Market-place.—Present aspect.—Visit to its stalls.—Norfolk Marketwomen.—Christmas Market.—Early History.—Extracts from old records.—Domestic scene of 13th century.—Early Crafts.—Guilds.—Medley of Historical Facts.—Extract from Diary of Dr. Edward Browne.—The City in Charles the Second’s reign.—Duke’s Palace Gardens.—Manufactures.—Wool.—Worsted.—Printing.—Caxton.—Specimens of Ancient Newspapers.—Blomefield.

The old city, so rich in antiquarian remains, can boast but slow progress in modern architectural developments; nor may it vie with many a younger town in its contrivances for the comfort and conveniences of those most useful members of society—the market-folks. No Grainger has arisen, to rear a monument to his own fame, and of his city’s prosperity, in the form of a shelter for this important class of the town and country populace. May be, the picturesque beauty of the Flemish scene, with its changeful canopy of “ethereal blue,” or neutral tint, toned down at whiles to hues of sombre gloom, beneath the heavy shade of passing storms of hail and thunder, or more steady-falling rain and snow, has made the philanthropists of these reforming times conservatives all, on this one point, while model cottages, baths and washhouses, almshouses for freemen, and almost every other scheme ingenuity may devise to testify the care and thought bestowed upon the public weal, are rising up around. Let the cry of “Protection” once again be raised, not for the “distressed agriculturist” salesman, in his handsome corn exchange, but in favour of the “unprotected females” that sit unsheltered from the sun or storm, to vend the produce of the poultry-yards, the dairy-house, and market-garden.

But though no Temple to Commerce of the larder has been erected—a fact to be deplored in a utilitarian sense—it can never be denied that the good old seat of thriving trade can boast as fine a specimen of a genuine old market-place as may well be found in this day of competition and rivalry. Its motley assemblage of buildings, ranged round the open square, of all styles and all ages, jostling against one another, or here and there huddled together into all sorts of inconceivable groups of varied and fantastic outline; the young ones of to-day starting up with bold and saucy front, and verily squeezing out from among them their quaint, old-fashioned, gable-ended kinsfolk of older date, or sometimes creeping out, as it were, from beneath them, content with shewing a modern face in some lower window, decked with all the new-fangled conceits of the latest fashions, and allowing their ancestors quiet resting-place aloft, where to moulder away into decay, are a chronology of history in themselves. Now and then, the fretted ironwork of some miniature parade, hanging midway in the air, and clinging to the perpendicular of masonry above some new plate-glassed and glittering front, suggests thoughts of marine villas, moonlight and sea views, and all those pretty poetical fancies associated with a lodging at some fashionable watering-place, and one wonders how they ever came to be transported thither, and for why? They that own them tell us that they have their use, in the city, where the love of pageantry is an heir-loom from generations long since passed away whose birthright was to minister to the gorgeous magnificence of fraternities and guilds, banquettings and processions, that read like fairy tales in this sober nineteenth century; and we would believe in their utility, were it no other than to afford a bird’s eye view of the busy scenes of homely traffic going on upon a market day, amongst the accumulated heaps of provisions for the daily wants of life.

The wants of life! Who amongst us knows the meaning of the words, the reality they hide? Who that has numbered among the wants of life, the gold to purchase luxury or ornament, place or power, the ways and means to shine and glitter in the world, where men are prized by what they seem, rather than what they are; the wherewith to pay the idly accumulated debts, incurred through mean attempts to cover the rags of poverty, or decent homely garments of honesty, with tinsel mockeries of wealth’s trappings? Who amongst these knows aught of the meaning of the wants of life? Ask him who has known Hunger, has been face to face with want and starvation, has shared with loved and loving ones, weak babes, and sick and helpless mothers, the task of driving these unbidden guests away, has felt the gnawing pangs of their demon power, while gazing upon plenty, upon the wealth of food and sustenance displayed before his eyes! Is it not more marvellous and strange, that such piles as a market displays should ever be permitted to lie safe within the arrow-shot of gaunt and wasting poverty, than that the annals of our police reports should now and then record how poverty and crime sometimes go hand in hand?

But to look more in detail at the picture offered on a summer market-day. There to the left sit congregated together the vendors of the far-famed staple produce of the country farm-yards, sheltered from the heat by the artificial grove of variegated umbrellas, serving, or attempting to serve, the double purpose of protection from the sun in summer, and the rain in winter and summer. The poultry “pads” and butter-stalls are one. Turkeys, and geese, and fowls, and sausages, and little round white cheeses, share the baskets and benches with eggs and pints of butter, in the land where that commodity is sold by liquid measure, whose equivalent is somewhere near about 1lb. 3 oz.

There is a legend that one who sits here is the heroine of an old tale, which goes to the effect that “once upon a time,” when the inspector came his round to test the weights of all the measured pints, the old lady was observed slily to slip a half crown into the end of a certain pint, and hand it forward to bear the scrutiny; a bystander, who watched the trick, a moment after laid his finger on the identical pint and begged to purchase it, resisting all evasion on the part of the discomfited saleswoman, who, compelled to submit, turned out eventually the “biter bit.”

Thronging around this neighbourhood, and proffering their services with most assiduous perseverance, are a host of most amiable-looking porter women, liveried in white aprons and sleeves, with a pair of huge peck baskets dangling on their arms. Tumbling, and bumping, and jostling among them, drowning their pleadings in a deafening chorus of discordant cries, come the itinerant venders of small wares—“lucifers three boxes a penny,” “cabbage-nets only a penny,” “reels of cotton two for a penny,” little dangling bunches of skewers, ranged in progressive order on queer and mysteriously twisted holders, that seem designed to puzzle any mechanical skill to get them off again, “only a penny;” laces, and saucepans, and stationery, and kettles, thrust into notice as though haberdashers, and tinmen, and stationers were simultaneously rushing off to the gold diggings, and disposing of their goods piecemeal by auction. Ere the next range of stalls may be explored, the pathway is obstructed by some “literate” specimen of the blind, with an attendant concourse of listeners eagerly drinking in the titles of his sheet of hundred songs for a penny. “There’s a good time coming,” “All’s lost now,” “My bark is on the shore,” and “I’m on the Sea,” &c. &c.; or should any great tragedy or judicial murder have occurred recently, to furnish him with a still more profitable stock in trade, such as a “last dying speech and confession,” or “full, true, and particular account” of some “shocking and brutal outrage,” somewhat may be seen and heard of how the minds and tastes of the ignorant are vitiated, and the morbid cravings of diseased imaginations fed; and the hawker of this food for the million, forms living evidence that the eye is not the only member through whose aid vice may gain entrance to the soul. But there is little time or opportunity to philosophize amid the din of importunity that is ringing upon the ears, “What d’ye luke for? fine guse? butifull fowill?” And there stands one who claims especial notice—the merry bacon woman, amid her throng of earnest customers. There she stands, or rather moves; stillness is a state to which she must be a total stranger, we could fancy. “Good day, ma’am.” “What’s for you, sir?” “Nice pork, dear? black meat? I’ll wait of ye this minute, sir.” “Yes, ma’am, beautiful ham; did you please to want any? Oh, thank you; very well, another day I shall be proud to wait of ye.” “No harm in asking,” she adds, turning apologetically to her more profitable customers. And so she goes on, ever moving, ever talking, ever cheerful, civil, and attentive, one never-ending strain of courtesy and kindness pouring from her lips, while her hands are ever busy cutting and weighing, and folding up in fine white linen cloths, her sausages and bacon, and black meat, and still nicer white juvenile-looking pork, just fresh from the pickle. Probably she has a home somewhere, but her sphere of usefulness and theatre of glory must be at the market-stall; she must have been born and bred a market-woman. Further on, there sits a melancholy and original old lady, proprietress of a heterogeneous kind of heap, composed of small quantities of the choicest produce of various sources of supply—stray joints of pork, trifling displays of butter, a few eggs, and an occasional specimen of poultry; but her fame is built upon her unrivalled “tatoes,” hidden up in pads, and carefully concealed from the eyes of chance passengers; their discovery is a mine of wealth to the privileged few, especially in bad seasons. Dealing forth sparingly, like a miser counting out his treasures, the queen of murphies compensates for the reserve that would seem to imply her belief that her purchasers were begging favours of her, by the involuntary boon she confers upon the lover of idioms, in her quaint displays of her county’s dialect. The ordinary greeting of “How d’ye do?” will be met by the assurance that she “don’t fare to feel no matters,” or she “fares to feel right muddled,” or “no how,” or that she is scarce fit to be “abroad.” Her “tatoes” she will recommend as eating like balls of flour, if cooked enow (a word indiscriminately used to express quantity and degree). She will occasionally detail particulars of her market-horse’s “trickiness” when he “imitated” to kick on the road, and how she “gots” him on as well as she could. Her breakfast jug she will designate a gotch, and many other like specimens will she afford of the contents of the vocabulary of East Anglia. A traveller may with little difficulty fancy he is listening to some native of the distant county Devon; and, strange to say, the guse, fule, and enow, and other striking similarities of brogue and dialect, are not the only features of resemblance these two counties bear to each other. The ancient rood screens of the Norfolk churches have many of them been found exactly to correspond with those found in Devonshire, and only there. In the celebrated rebellions of Edward the Sixth’s reign, many remarkable features of resemblance were observed in the character of the outbreaks at these distant points,—so much so, as to suggest the idea of secret communication being kept up between them. Whether both alike owe their peculiarities to the common parentage of the Iceni, a tribe of whom have been said to have settled in Devonshire as well as Pembrokeshire, or they are referable to any less remote link of connection, antiquarians may perhaps at some future day make clear. Certain it is, the “southron” is apt to be easily beguiled into the belief that he has met a fellow-countryman or woman among the folks who deem themselves another race than the people of the “sheeres.”

