166 so
SOME RECORDS
OF THE MONMOUTH MISSION
I walked over, and saw the stones reared against the boundary
wall. The Vicar happened to call upon me, with his wife, a few days after on some business ; so I asked him why he had removed the Bishop's tombstone. He said he did not think it right to have a Romish " bishop's tombstone there. I said , " Are you not going to replace it ? " He replied, " No, certainly not ". Then I said , " will write to my friend the Rev. Dr. Oliver , of Exeter, who has published the history of Bishop Prichard with a full description of his
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Lordship's burial there and the inscription on the stone , and I will get him to put a footnote in the next edition, to the effect that, through the bigotry of the Rev. Ellis Everett , this monument was removed in such a year " . He then said he would have it replaced said, immediately . If you don't , I will hand down your name to posterity like Pontius Pilate's in the Creed " . It has been replaced , and his successor , Canon Harding , I am told , still repeats the anecdote to visitors . The Breviaries of Bishop Prichard were given to me , and I left the two large quarto volumes in the Presbytery library at Monmouth . One of them was mended at the back with a harp- string . The family portraits † I sent to Mr. Herbert of Clytha , but that of the Bishop was sent to Downside. The oak bedstead on which he was said to have died I converted into a reredos to Father Kemble's altar, which I placed in the tribune of my church at Monmouth . You must please excuse my shaky writing, being in my 83rd year.
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Collections, p. 389. *+ They represent the Misses Bridget, Catherine and Winifred Powel of Perthir.
Two large oil paintings , of the Crucifixion and Saint Catharine , from the domestic chapel of Perthir, are now in MonmouthCatholic church. There are also a portrait of the Rev. John Williams of Perthîr and the Grange ( vide ante), and a small portrait on copper of Bishop Matthew Prichard , V.A.