I looked fondly at the maker's name on the knife I did buy,
and said that the table cutlery of a certain small household
which set itself up forty years ago had borne the same: but the
pleasant salesman did not seem to feel the pathos of the fact so
much as I.
IV
There is not only a vast deal of industry in Sheffield, but there
is an unusual abundance of history, as there might very well be
in a place that began life, in the usual English fashion, under
the Britons and grew into municipal consciousness in the
fostering care of the Romans and the ruder nurture of the Saxons,
Danes, and Normans. Lords it had of the last, and the great line
of the Earls of Shrewsbury presently rose and led Sheffield men
back to battle in France, where the first earl fell on the bloody
field, and so many of the men died with him in 1453 that there
was not a house in all the region which did not mourn a loss.
Which of the Roses Sheffield held for, White or Red, I am not
sure; but we will say that it duly suffered for one or the other;
and it is certain that the great Cardinal Wolsey rested eighteen
days at Sheffield Manor just before he went to die at Leicester;
and Mary Queen of Scots spent fourteen years of sorrowful
captivity, sometimes at the Manor and sometimes in Sheffield
Castle.
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