The great names mixed up with the curious transactions described in these two documents, give additional interest to them as matters of history, and specimens of the enlightenment prevalent among the very highest circles of society, in the period that so immediately preceded the Elizabethan age. A runaway monk, turning necromancer, was received into communion with some of the noblest of the land; and an educated gentleman, as Sir Edward Neville may be presumed to have been, hoped to win favour by promises to discover the philosopher’s stone. Three centuries have passed, and the only traces that may be found of these high-born credulities, lurk in the darkest corners of the darkest alleys of poverty and ignorance. CHAPTER VIII. CONVENTUAL REMAINS. _Conventual Remains_.—_St. Andrew’s Hall_.—_The Festival_.—_Music_: _Dr. Hook_, _Dr. Crotch_.—_Churches_.—_Biographical Sketches_: _Archbishop Parker_, _Sir J. E. Smith_, _Taylor_, _Hooker_, _Lindley_, _Joseph John Gurney_. The sketch of the Cathedral has embraced so much of the early history of the various religious “orders,” as to render but little necessary respecting the origin of the “frères,” or friars, whose settlements, in the city and neighbourhood, once occupied such important place in its limits and history. The Black Friars, or Preachers, White Friars, or Carmelites, Grey Friars, or Minors, and the Austin Friars, all had at one period, from the thirteenth century to the era of the Reformation, large establishments within its precincts; besides which, there was a nunnery, and divers hospitals, as they were called, such as the Chapel of the Lady in the Fields, Norman’s Spital, and Hildebrand’s Hospital; and hermitages without number lurked about the corners of its churchyards, or perched themselves above the gateways of its walls. The greater portion of these have left but a name, or a few scattered fragments, behind to mark their site; but one magnificent relic of the Black Friars monastery, comprising the whole of the nave and chancel of their beautiful church, yet stands in an almost perfect state of preservation,—a noble witness of the wealth and taste of the poor “mendicant” followers of Friar Dominick,—which was rescued from destruction at the period of the general “dissolution,” by the zeal and practical expediency of municipal authorities. Of the two friaries that have ceased to exist even in outline, it may suffice to record, that the Carmelites numbered among them the eminent writer, “John Bale, the antiquary,” as he is wont to be called; the Austin Friars seem to have possessed few particular claims for notice, save their less rigorous injunctions for fasting, but the Friars Minors were the great rivals of the Preachers, and both together, the sore troublers of the peace of the “Regulars,” who looked upon the growing power of this “_secular_” priesthood with a jealousy and hatred to be conceived only by