PROCESSION AT THE LAST LEGITIMATE PRESENTATION OF THE BACON.--This Hogarthian record of the Shakeshafts carried in procession with their Bacon is from a painting by David Ogbourne, a local artist who witnessed the ceremony. Local personages are represented in the crowd. The ladies in front of the laden basket are said to be members of the Strutt family. The man mopping his head is Pownall, "the fat butcher of Stebbing." --------------------------------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION Although, as in duty bound, a member of his county Archæological Society, no claim to what may be dignified by antiquarian research is made by the Author of this modest publication. If he is entitled to any credit at all, it can be merely in respect of the fact that (in addition to making the best use of the historical stores and constant kindness of Mr. Hastings Worrin), he has regarded it as a kind of minor act of local patriotism to try to gather together and set forth, in as simple and attractive a fashion as possible, such data as, with a little trouble, may be collected concerning a Custom all the surviving records of which are of interest and importance to those who live in Great or Little Dunmow or their vicinity. The subject has, however, a wider appeal. It is so familiar that throughout the land there can be few persons who have never heard of the Dunmow Flitch. It is so old as to be enshrined, for as long as English Literature shall endure, in Chaucer and Langland. It is proper to mention, perhaps, that most of the subjects illustrated have not before been photographed for publication. For corrections or for any light on difficulties still confronting the historian of the Flitch, the Author will be greatly obliged. In order to save labour to other students of the subject, he may perhaps mention that he has searched the following MSS. at the British Museum: "Registrum Cartarum Prioratus de Dunmawe," "Exscripta è Chronico de Dunmow," "Collectanea ex Chronico de Dunmowe," "Excerpta ex Chronico de Parva Dunmowe," "Memorandum de Pernis, a Prioratu de Dunmowe," the household accounts of the last Prior of Dunmow, and "Transcripta ex Libro Rubeo in Scarrario," and has glanced through certain Court Rolls. One list of presentations of the Bacon (which appears in Leland) is described in the catalogue at the British Museum as "perhaps a fragment of some larger work on the subject." Does it still exist? GREAT CANFIELD, DUNMOW. _Christmas_, 1909. CHAPTER I A Narrative of Nine Hundred Years Everybody knows that delightful Shakespearean scene in which Sir John Falstaff robs the travellers at Gadshill. But some readers of the play must have been puzzled a little by the sorry Knight's ejaculation-- "On, bacons, on!"