In the paper giving a title to this small volume
of historical essays Mrs. Hood describes in detail, for the county of Norfolk, the sufferings of the loyal clerff, deprived under the Parliament in and after 1642 and of the Puritan clergy expelled in 1662. The effect of these expulsions is most clearly shown when the particulars for a single county are set out in full. Mrs. Hood estimates that eighty-eight loyalists were turned out, while sixty-six Puritans were ejected twenty years later. Not all of these Puritans seceded from the Church ; some, like Richard Baxter himself, continued to attend its services though they would not hold office. In other essays Mrs. Hood deals with her special subject of manorial and parish history, as illustrated in the Norfolk villages whose records she knows well. Mrs. Hood also deals with the question, " Did Pre-Reformation Priests ever marry ? " in a paper giving several instances of Norfolk priests who had sons. It remains, of course, uncertain whether these sons were born before the fathers took orders, though this is the more probable explanation.
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