The Project Gutenberg eBook of Some of Our East Coast Towns
Title: Some of Our East Coast Towns
Author: J. Ewing Ritchie
Release date: January 4, 2017 [eBook #53890]
Language: English
Credits: Transcribed from the 1893 Edmund Durrant & Co. edition by David Price
Transcribed from the 1893 Edmund Durrant & Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
Some of
Our East Coast Towns.
BY
J. EWING RITCHIE
(CHRISTOPHER CRAYON.)
Author of “East Anglia”
&c.
Chelmsford.
EDMUND DURRANT & CO.
London:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT &
CO., LTD.
1893.
NOTE. With one exception and some few additions these articles have appeared in the “Christian World.”
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. |
PAGE. |
|
I. |
One of our Young Boroughs (Chelmsford) |
|
II. |
In an Ancient City (Colchester) |
|
III. |
A Quiet Suffolk Town (Hadleigh) |
|
IV. |
A Grand Mediæval Town (Bury St. Edmunds) |
|
V. |
Ipswich: the Pride of the Orwell |
|
VI. |
Living Norwich |
|
VII. |
A Day at Lynn |
|
VIII. |
Framlingham and its Castle |
|
IX. |
Sudbury |
|
X. |
International Haverhill |
|
XI. |
the Oldest Essex Borough (Maldon) |
|
I.
ONE OF OUR YOUNG BOROUGHS.
Chelmsford, one of the youngest of the Essex Boroughs, and almost a suburb of Greater London by means of the Great Eastern Railway, was, when I first knew it, a dignified county town, the leading people of which considered a second post from London as a daily nuisance, and had no taste for what is practically too near the rush and roar of modern life. The old stage-coaches stopped and changed horses at quaint old hotels, which have long disappeared. Now, as you drop down from the railway station, past the Quakers’ chapel on one side, and the big brewery on the other, all is modern, and except the church which stands on your left, there is little left to recall the past. In the square, opposite the Shire Hall, there is a modern statue which recalls to memory Chief Justice Tindal, who, born in 1776, at a house called Coval Hall, was educated at the Chelmsford Grammar School, and died at Folkestone, in 1846. The statue is erected on the site of an ancient conduit, which stood long upon the spot, with a Latin inscription which few Essex people cared to read. Not far off is the Corn Exchange, which, what time corn was a commodity worth dealing in, was on Fridays as busy as Mark Lane itself.
But on the whole the town is modern, and all of the modern time. It is respectable, thoroughly so, quite as much as any London square or street. Its great industry is a modern one—the manufacture of Electric apparatus, by the firm of Crompton and Co., Ltd., a firm which has for some time occupied a leading place in connection with the installation of Electric light, and has been the means of lighting not only Chelmsford, but many of the principal buildings in London. If you want to see antiquity in Chelmsford, you must pay a visit to the Museum, now incorporated with the Essex Field Club, which is a very good one of its kind. One of the best antiquarian magazines of the day is the Essex Review, published in High street, which is really a credit to the town. But Chelmsford is of the present rather than the past. Its men and women move with the times, perhaps in consequence of their nearness to the great metropolis. It has literary and scientific tastes, of which the sette of Odde Volumes is an illustration; and it is further known to fame as the head-quarters of the Essex Bee-keeping Association, established in 1880, which has done much to develop the taste for, and the growth of, honey—an article not unknown to the ancients, and an industry by means of which many a careful cottager may pay his rent. Of that association Mr. Edmund Durrant is the life and soul, and in all parts of the land he has lifted up his voice, on behalf of this new and desirable source of wealth in our country towns and village homes. As to its Beef Steak Club, which was founded in Chelmsford in the time of the Georges—it was second to none.
“The position of the town at the junction of the rivers Chelmer and Cann probably” writes Mr. Christy, “led to its being inhabited in very early days.” As Roman remains have been discovered there, there is reason to suppose that it was known to those enterprising people.
In the good old times, as some people call them, there was a Priory here (of which no trace now remains), where in the reign of Edward II. resided Thomas Langford, an author, of whose works I know little, save that a local historian describes them as curious. A greater man, I apprehend, was Philemon Holland, a physician and translator of Livy, Pliny, and other classic authors. He has better claims on us as having first translated Camden’s Britannia into English. He was born in Chelmsford, in 1551, and educated at the Grammar School, a school which still exists, but in a recent building, the older one having passed into the hands of the County Council Technical Instruction Committee. One of the old houses still remaining, “Springfield Mill,” is that in which Strutt wrote his Sports and Pastimes.
Chelmsford fell into Church hands at an early date: It owes indeed much of its prosperity to Maurice, Bishop of London, who, about the year 1100, built a bridge over the Cann, which brought the main stream of traffic through Chelmsford instead of Writtle.
The Church has been once at any rate in danger, that is in 1800, when a great part of the building fell down. Hence arose a well-known local rhyme.
Chelmsford Church, and Writtle steeple,
Both fell down, but killed no people.
Chelmsford seems early to have struggled after a Reformed Church. Strype tells us of one, William Maldon, who learned to read in order that he might study the Bible for himself, and there discovered how idolatrous it was to kneel to the crucifix, much to the anger of his father, who beat him till he was almost dead. A little later we hear of George Eagles, who, for preaching, was hanged, drawn and quartered at Chelmsford, in Queen Mary’s reign, and whose head was set up in the market-place on a long pole. Archbishop Laud found many victims in Essex. One was Thomas Hooker, Fellow of Emanuel College, Cambridge, and lecturer at Chelmsford, where by his preaching he wrought a great reformation, not only in the town but in all the country round. Happily for himself, Hooker escaped to America, where he died. When the Quakers appeared, they were sorely handled by those who ought to have known better; for instance, in July 1655, there was a day of general fasting, prayer, and public collection of money for the poor persecuted Protestants of Piedmont. John Parnell, the Quaker, embraced that opportunity for disturbing the people, and for this he was tried at Chelmsford, and sent to Colchester Castle where he died. One of the ejected ministers at Chelmsford, Mark Mott, is described as an able preacher. The congregational cause in Chelmsford, dates from the time of John Reeve, who took out a license for a Presbyterian Meeting-house, in 1692. Edward Rogers, an ejected minister, succeeded him. Before the year 1716, a meeting-house had been erected, and at that time a separation took place, which led to the erection of another meeting-house. In 1716, the pastor at the old meeting was Nathaniel Hickford. The congregation then consisted of seven hundred hearers, of whom twenty are described as having votes for the county, and eighteen as gentlemen. The first pastor at the new meeting was Richard, the father of the well-known Nathaniel Lardner. In 1763, the two churches united, but not long after they separated again. The new meeting, which is still in the London road, was for some time under the pastoral care of the Rev. George Wilkinson, but lately resigned, and his place is filled by the Rev. MacDougal Mundle, whose popularity argues well for the cause with which he is connected, and the church over which he presides.
