Page:The National Gazetteer - A Topographical Dictionary of the British Islands, Volume 3.djvu/76

Rh NORFOLK. 61 NORFOLK. Saxons and Angles, who landed here under Cerdio in 495, and in 527 the whole county was reduced, and formed part of tie kingdom of East Anglia, being named Norfolk, or "north folk," by the new settlers, in contra- distinction to Suffolk, or the " south folk." In 866 the Danes, who had possessed themselves of the territories on the continent, left vacant by the migration of the Angles to Britain, made their first appearance on the eastern coast of Norfolk, and were welcomed by the Angles, who made common cause with them against the - Saxons of the S. and W. ; but when some four years afterwards, viz. 870, they again landed in greater num- bers, they were opposed by Edmund, the East Anglian king, who being defeated and slain, the dominion of the Danes in these parts became permanent. By the treaty concluded between Alfred the Great and the Danish Prince Guthrun in 883, this county was included in the Danelagh, and only subject to the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon kings. In 974 it was ravaged by new swarms of Danish pirates, and in 100'2 Sweyn, King of Denmark, brought his fleet up the river to Norwich, which he plundered and burnt ; he was, however, suc- cessfully opposed by Tllfkyttle, the earldorman of East Anglia, and compelled to quit the country after the battle at Thetford. Upon the submission of the whole kingdom to Canute, Thurkill was appointed the Danish governor of the whole of East Anglia ; and in the reign of Edward the Confessor it was governed by Harold, the son of Godwin, who afterwards aspired to the crown. He being slain at the battle of Hastings, Norfolk, with the rest of East Anglia, submitted to "William the Con- queror, who bestowed the earldom on Ralph de Guader, or Waher, but he baring rebelled, was besieged in Nor- wich Castle, and his estates given to Roger Bigod, another of the Norman warriors who had joined the for- tunes of William. This family continued in possession of these vast demesnes for above a century, notwith- standing the unsuccessful support they gave to Prince Robert, the elder brother, against William Rufus, and to the young princes in their rebellion against Henry II., on both which occasions the county suffered severely, as it did subsequently in the baronial wars of John's reign, being first overrun by the king, who lost his baggage in the Wash whilst crossing from Lynn into Lincolnshire, and afterwards by the forces of Louis the Dauphin. In this reign Roger Bigod filled the office of lord high steward, and was one of the twenty-five celebrated barons appointed to enforce the observance of Magna Charta. His son Hugh was made Lord Chief Justice of England, and his grandson Roger became Earl Marshal of England, in right of his mother, Maud, the sister and coheir of Anselm, Earl of Pembroke and Earl Marshal. His nephew, who succeeded him in the earldom, having no issue, surrendered this earldom and the marshal's rod into the king's hands, which were regranted to him, but on his death the title became extinct. After the lapse of a considerable period the title was revived, and the earldom was conferred on Thomas Plautagenet, fifth son of -Edward I. During the vacancy of the earl- dom in 1381, the men of Norfolk, under the command of John lo Litester, or the Dyer, rose in rebellion, and joined the commons under Wat Tyler, but were defeated by Henry le Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, at North Walsham. A few years afterwards the earldom, with the title of Duke of Norfolk, was conferred on the powerful family of Mowbray, who held it till the latter part of the 15th century, when it passed by marriage to the Howards, John, the first of this line, being cousin and ultimately coheir of John Mowbray, the fourth duke, in whose family it has ever since remained. The Duke of Norfolk still exercises a peculiar and permanent jurisdiction over his large demesnes in this county, and appoints two coroners for his liberties. In its physical features the county of Norfolk is peculiarly uninviting, appealing as one vast level plain, the undulations of the surface not being sufficient to relieve the eye, while the coast for the most part is low, and often skirted by sand- banks. Although there are no hills, the land rises con- siderably towards the N. and N.W., where the chalk downs extend from near St. Edmund's Point to Castle Acre, and appear again at Downham. From this point the ground gradually subsides towards the E., where the chalk dips down, and is overlaid by diluvial beds of gravel, sand, and clay, interspersed with layers of fossil shells several feet in thickness, called " crag-pit shells," and occasionally intermixed with fragments of chalk. In the neighbourhood of Norwich, which is well wooded, alluvial clay and brick earth occur, interspersed with thick beds of gravel overlying the chalk ; and in the western portion of the diluvial districts the clay or marl is intermixed with boulders of green sandstone, abounding in a peculiar class of fossils. In the western part of the county the surface is extremely low, forming part of the great Fen district, which stretches through Lincolnshire and Cambridge, and much of it has only recently been reclaimed from the sea, especially in that part of the county which lies W. of Lynn, where the works of the Norfolk Estuary Improvement Company arc at present in progress. Here some of the sea-walls or embankments are of very early origin, and one called the Roman Bank is now quite inland, successive embankments having added outside it some of the most fertile tracts in the county. While, however, land is .yearly being reclaimed from the bed of the ocean on the side of the Wash, where the coast is low and marshy, the sea is gradually under- mining the cliffs on the E., and entire parishes lie engulphed under the bed of the German Ocean, which were at no distant period dry land. Both geology and history support the conclusion that vast changes have taken place in the configuration of the Norfolk coast, the relative- distribution of sea and land continually shifting. There are local traditions of the sea having once reached Norwich on the Wensum, which -was then accessible to the Danish fleet, and Bungay Castle on the Wavcney. The valley of the Bure, too, appears to have been an arm of the sea in the Roman time, as shown by the position of Burgh Castle, a Roman fort commanding the navigation of the stream, and near which anchors and other marine implements are occasionally dug up. The spot on which Yarmouth stands is known to have been under water in the 1 1th century, and the whole of the low flats N. of Yarmouth, now interspersed with "broads" or tidal lakes, were then parts of an estuary which is supposed to have been left dry a little previous to the Norman conquest. The coast, as at present defined, is about 90 miles in length from the estuary of the Nene, in Cross-Keys Wash, to the mouth of the Yare. The coast on the Norfolk side of the Wash is skirted by extensive mud-banks, which are dry at low water, but between these shallows are channels of deep water affording safe access to the estuaries of the Nen and Ouse, on the former of which is the great shipping port of Wisbeach, just within the Cambridge border, and on the latter the seaport town of Lynn Regis, about 10 miles from the sea. The tide ascends the Ouse as high up as Denver, near Downham, where it is arrested by sluices. This river is subject to a great swell or < flowing at the equinoxes, especially at the spring tides of the autumn equinox. From this point, following the coast towards the E., there are no considerable ports nearer than the mouth of the Yare, on the SufV'>lk border; but several landing and shipping places, as Hun- stanton, where there is a lighthouse on the cliff, which attains an elevation of 80 feet ; Thomham, near St. Edmund's Point, where a submarine forest c;m In at low water, proving how much the sea has hire ;r;iinod upon the land ; Burnham and Wells harbours, in Bran- caster Bay, the approach to which is rendered dangerous by the Burnham and other sandbanks which here line the coast, in great part composed of masses of ponderous chalk flints, washed out of the cliffs by the continual action of the waves beating on their shore, with the Docking and Dudgeon reefs farther out ; then come tho Cley and Blakeney harbours, with the Sherringham and Pollard shoals off them; and farther E.' the watering-place of Cromer, marked by a lighthouse, and sheltered by Foulness Point, where large portions of the chalk cliff have fallen, and been washed away by the