THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Now Ready. Extra crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net. CHRONICLES OF THEBERTON A SUFFOLK VILLAGE BY HENRY MONTAGU DOUGHTY Author of " Fries land Meres, " &c. WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY THE REV. W. W. SKEAT, Lrrr.D., &c. Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1910 TN this book we have the history of a Suffolk parish written by one who knows its traditions and loves its soil. Com- mencing with the Norman Conquest, when its serfs were still sold like its cattle and when it was called by a corruption of the older Saxon name, Thewardetuna, we are led carefully down, step by step, to the recent date of 1850. The parish has changed very little, and that slowly, since the days it was mentioned in the Pastpn Letters. The old tower which was standing in 1066 is still partoT"the Church, and on its outskirts a portion of another venerable building (and both of these are included in the illustra- tions of this book), the Abbey of Leiston, exists also. Of this Abbey we are told much here, for, until the Dissolution, it possessed the advowson of Theberton which adjoined it, having acquired it in 1373 from Margaret Countess of Norfolk, and it occasionally upheld its rights vi et armis. The author puts the whole life of the parish in the different centuries before us, giving us details of the Church, the incumbents and their difficulties during the Tudor and Stuart times, the parish government, the folklore, and even the inns. He has much to say of the land owners, and the residents, one of whom in remembrance of his happy youth at Theberton carried the name of the parish to a suburb of Adelaide in South Australia. He gives moreover extracts from the registers (which date from 1548) showing the names of the parishioners, and indicates by the prices and valuations which he quotes the gradual progress of luxury and comfort. When records of the parish have been wanting the writer has, from his local knowledge, been enabled to fill up the lacuna by illustrations from the history of the adjoining parishes, and this book, originally intended as the history of a small Suffolk community, will be found to be of special interest not only to East Anglians, but to all, far and wide, who wish to know how their forefathers have fared and carried on parish life from the time of the Norman Invasion. EXTRACT FROM INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. PROFESSOR SKEAT THE law of progress has always involved great and important changes. Many of these, especially as regards the pronunciation of our language and the history of our spelling, have been so slight and imperceptible at the time as to have usually escaped much observation ; but constant flux and steady movement produce important differences at last. One difficulty of watching events consists in the perpetual change of time and place ; and it is for this reason that it is a partial gain because it affords us a steadier view to eliminate one of these elements by making the place invariable. This is why it is often of much assistance to peruse the annals of a. single parish, such as that of Theberton, in order to understand how it is fully subject to the general law, changing from day to day for the most part imperceptibly, yet not unfrequently even violently affected by the shocks of great events. It is extremely interesting to note, in the following pages, several instances in which even a quiet parish has passed through its trials. See, for example, the remark at p. 8, that "from that act of a pope, who died seven centuries ago, our rectors have still to suffer ! " The "first prosecution of a poacher" goes back to 1299 (p. 10). In 1131 there was "a deadly pest amongst the animals, such as had never been in memory of man" (p. n). And it was ascribed to the appearance in the sky of an exceptionally beautiful exhi- bition of the aurora borealis. Much interest attaches to the prices of wheat and bullocks in 1281 and 1288 (p. 22). A pheasant cost as much as a goose. In 1348-9 came the terrible Black Death, when " harvests rotted upon the ground " (p. 24). Few of us realise, even in a slight degree, the many comforts of life which we moderns enjoy. Even the peasant may now protect his windows with glass ; but the medieval noble, who knew but little privacy, often had to dine in hall, protected only by a clumsy hood, or not at all, from the horrible draughts pouring through apertures in the cold stone wall. " How women got on without pins is hard to imagine " (p. 30). There is a strange story about the arrest of the rector of Theberton in his own church, whilst he was celebrating divine service, on Ascension Day, 1445 (p. 55). In 1528, we have the trials of two " wise women," who pretended to effect cures (p. 63) ; and somewhat later, of a wizard who practised divination by help of a sieve and a pair of shears (p. 65). In 1514, the new hand- guns were challenging the use of the bow ; but the parliament decided in favour of the latter (p. 69). These are a few specimens of the multifarious kinds of inform- ation to be here found ; all within the first 70 pages. It would be easy to multiply them largely ; but I hope enough has been said to recommend to the reader a careful perusal of the whole volume. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE OLD ROUND TOWER, THEBERTON CHURCH. CHURCH OF ST. MARY DE INSULA. A SURVIVOR OF THE OLD DEER PARK. FRAMLINGHAM CASTLE. THE FONT, THEBERTON CHURCH. LEISTON ABBEY IN 1781. THE CHURCH FARM. "THE STONE TO SITT UPON." GEORGE DOUGHTY ESQUIRE. NORMAN DOOR, THEBERTON CHURCH. THEBERTON HALL. MAPS. TYLERS GREKN. WINTERS HEATH. THE COMMONS OF THEBERTON IN 1824. LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. CHRONICLES OF THEBERTON THE OLD ROUND TOWER, THEBERTON CHURCH. A SUFFOLK VILLAGE BY HENRY ^MONTAGU DOUGHTY Author of " Friesland Meres" &*c. WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY THE REV. W. W. SKEAT, LITT.D., &c. Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1910 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, BREAD STREET HILL, E.G., AND BUNGAV, SUFFOLK. DA TO MY FRIENDS IN THEBERTON THEBERTON HALL, April, 1910. 825854 PAGE INTRODUCTION xiii CHAPTER I I Theberton in Doomsday Aspect of the Country Our Round Tower Death of William the Conqueror The First Leiston Abbey Slaves in Theberton Forgotten Sites Monastic Land- owners in Theberton Our Earliest Poacher Superstition and Cattle Plague Customs of the Manor The Great House of Bigod Edward II. Patron of the Benefice Early Rectors Devolution of the Advowson. CHAPTER II 17 The Black Death A XlVth Century Assessment Theberton Jurors in 1341 The Parish in the XlVth Century Earnings and Cost of Living Wages and Prices Great Fluctuations in Prices Suffolk Farming Standards of Comfort Homes of the Period Has our Manhood Degenerated? Mediaeval Manners Domestic Industries Home Defence Ancient Local Place Names. CHAPTER III 33 The Jenney Family Word Pictures from Chaucer Nature's Gentlemen The Old Theberton Deer Park Deer for Food and Sport The Modern Park Tithe Free Venison from Framlingham Castle A Park Keeper's Diary The Frenche Quene and the Cardinal Heveningham Park Concerning Appropriations. CHAPTER IV 45 The Theberton Appropriation The Pope's Usurped Power The King presents Rectors The Appropriation Invalid How Invalidated? Successive Rectors Presentation of John Doonwych Proceedings against Doonwych An Affray in Theberton Church Holy Thursday A.D. 1445 Fifteenth Century Fashions An Outrageous Abbot. CHAPTER V 58 Theberton Wills A Church Ale and a Trental Visitations of Leiston Abbey Local Names of Leiston Monks Courts Christian and Apparitors "Wise Women" in the XVIth Century Drynkynges A Clerical Wizard A Monkish Conspiracy The' Conspiracy Fails A Rector's Testament The Religious Renais- sance Longbow versus Caliver. Vlll COiNTENTS CHAPTER VI 71 " Tithes Forgotten" Theberton in the Star Chamber Abbot's "Assault and Grievous Affray" Taxable Men of Theberton A Great Change Impending "Poverty their Captain" After the Dissolution John Grene the Hermit The Paraphrase of Erasmus Walking the Perambulation The Soke of Leyston Tenants of the Soke versus Browne Claim for Common Rights. CHAPTER VII 85 A Martyrdom at Yoxford Our Earliest Parish Register An Old Theberton Lawsuit Concerning Theberton Hall Parish Topography The Ingham Family Communicants and Recusants Agricultural Prosperity An Elizabethan Farmer's Belongings The Church Farm State of Highways A.D. 1555 The Eastbridge Inn A.D. 1589 Our Old Church Bells. CHAPTER VIII 99 Christmas Festivities Holloaing Largesse Suffolk Fair Maids Theberton Christian Names Old Theberton Surnames Eliza- bethan Magistrates Poachers and Game Preservation Payment of Members of Parliament A Theberton Parson's Will Presentation of William Fenn Troublous Times. CHAPTER IX in The Book of Sports Bull-Baiting Betwixt the Two Bundles of Hay The Great Protestation The Eastern Association The Solemn League and Covenant Scandalous Ministers Parson Fenn Summoned Sequestration of the Rectory Fenn's Case Considered Death of Parson Fenn Commissioners Sitting at Eastbridge A Wreck off " The Sluice" Fenn's " Herbidge Book" The Rectory in 1635 A Flood of Superstition. CHAPTER X 127 Witches Hanged at Aldborough Superstition at Theberton A Digression about Weasels The Directory The Engagement Profanity Expensive The Rolls of the Manor Marriage by Magistrates Our Parish Soldier Theberton Parish Accounts The Plague Year Bartholomew Confessors Hue and Cry at Theberton. CHAPTER XI 141 Our Man-of-War Parson The Battle of Sole Bay Noise of Battle at Theberton Oboli and Quadrantes Customs of Tithing Attending the Generals The View of Frank Pledge The " Stone to Sitt Upon" Contents of a XVIIth Century Cottage Edmund Bohun of Westhall Labourers' Wages in 1682 The " Pariter." CHAPTER XII 154 Repairs to the Church Fees for Chirurgioning Assessment for Poll Tax The Archdeacon's Prandium Tyler's Green A Tax on Bachelors The Last Jenney of Theberton Parish Apprentices "Noyful Fo wells and Vermyn " Concerning Briefs The Moll House. CONTENTS ix CHAPTER XIII 166 Primitiae or First Fruits Coronation Festivity Linen Weaving Parish Republics Duties of Parish Constables Phaba Booth's . Penance Appointment of a Parish Clerk Phaba Married Influence of Justices Fuel for the Poor Peat from the Common Fen Herbs for Physic. CHAPTER XIV 179 Dipping for Lameness Purchase of a "Dog Wipe" Pluralist Parsons The Complaint of "Orthodoxus" A Parish Doctor's Bill Repairing the Tombs The Bear Way Hall and Park House A Potash Office The Beli Brook Vitality of Whin Seeds Crofts and Tofts Incorporation of Blything Union Riot at Bulcamp Workhouse Theberton Rioters. CHAPTER XV 195 A Forgotten Sport Setting Partridges How it was Done Shooting, Old Style and New Suffolk in India The Brick House - **" A Theberton Empire Builder An Australian Theberton Balloting for the Militia Hard Times Parish Topography Con- templated Enclosure of Commons Theberton Enclosure Act Concerning Parish Rights Tylers Green and Winters Heath More's the Pity. CHAPTER XVI 212 " Legalised Spoliation " New Parish Roads Who were Bene- fited? Minsmere Level Church Plate in 1801 The Company of Singers Our Last Parish Clerk The Church of the People Old Gravestones Theberton House Rules for a Holy Life A Theberton Statesman. CHAPTER XVII 225 The Last Parish Perambulation A Parish Emigrant Education Past and Present Commutation of Tithes Value of Theberton Tithes Untrustworthy Terriers A Poet Rector The Church Restored The Gleaning Bell The End of the Story. NOTES by the Rev. Professor Skeat 241 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE OLD ROUND TOWER, THEBERTON CHURCH Frontispiece CHURCH OF ST. MARY DE INSULA . . To face page 6 A SURVIVOR OF THE OLD DEER PARK . 11 38 FRAMLINGHAM CASTLE 42 THE FONT, THEBERTON CHURCH 11 S^ LEISTON ABBEY IN 1781 11 78 THE CHURCH FARM 11 96 "THE STONE TO SITT UPON" I 4 8 GEORGE DOUGHTY ESQUIRE .... 11 11 196 NORMAN DOOR, THEBERTON CHURCH 11 218 THEBERTON HALL M 232 MAPS. TYLERS GREEN To face page 208 WINTERS HEATH 210 THE COMMONS OF THEBERTON IN 1824 . 214 ERRATA Page 26, line 6 from foot, for " Bedingfield" read "Beding- feld." Page 28, lines 2 and 4, transpose the words " hall " and " bower." INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. PROFESSOR SKEAT OUR history is full of great events, and extends, since the time of Caesar, over more than nineteen hundred years ; but the more important part of it, considered as it affects us at present, is comprised within the modern period. Students of the history of our language usually consider this as beginning, for practical purposes, with the accession of Henry VII.; and it was near the beginning of the eighth year of his reign that Columbus discovered San Salvador. The events of the last four hundred years concern us therefore most nearly ; but there is also much that we cannot rightly appreciate without some acquaintance with the laws, manners, and customs of medieval times. The law of progress has always involved great and important changes. Many of these, especially as regards the pronunciation of our language and the history of our spelling, have been so slight and imperceptible at the time as to have usually escaped much observation ; but constant flux and steady movement produce import- ant differences at last. One difficulty of watching events consists in the perpetual change of time and place ; and it is for this reason that it is a partial gain because it xiv INTRODUCTION affords us a steadier view to eliminate one of these elements by making the place invariable. This is why it is often of much assistance to peruse the annals of a single parish, such as that of Theberton, in order to understand how it is fully subject to the general law, changing from day to day for the most part impercept- ibly, yet not unfrequently even violently affected by the shocks of great events. It is extremely interesting to note, in the following pages, several instances in which even a quiet parish has passed through its trials. See, for example, the remark at p. 8, that " from that act of a pope, who died seven centuries ago, our rectors have still to suffer ! " The " first prosecution of a poacher " goes back to 1299 (p. 10). In 1131 there was "a deadly pest amongst the animals, such as had never been in memory of man" (p. il). And it was ascribed to the appearance in the sky of an exceptionally beautiful exhibition of the aurora borealis. Much interest attaches to the prices of wheat and bullocks in 1281 and 1288 (p. 22). A pheasant cost as much as a goose. In 1 348-9 came the terrible Black Death, when " harvests rotted on the ground " (p. 24). Few of us realise, even in a slight degree, the many comforts of life which we moderns enjoy. Even the peasant may now protect his windows with glass ; but the medieval noble, who knew but little privacy, often had to dine in hall, protected only by a clumsy hood, or not at all, from the horrible draughts pouring through apertures in the cold stone wall. " How women got on without pins is hard to imagine" (p. 30). There is a strange story about the arrest of the rector of Theberton in his own church, INTRODUCTION xv whilst he was celebrating divine service, on Ascension Day, 1445 (p. 55). In 1528, we have the trials of two " wise women," who pretended to effect cures (p. 63) ; and somewhat later, of a wizard who practised divination by help of a sieve and a pair of shears (p. 65). In 1514, the new hand-guns were challenging the use of the bow ; but the parliament decided in favour of the latter (p. 69). These are a few specimens of the multifarious kinds of information to be here found ; all within the first 70 pages. It would be easy to multiply them largely ; but I hope enough has been said to recommend to the reader a careful perusal of the whole volume. WALTER W. SKEAT. CHRONICLES OF THEBERTON CHAPTER I IT seems a far cry back to the days of William the Conqueror ; but thus deep must we delve to find the earliest notice of Theberton. When William felt himself secure in his saddle, the thought came to his mind to have a survey made of his new dominion. We learn from the most ancient book in the English language the " Saxon Chronicle " how the king spoke very gravely to his Witan, and that he sent scribes throughout England, to write what every man possessed in land and in cattle, and how much money it was worth ; " no single hide, no rood even of land, no ox, nor cow, nor pig, was omitted." All these accounts were collected, and together form what we call the " Doomsday Book." This old book eight hundred years old is still preserved ; and in it are entries relating to this our parish which the Normans called " Thewardetuna." The Saxon name had been Theod-beorhtes-tun, the " tun " or farm of Theod-beorht, whence Thebbert's-tun, and dropping the s Thebbert-ton. Theod-beorht was pronounced Tibert by the Normans, whence another form, Tibberton. B 2 THEBERTON IN DOOMSDAY That corruption fell off, and Theberton, as now written, faithfully preserves the name of the " tun " as Thebbert " himself pronounced it a thousand years ago. l Mentioned too, in " Doomsday," is the manor, which is still in being. It was old even then, having come down perhaps from Theod-beorht. At the time of the survey, a man named Hubert held it under the great Robert Malet, of whom we shall read later on. In the days of Edward the Confessor, there had been one free man in Theberton, whose name was Suart Hoga, who held sixty acres under one Ulf, son of Maning Suart ; and there had been one plough, and two acres of meadow land put at i a year ; but William's surveyor found the plough no longer ; .the land had dropped out of cultiva- tion, and the value had fallen to but los. a year. The plough, I think, implied as much " earable " land as a team of eight oxen and one plough could work in a twelve-month, which might perhaps be one hundred acres. The present area of Theberton, probably much the same as in the Conqueror's time, is something under two thousand acres ; so we must picture some nineteen hundred acres of natural country wild heath, fen and forest, with, in the midst of it, about one hundred acres of clearing. And as was this, so were the adjacent manors ; each for the most part waste ; and the wastes together formed a vast wilderness, dotted with oases, cultivated like ours of Theberton. Good harbour was there for wild game red, fallow, 2 and roe deer, wolves, and wild boars, beavers, and perhaps bears. Herds of tame swine also, in the charge of Saxon swineherds like Gurth of Ivanhoe, 1 This on the high authority of Professor Skeat, for whose kind help I am greatly indebted. 2 Fallow deer are supposed to have been introduced by the Romans. ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY 3 battened on beech-mast and acorns, as swine do to this day, during the pannage months, in what was then in fact as well as name the New Forest. Rude huts there must have been for herdsmen and ploughmen ; and no doubt near the sea, and on the shores of the estuary now the Minsmere Level, were other cots for fishermen, who, in wicker hide-covered coracles, used to go fishing for herrings. Poor cabins all such dwellings then, though maybe neither cold, nor, judged by the barbarous standard of those days, quite comfortless. Bits of garden, yards they called them we Suffolk folk call them yards still were about them, and sheds, too, for cow or pony. Men built their own dwellings and sheds. Material was plentiful and nigh to hand, wood out of the forest for " house bote " and " hedge bote," clay under foot fit for daubing, and reeds from the nigh fen for their thatch- ing. No roads worthy the name then existed, only rutty tracks here and there, worn by solid cart wheels, and paths, mere forest trails, for foot people. There doubtless stood a church in our clearing, built by some Saxon lord of the manor, of rough logs prob- ably, and thatched with reeds ; and near it, perhaps even touching it, stood an ancient tower. Such towers were many in East Anglia, mostly placed either near the sea ; or by those first highways of an uncleared country the courses of rivers ; or near the great high roads, which the Romans during four centuries had driven through all obstacles. No quarri- able stone is found in these parts for corners, so copying Roman work such as the half-round bastions of Burgh Castle, our Saxon ancestors picked flints from off the land, bedded them in concrete, and built their towers round. " Rounde maad in compas " were they, like the B 2 4 OUR ROUND TOWER " Tower of Jelousie," the mortar perhaps compounded like Chaucer's prescription : ". . . Of licour wonder dere Of quykke lyme persant and egre The which was tempred with vynegre." At all events, one finds the mortar now as hard nearly as the flint stones. These round towers must have been the work of able craftsmen, so many of them still, after the storm and stress of centuries, standing strong as ever. Like most of its compeers, our round tower of Theber- ton stands on a conspicuous site, put there to serve not only for a stronghold against sea rovers, but as a landmark too, and a lighthouse to guide wayfarers through an intricate forest. Afterwards, when men needed a church for worship, and to serve as a store- house for treasures, they built it close to their tower, in which they then hung bells. Our Suffolk towers thus came to resemble in their usefulness the noble Irish Round Towers. Just when the primitive log church gave place to a better we cannot tell with certainty, but that the nave and the westernmost half of the present chancel were built not long after the Conqueror's time is probable ; the north door is a fine piece of Norman, and an accomplished architect, my late friend Mr. St. Aubyn, showed me good Norman work as far east as to half the length of the chancel. A church at Theberton, dedicated to St. Peter, was taken noteof in "Doomsday " ; and there was then a house for the parson, and glebe, perhaps the selfsame fields as now, computed at fifteen acres ; acres were then uncertain quantities, there are twelve statute acres at the present day ; the benefice was put at 40 marks or 26. i$s. ^d- a considerable income at the then value of money. DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 5 A year after his great survey, King William died in Normandy. In those days news travelled slowly, few of the laity could even read ; so our forbears in Theberton may have heard nought of the king's death till their 1 priest from the steps of the altar there were no pulpits then announced to them that his son had been crowned / "at Westminster, and that he had given sixty pennies to I Theberton and every other country church, for his soul's ^ sake. A masterful lord had been William, " mild " indeed " to those good men who loved God, severe beyond measure to those who withstood himself." " In his time," says the contemporary chronicler, " any man who was himself aught, might travel through the kingdom with a bosom-full of gold unmolested, and no man durst kill another, however grievous the injury he might have suffered." It helps to bring home to one how different an England our far-away ancestors lived