to provide for wife or daughter; no school bills to pay for the boys; no nurserymaids or governesses; no wife to worry him with her extravagance. No! Nothing of this sort. That's one side of the picture and every picture has two sides, the front and the back-and you may take your choice which you prefer if you can't have both.

The rector of Harpley could not marry if he wished, and when he was admitted to holy orders and, let us hope, received them with a view to doing his duty according to his light as a country parson in the Norfolk village- he gave up all dreams of wife and children. The joy of wedded love and the serene happiness of what we understand by domestic life were not for him. So it is not to be wondered | at that in his bailiff's account we have the name of only one woman - Emma, the dairy woman, who milked the cows, presided over that brewery which had so much to answer for in those thirty-one weeks of the rector's residence, looked after the poultry, and had her hands full; but it is almost certain that she was married and had perhaps a family, for the account shows that she had her rations of corn supplied her, which she of course took home and dealt with as she pleased. In the manor kitchen there would be just as many women cooks as there are in a college kitchen; that is, there were none at all.

How did the Rev. John spend his time from one week's end to another? Well, he may have spent it in various ways. In the first place, I suspect that he spent a great deal more of his time in his church than some country parsons do now. We have seen that he rebuilt a portion (and that the most sacred and important portion, as it was then esteemed) of his church within a few years of the time that we are dealing with—and in any case it was much more the habit of clergymen then to worship God in the church itself than it is now.

As the services of his church required his attendance, and the elaborate ritual in that church, varying with every saint's day or festival, gave him always something to prepare for, something to interest him in the actual conduct of divine worship, so the claims of his parishioners were in those days much more defined and much more imperative than we quite realize now. The people may have been very ignorant, and they may have been very superstitious; but they were very scrupulous, even the worst of them, in their

religious observances. The sacraments they had a right to, and the parish priest who was not ready at the call of the penitent to listen to the cry of remorse and to give the awful absolution to such as were agonized with a horror of sin, would have had to answer for his cruel negligence and suffer severely for the wrong. At any moment of the day or night the call might come that the angel of death was knocking at some lowly door; and the priest must needs go forth to touch with the holy oil the frail body that had almost done its work, carrying with him the host, and standing by the bed of the dying while the passing bell was tolling. In the stormy, moonless night, before he laid his head upon his pillow, he had to be sure that the lamp over the altar, which it was sacrilege to neglect, was burning brightly and duly fed and there was work to be done for the dead as well as for the living - the masses to be said for the souls of the departed, and the commemorations which had been imposed upon the ministers of the sanctuary, and which they neglected at their peril. It was not an age of mothers' meetings and tract distributing and district visiting, as we do these things now; but we mistake it very much indeed if we assume that the absolutely necessary daily duties of a village priest in the first half of the fourteenth century were as few in number as those of our modern country parson.

Moreover, the way in which he was looked after by his superiors would make us feel very uncomfortable now. Twice a year he had to present himself at the Synods held in Norwich Cathedral, and to give an account of himself; and although it may be true that, if he sent up his fees by deputy not much was said about his absence, yet in theory he was bound to be in his place, and might be called upon to answer for his non-attendance. Every year, too, the archdeacon, who was a very formidable personage with very real power at his back, held his courts and made inquiries, and irregularities and neglect were looked into, and sometimes grave charges were brought against the parson which might involve serious consequences if they were not disproved. The machinery of ecclesiastical discipline in these times was incomparably more powerful than we have any acquaintance with in this nineteenth century, and if it was not always employed effectively, and if it tended to fall out of use and to be well-nigh forgot. ten, it could be put in motion at any moment when occasion served; let but the

fires be lighted and the wheels would "grind exceeding small."

I do not mean to imply that in the thirteenth century any Norfolk parish was left to only a single ministering priest. So far from this, I suspect that no one man could have done all that was expected of the parson of any considerable village then. As a fact, I believe it would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, to find a Norfolk village in which there were not two or more ministering clergy, the unbeneficed "chaplains " as they were called, who constituted a very numerous class. These "chaplains" were the will-makers and conveyancers, the accountants, "men of business," and the schoolmasters of the villages; in fact, the educated class and the educators of the country folk, while they were always ready to take the heavy work off the shoulders of their more fortunate brethren, whose income was certain and their position secure. Yet, after making all reasonable abatements, it is certain that the resident rector of Harpley had a good deal more on his hands, and was responsible for a great deal more pastoral work than the present rector of the parish, and if he did not do it all himself he had to provide that it should be done.

such like vermin had to be kept down, and, moreover, their skins were worth money. The hares and the rabbits had skins too, and their flesh was good for food, and the big bustard was a dainty dish to set before a king, and the dogs could run them all down if you kept them up to the mark. But they had to be hunted with care and skill. Even nowadays it is not everybody who is fit for an M. F. H., and the care of the kennels calls for brains. In this very year, 1306, some of those Harpley hounds had misbehaved themselves. Mr. Bulur sternly records the fact that they had killed two of the geese - the curs! mangled them so that they were not fit to send into the kitchen. Oh! Don and Juno, and Tig and Ponto, and Samson and Stormaway! How you did catch it for those geese! Don't think the worse, I pray you, of the Rev. John if he were a hunting parson. Men have been that before now, and yet have had the fear of the Lord before their eyes, and have been no unfaithful or unfeeling pastors of their little flocks, nor neglected the poor and needy, the sick, the sad, or the dying.

