116 Recent WilUhirc Books, Articles, &c. 



Surely not. The point is certainly a remarkable one, but may not the 

 explanation of it be that in the 7th century, when the parish boundaries 

 were laid out, the Roman road was still used and was therefore known to 

 allmen and suggested itself naturally as a convenient boundary, whereas 

 the dyke in the other portions of its course was already a thing of the 

 mysterious past, without a meaning for the people of that day, and so 

 was ignored in laying out the parish bounds. "? 



Bryan King and the Riots at St. George's-in-the- 

 East. By William Crouch, Rector and Vicar of 

 Gamlingay; with a preface by George W. E. 

 Russell, and a note by J. B, Knight. Methuen & Co., 



36, Essex Street, W.C, London. [1904.] Cloth, 7^ X 5, pp. xii., 180, 

 with portrait of Bryan King. 



Bryan King was born at Liverpool in 1811, the son of George King, 

 a merchant of that city, and Catherine Ashfield, his wife. He was 

 educated at a Liverpool School, at first, and afterwards at Shrewsbury 

 School, and Brasenose College, Oxford, of which he was afterwards elected 

 fellow, remaining in residence at Oxford, where he was accounted the 

 handsomest man of his time, until 1837. He was ordained deacon 

 1836, and priest, 1837, by the Bishop of Oxford, and was the same year 

 appointed by the college Perpetual Curate of St. John's, Bethnal Green, 

 with a population of 8000 people. In 1842 he married Mary Martha, 

 d. of Rev. Thomas Fardell, Rector of Boothby Pagnell (Lines.), and was 

 presented by the college to the Rectory of St. George's-in-the-East, a 

 parish which contained within its boundaries in the neighbourhood of 

 Ratcliffe Highway some of the worst and most vicious slums of the 

 metropolis. Mr. King started choral services, and later on the use of 

 vestments. The trouble came to a head with the election by the vestry 

 of the Rev. Hugh Allen, a militant Protestant, as " Lecturer " at St. 

 George's. The supporters of the lecturer and of the Rector came to 

 blows, and for mouths the services were the scenes of the wildest 

 Protestant rioting. The author of the present book, Mr. King's son-in- 

 law, dutifully supports his father-in-law's conduct in every detail, and 

 falls foul in no measured language of everyone who did not agree with 

 him, and notably with Archbishop Tait, then Bishop of London, and 

 with his biographer, the present Archbishop. A remark which the latter 

 makes to the effect that possibly a little more tact on the part of Mr. 

 King might have conduced to the earlier settlement of the question so 

 irritates the author that he feels it necessary to impute all manner of 

 mean motives to the Bishops in general and to Bishop Tait in particular, 

 and to get Mr. Russell to echo his sentiments in a short but highly-spiced 

 preface of three pages, in, to put it mildlj', somewhat doubtful taste. 



In 1863 Mr. King exchanged with the Rev. J. L. Ross, and after the 

 turmoil of St. George's-in-the-East, passed a quiet and uneventful thirty- 

 one years as Vicar of Avebury, until he resigned the living in 1894 and 

 retired to Weston-super-Mare, where he died January 30th, 1895. It 

 seems a pity to have imported so much bitterness into the biography of 

 a good man. 



