THE PALACE AND WOLSEY
Very effective must the grouping of minster and palace have been before
the latter was suffered to sink into decay; and even now its dismantled
walls and gables, clad in ivy and moss and lichen, add considerably to
the picturesqueness of the scene. The only building near the church--it
lies on the south side--a walk of some twenty to five-and-twenty yards
would take the archbishops from their postern or garden gate to the
south transept door. Its plan is best described as a quadrangle with
battlemented walls and round turrets at intervals for defence. In
the valuation made in the sixteenth century it is called “a goodelie
Mansion House of the Bishoppe builded of timber and stone, and the most
of stone, adjoynenge to the Collegiat Churche there wiche House is
well and sufficientlie repayred.” On the side remote from the church
was a small park, now fields, and traces of the fish pond are clearly
visible; and three larger parks belonging to the archbishops were in
the neighbourhood.
The State apartments were to the east, the living rooms to the south,
the offices to the north, and the chapel and great hall were on the
north side adjoining the churchyard. It is difficult to fix the exact
spot where the different rooms were situated, but on the east side the
great window near the church belonged to the chapel, and that at the
other end to the library. The remains belong to two distinct periods,
for some roll mouldings and other work show that part of the walls, the
buttresses, and the lower part of the chimneys are of the fourteenth
century; and Dugdale is probably correct in telling us that Archbishop
Thoresby, a prelate of taste and munificence, built a new palace about
1360. The great windows and the upper part of the chimneys belong
to a later time, and are perhaps due to that magnificent prelate,
Cardinal John Kempe, whose arms of three corn sheaves (in allusion
to his father, a husbandman of Rye in Sussex), supported by an angel,
are still preserved in the walls. The great hall is usually ascribed
to Kempe, but experts date the chimney earlier. Some very interesting
carved stonework has been inserted in the wall opposite the church.
Its decay dates from the Civil War. Archbishop Williams fled into Wales
and died there. The royal garrison inflicted grave injury, and no later
archbishop repaired it. A private dwelling-house was built inside the
walls; the hall became the local session-house, and the site of the
offices first a bowling-green, and then a garden. Dr Trollope, bishop
suffragan of Nottingham, purchased the freehold from the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners, and commenced a partial restoration with the intention
that it should once again become the residence of the bishop of the
diocese, but in this he failed. It now belongs to the bishopric of
Southwell; and Dr Ridding has made additional restorations.
It has been seen that Alfric Puttoc, Gerard, Corbridge and the two
Booths died here, as did Sandys afterwards; and the more doubtful
Aldred (1069) and Godfrey de Ludham (1266) are also cited. Where some
of the archbishops died and were buried is so uncertain that it is not
surprising to find York and Southwell both mentioned. And even Robert
Holgate, who died in 1556, is assigned to Southwell, though, as he had
been deprived and was in disgrace, this is not likely.[29] The one
archbishop who has made the greatest mark in the history of the whole
roll is also the one whose movements at Southwell are the best known.
With Wolsey as “perhaps the greatest political genius whom England has
ever produced,” Southwell has nothing to do. He was Archbishop of York
as he was Bishop of Winchester and Abbot of St. Albans, and held other
preferments, in order to support his great state out of the multiplied
revenues. He never set foot in his diocese until after his fall, and
the manner of his coming was in this wise:
As the king’s Prime Minister, his arrogance had angered the nobles, his
taxes the people, his mode of life, setting “the clergy ill example,”
had weakened his prestige, and the affair of Anne Boleyn was his ruin.
On the adjournment of the special court, he repaired with Campeggio
to Grafton in Northamptonshire (19th Sept. 1529). Henry received him
graciously; but Wolsey knew how the king had been prejudiced against
him, for no preparations had been made for him, and was resolved on
retiring from politics. Supping that night with the Lords of the
Council, the following conversation was held:--
_Wolsey_--It were well done if the king would send his chaplains and
bishops to their cures and benefices.
_Norfolk_--Yea, marry, and so it were for you, too.
_Wolsey_--I would be contented therewith very well, if it were the
king’s pleasure to grant me licence, with his favour, to go to my
benefice of Winchester.
_Norfolk_--Nay, to your benefice of York, where consisteth your
greatest honour and charge.
_Wolsey_--Even as it shall please the king.
Farnham would have been too near Windsor to suit his enemies: and he
was not even allowed to retire quietly to York, while his son, Thomas
Wynter, was compelled to resign his stall of Norwell Overhall and his
other preferments.
