Great Britain -- History -- Medieval period, 1066-1485
Little Cornard lies almost at the extreme south of the county of
Suffolk. At the extreme north of Norfolk, occupying the elbow of the
coast, having the Wash on the west and the German Ocean on the north,
lies the deanery of Heacham, a district in which the Le Stranges have
for at least seven centuries exercised their beneficent influence.
Heacham itself is a large township extending over some 4,900 acres. The
manorial rights appear to have extended over the whole parish. The
series of Court Rolls is almost unbroken for the reign of Edward III.
During the years 1346, 1347, and 1348, ten, six, and nine deaths are
registered respectively. The courts were held every two months. In
December, 1348, there is no death recorded; in February, 1349, again
there is none. On the 28th of April a dispute was set down for hearing
to be adjudicated upon by the steward and a jury of the homage. It was
a dispute between a husband and wife on a question of dower. The man's
name was Reginald Goscelin, his wife's name was Emma. The dispute was
never settled. Before the day of hearing came on, _every one_ of Emma
Goscelin's witnesses was dead, and her husband was dead too. Four other
landowners had died. One of these latter had a son and heir to succeed,
but two months later the boy had gone, and the sole representative of
the family was a little girl, who became straightway the ward of the
lord of the manor.
Contiguous to the township of Heacham lies Hunstanton--not the pleasant
little watering-place which the million will persist in calling by that
name, though scarcely forty years ago the maker and builder of the
modern town, the man who marked out its streets and planned its roads,
and foresaw its future before a brick of the place was laid, gave it
the name of St. Edmunds--Hunstanton, I say, in the fourteenth century
was a parish less than half the size of Heacham, and probably much
further from the sea than it is now. When, on the 20th of March, 1349,
the steward of the manor of Hunstanton held his court there he entered
the name of only one old woman who had died within the last month--that
is, up to the 20th of March the plague had not yet appeared. Five weeks
after this, on the 23rd of April, the next court was held. Five petty
disputes had been entered for hearing. Sixteen men were engaged in them
as principals or witnesses. When the day came eleven of the sixteen
were dead. On the 22nd of May again there was a court, and again three
suits for debt were set down. The defendant in one case, the plaintiff
in a second, both plaintiff and defendant in the third, died before the
court day arrived. In June no court was held--was there a panic? Except
in this month and in September the meetings were carried on as
regularly as if it had all been done by machinery. In September things
got to their worst, and in this month the parson died, and was speedily
succeeded by another. When the court of the 16th of October sat, it was
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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