Chapter I: AM quite sure that if any old Thetfordian were permitted to return to (2)

The initial incidents of the outbreak happened upon this very road from Wymondham into Norwich, when the new fences erected by a local landowner upon Attleborough Common were demolished on June 20th, 1549. A fortnight later new hedges at Morley and Hethersett were destroyed. The destruction of those at Hethersett brought about the rising. It seems that the land-grabber of that place was one Serjeant Flowerdew, between whom and the Ketts of Wymondham there was a violent enmity. The Ketts were substantial folks, engaged in tanning. It cannot be said that they were blameless, for they, too, had enclosed; but had set the crowd on to destroy Flowerdew’s landmarks without considering their own case. The Serjeant naturally retorted by instigating the rustics in turn to level and tear into fragments the hedges and palings of the Ketts, who in the meanwhile seemed to have found salvation, for they not only permitted this work of vengeance on their own illegal enclosures, but heartily joined in it themselves. When this work was completed, and having thus proved their sincerity, the two brothers headed the mob back to Hethersett and destroyed what remained of Flowerdew’s enclosures; marching on to Cringleford and meeting the High Sheriff, who had heard of these riotous proceedings, and now admonished the people to return home. So far, however, from doing so, they put the Sheriff to flight, and, boldly setting forth upon an armed movement for reform, laid waste an enclosure beside the approach to Norwich, and, in defiance of the Mayor, marched round the city, climbed to the high ground of Hellesdon, and, reaching Mousehold Heath, pitched their camp there

XLIV

SOME years earlier a short-lived but significant movement had been set afoot by one self-styled “John Amend-all,” whose name is sufficient earnest of there being wrongs grievously calling for justice to be done. It had then been said that three or four stout fellows, riding overnight through the towns of Norfolk, with bell-ringing and exhortations to rise, would by morning have collected 10,000 men, and it was now perceived that this had been no idle talk; for 16,000 peasants joined the camp on Mousehold Heath, whence the Ketts and the leading spirits despatched a very moderate and fair-minded petition to the King for redress of their grievances.

Norwich, as the place of residence of many landowners and, as a manufacturing centre, quite out of sympathy with the country people, was meanwhile practically invested by the rebels, who from the commanding heights of Mousehold intercepted everything going in or coming out. There for more than a fortnight they lay, the summer weather in alliance with them, and with raiding parties looting cattle and provisions from all quarters for the feeding of this rustic host, which by this time had increased to 20,000.

Never did rebellion begin in more orderly fashion, for the Ketts, with their chaplain, Conyers, held open-air court on the Heath, and conducted things decently and in order. Food they were obliged to seize, but no violence and no robbery were permitted, and had the Government returned an answer showing any disposition to relieve the peasants from the landlords’ exactions and aggressions, all would have been well. But vague promises, coupled with an offer of pardon for all concerned if they would first disperse and return to their homes, was all the satisfaction they received; and Robert Kett very rightly retorted to the herald who brought this message that “Kings were wont to pardon wicked persons, not innocent and just men.”

Norwich then prepared itself for attack. The Bishop’s Bridge over the Wensum, and the gate that then straddled across it, were put in a condition for defence against the expected descent from Mousehold, and pieces of cannon were mounted on the quays. The next morning the assault was delivered, and Kett’s men, although many were slain by arrow-flights from the defenders, swarmed across the river and seizing the guns, which had refused to shoot, were soon masters of the city. The Mayor, Mr. Alderman Codd, and the principal citizens were made prisoners and marched up to “Kett’s Castle” on Mousehold, where they doubtless expected a violent death, Robert Kett sending down a message that any one coming to Mousehold should have a Codd’s head for a penny. But that was only his humour, with nothing tragical at the back of it, for the worst that befell those prisoners was the being made ridiculous in a mock-court held on the Heath.

Norwich, in despair, welcomed the tardy arrival of some 2,500 men, chiefly Italian mercenaries, under the command of the Marquis of Northampton, but they made little impression, and one of the aliens, being captured, was stripped of his armour and hanged. On August 1st there was renewed fighting in the streets, and Lord Sheffield was killed, at a spot still marked by an inscribed stone. This first force sent against the rebels was by this time defeated with heavy loss, and Norwich remained in the hands of the victorious peasants until August 23rd, when a second expedition, cautiously feeling its way through disaffected East Anglia, appeared at the entrance of the city by St. Stephen’s Gate.

It was not yet too late for the rebels to lay down their poor arms of bows and arrows, scythes, pikes, and bill-hooks, but, fired with the successful bloodshed that had given them possession of the city, they rejected all offers made by the Earl of Warwick, commanding the strong force that now sought entrance. Three days’ fighting, in the city and on the slopes of Mousehold, followed, with varying fortunes, and had it not been for the reinforcements of 1,100 German mercenaries, the rebellion might again have proved successful. As it was, however, their arrival turned the scale. It was at this juncture that, driven from the city, the peasants, remembering the old prophetic verse, moved to the hollow of Dussin’s Dale on Mousehold, where they were to “fill the vale with slaughtered bodies.” Here, they thought, if there was any truth in prophecy, they would achieve the final victory. It never occurred to them that there were two ways of reading that verse, and thus it was here they made their last stand and were cut down in hundreds, grimly fulfilling its words, if not its spirit. Three thousand five hundred of these poor countrymen were slain in this final struggle, and perhaps an equal number had fallen in the almost two months’ fighting and skirmishing of this fatal rising. Thus it ended, but vengeance had yet to take toll of their number. The chiefs of the movement had held their court on Mousehold, under an oak they called the Oak of Reformation, and it was from its branches that nine of them were now hanged. Robert Kett was hanged higher still, three months later, when, after having been sent to London and flung into the Tower, he was brought back and suspended from a gallows on the roof of Norwich Castle. Forty-five minor leaders were hanged, drawn, and quartered in Norwich Market place, and some 250 of the others were plainly hanged, without these fiendish extras. The others, a disheartened mob of 12,000, having learned an unforgettable lesson, were bidden go home, for even the bloodthirsty rage of the victors might well be aghast at the prospect of meting out a like penalty to such a number; and moreover, counsels of prudence and expediency had something to say. “What shall we do, then?” asked the victorious Earl of Warwick, himself a Norfolk landowner, anxious how his lands should be kept tilled if they thus made away with the tillers of them, “What shall we do, then? Hold the plough ourselves, play the carters, and labour the ground with our own hands?” Good Heavens forefend such disaster!

