wright, receiving in 1480 £5 6s. 8d. for bell-hanging at St. Stephen's, Walbrook.

Eleven bells in the county bear one of those ingenious devices by which the quasi-armiger sought to elude the Visiting Herald. The mullets and crescent

K

are upside down; the attenuated chevron and stout line of division for chief are only a sideways K, the first letter of his name. Whether this pulled through we know not, but we do know that Lord Mayor Keble put the mullets right, reduced the chief line, expanded and engrailed the chevron, and abolished the crescent. This shield, used by John Keble, the venerated author of the 'Christian Year,' will be familiar to Oxford men and others who may turn over these pages. There are plenty of Kebles now-in particular, one grand old man in Fressingfield.

Exhaustion, rather than repose, was the characteristic of the quarter of a century of Yorkist rule. The 'meek usurper' lay in the Tower till 1471, as it is generally thought, but plotting and counterplotting were constantly going on, and an outbreak might come at any time. Yet in the cessation of the din of arms the voices of litigants began to rise in a comparatively childish treble, and a complicated ecclesiastical case came before Master John Salot, Doctor in Canon Law and official of the Consistory Court of Bishop Lyhart in 1467, which is printed by Dr. Gowers in his paper on Mells Chapel, in the 'Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archæology and Natural History."

The traveller on the light railway from Halesworth to Southwold may observe, about two miles from the former station, a little ivy-grown ruin which tops a slight northward projection of the right bank of the Blyth valley. This is Mells Chapel. It is crumbling away, and a few pounds may preserve from utter destruction that which alike from position and history is well worthy of preservation. The site has already been mentioned as that of a 1 Vol. viii., pp. 334-379.

small fort to protect the ford over the Blyth, where Route IX. in Antonine's Itinerary crosses that river.1 Here is a small Early-Norman chapel, dedicated to St. Margaret, built, as it would seem, by some descendant of Edward Fitz-Hugh, who, like Christopher Sly, though without his error in name, claimed to have come over with Richard Conqueror.' It is not a Battle Roll name, nor does it occur in the Suffolk part of Domesday Book. However, his descendants were pleased to think this of themselves, and to grace their manor with this proprietary chapel. Wenhaston was, and is, the mother church, and Wenhaston was doubtless the Manor Paramount, and attempts to free Mells from its jurisdiction had been resisted. About the end of the thirteenth century the manor of Mells passed to Sir John de Norwich, ancestor of the Admiral who commanded the English fleet at the battle of Sluys. From his grandson, another John, it passed through one intermediate stage to Mettingham College, the posthumous foundation of the great Admiral, which seems to have supplied rectors or chaplains to serve the chapel regularly. Then came a collapse, and only in the summer, July 19 and 20, were the services held, those days being the eve and day of St. Margaret.

The Secular College and the Austin Priory were at variance about the tithes, no new subject of dispute. These were the usual three kinds-predial, arising from the soil; personal, arising from a man's trade; mixed, arising from animals nourished by the soil, including milk, cheese, etc. The official of the Court confirmed to Blythburgh two-thirds of the predial tithe, and to Mettingham the remaining third, with the exception of the wood and underwood, all of which went to Mettingham, with the tithe of the mill which stood on their ground. The allotment of the mixed tithes may well have been the subject of dispute later, as two-thirds were allotted to Blythburgh, and two-thirds to the Vicar of Wenhaston, the Blythburgh nominee. To him also, as representing 1 Page 33. 2 Page 103.

the mother church, the personal tithes were declared due. This arrangement having been solemnly made 'ad mutua pacis oscula' on the 6th day of May, 1467, it might have been hoped that peace hereafter would have reigned. But not even the Consistory Court at Norwich could take the part of the Israelite Abel-beth-Maachah, and make an end of the matter! One John Cowper, as we learn from a paper published by the Rev. T. S. Hill, Rector of Thorington, was resident in Mells at the time of the award. Like the Mettingham Seculars, he loved not Wenhaston and Blythburgh, and generally attended Halesworth Church, but paid tithes to Mettingham. Afterwards, by order of the Master of Mettingham College, he attended Bramfield Church on the four offering-days, the potaciones ecclesiasticæ, and paid the vicar of that parish five shillings a year, which the College allowed out of his tithe.

CHAPTER XII.

HENRY VIII. AND EDWARD VI.

UCH of opinion is akin to prophecy, and the

M opinions about the Reformation period are not

exempt from this condition. Facts remain unalterable save by the production of more facts, but what interpretation future ages may put on them is a hazardous speculation. Macaulay's New Zealander may be more than a dream. England's power may wither, and Rome remain as she is. Or, again, these days of historical study may bring forth fruit. Our indebtedness to Rome may receive just admission, and she herself may abandon the untenable points which have been taken up for her by her infatuated friends. It is even possible that she may recover her old sway, though such a result can hardly come about save with a tide of historical ignorance. In time to come unlooked-for issues may modify such estimates of the past as we cannot help making at the present time.

The great revival of learning has brought forth few more notable characters than Cardinal Wolsey, son of a substantial grazier and wool-stapler of Ipswich, born in 1471, the year of Barnet and Tewkesbury. He was studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, when Edward IV. died, and in the reign of Henry VII. he was employed in important diplomatic business, and preferred to the deanery of Lincoln. His rise to eminence under

Henry VIII., his sudden fall, and his sad death, belong rather to the general historian than to ourselves, who regard mainly the traces of his influence discernible still in his native county.

Of these traces, the best known is the decaying gateway of his projected college in the parish of St. Peter, Ipswich, purposed to be connected with 'Cardinal College,' Oxford, now Christ Church. Wolsey, with all his faults, was faithful to learning and to the Papacy. He saw clearly that the ignorance and self-indulgence prevalent among the secular clergy and in the smaller priories would, unchecked, bring about a general upset, coupled, perhaps, with a victory for the Lutheran heresy. Colleges of priests had proved themselves at Oxford and Cambridge the great lights of England, while even those in the country had shown their power to educate the mind and train the craftsman. What he planned was little beyond the scope of the Statute of Leicester in 1414, affecting the alien priories, while much more restricted in area. The difference lay in the machinery used, and it was for him a fatal difference, a Papal Bull instead of an Act of Parliament. Had there been no divorce suit pending, the procuring of the Bull of May 14, 1528, from Pope Clement VII. for the suppression of 'Romboro, Felixtow alias Fylstou, Bromehil1 prope Brandonfery, Bliborow et Montjoy,' would have effectually brought him under the Statute of Provisors. The houses to be suppressed were of the Benedictine rule, save Blythburgh and Mountjoy in Ipswich, of which the inmates were Austin Canons. A'l this while the great divorce business was trembling in the scales, and the French, who were in Henry's interest, were overrunning Italy. When Campeggio started for England, probably carrying this Bull with him, they were dangerously near Rome. The deadly Italian summer brought about a change. On August 21 De Lautrec, the French commander, died in the midst of his fever-stricken troops. Campeggio, who, 1 In Weeting, the only house in this list out of Suffolk.