For another thing the Chelmsford of the past was distinguished, and that was by a mock election, a very proper thing, when election was a farce, and not as now, the opportunity of the free and independent democracy to utter their political opinions, and to send the wisest of the wise and the purest of patriots to Westminster as Members of Parliament. An election is no farce now when the eyes of all England are on the electors, and orators from every corner of the land come to call on the electors to do their duty. In old times men were merry, and made fun even of an election; at any rate they did this in Chelmsford, where at every county election, a mock contest was held on a small island between the two rivers known as Mesopotamia, (that blessed word, as the old woman said when she heard it in the course of her favourite parson’s sermon). At this mock election, we are told, after the successful candidate was chaired with every mark of honour, he was ducked in the stream. Sometimes one wishes that old customs were revived, I know at any rate more than one candidate, who if he were ducked in the stream, and left there, would be little missed by an enlightened public such as we have in this present age.
II.
IN AN ANCIENT CITY.
About fifty miles away from London—you can run down in an hour by the Great Eastern—stands an ancient, if not the most ancient, city in England, where the mother of Constantine is said to have lived, where, at any rate, she founded a chapel, which still remains, and where Constantine the Great is said to have been born, and where old King Cole, that merry old soul, is reported to have reigned in all his glory. It was built by the Roman Claudius, A.D., 44. It boasts an old castle, which was terribly damaged by Cromwell’s soldiers when they took it after a severe siege, in which the inhabitants suffered terrible privations. It has an ancient priory in ruins, but which is deeply interesting to antiquarians; and it contains old houses and winding streets, which are ever a delight and wonder to the intelligent of the rising generation. Colchester, of which I write, is a busy place, and moves with the times. As you look at it from the Great Eastern Railway, which sweeps around its base, it seems a city set upon a hill; and in the old coaching days, when we drove along its High street, now handsomer than ever, it was a great relief in the summer time, when we stopped there to change horses, after a long and dusty ride, to buy some of the fruits and flowers offered for sale, and for the production of which the country round is famous. The Colchester people have a fine appreciation of their ancient and prosperous town, the streets of which are alive with military. There is a large camp here, the gallant men of which seem to have a due appreciation of the fine complexion and healthy figures of the Essex servant girls. It has its park and its promenades, a river which is rich in commerce and famed for its oysters, and if not quite up to the standard of Dr. W. B. Richardson, I must give its municipal authorities credit for doing the best they can, to bring it up to our modern ideas of sanitary excellence. It has lately taken to making shoes in the swiftest manner possible, and threatens to be a formidable rival to Northampton, and assuredly, when I hear of the money made by many of its citizens, who, starting with the proverbial half-crown, have now accumulated handsome fortunes, I feel justified in asserting that grass does not grow in its streets.
The religious history of Colchester is deeply interesting. That unfortunate Puritan, Bastwicke lived at the Red House, Red Lane. Matthew Newcomen, one of the Puritan divines who took part in the Smectymnian Controversy, was the son of a rector of Trinity. His brother Thomas, a Royalist, lived to be a Prebendary at Lincoln at the Restoration. Colchester has done much for Nonconformity. It was one of the earliest cities to do battle for religious freedom and the rights of conscience. As far back as 1428 we find the keeper of Colchester Castle empowered to search out and imprison persons suspected of “heresie or Lollardie.” In Queen Mary’s days fourteen men and eight women were brought from Colchester to London like a flock of sheep, but bound or chained together, to appear before Bonner, on account of religion; but several were burnt there at different times. The first certain account of the Baptists of Colchester is that of Thomas Lamb, about the year 1630, who was one of the victims of Archbishop Laud. For some time Baptists and Pædo-Baptists seem to have worshipped together here; they in time separated, and the present flourishing cause, under Rev. E. Spurrier, celebrated its bi-centenary last year. From a MS. account in Dr. Williams’s library, we learn that in 1715 there were three Non-conformist congregations in Colchester—one Independant, one Presbyterian (with a total of 1,500 hearers), and one Baptist (with 200). In the schoolroom of the Baptist church at Eld-street is a fine portrait of the Captain Murrell whose noble rescue of a shipwrecked crew in a stormy sea was the admiration of the whole civilised world a year or two since. And it rightly hangs there, for as a boy he was brought up in its Sunday-school. Close to the Baptist church in Eld-lane is the well-known Congregational church, a new and handsome structure, of which Rev. T. Robinson is the pastor.
Let me now take the reader to another Congregational church—that of Stockwell, of which the Rev. Thomas Batty is the present pastor. It looks uncommonly well, considering how often it has been altered and enlarged. Like all the other Nonconformist places of worship in Colchester, it is situated in an out-of-the-way part of the town. The old Noncons were too much given to set their light under a bushel, but there were reasons for that which happily do not exist now. But it is worth while looking at the place if only for the sake of seeing the monument to Mr. Herrick, the famous Independent parson, who preached there for fifty years. It is said of him that whilst his preaching regaled the highest intellect, the common people heard him gladly. The present occupier of the pulpit, who has been there twenty-five years, seems destined to achieve fame in many ways. One of his latest inventions is a fire-globe, for warming rooms.
There were, to me, two specially interesting ecclesiastical edifices in Colchester. One now utilised for industrial purposes, almost side by side with Mr. Batty’s chapel, was erected in 1691 for Nonconformist worship. It was there Isaac Taylor preached, and there his celebrated daughters attended. Their dwelling-house is close by, and there they wrote those charming poems and tales for infants’ minds which are popular in the nursery still. It was there Isaac Taylor, of Ongar, learned to think, so as to become one of the foremost essayists of his age. As you stand outside and look at the roof of the old tabernacle you will see that some part of it is more modern than the rest. It appears there was an orthodox minister whose preaching was not acceptable to the Unitarian part of the congregation. He would not go, and they resolved to make him, and to compel him to move they took off part of the roof. The preacher, however, remained, and the small endowment with him, which has been transferred to Mr. Batty’s church over the way. The other ecclesiastical edifice to which I allude is a small Episcopalian church of ancient date, which contains the tomb of the celebrated Dr. Gilberd. But the great lion of Colchester is, of course, its castle, now utilised as a museum, full of interesting Roman remains found in the neighbourhood, and to which they are constantly being brought, as almost every excavation in the city disinters something or other left by those rulers of the ancient world. In the castle is an interesting library, left to the city by Bishop Harsnett, a Colchester lad who became a great man—Archbishop of York, if I remember aright—but who in his old age was sadly worried by the Puritans. Some of the books are in excellent preservation, and are marvels of typography. I was especially struck with one, “Meditationes Vite Jesu Christi,” printed at Strasbourg in 1483. No printer in our day could surpass such work. We have gained much, but our old masters are our old masters still. It is interesting to note that the library is used by Mr. Round, one of the Essex M.P.’s, for a Bible-class on Sunday afternoons.
