LL STANDING) IN FLEET STREET, NEAR ST.
DUNSTAN'S CHURCH (_see page 52_).]

The _Record_ (No. 169, north side) started in 1828 as an organ of the
extreme Evangelical party. The first promoters were the late Mr. James
Evans, a brother of Sir Andrew Agnew, and Mr. Andrew Hamilton, of West
Ham Common (the first secretary of the Alliance Insurance Company).
Among their supporters were Henry Law, Dean of Gloucester, and Francis
Close, afterwards Dean of Carlisle. Amongst its earliest writers was the
celebrated Dr. John Henry Newman, of Oxford. The paper was all but dying
when a new "whip" was made for money, and the Rev. Henry Blunt, of
Chelsea, became for a short time its editor. The _Record_ at last began
to flourish and to assume a bolder and a more independent tone. Dean
Milman's neology, the peculiarities of the Irvingites, and the dangerous
Oxford tracts, were alternately denounced. In due course the _Record_
began to appear three times a week, and became celebrated for its
uncompromising religious tone and, as Mr. James Grant truly says, for
the earliness and accuracy of its politico-ecclesiastical information.

The old church of St. Bride (Bridget) was of great antiquity. As early
as 1235 we find a turbulent foreigner, named Henry de Battle, after
slaying one Thomas de Hall on the king's highway, flying for sanctuary
to St. Bride's, where he was guarded by the aldermen and sheriffs, and
examined in the church by the Constable of the Tower. The murderer,
after confessing his crime, abjured the realm. In 1413 a priest of St.
Bride's was hung for an intrigue in which he had been detected. William
Venor, a warden of the Fleet Prison, added a body and side-aisles in
1480 (Edward IV.) At the Reformation there were orchards between the
parsonage gardens and the Thames. In 1637, a document in the Record
Office, quoted by Mr. Noble, mentions that Mr. Palmer, vicar of St.
Bride's, at the service at seven a.m., sometimes omitted the prayer for
the bishop, and, being generally lax as to forms, often read service
without surplice, gown, or even his cloak. This worthy man, whose living
was sequestered in 1642, is recorded, in order to save money for the
poor, to have lived in a bed-chamber in St. Bride's steeple. He founded
an almshouse in Westminster, upon which Fuller remarks, in his quaint
way, "It giveth the best light when one carrieth his lantern before
him." The brother of Pepys was buried here in 1664 under his mother's
pe