_Bergh-Apton, near Norwich, Monday, 10 Dec. 1821._
From the _Wen_ to Norwich, from which I am now distant seven miles,
there is nothing in Essex, Suffolk, or this county, that can be called a
_hill_. Essex, when you get beyond the immediate influence of the
gorgings and disgorgings of the Wen; that is to say, beyond the demand
for crude vegetables and repayment in manure, is by no means a fertile
county. There appears generally to be a bottom of _clay_; not _soft
chalk_, which they persist in calling clay in Norfolk. I wish I had one
of these Norfolk men in a coppice in Hampshire or Sussex, and I would
show him what _clay_ is. Clay is what pots and pans and jugs and tiles
are made of; and not soft, whitish stuff that crumbles to pieces in the
sun, instead of baking as hard as a stone, and which, in dry weather, is
to be broken to pieces by nothing short of a sledge-hammer. The narrow
ridges on which the wheat is sown; the water furrows; the water standing
in the dips of the pastures; the rusty iron-like colour of the water
coming out of some of the banks; the deep ditches; the rusty look of the
pastures--all show, that here is a bottom of clay. Yet there is gravel
too; for the oaks do not grow well. It was not till I got nearly to
SUDBURY that I saw much change for the better. Here the bottom of chalk,
the soft dirty-looking chalk that the Norfolk people call clay, begins
to be the bottom, and this, with very little exception (as far as I have
been) is the bottom of all the lands of these two fine counties of
Suffolk and Norfolk.--SUDBURY has some fine meadows near it on the sides
of the river Stour. The land all along to Bury Saint Edmund's is very
fine; but no trees worth looking at. _Bury_, formerly the seat of an
Abbot, the last of whom was, I think, hanged, or somehow put to death,
by that matchless tyrant, Henry VIII., is a very pretty place; extremely
clean and neat; no ragged or dirty people to be seen, and women (_young_
ones I mean) very pretty and very neatly dressed.--On this side of Bury,
a considerable distance lower, I saw a field of _Rape_, transplanted
very thick, for, I suppose, sheep feed in the spring. The farming all
along to Norwich is very good. The land clean, and everything done in a
masterly manner.
_Tuesday, 11 Dec._
Mr. SAMUEL CLARKE, my host, has about 30 acres of _Swedes_ in rows. Some
at 4 feet distances, some at 30 inches; and about 4 acres of the 4-feet
Swedes were transplanted. I have seen thousands of acres of Swedes in
these counties, and here are the largest crops that I have seen. The
widest rows are decidedly the largest crops here; and, the
_transplanted_, though under disadvantageous circumstances, amongst the
best of the best. The wide rows amount to at least 20 tons to the acre,
exclusive of the greens taken off two months ago, which weighed 5 tons
to the acre. Then, there is the inter tillage, so beneficial to the
land, and the small quantity of manure required in the broad rows,
compared to what is required when the seed is drilled or sown upon the
level. Mr. NICHOLLS, a neighbour of Mr. CLARKE, has a part of a field
transplanted on _seven turn ridges_, put in when in the other part of
the field, drilled, the plants were a fortnight old. He has a much
larger crop in the transplanted than in the drilled part. But, if it had
been a _fly-year_, he might have had _none_ in the drilled part, while,
in all probability, the crop in the transplanted part would have been
better than it now is, seeing that a _wet_ summer, though favourable to
the hitting of the Swedes, is by no means favourable to their attaining
a great size of bulb. This is the case this year with all turnips. A
great deal of leaf and neck, but not bulbs in proportion. The advantages
of transplanting are, _first_, you make sure of a crop in spite of fly;
and, _second_, you have six weeks or two months longer to prepare your
ground. And the advantages of wide rows are, _first_, that you want only
about half the quantity of manure; and, _second_, that you _plough_ the
ground two or three times during the summer.
_Grove, near Holt, Thursday, 13th Dec._
Came to the Grove (Mr. Withers's), near Holt, along with Mr. Clarke.