But we have here wandered far aside in our market trip; next come in due order the butcher-stalls, taking a higher rank in the social scale of market society than the humbler pads, though their wares may not compete with their neighbours for a world-wide fame—south-down mutton, prime little scot, and short-horn beef, with the usual attendant displays of calves’ white heads with staring eyes, and mangled feet hanging to dismembered legs and shoulders by little strings of sinew, looking as though they were carelessly left on by accident, not to affect the weight, and other mysterious manifestations of the internal anatomy of oxen and sheep, and queer-looking conglomerations of odds and ends, transmogrified by some cooking process into very greasy imitations of brawn, and selling by the name of pork cheeses,—these make up the attractions of the butcher department, not over-inviting to look upon, even to those who are far from objecting to well-disguised appeals to their carnivorous propensities in the form of savoury dishes.

The lover of beauty will soon permit his eye to wander on and rest upon the treasures of the market-garden, where it may revel in a perfect sea of “Bremer” lusciousness; asparagus—seakale—peas, marafats and blues—beans, kidneys dwarfs, and windsor—salads and cresses—radishes in radiating bunches and globular bunches—cabbages and cauliflowers, that may perplex cooks and boilers by their magnitude—cucumbers and melons, and all the pumpkin tribe. Fruit—shining heaps of cherries—trays of bright glistening currants, with their little seeds peeping through as “natural” as the gems in the great Russian cabinet—strawberries and raspberries on their wooden trays, with the little skimmer-like spades to shovel them up, and the choice ones packed up in their little pints, sheltered from the sun by the fresh green leaf tied over—and sundry and divers wares from foreign parts lending new features to the home department, since the tariff of the “people’s friend” came into operation. But the crowning glory of the picture is the sovereign of the stall, the sturdy market-gardener, full of strength and sinew, the evidence of honest healthful labour meeting its due reward,—a fitting representative of the great base upon whose soundness rests the column of wealth, and capitol of rank, that with it form the pillar of our nation’s social prosperity. He knows not what it is to seek for work, but rather needs to pluralise himself to satisfy the demands upon his skill, and time, and taste; and fairly has he earned his reputation both in horti and floriculture. His rustic little home, with its thatched roof, and ivy and clematis twined verandah, lies in the very midst of a city of gardens almost of his own creation, watched and tended by him with a care that has rendered them the fairest line of beauty art ever devised to grace a road-side pathway through the suburbs of a city; and who ever saw or tasted wares that could rival the produce of his own little profitable domain? But the good-humoured smile of conscious superiority in his profession, that plays upon his features, is the market-gardener’s peculiar fascination. Talk to him of chemical manures or rich guano, how he will smile! and what a tale will he unfold of roses all burnt up, geraniums run to leaf, polyanthuses converted into cabbages, without the advantage of being edible; auriculas dying, &c. “May do somewheres, but not for flower or market-gardens.” Beyond him, lies spread out a rich carpet of flowers, grouped by the hands of younger and humbler ones, whom one might almost call the lay floricultural professors. Geraniums, and fuchsias, and bright blue salvias, verbenas of every hue, from deep maroon, through crimson, up to white; sweet-scented heliotrope, and richly shaded primroses, that make the tenants of the woods look pale with envy. A pity it seems to disturb the harmony of colour, so perfect a parterre does it form, with the back-ground of shrubs that stand in such rich clusters behind them, all waiting to be transplanted to new homes. In the very midst of them rises a mysterious-looking little ark of canvass, resting from its weekly labour of perambulating the streets and suburbs through which it has been borne, sedan fashion, by the pair of unclassical-looking hobbledehoys that own the gay treasures it is formed to shelter, and whose lips can manage to send forth a string of nomenclature that may fairly shake the nerves of any modest purchaser. Sweet simple-looking little floral gems, they will recommend to notice as Gilea rosea adorata, Clarkia fimbricata, Coreopsis nigra, speciosa, Colinsea rubra, all hardy annuals; and with the utmost nonchalance describe some trembling little creeper as Tropoelum Campatica Fuchsia CarolinÆ, Campanula Campatica, and Lobelia ramosa, all safely meant, we presume, to conceal the relationship of the owners to the familiar tenants of the cottage border. A novice must seize in desperation upon some one that, shorn of its ishii or osum, may chance to be remembered, lest his fate should resemble that of the fair lady, who once professed to own in her garden the “aurora borealis” and “delirium tremens.”

Among the scientific nurseries that clothe almost every outskirt of the city, may perhaps be found grander exotics, or more luxuriant varieties of floral beauty; but these fragments of botanic skill and lore are fair specimens of the inheritance bequeathed to the sons of the soil by those great master-minds whose gardens once drew Evelyn from the metropolis upon a visit to this then pre-eminent seat of wealth and magnificence. “My Lord’s Gardens,” that skirted the water-side, whose quadrangle contained a bowling-green, a wilderness, and garden, with walks of forty feet in breadth surrounding them, have passed away, a fragment of the wilderness alone remains to mark the site of the glorious displays of wealth and fashion once paraded among them; but the name, associated with the memory of the times, is a star of the first magnitude, in the galaxy of the city’s firmament of great men.

Sir Thomas Browne, the philosopher, the physician, the naturalist, the antiquarian, and the botanist, the associate and friend of the most eminent men that graced the age in which he lived, and the historian whose works have enriched the literature of the world, stands first in the long list of names that are linked with the beauties of the vegetable kingdom; a city that has sent forth a Lindley, a Hooker, and a Smith, to be professors in the great world of science, as his followers, has cause, indeed to honour the memory of him who sowed the first seeds in the garden, that has reared such giants from its soil.

But there is yet another picture to be viewed of homely traffic; the Christmas market-day, when the old place and people seem to be in the zenith of their glory. Each poultry-stall overflowing with the turkeys, geese, and fowls, that have not found an exit through the myriad avenues opened for their flight to every province, town, and city in the land. There they lie in state, sharing the sovereignty of the season, with bright-gemmed holly boughs and pearly mistletoe, that deck and garnish every pad, and stall, and bench, and lie heaped up in shining stacks of magnitude that may well suggest to the young novice a question as to how the slow-growing holly and rare parasite could have been found year after year in such profusion. Country walks, holly-skirted lanes, and park enclosures, may tell something of the one; and alas! for the poetry of the Druids and the oaks, the apple orchards now claim almost the sole honour of giving shelter to the other—the ancient deity of the woods; they will scarce allow the king of the forest a partial share in the tribute offerings to merry Christmas.

The bustling eve, when midnight surprises the scrambling teems of “Trotty Vecks,” gathering up the fragments left from rich folk’s caterings, that they too may have a savour of something more than the compliments of the season; when the remnants of the bountiful display that has been hoarded up for the highest bidders through the busy day, are auctioned off at the buyer’s own price, and fall thus perchance within the compass of the weaver’s earnings, then is the hour to see the spirit of peace and good-will towards men stalking abroad, and lifting from men’s hearts and faces the load of weariness and veil of care, transmuting by his magic touch the poor man’s copper into gold, and giving to his little stores a widow’s cruise-like power to cheer and comfort happy living hearts. No one who dwells in the old city should deem it fruitless toil to wend their way through the old market-place on Christmas Eve, and take a poet’s lesson from the scene!

