Transcribed from the 1893 Jarrold & Sons edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
_PRESS NOTICES OF THE FIRST EDITION_.
'We cordially recommend Mr. Ritchie's book to all who wish to pass an
agreeable hour and to learn something of the outward actions and
inner life of their predecessors. It is full of sketches of East
Anglian celebrities, happily touched if lightly limned.'--_East
Anglian Daily Times_.
'A very entertaining and enjoyable book. Local gossip, a wide range
of reading and industrious research, have enabled the author to
enliven his pages with a wide diversity of subjects, specially
attractive to East Anglians, but also of much general
interest.'--_Daily Chronicle_.
'The work is written in a light gossipy style, and by reason both of
it and of the variety of persons introduced is interesting. To a
Suffolk or Norfolk man it is, of course, especially attractive. The
reader will go through these pages without being wearied by
application. They form a pleasant and entertaining contribution to
county literature, and "East Anglia" will, we should think, find its
way to many of the east country bookshelves.'--_Suffolk Chronicle_.
'The book is as readable and attractive a volume of local chronicles
as could be desired. Though all of our readers may not see "eye to
eye" with Mr. Ritchie, in regard to political and theological
questions, they cannot fail to gain much enjoyment from his excellent
delineation of old days in East Anglia.'--_Norwich Mercury_.
'"East Anglia" has the merit of not being a compilation, which is
more than can be said of the great majority of books produced in
these days to satisfy the revived taste for topographical gossip.
Mr. Ritchie is a Suffolk man--the son of a Nonconformist minister of
Wrentham in that county--and he looks back to the old neighbourhood
and the old times with an affection which is likely to communicate
itself to its readers. Altogether we can with confidence recommend
this book not only to East Anglians, but to all readers who have any
affinity for works of its class.'--_Daily News_.
'Mr. Ritchie's book belongs to a class of which we have none too
many, for when well done they illustrate contemporary history in a
really charming manner. What with their past grandeur, their present
progress, their martyrs, patriots, and authors, there is plenty to
tell concerning Eastern counties: and one who writes with native
enthusiasm is sure to command an audience.'--_Baptist_.
'Mr. Ritchie, known to the numerous readers of the _Christian World_
as "Christopher Crayon," has the pen of a ready, racy, refreshing
writer. He never writes a dull line, and never for a moment allows
our interest to flag. In the work before us, which is not his first,
he is, I should think, at his best. The volume is the outcome of
extensive reading, many rambles over the districts described, and of
thoughtful observation. We seem to live and move and have our being
in East Anglia. Its folk-lore, its traditions, its worthies, its
memorable events, are all vividly and charmingly placed before us,
and we close the book sorry that there is no more of it, and
wondering why it is that works of a similar kind have not more
frequently appeared.'--_Northern Pioneer_.
'It has yielded us more gratification than any work that we have read
for a considerable time. The book ought to have a wide circulation
in the Eastern counties, and will not fail to yield profit and
delight wherever it finds its way.'--_Essex Telegraph_.
'Mr. Ritchie has here written a most attractive chapter of
autobiography. He recalls the scenes of his early days, and whatever
was quaint or striking in connection with them, and finds in his
recollections ready pegs on which to hang historical incident and
antiquarian curiosities of many kinds. He passes from point to point
in a delightfully cheerful and contagious mood. Mr. Ritchie's
reading has been as extensive and careful as his observation is keen
and his temper genial; and his pages, which appeared in _The
Christian World Magazine_, well deserve the honour of book-form, with
the additions he has been able to make to them.'--_British Quarterly
Review_.
* * * * *
EAST ANGLIA.
_PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS_
AND
_HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS_.
* * * * *
BY
J. EWING RITCHIE.
* * * * *
'Behold, there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem.'
MATTHEW.
* * * * *
_SECOND EDITION_,
REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ENLARGED.
* * * * *
LONDON:
JARROLD & SONS, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C.
1893.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
The chapters of which this little work consists originally appeared in
the _Christian World Magazine_, where they were so fortunate as to
attract favourable notice, and from which they are now reprinted, with a
few slight additions, by permission of the Editor. In bringing out a
second edition, I have incorporated the substance of other articles
originally written for local journals. It is to be hoped, touching as
they do a theme not easily exhausted, but always interesting to East
Anglians, that they may help to sustain that love of one's county which,
alas! like the love of country, is a matter reckoned to be of little
importance in these cosmopolitan days, but which, nevertheless, has had
not a little share in the formation of that national greatness and glory
in which at all times Englishmen believe.
One word more. I have retained some strictures on the clergy of East
Anglia, partly because they were true at the time to which I refer, and
partly because it gives me pleasure to own that they are not so now. The
Church of England clergyman of to-day is an immense improvement on that
of my youth. In ability, in devotion to the duties of his calling, in
intelligence, in self-denial, in zeal, he is equal to the clergy of any
other denomination. If he has lost his hold upon Hodge, that, at any
rate, is not his fault.
CLACTON-ON-SEA,
_January_, 1893.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
A SUFFOLK VILLAGE.
Distinguished people born there--Its Puritans and 1
Nonconformists--The country round
Covehithe--Southwold--Suffolk dialect--The Great Eastern
Railway
CHAPTER II.
THE STRICKLANDS.
Reydon Hall--The clergy--Pakefield--Social life in a village 37
CHAPTER III.
LOWESTOFT.
Yarmouth bloaters--George Borrow--The town fifty years 54
ago--The distinguished natives
CHAPTER IV.
POLITICS AND THEOLOGY.
