Sudbury was the birth-place of Enfield, whose _Speaker_ was a well-known text book in the past generation. Then our William Durbyn, author of the well-known _Commentary on the Epistle of Jude_, was also born there. He died a martyr for the truth’s sake in Newgate in 1685. The Grammar School of Sudbury dates as far back as 1591. Protestant as the town was, the Sudbury burghers marched to Framlingham to defend Mary’s rights against the attempted usurpation of Northumberland and his faction, she assuring them of her protection in the observance of their religion—a promise she shamefully failed to keep. It seems that Wilson, the Sudbury lecturer and preacher, was so harassed by the Bishop and Archbishop, that with Winthrop, afterwards Governor of Massachusetts, he went over with a large band of the later Pilgrim Fathers to New England. Sudbury itself at one time seems to have rejoiced in a Christian toleration as refreshing as it was rare. In 1670, or thereabouts, it was the practice of the Nonconformists to preach in All Saints Church, while one of the early pastors of the Congregational Church lived with his family in All Saints Vicarage for eleven years. It appears from the town records that this church was without a regular incumbent for a long time, and that after the Dutch war, the church was used as a prison for the Dutch prisoners, there being at one time 500 of them quartered in the town. The country round the old town—the town of Gainsborough’s boyhood—must have been singularly picturesque. The boy painter saw in it a beauty which he never forget; he told Thicknesse, his first patron, that “there was not a picturesque clump of trees, nor even a single tree of any beauty; no, nor hedge-row, stem or root,” in or around his native town, which was not from his earliest years treasured in his memory. It is interesting to note the painter’s progress. As you walk from the railway you come to Friar Street, where the painter married and took a house for a short while. A few steps further on bring you to Sepulchre Street, and you see the site of the house where he was born, opposite which is now the Christopher Inn. There was a large garden behind the house; and it was there the young artist sketched the face of the culprit whom he watched steal his father’s pears. That was his first attempt at portrait-painting, and a very successful one, as it led to the conviction of the culprit. The Pear Tree is still shown. Apparently Sudbury is famous for its pears. I saw many of them in the gardens belonging to some of the better houses. It was a pleasure for me to attempt to follow in the artist’s steps. For instance, I made my way to Brandon Wood, where the poet loved to go sketching. If the town is improved so as to be almost unrecognisable, the features of the country remain the same; nature builds more enduringly than man. There are trees in Brandon Wood that might have been there in Gainsborough’s time. Over the Essex