certain other small benefactions in Extune, Welcumestowe, Walebec, and Northampton.

In the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Henry VIII, this monastry, with the demesne lands belong. ing to it in Hardingstone and the two Cottons, were granted to John Mershe. In the forty-third of Queen Elizabeth, Bartholomew Tate, Esq. died possessed of them, and was succeeded by William Tate, his son. Zouch Tate, the son and successor of Sir William Tate, was chosen to serve in parliament for Northampton, in 1640. He took the covenant and became a zealous enemy to the royal cause. In 1644 he first moved the House of Commons, that no member of parliament, should enjoy any office, civil or military, during the war; and this was afterwards. passed into an ordinance, called the Self-denying Ordinance.

In the thirty-eighth year of Henry VI, in the meadows by the river, and in Hardingstone field, was fought, what our historians usually call the battle of Northampton, in which the Duke of Buckingham, with other noblemen, were killed, and the king taken prisoner. Many of the slain were buried in the convent of Delapre, and at St. John's hospital, in Northampton.

Near the south-western corner of the park, on an ascent, by the side of the London road, somewhat more than half a mile from Northampton, stands Queen's cross, one of the pledges of affection borne by Edward I, to his beloved queen Eleanor; who, when her husband was wounded by a Moor, in his expedition to the Holy Land, 1272, she sucked the venom out of the wound, by which Edward was providentially cured, and she escaped unhurt. The queen died at Herdley, Lincolnshire, Nov. 29, 1290. The body was carried for interment to Westminster Abbey, and at every place were the procession rested, king Edward caused one of these pillars or crosses to be erected. It is divided into three stories or towers. The first of an octogonal form, is fourteen feet in height. Against four of the sides alternately, on two separate escutcheons, are the arms of Castile and Leon, and of the county of Ponthieu, in Picardy. Under the arms, in highrelief, is a book open, and lying on a kind of desk. On the four other sides are two distinct shields, on one of which are the arms of England, and in the other alternately the arms of Castile and Leon, and those of the county of Ponthieu. The second story of a like shape with the former, is twelve feet in height. In every other side, within a nich, is a

female figure, crowned, about six feet high, with a canopy over its head, and supported by two Gothic pillars. The upper tower is eight feet in height, and has only four sides, facing the four cardinal points of the compass. On each of these sides is a sun-dial, put up in 1712, with an inscription upon it as follows:

On the East, AB ORTV SOLIS

South, LAVDATVR DOMINVS
West, VSQVE AD OCCASVM

North, AMEN. MDCCXII.

The top is mounted with a cross, three feet in height, and added when the whole was repaired, by the order of the Bench of Justices, in 1713.

The ascent to the cross is with seven steps.

On the south side of the cross is a small white stone, on which is the following inscription :

On the western side of the lowest story, and fronting the road, are the arms of Great Britain, carved in stone, with the following inscription beneath them, on a square tablet of white marble :

In perpetuam Amoris conjugalis memoriam,
Hoc Eleanorae Regina Monumentum,
Vetustate pene collapsum, restaurari voluit,
Honorabilis Justiciariorum Caetus
Comitatus Northamptoniae

MDCCXIII.

Anno illo felicissimo

In quo ANNA

Grande Britanniae suae Decus,
Potentissima Oppressorum Vindex,
Pacis Belliq; Arbitra,

Post Germaniam liberatam,
Belgiam presidiis munitam,
Gallos plus vice decima profligatos
Suis Sociorumq; arnis,

Vine udi modum statuit ;

Et Europae in libertatem vindicatae,

PACEM restituit

Crosses were also built to her memory,

Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Stony-Stratford, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, London and Westminster, upon the places where her hearse rested. Near the cross several Roman coins, and particularly one of Nero, in silver, have been found in ploughing.

In this parish also is the military work termed Huntsborough, but more generally called Dane's Camp, situate about a mile to the south-west of Northampton. It is pleasantly seated upon a high hill which overlooks and commands the neighbouring country. The figure is rather oval than

circular. It is surrounded with a single ditch, and a double bank; the outer one very little raised, and the inner one rising upon the borders of the area, which contains upwards of an acre of ground. The ditch is about twelve feet wide, and twenty feet deep. It seems to have had only one entrance, towards the south. The passages at present cross it from east to west, and from north to south. It is supposed to have been a summer camp, raised by a party of Danes, who supported themselves by plunder, and infested these parts about the year 921. It is generally believed to have been pitched at the period when Towcester was built, by King Edward the elder, or at least a few years before it. It has neither the usual form of a Roman camp, nor the manner of the entrance; and wants besides the convenience of water, which the Romans were particularly careful to secure. The camps of the Saxons were generally larger, not so circular, nor single trenched; and supposing it to have been raised by the Saxons, a more probable account could not be given of it, than that it was made to secure the corn-fields from the pillages of the Danes. Camb den mentions a tradition that it was raised in the time of the Baron's wars, when they laid siege to King John in Northampton. But it is too remote to have.