Of the many distinguished natives of Colchester, I have already mentioned the Newcomens. Another famous name connected with the town is that of Daniel Whittle Harvey, a great man in London on the Liberal side, and, perhaps, still remembered by the joke in Punch, where, when a cabman asks another what the V.R. on his badge implied, replied, “It’s Vittle Harvey to be sure.” He commenced his career as articled clerk to a Colchester solicitor, and very early developed a considerable talent for public speaking. He became a somewhat ardent Radical, and was so zealous at public meetings in favour of Reform that he was induced in 1812 to contest the borough, but was defeated by the Conservatives. “His determination and perseverance,” writes Mr. Charles Benham in his Colchester Worthies, “urged him not to abandon his attempts, which were afterwards more successful, and he was several times returned at the head of the poll.” He was subsequently appointed by the Corporation of London, Chief Commissioner of the City Police. He held that office simultaneously with his seat in Parliament until the passing of the new Police Act, when he was no longer eligible for his seat in Parliament, which he relinquished in 1834, maintaining his official appointment till his death, which was about 1864. Colchester has supplied London with two Lord Mayors—one of them, Sir Thomas White, was Lord Mayor of London in 1553. He received the honour of Knighthood for preserving the peace of the city in Wyatt’s Rebellion. He made various benefactions in different towns, including Colchester, in 1566. The second was David Williams Wire, who was in D. W. Harvey’s office in his youth, and was one of the first Dissenters to become Lord Mayor. He died in 1860, and was buried at Lewisham.
Science owes not a little to natives of Colchester. One of the most distinguished of them was Dr. William Gilbert, born in 1540. The house in Colchester where he received Queen Elizabeth as a guest remains to this day, and a very attractive old house it is. He was chief physician to the Queen, who valued him highly, and wonderful to say, allowed him an annual sum to encourage him in his studies. He was also chief physician to James I. In 1600 he published his famous book, “De Magnete,” the first work ever written on electricity. It indicates great sagacity on the part of the writer. The word electric was first given to the world in it. He also wrote a learned work about the world, which was published at Amsterdam after his death. In all English-American and Continental Pharmacopœias we have Dr. Griffiths’ mixture reproduced under the title of Mixtura ferri composita. It was in a work published at Colchester by Dr. Moses Griffiths that that prescription originally appeared. It is still frequently used. Only the other day, as it were, a celebrated, fashionable and wealthy surgeon died at the West end of London. I refer to Sir William Gull, the son of a Colchester mariner, who ultimately moved to Thorpe, near Clacton, where the son was brought up at a village school. He chose to be a schoolmaster, and assisted for a time at a Colchester seminary. He then went to be usher in a school at Lewes, where he developed great scientific tastes, which gained for him a post at Guy’s Hospital in connection with cataloguing the Museum. This led him to devote his attention to medicine, and having commenced practice, he soon rose to distinction. He attended the Prince of Wales, in conjunction with Sir William Jenner, throughout a dangerous attack of typhus fever, and was rewarded with a baronetcy. He died in 1890, and was buried at Thorpe, where there is a handsome monument to his memory. Nor in this catalogue of Colchester natives would we fail to omit the ladies. Let us give the first place to the far-famed Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, daughter of Charles Lucas, and born at Colchester. There were highly educated and gifted women then as now, and the fair Margaret early exhibited a taste for literature. She became the second wife of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, to whom she was married in 1645. Two years previously she visited the Court of Charles I., then at Oxford. She was appointed one of the Maids of Honour to the Queen Henrietta Maria, and accompanied her Majesty to France. She published ten volumes of letters—plays, poems, philosophical discourse, and the life of her husband the Duke. Her town residence was in Clerkenwell, a more fashionable locality at that time than it is to-day. The lady was certainly eccentric, but she is said to have been distinguished by pious and charitable works, and for them, perhaps as much as for her literary talent, deserves her tomb in Westminster Abbey, where she was buried in 1673.
Colchester contains a population of 34,549, and is connected by railway with most of the towns of the district. By means of its river Colne it is also a port, and has fine oyster beds, where the “Colchester Natives” are reared, which are celebrated all the world over. Its oyster feast is one of the most famous institutions of the place, though who was the Mayor who founded the feast is lost in the mists of antiquity. After the oyster-spatting season is over, that is about the middle of September, the Corporation holds a meeting on board a boat in the river, and proclaims the fishery to be open. The fishing is a source of profit to the Corporation. In the warm seasons—that was before 1870 (immense numbers of oysters were produced in 1865)—they realised as much as £18,318, the price being £4 a bushel. Since then, from the greater scarcity of oysters, and the enlarged market for them due to railway facilities, prices have been £12 and £14 for the same quantity, and it is at that price, I believe, they are now sold. The Colne fishery is about four miles and a half in extent; it contains the best fattening grounds in the kingdom, and the River Colne itself is one of the best spatting grounds in the district producing native oysters. We call them native, because so many oysters come from Holland and elsewhere, and are merely fattened in English waters. In London, when you buy a native, you are not sure that you get the genuine article. At the Colchester feast the Mayor treats you to the native in all its primitive beauty and simplicity. I own the oyster is not lovely to look at, and the sight of a hall filled with rows of tables, on which were placed plates containing a dozen for each guest, with glasses of stout or bottles of Chablis or Sauterne, lacks somewhat of the warmth of colour to which we are more or less accustomed in our civic feasts in town. It must also be remembered that these entertainments take place by night, when the gas sparkles in a hundred chandeliers. At Colchester the hour of the feast is 2 p.m., and oysters and stout, place them how you will, cannot be made to look picturesque. At one time these Colchester feasts were confined to the members of the Corporation and the officials. That custom has been changed for a better one, and many of the principal citizens and others are bidden to the feast. Strangers are also invited, and I have to thank more than one worthy Mayor for favouring me with an invitation. It is the privilege of the Mayor of Colchester for the time being to provide for all the expenses of the feast except a portion of the oysters, which are found by the Fishery Board, and the Mayor sends out all the invitations. The feast always takes place about October 22nd. Those who do not care for oysters had better stop away, as little else besides oysters and brown bread and butter is provided. Only a few ham sandwiches were added, but the oyster was, as it deserved to be, the staple of the feast; and I fancy most of us managed to consume about a couple of dozen each. It may be that others exceeded that moderate allowance, but in neither eating nor drinking was there any sign of excess. There was a time when oysters and stout were connected with Bacchanalian orgies. That time, happily, has long passed, and instead we listened to oratory as we smoked the meditative cigar or the Lilliputian cigarette, or gazed with an admiring eye on the tasteful way in which the hall had been prepared for the occasion. Music also lent its charms. Colchester is a garrison town, and at present the Royal Munster Fusiliers hold the fort. It was their band that played on the occasion, with great applause. It was not pleasant to turn out of the hall, which had begun to grow additionally cheerful in consequence of the gas, and to make one’s way along the wet and deserted streets of the ancient town. I need not add that I was all the better for what I had eaten and heard. There are delicate questions, worthy of any abler intellect than mine to settle, as to the proper way of eating an oyster. According to some theories, you should take the Great Eastern to Burnham, get on board a fishing-smack, and gulp down the delicious bivalve as he comes fresh and juicy from his watery bed. Others there are who contend for the same operation on the River Colne; and I have met with low-minded people who say that no oyster eats so pleasantly as that purchased at a common street stall, as the vendor has less capital than the regular dealer, and thus lays in a fresher stock as he requires them. If I consult my old friend Sir Henry Thompson, the great authority in such matters, I read, “Oysters are in fact the first dish of dinner and not its precursor; the preface and not the possibly obtrusive advertisement.” “It is,” he remarks, “a single service of exquisite quality served with attendant graces.” Sir Henry evidently has never been to a Colchester oyster feast, or he would have had a word to say in its favour. “It is not worth going to,” said a gentleman to me one day. Yet when I entered the hall shortly after he was the first to come and shake hands with me, and on that dull, rainy day he had travelled many miles to be at the oyster feast. The fact is, in dull days one is glad of any excuse for going out and having a chat with one’s friends, and it does one good to hear bishops and Dissenting ministers, as they did at Colchester, talk in favour of Christian unity, or the local M.P.’s talk of national ditto, or the mayors of the leading Essex towns vindicate that local self-government which we all hold to be an important element in the preservation and expansion of our national life.