---

But, as I have said, and I must needs say it again, the rector of Harpley had other duties and interests besides those which his parish and his people imposed upon him. He was clearly a very busy

man.

But the Rev. John Gurnay was not only rector of Harpley, and so responsible for the religious life of the parish as an ecclesiastical territory, he was besides this a man of considerable landed property. As It may safely be affirmed as a general such he had other duties and responsibil- rule, that the less a man has to do the less ities than those which fell upon him as you can depend upon him for doing that. a beneficed clergyman. Periodically · If you want to get a job done in a hurry, probably at intervals of two months - he beware of looking to the man of leisure to had to adjudicate upon the disputes and do it for you. It is the man who has all serious quarrels of the people who were his time employed and who has not a minhis subjects in the little domain — to safe- ute in the day to spare, who is the man guard his own and their interests against who can always find a minute to help a any invasion of their rights, to inflict pun- lame dog over a stile. The Rev. John ishment upon the unruly, to arbitrate be- was one of these restless, energetic men tween man and man, to be the general with a head upon his shoulders and a referee in matters great and small in a full allowance of brains inside that head hundred different ways. A busy man and—and I am now going to tell you what the an energetic one, he was also a man before his age. He was before his age in his architectural taste and knowledge, for the specimens of church building of the decorated period are rare in Norfolk. The rage for church building in the county began at least half a century later.

We have seen that he was a hospitable gentleman who entertained his friends in a bountiful way. Everybody hunted in those days even bishops and abbots and monks and country parsons hunted. The foxes and the badgers and the weasels and

worthy gentleman did and what he brought about in this year 1306—that is, five hundred and eighty-six years ago.

If you look at an old map of Norfolk not one of your modern ugly things all seamed and scarred with the tracks of those odious railways which are the great obliterators of so much that is picturesque and romantic and peaceful and humanizing on the face of the earth; but if you look at an old map, say of a hundred years ago

or, if you can get it, earlier you will see that there really was only one way of entering the county from the west, and

that way was by Lynn. Lynn was the key of Norfolk from the west and north if you wanted to get into it by land. I am not going into the physical geography of the matter, and I am not going to prove my point —

the proof is complete

is just the time of the year when the sheep-breeders "make up their flocks," as the phrase is, in preparation for the next lambing season, and it is just the time when the drovers who have more hoggets than they can keep during the winter are glad to turn them into money.

St. Lawrence's day fell on a Wednesday in this year 1306, and since the feeling against Sunday trading had been steadily growing for well-nigh a hundred years, from the time when Eustace de Flay had gone about from place to place preaching against the desecration of the Lord's Day, I assume that the king's writ had ordered that the Harpley Fair should be held in future on the first Wednesday after St. Lawrence's day. For on that day the fair continued to be held for more than five hundred years, and there are scores, and perhaps hundreds of living men who remember it, and have even attended it. There was a stretch of open heath in Harpley which extended from a spot called Harpley Dam to a place called Kipton Ash, where still grows a clump of ash-trees trees that are the successors or descend

