An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY the other City Records. One would have thought that after this miraculous recovery the authorities would have taken more care of it than (to suit the convenience of the Editor of the "Records of the City of Norwich") to send it to him to the South of England by post! But they did, and luckily it came back all right. By the way, such Editor did not do me the common justice of stating that the recovery of this most important record was due to me! Having occasion to look up the early registers of Horsford St. Faith's I found they bad vanished quite recently, and that there were none before 1695. Worse still, the very important registers of Aylsham, which I had myself seen a few years before, are now gone. Some day possibly Parliament will wake up to the necessity of collecting all these early registers, and preserving them from the negligence of many · of the clergy.~ On the 8th June I did not attend the General Meeting of the Norfolk and Norwich Arcbreological Society as I bad resigned the Committee, finding it hopeless to get them to do any work about this time. I summarized in Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany (n.s.) i., pp. 167-171, the ineptitude and laziness of the Norfolk and Norwich Archreological Society, pointing out its breach of faith with its members over a period of many years, in terms to which I must refer my readers. It was, however, like punching a loose-banging bladder, for it seems as though it is impossible to get the society to work on any other lines than cadging for free teas at excursions-of which scandal, however, they have at last become ashamed. Nothing much, however, could have been expected from a society of which the President and both Hon. Secretaries were stone deaf! Subsequently efforts were made to get a working Hon. Secretary, but the gentleman selected promptly broke down for a long while, though his post was well filled by the Rev. Dukinfield Astley till he regained health, without attaining editorial vigour! The next day I cycled over to Ingham, in all 34 miles, and restored the fragments of the Stapleton brasses on * I found the Bircham Newton Register among the private papers of the squire, and the early Register of Buckenham was absolutely rotten, and now has to be held together with interleaved paper.