leave the sense their learning to display,
And some explain the meaning quite away.
Hence, when a wretched woman was mourning alone over the husband who had just been hustled into his grave, the men were after her like wolves, every one of her neighbours knowing exactly what she was worth even to the fraction of a rood of land, or the last lamb that had been dropped, or the litter of pigs that were rootling up the beech-nuts in the woods. They gave her short time to make up her mind. Sentiment? We in the East--the land of the wise men since time was young--we know nothing of sentiment. We can hate with a sullen tenacity of resentment which knows no forgiveness; but love--nay we leave that for the "intense" of other climes. And women in the good old times--positively women--love one man more than another? What _they?_
"Whose love knows no distinction but of gender,
And ridicules the very name of choice!"
Why, where were you born?
The records of the marriages on the court rolls of the plague year are hardly more startling than the deaths. Whether men and women paid less to the lord for a license than they were compelled to pay if they married without license I cannot tell; but that hundreds of widows must have married only a few weeks or a few days after their husbands' deaths is clear. Matilda's case was not a rare one. Alice Foghal, at Lessingham, was another of those ladies who in a couple of months had been the property successively of three husbands--the last was actually a stranger. Where he came from is not stated, but he sate himself down by the widow's hearth, claimed it as his own, and paid a double fee for his successful gallantry. How he managed the matter remains unexplained, but young brides were plentiful in the parish just about that time; and at the same court where Alice's matrimonial alliances were compounded for, no less than fifteen other young women paid their fees for marrying without license from the lord. I have only noticed one instance of anything like remission of _marriage fees_, though I hope it was less uncommon than appears on the rolls. The lady in this case was a butcher's widow, and it was too much to expect that she could wait till the next court, wherefore the steward graciously knocked off seventy-five per cent. of his due; and, in lieu of two shillings, charged her only sixpence--_ratione temporis et in misericordia_, as he sententiously observes. Magnanimous steward!
I have met with no evidence leading to the belief that anywhere in the country villages there was anything approaching to a panic. Only a novice would be led astray by what he might read occurred at Coltishall. Five brothers named Gritlof and two other brothers named Primrose, being _nativi_, i.e., _villeins born_, and so the property of the lord, had decamped whither none could tell; the court solemnly adjudicated upon the case, and decreed that the seven runaways should be attached _per corpora_, whatever that may mean. But Coltishall is barely five miles from Norwich, and from the villages round the great city the _villeins_ were always running away in the hopes of getting their freedom if they could keep in hiding within the city walls for a year and a day. Oh, ye seven, had the yellow primrose less charm for you, and the barley loaves that were sure for you in breezy Coltishall--gritty though they might be--less charm than the garbage that might be picked up in Norwich, in its noisome alleys reeking with corruption, and all that flesh and blood revolts from? Ah! but to be free--to be free! How that thought made their poor hearts throb!
That there was panic--mad, unreasoning, insensate panic--elsewhere than in the country villages there is abundant evidence to prove, but it was among the well-to-do classes--the traders and the moneyed men, _bourgeoisie_ of the towns--that a stampede prevailed. Any one who chooses may satisfy himself of this by looking into Rymer's _Faedera,_ to go no further.
* * * * * * *
Enough has been told in the foregoing pages to illustrate the overwhelming violence with which the Great Plague ran its career in East Anglia. Only a small part of the evidence still ready to our hands has been examined; but if no more were scrutinized, the impression left upon us of the severity of the visitation would be quite sufficiently appalling. It is, however, when an attempt to estimate the immediate effects and the remoter consequencs that followed that our difficulties begin.
Before a man is qualified to dogmatize upon those effects, he must have gone some way towards making himself familiar with the social and economic conditions of the country during at least the century before the plague. Unfortunately the history of economics in England has never been attempted by any one at all duly qualified for dealing with so complex and difficult a subject, and the crudest theories have been substituted for sound conclusions, then only to be accepted when based upon the solid ground of ascertained fact. In the childhood of every science dogmatism precedes induction, and in the absence of clear knowledge, foolish and wild-eyed visionaries have posed as discoverers again and again. Yet bluster and audacity have their use, if only to stimulate the timid and the dilatory to quicken their pace and move forwards. For my part, however, if it be necessary to choose between the two, I should prefer to err with the slow and cautious rather than with the rash and over-bold; the former may for a while serve as a drag upon the chariot wheels of progress, the latter are sure to thrust us out of the road and land us at last in some quagmire whence it will be very hard to get back into the right track.