"
He never did appear! Next year her little estate was handed over to
another. She was the last of her line.
Such entries as these swarm in the Court Rolls of this year 1349.
They tell their own tale. But it is obvious that their tale is
incomplete, and that we must form our own conclusions from the number
of the deaths recorded as to the probable number of those whose names
have been quite passed over, sometimes, too, these Rolls are eloquent
in their silence. When country parsons were dying by scores and
hundreds, and the tillers of the soil by thousands and tens of
thousands, it could not but be that the lords of manors and their
stewards died also. Yes! they, too, were struck down. In one instance
that I have met with the first half of the entries of the business
carried on at one of these courts in the summer of this year is
written in the ordinary court hand of the time, and the rest is
rudely scrawled by some one whose hand is _not yet formed;_ it
looks like the writing of a lad apprenticed to the scrivener's
business. Was the steward of the manor actually smitten by the plague
as he was holding the court--a subordinate taking his place and
awkwardly finishing the work which his master's glazed eye perhaps
never rested on? Again and again I have found that a series of Court
Rolls of an important Norfolk manor is perfect for the first twenty-
two years of Edward III.
Pages:
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192