^{page 52 note a} i. e. a bond or agreement entered into by the bellfounder, who probably lived at Whitechapel. See p. 65.

^{page 52 note b} The sepulchre.—This was a moveable tomb erected in the church on Good Friday and remaining till Easter Day, and in which the consecrated host was deposited during that interval. The sepulchre was sometimes a fixture and made of stone. This subject has been fully illustrated by Mr. Gough in the Society's Vetusta Monumenta, Vol. III. Pl. xxxi. xxxii.

^{page 52 note c} The pascal.—Tapers ornamented with flowers were used on high festivals to burn before particular images and to be borne in processions. They were sometimes made like plaited hair and spiral, and wound round a staff. This was the pascal taper, which was sometimes very large, and it seems to have been customary to make a collection at Easter for the expense of it.

^{page 52 note d} Weston or West-End Green.—A small common at the foot of the hill on the London side, or west end, of Eltham. The rivulet which runs through Lee crosses the high road there.

^{page 52 note e} The holy fire.—On Holy Saturday, the day preceding Easter Day, is the ceremony of blessing fire, from which the lamps in the church are lighted that are kept alight during the ensuing year for the use of the church. On this day are blessed the pascal candle and the triple candle (see the Roman missal). It was very usual for pious persons to carry home on this day the sacred fire to their houses, as appears from the customs of Vienna and Lyons.

^{page 53 note a} A suit groat.—A fine for non-attendance to do suit at the lord's court.

^{page 53 note b} Torches.—Used at funerals for poor people in lieu of tapers at each corner of the hearse.

^{page 53 note c} The fifteen-penny lands consist of about thirty-eight acres of land at Eltham, which were given by King Henry the Seventh in 1492 to the poor inhabitants of Eltham towards the payment of their fifteenths, in consideration of so great a portion of the land in the parish belonging to the Crown, and not being assessed to the subsidies. This land is still held by trustees for the parish.

^{page 53 note d} Graylle.—A gradual, a service-book which takes its name from the prayer chaunted gradatim after the epistle. It is the choir-book used for singing mass.

^{page 53 note e} Thomas Huxley, Vicar, is not mentioned by Hasted in his list of Vicars of Eltham.

^{page 53 note f} Sir Henry Jerningham, Knt. of Costessey Hall, Norfolk, was among the lords and gentlemen who joined Queen Mary at Framlingham on the proclamation of Lady Jane Grey in 1553, and did her good service at Yarmouth, where, while he was raising, for her, six tall ships well manned, that were appointed before Yarmouth to have taken the Lady Mary if she had fled, were by foul weather driven into the haven, and Jerningham taking a boat to hail them, the sea-soldiers demanded what he would have. His answer was, their captains, whereunto the soldiers consented, threatening to throw them into the sea if they refused to serve Queen Mary. (Chronicle of Queen Jane, printed for the Camden Society, p. 8.) On the 31st July, in the same year, the Queen made him Vice-Chamberlain and Captain of the Guard. On the insurrection of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Henry Jerningham was sent with the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Arundel to. oppose him; but, the trained bands deserting the Duke at Strood, and going over to Wyatt, the Duke of Norfolk fled, together with the Earl of Arundel and Sir Henry Jerningham. He probably occupied Eltham Palace as Vice-Chamberlain. The chaplain's name is omitted in the original.

^{page 54 note a} The hearse.—It was usual on the death of persons of any note to erect in the church a hearse or stage decorated with palls or herse-cloths, tapers, the arms and cognizances of the deceased, &c.

^{page 54 note b} The common fine.—John Passey, by his will, dated 5th July, 1509, gave a messuage and land upon trust, among other purposes, to pay 13s. 4d. yearly to the borsholder of Eltham for the head-silver or common fine payable to the Crown at Michaelmas and Easter Law days.

^{page 54 note c} Judas’ light A taper which represented Judas Iscariot, and which at a certain part of the ceremony on Good Friday was suddenly extinguished and left to stink.

^{page 54 note d} The canopy cloth was borne over the Eucharist on solemn processions; as on the feast of Corpus Christi, and in visitations to the sick.

