By John Causton, to which John Steveyns was admitted chaplain, December 2, 1452; by John Coventry, in the chapel of St. Nicholas; by Henry Frowycke, whose endowment fetched £15 : 10s. in 1548; by John de Holleghe, whose endowment produced £7 in 1548; by Dame Eleanor, Prioress of Winchester, whose endowment yielded £4 in 1548. The original church does not appear to have contained many monuments of note. Among the civic dignitaries buried here was Nicholas Alwine, Lord Mayor in 1499, whose name is familiar to readers of _The Last of the Barons_. Sir John Coventry, Mayor in 1425, was also buried here. There is a tablet fixed over the vestry-room door, commemorating Dame Dionis Williamson, who gave £2000 towards the building of the church. On the west wall a sarcophagus commemorates Bishop Newton, rector, who won celebrity by his edition of Milton first published in 1749. The parish possessed a considerable number of charities and gifts: George Palin was donor of £100, to be devoted to the maintenance of a weekly lecture. Mr. Banton, of £50 for the same purpose. There were others, to the total amount of £60. There was one Charity School belonging to Cordwainer and Bread Street Wards for fifty boys and thirty girls, who were put to employments and trades when fit. The following are among the notable rectors: Martin Fotherby (d. 1619), Bishop of Salisbury; Samuel Bradford (1652-1731), Bishop of Gloucester; Samuel Lisle (1683-1749), Bishop of Norwich; Nicholas Felton (1556-1626), Bishop of Bristol; Thomas Newton (1704-1782), Bishop of Bristol; and William Van Mildert (1765-1836), Bishop of Llandaff, and later the last Prince-Bishop of Durham. Quaint sayings and traditions have gathered more thickly about St. Mary’s than about any of the City churches. Dick Whittington’s story has made the name familiar to every British child; while to be born “within sound of Bow Bells” is more dignified than to own oneself a Cockney. In sooth-saying we have the prophecy of Mother Shipton that when the Grasshopper on the Exchange and the Dragon on Bow Church should meet, the streets should be deluged with blood. They did so meet, being sent to the same yard for repair at the same time, but the prophecy was not fulfilled. The ringing of the Bow bells in the Middle Ages signified closing-time for shops, and the ringer incurred the wrath of the apprentices of Chepe if he failed to be punctual to the second. We now proceed to the =Poultry=. Stow thus describes the place: “Now to begin again on the bank of the said Walbrooke, at the east end of the high street called the Poultrie, on the north side thereof, is the proper parish church of St. Mildred, which church was new built upon Walbrooke in the year 1457. John Saxton their parson gave thirty-two pounds towards the building of the new choir, which now standeth upon the course of Walbrooke.” Strype says of it: