HISTQEY ^ ,♦*- OF IHE OROUG F'WwNw ■^fifr'^ " Ik THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ^ ^^ # i(S>'.J- ■ f^ " Kixr. John's Ci;p " (temp. F-dwakd III.). HISTORY OF THE BOROUGH OF KING'S LYNN. VOLUME I. 13 V HENRY J. HILLEN NOinMClI : I'uiNTKii r,Y THE East ov Englaxd Xkwspapur Co., Ltd., AND SOLI) AT Kinti's Lynn by Messrs. Matsei.l cV Takgktt, W. H. Smith S: Son, W. H. Tavi.ou. and Thkw & Son : at Norwich by Messrs. Jakroi.d & Sons, and A. H. Gonsi- : also by the Author. T5A TO the memory of the dead, who made OUR BOROUGH what it is— To those with whom we dwell, who strive to make it better than it is ; and finally — To those, who may succeed when we are gone, with earnest hopes, that their approving benison may rest upon the good intentions of the past. ENGLISH LOCAL *>9jS PREFACE. Several treatises, dealing with the social and constitutional history of the Borough of King's Lynn, have been written, lost, and forgotten ; two, however, survive because they were published — the one by Benjamin Mackerell in 1738, and the other by William Richards in 1812. The compiling of the third — an essay towards a more comprehensive, up-to-date account of this " ancient sea-port, borough, and market town," has yielded the writer pleasure ; and it is to be hoped that its publication, undertaken at the earnest request of many appreciative burgesses, may awaken interest in the minds of those living in the town and neighbourhood. The maker of books resembles an apothecary, as Robert Burton, the scholarly wit, assures us, who " compounds medicine by pouring out of old bottles into new ones." History, indeed, is not the product of an exuberant imagination, but a careful reiteration of events recorded by others. For obvious reasons, these pages are not overburdened with references, yet every statement is based upon some authority apparent or not, and hints are given to lead the inquirer towards the sources from whence information is derived. The writer — greatly beholden to Mr. George H. Anderson, the Borough Accountant, who supplied the photographs from which the illustrations are taken, and to Mr. George F. Pratt, who assisted in the compilation of the indexes — may well exclaim with Macrobius : Oinne meiim, nihil meiim — " this is all mine and yet none of it is mine." Although care has been given to insure accuracy, yet errors, especially when authorities disagree, are not impossible. May, however, the Readers' generous response — " To forgive divine," be reciprocal of the writer's humble apology — " To err is human." HENRY J. HILLEN. April, 1907, Friars' Rest, King's Lynn, CONTENTS. VOLUME I. Part I. — To the Accession of H.M. King Edward VII. Chapter I. The Lin in Prehistoric Times II. The Camp of Peace III. The Burg in the Lin ... IV. The Gleaming Dawn ... V. The Legend of St. Margaret VI. A Habitation with a Name ., VII. Our Great Charter VIII. The King's Taxes IX. The Red Register X. The Tolbooth ... XI. Isabel the Fair... XII. Naval and Military Annals . XIII."' The Peasants' Rising ... XIV. The First Lollard Martyr . XV. The Revolt of the Burgesses XVI. The Hansa XVII. The Bishop and the Sword .. XVIII. The Fugitive King XIX. Our Lady of the Mount XX. The Building of the Temple XXI. Church and State XXII. The Hand of the Spoiler XXIII. Her Ladyship " The Queen " XXIV. The Battle and the Breeze.. XXV. Our Heritage — The Sea XX\''I. Nkaring the Crossw.ays ^XVII, For King or Country ? Page I 9 i6 24 30 38 47 56 69 79 92 105 121 138 153 166 178 192 206 214 234 259 277 287 314 3^7 CONTENTS. Chapter XXVIII. XXIX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. Reaping the Whirlwind Welding the Broken Chain Unstable as Water Birth of Nonconformity The Receipt of Custom The Veering of the Wind Page 362 375 393 411 427 439 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. "King John's Cup" (temp. Edward III.) ... ... Frontispiece Crypt at the Foot of High Bridge, from an Etching by page Henry Baines 45 View of the " Triple Arcade " from the North-West, Bank Lane (1907) 265 The Corporate Seal, obverse and reverse ; the Seal of the Gild of St. George, and the Admiralty Seal (each exact size) 317 "King John's Cup" — Enamelled Panels around the Bowl 365 North Prospect of the Tuesday Market-place, "before THE REIGN OF JaMES IInD," FROM A LiTHOGRAPH PUBLISHED ABOUT 1827 43I ILLUSTRATIVE DIAGRAMS. The Arms of the Borough A Cross-Crosslet ■*'The Tolbooth (King's Staith) *St. Margaret's Church '"••'Part of a Medieval House (Bank Lane) " Roughly sketched ground plans, Page 30 31 81 219 267 PART I. TO THE ACCESSION OF H.M. KING EDWARD VII. HISTORY OF KING'S LYNN. CHAPTER I. The Lin in Prehistoric Times. At the head of the Wash, an important opening on the East Coast of England, lies the " Fenland," a vast plain, embracing portions of six different counties and covering an area of 1,300 square miles. The ancient inhabitants of this district unquestionably belonged to a sturdy and determined race. On the inland islands, which dotted the treacherous surface of a broad, dreary morass, they reared their frail mud-and-wattle huts. Having once gained a footing, no matter how fearfully insecure, they proceeded to cut a cunning maze of ditches, and to raise those wonderful " walls " or banks (the traces of which exist to-day) in order to keep out the intrusive waters of the ever-threatening sea beyond. In " the foggy fennes, with her unwholesome ayre and more un- wholesome soyle," to which Michael Drayton (1563-1631) thus refers in his Polyolhion — a geographical survey of England in verse, — terrible floods were at that remote period very usual occurrences. The ground, in many places much lower than the sea, was for the greater part of the year in a sodden state ; the atmosphere, moreover, was not only saturated with vapour, but it was also charged with noxious exhalations, arising from gigantic accumulations of putrefying animal and vegetable matter. The Fenland, though " a boggy syrtis, neither sea nor good dry land," was, notwithstanding, the home of the primitive fenmen. Braving, daring — defying the elements of nature, they hunted the badger and otter in the tangled overgrowth of the water-courses of that dark, unhealthy mere ; they snatched a scanty supply of burbot or mallard from "the waste enormous marsh;" they wrung from an unwilling soil a meagre and precarious crop, on which their lives and the lives of their children greatly depended; and they preserved untarnished the independence bequeathed them by a stern and savage ancestry. Though floods and inundations again and again devoured the fruit of their labour, yet were they undis- mayed, for sufiicient evidence remains to shew how courageously they cooperated in pitting their puny strength against superior — ay, almost omnipotent forces, until in the end they could exult, in that they