353 
Starting again with renewed vigor, the ten members visited 
the lions of the town, and all reliques in the church and town 
of the local hero, John Kirle, “ The man of Ross.” The sucker 
of his tree in the church of St. Mary still shows vitality, and the 
Market House built in the time of Charles I. of soft old red sand- 
stone, and now much weathered, still exhibits his rebus signifying, 
“T bear Charles on my heart.” At 10.40 the train again carried 
the excursionists to Kerne Bridge, five good pedestrians prefer- 
ring to cover the six miles on foot, but all met again at the great 
object of attraction, Goodrich Castle, about two-thirds of a mile 
from the station. The architecture of the Castle from the days 
of “ Godricus dux,” who gave his name to the place in the time 
of Cnut, to the reign of Henry VII., is of a most interesting 
character. The question whether the windows of the keep are 
Saxon or Norman will always remain a subject of debate, but no 
two opinions will exist about the picturesque beauty of the arches 
of the Ladies’ Tower and the Chapel. The Castle in the time of 
the Commonwealth was held by the Countess of Kent, a Grey. 
The Greys, Earls of Kent, had inherited it from the Talbots, 
Earls of Shrewsbury, by the marriage of an heiress in 1616. 
After a long siege Sir Henry Lingen, who had garrisoned it for 
the King, surrendered it, in 1646, to Col, Birch. Next year the 
Countess of Kent received compensation for her Castle, which was 
ordered to be slighted by the Protector. 
The church of Goodrich was afterwards visited by the members 
of the club, but the eucharistic chalice, presented to the parish by 
the grandfather of Dean Swift, who was rector during the 
Commonwealth, and ejected for his Royalist proclivities, could 
not be seen owing to the present rector’s absence. Much indigna- 
tion was, however, aroused among the antiquarians of the party 
by the discovery that an enormous boulder of about 12 tons 
weight in the churchyard, consisting of the conglomerate of the 
old red sandstone, to all outward appearance an “ ice-borne 
erratic” had been converted into. a sepulchral monument to some 
