East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical Associations

In another way also there came to the children in Wrentham the growing perception of a larger world than that in which we lived, and moved, and had our being. One of the historic sites of East Anglia is Framlingham, a small market town, lying a little off the highroad to London, a few miles from what always seemed to me the very uninteresting village of Needham Market, though at one time Godwin, the author of ‘Caleb Williams,’ preached in the chapel there. There is now a public school for Suffolk boys at Framlingham, and it may yet make a noise in the world. Framlingham in our time has given London Mr. Jeaffreson, a successful man of letters, and Sir Henry Thompson, a still more successful surgeon. In my young days it was chiefly noted for its castle. The mother of that amiable and excellent lady, Mrs. Trimmer, also came from Framlingham; and it is to be hoped that the old town may have had something to do with the formation of the character of a woman whom now we should sneer at, perhaps, as goody-goody, but who, when George the Third was King, did much for the education and improvement of the young. I read in Mrs. Trimmer’s life ‘that her father was a man of an excellent understanding, and of great piety; and so high was his reputation for knowledge of divinity, and so exemplary his moral conduct, that, as an exception to their general rule, which admitted no laymen, he was chosen member of a clerical club in the town (Ipswich) in which he resided. From him,’ continues the biographer of the daughter, ‘she imbibed the purest sentiments of religion and virtue, and learnt betimes the fundamental principles of Christianity.’ Well, it is hoped Mr. Kirby did his best for his daughter; but, after all, how much more potent is the influence of a mother! And hence I may claim for Framlingham a fair share in the formation of even so burning and shining a light as Mrs. Trimmer.

The name Framlingham, say the learned, or did say – for what learned men say at one time does not always correspond with what they say at another – is composed of two Saxon words, signifying the habitation of strangers; and to strangers the place is still rich in interest. In its church sleeps the unfortunate, but heroic, Earl of Surrey, whose harmonious verse still delights the students of English literature. Some say he was born at Framlingham. This is matter of doubt; but there is no doubt about the fact that he was buried there by his son, the Earl of Northampton, who erected a handsome monument to his father’s memory. The monument is an elevated tomb, with the Earl’s arms and those of his lady in the front in the angles, and with an inscription in the centre. It has his effigy in armour, with an ermined mantle, his feet leaning against a lion couchant. On his left is his lady in black, with an ermined mantle and a coronet. Both have their hands held up as in prayer. On a projecting plinth in front is the figure of his second son, the Earl of Northampton, in armour, with a mantle of ermine, kneeling in prayer. Behind, in a similar plinth, kneeling with a coronet, and in robes, is his eldest daughter, Jane, Countess of Westmoreland, on the right; and his third daughter Catherine, the wife of Lord Henry Berkeley on the left. The monument is kept in order, and painted occasionally, as directed by the Earl of Northampton, out of the endowment of his hospital at Greenwich. In repairing the monument in October, 1835, the Rev. George Attwood, curate of Framlingham, discovered the remains of the Earl lying embedded in clay, directly under his figure on his tomb. It is difficult now to find what high treason the chivalrous and poetic and gallant Earl had been guilty of; but at that time our eighth Henry ruled the land, and if he wished anyone out of the way, he had not far to go for witnesses or judge or jury ready to do his wicked and wanton will. To the shame of England be it said, the Earl of Surrey was beheaded when he was only thirty years of age. No particulars are preserved of his deportment in prison or on the scaffold, but from the noble spirit he evinced at his trial, and from his general character, it cannot be doubted that he behaved in the last scene of his existence with fortitude and dignity. On the barbarous injustice to which he was sacrificed comment is unnecessary; but regret at his early fate is increased by the circumstance that Henry was in extremities when he ordered his execution, and that his swollen and enfeebled hands were unequal to the task of signing his death-warrant. In this respect more fortunate was the father of Surrey, the Duke of Norfolk, who is buried near the altar of the church at Framlingham. He also was condemned to death, but in the meanwhile the King died, and his victim was set free. Not far off is the tomb of Henry Fitzroy, a natural son of King Henry. He was a friend of Surrey, and was to have married his sister. The other monuments which adorn the interior of this magnificent church are a table of black marble, supported by angels, to the memory of Sir Robert Hitcham, a mural monument by Roubillac, and others to commemorate virtues and graces, as embodied in the lives of decent men and women in whom the world has long ceased to take any interest.

