regions, the stately towers of Burleigh Hall--but can see little else
beside. All the country, as far as eye can reach, is the property of two
or three noble families, dwelling in turreted halls; while the bulk of
the population, the wretched tillers of the soil, live, as of old, in mud
hovels, in the depth of human ignorance and misery. An aggregate of about
a hundred of these hovels, each containing, on the average, some four
living beings, forms the village of Helpston. The place, in all
probability, is still very much of the same outer aspect which it bore in
the time of Helpo, the mystic stipendiary knight.

Helpston consists of two streets, meeting at right angles, the main
thoroughfare being formed by the old Roman road from Durobrivae to the
north, now full of English mud, and passing by the name of Long Ditch, or
High Street. At the meeting of the two streets stands an ancient cross,
of octangular form, with crocketed pinnacles, and not far from it, on
slightly rising ground, is the parish church, a somewhat unsightly
structure, of all styles of architecture, dedicated to St. Botolph.
Further down stretch, in unbroken line, the low huts of the farm
labourers, in one of which, lying on the High Street, John Clare was
born, on the 13th July, 1793. John Clare's parents were among the poorest
of the village, as their little cottage was among the narrowest and most
wretched of the hundred mud hovels. Originally, at the time when the
race of peasant-proprietors had not become quite extinct, a rather roomy
tenement, it was broken up into meaner quarters by subsequent landlords,
until at last the one house formed a rookery of not less than four human
dwellings. In this fourth part of a hut lived the father and mother of
John, old Parker Clare and his wife. Poor as were their neighbours, they
were poorer than the rest, being both weak and in ill health, and partly
dependent upon charity. The very origin of Parker Clare's family was
founded in misery and wretchedness. Some thirty years previous to the