Through East Anglia in a Motor Car Part 3

Let us, before closing the chapter, see what had been gained by this tour in mid-winter. Well, first it was a conviction that, although motoring in winter is a cold occupation, productive of some absolute pain, for it hurts to be really cold, and of a compensating increase of appreciation for familiar comforts, it is distinctly better than not motoring at all. This conviction I should probably retain, in spite of a const.i.tutional dislike to cold, in all circ.u.mstances except those of heavy snow when falling, which, I am content to believe, without trying it, is all but an absolute bar to motoring. If you have a screen the snow destroys its transparency; if you have not a screen it blocks your vision and covers up your eyes or your goggles. Moreover, on high and fenceless roads, where the motorist is most liable to be overtaken by snow, the white mantle obliterates the track and renders movement full of perils. But something more substantial than this conviction was gained during these three days. They were days, be it remembered, when the face of Nature, in what may be called a tamed country, is at its worst; they had been spent in traversing districts up to that time, for the most part, unknown to me; but there remained much of East Anglia, familiar to me in summer and in winter dress, which have been purposely omitted in this effort to gain a general impression of the country. I pictured to myself the breezy uplands of the Sandringham district, the pines, the heather, and the bracken, as I had seen them many a time in summer suns.h.i.+ne and in stormy winter; fancy filled the brown ploughland we had pa.s.sed a sea of yellow corn; I remembered the beautifully umbrageous lanes and roads of Eastern Ess.e.x, where they rarely "shroud"

the elms in the barbarous fas.h.i.+on prevailing in Berks.h.i.+re and other counties; the strange crops, whole fields of dahlias for example, which I had seen in the seed-growing districts; the heavy-laden orchards upon which, it must be admitted, Mr. Thomas Atkins levied heavy toll in 1904. So remembering I concluded, there and then, that I should find ample satisfaction in my task. But at that time I had not seen a t.i.the of the characteristic scenery of East Anglia. Ely, rising majestic from the plain; the very singular and impressive run along the sandy coast from Cromer to Wells-next-Sea; the road on thence to Hunstanton and Lynn; the glorious expanses of heath in many parts of Norfolk and Suffolk; the extraordinary hedges of fir along the roadside near Elvedon and in many another place--all these things, and a score besides--were as a sealed book to me.

The book has been opened now, and its prodigal variety of infinite charm appals me, even though a substantial part of my pleasant duty has been accomplished.

CHAPTER IV

SPRING. THROUGH THE HEART OF EAST ANGLIA

Some books consulted--"Murray" useless to motorists: proceeds by rail and observes county boundaries--Arthur Young's _Six Weeks' Tour_ dull--Leland's _Itinerary_ a ma.s.s of undigested notes--_The Paston Letters_ full of excellence--Start from Abingdon--The six-cylinder Rolls-Royce--Freedom from trouble--Hopes and Nemesis--Abingdon to Thame, a bad cross-country route--Thame to Royston direct--The gate of East Anglia--The "Cave"--Royston's broad hint to James I--To Newmarket--Straight road and abundant game--The mystery of the Hoodie Crow--Wild creatures and motor-cars--Weather Heath--Appropriate name--Value of tree "belts"--Scotch fir hedges--- Elvedon Hall and its game--Best use for such land--Enter Norfolk--Warrens and heaths--Thetford--Its story--Its Mound--Mr. Rye's theory dissipated by the learned--Windmills in East Anglia--Thomas Paine a Thetford man--Euston unvisited--Attleborough--Wymondham's twin towers--Their origin--Religious houses and popular risings--Kett's Rebellion--Curious legend on a house--Stanfield Hall--Its grim tragedy--A monograph quoted--Wholesale murders and a famous trial--Extraordinary cunning of the criminal--To Norwich and the "Maid's Head."

[Ill.u.s.tration: IPSWICH PORT]

During the interval between the first and second tours in East Anglia many books, more or less promising of material, were read. Of these books it will be prudent to say a little before recording an expedition in which East Anglia was attacked, so to speak, amids.h.i.+ps. Many of them it is needless to mention, though some will come in for pa.s.sing reference. The first was Murray's Handbook to Ess.e.x, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridges.h.i.+re, which is well-planned, having regard to the needs of its age, and well, no less than learnedly, written; but it was published more than thirty years ago, and is therefore rather out of date as to some of its facts, and for motorists absolutely obsolete in its method. It proceeds, for the most part, county by county; its routes are railway routes; it almost ignores roadside scenery, and it enlarges, very usefully sometimes, upon the internal details of churches and of other edifices, with which the motorist can rarely be concerned; for, as it is not intelligent to hurry through the country always, so it is not motoring to "potter" at every place. The good "Murray" is really rather embarra.s.sing to the motorist. Let me ill.u.s.trate.

Scole, mentioned in the last chapter, is a little more than two miles from Yaxley, on the Roman road. A brief account of Scole is found on p. 183. If Yaxley were mentioned at all (and it is worth mentioning, for the sake of its church, in a guide-book pure and simple) it would find a place in some Suffolk route, for only very occasionally does the guide-book writer allow even a railway to transport him across a county boundary. Amongst other books studied were Leland's _Itinerary_, the _Paston Letters_, in five stately quarto volumes, and Arthur Young's _Six Weeks' Tour_. These studies were not quite in vain, for they will at least show a reader what to avoid.