Homerton academy--W. Johnson Fox, M.P.--Politics in 89
1830--Anti-Corn Law speeches--Wonderful oratory
CHAPTER V.
BUNGAY AND ITS PEOPLE.
Bungay Nonconformity--Hannah More--The Childses--The Queen's 122
Librarian--Prince Albert
CHAPTER VI.
A CELEBRATED NORFOLK TOWN.
Great Yarmouth Nonconformists--Intellectual life--Dawson 153
Turner--Astley Cooper--Hudson Gurney--Mrs. Bendish
CHAPTER VII.
THE NORFOLK CAPITAL.
Brigg's Lane--The carrier's cart--Reform demonstration--The 185
old dragon--Chairing M.P.'s--Hornbutton Jack--Norwich artists
and literati--Quakers and Nonconformists
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SUFFOLK CAPITAL.
The Orwell--The Sparrows--Ipswich 226
notabilities--Gainsborough--Medical men--Nonconformists
CHAPTER IX.
AN OLD-FASHIONED TOWN.
Woodbridge and the country round--Bernard Barton--Dr. 252
Lankester--An old Noncon.
CHAPTER X.
MILTON'S SUFFOLK SCHOOLMASTER.
Stowmarket--The Rev. Thomas Young--Bishop Hall and the 283
Smectymnian divines--Milton's mulberry-tree--Suffolk
relationships
CHAPTER XI.
IN CONSTABLE'S COUNTY.
East Bergholt--The Valley of the Stour--Painting from 311
nature--East Anglian girls
CHAPTER XII.
EAST ANGLIAN WORTHIES.
Suffolk cheese--Danes, Saxons, and Normans--Philosophers and 320
statesmen--Artists and literati
CHAPTER I.
A SUFFOLK VILLAGE.
Distinguished people born there--Its Puritans and Nonconformists--The
country round Covehithe--Southwold--Suffolk dialect--The Great Eastern
Railway.
In his published Memoirs, the great Metternich observes that if he had
never been born he never could have loved or hated. Following so
illustrious a precedent, I may observe that if I had not been born in
East Anglia I never could have been an East Anglian. Whether I should
have been wiser or better off had I been born elsewhere, is an
interesting question, which, however, it is to be hoped the public will
forgive me if I decline to discuss on the present occasion.
In a paper bearing the date of 1667, a Samuel Baker, of Wattisfield Hall,
writes: 'I was born at a village called Wrentham, which place I cannot
pass by the mention of without saying thus much, that religion has there
flourished longer, and that in much piety; the Gospel and grace of it
have been more powerfully and clearly preached, and more generally
received; the professors of it have been more sound in the matter and
open and steadfast in the profession of it in an hour of temptation, have
manifested a greater oneness amongst themselves and have been more
eminently preserved from enemies without (albeit they dwell where Satan's
seat is encompassed with his malice and rage), than I think in any
village of the like capacity in England; which I speak as my duty to the
place, but to my particular shame rather than otherwise, that such a dry
and barren plant should spring out of such a soil.' I resemble this
worthy Mr. Baker in two respects. In the first place, I was born at
Wrentham, though at a considerably later period of time than 1667; and,
secondly, if he was a barren plant--he of whom we read, in Harmer's
Miscellaneous Works, that 'he was a gentleman of fortune and education,
very zealous for the Congregational plan of church government and
discipline, and a sufferer in its bonds for a good conscience'--what am
I?
Nor was it only piety that existed in this distant parish. If the reader
turns to the diary of John Evelyn, under the date of 1679, he will find
mention made of a child brought up to London, 'son of one Mr. Wotton,
formerly amanuensis to Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winton, who both read and
perfectly understood Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic and Syriac, and most of
the modern languages, disputed in divinity, law and all the sciences, was
skilful in history, both ecclesiastical and profane; in a word, so
universally and solidly learned at eleven years of age that he was looked
on as a miracle. Dr. Lloyd, one of the most deep-learned divines of this
nation in all sorts of literature, with Dr. Burnet, who had severely
examined him, came away astonished, and told me they did not believe
there had the like appeared in the world. He had only been instructed by
his father, who being himself a learned person, confessed that his son
knew all that he himself knew. But what was more admirable than his vast
memory was his judgment and invention, he being tried with divers hard
questions which required maturity of thought and experience. He was also
dexterous in chronology, antiquities, mathematics. In sum, an
_intellectus universalis_ beyond all that we reade of Picus Mirandula,
and other precoce witts, and yet withal a very humble child.' This
prodigy was the son of the Rev. Henry Wotton, minister of Wrentham,
Suffolk. Sir William Skippon, a parishioner, in a letter yet extant,
describes the wonderful achievements of the little fellow when but five
years old. He was admitted at Katherine Hall, Cambridge, some months
before he was ten years old. In after-years he was the friend and
defender of Bentley and the antagonist of Sir William Temple in the great
controversy about ancient and modern learning. He died in 1726, and was
buried at Buxted, in Sussex. It is clear that there was no such
intellectual phenomenon in all London under the Stuarts as that little
Wrentham lad.
Of that village, when I came into the world, my father was the honoured,
laborious and successful minister. The meeting-house, as it was called,
which stood in the lane leading from the church to the highroad, was a
square red brick building, vastly superior to any of the ancient
meeting-houses round. It stood in an enclosure, one side of which was
devoted to the reception of the farmers' gigs, which, on a Sunday
afternoon, when the principal service was held, made quite a respectable
show when drawn up in a line. By the side of it was a cottage, in which
lived the woman who kept the place tidy, and her husband, who looked
after the horses as they were unharnessed and put in the stable close by.
