It was an ominous place, suitable for the footpad’s leap in the dark upon the traveller’s back, and those wayfarers who were obliged to pad the hoof alone through Holloway when night was come wished they had eyes in the back of the head, in addition to the usual pair. Near by stood, and still stands, Bromley Hill House, once the seat of Charles Long, afterwards Lord Farnborough. In the dairy at that place one John Clarke, gardener, murdered Elizabeth Mann, a dairy-maid, and over against Holloway there was erected a gallows, and on it John Clarke, brought in a cart from Maidstone gaol, in due time swung. At the threshold of Bromley stands the College, not an educational establishment, but a superior kind of almshouse, whose purpose is explained by the inscription set up over the doorway: Deo et Ecclesiæ This College for Twenty poore widowes (of orthodox and Loyall Clergymen) & A Chaplin was given by Iohn Warner late L^d. Bishop of Rochester 1666 John Warner, Bishop of Rochester, was a staunch supporter of Church and King, in times when both the Establishment and the Monarchy were in a bad way. Charles the First was not wholly responsible for the troubles and tragedies of his reign. An acrid Puritanism was in the air, and had already manifested itself, very unpleasantly, in his father’s time. It was the inevitable reaction from the Renaissance gaieties under Elizabeth. The times were such that, even in the first year of Charles the First’s rule, Warner found it necessary to deliver a bitter sermon directed against the politico-religious activities of the Puritans, based upon the text, Matt. xxi. 38: “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.” No one had in those early days of strife thought of beheading Charles, and we must therefore count Warner among the prophets. The bishop came very near being impeached before Parliament for this exploit, and only escaped by the King stepping in and “pardoning” him in advance of Parliamentary action. It is not surprising to find that, when the troubles culminated in war, the House was swift to sequestrate the bishop from his see, and even to seize his property. They proved the innuendo of his discourse at his own expense, he was forced to leave his palace at Bromley in disguise, fearing for his personal safety at the hands of the saints, and for years he wandered in poverty in the West Country. Like other survivors of the dispossessed clergy, high-placed and low, he came to his own again at the Restoration in 1661, but he was then an old man of eighty. Five years later he was dead. [Illustration: IN THE FIRST QUADRANGLE, WIDOWS’ COLLEGE, BROMLEY.]