met his death, he and other boys were being
punished for playing at soldiers by being stuffed
into a large dog-kennel, known as "The Black
Hole." Crabbe was suffocating. In despair
he bit the hand of the boy next him. There
arose a cry of "Crabbe is dying!" and the
sentinel not a moment too soon released the
stifling boy.

On leaving school, Crabbe was apprenticed
to a surgeon; and while waiting for this situation
was employed by his stern father in piling
cheese and butter kegs at Slaughden quay. He
concluded his apprenticeship with Mr. Page, a
surgeon at Woodbridge, a market town seventeen
miles from Aldborough. There was a
long struggle before, in 1781, Crabbe visited
London, won Burke by his simple-hearted
ways, took orders, became chaplain to the
Duke of Rutland, and eventually at Parham,
Gleinham, and Readham, devoted his tranquil
life to doing good.

This quiet watering-place was first frequented
about the beginning of the century by a few
persons of rank, who found Hastings and
Brighton too gay and restless.

A noble modern writer, who has made
Suffolk the background of some of his best
novels, has taken up arms gallantly in defence
of the scenery of East Anglia. He contends
that the county that fostered the genius of
Gainsborough and Constable, and nurtured
that contemplative and mournful poet, "nature's
sternest painter yet the best," Crabbe, is
neither flat, dull, nor monotonous. From the
brow of its hillocks, the crow may, he thinks,
obtain gratifying glimpses of verdant and
thickly-wooded landscape, of umbrageous park,
of rivers glancing from dark recesses of shade,
and of peaceful church towers, grey sentinels
of leafy hamlets. "As the traveller," he says,
in Crew Rise, "gets away from the heaths on
the sea-coast on the one side, or the broad open
fields of 'the light lands' on the other side of
the county, and works his way into what is
called by the aborigines 'the garden of
Suffolk,' he unceasingly comes to breaks in the high
fences which border the lanes he passes through,
and these openings rejoice us with the sight of
some snatch of scenery that refreshes the eye."
And truly the crow, cutting his swift path from
Aldborough to Framlingham, does get by the
way many pleasant glimpses of abbey ruins, of
farmhouses built out of half demolished
mansions, of snug cottages at the corners of woods,
of old halls almost hidden by broad-armed
oaks, and of high roads, cool and umbrageous
as park avenues.

A continued series, indeed, of quiet
Gainsborough landscapes surround Framlingham, the
old town of the Iceni, standing on hilly ground
near the sources of the river Ore, which falls
into the sea at Oreford. Britons, Romans,
Saxons, and Danes chased each other in and
out of this fortified place, till at last a sort of
sensible compromise was effected, and, shaking
down altogether in a clubbable way, the Danes
gave the good-natured place the Saxon name of
Fremdlingham (strangers' home). The town
of the mere and the river soon became a stronghold,
and Redwald, one of the earliest of the
East Anglian kings, is said to have occupied the
castle with his spearmen. More certain it is
that King Edmund was enthroned at
Framlingham, and here enjoyed some happy days of
a troublous reign. After the battles of Thetford
and Dunwich, the king was besieged at
Framlingham by the ravenous sea robbers.
The defeated monarch fled, but was pursued,
shot to death with arrows, and then beheaded.
His head was found under a bush at Hoxne, a
small village on the Waveney, and there the
martyr's body lay till it was removed to
Beodrics-worth, which soon became a much-
frequented shrine of special sanctity, and acquired
its present name of Bury St. Edmunds.

Every place of this kind has had its
culminating time of greatness up to which it rose,
and after which it fell. The coronation period
came to Framlingham in 1553. Young King
Edward had died at Greenwich in July of that
year. The moment he appeared to be dying, the
crafty and ambitious Northumberland attempted
to get the two princesses into his power. Mary
was already within half a day's journey of the
wolf's den when the Earl of Arundel sent her
secret intelligence of the conspiracy. She
instantly hurried to Framlingham, and gathered
together an army of thirteen thousand men
under its walls. The Tudor blood burned within
her; her father's lion spirit asserted itself. She
wrote to the chief nobles and gentlemen of
England, calling on them to defend her crown
and person, and to the council desiring them to
proclaim her accession in London. Worst come
to the worst, she could easily, on a defeat, fly to
Yarmouth, and from there embark to Flanders.
Nobles and yeomen flocked to her daily, and
still faster came the billmen and bowmen
directly they knew that she had promised not to
alter the laws of good King Edward. The
Earls of Bath and Sussex, the eldest sons of
Lord Wharton and Lord Mordaunt, Sir
William Drury, Sir Henry Benningfield, and Henry
Jerningham, great Suffolk landowners, rode
into Framlingham at the head of their
retainers. Sir Edward Hastings brought over a
small army. Northumberland's fleet, driven
into Yarmouth by a storm, also declared for
Mary. In the mean time poor Lady Jane Grey
reigned unwillingly in the Tower. The duke
(the real monarch), as he left London to join
his army, said to Lord Grey:

"Many come out to look at us, but I find
not one who cries, 'God speed us.'"

The moment Northumberland left London,
the council quitted the Tower, and, going
to Baynard's Castle near St. Paul's, proclaimed
Mary queen. Suffolk surrounded the Tower,
and the poor queen of a ten days' reign returned
to her quiet country life and those books which
had been the dear companions of her studious
youth. Northumberland, finding his army of
six thousand men rapidly disbanding, laid down
his arms at Bury St. Edmunds. Mary soon after
entered London in triumph, and was welcomed
by her brave sister Elizabeth at the head of a