Retrospect of Domestic Literature— Topography. 
fordshire; Guild-hall Chapel, and the 
curious Kitchen at Stanton Harcourt, in 
Oxfordshire. We have not often seen 
a work of more equal good execution 
| than the present. 
In this class also, we have to place 
the second volume of Mr. WoopzBuRn’s 
“Ecclesiastical Topography ;” containing 
fifty Views of Churches in the Environs 
of London, accompanied by appropriate 
Descriptions. The commendations we 
bestowed upon the former volume need 
not to be withheld from this. Of the 
Views we prefer those of Merton, Cawn- 
berwell » Malden, and Mitckam Churches, 
in Surry ; of Hayes, and Foot’s Cray, in 
Kent; of Hampton, Nofthall, Greenford 
Magna, and Harrow, in Middlesex ; ‘and 
of Woodferd, in Essex. In the index, 
Ridge, which is in Hertfordshire, is re- 
ferred to, by mistake, as a church in 
Middiesex. From the descriptions we 
have selected the two following as speci- 
mens : 
Elstree. 
“The village of Elstree is situated 
about eleven miles from London, in the 
hundred of Caisho, in Hertfordshire. 
A few houses only near the church, are 
in the parish; the rest standing in the 
three parishes of Edgeware, Whitchurch, 
and Aldenham. 
“Of its antiquity we know but little. 
The property of the place is said to have 
been given to St. Alban’s asia at its 
first. foundation by king Offa;* and in 
the Domesday Survey, ; It 1s supposed to 
have been included in the manor of Park- 
bury, detailed among the possessions’ of 
the monks, to whom, from a remote 
period, the rectory of Elstree seems to 
have belonged. 
“The church, dedicated to St. Ni- 
cholas, is a small neat structure; the ap- 
pearance of whose exterior has given 
rise to the supposition that it was ori- 
ginally built out of the ruins of the an- 
cient city of Sulloniaca, about a mile 
distant. It consists of a nave, chancel, 
and south aisle, the latter separated from 
the body by octagonal pillarsand pointed 
arches. ‘The tombs are few, and of in- 
considerable note. 
“Since the dissolution of religious 
houses, the advowson of the rectory, 
which is in the deanery. of St. Alban’s, | 
has been vested in the crown. In the 
‘faxation of Pope Nicholas, 1291, we 
haveonly a casual mention of the vill 
called. “ Hildescrer;”+ without any valor 
* Newc. Rep. Eccl. vol. i. p. 840. 
+ MS. in the King’s Remembr. Off. Ex. 
gheq- ie 82, b e 
625 
of the living. A miscellaneous manu- 
script however in the Cotton library, of - 
the fourteenth century,* relating prin- 
cipally to St. Alban’s, sets its produce at 
three marks, The parliamentary com- 
missioners, in their enquiry into the 
state of the ecclesiastical benefices, in 
1650, found the rectory of Ilstree, with 
two acres of glebe, was worth but forty 
pounds a year; that it had been seques- 
tered from Abraham Spencer, (to whose 
family a fifth of the rectory had been 
allowed ;) and that the cure was supplied 
by Wilham Markelman, put in by the 
committee of plundered ministers. 
« Newcourt, io the Repertorium Ec- 
clesiasticum, supplies us with the names 
of a few rectors only, between 1595 
and'1700. .The following, of an earlier 
date, occur im a curious manuscript for= 
merly belonging to St, Alban’s Abbey, 
and not referred to by bishop Tanner, in 
Dr. Rawlinson’s Collection at Oxford, 
more particularly described in the ac- 
count of Ridge. The dates are those of 
presentation: 
Joh. Wynes. 
1467. Thomas William, 
1470. Hen. Spenser. 
1471. Malachy. Keenyan, 
1474. John Seman, 
1477. Richard Bisguet alias Bosquets 
1483. John Jubbe: 
“The rectors from 1700 to the present 
time, are given from the bishop of Lon- 
don’s Registers : | 
1706. William Hawtayne. 
1749. Richard Bainbrigg, M.A. 
1740. Samuel Clarke. 
1787. William Hawtayne. 
“Tn the king's books, 1534, it stands 
at eight pounds. |The eazliest date of 
the Register, according to Mir, Lysons, 
is 1636.” 
Bermondsey. 
“The new and fair church at Ber- 
mondsey, so particularly mentioned in 
the Domesday Survey, is allowed by cur 
topographers to mean only the conventuud 
church, which had then been very lately 
built.+ Mr. Manning dates the founda- 
tion of the parish church about the be 
ginning of the reign of Edward TIT. 
when, in 1387, a commission was Issued 
from the bishop of Winchester for its 
consecration by Boniface, bishop of 
Corban.} 
* Claud. E. iv. f. 342. 
+ Domesd. vol. i. f. 30. a. 
t~ Manning’s Hist. Surr. vol. i. p. 208, 
from Reg. Winton, Orleton. 
** But 
