The churchyard of St. Giles’ in the Fields is a very interesting one. It might well be now called St. Giles’ in the Slums, although of late years the surrounding streets have been much improved and the worst courts cleared away. Before there was a church of St. Giles’ there was a lazaretto or leper hospital on the spot, and what is now the churchyard was the burial-ground attached thereto. As a parish the settlement seems to date from 1547, but the hospital was founded 200 years earlier, and was entrusted to the care of the Master and Brethren of the Order of Burton St. Lazar of Jerusalem, in Leicestershire. The churchyard, which holds many centuries of dead, was frequently enlarged, Brown’s Gardens being added in 1628, until the parish secured an additional burial-ground, in 1803, adjoining that of St. Pancras. And yet it is barely an acre in extent. It is related in Thornbury’s “Haunted London” that in 1670 the sexton agreed to furnish the rector and churchwardens with two fat capons, ready dressed, every Tuesday se’nnight in return for being allowed to introduce certain windows into the churchyard side of his house. But it could not have been a pleasant churchyard to look at. It was always damp, and vast numbers of the poor Irish were buried in it (the ground having been originally consecrated by a Roman Catholic), and it is hardly to be wondered at that the parish of St. Giles’ enjoys the honour of having started the plague of 1665. And the practices carried on there at the beginning of this century were equal to the worst anywhere—revolting ill-treatment of the dead was the daily custom. Now the churchyard is a public garden, Pendrell’s tombstone being an object of historical interest, the inscription upon which runs as follows:— “Here lieth Richard Pendrell, Preserver and Conductor to his sacred Majesty King Charles the Second of Great Britain, after his Escape from Worcester Fight, in the Year 1651, who died Feb. 8, 1671. Hold, Passenger, here’s shrouded in this Herse, Unparalell’d Pendrell, thro’ the Universe. Like when the Eastern Star From Heaven gave Light To three lost Kings; so he, in such dark Night, To Britain’s Monarch, toss’d by adverse War, On Earth appear’d, a Second Eastern Star, A Pope, a Stern, in her rebellious Main, A Film to her Royal Sovereign. Now to triumph in Heav’n’s eternal Sphere, He’s hence advanc’d, for his just Steerage here; Whilst Albion’s Chronicles, with matchless Fame, Embalm the Story of great Pendrell’s Name.” This ridiculous epitaph belongs to the truly eulogistic group. It has its counterpart on a tombstone in Fulham Churchyard, erected to the memory of a lady, where the epitaph is “Silence is best,” or in the following one from Lambeth:— “Here lieth W. W. Who nevermore will trouble you, trouble you.”