were more than conquerors. Gradually and after centuries of unremitting toil a marvellous transformation was achieved ! The stagnant eas and sluggish lins, the wild intricate meres and many of those long, tortuous water-ways either partially or wholly disappeared ; the luxurious undergrowth in the heart of this fenny fastness, which rendered approach at one B 2 HISTORY OF KING'S LYNN. time tediously slow, and at other times utterly impossible, succumbed by imperceptible degrees. Many of the saltwater fish entrapped so many years ago in the winding streams are slowly dying and will soon become extinct, whilst the wild birds which once bred in such immense quantities are yearly growing scarcer. The crane, the dotterel, and the bald buzzard or fen eagle, as it was once termed, are either quite unknown or extremely rare. Under sanitary conditions the virulent epidemics which devastated this malarious district are almost unknown. The " Great Dismal Swamp " upon our eastern seaboard no longer exists ; it has given place to a rich agricultural area which is poetically and yet justly styled the " Golden Plain of England." On either hand are waving corn-fields or verdant meadows, amid which the sheltered cot, the busy mill and many a " Sweet Auburn " nestles peacefully. FROM THE KNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN. Our island home at a remote period formed part of the mainland. A dense forest covered the surface of what we will term East Anglia, and, stretching athwart the North Sea, connected our country with the Continent. The remains of the " forest bed " are found along the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk beneath and skirting the present cliffs ; they reappear in Western Europe. The same forest covered the whole of Ireland and extended beyond, for at a depth of 600 feet, trunks of trees, etc., have been dredged from the Atlantic. The climate was then far other than it is now, because many tropical animals found a congenial habitat in this immense forest. In the Norwich Crag and the forest bed of the Norfolk foreshore, bones of the elephant, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the cave lion and the cave bear, the spotted and striped hyaena, the Irish elk, the bison, and of many living species, including the anthropoid ape and mafi, have been found. How long this period existed geologists are unable to conjecture ; it terminated, however, when the first of the glacial epochs set in. During the so-called Ice-Age, repeated alternations of heat and cold seem to have occurred, for in the Pleistocene strata there is a most perplexing association of tropical, temperate and arctic animals. The lion and the grizzly bear, the hyaena and the reindeer, the panther and the arctic fox, the glutton and the mammoth, etc., are found side by side. But what chiefly concerns us is the fact that man — PALiEOLITHIC MAN appears spread over most of the dry land, throughout the whole world. Vestiges of the caves in which he dwelt, and the workshops, or rather pits, in which he chipped the rudest of stone implements (for the use of metals was unknown to him in his primitive state), have been brought to light. Although Palaeolithic remains are rarely met with in West Nor- folk, yet the neighbourhood of Brandon, Mildenhall and Lakenheath is rich in specimens attributable to the " Old Stone Folk," who lived, as computed, some 600,000 or 700,000 years ago. At Thetford, too, on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk, excellent specimens have been THE LIN IN PREHISTORIC TIMES. 3 found in the " river gravel." Few English examples can excel these implements for their marvellous delicacy of workmanship ; they have been widely distributed, specimens linding a place not only in the principal museums of this country, but in many of those on the Con- tinent. Similar remains were discovered at Shrub Hill, near Feltwell ; and a perfect PaliEolithic flint celt* was taken from the peat during the construction of the new railway bridge at Sutton Bridge (1895), at a spot which at some far distant period was perhaps the bed of the ancient river Nene. That few vestiges of prehistoric man have been discovered in the Lin, as part of the fenland was subsequently called, may be because a portion of this area was for inconceivable ages in a state of sub- mersion. The general subsidence of a greater part of Britain did not, however, greatly affect this district, because while Scotland and Lancashire were depressed more than 1,300 feet, our fenland sank only about twenty feet. At low water two beds of peat may be traced along the banks of the Great Ouse. The outcrop is distinctly marked near the Cut Bridge. These vegetable deposits are separated by a layer two or three feet in thickness, brought thither by the tides. Hence the fact is clearly established that there were two successive subsidences in what we term the Lin. The section of the strata passed through when Thomas Allen sunk a well opposite St. Nicholas' Chapel to obtain water for brewing purposes (1829), shews the widespread area of these peat-beds ; and it, moreover, proves the absurdity of boring for water in this district. The well is generally regarded as being of " fabulous depth " ; this, however, is not the case, as will be seen by the following sectional measurements of strata encountered in course of the boring : — Vegetable soil * . ■ 7 feet Loam used for bricks ^ , 7 Peat • •■ — 3 II Blue Clay ... 8 ,. Peat, with alder and hazei. • • > 3 Blue clay with silt ... ■ • ■ 30 „ Kimmeridge clay ... 630 „ Total depth 687! feet, It will be noticed that the intervening layer is thicker where the silting from the receding water has continued longest. Whilst dredging for oysters, two or three miles from the Bar Flat, some Lynn fishermen brought up a perforated stone hammer. This unique specimen, preserved in our Museum, powerfully suggests that the submerged forest was at one time inhabited by primeval man. When the glaciers finally disappeared there dawned what is designated the New Stone Age. That man had advanced in civilization is clearly established — he now reared domestic animals, ' Celt, a rutting or cle.