The records of the marriages on the court rolls of the plague year are hardly more startling than the deaths. Whether men and women paid less to the lord for a license than they were compelled to pay if they married without license I cannot tell; but that hundreds of widows must have married only a few weeks or a few days after their husbands' deaths is clear. Matilda's case was not a rare one. Alice Foghal, at Lessingham, was another of those ladies who in a couple of months had been the property successively of three husbands--the last was actually a stranger. Where he came from is not stated, but he sate himself down by the widow's hearth, claimed it as his own, and paid a double fee for his successful gallantry. How he managed the matter remains unexplained, but young brides were plentiful in the parish just about that time; and at the same court where Alice's matrimonial alliances were compounded for, no less than fifteen other young women paid their fees for marrying without license from the lord. I have only noticed one instance of anything like remission of _marriage fees_, though I hope it was less uncommon than appears on the rolls. The lady in this case was a butcher's widow, and it was too much to expect that she could wait till the next court, wherefore the steward graciously knocked off seventy-five per cent. of his due; and, in lieu of two shillings, charged her only sixpence--_ratione temporis et in misericordia_, as he sententiously observes. Magnanimous steward! I have met with no evidence leading to the belief that anywhere in the country villages there was anything approaching to a panic. Only a novice would be led astray by what he might read occurred at Coltishall. Five brothers named Gritlof and two other brothers named Primrose, being _nativi_, i.e., _villeins born_, and so the property of the lord, had decamped whither none could tell; the court solemnly adjudicated upon the case, and decreed that the seven runaways should be attached _per corpora_, whatever that may mean. But Coltishall is barely five miles from Norwich, and from the villages round the great city the _villeins_ were always running away in the hopes of getting their freedom if they could keep in hiding within the city walls for a year and a day. Oh, ye seven, had the yellow primrose less charm for you, and the barley loaves that were sure for you in breezy Coltishall--gritty though they might be--less charm than the garbage that might be picked up in Norwich, in its noisome alleys reeking with corruption, and all that flesh and blood revolts from? Ah! but to be free--to be free! How that thought made their poor hearts throb!