THE NORFOLK CAPITAL.
Brigg's Lane--The carrier's cart--Reform demonstration--The old
dragon--Chairing M.P.'s--Hornbutton Jack--Norwich artists and
literati--Quakers and Nonconformists.
Many, many years ago, when wandering in the North of Germany, I came to
an hotel in the Fremden Buch, of which (Englishmen at that time were far
more patriotic and less cosmopolitan than in these degenerate days) an
enthusiastic Englishman had written--and possibly the writing had been
suggested by the hard fare and dirty ways of the place:
'England, with all thy faults, I love thee still.'
Underneath, a still more enthusiastic Englishman had written: 'Faults?
What faults? I know of none, except that Brigg's Lane, Norwich, wants
widening.' For the benefit of the reader who may be a stranger to the
locality, let me inform him that Brigg's Lane leads out of the fine
Market Place, for which the good old city of Norwich is celebrated all
the world over, and that on a recent visit to Norwich I found that the
one fault which could be laid at the door of England had been
removed--that Brigg's Lane had been widened--that, in fact, it had ceased
to be a lane, and had been elevated into the dignity of a street.
My first acquaintance with Norwich, when I was a lad of tender years and
of limited experience, was by Brigg's Lane. I had reached it by means of
a carrier's cart--the only mode of conveyance between Southwold,
Wrentham, Beccles and Norwich--a carrier's cart with a hood drawn by
three noble horses, and able to accommodate almost any number of
travellers and any amount of luggage. As the driver was well known to
everyone, there was also a good deal of conversation of a more or less
friendly character. The cart took one day to reach Norwich--which was,
and it may be is, the commercial emporium of all that district--and
another day to return. The beauty of such a conveyance, as compared with
the railway travelling of to-day, was that there was no occasion to be in
a flurry if you wanted to travel by it. Goldsmith--for such was the
proprietor and driver's name--when he came to a place was in no hurry to
leave it. All the tradesmen in the village had hampers or boxes to
return, and it took some time to collect them; or messages and notes to
send, and it took some time to write them; and at the alehouse there was
always a little gossip to be done while the horses enjoyed their pail of
water or mouthful of hay. Even at the worst there was no fear of being
left behind, as by dint of running and holloaing you might get up with
the cart, unless you were very much behind indeed. But you may be sure
that when the day came that I was to visit the great city of Norwich I
was ready for the carrier's cart long before the carrier's cart was ready
for me. Why was it, you ask, that the Norwich journey was undertaken?
The answer is not difficult to give. The Reform agitation at that time
had quickened the entire intellectual and social life of the people. At
length had dawned the age of reason, and had come the rights of man. The
victory had been won all along the line, and was to be celebrated in the
most emphatic manner. We Dissenters rejoiced with exceeding joy; for we
looked forward, as a natural result, to the restoration of that religious
equality in the eye of the law of which we had been unrighteously
deprived, and in consequence of which we had suffered in many ways. We
joined, as a matter of course, in the celebration of the victory which we
and the entire body of Reformers throughout the land had gained; and how
could that be done better than by feeding the entire community on old
English fare washed down by old English ale? And this was done as far as
practicable everywhere. For instance, at Bungay there was a public feast
in the Market Place, and on the town-pump the Messrs. Childs erected a
printing-press, which they kept hard at work all day printing off papers
intended to do honour to the great event their fellow-townsmen were
celebrating in so jovial a manner. In Norwich the demonstration was to
be of a more imposing character, and as an invitation had come to the
heads of the family from an old friend, a minister out of work, and
living more or less comfortably on his property, it seemed good to them
to accept it, and to take me with them, deeming, possibly, that of two
evils it was best to choose the least, and that I should be safer under
their eye at Norwich than with no one to look after me at home. At any
rate, be that as it may, the change was not a little welcome, and much
did I see to wonder at in the old Castle, the new Gaol, the size of the
city, the extent of the Market Place, the smartness of the people, and
the glare of the shops. It well repaid me for the ride of twenty-six
miles and the jolting of the carrier's cart along the dusty roads.
As I look into the mirror of the past, I see, alas! but a faded picture
of that wonderful banquet in Norwich to celebrate Reform. There was a
procession with banners and music, which seemed to me endless, as it
toiled along in the dust under the fierce sun of summer, the spectators
cheering all the way. There were speeches, I dare say, though no word of
them remains; but I have a distinct recollection of peeping into the
tents or tent, where the diners were at work, and of receiving from some
one or other of them a bit of plum-pudding prepared for that day, which
seemed to me of unusual excellence. I have a distinct recollection also
of the fireworks in the evening, the first I had ever seen, on the Castle
plain, and of the dense crowd that had turned out to see the sight; but I
can well remember that I enjoyed myself much, and that I was awfully
tired when it was all over.
