In the Hartopp Family.
Returning from Southampton, Isaac Watts entered the family of Sir John
Hartopp, the first of those two influential friends whose names will
always be associated with his own; it was October 15th, 1696, he being
then twenty-two years of age, when he went to reside with him. Within
the memory of some of the old inhabitants of Stoke Newington there stood
on the north side of Church Street the remains of a red brick house,
with large casement windows; once they were all handsomely painted,
and bore the arms of Fleetwood, Hartopp, and Cook. But no one of these
later generations saw that old mansion in all its original greatness.
In later years it came to be divided into houses, and parts of it
drifted down from the abode of statesmen to the boarding-school for
young ladies. Still it retained even to its close, traditionary relics
and reminiscences of the old days of its pride and importance. On the
ceilings of its principal rooms were the remains of the arms of the
Lord General Fleetwood; and in the upper part there was a little door
concealed by hangings, through which the persecuted Nonconformist passed
into a place of safety and concealment, in the days of Charles II. The
old house was built towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, so
that even at the period when it comes before our readers it was ancient.
It was purchased by Charles Fleetwood, Lord General of the army of the
Commonwealth, and under Cromwell one of the Council of State. It is quite
unnecessary here to dwell upon his transient importance and power; he was
one of the last of those remarkable men in that singular interregnum of
our history, and the very last after the resignation of Richard Cromwell
who held some of the shadows of the departed substance of greatness. He
spent the remainder of his days in the mansion of Stoke Newington before
his final departure for Bunhill Fields. To this place, in time succeeded
Sir John Hartopp, by his wife Elizabeth Fleetwood, a grand-daughter of
the General; and to this old red brick building, with its secret chambers
and armorial casements and ceilings, Isaac Watts came as a tutor in the
family.
Sir John Hartopp was not a mere city knight, and indeed city knighthoods
meant much more in those days than now. He was of an old Leicestershire
family of Dalby Parva, in the register books of which place the name
is written Hartrupte. The family was able to trace a very interesting
history back to the time of Richard II.; the baronetcy dated from the
time of James I., and the family received considerable honours from
Charles I., and, what is more to the purpose of the present memoir,
it was in his house that Richard Baxter planned, if he did not partly
write, “The Saint’s Everlasting Rest.” Sir John Hartopp, the friend of
Watts, was born at the commencement of the Civil Wars. In his early
youth the whole of his neighbourhood was alive with marchings and
counter-marchings. Buckminster was the place of the family residence,
and the steeple of the parish church was used as a watch-tower for
reconnoitring. The house was alive and perpetually on the guard against
the incursions of the Cavaliers. Sir Edward Hartopp, the first baronet,
died at the commencement of the Protectorate of Cromwell, and was buried
at Buckminster; his son, the father of Sir John, died a short time
previous to the Restoration, and about this time we find the family
removed to London and settled at Stoke Newington. Sir John became an
eminent Nonconformist; as he cast in his lot among the Independents,
he was a member of the Church of Dr. Owen, with whom he maintained a
very close and intimate friendship; and there is in the library of the
New College, in St. John’s Wood, a volume of the sermons of Owen, very
carefully written down after hearing them, copied, probably for use in
the family, in Sir John’s handwriting. Many of Dr. Owen’s manuscripts
came into his possession upon his decease, and were contributed by him to
the complete collection of the Doctor’s sermons.
Sir John Hartopp was an ardent and active patriot. He was three times
chosen representative for his native county of Leicestershire. In 1671 he
was high sheriff, and he afterwards distinguished himself by his earnest
advocacy of the Bill of Exclusion to bar the Duke of York’s succession
to the throne. He became the subject of much persecution, and paid in
fines apparently the larger portion of £7,000. He died in 1722, when the
affairs of the nation had long, through the active exertions of such
men as he was, settled themselves into comparative tranquillity and
prosperity. Watts preached in his memory his sermon “On the Happiness
of Separate Spirits made Perfect,” and he dwells at some length upon
certain personal characteristics, from which we gather that Sir John
was an accomplished man, with a taste for universal learning, and the
pursuit of knowledge in various forms—mathematics in his younger days,
and astronomy in his old age; keeping alive his early knowledge of Greek
for an intelligent acquaintance with the New Testament, and so late in
life as at the age of fifty entering upon the study of Hebrew. His house
became the refuge of the oppressed, while by some happy disposition
of Providence he himself was saved from those more severe and painful
persecutions to which so many were not only exposed but subjected. His
ardent attachment to Dr. Owen assures us of the temper and character of
his religious convictions, and altogether he shines out before us as one
of those beautiful and luminous examples and illustrations of the men to
whom our country owes so much. So far as we can gather from what is left
on record of him, he appears to have been a true Christian gentleman,
a fine harmonious combination of characteristics blending in him the
severity of high principle with a gentle and tenderly affectionate nature.
