Nor was this all, for Bishop Middleton's successor in the see of Norwich came from this immediate neighbourhood also. This was Ralph Walpole, son of the lord of the manor of Houghton, in which parish the bishop himself had inherited a few acres of land. In less than forty years no less than three bishops had been born within five miles of where we are this evening: Roger de Wesenham, [Footnote: The names of several members of the bishop's family occur in the Rougham Charters as attesting witnesses, and a Roger de Wesenham is found among them more than once.] who became Bishop of Lichfield in 1245; William Middleton, who had just died; and Ralph Walpole, who succeeded him. There must have been much stir in these parts when the news was known. The old people would tell how they had seen "young master Ralph" many a time when he was a boy scampering over Massingham Heath, or coming to pay his respects to the Archdeacon at the Lyng House, or talking of foreign parts with old James de Ferentino or Peter Romayn. Now he had grown to be a very big man indeed, and there were many eyes watching him on both sides of the water. He had a very difficult game to play during the eleven years he was Bishop of Norwich, for the king was dreadfully in need of money, and, being desperate, he resorted to outrageous methods of squeezing it from those whom he could frighten and force, and the time came at last when the bishops and the clergy had to put a bold face on and to resist the tyranny and lawless rapacity of the sovereign.

And this reminds me that though archdeacons, and bishops, and even an archbishop, in those days might be and were very important and very powerful personages, they were all very small and insignificant in comparison with the great King Edward, the king who at this time was looked upon as one of the most mighty and magnificent kings in all the world. He, too, paid many a visit to Norfolk six hundred years ago. He kept his Christmas at Burgh in 1280, and in 1284 he came down with the good Queen Eleanor and spent the whole of Lent in the county; and next year, again, they were in your immediate neighbourhood, making a pilgrimage to Walsingham. A few years after this he seems to have spent a week or two within five miles of where we are; he came to Castle Acre, and there he stayed at the great priory whose ruins you all know well. There a very stirring interview took place between the king and Bishop Walpole, and a number of other bishops, and great persons who had come down as a deputation to expostulate with the king, and respectfully to protest against the way in which he was robbing his subjects, and especially the clergy, whom he had been for years plundering in the most outrageous manner. The king gave the deputation no smooth words to carry away, but he sent them off with threatening frowns and insults and in hot anger. Some days after this he was at Massingham, and one of his letters has been preserved, dated from Massingham, 30th of January, 1296, so that it is almost certain the great king passed one night there at least. It is a little difficult to understand what the king was doing at Massingham, for there was no great man living there, and no great mansion. Sometimes I have thought that the king rode out from Castle Acre to see what state the Walpoles of those times were keeping up at Houghton. Had not that audacious Bishop Walpole dared to speak plainly to his Grace the week before? But the more probable explanation is that the king went to Massingham to visit a small religious house or monastery which had been recently founded there. I suspect it had already got into debt and was in difficulties, and it is possible that the king's visit was made in the interest of the foundation. At any rate, there the king stayed; but though he was in Norfolk more than once after this, he never was so near you again, and that visit was one which your forefathers were sure to talk about to the end of their lives.

* * * * * * *

And these were the days of old. But now that we have looked back upon them as they appear through the mists of centuries, the distance distorting some things, obscuring others, but leaving upon us, on the whole, an impression that, after all, these men and women of the past, whose circumstances were so different from our own, were perhaps not so very unlike what we should be if our surroundings were as theirs. Now that we have come to that conclusion, if indeed we have come to it, let me ask you all a question or two. Should we like to change with those forefathers of ours, whose lives were passed in this parish in the way I have attempted to describe, six hundred years ago? Were the former times better than these? Has the world grown worse as it has grown older? Has there been no progress, but only decline?

