This fabric stands near the river, in the eastern part of the town, and is dedicated to the Holy Trinity; it is a spacious edifice, and consists of a nave, chancel, and aisles, with an embattled tower, at the west end: the church was repaired at the expense of the parishioners, in the year 1793. Over the arch of the east window of the chancel, now stopped up, but made in the time of Edward the Third, by HAYMO DE HETHE, bishop of Rochester, is the head of that prelate, in stone. A mural monument, in the chancel, commemorates Sir JOHN SPILMAN, a German, who first introduced the manufacture of paper into this kingdom, in the reign of Elizabeth; she granted him the subordinate manor of Portbridge, or Bycknore, in Dart ford. appertaining to the same, to two acres and an half of land at Fulwick, and to one acre more of land opposite to the chapel of St. Edmund. By the will of Thomas Yngledew, a chaplain, who died in 1462, he was to be buried before the altar of the chapel of St. Edmund the king and martyr; and Thomas Worship, who had probably been an officiating priest in the same chantry, desired his body to be interred at the door of the chapel lately founded in the cemetery of St. Edinund in Dartford, above the charnel, on the west side, at the very entrance of the said door. This chantry was presented as ruinous in 1496; and in 1516, six parishioners were summoned to answer to a charge of neglecting the repairs of it. Most probably, no money was ever appropriated for this purpose, nor was it easy to prevail upon the inhabitants to subject themselves to the burden of supporting this building. The chantry was, however, dissolved in the reign of king Edward VI. and, having been founded for superstitious purposes, the revenues of it were granted to the crown by act of parliament. That the burial-ground under our review was the ce metery of the chapel of St. Edmund is no unlikely conclusion; and the foundation of an edifice, which may still be traced, adds some weight to this conjecture. Before a traveller leaves this repository of the dead, perhaps he may observe an epitaph cut on a head of stone, placed to the memory of a child of three years old; and, there being an inscriptive simplicity in the lines, he certainly will not be dissatisfied with another perusal of them. They are as follow: When the archangels' trumpets blow, And souls to bodies join; What crowds will wish their stay below Had been as short as mine. VOL. V. No. 108. X Equally ford, which had previously been an appendage to the priory. In the thirty-first of Elizabeth, who knighted him, and to whom he was also jeweller, he obtained a license for the sole gathering, for ten years, of all rags, &c. necessary for the making of such paper. He died in 1607, at the age of fifty-five: his effigies, with that of his lady, are exhibited on the monument kneeling at a desk. Near this, in the pavement, is a slab, inlaid with brasses, of a male and female under a rich canopy, with labels proceeding from their mouths, and a mutilated inscription beneath their feet: these represent RICHARD MARTYR, and his wife, both of whom died at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Several other inlaid slabs are in different parts of the church, and some are very curious. On one of them, in what is termed the south chancel, is a male figure, and two escutcheons in brass, with indents for a female, &c. and the following mutilated inscription going round the verge: dmi millesimo quingentesimo octavo, et Ellenor uxor ejus, que obijt die mensis Februarij an°. dmi M.-LXXVII Quorum animbs ppcietur Deus Amen. Between each word in this inscription, are ornamental figures, as a bell, a tun, a leaf, a rose, a trefoil slipped, a dog, a mallet, a leopard's head, a crescent, &c. Among the remaining memorials, are several for the BEERS and TWISTLETONS, of Horseman's Place, in this parish, and other respectable families*. Equally descriptive, and not less pleasing, is another on an infant, near the above. The following are the lines:— So fades the lovely blooming flower, - In this burial-ground is a monument to the memory of the first wife of William Perfect, M. D. of West Malling, in this county; who has rendered his name famous in this and succeeding ages, by his great and unparalleled success in the cure of insane persons, and for his tenderness in the treatment of those unfortunate maniacs who have claimed his care and attention. *Hasted. Beauties of England and Wales. The The charitable benefactions. for the use of the poor, are numerous; an almshouse was founded here, under a licence from Henry the Sixth; and in an antient rental, it is called the Spytell House, ، where the leprous inhabet and dwell.' * It was in Dartford that the rebellion of Walter Hillier, the tyler, broke out in the reign of Richard II. On account of its great thoroughfare, this town is populous and thriving, and has many handsome buildings, A good market is held every Saturday, which is well sup plied with corn, butchers meat, poultry, &c. and an annual fair is held on the 2d of August. Dartford is also famed for its artichokes; and gunpowder of a peculiar quality, manufactured here, is called Dart ford powder. Richard Wich, vicar of this town, and afterwards of Harmondsworth, in Middlesex, was burnt on Tower Hill, London, June 17, 1440. Stow, in his Annals, thus mentions the circumstance: "Sir Richard Wich, vicar of Hermetsworth, in Essex, or Middlesex, sometime vicar of Dertford, in Kent, who had be fore abjured, was burnt on the Tower Hill the 17 of June. After whose death was great murmur among the people, for some said he was a good man and an holy, and put to death by malice: and some said the contrary, so that many men and wo men went by night to the place where he