In yon churchyards; or vainly fleeing fell

By foeman's dart or sword, and where they fell
Rotted unknown; their very bones are gone.
How vain for men to call the land their own!
They to the earth belong, not it to them;
Or rather both to Him Who both has made.

Mine eyes on Barking rest, so famed of yore
For holy lives by Saxon virgins led,
And holy deaths which spread a fragrant air

Of sanctity around, when in her grave
Blest Ethelburga from the cares of rule
Reposed. The walls her brother Erconwald

Had reared for her, burnt by the Danes and raised
Again, are gone; and through the ancient gate
We pass and sigh "The spoiler hath been here."
Then Stratford tells us of the restless Danes,
And how the King drained off the sluggish Lea;
And made this straighter course, to strand their ships:
For he, perchance, had read how Babylon

By her depleted stream forsaken fell.

Thus did King Alfred take the Northern fleet."+

Laindon Hill.

Arthur Young, who visited the whole of this neighbourhood in 1767, and certainly an impartial, if not an adverse, witness, from the then impracticable state of the roads leading him into constant difficulties, could not forbear expressing his delight when this prospect burst upon him, "I never," he says, "beheld anything equal to it in the West of England, that region of landscape. Nothing can exceed it, unless that which Hannibal exhibited to his disconsolate troops, when he bade them behold the glories of the Italian plains." "Essex," says Morant, "all things considered, may justly boast here of the grandest prospect in England."

SOCIAL CONDITION.

In estimating the social condition of a neighbourhood like ours, mainly agricultural, the land and farm labourers are the first consideration. The tenantfarmers are a thriving class at different rentals, averaging about 30s. per acre. The labourers are well paid at from 12s. to 15s. a week by the day, but earning very much more by piece-work, which is put in their way; and are generally as provident as, under the temptation of parish pay at all times to fall back upon, however drunken or otherwise improvident and vicious their habits, they can well be expected to be. In estimating the labourer's resources, it must be borne in mind that, in consequence of the change in farming from fallows to winter crops, these wages are to be had, with few exceptions, throughout the year, besides the £6 or £7 for the harvest month. An intelligent middle-aged farmer of the neighbourhood described the difference to the author in these words, "In my early time men were dis

* Bede, iv. 6.

+ Palgrave's 'Anglo-Saxons.'

charged directly after harvest,* half the farm being left fallow. Now I grow a third more corn, as much meat, and all sorts of market-garden produce." The practice, however, of throwing small farms into large, introducing a higher class of tenants whose houses and habits are unsuitable for boarding and lodging the young and unmarried labourers, as their fathers did, without substituting a well-organized lodging-house for them elsewhere on the farm, is unfavourable to their moral habits, and tends to sever the ties generally between master and man :—

"When I wor a boy there wor one board for master and men,

But I doan't count ever to see them back agen,

If any lad then, what lived in the house, wor to break out,
Master had his eyes open, and know'd what we wor about.
If we wor steady, he'd say, 'Here's a sixpence for you, my lad,'
But now a young chap goes his own way, and that's to the bad.
Yer works on the land;

Yer nit a servant now-a-days, but what they calls a hand;
Jist like a spade or a harrow, when they's holly wor out,
Chucks 'em away for another tool, when they's good for nout,

It's sartin sure we ought to do as we'd be done by,

And we'll be done by jist as we do, sure an' sartinly."

The Old Essex Farm Labourer, by Rev. W. E. Heygate, M.A.

The practice just spoken of, and now becoming universal, of "adding field to field and house to house" to one large holder, as the smaller holdings become vacant, will be found alluded to and discussed more than once, along with most of the subjects glanced at here, in the parish histories which follow. It is a matter requiring, we think, immediate and serious consideration. We entirely allow that, for experiments in scientific farming, large farms and their large capital are wanted, but as exceptions, not, as they are becoming, the rule. We deprecate this upon moral and social grounds, stated elsewhere. A fair argument may be pressed to an unfair conclusion, and so may a fair principle of action. But in this place we mainly refer to possible harm to the large holders themselves. As machinery advanced, it attracted or dragged the handloom-weaver, etc., into Manchester and such places. Thrown together in large masses, the first thing they did was to coerce their masters in every way by trades' unions. Under this new system, farm-labourers are being thrown into masses, a mass under each master, each with its "amalgamated engineers" to conduct the steam operations, suggesting and facilitating combinations. Is the holder of from 500 to 1000 or 1500 acres prepared for this? Could he live under it? Whatever the consequence you cannot stop machinery, but you can stop unreasonably and mischievously large holdings, making them exceptional. With the temptation of parish pay on the one hand, and the despair of ever rising to be his own master on the other, you place the labourer in an

