the churchyard through the eastern gates-which gates are curiously adorned with flames and death's heads-and turning from the vicar's walk, a beautiful lime-tree avenue running the whole length of the northern side of the churchyard, twelve hundred feet, proceeded to the south transept door. On the way I read the following lines, descriptive of a matron who died more than sixty years ago:

In brief to speak, let this suffice,

She was a wife both frugal, good and wise;
Of children careful, to her husband kind:

All certain symptoms of a virtuous mind.

The history of this church, which George Eliot declared to be the finest parish church in the kingdom, may be soon told. At the time of the Domesday Survey, about 1086, there was here a house of God. How long it had existed cannot now be certainly known, but that it had obtained some endowment is probable from the fact that, early in his reign, William Rufus sequestered the church and its estate for his own purposes. Once in a while, however, the Red King repented of the evil he had done. In 1093 he allowed the see of Canterbury, after three years' vacancy, to be filled, and on December 4th, Anselm, the pure and the true, was consecrated Archbishop. His influence over the king was not always inefficacious. The day after the consecration, Rufus, for the good of the soul of William, his father, and of Matilda, his mother, and for his own soul, presented the advowson of Ashbourne with some other churches to the Cathedral and Bishop of Lincoln. This praiseworthy motive may have been furthered by other considerations. Lincoln was a new see. The Cathedral built by the sainted Remigius was finished and men gathered there for its consecration, but three days before the time appointed for that ceremony, May 6, 1092, Remigius died. Now was appointed to the bishopric the king's friend and servant, Robert Bloet, and, perhaps both as a token of personal favor and also towards the endowment of the see, still in process, the king gave Ashbourne to Lincoln, thus blending cleverly, if not harmoniously, the spiritual with the friendly and the practical. Bloet held Lincoln for thirty years, besides being chancellor to William Rufus and justiciar under Henry I. Without ranking among the best of prelates, he was yet bountiful both to his church and to his poor, liberal in his manner of life and a friend of scholars. Both he and his successors for the next two hundred and fifty years seem to have got as much as was possible out of Ashbourne. That they needed much to enable them to maintain their state may have

been to them some excuse, but it did not help this village. The duties were done by a vicar, poorly paid we do not doubt.

It was during the incumbency of one of these vicars, Nicholas de Esseburne, about 1220, that, of the present building, the chancel and transepts were erected. Not, however, till 1241 were they consecrated. Then it was that Hugh de Patteshull, a Staffordshireman, lately appointed bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, determined that the heavy drain should no longer be made upon Ashbourne. He bound the Dean of Lincoln to content himself with a small pension, and he directed that the vicar should have four curates and such other clergy as would ensure proper ministrations, and enable the parish to exercise becoming hospitality. Afterwards, May 25th, 1241, he consecrated the church in honor of St. Oswald, king and martyr, as is testified by a Latin inscription on a brass tablet now kept in the vestry.

Nine years after this, both church and town suffered severely from fire. Presumably, the older portion of the former, to which had been added the work of Nicholas de Esseburne, was damaged beyond repair. At this time John de Brecham, appointed in 1241, the year of Bishop Patteshull's reforms, held the vicarage, and if it be true, as is said, that he spent two hundred marks yearly on the parish, his generosity is apparent. Under his care and his immediate successors, within forty years of the consecration, were built parts of the nave, the south aisle and the tower, and about 1330 the spire was finished. Two hundred years later, about 1520, the clerestories were added to the nave and transepts. Since then little has been done beyond repairing the ravages of time and storm. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the nave received its present roof, the south transept was partly rebuilt and strengthened, and the upper part of the spire, previously damaged in a gale of wind, was restored. The wind, indeed, has played havoc with the spire. Three times within the last hundred and fifty years it has had to be taken down and repaired. Lately, the entire building has been restored; but the work was done so carefully and conservatively under the supervision of the present excellent incumbent, the Reverend Francis Jourdain, that the archæologist can find no fault, and the lover of the churches of the past is more than satisfied.

