He Also Gave Them A
Great Many Good Lordships, Which They Enjoyed Till The General
Suppression Of Abbeys, In The Time Of Henry VIII.
But I am neither writing the history or searching the antiquity of
the abbey, or town; my business is the present state of the place.
The abbey is demolished; its ruins are all that is to be seen of
its glory: out of the old building, two very beautiful churches
are built, and serve the two parishes, into which the town is
divided, and they stand both in one churchyard. Here it was, in
the path-way between these two churches, that a tragical and almost
unheard-of act of barbarity was committed, which made the place
less pleasant for some time than it used to be, when Arundel Coke,
Esq., a barrister-at-law, of a very ancient family, attempted, with
the assistance of a barbarous assassin, to murder in cold blood,
and in the arms of hospitality, Edward Crisp, Esq., his brother-in-
law, leading him out from his own house, where he had invited him,
his wife and children, to supper; I say, leading him out in the
night, on pretence of going to see some friend that was known to
them both; but in this churchyard, giving a signal to the assassin
he had hired, he attacked him with a hedge-bill, and cut him, as
one might say, almost in pieces; and when they did not doubt of his
being dead, they left him. His head and face was so mangled, that
it may be said to be next to a miracle that he was not quite
killed: yet so Providence directed for the exemplary punishment of
the assassins, that the gentleman recovered to detect them, who
(though he outlived the assault) were both executed as they
deserved, and Mr. Crisp is yet alive. They were condemned on the
statute for defacing and dismembering, called the Coventry Act.
But this accident does not at all lessen the pleasure and agreeable
delightful show of the town of Bury; it is crowded with nobility
and gentry, and all sorts of the most agreeable company; and as the
company invites, so there is the appearance of pleasure upon the
very situation; and they that live at Bury are supposed to live
there for the sake of it.
The Lord Jermin, afterwards Lord Dover, and, since his lordship's
decease, Sir Robert Davers, enjoyed the most delicious seat of
Rushbrook, near this town.
The present members of Parliament for this place are Jermyn Davers
and James Reynolds, Esquires.
Mr. Harvey, afterwards created Lord Harvey, by King William, and
since that made Earl of Bristol by King George, lived many years in
this town, leaving a noble and pleasantly situated house in
Lincolnshire, for the more agreeable living on a spot so completely
qualified for a life of delight as this of Bury.
The Duke of Grafton, now Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, has also a
stately house at Euston, near this town, which he enjoys in right
of his mother, daughter to the Earl of Arlington, one of the chief
ministers of State in the reign of King Charles II., and who made
the second letter in the word "cabal," a word formed by that famous
satirist Andrew Marvell, to represent the five heads of the
politics of that time, as the word "smectymnus" was on a former
occasion.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 39 of 74
Words from 20190 to 20761
of 39569
