t^'''\ '^m% m^^m^: THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES -^m^ rn.'j,T"»it--.\i ,f^ '■ ,'• T'^'. - ■V,^'.-' \"ii' -T'.-.'A V- "■ ►-•- ' ■.■\v ;a SOME MATERIALS FOR THE HISTORY OF WHERSTEAD 1 W'KERSTEflD outlined from the Oninaitai Sunvv Illap. i i i ■ Nii,Miri'i|iiiTiuiiiiiiii Jo A// SAenre// tirah- c/r/. rfuRMATi Doorway in S PuroiofWherstkadGi. // .Ci^ SOMl: MATERIALS FOR THE HISTORY OF WHERSTEAD BY F. BARHAM ZINCKE VICAR OF WHERSTEAD AND CHAPLAIN TO THE QCEEN AUTHOR OF EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS AKD OF THE KEDIVE 'a winter is THE UNITED STATES' *SW1SS AtilENDS* A WALK IN THE CRISONS' ETC duuttlts olim nc Ttfrcar rttifs^ IPSWICH READ .^ BARRETT, 8 QUEEN STREET 1887 (J PREFACE. This little book is a reprint. The original appeared in the columns of the Suffolk Chronicle in weekly communications, as the successive chapters were written in 1884. At that time I had no thought of republication in any form. My only wish was to see how much I had to say, and could find to say, that I might suppose would be useful or interesting to some when I should be gone, and to give to it such permanence and diffusion as might be obtained from its appearance in a popular and well-established newspaper. After three years, however, I have been persuaded, perhaps too easily— such cases are not uncommon— to collect the scattered chapters into a single volume. The scantling of this I have so restricted as to enable me to send it by parcel post, at less than the weight of I lb., to my friends and neighbours, for whom it is intended. For I am not at all under any illusion that ' the general reader ' will be eager to look at what I may have said about our 2,264 acres and their 268 inhabitants. vi PREFACE From my notes, as they were at first submitted to my good neighbours three years ago, I have in this reprint omitted nothing. The number of chapters is the same, with the same heading of contents for each. As, however, collections of this kind have a tendency to continue growing, I have intercalated several paragraphs here and there containing additional facts. Of course some of the dates of the original communications had to be so advanced as to be brought into accord with the date of the reprint. In the accompanying map I have indicated the locahties ot the events and matters of interest mentioned in the text of the volume The architectural illustrations and the views down and up the Orwell were drawn for me by Mr. J. S. Corder, and repro- duced by the anastatic process The portraits were reproduced from paintings and photographs in my possession by the phototype process. F. BARHAM ZINCKE. Wherstead : 1887. CONTENTS. t'AGE I CHAPTER I. PARISH HISTORY— OUR CHURCH II. OUR VICARAGES . . . .12 HI. THE BENEFICE IV. OUR VICARS V. THE vicars' SURNAMES 19 29 VI. THE vicars' baptismal NAMES . . 34 VIJ. THE VICARS THEMSELVES VIII. THE VICARS THEMSELVES— GEORGE CAPPER IX. EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS X. THE PRESENTERS XI. GLEANINGS FROM THE REGISTERS . XII. COLLECTIONS TWO CENTURIES AGO . . 82 XIII. THE MANSION AT WHERSIEAD PARK XIV. WHERSTEAD TOWN HOUSE XV. LANDOWNING IN WHERSTEAD . .07 XVI. POACHING IN WHERSTEAD EIGHTY YEARS SINCE . I02 XVII. MLSCELLANEOUS NOTES AND VILLAGE WORTHIES . II5 37 49 59 72 77 90 95 viii CONTEXTS CHAPTER PACK XVIII. CELTS, AND ROMANO-BRITISH POTTERY 130 XIX. NOTES ON THE GEOLOGY OF WHERSTEAD . 168 XX. NOTES ON THE FLORA OF WHERSTEAD XXI. NOTES ON THE FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD XXII. LOCAL SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS XXIII. LOCAL SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS— C(7«/. XXIV. OUR E.\ST ANGLIAN DIALECT J 83 XXV. SOME PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN DIALECT ..... 191 XXVI. EAST ANGLIAN IN THE UNITED STATES. DIS- TINCTNESS IN VOWEL SOUNDS. REDUPLI- CATED AND RHYMING WORDS . . 200 XXVII. DISSYLLABIC FREQUENTATIVE AND INTENSIVE VERBS IN ' OCK.' HAS EAST ANGLIAN ANY- THING TO OnTE? THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE .... 20g XXVIII. CONCLUSION . . ai8 APPENDIX A. ON THE HARLANDS AND THE VERNONS . .-!2I B. ON THE COLLECTION FOR PONTEFRACT (p. 82) . 223 C ON THE FLOWERING PLANTS FOUND IN WHER- STEAD ..... 224 ADDENDA . . . . ' 233 INDEX OF NAMES . . . . 23^ ILLUSTRATIONS. MAP or "STHERSTEIAX' KOItMAN DOOR'WAT TWE CmjKCH rP THE ORWEIl DOTJC THE OBTTELL . THE VICAKAGE THE RET. G. CAPPER DATTD IXHTBli SIK ROBERT HARLAVD THE AUTHOR Ar the he fumJ*^ trfihe TmhaiK Tc face f. 7 I Tejace eaci other hetweat i if. 10 aad ii 77 fact t. 17 40 06 ., IlS -, 252 ^ I. THE PARISH CHURCH. Stand and unfold thyself. — Shakespeare. In a very large majority of our rural parishes the only historical monument now remaining is the parish church. The formation of territorial estates, on which ensued the arrangement of the land in large farms, has brought about the destruction of the old manor houses, and of the houses of the yeomen and of the small freeholders, which were no longer required. The classes indeed that had built and dwelt in them had already well-nigh disappeared, having, by the pressure of the incidents and conditions of the new system of agglomeration, been forced to go into trade or to emigrate to America. Even the hedge- rows, which in many cases were older than the houses, are now gone. Thus the land has for the most part become as bare of everything of historical interest as so much newly enclosed prairie in Minnesota or Manitoba. The modern farmhouse, built by the landowner for the accommodation of a tenant, and therefore without a suggestion of the pride of ownership, of individual taste, or of a desire to be remembered by one's descendants, or of any natural or pleasing feeling of any kind, and the labourers' cottages, generally suggestive of anything rather than pleasing thoughts, and the modern mansion, fre- quently unoccupied or let to stranger-s, all belong to an artificial system, that now appears, in its turn, to have run its allotted course, and to be out of harmony with the requirements and conditions of the times. But the parish church still stands B 2 PARISH HISTORY where, and much as, it stood eight or nine, or even ten, centuries ago. It alone saw the growth and the making of England. The Norman Invasion, the Crusades, the Feudal Castle, Cressy and Agincourt, the Wars of the Roses, the Reformation, the Great Rebellion, America and India, Marlborough and Wel- lington successively in the process of the ages touched the thoughts, the feelings, the lives of those who assembled within its walls, prompted their thanksgivings or wTOught them sorrow. It is, too, a priceless monument of the piety, the open- handedness, the artistic sentiment, the social arrangements of old times, when, notwithstanding much rudeness, hardness", and wide inequalities, men were regarded as living souls ; and when there was a sufficient number of permanent resident proprietors in ever)' parish to erect such structures, in which those who built them felt satisfaction and pride. Nor is it less a monument of the neglect, of the ignorance, of the deadness, which we are now prompted, happily with some sense of shame, to call the Philistinism, of the following commercial period, in which man was regarded as a sentient machine, e.xisting only for one of three purposes, self-indulgence, money-getting, or to toil for others. Frequently, too, it witnesses to what were the passing his- torical events of a period, through its records in stone of the emergence from among the inhabitants of the village of some great soldier or sailor ; some known statesman, or lawyer, or divine, or scholar ; some nabob or banker ; some one who was successful in commerce or trade. Those, however, who emerge to prominence in the world can only be few ; but the parish church speaks to the thought and feeling of all. It discourses to all on the matters that most concern our common humanity. It proclaims man's belief in the reality and supre- macy of the moral sense ; for what else could have maintained it throughout so many generations ? It is evidence of the need that all have felt for light, and of the general desire to make what light they had, or what they took for light, the guide of life. And how are we touched here by the memorials of human PARISH HISTORY 3 affection, and of the disappointments and failures of human hopes ! How many wounded hearts have sought for heahng here ! The remainder of the parish, all except this house of God, and God's acre around it, is for labour, for money-getting, for luxury. This is the one sacred spot where the humblest have found some inspiration. Here was evoked and fed the moral, the spiritual life. Here were enlarged the parishioners' narrow work-day horizons. Nowhere else were awakened such emotions, such tenderness, such regrets, such hopes, such aspirations. We may notice one more claim the parish church has on our favourable regard. It is the only piece of common property in the parish, held and used in common by all the parishioners. And its use has this excellent quality, that it periodically brings them all together, and makes them, at moments when their hearts are open to the highest and best influences, all acquainted with each other. Here, then, are reasons enough for our endeavouring to propagate the hope — and such hopes have a tendency to realise themselves — that, whatever changes may be in store for the National Church, men may not in the heat of the conflict lose sight of the fact that these material fabrics are unique and priceless monuments for local, and through local for general, history. It will be necessary also to keep distinctly in view that the common rights in them of all the parishioners that have always existed ought in the future, under all circum- stances, to be maintained. Of these parish churches, then, we are trustees and guar- dians, not only on behalf of our children, who in successive generations will take the places we now occupy here in our little sea-girt home, but also on behalf of that portion of the English race dispersed over two continents beyond the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, whose numbers, already far beyond our own, are increasing with a rapidity the world has never before witnessed. What they are to-day, and will be in the future, can only be the outgrowth, under new skies and on B 2 4 PARISH HISTORY broader areas, of offsets from the stock which the events and modifying conditions of centuries had created here. A few steps back from the present bring us to a past that is as thoroughly theirs as it is ours. Some years ago an American happened to be paying me a visit. He might have been taken for a shrewd money-making man, possessed, however, of some little literary culture. At his request I took him to see the parish church. T stood somewhat in advance of him while pointing out to him the ornamentation of the round arch of the porch, and telling him that as it was Norman it must be seven or eight hundred years old. Noticing that he made no reply, I turned round to see if he were listening, or whether he had moved away to look at something else, perhaps the old lichen-stained tower or the view of the Orwell. He was, however, 1 found, close to me, listening to what I was saying, and with tears in his eyes. 'Excuse,' he said, 'a weakness I never felt before, and should not have supposed myself capable of. But a sudden emotion has overcome me. I, brought up in a country without any antiquities, am overpowered at the thought of how many generations of men, how many even before my own country was known to the world, have entered in and gone out by this venerable porch, and among them probably ancestors of some of the first settlers of our New Eng- land States. The memorials of our past are here in England, and the chief of them are your priceless parish churches.' The thought had long been in my mind that it is almost a duty of his position in the incumbent of a benefice to collect what materials might be within his reach for a history of his parish. Such materials, archaeological, historical, and connected with the working of contemporary society in the parish and with the natural history of the locality, everywhere abound. The rural clergy generally have abundant leisure for work of this kind, though, perhaps, notwithstanding that printing is now cheap, it might not be desirable to send to the press at once a large proportion of such collections. Still, however imperfect and fragmentary, they might be deposited in MS. in the parsonage PARISH HISTORY 5 and ill the parish chest, to await the coming of an incumbent possessed of sufficient historical or scientific knowledge, and at the same time of sufficient literary skill, to put them into fit form for publication. In these days science, which is only accurate, compre- hensive, and systematic knowledge, is in the air, and the general thought is beginning unconsciously to be coloured with some little tinge of science. People wish to be told something about the world, animate and inanimate, around them, even in a parochial history. We have now had for a century an example of what may be effected in this direction in Gilbert White's 'Natural History of Selborne '—perhaps the most generally attractive book on natural history ever written. Its attractiveness is in some measure a result of the limitation of the area of White's investigations ; for it is strictly a parochial monograph— the record of his observations made from time to time — the journal of his notes on the natural history of the parish of Selborne. In these days works of this character would be received with interest and favourable appreciation by a far larger circle of readers than could have been found for White's charming pages. In fact, a great many people, and their number is increasing, would now be dissatisfied with any- thing professing to be a parochial history which did not give some information about the ornithology, the entomology, the botany, and the geology of the locality. As to the other department of our subject, that which embraces matters of human concern. Sir John Cullum, to take an instance from our own county, has, in his ' History and Antiquities of Hawsted and Hardwick,' given us what may be described as parochial archaeology. But here also the spirit of the age has very much altered people's ideas about what is required, and what they wish to have. Now that people have got accustomed to looking beyond their own neighbourhood, and knowledge is pretty generally understood to include an acquaintance with the causes of things, the detached and isolated archaeology of a detached and isolated locality has 6 PARISH HISTORY almost ceased to interest. The modern reader wishes to be enabled to understand how the little events of and the situa- tion of things in the little village world were connected with the great events of and the situation of things in the general outside world, and how they reciprocally bear upon and illustrate and interpret each other. The light each can supply must be thrown upon the other. With most men the history of their own country is more interesting than what may be called universal history. So would it be as respects local history with all of us who have not the knowledge and the sympathies required for the wider history of the country. But then it must be presented to us not as something complete in itself, which it is not, but as, which is what it is, a part of the great whole. If a beginning be once made by an incumbent in any part of the field in which he may be capable of doing some work, in most places a neighbour will be found capable of assisting him in some way or other in some other department. At all events, those who will follow him will sooner or later continue what he commenced ; and so eventually all that it is possible to know about a parish may be collected. But in this matter, as in most other undertakings, the chief difficulty is the first step. When the work has been entered on, then we may expect that it will be carried on. What is here submitted to the reader is meant for a beginning of this kind. It was in the year 1880 that the thoughts about a parochial history that had long been floating in my mind took form. I was then engaged in rebuilding the vicarage, and it occurred to me, in consequence, I suppose, of my having seen the invaluable lists of the Pharaohs who had preceded him which Rameses the Great set up in the great temple at Thebes and in his palace at Abydos, that it would be a ver)' useful and interesting embellishment to the hall of the new vicarage if I could place on its walls a panel inscribed with the names and dates of as many of the vicars who had preceded me as could now be recovered. For the small field of parochial history OUR CHURCH 7 this would have the same kind of interest which the hsts of the Pharaohs have for the great field of Egyptian history. Fortu- nately, I was able to do this through the entries in the diocesan registers of the institutions to the benefice, and without a single break for the last 587 years — that is, from 1300 a.d. Encouraged by this success, I proceeded to put upon paper all that I could recollect, and that as I Vi'ent along I could collect, about the parish. Week by week I published in the Suffolk Chronicle the results of my recollections and collections. That is the history of the present volume. Before, however, we come to the vicars, something should be said about the church in which they officiated, and the successive parsonages in which most of the vicars of at least the last 250 years resided. To begin, then, with the church. All that is recoverable of its history is what is wiitten on its walls and windows. We have already found that the porch is Norman. So, on the opposite or north side, is the arch for a disused door, the passage through which has been filled in with stone masonry. When this was done is not known. In 1862, on stripping the walls to re-face them, round window arches were found embedded in the walls at the north-west and south-west angles of the nave, where it joins the tower. The thickness of the ■walls — four feet — is also a Norman feature. We may, there- fore, pretty safely conclude that somewhere about the year 1 100 a Norman structure, of which the main substance still remains, took the place of the church that had preceded it. In the chancel are two small lancet windows. These, we may guess, are work of about the year 1200. The tracery of the east window, of the window on the north side to the west of the pulpit, and of four of the windows on the south side, is, in some degree. Decorated. To these, therefore, we may assign a date somewhere about 1300. The west window is in the Perpen- dicular style, and so may belong to some date not far from 1400. The rood-loft staircase, the piscina, and the recess in the i)orch for the stoup still remain. 8 OUR CHURCH No record is likely to be forthcoming that could throw any light on the erection of the Norman church, of which the existing structure is hardly more than an adaptation. We know, however, that in the year 1207 Gerard of Wachesham (the present Wattisham, near Bildeston) gave the benefice to the Augustinian Priory of Black Canons of St. Peter's, Ipswich, and that it was held by them till the year 1527, when they were suppressed in order that what they drew from the benefice, together with the rest of their income, might be appropriated to the support of Wolsey's College at Ipswich. Whatever alterations, therefore, in the structure were made in the inter- vening 320 years must have been made by the prior and canons of St. Peter's, Ipswich. The conversion, then, of the church from a Norman to a Gothic edifice must have been their work ; and so we are indebted to them for all our windows, for the tower, and probably for the oak roof of the chancel. By them also our tenor bell was placed in our belfry. It was of their thought, and at their cost, that it has been made to offer continuously for us, and for so many intervening generations of worshippers, the prayer ' that we may attain through the merits of Thomas (a Beckett) to the blissful realms of light ' — Nos Thome meritis mereamtir gaiidia lucis. The same hexameter occurs on a bell in the tower of the church of South Elmham St. Cross, in this county, and elsewhere, and indicates the work of a Nonvich foundry of the 15th century. AVe may imagine, then, that this bell was placed in our church tower at the date of its construction. This we have just sup- posed, judging from the tracer)- of the west window, may have been about the year 1400. To the thought of the historically-minded it is pleasant to listen to a bell that one's predecessors on the same spot had listened to for five centuries, beginning in the ages of faith without knowledge, and passing through the turmoil of the Reformation and the overthrows of the Great Rebellion, through the days of the Tudors, of the Stuarts, and of the Georges, OUR CHURCH 9 down to the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. And this is a pleasure that cannot be had everywhere. For in the days of Pitt clubs and patriotism, and of devotion to the throne and to the altar, the parsons and churchwardens of some of the contiguous parishes had their bells melted down into halfpence to pay for whitewashing their churches, and for port wine to toast Church and State. The legend on our second largest bell informs us that it was made by Miles Graye. He was a Colchester founder. Its date is 1622. Sam. Samwaies was then vicar, about whom we shall presently have something to say. The legend on our smallest bell informs us that it was made by John Darbie in 1675 ; Richard Gooding, C.W. John Darbie was an Ipswich founder. His work does not appear after 1680, Richard Gooding, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, attested in the previous year, 1674, as churchwarden, the entry in our registers of a collection. The following is the entry of his burial : ' Richard Gooding, Gent : of this Parish, was buried on y<^ 27 of Novemb : 82.' In 1676, another Gooding, whose christian name was John, attests, as church- warden, the entry of another collection. From the days of the prior and canons of St. Peter's, Ipswich, to our own day nothing appears to have been added to or altered in the church. It had been so well and solidly built that it was able to sustain the neglect of the ensuing 350 years. In 1863 a third restoration was effected, but this- time without any alterations. The Hon. Mrs. Dashwood, widow of Captain Ch. Ant. Dashwood, whose son had then inherited the Wherstead estate, repaired the old historic building at a cost of nearly 2,000/. The walls were re-faced externally — with the exception of the tower — and internally ; the tracery of the windows was repaired, and stained substituted for plain glass ; an oak roof, in keeping with the old roof of the chancel, that was retained, was placed over the nave, and the nave was fur- nished with open oak seats, the poppy-heads of which were copied from some old worm-eaten examples that still remained lo OUR CHURCH in the church when its restoration was taken in hand. A vestry also was added to the building. A stone pulpit was given by the Hon. Miss Rushout. It cost nearly 400/. The carving was done by a sculptor of Louvain. The font was the gift of the vicar. A reader who may have no acquaintance with Wherstead Church will wish to know the meaning of the large black ball that appears in our sketch beneath the weathercock on the tower. The same wish arose in the mind of a church dignitary who some years ago happened to be staying with me. I explained to him that it was a sailing mark that was used by vessels navigating the Orwell. In this he appeared to detect a grain of comfort, for he replied that ' he was glad to find that any use could be made of a church.' There appears always to have been more or less in one way or another some connection between the town of Ipswich and ^^■herstead Church. When our list of vicars commences, and for some time after its commencement, the entries in the diocesan register of institutions show that it was regarded as within the boundaries of Ipswich. This might have been so arranged because the prior and canons of the almost conter- minous Ipswich Priory were impropriators and patrons of the benefice. During this period the vicars, as some are styled friars and some canons, appear to have been selected from among the canons of the priory. In subsequent times, as may be inferred from the frequent entries in the parish registers of the marriages and burials of Ipswich people, between the inhabitants of the town and Wherstead Church there must have been a connection of sentiment or fashion. At the present day the attraction it has for the people of I])swich is of another kind. They now walk or drive out to the church to see the view from the east end of the church- yard. It is no inconsiderable gain for the inhabitants of so large and busy a town to have w-ithin an easy and pleasant walk the most charming view in the Eastern Counties. It com- mands almost the whole of the Orwell and of its banks. On OUR CHURCH II the left it looks up to and upon Ipswich, and on the right down to Levington, at the head of the last reach towards Harwich. All the five parks on its banks are before you— Stoke, Wherstead, Woolverstone, Orwell, and Nacton or Broke Hall. At high water the river has more the appearance of a long lake with well- wooded shores than of a river. As you look down upon it from a height of some hundred and fifty feet on a bright day, its sheeny surface faithfully reflects the blue of the sky, and in the further distance the golden light. In the days, now forty-two years ago, before railways had completely superseded the four- horse coach, I happened to be passing the Carter Fell, on the Scotch border between Jedburgh and Newcastle. A gentleman by whose side I was seated, and who I found, though then a Newcastle banker, had once been in business in Ipswich, re- marked to me ' that we had both been to Scotland in quest of scenery, but that there was a scene in the much-decried Eastern Counties which, in his opinion, was superior to any- thing he had seen in Scotland.' ' It is the view,' he continued, 'from a quiet unknown country churchyard.' 'Where?' I asked. ' Oh,' he replied, ' it is a place no one has ever heard of. It is near Ipswich, on the banks of the Orwell. The place is called Wherstead.' To me, at all events, it was not so un- known as he had supposed, for I was at that time curate of Wherstead. II. OUR VICARAGES. Nihil sanctius, nihil omni religione munitius quam domus uniuscujusque. Ci«ro. A WORD now about the vicarages, for we have had three within the last century. The oldest of which anything is known, and which was occupied by a long succession of vicars, stood on the south side of the church, and a little below it. A recess was excavated for it on the descent between the church and the bottom of the valley. This recess is still visible, although a great deal of the soil removed in sinking the road from the village to the church thirty-eight years ago was thrown into it. The view from this house commanded all the best part of the Orwell. It was a rambling, irregular structure, and, for a par- sonage, covered a good deal of ground. Its last occupants were two brothers, a General and an Admiral Cornwallis. Forty years ago one who had known it well described it to me as a crinaim-cranaim kind of house, full of ins and outs. Its old bowling green, a little beyond the east end of the churchyard, still remains, surrounded with dilapidated elms. Below the site of the old house are now standing — they once stood within its grounds — some ancient thorns, an ilex, and a circular clump of elms and oaks, now sadly wrecked by the unusually violent storms of the last five or six years. This clump stood at the south-west corner of the garden, and sheltered a summer-house in which the penultimate vicar, as the tradition of the parish ran, used to smoke the pipe of reflection and contentment. Between this clump of trees and the site of the old house OUR VICARAGES 13 several tufts of daffodils still break into flower every year, but now through the turf of the park. They mark the spot where a century ago the vicar's garden smiled. In the early spring for forty-six years I have noticed them bursting into bloom, and always with increasing interest, as I recalled their history, and welcomed them as faithful witnesses of the past. In 1880, when I was building the third vicarage, the only known fragment of the first was a block of conglomerate, which many years ago I had brought away from the old site, and which I have placed in an honourable and conspicuous position in the north wall of the new vicarage, with a suitable inscrip- tion around it. When I first came into the parish I had noticed that a slab of similar conglomerate was laid down before the doorsill of an old man of the name of Jerry Double. I asked him how it came there. He told me that he had been present at the de- molition of the old vicarage alongside the church, and that he had brought that stone away as a memorial of it. Some years after his death, which occurred about thirty-six years ago, I endeavoured, but unavailingly, to discover what had become of this stone. Among others I had questioned about it his daughter, who had resided with him. She was not, however, disposed to give me any information on the subject. After a time I asked David Double, old Jerry Double's nephew, to make what inquiries about it and what search for it he could. This he did, and in 1884 he succeeded in finding it. He had extracted from his cousin, who had been so reticent towards me, that on the death of her father she had allowed the landlord of the ' Ostrich,' the village inn, to remove it. He then went to the ' Ostrich,' and obtained permission from the successor of the late landlord to search the premises for it. When the hope of finding it was almost entirely abandoned, he spied a corner of it projecting from a mound of rockwork. It is a roughly dressed slab of conglomerate, three feet long, two feet wide, and half a foot thick. It formed part of the pavement of a yard at the old vicarage. This year (1887) I got possession of it. 14 OUR VICARAGES ' This David Double, whom I shall have occasion to mention again, is the only man in the parish who lives in a house and cultivates a bit of land — a garden of half an acre — of his own. All the rest of the parish, with the exception of the glebe, belongs to the Wherstead estate. He is a retired gardener, now (in 1 88 7) in his seventy-seventh year, and many years ago was, by a happy accident, able to buy with his savings this half-acre and to build his house upon it. The fact that he is thus rooted in the soil — this is the case with no one else amongst us — has engendered within him so intense an interest in everything connected with the history of the parish that the feeling could not be stronger if, instead of being the son of an agricultural labourer, he had been descended from a long line of distin- guished members of the Society of Antiquaries. If he were liable to be ejected from the parish, with a week's notice, at the will, in accordance with the interests, often at the mere caprice, of another man, is it conceivable that for him under such con- ditions the history of the parish would have any charm or attraction ? But to go back for a moment to his uncle, the Jerry Double who preserved a memorial of the old vicarage. In the year 1 84 7 the late Sir Robert Harland told me an anecdote about him, which in its antecedents and accessories has some little historical interest. Sir Robert Harland, before the breaking out of the French Revolution, had been a kind of page in the establishment of Count Dillon, who had married one of Sir Robert's sisters, and was a member of the French Administra- tion. In his capacity, as in some sort an attendant on the Count, he was present at the council held by the Administra- tion on the receipt of the intelligence of Rodney's great victory over Count de Grasse in the West Indies. He well remem- bered, he said, that the conclusion arrived at was that instruc- tions should immediately be sent to all their naval officers any- where in command of ships or fleets never to commit them- selves so far as that they must fight the English, for experience taught that on the water they were invincible, but to worry OUR VICARAGES 15 and annoy them as much as they could. And these appear to have been the tactics of the French navy down to the day of Trafalgar. In the year 1847 I was in conversation with Sir Robert Harland on the road not far from my house, and Jerry Double passed by ; upon which Sir Robert said, ' I am always glad to see that old man, because fifty years ago, when I had just re- turned from France, a young man, full of the ideas about liberty and reason which had brought about the Revolution, I treated him foolishly and harshly, which I am now endeavour- ing to atone for. I ordered my men to go on with the harvest work on Sunday, telling them that there was neither piety nor reason in risking the loss of what was given us for our support, because of some antiquated ideas about sitting idle for one day in the week. They all obeyed except Jerry Double. For this I discharged him. But now I think that he was right and that I was wrong, and so I allow him for the remainder of his life ten shillings a week.' This Sir Robert Harland was the only son of Admiral Harland, who had resided in the neighbouring parish of Sproughton, and whose house Sir Robert pulled down when he built the mansion in Wherstead Park. Admiral Harland had been Minister Plenipotentiary to the Nabob of Arcot. When Sir Robert had built his new house at Wherstead, it was found that the vicar's glebe was in the middle of the area be contem- plated forming into a park, and that the vicarage intercepted his view of the Orwell. It therefore became necessary, in his way of looking at the matter, that the glebe should be absorbed into the estate, and that the old vicarage should be demolished. This was effected in 1802 by an exchange. What was given for the charming site, and for the old house in which a long suc- cession of vicars had dwelt, was the house and land of a small freeholder of the name of Frost, who had been bought out in the formation of the Wherstead estate. The history of the Frost family, as far as births, deaths, and marriages go, is given in the parish register. The last of i6 . OUR VICARAGES the family, who was in business in London, used occasionally to visit Wherstead for the purpose of walking by and looking once more at the place where his forefathers had hved, but which was then the vicarage. The following entry from the parochial register shows that some time after they had left the place the mortal remains of a daughter of the uprooted family were brought here from Wiltshire in order that she might be buried within sight of the old home and among her kindred. Sarah, wife of Thomas Barry, Esq., of Bulidge House, Wiltshire, daughter of Charles and Elizabeth Frost, late of this parish, 1S20, aged 49. This second, or Frost vicarage, as it was inconvenient in its arrangements and much out of repair — it was 260 years old when I took it down — my immediate predecessor would have removed and rebuilt had it not been for the moulded ceiling of the sitting-room, which he had not the heart to destroy. He therefore contented himself with spending 600/. in en- largements and ineffectual repairs, which, like most contract work, were themselves in never-ending need of repairs. At last, in 1 880, which, however, was five-and-twenty years after I had quite made up my mind that I must do it, I replaced it with the now existing, which is our third, vicarage. It would have been unfeeling and barbarous to demolish an old house that had something to say about the local past, and which had some interesting features in itself, without leaving a memorial of what it had been. This memorial I have provided in an inscription on a brass plate, which I have placed as a panel in the hall of the new vicarage. Those, now, who, after me, will occupy this house, will know something of the house which preceded it on the same site, and was for seventy-eight years our second vicarage. I here give the inscription : — The frame of this panel was cut from a beam of the old house that was built on this site about 1620, and taken down in 18S0. Its woodwork was of oak and sweet chesnut, and, as it was for the most part quite sound, was re-used for the ceiling of the study, for lintels, joists, and otherwise in this house. The bricks of the old house were of varying thicknesses fruui OUR VICARAGES 17 l\ to 2,\ inches. Many of them had been taken from some previous structure. All of them were re-used in the walls of this house. The partition walls were of clay and chopped straw. The ceiling of the sitting- room was divided into four compartments moulded in plaster. Each had a border of vine leaves. In the centre of each was a large acorn in its cup, projecting 2\ inches, surrounded with oak leaves. In each corner of each compartment was z.Jleur de lis. I will here add the inscription — it is on the north side of the new vicarage — that surrounds the block of conglomerate that is our memento of our first known vicarage. This fragment is all that remains of the old vicarage that stood on the south side of the church, and was exchanged in 1802 for the house of a small freeholder on this site, built about 1620 and taken down in 1880. From it came the bricks that surround this inscription. These specimens of the bricks of the second vicarage were placed in a conspicuous position, and attention is directed to them in the inscription, because some inference as to their age may be drawn froin the fact that they are not more than two inches in thickness. From the marks upon them it was evident that they had been previously used in some older building. Many of the bricks in the soffit of the staircase in our church tower are of the same scantling, and so probably of the same age. Of the third vicarage little need be said. It will, I hope, long be able to speak for itself I am responsible for its de- sign and details, and for the fashion in which it was built. The foundations are 3 feet deep and 3 feet wide, and rest on solid indurated gravel. The outer skin of the walls is built of moulded concrete blocks made of the best London cement, faced with sifted shingle from Landguard Fort* beach, and backed with broken brick and the larger pieces of shingle. The inner skin is brickwork. The space between the two skins on the north and east sides was filled in with grout made with cement. On the south and west sides the two skins were clamped together and the interspace left empty. The mullions of the windows were made by Doulton, of Lambeth. c 1 8 OUR VICARAGES The aim of the interior hall, with a detached stove and an uncovered iron flue rising vertically from the stove through the two upper storeys, was to give complete command over the climate of the whole interior of the house, so that the staircase and landings might be free from damp, and that the air that is supplied to all the rooms might be warm and dr)\ The inscription over the outer door of the house, ' Liber Exi Redi Liber,' is addressed only to the master of the house, the vicar for the time being, and bids him go forth for what he has to do outside his door free, as far as in him lies, from fear, hatred, care, prejudice, debt, superstition, ignorance, and from whatever may enslave his mind, and to return to his work at home in the same state of freedom. The idea of the ceiling of the library, five-rayed gilt stars sown on an ultramarine expanse, I borrowed from the ceiling of the palace of Rameses the Great at Abydos. On the wall of this room I have a side face of Rameses I obtained at Thebes. 19 III. THE BENEFICE. That the grass does not grow on stones is not the fault of the rain. Oriental Proverb. So much for the vicarage in the sense of a dwelh'ng. Now a few words on the vicarage in the sense of a benefice, or, as we call it, a living. Since the rectorial tithe was alienated and appropriated to the monastery of St. Peter's at Ipswich, and subsequently to the Prior and Convent of Ely, it has never been much of a living. It has rather ' had everything advan- tageous for life except the means to live.' There is in the Bishop's Registry at Norwich a very old valuation of the bene- fices of the diocese. The year inscribed on it is 1300, but the general opinion is that the date of its compilation must be set somewhat later. It is called the Diocesan Domesday of Norwich. In this voluine Wherstead has the following entry : — Quested, als Wherested, Sje Mari^. Prior ecclia; S. Petri de Gypvico habet eccliam in proprios usus. Estimatio illius xv. marc. Estimatio Vicarise ejusdem vi. marc. Procuratio vii.s. vi.d. Vicarius solvit syno- dalia per annum ii.s. iv.d. Denarii S. Petri xiiii.d. Which may be translated : St. Mary's, of Quested, or Where- sted (now Wherstead). The Prior of the Church of St. Peter's, Ipswich, is impropriator of the benefice. Its estimated value (to him) is fifteen marcs. The estimated value of the vicarage of the same is six marcs. Procurations are seven shillings and sixpence. The vicar pays yearly for synodals two shillings and fourpence. Fourteen pence are due for St. Peter's pence. 20 THE BENEFICE A great deal of history is embedded in the particulars of this dry businesslike entry. At the date of the entry the benefice had become a vicarage. This diversion of the great tithe from the incumbent to the Prior of St. Peter's no doubt took place in 1207, the date of Gerard of Wachesham's gift of the advowson to the prior. From that time — that is, for 680 years — if we suppose that as many vicars were instituted in the century that preceded the year 1300 as in the century that followed that date, Gerard's act lowered the temporal position of thirty-four vicars by re- ducing their income to less than one-third of what it othenvise would have been. The motive of this gift was probably to secure on behalf of his soul the prayers of the monks of St. Peter's. In effect, however, it was a quasi-robbery of all future incumbents. It was buying what he regarded as an improved chance of salvation with other people's money. At some pre-Reformation date — I have not been able to ascertain precisely when — the rectorial tithe passed into the possession of the Prior and Convent of Ely, who were also patrons of the conterminous parish of Stoke, Ipswich. Nathaniel Acton, of Bramford Hall, who died in the year 1837, was lessee of the great tithes of Wherstead from the Dean and Chapter of Ely, the existing representatives of the Prior and Convent of Ely. These tithes now belong to the owner of the Wherstead estate. My friend, the Dean of Ely, tells me that they did not form part of the property his chapter had to make over to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and that now there is no trace among their documents of their ever having possessed them. AVhat, however, we are now immediately concerned in is the value of the great and of the vicarial tithe at the time when, A.D. 1300, we first find them separated and in different hands. At that date we now know that they were estimated respectively at fifteen and at six marks. A mark was not then in England, as it is now in Germany, a coin, but a term or sum of account. It meant as much silver as was contained in i6j-. i^d. of those times. In those times, however, there was threefold as much THE BENEFICE 21 silver in a shilling as there is now. A silver penny of those days was equal in weight to one of our threepennies ; a groat, or 4^/., to one of our shillings ; and a pound meant and was a pound, that is, twelve ounces, troy weight, of silver, whereas in these days a pound means only a third of that weight, or four ounces of silver. To translate, therefore, these mediaeval marks into the coin of the present day, we must multiply i6.f. 4(/. by three. Each mark, therefore, contained 49^. of our money. The next point to be ascertained is how much of the neces- saries of life would that sum of 495. have purchased in those times ? What was its purchasing power as respects commodi- ties ? Ten shillings of our money would generally in those times have purchased a quarter of wheat — that is to say, wheat then averaged about \s. ^d. a bushel. Sometimes it went down to 6^. 