GIPPING is a hamlet, with a population of fifty persons, in the county and however, exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, being a donative. In the district a rivulet, here called The Gipp, begins to flow, becoming afterwards the river Gipping, which, passing Stowmarket and Needham Market, leaves its name at Gippingwich or Ipswich, whence it flows into the Orwell, and at Harwich into the sea.

The parish of Gipping contains about 900 acres of land (chiefly owned by Mr. Charles Tyrell), and lies nearly midway between Mendlesham and Haughley, and is distant about four miles from Stowmarket, where is the mother church, and about two miles eastward from Haughley Road Station on the Great Eastern Railway. The object of chief interest is the small and beautiful fabric of the Perpendicular period, called Gipping Chapel. It is all extremely fine example of flint panel-work, or cut flint worked into the quarried stone or ashlar. The flint-work is here spread over the greater part of the four outside walls; being generally found on chief porches, and on the south side only of our Suffolk churches, usually adorning the wall- spaces between the clerestory windows.

There was, however, an older chapel than the present fabric. For at the latter part of the Decorated period we find, from the Inquisitiones Nonarum (as quoted in Hollingsworth's History of Stowmarket), that in the year 1340 there then existed a chapel at Gipping, and that its tithe was valued at 1 (pound). Hollingsworth further states that the abbot and abbey of St. Osythe were possessed of the rectorial tithes, and as patrons appointed the vicar at Gipping.

Sir James Tyrell, whom I have already referred to as associated with the murder of the Princes in the Tower of London, was nephew to Sir Thomas Tyrell, being the eldest son of his brother William, of Gipping, in Suffolk.

In reference to the Tyrell fanuly, Burke tell us: "The £amily of Tirrell is one of great note and antiquity, and for ·more than six bundred years its chief, in a direct line, enjoyed the honour of Knighthood." Knighthood, it must be remembered, was conferred solely for merit, and did not necessarily in any way fall to the lot of the representuve of a family, The record continues: Sir Walter Tirrell held at the general survey. from the Conqueror, the Lordshxp of Langharn, in Essex. This is the knight to whom, whether truly or falsely the death of King William Rufus has been attributed by historians. I do not know why doubt should be cast upon the traditition, which has been handed down of the death of King William Rufus. The occurrence, as understood to have been purely accidental, and has been generally accepted as authentic. You will not fail to notice that the orthography of the name of Tyrell is just as erratic as that of the parish of East Horndon.

Sir Walter Tyrell, after his unfortunate misadventure. fled the country from the very natural fear of the consequences of his act, and he continued to reside in Bormandy, at the Castle of Chaumont, up to the time of his death.

But it is a singular circumstance that the death of King William Rufus should not be the only regicidal act, with which the Tyre11s have been associated. The assassination of the young Princes in the Tower King Edward V, and his.brother the Duke of York-was carried out under· the· orders of the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King Bichard Ill, by Sir James Tyrell. a member of the family. The records state that Sir James Tyrell himself was afterwards executed on Tower Hill, for some alleged act of treason.

I am not at all sure that a Tyrell wns not also implicated in some way with the fate of Queen Anne Boleyn, for it is a significant fact that after her death, tradition 8ays, her henrt was conyeyed by night to East Horndon and deposited in the church, with which neither she nor her family hnd, so far as we know, any connexion whatever.