Another memory also comes to me in connection with the old Dragon,--not
of Revelation, but of Norwich--a huge green monster, which was usually
kept in St. Andrew's Hall, and dragged out at the time of city
festivities. Men inside of it carried it along the street, and the sight
was terrible to see, as it had a ferocious head and a villainous tail,
and resembled nothing that is in the heaven above or the earth beneath or
the waters under the earth. I fancy, however, since the schoolmaster has
gone abroad, that kind of dragon has ceased to roar. I think it was at a
Norwich election that I saw it for the first and the only time, and it
followed in the procession formed to chair the Members--the Members being
seated in gorgeous array on chairs, borne on the heads of people, and
every now and then, much to the delight of the mob, though I should
imagine very little to his own, the chair, with the Member in it, was
tossed up into the air, and by this means it was supposed the general
public were able to get a view of their M.P. and to see what manner of
man he was. It was in some such way that I, as a lad, realized, as I
never else should have done, the red face and the pink-silk stockings of
the Hon. Mr. Scarlett, the happy candidate who pretended to enjoy the
fun, as with the best grace possible under the circumstances he smiled on
the ladies in the windows of the street, as he was borne along and bowed
to all. From my recollection of the chairing I saw that time, I am more
inclined to admire the activity of Wilberforce, of whom we read, when
elected for Hull, 'When the procession reached his mother's house, he
sprang from the chair, and, presenting himself with surprising quickness
at a projecting window--it was that of the nursery in which his childhood
had been passed--he addressed the populace with such complete effect that
he was afterwards able to decide the election of its successor.' At
Norwich the Hon. Mr. Scarlett did well in not attempting a similar
display of agility. Perhaps, however, it is quite as well that we have
got rid of the chairing and the humour--Heaven help us!--to which it gave
rise on the part of an English mob.
There was a delightful flavour of antiquity about the Norwich of that
day--its old fusty chapels and churches, its old bridges and narrow
streets. All the people with whom I came into contact on that festival
seemed to me well stricken in years. It was not so very long since, old
Hornbutton Jack had been seen threading his way along its ancient
streets. With a countenance much resembling the portraits of Erasmus,
with gray hair hanging about his shoulders, with his hat drawn over his
eyes and his hands behind him, as if in deep meditation; John Fransham,
the Norwich metaphysician and mathematician, might well excite the
curiosity of the casual observer, especially when I add that he was
bandy-legged, that he was short of stature, that he wore a green jacket,
a broad hat, large shoes, and short worsted stockings. A Norwich weaver
had helped to make Fransham a philosopher. Wright said Fransham could
discourse well on the nature and fitness of things. He possessed a
purely philosophical spirit and a soul well purified from vulgar errors.
Fransham made himself famous in his day. There is every reason to
believe that he had been for some time tutor to Mr. Windham. He is once
recorded to have spent a day with Dr. Parr. Many of his pupils became
professional men; with one of them, Dr. Leeds, the reader of Foote's
comedies, if such a one exists, may be acquainted. The tutor and his
pupil, as Johnny Macpherson and Dr. Last, were actually exhibited on the
stage. But to return to Norwich antiquities. I have a dim memory of
some old place where the Dutch and Huguenot refugees were permitted to
meet for worship, and even now I can recognise there the possibility of
another Sir Thomas Browne--unless the Norwich of my boyhood has undergone
the destructive process we love to call improvement--not even disturbed
in his quiet study by the storm of civil war, inditing his thoughts as
follows: 'That crystal is nothing else but ice strongly congealed; that a
diamond is softened or broken by the blood of a goat; that bays preserve
from the mischief of lightning and thunder; that the horse hath no gall;
that a kingfisher hanged by the bill showeth where the wind lay; that the
flesh of peacocks corrupteth not;' and so on--questions, it may be, as
pertinent as those learnedly discussed in half-crown magazines at the
present day.
As a boy, I was chiefly familiar with Norwich crapes and bombazines and
Norwich shawls, which at that time were making quite a sensation in the
fashionable world. It was at a later time that I came to hear of Old
Crome and the Norwich school. Of him writes Mr. Wedmore, that 'he died
in a substantial square-built house, in what was a good street then, in
the parish of St. George, Colegate, having begun as a workman, and ended
as a bourgeois. He was a simple man, of genial company. To the end of
his life he used to go of an evening to the public-house as to an
informal club. In the privileged bar-parlour, behind the taps and
glasses, he sat with his friends and the shopkeepers, talking of local
things. But it is not to be supposed that because his life was from end
to end a humble one, though prosperous even outwardly after its kind,
Crome was deprived of the companionship most fitted to his genius, the
stimulus that he most needed. The very existence of the Norwich Society
of Artists settles that question. The local men hung on his words; he
knew that he was not only making pictures, but a school. And in the
quietness of a provincial city a coterie had been formed of men bent on
the pursuit of an honest and homely art, and of these he was the chief.'
Dying, his last words were, 'Hobbema, oh, Hobbema, how I loved thee!' In
my young days Mr. John Sell Cotman chiefly represented Norwich, although
in later times he became connected with King's College, London. A lady
writes to me: 'I think it was in the summer of 1842 Mr. Cotman came down
to Norwich to visit his son John, who at that time was occupying a house
on St. Bennet's Road. He visited us at Thorpe several times, and was
unusually well and in good spirits, with sketchbook or folio always in
hand. His father and sisters, too, were then living in a small house at
Thorpe, and from the balcony of their house, which looked over the valley
of the Wensum, he made one of his last interesting sketches, twelve of
which, after his death, the following year, were selected by his sons for
publication.'
Evelyn gives us a pleasant picture of Norwich when he went there 'to see
that famous scholar and physitian, Dr. T. Browne, author of the "Religio
Medici" and "Vulgar Errors," etc., now lately knighted.' Evelyn
continues: 'Next morning I went to see Sir Thomas Browne, with whom I had
corresponded by letter, though I had never seen him before, his whole
house and garden being a Paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of
the best collection, especially medals, books, plants and natural things.
