Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

“That he affirms the Book of Canticles to be but a kind of bawdy Song.

“That he never preacheth or catechiseth in the Afternoon on Sabbath Days, but goes to the Alehouse, and makes himself so drunk that he can neither go nor stand.” When this was published William Lang was a prisoner in London.

That there is considerable exaggeration in these charges – I have not given all – goes without saying, but that there was a strong case against the vicar nevertheless cannot be doubted. The facts of his legal proceedings against his parishioners were indisputable; the surmises that he had poisoned Mr. and Mrs. Twigg are worthless. That his daughter catechized in church is harmless enough; it is what is done by many a parson’s daughter nowadays where there is no Sunday-school room.

Reckless charges and complaints against the clergy whom their parishioners did not like were eagerly received by the Parliament on one side and by the King on the other. Thus Larkham, the intruding vicar of Tavistock, was petitioned against, and the petition put into the King’s own hand, with twenty-four articles against him, imputing faction, heresy, witchcraft, rebellion, and treason. This was in 1639 or 1640.

Mark Twigg, the vicar, was buried on 9 November, 1622, and seems to have been a son of Ralph Twigg, of Lawhitton, and Joan, daughter of John Cory, of Putford. His widow was buried by Lang in 1638, so that if Lang had the charge of her he endured it for sixteen years. The wife of W. Lang was Helen Hockin; he married her in 1607.

Lang was succeeded by Elias Eastaway in 1641. He was buried 10 June, 1646, when his son, of the same name, quietly stepped into his place. This Elias married Penelope Cleverdon on 25 March, 1647–8; and his daughter, Elizabeth, was baptized 23 January, 1647, before they were married, and she was buried 30 June. Elias had a son of the same name baptized 14 November, 1649, and a daughter in 1652, another son, Elias, in 1653, and a son, Richard, in 1656, and a daughter, Margaret, 1659.

Elias was quite ready to conform, so as to retain his living, at the Restoration, though he had been a burning and a shining light among the Puritans. He held the living till his death in 1680. He had been instituted 10 January, 1648–9, only a few days before the execution of the King.

WILLIAM COOKWORTHY

Augustus was about to indulge the Romans in a great series of spectacles, races in the circus, gladiatorial shows in the arena, and theatrical performances, all gratis, free and for nothing. Down came the rain in torrents all night. The streets were swimming, the Tiber swelled and rolled down a volume of yellow water. The good folks of Rome were in despair. But when morning dawned the skies cleared, the sun shone forth, the streets dried as by magic, and the shows were carried out with the utmost splendour. At night on the palace wall was scrawled in chalk: —

It rained all night, the day was bright,
Jove and Augustus share All-might.

Augustus was flattered and asked who had written these lines. Presently a poetaster, Bathylus, stood forward and confessed that he was the author, and was rewarded most liberally. Next night, the same lines were written on the wall, and under them the line: “I wrote the verse, another claimed the fame,” and underneath four times repeated “Sic vos non vobis,” or “Thus you, but not for you.” Bathylus was sent for and required to complete the lines. He scratched his head, turned red, and declared his inability to do this. Then from the throng came a tall, swarthy man, modest in his bearing, and wrote in chalk: —

Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves,
Sic vos non vobis velera fertis oves,
Sic vos non vobis melificatis apes,
Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves.

That may be rendered thus: —

Thus you, but not for you, birds build their nest,
Thus you, but not for you, ye sheep in fleeces drest,
Thus you, but not for you, ye bees the honey drain,
Thus you, but not for you, ye oxen ploughing strain.

He who wrote this was P. Virgilius Maro, and Bathylus became the laughing-stock of Rome.

I tell this story because up to a certain point it illustrates the fortunes of William Cookworthy. At the present day many hundreds of men live in ease and happiness through the discovery of china-clay by Cookworthy, but he himself reaped no advantage by what he discovered.

The town of St. Austell in Cornwall may be said to live on china-clay that is exported to the Staffordshire potteries. Before the discovery by Cookworthy, it was not known that the kaolin, the essential ingredient of porcelain, was to be found anywhere, except in China. But Cookworthy, who has put bread into the mouths of thousands, who created the manufacture of porcelain in England out of home-produced kaolin, reaped not a penny advantage from his discovery.