in, and how different they were from ourselves, when one recalls that even the language they spoke would at this day sound foreign to our ears. English has been so changed in the course of long centuries that we have to learn the old words Anglo-Saxon we call them now as one learns Dutch, by the help of dictionary. The parish priest of Theberton was no doubt a Saxon an Englishman and made his announcement in good English to English folk, but we moderns could not have understood a word of it. One thing that old time priest, whose name even is j forgotten, had in common with our modern parsons ; he I was not forbidden to have a wife and family. Not long ' after it was ordered by William of Corboyl Archbishop of Canterbury and all the bishops of England, that priests should abandon their wives ; but the chronicler 6 THE FIRST LEISTON ABBEY adds that they all kept their wives just as before, and that by the King's permission. Towards the close of Henry II's reign, in 1182, a house of religion made its first appearance on the borders of our parish among the swamps of the river Myssemeare. Now, the swamp is laid dry, but the walls of the Abbey church still stand upon an eminence rising above the green level as if still an island. Tidal waters did indeed ebb and flow round the desolate spot, when by a deed yet existing, William de Valleines gave land to the Church by the name of the " Church of St. Mary de insula." The Abbey was founded by a Suffolk worthy, Sir Ranulph de Glanvil, a great lawyer to whom our earliest law book is attributed, a knightly warrior, captor of King William the Lion of Scotland, Justiciary, Regent of the Kingdom, one of King Henry II's executors. His supposed birth-place is the parish of Stratford near our market town, Saxmundham. He died doing his devoir under Coeur de Lion at Acre. By the twelfth century, the monastic virtues were mayhap declining, but Ranulph introduced a new order of special sanctity, a late graft upon the primitive stock of that father of monks St. Benedict. St. Norbert, founder of the new order, was Archbishop of Magdeburg, where travellers should visit his convent, spared by even Tilly. He settled his community first in the forest of Coucy, where a site was shown him by an angel, the pratum monstratum, from which, or from the Norman primontrt, comes the designation of his order. His Premonstratensian or Premontratensian monks who wore a white habit, were also known as white canons. This house, the first Leyston Abbey, and its two successors on a different site, all stood close upon the borders of our parish. I have tried to tell their story < < c S ^/ f"" 1 a SLAVES IN THEBERTON 7 elsewhere, but it is so interwoven with the story of Theberton, that I shall have to repeat a little ; and some further gleanings from its archives will, I hope, add interest to this narrative. In the barbarous days of old, we know our country was cursed with the blight of slavery. In our now free England, as in Russia but yesterday, and the day before yesterday in Mecklenburg, Christian men, women and children could be bought and sold like cattle. One class, the " villeins regardant," only indeed was attached to the soil, so that when land was sold they passed as part of it ; a lower class " villeins in gross " being saleable independently, like any other merchandise. Now for one document from the Abbey Chartulary. It is a deed whereby one Saer de Biskele granted to the church of St. Mary of Leeston l and the canons of the Premontratensian order serving there, two little woods in the parish of Theberton, and together with them one Roger the Carter with all his following Roger and all his family, as " villeins regardant," thus passing with the land, like any other live stock upon it. Take another charter, whereby the same man, Saer de Biskele, granted to the same abbot and canons a house in Theberton, and certain lands, of which some were held by Bernard Herell, together with Bernard himself and his following. These charters give the names of the two little woods, and of the house of Saer de Biskele. The woods were called Uphalheg and Chiltre, and the house was known as Kaldham. And other charters deal with other lands, called Mikel Appeltun, and a wood Wimundesheg. 1 Professor Skeat is of opinion that this place-name is derived from an A. S. form Leastun "the meadows farm." Hence- forward, the several spellings of the name found in the several authorities for the time under consideration are used in the text. 8 FORGOTTEN SITES Would we could identify them ; I have found a wood called "Childer wood," in a royal grant of 1557, but it is exasperating that this, as well as the other old names, have now dropped out of memory. We read also in the charters, of land then lying " in morA" and of one acre described as "one very poor acre," in Theberton. Can it be that this moor of Theberton was the "dry common " of more recent times ? As to the " very poor acre," of such acres ploughable by two rabbits and a knife, there are too many still on the east side of the parish. The chief landlords in Theberton about this period were : the famous house of Bigod, one William always referred to as the son of Alan, our friend Saer de Biskele, and lastly the Abbey and Convent of Leystone. In the year 1200, we find that Roger le Bigod conveyed to William the son of Alan half a knight's fee equal to six plough lands (otherwise hides or carucates) for the life of William. In 1224, the Abbot of Leystone held lands in the parish, and, on an inquisition held in 1 274, his holding then seems to have been thirty acres. For Leystone Abbey lands no tithe was payable, as the estates of the Premontratensians had been then lately exempted by Innocent III ; and from that act of a Pope, who died seven centuries ago, our rectors still have to suffer! A statute of Henry VIII, having provided * I that persons who at the Dissolution should come into possession of dissolved Abbeys' lands should hold them as free of tithes as their old monastic owners had held them, has had this consequence : that 108 acres, 2 roods, and 17 perches in the parish of Theberton, formerly property of the Abbey of Leystone, are now held tithe free by the present lay owners. There are yet other lands besides, MONASTIC LANDOWNERS IN THEBERTON 9 in the parish, exempt for quite other reasons as we shall see later, from which our parson draws no tithe rent charge. At that time, the law permitted religious communities to hold land, and estates had long been accumulating in their hands. The mischief of it was, that areas vast in the aggregate, became inalienable, a dead hand it was said laid upon them, which was against the interests both of the feudal lords and of the Crown. At last, the evil increasing, that great legislator Edward I determined to apply a remedy. A Parliament, summoned by him for that object in 1279, enacted that thenceforth none should sell, give, bequeath or exchange lands to any religious body without the King's licence. This Act, the famous Statute of Mortmain, however obnoxious to their cupidity, the monks had not dared oppose, lest some worse thing should befall them ; the mendicant orders had favoured it ; and on all his subjects, both lay and clerical, had fallen a great awe of the resolute King. This illustra- tion is historical : When pressing on a further Act, it came to the King's ears that ominous murmurs were heard in the Monks' Hall at Westminster. Edward would brook no murmurers. A knight, one Sir John Havering, sent by the King, marched into the Hall, and thus spoke he : " Reverend Fathers, if any of you dare to contradict the King's command, let him stand forth that his person may be taken note of, as a known peace breaker of the kingdom." Silence fell upon all ; only one man, William Montfort, Dean of St. Paul's, so greatly dared as respectfully to request an audience. It was granted, but, entering Edward's awful presence, such terror overcame the dean that he fell dead, so the record tells us, at the grim monarch's feet. 10 Soon, occasion arose in this little parish of ours to put the law in force. In 1289, one John de Livermere and his wife Matilda desired to grant a messuage and thirty acres of land in Theberton to Nicholas the Abbot and the Canons of Leystone, and for this they had to obtain, and did in fact obtain, a licence from the King. Again, in 1312, we find that the same John and Matilda, having, together with other persons, conveyed some lands to the Abbey without the King's licence, the royal pardon had to be sued for, and was, probably for weighty reasons, granted. In 1 299, occurred the first prosecution of a poacher I have found recorded. The Abbot of Leyston im- pleaded a certain man John, for trespassing and driving off the hares from his manor the manor of Leyston. That same John afterwards farmed Abbey lands in Theberton. Since John's time such " dampnacionis filii spiritu diabolico seducti" as, ages afterwards, Bishop Rede called poachers, have never been wanting in Theberton. That abbot's successor, John de Glemham, acquired from John le Bigod de Stockton the right of free warren in the parish of Theberton, which enabled him and his monks, " lovers of venerye," to hunt beasts and fowls of warren hares, rabbits, pheasants, partridges over lands which did not belong to them. Parliament, by the Statute of Mortmain had thought to bind the religious orders ; but the fetters it forged, the monks snapped like pack thread. However strong the law, their ingenuity found means to evade it. Quite regardless of the Statute, they went on adding field to field, taking conveyances, not to themselves direct, but into the names of trustees for them. We are not without instances. In 1300 and 1305, one John SUPERSTITION AND CATTLE PLAGUE 11 de Leystone, whose name we shall meet later, became such a Trustee (pro Abbate) of lands in our parish. And in 1345, Richard de Bunstede,and in 1357, William Scarlett and others, became respectively trustees in like manner for the Abbey. At last Parliament put an end to the practice by an Act of 1391. One often hears it said what good times our fore- fathers had in these early Middle Ages. It is an idle tale, inspired by ignorance. The truth is that oppression and cruelty raged ; battle, murder, and sudden death were too awfully familiar; agriculture was in its rudiments ; no grain for food was imported ; sanitation was not even thought of; and spectral shapes of famine, plague, and pestilence stalked through the land. Men lived in the darkness of ignorance, fear, and superstition ; they imagined baleful portents in the heavens, and real calamities too frequently followed. This by way of illustration : One night after Christ- mas 1131, people were awakened from sleep by a portentous spectacle the northern half of the heavens lit up with burning flame ! That same year brought a deadly pest amongst the animals, such as had never been in memory of man. It fell on cattle and on swine chiefly, so that in a township where ten or twelve ploughs had been kept (ploughing then was done by oxen), not one survived ; and a man who had owned two or three hundred swine, had not one left. After that, the hens died, and flesh meat became scarce, and cheese too, and butter. The whole country suffered ; Theberton cannot have escaped. " God mend the state of things when such shall be His will," prayed the devout old chronicler, a monk of the great Abbey of Peterborough. Simple, superstitious old monk ! Celestial aurora borealis, bright and beautiful " Merry 12 CUSTOMS OF THE MANOR Dancers " how could he have regarded them as portents of calamity? I have met with no earlier case of swine fever and cattle plague. Those were the dark ages indeed ; yet through the mirk of them, and despite their distance, the concen- trated lights of history enable us to discern a slow process of development. True, there were constant reactions, waves advanced, receded, but the tide was rising. The status of the serfs was, from one cause and another, by degrees improving. The "villeins re- gardant " were commuting personal service for money. Their payments were recorded on the rolls of the manor, and, at last, copies of the rolls grew to be title deeds. One generation gained a bit, and the next a bit more. At first, the lord could at pleasure oust a villein who held, in the lawyers' quaint Norman French, " solonque la volonte le seigniour " absolutely at will. But in time there came to be added, qualifying that formula, this other term, " according to the custom of the manor." The customs of the manor crystallised, pre- cedent followed precedent, till in the end, the copyholder could eject even his lord, if he trespassed on his holding. The " villein in gross " too, slipped more and more out of the yoke of slavery, and stood at last on his own feet as a free labourer. To each generation in our quiet village, change was, we may suppose, hardly perceptible ; things would seem to go on much as usual. There were the two time-out-of mind authorities, manorial and religious. There never failed to be a lord of the manor ; and one " person of the parish " succeeded another. The manor courts were held, no doubt, regularly by the steward ; for seldom would the lord himself preside ; the suitors would know only the steward. A non-resi- THE GREAT HOUSE OF BIGOD 13 dent lord would be little more than a name. Of our manor the lord was non-resident and a foreigner to boot, but he Robert Malet, Robert the Hammer, the Norman who had buried Harold by the sea-shore was such a famous warrior, and so vast were his possessions, that when he tumbled from his high estate, his fall must have shaken the ground even of remote Theberton. Two hundred and twenty-one manors had he in Suffolk. A defeated rebel, he lost them all, they were forfeited to the King. How long this manor of Theberton continued in royal hands I do not know, but not later than King John's time ; for in his reign, and through the reigns of suc- ceeding Plantagenets, on to King Henry V's time, we know it was held by Bigods. They too, for a long period, were owners of the advowson. Probably, they held it as appendant to their manor ; but, on such evidence as is available, I cannot trace its devolutions in their hands before the fourteenth century. The earliest dealing with the advowson that I have found, was effected by an ancient charter, which is pre- served in our great treasure house the British Museum. By this charter the same William son of Alan whom we have met before, granted to the Leyston canons the church of St. Peter of Theberton, which was then in his fee. Charters in those days bore no dates, but Mr. Jeayes, of the MSS. Department of the Museum, tells me that the names of the witnesses (Hubert, bishop of Sarum, and Radulf archdeacon of Colchester) prove that the deed was made between 1189 and 1194. The words of William's grant would seem sufficient to have passed the entire advowson, but I conjecture that, in fact, it passed only some lesser interest, perhaps a next 14 EDWARD II. PATRON OF THE BENEFICE presentation. If the grant had vested the advowson in the Abbey, what more unlikely than that monks would, unless under compulsion, divest themselves of it ; yet, though unluckily, there is a gap just here in our records, it is in evidence, that, not a century after the grant, the advowson of Theberton was in the hands of the Bigods. We know that in 1305, Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, presented one Richard de Dodyngtone to the Theberton Rectory; and from the inquisition, held in 1306 after the death of Earl Roger Bigod, it appeared he had held, besides half a knight's fee in the parish, "the church of Theberton." In 1307, the advowson was in King Edward II, who had it, so we learn, by reason that the estates late of Earl Roger were in his hands. The question arises how they got into the King's hands. And this opens a window, out of our little parish into the world. The facts are these. Edward the First had called upon Roger Bigod, his Earl Marshal, to lead troops out to Gascony. He would go cheerfully, he said, if the King was himself going, and would march in the van as was his right by birth ; but if the King went not, he was not bound to serve in arms beyond the limits of England. "No! I am not so bound," the Earl hardily insisted, " and I will not go without you." " By God, Sir Earl, you either go or hang." " By God, Sir King, I neither go nor hang." The King did not hang him, but so heavy had been the cost of the quarrel, that it crippled the Earl ; and in the end wrought disaster for the house of Bigod. Exhaustion of his resources drove Roger to borrow ; he borrowed from his rich brother and heir presumptive, John Bigod. Whether the gossip is reliable that he planned to spite John for asking repayment we cannot EARLY RECTORS 15 tell. But the fact is certain that the Earl did con- trive this compact with the King : the Earl would surrender to the King, as his feudal lord, all his castles, manors, and lands, and also his titles and dignities, upon this condition : that the King should defray his debts ; should provide him for life with a com- petent revenue 1,000 marks ; should re-grant to him and the heirs of his body the titles and dignities of Earl and Marshal ; and, further, should re-grant all the castles, manors, and lands to the Earl and Countess Alice his wife, and their issue, with remainder to the King himself and his heirs. Roger and Alice never had any children, so the compact worked out, that when Earl Roger died, the dignities of Earl and of Marshal lapsed to the King ; and the castles, manors, and lands vested absolutely in the King also, subject only to a life estate in Countess Alice. The final result being that, not only was John disinherited, but the House of Bigod was stripped for ever, and beyond recovery, of all their great estates and dignities. Soon after Roger the Earl's death, King Edward I died, and his son Edward II reigned in his stead. In 1 306, one " Lebygod " was, it seems, presented to Theberton. I guess that this name should be le Bigod, and that Countess Alice as tenant for life of the advowson presented some member of her late husband's family. The benefice was soon vacant again, for in 1307, one John de Framlingham was presented, the patron now being Edward II, who again in 1312 presented Laurence de Rustene. It must be presumed that not long after her husband's death Countess Alice had surrendered her life estate in the advowson to the King. Between de Framlingham and de Rustene, an incumbency intervened of John de Trydian a Cornish 16 DEVOLUTION OF THE ADVOWSON man. I suppose that the King presented him, I cannot say. The rector who succeeded de Rustene was William de Neupert, who, in 1316, was presented by Thomas called de Brotherton, the then Earl of Norfolk. This Thomas, a brother of King Edward II, derived his surname of de Brotherton from his birthplace, a village in Yorkshire. The King had created him both Earl of Norfolk and Marshal of England, and endowed him with the estates, which had been surrendered, as we have seen, by Earl Roger Bigod. Thomas de Brotherton died in 1338, and was buried at Bury St. Edmunds ; and, his only son having died before him, his estates, which included the Theberton advowson, descended to his daughters Margaret and Alice, co-heiresses, subject however to the dower of their mother Countess Maria, part of which was half of a knight's fee in Theberton. Ultimately, these estates became the sole property of the eldest daughter Margaret, who married firstly John Lord Segrave, and secondly the famous Sir Walter Manny. Her seal bears the style " Margareta Marischalla, Comitissa Norfolciae." All this, I fear, is of the order dryasdust, but the facts have to be stated, to introduce personages who, Margaret of Norfolk in particular, will take leading parts later on in our story. It is on record that in 1339 an order passed, to deliver the advowson of Theberton to Lord Segrave and his wife Margaret the Countess of Norfolk. Lord Segrave exercised his rights, by presenting Bartholomew de Salle in 1349 and Roger de Eccleshall in 1351 to the Rectory of Theberton. Sir Walter Manny presented Robert de Iselham to the same Rectory in 1361. CHAPTER II IN 1363, Robert Earl of Suffolk, then patron of Leyston Abbey, built for the monks a new convent on a site more healthful than their island of the Myssemeare an undertaking which doubtless brought work and welcome wages to the men of Theberton. That structure only stood twenty-six years, being burned down in 1389 ; and strong arms and deft hands from Theberton helped to erect, on the same site, a third Abbey, whose ruins we admire still. In the meantime, had occurred an event noteworthy for our parish the passing of the advowson of Theberton into the hands of the conventual house of Leyston. It came to happen in this wise : In 1372, Margaret Lady Segrave, Countess of Norfolk, then owner of the advowson, made a grant of it to the abbot and canons, in exchange for an annual rent of 4OJ. to be paid to her and her heirs ; it being further provided that the Abbey should supply two chaplains to celebrate daily mass in the church of Theberton. These terms were varied ten years afterwards, by another charter, whereby the Countess re-granted to the Abbey the 40^. rent, and released them from providing one of the two chaplains ; in consideration of which, the Abbey on their part granted another advowson, that of 18 THE BLACK DEATH Kirkley, to the Countess in tail, with ultimate remainder to the King in fee simple. From another charter of the same year, we learn the pious object of the lady's grant to the Abbey. Done into English the charter runs thus : The Lady Margaret the Countess of Norfolk has given to the Monastery of Leyston in Suffolk the advowson of the church of Theberton ... for the souls of Thomas de Brotherton, late Earl of Norfolk a/id Marshal of England, and of Lady Alice formerly his consort father and mother of the said Lady Margaret, and for the souls of the Lords John de Segrave, and Walter Manny and so forth. The name of one rector I have omitted hitherto, I know not who presented him. This man, one Robert de Warham, became rector in 1330, and his next successor was instituted in 1349; so it may be that de Warham died a victim to the Great Pestilence of 1 348 that awful plague known to after generations as the Black Death. In this one diocese alone there perished two thousand clergy ; two out of every three parishes lost their incumbents ; one-third, some say one- half, of the population of the kingdom was swept away. In London, no less than fifty thousand corpses were buried, in thirteen acres of ground called Spittle or Spital Croft, dedicated for that purpose by Sir Walter Manny. 