The White Friars, or Carmelites, who took their name from an aggregation of hermits on Mount Carmel in the second Crusade, were never a power in England. They had but one convent in Suffolk, on a site in the parishes of St. Nicholas and St. Lawrence in Ipswich, of which a part was taken in after-days for a county gaol, the name being yet preserved in Gaol Lane. Allusion has been made to the Austin Friars as distinguished from the Austin Canons. Clare is their earliest foundation, and Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, is claimed as their founder, in the middle of the thirteenth century. Weever quotes a monument to the memory of his widow Maud : 'Her lord and she with an holy entente, As compared with others, much of the building remains, and there used to be communication between the castle and the friary by a bridge over the moat. Of the Orford friary no detail can be given but the date, circa 1294, and the names of a few benefactors. Though the abode of these Hermit Friars at Gorleston has disappeared, it must have been a place of great importance in its day. The site was to the west of the high road near the junction of Gorleston and Southtown, where terra firma emerges from the marsh. Here was a church 100 feet long and 24 feet wide, with a fine tower which formed a sea-mark, and existed in a ruined condition till 1813, when the sole remaining wall fell in an easterly gale. The engraving in Palmer's Perlustration of Great Yarmouth," shows that it was of the Perpendicular period. A small doorway of the same style, very late, may also be seen in a house hard by, the sole material relic of what was once a convent of the highest esteem ; for here were interred three Earls of Suffolk (one 1 III. 324. Ufford and two De la Poles), Sir Robert Bacon, Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, Roger Fitz-Osbert of Somerleyton, and many others of distinction. Three cartloads of encaustic tiles with armorial bearings, taken from these ruins, are said to have been broken up to mend the roads in 1800, and now and then one has been dredged from the bottom of the river.1 A cell to this priory existed in Yarmouth, the remains whereof may be seen at the back of the Star Hotel. Last in this long list of mendicants come the Crutched Friars, who derived their name from the cross at the head of their walking-staff. They were rare in England, and we have no trace of them in Norfolk. In London their house, the mother-house of the Order, was near the Tower, where the name is not extinct. Great Welnetham, founded before 1273, their sole habitation in Suffolk, was at once subordinate to this, and had a cell at Bergham in Linton, in the county of Cambridge. It is remarkable that their principles admitted of landed possessions. Altogether they had, besides houses, not less than 350 acres in Welnetham, Cockfield, Linton, Waldingfield, and Acton, the last the gift of Sir Robert Bures, whose fine brass remains in that church. From the friars to the Jews is nearly as abrupt a transition as from the fish to the friars at the beginning of this chapter; but the time has come for some notice of the Chosen Race in Suffolk. Considering their constant migrations and undoubted presence in all the great cities of the Roman world, there seems no reason to doubt the early appearance of the Jews on English soil, though direct evidence is not forthcoming. Mention is made of them in the Canonical Excerptions by Egbert, Archbishop of York, a.d. 740. We cannot rely on the Semitic extraction of Ithamar, Bishop of Rochester, A.D. 644-656, or afterwards on such names as Manasses de Gratia, Earl of Guisnes, the founder of the nunnery at Redlingfield. The Scripture 1 Palmer, 'Perlustration of Great Yarmouth,' iii. 326-328. narrative was sufficiently known for the names of Old Testament seers and monarchs to become household words,' and to be commonly used as Christian names. The Norman Conquest would not be likely to work the Jews any harm. Indeed, to William Rufus all religions were much on a level, and that a very low one. Moyses' Hall at Bury St. Edmunds is regarded as a Jewish synagogue of the time of Henry I. The words of Mr. Hudson Turner, in his Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages,' describe it thus: 'In plan the building is nearly square, measuring in round numbers about 50 feet either way. The groundfloor is vaulted and divided into three alleys, by ranges of three arches of stone, springing from either round or square pillars, having Norman capital bases. The archribs of the western alley are semicircular; in the others they are Early Pointed. The western division differs from the others, too, in being of greater width, the space between pillar and pillar being about 16 feet, while