In the South Brent church a fine series of carved bench-ends includes satirical representations of the story of Reynard the Fox, here especially applied to the grasping conduct of the mitred Abbots of Glastonbury, who sought to seize the temporalities and emoluments of South Brent, but were defeated at law. Thus we find here a fox, habited as an abbot, preaching to a flock of geese and other fowls; the fleece of a sheep hanging from his crozier sufficiently showing that his wardenship of flocks does not go unrewarded. Three of his monks, shown as cowled swine, peer up at him. A lower panel on the same bench-end discloses a pig being roasted on a spit, which is turned at one end by a monkey and the fire blown with a bellows by another monkey at the opposite end. On another bench-end of this series we see that the geese have revolted against the fox, who is found sitting upright in a penitential attitude, his hind legs in fetters. A monkey preaches to, or admonishes, the geese, in his stead. In the lower panel the fox is seen in the stocks, a monkey mounting guard with a halberd. [Illustration: BRENT KNOLL.] An elaborate mural monument to one “John Somersett,” 1663, and his two wives, occupies great space on the south side of the nave; John Somerset himself represented in half-length, with a portrait-bust of a wife on either side. There are, further, effigies of himself and the two Mrs. Somerset praying, accompanied by a chrisom child; together with an alarming effigy starting up in a coffin and praying earnestly to an angel who, armed with a trumpet like a megaphone, wallows amid clouds, blowing reassuring messages, which issue from the trumpet visibly in lengths, not unlike the news from modern tape-machines. An elderly angel, with an oily smile of smug satisfaction, beams greasily below. The whole curious composition has been recently very highly coloured, in reproduction of the original scheme. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XII BURNHAM—HIGHBRIDGE—BAWDRIP—“BATH BRICKS”—THE RIVER PARRET