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Then she turned to the table by her side, picked up a note and read it through. "Lord Southover tells me here," she said, "that you are just a pal of his who wants to make my acquaintance. He doesn't say why." "Is that necessary?" Francis asked good-naturedly. She moved in her chair a little nervously, crossing and uncrossing her legs more than once.
It is locally notorious that the black marble slab which formerly covered the remains of Gundrada, beautifully carved and bordered with nine Latin verses in her honour cut in the rim and down the middle, was discovered in 1775 in Isfield Church, misappropriated as a tombstone over one of the Shirley family, and by the care of Sir William Burrel removed to the church of Southover, immediately adjoining the ruins of the Priory.
Not only his bones, but much of his thick woollen gown, his under-garment of linen, and his leather shoes have been preserved. These, too, have been carefully transferred to Southover Church.
Whatever Lewes may have been before the Conquest that revolution saw it pass into the power of one of the greatest of William's nobles, that William de Warenne who was his son-in-law. It was he and his wife Gundrada, generally supposed to be the Conqueror's daughter, who founded the Priory of St Pancras at Southover.
Another famous resident of Lewes was John Evelyn, who spent a great part of his schooldays in the Grammer School at Southover. Here also was educated John Pell, the famous mathematician. A house at the end of the town on the Newhaven road belonged to the Shelleys, and Dr. Johnson once stayed here on his way to the Thrales in Brighton.
It is a curiously un-English vision you get from the High Street for instance, looking back upon the hill or from the little borgo of Southover or from Cliffe, and yet there can be few more solidly English places than Lewes.
It will be best, however, to take the Newhaven road from Southover which hugs the foot of the Downs and in a short two miles reaches Iford. About half-way a turning to the right leads to the snug little village of Kingston with the hills rising closely all round. This place was once the property of Sir Philip Sidney.
A chapel specially designed to receive the leaden caskets was erected in excellent taste at St. John's, Southover, in 1847. The names are plainly decipherable. The tombstone on the floor is that of Gundrada, brought here from Isfield. The effigy in the wall of the chapel is conjectured to be that of John de Braose, who died in 1232.
Not one of my own special little pets, I hope?" "Her name is Miss Daisy Hyslop," Francis announced. Lord Charles Southover pursed his lips and whistled. He glanced at Francis sideways. "Is this the beginning of a campaign amongst the butterflies," he enquired, "because, if so, I feel it my duty, uncle, to address to you a few words of solemn warning. Miss Daisy Hyslop is hot stuff."
But they respected the dead, the names William and Gundrada were upon the coffins which their profane mattocks unearthed, and the reader may see them at Southover Church. In the freshness of a May morning Hubert and his new uncle, Sir Nicholas Harengod, dismounted at the gate of the priory, having left their train at the hostelry up in the town.
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