8d. a quarter, or lod. a bushel of our money. The general purchasing power, therefore, of these 495. was then six times as great as it is now. We will take this 49^^. at 50^'. and multiply it by six, which will give 300.?., or 15/. A mark, then, in those days, from these two causes, first that there was three times as much silver in corresponding denominations as there is now, and then that silver had, weight for weight, at least six times the purchasing power that it has now, would go as far in housekeeping and providing necessaries as 15/. now. In those times, therefore, St. Peter's Priory at Ipswich drew from Wher- stead, expressed in terms of the present day, 225/. That is the modern value of their fifteen marks. By calculating in the same way we find that the vicar's income from the parish, esti- mated at six marks, would now be worth 90/. a year. By applying the same process to the other regular payments yearly due from the benefice, we find that the procurations, or the composition paid in money for the charge of entertaining the bishop or the ordinary, whenever he might visit the parish, and which are set down at ts. 6d., were equal to 6/. 15^-. of our money ; and that the synodals or fees paid at certain ecclesiastical meetings, and which are set down at 2s. ^d., 22 THE BEXEFICE amounted to 2/. 2^. of our money. The synodals, it is stated, were to be paid by the vicar. The procurations appear to have been ]iaid by the holder of the great tithe, or possibly they were in some way or other imposed on the parish. There remains one other ecclesiastical charge on the parish — that of Peter's pence, or Romescot. This was the Pope's due. It amounted to \^d. of the money of that time. This is equivalent to one guinea of our money. The foregoing investigation suggests some questions. How did it come about that what is still calleda pound — that is, a pound of silver — and which at the beginning of our period did actually weigh a true pound, does now only weigh the third part of a pound troy, or the fourth part of a pound avoirdupois ? The explanation is that when the mintage of money is absolutely in the hands of an individual, be he emperor or king— and our appellation of the royal mint reminds us that this was once the case here in England — there will be pressing occasions when his necessities will be too strong for his honesty, and he will either debase the standard or diminish the weight of the denomina- tion. If, for instance, he should coin a pound of silver into forty instead of into twenty shillings, and force his creditors to take the new as equivalent to the old shilling, he would atone stroke wipe out half his debts. But governments in which the influ- ence and interests of the people count for something do not act in this way, because it would injure not only every one who is a creditor, but also would disorganise trade, and until tlie market had adjusted itself to the new conditions would injure every one who had anything to sell. And this is the reason why from the time of Elizabeth, when the interests of the people began to be effectually represented in Parliament, there has been no tampering with the money of the realm. Another of these questions is, how did it happen that at that time a pound of silver had so much more purchasing power than it has at this day ? The answer is that the New World, with its productivesilver mines, had not yet been discovered, and that the silver mines of the Old World were becoming exhausted. THE BENEFICE 23 This process of exhaustion had been going on from the time of the Roman Empire. The supply, therefore, of silver having become deficient, its value had been constantly rising. The consequence of this was that its exchangeable value against food, clothing, and all kinds of commodities was many times as great as it is now. The apparently low prices of the beginning of our period and the comparatively high prices of the latter part of it equally represent the value of labour and of its products, when measured by the amount of coin in use at the two periods. A day's wages bore the same ratio to the whole amount of the currency then that a day's wages bears to the whole amount of the currency now ; the difference is in the currency, which was then very straitened in its limits, but is now vastly expanded. The intrinsic value of silver in the two periods varied, but in each period it went at its intrinsic value. This was not at all the case with the paper currency during our long suspension of cash payments from 1797 to 1821. The paper pound then only represented the degree of probability there was that the government would be able eventually to redeem its obligations. Under this system, in 181 2, a quarter of wheat on the average of all our markets for the whole year sold for 6/. 5^. 51/., and a quarter of barley for 3/. 6y. dd. But this was not a currency of the precious metals, but of probability, the probability that the government would eventually be able to redeem its obligations. We have an instance of this in the difference between the original contract for the building of the mansion in Wherstead Park, and the figures of the sum by which the contract was paid. The contract was made before the suspension of cash payments, and was for 26,000/., of course to be paid in the precious metals. It had, however, to be paid during the time of the suspension of cash payments, that is, in paper pounds, representing only a certain amount of pro- bability, and it took 50,000 of these probability pounds to dis- charge the original 26,000/., with perhaps some afterthoughts. A third question that is suggested by our inquiry into the value of the living in the early part of our period is. How has it 24 THE BEXEFICE come about that whereas six centuries ago the vicarial tithe of Wherstead was worth only 90/. of our present money, at the time of the Tithe Commutation Act it had come to be worth about 158/. ? This is an addition of 68/. ; and though it still leaves the living a very poor one, is, notwithstanding, a notice- able increase. The rectorial tithe, impropriated now by the Wherstead estate, has increased in the same proportion. What has been the cause of this increase ? I believe it is to be at- tributed to the extension and improvement of agriculture in the intervening centuries. All the land was gradually taken into cultivation, and fallows were also abandoned. And as the tithe might have been taken in kind, or was, at all events, esti- mated from the produce, this will fully acount for the increase. This implies that in the period between Edward III. and the Tithe Commutation Act the produce had nearly doubled. Henceforth, of course, no amount of increase in the produce will affect the tithe, which has become merely a reserved rent permanently fixed within certain variable limits. 25 IV. OUR VICARS. Series longissima rerum Per tot ducta viros. — Virgil. We have now come to the vicars who ministered in the church which, as we have seen, has some features and some history worthy of record ; and who lived in the fourteenth century on six marks, and in recent times on 158/. a year, in the vicarage houses, of which also we had something to say. The following list of them is extracted from the thirty-one folio volumes of Institutions in the Diocesan Registry at Norwich. It begins A.D. 1300, and is throughout unmarred by a single break. I shall give in the case of each the date of his institution, and the statement of the patrons who presented : — 1300, 5 Kal. Mart. — Tho. de Cruce. ad pr^s. Pr. et conv. S. Petri de Gypvico. 1302, 7 Id. Mail. Will, de Ryngested. ad prtes. eorundero. 1303, 5 Id. Nov. Will, de Culfo. ad prses. Pr. et conv. S. Petri de Gypvico. 1324, Id. Oct. Tho. de Hasketon. ad praes. Pr. et conv. S. Petri Gippevvic. •349. 8J"n- Joes de Berdefeld deCHATESHAM. .ad pra;s. eorundem. •395) 25 Fell. Joes Belcham. ad pres. eorundem. 1432, 6 Aug. Fr. Will. Wodebregge. ad prces. eorundem. 1434, 5 Jul. Fr. Will. Norwich. Can. S. Petri Gypw. ad pracs. eorundem. 1458, 25 Jul. Fr. Joes Branford. Canon. ad coll. dni. Epi. p. laps. 26 OUR VICARS 1478, 9 Dec. Fr. Will. Smith. Can. ad pnes. Pr. et conv. S. Petri Gyppewic. 1489, 13 Oct. Fr. ROBERTUS. Canonicus. ad coll. dni Epi. per laps. 1492, 16 Oct. Roger Umfrev. ad coll. dni Epi. •495) 9 Jul. Roger Benett. ad coll. dni Epi. 1530, 5 April. Joes Fuldeham]P- ■""'• """ ^'•'- <*^ ^'"T^^.^™ tf Mr. Joes Warner P"^- ^^"^ ^' <^''P- Cardmalis Coll. Gj'pwici dse. vicoe pronorum. 1546, 25 Mali. Will. Style, ad praes. dni R. Henrici VIII. 1552, 10 Jan. Joes Campell. ad praes. dni R. Edward VI. 155s, 26 Jun. Tho. Awdus. ad coll. dni Epi p. laps. 1576, 21 Aug. Ric. Gouge, ad prses. dnse R. Eliz«. 1582, 20 Dec. Tim. Fitzallen. ad prses. dnse R. Elizx. 15S5, 25 Nov. Will. Smith, ad prss. dns R. Elizce. 16:1, 29 Mart. Sam. Samwaies, M.A. ad pnes. dni. R. Jacobi. 1662, 22 Nov. Joes Burgess, ad prjes. dni. R. Caroli II. Vic. vacant. p. mortem ult. Inc. aut alio quocunq. modo. 1664, 25 Jiilii. Will. Thorxe, M.A. ad pnes. dni. R. Caroli II. 1718, 28 Julii. Edw. Leeds, ad pnes. dni R. Georgii. 1744, 17 July. George Drurv, B.A., on the presntn. of II. M. K. George II. 1761, 29 Jan. Will. Gee, B.A., on the presntn. of H.M. K. George III. 1815, 12 May. George Capper, on the presntn. of H.M. K. George III. 1847, 28 July. Foster Barham Zinxke, on the presntn. of H.M. Q. Victoria. It is a long span of time that this list covers — 5S7 years. It takes us back to a very different world from that in which we are now living. The Crusades had only just ended. The English Parliament was still in its cradle, ^^'ales had only just been united to the English Crown. The pleadings of our law courts were still in French. The commerce of the world was in the hands of the cities of Italy, and will be so in the main for two centuries longer, till the routes by sea to the East and the New World have been discovered. The dissatisfaction of Wickliffe with the religious doctrines and practice of his day, which was the precursor of the Reformation, still more than two centuries distant, will not yet for some time be proclaimed in his preaching and writings. Through all the changes of these 587 years the vicars of OUR VICARS 27 Wherstead have held on. There has been no break in their continuity. And their Hne reaches still further back, for it began a century earlier at the date of Gerard of Wachesham's gift of the benefice to the Prior and Black Canons of St. Peter's, Ipswich. The vicars, then, have succeeded one another for 680 years. But even this was not their beginning, but only a change of title corresponding to a diminution of income, for they had been preceded by a line of rectors whose beginning we must throw back for three or four hundred years more. There has then been on this spot a succession of ministers of the Word for more than a thousand years, that is for more than half the time that has elapsed since the Christian message was first heard in the villages of Galilee and on the shores of Gennesareth. But even the 587 years of our list is a long span in human history, and the unbroken continuity of the list through all those years is a striking indication of the stability which has characterised English progress. The beginning and the growth to maturity of the art, the literature, the philosophy of the Greeks, the most wonderful blossoming, and fruit-bearing too, of mind the ages have witnessed, required no greater span of time than this. It needed but half this lapse of years for the conquest of the world beyond the Alps and the sea by Rome, or again for the conquest of Rome by Christianity. In a third of this time the United States of America have sprung up from the feeble beginnings of a few scattered English colonists to a republic of 60,000,000 souls, already an empire second to none other in the world in wealth, intelligence, enterprise, and power ; and in a fourth of this time the foundations were laid, and the whole structure consolidated, of our vast Indian Empire. During these centuries we may suppose that our four manors and our several small freeholds contributed to the service of the State, and to the general business and work of the country, as many good and true men as an equal number of manors and of freeholds anywhere else. But now that they 28 OUR VICARS have all been merged in a single estate we have become nothing more than a factory for corn and meat, plus an occasional emigrant to the towns or to the colonies, with now and then a recruit for the army. Of the twenty-eight names our list of vicars contains, precisely one half belong to the papal and the other to the reformed period. The fourteen Catholics cover a span of 246 years ; and if we allow six years more of life to the present vicar, the fourteen Protestants will have covered a span of 346 years ; Just one hundred years more than their fourteen predecessors. The Catholic vicars held the benefice, on an average of the whole fourteen, each for slightly more than seventeen and a half years ; the reformed vicars for nearly twenty-five years each. This does not show that in these days such preferment as a benefice is bestowed generally at an earlier age than was customary under the old system, because the probabihty in the case of \Mierstead is that on the occurrence of a vacancy the preferment was offered to the senior canon in the prior)', and so on down- ward till some one accepted it. On this plan the incumbent could seldom have been a young man. 29 V. THE VICARS' SURNAMES. Ede tuum nomen, nomenque parentum. — Ovid. Our list is instructive on the subject of surnames. The mean- ing of the word surname is that it is an additional, a super- added name. So in fact it was. Our forefathers originally had no family names. Each individual had but one name ; that given him at baptism. But this limitation had the inconvenience that, as many received the same name, and necessarily so, for the list of baptismal names was too short to admit of much variety, the mere baptismal name did not sufficiently distinguish the individual. The most obvious way of meeting this difficulty was to append to the baptismal name some characteristically descriptive appellation, as Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, Henry the Scholar (Beauclerc), Richard the Lion- hearted (Cceur de Lion) ; or among the common multitude such peculiarities of the outward man as that he was short, long, white, brown, black, had crooked shanks, or was strong in the arm, S:c. A second resource was found in the trade a man practised, as that he was a baker, butcher, weaver, or fisher, &c. These two methods, however, were insufficient, because the list of personal peculiarities is soon exhausted, and because everywhere, more particularly in towns, a great many must be of the same trade. Another resource was to append to one's baptismal name that of the place of his nativity. This method also had a serious objection, for it is obvious that it could only be used when a man left his native parish or town, otherwise 30 THE VICARS' SURNAMES ever)' one in the parish or town might have had the same sur- name. A fourth device was either to prefix the Norman Fitz, or to postfix the Enghsh son, to the father's baptismal name, as for example Fitz John and Dickson. These are the four main sources from which our family nomenclature was derived. Ever)- one of them is open to the same unanswerable objection that in the next generation it would state what was not true, and what the obvious fact might directly contradict. Cruik- shank's son might have straight shanks, Culfo's son might be born in Ringstead, Baker's son might be a tailor, Dickson, who took his name from his father Dick, might have been christened Thomas, and so his son properly should be Thomson. People were a long time in getting over this difficulty. It was, however, eventually got over by every one recognising the great utility of surnames, and so they shut their eyes to the contradictions to fact involved in them ; and all the names got gradually emptied altogether of their original significance, and came eventually to mean only the one thing needed, that such or such an individual belonged to such or such a family. Now the origin and gradual adoption of our surnames are very distinctly illustrated by our list of vicars. The first nine, who cover a period of 158 years from a.d. 1300 to .\.d. 1458, all bear in addition to the baptismal name the name of the place, parish, or town in which they were born : Thomas de Cruce, William de Ryngested (Ringstead in Norfolk), William de Culfo (in Suffolk), Thomas de Hasketon (in Suffolk), John de Chatesham (Chattisham in Suffolk), John Belcham (Belchamp in Essex), William Wodebregge (Woodbridge in Suffolk), William Norwich, John Branford (Bramford in Suffolk). The first, Thomas de Cruce, probably got his designation of de Cruce from having been born near a roadside crucifix, or a market cross, or even a cross way, or from a place that then had the name of Cross. It is worth noticing that they all come from Suffolk, Essex, or Norfolk. The first five have the Norman de before the name of the place of their nativity. This means of course that they themselves came from those THE VICARS' SURNAMES 31 places. The four last have the de omitted. This may either mean that the use of Norman French in such matters was dying out, or that the names of the places they bear after their baptismal names were not the names of the places where they were born, but in each case where the father or grandfather had been born. If the latter could be shown to be the case, then they would be instances of the names of places having really and permanently become family names. The fifth name on the list is given as John of Berdefield of Chatesham. Here probably we have an attempt to particularise a man by giving the place both of his own and of his father's birth. If so, we may suppose that his native place was Berdefield. He was John of Bardfield, the son of William, or Thomas, or whatever it might have been, of Chattisham, as the names are now spelt. These names of the place of nativity, which of course were meant to tell where a man was born, must at first, and for a long time, have been dropped at the death of those who bore them. When they at last stuck to his children and grand- children, which there must have been great difficulty in getting them to do, then they became truly family names. The first undoubted family surname in our list is not new to us — it is that of our old familiar friend Smith. As he was a priest, he could not himself have been by trade a smith. The name, therefore, must first have been given to his father or grandfather, and as it had stuck to their descendants, as is proved by this William bearing it, it had become a true sur- name or family name. This was, as he was instituted in 1478, about 450 years ago. But in this matter things were still in an unsettled state, for the next vicar is merely called Robert. After Robert, however, surnames carry the day, for every suc- ceeding vicar has both a baptismal name and a surname. Doubtless it can be shown that at an earlier date than the beginning of our list, in some cases among the upper class, family names had been established. But it is also true that in the other direction, as late as the date of the Reformation, they had not become universal and permanent among the lower 32 THE VICARS SURNAMES strata of the community. The use I am making of our list is to find what hght it throws in this matter on the practice of a particular class at a definite time, that of the vicars of Wherstead in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries — though of course in a matter of this kind their practice is a fair sample of the general practice. The vicar who was instituted a.d. 1555 has what appears the strange name of Awdus. We can trace, however, from what this name had grown into this form. The w no doubt was a substitution for /. This was a change frequent in those times. Lawford, in which Manningtree Station is situated, supplies a near instance, for the name of the place was originally Lalford. Awdus, therefore, had pre\iously been Aldus, and Aldus had once been Aldous, a name which still remains amongst us ; and Aldous had in the first instance been Aid or Old House. By just the same process the name of Bacchus, which we sometimes meet with over shops in London and elsewhere, is not derived in any way from the Roman god of wine and jollity, but was formed sometimes from Bake House, and sometimes from Back House. In the same way the family names of Venus and of Duffus are only Fen House and Dove House. But our name of Awdus has gone through one more metamorphose. Not long ago I received a circular from a firm at Hull, the senior partner of which subscribed himself Audas. This is a very debased, though quite lineal, descendant of Old House. There is only one other surname in our list that requires notice, that of Samwaies. In the Register of Institutions at Norwich, and in his own entries in the parish registers, the name is spelt as I have just written it. On his gravestone, however, in the church it is inscribed in the form of Sames, which was probably intended to represent a monosyllabic sound, whereas Samwaies must have been a dissyllable. At this we need not feel any surprise when we remember that his contemporary, Shakespeare, spelt his own name in more ways than one. At that time spelling did not attempt to stereotype itself THE VICARS' SURNAMES 33 as it does now, but aimed at representing, which of course ought always to be its aim, the current customary sound of words. The shortening of Christian names is an outcome of famiharity and of friendly feeling. This good man had lived among his flock for more than half a century ; and if he won their affection, this abbreviation of his surname may have been almost unconsciously adopted as a way of expressing their kindliness towards him. New England was settled in Sames's time. A large proportion of the leading emigrants to Massachusetts, as the VVingfields, Shermans, VVinthrops, Appletons, &c., were from Suffolk ; and among them was the son of the Rector of an all but adjoining parish. In the neighbourhood of Boston is the town of Ipswich. It is not then an unlikely thing that one of Sames's kin joined in this heroic act, as it was then deemed, of planting a new England beyond the Atlantic. It was a subject that interested many, and which must have been in everybody's thoughts in this part of Suffolk. If a Suffolk Sames joined in this work, the name he took with him may in his new home have undergone another slight change, which would account for the Semmes family in the United States, one of whom in the great American civil war, as the dauntless captain of the ubi- quitous Alabama, made ' Semmes ' a name of pride to the South and of terror to the North, and one which, through the heavy compensation we had to pay, will not soon be forgotten in this country. 34 VI. THE VICARS' BAPTISMAL NAMES. How many are there who might have done well in the world had not their character and spirit been depressed and Nicodemused into nothing. — Sterne. We now come to the Christian names of our list ; and in them, too, we find embedded some not uninteresting histor)'. What first strikes the eye with respect to them is that, of all the twenty-eight on the roll, the last is the only one who had received more than one baptismal name. On my pointing out this to the late Dean of Westminster, Arthur Penryn Stanley, he replied that he had noted the same fact with respect to the far longer list of the Deans of Westminster who had preceded him : that only one beside himself had two Christian names. There are many instances of these binomial appellations of an earlier date, but the practice of giving them did not become general till about a century ago. They only begin to appear in the Wherstead baptismal register at about that time. We may suppose that the practice originated in a real want. The usual baptismal names were not more than fifty-two, and many families, too, had the same surname. Hence would arise some confusion, for many individuals must have thus come to have the same names. If, however, two baptismal names were given, this confusion would be avoided. The innovation was also recommended by the desire felt by the parents to give their infant the names of more than one of their relatives or friends. But in this, as is the case with THE VICARS' BAPTISMAL NAMES 35 everything, it was possible to raise objections on the other side. And here the opposition came from the lawyers, who for a long time, but in the end unavailingly, fought against the two names, taking what appeared to be the unanswerable ground that a man might be either Dick or Tom, but that it was not possible that he could be both. Of my twenty-seven one-name predecessors twelve bear Biblical and sixteen Saxon or Norman names. Among the Biblical names, which were a Norman introduction, there are seven Johns, three Thomases, one Timothy, and one Samuel. In all Christian countries the name of the beloved disciple was in high favour. In every language it became thoroughly naturalised, assuming in each a form in harmony with the capacities and characteristics of the language, as John, Jean, Giovanni, Joan, Evan, Juan, Hans, Ivan, &:c. Next in popu- larity to the beloved came the doubting Apostle, but at a long interval behind him. Perhaps Timothy was more used than Paul, out of reverence for the great Apostle. For the same reason Samuel may have become a common name, while Isaiah was almost unused. Of the sixteen Saxon and Norman names in our list William occurs nine times, more than half of the whole sixteen. This is a demonstration that the name of the Conqueror was not unpopular. The whole of the nation, whether of Norman or of Saxon descent, had become proud of him. Of our fifty- two Christian names this was evidently for many centuries the one most in favour. Not only does our list prove this, but also the fact that more family names were formed from it than from any other name, as Williams, Williamson, Fitz- William, Wills, Wilson, Wilks, Wilkins, Wilkinson, Wilcocks, Wilmot, Bilson, Tilly, Tillotson, &c. Of late, however, it seems to have lost much of its popularity. The other names of this class are two Rogers, two Georges, one Richard, and one Edward. The entire absence of Henry is remarkable. There is, too, only one Edward. This may show that the body of the people of this country had 36 THE VICARS' BAPTISMAL NAMES no liking for the memory of the Henries and the Edwards who had involved them in the long and costly wars with France, and again in the long and exhausting Wars of the Roses. We have already noticed that the present vicar is the first who appears with two baptismal names. His two names also are such as to indicate another change in personal nomen- clature. Neither of them is either a Biblical or old Norman or Saxon baptismal name. They are both of them, Foster and Barham, true surnames, and were in fact the surnames of two friends of his father. This use of surnames as Christian names is now quite common. People appear to have become tired, indeed almost ashamed, of the old Johns and Thomases, the old Williams and Edwards. Perhaps one may here be allowed to remark that our personal nomenclature is in a most anarchical condition. It rests on no intelHgible principle, nor indeed on any principle whatever. WTiat is required is that it should distinguish the individual from all others ; that it should give as much informa- tion as possible, that is to say, that the names should be significant of facts ; that it should be simple ; and that it should be uniform. Now all these objects might, as I have long thought, be secured by the observance of a very easy rule — that of every one having three names ; the first his own, or baptismal name, the second that of his mother, the third that of his father. Suppose, for instance, three brothers of the name of Howard married, the first a Brook, the second a Lawrence, the third a Scott, the children of the first would be called John and Mary Brook Howard, and the family would be called the Brook Howards ; the children of the second would be called Lucy and Thomas Lawrence Howard, and the family the Lawrence Howards ; and so with the Scott Howards. It certainly seems fair, and it would be useful, too, that the name of the mother should be present in the names of the children. This plan would enable us to get rid of much that in our modern practice is unmeaning, and would secure much that is desirable. 37 VII. THE VICARS THEMSELVES. Humani nihil alienum. — Terence. The series of our vicars is the thread of an important chapter in our parochial history. Their incumbencies are the natural divisions of our parochial annals. They are our kings, our consuls ; and so we wish to know something about the cha- racter and actions of each of them. For the three first cen- turies, however, everything that could have distinguished the individual, and aided in the reconstruction of his personality, has, for want of record, passed into the obscure inane, where all things are forgotten. Of our pre-Reformation vicars we have nothing to tell us what manner of man any one of them was. Nor do we know anything that any one of them did, with, however, the important exception that among them they made the church what it has continued to be down to our times. As, too, they placed in our belfry one of the bells still there, we know that the bell which is summ'oning us to divine service summoned them ; and that just as we hear it chiming at weddings and tolling at funerals, so did they. But these are general matters which do not belong more to any one name in particular than to any other. This same lack of means for doing anything towards resuscitating and recalling to individual life the names of our vicars who preceded the Reformation accompanies us for the half-century also that followed the Re- formation. We have recovered their names, but not anything that enables us to invest their names with individual life. 38 THE VICARS THEMSELVES Samuel Samwaies. The first of our vicars who is to us something more than a name, whose name we can vivify with some of the acts of the man and of the incidents of his office, as it had to be ad- ministered in his day, is one whose acquaintance we have already made, Samuel Samwaies, or Sames, who was instituted in the year 1611. It is to us an interesting fact that Samuel Samwaies placed his name among the signatories of the petition presented on Friday, May 29, 1646, to the House of Peers, praying that Episcopacy might be abolished and Presbytery set up in its stead. In this signature we have conclusive evidence of our vicar's attitude towards the great ecclesiastical controversies and the events of his time. We know which side he took ; and that his sympathies were with those who held that it was wise and proper to entrust to its members the government of the National Church. That his opinions on these matters were generally known may also be inferred from the fact that there is no entry in Will Dowsing's Journal of a visit to Wherstead Church. Samwaies's presence here made any such visit unnecessary. We may suppose on probable grounds that most of his predecessors resided here, but he is the first about whom we have on this point direct and un- questionable proof. Here his children were born and baptised, and the two daughters and the son who predeceased him were buried. Except in his last years the entries in the registers appear to have been made, including those to the number of eight con- nected with his own family, by Samwaies himself. It is strange — but of course the omission must be explained by the dis- orders of the times, particularly in ecclesiastical matters — that no entr)' was made of Samwaies's burial by his successor. He was buried in the church, and the inscription on his gravestone, after the wear and tear of two centuries and a quarter, is still legible : but as it is trampled on every Sunday by many feet, the day must come when it will be worn away. THE VICARS THEMSELVES 39 For this reason, and on account of its intrinsic interest, I will now repeat it : — Here resteth the body of Mr. Samuel Sames, who was minister of God's Word in this parish fifty and four years. He departed this life the 30 day of September, 1657. As he was instituted in i5ii and died forty-six years after- wards, in 1657, he must have been curate for the eight years that preceded his institution. We can imagine the old man, for he must have lived to beyond eighty, sunning himself in the warm vicarage grounds, midway on the southern slope of the Church Hill, and rumi- nating the while on the political and ecclesiastical troubles of the times, for he lived to within a year of Cromwell's death. In earlier and quieter times he had seen his children gathering cowslips — they still abound in the locality — from the Long Meadow, the Great Meadow and the Lambs' Pightle of the glebe, all now absorbed in Wherstead Park ; and searching for watercresses in the brook, which then bounded the glebe, but is now the sewer of the mansion in Wherstead Park. In whatever direction, north, south, east, or west, he had looked in those days, he would have seen the houses of substantial landowning neighbours, for they were around him on every side. But now there is no representative among us of any one of them. Their descendants, one after another, were bought out ; and where may be the descendants of those who sold the inheritance of their fathers, or whether indeed they have any descendants at all, no man knows. Old Samwaies saw many changes, the causes of w^hich were anterior changes : though perhaps this was beyond his ken. The changes of his day have been followed by a long series of others, change begetting change after its kind. In this ceaseless change all has not been good, still less has all been evil. Sooner or later the evil dies. The good has more vitality. 40 THE VICARS THEMSELVES John Burgess. Samuel Samwaies was succeeded by John Burgess. Among the records of the Corporation of Ipswich is the following entr)- :— 22 Januar)-, 44 Elizabeth. Order for the appointment of Mr. John Burgess, Professor and Preacher of the Holy Word of God, to the Office of Public Preacher of the towne, with a salarj- of one hundred marks per annum, for life : the Same Office having been already filled during pleasure by the said Mr. Burgess for ten years. Our John Burgess then might have been, and in all probability was, the son of this synonymous and synchronous Professor and Preacher of the Holy Word, whom the puritanically in- clined town of Ipswich had appointed as their Public Preacher in the latter years of the sixteenth century, and whose appoint- ment they renewed and made permanent in the forty-fourth of Elizabeth. For some few years before old Samwaies's death Burgess appears to have had the keeping of the parochial registers. From the manner in which he kept them, as well as from the fact that he was Samwaies's curate, we may infer that he was of puritanical proclivities. The omissions are evidently very numerous, and in such entries as are made he appears to have had scruples about the use of the words ' baptised ' and ' buried,' probably as implying the use of popish ceremonies : though, indeed, the Directory, which Parliament had issued to super- sede the Book of Common Prayer, orders that interments should not be accompanied by any kind or form of ceremony. For baptisms and burials he substitutes births and deaths. With respect to marriages also, which Parliament had declared to be merely civil contracts, he makes the following entry : — ' From this time,' what time is not specified, ' no marriages, only several contracts, are published.' In 1657, the year of Samwaies's death, he inserts a line for the purpose of declaring that he has become vicar. Doubtless THE VICARS THEMSELVES 41 he was at that time acting as vicar, but he was not presented and instituted — which, of course, could not have been done in the time of the Commonwealth — till the year 1662. Something will have to be said about his institution when we come to the entries of presentations, which we have taken from the diocesan registers and appended to the institution of each of the vicars on our list. In a memorandum of his death inserted in the parochial register he is styled, as had been Samwaies on his gravestone, ' Minister of God's Word.' This description of the sacred ofifice had at that time a technical significance, and indicated one who was, or had been, puritanically inclined. Doubtless Burgess was more or less imbued with some form or other of the narrowness and fanaticism of the dominant party. It must have been so with all those who at that time, as the phrase was, intruded themselves into parishes. We have nothing, however, to show in proof of his having been for those times particularly unreasonable or violent. His styling himself vicar, and his subsequently applying to the Crown for nomination, and to the Bishop for institution, would rather suggest the contrary. The interest, however, that attaches to his ministry does not result from the little that we know of his character or of his actions — on these subjects, indeed, we are very much left to conjecture — but from the facts that his presence and position here, and the manner in which he kept the parochial registers, remind us of the political and spiritual ferment then existing in the parish, and of the connection of this state of things here with the great contemporary events in the outside world of the country at large. They bnng into our minds thoughts about the great civil convulsion of the times, when the Parliament was arrayed against the Crown, and the army against the Parliament, till at last order and peace were re-established by the supremacy of the man who had the pre-eminence incapacity and firmness. 42 THE VICARS THEMSELVES William Thorne. William Thome succeeded to John Burgess. He held the benefice for fifty-four years from 1664 to 17 18. As he had eight children baptised here, and in the earlier period of his incumbency frequently signs the register, we may take it for granted that he was then residing in the old vicarage. Afterwards he appears to have resigned the house to his married son Oliver, who thenceforth signs the register as curate. Among the entries for 1707 nine lines have been erased. Their erasure is explained by the following note : — WTiat I have taken the liberty to blot out in this and the foregoing page was the interpolation of a couple of Fanaticks, who, notwithstanding they would not suffer their children to be baptised, yet (according to the practice of such a sort of persons) did insert their names here as baptised. Oliver Thorne, curate. Here, then, in the curate of Wherstead is the reaction against the ideas and sentiments of the middle of the foregoing century. Then ' fanaticism ' had carried all before it. Now the pendulum of public opinion and feeling had swung as far in the opposite direction, and ' fanaticism ' is fiercely denounced by the son and curate of Burgess's successor. Edward Leedes. Edward Leedes, who followed William Thorne, held the vicarage for twenty-six years, from 171S to 1744. He was also incumbent of St Matthew's, Ipswich, and Master of the Ipswich Grammar School. As he kept the parochial registers, we may infer that he served the church. He appears to have been a man of some mental activity, and to have been well thought of for his classical attainments. He could not, however, have been the author of ' Selections from Lucian's Dialogues, with a Latin translation,' which bears the name of Edward Leedes, if Lowndes is right in giving, as the date of the first edition of that work, the year 1678. This THE VICARS THEMSELVES 43 volume is a small duodecimo, and must have been used as a school-book, for in the ' Bibliographer's Manual ' we are told that it went through several reprints. Our Edward Leedes then could have done no more than edit some of the later re- prints of his namesake's work. On his death the following memorial lines appeared in the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' for June, 1744, vol. xiv. p. 331 : — If real merit cLiims the Muse's care, Or bids to fall the tributary tear, To thee, blest shade, a plaintive song we owe ; Thy name shall teach the weeping verse to flow, And pay in pious sadness what is due To Father, Friend, to Virtue, and to you. These lines are a fair specimen of what in the middle of the last century passed, both in respect of ideas and of diction, for poetry. But what most concerns us here is that they are evidence that our vicar had some reputation in his day, and some capacity for making attached friends. Edward Leedes buried his wife in Wherstead Church. The inscription was on a soft sandstone, and is now almost entirely obliterated. I am, however, able to reproduce it from Davy's ' Suffolk Collections MS.' Anns Leedes | Feminse rarse pietatis | Mente humili et sincera | Animi assidua affectione | Deuni coluit | De suis, de pauperibus | Bene meruit | De conjuge optime. _, .. „ r.Etatis 54 Obut Dec. 5 an. -^ ^ ^^ iDom. 1739. This is a very poor epitaph. Epitaphs should be like gems, small objects, precious not so much for their material as for the minute carefulness of their workmanship, every detail being skilfully cut and faultlessly polished. But here we have no carefulness, no skill, no polish. It is bad to begin with having to supply something ; the change of construction to the ablative is displeasing ; the use of animi, mente having been used in the preceding line, is tautological ; Deum coluit has no subject ; it is besides a repetition only in other words of the thought already expressed in the words rarce pietatis ; moreover, a mind sensi- 44 THE VICARS THEMSELVES live to shades of difference in congeneric things would have felt that to cultivate God, of course \vith offerings, was the heathen conception ; the Christian conception being to serve God with good works ; and it would have been better to have held back meruit for the last word, in order that the meaning of the sentence might be in suspense till the last word had been uttered. This epitaph, then, shows that Leedes could not have been what we understand by the words a finished and elegant scholar. Buflbn affirms that ' the style is the man himself.' If we accept this dictum as substantially true, we may infer that Leedes, though, as we have seen, of a genial disposition, and what is understood by a good fellow — that is, one whom his friends are glad to see, and who is glad to see them — was withal somewhat undiscriminating, and wanting in mental refinement and in that exactness and nicety of thought which reproduce themselves in the words by which they are expressed. I will now give the epitaph on Leedes himself, as copied in 1823 from the same stone by Da\'y. It will be seen that even then some words had been utterly obliterated : — Memorise etiam sacrce | Edwardi Leedes | Hujusce ecclesi^e Vicarii | Necnon | Scholae Publico; Gyppovicensis ; Magistri olim eruditi | Viri omni virtute beati | Integri vitas int . . . amicitije | Largaque manu . . . beneficii | Quern \ Vivum pia reverentia dileximus | Mortuum pio fletu ploramus | ObiitMaiil8°Anno.f'^°'"- "744. L.'Etat. 60. In this epitaph, too, there are flaws of the same kind as those that we have just found in its companion. Surely it would have been better to have written them, like that on the grave of Samwaies, in a tongue that all could have understood. The only justification for the use of Latin, that it is good of its kind, is conspicuously wanting. Edward Leedes, together with Rivers, who was at that time a leading man in the parish and churchwarden, presented to the church our smaller patin. THE VICARS THEMSELVES 45 George Drury. George Drury, Leedes's successor, was vicar for the seventeen years between 1744 and 1761. He was the great-grandfather of the present incumbent of Claydon in this neighbourhood Either he or his curate, who was also a George Drury, and therefore, probably his son, resided in the old vicarage. We may infer this from the following entry among the burials for the year 1755 : 'Amy, the wife of the Rev. Mr. George Drury, departed this life January the 19th, and was buried at Claydon, January the 22nd, 1755.' ■^^'^ s'^^ "°' been residing at Wherstead at the time of her death, there would have been no occasion for this entry. On the flyleaf of the register book is the following note : — Memorandum : The willows were planted in the meadows belonging to Wherstead vicarage in the year of our Lord 1754, by me, Geo. Drury, and the poplars in the year following. These willows and poplars, which would now have been 130 years old, were unfortunately cut down when the old glebe was incorporated in the new park. George Drury did well to leave a note of the year when his trees were planted. It adds very much to the interest with which we look on the giant larches at Dunkeld, or the magnificent avenue of planes at Figeac, in the Department of Lot, that we see affixed to the trees the dates at which they were respectively planted. Most owners of country houses would, I suppose, be glad to have information of this kind with respect to trees which are now, and were always intended to be, conspicuous ornaments of their grounds. Following, then, the good example of George Drury in this matter, I will here lecord that the two fastigiate poplars on the north side of the orchard of the vicarage were planted by me in May, 1851, as a memorial of the opening of the first and great Exhibition, which took place in that month and year. I brought the plants down from London in a fish-basket, they being then not so thick as my thumb. Although they are 46 THE VICARS THEMSELVES planted in a soil that is only sand and gravel, the tallest must now be about 50 feet in height, and is 6 feet i inch in circum- ference at two feet from the ground. The easternmost of the two, when it was fifteen years old, was blown down in a gale ; it was set up again and has stood many a gale since. This accident, however, very much checked its growth. The Pinsapo and Cupressus Lawsoniana in front of the house I planted in the year 1864 ; and two years previously I planted the row of golden hollies at the east end of the house. This George Drury presented to the church our smaller chalice. WiLLi.