Effigies of men who had devoted themselves to a religious life, but who died before attaining the order of priesthood, are very rare. There is one of a deacon within the altar-rails of Ryton Church, carved in green marble from Stanhope. Whitburn Church holds a singular effigy of comparatively late date. Attired in the full stiff dress of the time of William and Mary lies a plump, elderly gentleman. He wears a full periwig, a neckcloth with square ends, a coat with large buckramed skirts and wide sleeves, rolled breeches, and square-toed laced shoes ornamented with immense bows of ribbon. His head rests on a pillow, and his right hand holds a book, which is open at the text, "I shall not lye here, but rise." There is a skull between the feet. On the uprights of the tomb the same figure is carved in bas-relief, kneeling, and on each side of him is a lady in the dress of the same period. A tablet on the wall states that this is "the burial-place of Mr. Michael Mathew of Cleadon, and his wife, who had issue three sons and two daughters, of which only Hannah survives." BRASSES.--In many of the older churches of the county there are remaining the stone matrices which formerly held monumental brasses, but in most cases the brasses themselves have disappeared, the sanctity of a church, and the contiguity of a Table of the Ten Commandments not having prevailed against the temptation to steal a substance so portable and so readily saleable as brass. In the floor of the chapel at Greatham Hospital there is a large slab of stone, 90 by 43 inches in size, with an inscription in brass Lombardic letters round the edge commemorating William de Middleton, a master of the Hospital in 1312. On the wall is another inscription, in raised black-letter with chasing, asking for prayers for the souls of Nicholas Hulme, who was master in 1427, of John Kelyng, 1463, and of William Estfelde, who died in 1497. At Sherburn Hospital there is a small brass let into the chancel steps, which reads: "THOMAS . LEAVER . PREACHER . TO KING EDWARD . THE . SIXTE. HE . DIED . iN . iVLY . i577." In the church at St. Andrew’s Auckland there is a finely cut brass with the figure of a priest, of which the head is, unfortunately, missing. There is no inscription, but the date of it is probably about 1400. In the same church there is a unique brass, small in size, but about ½ inch thick; it bears a small Greek cross with a backing of plant decoration, and it has three lines of inscription across the plate and a legend round the margin. It is dated April 8, 1581, and was put up to the memory of Mrs. Fridesmond Barnes, who was the wife of the second Protestant Bishop of Durham, Richard Barnes. We know the cost of this brass, for in the Bishop’s accounts there is the entry, "To the gould-smyth at Yorke for a plate to sett over Mrs. Barnes, 32ˢ."