By the side of a pure and then beautiful stream, at a later period named the Westbourn, the first “clearing” was made; and in all probability on the eminence above this brook, perhaps on the very spot where the first Christian temple was raised, the inhabitants of this Mark first offered up their adoration to that God which their intelligence had taught them to worship; and let not those who occupy their places in well cushioned pews near this spot, decry or despise that worship; for it was the sincere and spontaneous act of the unenlightened mind, unmixed with the sins of a cold formality, or the hypocrisy of a political sham. However misguided our ancestors were, they were sincere, and they wanted not the support of the State to bolster up their peculiar dogmas, but freely consecrated a portion of the Mark to the services of religion. And the present christian Bishop of London, and his lay lessees, may now have the honour of receiving the proceeds of land once dedicated to Pagan worship. {115c} The Mark included a considerable extent of the forest around the portion cleared; and this portion of the Mark, the forest or waste-land, was, as we have seen, the common property of the inhabitants. To protect their rights in this common property against powerful and ambitious individuals, was for centuries the constant care of the people, as it was the special object of many of our ancient laws. How these laws were evaded; how by force or fraud “the lords of the soil” managed to transfer those lands to their own keeping; and how cunning and designing men have over-reached them in return; so that, at last, scarcely a scrap of all their former rights remain to the public, for public uses, I have made some attempt to tell, so far as the Paddington Mark is concerned. But a complete history of these transactions remains to be written. The formation of the Mark, and the reception of its occupants into the family of the state, were not the work of a day: and these long preceded the parochial arrangement; which latter, indeed, was an ecclesiastical division of the land, said to have been introduced into England in the seventh century by Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury: but this is evidently one of those errors so common in history, where one man is often credited or debited with deeds which belong to, and should be fairly divided among many individuals. It is this error, as Mr. Kemble has most strikingly pointed out, which has frequently made a saint, or a devil, when no heroic quality belonged to the person so set on high for admiration or detestation.