III.
A QUIET SUFFOLK TOWN.
One of the oldest towns in Suffolk is Hadleigh. You take the train at Liverpool-street; at Bentley change on to a branch line, and in twenty minutes you are there. If we are to believe the annalist Asser, its origin is to be traced as far back as Alfred the Great’s time, or the latter half of the ninth century. Asser relates that the Danish Chief Guthrum, after having been defeated by King Alfred, embraced Christianity, was appointed governor of East Anglia; that he divided, cultivated, and inhabited the district, and that when he died he was buried in the royal town called Headlega. Be that as it may, in the ancient church of Hadleigh, according to popular belief, there still remains his tomb. The principal event in connection with Hadleigh is that there Dr. Taylor was burnt to death by the Roman Catholics. The little town, says Fox, first heard of the pure Gospel of Christ from the lips of the Rev. Thomas Bilney, who preached there with great earnestness, and whose work was greatly blessed, numbers of men and women becoming convinced of the errors and idolatries of Popery, and gladly embracing the Christian faith. After the martyrdom of Bilney, Dr. Rowland Taylor was appointed vicar. He possessed the friendship of Cranmer, and it was through him that he obtained his living. In Queen Mary’s time the Church was no place for such as he. He was hauled up before Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. The Bishop, with other bishops, sent him back to Hadleigh to burn to death. “On his way Dr. Taylor was very joyful; he spoke many things to the sheriff and yeomen of the guard that conducted him, and often moved them to weep by his earnest calling upon them to repent and turn to the true religion.” At Hadleigh he was burnt, much to the sorrow of his flock, who revered and loved him. A very modest monument marks the site of the scene of the martyrdom and the triumph, as it then seemed, of Popery and arbitrary power. On the monument, which stands on a grass plot guarded by rails, is an inscription to the memory of Dr. Taylor, ending as follows:
Triumphant Saint, he braved and kissed the rod,
And soared on seraph wing to meet his God.
The lines were the composition of Dr. Nathan Drake, a doctor of medicine, much given to literature, and the author of many books—now rarely seen and never read—who lived and died at Hadleigh. In the church also, the great ornament to the town is a memorial of Dr. Taylor, and in the vestry of the Congregational chapel, just opposite the church, is a rude engraving of the martyrdom, which ought to be reproduced.
Dissent does not fare badly in the town. The Congregational body rejoices in two ministers, and the chapel, a very handsome one, is well attended. It will seat a thousand hearers. The Salvation Army have just commenced preaching in the town, and, as usual, they have drawn some of the people away. The Primitive Methodists and the Baptists have also places of worship at Hadleigh. The parish church can hold 1,200 people, but I do not hear that it is better attended than the Congregational chapel. Congregationalism has a long history in Hadleigh. One of its most successful preachers was the Rev. Isaac Toms, who held his ministry there for fifty-seven years. “His memory,” writes the Rev. Hugh Pigot, formerly curate of Hadleigh, “is mentioned with respect as that of a kind and gentlemanly old man, who, while maintaining his own views, did yet regularly attend the week-day services at the Church.” He was born in London, 1710, and his first engagement is said to have been with a city knight, of Hackney, with whom be continued as chaplain and tutor till 1742. He refused, from conscientious scruples, to accept preferment in the Established Church when offered him by his patron. He is said to have been eminent for his attainments as a scholar, and to have enjoyed the friendship of such men as Dr. Doddridge and Dr. Watts. In the vestry there is preserved a letter written by him to Washington’s private secretary during the American War. Dissent has grown in the place since his day. In a return made to Bishop Secker by Dr. Tanner, and preserved in the Rectory, there is to be found the following:—About 100 Presbyterians of no note; Robert Randall, a wool-comber, and his three children, and Birch, shopkeeper, Anabaptist; no Anabaptist teacher, no Methodist, no Moravian; one Presbyterian Meeting-house, one Presbyterian teacher—viz., Isaac Toms; the said house and teacher generally thought to be duly licensed and qualified according to law. Their number not increased at all of late years. The parish remarkably happy in regard to Dissenters, their number very trifling in proportion to the whole number of inhabitants, which, A.D. 1754, was computed in the town, 2,092; in the hamlet, 168—2,260. As we have seen, Popery had done to death vicar and curate, yet in 1754 we find Dr. Tanner thus writes concerning it: “Eight poor Papists—James Nowland (a taylor) and his daughter, Widow Rand and her daughter, Widow Hoggar, the wife of Ralph Adams, a sadler, and Barry, a taylor, all quiet people. No person lately perverted to Popery; no Popish place of worship; no Popish priest doth reside in or resort to this parish; no Popish school; no confirmation or visitation hath been lately held by a Popish bishop.” Queen Mary, and Bonner, and Gardiner, had all laboured in vain. Compulsory establishment of religion never succeeds in the long run.
In the churchyard of Hadleigh there are no monuments which require description. There is, however a curious inscription on a headstone on the south-east side leading to the market-place regarding the name and fame of one John Turner, a blacksmith, who died 1715.
My sledge and hammer lie declined,
My bellows have quite lost their wind;
My fire’s extinct, my forge decayed,
My vice is in the dust all laid;
My coal is spent, my iron gone,
My nails are drove, my work is done;
My fire-dried corpse lies here at rest,
My soul smoke-like is soaring to be blest.