Thus ended the great agrarian uprising of the mid-sixteenth century, and no man can with certainty say that it had any result. It sprang out of the void, and into nothingness it returned. But none the less it behoves us to honour those simple souls who laid down their lives for their immemorial rights in their common and free pasturages, who saw with a manly indignation the preserving of fish in the rivers, and that stopping up of public ways which even in the fierce publicity of our own times requires all the vigilance of a public society to keep in check. Wymondham or Norwich should in public memorial honour the men who by their action said that these things should not be, if they could help, and in laying down their lives for the cause were as truly martyrs as any of those who died for conscience’ sake in religion

XLV

THERE are modern epitaphs to Ketts in Wymondham churchyard, whose fir-grown space admirably sets off and embellishes the gaunt towers. It is in the narrow lane leading to the church that the most picturesque inn of the town is to be found, in the sign of the “Green Dragon,” a characteristic old English title and a very fine specimen of old English woodwork.

Most of the ancient inns of Wymondham have either disappeared, or have been rebuilt or otherwise modernised, but it was once, in common with most other mediæval towns clustered around great priories, a town of much good cheer and inordinate drinking. Piety and early purl went hand in hand in those days, and often staggered off to bed together in a very muzzy condition, or fell into the gutter, wholly incapable. Those were the days when the ascetic early use of the religious was forgotten, and before the Puritan rule of life had come into existence; and men were not less devout because they were drunken.

But the Priory guest-houses are all gone, and even the very pretty brew of “Weston’s Nog,” once famous in all this countryside, is no longer proclaimed over the old “Leather Bottle” inn. The sign of the bottle that once dangled over the door, and was inscribed with the name of that potent tipple, has itself disappeared.

The chief secular feature of the town is the Market House, an ancient building of timber frame and plaster filling, raised high above the level of the street, and entered by a lofty wooden stair. It has ceased to serve any market purpose, and now plays the part of a reading-room; and a very much larger room it is found, on inspection, to be than would from a casual glance at its exterior be supposed.

Among the decorative carving that covers the old woodwork of the Market House may be seen rough representations of spoons, skewers, tops, and spindles; allusions to the ancient staple trade of the town in articles of wooden turnery. It is a trade that has long wholly died out, but another old local industry—that of horsehair weaving—is still carried on. This trade was established somewhere about a century ago, and was once a great deal more important than now. One can readily imagine that Wymondham must have been particularly busy in the dreadful era of horsehair upholstery of sofas and chairs. The horsehaired chair or sofa belonged to the period of the cut-glass lustres that used to serve as “chimney ornaments,” and to the era of the “ornaments for yer fire-stoves” once sold in summer-time by itinerant vendors. Horsehair upholstery was very chilly, very sombre and severe, and afforded a particularly slippery and uncomfortable seat. One, happily, rarely sees those tomb-like sofas now, and the chairs are not often met; but when horsehair coverings disappeared from the household they found a lasting favour with railway companies, and still penitentially furnish many a waiting-room.

Thus the horsehair weavers at Wymondham even now find in their occupation a living wage. It is a cottage industry, and the old treadle looms may even yet be seen in work by any one curious enough to halt awhile and make due quest. They are cumbersome affairs of heavy wooden framing, rattle and clatter like the pots and pans of a travelling tinker, and give the minimum of output to the maximum of labour, the weavers having to perform the treadling, and at the same time to feed the shuttle with horsehair at every revolution of the machine. The local masters and the hair-cloth dealers of Norwich supply the weavers with the raw materials—so many pounds of hair—and it is brought back as a manufactured article, weighed, and paid for at the rate of 1¼_d._ per yard. The fabric is black and white when it leaves the looms, and is dyed in Norwich.

An ancient house, with handsome timbered front, well cared for, and now in private occupation, although said once to have been an inn, is one of the last objects to catch the eye in leaving the town. It bears the inscription, in bold raised letters: “_Nec mihi glis servus, nec hospes hirudo_,” which may be Englished, “I have neither the fat dormouse as a servant, nor the bloodsucker as a guest”: a bold and cheering statement for such travellers of old as could read Latin, and who might feel inclined to test the smartness of the service and the freedom of the bedrooms from fleas and bugs

XLVI

HETHERSETT, whose name means “Heather-heath,” and is pronounced “Hathersett” in the local speech, is heralded along the open road by a solitary roadside inn with the sign of the “Old Oak.” No ancient oak is within sight, but the accustomed pilgrim of the roads has not for years been exploring the highways and byways without having long ago arrived at the conclusion that there is a substantial reason for most things, even the names of inns, and so from that sign deduces an historic oak somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood. And surely enough, a short distance beyond the inn, on the left-hand side of the road, opposite the milestone that marks the twenty-second mile from Thetford and the seventh from Norwich, there stands the gnarled and weatherworn trunk of what the country folk call “Kett’s Oak,” one of the several ancient trees that own the name, and traditionally said to have been one of the meeting-places of Robert Kett and his followers, and one of the scenes of his rough-and-ready sylvan court. But although oaks grow slowly, and although the tradition is an old one, handed down, unbroken, through the centuries, many will find it difficult to believe that a tree which must have been a considerable one when Kett and his followers foregathered here would not now have a greater girth than this.

