rly English structure. Four
more of the old Sussex iron tomb slabs may be seen at Mayfield. In the
churchyard, says Mr. Lower, was once an inscription with this
uncomplimentary first line:--

O reader, if that thou canst read,

It continued:--

Look down upon this stone;
Death is the man, do you what you can,
That never spareth none!

In Mayfield's street even the new houses have caught comeliness from
their venerable neighbours. It undulates from gable to gable, and has
two good inns. The old timbered house in the middle of the east side is
that to which Richard Jefferies refers without enthusiasm in the passage
which I quote in a later chapter from his essay on Buckhurst Park. In
Louis Jennings' _Field Paths and Green Lanes_ the house comes in for
eulogy.

Vicar of Mayfield in 1361 and following years was John Wickliffe, who
has too often been confused with his great contemporary and namesake,
the reformer. And the village claims as a son Thomas May (1595-1650),
playwright, translator of Lucan's "Pharsalia," secretary to Parliament
and friend of Ben Jonson.

In the Sussex Archaeological Collections is printed the journal of Walter
Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield in the latter half of the eighteenth
century, from which a few extracts may be given:

"1750. I found the greatest part of the school in a flow, by reason of
the snow and rain coming through the leads. The following extempore
verse I set for a copy:--

Abandon every evil thought
For they to judgment will be brought.

In passing the Star I met with Mr. Eastwood; we went in and spent 2_d._
apiece.

[Sidenote: PRESAGES OF DEATH]

"I went to Mr. Sawyer's.... One of his daughters said that she expected
a change in the weather as she had last night dreamt of a deceased
person." The editor remarks that this superstition still lingers (or did
fifty years ago) in the Weald of Sussex. Walter Gale adds:--"I told them
in discourse that on Thursday last the town clock was heard to strike 3
in the afternoon twice, once before the chimes went, and a 2nd time
pretty nearly a 1/4 of an hour after.... The strikes at the 2nd striking
seemed to sound very dull and mournfully; this, together with the
crickets coming to the house at Laughton just at our coming away, I look
upon to be sure presages of my sister's death."

A year later:--"My mother, to my great unhappiness, died in the 83rd
year of her age, agreeable to t