At Stepney, and a half miles east of , we reach the eastern boundary of the radius we have defined for our work. This parish was anciently called Stibenhede, Stebenhythe, or Stebunhethe. In , probably because it was an out-of-the-way nook, between marshes and the river, it was the seat of a parliament summoned by Edward I. to meet at the mansion house of Henry Walleis, then Mayor of London. At an early date the manor was held by the Bishops of London, who had a palace, called Bishop's Hall, now in the parish of . In the century John de Pulteney, who was times Mayor of London, owned property in this parish. From the reign of Edward I. various injunctions were made at Stepney to prevent the frequent floods from the Thames, to inquire into the state of the banks and ditches, and to prevent all negligent tenants and delinquents.

Alienated by Bishop Ridley, the manor of Stepney was given by Edward VI. to the Wentworths. From Lord Wentworth it descended to Thomas, Earl of Cleveland, whose estates were confiscated in , when Sir William Ellis, Cromwell's solicitor, was made steward of the manor, a place then valued at per annum. After the Restoration the Earl of Cleveland recovered his manor, which continued in his family till the year , when

The parish church, dedicated to St. Dunstan and All Saints, was built in the century. It has a low broad tower, strengthened with buttresses, and surmounted by a turret and dome. In it was buried the illustrious Sir Thomas Spert, Comptroller of the Navy in the time of Henry VIII., commander of the and the founder of the Trinity House. Here also a writer to the discovered that remarkably absurd epitaph-

Here Thomas Saffin lies interred-ah, why?

Born in New England did in London die.

Was the third son of eight, begot upon

His mother Martha by his father John.

Much favoured by his prince he 'gan to be,

But nipt by death at th' age of twenty-three.

Fatal to him was that we small-pox name,

By which his mother and two brethren came

Also to breathe their last, nine years before,

And now have left their father to deplore

The loss of all his children, with his wife,

Who was the joy and comfort of his life.

Deceased, June 18, 1687.

On the outside of

Stepney Church

,

over the south porch, is a representation of the

Petticoat Lane

Crucifixion, rudely carved; and on the west wall, an imperfect basso relievo (not better executed) of a

figure

adoring the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. Within the west porch is a stone, on which are these lines:--

Of Carthage wall I was a stone, O mortals rend with pity! Time consumes all, it spareth none, Man, mountain, town, nor city. Therefore, O mortals! now bethink You whereunto you must, Since now such stately buildings Lie buried in the dust. Thomas Hughes, 1663.

On the east wall of the chancel (on the outside--),

is the monument of Dame Rebecca Berry, wife of Thomas Elton, of

Stratford

Bow, and relict of Sir John Berry,

1696

. The arms on this monument are Paly of

six

, on a bend

three

mullets (Elton) impaling, a fish, and in the dexter chief point an annulet between

two

bends wavy. This coat of arms has given rise to a tradition that Lady Berry was the heroine of a popular ballad called

The Cruel Knight; or, Fortunate Farmer's Daughter;

the story of which is briefly this:--A knight, passing by a cottage hears the cries of a woman in labour; his knowledge in the occult sciences informs him that the child then born was destined to be his wife. He endeavours to elude the decrees of fate, and avoid so ignoble an alliance, by various attempts to destroy the child, which are defeated. At length, when grown to woman's state, he takes her to the sea-side, intending to drown her, but relents; at the same time throwing a ring into the sea, he commands her never to see his face again, on pain of instant death, unless she can produce that ring. She afterwards becomes a cook, and finds the ring in a cod-fish, as she is dressing it for dinner. The marriage takes place, of course. The ballad, it must be observed, lays the scene of this story in Yorkshire. The incident of the fish and ring occurs in other stories, and may be found in the

Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

Amongst the epitaphs in is that to Sir John Leake, :--

To the memory of the Honourable Sir John Leake, Knt., Rear-Admiral of Great

Britain

, Admiral and Commander-in- Chief of Her late Majesty Queen Anne's fleet, and

one

of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Departed this life the

21st of August, 1720

, aetat

64

years,

1

month,

17

days; who, anno

1689

; in the Dartmouth, by engaging Kilmore Castle, relieved the city of Londonderry, in Ireland; also, anno

1702

, with a squadron at Newfoundland, he took and destroyed

fifty-one

sail of French, together with all their settlements. Anno

1704

he forced the van of the French fleet at the Malaga engagement; relieved Gibraltar twice burning and taking

thirteen

sail of French men-of-war. Likewise, anno

1706

, relieved Barcelona, the present Emperor of Germany besieged therein by Philip of Spain, and took

ninety

sail of corn-ships; the same year taking the cities of Carthagena and Alicant, with the islands of Ivica, Majorca, Sardinia, and Minorca.

This celebrated officer was son of Captain Richard Leake, Master Gunner of England; he was born at , in the year . Whilst a captain he distinguished himself in several engagements. In Queen Anne's reign he was times Admiral of the Fleet, and commanded with such undeviating success, that he acquired the appellation of

the brave and fortunate.

The living of Stepney was held by Archbishop Segrave and Bishop Fox (the founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford). Of the Stepney district churches St. Philip's is said to have been the district Gothic church built in the east of London. It was erected in , at a cost of £,. There is also a synagogue and Jews' burial-ground at Stepney, and numerous almshouses and hospitals, such as Deacon's city Paupers' House, the German and Portuguese Jews' Hospitals, Drapers' Hospital, , Gibson's, or Cooper's Almshouses.