in the others it is less than 11 feet. These differences in form and size, coupled with the fact that the western range has been in comparatively modern times dissevered from the others, and made to form part of the adjoining inn, have led some to suppose that they must have originally belonged to distinct, though conjoined, tenements; but this notion was satisfactorily set aside a few years since by the discovery of the original staircase to the upper floor, in the first arch between the western and middle alleys, with its perfect well, lighted by two small apertures, one pointed and the other square, and having a doorway in each alley. On the west side the vaulting was within the memory of persons still living 8 feet deeper than at present, and the descent was by a small staircase from the present staircase. It appears originally to have had no windows on the ground-floor. 'On the upper stage, over the eastern vaultings, are two good Transition Norman windows, each of two lights, square-headed and plain, under a round arch, with mould ing and shafts in the jambs, having capitals of almost Early English character. It is a good example of the external and internal details of windows of this date. 'It will be observed that internally the masonry is not carried up all the way to the sill of the window; by this arrangement a bench of stone is formed on each side of it. The other part of the house has a Perpendicular window, which may have replaced a Norman one. 'The sculpture under this window, representing the wolf guarding the crowned head of St. Edmund, is worthy of notice. The upper part has been too much altered to enable us to make out exactly what it originally was; it may have been a tower, of which the upper stage is destroyed, or it may have contained a doorway. 'The fireplace is in the wall of partition on the first floor, and not towards the street, as in the Jews' house at Lincoln; but this fireplace is not part of the original work, though it probably replaced an older one. principal entrance to the house would appear to have been on the east side.' The We have seen in the previous chapter to what extent the Bury Benedictines borrowed from the Jews. The interest was outrageous, of course; but the security was bad. The lenders might well have used the words which Sir Walter Scott puts into the mouth of Isaac the Jew :1 'I pray of your reverence to remember that I force my moneys upon no one. But when churchman and layman, prince and prior, knight and priest, come knocking to Isaac's door, they borrow not his shekels with these uncivil terms. It is then, “ Friend Isaac, will you pleasure us in this matter, and day shall be truly kept, so God sa' me?" and "Kind Isaac, if ever you served man, show yourself a friend in his need." And when the day comes, and I ask my own, then what hear I, but "damned Jew," and "The curse of Egypt on your tribe!" and all that may 1'Ivanhoe,' chap. xxxiv. : stir up the rude and uncivil populace against poor strangers?' Bury St. Edmunds took a share in a general assault made on the children of Israel in 1190, John Taxster mentioning the place in connection with the massacres at Norwich and at Stamford Fair, and their slaughter of one. another at York, when England 'Learn'd by proof, in one wild hour, how much the wretched dare.' Many Jews were here killed on March 18, which was Palm Sunday, says Taxster, writing in the reign of Edward I., and the rest were banished for ever, by the procuration of Abbot Sampson. They had thriven under no loving rule, as my old friend the author of the Perlustration of Great Yarmouth' used to say, whereas in an open town like Yarmouth they could not earn a living. Perhaps they found those burgesses as hard as Yorkshiremen, one of whom is said to be a match for six Jews. It is impossible to prevent the Burgh of St. Edmund from usurping a very large space in this part of the county history. The character of King John needs no comment, and the part played by Archbishop Langton will never be forgotten. The judicial restlessness which was the outcome of a wicked conscience at one time drove John up and down England, after the manner of gadfly-stricken Io. From Windsor to Tollard Royal in Cranborne Chase, back to Windsor, to York, north, south, east, west, anywhere, and all in vain, to be quit of the ghastly presence of Arthur-this was the manner of his torment. In A.D. 1214 his ill-devised military operations on the Continent, resulting in defeat and disgrace, undid what credit he had obtained from the revocation of the Interdict and the Excommunication. In the previous year, at a great assembly at St. Paul's, Langton had produced a charter of Henry I., the observance of which would have had the effect of depriving the |