Greenwich, eight from Deptford, one from Lee, one from Charlton, three from Eltham, and three from Woolwich; in addition to which, every incumbent minister in the hundred of Blackheath, and of Chiselhurst, have the privilege of sending one son for education here. The master is to be examined and approved by the head masters of Westminster, St. Paul's, and Merchant Taylors Schools; by the president of Sion College, the ministers of the hundred of Blackheath, and of Chiselhurst; and to be chosen by them, in conjunction with the wardens of the Leathersellers Company, and the lord of the manor, who has the privilege of nominating a Westminster scholar, to stand in election with one, two, or three candidates nominated by the other electors. The master is not to undertake any church duty, without leave of the trustees, by whom he may be displaced if he be guilty of any notorious behaviour.

The Almshouses are for six poor godly householders of this parish, sixty years of age and upwards, and able to say the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Mr. Colfe also bequeathed other annual benefactions; besides founding an English school for thirty-one boys, to be taught reading, writing, psalm-singing, and the accidence. All the above foundations are under the guidance of the Leathersellers Company.

A school for girls was instituted in 1699, to which Dr. Stanhope bequeathed 150%. and his lady 50%. To the interest of these sums are added two-thirds of the sacrament collections, amounting to a salary of twenty guineas per annum for the mistress, besides coals and candles.

At the entrance to the village, near the church, is a stately mansion, now used as a boarding school, which was built in 1680 by Sir John Letheullier, a rich Turkey merchant, and sheriff of London in 1674.

Returning to the great Kent road*, we arrive at

DEPTFORD.

This place does not feem to have been inhabited by, or

even

* Horsley, in his Britannia Romana, p. 313, informs us, that in the year 1690, a Janus's head was found in the road to New Cross, near St.

Thomas's

even known to the Romans, on account of its marshy situa tion; the tide also flowing over the greatest part of the land, might have occafioned the Roman way to have taken a more southern direction than the present road.

The antient name appears to have been Depeford, on account of the ford over the Ravensbourn, till a wooden bridge was erected over that river, which was replaced, in 1628, by a stone bridge near its influx into the Thames.

Deptford was the principal seat of Gilbert de Maminot, a Norman baron, in the time of William I. His son, Walcheline de Maminot, having been appointed warden of the Cinque Ports, maintained them in favour of the empress Maud; but being reduced to the last extremity, he sur, rendered Dover castle to king Stephen. Upon the accession of Henry II. he again surrendered it to that monarch, and retired into Normandy, where he died without iffue, This nobleman was a great benefactor to the abbey of Bermondsey, to which, in the year 1157, he gave ten shillings rent out of the mill at Deptford.

Whilst the family of Maminot held this place, they erected a castle, and esteemed it the head of their barony *;

the

Thomas's watering place, one side of which represented the countenance of a bearded man, with the horns and ears of a ram, a jewel, or other ornament suspended on each side of the head, which was crowned with Jaurel; on the opposite side was the countenance of a young woman, in antient head attire, which at the same time that it covered the head, projected from it. The whole was entire, and seemed to have been fixed on a square terminus, and was one foot and an half high. It was afterwards deposited in the collection of Dr. Woodward. Hasted, in his History of Kent, has preserved a figure of this Roman remain.

* Sir Henry Spelman informs us, that "the Saxon Theinge, or lord of the town, (whom the Normans called a Baron) had of old jurisdiction over them of his own town, (being as it were his colony); and as Corpelius Tacitus saith, did agricolis suis jus dicere. For those whom we now call Tenants, were in those antient times but husbandmen dwelling upon the soil of the lord, and manuring the same, on such conditions as the lord assigned; or else such as were their followers in the wars, and had therefore portions of ground appointed unto them in respect of that

service;

the castle, according to Mr. Hasted, had some remains visible near Saye's Court, in Bromfield, on the bank of the Thames, near the Mast Doek.

