by Silverpen [Eliza Meteyard].
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William & Mary Howitt) vol.2 #33 (14 Aug 1847).
Part the Second.
The sands hereabouts are exceedingly dangerous. Some of them are doubtless of very ancient elevation. The Hasborough sand, north of Yarmouth, shows its former elevation above the level of the ocean by the number of the grinders of elephants found there during the last century. Yet with this strong tidal influence in the amassment of vast deposits of sand, the encroachment of the sea is visible along the full extent of the coast. Years before geology had become a science, and men merely wondered and surmised where they now investigate and ratiocinate, many of the then scientific conjectured that Britain had not always been insular, but had formed a north-western portion of Europe. Verstegan, who published his "Restitution of Decayed Intelligence," in Holland, at about the close of the sixteenth century, mentions the fact as one of certainty; as if some light of modern geological science had already shone upon studies of the learned. An eminent geologist and antiquarian, the late Mr. Woodward, was of opinion, that in an early geological age Britain was joined to the continent, and that in the part now covered by the German Ocean, lying between Norfolk and Holland, there existed extensive fresh water lakes surrounded by vast forests, the trunks of whose trees are to this day found embedded in the alluvial soil, particularly on the sea-coast about Brancaster; and that these forests were inhabited by herds of deer and oxen is apparent from the bones and horns found in their stratum. "These remains," he further says, in his Synoptical Table of British Organic Remains, "of the submarine forests of our eastern coast are found in the greatest perfection on the beach at Palling in Norfolk; these are bouldered fragments strongly impregnated with the oxyde of iron, the pores and fibres remaining perfect. That this county is situated on the great chalk formation which is the substratum of all Europe is evident, whilst we can further see that this extensive marine deposit, emerging from the waters of the ocean, became inhabited by herds of elephants, together with the mastadon, hippopotamus, and other tenants of the forest. It seems this chalk was subsequently disrupted, separating this country from the continent, at the same time forming the valleys of East Norfolk and the drainage of the county. From the number of grinders of elephants found on the oyster bed of Hasborough, we are warranted in concluding that upwards of five hundred animals were deposited in that limited space. This bank was discovered in 1820, and during the first twelve months many hundred specimen of the molar teeth of elephants were destroyed by the fishermen, who were amused by breaking them; their wonder being excited by the grinders separating into laminæ. Off the Knole sand was dredged up, some years ago, the finest tusk of an elephant that this country has produced; it measured nine feet and a half along its curvature, and weighed ninety-seven pounds."
It was a lovely morning, and the sea unusually calm for a coast against which, even in slight gales, the ocean beats with iron waves. Clearing the passage between the Holm and Barnard Sands, we passed the spot of one of Van Tromp's disastrous defeats during the Civil Wars. The villages that stand at intervals along the low cliffs of Suffolk were once situated far inland. One that, some centuries ago, possessed a weekly market, contains now only two houses, and the whole parish of but an acre or so of land. The village of Cove Ales, pointed out by the pilot, was once a considerable fishing town, possessing a most magnificent church, the ruins of which yet attest its former grandeur. It was the birthplace of John Bale, the celebrated Carmelite friar, and author, amongst other works, of "Illustres Majoris Britanniæ." By mid-day we lay to off Dunwich; our jolly-boat, as it went in to shore, sweeping over the foundations of the engulphed city. At this place the encroachments of the sea are seen in their wonderful extent; for now a mean village of about forty houses, and a few ruins, are all that is spared of a royal city—the city of Saxon kings and prelates, and the early bishops' see of Angles, possessing a mint and royal chace. The latter is now entirely covered by the ocean, though remnants of its gigantic oaks are thrown upon shore after a storm. It extended about seven miles out into the present sea; church after church has been swept away, and the graveyards tumbling downwards and exposing the relics of the dead. About 1677 the sea reached the market-place, suddenly overwhelming that and the great church, since which time the engulplment has gone on piecemeal. The few remaining houses stand upon a cliff of some height, though of so friable and loose a soil as to be pervious to land springs, and no protection against the actions of the tides. Land springs are the great destroying agent of these eastern shores; week-by week the cliffs round Cromer in Norfolk are undermined and swept away; and it is not improbable that in another seventy years, or less, the great eastern valleys of Norfolk will be once more filled by the ocean tides. It is almost a matter of absolute certainty, unless art can raise some barrier of defence.
