r church has been erected, the splendour and size
of which in every respect accord with the increased wealth and numbers
of the parish.

[5] The visitation of the church in the year 1251, mentions a
very small tower, a good slope font, and a small marble stone
ornamented with copper to carry the _Pax_.

The church and churchyard of Pancras have long been noted as the
burial-place of such Roman Catholics as die in London and its
vicinity.[6] Many of the tombs exhibit a cross, and the initials R.I.P.
(_Requiescat in pace_), which initials, or others analogous to them, are
always used by the Catholics on their sepulchral monuments. Mr. Lysons
heard it assigned by some of that persuasion, as a reason for this
preference to Pancras as a burial-place, that masses were formerly said
in a church in the south of France, dedicated to the same saint, for the
souls of the deceased interred at St. Pancras in England. After the
French revolution, a great number of ecclesiastics and other refugees,
some of them of high rank, were buried in this churchyard; and in 1811,
Mr. Lysons observed that probably about 30 of the French clergy had on
an average been buried at Pancras for some years past: in 1801 there
were 41, and in 1802, 32. Mr. Lysons's explanation of this preference to
Pancras by the Catholics is, however, disputed by the author of
_Ecclesiastical Topography_, who observes that a reason more generally
given is, that "Pancras was the last church in England where mass was
performed after the Reformation."

[6] Strype, in his additions to Stowe, says, the Roman Catholics
have of late _effected_ to be buried at this place.

In the chancel are monuments of Daniel Clarke, Esq. who had been
master-cook to Queen Elizabeth; and of Cooper the artist, whose style
approached so near to that of Vandyke, that he has been called Vandyke
in miniature: he taught the author of Hudibras to paint; his wife was
sister to Pope's mother.

In the churchyard are the tombs of Anthony Woodhead, 1678, who was in
his day, the great champion of the Roman Catholic religion, and was
reputed to have written the Whole Duty of Man; Lady Slingsby, whose name
occurs as an actress in Dryden and Lee's plays, from 1681 to 1689;
Jeremy Collier, 1726, the pertinacious non-juror, who repressed the
immoralities of the stage; Ned Ward, author of the London Spy, 1731;
Leoni, the architect, 1746; Lady Henrietta, wife of Beard, the vocalist,
1753;