By the Rev. Chr. Wordsworth. 309 



Robert Kilhnan, lately buried," is mentioned.^ " The statues of 

 the said Thomas and Edith Bonhain are said to be in a hollow- 

 vaulted arch under the wall in the north side of our Church, and 

 such statues there are. His statue lies next to the door of the 

 said side, and her statue at the foot of his." " By me Eoger 

 l^owell, Curate there, April 10th, A.D. 1640." ^ 



The story was told to the editors of Modern Wilts (see there, 

 p. 48) in 1825, in the following form: — "There is a very old 

 monument in memory of one Bonhain, lord of the manor, in solid 

 stone at full-length, drest in pilgrim's habit, with a leathern belt 

 round his waist, and pouch or scrip by his side; and as report 

 says [he] was the father of seven children born at one birth, and 

 all brought to Church in a sieve to be baptized. The occasion of 

 this wonderful event was said to be, that their family coming on 

 very fast they were mistrustful that they should not be able to 

 maintain them, and so agreed to part for seven years, and if neither 

 party was seen or heard of, to be at liberty to marry again. He 

 went abroad, and she was in England with the babies ; the time 

 was nearly expired, and the lady on the point of marriage. The 

 news was made known to him (report says) by a witch, who con- 

 veyed him home instantly, and [he] found his lady to be married 

 the next day. He was at first denied admittance, for he had not 

 shaved himself the whole time, and no one remembered his person 

 until he produced the ring they had broken. Then he was into- 

 duced to his lady, who acknowledged him, and at the next birth 



' Mr. Roger Powell (probably e coll. Exon. Oxon.) the curate from 1612 

 to 1640, merely testifies that these Boiihams (Thomas and Edith, named in 

 the inscription and represented on the monument) 200 years before his time 

 were " said to have been that Bonham and his wife that had seven children 

 at one birth," and that his own recollection of the effigies of nine children 

 dated from twenty years back. 



- The local tradition at Wishford in 1885 was that the small and curious 

 female figure, which is worked on the same stone as the cushion on which 

 Thomas Bonham's head rests, represented the ivitch (mentioned in the story 

 as related on this page) whispering to him that his wife from whom he had 

 been so long separated by mutual consent was about to be married to another 

 on the morrow, and that she would spirit him off home to forbid the match. 

 VOL. XXXV. — NO. CVIII. X 



