There was a priory of nuns established at Newington in early Norman times, but all that is now left of it is a striking legend which proves that when these pious ladies retired from the world they brought some of the world's worst characteristics with them. What they quarrelled about one night will never now be known, but when the morning dawned the Prioress was found strangled in her bed; which goes to prove that the veil no more goes to make the nun than orders black, white, or grey furnish a monk fully forth in true monastic attributes. A chalk pit, about a mile south of the church, called significantly "Nun-pit," is shown as the place where those less holy than homicidal sisters were afterwards buried alive. Other accounts say that these nuns were removed to Minster, in Sheppey. However that may be, Henry the Second would have no more nuns here. He placed seven priests in the Priory as secular canons, and gave them the manor, hoping that this religious house would in future have a less lurid career. But things, instead of improving, grew worse. One of the canons was found murdered in his bed, and four of the brethren were convicted of the crime. [Sidenote: NEWINGTON] From these queer stories we come, appropriately enough, to a tale in which the Enemy bears a brave part. When Newington Church was being built, "ever so long ago," as the tale of gramarye has it, and the time came for the bells to be hung, the Devil, who, it is well known, hates the sound of church bells, conceived the grand plan of pushing the tower over, so that the builders would give up the idea. Accordingly, he ventured down the lane one night, and, standing in the churchyard--as he could well do, because the place was not yet consecrated--placed his back against the tower, and, putting his feet against a wall on the other side of the road, pushed. No one knows what was the result, but as there is a tower here to this day--and a very fine one it is, too--it may be presumed that either Satan had altogether overrated his strength, or that the builders had built better than they knew. But if the Enemy failed in this, he at least succeeded in leaving his mark. Accordingly, here is the wall, and in it is a stone, and in that stone is a hole made by his toes; while on another stone is the print of a very fine and large boot-sole--valuable evidence, because it not only proves the truth of the story but also shows us that the Devil wore a Blucher boot on one foot and let the other go unshod. If you ask me how it came about that the Devil could come here in the fourteenth century wearing a nineteenth-century boot, I must quote the showman who exhibited a wax model of Daniel in the lions' den. Daniel was seen to be reading the _Times_, and some one in the crowd pointed out the incongruous circumstance, to which the showman replied that Daniel, being a prophet, read the _Times_ by anticipation! And if a saint could