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his ninetieth year. He often used to speak of his father and grandfather. They were neither of them apparently estimable characters, and I believe that the grandfather was about fifty when the grandson was born, and he lived to a good old age. That means that Joe Barker's reminiscences, including such stories as he heard from his grandfather, covered a period of, at least, 140 years; in other words, they went back to, say, 1743. But it seems that the grandfather was as fond of talking about his young scrapes and prowess as the grandson was, and "he'd used to say as he learnt all his devilment from an old chap as my father used to talk about too, sometimes-old Billy Barlow, as broke a chap's nose with his fist, fair fighting, too. They said that chap was a highwayman and was a-looking out for a po-shay as was a-coming on the road. But he didn't stop no po-shays that night, you may depend on it!" I listened patiently till a pause came, then I interposed. "But who was Billy Barlow?" "Oh, he was dead afore I was much more nor born. My toes though!-grandfather used to say as he was a owdacious one. Why, when he was a boy he locked Parson Tapps into Scarning Church when he came to be constitootioned!" It took me some time to interpret that obscure word, until a happy thought flashed upon me that he meant instituted, and I inferred that even in those remote ages beneficed clergy were instituted with the old forms just as they are now. "But, Joe," I asked, "who was Parson Tapps? No man named Tapps was ever rector of Scarning. I know all their names for three hundred years." Hereupon came a long discussion, and old Joe grew more and more positive. At last it came to this: There was a certain Richard Tapps, who was constitootioned rector of Scarning in 1741, as I afterwards discovered, and he held the living with the perpet405

LIVING AGE.

VOL. VIII.

ual curacy of St. Saviour's, Norwich, till 1785. After being constitootioned he never put in an appearance here again for the rest of his life. "He was that scared by Billy Barlow he wouldn't come here no more, not even to be buried." And this is how it came to pass: Billy Barlow, apparently, was then a big, hulking, "owdacious" lad. "And when Parson Tapps came over the bridge, and the tother gentle folks as was with him, the sexton he unlocked the Church door and they all went in, and they left the key in the door. And there was old Billy a-looking on, and when they was all inside Billy shut the door and locked it, and pulled out the key and he hulled it into the moat, and there it is now, I suppose; and Billy he made hisself scarce, and he never split on hisself, you may assure yourself!"

Now, I have no doubt whatever that this did actually happen in the year 1741, when Richard Tapps was instituted, as appears by the Episcopal Records, and though he died in 1789, during all these forty-eight years his name never once appears in our parish books, though these have been kept with rather unusual care and precision for the last 200 years.

"But how about the bridge and the moat?"

"Well! that's what my old grandfather used to say. When he used to tell that tale he'd always talk about the bridge and the moat, and I don't know what he meant!" No! Joe Barker did not know about those things, for bridge and moat probably had disappeared long before he was born. But I am

in the habit of pointing out to my friends where the old rectory stood less than a hundred years ago, and which Mr. Barry Girling distinctly remembered. It was an old moated house, and you may easily trace the moat, which must have been filled up about the middle of the last century,

when an important alteration was made in the highroad, which then, apparently, was carried between the church and the parsonage, the new road actually passing over the bed of the moat on the north side of the house, which I doubt not in those days was crossed by a bridge communicating with the churchyard. I have set down all these things because they afford an illustration of an incident, in itself trifling and unimportant, and occurring nearly 160 years ago, coming to my knowledge from the lips of a man who had never read a book in his life, and whose father and grandfather "did not know a great A from a bull's foot," as the wise and learned say.

Let me give another illustration of the value of these local traditions.

The parish of Little Fransham possesses a church which is still beautiful in its sore decay. The oak roof, which dates from the fifteenth century, still remains, though the angels with expanded wings, which once added to the splendor of the place, the rood screen which, some fifty years ago, divided the chancel from the nave, the backs of the oak seats (themselves still in situ), and a great deal else that contributed to make the interior of the sacred building "exceeding magnifical," have been swept away in the memory of man. The angels in the roof went first, about fifty years ago; they were sawn off because the Vandal who happened to be at that time rector of the parish thought they were dangerous. Then the backs of the seats were sawn off, because the aforesaid Vandal declared that they encouraged the people to go to sleep when he was preachingas though any human being could possibly have kept awake while that Philistine was droning out his platitudes. Then the rood screen went the way of so many rood screens-and that Vandal was happy. He had made a clean sweep of everything that could remind

his people of ages which, in his opinion, knew nothing and were best forgotten. Eight or nine years ago I went to Fransham to have a talk with Harry Pestell and his wife-two dear old people that had lived all their lives in the parish and were fond of talking about all that concerned the place. Old Harry Pestell must have been some inches higher than six feet in his youth, and even when I saw him he was a grand specimen of an old man. He talked freely, not to say volubly. Of course he had known the Vandal. "Why! he right down scrome when he heard tell that that bit off the angel had dropt off. 'Have'm daywn" he says. 'Have'm daywn!' Lor', as Mas'r Alpe used to say, 'he needn't a-been afraid as any good angels were a-goin to fetch him afore his time; he warn't such good company for the likes of they! Anyhow, he had 'em daywn, and then he sawed off the backs o' the seats. He'd used to do what he liked, he did. Them seats had been there, I'm told, hundreds and hundreds o' years before him, and we boys we used to sit in 'em, and many's the time as I's sot in they seats and watched the images."

