When in Lichfield Cathedral, where we saw Chantrey’s monument of Bishop Ryder, we had omitted to ask for particulars about him, but here we were told that he was appointed Rector of Lutterworth in 1801, and had been a benefactor to the town.  He was made Canon of Windsor in 1808, Dean of Wells 1812, Bishop of Gloucester 1815, and finally became Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry.  He died at Hastings in 1836, and as Chantrey himself died in 1841, his monument of Bishop Ryder, that had impressed us so deeply, must have been one of his latest and best productions.

[Illustration:  LUTTERWORTH CHURCH]

Lutterworth was the property of William the Conqueror in 1086, and it was King Edward III who presented the living to Wiclif, who was not only persecuted by the Pope, but also by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London.  On two occasions he had to appear before the Papal Commission, and if he had not been the personal friend of John o’ Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the fourth son of the King Edward who had given him the living, and probably the most powerful man in England next to the king, he would inevitably have suffered martyrdom.  He was equally fortunate in the following reign, as John o’ Gaunt was uncle to Richard II, the reigning monarch, under whose protection he was spared to finish his great work and to translate the Holy Bible so that it could be read in the English language.

We went to see the bridge which crossed the small stream known as the River Swift, for it was there that Wiclif’s bones were burned and the ashes thrown into the stream.  The historian related that they did not remain there, for the waters of the Swift conveyed them to the River Avon, the River Avon to the River Severn, the Severn to the narrow seas, and thence into the wide ocean, thus becoming emblematic of Wiclif’s doctrines, which in later years spread over the wide, wide world.

A well-known writer once humorously observed that the existence of a gallows in any country was one of the signs of civilisation, but although we did not see or hear of any gallows at Lutterworth, there were other articles, named in the old books of the constables, which might have had an equally civilising influence, especially if they had been used as extensively as the stocks and whipping-post as recorded in a list of vagrants who had been taken up and whipped by Constables Cattell and Pope, from October 15th, 1657, to September 30th, 1658.  The records of the amounts paid for repairs to the various instruments of torture, which included a lock-up cage for prisoners and a cuck, or ducking-stool, in which the constables ducked scolding wives and other women in a deep hole near the river bridge, led us to conclude that they must have been extensively used.