Hadleigh has seen better days. At one time it flourished by reason of its cloth trade; then it took to making silk, and up to recent times it did a great trade in malt.
I would not live in Hadleigh all my life, but it is certainly a quiet corner into which to creep, and houses are to be had a bargain, considering, after all, how near it is to town. I can’t find that Hadleigh has given birth to any great men. It may be that they may come in time. One distinguished personage born there, Bishop Overall, was one of the translators of the Bible, and wrote that part of the Church Catechism which treats of the Sacraments. Another, William Alabaster, wrote a play called Roxana, which was so pathetic when acted at Trinity College, Cambridge, that it drove a young woman quite out of her wits. No wonder our Puritan forefathers had a horror of the stage.
One of the most eminent men born in Hadleigh, was Dr. Reeve, whose monument is in the Octagon chapel, Norwich, written by the earliest of English German scholars. William Taylor still records his worth and fame, a student at the University of Edinburgh, he became intimate with Francis Horner, and helped to write in the early numbers of the Edinburgh Review. In 1802, he was elected a member of the far famed Speculative Society. In London, where he went to continue his professional studies, he frequently met Coleridge, and the elder Disraeli at dinner. In the spring of 1805, while travelling on the continent—a place then rarely visited by the English, he saw Napoleon on the morrow of Austerlitz—was introduced to Haydn—was present when Beethoven conducted Fidelio—heard Humboldt relate his travels—and Fichte explain his philosophy. Thus, as life opened around with him, with the most brilliant prospects, he died at his father’s house Hadleigh, in September, 1814. It was his son, who for a while was the editor of the Edinburgh.
In modern history, Hadleigh may claim to have made its mark. It was there that the Oxford movement commenced, when in 1833 the Rev. James Rose, the rector, assembled at the parsonage (the present handsome building evidently has been built since then) the men who were to become famous as Tractarians. They had met there to consider how to save the Church. Lord Grey had bidden the Bishops to put their houses in order—ten Irish Bishoprics had been suppressed—a mob at Bristol had burnt the Bishop’s palace. The Church seemed powerless and effete. The friends who met at the Hadleigh Rectory resolved to commence the Oxford Tracts. Mr. Rose was the person of most authority. As Dean Church writes: “As far as could be seen at the time, he was the most accomplished divine and teacher in the English Church. He was a really learned man. He had intellect and energy, and literary skill to use his learning. He was a man of singularly elevated and religious character; he had something of the eye and temper of a statesman.” “The Oxford movement owed to him,” again writes Dean Church, “not only its first impulse, but all that was best and most hopeful in it, and when it lost him it lost its wisest and ablest guide and inspirer.” He and Mr. Palmer, and Mr. A. Perceval, formed, as it were, the right wing of the little council. Their Oxford allies were Mr. Froude, Mr. Keble, and Mr. Newman. From this meeting resulted the Tracts for the Times, and the agitation connected with them. Now that the tumult of the strife is over, it is evident that they gave new life to the Church; that they saved it—for a time.
The world of art also is indebted to Hadleigh. It was the birthplace of Thomas Woolner, the great sculptor. “There is” wrote a critic in The Century, “no living artist, whose work a man of letters approaches with more instructive interest than that of Mr. Woolner, himself, almost as eminent as a poet as a sculptor. His place in literature as the author of My Beautiful Lady, and Pygmalion, has long been decided, and needs no re-illustration. But after all the profession of Mr. Woolner’s life has been sculpture. Thomas Woolner, was born at Hadleigh, on the 17th December, 1825. At the age of thirteen he began life as the pupil of Mr. Behmes, sculptor in ordinary to the Queen. There may be persons living at Hadleigh, who remember the boy sculptor, and who could possibly give interesting facts respecting his early proclivities.” Alas, Hadleigh seems to have preserved no memory of him whatever. A lady resident in the town writes me, “I have heard that my grandfather, of Shelley Hall, once lent money to Thomas Woolner’s father. I have asked several of the inhabitants if they remember Thomas Woolner, but I have not been successful in getting information at present.”
IV.
A GRAND MEDIÆVAL TOWN.
On one of the hottest of our summer days I chanced to fall into conversation with an elderly decayed tradesman, living in a house erected for such as he. “Are you comfortable?” I said.
“Well,” was the reply, “we do our best to make ourselves as comfortable as we can.”
I was struck with the good sense of his answer. Ah, thought I, as we parted, how much happier we would all be if we did as the decayed tradesman did. The conversation took place opposite the grand Abbey-gate of the ancient town of Bury St. Edmunds. No Englishman should wander off to the Continent until he has first visited Bury St. Edmunds, a town full of busy life, peopled with more than 16,000 inhabitants, which rejoices in a rich historic past, and which, especially if you are there on a market-day, strikes the stranger as a place of immense activity and bustle. It is eighty-three miles from Liverpool-street, and you can see all its lions—and they are very numerous—in a day. On the eastern ridge of it—as Carlyle wrote in Past and Present—still runs, long, black, and massive, a range of monastic ruins. Its chief claim to fame is that it was the burial place of the young Saxon king known as Edmund, who, in 870, was cruelly murdered by the Danes at Hoxne, not far off. After the lapse of many years, the body was brought to Bury, where it was placed in the renowned Abbey, which owes much of its greatness to Edward the Confessor, and which for more than six hundred years remained one of the chief ecclesiastical centres of mediæval England. Piety, wealth, and superstition did much for the place. Its churchyard is one of the most picturesque in all the land. Its churches are marvels of beauty, and one of them contains the tomb of Mary Tudor, Queen of France, and third daughter of Henry VII. of England. Bury is famous as being the spot where the Barons met before enforcing the signature of Magna Charta by King John, who, on his return from France in 1214, met the nobles at Bury, and confirmed on oath a charter restoring the laws enacted by Edward the Confessor, and abolishing the arbitrary Norman code. You have to pay sixpence to visit the Abbey grounds, which are left in good order, and which ought to be thrown open to the public; but many people will not grudge the money when they come to the spot where is an inscription denoting that Cardinal Langton and the Barons swore at the altar that they would obtain from King John the satisfaction of Magna Charta, and another, close by, giving the names and titles of the twenty-five Barons who thus met. A few yards off are the ruins of the refectory where was held the Parliament which decided on the impeachment of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Many Parliaments were held at Bury; many kings and queens and mighty personages came there. It had its martyrs—like Coping, who was hanged for not believing the Prayer-book, and Lawes, an innocent clergyman, who, with forty others, was condemned and executed for witchcraft. The Jews, also, were very badly treated when, as usual, they were charged with the murder of a Christian child. The house where the chief Jew lived is still to be seen near the Market Place. It is now utilised by the police, who will shortly be removed to a finer building which is being erected in the neighbourhood.
