It sounds like the description by a maniac of the contents of a shop-window, set up by a compositor who had misplaced the punctuation; but it is clear and pellucid reading to a herald. At any rate, there is no difficulty in discovering what it all means, for the device is proudly and abundantly displayed in Bromley itself.
These many charges are not without their significance. The escallop shell is in allusion to the time when the palace of the Bishops of Rochester was situated here; the broom refers to the planta genista, the broom that gave, in the long ago, its name to Bromley, and still flourishes in the district; the sun in splendour indicates Sundridge, whose name itself by no means alludes to the sun; and the white horse is, of course, the familiar unconquered horse of Kent. The ravens recall the legendary history of the Ravensbourne. Beneath all this display is a Latin motto, to the effect that “While I grow I hope.”
Gravely aloof from all these things, the old parish church of Bromley stands indeed in the centre of the town, but in a quiet lane leading to a pretty little public garden on the edge of a height overlooking all South London and its sea of roof-tops. It need scarcely be said that the long body and the apocalyptic towers of the Crystal Palace are prominent in the view. They brood like an obsession over all the southern suburbs.
The exterior of the church looks very venerable and rustic, and has even been improved by a tasteful new chancel built in recent times. In the churchyard, built into the south wall, is a small and modest tablet inscribed:
Here lyeth interred ye body of Martine French of this parish, with four of his wives and two daughters. He departed this life 12 January anno 1661, being aged 61, and his last wife died ye 13th of ye same month, leaving behind him one sonne Martine and two daughters, Sarah and Mary.
But Martin French is a very minor person beside the neighbouring
- ELIZABETH MONK
- who departed this Life on the 27th Day of August 1753
- Aged 101
- She was the Widow of John Monk late of this Parish,
- Blacksmith,
- her second Husband,
- To whom she had been a Wife near 50 Years:
- By whom she had no Children:
- And of the Issue of her first Marriage none lived to the second.
- But Virtue
- would not suffer her to be childless:
- An infant to whom and to whose Father & Mother she had
- been Nurse
- (such is the uncertainty of temporal Prosperity)
- became dependent upon Strangers for the Necessaries of Life.
- To him she afforded the Protection of a Mother.
- This parental Charity was returned with filial Affection:
- And she was supported in the feebleness of Age
- By him whom she had cherished in the Helplessnesss of Infancy.
- Let it be Rememb’red
- That there is no Station in which Industry will not obtain
- Power to be Liberal:
- Nor any Character on which Liberality will not
- Confer Honour.
- She had been long prepared by a simple and unaffected Piety
- for that awful Moment, which however delayed
- is universally sure.
- How few are allowed an equal Time of Probation:
- How many by their Lives appear to presume upon more:
- To preserve the Memory of this Person,
- but yet more to perpetuate the Lesson of her Life,
- This Stone was erected by voluntary Contribution.
For lavish use of capital letters, adjectives, and copybook sentiments this would be difficult to beat.
IX
The interior of the church is injured by the galleries built round it, to accommodate a crowded congregation, and is otherwise of little interest; the tombs of the Bishops of Rochester consisting merely of a mangled relic of that supposed to be for Richard de Wendover, who died in 1350, and the slab and the tablet, respectively, to John Yonge, 1605, and Zachary Pearce, 1774.