Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/351

Rh the reputed thigh-bones of Ordgar and Ordulf, are preserved.

There is a fine monument to John Fitz, who died in 1590. Opposite it is one of Judge Glanville, Serjeant-at-Law in 1589 and Justice of Common Pleas in 1598. He died July 27th, 1600. He had by his wife a fair family. Now here comes in a question of some interest.

The current tradition is that one of Glanville's daughters, Eulalia by name, was married to a John Page, whom she murdered, and for the crime she was sentenced to be burned alive; which sentence was carried into effect in 1590 at Barnstaple.

I will give the story as contained in a letter by Mr. Daniel Lysons, author of the Magna Britannia, in 1827:—

"The Judge's daughter was attached to George Stanwich, a young man of Tavistock, lieutenant of a man-of-war, whose letters, the father disapproving of the attachment, were intercepted. An old miser of Plymouth, of the name of Page, wishing to have an heir to disappoint his relatives, who perhaps were too confident in calculating upon sharing his wealth, availed himself of this apparent neglect of the young sailor, and settling on her a good jointure, obtained her hand. She took with her a maidservant from Tavistock, but her husband was so penurious that he dismissed all the other servants, and caused his wife and her maid to do all the work themselves. On an interview subsequently taking place between her and Stanwich, she accused him of neglecting to write to her, and then discovered that his letters had been intercepted. The maid advised them to get rid of the old gentleman, and Stanwich at length, with great reluctance, consented to their putting an end to him.