Kaolin is found elsewhere, in Devon, on the fringe of Dartmoor. Now, the visitor to Plymouth, as he passes by the head of the Laira, will see a milk-white stream flow past the line. It is the overflow from the kaolin works at Lee Moor. Cookworthy did not, however, discover the china-clay on the borders of Dartmoor, where it abounds.

China-clay or kaolin is obtained from highly decomposed granite, and consists of the disintegrated and metamorphosed felspar of that rock. Often on the outskirts of the granitic masses of Cornwall the rock is so decomposed by the percolation of rain-water holding carbonic acid in solution that the granite may be dug with a spade to the depth of twenty feet or more. China-stone also is found similarly composed of disintegrated granite, and contains quartz as well as kaolin. It is used in the manufacture of glaze for earthenware. From S. Austell, where three thousand persons are engaged in raising and cleaning the kaolin, something like forty thousand tons are annually exported to Staffordshire for the manufacture of porcelain. But it is employed also largely in the calico-weaving districts as the principal ingredient in sizing and loading calico. It is also used in paper manufacture for the highly glazed and smooth sheets employed for illustrations.

But to come to William Cookworthy. He belonged to a Quaker family of Kingsbridge. His grandfather, William Cookworthy, married Susanna Wearmouth in 1669, and died in 1708. His father, a weaver, also William Cookworthy, born in 1670, married Edith Dobell in 1704, and died in 1718. William the third Cookworthy was born in 1705. After the father’s death the widow was left in straitened circumstances, and received assistance from the Friends’ Monthly Meeting. Although reduced to poverty, with a family of seven children, the eldest only fourteen years old, the widow struggled bravely through her difficulties. William, the eldest son, was apprenticed after his father’s death to the firm of Bevan, chemists and druggists, London, also Quakers. At the close of his apprenticeship, with the assistance of his employers, he set up for himself as a wholesale chemist and druggist at Plymouth, the firm being entitled Bevan and Cookworthy, and the place of business was in Notte Street, and here he lived for many years, and there died.

“He was in many respects a remarkable man, and his life is one of the most illustrious examples of men who have risen of which England can boast. Emphatically self-made, he had none of the foibles which frequently mark the characters of those who have been the architects of their own fortunes. An industrious man of business, a shrewd and painstaking inventor, deeply versed in the science of the day, valued in society for his geniality and power of conversation, he was at the same time one of the simplest and devoutest of Quakers, and an enthusiastic believer in the views of Swedenborg. He was a firm believer in the divining rod, and left a treatise on its uses. In short, Cookworthy was a man of many sides, but always genial, courageous, and persevering; a man who won the respect and esteem alike of high and low by his strict integrity, wide sympathies, and varied powers; one who, having set his hand to the plough, was not ready to turn back.”[36 - R. N. Worth, Transactions of Devonshire Association, 1876.]

In 1735, at the age of thirty, Cookworthy married Sarah Berry, of a Somerset Quaker family; and about this time he assumed the peculiar dress of the Society, a drab suit and a broad-brimmed hat, and became more accentuated in the phraseology adopted by the sect. He was an absent-minded man. One Sunday, in Exeter, on leaving the house of a friend, a physician, to go to meeting, as the rain was streaming down, he took down a cloak that was hanging in the hall and threw it over his shoulders, little noticing that this was not his own, but that of the owner of the house. In those days a physician’s walking costume was a scarlet cloak, with a gold-headed cane. In this garb Cookworthy strolled into meeting, and into the Ministers’ Gallery to the scandal of all the Friends assembled, but quite unconscious of his transformation.

On another occasion he was on his way to attend the quarterly meeting of the sect at Exeter, and halted at Ashburton to refresh himself and his horse. After having lunched, he took up a copy of Sir Charles Grandison, in seven volumes, began to read, read on and on, finished one volume, took up the next, forgot all about his purpose of going to Exeter, and was found by the Friends on their return from that town, and the conclusion of the meeting, still immersed in Samuel Richardson’s novel. As novel-reading is forbidden in the Society, no doubt but that poor Cookworthy was severely reprimanded, and prayed for as a back-slider.

