362 CITY OF WORCESTER.

author of the great English Magna Charta (for which he gets no thanks) was interred here, at his own request, in 1216, and lay quietly enough till the latter end of the last century, when the Dean and Chapter and some local antiquaries were seized with a sudden desire to look in the face the hero of Runnymede, and the patron of Worcester and its monastery. His monument was opened and the body found. Prince Arthur's Mortuary Chapel, with its interesting sculptures of the Florentine school, is the next thing in point of interest, although there are many much earlier remains, including coffin slabs and sculptured figures of bishops, abbots, knights, and ladies, from early in the thirteenth century downwards. Bedstead monuments have been removed from the Lady Chapel into the nave, where they are very unsightly; there are altar tombs, effigies in recesses, Roubiliac's elaborate monument of Bishop Hough, and Mrs. Digby, represented by the less daring but masterly chisel of Chantrey. The tomb of an Abbot of Evesham, in the Lady Chapel, is very remarkable and perhaps unique, for its pastorai staff being unprovided with a crook; and one of the stone effigies under Prince Arthur's Chapel exhibits one of the earliest known instances of beads. But probably second to none of these in interest is the little flat stone on the pavement of the north-west cloister, inscribed with the thrilling word "Miserrimus!" It has been stated that this stone covers the remains of the Rev. Thomas Morris, who, at the Revolution, refusing to acknowledge the King's supremacy, was deprived of his preferment, and depended for the remainder of his life on the benevolence of different Jacobites; and that at his death requested that the only inscription on his grave might be "Miserrimus." Thomas Bird, Esq., of Holly Green, Severn Stoke, has kindly sent me some extracts from the will of the Rev. Thomas Maurice who lived in the precincts of Worcester Cathedral, and who died in 1748. If this be the same individual it would appear that his pecuniary circumstances, at all events, were not BO desperate, as he left several houses