East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical Associations

In my young days, in serious circles, there was no name dearer than that of Joseph Gurney – a fine-looking man with a musical voice, always ready to aid with money, or in other ways, all that was right and good, or what seemed to him such. In the ‘Memorials of a Quaker Lady’ he is described thus: ‘He sat on the end seat of the first cross-form, and both preached and supplicated. I was very much struck with him. His fine person, his beautiful dark, glossy hair, his intelligent, benign, and truly amiable countenance, made a deep impression upon me. And as he noticed me most kindly, as I was introduced to him by Elizabeth Fry, as the little girl his sister Priscilla wanted to bring to England, I felt myself greatly honoured.’ The Gurneys have an ancient lineage, and had their home in Gourney, in Upper Normandy. One of them, of course, fought in the ranks of the winners at the battle of Hastings. Another was a crusader. Another had done good service at Acre, as a follower of Richard of the Lion Heart. When the main line came to an end, one branch settled in Norfolk. Gurney’s Bank at Norwich was one of the institutions of the city, and was as famous in my day as at a later time was the great house of Overend and Gurney, which, when it fell, created a panic in financial circles all the world over.

At Earlham, the home of the Gurneys, we learn how much may be done by a family, and how widespread its influence for good or evil may become. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton certainly stands foremost, not alone amongst the East Anglians, but the philanthropists of later years. At the age of sixteen young Buxton went to Earlham as a guest. His biographer writes: ‘They received him as one of themselves, early appreciating his masterly, though still uncultivated mind; while, on his side, their cordial and encouraging welcome seemed to draw out all his latent powers. He at once joined with them in reading and study, and from this visit may be dated a remarkable change in the whole tone of his character; he received a stimulus not merely in the acquisition of knowledge, but in the formation of studious habits and intellectual tastes. Nor could the same influence fail of extending to the refinement of his disposition and manners.’ At that time Norwich – the Buxtons being witnesses – was distinguished for good society, and Earlham was celebrated for its hospitality. Mr. Gurney, the father, belonged to the Society of Friends, but his family was not brought up with any strict regard to its peculiarities. He put little restraint on their domestic amusements, and music and dancing were among their favourite recreations. The third daughter, Mrs. Fry, had, indeed, united herself more closely with the Society of Friends; but her example had not then been followed by any of her brothers and sisters. ‘I know,’ wrote Sir Thomas, in later years, ‘no blessing of a temporal nature – and it is not only temporal – for which I ought to render so many thanks as my connection with the Earlham family. It has given a colour to my life. Its influence was most positive, and pregnant with good at that critical period between school and manhood. They were eager to improve; I caught the infection. I was resolved to please them, and in the college at Dublin, at a distance from all my friends and all control, their influence and the desire to please them kept me hard at my books, and sweetened the task they gave. The distinctions I gained at college (little valuable as distinctions, but valuable because habits of industry, perseverance and resolution were necessary to attain them) – these boyish distinctions were exclusively the result of the animating passion in my mind to carry back to them the prizes which they prompted and enabled me to win.’

Wilberforce, when he was staying at Lowestoft in 1816, wrote: ‘I am still full of Earlham and its excellent inhabitants. One of our great astronomers stated it as probable there may be stars whose light has been travelling to us from the Creation, and has not yet reached our little planet. In the Earlham family a new constellation has broken in upon us, for which you must invent a name, as you are fond of star-gazing, and if it indicates a little monstrosity (as they are apt to give the collection of stars the names of strange creatures – dragons, bears, etc.), the various stars of which the Earlham assemblage is made,’ continues Wilberforce, ‘will include also much to be respected and loved.’ At that time Mrs. Opie was one of the Norwich stars. Caroline Fox, who went to dine with her described her as in great force and really jolly. ‘She is enthusiastic about Father Mathew, reads Dickens voraciously, takes to Carlyle, but thinks his appearance rather against him – talks much and with great spirit of people, but never ill-naturedly.’

‘Norwich,’ as described by Camden, ‘on account of its wealth, populousness, neatness of buildings, beautiful churches, with the number of them – for it has a matter of fifty parishes – as also the industry of its citizens, loyalty to their Prince, is to be reckoned among the most considerable cities in Britain. It was fortified with walls that have a great many turrets and eleven gates.’ Camden, quoting one writer after another, adds the eulogy of Andrew Johnston, a Scotchman, as follows:

‘A town whose stately piles and happy seat
Her citizens and strangers both delight;
Whose tedious siege and plunder made her bear
In Norman battles an unhappy share,
And feel the sad effects of dreadful war.
These storms o’erblown, now blest with constant peace,
She saw her riches and her trade increase.
State here by wealth, by beauty yet undone,
How blest if vain excess be yet unknown!
So fully is she from herself supplied
That England while she stands can never want a head.’

From Norwich went Robinson to help to build up in Amsterdam that Church of the Pilgrim Fathers which was to be in its turn the mother of a great Republic such as the world had never seen. He has been styled the Father of Modern Congregationalism; be that as it may, when he bade farewell in that quaint old harbour, Delfhaven – which looks as if not a brick or a building had been touched since – he was doing a work from which neither himself nor those who stood with him could ever have expected such wonderful results. That emigration to Holland in Wren’s time was a great loss of money and men to England, and was an indication of Nonconformist strength which wise Churchmen would have conciliated rather than driven to extremities. ‘In sooth it was,’ wrote Heylin, ‘that the people in many great trading towns which were near the sea, having long been discharged of the bond of ceremonies, no sooner came to hear the least noise of a conformity, but they began to spurn against it; and when they found that all their striving was in vain, that they had lost the comfort of their lecturers and that their ministers began to shrink at the very name of a visitation, it was no hard matter for those ministers and lecturers to persuade them to remove their dwellings and transport their trades.’ ‘The sun of heaven,’ say they, ‘doth shine as comfortably in other places; the Sun of Righteousness much brighter.’ ‘Better to go and dwell in Goshen, find it where we can, than tarry in the midst of such an Egyptian darkness as is now falling on the land.’ One of the preachers who gave that advice and acted in accordance with it was William Bridge, M.A. Against him Wren was so furious that he fled to Holland and settled down as one of the pastors of the church at Rotterdam. In 1643 we find him pastor of the church at Norwich and Yarmouth, and one of the Assembly of Divines. In 1644 the church was separated – a part meeting at Yarmouth and a part at Norwich. This was done on the advice of Mr. John Phillip, of Wrentham – a godly minister of great influence in his denomination in his day.