1 How poor Theberton fared, no record 1 Site afterwards of the Charter House. " John Stow saith that he had read this Inscription fixed on a stone cross some time standing in the Charter House churchyard: 'Anno Domini MCCC. XL. IX. Regnante magna pestilentia, consecratum fuit hoc cemiterium in quo et infra septa presentis monasterii sepulta fuerunt mortuorum corpora plus quam quinquaginta millia praeter alia multa abhinc ad presens quorum animabus propitietur Deus. Amen.'" (Weever). A XIVxH CENTURY ASSESSMENT 19 remains to tell us ; we know that many villages were depopulated. The year 1341 presents us with a record of much local interest. Parliament, at the King's request, had granted him a tax of the ninth sheaf and fleece and lamb throughout England. It was firstly arranged, that the ninths to be paid by each parish, should be taken to be equivalent to the value of the tithe paid to the Church ; and secondly (perhaps to avoid another assessment), that the assess- ment which had been made in 1293, the taxatio of Pope Nicholas IV, should be deemed the then value of the tithes ; except where cause should be shewn why it ought to be more or less. The taxatio of 1293 had put the value of the tithes of Theberton at the figure they stood at in Doomsday, viz. 40 marks. The ninths due from Theberton would therefore be 26. 1 3 s. ^d. ; but assessors would have to make inquisition, to find what ought to be either added or deducted. All this is premised, to make clear what next follows : " On Thursday, next before the feast of S.S. Perpetua and Felicitas, in the I5th. year of King Edward III from the Conquest," an Inquisition was taken at Dunwich before the Abbot of Leyston and his companions, assessors and collectors. Among the jurors we find local names, such as Payne de Halesworth, John de Donkwyk (query Dunwich), Jacob de Chediston, Richard de Denham, Alan de Henstede, John de Wangford, John de Thorpe ; and witnesses to the Return were four parishioners of Theberton, whose names were : Richard Austyn, William Noble, William del Field and Robert Poer. The document, Englished, runs on : " The C 2 20 THEBERTON JURORS IN 1341 jurors say upon their oaths that the ninths of sheaves, fleeces and lambs of the Church (Ecclesie) 1 of Theberton are worth ;io no more ; because there are in that place (items of clerical income which, not being tithes of sheaves, fleeces or lambs ought to be deducted, viz.} 13 acres of land of the endowment of the Church, which are worth 1 3 shillings, at the rate of 12 pence per acre; also half an acre of meadow, which is worth 12 pence (this I take to represent the glebe} ; also oblations for the three great days, with other small tithes, which are worth 4 ; also tithe of hay worth 4os. ; also tithe of reed and rushes worth 66s. ; also tithe of milk and calves worth 50^. ; also tithe of flax and hemp worth 26s. Sd. ; also rent 8s. ; also gallin de apport (query hens paid as rent} worth i6s. ; also tithe of turbary (turf and peat) worth \6s. ^d.\ also two hundred acres of arable land in the same town which used to be cultivated, submerged by the sea, whence a ninth is worth 2Os." These items added together come to 16. i/j., which deducted from 26. i$s. ^d. leaves 9. i6s. 4 meadow or mowing land at the enormous rent relatively of ,$ the acre. Seven years afterwards, in 1288 1289, we find corn was cheaper, wheat 50^. the quarter this in London ; in other parts a good illustration of how difficult was transport 2$s., 2os., i$s., ios. Barley was "js. 6d., and WAGES AND PRICES 23 oats 5 s. the quarter. Prices of poultry and of game are remarkable ; a fat cock or two pullets fetched I s. io| to the parish church (rectory) a monk of their house one brother John Pethagh, who was instituted accord- ingly. Pethagh's incumbency was short ; and in 1409 the King again presented one Henry Leycestre who perhaps had Court interest. He was not even in Holy Orders : " primam habuit tonsuram clericalem " ; yet he was instituted the same year " in ecclesie parochiali " to the parish church. Perhaps this was not in canonical order, for another institution of the same man is recorded in the year following, by which time he had attained sub- deacon's orders. Now, there can be no room for doubt as to the rectorial status of Leycestre ; for when one Hugo Sprot I think also a secular from St. Andrew's Holborn, " a suburb of London " (how oddly it sounds now), exchanged livings with him, Sprot's institution was expressed to be on the resignation of Henry Leycestre " late rector " of Theberton. We have seen that the King had presented one turn, then the Abbot and Convent presented, and then the King again for the alternate turn, and that all the presentees were canon ically instituted to the rectory. Clearly, these facts do not consist with the validity of the appropriation. Had it been and remained valid, a Rector could not have been legally instituted ; for by the appropriation (to which moreover the King had con- sented) the Rectory had been "annexed incorporated and united " with the advowson, and thereby the Abbot and E 50 HOW INVALIDATED? Convent of Leystone had become for ever the incumbent Rectors " parsons imparsonees," to use the quaint old phrase of Theberton. The Rectory was full, there was no vacancy to be presented to, either by King or by Abbey, yet the King did in fact, and so did the Abbey, present clerks to the Rectory, and their presentations held good, for their presentees were in due form instituted by the bishop of the diocese. But what had invalidated the appropriation ? How came the monks to lose such a highly prized spiritual possession ? Of course, for some reason we do not know, it may have been invalid ab initio ; or, if that could be, have been surrendered ; or again, this conjecture may be worth considering, it may possibly be that, having parted by grant to the King with a part of the organism of their advowson a next or perhaps next alternate right of presentation to the rectory and rectors having by virtue thereof been presented and instituted, the union between rectory and advowson had been severed, and being once severed, they could never be re-united ; and thus, the benefice had been irrevocably disappropriated. Or there is another more likely alternative ; the monks may have concluded that it was their interest, not to appoint vicars, having regard to the restrictions of a statute passed in 1402. That Act provided that all vicars should be seculars, not members of any religious house, that they should be perpetual, not removable at the caprice of monasteries, be canonically instituted and inducted, and be sufficiently endowed at the discretion of the ordinary. This made it impossible for the Convent to provide pleasant berths for its monks, as vicars ; or by appointing them in rapid rotation, to arrange refreshing holidays. May it not be then, that they thought to evade the obnoxious act by an expedient ? They might, SUCCESSIVE RECTORS 51 as patrons, regardless of the appropriation, present a monk to the rectory the statute referred only to vicars and might they not extort from him being under vows of obedience by the rule of their order, security for the payment to them of the bulk of his tithes, and, make him sign a bond besides, conditioned that he should resign after a prescribed period, or on demand of the community. Probably this had been devised these men of religion were very sharp practitioners when they presented brother John Pethagh. The invalidity or loss of this Theberton appropriation is the more remarkable, seeing that had there been many instances, no great number of vicarages would now be in existence ; whereas the fact is, that (as appears by the Diocesan Calendar for 1908) out of three hundred and fifty-five benefices in the Archdeaconry of Suffolk, no less than one hundred and forty-two are vicarages, nearly the whole number of which originated from appropriations and the Act of 1402. Sprot, after a four years' incumbency, was succeeded by a Leyston canon, Clement surnamed of Blythburgh. He was presented by his House l which of course was still the patron, and was in due course instituted to the rectory of Theberton. This monk retained the benefice for eighteen years, resigning it to become abbot of Leyston, which dignity he held till 1445. In his time it was, that the revolt in men's minds against monastic greed found striking expression in Parliament. The House of Commons petitioned the King " that all parsonages appropriated to some religious house not endowing vicars, might within six months be 1 In the bishop's register it is written that he was presented by the Abbot of Sibton, but this was evidently a clerical error. E 2 c* 52 PRESENTATION OF JOHN DOONWYCH unappropriated." No legislation seems to have followed in the sense of the petition : luckily for Leyston Abbey, for the monks held other appropriate churches, and there is evidence that they worked them in flagrant defiance of law ; even as late as 1478, they had to make this return to Bishop Redman their visitor: " quinque habent ecclesias canonici, sunt curati in quibusdam, sed non perpetui" When Clement resigned Theberton, the Abbot and Convent presented Nicholas Craton, another member of their brotherhood, and he again was instituted to " the parish church." To him after less than two years, succeeded another monk John Geyst, or Geyse ; he died after one year in October, 1438. Then in November following, the Abbot and Convent presented John Doonwych, another member of their House, who was duly instituted. This was an eventful presentation. The monks' crafty expedient to evade the statute of 1402 was to have its seaworthiness tested. A time came, when for some reason, the Abbot desired to remove this monk from the rectory of Theberton. Possibly, having bound himself to hand part of his rectorial tithes over to his patrons, he may have failed in his payments. At all events the Abbot determined to eject him. Doonwych, beatus possidens, refused to budge. He probably was a cunning unscrupulous fellow ; the convent had sailed near the wind, why should not he ? True, he may have agreed to resign on demand, but the unjust compact, designed to evade a plain Act of Parliament, had been forced upon him while under monastic duress. True, he had vowed vows, but what were vows to him, now that he was no longer an inmate of the cloister? PROCEEDINGS AGAINST DOONWYCH 53 The Abbey had, on their part, a strong champion ; Clement the abbot was not a man to be trifled with. What the event was will be unfolded. It must be premised that the visitors of the Premon- tratensian order were, at this time, Thomas Abbot of Begham, and William Abbot of Radegunde, with joint and several powers. They made this petition to the High Court of Chancery ; I venture slightly to modernise the archaic spelling. " Right Mekely besecheth Thomas Abbot of Begham and William Abbot of Radegunde, visitors jointly and severally and by thair Commissaries, of the Premonstra- tensian order within the Roialme (realm) of Engeland, to have correccion, and duely to punisshe eny of this same ordre defectif or rebyll to it, within the said Roialme. But, gracious lord, for as muche as one John Doonwiche, one of the said ordre, and of the house of Leyston, was noised defectif and not rueled after the fourme of his said ordre, the forsaid Thomas committed power to Clement Abbot of Leyston, to cite and calle the said John to come afore hym, to answere after the forme of his seid ordre ; and so John, by the said Clement was lawfully cited, and it disobeyd, so that by due process he standeth accursed. Whereuppon the forseid Clement beyng Commissarie, came to Theberton a parissh belongyng to the said Abbey of Leyston, whare the said John was abiding against the will of his ordre, kepyng there the cure ; and there, required the Constable of the same Parissh, after the forme of our said souvrain lordes letters, to succour and support hym, in reforma- cion and correccion of the said John, to whiche the said Constable agreed and obeyd; but gracious lord, the forsaid John, of grete malice contrarie to his order, by 54 AN AFFRAY IN THEBERTON CHURCH the grete supportacion of John Curteys and John Sturmy of Theberton, disobeid the said Clement and his correc- cion, and yit doth. Whereuppon, if hit please your gracious lordship to consider the rebellion of the seid John Doonwiche to his order, and howe that he, standyng accursid, kepith the cure of the said Parissh, ministryng there the sacraments of holy church, by the supportacion of the forseid John Curteys and John Sturmy, there- uppon of your good grace, to grant writtes subpena, direct to the forseid John, John, and John, to appere byfore you in the Chauncerie, uppon a cartain day, to be examined uppon the matter aforseid, for the love of God and in weyrk of charete." Compliant with this petition, a writ dated 28th June, 1445 was granted out of Chancery, directing examina- tions to be taken. Accordingly, we read that on Tuesday the Feast of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, in the twenty-third year of Henry VI. (1445), John Doonwych, with John Curteys and John Sturmyn, appeared at Halesworth before Sir John Heveningham acting on a writ out of Chancery, and they, and twelve other persons, among whom were John Feld, Geoffrey Ulff, Ralph Cotyngham and William Andrewe, all of Theberton, deposed on their oathes as follows : They swore that Clement Abbot of Leyston had presented the said John Donewyche to the church of Theberton, to which church he was admitted by the ordinary, and lawfully instituted ; and by reason of being thus under obedience to the said ordinary, the said John was exempt from his order, and absolved from his oath ; and that he administered the cure of Theberton well and honestly. Also, that the said Abbot Clement, HOLY THURSDAY A.D. 1445 55 with one William Fraunceys and many others to the number of twenty persons arrayed in warlike manner, came on Ascension Day last past, to the church of Theberton, and made an assault on the said John Doonwych while he was celebrating service there, and arrested him, and wanted to take him with them. Whereupon the said John Curteys and John Sturmey and other parishioners of Theberton, went and spoke to the said abbot and those who came with him, with civil and honest words, and induced the said abbot to release the said Doonwych. How strange this seems to us, here now in modern Theberton. The background of the picture we can easily bring before us. Our age- worn church, with its old round tower and long ridge of thatched roof, cannot be much altered, though whether the octagon top had then been added to the round tower we do not know. Again those crumbling walls, on the borders of our parish, suggest the then noble Abbey on the new site, to which, a century before, the monks had migrated, as " bees, which having first built in the ground and hollow \ trees, get them hives in gardens ; and leaving the deserts, gain them princely houses in pleasant places " ; their I church was now cathedral-like, with choir and nave, aisles and transepts ; and a refectory, abbot's lodgings with other conventual buildings, covered a great space of ground. Between our church and the Abbey, the way was then a grassy track, a mile or more, through un- fenced woodland and pasture. Even the interior of our church we can well imagine. A rood screen then separated chancel from nave : perhaps the monastic patrons had already added to the chancel to afford space for showy ceremonial : our font looking 56 FIFTEENTH CENTURY FASHIONS so ancient now, probably had not then taken the place of one yet more ancient ; l the roof was unceiled then, the thatch probably showing between the rafters. And now, let us try to picture the rustic congregation on that Holy Thursday 144$. The lord of the manor may have been there. Imagine him in a long gown of rich material, his hair falling down below his shoulders, purse and dagger hanging from his girdle : " An anlas and a gipser al of silk Heng at his gerdul whit as morne mylk." The toe points of his shoes, pikes 2 or beaks they were called, ridiculously long, and tied up to his knees with silver chains ; we may see the costume in kings and knaves upon our playing cards. And perhaps his lady was there also, dressed in the fashion of card queens, let the Queen of Hearts serve for her model ; and a crowd of more humble folk, the men with hair cropped close, clad in short coats with leather belts, worsted hose and broad shoes ; and on the opposite side of the church, their wives and daughters, in hoods entirely enveloping their hair, the older ones with " barbs " of pleated linen covering the chin like linen beards ; all the women in voluminous petticoats, and not deformed by then un- thought of stays they were first worn in the time of Elizabeth. A hushed devout congregation we may not doubt ; kneeling on the bare earthen floor, perhaps for that great day strewn with rushes, there were no fixed seats then. The parish priest stood to celebrate mass at the altar. But what was that ? A hubbub, a sudden clatter of arms. From their places among the worshippers, two 1 The present font, I am told, dates from about 1510. 2 These pikes or beaks were some years afterwards, by 4 Ed. IV. c. 7, curtailed to two inches, under a penalty both to the shoemaker and the wearer. THE FONT, THEBKRTON CHURCH, AN OUTRAGEOUS ABBOT 57 reputable men, John Curteys, and John Sturmyn a land- owner in the parish, rise from their knees ; to meet at the porch door a familiar figure ; it was their old rector, now father Abbot of Leystone, in very angry mood, and with him a menie of a score men " arrayed in warlike guise ; " who marched into the church and seized the priest ! Curteys and Sturmyn at last prevailed with the abbot to let the parson go ; and he concluded the service. Whatever may have been the offence of Doonwych, can the conduct of Clement the Abbot be judged to have been less than outrageous ? How the legal issue was decided I cannot say, but the fact is, that brother John Doonwych, only a few weeks after that scandalous scene, resigned the benefice of Theberton, exchanging it apparently for another living. His successor was one John Hert, I believe a secular priest, presented by the monastery, whose institution is described, as upon the resignation of John Doonwych " the late rector." CHAPTER V IT is not without interest to find the mere names of men who lived in our parish nearly five hundred years ago, but we are fortunate in knowing more than the mere names of some of them. We know that William Fraunceys, who supported the abbot, died in 1459 ; and his will is before me as I write. He dwelt in Theberton, a man it seems of some substance, and was, according to the standard of those days, a good churchman. He left to the high altar of our church one mark, and half a noble more for reparation of the church ; to the light of the Blessed Virgin in the monastery of Leyston half a noble; to the friars minor of Dunwich half a noble (these were Franciscans or Grey Friars, whose old wall pierced by two fine gates, yet surrounds the remains of their conventual buildings). To the Friars Preachers of Dunwich he gave 6s. %d. (these were Dominican or Black Friars ; their convent was long ago washed away, with their church which contained the bodies of " Richard Bokyl of Leston, and Alice, and Alice, his wives," together with other benefactors) ; to John Curteys of Theberton (defender of Doonwych), he bequeathed one noble. For a secular chaplain to celebrate (in the parish church, no doubt) for two years for his soul, he made due provision. And he provided for a potation, that curious mediaeval blend of festivity religion and charity called a " cherche-ale ; " and 58 THEBERTON WILLS 59 Curteys (defender of Doonwych) was appointed one of his executors. John Sturmyn, the other defender of Doonwych, we find again as executor of the wills of two more inhabitants of Theberton. One testator was William Andrews from whose estate he had to contribute : to make the tabernacle of St. Peter of Theberton, for a secular priest to celebrate in the church of Theberton for two years and more, and for the repair of a way at " Estbrugge " Eastbridge ; this will was proved at Theberton on the I4th July, 1464. The other testator was Thomas Hervey, who bequeathed one quarter of barley to the altar of our church, and left to his son Thomas three acres of land called Jonefields (perhaps Johns' fields, but not now identifiable) when he should arrive at full age ; if he should die, then to his wife Alice, who seems to have been a Middleton woman. Hervey died on the 6th day of February, 1474. Geoffrey Ulff, another witness against Abbot Clement, was evidently a man of great trust ; we find him as executor for no less than six Theberton people. Ulff was in the I5th century a common name in Theberton, Kelsale, and Middleton. Of the will of John Feld or Field, another of the witnesses, Master William Jenney and Edmund his son, were supervisors. Field died on St. Mark's Day 1471, leaving a widow Agnes. She died in 1476, and I quote shortly from her will. " To Joan Townysende of Knodishale an 'Almarye'" (I think an Armoire or cupboard J ) ; " to Godson William Townysende, if he 1 In 1601, Sir Francis Hastings, in a speech in the House of Commons spoke of certain persons as worthy to be locked up in an " Ambery." Specific bequests of furniture were common ; such things were then of greater relative value than in these days of machinery. 60 A CHURCH ALE AND A TRENTAL wishes to be priested, 13*. ^d. and a sheep. ... I leave to the Rector of Theberton my green cloak for his trouble." That rector, with John Herberd, and Geoffrey Ulff were Widow Field's executors. We have also the testament of Ralph Cotyngham or Codyngham, which dealt with his house in Theberton, and lands in "Theberton, Medilton, Fordele and Westlylton," and provided, as did that of Fraunceys, for a " cherchale," probably partaken of in the church itself, and also for a trental thirty masses daily for thirty days for his soul. For 1461, we have in a business letter from Richard Calle to John Paston, an interesting statement of prices which helps to gauge the real value of legacies that at first sight seem so trifling : " They will not give a noble (6s. Sal.} nor even 6s. for a cow, . . . wheat \2d. a coomb, barley &/., malt gd. and lod." The lord of the manor whose presence on that Thursday I have suggested, would have been the William Jenney who, with his son Edmund, was supervisor of John Field's will. He was afterwards M.P. for Dunwich, and then, as Sir William, one of the Justices of the King's Bench ; and having seen the Wars of the Roses, and those dark days for England of Jack Cade's rising, died in 1483. In Weever's time there remained in our church this inscription : " Hie jacet Willelmus Jermey miles unus Justiciar Domini Regis de Banco suo et Elizabeth uxor eius t quiquidem Willelmus obiit xxiii die Decembris Anno Domini mcccclxxxiij. Quorum animabus propitietur Deus Amen" Jermey is evidently a clerical error for Jenney. The inscription has disappeared, no person knows what has become of it. The only bit of ancient brass now remaining is VISITATIONS OF LEISTON ABBEY 61 a small plate let into a sepulchral slab in the floor of the nave inscribed in black letters " Orate pro anima Katerine Pays cujus Anime propicietur Deus. Amen." No more is known of Katerine than that she died and was buried. The date of the brass is thought to be about I5OO. 1 Dowsing, the ruthless destroyer of all "orate pro anima " inscriptions, seems not to have come in person to Theberton, but to have sent one Francis Verden as his deputy. We of this " sweet and civil county of Suffolk," where it was his lot to be born, do not pride ourselves on Dowsing. We have, in duty bound, had to advert upon the craft of the monks of Leystone ; but they were no worse than were mediaeval monks in general. Indeed, there is good evidence which redounds much to their credit. At three years intervals, for many years, Bishop Richard Redman, on behalf of the Mother House of Pre"montre, made triennial visitations of the Abbey. And on every occasion this eminent bishop (successively of St. Asaph of Exeter and of Ely) speaks well of it. In 1482, he thanked God that, after diligent enquiry, he found everything well, and charity well observed. In 1485, there seems to have been no visitation, it was a year of great dying the Sudor Anglicus, the terrible Sweating Sickness. In 1488, the house was in an excellent state, and the church services were carried on in a better way than in any other house ; and to that, the bishop attributed the prosperity of Leyston in temporals and spirituals. In 1491, the bishop testified to the excellent rule of the abbot, and the state of the monastery, which 1 At Dennington, in 1662, 51 J Ibs. weight of brass "which had formerly been taken off the gravestones in the church and chancel," was found hidden in the vestry. 