If only I've stated it thrice. Now, during the long reign of Edward the First, which was now drawing to a close, the trade and commerce of the county had been going on increasing hugely, and from Norfolk there was a large export trade of wool and fells and hides. That means that Norfolk had be. come a land of flocks and herds more than it had ever been before, and the time was coming when men would begin to grumble loudly that so much land which had grown corn in their fathers' days was now turned into sheep-walk. But at present the cry was for more sheep and larger herds. Where were they to be got? Wherever there is a demand, there the supply will follow; and as the Norfolk men could not breed the sheep and cattle fast enough, they looked about them for a source of supply. It came. From the dreary high-ants of some venerable and conspicuous lands of the Pennine range, from the old tree which stood as a landmark in the Yorkshire moors and wolds, from the days of the Rev. John; and here the Cheviots for Scotland by this time was drovers and flockmasters used to assemble, - for Scotland - peaceable and tame and here the fair was held. At the beginthe sheep and stunted cattle were driven ning of this century the fair was far and slowly along; and Lynn became naturally away the largest sheep fair in the county. in the fourteenth century what it is at this Old men, and men hardly yet old, rememmoment, by far the largest cattle market ber the strange look of the Scotch shepin the east of England. Our Norfolk herds, with their bare legs and their plaids, dealers persist that it is "the largest out stalking about and bargaining; remember of London." The more the trade grew the booths and stalls; the impossibility of the more apparent it must have become finding any shelter for their horses, ridden that Lynn itself was ill adapted for any or driven a score or two of miles in the great assemblage of the shepherds and heat; remember the crowds, and the noise, their flocks. In the rich meadows and and the fights, and the drunkenness, and, marshes the cattle might do very well; a above all, the dreadful difficulty of getting few days of such pasture for the sheep water, which in the morning was to be would be ruinous-they would die by the bought for a penny a pail, and at night was hundred. It occurred to the rector of not to be had for love or money. There Harpley that he might make a great coup is some conflict in the reports that have for himself, and in doing that might be an reached me, but this is certain, that the immense benefactor to his neighbors, and fair was called Kipton Ash Fair, and to indeed to the whole county in which he this day men talk of the very mixed quality was born. So he made his advances in of the animals that were brought there; due form to his lord the king, and he made and to this day when a Norfolk dealer out his point so well, and he managed his wishes to commend a horse, he calls it a diplomacy so adroitly, that in this year" Hyde-parker;" but if he wishes to ex1306 he received the royal license for holding a fair annually on his own estate at Harpley; and inasmuch as Harpley Church was dedicated to St. Lawrence, the fair was to be held on St. Lawrence's day that is, the 10th of August. There was good reason for fixing this date, for it

press his contempt of the broken-down old beast, he bursts forth into what in Norfolk serves for poetry, and says:

That there hoss be a Kip'n Esh,
High in the bone and low in the flesh!

Kipton Ash Fair had a sudden and

no notes of admiration in his manuscript. One has to read the whole thing through and pick out the several items which are to be found under very different heads. Having done that, this is what comes out as clear as daylight.

The Rev. John was mightily pleased that he had gained his object, and there was just the least little shadow of anxiety as to whether the king's license would ar rive in time. It did come in time, however, and when the official who carried it produced it to the Rev: John, he was so pleased that he there and then tipped that

was not a very heavy tip, but then such tips were not the rule in those days, and the boy, you may be quite sure, had as much victuals and drink as he could carry ; and I am not sure that this tip was any

tragical end. About fifty years ago, when the flocks were assembled in the old place, a frightful form of what my informants assure me was small-pox broke out among the sheep, and they died by hundreds. There was dismay amounting to despair among the drovers, there was panic unspeakable among the dealers and the farmers. Of course there were high words, and of course everybody explained the calamity after a theory of his own. But there was one theory which prevailed extensively among the chief sufferers. That year there had been an enormous number of starlings observed in this dis-official's boy who had come with him. It trict, and, as most people know, starlings like nothing better than to settle on the back of a sheep and hunt for ticks and other parasites that are to be found in the fleece. Where there are sheep there are sure to be starlings. This year the shep-thing more than the earnest of something herds were appalled by the number of the starlings, and they swore that the starlings inoculated the sheep, and that the Norfolk farmers had caused the plague by not keeping down the starlings. But any way the poor dead sheep had to be buried where they dropped, and the area which a few days before had been one living mass of flocks and herds and human beings became, at the end of a week or so, a vast breadth of land which had been turned up to hide the carcases. And it was as if a great blight and curse had swept over the sweltering heath, and the sickening stench of the half-covered mass of putre faction was horrible. Then the farmers round about said they would have no more fairs at Kipton Ash, and they posted great bills and notices on the barns and gates along the roads for miles round about, and the annual gathering came to an end; until after a year or two the need of a fair had made itself felt as a very pressing one; and then the terror of the plague being still upon them - the farmers agreed to remove it to another spot, and since then it has been held a mile or two off, at Hempton Green.

more substantial, but it was all that Mr. Bulur had to account for on the audit day. You would like to know what the amount of that tip was, I dare say, but I am not going to tell you. When the rector had got his license, and due notice of the fair was published far and wide, the least the good man could do was to prepare for a great feast, and it should be a real feast too. The neighbors came from all the country round; the mayor of Lynn I doubt not was there; and Stephen Astley, the great man of Melton Constable; and Sir Richard de Rokele, who had only lately acquired the manor of Sandringham; and peradventure Sir Hamo le Strange from Hunstanton; and Sir Thomas de Ingoldesthorpe from Rainham, what time the Townshends were but very small folk there, though their time would come a century and a half later; and Sir Henry de Walpole, too, from Houghton. His brother Ralph had ceased to be Bishop of Norwich some seven years before, and was now Bishop of Ely, and he himself had got his foot upon the ladder - not the lowest rung of that ladder either - and many another whose posterity English But I did not sit down to write the his-history would remember in the after time. tory of Harpley great fair. If I had, I should have taken more pains to find out accurate information about its death and burial, as we may call it. My business is with the Rev. John who started the fair. What does this shrivelled bit of vellum, with Adam Bulur's account upon it, say about the fair? It says a great deal, though, of course, it says much less than some of us would wish to find there. What is told us is set down in a very simple and stolid way, and the bailiff has

