But Queen Elizabeth’s reign was long long ago. We know from books the principal events of her reign, as we do of some period in Roman or Grecian History. But we know little of the people, although we are of the same flesh and blood, and indebted to them for much that we now enjoy. Elizabeth’s reign covered the first 42 years of our Parish Registers; and the materials for this lecture will belong almost entirely to this period. As a stepping stone however and introduction to our subject, I propose to read to you a few lines from an account of a tour in these parts taken by a young lady about 200 years ago; a hundred years later than Elizabeth’s time. This lady was Miss Celia Fiennes, a daughter of Lord Saye and Sele. She appears to have been quite a “new woman” of the 17th century, and, I think I may safely say, the first lady who ever travelled through England as a tourist. She rode on horseback. She did not ride a bicycle for two reasons—first, because they were not made then; and secondly, because if they had been, there was no road on which they could have run a yard. This absence of roads is an important point to bear in mind, for it had much to do with the difference in the habits and character of these old people and of ourselves. Miss Fiennes rode along the roads and lanes, such as they were, accompanied by two male servants, and stayed at inns and country houses. In her tour through Suffolk and Norfolk she came from Ipswich, through Saxmundham, to Beccles, and this is a little of what she tells us about her journey:—