heiress of the Wingfields married a De la Pole, a family famous in our
history, the last of whom, Edmund, Earl of Suffolk, lost his head for
treason when I was young, and the castle passed to the De la Poles
with her. But some offshoots of the old Wingfield stock lingered in the
neighbourhood, perchance there was a bar sinister on their coat of arms,
I know not and do not care to know; at the least my fathers and I are
of this blood. My grandfather was a shrewd man, more of a yeoman than
a squire, though his birth was gentle. He it was who bought this place
with the lands round it, and gathered up some fortune, mostly by careful
marrying and living, for though he had but one son he was twice married,
and also by trading in cattle.

Now my grandfather was godly-minded even to superstition, and strange as
it may seem, having only one son, nothing would satisfy him but that the
boy should be made a priest. But my father had little leaning towards
the priesthood and life in a monastery, though at all seasons my
grandfather strove to reason it into him, sometimes with words and
examples, at others with his thick cudgel of holly, that still hangs
over the ingle in the smaller sitting-room. The end of it was that the
lad was sent to the priory here in Bungay, where his conduct was of such
nature that within a year the prior prayed his parents to take him back
and set him in some way of secular life. Not only, so said the prior,
did my father cause scandal by his actions, breaking out of the priory
at night and visiting drinking houses and other places; but, such was
the sum of his wickedness, he did not scruple to question and make
mock of the very doctrines of the Church, alleging even that there
was nothing sacred in the image of the Virgin Mary which stood in the
chancel, and shut its eyes in prayer before all the congregation when
the priest elevated the Host. 'Therefore,' said the prior, 'I pray you
take back your son, and let him find some other road to the stake than