Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood: Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other MatterWalter, J. Conway (James Conway)
History
Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood: Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter
Walter, J. Conway (James Conway)
Woodhall Spa (England)
{137} I may, perhaps, here explain that “non-jurors” were those persons
who considered that James II. was unjustly deposed, and who refused to
swear allegiance to William III. and his successors. Non-jurors were
subjected to double taxation, and obliged to register their estates
(1723); and from the first were excluded from any public office. I may
also here state that the Sir Richard Morrison who is named in this
epitaph was a man of great learning, and employed by Henry VIII. and
Edward VI. in several embassies to the greatest princes in Europe
(Camden’s “Britannia,” p. 302). He was also appointed “President of
Mounster in Ireland.” He had a brother, Fynes Morrison, who was fellow
of Peterhouse, Cambridge, who obtained from his college permission to
travel, and spent eight years in foreign parts. On his return he went to
Ireland and became secretary to Sir Charles Blount, the Lord Lieutenant.
There he wrote an account, in Latin, of his “Travels through the twelve
dominions of Germany, Bohemia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark,
Poland, England, Scotland and Ireland.” These he afterwards translated
into English, but they were not published till three years after his
death, which occurred in 1614. His works are a treasury of old-time
information, and he is named in the second volume of “Magna Britannia”
among the learned men whom our county has produced.
{138} It is a coincidence which seems to merit a note, that on the very
day on which these lines were penned it was the writer’s duty to unite in
the bonds of wedlock a young woman whose mother’s maiden-name was Fynes,
to her cousin, Charles Fynes: their common grandfather, Charles Pelham
Fynes, a fine sample of the old English yeoman, having been, as well as
two of his sons, the tenant of land held under the writer, and under his
father before him, during many years.
{139} This font which is old Norman, plain, but massive, was, some years
ago, taken away from its position at Poolham, and, by way of rescuing it
from destruction, was placed as an ornamental relic in the garden of
Whispington Vicarage, by the late Rev. C. P. Terrot who was, in his day,
one of our greatest antiquaries. When the writer restored Woodhall
Church, in 1893, the font in that church being of no architectural value,
he obtained the gift of this ancient font and restored it to its original
religious purpose, where it now stands, supported by four handsome
columns of serpentine, the gift of the Rev. J. A. Penny, the present
Vicar of Whispington. The gravestone here referred to was taken away
some years ago, and now forms the sill of a cottage doorway in Stixwould.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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