As was to be expected, I was taken to the Old Meeting House at Norwich, where many learned men had preached, and where many men almost as learned listened. The gigantic pews, in which a small family might have lived, filled me with amazement. And equally appalling to me was the respectability of the people, of a very different class from that of our Wrentham chapel. Close by was the Octagon Chapel, where the Unitarians worshipped, equally impressive in its respectability. But what struck me most was the new and fashionable Baptist chapel of St. Mary’s, where the venerable and learned Kinghorn preached – a great Hebrew scholar and the champion of strict communion – against Robert Hall, and other degenerate Baptists, who were ready to admit to the Lord’s Table any Christians, whether properly baptized – that is, by immersion when adults – or merely sprinkled as infants. Up to this day I confound the worthy man with John the Baptist, probably because he looked so lank and long and lean. He was a man of singularly precise habits, so much so that I heard of an old lady who always regulated her cooking by his daily walk, putting the dumplings into the pot to boil when he went, and taking them out when he returned. I could write much about him, but cui bono? who cares about a dead Baptist lion? Not even the Baptists themselves. On going into their library in Castle Street the other day, to look at Kinghorn’s life, I found no one had taken the trouble to cut the pages. In the front gallery of St. Mary’s, Mr. Brewer, the Norwich schoolmaster, had sittings for the boys of his school, including his own sons, who, at King’s College and elsewhere, have done much to illustrate our national history and literature. If I remember aright, one of the congregation was a jolly-looking old gentleman who, as Uncle Jerry, laid the foundation of a mustard manufactory, which has placed one of the present M.P.’s for Norwich at the head of a business of unrivalled extent. When Mr. Kinghorn died, his place was taken by Mr. Brock, better known as Dr. Brock, of Bloomsbury Chapel, London. Under Mr. Brock’s preaching the reputation of St. Mary’s Chapel was increased rather than diminished. As a young man himself at that time, he was peculiarly attractive to the young, and the singing was very different from the rustic psalmody of my native village, in spite of the fact that we had a bass-viol at all times, and on highly-favoured occasions such an array of flutes and clarionets as really astonished the natives and delighted me.

But to return to the Old Meeting. Calamy writes of one of the Norwich ministers, of the name of Cromwell, that ‘he enjoyed but one peaceable day after his settlement, being on the second forced out of his meeting-house, the licenses being called in, and then for nine years together he was never without trouble. Sometimes he was pursued with indictments at sessions, at assizes, and then with citations of the ecclesiastical courts; and at other times feigned letters, rhymes or libels were dropped in the streets or church and fathered upon him, so that he was forced to make his house his prison. At length that was broken open, and he absconded into the houses of his friends, till he contracted his old disease’ a second time. It is said that he was invited on one occasion to dine with Bishop Reynolds, when several young clergy were present. When Mr. Cromwell retired, the Bishop rose and attended him, and then a general laugh ensued. On his return his lordship rebuked his guests for their unmannerly conduct, and told them that Mr. Cromwell had more solid divinity in his little finger than all of them had in their bodies. It must be remembered that, like most of the early Independent ministers, Mr. Cromwell had a University training; and even in my young days the respect shown to a learned ministry kept up not a little of the high standard which had been laid down by the fathers and founders of Dissent. In these more degenerate days it is to be questioned whether as much can be said. The Old Meeting House at Norwich was finished as far back as 1643. The only pastor of the church who was not an author was the Rev. Dr. Scott, who died in 1767. In the Octagon Chapel the preachers had been still more distinguished. One of them was the Rev. Dr. Taylor, author of the famous Hebrew Concordance, which was published in two volumes folio, and was the labour of fourteen years. He left Norwich to become tutor at the newly-erected Academy at Warrington; but his son, Mr. Edward Taylor, the Gresham Professor of Music, was often a visitor at Wrentham, where he had a little property, which he valued, as it gave him a vote. Another of the preachers at the Octagon was the Rev. R. Alderson, who afterwards became Recorder of Norwich. The Mr. Edward Taylor of whom I have just written was baptized by him. One day, being under examination as a witness in court, Alderson questioned him as to his age. ‘Why,’ said Taylor, a little nettled, ‘you ought to know, for you baptized me.’ ‘I baptized you!’ exclaimed Alderson. ‘What do you mean?’ The Recorder never liked to be reminded of his having been a preacher. The Marchioness of Salisbury is of this family. Perhaps, of these Unitarian preachers, one of the most distinguished was Dr. William Enfield, whose ‘Speaker’ was one of the books placed in the hands of ingenuous youth, and whose ‘History of Philosophy’ was one of the works to be studied in their riper years. Norwich, indeed, was full of learned men. Its aged Bishop, Bathurst, was the one voter for Reform, much to the delight of William IV., who said that he was a fine fellow, and deserved to be the helmsman of the Church in the rough sea she would soon have to steer through. His one offence in the eyes of George III. was that he voted against the King – that is, in favour of justice to the Catholics. With such a Bishop a Reformer, no wonder that all Norwich went wild with joy when the battle of Reform was fought and won. Bishop Stanley, who succeeded, was also in his way a great Liberal, and invited Jenny Lind to stay with him at the palace. I often used to see him at Exeter Hall, where his activity as a speaker afforded a remarkable contrast to the quieter style of his more celebrated son.