62 LOCAL NAMES OF I^EISTON MONKS agreed, he said, with the belief of all, clergy and laity only the canons wore too large tonsures. In 1494, the highest possible praise was accorded to the administra- tion of the abbot, the bishop found nothing to correct. In 1497, the excellent state of the house and the administration of the abbot was commended. Only at the last of the visitations in 1500, do we find any word of blame : one of the canons had committed the pro- digious offence of going out of the enclosure meaning no doubt without the abbot's leave. The bishop added the grave admonition that " the canons were to use their hoods over their cloaks when out, and never tassels ! " Many of the canons seem to have been drawn from the neighbourhood. Among the names are John Yoxford, William Woodbridge, John Leystone, John Halesworth, John Beccles. When there was but one form of religion in the country, and all admitted the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, Church discipline for lay people, as well as for clerics, was a very real thing. In some ways, it worked good, touching a class of offences against morality, of which the common law did not take cognizance ; but on the other hand, the canon law, administered by " Officials of Ordinaries " and their Apparitors, was a foreign thing, which affronted the English sense of justice. Our English laws regard an accused man as innocent till proved guilty. The canon law took the contrary view, and the Church courts were as much prosecutors as judges. On mere common report, or on the word of an Apparitor, they would summon a man to appear before them, and, assuming his guilt, put him on his oath to admit or to deny it. The Apparitor acted as a social spy and common informer. His office was not only to execute the Church Courts' mandates and citations, but also to smell out offences among his own neighbours. Fees, it is needless to say, were exacted at each stage of the proceedings. The whole system was repugnant to our national tradi- tions, and lent itself to gratification of spite, to bribery, and all manner of abuses. Archdeacon Hale, in 1847 collected a series of cases heard by certain Courts Christian as they were called, from 1475 and, continuing after the Reformation, to 1640. We may perhaps mention a few of the lighter sort, such as : In 1497, a man was brought up for wearing the garb of a hermit, not having been professed a hermit ; a monk for wearing the vestments of a secular priest ; a rector for using arts of sorcery to defame his neighbours ; a layman for violating a bishop's park, by practising archery and playing games ; an aquae bajulus a parish clerk for defaming his priest with " Goo forth fole and set a cockes combe on thi crowne." All these were in Henry VII.'s time. In the next reign, 1528, we find the trials of two " wise women " a race by no means extinct, even yet to my knowledge, in our homely Suffolk. One, Margaret Hunt, was put on her oath to defend herself, and confessed enormous iniquities: she "knelys downe" these were her words " and prays the blessed Trinite to save them (her patients) and hele them from all ther weked enemys ; and then she techeth them ix nights for to sey v paternosters, v aves, and a crede, and iii pater- nosters iii aves and credes in the worshyp of Seynte Spyrite ; and when they take ther chamber and go to bedde at night, to sey one pater, one ave, and one crede, in the worshypp of Seynte Ive, to save them from all 64 " WISE WOMEN 11 IN THE XVIxn CENTURY envy. And then for them that lye seke of the ague, she techeth them to gether herbe-grace, peneryall, redde sage, redde fenell, and the barre rote, before the son downe, so that it be the last dryncke that the syke drincketh at night. And for them that hath ony sorys on ther bodys, she techeth them to gether herbe-grace, dyll, verveye, marygoldes, put a lyttill holy water to them, and sey sume prayers ; and when she stampethe to sey iii paternosters, iii aves, and a crede, in the worshyp of our Lady, yf it be a woman that stampeth ; and if it be a man he must sey iii paternosters, iii aves, and a crede, in the worshypp of Jesus." And this in Latin ; that she had learned the aforesaid doctrine in Wales, from a certain woman called mother Emet. The punishment of this poor creature is not recorded. The other wise woman, Elizabeth Fotman, practised upon horses as well as men. She was forced to confess that " she toke the mense rodd and put it to the horse bely that was syke of the botts, and made crosses on a caryers horse bely, and the horse rose up by and by ; and that the seid rodde did grow besyde the Rhodes " ; also, she said " she used to hele men of the tothe-ache, and the worms in chylders belys, and getheryng of herbs, yauyng over them." The following reminds us of a custom now long forgotten. So late as 1543, two men barely escaped excommunication, upon their own extorted confession, " that y a haith not maid ii mo torches, nor yet kepede the drynkynge in the parishe, accordynge the laudable use and custome of the same parishe. Whereupon, the judge decreed yt y a shall make ii sufficient torches, be- twyxt this daie and the feast of Saint John Baptiste next ensuynge, and delyver them unto the churchwardens, accordynge to the laudable usage and custome of the same DRYNKYNGES-A CLERICAL WIZARD 65 parishe." With regard to torches, ever since " the 3rd century, when besides adopting other pagan ceremonies, they also lighted torches to the martyrs in the day-time as the heathens did to their gods, this use of torches and tapers in churches, both by day and night, has prevailed in Catholic worship." The decree did not deal with the "drynkynges." What a " drynkynge " was, is well shown by a will of 1527, of one John Cole of Thelnetham in our county. He left the rent of three acres of land " to fynde yearelie a busshell and halfife of malte to be browne (brewed), and a busshell of whete to be baked to fynde a drinkinge upon Ascension Even, everlastinge for ye prisshe of Thelnetharn." Yet later again, in the second year of Mary's reign, occurred the case of a wizard. William Hasylwood clerk, accused of using art magic " wytchecraft or sorcery with a seve and a payre of sheeres," confessed : " that, in July was twelve mony ths last past, he the same Hasylwood, having then lost his purse with xiiii grootes (43. $d.} in the same, and thereupon remembryng that he, being a chylde, dyd hear his mother declare that when any man hadd lost anny thing, then they wold use a syve and a payre of sheeres to bring to knowledge who hadd the thing lost ; and so, this examinante upon occasion thereof, dyd take a seve and a payre of sheeres, and hanged the seve by the poynte of the sheeres, and sayed thees wordes by Peter and Paule he hath yt, namyng the partye whom he, in that behalf suspected : which thing he never used but ones, and also declared yt to one of his acqueyntaunce." Poor Hasylwoode had to do penance thereupon. Later, we shall meet with local apparitors, and with public penance suffered in our own parish church of Theberton. F 66 A MONKISH CONSPIRACY John Hert was the last rector we have named. To him succeeded Thomas Joye in 1450. He was a secular, presented to our parish church by the abbey ; the monks we may suspect had taken fright at the escapade of brother John Doonwych. Plainly, it was not safe to arm one of their brotherhood with weapons he might turn against his own community. How they must have lamented the loss of the Theberton appropriation. From their other parishes still appropriate, the tithes, subject to a fixed allowance for the vicar, belonged to themselves as rectors by absolute legal title ; whereas from a rector of this parish of Theberton, were he a secular they had no claim ; and even were he of their own religious family, no hold, except perhaps upon paper possibly invalid, securities. There were, we may be sure, anxious debates in the chapter house of Leyston Abbey. Could only some ingenious plan be hit upon, might they not even yet recover their rectorial position, arid be able again to appoint a vicar to Theberton. They would be too glad to embrace the provisions, which they once thought so odious, of the Act of 1402. Now for the outcome of their deliberations ; we have a significant document which slightly abbreviated runs thus : "On the penultimate day of October 1452, before Master John Selott, Chancellor of the bishop (Walter Leyhart) of Norwich, the vicarage of the parish church of Theberton then vacant was taxed at 40^. for first fruits of the same vicarage, on all future vacancies to be paid to the bishop and his successors." The Chancellor proceeded to decree "the said vicarage to consist of altarages of the church (offerings and perhaps small tithes) reserving to tlie bislwp and his successors power THE CONSPIRACY FAILS 67 to augment the portion of the vicar ; and an enquiry was directed as to the value of the altarages ; and Sir John Marche priest was personally instituted by the Chancellor, into the vicarage, on the presentation of the religious men the abbot and convent of Leyston, being the true patrons." The living hadbeen a rectory certainly since 1408 ; and yet forsooth, in 1452, the monks hoped by help of the Chancellor by what arguments persuaded we can only surmise to recover their former rectorial rights ; and in future to present vicars, not rectors, to Theberton ! Audacity succeeds sometimes, but this silly attempt was too barefaced. John Marche could not be, and in fact was never, instituted. Neither he nor any person could lawfully have been made, or recognised as vicar of Theberton. 1456 saw a fresh hand at the helm of Leyston. The new abbot was John Sprotling ; and in the first year of his abbacy, the Abbot and Convent presented one John Herberd or Herbert presbiter, to, of course, " the parish church rectory, not vicarage, of Theberton." This was the rector to whom Agnes Field had bequeathed the green cloak. He died in 1488. By his will, written in Latin, he describes himself as rector of " Thebyrton " and thus proceeds : " I leave my soul to God Almighty, the blessed Mary, and all the Saints, and my body to be buried in the church or chancel of Thebyrton. I leave to the aforesaid church, a missal, a vestment, a psalter, a processionary, and a surplice, upon this condition, that the parish shall find a secular priest to celebrate in the said church for half a year, and he to have for his salary five marks. I leave to Sir Thomas Grene a portifory, 1 on condition that he 1 " Portiforium," a service book breviary. F 2 68 A RECTOR'S TESTAMENT shall celebrate in the said church for a quarter of a year, for my soul and for the souls of my benefactors. I leave to the said Thomas my best cloak. I give to Robert Man of Thebyrton a gown, and to Isabell his wife another gown. The residue not disposed of I leave to the disposi- tion of Edmund Jenney Esqre, and Sir Robert Rowe, to dispose as may best please God and my soul's health." In 1488, Henricus Guerdon, or Everdon, was, by the same patrons, presented to the rectory, and was there- after canonically instituted to the parish church. In this case, special care was taken to leave no crevice for doubt, for besides the words " to the parish church," the word " Rector " was used ; moreover, the vacancy was described as upon the death of John Herberd " last rector." The next rector was Thomas Went, priest, and canon of the abbey. He was admitted in 1504, by the some- what notorious Bishop Nix of Norwich, to the parochial church of Theberton, and the words of this institution again were ac, te Rectorem in eadem canonice insti- tuimus. Thomas Went died rector of Theberton. He, and those he ministered to, lived in a splendid period the time of the awakening of a new world. Some rumours of the fame of it must have reached even Theber- ton, for one of the prophets of the religious renaissance was Colet, then rector of Dennington a parish but twelve miles distant, who was a friend of Erasmus. He after- wards became Dean of St. Paul's, and founded a great grammar school hard by his cathedral, which is St. Paul's School still. Dean Colet's plans must have fluttered the Pharisees, seeming to them, Sir Thomas More told the Dean, " like the wooden horse in which armed Greeks were hid for the ruin of barbarous Troy"; for his design was nothing less, than to teach boys rational religion and sound learning, and to discard the scholastic logic. THE RELIGIOUS RENAISSANCE 69 Brother Thomas can hardly have failed to imbibe the narrow prejudices of the cloister ; but then again, his later life as rector of Theberton may have opened his mind to the true beauty of the new teaching. Colet had placed over the master's chair in St. Paul's school, an image of the Child Jesus, with the words " Hear ye Him." Pleasant it is, to imagine our parson preach- ing from that text to his flock at Theberton. It was indeed a time of wondrous growth and change ; and that not only in religious life. All works of man : literature, discovery, arts, handicrafts, sprang at a bound into maturity. Perhaps, our simple country folk would feel no inno- vation more nearly than the threatened revolution in their weapons. The bow, from immemorial time, had been the tried and trusted arm of Englishmen : now the talk was, that smoking gunpowder and leaden balls would supersede good yeomanly bows and arrows. The change was to arrive later, but as yet, it was an open question whether, the clumsy caliver would really be more effective in war, than the English long bow. Lord Herbert thus stated the relative merits of the two arms : " When he that carries the caleever goes unarmed (without defensive armour) the arrow will have the same effect within its distance as the bullet, and can again for one shot return two. Besides, as they use halberts with the bow, (a man armed with a caliver could carry no weapon besides) they could fall to, to execute on the enemy with great advantage. I cannot deny but against the pike they were of less force than the caleevers." In 1514, Parliament gave judgment, for the bow and against the caliver. It made perpetual an old statute concerning archery, and forbad the use of " hand guns " to all men who had not five hundred marks a 70 LONGBOW VERSUS CALIVER year, an income considerable at that time, equivalent to more than 300 now. 1 All men under forty, were by law to possess bows and arrows and to practise shooting, and butts were to be erected in every village. So there must have been butts at Theberton, at which men used to practise archery. If every young man now possessed a magazine rifle, and with it practised marksmanship, we should be freed from the degrading fear of invasion. 1 The qualification was reduced to ^100 the next year. CHAPTER VI To Thomas Went, succeeded as rector of Theberton " Robert Folkelynge capellanus," chaplain perhaps of some forgotten guild, it might be that of St. John at Kelshall. He was presented in 1518 by the Abbot and Convent of Leyston, and instituted as before. This rector's name appears in the last will dated in 1523, of one of his parishioners. John Kylham willed that his body should lie in the churchyard of St. Peter of Theberton, he further willed "that Robert Folklyn have XXd. to pray for me and for my friends V masses of the wounds of our Lord." Probably John was a kinsman of another Kylham Richard, who by his will of the same date, left " XXd. to the High Altar of our church, for tithe negligently forgotten." Did he hope that this might save his soul from the evil smells of purgatory ? Turchill, an Essex husbandman, had in a vision seen the entrance into hell, whence was exhaled a smoke of most foul stench ; which arose from tithes unjustly detained and crops unjustly tithed. Richard Kylham also bequeathed " a peyer of shalleys " to our church. Whether the church ever received the Chalices, or what has become of them, I have found no record ; they may have been sold since for parochial purposes. 71 72 "TITHES FORGOTTEN " Church plate we know was sold from Middleton : for under date 1 547, we have the " true certificate " of four churchwardens there, that they, " with consent of the town, hathe solde ij peyer of silver sensors, ij peyer of Chalys, and i pax price xill n . VII s ." (say 130 of our money) ; and that they bought with the proceeds " grownde for to enlarge the weys in the town," and paid for " kepyng of a pore chylde," and also for " settyng forth of certen soldgers," and further for " mendyng Medylton Brigge," (where was this bridge ?), and lastly for "mendyng a lane ledyng from Yoxforth to Theberton" the " meadow lane " before alluded to. The sale was prudent and well-timed, for only six years after, in 1553, churchwardens had to produce to commissioners then sitting at Ipswich, all their church plate and orna- ments and church bells, "grete belles and saunce (sanctus) belles in the steples, only excepte " ; to be sold "for God's glory and the king's honour"; only the commissioners had authority to leave one or two chalices at their discretion. Robert Folkelynge held the benefice for twelve years, resigning it in 1530 in favour of another Robert Folkelynge, described as junior, who paid a yearly pension of 40^. to Robert Folkelynge senior for the remainder of his life. Farmers sometimes cheated this Robert the younger as they had his elder namesake ; one James Maihewe, in 1539, left Xlld. to the High Altar of Theberton for " tithes forgotten " ; and the same testator evidently a farmer, also gave three bushels of wheat and five bushels of malt for reparation of our church ; and after bequeathing live stock " cows, stirks, and colts, neate, and cattell, calfe, and lamb," besides money, for benefit of his wife and children, directed " a combe of wheate to be baken, and the brede thereof to be distry- THEBERTON IN THE STAR CHAMBER 73 butyde among the most needy persons in the parish of Theberton." " Robert Folkelyn parson of Theberton and Robert Gosse of the same town " were witnesses. This Robert Folkelyn was a frequent witness to the wills of his parishioners. In 1545, we find him, described as parson of Theberton, witness to the will of John Alyn of Theberton ; in 1551, as witness to the will of John Carsey also of Theberton, whereby that testator directed that, failing bequests for his children, his property be disposed of " in dedes of charity to the most honour of God and comfort to his soul." In Robert Folkelyn junior's time, dispute arose con- cerning lands in Theberton, between two bodies of persons with both of whom he had intimate relations. On one side, a number of his parishioners, and on the other side, a religious house, who were influential neigh- bours and patrons of his benefice. In the Star Chamber proceedings of the reign of Henry VIII. we find the following : To the King our Sovereign lord. Humbly complain unto your Highness your true liege men : John Grosse of Kelsale, John Ulffe of the same town, William Ulffe of Feberton (Theberton), Thomas Mannock of the same town, John Fryer, George Deer, John Grosse of Febyrton, Alexander Norman, Roberte Elmeham, Thomas Fraunceys, Richard Pecok, John Grey, John Byrde, John Clerke, and other inhabitants dwelling in the town and village of Theberton : that whereas they and their neighbours are seised of their several lands and tenements in Feberton aforesaid, and by reason thereof they and their ancestors have had free common of pasture appendant thereunto, in four several marsh land and hard land grounds, called the Fryth, and in other lands, marsh and heath, amounting to 700 acres 74 ABBOTS "ASSAULT AND GRIEVOUS AFFRAY " or thereabouts in Leyston and Feberton aforesaid, for pasture of their cattle and for mowing of " thakes " 1 and rysshes for the covering of their said tenements and houses; that this so continued till 21 July 25 Henry VIII (1533-4) when John Fereby clerk, Robert Fyske of Leyston clerk, being a white canon, Thomas Browne of Feberton yeoman, William Okey of Leyston, Henry Kechyn, William Symson of the same town, William Trusse of Pesenale cooper, Thomas Pryce of Leyston barber, Robert Shanke of Aldryngham husbandman, William Cuthbert of Leyston white canon, William Crispe of Leyston labourer, George Kendall of Leyston white canon, Robert Dawys of Medylton labourer, Robert Wyllet of the same town labourer, William Gylberde of Leyston butcher, James Morce of Leyston labourer, William Cache of Leyston carpenter, with other evil disposed persons to the number of twenty- three, servants to George Carleton Abbot of Leyston, with swords and bucklers daggers and quarter staves, assembled at Therberton, and then and there, in riotous manner, did enter into all the said common pasture, and thereof wrongfully disseise your complainants to the use of the said Abbot ; and did make assault and grievous affray on the said John Ulff and others, and carried off two loads of rushes, the goods of the said Thomas Fraunceys and Thomas Pawston. That of this riot, all the said misdoers, except the said abbot, are lawfully judged by the verdict of twelve true men within the county of Suffolk. And, because the said misdoers are the said abbot's servants, and by his " extorte power " are very like shortly and untruly to be acquitted, unless the king's favour be shewn in that behalf, the com- 1 Thatch and thatchers are still "thak" and "thakkers" in Suffolk speech. TAXABLE MEN OF THEBERTON 75 plainants beg a writ of subpoena to be directed to the Justices of the Peace in the county of Suffolk, commanding them to send up to the Star Chamber all the said indictments against the said misdoers ; and to summon the said Abbot, Thomas Browne, Thomas Perce (Pryce), Robert Fyske, and William Crispe, to appear there and answer in person. The abbot, by his answer, denied the truth of the complaint, and said that such matter would be determin- able at common law. Moreover, that he and his predecessors, time out of mind, had been seised of the marshes and grounds named in the bill, in right of their monastery, and that the complainants never had rights of common there. Concerning the merits of this dispute we cannot form an opinion, there is no evidence ; but it does not seem probable that costly proceedings would ever have been promoted on behalf of these poor people, unless upon advice that they had a case good enough to give hope of success. Mischievous was the precedent set by Abbot Clement for this his latest successor. George Carleton's chair was shaking under him, yet he could not refrain from violence. To make an " assault and grievous affray," with a force of twenty-three men three tonsured canons among them armed with swords and bucklers, daggers, and quarter staves, could not be deemed seemly for a father of religious. It is not without interest to trace the social position of the men who took part for and against Abbot Carleton. A subsidy return, which had been made in 1524, enables us in that respect ; for each parish, it gives the names of all taxable men, and the amounts of their incomes, in either land or goods, whichever was highest. 