The village green of Hethersett was enclosed, together with its large common, in 1800. The parish at that time claimed, and was allowed, a portion of the vast common of Wymondham, on the curious plea that it had buried, at the expense of the community, the body of a dead man found there and refused interment by the parish of Wymondham.

A local jape, which we may be sure will not willingly be let die, makes a play upon the name of Hethersett. It dates from many years ago, when the railway through the village to Norwich was new, and the train service incredibly slow. “Hethersett,” cried the porters at the station when a train stopped on one of those weariful occasions. “Here they set,” indignantly rejoined an old woman in one of the third-class carriages; “yes, and here they’re likely to set!”

The old church of this scattered village looks down upon the road from its slightly elevated situation at a point where the remains of the old highway, re-modelled over two hundred years ago, may yet be seen. The name of “highway” in a descriptive sense is, however, wholly misleading, for it plunges down between the church and the present road in the likeness of a broad and deep ditch. This hollow way, with its overhanging banks, proclaims, more than anything else can do, the dangers of bygone times, when travellers “travailed,” and a journey was really and truly what that word etymologically means, an expedition made by _day_. In these hollow ways lurked of old those outlaws who made even daylight travel perilous, and we can readily believe it was with dismay that benighted travellers saw the sun go down, and, simultaneously with its disappearance below the horizon, felt their courage ooze out at their boots. Trees and bushes now grow in the hollow where our forefathers of more than two centuries ago went so fearfully. It is long since it was used, and all who used it are gone, but Romance lives there, immortal, with the mud of years and the decaying leaves of autumn past.

The curious device of a dove and two serpents forms the weather-vane of Hethersett church. The living is in the gift of Caius College, Cambridge, and the vane displays the crest of Dr. John Caius, the re-founder of the College, officially and fully styled “Gonville and Caius.”

It was in 1561 that the Heralds’ College found a crest for that worthy man: “a clove argent, bekyd and membred gewles, holding in his beke by the stalke, flower gentle in proper colour, stalked vert.” “Flower gentle” is the old heraldic term for the wild amaranth, the “love lies bleeding” of old-fashioned gardens. In heraldic lore, it signified, as the grant of arms to Caius states, “immortalite that shall never fade.” The two serpents denote wisdom and grace.

An amusing record of old country superstition survives in the proceedings arising out of the theft of seven cheeses at Hethersett in 1797. A Mrs. Wissen, whose cheeses had mysteriously disappeared, instead of consulting a magistrate, a lawyer, or even the parish constable, went to a “cunning woman,” or white witch, who, after much supernatural mystification, told her that the missing cheeses had been stolen by a woman with a prominent mark on her nose. Whether the “cunning woman” really meant any particular person or not does not appear, but there unfortunately _was_ a woman, a Mrs. Bailey, so nasally decorated, living hard by. The owner of the cheeses thus spirited away must have known the owner of that carbuncly, or otherwise, marked organ, but she seems to have been loth to act upon her information, or to do more than talk about it. At any rate, we do not hear any more of her; but the affair was not ended at that, for one Chamberlain, a local shoemaker, coming on one occasion into violent dispute with the unfortunate Mrs. Bailey, taxed her with the robbery, saying, “she showed her guilt in her nose and couldn’t get it off.” The owner of that compromising nose was naturally indignant, and brought an action for slander against the shoemaker at the Norwich Assizes; but the jury of country folk, equally susceptible to superstition, looked with suspicion upon that organ, and brought in a verdict for the defendant.

From Hethersett we make for Cringleford, and down the winding, tree-shaded descent past Cringleford church to the level where Cringleford mill sits serenely beside the weedy river Yare. Not only is the descent winding, but it is narrow as well. Yet, not so very long ago, it was narrower still, for a tablet in the wall at the foot of the hill tells us, rather grandiloquently, that—

THIS ROAD WAS WIDEN’D
13 FEET
ANNO DOMINI 1823.
GARRATT TAYLOR KNOTT,
SURVEYOR.

Prodigious! Careful pacing discovers the fact that it is only twenty-five feet wide even now. By what careful driving, or special interposition of Providence, did the Norwich Mail and the stage-coaches succeed in escaping disaster at this point, when the road measured only twelve feet in breadth? One accident is, indeed, recorded to have happened to a coach described as the “Newmarket Mail” in 1846. It was an overturn at Cringleford Gate, and was not very serious, the only results being a general distribution of bruises, and a broken arm and collar-bone.

