Note (return) — ST. PANCRAS (OLD) CHURCH.

The church and churchyard of Pancras have long been noted as the burial-place of such Roman Catholics as die in London and its vicinity.6 Many of the tombs exhibit a cross, and the initials R.I.P. (Requiescat in pace), which initials, or others analogous to them, are always used by the Catholics on their sepulchral monuments. Mr. Lysons heard it assigned by some of that persuasion, as a reason for this preference to Pancras as a burial-place, that masses were formerly said in a church in the south of France, dedicated to the same saint, for the souls of the deceased interred at St. Pancras in England. After the French revolution, a great number of ecclesiastics and other refugees, some of them of high rank, were buried in this churchyard; and in 1811, Mr. Lysons observed that probably about 30 of the French clergy had on an average been buried at Pancras for some years past: in 1801 there were 41, and in 1802, 32. Mr. Lysons's explanation of this preference to Pancras by the Catholics is, however, disputed by the author of Ecclesiastical Topography, who observes that a reason more generally given is, that "Pancras was the last church in England where mass was performed after the Reformation."