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This young widow was a woman not only of high birth, great riches, and exceptional beauty, but also of remarkable wit, and, as if all this were not enough, she had, in addition, a violent temper and an obstinate will. This Coke found out in her conduct respecting a daughter who eventually became Lady Purbeck, the heroine of our little story.
We soon reached that ruined cottage of which Elzevir had spoken, and in what had once been an oven, found the compass safe enough as Ratsey had promised. Then on again over the solitary hills, not speaking ourselves, and neither seeing light in window nor hearing dog stir, until we reached that strange defile which men call the Gates of Purbeck.
The massive buttress supporting the choir wall, at the head of the steps to the undercroft, is divided into stages by a flat niche or panel with side-shafts of Purbeck marble. This was found, in 1840, to contain a mural painting of the Crucifixion, with the Blessed Virgin and St. John at the foot of the cross.
The vertical lines which mark these divisions are the triple attached vaulting shafts. They support the transverse ribs of the stone vault; and from their carved Purbeck marble capitals spring also the wall and diagonal ribs. A Purbeck string-course in each case separates the triforium gallery from the arcade below and from the clerestory above. The nave arcades have round arches.
Within, it consists of three openings widely splayed; the thin stone over the central lancet, beneath the surrounding moulding, is pierced with a quatrefoil opening; over the two side lancets the corresponding openings have six foliations; between the three lights and outside the outer ones, flush with the wall, are clusters of shafts of Purbeck marble, from which spring mouldings enclosing the lights in a most peculiar fashion: these follow the curves of the tops of the lancets, but before meeting they are returned in the form of cusps, and then are carried round the upper foliated openings.
The church stands high, perhaps as a guide, over a woodland churchyard, and is the evident successor of a Norman building, as its south doorway and font of Purbeck bear witness and the chancel arch too, unless indeed this be earlier still.
Aldhelm first came to Purbeck, he bound the old Pagan gods under a ban deep in these passages, but that the worst of all the crew was a certain demon called the Mandrive, who watched over the best of the black marble. And that was why such marble might only be used in churches or for graves, for if it were not for this holy purpose, the Mandrive would have power to strangle the man that hewed it.
From their own part of England came many that they knew; among the rest, Lord and Lady Purbeck, the Earl and Countess of Wessex, Sir John Grebe, the Drenkhards, Lady Stourvale, the old Duke of Hamptonshire, the Bishop of Melchester, the Dean of Exonbury, and other lesser lights of Court, pulpit, and field.
He eventually obtained a patent from Oliver Cromwell to change his name for that of his wife, declaring that he hated the name of Villiers on account of the mischief which several of those who bore it had done to the Commonwealth; and as to the title of Viscount Purbeck, he disclaimed it with contempt.
Cyprides from the Lower Purbeck. a. Cypris Purbeckensis, Forbes. b. Same magnified. c. Cypris punctata, Forbes. d, e. This is the beginning of the inferior division, which is about 80 feet thick.
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