^M Gee. William Gee's years equalled the fifty-four of Samwaies and of Thorne, his incumbency having begun in 1761 and termi- nated in 1815. He was also vicar of Bentley, and rector of St. Stephen's, Ipswich. Forty years ago I knew many persons who had been more or less intimately acquainted with him, but here in Wherstead he left no memories of any kind behind him, except that it was he who exchanged the charmingly situated and sunny old glebe and vicarage for the present glebe, and the vicarage I rebuilt. His successors will not regard this act of his as entitling him to their grateful recollection. But it was a matter in which he could hardly have helped himself Sooner or later, in one way or another, the vicar would have had to remove from the centre of the park. Gee made an entry in the parochial register of the particulars of the census for Wherstead in the year 181 1. After seventy- three years have passed this entry has acquired some interest ; I will therefore repeat it here. Inhabited houses, 32. Inhabited by 46 families. Uninhabited house, i. Families employed in agriculture, 37 ; in trade and handicraft, 6 ; not com- prised in either of the above, 3. Males, 119. Females, 104. Total, 223. Our present population shows an increase of about forty souls ; but this does not enable us to overtake our deficiency of agricultural labour, more hands being now employed than THE VICARS THEMSELVES 47 formerly as gamekeepers, gardeners, grooms, &c. It is difficult to understand what can be meant in this entry by the state- ment it contains that the number of houses in the parish was less by fourteen than the number of families. If this is to be taken in the ordinary acceptation of the words, it can only mean that in fourteen instances two families lived in one cottage. It is, however, impossible to take the words in that sense. The only explanation I can suggest is that the entry speaks of two semi-detached cottages as a single house. There are about fourteen such semi-detached pairs of cottages in the parish. All the cottages that were in existence at the time this census was taken are still inhabited. All that have since that time been built are of better materials, and more commodious than those of earlier dates. Never, I trust, shall we see again the erection of such cottages, with a single bedroom, and that on the ground floor, as the conscience of the eighteenth century permitted. It is certainly a noteworthy fact that 208 years, more than a third of our period of 587 years, were filled by the united ministries of four vicars, the present incumbent and three of his predecessors. This naturally suggests the thought that where a parish, again and again, is given over in this manner for more than half a century, nearly two complete generations of men, to a single teacher, whose office it is to teach morality and religion, to be a spiritual guide, a prophet, it seems imperative that something effectual should be done to' secure the teacher's having the knowledge requisite for the high and difficult work he has undertaken ; that he should have some power ot awakening and interesting thought ; and that there should be reasonable probability that his life will be to some degree a sermon : so that while, during the long period he may be among them, the people will be asking for bread, he will be capable of offering them something better than a stone. With this thought in our minds let us recall how the good people of VVherstead may have fared in their long connection with their three ministers, each of whom could have celebrated the jubilee of his ministry with four years to spare. 48 THE VICARS THEMSELVES Samwaies lived in stirring times and may have been some what stirred himself, for his preference of Presbytery to Episco- pacy may have been the result of thought and earnestness. Thome belonged to the time of the subsequent reaction, and left unerased in the parochial register an entry made by his son, who was acting as curate, that his Baptist parishioners were fanatics. All that was known of Gee, thirty years after the close of his ministry of fifty-four years, was that he used to smoke his pipe in his summer-house, in the lower part of his garden near the brook. Probably he was no worse than his own times. But what he had undertaken was to be better, and if he was not he was of no use, and was doing what in him lay not to raise, but to drag down his times. This is what now, more or less, the general public, and especially the public in each parish, does think ; while what the minister ought to think is. Who is sufficient for these things ? For what is required of him will always be beyond his capacity under any circumstances, and notwithstanding any efforts. But what is within his power is to make lifelong progress in intel- lectual attainment, and in moral excellence : for him intellec- tual attainment will include the power of setting forth know- ledge as well as the acquisition of it, and moral excellence will imply fearlessness as well as kindliness. These are the means by which he is called to serve God and man. To resort to any other means, or to present anything else in their stead, in him is default and fraud. In this latter part of the nineteenth century these are obvious ideas ; but if during the io8 years of Thome's and Gee's ministry they never could so much as have occurred to them, we have therein a measure of the progress society has made since their time. Remarkable, however, as is the fact we have been com- menting on of an incumbency of fifty-four years thrice repeated in our list of vicars, our present clerk, Daniel Addison, has got beyond them all ; for now, at the age of 84, being in excellent health, and still continuing uninterruptedly at work, he has regularly discharged the duties of his office for sixty-three years. The Phototype Co.. Strainl, London. George Capper— aged 47. 49 VIII. THE VICARS THEMSELVES. George Capper. He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again. Shakespeare. William Gee was succeeded by my immediate predecessor, George Capper. He had been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Like Gee, he was a pluralist, having held the rectory of Gosbeck and the vicarage of Little Blakenham as well as the vicarage of Wherstead. He was instituted to Gos- beck in the year 1795, and held it for fifty-two years, but never resided there. Forty years ago it was a tradition in Wherstead — but I never heard him mention the subject himself — that he used, twenty years previously, to supply himself the services of his three churches. People used to tell me that they could recol- lect seeing him starting in the morning on horseback for this pur- pose, and returning in the evening. As at that time no church, with very rare exceptions, had more than one service, and as he had established a great reputation in the hunting field for hard riding, there would have been no difficulty in this undertaking. The ground to be covered would not have been more than twenty- five miles. When I knew him, and for many years before that time, he had a curate in each of his outlying parishes. Though in 1884, the year in which I published these notes in the Suffolk Chronicle, he had been dead thirty-seven years, both of these curates, as well as his Wherstead curate, were still alive. E so GEORGE CAPPER In those days, the first quarter of the present century, there were but few resident clergy in the rural districts of this part of the country. R. Newton Shawe, of Kesgrave Hall, who was member for East Suffolk from 1832 to 1835, told me that when he first came to Kesgrave he made a memorandum that there were twenty-six parishes in his immediate neighbourhood in no one of which a clergyman resided. But he added that at that time — the time when he mentioned this to me, the year 1844— most of these gaps had been filled up. When I first came into this neighbourhood (1841) a tradition was still current of a resident curate of the conterminous parish of Holbrook having sers'ed five churches every Sunday. His name was Routh. He was a brother of the centenarian head of Magdalen College, O.xford, whom I can well recollect in his full-bottomed wig, so capa- cious that when on public occasions he wore it he was obliged to carry his college cap in his hand. This curate of Holbrook, having given there an early service, would mount his horse and ride two miles to Harkstead for a service there, and then two more miles for a third service at Erwarton ; that concluded, he would a third time mount his horse and ride nine miles into Ipswich, where in the afternoon and evening he would serve two more churches. Facts of this kind are worth preserving, because they show how great was the laxity of public opinion in the early part of this century, and how serious were the con- sequences of that laxity. I have had occasion to mention George Capper's reputation in the hunting field. He used to say that in his bachelor days, at the end of the last century, he had a housekeeper who not only cooked his dinner and brewed his beer, but who would also at times groom and saddle for him his hunter. He was equally conspicuous in the stubbles and coverts. For some time he preserved the whole of the Wherstead estate for his friend, John Vernon. I have seen in the local papers of about 1820 his name occupying a place in the lists of the great shooting parties of the late Lord Granville, who then rented Wherstead. But what interested him most, because most in GEORGE CAPPER 51 accordance with his natural taste, was yachting. He had built, under his own eye and directions, at the old shipyard beyond Bourne Bridge, three yachts. For many years he spent his summer afloat. In his youth he had much wished to be a sailor, feeling that the navy would open a more congenial career to one of his endurance and daring than any other profession. His father, however, vetoed his entry on that field. He has said to me, ' Had my ambition been allowed to take that course, I should either have given my life to my country or be at this time a not undistinguished admiral.' I have the medallion of Pitt he wore as a member of the local Pitt Club. It is of silver, and is of the size and weight of a crown piece. On the obverse is a good likeness of the great minister, in very high relief, with the legend Non sibi, sed patrice. On the reverse is the legend, ' Suffolk Pitt Club.' The club used to assemble every full moon, and at every meeting every member present was expected to empty a bottle of port wine. He also showed me the sabre he used to wear as a trooper in the Volunteer Yeomanry Cavalry. I have heard him tell the following anecdote of his parish- ioners. In Wherstead Park, on the site of the original vicar- age, about eighty yards below the church, a vixen fox had her earth and was bringing up her cubs. It happened one fine Sunday afternoon that one of the congregation had preferred remaining in the porch to entering the church. While seated there and looking on the fair view, he saw madam stealing off on a forage. Being unable to suppress, or, perhaps, without a thought of suppressing, the impulse to give the usual cry, he shouted, ' Talliho ! talliho ! There she goes ! ' There was a similar inability in the congregation to suppress the desire they felt to see what they were summoned to look at, and so the greater part of them rose from their knees and hastened out of the church. As a pendant to this he used to tell how one Saturday evening the keeper of a neighbouring squire, a friend of his, came up to the Hall to see the squire on, as he sent in to say, a E 2 52 GEORGE CAPPER matter of importance. The squire came to hear what the matter of importance might be. In the words of the keeper it was this : ' Yer muss stop the parson from the chuch to-morrow. A pat- tridge is sitting hard on twelve eggs close by the chuch poich. The folk coming and going will that skear the bird that the eggs will likeliest be spoilt. The pattridge must be kep' quiet, and yer muss order that the chuch be shut up to-morrow.' George Capper was born in 1766 and lived eighty years. In this long period he saw many changes and advances. His father, who was the incumbent of the two Sohams, made the first stone road in the county. He used to say that his father, on his marriage to a lady who had been brought up in London, had some difficulty in bringing her to her new home in Suffolk. At a distance of about a dozen miles from his house all carriage- able road ceased. At that point, therefore, the carriage had to be left, and a horse furnished with a pillion was provided for the completion of the journey. The bride, however, not being accustomed to this kind of locomotion, regarded it as both a danger and an indignity, and so for some time refused to place herself in the pillion, and instead sat down on the bank by the roadside, and bemoaned with sobs and tears the uncouth life she now saw before her. When I first came to Wherstead, and for many years after- wards, the mounting stage for the farmers' wives, who came to church and returned home on pillions, was still in existence, though then unused. It was a platform ascended by four steps, so that anyone standing on the platform had only to sit down on the pillion. It was at the north-west corner of the churchyard. When I first knew Wherstead, in 1841, an old man, then eighty-four years of age, of the name of Orris, was employed by the parish to scrape the roads. He told me that when he was a young man he had been employed by the parish to plough in the ruts on the Ipswich and Manningtree road, for at that time of day there were no stone roads. A very strong and heavy kind of plough was needed for this work. It was piovided by the parish, and, I suppose, because it was parish iiroperty was kept GEORGE CAPPER 51 in the church. At all events the congregation was not in those days straitened for room.' This Orris had also, when a young man, carried off in a post- chaise by the road he kept in order the daughter of the farmer who then occupied Pannington Hall, one of our four manors, and for whom he worked. When afterwards assailed by the father for having run off with his daughter, his defence was that 'he did not deny that he had run off with her, but that it was equally true that she had run off with him.' Down to my time a few of the quarter carts of those pre- macadamic times were still to be seen in Wherstead. They obtained their name from the fact that the shafts were so placed, not in the centre but at one side of the front, that the horse and cart quartered the road — that is to say, the horse walked on the rib of soil between the rut and the central track made by the feet of most of the horses that used the road, and the wheels went outside one rut and inside the other. The loads of broom purchased by the parish for mending the road, and entered in the old overseers' book for the first half of the last century, but which book is now lost, belong to this stage of road- making, when no stone was used, and unusually deep ruts and soft places were mended with faggots. Of course it was necessary that roads which were hardly more than tracks across the country should be very much wider than is requisite for stone roads to be, in order that vehicles might have space everywhere to leave the central ruts and slush whenever they became impracticable. This width of the old roads, three or four times as great as that of our present roads, was, forty or fifty years ago, in most places still retained. I can recollect the broad grass balks of the old system on both sides of our Ipswich and Manningtree road. Pretty nearly, how- ever, all these margins have now, in this parish as well as else- where, been enclosed by the contiguous landowners. In some places enterprising labourers squatted upon them, and by pre- scription, or otherwise, obtained possession When travelling in 1868 in the United States I found that 54 GEORGE CAPPER the practice of mending mud holes in roads with faggots, even in the main thoroughfares of great cities, had not then been altogether abandoned by our Transatlantic descendants. I drove over a road so mended in the main street of Atalanta, one of the most important towns in the State of Georgia, and again was floated over some enormous mud holes by the same contrivance in going to the railway station at New Orleans. It may be observed in this neighbourhood, and generally throughout the country', that wherever a road descends a hill it is found to be in a cutting with almost perpendicular sides. I have heard people say that they have never been able to find in old parish books any indication of these cuttings having been made at the expense of their respective parishes. It would be strange if indications of the kind could be found, for, as the perpendicular sides demonstrate, they were all engineered by nature. The traffic and the road plough loosened the surface, and this loosened surface the storm water of heavy rains was always transporting to lower levels. This operation having been continued through many centuries made these cuttings what they were at the beginning of the stone road period, and have continued since. George Capper used to tell me that he rode to Stratford to see the first of Palmer's mail coaches enter the county. Here was one of the beneficent results of stone roads. This must have been somewhere about 1785. Since those days progress has been rapid, for George Capper lived to see the uniform postage rate of a penny ; and, his father having made the first piece of stone road in the county, he lived to travel from Ipswich to London by railway. The completed through line was opened on a Monday in July 1847. On that Monday he went by it to London. During the week an internal lesion, from which he had long suffered, assumed an aggravated form, of which he died in the following week. Even people who are no longer young find it difficult to recall how recent and how complete was the remodelling and revolutionising of our manufacturing system, and the transfer- GEORGE CAPPER 55 ring of industries from one locality to another, consequent on the introduction of steam power. When I first knew Wherstead there were still to be seen in some of the cottages the spinning wheels that had been in use when Suffolk was one of the chief clothing districts in the country. Forty years ago all evidence had not been lost of the way in which the women in Wherstead had been employed before the steam jenny superseded the hand-wheel and spindle. In our marriage register is the following entry ; ' Edward Ven, Physician, and Mary Beau- mont, both of Ipswich, married 13th March, 1749.' Two months later her sister Elizabeth married Philip Broke, Esq., of Nacton, and became the mother of the Sir Philip Broke who, while in command of the Shannon, fought and took the Chesapeake. These two Miss Beaumonts were heiresses. From the window of the room in which I am now writing I may look on two farms in Freston which these two ladies brought to their respective husbands, and which still remain in the hands of their descendants. The wealth of the Beaumonts had been amassed in the Suffolk clothing business. As the course of our narrative — which does not prefer the straight lines and short cuts of the dull and economical canal to the natural and pleasant windings of the ever-varying and self-willed stream— has brought us to speak of the recentness of changes and practices that to the existing generation appear to date from remote times, we may here add what Wherstead has to say upon this point about potatoes and tea. The David Double whose acquaintance we have already made has told me that his grandfather used to tell him that when he was a boy of about ten years of age — this must have been about the year 1760— his father let his garden to an Ipswich man, who wanted it to grow potatoes in. This patch of potatoes in his father's garden was, he said, the first instance of their being grown in the villages in this neighbourhood ; and the poor people soon became so desirous of cultivating them from their manifest utility and from the high prices they fetched, that they used to ask permission to search over and 56 GEORGE CAPPER re-dig ground in which they had been grown, in the hope of finding a few to set for seed in their own gardens. The potato at that time had been known in this country for more than a centur)' and a half, but this family tradition shows that the culture did not become general hereabouts till a century and a quarter ago. The late Lady Harland, who died in i860 at the age of eighty, used to tell me that early in the century — it must have been about the end of the first decade — she gave half a pound of tea to ]\Iiss Lee, the sister and housekeeper of Joseph Lee, the tenant of Smith's Farm. I knew both brother and sister well, and was executor to the latter. The farm they occupied is situated to the east of the glebe. Miss Lee had never seen tea made, and had, as afterwards appeared, only indistinct and in part erroneous ideas about the process, for she put the whole of the half-pound into a saucepan, and cooked it as if she was making a vegetable soup ; and so she served it up. She, how- ever, and her brother found that they were unable to put them- selves outside either the leaves or the extract from the half- pound. On Lady Harland some time after asking her how they had liked the tea, she replied that they had not much fancied either the broth or the kale. George Capper used to mention several minor changes, all in the direction of comfort and common sense, that he had witnessed, such as the abandonment of hair powder, knee breeches, and shoe buckles, and the adoption of umbrellas. For a long time there was a violent prejudice against the use of umbrellas. The ground taken was that it was a French and thoroughly un-English practice. Two small incidents occurred to him of the class which shows that, as the phrase goes, truth is often stranger than fiction. Once at the end of a day's hunting his gold watch was missing. He had the ground he had ridden over and every place he had been at during the previous part of the day searched, but to no purpose. The following year, in hunting over the same country, and taking a hedge he had taken the foregoing year, and at the same point, he saw his watch hanging GEORGE CAPPER 57 on the branch of white thorn that had twelve months before torn it from his pocket. Ever)' year in the latter part of his Hfe he visited Harro- gate for six weeks. He used to drive himself in his mail phaeton, taking London and Oxford on the way. On one of these journeys, when about to leave the ' Angel ' at Oxford — it has now ceased to exist — he became aware that he had lost his gold- mounted spectacles. A search was made in all the rooms he had used, but unavailingly. He left an offer of a sovereign for the finder, and went on to Harrogate. On his return, after an absence of six weeks, he again occupied the same rooms at the ' Angel.' Nothing had been heard of his spectacles. After breakfast he took his place in the arm-chair by the fire, and to warm his chilly fingers, for he was of a gouty habit, he thrust his hands down between the sides and cushion of the chair. He must have done precisely the same action six weeks previously, for the fingers of his right hand came in contact with his spectacles, which had in this way been deposited there by himself at his previous visit. .As he was a very active-minded man, he naturally took to farming, the general occupation of those who live in the country. At Martlesham, about nine miles from this place, he held in his own hands a large farm that belonged to him. And here at Wherstead he farmed about fifty acres. M'hat on this occupation was not glebe he rented from the Wherstead estate. At that time, when labour was cheap and corn was dear, it was not difficult, even for gentlemen farmers, so to manage their business that there should be a satisfactory balance on the right side at the end of the agricultural year. In these days such occupations and accomplishments as those of George Capper would be more or less demoralising in a clergyman, because they would be condemned by public opinion, and consequently by his own conscience. In his day, however, they had no such effects. In all the country round there was no man so looked up to, so respected, and so beloved. In his latter days his neighbours installed him in the position of the general friend and arbitrator, and his brother magistrates 58 GEORGE CAPPER placed him at their head as chairman of quarter sessions for the eastern division of the county. He was the only man I have been personally acquainted with, and this is the more remarkable in one who came to fill the foremost position in his neighbourhood, of whom I never heard anyone of any class utter a disparaging word. Of him all agreed to say, as it were with one mouth, all manner of good. I have his portrait by W. Simson, who was a frequent \-isitor at Wherstead Park when William Scroope resided there. It is well painted and an admirable likeness. It will be observed that for this portrait he must have sat in trousers of French grey. Forty or fifty years ago the clergy generally only wore black and white on Sundays and when in evening dress. I can recollect George Capper down to his last days driving his phaeton into Ipswich with an overcoat of the colour of a dark wallflower. This portrait I have annexed as an heirloom to the vicarage, together with the three panels in the hall, the first containing the list of my predecessors from the year 1300, with what particulars about them could be recovered ; the second containing a brass plate, on which is inscribed the description of the preceding vicarage ; and the third in slate containing six Roman coins from a large find at the back of the house, and giving the particulars of the find. These three panels are all framed in old oak and chestnut from the preceding vicarage. I know that the chances can hardly be held to be in favour of such memorials being regarded with interest by my successor. We are most of us very much what public opinion makes us, and at present, in consequence of our artificial grammatical education, and from the aims, feelings, and estimates of things our social system suggests to us, the general public opinion gives but scant encouragement to the archjeological and historical sentiment. I trust, however, that my successor, should he be so unfortunate as to be one of those who care for none of these things, will still give this portrait and these panels a place on his walls, for the sake of the man to whom he will be indebted for his house, and for the sake of those who will be his successors in that house. 59 IX. EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. In the two last chapters we have been endeavouring to resusci- tate, as far as we could, our vicars of the three last centuries. Every one of their predecessors during the three foregoing centuries passed away without leaving any trace of his exist- ence beyond that of an empty name in the register of institu- tions at Norwich. But there is another way, besides that of collecting the traits of character and the actions of the individual, even had they been recoverable, by which we may learn something about our early vicars. We can summon before us the events that bore upon their office and position, and upon what were from time to time the thoughts and feelings of their order. And having seen what was the character and nature of each event in the series, and what effect it had on the clergy of the time, we shall then be able to understand what our vicars had to pass through, and how it affected them. We shall understand their difficulties, what were the forces arrayed against them, and what resources they had in themselves, and in what respects they were wanting in resources, to resist the forces that assailed them. One cannot look upon a combat without learning a good deal about the combatants. 1300 — 1400 A.D. Down to the commencement of our period nothing effectual had been done to disperse, or so much as to rend here and 6o EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS there, the dense cloud of ignorance which had settled down on men's minds after the overthrow of the old civilisation. Even what truth and knowledge are in themselves, and what are the grounds on which they rest, were not yet understood. Just as in the mind of the Hindoo devotee authority and tradition are everything, so was it with the Christian world in this country at that time. There was no question about doctrines. They rested on foundations that no one could or was disposed to question. The forms, too, that had grown out of the received doctrines expressed adequately the religious sentiments, and met adequately the religious wants of the times. So with respect to the doctrines. With respect, however, to the practice and whole manner of life of the clergy, from the Vicar of Christ down to the humblest parochial vicar, there was a world-wide difference. Their conduct had exhausted the toleration and patience, by the constant offence it gave to the moral sense, of the laity. For ignorance, though it always more or less misleads, cannot extinguish the conscience, or induce it to accept vice as of equal desert with virtue. Man- kind, therefore, having to suffer from, as well as to witness, could not but feel indignation at and denounce the greed, the extortion, the worldliness, the dereliction of duty, and the general profligacy of all orders of the clergy. So stood matters at the beginning of our period. But the clergy, however justly assailed, were still able to reply : ' At all events we are the accredited ambassadors of God. The message we deliver is the Word of God. The Sacrifice we offer is that of the Body of the Son of God. Our persons and our property are sacred For the laity to touch either is sacrilege.' Such was the position of the vicars whose names stand first on our list, and such was the attitude of the laity towards them. Wickliffe, however, before the century had closed, single- handed, and with but slight aid from antecedent or contem- porary thinkers, had in the forum of logic and argument levelled to the ground this apparently impregnable position. No other man has ever exhibited a higher combination of £r£XTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS 6 1 intellectual, of moral, and of physical courage and energy. He stood up in the face of the Church that was ubiquitous, that in all cases of doctrinal innovation or of ecclesiastical concern was both accuser and judge, that had recently shown abundantly that it had no conscience and no ruth, to proclaim to the world that the office on which was built the super- structure of the Church's wealth and power was but a human figment, and that all the temporal wealth of the Church stood on just the same footing as the wealth of the laity, and that it might even be rightfully taken from the ministers of religion it was corrupting for the uses of the State. To show on what he rested these conclusions he translated the Bible into English. Everybody might now compare with the teaching of the Bible the doctrines, the lives, and the posi- tion of the clergy. And, furthermore, he trained and dispersed over the country a company of poor preachers. The converts they made were the Lollards of those days, whose descendants never died out, but remained as obscure malcontents scattered over the country, and did much to prepare the minds of the lower classes of the people for the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Henceforth the attitude of the laity towards the clergy was greatly modified. It could no longer be that of unqualified intellectual submission, and of unquestioning acceptance of the position of the clergy as of divine appointment. Now there were some who did not submit their intellects to the Church, and who were able to give reasons for their refusing to exhibit this kind of submission, and who would not ac- knowledge the right of the clergy to the position they claimed, and could give reasons for their refusing to acknowledge it. Doubtless there were some such in Ipswich ; and their presence must have modified the mental attitude of the vicars of Wherstead towards their lay neighbours, as was the case with the rest of the clergy elsewhere. And of the priesthood of that day those least likely to sympathise with the new ideas were those who, like the vicars of Wherstead, had had the 62 EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS training of the cloister. What would have been far more congenial to their minds would have been the unsparing use of the force ecclesiastical authority has ever been ready to resort to, which is not the force of argument. So ended the fourteenth century. 1400 — 1500 .\.D. This century is marked by two events, the invention of printing and the revival of classical learning, which contributed very much to promote the work Wickliffe had commenced. His teaching, because it was addressed to the common under- standing and the common conscience of ordinary humanity, and had largely used the instrumentality of popular preaching, had come to commend itself, as had Christianity itself for the same reasons in its early days, chiefly to the humbler classes of society. Printing, however, and the revival of classical learning acted mainly on the upper strata of society, for they alone had both the money to buy books and the leisure to read them, and it was only among them that people could be found who were able to devote their lives more or less to study. These events very much aggravated the effects of the blow Wickliffe had dealt at the influence and power of the clergy. Formerly they alone had possessed the advantages of such education as the times admitted of. They had in consequence been employed in many of the highest offices of the State, and even as ambassadors. But now an education more deserving the name than what the clergy had received was opened to all who were able to avail themselves of it. Whatever advantages superior knowledge and acquirements confer the clergy had engrossed almost without a rival. Now they had at most points to relinquish this high and profitable and influential position to the laity. Those who used to receive with respectful submission were now qualified to criticise the utterances of the clergy, and, what was still more galling, would form their own opinions on controverted matters. The opinions, too, of the clergy themselves were at the same time undergoing much modification through the same causes. EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS 63 They also were being abundantly supplied, by the multiplication of books and by the recovery of the literature of the old civilisa- tion, with materials for thought. The effects which were being produced among other people were becoming visible in their own ranks. Some of the most learned and thoughtful among them came to see that much of the received system was mere excrescence, an outgrowth of developments that had, in the course of centuries of ignorance, been gradually brought about for the aggrandisement in one way or another of their own order. Towards the close of this century the discovery of the passage to India by the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and of the New World beyond the Atlantic, supervening on the multipli- cation of books and the recovery of the literature of the old civilisation, stimulated, in a manner and to a degree we can now hardly imagine, activity and independence of thought. Every mind was stirred at the novelty and the vastness of the vistas suddenly revealed to its contemplation. Men saw new and boundless fields opened before them for thought and enterprise, and .so became impatient of everything that would trammel freedom. So ended the fifteenth centur)'. Thought among all classes, even among the clergy to a considerable degree, was ripening for some great change. Were our vicars of those days in harmony with the spirit of the times ? Had they still been taken from the convent of St. Peter's, Ipswich, the probability is that the spirit of the times would have been hateful to them. But the bishop had now got the nomination to the benefice into his own hands, and our vicars towards the end of the century were appointed by him. Probably, therefore, as was the case elsewhere, some of them foresaw, and without disapproval, that change was in the air. 1500 — 1600 A.D. The Reformation did not burst on our vicars as lightning out of a clear sky. The events of the preceding century had, as we have seen, prepared the way for this great revolution. Having now in our review passed through 230 years, we 64 EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS find ourselves in a strangely different world from that at which we looked at the opening of our period. Then in matters of belief the laity were of no account. They knew nothing and thought nothing on the subject. But now — such has been the power of the course of events — ^they, and not the clergy, are masters of the situation. It was, however, the misfortune of our English Reformation that neither the laity nor the clergy were sufficiently taken counsel of in the new settlement that was being effected. That settlement was too much the work of an authority that was outside and above the people. Instead, therefore, of the Reformed Church being an organisation of the people for the purpo-i^es of religion, there was imposed on it too much of the aspect and position of a State department. In nothing is this seen more distinctly than in the independent and uncontrolled relation of the parochial clergy towards their parishioners. The cause of this was the almost autocratic character of the monarchy at that time. This was also the cause of the violent alternations between the new and the old sj'Stem, and of the per- secutions that attended them. When an autocrat, be he king or squire, undertakes the task of forcing a recusant people to do his will, violence— that is, persecution — is the only course open to him. The one will imprison and burn the recusants ; the other, acting under precisely the same impulses, excepting the misleading idea that society has imposed upon him the duty of devising for other people their beliefs and opinions, will deprive the recusants of employment, that is, will deprive them and their families of food, and will eject them from their homes into the road.' During the transformations and troubles of this period our vicars appear to have taken the times as they came. From the dates of institutions we can hardly suppose that there were any expulsions or resignations. Roger Bennett, who was appointed by the bishop in 1495, did not create a vacancy till thirty-five years afterivards, in the year 1530. Joseph Fuldeham, who was presented by the Dean and Chapter of Cardinal's College, EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS 65 Ipswich, held on for sixteen years, till 1546. And Thomas Awdus, who in Mary's reign was collated by the bishop in 1555, and was regarded, we may therefore suppose, as a good Catholic, conformed to the order of things established by Elizabeth, and remained vicar till 1576. It is worth mentioning here that the only incident in the whole range of English history I have ever heard people of the labouring-class in this part of the country refer to, and I quite believe it is the only incident tradition has preserved among them, is that of the burning of Dr. Taylor at Hadleigh in the reign of Mary. The fact that after 330 years his martyrdom is still remembered in Wherstead, nine miles from Hadleigh, is some measure of the impression it made at the time. The names of Marlborough and of Wellington may be forgotten ; the name of Queen Victoria may not be known ; but after eleven generations the name of Taylor is mentioned with honour, and with expressions of horror at the ruthlessness of those who put to so cruel a death so good a man. I will here append, as an instance of the formation of the quasi-\\\sXox'\c tradition — that, I mean, which takes a fact or name, and overlays it with inventions suggested by prepossessions or prejudices or a supposed fitness of things — that I have sometimes heard the same person who had just spoken of Dr. Taylor's martyrdom add, ' And at Framlingham Castle ' (Fram- lingham Castle is nineteen miles north by east of Ipswich) ' bloody Mary, who ordered Dr. Taylor's burning, was brought to bed of a viper.' This is told with bated breath, and with an air and tone of mystery, to imply that the author of evil, the old Serpent, to whom the wicked queen had sold herself, was the author of the viper. 