^{page 54 note e} Alb.—The alb is a white linen garment worn by the priests, deacons, and sub-deacons, reaching down to the feet, and tied round the neck and at the wrists, and gathered by a girdle round the waist.

^{page 55 note a} William Hammond is another Vicar of Eltham not mentioned by Hasted.

^{page 55 note b} Vestment.—The garment particularly called the vestment is the chasuble, casula, or planeta; an outer vestment pulled over the head and cut open at the sides to the shoulders, which the priest wears at mass. It derives its name from the Roman garment called pænula.

^{page 55 note c} Hanging-cloths for the altar. — The altar-cloth is often called in English manuscripts frontell (antipendium).

^{page 55 note d} A cross-banner cloth.—Banners of green were used in processions on vigils and fasts, and often had depicted on them either the personified representation of the Trinity, or more frequently the-heraldic emblem or diagram drawn in a triangular form, and reading Pater est Deus, &c.

^{page 55 note e} Saville.—A saveall or pinafore.

^{page 55 note f} Cope.—The cope, cappa, called also pluviale: used for the choir-service and ceremonials. It resembles in its shape a large and flowing cloak, open in the front, and fastens on the breast by clasps. The copes were of various colours andm aterials, and differently ornamented.

^{page 56 note a} Bodkin or baudkin.—A rich kind of stuff made of gold and silk.

^{page 56 note b} Tunicles, tynacoll, tunicella.—The sub-deacon's garment.

^{page 56 note c} A rent-charge payable out of some of the parish lands for the obit of the donor.

^{page 56 note d} Sir John Hanger was, I believe, a Roman Catholic priest who had served the church during the reign of Mary.

^{page 56 note e} Pope Street is a hamlet in the parish of Eltham, on the road to Footscray.

^{page 57 note a} The Spital House in Kent Street was the hospital for lepers, called “The Lock.”

^{page 57 note b} The beacon at Shooter's Hill was one of a chain of beacons established on every eminence along both sides of the river and communicating with each other. Each parish in which such an eminence was situate seems to have been required to keep a pile of wood always ready to be ignited, and to maintain persons to watch it, and to fire it, on receiving the signal from the next beacon.

^{page 57 note c} Whett's elm, or Wyatt's elm is frequently mentioned in the parish records. It was at South End on the road from Eltham town to Footscray, and probably at the angle formed by the road leading to Chiselhurst, called Green Lane; but the corner of the road from Eltham to Bexley was called White's or Wyatt's Cross, and I have been informed that there was formerly an ancient elm growing there. Recently the skeleton of a man upwards of six feet in length has been discovered there. It was probably the body of a felo-de-se buried at the cross road, according to ancient, but now happily exploded, custom, from whom the place may have derived its name of White's or Wyatt's Cross. Can Wyatt's Elm or Wyatt's Cross have any connection with Sir Thomas Wyatt or his family? His son George Wyatt, the poet, is said to have died at Bexley.

^{page 57 note d} Ringing the bells on Queen Elizabeth's progress through the town.—It was well for the churchwardens of Eltham that they paid her Majesty that mark of respect, for the churchwardens of Saint Olave's, Southwark, were sued in the Star Chamber and heavily fined “for not ringing their bells when the same termagant Queen passed down the river in her barge to Greenwich.”

^{page 58 note a} This means the anniversary of her proclamation.

^{page 58 note b} John Carnick is a third Vicar of Eltham not in Hasted's list.

^{page 59 note a} Morions.

^{page 59 note b} The Cross-house.—I am not sure whether the cross-house was a market-house with a market-cross standing in the wide space near the church from which the Court Lane leading to the palace branches off at right angles, or whether it was a cross-house similar to an ancient one at Southampton, consisting of two walls intersecting each other, and forming a cross covered by a roof, but open on each side, thus affording a shelter on one side or the other, let the wind blow from any quarter. Such a cross-house might have stood, and would have been very necessary, near the beacon at Shooter's Hill. The cross-house is afterwards mentioned several times on occasion of a poor woman being brought to bed in it, and others being sick there.

^{page 60 note a} The parish soldiers must have had a sumptuous dinner this time; the cost of the former dinner was only 1s. 8d.