Young's _Six Weeks' Tour_ is most consumedly dull, reeking of turnips, sticky with marl, and the accounts of "the seats of the n.o.bility and gentry, and other objects worthy of notice, by the author of the _Farmers'

Letters_," are very rarely interesting. Some of them which are to our purpose--for of course the tour was not confined to East Anglia--shall be quoted in due season. To reading Leland, stimulated by many quaint quotations in later works, I had looked forward for years, but the second edition in nine volumes of "The Itinerary of John Leland the Antiquary, Oxford; Printed at the Theatre, for James Fletcher, Bookseller in the Turl, and Joseph Pott, Bookseller at Eton. 1745," was a grievous disappointment.

The plums seem all to have been picked out by guide-book writers; few of them, if any, relate to East Anglia. The only things worthy of note were an account, perfectly straightforward, and to be quoted in its place, of the Dunmow Flitch, and some doggerel concerning the "properties of the counties of England." The material ones for us are:--

Ess.e.x, ful of good hoswyves,

Northfolk, ful of wyles, Southfolk, ful of styles, Huntingdoneshyre corne ful goode,

Cambridges.h.i.+re full of pykes.

Leland, in fact, cannot be commended, but that is only because he planned his _magnum opus_, like many a good man before him and after, without regard to the allotted span of human life, not to speak of its uncertainty.

In his "Newe Yeare's Gyft to King Henry the viii in the x.x.xVII Yeare of his Raygne," Leland talks of his studies, of his six years of travel, and then sketches his plan. It is "to write an History, to the which I entende to adscribe this t.i.tle, _De Antiquitate Britannica_ or els _Civilis Historia_.

And this Worke I entende to divide yn to so many Bookes as there be s.h.i.+res yn England and Sheres and greate Dominions in Wales. So that I esteme that this Volume will include a fiftie Bookes, wherof each one severally shaul conteyne the Beginninges Encreaces, and memorable Actes of the chief Tounes and Castelles of the Province allottid to hit." Leland died when he was forty-six, but if he had lived another century he could hardly have achieved his self-imposed task, even if he had been miraculously endowed with a Mercedes; and he cherished divers other projects. As it is, his so-called _Itinerary_ is, at best, but a collection of rough notes, having frequently no sort of coherence, often corrected or added to later in a distant geographical connection. In spite of a taste for antiquity it may be put down as stiff and heavy to read, and not sufficiently abounding in quaintness to repay the trouble of the reader.

The _Paston Letters_ on the other hand, are the best of reading, giving a wonderfully vivid idea of life in East Anglia at a singularly troublous period, and there will be occasion to quote them more than once. The edition by the worthy Sir John Fenn, stately as it is, and a joy to handle, is far from being the best. Posterity owes to him a deep debt for rescuing the letters from oblivion, but he omitted as uninteresting precisely the little fragments upon private and domestic affairs which we value most now in later editions. His notes, too, prove him to have been a rather dull dog and lacking in a sense of humour. Sometimes he scents impropriety where there is clearly none, at others he misconstrues the most obvious badinage.

Thus, where John Paston is addressed in the phrase, "Wis.h.i.+ng you joy of all your ladies," Fenn suggests a reference to the Virgin Mary, Heaven knows why. Still, Fenn rescued the letters, and the latest edition--far more complete than his--is at once one of the most entertaining and valuable of historical doc.u.ments and essential to the right understanding of life in old Norfolk. In fact, the _Paston Letters_ is one of the few really old books which a man not too studiously inclined may not prudently be contented to take as read. It is vastly entertaining, but, it must be said, it is not for the young person. A spade was not called a horticultural implement in those days, and there are many spades, and some knaves of spades too, in the _Paston Letters_.

Fortified with this literary foundation, and a good deal more of minor importance, I left my Berks.h.i.+re home near Abingdon on 9 March in a 30-h.p.

Rolls-Royce car, six-cylindered and equipped with every luxury in the shape of gla.s.s-screens and a cape hood, and driven by Mr. Claude Johnson. For companions we had my two daughters, and for a.s.sistance, if it were needed, a mechanic. As it happened there was not a particle of trouble with tires, engine, or apparatus of any kind during the 300 miles and more of this expedition, and we might have dispensed quite well with the mechanic, and with his weight. Indeed, at the end of the little tour, and for that matter after the next on another car, arose a feeling that the days of the uncertainty of motor-cars were over. Need it be said that Nemesis was in waiting for this sanguine feeling, and that, before my "travelling days were o'er" in East Anglia, one of those extraordinary runs of misfortune came, which, in motoring more than in any other pastime, justify the sayings that troubles never come singly, that it never rains but it pours?

It is perhaps wise to make this statement now, for a record of motoring wherein all was plain sailing--the metaphor is hardly mixed, for there is kins.h.i.+p between the motion of a sailing craft running free and that of a car in good tune--might run the risk of being dull. How our troubles were turned into a positive pleasure, at the time as well as in retrospect, by the skill, patience, and good humour of this same Mr. Claude Johnson, shall be told in its proper place in another chapter.

