EVESHAM AND BENGEWORTH. 159

the Prior and Convent of Worcester. The population of Bengeworth has increased fivefold since the days of Elizabeth.

Evesham has contributed to society many eminent men. Its abbey furnished several priors to Worcester monastery and one or two bishops to the see. Hugh de Evesham was made a cardinal in 1280. About the same time, Elias of Evesham wrote a "Chronicle" and a "Life of Becket." John of Evesham; prior of Worcester, was a most ambitious man, who first obtained the use of the mitre for the Worcester priors, but at length proved to be a very indifferent character. Walter Odington, a monk, was a great mathematician and philosopher in the time of Henry III. Joseph, another monk, wrote a collection of letters. John Feckenham was also a monk here, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's. John Watson, first a doctor of medicine, then Bishop of Winchester, 1575. Major Bernard, born at Evesham in 1657, suffered forty years' imprisonment as a Jacobite. John Deacle has been named before. Dr. Hopkins, prebendary of Worcester in 1675, was a native of Evesham; he was a great antiquary and collector of historical materials. William Tindal, the historian of Evesham, and author of other works, in the last century; and I really must not forget the good old Dr. Cooper, J.P., the very last of the pigtails, who has not so long disappeared from amongst us, and whose venerable form I still see occasionally with the mind's eye on the bench of our County Quarter Sessions.

"The Vale of Evesham," as before said, is a renowned district for beauty and fertility of produce. Habingdon says : "Worcestershire, having showed you her large pastures for sheepe on Broadway hills, presenteth you next with as ritch a granarie of come as any in England, being the Vale of Evisham." There are many eminent agriculturists here, and the increased produce in all crops has been wonderfully great of late years, especially since the establishment of the local Agricultural Society. No wonder, then, that a damsel so rich and attractive was somewhat coy when wooed by her lover,