Almost persecuted to death, and stripped of everything but his
archbishopric, Wolsey was at length suffered to go north, and reached
Southwell on the Thursday after Low Sunday 1530. As the palace required
repairs, he occupied the house of a non-resident prebendary for five
weeks until Whitsuntide. He was then sixty years old.
A pamphlet published six years later, quoted by Bishop Creighton, gives
an interesting account of the way he discharged his duties.
“Who was less beloved in the north than my lord cardinal before he
was amongst them? Who better beloved after he had been there awhile?
He gave bishops a right good example how they might win men’s hearts.
There were few holy days but he would ride five or six miles from his
house, now to this parish, now to that, and there cause one or other
of his doctors to make a sermon unto the people. He sat amongst them,
and said mass before all the parish; he saw why churches were made;
he began to restore them to their right and proper use; he brought
his dinner with him, and bade divers of the parish to it. He inquired
whether there were any debate or grudge between any of them. If there
were, after dinner he sent for the parties to the church and made them
all one.” George Cavendish, his gentleman usher, speaks to a similar
effect of his kindness to rich and poor, and his endeavours to patch
up quarrels. “He made many agreements and concords between gentleman
and gentleman, and between some gentlemen and their wives that had
been long asunder and in great trouble, and divers other agreements
between other persons; making great assemblies for the same purpose,
and feasting of them, not sparing for any costs, where he might make a
peace and amity; which purchased him much love and friendship in the
country.” The Whitsuntide of 1530 must have offered an exceedingly
brilliant spectacle; for people would come from far and near, not only
to attend the procession and synod, but to get a glimpse of the once
all-powerful cardinal in his fallen estate.
Cavendish relates that on the night of the Wednesday after Whitweek
he had just fallen asleep when he was disturbed by a message that two
travellers were at the gate demanding an instant interview with the
archbishop from the king. He went down, and found Brereton, a gentleman
of the privy chamber, and Wrotherly, and directed the porter to admit
them into his lodge.
When Cavendish had aroused Wolsey, the king’s emissaries had their
interview in the latter’s private dining-room. “After long talk they
took out of a male a certain coffer covered with green velvet, and
bound with bars of silver and gilt, with a lock of the same, having
a key which was gilt, with the which they opened the same chest; out
of the which they took a certain instrument or writing, containing
more than one skin or parchment, having many great seals hanging at
it, whereunto they put more wax for my lord’s seal; the which my lord
sealed with his own seal, and subscribed his name to the same.” This
document was either a transfer to the king of some property that had
escaped forfeiture, or of the French king’s pension, which Henry was
determined to have. The messengers were refreshed with wine and cold
meat, and went away directly afterwards, refusing Wolsey’s offer of
a bed, and grumbling to themselves because he only gave them four
sovereigns each, which, says Cavendish, was more than he could then
afford. The next day, Corpus Christi, in spite of his night’s rest
having been disturbed, Wolsey sang high mass in the minster. He left
Southwell at the end of the summer for Scrooby and Cawood. He had
intended to be enthroned in York minster, but was arrested before the
day fixed for the ceremonial. He died at Leicester Abbey on November
30th the same year.
=The Beginning of the Reformation.=--In 1540 the chapter, wisely
advised, surrendered their estates to the king. Things went on just
as before, until by a special Act (Private Acts, 33 Henry VIII. c.
10) it was provided that the church and chapter shall stand in the
same perfect state “as it was or stood the first day of June in the
32nd yere of the reigne of our sovereign lord the king, or at anie
time before, and shall remaine, continue and be for ever, a perfecte
bodie corporate.” It was declared to be the head and mother church of
the town and county of Notts, and everything was returned. Henry had
no political objection to establishments like Southwell: they did not
support the authority of the Pope in the way the abbeys did. In sparing
the chapter, some say the king was influenced by Cranmer, a native of
the county; others that the leading men of the county pleaded, while
an inscription in the nave gives the credit to Archbishop Lee. The
changes made were the abolition of the papal authority, the omission of
the Pope’s name in the service books, and the reciting of the Litany
in English, with one chapter in English from the Old Testament, and
another from the New; and in these changes everyone acquiesced.
A bishopric of Southwell, with jurisdiction over Notts and Derby,
was actually projected at this time, with Dr Richard Cox (afterwards
Bishop of Ely) as the _private first_ prelate of the new see. The old
endowments, with some fresh additions, altogether valued at £1003 per
annum, were set aside for this purpose. But it was not to be; either
the extravagance of Henry or the rapacity of his courtiers prevented
the allocation of any of the confiscated church lands; and Southwell
was destined to wait and become one of the Victorian bishoprics.
