in solemn procession
on the 15th of July. It rained, however, so violently on that day, and
for forty days succeeding, as "had hardly ever been seen," which made
them set aside their design as heretical and blasphemous; and instead,
they erected a chapel over his grave, at which many miracles are said to
have been wrought.

Another writer tells us that "St. Swithin, a holy bishop of Winchester,
about the year 860, was called the weeping St. Swithin, for that, about
his feast, Praesepe and Aselli, rainy constellations, arise _cosmically_,
and commonly cause rain." The legend attached to its name is perhaps
almost the only particular attraction of this little church.

The church of the holy St. Lawrence stands upon the spot of ground that
in ancient days, when Norwich was a fishing town, was the quay or
landing-place for all the herrings brought hither, the tithe of which was
so considerable when it belonged to the bishops of the East Angles, that
when Alfric, the bishop, granted the key staithe, with the adjoining
mansion, to Bury Abbey, about 1038, the abbey, upon building the church,
had a last of herrings reserved to it, to be paid them yearly. This last
of herrings was compounded for by the celerer of the convent, about the
time of Henry the Third, for a pension of forty shillings, which was
annually paid until the time of Henry the Seventh, and then done away
with, on account of the meanness of its profits.

On the sides of the arch of the door in the west are two carvings, one
representing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, the other that of St. Edmund,
who is seen in a rather mutilated condition, (in more senses than one)
his head lying at some distance in a parcel of bushes, while the Danes
are shooting arrows into his body, alluding to that portion of the legend
which says that when they could not kill him with arrows, Hunguar the
Danish leader ordered them to smite off his head, and carry and throw it
among the thickest thorns of the adjacent wood, which they did; but a
wolf finding it, instead of devouring it, kept it from all beasts and
birds of prey, till it was found by the Christians and buried with his
body, and that in a surprising manner.

In the fifteenth century, three "Sisters of Charity," called the Sisters
of St. Lawrence, dwelt in a tenement by the churchyard. In 1593, the
copes were turned into pall cloths, and in 1643 the painted glass of the
windows was smashed, and other considerable damag