Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/49

Rh this sort is the case. The Bishop of St. David's is the dean, and there are no less than fifteen prebendaries, all of them (the Bishop included) deriving considerable incomes from this neglected place. It might have been thought that the monument of Dr. George Bull, that learned Bishop who did so much honour to his country and the Diocese to which he belonged, would have called forth some compunction, some regret, when the auditor paid the half-yearly incomes of these sinecurist churchmen, for the church they never visit nor uphold; and then the noble monument, one of the finest in England, of the Lucy family, and many others of great interest and antiquity, all are neglected, and subject to spoliation, for there was no one present to protect them when I entered the venerable sanctuary. Even the sexton, with his paltry salary of five pounds a year, has not received one farthing of it for many long years. Yet the estates flourish, the rents are paid, and the dean and prebendaries pocket the money. The livings which pious men left to this church are still held by them, and yet it is all decay, ruin, and desolation. If the good and excellent Archbishop of Canterbury should ever read these lines, let me hope that he will exert his powerful influence in protecting one of our earliest and most interesting churches from further neglect and desecration."

Thus ends the angler's story; the following fact may give some additional colour to Mr. Jesse's account. The author of this memoir was drawing on one occasion in the interior of Christ's College chapel, when a very abrupt knock was made at the west entrance, and on inquiring who was there, a stalwart drover said he wanted to drive in his sheep, in order that he might catch them, and that he had been in the habit of doing so on former occasions. He was reminded of the place being a sacred edifice, and that the key was in the custody of the person he was speaking to at the time, who could not countenance such desecration. The state of the stalls, on inspection, amply proved that his statement was correct.

The remains of the Bishop's Palace and Refectory are well worth notice, and they display a good specimen of the Early English period of architecture. There are in the gable, under the open old wooden roof, rooms which are said to have been the bishop's apartments; one of them has a trefoiled window in the gable, at the end, facing the College chapel; it is now inhabited by a respectable farmer, and is in