Accidentally looking into the life of Bishop Bathurst, I find printed in the Appendix some interesting conversations at Earlham, where Joseph John Gurney lived. On one occasion, when Dr. Chalmers was staying there, Joseph John Gurney writes: ‘W. Y. breakfasted with us, and with his usual strong sense and talent called forth the energies of Chalmers’ mind. They conversed on the subject of special Providence, and of the unseen yet unceasing superintendence of the Creator of all the events which occur in this lower world. Said W. Y.: “Mr. Barbauld, the husband of the authoress, was once a resident in my house. He was a man of low opinions in religion, and denied the agency of an unseen spirit on the mind of man.” I remarked that when the mind was determined to a certain right action by a combination of circumstances productive of the adequate motives, and meeting from various quarters precisely at the right point for the purpose in view, this was in itself a sufficient evidence of an especial Providence, and might be regarded as the instrumentality through which the Holy Spirit acts. Mr. Barbauld admitted the justice of this argument.’ Again I read: ‘W. Y. supported the doctrine that nature is governed through the means of general laws – laws which broadly and obviously mark the wisdom and benevolence of God.’ One extract more: ‘W. Y. expressed his admiration of the masterly manner in which Dr. Chalmers, in his “Bridgewater Treatise,” has fixed on the atheist a moral obligation to inquire into the truth of religion; but, said he, might not the disciples of Irving, by the same rule, oblige us to an inquiry into the supposed evidences of their favourite doctrine that Christ is about to appear and to reign personally on earth? Might not even the Mahometan suppose in the Christian a similar necessity as it relates to the pretensions of the false prophet?’ If Joseph Gurney sent for W. Y. to converse with Dr. Chalmers as a genial spirit, surely the name of one so honourable and of one so friendly both to my father and myself should not be omitted. W. Y. loved a joke. He was very stout, and wore tight black knee breeches with shoes and silk stockings. I remember how he made me laugh one day as he described what happened to his knee-breeches as he stooped to tie up his shoes ere attending a place of worship. To cut a long story short, I may add W. Youngman did not go to church that day. Originally I think he was a dyer.

Harriet Martineau, as all the world knows, was born at Norwich. In her somewhat ill-natured autobiography she writes: ‘Norwich, which has now no social claims to superiority at all, was in my childhood a rival of Lichfield itself, in the time of the Sewards, for literary pretensions and the vulgarity of pedantry. William Taylor was then at his best, when there was something like fulfilment of his early promise, when his exemplary filial duty was a fine spectacle to the whole city, and before the vice which destroyed him had coarsened his morale and destroyed his intellect. During the war it was a great distinction to know anything of German literature, and in Mr. Taylor’s case it proved a ruinous distinction. He was completely spoiled by the flatteries of shallow men, pedantic women, and conceited lads.’ Yet this man was the friend of Southey and opened up a new world to the English intellect, and perhaps in days to come will have a more enduring reputation than Harriet Martineau herself. The lady does not err on the side of good nature in her criticism. All she can say of Dr. Sayers is: ‘I always heard of him as a genuine scholar, and I have no doubt he was superior to his neighbours in modesty and manners. Dr. Enfield, a feeble and superficial man of letters, was gone also from the literary supper-table before my time. There was Sir James Smith, the botanist, made much of and really not pedantic and vulgar like the rest, but weak and irritable. There was Dr. Alderson, Mrs. Opie’s father, solemn and sententious and eccentric in manner, but not an able man in any way;’ and thus the leading lights of Norwich are contemptuously dismissed. ‘The great days of the Gurneys were not come yet. The remarkable family from which issued Mrs. Fry and Priscilla and Joseph John Gurney were then a set of dashing young people, dressed in gay riding habits and scarlet boots, as Mrs. Fry told us afterwards, and riding about the country to balls and gaieties of all sorts. Accomplished and charming young ladies they were; and we children used to overhear some whispered gossip about the effects of their charms on heart-stricken young men; but their final characteristics were not yet apparent.’

It is to a Norwich man that we owe the publication of Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates. Luke Hansard, to whom they owe their name, was born in Norwich, 1725, was trained as a printer, went to London with but a guinea in his pocket, was employed by Hughes, the printer of the House of Commons, succeeded to the business and became widely known for his despatch and accuracy in printing Parliamentary papers and debates. He died in 1828, but the business was continued by his family, and to refer to Hansard became the invariable custom when an M.P. was to be condemned out of his own mouth – as Hansard was supposed never to err. Recently Hansard has been carried on by a company, but the old name still remains.

Dr. Stoughton has in vain, in a number of the Congregationalist, attempted to record the memory of a man well known and much honoured in his day – the Rev. John Alexander, of Norwich. The portrait is a failure. It gives us no idea of the man with his rosy face, his curly black hair, his merry, twinkling eye, his joyous laugh, when mirth befitted the occasion, or his tender sympathy where pain and sorrow and distress had to be endured. Mr. Alexander’s jubilee was celebrated in St. Andrew’s Hall in 1867, when the Mayor and a crowd of citizens did him honour, and a sum of money for the purchase of an annuity was presented, thus obviating the necessity of doing to him as on one occasion he in his humorous way suggested should be done with old ministers when past work – that they should be shot. In 1817 Mr. Alexander had come to Norwich to preach in the old Whitfield Tabernacle in place of Mr. Hooper, one of the tutors at Hoxton Academy. When I went to Norwich he had built a fine chapel in Prince’s Street, and amongst the hearers was Mr. Tillet, then in a lawyer’s office, a young man famous for his speeches at the Mechanics’ Institute and in connection with a literary venture, the Norwich Magazine, not destined to set the Thames on fire; latterly an M.P. for Norwich and proprietor and editor, I believe, of one of the most popular of East Anglian journals, the Norfolk News. It was in Prince’s Street Chapel I first learned to realize how influential was the Nonconformist public, of which I frankly admit in our little village, with Churchmen all round, I had but a limited idea. It seemed to me that we were rather a puny folk, but at Norwich, with its chapels and pastors and people, I saw another sight. There was the Rev. John Alexander, with an overflowing audience on the Sunday and an active vitality all the week, now dining at the palace with the Bishop or breakfasting at Earlham with the Gurneys, now meeting on terms of equality the literati of the place (at that time Mrs. Opie was still living near the castle, and Mr. Wilkins was writing his life of the far-famed Norwich doctor, the learned and ingenious author of the ‘Religio Medici’), now visiting the afflicted and the destitute, now carrying consolation to the home of the mourner. John Alexander was a man to whom East Anglian Nonconformity owes much. In the old city there was a good deal of young intelligence, and a good deal of it amongst the Noncons. Dr. Sexton was one of the Old Meeting House congregation, as was Lucy Brightwell, a lady not unknown to the present generation of readers. To a certain extent a Noncon. is bound to be more or less intelligent. He finds a great State Establishment of religion wherever he goes. It enjoys the favour of the Court. It is patronized by the aristocracy. It enlists among its supporters all who wish to rise in the world or to make a figure in society. By means of the endowed schools of the land, it offers to the young, even of the humblest birth, a chance of winning a prize. Conform, it says, and you may be rich and respectable. It was said of a late Bishop of Winchester that he would forgive a man anything so long as he were but a good Churchman, and even now one meets in society with people who regard a Dissenter as little better than a heathen or a publican. A man who can thus voluntarily place himself at a disadvantage, to a certain extent, must have exercised his intellect and be ready to give a reason for the faith that is in him. Naturally, men are of the religion of the country in which they are born – Roman Catholics in Italy, Mahometans in Turkey, Buddhists in the East. It requires more power and strength of mind and decision of character to dissent from the Church of the State than to support it. ‘How was it,’ asked Dr. Storrar, Chairman of the Convocation of the University of London, the other day, ‘that the lads educated at Mill Hill Grammar School had done so well at Cambridge and Oxford?’ The reply, said the Doctor, was – I don’t give his words, merely the idea – to be found in the fact that a couple of centuries ago there were men of strong intellect and tender consciences who refused to renounce their opinions at the command of a despotic power. They had been succeeded by their sons with the same quickness of intellect and conscience. Generations one after another had come and gone, and the children of these old Nonconformists thus came to the school with an hereditary intelligence, destined to win in the gladiatorship of the school, the college, or the world.

