The parish book records that in the time of George I a boy broke it off, melted it down, and was publicly flogged in consequence, the last time, apparently, that the whipping-post was used.

But Gabriel still twists about as manfully as he did when old Peter, the famous smith, fashioned and set him up with his own hand in the last year of King Henry VIII, as it is said to commemorate the fact that on this spot stood the stakes to which Cicely Harflete, Lady of Blossholme, and her foster-mother, Emlyn, were chained to be burned as witches.
So it is with everything at Blossholme, a place that Time has touched but lightly.

The fields, or many of them, bear the same names and remain identical in their shape and outline.

The old farmsteads and the few halls in which reside the gentry of the district, stand where they always stood.

The glorious tower of the Abbey still points upwards to the sky, although bells and roof are gone, while half-a-mile away the parish church that was there before it--having been rebuilt indeed upon Saxon foundations in the days of William Rufus--yet lies among its ancient elms.