In the churchyard, which is of considerable extent, many of those who fell in the two battles of St. Albans were buried.
#St. Michael's Church.#--St. Michael's Church is further from the cathedral than St. Peter's. To reach it one must go westward from the Clock Tower, along High Street and its continuations, down the hill past Romelands, where, as we have seen, George Tankerfield, condemned by Bishop Bonner as a Protestant heretic, was burnt at the stake. At last a bridge over the Ver is reached, and, turning round to the left after crossing it, we see St. Michael's Church before us. It has within the last ten years lost its Saxon tower, a new one with no pretention to beauty, pierced by two pentagonal windows in the third stage, having been built on a slightly different foundation. It stands within the area once inclosed by the walls of Verulamium, and Sir Gilbert Scott conjectured that it was originally the Basilica of the Roman city altered for Christian worship; but probably, though it may stand on the same site, it is of more recent date, though still of great age. Like the cathedral, its walls are built of Roman brick and flint. The plan is irregular: there is a nave and chancel, a large south aisle, or rather chantry, the eastern gable of which is of half-timber construction, below which are two tall round-headed windows far apart, with a small circular opening between them; the western gable has an opening with louvre boards. The tower projects from the north aisle, its western wall being flush with the west end of the nave; on the outside in the south wall of the chancel is a canopied niche over a flat slab a few inches above the level of the ground. The south door, within a porch, has a pointed top beneath a wide, round-headed arch springing from imposts. The arcading of the nave was formed by cutting arches through what probably were at one time the outside walls of the church; two of these on the south side open into the chapel. The carved oak pulpit of early seventeenth-century work, with its sounding-board and iron frame for the hour-glass, demands attention; but the chief attraction of the church for many is the alabaster statue of Francis Bacon, which is placed in a niche in the north wall of the chancel. He wished to be buried in this church, as his mother was already buried there, and moreover it was the parish church of his house at Gorhambury, and the only Christian church within the walls of ancient Verulam, from which he took one of his titles.