He immediately returned and complied with the invitation. [173]
In the park at Gautby there stood for many years an equestrian statue, of which the history is somewhat ludicrous. It passed for a statue of Charles II. Sir Robert Vyner, the hero of the above anecdote, presented it to the City of London, in 1675; and it was placed in the Stocks Market, in honour of his Majesty. The royal horseman bestrides a warlike steed, which is trampling under foot the figure of a turbanned Turk. This seems hardly an appropriate mode of representing a sovereign, who, so far from thirsting for deeds of war, could drink wine and play cards when the Dutch were burning our shipping in the Thames close by. The Stocks Market was eventually demolished, when the statue was transferred to Gautby Park, the Lincolnshire seat of the donor, whence it has in late years been transferred to the Yorkshire seat of the Vyners—Newby Park, near Ripon. It had been originally intended to represent John Sobieski, King of Poland, who was regarded as the saviour of Europe from the Mussulman power; and for him, the Turk trampled under foot was a fitting emblem. When the statue was taken down in 1738, the following satiric lines were circulated and sung in the streets:—
“The last dying speech and confession of the Horse at Stock’s Market.
Ye whimsical people of London’s fair town
Who one day put up, what the next day pull down;
Full sixty-one years, have I stood in this place,
And never, till now, met with any disgrace!
What affront to crowned heads could you offer more bare,
Than to pull down a king to make room for a mayor?
The great Sobieski, on horse with long tail,
I first represented, when set up for sale;
A Turk, as you see, was placed under my feet,
To prove o’er the Sultan my conquest compleat.
Next, when against monarchy all were combined,
I, for your Protector, old Noll, was designed.
When the King was restored, you then, in a trice,
Called me Charly the Second; and, by way of device,
Said the old whiskered Turk had Oliver’s face,
Though you know to be conquered he ne’er had the disgrace.
Three such persons as these on one horse to ride,
A Hero, Usurper, and King, all astride:—
Such honours were mine; though now forced to retire,
Perhaps my next change may be still something higher,
From a fruitwoman’s market, I may leap to a spire.
As the market is moved, I am forced to retreat;
I could stay there no longer, with nothing to eat.
Now the herbs and the greens are all carried away,
I must go unto those who will find me in hay.”
So the old horse, after serving varied purposes, and more than one “flitting,” finds literally “a green old age” in his “retreat” in the great horse county; a standing memorial, in stone, of a Lord Mayor’s “zeal” not “tempered with knowledge.” But his memory is not allowed to perish, for in the neighbouring training stables a favourite name among the fleet racers is Sobieski.
A pleasant walk of less than a mile over meadows, or “Ings,” brings us to the village of Minting, the last syllable of its name, possibly, being derived from the said “Ings.” Here, as has been already mentioned, formerly existed a Priory of Benedictine monks, a “cell” or offshoot of the Gallic monastery of St. Benedict super Loira, and founded in 1129 by Ranulph de Meschines, Earl of Chester. No buildings remain above-ground, but they must have been very extensive, as mound and hollow and stew pond cover an area of four or five acres. The benefice is in the gift of St. John’s College, Cambridge. The church, previously a very poor structure, was restored by the Vicar, the Rev. F. Bashforth, in 1863, at a cost of over £800, the late Mr. Ewan Christian being the architect. The font is modern, but handsome, in form hexagonal. There is a north aisle with three bays and Norman arches. Three windows in the north wall and two in the south are debased. The east window is a good sample of the Perpendicular,
and on the outside has figureheads of king and queen, as terminals of the moulding. A curious slab, carved on both sides, formerly lay loose in the porch, having been part of a churchyard cross. At the restoration it was cut into two sections, and these were placed on the east wall of the nave, north and south of the chancel arch, thus shewing the two carved surfaces. The device on the northern one is a rude representation of the Crucifixion; the Saviour’s legs are crossed, and a figure stands on either side, probably St. John and the Virgin. Below is a rudely-cut foliated pattern. The design of the slab on the south, formerly the back, is also rude foliation. On the north wall of the chancel there is an oval brass tablet to the memory of Gulielmus Chapman, of which one is tempted to say that, unless the individual commemorated was an almost more than human embodiment of all the virtues, the author of the epitaph must have acted on the principle recommended by the poet Matthew Prior,—
Be to his virtues very kind,
And to his faults a little blind.
It runs as follows:—“Gulielmus Chapman, Probus, Doctus, Lepidus, Facundus, Hic jacet. Pietate, Fidelitate, Benignitate, Modestiâ, Nulli Secundus, Hanc Vicariam bis 20 et octo annos tenuit. Clarus in Umbra, Rarâ in senectute Emicuit, Die 14 Aprilis decessit, Anno Ætat. 82, Anno Dom. 1722.”
The villagers of this parish, 100 years ago, are said to have exercised the art of weaving on a considerable scale, and one of the writer’s parishioners states that his grandmother lived there and had a hand-loom.