THE REED EPITAPH tracery in the clerestory windows marks a period of transition, being alternately flowing and Perpendicular. There is a good deal of old glass of the fourteenth century in the north aisle, quite two-thirds of the east window of the aisle being old, with the inscription "Thomas de Weyversty, Abbas de Waltham me fieri fecit." There is a turret staircase for the rood-loft stair at the junction of the south aisle and chancel, hence the door to the rood loft is on that side. The pulpit is Elizabethan. The Reed family have several monuments here, and it is probable that the three first known parsons of Wrangle—William (1342), John (1378), and Nicolas (1387)—were chaplains to that family. On a large slab in the chancel pavement to "John Reed sum time Marchant of Calys and Margaret his wyfe," date 1503, are these lines:—
This for man, when ye winde blows
Make the mill grind,
But ever on thyn oune soul
Have thou in mind,
That thou givys with thy hand
Yt thou shalt finde,
And yt thou levys thy executor
Comys far behynde.
Do thou for thy selfe while ye have space.
To pray Jesu of mercy and grace,
In heaven to have a place.
Sir John Reade, the great-grandson of John and Margaret, who died in 1626, is described as "eques aureus vereque Xianus eirenarcha prudens," etc., the last substantive meaning Justice of the Peace.
There is an old Bede-house founded 1555, which we shall pass now on our way to Leake, and we may perhaps trace the old sea-bank just behind it. There was once one also at Benington, a few miles further on, called "Benington Bede." But before leaving so much that is old we may delight our eyes, if we are lucky enough to find Mr. Barker (the vicar) or his wife in the church, with a sight of some most exquisite modern church embroidery in the form of an altar cloth, lately made by the ladies of the rectory.
Leake, little more than a mile from Wrangle, has a most massive Perpendicular tower which was fifty-seven years building and never completed; here, too, there was a seaway to the coast. The south aisle of the church and the nave