According to Carlyle, Bury St. Edmunds “is still a prosperous, rising town; beautifully diversifying with its clean brick houses, ancient clean streets, the general grassy face of Suffolk looking out right pleasantly from its hill-slope towards the rising sun.” The earliest reliable records tell of its foundation about 631 by Siegbert, King of the East Anglians. Many of the monks of the Abbey did good service to literature,—such as John Lydgate, who conducted a school of rhetoric there. In its Grammar School many distinguished men were educated,—such as Archbishop Sancroft, John Gauden (Bishop of Worcester), John Warren (Bishop of Bangor), Thomas Thurlow (Bishop of Durham), Tomline (Bishop of Winchester), Blomfield (Bishop of London), Lord Cranworth, Lord Keeper Guildford, Sir Thomas Hanmer (Speaker of the House of Commons and the first editor of Shakespeare), Baron Alderson, and Chief Baron Reynolds. One of its masters, the late Dr. Donaldson, was referred to on one occasion as one of the most learned men in Europe. There are many scholastic establishments in the town. One of the most successful in our time is the East Anglian School, founded by the Wesleyans, and carried on by them in a handsome block of buildings occupying a commanding site.
As was to be expected, the town is Churchy, and its politics are Conservative. The Salvationists, I am told, are doing well, and I have boyish memories of a fat man of the name of Elven, who was rather a leading man among the Suffolk Baptists; but what I was chiefly impressed with was his size. The family of the late Crabbe Robinson, one of the first of “our foreign correspondents,” was long distinguished in Bury St. Edmunds. One of his brothers was Mayor several times. They were all connected with the Presbyterian church in the place; one of Lady Howley’s, kept alive by a scanty endowment—not much matter as things are. The present worthy minister is a vegetarian, and has a large garden in which he grows his vegetables. If he is succeeded by a flesh-eating parson, I fear at the present price of butcher’s meat the latter will have rather a hard time of it. It is interesting to note that the celebrated Ouida was born in Bury St. Edmunds, and that Robertson, of Brighton, commenced his career here as an articled clerk to a local solicitor.
Blomfield, grandfather of the Bishop of London, kept a school here, and Crabbe Robinson was one of his pupils. The preacher at that time at the Independent chapel was Mr. Waldegrave. Crabbe Robinson describes him as “an ignorant, noisy, ranting preacher; he bawled loud, thumped the cushion, and sometimes cried; he was, however, a kind man, and of course he was a favourite of mine.” As an illustration of the state of religion among the Independents a hundred years ago, it is curious to notice Robinson’s mother’s experience, which he quotes. “There was no allusion to the Trinity,” he writes, “in it, or any other disputed doctrine. Indeed, the word belief scarcely occurs. The one sentiment which runs throughout is a consciousness of personal unworthiness, with which are combined a desire to be united to the Church, and a reliance on the merits of Christ.” One of the great men who lived later on at Bury was Capel Lofft, a gentleman of good family, an author also on an infinity of subjects. Capel Lofft is chiefly remembered now as the earliest patron of the poet Blomfield. He was acting as Magistrate at Bury, and was a leader among the Liberals of the place. Another distinguished East Anglian, who lived near Bury at that time was the celebrated agricultural writer, Arthur Young. It was to Bury Madame de Genlis fled for safety on the outbreak of the French Revolution. The celebrated Pamela escaped with her. Another French refugee who found temporary shelter at Bury was the Duke de Liancourt. It was he who brought the news of the capture of the Bastille to the unfortunate Louis, who exclaimed, “Why, that is a revolt.” “Sire,” answered Liancourt, “it is not a revolt—it is a revolution.” A Miss Bude, of Bury, who afterwards became the wife of Clarkson, the philanthropist, Mr. Robinson mentions as “the most eloquent woman I have ever known, with the exception of Madame de Staël.” It was at Bury that Robinson, who had been called to the bar, made his debut. At his first dinner with the barristers at the Angel Inn, among the company was Hart, one of the most remarkable men of the circuit. He was originally a preacher among the Calvinistic Methodists. It was said to him once, “Mr. Hart, when I hear you in the pulpit I wish you were never out of it; when I see you out of it, I wish you were never in it.” Bury Gaol had acquired some celebrity for the superior way in which its criminal population were looked after.
Bury St. Edmunds may claim to have given shelter to the immortal Daniel Defoe. He had been in the pillory before the Royal Exchange, in London, near the Conduit at Cheapside, and the third day at Temple Bar. He was the hero of the people, who garlanded him with flowers, repeating as they did so, with special gusto, the lines:—
Tell them the men that placed him here
Are scandals to the times,
Are at a loss to find his guilt,
And can’t commit his crimes.
But his imprisonment ruined him financially, his brick works at Tilbury failing through his absence. On the intercession of Harley, he was released early in August, 1704, and at once retired to Bury St. Edmunds to avoid the public gaze, and to recruit his health. He was not idle there, for he issued pamphlets within a month, besides his reviews. The chapel where he attended yet remains. The old Presbyterian Chapel in Churchgate Street must have been erected when he was there. It is a fine old-fashioned red-brick building, where Rev. Mr. Kennard at present preaches to a rather scanty congregation.
But the modern inhabitants of Bury do not come up to the high literary standard of their predecessors, such as Richard D’Aunger Vyle, tutor to Edward III.; Jocelin of Brakeland, whose chronicle of the monastery is referred to as vividly personifying the religious life of the middle ages; and John Lydgate, who took charge of the School of Rhetoric in the town, and wrote numerous poems, such as the Storie of Thebes, The Troy Book, and London Lickpenny, one of our earliest satires. Nor must we forget Richard Byfield, one of Tyndal’s friends, who was formerly Chamberlain for the Monastery. Richard de Bury, Chancellor to Edward III., and author of the Philobiblion, deserves honourable mention here as a native of the town. Fielding, in his Amelia, sends one of his characters to Bury for recovery of health, and describes it as a gay and busy town. Mrs. Inchbald, whose history reads like a romance, was born in a small farm-house at Standingfield, close by Bury St. Edmunds. The mother, Mrs. Simpson, had a strong taste for the theatre, and her family loved acting quite as much as she did. They all diligently attended the Bury Theatre—even the rehearsals. The actors and actresses were looked up to, almost worshipped, and when the theatre was closed the chief amusement of the family consisted in reading aloud the scenes which had been enjoyed so heartily. The unmarried son left the farm for the stage, and Elizabeth longed to do the same. Before reaching the age of thirteen, she frequently declared that she would rather die than live any longer without seeing the world. When a few years older, and ripe in maiden charms, she made her way to London, married an actor, and became an actress; wrote her simple story which yet finds readers, and died in the sixty-eighth year of her age, after she had burnt her memoirs, which would have been well worth reading, and for which she had been offered a thousand guineas. Another well-known name connected with Bury was that of Calamy, the elder, a rigid Presbyterian, who, about 1630, was one of the town lecturers at Bury. Subsequently he became Rector of Aldersmanbury, London, and one of the Assembly of Divines, and frequently preached before Parliament. He lived to see London in ashes, the sight of which broke his heart. His son Edmund was born at Bury, became a distinguished preacher, was ejected, and formed a congregation in Currier’s Hall, near Cripplegate, London. His son, who was likewise a leading London preacher, was the editor of the Abridgement of Mr. Baxter’s History of His Life and Times, and left behind him An Historical Account of My Own Life, a valuable contribution to the annals of his times published in 1829.