By a female heir this place came into the possession of the family of Saye, and was then called the Manor of West Greenwich; by which name it was granted by Geoffery de Saye, with the advowson of the church, &c. to the Knights Templars. His son Geoffrey regained the possession of Deptford, by an exchange of Sadlescombe, in Sussex. This honor came afterwards by another female heir to the family of Heron; it was then held by De la Pole, duke of Suffolk, from whose family it came to the crown in the reign of Henry VII. It was granted by that monarch to

Ollver

service; which portion was thereupon called a Knight's Fee; because that a servant in the war, whom the Saxons called a Knight, had it allotted unto him as the fee or wages of his service. Neither, at the first, had they these their fees, but at the lord's pleasure, or for a time limited; and therefore both these kinds of military and husbandmen dwelling upon the town or colony of the lord, were, as in reason they ought, under the censure and will of their lord respecting the lands they occupied; who therefore set them laws and customs, and in what manner they should possess these their lands; and as any controversy rose about them, the lord assembling the rest of his followers, did by their opinion and assist ance judge it. Out of which usage,, the Court Barons took their beginning, and the lords of towns and manours gained the privilege of holding plea and jurisdiction within those their territories over their tenants and followers; who thereupon are at this day called Sectatores, in French Suitres, or Suivre, to follow. But the Saxons themselves called this jurisdiction Sacha and Socha, signifying thereby causarum actionem, and libertatem judicandi; for Sacha signifieth, causa, in which sense we yet use it, as when we say For God's sake; and Socha signifieth Liberty or Privilege, as Cyric-socne, libertus ecclesia. But by this manner the lords of towns, as ex consuetudine regni, came to have jurisdiction over their tenants and followers, and to hold pleas of all things touching land. But as touching cognizance of criminal matters, they had not otherwise to meddle therewith, than by the king's charters. For, as touching the, king's peace, every hundred was divided into many Free-borgs, or Tithings, consisting of ten men, which stood all bound one for the other,, and did amongst themselves punish small matters, in their court for that purpose, called the Lete; which was sometime granted over to the lords of manours, and sometimes exercised by peculiar officers.

But, the

greater

Oliver St. John, and at the death of his son it reverted to the crown; and was granted in the latter end of the reign of queen Elizabeth, to Sir Richard Browne, who died in poffeffion, 1604. Mary, the sole daughter of another Sir Richard Browne, bart. having married John Evelyn, Esq. in 1647, this estate went into that family, in which it still continues in the person of Sir Frederick Evelyn, bart. of Wotton, in Surrey. The manor, however, is still vested in the crown, and the stewardship has been held with that of Greenwich.

Mr. Evelyn, the author of several eminent works, particularly on gardening, made this his favourite spot; his gardens here, are said to have been the wonder and admiration of the times; and what he prided himself upon was a hedge of holly, which he thus describes, with a great degree of enthusiasm, in one of the later editions of his Silva, pubJished by himself in 1704. "Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind, than an impregnable hedge of about four hundred feet in length, nine feet high, and five in diameter; which I can shew in my now ruined garden at Saye's Court, (thanks to the czar of Muscovy) at any time of the year, glittering with its armed and varnished leaves; the taller standards, at orderly distances, blushing with their natural coral? It mocks the

greater things were also carried from thence into the Hundred Courts; so that both the streams of civil justice, and of criminal, did there meet, and were decided by the hundreds, &c. as by superior judges both to the Court Baron and Court Leet.

A very important lesson is conveyed to all jurymen, by one of the laws of king Ethelred, which says, "Let the courts be holden in every hundred, and let twelve men of the elder sort, together with the rive (of the ́hundred) holding their hands upon some holy thing, take their oath that they shall neither condemn any man that is innocent, nor quit him that is guilty."

Canute the Great ordained, "That a man was not to be delayed above three court days from having his right: for if he were, he might then resort to the county; and if he obtained it not there, within four courts, then he might seek unto the king." This is the origin of removing causes into superior courts.-Antient Government of England.

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