsed in the immensity of her hoop, kneels at a desk at their feet. Next is the tomb of Dame Abigail Lawrence (1682), "the tender mother of ten children, nine of whom she suckled at her breast." Opposite, on the north wall, is the tomb of John Robinson, alderman, and merchant of the Staple, with Christian his wife (1592, 1599), who were "happy in nine sonnes and seaven daughters": all this family are kneeling behind their parents at a faldstool. Beyond this is an exquisite Gothic canopy (from St. Martin Outwich) of PurLetter from Mr. John Beaulieu to Mr. Turnbull. March 22, 1609-1610. VOL. I. U

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beck marble, over the tomb of Alderman Hugh Pemberton and his wife Katerina (1500).

Here the line of monuments is broken by a great tomb like a house, to Francis Bancroft, founder of the Mile End Almshouses, who "settled his estate in London and Middlesex for the beautifying and keeping in repair of this monument for ever." It is very ugly, but very curious. Being the property of the Drapers' Company, when a new Master is appointed, he generally pays his respects to Francis Bancroft, for the tomb can be entered by a door, and the lid of the coffin turns back, displaying the skeleton. Bancroft was so unpopular as a city magistrate in his life-time, that the people pealed the bells at his funeral, and tried to upset the coffin on its way to the grave. He desired that for a hundred years a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine might be placed in his grave every year on the anniversary of his death, because he was convinced that before that time he should awake from his death-sleep and require it. The hundred years have now expired.

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Beyond Bancroft's tomb are a staircase and a door, which formerly communicated with two stories of the convent. There, against the wall, are the tombs of William Bond-"Flos Mercatorum "- a merchant-adventurer, and most famous in his age for his great enterprises by sea and land" (1576); and Martin Bond (1643), governor of Tilbury Fort in the time of Elizabeth. He is represented sitting in a tent, with sentries outside, and a servant bringing up a horse. The noble altar-tomb beneath, with a raised coat of arms, is that of the great Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, with the simple in

scription, "Sir Thomas Gresham, Knight, buried December 15, 1579." Above hangs his helmet, carried at his funeral. Against the wall is the quaint coloured monument of Sir Andrew Judde, Lord Mayor (1558), founder of the Grammar School at Tunbridge

"To Russia and Muscovia,

To Spayne, Germany, without fable,
Travelled he by land and sea,

Both Mayor of London and Staple."

The great canopied tomb close by is that of Sir William Pickering, "famous in learning, arts, and warfare," and, moreover, very handsome, which caused him to stand so high in the favour of Elizabeth, that he (a simple knight) was at one time deemed to have a fair chance of obtaining the hand which was refused to the kings of Spain and Sweden. He died at Pickering House in St. Mary His son is commemorated on the same

Axe in 1574. monument.

*

The beautiful Gothic niche behind Gresham's tomb has a kind of double grille of stone-" the Nuns' Grate "which is believed to have been intended to allow refractory nuns to hear a faint echo of the mass from the crypt beneath. In the "Nuns' Aisle," every Sunday morning, a dole of fresh loaves—“good sweet wheaten bread "—lies waiting on a clean white cloth for the poor, bequeathed to them by a humble benefactor of the early part of the seventeenth century, whose dust lies below.

* That the life of the Black Nuns of St. Helen's was not altogether devoid of amusements we may gather from the "Constitutiones" given them by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's-" also we enjoyne you, that all daunsyng and revelng be utterly forborne among you, except at Christmasse, and other honest tymys of recreacyone, among yourselfe usyd, in absence of seculars in alle wyse."

On the wall above the Nuns' Grate is a monument erected in 1877 to the memory of Alberico Gentili, who, when driven to England by the religious persecutions of the latter part of the sixteenth century, established his reputation as a great international jurist by his famous work, "De Jure Belli." The register of St. Helen's mentions the burial of his father, Matteo, "near the cherry-tree," and that of the son "at the feet of Widow Coombs, near the gooseberry

tree"-i.. in the convent garden, as near to the back of this monument as can be identified.

Passing the altar, we reach the noble tomb of Sir John Crosby (1475) and his wife Anneys-he wearing an alderman's mantle over plate armour, and with a collar of suns and roses, the badge of the House of York, round his neck. The lady has a most remarkable headdress. Steps lead down into the Chapel of the Virgin, almost naved with