I think it not at all improbable that the “Vicarage House” had been made into “a house for _two_ tenants,” by Sir Rowland St. John; for, so far as I can discover, he was the first lessee who resided on the Paddington estate. The lords of the manor had preferred to live in the monastery, and the episcopal palace; and their lessees were only middle-men, whose object was—as the object of this class very frequently has been—to get as much out of the land-workers as possible, and give as little as possible in return. It is my opinion, however, that Sir Rowland St. John added very considerably to the parsonage-house; and adopted it as his own residence, (no uncommon thing at this period), by which it arrived at the dignity of a manor-house; and, as the bishop had “left it unto his tenants” to do what they pleased for the cure of souls, Sir Rowland, also in compliance with the fashion of the time, kindly gave house-room to some poor half-starved curate, who had never taken upon himself the ministry as a money-getting profession, or having done so had found his expectations most woefully deceived. The pay of his “reading minister” may astonish those who do not remember the account given by Mr. Macaulay, or some equally trust-worthy author, of the condition of the great majority of the clergy in the seventeenth century. The learned historian just referred to, states, what one may readily believe, seeing what the lords of Paddington and Marylebone paid the minister of those places, that “for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten were menial servants;” and he adds, “a large proportion of those divines who had no benefices, or whose benefices were too small to afford a comfortable revenue, lived in the houses of laymen.” “The Ordinary,” in his “discretion,” or in his hurry to secure a more lucrative preferment for himself—the see of London in Dr. Mountain’s time was not the richest in England, and therefore not worth sticking to—had forgotten to make any provision for that cure of souls in Paddington, which devolved on him, and for which he was paid. “The reading minister;” and afterwards Mr. Anthony Dodd, “the preaching minister,” were glad therefore to become tenants in the great man’s house; having no rectory-house to themselves, and not being provided with a sufficiency of the rectory profits “to do divine service, to inform the people, and keep hospitality.”