The Strife of the Roses and Days of the Tudors in the WestRogers, W. H. Hamilton (William Henry Hamilton)
History
The Strife of the Roses and Days of the Tudors in the West
Rogers, W. H. Hamilton (William Henry Hamilton)
Great Britain -- History -- Tudors, 1485-1603; Great Britain -- History -- Wars of the Roses, 1455-1485
A short leisurely stroll from the station leads us by the great shrine
dedicated to the Bacchus of our modern Briton, and we halt in front of
the gate opening to the path leading to the north porch of the large
church immediately before us. But ere we enter, we pause to take a
momentary glance at the long line of semi-ecclesiastical,
almshouse-looking buildings with Tudor gables and high chimnies that
skirt the opposite side of the road, and from one of which the civil
custodian of the church, in response to our enquiries, emerges.
From him we learn that the house he dwells in was probably antiently
the Priest's dwelling, who was perhaps a monk appointed by the Abbess
of Shaftesbury to whom a large part of the manor of Tisbury belonged,
if not also the patronage of the benefice. In making some excavations
behind it a few years since, the skeletons of several persons were
found, on one skull the hair remained very perfect, but subsided to
dust the instant it was uncovered, as if shrinking from the sacrilege
of the intrusive eye and curiosity of the present. The building may
also have been a Cell attached to Shaftesbury Abbey, and this spot the
last resting-place of the solitary religious, once resident within it.
The pavement of the path through the churchyard leading to the church
is also strongly representative of modern destructive notions, and
exhibits,--although it traverses what we should regard from its
associations as sacred precincts,--a true example of the now-a-day
"way of the world." It is floored with the older memorial stones of
the departed that rest, now un-named, around, and the tear-wrought
memories they were charged to perpetuate, callously trod under the
foot of man, and in sure process of ruthless obliteration. "They are
only very old stones," said our cicerone in answer to our
protest,--"families all gone and no one to look after them,"--exactly
so, thought we with a half-sigh mingling with the echo of the
Ploughman's line, ringing a presaging knell over the fate of our
possible memory, when, as here, some day and perhaps
"--no distant date,
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate,"
and this outrage on the memories of the departed, not the _best_
preparation altogether for entrance into the temple of Him, whose love
knoweth no change, and whose remembrance faileth not for the children
of men, more enduring than Job's yearning for graven words with iron
pen in the rock for ever, or even as vigorous Toplady puts it in
glorious anticipation,--
"My name from the palms of His hands,
Eternity will not erase."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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