Amongst other curiosities, Sir Thomas has a collection of all the eggs of
all the foule and birds he could procure; that country, especially the
promonotary of Norfolck, being frequented, as he said, by severall kinds,
which seldom or never go further into the land, as cranes, storkes,
eagles, and a variety of water-foule. He led me to see all the
remarkable places of this ancient citty, being one of the largest and
certainly, after London, one of the noblest of England, for its venerable
cathedrall, number of stately churches, cleannesse of the streetes and
building of flints so exquisitely headed and squared, as I was much
astonished at; but he told me they had lost the art of squaring the
flints, in which at one time they so much excelled, and of which the
churches, best houses, and walls are built.' Further, Evelyn tells us:
'The suburbs are large, the prospect sweete with other amenities, not
omitting the flower-gardens, in which all the inhabitants excel. The
fabric of stuffs brings a vast trade to this populous towne.'
Long has Norwich rejoiced in clever people. In the life of William
Taylor, one of her most distinguished sons, we have a formidable array of
illustrious Norwich personages, in whom, alas! at the present time the
world takes no interest. Sir James Edward Smith, founder and first
President of the Linnaean Society, ought not to be forgotten. Of Taylor
himself Mackintosh wrote: 'I can still trace William Taylor by his
Armenian dress, gliding through the crowd in Annual Reviews, Monthly
Magazines, Athenaeums, etc., rousing the stupid public by paradox, or
correcting it by useful and seasonable truth. It is true that he does
not speak the Armenian or any other tongue but the Taylorian, but I am so
fond of his vigour and originality, that for his sake I have studied and
learned the language. As the Hebrew is studied by one book, so is the
Taylorian by me for another. He never deigns to write to me, but in
print I doubt whether he has many readers who so much understand, relish,
and tolerate him, for which he ought to reward me by some of his
manuscript esoteries.' More may be said of William Taylor. It was he
who made Walter Scott a poet. Taylor's spirited translation of Burger's
'Leonore' with the two well-known lines--
'Tramp, tramp along the land they rode,
Splash, splash along the sea,'
opened up to Scott a field in which for a time he won fame and wealth.
Of Mrs. Taylor, wife of the grandson of the eminent Hebraist, Mackintosh
declared that she was the Madame Roland of Norwich. We owe to her Mrs.
Austen and Lady Duff Gordon. Mr. Reeve, the translator of De
Tocqueville's 'Democracy,' has preserved the memory of his father, Dr.
Henry Reeve, by the republication of his 'Journal of a Tour on the
Continent.' Let me also mention that Dr. Caius, the founder of Caius
College, Cambridge, was a Norwich man.
To Noncons Norwich offers peculiar attractions. We have in Dr.
Williams's library 'The Order of the Prophesie in Norwich'; and Robinson,
the leader of the Pilgrim Fathers, had a Norwich charge. Even in a later
day some of the Norwich divines had a godly zeal for freedom, worthy of
Milton himself, and on which the Pilgrim Fathers would have smiled
approval. It is told of Mark Wilks, the brother of Matthew, and the
grandfather of our London Mark Wilks, that when a deputation went from
Norwich during the Thelwall and Horne Tooke trials, when, if the
Castlereagh gang had had their will, there would have been found a short
and easy way with the Dissenters, and came back on the Sunday morning,
entering the place after the service had commenced, that he called out,
'What's the news?' as he saw them enter. 'Acquitted,' was the reply.
'Thank God!' said the parson, as they all joined in singing
'Praise God from whom all blessings flow.'
It is a fact that Wilks's first sermon in the Countess of Huntingdon's
Chapel at Norwich was from the text, 'There is a lad here with five
barley loaves and a few small fishes.' Let me tell another story, this
time in connection with that Old Meeting which has so much to attract the
visitor at Norwich. It had a grand old man, William Youngman, amongst
its supporters; I see him now, with his choleric face, his full fat
figure, his black knee-breeches and silk stockings, his gold-headed cane.
He was an author, a learned man, as well as a Norwich merchant, the very
Aristarchus of Dissent--a kind-hearted, hospitable man withal, if my
boyish experience may be relied on. One Sunday there came to preach in
the Old Meeting a young man named Halley from London, who lived to be
honoured as few of our Dissenting D.D.'s have been. He was young, and he
felt nervous as he looked from the pulpit on the austere critic in his
great square pew just beneath. Well, thought the young preacher, a
sermon on keeping the Sabbath will be safe, and he selected that for his
morning discourse. The service over, up comes the grand old man. 'The
next time, young man, you preach, preach on something you understand;'
and, having said so, he bought a pennyworth of apples of a woman in the
street, leaving the young man to digest his remarks as best he could.