Through _Norwich_ to _Aylsham_ and then to _Holt_. On our road we passed
the house of the late _Lord Suffield_, who married Castlereagh's wife's
sister, who is a daughter of the late Earl of Buckinghamshire, who had
for so many years that thumping sinecure of eleven thousand a year in
Ireland, and who was the son of a man that, under the name of Mr.
Hobart, cut such a figure in supporting Lord North and afterwards Pitt,
and was made a peer under the auspices of the latter of these two
heaven-born Ministers. This house, which is a very ancient one, was,
they say, the birth-place of Ann de Boleyne, the mother of Queen
Elizabeth. Not much matter; for she married the king while his real wife
was alive. I could have excused her, if there had been no marrying in
the case; but hypocrisy, always bad, becomes detestable when it resorts
to religious ceremony as its mask. She, no more than Cranmer, seems, to
her last moments, to have remembered her sins against her lawful queen.
Fox's "_Book of Martyrs_," that ought to be called "the _Book of
Liars_," says that Cranmer, the recanter and re-recanter, held out his
offending hand in the flames, and cried out "that hand, that hand!" If
he had cried out _Catherine! Catherine!_ I should have thought better of
him; but it is clear that the whole story is a lie, invented by the
protestants, and particularly by the sectarians, to white-wash the
character of this perfidious hypocrite and double apostate, who, if
bigotry had something to do in bringing him to the stake, certainly
deserved his fate, if any offences committed by man can deserve so
horrible a punishment.--The present LORD SUFFIELD is that Mr. EDWARD
HARBORD, whose father-in-law left him 500_l._ to buy a seat in
Parliament, and who refused to carry an address to the late beloved and
lamented Queen, because Major Cartwright and myself were chosen to
accompany him! Never mind, my Lord; you will grow less fastidious! They
say, however, that he is really good to his tenants, and has told them,
that he will take anything that they can give. There is some sense in
this! He is a great Bible Man; and it is strange that he cannot see,
that things are out of order, when _his_ interference in this way can be
at all _necessary_, while there is a Church that receives a tenth part
of the produce of the earth.--There are some oak woods here, but very
poor. Not like those, not near like the worst of those, in Hampshire and
Herefordshire. All this eastern coast seems very unpropitious to trees
of all sorts.--We passed through the estate of a Mr. Marsin, whose house
is near the road, a very poor spot, and the first really poor ground I
have seen in Norfolk. A nasty spewy black gravel on the top of a sour
clay. It is worse than the heaths between Godalming and Liphook; for,
while it is too poor to grow anything but heath, it is too cold to give
you the chirping of the grasshopper in summer. However, Mr. Marsin has
been too wise to enclose this wretched land, which is just like that
which Lord Caernarvon has enclosed in the parishes of Highclere, and
Burghclere, and which, for tillage, really is not worth a single
farthing an acre.--Holt is a little, old-fashioned, substantially-built
market-town. The land just about it, or, at least, towards the east, is
poor, and has been lately enclosed.
_Friday, 14th Dec._
Went to see the estate of Mr. Hardy at Leveringsett, a hamlet about two
miles from Holt. This is the first time that I have seen a _valley_ in
this part of England. From Holt you look, to the distance of seven or
eight miles, over a very fine valley, leaving a great deal of inferior
hill and dell within its boundaries. At the bottom of this general
valley, Mr. Hardy has a very beautiful estate of about four hundred
acres. His house is at one end of it near the high road, where he has a
malt-house and a brewery, the neat and ingenious manner of managing
which I would detail if my total unacquaintance with machinery did not
disqualify me for the task. His estate forms a valley of itself,
somewhat longer than broad. The tops, and the sides of the tops of the
hills round it, and also several little hillocks in the valley itself,
are judiciously planted with trees of various sorts, leaving good wide
roads, so that it is easy to ride round them in a carriage. The fields,
the fences, the yards and stacks, the buildings, the cattle, all showed
the greatest judgment and industry. There was really nothing that the
most critical observer could say was _out of order_. However, the forest
trees do not grow well here. The oaks are mere scrubs, as they are about
Brentwood in Essex, and in some parts of Cornwall; and, for some
unaccountable reason, people seldom plant the _ash_, which no wind will
_shave_, as it does the oak.
