Scoulton yet startle the stranger as they rise, voiceful, in their many thousands from the mere. In 1675, when Ogilby’s “Britannia,” that first, and most magnificent, survey of the roads, was published, this spot was pictured on his sketch-plan of this road as “Attleburgh Meer,” and was apparently something between a bog and a lake. It stretched across the road, and to a considerable distance on either side. This was in the very year of Sir Edwin Rich’s death, when his bequest became available, and we may suppose that this hindrance to travellers was abolished very shortly afterwards and the monument to his liberality erected here, on the very spot where that slough had once been. From its old name of the “Portway,” it is obvious this road must have been in existence in very ancient times, but it is equally obvious it was early discarded for other routes, for Ogilby is the earliest map-maker to mark it, and Will Kemp, who seventy-five years earlier danced his nine days’ dance from London to Norwich, went the less direct road to Norwich from Thetford by way of Rockland, Hingham, and Barford Bridge, which he would not have done had the way through Attleborough and Wymondham been passable. Kemp, who was a low comedian, and, according to his own showing, spent his life in “mad Igges and merry iestes,” wagered he would dance down all the way, and did so perform the distance in nine days jigging, with intervals for rest and entertainment in between: not a very difficult performance, even for that time, and even though it was winter when he did it. He tells us fully in his “Nine Days’ Wonder” how, accompanied by his tabourer, or drummer, he skipped and joked the miles away, and gives the route he took, over Bow Bridge to Romford, Ingatestone, Widford, Braintree, Sudbury, Long Melford, and Clare, to Bury St. Edmunds. It was on a Saturday, at the close of his sixth day’s dancing, that he entered Bury, and there, “by reason of the great snow that then fell,” he stayed until the following Friday morning, February 29th. The distance between Bury and Thetford is really twelve miles, and so Kemp does not take full credit for this day’s performance when he tells us that “Dauncing that tenne mile in three houres,” and leaving Bury shortly after seven in the morning, he was at Thetford soon after ten o’clock: “So light was my heeles that I counted the tenne mile no better than a leape.”