The situation of Cringleford church is sufficiently pretty, but examination proves it to be uninteresting, and its churchyard deformed with huge polished granite memorials to the undistinguished rich. More satisfaction comes from a lazy sojourn in the sunlight upon the old bridge that spans the Yare. The subdued rumbling of the mill, the leisured loading of a waggon with sacks of flour, and the evolutions of a boat’s crew among the weedy shallows of the Yare, induce a laziness which the certainty that Norwich is only two miles distant does much to intensify. It increases one’s sense of the permanency of things to learn that the floury miller, who comes out and casts an approving eye upon his fat sacks, is but the latest of a long line of his trade who have been following the art of grinding corn, by aid of the river Yare, for nine hundred years. How do we know that? By the evidence of Edward the Confessor’s Domesday Book, when the mill was stated to be worth 20_s._ a year, and by the Domesday Book of William the Conqueror, when the annual value had risen to 40_s._

By all means let the pilgrim linger here, for he shall no sooner have climbed yonder rise, through that steep and narrow street of Eaton which is clearly visible from this point, than old Romance flies, ashamed, before the terminus of the electric tramways which reach out from Norwich and serve the discreet suburbs that now spread out from the city and threaten to absorb and transform Eaton itself.

It is a pleasant strip of valley thus set between the not very Alpine heights of Cringleford and Eaton; but here, in East Anglia, we call those hills which we should disregard in the precipitous West. The valley broadens out on the right, where it meets that of the Tase, and from that confluence the combined streams, under the name of the Yare, flow onward through a widening valley that eventually loses itself in flat marshlands, to Yarmouth.

This bridge that spans the Yare, and is continued as a causeway over the flat, often flooded, water-meadows, although of a considerable age, is but the successor of a very ancient structure, once in charge of a succession of hermits, licensed by the Priors of Norwich to reside here and to solicit alms of travellers crossing by it. A history of these worthies would be a very desirable thing, but it is not likely ever to be produced. They have mostly gone their ways unchronicled; all, indeed, save Roger de Brugge, whose memory only lives because he was so robustious and insistent a person. We have no means of learning whence Roger came, or what his real name was, “de Brugge” being merely “of the bridge.” He flourished about 1390, and was a very troublesome person, who does by no means realise for us the usual picture of a hermit. Instead of living in a damp cell, unwashed and uncombed, in the verminous condition proper to all hermits of right feeling, he appears to have obtained a commercially good thing in his licensed wardenship of the bridge, and to have employed toll-collectors of his own, who were not content with soliciting alms, but demanded money at the point of the cudgel of all those whom it seemed safe to threaten in that way. Unfortunately for one of these eremitical under-strappers who did their soliciting with the persuasive advocacy of a big stick, he tried the method with a man who proved to be a soldier, unused to taking treatment of that kind quietly, and who punched him in the eye, stole his money-pouch, and dropped him into the river, where he was drowned, much to the consternation of his companion, who, early in the proceedings, had beaten a retreat to Eaton, whence he saw all these developments. Roger de Brugge, who was an absentee hermit, and lived amid much evil company at Norwich, was deprived of his post, which was given to another, and, let us hope, more worthy person.

The name of Cringleford has puzzled many. Blomefield thought it meant “Shingleford”; some moderns think it derives from Kringel, said to be Norse for a curve or loop, and point to the many-looped windings of the Yare; but we can never know.

The meaning of Eaton is, however, self-evident. The place is first cousin to all the other Eatons and Etons (sometimes, I am ashamed to say, they are spelled Heaton, which is of course a h’error) in this country: places that obtained their name, as this does, from being situated beside streams. Eatown, the “water town,” is the signification of the name, and Eaton here dabbles its feet in the overflow of the Yare, just as Eton next Windsor does in that of the Thames, or the Cheshire Eaton in the overrunnings of the Dee.

Here, when once up the rise through Eaton village street, past the Dutch-like “Red Lion,” the old highway to all intents and purposes ends, and it is only a suburban two miles, travelled by electric trams, by which you enter the City of Norwich. It is a noble road, bordered by young avenues and lined with private residences, but still suburban, and out of key with old road romance. Along it we come to the junction of roads opposite the fine Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, where the road from London, through Colchester and Ipswich, falls in, and both go forward together down St. Stephen’s Street into the City.

XLVII

DISTINGUISHED travellers of old generally made their entrance here, through the long-vanished St. Stephen’s Gate in the equally vanished walls. This way came, in 1600, on his public entry, that dancing Will Kemp, of whom we have already heard much. On the completion of his ninth day’s jigging, from Hingham to Barford Bridge and Norwich, he ended at St. Giles’s Gate, and thence, to avoid the crowd, rode into the City. Three days later, having duly advertised his intentions, he danced in through St. Stephen’s Gate. The City Waits assembled to do him honour, huge crowds pressed forward to see him, the Mayor entertained this caperer and gave him £5 in Elizabethan angels, and altogether he had a truly phenomenal reception.

The delightful old City of Norwich was ever hearty and hospitable, and, although much else be changed, it is so still. No merely ecclesiastic settlement, the cold glories of its Cathedral are but one phase of Norwich. Prosperous and self-sufficing in the best sense; its citizens public-spirited, its situation beautiful, its highways imposing and byways quaint and curious, Norwich stands by itself, in its likeness to no other town or city in England. If one must seek a parallel, it is to Exeter one must look, for there is much in common between the two. Both are, very distinctly, the capitals of their respective provinces; Norwich still metropolitan to East Anglia, and Exeter to the West of England. In both, too, the streets are winding and without plan, affording facilities, unparalleled elsewhere, of immediately losing your way.