After we had rambled about the ruins of Dunwich, and seen the relics of the last of its splendid churches, we returned on board to dinner, after which the anchor was heaved, and the sails set to the north. We passed some few cobles going out to the fishing stations. They are chiefly manned by a half-agricultural population, who after the fishing season draw their boats on shore, and turn to the business of the spade or plough. In a great agricultural county like Norfolk, the times of wheat sowing and marsh drainage are those that require the full strength of the population. Till the Reformation the fisheries of Britain gave employment to a great portion of its people, and looking at the decayed villages and towns along its whole extent of sea-coast, one would be led to believe in a decrease of population. But the staple food of a Catholic people was fish; to procure this in sufficient quantities necessarily employed large bodies of men, who by reason of their importance were bound together, by peculiar privileges, into guilds and corporate bodies. Scarcely a monastery or abbey but had its fishing-house upon the nearest coast; or else traded largely with these privileged and, often, wealthy companies.
We passed Lowestoft, with its pretty hanging gardens on the ness towards the sea; next Yarmouth, and just as the moon had risen to its full the anchor was cast off Caister beech. The coast here is as unbroken as the opposite shores of Holland. On the side nearest the sea it is covered with little heaving patches of furze; whilst inland it offers a great extent of marshes, that in winter is mostly overflowed. Though there was little of the picturesque in sand banks, and scanty vegetation,—for even the few trees spread their branches inland,—we landed upon Caister beach not only with curiosity, but interest. This Caister (Castrum), as its name bespeaks, was a Roman station, and supposed summer camp to that of Burgh on the opposite shore of this northern branch of the estuary of the Gariensis. It was probably merely an earthwork (Æstiva), as no remains of walls are on record, though Roman implements and urns have been found at different periods. But Caister owes its memorable associations to Sir John Fastolf, the owner and builder of its castle, and the prototype from whence Shakspeare is said to have drawn his famous Sir John. Some of the early editors of Shakspeare affirm that the original name was Oldcastle, but changed into Falstaff at the suggestion of Queen Elizabeth. As far as books may be evidence, there seem few points of similarity between the original and copy; yet possibly minute peculiarities in the character of the real Sir John may have been matter of verbal tradition in the time of Shakspeare, though lost to the next age. The real Sir John fought at Agincourt with memorable bravery, was seneschal of Normandy under the Duke of Bedford, and led the celebrated battle of the "Herrings;" still he did fly from the field of Pataie amidst the panic of the whole English army in their superstitious dread of the supposed spiritual prowess of Joan of Arc. In this, at least, was some foundation for the poet's witty satire in the fourth act of Henry the Sixth, and even the matter of the sack may not have been wholly imaginary, even when allowance is made for an author's exaggeration.
For his share in the disasters of this battle, Fastolf was deprived of the garter; but his character for courage and ability was so well established that it was soon restored, and he was preferred to various posts of honour and command. After governing Normandy for about four years, he made his final return home in about 1440, when he was near sixty years of age, and spent the remainder of his life at this castle, which it had been his pride to erect and adorn.
We walked onward to the ruins which stand about a mile and a quarter from the sea, on a slight elevation of soil. In its original state it was a building of much magnificence, with two courts and an inner and an outer moat; but more than four hundred years had passed since its erection, and for full half that time it had not only been allowed to fall into gradual decay, but to afford building materials for the hall and cottage. A long list of its apartments is preserved in Sir John's Inventory in the 21st volume of the Archeologia, but we now looked in vain for any vestiges of them. A tower of considerable height was still partially entire, and the various floors into which it was divided were yet to be distinguished by the intersecting beams; an ancient flagstaff mouldered in the winds, though the banner of Agincourt or the bearings of the Fastolfs no longer waved upon its summit. The inner moat was still entire; but all traces of pleasaunce or garden were utterly gone.
