TH

CHAPTER IX.

EDWARD III. AND RICHARD II.

HE earldom of Norfolk, which had passed through the Bigod family, was granted in 1313 to Thomas Brotherton, a son of Edward I. by his second wife, Margaret of France. The Suffolk jurisdiction of the earldom died out with him, or, rather, predeceased him by three years; for Robert de Ufford was created Earl of Suffolk in 1335, whereas in 1338 the abbey of Bury St. Edmund's became the resting-place of Brotherton, whose arms, England, with a label of three points for difference, may be seen on the tower of Holy Trinity Church, Bungay, and elsewhere. He was not at his best estate a strong character, failing with his brother, the Earl of Kent, at a critical moment in a scheme for the overthrow of the notorious Mortimer. He 'went with the century,' so that his weakness was not senile. This snipping away of his power before his death, and placing it in the hands of Robert de Ufford, was no doubt a great advantage to Suffolk, in addition to the autonomy conferred upon it.

The existing traces of the fourteenth century, ecclesiastical, political, domestic, commercial, indicate a period of great activity and general prosperity, retarded indeed by the two great pestilences which occurred, the first just before the half-century, the second about thirteen years later. After a partial recovery from these visitations there was a general social upset, in which socialism came

to the front and subsequently, after its wont, fell to the rear. In these ups and downs, as well as in the religious difficulties of the time, Suffolk bore its share.

Edward III. was married to Philippa of Hainault when he was a mere boy, a year before his accession revealed those high qualities which budded early and decayed before the usual time. Her people for some time had been carrying on frequent peaceful invasions of England, introducing their improvements in weaving, but in 1336 they entered the country in great force. Whether the quality of the wool tempted them, or trouble at home from over-population drove them forth, they came in battalions, and it was necessary to keep them in work. Hitherto England had produced more wool than it wanted. Forests had been felled, and much timber cut down in particular over the heavy lands of Suffolk, letting in air and sunlight, which boons, with the clearance of undergrowth and scrub, in time gave many acres of fair pasture; and sheep do well on the better qualities of heathland, so that the production of Suffolk in this respect must have been large. No doubt the population was large too, many believing that the eastern counties have not yet recovered the ground lost at the Black Death. Certainly the power of getting the wool transferred from the backs of sheep to those of human beings was far below the production of the raw material. The manufacture had drifted across the sea. The time had now come to change all this. The Fleming had been encouraged to settle, the Englishman was beginning to learn his craft, and the wool must not go out of the country. Legislation came in 1337. The 'vent of wool,' as Baker calls it, was by statute confined to the realm, to the no small annoyance of landowners who found themselves uncomfortably in the power of English woolstaplers, though there must have been consolation in rents for weavers' cottages and the rise in the price of much of the produce of the soil.

Two royal deaths, those of Charles IV. of France and

Robert Bruce of Scotland, in 1328, threw all Western Europe soon afterwards into confusion. At first the antiEnglish party prevailed, Edward III. doing homage to Philip of Valois for his French possessions, and David II. succeeding his father. But the calm was delusive. Edward Baliol's sufferings, claims, successes, cessions, defeats, kept the North of England and Scotland in constant turmoil, and the help accorded by the French to David Bruce irritated the English monarch into the assumption of the title from which he had retired. Having obtained supplies from the Parliament in the spring of 1340, he made the Orwell estuary a rendezvous for his fleet, and the midsummer weather saw those fair waters all alive with sail. His ships were under way on June 22, and two days afterwards they came across their French foes at Sluys, on the Belgian coast. It seems to have been a hot day, but probably nowhere hotter than at the scene of a naval engagement, the greatest and most desperate which the narrow seas had ever witnessed. The French were 400 sail, the English 300. From eight in the morning till seven at night the conflict raged, when the French, to avoid the cold steel, leaped into the sea, abandoning their ships, of which only thirty escaped. By commanding in person, Edward reserved for himself the chief laurels; but among his vice-admirals was Sir John de Norwich, supposed, from a similarity in armorial bearings, to be connected with the house of Bigod. His services must have been great if they are to be measured by their recompense. Not the most important item was the permission to crenellate his mansion at Mettingham, and the great gateway still remains to testify to the prowess of a vice-admiral on the coast of Flanders.