Unhappily—it is purely an antiquarian criticism—the prosperity and business energy of Norwich have swept away many landmarks of absorbing interest to the student of the roads, and much havoc has been wrought with the old coaching-inns. While many of the more obscure old taverns remain, the great coaching houses, standing on prominent sites and occupying much valuable ground, have, for the most part, been destroyed. Only “Rampant Horse Street” now remains to tell of the inn once bearing that name. The “Maid’s Head,” a splendid specimen of an old hostelry, remains, it is true, in Tombland, but where is the “King’s Head,” to which the Newmarket, Thetford, and Norwich Mail once came, and where the “Coach Office, Lobster Lane,” whence the Cromer Coach, the “Unicorn,” by North Walsham, set out twice a day? What the “Unicorn” was like we may see from Pollard’s picture. It was something between an omnibus and a hearse, and was drawn by a “unicorn” team—_i.e._, three horses; whence the name of the coach.

St. Peter’s, the narrow thoroughfare adjoining Rampant Horse Street, behind the loop road, and overshadowed by the great bulk of St. Peter Mancroft, was a great rendezvous for the coaching and carrying interests, and signs of that old-time feature in its history still remain in the numerous inns and houses that once were inns, now converted to other uses. Of these the most important by far was the “White Swan,” sometimes called, for convenience, merely the “Swan.” Many years have passed since it retired from public life, and it is now occupied as a wholesale provision store, for which the spacious old coach-yard and its great ranges of buildings seem to render it peculiarly suitable. Many might pass the house unnoticed, for its red-brick front is severely plain. The old coach-archway, however, is sufficient to attract the attention of the observant, for although the fine late seventeenth-century decorative carvings of festooned fruit and flowers on its framing are blunted by time and many successive coats of paint, their excellence still proclaims itself to the critical eye. A cursory glance shows that the house was re-fronted with brick in the Georgian period, and that beneath that commonplace skin an ancient building, in parts dating back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, still exists. A little fragment peeps interestingly from one corner of the red brick; it is an ancient corner-post, ornamented with the carving of an armed man. Not even those Georgian builders had the heart to destroy it.

Among coaches frequenting the “White Swan” were the “Light Post Coach,” the “Expedition,” and its successor, the “Magnet,” referred to in the earlier pages of this book. But long before any coaches ran the “White Swan” was an important house; the foremost in Norwich. Traces of that ancient import are not far to seek, and are stimulating to the imagination, even if facts be wanting. Directly opposite the entrance, across the very narrow street, is the great church of St. Peter Mancroft, and in line with it are the ancient Gothic vaulted cellars of the old inn. Antiquaries, on their periodical visits to Norwich, descend these depths, and, standing amid the butter-tubs and the sacks of nuts and miscellaneous groceries, speculate darkly on possible secret communications between the mediæval inn and the church, with little enlightenment ever forthcoming.

A ramble over the premises discloses nothing more of really ancient date, but does reveal something unexpected, in the splendid long room on the first floor of the buildings stretching down the yard. It dates from about 1760, and is, architecturally speaking, a noble room, of moulded ceiling and panelled plaster walls, with a raised platform at one end, surmounted by a Chippendale shield with coat-of-arms greatly resembling that of Caius College. It is now degraded to the position of a stock-room, piled with hams, sacks, and biscuit-boxes, but keeps its distinction throughout adversity, and is a reminder of times when the “White Swan” was the centre of Norwich social life; when balls and assemblies were held beneath its roof, and the original “Theatre Royal,” nursery of much dramatic talent, was established here. At the “White Swan” those pioneer players, the “Norwich Company of Comedians, servants to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk,” as they humbly styled themselves, began their performance. At that time the play began at 7 p.m., but the doors were opened at 5. An hour earlier than that, the servants of the playgoers were sent to keep the seats, which were not highly expensive. The highest price was half a crown for a box; and the pit, then fashionable, cost only two shillings. When such prices ruled, the actor’s lot was not exactly luxurious, and stage-furnishing was quite a negligible quantity. But dramatic art was never higher than then

XLVIII

IT has been already remarked how winding are the ways of Norwich, and it is indeed only with difficulty those once in it can find their way out. If it were required to turn a very pretty compliment to Norwich, here we have the most obvious foundation for one. But we must on to the coast, and take the City only incidentally, as its mazy streets are threaded on the way to the Aylsham road. It is by no means slighting Norwich so to do, for the City has been described in a short impressionistic sketch at the close of that companion volume to this, the “Norwich Road.”

From St. Peter’s, across St. Giles’ Street, by the back of the Guildhall, to Charing Cross is the most interesting way. This Charing Cross does not in the least resemble the place of the same name in London, and obtains its title from quite a different source. No “_chère reine_” gave this name, which is a corruption of “Sherers’ Cross,” a wayside cross so styled from the sheermen or cloth-cutters who once inhabited this quarter. It was demolished in 1732.

