John Josias Conybeare (1779-1824): A Pioneering Anglo-Saxonist, with Photographs of His Church and Related Places

"Had he known the late J. J. Conybeare, Professor of Poetry and Anglo-Saxon, Mr. Kemble must have acknowledged that he was a scholar, gentleman, and Christian." T. W.1

John Josias Conybeare was England's premier Anglo-Saxon scholar before the revolution in comparative Germanic philology that reached the country in the 1830s. He came from a family of Anglican churchmen: his great grandfather was vicar of Pinhoe (near Exeter); his grandfather, bishop of Bristol; his father, rector of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, London, where Conybeare was born. 2 After excelling in Westminster School, he entered Christ Church, Oxford, from which he graduated B.A. in 1801 and M.A. in 1804. In 1802 he was ordained a priest in the Church of England, becoming prebendary of Warthill in the Cathedral of York the next year. In 1808 he was elected Oxford's Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon, a position he held until 1812, when he was chosen Oxford's Regius Professor of Poetry and presented to the vicarage of St. John the Baptist Church in Batheaston, Somerset.3

Conybeare was widely learned: in chemistry, mineralogy, geology, theology, history, Latin, French literature, and English literature. During the short course of fifteen years, he amassed more than forty publications, eight of them concerned in some way with Anglo-Saxon.4 He first touched on the subject in his abridged edition and translation of The Romance of Octavian, an Old French poem.5 In contrasting what he considered the unpolished diversity of Middle English with "the stateliness and uniformity of its parent Saxon," Conybeare calls for more scholarship on Anglo-Saxon literature, including an edition of "the Saxon Romance, from which Mr. Turner has given some abstracts," or "the reimpression (in part at least) of the poetical paraphrase of Cædmon."6 The "Saxon Romance" refers to Beowulf; "the poetical paraphrase of Cædmon," to the biblical verse in the Junius Manuscript.7 Given these desiderata, it is not surprising that in 1812 Conybeare acquired a copy of Franciscus Junius's rare edition, Cædmonis Monachi Paraphrasis Poetica Genesios ac præcipuarum Sacræ paginæ Historiarum, abhinc annos M.LXX. Anglo-Saxonicè conscripta, & nunc primùm edita (Amsterdam: Cunrad, 1655) and had it interleaved, intending to use it as the basis for his own edition.8 Nor is it surprising that in 1817 he collated a copy of Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin's recently published text of Beowulf with the manuscript text in the British Library.9

Conybeare worked on other Anglo-Saxon poetry as well. The year 1814 was an annus mirabilis in which he published seven Anglo-Saxon essays. In "Anglo-Saxon Poem on the Battle of Finsborough," The British Bibliographer 4: 261-67, he reprints for the first time The Finnsburg Fragment, originally published by George Hickes in 1703.10 Conybeare is also the first scholar to translate the poem, rendering it in Latin prose and English verse. His six other essays published in 1814 appear in the seventeenth volume of Archaeologia.11 In "Communication of an inedited Fragment of Anglo-Saxon Poetry" (173-75), he is the first to print the text of a late Anglo-Saxon poem, The Grave, which he translates into Latin and English prose.12 In "Account of a Saxon Manuscript preserved in the Cathedral Library at Exeter" (180-88), he brings the Exeter Book to the attention of the scholarly world, prints selections from Christ II, and translates them into Latin prose and English verse. Similarly, in "Further Extract from the Exeter Manuscript" (189-192), he prints selections from Soul and Body II and translates them into Latin prose and English verse. Again, in "Account of an Anglo-Saxon Paraphrase of the Phœnix attributed to Lactantius, contained in the Exeter Manuscript" (193-97), he prints selections from The Phoenix and translates them into Latin prose and English verse.