But why dwell upon the possible or probable guests at the Harpley manor house? I know it was a grand feast, and I know that all the servants of the guests could not be accommodated; for Mr. Bulur had to pay for the lodging and expenses of some of them even on the Sunday before. But when the Tuesday came-i.e., the Vigil of St. Lawrence, being a Tuesday, remember, and therefore by no means a fast day there was a little special dinner for a favored few, at which they had fish,

and actually wine! Fish was a very dear luxury in the Middle Ages, that is quite certain. By fish I do not mean herrings, though they too were dear, but I mean fresh fish, such as we serve up as an adjunct to our dinners now. On Tuesday the 9th of August, 1306, the Rev. John provided herrings galore, but he provided some plaice also and some other fish which the bailiff does not give us the name of; and I make no doubt the good man had to send for it to Lynn, as many a worthy rector has done hundreds of times since those days and will do again. As to the wine, that too must have come from Lynn, for the Rev. John had no wine cellar and only indulged in such prodigality as this on very, very, very rare

occasions.

But when the next day came and the fair was opened, and the king's letter read, and the people shouted, and the buying and selling began, then indeed there was a real feast! Fish? I should think there was fish! There was fish enough to come to at least 15% of our money, but the guests appear to have gobbled it all up, so that the rector actually had to give an order for an extra allowance of herrings to be bought for the servants the day after the feast, and he sent a man to Lynn, as it seems, to buy the herrings and bring back the bill, and that raan was Adam the harper. What! should there not be "a taking down the fiddle and the bow"? Should there not be minstrelsy and song?

But all things come to an end. - Debemur morti nos nostraque.

The fair came to an end as we have seen, but it outlasted the founder more than five hundred years. He must have been in the prime of life in 1306 and he lived twenty-five years after that date. He had a younger brother, as it seems, who died young; and when he had finished building the chancel of Harpley church, he bethought him that life was uncertain, and that he had duties to those who should come after. So he made over his manor of Harpley and other property hereabouts to two trustees, who, I am pretty sure, were members of the Astley family, of which the Marquis of Hastings is the present representative; one of them was rector of the adjoining rectory of Little Massingham, and the other was lord of the manor of Burgh Parva, a mile or two from Melton Constable; and he settled the estates upon his nephew John and his heirs, with remainder in tail to his two other nephews William and Edward; and this settlement was made in the ninth year of King Edward II., i.e., in the year of our Lord 1316, ten years after Though the Rev. John had the good of the Harpley fair had been established, his people and of the neighborhood and and he himself was little more, I take it, of the whole county at heart in obtaining than forty years old. It is pretty certain the king's license for holding this fair, and that the nephews were still but boys, for though it proved for several centuries a the eldest of them did not marry till eight real boon and a solid advantage and a years later, and their uncle survived that very important matter for the agriculturists event nine years, and then his summons of Norfolk, it is not to be supposed that it came and he passed away some time in did not bring profit to the lord of the December, 1331, and was laid in his own manor and the landowners in the neighbor-church, and they raised for him a costly hood. Of course the hundreds of people tomb, and they laid upon him a marble who gathered together would want meat slab, and on it they carved his unpretendand drink, and these had to be supplied ing epitaph: on the spot. Living men remember the booths and stalls at Harpley fair. Accordingly there came in a very respectable amount from the rents of the stalls and the dues that were levied, and these are set down in Adam Bulur's account. Moreover, it appears that the rector was not above having a stall of his own, at which bread was sold and what else I cannot tell; and though I do not find any record of his buying any sheep or cattle, yet I do find that he bought a horse with some

HIC: IACET: CORPVS: IOHIS: DE: GVRNAY:
QVONDAM: RECTORIS: PATRONI: HVIVS:

ECLESIE:

CVIVS: ANIME: PROPICIETVR: DEVS. AMEN.

There the good man lay undisturbed for

On this subject some readers will be glad to be referred to the First Report of the Royal Commis sion on Market Rights and Tolis," p. 15. That and the Final Report, issued in 1891, exhaust the subject. It is obvious that this splendid résumé of an enormous body of evidence must have been the work of a single hand, and that a master's hand, however many signa tures it may bear at the end.