... Pushing my hand in the wall ... I
pulled out this carved horn, which then had a metal rim and
cover--of silver, I think. A man gave me a shilling for it, and he
sold it to Mr. Porch."
It is stated that a coronet was engraved or stamped on the silver rim
which has now disappeared.
[Illustration: Seventeenth-century Powder-horn, found in the wall of
an old house at Glastonbury. Now in Glastonbury Museum]
Monmouth's harassed army occupied Glastonbury on the night of June 22,
1685, and it is extremely probable that the powder-horn was deposited
in its hiding-place by some wavering follower who had decided to
abandon the Duke's cause. There is another relic of Monmouth's
rebellion, now in the Taunton Museum, a spy-glass, with the aid of
which Mr. Sparke, from the tower of Chedzoy, discovered the King's
troops marching down Sedgemoor on the day previous to the fight, and
gave information thereof to the Duke, who was quartered at Bridgwater.
It was preserved by the family for more than a century, and given by
Miss Mary Sparke, the great-granddaughter of the above William Sparke,
in 1822 to a Mr. Stradling, who placed it in the museum. The
spy-glass, which is of very primitive construction, is in four
sections or tubes of bone covered with parchment.
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