=The First Interregnum.=--In the autumn of 1545 the first Chantries Act
was passed (37 Henry VIII. c. 4), by the provisions of which not only
chantries but colleges were conferred upon the king in order to pay the
debts his extravagance had contracted. The Court of Augmentations,
to which was entrusted the alienation of the different estates, left
Southwell alone, as the list of 1547 shows that the prebendaries and
other clergy were in the full enjoyment of their benefices. But a
similar Act passed at the beginning of Edward VI.’s reign involved the
whole of the Southwell properties; and the chapter became moribund.
Some of the clergy were pensioned; but vested interests were not
generally recognised. On the petition of the parishioners, the minster
was continued as the parish church; and the sacrist prebendary, John
Adams, was made vicar of Southwell at a stipend of £20 a year, with his
vicar-choral, Matthew Fort, and the old parish vicar, Robert Salwyne,
as “assistants to the cure,” with £5 a year each.
=The Restoration of the Chapter=.--The greater part of the property
had been obtained by Northumberland, Lady Jane Grey’s father-in-law,
and afterwards went to John Beaumont, Master of the Rolls. By an Act
of 1557 this property reverted to the Crown in payment of Beaumont’s
debts. What follows is very much of a mystery, but some of the
prebendaries went back: and an action was brought against them in the
Court of Exchequer for trespass. The judgment delivered was remarkable;
it was decided that the Private Act exempted the chapter from the
later Chantry Acts of Henry and Edward. The simplest explanation is
that suggested by Mr Leach: Mary wished to restore the chapter and the
church lands, and the action at law was collusive.
Shortly after Mary died, and during the reign of Elizabeth this
decision of the Court of Exchequer was upheld in the numerous suits
brought by the chapter to recover different fragments of their estates.
Eventually almost the whole were recovered. The vicars-choral were
reduced to six, of whom one was to be parish vicar and a second the
master of the Grammar School. The chantry priests were abolished, their
property being retained by the chapter, and their house let on lease in
various tenements; but provision was made for the priests, and a lease
of 1574 stipulates for the life interest in their respective lodgings
of the two who still remained. Being illiterate, they had been unable
to find other preferment, and with a pension of £4 and the use of their
old rooms they were mercifully allowed to spend the rest of their
lives where they had formerly served.
Archbishop Sandys (1577-1589) was held in high esteem by the queen, and
was constantly consulted by her. As he had to organise both diocese
and province, as well as attend the council, Southwell was his most
central palace, and there he made his home. Through his instrumentality
a fresh body of statutes was drawn up. Provisions were made for divine
worship three times a day, for study and preaching, and one of the
canons was to deliver at least two theological lectures in English
during the week. The prebendaries were to preside in turn, and were to
elect a vicar-general from amongst themselves. This officer exercised
all jurisdiction over the peculiar not specifically reserved for the
chapter or the residentiary. But as the chapter had no permanent chief,
and no means were provided for enforcing residence, the statute became
a dead letter, and the vicars-choral, or minor canons as they came to
be called, were promoted by the chapter to benefices in their gift, and
also became pluralists.
King James passed through Southwell on his accession, travelling from
Scotland to London, and was greatly astonished at finding so large
a church in so small a town. When a member of his suite pointed out
that he had just seen two larger ones in Durham and York, the king
answered peevishly in his Scotch accent, “Vary weel, vary weel, but by
my blude this kirk shall justle with York or Durham, or any kirk in
Christendom.” It may have been the impression derived from his visit,
when the chapter greeted him with a loyal address, which caused him
to issue letters-patent, confirming the chapter in their disputed
estates, and so putting an end to the incessant, if always successful,
legislation.
=The Saracen’s Head and Charles I=.--Situated at the junction of the
roads from Mansfield, Newark, and Nottingham, this famous inn was
conveyed by Archbishop Arundel to John Fysher in 1396. It is so covered
with plaster that it is impossible to assign any date to the building;
but it appears never to have been rebuilt, only repaired from time
to time. The east side faces the street, and with the outbuildings
surrounds a courtyard, entered under an archway with oaken doors.
