The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 546, May 12, 1832

This humble village fane is situated to the north of London, somewhat more than a mile from Holborn Bars. Persons unacquainted with the site, may hitherto have considered it as part and parcel of this vast metropolis: but, lo! here it stands amidst much of its primitive, peaceful rusticity.
It would occupy too much space to detail the progressive increase of this district. When a visitation of the church was made in the year 1251, there were only forty houses in the parish. The desolate situation of the village in the latter part of the sixteenth century is emphatically described by Norden, in his Speculum Britanniæ . After noticing the solitary condition of the church, he says, yet about this structure have bin manie buildings now decaied, leaving poore Pancras without companie or comfort. In some manuscription additions to his work, the same writer has the following observations:— Although this place be, as it were, forsaken of all; and true men seldom frequent the same, but upon devyne occasions; yet it is visyted by thieves, who assemble there not to pray, but to wait for praye; and manie fell into their handes, clothed, that are glad when they are escaped naked. Walk not there too late. Newcourt, whose work was published in 1700, says that houses had been built near the church. The first important increase of the parish took place in the neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road.
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; Van Bleeck, the portrait-painter; Ravenet, the engraver, 1764; Mazzinghi, 1775, leader of the band at Marylebone Gardens, and father of Mazzinghi, the celebrated composer; Henry and Robert Rackett, Pope's nephews; Woollett, the engraver, 1785, to whose memory a monument has been placed in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey; Baron de Wenzel, the celebrated oculist, 1790; Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin, author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1797; the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, or Father O'Leary, the amiable Franciscan friar, 1802; Paoli, the patriotic Corsican, 1807; Walker editor of the Pronouncing Dictionary; the Chevalier d'Eon, 1810, of epicene notoriety; and Packer, the comedian, 1806, who is said to have performed 4,852 times, besides walking in processions; Edwards, professor of Perspective, 1806; Scheemakers, the statuary, 1808.