POLITICS AND THEOLOGY.
Homerton academy--W. Johnson Fox, M.P.--Politics in 1830--Anti-Corn Law
speeches--Wonderful oratory.
About 1830 there was, if not a good deal of actual light let into such
dark places as our Suffolk village--where it was considered the whole
duty of man, as regards the poor, to attend church and make a bow to
their betters (a rustic ceremony generally performed by pulling the lock
of hair on the forehead with the right hand), and to be grateful for the
wretched station of life in which they were placed--at any rate, a great
shaking among the dry bones. One summer morning an awe fell on the
parish as it ran from one to another that the guard of the Yarmouth and
London Royal Mail had left word with the ostler at the Spread Eagle that
George the Fourth was dead; then a certain dull sound as of cannon firing
afar off had been wafted across the German Ocean, and had given rise to
mysterious speculations on the subject of Continental wars, in which
Suffolk lads might have to ''list' as 'sogers'; and last of all there
came that grand excitement when--North and South, East and West--the
nation rose as one man to demand political and Parliamentary Reform. It
was a delusion, perhaps, that cry, but it was a glorious one,
nevertheless; that the millennium could be delayed when we had
Parliamentary Reform no one for a moment doubted. The sad but undeniable
fact that mostly men are fools with whom beer is omnipotent had not then
entered into men's minds, and thus England and Scotland some sixty years
ago wore an aspect of activity and enthusiasm of which the present
generation can have no idea, and which, perhaps, can never occur again.
Far away in the distant city which the Suffolk villagers called Lunnon,
there was a Suffolk lad, whose relations kept a very little shop just by
us, who was born at Uggeshall--pronounced Ouchell by the common
people--on a very small farm, and who, as Unitarian preacher and
newspaper writer, had been and was doing his best in the good cause; but
it was not the influence of W. Johnson Fox--for it is of him I
write--that did much in our little village to leaven the mass with the
leaven of Reform. While quite a lad the Foxes went to Norwich, where the
future preacher and teacher worked as a weaver boy. In after-years it
was often my privilege to meet Mr. Fox, who had then attained no small
share of London distinction, amongst whose hearers were men, often many
of the most distinguished _literati_ of the day--such as Dickens and
Forster--and who was actually to sit in Parliament as M.P. for Oldham,
where, old as he was--and Mr. Gladstone says, 'People who wish to succeed
in Parliament should enter it young'--he occupied a most respectable
position, all the more creditable when you remember that Parliament, even
at that recent date, was a far more select and aristocratic assembly than
any Parliament of our day, or of the future, can possibly be. Mr. Fox
had been educated at Homerton Academy--as such places were then termed
(college is the word we use now)--under the good and venerable Dr.
Pye-Smith, whose 'Scripture Testimony to the Messiah' was supposed to
have given Unitarianism a deadly blow, but whom I chiefly remember as a
very deaf old man, and one of the first to recognise the fact that the
Bible and geology were not necessarily opposed to each other, and to
welcome and proclaim the truth--at that time received with fear and
trembling, if received at all--that the God of Nature and the God of
Revelation were the same. There was a good deal of free inquiry at
Homerton Academy, which, however, Mr. Fox assured me, gradually subsided
into the right amount of orthodoxy as the time came for the student to
exchange his sure and safe retreat for the fiery ordeal of the deacon and
the pew. My father and Johnson Fox had been fellow-students, and for
some time corresponded together. The correspondence in due time,
however, naturally ceased, as it was chiefly controversial, and nothing
can be more irksome than for two people who have made up their minds, and
whom nothing can change, to be arguing continually, and the friendship
between them in some sense ceased as the one remained firm to, and the
other wandered farther and farther from, the modified Calvinism of the
Wrentham Church and pulpit, where, as in all orthodox pulpits at that
time, it was taught that men were villains by necessity, and fools, as it
were, by a Divine thrusting on; that for some a Saviour had been
crucified, that there might be a way of escape from the wrath of an angry
and unforgiving God; whilst for the vast mass--to whom the name of Christ
had never been made known, to whom the Bible had never been sent--there
was an impending doom, the awful horror of which no tongue could tell, no
imagination conceive. But to the last Mr. Fox--especially if you met him
with his old-fashioned hat on in the street--looked far more of a Puritan
divine than of the literary man, or the chief of the advanced thinkers in
Church and State, or an M.P. At a later time what pleasure it gave me to
