viz., that the present church is a very different building from that which existed in the year with which our bailiff's account is concerned. To begin with, the old church was covered with thatch or reed, and the bailiff enters on his debit side a payment for reed for the roof. But this is not all. It appears that the church, too, was built of clay lump or stud work. For, as in the case of the house, which we have seen was repaired and rebuilt this year, a certain expense was incurred in carting water for mixing with the clay, so also was it necessary to pay for cartage of water to the church for the same purpose; and there are two other charges, one for some iron work, possibly for the door, and another for two gates, which can only have been to protect the approaches to the churchyard. The rector can hardly have been yet in a position to build the beautiful chancel in which his body was laid some twenty-five years later, for he had only recently come into possession of the family estates, and his first duty was to erect a handsome tomb to his father, which accordingly he did erect at Lynn, as we find from an entry for the expenses of a certain John de Chewyngton, who appears to have been commissioned to look after the aforesaid tomb, and was sent to Lynn ad imaginem patris domini. Some years later the Rev. John undoubtedly did build the chancel of Harpley Church much as we have it now, and it is a noble monument of the good man's large-hearted liberality, and of his cultured taste, and of his zeal "for the houses of God in the land." It appears that the rector farmed some eight hundred acres of land, including the pasture, the sheep walk, and meadows. The account shows that he sowed a total of 1831 acres, of which 43 acres were in wheat, 55 in barley, 21 in oats, and the rest in peas (22 acres), beans (1 acres), and the coarse grain known as siligo (20 acres). The peas, we find, were chiefly used for porridge, as some quarters of oats were, and the barley was chiefly used for beer. The beans, it seems, were given to the poor, except a single bushel which went to the stable. There had been two great barley stacks standing when the year began; one had yielded over ninetytwo quarters, and the other a little over nineteen quarters; the allowance for barley seed was three bushels an acre, and if we may assume that the same numbers of acres were laid down in barley in 1305 as were sown in 1306, we must conclude that the yield on the barley crop was more than six times the seed, and the yield per acre something over two quarters. But such calculations are very likely to mislead us; we really have not sufficient data to go upon, and I should not have ventured to touch upon this problem, if I were not strongly persuaded that the late Mr. Thorold Rogers very much underrated the yield of the arable land of the country in the Middle Ages. I do not for a moment sup pose that the soil was adequately tilled, or that the maximum crop upon any farm was to be compared with that which was raised among us in the "roaring times," or is raised by good farmers now; but it is not conceivable that the cultivation of any land could have been carried on for a succession of years if the harvest yielded no more than three or four times the quantity of seed sown; the margin of profit would not have sufficed to maintain the laborers. The rector of Harpley, or his father before him, was a man who was in advance of his time; for whereas there were at the beginning of the fourteenth century many manors on which the personal servicesor enforced labor of the tenants were still exacted (the tenants being compelled to give so many days' labor in the year to the cultivation of the lord's domain, and to assist with their cattle in ploughing, harrowing, and carting over the acres the lord kept in his hand), it appears by this account that these services had been compounded for by a money payment before this date. The tenants of the manor had been relieved of their most burdensome imposts. Taking the manor as a little domain which comprehended a geographical area of limited extent, with so many acres under cultivation and so many more of waste, woodland, and heath, the greater portion in the hands of the tenants and scattered over the open fields, but the compact central farm, as it may be called, in the hands of the lord, and cultivated for his behoof the most noticeable feature of the village community is its selfsupporting character. The corn grown upon the land was ground at the manorial mill; the wool was spun into thread, and the thread woven where it grew. The cattle were slaughtered where they were bred, when they had been used for a year or two to drag the plough or the cart. Then their hides were dried and prepared to be made into harness, and a large portion of their flesh was salted down for winter consumption. Adjoining the manor house was a gar came dry the owner took her back and the calf was his; the hirer took all the milk and made his profit by it if he could. This practice still survives extensively in Dorsetshire, and the payment for the hire of the cows is very high-so