But there are other pictures still to be seen within the quaint old Elizabethan frame-work of the city’s market-place than scenes of merchandise, in these days of monster meetings. Who can forget the human gatherings that have many a time and oft, within the limits of even childhood’s memory, been witnessed here, when gable roofs, and parapets, windows, and balconies, church towers, and Guildhall leads, have swarmed with living thousands; gay dressed “totties” and dames, aye, and sober-minded lords of the creation too! all eager and intent to watch from safe quarters some common object of attraction that has drawn together a mighty multitude of the people, with their proverbial love of sight-seeing, an inheritance bequeathed to them by their ancestral pageantries. Slight stimulus is needed to send the heart’s blood of the city through every vein and artery to this centre, where it pulsates in deep and heavy throbs of joy, or hope, or anger, as the case may be; true, in these modern days the common wants and common blessings that have bound the sympathies of the million into one, cause the spectacle of tumultuous hate and bitterness, knocking together of heads, &c, to be a rare manifestation of popular enthusiasm; more frequently one desire, one feeling animates the body aggregate, be it to see the mammoth train of a Hughes or Van Amburgh, the entrÉe of a royal duke, the failure of a promised fountain bid to play by a new water company, the more successful display of fireworks at the same behest, the popping of some threescore pensioners in honour of some royal birthday, or the advent of some political election. On each and all of such occasions, and many more, the filling up of the frame-work is a picture of life, of concentrated human power, will, and passion, full of effect; may be, it needs an adequate cause to give it full strength, but everywhere it is full of interest, and the good old city’s market-place would not be fairly chronicled were its monster meetings of sight-seers deemed unworthy a passing comment. Pageantry has been numbered among the chartered rights of the citizens, from the days of “mysteries,” when the itinerant stage, with its sacred drama provided by the church, was the only theatre known, through the age of tournaments, the season of royal visits, Elizabethan processions, and triumphal arches, of guilds, of Georges and dragons, down to the last relic of the spirit of olden times—the chairing of its members; and not even the scant nourishment offered in this nineteenth century, has yet sufficed to starve and wither the seeds thus sown and fostered in the very nature of the people.

In a work that professes not to follow out the thread of history through all its variable windings, or note consecutively all the beads of truth that have been carved by the hand of time, and strung upon its surface, but only here and there to pause, as some gem more glittering than its fellows meets the eye, or some quaint rude relic of a day gone by lays claim to a passing curiosity, wonder, or pity, we feel at liberty to make a kaleidoscope sort of pattern of our gleanings and notes on the old market-place. Interwoven with its progress, and associated with its memories, must be almost every historical reminiscence, peculiarly belonging to an important municipality, and thriving mart of commerce and manufactures; from the first simple gatherings in the outer court of the castle, to the days when trades and crafts, brought over by Norman intruders, and flourishing under the skilful tutelage of Flemish refugees, clustered together in groups around the old croft, the saddlers, the hosiers, the tanners, the mercers, the parmenters, the goldsmiths, the cutlers, each with their own row, to the time when staples were fixed, or right of wholesale dealing granted—when cloth halls witnessed the measuring and sealing by government inspectors of every manufactured piece of cloth, to ensure fairness of dealing between buyer and seller—when sumptuary laws regulated quantity, quality, and pattern of the dresses of all dutiful and loyal subjects—down through ages of fluctuating vicissitudes of prosperity and adversity—tremulous shakings—and reviving struggles against the tide of competition that has sunk the first and greatest manufacturing city our country once could boast, beneath the level of many a nurseling of yesterday, a mere mushroom in growth and age—from the era of ultra-carnivorous diet, when boars, peacocks, venison, and porpoise, were scattered in plentiful profusion on the boards of butchers’ stalls, and in the regions of “Puleteria,”—when the potato, brocoli, turnip, onion, and radish, were unknown—the tansy, the rampion, cow cabbage, and salsify, their only substitutes in the days when vegetarians were not;—when quinces, medlars, rude grapes, and mulberries, wild raspberries and strawberries, supplied the place of a modern dessert, with the valuable addenda of hazel, and walnuts, whose beautiful wood even then was prized as an article of manufacture for cups and bowls, under the name of masere—down to the scene of the present day, as it has been pictured already.

Manifold have been the fleeting shadows that have peopled its disc, now bright, now dark, its area now traversed by triumphal arches and gorgeous processions, now serving as a platform for a gallows, whereon a Roberts and a Barber suffered for their loyalty to his majesty, Charles the First; in one age witnessing the rise of an oratory in its very midst, and a chaplain to minister to spiritual cravings, in the heart of material abundance; the next echoing to the ruthless hammers of destructive zealots, sweeping from their path every stone or carving that bore trace of the finger of the “scarlet lady.”

But although a consecutive detail of its rise and progress may not be within the province of our pen, we may endeavour to trace a few of the leading features of its history since the era of its first rise into existence as a fishing hamlet, when the sea washed its shores, and the huts of a few fishermen, perhaps, were the only habitations scattered over its surface. Here they dwelt, no doubt, in peaceful security, when the huge mound, topped with its towering castle, rose up in their midst, and their sovereigns fixed their dwelling-place within its strongholds, to be succeeded, after the departure of the Romans, by the feudal lords or earls of Danish and Saxon conquerors, in whose time the market-place was the magna crofta or great croft of the castle. At the gates of the ancient castles the markets were continually set, following the precedent of the assemblage of booths that gathered round the gates of the Roman camps. These, from being at first moveable stalls or shelters for goods, grew in after-years into towns, boroughs, and cities, many of them taking their names from the castles or camps, and were called chesters. The country people were not allowed to carry provisions into Roman camps; at each gate was a strong guard, that suffered none to enter the camp without licence from the commanding officer: this guard consisted of one cohort, and one troop at least, from which sprung the modern term of court, or cohort, of guard. The commanding officer of the guard at the gate had oversight of the market, punished such as sold by false weights and measures, brought bad provisions, or were guilty of any other offence in the market, and arbitrated in all cases of dispute. The Saxons, those exterminating conquerors, who so liberally parcelled out their neighbours’ territory into the famous divisions of the Heptarchy, next figured upon the scene, and the castellans succeeded the officer of the guard in the duties of his office, in later times to be fulfilled by pie-powder courts and clerks of the market. At this period, markets at the castle gates grew so important as to be composed of durable houses, as durable at least as wooden shambles were likely to be; and of such like constructions were the first outlines of the market-place composed, the fishmongers’ and butchers’ shops of the present day being the nearest similitudes that can be found to illustrate their features.

From this time the history of the market-place becomes identified with the progress of the borough, its struggles for growth being somewhat impeded, we fancy, by the tithes and taxes extorted by barons and bishops, between whom we may fancy the poor fisherfolks began to “fare rather sadly,” scarcely knowing what was their own, or if, indeed, they had any own at all. To sum up their miseries, old chroniclers record that about this time the sea began to withdraw its arm, which to them had been a great support, and the fishermen, who were bound to pay an annual tithe of herrings to the bishops of the see, found themselves in much the same plight as the Israelites of old, when doomed to make bricks without straw—in their case to supply herrings without a fishery—and were therefore reduced to the unpleasant necessity of thenceforth purchasing the wherewith to pay the lasting imposition. Notwithstanding all these impediments the progress of the borough was rapid; houses and churches sprung up thick and fast; so that at the time of the survey, in the reign of the “Confessor,” we find record of twenty-five parish churches, and one thousand three hundred burgesses; of sheep-walks, mills, and hides of land, (a hide being as much as one plough could till in a year,) of taxes, of honey, and bear dogs.

Churches were owned indiscriminately by bishops, earls, and burgesses; the materials of which they were constructed, chiefly wood, though occasionally rough flints and stones cemented by a durable mortar were substituted; the towers were circular, bricks were employed for pavements, and bells were used. The ancients conceived the sound of metal to be an antidote against evil spirits; and the adoption of bells into the Christian church, and their consecration, was but a variation of the practices of the pagans, who at the feasts of Vulcan and Minerva, consecrated trumpets for religious uses.

Such was the condition of the town and market-place, when the Norman Conqueror, whose coming produced such mighty changes in the land, brought over from the continent a host of foreigners, who settled themselves down in almost every part of the kingdom, and introduced trades and crafts of every variety, giving birth to the great manufacturing spirit that has grown to be so distinguishing a feature of our national greatness. Among the foreigners who established themselves in this district, we find the name of Wimer, a name yet prefixed to one of the great wards or districts of the city—the Wimer ward. At this period, perhaps the most prominent characteristic of the secular history of the times, especially in connection with trade, is the important position held by the Jews.

The Norman duke had brought with him a great number of this race of people, and although their religion was despised and bitterly hated, they monopolized almost every branch of trade, and so much of the learning of the day, that they took a high place both in commercial and civil transactions. In this city they successively had two extensive synagogues and colleges, where medicine and rabbinical divinity were taught together.

Pharmacy, education, and all monetary transactions of any importance, seem to have come within their province, their utility and wealth preserving them, for the time at least, from anything more than petty persecution. The history, however, of little St. William, given elsewhere, and other similar records that have been handed down, betray the jealousy and ill-will that existed between them and the Christians, even during the season of their prosperity, when royalty, as in the time of Rufus, patronized them.

