CHAPTER II. 



MODERN YARMOUTH, 



|]0R one I do not hesitate to admit undying affection 

 for the really ancient town of Great Yarmouth. It 

 is not because St. Nicholas, the friend of the 

 mariner, is its patron saint, and the building bearing his name 

 the finest parish church in England. It is a matter of very 

 little moment to me whether, in the year of our Lord 495, 

 Cerdicus, the warlike Saxon, and Henricus his son, did or 

 did not come unto those yellow sands. It may be recorded, 

 but one need not be particularly moved by the fact, that for 

 eight hundred years herrings and Yarmouth have been, at 

 home, if not abroad, synonymous terms. We may, on the 

 whole, take it as a matter of actual occurrence that the 

 Dutch and Fleming refugees, persecuted out of their own 

 countries, settled here. Very little am I moved by, though 

 not denying, the historical associations of the place, includ- 

 ing as they do a Cromwell, a Nelson, or even a Winthrop 

 Mackworth Praed, who once sat for the borough. 



These, though matters of passing interest, are not pro- 

 Vocative of affection. I love Yarmouth because, over and 



