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road. As there was a worn pathway that led only to this, we deemed that it was probably of some special interest, so we pulled the horses up and tramped across the field, to discover, if possible, the cause of the stone being erected thus. Upon a nearer approach we found that there were two stones, each bearing an inscription to the memory of Dr. Rowland Taylor, vicar of Hadleigh in the middle of the sixteenth century, who was one of the earliest martyrs of Queen Mary's Protestant persecution. After being imprisoned, and bribed in vain with a bishopric if he would recant his doctrines, he was eventually burnt at the stake on the spot where the stone stands.

Then to side with truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just.
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

This worthy Dr. Taylor was made of sterner stuff than a certain contemporary divine, the famous Simon Aleyn, vicar of Bray, who preferred holding his post to having the honour of martyrdom, and conveniently changed his creed four times to suit the changing times, making excuse that there was 'no trace of bigot in his blood;' to every foe, said he, ‘I offer reconciliation's hand '—much, of course, to his own worldly advantage.

Of the two inscribed stones raised to the memory of Dr. Taylor on this spot where he suffered death, one is modern, but the other is the original stone placed there directly after Queen Elizabeth's acces

A MEMORIAL OF A MARTYR.

117

sion to the throne. This latter memorial, though much battered and weathered with the exposure to the storms of centuries, is still legible, and from the quaint lettering thereon we managed to make out the following brief notice, which I give here, as probably in a few more years it will become undecipherable.

1555

D Tayler in De
Fending that

was good at
This Place lefte

his Blode.

Proceeding on our way we passed through a very pleasant pastoral land. Our road was bounded by shady elms, and on either side of us were spreading meadows dotted with these trees, beneath which the lazy cattle were sheltering themselves from the heat of the summer sun. Had the hedges been away we might have been driving through some vast and noble domain, so park-like did the country appear. A soft, mellow, thoroughly English-looking landscape it was, with a restful, soothing green everywhere; green fields, green hedges, green foliage, and green grass all around, and by way of contrast we had a deep blue sky above, and now and again a peep of a red-roofed or yellow-thatched cottage.

Grass grows everywhere in the habitable world. Why do not poets sometimes sing of its beauty as well as of flowers that so quickly fade? What would the world be without its mantle of grass, green all the year round?-if not so fresh in winter as in spring, still it is green. It gives breadth to the landscape because it is everywhere. If needs must be, we could

exist without flowers, hardly without the everyday universal grass; without this, what a barren world. ours would be!

Presently we came to the picturesque and pleasant little village of Hintlesham. The church is by the roadside here, and as we noticed that the door was open, we called a halt and descended to inspect the interior of the ancient fane. We found the church to contain some fine monuments in marble and alabaster to the Timpley family, whoever they may have been, the earliest bearing date of 1558, and another by some extraordinary blunder that of 1968-at least after careful scrutiny we could make nothing else out of the figures. One of the monuments in question is inscribed as follows: "Hic Jacet Nicholavs Timpley armiger qui obit. . . et Anna VXOR EIVS filia et Heres GVILMI Markham

Armigeri..." The dots represent spaces in the

marble that have not been filled in. It would therefore seem that this monument was erected in the lifetime of this Nicholas Timpley and his wife, the dates being left to be added after their death, and that the worthy couple died and were buried elsewhere, so that the Hic Jacet' on this monument is probably not the truth. Another monument here, to the memory of Captayne Iohn Timperley,' bearing date 1629, is of a most beautiful block of dark blue marble, beautiful enough and blue enough almost to have satisfied Browning's proud Bishop, who when ordering his tomb demanded

Some lump, ah! God, of lapis lazuli,

Blue as the vein o'er the Madonna's breast.

PUZZLING ENGLISH.

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This monument appears at one time to have contained a magnificent brass, judging by the matrix thereon; on either side of the place where the brass once was, are carefully executed carvings of military weapons and trophies. From the legend on this it would seem that the Timperleys as they prospered in the world added two letters to their name; the inscription is curiously worded. I give the conclusion of the epitaph as a sample of its quality :

Lett others tombes which ye glad heires bestowes
Write golde in marble, greefe affects no showes.
Theres a trew harte intoomb'd him & that bears
A silent & sadd Epitaph writt in teares.

I have often wondered when deciphering these old tomb-inscriptions to families of position, who was responsible for the eccentric and changeable English displayed in them, and whether everybody then spelt just as best pleased them. One thing alone seems certain both as to spelling and grammar; the writers of these old-time epitaphs were delightfully independent of all rules. According to my experience two inscriptions of the same date rarely have the same words, even the commonest, spelt in the same way, and I am now writing only of the wording of the memorials to men of position-noblemen, statesmen, soldiers; whose families one must suppose to have been well educated; but what can one expect of a time when succeeding generations spelt even their very surnames in different ways? In fact some of the ancient inscriptions are so perplexing that I have puzzled over them for hours and at last have been obliged to confess myself beaten, in spite

of my best endeavours to comprehend their full pur-
port. The verse I have given from Hintlesham
church is a very favourable specimen in the matter
of clearness-for the period. Here is another early
sixteenth-century epitaph which we copied; this we
discovered further on in the church of St. Mary
Tower, Ipswich, and I give it here in case my readers
may care to puzzle out the meaning for themselves.
What can a deade man feede and cloth and holy precepts give?
It cannot be; tush, tell not me, I know he still dooth live.
Live then, sweet soule, in ample rest, example to the rest.

Like thine his ground must low be laid that high wil build his nest.
If now think now on thank: If out of sight be out of minde,
Although 'tis wrong: yit light's thy loss that hevenly thank doost finde.
May never yet faire IPSWICH frye be foully so unkinde.

It will be noticed that this contains the familiar quotation, 'out of sight out of mind.' Though in the present case this is not the origin of the famous proverb, there is, I think, but little doubt that many an aphorism has been gathered from forgotten tombstone inscriptions, and sometimes even enshrined in verse by poets of a later day, though as a rule I must confess that I prefer the quaint originals with all their archaic spellings to the more modern renderings. Let us take as an instance of the spoiling of the old, the much-quoted line that appears in Sterne's Sentimental Journey': 'The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb' (which line, by the way, a Scotch minister once declared to be in the Bible, though of course he could not find it there when asked to do so). This surely is no improvement upon the original: To the close-shorne sheepe, God gives winde by measure.' Sterne, in appropriating this

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