Meantime the city had become a bishopric; a monastery, three friaries, and a nunnery sprung up in quick succession, betraying the growth of ecclesiastical power, and the presence of a great rival to the secular authority claimed by the ministers of civil justice; itinerant judges had been established for trying great crimes, such as murder or theft, and coroners had been instituted to hold inquests upon any persons dying suddenly, or found dead; either to acquit them of self murder, or seize their goods; the citizens were also exempted from the judgment of the law by single combat by Richard I. Among the events of interest bearing very early date is the royal visit of the first Henry, in the day when the king was his own tax-gatherer, and when, failing to receive his dues in lawful coin of the realm, he was wont to take them in kind, and to tarry until himself and suite had eaten up the hogs and sheep, and cows and geese, whose addition to his retinue would have been otherwise very burdensome. So liberal was the entertainment afforded the royal visitor here, that his majesty was pleased to confer upon the citizens many privileges as a mark of gratitude, among which exemption from such like visitations in future was included.

The next visit of royalty is attributed to Edward the First, whose generosity was evidenced by the command issued speedily after his return thither, that the Jews throughout the kingdom should be charged with unlawfully clipping and adulterating the coin of the realm, as an excuse for their persecution, imprisonment, and final extermination. The religious antipathies of the zealous crusader would not suffice to explain these atrocities; but the ambition of the warlike monarch seeking to replenish his exhausted treasury, that he might prosecute expensive foreign enterprises, gives a more satisfactory clue to the origin of cruelties, that led to such important confiscations being made to the crown. In obedience to the royal will, the beautiful college of the Jews in this city was plundered and burnt, its coffers emptied into the royal exchequer, and its tenants banished or imprisoned. An inn, called “Abraham’s Hall,” was soon after raised in the immediate neighbourhood, to memorialize the event; but an old ricketty gable or two, hidden away behind fair modern frontings of brickwork and stucco, is all that remains of this monument. St. George in combat with the Dragon, now figures on the sign board affixed to the inn that occupies one portion of its site.

It is some credit to the ministers of justice in the city, that we find upon their records, traces of the efforts made to bring to punishment some of the actual perpetrators of the outrages in Jewry, albeit they could perhaps only be deemed instruments in the hands of higher powers. Extracts from the “Coroners’ Rolls,” containing accounts of robberies and street frays in this reign and the preceding, prove this fact, and afford in addition curious evidence of the state of society at that period. For the quaint and amusing details they give, we must render thanks to the learned and skilled in antiquarian lore, obsolete orthography, black letter type, &c., but, for whose assistance in rescuing them from obscurity, and interpreting their meaning, they must to us have remained veiled in an impenetrable incognita.

Amongst them is the record of an “inquisition made of the fire raised in Jewry,” and a “precept given to apprehend all the felons concerned.” Another is so graphic, that we feel able to see the whole picture it gives at a glance—the widow sitting beside the bier of her husband, the sanctity of her sorrow invaded by brute violence, the house pillaged, and the corpse plundered and burnt in the agonised wife’s presence. The words of the roll say, “Katharina, the wife of Stephen Justice, accused Ralph, son of Robert Andrew, the gaoler, William Kirby Gaunter, William Crede, Walter de Hereham, John, servant of Nicholas de Ingham, and Nicholas sometime servant of Nicholas de Sopham, and Nicholas de Gayver, that when she was at peace with God and the king, in the house of Stephen Justice her husband, and the Thursday night after the feast of King Edmund, in the forty-eighth year of the reign of King Henry, the son of King John (1263), they came in the town of Norwich, in Fybriggate, St. Clement’s, and broke the oaken gates, and the hooks and the hinges of iron, with hatchets, bars, wedges, swords, knives, and maces, and flung them down into the court, and feloniously entered; that they then broke the pine wood doors of the hall, and the hinges and iron work of them, and the chains, bolts, and oaken boards of the windows. Afterwards they entered the door of the hall chamber towards the south, and robbed that chamber of two swords, value 3s. 6d., one ivory handled anlace, value 12d., one iron head piece, value 10d., an iron staff, value 4d.; one cow leather quirre (cuirass) with iron plates, value half a mark; and one wambeis (a body garment stuffed with cotton, wool, or tow), and coming thence into the hall, they burnt the body of her husband, as it there lay upon a bier, together with a blanket of ‘reins,’ value 3s.; and took away with them a linen cloth, value 18d. The said Katharina immediately raised hue and cry, from street to street, from parish to parish, and from house to house, until she came into the presence of the bailiffs and coroners. They also stole a lined cloth of the value of 5s., and one hood of Pers (Persian) with squirrel’s fur, value 10s.”

A writer in the ArchÆological Journal describes the houses of this period as possessing only a ground floor, of which the principal apartment was the aire, aitre, or hall, into which the principal door opened, and which was the room for cooking, eating, receiving visitors, and the other ordinary uses of domestic life. Adjacent to this, was the chamber which was by day the private apartment and resort of the female portion of the household, and by night the bed room. Strangers and visitors generally slept in the hall, beds being made for them on the floor. A stable was frequently adjacent to the hall, probably on the side opposite to the chamber or bed-room.

Another memorandum on the rolls, records the deaths of Henry Turnecurt and Stephen de Walsham, who “were killed in the parish of St. George, before the gate of the Holy Trinity, St. Philip and James’ day, in the same year. The coroners and bailiffs went and made inquisition. Inquisition then made was set forth in a certain schedule. Afterwards came master Marc de Bunhale, clerk, and Ralph Knict, with many others, threatening the coroners to cut them to pieces, unless the schedule was given up, and then they took Roger the coroner, and by force led him to his own house, with swords and axes, until the said Roger took the schedule from his chest; and then they took him with the schedule to St. Peter of Mancroft church, and there the aforesaid Ralph tore away the schedule from the hands of Roger, and bore it away, and before his companions, in the manner of fools, cut it into small pieces; and with much ado, Roger the coroner escaped from their hands in great fear and tremor. The coroners say they cannot make inquisition, by reason of the imminence of the war.” The disturbances alluded to were the dissensions going on between the king and barons.

Another describes an attack of four men, one of them a priest, upon one man in his shop in the market, where he was killed. Among many other similar accounts of these troubled times, stands the description of various felons, who sheltered themselves within the walls of the sanctuary, a privilege permitted from the time of Alfred, whose laws granted protection for three days and nights to any within the walls of a church; William the Conqueror confirmed and extended the privilege. In the times of feudal tyranny, this refuge was oftentimes of considerable advantage to innocent persons falsely accused, but as frequently was the shelter of crime.

In a case quoted from this authority, the felon professes to have sought refuge from punishment awaiting robberies, of which he acknowledges himself guilty. Upon the church of St. Gregory there yet remains a curious escutcheon, a part of the knocker, always then placed upon the door of a church, for the purpose of aiding those who sought refuge in sanctuary. A curious account of the ceremony of abjuration of the realm by one who had taken refuge in Durham Cathedral, is given in the York volume of the ArchÆological Institute.

“A man from Wolsingham is committed to prison for theft. He escapes, and seeks refuge in the Cathedral. He takes his stand before the shrine of St. Cuthbert, and begs for a coroner. John Rachet, the coroner of Chester ward, goes to him, and hears his confession. The culprit, in the presence of the sacrist, sheriff, under-sheriff, and others, by a solemn oath renounces the kingdom. He then strips himself to his shirt, and gives up his clothing to the sacrist as his fee. The sacrist restores the clothing—a white cross of wood is put into his hand, and he is consigned to the under-sheriff, who commits him to the care of the nearest constable, who hands him over to the next, and he to the next, in the direction of the coast. The last constable puts him into a ship, and he bids an eternal farewell to his country.”

There were usually chambers over the porches of churches, in which two men slept, for the purpose of being ready at all hours to admit applicants. In proof of the expense attending the maintaining of persons in the sanctuary, it is said that “in 1491, the burgesses in parliament acquainted the assembly that they had been at great expense in getting an ordinance of parliament to authorize them in a quiet way to take one John Estgate out of sanctuary, the said John having entered the churchyard of St. Simon and St. Jude, and there remained for a long time past, during which time, the city being compelled to keep watch on him day and night, lest he should escape, was at great charge and trouble. The ordinance being passed, John Pynchamour, one of the burgessess, went to the sanctuary and asked John Estgate whether he would come out and submit to the law, or no; and upon his answering he ‘would not,’ he in a quiet manner went to him, led him to the Guildhall, and committed him to prison.”

