260 Maud Heath's Causey. 
this aisle, the figure of a man drawn in green, kneeling, like 
Judge Littleton, and a woman drawn by him; with the words 
“Orate pro anima Johannis Hurts.” A coat of arms was scattered 
about these windows, ‘Or, a lion rampant, double tailed, sable”’: 
and in the margin of his manuscript Aubrey writes the name 
Hethe asif it referred to this coat; though we have not been able 
hitherto to identify it as the shield of any family of that name.! 
There can be no doubt that this south aisle had been thus liberally 
embellished by the Johannes Heath, whose figure, drawn in green, 
occupied so prominent a place at the eastern end of it. And it is 
only a fair inference that he must have been a gentleman land- 
owner of the Parish of Bremhill. Therefore with this fact before 
us, of a family being settled there of the higher class of life, it is 
at any rate quite as likely that the benefactress to the causey 
belonged to that class, as that she was only in the more humble 
position, to which, in the absence of any bona fide evidence, 
popular gossip has consigned her.? 
But this our suggestion to the contrary notwithstanding, the 
story of her being an old goody market-woman, or at the highest, 
a farm-housekeeper, is the favourite one, and is now likely to be 
perpetuated. For within these few years the tradition has been 
most substantially personified, in a bodily form and of a material 
that are likely to endure, as long as the causey itself shall last. 
A few minutes after leaving the Chippenham Station in the 
Train towards London, the passenger may observe on the right 
hand, upon the top of a high ridge, (above-mentioned as Bremhill 
Wick Hill), a column standing clear against the horizon. The 
distance is too great to distinguish a figure at the summit; but a 
1 Aubrey’s Collections for N. Wilts. Part 11, p, 4, Sir T. Phillipps’ edition. 
2 If Maud had left a Will, which we fear she did not, it would have perhaps 
told us more of her history. The name does not occur very often at that period. 
All that in such a case can be done is to collect and compare such meagre notices 
as do occur. One thing often leads to the solution of another in a very unex- 
pected way. There was a John Heath, Prebendary of Sarum, who died 1464, 
and a Richard Heath, Vicar of Chiseldon (about 15 miles from Bremhill) who 
died in 1474, the very year of Maud’s gift. But there is at present nothing to 
identify either of them as relatives of hers. 