76 A GREAT CHANGE IMPENDING All those to be mentioned were taxed for goods : Among the Abbot's men Henry Kechyn of Leyston had 3 a year, Robert Shanke of Aldringham 6, Robert Wyllet of Middleton 6, and William Trusse of Peasenale 2. The petitioners, against the Abbot, John Byrd, John Grosse, Thomas Fraunceys, John Fryer, Richard Pecok, John Clerke, had from i, to, in one case that of Fryer, 4. a year. Alexander Norman, William Ulff, Thomas Pauston, and John Grey earned i a year in wages. All these belonged to Theberton. Another John Grosse was richest of all with 12 of income ; he belonged to Kelsale. Some indication of their relative positions is afforded by comparing these incomes with that of "John Jenney Esquyer " set down in the Return at 26. i$s. $d. " in goods." I wish we had better knowledge of the topography. I confess I cannot, with accurate finger, point out the four marsh land and hard land grounds then called the Fryth the name is unknown now nor can I describe the 700 acres. The decrees of the court of Star Chamber are all missing, and we could never have known what was decided, but for a later suit in Edward VI. 's time, with which we shall deal later on. Abbot Carleton had been defending his claims by armed force. Only three years were to elapse, before his power, himself, and his abbey, were to be over- whelmed together by a final catastrophe. The great house, a thing of always, rooted in men's imagination as an immemorial oak, was to be uprooted. A revolutionary change for Theberton ! The familiar figures of the canons would be seen no longer about the lanes and paths of the parish ; the abbey church would "POVERTY THEIR CAPTAIN" 77 no more re-echo their chants and litanies ; the poor and needy would lose the brethren's never-failing alms ; the sick would no more benefit by the medical skill and charity of monkish leeches ; children would no longer be taught ; and tenants would lose their good old landlords, who had so often stood " between poor men and the devil " it always had been " good living under the crook." There was ground for fear that their lay successors would raise the rents of farms, even of cottages. True it is, that the fate of the monasteries was inevitable envied owners of one-fifth to one-third, so say the authorities, of all the land of the country, and patrons, appropriators, of countless rectories. Langland, in Piers Plowman, had in the fourteenth century foretold the fall of religious houses at the hand of a king ; and Erasmus seeing the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket, had declared that those who had heaped up such a mass of treasure, would one day be plundered. The air had long been full of mutterings presaging storms to come. Moreover, with this tempting wealth under his feet, Henry VIII. was now in sore straits for money ; his wars with both France and Scotland, and his reckless extravagance, had exhausted the hoards his thrifty father had laid up for him. He had had already to resort to unpopular expedients ; in 1524, all men worth 40 had been required to pay in one lump sum a subsidy properly spread over four years ; which had proved so insupportable, Speed says, " to the poorer sort of subjects, that payment was, with weepings and cursings, utterly denied to collectors, almost provoking open rebellion." Suffolk indeed had taken arms, making "poverty their captain." In 1526 again, when commissioners were sent to levy the sixth 78 AFTER THE DISSOLUTION part of the goods of all laymen, and the fourth part of the clergy's, the discontent was so great, that the king had to disavow the tax, and despatch letters through England, that he would ask nothing but by way of benevolence. The blow no doubt had long been impending ; yet it can hardly be, that so fell an outrage upon the rights of property did not come like an earthquake shock at last. Royal commissioners, Sir Thomas Russhe, Richard Southwell, and Thomas Myldemay, had made an inventory of the plate and other valuables used for religious services, together with the household goods and farming stock all the movable property of the House of Leyston ; and had delivered these goods to the keeping of the abbot, for use and behoof of " the lord the King." That " advocate and kinsman of the poor " did not get very much. Only goods appraised (we have the inventory) at 42. i6s. 3^., equivalent to say ^420 of our money, was secured for His Majesty from the clutches of lesser robbers. The first result of the Dissolution in country parishes was an outbreak of lawless violence. The honoured fabrics were given up to pillage. The King's command was, in all cases, to " pull down to the ground the walls of the churches, steeples, cloisters, frateries, dorters, (common sleeping rooms), chapter houses, and all other houses, saving those necessary for farmers ; " and faith- fully, too faithfully, alas, was it obeyed. I have no evidence concerning Leiston in particular, but we read that, throughout England, the mean folk gathered greedily about their prey, and that, so long as " door window iron or glass or lead, remained to be plundered, raingeing rabblements of rascals " could hardly be driven away. One can imagine the spoilers tearing up JOHN GRENE THE HERMIT 79 " the seats in the choir, and melting the lead therewithall, till all things of value were spoiled, carried away and defaced to the uttermost." The poor rector of Theberton, Robert Folkelyn had good reason, we cannot doubt, to blush with shame for his parishioners. Not much of either the original abbey which Glanvil built, nor of the third abbey, seems to have been thought " necessary for farmers," for little was preserved. Glanvil's old house, before (not long before) the Suppres- sion had been deserted by the brethren ; it only sheltered a hermit, a former abbot of Leyston, John Grene, who in 1531 "of his own will relinquishing his Abbacy, was consecrated a hermit at the chapel of St. Mary in the old convent near the sea." And there tradition says he died and was buried. And of the third abbey little was saved, besides its walls, which for generations after served as a mine for highway surveyors. Of the later life of Robert Folkelyn we know little. In 1549, I find that he held land of the manor of Middleton-Fordley. In 1553, the year of Mary's acces- sion, a mandate was issued for the induction of one William Stephenson. Stephenson ought to have been first instituted, but I cannot find that he ever was, in fact, either instituted or inducted. Folkelyn seems to have resigned his living, or, possibly having married under the Act of 1548 was ejected in 1553 or 1554. In the Diocesan Registry of Visitations, marked in pencil " 1554-1566" we find his name with the description "presbiter," under that of his successor Johannes Maysteman de- scribed as " Rector." Perhaps, after vacating his living he stayed on at Theberton, as I find his name as a land- owner of the parish in 1561. This is the last we know of him, his death is not recorded in the register. 80 THE PARAPHRASE OF ERASMUS Great alterations in churches and church worship were brought about during the brief reign of Edward VI. Henry VIII. had prohibited all under the degree of gentleman and gentlewoman from reading the Scrip- tures. Edward VI. ordered the bible of the largest volume in English, and the Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the gospels in translating which it is noteworthy that both Queen Katharine and the Lady Mary had assisted to be placed in churches, so that the parishioners might resort thither and read them. Happily our church's copy of the Paraphrase is preserved still. From time beyond men's memories there had stood a stone altar at the east end of Theberton Church ; no doubt the order to demolish it had been obeyed, and a wooden table, which the communicants sat round, was placed in the middle of the nave. All images were defaced under an Act of Parliament. The use of the Protestant liturgy, and attendance at the new services, were enforced by law. The holy Sacrament was to be ministered to the people in both kinds, bread and wine ; this " being more comformable," as the Act ex- pressed it, " to the common use and practice of the Apostles and primitive church by the space of five hundred years after Christ's Ascension." Confusion and irregularities were general for a long time, of which parishes adjacent to Theberton supply some evidence. In 1597, one Deyntery the curate of Leyston, not appearing at a bishop's visitation, was excommunicated, because "he weareth not the surplis, he doth not catechize the youth, he hath not walked the perambulations." In the same year, at Middleton, a " meere laye-man readeth Divine service." At Kelshall (now corruptly called Kelsale), they "had not moneth (month) sermondes." The rector Brood by name WALKING THE PERAMBULATION 81 " doth not catechize the yowth, he went not the peram- bulations." Brood said he was ready to catechize, " but for that they come not to him " ; he was warned to amend his faults. At Westleton, Elizabeth Bedingfield widow and Master Francis Bedingfield, not having received the communion there for twelve months, were excommunicated ; and may be were prosecuted afterwards as recusants. It was then a parson's duty to " walk the perambu- lation." The Rogation Day's processions, with banners, bells, lights and so forth, had been discontinued at the Reformation, but parish perambulations were now required by law. Elizabeth had enjoined the people, once in the year, with the curate to walk round their parish as they were accustomed, and at their return to the church, to make there their common prayers. And the curate was, at certain convenient places, to admonish the people, and give thanks to God, as they beheld His bene- fits, and for the increase and abundance of the fruits of the earth. The iO4th Psalm had to be said, and the minister was to inculcate such sentences as: " Cursed be he which translateth the bounds and dolles of his neighbour." 1554, John Masterman, or Maysteman, or Mayster- man, was instituted to the Rectory of Theberton ; Robert Browne, described as one of the barons of the Lady Queen, having presented him. How Browne acquired the right is rather interesting. It seems that George Carleton last abbot of Leyston had granted his next presentation to one John Compton ; Compton had died leaving Thomas Whight his executor, and Browne had acquired this presentation from Whight. It may be that with the break up of his House in prospect, Carleton, during the last years of his abbacy, had made friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, and sold the G 82 THE SOKE OF LEYSTON next presentation to John Compton, and that the crown had recognised that sale, and was content to take subject to it. At all events, the title, neither of Browne nor of Masterman, was ever, so far as we know, brought in question. Browne was a lessee from the Crown of the site of the ancient abbey by the sea, of a warren of conies of two miles' compass, and of five hundred acres of marsh land, all late the property of the community ; and he was also owner, as purchaser from the Crown, of the site and the demesne lands of the great third abbey. It was against this Robert Browne, lessee from the Crown and owner of Abbey lands, that certain " poor tenants of the soke of Leyston " commenced in Edward VI. 's time, the later suit that has been referred to. The soke of Leiston ! " Manor and lordship " are familiar expressions, but not so familiar now is the word "soke." Until its forced surrender to the Crown, the abbots had been lords of the manor or lordship of Leyston, and their jurisdiction, for a long time at all events from 1327 when it was rated for a subsidy under that name had been known also as a soke. There were and are other Ecclesiastical jurisdictions called sokes : great sokes for example of Peterborough and Southwell, and of the Bishops of Winchester and London, and nearer home there was one at Thetford. Peterborough was under no county Lord Lieutenant, but had its own Custos Rotulorum and separate Com- mission of the Peace. To the soke of Southwell twenty " touns " were subject, and the Archbishops of York appointed both its Custos Rotulorum and justices. Thetford had, I think, its own magistracy distinct from the county. I know of no such special privileges of this soke of TENANTS OF THE SOKE VERSUS BROWNE 83 Leyston. The abbot as lord of the soke, had his own court in which his bailiff presided, and his own constable, his own stocks and prison, and his own gallows. He would, independently of the Hundred Court of Blything, appoint in his Court Leet an ale-taster, who would see that the ale sold in his Liberty was " fit for man's body," and likewise that the bread was of good weight. All freeholders within the soke were bound to attend the Courts Leet held once a year, and so also were all persons who, the term was, were " commorant," usually sleeping therein The soke comprised one hundred and ninety-one tenants and tenantries, besides the " hanborowes " 1 who had been accustomed to come to the manorial courts ; and it extended into our parish, in which there are still many tenements holden of the Leyston manor. Some of the " certain poor tenants " therefore must have been parishioners of Theberton. Among the matters of complaint were alleged acts of waste in woods of the lordship described as within a mile of the sea, out of which, in the six or seven years last past, it was said that over four hundred oaks meet for ship timber had been taken. The complainants then referred to the former suit in the Star Chamber, concerning rights of pasture, over, it was now said, five hundred acres. They stated that it had pleased the late King Henry VIII. to appoint certain gentlemen to sit in commission, to set an indif- ferent end upon the matter in variance ; that the com- mission sat accordingly, and that it was agreed that the inhabitants of " Feverton " should have the use of sixty 1 This curious word " hanborowes " is, as Professor Skeat has kindly pointed out to me, a variant of " handborowes " ; fully explained in the New English Dictionary, which has : " lit. hand- pledge or security, a name for one (or each) of the nine sureties associated with the ' head-borow ' in a frank-pledge." G 2 84 CLAIM FOR COMMON RIGHTS acres only, whereas from time immemorial they had enjoyed a moiety of the said five hundred acres, the tenants of Layston enjoying the other moiety. That now, the tenants of Layston and Feverton enjoyed between them only about one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty acres, and that the said Robert Browne kept the residue in his own hands. The answer of the defendant Robert Browne was that : As for the claim of the tenants of Theberton to pasture over five hundred acres of what had been the demesne of the Monastery ; as far as he could learn they had no title in law, nor had ever had any right. In the abbot's time, the tenants were allowed to send certain of their cattle on to the soft or marsh grounds belonging to the Abbey, and to take rushes from the marshes for their thatch. If any of the inhabitants' beasts happened to feed on the hard lands of the Abbey, the abbot used to distrain for damage. Browne further stated that the Commissioners, Sir John Jerningham knight, and Edmund Rous Esqre., had examined both the ground and the witnesses, and, by agreement, set stakes and marks where the inhabitants should make a ditch in the said marsh, thereby enclosing a parcel thereof to them- selves. Of what happened further in this matter we have no knowledge ; but it will be seen later on that the poor folk of Theberton exercised common rights in a large area of marsh and fen down to a recent period. CHAPTER VII IN 1606, there was a tragedy in the Browne family. Agnes the wife of John Browne son or grandson of Robert Browne, murdered her husband ; and, Suckling says that one Peter their servant was gibbeted for the crime. What happened to Agnes we do not know ; we have depositions, taken upon an enquiry as to the King's right to her goods, which shows that she had been con- demned as a felon. The gibbet on which Peter was executed was the manorial gibbet of the manor of Leiston, the site of which according to a perambulation of that manor, made in 1620, may be found : by follow- ing " the brook between Thorpe and Haslewood manors, until you come unto Friday Market Heath, and then, leaving the water-course, following the hedge south-west until you come next a green way," which will be "beyond the gibbet." I hope this may make the position clear to my local readers. It is not at all clear to me. John Masterman lived all through Mary's reign, that bloody time of inhuman persecution in the desecrated name of our holy religion. It was in the first year of his incumbency that, most likely he as well as others from Theberton, trudged the three miles along the " meadow lane," to see the martyrdom of Roger Coo, 85 86 A MARTYRDOM AT YOXFORD who, " an aged father," was " cruelly committed to the fire at Yoxford where he most blessedly ended his years in I555-" Conceive it, now in these good days of religious equality when all Englishmen are free to obey their consciences, that Christian folk could have stood tamely by, to see an innocent old man burned to death at the stake, with horrible torments ; only because he refused to admit the doctrine of the Real Presence. Whether Masterman was at heart a " bitter Papist," we do not know, but we know this, that he read the Liturgy in the vulgar tongue, did not oppose the again taking down of images, and when the oath of supremacy was in the first year of Queen Elizabeth tendered to him, he did not refuse to take it. De- privation would have followed refusal ; the fact is, however, that he held the living until his death, for in I57O, we find the institution of his successor, Robert Page clerk, per mortem ultimi Rectoris sive Incumbentis. Why the last words sive Incumbentis were used, I am not able to expain. It was during Masterman's time, that in a letter to Archbishop Parker, signed by " Robert Wingfield, Wyllyam Caundysh, Wym. Hopton, Thomas Colbyn of Beckles (who built Roos Hall) and Thomas Playter," all persons of eminence in Suffolk, it was alleged that there was not one preacher (query licensed preacher) in a great circuit, viz. : from Blythburgh to Ipswich which is twenty miles distant and ten miles in breadth along the sea coast ! Thomas Cromwell well-named malleus monachorum, a blacksmith's son, had succeeded the Ipswich grazier's son, and was now the King's Vicar General. In 1538, he commanded that all parishes should keep registers OUR EARLIEST PARISH REGISTER 87 of christenings, marriages, and burials ; but not till ten years after was this done at Theberton. Our first register dates from 1548. In 1597, registers having been kept carelessly, Convocation issued an injunction confirmed by Queen Elizabeth, that copies into new books should be made of the existing registers, and that each page of the new books should be attested by the signatures of incumbents and of churchwardens. The first book of our register, which is a copy made pursuant to the injunction, begins thus : " M m y* this Register Book was maid in the yeare of our Lord God I598,and y* Conteyneth the Christeninges, marriages, and burialles from the yeare of our Lord God 1548, which were in this toune of Theberton in the Countie of Sufif." And the subsequent pages were duly signed at foot by the then incumbent " Reighnald Plumer as minister or parson there," who will be referred to later. I have myself, with help for the oldest and most crabbed hand-writings, read all our parish registers, but cannot ask readers to follow me through tedious lists of names, to which no possible interest attaches. There are a few such entries as : In 1559, "a certaine travellinge man which died at Eastbridge," was buried. In 1563 " Robert Adams, son of Nycholas was drouned in a pit and burried." The original book had indeed been negligently kept. For some years no entries at all were made ; and in the copy is now and again written : Such a year " is wantynge in the ould Regester booke." In 1574, occurs the first entry relating to the Jenney family : " M ris . Anne Jenney, the doughter.of Arthur Jenney Esquier, bapt. 18 Aprill." Arthur Jenney was to inherit the manor of Theberton, and to hold his first 88 AN OLD THEBERTON LAWSUIT court in 1 590. He had been preceded by ancestors of whom some have made their appearance already. Sir William, of Doonwych's time, a judge of the King's Bench, and Sir Edmund the donee of " one buk " from Framlingham, will be remembered. Arthur Jenney was buried here in 1604, and Christopher his younger brother in 1609, but no monuments of either remain. The family continued to hold the manor till the last years of the seventeenth century. At this time, the Jenneys were an unhappy family. In 1584, when Arthur Jenney was living at Theberton, his father Francis Jenney of Knoddishall a parish three miles off, was an old man of seventy-four. Against him and one Thomas Okeley as co-defendant, Arthur instituted a suit in Chancery. He stated that his father was tenant for life, with remainder to himself, of a certain park and grounds adjoining, called Theberton Park, with divers other lands and tenements ; that his father being very aged, and the house and buildings at Theberton very ruinous and in great decay, his father induced him to take the premises on lease ; and that he, upon hope of the fatherly good-will and liking of his father, had upon entreaty been content to remove his dwelling from Norfolk, and to take the said park and lands on lease for twenty-one years should his father so long live, at a rent of 220, the lease being dated in 1 566. Arthur, and one John Jernegan (his wife's name had been Elye Jernegan) had become bound in 400 for payment of the rent. Francis Jenney the father, by his answer, said that all Arthur's statements were most false and untrue, devised only to vex and trouble him, and thereby to shorten his days if that were possible ; that Arthur advised by the Duchess of Suffolk and other friends, had solicited the lease ; and that, though dissuaded by his own friends CONCERNING THEBERTON HALL 89 as it would be committing the greatest part of his living into his son's hands, he did in fact make the lease as stated ; that his son did not pay the rent ; that he had gently sought to obtain it, but would not put the matter in controversy in his old age ; and further, that the surety Jernegan had fallen into great decay, and was not of ability to satisfy his bond. The other defendant Thomas Okely in his answer alleged that the suit had been devised by Arthur and his father on purpose to put him to vexation ; and that they also had " set towards him Christopher Jenney," the younger brother, " a very malicious person." Arthur filed a replication, stating that for eleven or twelve years he had endeavoured to get the matter peaceably settled by reference to friends ; that he had, since his years of discretion, always been as dutiful to his father as any son he had which was not saying much, for he added that the extremities he endured at the hands of his father came not of his father himself, but by evil counsel, lewd advice, and practices, of Christopher his own younger brother. I find other references of about the same date to the old park, and mention of the hall, of Theberton. In a Particular of the Manor, is described " the Seate of the Manor called Thebarton Halle with the Parke lying in Theberton and Fordlye, 1 beinge well builded, with a gardine, orchard, meadowes, pastures, and earable (arable) lands, woods, timbers, and underwoods." Besides the " halle " there is mentioned, among other lands occupied by the lord of the manor on the farm then called Park Closes, " one close called Whinney Close containing 20 1 Can this be the park in Fordley, before referred to as described on the rolls of that Manor ? There is presumptive evidence that at this time the Theberton park contained no deer, but was under tillage. 