SAINT MARTIN's.

It has been remarked, that the antiquity of this church is too remote
for historical light.

The curious records of those dark ages, not being multiplied, and
preserved by the art of printing, have fallen a prey to time, and the
revolution of things.

[Illustration]

There is reason for fixing the foundation in the eighth century, perhaps
rather sooner, and it then was at a small distance from the buildings.
The town stood upon the hill, whose centre was the Old Cross;
consequently, the ring of houses that now surrounds the church, from the
bottom of Edgbaston-street, part of Spiceal-street, the Bull-ring,
Corn-cheaping, and St. Martin's-lane, could not exist.

I am inclined to think that the precincts of St. Martin's have undergone
a mutilation, and that the place which has obtained the modern name of
Bull-ring, and which is used as a market for corn and herbs, was once an
appropriation of the church, though not used for internment; because the
church is evidently calculated for a town of some size, to which the
present church-yard no way agrees, being so extremely small that the
ancient dead must have been continually disturbed, to make way for the
modern, that little spot being their only receptacle for 900 years.