INGSTON-UPON-THAMES has had, during the past twelve months, many reasons to congratulate itself upon its choice of a Mayor, and Dr. W. E. St. Lawrence Finny, who had just retired from that onerous position, has been responsible for the erection of a memorial which it is to be hoped will long remain in the ancient borough. The occasion of the 700th anniversary of the grant of the earliest existing charter to the borough of Kingston was, entirely through the energy of Dr. Finny, commemorated by the unveiling of a memorial window in the Town Hall, on October 26 last, by the Right Hon. the Speaker of the House of Commons. The heraldic and antiquarian tastes of the Mayor happily influenced the choice of design, and the window, being entirely heraldic, has been reproduced on our frontispiece.

The central figure of the design is the Royal Arms, and immediately beneath is the following inscription: "This window was erected to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the granting of the first charter by King John to the royal borough of Kingstonupon-Thames, and was unveiled by the Right Hon. William Court Gully, Q.C., M.P., Speaker of the House of Commons, October 26, 1899." Above and below are the arms of King John, His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, K.G., who is the second honorary freeman, the Mayor (Dr. W. E. St. L. Finny), the Recorder

(Mr. C. W. Bardswell), the High Steward (the Right Hon. Lord Thring), the Speaker, and the Monastery of Merton; and upon smaller shields the names of the four old Kingston guilds, viz., the Mercers, the Butchers, the Woollen Drapers and the Cordwainers, are inscribed.

These pages are hardly the place to speak at length of the ceremony itself; and the lavish hospitality with which it was accompanied, and much of the matter of the speeches are alike foreign to the subjects to which this Magazine is devoted, but the speeches both of the Mayor and of the Speaker contained much information which will be of interest to our readers.

The Mayor proceeded to describe in detail the many heraldic features of the window, as recorded in the foregoing description. It had been submitted to the very careful supervision of Ulster King of Arms, Sir Arthur Vicars. He mentioned this because the heraldry, as it appeared in the window, was a perfect record. It had been carried out by Messrs. Heaton, Butler and Bayne, of London, and the work was excellent. [We cordially endorse this remark.-Editor.] Attached to a window of this kind there was not only a monetary but a sentimental value, representing as it did the historical associations of the place in which it was put up. In the time of King John windows were very valuable property, not because glass was scarce, but because the men who could cut it were very few and far between. At Southampton King John took his windows away with him. History repeated itself. Pieces of the windows of the old town-hall that stood there were picked up and put into the new building as well as it could be done, and he hoped the same thing would happen there when in the future they erected a new town-hall. They lived, he said, in an age in which they dwelt upon centenaries, and some people had been celebrating the 300th centenary of Cromwell, and windows were to be unveiled shortly to his memory. If they looked up the old records of the borough, they would find an entry showing that Oliver Cromwell ordered the royal arms to be taken down in the town-hall of Kingston, and to be blotted out in the parish church. In his opinion the best testimony to his memory which they could offer was the restoration of the royal arms in the town-hall, which they were now engaged in. And he was very pleased that an Irishman had been the means of doing it, for they knew that Irishmen had no good feeling towards Oliver Cromwell, inasmuch as the way he treated the Irish was, to his mind, simply abominable.

The Right Hon. the Speaker said, it occurred to him that