breath stops; my life is gone; I feel myself a-dying downwards."

Here are some of the bequests:--"I give my iron-work to those people
which make good swords, at Hounslow; for I am all Spanish iron and
steele to the back.

"I give my body and stones to those masons that cannot telle how to
frame the like againe, to keepe by them for a patterne; for in time
there will be more crosses in London than ever there was yet.

"I give my ground whereon I stood to be a free market-place.

"JASPER CROSSE, HIS EPITAPH.

'I look for no praise when I am dead,
For, going the right way, I never did tread;
I was harde as an alderman's doore,
That's shut and stony-hearted to the poore.
I never gave alms, nor did anything
Was good, nor e'er said, God save the King.
I stood like a stock that was made of wood,
And yet the people would not say I was good;
And if I tell them plaine, they're like to mee--
Like stone to all goodnesse. But now, reader, see
Me in the dust, for crosses must not stand,
There is too much cross tricks within the land;
And, having so done never any good,
I leave my prayse for to be understood;
For many women, after this my losse,
Will remember me, and still will be crosse--
Crosse tricks, crosse ways, and crosse vanities,
Believe the Crosse speaks truth, for here he lyes.

"I was built of lead, iron, and stone. Some say that divers of the
crowns and sceptres are of silver, besides the rich gold that I was
gilded with, which might have been filed and saved, yielding a good
value. Some have offered four hundred, some five hundred; but they that
bid most offer one thousand for it. I am to be taken down this very
Tuesday; and I pray, good reader, take notice by the almanack, for the
sign falls just at this time, to be in the feete, to showe that the
crosse must be laide equall with the grounde, for our feete to tread on,
and what day it was demolished; that is, on the day when crosses were
first invented and set up; and so I leave the rest to your
consideration."

Howell, the letter writer, lamenting the demolition of so ancient and
visible a monument, says trumpets were blown all the while the crowbars
and pickaxes were working. Archbishop Laud in his "Diary" notes that on
May 1st the fanatical mob broke the stained-glass windows of his Lambeth
chapel, and tore up the steps of his communion table.

"On Tuesday," this fanatic of an