A "sketch of his character" closes the account. Perhaps W. S. M. may deem these particulars not wholly uninteresting, but tolerably conclusive, considering the time of publication, when the fact must have been notorious.
A Hermit at Hampstead.
OAKEN TOMBS, ETC.
(Vol. vii., p. 528.)
At Banham, Norfolk, in a recess in the wall of the north aisle of the church, is an oaken effigy of a knight in armour in a recumbent position. Blomefield says:
"It is plain that it was made for Sir Hugh Bardolph, Knight, sometime lord of Gray's Manor, in this town, who died in 1203, for under his left arm there is a large cinquefoil, which is the badge of that family," &c.
Since he wrote, however (1739), with a view to the better preservation of this interesting relic, some spirited churchwarden has caused it to be well painted and sanded so that it now looks almost as well as stone. At the same time, the marks by which Blomefield thought to identify it are necessarily obliterated.
T. B. B. H.
William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who was slain at Bayonne in 1296,—his effigy in wood is in St. Edmund's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, covered with enamelled brass. There is also in Abergavenny Church, amongst the general wreck of monumental remains there, a cross-legged effigy in wood, represented in chain mail; which the late Sir Samuel Meyrick supposed to have been that of William de Valence. It is mentioned in Coxe's Monmouthshire, p. 192.