Removal of Memorial Brasses from the Church.
In 1644 our church suffered some illusage from the Protestant fervour of the Parliament. The story, as told by the Vicar, Mr. Jacob Rouse, is as follows—
“In the same year after, on the 22nd of June, there came one Jessope with a commission from the Earl of Manchester to take away from gravestones all inscriptions on which he found “orate pro anima;” A wretched commissioner not able to read or find out that which his commission informed him to remove, hee took up in our church so much brasses as he sould to Mr. Josiah Wild for five shillings, which was afterwards contrary to my knowledge, run into the litle bell that hangs in the town house. Thear wearr taken up in the middle ally, twelve peeces, belonging to the twelve severall generations of the Jettors; in the chancell, one belonging to Bishop Scroope; the words were “Richardus Scroope Episcopus Dromorocensis et hujus ecclesiæ vicarius, hic jacet, qui obiit 10 may anno 1364.” There was also by this Jessop taken up in the vicar’s chancell, one the north side of the church, a fair peece of brasse with this inscription “Hic jacet Johannes Goodknapp hujus ecclesiæ vicarius qui obiit 4 Decembris anno dni 1442.”
The vicar’s spelling is bad for this time, and his account is curiously inaccurate. Bishop Scroope’s Christian name was Thomas, not Richard, and he died in 1491, not 1364. The Jettors were an old Lowestoft family, and we have seen their names in the Subsidy Rolls for 1524, in which John Jettor, senr., of that date, appears as possessed of £10 worth of “movabyll goods.” The existence of brasses in the Parish Church commemorating 12 generations of this family before 1644 was very improbable. No such name as John Goodknapp appears in the list of vicars in the Diocesan Register.
It appears that the “litle bell,” which was cast from the brasses taken from the church, was in use as the chapel bell in Gillingwater’s time at the end of the last century. It was re-cast when the chapel was converted into the Town Hall; in the tower of which it still hangs, and sounds the hours for the Town Clock.
Although both Yarmouth and Lowestoft must have suffered with the rest of the country from the restrictions on social and commercial intercourse during these sad times, the fishing business seems to have improved rather than otherwise, owing to a diminution in the number of foreign competitors, and an increase in the exportation of fish.
There appears to have been a considerable increase in the number of ships sent from both towns to the cod fishery off Iceland, and to the herring fishery in the North Sea. During the years 1641 and 1649, the Yarmouth cod fishing reached its greatest height. The ships destroyed by the “pirates” in 1644 were soon replaced, and the accounts shew that no less than 33 barks were sent to the Iceland fishery in 1648, besides 182 boats employed in the herring fishery. According to Gillingwater, as many as 30 ships were employed by Lowestoft in the same fisheries at this one. If this was the case, the Lowestoft fishermen must have made a great advance since the days of Elizabeth, when we were told by Mr. Mighells that their ships going to Iceland had been reduced to one.
Gillingwater gives a full account of the cod fishery, as carried on by the Lowestoft fishermen, and tells us that in his time—
“There was a trench still visible upon the Denes, a little to the north of Lowestoft, in which stood the blubber coppers where they used to boil the livers of the fish when they returned home from the voyage.”