^ving iiuplcnieiit of stone — or of li uhzc if so stated. This term, at first vaguely applied because they were supposed to be of Celtic make is now being discarded, whilst arrow-head and »pear-heari, &r. are u?cd instead, 4 HISTORY OF KING'S LVNN. cultivated the soil, and practised a few primitive arts such as spinning, weaving and the making of rude pottery. The stone implements used were more neatly wrought, and in some instances highly polished. At one part, at least, of the period he w^as acquainted with the use of copper, tin and gold. Remains of shell mounds, lake dwellings, barrows and sepulchral chambers have been found in many parts of the world. NEOLITHIC MAN probably lived, we are told, some 60,000 years ago. At the com- mencement of this era, and when man reappeared, glaciers might still have been lingering upon the highest of pur mountain ranges, but the end of the glacial epoch was inevitable. The intense cold slowly gave place to a mild and genial climate, and from that time to the present the genus homo has never been e.xtinct in Britain. The wonderful discoveries of Messrs. Prestwich, Evans, Wyatt and Lyell at Bidden- ham, in the bed of the Great Ouse, near Bedford, shew that " the fabricators of antique tools, and extinct mammalia coeval with them, were post-glacial, or in other words, posterior to the grand submer- gence of central England beneath the waters of the glacial sea." (Sir Charles Lyell.) But what manner of man was he? you naturally ask. For reply we append a description from the pen of Mr. W. G. Clarke : We can picture him thus : Seated at the foot of a huge pine tree on the verge of a broad expanse of water which filled out the ancient river-valley of the Little Ouse. Behind him are the forest depths with their mdefinable mystery — the haunt of many a wild beast. He feels none of the nervous apprehension which a highly-civilised man of the present day would experience, since such subtle development of the nervous system would at that date have been fatal to the future progress of the race. Standing up, his keen ear quick to detect the faintest sound, we can see that he is of medium height, with long and powerfully developed arms, broad-shouldered and hipped, but with thin flanks— a near approach to the tj-pical fen man. His dress is very simple, merely a few skins carelessly sewn together with sinews running through holes pierced with either his bone needle or his flint awl. Across his shoulder a bow, made of a short piece of ash and more sinews, is slung ; whilst half-adozen arrows rest in a bark quiver, fastened to his side with a leathern thong. The arrow shafts are made of wood, which has been sawn to the length, shaved to the thickness and planed to the roundness that was needful entirely with implements of flint, and are finished off witli barbed flint points, again bound on with the ever-useful sinew. With the fire obtained by striking a nodule of iron pyrites with a piece of flint, he is heating some "pot-boilers" or "cooking-stones " to a white heat, and presently his wife will carefully put them inside the coarse pot of sun-burnt clay, and thus heat the water it contains. At present she is busily engaged in scraping the fatty tissues from the skin of the wolf, which her lord has recently slain. Now with stealthy footstep, and eye and ear on the alert, he is off again in search of other game, and his wife is left alone. [Transactions of the Norfolk and Nonfich Naturalist Society, Vol. VI., p. 24.] When the Alexandra Dock was being excavated at Lynn, the bones of various extinct and other animals — those of the mammoth, the primeval ox (Bos fritnigeitius), the beaver, elk, wild boar, etc., besides three well-shaped arrow-heads, were brought to light. In the bed, moreover, above which these occurred, specimens of British and Roman pottery were discovered (i868). Fragments of pottery similar THE UN IN PREHISTORIC TIMES. 5 in character were also found when the Eau Brink Cut Bridge was erected (1873). That prehistoric implements are not uncommon in the neigbour- hood of our borough is established by the following " finds " : — (i) Thetford and the district, including Santon Warren, Stone- heath, Thetford Abbey Heath, Thetford Warren — arrow and spear- heads, chisels and fabricators,* awls and borers, knives and saws, scrapers and smoothing stones, as well as flakes, axes and cores (Mr. W. G. Clarke.) (2) Riffley, South Wootton, Middleton, East Walton, Barton Bendish, Beechamwell, Shingham, Caldecott, Narborough, Westacre, Oxborough, Tottenhill, and the Nar Valley — celts more or less perfect. (3) Pentney and Roydon Fen — polished celts. (4) Massingham Heath — flakes, fabricators, rough-hewn hammers, mining tools (picks, hammer-picks, borers, diggers and hand choppers); also the antlers of deer. (Dr. C. B. Plowright.) (5) Hunstanton, by the shore — about fifty wave-worn imple- ments (Rev. R. C. Nightingale) ; Rising and Heacham inland — Neolithic scrapers, flakes, etc. (Mr. H. Lowerison) ; Holme Scarfe — a small bronze axe-head, sticking in the trunk of a tree (1829). This interesting relic, formerly in Samuel Woodward's collection, un- questionably belongs to the Forest Bed. It is now deposited in the Norwich Museum, and is described as " partly embedded in the trunk of a tree," although the authorities never possessed the wood from which it was taken. (6) Swaffham— stone and bronze celts, ancient pottery and several querns ; f Sporle — flint hammer-heads, partly bored on each side and bronze axe-heads ; also found at Riffley, Hillington, Cong- ham, Fordham, Oxborough and Boston. The following additional places where urns and implements have been found are marked on the map, attached to Mr. E. M. Beloe's article, entitled The P adders' Way and its Attendant Roads (1895) • — Snettisham, Castle Rising (bronze implements), Pens- thorpe, Lexham, Wereham, Merton, Weeting, Wretham, Ixworth and Lakenheath (stone and bronze implements). Unbaked food vessels are unearthed at Tottenhill. Other specimens, no less interesting, may no doubt be seen in many private cabinets. The geological importance of the following recent disrnveries in North-East Norfolk is sufficient apology for prolonging this section. These specimens, if their genuineness be established, will certainly constitute THE EARLIEST TRACES OF MAN in Western Europe. Mr. W. J. Lewis Abbott picked up worked flints in the Cromer forest-bed at Runton (1807). This circumstance is of vast conse- quence, because in this country the remains of man were never found • Fabricator, a narrow stone chisel or flaking tool, employed with a stone hammer to do the finer chipping. t Quern, a primitive stone haud-mill for grimlins com. 6 /i/STORy OF KING'S LYNN. at so low a horizon before ; it thus places the advent of man in Western Europe at a much earlier date. The opinion had indeed been previously hazarded that if vestiges occurred at this horizon at all they would be exactly where Mr. Abbott has discovered them. The Forest-bed series (the top of the Pliocene, beneath the Glacial Beds) are below a valley gravel, which contains flint implements of well-known palaeolithic forms. He found them sticking in the iron- pan, portions of which were attached to them. Whilst some experts regard these interesting relics as the unqualified work of primeval man, Sir John Evans, with the caution for which he is distinguished, admits that they may probably be such. Prior to the above-related incident, Mr. Randall Johnson found