“Prepare for death for if the fatall sheares
  Covld have bene stayd by prayers, sighes or teares
  They had bene stayd, and this tombe thov seest here
  Had not erected beene yet many a yeare.”

“Here lyeth the body of my Lady Brooke, who while she lyved was a good woman, a very good mother, and an exceeding good wife.  Her sovle is at rest w^th God, for she was svre y^t her Redemer lyved, and that thovgh wormes destroyed her body, yet shee shovld see God in her flesh.  She died the 12th of Jvly 1600.”

From the different aspects of life at Pickering in the Tudor Period that we have been able to give, something can be seen of the manner of living at this time; but to have done justice to the materials that may be drawn upon would have required a volume for what has of necessity been limited to a chapter.

CHAPTER X

The Forest and Vale in Stuart Times

A.D. 1603 to 1714

As in the two preceding chapters the records belonging to the Stuart period are so numerous that one is almost embarrassed at the mass of detailed information that has been preserved, and it is only possible to select some of the most interesting facts.  Commencing with the parish registers, however, we are confronted with a gap of about thirteen years.  After having been kept with regularity since 1559, there appears on p. 48 of the earliest book this curious entry:  “Edward Milnes Vicar of Pickering rent out all these following leaves.”  The missing pages contained the entries from 1602 to 1615, and this coincides with the years of Milnes’s tenure of the living, for he appears to have come to Pickering in 1602, and he was deprived in 1615.  The reasons for removing this vicar are recorded as follows in the last pages of the register, but the motives that prompted him to tear out these thirtyfive parchment pages from the register do not appear:—­

“A true copie of the Order of the Councel ther in Pickering Lith asserted? obtained by Mr Lawrence Trotter attornie at the Common law Ano do[=m]i 1615.

[Sidenote:  [Much thumbed at the edge.]]

“At the Court at Greenewich on Sunday the 21 of May 1615 in the afternoone:  present L. Archbishop of Canterburie, L. Chancelor, L. Knolls, L. Treasurer Mr Secretarie Winwood, D. of Linnox, Mr Chanceler of the Excheq, E. of Worcester, L. Chiefe iusice, E. of Pembrooke, Mr of y^e Rolles, L. Souch, Sir Thomas Lake.

[Transcriber’s Note:  [P] and [p] was used to represent a P or p with a horizontal stroke through the lower part of the stem.]