As early as September, as stated in the October number of the British Magazine, 1833: "ESSEX.-The Labourers.-We regret to state that, harvest being concluded, a great number of labourers are out of employ in many parishes of this county. In Braxted there are thirty dependent on the poor-rates; and in the neighbouring parish of Lindsell fifteen. In the latter parish a labourrate was tried, but resisted."

D

unnatural position, in which the ordinary springs of human conduct, the hope of bettering, or the fear of deteriorating his condition, are about equally extinguished. Otherwise the country will be depopulated, except the two only classes remaining, a handful of farmers, and swarms of labourers, strangers to each other. Labourers will fill the place of smith, farrier, wheelwright, and collar maker, on their several farms, each with its co-operative store, ousting the general shop. Then how are parish offices to be filled, and coroner and petty juries to be got together? And what chance will the sober and industrious and thrifty labourer have of bettering his condition?

As for trades' unions, the author sees no harm in them, but only in the violence and coercion too often attending them. It is only a chance, but it is well to remember there is that chance. The chief objection to large holdings is its sharpening and deepening the lines which separate classes, instead of the shading off and blending suggested by nature and recommended by experience. Nature has no sharp lines but mountains, and mountains are nature's distortions.

The labourer has risen in the world along with his master. He keeps pace with him in dignity, in a way of his own. In the absence of the old sympathies arising from daily personal and home intercourse, the young labourer especially is ambitious to show he's as independent of the master as the master of him

:

"When I wor a youngster, boys used to do what they was told:

But now they only sarce ye, and the girls is quite as bold.

And we used to touch our hats, if a gentleman com'd by,

Now they call 'What's the time, Governor?' and winks with their eye."
The Old Essex Farm Labourer.

As far as it goes, the influence of union schools is bad. These pauper boys receive an education far above the station they are to occupy, as well as beyond that which the honest, independent labourer can secure to his children, going to work so much younger; and, thrown upon the labour market without any industrial qualifications, take the lead generally in unbecoming assumption and insubordination.

"I warn't brought up in a Union School, as when they gets out

They doan't no wheat from wo-ats, and is just good for nout."-Idem.

The general upheaving of the farm-servant mind extends to dress, cropping up as it does in the prim black suits of the men, and the flaunty finery of the The picturesque is gone,—and something more.

women.

"And the white smocks worked all so beautiful right round the neck
As used to be in church of a Sunday without a speck ;

And the women's red cloaks and neckerchiefs, yellow and bright,
Like a daffordowndilly. Yer'd a' said that was a sight."-Idem.

In those days the social condition of the labouring class was little in

fluenced by the clergy as a whole, it being then the rarest thing for an Incumbent to reside on his living,

"The masters then wor kind,

If yer'd run arter a parson, yer'd ben well behind;

They wor fust at this church, then at that church, five o' one day;
Twarn't too much time for the sarmint, let alone for to pray.

Fifteen com'd out this way and that, each Sunday morn,

Yer'd a wondered where the wood wor when a' them rooks wor born.
Fifteen coms agen of a night to take a week's rest,

And they lays up the parson all snug along wi' their best."

The Old Essex Farm Labourer.

Of the few who did reside, some were of the Myles type :

"Parson Myles was a hunter, and could gallop through a prayer,

Right straight ahead over anythin, and stop him who dare.

A weddin ud come to "Amasement," most as soon as begun ;

And, afore they well know'd where they wos, they found emselves one.

He was a kind gentleman truly, but not much of a Priest:

No great hand at a fast day, but a rare un at a feast."-The Old Essex Clerk.

