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 become 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 Yorkshire moors and wolds, from the Cheviots for Scotland by this time was - for Scotland - peaceable and tame the sheep and stunted cattle were driven slowly along; and Lynn became naturally in the fourteenth century what it is at this moment, by far the largest cattle market in the east of England. Our Norfolk dealers persist that it is "the largest out of London." The more the trade grew the more apparent it must have become that Lynn itself was ill adapted for any great assemblage of the shepherds and their flocks. In the rich meadows and marshes the cattle might do very well; a few days of such pasture for the sheep would be ruinous-they would die by the hundred. It occurred to the rector of Harpley that he might make a great coup for himself, and in doing that might be an immense benefactor to his neighbors, and indeed to the whole county in which he was born. So he made his advances in due form to his lord the king, and he made out his point so well, and he managed his diplomacy so adroitly, that in this year 1306 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

old tree which stood as a landmark in the days of the Rev. John; and here the drovers and flockmasters used to assemble, and here the fair was held. At the beginning of this century the fair was far and away the largest sheep fair in the county. Old men, and men hardly yet old, remember the strange look of the Scotch shepherds, with their bare legs and their plaids, stalking about and bargaining; remember the booths and stalls; the impossibility of finding any shelter for their horses, ridden or driven a score or two of miles in the heat; remember the crowds, and the noise, and the fights, and the drunkenness, and, above all, the dreadful difficulty of getting water, which in the morning was to be bought for a penny a pail, and at night was not to be had for love or money. There is some conflict in the reports that have reached me, but this is certain, that the fair was called Kipton Ash Fair, and to this day men talk of the very mixed quality of the animals that were brought there; and to this day when a Norfolk dealer wishes to commend a horse, he calls it a

66

Hyde-parker;" but if he wishes to express 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 arrive 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 putrefaction 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?

formalities, and the witness to the transaction was Mr. Henry Spendlove, who was, I think, the rector's agent and steward and friend and right-hand man, and whose name is mentioned more than once by Adam Bulur, with a certain sort of respect. We have a word to say about Mr. Spendlove before we have done.

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 hand, and that a master's hand, however many signa

body of evidence must have been the work of a single

tures it may bear at the end.

498 years. But in the year 1829 they opened that tomb and they "displaced the roof thereof.

And underneath, about a foot and a half from the surface, a figure was revealed, clad in a silk priest's robe [query, a cope ?], and holding in its hand a sacramental cup, from which the stillness of five hundred years had only stolen silently the flesh from the bones and the gilding from the cup; all else remained unimpaired.

What became of that plundered cope and that precious chalice? Did they find their way to Wardour Street?

There is one more little fact that comes to light, and to my mind it is a very eloquent and pathetic fact as I read it.

| They that come after will have no bad report to make of me and of my doings, and that which I have done may He within Himself make pure! You I have in no wise wronged, you are my heir. But have a thought for the young man whose father was my friend, and let him take my place and follow me as shepherd of the little flock whose pastor I have been for thirty years and more."

And then a young man's voice breaks in, and there is a promise given, and the dying village parson sinks back and there is silence; till somehow there comes up the sound of many voices chanting loud and sweet, and their song is :

O all ye priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him forever.

And there are other voices that make answer again, and their song is like unto the first:

O all ye holy and humble men of heart, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him forever.

Do not try to persuade me that all this was no more than such stuff as dreams are made of. AUGUSTUS JEssopp.

Henry Spendlove, who had been, as it seems, the lifelong trusted friend and steward of the rector, had, I think, a son, and his name was Thomas. When the rector died and the living fell vacant, Thomas Spendlove was a lad at Cambridge, but he had already been admitted to minor orders. In those days it was never safe to keep a benefice open an hour longer than was absolutely necessary, and it so happened that the Bishop of Norwich, William de Ayremine, was away in foreign parts at the time the living of Harpley fell vacant. The bishop had, however, left his brother Adam as his commissary, in charge of his diocese. Adam de Ayremine was a great don at Cambridge, though what his position in the University was I have never been able to discover. Before him, on the 2nd of January, 1332, young Thomas Spendlove presented himself armed with the necessary legal instrument, and by him he was instituted in due form, as rector of Harpley, on the presentation of "John de Gur-case of the whispering galleries in nay the younger, then lawful patron of the benefice."

From The Cornhill Magazine. CURIOSITIES IN OUR CATHEDRALS. MANY, if not most, of our cathedrals have curiosities treasured in them that are no part of the fabrics, but yet from associations have come to be identified with them, or with their history. In rarer instances, these curiosities are part of the structure in which they occur, as in the

Gloucester Cathedral and St. Paul's; and in others, without being actually a portion of the construction, they are parts of its ornamentation, as in the case of the figure of a demon looking over Lincoln from the roof of the south-east side of Lincoln Cathedral, and of the fiddler fiddling over York on the roof of York Minster. Sometimes a recent discovery imparts an interest as of a curiosity, as in the matter of the grooves lately noticed in the shafts of the Norman triforium in the south tran sept of Oxford Cathedral, whereby we may see the management with which the Norman masons used for their purpose portions of the Saxon windows they found, in the edifice they were improving, ready to their hands.