Sir John died immensely rich, and the extraordinary inventory of his moveable wealth is, as I have said, preserved. In it are mentioned "consecrated candell-stikkes allegilt," a pix and cross, a ewer and chalice, "likewise allegilt." Besides the plate in his house in Bermondsey and the Abbey of St. Bennet's at Holme, this at Caister alone, without mentioning gold plate, weighed 13,400 ounces. Amongst the articles was a saltcellar "like a Bastell (Bastile) allegilt with rosys," weighing seventy-seven ounces; a spice plate "welle gilt," of one hundred and ten ounces, a flagon weighing three hundred and sixty-eight ounces, which when filled according to the measure of Sir John's hospitality, might have made a draught for one of those Scandinavian heroes supposed to quaff mead in the Valhalla of the gods. There were a hundred and eleven other drinking vessels of silver; two hundred and fifty-one silver dishes and platters; and more curious than all, a gigantic toasting fork of silver thus noted, "Item, 1 Roste Iren with 7 staves, and 1 foldyng stele of silver weing" seventy-three ounces. Next is an account of the wardrobe. Of its "canvass, fyne linen, and clothis of divers sortes." "It would appear," says Mr. Amyot, "from the abundance of the material given under this head, that it was the practice in houses remote from themetropolis, to hoard up large stores of such articles in readiness for use." The furniture of all classes is next described in the order of the respective rooms in which it was arranged. In the steward's room I find "three grete brasse pottys of Frenche fascion," and other articles. It is evident that French fashions and many of the luxuries which are now prevalent, were then equally prized. Not only are feather beds found in most of the chambers, even down to the porter's, but pillows of down and lavender appear in all the principal rooms, except that occupied by Sir John. The old warrior himself, however, did not disdain to repose on a feather bed covered with blankets of fustian, and his cook slept under a coverlet of "roses and blood hounds' heads." There is, however, an entire absence of books, except three religious missals, and a Martyrology in the chapel. This is the more strange as Sir John had for his friend and secretary William of Worcester, whose studies he encouraged, and who is known to have searched for Norman and French chronicles with all the passion of a modern bibliomaniac. Though printing was not introduced into England till some few years later, one might have expected to find, if not the Roman classics, at least, manuscripts of the popular English poetry of the day, as that of Chaucer and Gower; but as we have notice of two books, in the Paston Letters, given by Sir John to his secretary, there is some probability that there were others, though removed from Caister at the death of Sir John and before the taking of the inventory. Though Fastolf was twice married, he died childless in 1459, and his great wealth caused a lengthened litigation amongst the parties claiming heirship. He was a great benefactor to both universities, particularly to Magdalen College, Oxford, to which, amongst other wealth, he left the "Boar's Head" in Southwark. It was the deep winter season when Sir John died, and he was buried in the Abbey of St. Bennet's in the Holm, fifteen miles from this manor of Caister. A narrow causeway was the only road across the flooded and desolate marshes that lay between his old house and his new. It must have been a strange sight to see that lengthened train of priests, kinsmen, soldiers, and retainers, bending to the keen ocean blast and bearing on the body of a hero of Agincourt, not to be immortalized by his valour or good deeds, but by the satire of a great poet yet unborn, and in one of the most delightful and witty characters of the comic stage.
The pig-sties, cart-sheds, and dove-cotes of a modern farm, now nestle in the wide fire-places and chapel windows. At this hour they were partly hidden by the deep shadows of the walls; and where the illusive beauty of the moonlight fell, there age and mouldering decay seemed stripped of half its desolation. From the summit of the old avenue we gave one last look, and bidding farewell to my friend, whose jolly-boat waited for him on the shore, I hastened to my shelter for that night at an homestead in the marshes of the Bure.
My solitary way was long, so that it was late before I arrived; but there awaited the hospitable welcome of a substantial supper that soon smoked on pewter as bright as silver. The kitchen in which my host received me—for the place was too primitive to have a parlour—formed the very beau-ideal of such ancient halls and butteries as we see in prints representing the granges of the middle ages. Its vast old stone fire-place, its rude carved oaken settles on either side, its timber roof, its flagged, yet exquisitely clean floor, its piles of pewter ranged on skeleton-dressers, its high backed chairs three centuries old, were all in keeping. My host, though old, was exceedingly intelligent, and had adopted most of the improvements in agriculture. "Look out," he said, "from your window in the morning, and see my herd of two hundred Galloways, up to their knees in grass and clover, and remember that the whole was a swamp thirty years ago, producing only a few boat-loads of reeds for thatching, or litter, and that will show you what drainage and top dressing can do."