One thing, however, may be said by way of preliminary to the account of this particular tour. There was much controversy at the beginning of 1905 upon the question whether the movement of a six-cylinder petrol car is, or is not, more luxurious than that of a four-cylinder car of first-rate design and construction. A prolonged match, not entirely free from flukes, the bane of motoring trials, has been held by way of attempt to decide the issue; and it has ended in favour of six cylinders, as ill.u.s.trated by the identical car in which this tour was taken. The controversy will probably go on for ever, none the less, for it is the old case of _de gustibus_ which can never be settled, and it is all but impossible to compare memories of kindred sensations felt at different times. Who can say, for example, which cigar, gla.s.s of old wine, sail on a strong breeze, gallop over the Downs, run in a first-rate motor-car, dive into cool water, which--almost what you will, so long as it be one of the pleasures cla.s.sified by old Aristotle as coming into being through the touch--was absolutely the best of his life? Without scientific certainty, however, there may be strong conviction, and mine is that a good six-cylinder, whether Rolls-Royce or Napier, runs more smoothly than any four-cylinder car, and I have tried nearly all the best of them. In fact, there is very little to choose in point of smooth running, if indeed there be anything to choose at all, between it and a White steam car, used on another East Anglian tour. Tried by the, to me, infallible touchstone of my own spine, a six-cylinder is a very little, but still distinctly, more luxurious than the best four-cylinder car; but this is not to say that there are not a round dozen of four-cylinder cars on the market which make their pa.s.sengers as comfortable as any man, or even delicate woman, can reasonably wish to be in this world.

We started just after ten, on a windy and rainless morning, in an atmosphere giving beautifully clear views of distant objects, and thereby raising some reasonable apprehensions for the morrow among the weather-wise. Our route lay outside my present manor until Royston was reached, for it was through Dorchester, Thame, Aylesbury, Ivinghoe, Dunstable, Luton, Hitchin, and Baldock; and the temptation to describe some of it, especially the run along the Chilterns, is strong, but it must be resisted. One observation, however, must be made. From Thame onwards, in spite of the tendency of our road system to radiate from London obstinately as in Roman times, much as our railways do, and as if cross-country travelling were not a thing to be encouraged, there was little reason to complain of want of directness in the road. But to journey from Abingdon to Thame it is necessary to go round two sides of a rough but large triangle, whether the route chosen be through Oxford, distant six miles, or through Dorchester and s.h.i.+llingford, which is rather longer. In either case the traveller has been compelled to go a long way out of his true course, and from the turning point to Thame is about the same distance in both cases.

To Royston the distance is, as nearly as may be, seventy miles, and the last part of the run, where we followed the north-west edge of the Chilterns, cutting in and out of Hertfords.h.i.+re, Bedfords.h.i.+re, and Cambridges.h.i.+re in bewildering succession, was very exhilarating. A pretty sight too were the Chilterns, with their swelling undulations of down turf, marked out near Royston for galloping grounds and showing here and there, in the form of a flag and a carefully tended green, that the golfer has found his way to Royston. Indeed, this close down turf, this "skin" of gra.s.s catching the full force of northerly and westerly gales, is suitable to the golfer's needs as any save that of seaside links.

At Royston we found an ancient and interesting inn, actually bisected by the ancient boundary line of Hertfords.h.i.+re and Cambridges.h.i.+re, a kindly welcome, most benign bulldogs, and last, but by no means least, a glorious pie. The inn is there still no doubt; so probably are the bulldogs; so no doubt is the kindly welcome; but the pie vanished in a manner almost miraculous. It came in an ample dish, steaming, succulent, the crust browned to a nicety. In a surprisingly short time the dish went out, empty, almost clean as Jack Sprat's and his spouse's platter, and its exit was accomplished by a gurgle of suppressed laughter from without. Was there something of a rueful tone in that laughter? Perhaps there was. He who would feed after March motorists have eaten their fill had best send in to them a gigantic pasty, else will he go hungry.

At Royston, the gate of East Anglia, we strolled about a little, finding it to be just a quiet town of the country--there is no sufficient reason to believe it to be really ancient according to the standard of antiquity in these islands--and the intersecting point of two great roads, that followed by us, which went on to the eastward, and the road between Hertford and Cambridge. Here, according to the antiquaries of yesterday, Icenhilde Way and Erming Street crossed one another. The antiquaries of to-day question the Icenhilde Way so far east as this, laugh at the philology which would make Ickleton evidence of its existence, and make nothing of the authority of the learned Dr. Guest. Perhaps they would treat with more respect Erming Street, said to have led from Royston to Huntingdon, and to cross the Ouse at Arrington, for there appears to be sound evidence that Edgar granted to the monks of Ely the Earmingaford, or ford of the Earmings, or fenmen.

Walking eastward along the s.p.a.cious street we found first the turning for Newmarket, which was of present interest, and, quite by accident, a notice "To the cave," leading us into a back yard and to a locked gate, and provoking a little later research. We couldn't get in, of course. The custodian, if there be one, was at his sacred dinner, as everybody in Royston seemed to be; but Royston struck us as the kind of place in which an obsolete notice might hang unmoved so long as the fibre of wood would support its covering of paint. Investigation in books showed the "cave" to have been discovered by a fluke in 1472, but the "cave," like a good many others here and elsewhere, seems to have been merely an ancient boneshaft or rubbish pit, afterwards excavated sufficiently to be used as a subterranean chapel. Hence the sketches of saints carved on the chalk walls which, candidly, I should like to have seen close at hand.