two worked flints, about twenty miles east of Runton, on the Palling beach, which were similarly stained with the characteristic iron-pan of the Forest-bed. On the same coast, at Hemsby, some ten miles from Palling, Mr. Woolstan ploughed up the head of a stone axe (1897). This specimen Sir John Evans unhesitatingly pronounced to date from B.C. 1000. The greater part of the Fenland, as geologists assure us, is the outcome of A NATURAL PROCESS which they call " silting." Ever since the Post-Glacial epoch began, the tides have been ebbing and flowing with clock- like regularity ; they have daily and persistently, century after century, brought the waste produced by the wear and tear of erosion from the adjacent coasts of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and have quietly dropped them into the Wash, — the jEstuarium Metaris, as Ptolemy calls it, which, of all the numerous /Estuaria, or bay-like openings around our coast, was then of the utmost importance. From time immemorial silting has been going on, and the process is unvaryingly the same. Sir William Dugdale (1605-1686) noticed it, and still, as we know, it is going on, and it will continue thus to do, until the Wash, which is already but partly covered with water, is permanently and completely silted up. Man may assist Nature, and by means of embankments facilitate these growing accretions, but he cannot prevent them. Here, then, is a vast triangular area, covering 600 square miles — nearly one- half of the entire Fenland — whose apex is at Littleport, and whose sides stretch away eastward toward the artificial banks which guard our shores. This tract of land was not formed, as is commonly the case, by materials borne down by the rivers on their way to the sea, but it is entirely the result of tremendous accumulations brought hither by the tides of past ages, the newest inland portion of which must have been deposited 7,000 years since. It is well known how Neolithic man constructed rude villages upon piles driven into the beds of certain lakes. The remains of these so-called " Lake-Dwellings," which were connected with the shore by gangways, fixed or removable, are well known in Ireland, as well as in different parts of Switzerland. That none have as yet been discovered in this part of the Fenland is an insufficient reason THE LIN IN PREHISTORIC TIMES. T to conclude that prehistoric man or his near descendants may not at some remote era or other have constructed similar places of abode in this neighbourhood, which was, after the glacial period, if not wholly covered with water, rarely better than a dangerous, impassable swamp. The " submarine forest " between Lincolnshire and Norfolk might at some era of the world's history have been the habitation of early, uncivilised man, although now covered by the sea. The draining of the West Mere in the parish of Wretham, a few miles from Thetford and twenty-four from Lynn, revealed " a lake-dwelling " (1851), At Weeting, between Thetford and Lynn, there may be seen what is described as " probably the finest remains of neolithic quarrying extant." As a step in a right direction, it may be well to give a passing reference to the so-called " grimes' graves " before directing attention to similar ancient vestiges nearer Lynn. The " graves," of which there are about one hundred, are circular in form, and are situated in a wild and desolate locality. They were carefully examined by the Rev. Canon Greenwell, of Durham, the experienced explorer of the tumuli of the Yorkshire Wolds (1870). The main objects of this arduous undertaking was to test the foregone conclusion of archaeologists ihat these earthworks were the remains of an ancient British village, the dwellings of which were partly sunk in the ground. During the process of excavation, which for some time was most disheartening, the teeth of various animals, including those of the dog, pig, goat and a small ox, as well as club-like instruments fashioned from the antlers of the deer, several flint hammers, a bone pin ingeniously sharpened, and a piece of chalk having a hole through it, bored from both sides, were found. At length, at a depth of 40 feet, he rame upon a tunnel in the chalk, which he followed up, and there a sight met his gaze that few men have been privileged to see ; for before him lay the workmen's tools just as they had been left after the day's labour — who shall say how many centuries ago ? Even the explorer at Pompeii and Herculaneum, as he disinters the relics of more than 1,800 years ago, is looking upon a modern production when compared with those found at Grimes' Graves. Here were the picks of deers' antlers, chalk lamp, and a few rough flint flakes and weapons laid down carelessly as the shades of evening fell, with the expectation of again being used en the subsequent day. Perhaps a neighbouring tribe made a raid that ni^ht, and the flint-workers were numbered with their forefathers ; or, as is more probable, a landslip took place, and the way to their tools was obstructed with tons of chalk. All the implements were covered with a limestone inaustation tliat told of the centuries they had lain hidden from the light of day. (Mr. W. G. Clarke.) Referring to two of the picks brought from the tunnel. Canon Greenwell says they had " upon them an incrustation of chalk, the surface of which bore the impression of the workmen's fingers, the print of the skin being most ap{)arent." After a patient and minute investigation, the reverend gentleman was perfectly convinced that these marvellous remains at Weeting were a series of neolithic flint quarries, worked by prehistoric man, unacquainted with the use of metals. 8 HISTORY OF KING'S LYNN. From surface flints the rude implements of Palaeolithic man were almost exclusively made, but after many, many centuries newly- quarried flints were found to be far easier of manipulation. Hence in the later Stone Age surface flints were discarded and deep shafts were sunk. How inconceivably laborious was the making of these excavations, with no spade or picks, except the antlers of the deer or sharp-pointed stones bound with ligatures to rough hafts, something like the chisels and punches used by blacksmiths at the present time, which are held by twigs of twisted hazel or willow. In these holes, sometimes thirty or forty feet deep, were cut successive stages on the alternate sides, and up these awkward steps large blocks of stone were handed up to the surface. Here the flints were trimmed and worked into the nicely-balanced artistic weapons, which constituted the most useful belongings of our cave-dwelling ancestors. FLINT-KNAPPING AT BRANDON is the most ancient of surviving crafts. From the far remote Neolithic Ago. down to the present hour has the working of flints been carried on in this neighbourhood. It therefore