Another entry of an event that transpired during the troubled reign of Henry III., bears reference to the memorable disputes between the citizens and the monks of the priory, of which the Ethelbert gateway, leading into the Cathedral Close, is a monument; the citizens having had the penance of erecting it, imposed upon them for their destructive attacks upon the monastery, a great portion of which, including parts of the cathedral, they pillaged and burnt. The record states that “one John Casmus was found slain on the Tuesday next after the feast of St. Laurence, by William de Brunham, prior of Norwich, at the gates of St. Trinity, on the eastern side; the said prior having struck him with a certain ‘fanchone’ on the head, from which blow he instantly died. The coroners are afraid to make inquisition, for fear of a felonious assault; a result rendered very probable by the known temper of the prior, who, by his violent conduct, is said to have contributed materially to the unhappy disturbances.”

Long-cherished bitterness and jealousies respecting their several limits of jurisdiction, had found occasion for outbreak the preceding week to that mentioned in the record, at the annual fair, held on Trinity Sunday, before the gates of the cathedral, on the ground known as Tombland, from having anciently been a burial place. The servants of the monastery, and the citizens, had come into collision at some games that were going on upon the Tuesday, and a violent conflict ensued, which lasted for a considerable time. The writers of the time are divided as to the blameable parties; the monks being accused of aiding and abetting their servants in doing wrong, and vexing the people; the citizens, in their turn, being condemned for transgressing the recognized laws which existed concerning the boundaries of the prior’s jurisdiction.

The animosities never fairly could be said to have ceased until the general destruction of all monastic power at the period of the Reformation.

One more curious extract we will make from these coroner’s rolls, remarkable as being one of the very few authentic accounts to be met with of a person being restored to life after execution.

“Walter Eye was condemned in the court of Norwich, and hung, and appeared dead, but was afterwards discovered to be alive by William, the son of Thomas Stannard; and the said Walter was carried in a coffin to the church of St. George’s, before the gate of St. Trinity, where he recovered in fifteen days, and then fled from that church to the church of the Holy Trinity, and there was, until the king upon his suit pardoned him.”

It was formerly a prevalent idea that felons could only be suspended for a certain time, but this was not really the case; so far from it, Hale’s “Pleas of the Crown” asserts, “that, in case a man condemned to die, come to life after he is hanged, as the judgment is not executed till he is dead, he ought to be hung up again.”

Another anecdote, extracted from the books of the corporation, bearing a more recent date, possesses a double interest, from being connected with a memorable disturbance, dignified in local history by the title of Gladman’s Insurrection, and also from the name and rank of the lady concerned, who was grand-daughter to Chaucer, the poet, and wife of William de la Pole, who succeeded to the earldom of Suffolk upon the death of his brother Michael, a.d. 1415, the second year of the reign of King Henry V.

The only liberty we shall take with the original account is to slightly abridge it, and render it in modern orthography.

Item. It was so, that Alice, Duchess, that time Countess of Suffolk, lately in person came to this city, disguised like a country house-wife. Sir Thomas Tuddenham, and two other persons, went with her, also disguised; and they, to take their disports, went out of the city one evening, near night, so disguised, towards a hovel called Lakenham Wood, to take the air, and disport themselves, beholding the said city. One Thomas Ailmer, of Norwich, esteeming in his conceit that the said duchess and Sir Thomas had been other persons, met them, and opposed their going out in that wise, and fell at variance with the said Sir Thomas, so that they fought; whereby the said duchess was sore afraid; by cause whereof the said duchess and Sir Thomas took a displeasure against the city, notwithstanding that the mayor of the city at that time being, arrested Thomas Ailmer, and held him in prison more than thirty weeks without bail; to the intent thereby both to chastise Ailmer, and to appease the displeasure of the said duchess and Sir Thomas; and also the said mayor arrested and imprisoned all other persons which the said duchess and Sir Thomas could understand had in any way given favour or comfort to the said Ailmer, in making the affray. Notwithstanding which punishment, the displeasure of the duchess and Sir Thomas was not appeased. And it is so, moreover, that one John Haydon, late was recorder of the city, taking of the mayor and citizens a reasonable fee, as the recorder is accustomed; he, being so recorded, had interlaced himself with the prior of Norwich, at that time being in travers with the said mayor and commonality, and discovered the privity of the evidence of the said city to the said prior, because whereof the mayor and commons of the said city discharged the said Haydon of the condition of recorder; for which Haydon took a displeasure against the said city.

By malice of these displeasures of the said duchess, Sir Thomas Tuddenham, and John Haydon, the Duke of Suffolk, then earl, in his person, upon many suggestions by the said Tuddenham and Haydon to him made, that the mayor, aldermen, and commonality aforesaid, should have misgoverned the city, laboured and made to be taken out of the chancery a commission of over determiner. And thereupon, at a sessions holden at Thetford, the Thursday next after the feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, the said Sir Thomas and John Haydon, finding in their conceit no manner or matter of truth whereof they might cause the said mayor and commonality there to be indicted, imagined thus as ensueth: first, they sperde an inquest, then taken in a chamber, at one Spilmer’s house; in which chamber the said T. lodged, and so kept them sperde.

“And it was so, that one John Gladman, of Norwich, which was then, and at this hour, is a man of ‘sad’ dispositions, and true and faithful to God and to the king, of disport, as is and hath been accustomed in any city or borough through all this realm, on fasting Tuesday made a disport with his neighbours, having his horse trapped with tinsel, and otherwise disguising things, crowned as King of Christmas, in token that all mirth should end with the twelve months of the year; afore him went each month, disguised after the season thereof; and Lent clad in white, with red-herring’s skins, and his horse trapped with oyster shells after him, in token that sadness and abstinence of mirth should follow, and an holy time; and so rode in divers streets of the city, with other people with him disguised, making mirth, and disport, and plays.

“The said Sir Thomas and John Haydon, among many other full strange and untrue presentments, made by perjury at the said inquest, caused the said mayor and commonality, and the said John Gladman, to be indicted of that, that they should have imagined to have made a common rising, and have crowned the said John Gladman as king, with crown, sceptre and diadem, (when they never meant it), nor such a thing imagined, as in the said presentiment it showeth more plain, and by that presentiment, with many other horrible articles therein comprised, so made by perjury, thay caused the franchise of the said city to be seized into the king’s hands, to the harm and cost of the said mayor and commonality.”

And now we take a long stride from the reign of Henry V. to that of Charles II., omitting the intermediate century that was marked by the royal visit of the maiden queen, chronicled at length among the “pageantries;” and passing over the troubled era of the Commonwealth, the Reformation, and “Kett’s rebellion,” all of which have found a place for notice elsewhere, we find ourselves once more in the smooth waters of peace, with the tide of prosperity at the full within the walls of the old city; and we ask no pardon for making copious extracts from the journal that furnished Macaulay with materials to serve up the rich banquet that lies condensed in the few lines devoted to this period of the city’s history, in his unrivalled work. The diary of Dr. Edward Browne gives a picture of the society and habits of the citizens in his time, perhaps not to be met with elsewhere. His father, Sir Thomas Browne, then tenanted the house now known by the title of the “Star,” and in the winter of 1663–4 was visited by his son Edward, who, during his stay, made the entries in his journal which we have extracted. At that time, Henry, afterwards Lord Howard, of Castle Rising, subsequently Earl of Norwich, and Marshal of England, resided in the city, at the palace of his brother, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, who was an invalid, on the continent, suffering from disease of the brain.

“Jan. 1st. (1663–4.) I was at Mr. Howard’s, brother to the Duke of Norfolk, who kept his Christmas this year at the Duke’s palace in Norwich, so magnificently that the like hath scarce been seen. They had dancing every night, and gave entertainments to all that would come; hee built up a room on purpose to dance in, very large, and hung with the bravest hangings I ever saw; his candlesticks, snuffers, tongues, fire-shovel, and and-irons, were silver; a banquet was given every night after dancing; and three coaches were employed every afternoon to fetch ladies, the greatest of which would holde fourteen persons, and coste five hundred pounde, without the harnesse, which cost six score more; I have seen of his pictures, which are admirable; he hath prints and draughts, done by most of the great masters’ own hands. Stones and jewels, as onyxes, sardonyxes, jacinths, jaspers, amethysts, &c. more and better than any prince in Europe. Ringes and seales, all manner of stones, and limnings beyond compare. These things were most of them collected by the old Earl of Arundel (the Duke’s grandfather).

“This Mr. Howard hath lately bought a piece of ground of Mr. Mingay, in Norwich, by the waterside in Cunisford, which hee intends for a place of walking and recreation, having made already walkes round and across it, forty feet in breadth; if the quadrangle left be spacious enough, he intends the first of them for a bowling-green, the third for a wildernesse, and the fourth for a garden. These and the like noble things he performeth, and yet hath paid 100,000 pounds of his ancestors’ debts.