Royston is quiet enough in all conscience now, and it is doubtful whether the motor-car, rapidly as it increases in the land, will bring much prosperity to it, although it is placed at important cross-roads. Cambridge is but 12-1/2 miles distant, and Cambridge is a good deal more interesting than Royston, as well as a more certain find for refreshment, for pies may not always be to the fore. Being at the cross-roads, however, Royston is likely to see as much life pa.s.sing through its midst and to like it as little as it did in the days of James I. Nay, it may even like the bustle less, for more dust will go with it. James, who really was an ardent, if not a mighty, hunter, planted a hunting-box near Royston, his particular object being probably to course the Chiltern hares--for this is a first-rate coursing country, possessed, as is most down-land, of remarkably stout hares; and, when hares are stout, the open prospect of the downs makes coursing a very pretty sport. Deer, of course, there may have been; but the country does not look like them; and as for the fox, of whom the moderns have written and sung, "Although we would kill him we love him," he was vermin in the days of King James. To hunt the hare either with greyhound or harier, on the other hand, was a sport much loved of our kings even in Saxon times, and in Downland of Berks.h.i.+re, not dissimilar to the Chilterns, there are examples of manors held on the condition that the tenant should keep a pack of hariers for the king's hunting. Whether the Royston folk had to keep hounds for the king is not clear, but "Murray" has unearthed a lovely story of their catching his favourite hound and attaching to his collar a scroll bearing the words "Good Mr. Jowler, we pray you speak to the king, for he hears you every day and so doth he not us, that it will please his Majesty to go back to London, for else the country will be undone; all our provision is spent already, and we are not able to entertain him longer." Here was a new way of conveying a broad hint. "Baby Charles" visited Royston twice, immediately before his standard was raised at Nottingham, and later as a prisoner.

The distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of the road from Royston to Newmarket, which crosses over the south-eastern end of the Gog Magog Hills, is its undeviating straightness. It is plain from the map that it curves gently here and there, having indeed almost a sharp turn to the left before it ascends the Gog Magog Hills--which would be of little account as hills elsewhere than near a fenny country--but the general impression left was of wide prospects, Scotch firs, belts planted for partridge driving, and abundant game birds. The feeling that this is an ideal shooting country, and not half a bad one for motoring, was at its strongest when Six-Mile Bottom, famous in the history of sport with the gun, was reached. It was a day, as luck would have it, on which a bird-lover could take rapid observations of bird-life as he swept along, for there were no vehicles to distract him on the empty road, and there was no chance of his coming upon them unawares. Partridges we saw galore, c.o.c.k-pheasants strutting on the ploughland, confident that they were safe from the gun by law till the next October, and probably knowing quite well--for there are few things a wily old c.o.c.k-pheasant does not know--that there would be no serious danger, away from boundary hedges, until the leaf was clear in November. Less handsome than the c.o.c.k-pheasants, but more interesting, because less familiar to my eyes, were the hooded crows, in their sober suits of drab-grey and glossy black, walking about in perfect amity with the pheasants. This bird is a grey mystery. In shape and dimensions he is identical with the carrion crow; carrion crows and hoodies (or Royston crows) will interbreed on occasion; their nests and eggs are of identical situation, structure, colour, and shape. Their common habits include a partiality for young birds and young rabbits as well as for carrion--I have heard a rabbit scream, looked in the direction of the noise, shot a carrion crow which rose, and found it lying within a couple of yards of a half-grown rabbit, quite warm, and with its skull split--and yet n.o.body knows for certain whether the two species are distinct or not. The black crows may be migrants; the grey crows certainly are. They come over to the East Coast in hordes in the autumn, mostly from Russia, where they also interbreed with the carrion crow. They come inland a little, and I have seen one or two in Berks.h.i.+re, but west of Berks.h.i.+re they are certainly very exceptional in England and Wales, though they are quite common and even breed in Scotland and Ireland. In fact, they are birds, of whom one would like to know more, attired in a Quakerish habit according ill with their disposition. Still, when you have no game coverts of your own in the vicinity, it is good to see them circling about over these wide s.p.a.ces near Royston, and to remember that they used to be called Royston crows. The marshmen call them Danish crows also, and it is a great pity when ornithologists omit to specify these local names of birds. Hoodie, Danish crow, Royston crow are identical, and each of them at least as interesting as _Corone cornix_. They are all, as Mr. Rowdler Sharpe says, ravens in miniature, but it is open to doubt whether, as pets, they would be equally amusing in their tricks. We saw them in great numbers as we swept along, and, like many wild things, they took no notice of the car. It is strictly irrelevant, of course, but it may be interesting to say that, since these words were written, I have found that even a Highland stag is not afraid of a motor-car, which shows a Highland stag to have far more sense than some reasoning men.

Newmarket we have seen before, and since this time also it was pa.s.sed without a halt, whereas on a later visit we stopped for a while, it need not detain us now. Our road, which kept to the high ground to the south-east of Mildenhall Fen, took us first through characteristic environs of Newmarket not seen on the former tour, past endless training grounds, trim houses and carefully-built stables, and later through the wild heaths known as Icklingham and Weather Heath, the latter actually 182 feet above the sea-level. Right well, no doubt, that last-named heath has earned its name, for it is easy to imagine, and much more comfortable to imagine than to feel, how a gale from the north or west would have swept across the fens over that heath. For that matter there is not a single eminence of more than 200 feet between Weather Heath and the gales from the North Sea, so the east wind swept it too. Here the hand of man has wrought a great and beneficial alteration in the features of nature. Mention has been made before of the belts, clearly planted for partridge driving, to be seen in some parts of East Anglia, and they must be noticed more particularly a few miles farther on, when we pa.s.s Elvedon. The landowners who planted them, and the pheasant coverts, have improved the scenery and their own shooting at the same time. They cannot, perhaps, be credited with absolute and unalloyed altruism. And soon, on this naturally bleak upland, the road was sheltered on either side by close hedges of fir, trimmed to a height of ten feet or so, such as I never saw before, nor have seen since, out of Norfolk. They cannot be meant for screens to conceal the guns from the driven birds, for the British public has to stand a good deal of shooting in illegal proximity to high roads, but it would hardly tolerate permanent arrangements to that end, even in Norfolk or Suffolk, where game is sacrosanct. There can be nothing of this kind here, nor, if there were, would it have been necessary to plant both sides of the road. No--these hedges, charming because of their quaintness, can have been planted in no other spirit than that of humanity, in the widest sense of the word. They break the monotony of the landscape, and that is something; close and impervious, they must break also the force of the wind and must form an effectual barrier to the slas.h.i.+ng rain that the wind sends with terrible force before its breath. They are an unmixed blessing, a wonderful improvement to the conditions of wayfaring, and it only remains to be hoped that there may arise no county surveyor who, using the arbitrary discretion given to him by law, shall decree that these merciful shelters be laid low in the season of the year when his word is law.