Internally it contains long rambling passages; but the great point of
attraction is the coffee-room in which Charles I. is traditionally
said to have given himself up to the Scotch army. It is two rooms
thrown into one; the ceiling is papered, but the wainscotting remains
on the walls; and although the windows have been altered, the old
settles beneath are left. The long passage over the archway leads to
the King’s Room, also two thrown into one, in which Bishop Selwyn
passed a night, and composed some halting rhymes. The inn is associated
with the Whitsuntide feasts, and with supposed royal visits from Edward
I. and Edward III., who were more likely to have rested at the palace.
It is a typical old posting-house; and there is no reason whatever to
doubt the story that Charles here, as distinct from the palace, met the
Scotch commissioners, as it has been handed down uninterruptedly.
In the spring of 1646 the affairs of the king were desperate; and on
23rd March he sent a message through Montreuil, the French “resident
in Scotland,” for the leaders of the Scotch army. Montreuil was at
Southwell, and the army was besieging the royalist castle of Newark.
Charles hoped that as the Scotch feared the length to which matters
were tending, he could more easily make terms with them than with the
Parliamentary party. On the evening of 26th April he misled his council
by telling them that he was going to London to treat; and at three in
the morning, accompanied by Ashburnham and his chaplain, Dr Hudson,
and disguised as Ashburnham’s servant, with hair and beard trimmed,
secretly left Oxford.
The forlorn monarch at one time entertained the idea of escaping by
sea from Lynn; but this was abandoned; and Hudson went to Montreuil
at Southwell to urge him to get conditions from the Scotch that would
satisfy the king. Turning westward the king reached Stamford on the
evening of 3rd May; and staying there, still in disguise, he set out on
the night of the 4th, and reached the Saracen’s Head at Southwell at
7 A.M. on the morning of 5th May, where he was received by Montreuil.
At Southwell, says Mr S.R. Gardiner, “he fancied himself a guest; but
the days of his captivity had in fact begun.” The negotiations which
followed may best be described as a game at bluff, Lothian (on the part
of the Scotch) and the king each trying to overreach the other; and
when Charles finally gave himself up, Montreuil and the Scotch alike
believed him pledged to Presbyterianism, while Charles fully trusted
that his life and person were safe. The same day he was removed to
Kelham Hall, where David Leslie, the commander of the army, had his
headquarters. The action of the king in giving himself up was a
complete surprise for the Scotch leaders, who wrote to the Parliament
from Southwell that it made them feel like men in a dream.
Bishop Selwyn is wrong in supposing that Charles slept in the king’s
room: unless he there took such necessary rest as he was able after his
arrival; but just as likely he made use of Montreuil’s bedroom, which
appears to have been the back part of the present coffee-room. Neither
is there anything to show that he slept there the previous year after
Naseby, when “he wandered helplessly in search of fresh forces.” That
he did stay at the Saracen’s Head, however, seems certain. The palace
was already in a state of dilapidation, and Charles still in disguise
as Ashburnham’s servant. No house was in itself more likely; and the
account dates from the time. As he passed under the archway of the
hostelry with Lothian and his Scotch escort to the Kelham road, he was
but beginning the initial stage of that sad journey which was to end
only on the scaffold at Whitehall, and convert the life-story of this
able but untrustworthy sovereign into the most pathetic of any king in
English history.
=The Second Interregnum=.--During the Civil War and the Commonwealth
the prebendaries were compelled to vacate their stalls and seek
refuge where they could: the usual services were prohibited, and a
great deal of injury inflicted on the statues both outside and in. A
warrant was issued to pull down the nave and all parts not actually
required for worship. Edward Cludd, who had purchased Normanton Park,
a man of influence in the Parliamentary party, saved the building from
demolition. He was a justice of the peace, and celebrated marriages
under an oak in his park, that was called after him. He lived to see
the restoration, and was buried in the church. When the chapter was
restored in 1660, nearly all the stalls were found to be vacant, and
the king filled most of them up by royal mandate without waiting for
the new archbishop.
On the fifth of November 1711, a storm, with thunder and lightning,
passed over the town, accompanied by a high west wind. The conical roof
of the south-west tower took fire, and the flames spread, injuring
the roof of the nave. It spread along the nave to the central tower,
melting the bells, and destroying the organ. Beyond this the annals of
the church and town possess little or nothing further of interest.
In 1780 the buildings in the Vicars’ Court were pulled down, and the
present houses erected in their place. The large one at the end was for
the prebendary in residence; and the two on either side for four of the
minor canons; the parish vicar and Grammar School master being provided
for elsewhere. Four years later Booth’s chapel was pulled down, and the
Grammar School removed to the old house of the chantry priests, where
the red brick building now stands.
