" And at the same time he is full
of interest in the small incidents of Nature around him, and notes, for
instance, how a crow had built a nest and laid an egg in the poke of the
topsail of the windmill.
But Rous's Diary is not concerned only with matters of local interest.
All the rumours of the world reached the Vicar of Downham and were by
him faithfully set down from day to day. Europe was seething with war;
these were the days of that famous Thirty Years' War of which we have so
often heard of late, and from time to time England was joining in the
general disturbance, whether in France, Spain, or the Netherlands. As
usual the English attack was mostly from the basis of the Fleet, and
never before, Rous notes, had England possessed so great and powerful a
fleet. Soon after the Diary begins the English Expedition to Rochelle
took place, and a version of its history is here embodied. Rous was kept
in touch with the outside world not only by the proclamations constantly
set up at Thetford on the corner post of the Bell Inn--still the centre
of that ancient town--but by as numerous and as varied a crop of reports
as we find floating among us to-day, often indeed of very similar
character. The vicar sets them down, not committing himself to belief
but with a patient confidence that "time may tell us what we may safely
think." In the meanwhile measures with which we are familiar to-day were
actively in progress: recruits or "voluntaries" were being "gathered up
by the drum," many soldiers, mostly Irish, were billeted, sometimes not
without friction, all over East Anglia, the coasts were being fortified,
the price of corn was rising, and even the problem of international
exchange is discussed with precise data by Rous.
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