“To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.”—Hypatia.

In this sentence the Reverend Charles Kingsley carries forward the message left by Aristotle.

When preparing to write this little booklet I was greatly impressed with the above words. No more fitting motto could I find for it, since it deals with the tyranny of our own country side.

It is a challenge to autocracy, a protest against injustice and a warning signal to the teaching profession.

It shows how a simple, moral, God-fearing little community may be roused into action against parochial busybodies and local glebe lords. The squire and the rector have been the Lord High Tololorums of the countryside for centuries.

To dispute their divine authority, or to question their insolence, oft means social ostracism, or a tour abroad without a Cook’s guide.

Emigration returns will prove this.

The people of Burston, in Norfolk, are deeply religious and law-abiding. The reverend rector has, however, gone too far.

Their struggle against him for fifteen months, their brave devotion and loyalty to their teachers, is almost without parallel in the history of Nonconformity.

They have seceded from the Church, their children have voluntarily left the Council School, and the parents, though fined again and again, have successfully defied that poor man’s Dragon of Wantley—the Law. The struggle is not yet concluded, and Heaven knows where and how it will end.

The reverend rector finding teachers, parents, and children still true to each other, has issued notices to quit at Michaelmas, next September.

Not succeeding from the religious point of view, he is now about to try his luck as landowner.

By means of these glebe notices he seeks to remove the bravest and best so that he may once more hold the destinies of the villagers in the hollow of his hand.

The purpose of this booklet is to focus the clear white light of public opinion upon Burston. I believe I voice the wish of every true woman and man, every lover of justice and genuine freedom, when I express a hope that he may not succeed. Had he brought an atom of brotherly love or the true charity which he quotes on Sundays, or sought to crystallise the true spirit of Christianity into his dealings with his village folk, then this booklet would have remained unwritten.

However, it may serve a useful purpose if it only shows other reverend rectors what they must avoid.

When the teaching profession becomes as wide-awake to its interests as, say, the dock labourers, the miners, and cotton operatives, then will its members join their Union, loyally co-operate with each other, and form a linked breakwater against oppression.