224 ROBERT POCOCK. 



Archbishop of Canterbury devoid of interest, when 

 he says, " I humbly beg out of kindness, as for old com- 

 panionship and our common country's sake, that he 

 will undertake the burden of this executorship, be- 

 seeching him and the other executors, by the sprinkling 

 of the blood of Jesus Christ, that they would be such 

 true dispensers of my goods as they would themselves 

 wish to have when their own turns come." 



Thus Bishop Grravesend expresses himself, dying 

 the 9th of December, 1303; and his body, taken to 

 London on the 15th, was, after an impressive funeral 

 on the day following, quietly laid under the floor of his 

 cathedral, below a simple stone of " ten pieces." 



Though it does not appear in his will, he founded and 

 endowed the Divinity Lecture at St. Paul's, originally 

 attached to the chancellorship of the church. 



Pocock had traced out (as the fact was) that the 

 Bishop's same nephew Stephen, of Gravesend, to 

 whom his uncle had bequeathed his best Bible, became, 

 in A.D. 1339, curiously enough (after three other in- 

 tervening prelates), himself Bishop of London, a see 

 he occupied till 1398. Being a man of inflexible 

 probity he felt unable to recall his oath of allegiance to 

 King Edward II. after his deposition, and for this he was 

 imprisoned ; and while the Earl of Kent lost his life on 

 the same account, Stephen was ultimately released and 

 pardoned by Act of Parliament in 1336, his previous 

 accusation being that after the death of the king, 

 September 21st, 1327, he had disseminated rumours 

 that Edward II. was still living. 



Returning to Pocock's career as a topographer, it is 

 believed to have been a few years afterwards that our 

 indefatigable author drew up his 



