first set of county maps, which were engraved by his encouragement and at his request. He represented Ipswich in three Parliaments, and died without issue in 1588, aged seventy-two. In Woodbridge his name is perpetuated by a handsome pile of buildings known as the Seckford Almshouses and Schools, to which the property in Clerkenwell is devoted. At the time of his decease that property produced about £112 a year; in 1768 it was said to be of the yearly value of £563. In 1826 an Act of Parliament was obtained to enable the governors of the almshouses to grant building and other leases, to take down many of the old buildings, to erect new premises, and repair and alter old ones, and to lay out new streets on the charity estate in Clerkenwell, and, in consequence, we find in 1830 the estate producing a rental of more than £3,000 a year. In 1844 the yearly rental had risen to £4,000. Since then it has much increased, and all this is devoted to the benefit of the Woodbridge poor. In 1806 Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, came to live at Woodbridge. When fourteen years old he was apprenticed to Mr. Samuel Jessup, a shopkeeper in Halstead, Essex. ‘There I stood,’ he writes, ‘for eight years behind the counter of the corner shop at the top of Halstead Hill, kept to this day (November 9, 1828) by my old master and still worthy uncle, S. Jessup.’ In Woodbridge he married a niece of his old master, and went into partnership with her brother as corn and coal merchant. But she died in giving birth to the Lucy Barton whose name still, unless I am mistaken, adorns our literature. Bernard gave up business and retired into the bank of the Messrs. Alexander, where he continued for forty years, working within two days of his death. He had always been fond of books, and was one of the most active members of a Woodbridge Book Club, and had been in the habit of writing and sending to his friends occasional copies of verse. In 1812 he published his first volume, called ‘Metrical Effusions,’ and began a correspondence with Southey. A complimentary copy of verses which he had addressed to the author of the ‘Queen’s Wake,’ just then come into notice, brought him long and vehement letters from the Ettrick—letters full of thanks to Barton and praises of himself, and a tragedy ‘that will astonish the world ten times more than the “Queen’s Wake,”’ to which justice could not be done in Edinburgh, and which Bernard Barton was to try to get represented in London. In 1825 one of Bernard’s volumes of poems had run into a fifth edition, and of another George IV. had accepted the dedication. Thus prompted to exertion, he worked too hard; banking all day and writing poetry all night were too much for him. Lamb, however, cheered up the dyspeptic poet. ‘You are too much apprehensive about your complaint,’ he wrote. ‘I know many that are always writing of it and live on to a good old age. I knew a merry fellow—you partly know him,