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or guild, of shoemakers, glovers, saddlers, and cobblers, to be used 

 by them as a place for their guild meetings, and "for no other 

 purpose ■whatever." Before this date this room had been used as 

 a lock-up for "better sort of fForreyners." In 1653 the gate was 

 extensively repaired by order of the Mayor, Mr. Edward Prescott 

 (ancestor to our fellow townsman of that name). As to the name 

 of iiiggin, no meaning has yet been found which is quite satisfactory. 

 There is, in Tork, a Gate bearing the same name, but antiquaries in 

 that City have formed no conclusion as to the meaning of the word. 

 It is variously spelt ; in old documents it appears as Bekyn, Bygen, 

 Bikkene, Begin, and Bigge^n, but even these varieties of the name 

 throw no light on the meaning. 



Of Cow Gate we know still less than of Biggin Gate. It 

 was called sometimes the Common Gate, because it adjoined the 

 waste land or Common where the cows of the town were allowed 

 to graze. These cows would be troubled to find any pasturage up 

 there now, for all the land above the site of the old gate has been 

 built upon for manj years, and some of it enclosed as a burying 

 place for St. Mary's Parish. The inscription let into the public 

 house wall at the top of Queen Street, tells us that the gate was 

 taken down in 1776. Whether it was part of a street improvement 

 scheme of those days I do not know, but apparently it was not 

 wholly destroyed, for in 1830, when the street was widened, 

 remains of an arch of the old gateway were seen built into the 

 walls of a house. The public-house, which stands on the site, 

 bears the remarkable name of "The cause is altered." What 

 cause does it refer to, and why is it altered ? * 



The next Tower to which I would draw your attention is 

 one which many old people remember, for it was left standing in 

 Bench tStreet till 1836. In all tJie old books about Dover and 

 its Churches, we have recorded that this tow'er was part of 

 St. Nicholas Church, one of the six Parish Churches in Dover. 

 Canon Scott-Robertson has, however, clearly shown that that of 

 St. Martin was a very large one, with a triple apsidal end, with 

 high altars in each apse, dedicated to St. jS^icholas, St. John, and 

 St. Martin, that each of these had a separate incumbent and 

 a parish assigned to him ; so that in fact one roof covered the 

 three Churches. One document he quotes stated that Archbishop 

 Warham, in 1511, found the Church and steeple of St. Martin 

 in " a bad state of repair, whicli doeth great hurt to the Church of 

 St. Nicholas," and the churchwardens of St. John's abandoned all 

 idea of service in their portion at this time for the same reason, 

 which certainly points to the same thing, for otherwise they would 

 not have been affected. So we must no longer think of the old 



* Is there not a very similar sign in Westminster ? Eds. 