The backs of the gigs were sheltered from the road by a hedge of lilacs,
and over the gateway a gigantic elm kept watch and ward. The house in
which we lived was also part of the chapel estate, and, if it was a
little way off, it was, at any rate, adapted to the wants of a family of
quiet habits and simple tastes. On one side of the house was a
water-butt, and I can well remember my first sad experience of the
wickedness of the world when, getting up one morning to look after my
rabbits and other live stock, I found that water-butt had gone, and that
there were thieves in a village so rural and renowned for piety as ours.
I say renowned, and not without reason. Years and years back there was a
pious clergyman of the name of Steffe, who had a son in Dr. Doddridge's
Academy, at Daventry, and it is a fact that the great Doctor himself, at
some time or other, had been a guest in the village.
In 1741 the Doctor thus records his East Anglian recollections, in a
letter to his wife: 'You have great reason to confide in that very kind
Providence which has hitherto watched over us, and has, since the date of
my last, brought us about sixty miles nearer London. From Yarmouth we
went on Friday morning to Wrentham, where good Mrs. Steffe lives, and
from thence to a gentleman's seat, near Walpole, where I was most
respectfully entertained. As I had twenty miles to ride yesterday
morning, he, though I had never seen him before last Tuesday, brought me
almost half-way in his chaise, to make the journey easier. I reached
Woodbridge before two, and rode better in the cool of the evening, and
had the happiness to be entertained in a very elegant and friendly
family, though perfectly a stranger; and, indeed, I have been escorted
from one place to another in every mile of my journey by one, and
sometimes by two or three, of my brethren in a most respectful and
agreeable manner.' Dr. Doddridge's East Anglian recollections seem to
have been uncommonly agreeable, owing quite as much, I must candidly
confess, to the presence of the sisters as of the brethren. Writing to
his wife an account of a little trip on the river, he adds: 'It was a
very pleasant day, and I concluded it in the company of one of the finest
women I ever beheld, who, though she had seven children grown up to
marriageable years, or very near it, is still herself almost a beauty,
and a person of sense, good breeding, and piety, which might astonish one
who had not the happiness of being intimately acquainted with you.' What
a sly rogue was Dr. Doddridge! How could any wife be jealous when her
husband finishes off with such a compliment to herself?
But to return to the good Mrs. Steffe, of whom I am, on my mother's side,
a descendant. I must add that as there were great men before Agamemnon,
so there were good people in the little village of Wrentham before Mrs.
Steffe appeared upon the scene. The Brewsters, who were an ancient
family, which seems to have culminated under the glorious usurpation of
Oliver Cromwell, were eminently good people in Dr. Doddridge's
acceptation of the term, and I fancy did much as lords of the manor--and
as inhabitants of Wrentham Hall, a building which had ceased to exist
long before my time--to leaven with their goodness the surrounding lump.
It seems to me that these Brewsters must have been more or less connected
with Brewster the elder--of Robinson's Church at Leyden, who, we are
told, came of a wealthy and distinguished family--who was well trained at
Cambridge, and, says the historian, 'thence, being first seasoned with
the seeds of grace and virtue, he went to the Court, and there served
that religious and godly Mr. Davison divers years, when he was Secretary
of State, who found him so discreet and faithful as he trusted him, above
all others that were about him, and only employed him in matters of great
trust and secrecy; he esteemed him rather as a son than a servant, and
for his wisdom and godliness in private, he would converse with him more
like a familiar than a master.' When evil times came, this Brewster was
living in the big Manor House at Scrooby, and how he and his godly
associates were driven into exile by a foolish King and cruel priests is
known, or ought to be known, to everyone. Of these Wrentham Brewsters,
one served his country in Parliament, or I am very much mistaken. It was
to their credit that they sought out godly men, to whom they might
entrust the cure of souls. In this respect, when I was a lad, their
example certainly had not been followed, and Dissent flourished mainly
because the moral instincts of the villagers and farmers and small
tradesmen were shocked by hearing men on the Sunday reading the Lessons
of the Church, leading the devotions of the people, and preaching
sermons, who on the week-days got drunk and led immoral lives. As to the
right of the State to interfere in matters of religion, as to the danger
to religion itself from the establishment of a State Church, as to the
liberty of unlicensed prophesying, such topics the simple villagers
ignored. All that they felt was that there came to them more of a
quickening of the spiritual life, a fuller realization of God and things
divine, in the meeting-house than in the parish church. They were not
what pious Churchmen so much dread nowadays--Political Dissenters; how
could they be such, having no votes, and never seeing a newspaper from
one year's end to the other?
It was to the Brewsters that the village was indebted for the ministry of
the Rev. John Phillip, who married the sister of the pious and learned
Dr. Ames, Professor of the University of Franeker. Calamy tells us that
by means of Dr. Ames, Mr. Phillip had no small furtherance in his
studies, and intimate acquaintance with him increased his inclination to
the Congregational way. Archbishop Abbot, writing to Winwood, 1611,
says: 'I have written to Sir Horace Vere touching the English preacher at
the Hague. We heard what he was that preceded, and we cannot be less
cognisant what Mr. Ames is, for by a Latin printed book he hath laden the
Church and State of England with a great deal of infamous contumely, so
that if he were amongst us he would be so far from receiving preferment,
that some exemplary punishment would be his reward. His Majesty had been
advertised how this man is entertained and embraced at the Hague, and how
he is a fit person to breed up captains and soldiers there in mutiny and
faction.' One of Dr. Ames's works, which got him into trouble, was
entitled 'A Fresh Suit against Ceremonies,' a work which we may be sure
would be as distasteful to the Ritualists of our day as it was to the
Ritualists of his own. One of his works, his 'Medulla Theologiae,' I
believe, adorned the walls of the paternal study. There is, belonging to
the Wrentham Congregational Church Library, a volume of tracts,
sixty-seven in number, of six or eight pages each, printed in 1622,
forming a series of theses on theological topics, maintained by different
persons, under the presidency of Dr. Ames; and I believe a son of the
Doctor is buried in Wrentham Churchyard, as I recollect my father, on one
occasion, had an old gravestone done up and relettered, which bore
testimony to the virtues and piety and learning of an Ames. Thus if Mr.
