"April 25. 1682.--About nine, this night, it began to lighten, thunder, and rain. The next morning, there was the greatest flood in St. James's Park ever remembered. It came round about the fences, and up to the gravel walks--people could not walk to _Webb's_ and _Storie's_. "April 3, 1685.--This afternoon nine or ten houses were burned or blown up, that looked into S. James's Park, between _Webb's_ and _Storie's_."--_Diary of Phillip Madox_, MS. formerly in the possession of Thorpe the bookseller. No. 3. _Capel Court_.--So named from Sir William Capell, draper, Lord Mayor in 1503, whose mansion stood on the site of the present Stock Exchange.--Pennant's _Common-place Book_. No. 4. _Bloomsbury Market_.--This market, built by the Duke of Bedford, was opened in March, 1730. Query, was there a market on the site before?--_Ibid_. No. 5. _Bartlet's Buildings_.--_Mackeril's Quaker Coffee-house_, frequently mentioned at the beginning of the last century, was in these buildings.--_Ibid_. No. 6. _St. Olave's, Crutched Friars_.--Names of various persons who have occupied houses in this parish: Lady Sydney, 1586--Lady Walsingham, 1590--Lady Essex, 1594--Lord Lumley, 1594--Viscount Sudbury, 1629--Philip Lord Herbert, 1646--Dr. Gibbon, 1653--Sir R. Ford, 1653--Lord Brounker, 1673--Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 1700--_Extracts from the Registers made by the Rev. H. Goodhall_, 1818. EDWARD F. RIMBAULT. * * * * * WIVES OF ECCLESIASTICS. In reply to your correspondent's query as to the "wives of ecclesiastics," I find amongst my notes one to this effect:-- ERROR, to assume in ancient genealogies that a branch is necessarily extinct, simply because the last known representative is described as "Clericus," and _ergo_, must have died S.P.L. It will be obvious to many of your readers that Clericus is _nomen generale_ for all such as were learned in the arts of reading and writing, and whom the old law deemed capable of claiming benefit of clergy,--a benefit not confined to those in orders, if the ordinary's deputy standing by could say "_legit ut clericus_."