On we glided with supreme ease--the whole distance from Newmarket to Thetford being eighteen miles, but the "going so good," as foxhunters would say, that distance counts for little--and the evidence of the cult of St.

Pheasant was more and more conspicuous. Were we not drawing near to Elvedon Hall--an Italian house built in 1876 for the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, now the property of Lord Iveagh--and have not fabulous "bags" been long a tradition of Elvedon Hall estate? Let it not be supposed for a moment that this fact is mentioned by way of pandering to the prejudice of protesting Radicals, or of joining in the chorus of ignorant invective against game-preservation, now happily seldom heard in the land. Looking at this bleak upland, having regard to the recent and the probable future history of British agriculture, and, if a personal allusion be permissible, to the well-known character of the present owner of Elvedon Hall, it is plain that this ground could not be better employed than as a game preserve, that as such it probably produces more food and gives more employment than if it were in the hands of farmers, and that, if this were not so, Lord Iveagh would not be the man to preserve game. There is no East Anglian grievance here, and East Anglia certainly feels none. If there be any grievance at all it is that some of the money primarily made on the banks of the Liffey is spent in East Anglia; but, no doubt, much of it comes indirectly from East Anglia also, and there is no sort of doubt that Lord Iveagh does his duty, and much more than his duty, by Ireland as well as by England, more completely than most men.

Leaving Elvedon behind we sped to Thetford, pa.s.sing, a mile or so beyond the gates of Elvedon, across the county boundary and out of Suffolk into Norfolk. The character of the scenery remained unchanged. We were in a land of heaths, barren and pleasing, and of rabbit warrens, some of them very ancient and famed for the quality of the skins and fur of the rabbits reared among them. Arthur Young found this country from Northwold to Thetford, and again from Thetford to Ingham, "an uncultivated sheep-walk,"

and as he made no suggestion for its improvement generally (in spite of the success achieved in the neighbourhood by "one of the best farmers in England [Mr. Wright]," through the use of marl, which was not even "the fat soapy kind)," it may be taken that the case is a fairly hopeless one. The rabbits probably pay as well as anything else would, and we have to thank them, and the sterility of the soil, for the preservation of a fine tract of wild and open land, and for the sense of freedom in pa.s.sing through it.

As for Thetford, its motto certainly ought to be "Ichabod." There are few places in England, possessed in their time of a substantial reputation, whose glory has departed more completely. It was the scene of a fierce battle between Dane and Saxon; it was the second city in Norfolk in point of importance; it had a mint so late as the days of Henry II; its priory was founded by Roger BiG.o.d, but is now an uninteresting ruin; it had twenty churches, five market-places, and twenty-four main streets in the time of Edward III; it was the diocesan centre of East Anglia for nineteen glorious years, from 1075 to 1094. Also it has always had its vast earthwork, commonly known as the "mound," commonly believed also to be of enormous antiquity, Roman at the latest, and by virtue of it Thetford has been identified with the Roman Sitomagus. It is a little hard that, when all the rest of the glory of Thetford is gone, even the Mound, which without excavation is totally devoid of interest, should have the glamour taken away from it and that investigators on scientific principles have exploded the Sitomagus bubble. Mr. Rye says:--

"It has been guessed to be Sitomagus, and certainly many signs of Roman occupation have been found here. But the great 'Castle Mound,' steep and high, with its gra.s.s-grown sides, so difficult even in times of peace to climb up, is the chief object of interest in the town. There are no traces of buildings on it, and the platform at the top is so small that the generally received theory that it was thrown up as a refuge against the Danes is obviously untenable. The labour and energy necessary to create such a mound would have been enormous, and surely would have been expended in comparatively recent times, such as those in which the Pirate Danes harried our country, to more practical use. That the mound is mainly artificial I have little doubt; but whether it was a burial mound or not cannot now be discovered without deeper excavations than are likely to be allowed."

Considering that the earthwork is a hundred feet high and a thousand feet in compa.s.s it would certainly be rather a large-sized burial mound. Let us look at what Mr. Haverfield says. He relegates Thetford to an index of the "princ.i.p.al places where Roman remains have been found, or supposed, in Norfolk," but does not dignify it by a position in the text, which is confined to "places where vestiges of permanent occupation have been found." The "finds" at Thetford have been first Roman coins, according to Sir Thomas Browne and Blomefield. But coins alone do not carry us far.

