The Giant’s Tomb at Morthoe

Under 7 July, the Translation of St Thomas Becket, Hone printed letters about a tomb in the little church of Morthoe on the north Devon coast above Woolacombe Bay. In a recess stood a vault covered by a black slab engraved with a robed figure holding a chalice. The country people could only say that it held a giant to whom all that part of the country had once belonged. Devonshire antiquaries claimed instead that Sir William de Tracy, one of Becket’s murderers, had retired there after the killing, but Hone’s correspondents thought that tale rested on a misreading of the inscription.