90 PARISH TOPOGRAPHY acres," also " one Mansion House with a brickell (brick kiln) and house, with the close called More Close." The road now the " hall road," was then known as More or Moor Lane. It is probable that the wood now called the " Whin covert " occupies part of Whinney Close, and that the " Mansion House with a brickell " stood on the site of the wood now " Kiln or Kell Grove." The Particular bears no date, but it refers to the reign of Mary as seemingly recent, and to acts as lord of the manor, of Francis Jenney, who I take it was the Francis of Knodishall defendant in the Chancery suit. We read also of a " Park House " in Theberton. There is this entry in our Register for 1587: "John Neele, which was slaine by ye cavinge of the grounde in Mr. Jenney's well at the parck house in theberton, was buried the 21 Daie of Auguste." This Mr. Jenney must have been Arthur, who was living upon the property demised to him by his father. The Moor lane or Hall road had then wider grassy margins than now, for " the several feadings of the Highways leading from Theberton Hall to the Kelshall closes and meadows " appertaining to the manor, were put at five acres. The " rents of assize free or bond of the manor, with daies works, rente henns, and other services by the yeare " were set at 3. is. lod. The present lord of the manor has never received either the days' works, rent hens, or other services, or any part of the 3. i s. iod. t and fears that they are gone beyond recovery. In 1574, Robert Page then rector, quaintly described as " old parson of Theberton," and Margaret Hooe were married the last day of March. Page's successor Reignald Plummer, the copyist of this part of the register, must lie under suspicion of having added the " old." THE INGHAM FAMILY 91 In 1578, we find the first mention of the Inghams inhabitants of Theberton for centuries " Katharaine Ingam the doughter of Thomas was baptized ye 2nd of March." In later years, both this name and the old name of Jenney recurs in the register too often to be repeated. In 1584, "Thomas Smith curate of Theberton was buried." Either he was a curate of Robert Page, or, which I think more probable, was, on the death of Page, the date of which I do not know, serving the cure pend- ing a new appointment to the Rectory. In 1585, Reignald orReighnald or Reginald Plummer, M.A., was instituted to the parish church, vacant by the death of the last rector. About this incumbent I have gleaned a few notices. At the Easter visitation of 1597, the outgoing wardens, whose names are in the register, Robert Beare and Roger Clemence, presented that " the parsonage howses are somewhat decayed " adding, however, that " he (Plummer) preacheth everye Sondaye." Plummer ap- peared, and objected that the houses had been repaired in part, adding, rather superfluously, one might think, that he was a master of arts ! l One Thwayte swore that all the " decayes " had been repaired by him, but there had been some " decayes " since, by reason of a " tempest and bigg wynde." The churchwardens were themselves presented, for 1 He evidently desired to make it clear that he was not what Fuller called a "" mean minister." Mr. Ditchfield, in his " Old Time Parson," says that in the Archdeaconry of St. Alban's, ministers not preachers (I think he means licensed preachers) or masters of arts, had to be examined periodically as to their competence by the archdeacon, or the judge of his Court. One .vicar was dull and " not competent," but he afterwards improved, obtained a licence, and was reported to be preaching " painfully and diligently in his parish." 92 COMMUNICANTS AND RECUSANTS that a silver cover for the communion cup was a-wanting ; and they, not appearing, were then and there excom- municated. Beare appeared afterwards, and was ordered to provide a cover before Christmas, and that was done. The church still possesses a chalice, said to date from 1574- In 1603, the Bishop (Jegon) of Norwich, in pursuance of directions from the Archbishop, required a return from each parish in his diocese, of the number of com- municants, the number of recusants and non-receivers of communion, and as to any other benefice held by the incumbent. According to Plummer's return, there were one hundred and twenty communicants, no recusants, no non-receivers of communion in Theberton ; and he added that he served an impropriation another cure, at the stipend of .10 a-year. As communion was compulsory, the return proves that one hundred and twenty was then about the adult population of our parish. It was the impropriate church of Middleton that Plummer, certainly from 1603 to 1606, and I think during other years, was serving as curate. In 1606, he was presented for baptizing the child of a woman, a stranger in that parish, which he denied (why should not he have baptized it), and was warned for not " catechizing on Sondaye." Good Parson Plummer need not have indulged in sarcasm on his predecessor for marrying Reighnold himself and his wife Issabel had seventeen children whose names are in the register. Fortunately for them agriculture and all the country trades which feed upon and are fed by that great mother of industries, were just then prosperous ; for though out of the seventeen only seven survived, those seven had to be clothed and educated AGRICULTURAL PROSPERITY 93 and put out in the world. Thomas Tusser, who farmed for a time at Cattawade on the Essex edge of our county, though a professor of detail, and as a Solomon to teach others, and careful and prudent withal, found that his own sad lot was as he wrote In Suffolk soil For hope of pelf like worldly elf To moil and toil To cark and care and even bare With loss of pain to little gain. He failed perhaps too much the gentleman, but the home-bred farmers, sons of the soil, were generally prosperous. It is the fact that rents had risen ; but still Harrison says that whereas " they were scarce able in former times to live and pay their rent without selling of a cow or a horse or more," now, although " four pound of old rent be improved to forty or fifty pound, yet will the farmer think his gain very small toward the midst of his term, if he have not six or seven years rent lying by him therewith to purchase a new lease." Striking too was the improvement about this date in the standard of living. " So common," we read, " were all sorts of treene (wooden) vessels in old time, that a man should hardly find four pieces of pewter in a good farmer's house"; whereas, in this his own time, Harrison tells us, the farmer would have " a fair garnish of pewter on his cowboard (cupboard), three or four feather beds, so many coverlets and carpets of tapestry, a silver salte, a bowle for wine if not a whole nest and a dosen of spoons, to furnish up the sute." Here is an actual list of all the belongings furniture implements and stock left by a small farmer of our parish of Theberton in 1582, with the value set upon every article. 94- AN ELIZABETHAN FARMER'S BELONGINGS "An8 Dml 1582 "An Invetorye of the goods and chattals of Wyllam Geads of ffeaberton in the Countye of Suff. husbondman deciseassed, made the thirde daye of november in the yere of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lad ye Elyzabethe Queene of Inglond ffraunce and Irelond Defender of the faythe &c. 24th. prised by us Thomas Syer, Robertt ffrenche, Robert Baker, Henry Hill, and Thomas Base. s. d, In primis his aprell 13 4 Itm one payer of tongs, two cobirons, a gridiron, a fierpane, and two hayles (a) 3 o Itm fower chaiers, one dresser and forme, and a little stole 20 Itm one table planke (b) 20 Itm in pewter 15 peces, fyve saults, one morter and a ^ pestle, two canstacks (c) and a grater 10 o Itm 6 chossens (d) o 20 Itm in brase 7 kettles, one pott, towe skelletts (e) a fnen pane, a skomer (e) and a spiett (e) . 26 o Itm one flock bed as it stand ther, one covering with hangings therto 10 o Itm two ould Koffers 20 Itm another flockbed as it stand w th a coveringe and hangings therto 10 o Itm 6 pillows 68 Itm 2 Koffers 26 Itm in ale vessells thre, two potts, treninge (f) dysshes, treninge spones, and treninge platters, and trenchers 20 Itm one featherbed as it stand in the chamber, wth the hangings therto belonging and two coverings . . 25 8 Itm in chese thre qrters 20 o Itm 14 payer of shetts 6 pillowberes (^), fower table clothes, fower table napkings, wth the rest of the other Linninge 40 o Itm half a come (h) of Wheat 40 Itm 40 pound wole 50 Itm 8 li. hempe o 16 (a) An iron contrivance to hang a pot over the fire, from the Dan. hale originally a tail see Eng. Dialect Dictionary. (b} For trestles. (c) Candlesticks. (d) Cushions. (i?) Small kettles or boilers. Skimmer. Spit. (/) Wooden. (g) Pillow cases. (n) Coomb. THE CHURCH FARM 95 s. d. Itm 2 potts of buttur 20 Itm in mathocks, sides, pick forks, hoks, hatchetts, and wimbles (/), wth other iron 68 Itm one chese prese, 9 bowles, 4 kelers (_/), one charne (k\ thre fatts, and a tube 20 o Itm two fanes, two skepes 3 o Itm a payer of querns, one towcome (l\ a passhell (;) and thre payles , 34 Itm in gysse, duxe and henes 80 Itm the corne in the Barne, with the Haye ther ... 10 o o Itm one haye stake 134 Itm the wheat one the ground 30 o Itm one cartte, one ploughe, the carte trayse (n) wth counters and sheres therto, collers and Dudfens (0), two panejls, one cart sadle, one bridle, and a payer of harrous 20 o Itm the hempe unpilled 50 Itm two sythes, one iron Rake 40 Itiri thre of the best mylche neat (/), the w ch are gyven to the children 500 Itm fyve other mylche neat 613 8 Itm two buds (q~) 30 o Itm one kalf 50 Itm thre mares 400 Itm thre Lambs 7 o Itm two hogs, one sowe, and sijxe Shotts (r) . . . 33 4 li. s. d. Some totalis 44 126. Possibly Wyllyam Geads lived at the Church Farm house, the greater part of which certainly dates from Tudor days. The old messuage is yet little altered, nor can there be much alteration in its surroundings. It stands just off the road ; and from its windows, perhaps in Geads' (*') Augers. (f) Shallow wooden tubs for washing up. A word still used in Suffolk. (K) Churn. Spelling characteristic of Suffolk pronunciation. (/) For combing or dressing tow. (m) Query pestle. (n) Cart harness, the expression still used. (0) Cart-horse bridle, word still in use. (p} Milch cows. A cow stable is still called a neat-house. (q} Young bullocks about a year old. (r) Young pigs. 96 STATE OF HIGHWAYS A.D. 1555 time latticed with thin strips of wood like dairy windows now, or filled with oiled linen, for glass was expensive, overlooks the three cottages across the road, as old possibly as itself; and is looked down upon by the ancient round tower of the church. The now good road from Leiston to Yoxford, was then a " wikkede wey," deserving the statement in the Act of 1555 whereby the first surveyors had been appointed, that highways generally were "both very noisome, tedious to travel, and dangerous to passengers and carriages." By carriages, of course was meant wheeled vehicles of every kind, farm carts for example ; private carriages had but just come into use, and there were few of them. The Earl of Arundell is said to have owned the first coach two years before Geads' death in 1580. In the village street southward of the church.no very old houses remain. Most prominent is the modern inn, the Lion. I find no record of an older inn on the same site ; but the register for 1589 mentions an Eastbridge inn : " Duncane Agnisse, a saylor of Southold which died at Eastbridge Inne, was buried the 22 of Marche." As this was the year following the Spanish Armada, and as Southwold had fitted out thirteen armed ships to fight the invaders, it is not unlikely that poor Duncane Agnisse had fought for his country in one of them. With our parish accounts, as with our manor rolls, we are unfortunate. Had early accounts 1 been preserved, we should have found, no doubt, entries of charges for food and clothes and arms for soldiers ; even with- out evidence, however, we may assume that men were 1 All the parish accounts, not lost stolen or strayed, have lately been sorted, repaired, and bound in books, and are now in custody of the Parish Council. THE EASTBRIDGE INN, A.D. 1589 97 trained here, as we know they were in neighbouring villages. Suffolk did what it could. One hundred and thirty-one Suffolk gentlemen contributed 3625. From Kelsale, one Lambert Nolloth subscribed 25, and Thomas Rivett of Brockford, an ancestor of mine, gave a like sum. No money was, so far as we know, sent from Theberton ; but when, some years later, 1599, " authority called footmen and horsemen out of the shire into the parts of Essex near London for defence of the court against secret purposes intended," we find our acquain- tance Arthur Jenney contributing one horse for service of Her Majesty. I wonder whether the old Eastbridge inn displayed a sign in the fifteen hundreds ; and, if so, how the painter depicted a thing so strange as an eel's foot, which the present beer-house is named after. In those days, when an inn-holder brewed the liquor he sold, surely the sign of an eel's foot in it would have been too significant of adulteration. To adulterate the Englishman's barley wine the " ryght goode ale which God sent us, a myghty drynke for the commune people," has always been held as sinful as sacrilege ; and has ever been punished by publicity. At the present day, an offender's name, upon a second conviction, is printed in the newspapers. In mediaeval times, publicity was secured by means as effectual and more nasty. A brewer who tampered with ale, we had no hops then and no beer, was made a shameful spectacle driven about public places in a dung cart. So far back as the thirteenth century this had been the practice, and it followed a yet more ancient precedent. The law was in the Conqueror's time, that Malam cerevisiam faciens in cathedrd ponebatur stercoris. The earliest but one of our former church bells was H 98 OUR OLD CHURCH BELLS dated 1594, and bore the arms of France and of England, the royal initials E. R., and the words nos sumus instructi ad laudem Domini. The late Dr. Raven told me that there had been an earlier bell dated 1553 ; and he records the dates of three others, two of 1614 and one 1663 by John Darbie. CHAPTER VIII GOOD old Tusser, who got no pelf from his Suffolk farming, has yet left us debtors for the treasures of his experience. His notable old saws, in doggerel rhyme to hold the memory, afford a life-like view of Elizabethan husbandry and housewifery. We see not only the year's work of such a husbandman as Wyllyam Geads, but also the wise indoor management of such a housewife as we may believe was Mistress Geads. Let me refer my readers to the book itself the famous " Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry," of which the best edition is the reprint of 1812. A few slight quotations must suffice here. Among the goods in Geads' inventory, as in most in- ventories of the time, was a parcel of hemp. In 1533, it had been enacted by Parliament, that all persons occu- pying sixty acres of arable land, should grow a quarter acre of hemp or flax every year. Under this Act, to all the larger holdings were attached " hemp lands " ; and the word survives still as a field name, though its origin is almost, if not quite, forgotten, y Flax was harvested in July, for which month Tusser advises : Now pluck up the flax for the maidens to spin ; * 1 According to Brother Bartholomew, who wrote in the twelfth or thirteenth century, there was much and "divers work and 99 H 2 100 CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES And the " fimble " or female hemp at the same time : Wife pluck fro' thy seed hemp, the fimble hemp clean, This looketh more yellow, the other more green, Use t'one for thy spinning, leave Michell the t'other, For shoe thread, and halter, for rope, and such other. The " carle " or male hemp was not harvested till Michell (Michaelmas), when we are told : Now pluck up thy hemp, and go beat out the seed, And afterward water it as ye see need ; But not in the river where cattle should drink, For poisoning them and the people with stink. With the last lines, no person who has tied up his boat in a Friesch canal, to leeward of retting hemp, can fail to sympathise. Often, a Suffolk field bears the name " camping close," from a rough kind of football once played there a game quite obsolete now in these parts. The more grass is trampled in winter the better. Tusser accord- ingly advised : Get campers a ball To camp therewithal And, In meadow and pasture to grow the more fine, Let campers be camping in any of thine. How such people as Master Geads and his jolly neigh- bours feasted at Christmastide is told with great gusto ; those old-fashioned yeomen did indeed enjoy high feeding : Good bread and good drink, a good fire in the hall, Brawn pudding and souse, and good mustard withall, Beef, mutton, and pork, shred (mince) pies of the best, Pig, veal, goose, and capon, and turkey well drest, Cheese, apples, and nuts, joly carols to hear, As then in the country is counted good cheer. travail," before the flax reached the maidens' hands. After being taken out of the water and dried in the sun, it was "knocked, beaten, and brayed and carried, rodded, and gnodded, ribbed and heckled and at the last spun." HOLLOAING LARGESSE 101 The roasting spit was then turned by a dog, a turn- spit or turnbroche, Good diligent turnbroche and trusty withall Is sometimes as needfull as some in the hall. Field sports for farmers, Tusser, rather to one's surprise, did not approve of; fowling-pieces had not been invented, and hawking was a sport considered meet only for " gentlemen and persons of quality." Our sage's reflection is : Though some have a pleasure with hawk upon hand, Good husbands get treasure to purchase their land. And though we read elsewhere that, about that time, "the cheife sport of the yeomanry most delightful for their chace " was hare hunting, Tusser does not allude to it. Saffron, used for bleaching linen, and for cooking, was commonly grown in Suffolk, particularly in the Wood- bridge district. In August : When harvest is gone, Then saffron comes on ; A little of ground Brings saffron a pound. We still, in remote places, call the leading man in the harvest field, the " lord " ; and the ancient custom of " holloaing largesse " is not yet forgotten ; I have heard it myself. It was the same in Tusser's time, as Tusser himself witnesses : Grant harvest-lord more by a penny or two, To call on his fellows the better to do, Give gloves to thy reapers a largess to cry, And daily to loiterers have a good eye. The wonderful machines, which are the reapers now, do not need gloves. Turnips and mangold were then unknown in England, 102 SUFFOLK FAIR MAIDS and when hay ran short in winter, there were hard times for sheep and for cattle : If snow do continue, sheep hardly that fare Crave mistle and ivy for them for to spare. Young people now have found more interesting uses for mistletoe. Were not the maids of Suffolk always fair ? Old Fuller certainly thought so, when he wrote " The God of Nature hath been bountiful, in giving them beautiful complexions." For cattle, the old farmers cut down boughs of trees : From every tree, the superfluous boughs Now prune for thy neat, thereupon to go browse. Suffolk has always been famous for its butter, which, as Fuller again oddly observed, was half our Saviour's fare in infancy " butter and honey shall He eat " ; and likewise for its cheese, which Camden accounted good as that of Parma ; but which, made by more modern methods, of skimmed-milk, has been ofttimes flung into the hog trough, and there, our Suffolk ploughboy poet says, it long remained, defying even the pigs' teeth : in perfect spite Too big to swallow and too hard to bite. Tusser says that "Good dairy doth pleasure"; can we not fancy our smiling " fair maids " in the dairy, their faces bright with health and happiness ; or again, with their sleeves turned up, their dimpled arms in the wash tub, singing his quaint old rhyme : Dry Sun Dry Wind Safe Bind Safe Find. Go wash well saith Summer, with Sun I will dry, Go wring well saith Winter, with Wind so shall I. THEBERTON CHRISTIAN NAMES 103 Ewes were milked in those days for the dairy, as they milk them now in Holland, and it seems, produced more for the grass they consumed than cows. Five ewes to a cow, make a proof by a score, Shall double thy dairy or trust me no more. Davy gives another extract from the lost Manor Rolls of Theberton, which must have been lost therefore since his time. It bears date in the 42nd year of Queen Elizabeth. I venture to transcribe the clerk's jumbled Latin : Curia cum leta tenta 14 Oct. 42 Eliz. capitales plegii super sacramentum dicunt quod Inhabitantes ville Theberton non utunt piliis Anglice doe not were capps secundum forman statuti in hujusmodi casu provisi. Ideo villata de Theberton penatur ad 6d. ad reformandum. This, perhaps, purported to be under a statute of 13 Elizabeth, which provided that all persons above the age of seven years (some of worship and quality excepted) should wear upon Sabbaths and holidays caps of wool, knit thicked and dressed in England, upon pain to forfeit ten groats for the omission thereof. 