Here, fronting on the narrow street, is the so-called “Strangers’ Hall,” one of the most deeply interesting places in Norwich; what, in fact, is nothing less than a well-preserved specimen of a mediæval merchant’s house. We do not, in this England of ours, lack churches and cathedrals, palaces, castles, and mansions of the great, to show us how we worshipped, and how kings and nobles housed, in days of old; but we are very sadly lacking in remains of the houses built for, and occupied by, the wealthy traders of anything from five to two centuries ago. We know comparatively little of the way in which the Mayors of our great towns lived, and thus the accidental preservation of this house, built by a mayor of Norwich, and inhabited by and added to by a long succession of such worthies, is particularly instructive. The oldest portion is the crypt, used anciently as cellarage and store-room, built probably by Roger Herdegrey, who was a Member of Parliament in 1358, and Bailiff of Norwich two years later. After passing through many hands, the property came, about 1490, to Thomas Cawse, mercer, twice Mayor, and twice the chosen representative of the City in the Council of the State. From him it came to Nicholas Sotherton, mercer, who seems to have rebuilt the greater portion. In 1610 his family sold it. Already the house had acquired the name of the “Strangers’ Hall,” for Sotherton, under the patronage of the Duke of Norfolk, had warmly welcomed the Flemings, refugees from Holland under the Spanish domination, and had given those strangers the use of his house. Although they did not reside here, and probably did not use it for any great length of time as the central meeting-place of their community, it has, singularly enough, retained the name under many changes. Francis Cock, grocer, and Mayor in 1627, resided here, and built the great staircase in the Hall, together with the large oak-framed oriel window; and another Mayor, Sir Joseph Paine, followed him, and made alterations for his own comfort and dignity in 1659. He was the last of that long line, and when he died, in 1668, the history of the old place becomes obscure. Early in the nineteenth century, however, we obtain a glimpse of it as the Judges’ Lodgings, but thenceforward the old relic fell upon neglect, and would have been recklessly destroyed for rebuilding had not an enthusiastic and public-spirited citizen purchased it in 1899. It still bears the misleading name of the “Strangers’ Hall,” and no one sufficiently impresses the visitors who pay their sixpence a head for being shown over it that the building is a rare and splendid specimen of the domestic surroundings of the wealthy and cultured traders who made Norwich prosperous in old days.

Sotherton lies, with many another worthy citizen, in St. John’s church, Maddermarket, or other one of the many churches—“steeple-houses” the Quakers would call them—set so thickly about Norwich. Where Gibson lies, who in those old days set up the neighbouring water-fountain, I know not; but surely his spirit must be unquiet since the ornamental portion of it has been built into the wall of Bullard’s brewery, and the water of which he was so proud cut off. No longer can one drink here, but Gibson’s very excusable little crow over his work may yet be read:—

This water here cavght
In sorte as yowe see
From a spring is brovghte,
Thereskore foot and three

Gibson hath it sovghte
From Saynt Lawrens wel
And his charg this wrowghte
Who now here doe dwel

Thy ease was his coste not smal
Vouchsafid wel of those
Which thankful be his worke to see
And there can be no foes.

Near by, on our way to Cromer, is a building notable above all others in the varied culture of the good City of Norwich. This is St. Andrew’s Hall, where the triennial Norfolk and Norwich Musical Festivals are held. The long, flint-built structure, of late Gothic design, wears a strikingly ecclesiastical appearance, as it has every right to do, for it really _is_ a church, and was built by the Dominicans, or Black Friars, as the church of their monastery. The City certainly acquired it at a bargain-price when that establishment was dissolved, under Henry VIII., but extraordinary bargains of a precisely similar nature were on offer throughout the kingdom at that time, and prices ruled so low that in retired situations, where the huge abbeys and priory buildings were far away from any possible civic use, they were given to the nearest local magnate, to do with as he would. King Henry took £80 for this particular example, and Norwich certainly had full value for its money.

The building then was made to serve the purpose of the City Grammar School, and so continued for twelve years, until Edward VI., in 1548, granted the ancient Charnel House Chapel—then usually called the Carnary—in the Cathedral Close, for the School. A striking change then came over the Dominicans’ old church, for the citizens, who had found the Guildhall too cramped, put this fine roomy building, under the name of the New Hall, to use as an assize-court, an exchange, a place of assembly, a hall for City feasts, or as anything that the public needs of the moment dictated. On Sundays the large alien Dutch population were permitted the use of the nave for their services, and the Flemish refugees had the choir. Perhaps the grandest of all the sumptuous feasts and receptions given here was that at which Charles II. and his Court were entertained, in 1671. It was on this occasion that he knighted Sir Thomas Browne.

The eastern part of the building, anciently the choir, is still divided from the nave, and is known as Blackfriars Hall. It is in the nave, or “St. Andrew’s Hall,” that the Musical Festivals have long been held. Portraits of Norfolk and Norwich worthies, pictures of historical events, and naval trophies decorate the walls.

The good folk of Norwich are rightly proud of their noble Hall, and the ways of its custodians have always been keenly followed. Its restoration and re-arrangement in 1863 were the cause of a good deal of local searchings of heart and contention, and a survival of that war of parties may still be seen in the grotesque carvings that form stops to the hood-mould of a door on the south side of the Hall. They are carved in the true mediæval style, one representing a pig blowing a horn; the other showing a pig with a very self-satisfied expression of countenance playing an organ, while a number of grinning demons blow the bellows. These were the satirical efforts of the victorious party who thus sealed their victory; the point of these satires in stone being that the head of the defeated faction was a Mr. Bacon—Richard Noverre Bacon, editor and proprietor of the _Norwich Mercury_, born 1798, died 1884.

XLIX

BY Prince’s Street we come to Tombland, the open space by the Cathedral, where St. George’s Church and Tombland Alley make so picturesque a group; and thence across the Wensum at Fye Bridge and along Magdalen Street. Bearing to the left, by Botolph Street, and noticing the gable end of the “King’s Arms” inn, with its ornamental tie-rods “I.C. 1646,” on the gable-end, we finally pass along St. Augustine Street, to come to the long suburban rise of the Aylsham Road, through Upper Hellesdon.

Here, just beyond the “One Mile” inn, is an ancient cross, recently restored, looking like a survival of some historic event, but a near glance reveals that it only marks the boundary of the City in this direction.