In his fifth and sixth essays in Archaeologia for 1814, Conybeare turns from editing and translating poetry to poetics. In "Observations on the Metre of the Anglo Saxon Poetry" (257-274), he disagrees with George Hickes that Anglo-Saxon meter is quantitative, like classical Latin verse, and rejects Thomas Tyrwhitt's assertion that the meter is not governed by any rules. Examining macaronic verse in The Phoenix (Anglo-Saxon and Latin) and short excerpts from The Riming Poem (hitherto unknown to scholars), Conybeare concludes that Anglo-Saxon meter is based on stress and essentially trochaic and dactylic. He also introduces the subject of alliteration. In his final essay in Archaeologia, "Further Observations on the Poetry of our Anglo-Saxon Ancestors" (267-274), Conybeare extends his earlier comments on alliteration and meter and also discuses parallelism—what today we call variation.

The seven papers just described contributed more to Anglo-Saxon studies than the combined work of the three men who held Oxford's Anglo-Saxon Professorship before Conybeare and the first eight who immediately followed.13 In short, Conybeare awakened interest in The Finnsburg Fragment, which had lain dormant for a century in Hickes's Thesaurus. He unearthed The Grave, previously unedited, unprinted, and untranslated. He was the first Anglo-Saxon scholar on record to travel to Exeter to see the Exeter Book.14 His edition and translation of select passages of Christ II, Soul and Body II, and The Phoenix from the Exeter Book introduced the poems to the public. His discussion of meter, alliteration, and variation was the most informed and informative to that time in English.

In July 1817 Conybeare wrote a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine in which he outlines a book in progress under the title "Illustrations of the Early History of English and French Poetry."15 The book's main focus, Conybeare says, is on works little known or unknown to earlier scholars. The priority is Beowulf. Conybeare credits Turner with bringing the poem before the public by printing passages from the first six sections, and he acknowledges the deep debt scholars owe Thorkelin for publishing the first edition. He also points out, however, that Turner gives a mistaken view of the poem's subject and that Thorkelin gives a highly inaccurate text and translation. "In order, therefore, to present a full and accurate analysis of this unquestionably the earliest Heroic Poem of Modern Europe," says Conybeare, "the whole has been scrupulously collated with the Cottonian Manuscript, and a great part of necessity re-translated" (103).16 Further, Conybeare says that his book will include an edition of some hitherto unedited poems from the Exeter Book, most notably Widsith. The better to understand the early "Poetical History" of English, he will also treat Anglo-Saxon poems already in print and, if there is room, some later poetry. The section on early French poetry will feature an account of the Rout of Roncesvalles (what we now call The Song of Roland), a copy of which is one of the great treasures in English libraries and apparently the oldest known copy in existence (Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 23). In his final paragraph, Conybeare declares that profits from the book will assist in "the erection of a Parochial School in a village where it is seriously wanted, and where the means of the inhabitants are unfortunately inadequate to the purpose" (104).

Conybeare found his progress on the book too halting amid other demands on his time yet was eager to have the village school built: in 1818 he contributed from his own resources most or all of the funds for its construction.17 But he continued working on the book. By January 1824 he had corrected for the press sixty-four pages in proof and had altered the title from "Illustrations of the Early History of English and French Poetry" to "Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry." We know these details, and others like them, thanks to Frederic Madden's diary.18

Frederic Madden (1801-1873)—later to become the most distinguished Middle English scholar of his day—was the son of William John Madden, Captain of the Royal Marines in Portsmouth.19 Although Frederic showed much academic interest and promise early in life, his family lacked the means to send him to college, and his prospects for a professional career wavered uncertainly. About two months before turning twenty-three, Madden, on his mother's advice, left Portsmouth for an extended visit to relatives. His first stop, in early December 1823, was in London to see his brother, Henry, and their celebrated uncle, Major General Sir George Allen Madden. While there Madden frequented the British Museum and was interviewed for the job of manuscript copyist by Henry Petrie, Keeper of Records at the Tower of London.

