I said that the two prosperous men in Rougham six hundred years ago were Peter Romayn and Thomas the Lucky, or, as his name appears in the Latin Charters, Thomas Felix. When Archdeacon Middleton gave up living at Rougham, Thomas Felix bought his estate, called the Lyng House; and shortly after he bought another estate, which, in fact, was a manor of its own, and comprehended thirteen free tenants and five villeins; and, as though this were not enough, on September 24, 1292, he took a lease of another manor in Rougham for six years, of one of the daughters of Sir Richard le Butler, whose husband, I suppose, wanted to go elsewhere. Before the lease expired he died, leaving behind him a widow named Sara and three little daughters, the eldest of whom cannot have been more than eight or nine years old. This was in the year 1294. Sara, the widow, was for the time a rich woman, and she made up her mind never to marry again, and she kept her resolve. When her eldest daughter Alice came to the mature age of fifteen or sixteen, a young man named John of Thrysford wooed and won her. Mistress Alice was by no means a portionless damsel, and Mr. John seems himself to have been a man of substance. How long they were married I know not; but it could not have been more than a year or two, for less than five years after Mr. Felix's death a great event happened, which produced very momentous effects upon Rougham and its inhabitants in more ways than one. Up to this time there had been a rector at Rougham, and apparently a good rectory-house and some acres of glebe land--how many I cannot say. But the canons of Westacre Priory cast their eyes upon the rectory of Rougham, and they made up their minds they would have it. I dare not stop to explain how the job was managed--that would lead me a great deal too far--but it _was_ managed, and accordingly, a year or two after the marriage of little Alice, they got possession of all the tithes and the glebe, and the good rectory-house at Rougham, and they left the parson of the parish with a smaller house on the other side of the road, and _not_ contiguous to the church, an allowance of two quarters of wheat and two quarters of barley a year, and certain small dues which might suffice to keep body and soul together but little more. [Footnote: This appears from the following charter, which it seems worth while to quote: "Pateat universis... quod nos Robertas de Feletone, Miles, et Hawigia uxor mea concessimus ... Alicie filie Thome de Rucham... Totum ius nostrum... in terris... dicte Alicie... in Rucham, que ... habuimus de dono et dimissione Johannis filii Roberti de Thyrsforde in Rucham _ante diuorstium_ (sic) _inter eundem Johannem et dictam_ Aliciam factum... Omnia munimenta et scripta que de dicto tenemento habuimus eidem Alicie quiete reddidimus... Datum apud Lucham die Dom: prox: post Annunc: B Mar: Virg: Anno R. R. Edw: fit. Reg. Henr: tricessimotertio" (28 March, 1305).--_Rougham Charter_, No. 157.]