beasts lie in the porch."]

From one cause or another it is pretty certain that for every old
gravestone now to be seen twenty or more have disappeared.

In Gough's "Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain" many instances are
given of the wanton and wholesale destruction of church and churchyard
memorials, even late in the eighteenth century. In some cases the
church officers, as already stated, gave public notice prior to
removal of gravestones, in order that persons claiming an interest
in the remains might repair and restore them; but more frequently the
stones were cleared away and destroyed, or put somewhere out of sight
without observation. Sometimes this was the act of the Rector; at
other times individuals, exercising rights of ownership, have done the
disgraceful work, and occasionally the whole of the parishioners have
been implicated. Gough says that the inhabitants of Letheringham in
Suffolk, being under the necessity of putting their church into decent
order, chose to rebuild it, and sold the whole fabric, monuments and
all, to the building contractor, who beat the stones to powder, and
sold as much at three shillings a pound for terrace (?) as came to
eighty guineas. A portion of the fragments was rescued by the Rev.
Mr. Clubbe, and erected in form of a pyramid in the vicarage garden of
Brandeston, in the same county, with this inscription:

[Transcriber's note: the following is enclosed in a narrow border]

Indignant Reader!
These monumental remains are not, as thou
mayest suppose, the
Ruins of Time,