Paddington has its story. We are told even to this day, {1a} that King Edgar gave lands here to the Monks of Westminster. And considering what Kings did give to Monks, and also the kind of services rendered by Dunstan and his friends to this usurper of his brother’s crown, it would not have been very surprising to have found this tale true. The same account is given by other authorities. The Rev. Daniel Lysons—the historian of “The Environs of London,”—says “King Edgar gave the Manor of Paddington to Westminster Abbey.” {1b} And a more recent writer, Mr. Saunders, in his “Results of an Inquiry concerning the situation and extent of Westminster, at various periods,” has supported this assertion in these words—“According to Dart, Paddington occurs, as an appendage to the convent of Westminster, in a Charter of King Edgar.” {1c} Unfortunately for the credit of this story, the work these authors have referred to does not sanction it. Dart, indeed, in the very page referred to both by Lysons and Saunders, states something very different from that, which he is reported to have said; for he distinctly informs us it was Dunstan who gave the land at Paddington to the monks of Westminster. {2a} After specifying the gifts of proceeding Kings, and those of Edgar in particular, Dart says, “But to return to Dunstan. Having thus influenced the King, he goes on with his own benefactions. And first by his Charter, takes upon him to confirm some of the gifts of Edgar, then grants many privileges to this church, exempts it from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London and curses all his successors in that see, and all others who dare to infringe its rights; and lastly releases it from the payment of the tax called Roomscot, {2b} as Offa, Kenulph, and Edgar had done.” The Bishop by another charter secures the privileges of the convent, and settles certain lands for the maintenance of the monks, viz. “Lands at Hendon and Hanwell to the amount of twenty-eight hides.” And at “Paddington, in the county of Middlesex, which grant was confirmed by his own Charter, and afterwards by King Henry the Eighth, and said to contain two hides of land.” He also granted certain lands at Merton, Perham, Cowell, Ewell, and Shepperton—thirty seven hides in these five places. All these grants, _with the exception of Paddington_, Dart states were confirmed by the Charter of Edward the Confessor. But this statement of Dart’s relative to the grant of land in Paddington is of no value, excepting that it probably names the utmost extent of land which the church of Westminster _ever_ got in Paddington by honest means, since it has been convincingly proved that “the Great Charters” both of Edgar, and Dunstan, are the fabrication of monks who lived long after the death of the King and Bishop.