Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/126

 another Parish it is twenty shillings; on which latter sum, not on the former, John Hampden was tried.

removed to Ely very soon after writing the foregoing Letter. There is a ‘receipt for 10l.’ signed by him, dated ‘Ely, 10 June 1636’; and other evidence that he was then resident there. He succeeded to his Uncle’s Farming of the Tithes; the Leases of these, and new Leases of some other small lands or fields granted him, are still in existence. He continued here till the time of the Long Parliament; and his Family still after that, till some unascertained date, seemingly about 1647, when it became apparent that the Long Parliament was not like to rise for a great while yet, and it was judged expedient that the whole household should remove to London. His Mother appears to have joined him in Ely; she quitted Huntingdon, returned to her native place, an aged grandmother,—was not, however, to end her days there.

As Sir Thomas Steward, Oliver’s Uncle, farmed the tithes of Ely, it is reasonable to believe that he, and Oliver after him, occupied the house set apart for the Tithe-Farmer there; as Mark Noble, out of dim Tradition, confidently testifies. This is ‘the house occupied by Mr. Page’; under which name, much better than under that of Cromwell, the inhabitants of Ely now know it. The House, though somewhat in a frail state, is still standing; close to St. Mary’s Churchyard; at the corner of the great Tithe-barn of Ely, or great Square of tithe-barns and offices,—which ‘is the biggest barn in England but one,’ say the Ely people. Of this House, for Oliver’s sake, some Painter will yet perhaps take a correct likeness:—it is needless to go to Stuntney out on the Soham road, as Oliver’s