the church ; the old high- backed pews were falling to 

 pieces they had always been very uncomfortable and 

 these he replaced by the present seats $ a new pulpit 

 was given by my mother and others in place of the 

 Jacobean pulpit which, though picturesque, was decay- 

 ing and in some ways inconvenient. What was sound 

 in the Jacobean woodwork was used to line the base 

 of the tower where the font now stands, and so give it, 

 as the Baptistery, some distinction; and a much- 

 needed heating apparatus was introduced into the 

 church. The new pulpit was used for the first time 

 on my mother's birthday, November 6, 1887, and the 

 rest of the work was finished on December i. When 

 one looks back over his life as Rector for nearly fifty 

 years, and the longer life which was almost all passed 

 in Bloxworth, it is no wonder that one of the older 

 farm labourers a man not much given to expressing 

 emotion should have said, when my father passed 

 away, c There, 'tis the end of all things to we. 5 



Of my father's other parish, Winterbourne Tomson, 

 there is little to say. It consisted of a handful of people 

 never much more and often less than twenty in all living 

 in a few cottages clustered round a decayed little church 

 in a field two miles from Bloxworth. My father took a 

 service there every Sunday for his tiny congregation until 

 about 1 890, when the church was closed with the consent 

 of the Bishop, and with good reason, since there was a 

 church just beyond each of the next fields to east and 



