Thus, too, our trouble with the Lakenheath eels is very great.
King Knut, namely, or rather his Queen who also did herself
honour by honouring St. Edmund, decreed by authentic deed yet
extant on parchment, that the Holders of the Town Fields, once
Beodric's, should, for one thing, go yearly and catch us four
thousand eels in the marsh-pools of Lakenheath. Well, they went,
they continued to go; but, in later times, got into the way of
returning with a most short account of eels. Not the due six-
score apiece; no, Here are two-score, Here are twenty, ten,--
sometimes, Here are none at all; Heaven help us, we _could_
catch no more, they were not there! What is a distressed
_Cellerarius_ to do? We agree that each Holder of so many acres
shall pay one penny yearly, and let go the eels as too slippery.
But alas, neither is this quite effectual: the Fields, in my
time, have got divided among so many hands, there is no catching
of them _either_; I have known our Cellarer get seven and twenty
pence formerly, and now it is much if he get ten pence farthing
(_vix decem denarios et obolum_). And then their sheep, which
they are bound to fold nightly in our pens, for the manure's
sake; and, I fear, do not always fold: and their _aver-
pennies,_ and their _avragiums,_ and their _foder-corns,_ and
mill-and-market dues! Thus, in its undeniable but dim manner,
does old St. Edmundsbury spin and till, and laboriously keep its
pot boiling, and St. Edmund's Shrine lighted, under such
conditions and averages as it can.


How much is still alive in England; how much has not yet come
into life! A Feudal Aristocracy is still alive, in the prime of
life; superintending the cultivation of the land, and less