"You mean the angels, I suppose?" "No! I don't mean the angels. S'pose I dunno a angel from a image?" "But where were the images? What were they?"

[N.B. When you are questioning an old man, or, for that matter, when you're cross-examining any man, never ask two questions at once.]

"Well, you're a larned gent, you are, and maybe you can tell me what they was, for I never heerd no one say what they was. But d'ye think I don't gnaw a angel from a image? There was four on 'em, and we boys used to look at 'em all sermon time. Angels!-they warn't no angels!"

"Well, but, my good friend, what is the difference between an angel and an image?"

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"What's the difference? Why, a angel's got wings and a image has got his close on. And a angel ain't painted all manner o' colors, and they images they was dressed in red and green, and two on 'em was men, and two on 'em was women. D'ye s'pose I dunno what a image is?"

Old Pestell was getting quite angry at my incredulity. So I dropt the subject for a few minutes to give him time to recover his equanimity.

"Where were those images you spoke of just now?"

"Where! Why, atop of the screen, o' courst. There was a kind of balcony in front of 'em and they stood behind it; and we boys we'd used to watch 'em, cause lots on 'em used to say they'd seen 'em move, and I've watched 'em scores o' times to see if I could see 'em move. But they never did as I saw for all my watching of 'em!"

"Were they on the top of the screen when the Vandal took it down?"

"Lor' no. That was long afore his time. That was Parson Swatman as sawed them off. I was a grown man by that time, and I heerd tell as one of the boys took his oath as he'd seen one of the images move a goodish way and nodded his head, and he stood to it that hard that Parson Swatman said he'd seen double; and then some on 'em laughed a goodish deal, and then Parson Swatman said he'd have no more images, and he sawed 'em off."

Now, the inference from all this is plain enough. When the roods were removed by authority from the chancel screens in the sixteenth century, the spoilers almost invariably tore down, not only the central crucifix, but the

"images" which were fixed in sockets on the rood beam. There were for the most part four such "images," two of them being always those of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John. As an instance, I may mention that on the rood beam of Scarning Church there are five such sockets distinctly traceable. The socket for the rood or crucifix being considerably larger than those for the images. At Fransham I conjecture, with some hesitation, that the rood was not fixed into the beam, but suspended from the roof, and so the images were left undisturbed. Anyhow, I can have no doubt that we have here an instance of the aforesaid images having remained in situ in a small village church. till the second decade of this century, and were actually remembered by a man still living ten years ago. Old Pestell died at Fransham in January, 1891, in his ninety-third year.

It is, however, when we avail ourselves of the opportunities which a long chat in the lowly cottages of the aged poor affords us that we get some of the most instructive reminiscences of the daily life and social habits, and ways of thinking and religious sentiments, of our rustics in days when there were no railroads, and no newspapers and no large farms, and when the roads were, for thousands of miles in England, almost incredibly bad. It was only in 1827 that McAdam was appointed General Surveyor of Roads, and received a grant of 10,000l. from Parliament as a recognition of his great services in bringing about the improvement of the highways in various parts of England. Even as late as 1830 (and I believe after that) the parish roads within four or five miles of Norwich were so nearly impassable that Mr. Micklethwaite, owner of Taverham Hall-a considerable squire and High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1810-used habitually to drive into Norwich with four horses, as his son informed me some twenty years ago,

adding, as if it were within his own recollection: "He couldn't help himself; the roads were all rucks." The "old Lady Suffield," as she is still called by those who remember her ladyship, even down to the time of her death in 1850, never drove out from Blickling Park with less than four horses. "It was not from any love of display. She had never done anything else all her life, and she would go and stop the carriage at some of the cottages, and talk to the old people." That was the report I received from the lips of one who knows, and to whom all my homage is due "on this side idolatry."

