horses to fetch the goods from
the merchants' warehouses to the beam, and to carry them back. The house
belongeth to the Company of Grocers, in whose gift the several porters',
&c., places are. But of late years little is done in this office, as
wanting a compulsive power to constrain the merchants to have their
goods weighed, they alleging it to be an unnecessary trouble and
charge."

In former times it was the usual practice for merchandise brought to
London by foreign merchants to be weighed at the king's beam in the
presence of sworn officials. The fees varied from 2d. to 3s. a draught;
while for a bag of hops the uniform charge was 6d.

[Illustration: THE WEIGH-HOUSE CHAPEL (_see page 563_).]

The Presbyterian Chapel in the Weigh-house was founded by Samuel Slater
and Thomas Kentish, two divines driven by the Act of Uniformity from St.
Katherine's in the Tower. The first-named minister, Slater, has
distinguished himself by his devotion during the dreadful plague which
visited London in 1625 (Charles I.). Kentish, of whom Calamy entertained
a high opinion, had been persecuted by the Government. Knowle, another
minister of this chapel, had fled to New England to escape Laud's
cat-like gripe. In Cromwell's time he had been lecturer at Bristol
Cathedral, and had there greatly exasperated the Quakers. Knowles and
Kentish are said to have been so zealous as sometimes to preach till
they fainted. In Thomas Reynolds's time a new chapel was built at the
King's Weigh-house. Reynolds, a friend of the celebrated Howe, had
studied at Geneva and at Utrecht. He died in 1727, declaring that,
though he had hitherto dreaded death, he was rising to heaven on a bed
of roses. After the celebrated quarrel between the subscribers and
non-subscribers, a controversy took place about psalmody, which the
Weigh-house ministers stoutly defended. Samuel Wilton, another minister
of Weigh-house Chapel, was a pupil of Dr. Kippis, and an apologist for
the War of Independence. John Clayton, chosen for this chapel in 1779,
was the son of a Lancashire cotton-bleacher, and was converted by
Romaine, and patronised by the excellent Countess of Huntingdon; he used
to relate how he had been pelted with rotten eggs when preaching in the
open air near Christchurch. While itinerating for Lady Huntingdon,
Clayton became acquainted with Sir H. Trelawney, a young Cornish
baronet, who became a Dissenting minister, and eventually joined the
"Rational party." An