Let me now give an anecdote of Dr. Bathurst, the Lord Bishop of Norwich, too good to be lost. It is told by Sir Charles Leman, who described him in 1839 as gradually converting his enemies into friends by his uniform straightforwardness and enlarged Christian principle. One of his clergy, who had been writing most abusively in newspapers, had on one occasion some favour to solicit, which he did with natural hesitation. The Bishop promised all in his power and in the kindest manner, and when the clergyman was about to leave the room he suddenly turned with, ‘My lord, I must say, however, I much regret the part I have taken against you; I see I was quite in the wrong, and I beg your forgiveness.’ This was readily accorded. ‘But how was it,’ the clergyman continued, ‘you did not turn your back on me? I quite expected it.’ ‘Why, you forget that I profess myself a Christian,’ was the reply.

Of a later Bishop – Stanley – whom I can well remember, a dark, energetic little man, making a speech at Exeter Hall, we hear a little in Caroline Fox’s memories of old friends. In 1848 she writes: ‘Dined very pleasantly at the palace; the Bishop was all animation and good humour, but too unsettled to leave any memorable impression. I like Mrs. Stanley much – a shrewd, sensible, observing woman. She told me much about her Bishop, how very trying his position was on first settling at Norwich; for his predecessor was an amiable, indolent old man, who let things take their course, and a very bad course too, all which the present man has to correct as way opens, and continually sacrifice popularity to a sense of right.’

The following anecdote of Miss Fox and her friends calling at a cottage in the neighbourhood of Norwich is too good to be lost. ‘A young woman,’ she writes, ‘told us that her father was nearly converted, and that a little more teaching would complete the business,’ adding, ‘He quite believes that he is lost, which is, of course, a great consolation to the old man.’ That story is racy of the soil. It is in that way the East Anglian peasantry who have any religion at all talk; they have no hope of a man who does not feel that he is lost. Well, there are many ways to heaven, and that must comfort some of us who still believe that man was made in the image of his Maker, a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour, and not destined to an eternity of misery for the sins of a day.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SUFFOLK CAPITAL

The Orwell – The Sparrows – Ipswich notabilities – Gainsborough – Medical men – Nonconformists.

Those who imagine Suffolk to be a flat and uninteresting county, with no charms for the eye and no associations worth speaking of, are much mistaken. There are few lovelier rivers in England than the Orwell, on which Ipswich stands, up which river the fiery Danes used to sail to plunder all the country round, and on the banks of which Gainsborough learned to love Nature and draw her in all her charms. The town itself stands in a valley, but it has gradually crept up the hills on each side, so that almost everywhere you have a pleasing prospect and breathe a bracing air. A few miles, or, rather, a short walk, brings you to Henley, which has the reputation of being the highest land in Suffolk, and on the other side there is a railway that connects Ipswich with Felixstowe, just as the Crystal Palace is connected with the City. Ipswich may claim to be the most prosperous and enterprising of all the Suffolk towns. It goes with the times. Its citizens are active and pushing men of business, and have enlightened ideas as well. They are also Liberal in politics and practical in religion, and are never behind in coming forward when there is a chance of benefiting themselves or their fellow-creatures. And yet Ipswich has a history as long as the dullest cathedral town. It was a place of note during the existence of the Saxon Heptarchy. Twice it had the honour of publicly entertaining King John; and there is a tradition that in the curious and beautifully-ornamented house in the Butter Market – formerly the residence of Mr. Sparrow, the Ipswich coroner, whose old family portraits, including one of the Jameses, presented to an ancestor of the family, filled me not a little with youthful wonder – Charles II. was secreted by one of the Sparrows of that day, when he came to hide in Ipswich after the battle of Worcester. ‘The house is now a shop,’ but, observes Mr. Glyde, a far-famed local historian, ‘a concealed room in the upper story of the house, which was discovered during some alterations in 1801, is well adapted for such a purpose.’ And, at any rate, the gay and graceless monarch, in search of a hiding-place, might have gone farther and fared worse. Be that as it may, Ipswich can rejoice in the fact that it was the birthplace of Cardinal Wolsey; and that he was one of the first educational reformers of the day must be admitted, at any rate, in Ipswich, of which, possibly, he would have made a second Cambridge. Alas! of his efforts in that direction, the only outward and visible sign is the old gateway in what is called College Street, which remains to this day. Ipswich fared well in the Elizabethan days, when her Gracious Majesty condescended to visit the place. Sir Christopher Hatton, the dancing Lord Chancellor, who led the brawls, when

‘The seals and maces danced before him,’

lived in a house near the Church of St. Mary-le-Tower. Sir Edward Coke resided in a village not far off, and in 1597 the M.P. for Ipswich was no other than the great Lord Bacon, who by birth and breeding was emphatically a Suffolk man. From Windham’s diary, it appears that at Ipswich that distinguished statesman experienced a new sensation. In 1789 he writes: ‘Left Ipswich not till near twelve. Saw Humphries there, and was for the first time entertained with some sparring; felt much amused with the whole of the business.’

