IN THE GLOAMING. 193 



I should reach the storied pile with less than a 

 full appreciation of its traditional interest. 



From his nervous lips I learned how King 

 Richard II. kept Christmas revels here with a 

 splendor that lavished two hundred tuns of 

 wine, and roasted two thousand oxen, whose 

 bones are still found in Oxenbury field hard 

 by; how Elizabeth passed three whole days in 

 the close; and how the solidity of its fortifica- 

 tion, the consummate grace and finish of its 

 architecture, the richness of its sculpture, and 

 the surpassing beauty and magnificence of the 

 nine windows of its lady chapel marked it as 

 the crowning glory of the Western Church, 

 until the dark days of the Revolution lowered. 

 Then its sore trials were recounted, and I learned 

 of the fanatical attack of Lord Brooke, "with 

 his horde of impious Roundheads," made by 

 strange fatality on St. Chad's day ; of the shoot- 

 ing of Lord Brooke by " Dumb Dyo^tt," who 

 was perched in the steeple with a fowling-piece 

 that now hangs over the fireplace of Colonel 

 Dyott's house ; of the surrender of the close 

 9 M 



