The unhappy monarch, learning too
late the dire effects of groundless suspicion, paid a visit in the
following year to his deeply-wounded stepfather, the brother of the
dauntless hero whom he had so lately sacrificed.
"It is stated that the King arrived at Knowsley on or about the 24th
June 1496, and then went to Lathom; whence, after remaining a month with
his mother the Countess, and the Earl her husband, he returned to
London.
"This brings us within one year of the date on the tenor bell, and I
cannot help thinking that its emblems have some allusion to the royal
visit to Knowsley and Lathom. It becomes, however, necessary to attempt
to account for the second date, 1576, on the same bell. And here we can
again only conjecture. It is not improbable that the original bell was
injured; that, prior to breaking up, its inscription and emblems were
carefully moulded, and a new one cast, with the old metal, in the year
1576, care being taken that a copy of the inscription, &c., should fill
the same situation in the present bell, which the originals occupied in
the former."[11]
It may not be deemed irrelevant to mention here a tradition which exists
relative to the visit of King Henry VII.
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