12
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
"passe that there flocked together all about the same marishes
"such a number of owles, as all the shire was not able to yield:
"whereby the marsh holders were shortly delivered from the
"vexation of the said mice." Stow and Speed are stated to
repeat this account. J. Childrey in his Britannia Baconica,
published in 1660, gives a similar description probably based on
Holinshed's description with a little additional information, as
follows : "In the year 1580, at Alhallantide, an army of Mice
"so over-run the marshes in Denge Hundred near Southminster
"that they eat up the Grass to the very Roots, and so poisoned
"it with their teeth, that a great Murrain fel upon the Cattle
"that grazed there. But at length a great number of strange
"painted Owles came (no man knows whence) and devoured
"all the Mice. The like vexation was at the same time in Kent,
"saith Stow. It is reported that in 1648 there happened the
"like again in Essex." Although some of the subsequent
accounts may have been copied from Holinshed, that of Fuller
in The History of the Worthies of England, published in 1662, is
clearly original. He writes, "I wish the sad casualties may never
"return, which lately have happened in this County. The one
"1581 in the Hundred of Dengy the other 1648 in the Hundred
"of Rochford and Isle of Foulness (rented in part by two of
"my credible parishioners, who attested it, having paid dear
"for the truth thereof), when an Army of Mice nesting in
"Ant-Hills, as Conies in Burroughs, shaved off the grass at the
"bare roots, which withered to dung was infectious to Cattle.
"The March following, numberless flocks of Owls from all parts
"flew thither, and destroyed them, which otherwise had ruined
"the Country, if continuing another year." Christy states that
Lilly, in his Merlinus Anglicus Junior, published about 1664,
alludes to an invasion of mice at Southminster in 1660. I am
unable to accept this, as in spite of a search I have been unable
to find the statement, and further, E. A. Fitch's quotation from
the work in question suggests that Christy was mistaken.
We now come to the earliest mention of an Essex heronry.
This is to be found in Speculi Britanniae pars, etc., published
in 1594. The author, John Norden, in his own language,
writes: "Towlshunt Darcye, g. 30. Nerewch is a fayre heron-
rye."