high that it is said to amount to as much as two-thirds the market value of the animal for the mere annual hire. The rector of Harpley in 1306 let out his herd by the year in this way, reserving three cows, however, for the requirements of the household, and his dairymaid's name was Emma. The three cows reserved were apparently not more than enough to supply the milk for the porridge; the servants were very liberally supplied with oatmeal; also, they had rations of cheese, which, however, was not made in the dairy, but was bought perhaps from the hirer of the other cows. Goats are very rarely met with in our Norfolk records; but the Rev. John had a flock of goats at Wooton, which he let out in the same way as he did his herd of cows. I rather suspect he did not like a bevy of women about him and his household; and milking and butter-making he therefore would have nothing to do with. Let others milk the cows and the goats, and make their profit of the dairy business if they could that should be their affair. den in which vegetables were grown, and some garden seeds were distributed to the poor, gratis. There are few subjects over which so much obscurity still hangs as the subject of medieval horticulture; and in the account with which we are dealing, the only vegetable named is the leek, which our forefathers appear to have loved extremely and to have cultivated universally. The gardeners' rolls of the priory at Norwich form, perhaps, the most important series of such rolls during the fifteenth century which could anywhere be found in England, and they deserve to be printed for the benefit of students; but we must wait for better times before we can hope for their publication. The bailiff at Harpley includes all his vegetables under the single designation of "Olera." Besides the garden there was an orchard, and the crop this year was a large one; for, after using all that were needed in the house, many bushels of apples were sold by the bailiff. The late Mr. Thorold Rogers, though he had frequently met with mention of hemp as cultivated in England, said that he had "never seen any entry of payment for such kind of labor as the manufacture of ropes (Hist. of Prices, i. 28). It is plain that at Harpley, as in many other places, there was a hempland, and this year the bailiff brings I have said that when a cow or bullock into his account two payments for the was slaughtered the hide was turned into manufacture of hemp into traces, head-leather, if leather was needed, for the harstalls, and ropes. ness room or other purposes. Sixty years ago I am told by old men who can look back so far in every considerable village in Norfolk there was a tan vat, where the farmers took their hides to be cured. It appears to have been a very long and a very nauseous process; but, of course, the laudatores temporis acti assure me that there is no such leather now as they used to have when they were boys. There are indications that the rector of Harpley was rather a "high farmer." His implements, such as they were, had a good deal spent upon them, and whereas at this time wheeled carts were in Norfolk by no means universally used, Mr. Gurnay's carts appear to have been all not only furnished with wheels, but the wheels had iron tyres, or the next best substitute for tyres, to wit, thick iron plates, called "That was more juicy like! There was strakes, attached to the fellies by long more suppleness and heart to the old spikes which were riveted on the inner leather. Why, Lor' bless you, I never surface of the woodwork. The sheep-remember my father with more than one fold, too, was apparently constructed with exceptional care, and afforded much more protection and warmth for the lambs than was customary in Norfolk, even fifty years ago, among any but the leading sheep breeders of the county. At the beginning of this century it was not uncommon for the Norfolk farmers and resident gentry to let out their herds of cows at so much a head for the "season." The owner had to feed the cattle and house them, and if a cow chanced to die, he had to supply her place with another of equal value. When a cow be pair o' leather breeches all his life. You couldn't wear that leather out. My father'd think nothing of riding fifty miles in they breeches, and going to church in 'em o' Sunday!" In the account we are dealing with, I find a payment entered for making tallow into dip candles. Here again I have met with some curious explanation of this entry in the reminiscences of our reverend seniors. Sixty years ago, on a substantial farm, the dip candles were almost always bought of the tallow chandlers, by whom they were made on a large scale; but the mould candles were always made in the house, and generally by the mistress of the establishment. The mould was nothing more than a tin tube which was set upright on a dish, half full of moist sand, to keep the tallow from escaping. There was a great deal of knack and dexterity required in working the cotton-wick (the housewife used to buy this in balls of the travelling pedlars) into the middle of the tallow, which was poured hot into the tube; and