Tower against spire was, in the end, likely to leave the parties without
a church in answer to their prayers, had not the happy suggestion
offered itself in the shape of a pair of these campanile structures
suited to the taste of each.
That the foregoing is an idle and impertinent invention there is little
need to show, inasmuch as both tower and spire might still have been
built to satisfy the whim of the old ladies, though placed in the usual
manner, one serving as a substratum to the other. A more probable
solution is the following, though it may be as far from the truth:--At
the dissolution of the priory of Burscough in the time of our great
reformer Henry the Eighth--who, like many modern pretenders to this
name, was more careful to reform the inaccuracies of others than his
own--the bells were removed to Ormskirk; but the small tower beneath the
spire not being sufficiently capacious, the present square steeple was
added, and the wonder perpetuated to this day.
De Poininges, on crossing the churchyard, met there a personage of no
less note than Thomas the Clerk, or Thomas le Clerke, retiring from some
official duties, arrayed in his white surplice and little quaint
skull-cap.
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