368 CITY OF WORCESTER.

St. Paul's: formerly extra-parochial, and a thickly populated and poor part of the city, with nearly 3,000 inhabitants. Here was a house of the Grey Friars, afterwards the site of the city gaol, now closed in consequence of the amalgamation with the county prison. Church built some twenty years ago; will accommodate 620 ; value of living, £150; Rer. R. J. Coward perpetual curate; the Bishop patron.

St. Swithin's: another central parish, with a population of only 764; church built 1736, by White aforesaid; 400 sittings; value of living, £170; Rev. M. Day rector; Dean and Chapter patrons.

Romanists were sadly persecuted in Worcester from the Reformation till the accession of James II, and several of their priests were hung, drawn, and quartered, at Red Hill, a mile-and-half out of the city. The Catholic register commences with 1685, and it is supposed they had a chapel about that time at the corner of Pierpoint Street. James II, when at Worcester, went in state to this chapel, instead of the Cathedral, but the Mayor and Corporation having bowed his Majesty in, declined to form a part of the congregation, and evinced their high Protestant principle by adjourning to the Green Dragon, where they spent two shillings in liquor till mass was ended. Notwithstanding the opposition to Popery under William and Mary, the "Mission of St. George," at Worcester, was continued by stealth in upper chambers and back rooms till the latter part of the eighteenth century. In 1764 a chapel was built on the site of the present one, but the existing fabric dates its erection from the year of the passing of the Emancipation Bill, 1829. Rev. W. Waterworth is the priest. - Congregationalists: erroneously called at various times Presbyterians and Independents; they took possession of tbe Cathedral during the Commonwealth, Simon Moore being their chief preacher. When the Act of Uniformity of 1662 turned Puritans into Nonconformists, Thomas Badland, a minister ejected from Willenhall, formed a congregation at the bottom of Fish Street, in this city. In 1706 a chapel was