He Also Gave Them A
Great Many Good Lordships, Which They Enjoyed Till The General
Suppression Of Abbeys, In The Time Of Henry VIII.
But I am neither writing the history or searching the antiquity of
the abbey, or town; my business is the present state of the place.
The abbey is demolished; its ruins are all that is to be seen of
its glory: out of the old building, two very beautiful churches
are built, and serve the two parishes, into which the town is
divided, and they stand both in one churchyard. Here it was, in
the path-way between these two churches, that a tragical and almost
unheard-of act of barbarity was committed, which made the place
less pleasant for some time than it used to be, when Arundel Coke,
Esq., a barrister-at-law, of a very ancient family, attempted, with
the assistance of a barbarous assassin, to murder in cold blood,
and in the arms of hospitality, Edward Crisp, Esq., his brother-in-
law, leading him out from his own house, where he had invited him,
his wife and children, to supper; I say, leading him out in the
night, on pretence of going to see some friend that was known to
them both; but in this churchyard, giving a signal to the assassin
he had hired, he attacked him with a hedge-bill, and cut him, as
one might say, almost in pieces; and when they did not doubt of his
being dead, they left him.
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