1600 — 1700 A.D. We are now in the middle of the seventeenth centuiy, and the narrowness and insufficiency of the Elizabethan settlement has been made apparent. That settlement had taken but small account of the enthusiasm of the common people, except as a K 66 EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR ITCARS matter which admitted, which it did not, of State regulation. It had supposed that religious enthusiasm might be compressed and suppressed by stereotyped forms and Thirty-nine Articles — that it might be moulded at will by outside authority. It is easy to be wise after the event, but the history of the Lollards from the days of WicklifTe, and the intrepid deaths of the three hundred martyrs of the Marian persecution, might have, and ought to have, taught Elizabeth and her advisers that the reh- gious sentiment was irrepressible, and where to look for its most vigorous manifestations, and how to take a truer measure than they did of its force. It has now been seen for many centuries as a distinguishing characteristic of our self-willed and enthusiastic English race — our history demonstrates that it has been so in the past, and the existence amongst us of so many self-originated and self-supporting religious organisations demon- strates that it is so still — that it is not so much amongst the cultured as the uncultured and the partially cultured classes that the fire of religion burns at a white heat. So is it with Englishmen everj'where, at home or abroad, in the New World, or in the settlements of the still newer world of the Southern Ocean. And it is so with them alone of all Christian peoples. Books had now got into ever)-one's hands — at all events, the one Book on which the whole controversy turned. And the less cultured and the more narrow-minded, because in them there is less to confine and damp the fire, will be more absorbed in the controversy than those whose culture is greater and whose horizons are broader. This goes some way towards ex- plaining the intensity of the Puritans, and the variety and over- bearing violence of the sects. Those who had manipulated the religious revolution of the preceding century had said to it, ' So far shalt thou go, and no further.' But in this as in some other movements the revolutionary conditions at last descended to the mass of the people. A centur)- was required for this, and then the constructive work of the first stage of the revolu- tion, and the barriers that had been erected to stop its further progress, were swept away. EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS 67 ' Mr. Samuel Sames, who was minister of God's Word in this parish for fifty and four years,' had to steer as well as he could through the troubled waters of those times. Doubtless he escaped most of his difficulties by, as we have seen, being able to go with the stream. Many, however, of his neighbours m the mmistry of the Word were not able to do this ; and we cannot read on his gravestone the date of 1657 without thinking of the slights, the rebuffs, the reproaches, they must have met with at the hands of the not always wise or always gentle zealots around them. Samwaies's coadjutor and successor, Burgess, was, more or less, one of those zealots ; but not neces- sarily, therefore, a better man, with a better heart, and of better motives and of a better life, or even with a better head, than many of those who differed from him in opinion and sentiment. Had he but lived fifty years earlier or fifty years later, he would not have been a zealot. Zeal of this kind can be only a passmg phase of humanity. The work of the world could not be done by a world of zealots ; at all events, one would not choose such a world to live in. 1700 — 1800 A.D. We pass on to the middle of the next century ; and what we find has now become the state of religious feehng reminds us of the mechanical law that reaction equals action. In the middle of the seventeenth century religious enthusiasm had upheaved societyand overturned both Church and State. In the middle of the eighteenth century religion was hardly visible in the working of society. The late Mr. Green, whose sympathies were all with the Puritans and with liberty, in his ' History of the English People,' tells us that at this time ' the decay of the great dissent- ing bodies went hand in hand with that of the Church and during the early part of the century the Nonconformists declined in numbers as in energy.' Indeed, it would have been a contradiction to the teaching of history and of experience if the absorption and intensity of the seventeenth centur)^ had not in their case, as well as in the case of others, issued in a period of comparative indifference. 68 EVEi\TS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS The torpidity within the Church was only more conspicuous on account of the more prominent position it occupied in the national and social organisation. Parson Trulliber was now the representative of a considerable proportion of his order. The clergy abounded in the hunting field. They drank hard. They were pluralists. They were non-resident. Their amuse- ments were those of the laity. In dress they were hardly dis- tinguishable from the laity. The clergy of the middle ages, with whom our review com- menced, were evil-livers. Those of the last century, certainly, were very far from what they should have been. Still they were not so morally reprehensible as their mediaeval brethren, who were contemned and denounced by their contemporaries. The public opinion of the last century, its leniency of course being in some measure attributable to its laxity, was not outraged ; and the clergy themselves were better educated, and had therefore more self-respect. None can be rightly judged without some reference to the character of the times in which they lived. Such was the world to which Wesley addressed himself. What he undertook may be compared to the effort to restore the functions of life to one who had been some time under water and is apparently drowned. There was nothing particu- larly new or profound in his ideas. In this there was a wide difference between him and AMckliffe, as there was also in the courage requisite for enabling each of them to carry out the work he had undertaken. What animated Wesley was faith in his ideas and in himself. This was his support while he de- voted his long life, almost coincident with the centur)', to the single aim of planting those ideas in the minds of others, and of training and organising those who were to extend and continue his work. His success is to be measured not merely by the number of millions of those among the English-speaking peoples who at this day belong to the society he founded. His influence Hprame app.Trent among the congregations and ministers EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR I '/CARS 69 of the Church from which he never seceded, and of which he regarded himself as a member. The party in the Established Church which became known under the name of the Evangelical, and was for a long time its most active and influential section, was, though indirectly, yet as truly, a product of Wesley's efforts as Methodism itself The religious revival that now ensued in the Church and among all the denominations was primarily his work. Sooner or later, doubtless, it would in some way or other have been brought about, but that it came at that parti- cular time and in that particular form was due to him. For lack of definite evidence we are not able to point to any palpable effects which this revival had on the character and actions of our contemporary vicars. We know, however, that it greatly modified the sentiments of the society that surrounded them. It was a consequence of this that public opinion became more exacting, and that much that had hitherto been tolerated in the clergy was now reprobated, and so repressed. Evangeli- calism to no inconsiderable degree leavened the whole English world. 1800 — 1887 A.D. In our review of our period we have at last reached our own times. We are now in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The Evangelical revival no longer survives in its original form. But, as is the case with the food supplied to our bodies, what was life-supporting in it has been assimilated and absorbed into the substance of the religious organism of the nation ; for religion is an organism of the thought, the knowledge, the hopes, and the conscience of the age. What in this revival belonged to the essence of religion survives, what was of the accidents of the time and of the idiosyncrasy of the man is disappearing. The second quarter of our current century witnessed another religious movement or revival of a verj' different character from that of Wesley. Its object was not so much the substance of religion itself as matters connected with religion, what are called Church principles. A revival of this 70 EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS kind is a far easier matter than the other. It could not possibly have preceded it, being its complement. It is addressed to a socially higher and more leisured class, and so can use the press, instead of the preacher, as the instrument for its dissemi- nation. And now in the last quarter of the century not far from all the clergy have accepted it. A consequence of this is that there never was a time in the six hundred years of our period, perhaps never since there was an organised body of clergy, when they wore so uniformly a professional aspect, were so much of one type, and gave so little ground for adverse remark. This, however, is far from all that may be said. These two revivals, one bearing directly on the essence of religion, though with some mistakes that had to be abandoned, and the other on things connected with religion, aided much, perhaps indeed chiefly, by the growing demands and more exacting vigilance of public opinion, have brought about among the clergy almost uni- versally so careful and intelligent a discharge of duty that there is no record of anything like it, or approaching to it, ever having been exhibited before amongst us. The suddenness and completeness of this change, and its contrast with what preceded it, remind one of the saying that the darkest hour of the night is that which precedes the break of day. An old Nonconformist preacher of this neighbourhood, with whom I frequently had some talk about his recollections of the past, used to tell me that of all the advances and changes he had noted in his time, a time pre-eminently full of great advances and signal changes, not one had been so complete and so conspicuous as that which had been effected in the lives and character of the clergy of the Established Church. He could recollect, he would say, that at the beginning of the century, with the exception of the Evangelical few, they were careless about their duty, and incapable of exercising to any useful purpose any influence over their neighbours, but at the time he knew of scarcely any who neglected their duty, and he saw many who were remarkable for their power of influencing other minds. EVENTS THAT TOUCHED OUR VICARS 71 The difficulties, then, which the clergy have now to con- tend with do not arise from the misconduct of their own order ; never was there less of that. Nor do they arise from the dis- order, the violence, or the viciousness of society ; never was society less disorderly, less violent, and less vicious. Their difficulties now lie in the intellectual order. Of them, however, this is not the place to speak. We will, therefore, conclude this chapter by pointing out the facts and lessons the foregoing review of the last six centuries has placed in relief. In the first place it has shown that in our English race there exists a capacity, which does not appear to exist now in any other people, for producing Lollards— that is, religious enthu- siasts ; generally from the uncultured and not highly cultured classes, who are ready to spend and be spent for conscience' sake. This is both a natural result and a contributory cause of the strength of our national character. In the second place it has shown that the Church of England did not understand, and so did not make any provision for including and utilising and dealing with such enthusiasts ; and that this has been to it a cause of weakness, which has once already issued, and may again issue, in its overthrow. Thirdly, the events that have been in review have demon- strated that the stream of tendency has all along been in the direction of liberty in religious opinion, rightfully based on increasing knowledge— that is, on an increase in the materials for forming opinions. Lastly, the history has reminded us of the saying, that it is not wise to put new wine into old bottles. It gives much additional substance to the interest we take in our vicars to see them passing through the great intellectual and religious events of so many centuries, while the events themselves have proved well worthy of review for their own sake. 72 X. THE PRESENTERS. Qui facit per alium facit per se. We now ccme to the statement, which in our list of vicars follows the name of the presentee, of who it was that in the case of each presented. The first eight were presented by the prior and convent of St Peter's, Ipswich. We may infer from the practice of all corporate bodies that they found in every instance that there was no one on earth so well qualified in every respect for the good things they had to give away as some member— all being quite inconspicuous — of their own small brotherhood. We may rest this supposition not only on the universal practice of corporate bodies, especially in times when public opinion, almost a modern result of the publicity of the press, had no existence, but also on the names of the vicars, which inform us that almost all of them were natives of neighbouring villages, as Culfo, Hasketon, Chatisham, Wood- bridge, &c The first six are not described as friars, as are the six that follow them. But doubtless they were all friars — that is, members of the Augustinian monastery of St. Peter's, Ipswich. In the earlier period probably they did not look upon the appellation of 'friar' as a particularly honourable distinction. When, however, there had come to be a struggle between the secular and the regular clergy for position and dignity, they may have become somewhat proud of their being regulars, and so recorded this fact in the entries of the institu- tions of their vicars. Or it may have been that the estimation THE PRESENTERS 73 in which the public held the preaching friars — the Franciscans and the Dominicans — may have brought them to think that it was as well to append this title to the names of their nominees. The eighth and three following vicars have the additional title of canon appended to their names. This was the technical description of the Black Augustinian monks ; they were the Black Canons of St. Augustine. The ninth vicar is not presented, as had been all his pre- decessors, by the regular patrons, the prior and convent of St. Peter's, but collated by the bishop. This means that the prior and convent failed to fill up the vacancy from some reason or other. The reasons that most readily present themselves to us are either that they could not agree among themselves, or that the bishop would not accept their nominee. The monks were beginning to be found out. The next vacancy, that created by the death of the bishop's nominee, is now filled up by the regular patrons. This time they are able to agree, or at all events their nominee is acceptable to the bishop. He was the William Smith who, as we have already had occasion to notice, is the first vicar on our list possessed of an indubitable surname. He w-as pre- sented in the year 1478. On his decease, however, we find that the appointment a second time falls to the bishop, and that never again does St. Peter's Convent present to our benefice. On this, the second occasion of the bishop's collating, it is stated in the entry of the institution, as it had been in the first case, that the right of appointment came to him per lapsutn. On also the two next ensuing vacancies he collates, without, however, anything being said of the right having lapsed to him. This seems as if the bishop had assumed the nomination, and that his assumption had been acquiesced in. The monasteries had now fallen into well-deserved disrepute. Even as far back as the time of Henry IV. the Commons had petitioned that all their property should be confiscated ; and the seed VVickliffe had sown, in ground well prepared to receive it, was now bearing abundant 74 THE PRESENTERS fruit. Such public opinion, therefore, as there was doubtless supported the bishop in what might be held, when regarded from a strictly legal point of view, as a high-handed usurpation, but which was a wise and highly becoming act in view of the higher law, that institutions that exist for the one purpose of promoting ought not to be allowed to discredit and damage religion and morality. The public knew that the bishop's nominees would be better parish priests than, to keep well within their repute, the lazy and luxurious friars. We now come to the fourteenth vicar and to a new patron. And this connects for a brief space with our benefice of Wherstead the name of one who was not only the most eminent man Ipswich ever produced, but who was the fore- most Englishman of his day ; and of all who at that time had been the architects of their own fortunes, the one who was the most widely known throughout Christendom — Wolsey the Magnificent. The fourteenth vicar is presented by ' the dean and chapter of Cardinal's College, Ipswich, the patrons,' as the entry states, 'of the aforesaid vicarage of Wherstead.' This was the college Shakespeare immortalises : — He was most princely. Ever witness for him Those twins of learning that he raised in you, Ipswich and Oxford ! One of which fell with him, Unwilling to outlive the good that did it : The other, though unfinished, yet so famous, So excellent in art, and still so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue. It was, indeed, a princely foundation. It consisted of a dean, and twelve secular canons, eight clerks, and eight choris- ters, and a grammar school, and was endowed with the revenues of thirteen suppressed monasteries, among which was that of St. Peter's, Ipswich. It succeeded to the church patronage of these thirteen monasteries, and so became the patron of Wherstead, and thus it came about that one of my predecessors was presented to the benefice of Wherstead by the dean (his name was William Capon) and the chapter of Cardinal's College, THE PRESEXTERS 75 Ipswich. This great college, then, was not merely an inchoate idea, an unsubstantial vision floating in the mind of a magni- ficent dreamer, but an institution actually established and commencing its work, for in the year 1530 it is entered in the diocesan register of institutions at Norwich that its dean and chapter presented John ^Varner to the benefice of Wherstead, and John Fuldeham to that of Cretyngham, of which also it had become patron, and then allowed the two vicars to exchange benefices, so that John Fuldeham, after his resignation of Cretyngham, on their presentation became vicar of Wherstead, which preferment he held for sixteen years. Had not Henry VIII. suppressed this noble foundation, it would at this day have been in existence, and might, and probably would, have been the most famous school in the world. On the fall of the Great Cardinal Henry VIII. seized all his preferment, and amongst the rest the endowments of his college at Ipswich. In the roll of these were the manors of Pannington Hall and of Bourn Hall, in Wherstead. Hence- forth the Crown became the patron of the benefice of Wher- stead. On the next vacancy the king presents. In Mary's reign the bishop, as might have been expected, collates. In the long reign of Elizabeth the Crown presents thrice, and so on without an interruption down to our own time. The present vicar received in 1847 his appointment from Her Majesty Queen Victoria. He, however, will be the last nominee of the Crown, for under Lord Westbury's Act the advowson was in 1864 sold to a private patron. Henceforth an indispensable condition of presentation will be relationship to or the friend- ship of the patron, or money paid for the presentation, in which case the incumbent will practically have presented himself In the time of the Commonwealth there was necessarily for a few years an interruption to what from the time of Henry VIII. to that of Victoria was the regular order of things. In 1657 old Samwaies died. This was the year that preceded the Protector's death. By some means or other, we know not what, John Burgess had become already established in the 76 THE PRESESTERS parish. He first appears on the scene in the latter years of the octogenarian Saniwaies, but whether with his approval or whether intruded upon him there is nothing to show. We have inferred from the way in which he kept the parochial registers that his tendencies were puritanical. But this may not have been altogether displeasing to Samwaies, who had himself, as we have already seen, signed a petition for the abolition of episcopacy. In 1662, however — that is, five years after Samwaies's death — he obtains from Charles II. a regular nomination, and is instituted regularly. It is stated in the entry of his institution in the diocesan register that it is valid in whatever way the vacancy had been created — ' vicaria vacante per mortem ultimi incumbentis, aut alio quocunque modo ; ' that is to say, whether the vacancy had been created by a resignation of Samwaies in his favour, or by the death of Samwaies, or by his own withdrawal from his informal and intrusive ministry, or ■whatever might be the way in which anyone might suppose or allege that the vacancy had arisen. He was a cautious man, and took care that his title should not be invalidated by the informalities of the late disorderly times. The entry of Burgess's institution is found, not in the regular official volume of institutions for this period, but in Bishop Reynolds's register, a concurrent and quasi-private volume, which, however, contains several entries, among them being that of Burgess, that for some unknown reason did not find their way into the regular official volume. 77 XI. GLEANINGS FROM THE REGISTERS. Rerum natura tola nusquam est magis quam in minimis. — Pliny. Our parish registers commence in the year 1590. In look- ing over them for particulars of interest connected with the history of the parish and of my predecessors I met with some small matters that are worthy of notice. The only indication we have of the Great Plague of 1665 is that for the two following years we find entries in which it is stated that those buried had died on the previous day. These rapid interments must have been caused by apprehensions of infection ; and the entry is made to show that what was possible had been done to guard against it. Everyone knows what grotesque names, drawn from a biblical source, and intended to express some religious senti- ment or hope, were imposed on their children by the fanatics of the period of the Great Rebellion, such as Faintnot, Fearnot, Accepted, Redeemed, Makepeace, Peaceofgod, Flydebate, Weepnot, Bethankful, Killsin, Morefruit. An entry in our baptismal register for the year 1673 contains one of these names. A baptised infant is entered as the daughter of John Ellis and Estofidelis, his wife. As Estofidelis's parents had not been content with the English Bethoufaithful, and under- stood Latin, they must have been people of some education and position. In 1678 I first come on the title of ' Esquire' appended to a name ; it is in the rase of a justice of the peace. 78 GLEANINGS FROM THE REGISTERS As early, however, as 1591, ' Gent.' is found appended in the same way to the name of one Thomas Hall, in the entry of his son's baptism. He was owner of Bourn Hall. The use of the word ' town ' instead of village or parish was general, as appears from the registers, down to a very recent period. It is of late years only that I have ceased to hear our parochial or vestry meetings called town meetings. The variations I have fallen in with in the spelling of the name of our parish have been many, as, for instance, Querstede, Wervestede, Vervestede, Wherested, U'hersfield, Whearstead, Whersteed, Wheatstead, Wheatstrade, Quested, Wetstead, and Wherstead. I might perhaps be able to add to this number of variations by a search in the thirty folios of institutions in the diocesan registry' at Norwich. I can remember that forty years ago it was called by all classes Wetstead. But at that time I can also recollect that there was scarcely a single parish in this neighbourhood the name of which was pronounced as it was written, and as it is now pronounced. Freston was Fresson, Wolverstone Wolverson, Chelmondiston Chimpton, Harkstead Hastead, Erwarton Arnton, Tattingstone Tattinson, East Bergholt Barfield, &c. But Lord Brougham never called the capital of the Midlands otherwise than Brummagem, being in his old age too conservative to drop the practice of his youth. And I can recall another noble lord, a contemporary of Lord Brougham, who always spoke of the million-peopled city under the name of ' Lunon.' Those were, too, the days of ' covechousness,' ' mussy,' and ' eddication.' Of course it is the ability to read that has brought people to pronounce the names of places in these days as they find them spelt in print. This change in practice proves that among the masses the readers have now become sufficiently numerous to reverse a custom which had the merit of saving breath, and was till recently universal. Education has also had the effect of extinguishing among the agricultural class in the parish the use of words which they do not find in print. Down to thirty years ago in this neigh- GLEANINGS FROM THE REGISTERS 79 bourhood a young woman was always spoken of as a ' mawther,' or ' morther,' and hedging gloves were called 'dornocks.' Both those words are supposed to have a Scandinavian origin. They are now absolutely unused, even by the old people who remember them. ' Chats ' for scraps, as the bullocks' chats, the scraps of beet or turnips they left and which went to the pigs, 'shruff' for dry wood in the hedges, 'mash' for marsh, ' yard ' for garden, and ' sauce ' for vegetables, have all passed into the limbo of oblivion. So has the use of ' Madam ' and of ' Lady ' prefixed to the surname to distinguish a married woman of the upper class from one of their own class, whom they would style ' Mrs.' We shall before long have occasion to notice an entry from an overseers' book of the middle of the last century of a payment made by ' Madam Brand,' the wife of Captain Brand. If the person spoken of used a close car- riage ' Lady ' was prefixed to the name, as ' Lady Capper,' and the class, then a very small one, was called 'carriage ladies.' This reminds one of Pitt's dictum, that it was in accordance with the spirit of our constitution that everyone who had an income of 10,000/. a year should be allowed to claim admission to the peerage. They conferred the title of ' Lady ' on all who exhibited the outward signs of wealth. In these democratic days, however, no repugnance is felt at giving the same appella- tion, that of ' Mrs., 'to women of all classes. In my memory the ordinary wish at parting was, ' The seal of the day to you.' This is now never heard. Instead of it we have ' good morning,' ' good day,' ' good evening,' ' good night.' This ' seal ' meant the season or time of the day. It seems to be identical with the latter part of the word ' haysel,' which is still in common use for the hay season. ' Eleet,' for a place where roads meet, has also of late become obsolete. ' Three eleet ' meant a place where three roads meet (Trivium) ; 'four eleet,' a place where four roads meet (Quadrivium). To these instances of the recent disuse of once familiar words may be added the aban- donment of the practice, once universal, but now only met with occasionally among the old, cif addressing a superior in the So GLEAiMNGS FROM THE REGISTERS third person, as, for instance, ' I have come to ask a favour of Mr. Wright,' or ' of Mrs. Wright,' as the case might be. ' I am glad to see Mr. (or Mrs.) Wright well.' Happily this desire to imply a sense of social inferiority is dying away. But there was something picturesque in hearing yourself addressed in the third person. In 1678 occurs the first entry, together with the entr}- of the burial, of the certificate that the corpse was buried in woollen ' according,' in the words of the entr)-, ' to the late Act.' These certificates and affidavits continue for 133 years, down to 181 1. This enforcement by statute of burial in woollen appears to have been the elder sister of its successor, the Corn Laws. There is a strong family resemblance between them. Equally in both one can see no object but that of increasing rent. If this was its motive, there was no lack of ingenuity or of origi- nality in the idea of utilising our dead friends for the purpose of making dearer the clothing of the living. It would not have been possible to compel the living to wear woollen clothes, but this compulsion — and the advantage would be just as great in the eyes of the wool growers — might be applied to the dead, who could not help themselves. It would have been an analogous proceeding if the Corn Laws had enacted that in every grave there should be deposited upon the cof- fin a sack of wheat flour. Possibly during the last and the earlier part of the present century the now obsolete smock- frock of the farmer and of his men, and the fustian jacket and corduroys of the artisan in the towns, may have been one of the results of this artificial enhancement of the price of woollen clothing. At all events, these classes did not formerly wear, woollen clothes as they do now, the present comparative cheapness of woollens being undoubtedly the cause of the large disuse of cotton fabrics for their outer garments now customary among them. In the year 1783 I find the following entry : — Memorandum. A duty of threepence was laid upon registering every marriage, baptism, birth, or burial, from the first day of October, 1 783. GLEANINGS FROM THE REGISTERS 8i It seems, on the face of this statement, that it would have been possible to escape this tax by requesting that the entry should not be made in the register. It was in fact a poll-tax, assessed on the poor at the same rate as on the rich. In many cases it must have been paid by the incumbent. Badness, in some degree, is an inseparable quality of all taxes, but that so bad a tax as this should have been imposed shows that the Government had almost come to its wits' end in contriving how to raise the necessary revenue. In these matters certainly ' we are very much better than our fathers,' at all events very much better off. 82 XII. COLLECTIONS TWO CENTURIES AGO. Dandi amor dando crescit. From the year 1659 to the year 1679 there occur in our register several entries of collections made in the church, or parish, for various objects. They are worth preserving, as helping us to understand how such matters were managed over two hundred years ago. I here give them verbatim : — July the tenth 1659. Collected in our Towne of Wherstead the day and yeare above written towards the releefe of the distressed people inhabitants of Southwold alias Southbay the sura of five pounds one shilling and threepence halfepenny by us John Surges Minister the mark of Robert X Culfe Churchwarding. 1660. Collected for Heydon in the East Riding of the County of Yorke the sum of seven shillings and one penny. 1661. Fire — Collected to a breefe for Chertsey in the county of Surrey 2s. lod. o. Fire — Collected to a breefe for the inhabitants of St. Bartholomew Exchange, London, the sum of one shilling and sixpence. War — Collected for the re-building of the pish (parish) church of Pontefract in Yorkshire the sum of one pound two shillings and eight- pence. COLLECTIONS TWO CENTURIES AGO 83 Fire — Collected for Richard Woosley and others of Wapping in the pish of White Chappell London the sum of six shillings and sixpence. Fire — Collected for the inhabitants of Milton Abbas in the county of Dorset the sum of one shilling and twopence. Fire — Collected for Christopher Spire and John Simons of Watering- bury in the county of Kent two shillings and sixpence. Fire — Collected for Oxford the sum of one shilling and eightpence. Fire — Collected for the inhabitants of ffakenham in the county of Norfolk the sum of three shillings. Fire — Collected for the inhabitants of Scarborough in the county of York the sum of two shillings and threepence. Collected towards the re-building of Rippon church and steeple in the county of York the sum of four shillings and one halfpenny. Collected for the inhabitants of Elmeley Castle in the county of Wor- cester the sum of one shilling and fowerpence. Collected for Prisilla ffeilder Widd and Thomas ifeilder her son of Dartford in the county of Kent the sum of one shilling and eightpence. Fire — Collected towards the releef of the inhabitants of St. Bartholomew Exchange London the sum of one shilling and sixpence. Collected for Henry Harrison mariner the sum of two shillings and one penny. Collected for Richard Dutton of the city of Chester the sum of one shilling and sevenpence half penny. Collected for the releef of the inhabitants of East Hagborne in the county of Berks the sum of one shilling and twopence. Collected for Tho. Thorneham pr: of Soorbey (Sowerby) in the county of York the sum of Is. 3d. Collected for Condover in the county of Salop the sum of one shilling and eightpence received by me John Madei.ey. Collected for Henry Harrisson mariner for losse by shipwracke the sum of two shillings and one penny received by me John Saunders. Collected in the towne of Whersteed for St. Maries ine the Fields London ois. gd. Collected in the towne of Whersteed for the towne of Fordingham the sum of twelvpence. Collected in the towne of Whersteed for the towne of Tiverton one shilling and sixpence. Collected in the towne of Whersteed for the Church of Harwich one shilling ninepence. Collected in the towne of Whersteed for the towne Hexam two shillings. Collected in the towne of Wherstead for the inhabitants of the city of London six and forty shillings and twopence. £qi2 06s. 2d. G 2 84 COLLECTIONS TWO CE.VTURIES AGO Collected in the towne of Wherstead for the inhabitants of the towne of Thetford two shillings and fourpence. ;^oo 2s. 4d. Fire — Collected in the towne of WTierstead towards the releife of the distressed people inhabitants of the towne of Brekles the just sum of one and twenty shillings tenpence halfpenny — £o\ ois. lo o^ Collected June the 5th for the Cotton end breife the just sum of two shillings — o6d. (Cotton End is a hamlet in the parish of Cardington, near Bedford.) June the 12th, 1670. Collected then in the towne of \Mierstead for the poor inhabitants ol the towne of Ifleham in the county of Cambridge two shillings two pence. Collected in the towne of Wherstead the 24 of July 1670 the just sum of one and twenty pence for the towne of Somraersham in the county of Huntington. Collected November the 29th 1670 the just sum of forty shillings and twopence of the inhabitants of \Mierstead towards the redemption of the poore distressed captives in Turkey. William Whitehead Churchwarden X his mark William Thorne (Vicar) John Clarke Thomas Sorrell. Collected in the towne of Wherstead for the towne of ffordingbridge the just sum of two shillings and tenpence, Aug. 30th, 1673. Collected March the 15th 1673 of the inhabitants of WTierstead the sum of three shillings halfpenny towards the rebuilding of the Church of Benenden in the county of Kent. 03s. cod. ob. Collected January 17th 1674 in the towne of \\herstead for Thomas Gibbon of the parish of St. Margaret's at ClifiTe in the county of Kent the sum of eighteen pence. Collected January 24th 1674 in the towne o{\ , . Wherstead for the refe of certain sufTerers in the town ' ' , „, , . , ,,.,,,, r Rich: GooDiNGE of Walton in the county of Norfolk the sum of two 1 , , , . ' churchwarden, shillings and mnepence. ; Collected in our towne of Wherstead for the towne of Northampton in the county of Northampton the just sum of one and forty shillings and fourpence in the year 1676. „ f Thomas Sorrell By us -: LW'iLL: Thorne vicar ibid. Collected Oct. 1st 1676 for the poor sufTerers of Eaton in the county of Bucks the sum of sixteen pence— W. Thorne John Gooding. COLLECTIO.XS TWO CEMTURJES AGO 85 Collected the 29 October 1676 the sum of three shillings twopence farthing towards the releife of the sufferers of Topsham in the county of Devon. W. Thorne John Gooding. Collected in the towne of MTierslead Sep. 23 1677 by Mr. John Gooding churchwarden for the releife of the poor sufferers of Blithbargh in the county of Suff; the 3um of two shillings. Collected of the inhabitants of the towne of Wherstead in the county of Suff: the sum of nine shilllings and sevenpence towards the re-building of St. Paul's Church in London— Will. Thorxe vicar ibid. Edward Hollix churchwarden. Collected for the sufferers of UfiBngton in the county of Lincoln the sum of one shillir.g elevenpence the three and twentieth day of ffebruary 1678-9 — \Vm. Thorne. Sep. 28 1679. Collected then of the inhabitants of \\'herstead towards the reliefe of the sufferers of Dover in the county of Kent the sum of sixpence. August the loth 1679 collected then one and twenty pence towards the re-building of Windlesham Steeple in the county of Surrey. With the addition of a collection on behalf of Newmarket in 1684, and another on behalf of Tunbridge Wells in 1692, these are the only entries of the kind in our registers from their commencement in 1590. As some of the years embraced in the twenty-one years the above entries cover have several entries and some have none, we can hardly suppose that all the collections made during the period were recorded. No reason is given for the commence- ment of the practice of making the entries, or for its discon- tinuance. We may, however, suppose that it had its origin in Puritan scrupulousness, for John Burgess commenced it ; and that its discontinuance was due to Cavalier carelessness, for it was fanatic-hating Oliver Thome who dropped it. The majority of the entries have no dates, but they are all comprised between the years 1659 and 1679 inclusive. What first strikes us on glancing over this list of collections is their frequency, in comparison with the practice, as respects this matter, at the present day in our small rural parishes. Wherstead has now a population of about 264 souls, and we 86 COLLECTIONS TWO CENTURIES AGO can hardly suppose that two centuries ago it exceeded 300. But what is of real interest in it is the variety of objects for which the collections were made, and the remoteness of the places to which assistance was sent. It is almost laughable to see the little mouse of Wherstead going to the rescue of the great lion of the City of London. Perhaps this was after the great fire of London ; for, though no date for the collection is given, yet its amount 02/. 06s. 2d. is so considerable as to indi- cate that the need was pressing, and impelled people to con- tribute freely. Again we find ' gs. id. collected towards the re-building of St. Paul's Church in London.' This did not touch the feelings of the inhabitants of Wherstead so deeply. The instant necessities of thousands of houseless and starving people appealed irresistibly to their pity and to common humanity, while the Londoners might be allowed, but with some little extraneous encouragement, to re-build at leisure their own cathedral. There are entered two collections for St. Bartholomew Exchange, London. The cause for both is stated to have been fire. Each amounts to \s. 6d. In both cases it is stated that the eighteen-pence was for ' the inhabitarits.' Other collections for the behoof of London and Londoners are one for ' Richard Woosley and others of Wapping, in the parish of White Chappell, London, six shillings and sixpence,' and 'for St. Maries ine the Fields, London, o/. ij-. gd.' The collections for individuals do not at all accord with existing ideas and practices. ' For Richard Button of the city of Chester' — it was a far cry to the city of Chester when A\'herstead people were in search of some poor fellow in dis- tress — was collected is. jhd. Henry Harrison, mariner, was highly favoured, for we find that for him two collections were made, both amounting to 2s. id. ; though possibly this, as in the case of the two identical collections for St. Bartholomew Exchange, London, may have been a double entry through inadvertency. What had brought him into trouble was ' losse by shipwracke.' 'Thomas Gibbon of the parish of St. Margarets at Cliffe in the county of Kent,' has collected for him the sum COLLECTIONS TWO CENTURIES AGO 87 of eighteenpence. ' For Christopher Spire and John Simons of Wateringbury, in the county of Kent,' was collected 2s. 6d. ' For Prisilla ffeilder Widd and Thomas ffeilder her son of Dartford in the county of Kent,' was collected is. Sd. ' For Tho. Thorneham pr:' (perhaps parish) 'of Soorbey (Sowerby) in the county of York,' was collected is. ^d. There are collections made for the rebuilding of churches and of steeples ; two shillings and eightpence 'for the re-building of Pontefract Church, Yorkshire.' On the margin is written the word ' war ; ' so we may suppose that this church had been injured or destroyed in the great civil war. ' Towards the re- building of Rippon church and steeple in the county of York,' were contributed 4s. old. ' For the Church of Harwich,' is. gd. ' Towards the re-building of the Church of Benenden in the county of Kent,' Wherstead sent 03^. ood. ob. As ' ob ' stands for one halfpenny, it may be an abbreviation of obolus, though in fact th'E sterling value of an obolus was about three halfpence. ' Towards the re-building of Windlesham steeple in the county of Kent ' was collected the sum of 2id. The most numerous entries are those of collections for ' the distressed people,' ' the inhabitants,' ' the poor inhabitants,' ' certain sufferers,' ' poor sufferers,' in certain ' townes ; ' some- times simply for ' the towne.' The names of the towns occur- ing in this connection are Southwold a/i'as Southbay, Heydon, Chertsey, Milton Abbas, Oxford, Fakenham, Scarborough, Elmeley Castle, East Hagborne, Condover, Fordingham, Tiverton, Hexham, Thetford, Brekles, Ifleham, Sommersham, Fordingbridge, Walton in Norfolk, Northampton, Eton, Tops- ham, Blythburgh, Uiifington, Dover. Of several of these places we may very well suppose that ' the towne of Wherstead ' was quite unaware of the existence before it was called upon to reheve their sufferings and distresses. From these entries, and from the list generally, we may draw the comfortable in- ference that the country is throughout in towns and rural districts much wealthier and much better off in every respect now than it was at the date of these Wherstead collections ; 88 COLLECTIONS TWO CEXTURJES AGO for ever)' town and rural district is in these days quite able and willing to take care of its poor sufferers and distressed inhabi- tants. The hat is not now sent round by Oxford, Scarborough, Hexham, Northampton, Eton, Dover, and the city of London : that it was once necessary to send it round shows what a different world it was then from what it is now. Another change in the times which our list of collections suggests is that the Church is in these days very far from being the general almoner to the degree in which she was two centu- ries ago. As was just observed, people are better off now. Wages, too, are higher and more regular ; the people have to some extent learnt to insure themselves against the calamities of life by saving ; the Poor Law everj-where pro\'ides with un- failing regularity for hopeless cases ; and our well-to-do classes have the means and are charitably disposed to aid in exceptional cases. And besides all this the Church itself can no longer, now that the Nonconformist bodies have grown so much in numbers, consoHdation, and wealth, be regarded, either in practice or in theorj-, as the only recognised religious organisa- tion of the nation. It is always useful to know when it was that old customs, even though of no great importance in themselves, came to die out ; for this never happens except as the result of other changes, which are the reason of their decay. It will have been observed that in several of our entries ' a brief ' is cited as the authority for the collection therein recorded ; and doubtless it was so with more than those particular entries in which there is mention of the brief The existing generation of church-goers has no knowledge of these briefs, but forty years ago they were still read in Wherstead church. They were royal letters authorising collections. These were the briefs referred to in the rubric following the Nicene Creed, at which point in the service the minister is directed to read them. For reasons approved of by the authorities in Church and State, and I suppose by the clergy and congregations generally — few things can secure universal approval — it was deemed advisable to discontinue the practice of issuing them. COLLECTIONS TWO CENTURIES AGO 89 The liberality of some of the collections on our list is re- markable, but still more so is the exiguity of many of them. That for the sufferers at Dover could not have gone very far in the mitigation of their sufferings, for it only reached the sum of sixpence. One is almost curious to know how in the days preceding postage-stamps this sixpence was remitted from Wherstead to Dover. One of our collections did not fall under any of the heads we used for the classification of the rest. It stands apart by itself. In 1670 there was gathered in Wherstead ' the just sum of forty shillings and twopence towards the redemption of the poore captives in Turkey.' By Turkey is probably here meant Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, so designated as being parts of the great Mahomedan Empire of Turkey. Reversely the word Turks is uSed in the combination of ' Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics,' which occurs in one of the collects for Good Friday ; here the name of a part is given to the whole of the Mahomedan world. Fifteen years before this collection was made, Blake had taught the Algerines to respect the English flag, but without putting an end to their piracies in the Medi- terranean, or to their plundering and slave-hunting expeditions along the southern coasts of Europe. And here it will not be out of place to mention that about the date of our collection Mr. Francis Vernon, the elder brother of Mr. Secretary Vernon, while travelling in the East, was captured and made a slave by the Algerines. On being ransomed he returned home through Venice, and while there had his portrait painted. In this portrait he wears the coarse, scanty, black dress he had worn while a slave. After a time the irrepressible love of travel and adventure again carried him to the East. His second expedi- tion, however, was still more unfortunate than his first, for it terminated with his murder in Egypt. The portrait of him just mentioned was brought by the late Lady Harland {nee Arethusa Vernon, and who had inherited the Vernon estates) from Thurlow Hall, the original seat of the Vernons, to the mansion in Wherstead Park, to which it is annexed as an heir- loom. 90 XIII THE MANSION AT WHERSTEAD PARK. Non domo doniinus, sed domino domus honestanda est. — Cicero. I HAVE already had occasion to mention the house Sir Robert Harland built in Wherstead Park. Its date, 1792, is cut upon the exterior siU of one of the windows of the drawing-room. I take this to have been the year when the building was commenced. Sir Jeffery Wyatville was the architect. Externally it has no architectural features of any kind. Internally its chief feature is the hall and staircase, and the gallery round the hall and staircase for the second storey. On the south side it may be observed that the white brick of the ground floor and of the floor above is of a different tint from that of the rest of the house. This marks the extent of the old house which was incorporated in the new mansion. This part contains the present library and billiard room, and the first floor of bed- rooms above. The house is best known for the large number of portraits, together with some other pictures, which adorn its walls. Of these the most valuable is a large canvas by Canaletto, nine feet in length by seven and a half in height, which Sir Robert Harland bought from the Duke of Newcastle when he was in pecuniary difficulties. But what is of most interest in the collection is the large number of portraits it includes. Among these are portraits of James II., of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth, of Queen Anne, of her son, the Duke of Gloucester, who died at the age of thirteen, of Mr. Secretary Vernon, and WHERSTEAD PARK MANSION 91 his wife, all by Sir G. Kneller. There are also portraits of several members of the Vernon family, in subsequent genera- tions, and of several members of the Harland family. There is a portrait of Mr. Francis Vernon, which we have already had occasion to mention. This was painted at Venice. He is in the dress he wore as a slave after his capture by the Algerines. Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester, by Zucchero. Nell Gwynne, Lady Castlemaine, and the Duchess of Portsmouth, by Sir Peter Lely. The family of Admiral Vernon, and the same repeated with his black manservant, by Hogarth. Admiral Sir Robert Harland by Dance. This has been engraved. The late Sir Robert Harland, then a young man, on his return from France on the breaking out of the Revolution, by Romney — full length. His three sisters, the Countess Dillon, Mrs. Dairy mple, and Lady Rowley — separate portraits, by Cosway. Admiral Cavendish and Admiral Sir George Rooke, by Vander Heist. The Earl of Shipbrooke, nephew of Admiral Vernon ; and the Countess of Shipbrooke and General Vernon, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The above are the most noteworthy in this very far from inconsiderable collection, both in respect of numbers and of interest. In the hall is the remaining one of the six very elaborately adorned chairs, of ebony, profusely inlaid with ivory, which the Nabob of Arcot gave in 1772 to Lady Harland, through Admiral Sir Robert Harland, who was at that time Minister Plenipotentiary at his court and commander-in-chief of the fleet in the Indian seas. Five of these chairs were sold to George IV. for his Pavilion at Brighton. He gave for them 50/. apiece. There is an inscription on the one at Wherstead which gives its history. 92 WHERSTEAD PARK MANSION In the drawing-room is a carved and gi)t altar, and over it a very pleasing carved and painted figure of the Virgin, taken by Admiral Vernon from the chapel of the Spanish three- decker Santisima Tritiidad, which was one of his captures. Of this, too, the history is given in an inscription on a brass plate appended to the altar. This Admiral Vernon is best known for his achievements against the Spaniards in taking Chagres and Porto Bello. His last command was in the Channel. He was dismissed from the service on the alleged ground that in some pamphlets he had written he had published letters of a Secretary of State. He was known in the navy by the nickname of ' Old Grog ; ' and having introduced on board the ships he commanded rum- and-water as a drink for the sailors, it was called after him ' grog.' He was Member of Parliament for Ipswich, and somewhat violent as a politician. I have a medal that was struck to commemorate his achievements at Chagres and at Porto Bello. On the obverse is a three-quarter length figure of the admiral. On the right side is a ship in front of a fort, over which are the words, ' A view of Fort Chagre.' The legend on the circumference is, 'The Hon. Edward Vernon, Esq., Vice- Admiral of the Blew, and Comer. -in-Chief of all his Maj. ships in the West Indies.' On the reverse is a harbour in the form of a horse-shoe. At the toe of the shoe is a town. In the centre of the harbour is a fort. There are also forts at each extremity of the heel of the shoe. In front of these forts are six ships. The legend on this side is, ' Porto Bello, taken by Admiral Vernon with six ships of war only. Nov. 22. Anno Dom: 1739.' This medal is of copper, with the thinnest possible film of silver. In 181 9 Sir Robert Harland let this house to the Lord Granville of that day for 1,000/. a year, the shooting being included, and the landlord paying rates and taxes. This Lord Granville was the father of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Mr. Gladstone's late Ministry. During his residence here Wherstead was visited by many of those who at that time filled WHERSTEAD PARK MANSION 93 conspicuous places in society and in public life. Among these were Huskisson, Canning ; Counts Lieven, Niemen, and Pahlin ; Lords Morpeth and Jersey ; Charles Greville, Luttrell, the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of York, and many others whose names are not yet forgotten. My predecessor used to tell me that he saw one evening at Wherstead Park Canning and the Duke of Wellington taking parts in acting a charade. The Duke appeared as a nurse, wearing a white cap, and holding in his arms a pillow dressed up as a baby. In 1820, in shooting the Hill Covert, a discharge from the Duke's gun peppered Lord Granville severely in the face. The spot at which this mishap took place was a few paces south of the north-west angle of the Covert, where it is nearest to the railway. The Duke was in the meadow ; Lord Granville was in the wood. The wood rises rather sharply from the meadow. The Duke fired at a pheasant as it rose above the underwood. The elevation, however, was not sufficient to carry the charge above Lord Granville, who was on much higher ground than the Duke. Fortunately he was struck on the side of the head, one shot even passing through his nose. Had he been struck in the full face, his sight might have been totally destroyed. Eleven shots were extracted. It is evident that Lord Granville was where he ought not to have been. The tradition is that this was the only point in the mishap which the iron disciplinarian regarded as material, and so he could not refrain from saying to his bleeding host : ' If you had not been where you had no business to have been, it could not have happened.' I have seen a contemporary caricature in which the occurrence is regarded only from this point of view. It is a fact that could not have been expected that after the lapse of sixty-seven years one who was present at the accident, as a beater, is still in 1887 living in the parish, and so distinctly recollects the event that he describes how people who were present were dressed, and what they said on the 94 WHERSTEAD PARK MANSION occasion ; and that the surgeon who extracted the shots, Dr. A. H. Bartlett of Ipswich, is also still alive. During a visit to Wherstead in January-, 1821, the great Duke was admitted to be a freeman of Ipswich. It was on a Sunday — to suit the Duke's engagements — that this reciprocal honour was conferred and received. At 10.45 a-^'- t^G Duke, accompanied by Lord Granville, in a carriage drawn by four greys, arrived at the Town Hall. Here he took the oaths and was admitted to the roll of freemen. A procession was then formed of the bailiffs, the portmen, and the unofficial nota- bilities of the town, and the new freeman was conducted to the Church of St. Mary Tower. A great crowd had assembled for the occasion, and some disapproving cries were heard to remind the great Captain that in Queen Caroline's business he had not taken the popular side. In the following September the Tories of Ipswich ran their new freeman for the High Stewardship of the Borough. They supposed that the other side would not venture to put up any- one to contest this honour against the foremost man of the age ; or that, if they did, he who had never lost a battle would not now lose one for the first time. In both these suppositions they were mistaken. The Liberals found a champion in the owner of Wherstead, Sir Robert Harland, who, witha majority of 76, vanquished the great Captain, and became High Steward of Ipswich. Marlborough had in 17 19 been elected to this office. When I first became acquainted with the place, William Scroope, the author of ' Deer Stalking' and of ' Salmon Fish- ing,' had hired and was residing at Wherstead Park. Here his book on 'Salmon Fishing' was written. I saw it in MS. before it was sent to Murray for publication. Lady Beaconsfield was a niece of this William Scroope, and just at the time when in 1846 his horror of railways drove him away from Wherstead Disraeli was on the point of fulfilling an engagement to visit him here. At page 416 of Scroope's 'Deer Stalking' is a poetical translation from the Gaelic ' by the celebrated pen of Mr. D'Israeli, jun.' 95 XIV. WHERSTEAD TOWN HOUSE. Nomina si pereunt, peril et cognitio rerum. In the year 1823 my old friend— with whom, however, I was not acquainted till nearly twenty years later— D. E. Davy, the SuiTolk antiquary, whose collections are now in the British Museum, while staying with my predecessor at Wherstead Vicarage, found in the church chest an old overseers' book, the entries in which began from the year 1708. From this he fortunately made some extracts, from which I take the follow- ing :— '1713, for half a load of broom for mending the roads, 2s: The road then between Ipswich and Manningtree was not repaired with stone, but with fagots. '1715, this is the last entry of Sir Edw. Coke being rated in Wherstead.' But Davy's e.xtracts mainly refer to matters connected with the 'towne house ' and 'towne lands.' ' 1729, Petty rents for the towne house 6/. 3" XVIII. CELTS, AND ROMANO-BRITISH POTTERY. A sense of our connection with the past vastly enlarges our sympathies, and supplies additional worlds for their exercise. — EJin. Reviciv. In the year 1S03, at a spot about 400 yards south-west from the vicarage, on the brow of the descent above the large now disused crag pit, at the head of the valley behind the vicarage, on the right hand to one looking down to the valley — the exact spot is marked in the Ordnance map — an earthen pot was turned up by the plough, containing 2,000 Roman coins. Sir Robert Harland, as owner of the land, took possession of them. He was at that time living in the house that had become by exchange the second vicarage, and on the site of which the third vicarage now stands. He thought so much of this large find of Roman money on the spot where he was living that for some time he kept conspicuously chalked on the door of his house the words, ' The Roman Bank.' I have not been able to ascertain what became of these coins and of the earthen pot in which they were found. I have, however, heard that they were sold to Mr. Dykes Alexander, who at that time was head of the firm of Alexanders & Company, bankers, Ipswich. The man whose plough turned up the pot gave six of the coins it contained to a fellow-labourer who was at the time ploughing in the same field. The son of that man eight years ago gave these six coins to me. They are one of Antoninus Pius, one of Gallienus, two of Postumus, one of Volusianus, and one of Victorinus. CELTS 131 These coins, from their connection with the spot on which I hve, I value beyond gold and precious stones. I have had them let into revolving brass frames, so that the obverse and reverse of each can be seen at will. These I have had fixed on the top of a slate panel, in which is a deeply incised inscription giving the date, the amount, the locality, and the manner of the find. The brass frames containing the coins and the in- scription on slate I have had framed in old oak — 260 years old — from the old vicarage I took down. This framed panel I have fastened to the wall of the hall of the vicarage I built on the site of 'The Roman Bank,' which for seventy-eight years was the second vicarage. Since the publication of these ' Materials ' in the Suffolk Chronicle, one who, before Sir R. Harland parted with the bulk of the find, came into possession of four of the coins, was so good as to send them to me by post. This find, from the great number of coins the pot contained, and from that number amounting precisely to 2,000, might have been a small military remittance, or it might have been a sum a farmer of the ta.xes was about to forward to the authori- ties. It might have been buried by a thief, or by one who for some reason was afraid of its being stolen. As it was deposited so near the surface that the plough, that great leveller of super- ficial inequalities, ever busy in filling hollows with hummocks, at last restored it to daylight, we may suppose that it had been buried, or rather hid away, in pressing haste. From the time that I became vicar, whenever I noted any- where in the neighbourhood of this find that the corn died away sooner than elsewhere, or that there appeared some sub- sidence in the ground, I would dig down to the hard pan in hopes of finding the remains of a Roman villa. Sir Robert Harland had told me that in excavating for the foundations of the house in the park some Roman coins had been discovered; and in my time in sinking the road from the village to the church a gold Roman coin had been found, which fell into the hands of Mr. Fitch, the postmaster and antiquary of Ipswich, 132 CELTS whose antiquarian notes are now in the Ipswich Museum. Here then was confirmatory evidence that my hope was reasonable. At last, in 1882, I discovered that the spot on which I had been so long living was the very spot for which I had been so long searching. On the west side of my kitchen garden is a long border, which in summer generally became so dry that whatever had been growing on it came to a standstill. To correct this fault I determined to increase the subterranean sponge by digging the border to the depth of between three and four feet. This thorough breaking up and disintegrating of the soil would not only enable roots to descend more deeply, but would also enable every atom of the disintegrated soil to retain around it a film of water, to be yielded up in the summer when required. In digging this border to this depth I found a great many flint flakes and scrapers, all of which had been used till the cutting edge had been worn off. I also found a flint hammer with its flat face everywhere, but quite evenly, battered and bruised, just the effect that would be produced had it long been used for beating some soft substance — it might have been leather or flax -that would not crack and sphnter the flint. I also came upon several patches of solid chalk, which must, I suppose, have been brought from Claydon, some miles away. For what purpose this chalk had been used there was nothing to show. In the following year, encouraged by the complete horticul- tural success of deep digging to cure the tendency in the soil to become parched in summer, and by the indications just men- tioned that I was on ground that pre-Roman Britons had dwelt on, I determined to dig to the same depth the whole of my orchard. I began at the east end, and at the south-east corner, at the depth of three and a half feet, I found lying side by side two very perfect flint celts, one of grey and the other of black flint. They had first been chipped, and then all the asperities ground off. The longer one had been used with the hand only; the shorter one, too small to be used only by the hand, is starred and bruised on the blunt eftd, which shows that it was ROMAXO-BRiriSH POTTERY 133 worked by the aid of a wooden mallet. The smaller of the two is covered with spots of manganese. I gave the late Charles Darwin an account of this discovery. He was convinced from all the particulars that these celts had been buried to this depth — they were lying on the hard pan — by the work, con- tinued through so many centuries, of the common earthworm. At pages 146, 147, 148 of the fifth edition of his work on ' Vege- table Mould and Earthworms ' he gives the particulars of the finding of these celts, and explains how they may have been buried by worms. In 1882 I had the remainder of my orchard dug to the same depth, turning over three feet and picking up the hard pan below with a mattock to the depth of nearly another foot. And now it was that I came upon very distinct indications of what I had for so many years been in search. At a depth of about three feet from the surface, and scattered, though not evenly, over the whole area, I found more than 600 pieces of broken Romano- British pottery. About thirty years previously I had had the whole of this orchard double dug to the ordinary depth of about twenty inches, when nothing of the kind had been found ; they were all below that depth. These pieces belonged to a great many and to a great variety of vessels ; some large, some small ; some grey, some reddish, some black. With not many exceptions the fragments had still on the outer side the grime of soot, which showed that they had been used in cooking. In five cases I was able to fit together several of the pieces, in one case as many as nine- teen pieces. But these were found close together in what appeared to have been a hole in the ground at the time they were cast away, for the soil around them was not the yellow indurated clay found thereabouts at that depth, but was almost of the same colour and texture as the surface mould. In a large proportion of the pieces the edges are worn, as if they had been long on the surface and much trampled on. One vessel that I am able partially to restore was evidently a dish, for it is only four inches deep, and the rim is both 134 ROMANO-BRITISH POTTERY inclined much outwards and adorned with a zigzag pattern on the inside. The material is very thick, as would be required for a dish so large as to be capable of holding, as this was, a quarter of mutton ; but as on the outside of this vessel also there is much sooty grime, it, too, although used as a dish, must, before it was put on the table, have been set on the fire and had its contents cooked in it. From this we may infer that its contents were of the nature of a stew, that there was no carving, that the party sat round it, each taking from it as much as and just what he wished. There are several fragments of a large vessel, including a handle and the bung-hole, of a pale stone colour. The bung- hole had in the making of the vessel been strengthened by more than doubling the material. This was a necessary pre- caution, as the bung was not of cork, but of some kind of wood. These fragments are quite clean, and show no dis- coloration from fire ; the vessel, therefore, to which they belonged was, we may conclude, used for holding wine or some kind of liquid. Among the more than 600 pieces there was but one fragment of Samian ware ; its genuineness, however, is not indubitable. In Roman times, then, hereabouts stood a house. And, as the front must have been on the sunny side, and these frag- ments would not have been thrown out of the front door, the north side of the house must have been south of where the fragments were found. I therefore infer that just about where my stables now stand in Roman times stood a dwelling, in which the vessels we have been speaking of were used and broken, and the fragments of which are now revealing to us something of their own history, and of the history of the spot in which they have been buried for so many centuries. In the winter of 1883-4, while myself digging in the south- west corner of my orchard, I came on the skeleton of some large animal. It was lying at the depth of not quite four feet, on a very compact, almost indurated, impure sand, which here formed the pan, and was. indeed, to some degree imbedded in ROMAXO-BRJTISH POTTERY 135 this stratum. The head, with its teeth still infixed in the jaws, was in its natural position, in advance of the vertebrs, which also were in almost undisturbed order. I at once saw that the bones could not be those of a calf or a colt, from the slender- ness of the shanks when compared with the large size of the vertebrae. The ribs were missing. On showing the teeth and bones to Dr. Taylor, the learned Curator of the Ipswich Museum, he at once pronounced them to have belonged to a hind of the red deer. He had lately collected the bones of a large number of this species from the excavations made for the main sewer in the main street of Ipswich, where, judging from their accompaniments, they must have been thrown by the rude dwellers in some village of early times. The first thoughts that arose in one's mind on the disinter- ment of this almost complete skeleton were, at what date and by what agency was it buried at this spot? ^Ve do not know when the species became extinct in the forests and glades of what is now Wherstead. But from the small ness of the parishes in this neighbourhood, which is pretty much the case through- out the Eastern Counties, its extinction must have been effected at a comparatively early date. In the eight miles from Stoke bridge to Erwarton Church, seven parishes, W herstead being one of them, are passed through. This shows that at a pre- Domesday period this part of the countrj' was generally enclosed and cultivated. Of the three eastern counties, Essex and Norfolk pay more tithe than the whole of Yorkshire, and Suffolk not far from as much. This throws back the latest possible interment of our red deer many centuries. But what motive could any people, barbarous or semi-civilised, have had for burying the carcase of so large an animal ? Was the inter- ment contemporary with the commencement of the subsidence into the earth of the flint chisels already mentioned in this chapter? Is it to be assigned to Anglo-Saxon, to Reman, to British, or to pre-historic times? It is hard to believe that it was the work of man at any time. Why waste so much good venison ? Or, if it was not good, why give themselves so much 136 ROMANO-BRITISH POTTERY trouble about then unappreciated sanitary precautions ? It is almost as difficult to imagine how it could have been the work of any natural agent. If the carcase had lain for any time on the surface of the ground, it would have been torn piecemeal, and the bones dragged about separately by the crows and the wolves and other carnivorous creatures. Were the ribs carried off in this fashion, or did they decay in the ground? Or can we suppose, giving them one or even two millenniums for the work, that the earthworms (which, as we have seen Charles Darwin concluded, were the agents in the burial, to just the same depth in the south-east corner of this orchard, of our celts) were the inhumers of this skeleton also ? It might have been impossible for earthworms to bury such long and curved bones as ribs, which, therefore, may ha\e remained on the surface, and there decayed. No small proportion of the intellectual pleasure of life con- sists in association. Association it is that makes the Hill of Zion, the Rock of Athens, and the Forum of Rome dear to the mind. To the man who knows nothing of their history they are no more than any other hill or rock or valley. But his- tory is not limited to events that have influenced the world, and which are blazoned in full in its records. There is a general history of the ages as they advanced one after another, and, too, an unwritten history of the undistinguished human lives that took their colour each from its own age as it passed. And a spot that is enriched with a long series of such associations — though they may all belong to what were only ordinar}- and undistinguished forms of life — comes to have an historical interest, and is dwelt upon with pleasure by the historical and sympathetic imagination. This pleasure the Vicar of Wherstead can now enjoy at will. As he walks in his garden or orchard, or sits alone in his study, he can picture to himself how, upon that verj' spot two or three thousand years ago, the rude Briton was busy with his flint chisels in digging out the canoe from which he would soon be fishing in the Orwell ; or how, seated by the hearth in his ROMANO-BRITISH POTTERY 137 hut on a winter evening, he would trim his club, armed with a long thick flint spike. A part of one of these club spikes I lately found close by, as if it had been broken short in dealing a death-blow, perhaps in defence of home. A much larger one was found this year (1887) at Pannington Hall, and is now in the Ipswich Museum. Or in his mind's eye he can see the rude Briton's children playing about on a summer day around their father's hut. And then as time goes on he can summon into his presence the kilted and lordly Roman colonist, occu- pying the same site, because he found that it was already cleared, was not far from water, and had a pleasant look-out. And in all the following centuries he can imagine it occupied, because the advantages that had at first recommended it to Britons and to Romans would continue to recommend it to those who came after them, besides that men generally go on building where their predecessors had built ; to do so, at all events, saves thought and trouble. To live on such a site enables one to feel that he is not altogether hke a piece of seaweed, tossed hither and thither, the sport of winds and waves, but that he fills an appointed place in a long series ; that he is heir to the memories of those who preceded him and trustee for those who will follow him ; and that he is rooted to a spot which men have found pleasant, and lived on and loved, back to a time beyond the memor>' of history. •38 XIX. NOTES ON THE GEOLOGY OF WHERSTEAD. The solid rocks are not primeval, but the daughters of time. — Linmeus. The superficial deposits of the parish are somewhat diversified. On the north face of Bourn Hill is some extent of good brick clay. Here bricks had been made time out of mind down to 1861, when the late Dr. Jenkin (the year before his death, and at the age of eighty, he assumed the name of Vernon), because he supposed that he did not like, while occasionally passing that way, to smell burning bricks, had the kiln demolished, and ordered the discontinuance of brick-making, which has not since been resumed. Here were made the bricks for the wall that surrounds the four-acre kitchen garden and for the water- tower at Wherstead Park. In the park, to the east of the ice-house plantation, is an old pit of fine yellow sand. The same sand again shows itself on the surface about 300 yards to the south, on a spur of the high ground that overlooks the valley to the south-west of what used to be called the Fish Pond, but is now the Dog-kennel Pond. The railway cutting through Spinney and Wherstead Woods is in sand, but of a far coarser quality. In places, both in Pannington and Bourne Hall Farms, a coarse stony gravel, mixed with much sand and yellow clay, immediately underlies the thin surface soil. In dredging the channel of the Orwell off the Wherstead Strand a bed of chalk was encountered. A continuation of this chalk underlies the surface of the Bourn Hall meadows, for I there saw it exposed in the year 1846, in the trenches that GEOLOGY OF WHERSTEAD 139 had been dug for the foundations of the accommodation arch- ways in the railway viaduct that crosses these meadows. Before the dredge reached the stratum of chalk just men- tioned in the Orwell off Wherstead Strand it had to remove a bed of peat. In this were found, in excellent preservation, the wood and bark of the birch and of other trees. Hazel nuts abounded in it. Some of them had been nibbled and perfo- rated by the squirrels that had extracted from them their kernels so many ages ago. The groovings in these nutshells made by the squirrels' teeth were still clear and fresh. There were also found in this bed the seeds of the alder and many other peat- preserved vegetable products. Among the animal remains were several teeth of the gigantic mammoth (elephas primigeniiis). These animal remains, and the remains of the vegetable forms on w'hich they had been supported, tell us that in remote ages a forest extended here, over what is now the bed of the Orwell and the area of what is now the parish of Wherstead, at a time when the fauna of this part of the world was very different from what it had become at the dawn of European history. Professor Boyd Dawkins, in his ' Early Man in Britain,' says of this mammoth period: ' The primeval hunter, who followed the chase in the lower valley of the Thames, armed with his rude implements of flint, must have found abundance of food, and have had great difficulty in guarding himself against the wild animals. Innumerable horses, large herds of stags, uri, and bison were to be seen in the open country, while the Irish elk and roe were comparatively rare. Three kinds of rhinoceros and two kinds of elephants lived in the forests. The hippopotamus haunted the banks of the Thames, as well as the beaver, the water rat, and the otter. There were wolves also, and foxes, brown bears and grizzly bears, wild cats, and lions of enormous size. Wild boars lived in the thickets, and as night came on, the hyjenas assembled in packs to hunt down the young, the wounded, and the infirm.' The modern tillers of the soil of Wherstead will find it difficult in imagination to resuscitate and re-people its primeval 140 GEOLOGY OF WHERSTEAD forest with these now mostly extinct, and many of them enor- mous, quadrupeds, together with their sparse human assailants, who from generation to generation were waging against them a never-ceasing and not altogether unequal warfare. It is science that has recovered for us this remote, and which is not its least interesting, chapter in the history of our locahty. On our low ground, near the Orwell, have been found many large masses of a dark-coloured intractable kind of sandstone. They are remarkable not only for their toughness and size, for some of them weigh more than half a ton, but also for their mammiform upper surface. Several large slabs of this rock may be seen in the bed of the dipping at low water under Stoke bridge, and for some little way above it. They are also found abundantly in many of our deeper valleys. In Turret Lane there used to be, and I suppose still are, several of these slabs, or pieces of them, set up against the wall to protect it from passing vehicles. Many similar masses were taken out of the excavations for the docks and for the dock gates. Doubt- less in the course of past ages a great many pieces of this rock that had been lying about on the surface were broken up and used in foundations and otherwise. In Wherstead two blocks have from time out of mind been turned to account,one on the Strand, where it was erected as a protection to the roadside bank, and the other on the raised footpath of the road between Bourn Hall and the Ostrich Inn, where it does duty as a kerb- stone. I have two pieces that have been brought up from the valley to my garden, there is a piece at Wherstead Park, and probably there may be others in the parish in use as doorsills, mounting blocks, or otherwise. Some eighty years ago, a long slab was found near the fishpond in the park ; and as from its size and length people supposed that it had once formed part of a cross, or had been in some way connected with a tomb, it was brought up to the churchyard and laid on the south side of the church. This was the account old people gave of it when I first knew the place. Twenty years ago one end of it was still visible, but at the time of the restoration of GEOLOGY OF WHERSTEAU 141 the church the soil that was taken from around the building was spread over this part of the churchyard, and this completely buried it. But as in dry summers the grass over it dies away, its position may still be made out. Sir Charles Lyell told me that the only way in which he could account for these masses of sandstone in our alluvial dis- trict was that they had been in their first form a sandy sea beach, that afterwards in some way or other the sand became indurated, and that subsequently it was broken up by the action of ice or water. Necessarily this was only a probable opinion founded on the appearance and texture of the masses, and from a con- sideration of the localities in which they were found. He thought that the mammiform surface might be accounted for by the action of the wind on a sandy beach, which, having been rapidly covered by some other deposit, had thus been enabled to preserve the swellings and the depressions the wind might have produced. Dr. Taylor, however, having at last discovered these slabs and masses of sandstone in situ, undisturbed in the very spot in which they were formed, is able to give us their true history. In this neighbourhood the chalk beneath our feet is overlaid by a stratum of sand. This stratum of sand abounds with masses of our sandstone. It is evident, then, that they were compacted and cemented by the chemistry of nature out of the materials around hem, on the spot where they are found. The streams in our valleys — as, for instance, that in the valley of the Gipping — which eroded the surface to a sufficient depth to get down to and to carry away the loose part of this bed of sand, left naked and detached the slabs and masses of sand-rock that had been formed in it. Those pieces that happened to be in the line of the channel, when the stream had eroded its bed to a sufficient depth, came eventually to lie on the chalk, and even in some cases to descend some little way below what had been the original surface of the chalk, for they had to keep to the bed of the stream. But those that were not in the course of the channel, but on the side of the valley— this was the position of our Wherstead specimens— remained on the side of 142 GEOLOGY OF UHERSTEAD the valley, only sinking lower and lower as more and more of the surface was washed away. It would seem, however, that the above explanation does not account for the fact that the sides of the blocks of this intractable rock are often so straight and clean as almost to wear the appearance of their having been dressed by man's hand. I'his prompts the question of, What natural force could have so fractured such tough rock ? Geologically some of these slabs of sandstone in the Orwell valley are of great interest, because, as Dr. Taylor has pointed out, the parallel grooves and scratches on them, which could only have been inscribed upon them by a descending glacier, demonstrate that during the Glacial epoch, when glaciers and reindeer existed in the South of France, there was a mighty glacier descending the Orwell, and passing alongside of what is modern Wherstead. Here, again, it is science that has deci- phered the previously unnoticed records of the remote past, and recovered for us, from the grand moving panorama of the ages, another thought-stirring picture of our locality. It was, indeed, a stirring sight that might then have been beheld from the spot where our church now stands — a glacier slipping by in the valley below, a mile wide, and visible for some miles of its length from Ipswich to Levington. This does not imply, though the climate must have been somewhat severe, that the earth was frozen ; probably it was covered to the edge of the glacier with a vigorous growth of trees and grass. This chapter in the natural history of Wherstead must have preceded that of the peat bed in the channel of the Orwell with its mammoths and their contemporaries ; for the glacier would have swept away, as it would a few straws, the peat bed with its bones, and leaves, and nuts. There are in the parish eight crag pits, some of great age and size. When 1 first knew the place they were all used for the purpose of supplying bottoms to manure heaps. The land was also sometimes dressed with the pure crag for the sake of the lime, in the form of broken shells, which it contains. None is now used for either of these purposes — I suppose because at GEOLOGY OF WHERSTEAD 143 the present price of labour these practices would not compen- sate for their cost. In our crag the usual teeth, shells, ceto- tolites, &c., are found. Many years ago I took out of the crag pit on my glebe a metatarsal bone, which Professor Sir Richard Owen pronounced to belong to an extinct species of deer. As it will be interesting to neighbouring geologists, I will here insert from his original MS., which he at that time gave me, a short paper by the Darwin of geology, the late Sir Charles Lyell, on the crag pit in my glebe. At the time he wrote it he was staying with me for the meeting of the British Association then (in the year 1851) being held at Ipswich. It was read before the Geological section. On the occurrence of a Stratum of Stones coi'ered with Barnacles in the Red Crag at IVherstead, near Ipswich, by Sir Charles Lyell. It has been observed that in the Red Crag of the neighbourhood of Ipswich, and generally throughout the area occupied by that formation in Norfolk and Suffolk, the marine organic remains are not now in the places where the animals to which they belonged lived and died. They are mixed with pebbles, and often, like them, bear the marks of having been rolled. The valves of the bivalve mollusca are found detached one from the other, and neither they nor the univalve shells are arranged in groups as they lived at the bottom of the sea. They look as if they had formed portions of shifting sandbanks, or as if they had been drifted from some other place to that where they are now met with. Every exception, therefore, to so general a rule deserves notice, and on that account I shall mention one now to be seen in a crag pit, near Ipswich, about 500 yards south of the vicarage house of Wherstead. My attention was called to the stratum by the Rev. Barham Zincke, of Wher- stead. The shelly Red Crag here laid open has a vertical thickness of from ten to twelve feet, and is overlaid by about eight feet of sandy and gravelly beds without fossils. The shelly mass presents the usual characters of this formation, and among others that of having the separate valves of the pectunculue, mactra, cardita, and terebratula with their concave sides turned downwards, almost without an exception. Near the top of the shelly mass, usually within eighteen, or sometimes eight, inches of it, a stratum occurs consisting of unrounded chalk flints, intermixed with some well-rounded flint pebbles. The upper portion of these stones, which are of various sizes, are encrusted with barnacles, from which their lower 144 GEOLOGY OF WHERSTEAD surfaces are free. The Balani consist chiefly of littoral species, Balanus communis, and another nearly allied to it. The largest of the stones obtained by Mr. Zincke from this bed, and which he has brought to the meeting, is an unrounded chalk flint, measuring no less than twenty-two inches in length by sixteen in breadth and seven in thickness. It supports on its top and sides about ten groups of barnacles, but none of these are found on the under side of the stone, where it must have rested on the bottom of the sea. The same remark holds good in regard to the other stones and pebbles spread throughout the same stratum. Among these Mr. Zincke and I observed a small coprolite, or one of the bodies commonly so called, the top of which was covered with barnacles, while all the lower portion was smooth. The pebbly stratum containing these Balani is overlaid with shelly crag of somewhat fine materials, of slight thickness, as before stated. From the above facts it appears that the action of the currents which brought the principal mass of crag to this spot, and which had power to convey to it some stones of no ordinary magnitude, was so completely suspended for a time that even the smallest and lightest pebbles were not moved or overturned. Had any of them been turned over we should have found barnacles on the lower sides of some, or perhaps on both sides. Nor did any current wash away the loose shelly layer that_after\vards covered the barnacle bed. The Balanus communis is a littoral species, and Mr. Searles Wood informs me that he has generally met w ith it in the upper part of the Red Crag. Professor E. Forbes, to whom I have shown the specimens, says that the time required for such a growth of Balani may have been three or four months, and that they probably lived in very shallow water, if not betw^een high and low water mark. The crag pit in which this stratum of pebbles covered with barnacles only on the upper surface occurs, and on which Sir Charles Lyell wrote the above memoir, is in the north side of the valley which lies to the south of my house. In the parallel valley to the north of my house, at the distance from my pit of about half a mile, I found in 1883, in a crag pit then tempo- rarily reopened, a stratum presenting the same facts in every particular. An interesting fact in the geology of the parish is the evi- dence the surface soil contains, except in the valleys, of the materials that compose it having been brought hither by ice, either icebergs or floes of shore ice. During the thirty-four GEOLOGY OF WHERSTEAD 145 years my predecessor resided at the vicarage he had an arrange- ment with the parish to repair the half-mile of cross-road in front of the vicarage. For this purpose he had, year by year, the stones hand-picked off the glebe. These stones I can recollect, for the latter part of the period, were of the ordinary size of stones picked off cultivated land, not many being larger than one's fist. But that there were in former times much larger stones lying about is shown by the fact that when I took down our second vicarage, which had been built 260 years ago, I found several boulders of glacier or water-worn quartz and other kind of rock built into its foundations. Of late years I have reverted to my predecessor's practice of having the stones on the glebe hand-picked for the purpose of mending the road near my house. These stones I have been in the habit of breaking myself — I do it before breakfast — for the sake of exercise. In thus passing them all in review I have been astonished at the variety of rock among the pieces — red Scotch sandstone, yellow and white sandstone, basalt, Cumbrian rocks, pieces of the Bass rock, quartz, gneiss, granite — almost, indeed, every kind of crystalline and of sedimentary rock known in Scotland and in the North of England. Floating ice seems to be the only means of transport imaginable for bringing hither so many different kinds of rock from such distant localities. Small boulders, like those used in the foundations of the second vicarage, abounded in the outer facing of the walls of the body of the church and of the tower, in the proportion of perhaps one-third of boulders to two-thirds of flint. In the refacing of the walls in the restoration of 1863 several additional loads of flint were used, which diminished the proportion of boulders reused. I'here is the same variety of rock and the same water-worn character in these large pieces in the face of the church walls as in the smaller pieces still found on the glebe. The natural inference, then, is that at the date of the building of the parish church they were collected from the surface of the fields in the parish. 