LINDRIDOE, PENSAX, KNIGHTON, AND NEWNHAM. 249

lives but for the good services of the monks of Worcester, who advanced large sums of money for them, and in return received certain lands in Lindridge. The Penells lost their property here by defending the cause of the Stuarts, but they are immortalised in the church by extraordinary epitaphs of the seventeenth century. The last heir male of the Lowes, in 1724, left a clause in his will that the house of his ancestors - at the Lowe, whence they derived their name - should not be destroyed, but kept in repair for ever by the owner of the estate. It is now occupied by a labourer. The hamlets or places of Doddenhill and Woodson also gave names to ancient families. Josiah Sandby, incumbent of Lindridge in 1716, was a prebend of Worcester, chaplain to a regiment in Flanders, for some time governor of Brussels, and also secretary to the brother of the great Duke of Marlborough. Lindridge vicarage in 1751 was taken by another celebrated prebend of Worcester - Richard Meadowcourt, an accomplished critic, author of some sermons which greatly stirred up the Vigornians to the necessity of "considering their ways," and a man who much preferred using his legs to travelling in "the state prison of a coach." In the present days of effeminacy, helplessness, and paltry pride, the memory of Mr. Meadowcourt will be revered by the writer of these sketches, if only for the incident last mentioned. Another incumbent of Lindridge was Dr. Arthur Onslow, nephew of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Dean of Worcester, and a great pluralist, who died at Lindridge in 1817, and was buried in the Cathedral crypt. The late Vicar, the Rev. Canon Benson, was formerly Master of the Temple, London, and so celebrated as a preacher that when his term of residence at Worcester Cathedral came on the congregations could scarcely obtain standing room.

In the roll of household expenses of Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, thirteenth century, it is stated that the Bishop in his visitation tour came to Lindridge (then, as now, in his diocese). It seems that the living had been both a rectory and a vicarage, but was at that time united under one