Horsham St. Faith’s village—generally called in these parts merely “St. Faith’s,” or “St. Fay”—is just over the hill-top, and is the usual small Norfolk village with a large church. It stands aloof from the centre of the place, up a by-lane, and opposite a row of six old seventeenth-century red-brick cottages, known as “Church Row,” all very rural. A last touch in that sort is the sight of a bird’s nest built into the delicately undercut stonework of the upper part of a tabernacle on the south parvise.

A general air of dilapidation and put-off-all-the-repairs-to-next-year kind of aspect belongs to the central spot of this village—the hub of St. Fay’s. A very large, very rush-overgrown, and excessively duckweedy pond occupies the best part of the road, slyly lying in wait to receive into its green and rank bosom the village tippler or the incautious midnight roysterer from Norwich; nay, even the unwary cyclist.

This out-at-elbows air reflects ill upon the condition of the horsehair weaving, still the staple trade of the village. It is “not what it was,” say the natives, and although some thirty to forty weavers are still employed, the trade is a decaying one. Historically, St. Faith’s is interesting, for it is bound up with the story of Katharine Howard, who was daughter of Lord Edmund Howard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk, and fifth wife of that professional widower, Henry VIII., who wrought so greatly in all manner of affairs of Church and State during his thirty-eight years’ reign that we meet him at almost every turn.

It seems that while still a child, not yet thirteen years of age, in the house of her father’s step-mother, the Duchess of Norfolk, at St. Faith’s, she was debauched by one Henry Manox, perhaps a music-master, described as “a scoundrelly player on the virginals,” and that she had relations of a more than questionable nature with one Francis Derham. Loud as are the moralists in denouncing the levity of our own times, we have but to read the intimate accounts of the household in whose vile society this forward girl was brought up, to be convinced that we have advanced since then. The fury of Henry knew no bounds when these disclosures were made, eighteen months after his wedding with her, and she paid the penalty with her life, in the Tower, in the twentieth year of her age.

Of Newton St. Faith, scarce more than a mile down the road, there is little to be said, but its few houses are succeeded by the loveliest two miles of highway in Norfolk. Enclosed fields, trim with their neat hedges and long lines of wheat and barley, or well-ordered in their infinite perspectives of winter furrows, give place suddenly to a land rich in the varied tints of bracken and heather, and wooded, now in dense clumps, or again in isolated trees. These are the fairy-like woods of Stratton Strawless. The peculiar beauty of these ferny glades is chiefly due to the large numbers of silver birch—that airy and graceful “lady of the forest”—intermingled with the dark pines, the grey beeches, and the sturdy oaks that all go to make up the ranks of the Stratton woods, whose picturesque _abandon_ is greatly added to by their being open to the road. For this is common land, and before Robert Marsham planted it in 1797, was a stretch of heath, barren of aught save heather and bracken. It is, in fact, in the existence of this ancient heath that Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk, rightly or wrongly, found the origin of the “Strawless” in the place-name, for he points out that no corn could have been grown here. His finding is probably wrong, for Mr. Walter Rye, eminent in Norfolk archæology, has found it was “Stratton Streles” in the time of Henry III., and that the name almost certainly is Danish, deriving from the village of Stroeden Strelev in Denmark.

We need not hasten to acclaim the Marsham who created these woods as a public benefactor, because he did not aim at anything of the kind, and merely wished to improve the outlook from his hideous house, now confronted with these glades, instead of by a monotonous flat. There is no denying the ugliness of that square brick mansion. A benefactor would have hidden it from the public gaze, but it is, instead, rather ostentatiously on view from the road, across a wide, uninterrupted stretch of grassy meadow. The lodges are far more endurable than the mansion, and although built in the same dull brick, in a manner fondly thought classic, the brilliant coat of whitewash given them makes their clumsiness almost picturesque.

The village lies nearly a mile away from the road, past the reedy lakes that follow the course of a little stream. In the church may yet be seen the monuments of Marshams, from 1250 onwards; together with a window filled with probably the very worst stained glass on earth.

With regret we leave these lovely woods for the cultivated and more prosaic lands towards Hevingham, whose great church, overlooking the road from its knoll, is a mile distant from the village. It is a church with lofty nave, but no aisles, and, restored with more thoroughness than discretion, has been swept clean of any possible interest. But its noble south porch, and the gigantic sweet-chestnut tree in the churchyard, give the spot an air of distinction.

Hevingham, with the three succeeding places, is celebrated (or rather, made notorious) by a rhyme whose inner meaning no local antiquary has yet followed. Thus it runs:—

Blickling flats, Aylsham fliers,
Marsham peewits, and Hevingham liars.

Marsham, a mile distant, lies at the foot of a hill. It is a scattered village, its Dutch-gabled “White Hart” and the sign of the “Plough and Shuttle” pointing to some bygone foregathering of local agricultural and weaving interests; but the church is its principal feature. Not imposing without, its interior is particularly beautiful, with clerestoried nave, fine open-timbered roof, and splendid rood-screen. A feature that piques the curiosity of enquiring minds, with no possibility of that curiosity being satisfied, is the very ancient slab on the floor, outside the chancel, with the word “oblivio” repeated eight times, and a Latin inscription to the effect that the person buried here was of opinion that he would be forgotten as soon as his heart ceased to beat. It would appear as though he wished this oblivion, for the stone is without name or date.

Marsham was the incumbency of the Reverend Samuel Oates, father of the famous, or infamous, Titus Oates, who figures so pitifully in the reign of Charles II., and is described, with much justice, in biographical dictionaries as “Perjurer.” But Marsham escapes the odium of being his birthplace, for he was born at Oakham, in Rutlandshire.

