which ploughs and harrows and other farm implements are made.

Along the low river mouths are marshes, and high banks have been raised to keep the river waters in. The north-west corner, also, between Cambridge and Norfolk, is part of the fen country, a district of marshes, peat fens, and stretches of open heath upon which sheep find a living. There is another marshy corner in the north-east, to the east of Waveney river, where 66 Green grow the rushes, O," upon "broads" like those of Norfolk.

Heather wastes with sheep feeding on them, and marshes, with cattle dotted about in the deep green pastures, and low sands running far inland; these are the kinds of land to be found lying along the low coast of Suffolk, which seems to be gradually sinking into the sea.

Indeed, at many points of the coast where the sea is now deep enough at low water to carry the largest ships, harvests were reaped and villages were standing not so very long ago. Dunwich is now a little village with not more than twenty houses; it stands on rather high ground, and all about it is waste and desolate. A thousand years ago, Dunwich was a rich and great city, with a bishop and twelve churches; and there was a large wood between it and the shore. But the sea made its way in, and carried off Dunwich city bit by bit; a monastery, churches, four hundred houses, were swept off at once in the reign of Edward III. The people at last fled from the sea, and made their homes in the present village of Dunwich.

Lowestoft, close by which is the Ness, the most eastern point in England, and Southwold, Felixstow, and Aldborough are pleasant bathing places on this east coast; they are also fishing towns and sea-ports.

THE SUFFOLK MARTYRS.

183

II.

THE SUFFOLK MARTYRS.

THE North folk (Norfolk), and the South folk (Suffolk), made up the Saxon kingdom of East Anglia, and this kingdom was under the rule of the brave and pious King Edmund. Lodbrog, the Dane, had found his way into Suffolk, and had been basely slain. False news came to Hubba and Hungnar, the sons of Lodbrog, that Edmund the king had killed their father. So the Danish brothers got ships and men, and their twin sisters wove them a standard with a raven upon it, a dark standard which was to wave over many a bloody battle-field. And they came, the first of the long stream of Danes, kings, and jarls (earls), and fighting men, which for three hundred years poured down upon the shores of unhappy England.

At Hoxne, on the banks of the Waveney, the brothers met King Edmund; the Danes numbered more than the Saxons, and the king "fought fiercely and manfully against the army. But because the merciful God foreknew that he was to arrive at the crown of martyrdom, he there fell gloriously." He was made captive, fettered, and barbarously beaten. Then the Danes said he should live if he would renounce Christ; but the king refused to receive his life as the price of dishonour to his Lord. So they bound him to a tree, and shot at him with arrows till he died; and then the Danish brothers struck off his head and threw it into a thicket.

The body of the martyr was carried to a town called Badrichesworth, and there buried; wherefore this town came to be called Bury St. Edmund's. Many years

after, Canute, himself a Dane, raised a great abbey there, one of the most splendid in the land. In all the country-side the death of King Edmund was kept in mind, and pictures might be seen in many church windows of how he was bound to a tree and shot to death with arrows.

In the early days of the Reformation, Hadleigh had a good and gentle vicar, named Rowland Taylor, who taught his people the truth as he found it in the Bible, and would not allow in the parish church the services of the Church of Rome. Now, Queen Mary was not only a zealous Roman Catholic herself, but she meant that all the people of England should be subject to the Pope. She set herself to root out the Protestant faith by burning all who held it.

Good Dr. Taylor was one of the first to suffer; he was held for two years in the King's Bench Prison, and then, seeing that he would not recant, was sent home to Hadleigh to be burnt at the stake.

It was very dark, and they led him without lights to an inn near Aldgate. "His wife watched all night in St. Botolph's Church porch, beside Aldgate, having with her two children.

"Now when the sheriff and his company came against St. Botolph's Church, Elizabeth cried, saying, 'O my dear father; mother, mother, here is my father led away.' Then cried his wife, Rowland, Rowland, where art thou?' for it was a very dark morning that the one could not see the other.

"Dr. Taylor answered, 'Dear wife, I am here,' and stayed. Then came she to him, and he took his daughter Mary in his arms; and he, and his wife, and Elizabeth kneeled down and said the Lord's Prayer.

At which sight the sheriff wept apace, and so did divers others of the company.

"Then he took farewell of his wife and children; his wife saying, 'God be with thee, dear Rowland; I will, with God's grace, meet thee at Hadleigh.'

"All the way, Dr. Taylor was merry and cheerful as one going to a most pleasant banquet or bridal.

"The streets of Hadleigh were beset on both sides with men and women of the town and country who waited to see him; whom, when they beheld so led to death, with weeping eyes and lamentable voices they cried, 'Ah, good Lord! there goeth our good shepherd from us, that so faithfully hath taught us, so fatherly hath cared for us, and so godly hath governed us! Oh! merciful God, strengthen him, and comfort him.""

Arrived at the spot, "when he had prayed, he went to the stake and kissed it, and set himself into a pitch barrel which they had set for him to stand on, and so he stood with his back upright against the stake, with his hands folded together and his eyes towards heaven, and so let himself be burned." *

Map Questions.

1. What two rivers bound Suffolk on the north? In what direction does the Waveney flow? Name three towns on its banks. The town and cape at its mouth. The watering-place at the mouth of the Blythe. The village to the south of it.

2. What river forms part of the southern boundary? Name the estuary on which Ipswich stands.

3. Name three considerable towns in the west of Suffolk. What is the character of this county? Name the eastern counties of England.

* Fox's 'Book of Martyrs.'

BERKSHIRE.

I.

THE VALE OF WHITE HORSE.

"Most of you have probably travelled down the Great Western Railway as far as Swindon. Those of you who did so with their eyes open have been aware, soon after leaving the Didcot Station, of a fine range of chalk hills running parallel with the railway on the left-hand side as you go down, and distant some two or three miles, more or less, from the line. The highest point in the range is the White Horse Hill, which you come in front of just before you stop at the Shrivenham Station. The Great Western now runs right through it, and White Horse Vale is a land of large rich pastures, bounded by ox-fences, and covered with fine hedge-row timber. The villages are straggling, queer, old-fashioned places, the houses being dropped down, without the least regularity, in nooks and outof-the-way corners, by the sides of shadowy lanes and footpaths, each with its patch of garden.

"I pity people who weren't born in a vale. I don't mean a flat country, but a vale: that is a flat country bounded by hills. The having your hill always in view if you choose to turn towards him, that is the essence of a vale.

"And then, what a hill is the White Horse Hill! There it stands right up above all the rest, 900 feet above the sea, and the boldest, bravest shape for a chalk