the upper window of St. Edward's Chapel: this, probably, was executed as remotely as Henry the Sixth's time, and includes whole-length representations of Christ and the Virgin Mary; King Edward the Confessor, and St. John the Evangelist, his Patron Saint; and St. Augustin and Bishop Mellitus. The monumental Chapels of St. Edward, and King Henry the Seventh, and the chantry Chapels of Henry the Fifth (with its elaborate screen-work against the east wall), Abbot Islip, and St. Faith, (erroneously called St. Blaize's and St. Catherine's Chapel), are all deserving of a most particular inspection. Indeed, there is scarcely any part of the fabric, crowded as it is with memorials of the most noble and highly-talented of our countrymen, but will amply repay the visitant for the labour of examination and research. Westminster Abbey, with all its possessions, was surrendered to Henry the Eighth by Abbot Boston, or Benson, on the 16th of January, 1539-40: its nett revenues, according to Dugdale, amounted to 34701. Os. 24d. per annum. Its gross valuation, as given by Speed, was 39771. 6s. 44d. On the 17th of December, 1540, the King, by his letters patent, erected Westminster into an Episcopate, of which the Abbey Church became the Cathedral, and Thomas Thirlby, Dean of the King's Chapel, was appointed its first Bishop. He was also its last Bishop, for during the Protectorate in Edward the Sixth's reign, he was constrained to resign his See on March the 29th, 1550. The new Bishopric was then suppressed, and the diocese of Westminster consigned to the jurisdiction of the Bishops of London, who thus obtained authority over various Churches which, as belonging to the Abbey, had previously been exempt from visitation. Queen Mary, by a charter, dated at Croyden, on September the 7th, 1556, re-instated the Monastery of Westminster, and soon afterwards bestowed the Abbacy on John Fecknam, or Feckenham, who was the last Abbot that ever sat in the House of Lords; in which, in January, 1559, in Queen Elizabeth's first Parliament, he took his seat in "the lower place on the Bishops' form." In the same year, July the 12th, the Abbey was surrendered to the Queen, under the authority of a general Act of Parliament, which vested in the reigning sovereign all the religious houses lately erected, or revived, by her sister. The monks were then finally displaced, and Abbot Feckenham was, in the following year, committed to the Tower in consequence of his pertinacious resistance to the measures of Elizabeth in support of the Reformed Church. The unsettled state of ecclesiastical affairs had induced the Queen to keep the Abbey in her own hands for several months, but at length, on May 21st, 1560, she re-founded it as a Collegiate Church, to be governed by a Dean, twelve Secular Canons, or Prebendaries, and various other officers : she also attached to it a royal school for forty boys (now called the King's Scholars), with a Master, Usher, &c. and many very eminent men, both in church and state, have acquired the rudiments of knowledge at this establishment. LONDON IN QUEEN ELIZABETH's reign. Not any plan nor view of the Metropolis is known, with certainty, to be extant, of an earlier date than Queen Elizabeth's reign; although Bagford, in his Letter to Hearne, prefixed to Leland's "Collectanea,” has mentioned a view, or ground-plot, of London, as being noticed in a manuscript inventory of Henry the VIIIth's furniture. Vertue, speaking of a plan and view of London, with the River Thames, &c. which he describes as "the most ancient Prospect in print,"* says, "This was reported to have been done in Henry VIII. or Edward the VIth's time; but from several circumstances it appears to be done early in Queen Elizabeth's reign, about 1560, being cut on several blocks of wood: the plates thereof are now of the greatest scarcity, no copies perhaps preserved, being put up against walls in houses, therefore in length of time all decayed or lost."+ Whether that Prospect was the identical" Civitas Londinvm, Ano Dni Circiter MDLX," which Vertue "re-engraved to oblidge the Curious," and "shew Posterity how much was built of this populous City" in Elizabeth's reign, is somewhat questionable, and the engraver's notes are not sufficiently explicit to enable us to determine the question. Of the "Civitas Londinum," his words are, "Probably this was published by Ralph Aggas, as he Vide Walpole's "Catalogue of Engravers," in his account of Ralph Aggas. † Ibid. * G VOL. I. himself mentioned in that plan of Oxford, done after this was begun but it must be observed, that this very impression is a second publication, with the date 1628, and that there are several alterations from the first in this; and particularly, instead of the arms as Queen Elizabeth bore then, those of King James I. (of England, France, and Scotland) are put in the place of them."* In the explanatory part of the re-engraved plan, Vertue inserted the three first of the following lines, as inscribed by Ralph, or "Radulphus Aggas, on his Oxonia Antiqua,' published A.D. 1578;" but the entire verse is here given, as printed by Mr. Gough in his "British Topogra phy."+ "Near tenne yeares past the Authour made a doubt Whether to printe or laye this work aside, Untill he first had London plotted out: Which still he craves, although he be denied. He thinks the Citie now in hiest pride, And would make shewe how it was best beseen The thirtieth year of our moste noble Queene." Now this information leaves it dubious whether Aggas's intention was ever executed; and, unless we regard the thirtieth year," mentioned in the last line, as a mistake for the twentieth of Elizabeth, which the year 1578 actually was, there is a most unaccountable ambiguity in the meaning of the verse. But, at any rate, we have no absolute valid autho * Walpole's "Catalogue of Engravers," under Aggas. + Vide the article "London," vol. i. p. 744. rity for ascribing the plan under review to the above Surveyor, although it has been generally called by his name. Mr. Gough, who mentions three impressions of the old plan, two of them belonging to Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Mead, and the third in the Pepysian Library, conceives with Mr. Ward, that it has been altered at different times. The impression in the Pepysian Collection, he says, has the following lines in the righthand corner: the last couplet seems a compliment to King James. "NEW TROY my name when first my fame begun By Trojan Brute ; who then me placed here, This vertuous peer my soveraign King to be." In Vertue's plan, which was executed in 1737, and eventually purchased of his widow by the Society of Antiquaries, the above lines are omitted; their place being occupied by the explanatory remarks, under the words Londinum Antiqua. Vertue describes the original printed plan as 6 feet 3 inches long, and 2 feet 4 inches wide, "contained in six sheets and two half sheets ;" but with "notes of explanation printed," he imagines, "on slips of paper, to be added at bottom." His own plan was |