them has always
been accorded to a young soldier who was stationed at Verulam. It
appears that he was converted by an evangelist named Amphibalus, to
whom, when the trial came, he gave shelter, and even facilitated his
escape by an exchange of garments. When brought before the judges and
charged with concealing "a blasphemer of the Roman gods," Alban
avowed himself a convert to the proscribed religion and refused, in
spite of torture, to burn incense upon the heathen altars. He was
therefore beheaded outside the city about the year 285 (although the
precise date is uncertain).[10] About A.D. 785, Offa, king of that
part of Britain which we call the Midland Counties, caused search to
be made for the bones of the proto-martyr, and built a noble
monastery and church where they were found, which possibly may be
identified with the older parts of the present structure.[11]
Eventually his shrine was reared up in the South transept of the
Cathedral. Behind and just above the shrine is the Watching Gallery,
where devotees offered continual prayer and guarded the relics from
fire and robbery. Close by is another shrine in memory of S.
Amphibalus. The monastery attained to great eminence--its head was
the premier Abbot of England--and the shrine was loaded with
ornaments of enormous value. The glory departed at the time of the
Dissolution under Henry VIII. The Monastic Church is now admitted to
the rank of a Cathedral. The building was restored (or deformed?) at
great cost by the first Lord Grimthorpe, who did things with all his
right, but, as in this case, as some say, with all his wrong.

[Footnote 10: Appendix D.]

[Footnote 11: These words are written within a mile of a site in Kent
which bears the name of St. Albans, inasmuch as a small
daughter-house was established there.]

The church in the neighbourhood of old St. Albans, on the North side
of the chancel, contains a monument to the memory of Francis Bacon,
Viscount St. Albans, a great lawyer, an incisive thinker, the founder
of the school of inductive philosophers--a man who, unhappily, was
cast from his exalted legal position by the malice of his foes. How
far he himself contributed to his disgrace we will not say.

WINCHESTER.--Wynton, otherwise, Venta Belgarum (_Venta_, a Latin form
of _Win_, which is derived from the Celtic, _gwent_, a plain; hence
also _Venta Silurum_, and Bennaventa=Daventry); 66-1/2 miles S.W.
London.

The city is situated in and a