146 GEOLOGY OF WHERSTEAD In digging my orchard and part of my garden to the depth of four feet I everywhere found confirmatory evidence of the superficial soil being due to the transport afforded by ice. Precisely the juxtaposition and intermixture of the very mate- rials we see on glaciers, and which would, therefore, have been on icebergs detached from glaciers, were everj'where visible when we reached the undisturbed soil two, or three, or four feet below the surface : veins of fine and of coarse sand, veins of stiff red clay, veins of incoherent and of indurated gravel, plenty of stones and pebbles, some unworn and some rounded; and all these so confused and intermixed that in a yard or two all might be fallen in with. Just so is it with ever)- gravel pit that has ever been opened on the higher ground of the parish for road material. In no one have we ever found the clean gravel which running water deposits, but in all the stone is mixed, generally so largely as not to be worth working, with sand and clay ; just what we see in moraines, and what would be deposited from icebergs or shore ice. At the time when these ice-borne deposits were brought hither, what is now the surface of this district must have been submerged by the sea. The date, therefore, of the glacier which descended the Onvell, and scratched and grooved our sandstone slabs, must have been subsequent to the conversion, through a process of elevation, of the bed of this ancient sea into dry land. Here, then, we have two distinct epochs — first, that of the deposition at the bottom of the sea of the materials that now constitute our soil, and subsequently that of the Orwell glacier, when these deposits had been elevated to such a height that that glacier passed down to the sea alongside of them in what is now Wherstead. Besides these we have in our drift deposits, in our crag, and in our mammoth remains interesting evidence of the great but geologically recent changes in climate and organic life which time has witnessed on our planet. 147 XX. NOTES ON THE FLORA OF WHERSTEAD. Nature never did betray The heart that loved her. — Wordsworth. In the flora of the parish during the last forty years several changes have occurred in the direction of extinction. The pink centaury {Eryt/mea Centauriuin) was once abundant in the grass drift from the vicarage farmyard down southward to the brook meadows. Not a plant of it is now to be seen there. This extinction I attribute to the fact that the farmer who, some dozen years ago, hired the meadows kept his sheep during the spring and summer so frequently in this drift-way that the turf was bitten too close for a plant which must rear its head some three or four inches above the ground to form seed, and so to reproduce itself In the meadow to the south of the drift-way just mentioned, about forty years ago, I found in flower the Neottia spiralis. Though most years since I have made a more or less careful search for it, I have never again found there another specimen of this orchid. Just below Redgate's farmhouse, at the point where the brook from the park enters the lane, which it Immediately crossed, on the left-hand bank the black henbane {Hyoscyamiis niger) had established itself. Here I many a time pointed it out to persons who took an interest in our wild plants. Some years ago the brook, which had formerly at once crossed the road to the opposite side, was made to flow alongside this left- 148 FLORA OF WHERSTEAD hand bank, just beneath the patch of henbane. This made the bank too moist a station for it, and so all the plants rapidly disappeared. I have never found it growing in any other spot in the parish. To one with his face towards Ipswich, on the left hand roadside bank, midway between Bourn Hall and the cottages opposite the Ostrich Inn, the borage {Bo?-ago offia'nalis), the leaves of which are used in this country' for flavouring beer and cider-cup, and the flowers in France for dressing salads, as summer and autumn came round enlivened the spot with its multitudinous stars of clearest blue. The yearly repairing of this bank by the present tenant — probably formerly it was not repaired more frequently than once in half a dozen years — has now extinguished this species here. For six years its charming blue has not gladdened the eyes of the passing pedestrian at this spot. The ancestors of the borage I have in my garden I obtained here some thirty years ago. A Swiss botanist, while staying with me in the year 1870, found in Clubs Heath Wood a plant of the musk mallow {Malva moschata). But as the spot where he found it was on the brow of the railway cutting, where there has since been a fire caused by a live coal from a passing locomotive, it may, perhaps, be no longer existent in that precise locality. I am, however, glad to say that, if it be so, still this interesting plant, with its large scented flowers and deeply pinnatifid leaves, is not lost to the parish, for my neighbour, Mr. H. Haward, of Pannington Hall, who has a naturalist's eye for everything within his reach, last year found it on the bank of his church meadow. He also found not far from it the viper's bugloss {Echium vulgare). The red valerian {Centra nthus ruber) is found on banks and walls in the parish. Its flowers, of a strong clear red — which are conspicuous, not only from their colour and abundance, but also because from their terminal position they stand well above and quite clear of the foliage — make this a showy and effective plant, and entitle it to a place in mixed borders and the less dressy parts of a garden. FLORA OF WHERSTEAD 149 The thrift {Arme>-ia maritima) grows abundantly along the waste of the Strand opposite Redgate's Farm, and as far as the foot of Freston Hill, though of late years the area suitable for it has been much reduced by the removal of the soil on which it grew to mend the contiguous riverside banks. This plant, as its station here indicates, and as its name implies, is a seaside or maritime species. I have, however, seen it maintaining itself in the struggle for life on the southern slope of the Alps, some hundreds of miles from the sea and some thousands of feet above the sea level. This shows the capacity it possesses, by the process of the survival of the fittest, for adapting itself to widely altered conditions. Only those sur- vived the constantly increasing elevation and withdrawal from the sea that were capable of supporting these changes of con- dition. In this way, by gradual variations, always in the same direction, what was originally a maritime has been transmuted into an Alpine plant. On our Strand the sea lavender also {Statice Limoniuni) may be found. On a dry sunny gravelly bank near the vicarage we have one of the smaller species of St. John's wort {Hypericum pul- chrum). In the conterminous parish of Bentley I found many years ago the large-flowered St. John's wort {H. calycinum). It caught my eye, as I was driving by, at the angle made by the Manningtree and Bentley roads, at the south side of the Tattingstone Valley, some two hundred yards above Bentley Mill. I have since frequently seen it there in bloom. From this spot, about twenty years ago, I brought some plants which I established in Wherstead in a similar station, where they still remain in vigorous growth. There are doubts whether this is a native or a naturalised species. The handsome white-veined thistle {Silybum tnarianuni) once grew on the brow of my crag pit. It is a striking plant. Its large variegated leaves fit it well for a place in garden banks and shrubberies. I am not aware that it is now to be found anywhere in the parish. i.io FLORA OF WHERSTEAD Our ferns have sufTered sadly from the trade in these plants that has of late years sprung up. There was a time, before it became everybody's duty to admire them, when they exhibited their graceful forms unmolested and safe from speedy and cruel extermination, wherever nature had placed them. The glossy glazed dark green polystichum {Polystichum aculcatum) once flourished about a quarter of a mile from the village street on the left bank of the lane from the Manningtree road to Pan- nington Hall. As this fern never tillers or makes offsets, it is a true bird's-nest form. I can recall the picture of six fine old plants growing in close contiguity to each other on the hedge bank about fifn- yards below the small farmhouse at the head of the lane. They were as bright and green at midwinter as at midsummer. I still have in my garden some plants of this noble variety I brought about thirt)' years ago from that locality. Not one is to be seen there now, or anywhere else in the parish. In that neighbourhood the deep ditches, the banks, and the waste land, of which nearly all has since been enclosed, abounded with specimen plants, such as time and suitable locality only can produce, of the common polystichum, hart's tongue, male fern, and Adianfum nigrum. The two former have thereabouts been quite exterminated, and the last of the four it is now difficult to find. On one bank in the parish the Aspknium Trichomanes drags on a feeble existence, the place being ill adapted to its requirements. This fern, which is so conspicuous by its pre- sence on every wall and stony bank in the West of England, measures the difference between our comparatively scanty rainfall and the more than double amount received along the Atlantic coast. The finest natural fernerj' I have ever anywhere seen in this country was in the wood at the back of my house. It was on a swampy piece of ground about three acres in extent. A small stream finds its way through it. On the north side of the stream the swamp has been planted with alders. On the south side the swamp was so soft and wet that no attempt had ever FLORA OF WHFRSTEAD 151 been made to turn, it to account in any way. This part was closely covered with living stools and dead stumps of tussock grass. Some of these, that must have been the growth of centuries, stood three feet out of the swamp. Upon all the dead and on many of the living stumps of tussock grass were esta- blished vigorous plants of lady fern ; many, for size, monsters of their kind. Their age, too, probably might have been reckoned by centuries. They were of both the green and the purple stemmed varieties. The latter were somewhat the more erect and taller. Magnificent old plants of these two varieties were closely set along the margin of the stream. An acre of such lady ferns was a glorious sight, which photographs itself on the memory with an unfading impression. On the dry bank to the south of this part of the swamp grew many gigantic male ferns, and scattered among them the largest blechnums I have seen in this part of the country. On the other side of the stream, among the alders, every stump was tufted with the Lasirea dilatata, enriched here and there with some specimens of the Lastrea uliginosa. On the dry ground to the north of the alders was a fringe of old polystichums and male ferns. Here, then, was a fernery with an e.xtent, a variety, and a luxuriance such as nature only could have created. It was composed of five species, of which one contained two varieties. Ferns so predominated that other plants were unnoticed. I often visited the place, but always with misgivings. The thing was too good to last. Either the place might be drained, which might easily be done, or it might become known to others. It was in the way of the latter apprehension that its ruin was brought about. The time came when the ruthless fern dealers, or rather stealers, broke into this genuine and hereabouts last retreat of persecuted nature. I have not had the heart to visit the place lately. On both my last visits I found these soulless destroyers—' the wild boar out of the wood ' could not have rooted up and destroyed so much— filling their sacks with the noblest specimens ; but they were of kinds that would not grow in London areas and on Ipswich rock-work, 152 FLORA OF WHERSTEAD and many of them indeed were cut off so short, to save the trouble of digging them up by the roots, that it would be im- possible for them to live anywhere. I am told that the place is now only a rifled and unsightly waste of black bog earth, as rough as if a dozen canisters of dynamite had been exploded upon it. While on the subject of ferns I may mention that Mr. H. Haward, of Pannington Hall, who is a most successful cultiva- tor of these plants, found two years ago on a bank near his house, and still has in his possession, a now well-grown plant of Polystichum lineare. The very peculiar characteristics of this variety are as well marked in his specimen as in any I have seen bought from nurserymen under this name. The discovery of this plant here shows that its spores are widely dispersed, for it is more likely that it originated in this way than as a repeated sport from the common form, from which it is in its distinguish- ing features a wide departure. In two works that I have on the cultivation of ferns it is said of the holly fern {Polystichum Lonchitis) that it rarely survives removal from its native stations. It may, therefore, be of some interest to mention that even here in Wherstead, which differs so much in soil and climate from its British stations, I have six plants of this species, which now for twelve years have not been at all affected by the change in situation and in other conditions that has been imposed upon them. This, however, may be attributed to their having been removed ; not from a British, hut from a Swiss station, for I brought them from the Alp I'AUee, above Zinal, where at about 7,000 feet above the sea level they abound. In the year 1853 the late Lady Harland had the pond in '\\'herstead Park cleaned out. Several hundred loads of mud were taken from it. In order that the mud might be dried and aerated before it was spead on the grass, it was formed into a long ridge. The whole of this in the ensuing summer was covered with a thick growth of watercresses. No watercresses had ever been known in this pond, which was indeed far too FLORA OF WHERSTEAD 153 deep to admit of their growth. I found, however, on inquiring of 'the oldest inhabitant,' that the httle brook that had once been the boundary of the vicarage meadow of the old glebe, from which brook this pond receives its supply of water, had abounded in watercresses. I have already mentioned that when the mansion in the park was built this brook was made to carry the sewerage from the house, and was therefore put into a subterranean conduit. This was about the beginning of the century, and so about fifty years before the time at which the mud was taken from the pond. The seeds, therefore, that germinated on this mud so freely must have been carried down to the pond at least fifty years previously, and had all this time retained their vitality, so as to be ready to germinate as soon as they were brought sufficiently under the action of the light and the air. It is well known that many seeds have this power of resisting decay, if buried deeply in the ground. Lately, on lowering a part of my grass plat, which had been in grass beyond the memory of man, the soil removed from beneath the turf produced an abundance of red poppies. The growth of these watercresses shows that the seeds of an aquatic plant are as long-lived when sunk in deep water. I will here mention two local instances of the dispersion of plants by natural means. Some years ago on the north bank of Stalls Valley Tane I found a plant of Seditm gigantetim. I was the only person in the neighbourhood who cultivated this plant, and here it was growing at the distance of a mile from my garden. Probably the seed had been conveyed on a bird's foot. In the year 1861 I brought from Glenthorn, near Lynton, in North Devon, the seat of the late Walter Halliday, a plant of the Filix mas paleacea. It has already become not uncommon in the woods of the parish. This, however, might almost have been expected, as the spores of ferns are air-borne to great distances. In an appendix will be given a list of the flowering plants found in Wherstead. '54 XXI. NOTES OX THE FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD. Nobis et cum Deo et cum animalibus est aliqua communitas. Lactaniius. Few of us whose good fortune it is to live in the country are aware of the great variet)' of birds that make their homes and bring up their little families before our eyes and within our hearing, and of the pleasure to be derived from obsersing their manners and customs — manners and customs that originate in wants analogous to our own acting on a brain of like materials and uses to our own. Some years ago I made a list of the species whose nests I had found on the glebe round the house, at the church, and in the little breadth of Wherstead Park between. 1 was surprised that the number mounted up to forty-one. I will here give the list : golden-crested wren, common wren, spotted flycatcher, robin, hedge sparrow, redstart, garden warbler, wagtail, starling, rook, jackdaw, English partridge, French partridge, pheasant, landrail, water hen, blackbird, common thrush, missel thrush, green linnet or grosbeak, bull- finch, common sparrow, brown linnet, chaffinch, goldfinch, green woodpecker, chimney swallow, martin, sand martin, wood pigeon, stock dove, turtle dove, nightingale, lark, yellowham- mer, barn owl, cuckoo, kingfisher, common tomtit, puddingpoke tomtit, kestrel. A pair of golden-crested \\Tens till within the last ten years used ever)' year to build their nest on a branch of a spruce fir FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD 155 in the east shrubbery of the vicarage. The selected position was one where on the upper side the living leaf-bearing sprays were numerous and compact enough to act as a roof, and the dead depending twigs also were numerous, among which the nest was inserted. On the branches becoming too thinly clothed with twigs to give the desired shelter, they forsook the place. That never more than one pair had a nest here, though till lately there were several spruce firs about the place, shows that wild animals have their own range and beat, upon which they will not allow even their progeny to encroach. I once saw two golden-crested wrens fighting on the grass plat. That there was so great wrath in such little bodies was surprising. I watched them till they had become so exhausted as to allow me to take them both up and bring them into the house. It was about twenty minutes before they had so far recovered as to be able to fly out at the open window. Probably one was endeavouring to repel an invasion of his territory or of his domestic arrangements. The landrail's nest was found in a small paddock laid down for hay, not more than fifty yards from the house. Every year we used to hear their 'crake 'in the corn. But now this species, too, appears to have forsaken the locality. The bullfinches also, except when they come in early spring as depredators of the fruit buds of the gooseberry bushes and plum trees, have deserted us. They were driven away by the removal of the hedges. This deprived them of the thick bushes which they require for the concealment of their nests. The goldfinches used every year to breed on the fruit trees in the vicarage garden, and in the cottagers' gardens in the village. In neither locality are they now ever seen. The cause is the same as with the bullfinches, though it acts in a different way. What the removal of the hedges has deprived them of is the thistle heads, the seeds of which were their autumn and winter store. To them this loss was notice to quit. The kingfisher's nest was found in the bank of the brook at the back of the vicarage. As this brook has no fish except 156 FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD eels, and at its lower end, where it enters the Orwell, a few flounders, the diet of this pair must be mainly composed of aquatic insects. The kestrel's nest I found in the ice-house plantation between the vicarage and the church ; it was placed about twenty feet above the ground in ivy which thickly surrounded the stem of a tall slim oak, which had been drawn up by its too close neighbours to an unusual height, and was up to the place of the nest quite branchless. One Sunday morning, now one-and-twenty years ago, our parish clerk, on attempting to ring out the usual summons to Divine service, found that the tenor bell was dumb. Nothing of the kind in the previous forty years of his clerkship had occurred. On ascending to the belfry to ascertain what it was that had gone wrong, he saw that a pair of jackdaws had filled the bell with sticks for their nest. The foundation of their structure they had, with excellent judgment and complete fore- knowledge of the requirements of the case, laid on a beam about eight inches below and on one side of the slider. From this beam they had built in a slanting direction to the slider. The slider alone would have been too narrow for the founda- tion of their intended superstructure. From the bed thus laid conjointly on the beam and slider they built up to the clapper, then round the clapper, apparently completely filling the bell, but still so as to leave a passage up to the top of what had been the concavity of the bell, where they intended that the eggs should be deposited. The clerk did not measure the sticks, but thinks there must have been a bushel and a half This, however, is a small allowance for a jackdaw's nest, for he has brought down in other years a bushel skep filled eleven times from the nests of four pairs, the number that usually built in our belfry, which gives nearly three bushels to a nest. For the last seven years these birds have, without any apparent reason, deserted their immemorial haunt in our church tower. The engineering just described of our Wherstead jackdaws was equalled by that which Jesse records in his ' Country Life ' FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD 157 of a pair that had built their nest on the sill of a window that gave light to the spiral staircase in the tower of the chapel of Eton College. When their nest had been completed they came to the conclusion that the sill that supported it was too narrow, that their young ones would overbalance it, and that nest and young ones together would fall down the staircase. There was but one way of obviating this foreseen catastrophe, and that was by placing a prop beneath the nest. And this was what they did. Having ascertained which step of the staircase was exactly beneath the nest — this step was ten feet below it — they began upon it, and built up a pillar of interlaced sticks, ten feet high, upon which, when it was completed, the nest rested. With this support the needed stability was ob- tained. They had also the sense to construct this pillar much wider at the base than at the top, tapering from bottom to top in the form of an elongated truncated cone. Jesse gives a wood- cut of this marvellous instance of the foresight of the jackdaw, and of its capacity for solving what was to it an absolutely new problem. The difference between the Wherstead and the Eton case is this — that in the former the bird architects saw before the nest was begun that it was necessary to contrive a suffi- ciently broad and stable foundation for the intended super- structure, while in the latter they perceived this after their nest was built. Each showed a perfect understanding of the diffi- culty to be met, and of how it was to be met. In the year 1879 — that will long be memorable for the amount of its rainfall — the partridges that breed regularly in my paddock had their nest flooded. As the weather still con- tinued wet, they abandoned the thought of making a second nest that year on the ground, and found a place for it on the roof of a cart-shed which stands in the north-east corner of the paddock. The spot they selected was where the thatch was covered with ivy. It was nine feet above the ground. This is the only instance I have met with of partridges having their nest off the ground, though I am aware that other instances of the kind have been observed. Such reversals of instinct upon ijS FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD sufficient reasons intimate to us that the habits and ways of doing things of any species of the lower animals would rapidly change if a change of circumstances required different habits and different ways of doing things. This implies that they have a distinct perception of the conditions under which they have to act, and that they have the power of thinking out w'hich of their old ways must be given up, and what new ways must be adopted under their altered circumstances. Instincts, therefore, are not aboriginal endowments, but intelligently formed transmitted habits. The eleven eggs this nest contained were hatched on the roof of the cart-shed, and all the chicks were in some way or other brought safely to the ground, for we counted them many a time afterwards. I have known a hen who had made her nest on the ridge of my barn, twenty feet from the ground, bring down her brood ; and I remember observing how, while a boy in Jamaica, a domestic duck, to escape the snakes that abounded in the neighbourhood, made her nest in the fork of a lofty cotton tree — one of the giants of the West Indian forest — at a height of perhaps thirty feet from the ground, and in some way or other brought down her little ones without a mishap. The passage, however, to the lower world is not always achieved with safety. Here, on April 30, 1884, two newly hatched chicks that had straggled from the nest on the top of a summer- house before the rest of the brood were able to come off fell to the ground and were killed. The stockdove was driven from the neighbourhood of my house by the destruction, in most cases the work of storms, of the old hollow elms in which it used to place its nest. The red-backed shrike is seen most years in the oaks and elms near the orchard, sometimes accompanied by its little family that it is about to launch on the world to provide for themselves and take their chance. The nest, however, of this bird I have never found, nor that of the nuthatch, which in the autumn levies a large contribution on the filberts in the orchard. The yellow wagtail I have seen near the house. I have FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD 159 heard that it breeds in the marshes between Lawford and Brantham. On what used to be a bit of waste land covered with whin bushes, but is now enclosed, at the foot of Freston Hill, I used to see frequently the whinchat. The hawfinch, the ring ouzel, and the goatsucker are not uncommon in the parish, though I have never found the two last near the vicarage. The hawfinch is one of the shyest of birds ; and, though I have reasons for believing that it breeds in the Home Covert, I never saw it near my house till this year (1887). It then — but only on one occasion, as far as I observed, during the severe weather of the winter,— entered my south verandah, together with the other birds that came for their daily supply of breadcrumbs. It almost looked like a small dumpy parrot. Its wariness and timidity were very apparent. The wild duck has been known to breed by the pond in the park. Sir Robert Harland had a stuffed specimen of the great bustard, and also one of the little bustard. Both of these birds he used to tell me had been shot in his time in the parish, not more, there- fore — though possibly less — than ninety years ago. For three winters I threw out breadcrumbs to a hen blackbird that had lost a leg. In the summer it was never seen about the house. Perhaps at that season of the year, when food is abundant in the woods, it sought in them security against the risks of cats and guns. The drawing-room of the old vicarage I pulled down had a through light, the north window being opposite to that on the south side. Once while I was sitting in it a greenfinch pursued by a hawk, thinking there was an open passage through, dashed itself with such force against the glass that its beak was partly driven into its head. Its death, of course, was instantaneous. On another occasion I was standing in my vinery looking at two goldfinches in a cage that was hanging on the outside of the east end of the vinery, when a hawk dashed against the cage, having swooped down at its inmates. My predecessor, while I was his curate, put up an iron fence. The height was greater and the wires were finer than i6o FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD common. During the ensuing six months dead partridges were twice picked up alongside of it. They had been killed by flying against it. After that time I heard of no more mishaps of the kind. The survivors appear to have quickly learnt, through the misfortunes of their friends, that the wires were to be avoided. The herons that may be seen fishing along the mile of ooze that borders Wherstead Strand come from the heronry in Orwell Park. A particle of history attaches to this heronry. In the reign of Elizabeth the burgesses of Ipswich lodged a complaint against its then owner, that his herons destroyed their fish. The queen in council issued an order for the destruction of the heronry. It has, however, survived this order, which certainly no lover of birds, perhaps few lovers of fish, will regret. The heronry at Orwell Park is an interesting sight. Where else, except in a herony, could we see in this country so many large birds collected together and moving to and fro, while going for or returning with food for their progeny ? Here, too, one may note their caution in placing their nests only in trees that, by being situated in a valley, are very much protected from the wind. A gale would be too much for so large a bird on so large a nest in an exposed position. The burgesses of Ipswich in these days would not give them- selves any trouble about the fish in the Orwell, which are now hardly more than a few eels, some slips and flounders, and in autumn some small whiting. Better fish is now to be had from distant fishing grounds, and if any damage is now done to the fishing in the Orwell it is done by Ipswich steamboats and Ipswich sewage. But to return to our herons. Some forty years ago one of the late Archdeacon Berners's keepers shot on Wolverstone ooze a heron with a brass plate on its leg, which gave the information that it had come from a certain heronry in Lincolnshire. The brass plate he returned to the gentleman who owned the heronry, who replied that he was not surprised that one of his herons should be shot on the Orwell, for not long previously one had been shot on the Danube, not far from Vienna. FAUNA OF IVHERSTEAD i6i We have just seen that the destruction of the numerous hedges that separated the once small fields — many of them were broad double fences that had been kept up to provide cover for game— has very much modified the bird-life around the vicarage. It has had similar effects on other forms of life. Forty years ago old people in the parish used to tell me that when they were young vipers were common enough in this neighbourhood. They had then become extinct. My inform- ants attributed this to the removal of the old wide hedge- rows, often on raised banks, which had deprived these reptiles not only of secure shelter, but also of the mice and frogs, their joint tenants of the hedgerows, on which they had lived. The same cause has swept away almost as completely the common snake, for hereabouts one is rarely seen now, and only in the woods. The slow-worm, too, was once abundant. Every summer I used to see it on the dry sunny banks round about the vicarage. Not one has now been seen for some years. The hedgehog down to within the last twenty-five years was frequently trapped in my garden, and was sometimes destructive to the young mangold-wurzel plants when they were about the thickness of a little finger. It has now quite deserted us. In my predecessor's time, and during the earlier part of my own incumbency, if the door of the dining-room, drawing- room, or study, on the garden side of the house, were on a summer evening left open, it was highly probable that a toad out on a forage would have found its way in. Every evening they were to be seen crawling along the foot of the wall, or out on the grass, and at the season when the young brood is about the size of a large pea the flower garden was alive with them. For several years not a toad has shown itself about the place. I know not of any change about the house that could have interfered with their habits, except it be that I have diminished the extent of the shrubberies, though I can hardly think that in this there is a sufficient cause for their complete disappearance. M 1 62 FAU.XA OF U'HERSTEAD It is strange that simultaneously frogs have also very much diminished in number, notwithstanding that the pond in which they breed is now very much better supplied with water than it used to be formerly, and is never now dry in consequence of its receiving the overflow of the water that is forced up to the house by a water ram. In the spring of this year (1887) not one has been seen. We now also miss several insect visitors that were once common. Insects have a great aversion to wind. They are incapable of making their way against or across it, and even when they attempt to fly with it they become the sport of it. As long as there were high and thick hedges, connecting the vicarage with the woods to the south of it, the garden used to be enlivened with, among the more common lepidoptera, the greater and smaller fritillaries, peacock-eyes and admirals, brimstones and clouded yellows, and above all we used to have an occasional visit from a purple emperor ; Holbrook Park, about a mile off, being in these parts one of the few locaHties where it is found in what are for it considerable numbers. A dozen years have now passed since the imperial purple has been displayed here ; and of the rest a year or two may pass without a specimen of some one or other of the kinds mentioned being seen. It was interesting to watch the proboscidian sphinxes darting like so many tropical humming birds from flower to flower to extract their particles of nectar, and poising themselves over the tubes of the verbena ; but even they, strong of wing as they are, seem no longer disposed to trust themselves to the shelterless aerial ocean that surrounds us. As respects, then, these visitors, too, we must now content ourselves with the recollections of the past, for we never expect again to see them disporting themselves before us here. I once caught on the gate at the bottom of the driftway alongside the glebe an insect resembling in appearance an ichneumon. It was of a bright russet-black colour. In size it was about equal to the common night-flying orange-coloured ichneumon, only not so stout. It had a long ovipositor, as FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD 163 long as its long abdomen, which was not retracted, but laid longitudinally on the under side of the abdomen, and then in some way or other concealed. I have not found among my entomological acquaintances one who could give me any infor- mation about this insect. As it was by its wings that I caught it, while employed, as I supposed, in probing with its ovipositor the rotten wood of the gatepost for a grub of the stag-beetle in which it might deposit its eggs, its detention for a minute or two, while I inspected it, did it no harm. I have a repugnance to reducing to specimens by pinching, or crushing, or impaling creatures who have no wish to be torn in such fashion from the warm precincts of the cheerful day, and who have as much right to their brief day as I to mine. Doubtless they are responsible for the arrangement of depositing their eggs in the bodies of their fellow-insects, but questions of morality are beyond their ken. In autumn, while sitting at an open window reading by a moderator lamp, I once captured in two hours and a half thirty-five specimens of the orange-coloured ichneumon. Several years ago I had brought to me a specimen of the old English black rat. In comparison with its brown Hanoverian congener, which has now nearly supplanted it, its most obvious differences are in colour and size, for it is a smaller animal. It is also distinguishable by the greater coarseness of its coat, the largeness of its ears, the greater length of its tail, and the general ugliness of its appearance. It is gradually becoming extinct. At present its chief stronghold is the domain of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City of London, where it, probably, may outlast them. In the year i860, in the autumn, every morning were to be seen on the grassplot of my garden a dozen or more little ex- cavations. They were all of precisely the same size and form, each being about as big as an eggcup, or a little deeper. The park, to the north of the house, exhibited a great number of similar pits. They were all made with the utmost neatness. This went on for four or five weeks. For some time I was at i64 FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD a loss to imagine who was the excavator, and what was the object of the excavation. At last I observed that at the bottom of each there were traces of a little chamber. From this it was obnous that it was the work of rats in search of the grub of the cockchafer. It is strange that, though these grubs always abound here, this was the only occasion, before or since, when I have known the rats dig for them. The next year they destroyed all my crocus bulbs, about fift)- patches, digging for them in precisely the same manner. But again this was a single instance of this kind of depredation, for never since have they meddled with my crocuses. If it was an exceptional scarcity' of food that suggested to them on these two occasions methods of foraging, which here were exceptional, why in the year they dug up the crocuses did they not also dig for the cockchafer grubs, and vice versa ? Or was it that in these two years there was in the rat conmiunit)' here an exceptionally sagacious member who instructed his brethren in these un- usual ways of finding an additional supply of food ? But on that supposition we must conclude that the rest of the commu- nity were verj- dull, and forthwHth forgot so ready and service- able a resource. I have known a rat carr)- down safely, and hide away suc- cessfull}-, the eggs a hen was sitting on under the ridge of the roof of a haystack. I have also known one remove the eggs from under a hen that was sitting in my barn on the top of a heap of straw. When the straw was removed the eggs were found on the floor under what had been the middle of the heap. In this case, therefore, the rat must have burrowed up- wards through the heap of straw, and by the way thus made carried off the eggs one at a time, and deposited them on the ground. Nearly a fortnight was occupied in the completion of this operation. As none of the eggs were sucked, the thief must have given himself all this trouble out of ' pure cussedness.' I once found a rat caught by one of its hind legs in a trap I had set in the furrow of a wheat field an hour or two before. The bone of the leg was broken. As I stood looking at it it FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD 165 bent itself back to its trapped and broken limb, and without any hesitation or flinching began to amputate it, by biting through the ligaments and skin. In a few minutes, which I have ever since much regretted were not allowed it, this courageous fellow-creature would have recovered the liberty it so fully deserved. I have observed in a brook much frequented by water-rats {Arviiola ampliibiiis)^ and from which watercresses arc gathered in summer, that in the spring these plants are so cut down that only short stumps remain, and that these stumps, with the few leaves that are left on them, have a soiled appearance, as if they had been trampled over. This I infer is the work of the water-rats, who, as they are strict vegetarians, may make this plant part of their winter and spring dietary. They may, perhaps, neglect it in summer and autumn for some other plants they may prefer, and which may have then become avail- able. The water-rat is much more nearly allied to the beaver than to the common rat, and has erroneously been supposed to be carnivorous by those who were misled by its popular mis- nomer of 'rat.' This slur is not implied in its alias of water vole. I remember that, some forty-five years ago, when in the spring a stack of wheat belonging to my predecessor was being brought into the barn to be threshed, it was found to contam a large population of mice, a very considerable proportion of which were pied, being brown spotted with white, or white spotted with brown. It was then called to mind that an itinerant Italian organ boy had in the previous autumn been found asleep alongside of this stack, and that he had said that, while he was asleep, the tame white mouse he had just pre- viously been exhibiting to the servants at the back door of the vicarage had escaped, and must have got into the stack. I once found in a piece of wheat on the glebe the nest of the smallest of all English quadrupeds, the harvest mouse. It was a round ball constructed of blades of grass and of the flag of the wheat. It was not on the ground, but was suspended between several straws of wheat. This little creature is only 1 66 FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD one-sixth of the size of the domestic mouse ; six of them weighing one ounce, which is the weight of one of the domestic species. This tiniest of mammals is, I am told, not uncommon in the parish, being occasionally found associated with the common mouse in wheat stacks. The water shrew I have often seen on the bank of the dam of my water-ram. At my appearance on the scene it always takes to the water, gliding in noiselessly. It is a somewhat larger animal than the common shrew. Its body is stouter and longer, as is also its tail. Its form has not the dumpiness of the common shrew, but is well-proportioned. Some years ago, while using a spade on the south side of my garden, on a bank about three feet higher than the adjoin- ing paddock, I heard close by the piteous cry of a rabbit in distress. On looking over the bank I saw just below me, at the distance of four or five yards, a rabbit tottering along with a weasel on its neck. The spade I had in my hand was rather a heavy one, with an unusually sharp edge. I dashed it instantly at the weasel, thinking that I might dislodge it from the rabbit. It, however, alighted edge foremost on the two animals, and passing through the neck of each, with