listen to this distinguished East Anglian as he appeared at the crowded
Anti-Corn Law meetings held in Covent Garden or Drury Lane! Ungainly in
figure, monotonous in tone, almost without a particle of action, regarded
as free in his religious opinions by the vast majority of his audience,
who were, at that time, prone, even in London, to hold that Orthodoxy,
like Charity, covered a multitude of sins. What an orator he was! How
smoothly the sentences fell from his lips one after the other; with what
happy wit did he expose Protectionist fallacies, or enunciate Free Trade
principles, which up to that time had been held as the special property
of the philosopher, far too subtle to be understood and appreciated by
the mob! With what felicity did he illustrate his weighty theme; with
what clearness did he bring home to the people the wrong and injustice
done to every one of them by the landlord's attempt to keep up his rent
by a tax on corn; and then with what glowing enthusiasm did they wait and
listen for the climax, which, if studied, and perhaps artificial, seemed
like the ocean wave to grow grander and larger the nearer it came, till
it fell with resistless force on all around. It seems to me like a
dream, all that distant and almost unrecorded past. I see no such
meetings, I hear no such orators now. As Mr. Disraeli said of Lord
Salisbury when he was Lord Robert Cecil, there was a want of finish about
his style, and the remark holds good of the orator of to-day as
contrasted with the platform speaker of the past. It is impossible to
fancy anyone in our sober age attempting, to say nothing of succeeding in
the attempt (my remarks, of course, do not apply to Irish audiences or
Irish orators), to get an audience to rise _en masse_ and swear never to
fold their arms, never to relax their efforts, till their end was gained
and victory won; yet Mr. Fox did so, and long as I live shall I remember
the night when, in response to his impassioned appeal, the whole
house--and it was crowded to the ceiling--rose, ladies in the boxes,
decent City men in the pit, gods in the gallery--to swear never to tire,
never to rest, never to slacken, till the peasant at the plough, the
cotton-spinner in the mill, the collier in the mine, the lone widow
stitching for life far into the early morning in her wretched garret, and
the pauper in his still more wretched cellar, ate their untaxed loaf. As
the 'Publicola' of the _Weekly Dispatch_, Mr. Fox laboured to the end of
his life in the good cause of Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. It is not
right that his memory should remain unrecorded--his life assuredly was an
interesting one. Harriet Martineau writes in her autobiography that 'his
editorial correspondence with me was unquestionably the reason, and in
great measure the cause, of the greatest intellectual progress I ever
made before the age of thirty.'
But it was not from William Johnson Fox that at that time came to our
small village the grain of light that was to leaven the lump around.
Lecturing and oratory, and even public tea-meetings, were things almost
unknown. Now and then a deputation from the London Missionary Society
came to Wrentham, and in this way I remember William Ellis, then a
missionary from Madagascar, and Mr. George Bennett, who, in conjunction
with the Rev. Mr. Tyerman, had been on a tour of inspection to the
islands of the South Seas, and to whose tales of travel rustic audiences
listened with delight. Once upon a time--but that was later--the
Religious Tract Society sent a deputation in the shape of a well-known
travelling secretary, Mr. Jones. This Mr. Jones was inclined to
corpulency, and I can well remember how we all laughed when, on one
occasion, the daughter of a neighbouring minister, having opened the door
in reply to his knock, ran delightedly into her papa's study to announce
the arrival of the Tract Society!
A great impression was also made in all parts of the country by the
occasional appearances of the Anti-Slavery Society's lecturers. In 1831,
as Sir G. Stephen tells us, the younger section of the Anti-Slavery body
resolved to stir up the country by sending lecturers to the villages and
towns of the country. The M.P.'s did not much like it. The idea was
novel to them. 'Trust to Parliament,' said they; the outsiders replied,
'Trust to the people.' This scheme of agitation, however, was rejected,
and would have fallen to the ground had not a benevolent Quaker of the
name of Cropper come forward. 'Friend S., what money dost thou want?'
'I want 20,000 pounds, but I will begin if I can get one.' 'Then, I will
give thee 500 pounds.' Joseph Sturge immediately followed with a promise
of 250 pounds, and Mr. Wilberforce twenty guineas; and 1,000 pounds was
raised, and competent agents sent out. It proved by no means an easy
matter to obtain these lecturers, for their duty was not confined to
lecturing; they had also to revive drooping anti-slavery societies and to
establish new ones. Also they were to have collections at the end of
every lecture. One of them who came to Wrentham was Captain Pilkington.
'Pilkington,' writes Sir George Stephen, 'was a pleasing lecturer, and
won over many by his amiable manners; but he wanted power, and resigned
in six months.' We in Wrentham, however, did not think so, and I can to
this day recall the sensation he created in our rustic minds as he
described the horrors of slavery, and showed us the whip and chains by
which those horrors were caused. To the Dissenting chapel most of these
lecturers were indebted for their audience, and if I ever worked hard as
a boy, it was to get signatures to anti-slavery petitions. Naturally, a
Church parson came to regard all that was attacked by Reformers as a
bulwark of the Establishment, and in our part the Meetingers' were the
sole friends of the slave.
As was to be expected, the reading of the village was of the most limited
description. It is true we children jumped for joy as once a month came
the carrier's cart from Beccles, with the books for the club--the
_Evangelical Magazine_, for all the principal families of the
congregation, and the _Penny Magazine_ and _Chambers's Journal_--then but
in their infancy--for ourselves; but, apart from that, there was no
reading worth mentioning. That which most astonishes the tourist in
Ireland is the way in which people read the newspapers. In our Suffolk
village the very reverse was the case, partly because there were few
newspapers to read, partly because there were few to read them, and
partly because they were dear to buy. The one paper which we took in was
the _Suffolk Chronicle_, which made its appearance on Saturday morning,
the price of which was sixpence, and which was edited by a sturdy Radical
of the name of King, who to the last held to the belief that to have a
London letter full of literary or critical talk for the Suffolk farmers
was, not to put too fine a point on it, to throw pearls before swine.
And perhaps he was right. I can well remember, when one of my early
poetical contributions appeared in its columns, how a fear was expressed
to me by a farmer's widow in our parish, lest 'it had cost me a lot o'
money' to have that effort of my muse in print. Mr. Childs, of Bungay,
had many experiences, equally rustic and still more illustrative of the
simplicity of the class. Once upon a time one of them came in a great
state of excitement for a copy of the 'Life of Mr. General Gazetteer.'
On another occasion a farmer's wife came in search of a Testament. She
wanted it directly, and she wanted it of a large type. A specimen was
selected, which met with the worthy woman's approval. But the question
was, could she have it in half an hour, as she would be away for that
time shopping in the town, and would call for it on her return. She was
told that she could, and great was her astonishment when, on calling on
her return for the Testament, there it was, printed in the particular
type she had selected, ready for her use.
I have a very strong idea that the calm of the country and the peaceful
occupations of the people had not a very rousing influence upon the
intellect. I may go further, and say that the cares of the farm, when
high farming was unknown, did not much lift at that time the master above
the man. The latter wore a smock-frock, while the former, perhaps,
sported a blue coat with brass buttons, and had rather a better kind of
head-dress, and ambled along on a little steady cob, that knew at which
ale-house to call for the regular allowance, quite as well as his master.
But as regards talk--which was chiefly of bullocks and pigs--well, there
really was no very great difference after all. To such religion was the
mainspring which kept the whole intellect going; and religion was to be
had at the meeting. And I can well remember how strange it seemed to me
that these rough, simple, untutored sons of the soil could speak of it
with enthusiasm, and could pray, at any rate, with astonishing fervour.
Away from the influence of the meeting-house there existed a Boeotian
state of mind, only to be excited by appeals to the senses of the most
palpable character, a state of mind in which faith--the evidence of
things not seen, according to Paul--was quite out of the question; and I
regret to say that, notwithstanding the activity of the last fifty years
and the praiseworthy and laborious efforts of the East Anglian clergy in
all quarters, suitably to rouse and feed the intellect of the East
Anglian peasantry, a good deal yet remains to be done. Only a year or
two ago, riding on an omnibus in a Suffolk village, the driver asked me
if people could go to America by land. 'Of course not,' was my reply.
'Why do you ask such a question?' Well, it came out that he had 'heerd
tell how people got to Americay in ten days; and he did not see how they
could do that unless they went by land, and had good hosses to get 'em
there at that time.' On my explaining the real state of affairs, he
admitted, by way of apology, that he was not much of a traveller himself.
Once he had been to Colchester; but that was a long time ago.
But to return to the _Suffolk Chronicle_. It was my duty as a lad, when
it had been duly studied at home, to take it to the next subscriber, and
I fancy by the time the paper had gone its round it was not a little the
worse for wear. But there were other political impulses which tended to
create and feed the sacred flame of civil and religious liberty. In one
corner of the village lived a small shopkeeper, who stored away, among
his pots and pans of treacle and sugar and grocery, a few well-thumbed
copies, done up in dirty brown paper, of the squibs and caricatures
published by Hone, whom I can just remember, a red-faced old gentleman in
black, in the _Patriot_ office, and George Cruikshank, with whom I was to
spend many a merry hour in after-life. This small shopkeeper was one of
the chapel people--a kind of superintendent in the Sunday-school, for
which office he was by no means fitted, but there was no one else to take
the berth, and as the family also dealt with him in many ways, I had
often to repair to his shop. It was then our young eyes were opened as
to the wickedness in high places by the perusal of the 'Political House
that Jack built,' and other publications of a similar revolutionary
character. Nothing is sacred to the caricaturist, and half a century ago
bishops and statesmen and lords and kings were very fair subjects for the
exercise of his art. In our day things have changed for the better,
partly as the result of the Radical efforts, of which respectability at
that time stood so much in awe. London newspapers rarely reached so far
as Wrentham. It was the fashion then to look to Ipswich for light and
leading. However, as the cry for reform increased in strength, and the
debates inside the House of Commons and out waxed fiercer, now and then
even a London newspaper found its way into our house, and I can well
remember how our hearts glowed within us as some one of us read, while
father smoked his usual after-dinner pipe, previous to going out to spend
the afternoon visiting his sick and afflicted; and how such names as Earl
Grey, and Lord John Russell, and Lord Brougham--the people then called
him Harry Brougham; it was a pity that he was ever anything else--were
familiar in our mouths as household words.
In another way also there came to the children in Wrentham the growing
perception of a larger world than that in which we lived, and moved, and
had our being. One of the historic sites of East Anglia is Framlingham,
a small market town, lying a little off the highroad to London, a few
miles from what always seemed to me the very uninteresting village of
Needham Market, though at one time Godwin, the author of 'Caleb
Williams,' preached in the chapel there. There is now a public school
for Suffolk boys at Framlingham, and it may yet make a noise in the
world. Framlingham in our time has given London Mr. Jeaffreson, a
successful man of letters, and Sir Henry Thompson, a still more
successful surgeon. In my young days it was chiefly noted for its
castle. The mother of that amiable and excellent lady, Mrs. Trimmer,
also came from Framlingham; and it is to be hoped that the old town may
have had something to do with the formation of the character of a woman
whom now we should sneer at, perhaps, as goody-goody, but who, when
George the Third was King, did much for the education and improvement of
the young. I read in Mrs. Trimmer's life 'that her father was a man of
an excellent understanding, and of great piety; and so high was his
reputation for knowledge of divinity, and so exemplary his moral conduct,
that, as an exception to their general rule, which admitted no laymen, he
was chosen member of a clerical club in the town (Ipswich) in which he
resided. From him,' continues the biographer of the daughter, 'she
imbibed the purest sentiments of religion and virtue, and learnt betimes
the fundamental principles of Christianity.' Well, it is hoped Mr. Kirby
did his best for his daughter; but, after all, how much more potent is
the influence of a mother! And hence I may claim for Framlingham a fair
share in the formation of even so burning and shining a light as Mrs.
Trimmer.
The name Framlingham, say the learned, or did say--for what learned men
say at one time does not always correspond with what they say at
another--is composed of two Saxon words, signifying the habitation of
strangers; and to strangers the place is still rich in interest. In its
church sleeps the unfortunate, but heroic, Earl of Surrey, whose
harmonious verse still delights the students of English literature. Some
say he was born at Framlingham. This is matter of doubt; but there is no
doubt about the fact that he was buried there by his son, the Earl of
Northampton, who erected a handsome monument to his father's memory. The
monument is an elevated tomb, with the Earl's arms and those of his lady
in the front in the angles, and with an inscription in the centre. It
has his effigy in armour, with an ermined mantle, his feet leaning
against a lion couchant. On his left is his lady in black, with an
ermined mantle and a coronet. Both have their hands held up as in
prayer. On a projecting plinth in front is the figure of his second son,
the Earl of Northampton, in armour, with a mantle of ermine, kneeling in
prayer. Behind, in a similar plinth, kneeling with a coronet, and in
robes, is his eldest daughter, Jane, Countess of Westmoreland, on the
right; and his third daughter Catherine, the wife of Lord Henry Berkeley
on the left. The monument is kept in order, and painted occasionally, as
directed by the Earl of Northampton, out of the endowment of his hospital
at Greenwich. In repairing the monument in October, 1835, the Rev.
George Attwood, curate of Framlingham, discovered the remains of the Earl
lying embedded in clay, directly under his figure on his tomb. It is
difficult now to find what high treason the chivalrous and poetic and
gallant Earl had been guilty of; but at that time our eighth Henry ruled
the land, and if he wished anyone out of the way, he had not far to go
for witnesses or judge or jury ready to do his wicked and wanton will.
To the shame of England be it said, the Earl of Surrey was beheaded when
he was only thirty years of age. No particulars are preserved of his
deportment in prison or on the scaffold, but from the noble spirit he
evinced at his trial, and from his general character, it cannot be
doubted that he behaved in the last scene of his existence with fortitude
and dignity. On the barbarous injustice to which he was sacrificed
comment is unnecessary; but regret at his early fate is increased by the
circumstance that Henry was in extremities when he ordered his execution,
and that his swollen and enfeebled hands were unequal to the task of
signing his death-warrant. In this respect more fortunate was the father
of Surrey, the Duke of Norfolk, who is buried near the altar of the
church at Framlingham. He also was condemned to death, but in the
meanwhile the King died, and his victim was set free. Not far off is the
tomb of Henry Fitzroy, a natural son of King Henry. He was a friend of
Surrey, and was to have married his sister. The other monuments which
adorn the interior of this magnificent church are a table of black
marble, supported by angels, to the memory of Sir Robert Hitcham, a mural
monument by Roubillac, and others to commemorate virtues and graces, as
embodied in the lives of decent men and women in whom the world has long
ceased to take any interest.
The venerable castle--here I quote Dr. Dugdale's 'British
Traveller'--with its eventful history, imparts the strongest interest to
the town of Framlingham. Tradition refers its origin to the sixth
century, and ascribes it to Redwald, one of the early Saxon monarchs.
St. Edmund the Martyr fled hither in 870, and was besieged by the Danes,
who took Framlingham and held it fifty years. The Norman King gave the
castle to the Bigods. The castle passed through many hands. It was
there Queen Mary took shelter when, after the death of Edward VI., Lady
Jane Grey was called to the throne, and thence she came to London, on the
capture of the former, to take possession of the crown. It was an evil
day for England when she came to Framlingham Castle and beguiled the
hearts of the Suffolk men. Old Fox tells us that when Mary had returned
to her castle at Framlingham there resorted to her 'the Suffolke men,
who, being alwayes forward in promoting the proceedings of the Gospel,
promised her their aid and help, so that she would not attempt the
alteration of the religion which her brother, King Edward, had before
established by laws and orders publickly enacted, and received by the
consent of the whole realm in his behalf. She afterwards agreed with
such promise made unto them that no innovation should be made of
religion, as that no man would or could then have misdoubted her.
"Victorious by the aid of the Suffolke men," Queen Mary soon forgot her
promise. They of course remonstrated. It was, methinks,' adds Fox, 'an
heavie word that she answered to the Suffolke men afterwards which did
make supplication unto her grace to performe her promise. "For so much,"
saith she, "as you being but members desire to rule your head, you shall
one day perceive the members must obey their head, and not look to rule
over the same."' Well, Queen Mary was as good as her word. As Fox adds,
'What she performed on her part the thing itself and the whole story of
the persecution doth testifie.' But the stubborn Suffolk gospellers were
not to be put down, and a remnant had been left in Framlingham, as well
as in other parts of the country. At Framlingham we find a Richard
Goltie, son-in-law of Samuel Ward, of Ipswich, was instituted to the
rectory in 1630. In 1650 he refused the engagement to submit to the then
existing Government, and was removed, when Henry Sampson, M.A., a fellow
of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, was appointed by his college to the vacancy.
He continued there till the Restoration, when Mr. Goltie returned and
took possession of the living, which he continued to hold till his death.
Not being satisfied to conform, Mr. Sampson continued awhile preaching at
Framlingham to those who were attached to his ministry, in private houses
and other buildings, and by his labours laid the foundation of the
Congregational or Independent Church in that town, as appears from a note
in the Church Book belonging to the Dissenters meeting at Woodbridge, in
the Quay Lane. Mr. Sampson collected materials for a history of
Nonconformity, a great part of which is incorporated in Calamy and
Palmer's works. It was to him that John Fairfax, of Needham Market,
wrote, when he and some other ministers were shut up in Bury Gaol for the
crime of preaching the Gospel. It appears that they had met in the
parish church, at Walsham-le-Willows, where, after the liturgy was read
by the clergyman of the parish, a sermon was preached by a non-licensed
minister. The party were then taken and committed to prison, where they
remained till the next Quarter Sessions, when they were released upon
their recognisances to appear at the next Assizes. Then, it seems,
though not convicted upon any other offence, upon the suggestion of the
justices, to whom they were strangers, they were committed again to
prison, on the plea that _they were persons dangerous to the public
peace_. Thus were Dissenters treated in the good old times. Mr. Sampson
seems to have fared somewhat better. After his removal, he travelled on
the Continent, returned to London, entered himself at the College of
Physicians, and lived and died in good repute. The old congregation
having become Unitarian, a new one was formed, and of this Church a
pillar was Mr. Henry Thompson--a gentleman well known and widely honoured
in his day. This Mr. Thompson had a son, who was sent to Wrentham to be
educated for awhile with myself. An uncle of his, one of the most
amiable of men, lived at Southwold, close by, and I presume it was by his
means that the settlement was effected. Be that as it may, the change
was a welcome one, as it gave me a pleasant companion for nearly five
years of boyish life. I confess my two sisters--one of whom has, alas!
long been in her grave--did all they could in the way of sports and
pastimes to meet my wants and wishes, and act like boys; but the fact is,
though it may be doubted in these days of Women's Rights, girls are not
boys, nor can they be expected to behave as such.
I confess the advent of this young Thompson from Framlingham was a great
event in our small family circle. In the first place he came from a
town, and that at once gave him a marked superiority. Then his father
kept a horse and gig, for it was thus young Thompson came to Wrentham,
and all the world over a gig has been a symbol of the respectability dear
to the British heart; and he had been for that time and as an only son
carefully and intelligently trained by one of the family who, in the
person of the late Edward Miall, founder of the _Nonconformist_, and M.P.
for Bradford, was supposed to be the incarnation of what was termed the
dissidence of Dissent. Young Thompson was also what would be called a
genteel youth, and gave me ideas as to wearing straps to my trousers,
oiling my hair, and generally adorning my person, which had never entered
into my unsophisticated head. He also had been to London, and as
Framlingham was some twenty miles nearer the Metropolis--the centre of
intelligence--than Wrentham, the intelligence of a Framlingham lad was of
course expected, _a fortiori_, to be of a stronger character than that of
one born twenty miles farther from the sun of London. There was also a
good deal of talent in the family on the mother's side. Mrs. Thompson
was a Miss Medley, and Mr. Medley was an artist of great merit, the son
of Mr. Medley, of Liverpool, a leading Baptist minister in his day, and a
writer of hymns still sung in Baptist churches. Mr. Medley was also
active as a Liberal, and was credited by us boys with a personal
acquaintance with no less illustrious an individual than the great
Brougham himself. Once or twice he came to lodge during the summer at
Southwold; naturally he was visited there by his grandson, who would
return well primed with political anecdote to our rustic circle, and was
deemed by me more of an authority than ever. Once or twice, too, I had
the honour of being a visitor, and heard Mr. Medley, a fine old
gentleman, who lived to a very advanced age, talk of art and artists and
other matters quite out of my usual sphere. It is not surprising, then,
that the grandson became in time quite an artist himself, though he is
better known to the world, not so much in that capacity, but as Sir Henry
Thompson, certainly not the least distinguished surgeon of our day. In
Lord Beaconsfield's last novel, 'Endymion,' we have a passing reference
to one Wrentham lad, Sir Charles Wetherell, as 'the eccentric and too
uncompromising Wetherell.' Assuredly the fame of another lad, Sir Henry
Thompson, connected with Wrentham, will longer live.