Phillip was chased out of Old England into New England for his
Nonconformity, some of the good old Noncons remained to uphold the lamp
which was one day to cast a sacred light on all quarters of the land.
That some did emigrate with their pastor is probable, since we learn that
there is a town called Wrentham across the Atlantic, said to have
received that name because some of the first settlers came from Wrentham
in England.
Touching Mr. Phillip, a good deal has been written by the Rev. John
Browne, the painstaking author of 'The History of Congregationalism in
Suffolk and Norfolk.' It appears that his arrival in America was not
unexpected, as the Christian people of Dedham had invited him to that
plantation beforehand. He did not, however, accept their invitation, but
being much in request, 'and called divers ways, could not resolve; but,
at length, upon weighty reasons concerning the public service and
foundations of the college, he was persuaded to attend to the call of
Cambridge;' and, adds an American writer, 'he might have been the first
head of that blessed institution.' On the calling of the Long
Parliament, he and his wife returned to England, and in 1642 we find him
ministering to his old flock. So satisfied were the neighbouring
Independents of his Congregationalism, that when, in 1644, members of Mr.
Bridge's church residing in Norwich desired to form themselves into a
separate community, they not only consulted with their brethren in
Yarmouth, but with Mr. Phillip also, as the only man then in their
neighbourhood on whose judgment and experience they could rely. In 1643
Mr. Phillip was appointed one of the members of the Assembly of Divines,
and was recognised by Baillie in his Letters as one of the Independent
men there. The Independents, as we know, sat apart, and were a sad thorn
in the Presbyterians' side. Five of them, more zealous than the rest,
formally dissented from the decisions of the Assembly, and afraid that
toleration would not be extended to them, appealed to Parliament, 'as the
most sacred refuge and asylum for mistaken and misjudged innocence.' Mr.
Phillip's name, however, I do not find in that list; and possibly he was
too old to be very active in the matter. He lived on till 1660, when he
died at the good old age of seventy-eight. In the later years of his
ministry he was assisted by his nephew, W. Ames, who in 1651 preached a
sermon at St. Paul's, before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, 'On the Saint's
Security against Seducing Sports, or the Anointing from the Holy One.'
It is to be feared, in our more enlightened age, a good Wrentham
Congregational minister would have little chance of preaching before a
London Lord Mayor. Talent is supposed to exist only in the crowded town,
where men have no time to think of anything but of the art of getting on.
Other heroic associations--of men who had suffered for the faith, who
feared God rather than man, who preferred the peace of an approving
conscience to the vain honours of the world--also were connected with the
place. I remember being shown a bush in which the conventicle preacher
used to hide himself when the enemy, in the shape of the myrmidons of
Bishop Wren, of Norwich, were at his heels. That furious prelate, as
many of us know, drove upwards of three thousand persons to seek their
bread in a foreign land. Indeed, to such an extent did he carry out his
persecuting system, that the trade and manufactures of the country
materially suffered in consequence. However, in my boyish days I was not
troubled much about such things. Dissent in Wrentham was quite
respectable. If we had lost the Brewster family, whose arms were still
to be seen on the Communion plate, a neighbouring squire attended at the
meeting-house, as it was then the fashion to call our chapel, and so did
the leading grocer and draper of the place, and the village doctor, the
father of six comely daughters; and the display of gigs on a Sunday was
really imposing. Alas! as I grew older I saw that imposing array not a
little shorn of its splendour. The neighbouring baronet, Sir Thomas
Gooch, M.P., added as he could farm to farm, and that a Dissenter was on
no account to have one of his farms was pretty well understood. I fancy
our great landlords have, in many parts of East Anglia, pretty well
exterminated Dissent, to the real injury of the people all around. I
write this advisedly. I dare say the preaching in the meeting-house was
often very miserably poor. The service, I must own, seemed to me often
peculiarly long and unattractive. There was always that long prayer
which was, I fear, to all boys a time of utter weariness; but,
nevertheless, there was a moral and intellectual life in our Dissenting
circle that did not exist elsewhere. It was true we never attended
dinners at the village public-house, nor indulged in card-parties, and
regarded with a horror, which I have come to think unwholesome, the
frivolity of balls or the attractions of a theatre; but we had all the
new books voted into our bookclub, and, as a lad, I can well remember how
I revelled in the back numbers of the _Edinburgh Review_, though even
then I could not but feel the injustice which it did to what it called
the Lake school of poets, and more especially to Coleridge and
Wordsworth. Shakespeare also was almost a sealed book, and perhaps we
had a little too much of religious reading, such as Doddridge's 'Rise and
Progress,' or Baxter's 'Saint's Rest,' or Alleine's 'Call to the
Unconverted,' or Fleetwood's 'Life of Christ'--excellent books in their
way, undoubtedly, but not remarkably attractive to boys redolent of
animal life, who had thriven and grown fat in that rustic village, on
whose vivid senses the world that now is produced far more effect than
the terrors or splendours of the world to come.
