The coaching age ended, so far as Lynn was concerned, in 1847, when the East Anglian Railway, from Ely to Lynn, with branches to Dereham, Wisbeach, and Huntingdon, was opened. It was an unfortunate line, an amalgamation of three separate undertakings: the Lynn and Dereham, the Ely and Huntingdon, and the Lynn and Ely Railways. By its junction with the Eastern Counties, now the Great Eastern, at Ely, a through journey to London was first rendered possible. Three trains each way, instead of the twenty now running, were then considered sufficient for all needs. They were not, at that early date, either swift or dignified journeys, for engine-power was often insufficient, and it was a common thing for a train to be stopped for hours while engine-driver and stoker effected necessary repairs. It was then, and on those not infrequent occasions when trains ran by favour of the sheriff, accompanied by a "man in possession" and plastered with ignominious labels announcing the fact, that passengers lamented the coaches. The East Anglian Railway, indeed, like the Great Eastern, which swallowed it, had a very troubled early career.
Lynn in those early years of innovation still retained many of its old-world ways. It was a sleepy time, as Mr. Thew, who has written his reminiscences of it, testifies. For police the town possessed one old watchman, who bore the old East Anglian name of Blanchflower, and patrolled the streets "with one arm and a lantern." The posting of letters was then a serious business, calling for much patience, for you did not in those days drop them into a letter-box, but handed them through a window at which you knocked. When the clerk in charge, one John Cooper, had satisfied his official dignity and kept you waiting long enough, he was graciously pleased to open the window and receive the letters. The successor to this upholder of official traditions, was one Charles Rix, addicted to declaiming Shakespeare from his window.
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, LYNN.
The postmaster of Lynn at this easy-going time was Mr. Robinson Cruso, who also filled the miscellaneous occupations of auctioneer and estate agent, and wine and spirit merchant, and was a member of the Town Council. He was a descendant of an old Lynn family, many of whose representatives lie in the church of St. Nicholas. This Cruso (they spelled their name without the "e") was an upholsterer, and born ten years after Defoe's famous book was published; hence the "Robinson." There are still a number of the name in Norfolk and Suffolk.
XLVIII
We must now make an end. Of Lynn's long municipal history, of the treasures stored in its ancient Guildhall, of King John's disastrous journey from the town across the Wash; of many another stirring scene or historic pile this is not the place to speak. The Story of the Road is told, and, that being done, the task is completed; but it is not without regret that a place like Lynn, so rich in picturesque incident, is thus left. Many a narrow, cobbled lane, lined with quaint houses, calls aloud to be sketched; there, too, are the ancient Red Mount Chapel, in the lovely park-like "walks" that extend into the very heart of the town, and the ancient Greyfriars Tower to be noted; but Lynn has been, and will be again, the subject of a book entirely devoted to itself.
One pilgrimage, however, must be made ere these pages close: to Islington, four miles away on the Wisbeach road, for it is to that secluded place the sweet old ballad of the "Bailiff's Daughter of Islington" refers, and not to the better known "merry Islington" now swallowed up in London.
The ballad of the "Bailiff's Daughter" is of unknown origin. It is certainly three hundred years old, and probably much older; and has survived through all those centuries because of that sentiment of true love, triumphant over long years and distance and hard-hearted guardians, which has ever appealed to the popular imagination. Who was that Marshland bailiff and who the squire's son we do not know. It is sufficient to be told, in the lines of the sweet old song, that
"There was a youth, and a well belovèd youth,
And he was a Squire's son;
He loved the Bailiff's daughter dear
That lived at Islington."