In the early part of the present century Miss Berry, on returning from one of her Continental trips, paid Ipswich a visit, having landed at Southwold. ‘Appearance of Ipswich very pretty in descending towards it,’ is the entry in her diary. About the same time Bishop Bathurst made his visitation tour, and he writes to one of his lady correspondents: ‘You will be glad that, during the three weeks I passed in Suffolk, I did not meet a single unpleasant man, nor experience a single unpleasant accident.’ With the name of the Suffolk hero Captain Broke, of the Shannon. (I can well remember the Shannon coach – which ran from Yoxford to London – the only day-coach we had at that time), Ipswich is inseparably connected. He was born at Broke Hall, just by, and there spent the later years of his life. Another of our naval heroes, Admiral Vernon, the victor of Porto Bello, resided in the same vicinity. At one time there seems to have been an attempt to connect Ipswich with the Iron Duke. In the memoir of Admiral Broke we have more than one reference to the Duke’s shooting in that neighbourhood, and actually it appears that, unknown to himself, he was nominated as a candidate to the office of High Steward. Ipswich, however, preferred a neighbour, in the shape of Sir Robert Harland. At a later day the office was filled by Mr. Charles Austin, the distinguished writer on Jurisprudence.

One of the celebrated noblemen who lived in Ipswich was Lord Chedworth. He wore top-boots, and wore them till they were not fit to be seen. When new boots were sent home he was accustomed to set them on one side, and get his manservant to wear them a short time to prepare them for his own feet. Sometimes the man would tell his lordship that he thought the boots were ready, but his lordship would generally reply, ‘Never mind, William; wear them another week.’ While at Ipswich his lordship was frequently consulted, owing to his legal attainments and well-known generous disposition, by tradesmen and people in indigent circumstances. The applicants were ushered into the library, where, surrounded by books, they found his lordship. The chairs and furniture of the room, like his lordship’s clothes, had not merely seen their best days, but were comparatively worthless, and the old red cloak which invariably enveloped his shoulders made him look more like a gipsy boy than a peer of the realm. His lordship’s legacies to Ipswich ladies and others, especially of the theatrical profession, were of the most liberal character.

Ipswich in its old days had its share of witches. One of the most notorious of them was Mother Hatheland, who in due course was tried, condemned and executed. From her confession in 1645 it appears ‘the said Mother Hatheland hath been a professor of religion, a constant hearer of the Word for these many years, yet a witch, as she confessed, for the space of nearly twenty years. The devil came to her first between sleeping and waking, and spake to her in a hollow voice, telling her that if she would serve him she would want nothing. After often solicitations she consented to him. Then he stroke his claw (as she confessed) into her hands, and with her blood wrote the covenant.’ Now, as the writer gravely remarks, the subtlety of Satan is to be observed in that he did not press her to deny God and Christ, as he did others, because she was a professor, and he might have lost all his hold by pressing her too far. Satan appears to have provided her with three imps, in the shape of two little dogs and a mole.

As the home of Gainsborough Ipswich has enduring claims on the English nation and on lovers of art and artists everywhere. That must have been a Suffolk man who passed the following criticism on Gainsborough’s celebrated picture of ‘Girl and Pigs,’ of which Sir Joshua Reynolds became the purchaser at one hundred guineas, though the artist asked but sixty: ‘They be deadly like pigs; but who ever saw pigs feeding together, but one on ’em had a foot in the trough?’ Gainsborough had an enthusiastic attachment to music. It was the favourite amusement of his leisure hours, and his love for it induced him to give one or two concerts to his most intimate acquaintances whilst living in Ipswich. He was a member of a musical club, and painted some of the portraits of his brother members in his picture of a choir. Once upon a time, Gainsborough was examined as a witness on a trial respecting the originality of a picture. The barrister on the other side said: ‘I observe you lay great stress on a painter’s eye; what do you mean by that expression?’ ‘A painter’s eye,’ replied Gainsborough, ‘is to him what the lawyer’s eye is to you.’ As a boy at the Grammar School of his native town, it is to be feared he loved to play truant. One day he went out to his usual sketching haunts to enjoy the nature which he loved heartily, previously presenting to his uncle, who was master of the school, the usual slip of paper, ‘Give Tom a holiday,’ in which his father’s handwriting was so exactly imitated that not the slightest suspicion of the forgery ever entered the mind of the master. Alas! however, the crime was detected, and his terrified parent exclaimed in despair, ‘Tom will one day be hanged.’ When, however, he was informed how the truant schoolboy had employed his truant hours, and the boy’s sketches were laid before him, forgetful of the consequences of forgeries in a commercial society, he declared, with all the pride of a father, ‘Tom will be a genius,’ and he was right.

Worthy Mr. Pickwick seems to have known Ipswich about the same time as myself. ‘In the main street of Ipswich,’ wrote the biographer of that distinguished individual, ‘on the left-hand side of the way, a short distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the Great White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rapacious animal, with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane carthorse, which is elevated above the principal door. The Great White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood in the same degree as a prize ox, a county paper chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig, for its enormous size. Never were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof as are collected together between the four walls of the Great White Horse of Ipswich.’ This was the great hotel of the Ipswich of my youth. As regards hotels, Ipswich has not improved, but in every other way it has much advanced. One of the old inns has been turned into a fine public hall, admirably adapted for concerts and public meetings. The new Town Hall, Corn Exchange, and Post-office are a credit to the town. The same may be said of the new Museum and the Grammar School and the Working Men’s College and that health resort, the Arboretum; while by means of the new dock ships of fifteen hundred tons burden can load and unload. Nowadays everybody says Ipswich is a rising town, and what everyone says must be right. The Ipswich people, at any rate, have firmly got that idea into their heads. Its fathers and founders built the streets narrow, evidently little anticipating for Ipswich the future it has since achieved. The Ipswich of to-day is laid out on quite a different scale. It has a tram road service evidently much in excess of the present population, and as you wander in the suburbs you come to a sign-post bearing the name of a street in which not even the enterprise of the speculative builder has been able at present to plant a single dwelling. When Ipswich has climbed up its surrounding hills, and taken up all the building sites at present in the market, it will be a goodly and gallant town, almost fitted to invite the temporary residence of holiday-making Londoners who are fond of the water. At all times it is a pretty sail to Harwich and thence to Felixstowe, that quiet watering-place, a seaside residence that has still a pleasant flavour of rusticity about it, with a fine crisp sea-sand floor for a promenade.

