There were a hundred and twenty-six parish churches in London. This seems an enormous number for a population of not more than 120,000 or thereabouts. But we have to remember what the Church did for the people. The daily services; the chanting of the daily masses for living and for dead; the funerals, the weddings, the baptisms, the visitation of the sick, the direction of Fraternities, the countless observances and customs of religion, for all these things the Church was the centre, and the parish clergy were the directors. The boundaries of a parish were not at first rigidly laid down; they overlapped the ward boundaries; they were matters of agreement: it was not until the Poor Law made the definition necessary, that the boundaries were finally and exactly laid down. The multiplication of parishes was partly due, no doubt, to the desire of expiating sins by building, endowing, and decorating a Church for the good of the Founder’s soul. The census of the City, taken at any time between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries, would certainly show an almost stationary figure, lowered upon a visitation of plague, or raised after a long interval without plague, pestilence, fire, or famine. The average represented about a thousand souls to every church. The origin of the City churches cannot, as a rule, be ascertained. The oldest dedications of the churches seem to show that the London parishes were settled before the Norman Conquest: most of the London churches were probably built in or about the eighth century during that strange outburst of religious enthusiasm, the first of so many which have swept over the country. London was a city of churches: one could not escape the sight of the green churchyard, the trees standing over the graves, and the little church among them. Nor could one get away from the sound of the church bells. All day long, from daybreak until night, the bells were ringing, not only from the churches, but also from the monastic houses. High above the stroke of anvil, and the multitudinous roar of the industrial city, rolled and clanged and resounded the continual clash of the bells. What the boy Whittington heard at Highgate was not the chime of Bow Church alone; it was the sound of the bells of all the churches and all the convents of London ringing together. I have estimated roughly that, with the parish churches and their property, a full quarter of the City was occupied by the religious houses and the places they owned. As for the proportion of the population which was supported by the Church, we may form an idea by taking the case of St. Paul’s Cathedral alone:—