1 The instance is remarkable, of a Manor Court retaining its magisterial jurisdiction down to so late a date. Returning to our i6th century registers ; there is little more worth quoting : but some old Christian names may be available for future Theberton babies. Parents, tired of Gladys, Phyllis, and such like, might do worse than 1 The clerk was probably not aware that the Act had, in fact, been repealed three years before, in 39 Elizabeth. The industry, designed to be protected thereby and by the previous Acts of Edward IV. and Henry VIII., was of importance, maintaining before the invention of fulling mills, fifteen distinct callings of handicraftsmen. The best caps were made at Monmouth. " Wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps," said Fluellen of the Welshmen, in K. Henry V. 104 OLD THEBERTON SURNAMES call their girls Beteriss, Damaris, Annice, Amyce, Ancilla, Faith, Fyonet, Mirable, Sythe, Finet, Apphia, Tryphena or Jeronomye names all borne by their female predecessors in our parish. Among the surnames in the register, few are familiar now, Syle, Smyle, Slith, Sylbarte, Semicraft, Hellouse, Erys, Boutatout, Wagylgoose, are among them. Bouta- tout reads like a Huguenot name. One comes across it, too, in naval history. John "Buteturt" was by King Edward II. appointed "Admiral captain of sailors and marines " (of the East coast) and also " of our knights and other faithful subjects who are about to proceed with the same John against our Scottish enemies and rebels " this in 1315. Some of the late surnames are pretty, Marjoram we have still, and there was Flowerdew. Early in the i/th century, matters of social interest to country folk seem to have been much in the air. In Queen Elizabeth's last Parliament we find such subjects debated in both houses. In 1601, a bill was brought into the Commons House against profane swearing ; it never matured into an Act ; but it interests us, because, in the course of debate one member took occasion to in- veigh against holders of the office of Justice of the Peace, which even then was respectable for antiquity. So far back as 1332, it was, that the "lords and great men" had advised King Edward III. "that he should ordain Justices in every County for the conservation of the peace, with power to repress and punish offenders." The member, one Mr. Glascocke, related to the House this tale about a Justice whom he knew : A poor neigh- bour coming to him, said, Sir, I am very highly rated in the Subsidy Book. I know thee not, said the Justice. Not me Sir, quoth the country man, why your worship ELIZABETHAN MAGISTRATES 105 had my team and my oxen such a day, and I have ever been at your worship's service. Have you so Sir, quoth the Justice, I never remem- bered I had any such matter, no, not a sheep's tail : " So," continued Mr. Glascocke, " unless you offer sacrifice of sheep and oxen to the idol Justices they know you not " and so forth. In defence of the Justices, Sir Francis Hastings said : " I never in my life heard Justices of the Peace taxed before in this sort. For aught I know, Justices of the Peace be men of quality, honesty, experience, and justice." And again, another speaker : " I much marvel that men will dare accuse Justices of the Peace, Ministers to Her Majesty, without whom the Commonwealth cannot be." There were about this time, particularly in parts of London, numbers of corrupt magistrates, for whom no good word can be said. Glascocke, later, pretended by way of apology, that his diatribes had been aimed against that class alone, men then commonly known as Basket Justices. Parliament had always been anxious that Justices of the Peace should be above suspicion. In 1439, ft na ^ been enacted that County Justices must possess land worth 20 a year equivalent to some 300 now ; and the reason assigned was that some persons had been appointed, who, "on account of their meanness and incapacity could not govern or direct the people." There can be no doubt that independent position, a liberal education, and some enabling acquaintance with law, must be more solid grounds for confidence in the dispensers of justice, than the wearing of badges of political parties, whatever their colour. In the same Parliament, the House of Lords also had 106 POACHERS AND GAME PRESERVATION social legislation before them. They passed a bill intituled " Against Drunkards and common haunters of Alehouses and Taverns." Drunkenness was then prevalent, as it always had been, the statements of Camden and of Fuller notwithstanding. Camden's opinion was that the vice had recently been brought to England out of the Netherlands; that before 1581, of all Northern nations, the English had been the most moderate, and were much commended for their sobriety ; and that our soldiery had only learned in the recent Dutch wars " to drown themselves in strong liquors, and by drinking others' healths to impair their own." Fuller quotes Camden and asserts that "before the midst of the reign of Elizabeth there was neither general practice nor legal punishment of that vice in this kingdom," and goes on to say : " We must sadly confess that since that time, many English souls have taken a cup too much of Belgic wine, whereby their heads have not only grown dizzy in matters of less moment, but their whole bodies stagger in the fundamentals of their religion." A bill was also introduced into the Lords which attained a second reading, for preservation of pheasants and partridges. It was, in due course, referred to a special committee, on which sat very grave and reverend Signiors : an archbishop, four bishops, three learned judges. Poaching had for centuries been a subject of legisla- tion. More than two hundred years before, in 1389, a statute had made illegal the use of " rabbit nets, heyes and hare pipes." In 1536, a proclamation was made by Henry VIII. prohibiting the slaughter of partridges, pheasants, and herons, from how strange it sounds now the Palace of Westminster to St. Giles' in the Fields, and thence to Islington, Hampstead and Hornsey PAYMENT OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT 107 Park. I think, however, that this debate in the House of Lords was the first time that not only poaching, but actual preservation was under discussion in Parliament. That pheasants, so "fair in feather and dainty in the flesh," were, not long after this, even hand-reared, I infer from Fuller, who writes, " whether these tame, be as good as the wild pheasants, I leave palate men to decide." In those days, constituencies paid their Parliament- men, whose " wages," since Edward I., had been levied by the sheriffs on the counties. The " wages " of knights of the shire were 43. a day equivalent to, say, 3 now and of the burgesses, borough members, half that at least ; with besides, in both cases, charges of going and coming, fees for writs, and so forth. And to make sure of fair work for fair pay, it was ordered that, when absent without the Speaker's leave, the legislators should lose their wages. Plummer's work, in his later years, seems to have been many sided. We know he preached " everye Sondaye " at Theberton, and that he also served the cure of Middleton ; and, besides this ministerial work, an Act of Parliament had thrust other strange duties upon him : he was to be present to aid the constable when rogues were whipped, and register the same, on pain of five shillings for every default ; he had also to register the testimonials of servants leaving their places, for which last duty, a munificent two pence was to be allowed him. The two old bells, impressed with the date 1614, were hung it is likely in Plummer's time. 1625 saw the close of our parson's life. That year, the register records " Reighnald Plummer minister of this Towne was buryed the 3Oth of Aug." 108 A THEBERTON PARSON'S WILL Plummer had lost his first wife Issabel in 1617, and had married again. During his last illness, he made his will which is not without interest, as suggesting the plenishing of a country parsonage of the period. After bequests to the poor of Leiston, Westleton, Middleton and Fordley (the parishes of Middleton and Fordley were not united till 1657) of 5.$-. to each parish, he gave " his loving wife Ann 20, a bedstead 2 bolsters 2 pillowes 2 blanketts I coverlett, as it standeth in the parlour (beds stood in parlours then of even great houses 1 ) with the curtings, and sixe payre of sheetes the best att her choyce, all her apparell lynnyng and wollen, all her ridinge geare with her syde sadle and other furniture (Ann seems to have been an equestrienne) one letherein trunck, one joyned box, another little painted boxe, one dossend (dozen) of table napkins, all the hempe, towe, and (illegible), her gould rings, her bible, her boxe of banketting dishes, my bearinge clothe, fower greate peaces of pewther the best att her choyce, sixe pewther porringers, one bosen (basin), one joyned chayre, her lookinge glasse." Also he gave her 6 i$s. 4^., on condition she should make no claim to thirds in his free lands, but should release, "according to lawe in that case provided, att the chardges in Lawe of John Ingham of Theberton yeoman, soe as she bee not driven to travell further then the cittie of Norwich." To the said John Ingham and his heirs, he left all his free lands in Theberton (he had bought lands of Robert Barnes in 1610, and had sold lands called Harts to John Ingham for 230 but had not conveyed the freehold portion of them), but the will continued if his wife should refuse to release her dower in them, then he gave the said 1 Vide inventory of Sir John Rous, at Henham, 1603, set out in Suckling's Suffolk. PRESENTATION OF WILLIAM FENN 109 6 13-r. 4< to said John Ingham, towards the com- pounding with her for her thirds. To Mary his daughter 20, Dorithie his daughter 14, Ambrose his son 20, William his son 20, Elizabeth his daughter 20, Jaine his daughter 20, at 21. All residue of goods and chattels he gave unto Tymothie and John his two sons towards payment of their portions, and he appointed them his executors. The will was witnessed by Zacharie Starke and Robert Beare. Neither in church nor in churchyard is found any memorial of this worthy rector ; for three hundred years his name has been forgotten. That these words, written during his lifetime, may be applied to him, it will not hurt us to believe : " The Lord hath vouch- safed many singular benefitts, as proper to this country (Suffolk), among which this one is nott the least, the great number of religious, grave, reverend, and learned ministers of God's Holy Word, which are planted in this shire, travelling (travailing) in the Lord's harvest, with sound doctrine and upright life." The good man was succeeded by one William Fenn, who was presented by Charles I., one of the earliest acts of his reign. Our register has this entry: "1626, memoranda that Wille ffenn Clerke, uppon the seconde day of Aprill, in the yere of our Lorde 1626, beinge lately inducted into the church of Theberton in Suff., did then and there in the tyme of Divine service openly reade the forty articles 1 intituled Articles agreed Upon by the Archbishops and Byshops in the Convocacon holden at London, Anno Domini 1562, without eyther addinge or detractinge, and with the declaracon of his unfeined assent and consent unto 1 An evident mistake. The real number of articles was the same then as now thirty-nine. 110 TROUBLOUS TIMES the same and every of them, in the presence of us whose names be here under written : Thomas London, John Ingame, Thos. Bradstreet, Edmond Whincopp, Robert Backler, Robert Beare, Godfrey Trelonde, Robert Coding, John (illegible), and many others. CHAPTER IX FENN'S tenure of his benefice nearly coincided with his royal patron's tenure of the kingdom ; and no time more troublous and distracted has ever been known in England. It is not for a local chronicler to launch out from his backwater into tempestuous seas ; the nation's history too high for him, he does not dare to touch in these pages, save, when needs must, to explain the story of his parish. Differences had long agitated the minds of Englishmen, and clefts were opening now in many directions ; firstly, in the domain of religion ; and secondly, in the realm of society and politics. In religion it was, that the earthquake was most severely felt in our little community. There were, no doubt, both Puritan and Roman Catholic sympathizers in Theberton. The restoration of Communion Tables to the east end of churches, the calling them altars, indeed all the church ceremonial and discipline inculcated by Laud, had scandalized the Puritans ; while, on the other hand, to the eyes of high church people, the Puritans were hypocritical bigots, dour and sour themselves, and set upon denying enjoyment to all others. Sundays, formerly happy holy days, were to be as Jewish 111 112 THE BOOK OF SPORTS BULL-BAITING sabbaths. " The vanityes of the Gentiles, which were comprehended in a Maypole, were to be battered down," and indeed, all recreations, however innocent, were reprobated, and if possible repressed. James I. saw that the common people clung to the old, more cheerful religion ; and turned his astute mind to win their affections for the reformed Church of England. He issued the Declaration we call the Book of Sports, and thereby notified his pleasure to his good people, that after the end of Divine Service they should not be letted from any such lawful recrea- tions as dancing either men or women, archery, leaping, vaulting, nor from having May games, Whitsun ales and Morris dances, and the setting up of Maypoles ; and that women should have leave to carry rushes for the " decoring " of churches according to their old custom. 1 And the professor of kingcraft laid a bait for noncon- formists by providing that to those only who attended church were the sports to be permitted. His Majesty's efforts notwithstanding, religious bicker- ings and civil dissensions raged throughout Fenn's incumbency. Our churchwardens were presented in 1627, because they had not, as the law required, " Bishopp Jewell's Apologie"; Mr. Bradstreet, a witness to Fenn's reading in, appeared, and promised to supply the 1 The ancient sport of bull-baiting was expressly excepted from the king's list of lawful Sunday recreations. The brutal amuse- ment had been enjoyed by Queen Elizabeth ; during Puritan times it was prohibited altogether, but it revived with the Restoration ; Pepys says of the good sport he saw at the Paris garden : " the bulls tossed the dogs into the very boxes." Long afterwards in William III.'s reign, it was still a fashionable amusement, as a French witness M. Misson wrote, indulged in by "butchers and gentlemen." In 1802, a Parliamentary majority refused to put it down : and not till 1835 was a ^ aw enacted to make it illegal. BETWIXT THE TWO BUNDLES OF HAY 113 same. The Bradstreet family had for some time been resident in the parish ; the name occurring in the register in 1594. It may be, that the Rev William Bradstreet, our rector from 1865 to 1881, descended from this old Theberton stock. In 1633, the Book of Sports not having been widely promulgated, Charles I. had it republished ; and strictly commanded that it should be read in churches by the clergy. Parson Fenn, we shall see, read it in his Theberton church, and no doubt with unction, as also without doubt, to the disgust of Puritans in his con- gregation. Some parsons, like Buridan's ass, halted betwixt two opinions ; one minister of a church in London, after reading the King's Declaration, immediately went on with the Ten Commandments, adding : " Dearly Beloved, you have heard the Commandments of God, and of man, now obey which you please." The bulk of the people of Theberton must, I think, have been Puritans, detesting the high church and royalist proclivities of Fenn, and bitterly opposed to any such changes as should " put on their church the shape and face of Popery." In 1639-40, writs had come down into Suffolk to collect " ship money " ; and the overseers and the con- stable had to assess the charge upon the ratepayers of Theberton. Throughout Suffolk, feeling against this fateful tax rose very high, " people abounding," so we read, " in remissness and obstinacy." " Innumerable groans and sighs," the sheriff reported, " were daily returns, instead of payment." It is significant of the remissness and obstinacy of our stiff-necked parish, that, though neighbouring " towns," Middleton and Kelsale, were certainly rated, and we must suppose I 114 THE GREAT PROTESTATION paid their rates, no return was obtained from Theberton. The folk of Theberton, as those of other parishes, had in 1641 to become parties to the great Protestation. The form was : " I, A. B. do in the presence of Almighty God, promise, vow, and protest, to maintain and defend as far as lawfully I may, the true reformed Protestant religion expressed in the doctrines of the Church of England, against all Popery and Popish innovations within this realm." It seems that this was not signed in each separate village. From Dennington for example, the minister and churchwardens and constable went to Laxfield to sign. Fenn still clung to his rectory, although his position must have been perplexing to say the least of it. One day, parsons were commanded by Parliament to read certain Proclamations to their people. Next came a King's Proclamation, enjoining them on their allegiance, not to read the proclamations issued by Parliament. And then again, from Parliament came injunctions, forbidding them to read what had been sent them by the King. In 1642, under two Acts of Parliament a sum of 20,609. \Js. was charged upon Suffolk, of which Theber- ton was assessed at 20. 8s. 4d. We have, for our parish, the names of all the persons charged, with the amount each had to pay : the list contains sixty-nine names, some of which are mentioned later. In December of the same year, the Commons passed an Ordinance, to set on foot the famous Eastern Association. Suffolk and the other eastern counties THE EASTERN ASSOCIATION 115 accepted it warmly. At first, contributions poured in of arms and of money ; but before long, free gifts having been exhausted, loans had to be asked for, to be secured by the " Propositions for the defence of Parlia- ment," and bearing interest at the abnormal rate of ten per cent. How Theberton took up the loan we have no evidence. In Dennington, we find that two inhabitants, Bartholomew and Edward Rafe, lent 10 "upon the Propositions." Cratfield contributed money and plate and also two nags and a mare, and these were sent in for collection to Yoxford, as probably were any loans from Theberton. Happily brother had not to fight with brother here in Suffolk ; but such entries as these in the Dennington books, help us to realise how civil war afflicted other districts of England : " 26 Jan. 1643, Given to a poor distressed man and his wife and children, being plundered by the King's forces of all their estate 5/--" " 1644 Laid out to young Lionel Nickolls being maimed in the Parliament's service I7/-." " Given by consent of the town to two maimed souldiers, the one having his leg shot off, and the other shot in the arm, 4/-." In 1643 again, an Ordinance was made by Parliament, directing, among other things, that altar rails were to be taken down, and communion tables moved from the east ends into the bodies of churches. Under this Ordinance, crucifixes, images, and pictures of saints, and superstitious inscriptions, were also to be removed and done away with ; and from it originated the commission of the iconoclast Dowsing. In some venerable German churches Hildesheim may serve for an example not only the fabrics themselves in their integrity, but likewise the ancient church I 2 furnishings, and precious objects treasured in their sacristies, have been preserved, as witnesses from age to age of a hoary antiquity. In England, on the other hand, Dowsing or barbarous soldiers, ignorant incum- bents or modern architects, have worked their wicked wills, and stripped most of our churches bare of things historical, and vulgarized others with machine-made sham Gothic ornaments. In our own parish church, almost nothing remains to carry our minds back to past ages. True, the old walls yet stand ; but there is little else, to suggest the scenes which, within those walls, have during long ages succeeded each other. Not the least striking of such scenes was enacted in 1643 r 1644. Members having themselves sub- scribed the Solemn League and Covenant, Parliament directed it to be sent to the Justices of the Peace and other men of influence in all parishes of England, and to be taken in churches by all congregations. The minister was, upon a Sunday, to read the entire Covenant from the pulpit ; and during the reading, the congrega- tion were to uncover (men wore their hats then in churches); and, at the end of the reading, all were to stand, and, holding up their bare right hands, to promise that they would sincerely, really, and constantly, through the grace of God, endeavour in their several places and callings the preservation of the reformed religion. Afterwards, all had to subscribe the Covenant, by affix- ing their names or marks to a roll of parchment, which was to be preserved as a record in the parish. No parchment roll has been preserved in our parish of Theberton ; but probably, most of the residents named in the assessment list of 1642 signed it, for instance: Sir Arthur Jenney, "Mr. Claxton," Thomas SCANDALOUS MINISTERS 117 Ingham, Daniel Hygate, Robert Beare, and John London. Parson Fenn too, described as " William Fenne Curate for tithes and Glebe," appears in the assessment list. He was still the parson of Theberton ; but whether he obeyed the Parliament by reading and signing the Covenant, or obeyed his own conscience and refused, thereby giving his enemies cause to blas- pheme, we have no evidence. Just at that time, Parliament was passing an Ordinance, whereby, after reciting that complaints had been made by the well-affected inhabitants of Suffolk among other counties, that the service of Parliament was retarded, the enemy strengthened, peoples' souls starved, and their minds diverted from the care of God's cause, by their idle ill-affected and scandalous clergy ; it was ordained that the Earl of Manchester should appoint county committees ; of whom any five members were to sit in any place selected by the Earl, and were to call before them ministers that were scandalous in their lives, ill-affected to the Parliament, or fomenters of the unnatural war then raging, or that should wilfully refuse to obey the Ordinances of Parliament, with power to send for witnesses and examine them upon oath. A Suffolk committee was appointed pursuant to this Ordinance comprising : Alexander Bence M.P., and Squire Bence, William Bloyse M.P., Francis Brewster. Robert Brewster of Wrentham M.P. for Dunwich, Sir Edward Duke, William Heveningham, Sir William Playter, Edward Read, William Rivet, and Sir John Rous, each of whom was paid 5-y. per diem for his services. The Ordinance was soon to be applied to our parish. On Christmas Day 1644, a warrant was issued directed to the inhabitants of the town of Theberton, or any two 118 PARSON FENN SUMMONED of them, requiring them to summon William Fenn parson of the parish, and three witnesses who were named in the warrant, to appear at Beccles on Wednesday the I7th day of January, "att the signe of the Kings Heade," to make proof of the articles exhibited against the said minister ; . . . . and that the said Mr. Fenn should be given notice, that he should come prepared to give in his answer in writing, and to produce any witnesses who might conduce to the clearing of himself, on the dismal charge of the witnesses that should testify against him. This warrant was signed by a sub-committee of five : Sir Robert Brooke, knight, William Hyningeham and Robert Brewster, esquires, and Edward Reade and Francis Brewster, gents, who described themselves as Deputy Lieutenants and Com- mittee of Parliament. The case was heard by the sub-committee, and, in the result, the Articles were held proved. The evidence for the prosecution was to the effect, among other things : that Fenn was a common frequenter of alehouses as a common drunkard, that he was a common swearer, that he was grossly and shamelessly immoral, that he had given out in speeches that he had a licence from the devil to send souls to hell, and power to save whom he would, and that he had threatened to murder one of the witnesses. And furthermore, it was in evidence: that he was a great enemy against the proceedings of Parliament, and had frequently drunk healths to Prince Rupert, and rejoiced that the great parliament-man Sir William Waller had been routed, that he did not observe Sabbaths and Fast days as commanded by Parliament, that he had frequently bowed towards the font and communion table, and had read the books of liberty for Recreation on the Sabbath day meaning the Book of Sports. SEQUESTRATION OF THE RECTORY 119 Among the witnesses to prove the articles were the three who had been summoned, viz., Daniell Hygate gent, Gabriell Battman and Richard Worledge, and also thirty-three others, all of Theberton, thirteen of whose names appear in the assessment list of 1642 ; among them, Robert Beare and his wife, John London, and William Dowseing. In February 1644, the report of the sub-committee having been sent up to the Commons' Committee of Plundered Ministers ; that Committee ordered that the Rectory of Theberton be forthwith sequestered from William Fenn for great misdemeanours, and that some godly and orthodox divine be recommended to the Assembly of Divines, to examine his fitness to have the said sequestration ; and that John London, Thomas Ingham, Robert Beare, and one John Fasset whose name I do not find elsewhere, were to take care and provide for the service of the said cure, till this Committee should take further order in the premises, and the said William Fenn was thereby commanded to forbear to cut, fell, or carry away, any of the timber or other trees, or wood, standing, or growing upon the glebe of the Rectory. l What judgment should be passed by us on parson Fenn. It is notorious that the judicial honesty of the Plundered Ministers' Committee, and likewise of county committees, is open to the gravest suspi- cion. The bias of the class which supplied their members, is betrayed by the use of such epithets as " scandalous," " malignant," " delinquent," to designate men, whose greatest offence, perhaps, was disagreement with the views political and religious of the faction in 1 This information was taken by Mr. Davy from papers which were in the possession of my grandfather in 1810. 