constitutes the oldest native industry in Great Britain. True, arrow-heads are no longer in demand, but the industrious flint-knappers of Lingheath supply not only the " strike-a-lights " which many travellers prefer to matches, but immense quantities of gun-flints, which are mostly exported to Africa, where " Brown Bess "—the cumbersome, uncertain flint-lock musket, has been in evidence since the invention of the percussion cap induced our manufacturers to throw the out-of-date weapon upon the markets of the Dark Continent, When we remember that with the best of tools it takes the modern flint-knapper two or three years' continuous practice to acquire a moderate degree of success in his peculiar craft, we can the more thoroughly appreciate the wonderful skill and astonishing patience which enabled the forgotten inhabitants of East Anglia to produce by the mere striking of one stone against another such marvellous specimens of artistic beauty. If any of our readers are sceptical and reticent of praise, we ask them to try the experiment themselves, and that, too, under the best conditions. Let them produce a well- balanced arrow-head, and for this purpose we will leniently concede the use of any hammers they may choose. The discovery of artificially-chipped flints, in the road-metal spread upon some of the highways in this part of Norfolk, led to the exploring of the source of supply — " a gravel pit," on THE MASSINGHAM HEATH, by Messrs. C. B. Plowright, M.D., and H. C. Brown, Ph.D. The result of their labour was communicated to the Norfolk and Nor- wich Naturalist Society (1891). Upon this extensive heath some half-dozen interesting depressions were observed, which bore a strong resemblance to those already mentioned at Weeting. All were roughly circular, and in general appearance alike ; they varied in depth from eight to ten feet, and were from forty to ninety feet in THE CAMP OF PEACE. 9 diameter, and in no case was there a cart-track leading thereto. Flint flakes, the refuse struck off in the making of rude digging and boring tools, were found in each. These hollow depressions were also re- garded as " shafts sunk by Neolithic man for the purpose of procuring flint for the fabrication of the various articles manufactured from it by him." Many years since the Rev. Christopher Grenside, then Rector of Great Massingham, contended that upon this heath were traces of "a British village." These Mr. Plowright and his companion tried in vain to discover. One afternoon, however (says Mr. Plowright in his report), we were led by a happy accident to the object of our search. It was during the winter after we had measured the above-described depressions, standing on tlae higher ground on the north side of the Grimston road, that we saw by the slanting rays of the setting sun a number of hollows on the south side of the road. The sun had sunk just low enough to cause the edge of each hollow to cast a shadow into the interior. Plainly displayed before us on the opposite hill were a number of round shadows, which marked the objects of our search. These consisted of a cluster of about a dozen small round depressions from 15 to 20 feet across, not more than a foot or two deep, occupying the summit of a small eminence within 100 yards of the main road from Grimston to Massingham ; this eminence is on the south side of the road, and is the first high ground approaching the road beyond Little Massingham Belt on the road from Lynn to Great Massingham. . . . It is quite possible that the inhabitants of this village were the same men who chipped the flints they had previously mined from the before-mentioned shafts. At present (1891) the traces of the village are plain enough ; but there may come a time when the plough of the agriculturist in one short day will obliterate this interesting relic of the past. [Transactions of Novfolk and Norwich Naturalist Society, Vol. V., p. 264.] Sincerely do we reiterate the writer's concluding words : " May this day be long distant !" CHAPTER 11. The Camp of Peace. On the eastern side of the Lin — " a flat malarious world of reed and rush " — were two promontories (Gaywood and Runcton), which jutted out into a marshy expanse, and which were at one time higher than they are at present. A deposit of silt gradually encroaching between these natural jetties would in time cover the peaty surface of the fenland so that the part most distant from the sea would cease to he flooded, unless perhaps when there chanced to be an exceptionally high tide. Hence nothing is more natural than to suppose the inhabitants reared from time to time a series of banks between these promontories in order to protect the land that the tidal deposits had formed. The survival of certain inland place-names proves that the position of the coast-line was once further west than is now the case. Holland, a part of Lincolnshire adjacent to our Marshland, refers to a low-lying country, if we may trust the Teutonic origin of the name ; C 10 HISTORY OF KING'S LYNN. Shrew's Ness Point appears several miles away from the waters of the Wash ; and ancient salt-pans, which were always near the sea-shore, have been found much further inland than Sailers' Lode. That this part of our island swarmed with inhabitants at a very remote period there can be but small doubt. The numerous tumuli or barrows still existing, or destroyed within memory — the sites of ancient dwellings incom- patible with aught but savage existence — of which Grimes' Graves near Weeting, the immense range of pits extending nearly five miles along the north-east coast of Weybourn, Beeston, Aylmerton and other places, and the hollows still to be found on Marsham Heath, are important examples. Numerous earthworks, too, of a boldness and extent to render them objects of admiration to this day, and of some of which the Roman did not disdain to avail himself and to incorporate with his own stupendous works, attest the power and resources of the tribes located in this district. [Norfolk Archceology .] EARLY INHABITANTS. Of the " Newer Stone Folk," the Iberians — Silurians, or Euskarians, as they are also called — inhabited this part of the globe. They were a non-Aryan race, short and thick in stature, with long skulls, dark hair, and swarthy complexions. That they greatly resembled the Basques there can be no doubt ; and the remark made by Caesar that Silures had their hair " coloured and curled like the old people of Spain " has led to the conclusion that they were of the self- same race. These aborigines were incapable of attaining any high intellectual development, nevertheless they were in a measure civilised. Their mode of life is unknown, but the long barrows found in various parts of the country are ascribed to them, and clearly establish the fact that their weapons were of stone, and that they were ignorant of metals. After an indefinite period the Iberians were invaded — perhaps re- peatedly invaded — by hordes of Aryans, whom we denominate Celts, but whom the Romans termed Cimmerii and Cimbri. The time of their coming is unascertainable, and hence beyond the very limited bounds of our historical knowledge. The Celtic settlers were the so- called " Advanced Stone Folk." Their skulls were round, and their hair fair ; they burned their dead, and over the rude urns in which they placed the ashes of their cremated friends they raised round barrows.