The bed of this ill-fated pair, with their names carved on the head-board, was found by Mr. Hawker in one of the farms in the parish. He was very anxious to get possession of it. He begged it, and when refused offered money, but to no avail: the farmer would not part with it. After trying persuasion, entreaty, and offering large sums in vain, he had recourse to another expedient. The vicar said to the farmer: “Does it ever strike you, S——, when lying in that bed, as you do of a night, how many corpses have preceded you? There was first of all poor John Manning, all dead and bloody, in 1601, his side ripped up by a bull’s horns, just where you lie so snug of a night. Then there was his bride, Christiana, lying there, where your wife sleeps, sobbing away her life, dying of a broken heart. Just you think, John, when you lie there, of that poor lone woman, how her tears dribbled all night long over the pillow on which your wife’s head rests. And one morning, when they came to look at her, SHE WAS DEAD. That was two hundred and fifty years ago. What a lot of corpses have occupied that bed, where you and your wife lie, since then! Think of it, John, of a night, and tell your wife to do the same. I dare say the dead flesh has struck a chill into the bed, that the feel of it makes you creep all over at times at dead of night. Doesn’t it, John? Two hundred and fifty years ago! That is about five generations—five men washed and laid out, their chins tied up on your pillow, John, and their dead eyes looking up at your ceiling; and five wives dead and laid out there too, and measured for their coffins, just where your wife sleeps so warm. And then, John, consider, it’s most likely some of these farmers were married again, so we may say there were at least six or seven female corpses, let alone dead babies, in that bed. Why, John, there have been at least fourteen corpses in that bed, including John Manning bleeding to death, and Christiana weeping her life away. Think of that of a night. You will find it conducive to good.” “Parson,” said the farmer aghast, “I can never sleep in that bed no more. You may take it, and welcome.” So Mr. Hawker got the Manning bed, and set it up in the room that commanded the tomb in the churchyard; “so that the bed may look at the grave, and the grave at the bed,” as he expressed it. The writer in _The Standard_, already quoted, thus describes his first acquaintance with the vicar of Morwenstow:—