explain the marvel that such a spacious and beautiful church should have been erected at such an early period, it has been customary to call in aid a purely imaginary factor, and to attribute its building to the munificence of St. Bartholomew’s Priory, to whom Henry I. had given the great tithes of the parish. In the 13th century these tithes were valued at seven marks, or about £14 of our present money. In the 14th, or even in the 16th century, the value of these tithes could hardly have increased to such an amount as would suggest to the most liberal-minded monks that it was their duty to build a church for the parish in return for the income they received from it. Dr. Jessop, in a recent article in the “Nineteenth Century,” has ridiculed the notion of monks building parish churches; and certainly the connection between monasteries and parish church property does not favour the view that they often felt it their duty to apply these funds to the building of any other churches than those attached to their own abbeys and priories. Dr. Jessop’s view is that our parish churches were built by the parishioners themselves. I assume that he would include in the “parishioners” the owners of property in a parish, whether resident or not. Where the founder’s name has not been handed down to posterity this probably was the case, and from what we know of the condition of our old town in the time of Henry VIII., we can have no reason to doubt their ability to incur the expense at that period (great as the expense must have been, even when labourers’ wages where at 4d. or 5d. a day), particularly when we bear in mind the powerful influence of the doctrine of good works in securing legacies for such an object. Nor was the new church built all at once. The aisles do not appear to have been built at the same time, and the chancel appears to have been an after addition, as well as the south porch. OLD CHAPELS. There appear to have been two chapels in the town at this time, which the people could attend while the parish church was closed—a very little one, the chapel of the “Good Cross” at the south end of the town, and a larger one in the centre of the town, which was replaced after the Reformation by a Protestant chapel. This chapel, after having been restored and enlarged in the 17th century, was in use until St. Peter’s Chapel was built, when it was given over to secular uses, and has been since appropriated by our Corporation as their Council Chamber. OTHER STRUCTURAL RELICS.