Woodbridge has some claim to consideration from the Nonconformist point of view. In 1648 a schoolmistress, Elizabeth Warren, published a pamphlet, ‘The Old and Good Way Vindicated, in a Treatise, wherein Divers Errours, both in Judgment and Practice incident to these Declining Days, are Unmasked for the Caution of humble Christians.’ From the same town also there issued ‘The Preacher Sent: a Vindication of the Liberty of Public Preaching by Some Men not Ordained.’ The author of this book, or one of the authors of it, was the Rev. Frederick Woodall, the first pastor of the Free Church—‘a man of learning, ability, and piety, a strict Independent, zealous for the fifth monarchy, and a considerable sufferer after his ejectment.’ He had, we are told, to contend with a tedious embarrassment, through the persecuting
spirit that for many years prevailed, and considerably cramped the success of his ministry. Woodbridge is one of the churches which Mr. Harmer refers to in his ‘Miscellaneous Works,’ as being rigidly Congregationalist, and which conducted its affairs rather according to the heads of Savoy Confession than the heads of Agreement. When I was a boy the pastor was a Mr. Pinchback, who seems to have been a worthy successor of godly men, equally attractive and successful. He had previously settled at Ware. It is recorded of the good divine that on one occasion he had to leave his wife at the point of death, as it seemed, to go to chapel. In the course of the service he mentioned the fact of her illness, and announced in consequence that he would preach her funeral sermon on the following Sunday. But when the following Sunday came the lady was better, and lived for many years to assist her husband in his godly work. In the rural districts the Baptists flourished immensely.
At Grundisburgh there preached for many years to a large congregation a worthy man of the name of Collins, who was one of the leading lights of the body which rejoiced in a John Foreman and a Brother Wells. People who live in London cannot
have forgotten Jemmy Wells, of the Surrey Tabernacle, and his grotesque and telling anecdotes. One can scarcely imagine how people could ever believe the things Wells used to say as to the Lord’s dealings with him; but they did, and his funeral—in South London, at any rate—was almost as numerously attended as that of Arthur, Duke of Wellington. I expect high-and-dry Baptists have been not a little troublesome in their day, and in East Anglia they were more numerous than in London. It may be that they have helped to weaken Dissent in that part of the world. Men of independent intellect must have been not a little shocked by that unctuous familiarity with God and the devil which is the characteristic of that class. On a Sunday morning Jemmy Wells, as his admirers called him, would describe in the most graphic manner what the devil had said to him in the course of the week; and on one memorable occasion, at any rate, described with much force the shame he felt at having to tell the gentleman in black that his people’s memories, unfortunately, were somewhat remiss in the matter of pew-rents. Brother Collins avoided such flights, but he was an attractive preacher to all the country round, nevertheless. Truly such a one was needed in that
district. At Rendham, a village near Saxmundham, lived a godly minister of the Church of England. In 1844, speaking to a friend of the writer, he said that when he came into the county, between thirty and forty years before, there was only one other clergyman and himself between Ipswich and Great Yarmouth who preached the Gospel, and that sometimes the squire of the parish would hold up his watch to him to bid him close his sermon. In some places where he went to preach he had to have a body-guard to prevent his being mobbed and pelted with rotten eggs on account of his evangelical principles.
CHAPTER X.
milton’s suffolk schoolmaster.
Stowmarket—The Rev. Thomas Young—Bishop Hall and the Smectymnian divines—Milton’s mulberry-tree—Suffolk relationships.
‘My father destined me,’ writes John Milton, in his ‘Defensio Secunda,’ ‘while yet a little boy, for the study of humane letters, which I served with such eagerness that, from the twelfth year of my age, I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight, which, indeed, was the first cause of injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were also added frequent headaches; all which not retarding my natural impetuosity in learning, he caused me to be instructed both at the Grammar School and under other masters at home.’ Of the latter, the best known was the Rev. Thomas Young, the Puritan minister, of Stowmarket, Suffolk.
It is generally claimed for Young that he was
an East Anglian. Professor Masson has, however, settled the question that he was a Scotchman, of the University of Aberdeen. Be that as it may, like most Scotchmen, he made his way to England, and was employed by Mr. Milton, the scrivener of Bread Street, to teach his gifted son. As he seems to have been married at the time, it is not probable that he resided with his pupil, but only visited him daily. Never had master a better pupil, or one who rewarded him more richly by the splendour of his subsequent career. The poet, writing to him a few years after he ceased to be his pupil, speaks of ‘the incredible and singular gratitude he owed him on account of the services he had done him,’ and calls God to witness that he reverenced him as his father. In a Latin elegy, after implying that Young was dearer to him than Socrates to Alcibiades, or than the great Stagyrite to his generous pupil, Alexander, he goes on to say: ‘First, under his guidance, I explored the recesses of the Muses, and beheld the sacred green spots of the cleft summit of Parnassus and quaffed the Pierian cups, and, Clio favouring me, thrice sprinkled my joyful mouth with Castalian wine;’ from which it is clear that Young had done his duty to his pupil, and that the latter ever regarded