By Charles Edward Long, Esq. 225 



say ; this discovery is left for any one who may be permitted and 

 disposed to disinter his remains, and decypher his coffin plate, if 

 it yet exists. 



When Symonds was at Ramsbury, he proceeded, as was his wont, 

 to examine the Church, but it was dusk, and he, most unfortunately, 

 overlooked the Darell aisle, yet even at that time, I question whe 

 ther a single brass remained, for in describing the monuments in 

 the Chancel, he says, that the brasses had all been stolen. He seems 

 to have been there in 1644. 



The discredit of these depredations is usually assigned to Cromwell 

 andhis soldiers. With regard to the destruction of altars and images, 

 my beKef is, that all this was, very naturally, done at the Reformation. 

 Those who read in their psalms " confoimded be all they that wor- 

 ship carved images," sought to extirpate image worship by destroy- 

 ing the images. That the Roundheads alone are to be saddled with 

 the sin, archaeologically speaking, of sweeping away our monu- 

 mental brasses, I by no means believe. Indeed, in this particular 

 instance, I am much inclined to attribute the mischief done, to my 

 Lord Wilmot's troopers, when in December, 1642, they made their 

 attack on Marlborough ; and, as Clarendon tell us, "what they 

 spared in blood, they took in pillage, the soldiers enquiring little 

 who were friends or foes." There was another tempting reason for 

 the cavaliers. Colonel Popham was their sturdy opponent. What 

 Wilmot left unfinished, the King and Prince Rupert may have 

 completed when they routed Essex at Albourne Chacc, in September, 

 164J3, and pursued his rear- guard towards Hungerford, but which 

 compliment he repaid a very few days afterwards, at the first battle 

 at Newbury. 



