Samuel Kerrich and Matthew Postlethwayt are bound in a sum of two hundred pounds, sa prted irm, and dated September 30, 1732 The condition of the coliga tion is that Samuel Kerrich and Barbara Postlethwayt may lawfully marry and small cause such marriage to take place at Denton between the legal hours. No date is, however, specified, so this instrument would have had no legal effect, being, in fact, a nudum pactum and “void for uncertainty." The document is executed by Kerrich and his future father-in-law, and witnessed by John Postlethwayt and Elizabeth Townshend, sister-in-law of Matilda, Matthew's second wife, and daughter of Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul's, and sworn before Charles Kidman Proctor.

The marriage took place in Denton Church, October 1, 1732.

There almost seems to have been a fatality against a bride being brought home to what Pyle called "the enchanted house" of the vanished Pell family. For now, as at the time of Kerrich's former marriage, the smallpox continued to ravage the district of Dersingham, and there was nothing to be done but for the bride to stay on at Denton while the bridegroom went forth to his labour and to the danger, fifty miles off on the other side of the great country. Again there was only an occasional visit to the wife, a separation made only bearable for both by their charming letters to each other. At last, at the end of the spring of 1733, the blessed day came when Barbara went home.

Now opens the new life which we know from her constant correspondence with her sister and step-mother (who purveys all the Gooch news) must have been of the brightest kind.

And now came the father's letters to his daughter, always beginning "Most Dear Child!" and these, together with Mrs. Kerrich's diverting answers to her sister, the letters of Mrs. Hoste, Mrs. Masters, the aged Catherina

Cobbe, and the quaint motherly epistles of Mrs. Houghton, give a complete picture of what went on at Dersingham, and in local society on both sides of the county. To complete the volume of news, Kerrich has his continuous epistolary intercourse with his relatives his father-in-law, Dr. Kerrich of Bury, Charles Ray, Bishop Gooch, and others. When to these are added the continuation of the correspondence with the now scattered Corpus friends, Aylmer, Herring, Denne, Bishop Mawson, Beacon, Rand, Styleman, Hoste, Stephens, and others, some idea may be formed of the literary equipment of the vicarage of Dersingham, of which the letters of Pyle form only a respectable example. If, as might have been thought by friends in London, Kerrich was buried alive in the country, he certainly had the wherewithal to illumine his sepulchre. All this material must, alas! be now almost ignored under the restraint of a limited notice.

Arrived at the point where Kerrich is settled in his place we shall now proceed to run lightly through the two lives thus happily brought together, touching upon the principal events, and vivifying from time to time the dry recital of facts by quotations from the strictly family letters.

Early in the year 1733 Kerrich's father died. During the summer several of Mrs. Kerrich's old school-fellows came to stay with her, among them Miss Greenwood, who, she tells her sister, "has happened of a most sad Misfortune, she was lam'd with Bleeding & her arm is quite wither'd now, how long it has been done I don't know, but 'tis thought it must be her Death, & she is very chearfull & easy under it." In September Mrs. Kerrich had the first of many "disappointments," and slowly got better again. They receive much friendship from Lord Townshend, "who spends his time in planting and improving his estate," and from the Hostes of Sandringham Hall. The changes and chances among the servants of

In 1727 the two girls go out to "dancing bouts," and have become very accomplished in music and singing. Their performances in this way made a particular impression upon a barrister of the Middle Temple, "Councillor " Robins, who writes as follows: "I got safe to Town last night full of thanks and acknowledgements to you and the rest of my good ffriends for the agreeable Summer I have pass'd this year in the Country of which I cannot express a more gratefull sense than by declaring frankly to you it has left such a Relish upon my Mind that 'twill be some time before I shall be reconciled to business, and shall be often thinking of your daughters Musick when I should be attending to the Wrangles of Westminster Hall and therefore I must in a very particular manner desire my humble Service and thanks to them for the great pleasure they gave me both in their company and their performances."

On the occasion of the death of George I., June 11, 1727, Barbara and her sister went into mourning, and she writes to Elizabeth :-"We must have each of us a plain head & Ruffles, & I wouldn't have the Fringe set into my Night-Cloaths but bring it with you as for Cloaths here is various reports about what will be ye most fashionalb Mourning Mrs Buxton says she hears either Bumbezzeens Poplins or Crapes & some talk of dark Gray Silks about 3 shillings a yd tho' every thing of Mourning will be very deere you may inquire what will be worn by the generality of people." Very like a modern letter! Mrs. Postlethwayt died on March 29, 1730. Her portrait in pastels, by Saunders, forms one of the set of nine. Both Barbara and her father wrote admirable letters to John, then an undergraduate at Merton, and many letters of condolence were received. The mother was buried in the chancel of Denton Church. A year and a quarter later John Postlethwayt had letters from his father and sister announcing the approaching marriage of the former to Matilda, sister of Thomas Gooch,

Caius College, and afterwards second baronet e. That this union to "Cosine Gooch" was uld be desired is sufficiently shown by the respect in which she was held during the of her long life by her step-children, and by ining letters which she addressed to them, and after the death of her husband, and in her n the house of her nephew, Benacre Hall. rn now to Samuel Kerrich, whom we left just is solitary life at Dersingham. We have seen as acquainted with Matthew Postlethwayt at School at the time of the death of the Chief But there are older associations. Matthew t was entered of Corpus in 1699 under the e of Charles Kidman, an old friend of the er, and maternal uncle of Kerrich. It is

series of letters which Kidman addressed to the Chief Master 712 include all Matthew Postlethwayt's quarterly college bills of his entering Corpus to his migration in December 1702 to

ats of this kind and date must be very scarce an example of

gathered from Kidman's letters to his nephew that the latter paid frequent visits to the uncle at Banham Rectory, and from other correspondence that Kerrich often called upon his old friend the rector of Denton, when at Banham. The acquaintance of nearly twenty years now developed into a warm friendship, and it appears from the opening letter of Postlethwayt to Kerrich that the entire Denton family made a stay of several days at Dersingham, early in November 1731. It was the first, and perhaps an excusable, distraction that Kerrich had had since the death of his wife only three months before. "'Tis our Desire," says Postlethwayt, October 26, 1731, "to put you to as little Trouble as may be by our visit, & to be treated like intimate Friends, & not as Strangers, who expect Niceties and Quelque choses." Arrived at Denton again Postlethwayt writes, November 30, 1731: "Ys presents You both with mine and my ffamily's hearty Thanks for your very kind, generous & handsome Entertainment You lately gave us at Darsing

So strict a disciplinarian was the Chief Master that Kidman had to remonstrate with him very soon after the boy's arrival in College :—

"Yr Nephew complains of a Rheữ falling upon his eyes wch I am apt to impute to his sitting up late wch he says he cannot tell how to avoyd unless you think fit to make some abatemts of yse exercises wch you lay upon him : wch I think you shd doe if you intend he shd pursue his Univers: studies equally wth his Companions." Similarly Samuel Kerrich in 1715 made himself ill with overwork, and in 1768 he was told by the Master of Magdalene that his son Thomas Kerrich "continued his Evening Studies much too far into the Morning," and desired that it should be checked by the father. Perhaps three generations of such determined workers is a somewhat rare

case.