Among the great judges few take a higher place than Lord Thurlow. Scarcely anyone could inspire such fear by the mere force of his personality than he. Whether in the House of Lords, when he crushed the Duke of Grafton, who twitted him with being a novus homo; or in the law courts; or at his own table in private life, where, in his old age, he could make the greatest wits of the day retire in discomfiture, he shewed himself an antagonist to be dreaded. Yet, as Crabbe attests, under that rough exterior beat a kind heart.
Not only the genius of Nelson, the son of a Norfolk Rector, as well as the moral failure which cast a stain on the unparalleled lustre of his name, may be traceable to his native soil. Even to-day there is one to whom England looks with confidence, though his stern practical ability inspires but little affection, among whose proud and well-deserved titles is the name of his mother’s home, an out-of-the-way Suffolk village; for on entering the peerage Earl Kitchener assumed the style of Baron Kitchener of Khartoum and Aspal.[11]
The force of character which produces great men is certain almost to manifest itself for evil also, and we recognise the truth of much of Crabbe’s stern realism in the characters to which he introduces us. As Dr. Jessop, a singularly acute observer of the Norfolk villager, points out, the criminal annals of East Anglia disclose outbursts of remarkable ferocity on the part of its inhabitants. Side by side with this vindictive spirit is a proneness to superstition, generally of a gloomy character. Aldeburgh has records of many portents and apparitions in its annals; nowhere was the witch finder more active than in Suffolk; and, even in the later half of the nineteenth century, a woman suspected of being a witch was done to death in the neighbouring county of Essex. We have seen in Crabbe how what was then called “enthusiasm” in religion drove more than one of his characters into a despair of gloom. Not that there was not a great deal of genuine piety: the churches of East Anglia are the glory of the countryside, and many of the most magnificent are due to the liberality of its traders and manufacturers in the days when it was one of the industrial centres of English life. Indeed, it may not be merely local vanity which explains the contemptuous epithet “silly” as carrying with it not a slight but a compliment—the word being used in its older sense as the equivalent of the German selig, “pious.” Nowhere did the Reformation obtain a stronger hold than in the diocese of Norwich; and its roll of Protestant martyrs in the reign of Mary was exceptionally large. Forcefulness for good or evil, superstition, and genuine piety all play their part in the story I am now about to ask you to consider. The popularity in Suffolk of the life of Margaret Catchpole—though the literary merit of the book is not great—is a testimony that her tale strikes a sympathetic chord to this day.
I must preface what I have to say by a few remarks about the author of the book. The Rev. Richard Cobbold was the son of John Cobbold, a wealthy brewer of the Cliff House, Ipswich, by his second wife, who plays so important a part in the story I am about to put before you. Mrs. Cobbold was a very remarkable woman, a friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds, an author of some repute; and, what was most unusual at the time, an eloquent public speaker. She married Mr. Cobbold when he was a widower with fourteen children and had by him a large family herself—six sons and a daughter. Richard was the youngest son, being born in 1797 and dying in his eightieth year in 1877. He was Rector of Wortham, a parish in the north of Suffolk, an author of repute in his day, highly respected as a devoted clergyman, a strong churchman, and a keen and active sportsman. In 1845 he brought out “Margaret Catchpole.” In his preface he says: “The public may depend upon the truth of the main features of this narrative; indeed, most of the facts recorded were matters of public notoriety at the time of their occurrence. The author who details them is a son with whom this extraordinary female lived and from whose hands he received the letters and facts here given.” The story of Margaret Catchpole told in the novel is briefly as follows:
She was born at Nacton, a village not far from Ipswich, on what was then a somewhat desolate heath on the north bank of the Orwell. Her father was head ploughman to a farmer named Denton, a well-known breeder of Suffolk cart horses. From childhood she was known as a good rider, and she obtained her first place as a servant by catching a very spirited pony of Mr. Denton’s, whose wife was taken suddenly ill, and riding at a gallop to the town and through the streets crowded on a market day to fetch the doctor. As she had not had time to saddle or bridle her steed, she rode him bareback with a halter to guide him—a really remarkable feat for a child of fourteen. As she grew up, she found a suitor in a clever sailor named William Laud, originally a boat builder, who had been a pupil in navigation, says the author, under a Mr. Crabbe, a brother of the poet’s.[12] Laud’s education and abilities seem to have been above his station in life, and had he been able to keep straight he would have risen to the command of a merchant ship, and possibly even to officer’s rank in the Royal Navy. As it was, he attached himself to a man named Bargood, an unscrupulous employer of smugglers, and became one of the leaders of that highly organized body which in the war with France was bent on defrauding the revenue. Laud’s influence was singularly bad for the Catchpole family. Two brothers came to a bad end, another enlisted and disappeared for years, and the whole household fell under suspicion of being in league with the smugglers.
Now comes the undoubted fiction in the story. Margaret Catchpole particularly requested that her husband’s name should be concealed, if her adventures were ever published, in order that her children might not know she had been a convict. Consequently we must assume that the honest lover called John Barry of Levington, the parish next to Nacton, is fictitious, and probably that he and his brother Edward are introduced to heighten the romance.[13] Anyhow, in the story Laud was severely wounded by John’s brother Edward, who commanded the preventive men on Felixstow Beach, and was supposed to have been killed. Margaret nursed Laud in his concealment into convalescence; and later on when she was in service at a Mrs. Wake’s he attempted to carry her off by violence. She was, however, protected by the faithful John Barry and a strange old fisherman nicknamed Robinson Crusoe. John Barry was seriously wounded. On his recovery he proposed to Margaret, who refused him; and, in desperation, the rejected lover emigrated to the Colony of New South Wales, Australia.
