It will be seen by the plan that six of the wooden pillars which supported the roof* remain; and if the hall was originally the whole length of the plan, four others have been removed. At present the building is at this end carried up into another story. At the same time its width is narrowed, and a party wall divides it from the remaining

portion of the hall. The square room thus formed on the ground floor, and which is called the Parlour, is now used for the courts leet and courts baron, and their attendant dinners; the hall itself is occupied only as a lumber room.

Two of the timber arches still remain complete, presenting this appearance.

There are also lateral beams from arch to arch, as shown by the dark shading, and which are supported by bracket pieces from the lower dark spots, exactly as the centre beam appears in the cut. At Nursted a pointed arch resembling those at the side occupied the central division; and it is highly probable that the same was originally the case here; and then the only difference was that here the pillars, instead of being columnar, are square, with chamfered angles. There can, indeed, we think, be little doubt that the two tie-beams and queen-posts are of modern construction. Though the walls are new, the stone pavement appears by no means modern.

Round the walls of the parlour are placed a range of painted shields. They are uniformly encircled in a wreathed border of black and white ribbons, with architectural trefoils or Tudor flowers at the four corners, and

they seem to have been made for the bosses of a panneled roof. They are nineteen in number, but comprise only five varieties:→→

1. Gules, a cross Or.

2. Or, a Saracen's head, wreathed, Proper. The crest of Prior Weston. 3. Gules, an anchor Sable, crossed Or.

4. The same, surcharged with a tun, inscribed Likes, evidently a rebus of the name of Likeston. (See the cut overleaf.)

5. Quarterly: 1 and 4. Ermine, on a chief Azure five Bezants Or; 2 and 3. Argent, three camels passant Sable; the whole surmounted by a chief Or, charged with a cross Sable. This is the coat of William Weston, the last Prior of St. John's before the Reformation, which shows the period of the formation of these coats. His mother was Katharine, sister and heiress of John Camel of Shapwick (see the pedigree

of Weston, of Sutton by Guildford, in Manning and Bray's History of Surrey, vol. i. p. 135), and he here quarters her coat of the camels.

"

It appears from Dugdale that there were formerly these further varieties, then described as armes paynted on the seeling in a chamber of the house:"

6. Azure, two foxes in pale Or. 7. Gules, a long or passion cross. 8. Gules, the common heraldic cross Or (as No. 1) surmounted with a chief charged with a cross (as No. 5).

It is added by Dr. Thomas, that "On the great beam over the old kitchen chimney is cut in wood, a chevron ingrailed between three fermaux, in chief a Jerusalem cross, with this motto, Sane Baro." This was the coat of Sir Thomas Docwra, the Lord Prior preceding Weston; but instead of "fermaux" (a species of heraldic buckles) we should read "Plates each charged with a pallet," the coat of Docwra being Sable, a chevron engrailed Arg. between three Plates each charged with a pallet Gules, as they appear on his standard (Coll. Arm. Vinc. Camb.) and in the Parliament Roll of 6 Hen. VIII. published by Mr. Willement. The same coat occurred no less than six times on the gateway of Clerkenwell Priory (represented upon every number of the Gentleman's Magazine); see the accurate engraving

of the shields thereon, in the Gentleman's Magazine for Oct. 1788, p. 853. In one instance there, it impaled a cross flory, the chief with its cross surmounting both coats*; and in another (according to a plate in Gent. Mag. for Dec. 1749) it impaled three lions rampant, the chief then being placed only over the dexter side. The chief, it is evident, is the usual distinction which was added to the family coats of the Lords Priors of St. John of Jerusalem.

We will now proceed to the Church. It is built of a red sandstone, and is a rectangular structure of a single pace; in its exterior dimensions exactly one hundred feet long, and thirty-eight wide. The walls are 4 feet thick. The architecture is of the best style of the reign of Edward the Third.

There are three windows on the north and three on the south sides, one at the east end, and two at the west, namely, a large one of five lights immediately above a door, and a circular or wheel window in the gable. The character of the tracery, which is bold and florid, will be seen in the view.

To the north wall are five buttresses; the intervening space next the west is a dead wall; the next had a window of three lights; the next one of four, below which is a small door, now closed; and the last one of three immediately lighting the altar.