The country round, if flat, was full of interesting associations. At the
back of us--that is, on the sea--was the village of Covehithe, and when a
visitor found his way into the place--an event which happened now and
then--our first excursion with him or her--for plenty of donkeys were to
be had which ladies could ride--was to Covehithe, known to literary men
as the birthplace of John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, in Ireland. In
connection with donkeys, I have this interesting recollection, that one
of the old men of the village told me. At the time of the Bristol riots,
he remembered Sir Charles Wetherall, the occasion of them, as a boy at
Wrentham much given to donkey-riding. In the history of the drama John
Bale takes distinguished rank. He was one of those by whom the drama was
gradually evolved, and all to whom it is a study and delight must
remember him with regard. His play of 'Kynge John' is described by Mr.
Collier as occupying an intermediate place between moralities and
historical plays--and it is the only known existing specimen of that
species of composition of so early a date. Bale, who was trained at the
monastery of White Friars, in Norwich, thence went to Jesus College,
Cambridge, and was expelled in consequence of the zeal with which he
exposed the errors of Popery. However, Bale had a friend and protector
in Cromwell, Henry VIII.'s faithful servant. On the death of that
nobleman Bale proceeded to Germany, where he appears to have been well
received and hospitably entertained by Luther and Melancthon, and on the
accession of Edward VI. he returned to England. In Mary's reign
persecution recommenced, and Bale fled to Frankfort. He again returned
at the commencement of Elizabeth's reign, and was made prebend of
Canterbury, at which place he died at the age of sixty-three. Covehithe
nowadays is not interesting so much as the birthplace of Bale, as on
account of its ecclesiastical ruins, which are covered with ivy and
venerable in their decay. The church was evidently almost a cathedral,
and surely at one time or other there must have been an enormous
population to worship in such a sanctuary; and yet all you see now is a
public-house just opposite the church, a few cottages, and a farmhouse.
A few steps farther bring you to the low cliff, and there is the sea ever
encroaching on the land in that quarter and swallowing up farmhouse and
farm. Miss Agnes Strickland, who lived at Reydon Hall--a few miles
inland--has thus sung the melancholy fate of Covehithe:
'All roofless now the stately pile,
And rent the arches tall,
Through which with bright departing smile
The western sunbeams fall.
* * * * *
'Tradition's voice forgets to tell
Whose ashes sleep below,
And Fancy here unchecked may dwell,
And bid the story flow.'
Ah! what was that story? How the question puzzled my young head, as I
walked in the sandy lane that led from my native village! How
insignificant looked the little church built up inside! What had become
of the crowds that at one time must have filled that ancient fane? How
was it that no trace of them remained? They had vanished in the
historical age, and yet no one could tell how or when. Nature was, then,
stronger than man. He was gone, but the stars glittered by night and the
sun shone by day, and the ivy had spread its green mantle over all. Yes!
what was man, with his pomp and glory, but dust and ashes, after all!
How I loved to go to Covehithe and climb its ruins, and dream of the
distant past!
Here in that eastern point of England it seemed to me there was a good
deal of decay. Sometimes, on a fine summer day, we would take a boat and
sail from the pretty little town of Southwold, about four miles from
Wrentham, to Dunwich, another relic of the past. According to an old
historian, it was a city surrounded with a stone wall having brazen
gates; it had fifty-two churches, chapels, and religious houses; it also
boasted hospitals, a huge palace, a bishop's seat, a mayor's mansion, and
a Mint. Beyond it a forest appears to have extended some miles into what
is now the sea. One of our local Suffolk poets, James Bird (I saw him
but once, when I walked into his house, about twelve miles from Wrentham,
having run away from home at the ripe age of ten, and told him I had come
to see him, as he was a poet; and I well remember how then, much to my
chagrin, he gave me plum-pudding for dinner, and sent me to play with his
boys till a cart was found in which the prodigal was compelled to
return), wrote and published a poetical romance, called 'Dunwich; or, a
Tale of the Splendid City;' and Agnes Strickland also made it the subject
of her melodious verse, commencing:
'Oft gazing on thy craggy brow,
We muse on glories o'er.
Fair Dunwich! Thou art lonely now,
Renowned and sought no more.'
Never has a splendid city more utterly collapsed. After a long ride over
sandy lanes and fields, you come to the edge of a cliff, on which stand a
few houses. There is all that remains of the Dunwich where the first
Bishop of East Anglia taught the Christian faith, and where was born John
Daye, the printer of the works of Parker, Latimer, and Fox, who, in the
reign of Mary, became, as most real men did then, a prisoner and an exile
for the truth. He has also the reputation of being the first in England
who printed in the Saxon character. In the records of type-founding the
name of Daye stands with that of the most illustrious. When the Company
of Stationers obtained their charter from Philip and Mary, he was the
first person admitted to their livery. In 1580 he was master of the
company, to which he bequeathed property at his death. The following is
the inscription which marks the place of his burial in Little Bradley,
Suffolk:
'Here lyes the DAYE that darkness could not blynd,
When Popish fogges had overcast the sunne;
This DAYE the cruel night did leave behind,
To view and show what bloudie actes were donne.
He set a FOX to write how martyrs runne
By death to lyfe, FOX ventured paynes and health.
To give them light Daye spent in print his wealth,
But GOD with gayne returned his wealth agayne,
And gave to him as he gave to the poore.
Two wyfes he had partakers of his payne:
Each wyfe twelve babes, and each of them one more,
Als was the last increaser of his store;
Who, mourning long for being left alone,
Sett up this tombe, herself turned to a stone.'
