Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: apparition the body was disinterred, a coroner's inquest held, and a verdict returned to the effect thnt the boy had been " strangled." This verdict appears to havo been mainly arrived at in consequence of the depositions of two women " of good repute " that two days after the corpse was found they saw it, and discovered a " black list" round its neck; and likewise of the joiner who put the body into the coffin, and who had an opportunity of observing it, as the shroud was not put on in the usual way, but was in two pieces, one laid under and the other over the body. A " chirurgeon " who gave evidence could not or would not positively affirm to the jury that there was any dislocation of the neck. So far as can be learnt, no steps were taken to bring anyone to justice on account of the suggested death by violence of the lad. BISHAM ABBEY. Bisham Abbey, in Berkshire, was formerly the family seat of the Hobbys, and about the first half of the sixteenth century was in possession of Sir Thomas Hobby, or Hoby, a man of no slight reputation for learning in those days. He married Elizabeth, the third daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, who shared the general fame of her family for intellectual qualifications. When Sir Thomas went to France as ambassador forQueen Elizabeth his wife accompanied him, and on his death abroad in 1566 Lady Hoby brought his body home and had it interred in a mortuary chapel at Bisham. Subsequently she married John, Lord Russell. By her first husband the Lady Hoby is said to have had a son who, when quite young, displayed the most intense antipathy to every kind of study; and such was his repugnance to writing, that in his fits of obstinacy he would wilfully and deliberately blot his writing-books. This conduct enraged his mother, whose whole family were note...