’But,’ I said, ’_did_ she die first?’ Father remarked that he thought she shuffled off this mortal coil in 1084, but that he couldn’t bother to remember an unimportant little detail like that about a woman! Apparently it was quite a nice bit of land, sufficiently large and fertile to supply pasture for ’80 romping, roaming, and rollicking swine.’ Some of the things the tenants had to do were very quaint. How would the village people like daddy to come down on them now to ’dam the water to overflow the meadows once a year,’ and if they didn’t do it make them pay a halfpenny? Or supposing they got a message that they had ’to fill two dung carts every two days or pay twopence,’ or ’thresh and winnow white wheat,’ and for every two bushels that they didn’t do have to pay ’somewhere about three farthings.’ But the thing that fascinates me so is the entry in the accounts about marey Falkner’s chemise. I’ll copy it out:— 1792—to pare shoes for Marey Falkner .. 4 6 To shift 16d Ell for marey Falkner .. 2 8 Two pare stockens 16d Do. .. 1 4 To Handkerchief 14d. Do. .. 1 2 Paid for maken Shift .. .. .. 6 and then 1793 for menden marey Falkners shoes 1 6 Oh, she must have been a proud girl when she got that outfit! But I hope the churchwarden’s wife gave her the shift: it seems an embarrassing present to receive from an Evangelical churchwarden. I wonder if there was a ribbon round the top of it, and wasn’t she a good girl to make her shoes last out so long? I do hope there was a ribbon. I’ve always had such heaps of them; the distribution of life’s trimmings is very unequal; poor little marey Falkner. The account goes on to say that Dame Crane received two and six for nursing John Insgridle, but they paid Dame Hollice 8/0 for nursing Snellings’ wife, which seemed dear, unless there was a baby. H. Delva had to be examined and ’hors and cart to take her thare’ cost six bob, which was a lot, I think. Then the churchwardens seem to have bought a lock for the church wicket and one Hedgehog, and paid four shillings for a hat for Richard Helsey. They procured a Polcat and a Stote and a mat for the ’Cumionion for the minister’ and then got another Hedgehog and ’releived a porper’ (doesn’t it look poverty-struck spelled that way? I always told father that was the right way to spell relieved), and they finished up with seventy-two dozen Sparrows at three pence a dozen. Whatever did they do with such a Zoo? But the thing I like best of all in the church is the record of a naughty boy who evidently behaved as disgracefully in the seventeenth century as my brother does in the twentieth, for very badly carved in the chancel near our seat is R. Fotheringham. 1660.