The late Bishop Their monuments There are several

north wall is the recumbent stone effigy of the Princess Elizabeth, daughter to John of Gaunt, and wife of Sir John Cornewall, of the date of 1426; and nearer is a monument of a man in armour, supposed to represent her husband. of Worcester was descended from this family. in this church are about to be restored. other carved figures, brasses, &c., of the date of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; likewise some marble monuments to several members of the Rushout family (into whose possession the manor has now come) which deserve notice for the chasteness of the designs and beauty of the execution. There are also some beautiful lines to the memory of the Right Hon. Lady Caroline Rushout, who died in the year 1818.

The excellent organ in this church was the gift of the Misses Rushout, of Burford House. Around one of the bells of this church the following inscription is to be found :

"At service time I sound,

And at the death of men,

To serve your God and well to die,

Remember then!"

The parish of Burford is very large, extending from the river Teme high up into the Clee Hill. From its covering so large an area, one church, wherever placed, would have been inaccessible to many of its inhabitants. The benefice therefore was divided anciently into three portions. The rector of the first portion serves the chapel of Nash and the chapel of Boraston, value £337; the rector of the second portion serves the chapel of Whitton, value £286; the rector of the third portion serves the mother church, St. Mary's, value £335. There are three rectory houses, which are near the respective churches. The rectors are-Rev. H. M'Laughlin, Nash and Boraston; Rev. C. Whitefoord, Whitton; Rev. J. Wayland Joyce, Burford. The clerk at Burford is Mr. William Jones, and the organist is an amateur, E. Wellings, Esq. The daily school contains about 40 children, the Sunday school upwards of 50. Population of the three portions, 1031.

An obliging correspondent has forwarded to me the following account of the superstitions prevalent in and about Tenbury. "The peasantry round Tenbury (like those of Shrawley) are no less superstitious and credulous than the generality of the poorer classes, and have great faith in charms. As an instance, some of them firmly believe the following is a sure remedy for scrofula. If a person afflicted with it takes the right or left foot of a toad (according as the wound is on the right or left side), and wrapping it in three pieces of linen, enclosed in a black silk bag, wears it, a piece of string to go round the neck being attached, at the same time observing the toad, for whether it lives or dies so will the person. A woman having tried this charm firmly believes it effected a cure, when the case was pronounced hopeless by medical men. The people also believe in tokens of death, such as the issuing of light from a candle after it is blown out, &c."

P

acres.

Great Malvern.

Thou hast a famous church,
And rarely builded;
No country town hath such,
Most men have yielded;
For pillars stout and strong,
And wondrous large and long,
Remember in thy song

To praise the Lord.

A thousand bottles there
Were filled weekly,
And many costrels rare
For stomachs sickly;

Some of them into Kent,
Some were to London sent,
Others to Berwick went-
O praise the Lord.

OLD SONG.

RIOR to the Conquest, the Malvern Hills and a large district of surrounding country were covered with wood, a trace of which still remains in the local name of "The Chase," which at one time extended to about 8000 Some "holy eremite," inspired with a wish for a retired and religious life, penetrated these wilds and fixed upon the site of the present abbey, or near thereto, as the place for his cell. A writer in the " Archæological Journal" of about May, 1845, in giving a description of the beautiful remains of painted glass for which the abbey was famed, mentions the third window in the clerestory, north of the choir, which had been till then unaccountably overlooked, as containing an illustration of the legend of St. Werstan and the first Christian establishment at Malvern. This memorial is still remaining, and a dwelling called "The Hermitage," near to the church, was not long since in existence, until some fashionable gentleman pulled it down and erected an Italian villa in its stead, calling it "Il Bello

Sguardo." Here it may reasonably be supposed was the simple oratory of St. Werstan, and here did he suffer martyrdom. In process of time great numbers of religious resorted to the spot, and historians tell us that about the year 1083 a Benedictine monastery was formed here under the hermit Aldwin and some monks from Worcester Priory. The establishment attained to great fame, having acquired large estates and possessions besides the endowment of Edward the Confessor; and constant disputes were occurring between the Bishop of Worcester and the mitred Abbots of Westminster, who claimed a preeminence of power in consequence of Gislibertus Crispinus, one of their number, having formerly bestowed several manors upon this Priory; till at length an amicable settlement was concluded by Edward I, and the priory became subordinate to Westminster. In the 15th century the priory was restored by Sir Reginald Bray, the Premier of Henry VII., whose memory is immortalized by the unrivalled skill and taste displayed by him in the erection of Henry's Chapel at Westminster, " that glorious work of fine intelligence," and in the completion of that of St. George, in Windsor Castle. Sir Reginald was born at St. John's-in-Bedwardine, in the suburbs of the city of Worcester. The abbey, thus restored, was a magnificent building, the massive round piers and semi-circular arches of the nave testifying to the Early Norman origin of that portion of the edifice, which is probably coeval with the foundation of the monastery; while the rest of the building is an elegant and diversified specimen of design and embellishment in the latest period of the Pointed style. The roof is of carved wood, flat, and of the Perpendicular style : it appears to have been designed as a temporary expedient only, provision having evidently been made for the after construction of a stone vaulted roof, which, however, was never effected. The clerestory is also of the 15th century, on a much earlier substructure. At the Dissolution, Henry the Eighth (who had been memorialized by Latimer not to suppress this house, on account of its great importance and the hospitality and usefulness of the prior,) granted the priory to William Pynnock, who

alienated it to John Knottesford, Esq., serjeant-at-arms, from whom it was purchased by the inhabitants. Dr. Card, the late vicar, observes—" To the happy circumstance of its being made parochial we owe the preservation of a fabric so touching to the heart of the Christian, and which serves to gratify the eye of the painter as well as the antiquary, from its having all the painter's beauties of intricacy of form and light and shade." The old parish church stood at the north-west corner of the present churchyard. The abbey, which now consists of nave, tower, and chancel, with north and south aisles, and Jesus Chapel on the north, must have been a noble and cathedral like structure before the demolition of the south transept aisle and the Lady Chapel at the east end. Of the former extensiveness of the establishment several proofs, such as stone coffins and other relics, have been recently discovered, as I have been informed, in the course of erecting some new villas on the south side; but no account has appeared of them, and all investigation was suppressed, though it would probably have been very easy by these means to discover the exact locality of the refectory and cloisters. A new erection called "Knottesford Lodge," in memory of the individual from whom the parishioners purchased the church, has been recently put up on the supposed site of the refectory; previously to this a barn stood on the spot, and the refectory "board" was there used for mangers. To pursue the history of the abbey: after the Dissolution it gradually became a ruin, and the work of restoration was left for the taste and untiring zeal of Dr. Card, the late much respected vicar, who, after constant appeals to the public and the devotion of his own time and energies to the task, succeeded in restoring this beautiful structure to its present condition. Fortunately for the Doctor, he had completed his self-imposed task ere the restorers of ancient ecclesiastical beauties were called hard names, and dubbed as followers of the great beast; else the ruin might still have remained to us. All moderate minded Christians will see no positive mischief in the restoration of a temple for the worship of God