* From an examination of many of these barrows, or tumuli, it has been found that the Celts used not only weapons in stone but others which were wrought in bronze. Neatly carved ornaments in amber, jet and fossil have also been discovered. Moreover, they employed a wheel in fashioning their earthen vessels ; they used gold in uniting their trinkets ; and scattered slag proves indisputably that they were con- versant with the art of smelting iron. The clever prehistoric colonisers, from whom the earlier dwellers in this country learnt so much, came apparently in separate relays, for there seems to have been no homogeneity amongst them. The three tribes which settled in the eastern part of the country are familiar to • Barrow (A.S. bcoj'g'— from beorgan, to protect or shelter, also to fortify) : An artificial mound of stones or earth piled up over the remains of the dead. Burials in barrows were practised as late as the 8th century. One of the finest barrows in the world is Silbury Hill, near Marlborough, Wiltshire. It is 170 feet in perpendicular height, 316 feet along the slope, and it covers about five acres of ground. THE CAMP OF PEACE. 11 us under their Latinised names : the Coritani, who occupied Lincoln- shire and the eastern midlands ; the Trinobantes, the district north of the Thames ; and the Iceni — those with whom we are most interested — were in possession of what was subsequently known as East Anglia, which included Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdonshire and Cambridge- shire. Of this territory Norfolk and Suffolk were fairly habitable, whilst the other portions of the district to a great extent were extremely marshy and malarious. As few Roman stations have been found in Suffolk, it is highly probable that the county of Norfolk was the centre of their prosperity and the arena where their power was displayed. A few miles from Lynn, in the Marshland division of the " Free- bridge Hundred," we meet with what is termed " THE ROMAN BANK." Eleven million tons of material, as is computed, were absorbed in the construction of this remarkable rampart. Its circuit, which originally measured 150 miles, embraced seven important townships, namely : Emneth, Walsoken, Walton, VValpole, Terrington, Tilney and Clenchwarton. As members of the colony, each town had a right to share in the luxuriant pasturage which abounded on the Smeeth,* to which " droves " from the different townships converged, and all in return were expected, or it may be by certain laws compelled, to co- operate in keeping the sea-wall, by which those " within the Marsh- land ring " were protected, in efficient repair. This was the ancient Freebridge, which appears in the Domesday Book as Frede bruge and Fredre burge, the derivation of which must now claim attention. (i) Bridge: — The Anglo-Saxon burJi, burg (a camp, a settlement a town and subsequently a borough), is derived from a base with the same gradation as burg-on, the past tense plural of beorg-an, to pro- tect ; burg lapses in the oblique cases into beorg, an earth-work. How reasonably then might (Free-) burg have been applied to a colony of settlers surrounded by the " Roman bank." Moreover, burh in the plural becomes by mutation byrig or byrigg, and the double g is written eg in Anglo-Saxon, gg (or gge) in middle English (iioo — 1500), and dge in modern English, in nearly all cases, the sound being changed from that of the " hard " ^ to that of ;. Hence, in tracing the word " bridge " to burli (a camp, or earth- work), we have the Anglo-Saxon brycg (byricg), the middle English briggc (byrigg), and the modern English bridge (byridge), the g being pronounced like a ;. " The breakdown of the g into the sound of ; is really due to the frequent use of the oblique cases of the substantives in which a final e followed the eg, as in the Anglo-Saxon brycg-e, the genitive, dative and accusative of brycg ; hence the middle English took the form of brigg-e instead of brigg or brig.'' It will be remembered that in the north of England brig is still used, and it contrasts strikingly with "the southern palatalised form bridge." [Skeat's Principles of English Etymology, 1887.] * Smecth ; Anglo-Saxon smccffc, plane, smooth. "Tylney Smeeth. So called of a smooth plaine or common thereunto adioyning some two miles in extensure." (Wecver's Antient Funerall Monuments, 1767.) Smithfield in London is a familiar example of this form of designation. Fridaybridge, Elm : frede bruge Freebridge; or jreJa byrigg (15th century), frede dug {hyrlgp)"\.ht day of peace" ;hence a memorial earthwork 12 HISTORY OF KING'S LYNN. (2) Free : — This syllable is derived from the Anglo-Saxon adjective freo, frio; Gothic frei-s (stem fri-ja), which originally meant " at liberty," " acting at pleasure," " free," " peaceful " ; and it is allied to the Sanskrit fn-ya, beloved, agreeable, from Aryan fri, to love. Frede, the genitive case of freo, means " of peace."* (Skeat and Taylor.) (3) Freebridge therefore signifies a settlement protected by an earth-work — a camp of peace ; and the lands not subject to the juris- diction of a lord claiming sac or soc were termed *' free." West Briggs, a depopulated village contiguous with the parishes of Totten- hill and Wormegay, was entered in the Conqueror's survey as Wes- bruge. Carefully notice the derivation of the syllable -bridge (Free- bridge), as reference must be made to the root {beorg) in another place. Now the all-wise Odin, we are told, enacted a law that the bodies of the dead should be burned, with whatever goods they possessed ; he moreover ordained that over the ashes, heaps of earth should be raised for an everlasting memorial, and that high staves inscribed with Runic characters should mark the graves of such as had during their lives performed exceptional deeds of valour. The staves, it is true, have disappeared, but the mounds of earth heaped up so many cen- turies ago remain. Many mounds are still to be seen in the " Free- bridge," and what strikes the observer as somewhat strange is the fact that by far the greater number are near the " Roman Bank." They actually follow its winding course. Without being too venturesome, we think it might be safely affirmed that a people who were capable of constructing a system of roads, who