In May, 1793, Margaret entered into service with Mrs. Cobbold of the Cliff, Ipswich. The house still stands adjoining the well-known brewery on the shore of the river Orwell. Even to this day it lies at the fringe of the business part of Ipswich, at the end of the docks and quays; beyond it is country and the well-wooded banks of the beautiful river. The girl was under-nursemaid, and also helped the cook in the evening. She soon manifested exceptional abilities; for not only did she learn all the lessons which the children had to prepare, but on three occasions she saved the life of members of Mrs. Cobbold’s large family. She rescued two little boys, George and Frederick (the latter my grandfather), from the fall of a wall, which would inevitably have crushed them; she saved another, Henry, in Ipswich, when he had fallen into deep water; and when an older boy, named William, had gone alone down the Orwell to shoot ducks and his boat had been overturned, it was by her courage and resource that the lad was recovered in a state of insensibility. On the latter occasion Laud reappears suddenly. He had been pressed into the Navy and was now necessarily leading a more reputable life, and Margaret could avow her partiality for her lover without shame. In 1794 Laud fought in Lord Howe’s victory of the 1st of June and apparently distinguished himself highly in the action, being one of the crew entrusted with bringing home a valuable prize. In the story Laud is represented as a man naturally with good impulses, but weak and unstable; and the villain of the piece is the sailor who was Laud’s mate in his smuggling days—one Luff.
Luff was determined to get Laud back to the smuggling business; Laud, on the contrary, desired to lead a virtuous life with Margaret. Accordingly, when he was free of the navy, he brought his prize money and left it at Mr. Cobbold’s house, but Margaret, who had now become cook and had got into trouble by entertaining too many sailors, refused to see her lover—of course not knowing it was he. Luff then turned up, and, as she refused to give him information about Laud, threw her into a well from which she was rescued with difficulty. Luff was killed soon after in a desperate encounter with the preventive men, and from what Margaret’s brother Edward could gather Luff had murdered Laud. Margaret did not believe it; but her conduct became so unsatisfactory from grief and disappointment that Mrs. Cobbold, despite all she had done for the family, was compelled to dismiss her from her service. Laud in the meantime had reformed and settled down as a boat builder, and on his uncle’s death he came into the business. But the habit of smuggling was too strong, and he returned to his old courses. This brings us to the tragedy. Margaret has heard that Laud is alive from an old servant of the Cobbolds. She longs for an explanation and is determined to see him. Instead of consulting any of her reputable friends she goes to Ipswich and is persuaded that Laud is in London waiting for her there. Even a letter from him is produced expressing his readiness to marry her if she would join him. This clumsy fraud was devised by a man named Cook in order to induce Margaret, whose fame as a rider was known to him, to steal a horse from Mr. Cobbold, and to ride him up to London. Regardless of the consequences, Margaret took her old master’s best horse, named Rochford, and rode him to London, seventy miles, in eight hours. Of course the loss of the horse was known at once, and handbills were issued offering a reward. Margaret, dressed as a groom, was arrested soon after her arrival in London, and sent back to Ipswich to be tried at the Assizes. On August 9, 1797, she pleaded guilty at Bury St. Edmunds and was condemned to death. Her crime was then considered a most serious one, but she made a very favourable impression, and the witnesses for character gave such good testimony that the judge commuted the death sentence to one of transportation for seven years. For three years Margaret remained in Ipswich gaol; and it is probable that her sentence would have been remitted altogether but for what ensued.
Laud was now smuggling on a large scale. He was deeply concerned with an affair in which two preventive men were beaten and thrown into the sea at Southwold for reporting that they had seen forty carts and horses ready to take a cargo which was to be “run” near Dunwich. A reward of £100 for his apprehension was offered in the newspapers on March 2d, 1799. Shortly after this 880 gallons of gin were seized and the guilt of smuggling it brought home to Laud. All his property was confiscated and he was given a year’s imprisonment and sentenced to pay £100. He was committed to Ipswich gaol, and would have to stay there after his sentence had expired till the fine was paid. Of course Margaret, whose good conduct had made her practically free of the prison, discovered that her lover was an inmate; and, as she had kept intact the prize money he had given her, she was able to give him the means of obtaining his liberation at the end of his year’s imprisonment. Laud persuaded her to try to escape and join him, and the way she did this is one of the most extraordinary in her romantic career. The wall of the prison was twenty-five feet high and protected at the top with iron spikes. Margaret succeeded in getting a flower stand, which placed endways raised her to within thirteen feet of the top. She had made herself a garment like a shepherd’s smock and a pair of trousers so as to be unincumbered in her movements. By casting a clothes-line over the chevaux-de-frise on the top of the wall she managed to climb up to the iron spikes. Then, lowering the line on the other side, she turned over between the revolving spikes and let herself down on the opposite side. She and Laud made for a place called Sudbourn; but were overtaken on the beach where, after a desperate fight, Laud was killed by Edward Barry, and Margaret arrested and taken back to the gaol.
It was one of the strange anomalies of the cruel law of that age that whereas ruffians like Cook, and desperados like Laud escaped the capital sentence, comparatively innocent persons were hanged without mercy. For a reprieved person to escape from prison was death, and, though Margaret was ignorant of the terrible penalty which she had incurred, there seemed no hope of her meeting with any further leniency. She was again brought before the same judge, Lord Chief Baron Sir Archibald Macdonald, who had condemned her in August, 1797, on the third day of the same month in 1800. Again she pleaded guilty, and when the judge condemned her in very stern language she made a short speech accepting his sentence, which impressed everyone present in the court house. Her eloquence and her whole demeanour profoundly impressed the judge, and again he obtained power to respite her, sentencing her this time to lifelong transportation.