church incendiary Sir William Waller and his crew of plunderers,
who, if my information is not wrong, as I believe it is not,
destroyed more monuments of the dead, and defaced more churches,
than all the Roundheads in England beside.

This church, and the schools also are accurately described by
several writers, especially by the "Monasticon," where their
antiquity and original is fully set forth. The outside of the
church is as plain and coarse as if the founders had abhorred
ornaments, or that William of Wickham had been a Quaker, or at
least a Quietist. There is neither statue, nor a niche for a
statue, to be seen on all the outside; no carved work, no spires,
towers, pinnacles, balustrades, or anything; but mere walls,
buttresses, windows, and coigns necessary to the support and order
of the building. It has no steeple, but a short tower covered
flat, as if the top of it had fallen down, and it had been covered
in haste to keep the rain out till they had time to build it up
again.

But the inside of the church has many very good things in it, and
worth observation; it was for some ages the burying-place of the
English Saxon kings, whose RELIQUES, at the repair of the church,
were collected by Bishop Fox, and being put together into large
wooden chests lined with lead were again interred at the foot of
the great wall in the choir, three on one side, and three on the
other, with an account whose bones are in each chest. Whether the
division of the RELIQUES might be depended upon, has been doubted,
but is not thought material, so that we do but believe they are all
there.