Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/439

Rh doughty earl clad cap-a-pie in gilt armour. Everything is brass of the first quality. It must have been of the purest kind to preserve such a natural polish. The slab of solid brass laid over the marble tomb on which the figure rests, is several inches thick, bearing inscribed on its edge all the way round quite a history of the earl. Then over the form is a brass structure, consisting of long poles of the metal hooped with gilt bands, representing the hearse used at the time. It is some satisfaction that the old Norman chieftain spoke English, and that those to whom he willed his memory in special charge were not ashamed of the language of the country, rude as it was. Unlike the pretentious pedants of later times, they regarded it good enough for the epitaph of one of the greatest men of the age. In this epitaph, which makes a good sized printed page when copied from the brass, it is stated that he was "visited with longe sicknes in the castel of Roan, therinne decessed ful cristenly the last day of April, the yer of oure lord god A. MCCCCXXXIV, he being at that tyme Lieutenant gen'al and governer of the Roialme of FFraunce and of the Duchie of Normandie"; and then it goes on to remind the reader of some geographical incidents connected with the transportation of his remains; "the whuch body with grete deliberacion and ful worshipful conduit Bi see and by lond was