my informant told me, with some pride, that his mother was noted as the best candle maker in the neighborhood, her wicks were always "straight | and stretched as they ought to be." During this time two horses were kept in the home stable for domestic as distinct from farming purposes, and they had the liberal allowance of about half a peck of oats a day. The rector had besides his "palfrey," and during the whole period of thirty-one weeks the account shows that there was an average of seven other riding horses belonging to the guests, and at least two more belonging to one Simon Tripping, who, I think, must have been the great man's huntsman. The allowance of oats for porridge in the kitchen was about a bushel a week. There were about one hundred and ten quarters of barley and malt made into beer, which, reckoning an average of two bushels to the barrel for the strong beer and at least as much more for the small, gives us certainly not less than one thousand barrels for the year's consumption. But the consumption of food was enormous: 31 swine, i.e., a hog a week, II sheep, 4 piglings, 113 head of poultry, and no less than 86 geese, were consumed by the household, and no less than 52 quarters of wheat- not to speak of the inferior sorts of "bread stuffs," which I suspect were largely distributed as maintenance allowance for the dependents on the estate. Making all due allowance for the great feast to which we shall come by and by, I can hardly estimate the number of There are two or three omissions in the account which are a little puzzling. There is no mention of butter, eggs, or honey directly or indirectly. As to the butter, it is just possible, but very improbable, that none was used in the household, but it is hardly conceivable that there should have been no beehives, and no careful storing of the produce, and quite inconceivable that no account was kept of the eggs. In the thirteenth century and it must be remembered that we are now only six years out of that century-I doubt whether it would be possible to produce a rent roll of any Norfolk estate which does not enter the rent paid by the tenant in eggs, as well as the other portion paid in oats, in addition to the mere money pay-persons eating the rector's bread — and ment. In this balance sheet the bailiff sets down, (1) the payment in composition of personal services; (2) the number of bushels of oats; (3) the money rent; and all this very minutely, but not a word about the eggs, which, in a manor of this pretension, would amount to many hundreds and probably thousands. Another significant omission is all mention of any tithes, except the tithe of lambs or offerings paid to the Rev. John as rector of the parish; although his payments of tithes due from himself at Wooton and elsewhere are duly entered. I can only explain the difficulty by conjecturing that another functionary had to keep account of such small matters as the eggs, honey, hemp, flax, and perhaps garden produce, and that this account, with the tallies, was rendered to the steward of the household probably at the same time as the farm bailiff presented his account, viz., at the Michaelmas audit. The state kept up by the rector of Harpley during his thirty-one weeks' residence at the manor house, fairly staggers us when we come to analyze it. He resided there during the winter months only. by that I mean eating the white bread he ate himself - during his winter residence at Harpley at less than fifty or sixty persons. It is a startling view of the way of life which a rich man led in those days— but it must be remembered that he stayed at home and that he had no luxuriesabsolutely none. There is indeed one payment made to Stephen the jeweller at Lynn, but it was a payment not in money but in corn; the good man received four bushels of wheat ad oblacionem, which I suspect means a present, and I further suspect that it was in return for work bestowed on Sir John Gurnay's tomb. After all, "it's the hoffle weemen as takes it out of yur," as an old misogynist of my acquaintance, long since dead, used to delight in asseverating. Men can do without luxuries, and only begin to crave for them when the enticements of ladies' society makes them effeminate and dandiacal. There would be no peacocks with the dazzling plumage if there were no peahens. And the Rev. John Gurnay had no milliners' bills to keep him awake at night; no drawing-room which had to be "done up" periodically; no ball dresses 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 pas. toral 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. 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 We have seen that he was a hospitable and romantic and peaceful and humanizing gentleman who entertained his friends in on the face of the earth; but if you look a bountiful way. Everybody hunted in at an old map, say of a hundred years ago those days even bishops and abbots and or, if you can get it, earlier you will monks and country parsons hunted. The see that there really was only one way of foxes and the badgers and the weasels and entering the county from the west, and |