The patronage of this church appears to have been anciently in the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s; but the parishioners have ever since the reformation had the right of chusing their own Minister, who must however be licenced by the Bishop of London; but in matters ecclesiastical it is subject to the Archdeacon, except as to wills and administrations, which belong to the Commissary. The Incumbent receives by act of Parliament 150l. a year from the parish. _St._ MARY ALDERMARY, on the east side of Bow lane, in Cordwainer street ward, has its additional epithet of Aldermary, or Elder Mary, from its being the most ancient church in this city dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The last church, which was erected at the expence of Henry Keeble, was destroyed by the fire of London in 1666; but it was afterwards erected at the expence of Henry Rogers, Esq; who generously gave 5000l. towards rebuilding it. This Gothic edifice is very spacious, it being an hundred feet in length and sixty-three in breadth; the height of the roof is forty-five feet, and that of the steeple an hundred and thirty-five. The body is enlightened by a single series of large Gothic windows. The wall has well-contrived buttresses and battlements; these buttresses run up pilaster fashion, in two stages, not projecting in the old manner from the body of the building. The tower, which is full of ornament, consists of five stages, each of which, except the lowest, has one Gothic window; and the pinacles, which are properly so many turrets, are continued at each corner down to the ground, divided into stages as the body of the tower, and cabled with small pillars bound round it, with a kind of arched work, and subdivisions between. _English Architecture._ This rectory is one of the thirteen peculiars belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury; and the parish of St. Thomas Apostles being annexed to this church by an act of Parliament granted in the reign of King Charles II. the profits of the Rector are greatly augmented, he receiving 150l. _per annum_ in lieu of tithes, and about 100l. a year by glebe. _St._ MARY AT HILL, on the west side of St. Mary Hill, in Billingsgate ward, owes its additional epithet to its situation on an eminence. This church is of considerable antiquity, since a chantry was founded in it so early as about the year 1336. It is remarkable, that in the year 1497, digging in this church for the foundation of a wall, the corpse of Alice Hackney, who died about the year 1322, was discovered in a very rotten coffin; and that the skin was sound and flexible, and the joints pliable, though buried about 175 years. The body was kept above ground three or four days, without any noisome smell, but then beginning to be tainted was again laid in the ground.