for the accommodation of the clergyman at funerals; no interments being permitted in or near the present church, nor funeral ceremony allowed to be performed. The area surrounding the church is laid out in a pleasant walk, planted with trees, and enlivened with a view of the serpentine course of the Ouse, which winds round three sides of the town.

The Town-Hall is a large brick building, surmounted with a gilt swan, which is the borough arms. The principal floor is reserved for the use of the magistrates when they hold the parish court, every three weeks; and sessions, half yearly. The houses are chiefly brick, irregularly scattered over a large extent of ground on the side and bottom of a hill. The laboring inhabitants are principally employed in agricultural pursuits, or lace*making. As the latter manufacture requires but little ingenuity, and cheap materials, there is scarcely a house or female in the town unprovided with a lace-pillow, parchments, bobbins, gimps, pins, thread, and other requisites. The profits of this business to the makers, depends on their facility of execution; their daily earnings are therefore different. Some women can earn from eighteen pence to two shillings a day; others cannot get more than one shilling in the same time. Their receipts, however, have lately experienced a considerable drawback, a manufactory having been established at Nottingham, in which the lace is made with machinery, and being quicker executed, is retailed at a less price: yet neither its quality nor workmanship is so good as that made by hand.

The

*In all the accounts we have read of Buckinghamshire, it is stated that bone lace is the chief manufacture; but some of the oldest makers, whom we consulted, were totally ignorant of the term. The principal sort made is fine thread-lace, black and white: the former commonly worked with a frenchground, or perfect diamond squares; the latter generally executed with a roundish hole, called the point-ground. The maker is furnished with a round pillow, on which a slip of parchment is fixed, perforated with a great number of holes, correspondent to the pattern required to be executed. These holes are filled with pins, which are placed and displaced as the bobbins are moved, or stitches finished. The thread is fixed on the top of small bobbins, or gimps; the first are used in making fine lace and ground; and the latter for coarse lace, and to work in the flowers, &c.

The corporation in the reign of Edward the Third consisted of a mayor and three bailiffs; but the charter by Queen Mary vests the government of the town in a bailiff and twelve burgesses, whose titles were altered by Charles the Second into those of mayor and aldermen ; but the former charter was afterwards restored, and the magistrates are still entitled bailiff and burgesses. It does not appear that this town sent members to Parliament previous to the 36th of Henry the Eighth, though three persons were sent as early as the 11th of Edward the Third to a council of trade held by that Prince at Westminster. The right of election is vested in the bailiff and twelve burgesses. The inhabitants are divided into several religious sects: the Presbyterians, Quakers, Methodists, and Socinians, have each a place of worship. The free school was founded about 1540, by Isabel Denton, who bequeathed a small legacy for a school-master, &c. The endowment has been increased by several donations; and a sunday school has lately been established for the children of the poor. The extent of the parish is computed at 3800 acres.

About one mile east of Buckingham is a little village called

MAIDS MORETON,

So denominated, according to Brown Willis, from its moorish situation, and the daughters of Lord Peover, two maidens who built the church, about the year 1450. This fabric consists of a nave, a chancel, with a small vestry on the south side, and a curiously constructed tower at the west end. The windows are in the large handsome style of Norman architecture, and display several fragments of painted glass, but are too much injured to be intelligible. The roof of the chancel, the porches, and the tower entrance, are highly decorated with light and elegant specimens of gothic architecture, particularly the north porch, which is supported with six small pillars attached to the side walls.

The following memorandums appear in the church register, "Anno 1642. This year the cross, which had like with its fall to have beat out the brains of him that did it, was cut off the

top

top of the steeple by the soldiers, at the command of Colonel Purefoy, of Warwickshire." "Anno 1653. This year came in force an act of the usurper Cromwell, that children ought not to be baptized, and about marriages by justices of peace. But it is here observed, that not one in this parish complied with it, but christened the children in the church; and no persons bedded before they were solemnly wedded in the church." This parish contains about 900 acres, principally disposed in unenclosed arable land, called Moreton Fields. The soil is a stiff heavy clay.

STOWE,

THE chief ornament of the county, and principal Seat of George Grenville Nugent Temple, Marquis of Buckingham. The earliest account of the manor is contained in Domesdaybook, which states, that in the reign of Edward the Confessor, its value was 60s. and that it was held by Robert Doyly and Roger Ivory of the Bishop of Baieux. When the bishop was dispossessed of his lands in the year 1088, this manor was obtained by the above persons for themselves, and afterwards divided between them. Stowe was retained by Doyly, who founded a church in his castle at Oxford, and endowed it with this domain; but on the removal of his foundation in 1129, he bestowed it on the canons of Oseney Abbey, in whose possession it remained till the capricious Henry the Eighth, on the dissolution of the religious houses, erected the abbey into a cathedral, and settled it on the new bishop; but the foundation being removed to Christ Church, it was given by Edward the Sixth to that college. Brown Willis, in his History of Buckingham, states, that it was afwards, on a vancancy of the see of Oxford, granted by Queen Elizabeth to three gentlemen, who first leased, and then conveyed it to John Temple, Esq. in the year 1592; but we have

been

The Temple family deduce their maternal descent from Leofric, Earl of Mercia. They appear to have been first settled at Temple Hall, in Leicestershire; though they possessed lands in this county as early as the reign of Henry the Sixth.