Note 25 — YARMOUTH BEACH, ITS HOLIDAY ASPECTS.

The following is inserted for the behoof of ardent admirers of the “good old times,” when the Yarmouth Rows were in their meridian glory. No better period for reflection could be selected than when in the full glow of an enjoyable dip in the briny; the mind could then fully realise the degeneracy of the present times as compared with the year 1571. “On May 8th, 1571, Dr. Whitgift, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and the Heads of Colleges, for many and weighty reasons, decreed that if any scholar should go into any river, pool or other water in the County of Cambridge, by day or night, to swim or wash, he should, if under the degree of Bachelor of Arts, for the first offence, be sharply and severely whipped publicly in the common hall of the College, and on the next day should be again openly whipped in the public school where he was, or ought to be, an auditor before all the auditors, by one of the proctors, or some other assigned by the Vice-Chancellor; and for the second offence every such delinquent shall be expelled his college and the University for ever. But if he should be a Bachelor of Arts, then for the first offence he should be put in the stocks for a whole day, in the common hall of his College, and should, before he was liberated, pay ten shillings towards the Commons of the College, and for the second offence he should be expelled his College and the University. And if he should be a Master of Arts, or Bachelor of Law, physic, or music, or of superior degree, he should be severely punished, at the judgment and discretion of the Master of his College, or, in his absence, of the President and one of the Deans.” Cooper’s Annals of Cambridge Vol. ii. p. 377.