The church is a large Gothic structure, and appears to have been built in the form of a Roman cross, but is now curtailed of its transepts; at the juncture of one of them, a circular arch, now filled up, wears a Norman character, and seems to have been part of the original building. Three arches, curiously dissimilar, separate the north aile from the nave. The choir remains in its antique state, with stalls for a prior and his monks, formed of oak, and rudely carved; and the ailes on either side are furnished with the monuments of several illustrious personages. On the north of the choir is the figure of a man in a coat of mail, with a bull at his feet; supposed to be the monument of Sir Edward Nevill, which is thus explained by Churchyard: “His force was much; for he by strength With bull did struggle so, He broke clean off his horns at length, And therewith let him go.” On the opposite side is the recumbent effigy of an armed knight, his legs across, {308} and his feet resting on a greyhound. Of this the sexton’s legend relates, that the knight, returning home, saw his infant son lying on the floor covered with blood, with his cradle overturned at his side, and the hound standing by, with his mouth besmeared with gore. Conceiving that the dog had attacked the child, he instantly killed it; but soon discovered, that the blood issued from a large serpent that had writhed about the child, and which this faithful animal had destroyed. In the middle of the south aile of the choir, generally called the Herberts’ chapel, is the effigy of Sir William ap Thomas, and his wife Gladys, daughter of the celebrated Sir David Gam. Beneath a handsome alabaster monument, at the further end of the chapel, repose the ashes of Sir Richard Herbert, of Coldbrook, and his wife. This Sir Richard, a younger son of the just mentioned Sir William ap Thomas, was a man of gigantic stature and uncommon strength. In the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, he with his brother the Earl of Pembroke supported the White rose at the battle of Banbury, where he was at length taken prisoner, and finally executed by the successful faction; but not until he had passed and repassed twice through the adverse army, killing with a pole-ax no less than 140 men; which, his illustrious descendant and biographer, lord Herbert of Cherbury, remarks, is more than is famed of Amadis de Gaul, or the Knight of the Sun. The richest monument in the church is that of Sir Richard Herbert of Ewias, his nephew, which occupies a recess in the south wall of the chapel.