There is an anecdote of Rowland Hill, the eccentric preacher, in connection with Bury, too good to be omitted. He had come to preach at the Congregational Chapel, and, there being no railway then, had travelled in his own carriage, and with his own horses. Very properly he was anxious about the accommodation provided for the latter. The minister, Mr. Dewhirst, told him that he need be under no apprehension on that score, as he had a horse-dealer, a member of his church, who would look after them. “What!” said Rowland Hill, in astonishment, “a horse-dealer a member of a Christian Church! who ever heard of such a thing?” Evidently at that time horse-dealers had a somewhat doubtful reputation. Is it not delightful to think how much honester they are now?
Politically Bury St. Edmunds is extinct. It returned two members since 1292. Formerly the constituency consisted only of the Corporation. In 1832 it was enlarged so as to embrace the resident Freemen and the ten-pound householders, and it was the custom for the Duke of Grafton and the Marquis of Bristol each to return a member. Field-Marshal Conway, the friend of Horace Walpole, was the most distinguished man Bury St. Edmunds ever returned to Parliament. It is an anomaly that gives Bury the right to return the one member left it by recent legislation. But we rejoice in anomalies. For instance, look at Ireland. Ireland is inferior to the great metropolis, either in regard to population or property, but Ireland rejoices in nearly double the number of legislators it sends to the Imperial Parliament.
V.
IPSWICH: THE PRIDE OF THE ORWELL.
Lying in a valley surrounded by hills, up which the town is gradually climbing, and watered by the picturesque Orwell, which elevates the town to the dignity of a port, and within little more than an hour and a half’s run from London by the Great Eastern Railway, Ipswich may claim to be a place well worth visiting, while to the trader it is known and appreciated as a busy and thriving town. When I first knew it—at a time a little antecedent to the advent of the illustrious Mr. Pickwick—it was not much of a place to look at. With the exception of the space opposite the Town Hall, a handsome building all of the modern time, the people seemed sadly hampered for want of room. In this respect the place has been wonderfully improved of late, as much as any town in Her Majesty’s dominions; not even Birmingham more. It was one of the first places to have an Arboretum, which is well kept up for the health and comfort of its people. Then by the river a pleasant promenade has been formed, where, when the tide comes up from Harwich, bringing with it a faint touch of the briny, you may fancy that you are by the side of the sea itself. That River Orwell is a sight in itself, and is utilised by the young and vigorous as regards boating and bathing in a way conducive to the development of health and muscle alike. The corn market at Ipswich is one of the most important in the kingdom, and the public buildings are numerous, and boast not a little of architectural skill, as, for instance, the Grammar School, the theatre, Tacket Street Chapel—one of the oldest representatives of Nonconformity in the place—the pile of buildings forming the offices of The East Anglian Daily Times—the most successful of the East Anglian dailies, which would be a credit even to the metropolis. One of the handsomest piles of buildings in the town is that occupied by the Museum, the Schools of Art and Science, and the Victorin Free Library. Since their completion in 1881, the whole of the valuable books and archælogical treasures belonging to the Corporation have been classified and attractively arranged for inspection by visitors. The old Judge’s chambers have now been turned into a club, which supplies a want felt in such a place. I think Ipswich was one of the first towns to start a Mechanics’ Institute, still in vigorous existence; while all over Europe you may meet with agricultural machines that had their birth in the great works of Ransomes, Sims, and Jefferies—names dear to the farmer all the land over. Ipswich is now also becoming celebrated for its boots and shoes, while its tasteful shops indicate a considerable amount of intelligence and wealth as existing among its people to the present day.
Ipswich contains no less than thirteen churches, built, for the most part, in the Perpendicular style of architecture. Portions of some, however, are of earlier date. The oak door at St. Mary at the Elms, for instance, is in the Norman style, but slightly enriched, and therefore probably of the older or primary Norman. The Town Hall stands upon the Cornhill, upon the site of St. Mildred’s Church, many centuries disused. There also stood an ancient Hall of Pleas; and a Sociary or Seating Room of the Corpus Christi Guilds was erected there in Henry VIII.’s time. The mansions of Ipswich merchants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, still to be found ornamenting the parish of St. Clement’s, are worthy of close inspection, as they attest the wealth and importance of those who once inhabited them. Very many of the houses bear dates, and have fine ornamental exteriors. Many of the fine carved corner posts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries still remain. A gateway, an interesting relic of the great Cardinal Wolsey, who was a native of Ipswich, stands abutting upon College Street, and near the East end of St. Peter’s Church. It is of brick and small, and was probably not the chief place of egress attached to the building, which was undoubtedly built in a style of magnificence, and in accordance with the fine taste in architecture which the Cardinal was known to have possessed. Over the doorway are the arms of Henry VIII., and on each side of the Royal coat is a trefoil-headed niche, though now containing no figures. The place was erected in 1528. In the early part of the present century Ipswich was evidently a declining town. In 1813 its population was only 13,670, when Windham, the great statesman, who visited the place, speaks of it in very favourable terms as a town, picturesque and pleasant. At this present time the town has a population of 57,260. One of the most eminent men born in Ipswich was Firmin, the London draper, who was a philanthropist of the noblest character, and who did much for the poor both at Ipswich and in London. He was a Unitarian when to be anything but orthodox was considered in all circles as a matter of serious censure, and yet he was a friend of a Liberal Bishop. He is buried in Christ Church, Newgate Street, close to the great school for which he did so much, and to the funds of which he was such a liberal contributor. In every way he is to be considered a credit to his native town, and as one of the foremost men of the age in which he lived, and which he so greatly adorned. He set a good example that many of our merchant princes have not been slow to imitate. Had he been orthodox his fame would have been greater still.