The venerable castle – here I quote Dr. Dugdale’s ‘British Traveller’ – with its eventful history, imparts the strongest interest to the town of Framlingham. Tradition refers its origin to the sixth century, and ascribes it to Redwald, one of the early Saxon monarchs. St. Edmund the Martyr fled hither in 870, and was besieged by the Danes, who took Framlingham and held it fifty years. The Norman King gave the castle to the Bigods. The castle passed through many hands. It was there Queen Mary took shelter when, after the death of Edward VI., Lady Jane Grey was called to the throne, and thence she came to London, on the capture of the former, to take possession of the crown. It was an evil day for England when she came to Framlingham Castle and beguiled the hearts of the Suffolk men. Old Fox tells us that when Mary had returned to her castle at Framlingham there resorted to her ‘the Suffolke men, who, being alwayes forward in promoting the proceedings of the Gospel, promised her their aid and help, so that she would not attempt the alteration of the religion which her brother, King Edward, had before established by laws and orders publickly enacted, and received by the consent of the whole realm in his behalf. She afterwards agreed with such promise made unto them that no innovation should be made of religion, as that no man would or could then have misdoubted her. “Victorious by the aid of the Suffolke men,” Queen Mary soon forgot her promise. They of course remonstrated. It was, methinks,’ adds Fox, ‘an heavie word that she answered to the Suffolke men afterwards which did make supplication unto her grace to performe her promise. “For so much,” saith she, “as you being but members desire to rule your head, you shall one day perceive the members must obey their head, and not look to rule over the same.”’ Well, Queen Mary was as good as her word. As Fox adds, ‘What she performed on her part the thing itself and the whole story of the persecution doth testifie.’ But the stubborn Suffolk gospellers were not to be put down, and a remnant had been left in Framlingham, as well as in other parts of the country. At Framlingham we find a Richard Goltie, son-in-law of Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, was instituted to the rectory in 1630. In 1650 he refused the engagement to submit to the then existing Government, and was removed, when Henry Sampson, M.A., a fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, was appointed by his college to the vacancy. He continued there till the Restoration, when Mr. Goltie returned and took possession of the living, which he continued to hold till his death. Not being satisfied to conform, Mr. Sampson continued awhile preaching at Framlingham to those who were attached to his ministry, in private houses and other buildings, and by his labours laid the foundation of the Congregational or Independent Church in that town, as appears from a note in the Church Book belonging to the Dissenters meeting at Woodbridge, in the Quay Lane. Mr. Sampson collected materials for a history of Nonconformity, a great part of which is incorporated in Calamy and Palmer’s works. It was to him that John Fairfax, of Needham Market, wrote, when he and some other ministers were shut up in Bury Gaol for the crime of preaching the Gospel. It appears that they had met in the parish church, at Walsham-le-Willows, where, after the liturgy was read by the clergyman of the parish, a sermon was preached by a non-licensed minister. The party were then taken and committed to prison, where they remained till the next Quarter Sessions, when they were released upon their recognisances to appear at the next Assizes. Then, it seems, though not convicted upon any other offence, upon the suggestion of the justices, to whom they were strangers, they were committed again to prison, on the plea that they were persons dangerous to the public peace. Thus were Dissenters treated in the good old times. Mr. Sampson seems to have fared somewhat better. After his removal, he travelled on the Continent, returned to London, entered himself at the College of Physicians, and lived and died in good repute. The old congregation having become Unitarian, a new one was formed, and of this Church a pillar was Mr. Henry Thompson – a gentleman well known and widely honoured in his day. This Mr. Thompson had a son, who was sent to Wrentham to be educated for awhile with myself. An uncle of his, one of the most amiable of men, lived at Southwold, close by, and I presume it was by his means that the settlement was effected. Be that as it may, the change was a welcome one, as it gave me a pleasant companion for nearly five years of boyish life. I confess my two sisters – one of whom has, alas! long been in her grave – did all they could in the way of sports and pastimes to meet my wants and wishes, and act like boys; but the fact is, though it may be doubted in these days of Women’s Rights, girls are not boys, nor can they be expected to behave as such.