Again the service was to be carried on. The young man was in the pulpit,
the grand old man below. There was singing and prayer, but no sermon,
the young man having bolted after opening the service. I like better the
picture of Norwich I get in Sir James Mackintosh's Life, where Basil
Montague tells us how he and Mackintosh, when travelling the Norfolk
circuit, always hastened to Norwich to spend their evenings in the circle
of which Mrs. Taylor was the attraction and the centre. The wife of a
Norwich tradesman, we see her sitting sewing and talking in the midst of
her family, the companion of philosophers, who compared her to Lucy
Hutchinson, and a model wife. Far away in India Sir James writes to her:
'I know the value of your letters. They rouse my mind on subjects which
interest us in common--friends, children, literature, and life. Their
moral tone cheers and braces me. I ought to be made permanently happy by
contemplating a mind like yours; which seems more exclusively to derive
its gratifications from its duties than almost any other.' It was in the
Norwich Octagon that these Taylors worshipped. Their Unitarianism seemed
to have affected them more favourably than it did Harriet Martineau,
whose family also attended there. I remember Edward Taylor, who was the
Gresham Professor of Music. But theologically, I presume, the palm of
excellence in connection with the Octagon is to be awarded to Dr. Taylor,
the great Hebrew scholar. He wrote to old Newton: 'I have been looking
through my Bible, and can't find your doctrine of the Atonement.' 'Last
night I could not see to get into bed,' replied old Newton, 'because I
found I had my extinguisher on the candle. Take off the extinguisher,
and then you will see.'
Leaving theology, let us get up on the gray old castle, which is to be
turned into a museum, and look round on the city lying at our feet.
Would you have a finer view? Cross the Yare and walk up the new road
(made by the unemployed one hard winter) to Mousehold Heath, and after
you have done thinking of Kitt's rebellion--an agrarian one, by-the-bye,
and worth thinking about just at this time--and of the Lollards, who were
burnt just under you, look across to the city in the valley, with its
heights all round, more resembling the Holy City, so travellers say, than
any other city in the world. In the foreground is the cathedral, right
beyond rises the castle on the hill; church spires, warehouses, public
buildings, private dwellings, manufactories, chimneys' smoke, complete
the landscape fringed by the green of the distant hills. There are a
hundred thousand people there--to be preached to and saved.
Windham was rather hard on the Norwich of his day. In his diary, in
1798, he records a visit to Norwich, of which city he was the
representative. On October 9 he dined at the Swan--'dinner, like the
sessions dinner, but ball in the evening distinguished by the presence of
Mrs. Siddons.' On the 10th he dined at the Bishop's--'A party, of, I
suppose, fifty, chiefly clergy. I felt the same enjoyment that I
frequently do at large dinners--they afford, in general, what never fails
to be pleasant--solitude in a crowd.' On the 11th he writes: 'Dined with
sheriffs at King's Head. Robinson, the late sheriff, was there, and much
as he may be below his own opinion of himself, he is more to talk to than
the generality of those who are found on those occasions. I could not
help reflecting on the very low state of talents or understanding in
those who compose the whole, nearly, of the society of Norwich. The
French are surely a more enlightened and polished people.' Perhaps
Windham would have fared better had he dined with some of the leading
Dissenters. Few of the clergy of East Anglia at that time would have
been fitting company for the friend of Johnson and Burke. In Norwich,
Mr. Windham often managed to make himself unpopular. For instance,
towards the end of the session of 1788, Mr. Windham called the attention
of Government to a requisition from France, which was then suffering the
greatest distress from a scarcity of grain. The object of this
requisition was to be supplied with 20,000 sacks of flour from this
country. So small a boon ought, he thought, to be granted from motives
of humanity; but a Committee of the House of Commons having decided
against it, the Ministers, though they professed themselves disposed to
afford the relief sought for, could not, after such a decision, undertake
to grant it upon their own responsibility. The leading part which Mr.
Windham took in favour of this requisition occasioned, amongst some of
his constituents at Norwich, considerable clamour. He allayed the storm
by a private letter addressed to those citizens of Norwich who were most
likely to be affected by a rise in the price of provisions; but the fact
that Norwich should thus have backed up the inhuman policy of refusing
food to France showed how strong at that time was the force of passion,
and how hard it is to break down hereditary animosity. As a further
illustration of manners and habits of the East Anglian clergy, let me
mention that when, in 1778, Windham made the speech which pointed him out
to be a man of marked ability in connection with the call made on the
country for carrying on the American War, one of the Canons of the
cathedral, and a great supporter of the war, exclaimed: 'D--n him! I
could cut his tongue out!'
In my young days, in serious circles, there was no name dearer than that
of Joseph Gurney--a fine-looking man with a musical voice, always ready
to aid with money, or in other ways, all that was right and good, or what
seemed to him such. In the 'Memorials of a Quaker Lady' he is described
thus: 'He sat on the end seat of the first cross-form, and both preached
and supplicated. I was very much struck with him. His fine person, his
beautiful dark, glossy hair, his intelligent, benign, and truly amiable
countenance, made a deep impression upon me. And as he noticed me most
kindly, as I was introduced to him by Elizabeth Fry, as the little girl
his sister Priscilla wanted to bring to England, I felt myself greatly
honoured.' The Gurneys have an ancient lineage, and had their home in
Gourney, in Upper Normandy. One of them, of course, fought in the ranks
of the winners at the battle of Hastings. Another was a crusader.
Another had done good service at Acre, as a follower of Richard of the
Lion Heart. When the main line came to an end, one branch settled in
Norfolk. Gurney's Bank at Norwich was one of the institutions of the
city, and was as famous in my day as at a later time was the great house
of Overend and Gurney, which, when it fell, created a panic in financial
circles all the world over.
At Earlham, the home of the Gurneys, we learn how much may be done by a
family, and how widespread its influence for good or evil may become.