"h.o.a.rds of coins have their own value for the students of Political Economy, since they often reveal secrets in the history of the Roman currency. But they do not so often ill.u.s.trate the occupation or character of the districts in which they are found. Sometimes they occur in the vicinity of dwellings, buried--for instance--in a back garden, which the owner had constantly under his eye. But they occur no less often in places remote from any known Romano-British habitation; they have been lost or purposely hidden in a secluded and unfrequented spot."

This is a general remark on the test applicable to "sporadic finds," such as those at Thetford, which are banished to the index. There another sporadic "find," which if it had been real would have conveyed more meaning, receives very short shrift. "A lamp is said by Dawson Turner to have been found at Thetford in 1827 under the Red Mound, and the lamp he figures is now in Norwich Museum." That sounds promising, does it not? Men might bury h.o.a.rds of money in odd places and forget them, or meet their deaths before they unearthed them. They would hardly be likely so to conceal their household lamps. Alas for this pretty piece of foundation for an imaginative structure, "the curator tells me it was brought from Carthage, and presented by Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, and it certainly has the look of a foreign object." Finally, "Thetford has been called Sitomagus by Camden and others, and also Iciani; but it does not seem to be a Roman site at all; its earthworks are post-Roman. Camden's 'river Sit or Thet' is a piece of characteristically bad etymologising."

The learned scholar deigns to write no more than this of Thetford, and, being concerned only with Romano-British Norfolk, sets up no positive theory. But why was the Mound built? Exit Mr. Rye's _a priori_ view, that it could not have been built in such comparatively recent times as those of the Danish invasions, because the energy and labour would have been expended to better purpose in those times, for the Mound is post-Roman. It may have been raised between the date of the Roman "departure," in 410, and that at which the kingdom of East Anglia was established. This is one of the most delightful chapters of history, to a persistently boyish mind, because next to nothing is known about it. There is no reason to suppose that the Romanized Britons remaining in East Anglia, as it was to be, welcomed the Saxons with open arms, and every reason to believe that the Saxons were a thoroughly barbarous crew. The Britons may have raised it against them. Or again, it may have been raised by the Saxons against the Danes, as, in the opinion of Dr. Jessopp, were Castle Rising, Castle Acre, Mileham, Elmham, and the Norwich Mound. The works at some of these places are certainly post-Roman, and at none of them is there clear evidence of Roman occupation; in fact, the chances are that they were all of later date; and the chances are also that there was a great deal more fighting in these parts between 410 and 800 A.D. than the muse of history has chosen to reveal. But this problem is glanced at later. As for Mr. Rye's _a priori_ view that the exertion would have been better employed in those days, why, bless the man, Offa's d.y.k.e was made, from the mouth of the Dee to that of the Wye, late in the eighth century, and it is a Cyclopean work.

The Mound is "wrop in mystery," that is all about it, and a heap of earth whereof the meaning is not known to the learned is a precious dull spectacle. So, to tell the plain truth, is Thetford. To us the most interesting facts it provided were a substantial tea at the "Bell," itself quite old enough to please. While tea was in preparation we saw quite as much of Thetford as any reasonable man could wish to see; when tea came it was marked by the appearance of weird things in the nature of tea-cakes, combining something of the toughness of the m.u.f.fin and the texture of dry toast, not very new dry toast, with the shape of the crumpet. The other memory of Thetford is of a strange old man, having toy windmills for sale and attached to every part of his person, after the fas.h.i.+on of those street musicians who, by dint of ingenious contrivances in string, can play, or at any rate make a noise with, some half-dozen rude instruments at the same time. This wandering toy seller was a blessing in disguise. He was, and is, a providential reminder that windmills, here, there, and everywhere, are striking objects in the East Anglian landscape. Travelling eastward from the Midlands one sees them as far west as Buckinghams.h.i.+re, and there not in the Chilterns only, and in East Anglia proper their name is legion. In or out of working order--and in a country of much wind travelling fast, of water moving, as a rule, very slowly, they are mostly in working order--they add picturesque character to the landscape. Moreover, in beauty they have a distinct advantage over the watermill. The latter may be, often is, exquisite at close quarters; its foaming stream, its dripping and moss covered wheel, its gleaming pond with willow-shadowed or elder-girt bank, are among the loveliest objects in England when seen at close quarters.

Your windmill, on the other hand, must in the nature of things be placed either on an eminence or in a wide and open s.p.a.ce. Not so beautiful, perhaps, only perhaps, at close quarters, as the watermill, it is still more than pleasing, and it can be seen for miles. It is as a beacon on the coast which the mariner can see for many leagues before he pa.s.ses it, as the motor-car pa.s.ses the windmill, at a safe distance. Constable, it is worth while to remember, learned some of his skill in an East Anglian watermill.

It was only afterwards that, consulting the faithful "Murray," I learned that Thetford had been the birthplace of Thomas Paine, "the infamous author of _The Age of Reason_," and that the house in which he was born was standing thirty years ago. It would not, perhaps, have been very interesting to discover whether it was still standing; but it was decidedly quaint to learn that Tom Paine was the son of a Quaker staymaker. Could there be anything more incongruous? That a Quaker should be the father of Thomas Paine was bad enough; that a Quaker should make stays--let us hope he never measured his fair customers for them, but made them in stock sizes--was monstrous. Yet on investigation in other books it turned out to be a true story, and from the investigation came an awakened memory, which others may need also, that Thomas Paine was a really influential personage among the founders of American Independence.

