Oliver Cromwell.
There were other interesting documents we inspected, but alas! space forbids my giving any more here.
On our way back to Grantham we pulled up at the little village of Sedgebrook, attracted by the fine and interesting-looking church there, and also in search of any quaint epitaph. We found the rector, manifestly an ardent antiquary, in the church, which was being lovingly repaired under his skilled supervision. He did not know of any noteworthy epitaph in the churchyard, but he could give us one he copied at Shipley in Derbyshire, if we cared to have it. We did, and here it is:—
God saw good as I lopped off wood
I fell from the top of a tree,
I met with a check that broke my neck
And so God lopped off me.
Sedgebrook church is very interesting, I could easily enlarge upon it to the extent of a whole chapter did the exigencies of space permit. Here is the Markham chapel in which the “Upright Judge,” Chief Justice Markham of the King’s Bench, 1462, is buried, or is supposed to be; his tomb has been destroyed. There is a hazy local tradition that only his effigy is buried here and not his body; also the same tradition has it that the judge, on being deprived of his office by the king, took sanctuary in the church and was fed there by his daughter, whose incised slab representing her head resting on a pillow now finds a place on the wall of the chapel. “Now,” said the rector, “some clever people come here and when they see that, they at once take the pillow for a head-dress, and one gentleman even went so far as to call attention to it in a publication as a unique example of a head-dress of the period!” Of course the slab was intended to be laid flat on the floor, when the effect of the pillow, a little out of drawing by the way, would have been more natural. After this, we hastened back again to our comfortable medieval hostelry at Grantham, well satisfied with our day’s wanderings.
A CHAINED LIBRARY
Early next morning, before starting on the road, we paid a visit to the grand parish church of the town, whose splendid tower is one of the finest in the kingdom, besides being one of the earliest, ranking, according to some architectural authorities, second only to that of Salisbury Cathedral. But what interested us most in this glorious old church, with its broad aisles and general feeling of spaciousness, was its library of chained books of rare medieval works; this is contained in a large parvise chamber over the south porch. The books are curiously placed on their shelves with their backs to the wall, their titles being written on their front pages. We noticed that many of the works suffered from iron-mould owing to the chain fastenings and damp.
We left Grantham in a mist that inclined to rain; what the country we passed through at first was like I cannot say, but half seen through the veil of mist, the hills around loomed vague and vast, poetically mysterious; even the near fields and hedgerows were only dimly discernible, and the trees by the roadside dripped with moisture that was almost as wetting as an honest rain, but it in no way damped our spirits. We enjoyed the mist, it left so much to our imagination, and it allowed us to picture the scenery much as we wished it to be; thus the possibly commonplace assumed, in our eyes, the romantic. So, driving on through a land half real, half the creation of our fancy, we reached Great Ponton, a tiny hamlet with an ancient church, solemn with the duskiness of centuries. Close to the hoary fane stood, pathetic in neglect, a quaint, old-time, stone-built home with “stepped gables,” whose weather-worn aged-toned walls were broken by mullioned window’s rounded at the top, and without transoms. A home of the past, full of character. Without, the stone gateway pillars still stand, gray and desolate, that used to give access to the mansion; the space between them now being barred merely by broken hurdles, and in the fore-court grasses and nettles flourished exceedingly. The building somehow involuntarily called to our mind Hood’s famous poem of “The Haunted House.”
Then passing through a pleasant country of woods, we suddenly found ourselves in the old-fashioned village of Colsterworth, where at the “White Lion” we baited our horses and refreshed ourselves; after which we set out on foot across the fields to find Woolsthorpe Manor-house where Sir Isaac Newton was born, which we made out from our map to be about a mile and a half distant, though it took us a good two miles to get there all through asking our way; for we got directed to the “Sir Isaac Newton” public-house instead of to his birthplace! At last, however, we found the modest old manor-house, a small but pleasant enough looking home, whose stone walls are ivy-draped, but, though substantially built, the place has no particular
SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S BIRTHPLACE