In the rectory of Stepney was valued at a year, and the vicarage at . In the Parliamentary survey, taken in , the vicarage is set down at the value of per annum. The ancient rectory stood near the east end of the church; and in Lysons' time the brick wall which enclosed the site still remained.

Colet, the founder of School, and the sworn friend of Erasmus, was vicar here, and still resided in Stepney after being made Dean of . Sir Thomas More, writing to him, then abroad, says,

If the discommodities of the city offend you, yet may the country about your parish of Stepney afford you the like delights to those which that affords you wherein you now keepe.

Richard Pace, who was presented to the vicarage in , had been in the service of Cardinal Bainbridge, who having recommended him at Court, the king had made him Secretary of State, and employed him in matters of the highest importance. He was afterwards made Dean of , but kept the vicarage till , when he was sent as ambassador to Venice. Whilst there he either thwarted some plan of Wolsey's, or did not lend himself enough to the ambitious schemes of that proud cardinal, for he fell into disgrace, and at his return was thrown into the Tower for years. These misfortunes affected his brain, and he suffered from mental disease, from which he never wholly recovered. After his release he retired to Stepney, where he died in , and was buried in the church, near the great altar. Erasmus, who was a friend of Pace's, speaks highly of his amiable character, his pleasant manner, and his integrity. He wrote a book on the unlawfulness of King Henry's marriage with the widow of his brother Arthur, a Preface to Ecclesiastes, and some Latin epistles and sermons. William Jerome, presented to the vicarage of Stepney in , was executed in on a charge of heresy.

Roger Crab, gent., of the old celebrities of , and who was buried at Stepney, , was of the eccentric characters of the century. The most we know of him is from a pamphlet, now very rare, written principally by himself, and entitled, It appears from this publication that he had served years in the Parliamentary army, and had his skull cloven to the brain in their service; for which he was so ill requited that he was once sentenced to death by the Lord Protector, and afterwards suffered years' imprisonment. When he had obtained his release he set up a shop at Chesham as a haberdasher of hats. He had not been long settled there before he began to imbibe a strange notion, that it was a sin against his body and soul to eat any sort of flesh, fish, or living creature, or to drink wine, ale, or beer. Thinking himself at the same time obliged to follow literally the injunction to the young man in the Gospel, he quitted business, and disposing of his property, gave it to the poor, reserving to himself only a small cottage at Ickenham, where he resided and a rood of land for a garden, on the produce of which he subsisted at the expense of farthings a week, his food being bran, herbs, roots, dockleaves, mallows, and grass; his drink, water. How such an extraordinary change of diet agreed with his constitution the following passage from his pamphlet will show, and give, at the same time, a specimen of the work :--

Instead of strong drinks and wines, I give the old man a cup of water; and instead of rost mutton and rabbets, and other dainty dishes, I give him broth thickened with bran, and pudding made with bran and turnip-leaves chopt together, and grass; at which the old man (meaning my body), being moved, would know what he had done, that I used him so hardly; then I show'd him his transgression: so the warres began; the law of the old man in my fleshly members rebelled against the law of my mind, and had a shrewd skirmish ; but the mind, being well enlightened, held it so that the old man grew sick and weak with the flux, like to fall to the dust; but the wonderful love of God, well pleased with the battle, raised him up again, and filled him full of love, peace, and content of mind, and he is now become more humble; for now he will eat dock-leaves, mallows, or grass.

Roger Crab that feeds on herbs and roots is here;

But I believe Diogenes had better cheer.

Rara avis in terris.

A passage in this man's epitaph seems to intimate that he never resumed the use of animal food. It is not of the least extraordinary parts of his history that he should so long have subsisted on a diet which, by his own account, had reduced him almost to a skeleton in . It appears that he resided at at the time of his decease. A very handsome tomb was erected to his memory in the churchyard at this place, which being decayed, the ledger-stone was placed in the pathway leading across the churchyard to . Strype says of the man,

This Crab, they say, was a Philadelphian, a sweet singer.

A congregation of Protestant Dissenters Was established in Stepney in the year by William Greenhill, who was afterwards vicar of Stepney. He was ejected soon after the Restoration, and was succeeded by Matthew Mead. This eminent Puritan divine was appointed to the cure of the new chapel at by Cromwell, but in , being ejected for nonconformity, succeeded Greenhill as pastor of the Dissenting congregation at Stepney. In , being accused of being privy to the Rye House Plot, he fled to Holland till the

was separated from the parish of Stepney in the year ; St. George's-in-the-East, in the year ; Spitalfields, in ; , in ; Stratford-Bow, the same year; and , in .

Sir Thomas Lake, who was afterwards Secretary of State to James I., resided at Stepney in ; Isabel, Countess of Rutland, had a seat there in ; Nathaniel Bailey, author of the useful and well-known English Dictionary, and other works, lived at Stepney; Capt. Griffiths,

an ancient Briton, who, by the gallant and extraordinary recovery of his fishing-boat from a French frigate, attracted the notice of King William IV., and became afterwards captain of a man-of-war, was an inhabitant of Stepney, and was buried there.

their Honours and Glories at the Admiralty.

It is an old tradition of the East End of London that all children born at sea belong to Stepney parish. The old rhyme runs-

He who sails on the wide sea

Is a parishioner of Stepney.

[extra_illustrations.2.141.1] a portrait of the author cut in wood

[extra_illustrations.2.142.1] Mr. Mead