Two very noteworthy Elizabethans lie buried in St. Sepulchre’s, one a scholar, the other a brilliant adventurer. The former was Roger Ascham, the queen’s tutor, and the latter, Captain John Smith, “sometime Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New England,” of Pocahontas fame. Captain Smith’s adventures in America have rather overshadowed his earlier exploits. Mr. Walter Thornbury, in his wonderful _Old and New London_, tells that he fought in Hungary in 1602, and in three single combats overcame three Turks and cut off their heads, for which and other equally brave deeds Sigismund, Duke of Transylvania, gave him his picture set in gold with a pension of three hundred ducats, and allowed him to bear three Turks’ heads proper as his shield of arms. Pocahontas, who you remember found the English climate too much for her, lies buried in the parish church of St. George, Gravesend. In 1914 the Society of Virginian Dames placed two stained glass windows to honour her memory. STONE EFFIGIES Not the least of the quaint things that the seeing eye may note in London streets are the small statues and reliefs that give an odd variety to some of the houses. At No. 78, Newgate Street, five minutes’ walk from St. Sepulchre’s, and on the same side of the road, is a bas-relief (probably an old shop-sign) of a giant and a dwarf. These were William Evans and Sir Jeffery Hudson, freaks whom it pleased Charles II. to keep about him at the Court, as readers of _Peveril of the Peak_ will remember. Just opposite is Panier Alley, so called from the basket-makers who once lived here. On the left, cased in glass in order to preserve it from the weather, is a somewhat battered effigy of a fat boy sitting upon a panier, and, underneath, this inscription: When ye have sought the citty round, Yet still this is the highest ground. August the 27th, 1688. It was put up a few years after the Great Fire, that landmark in the history of the City. I am told its claim is not strictly founded on fact, and that part of Cannon Street is a few feet higher, but one would like to believe the cherub. Another bas-relief of a fat boy, at the corner of Cock Lane, even nearer to St. Sepulchre’s, I mention in another chapter, and there is a quaint old vintner’s sign of an infant Bacchus on a barrel, to be found at the junction of Liverpool Street and Manchester Street, in the rather depressing vicinity of King’s Cross. It is believed to be the only one of its kind left in London. [Illustration: LINCOLN’S INN] CHAPTER VII DOWN CHANCERY LANE LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS “London, Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall.”--DICKENS.