was fast asleep, so they got together all their ropes and quietly tied his limbs and fastened him to the earth; then, attacking him with their knives and axes, they managed to kill him.  This was a great event, and to celebrate their victory they cut his figure in the chalk cliff to the exact life-size, so that future generations could see what a monster they had slain.  This was the legend; and perhaps, like the White Horses, of which there were several, the Giant might have been cut out in prehistoric times, or was it possible he could have grown larger during the centuries that had intervened, for he was 180 feet in height, and the club that he carried in his hand was 120 feet long!  Cerne Abbas was a very old place, as an early Benedictine Abbey was founded there in 987, the first Abbot being Aelfric, who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury.  It was at Cerne that Queen Margaret sought refuge after landing at Weymouth in 1471.  Her army had been defeated at Barnet on the very day she landed; but, accompanied by a small force of French soldiers, she marched on until she reached Tewkesbury, only to meet there with a final defeat, and to lose her son Edward, who was murdered in cold blood, as well as her husband Henry VI.  Very little remained of the old abbey beyond its ancient gateway, which was three stories high, and displayed two very handsome double-storeyed oriel windows.

We now followed the downward course of the River Cerne, and walking along a hard but narrow road soon reached the village of Charminster.  The church here dated from the twelfth century, but the tower was only built early in the sixteenth century by Sir Thomas Trenchard of Wolfeton, whose monogram T.T. appeared on it as well as in several places in the church, where some very old monuments of the Trenchard family were also to be seen.  Wolfeton House was associated with a very curious incident, which materially affected the fortunes of one of England’s greatest ducal families.  In 1506 the Archduke Philip of Austria and Joanna his wife sailed from Middelburg, one of the Zeeland ports, to take possession of their kingdom of Castile in Spain.  But a great storm came on, and their ship became separated from the others.  Becoming unmanageable, it drifted helplessly down the Channel, and to make matters worse took fire just when the storm was at its height, and narrowly escaped foundering.  Joanna had been shipwrecked on a former occasion, and when her husband came to inform her of the danger, she calmly put on her best dress and, with all her money and jewels about her, awaited her fate, thinking that when her body was found they would see she was a lady of rank and give her a suitable burial.  With great difficulty the ship, now a miserable wreck, was brought into the port of Weymouth, and the royal pair were taken out with all speed and conveyed to the nearest nobleman’s residence, which happened to be that of Sir Thomas Trenchard, near Dorchester, about ten miles distant.  They