And about eight miles away, across the Avon, in Dorsetshire, between two fields on Woodlands Farm, runs an old-fashioned double hedge, the central ditch choked up with hazel, and holly, and the common brake. About midway down, half in the ditch and half in the hedge, stands a pollarded ash, now bored into holes by the woodpeckers. This is Monmouth's Ash, and close to it, in the ditch, the duke, the miserable cause of so much misery, was seized, hid among the fern and brambles.[1]
To the ecclesiologist the little church of Ellingham (Adeling's hamlet) is full of interest. Within stands the old covered carved pew of Moyles Court, and a monument to one of its former owners. The plain rood-screen, with the stand for the hour-glass, and the marks of the pulpit still remain, formerly, as we can still see, painted blue like the chancel. On the south wall traces of the staircase to the rood-loft, as well as the entrance from the outside, are also still visible. In the chancel the Early-English windows have been sadly mutilated. Over the communion-table hangs a picture of the Day of Judgment, plundered from some church in Port St. Mary, in the Bay of Cadiz, whose bad execution is only exceeded by its indecent materialism. In the south chancel wall is a double piscina. On the walls above the rood-screen, the twenty-first verse of the twenty-fourth chapter of Proverbs, and the twenty-
- ↑ Monmouth, like a second Warbeck, was in all probability on his way through the Forest to Lymington, where Dore, the mayor, had raised for him a troop of men, and would assist him to embark. At Axminster, in Dorsetshire, there is a local MS. record, "Ecclesiastica, or the Book of Remembrance," made by some member of the Axminster Independent Chapel, of the sufferings of Monmouth's followers, which appears to have been unknown to Macaulay.
