Six hundred years ago! Yes, it is a long time. Not a man of you can
throw his thoughts back to so great a lapse of time. I do not expect
it of you; but nevertheless I am going to try to give you a picture
of a Norfolk village, and that a village which you all know better
than I do, such as it was six hundred years ago.
In those days an ancestor of our gracious Queen, who now wears the
crown of England, was king; and the Prince of Wales, whom many of you
must have seen in Norfolk, was named _Edward_ after this same
king. In those days there were the churches standing generally where
they stand now. In those days, too, the main roads ran pretty much
where they now run; and there was the same sun overhead, and there
were clouds, and winds, and floods, and storms, and sunshine; but if
you, any of you, could be taken up and dropped down in Tittleshall or
Rougham such as they were at the time I speak of, you would feel
almost as strange as if you had been suddenly transported to the
other end of the world.
The only object that you would at all recognize would be the parish
church. That stands where it did, and where it has stood, perhaps,
for a thousand years or more; but, at the time we are now concerned
with, it looked somewhat different from what it looks now. It had a
tower, but that tower was plainer and lower than the present one.
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