[Footnote: I do not take account of those who ran away to
the corporate towns. I suspect that there were many more cases of
this than some writers allow. It was sometimes a serious
inconvenience to the lords of manors near such towns as Norwich or
Lynn. A notable example may be found in the "Abbrev, Placit.," p. 316
(6°. E. ii. Easter term). It seems that no less than eighteen
villeins of the Manor of Cossey were named in a mandate to the
Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, who were to be taken and reduced to
villeinage, and their goods seized. Six of them pleaded that they
were citizens of Norwich--the city being about four miles from
Cossey.] Yes, there was one means whereby he could be set free, and
that was if he could get a bishop to ordain him. The fact of a man
being ordained at once made him a free man, and a knowledge of this
fact must have served as a very strong inducement to young people to
avail themselves of all the helps in their power to obtain something
like an education, and so to qualify themselves for admission to the
clerical order and to the rank of free-man.
At Rougham there was a certain Ralph Red, who was one of these
villeins under the lord of the manor, a certain William le Butler.
Ralph Red had a son Ralph, who I suppose was an intelligent youth,
and made the most of his brains. He managed to get ordained about six
hundred years ago, and he became a chaplain, perhaps to that very
chapel of ease I mentioned before.
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