Sir John Hartopp, as we have seen, became by marriage connected with
the family of Cromwell; he married Elizabeth, one of the daughters of
the Lord General Fleetwood, and his sister married a son of the old
general—thus there was a double connection. When Fleetwood’s house
was first built in the village of Stoke Newington it must have been
a stately mansion. In his day it was probably divided, and had all
the characteristics of the old mansions of the earlier part of the
seventeenth century. Hither the General retired after the Restoration,
and here, singularly enough, he was permitted to pass his days in
tranquil obscurity. He died while Watts was studying at the adjoining
academy. Watts no doubt knew the old Ironside, for he was on terms of
close intimacy with his son, Smith Fleetwood. Such were some of the
collateral connections of the Hartopp family. And there was another. Sir
Nathaniel Gould, to whom Watts inscribes a poem, who married Frances,
the daughter of Sir John and Lady Hartopp. Such was the circle in which
it appears he moved to and fro with a pleasant and indulged affability.
All of these people were members of the church over which Dr. Owen had
presided, and of which Watts was hereafter, and shortly, to be minister.
It was no doubt owing to the intimacy he sustained with all these
eminent persons, that he by-and-bye received the invitation to become
their pastor, in which relation he preached a funeral sermon, as we have
seen, for Sir John, so also for Lady Hartopp, and Lady Gould, of whom he
remarks, “I would copy a line from that most beautiful elegy of David,
and apply it here with more justice than the Psalmist could to Saul and
Jonathan, ‘Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives, and in their
death they were not divided,’ silent were they and retired from the
world, and unknown except to their intimate friends; humble they were
and averse to public show and noise, nor will I disturb their graves by
making them the subject of public praise.”
It was a house full of daughters and two sons. Two had already gone
to the family vault, and one—born the year of Watts’ entrance into
the family—was soon to follow. But there were nine daughters in the
household; of these two had died before the days of Watts’ residence,
seven survived; these were Helen, and Mary, and Martha, and Elizabeth,
and a second Anne, and Bridget, and Dorothy, and Frances. Was Watts their
tutor? It was a dangerous neighbourhood for a young man, amidst all those
bright glances and radiant young faces in the Puritan household; perhaps
the danger had been greater had there been fewer of them. Fancy indulges
herself in picturing the life of the young student there. As we have
seen, Frances married Sir Nathaniel Gould, and died in 1711, six days
after her mother, Lady Hartopp. The other six daughters all lived and
died unmarried in the family home. How solitary, one thinks, the last of
that bright circle must have felt, dying there in 1764, sixty-two years
after Watts first took up his abode among them.
Isaac Watts entered the family as the tutor of the future baronet, and
many of those pieces which he afterwards gave to the world were the
productions of this time, many of his “Miscellaneous Thoughts,” the
chief portions of his “Logic,” and probably much of his “Improvement
of the Mind.” We have said already he furnishes, like John Calvin and
some others, an instance of a singular prematurity of intelligence, not
however interfering, as is so frequently the case, with future eminence,
usefulness, and advancement.
Here, then, was for some time Watts’ home. He studied hard and
diligently, drawing forth and putting into shape the results of previous
years of scholarship. Behind the house there were extensive gardens and
remarkably fine trees, and especially a noble cedar, said to have been
planted by General Fleetwood, concerning which Robinson tells a singular
story: That long years ago a scythe had been hung up in the fork of the
tree, and was left there unnoticed and untouched until years after it
was discovered, the body of the tree having completely overgrown it and
enclosed the blade so fast that it could not be removed. “And,” says
Robinson, “it is at this day to be seen, the point of the blade on the
one side, and the end on the other.”[8]
The young man to whom Watts was tutor died at the age of thirty-five.
He had succeeded his father in the baronetcy. Watts had given to him a
noble training. Upon the publication of his “Logic” it was dedicated
to him, and the writer reminds him that it had been prepared for him
to assist his early studies. Some of the most animating verses in the
“Lyrics” are addressed to him, and many other scholastic pieces also
were prepared for his pupil while residing at Stoke Newington. Amidst
the shades of its trees were written many of those essays so pleasing
to read now, his “Miscellaneous Thoughts” and “Juvenile Relics.” Here
the young man was indeed training himself as well as teaching his pupil,
when we remember that many, if not most, of his hymns had already been
written at Southampton, and that his “Institutes of Logic” and his whole
method of thought were matured and written here; truly he appears to
have been an industrious athlete. Neither egotism nor egoism seems to
shadow his studies by any morbid self-consciousness, or any wondering
dreams as to what his future destiny might be. He appears to have been
one to whom faith and duty were sufficient. He had found his Saviour, and
he believed; he had his work to do, and he wrought at it like a living
conscience. By-and-by he left the old house which had yet a singular
history. His pupil was very wealthy, and he appears to have given during
his life, and to have left upon his death a maintenance, with the family
mansion, to his six maiden sisters. There they lived, and there they
died; and it is remarkable, as has been already said, that one of them
died in 1764, aged eighty-one, ninety years, as the church register
shows, after the death of a young sister in 1674, the year in which Watts
was born; this, we may be sure, was throughout his life one of the houses
he would frequently revisit, and renew his impressions of youthful days
amidst its elm and cedar shades. Gradually all the members of the family
dropped away, each in turn gathered one by one, till one and all were
re-united in the vaults of Stoke Newington Church. But we are stepping on
too fast for our life of Watts, whose more obvious and active career was
all before him yet.
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