the German Sea
with a vengeful army of Flemings. Returns, to the coast of
Suffolk; to Framlingham Castle, where he is welcomed; westward
towards St. Edmundsbury and Fornham Church, where he is met by
the constituted authorities with _posse comitatus;_ and swiftly
cut in pieces, he and his, or laid by the heels; on the right
bank of the obscure river Lark,--as traces still existing
will verify.

For the river Lark, though not very discoverably, still runs or
stagnates in that country; and the battle-ground is there;
serving at present as a pleasure-ground to his Grace of
Newcastle. Copper pennies of Henry II are still found there;--
rotted out from the pouches of poor slain soldiers, who had not
had _time_ to buy liquor with them. In the river Lark itself was
fished up, within man's memory, an antique gold ring; which fond
Dilettantism can almost believe may have been the very ring
Countess Leicester threw away, in her flight, into that same Lark
river or ditch.* Nay, few years ago, in tearing out an enormous
superannuated ash-tree, now grown quite corpulent, bursten,
superfluous, but long a fixture in the soil, and not to be
dislodged without revolution,--there was laid bare, under its
roots, 'a circular mound of skeletons wonderfully complete,' all
radiating from a centre, faces upwards, feet inwards; a
'radiation' not of Light, but of the Nether Darkness rather; and
evidently the fruit of battle; for 'many of the heads were
cleft, or had arrow-holes in them. The Battle of Fornham,
therefore, is a fact, though a forgotten one; no less obscure
than undeniable,--like so many other facts.

----------
*Lyttelton's _History of Henry II._ (2nd Edition), v. 169, &c.
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Like the St. Edmund's Monastery itself! Who can doubt, after
what we have said, that there was a Monastery here at one time?
No doubt at all there was a Monastery here; no doubt, some three
centuries prior to this Fornham Battle, there dwelt a man in
these parts, of the name of Edmund, King, Landlord, Duke or
whatever his title was, of the Eastern Counties;--and a very
singular man and landlord he must have been.

For his tenants, it would appear, did not complain of him in the
least; his labourers did not think of burning his wheatstacks,
breaking into his game-preserves; very far the reverse of all
that. Clear evidence, satisfactory even to my friend Dryasdust,
exists that, on the contrary, they honoured, loved, admired