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton certainly stands foremost, not alone amongst the
East Anglians, but the philanthropists of later years. At the age of
sixteen young Buxton went to Earlham as a guest. His biographer writes:
'They received him as one of themselves, early appreciating his masterly,
though still uncultivated mind; while, on his side, their cordial and
encouraging welcome seemed to draw out all his latent powers. He at once
joined with them in reading and study, and from this visit may be dated a
remarkable change in the whole tone of his character; he received a
stimulus not merely in the acquisition of knowledge, but in the formation
of studious habits and intellectual tastes. Nor could the same influence
fail of extending to the refinement of his disposition and manners.' At
that time Norwich--the Buxtons being witnesses--was distinguished for
good society, and Earlham was celebrated for its hospitality. Mr.
Gurney, the father, belonged to the Society of Friends, but his family
was not brought up with any strict regard to its peculiarities. He put
little restraint on their domestic amusements, and music and dancing were
among their favourite recreations. The third daughter, Mrs. Fry, had,
indeed, united herself more closely with the Society of Friends; but her
example had not then been followed by any of her brothers and sisters.
'I know,' wrote Sir Thomas, in later years, 'no blessing of a temporal
nature--and it is not only temporal--for which I ought to render so many
thanks as my connection with the Earlham family. It has given a colour
to my life. Its influence was most positive, and pregnant with good at
that critical period between school and manhood. They were eager to
improve; I caught the infection. I was resolved to please them, and in
the college at Dublin, at a distance from all my friends and all control,
their influence and the desire to please them kept me hard at my books,
and sweetened the task they gave. The distinctions I gained at college
(little valuable as distinctions, but valuable because habits of
industry, perseverance and resolution were necessary to attain
them)--these boyish distinctions were exclusively the result of the
animating passion in my mind to carry back to them the prizes which they
prompted and enabled me to win.'
Wilberforce, when he was staying at Lowestoft in 1816, wrote: 'I am still
full of Earlham and its excellent inhabitants. One of our great
astronomers stated it as probable there may be stars whose light has been
travelling to us from the Creation, and has not yet reached our little
planet. In the Earlham family a new constellation has broken in upon us,
for which you must invent a name, as you are fond of star-gazing, and if
it indicates a little monstrosity (as they are apt to give the collection
of stars the names of strange creatures--dragons, bears, etc.), the
various stars of which the Earlham assemblage is made,' continues
Wilberforce, 'will include also much to be respected and loved.' At that
time Mrs. Opie was one of the Norwich stars. Caroline Fox, who went to
dine with her described her as in great force and really jolly. 'She is
enthusiastic about Father Mathew, reads Dickens voraciously, takes to
Carlyle, but thinks his appearance rather against him--talks much and
with great spirit of people, but never ill-naturedly.'
'Norwich,' as described by Camden, 'on account of its wealth,
populousness, neatness of buildings, beautiful churches, with the number
of them--for it has a matter of fifty parishes--as also the industry of
its citizens, loyalty to their Prince, is to be reckoned among the most
considerable cities in Britain. It was fortified with walls that have a
great many turrets and eleven gates.' Camden, quoting one writer after
another, adds the eulogy of Andrew Johnston, a Scotchman, as follows:
'A town whose stately piles and happy seat
Her citizens and strangers both delight;
Whose tedious siege and plunder made her bear
In Norman battles an unhappy share,
And feel the sad effects of dreadful war.
These storms o'erblown, now blest with constant peace,
She saw her riches and her trade increase.
State here by wealth, by beauty yet undone,
How blest if vain excess be yet unknown!
So fully is she from herself supplied
That England while she stands can never want a head.'
From Norwich went Robinson to help to build up in Amsterdam that Church
of the Pilgrim Fathers which was to be in its turn the mother of a great
Republic such as the world had never seen. He has been styled the Father
of Modern Congregationalism; be that as it may, when he bade farewell in
that quaint old harbour, Delfhaven--which looks as if not a brick or a
building had been touched since--he was doing a work from which neither
himself nor those who stood with him could ever have expected such
wonderful results. That emigration to Holland in Wren's time was a great
loss of money and men to England, and was an indication of Nonconformist
strength which wise Churchmen would have conciliated rather than driven
to extremities. 'In sooth it was,' wrote Heylin, 'that the people in
many great trading towns which were near the sea, having long been
discharged of the bond of ceremonies, no sooner came to hear the least
noise of a conformity, but they began to spurn against it; and when they
found that all their striving was in vain, that they had lost the comfort
of their lecturers and that their ministers began to shrink at the very
name of a visitation, it was no hard matter for those ministers and
lecturers to persuade them to remove their dwellings and transport their
trades.' 'The sun of heaven,' say they, 'doth shine as comfortably in
other places; the Sun of Righteousness much brighter.' 'Better to go and
dwell in Goshen, find it where we can, than tarry in the midst of such an
Egyptian darkness as is now falling on the land.' One of the preachers
who gave that advice and acted in accordance with it was William Bridge,
M.A. Against him Wren was so furious that he fled to Holland and settled
down as one of the pastors of the church at Rotterdam. In 1643 we find
him pastor of the church at Norwich and Yarmouth, and one of the Assembly
of Divines. In 1644 the church was separated--a part meeting at Yarmouth
and a part at Norwich. This was done on the advice of Mr. John Phillip,
of Wrentham--a godly minister of great influence in his denomination in
his day.