Madden's next stop was in Batheaston to visit his other brother, Lewis. At noon on 17 January 1824 good fortune smiled on Madden when the Rev. Mr. Conybeare, "who resides within a hundred yards of my brother's house, honored me by a visit" (diary, 38). "Thus began," says Clubb, "a tragically brief but, on Conybeare's side toward Madden a most generous and stimulating, friendship."20 Although Madden, pleading tired legs, declined to accompany Conybeare to central Bath (about three miles away) to take the waters, he did accept Conybeare's invitation to view his library. During their conversation, Conybeare informed Madden that he and Petrie were intimate friends, that he was working on a book that would include selected passages from Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon and in translation, and that he owned practically "every volume in Saxon literature that had ever been published" (diary, 41-42). After telling Madden that he was free to borrow any volumes he liked, Conybeare departed, leaving Madden alone to survey the collection—"I was lost in surprise and pleasure" (diary, 43).21

On Monday, 19 January, Madden called on Conybeare and steered the conversation to Anglo-Saxon "as I was particularly anxious to learn from him all I could on this subject" (diary, 53). Conybeare obligingly discussed Anglo-Saxon dictionaries, Beowulf, the Exeter Book, and related matters. Near the end of the visit "he very generously put into my hands to read, the proof-sheets of his work he had hitherto received from the printer Richd. Taylor. Few authors would be willing to shew their works in this state, before they had fairly issued from the hands of the printer, & I feel the value of Mr C's confidence in me" (diary, 60a).22

Madden had little chance to read the proofs, however, because the next day Conybeare invited him to see his coin collection and to accompany him to Bath. During their journey Conybeare mentioned that the essays he published in Archaeologia derive from his lectures as Oxford's Professor of Anglo-Saxon. Back in Batheaston, Madden notes, "In the evening I read over the proof sheets of the work Mr. C. has prepared for the press, and which he was good enough to lend me. All that has been printed amounts only to 64 octavo pages, (it is to be published in this form, with a few copies in 4to. to bind up with Warton) and is intitled 'Illustrations of AngloSaxon Poetry' " (diary, 69).23 Madden goes on to describe in detail the contents of the page proofs: on Cædmon's Hymn and Bede's Death-Song (1-8), on Widsith (9-29), and on Beowulf (30-64).

As he proceeded through Conybeare's proofs, Madden was so taken with Beowulf that on 27 January he ordered a copy of Thorkelin's costly edition and resolved to collate the text against the original in the British Museum. The next day, on hearing Madden's plans, "Mr. C. immediately offered to lend me his own copy, with permission to transcribe his MS notes & corrections, with his collation of the text with the Cotton. MS."—an act of generosity "which I believe can not be paralleled" (diary, 87).24 While awaiting his copy of Beowulf, Madden studied Anglo-Saxon grammar from books on loan from Conybeare and continued to pore over the page proofs of Illustrations. Three and a half weeks later, on 24 February, Madden returned the proofs, and Conybeare promised to send over his copy of Beowulf (diary, 142). That evening Madden began copying Conybeare's notes on Thorkelin's edition, finishing the task less than a week later, on 1 March (diary, 146).25 On the evening of 3 March—the day before Conybeare was to leave Batheaston—Madden stopped by the vicarage to return Conybeare's copy of Thorkelin. "He was not at home, which I was sorry for, as I wished to thank him again for his attentions, & for his great liberality in offering me the use of his library after his departure for Oxford. I shall miss him very much; indeed it is owning to his kindness that my stay has been rendered so pleasant" (diary, 147-48). Near the end of March, Madden himself left Batheaston.

