St. Paul’s connection with the church appears to have ceased before the Conquest, since which time the edifice has been once or twice rebuilt. The spire is recorded to have been re-edified in 1479, in which year the _parson of the parish_, with his officers, ate a goose upon the top, and cast the well-picked bones into the four streets below. The ecclesiastics of those days were a jovial crew,—none of your lean, skewery-built men, like their degenerate types of the present day,—but priests of size and substance; men who quaffed their wine and sack right merrily; and who evidently looked after the _spirits_ of their flocks more than after their souls. Must not those have been “good old times!” The east and part of the south sides of the church were rebuilt in 1640, just before the breaking out of the great Civil War. The “parson and goose spire” having been injured by lightning in 1780, was that same year removed. The present square steeple was rebuilt in 1813; and the illuminated clock which ornaments the south front was first publicly lit up in 1835. The interior of the church, which contains some venerable monuments, has of late years been considerably improved and beautified. CHAPTER VI. Watergate Street.—God’s Providence House.—Bishop Lloyd’s House.—The Puppet Show Explosion.—Trinity Church.—Dean Swift and the Yacht,—St. Martin’s and St. Bridget’s Churches.—The Stanley Palace.—Watergate.—Port of Chester. WESTWARD, ho! a few steps, and we find ourselves moving along Watergate Street; once, and when Chester was a thriving port, the chief street of the city. As with men, so There is a tide in the affairs of _streets_, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;