When I was a boy Ipswich was resorted to by Londoners in the summer-time. As an illustration, I give the case of Mr. Ewen, one of the deacons of the Weigh House Chapel, when the Rev. John Clayton was the pastor. In his memories of the Clayton family, the Rev. Dr. Aveling writes of Mr. Ewen, that ‘he was so sensitively conscientious in the discharge of his official duties at the Weigh House, that he was never absent from town on the days when the Lord’s Supper was administered, and when he was expected to assist in the administration of the elements. His London residence was in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but having a house and property in the town of Ipswich, he passed his summer months there. Yet so intent was he upon duly filling his place in the sanctuary of God, that he regularly travelled by post-chaise once in every month, and returned in the same manner, that he might be present, together with his pastor and the brethren, at the table of the Lord. The length and the expense of the journey (and travelling was not then what it is now) did not deter him from what he at least deemed to be a matter of Christian obligation.’ Dr. Aveling is quite right when he tells us travelling is not what it was. It took almost a day to go from Ipswich to London when I was a boy, and now the journey is done by means of the Great Eastern Railway in about an hour and a half. It seems marvellous to one who, like myself, remembers well the past, to leave Liverpool Street at 5.0 p.m. precisely, and to find one’s self landed safe and well in Ipswich soon after half-past six. The present generation can have no conception of travelling in England in the olden time.

There were some wonderful old Radicals in Ipswich, though it was, and is, the county town of the most landlord-ridden district in England. Some of them got the great Dan O’Connell to pay the town a visit, and some of them nobly stood by old John Childs when he became famous all the world over as the Church-rate martyr. The lawyers and the doctors were mostly Tories, but the tradesmen and the merchants were not a little leavened with the leaven of Dissent. Mr. Hammond was, however, a Liberal surgeon, and as such flourished. His Whig principles, writes Mr. Glyde, brought him many patients, and his skill and sound qualities retained them. Dr. Garrord, the well-known London practitioner, was an apprentice of Mr. Hammond’s; and this reminds me that among the Ipswich men who have risen is Mr. Sprigg, the Premier of Cape Colony when Sir Bartle Frere was at the head of affairs there. The father of Mr. Sprigg was the respected pastor of a Baptist chapel in the town. The only Ipswich minister whom I can remember was the Rev. Mr. Notcutt, who preached in the leading Independent chapel, now pulled down to make way for a much more attractive building. All I can recollect about him is, that once, when a lad, I fainted away when he was preaching. No sermon ever affected me so since; and that effect was due, it must be confessed, not to the preacher, who seemed to me rather aged and asthmatic, but to the heat of the place, in consequence of the crowd attracted to the meeting-house on some special occasion.

But to return to the doctors. Of one of them, who was famed for his love of bleeding his patients, not metaphorically, but in the old-fashioned way, with the lancet, it is recorded that on the occasion of his taking a holiday two of his patients died. Lamenting the fact to a friend, the following epigram was the result:

‘B- kills two patients while from home away —
A clever fellow this same B-, I wot;
If absent thus his patients he can slay,
How he must kill them when he’s on the spot!’

Perhaps one of the noted physicians of my boyhood was Mr. Stebbing. ‘He was once,’ writes Mr. Glyde, ‘called in to see one of the Ipswich Dissenting ministers, who had taken life very easily, and had grown corpulent. After examining the patient and hearing his statement as to bodily state, he replied: “You’ve no particular ailment; mind and keep your eyes longer open, and your mouth longer shut, and you will do very well in a short time.”’ On another occasion a raw and very poor-looking young fellow called upon him for advice. The doctor told him to go home and eat more pudding, adding, ‘That’s all you want; physic is a very good thing for one to live by, but a precious bad thing for you to take.’ One of the Ipswich characters of my boyhood, of whom Mr. Glyde has preserved an anecdote, was old Tuxford, the veterinary surgeon. He used to declare that he never took more than one meal a day – a breakfast; but when asked of what that consisted, he said, ‘A pound of beefsteak, seven eggs, three cups of tea, and a quartern of rum.’ It may also be mentioned that before Mrs. Garrett Anderson was born, Ipswich had a lady physician in the person of Miss Stebbing, daughter of the doctor to whom I have already referred. ‘She was,’ says one who knew her well, ‘a woman of general education, with more than ordinary tact and discernment, combined with the true womanly power of analyzing and observing. She had good physical powers, and, like her worthy father, was somewhat pungent in her remarks and eccentric in her habits. She entered the ranks as a medical practitioner during her father’s life. The benefit of his advice so aided her perceptive powers as to make her quite an expert in various ways, and she continued to practise long after his decease, occasionally attending males as well as females. Her knowledge of midwifery caused a large number of ladies to engage her services.