In April, supported by a recommendation from Conybeare, Madden began working for Petrie as a copyist in London.26 At the same time Conybeare was giving, or preparing to give, the prestigious Bampton Lectures in Divinity at Oxford. Madden and Conybeare exchanged letters and planned to meet in June, when the lectures would be done and Conybeare came to London to consult his printer, Richard Taylor, concerning Illustrations.27 Conybeare gave his first lecture no earlier than early April and the eighth and final lecture probably no later than mid-May.28 By statute the lectures had to be printed within two months after they were delivered. Conybeare must have submitted his copy to the printer at once: the proofs—some 340 pages—were in Conybeare's hands by early June. On Monday, 7 June, he returned them to Samuel Collingwood, the printer at the University of Oxford, saying, "I enclose the proofs, with the Title, Preface, and Contents. Can you have the goodness to let me have the proofs of these latter by Wednesday night's coach, as I leave town on Friday. I will then forward the Errata, and any supplementary Notes which may seem needful, with all speed."29 Conybeare wrote the note to Collingwood from his London lodgings on 27 Gower Street. He expected an immediate turnaround from the press. The proofs would have arrived in Oxford in the small hours of Tuesday morning.30 If sent out Tuesday night, the requested proofs of the title, preface, and table of contents would have arrived back in London on Wednesday. On Thursday, 10 June, Conybeare turned forty-five and went to dine at Stephen Groombridge's house on Eliot Place, Blackheath, about eight miles from Gower Street.31 He also sent word to Madden that he would be pleased to meet him the next day, Friday.32

But Conybeare did not return to Gower Street on Friday, nor did he send his regrets to Madden, who, after completing a stint of scribal work for Petrie at the British Museum on Tuesday, 15 June, decided to call on Conybeare:

I went once more to Gower St. to enquire after Mr Conybeare, and to my very, very deep sorrow & surprise, heard he was indeed no more! He was taken ill on Friday at dinner, and died on Saturday night! How extraordinary!—that the three people I so lately have met, & have been in habits of intimacy with, should have gone! —Poor Mrs Saurin—Lake Allen—& now Mr Conybeare,—whose kindness to me I shall ever remember with feelings of gratitude: Oh Death! how sudden—how singular a phenomenon thou art! The very day poor Mr C had appointed to see me—he died!33

After noting that William Daniel Conybeare, Conybeare's brother, and Charles Davies, John Conybeare's brother-in-law, had come to London, Madden concludes, "Poor man! I am vexed to the soul at his decease,—& it has been so sudden that it scarcely appears credible."

The funeral was held in Batheaston. An anonymous obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine preserves a firsthand account.

He was buried on the 20th in his own Church-yard, in a spot selected by himself. His remains were followed by his brother, the Rev. Wm. Conybeare, and by his brother-in-law, the Rev. Chas. Davies, as chief mourners; and by other relations and friends. The principal parishioners assembled at a house opposite, joined the train as it left the Vicarage; clergy and gentry from the neighbourhood likewise attended; and the church and church-yard were filled with the inhabitants of the parish of all classes. The Rev. Mr. Hutchins, the Curate, received the body, but from the time of its entering the Church the Rev. Chas. Davies undertook the melancholy duty of performing the service. The appearance of the mournful scene, and its several circumstances, strongly marked the deep sense entertained by the parish and by the neighbourhood of the loss they had all sustained. The multitudes who attended the interment, both rich and poor, bore just testimony to the character of him who had been truly the father of the parish, the friend of the poor, the comforter of the afflicted, and a bright example for the profession of which he was a member.34

Three weeks after Conybeare's death, John Britton dedicated to him The History and Antiquities of Bath Abbey Church: including Biographical Anecdotes of the most distinguished Persons interred in that Edifice; with an Essay on Epitaphs, in which its principal monumental Inscriptions are recorded (London: Longman, 1824; rpt. 1825). The Essay on Epitaphs in Britton's book (68-83) was composed by Conybeare. Ironically, no epitaph is decipherable on Conybeare's own gravestone. Britton's dedication, however, reads like an epitaph.