I confess the advent of this young Thompson from Framlingham was a great event in our small family circle. In the first place he came from a town, and that at once gave him a marked superiority. Then his father kept a horse and gig, for it was thus young Thompson came to Wrentham, and all the world over a gig has been a symbol of the respectability dear to the British heart; and he had been for that time and as an only son carefully and intelligently trained by one of the family who, in the person of the late Edward Miall, founder of the Nonconformist, and M.P. for Bradford, was supposed to be the incarnation of what was termed the dissidence of Dissent. Young Thompson was also what would be called a genteel youth, and gave me ideas as to wearing straps to my trousers, oiling my hair, and generally adorning my person, which had never entered into my unsophisticated head. He also had been to London, and as Framlingham was some twenty miles nearer the Metropolis – the centre of intelligence – than Wrentham, the intelligence of a Framlingham lad was of course expected, à fortiori, to be of a stronger character than that of one born twenty miles farther from the sun of London. There was also a good deal of talent in the family on the mother’s side. Mrs. Thompson was a Miss Medley, and Mr. Medley was an artist of great merit, the son of Mr. Medley, of Liverpool, a leading Baptist minister in his day, and a writer of hymns still sung in Baptist churches. Mr. Medley was also active as a Liberal, and was credited by us boys with a personal acquaintance with no less illustrious an individual than the great Brougham himself. Once or twice he came to lodge during the summer at Southwold; naturally he was visited there by his grandson, who would return well primed with political anecdote to our rustic circle, and was deemed by me more of an authority than ever. Once or twice, too, I had the honour of being a visitor, and heard Mr. Medley, a fine old gentleman, who lived to a very advanced age, talk of art and artists and other matters quite out of my usual sphere. It is not surprising, then, that the grandson became in time quite an artist himself, though he is better known to the world, not so much in that capacity, but as Sir Henry Thompson, certainly not the least distinguished surgeon of our day. In Lord Beaconsfield’s last novel, ‘Endymion,’ we have a passing reference to one Wrentham lad, Sir Charles Wetherell, as ‘the eccentric and too uncompromising Wetherell.’ Assuredly the fame of another lad, Sir Henry Thompson, connected with Wrentham, will longer live.

This reference to Sir Henry Thompson reminds me of his early attempts at rhyme, which I trust he will forgive me for rescuing from oblivion. Once upon a time we captured a young cuckoo, and having carefully gorged it with bread-and-milk, and left it in a nest in an outhouse, which we devoted mainly to rabbits, the next morning the poor bird was found to be dead. A prize was offered for the best couplet. Three of us contended. My sister wrote:

‘This lonely sepulchre containsA little cuckoo’s dead remains.’

I wrote:

‘To our grief, cuckoo sweetIs lying underneath our feet.’

Thompson took quite a different and, read by the light of his subsequent career, a far more characteristic view of the case. He took care, as a medical man, to dwell on the cause which had terminated the career of so interesting a bird. According to him,

‘It had a breast as soft as silk,And died of eating bread-and-milk.’

Assuredly in this case the child was father to the man.

But the great awakening of the time, that which made the dry bones live, and fluttered the dove-cotes of Toryism – we never heard the word Conservative then – was the General Election. At that time we were always having General Elections. We had one, of course, when George IV. died and King William reigned in his stead; we had another when the Duke was out and the Whigs came in; and then we had another when the cry ran through the land, and reached even the most remote villages of East Anglia, of ‘The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!’ Voters were brought down, or up, as the case might be, from all quarters of the land. Coaches-full came tearing along, gorgeous with election flags, and placarded all over with names of rival candidates. Gentlemen of ancient lineage called to request of the meanest elector the favour of his vote and influence. It was with pain the Liberals of our little village resolved to vote against our Benacre neighbour, Sir Thomas Gooch, who had long represented the county, but of whom the Radicals spoke derisively as Gaffer Gooch, or the Benacre Bull, and chose in his stead a country squire known as Robert Newton Shaw, utterly unknown in our quarter of the county.