“Jan. 6th. I dined at my Aunt Bendish’s, and made an end of Christmas at the Duke’s palace, with dancing at night and a great banquet. His gates were opened, and such a number flocked in, that all the beer they could set out in the streets could not divert the stream of the multitude.

“Jan. 7th. I opened a dog.

“Jan. 9th. Mr. Osborne sent my father a calf, whereof I observed the knee joint, and the neat articulation of the put-bone, which was here very perfect.

“This day Monsieur Buttet, who plays most admirably on the flageolet, bagpipe, and sea-trumpet, a long three-square instrument, having but one string, came to see me.

“Jan. 11th. This day, being Mr. Henry Howard’s birthday, we danced at Mr. Howard’s, till 2 of the clock in the morning.

“Jan. 12th. Cutting up a turkey’s heart. A monkey hath 36 teeth: 23 molares, 4 canini, and 8 incisores.

“Jan. 13th. This day I met Mr. Howard at my Uncle Bendish’s, where he taught me to play at l’hombre, a Spanish game at cards.

“Jan. 21st. I shewed Dr. De Veau about the town; I supped with him at the Duke’s palace, where he shewed a powder against agues, which was to be given in white wine, to the quantity of three grains. He related to me many things of the Duke of Norfolk, that lives at Padua, non compos mentis, and of his travailes in France and Italy.

“Jan. 23rd. Don Francisco de Melo came from London, with Mr. Philip Howard (third grandson of the Earl of Arundel), to visit his honour, Mr. Henry Howard. I met them at Mr. Deyes the next day, in Madam Windham’s chamber.

“I boyled the right fore-foot of a monkey, and took out all the bones, which I keep by me. In a put-bone, the unfortunate casts are outward, the fortunate inward.

“Jan. 26th. I saw a little child in an ague, upon which Dr. De Veau was to try his febrifuge powder; but the ague being but moderate, and in the declension, it was thought too mean a disease to try the efficacy of his extolled powder.

“Feb. 2nd. I saw cock-fighting at the White Horse, in St. Stephen’s.

“Feb. 5th. I went to see a serpent, that a woman, living in St. Gregory’s church-yard, vomited up, but she had burnt it before I came.

“Feb. 16th. I went to visit Mr. Edward Ward, an old man in a fever, where Mrs. Anne Ward gave me my first fee, 10s.

“Feb. 22nd. I set forward for my journey to London.”

This quaint admixture of scientific research, pleasure-seeking, and superstitious credulity, blended with intellectual enquiry, affords a curious picture of the domestic and professional habits of a physician of the seventeenth century. The father of the writer, the eminent Dr. Thomas Browne, received the order of knighthood from his majesty, King Charles II., on the occasion of his visiting the city in 1671, when he dined in state at the New Hall (St. Andrew’s); the same honour was pressed upon the acceptance of the mayor, who, however, ventured to decline the proffered dignity. In the reign of James II., we find record of Henry, then Duke of Norfolk, riding into the market-place at the head of 300 knights, to declare a free parliament, the mayor and sheriffs meeting him there, and consenting to the act. But the glory of the palace, once the scene of such regal splendour and magnificence, was not of long duration. A dispute between the grandson of the Duke Henry and the mayor of the city, concerning the entrance of some comedians into the city, playing their trumpets, &c. on the way to the palace, caused its owner, Thomas, then Duke, to destroy the greater portion of it, and leave the remainder untenanted; and among divers transmutations of property that characterized the era of Queen Anne, we find the appropriation of its vestiges to the purpose of a workhouse, when those institutions first sprang into existence—a fate shared at the same period by the cloisters of the old Black Friars monastery.

The river, that once reflected the gorgeous displays of wealth that glittered upon the margin of its waters, in the palace of the Dukes, now flows darkly and silently on, through crowded thoroughfares and gloomy wharfs, and staiths; corn and coal depots, red brick factories, with their tiers of low window-ranges and tall chimneys, have usurped the place of banquetting halls and palace gardens; a toll bridge adds silence to the gloom, by its prohibitory tax on passers-by, a stillness, oppressive by its sudden contrast to the activity of neighbouring thoroughfares, pervades the whole region round about; and the spot that once was the nucleus of wealth, riches, and grandeur, now seems the very seat and throne of melancholy.

Coeval with the rise of workhouses, in the reign of Anne, is another event of local history—the introduction of street-lighting. An act of parliament of William III., confirmed in the 10th of Anne, enacted “that every householder charged with 2d. a week to the poor, whose dwelling-house adjoined any streets, market-places, public lanes, or passages in the city, should every night, yearly, from Michaelmas to Lady-day, as it should grow dark, hang out, on the outside of their houses, a candle, or visible and convenient lights, and continue the same until eleven o’clock at night, for enlightening the streets, and convenience of passengers, under penalty of 2s. for every neglect.” Lamps, at the cost of the community in general, were soon afterwards substituted, but their shape, and distance from each other, would seem to have rendered them but indifferent substitutes for the illuminations that preceded them; and if memory is faithful to us, in recalling the progenitors of the gas-lights of the present day, we may form some slight conception of the pigmy race of ancestors from which they sprung.

Meantime, during these years of progress and prosperity, while Time was tracing its finger-marks upon the walls of men’s houses, and writing its lessons on their hearts and minds, there stood, in the centre of the old market-place, a little silent symbol of the religious feeling of the passing ages,—the market-cross, and oratory within the little octagonal structure, whose external corners bore upon all of them the emblem of hope and salvation—the crucifix. In its earliest days, its oratory was tenanted by a priest, supported by the alms of the busy market-folks, who could find means, in the midst of all their worldly callings, to pay some tribute in time and money to religion. And was it such a very foolish practice of our ignorant old forefathers, thus to bring the sanctuary into the very midst of the business of life?—was it a great proof of childish simplicity, to seek to sanctify the scenes of merchandize by the presence and teaching of Christianity? Is it indeed needful that the elements of our nature, spirit, soul, and body, should be rent asunder, and fed and nurtured in distinct and separate schools, until each one of us becomes almost conscious of two separate existences—the Sabbath-day life, within the church or meeting walls, and the week-day business life abroad in the world? Or shall the union be pronounced more beautiful and consonant with the laws of harmony, that carries the world into the sanctuary, and desecrates the house of God by the presence of sordid passions, crusted round the heart by daily exercise in the great marts of commerce, or in the intercourse of political or even social life, that not the one day’s rest in seven, spent in listening to some favourite theologian’s intellectual teachings of doctrinal truths, or controversial dogmas, can suffice to rub off, to purify, or make clean? A market-cross and priest may not be the remedies for this disease of later times, but they were outer symbols of the reality needed—Christianity, to be carried out into the every-day actions of the world, mingling with the dealings of man with man, master and workman, capitalist and consumer,—that there may no longer exist those monstrous anomalies that are to be met with in almost every phase of society in this Christian land, among a people professing to be guided by the light of “Truth,” to walk according to the law of “Charity,” and to obey the precept, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”

But the busy hands of zealous reformers long since began their work upon this little outward expression of “superstition;” the priest disappeared, the crucifixes fell beneath the murmurs of “true Protestants,” and the oratory was transferred to the “masters, and searchers, and sellers of leather;” but, in process of time, falling to decay, the little monument was pulled down, and all traces of its existence obliterated from the scene of its former dominion.

