158 EVESHAM AND BENGEWORTH.

George Fox himself narrowly escaped a very high pair of stocks prepared especially for him. Justices Garner and Martin were among the most violent of the magistrates, and encouraged the people to maltreat the poor Quakers. The old cell in which they were confined is still in existence under the end of an ancient dwelling-house near the entrance to the churchyard from the Market Place. Evesham was the first place in the county visited by John Wesley, and although the magistrates encouraged the mob against him, he escaped injury, and won the hearts of the common people.

A free grammar school was founded at Evesham by James I - a very poor endowment, and the only instalment of compensation to the town for the loss of the great abbey, with its splendid revenue, equal to some £80,000 of our present money yearly! There are of course National and other schools in the town, and in Bengeworth is another free school, founded early in the last century, by Mr. John Deacle, a native of Evesham, who made his fortune in London somewhat in the Dick Whittington style.

Bengeworth is a pleasant suburb, possessing a very rickety gray old church, chiefly of the fifteenth century, Late Perpendicular, with a few remains of an Early English building. The proper restoration of this church, which has but little in it to admire, would involve an outlay nearly equal to that of building a new one, so the latter course has been decided on, a new site having been given by Lord Northwick, who is a large landowner and the reputed lord of the manor. The other principal landowners here are Miss Porter, F. Darwin, J. P. Lord, and J. P. Dunn, Esqrs. Mrs. Marsden is patron of the living, value £164 ; Rev. S. E. Marsdeu vicar; church accommodation, 700 ; free seats, 270. Acreage of the parish, 1,207. Bengeworth anciently belonged to the Church of Worcester, but the crafty abbots of Evesbam managed to get a large slice of it unjustly, and for a long time it formed a bone of contention, until at length the abbot consented to perform proper service and acknowledgment for it to