Being convinced of this, and believing, moreover, that to most of us
nothing on earth is so interesting as that which most concerns
ourselves at any period of our existence, I resolved, when I was
asked to address you here this evening, that I would try to give you
some notion of the kind of life which your fathers led in this parish
a long, long time ago, and so help you to understand through what
strange changes we have all passed, and what strange stories the
walls of our houses, if they could speak, would have to tell, and on
what wonderful struggles, and hardships, and dangers, and sorrows
yonder church tower of yours has looked down, since, centuries ago,
it first rose up, the joy and pride of those whose hands laid stone
on stone.
When I came to think over the matter, however, I found that I could
not tell you very much that I was sure of about your own parish of
Tittleshall, but that it so happened I could tell you something that
is new to you about a parish that joins your own; and because what
was going on among your close neighbours at any one time would be in
the main pretty much what would be going on among your forefathers,
in bringing before you the kind of life which people led in the
adjoining parish of Rougham six hundred years ago, I should be
describing precisely the life which people were leading here in this
parish where we are now--people, remember, whose blood is throbbing
in the veins of some of you present; for from that dust that lies in
your churchyard yonder I make no doubt that some of you have sprung--
you whom I am speaking to now.
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