etty with trees and shrubs--those four yews by the
gates a present from FitzGerald; and the rectory, half a mile off, is
almost hidden by oaks, elms, beeches, and limes, all of my father's and
grandfather's planting. Else the parish soon will be treeless. It was
not so when my father first came to it. Where now there is one huge
field, there then would be five or six, not a few of them meadows, and
each with pleasant hedgerows. There were two "Greens" then--one has many
years since been enclosed; and there was not a "made" road in the entire
parish--only grassy lanes, with gates at intervals. "High farming" has
wrought great changes, not always to the profit of our farmers, whose
moated homesteads hereabouts bear old-world names--Woodcroft Hall, Blood
Hall, Flemings Hall, Crows Hall, Windwhistle Hall, and suchlike. "High
farming," moreover, has swallowed up most of the smaller holdings. Fifty
years ago there were ten or a dozen farms in Monk Soham, each farm with
its resident tenant; now the number is reduced to less than half. It
seems a pity, for a twofold reason: first, because the farm-labourer thus
loses all chance of advancement; and secondly, because the English yeoman
will be soon as extinct as the bustard.

Tom Pepper was the last of our Monk Soham yeomen--a man, said my father,
of the stuff that furnished Cromwell with his Ironsides. He was a strong
Dissenter; but they were none the worse friends for that, not even though
Tom, holding forth in his Little Bethel, might sometimes denounce the
corruptions of the Establishment. "The clargy," he once declared,
"they're here, and they ain't here; they're like pigs in the garden, and
yeou can't git 'em out." On which an old woman, a member of the flock,
sprang up and cried, "That's right, Brother Pepper, kitch 'em by the
fifth buttonhole!" {22} Tom went once to hear Gavazzi lecture at
Debenham, and next day my father asked him how he liked it. "Well," he
said, "I thowt I should ha' beared that chap they call _Jerry Baldry_,
but I din't. Howsomdiver, this one that spook fare to laa it into th'
owd Pope good tidily." Another time my father said something to him
about the Emperor of Russia. "Rooshur," said Tom; "what's that him yeou
call Prooshur?" And yet again, when a concrete wall was built on to a
neighbouring farm-building, Tom remarked contemptuously that he "din't
think much of them consecrated walls." Withal, what an honest, sensible
soul it was