Chapter 10: A Seventeenth-Century Story

There is a story in every name in that first column of The Times--Births, Marriages, and Deaths--down which we glance each morning, but, unless the name is known to us, we do not bother about the stories of other people. They are those not very interesting people, our contemporaries. But in a country churchyard a name on an old tombstone will set us wondering a little. What sort of life came to an end there a hundred years ago?

In the parish register we shall find the whole history of them; when they were born, when they were married, how many children they had, when they died--a skeleton of their lives which we can clothe with our fancies and make living again. Simple lives, we make them, in that pleasant countryside; “Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath”; that is all. Simple work, simple pleasures, and a simple death.

Of course we are wrong. There were passions and pains in those lives; tragedies perhaps. The tombstones and the registers say nothing of them; or, if they say it, it is in a cypher to which we have not the key. Yet sometimes the key is almost in our hands. Here is a story from the register of a village church-- four entries only, but they hide a tragedy which with a little imagination we can almost piece together for ourselves.

The first entry is a marriage. John Meadowes of Littlehaw Manor, bachelor, took Mary Field to wife (both of this parish) on 7th November 1681.

There were no children of the marriage. Indeed, it only lasted a year. A year later, on l2th November 1682, John died and was buried.

Poor Mary Meadowes was now alone at the Manor. We picture her sitting there in her loneliness, broken-hearted, refusing to be comforted...

Until we come to the third entry. John has only been in his grave a month, but here is the third entry, telling us that on l2th December 1682, Robert Cliff, bachelor, was married to Mary Meadowes, widow. It spoils our picture of her...

And then the fourth entry. It is the fourth entry which reveals the tragedy, which makes us wonder what is the story hidden away in the parish register of Littlehaw--the mystery of Littlehaw Manor. For here is another death, the death of Mary Cliff, and Mary Cliff died on ... l3th December 1682.

And she was buried in unconsecrated ground. For Mary Cliff (we must suppose) had killed herself. She had killed herself on the day after her marriage to her second husband.

Well, what is the story? We shall have to make it up for ourselves. Here is my rendering of it. I have no means of finding out if it is the correct one, but it seems to fit itself within the facts as we know them.