“And Edward Browning, Labourer, about five Feet four or five Inches high, wears his own Hair, of a dark complexion; was one of Lord North’s Soldiers in the last War.
“Whoever will apprehend either, or both of them, and conduct them to the Parish Officers of Claverton aforesaid, shall receive Half a Guinea for each or either of them, and Threepence per Mile for every Mile they shall travel with them.”
History does not relate whether or no these gay deceivers were ever captured. If those who sought them relied upon the illustration, it would seem quite likely that they never were!
XLV
THE ABBEY
The Abbey is the very centre of Bath. Round it cluster the Municipal Offices, the Baths, and the Pump Room, and along the broad pavements invalids are drawn in Bath chairs—one of the five articles with which the name of the City is indissolubly linked. When Bath chairs, Bath chaps, Bath stone, and Bath buns are no longer so distinguished, then will come the final crash. One need not insist so greatly upon Bath Olivers, because they are not in every one’s mouth, either literally or figuratively; although, to be sure, they are much more exclusively a local product than “Bath” buns; while “Bath” bricks are not made at Bath, but at Bridgewater.
The surroundings of Bath Abbey are strikingly Continental in appearance, for that great church stands in a flagged place, instead of being set in a green and shady close, as usually is the case in England. Its surroundings have always been thronged, from the time when the Flying Machines crawled, to when the last of the mail coaches drew up in front of the “White Lion,” in the Market Place hard by, or at the “White Hart,” which stood until 1866, where the “Grand Pump Room” Hotel now rises. The story of the Abbey is too long for these pages; but it is remarkable at once for being one of the very latest Gothic buildings in the country; for its possessing windows so large and so many that it has been called the “Lantern of England;” for its central tower, which is not square, being eleven feet narrower on its north and south sides than those to the east and west; and for the prodigious number of small marble and stone memorial tablets on its interior walls—tablets so many that they gave rise to the famous epigram by Quin:—
“These walls, so full of monument and bust,
Shew how Bath waters serve to lay the dust.”
