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story of" fair Matilda," and interesting information respecting the matrimonial prize. Robert Fitzwalter," writes Dugdale "who lived long beloved by King Henry, the son of King John (as also of all the realm), betook himself in his latter days to prayer and deeds of charity, and great and bountiful alms to the poor, kept great hospitality, and re-edified the decayed Priory of Dunmow, which Juga, a most devout and religious woman, had builded; in which Priory arose a custom, began and instituted either by him or some of his ancestors, which is verified by the common saying or proverb, 'That he which repents him not of his marriage, either sleeping or waking, in a year and a day, may lawfully go to Dunmow and fetch a gammon of bacon.' It is certain that such a custom there was, and that the bacon was delivered with such solemnity and triumph as they of the Priory and town could make-continuing till the dissolution of that house. The party or pilgrim took the Oath before the Prior of the Convent, and the Oath was administered with long process and much solemn singing and chanting."

"The Vision of Piers Plowman," a religious allegorical satire, attributed to Robert Langlande,

and written about 1362, contains a reference to the Dunmow flitch. In the following lines (which are slightly modernised to render them intelligible) the satirist adverts to the hasty and ill-assorted marriages that followed the great pestilence, the "black death."

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Many a couple since the Pestilence
Have blighted them together;
The fruit that they bring forth
Is foul words,

In jealousy without happiness,
And quarrelling in bed;

They have no children but strife,

And slapping between them:

And though they go to Dunmow

(Unless the devil help!)

To follow after the flitch,

They never obtain it;

And unless they both are perjured,
They lose the bacon.”

In the "Prologue of the Wife of Bath's Tale," by Chaucer, the merry wife relates how she treated her husbands, and shows they had little chance of obtaining the prize of matrimonial felicity. She observes:

"The bacoun was nought fet for [t]hem, I trowe,
That som men feeche in Essex at Dunmowe."

About the year 1445 appeared a theological poem, being a sort of paraphrase in verse of the

Ten Commandments, and of which some extracts appear in "Reliquiæ Antiquæ." The author, commenting on the Seventh Commandment, bewails the corruption of the period that he could "Find no man now that will enquire

The perfect ways unto Dunmow,
For they repent them within a year
And many within a week I trowe."

Allusions to the custom have been found by Mr. Thomas Wright, M.A., F.S.A., in MSS. of the latter part of the sixteenth century at Oxford and Cambridge. Writing in 1659,

Howell says:—

"Do not fetch your wife from Dunmow

For so you may bring home two sides of a sow."

In 1778, was produced at the Haymarket Theatre, a ballad opera entitled "The Flitch of Bacon." It was written by Henry Bates, the son of an Essex clergyman. It was printed in the following year.

County histories contain particulars concerning this custom. Morant, the celebrated historian of Essex, deals with the subject. "The prior and canons," says Morant, "were obliged to deliver the bacon to them that took the oath, by virtue (as many believe) of a founder or benefactors' deed or

will, by which they held lands, rather than by their own singular frolic and wantonness, or more probably it was imposed by the Crown, either in the Saxon or Norman times, and was a burthen upon the estate." It is stated that after the Pilgrims, as the claimants were termed, had taken the oath, they were brought through the town in a chair, on men's shoulder, with all the friars, brethren, and townsfolk, young and old, male and female, after them, with shouts and acclamations, and the bacon was borne before them on poles.

From the Chartulary of the Priory, which is deposited in the British Museum, it appears that only three couples obtained the bacon previous to the suppression of the religious houses. These were respectively on the 27th April, 1445, in the year 1468, and on the 8th of September, 1510. The following are taken from the original entries now in the British Museum :

"MEMORANDUM.—That one Richard Wright, of Badbourge, near the city of Norwich, in the county of Norfolk, yeoman, came and required the bacon of Dunmow on the 27th day of April, in the 23rd year of the reign of King Henry VI., and according to the form of the charter, was sworn before John Cannon, Prior of this place and the