Unlike Covehithe, Dunwich has a history. In the reign of Henry II., a
MS. in the British Museum tells us, the Earl of Leicester came to attack
it. 'When he came neare and beheld the strength thereof, it was terror
and feare unto him to behold it; and so retired both he and his people.'
Dunwich aided King John in his wars with the barons, and thus gained the
first charter. In the time of Edward I. it had sixteen fair ships,
twelve barks, four-and-twenty fishing barks, and at that time there were
few seaports in England that could say as much. It served the same King
in his wars with France with eleven ships of war, well furnished with men
and munition. In most of these ships were seventy-two men-at-arms, who
served thirteen weeks at their own cost and charge. Dunwich seems to
have suffered much by the French wars. Four of the eleven ships already
referred to were captured by the French, and in the wars waged by Edward
III. Dunwich lost still more shipping, and as many as 500 men. Perhaps
it might have flourished till this day had if not been for the curse of
war. But the sea also served the town cruelly. That spared nothing--not
the King's Forest, where there were hawking and hunting--not the homes
where England nursed her hardy sailors--not even the harbour whence the
brave East Anglians sailed away to the wars. In Edward III.'s time, at
one fell swoop, the remorseless sea seems to have swallowed up '400
houses which payde rente to the towne towards the fee-farms, besydes
certain shops and windmills.' Yet, when I was a lad, this wreck of a
place returned two members to Parliament, and Birmingham, Manchester and
Sheffield not one. Between Covehithe and Dunwich stood, and still
stands, the charming little bathing-place of Southwold. Like them, it
has seen better days, and has suffered from the encroachments of the
ever-restless and ever-hungry sea. It was at Southwold that I first saw
the sea, and I remember naturally asking my father, who showed me the
guns on the gun-hill--pointing seaward--whether that was where the
enemies came from.
Southwold appears to have initiated an evangelical alliance, which may
yet be witnessed if ever a time comes of reasonable toleration on
religious matters. In many parts of the Continent the same place of
worship is used by different religious bodies. In Brussels I have seen
the Episcopalians, the Germans, the French Protestants, all assembling at
different times in the same building. There was a time when a similar
custom prevailed in Southwold, and that was when Master Sharpen, who had
his abode at Sotterley, preached at Southwold once a month. There were
Independents in the towns in those days, and 'his indulgence,' writes a
local historian, 'favoured the Separatists with the liberty and free use
of the church, where they resorted weekly, or oftener, and every fourth
Sunday both ministers met and celebrated divine service alternately. He
that entered the church first had the precedency of officiating, the
other keeping silence until the congregation received the Benediction
after sermon.' Most of the people attended all the while. It was before
the year 1680 that these things were done. After that time there came to
the church 'an orthodox man, who suffered many ills, and those not the
lightest, for his King and for his faith, and he compelled the
Independents not only to leave the church, but the town also. We read
they assembled in a malt-house beyond the bridge, where, being disturbed,
they chose more private places in the town until liberty of conscience
was granted, when they publicly assembled in a fish-house converted to a
place of worship.' At that time many people in the town were Dissenters;
but it was not till 1748 that they had a church formed. Up to that time
the Southwold Independents were members of the Church at Wrentham, one of
the Articles of Association of the new church being to take the Bible as
their sole guide, and when in difficulties to resort to the neighbouring
pastor for advice and declaration. Such was Independency when it
flourished all over East Anglia.
A writer in the _Harleian Miscellany_ says that 'Southwold, of sea-coast
town, is the most beneficial unto his Majesty of all the towns in
England, by reason all their trade is unto Iceland for lings.' In the
little harbour of Southwold you see nowadays only a few colliers, and I
fear that the place is of little advantage to her Majesty, however
beneficial it may be as a health-resort for some of her Majesty's
subjects. It is a place, gentle reader, where you can wander undisturbed
at your own sweet will, and can get your cheeks fanned by breezes unknown
in London. The beach, I own, is shingly, and not to be compared with the
sands of Yarmouth and Lowestoft; but, then, you are away from the Cockney
crowds that now infest these places at the bathing season, and you are
quiet--whether you wander on its common, till you come to the Wolsey
Bridge, getting on towards Halesworth, where, if tradition be
trustworthy, Wolsey, as a butcher's boy, was nearly drowned, and where he
benevolently caused a bridge to be erected for the safety of all future
butcher-boys and others, when he became a distinguished man; or ramble by
the seaside to Walberswick, across the harbour, or on to Easton
Bavent--another decayed village, on the other side. Southwold has its
historical associations. Most of my readers have seen the well-known
picture of Solebay Fight at Greenwich Hospital. Southwold overlooks the
bay on which that fight was won. Here, on the morning of the 28th May,
1672, De Ruyter, with his Dutchmen, sailed right against those wooden
walls which have guarded old England in many a time of danger, and found
to his cost how invincible was British pluck. James, Duke of York--not
then the drivelling idiot who lost his kingdom for a Mass, but James,
manly and high-spirited, with a Prince's pride and a sailor's heart--won
a victory that for many a day was a favourite theme with all honest
Englishmen, and especially with the true and stout men who, alarmed by
the roar of cannon, as the sound boomed along the blue waters of that
peaceful bay, stood on the Southwold cliff, wishing that the fog which
intercepted their view might clear off, and that they might welcome as
victors their brethren on the sea. I can remember how, when an old
cannon was dragged up from the depths of the sea, it was supposed to be,
as it might have been, used in that fight, and now is preserved at one of
the look-out houses on the cliff as a souvenir of that glorious struggle.
