174 THE EXETER ROAD 



that they ever be forgotten, as in the England of 

 to-day they would almost seem to be. Hellish ferocity, 

 damnable frauds, how they smirch those sculptured 

 stones and cry insistently for remembrance ! 



Nicholas Shaxton, Bishop in the time of Henry 

 the Eighth, was alive to it all, and cleared away 

 the false relics ; the ' stinking boots, mucky combs, 

 ragged rochetts, rotten girdles, pyled purses, great 

 bullocks' horns, locks of hair, filthy rags, and gobbets 

 of wood,' which he found here ; but, with less courage 

 than others, he recanted in Mary's reign. Sherfield, 

 Recorder of Salisbury, was another reformer, but he 

 lived in less dano-erous times for such men. It was 

 in 1629 that he smashed the stained -glass window, 

 representing the Creation, in St. Edmund's Church. 

 In other times he would assuredly have been burnt 

 for thig act ; as it was, he was summoned before the 

 Star Chamber. He pleaded that the window did not 

 contain a true history of the Creation, and objected 

 that God was represented as ' a little old man in 

 a Ions; blue coat,' which he held was ' an indionitv 

 offered to Almighty God.' He was committed to 

 the Fleet Prison for this, fined £500, and required 

 to apologise to the Bishop of Salisbury. Fortunate 

 Mr. Sherfield ! 



This fair city has been almost as much of a Gol- 

 gotha as the settlements of savage African kinglets 

 are wont to be. Shakespeare has made mention of 

 the execution of the Duke of Buckino-ham here in 

 1484 by Richard the Third, but many an one has 

 suffered and left no such trace. That such execu- 

 tions were generally unjust and almost always too 