And here my story ends. But I have my day dreams as I walk through the lanes and fields of Arcady; and I have my visions in the night as I lay my head upon my pillow, and at times there rise up before me scenes and sights and sounds, words and men and women so vividly present, that I find it hard to believe them other than real. I find myself standing beside the deathbed of the old parish priest of the Norfolk village, and there are others round him, and one of them is John de Gurnay the younger, who is holding his uncle's hand. And I hear the dying man speak low but clearly; and this is what he says: "Nephew mine! I am passing away and going home. I have In Hereford Cathedral there are two lived my life and I have not lived in vain. | relics of considerable extraneous interest.

One is a map of the world more than five tion of the Crucifixion. The ark is delinhundred years old; and the other is a eated with various creatures and three chair of Norman workmanship. It is human figures. A mermaid also occupies thought that the map was originally in- a prominent place. Curiously, Africa is tended for an altar piece, as it is embel- called Europe, and Europe is marked lished with a representation of the Last "Affrica." England is divided into CorJudgment and other drawings of sacred nubia (Cornwall), Lindeseya (Lincolnsubjects. It gradually became faded and shire), and Norhuba, and, owing to the browned, torn and neglected. Dingley, scale, probably, but one hill is named in the seventeenth-century herald, mentions it-Clee Hill. Twenty rivers are marked having seen it in the Lady Chapel. and named, and twenty-six cities and "Among other curiosities in this library towns, of which one between Winchester are a map of ye world, drawn on vellum and Exeter, marked Cadan, has not been by a monk, kept in a frame with two doors, identified. Scotland has two divisions and with guilded and painted letters and fig-six towns. Three towns are marked in ures," he says. Before his time it was Wales, and four in Ireland. Without hidden under the wooden floor of a chan- going into details, it is sufficient to say try chapel for a season, it is said, which that the work generally is of extreme incircumstance may have saved it from de- terest and curiosity from many points of struction and given it a new interest when view, not the least being the fact that found. Nevertheless, it became so much Richard of Haldingham has been identidilapidated that it was eventually sent to fied as having held the prebendal stall of the British Museum in 1855, that it might | Norton in the cathedral from A.D. 1290 to be cleaned and repaired with the requisite A.D. 1310. The chair in this cathedral is skill and judgment; and, since then, it has of still greater antiquity. Word has been been placed in the south choir aisle of the passed down through century after century cathedral, and protected with plate glass. that King Stephen sat in it on Whit SunIt is drawn in black ink, with some of the day, A.D. 1142. It consists of upwards of initials and the names of places in ver- fifty pieces, and stands three feet nine milion and gold, and the rivers are colored inches high. It is thirty-three inches blue. The map is of a circular outline, wide, and measures twenty-two inches and the framework on which it is displayed from back to front. Four upright pieces, is rectangular, leaving spandrils at each with knobs or finials, whereof two form angle that are filled in with drawings and the supports of the back, and two of a less inscriptions. It covers about eighteen height terminate at the arms in front, form square feet. Here and there, all over it, a framework which is filled with rows of are small outline drawings of fish, birds, smaller rails arranged in an ornamental animals, human figures, and buildings. manner. Below the seat, in front, is a row Some of these are exceedingly curious, of semicircular arches resting on similar the most so being a representation of a rails or shafts to those without this dis man, apparently suffering from elephanti- tinctive treatment at the sides. The seat asis, with only one leg, which is of suffi- is formed of plain boards placed in a cient dimensions to be turned up over his groove; and the back has been also filled head. Between two circular lines forming with an arrangement of moulded rails a border to the map are various inscrip- similar to that of the sides, some pieces of tions, and in the four corners are single which, however, have been lost. It is not letters, which, put together, read MORS. a little singular that Richard de HaldingIn the right-hand corner there is also a ham drew a chair of precisely the same delineation of the author, attended by a construction as a seat for the pope in one page and followed by his greyhounds. of the spandrils of his map, which has His name is given in a short Norman- been accepted as evidence in favor of the French legend: "All who have or shall probability that it was in the cathedral in have read, or shall see this history, pray his time. Before leaving this subject, it to Jesus in Deity (that) He may have may be mentioned that the chair in which mercy on Richard of Haldingham and Queen Mary was married to King Philip Lafford, who has made and contrived it, of Spain is preserved in Winchester Cathat joy may be given to him in Heaven." thedral; and that which was required, in The map gives us the measure of the geo- addition to the coronation chair, for the graphical information of the day. In the coronation of William and Mary, is precentre of it is Jerusalem, which is in- served in Westminster Abbey. As in the scribed "Civitas Ierusalem and Mons case of the coronation chair, a close scruCalvarie," and adorned with a representa- tiny discloses the fact that color and gild