Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/184

140 all his honours and lands, and was conveyed to Winchester, where he died in prison, and was hurriedly buried.

William the Conqueror gave Bideford to the son of Hamo the Toothy, Richard de Grenville, and the place has never since lost its association with the Granville family.

Sir Theobald Granville in the fourteenth century was a large benefactor to the town in assisting in the building of the bridge, rendered advisable by the great loss of life at the ford or in the ferry. It was, however, said to have been set on foot at the prompting of Richard Gurney, the parish priest, who dreamed two nights running that there was a rock below the ooze on which a pier might rest. But one pier did not suffice, and how to sustain others on mud was a puzzle. It was—so tradition says—solved by sinking bags of wool and laying the bases of the piers on these, a story not so improbable as appears on the face.

For a long time the vicars of Bideford had a herriot, that is, a right to the second best horse or cow of any parishioner who died. In 1529 this led to a scene. Sir William Coffin was passing one day by the churchyard, when, seeing a crowd collected, he asked the occasion, and learned that a corpse had been brought there to be interred, but that the vicar refused to read the burial service unless the dead man's cow were surrendered. But as the deceased had left no other property whatever, the heirs demurred. On hearing this Sir William sent for the priest, and reasoned with