But these Anglo-Danes of East Anglia were our ancestors. They lived in the same villages, and tilled the same land as the peasantry of the present day, and many of our country parishes must have been in Saxon times very much what they are now, in which the squire and the parson fill the places of the thane and the parish priest and a few farmers holding land under the squire, and agricultural labourers, enough and no more, than are required to cultivate the land, with perhaps a village blacksmith and shoemaker, complete the roll of the resident population. The intellectual condition of our ancestors must have been very low. Mr. Turner describes it as the “twilight of mind,” and he says there is a great similarity in their poetry to that of the natives of New Zealand. Even the thanes and magnates of the land were, with a very few exceptions, entirely uneducated, and if they had learnt to read there would have been few books from which they could have got any knowledge. King Alfred was one of the few who could read in his time. With the upper classes in such a barbarous condition no wonder we are told that gross excess in eating and drinking was their characteristic failing. Even the great and good Alfred is said to have destroyed his constitution by having to take part in banqueting for several days and nights in celebration of his wedding. The prevalence of this low vice may be to a great extent attributed to the want of any means by which the produce of their farms could be made a better use of. It was not until trade sprung up that they could sell their surplus produce and spend the proceeds in the purchase of things which would lead to a higher and more civilised standard of living. But during the whole of the Saxon period the monotonous routine of their agricultural occupations was only varied by war, which was frequent enough; and as war in those days was always accompanied by devastation and slaughter, the slow progress of our Saxon fore-fathers in wealth and civilisation is easily accounted for, and we can well understand how it was that this fertile country was only partially cultivated when the Normans came over, and how it was that the Conqueror found his property in “Lothuwistoft” in such a backward state. Such was Lowestoft in its infancy—a small agricultural village of less importance than Carlton or Mutford or Kessingland. We shall now lose sight of her for some 300 years. When she again appears in the records of the past she will appear as a town of some importance to the country, and as a rival of Yarmouth in the herring trade. ETYMOLOGY OF “LOWESTOFT.”