Had Martyn been of canonical age for ordination at the close of 1803, there can be little doubt that he would at once have been sent out by the Church Missionary Society, which could find only German Lutherans as its agents abroad, until 1813, when another Fellow of St. John’s, and a Wrangler, the Rev. William Jowett, offered his services, and was stationed at Malta. But when ordained he lost the little that he had inherited from his father, and saw his younger sister also without resources. There was a tradition in the family of his half-brother John, that Henry and his sisters litigated with him, and farther lessened the patrimony. However that may have been, while in India Henry set apart the proceeds of his Fellowship at St. John’s for the maintenance of his brother’s family, and bequeathed all he had to his children. Mr. H. Thornton, of Clapham, was executor, and duly carried out his instructions, starting the nephews in life. Another incident at this time foreshadows the self-denial of his Indian career. By opening the door of his room suddenly he had disfigured the face of his Cambridge landlady, whose husband was a clergyman. He left to her the interest of 1,000l. as an amend, and she enjoyed this annuity through a very long life.
The Senior Wrangler was not allowed to preach in the church where he had been baptised, nor in any church of his native county, save in his brother-in-law’s. On August 8, 1804, he thus wrote to his friend ‘R. Boys, Esq., Bene’t Coll., Cambridge,’ after preaching at Plymouth for his cousin:
The following Sunday it was not permitted me to occupy the pulpit of my native town, but in a neighbouring church I was allowed to testify the Gospel of the grace of God. But that one sermon was enough. The clergy seem to have united to exclude me from their churches, so that I must now be contented with my brother-in-law’s two little churches about five miles from Truro. The objection is that ‘Mr. Martyn is a Calvinist preacher in the dissenting way, &c.’ My old schoolmaster, who has always hitherto been proud of his pupil, has offered his services for any time to a curate near this place, rather than, as he said, he should apply to me for assistance.
It is interesting to remember, remarks Mr. Moule, who has published this letter for the first time, that ‘always now, as the anniversary of Martyn’s death recurs, a sermon is preached in the cathedral of Truro, in which the great work of Missions is set forth, and his illustrious share in it commemorated.’
As confidential adviser of Charles Grant in the Court of Directors, in the appointment of chaplains, Simeon always sought to attract the best of his curates to that career, and it would appear from the Journal that so early as the beginning of 1803 he had hinted at this to Martyn. Now the way was plain. Martyn could no longer support himself as one of those volunteer missionaries whose services the two great missionary societies of the Church of England have always been happy to enjoy, nor could he relieve his sister out of the subsistence allowance of a missionary. Mr. Grant’s offer of a Bengal chaplaincy seemed to come to him as the solution. But a new element had entered into his life, second only to his spiritual loyalty. He had learned to love Lydia Grenfell.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See the Statistical Society’s Journal, September, 1888, for invaluable notes on the ‘System of Work and Wages in the Cornish Mines,’ by L.L. Price, M.A., of Oriel College, Oxford.
[2] The late Henry Martyn Jeffery, M.A., F.R.S., in 1883.
[3] Rev. Henry Bailey, D.D., Canon of Canterbury, supplies us with this story from the lips of the late Rev. T.H. Shepherd, who was the last surviving Canon of the Collegiate Church in Southwell:—