Before the lease expired he died,
leaving behind him a widow named Sara and three little daughters, the
eldest of whom cannot have been more than eight or nine years old.
This was in the year 1294. Sara, the widow, was for the time a rich
woman, and she made up her mind never to marry again, and she kept
her resolve.
When her eldest daughter Alice came to the mature age of fifteen or
sixteen, a young man named John of Thrysford wooed and won her.
Mistress Alice was by no means a portionless damsel, and Mr. John
seems himself to have been a man of substance. How long they were
married I know not; but it could not have been more than a year or
two, for less than five years after Mr. Felix's death a great event
happened, which produced very momentous effects upon Rougham and its
inhabitants in more ways than one.
Up to this time there had been a rector at Rougham, and apparently a
good rectory-house and some acres of glebe land--how many I cannot
say. But the canons of Westacre Priory cast their eyes upon the
rectory of Rougham, and they made up their minds they would have it.
I dare not stop to explain how the job was managed--that would lead
me a great deal too far--but it _was_ managed, and accordingly,
a year or two after the marriage of little Alice, they got possession
of all the tithes and the glebe, and the good rectory-house at
Rougham, and they left the parson of the parish with a smaller house
on the other side of the road, and _not_ contiguous to the
church, an allowance of two quarters of wheat and two quarters of
barley a year, and certain small dues which might suffice to keep
body and soul together but little more.
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