timately associated with
the name and genius of Chatterton: no saint in the calendar could have
shed over it such an interest; and beautiful as it is, "the pride of
Bristowe and the Westerne Land," how many visit it for its beauty alone?
This is rather hard for the clericals: they are unwilling to forget that
Chatterton was an impostor and a suicide; and to have their church
surrounded by a halo from such a _source_! bah! They have done what they
could by removing his monument from _consecrated_ ground and depriving
it of its inscription.

In an old chest left to moulder in a room over the north porch of this
church Chatterton professed to find the Rowley manuscripts. In this
room, "here, in the full but fragile enjoyment of his brief and illusory
existence, he stored the treasure-house of his memory with the thoughts
that, teeming over his pages, have enrolled his name among the great in
the land of poetry and song. Happy here, ere his first joyous
aspirations were repressed--ere the warm and genial emotions of his
heart were checked--before time had dissipated his idle dreams, and
neglect, contempt and distress had fastened on his mind, and hurried him
onward to his untoward destiny."[3]

This church is one of the finest examples of the Perpendicular Gothic:
it has been carefully restored, the work extending over thirty years.
The most interesting monuments are those of William Canynge the younger,
the great Bristol merchant, who lies buried here with his wife, his
almoner, his brewer, his cook and other servants--a goodly family party:
the cook is indicated by a knife and skimmer rudely cut upon a flat
stone. There are two effigies of Canynge--one in his robes as mayor, the
other in priest's robes; for in his latter years, after the death of his
wife, he took orders, and died in 1474 dean of Westbury.

[Illustration: MUNIMENT-ROOM, ST. MARY REDCLIFF.]

The memorial of Admiral Sir William Penn, father of the founder of
Pennsylvania, is a conspicuous object in the nave--a mural tablet
decorated with his helmet, cuirass, gauntlets, sword, and tattered
banners taken from the Dutch. Near it--a singular object in a church--is
the rib of a whale which is believed to date from the year 1497, there
being an entry in the town records of that year: "Pd. for settynge upp
ye bone of ye bigge fyshe," etc.;[4] and as Sebastian Cabot had then
just discovered Newfoundland, it may have been one of the trophies of
his voyage. But i