_Saturday, 15 Dec._
Spent the evening amongst the Farmers, at their Market Room at Holt; and
very much pleased at them I was. We talked over the _cause of the low
prices_, and I, as I have done everywhere, endeavoured to convince them,
that prices must fall a great deal lower yet; and that no man, who
wishes not to be ruined, ought to keep or take a farm, unless on a
calculation of best wheat at 4_s._ a bushel and a best Southdown ewe at
15_s._ or even 12_s._ They heard me patiently, and, I believe, were well
convinced of the truth of what I said. I told them of the correctness
of the predictions of their great countryman, Mr. PAINE, and observed,
how much better it would have been, to take his advice, than to burn him
in effigy. I endeavoured (but in such a case all human powers must
fail!) to describe to them the sort and size of the talents of the
Stern-path-of-duty man, of the great hole-digger, of the jester, of the
Oxford scholar, of the loan-jobber (who had just made an enormous
grasp), of the Oracle, and so on. Here, as everywhere else, I hear every
creature speak loudly in praise of _Mr. Coke_. It is well known to my
readers, that I think nothing of him as a _public_ man; that I think
even his good qualities an injury to his country, because they serve the
knaves whom he is duped by to dupe the people more effectually; but, it
would be base in me not to say, that I hear, from men of all parties,
and sensible men too, expressions made use of towards him that
affectionate children use towards the best of parents. I have not met
with a single exception.
_Bergh Apton, Sunday, 16 Dec._
Came from Holt through Saxthorpe and Cawston. At the former village were
on one end of a decent white house, these words, "_Queen Caroline; for
her Britons mourn_," and a crown over all in black. I need not have
looked to see: I might have been sure that the owner of the house was a
_shoe-maker_, a trade which numbers more men of sense and of public
spirit than any other in the kingdom.--At Cawston we stopped at a public
house, the keeper of which had taken and read the Register for years. I
shall not attempt to describe the pleasure I felt at the hearty welcome
given us by Mr. Pern and his wife and by a young miller of the village,
who, having learnt at Holt that we were to return that way, had come to
meet us, the house being on the side of the great road, from which the
village is at some distance. This is the birth-place of the famous
_Botley Parson_, all the history of whom we now learned, and, if we
could have gone to the village, they were prepared to _ring the bells_,
and show us the old woman who nursed the _Botley Parson_! These Norfolk
_baws_ never do things by halves. We came away, very much pleased with
our reception at Cawston, and with a promise, on my part, that, if I
visited the county again, I would write a Register there; a promise
which I shall certainly keep.
_Great Yarmouth, Friday (morning), 21st Dec._
The day before yesterday I set out for Bergh Apton with Mr. CLARKE, to
come hither by the way of _Beccles_ in Suffolk. We stopped at Mr.
Charles Clarke's at Beccles, where we saw some good and sensible men,
who see clearly into all the parts of the works of the "Thunderers," and
whose anticipations, as to the "general working of events," are such as
they ought to be. They gave us a humorous account of the "rabble" having
recently crowned a Jackass, and of a struggle between them and the
"Yeomanry Cavaltry." This _was_ a place of most ardent and blazing
_loyalty_, as the pretenders to it call it; but, it seems it now blazes
less furiously; it is milder, more measured in its effusions; and, with
the help of low prices, will become bearable in time. This Beccles is a
very pretty place, has watered meadows near it, and is situated amidst
fine lands. What a _system_ it must be to make people wretched in a
country like this! Could he be _heaven-born_ that invented such a
system? GAFFER GOOCH'S father, a very old man, lives not far from here.
We had a good deal of fun about the Gaffer, who will certainly never
lose the name, unless he should be made a Lord.--We slept at the house
of a friend of Mr. Clarke on our way, and got to this very fine town of
Great Yarmouth yesterday about noon. A party of friends met us and
conducted us about the town, which is a very beautiful one indeed. What
I liked best, however, was the hearty welcome that I met with, because
it showed, that the reign of calumny and delusion was passed. A company
of gentlemen gave me a dinner in the evening, and, in all my life I
never saw a set of men more worthy of my respect and gratitude.
