the same time, for the chapel of St. Andrew, which was in St. Leonard's church, "in ecclesia Hospitalis," was also ascribed to William Leprosus. The Church is first heard of in 1220, and belonged to the Abbey, which received about £6 10s. 0d. from the revenues of the rectory. The vicarage, however, was so small that it would not adequately sustain a vicar, and the Abbot therefore arranged, in 1437, with the consent of the Bishop of Lincoln, that any chaplain appointed by the Abbot should serve the cure, instead of a resident vicar, receiving 53 shillings and 4 pence a year out of the revenues of the rectory.
Almost the only incident connected with this church which is recorded in the annals of the borough is a charge of burglary, reported in the Coroner's roll for 1297-8. Geoffrey the Mason, in conjunction with some other persons, who escaped, stole from St. Leonard's church the vestments, surplices, books, and other church ornaments, all of which were found in Geoffrey's possession. The small value then placed upon the church's goods (three shillings), quite bears out the tradition which affirmed that it was a church of little size or importance. Two centuries later, it seems to have been in a poor way. At the Episcopal Visitation of 1509, a presentment was made that John Birmingham, the vicar of St. Leonard's, had allowed a parishioner to die unconfessed, and without the eucharist, and that he did not read the generates sententiae,(a commination service,) nor expound the articles of the Christian faith. The vicar stated that he did not possess a copy of the genarales sententiae. At the Visitation of 1526, when John Baston was vicar, the church was poorly furnished and badly served. It then possessed only two altar-cloths for the High Altar, and no linen covering at all for Our Lady's Altar. It had no manuale, (containing the services of extreme unction, baptism, etc.,) no canopy for the pyx, no vessel for frankincense, and no lucerna. Divine service was not well attended, and was frequently interrupted by disorderly and irreverent persons. The vicar himself, it would seem, sadly neglected his duties,
and the parishioners said that he ought to be suspended. An attempt had then lately been made to raise some money for the church by means of a Robin Hood's Play and through that popular performance forty shillings had been collected. But the man
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