During tea and the consumption of the strange tea-cakes (which may, after all, have been slices of the traditional Norfolk dumpling, more or less toasted) rose a suggestion that we might turn southward for three or four miles, cross the Waveney, enter Suffolk again, and take a motorist's view of Euston Park. It would be the same Euston Park, planted with many of the same trees, grown bigger, which surrounded the house, when Lord Ossory heard the thunder of guns from the east and rode off, as has been recounted before this, to be a spectator of the great sea-fight in Sole Bay. It would be the same house, too, for it was acquired by the first Duke of Grafton, with the property, by marrying Lord Arlington's daughter in the days of Charles II, and the Dukes of Grafton from time to time hold it still. The decision not to make a detour was reached partly because, as we meant to make Norwich by way of Attleborough and Wymondham, it would have involved a return by the same road as that taken on the outward journey, and partly because the descriptions were unpromising. The reference here is distinctly not to the description in "Murray." "It is a large, good, red-brick house, with stone quoins, built by Lord Arlington in the reign of Charles II, and without any pretensions to beauty, except from its position in a well-timbered and well-watered park." That description, such is the perversity of human nature, raised a suspicion that the house might, if it were visible from the road, turn out to be a very satisfying structure, conveying that idea of s.p.a.cious comfort and substance which is completely lacking in many a more imposing "mansion." Nor was I moved by the fact that Walpole wrote "the house is large and bad," for it might have been possible to disagree with Walpole, of Strawberry Hill, on a question of taste. But Walpole went beyond matters of mere opinion. "It was built by Lord Arlington, and stands, as all old houses do, for convenience of water and shelter in a hole; so it neither sees nor is seen." That settled the question. Euston might, or might not, be one of the stately homes of England, whose owners permit them to be inspected by strangers on stated days; this March day might have been such a day; but not even the prospect of seeing "Euston's watered vale and sloping plains," or some fairly interesting portraits, or Verrio's frescoes, would have induced me to avail myself of the privilege, if indeed it had existed. I know what the legitimate inmates of a great house feel on those occasions. Besides, motorists are unpopular in ducal parks, and with good reason. It is absolutely true that a duke, riding a bicycle in his own park, has been abused, coa.r.s.ely, violently, and recently, by a motorist who was enjoying that park by the duke's grace. That park is now closed to motorists, and no wonder; and the case is not exceptional in character.

So we glided onward--gliding is the true word for the onward movement of a good car--over the open ground of Croxton Heath first, then past sundry villages, not lying close up to the high road, between the houses of Attleborough, and noticed, without halting, Attleborough's fine church.

After this, for quite a long while, there were no more villages, and then, in front of us and dominating the view, rose a huge church, having two towers, one at the west end. It stirred memory of pleasant browsings in _Norfolk and Norwich Notes and Queries_. This could be, and in fact was, none other than Wymondham, p.r.o.nounced Windham, where the Benedictine monks and the paris.h.i.+oners quarrelled over the parish church, which had been appropriated to the abbey. So bitterly did they quarrel that the east end, transepts, and part of the nave were walled off for the monks--they certainly took the lion's share--in 1410, the paris.h.i.+oners being relegated to a portion of the nave; and there, at the west end, they built them a tower and hung bells in 1476.

A mighty religious house was this of Wymondham, ent.i.tled to all wrecks between Eccles, Happisburgh, and Tunstead, and to a tribute of two thousand eels every year from Elingley. This tribute, we may be sure, was paid in Lent, for it is pretty clear from the _Paston Letters_ that, while herrings were the stock food of the days of fasting, eels were the luxury that made them tolerable. Mistress Agnes Paston writes to her husband in London that she has secured the herrings--from Yarmouth, no doubt, as she lived hard by at Caister-by-Yarmouth--but that the eels are delayed, which appears to be accounted very sad. Just because this was a mighty religious house at Wymondham it is not surprising to find that Kett, of the famous rebellion, was a Wymondham man. Here, unfortunately, it is necessary to be at partial variance with Mr. Walter Rye. He writes: "Lingard, as of late Professor Rogers, has said that Kett's Rebellion had a religious origin; the former so writing from religious bias, the latter from ignorance." That is rather a brusque way of putting things, for, although Lingard, as a Roman Catholic, was a little apt to think too ill of the effects of Henry VIII's policy towards the religious houses, Professor Rogers deserved to be spoken of with more respect. Enclosures were, of course, the main cause for Kett's Rebellion in 1549, and Kett had a private grudge to avenge against one Sergeant Flowerdew at the outset. But, as a Wilts.h.i.+re labourer once said to me, "where there's stoans there's carn," so, where there have been great religious houses in England, the rebellious spirit manifests itself in the pages of history before and after those houses came to an end. At Abingdon and at Bury St. Edmunds--I quote the two places of which the story happens to be fresh in my memory--conflicts were incessant, and there is no reason to doubt that the state of things was the same at Wymondham. The religious houses had become, with exceptions of course, corrupt within and extortionate without the gates. They were oppressors of the poor, whose best friends they had once been; there was no limit to the variety of the tolls they demanded. They were by far the largest landowners in the country. All this had ceased but a very few years before Kett's Rebellion, but the spirit which it had created, the very men in whom that spirit had been raised by extortion and injustice, were very much alive. If Kett's Rebellion had not such a directly religious origin as Lingard supposed, it is more than likely that it was indirectly due to the spirit of unrest and discontent which always arose in the vicinities of religious houses.