Sensible, modest, understanding the whole of our case, and clearly
foreseeing what is about to happen. One gentleman proposed, that, as it
would be impossible for all to go to London, there should be a
_Provincial Feast of the Gridiron_, a plan, which, I hope, will be
adopted--I leave Great Yarmouth with sentiments of the sincerest regard
for all those whom I there saw and conversed with, and with my best
wishes for the happiness of all its inhabitants; nay, even the _parsons_
not excepted; for, if they did not come to welcome me, they collected in
a group to _see_ me, and that was one step towards doing justice to him
whom their order have so much, so foully, and, if they knew their own
interest, so foolishly slandered.
_Bergh Apton, 22nd Dec. (night)._
After returning from Yarmouth yesterday, went to dine at
Stoke-Holy-Cross, about six miles off; got home at mid-night, and came
to Norwich this morning, this being market-day, and also the day fixed
on for a Radical Reform Dinner at the Swan Inn, to which I was invited.
Norwich is a very fine city, and the Castle, which stands in the middle
of it, on a hill, is truly majestic. The meat and poultry and vegetable
market is beautiful. It is kept in a large open square in the middle, or
nearly so, of the City. The ground is a pretty sharp slope, so that you
see all at once. It resembles one of the French markets, only _there_
the vendors are all standing and gabbling like parrots, and the meat is
lean and bloody and nasty, and the people snuffy and grimy in hands and
face, the contrary, precisely the contrary of all which is the case in
this beautiful market at Norwich, where the women have a sort of uniform
brown great coats, with white aprons and _bibs_ (I think they call them)
going from the apron up to the bosom. They equal in neatness (for
nothing can surpass) the market women in Philadelphia.--The
cattle-market is held on the hill by the castle, and many _fairs_ are
smaller in bulk of stock. The corn-market is held in a very magnificent
place, called Saint Andrew's Hall, which will contain two or three
thousand persons. They tell me, that this used to be a most delightful
scene; a most joyous one; and, I think, it was this scene that Mr.
CURWEN described in such glowing colours when he was talking of the
Norfolk farmers, each worth so many thousands of pounds. Bear me
witness, reader, that _I never was dazzled_ by such sights; that the
false glare never put my eyes out; and that, even then, twelve years
ago, I warned Mr. CURWEN of the _result_! Bear witness to this, my
Disciples, and justify the doctrines of him for whose sakes you have
endured persecution. How different would Mr. CURWEN find the scene
_now_! What took place at the dinner has been already recorded in the
Register; and I have only to add with regard to it, that my reception at
Norfolk was such, that I have only to regret the total want of power to
make those hearty Norfolk and Norwich friends any suitable return,
whether by act or word.
_Kensington, Monday, 24 Dec._
Went from Bergh Apton to Norwich in the morning, and from Norwich to
London during the day, carrying with me great admiration of and respect
for this county of _excellent farmers_, and hearty, open and spirited
men. The Norfolk people are quick and smart in their motions and in
their speaking. Very neat and _trim_ in all their farming concerns, and
very skilful. Their land is good, their roads are level, and the bottom
of their soil is dry, to be sure; and these are great advantages; but
they are diligent, and make the most of everything. Their management of
all sorts of stock is most judicious; they are careful about manure;
their teams move quickly; and, in short, it is a county of most
excellent cultivators.--The churches in Norfolk are generally large and
the towers lofty. They have all been well built at first. Many of them
are of the Saxon architecture. They are, almost all (I do not remember
an exception), placed on the _highest_ spots to be found near where they
stand; and, it is curious enough, that the contrary practice should have
prevailed in _hilly_ countries, where they are generally found in
valleys and in low, sheltered dells, even in those valleys! These
churches prove that the people of Norfolk and Suffolk were always a
superior people in point of wealth, while the size of them proves that
the country parts were, at one time, a great deal more populous than
they now are. The great drawbacks on the beauty of these counties are,
their flatness and their want of fine woods; but, to those who can
dispense with these, Norfolk, under a wise and just government, can have
nothing to ask more than Providence and the industry of man have given.