It was rather a trying time for the Wrentham Liberals and Dissenters to do their duty, for Sir Thomas was a neighbour, and always was a pleasant gentleman in the parish, and had power to do anyone mischief who went against him. Our medical man did not vote at all. Our squire actually, I believe, supported Sir Thomas, and altogether respectable people found themselves in an extremely awkward position. At Southwold the people were a little more independent, for Gaffer Gooch rarely illuminated that little town with his presence; and as my father, with the economy which is part and parcel of the Scotchman as he leaves his native land, but which rarely extends to his children, had, by teaching gentlemen’s sons and other ways, been able to save a little, which little had been devoted to the purchase of cottage property in Southwold (well do I remember the difficulty there was in collecting the rents; never, assuredly, were people so much afflicted or so unfortunate when the time of payment came), it was for Southwold that he claimed his vote. I, as the son, was permitted to share in the glories of that eventful day. The election took place at school-time, and my companion was Henry Thompson. We had to walk betimes to Frostenden, where Farmer Downing lived, who was that rara avis a Liberal tenant farmer; but of course he did not vote tenant farmer, but as a freeholder. It was with alarm that Mrs. Downing saw her lord and master drive off with us two lads in the gig. There had been riots at London, riots as near as Ipswich, and why not at Halesworth? A mile or two after we had started we met, per arrangement, the Southwold contingent, who joined us with flags flying and a band playing, and all the pride and pomp and circumstance of war. We rode in a gig, and our animal was a steady-going mare, and behaved as such; but all had not gigs or steady-going mares. Some were in carts, some were on horseback, some in ancient vehicles furbished up for the occasion; and as the band played and the people shouted, some of the animals felt induced to dance, and especially was this restlessness on the part of the quadrupeds increased as we neared Halesworth, in the market-place of which was the polling-booth, and in the streets of which we out-lying voters riding in procession made quite a show. Halesworth, or Holser, as it was called, was distant about nine miles, lying to the left of Yoxford, a village which its admirers were wont to call the Garden of Suffolk. In 1809 the Bishop of Norwich wrote from Halesworth: ‘The church in this place is uncommonly fine, and the ruins of an old castle (formerly the seat of the Howards) are striking and majestic.’ But when we went there the ruins were gone – the more is the pity – and the church remained, at that time held by no less a Liberal than Richard Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin. I used at times to meet with a country gentleman – a brother of a noble lord – who after he had spent a fortune merrily, as country gentlemen did in the good old times, came to live on a small annuity, and, in spite of his enormous daily consumption of London porter at the leading inn of the town, managed to reach a good old age. The hon. gentleman and I were on friendly terms, and sometimes he would talk of Whately, who had often been at his house. But, alas! he remembered nothing of a man who became so celebrated in his day except that he would eat after dinner any number of oranges, and was so fond of active exercise that he would take a pitchfork and fill his tumbrels with manure, or work just like a labourer on a farm. Of the Doctor’s aversion to church-bell ringing we have a curious illustration in a letter which appeared in the Suffolk Chronicle in 1825: ‘A short time since a wedding took place in the families of two of the oldest and most respectable inhabitants of the town, when it was understood that the Rector had, for the first time since his induction to his living, given permission for the bells to greet the happy pair. After, however, sounding a merry peal a short hour and a half, a message was received at the belfry that the Rector thought they had rung long enough. The tardiness with which this mandate was obeyed soon brought the rev. gentleman in person to enforce his order, which was then reluctantly complied with to the great disappointment of the inhabitants, and mortification of the ringers, several of whom had come from a considerable distance to assist in the festivities of the day.’ The Independent chapel was an old-fashioned meeting-house, full of heavy pillars, which, as they intercepted the view of the preacher, were favourable to that gentle sleep so peculiarly refreshing on a Sunday afternoon – especially in hot weather – in the square and commodious family pew. The minister was an old and venerable-looking divine of the name of Dennant, who was always writing little poems – I remember the opening lines of one,

