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within, and did it designedly to affront him. But the
King gave the fellow no other reproof than just looking out of his
window and telling him that he made haste to be rich. This house either
is at this time or was then inhabited by one Southouse. They were the
trained bands of this place that the King was taken by, having been
forced again to the shore, as he endeavoured to get to sea through this
creek, which is very difficult to get clear of, without a very skilful
pilot, which it seemed he had not procured.
Out of this street we turned into a lesser one on the
right, called Church Street, which, agreeably to its denomination, led
us into the church, in which are many monuments of antiquity. And I am
in some measure contented for my not having had time to transcribe them,
by being since told by our good Rochester physician that he had got all
of them, and would send copies amongst other things of that kind which
he had promised to send. But there is one modern one, which I cannot
help remembering out of the particular regard I have to hypocrisy and
vanity joined together. On the north side within the church there is a
very handsome monument fixed up in the wall, with an English inscription
giving notice, in very ample terms, that there is left to the parish a
considerable benefaction of 20s. a year for a sermon to be preached on
such a day, and 5s. annually for the clerk for his [p.80]
attendance on that day, and 20s. to |
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the sexton, who is enjoined, upon the penalty of
forfeiting his title to this benefit, to expend two bottles of oil (one
every half year) upon the iron rails of an altar monument, which is in
the north side of the churchyard. This last particularity of the oil
(though there were other ostentatious singularities which I do not
remember) excited our curiousity to see what was further done in the
churchyard, and there we saw a very grand monument of that sort, with
inscriptions on all sides of the greatest humility and arrogance that
one would desire to read; but the rails were the chief things to be
observed, which, considering the oil which was to be bestowed on their
purification, would not have surprised one with an extraordinary
brightness. I mean, if its brightness and cleanliness were something
singular, as indeed they were, for the oil was just slovenly poured on
without any rubbing, in order for to clean the irons, that it made it
ten times more nasty and dirty than it would otherwise have been by
suffering the plain calamity of the weather. The person who ordered this
splendid monument and the other marble one in the church was one Isles,
who was a poor lad of the lower rank of this town, and had been bound to
some inferior trade in it, but run away from his master to London, where
he got into some way of life which |