REIGATE CHURCH 169 



There are some in Reigate who dwell in imagination 

 upon old times. Not by any means the obvious 

 people, the clergy and the usual kidney ; they find 

 existence there a vast yawn. The antiquarian taste 

 revealed itself by chance to the present inquirer in the 

 person of a policeman on duty by the tunnel, who 

 knew all about Reigate's one industry of digging 

 silver-sand, who could speak of the " Swan ' inn 

 having once possessed a gallows sign that spanned the 

 road, and knew all about the red brick market-house 

 or town hall being built in 1708 on the site of a 

 pilgrims' chapel dedicated to St. Thomas a Becket. 

 He could tell, too, that wonderful man, of a bygone 

 militant parson of Reigate, who, warming to some 

 dispute, took off his coat in the street and saying, " Lie 

 there, divinity," handsomely thrashed his antagonist. 

 " I like them old antidotes," said my constable ; and 

 so do I. 



XX 



Reigate Church has been many times restored, and 

 every time its monuments have suffered a general 

 post ; so that scarce an one remains where it was 

 originally placed, and very few are complete. 



The most remarkable monument of all, after having 

 been removed from its original place in the chancel to 

 the belfry, has now utterly vanished. It is no excuse 

 that its ever having been placed in the church at all 

 was a scandal and an outrage, for, being there, it should 

 have been preserved, as in some sort an illustration of 

 bygone social conditions. But the usual obliterators 

 of history and of records made their usual clean sweep, 

 and it has disappeared. 



It was a heart-shaped monument, inscribed, ' ' Near 

 this place lieth Edward Bird, Esq., Gent. Dyed the 

 23rd of February, 171f . His age 26," and was sur- 

 mounted by a half-length portrait effigy of him in 

 armour, with a full flowing wig ; a truncheon in his right 



