Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/141

Rh verse of the third chapter of Galatians, according to the version of the Geneva Bible, are roughly painted.

As in all the other churches of the district, the churchwardens have here from time to time shown their natural attachment to ugliness. The Early-English triplet at the east end has been blocked up, the gravestones in the chancel defaced, and a brick porch patched on at the south side.

The road now winds on by low water-meadows, pastured by herds of cattle, past Blashford Green, till we reach Ringwood, the Rinwede of Domesday. Here, at the Grammar School, was Stillingfleet educated. Here Monmouth wrote his three craven letters to James, the Queen Dowager, and the Lord Treasurer, imploring them to save that life which it was a disgrace to own.

The old church has been pulled down, and a new one, modelled in every particular after it, has been built on its site. A church ought doubtless to tell its own date by its style. Yet it is far better that we should copy a moderately good 123