When Carlyle made so great a point of the incident at Thurtell's trial, where a witness explained what he meant by a gentleman by saying that he kept a gig, Carlyle must have been ignorant of the fact that in 1824 only the leisure classes kept gigs. Once off the "king's highway" and you were among the "rucks." "Farmers never drove to market in they days," said one of our elders to me. "They rode o' horseback and they'd used to race halfway homemore particular when they was tight." It is extremely difficult to realize what the country was like before the open fields and "waste lands" were inclosed. In this part of Norfolk the old byeways, as a rule, followed the course of the little runnels or brooks which served as the boundaries of the old manors. Wherever you see a parish road which is quite straight for half a mile, there you may be sure it is a new road laid down when some enclosure was carried out. I think the last inclosure in this parish was made in 1803. One of my old gossips, who died at about eighty, and whom I constantly visited nearly twenty years ago, more than once boasted that his father had turned the first furrow when the common at Daffy Green was enclosed. Why he should have been proud of this achievement I know not, but he was.

Of course the road that was carried through the old heath is as straight as a ruler. On the heath there was a tumble-down house, which has only fallen into ruins of late years-it has not been pulled down-and here poachers, and thieves, and gipsies, and other rogues used to drop in all night long"lying about anywhere." I infer they used to have as much beer as they could pay for, and that sometimes the coin was "an old hare," and sometimes a share of other plunder. "But no one know'd nothing about licensing in those days." The area of heath and scrub and waste land in some parishes amounted to almost as much as was under cultivation. Running along the north bank of a watercourse, which separates the parish of Scarning from Wendling, lies a tract of land on which the Abbey of Wendling stood for some four centuries. The Wendling canons made the most of it; they skilfully manipulated the stream and utilized it for turning a mill, at which all the tenants of their Wendling manor were bound to bring their corn to be ground. Skirting the millstream there was a long tract of rough, waste land overgrown with gorse and scrub; at the beginning of this century it was reckoned as no man's land, and had become worthless for purposes of tillage. But one of the elders of our parish, being a far-sighted and resourceful young fellow, managed to set himself up with a donkey and cart some eighty years ago, and began to cut down the scrub and make merchandise of it. He sold the stuff for kindling fuel and for oven wood, and he succeeded so well and was left so unmolested that he saved quite a pretty little sum of money, which became the nucleus of the considerable fortune that he left behind him twenty years ago. The mill continued to be used till 1878 [?], when a flood wrought much damage to the ancient waterways and to the mill itself,

and the landlords (Christ Church) declined to carry out the repairs. "I remember when I was a boy," said one of my informants, "there used to be an old paved road of great round stones to the mill from the turnpike. But they took 'em all up and sold 'em for the turnpike road." I infer that this "reform" was carried out when the macadamizing of the main road began, and the boulders were utilized for this purpose while, at the same time, employment was found for men out of work by setting them "to break stones on the high road."

*

I think that I have elsewhere drawn attention to the fact that this parish contains nearly 3,500 acres of very good land. It has never had a great squire's house in it. That is, it has always been an "open parish," with a number of small estates, the owners of which, in many cases, were non-resident.

Until the beginning of this century no justice of the peace had ever lived in the place, and the outlying hamlets must have been very "shy neighborhoods," inhabited by a more or less lawless set, who lived in a strangely free and unmolested way. There was a cage just outside Scarning, but lying in the parish of Dereham, and the stocks and pillory, or whipping-post, stood outside our churchyard. One of my Elders remembered a dissolute old roisterer named Marshall being put in the stocks (he does not remember by what authority), and kept there for three or four hours. "He was a wonder for roaring and hollering was that there Marshall. They put him in the cage at Dereham one night, and he roared like a bull and called for beer and said he was going to die of cold. So some of his mates they brought him a quart of beer. But they couldn't get it through the bars of the cage; so they brought him a long old tobacco pipe, and he sucked up his

beer through that. 'You give all that's left to the constable, mates, and tell him he's welcome to it, with my love,' says he. But there warn't a drop left for the constable nor no one else!"

It goes without saying that reminiscences like these indicate a certain lowness of morale as generally prevalent among the rustics, and yet I am inclined to think that, so far from our people being any worse than their neighbors, they bore rather a better character than the average Norfolk laborer three generations ago.

The influence of the school in the parish may have had something to do with this, and the fact that there has been always a resident clergyman, whose presence must have been for the advantage of his parishioners in more ways than one. It is true that there are no traditions which point to any one of these gentlemen having been a man of conspicuous earnestness, or energy, or pulpit gifts. On the other hand, there are no bad stories or anything to the discredit of any one of them current among the people. They are always spoken of with a certain measure of respect and esteem. One of them, who has long since passed away and left no representatives, is remembered chiefly for a song that he used to sing at the tithe dinner every year, when such gatherings appear to have been characterized by a dangerous amount of boisterous joviality likely to end in unseemly talk and conduct. Mr. Aufrere was appointed Rector of the parish at the beginning of this century; he invariably took the chair at the tithe dinner, which seems to have been held in, or near, the Black Horse. The two Rectors (for there are two, one being the Lay Rector, who was never present at these festivities) shared the expense of the entertainment, and when the tithepayers had eaten and drunk enough to be quite good for them-that is, when they had come to the end of

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