336 GREAT BUSTARDS CHAP. Great Warren, usually so sun-scorched and barren, is as fragrant as a bean-field; odours of gorse, grass, and fir are mingled in the humid air. The wind no longer blows in boisterous gusts, but breathes warmly and balmily on Nature's freshened face. Over the vale of the Ouse hangs a shimmering blue haze, through which the wind-ruffled willows and white poplars gleam silvery white; on the high ridges dusky firs and feathery larches show clear-cut outlines against an already cloudless sky. Across the mossy and stony footpaths where the warreners sometimes find flint arrow-heads lying, as though they were really "elfshot" from the woods-hundreds of rabbits, black and fawn-coloured, scurry at the ringing of my bicycle bell; now and again a flock of lapwings rises from some rushy hollow and flies waveringly towards the marshes of the Ouse. Except for the grey old house in which the head warrener lives, and which owing to its style of architecture is believed to have been an ancient fortress, there is no human habitation on the warren. Bathed in the warm sunshine of a June afternoon, the face of the waste, despite its lonesomeness, is strangely beautiful; like a gipsy girl's it fascinates by its wildness. But unlike a human face its changes are passionless. The sun may scorch it, the wind buffet it, the rain beat upon it, still it remains impassive; it assumes many different aspects, yet is ever itself the same. While in the Castle Museum at Norwich I stood a long time admiring a splendid group of bustards. It consisted entirely, I believe, of Norfolk-bred birds; and I could not but lament the extinction, not only in Norfolk, but in the whole British Isles, of one of the handsomest species of our avi-fauna. Here, on this tawny warren, I am in the midst of one of their last British haunts. As the "last of the English " fled to the inaccessible fen isles, so those beautiful birds, driven by enclosure and persecution from many of the waste lands where they had bred undisturbed, made a last stand against the invader and destroyer on these barren border-lands. Yet even here XII NORFOLK PLOVERS 337 they found no sanctuary, and some sixty years ago the sole survivor of the Norfolk and Suffolk "droves," a fine male bird, was shot near Swaffham. There is reason for believing that Norfolk folk generally were strongly opposed to the killing of the bustards, and that their extinction was due to the unsportsmanlike conduct of a "fellow from London," as he was called, who not only shot but trapped them. For doing so he narrowly escaped being horse-whipped and ducked in a pond by his indignant neighbours. It must have been a fine sight to see, on Thetford Warren, a drove of perhaps a score great buff-coloured bustards alertly watching for the appearance of the little lizards which scurried among the wiry heath grasses; and in the eighteenth century such a sight was by no means uncommon. But the present dwellers on the borders of this lonesome warren must go a long way if they would see a great bustard in its natural wild state. Since the extermination of the indigenous birds a few foreign migrants have visited England.at increasingly long intervals; but in Norfolk and Suffolk they have occurred very rarely, though in 1871 several specimens, supposed to have been driven across the Channel by the heavy cannonading of the Franco-Prussian War, were shot in various parts of the country. * But though the great bustard is gone, a bird whose habits are not unlike the bustard's still haunts the warren in decreasing numbers. This bird is the thick-knee or stone curlew, which is known in East Anglia as the Norfolk Plover. At times you may see as many as fifty of these birds settle down amid the heath grasses; and if you are careful to remain hidden behind a gorse clump or among the tall bracken you may perhaps be able to watch them for an hour or more. If you use a pair of good field glasses, you may see them go through many interesting antics, some of which will puzzle you; for they will run * Since the above was written Lord Walsingham has liberated a number of great bustards in East Anglia and has issued an appeal to gunners urging that they may be allowed to breed undisturbed. Z 338 THETFORD CHAP. swiftly to and fro with neck outstretched, flap or wave their wings in an excited manner, and sometimes leap into the air while waving their wings. They are most active in the evening -during the daytime they often sleep or crouch among the heath grasses, relying on the colour of their plumage to conceal them from their enemies-and when dusk falls you may hear them piping loudly, like boys whistling, as they fly to their feeding grounds in the upland fields. A