Of the Radicals of Ipswich, the only one with whom I came into contact was Mr. John King, the proprietor and editor of what was then, at any rate, a far-famed journal – the Suffolk Chronicle. Astronomy was his hobby, and he had ideas on the subject which, unfortunately, I failed to catch. He had built himself an observatory, if I remember aright, at his residence on Rose Hill, where he would sweep the heavens nightly, to see what could be seen. He was a Radical of the old type, a tall, dark, bilious-looking man, a little hard and dry, perhaps, who seemed to think that it was no use to throw pearls before swine, and to serve up for the chaw-bacons a too rich intellectual treat, and his policy was a successful one. Priest-ridden as Suffolk was, the Suffolk Chronicle was the leading paper of the county, and had a large circulation, and, let me add, did good service in its day. Now I find Ipswich rejoices in a well-conducted daily journal, the East Anglian Times, which I hear, and am glad to hear, is a fine property, and I see all the leading towns in Suffolk have a paper to themselves, even if they can’t get up a decent paragraph of local news – and some of them I know, from my experiences of Suffolk life, are quite unequal to that – once a week. The plan is to have some sheets already printed in London, at some great establishment, whence perhaps a hundred little towns are supplied, and then the local news and advertisements are added on, and Little Pedlington has its Observer, and Eatanswill its Gazette. When I was a boy, such a thing was out of the question, as to each paper a fourpenny-halfpenny stamp was attached. As the stamps had to be paid for in advance, and as, besides, there was an eighteen-penny duty on every advertisement, it was not quite such an easy matter to run a paper then as it has since become. I fancy the old-established journals suffered much by the change, which completely revolutionized the newspaper trade; at any rate, so far as the country was concerned. In this connection, let me add that it was to an Ipswich journalist we owe the establishment of penny readings on anything like a large and successful scale. They were originated by Mr. Sully, at that time the proprietor and editor of the IpswichExpress, a paper intended to steer between the ferocious Toryism of the Ipswich Journal, and the equally ferocious Radicalism of the Suffolk Chronicle. As was to be expected, the attempt did not succeed. As in love and in war, so in politics and theology, moderation is a thing hateful to gods and men. The electioneering annals of Ipswich can testify to that fact. I have a dim recollection of an election petition which ended in Sir Fitzroy Kelly’s admitting that he had stated what was not true, but he did it as a lawyer, not as a gentleman, and in sending one of the finest old gentlemen I ever knew to gaol, because he would not tell what he knew of the matter. There was not much half-and-half work in the Ipswich politics of my young days.

When people fight fiercely in politics, it is natural to expect an equal earnestness in religious matters. It was so emphatically with respect to the Ipswich of the past. ‘The Reformed religion, after those fiery days of persecution,’ writes John Quick, ‘was now revived, and flourished again in the country, under the auspicious name of our English Deborah, Queen Elizabeth; and Ipswich, the capital town of Suffolk, was not more famous for its spacious sheds, large and beautiful buildings, rich and great trade, and honourable merchants, both at home and abroad, than it was for its learned and godly ministers and its religious intolerants.’ Of the godly ministers, one of the most famous was Samuel Ward, who was buried in St. Mary-le-Tower Church. In 1666 he preached a sermon at St. Paul’s Cross. But he meddled with politics. For instance, in 1621 he published a caricature picture, entitled ‘Spayne and Rome Defeated.’ It is thus described: The Pope and his Council are represented in the centre of the piece, and beneath, on one side the Armada, and on the other the Gunpowder Treason. Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, complained of it as insulting to his master. Ward was placed in custody. Being Puritanically inclined, he was, in addition, prosecuted in the Consistory Court of Norwich by Bishop Harsnet for Nonconformity. Ten years later, when 600 persons were contemplating a removal from Ipswich to New England – as a place where they could worship God without fear of priest or king – the blame was cast by Laud on Ward. Rushworth informs us that the charges laid against him were that he preached against the common bowing at the name of Jesus and against the King’s ‘Book of Sports,’ and further said that the Church of England was ready to ring changes in England, and that the Gospel stood on tiptoe as ready to be gone; and for this he was removed from his lectureship and sent to gaol. John Ward, his brother, Rector of St. Clement’s, was a member of the Assembly of Divines, and was called to preach two sermons before the House of Commons, for which he received the thanks of the House. At that time we find a reference to Ipswich as a place which ‘the Lord hath long made famous and happy as a valley of Gospel vision.’ Such places, alas! seem to have been commoner formerly than they are now.

One of the Congregational churches of Ipswich, at any rate, has very interesting historical associations. ‘Salem Chapel,’ writes the Rev. John Browne, in his ‘History of Congregationalism in Suffolk and Norfolk,’ ‘stands in St. George’s Lane, opposite the place where St. George’s Chapel formerly stood, where Bilney was apprehended when preaching in favour of the Reformation, and where he so enraged the monks that they twice plucked him out of the pulpit.’ The last time I was at Ipswich I saw bricklayers at work at the old Presbyterian church in St. Nicholas Street, which it would be a pity to see modernized, being such a fine illustration of the old-fashioned Dissenting Meeting-house, before it became the fashion to have a taste and to build Gothic chapels in which it is difficult to see or hear, and the only advantage of which is that they are an exact copy of the steeple-houses against which at one time Nonconformist England waged remorseless war. One of the pastors of this congregation removed to Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds, where he succeeded Dr. Priestley; another was the author of a ‘History and Description of Derbyshire’; while one of the supplies was the Rev. Robert Alderson, afterwards of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich, who ultimately became a lawyer and Recorder of Norwich. Perhaps one of the most singular scenes connected with Dissenting chapels in Ipswich was that which took place in the old chapel in Tackard, now Tacket, Street. In 1766 the minister there was the Rev. Mr. Edwards, who, it appears, was sent for to the gaol to see two men who had been found guilty of house-breaking, and who, according to the law as it then stood, were to be hung. Mr. Edwards did so, and stayed with them two hours. As the result of this visit they were brought to a penitent state of mind. They had heard that Mr. Edwards had prepared a sermon for them and desired them to attend. This was a mistake, but notwithstanding they obtained permission to go to the chapel, where Mr. Edwards was conducting a church meeting. A report of the purpose got abroad, and many persons came to the meeting, upon which it was thought most proper that the church business should be laid aside, and that Mr. Edwards should go into the pulpit. This he did, and after singing and prayer the prisoners came in with their shackles and fetters on. Mr. Edwards, in describing the scene, says:

‘Many were moved at the sight. As for myself, I was obliged for some time to stop to give vent to tears. When I recovered I gave out part of a hymn suitable to the occasion, then prayed. The subject of discourse was, “This is a faithful saying,” and the poor prisoners shed abundance of tears while I was explaining the several parts of the text, and especially when I turned and addressed myself immediately to them. The house was thronged, and I suppose not a dry eye in the whole place – nothing but weeping and sorrow; and the floods of tears which gushed from the eyes of the two prisoners were very melting.’

