st, Mr. Pett's, the
builder, and there was very kindly received, and among other things he
did offer my Lady Batten a parrot, the best I ever saw, that knew Mingo
so soon as it saw him, having been bred formerly in the house with them;
but for talking and singing I never heard the like. My Lady did accept
of it: Then to see Commissioner Pett's house, he and his family being
absent, and here I wondered how my Lady Batten walked up and down with
envious looks to see how neat and rich everything is (and indeed both
the house and garden is most handsome), saying that she would get it,
for it belonged formerly to the Surveyor of the Navy. Then on board the
Prince, now in the dock, and indeed it has one and no more rich cabins
for carved work, but no gold in her. After that back home, and there eat
a little dinner. Then to Rochester, and there saw the Cathedrall, which
is now fitting for use, and the organ then a-tuning. Then away thence,
observing the great doors of the church, which, they say, was covered
with the skins of the Danes,

[Traditions similar to that at Rochester, here alluded to, are to be
found in other places in England. Sir Harry Englefield, in a
communication made to the Society of Antiquaries, July 2nd, 1789,
called attention to the curious popular tale preserved in the
village of Hadstock, Essex, that the door of the church had been
covered with the skin of a Danish pirate, who had plundered the
church. At Worcester, likewise, it was asserted that the north
doors of the cathedral had been covered with the skin of a person
who had sacrilegiously robbed the high altar. The date of these
doors appears to be the latter part of the fourteenth century, the
north porch having been built about 1385. Dart, in his "History of
the Abbey Church of St. Peter's, Westminster," 1723 (vol. i., book
ii., p. 64), relates a like tradition then preserved in reference to
a door, one of three which closed off a chamber from the south
transept--namely, a certain building once known as the Chapel of
Henry VIII., and used as a "Revestry." This chamber, he states, "is
inclosed with three doors, the inner cancellated, the middle, which
is very thick, lined with skins like parchment, and driven full of
nails. These skins, they by tradition tell us, were some skins of
the Danes, tann'd and given here as a memorial of our delivery f