The curfew still rings at Richmond, telling the good people when to go to bed; but whether they go or not is another matter. We are told it is, or was, also rung for them to get up again at six o'clock; and the aged official whose duty it was to ring the morning bell, like a wise man, did so at his leisure, lying in bed with the rope hanging from the ceiling.[35] [Illustration: EASBY ABBEY.] From the churchyard, Easby Abbey is seen in the distance in a romantic spot by the river: and the walk there is delightful, along the terrace above the Swale. Like the rest of these fine structures, it was destroyed by the vindictive Henry in 1535. The water close at hand, the old abbot's elm, and the little church and gatehouse beyond, altogether make this a spot in which to linger and ruminate. The church walls are covered with curious and very well preserved paintings of the twelfth century, giving a good idea of the costume of the period. The tempting serpent, too, is shown twisted in artistic coils around a very pre-Raphael looking tree; and in another scene the partakers of the fruit are doubled up with remorse, or dyspepsia. So close at hand as is Bolton on Swale, to the east, it would be a pity not to mention Henry Jenkins, who died there in 1670, aged one hundred and sixty-nine!--a man in Charles II.'s reign who remembered the dissolution of the monasteries, and who recollected as a boy assisting in carrying arrows in a cart to the battle of Flodden field (where veteran soldiers remembered the accession of King Edward IV.), was a wonder compared with the feeble memory of our present-day centenarians, who rarely recollect anything worth recording. When we think how nearly we are linked with 1670 by the life of Mrs. William Stuart, who died in the late queen's reign, and who heard from the lips of her grandmother how she had been taken to Court in a black-draped Sedan when Whitehall was in mourning for the death of the king's sister, Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans,--it would have been possible for the little girl to have spoken with old Jenkins, and thus with only three lives to have linked the early part of the reign of Henry VIII. with that of Victoria. FOOTNOTES: [31] We have described these relics (now in the possession of Mrs. Martin-Edmunds) in detail in the _Memoirs of the Martyr King_. [32] In the account in _Secret Chambers_ of the inscription on the swords, it is given in error as "Shortly." [33] See _Some Beauties of the Seventeenth Century_. [34] See _King Monmouth_. [35] This and other information we have derived from Mr. Harry Speight's interesting work, _Romantic Richmond_. INDEX Abbotts Ann, 221. Amber, river, 217. "Angel," Ringwood, 178. "Angel," Stilton, 10. "Angel," Yeovil, 145. Ashford, 221. Ashover, 217. Askrigg, 261. Athelhampton, 173, 174, 175. Avon, river, 84, 85. Axmouth, 169. Aysgarth, 249, 262, 263.