few of these birds still breed on the warren. If you are lucky you may find their eggs, deposited in a natural depression of the sandy or stony ground. Protective coloration is as evident in the eggs as in the birds themselves, for the colour and markings are so like those of many pebbles that they can hardly be distinguished from them. "Night hawks" is another name for the thick-knees, and has been earned by their shrill cries at night. They are not only harmless, but useful birds, for they destroy large quantities of troublesome insect pests; but the gradual enclosing of heaths and waste lands is slowly but surely driving them from their old haunts, and Thetford Warren is likely to be their last breeding-place in East Anglia. From the lonesome wildness of this primeval waste I pass with almost startling suddenness into the streets of a town of obvious and impressive antiquity. Thetford, which some have called the "Metropolis of the Heptarchy," is remarkable for its archeological and historical interest, quaint and picturesque buildings, and charming situation in the midst of a district almost entirely unlike any other in East Anglia. It is a border town. As you ramble through its somewhat mazy streets you may easily pass from Norfolk into Suffolk and back again without being aware of it. Its site must, like many a spot in the open country around it, have been occupied by a settlement of Neolithic people; its huge mound, the Castle Hill, dates back to prehistoric times. That the first king of the East Angles made the town XII "A ROYAL CITY" 339 his capital and called it Theodford there is as little doubt as that the Danes and Anglo-Saxons fought here some of their bloodiest battles. So it early bore the title of "royal city," and though it afterwards had to rest content for a while with being a bishop's see, it was from Norman until Stuart times a favourite country seat of English monarchs. The so-calledR royal palaces, known as the Manor and King's Houses, are preserved in much the same state in which they passed out of the hands of their royal owners, and if in no way imposing are of interest on account of their associations. More especially does this apply to the King's House, which was rebuilt by Queen Elizabeth, and in the reign of James I. was given to Sir Philip Wodehouse in recognition of an ancestor's gallantry at Agincourt. But kings and queens no longer come to Thetford, which, from its size and populousness in the fourteenth century, could maintain twenty churches, has sunk into a state in which it can boast of only three. Its fine Abbey, in which the Dukes of Norfolk-the Bigods, Mowbrays, 340 EDMUND THE MARTYR CHAP. and Howards-were for many generations laid to rest, has suffered severely from neglect and vandalism; its Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre, and its Saxon nunnery which Uvius, abbot of Bury, founded to commemorate the battles between the Saxons and Danes, are, at first glance, almost indistinguishable from the modern buildings which have been built of their stones. But the sacrilege of an age which had no respect for these ancient relics has not robbed Thetford of its air of antiquity, which the very stones of its old religious houses, built up, as at Castle Acre, into the walls of otherwise uninteresting houses, do much to preserve. It is to the Danes and Anglo-Saxons that Thetford owes the most thrilling pages of its history. Those warring races have provided the modern writer on East Anglia's past with abundant real and romantic interest. Around Thetford were fought some of their fiercest fights and performed some of their most daring deeds. That romance has cast a glamour over many a brutal and sordid fact; that monkish craft or credulity has transformed many a plain tale into an impossible legend no one can deny; but as both fact and tale have gained thereby, those of us who love the past for its romance need not complain. If all the stories told about Edmund, the so-called martyr king of East Anglia, were true we would have good reason to consider him one of the unluckiest monarchs that ever reigned in England. The fates seem ever to have fought against him : even his charitable deeds brought him into trouble. There is an old belief in the northern isles that if you save a man from drowning he will live to do you an injury. Edmund welcomed and treated as an honoured guest a stranger whom the sea cast upon the shore of his realm. One of his servants, envious of the favour shown the stranger, led the latter into the woods and slew him. A garbled account of the murder reached the victim's friends in Denmark, and moved them to invade East Anglia, kill Edmund, and overthrow the dynasty of the East Anglian |