“We laid them in their lowly rest, The strangers of a distant shore; We smoothed the green turf on their breast, ’Mid baffled ocean’s angry roar! And there--the relique of the storm-- We fixed fair Scotland’s figured form. She watches by her bold--her brave-- Her shield towards the fatal sea; Their cherished lady of the wave Is guardian of their memory! Stern is her look, but calm, for there No gale can rend, or billow bear. Stand, silent image, stately stand! Where sighs shall breathe and tears be shed; And many a heart of Cornish land Will soften for the stranger-dead. They came in paths of storm--they found This quiet home in Christian ground.” [Illustration: DOORWAY AT STANBURY, showing the initials of Kempthorne and Manning.] Halfway down the principal pathway of the churchyard is a granite altar-tomb. It was raised, in all likelihood, for the old “month’s mind,” or “year’s mind,” of the dead: and it records a sad parochial history of the former time. It was about the middle of the sixteenth century that John Manning, a large landowner of Morwenstow, wooed and won Christiana Kempthorne, the vicar’s daughter. Her father was also a wealthy landlord of the parish in that day. Their marriage united in their own hands a broad estate, and in the midst of it the bridegroom built for his bride the manor-house of Stanbury, and labelled the door-heads and the hearths with the blended initials[29] of the married pair. It was a great and a joyous day when they were wed, and the bride was led home amid all the solemn and festal observances of the time. There were liturgical benedictions of the mansion-house, the hearth, and the marriage-bed; for a large estate and a high place for their future lineage had been blended in the twain. Five months afterwards, on his homeward way from the hunting-field, John Manning was assailed by a mad bull, and gored to death not far from his home. His bride, maddened at the sight of her husband’s corpse, became prematurely a mother and died. They were laid, side by side, with their buried joys and blighted hopes, underneath this altar-tomb--whereon the simple legend records that there lie “John Manning and Christiana his wife, who died A.D. 1546, without living issue.” [Illustration: THE MANNING TOMB IN MORWENSTOW CHURCHYARD (P. 24) _From a photo by Mr. T. W. Woodruffe_]