Porcelain in China has a high antiquity, and must have been made there at least 1250 years before it was manufactured in England; it was introduced into Europe in 1518, when it acquired the name of China. For a long period it was supposed that the fine white clay consisting of silica and alumina, and called by the Chinese Kaolin, was found only in the Celestial Empire, and specimens brought to Europe fetched a high price. At the beginning of the eighteenth century it was discovered in Saxony in an odd way. A merchant named Schnorr, being on a journey, was struck with the whiteness of some clay near Schneeburg, and collecting some of it, thinking it might be employed instead of wheaten flour for the manufacture of hair powder, used it for this purpose. It succeeded, but had this disadvantage, that wigs dressed with the new hair powder were very heavy. An apothecary named Bötcher noticed the increased weight of his wig and instituted inquiries, when he found that the new material used was precisely that which was required for the manufacture of porcelain; and Dresden china was begun to be made by him in 1709, and was carried on with the greatest secrecy, and the exportation of the earth was forbidden under heavy penalties.

In 1745, Cookworthy heard that a similar clay had been discovered in Virginia, and sent a Quaker to procure some for him. Somewhere about 1748 he himself discovered it in Cornwall. He wrote: “I first discovered it in the parish of Germo, in a hill called Tregonnin Hill.” After a long description of the properties of the clay and his experiments upon it, he says: “I have lately discovered that in the neighbourhood of the parish of S. Stephen’s, in Cornwall, there are immense quantities both of the Petunse stone and the Kaulin, and which I believe may be more conveniently and advantageously wrought than those of Tregonnin Hill, as by experiments I have made on them they produce a much whiter body, and do not shrink so much in baking, nor take stains so readily from the fire. S. Stephen’s lies between Truro, S. Austell and S. Columb; and the parish of Dennis, the next to S. Stephen’s, I believe, hath both the ingredients in plenty in it.”

The same materials were afterwards found at Boconnoc, the seat of the Hon. Thomas Pitt, afterwards created Lord Camelford. This discovery led to an acquaintance with Thomas Pitt, and together they obtained a patent in 1768 and started the Plymouth China Factory, that brought the manufacture of porcelain to great perfection; but for some reason did not yield profit to the patentees.

In precisely the same year kaolin was discovered at St. Yrīeix, near Limoges. The wife of a surgeon there had used it for the purpose of bleaching linen, when her husband, suspecting its real value, took it to Bordeaux, and on trial it was found to be the very thing needed as a base to real hard porcelain. The manufactory of Sèvres which had used imported Chinese clay, now employed that of St. Yrīeix; and the Limoges manufacture of porcelain was then started.

After six years’ trial, outlay, and discouragement, the Plymouth China Works were removed to Bristol and the patent was assigned to Richard Champion, a connexion by marriage of the Cookworthy family. The endeavour to make the porcelain manufactures there a paying concern failed as it had at Plymouth, and Champion removed his works to Staffordshire, where the fuel was close at hand. The Bristol patent-right was transferred to a company of six partners. Champion received through Burke, who was then in office, the appointment of Deputy-Paymaster of the Forces, in 1782, when he left Staffordshire, but on a change of Ministry he lost the post, and went to America, where he died in 1787. Neither his family, nor that of Cookworthy, ever received any benefit from the important art and industry they had been the means of establishing. William Cookworthy died on the 17th October, 1780. Among the worthies celebrated in the memorial windows of the Plymouth town hall is “William Cookworthy, Chemist and Potter, the discoverer of the English China-clay, and the first maker in England of true Porcelain.”

Abundant information relative to Cookworthy exists.

Memoir of William Cookworthy, by his Grandson, G. H. Harrison. London, 1854.

Relics of William Cookworthy, by John Prideaux. London, 1853.

“William Cookworthy and the Plymouth China Factory,” by R. N. Worth, in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1876.

William Cookworthy, by Theodore Compton. London, 1894.

Strangely enough, though Cookworthy has not received the recognition due to him as a discoverer. Ure, in his Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures (London, 1853), makes no mention of him. Nor does Tomlinson in his Cyclopædia of Useful Arts and Manufactures, London, 1854; nor did Marryatt in the first edition of his History of Pottery in 1850. But Cookworthy has received due acknowledgment in the Dictionary of National Biography.

WILLIAM JACKSON, ORGANIST

The autobiography of William Jackson was printed and published for the first time in the Leisure Hour, 1882. It is not of much personal interest, as it concerns almost exclusively his musical education and his travels abroad. For instance, concerning his marriage, it is dismissed with the curt remark, “At twenty-three I married.” Nevertheless it affords us some particulars which we might have sought for in vain elsewhere.

