The vicar
died some ten years before the lady. When old age was creeping on her
she made over all her houses and lands in Rougham to feoffees, and I
have a suspicion that she went into a nunnery and there died.
In dealing with the two cases of Peter Romayn and John of Thyrsford I
have used the term _cleric_ more than once. These two men were,
at the end of their career at any rate, what we now understand by
clergyman; but there were hosts of men six hundred years ago in
Norfolk who were _clerics,_ and yet who were by no means what we
now understand by clergymen. The _clerics_ of six hundred years
ago comprehended all those whom we now call the professional classes;
all, _i.e._, who lived by their brains, as distinct from those
who lived by trade or the labour of their hands.
Six hundred years ago it may be said that there were two kinds of law
in England, the one was the law of the land, the other was the law of
the Church. The law of the land was hideously cruel and merciless,
and the gallows and the pillory, never far from any man's door, were
seldom allowed to remain long out of use. The ghastly frequency of
the punishment by death tended to make people savage and
bloodthirsty. [Footnote: In 1293 a case is recorded of three men, one
of them a goldsmith, who had their right hands chopped off in the
middle of the street in London.
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