threw up fortifications Caesar was constrained to admire, who raised high mounds over the funereal piles of their heroes, would, being prompted by the first law of nature, strive to protect themselves against the depredations of an insidious enemy like the sea. Some writers contend that the so-called " Ancient Briton " acquired his knowledge of embanking from the Belgic Gauls, who in turn derived this necessary art from the Greeks who visited the west of Europe. Be this as it may, the British Celts were unquestionably a mixed race long before the Roman invasion, " There cannot be the least doubt that an active communication was maintained throughout the Celtic nation on different sides of the channel." — [Kemble's Saxons in England, 1876.] For three reasons the bank encircling the " Camp of Peace " may be regarded as of pre-Roman origin : — First, because our early pro- genitors were skilled in the construction of earth-works; secondly, because in some places older embankments intersect what are un- doubtedly Roman ; and thirdly, because the Celtic Britons undoubtedly raised mounds to mark where the ashes of their dead were deposited. Besides, these mounds abound in Marshland, and they are, with one solitary exception, at no great distance from the " Bank." The remains of enormous earthworks, not only in West Norfolk, but in various parts of the kingdom, seem to point to the existence of a great r.ational system of embankment at one time or other. ^' A special seat near the altar for those claiming sanctuary was called the /reed-stool or " seat of peace." THE CAMP OF PEACE. 13 Whether the Romans landed on the shores of Norfolk, or on the south-east coast of England, must be left for future consideration, but " the fame of the Latin arms seems early to have penetrated into the land of the Iceni, whose chieftain allied himself with the new comers." (Mason.) Let us for a while accept the theory that Caesar and his legions landed on the coast of Kent. Once having gained a footing in Britain, the invaders would turn their attention almost at once to the Freebridge part of the great Fenland, because, as an ancient stronghold or camp of refuge, it would be conspicuous in offering resistance to their advance, and besides, from an early date this district was renowned for its amazing fertility. In all likelihood the conquerors either improved or finished the " walls " or sea-banks already in existence, so that any land occasion- ally subject to inundation might be adequately protected. That they pursued this course is evident, because Tacitus, the celebrated Roman historian (a.d. 60-120), informs us in his Vita Agricolce — the life of his father-in-law Agricola, that the Romans employed the sub- jugated Britons '^in sylvis paludibus emuniendis,'' that is, in clearing the woods and draining the marshes. THE SUBJUGATION OF THE ICENI, the tribe at this period inhabiting the Lin and other parts of Norfolk, was brought about in the reign of the Emperor Claudius by his general Aulus Plautius (a.d. 43) ; hence the Fenland was one of the first acquisitions in Britain gained by the Roman invaders. The friendship, however, between the Romans and the Icenian inhabitants was unfortunately of short duration. This was owing not so much to changes in the policy pursued by the new comers, as to the over- bearing insolence and unwarranted exactions of those deputed to carry it out. Such cruel oppression, which was peculiarly unjust and wholly unpardonable, at last goaded the tribe into open rebellion. This outburst of indignation was the prelude of a general rising, which for a time seriously endangered the Roman supremacy. Catus Decianus, the brutal persecutor of Boadicea, " the British warrior queen," and her heroic daughters, had been appointed procurator over the province peopled by our courageous forbears. He is regarded as the first pro- curator, and his rule embraced Norfolk, Suffolk, the greater part of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, and perhaps extended into Lincolnshire. Under the supervision of Catus Decianus the embanking of the Fenland marshes was more thoroughly accomplished. To facilitate the accomplishment of this tremendous undertaking, he introduced a colony of Belgae, a people singularly fitted, from practical knowledge of the nature of their own country, for such work. The improvements thus begun are supposed to have been finished by Severus, one hundred and fifty years afterwards. Of the origin and early history of the SETTLEMENT IN THE LIN to the east of the " Camp of Peace " (Freebridge) very little is known. Tradition is silent, and the pages of history are obscured by the U HISTORY OF KING'S LYNN. shadow of barely-mentioned centuries. In this respect the old burg upon the Lin, insignificant though it might be, stands by no means alone. Cities of incomparable importance, such as Paris, Rome and our own stupendous metropolis, have submitted to a like fate. Referring to London, the late Sir Walter Besant observes : — When a little later we are able to read contemporary history, we find not a single custom or law due to the survival of British customs. We iind the courses of the old streets entirely changed, the very memory of the old streets swept away, not a single site left of any ancient building. Everything is clean gone ; not a voice, not a legend, not a story, not a superstition remains of that stately Augusta. It is entirely vanished, leaving nothing behind but — a wall ! You may see (he goes on) at the Gild Hall nearly everything that remains of Roman London. But there is absolutely nothing to illustrate Saxon Augusta. The city, which grew up over deserted Augusta and flourished for four hundred years, has entirely disappeared. Nothing is left of it at all ! And what in sooth remains of old, historic Lynn — of British, Roman, Saxon, Danish Lynn ? The spade of the unthinking agricul- turist has levelled its earth-works, and the impartial hands of remorse- less Time have crushed its strong-built walls and scattered the frag- ments to the winds. Long centuries of its history are unrecorded, and its origin is preserved in a name, over whose derivation philologists disagree. Tradition would have us believe that Rising was a place of supreme importance before Lynn sprang into existence. According to the old doggerel — Rising was a sea-port town, When Lynn was but a marsh ; Now Lynn it is a sea-port town And Rising fares the worse. This statement merits as much credence as the rhyme relating to Downham — Rising was, Lynn is, and Downham shall be The greatest sea-port of the three. For our " ancient borough " we claim no great antiquity. Not- withstanding, a Roman station was probably reared here (as at Rising, Oxborough, Wisbech, etc.), either near or upon the site of a British settlement. In the time of Ptolemy, some forty years after Agricola's conquest, there were as many as fifty-six cities which could scarcely be looked upon as wholly Roman in their construction; and Caesar states that there were numerous buildings in Britain not unlike those in Gaul. LYNN — A PLACE-NAME. In ancient documents the student meets with Lenn and Lenne ; in the deeds of the priory at Lewes, in Sussex, founded by William de Warren, the spelling is Lunea; whilst in the Domesday Survey {1080-6) the word appears as Lena and Lun. When history is silent, it may be advantageous to glean information even from a name. At the outset, however, let it be clearly understood that this word, in its varying guises, always refers to a distinct part of the Fenland ; that our town does not figure in the Domesday book ; and, finally, that North, West, and South Lenne are not mentioned until centuries afterwards. THE CAMP OF PEACE. 