The greatest tribute to John Conybeare's memory was made by his only brother, William Daniel Conybeare. Although a clergyman and only in his thirties, William enjoyed a wide reputation as a geologist. He was so distraught by John's death, however, that he published nothing on geology for the next five years.36 But he did undertake something vital for Anglo-Saxon scholarship: "the melancholy yet gratifying task" of editing John's Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, published in 1826. 37 Since John "had at the time of his sudden decease only corrected the proofs as far as page 80, and left in a state of complete preparation for the press the transcript of that portion of the work which extends to page 163," William's editing was no simple matter.38

Illustrations has four major parts: I. essays on meter, II. a catalogue of Anglo-Saxon poetry by genre, III. illustrations of Anglo-Saxon poetry prepared by John Conybeare, and IV. an appendix of miscellaneous material intended for Illustrations but not prepared by John before his death. In Part I, William reprints the two essays on meter that John published in Archaeologia in 1814 and adds four of his own, plus the editio princeps, with translation, of The Riming Poem. Part II, the catalogue of Anglo-Saxon poetry, is wholly William's work, as is his pioneering translation of The Battle of Maldon, appended to the catalogue. To Part III—John's treatment of Cædmon's Hymn, Bede's Death-Song, Widsith, and Beowulf—William edits and adds some notes to Beowulf taken from John's foul papers. In Part IV, he introduces and reprints John's texts and translations of Anglo-Saxon verse published in 1809 and 1814,39 edits John's unpublished lectures at Oxford (on Christ II, Maxims I and Maxims II, Deor, The Ruin, and Meters of Boethius), and adds two contributions of his own: an edition and translation of The Wife's Lament and a seventeen-page descriptive catalogue of the Exeter Book's contents. The catalogue shows that William, like John, must have spent days in Exeter studying the manuscript.

Benjamin Thorpe remarks that William Conybeare's descriptive catalogue of the Exeter Book "proved amply sufficient to excite the attention of scholars both at home and abroad."40 One should also note that John's texts and translations of select poems from the Exeter Book were the only ones available until Thorpe's edition of the manuscript as a whole in 1842. John and William Conybeare together brought the Exeter Book into the world of nineteenth-century scholarship. John also did much for Beowulf. He recognized that Thorkelin's 1815 text of the poem was deficient and made his own collation in 1817, published in Illustrations. He also knew that Thorkelin's understanding of Beowulf was faulty and, in various extracts translated into English in Illustrations, furnished "the first account of the poem and its text to the English-speaking world" until John M. Kemble's complete translation of Beowulf in 1837.41 William could not have better honored his brother's memory—his "nearest and most valued relative" (Illustrations, iv)—than to edit the book for which John is most remembered.

Photographs of Conybeare's Church and Related Places

All photographs but the first are connected with Conybeare's church, St. John the Baptist, in Batheaston, about three miles from downtown Bath. Unless otherwise noted, the photographs were taken by the author in July 2016.

1. John and William Conybeare at a lecture by William Buckland

This is a reproduction of a lithograph by Nathaniel Whittock (1791-1860), colored and printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel (1789-1850). (Download credit: Wellcome Library, London, V0006732.) John Conybeare is the third person in the front row, from left to right. The second person in the row, somewhat taller than John, is William Conybeare. The audience listens to a lecture by William Buckland, groundbreaking geologist and paleontologist, delivered in the Geological Lecture Room of the old Ashmolean Museum on 15 February 1823. For date and identifications, see The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 6, Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part I, ed. M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), xix. In the same book, N. A. Rupke, "Oxford Scientific Awakening and the Role of Geology" (543-62), notes that Buckland used John Conybeare's watercolor paintings to illustrate his lectures (554, n. 26). In The Life and Correspondence of William Buckland, D.D., F.R.S. (London: Murray, 1894), Elizabeth Oke Gordon (Buckland's daughter) records that William Conybeare was one of Buckland's "earliest and most intimate companions" (2) and that in 1816 Buckland and John Conybeare traveled through Europe for five months collecting geological data (18-19). Overall, John Conybeare published fourteen scientific papers (Torrens, "Conybeare, John Josias," 70).