One prebendary (in residence for three months every four years), and
even that frequently by proxy, was considered sufficient, and so
continued to the end.
=Some distinguished Prebendaries=.--Some members of the chapter, after
the Reformation, became distinguished, and are deserving of notice.
=Lancelot Andrewes= (North Muskham, 1589-99) is still remembered for
his Sermons, Devotions, and Manual for the Sick. At the same time
that he held his Southwell stall, he held another at Westminster,
and was master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He afterwards became
Dean of Westminster, and in succession Bishop of Chichester, Ely, and
Winchester. On the death of Bancroft, the bishops met and agreed to
recommend Andrewes for the primacy; but he was passed over in favour
of a far inferior man, George Abbot, owing to the Scotch favourites
that had the ear of King James. Andrewes was the first preacher of
his day, though the puns in his sermons would excite the laughter of
a modern congregation. He was looked up to for his high character;
and in learning and administrative ability ranked higher than any of
his brother prelates, and was renowned as a controversialist against
Bellarmine. He found time to keep his residence at Southwell, and
became attached to it. Some of his family settled there, but died out
in the eighteenth century.
The other prebendary who calls for notice owes his name and fame to
different circumstances altogether.
=William Mompesson= (Normanton, 1671-1709) was a son of the rector of
Eakring, and was living at Southwell at the time Monk passed through on
his way from Scotland. The year after the plague he was vicar of the
lonely parish of Eyam, to the north of Bakewell, in the Derbyshire
Peak. In the April of 1666 the contagion was conveyed to Eyam in some
patterns of tailors’ cloth, and rapidly spread. His wife urged him to
leave, but he declined; and she remained, their infant son and daughter
being sent to Barnburgh Rectory, in Yorkshire, a Southwell benefice
held by a relative. Mompesson proposed to the Earl of Devonshire to be
responsible for no parishioner crossing the parish boundary, provided
that food was left at stated places. This arrangement was faithfully
carried out, and the contagion did not spread to any other village.
Mompesson, wisely abandoning the church, held the services on Sundays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays, underneath a curiously-formed rock hard by,
that is still pointed out. His wife died--there is a monument to her
in the churchyard,--and no less than four-fifths of the people. A new
burying-ground had to be marked out in the heath above the village
before the cold weather of late autumn finally stopped the ravages
of the pest. There can be no doubt that the influence and devotion
of this one man isolated the plague, and kept it strictly confined
to the one small village. Archbishop Sterne gave him the well-earned
stall of Normanton; and the chapter elected him their vicar-general.
He succeeded his father at Eakring, and was buried there, refusing the
deanery of Lincoln.
The virulence of the pest at Eyam may be gathered from the fact that,
ninety-one years later, five labourers, digging on the extemporised
burial-ground, contracted a putrid fever, of whom three died, as well
as other parishioners. The infant son, who was removed from Eyam,
became prebendary of Oxton and Cropwell, and succeeded his father as
vicar-general. It is to be regretted that this name is now extinct in
the county.
A number of other prebendaries rose to high preferment. =Matthew
Hutton=, like Andrewes, a master of Pembroke college, became Archbishop
of York in the reign of Elizabeth. In the next century =Robert Snowden=
became in succession bishop of Carlisle, Bristol, and Chichester;
=John Jegon= obtained Norwich, and made his brother Thomas (also a
prebendary) archdeacon and canon residentiary in his diocese; =Robert
Sanderson=, a noted casuist, and one of the few prebendaries who
survived the Civil War, was appointed to the throne of Lincoln at
the Restoration; and =William Jackson=, after holding Dunham for
thirty-two years, was Bishop of Oxford in 1812. We now come to a more
distinguished inhabitant.
=The Burgage Manor House and Byron=.--Byron is always interesting,
and an account of his connection with Southwell may be useful. On her
son’s accession to the title and estates, Mrs Byron was too poor to
afford to live at Newstead, which was let; and after staying for a time
at Nottingham and other places, in 1804 she took the Burgage Manor
House at Southwell--the white house on the green coming up from the
station. Here Byron came first from Harrow for the summer holidays of
this year, at the age of sixteen. In 1805 he went to Trinity College,
Cambridge, and was generally at Southwell during the vacations up to
June 1807, after which we have no more traces of him. Lord Stratford
de Redcliffe saw him in the Eton and Harrow match of 1805, on the old
Dorset Square Lord’s Ground, and afterwards described him to Tennyson
as big for his years and moody-looking, and remembered to have seen
him, “bat in hand, limp back to the Pavilion, having just lost his
wicket, and evidently not over-pleased.” At Southwell, the future poet
played cricket and bathed in the Greet, and, accompanied by John Pigot,
made a visit to Harrogate with his two dogs “Nelson” and “Boatswain.”