15 (i) Camden suggests that Lenne is derived from the British noun Lhyn, a word denoting a pool, or " waters broad-spreading." He points out that the river Nar, which flows close to our town, was at one time called the " Linn river," and he suggests that the Romans, who, perhaps, settled along its banks, might (from some resemblance, though not now apparent), have named it after a stream in Italy, men- tioned by Virgil in his Atneid (vii. 517) — Sulfur ea Nar, albus aqua. As the adjacent town was called " Linn," it is right to inquire whether the town was named from the river, or the river from the town. The Nar, however, is not a canal, but a natural water- course ; hence the probability is in favour of the settlement deriving its name from the stream which flowed into a marshy liti. " The Anglo-Saxons," writes Mr. Henry Bradley, M.A., sometime President of the Philological Society, " carefully preserved the ancient British names of rivers and streams. In this respect their practice agreed with that of the Romans, and they still further resembled them in the frequent habit of calling inhabited places from the rivers on which they stood." (2) Spelman contends that Lcn (Lenne) is not a corruption of Lyn (Lhyn), but that it is the Anglo-Saxon word for " farm." Subsequent writers, whose views we purpose giving, have con- tented themselves with adopting one or other of these theories. Leland in his Itinerary, Seldon in his notes on Drayton's Polyolhion, and Dr. Isaac Taylor in Names and Places, adhere to the etymology proposed by Camden. So also does Mr. John J. Coulton, who looks upon Lyn as another form of Len, and who, in support thereof, says " Z There is evidence, abundant and conclusive, that in the early part of the Christian era the Church of Christ was planted in Britain. With- out reiterating the convincing arguments adduced bv Bishops Stilling- fleet and Burgess, and other learned authorities, the above statement shall be accepted, and we will at once proceed to shew how probable it is that Norfolk was the scene of the introduction of Christianity into this country. First, let us consider our local traditions. Among the rural inhabitants of West Norfolk, traditions based upon Druidism, Roman mythology, and the Christian religion are current. It is remarkable, for instance, that at Shingham, a sequestered village some fifteen miles from Lynn, there are planta- tions haunted by Bel's dogs. Now the word Shingham means, as etymologists assure us, the bright or shining dwelling, and strange indeed is it, that tradition asserts there was, in the adjacent village of Beechamwell St. Mary, a temple of the sun, and, moreover, that Shingham and the adjoining village of Caldecott contained, at some remote period, temples dedicated respectively to Venus and Diana — Roman goddesses ! Is it not curious that this cluster of villages near Swaffham should, moreover, be haunted by a pack of spectral hounds, which the present inhabitants call Bel's dogs? As "no one can imagine or reason why the traditions should have been invented among a population not addicted to mythology " — and Mr. Andrew Lang's observation on this subject is quoted — we are constrained to admit that it is very curious. That the Romans built such temples in Britain is beyond dispute. A temple dedicated to the goddess of the chase is supposed to have occupied the same natural elevation now crowned by St. Paul's Cathedral. As with Caldecott, so with London, the tradition alone sun-ives. An altar dedicated to Trivia, that is, Diana of the Cross-ways, formerly stood where the Roman roads, the Ick- nield Street and the Ermine Street crossed, not very far from Royston. Here a festival was held soon after each vernal equinox, when the Romans made sacred cakes and offered them to their goddess. The eating of crossed buns is chiefly observed in this district — Cambridge, THE GLEAMING DAWN. 25 Hertford, Norfolk, etc., whereas in other parts the custom is quite unknown, as for example at Bath, where instead of a temple to Diana there was one dedicated to Minerva. Fragments of tiiis ancient temple have been found, sufficient to enable Smirke to design a restored portico. To a Pagan rather than a Christian rite may we derive the origin of our " hot cross bun." Traces, too, of Druidism have been detected in many Norfolk place-names, and in certain customs with which the general reader is far more familiar ; but in the tradition relating to the spectral hounds, the survival attaches itself not so much to the place, as to the circum- stances associated with the place. It constitutes a neat blending of the ancient polytheism of the Druids and the newly-introduced mythology of the Romans. The Druids were wont to worship the rising sun (that is, Bel) from the hill-tops; from this custom the castle-mound at Nor- wich was anciently known as Belinus. A common expression in Leicestershire — " he leaps like a hel giant," that is, as the rising sun from the sea — is associated with the sun-wojship of our Druidic fore- fathers. The pale, glinting light, flickering among the masses of waving foliage in the Shingham woods, unquestionably gave rise to the phantom sun-dogs — and dogs, be it remembered, were sacred to Diana, the goddess of hunting. Another East Anglian tradition assures us St. Paul preached the Gospel at Babingley, near Lynn. That the great Apostle of the Gentiles really visited this country is more than probable. Mr. Soames, indeed, says " he may fairly be considered the founder of our national Church." Gildas, the most ancient of the British his- torians, states that as early as the reign of the Emperor Nero a Christian Church was existent in Britain (a.d. 6o or 6i), about the time when the Icenian (|)ueen Boadicea was vanquished ; and Clemens Romanus, a fellow-worker with St. Paul, declares in his Epistle to the Corinthians that St. Paul " taught the whole world righteousness, and for that end went to the utm