Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/476

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the little village of Sedgebrook, attracted by the fine and interesting-looking church there, and also in search of any quaint epitaph. We found the rector, manifestly an ardent antiquary, in the church, which was being lovingly repaired under his skilled supervision. He did not know of any noteworthy epitaph in the churchyard, but he could give us one he copied at Shipley in Derbyshire, if we cared to have it. We did, and here it is:—

God saw good as I lopped off wood
I fell from the top of a tree,
I met with a check that broke my neck
And so God lopped off me.

Sedgebrook church is very interesting, I could easily enlarge upon it to the extent of a whole chapter did the exigencies of space permit. Here is the Markham chapel in which the "Upright Judge," Chief Justice Markham of the King's Bench, 1462, is buried, or is supposed to be; his tomb has been destroyed. There is a hazy local tradition that only his effigy is buried here and not his body; also the same tradition has it that the judge, on being deprived of his office by the king, took sanctuary in the church and was fed there by his daughter, whose incised slab representing her head resting on a pillow now finds a place on the wall of the chapel. "Now," said the rector, "some clever people come here and when they see that, they at once take the pillow for a head-dress, and one gentleman even went so far as to call attention to it in a publication as a unique example of a head-dress of the period!" Of course the slab was intended to be laid flat on