J. W. Robertson Scott

“ Is there to be found a married man
That in verity declare can,
That his marriage him doth not rue,
That he has no fear of his wife for a shrew,
He may this Bacon for himself down hew?
The tale goes that a would-be possessor of the Red Tower Bacon asked, when a ladder had been brought for his assistance, that some one should cut down the Flitch for him, as if he got a grease-spot on his best clothes his wife would scold him! Needless to say, this applicant was not allowed to have the Bacon. ”

“ It is so familiar that throughout the land there can be few persons who have never heard of the Dunmow Flitch. It is so old as to be enshrined, for as long as English Literature shall endure, in Chaucer and Langland. ”

“ PROCESSION AFTER THE MODERN CEREMONY.—Two couples in chairs, recent imitations of the original in the Priory Church. The Bacon is swinging from poles behind the second couple.
Where the monastic building once extended nothing remains but the out of sight foundations which try the patience of the digger of land drains. ”

“ In the accounts available of the awarding of the Flitch after the closing of the religious houses by Henry VIII we hear of "two great stones near the Church door" on which the applicant for the Bacon had to kneel. Whether they are still in existence is uncertain.
What are to-day pointed out as the stones on which the Pilgrims knelt may possibly be the bases of two of the many columns which local vandals in want of building material have demolished. They are certainly not "sharp," as some chroniclers describe the stones to have been. ”

“ Hartley has written, by that
indefinable feeling which ever strikes us on our entry into a spacious and beautiful edifice. That the building is a fragment of what must have been a structure of extreme beauty becomes evident. ”

“ Now all may have fallen out exactly as Harrison Ainsworth tells us; but then, again, as Uncle Remus says, "it moughtn't."
"Among the jocular tenures of England," writes Grose—he was the antiquary for whom Burns wrote "Tam o' Shanter"—"none has been more talked about than the Bacon of Dunmow." (A peppercorn rent, which still appears in legal documents, is a kind of "jocular tenure.") In the theory of a jocular tenure we have probably the true origin of the Flitch custom. ”

“ I, Leslie Allen Wright, the chief attendant to the Bridegroom upon his day of wedding, praying a grace of pardon for usurping the Prior's rightful duty, yet feeling the fine prompting spirit of the ancient custom, do now bestow upon these two worthy persons, Walter Girdwood Mulliner and Gabrielle his wife, a Flitch of Bacon.
May they in all the added years of their life grow in Ripeness and in Spirit. Amen.
A Bacon custom in Brittany has been referred to. Mention may also be made of a German story, "The Man and the Flitch of Bacon" ”

“ Among the twenty-five Essex lordships which his sovereign gave him were those of Great and Little Dunmow. When the grandson of this Baynard fell out with Henry I, it was not long before that energetic monarch had a Fitzwalter enjoying the advantages of the lordships.
Fitzwalters followed one another for ten generations. The family is notable for the "Sir Reginald Fitzwalter" of Harrison Ainsworth's ballad. Tradition has long declared him to be old Dugdale's Lord Robert who "re-edified the decayed Priory of Dunmow." ”

“ It is also of interest to notice that, in the cases reported, the Bacon is given to a man, not to a husband and wife. An historian also speaks of "the Pilgrim" and of "his Bacon being borne before him."
The first recorded presentation of the Bacon is dated, as will be observed, 1445. But, in view of the allusion in Chaucer a century before, it is plain that the custom must have existed even before his time. The references to the custom in other early authors would also seem to point to the fact of it having been frequently observed. ”

“ During the last four years of the Priory's existence, 1531-5, that is up to the time of the dissolution of the minor monasteries, the Prior entered up his accounts every Sunday in a long narrow book such as one sees on bakers' counters.
The entries at the very end of the book are in regard to the payment to one "Purcas"—still a Little Dunmow name—"for iiij days' werke, xxd," and to two "labryng" men for their "werke." Earlier in the book a payment "to my stuarde for kepying of my Curte at Dunmowe" is chronicled. A large proportion of the expenses are in respect of farm work or stock. ”

“ Memorandum: that in the year of our Lord, 1510, Thomas le Fuller, of Coggeshall, in the County of Essex, came to the Priory of Dunmow, and on the 8th September, being Sunday, in the second year of King Henry VIII, he was, according to the form of the Charter, sworn before John Tylor, the Prior of the house and Convent, as also before a multitude of neighbours, and there was delivered unto him, the said Thomas, a Gammon of Bacon. ”

“ THE ANCIENT CHAIR AND THE "SHARP-POINTED STONES."—Both are in the Priory Church, the former within the altar rails, the latter just outside.
THE EFFIGIES IN THE PRIORY CHURCH.
THE EFFIGIES IN THE PRIORY CHURCH.—Traditionally regarded as representing the founder of the Flitch custom and his wife, and the "Fair Matilda" poisoned by King John. There is no doubt that the knight is one of the Fitzwalters, and that the female figure lying by itself represents a member of the same house. An interment in 1627 recorded in the Register of the Church is described as "next to the tomb of Matilda." ”

“ PROCESSION AT THE LAST LEGITIMATE PRESENTATION OF THE BACON.—This Hogarthian record of the Shakeshafts carried in procession with their Bacon is from a painting by David Ogbourne, a local artist who witnessed the ceremony. Local personages are represented in the crowd. The ladies in front of the laden basket are said to be members of the Strutt family. The man mopping his head is Pownall, "the fat butcher of Stebbing." ”

“ Thirty-seven years later there is a record of the giving of the Bacon by the Lord of the Manor, the recipients being Thomas Shakeshaft, of the parish of Weathersfield, Essex, weaver, and Ann his wife. They figure in the Everyday Book illustration. The "Hommage" on this occasion consisted of Bachelors as well as Spinsters—
HOMMAGE.
William Townsend, Gent. ”

“ He had the generalship of that "Army of God and Holy Church" which wrung Magna Charta from John in 1215, and was "the first champion of English liberty."
This knight (says Newcourt) lived in all affluence of Riches and Honour, 16y and ob. 1234, 19 Hen. III, and was buried before the High Altar in this Priory Church near his said daughter, the Fair Matilda. ”

“ Mr. and Mrs. QUIGGIN.
1905. Rev. and Mrs. O. F. S. P. JENKINS, St. John's, Mold. N. Wales.
Mr. and Mrs. F. J. G. NOAKES, 17, Bedlum, Bitterly, Ludlow, Salop.
1906. Mr. and Mrs. W. S. J. LLOYD-WILLEY, 5, Cottage Grove, Bow, E.
Mr. and Mrs. H. LEWIS MORGAN, 517, Cliff Road, Bristol.
No ceremony has been held since 1906.
CHAPTER XI
The Scene at the Modern Ceremony
Humorous account of a recent Flitch festival, which appeared in the London Star, may be reproduced in part, as an outsider's impression of the modern ceremony—
The sun poured down on Dunmow meadows. ”