Ely,
Sept. 11th, 1686.
Good Brother,
The good character I have received concerning you ... has given me a particular confidence in yr. care to putt the directions of my printed letter in practice. Yr. parish, if it be not so numerous as I suppos'd, yet lyes on the Great Northern Roade; it would be for our Churches Honor and for the consolation of well dispos'd travellers to find Daily Prayers in yr. Church. I press them all over the Diocese where it is practicable, but at Caxton I wd. have them by all means, tho' you begin with a congregation of but a widdow or two. Have them if you please at 6 or 7 in the morning if that will be best for passengers. My good friend you have been bredd in a camp to toyle and hardship. I know the putting my orders in execution, that is the making of so many careless people Christian indeed, will cost you a great deale of labour. But do not grudge it; you are sure of as great a Reward in Heaven; and in good time you may find your account by it here.... In the mean time do your Business with all your might, and sett into it presently, before the Visitation. By which you will more than a little oblige, Sir,
Yr. affect. friend and Brother,
Fran. Ely.
Mr. Say of Caxton.
P.S.—If you have no little Schoole in your town I shall wonder, and you ought to procure one. If there bee one, then you need not want a congregation for both morning and evening prayers.
After crossing the Ermine Street we come to Eltisley, where there is a pretty Village Green and a good village inn; and the church, though small, has some fine Early English work. It is dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. Pandiana (or Pandionia), an obscure personage, said by Leland to have been a Scottish[186] princess, who found in this remote spot a refuge from the importunities of her suitors, and was here buried by the side of a spring still known as St. Pandiana's Well. Her nunnery perished after the Conquest, and in the fourteenth century her body was translated into the church, along with that of the yet more obscure St. Wendreda,[187] a purely Cambridgeshire saint, whose name is also connected with the church of March, and with a "well" near Newmarket.
The village is the scene of a dramatic tale found in Roger of Wendover, under the date 1234. A famine was raging, and the hungry poor invaded the ripening harvest-fields and devoured the crops, "for which they may scarce be blamed. Of the farmers, however, (who ever from their avarice, look upon the poor with an evil eye,) many were highly wroth at this pious theft. And they of Alboldesley hied them all on the next Sunday (July 16th) to the church, and with tumult required the priest to excommunicate upon the spot all who had thus plucked their wheat-ears. But one pious man alone adjured him in God's name to pronounce no such sentence for his crops; adding that he was right well content that the poor should take from him in their need, and that he commended to the Lord's care whatsoever was left.
"Now scarcely had the priest perforce begun the curse, than there suddenly arose such a storm of thunder, lightning, whirlwind, rain and hail, that the corn in the fields was torn from the ground as by a blast from hell; and all that grew therein, and the cattle, and the very birds, were destroyed, as though trodden down by carts and horses. But that just man found his land without trace of harm. And thus it is clear that as the angels sing Glory to God in the Highest, so on earth is there Peace toward men of Good-will.
"This storm began on the borders of Bedfordshire (at Eltisley), and passed eastwards through the Isle of Ely. And here is a wondrous thing. Such crops as still stood when it was over were found so rotted that neither horse nor ass, steer nor pig, goose nor hen, would eat thereof." A cyclone of precisely the same character devastated Essex on June 24, 1897, and was as capricious in its visitations.