One of the oldest houses in Ipswich is that known as Christ Church, the dwelling place of the Fonnereaus for many generations. It is one of the oldest houses in England, and has been inhabited for 350 years. There is not a better example of Elizabethan building to be met with anywhere. More than once has Royalty been hospitably entertained there. The most celebrated Royal visitor was Queen Elizabeth, who made a tour of the Eastern Counties in 1589, and rode through Essex and Suffolk with a crowd of attendant cavaliers. Her Majesty reached Ipswich in August, and was entertained there four days. Local tradition says that the bed Her Majesty slept in may be seen to this day in the haunted chamber of the old mansion. Long before the house was built, there was on the spot the convent and priory of Christ Church, tenanted by monks, known as Black Canons of St. Augustine, who took an active part in the business of the town, and to whom King John granted a charter for a market, which became a very popular one. As regards the park, the legend is that the bowling-green on the summit, now surrounded by a double avenue of magnificent limes, was one of those places selected by the Druids for purposes of worship. It is certain that the Danes, who were much given to sailing up and down the Orwell, on plunder bent, chose this very spot as the site of what may be called a hall of justice. There is reason to believe that on this very green Charles II. played bowls. There was a celebrated Lord Rochester who visited the house, and found the park-keeper driving two donkeys for the purpose of keeping the turf in good order. Further tradition says that in order not to hurt the turf the donkeys wore boots, which induced the facetious Earl to observe that Ipswich was “a town without people, that there was a river without water, and that asses wore boots.” Christ Church is now on sale. Ultimately it is to be hoped it will be purchased by the Corporation for a people’s palace and park.
In the old times Ipswich must have been a much more picturesque place than it is to-day. All its old records are religiously preserved by a worthy townsman, Mr. John Glyde, in his Illustrations of Old Ipswich, a handsome work, which is a credit to the town, and which ought to find a place in the library of East Anglians wealthy enough to purchase it. He writes lovingly of its gates and walls indicating the lamentable state of insecurity by which our forefathers were embarrassed in those good old times, when the Curfew Bell tolled every evening at eight o’clock. “There is, perhaps,” says an antiquarian writer, “no house in the kingdom which, for its size, is more curiously or quaintly ornamented than the ancient house still standing in the Butter Market.” The tradition is that Charles II. was hidden for awhile in that house after his defeat at Worcester. Be that as it may, the Ipswich traders, like John Gilpin, were men of credit and renown, and Fuller, in the seventeenth century, spoke of the number of wealthy merchant houses in Ipswich. It was in the reign of Elizabeth, remarks Mr. Glyde, that Ipswich seems to have attained the zenith of its fame. There is scarcely a branch of foreign commerce carried on at the present time, with the exception of trade with China, that was not prosecuted with more or less entirety in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. At that time Ipswich was much richer in shipping than Yarmouth, Southampton, or Lynn. Foreign weavers discovered the advantage of using English wool, and the gold of Flanders found its way into the pockets of English traders. The town still boasts a memorial of Cardinal Wolsey’s munificent liberality. One of its representatives was no less a distinguished person than Bacon—
The wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind.
Cavendish, the explorer of the world, was one of the personages at one time often to be seen in its streets—streets along which had ridden in triumph Queens Mary and Elizabeth, to say nothing of the Saxon Queen, who at one time resided in the town. But if Ipswich knows no longer the grandeur and pageantry of the past, if its Black Friars are vanished, it is still the abiding place of that new and better spirit to which Cromwell appealed, and not in vain, when he sought to make this England of ours great and free.
“I knew of no town to be compared to Ipswich,” wrote old Cobbett, “except it be Nottingham, and there is this difference that Nottingham stands high and on one side looks over a fine country whereas Ipswich is in a dell, meadows running up above it and a beautiful arm of the sea below it. From the town itself you can see nothing, but you can in no direction go from it a charter of a mile without finding views that a painter might crave, and then the country round is so well cultivated.” A good deal has been done for Ipswich since Cobbett’s day. It has its public promenades and in the neighbourhood of the river there still lingers somewhat of the scenery Gainsborough loved to paint. There is also a good deal of literary association connected with Ipswich. The White Horse Inn still remains in much the same state as it was in the times of Mr. Pickwick, “famous,” wrote Dickens, “in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or county paper chronicled turnip or unwieldy pig for its enormous size.” Any one who has sojourned there will find it easy to understand how the illustrious Pickwick came to mistake a lady’s bed-chamber for his own. Why should not the Great White Horse be as dear to the admirers of Dickens as the Leather Bottle at Cobham? If the admirers of Pickwick rush as they do by hundreds to Cobham to view the room where Pickwick slept, why, it may be asked, should not a similar patronage be extended to the Great White Horse at Ipswich.
Curious people besides Pickwick and his friends have favoured Ipswich. There lived there in the reign of William III., a family known as the “odd family,” a most appropriate name, as the following facts clearly prove. Every event, good, bad, or indifferent, came to that family in an odd year, or on an odd day of the month, and every member of it was odd in person, manner, or behaviour. Even the letters of their christian names always amounted to an odd number. The father and mother were Peter and Rahab; their seven children (all boys) bore the names of Solomon, Roger, James, Matthew, Jonas, David, and Ezekiel. The husband possessed only one leg, and his wife only one arm; Solomon was blind in his left eye, and Roger lost his right optic by an accident. James had his left ear pulled off in a quarrel; Matthew’s left hand had but three fingers; Jonas had a stump foot; David was humpbacked; and Ezekiel was 6ft. 2in at the age of 19. Every one of the children had red hair, notwithstanding the fact that the father’s hair was jet black and the mother’s white. Strange at birth all died as strange. The father fell into a deep sawpit and was killed; the wife died five years after of starvation. Ezekiel enlisted, was afterwards wounded in 23 places, but recovered. Roger, James, Matthew, Jonas, and David died in 1713, in different places on the same day; Solomon and Ezekiel were drowned in the Thames in 1723.
Thomas Colson, known to Ipswich people as Robinson Crusoe, died in the year 1811. He was originally a wool-comber, then a weaver, but the failure of that employment induced him to enter the Suffolk Militia, and while quartered in Leicester with his Regiment, he learned the trade of stocking weaving, which he afterwards followed in Suffolk. But this occupation he shortly exchanged for that of fisherman on the Orwell. His little craft, which he made himself, was a curiosity in its way, and seemed too crazy to live in bad weather, and yet in it he toiled day and night, in calm or storm. Subject to violent chronic complaints, with a mind somewhat disordered, in person tall and thin, with meagre countenance and piercing blue eyes, he was thus described by a contemporary poet—
With squalid garments round him flung,
And o’er his bending shoulders hung,
A string of perforated stones,
With knots of elm and horses bones.
He dreams that wizards leagued with hell,
Have o’er him cast their deadly spell;
Though pinching pains his limbs endure,
He holds his life by charms secure,
And, while he feels the torturing ban,
No wave can drown the spell-bound man.
—But this security was the means of his death. In October, 1811, there was a great storm on the Orwell, and he was driven in his boat on the mud. He refused to leave his vessel, though advised and implored to do so. The ebb of the tide drew his boat into deep water, and he was drowned.
Amongst the charitable women of Ipswich must be mentioned Miss Parish, a maiden lady, who died there in 1810. She seems to have relieved everyone who was in distress. At the time of her death she had actually twenty pensioners living in her house, besides children supported at different schools, while numbers were cheered by her occasional donations. She was a good Samaritan indeed. It is to be hoped there are to be found many such in the Ipswich of to-day.