Figure 1. (Roll over to enlarge.) John and William Conybeare at a lecture by William Buckland

2. Sketch from 1858 of the bell tower and south side of St. John the Baptist Church

This sketch was made in 1858 by Rev. T. P. Rogers, before the south wall was moved out under his direction beyond the width of the tower. The tower, dating from 1460, is here much the same as Conybeare saw it. The church building itself was begun in 1262 under the auspices of Bath Abbey. The chest tombs (stone boxes built above graves) in the churchyard date from the eighteenth century and early nineteenth. Both the church and the chest tombs are on the National Heritage List. (Image reproduced from Dobbie, 35, who also provides much of the information here and below on the tower and church in her fifth chapter, entitled "The Church.")

Figure 2. (Roll over to enlarge.)

3. The south side of the church today

St. John the Baptist is notably larger today than in Conybeare's time. The north aisle (not visible in the photograph below) was added a decade after his death and the south aisle and porch in 1867-68. The south aisle and porch were built largely with stone from the old south wall and porch. In the photograph a small part of the middle section of the bell tower is visible above the roof of the south aisle. To the right of the south aisle is the chancel, remodeled in 1860.

Figure 3. (Roll over to enlarge.)

4. The back of the bell tower

The bell tower, 94 feet high, is built in the style of perpendicular Gothic. There are eight bells today, three more than during Conybeare's lifetime. At the end of the nineteenth century an old parishioner, son of a man who pealed the bells for sixty years, told a tale his father must have told him. In 1824 the parish ordered the recasting of an old bell and the acquisition of a new one. "Well, Mr Conybeare wor Vicar at that time, and he wouldn't hev nothing to do with 'em, and I hev heerd say, as how he said he didn't care if he never heered 'em rung. Nor he didn't. He wor away for three months from home and they wrote and told him that the bells wor all paid for and finished but he never heerd 'em, for he died while he wor away. And it wor while he was a-lyin dead that my father wor married. And Mrs Conybeare she said that if my father wouldn't have the bells rung at his wedding, she would give them their wedding dinner, so they only just rose the bells, and rang 'em out of church, and let 'em fall again, so that as I told you, they was rung fust of all at my father's wedding" (Dobbie, 45).

Figure 4. (Roll over to enlarge.)

5. The church interior

The interior of St. John the Baptist has undergone dramatic alteration since Conybeare. The north and south aisles were added at different times after his death. (Note the difference in the style of pillars.) The high-backed pews—men on one side, women on the other—and the three-decker pulpit of Conybeare's era have long since been replaced. Dobbie, 42-43, quotes a memorable account of a service in 1840. Conybeare's service was probably similar.

Figure 5. (Roll over to enlarge.)

6. The memorial tablet

A marble tablet in tribute to Conybeare was set up in the church soon after his death. In "Notes on Early Geologists connected with the Neighbourhood of Bath," Proceedings of the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, 2 (1870-73): 303-42, at 332, W. Stephen Mitchell describes the tablet as placed on "the east wall of the north transept." But I know of no evidence that the church ever had a transept. (Perhaps Mr. Mitchell muddled his notes or received an imprecise report. His version of the tablet's text differs in minute particulars from the original.) It is plausible to believe, however, that the tablet was on the old north wall or on the east wall near the north wall: Conybeare's grave lies in the cemetery to the north of the church. About a dozen years after his death, the north wall was dismantled and the north aisle built (Dobbie, 40). The tablet may have been removed then and, broken in the removal, not restored to the church. In any case the tablet is now in two pieces and stored on its side among miscellanea in a small basement on the north side of the church. Perhaps the Batheaston Parish Council or the Batheaston Society will restore the memorial tablet to the church proper. The inscription:

Figure 6. (Roll over to enlarge.)

