Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/52

 36 NOTES AND QUERIES. p» s. iv. JULY s, 99. Acts of Parliament, or reports of the Eccle- siastical Commissioners or of the Common Council of the City, inasmuch as these deal only with the history of the ground :— 1. The Inscriptions upon the Tombs, Gravestones, etc., in the Dissenters Burial-Place near Bunhill Fields. London: Printed by £. Curll, in Fleet Street. 1719. 8vo. 2. Bunhill Memorials. Sacred Reminiscences of Three Hundred Ministers and other Persons of note, who are Buried in Bunhill Fields, of every Denomination. With the Inscriptions on their Tombs, and other Historical Information concern- ing them, from authentic Sources. Edited by J. A. Jones. London: Paul. 1849. 8vo. 3. Bunhill Fields Burying Ground : Proceedings in Reference to its Preservation. With Inscrip- tions on the Tombs. London : 1867. 8vo. 4. History of Bunhill Fields Burying Ground, with some of the Principal Inscriptions. With a Plan of the Ground. 1870. Svo. 5. History of the Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, with some of the Principal Inscriptions. Printed by order of the City Lands Committee of the Cor- poration of London. Henry Hicks, Esq., Chairman. London: 1887. Svo. No. 1 would appear to be the earliest Hat of the inscriptions upon the tombstones. It was compiled by one Rawlinson, and a copy of his book is to be found, I believe, in the Guildhall Library. Jones's book (No. 2) is of value from the care which was taken in its preparation ; but it is, as its title implies, limited in its scope, and its trite pious reflec- tions coulfl well be spared by the general reader. Nos. 3, 4, and 5 were substantially the work of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Charles Reed, the deputy in the Court of Common Council of the City of London for Farringdon Ward Within. Mr. Reed was a printer and afterwards a typefounder, a strong Dissenter, and a man of cultivated mind and fine presence. He it was who when the lease of the ground from the prebendary of St. Paul's expired in 1868, and the Ecclesiastical Com- missioners threatened to sell the land on building leases unless 10,000/. were paid to them, induced the City authorities to procure an Act of Parliament which vested the land " for ever hereafter " in the Corporation. On the acquisition of the ground great pains were taken to lay it out as well as its crowded state would permit; but from itw situation in the very heart of a squalid district parts of it soon fell into disorder. The "Campo Santo," as Southey called it, became the haunt of neighbouring roughs. The modern idler found here a convenient place in which to pursue the same nefarious occupation as Hogarth's "idle apprentice," and from the shelter of the tombstones defied the righteous retribution of the beadle. It was ultimately found necessary to rail off the ground and confine the public to the path ; but admission can, I believe, be obtained to any portion on application to the civil gatekeeper. Bunhill Fields has had its "Old Mortality." Sir Charles Reed was an ardent collector of Nonconformist relics, and amongst his pos- sessions was an old diary in which reference is made to the labours of a certain Dr. Rippon, an eminent Baptist minister and the compiler of a once well-known hymn-book bearing his name. Rippon was born at Tiverton in 1731, and became the pastor of the church in Carter Lane, Tooley Street (removed for the new London Bridge), where, and at New Park Street (afterwards the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon's first London charge), he ministered for no less than sixty-three years, dying in 1836, and being, appropriately enough, buried in Bunhill Fields. From this diary the following is an extract, and it is an interesting indication of the erstwhile im- portance of Bunhill Fields as a place of sepulture that every person named in it found his place of final rest there :— " We were asked to go over to the Tabernacle* to tea, and our pastor, Mr. Winter.t never having seen Dr. Owen'sJ grave, we went into the ground by the Old Royal Road]!—riot our usual way. There we found a worthy man known to Mr. Wilks,§ Mr. Rippon by name, who was laid down upon his side between two graves, and writing out the epitaphs word for word. He had an ink-horn in his button- hole, and a pen and book. He tells us that he has taken most of the old inscriptions, and that he will( if God be pleased to spare his days, do all, notwith- standing it is a grievous labour, and the writing is hard to make out by reason of the oldness of the writing in some, and defacings of other stones. It is a labour of love to him, and when he is gathered to his fathers, I hope some one will go on with the work."1J Dr. Rippon's work is still extant, but only in manuscript. He left six volumes of Bunhill Fields inscriptions, in his own handwriting, which are now preserved in the library of the Heralds' College, Queen Victoria Street. ficld at the back of the City Road. It lias been rebuilt. t Rev. Richard Winter, D.D., the successor of the Rev. Thomas Bradbury in New Court Chapel, Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn, oli. 1799, it-tnt. seventy- eight. J Prol>ably Dr. John Owen, who lies in Bunhill Fields under a portentous Latin inscription, oh. 1683, trtat. sixty-seven. A Mr. "Thaufcful" Owen was also buried here, oli. 1081. ii Now the City Road. S Rev. Matthew Wilks, D.I)., the minister at VVhiteneld's Tabernacle just mentioned, and after- wards at Whitefield's Taternacle in the Tottenham Court Road. U See 'History of the Bnnhill Fields Burial Ground,' 1887, pp. 2i-2.
 * Tho chapel erected for the Rev. George White-