BUNGAY AND ITS PEOPLE.
Bungay Nonconformity--Hannah More--The Childses--The Queen's
Librarian--Prince Albert.
In the beginning of the present century, a disgraceful attack on
Methodism--by which the writer means Dissent in all its
branches--appeared in what was then the leading critical journal of the
age, the _Edinburgh Review_. 'The sources,' said the writer, a clergyman
(to his shame be it recorded) of the Church of England--no less
distinguished a divine than the far-famed Sydney Smith--'from which we
shall derive our extracts are the Evangelical and Methodistical magazines
for the year 1807, works which are said to be circulated to the amount of
18,000 or 20,000 every month, and which contain the sentiments of
Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists, and of the Evangelical clergymen of
the Church of England. We shall use the general term of Methodism to
designate these three classes of fanatics, not troubling ourselves to
point out the finer shades and nicer discriminations of lunacy, but
treating them as all in one general conspiracy against common-sense and
rational orthodox Christianity.' To East Anglia came the reputed worthy
Canon for an illustration of what he termed their policy to have a great
change of ministers. Accordingly, he reprints from the _Evangelical
Magazine_ the following notice of an East Anglian Nonconformist
ordination, which, by-the-bye, in no degree affects the charge unjustly
laid at the door of these 'fanatics,' as engaged 'in one general
conspiracy against common-sense and rational orthodox Christianity.'
'Same day the Rev. W. Haward, from Hoxton Academy, was ordained over the
Independent Church at Rendham, Suffolk; Mr. Pickles, of Walpole, began
with prayer and reading; Mr. Price, of Woodbridge, delivered the
introductory discourse, and asked the questions; Mr. Dennant, of
Halesworth, offered the ordinary prayer; _Mr. Shufflebottom_ [the italics
are the Canon's], of Bungay, gave the charge from Acts xx. 28; Mr.
Vincent, of Deal, the general prayer; and Mr. Walford, of Yarmouth,
preached to the people from Phil. ii. 16.' As a lad, I saw a good deal
of Bungay, though I never knew the Shufflebottom whose name seems to have
been such a stumbling-block and cause of offence to the Reverend Canon of
St. Paul's. I say Reverend Canon of St. Paul's, because, though the
writer had not gained that honour when the review appeared, it was as
Canon he returned to the charge when he sanctioned the republication of
it in his collected works. It was at Bungay that I had my first painful
experience of the utter depravity of the human heart--a truth of which,
perhaps, for a boy, I learned too much from the pulpit. The river
Waveney runs through Bungay, and one day, fishing there, I lent a
redcoat--with whom, like most boys, I was proud to scrape an
acquaintance--my line, he promising to return it when I came back from
dinner. When I did so, alas! the red-coat was gone.
Nonconformity in Bungay seems to have originated in the days of the Lord
Protector, in the person of Zephaniah Smith, who was the author of: (1)
'The Dome of Heretiques; or, a discovery of subtle Foxes who were tyed
tayle to tayle, and crept into the Church to do mischief'; (2) 'The
Malignant's Plot; or, the Conspiracie of the Wicked against the Just,
laid open in a sermon preached at Eyke, in Suffolk, January 23, 1697.
Preached and published to set forth the grounds why the Wicked lay such
crimes to the charge of God's people as they are cleare off'; (3) 'The
Skillful Teacher.' Beloe says of this Smith that 'he was a most singular
character, and among the first founders of the sect of the Antinomians.'
One of the first leaders of this sect is said by Wood to have been John
Eaton, who was a minister and preacher at Wickham Market, in which
situation and capacity Smith succeeded him. This Smith published many
other tracts and sermons, chiefly fanatical and with fantastical titles.
One is described by Wood, and is called 'Directions for Seekers and
Expectants, or a Guide for Weak Christians in these discontented times.'
'I shall not give an extract from these sermons,' writes Beloe, who is
clearly, like Wood, by no means a sympathetic or appreciative critic,
'though very curious, but they are not characterized by any peculiarity
of diction, and are chiefly remarkable for the enthusiasm with which the
doctrine of the sect to which the preacher belonged is asserted and
vindicated. The hearers also must have been endowed with an
extraordinary degree of patience, as they are spun out to a great
length.' Mr. Smith's ministry at Bungay led to a contention, which
resulted in an appeal to the young Protector, Richard Cromwell. Then we
find Mr. Samuel Malbon silenced by the Act of Uniformity, who is
described as a man mighty in the Scriptures, who became pastor to the
church in Amsterdam. In 1695 we hear of a conventicle in Bungay, with a
preacher with a regularly paid stipend of 40 pounds a year. Till 1700
the congregation worshipped in a barn; but in that year the old
meeting-house was built, and let to the congregation at 10 pounds per
annum. In 1729 it was made over to the Presbyterians or Independents
worshipping there, 'for ever.' The founders of that conventicle seem to
have suffered for their faith; yet the glorious Revolution of 1688 had
been achieved, and William of Orange--who had come from a land which had
nobly sheltered the earlier Nonconformists--was seated on the throne.
Bungay, till Sydney Smith made it famous, was not much known to the
general public. It was on the borders of the county and out of the way.
The only coach that ran through it, I can remember, was a small one that
ran from Norwich through Beccles and Bungay to Yarmouth; and, if I
remember aright, on alternate days. There was, at any rate, no direct
communication between it and London. Bungay is a well-built market town,
skirted on the east and west by the navigable river Waveney, which
divides it from Norfolk, and was at one time noted for the manufacture of
knitted worsted stockings and Suffolk hempen cloth; but those trades are
now obsolete. The great Roger Bigod--one of the men who really did come
over with the Conqueror--built its castle, the ruins of which yet remain,
on a bold eminence on the river Waveney. 'The castle,' writes Dugdale,
'once the residence and stronghold of the Bigods, and by one of them
conceived to be impregnable, has become the habitation of helpless
poverty, many miserable hovels having been reared against its walls for
the accommodation of the lowest class.' The form of the castle appears
to have been octangular. The ruins of two round fortal towers and
fortresses of the west and south-west angles are still standing, as also
three sides of the great tower or keep, the walls of which are from 7 to
11 feet thick and from 15 to 17 feet high. In the midst of the ruins, on
what is called the Terrace, is a mineral spring, now disused, and near it
is a vault, or dungeon, of considerable depth. Detached portions of the
wall and their foundations are spread in all directions in the castle
grounds, a ridge of which, about 40 yards long, forms the southern
boundary of a bowling-green which commands delightful prospects. The
mounds of earth raised for the defence of the castle still retain much of
their original character, though considerably reduced in height. One of
them, facing the south, was partly removed in 1840, with the intention of
forming a cattle market. As a boy I often heard of the proud boast of
Hugh Bigod, second Earl, one of King Stephen's most formidable opponents,
as recorded by Camden:
'Were I in my castle of Bungay,
Upon the river Waveney,
I would not care for the King of Cockeney.'
In ancient times the Waveney was a much broader stream than it is now,
and Bungay was called _Le Bon Eye_, or the good island, then being nearly
surrounded by water. Hence the name, in the vulgar dialect, of Bungay.
To 'go to Bungay to get a new bottom' was a common saying in Suffolk.
In 1777 we find Hannah More writing to Garrick from Bungay, which she
describes as 'a much better town than I expected, very clean and
pleasant.' 'You are the favourite bard of Bungay'--at that time the
tragedians of the city of Norwich were staying there--'and,' writes
Hannah, who at that time had not become serious and renounced the
gaieties of the great world, 'the dramatic furore rages terribly among
the people, the more so, I presume, from being allowed to vent itself so
seldom. Everybody goes to the play every night,--that is, every other
night, which is as often as they perform. Visiting, drinking, and even
card-playing, is for this happy month suspended; nay, I question if, like
Lent, it does not stop the celebration of weddings, for I do not believe
there is a damsel in the town who would spare the time to be married
during this rarely-occurring scene of festivity. It must be confessed,
however, the good folks have no bad taste.' It must be recollected that
Hannah More in reality belongs to East Anglia. She was the daughter of
Jacob More, who was descended from a respectable family at Harleston. He
was a High Churchman, but all his family were Nonconformists. His mother
used to tell young people that they would have known how to value Gospel
privileges had they lived like her, when at midnight pious worshippers
went with stealthy steps through the snow to hear the words of
inspiration delivered by a holy man at her father's house; while her
father, with a drawn sword, guarded the entrance from violent or profane
intrusion, adding that they boarded the minister and kept his horse for
10 pounds a year. An unfortunate lawsuit deprived the Mores of their
property, and thus it was that the celebrated Hannah was born at
Gloucestershire, and not in Suffolk or Norfolk. The family mansion was
at Wenhaston, not very far from Wrentham.
In my young days Bungay owed all its fame and most of its wealth to the
far-famed John Childs, who was one of our first Church Rate martyrs, to
whom is due mainly the destruction of the Bible-printing monopoly, and to
whom the late Edward Miall was much indebted for establishing the
_Nonconformist_ newspaper. For many years it was the habit of Mr. Childs
to celebrate that event by a dinner, at which the wine was good and the
talk was better. Old John Childs, of Bungay, had a cellar of port which
a dean might have envied; and many was the bottle that I cracked with him
as a young man, after a walk from Wrentham to Bungay, a distance of
fourteen miles, to talk with him on things in general, and politics in
particular. He was emphatically a self-made man--a man who would have
made his way anywhere, and a man who had a large acquaintance with the
reformers of his day in all parts of the country. On one occasion the
great Dan O'Connell came to pay him a visit, much to the delight of the
Suffolk Radicals, and to the horror of the Tories. The first great
dinner at which I had the honour of being present, and to which I was
taken by my father, who was a great friend of Mr. Childs, was on the
occasion of the presentation to the latter of a testimonial by a
deputation of distinguished Dissenters from Ipswich in connection with
his incarceration in the county gaol at Ipswich, for having refused to
pay rates for the support of a Church in which he did not believe, and
for the performance of a service in which he took no part. At that time
'the dear old Church of England,' while it was compelled to tolerate
Dissent, insisted on Dissent being taxed to the uttermost farthing; and
that it does not do so now, and that it is more popular in consequence,
is due to the firm stand taken by such men as John Childs of Bungay. He
was a great phrenologist. In his garden he had a summer-house, which he
facetiously termed his scullery, where he had some three hundred plaster
casts, many of which he had taken himself of public individuals and
friends and acquaintances. My father was honoured in this way, as also
my eldest sister. Sir Henry Thompson and I escaped that honour, but I
have not forgotten his dark, piercing glance at our heads, when, as boys,
we first came into his presence, and how I trusted that the verdict was
satisfactory. Of course the Childses went to Meeting, but when I knew
Bungay Mr. Shufflebottom had been gathered to his fathers, and the Rev.
John Blaikie, a Scotchman, and therefore always a welcome guest at
Wrentham, reigned in his stead. Mr. Childs had a large and promising
family, few of whom now remain. His daughter was an exceptionally gifted
and glorious creature, as in that early day it seemed to me. She also
died early, leaving but one son, Mr. Crisp, a partner in the well-known
legal firm of Messrs. Ashurst, Morris, and Crisp. It was in the little
box by the window of the London Coffee House--now, alas! no more--where
Mr. Childs, on the occasion of his frequent visits to London, always
gathered around him his friends, that I first made the acquaintance of
Mr. Ashurst, the head of the firm--a self-made man, like Mr. Childs, of
wonderful acuteness and great public spirit. In religion Mr. Ashurst was
far more advanced than the Bungay printer. 'It is not a thing to reason
about,' said the latter; and so to the last he remained orthodox,
attended the Bungay Meeting-house, invited the divines of that order to
his house, put in appearance at ordination services, and openings of
chapels, and was to be seen at May Meetings when in town, where
occasionally his criticisms were of a freer order than is usually met
with at such places.
'The Bungay Press,' wrote a correspondent of the _Bookseller_, on the
death of Mr. Charles Childs, who had succeeded his father in the
business, 'has been long known for its careful and excellent work.
Established some short time before the commencement of the present
century, its founder had, for twenty years, limited its productions to
serial publications and books of a popular and useful character, and in
the year 1823, soon after Mr. John Childs had taken control of the
business, upwards of twenty wooden presses were working, at long hours,
to supply the rapidly-increasing demand for such works as folio Bibles,
universal histories, domestic medicine books, and other publications then
issuing in one and two shilling numbers from the press.' Originally Mr.
Childs had been in a grocer's shop at Norwich. There he was met with by
a Mr. Brightley, a printer and publisher, who, originally a schoolmaster
at Beccles, had suggested to young Childs that he had better come and
help him at Bungay than waste his time behind a counter. Fortunately for
them both the young man acceded to the proposal, and travelled all over
England driving tandem, and doing everywhere what we should now call a
roaring trade. Then he married Mr. Brightley's daughter, and became a
partner in the firm, which was known as that of John and R. Childs, and,
latterly of Childs and Son. 'Uncle Robert,' as I used to hear him
called, was little known out of the Bungay circle. He had a nice house,
and lived comfortably, marrying, after a long courtship, the only one of
the Stricklands who was not a writer. Agnes was often a visitor at
Bungay, and not a little shocked at the atrocious after-dinner talk of
the Bungay Radicals. 'Do you not think,' said she, in her somewhat
stilted and tragic style of talk, one day, to a literary man who was
seated next her, author of a French dictionary which the Childses were
printing at the time--'Do you not think it was a cruel and wicked act to
murder the sainted and unfortunate Charles I.?' 'Why, ma'am,' stuttered
the author, while the dinner-party were silent, 'I'd have p-p-poisoned
him.' The gifted authoress talked no more that day. Naturally, as a
lad, seeing so much of Bungay, I wished to be a printer, but Mr. Childs
said there was no use in being a printer without plenty of capital, and
so that idea was renounced.
But to return to Mr. John Childs. About the year 1826, in association
with the late Joseph Ogle Robinson, he projected and commenced the
publication of a series of books known in the trade as the 'Imperial
Edition of Standard Authors,' which for many years maintained an
extensive sale, and certainly then met an admitted literary want,
furnishing the student and critical reader, in a cheap and handsome form,
with dictionaries, histories, commentaries, biographies, and
miscellaneous literature of acknowledged value and importance, such as
Burke's works, Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall,' Howe's works, the writings of
Lord Bacon--books which are still in the market, and which, if I may
speak from a pretty wide acquaintance with students' libraries fifty
years ago, were in great demand at that time. The disadvantage of such a
series is that the books are too big to put in the pocket or to hold in
the hand. But I do not know that that is a great disadvantage to a real
student who takes up a book to master its contents, and not merely to
pass away his time. To study properly a man must be in his study. In
that particular apartment he is bound to have a table, and if you place a
book on a table to read, it matters little the size of the page, or the
number of columns each page contains. Mr. Childs set the fashion of
reprinting standard authors on a good-sized page, with a couple of
columns on each page. That fashion was followed by Mr. W. Smith--a Fleet
Street publisher, than whom a better man never lived--and by Messrs.
Chambers; but now it seems quite to have passed away. On the failure of
Mr. Robinson, Mr. Childs' valuable reprints were placed in the hands of
Westley and Davis, and subsequently with Ball, Arnold, and Co.; and
latterly, I think, the late Mr. H. G. Bohn reissued them at intervals.
As to his part publications, when Mr. Childs had given up pushing them,
he disposed of them all to Mr. Virtue, of Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row, who
then secured almost a monopoly of the part-number trade, and thus made a
large fortune. 'I love books that come out in numbers,' says Lord
Montford in 'Endymion,' 'as there is a little suspense, and you cannot
deprive yourself of all interest by glancing at the last part of the last
volume.' And so I suppose in the same way there will always be a
part-number trade, though the reapers in the field are many, and the
harvest is not what it was.
Active and fiery in body and soul, Mr. John Childs, at a somewhat later
period, with the sympathy and advocacy of Mr. Joseph Hume and other
members of Parliament, and aided to a large extent by Lord Brougham,
succeeded in procuring the appointment of a Committee of the House of
Commons to inquire into the existing King's Printers' Patent for printing
Bibles and Acts of Parliament, the period for the renewal of which was
near at hand. The principle upon which the patent was originally granted
appeared to be _correctness secured only by protection_--a fallacy which
the voluminous evidence of the Committee most completely exposed. The
late Alderman Besley, a typefounder, and a great friend of John Childs,
as well as Robert Childs, practical printers, gave conclusive evidence on
this head, and the result was that, although the patent was renewed for
thirty years, instead of sixty as before, the Scriptures were sold to the
public at a greatly reduced price, and the trade in Bibles, though
nominally protected, has ever since been practically free.
Nor did Mr. Childs' labours end here. In Scotland the right of printing
Bibles had been granted exclusively to a company of private persons,
Blaire and Bruce, neither of whom had any practical knowledge of the art
of printing, or took any interest in the different editions of the Bible.
The same men also had the supplying all the public revenue offices of
Government with stationery, by which means they enjoyed an annual profit
of more than 6,000 pounds a year. When the Government, in an economical
mood, ordered them to relinquish the latter contract, not only were they
compensated for the loss, but were continued in their vested rights as
regards Bible-printing. In Scotland there was no one to interfere with
their rights. In England patents had been given not only to the firm of
Messrs. Strahan, Eyre and Spottiswoode, but to each of the two
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Up to 1821 the Bibles of the
English monopolists came freely into Scotland, but then a prohibition,
supported by decisions in the Court of Sessions and the House of Lords,
was obtained. In 1824 Dr. Adam Thompson, of Coldstream, and three
ministers were summoned to answer for the high crime and misdemeanour of
having, as directors of Bible societies, delivered copies of an edition
of Scriptures which had been printed in England, but which the Scotch
monopolists would not permit to circulate in Scotland. Bible societies
in Scotland had received, in return for their subscription to the London
society, copies of an octavo Bible in large type, to which the Scotch
patentees had no corresponding edition, and which was much prized by the
aged. And it was because Dr. Thompson and others helped to circulate it,
as agents of the London Bible Society, that they were proceeded against.
The Scotch Bible, in consequence of the monopoly, was as badly printed as
the English one. In order to show how monopoly had failed to secure good
work, a gentleman sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury an enormous list
of errors which he had found in the Oxford Nonpareil Bible. In an old
Scotch edition the apostle is made to say, 'Know ye not that the
righteous shall _not_ inherit the kingdom of God?' In another edition
'The four beasts of the Apocalypse' are '_sour_ beasts.' Dr. Lee,
afterwards Principal of Edinburgh University, felt deeply the injustice
done by the monopoly, and the heavy taxation consequently imposed upon
the British and Foreign Bible Society; but he was a man of the study
rather than of the street. Yet in 1837 the monopoly, powerfully defended
as it was by Sir Robert Inglis, who dreaded cheap editions of the Word of
God, as necessarily incorrect and leading to wickedness and infidelity of
all kinds, fell, and it was to John Childs, of Bungay, that in a great
measure the fall was due, while owing to the repeated labours of Dr. Adam
Thompson and others, we got cheaper Bibles and Testaments on the other
side of the Tweed.
If you turn to the life of Dr. Adam Thompson, of Coldstream, the man who
had the most publicly to do with the fall of the monopoly, there can be
no doubt on this head. Though specially interested in the English
patents, Mr. Childs was aware that the one for Scotland fell, to be
renewed sooner by twenty years, and he kept dunning Joseph Hume on the
subject, who, Radical Reformer, at that time had his hands pretty full.
Mr. Childs had got so far as to have his Committee, and to get the
evidence printed. What was the next step? Dr. Thompson's biographer
shall tell us. 'Mr. Childs had been looking out for a Scottish
Dissenting minister of proved ability, zeal, and influence, who should
feel the immense and urgent importance of the question, and after
mastering the unjust principles and the injurious results of the
monopoly, should testify to these before the Committee, in a weighty and
pointed manner, and effectively bring them also before the ministers and
people of Scotland. He fixed upon Dr. Thompson, and the letter in which
he wrote to the Doctor to prepare for becoming a witness was the
beginning of a ten years' copious correspondence, the first in a series
of many hundreds of very lengthy letters, in which Mr. Childs, with great
shrewdness, sagacity, and vigour, and with perfect confidence of always
being in the right, acted as universal censor, pronouncing oracularly
upon all ecclesiastical and political men and organs, expressing
unqualified contempt for the House of Lords, and very small satisfaction
with the House of Commons, showing no mercy to Churchmen, and little but
asperity to Dissenters, and denouncing all British journals as base or
blind except the _Nonconformist_.' Only two of these letters are
published in Dr. Thompson's biography. I give one, partly because it is
interesting, and partly because it is characteristic. Unfortunately, of
all John Childs' letters to myself, written in a fine, bold hand, exactly
reproduced by his son and grandson, so that I could never tell one from
the other, I have preserved none. Childs thus wrote to Dr. Thompson,
July 15th, 1839:
'MY DEAR FRIEND,
'You will be happy to know that I went into Newgate this morning with
my friend Ashurst, and heard their pardon read to the Canadians.
They were released this afternoon, and Mr. Parker and Mr. Wixon have
been dining with me, and are gone to a lodging, taken for them by Mr.
A., where they may remain till their departure on Wednesday. I have
just sent to Mr. Tidman to inform him they will worship God and
return thanks in his place to-morrow, if all be well. How
wonderfully God has appeared for these people! My dear friend, when
I first saw them in January all things appeared to be against them,
but all has been overruled for good.
'At the time you left on Monday evening, Lord John was making known
to the House of Commons, in your own words, the plan proposed by
yourself, and adopted by him, to my amazement. Most heartily do I
congratulate you on the termination of the event, so decidedly
honourable to yourself in every way. I do not expect you will
approve of all that I have done, but I felt it to be my duty to
address a letter to the _Pilot_ on the subject, calling attention to
the liberty taken with you, and the manner in which you were
humbugged when in concert with the London societies, and the absolute
triumph of your cause when conducted with single-handed integrity,
intelligence, and energy. If it shall happen that you do not approve
of all I have said, I am sure you ought, because without you, and
with you, if you had left it to the fellows here, Scotland's
Dissenters would have now appeared the degraded things which, on the
Bible subject, the English Dissenters have appeared in my eyes for
some years past. It is due to you. I was fairly rejoiced when I saw
Lord John's declaration, because I could see from his answer to Sir
James Graham that he meant the thing should be done. Scotland ought
to have a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving, and as I said to a
friend to whom I wrote in Edinburgh, "You ought to have a
monument--the Thompson monument." "That, sir," the guide would say,
"is erected to honour a man by whose honest energy and zeal Scotland
was freed from the most degrading tyranny--that of a monopoly in
printing the Word of God." The tablet should bear that memorable
sentence of yours on the first day of your examination, "All
monopolies are bad." Of all monopolies religious monopolies are the
worst, and of all religious monopolies a monopoly of the Word of God
is the most outrageous.' Alas! I have heard nothing of the Thompson
monument.
Such a man was John Childs. One more busy in body and brain I never
knew. That he was disposed to be cynical was natural. Most men who see
much of the world, and who do not wear coloured glasses, are so. Take
the history of the Bible monopoly. The work of its abolition was
commenced by John Childs, of Bungay, carried on and completed as far as
Scotland was concerned by Dr. Adam Thompson, while the British public in
its usual silliness awarded 3,000 pounds to Dr. Campbell, on the plea--I
quote the words of the late Dr. Morton Brown, of Cheltenham--that, 'God
gave the honour very largely to our friend, Dr. Campbell, to smite this
bloated enemy of God and man full in the forehead.' The bloated enemy,
as regards Scotland, was dead before Dr. Campbell had ever penned a line.
As regards England, I believe it still exists.
It must have been about 1837 that the name of John Childs, of Bungay, was
made specially notorious by reason of his refusal to pay Church-rates,
and when he had the honour of being the first person imprisoned for their
non-payment. He was proceeded against in the Ecclesiastical Courts, and
as his refusal to pay was solely on conscientious grounds, he did not
contest the matter. The result was, he was sent to Ipswich Gaol for the
non-payment of a rate of 17s. 6d., the animus of the ecclesiastical
authorities being manifested by the endorsement of the writ, 'Take no
bail.' It was the first death-blow to Church-rates. The local
excitement it created was intense and unparalleled. In the House of
Commons Sir William Foulkes presented several petitions from Norfolk, and
Mr. Joseph Hume several from Suffolk, on the subject. One entire sitting
of the House of Commons was devoted to the Bungay Martyr, as Sir Robert
Peel ironically termed him. The Bungay Martyr had however, right on his
side. It was found that a blot had been hit, and it had to be removed.
The excitement produced by putting Mr. Childs into gaol was intense at
that time all over the land. 'I beg to inform you,' wrote a Halesworth
Dissenter, Mr. William Lincoln, to the editor of the _Patriot_, at that
time the organ of Dissent, 'that my highly-esteemed and talented friend,
Mr. John Childs, of Bungay, has just passed through this town, in custody
of a sheriff's officer, on his way to our county gaol, by virtue of an
attachment, at the suit of Messrs. Bobbet and Scott, churchwardens of
Bungay, for non-payment of 17s. 6d. demanded of him as a Church-rate, and
subsequent refusal to obey a citation for appearance at the Bishop's
Court.' Naturally the writer remarked: 'It will soon be seen whether
proceedings so well in harmony with the days of fire and faggot are to be
tolerated in this advanced period of the nineteenth century.' When, in
due time, Mr. Childs obtained his release, the event was celebrated at
Bungay in fitting style. I find in a private diary the following note:
'This day week was a grand day at Bungay. I heard there were not less
than six or seven thousand people there to welcome his return, and the
request of the police, that the greatest order might be observed, was
fully acted up to. Miss C. did not enter Bungay with her father. I
suppose when she found so great a multitude of horsemen, gigs,
pedestrians and banners, they thought it better for the young lady and
the younger children to retire to the close carriages. Mr. C. during his
imprisonment had letters from all parts of the kingdom.' I remember the
leading Dissenters came to Bungay with a piece of plate, to present to
Mr. Childs, to commemorate his heroism. A dinner was given by Mr. Childs
in connection with the presentation. At that dinner, lad as I was, I was
permitted to be present. I had never seen anything so grand or stately
before; and that was my first interview with John Childs, a dark,
restless, eagle-eyed man, whom I was to know better and love more for
many a long day. I took to Radical writing, and nothing could have
pleased John Childs better. I owed much to his friendship in after-life.
In 1833 the Church-rate question was originally raised in Bungay, and
many of the Dissenters refused to pay. The local authorities at once
took high ground, and put twelve of the recusants into the Ecclesiastical
Court. They caved in, leaving to John Childs the honour of martyrdom.
At the time of Mr. Childs' imprisonment he had recently suffered from a
severe surgical operation, and it was believed by his friends impossible
that he could survive the infliction of imprisonment. The Rev. John
Browne writes: 'A committee very generously formed at Ipswich undertook
the management of his affairs, and when they learned at the end of eleven
days' imprisonment that he had undergone a most severe attack, indicating
at least the possibility of sudden death, they sent a deputation to the
Court to pay the sum demanded. The Court, however, required, as well as
the money, the usual oath of canonical obedience, and this Mr. Childs
refused to give. He was told by his friends that he would surely die in
prison, but his reply was, 'That is not my business.' But it seems so
much had been made of the matter by the newspapers that Mr. Childs was
released without taking the oath. Charles Childs, the son, followed in
his father's steps. At Bungay the Churchmen seemed to have determined to
make Dissenters as uncomfortable as possible. Actually five years after
they had thrown the father into prison, the churchwardens proceeded
against the son, having been baffled in repeated attempts to distrain
upon his goods, and cited him into the Ecclesiastical Court, where it
took two and a half years to determine whether the sum of three shillings
and fourpence was due. At the end of that time the judge decided it was
not, and the churchwardens had to pay Mr. Childs' costs as well as their
own, which in the course of time amounted to a very respectable sum.
Charles Childs, who died suddenly a few years since, and who never seemed
to me to have aged a day since I first knew him, was truly a chip of the
old block. He was much in London, as he printed quite as much as his
father for the leading London publishers. An enlightened patriot, he was
in very many cases successful in resisting the obstacles raised from time
to time by party spirit or Church bigotry. On more than one occasion he
conducted a number of his workmen through an illegally-closed path, and
opened it by the destruction of the fences, repeated appeals to the
persistent obstructions having proved unavailing. He was a man of
scholarly and literary attainments, a clever talker, well able to hold
his own, and during the Corn Law and Currency agitation he contributed
one or more articles on these subjects to the _Westminster Review_, then
edited by his friend, the late General Perronet Thompson, a very foremost
figure in Radical circles forty years ago, always trying to get into
Parliament--rarely succeeding in the attempt. 'How can he expect it,'
said Mr. Cobden to me one day, 'when, instead of going to the principal
people to support him, he finds out some small tradesman--some little
tailor or shoemaker--to introduce him?' Once upon a time the _Times_
furiously attacked Charles Childs. His reply, which was able and
convincing, was forwarded, but only procured admission in the shape of an
advertisement, for which Mr. Childs had to pay ten pounds. The corner of
East Anglia of which I write rarely produced two better men than the
Childs, father and son. They are gone, but the printing business still
survives, though no longer carried on under the well-known name. By
their noble integrity and public spirit they proved themselves worthy of
a craft to which light and literature and leading owe so much. It is to
such men that England is under lasting obligations, and one of the
indirect benefits of a State Church is that it gives them a grievance,
and a sense of wrong, which compels them to gird up their energies to act
the part of village Hampdens or guiltless Cromwells. All the manhood in
them is aroused and strengthened as they contend for what they deem right
and just, and against force and falsehood. Poets, we are told, by one
himself a poet,
'Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.'
Nonconformists have cause especially to rejoice in the bigotry and
persecution to which they have been exposed, since it has led them by a
way they knew not, to become the champions of a broader creed and a more
general right than that of which their fathers dreamed. It is easy to
swim with the stream; it requires a strong man to swim against it. Two
hundred years of such swimming had made the Bungay Nonconformists strong,
and gave to the world two such exceptionally sturdy and strengthful men
as John and Charles Childs. I was proud to know them as a boy; in
advancing years I am prouder still to be permitted to bear this humble
testimony to their honest worth. It is because Nonconformity has raised
up such men in all parts of the land, that a higher tone has been given
to our public life, that politics mean something more than a struggle
between the ins and the outs, and that 'Onward' is our battle-cry.
Of the young men more or less coming under the influence of the Childs's,
perhaps one of the most successful was the late Bernard Bolingbroke
Woodward, Librarian to her Majesty. When I first knew him he was in a
bank at Norwich. Thence he passed to Highbury College, and in due time,
after he had taken his B.A. degree, settled as the Independent minister
at Wortwell, near Harleston, in Norfolk. There he became connected with
John Childs, and, amidst much hard work, edited for the firm a new
edition of 'Barclay's Universal English Dictionary.' In 1860, on the
death of Mr. Glover, who had for many years filled the post of Librarian
to the Queen at Windsor Castle, Mr. Woodward's name was mentioned to the
Prince, in reply to inquiries for a competent successor. Acting on the
advice of a friend at head-quarters, Mr. Woodward forwarded to Prince
Albert the same printed testimonials which he had sent in when he was a
candidate for the vacant secretaryship of a large and popular society,
and to those alone he owed his appointment to the office of Librarian to
the Queen. An interview took place at Windsor Castle, which was highly
satisfactory; but before the appointment was finally made, Mr. Woodward
informed Her Majesty and the Prince that there was one circumstance which
he had omitted to mention, and which might disqualify him for the post.
'Pray, what is that disqualification?' asked the Prince. 'It is,'
replied Mr. Woodward, 'that I have been educated for, and have actually
conducted the services of an Independent congregation in the country.'
'And why should that be thought to disqualify you?' asked the Prince.
'It does nothing of the sort. If that is all, we are quite satisfied,
and feel perfectly safe in having you for a librarian.' Am I not
justified in saying that at one time Bungay influences reached far and
near?