was burnt, and offered their money, images of wax, and other things, making their prayers, kneeling, and kissing the ground, bare away with them the ashes of his body for holy reliques, &c. This endured eight dayes, till the mayor and aldermen ordained men of armes, to restraine the people, who apprehended many and sent them to prison, amongst whom was the vicar of Berking church, (Tho. mas Virby) beside the Tower, in whose parish all this was done, who had received the offering of the simple people. And to excite them to offer more fervently to the fulfilling of his false co. vetousness, he had medled ashes with the powder of spices, and strewed them in the place where the priest was burnt, and so the simple people were deceived, weeping the sweete savour had * Hasted. Beauties of England and Wales. come of the ashes of the dead priest: all which the said vicar of Berking church confessed in prison. This have I noted the more at large, because some have written the vicar of Berking to be burnt, though he better deserved then the other." A little distance from the summit of Dartford Hill is the open plain, upon which king Edward III. is imagined to have held the tournament before-mentioned; and the duke of York, in the reign of Henry VI. certainly assembled here a numerous army. It is by many called Dartford Brim, by some the Brimpt, and by others the Brink; but Brent, which signifies Burnt, is the antient name; and Rapin, in his detail of the latter transaction, stiles it, from Hall's Chronicle, the Burnt Heath; whence it acquired that appellation is not known. In digging the gravel-pit at the north-east corner of this ground, a few years since, the labourers discovered the skeletons of several bodies, eight in one part, and four in another. When the assizes were held at Dartford, the Brent is supposed to have been the place of execution, and therefore these were imagined to have been the bones of criminals who had suffered death under the sentence of the law*. About two miles and a half south of this town is the village of DARENT, pronounced DARNE. It originally be * One branch of what is usually stiled the Roman Watling Street is supposed to have been continued from the bank of the Thames, a little above Lambeth Palace, through Rochester and Canterbury to Dover; but, by the alterations and improvements upon the turnpike road, particularly on Blackheath, Shooter's Hill, and Bexley Heath, the traces of the old Roman way are almost obliterated. Beyond Dartford Brent, however, there is much less difficulty in discovering the remains of it. East south-east is nearly the point of direction of the Watling Street in Kent; and soon after the traveller comes upon the fine open plain just mentioned, if he falls into a track that runs between the turnpike road and the road leading to Green Street Green, it will convey him into a lane, still often termed the Roman road; and not without reason, since in divers parts, it appears in a plain ridge. In some places the hedge stood upon it, but in others, for many yards together, it lies between the present highway and the hedge on the left; especially near a farm house, the true name of which is Blacksole, though, vulgarly called, Hungergut Hall. longed longed first to the church of Rochester, afterwards to that of Canterbury, till it was exchanged by archbishop Walter for the manor of Lambeth, as has been already stated in the description of the latter place. Henry VIII. confirmed it to the newly erected dean and chapter of Rochester, who are now lords of the manor, im propriators of the rectory, and patrons of the vicarage. Darent church, dedicated to St. Margaret, is of Saxon architecture; "the font," says Mr. Hasted "bears high marks of antiquity, it is a single stone rounded and excavated, composed of eight compartments, with columns alternately circular and angular, and semicircular arches, the figures and objects are in high relief, and are rudely carved; some of the figures appear to be chimerical, and others symbols of the sacraments, and similar religious offices." * St. *Mr. Denne, in his description of this church and font, in Thorpe's Custumale Roffense, where there are engravings of it, has imagined the carvings to bear an allusion to the history of St. Dunstan; and he describes the first compartment to represent king Edgar, who raised St. Dunstan to the archbishopric. The second represents Satan under the similitude of a dragon, illustrative of one of the saint's conflicts; the saint is represented playing on a harp, which, as his legend informs us, had this miraculous power, that when suspended on the walls of Dunstan's cell, would, without the imposition of any visible hand, pour out the most harmonious sounds. The fourth represents a centaur, by which is meant the Evil Spirit, when, with his barking dogs, he interrupted St. Dunstan, whilst a lad, hastening to a church to return thanks for a supposed miraculous recovery, and whom the stripling, by brandishing his stick in the face of the opposing spectre, routed with all his pack. The fifth represents the horse on which the saint rode, miraculously struck dead when the voice from heaven informed the saint, that kihg Edred, whom he was going to comfort in his last moments, was dead. The sixth represents the Fox or the Wolf, under which forms it is said the devil tempted him. The seventh has the human form, with the face of a lion or bear; this denotes the sharp encounter the saint had with the Devil under one of these forms, in beating of whom he broke his pastoral staff, The eighth is said to apply to an anècdote of the birth of king Ethelred II who having defiled the sacred font at baptism, the saint prophetically denounced with an oath, as most unfortunate through life. Such |