1

A
SURVEY
OF THE
CITY of LONDON.


BOOK. V.
Containing an Account of the GOVERNMENT, and Governours, of the said CITY; Its Corporations and Trades; Its Laws, Orders, and Customs; and Militia.


CHAP. I.

The Government of the City of LONDON. And first of the Ecclesiastical State. Catalogue of all the Bishops of LONDON; And of the Parishes and Churches. An ancient List of them. Their Patrons and Tenths. Religious Houses, Hospitals, &c. Tables of the late or present Incumbents, Lecturers, Values, &c. of all the Parishes in LONDON and WESTMINSTER, with the Out-Parishes. Table of the daily Hours of Prayer, &c. in every Church. Weekly Lectures. BOYLE'S Monthly Lecture. Anniversary Sermons.

HAVING thus run through the Description of this City of London, as well in its original Foundation, as in its Increase of Buildings and Ornaments, together with such Incidents of sundry Sorts, as are before, both generally and particularly, discoursed; it remaineth that somewhat be noted by me, touching the Policy and Government, both Ecclesiastical and Civil, of London; the Order whereof is maintained by the Customs thereof, most laudably used before all the Time of Memory.

W. Malmesbury.

And first to begin with the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction; I read, that the Christian Faith was first preach'd in this Island (then called Britain) by Joseph of Arimathea, and his Brethren, Disciples of Christ, in the Time of Arviragus, then Governour here, under the Roman Emperor. After which time, Lucius, King of the Britains, sent his Ambassadors, Elvanus and Meduvinus (two Men learned in the Scriptures) with Letters to Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome, desiring him to send some Devout and Learned Men, by whose Instruction, he and his People might be taught the Faith and Religion of Christ. Eleutherius baptized those Messengers, making Elvanus a Bishop, and Meduvinus a Teacher; and sent over with them into Britain, two other famous Clerks, Faganus and Deruvianus *; by whose diligence, Lucius and his People of Britain, were instructed in the Faith of Christ, and baptized; the Temples of Idols were converted into Cathedral Churches, and Bishops were placed, where Flamines before had been: At London, York and Carleon upon Uske, were placed Archbishops, &c. The Epistle said to be sent by Eleutherius to King Lucius, for the establishing of the Faith, ye may read in my Annals, Summaries and Chronicles, truly translated and set down, as mine Author hath it; for some have curtailed and corrupted it, and then fathered upon Reverend Bede, who never wrote Word thereof, or otherwise to that Effect, more than this as followeth:

Antiquities of Glaston.

Lib. constitut.

Eleutherius died in the Year 186. when he had sitten Bishop 15 Years.

*Deuvianus first Edit.

Liber Custom.

In the Year 156 Marcus Aurelius Verus, the 14th Emperor after Augustus, governed the Empire, with his Brother Aurelius Commodus. In whose time, Eleutherius, a Holy Man, being Pope of the Church of Rome, Lucius King of Britains wrote unto him, desiring that by his Commandment, he might be made a Christian: which his Request was granted him; whereby the Britains receiving then the Faith, kept it sound and undefiled in Rest and Peace, until Dioclesian the Emperor's time.

Bede.

Thus far Bede; which may suffice to prove the Christian Faith then to be received here. And now of our London Bishops, as I find them.

There remaineth in the Parish Church of St. Peter upon Cornhil in London, a Table wherein is written, that Lucius founded the same Church to be an Archbishop's See, and Metropolitan and chief Church of his Kingdom, and that it so endured the Space of four hundred Years, until the

This is before set down in Cornhil Ward.

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