My friends, the people who lived in this village six hundred years ago were living a life hugely below the level of yours. They were more wretched in their poverty, they were incomparably less prosperous in their prosperity, they were worse clad, worse fed, worse housed, worse taught, worse tended, worse governed; they were sufferers from loathsome diseases which you knew nothing of; the very beasts of the field were dwarfed and stunted in their growth, and I do not believe there were any giants in the earth in those days. The death-rate among the children must have been tremendous. The disregard of human life was so callous that we can hardly conceive it. There was everything to harden, nothing to soften; everywhere oppression, greed, and fierceness. Judged by our modern standards, the people of our county village were beyond all doubt coarser, more brutal, and more wicked, than they are. Progress is slow, but there has been progress. The days that are, are not what they should be; we still want reforms, we need much reforming ourselves; but the former days were not better than these, whatever these may be; and if the next six hundred years exhibit as decided an advance as the last six centuries have brought about, and if your children's children of the coming time rise as much above your level in sentiment, material comfort, knowledge, intelligence, and refinement, as you have risen above the level which your ancestors attained to, though even then they will not cease to desire better things, they will nevertheless have cause for thankfulness such as you may well feel to-night as you look back upon what you have escaped from, and reflect upon what you are.

III.

DAILY LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL MONASTERY.

"Now I think on't,
They should be good men; their affairs as righteous:
But all hoods make not monks."

[The commemoration of the birth of Martin Luther, which people would have called his quater-centenary if they had not been deterred by the terrific appearance of so huge a word, was the occasion of many preachments and much lecturing, besides a great deal of heroic talk in public and private. With so much to encourage cynicism and persiflage among us it was comforting to find that the instinct of hero-worship is not quite dead, and that the story of a great man's life still stirs the heart. It was inevitable that, among the many utterances with which we were treated in the year 1883, many should be very foolish, and not a few mischievous and erroneous. Itinerant Windbags are rarely scrupulous about their facts, and the allusive style flavoured with stinging invective is far more telling than any historical narrative, however picturesque and eloquent it may be. Luther the Monk will always be a more attractive subject in the lecture hall than Luther the Theologian, and an audience prepared to be harrowed and shocked will greedily listen to broad hints about _abominations_-the word is a very favourite one--which the author could disclose, but mercifully withholds in pity for the shuddering hearts of a too sensitive assembly. The consequence was that an altogether disproportionate amount of declamation was wasted up and down the country by gentlemen on the stump, in girding at monks and nuns, their vices and crimes, till some men's minds were not a little exercised, and some, horrified by what they were told, asked in their perplexity, "Can these things be?" The present writer knows nothing of the condition of the German Religious Houses in the fifteenth or the sixteenth century, and not as much as he would wish to learn of the condition of the English houses during the same period, but he has been painfully convinced that the peripatetic orators are about as qualified to lecture upon the subject as he is to lecture on astronomy.

It was while musing in my solitude upon the harm done by ignorant pretenders in sowing error broadcast in the waste places of the world that I received a call from one of the class, who came to beg my countenance for a lecture upon Luther the Monk and Monkery. He was a vociferous personage and prodigal of his words. He added to all his sins this one, that he did not know when to go. He had no tact, only talk. Irritated at last beyond endurance, my normal suavity forsook me, and I spoke with brutal plainness. Of course he was wroth, and pressed for an explanation. In a weak moment I yielded. "To begin with," said I, "Luther, strictly speaking, was not a monk at all!" [Footnote: He belonged to the order of Friars Eremite under the Augustinian Rule.] It was a foolish speech: first, because it made my friend an offender for a word; and, secondly, because there was more truth in it than the man was capable of understanding or was prepared to receive; but it had the effect of ridding me of a bore. As he took his leave he shot at me this Parthian shaft--"If you are above learning, sir," he said, "perhaps teaching might not be beneath you. Could you not, for instance, let the world know something about monks and monasteries some day? Even I, ignorant as you pronounce me, have heard of your lecturing on a thirteenth-century village. Why not try a thirteenth-century monastery next?" I politely thanked him for his valuable suggestion, and promised to give it my respectful attention. The following sketch is the outcome of our interview. "Facit indignatio versus.">[