As was to be expected, I was taken to the Old Meeting House at Norwich,
where many learned men had preached, and where many men almost as learned
listened. The gigantic pews, in which a small family might have lived,
filled me with amazement. And equally appalling to me was the
respectability of the people, of a very different class from that of our
Wrentham chapel. Close by was the Octagon Chapel, where the Unitarians
worshipped, equally impressive in its respectability. But what struck me
most was the new and fashionable Baptist chapel of St. Mary's, where the
venerable and learned Kinghorn preached--a great Hebrew scholar and the
champion of strict communion--against Robert Hall, and other degenerate
Baptists, who were ready to admit to the Lord's Table any Christians,
whether properly baptized--that is, by immersion when adults--or merely
sprinkled as infants. Up to this day I confound the worthy man with John
the Baptist, probably because he looked so lank and long and lean. He
was a man of singularly precise habits, so much so that I heard of an old
lady who always regulated her cooking by his daily walk, putting the
dumplings into the pot to boil when he went, and taking them out when he
returned. I could write much about him, but _cui bono_? who cares about
a dead Baptist lion? Not even the Baptists themselves. On going into
their library in Castle Street the other day, to look at Kinghorn's life,
I found no one had taken the trouble to cut the pages. In the front
gallery of St. Mary's, Mr. Brewer, the Norwich schoolmaster, had sittings
for the boys of his school, including his own sons, who, at King's
College and elsewhere, have done much to illustrate our national history
and literature. If I remember aright, one of the congregation was a
jolly-looking old gentleman who, as Uncle Jerry, laid the foundation of a
mustard manufactory, which has placed one of the present M.P.'s for
Norwich at the head of a business of unrivalled extent. When Mr.
Kinghorn died, his place was taken by Mr. Brock, better known as Dr.
Brock, of Bloomsbury Chapel, London. Under Mr. Brock's preaching the
reputation of St. Mary's Chapel was increased rather than diminished. As
a young man himself at that time, he was peculiarly attractive to the
young, and the singing was very different from the rustic psalmody of my
native village, in spite of the fact that we had a bass-viol at all
times, and on highly-favoured occasions such an array of flutes and
clarionets as really astonished the natives and delighted me.
But to return to the Old Meeting. Calamy writes of one of the Norwich
ministers, of the name of Cromwell, that 'he enjoyed but one peaceable
day after his settlement, being on the second forced out of his
meeting-house, the licenses being called in, and then for nine years
together he was never without trouble. Sometimes he was pursued with
indictments at sessions, at assizes, and then with citations of the
ecclesiastical courts; and at other times feigned letters, rhymes or
libels were dropped in the streets or church and fathered upon him, so
that he was forced to make his house his prison. At length that was
broken open, and he absconded into the houses of his friends, till he
contracted his old disease' a second time. It is said that he was
invited on one occasion to dine with Bishop Reynolds, when several young
clergy were present. When Mr. Cromwell retired, the Bishop rose and
attended him, and then a general laugh ensued. On his return his
lordship rebuked his guests for their unmannerly conduct, and told them
that Mr. Cromwell had more solid divinity in his little finger than all
of them had in their bodies. It must be remembered that, like most of
the early Independent ministers, Mr. Cromwell had a University training;
and even in my young days the respect shown to a learned ministry kept up
not a little of the high standard which had been laid down by the fathers
and founders of Dissent. In these more degenerate days it is to be
questioned whether as much can be said. The Old Meeting House at Norwich
was finished as far back as 1643. The only pastor of the church who was
not an author was the Rev. Dr. Scott, who died in 1767. In the Octagon
Chapel the preachers had been still more distinguished. One of them was
the Rev. Dr. Taylor, author of the famous Hebrew Concordance, which was
published in two volumes folio, and was the labour of fourteen years. He
left Norwich to become tutor at the newly-erected Academy at Warrington;
but his son, Mr. Edward Taylor, the Gresham Professor of Music, was often
a visitor at Wrentham, where he had a little property, which he valued,
as it gave him a vote. Another of the preachers at the Octagon was the
Rev. R. Alderson, who afterwards became Recorder of Norwich. The Mr.
Edward Taylor of whom I have just written was baptized by him. One day,
being under examination as a witness in court, Alderson questioned him as
to his age. 'Why,' said Taylor, a little nettled, 'you ought to know,
for you baptized me.' 'I baptized you!' exclaimed Alderson. 'What do
you mean?' The Recorder never liked to be reminded of his having been a
preacher. The Marchioness of Salisbury is of this family. Perhaps, of
these Unitarian preachers, one of the most distinguished was Dr. William
Enfield, whose 'Speaker' was one of the books placed in the hands of
ingenuous youth, and whose 'History of Philosophy' was one of the works
to be studied in their riper years. Norwich, indeed, was full of learned
men. Its aged Bishop, Bathurst, was the one voter for Reform, much to
the delight of William IV., who said that he was a fine fellow, and
deserved to be the helmsman of the Church in the rough sea she would soon
have to steer through. His one offence in the eyes of George III. was
that he voted against the King--that is, in favour of justice to the
Catholics. With such a Bishop a Reformer, no wonder that all Norwich
went wild with joy when the battle of Reform was fought and won. Bishop
Stanley, who succeeded, was also in his way a great Liberal, and invited
Jenny Lind to stay with him at the palace. I often used to see him at
Exeter Hall, where his activity as a speaker afforded a remarkable
contrast to the quieter style of his more celebrated son.
Accidentally looking into the life of Bishop Bathurst, I find printed in
the Appendix some interesting conversations at Earlham, where Joseph John
Gurney lived. On one occasion, when Dr. Chalmers was staying there,
Joseph John Gurney writes: 'W. Y. breakfasted with us, and with his usual
strong sense and talent called forth the energies of Chalmers' mind.
They conversed on the subject of special Providence, and of the unseen
yet unceasing superintendence of the Creator of all the events which
occur in this lower world. Said W. Y.: "Mr. Barbauld, the husband of the
authoress, was once a resident in my house. He was a man of low opinions
in religion, and denied the agency of an unseen spirit on the mind of
man." I remarked that when the mind was determined to a certain right
action by a combination of circumstances productive of the adequate
motives, and meeting from various quarters precisely at the right point
for the purpose in view, this was in itself a sufficient evidence of an
especial Providence, and might be regarded as the instrumentality through
which the Holy Spirit acts. Mr. Barbauld admitted the justice of this
argument.' Again I read: 'W. Y. supported the doctrine that nature is
governed through the means of general laws--laws which broadly and
obviously mark the wisdom and benevolence of God.' One extract more: 'W.
Y. expressed his admiration of the masterly manner in which Dr. Chalmers,
in his "Bridgewater Treatise," has fixed on the atheist a moral
obligation to inquire into the truth of religion; but, said he, might not
the disciples of Irving, by the same rule, oblige us to an inquiry into
the supposed evidences of their favourite doctrine that Christ is about
to appear and to reign personally on earth? Might not even the Mahometan
suppose in the Christian a similar necessity as it relates to the
pretensions of the false prophet?' If Joseph Gurney sent for W. Y. to
converse with Dr. Chalmers as a genial spirit, surely the name of one so
honourable and of one so friendly both to my father and myself should not
be omitted. W. Y. loved a joke. He was very stout, and wore tight black
knee breeches with shoes and silk stockings. I remember how he made me
laugh one day as he described what happened to his knee-breeches as he
stooped to tie up his shoes ere attending a place of worship. To cut a
long story short, I may add W. Youngman did not go to church that day.
Originally I think he was a dyer.
Harriet Martineau, as all the world knows, was born at Norwich. In her
somewhat ill-natured autobiography she writes: 'Norwich, which has now no
social claims to superiority at all, was in my childhood a rival of
Lichfield itself, in the time of the Sewards, for literary pretensions
and the vulgarity of pedantry. William Taylor was then at his best, when
there was something like fulfilment of his early promise, when his
exemplary filial duty was a fine spectacle to the whole city, and before
the vice which destroyed him had coarsened his morale and destroyed his
intellect. During the war it was a great distinction to know anything of
German literature, and in Mr. Taylor's case it proved a ruinous
distinction. He was completely spoiled by the flatteries of shallow men,
pedantic women, and conceited lads.' Yet this man was the friend of
Southey and opened up a new world to the English intellect, and perhaps
in days to come will have a more enduring reputation than Harriet
Martineau herself. The lady does not err on the side of good nature in
her criticism. All she can say of Dr. Sayers is: 'I always heard of him
as a genuine scholar, and I have no doubt he was superior to his
neighbours in modesty and manners. Dr. Enfield, a feeble and superficial
man of letters, was gone also from the literary supper-table before my
time. There was Sir James Smith, the botanist, made much of and really
not pedantic and vulgar like the rest, but weak and irritable. There was
Dr. Alderson, Mrs. Opie's father, solemn and sententious and eccentric in
manner, but not an able man in any way;' and thus the leading lights of
Norwich are contemptuously dismissed. 'The great days of the Gurneys
were not come yet. The remarkable family from which issued Mrs. Fry and
Priscilla and Joseph John Gurney were then a set of dashing young people,
dressed in gay riding habits and scarlet boots, as Mrs. Fry told us
afterwards, and riding about the country to balls and gaieties of all
sorts. Accomplished and charming young ladies they were; and we children
used to overhear some whispered gossip about the effects of their charms
on heart-stricken young men; but their final characteristics were not yet
apparent.'
It is to a Norwich man that we owe the publication of Hansard's
Parliamentary Debates. Luke Hansard, to whom they owe their name, was
born in Norwich, 1725, was trained as a printer, went to London with but
a guinea in his pocket, was employed by Hughes, the printer of the House
of Commons, succeeded to the business and became widely known for his
despatch and accuracy in printing Parliamentary papers and debates. He
died in 1828, but the business was continued by his family, and to refer
to Hansard became the invariable custom when an M.P. was to be condemned
out of his own mouth--as Hansard was supposed never to err. Recently
Hansard has been carried on by a company, but the old name still remains.
Dr. Stoughton has in vain, in a number of the _Congregationalist_,
attempted to record the memory of a man well known and much honoured in
his day--the Rev. John Alexander, of Norwich. The portrait is a failure.
