MAIDSTONE, a municipal and parliamentary borough, and the county town of Kent, England, situated almost midway between London and Dover. It lies principally on the eastern bank of the river Medway, the modern part spreading over the western slopes of a picturesque valley, which is intersected and environed by orchards and hop gardens. Although antiquaries have conjectured that Maidstone was a military station of the Romans, few Roman remains have been found in the neighbourhood. The Saxon spelling of the name was Medwegestun, “Medway’s town.” The manor, valued in Domesday Book at £35, 10s., had from a very early period belonged to the see of Canterbury. Archbishop Boniface in 1260 established a hospital here for poor pilgrims, the chapel of which, with modern additions, is again used for public worship. The parish church of St Mary, which had existed from Norman times, was demolished in 1395 by Archbishop Courtenay, who erected on the site thereof the present church of All Saints; he also, at a short distance, founded a college of secular canons, the ruins of which are an interesting specimen of 14th century architecture. From the reign of John until the Reformation the archbishops had here a residence, at which Stafford and Courtenay died; but the existing building known as the palace dates chiefly from Elizabethan times. The rectory, with the manor, passed into lay hands at the Reformation; and, having been a perpetual curacy for three hundred and twenty years, the living became a vicarage in 1866. All Saints is one of the largest parish churches in the kingdom, and contains, besides many excellent monuments, the richly carved sedilia and the twenty-eight oak seats used by the collegiate priests. The parish has, since 1837, been divided into nine ecclesiastical ...