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functions, Westminster is included in the Metropolitan Police
District, which was constituted by Act of Parliament (10
Geo. IV., cap. 44) in 1829, and extended ten years later by
the Act 2 and 3 Vic., cap. 47.
Arms were granted to Westminster in the year 1601 under
both the seals of office of the Kings-at-Arms, William Dethick,
Garter Principal King-of-Arms, and William Camden,
Clarencieux King-of-Arms: azure, a portcullis or, on a chief
of the first, the arms of King Edward the Confessor, a cross
patoncee between five martlets, four in the cantons of the
cross, and one in base or, between two roses seeded or,
barbed vert.
Perhaps before proceeding to describe the parish of St.
James, a glimpse at the condition of life in England at the
period of the formation of the parish may not prove uninteresting
or uninstructive.
A RETROSPECT *
The present mode of life is so entirely different from that
which existed in the time of the Stuarts, that no comparison
of the two periods will enable us to realise the full extent of
the changes which have occurred in the meantime.
Speaking of the state of England in 1685, Lord Macaulay
remarks:—
"Could the England of 1685 be, by some magical process, set before our
eyes, we should not know one landscape in a hundred or one building in
ten thousand. The country gentleman would not recognise his own fields.
The inhabitant of the town would not recognise his own street. Everything
has changed but the great features of nature, and a few massive and
durable works of human art. . . . Many thousands of square miles which
*Among the authorities consulted in the compilation of this chapter may
be mentioned Lord Macaulay, Knight's Encyclopædia of London, Allan's
History of London, Cunningham's Handbook of London, Statutes at large,
Records of the Parish Clerks' Company, Parliamentary Returns, the Early
Minute Books and Rate Books of the Parish, and others.
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