The advowson of Ashbourne has not been held by Lincoln uninterruptedly from the time of William Rufus to the present. In October, 1270, Prince Edward, son of Henry III, and afterwards himself king of England, was in a terrible storm off the Sicilian coast. He had purposed to wrest from the infidel the Land which Christendom has ever regarded as holy,

but the violence of the tempest threatened destruction both to his fleet and to his hopes. So he vowed to found an abbey for the glory of God and the good of men's souls, were he saved. The storm passed away, and he had opportunity both to lift up the cross in Palestine, and to establish his monastery wherever he thought fit. He did both. In Cheshire he built on the banks of the Weaver the house known as Vale Royal, the spot having been selected because over it the shepherds had heard celestial music in the air. To maintain this house, and the sixteen gentlemen who should dwell therein, endowment was necessary, and, as princes did not always out of their own means satisfy the requirements of an expensive vow, some readjustment of church revenues was effected, and Ashbourne was taken from Lincoln and given to Vale Royal. Whether the dean and chapter of Lincoln approved of this transfer of their property, I do not know; and, after all, reparation was not long delayed. In 1289, the year that Queen Eleanor, the beloved of king and people, died, Edward I restored to Lincoln the benefice of which it had been deprived.

It is worth while to notice the way in which the rights of parishes to their own endowments were set aside. The estates which were given by the faithful for the maintenance of divine services within a certain district, or at a certain church, came to be considered by those in authority as at their disposal, and they granted them to whomsoever they would. Ashbourne was not in the diocese of Lincoln, nor had it aught to do with Vale Royal: in fact, it was a parochial foundation, and its revenues were intended for the people, and not for either monks or canons; but that made no difference. Something, of course, may be said for the solidarity of the Church, but the only reason that I can see for this appropriation to outside purposes of parish incomes, or, to put it more exactly, of the the greater tithes of a parish, is because such incomes or tithes exceeded the necessities of the parish. The tithes of Ashbourne came to be largelarger, I presume, than the place needed. And, as money never should be wasted, this is the reason why to-day, instead of being thrown away upon the Church or its clergy, they go to a lay impropriator who does not even live in the parish.

An edifice, in some parts, well-nigh seven hundred years old-perhaps fragments of it are even older-and added to or altered at considerable intervals of time, necessarily displays several styles of architecture. Indeed, here are illustrated the three great Gothic styles, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular. The building is cruciform, the length of the nave and chancel together, from east to west, being 175 feet, and of

the transepts, from north to south, 100 feet. The chancel is five feet longer and two feet broader than the nave, and, like several other churches we have visited this summer, has a decided deflection towards the north. Someone told me that the deflection is not symbolical, that it does not represent the drooping head of our Saviour upon the cross, but that it was the result of haphazard work and had no significance. This opinion I cannot agree with; nor have I ever seen a chancel deflect towards the south. The transepts are forty-four feet wide, and each is divided in the middle by arches and pillar. Double transepts of this kind are rare. The nave has an aisle on the south side only, thus destroying the symmetry of the structure, and yet not injuring its beauty or its verity. Between this aisle and the nave is an arcade of four arches, above the capitals of the pillars of which appear the heads of some of the nobles and prelates who have been interested in Ashbourne. On the easternmost is the head of Edward I and the head of his contemporary, Roger Longspee, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, to whose memory history has not been over gentle. Formerly between the spandrels of the nave arches and on the opposite wall were the names and emblems of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and on the west wall was a figure of St. Christopher. In the south wall of the aisle are the remains of a passageway leading up through the wall to a chamber over a porch now destroyed; but by far the most interesting object in this part of the church is the font, which is coeval with the consecration of the church itself. The west door, instead of being exactly under the great western window of the nave, is, owing to the south aisle and to the desire to have the altar from the entrance full in sight, placed so far to the south that the point of its arch almost coincides with the corner of the window. The view from this door up the church is very impressive: the only drawback being the chancel roof, which in restoration has been set so low that it cuts off the point of the east window. As this part of the restoration was done by Sir Gilbert Scott, one hesitates to say that the beauty of the window is thereby marred.

And it is a beautiful window, of fine perpendicular style. Passing up the nave and through the space under the tower, of which more by-andby, we enter the chancel there to find that in this window are the arms of Normandy and England, of John of Gaunt and the Duchy of Lancaster, and of many of the families who held lands within the honor of Tutbury. There are twenty of these coats, most of them, if not all, being as old as the stonework itself. The chancel screen, the choir-stalls and the altar, like the pulpit in the nave, are modern, but unlike most things modern