By Clifford W. Eolgate, M.A. 



7 



Parish Church, of which he was one of the churchwardens from 

 1878 to 1895. 



To go back, then, first to the year 1847. The Rector of the 

 parish then was the Rev. John David Hastings, whose tenure of 

 the benefice extended from 1841 to 1869. I have ascertained that 

 in 1846 the joists and flooring of the Church, and the vaults 

 underneath, were found to be in a decayed and insecure state. A 

 faculty, accordingly, was applied for to remove the then existing 

 pews, replace the joists and flooring with new materials, repair 

 extensively the vaults underneath, remove the western gallery, 

 remove the organ from it to the south transept, and to remove the 

 " incongruous Grecian altar piece " from before the east window. 

 The re-seating proposed was to raise the accommodation from eight 

 hundred and ninety-three sittings to nine hundred and ninety-six, 

 of which three hundred and thirty-seven were to be free ; £1200 

 was to be raised in the town by a rate of Is. 6d. in the pound, and 

 the remainder of the total estimated cost of the alterations — £6000 

 — it was hoped would be raised by voluntary subscriptions in the 

 town and county. A faculty for the proposed " re-pewing and 

 making other alterations in and about the Parish Church of 

 Trowbridge," was duly granted by the Consistorial Court of 

 Salisbury on January 15th, 1847. In it no special mention was 

 made of Crabbe's or of any other particular monuments or vaults, 

 but there was the following general proviso : — " provided that all 

 monuments, tablets, or tombstones, which it shall be found necessary 

 to remove for the purposes aforesaid, shall respectively be replaced 

 in a proper and suitable situation, as near as conveniently may be 

 to their present position." 



It was during the restoration and re-pewing of the Church in 

 1847 — fifteen years after the poet's burial — that his remains were 

 disturbed, and his skull taken away by a workman engaged in the 

 work in the chancel. 



The details of what actually happened with regard to the skull, 

 given in the words of the gentleman into whose hands it eventually 

 came, will be quoted directly. 



The facts relating to its abstraction, as known generally, and as 