And now a word upon manufactures. The great parent of English looms, and English weavers of wool, claims it; the city, that has for centuries robed the priesthood of Christendom in its camlets; that has invented crapes, and bombazines, and paramattas, to clothe one-half of the world in the sable “livery of woe;” that has draped the fair daughters of every clime in the graceful folds of its far-famed “filover;” that has in later years shod the feet of no small proportion of the nation’s population; whose every court and alley echoes the throw of the shuttle and rattle of the loom; whose every cellar and hovel has its winding frame for childhood and old age to earn their mite upon; whose garrets pour forth their pale sickly wool-combers, with faces blanched by the fumes of charcoal; that has its districts of “cord-wainers,” and colonies of “binders;” its hidden timber-yards, where thousands of square feet are rapidly being transformed into “vestas” and “lucifers,” and “silent lights;” and its tall factories, whose heaped-up stories send down their streams of human working bees, from the cells of their monster queen, the steam-engine, and the task of making produce to supply the rich man’s wants—has, we say, a claim upon us in her character of a manufacturing place. The venerable city, once the summit of the pyramid of our nation’s commercial glory, stands no longer in isolated grandeur, the mistress of trade, but for long has had to look up at a vast mass of capital and labour, accumulated above her head by the energies and activities of younger rivals. India has gorged with its raw material the markets once fed with the wool of home-grown sheep, and cotton towns have risen up and outgrown the old woollen mart of the country. Fashion and its fluctuations, machinery and its progressions, iron and coal in their partial distribution, have each and all helped to lay the head of the mighty low; but there is strong vitality left within her—powerful talents and great resources; she is even now rising from the lethargy that had crept over her. Would our space permit, how fain would we trace the workings yet going on in her midst: the progress of the shearer’s wool from the wool-sack to the rich brocaded cashmere; through its “combing” with irons heated over charcoal furnaces, that poison the atmosphere around, and shorten the lives of the operatives engaged in it, forsooth, because the foreman of the manufactory has a perquisite of selling charcoal,—thence to the huge factory with giant engines, and labyrinths of spinning-wheels; away, again, to the spider-looking winding-frame, that children and old women may turn to help to fill the shuttles of the abler workers at the loom; thence to the dyers, and then to the loom itself, where manhood, youth, and woman’s feebler strength alike find exercise and room for labour. How many histories have been woven into the fabric—what tears or smiles have cast their light or shade upon the tints,—what notes of harmony or love, or wailings of sorrow and sickness have echoed the shuttle’s throw,—how many tales of stern heart griefs, pining wants, wasting penury, or disease, are wrapped in the luxurious folds that minister to the comfort and enjoyment of the unconscious wearer.

But we dare not tarry amid these scenes, richly fraught as they may be with subject for graphic sketching; we may not pause to visit the great gatherings in factory chambers, or linger amongst the home labours of the industrious artisan; can barely hint at traits of heroism, lives of gentle loving duty going on amid the rattling noise of looms that trench upon the narrow limits of the sick bed; deeds of good Samaritanism that grace the weary weaver’s home, or dwell upon the Christian lessons they have power to teach. If the anatomy of a manufacturing city does revolt the senses and sensibilities in the pictures of suffering and poverty it seldom fails to abound with, there is yet much beauty in the deep, earnest, truthful poetry to be read in the page it lays open. Mary Barton is no fiction; scarce a district in a manufacturing province that could not furnish a heroine like her; nor need we, perhaps, look to the other side of the Atlantic, to find the prototype of “Uncle Tom.”

There is little doubt that woollen manufactures of some kind existed in this neighbourhood from a very early period. Sheep were here in great abundance, and as soon as there were ships to send them in, were exported to other countries from these parts. Doomsday Book mentions numerous “sheep-walks,” covering many acres of ground; whether these “walks” comprised such lands as we now term “meadows or pastures,” is not explained, but most probably such is the interpretation to be put upon the term, and not, as at first sight might seem to be implied, that the sheep had narrow strips of “esplanade,” or promenade, all to themselves, upon which they marched up and down in regimental order. About these same sheep it has been said, in these our times, that there exists strong presumptive evidence that the fine Spanish “merino” is a lineal descendant of the family, and that the wool now imported as of foreign extraction, is literally and truly the growth of the offspring of respectable English forefathers, some members of whose domestic circle were honoured by being made presents of to Spanish princes by the sovereign of England, in the days when the office and title of shepherd was coveted by nobles in that country. The hypothesis we pretend not to establish, so “revenons À nos moutons.”

The preparing of wool was a favourite occupation of the British ladies of rank; and soon after the settlement of the Romans, it is recorded by Dionysius Alexandrinus, that “the wool of Britain was often spun so fine, that it was in a manner comparable to a spider’s thread.” The mother of Alfred is described as being skilled in the spinning of wool, and busied in training her daughters to similar occupations. The advent of the various workmen who followed in the train of the conqueror from Normandy, caused fresh energy to be infused into this, as all other branches of manufactures; but the main stimulus was given by a colony of Dutch, who, driven from their own country by inundations in the reign of Henry the First, crossed the channel, and selecting the convenient promontory of Norfolk, settled themselves down at a little village called Worsted, about thirteen miles from Norwich, whence the name of the wool first spun there by them.

In the reign of Stephen the woollen manufactures were so flourishing in many large towns, that the merchants petitioned for power to form themselves into distinct guilds or corporations,—the earliest development of the principle of joint stock companies, borrowed by the Normans from the free cities of Italy, where trade and manufactures had long flourished, and where this combination of mercantile influence had been employed by the Roman monarchs as a check upon the feudal power of the barons. The inconvenience, however, that attended the monopolies that sprung from this source were soon manifest; and disturbances were continually arising, until free trade was in a measure restored. The sumptuary laws of Edward the Third, and the inducements held out by him to foreigners to settle in his dominions,—the fixing of the staples, that obliged all merchants to bring their wool and woollen cloths for sale to Norwich, forbidding any to offer such articles in any other part of Norfolk or Suffolk,—tended materially to the commercial prosperity of the city; but in the reign of Richard the Second, discontent spread itself throughout the working population of the kingdom, and the insurrection of Wat Tyler was followed by an open rebellion in Suffolk, when 80,000 men marched upon Norwich, and committed divers acts of devastation and plunder, headed by John Litester, a dyer. This, united to the jealousies that existed between the native and foreign artisans, caused a decline in the local manufactures for some time. In Elizabeth’s reign they revived, through the invitation given to the Dutch and Walloons, then fleeing from the persecutions of the Duke of Alva. By the advice of the Duke of Norfolk, thirty of these, all experienced workmen, were invited to attend in Norwich, each bringing with him ten servants, to be maintained at the expense of the duke. These speedily multiplied, until their number exceeded five thousand. No matter of surprise, therefore, is it that the Old City retains so many quaint traces of Flemish taste and Flemish architecture, or that strangers, one and all, should be struck with the peculiarly foreign outline of its quaint old market-place. Soon after the settlement of these strangers in the neighbourhood, new articles of manufacture were introduced; in addition to the “worsteds,” “saies,” and “stamins,” hitherto the sole articles of commerce, and the admixture of mohair and silk with the wool, produced a total change in the quality of the goods. Bombazine, that staple “mourning garb,” was the first result of the experiments made in silk and wool combined. The ladies of Spain were thenceforth supplied with the material for that indispensable article of their costume, the mantilla. Camlets, too, were woven for the religious orders of priests and monks, as also calimancoes, tabinets, brocaded satins, florettes, and damasks, of which the legends of our grandmothers, and occasionally their wardrobes, bear trace; crape, the celebrated Norwich crape, now almost a forgotten fabric, was of later invention; but its fame is chronicled in Ministerial mandates during Walpole’s administration, 1721, when court mourning was ordered to consist of nothing but that pre-eminent material. Long since, the paramatta cloth has superseded both bombazine and Norwich crape; nor must we be unmindful that this superfine invention owes its origin to the skill and ingenuity of a manufacturer of the same city. Shawls of every variety have held a prominent place among the manufactures; indeed, may be considered as nominally the staple produce of the Norwich looms, though in reality such is not the fact, an infinite variety of materials, bearing as many new and fashionable titles, being in truth the result of the labour of its artisans, silk—satins, brocades, alpaccas, barÈges, and many more; and of late years the shoe manufactory has so vastly increased, that it may fairly take a place henceforth among the constituents of the “fame” of the capital of Norfolk. It may not be out of place here also to give some little sketch of the rise and progress of that most important of all inventions and arts, printing, in these particular parts,—more especially as William Caxton, the first English printer, was one of the agents, and a principal one, in opening the commerce between this country and Flanders in 1464, when that port was appointed a staple for English goods as well as Calais, a measure fraught with immense advantages to the manufacturing districts of the country, and of course pre-eminently to this city. When he, the mercer’s apprentice, first stamped the “merchants’ mark” upon his master’s bales, he little thought that by this same process of stamping, carried forward by the ingenuity of many men into a new art, the whole aspect of the world’s history would be changed. The origin of these distinctive “marks,” still to be seen engraved on brasses, painted in church windows, and here and there carved on the doors and panels of old houses, is about as obscure as most of the other customs of those ages. They were undoubtedly used to distinguish the property of one merchant from another; and if their owners gave money towards the building or restoration of churches, their marks were placed in the windows, in honour of their liberality. Similar marks are to this day used by some of the merchants of Oporto and Lisbon, stamped upon their pipes of wine. Their forms seemed to depend on fancy, but a certain geometrical precision pervaded all; sometimes they were composed of a circle with a cross, or a shield with crosses laid over each other, of angles of every possible direction grouped into a figure, now and then the figure of a bird or animal added, but each differing essentially from every other, that it may retain its distinctive characteristics. Printing, however, though introduced into this country by Caxton, was for some centuries seldom, if ever, practised, save in London and the two universities. To the Dutch and Walloons, who came over at the invitation of Elizabeth, is ascribed its first introduction in this city. In 1568, a Dutch metrical version of the Psalms was issued from the press. No great progress, however, would seem to have been made during the next century, but in 1736 was printed anonymously the “Records of Norwich,” containing the monuments of the cathedral, the bishops, the plagues, friars, martyrs, hospitals, &c., in two parts, price three halfpence each; and in 1738, an “Authentic History of the Ancient City of Norwich, from its Foundation to its Present State, &c. (the like not extant), by Thomas Eldridge, T.C.N., printed for the author in St. Gregory’s ch. yd., where may be had neat Jamaica rum, fine brandy, Geneva and cordial waters, all sorts of superfine snuffs and tobaccos at the lowest price!!!” This work, the author presumes, from its bulk (thirty-two pages), to be the “completest work ever yet published.” Alas for the literature of the day! From this period, however, Norwich kept pace with other places; a newspaper had been established even earlier, a quarto foolscap, at a penny a number. Among the advertisements from this “Gazette” bearing date July 16, 1709, are these—

