The Wesleyan Methodists first appeared in Norwich in 1754, when the Revs. John and Charles Wesley visited the city, and the Rev. J. Wesley preached here for some time, and on leaving, appointed Mr. T. Oliver in his room. One of his successors was the Rev. R. Robinson, afterwards at Cambridge, who also preached for some time at the Tabernacle; and another was Dr. Adam Clarke, the learned Commentator, who was appointed in 1783, but left in 1785. Their first chapel was built in 1769, in Cherry Lane.
CHAPTER XIV.
Social State of the City from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries.
Before we proceed to chronicle the leading local events of the 18th century, it may not be altogether unprofitable to review briefly the social state of the city during some 300 or 400 years preceding. In doing this we may now and then have to advert to matters to which we have alluded already; but at the risk even of an occasional repetition, it will be worth while—in order to help our readers to appreciate subsequent improvements at their proper worth—to consider a little more minutely than we have yet done, the physical circumstances under which the citizens have lived in former centuries, and the various influences to which they have been subject.
A “Chapter of Horrors” might be written, descriptive of the plagues, pestilences, famines, floods, and fires, which devastated the city and county for 300 years. It would seem as if the darkness and gloom of the physical world corresponded at times with the superstitions and vices of the people. The dark ages were ages of terrible calamities, and England was then a terrible country to live in. Plagues and pestilences now and again desolated the whole land, and Norfolk and Norwich did not escape the ravages of diseases emphatically named the “Black Death.” Exaggerated accounts must have been given of the desolations caused by these various scourges, or else both city and county must have more than once lost the great part of their inhabitants.
Blomefield is responsible for very dark pictures indeed; but his statements, right or wrong, have been endorsed by later compilers of local history. We are told, by one writer, for instance, that:—
“In 1348, the plague, which had lately ravaged the greatest part of the known world, broke out in this city; wherein there died, according to the most credible accounts, within the space of twelve months, upwards of 57,000 persons, besides religious and beggars; and this will not appear very surprising, when we consider that in some places not one-fifth part of the people were left alive, and that Norwich was more populous at that time than it has ever been since. It then contained sixty churches, besides conventual ones, within the walls; and the large parishes of Heigham and Pockthorpe, and the large chapel of St. Mary Magdalene without them.”
Such is the astounding statement in a local history printed by John Crouse, in 1768. Where he got his “credible accounts” he does not say, and he moreover gives the statement of the Domesday Book, that in 1086, the city contained only 1565 burgesses; so that the population must have increased in 250 years to a most fabulous extent, for 57,000 persons to have died of the plague in 1348. In 1377, a census was taken of some large towns, and Norwich was then found to contain 5300 people. But in truth the number, 57,000, very probably applied to the whole diocese, for the same local history states:—
“This severe visitation was not confined to the city alone, but cruelly extended itself all over the diocese; so that in many monasteries and religious houses, there were scarce two out of twenty left alive. From the register book it appears that in the course of the year there were 863 institutions. The clergy dying so fast, that they were obliged to induct into livings numbers of youths who had but just received the tonsure.”
The register in question was, no doubt, one of the whole diocese.
In 1361 there happened a great dearth, attended by the plague; this was called the second pestilence. And on January 15th, in the same year, there arose so furious a storm of wind from the south west, as to throw down the tower of the cathedral, which falling on the choir demolished a great part of it. The storm raged violently for six or seven days, and was succeeded by a prodigious fall of rain, which occasioned incredible damage by inundations. Where the inundations occurred is not stated in the local history, but if in the city the damage must have been great indeed.