that time; it did not dry hard on the cut surface as bought bread does; it was made from home-grown wheat ground at a water-mill near by, whose wheel was turned by the little, useful river—there was the romance of it. Great long loaves they were, with a generous allowance of crisp, rocky crust to crumb—loaves to be remembered.
We stepped at once from the door of the house into the country, and that was the charm of it. Our water came direct from the lonely moors above, and was beyond suspicion pure and in superabundant supply; indeed at one end of the large kitchen there was a stone trough for washing purposes, and along this the water ran day and night; no tap was ever turned on—there was no tap to turn. Perhaps I was fortunate in finding such desirable quarters, but on comparing notes with an artist friend, who took farmhouse apartments in Cumberland, I found he fared as well as we did. A change in the method of taking a holiday lends an added zest to it, and those who are tired of expensive hotels, seaside lodgings, or constant travelling, with the everlasting packing and squeezing of the sponge, might do worse than try farmhouse apartments in some pleasant country. If rest be needed I cannot imagine a more restful form of holiday.
Besides being a good cook our farmer's wife was skilled in the making of sundry jams, jellies, ginger-beer, and elderberry wine; of the last she was very proud, and mulled some for us to bring out its full flavour—I did not sample it a second time: such wine maketh the heart sad. One of her concoctions, however, commended itself to me, namely, a home-made kind of liquor that was fresh and pleasant to my palate which she called, curiously enough, "Job's Comforter." Who would have expected such a thing in a remote farmhouse? This is the recipe for the making of it as given to me: "Get a wide-mouthed stone jar and put in it as many good lemons as you can; stick as many cloves as possible into the skin of the lemons, pressing them well in, then place the prepared lemons in the jar and fill up with unsweetened gin; let the lemons remain in the gin for two or three days, after this strain the liquid off, add honey and a little sugar-candy to sweeten according to taste and to give a smoothness to the liquor, then bottle it." I give the recipe exactly as given to me. I had some trouble to obtain it, and should prefer more precise details as to quantities, but these old housewives are jealous of giving their recipes away. I took a bottle of this "Job's Comforter" home with me and friends of mine pronounced it excellent—"as good as Chartreuse" they declared, but perhaps this estimate was owing to the novelty of the thing. Still, it was undoubtedly good.
Resuming our journey we followed the lonely lane for a long way without arriving anywhere, but "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive," and we were in no hurry. Still, the longest lane has ending, and ours ended at a wide, open, elevated space marked Pit Down on the map; this spot, I afterwards discovered, earned its title from the fact that there in pits were hastily buried the victims of the plague that once devastated the villages around, and in one of these villages, Fletching by name, we shortly afterwards found ourselves. A pretty village it proved to be of the picture-book sort, as clean and neat as though it were a Kate Greenaway's drawing materialised. The ancient church stands in precisely the right spot, around which are grouped, as an artist might group them, the many gabled houses of the village; the one thing wanting to perfect the picture was the village green, but "fortune seldom comes with both hands full." Fletching lies well out of the beaten track and is only to be reached by winding lanes, so that I should imagine a motorist is seldom seen there, unless he has fortunately lost his way to the finding of the village. Even then some motorists might not realise their good fortune.
I stopped the car in the shade of one of its attractive houses, when a man approached me, evidently imagining I had come to see the church, and, desiring to be of service, exclaimed, "The rector will be delighted to show you over the church; there are a lot of curious old tombs inside that are well worth seeing. The rectory is just over the way"—pointing to it—"and I know the rector's at home." I explained that I had not come to see the church but had merely driven into the village accidentally. "But you really ought to see it now you are here," he continued; "the rector takes a great interest in it, and is always so pleased to show it to any stranger." Fate had brought me to Fletching, and Fate appeared determined I should see the church. Fate was kinder than I knew. The man stood there watching me, and after his civility I felt it would seem ungracious to disappoint him. So to the rectory I went, though somewhat reluctantly, for it was a fine, out-of-door day, but I did not wish to hurt the man's feelings.
The grey-haired parson received me most cordially; I might have been a welcome guest instead of a stranger seeking a favour, but I have always found that in pleasant places you meet with pleasant people. Pleasant surroundings surely, to a certain extent, influence the temperament of man? They affect me, I know, and strongly. "Delighted to show you over our church," said the parson; "it possesses many features of interest that you might miss if you went alone." So I put myself under his guidance, for who should take a more intelligent interest in, or know more about, a church than its parson? He even appeared very desirous to show it. A parson's life in a village is often a dull one, and possibly the occasional meeting with a sympathetic stranger comes as a welcome relief to his round of monotonous days.
Before entering the building I noticed a little "low-side" or "leper window" on the left of the porch. The purport of these so-called "leper windows," so frequently to be found in country churches, has perplexed many a learned archaeologist, and it seems passing strange to me why a window so usual should be a subject of such mystery. The once generally accepted theory was that they were provided for lepers, that those so unfortunately afflicted might view, from outside the church and safely apart from the congregation, the elevation of the Host, and thus participate, to some extent, in the service. But in the case of Fletching church, and many others, these peculiar windows are so placed that no one could possibly see the altar from them; moreover, as the rector remarked, lepers were never admitted into churchyards. So the leper theory fails. My personal impression is that these windows were never intended for looking into, but for looking out of the building, and for this purpose such a small window sufficed. From the number of leper windows I have inspected, and writing from recollection, I should imagine that the majority of them are suitably placed for watching the congregation entering the church, and so might be of service to the bell-ringers; but that, I take it, would be a secondary consideration and not the main object of them.
On entering Fletching church my attention was called to the Norman arches under the tower showing that the building had been originally Norman. Now, owing to rebuildings and restorations, it is mainly Early English—the Early English of the Victorian era! On the west wall is a curious and well-preserved little brass, doubtless formerly on the floor. The inscription on this, beautifully cut, runs briefly as follows:
Hic jacet Petrus Denot, glover:
Cujus aie ppicietur Deus. Amen.
The brass is manifestly an ancient one, and the absence of a date is notable; there is plenty of space for it. Two gloves, crossed, are shown below. The English word "glover" looks strangely out of place in the midst of the Latin. Presumably the carver of the inscription, though doubtless familiar from frequent usage with the usual Latin employed on the memorials to the dead, its Hic jacets, its Obiits, and the rest that goes between, was in a quandary how to render "glover" in the classic tongue; his limited learning failing him, he boldly inserted it in English. At least I arrived at that conclusion. Who was this Petrus Denot, I wondered? The rector knew his story in part and enlightened me. He was an inhabitant of Fletching, a glover by trade, and was one of the unfortunates who took a part in the Cade rebellion; he was captured and hanged, but his body was recovered by his relations and was buried in the church. I query if that is the whole of the story, for it seems strange that a tradesman of the period, to say nothing of his being hanged for treason, should have the much-sought-for privilege of being buried within the church's hallowed walls, and honoured with a brass besides. Does the brass being dateless point to anything? I fancy that there is more in the simple terse inscription than meets the eye. At one time it appears Fletching was famous for its gloves made from hogs' skins imported from Holland, and it is supposed that the plague was conveyed to the village by these skins, and that brought the industry to an end, and the village nearly too.