With Cressy we have little to do so far as records go, but the awful visitation of the Black Death, which followed in three years, has left a mark on the county not to be obliterated. Originating in China, after those volcanic throes which are known to precede such manifestations of the death-dealing powers which lurk in the

elements, it spread through Asia into Egypt, and thence leaped from point to point among the great cities of Europe. Coincident with its progress came the furious storms of 1347, the general failure of the crops, misery, and starvation. Then in January, 1348, close on each other, came a seismic crash in Italy and the outbreak of the Black Death at Avignon, with its horrible accompaniments of carbuncles, delirium, inflammation of the lungs, and blood-vomiting. Seven hundred years had elapsed since the Destroying Angel had given forth a like blast from his trumpet. It was to recur in not so fierce a form fourteen years afterwards, and a faint echo has been felt time after time down to our own days; but 1348 and 1349 are years by themselves in the later ages. The 'deadly pestilence,' as the letter of Edward III. to his Lord Treasurer, Bishop Edington of Winchester, calls it, had broken out in Westminster before 1348 was out, and a royal proclamation on March 18, 1349, speaks of its serious increase there as well as in London and elsewhere. About this time it appeared in Suffolk. Dr. Jessopp, in the Nineteenth Century,1 has told the story of one parish in these graphic words:

'In the Valley of the Stour, a mile or two from Sudbury, where the stream serves as the boundary between Suffolk and Essex, the ancestors of Lord Walsingham had two manors in the township of Little Cornard-the one was called Caxtons, the other was the manor of Cornard Parva. At this latter manor a court was held on March 31; the number of tenants of the manor can at no time have exceeded fifty, yet at this court six women and three men are registered as having died since the last court was held, two months before. This is the earliest instance I have yet met with of the appearance of the plague among us, and as it is the earliest, so does it appear to have been one of the most frightful visitations from which any town or village in Suffolk or Norfolk suffered during the time the pestilence lasted. On May I another court was held: 1 February, 1884.

fifteen more deaths are recorded-thirteen men and two women. Seven of them without heirs. On November 3, apparently when the panic abated, again the court met. In the six months that had passed thirty-six more deaths had occurred, and thirteen more households had been left without a living soul to represent them. In this little community, in six months' time, twenty-one families had been absolutely obliterated-men, women, and children— and of the rest it is difficult to see how there can have been a single house in which there was not one dead. Meanwhile, some time in September, the parson of the parish had fallen a victim to the scourge, and on October 2 another was instituted in his room. Who reaped the harvest? The tithe sheaf too-how was it garnered in the barn? And the poor kine at milking time? Hush! Let us pass on.'

The Bishop of Norwich at this time was the well-known William Bateman, founder of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. The eight crescents which flash out on the Cam when the Hall' boat is gliding over those waters, calm but not clear, are from the arms of this prelate. He was rather a politician and a jurist than a theologian, and, having served much at Avignon, was probably looking forward to a cardinal's hat. State business took him thither after the Black Death had run its course in France, and just before its outbreak in East Anglia. It must have been with the most acute distress that he heard of the devastation of his diocese. He was a native of Norwich, where his father was a citizen of high repute, and his eldest brother, Sir Bartholomew Bateman, among many other possessions, owned the manors of Gillingham and Flixton, hard by the South Elmham palace, the Bishop's favourite residence. He seems to have lost no time in returning to his flock, probably posting across from Avignon to some north-east port, by an ancient and excellent road, and then sailing direct to Yarmouth, where he landed about June 10, to learn, among other sad events, of the death of his brother at Gillingham. The