no dis- crimination between the wrongdoer and his victim, fixed itself firmly in the ground. They were both neatly and completely guillotined. Their bodies lay on one side of the erect spade, and their heads on the other side. This accidental success could not probably have been repeated out of a hundred or several hundred attempts. I left the group untouched for some hours that others might see how chance sometimes achieves what skill would have despaired of William Scroope, when he lived at Wherstcad Park, used to say, and I believe he repeats it in his book on ' Salmon Fish- ing,' that there is something in the water of Suffolk streams which makes it impossible for the trout to exist in them. In the Bourn brook, which separates Wherstead from Stoke, they may now be seen of a fair size and in fair abundance. The progenitors of these Wherstead trout were hatched and placed FAUNA OF WHERSTEAD 167 in this little stream, at its source in Hintlesham, seven miles above Wherstead, several years ago, by the late Colonel Anstruther. One weighing three pounds has been taken out of the Washbrook milldam ; and last summer I had one brought to me which weighed somewhat over a pound. It had been netted below the Bourn sluice, where the outflow of the Bourn brook joins the main mid-channel of the Orwell. For the last three or four years many, from one to two pounds in weight, have been taken during the summer in the Orwell. In the lower part of Bourn brook I have of late frequently seen trout at rest, near the bank, and where the water was deep, some of which may have weighed not less than a pound. Here we have a reminder that conjecture, till verified by experiment, is of but little worth. Experiment it is that either establishes or confutes conjecture. i68 XXII. LOCAL SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS Ignorance is the curse of God ; Knowledge the wing whereby we fly to heaven. Shakespeare. At this time of day there can be no novelties in local super- stitions. The only interest they can now have for us is that men once held and acted on such beliefs. We see in them a bygone stage of the mind and bygone hindrances to right feeling and profitable action. The soil in which such mis- beliefs germinated and grew could only have been ignorance, and that not merely of facts, but of the meaning of truth and of the requirements of causation. For long ages they diverted men from searching out the true causes of existing mischiefs and their true remedies ; and they could bear no fruit but terror, losses, and cruelties. If we regard them from this point of view, there may be some grains of interest, and even of advantage, in recalling for a few moments some of our old Suffolk misleading misbeliefs. Exorcism by Fire. A woman I knew forty-three years ago had been employed by my predecessor to take care of his poultry. At the time I came to make her acquaintance she was a bedridden toothless crone, with chin and nose all but meeting. She did not dis- courage in her neighbours the idea that she knew more than SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS 169 people ought to know, and had more power than others had Many years before I knew her it happened one spring that the ducks, that were a part of her charge, failed to lay eggs. This of course, was a natural result of the character of the preceding winter, or of the spring then passing, or of their food having been too abundant or in some way or other unwholesome. She, however, was too ignorant to think that anything unusual could have a natural cause, and so she at once took it for granted that the ducks had been bewitched. This misbelief involved very shocking consequences, for it necessitated the idea that so diabolical an act could only be combated by diabolical cruelty. And the most diabolical act of cruelty she could imagine was that of baking alive in a hot oven one of the ducks. And that was what she did. The sequence of thought in her mind was that the spell that had been laid on the ducks was that of preternaturally wicked wilfulness ; that this spell could only be broken through intensity of suffering, in this case death by burning ; that the intensity of the suffering would break the spell in the one roasted to death ; and that the spell broken in one would be altogether broken, that is, in all the ducks. The moral of this story is that of the demoral- ising effect of ignorance. From this we may infer the human- ising and the purifying effect of its opposite — that is to say, of knowledge. Shocking, however, as was this method of exorcising the ducks, there was in it nothing original. It was the traditional and received prescription. Just about a hundred years before everyone in the town and neighbourhood of Ipswich had heard, and many had believed, that a witch had been burnt to death in her own house at Ipswich by the process of burning alive one of the sheep she had bewitched. It was curious, but it was as convincing as curious, that the hands and feet of this witch were the only parts of her that had not been incinerated. This, however, was satisfactorily explained by the fact that the four feet of the sheep, by which it had been suspended over the fire, had not been destroyed in the flames that had con- I70 SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS suraed its body. As this method of destroying a sorceress by burning one of her victims had, when the father of our old lady was a lad, been employed at Ipswich with such complete success, he had doubtless talked to his children about the occurrence. From this source we may be pretty sure his daughter had derived her knowledge of the way in which the spell that had been laid on the ducks she had charge of was to be counterworked. They must be exorcised by fire. One of them must be burnt alive. This terrible end of the unhappy duck would be simultaneously the end of the witch, whosoever and wheresoever she might be, and of her spells. About Bees. As late as my early time here it was still the practice, when a death occurred' in a house where bees were kept, for some member of the family to go to the hives and tap them ; and, when the bees came out, to whisper to them the loss the family had sustained. The supposition here was that, because the bees showed so much intelligence and were so industrious, they must be regarded as partners with or members of the family, and were entitled to the information that one of those with whom and for whom they had been working was gone. It was believed that if they were not duly apprised of these events they would resent the neglect by making no more honey, or even by leaving the place. I knew a case in this parish where the owner of the hives, not being content with informing the bees of the death that had occurred, was in the habit, furthermore, of putting them into mourning ; this she did by placing round each hive a band of crape. These superstitions diverted thought from the consideration, discover)-, and pro- vision of natural means for strengthening the hives and in- creasing the produce of honey, and put in their place practices that appeared to ignorant minds likely and fitting, but were, in fact, absurd and useless. Another superstition about bees I fell in with while esta- SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS i/i Wishing an apiary, now many years ago, was the old and wide- spread one that they were not to be paid for with money. This originated in the same idea as the practice just noticed. Their intelligence and industry entitled them to be treated as members of the family — at all events, should save them from being bought and sold like cattle. About the R.wen. The belief that a visit, accompanied with a croak, from a raven bodes the approaching death of one of the family is as general here as elsewhere. Ravens, however, having of late years been extinguished in this neighbourhood, we are no longer forewarned as those of us used to be about whose houses there might have happened to be something to attract these birds. In my early time in Suffolk, while I was living at Freston, there was a pair which bred year after year in the contiguous parish of Woolverstone, in a lofty oak between the Hall and the river. One day my housekeeper, with faltering voice and distressful look, told me of her having that morning been wholly knocked down by hearing and seeing the fateful visitor. As was natural, it did not occur to her that the visit and croak could have had any reference to herself ; and so she thought it her duty — which, however, she was very loth to discharge — to inform me of what was in store for myself In the nature of things there must be cases in which the event is in accord with these warnings ; and, as Bacon remarks, the misses are forgotten and the hits are remembered. The funereal colour and the gravity of this bird, together with the harshness of its voice, would, if such messages were sent to men, make it an appropriate messenger. Hence it is taken for granted that it really does come with such messages. Here ignorance, while it diverts people's attention from the search for the true causes of sudden or untimely deaths, which search might lead to profitable results, issues only in fruitless terror and distress of mind. 172 SUPERSTlTIOiWS AND MISBELIEFS A Wizard's Familiars. Over forty years ago the occupier of a farm of about 400 acres, and who was also a churchwarden, told me that in his younger days — he was then about sixty-five — on his entering the room of a wizard with whom he was acquainted — the wizard's name was Winter, and he resided at Aldborough ; the name of the man and his place of residence were given in the belief that they were all but unanswerable vouchers for the truth of the story — he saw on the table before the wizard some half-dozen imps. They were black, the colour of the white man's devil. In form and size they were something between rats and bats, the most mischievous and the most hideous of English animals. They were twittering to the wizard : they could not be allowed human voice. As soon as my informant entered the room they were ordered to \anish : the mysteries of iniquity must not be exhibited to honest men. They obeyed this order by gliding down to the floor : they could not have the same modes of locomotion as God's creatures. They then vanished through the floor : solid substances, impermeable to God's creatures, were permeable to them. I take it for granted that the narrator believed he had seen all this. He mistook for knowledge traditions and conjectures born of ignorance, and affrighted imagination working on these materials did the rest. He must also have believed that other people's minds, including the person he was addressing, were in the same state as his own. He had no experience or knowledge for reading or measuring mental differences. From the foregomg story the following are obvious infer- ences. The narrator had no conception of what is meant by the laws of nature ; with him the evidence of a law of nature was that it was a traditional belief, or in conformity with tradi- tional belief He had no conception of the grounds on which truth and knowledge rest. He was incapable of observing accurately and to any good purpose, and of sifting and weighing evidence. We. cannot, therefore, be surprised that he believed SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS 173 as he told me that he did, that his cows and his calves had been bewitched, when they were only suffering from natural ailments, and that he made no efforts to combat their ailments by natural remedies ; but, instead, had recourse to nailing up a horseshoe over his cow-house, and to drawing lines and crosses and circles and triangles in the dust before the door, which figures he was persuaded it was impossible for any witch or wizard to step over ; also, that he believed that one of his ploughmen — the man whom he suspected of having bewitched his cows and calves — had been seen following his plough, not on his feet, but on his head. I remember also that I found it impossible to persuade this man that the water in his well and the outflow of the numerous springs in the neighbourhood were supplied by the percolation of the rainfall. His theory was that all subterranean water must be due to infiltration from the sea. That the bottom of his well was far above the sea level was a fact that had no tendency to shake his belief on this point. This was not sur- prising, because his mind was in that stage in which belief is not dependent on evidence, but on suppositions suggested by ignorance, and by ideas of what appears fitting or likely to an ignorant mind. Evidently his thought was that there Vfas in the sea water enough to supply the wells and brooks, but that there did not appear to be enough in the rainfall. The relation of the sea level to that of the wells and brooks, in his opinion, neither proved nor disproved anything, for to him the world was full of wonders, and the preternatural was as much a part of the regular course of things as the natural. A Wizard's Curse. Many years ago a man told me that a row of plum trees that had in his time grown in a garden in this parish — they had been parallel to and not far from the road — had been cursed by a wizard. He had been overheard, while passing them, to mutter his curse. After that they never bore anv 174 SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS more fruit, and gradually died out, so that at the time my in- formant mentioned to me the occurrence there was not one of them remaining. The spot, however, on which they had grown had only a few inches of fertile soil, beneath which all was hard gravel ; and as the plum cannot flourish unless its roots are in moderately moist soil, the situation accounted for all the phe- nomena. Those, of course, who behaved that these trees had died because they had been cursed would not look for, and so could not discover and secure the profit of the discovery of, the true cause. They would go on planting plum trees on similarly unsuitable spots, and losing their labour and the ground, which might have done moderately well, and still better if deepened, for some other plants. I ridiculed to my informant the idea that these plum trees had been cursed, and that any curse could have any such effect. He earnestly deprecated my ridicule with the remark, ' You do not know, sir, what may come of what you are saying. These people have obtained very great power. Mischief may be laid on you for what you are now saying. One ought to be careful not to anger, it is better not to speak about, these people.' l'7l XXIII. LOCAL SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS— Continued. Many an amulet and charm, That would do neither good nor harm. Hudihras. About the Moon. The moon, from the softness and beauty of its light, from its light, unlike that of the sun, being unaccompanied by warmth, and from the incessant variations of its phases, was in all pre- historic times an inexhaustible source of myths, superstitions, and misbeliefs. In these latter days its supposed influences are chiefly felt in small matters of no great significance. In its associations and uses there is now no poetry. It has indeed sunk very low. I still occasionally hear people assert that if a pig is killed while the moon is waning the fat will in cooking shrink. Their rule, therefore, is to kill their pigs while the moon is waxing. Undoubtedly some pork will waste, and some will swell, in the pot. But what has the moon to do with this? We may suppose that the shadow of the ghost of an idea in this belief came from the fact that the luminous part of the moon — that is to say, the part of it visible to us on which the sun is shining— does for a time appear to wax. Those, then, who think it profitable to kill their pigs at this time must be ignorant of the cause and nature of this waxing. They know not that there is no change in the moon itself, but that only less and less, or more and more, of its illuminated side is continu- 176 SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS ously becoming visible to us. But supposing an actual incre- ment or decrement in the moon itself, what reason was there for believing in a connection between it and pig's flesh ? Only the groundless assumption that all waxings in nature are con- nected, even do^vn to the waxing of a piece of pork in the pot; and that all are derived from the same cause — that cause being the deceptively apparent waxing of the moon. The effect of this misbelief is to divert attention altogether from the real cause of the waste or shrinkage in the pot, which probably is that the cells of a coarse-fleshed hog are large enough to allow of the escape in boiling of the fatty matter they contain, whereas in a high-bred and fine-fleshed animal the cells are smaller, and therefore this cause of waste cannot come into play. Here, then, is a point it would be advantage- ous to know, but which those who hold that swelling and shrink- ing in the pot are dependent on waxing and waning in the moon are not at all on the road to discover. So long also will they be obliged to kill their pigs sooner or later than might have suited their convenience. Reversely, it was believed that there were things which ought to be done while the moon was waning ; for instance, you should cut your corns at this time. The moon is wan- ing. Growth will then be weak. They will not wax again rapidly. The moon that wanes in heaven before our eyes is the cause of all sublunary waning. Its period of waning is the period of waning in all things. Therefore, take off your lambs and little pigs while the moon is in this phase. The secretion of milk in the ewes and the sows will then be more readily staunched. It is waning time. It is a bad time for putting up poultry to fatten. It would be contrar)' to nature for them to wax at that time. All the misbeliefs about what are called changes in the moon producing changes in the weather rested on the same miscon- ceptions. The moon changes no more than the sun or the earth. There is no more difference in nature between the moon on the seventh and the moon on the eighth day of its SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS 177 age, that is, what is called its second quarter, than there is between the moon on the eighth and the moon on the ninth day of its age, on the tenth and eleventh, or any other two days — that is to say, there is really no change at all. But the popular idea was that there are certain definite important steps in the waxing and in the waning, and that in conformity with them good or bad meteorological conditions would at one period be waxing and at the other period be waning. These assumed lunar changes, however, that apparently take place, are only certain points in the evenly progressive process of lunar illumination that is visible to us for half the period in the direction of increase and for the other half in the direction of decrease. Were it not for the inveteracy of this belief, it would not be worth while to insist on the fact that the quarters are only arbitrarily fixed points in a regularly gradual pro- cess, which process itself signifies nothing ; and that these points came to be fixed where they are merely because the time required for the accomplishment of all these so-called changes is proximately twenty-nine days — that is, something not far from a multiple of four, and, therefore, roughly divisible into four weeks. But these are not natural divisions, or divisions that rest on any natural facts or real differences of any kind, but are merely a convenient convention for enabling us to in- dicate in words the age of the moon. The popular supposition is • that these changes, which are no changes at all in anything except in the amount of moonshine, could not have been designed merely to amuse, but must have important and far- reaching purposes and effects, and that their first effect must be felt in the region of the air, through which their power is trans- mitted — that is to say, on the meteorological conditions of our earth — that is to say, on the weather. About the Spontaneous Genesis of Stones. I was some years ago assured by an educated farmer who had much intelligence, and who took in a weekly paper, that it was of no manner of use to have stones picked off one's land N lyS SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS (I have heard the same opinion expressed by others) because — this was the reason he gave — it is an undoubted fact that the land produces them. He insisted that this assertion of his was not only in accord with the order of nature, because everything, even a stone, must have been produced, but was also a result of his own experience ; for he had several times had the stones picked off a certain field, and now there were upon it as many as ever. Of course this proved him completely ignorant of the composition of different kinds of stone, of the processes by which they had been produced, and of how they came to be where he found them. His false premiss, that after having removed a great many stones there were still as many as before, by a correct logical process had obliged him to abandon the attempt to clear his field of stones. If these stones were hurtful to the fertility of the soil, this ignorance was a pecuniary loss. About the Spontaneous Genesis of Weeds. Similar remarks may be made on the somewhat similar misbelief, which also I have heard confidently announced, as if there could be no doubt about it, that weeds are natural to the ground, in the sense that the ground originates them ; and that no man ever did, because no man ever could, eradicate them. They spring eternal from the ground itself, not at all necessarily from the seeds of parent weeds. Those who are the victims of this misbelief have not yet arrived at the know- ledge of the elementary truth of omne vivum e vivo. But to this ignorance is superadded in the case of the weeds a theological conception, that the ground has been cursed with weeds as a punishment for man's disobedience. It has, there- fore, ever borne, and will ever continue to bear, for the punish- ment of the husbandman (but why should husbandmen only be punished ?), thistles and poppies and speargrass. It is then useless, not to say that it is a sign of a rebellious spirit, to attempt to clean one's land thoroughly. It is pious to accept this dispensation up to a certain point. SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS 179 About the Broom Plant. Formerly I used to hear the rhymes : — Sweep with a broom that is cut in May, And you will sweep the head of the house away. Is it possible that this meant no more than that it was a bad time to cut broom when, from being in flower, the shoots were tender ; and also that it was wiser to let the plant flower and shed its seed, so that there might be a good stock for future use ; and, too, that the beauty of its profuse golden bloom in the early spring was an appeal to your forbearance which it would be unfeeling and unwise to neglect ? If so, the rule would be good ; and the punishment denounced against those who violated it would be the superstitious element in the belief. This would be intelligible. The Australian aborigines had a similar superstition with respect to some plants that were useful to them for food. They observed a traditional rule, which had become a superstition, against taking them up for food during the time of fructification, and till they had shed their seed. It had become a superstition, because the only reason they gave for its observance was that its violation would be visited with preternatural consequences. Plainly, however, the rule must have originated in the observation that its violation would very much lessen their supply of food from this plant. About the Whitethorn. One might conjecture that the somewhat similar superstition, that you will die before the year is out if you bring May-flower into your house, originated in the kindred idea that people would do well to co-operate with Providence by allowing every flower of so serviceable a plant as the whitethorn to mature its seed, because its fruit is the winter food of a great many kinds of birds. This explanation would become still more probable if it could be shown that it had been the practice formerly in this country, as it is now on the Continent, to look on blackbirds N 2 io8 SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS and thrushes as by no means insignificant viands. The old nursery ditt)' of the four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, which was a dainty dish to set before a king, seems to imply that there was a time when they were held here in high estimation. It is a common misbelief that an abundance of fruit on this plant is an indication that the coming winter will be severe, because we have before us a providential store of food for many of the feathered tribe. This supposition is disproved by the fact that the first spell of severe weather destroys the edible part of this fruit. That the fruit is abundant in any particular year only proves that in that particular year the season had been favourable for setting the fruit. It tells us something about the season that is past, but nothing about that which is coming. About the Nail th.\t h.\s lamed a Horse. The belief has still some vitality amongst us that the way to recover a horse from the lameness caused by puncture of the foot from treading on a nail is not merely to keep the nail that inflicted the wound, but also to take care that it has been thoroughly cleaned and is bright, and to see that it is well greased. Some years ago while driving by the old shipyard in Stoke my horse was lamed by this mischance. He had set his foot on a piece of plank from which a nail was protruding. The wound was bad, and the recovery was slow. My coach- man, however, had no doubt from the first He confidently assured me that recover)' was certain, for he had at the time brought away the nail, had carefully cleaned and polished it, and was daily greasing it thoroughly. This was in the times that preceded the electric telegraph and the penny newspaper. But as lately as the year 1884 I met with an instance of the survival of this superstition. A man produced from his pocket and showed to me the offending nail, which he believed would, as long as he kept it bright, aid in the recovery of the lame- ness it had caused. I forgot to ask whether he kept it greased. Bacon notes the same misbelief respecting the sword, that if the blade, after a wound has been inflicted with it, be kept SUPERSTITIONS A.\D MISBELIEFS i8i anointed with some soothing balm, the healing process will be greatly assisted ; but that if, contrariwise, the blade be anointed with some poisonous preparation, the wound will be thereby aggravated. The origin of this superstition cannot easily be made out. Its vitality, however, proves that in it there is something to commend it to ignorant minds. It is plain that those who believe in it can have no conception of natural causes, or of the necessity of an alleged cause having some ascertained properties that might reasonably be regarded as adequate to the produc- tion of the desired or supposed result. The keeping the nail cleaned and greased is evidently the essential point, for this is the whole of the difference between the condition of the nail when kept and what would be its condition if it were cast away at the time it was taken from the horse's foot. The idea cannot be that if the nail be in safe keeping it can do no more harm, because that might have been more easily secured by throwing it over the hedge or by burying it. And, besides, it is not at all a question of doing no more harm, but of active aid in the recovery of the wound. Is it to be explained by the supposi- tion that there is still lurking in men's minds some conception of the idea which in early times obtained very widely that the brute instrument through which anything was done was not really brute, but was in a sense an intelligent and conscious agent ; so that, if the nail be kept bright and greased, those will have become its qualities, its nature ; and that it will in some way or other— we should say preternaturally, the believers in the remedy would say naturally — impart the qualities of being clean and oiled to the wound ? This persistent primitive misconception came from general- ising on insufficient evidence. Because what we ourselves do is the result of will and intention, it was inferred that everything that is in any way done, even by a stick or a stone, by a swoid or a nail, is equally and in the same sense the result of will and intention in what was the instrument of the act. The imagina- tion could not think of anything done by any agent having been done without motive and purpose, without will and intention. i82 SUPERSTITIONS AND MISBELIEFS From this it followed that the instrument of every act was conscious and intelligent, and that its consciousness and in- telligence — that is, its will and intention — might be influenced. Again, in this case, as we did in the preceding ones, we must note the loss sustained by accepting traditionally and ignorantly as an efficient cause that which it is impossible could be in any way or sense a cause at alL My object here has not been to collect as many kinds and instances as I could of Suffolk superstitions — Forby's pages contain a great many more than I have noticed — but to record those I have myself fallen in with, and to endeavour to trace them to their sources, and to show how most of them issued in mischievous and degrading consequences. One may be disposed to think that the superstitious beliefs of populations steeped in ignorance — and this is still the condition of all the world with the exception of a few of the most advanced nations — are a very potent cause of their stagnation. Progress mainly arises from people having ascertained the true causes of things ; and this is precisely what they have not done, and are in- capable of doing. They acquiesce in their deadening and misleading superstitions, and take it for granted that there is nothing more for them to do. The opposite state of mind, and its far-reaching effects, may be contemplated in the condition of the Americans. Partly from their having been transplanted to a new world, far away from the homes of the old supersti- tions ; partly from their being of very mixed origin, so that no man sympathised with or countenanced his neighbours' mis- beliefs ; and partly from the wide diffusion among them of some degree of education, they have become of all people the least superstitious. Their gains from this source intellectually, morally, and economically have been incalculable. The minds of the million, or rather of the whole people, have been directed to the ascertainment of the true causes of things. That this is their mental attitude is the explanation of the fruitfulness of their practical thought. It accounts for no small part of the difference between 50,000,000 Americans and 50,000,000 Russians. i8.3 XXIV. OUR EAST ASGLIAX DIALECT. So build we up the being that we are. Thus deeply drinking in the soul of things, We shall be wise perforce. , Wordsworth. Of Language in General. Words, it is obvious, are the means through which the images that are in one mind are reflected from it to other minds. The understanding is a mirror that receives the images of what the senses report. Words are the outwardly reflected details of these images. Through them others see — their understanding receives — the images that are in the mirror of the first reci- pient's understanding. This process has no limits. A man can reflect what is in his mind through spoken words to thou- sands at the same time, and in written words to millions, and throughout all time to thousands of millions ; for words addressed to the eye give to these images infinite dispersion and eternity, inasmuch as they have become imperishable and portable. Thus it is that what was in the mind of David and of Homer has been transmitted to all the world. The capacity for so using words is the high and peculiar attribute of ' arti- culate speaking ' man. Words, however, have an anterior use to that just noticed of enabling a man to impart to other minds what is in his own mind ; it is through them, used as the symbols of things in nature and of the images of those things in our mind.s, that we 1 84 OUR EAST ANGLIAN DIALECT are enabled to store up in our minds and to compare together one with another the things that have been observed and felt. Furthermore, it is through words that we are enabled at will — that is to say, unaided by suggestions or reminders from with- out — to think over what has been so stored up. These uses of words will be better understood by comparing ourselves in these respects with the lower animals. The brute has understanding. The device by which a partridge diverts from its helpless brood the attention of a dog or any dangerous intruder is a demonstration of this. Doubtless the action has become what is called instinctive. The instinct, however, must have been acquired ; and the only way in which it could have been acquired must have been through the perception of the utility of the action for the object in view, because it is a manoeuvre which exposes the parent bird to great risks. Also the brute has some capacity for transmitting by sound what is in its mind. The several calls and cries of domestic fowls are a familiar instance of this ; they are significant, and are under- stood. Furthermore, the brute is capable of giving utterance to articulate words, for probably there is no word in any lan- guage which the imitative powers of the parrot are incapable of reproducing. Some years ago I had one of the green species which mimicked with marvellous precision the' sounds of saw- ing, of scrubbing the floor, and even of pouring out water. This, I suppose, is really going beyond what it is possible for man's vocal apparatus to achieve. The brute, however, cannot store up in its mind, through the medium of purposely, though almost unconsciously, invented words, images of what it has observed and felt. Nor can it, for want of such words, recall at pleasure what images may be in its mind ; nor can it, by reason of the same want, reflect those images into the minds of others of its kind. It appears, indeed, from this deficiency to be incapable of thinking e.xcept under the stimulus of what it is at the moment perceiving through the channel of some one of the senses — that is to say, of what it is seeing, or hearing, or smelling, or tasting, or touching, or inwardly feeling. OUR EAST ANGLIAN DIALECT 185 The savage, however, can think independently of the simultaneous report and stimulation of the senses. This he is enabled to do not merely because the images of the things he has observed are in his mind — that would not be enough, but, furthermore, because he is able to summon before his thoughts at will these images of things ; and this he does through the words he has invented to stand for them — that is to say, through the names he has given them. The mind can deal with the quantities of things — of money, for instance — in any way that is required, by adding, or subtracting, or multiplying, through the figures that stand for the money. Just so, with the aid of the names of things — that is, of the words that stand for things, and which are the mental, the vocal, and, if written, the visible signs of things — the mind can summon before itself the images that stand for the things, and deal with them as required. In this process there are three stages — first, the things themselves in nature ; then the images of these things in the mind ; and, lastly, the words or names which stand equally for the things in nature and for the images of them in the mind. In the faculty of inventing these words or names, and in the faculty of using them in the ways just spoken of, lies ' the promise and the potency ' of the intellectual con- struction, the building up in the human mind in all its details, of the whole cosmos, inclusive of what is in man himself. As observations are multiplied and corrected and knowledge increased, our conceptions, represented by words, invented as the need for them arises, generally out of old materials reused, are ever gaining in number and distinctness. This has been a slow process. Its origins we cannot recover. But experience tells us that much that was, at any selected point in the progress, not in the mirror, and then for a time only hazily present in it, afterwards became clearly defined, and was permanently added, in the form of words, to the sum of the objects, and of their reciprocal relations, that previously had been more or less accurately imaged, and so became available for intellectual construction and capable of being reflected. 1 86 OUR EAST ANGLIAN DIALECT The ultimate goal is the building up in the mind of the cosmos. Words, being the human symbols of the objects of nature and of their images in the mind, are both the materials of this intellectual edifice and the means by which whatever of it has been constructed is reflected from mind to mind. At present in the aims and methods of our schools and universities there is no inconsiderable hindrance to the progress we might be making in the mental construction of the cosmos, which is the all-embracing intellectual work that has been set for us to do, and for the achievement of which we have been adequately endowed. Much has been said of late about their neglect of scientific knowledge, and some, but very far from effectual, attempts have been made to apply a remedy ; for our highest educational aims still remain practically limited to the effort, a wise and necessary effort three or four centuries ago, to recover an acquaintance with the classics. This, instead of training, aborts the observing faculty. It fixes the eyes and concentrates the thought of the educated part of the community upon a past condition of the mirror. It averts their eyes and thoughts from the cosmos. No training is given that might qualify them for adding to the image-receiving and image-reflecting regions of the mirror, and, which is the great point, to the store of materials that is being collected for the intellectual construction of the cosmos. It will only be in spite of what they have been taught, and of the bent given to their minds, if they endeavour to attain to the possession of any portion of the materials that have been already amassed for this purpose. To be able to look at and make out — but this a very few only reach — what the mirror reflected two thousand years ago is doubtless interesting, but ought not to be the highest educational aim now. This remark, however, about the antiquated character of our highest educational aims has been made parenthetically to our immediate object, which is to show the relation of words to the building up in the mind of the cosmos, and to the reflection from mind to mind of whatever of the structure has been achieved. OUR EAST ANGLIAN DIALECT 187 The representative and reproducing power of human speech has no bounds except those of the universe and of all that it contains, so far as they are accessible to our senses. The invented words we now possess are an intellectual re-creation of the cosmos, so far as we have observed and mastered its details and the workings and functions of any part of it. The difference between the language of an Australian savage and that of the president of the Royal Society measures the distance between the points they have respectively reached in this intellectual reconstruction. The completion of the reconstruc- tion is the work that has been set to the human understanding, aided by the faculty of inventing and of using articulate sounds for the permanent retention of all that has been observed or that is in or can enter into the mind, and of transmitting by this vehicle to other minds our own emotions and ideas and facts of all kinds, and their innumerable relations to each other and to ourselves. This is the road we have to travel and the means we possess for travelling along it ; at the end stands the completion of the intellectual reconstruction of the cosmos. This is the prerogative of man ; the achievement which sums up all achievements ; the ultimate intellectual making of man. This mental reconstruction of the cosmos places within the human mind that which is the external product and work of the divine mind. It plants in the mind of man completely, and in orderly form, the cosmic manifestation of the mind of God, which is the total of what man is cognisant of and concerned with. This is the final goal and the supreme use of knowledge. This is the consummation and the per- fected issue of education, of observation and research, of science and philosophy ; it is the sununa philosophia. This conception— that of building up in the mind the cosmos by the aid of words — alone co-ordinates and alone gives an in- telligible and distinct purpose and a natural and unquestion- able place to all attained and attainable knowledge. And these words that we invent in and for carrying on this i88 OUR EAST ANGLIAX DIALECT work are not invented haphazard, but in strict accordance with certain definite ascertained laws. Within certain limits every word must have been what it came to be. It had its parent- age, and will have its issue. It could not have been anything else. It is this ever-growing and supreme power, value, and purpose of language which gives importance and interest to an inquir)' into the history and character of any particular language, and of any dialect of any language. Such inquiries are chapters and subchapters in the history of the formation of this mar- vellous intellectual reconstruction, which aims at being as all- embracing and as subtle as the cosmos itself, for it is its human correlative, counterpart, and antitype. It is from this point of view that I propose to look at, or to take a glimpse of, our East Anglian dialect: the relations in which it stands to the histor)', purpose, and work of language. It can have no other serious or substantial interest. Of Di.\lects. A dialect is the form any language has assumed in some particular isolated district of the region the language covers. It consists of peculiarities of pronunciation and of grammar ; of peculiar words ; and of words common to it and to the wide- sjjread and more highly cultivated language to which it belongs, but used by the dialect in a peculiar sense. If it is regarded disconnectedly and as a separate entity, it teaches little ; but if comparatively, it then throws much light on the formation of the language, to which it stands in the relation of an affluent to the main stream, or of an offset from the same stock, and also on the formation of language generally. I shall speak of our East Anglian dialect as I have heard it now for forty-six years in Wherstead and the surrounding parishes. Of late 1 have noticed that it is passing through a process of rapid extinction. I mention this merely as a fact that may be observed, not as a loss to be regretted, for what is OUR EAST ANGLIAN DIALECT 189 abandoned is replaced by something better. The processes of decay and of extinction, of substitution and of absorption, of modification and of outgrowth have been going on in the department of speech from its earliest days. Language is an organism of the intellect, and like all other organisms is subject to these incidents. The peculiarities of a dialect originate mainly in historical events ; but to some extent also in climatic, in social, and in intellectual conditions. These causes gave rise to our East Anglian as well as to our northern and western dialects. And we may go further and say that nothing but causes of this kind, acting in endless combinations on the linguistic faculty and the impulses of man, have brought about all the diversities of language that are, or that ever have been, in the world. To dwell for a moment on these causes as they have affected ourselves. The retention in this part of the country in a greater or less degree of some fragments of the British or of the Latin element at the time of the Teutonic invasion ; differences here in the composition of the invading Teutonic element from what was its composition in other parts of the country ; a more or less considerable proportion here of the subsequent Danish invasion; the degree and fashion in which the Norman in- vasion affected us ; the greater or less connection of East Anglia with the administrative centre of the country ; and all these conditions acting on the language at the time when it was freely forming itself, are the historical causes that contributed towards bringing about what is characteristic in our East Anglian dialect. Our colder and drier East Anglian climate may, by harden- ing and bracing up the organs of speech, have given us the force of utterance which enabled us to impart a distinct power to our vowels and a disposition not to flinch from combinations of consonants other people would have rejected. The fact that from social causes our dialect at an early period ceased to be employed by the upper class and so be- came the speech only of yeomen and peasants may account for its rusticity. It became rude because its use was confined to 190 OUR EAST ANGLIAN DIALECT the expression of the ideas and wants of the ruder classes of the community. It was entrusted to the keeping of those who were pretty generally excluded from books, from an acquaint- ance with the past, from science and art, from the administra- tion of affairs, from political discussion and almost from intellectual occupations of any kind, and who had little to employ their thought upon, and so to enlarge their language, but the simplest and humblest necessities of life. Under such conditions the growth, because the use, of language is much restricted. Its possible wealth and niceties are not developed. It is impoverished, withered, hardened. In Suffolk phrase it becomes skrinchled and scockered. 