ists, was built in
Richard II.'s reign, and was used for a jail until not long ago they
determined to put a school there. In front of it the martyr Tankerfield
was burnt, and buried in 1555 in a little triangular graveyard which
still exists. Fox, in his _Book of Martyrs_, relates that he endured the
pain with great constancy, and testified to the last against the errors
of his persecutors.

[Illustration: THE SHRINE AND WATCHING-GALLERY.]

[Illustration: CLOCK-TOWER, ST. ALBANS.]

[Illustration: BARNARD'S HEATH.]

In the town of St. Albans, near the abbey and at the junction of two
streets, stands the ancient clock-tower, built in the early part of the
fifteenth century, and mainly of flint. It occupies the site of an
earlier one said to have been erected by two ladies of Verulam, who,
wandering alone in the woods and becoming lost, saw a light in a house,
sought refuge there, and erected the tower on the site as a memorial of
their deliverance. The bell in this tower was in former days used to
ring the curfew. The town itself has little to show. In the church of
St. Peter, among the monumental brasses, is the one to a priest often
quoted, that reads:

"Lo, all that here I spent, that some time had I;
All that I gave in good intent, that now have I;
That I neither gave nor lent, that now abie[A] I;
That I kept till I went, that lost I."

Edward Strong, the mason who built St. Paul's Cathedral in London under
the direction of Wren, is also buried in this church. Its chief tenants,
however, are the slain at the second battle of St. Albans in the Wars of
the Roses. At the first of these battles, fought in 1455 on the east
side of the town, Henry of Lancaster was wounded and captured by the
Duke of York. The second battle, a much more important contest, was
fought on Shrove Tuesday, February 17, 1461, at Barnard's Heath, north
of the town, and near St. Peter's Church. Queen Margaret of Lancaster
led her forces in person, and was victorious over the Yorkists under the
Earl of Warwick, liberating the captive king, who was in the enemy's
camp, and following the battle by a ruthless execution of prisoners.
King Henry, who had gone to St. Alban's shrine in tribulation when
captured in the earlier contest, also went there again in thanksgiving
when thus liberated six years later. The town of St. Albans, by the
growth of time, has stretched across the Ver, and one straggling suburb
reaches into the north-western a