He would have been happy enough but for the usual quarrels with his
mother, in one of which, to escape the poker, he took refuge in flight,
keeping his address secret from Mrs Byron. While in hiding from her, he
wrote to young Pigot: “Without doubt the dames of Southwell reprobate
the pernicious example I have shown, and tremble lest their _babes_
should disobey their mandates, and quit their mammas on any grievance.”
But so far from blaming him, Southwell took his side, and in spite of
constitutional shyness he was a decided favourite.
Not only the young medical student, John Pigot, but his sister
Elizabeth, attracted Byron; and although the affection never ripened
into a passion, Miss Chaworth was too recent--the young lady had the
rare knack of overcoming his shyness, and in the Pigots’ house he felt
at home, and went in and out as he pleased. One day Miss Pigot happened
to read something of Burns to him, and in the talk that followed was
surprised to find that Byron also composed verse. He recited to her
the two short pieces to be found at the beginning of the “Hours of
Idleness,” “In thee I fondly hoped to clasp,” and “When to this airy
hall”; and shortly afterwards, urged partly by his friend and partly
by his own budding ambition, commissioned Ridge of Newark to print a
hundred copies of his juvenile efforts, which was duly done in November
1806. Miss Pigot lived some forty years after her friend’s death, and
is still well remembered. His letters to her (including the earliest
published) are in Moore’s life; and she is the Eliza of his youthful
verse.
Another friend, nearly twenty years his senior, was the Rev. John
Thomas Becher, already incidentally referred to in treating of the nave
transepts. He was a son of the vicar-general, and afterwards succeeded
his father. Byron presented Becher first with a copy of his little
volume; and the result was remarkable. His friend, after reading the
verses, initiated a discussion carried on in verse; and so unfavourable
was Becher’s criticism, that the whole, with the exception of one or
two copies which could not be recalled, were that same night committed
to the flames. Many of them reappeared in “Hours of Idleness” the next
year; and all, or nearly all, eventually in the complete editions of
his works published by Murray. Mr Becher advised his friend to study
the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton, and not to waste his time in
devouring the current light literature. He also urged him, but without
success, to cultivate the county magnates, and to mix more in general
society. Byron’s answer may be found in the “Hours of Idleness.” In
reality, the lord of Newstead was too proud and too shy to mix freely
with the county world without making what he thought a sufficient
display. Thomas Moore regretted that the young genius was so soon
removed from Mr Becher’s influence; and expressed the opinion that, had
he remained longer at Southwell, his after-life might have been free
from vice.
In writing the “Hours of Idleness” he kept late hours. His first visit
in the morning was to Miss Pigot, to whom he read the production of the
previous night. He then went on to the Bechers’ and other houses. His
evenings were given by preference to the Pigots, and he and Miss Pigot
were accustomed to play and sing together such songs as the “Maid of
Lodi.” Among his verses with a local tinge are some lines addressed to
Miss Houson, who was alarmed one day at the sound of a bullet he had
fired in his mother’s garden; the prologue to some private theatricals,
a “Reply” to his friend, John Pigot; and the often-quoted punning
epitaph on the drunken carrier. When he was seriously ill, and wrote
his “Adieu,” he referred to the Greet--
Streamlet! along whose rippling surge
My youthful limbs were wont to urge,
At noontide heat, their pliant course;
Plunging with ardour from the shore,
Thy springs will lave these limbs no more,
Deprived of active force.
But the associations of the minster failed to make any impression on
him; and the subject is ignored alike in his verse and letters. The
silly affectation with which he bemoaned the quietness and dulness
of the town has been constantly quoted; what he really thought was
something quite different, and is conveyed in a letter to a friend
named Dallas, written in 1811, whom he advised to settle there.
“Now, I know a large village, or small town, about twelve miles off
[Newstead Abbey] where your family would have the advantage of very
genteel society, without the hazard of being annoyed by mercantile
affluence; where _you_ would meet with men of information and
independence; and where I have friends to whom I should be proud to
introduce you. There are, besides, a coffee-room, assemblies, etc.
etc., which bring people together. My mother had a house there for some
years, and I am well acquainted with the economy of Southwell, the name
of this little commonwealth.”[30]