A law, which already exists, will affect the income of the next occupant of the See of London, and therefore his relations to the rectory of Paddington; and it has been hinted that something may be done, in that event, for this parish. But the people of Paddington do not desire such patchwork arrangements. They want that which the whole country is asking for, and which cannot be much longer delayed—a law to regulate the whole of the estates of the church; and there is one pleasing anticipation for the people of Paddington in the contemplation of such a measure; viz. that, whatever may be the effect of that law, it cannot make _their_ position worse than it is at the present time. CHAPTER III. ANCIENT CHURCHES—ACT OF PARLIAMENT CHURCHES AND CHAPELS—CHURCH-YARDS—CHURCH-RATES—PARSONAGE-HOUSES—ECCLESIASTICAL DIVISIONS—PLACES OF WORSHIP BUILT AND SUPPORTED BY VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS, UPHOLDING THE STATE RELIGION; AND THOSE DISSENTING THEREFROM. IT is not worth while to enter into an elaborate enquiry, to shew that the parish of Paddington was at one time included in the parish of Tybourn, and that the ancient Tybourn church was the mother-church of the whole of those districts, now included in the parishes of St. Mary Abbot’s Kensington, Paddington, and Marylebone; but the facts and arguments which have been already adduced to prove that Westbourn and Tybourn were but synonymous terms; and that the modern manor of Paddington was but a portion of the ancient Tybourn manor, may serve to sanction such a supposition. Maitland, Lysons, and other authors, tell us that the ancient church of Tybourn was situated near the present Marylebone Court-house—i.e. beside _the modern_ Tybourn; but the only evidence these authorities condescend to give in support of their opinion, is, that in 1729, “a great quantity of bones were dug up at this place.” They offer no proof, however, that these bones belonged to the inhabitants of the ancient village of Tybourn; neither do they attempt to shew that they were not the remains of some of those who had died in London of the plague, which raged there in the previous century. A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, part 1, p. 315, 1809, seems to me, to be quietly quizzing those antiquarians who accepted this story of the bones, when he tells the public that “in all ancient documents, Mary la bonne (Mary the Good) is called Sancta Maria de Ossibus, (Saint Mary of Bones).” Lysons, however, does not see the joke, for he gravely replied in his second edition, “I have never seen any in which it is so described.”