"It may appear a little singular, in so rich a corn country, formerly well stocked with game, with no great men to obstruct any fair sportsmen [rich indeed as a reason for residence, unless said in irony, which one can hardly suspect] and so near the metropolis, that so few clergymen should be found to reside on their livings. During the many years I knew the country, I do not remember more than three constant residents at any one time, and those were on livings of the lowest value in the district.*

"It is not my wish to criticize the motives of that reverend body, whose general as well as individual character ought to be upheld with every possible degree of respect. I merely mention the fact; and, as a kind of collateral proof, insert the following copy of a petition, to which I was a subscribing petitioner, sent to Lord T[hurlow], at that time Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain :

'My Lord,

'We, the inhabitants and parishioners of L[ittle] S[tambridge], in the county of [Essex], beg leave to make known to your lordship the disagreeable situation which your petitioners ever have been and still are (but for our hopes in your lordship's well-known attention to unprotected merit) likely to be continued in, by the non-residence of their rectors. The living of this parish being now vacant, and in your lordship's gift, we humbly presume to request the same in favour of the Reverend... .., a curate, who has resided and done duty in this neighbourhood as such for more than twenty-seven years; a clergyman whom we all respect for his virtues, and on whom we can depend for residing with us. But, if given to a stranger,

* Fifteen is the number of parsons estimated to have gone out of Billericay every Sunday morning for the services, such as they were, throughout the Rochford hundred. Our neighbourhood (except Stifford and some other parishes), and the hundreds of Barstable and Chafford generally, were served by roving bands of clergy galloping out of Brentwood and Romford on Sunday mornings.-W. P.

we are sorry that truth obliges us to declare he sends us whatever curate he can get to do his business cheapest, assigning as a reason that the country is too unhealthy for him to live in, and the value of the living (£120 a year) too small to allow more than £15 a year for a curate. My lord, we could enlarge much on this subject, but are fearful of intruding; we will only beg leave to make this remark, that all the twenty-seven neighboring parishes in this district being in the same predicament, served by curates (three, four, and sometimes five churches to one curate), we have little or no relief if we ride to any neighbouring church, for it is gallop and get forward with them all; and, from the little respectability of some of their characters, we cannot say we have much desire. Your petitioners compose and contain every individual in the parish that pays tythe, and are all plain humble farmers, with little or no acquaintance with great men. But emboldened by the high ideas they entertain of your lordship's considerate goodness, they earnestly solicit your lordship will be pleased to grant the rectory of this parish to the Reverend . . .

'And your petitioners,' etc. etc.

"We were not successful, and this worthy clergyman remained a poor curate, until a considerate neighbouring gentleman farmer,* from pure regard to his character, made his life comfortable by presenting him to a small living in his gift. I rejoice in this opportunity of doing justice to the merit both of the donor and receiver."-Struggles Through Life, by Lieut. John Harriott, formerly of Rochford, in Essex, now Resident Magistrate of the Thames Police. London, 1807, vol. i. p. 290.

An esteemed Essex correspondent, said to "know Essex better than any man in it," favours the author with the following note:-"It has this moment occurred to me who the clergyman was in whose behalf the memorial was presented. I think it may have been the Rev. Henry Ellis, who was presented to the rectory of Sutton, and died in 1802. At the time of his preferment he was curate of High and Good Easter, but had previously been curate in Rochford Hundred some 27 or 30 years. I think I could tell exactly. He was a most intimate friend of my grandfather— godfather to my father-wrote my grandmother's epitaph.

"He entered at Brasenose, 19th March, 1752, at. 17, but went out as of S. John's, Oxford. I have since found that he went to Easter in November 1793, having been curate then in Rochford Hundred more than 30 years. I don't know in what year he was preferred to Sutton.

"He was a most worthy man, and I have in my possession an elegy written on his death, I believe by the Rev. Mr. Archer, an eccentric clericus, but of some poetic talent.

"Mr. Cockerton the patron, who was a personal friend of Mr. Ellis, inherited the manor and living from a relation, Mr. Chester, Moor Hall, a

Probably he was preferred to Sutton, then in the presentation of Mr. Cockerton, and the only living in the neighbourhood in the gift of a person answering to the description "gentleman farmer."