From Marsham an avenue of young oaks—young as oaks go, for they are only some sixty years old, and mere infants—leads on to Aylsham, passing, on the right hand, an old toll-house, and crossing the railway on the level at Aylsham station.

Aylsham once manufactured linen and worsted, and the “lineners” and worsted-weavers contributed greatly to the building of its fine church, a church packed away inconspicuously in a corner off the Market Square; but those old trades are dead now, and only the weekly market keeps the little town alive. You enter the place along a street once called “the straits,” and still remarkably narrow, past the old coaching-inn, the “Dog”; but the little town does not fully disclose itself along this narrow way, for its central point and focus is the Market Square, reached on the left by a short and narrow street. Here stands that curious old early seventeenth-century brick inn, the “Black Boys,” remarkable for its coved eaves, still bearing the old decorative design that gave the house its name. This is a device of foliage and fruit, painted and gilt, running the two sides of the house, with three little black, impish-looking figures in the centre of the side facing the square and one at each corner, all blowing gilded horns. They look like the “little demons” of Ingoldsby’s “Truants,” who had “broken loose from the National School below,” but they are really only intended for representations of Bacchus, and thus by a side-wind, as it were, to hint to travellers of old of the good cheer of the house.

L

THE “Black Boys” owes its existence on this scale to the near neighbourhood of Blickling Hall, perhaps the most famous mansion in Norfolk, and certainly the most beautiful and stately. Blickling is scarce a mile distant, and is so small a village that it must have been to Aylsham in general, and to the “Black Boys” in particular, the custom fell in those old days when the Hobarts of Blickling Hall entertained so royally. We cannot forbear visiting Blickling, for not merely Hobarts, but Anne Boleyn herself, most unhappy of queens, is associated with that noble pile and has made it historic.

The first sight of Blickling Hall is one of the greatest surprises that can possibly befall the traveller in search of the picturesque. Every one, in these days of broadcast photographs, is in some sort familiar with the look of the Hall, and most people can tell you it looks like another, and a better, Hatfield House; but no one is prepared on coming downhill past the church into the village, to find the main front of this finest of Jacobean mansions, this dream of architectural beauty, actually looking upon the road, unobstructedly, from behind its velvet lawns. No theatrical manager, no scene-painter, cunning in all the artful accessories of the stage, could devise anything more dramatic, and you—Columbus of the roads, who steer into unwonted byways in search of the beautiful—cannot repress the involuntary tribute of an admiratory O! at sight of it. There it stands, like some proud conscious beauty, isolated. No meaner building shoulders it, and for all the stir you see or sound you hear, it might be some enchanted palace, not waked to life and love. It has, indeed, its modern tragedy, for its owner, the young Marquis of Lothian, is afflicted, and non-resident.

There is something of a village, a little way removed; but only a few houses, themselves picturesque, are to be found, together with an inn, the “Buckinghamshire Arms,” displaying the heraldic achievement of the Earls of Buckinghamshire and their motto, _Auctor pretiosa fecit_ (“The giver makes them valuable”), one of those delightfully bumptious and self-sufficient phrases abounding in titled families.

Blickling is generally associated with the unhappy Anne Boleyn, but her birthplace is quite uncertain, and although her early years were passed at this place, it was not Blickling Hall, but the long-vanished Dagworth Manor, with which she was familiar. The present stately building was not commenced until 1619, eighty-three years after her death. Dagworth Manor stood nearly a mile distant from the present Hall, and was built towards the close of the fourteenth century by Sir Nicholas Dagworth, who was succeeded by that Sir Thomas de Erpingham who built the Erpingham Gate in the Cathedral Close at Norwich, together with the tower and the greater part of Erpingham church, and was that stout old warrior who in his old age fought at Agincourt, as we read in Shakespeare’s _Henry V._, where the King says:—

Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham:
A good soft pillow for that good white head
Were better than a churlish turf of France.

It was that brave old knight who led the onslaught with the war-cry to his men, “Nestroke” (“Now strike!”).

Erpingham was followed by Sir John Fastolfe, who sold the property about 1459 to Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, mercer and Lord Mayor of London, who was son of Geoffrey Boleyn of Salle. The Boleyns are thought to have derived their name from one of their family who traded to Boulogne. Sir Geoffrey was great-grandfather of Anne Boleyn, who became Queen to Henry VIII. and mother of Queen Elizabeth. Sir James Boleyn, uncle to Anne, lived at Dagworth in reduced circumstances, and finally sold the estate to Sir John Clere, of Ormesby, whose spendthrift son alienated it to Sir Henry Hobart, Lord Chief Justice, and grandson of Henry VII.’s Attorney-General. It was this Sir Henry who began to build Blickling Hall, in 1619. His son completed it in 1628. The Hobarts in time became ennobled as Earls of Buckinghamshire, and finally the property came by marriage to the Kerrs, Marquises of Lothian.

The striking general resemblance of Blickling Hall to Hatfield House is accounted for by the belief that the same architectural draughtsman designed both. Its interior is worthy of the lovely outward view, and is still rich in magnificent old furniture, in the famous Blickling library, and in relics of unhappy Anne Boleyn. It is curious to observe how the Hobarts, who had no family connection with the Boleyns, and did not even purchase the estate from them, preserved the memory of their sometime ownership, in the sculptured figures of rampant bulls that flank the main entrance and make punning allusion to Boleyn.