The details of that fight are matters of history, and I need not dwell on
them. Our literature, also, owes Southwold one of the happiest effusions
of one of the wittiest writers of that age; and in a county history I
remember well a merry song on the Duke's late glorious success over the
Dutch, in Southwold Bay, which commences with the writer telling--
'One day as I was sitting still
Upon the side of Dunwich Hill,
And looking on the ocean,
By chance I saw De Ruyter's fleet
With Royal James's squadron meet;
In sooth it was a noble treat
To see that brave commotion.'
The writer vividly paints the scene, and ends as follows:
'Here's to King Charles, and here's to James,
And here's to all the captains' names,
And here's to all the Suffolk dames,
And here's to the house of Stuart.'
Well, as to the house of Stuart, the less said the better; but as to the
Suffolk dames, I agree with the poet, that they are all well worthy of
the toast, and it was at a very early period of my existence that I
became aware of that fact. But the course of true love never does run
smooth, and from none--and they were many--with whom I played on the
beach as a boy, or read poetry to at riper years, was it my fate to take
one as wife for better or worse. In the crowded city men have little
time to fall in love. Besides, they see so many fresh faces that
impressions are easily erased. It is otherwise in the quiet retirement
of a village where there is little to disturb the mind--perhaps too
little. I can well remember a striking illustration of this in the
person of an old farmer, who lived about three miles off, and at whose
house we--that is, the whole family--passed what seemed to me a very
happy day among the haystacks or harvest-fields once or twice a year.
The old man was proud of his farm, and of everything connected with it.
'There, Master James,' he was wont to say to me after dinner, 'you can
see three barns all at once!' and sure enough, looking in the direction
he pointed, there were three barns plainly visible to the naked eye.
Alas! the love of the picturesque had not been developed in my bucolic
friend, and a good barn or two--he was an old bachelor, and, I suppose,
his heart had never been softened by the love of woman--seemed to him
about as beautiful an object as you could expect or desire. One emotion,
that of fear, was, however, I found, strongly planted in the village
breast. The boys of the village, with whom, now and then, I stole away
on a birds'-nesting expedition, would have it that in a little wood about
a mile or two off there were no end of flying serpents and dragons to be
seen; and I can well remember the awe which fell upon the place when
there came a rumour of the doings of those wretches, Burke and Hare, who
were said to have made a living by murdering victims--by placing pitch
plasters on their mouths--and selling them to the doctors to dissect. At
this time a little boy had not come home at the proper time, and the
mother came to our house lamenting. The good woman was in tears, and
refused to be comforted. There had been a stranger in the village that
day; he had seen her boy, he had put a pitch plaster on his mouth, and no
doubt his dead body was then on its way to Norwich to be sold to the
doctor. Unfortunately, it turned out that the boy was alive and well,
and lived to give his poor mother a good deal of trouble. Another thing,
of which I have still a vivid recollection, was the mischief wrought by
Captain Swing. In Kent there had been an alarming outbreak of the
peasantry, ostensibly against the use of agricultural machinery. They
assembled in large bodies, and visited the farm buildings of the
principal landed proprietors, demolishing the threshing machines then
being brought into use. In some instances they set fire to barns and
corn-stacks. These outrages spread throughout the county, and fears were
entertained that they would be repeated in other agricultural districts.
A great meeting of magistrates and landed gentry was held in Canterbury,
the High Sheriff in the chair, when a reward was offered of 100 pounds
for the discovery of the perpetrators of the senseless mischief, and the
Lords of the Treasury offered a further reward of the same amount for
their apprehension; but all was in vain to stop the growing evil. The
agricultural interest was in a very depressed state, and the number of
unemployed labourers so large, that apprehensions were entertained that
the combinations for the destruction of machinery might, if not at once
checked, take dimensions it would be very difficult for the Government to
control. When Parliament opened in 1830, the state of the agricultural
districts had been daily growing more alarming. Rioting and incendiarism
had spread from Kent to Suffolk, Norfolk, Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire,
Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Huntingdonshire, and Cambridgeshire, and a
great deal of very valuable property had been destroyed. A mystery
enveloped these proceedings that indicated organization, and it became
suspected that they had a political object. Threatening letters were
sent to individuals signed 'Swing,' and beacon fires communicated from
one part of the country to the other. With the object of checking these
outrages, night patrols were established, dragoons were kept in readiness
to put down tumultuous meetings, and magistrates and clergymen and landed
gentry were all at their wits' ends. Even in our out-of-the-way corner
of East Anglia not a little consternation was felt. We were on the
highroad nightly traversed by the London and Yarmouth Royal Mail, and
thus, more or less, we had communications with the outer world. Just
outside of our village was Benacre Hall, the seat of Sir Thomas Gooch,
one of the county members, and I well remember the boyish awe with which
I heard that a mob had set out from Yarmouth to burn the place down.
Whether the mob thought better of it, or gave up the walk of eighteen
miles as one to which they were not equal, I am not in a position to say.
All I know is, that Benacre Hall, such as it is, remains; but I can never
forget the feeling of terror with which, on those dark and dull winter
nights, I looked out of my bedroom window to watch the lurid light
flaring up into the black clouds around, which told how wicked men were
at their mad work, how fiendish passion had triumphed, how some honest
farmer was reduced to ruin, as he saw the efforts of a life of industry
consumed by the incendiary's fire. It was long before I ceased to
shudder at the name of 'Swing.'
The dialect of the village was, I need not add, East Anglian. The people
said 'I woll' for 'I will'; 'you warn't' for 'you were not,' and so on.
