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 RELIGIOUS HOUSES Essex, were held in 1283.'^ The church of St. Pancras was held in 1345.' Ralph de Diceto gave the church of Barnes to the hospital of the almonry.' That of Chingford was alienated before 1 363* Bishop Richard de Bcames granted the churches of Aldbury, Brent Pelham, and Furneaux Pelham, all in Hertfordshire.' The rectory manor of Sunbury was acquired in 1230 ;' the church of Brightlingsea in 1237' ; the church of Chiswick, probably as a result of the ancient rights over Sutton, and that of Leigh, were held in 1252 ;' in 1320 the dean and chapter impropriated the rectory of Hutton in Essex.' A rent was received from the church of Rickling in Essex in 1422.'° London churches in the patronage of St. Paul's were, at a date between 1 138 and 1250," those of St. Thomas the Apostle, St. Benet Paul's Walk, St. Peter Paul's Wharf, St. Augustine Watling Street, St. Thomas Knightrider Street, St. John Walbrook, St. Giles with- out Cripplegate, St. Mary Aldermanbury, St. Helen Bishopsgate, St. Michael Queenhithe, St. Benet Grace- church Street, St. Botolph Billingsgate, St. Martin Orgar St. Martin's Lane, St. Mary Magdalen Milk Street, St. John Zachary Maiden Lane, St. Mary Magdalen Old Fish Street, St. Antholin Watling Street, St. Olave Old Jewry, St. Stephen Coleman Street, St. Michael le Querne." The last two of these did not continue in the possession of St. Paul's." The church of St. Nicholas Olave was granted to the dean and chapter by Gilbert Foliot ; that of St. Michael Bassishaw came into their possession shortly before 1373 ; " they held the churches of St. Faith in the Crypt,'* and of St. Gregory by St. Paul's which was appropriated to the minor canons between 1445—8.'° The ' manor of Norton ' appears to have evolved into that of Folliot Hall, in High Ongar and Norton Mandeville, which was held in 1535." At th;s date no rights in Willesden not assigned to prebends were called temporal, and there is no mention of the chapter's possession of a manor in Luftenhall apart from that of Ardeley. Additional manors which now belonged to the chapter were those of Paulhouse and Bowhouse and of Harringay or Hornsey, in London and Middlesex ; and those of Beldame or Kentish Town, which may have been attached to the church of St. Pancras, and of Barnes, next Hadleigh in Essex.'* The rectories outside London impropriated by the cathedral in 1535 were those of Sunbury, Willesden, Kentish Town, Rickling in Essex, Belchamp St. Paul, Walton, Kirby, Brightlingsea and Tillingham ; and the vicarages of Kensworth, Caddington, Ardleigh, Sandon, St. Pancras, Drayton, and Chiswick. The churches of Thorpe-le-Soken, Navestock and Twy- ford appear to have been alienated." The dean and chapter presented to Wickham St. Paul's in the seventeenth and to Heybridge and Barling in the eighteenth century." HOUSE OF BENEDICTINE MONKS 2. SAINT PETER'S ABBEY, WESTMINSTER The real date of the foundation of West- minster Abbey must probably always remain uncertain. There is hardly a charter before the time of Edward the Confessor which is not open to suspicion, there is no mention of the monastery in Bede nor yet in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the year 1 040, and there can be no doubt that the more important the house became the greater was the temptation to rival in antiquity the foundation stories of such houses as St. Paul's and St. Alban's. The legend of the destruction of the temple of Apollo by King Lucius and the building of the Christian church of St. Peter on '' Dom. Bk. of Si. Paul's (ed. W. H. Hale), 160. ' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix,App. i, 38. ' Reg. Eleemos. D. S. Pauli (ed. M. Hackett), fol. 6. • Chan. Inq. p.m. 37 Edw. Ill, No. 63 (ist Nos.). ' Reg. S. Fault (ed. W. S. Simpson), iv, 2, 3. ' Hist. MSS. Com. Re/>. ix, App. i, 40. ' Fisit. of Churches of St. PauPs (Camd. Misc.) i, 33. ' Cal. of Pat. 1 3 1 7-2 1, p. 421. '" Feud. Aids, ii, 197. " Newcourt, Repert. i, 550, quoted from Register of D. and C. of St. Paul's. " Arch. Iv, 291. " Pat. 19 Eliz. pt. 6 ; Dugdale, Hist, of St. Paul's, App. 33. " Newcourt, Repert. i, 508. " Ibid. 349. its site is hardly worthy of consideration,^ but the story of the East Saxon foundation is so intimately bound up with Westminster traditions that no account of the abbey would be complete without it. The founder, according to this story, was a certain high-born citizen of London — after- wards identified as Sebert,^ king of the East Saxons and nephew of King Ethelbert, at whose instigation the work is supposed to have been undertaken. But more honourable even than this ancient and royal foundation was the apostolic consecration of the church. After the completion of the building, St. Peter, it is said, came by night to the banks of the Thames and was ferried over the broad marshes which sur- rounded the site of the abbey on the island of Ibid. 359; Cal. Rot. Cart, et Inq. a.q.d. (Rec. Com.), 387- " Fal. Eccl. (Rec. Com.), i, 360. " Ibid. 360-62, 437, 434, 437,443. " Inst. Books, P.R.O. ' Flores Hist. (Rolls Ser.), i, 146 et seq. ; Wid- more. Enquiry into the First Foundation of Westm. Abbey, 2. But for possible traces of Roman occupa- tion of Westminster, see V.C.H. London, i. ' Said to have been buried in the abbey, and trans- lated in 1308, when, on opening the coffin, the monks found his right hand and fore arm untouched by decay. Chron. Edw. I and Edw. II (Rolls Ser.), i, 266. 433 55
 * Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 75.