What are to-day pointed out as the stones on which the Pilgrims knelt may possibly be the bases of two of the many columns which local vandals in want of building material have demolished. They are certainly not "sharp," as some chroniclers describe the stones to have been. A pair of stones like those in the Church are to be seen in Little Dunmow village.
In Hone's Table Book, published about the time of the accession of Queen Victoria, it is said that "the two great stones" were then in the Church. But whether the writer of this statement had actually seen them for himself does not appear. It may perhaps be mentioned that, as the first presentations of the Bacon were made seemingly not to wedded pairs but to husbands only, there could not be at this early stage of the history of the Custom any need for "two" stones. The present stones are each only about half a foot in diameter and the right distance apart for one person to kneel on them. They could hardly be described as "great" stones.
CHAPTER V
A Tale of Tyranny and War
Below the pavement of the Priory Church many dead sleep. Four graves only are marked by stones. One resting-place, supposed to be that of the Lady Juga, the foundress of the Priory, is covered by a slab of grey marble "coffin-fashioned, with a cross flory." Over three other tombs are mutilated alabaster effigies, once "heedlessly thrown among heaps of bricks and rubbish."
Begun, Dugdale and Morant say, in 1104, the Priory was more than a century a-building. Indeed, it was as late as 1501 that "five bells were blessed in Dunmow steeple." Only thirty-four years were to pass before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It is doubtful if the Priory was even then finished. In fact, in the expenses of the Priory for 1534 are payments to two men "for making of ix foote of the stepull." (See [Appendix].)
We have seen how much now remains of the scene whereon the Prior and his dozen Augustinian monks prayed and ruled on revenues drawn from holdings of land in four counties.
The Lady Juga was sister to one Ralph Baynard who came over from Normandy with William. Among the twenty-five Essex lordships which his sovereign gave him were those of Great and Little Dunmow. When the grandson of this Baynard fell out with Henry I, it was not long before that energetic monarch had a Fitzwalter enjoying the advantages of the lordships.
Fitzwalters followed one another for ten generations. The family is notable for the "Sir Reginald Fitzwalter" of Harrison Ainsworth's ballad. Tradition has long declared him to be old Dugdale's Lord Robert who "re-edified the decayed Priory of Dunmow." He had the generalship of that "Army of God and Holy Church" which wrung Magna Charta from John in 1215, and was "the first champion of English liberty."
This knight (says Newcourt) lived in all affluence of Riches and Honour, 16y and ob. 1234, 19 Hen. III, and was buried before the High Altar in this Priory Church near his said daughter, the Fair Matilda.