54 
whether of wide fee or small manor, who built the church, the 
mill, the bridge ; his sign manual still authorises the village fair ; 
he imposed the rents ; he liberated from feudal service ; he raised 
his tenants for the Red or White Rose, and it was he who 
brought the jealous neighbour or offended King down in ven- 
geance upen his faithful followers. There he lies on an altar 
tomb, his wife by his side and his dog at his feet. 
If the topographer is fortunate he will find some small charitable 
endowment, a hospital for lepers ora scholarship at the University 
in the village of our idea. This may be the work of the lord, 
but it is not less frequently the work of one of humble birth, 
citizen, goldsmith and Lord Mayor, or perhaps Chaplain, Bishop 
and Lord Chancellor who has remembered the remote village 
which gave him birth; and I know not how an old man can 
more wisely lay down “ the staff of age which youth doth travail 
for.” I recollect two or three instances in which bishops have 
built sumptuous tombs to their obscure but honoured parents. 
The topographer will, however, be usually disappointed of such 
pleasant discoveries, and will hear no more of the state of the 
peasantry than may be afforded by an old book of local 
husbandry. Such, then, is the civil history of rural England 
until the Puritans swept away the feudal idea with fire and sword. 
The restoration of the King restored much, but not the manorial 
tenures in their singular character, and the statute of Charles II. 
commuted nearly all feudal services into a money payment. 
From that time the freeholder (as we call him) and even the 
copyholder rose into practical independence of the manorial lord. 
From what I have said it will be infered that in proposing a 
topographical work it will be best to choose the area of one of 
these great secondary fees. The tenancies in chief rarely lie 
compacted together, the subinfeudations more usually do, and in 
tracing the history of such a tract of land, say a twentieth part of 
a county, we have a chain of events and we have within the 
boundary a development of life quite independent of our neigh- 
