"Pray for the soule of Sr. John Tone whos body lyth berid under this tombe on whos soule Jhu have mercy a patr nostr & ave."

Sir John was a priest, and probably a Knight of Malta, who died in Beaminster while he was on a pilgrimage through Dorset.

The church is the scene of a "well-authenticated" apparition. Down to the year 1748 the free school (of which the Rev. Samuel Hood, father of Admirals Viscount Hood and Lord Bridport, was at one time master) was held in one of the galleries, and there, on "Saturday, June 22, 1728," did one John Daniel appear at full noonday to five of his school-fellows, "between three weeks and a month after his burial." The reason was plain when his body was dug up and duly examined, for it was found that he had been strangled.

Letherbury, about a mile south of Beaminster, is a pleasant walk down the Brit valley, by the river-side. On the road is Parnham, a noble mansion of the Tudor period standing in a well wooded and watered demesne. From the Parnhams this estate came to the Strodes, passing thence in 1764 to the Oglanders. Other old houses in the neighbourhood of Beaminster are Strode, Melplash and Mapperton, and the whole district bears the marks of long and prosperous agricultural occupation in the old-fashioned days when "squire" and tenant lived and died in semi-feudal relationship on the estate which the one owned and the other rented.

Mapperton House belongs to the time of Henry VIII. In the reign of that sovereign the lord of the manor was Robert Morgan, who had the following patent granted to him:—"Forasmoche as we bee credibly informed that our welbiloved Robert Morgan Esquier, for diverse infirmities which he hathe in his hedde, cannot convenyently, without his grete danngier, be discovered of the same. Whereupon wee in tendre consideration thereof have by these presents licensed him to use and wear his bonnet on his hed at all tymys, as wel in our presence as elsewher at his libertie."

Poor old Robert! Perhaps his Dorset stubbornness had as much to do with his wearing a "bonnet at all tymys" as the "infirmities in his hedde." But he was well able to take care of himself, for he built this beautiful manor-house and recorded the fact in the great hall:

"Robt. Morgan and Mary his wife built this house in their own lifetime, at their own charge and cost.

What they spent, that they lent:

What they gave, that they have: