passion in my mind to carry back to them the prizes which they prompted and enabled me to win.’
Wilberforce, when he was staying at Lowestoft in 1816, wrote: ‘I am still full of Earlham and its excellent inhabitants. One of our great astronomers stated it as probable there may be stars whose light has been travelling to us from the Creation, and has not yet reached our little planet. In the Earlham family a new constellation has broken in upon us, for which you must invent a name, as you are fond of star-gazing, and if it indicates a little monstrosity (as they are apt to give the collection of stars the names of strange creatures—dragons, bears, etc.), the various stars of which the Earlham assemblage is made,’ continues Wilberforce, ‘will include also much to be respected and loved.’ At that time Mrs. Opie was one of the Norwich stars. Caroline Fox, who went to dine with her described her as in great force and really jolly. ‘She is enthusiastic about Father Mathew, reads Dickens voraciously, takes to Carlyle, but thinks his appearance rather against him—talks much and with great spirit of people, but never ill-naturedly.’
‘Norwich,’ as described by Camden, ‘on account of its wealth, populousness, neatness of buildings,
beautiful churches, with the number of them—for it has a matter of fifty parishes—as also the industry of its citizens, loyalty to their Prince, is to be reckoned among the most considerable cities in Britain. It was fortified with walls that have a great many turrets and eleven gates.’ Camden, quoting one writer after another, adds the eulogy of Andrew Johnston, a Scotchman, as follows:
‘A town whose stately piles and happy seat
Her citizens and strangers both delight;
Whose tedious siege and plunder made her bear
In Norman battles an unhappy share,
And feel the sad effects of dreadful war.
These storms o’erblown, now blest with constant peace,
She saw her riches and her trade increase.
State here by wealth, by beauty yet undone,
How blest if vain excess be yet unknown!
So fully is she from herself supplied
That England while she stands can never want a head.’
From Norwich went Robinson to help to build up in Amsterdam that Church of the Pilgrim Fathers which was to be in its turn the mother of a great Republic such as the world had never seen. He has been styled the Father of Modern Congregationalism; be that as it may, when he bade farewell in that quaint old harbour, Delfhaven—which looks as if not a brick or a building had been touched since—he was doing a work from which
neither himself nor those who stood with him could ever have expected such wonderful results. That emigration to Holland in Wren’s time was a great loss of money and men to England, and was an indication of Nonconformist strength which wise Churchmen would have conciliated rather than driven to extremities. ‘In sooth it was,’ wrote Heylin, ‘that the people in many great trading towns which were near the sea, having long been discharged of the bond of ceremonies, no sooner came to hear the least noise of a conformity, but they began to spurn against it; and when they found that all their striving was in vain, that they had lost the comfort of their lecturers and that their ministers began to shrink at the very name of a visitation, it was no hard matter for those ministers and lecturers to persuade them to remove their dwellings and transport their trades.’ ‘The sun of heaven,’ say they, ‘doth shine as comfortably in other places; the Sun of Righteousness much brighter.’ ‘Better to go and dwell in Goshen, find it where we can, than tarry in the midst of such an Egyptian darkness as is now falling on the land.’ One of the preachers who gave that advice and acted in accordance with it was William Bridge, M.A. Against him Wren
was so furious that he fled to Holland and settled down as one of the pastors of the church at Rotterdam. In 1643 we find him pastor of the church at Norwich and Yarmouth, and one of the Assembly of Divines. In 1644 the church was separated—a part meeting at Yarmouth and a part at Norwich. This was done on the advice of Mr. John Phillip, of Wrentham—a godly minister of great influence in his denomination in his day.
As was to be expected, I was taken to the Old Meeting House at Norwich, where many learned men had preached, and where many men almost as learned listened. The gigantic pews, in which a small family might have lived, filled me with amazement. And equally appalling to me was the respectability of the people, of a very different class from that of our Wrentham chapel. Close by was the Octagon Chapel, where the Unitarians worshipped, equally impressive in its respectability. But what struck me most was the new and fashionable Baptist chapel of St. Mary’s, where the venerable and learned Kinghorn preached—a great Hebrew scholar and the champion of strict communion—against Robert Hall, and other degenerate Baptists, who were ready to admit to the Lord’s Table any Christians, whether properly
baptized—that is, by immersion when adults—or merely sprinkled as infants. Up to this day I confound the worthy man with John the Baptist, probably because he looked so lank and long and lean. He was a man of singularly precise habits, so much so that I heard of an old lady who always regulated her cooking by his daily walk, putting the dumplings into the pot to boil when he went, and taking them out when he returned. I could write much about him, but cui bono? who cares about a dead Baptist lion? Not even the Baptists themselves. On going into their library in Castle Street the other day, to look at Kinghorn’s life, I found no one had taken the trouble to cut the pages. In the front gallery of St. Mary’s, Mr. Brewer, the Norwich schoolmaster, had sittings for the boys of his school, including his own sons, who, at King’s College and elsewhere, have done much to illustrate our national history and literature. If I remember aright, one of the congregation was a jolly-looking old gentleman who, as Uncle Jerry, laid the foundation of a mustard manufactory, which has placed one of the present M.P.’s for Norwich at the head of a business of unrivalled extent. When Mr. Kinghorn died, his place was taken by Mr. Brock, better known as Dr. Brock,