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 A HISTORY OF LONDON 1678-9 work had been begun on thirty-four churches. St. Vedast's, St. Sepul- chre's, St. Christopher le Stocks and twelve other churches had been finished and paid off ; five churches were far advanced ; St. Mary le Bow, St. Olave Jewry, and St. Nicholas Cole Abbey were 'near paid off' ; at St. Laurence Jewry, St. Magnus, St. Bride's, and St. Stephen Walbrook work was still being done on the towers, and St. Michael Bassishaw was finished. The rebuilding of Christ Church had begun and building was still going on at five other churches.^" In 1683 twenty-five churches, including St. Lau- rence Jewry and St. Anne and St. Agnes, had been completed ; seventeen were nearly finished ; St. Clement Eastcheap, St. Michael Crooked Lane, and St. Margaret Old Fish Street had been lately begun, leaving Allhallows Lombard Street, St. Margaret Lothbury, St. Andrew by the Wardrobe, St. Michael Paternoster Royal, St. Margaret Pattens, and St. Mary Somerset still to be taken in hand.^^ In the disorganization caused by the Fire the tithes and terriers'' of church property in many cases disappeared, so that the danger of appropria- tion by private persons was great. Sir Joseph Childs seized part of the site of the east end of St. Botolph Billingsgate, and would give no compensation;'* at St. Thomas the Apostle it was believed that part of the parsonage was occupied by a mason,'* and other cases might be cited." Bishop Henchman's proposal that incumbents should be empowered to let their glebe and parson- ages on building leases was accepted by Parliament and widely followed ; '° the interrogatories of Archbishop Sancroft in 1685 and of Bishop Compton in 1693" show that these transactions were suspected of irregularity due to neglect of registration. At St. Mary Staining and St. Magnus in 171 1 the length of the leases of glebe property was not known, while at St. Mary Mounthaw the counterpart had been mislaid.'^ The term of the lease was generally forty years ; '' that of part of the churchyard of St. Martin Vintry was for 999 years, but this was exceptional.*" Benefactions were also some- times misapplied, and in 1669 the rector of St. Benet Gracechurch desired that the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's should record the parish charities lest they should be lost." The plate, books, bells, and lead of St. Michael Paternoster were purloined by the churchwardens after the Fire ; at St. Pancras Soper Lane a churchwarden disappeared with the plate,*' and the commissioners complained of the theft of materials from the ruined churches as well as of the erection of ale-houses and forges in the precincts. The lord mayor was accordingly ordered to make a return of all communion plate, bells, vestments, records, books, and other goods of the destroyed churches,*' but this attempt at control met with little success. The ruin caused by the Fire had an equally important effect on the incomes of the City clergy. Hitherto their stipends had under the Act of 1535 been regulated by a rate increasing with the increase of property and '° Bodl. Lib. Tanner MS. 142, fol. 25. " Ibid. fol. 36. " Archidiaconatus Lond. fol. 5, 39, 62, &c. " Ibid. fol. 119. " Bodl. Lib. Tanner MS. 124, fol. 171. »» Ibid. fol. 117, 133. ^ Archidiaconatus Lond. passim. " Articles of Inquiry in a Parochial Visitation, 1693 (B.M. Pressmark 5155, c, 85). " Archidiaconatus Lond. fol. 39, 77, 136. ^' Vaxdi. passim. " Bodl. Lib. Tanner MS. 1 2 5, fol. 117, 124. " Sharpe, Lond. and the Kingdom, ii, 424.
 * " Bodl. Lib. Tanner MS. 142, fol. 102. " D. and C. St. Paul's, box 55, no. 46.