A girl was called a 'mawther,' a pitcher a 'gotch,' a 'clap on the
costard' was a knock on the head, a lad was a 'bor.' Names of places
especially were made free with. Wangford was 'Wangfor,' Covehithe was
'Cothhigh,' Southwold was 'Soul,' Lowestoft was 'Lesteff,' Halesworth was
'Holser,' London was 'Lunun.' People who lived in the midland counties
were spoken of as living in the shires. The 'o,' as in 'bowls,' it is
specially difficult for an East Anglian to pronounce. A learned man was
held to be a 'man of larnin',' a thing of which there was not too much in
Suffolk in my young days. A lady in the village sent her son to school,
and great was the maternal pride as she called in my father to hear how
well her son could read Latin, the reading being reading alone, without
the faintest attempt at translation. Sometimes it was hard to get an
answer to a question, as when a Dissenting minister I knew was sent for
to visit a sick man. 'My good man,' said he, 'what induced you to send
for me?' 'Hey, what?' said the invalid. 'What induced you to send for
me?' Alas! the question was repeated in vain. At length the wife
interfered: 'He wants to know what the deuce you sent for him for.' And
then, and not till then, came an appropriate reply. This story, I
believe, has more than once found its way into _Punch_; but I heard it as
a Suffolk boy years and years before _Punch_ had come into existence.
One of the prayers familiar to my youth was as follows:
'Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on;
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels at my head;
Two to watch and one to pray,
And one to carry my soul away.'
An M.P., who shall be nameless, supplies me with an apt illustration of
East Anglian dialect. It was at the anniversary of a National School,
with the great M.P. in the chair, surrounded by the benevolent ladies and
the select clergy of the district. The subject of examination was
Christ's entry into Jerusalem on an ass's colt. 'Why,' said the
M.P.--'why did they strew rushes before the Saviour? can any of you
children tell me?' Profound silence. The M.P. repeated the question. A
little ragamuffin held up his hand. The M.P. demanded silence as the apt
scholar proceeded with his answer. 'Why were the rushes strewed?' said
the M.P. in a condescending tone. I don't know,' replied the boy,
'unless it was to hull the dickey down.'
Roars of laughter greeted the reply, as all the East Anglians present
knew that 'hull' meant 'throw,' and 'dickey' is Suffolk for 'donkey,' but
some of the Cockney visitors present were for a while quite unable to
enjoy the joke.
It is to be feared the three R's were not much patronized in East Anglia,
if it be true that some forty or fifty years ago, in such a respectable
town as Sudbury, it was the fashion for some fifty of the leading
inhabitants to meet in the large bar-parlour of the old White Horse to
hear the leading paper of the eastern counties read out by a scholar and
elocutionist known as John. For the discharge of this important duty he
was paid a pound a year, and provided with as much free liquor as he
liked, and there were people who considered that the Saturday
newspaper-reading did them more good than what they heard at church the
next day.
In some cases our East Anglian dialect is merely a survival of old
English, as when we say 'axe' for 'ask.' We find in Chaucer:
'It is but foly and wrong wenging
To axe so outrageous thing.'
In his 'Envious Man,' Gowing made 'axeth' to rhyme with 'taxeth.' No
word is more common in Suffolk than 'fare'; a pony is a 'hobby'; a thrush
is a 'mavis'; a chest is a 'kist'; a shovel is a 'skuppet'; a chaffinch
is a 'spink.' If a man is upset in his mind, he tells us he is 'wholly
stammed,' and the Suffolk 'yow' is at least as old as Chaucer, who wrote:
'What do you ye do there, quod she,
Come, and if it lyke yow
To daucen daunceth with us now.'
An awkward lad is 'ungain.' A good deal may be written to show that our
Suffolk dialect is the nearest of all provincial dialects to that of
Chaucer and the Bible, and if anyone has the audacity to contradict me,
why, then, in Suffolk phraseology, I can promise him--'a good hiding.'
I am old enough to remember how placid was the county, how stay-at-home
were the people, what a sensation there was created when anyone went to
London, or any stranger appeared in our midst. From afar we heard of
railways; then we had a railway opened from London to Brentwood; then the
railways spread all over the land, and there were farmers who did think
that they had something to do with the potato disease. The change was
not a pleasant one: the turnpikes were deserted; the inns were void of
customers; no longer did the villagers hasten to see the coach change
horses, and the bugle of the guard was heard no more. For a time the
Eastern Counties Railway had a somewhat dolorous career. It was thought
to be something to be thankful for when the traveller by it reached his
journey's end in decent time and without an accident. Now the change is
marvellous. The Great Eastern Railway stands in the foremost rank of the
lines terminating in London. It now runs roundly 20,000,000 of train
miles in the course of a year. It carries a larger number of passengers
than any other line. It carries the London working man twelve miles in
and twelve miles out for twopence a day. It is the direct means of
communication with all the North of Europe by its fine steamers from
Harwich. It has yearly an increased number of season-ticket-holders. On
a Whit Monday it gives 125,000 excursionists a happy day in the country
or by the seaside. In 1891 the number of passengers carried was
81,268,661, exclusive of season-ticket-holders. It is conspicuous now
for its punctuality and freedom from accidents. It is, in short, a model
of good management, and it also deserves credit for looking well after
the interests of its employes, of whom there are some 25,000. It
contributes to the Accident Fund, to the Provident Society, to the
Superannuation Fund, and to the Pension Fund, to which the men also
subscribe, in the most liberal manner, and besides has established a
savings bank, which returns the men who place their money in it four per
cent. It is a liberal master. It does its duty to its men, who deserve
well of the public as of the Great Eastern Railway itself; but its main
merit, after all, is that it has been the making of East Anglia.