It gives us no idea of the man with his rosy face, his curly black hair,
his merry, twinkling eye, his joyous laugh, when mirth befitted the
occasion, or his tender sympathy where pain and sorrow and distress had
to be endured. Mr. Alexander's jubilee was celebrated in St. Andrew's
Hall in 1867, when the Mayor and a crowd of citizens did him honour, and
a sum of money for the purchase of an annuity was presented, thus
obviating the necessity of doing to him as on one occasion he in his
humorous way suggested should be done with old ministers when past
work--that they should be shot. In 1817 Mr. Alexander had come to
Norwich to preach in the old Whitfield Tabernacle in place of Mr. Hooper,
one of the tutors at Hoxton Academy. When I went to Norwich he had built
a fine chapel in Prince's Street, and amongst the hearers was Mr. Tillet,
then in a lawyer's office, a young man famous for his speeches at the
Mechanics' Institute and in connection with a literary venture, the
_Norwich Magazine_, not destined to set the Thames on fire; latterly an
M.P. for Norwich and proprietor and editor, I believe, of one of the most
popular of East Anglian journals, the _Norfolk News_. It was in Prince's
Street Chapel I first learned to realize how influential was the
Nonconformist public, of which I frankly admit in our little village,
with Churchmen all round, I had but a limited idea. It seemed to me that
we were rather a puny folk, but at Norwich, with its chapels and pastors
and people, I saw another sight. There was the Rev. John Alexander, with
an overflowing audience on the Sunday and an active vitality all the
week, now dining at the palace with the Bishop or breakfasting at Earlham
with the Gurneys, now meeting on terms of equality the literati of the
place (at that time Mrs. Opie was still living near the castle, and Mr.
Wilkins was writing his life of the far-famed Norwich doctor, the learned
and ingenious author of the 'Religio Medici'), now visiting the afflicted
and the destitute, now carrying consolation to the home of the mourner.
John Alexander was a man to whom East Anglian Nonconformity owes much.
In the old city there was a good deal of young intelligence, and a good
deal of it amongst the Noncons. Dr. Sexton was one of the Old Meeting
House congregation, as was Lucy Brightwell, a lady not unknown to the
present generation of readers. To a certain extent a Noncon. is bound to
be more or less intelligent. He finds a great State Establishment of
religion wherever he goes. It enjoys the favour of the Court. It is
patronized by the aristocracy. It enlists among its supporters all who
wish to rise in the world or to make a figure in society. By means of
the endowed schools of the land, it offers to the young, even of the
humblest birth, a chance of winning a prize. Conform, it says, and you
may be rich and respectable. It was said of a late Bishop of Winchester
that he would forgive a man anything so long as he were but a good
Churchman, and even now one meets in society with people who regard a
Dissenter as little better than a heathen or a publican. A man who can
thus voluntarily place himself at a disadvantage, to a certain extent,
must have exercised his intellect and be ready to give a reason for the
faith that is in him. Naturally, men are of the religion of the country
in which they are born--Roman Catholics in Italy, Mahometans in Turkey,
Buddhists in the East. It requires more power and strength of mind and
decision of character to dissent from the Church of the State than to
support it. 'How was it,' asked Dr. Storrar, Chairman of the Convocation
of the University of London, the other day, 'that the lads educated at
Mill Hill Grammar School had done so well at Cambridge and Oxford?' The
reply, said the Doctor, was--I don't give his words, merely the idea--to
be found in the fact that a couple of centuries ago there were men of
strong intellect and tender consciences who refused to renounce their
opinions at the command of a despotic power. They had been succeeded by
their sons with the same quickness of intellect and conscience.
Generations one after another had come and gone, and the children of
these old Nonconformists thus came to the school with an hereditary
intelligence, destined to win in the gladiatorship of the school, the
college, or the world.
Let me now give an anecdote of Dr. Bathurst, the Lord Bishop of Norwich,
too good to be lost. It is told by Sir Charles Leman, who described him
in 1839 as gradually converting his enemies into friends by his uniform
straightforwardness and enlarged Christian principle. One of his clergy,
who had been writing most abusively in newspapers, had on one occasion
some favour to solicit, which he did with natural hesitation. The Bishop
promised all in his power and in the kindest manner, and when the
clergyman was about to leave the room he suddenly turned with, 'My lord,
I must say, however, I much regret the part I have taken against you; I
see I was quite in the wrong, and I beg your forgiveness.' This was
readily accorded. 'But how was it,' the clergyman continued, 'you did
not turn your back on me? I quite expected it.' 'Why, you forget that I
profess myself a Christian,' was the reply.
Of a later Bishop--Stanley--whom I can well remember, a dark, energetic
little man, making a speech at Exeter Hall, we hear a little in Caroline
Fox's memories of old friends. In 1848 she writes: 'Dined very
pleasantly at the palace; the Bishop was all animation and good humour,
but too unsettled to leave any memorable impression. I like Mrs. Stanley
much--a shrewd, sensible, observing woman. She told me much about her
Bishop, how very trying his position was on first settling at Norwich;
for his predecessor was an amiable, indolent old man, who let things take
their course, and a very bad course too, all which the present man has to
correct as way opens, and continually sacrifice popularity to a sense of
right.'
The following anecdote of Miss Fox and her friends calling at a cottage
in the neighbourhood of Norwich is too good to be lost. 'A young woman,'
she writes, 'told us that her father was nearly converted, and that a
little more teaching would complete the business,' adding, 'He quite
believes that he is lost, which is, of course, a great consolation to the
old man.' That story is racy of the soil. It is in that way the East
Anglian peasantry who have any religion at all talk; they have no hope of
a man who does not feel that he is lost. Well, there are many ways to
heaven, and that must comfort some of us who still believe that man was
made in the image of his Maker, a little lower than the angels, crowned
with glory and honour, and not destined to an eternity of misery for the
sins of a day.