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the church, the monuments were more westward, and that while 
the building operations were going on, they were taken down, and 
afterwards re-erected where we now see them, so as to leave an 
uninterrupted approach to the present north door. 
That the ground around the church should be of the character 
indicated by the excavation mentioned, need be no matter for 
surprise, if it is, as I suspect, the debris cleared out of the old 
church when getting in foundations for pillars and internal walls 
of the new church ; for we find by the old churchwardens’ books 
that burials in the church were regularly permitted on payment of 
three shillings and fourpence each. This went on up to within 
two years of the demolition of the old church ; and it appears that 
during the fifty years preceding the re-building, upwards of one 
hundred such burials took place in the church. This abominable 
practice, however, was quite common in the 17th century, and in 
one place inspired an epitaph writer thus :— 
‘* Here lies I outside the dooer, 
Here lies I because Ise pooer ; 
The further in the more to pay ;— 
Here lies I as warm as they.” 
When the “giant” idea first came in, and from whence, does 
not clearly appear. Camden, in his “ Britannia,” (1586) mentions 
“Perith,” its “pretty handsome church,” its castle, market-house 
of wood, beautified with bears climbing up a ragged staff, the 
device of the Earls of Warwick. King Arthur’s Round Table, 
Maybrugh, and Bishop Strickland’s water-course from the Petteril; 
but strange to say, profound antiquarian though he was, he makes 
no allusion to the giant’s grave. 
The next writer in point of date is Sandford, who (Jefferson in 
his “ History of Leath Ward,” says) wrote his manuscript history 
in 1670, in which he states that he was told by Mr. Page, of 
Penrith, who from 1581 to 1591 was schoolmaster, marshal-man, 
and bailiff, that a strange gentleman came to Penrith in search of 
antiquities, and produced a written account of a “Sir Hugh 
Cesario, a knight-errant, killing monster, man, and beast, and was 
buried in the north side of the church, ith green field.” Sandford 
