This went on until Henry the Eighth fell upon the Church, and took away not only many of the Episcopal demesnes but also many of the Episcopal privileges (if indeed they may be so termed). Such rights as the King spared survived for 300 years longer. The Bishop of Ely still possessed a jurisdiction of considerable importance and dignity, holding almost sovereign authority within his "Franchise," which was styled "the Royal Franchise or Liberty of the Bishops of Ely." He himself appointed his own Judges to hear all cases within the Isle of Ely; Assize and Quarter Sessions were held in his name and at his pleasure; his chief bailiff acted as High Sheriff, and he nominated the magistrates. It was the Bishop's Peace, and not the King's Peace, against which malefactors throughout the Isle were held to offend. This went on till 1836, when on the death of Bishop Spark, these last remnants of Etheldreda's jurisdiction as Queen-Abbess ceased by Act of Parliament. But to this day there live on some far-off echoes of the Girvian principality. The Isle of Ely, with its three Rural Deaneries and forty-six benefices, is ecclesiastically under the immediate jurisdiction of the Bishop; no Archdeacon holds any authority there, as in other parts of the diocese, except in the parishes of Haddenham and Wilburton. True, we have an Archdeacon of Ely, but he ought rather to be designated Archdeacon of Cambridgeshire, for, with the exceptions named, beyond the limits of the county proper he is powerless. The Isle, moreover, has its own County Council quite distinct from that of Cambridgeshire, while the common High Sheriff of both divisions is nominated from each in turn. And in the very heart of London, close to Holborn Circus, traces of this civil jurisdiction still survive in Ely Place, where stands, abutting on houses of the most commonplace type, the beautiful chapel dedicated to St. Etheldreda, built at the close of the thirteenth century, and once attached to the town palace of the Bishops of Ely. Ely Place was a "Liberty," and, within the memory of those still living, the Royal writs did not run here, and no police-officer or sheriff could follow a debtor who had here taken sanctuary; it was, moreover, rated on a basis peculiar to itself. The "Liberty" is still governed by certain Commissioners, elected annually by the householders. It has its own day and night watchmen, with their gold-laced hats, who fulfil the function of policemen, and the silence of the night is, even in this twentieth century, broken by their call, hour by hour, as of yore. We all remember how Shakespeare makes Richard the Third say to the Bishop of Ely, "My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there,"