Sometime during the year 1343 there had been a disastrous fire in the house of one Roger Andrew; the dwelling, with all that it contained, was burnt to the ground. Poor Roger lost all his household stuff and furniture and much else besides; worse than all, he lost all his title deeds, the evidences and charters whereby he held his little estate. As for Roger himself, he either perished in the flames or his heart broke and he died very shortly afterwards. He left a son behind him, young Richard Andrew, who must have found himself in sorry plight when he came to take up his patrimony and enter upon his inheritance. Those were not the days when the weak man and the beaten man excited much pity in England. No! they were _not,_ whatever sentimental people may say who maunder about the ages of faith and refresh themselves with other such lackadaisical phrases. So, poor Richard being down in his luck, John Bonington, acting for Henry, Earl of Lancaster, [Footnote: His son and heir, Henry, Earl of Derby, was created _Duke_ of Lancaster in 1351.] the lord of the manor, put the screw on, and boldly claimed a heriot from the young man as the right of the lord. Richard disputed the right, and protested that his land was not _heriotable._ Bonington pleaded his _might_ in a very effectual way, and took his heriot--to wit, the best horse which Richard had in his stable, the best and probably the only one. Then Richard appealed to the homage. The homagers were afraid to give a verdict against the steward, and timidly objected that all Richard's evidences had been burnt in the fire. Bonington trotted off triumphant, leaving Richard to his bitter wrath. Six years went by, and the plague came. It fell upon the district round with terrific fury, and the people died in that dreadful April, 1349, as the locusts die when the hurricane drives them seaward, and they rot in piles upon the shore. The Roll of the Manor Court is a horrible record of the suddenness and the force with which the Black Death smote the wretched Essex people. When the steward's day's work was done, and the long, long list of the dead had been written down, he added a note wherein he gives us the facts which have come down to us; and then he adds that, inasmuch as he, John Bonington, had come to see that the aforesaid horse had been unrighteously taken from Richard Andrew six years before, and that the conviction of his own iniquity had been brought home to his contrite heart, _as well by the dreadful mortality and horrible pestilence at that time raging as by the stirring of religious emotion within his soul,_ therefore the full value of the horse was to be restored to the injured Richard, and never again was heriot to be levied on his land. After six years' hard riding and scant feeding, peradventure Richard Andrew would rather have had the hard cash than the poor brute, which by this time, probably, had died and gone to the dogs! A shudder of penitence and remorse had thrilled