^{page 60 note b} Mr. Hatton. —This was the celebrated Sir Christopher Hatton— “Whose high-crowned hat and satin doublet Moved the stout heart of England's Queen, Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it.”

Christopher Hatton was appointed Keeper of Eltham and Home Parks on the 27th July, 1568, for his life, and he appears to have enjoyed the office until his death, in 1591, for one of his letters is dated from Eltham, 15th July, 1590. And here doubtless the Queen visited him. She was twice through the town in 1568, once in 1569, and she dined at Eltham in 1576, as appears from these extracts. A pleasing notice of Hatton's mode of living here, and of his taste and liberality, occurs in the intercepted letters of Monsieur de Champenaye, ambassador in England from the Low Countries. He says:—I was one day by Sir Christopher Hatton, Captain of her Majesty's Guard, invited to Eltham, a house of the Queen's, whereof he was the guardian. At which time I heard and saw three things that, in all my travels in France, Italy, and Spain, I never heard or saw the like. The first was a concert of music, so excellent and sweet as cannot be expressed; the second, a course at a buck, with the best and most beautiful greyhounds that ever I did behold; and the third a man of arms, excellently mounted, richly armed, and indeed the most accomplished cavaliero I had ever seen. This knight was called Sir Henry Lea, who that day (accompanied with other gentlemen of the court), merely to do me honour, vouchsafed at my return to Greenwich to break certain lances, which action was performed with great dexterity and commendation.—Segar's Account of Tournaments, in Walpole's Miscellaneous Antiquities. The 37s. 8d. spent at the eating of the buck was probably for drinking, exemplifying the old saying, that good eating requires good drinking.

^{page 60 note c} Hue and cry for Brown.—This alludes to a horrible murder committed at Shooter's Hill in 1573, by George Brown, who, being enamoured of the wife of Master Sanders, a merchant of London, waylaid and murdered Sanders (with the connivance of his wife) on Shooter's Hill, where he was on his road into Kent in pursuit of his business. Mr. Sanders's man servant, who was also left for dead by the road-side, fortunately recovered sufficiently before his death to give an account of the murder, and accused Brown, who was apprehended at Rochester, tried, and executed on the spot where the murder was committed, and Mrs. Sanders, with two confederates, Mrs. Drewry and a man called Trusty Roger, were afterwards tried, convicted, and executed in Smithfield. This horrible tragedy gained for the place, for a time, the title of “The Hill of Blood,” and a play was produced on the subject, shewing that the morbid taste for such subjects, which now unhappily exists, is not peculiar to the present day.

^{page 61 note a} This was doubtless on a visit by her Majesty to Sir Christopher Hatton,

^{page 62 note a} Abbott money, obit money.—See ante.

^{page 62 note b} Stoupes, stulpes, posts.

^{page 62 note c} A sign penny —a fee paid to the steward or bailiff of the court on signing the book.

^{page 62 note d} Sir Thomas Walsingham, of Seadbury, in Chiselhurst, was sheriff of Kent in 5th Elizabeth. His grandson of the same name had the honour of Eltham given him, which was the Earl of Dorset's, and the Middle Park, which was Mr. White's. “He has cut down 50001. worth of timber, and hath scarcely left a tree to make a gibbet.”—From the Mysteries of the Good Old Cause, 1660, quoted by Lysons. He died in January, 1583–4.

^{page 63 note a} Boards for the Vicar's coffin.—This was Thomas Thirwind, who was buried 26th January, 1584.

^{page 63 note b} The traitors.—This probably alludes to the Earl of Arundel, who was arrested and sent to the Tower as he was about to embark in order to leave the country.

^{page 63 note c} 1588 was the year of the threatened invasion by the Spanish Armada; but the parish of Eltham seems not to have been called upon for any great contribution of force to repel the invaders. The valiant Roger Pounder (whose name seems formidable enough) being the only man sent from Eltham with 20s. to buy swords and daggers, and 8s. in his pocket to Chatham Heath.

^{page 64 note a} Houngerland.—The name of part of the parish lands.

^{page 64 note b} The butt. By Act of Parliament of Henry VIII. every parish was required to have butts for the practice of archery. This item shows us that the parish butts of Eltham were in Eastfield, which is at the back of the houses on the north side of the High Street.