“This is to give notice to all persons in the city, that right over against the three Feathers in St. Peter’s of Hungate, there is one lately come from London, who teacheth all sorts of Pastry and Cookery, all sorts of jellies, creams, and pickles, also all sorts of Collering and Potting, and to make rich cakes of all sorts, and everything of that nature. She teaches for a crown down, and a crown when they are fully learned, that her teaching so cheap may encourage very many to learn.”

June 5, 1708.

“Mr. Augustine de Clere, of Norwich Thorpe, have now very good malt for retail as he formerly had; if any of his customers have a mind to take of him again, they shall be kindly used with good malt, and as cheap as any body sell.—You may leave your orders with Mr. John de Clere, Hot-presser, living right over the Ducking stool, in St. Martin’s of the palace of Norwich.”

Among the Queries from Correspondents occur the following—

Norwich Gazette, April 9, 1709.

“Mr. Crossgrove,

You are desired to give an answer to this question, ‘Did the soul pre-exist in a separate state, before it came into the body, as many learned men have thought it did; and as that question in the ninth chapter of St. John’s gospel seems to insinuate. Your answer to this query will very much oblige your constant customer, T. R.”

This query is replied to at some length satisfactorily by Mr. Crossgrove.

This department of the paper is headed “The Accurate Intelligencer,” and in its columns are sundry other rather peculiar interrogatories, such as—

“Mr. Crossgrove,

Pray tell me where Moses was buried, and you will very much oblige your constant customer, B. S.”

Answer.

“Mr. B. S.

He tells you himself that no man knew it, even when he could not have been long buried; as you may see in the last chapter of Deuteronomy; from whence, Sir, you may infer, that if it was a secret so early, ’tis certainly so still. Your humble servant, H. C.”

Another rich specimen runs—

Lynn, May 18, 1709.

“Mr. Crossgrove,

Did the Apostles use notes when they preached? I have sent this Query twice before, and if I do not find it answered in your next paper, I shall conclude you either cannot or durst not answer it.

Yours unknown, &c.”

Answer

“Sir,

I have a bushel of letters by me that came all to the same tune with this of yours, viz. You cannot or durst not answer it; but sometimes they see I dare do it, tho’ I neglect other letters more pertinent through want of room: I have a dozen letters come in a week, all post haste for an answer, and seldom room to insert more than one at a time, so that many must of necessity lye by. But now for your dreadful puzzling question, Did the Apostles use notes? and to this I answer positively No, nor Bibles neither to hide their notes in; take notice of that; nor had they pulpits to stand in as ever I heard of, and we may observe from their sermons they took no texts: and what then? What would you infer from all this? The Apostles also never studied their sermons, for they had an extraordinary gift of preaching, as well as of speaking. But I shall say no more to your designing question than this—That those divines who read their sermons know how to improve their time much better than in getting them like schoolboys by heart; and that a good polite discourse well read, is more worthy than a Bundle of what comes uppermost tumbled out Head and Heels.

Yours, H. C.”

Well done, Mr. Crossgrove! say we.

In 1714, a “Courant” was established, small folio size: at the end of one occurs this notice—

“Note. An Accident happening, the reader is desired to pardon all literal errors, as it is not corrected.”

Papers of somewhat later date afford samples almost as quaint:—Advertisement. “James Hardy acquaints his friends, that he has lately had a large quantity of preserves. I shall be very happy to supply any gentleman with coals.” “Notice is hereby given that on Thursday and Friday next, being sixth and seventh of June, 1734, a coach and horses will set out for London, from Mr. Thomas Bateman’s, St. Giles, and perform the same in three days. Note, the coach will go either by Newmarket or Ipswich, as the passengers shall agree.” They certainly had one advantage over railway travellers of the present day—that they could choose their own route.

Another specimen runs—“Whereas Mrs. Cooke at the pastry shop near the three steps has charged Mrs. Havers with embezzling to the quantity of two yards of padashway, out of her suit of clothes turned upside down two years since, and made at first for a much less person; the clothes having been viewed by several mantua makers, the same appears to be a most malicious slander,” &c.

Specimens might be multiplied, but these may suffice to place beside the elaborate and ornate productions of this present year 1853, to see what a century has done in orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody.

It must have been rather more than twenty years after the first establishment of a local newspaper, that the Rev. Francis Blomefield, the great historian of the county, first commenced printing his elaborate “Topographical Essay,” a work of five volumes folio, the materials for which he is said to have begun to collect when only fifteen years of age. Many beyond the limits of the locality more especially intended to profit by this laborious undertaking, may feel interested in the facts connected with its progress, contributing so much as they do to give a correct idea of the difficulties attending the path of an author little more than a century ago.

Blomefield was rector of the parish of Fersfield, in which also he was born; in the summer months he was in the habit of making excursions in search of materials for his work, and to test the accuracy of information he had gained, by a method he had adopted, in furtherance of his object, of distributing “queries,” to be filled up with answers concerning any historical or antiquarian subjects that may be known to the parties applied to. In reference to this plan, he says himself, in a letter to a friend, “It is impossible to tell you what great helps have come in by my queries: sometimes having twenty or thirty sheets, besides books, letters, records and papers for a single hundred;” (alluding to the divisions of the county into hundreds).

It was after one of his collating rambles that he finally determined to issue proposals for printing his work; and meeting with much encouragement, he speedily looked about for a suitable printing establishment. In a letter to Mr. Chase, a printer who lived next door to “John o’ all sorts,” Cockey Lane, Norwich, on the 1st of July, 1733, he says, “I have endeavoured to procure a set of Saxon types, but cannot do it; and upon looking over my book find a good number of Greek inscriptions, some Hebrew words, and some Gothic. So that I must print it in London; it being impossible to have those types any where in the country (!). I wish heartily I could have done it with you; for I like your terms, and could have been glad to have corrected the press myself, which I then could easily have done.”

Eventually he decided upon printing the work upon his own premises, and engaged a good workman, at a salary of £40 a year, bought a press for £7, and fitted up a printing office with all the requisite materials. The account in the papers of the “ArchÆological Society,” goes on to say, “At that time, distance and difficulties of intercourse made any want of punctuality most annoying, and the plan of printing at home involved the necessity of a great variety of type and other materials. Meanwhile type founders, stationers, and engravers, were but too much given to weary him with delay, or to disgust him with fraud. Beginning a correspondence with frankness and civility, he often had to continue it, urging and reiterating entreaties of attention—alternately coaxing compliance with ‘half a piece’ to drink his health and success to his work, or with ‘promise of making amends,’ or a ‘fowl at Christmas,’ or rebuking with reluctant severity, resulting more from devotedness to his object, than anger or bitterness. A facetious engraver, who was introduced to him, and invited to his house to assist him, after remaining there three weeks, agreed for a large portion of the work, and cut several of the things, all which he ran away with. Other vexations sprang out of the patronage and assistance he most valued; but, after many interruptions, the first edition of a part of the book was brought out in 1736.”

In the midst of his labours, however, he was cut off by that virulent enemy, the small pox, on the 15th January, 1751, at the age of forty-six. His work was continued by the Rev. Charles Parkens, of whom a curious anecdote is related;—its accuracy we do not pretend to vouch; the tale runs that Mr. Parkens had a tame magpie, which had access to her master’s study, and seeing him busily employed in folding and unfolding the packets that lay before him on his desk, she thought it no harm to be busy too, until from time to time she flew away with the whole borough of Yarmouth. Many of the parcels, it is added, were recovered, but others irrecoverably lost.

“I know not how the truth may be,
But tell the tale as ’twas told to me.”

With this cursory glance at the work of the great historian of the district, we close our chapter on the subjects suggested by the “Old Market-place.” The sketches have been necessarily superficial, but they afford proof that its chronicles include a variety of matter and incident that may interest almost every class of mind.