Past and Present Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. · Thomas Carlyle
TWELFTH CENTURY.
'We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!' Indisputable, though very dim to modern vision, rests on its hill-slope that same _Bury_, _Stow_, or Town of St. Edmund; already a considerable place, not without traffic, nay manufactures, would Jocelin only tell us what. Jocelin is totally careless of telling: but, through dim fitful apertures, we can see _Fullones_, 'Fullers,' see cloth-making; looms dimly going, dye-vats, and old women spinning yarn. We have Fairs too, _Nundinae_, in due course; and the Londoners give us much trouble, pretending that they, as a metropolitan people, are exempt from toll. Besides there is Field-husbandry, with perplexed settlement of Convent rents: corn-ricks pile themselves within burgh, in their season; and cattle depart and enter; and even the poor weaver has his cow,--'dungheaps' lying quiet at most doors (_ante foras_, says the incidental Jocelin), for the Town has yet no improved police. Watch and ward nevertheless we do keep, and have Gates,--as what Town must not; thieves so abounding; war, _werra_, such a frequent thing! Our thieves, at the Abbot's judgment-bar, deny; claim wager of battle; fight, are beaten, and _then_ hanged. 'Ketel, the thief,' took this course; and it did nothing for him,--merely brought us, and indeed himself, new trouble!
Everyway a most foreign Time. What difficulty, for example, has our _Cellerarius_ to collect the _repselver_, 'reaping silver,' or penny, which each householder is by law bound to pay for cutting down the Convent grain! Richer people pretend that it is commuted, that it is this and the other; that, in short, they will not pay it. Our _Cellerarius_ gives up calling on the rich. In the houses of the poor, our _Cellerarius_ finding, in like manner, neither penny nor good promise, snatches, without ceremony, what _vadium_ (pledge, _wad_) he can come at: a joint-stool, kettle, nay the very house-door, '_hostium_;' and old women, thus exposed to the unfeeling gaze of the public, rush out after him with their distaffs and the angriest shrieks: '_vetulae exibant cum colis suis_,' says Jocelin, '_minantes et exprobrantes_.' What a historical picture, glowing visible, as St. Edmund's Shrine by night, after Seven long Centuries or so! _Vetulae cum colis_: My venerable ancient spinning grandmothers,--ah, and ye too have to shriek, and rush out with your distaffs; and become Female Chartists, and scold all evening with void doorway;--and in old Saxon, as we in modern, would fain demand some Five-point Charter, could it be fallen-in with, the Earth being too tyrannous!--Wise Lord Abbots, hearing of such phenomena, did in time abolish or commute the reap-penny, and one nuisance was abated. But the image of these justly offended old women, in their old wool costumes, with their angry features, and spindles brandished, lives forever in the historical memory. Thanks to thee, Jocelin Boswell. Jerusalem was taken by the Crusaders, and again lost by them; and Richard Coeur-de-Lion 'veiled his face' as he passed in sight of it: but how many other things went on, the while!
Thus, too, our trouble with the Lakenheath eels is very great. King Knut namely, or rather his Queen who also did herself honour by honouring St. Edmund, decreed by authentic deed yet extant on parchment, that the Holders of the Town Fields, once Beodric's, should, for one thing, go yearly and catch us four thousand eels in the marsh-pools of Lakenheath. Well, they went, they continued to go; but, in later times, got into the way of returning with a most short account of eels. Not the due six-score apiece; no, Here are two-score, Here are twenty, ten,--sometimes, Here are none at all; Heaven help us, we _could_ catch no more, they were not there! What is a distressed _Cellerarius_ to do? We agree that each Holder of so many acres shall pay one penny yearly, and let-go the eels as too slippery. But, alas, neither is this quite effectual: the Fields, in my time, have got divided among so many hands, there is no catching of _them_ either; I have known our Cellarer get seven-and-twenty pence formerly, and now it is much if he get ten pence farthing (_vix decem denarios et obolum_). And then their sheep, which they are bound to fold nightly in our pens, for the manure's sake; and, I fear, do not always fold: and their _aver-pennies_, and their _avragiums_, and their _fodercorns_, and mill-and-market dues! Thus, in its undeniable but dim manner, does old St. Edmundsbury spin and till, and laboriously keep its pot boiling, and St. Edmund's Shrine lighted, under such conditions and averages as it can.
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