ROBERT POCOCK. 27 



Faulcon ale-house, situate in Milton next Gravesend, 

 Arnold Syddall Clerk, curate of Gravesend, was there 

 in, company with this deponent and others, and that 

 he then and there heard the said Arnold Syddall declare 

 and say that the Pretender, the Prince of Wales, was 

 King James's true-begotten son, and born of the 

 Queen's own body ;" while again, eleven years later, 

 Bishop Atterbury suspended the then curate for allow- 

 ing the Dutch soldiers (who sat covered during their 

 sermon) the use of the parish church for their service. 

 So highly ran the politico-religious animosities of the day. 



Indeed, even at an earlier period the inhabitants of 

 Gravesend were unfortunate in regard to their eccle- 

 siastical buildings; and the church wardens were exposed 

 to constant proceedings in the spiritual courts, for their 

 old church of St. Mary became more ruinous as it grew 

 to be more and more remote from the receding popula- 

 tion, which, in view of the supreme importance of the 

 river traffic, had beenfor the last three centuries steadily 

 leaving the interior for the river-side. Within six years 

 of the rebuilding and reconsecration of the old church by 

 Bishop Fisher, we find the churchwardens cited to the 

 Consistory Courts in consequence of its neglect and dis- 

 repair, and this continued repeatedly until Henry VIII., 

 "in terra Supremum Caput Ecclesige Anglicanae/' 

 by his licence of 1544, authorized the abandonment of 

 St. Mary's, and the substitution of St. George's Chapel 

 as the parish church. 



Owing to the dearth of material, we cannot, until 

 we shall have further advanced in the century, com- 

 mand much unpublished information respecting our 

 printer ; but continuing for the present to confine our- 

 selves to his publications, he issued in 1802 : 



