On a silver paten,
Packefelde.
And on a fine Holland communion cloth,
III III . 1640.
This church was lately much repaired and beautified at the expense of its late rector, the Rev. Dr. Leman; who not only new laid the floor, erected a new pulpit and desk, and placed over a curious old font, a handsome model of the tower and spire of Norwich Cathedral, but also embellished it with many other useful ornaments. He was endued with many excellent qualities particularly charity and beneficense, which he constantly exercised with the greatest liberality, both with respect to his parishioners and to mankind in general; and, consequently, was justly entitled to the following character, which was given of him at his decease:—“He was an admired preacher, a strenuous assertor of the rites and ceremonies of the church of which he was so bright an ornament, and indefatigable in every other part of the pastoral office.”
There is also a meeting house in this parish for the people called Quakers, who have held meetings here for 130 years past, though their number is but small.
Int Rogeru Townesend & Henricum Spilman Quer et Tho: Aslack et Eliz ux ejus Deforc, Manerij de Elgh als dict Willingham All Saint set Advoc: Ecclie ejusd: Et Ecclie de Pakefield: Jus Rogeri. Fines Suff. A.° 10 E. 4 Lig. 1, No. 24.
Edmund Jenney Miles, Cond: Test die Veneris ante fm Nat B. Marr: Virg. 1522. Habuit int al: Advoc: Ecclie de Pakefield. P.bat 21° Dec. 1522 ’e libro. (Briggs Regr. Norw. 35 vid. plus in Knodeshall.)
These injuries, and, in a great measure, illegal attempts to exclude the town of Lowestoft from having any share in the herring fishery occasioned a most violent rupture between the towns, and who carried their resentment so far as to fit out armed vessels, to commence hostilities on each others property, and even to commit bloodshed; the one party insisting upon the privileges they pretended to be entitled to by their charter, and the other party as strenuously defending those rights which for many centuries they had enjoyed, without any other interruption than paying the custom due to Yarmouth for the purchase of herrings in Kirkley road. But now it evidently appeared, that an utter exclusion of the Lowestoft men from the benefit of the herring fishery, was the determined resolution of the town of Yarmouth; and, therefore it occasioned the most violent struggles between liberty and oppression that can be well imagined; which continued so long as to make both the parties, most probably, weary of the contention, and agreed at last (in order for settling the dispute) to lay this long-contested affair before the Privy Council; from thence it was referred to the judges, and at last to a hearing before the house of Lords, where the case was finally determined in favour of the town of Lowestoft, as will be more fully shewn in the following section.
Upon an inquiry into the state of the herring fishery, after this contest was decided, it was found that the fishery at Lowestoft, and also at the adjoining towns, was greatly on the decline, occasioned partly by the disputes with Yarmouth, by the civil war in the reign of Charles I, the great fire at Lowestoft in 1644, and the war the nation was then engaged with the Dutch.
In consequence of these distresses, the town of Lowestoft and the neighbouring towns of Pakefield and Kirkley, presented a petition to both Houses of Parliament, requesting their lordships to take the unfortunate state of these towns into consideration, and to grant them relief; and particularly with respect to enforcing the old statutes relative to the consumption of fish in this Kingdom, and also by adding such new ones for that purpose as their lordships might think necessary.