7. Front of the old vicarage

Across the street from the church a few yards to the south is the old vicarage (no longer owned by the parish). Among Conybeare's many interests was chemistry. As far back as 1804, he had a laboratory at Oxford for experiments (Torrens, 70). It is not surprising that a decade or so later he built a laboratory in his residence in Batheaston. The result, says Dobbie, was the "mutilation of the front of the vicarage" (33). In the photograph the protruding front of the vicarage appears to show two stages of construction. The older seems to be the section on the left. Presumably that is what Conybeare had built, the right section being added later. The entire protruding front occupies about half of the street side of the former vicarage.

Figure 7. (Roll over to enlarge.)

8. "Old School Entrance 1818-1859"

The old vicarage and the church are situated on a road called Northend. North down Northend fewer than a hundred yards beyond the church is an arch built into the wall that lines the road. Now bricked up, the arch once opened on steps leading to the part of the churchyard in which Conybeare, wholly or largely from his own funds, had a National School erected in 1818. Made of stone, the building consisted of a single room where probably no more than three dozen students of various ages, most of them poor, were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. (The population of Batheaston then was 1,330; today it is twice that.) A decade after Conybeare's death, the new vicar, Spencer Madan, added a second story, in which girls and the very young were taught separate from boys on the first floor. Twenty-five years later the building was torn down and the school established elsewhere, after which the church cemetery was extended to occupy the former school grounds. (On the old school see Dobbie, 116-19.)

Figure 8. (Roll over to enlarge.)

9. Conybeare's grave from the back

"He was buried in Batheaston; but in 1963, I was unable to find his grave in either church or churchyard—both lovely": Merrell D. Clubb (Clubb, 65-66, n. 21). It is easy to see why Professor Clubb, through no fault of his own, could not locate Conybeare's grave. The weather has almost wholly worn away the name from the stone slab marking Conybeare's burial—not a kind fate for someone who composed an essay on epitaphs. The gravesite, however, can be found in the parish records. I am grateful to Rev. Isobel Rathbone, Vicar of St. John the Baptist Church, for finding the grave in the cemetery index, for locating it in the cemetery itself, and for arranging for Mr. Robert Mimmack, Churchwarden, to serve as guide when I visited Batheaston. The grave is on the north side of church not forty yards from the building in the spot selected by Conybeare. Rev. Rathbone writes, "Sadly, it is one of the worst-maintained tombs in the whole churchyard. ... The problem is that the maintenance of individual tombs is the responsibility of families of the deceased and once families cease to be interested, it lapses." The grave has suffered from more than the weather and lack of familial maintenance. The knobs and the holes on the stone border around the slab are the remnants of an iron fence that once protected the grave. According to Mr. Mimmack, the fence was removed during World War II, when England was in dire need of iron. The photograph shows the grave from the back. In the upper right corner, part of the church's graceful new Memorial Wall is visible. The Memorial Wall and Garden were designed as a place where ashes of the dead can be interred and where villagers and guests can sit in silence and reflect on the lives of their loved ones.

Figure 9. (Roll over to enlarge.)

10. Conybeare's grave from the front

The photograph, taken by Mr. Robert Mimmack, is of the present writer and the front of Conybeare's grave. This view shows more clearly than the photograph taken from the back that the grave is located on a slope. It was mainly the desire to find Conybeare's grave and pay respect to his memory that led me, like Professor Clubb more than half a century ago, to Batheaston. The final poem in Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry is John Conybeare's text and translation of The Grave, a somber reflection on death.

Figure 10. (Roll over to enlarge.)

11. Mr. Robert Mimmack, Churchwarden, St. John the Baptist Church

I am grateful to Mr. Robert Mimmack, here pictured in front of the church's main door on the south porch, for his generous gift of time and guidance. I could not have hoped for anyone more cordial or knowledgeable. I am indebted as well to Rev. Isobel Rathbone for encouraging and facilitating my visit.

Figure 11. (Roll over to enlarge.)

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