He informs us: “Of my family I know nothing but that for many generations they were farmers at Morleigh, an obscure place in the south-west of Devon. It seems trifling to add that all the Jacksons in Devonshire have a family face and person. What mine was may be known by a picture by Rennell, painted at twenty years of age; one by Gainsborough at forty; another by Keenan at seventy. I recollect also sitting for a miniature to Humphrey, for a portrait in crayon to Morland, and for two in oil to Opie.” He goes on to say: “My grandfather Richard Jackson was a serge-maker in Exeter, lived creditably, and acquired what in those days was considered a fortune. He left many children. My father, William, was his second son, to whom he gave a good school education, but not inheriting the prudence of his predecessor, he soon dissipated his little fortune.”

William Jackson of Exeter was born on 28 May, 1730 and began his education at seven, which was continued till he was sixteen. He did not begin his musical studies till twelve years old, when he became a chorister in Exeter Cathedral. He displayed a decided taste for music.

“From a subordinate member of the choir at Exeter I learnt two or three common airs, such as are given to beginners. This was the whole of my instruction for three years which I received from others; by my own assiduous practice I could perform Handel’s organ concertos and some of Corelli’s sonatas – in a wild, irregular manner, no doubt. As yet I was a stranger to any but my own poor performance, when I was carried to hear a young lady, who, among other pieces, played the overture of Otho.”

In 1748 he removed to London, where he passed two years under the tuition of John Travers, organist to the King’s Chapel and to St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, and an eminent song composer. He then returned to his native place, where he settled for life as a teacher, professor, and composer of music. He soon attained reputation and employment; but it was not till 1777 that he succeeded to the places of sub-chanter, organist, lay vicar, and master of the choristers in the cathedral. His talents in musical composition were first made known in 1775, when he printed a collection of twelve songs that speedily became popular.

Whilst a boy in London, “In or about 1746,” he says, “the oratorio of Judas Maccabeus was first performed. I squeezed in among the chorus singers, and was remarked by Handel when he entered, as a stranger. ‘Who are you?’ says he. ‘Can you play? Can you sing? If not, open your mouth and pretend to sing; for there must be no idle persons in my band.’ He was right. However, in the course of the evening, by turning his leaf and some other little attentions, there became some sort of intimacy between us, so that I gained admittance to the frequent repetitions of this oratorio.”

Jackson made the acquaintance and gained the friendship of Gainsborough. Of him he says: “His profession was painting, music was his amusement,” and the reverse might be said with equal truth of Jackson. Each undertook to instruct the other in his own art, and Jackson rather prided himself on his paintings than on his music. In his volume of essays, The Four Ages, he gives his reminiscences of Gainsborough, and they are amusing. His account can here be briefly summed up: —

“There were times when music seemed to be his employment, and painting his diversion. When I first knew him he lived at Bath, where Giardini had been exhibiting his then unrivalled powers on the violin. His performance made Gainsborough enamoured of that instrument; and conceiving, like the servant maid in the Spectator, that the music lay in the fiddle, he was frantic until he possessed himself of the very instrument which had given him so much pleasure – but seemed much surprised that the music of it remained behind with Giardini.

“He had scarcely recovered this shock when he heard Abel on the viol-di-gamba. The violin was hung on the willow – Abel’s viol-di-gamba was purchased, and the house resounded with melodious thirds and fifths. Many an adagio and many a minuet were begun, but never completed. This was wonderful, as it was Abel’s own instrument, and therefore ought to have produced Abel’s own music.

“Fortunately, my friend’s passion had now a fresh object – Fischer’s hautboy; but I do not recollect that he deprived Fischer of his instrument, though he procured a hautboy.

“The next time I saw Gainsborough he had heard a harper at Bath. The performer was soon left harpless, and now Fischer, Abel, and Giardini were all forgotten – there was nothing like chords and arpeggios.

“More years passed, when, upon seeing a Theorbo in a picture of Van Dyck, he concluded that the Theorbo must be a fine instrument.” But Theorbos were no more played. The nearest approach to one was a lute. On inquiry Gainsborough ascertained that there was a poor German professor who performed on the lute, living in a garret. To him went the artist full of eagerness. The lute he must have. The poor man was reluctant to part with it; but finally sold it for ten guineas.