"Ought country Banks to be encouraged in Great Britain"—A majority of more than two to one were of opinion that they ought not! This was in 1791.
There were, of course, topics of a more strictly controversial kind, bearing upon tithes, Church Establishment, Test Acts, &c., the discussion of which was natural enough to a body constituted as the Royston Book Club was, chiefly of Dissenting ministers and wealthy adherents in their congregations. I have, however, quoted enough to show that it was not merely a sectarian conventicle, but a forum for intellectual debate in its fullest sense. Upon this point the following three questions may be added:—
"Is there any foundation in fact for the popular Belief of Ghosts and Apparititions [sic]?—J. Phillips.—Y, 15; n, 26."
If fifteen men of education voted for the Ghosts can we wonder at the stronghold they had among the common people, and that it has taken the hundred years which have elapsed to get them generally disestablished?
"Whether Old Bachelors ought to be most pitied, envied or blamed?"—No verdict, probably the bachelors were in pretty full force and resented the liberty implied by the question!
"Whether Good Sense, with a deficiency of Good Temper, or Good Temper with a deficiency of Good Sense, be preferable in domestic life?—W. Nash.—12 in favour of Good sense, 14 Good Temper."
That the debates were often characterised by considerable freedom of thought and utterance is evident from other sources, as when the gifted young barrister of Bury St. Edmunds (Henry Crabb Robinson) by his outspoken sentiments in one of the debates, and admitted leanings to Godwin's philosophy, brought down the reproof from the great Robert Hall upon his friend Mr. William Nash, for receiving the young barrister of freedom of opinion on friendly terms into his family at Royston. But the family of the quiet and eminently respectable country lawyer appear to have had no cause to regret the enduring friendship of the brilliant young conversationalist, who afterwards became an intimate friend of Wordsworth, Southey the Laureate, and the Lake School, with Goethe, Madame de Staël, and many other great names in the world of letters and art, and even had the offer of the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Sax Weimar.
At such a time, however, these debates did make a good deal of stir, in fact "as the members were credited with holding what at that time were called dangerous principles, their meetings used to cause a great excitement in the place."
The peculiarity of these debates was the prevailing discussion of general principles. The region of practical politics for many of the coming questions was as yet almost half-a-century off, and having no effective means of influencing many matters which did, nevertheless, touch their daily lives very closely, they turned their attention inwards to the mental exercise of debating abstract questions of high philosophy and of morals.
The Book Club continued its meetings at the Green Man from 1761 until 1789, in which year it was "agreed to go to the Red Lyon," and from that time, during the remainder of the last and the earlier years of the present century, it continued to meet at the Red Lion, in the same room, curiously enough, which had accommodated the old Royston Club, and the two extremes of social and public life I have indicated, were in turn brought under the same roof! To many of the old habitués of the place under the older institution this use of their place of meeting by "traitors, republicans and levellers," as they would have called them, would have been little short of desecration, and that it was possible for two such institutions to have existed for some time at least side by side, can only be explained by the fact that one was an institution reflecting the prevailing belief of the town at that time, while the other brought together many of the county families of the old order.