‘A while ago when I was nought,And neither body, soul, nor thought’ —

and whose ‘Soul Prosperity,’ a volume of sober prose, reached a second edition. His grandson, Mr. J. R. Robinson, now the energetic manager of the Daily News, may be said to have achieved a position in the world of London of which his simple-hearted and deeply-devotional grandfather could never have dreamed. As I was the son of a brother minister, Mr. Dennant’s house was open to myself and Thompson, though we did not go there on the particular day of which I write. The leading tradesman of the town was a Liberal, and had at least one pretty daughter, and there we went. Most of the day, however, we mixed with the mob which crowded round, while the voters – you may be sure, not all of them sober – were brought up to vote. The excitement was immense; there was the hourly publication of the state of the poll – more or less unreliable, but, nevertheless, exciting; and what a tumult there was as one or other of the rival candidates drove up to his temporary quarters in a carriage and pair, or carriage and four, made a short speech, which was cheered by his friends and howled at derisively by his foes, while the horses were being changed, and then drove off at a gallop to make the same display and to undergo the same ordeal elsewhere! To be sure, there was a little rough play; now and then a rush was made by nobody in particular, and for no particular reason; or, again, an indiscreet voter – rendered additionally so by indulgence in beer – gave occasion for offence; but really, beyond a scrimmage, a hat broken, a coat or two torn or bespattered with mud, a cockade rudely snatched from the wearer, little harm was done. The voters knew each other, and had come to vote, and had stayed to see the fun. For the timid, the infirm, the old, the day was a trying one; but there was an excitement and a life about the affair one misses now that the ballot has come into play, and has made the voter less of a man than ever. Of course the shops were shut up. All who could afford to do so kept open house, and at every available window were the bright, beaming faces of the Suffolk fair – oh, they were jolly, those election days of old! Well, in East Anglia, as elsewhere, spite of the parsons, spite of the landlords, spite of the slavery of old custom, spite of old traditions, the freeholders voted Reform, and Reform was won, and everyone believed that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. In ten years, I heard people say, there would be no tithes for the farmer to pay, and welcome was the announcement; for then, as now, the agricultural interest was depressed, and the farmer was a ruined man. Now one takes but a languid interest in the word Reform, but then it stirred the hearts of the people; and how they celebrated their victory, how they hoisted flags and got up processions and made speeches, and feasted and hurrahed, ’twere tedious to tell. All over the land the people rejoiced with exceeding joy. Old things, they believed, had passed away – all things had become new.

CHAPTER V.

BUNGAY AND ITS PEOPLE

Bungay Nonconformity – Hannah More – The Childses – The Queen’s Librarian – Prince Albert.

In the beginning of the present century, a disgraceful attack on Methodism – by which the writer means Dissent in all its branches – appeared in what was then the leading critical journal of the age, the Edinburgh Review. ‘The sources,’ said the writer, a clergyman (to his shame be it recorded) of the Church of England – no less distinguished a divine than the far-famed Sydney Smith – ‘from which we shall derive our extracts are the Evangelical and Methodistical magazines for the year 1807, works which are said to be circulated to the amount of 18,000 or 20,000 every month, and which contain the sentiments of Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists, and of the Evangelical clergymen of the Church of England. We shall use the general term of Methodism to designate these three classes of fanatics, not troubling ourselves to point out the finer shades and nicer discriminations of lunacy, but treating them as all in one general conspiracy against common-sense and rational orthodox Christianity.’ To East Anglia came the reputed worthy Canon for an illustration of what he termed their policy to have a great change of ministers. Accordingly, he reprints from the Evangelical Magazine the following notice of an East Anglian Nonconformist ordination, which, by-the-bye, in no degree affects the charge unjustly laid at the door of these ‘fanatics,’ as engaged ‘in one general conspiracy against common-sense and rational orthodox Christianity.’ ‘Same day the Rev. W. Haward, from Hoxton Academy, was ordained over the Independent Church at Rendham, Suffolk; Mr. Pickles, of Walpole, began with prayer and reading; Mr. Price, of Woodbridge, delivered the introductory discourse, and asked the questions; Mr. Dennant, of Halesworth, offered the ordinary prayer; Mr. Shufflebottom [the italics are the Canon’s], of Bungay, gave the charge from Acts xx. 28; Mr. Vincent, of Deal, the general prayer; and Mr. Walford, of Yarmouth, preached to the people from Phil. ii. 16.’ As a lad, I saw a good deal of Bungay, though I never knew the Shufflebottom whose name seems to have been such a stumbling-block and cause of offence to the Reverend Canon of St. Paul’s. I say Reverend Canon of St. Paul’s, because, though the writer had not gained that honour when the review appeared, it was as Canon he returned to the charge when he sanctioned the republication of it in his collected works. It was at Bungay that I had my first painful experience of the utter depravity of the human heart – a truth of which, perhaps, for a boy, I learned too much from the pulpit. The river Waveney runs through Bungay, and one day, fishing there, I lent a redcoat – with whom, like most boys, I was proud to scrape an acquaintance – my line, he promising to return it when I came back from dinner. When I did so, alas! the red-coat was gone.