The chapters of which this little work consists originally appeared in the Christian World Magazine, where they were so fortunate as to attract favourable notice, and from which they are now reprinted, with a few slight additions, by permission of the Editor. In bringing out a second edition, I have incorporated the substance of other articles originally written for local journals. It is to be hoped, touching as they do a theme not easily exhausted, but always interesting to East Anglians, that they may help to sustain that love of one’s county which, alas! like the love of country, is a matter reckoned to be of little importance in these cosmopolitan days, but which, nevertheless, has had not a little share in the formation of that national greatness and glory in which at all times Englishmen believe.
One word more. I have retained some strictures on the clergy of East Anglia, partly because they were true at the time to which I refer, and partly because it gives me pleasure to own that they are not so now. The Church of England clergyman of to-day is an immense improvement on that of my youth. In ability, in devotion to the duties of his calling, in intelligence, in self-denial, in zeal, he is equal to the clergy of any other denomination. If he has lost his hold upon Hodge, that, at any rate, is not his fault.
Clacton-on-Sea,
January, 1893.
CHAPTER I. a suffolkvillage. | |
Distinguished people born there—Its Puritans andNonconformists—The country roundCovehithe—Southwold—Suffolk dialect—The GreatEastern Railway | |
CHAPTER II. thestricklands. | |
Reydon Hall—The clergy—Pakefield—Sociallife in a village | |
CHAPTER III. lowestoft. | |
Yarmouth bloaters—George Borrow—The town fiftyyears ago—The distinguished natives | |
CHAPTER IV. politics andtheology. | |
Homerton academy—W. Johnson Fox, M.P.—Politicsin 1830—Anti-Corn Law speeches—Wonderful oratory | |
CHAPTER V. bungay and itspeople. | |
Bungay Nonconformity—Hannah More—TheChildses—The Queen’s Librarian—PrinceAlbert | |
a celebratednorfolk town. | |
Great Yarmouth Nonconformists—Intellectuallife—Dawson Turner—Astley Cooper—HudsonGurney—Mrs. Bendish | |
CHAPTER VII. the norfolkcapital. | |
Brigg’s Lane—The carrier’scart—Reform demonstration—The olddragon—Chairing M.P.’s—HornbuttonJack—Norwich artists and literati—Quakers andNonconformists | |
CHAPTER VIII. the suffolkcapital. | |
The Orwell—The Sparrows—Ipswichnotabilities—Gainsborough—Medicalmen—Nonconformists | |
CHAPTER IX. anold-fashioned town. | |
Woodbridge and the country round—BernardBarton—Dr. Lankester—An old Noncon. | |
CHAPTER X. milton’ssuffolk schoolmaster. | |
Stowmarket—The Rev. Thomas Young—Bishop Halland the Smectymnian divines—Milton’smulberry-tree—Suffolk relationships | |
CHAPTER XI. inconstable’s county. | |
East Bergholt—The Valley of the Stour—Paintingfrom nature—East Anglian girls | |
CHAPTER XII. east anglianworthies. | |
Suffolk cheese—Danes, Saxons, andNormans—Philosophers and statesmen—Artists andliterati | |
CHAPTER I.
a suffolk village.
Distinguished people born there—Its Puritans and Nonconformists—The country round Covehithe—Southwold—Suffolk dialect—The Great Eastern Railway.
In his published Memoirs, the great Metternich observes that if he had never been born he never could have loved or hated. Following so illustrious a precedent, I may observe that if I had not been born in East Anglia I never could have been an East Anglian. Whether I should have been wiser or better off had I been born elsewhere, is an interesting question, which, however, it is to be hoped the public will forgive me if I decline to discuss on the present occasion.
In a paper bearing the date of 1667, a Samuel Baker, of Wattisfield Hall, writes: ‘I was born at
a village called Wrentham, which place I cannot pass by the mention of without saying thus much, that religion has there flourished longer, and that in much piety; the Gospel and grace of it have been more powerfully and clearly preached, and more generally received; the professors of it have been more sound in the matter and open and steadfast in the profession of it in an hour of temptation, have manifested a greater oneness amongst themselves and have been more eminently preserved from enemies without (albeit they dwell where Satan’s seat is encompassed with his malice and rage), than I think in any village of the like capacity in England; which I speak as my duty to the place, but to my particular shame rather than otherwise, that such a dry and barren plant should spring out of such a soil.’ I resemble this worthy Mr. Baker in two respects. In the first place, I was born at Wrentham, though at a considerably later period of time than 1667; and, secondly, if he was a barren plant—he of whom we read, in Harmer’s Miscellaneous Works, that ‘he was a gentleman of fortune and education, very zealous for the Congregational plan of church government and discipline, and a sufferer in its bonds for a good conscience’—what am I?
Nor was it only piety that existed in this distant parish. If the reader turns to the diary of John Evelyn, under the date of 1679, he will find mention made of a child brought up to London, ‘son of one Mr. Wotton, formerly amanuensis to Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winton, who both read and perfectly understood Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic and Syriac, and most of the modern languages, disputed in divinity, law and all the sciences, was skilful in history, both ecclesiastical and profane; in a word, so universally and solidly learned at eleven years of age that he was looked on as a miracle. Dr. Lloyd, one of the most deep-learned divines of this nation in all sorts of literature, with Dr. Burnet, who had severely examined him, came away astonished, and told me they did not believe there had the like appeared in the world. He had only been instructed by his father, who being himself a learned person, confessed that his son knew all that he himself knew. But what was more admirable than his vast memory was his judgment and invention, he being tried with divers hard questions which required maturity of thought and experience. He was also dexterous in chronology, antiquities, mathematics. In sum, an intellectus universalis beyond all that we