This reference to Sir Henry Thompson reminds me of his early attempts at
rhyme, which I trust he will forgive me for rescuing from oblivion. Once
upon a time we captured a young cuckoo, and having carefully gorged it
with bread-and-milk, and left it in a nest in an outhouse, which we
devoted mainly to rabbits, the next morning the poor bird was found to be
dead. A prize was offered for the best couplet. Three of us contended.
My sister wrote:
'This lonely sepulchre contains
A little cuckoo's dead remains.'
I wrote:
'To our grief, cuckoo sweet
Is lying underneath our feet.'
Thompson took quite a different and, read by the light of his subsequent
career, a far more characteristic view of the case. He took care, as a
medical man, to dwell on the cause which had terminated the career of so
interesting a bird. According to him,
'It had a breast as soft as silk,
And died of eating bread-and-milk.'
Assuredly in this case the child was father to the man.
But the great awakening of the time, that which made the dry bones live,
and fluttered the dove-cotes of Toryism--we never heard the word
Conservative then--was the General Election. At that time we were always
having General Elections. We had one, of course, when George IV. died
and King William reigned in his stead; we had another when the Duke was
out and the Whigs came in; and then we had another when the cry ran
through the land, and reached even the most remote villages of East
Anglia, of 'The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!' Voters
were brought down, or up, as the case might be, from all quarters of the
land. Coaches-full came tearing along, gorgeous with election flags, and
placarded all over with names of rival candidates. Gentlemen of ancient
lineage called to request of the meanest elector the favour of his vote
and influence. It was with pain the Liberals of our little village
resolved to vote against our Benacre neighbour, Sir Thomas Gooch, who had
long represented the county, but of whom the Radicals spoke derisively as
Gaffer Gooch, or the Benacre Bull, and chose in his stead a country
squire known as Robert Newton Shaw, utterly unknown in our quarter of the
county.
It was rather a trying time for the Wrentham Liberals and Dissenters to
do their duty, for Sir Thomas was a neighbour, and always was a pleasant
gentleman in the parish, and had power to do anyone mischief who went
against him. Our medical man did not vote at all. Our squire actually,
I believe, supported Sir Thomas, and altogether respectable people found
themselves in an extremely awkward position. At Southwold the people
were a little more independent, for Gaffer Gooch rarely illuminated that
little town with his presence; and as my father, with the economy which
is part and parcel of the Scotchman as he leaves his native land, but
which rarely extends to his children, had, by teaching gentlemen's sons
and other ways, been able to save a little, which little had been devoted
to the purchase of cottage property in Southwold (well do I remember the
difficulty there was in collecting the rents; never, assuredly, were
people so much afflicted or so unfortunate when the time of payment
came), it was for Southwold that he claimed his vote. I, as the son, was
permitted to share in the glories of that eventful day. The election
took place at school-time, and my companion was Henry Thompson. We had
to walk betimes to Frostenden, where Farmer Downing lived, who was that
_rara avis_ a Liberal tenant farmer; but of course he did not vote tenant
farmer, but as a freeholder. It was with alarm that Mrs. Downing saw her
lord and master drive off with us two lads in the gig. There had been
riots at London, riots as near as Ipswich, and why not at Halesworth? A
mile or two after we had started we met, per arrangement, the Southwold
contingent, who joined us with flags flying and a band playing, and all
the pride and pomp and circumstance of war. We rode in a gig, and our
animal was a steady-going mare, and behaved as such; but all had not gigs
or steady-going mares. Some were in carts, some were on horseback, some
in ancient vehicles furbished up for the occasion; and as the band played
and the people shouted, some of the animals felt induced to dance, and
especially was this restlessness on the part of the quadrupeds increased
as we neared Halesworth, in the market-place of which was the
polling-booth, and in the streets of which we out-lying voters riding in
procession made quite a show. Halesworth, or Holser, as it was called,
was distant about nine miles, lying to the left of Yoxford, a village
which its admirers were wont to call the Garden of Suffolk. In 1809 the
Bishop of Norwich wrote from Halesworth: 'The church in this place is
uncommonly fine, and the ruins of an old castle (formerly the seat of the
Howards) are striking and majestic.' But when we went there the ruins
were gone--the more is the pity--and the church remained, at that time
held by no less a Liberal than Richard Whately, afterwards Archbishop of
Dublin. I used at times to meet with a country gentleman--a brother of a
noble lord--who after he had spent a fortune merrily, as country
gentlemen did in the good old times, came to live on a small annuity,
and, in spite of his enormous daily consumption of London porter at the
leading inn of the town, managed to reach a good old age. The hon.