191 XXV. SOME PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN DIALECT. Verba sunt rerum notse. — Cicero. When an emigrant from any other part of the country is brought by the chances of life into East Anglia, his attention is soon arrested by the linguistic peculiarities of the uneducated class among his new neighbours. He finds, as is the case with local dialects generally, that the pronunciation is harder than that of the cultivated language ; for instance, ' say ' has here become 'sahr,' and you 'yeow.' Some words are presented to him in a variant form; for instance, the preterites of ' snow,' ' mow,' ' sow,' and ' owe ' have been brought into harmony with the re- ceived preterites of ' know,' ' crow,' ' blow,' and ' grow,' and have thus become 'snew,' 'mew,' 'sew,' and 'ewe.' In like manner the preterites of ' beat ' and ' heat ' have been brought into har- mony with the received preterite of ' eat,' which, though written ' ate,' is pronounced ' et,' and have thus become ' bet ' and ' het ;' and the similarly formed preterites ' kep,' 'slep,' 'swep,' 'crep'' and 'lep' have been provided for ' keep,' 'sleep,' 'sweep,' 'creep/ and 'leap.' Again, the third person singular of the present tense has been made identical with the first person singular and with the three persons of the plural ; for instance, the new-comer will hear that ' time fly,' and that ' Hezekiah Winterflood have a misery in his head.' All these are simplifications. So also is the abolition, in the use of the personal pronouns ' he ' and ' she,' of the oblique cases ' him ' and ' her ; ' for instance, ' I heard he,' and 'I saw she.' These peculiarities, though of 192 PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN course they would be in received English grossly incorrect, are not at all incorrect or ungrammatical in East Anglia. He would, too, meet with some words that would probably be quite new to him; such, for instance, as 'dolk' for a depres- sion, generally in the ground ; ' stound ' for a period of time ; ' trunch ' for short and thick ; ' twitty ' for snappish ; ' bargood ' for yeast ; ' jowered ' for exhausted ; ' dossing ' for butting ; ' ding,' as a verb, to throw, as a noun, a smart slap, &c. But it will not be from the upper class that he will hear these variations of and additions to our cultivated English, any more than he would meet with analogous variations and addi- tions among the upper class in Northumberland or Somerset- shire ; nor will it be from the tradesmen, nor from the capitalist farmers of the present day, nor even from his domestics. It will be from the agricultural labourer only that they will in these days be heard. Doubtless there was a time when all East Angles spoke East Anglian. Tusser wrote his ' Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrj' ' in this dialect. This work was published in 1557, and its author died in 1580. If, then, a date may be fixed for what must from its nature have been a gradual ])rocess, we may say that towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth it had become the dialect of the unedu- cated classes, who have from that day formed a continuously waning proportion of the community ; the diminution having, in the earlier part of the period that has since elapsed, been very gradual, and in the latter part of it much more rapid. The strong tang of rusticity that marks the dialect was a neces- sary consequence of its having come to be confined to the cottage and to the parlour of the village public-house. And even in these its last retreats the public elementary school is rapidly extinguishing it. It is an illustration of the risks and unprofitableness of ' prophesying unless you know,' that the present imminence of the very event, the extinction of our East Anglian dialect, which Forby pronounced so impossible as to be almost incon- ceivable, is precisely what is now adding much to the value of PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN 193 his 'Vocabulary of East Anglia.' This result, however, is being brought about by a cause which no one in his time could have foreseen. That cause originated outside of our borders, for, while Watt was perfecting at Soho the steam-engine, he was contriving, among many other revolutions, the extinguish- ment of the dialect of East Anglia, because what he was then thinking out led directly to the now familiar, but at that time unimaginable, increase of our manufactures and commerce, to the recent enormous growth of London, to the incredible, as it would have appeared to our fathers, volume of emigration to our colonies, and to the universal education which these new conditions necessitated. Through the operation of these causes our East Anglian population has been swept into the great currents of the modern world, and is in this way being assimilated to the ideas and practices of the day. This is rapidly effacing our dialectic peculiarities. They cannot hold their ground. The iron horse, the iron workman, and the penny newspaper are not on their side. And the extension of household suffrage to the county constituencies will give the finishing stroke to the process of their extinction. Already, indeed, Moore's ' Suffolk Words ' and Forby's ' Vocabulary of East Anglia ' are rapidly becoming the chief sources of our knowledge of East Anglian. Both these works were very useful efforts to collect the materials necessary for its study. They are, however, overloaded with redundances and irrelevances, disfigured by more or less unhappy con- jectures and assumptions, and made wearisome by constant straining at jocosity of a feeble sort. But blemishes of this kind the reader can eliminate for himself, regarding them merely as harmless consequences of the interest these authors took in their subject, at a time when in this country very little was known about the history of language. As to their redun- dances, they boast of 2,500 words ; but a glance over their pages leaves the impression that not so many as the odd five hundred are really entitled to a place in a list of 'Suffolk Words,' or in a ' Vocabulary of East Anglia.' Sir John o 194 PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN Cullum's list of words and expressions used in his part of Suffolk only reaches to the number of no, and of these a large proportion are very far from being of exclusively East Anglian usage. That all these first efforts should err also in the opposite direction, that of incompleteness, was unavoidable. To show that their useful researches did not exhaust the whole field, I will here give a few words I have myself noted, but which are not to be found in the pages of Moore or of Forby. Snieaky. — This word I have heard applied to tainted meat. A few moments' thought about its origin may illustrate the formation of new words by showing how the impulse that is in the mind to express a fact, or a feeling, makes use of pre- existing materials for its new coinage. Those whom conjectures satisfy might imagine more than one root for this word. First, they might supppose it may have been ' smear.' On meat, in the process of its becoming tainted, there is thrown out a kind of exudation. There is upon it a wet smear. This, with the adjectival termination of _)', gives ' smeary.' But how did it come about that k was substituted for r ? Some might be almost tempted to ask whether this might not have resulted from the word ' sneaky' having been in some way or other suggested to the thought while ' smeaky ' was in formation. This would also ac- count for the otherwise inexplicable fact that a contemptuous intonation invariably accompanies the use of this word, which may be an unconscious survival of the feelings appropriate to this part of its origin. Or a second conjecture might be that the whole word may be no more than ' sneaky ' with the variation of a single letter, 7n for «, in order to distinguish the new from the old word. The root idea, then, would be that the action on the part of the meat was mean and contemptible, which would be underlaid by the supposition that the meat was a conscious and intelligent agent — a way of regarding natural objects that obtained very widclv in early ages and among ignorant people. This origin, then, of the word would be an instance of a common form of PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN 195 animism, or of the conception of inanimate things as animate, which accounts for the worship of trees, stones, swords, &c. A third conjecture would be that ' smeaky ' had been con- structed from ' smirch; ' first ' smirchy ; ' then, not ' smirky,' for that was a word already in existence with a different meaning, but 'smeaky.' All this is etymology after the manner of the ancients. But in fact not one of these three conjectures, however self- evident it might appear to those who had hit upon and pro- pounded It, would be right ; for in etymology nothing can be accomplished, and of course nothing can be demonstrated, by conjectures. Certainty can only be attained in this matter by the historical method. Are there, then, any historical facts connected with this rare Suffolk word, which probably not one in a thou- sand of us ever heard, or, if heard, ever noticed ? Is any light thrown on it by history ? The word ' smeggy,' with much the same meaning, occurs in another English dialect. For this the reader is referred to Halliwell-Phillips's ' Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words.' In Icelandic, ' smekker ' means having a bad taste. To these must be added what Richardson says of the Teutonic relatives of our English ' smack.' The East Anglian 'smeaky,' then, has no kindred with 'smear' and ' smirch,' but came from a root from which in the Teutonic languages is descended a large family of closely related words. Bleivse. — This is a noun formed from ' blue.' It means a bluish mist, not unusual in summer when the temperature suddenly becomes chilled, the sky remaining cloudless. It is supposed to bring a blight. I will give the meaning of the word as it was many years ago explained to me by a Suffolk labourer. I had said to him, giving utterance to the commonly received opinion on the subject, 'This chilly haze will bring blight.' To this he sharply replied, correcting me, ' It is no haze.' 'Well,' I inquired, 'what is it? It is what people call haze or mist.' ' No,' was his rejoinder, ' it is not haze or mist. It is " blewse." ' 'And what,' I continued, ' is " blewse " ? ' ' Why,' he replied, ' everybody knows what " blewse " is. It is the smoke 196 PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN of the burning mountain.' Some talk, then, about volcanos had some time or other filtered down to unlettered Hodge. And what he had heard about them being borne out by his reminis- cence of the text, ' If He do but touch the mountains they shall smoke,' because he saw a resemblance to smoke in this bluish blighting mist, he attributed it to the burning mountain ; he could not imagine more than one. And having constructed an idea in his mind, he was obliged to invent a word to repre- sent it ; and this he did unconsciously in strict accordance with the rules the mind and the organs of speech act upon in such cases. And as to the phenomena of the thing, its appearance, its deleterious effects, its wide reach, and even its supposed odour, the burning mountain explained the whole of them. It was, and could be, nothing else, the smoke of the burning mountain. The existence of the word ' blewse,' which, however, he had himself invented, was to his mind a demonstration of the reality of his supposition, for words must represent things. This word ' blewse ' shows how easily and spontaneously new words came into being among our uncultured predecessors, to whom we of this day are as much indebted for our language as we are for our morality or our features. In these days none of us are altogether uncultured, but those amongst us who now stand in the place of the uncultured people of old times — our Suffolk ploughboys, for instance — have a much greater facility for inventing words, and do invent a great many more, than our literary class ; their inventions, of course, almost in every case being constructed out of pre-existing materials. The ploughboy is always inventing words. He is always striving to find and adapt articulate sounds for the expression of new ideas and newly observed objects and facts. The literary man has a repugnance to use any word for which he has not authority — that is to say, to use any new word whatever ; he is always denouncing and fighting against this kind of invention. But, on the other side, the word-making of the unlettered never slumbers. The literary man forgets that every word he himself uses was once new, that it was the product of an immemorial PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN 197 series of adaptations, readaptations, alterations, imitations, and appropriations, and had been inventively accommodated and re- accommodated, again and again, to what were the ever-varying conditions and wants of the countless ages of the past, and that in this matter what has been is what is and what will con- tinue to be to the end. What he so loudly and persistently denounces is precisely that which is the principle and the evi- dence of life, of growth, and of adaptation in language. His un- availing protests do, however, demonstrate one thing, and that is that when a word is wanted there is nothing in the world that can prevent its coming into existence. The word is wanted ; that sets in motion the machinery Nature has provided for the creation of words, and when the word has been created, gene- rally out of old materials, that it is wanted guarantees its recep- tion and endows it with vitality. The London Road. — Once on a clear starlight night I said something to a labourer who happened to be with me about the Milky Way. ' We,' he interposed, ' don't call it by that name. We call it the London Road.' I supposed at the moment that this merely meant that from the neighbourhood where we were it was parallel to the direction of the London Road. It was for this reason that Watling Street (the Roman road from London to Wroxeter) and the Milky Way were once interchangeable appellations. On continuing the conversation, however, I found that this was the smallest part of the reason why the luminous celestial belt had received this strange local appellation. The date of our conversation was in the days before railways, when the upper ten thousand posted to and from London, and there was a great deal of traffic by night in carriages and wagons. 'Its name,' he explained, 'is the London Road, because it is the light of the lamps of the carriages and wagons that are travelling to and from London.' The mind asks for the causes of things long before it is capable S)f judging of the adequacy of the causes it supposes. But it is this demand for causes which in the end issues in the right understanding of things. 198 PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN Do. — Of this word we have hereabouts a highly idiomatic use I have nowhere seen noticed. It corrects an answer which the person interrogated feels was too wide. For instance, you ask, ' Has the squire passed this way ? ' To this the answer might be, ' No. Do : I dint see him.' That is, suppose, or grant, that he did pass, which I allow he might have done, I did not see him. His p'assing did not come under my observation. Again, to the question, ' Is your daughter going out to service ? ' the mother might reply, ' No. Do: I should soon want her back again.' Again : ' Mrs. Orris can't get no better. Do : it will surprise me.' 'She say she can draw a pail of water. Do : she is a poor creature.' It is also used negatively to correct an affirmative answer. For instance : ' Has the squire passed this way?' 'Yes. Don't: it wount be like him.' 'Has your daughter gone out to service ? ' ' Yes. Don't : I shount know how to keep her at home.' The imperative form is taken from the understood ' suppose,' or ' grant,' and all that is in the mind, and that has to be supposed or granted, is packed away in the litde word 'do.' This is an admirable instance of condensation in language. It is, too, particularly interesting, because we see in it distinctly what it was that the mind had to condense, and by how thoroughly legitimate and effective a method it reached its aim. This achievement, moreover, was imagined and devised by un- schooled labourers, and would have been beyond the reach of their cultivated betters, whose mental pliability and fertility in word-making have been pretty well extinguished by a tyrannous enforcement of the doctrine, which is a contradiction of Nature's scheme, that it is incorrect and inelegant, not to say heretical and vulgar, to take a step in such matters beyond the beaten tracks of recognised usage. This East Anglian use of ' do ' resembles, in the word selected for the purpose in view, that of the Latin fac for 'suppose' or 'allow.' In the Ciceronian use, however, of/airthe condensation of our Suffolk peasants was not attained. The Ciceronian phrase would have been, ' Do that the squire had PECULIARITIES OF OUR EAST ANGLIAN 199 passed,' and ' Do that my daughter had gone into service.' The difference is that with us the ' do ' is used absolutely. This requires that the speaker should imply, and that the hearer should understand, a contingent possibility that is not ex- pressed. 200 £-^5 7- AXGLIAN IN THE UNITED STATES XXVI. EAST ANGLIAN IN THE UNITED STATES. DIS- TINCTNESS IN VOWEL SOUNDS. REDUPLI- CATED AND RHYMING WORDS. And who in time knows whither we may vent The treasures of our tongue ? To what strange shores This gain of our best glory shall be sent, T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores ? What worlds in th' yet unformed Occident May come refined with th' accents that are ours ? — Daniel. Charles Dickens I think it was, who somewhere said that he had been shocked at hearing an American lady use the word ' bug' for 'beetle.' She had vouchsafed to him the information that her brooch was made of a ' bug-stone,' that is, as we now call it, a beetle-stone. There was, however, a grain of history in what caused him this shock. ' Bug ' is East Anglian for ' beetle, ' and the word was taken in that generic sense to New England by its first Puritan settlers, many of whom hailed from Suffolk. But, besides this monosyllable, which the fortune that rules among words has now restricted in its old home to a single, and that an almost unmentionable, species, they took with them the whole of the East Anglian vocabulary. And thus many of our words received there a new lease of life, and are now heard familiarly from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast of the New World. ' Freshes ' are with East Angles river floods. With their descendants on the other side of the Atlantic they have become ' freshets.' EAST ANGLIAN IN THE UNITED STATES 201 'Hub' is with us the nave of a wheel. It is a Massachusetts ' crack ' that Boston is the ' hub ' of the world — that on which ■the world revolves ; that which holds it together ; its organic centre. 'Kinder big' the States consider themselves ; we should not deny that they are ' kind o' big.' ' Kinks ' are sometimes found in our cords and skeins of thread. On their side the hair of the nigger 'kinks.' Here 'nog' is a kind of strong ale. There a glass of sherry or madeira, with the addition of the yolk of an egg and some sugar whipped together, is 'egg-nog.' In New England, as in East Anglia, an ironing-flat and a kettle of water are not heated, but ' het.' A small load for a man's back or for a carriage is a 'jag.' A jolt, or a shake, is a 'jounce.' To be brisk, in good health and spirits, is to be ' kedge ; ' for instance, ' How are you to-day ? ' ' Thank you, pretty kedge.' A sitting room is a ' keeping room.' A penthouse is a ' linter ' (lean-to). Sausages are 'links.' To choke, or suffocate, is to ' quackle ; ' a word well invented from the gurgling and gasping of suffocation. A damp chilly day is a ' rafty ' day. For anything to be over-poised, or metaphorically to decline in health, is to 'sag.' Vegetables are, with us, ' sauce ; ' but our New England cousins have made a further use of this word, for with them one who grows vegetables for sale is a ' sauce-marketer.' This compound we in East Anglia never reached, having been satis- fied with the less distinctive, but generally adopted, appellation of a ' market-gardener ; ' we, however, have our summer and our winter 'sauce.' 'Shot,' as with us, is a young hog ; but with them it is also used metaphorically for a man. None probably of the foregoing or of the following East Anglian words are current in Australia. That they have been 202 EAST ANGLIAN IN THE UNITED STATES naturalised in the United States is a fact that has some historical significance. ' Cuteness ' is a characteristic of everj-body there now. Long, however, before this had become one of their national features, Forby had noted that ' cute ' was a common East Anglian word, derived, as he supposed, from the Anglo-Saxon ' cuth,' skilled or knowing. Their ' right away ' seems to have been suggested by our ' right doivn ' and ' right up.' Their 'rare,' applied to underdone meat, is our 'rere,' from, as Forby tells us, the Anglo-Saxon ' hrere,' raw. We are ' riled ' and ' peskily riled,' just as they are. We taught them how by drawing off the r ' marshes ' might be converted into ' mashes.' A little time back there was a discussion in the newspapers on the origin of what the disputants called the American word 'cuss.' Some demonstrated that it had no connection with ' curse.' An acquaintance, however, with East Anglian, the source, as we have now seen, of much of the New World English, would have rendered this mistake impossible. The word 'cuss,' formed precisely in the same way from 'curse' as our 'puss' and ' nuss ' are from ' purse ' and ' nurse,' has all along been in use here. It is our way to drop the interior r after a, e, o, and u in mono- syllables. ' Marsh ' has been just noticed. ' Harsh,' ' scarce,' 'bird,' 'first,' 'porch,' 'worse,' 'horse,' 'church,' we pronounce ' hash,' ' scace,' ' bahd,' ' fust,' ' poch,' ' wuss,' ' boss,' ' chuch.' Here the farmer used in old times to ' larrup ' his idle, dis- orderly boys ; there, during the abolition agitation, a Southern dame was heard to wonder what kind of a world it wou'd be when ladies could no longer ' larrup ' their own niggers. Distinctness of the Vowel Sounds in East Anglian. The resources of our English tongue for word-making have been enlarged in no inconsiderable degree by the distinctness that has been given to and maintained in the use of our vowel DISTINCTNESS IN VOWEL SOUNDS 203 and diphthong sounds. In modern Greek all the vowels appear to have been pretty nearly merged in some way or other into a single sound somewhat resembling our e. This must have been brought about by mental feebleness, and is a great deteriora- tion and injury to a language. We, on the contrary, have had sufficient mental and physical energy and decision to impart to each vowel so distinct a value that with us the five vowels, combined successively with the same consonants, often supply us with five distinctive words, as for instance in the five names 'Habert,"Hebert,' 'Hibert'(Hibbert), ' Hobart,' and' Hubert j' or, to take another instance, in the five words, 'bat,' 'bet,' 'bit,' 'bot' (a kind of tick that infests cattle), and 'but' And here indeed we have done far more than obtain five distinct words, for with these same two consonants, combined with the double vowels, we have more than doubled the list of words we have just seen our two consonants and the five vowels supply us with ; for instance, the diphthongs give us in addition ' bait," bawt' (bought ), 'belt' (bite), 'beat,' 'beet,' 'Beut'(Bute), 'boat,' 'boot,' 'bout' Here are eight words more ; all the thirteen containing only the same consonants and in the same places. The whole of the differences are in the vowel sounds. And the sound of each of these thirteen words is so distinct from the sound of all the rest, with the one exception of ' beat ' and ' beet,' that no ear could ever have mistaken any one of them for any one of the rest. Now a marked peculiarity of our East Anglian dialect is the frequency with which it has availed itself of this distinctness of our vow-el sounds. This it has done for several purposes : either to retain the old pronunciation of a word ; or to give increased weight to the sound of a word ; or on the contrary to attenuate its sound ; or to distinguish it from some similarly sounded word ; or to make it more easy for the vocal apparatus to utter it ; or from some reason or other that is not now apparent. These objects we have compassed either by retain- ing vowels others have exchanged or by exchanging what they have retained. These are quite legitimate methods of con- structing or of varying words during that stage in the existence 204 DISTINCTNESS IN VOIVEL SOUNDS of a language or dialect when it is not yet under the restraint of literary bonds, but is in its natural condition of perpetual flux, change, and formation. I will subjoin some instances of words in which with us the vowel has come to differ from that found in the same word in literary English. ' Mice,' ' lice,' ' hive,' and ' dive ' are in East Anglian ' meece,' ' leece,' ' heeve,'and ' deeve.' This exchange arises from no dislike to the ?', for we have changed ' men,' ' end,' 'head,' and 'breast ' into'min,' 'ind,' 'hid,' and 'brist.' With us ' have ' and ' wax 'are ' heve ' and ' wex,' both archaic pronunciations retained. In ' sermon ' and ' errand ' the reverse of this substitution — that is, the putting of a in the place of e — has been established. In ' sermon 'this was done probably from a wish to strengthen the word and make much of it, ' sarmon ' being a fuller and more sonorous word than ' sermon.' Sometimes a final / is added to words from, we may suppose, the same motive, for in the formation and use of words breath and effort are never expended without purpose. ' Sermon ' has thus been further strengthened into ' sarmont' It is in this way that we have come to have our 'margent ' and ' epitapht,' and our ' gownd ' and ' lawnd.' Here is evidence of force and vigour — at all events, of something the very reverse of the French practice of apocopating the terminations. But what we have now before us is the excellent material for word-building and for the modification of words our English has in its vowel sounds. AVith us the several vowels are living forces, distinct entities, which are so regarded and so employed, and which our East Anglian dialect illus- trates. To continue our instances : the ove in ' prove ' and ' move ' we pronounce just as cultivated English pronounces it in ' love.' The u in 'shut' and 'shutter' is sounded by us as f; here we retain the archaic pronunciation, being enabled to do it by the distinctness we have imparted to and retained in our vowel sounds. But no more instances are required ; enough have been given to show that it is because we have kept our vowel sounds trenchantly distinct, and in a manner significant, that we are able to use them m the fashion and for the REDUPLICATED AND RHYMING WORDS 205 purposes just noted. Because we have not melted down our vocal gold, and silver, and copper, and tin, and iron into a confused amalgam, each remains available for any natural and legitimate use we may have occasion to make of it. Reduplicated and Rhyming Words. In colloquial English there is a long list of irregularly compounded words, sometimes only irregularly reduplicated with a slight alteration of one of the halves. These words, though they are for the most part beneath the dignity of lexicographers, are yet evidence of a kind of linguistic inven- tiveness in our people, which ought not to be passed over unnoticed. The method of their construction is readily traced, and throws some light on the construction of language itself. In these double words it is not necessary that each member should be, if taken alone, significant. Each may be, and generally is, but it is sufficient if one is significant, while the other alliterates or rhymes with it The rhymes are sometimes double and even treble. The alliteration or rhyme pleases the ear, and aids much in fixing the words in the memory. The repetition of what is significant, put in a somewhat different form, gives emphasis and force to the idea that has to be conveyed. 'Pit-pat' and 'wishy-washy' are examples of the alliterative class ; ' namby-pamby ' and ' miminy-piminy ' of the rhyming class. In neither of the first two of these examples would the first half of the word — that is, ' pit ' or ' wishy ' — if by itself have any signification. Letters may be added or altered for the sake of the jingle. For instance, the two interior w's in ' namby-pamby ' appear to have been introduced for the purpose of building up and strengthening the compound, and in 'miminy-piminy' they may be supposed to be substituted for two «'s if the roots of the word are ' minikin pins.' The ;«'s make a better word than the «'s would, without obscuring the suggestion of the roots. It has come to be understood that words of this kind are 2o6 REDUPLICATED AND RHYMING WORDS used more or less in an unfavourable sense. This is implied in their undignified jingle. Otherwise there would be no clue to the meaning of such combinations as ' sing-song ' and ' see- saw ; ' for not one of these four syllables has in itself any of the depreciatory significance possessed by their compounds. I have collected from the pages of Forby the following list of words of this kind in use in East Anglia. Doubtless it errs in both directions, that of including some that are not exclusively East Anglian, and that of omitting some that, in Suffolk phrase, he had not ' happened on.' Coxy-roxy. — Fantastically drunk. Both members of this word were, perhaps, originally significant. 'Coxy' may have been intended to suggest the idea of strutting like a cock, crowing and flapping his wings ; and ' roxy ' that of rolling or rollicking about. Crawly-maiii'ensis, corn spurrey. Spergularia rubra, sand spurrey. marina, seaside sandwort. Sagina apetala, annual pearlwort. procumbens, procumbent pearl- wort. Scleranthacece. Scleranthus annuus, annual knawel. 226 APPENDIX Hypericacea. Hypericum perfoliatum, perforated St. John's-wort. quadra}igiilu7}i^ square-stalked St. John's-wort. Hypericum humifiisum, trailing .St, John's-wort. pulc/irum, upright St. John's- wort. Hypericum hirsutum, hairy St. John's-wort. Malvacem. Malva moschata, musk mallow. | Malva rotundifolia^ dwarf mallow. JMalva sylvestris, common mallow. Linacem. Linum usitatissimtiin, common flax. Geraniacete. Geranium molle, dove's-foot gera- i Geranium dissectum, jagged-leaved nium. I geranium. rotundifolium, round-leaved Robertiaiium, herb Robert. geranium. Cf^/aw/'W/^/w, long-stalked gera- pusilliim, small-flowered gera- ! nium. nium. Erodium cicutarium, stork's-bill. Celastrinea. Euonymus ettroptsuSy spindle tree. Cytisus scoparius, broom. Ulex europitus, furze. Ononis arz'cnsis, rest-harrow. Medicago maculata, spotted medick. Trifolium pratense, red meadow clover. repens, white clover. sitbterranettm, subterranean clover. procumhcnSy hop trefoil. minus, lesser yellow trefoil. LegnminoscB. j Lotus corniculatus, bird's-foot trefoil. I major, narrow-leaved bird's- foot trefoil. Astragalus glycyphyllus, milk vetch. Ornithopus perpusillus, birdsfoot. Vicia hirsuta, hairy tare. Cracca, tufted vetch. sepium, bush vetch. saliva, common tare. Latliyrus pratensis, meadow vetch- ling. APPENDIX 227 RosacecB. Spima Ulmaria, meadow-sweet. Gettm tirbanum, avens. Fragaria vesca, wild strawberry. Potentilla Tormetitilla, tormentil. reptans, creeping cinquefoil. anseritia, silverweed, Fragai-iastrzim, strawberry- leaved potentil. Potentilla argentea, hoary cinque- foil. Alchemilla arvensis, field lady's- mantle. Agrimonia Enpatoria, agrimony. Rosa arvensis, field rose. cattina, dog-rose. rubi''inosa, sweet briar. Saxifragacece. Saxifraga gramtlata, meadow saxi- frage. tridactylites, rue-leaved saxi- frage. Chiysosplenium alternifolium, alter- nate-leaved golden saxifrage. oppositifoliitm, opposite-leaved golden saxifrage. Crassulacece. Scdum Tekphium, orpine. Onagracea. Epilobium hirsutum, hairy willow- herb. pari'ijiorum, small-flowered willow-herb. montaniim, broad-leaved wil- low-herb. Epilobium ietragonum, square- stalked willow-herb. palnstre, narrow-leaved willow- herb. Circcea lutetiana, enchanter's night- shade. Lyihracea. Lythrum Salicai'ia, purple loosestrife. Cucurbitacece. Bryonia Jioica, red-berried bryony. 228 APPENDIX Umbelliferm. Sankula europtia, wood sanicle. Coniitm tiianulatum , hemlock. Apitim graveokns, wild celery. Aigopodium Podagraria, herb Gerard. Helosciadiiim nodiflorum, procum- bent marshwort. Sium aiiguslifolium, narrow-leaved water-parsnip. Biinium Jie.xuosiiiii., earth-nut. Scandix pecten-'i'cneris, shepherd's- needle. jUthusa Cynapium, fool's parsley. Anthriscus sylvestris, wild beaked parsley. vulgaris, common beaked parsley. Pastinaca iativa, wild parsnip. Heradeum Sphondylium, cow-par- snip. Daiicus Carola, wild carrot. Caiicalis Anthriscus, upright hedge- parsley. nodosa, small bur-parsley. Angelious sylvestris, wild angelica. Cornacece. Cornus sanguinea, dogwood. Caprifoliacem. Viburnum Opulns, wild guelder- I Lonicera Periclymenttm, honey- rose. I suckle. Adoxa Moschatellina, moschatel. RubiacecB. Galium veruni, yellow bedstraw. cniciatum, crosswort. uliginosum, rough marsh bed- straw. Mollugo, great hedge bedstraw. Galium saxatile, smooth heath bed- straw. Aparine, goosegrass. Sherardia arvensis, field madder. Valerianacece. Valeriana officinalis, wild valerian. | Fedia olitoria, lamb's-lettuce. Dipsacea. Knautia arvensis, field scabious. | Siabiosa succisa, devil's-bit scabious. APPENDIX 229 knap Arctium Lappa, burdock. Centaurea scahiosa, greater weed. nigra, common knapweed. Cyanus, blue cornflower. Carciuiis nutans, nodding thistle. acanthoides, welted thistle. eriophorus, woolly-headed this- tle. acaulis, dwarf plume-thistle. Cnicus lanceolatus, spear plume- thistle. arvensis, creeping plume- thistle. palustris, marsh plume-thistle. Eupatoriuin cannahiniim, hemp- agrimony. Aster Tripolium, sea-aster. Bellis perennis, daisy. Solidago Virgaurea, golden rod. Imila dysenierica, common flea- bane. Anthemis Cotula, stinking chamo- mile. arvensis, corn chamomile. Achillea Millefolium, common yarrow. Matricaria Chamomilla, wild cha- momile. inodora, scentless mayweed. Partheniiim, common feverfew. Chrysantlu'inufu segetum, corn marigold. Leucanthemum, ox-eye daisy. Comfosita. Tanacetum vulgare, tansy. Artemisia vulgaris, common mug- wort. Absinthium, common worm- wood. Gnaphalium sylvaticum, highland cudweed. Filago germanica, common filago. minima, least filago. Senecio vulgaris, groundsel. sylva/ictis, mountain groundsel. Jacobcea, common ragwort. Lapsana communis, common nip- plewort. Hypochtzris radicata, cat's-ear. Tragopogon pratetisis, yellow goat's- beard. Leontodon hispidus, rough hawkbit. autumnalis, autumnal hawk- bit. Taraxacum, dandelion. Lactuca virosa, strong-scented let- tuce. Crepis taraxacifolia, rough hawk's- beard. virens, smooth hawk's-beard. Sonchus arvensis, corn sow-thistle. oleraceus, common sow-thistle. Hieraciuin Pilosella, mouse-ear hawkweed. sylvaticum, wood hawkweed. murorum, wall hawkweed. horeale, shrubby broad-leaved hawkweed. Ca?npanulacecE. Campanula rotundifolia, harebell. Ericacea. Calluna vulgaris, ling. 2 30 APPENDIX Oleacece. Ligustritm vulgare, privet. Geniianacea. Erythma Centauriiim, centaury, Convolvulacea. Convolvulus sepium, great con- I Convolvulus arvensis, small bind- volviilus. weed. Boradnacea. Eehium vulgare, \-iper's bugloss. Symphytum officinale, comfrey. Borago officinalis, borage. Lycopsis arvensis, small bugloss. Myosotis palusiris, forget-me-not. ccespitosa, tufted water scorpion- grass. Myosotis sylvatica, upright wood scorpion-grass. arvensis, field scorpion-grass. versicolor, yellow and blue scor- pion-grass. collina, early field scorpion- grass. Solanacea. Hyoscyamtis niger, henbane. I Solanum nigrum, common night- Solamim Dulcamara, woody night- j shade. shade. Scrophulariacea. Verbascum Thapsus, great mullein. Linaria Elaiine, sharp-pointed toadflax. vulgaris, yellow toadflax. Antirrhinum OroiUium, lesser snapdragon. Scrophularia nodosa, knotted fig- wort. aguatica, water-figwort. Digitalis purpurea, purple fox- glove. Veronica hederafolia, i^7-leaved speedwell. Buxbaumii, Buxbaum's speed- well. officinalis, common speedwell. Veronica humifusa,piosti!!Lte smooth speedwell. serpyllifolia, thyme-leaved speedwell. montana, mountain speedwell. Chamcedrys, germander speed- well. scutellata, marsh speedwell. Anagallis, water-speedwell. Beccabunga, brooklime. arvensis, wall speedwell. Rhinanthtts Crista-galli, yellow rattle. Melampyrum pratense, yellow cow- wheat. APPENDIX 231 Plantaginacea. Plantago major, greater plantain. j Plantago Coronopus, media, hoary plantain. \ plantain. Plantago lanceolata, ribwort plantain. Orohanchacece. Orotanchs major, broom-rape. buck'shorn LabiatcE. Mentha piperita, peppermint. aqtiatica, water capitate mint. saliva, marsh whorled mint. arvensis, corn mint. Ca/amintha Cli)iopoiiium,vii\A basil. Prunella vulgaris, self-heal. Nepeta Glechoma, ground -ivy. Scutellaria galerimlata, skull-cap. Stachys sylvat!ca,hedge woundwort. palustris, marsh woundwort. Betonica officinalis, wood betony. Galeopsis Tetrahit, common hemp- nettle. red hemp- narrow-leaved red dead- Galeopsis ladanum nettle. angustifolia, hemp-nettle. Laviiuni purpureitm, nettle. amplexicaule, henbit nettle. album, white dead-nettle. Galeobdolon hiteum, yellow dead- nettle. Ballota nigra, black horehound. 'leucrium Scorodonia, wood sage. Verbenacece. Verbena officinalis, vervain. PrimulacecB. Primula vulgaris, primrose. elatior, oxlip. veris, cowslip. Lysimachia nemoruin, yellow pim- pernel. ^Maja/AVarz/efMi/i.scarlet pimpernel. Plumbaginacea. Armeria maritima, thrift. I Statice bahusiensis, remote-flowered Statice Limonium, sea-lavender. | sea-lavender. Polygonacem. Polygonum amphibium, amphibious Polygonum Convolvulus, climbing persicaria. buckwheat. Persicaria, spotted persicaria. Rumex Acetosella, sheep's sorrel. Hydropiper, water-pepper. ' Acetosa, common sorrel. aviculare, common knotgrass. 232 APPENDIX Chenopodiacece. Beta maritima, beet. Chenofodium album, white goose- foot. Bonus-Henricus, mercury goosefoot. polyspermum, all-seed. AtripUx Httoralis, grass-leaved sea- orache. patiila, common orache. portulacoidcs, sea-purslane Suada maritima, sea-blite Euphorbiacea. Euphorbia Helioscopia, sun spurge. I Euphorbia amygdaloides woo^ Peplus, petty spurge. | spurge. Mcrcuriaiis ptrennis, dog's-mercury. UrticacecB. Urtica urens, small nettle. | Urtica dioica, great nettle. Humulus Lupulus, hop. OrchidacetB. Orchis mascula, early purple I Orchis maculata, spotted palmate orchis. I orchis. IridacecE. Iris Pseudcuprus, yellow water-iris. Dioscoreacem. Tamus communis, common black bryony. Liliacea. Allium ursinum, broad-leaved I Hycuinthus non-scriptus, hyacinth, garlic. ' Ruscus aculeatus, butcher's-broom AracecB. Arum maculatum, cuckoo-pint. The author— aged 59. Tlic Phototype Co., Strainl.Lomlon. 233 ADDENDA. Page 31. It is a very curious coincidence that in the Hst of Rectors of Hawsted, given in Sir John CuUum's History of Hawsted, in 1330, nineteen years before the presentation to Wherstead of our John de Berdefield de Chatesham, our only double-named Vicar, another John, son of William de Bradfield de Radswell, the only double- named Rector of Hawsted, was presented to that Church. One is tempted to the inference that the same place is meant by Berde- field and Bradfield, and that these two contemporary Johns were of dififerent branches of the same family. Page 42. I have just ascertained from the Head Master of the Grammar School of Bury St. Edmunds, that an Edward Leeds was ap- pointed Head Master of that school in 1663, and that he held the appointment till 1707. In 1676 he published y? Latin Exercise Book, and in 1690 Metitodus Gracam Lingiiatn (focendi. We may, therefore, pretty safely infer that T/ie Selections from Lucian^s Dialogues ivith a Latin translation, published in 1678, was the work of this Edward Leeds. He had a son, another Edward Leeds, who, on the death of his father, was appointed Second Master of Bury School, and who afterwards became Head Master of the Ipswich Grammar School. This was the Leeds who was Vicar of Wherstead from 1718 to 1744. R 234 ADDENDA Page 94. On July 4 while the sheets of this volume were passing through the press, Dr. A. H. Bartlett died. Page 167. This evening, July 7, I had a trout brought to me, weighing three pounds and a half, just taken from Bourn Brook in this parish. 235 INDEX OF NAMES. Addison, D., 48, 156 Anstruther, Col. J. H, L. , Awtius, 32 Brand, Admiral, 95, 9 Burgess, J,, 40, 67, 76 Gee, W., 46 167 Gerard of Wachesham, 8, 20, 27 Gladding, 105 Gooding, R. , 9, 98 Granville, Lord, 92 Graye, M. , 9 Green, R. , t-^ Capok, W., 74 Capper, G. , 49, 222 Clark, 107, 113 Coke, Sir Edward, gi Darbie, D. , 9 Darwin, Ch., 133 Dashwood, Hon. Mrs. , 9 — Charles Antony, 222 Davy, D. E., 95 Dawkins, Boyd, 139 Double, David, 13, 55, 96 — Isaac, 127 — Jerry, 13, 125 Drury, G., 43 Ellis, Estofidelis, 77 Fitch, 131 Forby, 193 Frost, 15, 112 Harland, Sir R. (the first), 15. gi, 221 — Sir R. (the second), 14, 92, 102, 118, 130, 221 — Lady, 56, 222 Hayward, H., 148, 152, 224 Hunt, 98 Karolyi, 221 Lee, D. , io6 Leeds, E. , 42 Lyell, Sir C. , 141, 143 Mary, Queen, 65 Moore, 193 Orris. 52 Rands, H., 123 Rewse, W. , io6 236 IXDEX OF NAMES Reymes. Gilbert dc. 100 — Hugh de. 100 Routh. 50 Rushout, Hon. Miss, 10 Samwaies, S. . 33. 38, 66 Scott. 103, 125 Scroope, W. , 94. 166 Shawe, R. N. , 50 Smith, W. , 31 — W. H. , 222 Sparrow, 98 Ven, E., 55 \'ernon. Francis. 89 — James. 90, 221 ■ — Admiral. 92 — Dr.. formerly Jenkin. 13 Watt. 193 Wellington, Duke of, 93 Wesley, 68 Wickliffe, 60 Wilsmore, 120 Wolsey, 74 rAYLOR> Dr. , 65 -JE.,i3S Thome, W., 42 ZiNCKE, F. B, 145. 154 10, 17, 36, 131, 143, PRINTED BV 3l*0rnS\V<)0L)E AND CO,, NEW-STREET SQL'AKE LONDON UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles TTiis book is DUE on the last date stamped below. ^Ai (M^^ or;- of ,.her- • ■^■.<' UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITv D 000 452 747 9 -.' - -r -A-^