uilt of Portland stone; while Purbeck marble
shafts are used in the north porch, and of the fine white stone from
Caen in Normandy, the Salisbury and Draper chantries in the interior
are constructed. These, though now about four hundred years old, are
absolutely sharp in all the carving. There is a tombstone to the north
of the porch which bears a curious inscription as follows:--"We were
not slayne but raysd, raysd not to life but to be byried twice by men
of strife. What rest could the living have when dead had none agree
amongst you heere we ten are one. Hen. Rogers died Aprill 17 1641."
This inscription has been variously explained. It is said by some that
Cromwell, afterwards Protector, was at Christchurch, and dug up some
lead coffins to make bullets for his soldiers, and flung the bodies out
of ten such coffins into one grave; but this is manifestly incorrect.
Oliver Cromwell was never at Christchurch, though Thomas Cromwell
probably was, and here, as elsewhere, the two have been confounded.
In many cases poor Oliver has had to bear the blame for destruction
caused to churches by his less well-known namesake, the great destroyer
of religious houses in the days of the eighth Henry. But neither of
them had anything to do with this tomb, nor were the Parliamentary
forces guilty of tampering with the coffins of the dead in the parish
burying-ground at Christchurch. The very date precludes the idea, for
the civil war did not begin till more than fifteen months after the
date carved on this stone; and we may give the Roundheads credit for
more sense than to be digging up coffins to make their bullets with,
when there was abundance of lead to be had for the stripping on the roof
of the Priory Church. A far more probable explanation is that which
states that the ten bodies here interred were those of ten shipwrecked
sailors, who were first buried on the cliffs near the spot where they
were washed ashore; but the lord of the manor, when he heard thereof,
waxed exceeding wroth, and a strife ensued between him and one Henry
Rogers, Mayor of Christchurch, the former insisting on their removal to
consecrated ground, the latter objecting to the removal, probably on the
ground of expense; but in the end the lord of the manor had his way. But
the mayor, to save the cost of ten separate graves, had them all buried
in one, and placed this inscription over their remains as a protest
against the conduct of the lord of the manor in mov