above five years old, had got up the steeple by
themselves, and having lost their way down, come to the place where the
great bells hang. Here there was a large round space left purposely in
the arch, when first built, for the drawing up bells or any other
things, as there should be occasion. This place used to be safely
closed before, but now it lay wide open, and was between thirty and
forty yards off from the ground. The two children, coming hither and
finding this passage, one, out of his childish simplicity, was for
jumping down: No, (saies the other) let us rather swarm down, there
being a bell rope then hanging down through that place to the
clockhouse below. Now, this last they did, and a gentleman walking
there beneath at that time, sees two children come with that swiftness
down the rope, like arrows from a bow, who were both taken up for dead,
on the place. This hapned on a Sunday ith' afternoon, in sermon time.
The news coming into the parish church, that two children falling off
from the minster were slain, the congregation were exceedingly
disorder'd, so that the preacher could not go on for a time, every
parent fearing it might be their own childrens case; till at length
they understood the truth and certainty of all. For it pleased God by a
strange and wonderful providence to preserve both these children,
having no hurt but only their hands galled by the rope, and their feet
a little stunted by the fall from the clock-house, where they were
thrown off, the rope being fastened there, and this some four or five
yards high. The persons, I suppose, are both living still; and one of
them, (whose father was then one of the chief tradesmen of the town)
since a grave minister, and rector of a parish in Northamptonshire.

"The other thing that hapned of more fatal consequences was this:--it
being that time of the year when young lads are busie in rifling
jackdaws nests to get their young, a scholar of the free-school, a son
to a parliament officer, was got upon the top of the minster about this
employment; who going along the cieling in the body of the church, and
treading unwarily on some rotten boards, fell down from thence, upon
the loft where the organ now stands, having his pockets filled with
those inauspicious birds, and with the fall from so great a height, was
slain outright and never stirred more.

"These two things hapned much about the same time, and in the time of
that publick confusion and disorder