The good man continues: ‘When we had concluded I went and spoke some encouraging words by way of supporting them under their sorrow. They then desired I should see them in the evening, which I did, and called upon Mr. Blindle on the way; the old gentleman went along with me to the prison, and was one who prayed with them with much fervour and enlargement of heart. We spent nearly two hours with them, and a crowd of people were present.’ On another occasion we find an American Indian preaching in the pulpit – a novelty in 1767. He came over with a Dr. Whitaker, of Norwich, in America, to collect money for the education and conversion of Indians, and at Tackard Street the people raised the very respectable sum of £80 for the purpose. In 1561 Queen Elizabeth paid Ipswich a visit. At that time the place was a little too Protestant for her. Strype writes: ‘Here Her Majesty took a great dislike to the impudent behaviour of most of the ministers and readers, there being many weak ones among them, and little or no order observed in the public service, and few or none wearing the surplice, and the Bishop of Norwich was thought remiss, and that he winked at schismatics. But more particularly she was offended with the clergy’s marriage, and that in cathedrals and colleges there were so many wives and children and widows seen, which, she said, was contrary to the intent of the founders, and so much tending to the interruption of the studies of those who were placed there. Therefore she issued an order to all dignitaries, dated August 9, at Ipswich, to forbid all women to the lodgings of cathedrals or colleges, and that upon pain of losing their ecclesiastical promotion.’ From this it is clear that when Elizabeth was Queen there was little chance of the Women’s Rights Question finding a favourable hearing. The Queen was succeeded by monarchs after her own heart. In 1636 Prynne published his ‘Newes from Ipswich,’ ‘discovering certain late detestable practices of some domineering Lordly Prelates to undermine the established doctrine and discipline of our Church, extirpate all orthodox sincere preachers and preaching of God’s Word, usher in popery, idolatry and superstition.’ For this publication Prynne was sentenced to be fined £5,000 to the King, to lose the remainder of his ears, to be branded on both cheeks, and to be perpetually imprisoned in Carnarvon Castle. At that time the Ipswich people were far too Liberal for the powers existing. Ipswich news nowadays is little calculated to displease anyone, and governments and kings are less prone to take offence at the exercise of free thought and free speech.

Ipswich people make their way. Miss Reeve – who wrote the ‘Old English Baron,’ a popular tale years ago – was the daughter of the Rev. William Reeve of St. Nicholas Church. Another Ipswich lady, Mrs. Keeley, who lives on in her grand old age, was certainly one of the most popular performers of her day.

Two hundred years ago, no city man was better known than Thomas Firmin, who was born at Ipswich, described in his biography as ‘a very large and populous town in the county of Suffolk,’ in 1632. He was of Puritan parentage, and bound apprentice in the city of London, and then began business as a linen-draper on the modest capital of £100. In a little while he married and was enabled to dispense a generous hospitality, seeking all opportunities of becoming acquainted with persons of worth, whether foreigners or his fellow-countrymen. Amongst his special friends were Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, and Archbishop Tillotson, at that time the afternoon lecturer at St. Lawrence’s. During the time of the plague he managed to secure work for the London poor, and after the fire he erected a warehouse on the banks of the Thames, where coal and corn were sold at cost price. In 1676 he built a great factory in Little Britain, for the employment of the needy and industrious in the linen manufacture; he also relieved poor debtors in prison. The great work of his later years was in connection with the Blue Coat School. He was also one of the Governors of St. Thomas’s Hospital, which he did much to rescue from the wretched condition in which he found it. When the French refugees, in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, were driven over to this country, Firmin exerted himself powerfully on their behalf, and sent some of them to Ipswich to engage in manufacturing there. He also had a good deal to do with Ireland, when, as now, the country was torn by contending factions. At a large expense he also educated many boys and set them up in trade. He was also one of the first of the avowed and ardent friends and advocates of a free thought, of which there were few supporters in England at that day – even among the countrymen of Milton and John Locke. Unitarians were rare in the days when Firmin proclaimed himself one. Altogether he was one of the best men of his age, and well deserved to be buried in Christchurch, Newgate, among the Bluecoat School boys, to whom he had ever been such a friend, and to have the memorial pillar erected in his honour by Lady Clayton in Marden Park, Surrey. It is to be hoped that the memorial remains, though, alas! the noble mansion at one time inhabited by Wilberforce, and where the great philanthropist’s celebrated son, the Bishop of Oxford was born, and where I have spent more than one pleasant day when Sir John Puleston lived there, has been since burnt down.

CHAPTER IX.

AN OLD-FASHIONED TOWN

Woodbridge and the country round – Bernard Barton – Dr. Lankester – An old Noncon.

The traveller as he leaves the English coast for Antwerp or Rotterdam or the northern ports of Germany, may remember that the last glimpse of his native land is the light from Orford Ness, which is a guiding star to the mariner as he ploughs his weary way along the deep. Of that part of Suffolk little is known to the community at large. When I was a boy it was looked upon as an ultima Thule, where the people were in a primitive state of civilization; where shops and towns and newspapers and good roads were unknown; where traditions of smuggling yet remained. Few ever went into that region, and those who did, when they returned, did not bring back with them encouraging reports. Barren sandy moors, along which the bitter east wind perpetually blew, fatal alike to vegetation and human life, were the chief characteristics of a district the natives of which were not rich, at any rate as regards this world’s goods. Orford, like Dunwich, was once a place of some importance. ‘A large and populous town with a castle of reddish stone,’ writes Camden, but in his time a victim of the sea’s ingratitude; ‘which withdraws itself little by little, and begins to envy it the advantages of a harbour.’ In the time of Henry I., writes Ralph de Coggeshall, when Bartholomew de Glanville was Governor of its castle, some fishermen there caught a wild man in their nets. ‘All the parts of his body resembled those of a man. He had hair on his head, a long-peaked beard, and about the breast was exceeding hairy and rough. But at length he made his escape into the sea, and was never seen more,’ which was a pity, as undoubtedly he was the ‘missing link.’ Besides, as Camden remarks, the fact was a confirmation of what the common people of his time remarked. ‘Whatever is produced in any part of nature is in the sea,’ and shows ‘that not all is fabulous what Pliny has written about the Triton on the coasts of Portugal, and the sea man in the Straits of Gibraltar.’ Nor is that the only wonder connected with the district. Close by is Aldborough, where the poet Crabbe learned to become, as Byron calls him,

‘Nature’s sternest painter, but the best;’