Of my chamber of that night I might have said with Tennyson,
"Dear room, the apple of my sight,
There is no room so exquisite;"
for it had white walls, white bed, white chairs, white floor, with a great jar of lavender on the window-sill, with the window itself half imbedded in a luxuriant vine, through which came resolutely in the next morning the gladness of as bright a sun as ever shone on earth. It was yet early when my host tapped at my door, and after a ramble with him amidst his favourite herd, we passed into the garden full of old country flowers and herbs, and, more delightful still, into his old monkish apple orchard, the mossed trees bending under their load of beefin apples, which are considered such a luxury when dried with care. This is an apple that appears peculiar to the light sandy soil of Norfolk, though of that kind now becoming very rare, yet still found in the vicinity of conventual buildings. It is evidently a relic of the "monks' apples," and though elsewhere the shrivelled pip shows signs of degeneracy, the dark red and green of this peculiar autumn apple is still hereabouts the pride of many a homestead orchard. After breakfast and the despatch of a farm labourer to the boat with a store of good things, my host proposed to accompany me, and led the way, through the feathery alders that fenced in the homestead, to the marsh. We were often knee deep in the grass, the whole marsh stretching before us like a green sea, and the wild convolvulus garlanding the moist banks and bending with its weight of blossom. At last the white sails of the cutter came in sight, as they feathered up the tall spars against the blue skies. After good bye with my host we crept a few miles lazily up the Bure that sunny afternoon, the south wind lightly filling the sails, and lengthening out the ripple at the bows. Except a passing wherry or a herdsman on the marsh, nothing disturbed the intense stillness of the scene; and the beautiful champaign land that shuts in this valley seemed to close around and hide me from the living world. We lay to before sunset, to pitch the tent upon the green shore of a little bight partly fenced in with reeds. Whilst Jemmy prepared the evening meal, and stewed a fowl with a few of the mushrooms that in this place absolutely whitened the more elevated banks of the river, I baited the night lines for eel fishing. There are vast quantities of fish in these deep streams; and during the middle ages many mills and marshland homesteads were held of the monasteries by the fee-rent of so many eels annually.
On the morrow about noon we reached the site of the celebrated abbey of St. Bennet's at Holm, the bishop of Norwich still holding his right as a spiritual lord in Parliament by the title of its mitred lord abbot. The only portion of the ruins now left is a part of the beautiful gateway now converted into a draining mill. Like Croyland it was fenced in by desolate marshes, crossed by causeways now nearly obliterated; and the walls, strongly fortified, dipped to the estuary and encircled the holy precincts of the island. I could just trace the probable boundary of the outer walls; but not one stone is left upon another of the chapel where finally rested Sir John Fastolf. There was food enough here for the most excursive imagination. This place populous in a desert; its trains of monks and soldiers, its embassies from kings and commons, its abbots lords of whole counties, its serfs and feoffs, its chapels and its shrine, its noble scriptorium, its world care and secular ambition, passed as a dream; and a wayfarer stood as humbly on the scattered ashes of the world's pomp and diligence, as once did those poor and persecuted Saxon Christians, who here on this "holy isle," already holy from Scandinavian myth, raised their humble sheiling where had fallen the blood from the altars of Thor and Odin.
In the afternoon the sails were set for Wroxham Broad. Our boat was brought to in a pretty cove, the anchor thrown over, the sails furled, the yards, that stretched their enormous shadows, lengthened out almost across the Broad by a ray of the setting sun, were hauled down and stowed away, and the fire lighted for the teakettle. Whilst we were at tea, several friends whose boats were on the Broad came to talk over the water frolic of the morrow. I was up so early next morning that, when I got outside, the Broad lay enveloped in a dense mist, so thick as to be quite impervious to sight, and hiding the twenty or thirty boats anchored upon the lake. Some rain had fallen, and the sails were drenched. Whilst Jemmy and the boy shook them out and placed things in order, I got into the jolly-boat and sculled to the end of the Broad into the river, and tying the boat to an alder jumped on shore. I climbed the heights of Hoveton and turned to look upon the Broad, river, and valley that lay beneath shrouded in mist. Not a sound of life stole up from below; not a breath of air stirred the foliage. There was a sublimity in the misty repose of nature which was heightened, rather than disturbed, by an occasional rook flitting across like some grey shade startled at the approach of dawn. Even as I looked the sun upsprung from the clouds, shooting its rays through the mist like arrows. The fleecy rack rolled over and over in enormous billows; then it waxed fainter, leaving for the instant little clouds, like islands floating amidst the trees; and as they vanished, Broad, river, valley, woods, glowed in the warm light spread across the azure of heaven. The sheet of water that lay before me was about two miles in length; gently curving like a stringed bow, one end as if beneath my feet, the other lost in mazy bights and woodland nooks. Hall, village, church-tower just peeping from the trees, and helping to lengthen out the shadows of leaf and branch, as they fell across the naked spars and shrouds of the a fleets of boats, cradled in the green nooks of the lake.