Indeed, the very success of Henry VIII's stern treatment of the monasteries is proof positive that he was supported by popular opinion. As for the enclosures, some may have been made by the new lords of manors; others, and probably the vast majority, had been made by the grasping "religious." Moreover, the pet.i.tion sent up to the king when the rebellion was at its height contained express allusions to religious grievances. It asked "that parsons shall be resident, and all having a benefice worth more than 10 a year shall, by himself or deputy, teach the poor parish children the catechism and the primer." Not a very outrageous demand surely; and if we scan the material grievances complained against--establishment of numerous dovecots, and claims to exclusive rights of fis.h.i.+ng, for example--we see that they are essentially the grievances which the religious houses had originated. How Kett and his men marched in due course to Mousehold Heath, on the outskirts of Norwich, the grievous fighting which followed in and about Norwich, how they killed Lord Sheffield by the Palace Gates at a spot marked to this day by a stone with an S on it, how Warwick, after many reverses, finally defeated Kett, who was hanged, drawn, and quartered, shall not be told at length in this volume. These things are an essential part of the history of England; they are far and away the most exciting events in the history of Norwich, and, since they cannot be dealt with fully here, they are best pa.s.sed over with this slight mention.

At Wymondham is, or was, an old house having a very curious inscription, "_Nec mihi glis servus, nec hospes hirudo_," which is not quite free from difficulty even as it stands, for a verb is left to be understood, and it may be "_sit_" or "_est_." In the one case the guest hopes, in the other the house boasts, the servant to be no dormouse and the host no leech.

Things were worse when somebody read _hirudo_ as _hirundo_, though one might make attractive translations of that too. But we cannot linger over that when we are close to the scene of a tragedy far more recent, and therefore a good deal more affecting, than that of Kett's Rebellion.

Stanfield Hall is close to Wymondham. It is the reputed birthplace of Amy Robsart, who may or may not have been murdered at c.u.mner--Lady Warwick says she was not--and Stanfield Hall was certainly the scene of a series of remarkably cold-blooded murders in times which may still be counted recent.

Prefacing a frank confession that my personal interest in murders is small, which seems to be a misfortune judging by the enraptured attention they attract from many intelligent and cultivated persons, I endeavour to give some account of these murders partly because I desire to please, partly because a very old friend, now dead, devoted a vast amount of attention to them. His meticulous care in studying the _locus in quo_ may serve to compensate for my lukewarmness as a student of homicide; nay more, his interest in the subject seems to have been infectious, for, having read his monograph of some five-and-twenty octavo pages on the subject since the foregoing sentence was penned, I am now distinctly conscious of being keen on the subject and of finding interest in it.

Truth to tell, it was not the first time of reading. The late Sir Llewelyn Turner, of Carnarvon, was one of those rare men who, inhabiting remote corners of the provinces, escape provincialism and retain intelligent appreciation of public affairs and a sympathetic interest in all sorts of events. In the year 1902, having committed to paper his memories and opinions upon a large number of subjects, and being all but eighty years old, he entrusted me with the task of preparing his MS. for the printers; and he had the satisfaction of seeing himself in print, to the extent of some five hundred pages with ill.u.s.trations, before he died. Among the miscellaneous chapters of the book is one ent.i.tled "Stanfield Hall and its Terrible Tragedies." It is, of course, far too long for quotation, but it is also a treasure-house of nice points, some of them perhaps new even to precise students of the history of crime.

"In the year 18-- I accepted an invitation from my valued friend, connection, and old schoolfellow, Colonel Boileau, to pay him a visit in this interesting old moated house, the scene of fearful murders and bloodshed, viz., the murders of Mr. Isaac Jermy, the Recorder of Norwich, of his son Mr. Isaac Jermy Jermy, and the shooting of Mrs. Jermy Jermy, the son's wife, and her maid, by probably one of the greatest scoundrels that ever disgraced humanity, James Bloomfield Rush." The quotation will serve to show that my old friend's literary method is too leisurely and minute to justify the repet.i.tion of the story in his own words. Truth to tell he rambled somewhat and was not unduly particular about the sequence of events. Still it may be possible after study of his monograph, to produce a narrative of this crime having something more of freshness than would follow from reference to the text-books of crime; for these murders, it must be remembered, were on a colossal scale, and the case, although simple enough in its legal aspect, has a place among the celebrated crimes by virtue of its wholesale character, its beginnings in long-planned roguery, and its culmination in thorough-paced brutality. The foundations of the programme of crime which was finished on the 28th of November, 1848, were laid many years before, and it is a curious study in the wickedness of which human nature is capable to trace the evolution of the scheme.

In the second half of the eighteenth century the then head of the Jermy family held Stanfield Hall and its estate as, probably, his predecessors of the same name had held it for centuries. Jermiin is one of the Norfolk names of early date for which Mr. Walter Rye claims a Danish origin, and he was probably a Jermy (or letters to that effect) who, in Tudor times, built Stanfield Hall, and moated it round and about. At any rate a Jermy held it when our story opens. A poor relation of the name sold his reversionary interest in the estate to a Mr. Preston, and Mr. Preston came into the estate, "in the shoes of" the poor relation, and was able to settle down in Stanfield Hall. Outside the lodge gates lay the Home Farm, having James Rush for its tenant, a plausible fellow, it would seem, but a whole-souled rascal at heart. Ascertaining that his landlord was going to London by coach on a given day, Rush engaged the three remaining inside places for himself, and so agreeable did he contrive to make himself to the old man on the journey that he returned to Stanfield not merely as tenant of the Home Farm, but also as accredited agent of the estate. As such he had access to Mr. Preston's t.i.tle-deeds, which he stole before Mr. Preston died.