It was Bishop Mountayne who leased the manor of Paddington to Sir Rowland St. John, in 1626, and not Bishop Abbot, as stated by Lysons; for George Abbot was bishop of London only a few months, and was translated to Canterbury in 1611. I learn from the survey to which Lysons has referred, but which I think he could not have examined for himself, that the lease granted by Bishop Mountayne was dated the twenty-fourth of November, 1626, the second year of Charles the first, the reserved rent for the manor only, being forty-one pounds, six shillings and eight pence; the wood of thirty acres before referred to, being now separately leased for forty shillings per annum; and besides the payment of this increased rent, the lessee was bound by this lease to find the surveyor and steward of the said Lord Bishop, “with provision for man and horse during the holding of his court upon the premises.” At the time this parliamentary survey was taken, the rectory, “excepting the parsonage house or houses,” with the great tithe, was held by John Lisle, one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal; and it was separately valued at twenty-eight pounds per annum. The ordinance which was issued on the sixteenth of November, 1646, for the sale of Bishops’ lands and estates for the service of the Commonwealth, was followed by a valuation of these estates in England and Wales; and from that valuation we learn the following particulars relative to Paddington:—{49a} TEMPORALITIES. _£_ _s._ _d._ Present rents and profits, per annum 44 1 8 Improvements above, per annum 1119 11 8 Timber, wood, &c., valuation in gross 362 6 8 RECTORY AND PARSONAGE. Present value _nil_. Future, per annum 35 0 0 On the fourteenth of December, 1649, “The manner of Paddington wth ye appurten’ces” was sold to Thomas Browne for the sum of three thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight pounds, seventeen shillings and four pence. {49b} How long Mr. Browne enjoyed the revenues of this manor, or what arrangement was come to with respect to this particular purchase on the re-establishment of the episcopacy, I do not know. Lysons informs us that “by the parish accounts, it appears Thomas Browne, esquire, was lord of the manor in 1657,” and it is very probable he continued so after the prelacy was restored; but unfortunately these parish accounts are not now to be found; otherwise more information on this subject, as well as many others, might be obtained.