[54] _Archaeologia_, vol. xxxii., "The Early Use of Gunpowder in the
English Army," pp. 379-387.

[55] _History of the Tower of London_ (John Bayley, F.S.A.) (first
edition), vol. i., Appendix, pp. 1, 4.

[56] _Issues of the Exchequer_ (F. Devon), pp. 43, 74; Expense Roll for
works at Westminster Palace, 43 Henry III.

[57] _The Tower of London_ (Harrison Ainsworth), book ii., ch. xi.

[58] _History of the Tower_ (Bayley), vol. i., p. 179.

[59] _History of the Jesuits in England_ (Taunton), ch. vii., p. 166.

ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT, SMITHFIELD

BY J. TAVENOR-PERRY

Anyone now visiting the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, after a
lapse of fifty years, would scarcely recognize in the present stately
building the woe-begone and neglected place of his recollections. In the
apse and the transepts, in the lofty screen to the west of the stalls,
suggesting a hidden nave beyond, and in the glimpses of the Lady Chapel
across the eastern ambulatory, he would see the completed choir of some
collegiate church, of which the principal architectural features
suggested an ancient foundation. It is true that, in the church of fifty
years ago, the Norman details were still very distinct, though the round
arches of the arcades had been parodied by the Georgian windows of the
east end, and by the plastered romanesque reredos; but gloom and
darkness overspread the whole place, encroachments of the most
incongruous kinds had invaded the most sacred portions, and to the
casual observer it seemed impossible that the church could ever be
rescued from the ruin with which it was threatened, or reclaimed from
the squalor by which it was surrounded.

To understand the difficulties which lay before the restorers, who, in
1863, commenced the task of saving the building from annihilation, and
to properly appreciate what they have achieved, as well as what they
only aimed at accomplishing, it is necessary to give some account of
the state of the fabric in that year, and, without repeating at undue
length the oft-told tale of its foundation, to give a history of the
church during the eight hundred years of its existence.

The founder, both of the priory and of the hospital, was one Rahere, of
whom but little is certainly known. Some assume that he was that same
Rahere who assisted Hereward in his stand against the Norman invaders of
the Cambridgeshire fens, but if so, this did not prevent him, later on,
from attaching himse