120 FENN'S CASE CONSIDERED power. " White's Century " written by a member of Parliament was a much esteemed work ; " Scandalous Malignant Priests" were among the first words of its lengthy title. The County Committees in general were thus described by an eye and ear witness cited in Walker's " Sufferings of the Clergy " : " Mine ears still tingle at the loud clamours and shoutings there made .... in derision of grave and reverend divines, by that rabble of sectaries, which daily flocked thither to see their new pastime ; where the committee members, out of their vast privilege to abuse any men though their betters, without control, have been pleased to call the ministers of Christ brought before them by jailors and pursuivants and placed like heinous malefactors without the bar, saucy jacks, base fellows, brazen-faced fellows " and so forth. Walker says that so notorious were the dealings of these committees, that it long remained a common saying in Suffolk, that Mr. Playters of Uggeshall was deprived for " eating custard after a scandalous manner," he being known to keep a good table. Moreover, in favour of Fenn, one cannot but observe how many of the charges against him bore a political colour ; such as being an enemy to proceedings of Parliament ; rejoicing at Waller's defeat ; not observing Sabbaths and fasts as commanded by Parliament ; read- ing the Book of Sports it had been his plain duty to read it, in obedience to a lawful government and the like. We have not before us the evidence if any was adduced for Fenn's defence. Whether he put in a written answer, or tendered witnesses, we do not know. It is possible that answer and evidence have been suppressed. And there is this further observation : DEATH OF PARSON FENN 121 out of five hundred beneficed clergy in Suffolk, it is stated, and I do not doubt the statement, that one hundred and twenty-nine were at this same time sequestered. Is it at all likely that of ministers of religion so large a proportion, more than one- fourth, could have been guilty of such moral or ecclesiastical offences, as merited this severe punishment ? Against Fenn on the other hand, it is to be noted that his judges were not ignorant men, of a low class such as, according to Walker, composed the committees in general, but on the contrary, that they bore names highly respected in Suffolk ; and there is the testimony concerning his moral conduct, of no less than thirty-six witnesses out of his own parish, to the effect that Fenn was not fit to live with decent people, and was a disgrace to his sacred profession. Whether their evidence was tested by cross-examination we do not know probably not. One of Fenn's last ministerial acts, was to baptize " Elizabeth Jenney daughter of Sir Robert Jenney and Elizabeth his lady, on 25 January 1644." After his deprivation, Fenn does not seem to have left Theberton ; for there is an entry in the parish register : 1651, "Willyam Fenne, Minister of Theberton, deceased this liffe Apelle the 28." Some friend of Fenn's, the parish clerk perhaps, not willing to admit his successor's title, may have thus described him. In point of fact, John Gary was the minister of Theberton in actual possession of the benefice. Even our " rusticals " must have heard of that star of the first magnitude, George Villiers then Marquess of Buckingham. He was now to become of special interest to our parish and neighbourhood. That grotesque sovereign, his dear " Dad and Gossip," had been loading the "dogge Steenie" with extravagant gifts. One of 122 COMMISSIONERS SITTING AT EASTBRIDGE them was the lordship of Leyston manor, then valued at i 14. 75. \\\d. a year. 1 In 1620, the Marquess held his first court for Leyston at which, on the homage, sat Robert Beare and Thomas London both of Theberton. Also, a perambulation was made of the manor, which marches on one side with the manor of Theberton. By words alone without a map, the boundary can hardly be followed, and no ancient map is in existence. My readers, however, may recognise a few place names, such as "the West House," and "the Harrow" whence I suppose comes Harrow Lane ; and possibly Higbones, Herne's Grove, and Hangman's Close, might be identified. Buckingham sold the manor to Richard Miller a mercer in Cheapside ; and, in 1633, we find an action in the court of Exchequer commenced between Miller and others co-plaintiffs, and John Claxton, Esqr., whose name we know, as defendant. The court sent down commissioners ; and they Henry Coke, and Edmund Harvey Esquires and John Cary and Francis Burwell, gents, sat at Eastbridge, may be at the redoubtable Eel's Foot, to take the evidence. Claxton was a copyhold tenant of Leyston manor, and traced his title on the rolls, from a surrender made in Edward IV.'s reign, by John Sturmyn. This John Sturmyn was probably the man, or a like-named son of the man, who in 1445, as will be remembered, withstood the irruption of the Abbot Clement. The question now litigated was the right, whose it was, to fell timber upon the copyholds. Among the witnesses were John Ingam(Ingham) who ten years before had witnessed the reading in of parson Fenn, Henry 1 In the Lords Journals, Proceeding on the impeachment of Buckingham in 1626, Leyston is spelt Lagston. A WRECK OFF "THE SLUICE" 123 Rackham, and John Baker of Theberton, Sir Hurstone Smith a knight of Huntingfield, and William Buckenham who had once been bailiff of the manor of Theberton. The land, on which grew the trees in controversy, was thirty-five acres, described as situate in Moorfield. Claxton owned other copyholds also, among them eight acres in Theberton, and also freehold land adjacent to lands of Arthur Jenney. The timber was valued at i 50 or thereabouts. In the same year 1633 we meet with Miller's name again, this time more closely associated with that of John Ingham of Theberton. A small craft, called a "pink," had been wrecked off the mouth of the Minsmere river near what we call the Sluice ; and, while on a sand bank, where only boats could get to her, had been seized for the King. It seems, she afterwards drove up on the foreshore, and cargo was there taken out of her, and laid upon the beach. Miller then claimed the property, in his capacity of the lord of Leyston manor, and owner of the soil on which the wreck and the goods lay. Ingham was the bailiff of the manor, and was zealous to enforce Miller's rights. No doubt swarms of would-be wreckers had been attracted to the beach, Leyston copyhold tenants among them, and it was said that at Ingham's instiga- tion, the tenants would not suffer the Admiralty Marshal to see the goods. Thereupon, complaint against Ingham was made to Mr. Secretary Coke, and a warrant was issued from the Admiralty, to bring him up from Theberton, to answer in London such matters as should be objected against him on behalf of his Majesty. Our present pulpit was erected in Fenn's time 1628. The sermons preached by him are, perhaps happily, unremembered ; and thousands more emitted from the 124 FENN^S "HERBIDGE BOOK" same platform of eloquence some good seed, fruit of reverent study, to grow in the hearts of devout congre- gations ; some pithless thistledown, listlessly blown about, while sleep crept round from pew to pew are all alike utterly forgotten. Fenn kept what he was pleased to call a " herbidge book" tithe book, in which, in 1634, he entered "the customes belonging to the Towne of Theberton." They are not too long to transcribe : Meadowe the acre &,d. Cow with calf. Lactage 3 an d thence to the commutation value ^430. lO-y.: "that I must leave," as we say in Suffolk. I have no explanation to offer. The Commutation Agreement sets out the same customs of titheing as are recorded in the survey of 1754. They of course went the way of tithes in kind, and after 1838 ceased to be payable. In 1841, the Rev. Henry Hardinge was instituted to the Rectory on the resignation of Mr. Strong ; he was a man of cultured taste, an accomplished linguist, and author of a poem "The Creation" published in 1863; he had for some years been curate for Mr. Strong, in charge of the parish. The bad system of pluralist parsons and poor starveling curates, was not to endure much longer ; but so late as 1837, there were still no less than five hundred non-resident beneficed clergy Mr. Strong among them in this diocese of Norwich. Two alms plates or patens which he presented to the church keep Mr. Strong's name in our remembrance. This year saw the erection of a gallery supported by wooden arches, across the west end of the church, in place of the former platform. I find only one bill relating to this work, dated 1841 : "to George Ward for building the gallery, lO." The baptism of the present writer is registered in 1841 ; and in 1843 the register records the baptism of his brother Charles Montagu Doughty, author of THE CHURCH RESTORED " Arabia Deserta " and " The Dawn in Britain " ; and also the burial of their mother, Frederica Doughty, daughter of the Hon. and Rev. Frederick Hotham, then rector of Dennington. The Davy MSS. describe the church in the year 1848. Pews then nearly filled the chancel, but the nave had been re-seated, and the aisle completely restored by my father, at a cost of nearly ,2,000. The author of the MSS. noted with some disapproval the stencilled walls and pillars of the aisle. He did not know, perhaps, that Mr. Cottingham the eminent church architect, had but followed a practice of the period to which the aisle belongs. There are original examples in England and in some ancient churches of North Germany which I have seen. The gallery was not touched at this time ; remaining till Mr. Bradstreet succeeded to the Rectory on the death of Mr. Hardinge ; it was removed, I think, in 1866. Afterwards, an organ, and a choir of good intentions, supplanted the " company of singers." There was granted in 1846, a faculty for seats in the then restored aisle, to compensate Mr. Doughty for "the ancient pews which had belonged to his Hall by prescriptive right." My father did not live long after his work of restoration ; he died in 1850. The pulpit had been moved, I think, during these works; it had undergone former migrations in 1822, and in 1841. In 1882, it was proposed once more to remove it, and I remember well, how at a vestry meeting we all laughed at the suggestion of a worthy church- warden that it be put upon casters ; he had, he told us, known three Reverends, and each wanted it in a different place. If it had been upon casters, they might have pleased themselves, without expense to the parish. 234- THE GLEANING BELL Till about halfway through last century, one interest- ing custom still held its own among us at Theberton the gleaning bell. Blackstone's opinion was, that the Common Law of England allowed the poor to enter on any man's ground to glean after harvest. That opinion was over-ruled by legal decision, but the practice held on under kindly favour of the farmers. It happens that many parish bills of the time have been preserved ; and they show that, from 1815 to 1849, a gleaning bell was paid for every year. It was rung for two or three weeks, according to circumstances ; in 1815, for instance, "from I2th August at Mr. Heath's, to 3ist at Mr. Ablett's." I think that at one time all persons belonging to our parish, and perhaps also outsiders, after sound of the morning bell, were at liberty to glean where they pleased, but that latterly this licence was restricted, and each farm became a preserve for the families of the men employed on it. At the present time, self-binding and reaping machines, and horse rakes following close behind the wagons, leave but few ears upon the ground ; and, moreover, the price of corn has not for many years been high enough to attract the women now, happily, so much ^better to do to a petticoat harvest in the fields. The following lines I quote from a little volume " Suffolk Largess," kindly given to me, soon after it appeared in 1865, by the author. He was a police- constable stationed at Theberton, who preferred to veil his identity under the pseudonym of " Quill." Our good old Suffolk speech is fairly well rendered : (Morning) Why ! listen, yow be quiet, bo' the bell is tolling eight Why don't yow mind what you're about? We're allers kind o' late! THE END OF THE STORY 235 Now Mary, get that mawther dressed oh dear ! how slow yow fare There come a lot o' gleaners now. Maw, don't stand gawkin' there ! (Evening) Dear me ! there goo the bell agin 'tis seven I declare And we don't fare to have got none : the gleaning now don't fare To be worth nothin' ; but I think as far as I can tell We'll try a coomb somehow to scratch, if we be live and well. And now my work may end. The story of nearly eight centuries has been brought down to 1850, within old people's memories. Some day perhaps, another pen may care to carry on these simple Chronicles of Theberton. Among Authorities consulted for this book may be mentioned : " The Doomsday Survey." " The Saxon Chronicle." Chaucer. " Prologue to the Canterbury Tales." " Collectanea Anglo Premonstratensia." Gasquet. " Abstracts of Charters from the Register of Leiston Priory. British Museum, Cotton MSS. Vespasian E. XIV. Jessop's " Diocesan History of Norwich." Suckling's " Suffolk." " Deer and Deer Parks." E. P. Shirley. Davy's "Suffolk Collections." Add. MSS. British Museum. Stephen's " New Commentaries on the Laws of England." Cullum's " History of Hawsted." " Suffolk Records and MSS." Copinger. "Parliamentary History of England" (23 volumes). Raven. " History of Suffolk." Tanner. " Notitia Monastica." 1787. Gamier. " Annals of the British Peasantry." Gamier. "History of the English Landed Interest." Hawes' " History of Framlingham." 1798. Rolls of Manor of Middleton cum Fordley. Rolls of Manor of Middleton Chickering. Rolls of Manor of Theberton. " Diary and Autobiography of Edmund Bohun." Rix. "The East Anglian Rising, 1381." Powell. " The Founders of Penang and Adelaide." A. F. Steuart. " Memorials of Old Suffolk." V. B. Redstone. 238 AUTHORITIES CONSULTED " Wenhaston and Bulcamp Suffolk." Rev. J. B. Clare. "Thorington Registers." Rev. T. Hill. Wise. " History and Scenery of the New Forest." Tusser. "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry." Edition of 1812. " The Old Times Parson." Ditchfield. Fuller's "Worthies of England." " Leaves from the Note Book of Lady Dorothy Nevill." 1907. Stebbing's " History of the Church." Walker's " Sufferings of the Clergy." Kingston's "East Anglia and the Great Civil War." 1897. " Poems of Bishop Richard Corbet." 4th Edition. Cobbett's " Rural Rides." Disraeli. " Curiosities of Literature." Disraeli. " Miscellanies of Literature." Shaw's " Parish Law." " Suffolk in 1674 : Hearth Tax Returns." Ecton's " Thesaurus." " The Clerical Guide." 1829. " Index Villaris." 1680. Walter Rye. " History of Norfolk." Capper. "Topographical Dictionary of United Kingdom." 1825. Reyce's " Breviary of Suffolk." Lord F. Hervey. " MS. Collections for Dennington," by Edward Dunthorne. In possession of the author. Cox. " Magna Britannia Suffolk." Ecton. " Liber Valorum et Decimarum." 1711. Webb. " English Local Government." Hone. " Every Day Book." Bacon's " Liber Regis." 1780. " Suffolk Sportsman." Symonds. "Taxatio Ecclesiastica" of Pope Nicholas IV. Taylor's " Index Monasticus, Diocese of Norwich." 1821. " Valor Ecclesiasticus." Circa, 1535. Lewis' "Topographical Dictionary of England." " Tract on the Commodities of England." Sir John Fortescue. "Sportsman's Dictionary." 1735. Strutt's " Sports and Pastimes." Brand's " Popular Antiquities." AUTHORITIES CONSULTED 239 Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy." " Excursions through Suffolk." 1 8 1 8. " Paston Letters." Gairdner's Edition, 1908. " Suffolk Feet of Fines." Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, &c., Publications. Bishop's Registers, Norwich. Acts of Court Books, Norwich. Bishop's Visitation Book, Norwich. Cal. Dom. State Papers. Calendars of Wills, Norwich. Probate Registry. Sacrist's Register, Dean and Chapter of Norwich Records. Prior's Register, Dean and Chapter Records, Norwich. Archbishop of Canterbury's Registers, Lambeth. " Victoria History Suffolk. Mandates to Induct, Suffolk Archdeaconry Register, Ipswich. Visitation Books, ditto. Act Books, ditto. Parish Registers, Theberton. Parish Accounts, ditto. Parish Registers, Middleton. Parish Accounts, ditto. Calendars of Patent Rolls. P.R.O. Rentals. Sign Manual Warrants. Exchequer Depositions. Early Chancery Proceedings. Star Chamber Proceedings. Chancery Inquisitions post mortem. Domestic State Papers, Ipswich. "Ship Money Returns, Suffolk, 1639-46." V. B. Redstone. Return of Rates (Suffolk) collected pursuant to Act of Parliament, 16 Charles I, 1642. Original in Bury St. Edmunds Museum. Jortin. "Ecclesiastical History." Gasquet. " Parish Life in Mediaeval England." East Anglian Daily Times Miscellany. "Gleanings after Time." G. L. Apperson, 1907. " Piers the Plowman." Professor Skeat. Lecture on Chaucer. Professor Skeat. Times Report, June 2, 1898. 240 AUTHORITIES CONSULTED " Anglo-Saxon Britain." Grant Allen. " Precedents in Criminal Causes." Archdeacon Hale. Ranke's " History of the Popes." Foxe's " Book of Martyrs. " Weever's " Funeral Monuments." " History of Hampshire." Shore. " North Wales." S. Baring Gould. Green's " History of the English People." A FEW NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE REV. PROFESSOR SKEAT I TRUST I may be allowed to add a few notes, on my own account, upon a few points which have come under my special notice. With regard to the footnote on p. 2, I do not feel sure that I have expressed myself clearly. I mean that the present name of Theberton has resulted from the old name by regular changes, and in this sense has been preserved. The pronunciation of Theod-beorhtes tun can only be fully appreciated by such as have learnt a little Anglo-Saxon. Theod-beorht is composed of two elements ; the former, " theod," means " people," and the latter means "bright." Most of our old names are thus strangely com- pounded. Each element must have its meaning ; but the whole compound is usually nonsensical. A large number of Old English Christian names still survive as surnames ; and Theodbeorht is the source of the modern Tebbut, Tebbott, Tebbit, and Tibbert. At p. 31 occurs "le Packeway." The word "pack" is first recorded in 1225. The word "pedder" is derived from "ped," which meant " a basket," and is equivalent to " pedlar " ; they hawked things (originally fish) about in baskets. The Latin " pedes " could only have yielded " peder " ; so that Weever"s guess is impossible. At p. 99, the best edition of Tusser is noted as being that of 1812. A newer edition was printed for the English Dialect Society in 1878, with notes and a glossary ; it leaves little to be desired. At p. 130, the passage is as follows : " Qui alteri dederit liquorem in quo mus vel mustela fuerint submersi, si secularis homo sit, tres dies jejunet ; si monasticus sit, trecentos psalrnos cantet." *4i R 242 A FEW NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Confessionale Ecgberti, 40. This Ecgbert was Archbishop of York. The Confessionale is printed in Thorpe's Ancient Laws, vol. ii. A " whitteritt," at p. 130, is the same as a "whitrack," otherwise called a " whutthroat," *>., white-throat. "Whitrack" means " white neck," from " rack," a neck. See Whitrack and Rack in the English Dialect Dictionary. The throat of the weasel is white. At p. 142, there is no difficulty as to "a payre of uppbodyes." It means a pair of stays, to keep the bodies up. P. 163, note. The wood-wale is the green woodpecker ; see the English Dialect Dictionary. It is so explained in my Glossary to Chaucer. Where the Suffolk man says "an alpe," meaning a bull-finch, the Shropshire man says " a nope," shifting the n from the article to the substantive. The origin is unknown, but "alpe" is certainly the older form. RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Form L9-50m-7,'54 (5990) 444 THE UNIVERSITY OP CALXFQBNIA LOS ANGELES BA^- Doughty - 690 Chronicles of T39UD7 Theberton - DA 690 T39liD7 iRARVFACIUTY