Marian of the morris dance, who up to that time had probably only a vague connexion with Robin Hood. MAIDSTONE, a market town and municipal and parliamentary borough, and the county town of Kent, England, 41 m. E.S.E. of London by the South Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1901), 33,516; area, 4008 acres. It lies principally on the eastern bank of the river Medway, the modern part spreading over the western slopes of a picturesque valley, which is intersected and environed by orchards and hop gardens, this being the richest agricultural district of Kent. The hop grounds form the so-called middle growth of Kent, and the town has the principal grain market in the county. Archbishop Boniface in 1260 established a hospital here (Newark hospital) for poor pilgrims, the chapel of which, with modern additions, is now St Peter's Church. The parish church of St Mary, which had existed from Norman times, was demolished in 1395 by Archbishop Courtenay, who erected on the site the present church of All Saints. This fine Perpendicular building contains, besides many excellent monuments, the richly carved sedilia and the twenty-eight oak seats used by the collegiate priests. Courtenay also founded a college of secular canons, the ruins of which are an interesting specimen of 14th-century architecture. From the reign of John until the Reformation the archbishops had a residence here, at which Stafford and Courtenay died. This Perpendicular building, with its Elizabethan east front, was acquired by the corporation as a memorial of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887, and houses the school of science and art. The rectory, with the manor, passed into lay hands at the Reformation; and, having been a perpetual curacy for three hundred and twenty years, the living became a vicarage in 1866. The grammar school was founded in 1549, and endowed with the estates of the local Corpus Christi fraternity, then dissolved; the hall in which the gild assembled remains, but the school is established in modern buildings on a new site. There are oil-mills, rope, sacking and twine factories, and cement, lime, and brick works. There is a considerable carrying trade on the Medway. A museum, with public library, was opened in 1858, in an interesting building of the early part of the 16th century. This is the headquarters of the Kent Archaeological Society, founded by the Rev. L. B. Larking in 1858. In 1890 an art gallery was added. The West Kent and General hospital, the county ophthalmic hospital, county gaol and barracks may be mentioned among other institutions. From Saxon times down to 1830 condemned malefactors were executed, and all the great county meetings were held, on Penenden Heath, a common situated about a mile north-east of the town, and enclosed by the corporation as a public recreation ground. The parliamentary borough of Maidstone returns one member. The town is governed by a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors.