Reigate town was the property, almost exclusively, of the late Lady Henry Somerset. By direction of her heir, Somers Somerset, it was, in October, 1921, sold at auction in several lots. There are some in Reigate who dwell in imagination upon old times. Not by any means the obvious people, the clergy and the usual kidney; they find existence there a vast yawn. The antiquarian taste revealed itself by chance to the present inquirer in the person of a policeman on duty by the tunnel, who knew all about Reigate's one industry of digging silver-sand, who could speak of the "Swan" inn having once possessed a gallows sign that spanned the road, and knew all about the red brick market-house or town hall being built in 1708 on the site of a pilgrims' chapel dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket. He could tell, too, that wonderful man, of a bygone militant parson of Reigate, who, warming to some dispute, took off his coat in the street and saying, "Lie there, divinity," handsomely thrashed his antagonist. "I like them old antidotes," said my constable; and so do I. XX [Sidenote: REIGATE CHURCH] Reigate Church has been many times restored, and every time its monuments have suffered a general post; so that scarce an one remains where it was originally placed, and very few are complete. The most remarkable monument of all, after having been removed from its original place in the chancel to the belfry, has now utterly vanished. It is no excuse that its ever having been placed in the church at all was a scandal and an outrage, for, being there, it should have been preserved, as in some sort an illustration of bygone social conditions. But the usual obliterators of history and of records made their usual clean sweep, and it has disappeared. It was a heart-shaped monument, inscribed, "Near this place lieth Edward Bird, Esq., Gent. Dyed the 23rd of February, 1718/9. His age 26," and was surmounted by a half-length portrait effigy of him in armour, with a full flowing wig; a truncheon in his right hand, and in the background a number of military trophies. The especial scandal attaching to the fact of this monument ever having been placed in the church arises from the fact that Edward Bird was hanged for murder. Some particulars are gleaned from one of the many catchpenny leaflets issued at the time by the Ordinary--that is to say, the Chaplain--of Newgate, who was never averse from adding to his official salary by writing the "last dying words" of interesting criminals; but his flaring front pages were, at the best--like the contents bills of modern sensational evening newspapers--indifferent honest, and his account of Bird is meagre.