At eleven o'clock I returned from the village with some friends, and sculled on to the Broad. A south-east wind blew with delicious freshness, for the sun now glanced hot upon the water. The boats so still in the morning were rolling before the wind, some with their jibs hauled to windward, some keeling down to the impulse of the fresh gale, some bending round the green promontories, others yet moored with their crews busily employed in hoisting the tall sails. There were already wherries and one small steamer, the "Lady of the Yare," filled with holiday folks and connoisseurs of the coming chase. Our boat was in high order, and once on board, we scudded merrily towards a reed-house, built upon piling in the upper arc of the bow. Upon the outside balcony was now gathered the beauty and fashion of the county to witness this annual and most recherché water frolic of Norfolk. A gun was soon fired for the boats to prepare and take their stations, a second gun as a signal to place themselves in a line, and a third for the start. When the whole got under weigh they stood so close, that a casting net might have covered the tips of their yards. As the lake has a great and equable depth, stakes were placed in various angles, so as to insure its being traversed in every direction, as well as to show-all the points of a boat's speed, on a wind, close hauled, running free, or beating. The wind continued fair in the south-east, blowing across the Broad, so that the boats in the direction of the reed-house being to windward had to veer half round in order to reach the stake on the leeward. The confusion amongst the boats was apparent in the struggle which should get round the stake first, and lead the way clear to the next. The foreyard of a lateen showed first round, with the bow-sprit of a cutter close upon her. The others followed. From the next stake the cutter led the way, kept in advance, and flung the ripple in broad foam from her bows so as to wash the lee quarters of the boats in the rear. Her mainsail, however, got lulled under the headlands, in the second circuit of the lake; and in the third heat, and after a severely contested race, even to the last fifty yards, a lateen rounded the last stake first, though the bowsprit of the cutter was on her weather beam, and instantly passed her—but too late. In a minute after the cup colour floated from the mast of the conqueror.
We had sat under the awning which protected us from the sun, enjoying the delicious air that rustled among the reeds of our little bay, and watching the contest with anxious faces. It was now between four and five o'clock. Suddenly every sail was lowered, and every bay resounded with the noisy mirth of parties addressing themselves to their baskets of provisions. Our own little bay might be taken as a sample of the rest. It was an indentation surrounded on three sides with reeds that grew up like a wall from the water here quite twelve feet deep. In the middle we lay at anchor with our yards lowered; directly astern, with her head-rope fastened to our stern, was a flat-bottomed shapeless affair of a boat used for navigating the dykes and bringing home the reed crops in this land of waters. This had now two or three boards nailed from gunwale to gunwale, on which sat the old ditcher and his family. He in the stern with a cup of ale, his wife sitting a little further away, cutting up a huge pie, and distributing it to various sized boys and girls. In the shade of the rushes was a four-oared gig, the rowers lazily smoking and passing round a rummer of wine. There was the music of knives and forks, though none of the feasters were visible, in the cabin of a small boat on the edge of the bay; and as all joy has probably a foil in some shape or another, here it was that of a solitary urchin, who, having played truant from a field of ripening corn, where he had been placed to frighten away crows, now sat in a little punt hungry and fearing to return. I hailed him, and turned him over to Jemmy for some food. We afterwards sailed down the Broad, and dined with the winner of the cup and some twenty of his friends under a tent. A dance on the sward by moonlight closed this happy day.
On the morrow not a boat swept these lonely waters. I was riverward seventy miles from home; by land seven. On that same evening I walked there to my sabbath eve's supper; my man and boy remaining with the boat till my return on Monday morning.
I have now given an account of one week on these lonely waters; but description can ill express the joyousness of spirit, the health of mind and body, the appreciation of the true, in opposition to the conventional, which has ever arisen from those simple, yet delightful, River Hours, Farewell.