city" in England, and prevent any further additions to this disgraceful list of sacrilegious robbery.
It is a very common error with ignorant persons to ascribe most of the mischiefs from which churches have suffered in the defacement of monuments, or the abstraction of brasses, to the period of the Great Rebellion. Scarce a parish clerk is to be found, who, in pointing out some mutilated figure or some slab robbed of its effigy, does not lay the blame on Cromwell's soldiers. The puritan faction, who overthrew for a time altar and throne, have sins enough to answer for without the addition of those which belong to a later period, nor is it just that the neglect of the sacred memorials of the dead, which has marked an age even now not passed away, should be lost sight of in a general reference of all offences against the sanctity of God's house, to an earlier generation of unholy spoilers.
These reflections are very forcibly confirmed by the present state of the little chapel of St. Andrew at Frenze, near Diss, in Norfolk, which was long the burial place, and still retains many interesting memorials, of the knightly family of Blenerhaysett, so named from Blenerseta, in Cumberland, where the elder branch long resided. To the secluded situation and unpretending simplicity of the church at Erenze the old historian of the county ascribed the safety of those effigies which it contained, while more stately edifices in the neighbourhood had been unsparingly stripped and plundered. The publicity given to its treasures by Cotman's book has been the signal for commencing the work of spoliation, and the effigy of Sir Thomas Blenerhaysett, represented as clad in an armorial tabard, has disappeared[1]. Of those which remain the following is a brief account. On entering the south door of the church, the first slab bears a female effigy, exhibiting the pedimental head-dress of the sixteenth century; the sleeves have furred cuffs, and round the waist is a rich girdle, from which hangs a chain and pendant, of goldsmith's work[2]. The legend, in old English letters, runs thus:—
pray for the soule of Jane Blen'haysett widow late wife onto John Blen'haysett esquyer whiche Jane departed oute of this p'sent lyf ye VI day of October the yere of our lord god MVcXXI on whose soule Jhu haue mercy. Amen.