gentleman and I were on friendly terms, and sometimes he would talk of
Whately, who had often been at his house. But, alas! he remembered
nothing of a man who became so celebrated in his day except that he would
eat after dinner any number of oranges, and was so fond of active
exercise that he would take a pitchfork and fill his tumbrels with
manure, or work just like a labourer on a farm. Of the Doctor's aversion
to church-bell ringing we have a curious illustration in a letter which
appeared in the _Suffolk Chronicle_ in 1825: 'A short time since a
wedding took place in the families of two of the oldest and most
respectable inhabitants of the town, when it was understood that the
Rector had, for the first time since his induction to his living, given
permission for the bells to greet the happy pair. After, however,
sounding a merry peal a short hour and a half, a message was received at
the belfry that the Rector thought they had rung long enough. The
tardiness with which this mandate was obeyed soon brought the rev.
gentleman in person to enforce his order, which was then reluctantly
complied with to the great disappointment of the inhabitants, and
mortification of the ringers, several of whom had come from a
considerable distance to assist in the festivities of the day.' The
Independent chapel was an old-fashioned meeting-house, full of heavy
pillars, which, as they intercepted the view of the preacher, were
favourable to that gentle sleep so peculiarly refreshing on a Sunday
afternoon--especially in hot weather--in the square and commodious family
pew. The minister was an old and venerable-looking divine of the name of
Dennant, who was always writing little poems--I remember the opening
lines of one,
'A while ago when I was nought,
And neither body, soul, nor thought'--
and whose 'Soul Prosperity,' a volume of sober prose, reached a second
edition. His grandson, Mr. J. R. Robinson, now the energetic manager of
the _Daily News_, may be said to have achieved a position in the world of
London of which his simple-hearted and deeply-devotional grandfather
could never have dreamed. As I was the son of a brother minister, Mr.
Dennant's house was open to myself and Thompson, though we did not go
there on the particular day of which I write. The leading tradesman of
the town was a Liberal, and had at least one pretty daughter, and there
we went. Most of the day, however, we mixed with the mob which crowded
round, while the voters--you may be sure, not all of them sober--were
brought up to vote. The excitement was immense; there was the hourly
publication of the state of the poll--more or less unreliable, but,
nevertheless, exciting; and what a tumult there was as one or other of
the rival candidates drove up to his temporary quarters in a carriage and
pair, or carriage and four, made a short speech, which was cheered by his
friends and howled at derisively by his foes, while the horses were being
changed, and then drove off at a gallop to make the same display and to
undergo the same ordeal elsewhere! To be sure, there was a little rough
play; now and then a rush was made by nobody in particular, and for no
particular reason; or, again, an indiscreet voter--rendered additionally
so by indulgence in beer--gave occasion for offence; but really, beyond a
scrimmage, a hat broken, a coat or two torn or bespattered with mud, a
cockade rudely snatched from the wearer, little harm was done. The
voters knew each other, and had come to vote, and had stayed to see the
fun. For the timid, the infirm, the old, the day was a trying one; but
there was an excitement and a life about the affair one misses now that
the ballot has come into play, and has made the voter less of a man than
ever. Of course the shops were shut up. All who could afford to do so
kept open house, and at every available window were the bright, beaming
faces of the Suffolk fair--oh, they were jolly, those election days of
old! Well, in East Anglia, as elsewhere, spite of the parsons, spite of
the landlords, spite of the slavery of old custom, spite of old
traditions, the freeholders voted Reform, and Reform was won, and
everyone believed that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. In ten years,
I heard people say, there would be no tithes for the farmer to pay, and
welcome was the announcement; for then, as now, the agricultural interest
was depressed, and the farmer was a ruined man. Now one takes but a
languid interest in the word Reform, but then it stirred the hearts of
the people; and how they celebrated their victory, how they hoisted flags
and got up processions and made speeches, and feasted and hurrahed,
'twere tedious to tell. All over the land the people rejoiced with
exceeding joy. Old things, they believed, had passed away--all things
had become new.