So pretty was the church, and so tranquil seemed this country burial-place, not a century since, that many of those who witnessed the abominations committed in the consecrated grounds of London and Westminster, longed to secure for their corruptible bodies a nook in this village church-yard; and so manifest was this desire, during the whole of the last century that, though the population of Paddington was increasing, the burials here far exceeded the baptisms.
In Lysons’ “Environs,” this fact stands exemplified thus—
| Years. | Years. | Average Annual Baptisms. | Avenge Annual Burials. |
| 1702 to | 1711 | 10.6 | 38.1 |
| 1740 „ | 1749 | 16.6 | 193.3 |
| 1780 „ | 1789 | 16.5 | 192.3 |
| 1790 „ | 1794 | 36.6 | 244.6 |
And this addition of motionless mortality to the soil, like the development of its resources by the increase of active life, formed but an additional inducement to its insatiable lords to increase their demands upon the people; for I find from records still preserved, [133] that after they had obtained the Act which bound the inhabitants of Paddington to pay a rent-charge for their “pretty church-yard;” and after the infamous Act of 1795, the lord and his lessees were urgent in their demands for a share of those fees, which were obliged to be levied on the relatives of the dead, to secure the performance of those duties which these rectors were already well paid to perform.
Of the earliest Christian temple erected in Paddington, I have nothing more to say than what I have already said, excepting this, that in all probability it was built and endowed by the first possessors of “the Paddington Estate,” whoever they were; and, whatever were their sins respecting that estate, they must be exonerated from that amount of refined selfishness which has enabled others to take the property dedicated to God, and God’s poor, and leave the people to their own resources for providing themselves with places of worship, and “the cup of charity” for the aged and infirm.
St. Katherine’s, and St. James’s.
The “old and ruinous” church, pulled down about 1678, was, in the opinion of that accurate observer, Newcourt, dedicated to St. Katherine; for, says he, “I observed the picture of St. Katherine to be set up in painted glass, at the top of the middle panel of the east window in the chancel, where oftentimes the Saint, to which any church is dedicated, is placed.”
Newcourt does not tell us to whom the church, “new-built from the ground,” was dedicated; but he saw none of the causes at work which ensured its destruction in rather more than a century; and it could not have been imagined by him that a policy would be inaugurated, and completed, within a century and a half of the time at which he wrote, which would be sorely puzzled to account for the existence of a church built by those who were in receipt of the rectorial revenues. Such a puzzle was not allowed to exist. Doubtlessly, Newcourt thought the name would have existed more than one hundred and ten years—the time the church was allowed to stand—and indeed it does now exist in the new parish church; but Newcourt omits to give it.
We find, however, by Willis’s Thesaurus of 1763, and by Lysons, that the Sheldon church was dedicated to St. James.
This country church served Hogarth and Jane Thornhill for a Gretna-Green; for here they were married, much against Sir James’s will, it is said, [134] on the twenty-third of March, 1729.